0:08 - Opening Night Live
13:28 - Impact of Pandemic on Children
20:39 - The State of Health in Children
22:14 - Birth Rate Concerns
30:13 - The Decline of Marriage
34:34 - Student Loan Crisis
44:09 - Nostalgia for Early Gaming
53:06 - Analyzing the Series 'Adolescence'
1:01:39 - School System Critique
1:05:11 - Censorship and Youth Violence
1:13:05 - Navigating Modern Relationships
1:13:25 - Closing Remarks
In this episode, I share my journey through a challenging season of health issues that impacted my voice and overall ability to produce content. After several weeks of dealing with discomfort, I finally feel like I'm returning to my usual self, which is a relief. I kick off the discussion with some interesting trivia about notable figures in American history related to aviation and space exploration, highlighting their connections to my home state of Ohio. This moment also provides an avenue to reminisce about classic sitcoms that shaped my early impressions of American culture.
As the conversation flows, I delve into some surprising statistics, including public sentiment about historical events like the Black Plague. To add a bit of humor, I jokingly associate approval ratings of such a grim topic with the dynamics of personal popularity, prompting reflections on human perceptions of public figures. Trust me when I say the numbers will leave you pondering!
The bulk of our discussion revolves around the implications of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Noted economist Tyler Cowen's assertion that the elite's pandemic response had merits leads to a critical examination of differing perspectives on health policy. We explore the effects of lockdowns, vaccinations, and personal freedom, as well as their consequences, particularly how they impacted children. Studies revealing significant drops in IQ among kids during the pandemic raise alarms about the long-term effects of government restrictions on education and development.
I continue probing our trust in experts, discussing the importance of personal experience and accountability when evaluating public health policies and their outcomes. Citing observations about the increased chronic health issues in children over decades, I question what role, if any, our health bureaucracies play in this troubling trend.
Shifting gears, I highlight some broader societal issues such as declining birth rates and the challenges many families face today, especially regarding financial burdens from student loans. I share a particularly striking case that reveals the harsh reality of borrowing to finance education, where repayments end up being more than the original debt. This segues into a critical perspective on education's role in shaping our societal values surrounding family life and economic stability.
Throughout the episode, I invite reflections on culture, individual freedom, and the societal structures that frame our choices — all while maintaining a light-hearted tone amidst serious topics. I conclude by urging listeners to consider the broader implications of these conversations on their lives and future generations, while encouraging open dialogue about the complexities we navigate as a society today.
Your questions are always welcome, and I look forward to engaging on these vital subjects as we build a better understanding of our world together.
[0:00] Good evening, good evening. Welcome, welcome, welcome to your Wednesday Night Live, 23rd of April 2025.
[0:08] Voice has almost returned to normal. I've had, I don't know, like five, six weeks of messed up voice ear stuff, but it seems to be almost back to normal. So that's obviously a big relief and very good for me, for you, for the world as a whole, I do hope and believe. Oh, I don't have my hat. Oh, well, that's fine. We can do the forehead dumb. We can do the forehead dumb. All right. So I have a lot of great topics tonight. Of course, I'm completely thrilled and overjoyed, blessed and honored to get your questions as well. Here's a little bit of trivia. The first man to fly an airplane and the first man on the moon lived 56 miles apart in southwest Ohio.
[0:57] Cleveland Rocks, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. It was an old, uh, old, um, sorry, I shouldn't laugh. Um, Drew Carey, the Drew Carey Show. Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. Ohio and Cincinnati were my introductions to America through sitcoms. WKRP in Cincinnati. Loved, loved, loved that show when I was a kid. Loved that show when I was a kid. Very funny. And I ended up, you know, kind of in the vicinity of being a DJ, if that makes any sense. Drew Carey show intro, yeah. That guy is tortured, man. Drew Carey is tortured. Oh, I say this with sympathy, of course. But definitely, he is with the torture. All right. So, what else? Okay, let me see if you can guess this number. Okay. I don't even know how to ask this too well. All right. The Black Plague has a what percent approval rating among Americans? The Black Plague... The Black Plague has a what percent approval rating among Americans?
[2:18] I was surprised. Because sometimes people just guess, like they don't know, they don't know. However, however, Black Plague, two relatively negative words, I suppose. Shouldn't be hard to figure out whether or not.
[2:38] Is that the disease with the buboes? Yeah, bubonic plague. Thank you for the tip. Of course, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I'd really appreciate it. It's a low donation month, mostly because I've been kind of under the weather. So my shows have not been spectacular. Focused, dedicated, but I know the difference. So I really appreciate you guys' patience as I recover from this ear bug from hell. So the problem has been that when I talk I can hear a buzz in my ear so it's been a little tough to be vocally committed and to have lengthy shows so.
[3:20] Let's see here did you see the study on 1 million kids cutting sugars and additives raised test scores by 15.7% or 10 IQ points yeah if you could email me the study I'd appreciate that I have doubt I have doubt, all right yeah it was the disease with the buboes, he used to be a libertarian beacon drew carry now he's got that weird bod barker extended microphone on the prices right can you imagine going from libertarian wunderkind to how much did this cost, diseases have approval ratings right so, So the Black Plague has a 9% approval rating among Americans.
[4:10] So if you are, in fact, a manifestation of a horrible, vomity, lymph node, back of the rat off the ships from China plague that kills 25 to 30% of the population, if you're that, still one out of ten people are going to go yay he's my boy, he's my guy he's the guy love that guy, black death black death, maybe they think he's a, WWF fellow I don't know, I don't know anyway, so just you know if people don't like you if you should go through the difficult experience, I may go through this someday, if you go through the difficult experience of people not liking you, as long as you can keep it to around 1 in 10, then you are at the same popularity level as the Black Plague. Hopefully that gives you some perspective. Email, yeah, just email it to host, H-O-S-T, host at freedomain.com. All right.
[5:31] Tyler Cowen is an economist. I think he's childless. I don't know why I read that or that it even matters. But tell me what you think of this. So Tyler Cowen wrote, a lot of people do not want to admit it, but when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, the elites, by and large, actually got a lot right. Most importantly, the people who got vaccinated fared much better than the people who did not. We also got a vaccine in record time against most expectations. Operation Warp Speed was a success. Long COVID did turn out to be a real thing. Low personal mobility levels meant that often lockdowns were not the real issue. Most of that economic activity was going away in any case. Most states should have ended the lockdown sooner, but they mattered less than many critics have suggested. Furthermore, in contrast to what many were predicting, those restrictions on our liberty proved entirely, entirely temporary. Wow. That's really something. That's really something. I think he's a free market economist. Wild.
[6:57] The elites, by and large, actually got a lot right. What can you even say? What can you even say?
[7:14] What can you even say? You know, we were talking, I think it was a week and a half ago, it was a week and a half ago, with the Douglas Murray-Dave Smith debate, we were talking about expertise. Expertise. And I would sort of amend that. I was talking about people who expose themselves to contradictory information.
[7:33] And are able to have some standard by which they can overcome confirmation bias, right? It's pretty important. It's why people on the right generally have a much better rounded worldview than people on the left. It's not necessarily because the perspective of people on the right is inherently more rounded. it. It's because if you're on the right, I mean, you grew up in government schools, you can't really help but have exposure to the mainstream media. So you have that worldview kind of hammered into you, you know, nails through the forehead. And then you find some exposure to some other kind of arguments or thinking or way of viewing the world and so on. And you have a bigger or wider or more rounded perspective because of that right whereas if you're on the left then you're raised in the left the media is the left the news is the left school is the left and you can just chug along with no real exposure to any arguments that go outside your particular bubble.
[8:50] But yeah, they got it right. I mean, the Royal College estimates were way off. The elites, almost unanimously and with quite a lot of pressure, said it was not a lab leak, but natural, of natural origins, and completely dismissed the lab leak. Though there were countless people to whom it was completely obvious that the most likely explanation like by far there wasn't even a close second was the lab leak and as i mentioned before if they had accepted that it was a lab leak then lockdowns don't really do much good right, because if it's already if it's designed to infect human beings then i don't know what distancing and lockdowns and all of that sort of stuff is really supposed to do right.
[9:43] Those restrictions on our liberty proved entirely temporary. Oh, snap the edge of the table off. Those restrictions on our liberty proved entirely temporary.
[10:04] Okay, let me ask you this, my friends. Let me ask you this. Were there losses that you experienced during the pandemic that were not particularly temporary? For instance, did you have a business or a job that did not survive the pandemic? Well, the lockdowns. And I understand there would have been, as Dr. Cohen is saying, some of this would have diminished anyway. But, you know, in Canada, of course, a lot of the big box stores were allowed to stay open, but the smaller stores were not. People lost their jobs, in particular, if they didn't want to get vaccinated. And I think that the American military is bringing some people back now. But that seems pretty significant, right? That seems pretty significant.
[11:23] It's uh wild, i mean if you and you of course you can say that the you know the lockdowns were gone and the travel restrictions are gone and so on but those restrictions on our liberty proving entirely temporary boy it takes a guy who's got tenure who can't get fired it takes a guy to say well the restrictions just uh proved entirely temporary, it's wild man, It's wild how people can just say that kind of stuff. Safe and effective. Well, haven't the odds for a lot of people who took the COVID vaccines, haven't the odds of getting COVID gone up? I mean, if you follow the great Dr. Naomi Wolf, she's gathered together teams to go through the Pfizer documents and other documents to try and figure out the safety slash danger profile. Got it right. That is just wild to me. Absolutely wild. Just not much curiosity or anything like that, right?
[12:50] Remember you'd go to restaurants and you'd wear your mask until you got to the table and you'd sit down and take your mask off because, you know, five to six feet, five to seven feet, virus, patterns, sedimentary layers of death virus. Below four to five feet, ah, wow. Yeah, it's very tough for people who have tenure to understand entrepreneurs.
[13:29] I mean, the IQ drops for the kids who couldn't go to school and socialize was unbelievable, right?
[13:55] So, according to a study, let me just get to the summary here no I can't get to the summary unfortunately it's going on yeah children born during the pandemic show, lower IQs children's IQ dropped during the lockdown, and it's not small. Some people have said half a standard deviation, standard deviation, wild.
[14:57] So that's pretty important. Seems pretty important. All right. So I think for me, an expert is also someone who has a standard by which they can be wrong and hold themselves to that standard, right? As Mike Cernovich wrote in 2007, the quote economist Tyler Cowen and his co-blogger claimed that there wasn't going to be a recession. And they marked people discussing subprime lending and credit default swaps as being hysterics. They got the most important issue of their careers wrong. Wrong. Now, I get it. We can all be wrong. I've certainly made mistakes in my life, publicly and privately. No question. But holy crap. One of the concepts, this is Taleb's argument, sort of skin in the game. I don't listen to people who don't have skin in the game. So why would I listen to somebody who talks about lockdowns when they can't get fired, get paid no matter what, and work from home?
[16:21] Like Fauci. This is from Dr. Simon Godek. when Fauci joined the National Institute of Health in 1968, only about 6% of American children had a chronic condition. By the time he became director of NIAID in 1984, that number had nearly doubled to 11.8%. Now, after 40 years of his leadership, over 60% of U.S. children suffer from at least one chronic illness. 60%. 60% of children.
[17:12] Yeah, you got laid off thanks to the pandemic. Yeah. Inflation to inflation. Yeah, that's right. That's right. In a couple of years, 40% of all the dollars ever created were printed, right? You know, a tenfold increase in 40 years, a tenfold increase in chronic childhood health conditions, if that's not enough for people to take to the streets, I don't know what is. I mean, I got to tell you, like, I mean, I'm only 59 this year, right? 59 this year.
[17:47] I knew almost no sick children when I was young.
[17:56] I knew almost no sick children when I was young. I remember one kid. Oh, this is really rough, man. This is really rough. He was an amazing soccer player. Amazing soccer player. Like, to make the ball dance. You know, like how they have those, often these Asian guys who look like they're floating when they do this sidestep thing. I mean, he could just, you know, twirl it like Beckham and bend it like the solar system. And he um against policy he did a flip in a pool and hit his head and was underwater for too long and never recovered no that's a that was a brain damage thing it was really really tough and he stayed in the school and he was like he made he made a lot of us pretty cautious pretty cautious because you see something like that and you're like everything could change like in a split second if you make a bad decision. Everything. There was that. I had a friend when I was in junior high school who was in a wheelchair, and he didn't make it to high school. I had another friend, my best friend, when I came to Canada at the age of 11 or 12, died into sleep. He had a congenital heart defect that nobody knew about. Other than that...
[19:20] You know, I mean, knew a couple of kids who had asthma and so on, but not. It was tiny. I mean, I assume it was less than the sort of 9% thing, right? It was tiny. It was tiny.
[19:38] So when you preside over, or I'm not saying it's all causal to Dr. Fauci, but if you are in charge and there's a tenfold increase in childhood chronic health conditions, I mean, the way I think, I'm not talking about Dr. Fauci here, I'm just talking about general elites. Honestly, I think a lot of them in the health field are so fucking cold-hearted. I think they're just few kids as like crops. You know, you plant illness in kids, and the government pays you for endless medical interventions. Endless medical interventions. And this is a big change for me from when I was younger. I mean, I viewed, you know, Western medicine as legit. And I mean, medicine is fine. It's sort of medicine plus the state.
[20:39] Oof. Oof.
[20:52] I think they view children as a kind of crap. Well, if they're unwell, then you can print money through the state. Matt Walsh. He always sounds like he's swallowing his voice a little. Well, I should talk, right? He wrote, the birth rate in 1850 was almost 300 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. In 1950, it was 106. Today, it's 55, half of what it was, 20 years, 75 years ago. 20% of what it was 175 years ago. We need to start taking this problem seriously before we march into our own extinction. Now, of course, survivability, you know, one in three, sometimes kids, one in two, sometimes didn't make it to their fifth birthday. So I get that there was a certain amount of infant mortality or excess mortality that was being made up for in the past, but, it's rough I know Trump's talking about what 5,000 bucks give women who have give birth 5,000 bucks not only will that not work it'll do the opposite of working.
[22:15] Amish goods don't suffer the ailments common in our advanced society listen, I mean, maybe you're right. I did look up at one point, you know, the argument that the Amish don't have autism because they don't get vaccinated and so on. I would look up counter arguments, please. I'm begging you as a whole, look up counter arguments. We all have a confirmation bias. We like to look up things that support our perspectives. And I understand that. And that's human nature. And, you know, after a certain amount of, after a certain amount of experience, it kind of makes sense, right? I don't go and check out the flat earth theories anymore. But just look up, right? Just look up the counter arguments, right? Look up the counter arguments. Maybe they're valid, maybe they're not. but really do try to make sure that you don't just do confirmation bias as best you can. And they tried in Hungary, they've tried these baby bonuses. I think it was in Hungary, if you have four kids, you'd have to have pay income tax again.
[23:33] But I honestly, I don't think that we can improve the birth rate until there is a certain amount of, we really can't improve the birth rate until there's much more of a free market in education and entertainment. So right now, it's the anti-natalists who are in charge of the education and the media as a whole. So until we can find some way to get more of a free market education in media society, then it's just not going to work. Because the hammering, the message is so insistent, so relentless. I mean, you remember this, what was it, 2019? Five, five years ago plus, where I put out the infamous, I was quite proud of this, voted the worst tweet of all time, the infamous Taylor Swift tweet. Just pointing out that, yeah, she's 30. I hope she has kids because 90% of her eggs are already gone. Think she'd be a fun mom. she should have get yeah.
[25:03] Because, of course, the opposite of pronatalism is short-term hedonism. It's more fun to go to college than to raise a baby in the short run, right? In the immediate, in the moment, right? Go to some keggers, show up to some classes, try and learn something about World War II through one bloodshot eye at 8.30 in the morning.
[25:32] It's more fun in the short run. And of course, the reason why, I was reading about this with regards to China, because they have that one-child policy now there. Population is falling off a cliff. It's brutal. Population is falling off a cliff. And it's really, really hard to reverse, because your entire culture, your entire society starts to adapt itself to not community, not families, communities, not communities where there's just a bunch of, like, when I was a kid, I could go outside into the neighborhood, at least 10 kids to play with. At least. Often more. We have no money but maybe somebody would have a soccer ball or whatever but we would uh i would be able to go out.
[26:34] Of my apartment the flat that my family lived in i'd be able to go out and there were always kids to play with now if you live in the suburbs friends of mine were telling me about this right if you live in the suburbs they what do they call them bedroom communities and bedroom communities These are, you know, people take their kids, they drop them off at daycare, they go to work, they spend their time at work, they come back, they pick up their kids, then they've got to, you know, have dinner and bathe, and maybe there's some homework involved if it's school or whatever. And kids, you know, maybe there'll be some, maybe a bit on Sunday afternoon, some kids will be out. But I'm telling you, man, you know, I mean, I mean, obviously, I've mentioned this once or twice on the show, that I had a pretty rough upbringing at home. But socially, ah, socially, it was paradise. It was paradise. Hmm.
[27:38] I think women lose a lot of status when they have kids. Childless women are so desperate to say how much better it is. Also, parents seem to spend, says Squiglet, seem to spend all their time complaining. I was utterly shocked how wonderful my kids are and how much joy they bring. Yeah. Yeah, very true. Very true. All right, so parenting is a blast. So. If the government I'm not saying it should but if the government were to gain control of the media and it was like a pro-natalist, government they would just start pounding those messages and I mean people just you know most people just follow the social cues right most people just follow the social messaging social messaging, oh the exemption only applies to the mother's income no income tax yeah Yeah. I mean, it's wild.
[28:45] Right, it'll come back. Somebody wrote, your name has been on the socials lately via Mike Cernovich regarding the Jordan Peterson psychologizing the right. From a philosophical standpoint, how do these attacks on those who dare talk about sacred cat topics? Blah, blah, blah, blah, destabilizing. Well, I don't, um, you know, saying that those who disagree with you are sociopaths or psychopaths is not an argument. I mean, if you disprove their arguments and then they continue to sort of repeat and escalate and don't respond, then you can, you know, start, you can't, I mean, you can't really diagnose people from a distance. Uh, I don't think professionals are really supposed to do that. I think that was actually something that was, first brought up. Is that the Goldwater Rule? You're just not supposed to, as a psychologist, you're not supposed to, diagnose people that you aren't treating, right? You can't diagnose from a distance. And that came up with Nixon. It also, of course, came up with Trump again. Anybody who kind of stands out. Or anyone who's anti-communist. And hard leftists generally, define opposition to their beliefs as either corruption, like foundational moral corruption, even though they they don't often know what a woman is, they apparently know what good and evil is in its foundations. So if you disagree with hard leftists, then you are either.
[30:08] Insane or irredeemably evil.
[30:13] And that's just kind of a, to me that's just a kind of massive selfishness. It's a massive kind of selfishness.
[30:33] All right. I like, if you're on X, I'm sure you know this, but I do like the fact that if you have a tweet that's hard to understand or you have doubts or skepticism about that, you can just push that little grok icon, explain this post. Interesting. Blind Luck posted, It baffles my mind that after 42 months of interest-free extensions, 5.3 million people are in default on their student loans.
[31:06] A woman named Emily Logan-Stedman wrote this. She said, I borrowed $128,606.84. I've paid $97,858.26. I still owe $100,482.57. She says, I wouldn't trade in my law degree. I left law school. I'm fortunate to have almost always had a job that allows me to make the max required payment. Cloaking did not allow that. But still, come on. Those numbers are really kind of shocking for me. That you can pay almost $100,000 on $128,000 and still owe $100,000. Holy crap. Uh, why pay off? I don't know. I think it's very cool. I'm still quite fascinated by AI.
[32:15] Interest accrual outpacing principal reduction. Yeah. Yeah. Um, 6% interest rate. At 6%, the annual interest on 128,000 is 7,700. Yeah. Yeah. So about 28,000 of her payments have gone towards the principal. The remaining almost 70,000 have gone towards interest. I'm, yeah, federal student loans can take 10 to 25 years to pay off. A standard 10-year plan for Emily's loan at 6% interest would require monthly payments about 1,400 bucks. Over 10 years, she'd pay about 171,000 with 42,000 and change going to interest.
[33:13] Yeah, it's wild. I am, I'm a big fan. If you're in debt, it's just, it's not financial advice to you. I'm just saying if I'm in debt, when I've been in debt, I will, you know, sell a kidney to put more down on the principal because it's magic. Absolute magic. Absolute magic. Now, if that's the max required payment, then she's not allowed to put down more money on the principal. I assume that's what she's saying, right? That there's a maximum payment that you can do. But yeah, that's some pretty wild stuff.
[34:15] So initial loan amount 128,600 total payments made 97,858 remaining balance 100,000 payments are monthly fixed there are no extra payments or changes in terms yeah like there's some mortgages that let you pay 13 months in a year the extra month goes straight on the principle. Huge difference, right?
[34:34] Principle, paint down the principle is economic superpower. It's wild how much it saves you.
[34:51] Wow, some pretty intense math going on here. Come on, I grok me Amadeus.
[35:01] Oof. So I think what she said, so the grok worked it out. Initial loan amount, 128,606. Interest rate, 6.7% annual. Monthly payments, 906. Payments made, 108 months or nine years. total term 282 months or 23.5 years. Yeah. And I assume that that's the maximum. So she's been paying for nine years. It's about 14 and a half years left. The 6.7% rate is consistent with federal graduate loan rates from the early 2010s. Rate could vary slightly. Yikes. That's kind of terrifying. Now, of course, putting women in particular, men too, right? But putting women in particular into debt is a great way of killing the birthright. It's a fantastic way to kill the birthright. You can't quit. You can't quit. Or if you do have kids, you've got to hand them over to the daycare of the state whoever right that's really something.
[36:23] Crush your monthly expenses. And James says, I paid off my student loans early when I could, not sure what she means with a maximum payment. I don't know. But I mean, I think we know what she means by a maximum payment. It means that you're on this treadmill forever.
[36:40] I mean, when I was dating, I avoided women with debt. I mean, I don't know if that's even possible anymore. But I would avoid I would avoid women in debt I just did not want I did not want that burden, I did not want that burden and it's one thing to be in debt for something that's going to grow in value you know if you go in debt for maybe a house or whatever right something that's going to hopefully gain in value go in debt to buy bitcoin if that's what you did but, But yeah, James, can you look that up if there are some loans that you have a maximum payment and you just can't pay more? Like you can't, like they're designed to lock you in for a quarter century. That's rough, man. That's brutal. Oh, and please don't forget, speaking of finances, freedomain.com slash donate. I really would appreciate your help. freedomain.com slash donate. I am committed to doing better shows. I apologize for the last couple of weeks. I am returning to my native roots. We'll get there. We'll get there. Sideswipe health issues are rough. Rough. What did the dog say when he sat on the sandpaper? Rough.
[37:57] Oh, as a father, as a dad, I can make these joketh.
[38:07] All right. Somebody wrote, the middle class trap, $3,000 a month house payment. $1,200 a month car payments, $2,000 a month child care, $900 a month student loan payment, $1,000 a month credit card payment. Congrats. You're stuck for the next 20 plus years. The student loan stuff is a big deal. It's a big deal. Only 38% of student loan borrowers are up to date on their payments, even after a 3.5 year payment pause. 4 million borrowers are between three and six months behind five million or nine or more months behind yikes, and and uh the majority of these uh unpaid uh 83 of the debtors in default are women, ouchies but again it's more fun in the short run it's hedonistic and more fun in the short run to go join a sorority to go have some fun and all of that right.
[39:30] I mean, it's the reason they don't teach you financial literacy in schools, right? Joe says, Stef, when you put out your resume and had chief technical officer experience, why do you think you didn't get any calls? Do you think that's when the H-1B imports started taking off? It could have been a diversity thing. It could have been, like, obviously I have a very white male kind of name. It could have been a diversity thing. I don't know. And I did get a few, but it was rough. I mean, I ended up getting a great job after a while, but I got that through contacts, through people I'd already worked with before. Man. It was crazy, man. I mean, I had more success getting jobs when I was a waiter than when I had a decade's worth of top-level business experience. And not just top-level, like management experience, product design and implementation, coding, sales, marketing, presentations. I was the guy, you know, I'm pretty, pretty outgoing. And I was the guy that I would be sent down to Vegas to do presentations and chat up with people in the booth and all of that. Like I just, I can't, I wouldn't say I did it all, but I did a lot in the business world, a lot in the business world.
[40:53] Are you going to dip into the Oblivion remake? Are you? Are you? I will probably dip in, but I don't think I'll be able to play it. Somebody wrote, I don't know if this is true or not. Let's ask Grok. Is it true? Ist truthiness? Yeah, probably not. Rome Total War has now been cited in over 200 divorce proceedings. I've never played it. I've never played it. That's pretty funny.
[41:39] I.O. Research has written, what does that mean, GWAS? Sorry, I should probably know what this means. Oh, genome-wide association study. A genome-wide association study of 273,157 individuals from UK Biobank identified 106 genetic variants associated with socioeconomic status. Genetic inheritance explained up to 40% of the intergenerational transmission of occupational status. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Let's see. Analyze the post. Should have done this before. Just struck me now. Yeah, it seems to be valid. It's pretty wild. And that's from 2023, April 29th, 2023.
[42:52] What was the first game console you played on? It was the Atari, and I'm not proud that I know this number. I'm not proud. It was the Atari 2600. The Atari 2600. I, was it? Well, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Eric Clapton style. I, well, there was an Atari 400 with 8K, 4K? 4K, I think 4K or 8K of RAM. An Atari 400 that I would occasionally be able to take home on the weekend. All right.
[43:38] And I played on that, Star Raiders, great game. Was it a couple of months ago? I can't even remember how I ended up here. Every 10 years, I will download an emulator and get old operating systems running again, you know, just because I find it fun and nostalgic. And I got the old Atari, the blue screen ready, right? The old Atari. Started off with a notepad, but if you put the basic module in there, you could start programming, which is kind of what I did.
[44:09] So I played, I probably, yeah, Star Raiders, a couple other games, of course, but I played, they had a pretty bad version of Asteroids, but I played the Atari 2600. That's one I actually had at home. I got it real cheap from a guy who was moving to South Africa, and he gave it to me real cheap. And of course, we would circulate the cartridges to play with. But I think that was the first game console I played on. My first game was Pong. Yeah, my uncle had Pong. Yeah, my uncle had Pong. That was probably the first one I ever played at home. It's a little dull. But I remember... I remember the Space Invaders. It was at a bowling alley. And I was just like, oh, greatest thing ever.
[45:03] All right, was Pac-Man really the hype in the 80s? I mean, for girls, yes, not really for guys. We were all Defender, which was like, playing the game Defender was like having a bag of killer bees lowered on your head and tied around your neck.
[45:30] Okay, somebody says, on my mortgage, you can only overpay by 10% a year. Also, if you pay off early, there is a percent penalty. You can overpay when you remortgage, though. That's interesting. James says, there are some loans out there that have prepayment penalties. They don't exist for federal student loans, but do exist on private student loans and refinance private loans. Okay.
[45:53] Jared says, being unhireable after being an entrepreneur is probably a hiring manager's fear that you'd start a new company at first sign of irritation. Better to have someone who's terrified to quit. You're right. And actually, I think that's a great point. Well said. I thought you were going to go with that you'd need a very, very high level person to hire someone like me. Like basically, I only reported to the chief technical officer or the board as a whole. Sorry, I only reported to the CEO, the chief executive officer. And so, and I don't think that chief executive officers are necessarily going through monster.com looking if they just probably have headhunters or that kind of stuff, right? But it could be that people wouldn't want to hire me because they thought I might take their jobs. I'll be better than them, right? Which is actually what you want if you're a manager. You want to hire someone to replace you, right? I have not watched any anime yet, sorry. Donkey Kong? It was supposed to be Monkey Kong, right? I think that was a typo. Because there's no donkey in it. I never particularly got into Donkey Kong and the jumping barrels kind of dull. There was a... And this was really wild. There was an Eastern Front game. Gosh, let me see here. I need to get it. I think it was called 1942.
[47:16] Yeah, Eastern Front, 1941. It was wild. Created by Chris Crawford. It was wild. Scenario editor in assembly language source code. It was one of these games where you... It was a strategy game. Let me see if there are pictures here. Flashbacks! Flashbacks. I'll throw it in the chat. But it was a game where the longer it took for you to make your move, the better move the computer would make.
[48:03] It was really quite addictive. Trying to, oh, those Russians, trying to get all of that stuff done in the game. It was great. All right, sorry. I'm not going to go down this giant rabbit hole of video game nostalgia. Nostalgia. It's actually kind of funny. Every now and then my wife has a strange kind of... She just sounds Australian from time to time. And I... I don't know why. It just happens. It just happens. What's that old joke, you know? Do you know that somebody in the office has been possessed by an owl? Who? Who? Thank you.
[48:51] All right. Have you ever watched the movie The Departed? I never have. It looks pretty grungy. Stef, why do you think so many women are unhappy in their marriages? I know so few happily married women. Hmm. Hmm, I say. Hmm. Boy, I really can't get people to donate today. If you can, if you could, I'd appreciate it. Freedomain.com slash donate. Or if you're listening to this later, I would appreciate that as well. Freedomain.com slash donate. um i know so few happily married women um it's a big question it's a big question, i mean by definition i guess right it's a big question.
[49:37] I think i think my first thought would be that, that women a little bit more than men tend to be a bit hive-mindy and a bit suggestible, or they score very high in trade agreeableness. I mean, there's been times over the years where I thought, I could actually benefit from scoring slightly higher in the trade agreeableness, but then I just wouldn't be me now, would I? So I would say that if women, if you're happy in your marriage and there are women complaining about their marriage, I think most women, if their friends are all complaining about their marriages, I think there's a lot of women who would say, who would feel the need or feel the urge to agree with that. Yeah, my husband does this, that, and the other, right? As opposed to, you know, if there's a bunch of women, what do they call it, a stitch and bitch or a hen party or something. If there's a bunch of women complaining about their husbands, and then you as a woman say, oh, no, my husband's great. Do you feel that chill run through the air?
[51:05] You're saying Donkey Kong was named because the Japanese developers thought donkey was American slang for stubborn? Really? No, I'm not sure that's it. It's too close to monkey. I'm going to go with mine. You could be right. I'm going to go with mine. I'm going to go with mine. Now, hit me with a Y. Sorry, like you know what a Y looks like. Hit me with a Y. If you would like a review of the Netflix four-part series shot in nauseating, vomit-inducing, steady continue cam, the show Adolescence, Adolescence, if you would like that. There are things to talk about. Even if you haven't seen it, there'll be spoilers aplenty. But even if you haven't seen it, there's things to talk about it that I think are quite interesting.
[52:14] We've got a bunch of yeses. One no. Okay. All right. Looks like we're down for that. So adolescence is a very sort of heavily promoted story about a 13 year old boy who murders a girl stabs her to death and it is a shot in uh continue it's shot continuously there are no cuts It's wild. I mean, it's like orchestrating ballet from space or something like that. It's just wild. And the acting, of course, is fantastic. The technical brilliance is fantastic. The script is at times brilliant, at times just kind of clunky.
[53:06] And it is torture porn. It is torture porn. And there's no answers. It's not, you know, they sort of point out the incel stuff Andrew Tate gets mentioned a couple of times But it doesn't really focus nearly as heavily on that As I thought it was going to.
[53:28] And of course, you know, knife crime in the UK Is up like, what, 240% over the last 10 years And of course, they have to make it a white kid, right? I mean, you almost can't expect anything different at this point But the first show is the arrest and the booking, more or less. The second show is the cop and his partner going through a British school looking for clues. The third show is sort of a cat and mouse game between the young murderer and his partner. A psychologist or a psychologist who's come to write a report on him. And then the fourth episode is, you know, the sort of absolutely horrifying, horrible, miserable day of the family as the trial is drawing near.
[54:23] And again, I mean, these are... I thought there would be some mystery. I really thought there was going to be some mystery. Like, did he do it? Did he not do it? Because he claims that he didn't do it and so on. But they have him on video. This is in the first episode, so again, there's some spoilers here, but it's pretty clear at the beginning that they have him on video, and the kid won't admit it, but they have him on video. So there's no mystery. I mean, there's about as much mystery as there is in Crime and Punishment, where Raskolnikov, I mean, you're standing over his shoulder as he cudgels Lisa Vetter and the porn broker. Axes them, axes them.
[55:14] Now, the filmmakers themselves have said that they didn't want an answer, right? So they didn't want to say, oh, he became a murderer, like Menendez style, right? In the Menendez brothers, which I did a show on some time ago. In the Menendez brothers, of course, they were tortured and raped, according to their claims. Seems to be some evidence by their parents and others. And that's why they became matricidal and fratricidal. Well, yeah, sorry, I'll get your comments in a sec. Now, technically it's very good. I mean, there's this existential horror throughout the whole thing. It's like crime and punishment, plus Kafka, plus David Mamet, brittle dialogue, plus oblique references, plus denial, plus projection. Like it's a, it's a horror show. I mean, it's a horror. It's a horror series.
[56:12] It's a horror series. And they said, the makers, and then the guy who plays the father, I think was also involved in the creation of the, I mean, an insanely talented guy. Oh, the Menendez Brothers are premium shows. Yes. So if you go to premium.freedomain.com, you can sign up there and you can get the Menendez Brothers shows. And they're very good. Very, very powerful. Yeah, premium.freedomain.com. You can sign up for those. Just go to freedomain.com slash donate. You can sign up for a subscription. And also you can go to fdrurl.com slash locals. It's a horrible show. It's beautifully done in its own horrifying way. It is, you know, it's a torture fest. Like the family is just tortured and it's completely horrendous as far as that goes. I mean, it's a morality play, right? It's a morality play.
[57:13] And there are no answers. And they very specifically said, we don't want him to have been a murderer because he was molested by his uncle Johnny or whatever. And the cop's partner says very clearly that you're not going to get an answer as to why he did it. But I think there is an answer. I think the answer is in the series. And nobody's talked about it let me monopolize the answer.
[57:51] I remember, I mean, it's too late. I mean, I said spoilers earlier, but nothing that I'm talking about here spoils. Watching the movie, it's not like giving the ending of The Sixth Sense or that famous Siskel and Ebert conflict over The Crying Game. But, yeah, somebody says, I love how Netflix and Hollywood always portrays troubled children having perfect, caring parents. By the way, that therapist in that show was really something else. But she wasn't trying to give him therapy, right? She wasn't trying to fix him. She wasn't trying to, right? She was just assessing him. Just assessing him.
[58:35] So the answer as to what happened is in the second episode. The answer to what happened in general is in the second episode. And nobody's talking about this. So in the second episode, they go to a school. And the school is hell. The school is hell. You've got teachers snarling at students, students bullying each other. You have teachers snapping at the children and only playing videos of lessons not even teaching directly you have inconsequential boring, useless, pointless, brain rot, empty habit garbage neuron nothing burgers being hurled at these kids in slow motion digital mind frack.
[59:52] The teachers have no particular capacity to manage their own emotions. The females are syrupy and sentimental. The males are aggressive and escalate in general. And it's hell. So, the children, what are they taught? Well what they're not taught is how to think, they're not taught how to think they're not taught how to reason they're not taught how to analyze and they don't seem to have any modeled, better behavior as a whole like emotional behavior people with sort of maturity and self-restraint and so on right the teachers are just universally impatient and I think everyone's had that experience in school where, whether it's teacher burnout or something like that, but the teachers who just, they don't care. They don't care. They're hostile. They view the kids as enemies. It's rough.
[1:01:09] I certainly remember. I remember teachers like that, just escalating, burnt out, tense, stressed, aggressive, on the edge they're too long not happy to be there trapped they feel trapped I think they feel trapped maybe they are.
[1:01:40] So, to me, the real essence of adolescence is an absolute condemnation of the school system. That the students are bullied, and the teachers are bullied by each other, the teachers are bullies, and there's no education going on. It's just a holding pen of semi-cucked insanity for years and years and years. Nobody wants to be there, nobody's enjoying it. I mean, I didn't get a massive amount of how to think, but there were some. There was definitely some. Definitely some. There were some debates, some, you know, challenging questions, some arguments, some principles floating around.
[1:02:53] But it's all in, the second episode I mean the dad has a real temper for sure, and the dad says how he was you know beaten by his own father and he said he'd never do that to his kids and he didn't although, obviously he would get angry and get loud And as it was memorably pointed out in the show, he tore down a shed because he was angry about something. And, of course, that doesn't make a massive amount of sense to me that the father who was violently beaten by his own father is not a murderer, but his son, who he does not hit, becomes a murderer.
[1:03:58] I have some significant questions. For me, just sort of psychologically and so on, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It really does not make a whole lot of sense. And i think a lot of it has to do with um you know the the push for censorship right, the push for censorship that you know ordinary nice you know though quirky kids and all of that while they're just online and they just get radicalized just get radicalized things just go kind of crazy they fall down rabbit holes they red pill the 80 20 rule that's repeated a couple of times jimmy says yes my wife is a school teacher of the crap she has to push insane she's completely done yeah it's rough man very rough very rough indeed.
[1:05:11] So, I mean, this is part of the kind of dystopian stuff that's going on in the UK at the moment, where, what, are they arresting 20 people a day for social media posts?
[1:05:24] It's, yeah, so this idea that young boys in particular are just these kind of powder kegs, and they just, you know, they, as the parents say at the end, right, like, we thought he was here, he was in his room, we thought he was safe. we got on the computer. And the idea that somebody can be talked into murder, like, I don't know, maybe there's some, I don't really know much about the dark web or whatever, but maybe there's really awful creepy stuff on there. But that the idea that you're average, not particularly tech savvy, little boy is going to just fall down a rabbit hole, get radicalized and stab a girl 14 times. I don't really think that's how, I mean, I'm obviously not a psychologist, pretty sure that's not how murderous personalities work.
[1:06:23] I don't think that's how those kinds of murderous personalities work. At all. I think it requires a lot of violence early on, A lot of brutal violence early on, which does not seem to be the case with this kid at all. A lot has been said about the boys acting, and it is, of course, incredible. I mean, the kid is just an amazing actor.
[1:07:00] The nice kid's getting seriously corrupted by the internet narrative, maybe preamble for online censorship. Yeah, I mean, I think it's justification at the moment, which is why they're pushing this stuff in schools. It is saying, well, unless we gain control of these narratives on the internet, we're just going to end up with a bunch of, you know, stabby boys roaming around. So, yeah, that's, I think, one of the reasons why it went the way that it did and why it's being pushed so much, right? But yeah if you're watching it really look in detail at, really look in detail at the second episode and what's going on in that school, that school is hell hell all right uh wilford riley on xroids well it's worth noting that alimony is only granted in 9.1% of marriages. After an initial split of assets, one-third or more of which now come for the women, divorce rape is pretty rare. But you do have to pay child supports because they're your kids.
[1:08:13] Secretary Linda McMahon wrote, the most recent Nations Report card shows that 40% of 8th graders cannot even read at the basic level. One of the worst results we've seen. Nearly 70% of 8th graders are not proficient in reading. What we are doing is simply not working. I mean, that's also partly multi-language, right? Every additional language that you add to the educational system takes away resources that can be used or could be used for educating children better, right? What percent of people on food stamps are overweight? What percentage of people on food stamps in America are overweight? Is that the wife of Vince McMahon, really? All right. I assume you're not trolling. I will absolutely, completely, totally, and humbly believe you. Believe. Believe. It's sort of annoying to keep repeating that. My apologies.
[1:09:34] This is a report from the wall street journal america doesn't have a hunger problem about three quarters of adult food stamp beneficiaries are overweight or obese only three percent are underweight, more americans of all income levels die from illnesses caused by overindulgence than by hunger if the government keeps subsidizing more people to eat more junk, Over the past 15 years, food stamp enrollment has swelled as eligibility standards eased through waivers of work requirements while Congress and the USDA boosted payments. There are now 50% more people on food stamps than in 2008, and payments have nearly trickled.
[1:10:20] I don't know, things that don't work. Things that just don't work. What's interesting is also China's got an interesting way to deal with their low birth rate. On February the 1st, there's a new law in China. If you divorce, the woman only gets marital assets in proportion to the amount of money she has contributed, which is quite interesting, because men are very scared to get married, right? Once you've seen a generation of two of men get taken apart by family courts. So China's new law, effective February 1st, changes divorce asset division, allocating marital assets based on each spouse's financial contributions, aiming to curb exploitive divorce settlements often linked to gold diggers. Yeah, so the broader demographic strategy as declining marriage rates down 20.5% to 6.1 million in 2024 threatened birth rates. So, the law reflects China's unique land ownership system where the state owns urban land and leases it for 70 years, complicating traditional expectations like buying a house for a fiancé, which some women exploited in divorce. So, it's amazing how quickly things can move in a dictatorship.
[1:11:48] Yes it really is Vince McMahon's wife nice to know why is junk food cheaper than healthy stuff and of course more available we could grow fresh veggies and fruit indoors with hydroponics, I don't know that junk food is cheaper than the healthy stuff, but, I mean, a banana is pretty cheap, right?
[1:12:16] So, I mean, it's, I assume to some degree, junk food is, it's cheaper to store, it's cheaper to transport. You can kind of jam a bunch of calories into a smaller footprint, so to speak. Somebody says, when I asked my midwife about the intelligence benefits of breastfeeding, she said she wasn't allowed to talk about it because it made some women feel bad that seemed wrong to me well you and me both although i understand that some women might feel bad if they didn't breastfeed and it turned out that it was very important.
[1:12:52] Well and these days right even um even fornication is a problem you don't right i mean these these accusations, these lawsuits and so on. I mean, it's rough, man.
[1:13:05] So even with not marrying the woman and just sleeping around with her, you know, if you start to make some money later on in life and she finds out about it and she's got the wrong people around her or she's got the wrong, you know, you're doing something political that some people don't like.
[1:13:26] All right any other last questions comments issues challenges problems i'm here to serve happy to help for those of you who posted your questions on locals i will get to those tomorrow thank you for your questions i will get to answering those tomorrow really do appreciate your uh great questions great questions he said rankly praising and rubbing with scented oils, the bald feet of the listeners. B-A-L-L-E-D. Actually, somebody sent me a message that said that the reason why foot binding became popular in China was because there was some empress who had a club foot.
[1:14:08] All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for dropping by tonight. Thank you for the tips. I appreciate that. FreeDomain.com to help out the show. It's just like a week or so left in the month. If you could help me out, I would really appreciate it. And I, again, sorry for the slightly lower energy shows over the last couple of weeks, but we're back. I'm at least halfway on the road to recovery, which I appreciate. And thank you for your patience as my inner ear stabilizes. And I will talk to you Friday night. No, no, not this Friday night. Sorry, we're back Sunday. Friday night I can't. I have something else. So I will not be doing a show this Friday night. So if you see me, I've now possessed you. If you see me Friday night live, it's just a possession. So I hope you enjoy that. I won't charge you extra. All right. Have a glorious evening, everyone. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye.
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