0:01 - Introduction
1:22 - Listener Interaction and Questions
4:50 - Reflecting on Parental Wisdom and Influence
9:18 - Seeking Wisdom Outside of Family and Teachers
20:38 - Influence of Reader's Digest and Mad Magazine
32:33 - Dungeons & Dragons and Moral Dilemmas
33:55 - School Curriculum and Economic Education
35:22 - Morals from Fantasy Novels
44:50 - PewDiePie in Japan?
56:29 - Impact of Tablets on Kids
59:02 - Replacements for Unvaccinated Employees
1:00:23 - Economy Post-COVID
1:03:27 - The Toxicity of Hate
1:05:01 - 13 Life Lessons
1:06:53 - Civilization VII and Aging
1:07:33 - Ways You Abandon Yourself
1:12:30 - The Balance of Business
1:23:44 - Chasing Excellence
1:29:46 - Value Determined by Customers
1:34:29 - Discrediting Philosophy
1:38:54 - Society's Value Choices
1:44:56 - Support and Donations
In today's insightful podcast episode, we embark on a deep exploration of the profound impact of early childhood experiences on personal development, particularly focusing on the theme of parental wisdom. We delve into the intricate dynamics of children raised in daycare settings, examining how such environments can influence the development of coping mechanisms that may reverberate into modern dating culture. Listeners actively participate by sharing their own encounters with parental advice, revealing varying perspectives on the value of the guidance they received. Moreover, we broaden the discussion to include the vital role of teachers and other authority figures in sculpting individuals' worldviews, prompting me to reflect on the formative influence of Reader's Digest in shaping my own outlook on life. This engaging dialogue prompts deep reflection on the enduring significance of meaningful guidance and its profound imprint on our life paths.
In a fascinating turn, the conversation shifts towards an intriguing moral analysis of Mad Magazine by a theologian, offering captivating insights into the realms of morality and skepticism. The speaker shares a personal anecdote of how their journey into philosophy was deeply influenced by the ethical dilemmas presented in Dungeons & Dragons, where concepts of alignment and character classes profoundly shaped their moral decision-making processes. Rich discussions unfold around moral quandaries encountered in gaming scenarios, underscoring the ethical importance of adhering to lawful good principles even in virtual environments. A particularly thought-provoking moment arises when the contentious topic of hiring an assassin in-game ignites a fervent debate on ethics, ultimately highlighting the multifaceted sourcesófrom childhood experiences with theft to immersive video game narrativesóthat contribute to the complex tapestry of one's moral compass. The discourse culminates in a poignant exploration of the pivotal roles of storytelling, ethics, and imagination in shaping the unique fabric of individual belief systems.
Continuing the captivating narrative, the speaker delves into a personal narrative of their time in daycare, recounting poignant experiences of being the lone male and white individual in that setting. The discussion intricately dissects the potential implications of children being nurtured by strangers, touching on profound repercussions on their perceptual frameworks. Engaging conversations ensue on diverse topics, including verbal delays in children, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, societal responses to the crisis, media coverage nuances, and broader societal impactsóa rich tapestry of reflections on multifaceted issues. The speaker offers insightful commentary on philosophical approaches amidst the crisis, weaving in snippets of discourse on public figures and their stances. The episode concludes on a compelling note, drawing attention to an economically intriguing narrative from a Twitter thread that encapsulates the complexities of our contemporary landscape.
Shifting gears, we embark on a thought-provoking segment that commences with a riveting exploration of emotional responses evoked by literary works and physics textbooks, hinting at the profound ways in which varying forms of content can resonate with individuals. The conversation deftly navigates towards discussions on the significance of aging, outsourcing tasks, medieval work structures, and the essence of life lessons that underscore the virtues of hard work, patience, and self-awareness. We delve into the intricate nuances of capitalism, profitability considerations, and ethical dilemmas intertwined with selling curative products, shedding light on the ethical implications and financial dimensions of market practices. Moreover, we delve into the complex interplay between self-acceptance, the pursuit of excellence, and the delicate balance between contentment and ambition in personal and professional spheres. The dialogue crescendos into a reflective juncture where the speaker elucidates on their evolution and innovation in content creation, emphasizing a steadfast commitment to growth, exploration, and the pursuit of excellence in their creative endeavors.
In a fresh thematic exploration, we delve into the necessity of embracing novelty, innovative approaches, and the continual creation of engaging content to captivate audiences. I underscore the intrinsic value of perpetual improvement and the avoidance of stagnation or repetition in content creation endeavors, emphasizing the imperative of constantly pushing boundaries and seeking fresh perspectives. A poignant discourse unfolds on the economic paradigms underpinning the determination of one's value, reinforced by the pivotal role of audience feedback in gauging the efficacy and relevance of the content provided. As we navigate through varied topics, exchange profound insights, and foster enriching conversations, I extend gratitude to our audience for their unwavering engagement and express a resounding encouragement to persist in the relentless pursuit of improvement, embracing challenges with fervor and seizing all opportunities for growth. Thank you for tuning in, and may this journey of exploration and advancement in content creation continue to inspire and invigorate our collective pursuit of excellence.
[0:01] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux. 9th of June, 2024, 11am, and some slight little bit of change. Welcome to all of our fans at the Alphabet Agencies. We're just here to talk about philosophy. As it says on my cup, I was hoping for a battle of wits, but you appear to be unarmed. Unarmed! So yeah if uh if it appears out of sync you can just hit the refresh free domain.com slash donate to help out the show thank you very very much don't forget we are doing private call-ins now you can go to free domain.com slash call request all of that, kind of good stuff and the testimonials are up at various places and people are finding it wonderfully helpful and i gotta tell you it's a very interesting thing to talk to people privately, You know, not having to worry about names, places, not having to worry about personal stories of mine. It is very, very nice. Very, very nice. Good morning, Taylor. Good morning, Taylor. Good morning. Should we do a I Watch Locals? James. Buzz Omega. Joe. Do Not Panic. Black Hand. Kairos. Always nice to see you, my friend. Thank you for all of your support of the show.
[1:23] And I am all ears. Questions, comments, issues, challenges. The challenges.
[1:31] Hello, says somebody. Captain Lissandra. Oh, I assume that's Lissandra Spooner, and his brother, Lissandra Sporkler. Hello, had a thought last night that I think would make a good show topic. The West has entertained feminism for about 50 years now. 50 years is about two generations. One of the costs of feminism is women working full-time and children being relegated to daycare. The people now active in the dating market get a significantly more likely to have a daycare childhood than any previous generation. What are your thoughts on this connection? My understanding is people who spent a significant amount of their early childhood in daycare often develop abandonment coping mechanisms. Some examples are emotional self-sufficiency, difficulty trusting others, strong independent struggle with intimacy, fear of rejection. Okay. Do you think the above behavior patterns are connected to the modern independent women phenomenon? How would a daycare childhood impact the modern dating culture and division between the sexes? That is a great question. I appreciate that. And for more on this, I refer you to my novel, The Present. It's a great, great book. And a very deep book, I might add as well, about where things are in the modern world and where they're heading. You can get it for free at freedomain.com slash books.
[2:56] So, the daycare kids have as their foundational experience dread, for the most part. Dread. They feel unsupported. They're tossed to the winds. They don't have primary pair bonding. So, moral courage has a lot to do with primary pair bonding. I remember when I was in theater school, there was a guy there who was studying to be a director, and he said, at one point, I honestly can't remember the context, it's been almost 40 years, but he said, you know, my parents, you know, I'm 18 years old, and they say, you know, man, go out into the world, and do your thing, and take your shot, and make your mark, no matter what happens, you always have a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head. You are always welcome back here. We will always support you. Kind of a chilling silence rippled around the room. Because that's unusual and a little sad. A little sad. You have to look at the wiring of humanity and figure out what we were evolved for and what we have become.
[4:20] And we were wired for a deep closeness and knowledge transfer from our parents, a deep closeness and a moral transfer from our parents. We spent our days with our parents. We went hunting with our parents. We learned to take care of children with our parents. We gathered fruits and nuts and berries with our parents. Thank you, Adam. him and we had a deep knowledge transfer from our parents.
[4:50] How to farm, how to hunt, how to gather, how to raise a barn, how to take care of livestock, like all of these things.
[5:10] So one of the questions I've been asking people lately on the call-in shows is, and you guys can tell me this, good morning, what wisdom did your parents give to you that you still use to this day? So as a child or as a teenager, what wisdom did your parents give to you that you still use to this day? It's a big question. It's a big question. I remember going to my mother. I remember having a temper when I was in my early teens and I had a little racetrack where the little electric cars raced around in the grooves. I got mad because they wouldn't go together and I just twisted and broke them and I was like, well, that's not right. That's not right. And I remember going to my mother, my mother of all people, but I'm like, how do I handle my temper? And she just gave me nothing, nothing. Like this, I shouldn't be breaking my things. That's not right.
[6:16] So I had to do the long, slow, painful trek across the desert of human indifference to try and get to some oasis of wisdom. Had to invent the entire wheel and the axle and the tires and the steering mechanism all by myself. Now that's given a lot of originality and I think that's given a lot of pluses, but I would rather not have had to do that. I would rather not have had to do that.
[6:46] So, what do we got here? Literally nothing. Explicitly given wisdom. Yeah. No, not counterexample. Nothing comes to mind. It doesn't cost anything to be nice. That's one of the biggest lies on the known planet. You consider that wisdom? It doesn't cost anything to be nice. It costs enormously to be nice sometimes. You get exploited to here and hell and gone and back. Oh, my God, being nice? Oh, no. It costs enormous amounts to be nice. So let's see here. Don't forget the past. Okay, that's not really advice. Slow down, stay in your own lane, and keep your distance from the car in front of you. Never date a welfare chick. All right? I mean, those are more commandments than wisdom. I mean, I'm not going to try and say that they're completely irrelevant, but they're not exactly.
[7:54] Responsibility gravitates to the responsible. Nothing comes to mind for parental wisdom, no wisdom given by my parents. Yeah, what is the biggest lesson you ever got from working? Is that there was a response, the most popular response from the question, what did you most learn from working, was efficient workers are punished with more work. Hard to argue. So Tom says, nothing really. Clearly, Sir Punter says, I can't think of anything. I usually found myself going to them, getting frustrated and figuring out on my own somehow. Sometimes in life you have to learn how to kiss ass before you can kick it. That's not very helpful. Does terrible advice master's wisdom count? Nope. There's more important things than work. They did work all the time, though. Right. I mean, it has to be something that they had some credibility with. In other words, they did that, right? They told me to get an education was a decent tip back then. Don't know about today. Yeah. So, when people say, but they're my parents, to which my question is, great, did they parent? Did they parent?
[9:19] Somebody says, there's i just drove a three-wheeler around dirt roads and took care of farm animals but honestly other than job skills i can't really think of much myself even though both of my parents were teachers, this reminds me of one guy calling him with questions about homeschooling you asked him what public schools taught him and he said he learned how to cook eggs why do you think efficient workers get rewarded with more work and not greater pay in corporate america because the efficient workers so the the purpose of modern governments is to give people unearned benefits And some of the unearned benefits are, you know, subsidies and welfare and so on. And a lot of the subsidies are jobs you didn't earn, right? There's a quotas and you've got to hire this and that and the other. And so every efficient worker is carrying two to three HR appointees on their back. So, father was a policeman, told me if you can't do the time, don't commit the crime. And that's Beretta stuff, right? Don't care more for others than they care for themselves. You will get sick. Oh, that's from your parents. Good for them. Good for them. Dad would tie knots with ropes, but never teach me how to tie the knots. I had to learn how to tie a fast hitch myself.
[10:31] Merit is not the measure of who gets promoted. Learned that at work. My parents lied and gaslit me constantly because they found it amusing. Lots of bad advice I was given, I believe, purposefully. Sabotage is not, right? My father was the only one who tried giving me life advice. My mother, not at all, right? Not my parents, but my grandparents, being humble. Mr. Miyagi told me, wax on, wax off. True wisdom there. Yes, so did you get? What about your teachers? Did your teachers give you any advice or feedback or wisdom or knowledge that you still use to this day? Now, I mean, most of us do, you know, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. We'll do some percentages, maybe some ratios. But somebody says, focus on your decisions and behaviors, things you can control. Right.
[11:32] So you got some practical skills you know i get that that's not unimportant you got some practical skills what moral lessons did you get what moral lessons did you get, most teachers are terrible only about two to three really cared yeah.
[11:58] One teacher said that what you know is more important than grades yeah i mean these are little fortune cookie stuff but how do you use that how do you use that thanks uh anthony how do you how do you use that.
[12:15] One teacher told me not to use weak words like saying i think all the time or kind of sort of yeah yeah it drives me nuts with the caller sometimes when we hit the fog banks of i don't know sort of kind of maybe a little somewhat blah blah blah blah it's like you're a man speaking absolutes or don't speak teachers mostly just haranguing me about doing homework and how i had so much more potential yeah yeah yeah it's funny you know if i was a coach and i was unable to inspire an athlete i would question myself i wouldn't just bitch at the athlete but you know So coaching is a bit more free market. My history teacher taught me, think or I, the government, will think for you. Okay, but telling people to think is a little different from teaching them how to think. I got Voltaire, I will defend the death, a man's right to say, yeah. Our history teacher said it's stupid to compare communism to Nazism like baseball cards, they're both bad. But it's not stupid to compare them, is it? I mean, it's like, say, multiple sclerosis and cancer are both bad. But they're different, right? Different causes, different cures.
[13:34] After holding the door open for an old lady, the only piece of advice my father gave me was always hold the door open for old people. That really struck me. Because he'd never given me anything like that before. Then he continued, because you never know if they will die one day and put you in their inheritance. One of my female middle school teachers told me once that I should join the military, that it would set me straight. Well, not anymore, I think, but I hear what you're saying. The majority of people in authority are empty shells To be honest, I received no wisdom from my parents or teachers Very sad I had two teachers in high school that were instrumental In honing my critical thinking skills and showing me how to think for myself, In early high school they taught me that the media was manipulative And that the cultural revolution was terrible, Oh, so they thought the media was manipulative, not the schools Media's voluntary, schools are not I had a teacher who I despised, recommend I go get paid co-op he said I've seen a lot of guys like you getting job career does them a lot of good I hated his arrogant smugness but he was right I didn't belong in public school, my father drilled into me to respect my elders as well I think the lesson he should have taught me is to respect people who deserve respect yeah I also had a teacher who pulled me aside and told me not to hang out with the jackasses in the class also said that I was a capable kid who had a lot of potential to encourage me to think higher of myself right.
[14:58] Right. Australia is just Europe's Texas. All right. My parents deferred to the church for moral instruction. The church said coffee was bad, but had nothing to say about circumcision. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. I mean, the ultimate vaccination to evil is clarity in moral thinking. And everybody's concerned about jamming mRNA into children, but not morally instructed them to avoid evil and pursue virtue. Another piece of advice in the face of bullying was to keep my thumbs outside of my fingers when punching. Yeah, never punch with your thumb. It'll break your thumb, right? You've got to be outside, right? Somebody says, I'm not sure how much credit my father gets for it, but I had to do chores for spending money as a kid. And when at 12 I got a flyer out he did have me save my money I learned dollars equals working rules for staying at home to save was either go to school or work a job, right so he made you save your money I'm not sure that teaches much responsibility right.
[16:13] So now of course this is not an open sample right this is not an open sample people uh sorry people over here on the rumble uh yes somebody says my father praised me for stopping at the road and checking for myself making my own choices instead of just following him my mom taught me to never Never put eyeliner on your bottom lashes. Is that a thing? You don't put eyeliner on your bottom lashes? Is that like a... That's a thing. All right. Good to know. Good to know. Thank you for the tip. I appreciate it. With regards to fathers, I was advised to find a technological area that moves too fast for universities to systematize it, then throw myself in feet first. After leaving the police, he taught himself engineering, and after a lot of work became a telecommunications systems architect. If I took that advice, I would have thrown myself at cryptocurrencies, but he lacked moral credibility. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Is it a lie about, uh... You, uh, you know a lot about eyeliner for a dude. Yeah. So, uh, yes. We got sweet fuck all from our eldest, basically.
[17:41] I had a teacher who called me an ass in front of the whole class i gave him the middle finger shortly after and the principal suspended me for a day my parents took the side of the school i was really depressed and broken at the time yeah oh you're a professional makeup artist can you help me i i don't know do people normally wear makeup in front of cameras they do right yeah they do i I don't. I just, I don't have that kind of time on the planet. My dad taught me about the scientific method, just didn't like it when I applied that to ethics. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. I know nothing could want to keep it that way about makeup. Yeah.
[18:23] I learned how to change my own oil. Ah, you are a T-60. Or a Cylon. So, yeah, we got nothing. We got nothing. So parents in general and i know this is a bit of a self-selecting group you tend to be more curious and original than the masses but if somebody says to me well that's my parent they deserve special consideration i'm like yeah okay i'm no problem with that as a principal, they they deserve special consideration because they parented you right they weren't what did i I say to some other caller the other day that they were big, hitty roommates who paid the bills.
[19:11] My dad taught me that before I walk into a bar, remove my glasses or you look like a dork. Also, that if someone gets in your face, punch them first. That's about it. Well, that's terrible advice. I mean, the glass is sure. But if somebody gets like if somebody's yelling at you and you punch them first, that's terrible advice, in my opinion. Then you get charged with assault. You might go to jail. You have a record and you could get sued. Sorry, that's just the way that it is As far as I understand it Though I'm not a lawyer I think hitting, throwing the first punch Is generally a pretty bad idea All around, My father, when I was very young Told me the importance of not being fat And how to exercise in a kind way Well, helpful But you guys got nothing with regards to morals, right? So if people want special considerations Because they're your parents Shouldn't they have parented you? Which means giving you a wisdom That you use every day for the rest of your life, or at least on a regular basis for the rest of your life? I don't know, man. What did you get? What did you get?
[20:29] Got better advice from the police constable who visited our schools, taught us about personal safety, bike safety, yes. I managed to get my advice from the Reader's Digest.
[20:38] I mentioned this before, in the basement of the flats that I grew up in, not low shoes, but apartments, people would throw stuff out, and I found basically giant tied together pallets almost of Reader's Digest. And readers digest for those of you who don't know is it wasn't a magazine but it was basically a booklet and they produced every month i think it was they produced a booklet a thick booklet full of interesting information they had laughter the best medicine which had jokes they had humor in uniform which was funny stuff about the military they had a variety of articles they didn't do celebrity trash or anything like that and they had something i absolutely loved which was called drama in real life, which was like really exciting, dangerous, crazy adventures that people had gotten into and how they coped and survived and all of that. And there was some decent moral lessons and in all of that. So, and that was old school Christianity. A lot of it was old school Christianity.
[21:45] And so I probably read a couple of hundred of those, which I got for free because people were just tossing them out. I assumed that somebody had died and they were a bit of a hoarder and they threw the stuff in the basement and I was just very lucky to be going out to throw out the trash in the basement when I saw these things and took them back upstairs took forever so I had to cut up the string keeping them all together and I brought them back up and I kept them and I read them and I found those to be very interesting influential it gave me a lot of a sense of good humor a positive view of the world And not only were they throwing out hundreds and hundreds of these Reader's Digest, I don't know what to call them, because again, they're not magazines, but they're not quite pamphlets, but they were, you know, small square, you know, a couple hundred pages maybe. But also, Reader's Digest did condensed books. And so you would get a volume with, say, four books that had been condensed. They'd stripped away extraneous text, obviously. Sorry, you know what condensing means.
[22:45] So, because it was condensed, I got the cream of the crop. Sorry, condensed cream joke and mild.
[22:52] So, I got some moral instruction from that. I also remember in my early teens.
[22:57] There was a theologian who wrote a moral analysis of Mad Magazine. And i got some very interesting moral lessons from that so mad magazine was this chaotic neutral uh kids comic book joke panel thing that came out uh that was pretty funny and they had these things you fold them you fold the back in thirds and you get a totally different picture they had uh they would take take apart movies uh there was um little lessons that came in they even had little little comics in the corner they had spy versus spy which i actually found just tom and jerry with pointy hats not particularly interesting but there was a lot of skepticism and there was a lot of morality buried in mad magazine and i remember when i read this book and analyzing from a christian perspective the morals of mad magazine i found that very interesting and i was like and when i read that book i was probably 12 or 13 and maybe it was one of the things that started to get me into philosophy or at least primed me for philosophy when I started getting into philosophy and at the age of 15 or so but well also we got into I got into philosophy as well because of Dungeons and Dragons that there was so in Dungeons and Dragons you have these alignments and I haven't talked about this for a while so hopefully you'll forgive me if you've heard it before in Dungeons and Dragons you have these alignments there's lawful neutral and chaotic lawful means obviously rules-based neutral means maybe rules if they suit my interests.
[24:23] Chaotic means I don't care about rules, I'm more impulsive.
[24:27] And in chaotic, neutral, and lawful, there was three alignments. There was good, neutral, and evil. So lawful good was I follow moral rules, and I don't follow immoral rules. Lawful neutral is I'll just follow the rules. I don't care if they're good or bad, I'll just follow the rules. Lawful evil is I will follow evil rules right i i'm in a criminal gang and i will follow evil rules i will avoid or go against good rules there's neutral good neutral true neutral and then neutral evil and then there's chaotic good which is sort of like the robin hood thing like there's no respect particularly for rules but you aim for virtue chaotic neutral and then chaotic evil which is you know psychopathic i guess sociopathic would be more lawful evil and so when you're in dungeons you have character classes.
[25:21] And your powers are based upon your character class. So as you can imagine, being the goody three shoes that I am, I played the character class. Well, I mean, I played a bunch, but the one that I played the longest and actually ended up becoming a demigod at the end of my Dungeons & Dragons process was Argoth the Lawful Good Paladin, right? It's a holy knight. So, you know, obviously you can tell a lot about people by the D&D characters they play. So lawful good holy night spreading truth and virtue uh sometimes very aggressively so not not wildly off from my entire business plan business plan paladin to de-platform so uh and uh other people i knew were not so uh good so i gained my powers i gained protection from evil i had healing spells and so on and other cool things that I could smite with my holy sword, just all kinds of cool stuff that I could do.
[26:21] And I got my powers as long as I followed lawful good as a moral philosophy. So if I did something chaotic or immoral, my God would say, no, I'm not giving you my powers. Like I pray to the God for my powers. I'm not giving you these powers because you're not actually a good representative of me. So I followed a lawful good And if I did something chaotic and or evil, then the God would strip my powers from me saying, you're not a good representative of what I believe, and you're actually besmirching the reputation of me as a God by claiming to follow me and doing the opposite. You may have heard me make this argument from time to time.
[27:01] So I had to follow the lawful good stuff in order to retain my powers, again, quite deep in its own way. So I also did a lot of dungeon mastering, which helped me with storytelling and plot development, characterization and world building, all this great imaginative stuff that I think I put to good use in my novels.
[27:21] And who should I say? Who should I say? So two players close to me, Bob and Doug. So bob was not their real names so bob was a chaotic neutral thief now bob was a troll to be frank so i remember one character fell into a pit where uh it was a trap and there was rising oil that was going to hit some torches and burn him to death and he begged for help and bob was the only character around who could help him so bob shot this character through the leg with an arrow tied with a rope and pulled him to safety. So he did save his life, but he injured him at the same time. So this is the kind of stuff that Bob would do. And he found it unnervingly funny. It's kind of funny in a trollish kind of way, but he giggled way too much. I didn't actually think it was particularly healthy. That's kind of how it played out in his life. Anyway, so that's not Bob and Doug. Well, Bob is, right? So Bob did something to Doug. Now, Now, Doug was a chaotic good ranger and had, as a ranger, great attacks against giants. Rangers and giants are sort of natural enemies. And we were going through a big giant adventure. And Bob did something to annoy Doug the ranger, the chaotic good ranger. And so the chaotic good ranger hired an assassin to kill Bob.
[28:44] Right? So the chaotic neutral thief was doing something to annoy the chaotic good ranger. of the chaotic good ranger hired an assassin to kill the chaotic good of the chaotic neutral thief.
[28:55] And so I stripped, as the dungeon master, I stripped the ranger of his powers. Because I said, you can't be good and hire an assassin unless it's in direct self-defense, which it's not.
[29:08] I mean, I stand by that. More than 40 years later, I stand by that moral judgment. That you cannot be a good person if someone is annoying to you and you hire an assassin to kill them. That's evil. That's evil. I mean, it's not self-defense. You're hiring an assassin to go so we got into the most outrageous arguments about this because he didn't want to give up his powers particularly because he was using these powers against the giants and i but i was like i and and so we got into this big uh disagreement and it was ferocious and i wasn't gonna budge even though i wasn't obviously a big moral philosopher at the time i'm like no you can't hire an assassin to kill someone who's annoying and call yourself good and And if you're not good, then the God who is good, who you get your powers from, is going to revoke your powers. And you're going to be, at best, chaotic neutral, not evil necessarily, because you don't immediately become evil the moment you do something evil. It generally is kind of like a habit. So we got into this absolutely ferocious, went on for a long time, and more than one session, because he refused to play if he couldn't retain his powers. And I tried to reach a compromise and I said, okay, let's try this. Let's try this.
[30:27] You can you can undo the action. Right? Massive control Z. Right? You can edit undo. I said, I'll let you go back and not hire the assassin. He's like, no, I'm hiring the assassin because he's really mad at the thief, right? No, I'm going to hire, and I said, okay, well, if you don't want to undo hiring the assassin, you lose your powers. Well, I'm not going to play if I've lost my powers. I'm like, well, then we're at an impasse. Like you either don't play or you undo your action or you accept the loss of powers, but you can't hire an assassin to kill someone who's just being annoying and retain virtue. Sorry. Like that's just, anyway, so we ended up, I can't remember how we found this guy, but there was an elder. So, of course, we were like, I don't know, 14 or so, right? And we found this elder through some contact, some friend of a friend, and he was a guy who was in his 30s, which of course seemed as ancient as Methuselah. And we went to the elder of the tribe for judgment, because we could not resolve this to see if he was a DRO. So we went to the elder.
[31:39] To get an answer. And we trooped to his office in the basement of a library. And I will tell you, it was not one of the most inspiring moments of my life. Trooping down three flights of stairs to an airless, windowless little corner office. Piled with D&D books. To talk to a guy. And I'm like, oh, so D&D is like a passing thing, right? To some degree. I mean, you don't necessarily want to have it to be the core of your life in your 30s, right? Because this guy, it was the core of his life in his 30s, right? It's like when I went to one Dungeons & Dragons convention, and it was actually pretty terrifying for the most part.
[32:22] So, I still play. My daughter really enjoys it, so we play a pretty sanitized version, as we have. We play with some friends, and it's a huge amount of fun. And I have, I mean, it's great. It's great.
[32:33] I just wouldn't want to be, you know, dungeon mastering. There's a guy, I think, in Waterloo. He's a professor of history or something like that. He's been running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for over 30 years. You can look him up. It's pretty wild. He's been running a dungeon. He's got like 20,000 miniatures. He's got entire maps in his basement. Now, he's got a daughter, so I guess he had a kid. But that seems like a lot of time to spend on that. But hey, you know, whatever floats your boat. So we went to this elder, this guy who was a bearded tubby guy, the usual kind of cliche of the D&D nerd in his 30s. And we went to him and we presented our case and he just wouldn't. We got no answer. We got no answer. And to me, this is again, I have no, no change in opinion now, 43 years later, like it's pushing half a century of no change in opinion. I don't look back and say, oh, I shouldn't have been, like, no, like, you cannot hire assassins to kill people who are just annoying. You can't do it, right? You can't do it. So, I also got into philosophy partly because I had these sort of strong moral instincts and...
[33:49] All right, let me see here. Let me just get your comments.
[33:56] Somebody says, I wish they would have taught us about economics in school. However, what they would have taught us would have probably been propagandized. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got told not to hang around kids who were thinking of doing crime. The lessons got pretty detailed sometimes. Yeah. Helpful. Everything I was taught was never actually modeled. Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, that's tough, right? Well, Dad was often, far too often clear on the concept that children should be seen and not heard. If there was a corollary, it would have been, and seldom seen. Yeah, when I would stand in front of the TV, my mom would stand in front of something like, You're a pain, but you're not a windowpane. I think I received my morality from comic books in the 90s, back before they were woke. Yeah, I read some comic books. I built a treehouse with my brother, and we would go up there, and...
[34:47] Sometimes I would go up there. You know, every kid from a bad household needs a hideaway, right? You need a hovel, you need a place to go, you need a cave, you need a fort in the woods, you need a treehouse, or something like that. And I would go up and I would read these World War II comics that were actually quite grim, quite grim and quite moving, and taught me a lot about courage and brotherhood and so on, right? All right.
[35:14] My parents were neglectful for the most part, but my mother often told me to stand up straight with my shoulders back. If I'm not mistaken, you've mentioned this phenomenon before, as if to hide the dysfunction. Yeah, for sure.
[35:22] I got some morals from novels like fantasy novels. Yeah, there's a fantasy novel. Oh, gosh. If anyone could ever get this back to me, I'd be completely thrilled. I think it was in the 80s, and I actually ran an entire Dungeons and Dragons campaign off this fantasy novel, and it's about a young wizard who is in a city, and he's trying to learn his powers, and he can't learn his powers. He's having real trouble learning his powers, he finally gets them at the end in sort of very powerful and cool ways. And it was a probability-based magic system, like you had a probability of the spell working. And I mean, that's very obscure, but if anyone can ever figure out that novel or give me some suggestions, I would like to hear it. I remember Istvan the Archer as well. I don't think that that stuff was ever done, but that was a good depiction of evil. Owl Magazine taught me lots of useful stuff for kids, yeah. Uh steph how's your relationship with christianity as of now i remember you mentioning a catholic book you were reading previously any updates on that, yeah um um i don't think there's anything particularly new from the i talked about this a couple of weeks ago so i tend towards chaotic good because well i er, what is it uh there was a the acdc logo was a tattoo and it was adhd and if i'm on the highway hey look a squirrel.
[36:40] Never into such games might be in part no interest and secondly not having friends, i once had a character where i had another player cut off both my arms because i didn't want to go in the direction they did oh that's kind of psycho yeah i mean so dnd was great for imagination and it was cheap man i mean you buy you buy a couple of books and we all went splits fills on the books so we got thousands of hours of entertainment for almost no money.
[37:09] All right, let me see here. At 12 or so, I stole a couple of Garfield comics from a book fair. I came home and told my mom I stole them. I don't remember her saying much or getting mad, but she returned with me to the book fair and told them I had put the Garfields in my bag on accident. They let me keep the comics, but I never read them anyway. No memory of instruction or even reprimand for this event or the handful of other times I did something that should have prompted some form of instruction or intervention. I actually got a lot of my work ethic from anime, LOL, as most anime stories revolve around working hard to level up.
[37:39] And what was it they uh uh gandalf told everyone to run so he could defeat the boss battle and return more powerful with the new stuff he got all the xp from the boss battle yeah i was in a store a safeway store i think it was or a convenience store no no it was a and uh i was looking for something to eat couldn't find anything and it turned out a friend my friend had stolen a um a bag of m&ms he'd stolen a bag of m&ms i didn't i didn't even know he was us anyway so they called the cops in us and the cops came and uh and all of that and we never i think they just frightened us they just released us and i said yeah i didn't know my friend was stealing and well you might not want to hang around friends like that yeah kind of thing right and uh my mom came to pick me up and i thought she'd be incensed that i was in the police station but i got beaten up for nothing leaving a cup somewhere but uh i didn't get any negative of feedback from having to be picked up from a police station at the age of 12 strange.
[38:41] Actually civilization is a that they did a study where people who are young people uh who are good at the game civilization sid meyer civilization are actually pretty good at business management too, it's uh it's either the same skill set or one trains the other i um got back into playing a little bit of twitch games i haven't played them in really years uh doom 2016 and uh that's because i actually do think it's good for my brain it keeps it working fast because there's so much chaos and so much going on and so many weapons choices that i think it just has my brain pushed to the max and i think it's a good good workout for my brain i mean all workouts are good workouts for your brain i remember admiring wolverine because he could sniff out shape shifters and it kind of had the epiphany to trust my instincts but now philosophy kind of seems like more of an indicator of people's true intentions on anything. Yeah.
[39:37] Imagination is funny it makes a cloudy day sunny it makes a bee think of honey just like i think of you imagination is really really important muscle to develop and imagination has been outsourced to video game developers now so yeah that's really sad i would say the most cracked people are starcraft players i would hire any on the spot if your masters are above, i don't know what you mean by cracked do you mean good, Yeah. I mean, I used to play the SimCity games back in the day. I remember there was one like you were dressed in and they would come and bomb the city. Then you had to rebuild it. I'm like, hey, that's what killed my grandma. All right. So sorry to get back to this question. Daycare. So what is your what is your body experience daycare as? Right. So what does your body experience daycare as? Well, your body, I think, I don't know. I can't prove it. It's just a theory. Your body experiences daycare as your tribe lost the war and you've been kidnapped.
[40:41] Because why would you be separated from your parents and raised by strangers unless your tribe had lost the war and you'd been sold into slavery or you were kidnapped or you were being kept alive so that you could grow up to be a slave? Slave. So what is like, what would, what would occur in your body if your parents vanished and you were raised by strangers? Well, child trafficking, right? You've, you've, your, your parents and elders lost the war and you've been captured and you're going to be a slave.
[41:19] And this is why people are both bullies and cowards, right? Slaves have to exaggerate bullies, being a bully and being a coward. And it's not really bullying coward in terms of a moral sense. It's just the way that this kind of stuff works. But yeah, I know, because slaves have to be cowards to their masters and bullies to other slaves, because if other slaves aren't cowards, every slave gets punished, right? So if you speak up or some slave tries to escape or like all the slaves get punished. So you have to be both a coward and a bully if you are programmed to be a slave. And I think that being raised not by your parents to a large degree is programming you to be both a bully and a coward. And what do we see in the modern world? Cry bullies, right? People who bully like crazy, but the moment you push back, they cry victim, right? So they're both bullies and cowards. and that is tragically what happens when you hand your children over to strangers. And if you doubt that even more, think of it this way.
[42:21] So when I worked in a daycare, I was the only male and the only white person. So if there were a lot of white kids, and this is any race, it's not particular to white kids, but if you are a white kid and you're handed over to, say, some foreign race, doesn't really matter what race, then you're going to assume that the invasion worked your parents were killed and the other race that the sort of is is now in charge of you like the way that that muslims would sometimes sell christians into slavery and so on right so i i think when you look at the sort of multi-racial aspect of things i think that just makes it even more vivid for for kids so yeah it's uh it's uh rough. It's rough. I think it's very, very tough for the daycare kids.
[43:13] And this is nothing negative to any race, I'm just sort of pointing it out, that deep down you'll be like, okay, so why am I being raised by, you know, real foreigners, like total foreigners, at least in terms of like your... Now, if you go to a grandparent, then your parents got killed, but you didn't lose the war, right? So I don't think that's as bad. But yeah, I think it's rough. Rough so to you know conquer people you first need to make them feel like they're conquered and the best way to do that is to have the kids largely raised by strangers.
[43:49] So then the question is okay so hang on but steph you may say and may you very well say but steph the parents come home at night and they pick their kids up from daycare and then And then they take care of the kids in the evening. And okay, so how does the kid process that he's being raised by strangers and his parents come home at night? Well, he's going to assume, I think deep down, sort of physiologically down in the base of his brain, he's going to be like, okay, so my parents lost the war and we're all slaves. Right? So I'm a slave who's being raised by others, so I have more allegiance to the conquering people. I'm a slave, and my parents are slaves, which is why they have to go and work for others during the day. And they let me come home at night and spend some time with me, but we're all slaves. So that would be my guess.
[44:51] Oh, PewDiePie, did he move to Japan? pan? I haven't kept track of that guy forever. And forever. Unless the home environment is so awful, daycare is an improvement. Now that's a grim thought. So slaves can't pair bond very easily, because the slave pair bonding can't, like if you become come best buds with your fellow slave and he gets beaten to death or sold off or just whatever right and then so the pair bonding becomes kind of pointless in a way right i mean there's of course examples in the in the documentation of the antebellum south that the black slaves would have a family and for whatever economic reason the family would be split up and the male slave would be sold here and the female slave would be sold over there and the family would be split up and so on, right? Ironically, PewDiePie is not big in Japan. Hey! Alpha Phil reference. That guy's got a high voice, man. So.
[46:01] Yeah, it's really, really sad. There must be some external power that would keep the parents from raising the children. I mean, there is in a way. It's just propaganda. But for the child, it's like there must be some external power that is preventing his parents from raising him. And that can only be loss of a battle. All right. Has this channel ever put out a Sunday morning live stream without Stefan Molyneux? That's a good question. That's a good question. I mean, has a solo artist ever released an album under his own name that doesn't have him? I think that'd be kind of fraught, wouldn't it? Freddie Mercury's solo album with Steph singing his songs. Not really. All right. Um...
[46:57] Thank you for encouraging me to grow up, get sober, think, and to face my fears. I started watching you on YouTube eight years ago, and you helped change my life in a positive way. Oh, thank you, Joey. That is beautiful to hear. And again, I appreciate that, and I'm not trying to run from the compliment. I really do appreciate it. But remember to take most of the praise for yourself. I may have written a diet book, so to speak, but you changed your diet, and that's not easy. So well done. Good for you. FreeDomain.com slash donate. Don't forget to help out the show. All right. Steph, in your daughter's generation, have you seen a lot of verbal delay and other mental handicaps? In young kids, I'm seeing a shocking number of nonverbal children, even as old as five, six, seven years old. I don't know what that... No, no, no. I mean, no. But we have a pretty selected group, right? As you can imagine, so...
[47:53] Uh non-verbal kids five six seven years old so that could be daycare that could be tablets that could be the mask mask masking was a huge problem for children learning language, right i mean nobody everybody was in a wild panic obviously during covid and almost nobody was thinking about anything of any relevance or importance or any there was no caution right the whole point of panicking people is so that they don't think of the long term right when you're running from a bear you don't sit there and say yes but in the long term like you just like need to get away from here i need to get away so they you know scare you with these endless conveyor belts of hobgoblins i think what are they trying bird flu now and was it the president of el salvador was it said that the whole bird flu thing was not true but yeah they're constantly trying to scare you with stuff so that you don't think about the long term right, and you know, it's funny, you know I mean, I've mentioned this before but I really, I'm having trouble shaking all this stuff, I'm having trouble shaking all this stuff nobody's taking the new vaccines, or very few people are taking the new boosters, COVID is still around, so the majority of people are functionally unvaccinated COVID is still around and it's like nothing ever happened. Isn't that wild?
[49:19] If you've ever seen, and it's a pretty propaganda-heavy movie, but if you've ever seen the movie The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. John Belushi? John Belushi, sorry. Jim Belushi's the one who made it. But in that movie, there's a sort of comic bit with Carrie Fisher where she keeps trying to kill the Blues Brothers, or Jake, I suppose. Pose and so she fires a rocket at them and the rocket goes off and destroys a house and they kind of get up dust themselves off and walk off like nothing happened isn't this wild.
[49:59] Uh i think it was the entire point of covid was i mean i think the majority of the point of covid was just uh a massive money transfer massive money transfer right i mean that that was a short-term thing. Tens of billions of dollars, right? All right. Somebody says, I think it's isolation and tablets. The kids in my neighborhood are always inside on screens, and the seven-year-olds have the vocabulary of my three-year-old. Yeah. Is it too stressful to share peaceful parenting with a pregnant woman? Best to wait until after birth? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah I don't know but isn't it wild like nobody's talking about any of this it's all completely gone there's no circling back there's no post evaluation there's no like it's just like it never it doesn't seem like like a weird dream, like it was just like I had a really really bad trip man smoked the wrong DMT had a really really bad trip and um it's gone, like society passed out, had a fever dream for two and a half years.
[51:14] And people don't want to circle back and say, you know, we kind of did some crazy stuff. You know, we kind of did some crazy stuff. You know, we kept telling our children, don't succumb to peer pressure, and we kind of did some crazy stuff. Men in black memory eraser, yes, that pen, gone, right? Boomer remover in China say the conspiracy theorists theorists slash realists. I don't know what that means.
[51:51] Yeah, I mean, when you pretend something didn't happen, it's just in preparation to have it happen again, right? Now, of course, the media, the media doesn't want to talk about it, obviously, right? The Doors put out an album without Jim Morrison. Right. Right. Hey, Steph, question from the Telegram chat. Is there a difference between suffering caused by indifference or by sadism? Yes, and there's an answer on Telegram. And the answer comes from the StephBot AI, and I think it's pretty good. Well, I mean, people, I don't know. It's bizarre, right? Like Jen Psaki, I'm going to circle back. There's no circling back. It's all gone. It's all gone. And this is one of the few times in history right if people hate a particular minority they don't then become that minority right so so people hated and feared the unvaccinated and again i'm no doctor but this is sort of my understanding of what's going on that the uptake of the boosters is in the single digits right and then the protection such as it is wears off according to sort of what i've read so again don't take any advice from me i don't do anything based upon what i'm saying i'm just this is sort of my amateur understanding of it. But...
[53:17] I mean, everybody hated and feared the unvaccinated. And now, like, a year or two later, everyone's functionally unvaccinated. I mean, isn't that wild? It's like, everyone hated minority X, and then a year or two later, everybody is minority X, and nobody talks about anything.
[53:43] People's capacity for unreality continues to shock me. And that's my fault. I mean, that's totally on me. That's my fault, my weakness. I like to hold on to some vague shreds of optimism, however unrealistic it may be. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And the other thing too, so... The other thing, too, I think, why people can't talk about it, I think there's the shame at how easily they were manipulated into hating people. Like, you hate people for being unvaccinated and then, you know, nine out of ten people don't take their boosters, thus ending up functionally unvaccinated. So it's pretty tough i think to criticize people from a year and a half ago that you've now become so i think that's one thing but i think the other thing is that the media can't talk about, covid and its aftermath because of social media.
[55:04] And that's pretty, it's pretty wild when you think about it. So let's say some alphabet media company, right? And they start saying something about COVID. Then immediately everybody posts right underneath. Well, here's what you were saying two years ago. It's complete opposite. And you're not acknowledging the difference. It's like the hypocrisy, like the terrifying, well, one of the many terrifying things about the world of 1984, George Orwell's novel, is that things change and you can't reference the past and you just have to live in this blur of affirmations in the moment with no continuity. But social media and replies and posts and so on, what that does is it points out that we have not always been at war with Eurasia, right? We used to be at war with Eurasia, now we're at war with East Asia. A year ago you were saying Eurasia is the enemy, now you're saying East Asia is the enemy or whatever, right? So community notes is It's very powerful in many ways on X, on Twitter. But when people, if the media were to talk about COVID, they're going to get hammered for reversing position without acknowledgement. And they just, yeah, if they comment on COVID, they have to disable comments, right? But then other people repost it with comments, right? They repost that and allow comments, right?
[56:26] So, it's wild. child.
[56:30] So let's see here. Oh, regarding kids and nonverbal. Yes, for sure. This has been my experience. Also, my three-year-old is super verbal. I've heard as many as seven to 10 hours a day on tablets or phone, even babies before one year old. Luckily, lots of homeschooling groups around here crushing it with their families. And that's who we hang out with. Yeah. I did support at Freedomain. Thanks, Steph, for sharing your high value wisdom. Thank you very much, David. I appreciate that. Freedomain.com slash donate. Seems like suffering will be the only way people will learn. But a lot of people would rather not, like they'd rather completely fail than learn anything.
[57:12] Yeah, it's wild. Was it now Fauci was saying, oh, the six-foot thing just kind of came out of nowhere. But he's science, everybody. He's science. Oh, I got to read Rand Paul's new book. I guess he did not new, but book about...
[57:31] The Kennedy guy, I can't remember his name, the workout Kennedy guy. Kennedy guy and his book on COVID is chilling, and so is Rand Paul's. Oh no nothing's gonna happen no come on i mean i i can't even tell you the number of times oh so and so is finally gonna get caught for no no i i mean i don't think anything's gonna happen to anybody who was the architect of any of this stuff because it's funny you know like people used to say like well without the state he'll build the roads and now the ultimate clinching argument and by the way dave smith's been largely killing it out there which is great to see but the new argument is but without the government who's going to develop gain of function bat coronaviruses to infect human beings like that's not going to happen without the government can you imagine trying to sell that to the general population here you know give me a billion dollars and i will uh try to develop pandemic worthy gain of function coronavirus bat crap, Yay! Go fund me! Go fuck me. It's wild. Oh my gosh.
[58:49] I can finally apply for better paying jobs again because no one is asking for a koof jab. Hashtag so happy, yeah? Well, people were fired from their jobs and then replaced with illegal immigrants who'd never been tested for anything and had no vaccination requirements.
[59:02] I mean, honestly, it's wild. It's wild. All right, let me see if I've got any other questions else there. Did they get anything right during COVID? Lockdowns, masks, wet market theory, the jab, six feet. I think they were 100% wrong. Well, but what price are they paying for being wrong? Let's say they were wrong about everything. Yeah, I don't know. Let's see here.
[59:41] So, what was I going to say? I mean, I did get a lot of things right over COVID. Not perfect. I don't have a perfect track record. I don't think anybody does. But I certainly did say that the very first time I heard of it from a friend of mine in Hong Kong after I came back from doing my documentary in Hong Kong, which you should totally see. It's a great documentary at freedomain.com slash documentaries. And it's free. Did I mention it's free? It's free. It cost me a lot, though, if you ever want to see me get into your guest for partaking in an anti-communist protest, there you go. But I told everyone it was going to be a huge deal.
[1:00:24] Um i was i accepted the value a voluntary value of not socializing as much until we found out how dangerous this thing was that was i accepted that and i will stand by that and i said that masks could be helpful because it prevented you from touching your face and so on i don't think that masks have turned out to be super helpful but i mean i think everything else i didn't take the vax my god and i also said that the lockdowns were going to do far more harm than any good they could possibly do and i said this very early on so i don't know it's funny because there is this rumor that i just got everything wrong during vax and all that kind of stuff and it's like yeah i mean i didn't agree with the government lockdowns of course but i mean i myself obviously i myself, i stayed home when this thing first hit because i didn't know how bad it was going to be, Steph, do you think the economy has improved since COVID? No. No, it's worse. It's worse. I mean, it's just debt, right? It's not a real economy. It's not a real economy.
[1:01:34] Steph, today, June 9th, is the last day of the deal for Saudi Arabia taking payments in U.S. dollars only. What short-term and long-term impacts should we expect? Well, it's not good. It's not good. What made you think COVID was going to be a big deal compared to all other viruses that popped up?
[1:01:57] Because it was so transmissible. It seemed very transmissible. Well, first of all, they denied it was transmissible, right? I think early on, the Chinese government said it's not transmissible, which is how you know it is transmissible. And because I accepted, or I believed, right, and I made this whole video called The Case Against China about how it came from a lab. So I believed that it had been engineered for transmissibility, which means it was going to spread like crazy. What do you think of people like James Corbett or Tim Pool who seem to forego much philosophical thought I mean I think they're both fine, but they're not philosophers I mean there's nothing wrong with what they're doing I think they're doing some good work and some great stuff but, I mean they're not they're not philosophers so why would they do that right, You know, it's like saying, Steph, why don't you do more surgery? It's like, I'm not a surgeon, right? So I'm not quite sure I understand the question.
[1:03:08] Yeah. But it is, I think it is kind of a reminder of just how programmable and empty and dangerous a lot of people are, right? The square box on the wall says, Let's hate these people. And they're like, where's my pitchfork, man? Let's hate these people.
[1:03:27] And then no apologies, no, right? Yeah, it's really dysfunctional. It's really, really toxic in a lot of ways, right? And nobody can admit they're wrong. I mean, this comes out of parents usually not admitting they're wrong. All right. So, I'm going to end on something that was economically interesting. I thought was economically interesting.
[1:04:05] This is an old Twitter thing.
[1:04:11] Where somebody, Twitter books wrote, last book that made you cry. And somebody wrote, University Physics with Modern Physics, 14th edition by Hugh D. Young, Roger A. Friedman. and then Roger Friedman wrote back and he said no doubt tears of joy, I don't know, have you ever had to do something where you're just not good at it but you have to do it anyway oh that's horrible the good thing about getting older is you can outsource a bunch of stuff that seems really important according to Oxford professor James E. Thurald Rogers the medieval worker did not labor for more than 8 hours in a single day the peasant enjoyed anywhere from 8 weeks to half the year off Enjoyed your talk with Conor Tomlinson. Do you think you might start having talks and debates outside this format again? Yeah, I mean, I would have no massive objection to it.
[1:05:01] All right, 13 brutal life lessons. Nobody teaches you the easy road will destroy you. No work is beneath you. Be patient and persistent. The more you give, the more you get. No one owes you anything. You quit, you lose, you fail. Success is about removing the wrong things. Don't make emotional decisions. You have to take risks to win. How you treat others comes back to you. Listening is more important than speaking. Take time to learn who you are. Discipline weighs ounces. Regret weighs tons. That hits you in the feels, doesn't it? Discipline weighs ounces. Regret weighs tons.
[1:05:39] All right. I'm going to see if I can. This might be a little bit of scrolling, but I think I can find it.
[1:05:54] Oh yeah the 50 years ago big sugar quietly paid three scientists to point the blame for chronic disease at cholesterol and saturated fat uh it's pretty rough man uh it's pretty rough, i'm just gonna see if i can uh i love this picture of a potato if this can become vodka you can become you can become anything you want to be.
[1:06:18] F-E-A-R fear has two meanings forget everything and run or face everything and rise the choice is yours eh it's not easy not easy to make those decisions right knowing when to run knowing when to fight is not easy, Uh, somebody, I've had this experience in Montreal. Somebody says, my closest encounter with the mafia is I went to a starkly empty pizza place in Rhode Island once. They seemed utterly confused that I wanted a pizza. It took 45 minutes to make. They gave it to me for free and it was the best pizza I'd ever had. Did Joe Rogan ever apologize to you yet? No, no, no, he's counting his money. He's counting his moots well paid.
[1:06:53] Uh, let me just see here. I did. yeah the civilization what is it seven was announced today the civ series is sort of like ender's game but for management rather than murdering aliens business school students who were good at civ 5 also turn out to be better planners organizers and problem solvers in the small in this small experiment yeah so part of aging is this game is now too complicated for me to learn the rules it's why i gravitate towards dungeons and dragons based games sometimes or the doom games because i understand all the weapons because at this point it's like let's say Civilization VII comes out, I'm never playing it because I just don't have the time left on this mortal coil to learn massive amounts of new rules.
[1:07:33] This was good. The different ways you abandon yourself, saying yes when you're aching to say no, apologizing to someone who owes you the apology, digging your heels in deeper when you know you're the one in the wrong, over-explaining your truth to someone who stopped listening long, long time ago, romanticizing the bare minimum begging for basic decency chasing people who do not want to be caught building a life based on what you think looks good but not on what actually feels good ignoring your intuition ignoring your body ignoring your needs.
[1:08:07] Contorting and bending and breaking to fit in places you know you've outgrown, staying in a relationship that has run its course not allowing time for deep rest running on fumes staying quiet when someone disrespects you refusing to allow what already is, lying to yourself, never asking for help, never taking a chance on yourself, never living up to your own word, celebrating those who only tolerate you, wishing you were someone else. That's good. That's good.
[1:08:43] All right. Let's see if I can find... It's a long way down. It's a long way down. Maybe I can find it. Maybe I can find it. Maybe I can't. I keep bookmarking stuff, and I never really get it. Get down to sorting it out. I'm fine to get or do much with it. But, you know, I guess I can post these bookmarks on my grave. All right, let me try. I'll try one more. One more little thing here. One more little thing. I love on X is half the ads are like guys hugging lions with massive muscles and Viking helmets. And it's like, you're manly man juice for manliness. and that was really something else really something else.
[1:09:45] So okay I won't I remember what it was I remember what it was but yeah I don't think I was I think I must have skipped past it or maybe I didn't bookmark it sometimes I miss so, this guy was saying let me tell you how capitalism works kids so let's say you're a pharmaceutical company and you develop a drug that cures tens of thousands of sick people and it only costs you ten dollars per cure to make, but the illness or the ailment afflicts mostly poor people and so you want to sell it for fifteen $15,000. But poor people can't afford the $15,000. Now, if you sell it for less, you can actually get sued and lose your job for fiduciary misconduct, right? You have a fiduciary responsibility as the CEO to maximize shareholder value. And if you sell something that you could sell for more for less, then you're going to lose your job, get sued, and things are going to go badly. That's That's how capitalism works. So the poor people don't get their cure and it all goes to hell and people die by the tens of thousands because profit, right? I mean, my gosh, my gosh, my gosh.
[1:11:11] That is, it's hard to even know. I hate that phrase, and I apologize for using it. It's hard to even know where to start on how wrong this is, right? And this is just, I think this is just a troll aiming to fear uncertainty, doubt, suspicion, hostility, and so on. Oh, those tens of thousands of poor people are dying because capitalism is like, okay, so. This is somebody who's not run a business, and, you know, they're looking at it from the outside. Don't forget, freedomain.com slash donate. A little donation, a bit of a light donation day, but we'll kick it off with this, I think, pretty good analysis. Let me know what you think. So first of all, people don't, it costs about a billion dollars to develop a cure for anything, largely because of regulations, right? Like in Canada, I think it's in Ontario, but in Canada as a whole, a third of the price of your home is regulations and bureaucrats. And like the regulators and bureaucrats end up costing more than the actual labor to build a house. I mean, it's really, it's horrible, right? Right. So there is no such thing as a cure that is developed where there's not a solid business plan. How are we going to sell it? Right. So nobody's going to bother going through the billion dollars to create the cure because like in this guy's mind, the cure just magically appears and it costs only $10 to make. Therefore you should only charge $11 for it. It was like, that's not even remotely. So if nobody can figure out how to sell something, it doesn't get made.
[1:12:31] I mean when I was and I know this directly right because I was in charge of a multi-million dollar budget in the software field and when I would want to build a new feature I would want to build a new interface I'd want to build something I would have to do a cost-benefit analysis I would have to poll the clients to see if they were interested in it I'd have to make sales projections here's how much we're going to spend developing say the web interface to my windows app and here's the demand on for it here's much here's how much clients estimate they'd be willing to pay here's how long it's going to take to amortize right well what's the roi return on investment of what it is you're spending now some of it is just a labor of love like i just do it on my own like you don't need this level of 48-bit audio quality with crazy mics and like you don't need this level of audio quality to listen to what i say but i like it i think it's like that's just a labor of love like Like the video quality as well, like I'm trying to get good video, trying to get good audio. So that's just a labor of love stuff. But in general, in business, you have to spend. So, you know, when I got raises for 30 or 35 employees of mine, I did so by creating a cost-benefit analysis. Here's the risk of them leaving. Here's how much it's going to cost if they leave to hire and train and just make it cost-benefit. So you don't just have a cure.
[1:13:51] And have no way of knowing how to sell it. That doesn't, I mean, I don't even know what to say. That's just so beyond the pale. That's just amateur hour. That's like thinking you're really good at managing real estate because you played Monopoly when you were six. I don't even know what to say about that, right? So the cure won't exist if there's not a path to selling it. But let's say, let's say that there is a cure that is $15,000 that saves people's lives.
[1:14:19] Well, that's not actually that hard to sell because people will give loans to poor people for $15,000 that they will then pay off. Poor people have cars. A lot of times poor people have little apartments that they bought. They have, right? So if a poor person, let's say they can only pay back a thousand dollars a year for whatever reason. Okay. So they pay it back in, you know, 15 years plus interest, whatever, whatever, right? So they would, they would be people who would lend money to that in order for the poor people to stay alive because the poor people would make more money staying alive and therefore they would i mean other than just the emotional benefit of staying alive the poor people would make more money so even if the cure was fifteen thousand dollars poor people would be able to afford it you'd say oh yes but they don't have that money and it's like yeah do you know you never heard of layaway plans you never heard of leasing you never heard of amortization you've never heard of any of this kind of stuff plus Plus, of course, there would be GoFundMe, there would be support, there would be charities, all kinds of things. Of course, the government would get involved in order to do all of that sort of stuff. So there'd be a lot of help that would come about. And, of course, as time went along, the price would go down, right? The price would go down as the initial costs were paid. But yeah, just creating these wild, completely self-contradictory scenarios, it's like an intelligence test.
[1:15:45] Why would a company spend a billion dollars to develop something they couldn't sell? And this whole and I remember this you know way back in the day right somebody said I was in a group with a group of friends and someone said you know the can of coke is 25 cents to buy but the ingredients only cost 2 cents so then it's an IQ test to say well are you kidding me they're making 23 cents but it's like no well there's the cost of the cans there's the cost of the labor the cost of the factories, and the cost of taxes and payroll and research and development advertising like there's a lot of expense they don't actually make that much money, Thank goodness somebody said that to me back in the day Because when I was 11, that seemed kind of.
[1:16:28] That seems kind of like obvious in hindsight, but it was one of these things that just really changed my mind long before, like I was still a socialist back then because I was just programmed and propagandized. And so rich people make money off the interest.
[1:16:46] Did you just send a dollar to him? Maybe you, maybe you slipped a digit. It's actually 19 zeros you need to put after that one. Just kidding. Just kidding. It's 20. so but uh thank you for the thought i suppose what if the miracle cure is in the tip of a flagpole right right right right right and so and let's say that everything this guy is saying is true that there's this cure that costs that you're being charged 15 000 first of all you don't charge what the market won't bear right like if nobody's going to pay 15 let's say the cure is for everything that goes wrong with everyone who's poor right some illness hits only poor people and they can't possibly afford $15,000, then you will lower your price until people can afford it.
[1:17:32] Right? I mean, this is not complicated, is it? I mean, I guess I could say it's a zillion dollars an hour to talk to me, and it's like, well, I don't exactly know what a zillion is, but it seems like a lot, so people wouldn't pay that, so I would have to lower my price to the point where people would pay. I mean, everybody wants to sell everything they have. I mean, you'd love to get paid a zillion dollars an hour, wouldn't you? I would. But you get what you negotiate. So a business that, let's say it only costs $10 to produce, but they can't sell it for $15,000, what are they going to do? Just not sell anything? Just completely write off the entire billion dollar R&D cost of that? No, they'll lower their prices until people can afford it.
[1:18:19] And of course this guy could say well you know what you'd have to do is you'd have to create a big charity raise awareness and you know help subsidize these things for people and right you could do all of that right.
[1:18:31] Right, no money in making a cure for cancer. Oh yes, there is massive money in making a cure for cancer. You know, there's massive money in making a cure for cancer. Just not in treatment. But there's massive money. How do you make money? Buying coins is expensive. Yeah, I mean, I like the coins thing, but Google and Apple take their 30% from the coins, so I don't end up with as much as you think. Do you think that these scenarios come about from rejecting intellectual property as property the scenarios accepted the right to the property in its manufacture but not in its conception no the scenarios come about just because it's trolls there's people wanting to create division and make people angry and upset and unhappy and all that kind of stuff so, uh let's see here.
[1:19:22] Yeah there's massive money making so and and the um uh life in sorry uh life and and health insurance companies only make money when you're not sick so they have a massive incentive, to create a cure for cancer or to support a cure for cancer, i mean just think of life insurance right you got a million dollar life insurance payout if If cancer takes, you know, an average of seven or eight years off the lifespan of people, then you don't have to pay that life insurance and you get more payments for seven or eight years. A massive, massive amount of money in curing cancer. Steph says, Frank, I just started dating a girl and from what I understand, she had a good childhood. Her parents didn't verbally or physically abuse their kids and seemed to be very supportive. Yet she has struggled with depression, anxiety, and perfectionism. What kind of childhood things could have contributed to developing these issues? Thank you.
[1:20:23] Interesting. Let's see here. Let me see. Anxiety. Okay. So let's say she had a great childhood. She struggles with anxiety, depression, and perfectionism. Well, what's wrong with that? See, here's the thing. There are these two poles in life. Get ready for a rant. There are these two poles in life. I want to accept myself and I want to pursue mad excellence. And you can't even choose one or the other. When you recognize your potential, you have to be dissatisfied with where you are. Lazy people pursue self-acceptance. Workaholics pursue excellence. But you have to balance the two. Of course you have to accept yourself and be happy with who you are and enjoy your own company. And I get all of that. But you also have to be dissatisfied with where you are because you want to do better. Do you think somebody gets to win a gold medal at the Olympics because they just practice nothing but self-acceptance and happiness with where they are? No.
[1:21:35] I mean, I'm very happy with myself. I think I've made good choices in a very complex realm. and I produced maximum philosophy that the world can handle, right? You don't want to have a pill so big it chokes people, right? So I produced the maximum philosophy and there's a lot of stuff that's laid into what I do that will become more apparent as the centuries go by, but I produced maximum philosophy that the world can handle at the moment without nailing me to a tree. So I think I've done a good navigation. Thank you for your help and support, freedomain.com slash donate. But I think I've done a reasonably good job of that and I'm quite satisfied with how I've approached that. So yeah I'm happy with what I've done I'm happy with myself and and and I continually want to do better so I'm in love with who I am and I'm in more passionate love with who I can be, but when I say I have more potential to manifest I have to have discontent with where I am because without being discontented with where you are can you progress if some guy is 300 pounds and says I'm perfectly happy with my body, he ain't going to die. And our potential is always the maddening ideal that we will chase that accelerates the faster we chase it. But we can't stop chasing. That's just the reality of it. It's a train we won't catch, it's out of the seagull, just running faster to catch up a train that accelerates the faster I run.
[1:23:02] The chasing is the excellence. You never catch it. That's never going to happen. I'm never going to do a perfect show. I do as good as I possibly can, and then I up the standard every single show. Every, like, 9, 10, 11, 12 times a week, I up my standard. Do I reach it? Nope. Do I do a perfect show? Nope. But damn it, I'm not resting on my laurels. I think that's fair to say, isn't it? I'm not doing the same show as I did 20 years ago. I'm not repeating things. I'm not one of the political talking heads who just keeps going over the same ground and plowing the same field and planting the same crops no matter what, no matter how many crows of misinformation take away your seedlings.
[1:23:45] I mean, I'm trying new things all the time. I mean, I'm writing novels. I'm doing voice chats rather than text-only live streams. Right? I wrote the whole book on peaceful parenting, which is a huge challenge.
[1:24:03] I'm doing lots of different things. Paid call-in show, I'm doing lots of different things. Always trying new things, new approaches. How often do I repeat my arguments? I mean, this argument about you go to daycare, your body experiences that as being sold into slavery, that's totally new, totally new. And every show, I try to create something new that is of value, because if you get that eye-rolling feeling that you've heard all this before, I've utterly failed in my potential. And love Harry Brown, Brown with an E, but he had like five stories he would trot out every single time. And I can't do it. I can't stand it. When I'm repeating myself, I'm generally on autopilot. Now, if it's been a long time, if it's been years since I told the story and I mentioned that I've said it before, I can do it again, but I can't just do the same stuff. I can't have stimulus response. I can't be, well, here's the input, here's the output. I've done entire shows about the dangers of daycare. Yeah, I wrote a novel, half of which was involved with the daycare generation, but I needed to have something new to say about daycare tonight or today because otherwise I can't stay awake and neither should you. It's got to be new.
[1:25:14] I have to be satisfied with what I've done and dissatisfied at repeating it. I have to like who I am but love who I could be. Otherwise, there's no continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is essential. In the pursuit of excellence, by definition, right? And let's say I do 1% better shows every time I do a show. My shows double in quality every couple of months. This kind of cumulative improvement is insane. It's like compound interest. It's a force that's stronger than strong atomic forces. It's stronger than the power of self-delusion that seems to fire the furnace hearts of most people on the planet with two legs and little hair.
[1:26:01] So what the hell is wrong with perfectionism? And perfectionism is going to come with some anxiety. I want to do a better show. That means I'm not chewing the same crap I've chewed before. I'm not saying the same words I've said before. I'm going on the edge. I'm surfing the perimeter. I'm doing the maximum that I can do, which means I'm constantly in danger of screwing it up. I'm constantly in danger of failing. I'm constantly in danger of not getting it right. Because the only way to get things right is to keep doing the same things you already know how to do. but that means that you're stagnant. I always have to have in the show the possibility of failure. Of course. Otherwise, there's no chance of success. I don't consider myself successful because I know how to climb stairs. I mean, I learned how to climb stairs when I was a year and a half or two years old. So I know how to do that, but can I consider myself successful? Oh, I'm so good at climbing stairs, man. That's all I need to do today. Time to take to the couch. So maybe, just maybe, Frank, maybe this girl has truly God-given potential. And she gets a sense of that deep down. And she's incredibly dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied because she gets a sense, a dim sense of how far she is from her potential.
[1:27:20] I remember many years ago listening to an interview with a world-famous golfer. He said, yeah, I was working in a factory. I was like a foreman or, you know, I did something and above the actual hand-to-hand work. I was making like 60K a year, and all my friends kept saying to me, man, you're such a good golfer. Just go play golf. What are you doing here? What are you doing here, man? Right? Goodwill hunting style. What are you doing here? You've got so much potential. What are you doing here? Man, if I could play golf like you, you couldn't.
[1:27:51] I was yesterday, for reasons I won't even get into, my daughter and I were hunting two chickens in the woods. Really thick woods, man. It was tough work. Got scratched the hell out of myself. We were hunting two chickens in the woods, deep woods. And we went totally primal, totally primeval. It was great. I was like Lord of the Flies stuff. And anyway, in the middle of the deep woods, I found two golf clubs. Wouldn't you love to, I mean, I'd love to know why are there two golf clubs deep in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere? Why? Why? Why? Makes no sense. I'll never know. It tortures me that I'll never know. So, yeah, maybe she's got amazing, incredible, fantastic potential. And she's getting a real sense of that. And so she's been stimulated to growth with dissatisfaction of where she is. Right? Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Right?
[1:28:55] Selling a one-time pill makes nothing next to selling you a lifelong prescription, as a treatment every month for the next 30 to 50 years. What are you talking about?
[1:29:08] Oh my gosh, you guys, come on. You've got to stop doing this low-rent stuff. Selling a one-time pill makes nothing next to selling you a lifelong prescription as a treatment every month for the next 30 to 50 years. Cheers. But, oh my God. No, come on. You got to do better than that. So, okay, let me just ask you this. Let me ask you this. Okay, you have a medical problem. Some guy comes along and says, well, I can sell you one pill for $1,000. It's going to cure you forever. Or you can spend $100 a month for the rest of your life. What do you want? What do you want?
[1:29:47] Come on. now if the government's paying or whatever I don't know who cares right then that's not a free market situation do you want a thousand dollar pill that cures you forever or a fifty dollar pill for the rest of your life every month, of course you're going to want the thousand dollar pill in fact you can borrow the money to pay the thousand dollar it's going to cost you much less than fifty dollars a month for the rest of your life, so you're thinking about the manufacturer but in a free market situation it's not the manufacturer who wants to make money that dominates the interaction It's the needs of the customers. Stop putting out misinformation. Think through things.
[1:30:29] Think through things. What does the customer want? What does the customer want? That's what determines the situation. Right? Don't put out stuff without thinking it through. It's bad. You're peeing in the pool party. You are putting out an environmental toxin called unintelligent stuff. and you're smarter than that because you're in this. You've got to think through things.
[1:31:07] Even when you fail, it only serves to make you better, e.g. your I was wrong about series. It also showcases humility and how not to dig your heels in. Yeah, I don't have a standard called perfection in result, but in process. Steph, I'll say again, you're always fresh, always new, always original. That's why I keep coming back. You also learn and change. for instance, dropping politics. You are an inspiration for me. I will always talk about something new and interesting with friends and coworkers. I told you that over the last eight years, I've stopped listening to everyone else. The YouTube losers who are skirting the vague YouTube terms of service, chasing growth and self-censorship to keep their channels up. The one pill will be a million dollars. Thank you for the tip. The one pill will be a million dollars. No. Oh my gosh. What are you talking about? What will the price of the pill be? Will it be a thousand dollars? Will it be a million dollars? What will the price of the pill be? Come on, people. Let's do some Econ 101. What will the price of the pill be that cures you so that you don't need monthly pills for the rest of your life? What will the price of the pill be? The price of the pill will be the maximum the customers are willing to pay in volume.
[1:32:36] Right? The pill will be the maximum the customers are willing to pay. So do you think that there's some value embedded in the pill? There's no value embedded in the pill. If you're suicidal, the pill is like you'll pay to not take it because you want to die, right? So there's no innate value in the pill, right? You understand that, right? There's no innate value in the pill.
[1:33:02] The pill will be sold for whatever the maximum is that people in volume are willing to pay. There's a sweet spot. You understand? If you undercharge, you lose money. If you overcharge, you lose money. So trying to find out the right price to charge is complicated. But when you can't force people to pay for things, you have to woo them into paying for things, right? So what is the objective value of what it is that I do? You think the pharmaceutical will sell it to you. They own the government to ensure they get what they want. In the free capital system, of course, customers decide, but we are in a late state fascism. The point is we don't get the choice. Yeah, sure. Okay, but then talk about coercion and fascism. Don't talk about price and markets. kids. If it costs a million bucks, then people may well look at the daily five cent pill for 30 to 50 years and be like, I'll just do that. Right. But James, if it costs a million bucks, it will never be developed. Right? I mean, just try this. Try this. Honestly, you don't believe me. Try going to investors and say, I want to build an average car and sell it for a million dollars. They'll laugh at you. They won't fund you and it'll never happen. So the pill that costs a million bucks won't even exist. You're talking about something that just won't exist.
[1:34:29] Stop, and this is in general, right? And I need to be reminded that this from time to time too. So, but yeah, stop putting labels on things that can't possibly happen. Because what you do is you discredit philosophy by creating theoreticals that can't ever happen. Teaching people that value is subjective is one of the hardest economic ideas to teach people, right? So what is the value? What is the economic value of what I'm doing today? It is based on the tips. Is there a magical, mystical value? No, it's really a million dollars for an hour and 40 minutes of my thoughts. It's a million dollars. I'm underpaid by tips taken away from a million dollars. I'm underpaid. Like, what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything.
[1:35:15] What am I worth for the time that I spend doing the live streams? Economically, what am I? Oh, there's all this philosophy. What am I worth? I'm worth what you donate. I can remind you, I can say it's important and it is important and it's honorable and I think it is honorable, but what am I worth? I'm worth what you voluntarily agree to donate. There's no other X value. you now i can say well i want donations to increase and that i sometimes do want and need that okay, because you know i've had to live on less than when i was uh bigger so i can do things to you know provide some benefits provide some incentives or whatever right but what am i worth i'm worth what you decide to donate that's it there's no other ghost price tag that i'm worth so much more And it's like, no, you're worth what you negotiate. You might want a genius Nietzsche reading supermodel with big tits, right? Okay, if you can get something like that, good for you, man. But you end up with who you are willing to be with.
[1:36:31] Having too high an estimation of your own value is usually, usually, well, almost always, it is self-sabotage to have too high estimation of your own value. It's the case for me too. Like if I said, well, I'm worth a million dollars a live stream and I'm enraged that I don't get that. It's like, well, then my live stream suck and you donate less. It's a form of self-sabotage, right? Because I'm entitled and I'm angry and I'm frustrated and that's no good, right? That's no good. I have to provide value, and you're the final determinant of the value that I provide. You and you alone decide the value. I don't decide it. I don't decide the value that you provide to me at all. You are the fundamental determinant of how much economic, you can say other value, whatever, soft values, but in terms of bills to pay and employees and so on, you are the final determinant of the economic value of what I'm doing. And I'm worth so much more doesn't mean anything. I deserve more. It's like, I don't even know what that means. That's like there's some platonic dollar sign hanging over your head that, you know, if you're willing to work for $100,000 a year or you're willing to work for $50,000 a year, that's what you're worth. Right? That's what you're worth. Right?
[1:37:57] It's like when society was paying thousands of dollars to go see messy kick a ball society values kicking a ball and not philosophy and i love society for that i love society for that i love the fact that society pays entertainers tens of millions of dollars or sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars a year and philosophers require on relative relatively i'm not i mean I mean, thank you for support, but obviously, relatively, relative to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, relatively paltry donations. Beautiful. I love society for that. And I, in fact, don't even really want that to change too much because I am happy with my level of care and concern for society. I don't particularly want it to go up. So I'm relatively happy that the majority of my audience abandoned me when I moved one website over. Fantastic. So then I don't have to agonize about what's happening to the majority of people.
[1:38:54] Right because i will not care for people more than they care for me that's a recipe to just be exploited so the fact that society values he kicks a ball he bounces a ball he swings a club he swings a bat let's give him tens of millions of dollars like fantastic beautiful beautiful so i am released from obligation to protect you.
[1:39:23] I am released from obligation to put myself at risk in order to protect you.
[1:39:34] I mean, to me, it's the, here's the analogy, right? So here's the analogy is that there are a bunch of soldiers in a country surrounded by hostile enemies, and everybody wants to voluntarily give their money to baseball players and porn stars, not the soldiers who protect them. It's like, okay, then you won't really have any soldiers. and when you get invaded kicking soccer balls at the invaders will not save you right so society learns right this is where you want to put your resources you want to put your resources, in entertainers who propagandize and program you to the detriment of your civilization you want to give your money to people who bounce and dribble balls because you want to have thrill spills and chills without having to get off the couch and you will give your money to people who promise political solutions that never really materialize and you want to do all of this right okay so then, i wish you the best but i'm out of it i'm i tap out right i tap out because that's where you want to not you guys right obviously right.
[1:40:47] I don't have to feel an obligation to protect those who don't value the protection of philosophy. Quick question. Quick question. Quick question. Oh, sorry. Let me just get your comments here. Ah, the old debate on spending tax money on art. No one much wants versus sports teams, films, and television, which many more do want. It's an episode of Yes Ministry, yeah? Society's paying like $300 for Jordan sneakers, but won't donate to their philosophers or buy books. Somebody says, I did a column with Steph in February. My quality of life has improved dramatically. I appreciate that, thank you. The football obsession is sickening, and I'm with you, Steph. Pot-bellied, bearded, T-shirt-wearing fans taking off their hat and tearing up, cheering up during the national anthem while the USA has bombed and slaughtered people, yeah? Sorry. Has the world gotten crazier or saner since I was deplatformed? I mean, I was a pretty big influence on helping keep the world sane, right?
[1:42:08] Taking out the philosophers is the mark of a fading civilization, right? In the future these shows will be studied thoroughly i think the unpublished call-ins will be worth a lot of bitcoins in the future yeah yeah i think so i think so all right any other last comments questions issues before we sign off any other last donations freedom a.com slash donate yeah it's gotten crazy of course it has right of course it has you know they keep saying society's getting better and better more of this and more of that will make it better and better and it's like okay so is there more free speech or less free speech than than it was 15 years ago, right?
[1:42:46] So, yeah, there's a price to be paid for not defending your philosophers. Society pays a huge and awful price for not protecting its philosophers. It's really, really sad.
[1:43:00] But by the time the price shows up, right, by the time the price shows up, it's usually too late.
[1:43:07] Because if society doesn't want to protect its philosophers, then philosophers don't want to protect society. society, and really can't, right? You can't, right? So, if society doesn't protect its philosophers, society finds out what life without philosophy becomes. Any recommended readings? I've read most of your books. Yeah, I mean, I was just starting to reread this the other night. It's a book I've read a couple of times before, Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. Very good, very good book. So, you can check that out. Any updates on the Peaceful Parenting book, the actual book, you could tie it to donations or pre-sales yeah i'm still half and half about a physical book honestly i um i've been down this road before where people say they're desperate for physical books and then they don't they don't buy them and it's a lot of work to make a physical book i'm just waiting on the cover um i'm just waiting on the cover the guy who did the just poor cover uh very kindly agreed to do the cover for peaceful parenting and it should come in next week and then we can uh i think it'll probably go and of course i'm working on a shortened version as well so that's uh that's a it's a big job so but yeah if you've got access to the peaceful parenting book you can share it with whoever you want don't worry about it they don't need to donate just you can share it with whoever you want so go for it all right and of course if you want access to the peaceful parenting book before the final thing comes out uh you can go to freedomain.com no actually sorry you have to go to freedomain.locals.com would you sign the books.
[1:44:36] Um, maybe, maybe, but then they've got to be shipped to me. I've got to sign them, then I've got to ship them out. I, yeah, I don't think that's a particularly good use of my time unless I charge a huge amount, which doesn't feel quite right. And I appreciate that. But, um, all right.
[1:44:56] All right. So, don't forget, free domain.com slash donate, of course. And don't forget to use the promo code, all caps, UPB2022 at freedomain.locals.com. You can try it out for a month for free. And also, FDRURL.com slash TikTok, FDRURL.com slash TikTok to get to our TikTok channel. If you could sign up for that, I would really appreciate that. Doing all right. It's doing all right. I would pay, you are a legend. Yes, but I sort of have to figure out the time. Thank you for the show, Steph. I donated for the Friday night Skype show. I joined late today because I was feeling nauseous. Thank you. Well, I hope you feel better, and I'm sorry that you're feeling unwell. That's not fun. Not a lot of fun. All right yeah i mean everybody thinks they can live with that philosophy all societies think that philosophers are uncomfortable and inconvenient and it's just easier without them and so they ditch their philosophers and yep you can blindfold turn off your gps and try to fly and jfk jr style you uh kiss the water in time all right thanks everyone have yourself a wonderful day freedom and a cop slash donate if you'd like to help out later hugely appreciate it i will talk Talk to you guys on a Wednesday night. And don't forget, freedomain.com slash call. If you'd like a call, it doesn't have to be paid. It can be open. But freedomain.com slash call to get that. Lots of love, everyone. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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