Cult Season continues, and much like Stefan himself, you may have hoped this would go away after Part 1. Unfortunately, like all persistent internet hauntings, Molyneux has returned. And this time, Chris and Matt venture even deeper into the Moly-Hole, a place where truth is redefined, callers are slowly gaslit into existential confusion, and every philosophical insight is served with the overwhelming scent of narcissism and emotional manipulation.We return to the joyful world of Stefan’s caller-domination rituals, courtesy of Twitter Spaces, where he continues his life’s work of berating strangers and stroking his own ego while insisting he alone possesses the True Meaning of Truth.Listeners can thrill to the culmination of the Truth Call™ from Part 1, where the philosophically inclined young father is sucked further into Stefan’s epistemological meat grinder as Stefan tries to uncover the imaginary psychoanalytic roots of the caller’s ongoing defiance. From there, we are introduced to Caller No. 3 for just a sprinkling of the patented victim-blaming and misogyny of the Molyneux Method.Finally, Chris and Matt offer their overall thoughts on Molyneux’s long and illustrious career as an internet arsehole. They conclude that while Stefan has managed to cycle through platforms, ideologies, and degrees of baldness, he has maintained absolute fidelity to the same psychological tactics—gaslighting, projection, undermining, hypocrisy, and the uncanny ability to make even a throwaway joke feel incredibly creepy.So that’s it for now… collectively we can escape the Moly-Hole, carefully sealing the tunnel entrance as we leave. And let’s pray this is the last time anyone has to think about good ol’ Stefan.Aside from that… Cult Season continues. Abandon hope, etc.LinksFreedomain Radio 6162: The Most Frightening Fact! (Twitter/X Space)Philosophy student reviews Molyneux’s The Art of the ArgumentMichael Shermer’s amazing excuse for endorsing MolyneuxFormer guest discusses Molyneux’s descent into racist pseudoscience (2016)Guardian article (2008) on Molyneux’s online cult & “DeFooing”Daily Mail article (2015) on a family impacted by Molyneux’s communityDaily Beast profile on Molyneux during his Trump pivotSPLC profile on Stefan MolyneuxSPLC investigation of Molyneux’s alt-right connections (2018)College of Psychologists of Ontario:...
Hello and welcome to the Cody the Gurus, a podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.
We try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matt Brown, the psychologist from Australia, and with me is Chris Kavanaugh, the Anakin Skywalker, Jamai Obi-Wan Kenobi, partner in crime, junior co-host, anthropologist slash psychologist and academic in Japan.
Hi, Chris.
Wow.
Wow.
That was very professional.
I like that.
I've got no notes.
No notes.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Good job.
You're totally fine with it.
But Chris, not the younglings, Chris.
Not the younglings.
Oh, wow.
You've watched those movies.
That's it.
I'm actually pretty shocked.
I didn't.
I did not enjoy them.
Have you seen the sequels?
You know, the ones that came after, the more recent, the Disney ones?
Yeah, like, what's the more recent one?
The one series.
Like, they're better.
They're much better.
No, no, they're not.
They're not.
i'm not talking about the mandalorian or those kind of things i mean no i'm talking about the one that's kind of you know what was the the series that was it sort of dwelt upon the Oh, Andor.
You're talking about Andor.
Yeah, Andor.
Andor.
Yeah.
No, I mean the three movies that they made after, right, with Kylo Ren and all that.
No, I have not seen those.
I will not.
I think they're not, they're not your kettle of fish, shall we say.
Hey, are you still watching Foundation?
Not recently.
I mean, but I mean, I think I saw the most recent series or something like that.
I think I'm catching up.
Yeah, I think I'm catching up.
Yeah.
It's okay.
What about Plurbus?
You seen Plurbus?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm watching Pluribus.
That's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's our general tickets.
That's why we're not a movie review show.
I feel like we're dancing around here, Matt, because we know what we're bringing back to.
We know what's coming.
Warn people.
We tried to warn you.
He's in everything.
He's in your ear.
Everywhere all of London man.
Yeah, so this is part two of our Stefan Molnew episode.
And we gave people a break.
I think it's only healthy that you don't get Molnew blasted into your ear hole for over three hours.
That's dangerous, right?
But this episode, as a result, you know, it's the tail end of the conversation.
And you're going to hear the wrap-up of that stirring conversation about truth and what it means.
And then you'll hear a little bit from the third caller from that episode that we looked at.
And then that will be the last, hopefully, to hear about Steph Molly.
I mean, the Grammator episode will come, right?
But apart from that, hopefully you can leave your mental space.
You know, it's not a pleasant experience, but we do promise that after this episode, you will never need to hear from the man ever again.
And, you know, it's important to know what's out there.
It's important.
That's right.
What's lurking in the darker corners of the internet?
And well, we can only hope that he activates his right to reply.
That's that would.
That would just be great.
But um yeah, so anyway Matt uh, any final thoughts?
Before we get back, I will say that we're gonna start off.
You're going to be hit straight away by a clip and the the context of that is, you know it's, it's just building on the conversation, the gaslighting that you were hearing from the previous conversation.
So, any any final thoughts?
Before we we let people get it with the full brunt of the Molenu again.
No, i'll save it.
I'll save it till the end.
Um, save the hot test till afterwards.
Clips first, then opinions.
Clips first.
Okay, here we go.
Clip number one, even if I did explain it to him, he can't justify it himself, he just says it.
So I guess, when he, when my son, says the earth revolves around the sun, can I say under this, this understanding of truth, that he is making a true statement, or he him, or is he not making a true statement?
I'm trying to understand, because he doesn't have the correct process, because I failed at teaching him right.
Maybe I, I I failed, let me, let me ask you something.
I mean, I understand this because we've already i've already covered this when I said truth is attached to a proposition, when it is proven, doesn't have to be proven by every individual right right okay, I mean you and I didn't have to come up with all the words in this conversation.
Let me, let me ask you something, because i'm I feel like we make, we make no progress, you don't concede anything, we never get to any meeting of the minds.
You just, it feels to me, you just keep moving the goalpost.
Now you're talking about what?
About a child?
And it's like, well, we're not talking about children, right?
Children are a process to development.
So let me ask you this, why does this matter to you so much?
Okay, all right.
So seems like this caller has tried to make a pretty simple point, which is, imagine a child, imagine I tell the child that the uh earth goes around the sun, that the child goes, oh okay dad, so the earth goes around the sun, does it?
And according to Molanyu, the kid has just said an untrue statement, but maybe not because he's kind of changing his grounds right, because now he says, as soon as someone has verified this claim, then anyone can say it and it becomes true, Chris.
But this is quite different from what he was saying before, which is that if, if the person doesn't know, then they're not speaking the truth, right?
Well, I think he's.
He's unwilling to address that contradiction, right?
So instead, and he's tried various attempts to deflect from it.
But then here this is beginning of a pivot right.
So he said, we're going around in circles, you don't concede anything, like i'm, i'm delivering truth bomb after truth bomb and and you just, you're stuck in the mud you're, you're furry nights.
Yeah, what's this about?
Kids have come in right, it doesn't clarify anything.
So he says, you know, why does this matter to you?
That's his new thing right, that's the, the flip of the gurus, and and this is the judo flip we're very familiar with from Dr K, which is hold on hold on, hold on.
Why does this matter to you?
Why did you ask me this why?
Why do you seem so difficult?
Explain yourself to me.
Yeah we, we did hear this recently with Keith Reniary as well.
So um yeah well, let's see.
Maybe we'll hear a little bit more echoes of Nixium here.
So listen to this, because how we think about truth affects how we believe and understand, navigate through life.
Why does this matter to you so much?
This is about very abstract.
Why does this matter to you personally, so much like people can call me up and i'm pretty good at just about every life situation.
I've got 20 years experience doing public.
Yeah, answers about.
So everything else in your life is great.
Everything else in your life is going as beautifully as it could be, except for this issue, because this is what you're bringing up.
So that's my sort of question, of all the things that we could talk about, why is this one so important to you and why do you never agree?
Uh, I I disagree with the, the premise.
I think it's a loaded question.
You disagree.
This isn't.
What have you?
What have you conceded to me in this conversation?
That uh, based on how you describe truth in these cities?
No no no, not based on how I describe truth.
That's not a concession.
It's something we have to agree on, but we make it subjective to me.
What have you?
Because listen, if you and I have talked for like 40 minutes or whatever and we haven't agreed on anything, why on earth would I want to continue the conversation?
Um, what have you agreed with me on?
What have you accepted that I have put forward?
I well, I accept that you have a different definition of truth and understanding this.
No, that's just accepting that we no, that's just accepting we don't agree.
What have you accepted that I have put forward?
I put forward a large number of arguments and observations and and so on.
Well, hang on, what have you accepted?
This feels very sneaky and manipulative and a lot of fun.
So the first of the clear cult-ish dynamics is, i'm a very well-respected figure.
I have 20 years of advising people, and people you know recognize me as a very important figure, and yet we are disagreeing here.
So uh, and he reframes at the start, initially saying, you know, is everything else in your life going well?
Is there no other issues?
Is this, is this maybe a symptom, the fact that you refuse to agree?
Right, that's what you know.
If you're feeling resistance, doesn't this reflect some problem with you?
And and then the very obvious rhetorical technique of the end of tell me what i'm right about and and not just like what I believe or what you've accepted, like say how i'm correct and you're wrong.
Yeah yeah, it's.
It's incredibly sneaky because he sneaks in the, the premise there, that this, this caller has to agree with him, has to concede things to him.
He doesn't have to concede anything to the caller, and he hasn't.
He just keeps repeating his position on this without actually responding to anything.
The caller is actually proposing to him pretty clearly really, and flipping it around so it becomes, uh, let's do some soul searching and figure out what's wrong with you and how you can do better to to make me happy, to please me, yes.
And every time they tries to answer, you know saying, well I, I understand that you have presented.
He's like, no yep yep, it's not, it's not enough right, you have to, you have to completely uh submit, accept that he's right yeah submit, so no, he doesn't even get to finish the sentence where he says, you think right, because that's implying that there's a subjective assessment right, that other people could disagree, when he doesn't believe it's possible.
Yeah, and uh like, like a micro observation there, you notice the interrupting, like he can and does interrupt the caller.
Um, the caller cannot interrupt him.
There's just.
There's something i've noticed there with these characters, which is they're very good at uh controlling uh, the conversation, And I noticed this too with, say, Eric Weinstein, when he's having debates with people and stuff.
They're not very good at a lot of things, but they're good at these sort of micro strategies in conversation.
Yeah, quite manipulative.
And like here as well, we'll hear more of this, but there's the implication, maybe we need to end this conversation, but I'm not enjoying it.
It's not going anywhere.
Like you never hear the caller or the, you know, because of the power dynamics, they never say, well, this conversation is just boring me.
Like, what are you actually saying here that's worthwhile?
Why should I continue?
Because obviously in that thing, Molyneux would say, well, if you don't appreciate the kind of wisdom that I'm dropping, well, there'll be plenty of other people who we need to call.
But he's implying, you know, if you don't change your attitude sharpies, maybe we need to just stop interacting.
Like, we're not going to get anywhere.
So yeah, I mean, I consider that a blessing, but yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, that's right.
The person is making poor choices.
Those poor choices started with listening to Moligno in the first place and culminated with him making these calls.
The other little observation too, Chris, is I don't think like these manipulative strategies are definitely in the repertoire of cult leaders, but you also see it in controlling manipulative people in all walks of life, right?
Oh, true.
Boyfriend could be at work.
So I think it's kind of useful to notice them when they're happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so he posed the challenge there.
You know, no, tell me what you agree and let's hear what the caller comes up with.
I accept that we have no business believing something or calling something true if we haven't proved it through the robust, you know, I mean, I'm sorry to use that word, experimental methodology through, you know, if we haven't empirically tested something, we should not attach the label of truth to things that involve matter and energy.
Okay.
So you accept that something is true when it is proven.
Not is true.
It's recognized as true.
So I don't accept is true.
I say is recognized as true.
For me, that's a very important.
Okay.
So is there anything that is true?
Is there anything that is true?
Two and two make four.
Is that true?
Yes, of course.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Yes.
No, of course.
Yes, there are things that are true.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So there are some things that are true and other things that are recognized as true.
I would say the Venn diagram is there are things that are true and a subset of those are recognized as true.
So anything that is recognized as true must necessarily also be true, but some things are true and we can't publicly verify or recognize them as being as such.
So now you don't have to do that.
This is why it's so fucking circular.
So Sophon really doesn't like any of this, but to me, Chris, it seems pretty straightforward.
Like there's probably some better theory of physics out there that, you know, whatever reconciles, I don't know, you know, quantum mechanics and gravity, whatever.
You know, we don't know what it is.
Geometric unity.
We do know what it is.
We do know what it is.
That's probably a bad example.
It doesn't have to be something so fancy.
But there's all kinds of things that are true, right?
Like, did this animal is a descendant?
Did it evolve from this other animal?
We don't know, right?
We don't have the fossil evidence, whatever.
But there is clearly a truth out there.
So that's all this guy is saying, right?
Yeah, well, I think, I mean, he did a good job again of saying there are things that are true and there's a subset of things that we verified that are true.
So to be verified as true, it has to be true.
That doesn't encompass everything that's true.
And Malnu's reaction is that fucking circular.
Yeah.
No, it isn't.
Yeah.
So now let's see.
Molynw's going to explain how it's circular.
Okay.
Oh, God.
So now you're right back to, so I said, truth is when it's proven.
And you say, no, no, and you accepted that.
And now you say, well, no, but truth can also be unproven.
Well, for example, you stated earlier.
Hang on.
Did you say that?
Did I say that?
No, that's not how I characterize it.
You said there's a Venn diagram.
Yes.
And there are things that are true that have not been proven as true.
Yes.
Yes.
Sorry.
Yes.
So we can't publicly verify.
Yes.
Okay.
So this is, so you've accepted nothing.
Well, I can prove that to you, actually.
No, you have accepted nothing and you lied to me when you said that you had accepted that things are not true until they're proven.
You said to me, hey, I accept that things are true.
If you keep talking, when I'm making a point, we cannot have a conversation.
This is what I'm saying.
So you are emotionally compelled by this and you don't even know why.
Like I told you why I fight you on this because I come from this mystical bullshit culture from the 70s.
So I've given to you my emotional investment in this topic.
What is your emotional investment in this topic?
Because you're very manipulative.
You have an emotional investment in this topic.
You have an emotional investment in this topic.
I just need to know what it is.
Chris, at the beginning, you called it projection.
And just perfect examples here.
When Mollen Yu accuses this guy of being manipulative, it's just interesting, isn't it?
How they always project what it is they're doing on the person.
I guess the other things that he's doing there is he's really like he wants to get away from this topic because Stefan knows that he's caught in it.
He's fucked up, right?
So he needs to shift this quick smart to a discussion about what's wrong with this person.
Why, you know, why are you so fucked up?
How can I, you know, play the guru and, you know, fix your psychological problems.
And it's, yeah, it's just very interesting that, you know, these sort of little threats and accusations that he just throws in there.
Oh, you, you lied to me.
You've accepted nothing.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Very strong direct accusations, right?
And you also heard, Matt that he kind of lays on that, as I said earlier, like he's revealed some things.
He's been honest and direct.
Like he's told them his investment and about his childhood.
And you're being manipulative.
You're lying.
You're not revealing what, like, why don't we actually talk about what's important instead of this bullshit about truth, which I've already solved and you refuse to accept.
Actually, you know, this is a well-known trick, isn't it?
If you want to get somebody to open up to you, divulge stuff to you, then yeah, it's a standard trick, isn't it?
You can make up something if you like, but definitely make out that you're opening up to them and that puts the burden on them to reciprocate.
So Molyneux is very straightforward.
Yeah.
So the other thing is, and I did notice this when re-listening to it, that Molyneux dropped the, like, what have you agreed?
Because he mistook that the guy was endorsing his perspective.
And then when he catches on that it's, it's not a submission to his point of view, he gets angry, right?
And he needs to get back to the psychologizing of things.
So that was something because you're like, he, he temporarily became mollified if you like that, you know, like, oh, okay, so let's, let's carry on then and, you know, ask some questions.
But here he realizes, you're still harboring a different opinion of me.
You can't be can't be doing that.
I thought we agreed that I was right.
And of course, you're interrupting me double standard right yeah okay so he's got a resistant person on his hands he does and he's asked them you know let's talk about the real issue so let's see um and remember that how this started out you know oh very happy i'm sorry if i you know maybe i didn't express myself clearly there i'm sorry i feel like i'm not getting through and i'm sure that's on me I'm sorry.
I'm just getting a little annoying.
Doesn't mean it's anything to do with you.
Doesn't mean it's your fault.
Okay.
That's not your fault, right?
It's quite shifted.
The tone has shifted quite a bit and it's going to shift more.
So that's this.
Well, what I, I mean, right now I feel a little sad if we're going to talk emotionally.
I feel sad because I think you're accusing me of being bad.
I'm genuinely trying to understand.
And I feel like you're mad at me.
And I mean, I can't mad at least on the teacher.
It's not a feeling.
I am mad at you because you keep moving your definitions and changing the goalposts.
And it's frustrating and annoying.
It's an important topic.
And when I'm having frustrating interactions with someone, there's no point pretending to keep reasoning.
So you can talk about your emotional investment in this or why it matters to you so much.
Or I've got other callers because I'm not enjoying this.
I love intellectual discussions, right?
But I'm not enjoying this.
I find this really annoying and frustrating.
Now, I've got 40 plus years of having intellectual discussions.
I love debating.
And you can either accept my expertise or not.
But I'm telling you, you have an emotional intensity or reason for this topic.
And I know that because I've been doing this shit for almost half a fucking century.
I know this.
Okay.
So once again, the playbook is you're disappointing me.
You're being very resistant.
I've got other, I've got better things to be doing to be talking to you.
It's accusing him of being emotional.
Again, projection because he sounds pretty emotional.
But didn't this, didn't this strike you as exactly the same as, why am I not enjoying the feeling I have in my body right now, Midwest?
Like, I'm not finding this conversation enjoyable.
And that's your fault, right?
And it can't be me because I held 40 years of having conversations.
I'm a legend of having conversations.
So look, if you could, you could either accept my expertise or not.
Go get fucked up, basically, because that is it.
It's my way or the highway, right?
With these sorts of people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then he goes from that to this.
But then you're just telling me something that I know that's not, you're telling me something is not so that I absolutely know to be so.
And that's fine.
I mean, you can disagree with me all you want, but we have to have a conversation about the underlying emotions because we're not making, hang on, because we're not making any progress on the intellectual side because everything keeps changing.
And the reason that I'm saying that is I make a proposition, you change the topic.
I make a proposition, you change the topic.
I try and draw you back.
You change the topic.
Now we're talking about, well, a semi-robust explanation to a child.
And it's like, but you haven't accepted or admitted anything.
And then you say, no, no, no, I do accept that something is true only after it's proven.
And then you say, oh, no, but there's a bunch of categories of things that are true that aren't proven.
And that's just contradictory statements.
And you don't even notice that they're contradictory statements, which means you're arguing emotionally and not from a place of reason.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah.
Well, the manipulation, gaslighting continues.
Gaslighting.
Yeah.
And, you know, the thing that's interesting here is I actually think this is perhaps an insight into Stefan's mind.
That is his recollection, I think, of their exchange where he's provided, you know, just proposition after proposition, highlighting these, providing a very robust, you know, intellectual framework.
And this guy's just been throwing out nonsense that doesn't make sense, shifting GoPros, moving things and getting emotional.
And none of that is true, right?
It's Stefan who's been unable to answer basic hypotheticals, who's contradicted himself, who's got emotional, who raised the issue that he doesn't understand what the child example is.
What's a child category?
It was very straightforward why he raised the child's example.
And Stefan kept trying to leap on these things like, what do you mean by robust to deflect?
So it is just extreme gaslighting where he's like his account of the situation is just so far from reality that it's somebody's wrong.
And it's actually not the caller, right?
Yeah, exactly.
I think in Stefan's mind, he's like provided like not only an assertion, but he's provided like a very robust grounds for it.
You know, a whole bunch of arguments or like a logical sort of, but he, if you think back to what he's actually said, he's done nothing except just repeat his assertion using different words every time.
He's such a terrible philosopher.
No, and he hasn't even addressed the contradiction, which is the whole point that they're stuck on, right?
That's the reason that the whole conversation has stuck and the reason it's got bogged down into this nightmare scenario because of Stefan, right?
And the caller's willingness to go along with it.
It has to be said as well.
But so let's get back to Mr. Manipulation himself, Stefan.
Where does he go with this?
I'll sure assume my emotion, but again, I think I'm being misrepresented, but I still think I'm giving this thing.
But if you think I'm misrepresenting you, then we can't have a, I'm not.
It's recorded.
You can go back and listen to it.
And I double-checked with you.
So then if you think that like the reason we're having a terrible discussion at this point is either both of our fault or one of our fault.
Now, I have a history of having very productive and positive discussions and I love the topic.
And I've been open and vulnerable about my emotional reasons for the importance of the topic.
My most important.
Hang on.
So if the conversation is going badly, I'm at fault or you're at fault or we're both at fault.
Now, I've been very honest and open about my emotional investment in this and why, and I've told you what a delightful and positive topic it is.
I've asked you questions about what you've conceded or accepted.
And if nothing, and I've told you I don't like it when you keep talking about my system.
And then I've told you when you say, oh, I accept that things are only true after they're proven.
And then you say, well, there's a whole category of things that are true, even though they're not proven.
That's not a productive discussion.
So if you want to talk about the emotions, that's fine.
If you don't, that's fine too.
I'll move on.
Yeah.
Again.
There's so many, like it's, there's so many false choices, right?
Like he's like, it could be one of us is at fault or we're both at fault.
And then he gives the reasons it can't be him, right?
Like, because I'm, I always have productive discussions.
I never end up in like these kind of things, except with you.
That's not true, by the way.
You can hear hundreds of recorded true Stefan is spazzing out on his callers.
So he has a long documented history of going crazy at callers.
But also that thing at the end where he's like, Elor, you accept my shifting to we're going to focus on your emotions and whatever else is going wrong with you.
And we can do that.
Or I'll move on to someone else.
So there's no option to continue to discuss like the philosophical issue, right?
It's talk about your personal issues and what you're doing wrong or get off the call.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this caller, like remarkably willing to take abuse, which is but putting that aside, he's, he's not very emotional.
He's his topic, he keeps wanting to return to the this little, you know, philosophical conundrum.
And it's Stefan who's emotional and wants to bring in all this other stuff.
So yeah, it's interesting.
Stefan really, really wants to get off, get off any philosophical discussion.
Yeah.
I mean, I want them to get off it because I've had enough of Stefan just asserting things, but unfortunately, I know where he goes with this.
And I think when you hear, you'll prefer that he stick on with the philosophical thing.
So this is the caller giving in.
Okay.
And giving Stefan what he wants.
The emotions, I think for me, you know, if we get into the emotions, I mean, you know, having gone through life, right, there's times where I believe the lie and then, you know, and then I encounter the truth and I realize, wow, I've been lied to, I've been deceived.
And there's been many of those moments, right?
Moments of awakening to something that was happening.
You didn't even realize it's happening.
So in that sense, I have a deep love for truth.
Okay, so hang on.
That's not the, I mean, everybody gets lied to.
I mean, so, but your particular emotional intensity, who is it that was the most important to you in your life, probably when you were growing up?
Who was the most important person to you that you found out lied?
Yeah, man, I don't know if I buried that or not, but I, it's the meaningful lies where I remember experiencing, you know, an embarrassment, right?
Is like, let's say, friends, let's say friends and people I thought were friends.
You know, like in college, right?
Where they seem like you got you back, but then really, you know, they were mocking you.
There's this whole, they pretended to be your friend, but they're not your friend kind of thing.
So I remember that lesson, at least an impression.
Certainly not having a father growing up, you know, I think that I've had to question everything.
Okay.
So I suspect we're getting into grant here that Stefan is much more comfortable with, which is that the microscope is on the caller.
Yeah.
And Stefan can play this role of pseudo-yes, the psychotherapist.
And the caller here sounds like he's searching for something.
You know, this is the thing that you find like, because there, Matt, I noted a bit of cold reading from Stefan where he's like, you know, cold reading this technique that mediums and psychics like to use where he's angling here for something to do with family and parents, right?
So if you look at what he said, he said, when the guy said, you know, I don't, yeah, I've been lied to by people in the past and giving and stuff.
It's like, okay, everyone's been lied to, but who lied to you?
Who is it that lied to you?
And he says, you know, you've got an intensity in your life, probably when you were growing up, who was the most important person to you that you found out lied to you, right?
So he wants this drill this into your parents lied to you.
That's where the issue is, right?
And that's what his whole model is about, right?
It's like people being abused and they're younger by parents.
So that's much more firmer grinding to him.
And then the guy goes on to talk about his friends at college.
But the last line he mentions is that being absent.
Right.
So I wonder which one Stefan hones in on.
So here's the patented.
I mean, he's already judo flipped the conversation, but we're about to hear a kind of full-scale epony to the caller.
So in this case, I don't even, I really hate to, I don't mean to offend you at all.
So if I come across as asking questions, I'm, I'm not trying to be offensive.
It's just no, no, no, no, don't do that.
No, no, don't do that.
Don't, that's so rude, man.
That's so passive aggressive.
Jesus.
don't tell me that the reason i'm upset is just because you're asking questions come on man you you understand that's really insulting now you're right i'm sorry i didn't mean to say that way no no say it stop lying to me jesus what do you mean you didn't mean to say it did you have tourettes that you possessed own what you said i'm scared of being interrupted so i'm trying to say no don't lie to me you said it it's rude Don't say, well, I didn't mean to say it.
That's not, that's not reasonable.
You're right.
No, you're right.
I see that it sounds passive aggressive.
It sounds like the reason that you don't like me asking questions.
And that's just the pure thing.
The way I said it makes it sound like that.
And I'm sorry.
But why would you do that?
I feel frustrated in that I can't ask the questions and you've attributed bad will to me in this conversation.
And I feel like you misinterpreted what I've said, but rather than being open to hear how maybe you made a mistake, you're just saying, I'm the one doing the bad things and I'm not learning anything.
And it's just really frustrating for me.
That's my experience of it.
And what is your relationship like with your father?
Yeah.
God.
So that was like a wrenching kind of turn, right?
Stefan just suddenly just dropped the thing.
But let's go back because first of all, the guy said, I don't mean to offend you at all.
I'm not trying to be offended.
He's apologizing.
Yeah.
Stefan chooses to get angry at that and misrecalls it or misstates it as the person was lying about saying that he didn't say any of the things that made Stefan angry when actually the guy's apologizing for the things that he said.
No, well, but I understand this.
This is like a kind of manipulative technique where the person is saying, oh, you're, you know, you're right.
I'm sorry.
And this, the, now the power in the conversation has shifted.
And Stefan says, no, but you don't really mean you're sorry, right?
You're saying that, but you're trying to minimize what you're doing, right?
You're not owning it.
And every time he says, you're right, I didn't, you know, I should understand.
And it's like, so why did you, what you lied about there was he's then saying, well, then you were lying, right?
When you just said there that you didn't mean to do it, because you did mean to do it, right?
You're trying to present me as doing something unfair.
And like, it's, uh, this is weaponized therapy speech 101, but it's, it's quite notable how Stefan's tone has like become so much more assertive.
Now he's on firm grind, right?
He knows how to like needle up people here.
And yeah.
Yeah, he's feeling, he's feeling very confident because, yeah, he's on his front foot.
But just the, Chris, just the, just the hypocrisy there.
He accuses this guy.
Yeah, don't do that.
Don't you fucking do that.
That's so rude, man.
That's so passive aggressive.
Yeah.
And then everything he says after that.
This is the epitome of the worst kind of passive aggression.
Yeah.
We've talked about him being the manifestation of various things, but he is hypocrisy given form.
He's like the platonic ideal of hypocrisy in human form.
We've seen it earlier in him criticizing the left or whatever for people that are going to criticize him.
And here it's with a like one-on-one situation.
Like you said, it's not just all based on ideology and politics.
It's also in the interpersonal relationships.
It's the exact same technique.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, you said it best at the beginning, which is that projection thing, but it just, it staggers me that he can like basically accuse everyone else of doing the thing that is his pure modus operandi.
I'd like, like in the same breath, it is incredible.
They can't keep getting away with this, Chris.
I know, I was thinking that he can't keep getting away with this.
But so, you know, Stefan's final question.
What about your dad?
Right.
Let's get back to your dad.
Okay.
I mean, he didn't really talk about his dad, but Stefan noticed the chance.
Oh, with him.
Yeah, I mean, we don't, at this point, it's kind of apathetic.
We don't, you know, there was a period where I was angry about the whole thing, angry about the absence, you know, angry about not having the moments.
And then especially, you know, when I have in my own experience of being a father myself, I see all the beautiful things that my children can experience.
And already they've experienced more than I have my whole life.
So that's been a thing.
But at this point, it's kind of just an acceptance of he's been through his experience that's made him a certain kind of way.
And your father's been through his experience.
Yeah, my father, right?
Yeah.
Like a resignation that he's kind of become the person he is through his own traumas.
And so he's not responsible for his bad behavior because he had trauma?
No, no, he is.
He is, but he lacks the self-awareness.
No, no, hang on.
You understand.
This is exactly why you're so confusing to talk to.
You said he did what he did because of his own traumas.
And I said, is he responsible?
Yes, but he doesn't have the blah, blah, blah.
So he both is, he's like Schrodinger just responsibility.
He both is and is not responsible.
Yeah, just pause on that for a second, right?
Just take a breath.
Just take a breath.
Pause on that for a second.
Do you understand that that's confusing and contradictory?
Do I understand that that's...
I understand it's confusing.
It is contradictory if I mean it in the same way both times when I say it.
Yes.
Okay.
Do you understand that it's confusing and contradictory without caveats?
That your communication in this, like, let's just take that little time slice of 10 seconds ago, right?
Yeah.
Again, seizing on some trivial interpretation of words and making a massive deal about it.
I'm requiring complete submission, right?
Again, it's not enough to just say, oh, yes, I understand that you can be interpreted.
And he's like, no, no, without caveats, without any indication that this could not be completely your fault, admit that you were wrong, right?
Yeah.
And the guy is just doing what he's told, basically.
He was told to talk about his father.
He's expressed a sentiment that's pretty, you know, normal everyday sentiment.
Yeah, I had an absent father.
Maybe I felt bad about it or resentful, you know, but whatever.
He had his own shit to deal with.
So, you know, that's what's what he's saying.
Right.
And, but Stefan chooses to treat this as contradictory, confusing, frustrating.
It's not because he said, you know, he had stuff that, you know, made him like that.
And you're like, oh, so you're, you're letting him off the hook.
And he's like, no, no, but he lacks the awareness to note any of those kind of issues.
It's like, well, it's a complete contradiction.
Like, no, no, it isn't.
It is not.
It's like only because you want to leap on it.
But one of the things that I have to say that annoys me a little bit about all her here.
Like, I have sympathy for him because he's been bullied by an arshole, a world-class arsehole.
But why does he have to be such a pushover?
But like, I mean, he is defending his corner and the philosophy point, but why have you let this arrogant bully like start lecturing you about your relationship with your follower and stuff?
Like, God, I.
Well, Chris, I've been thinking about that a lot too.
But isn't it connected to the theme of the cults, right?
It's the same as asking why did those people, what did those women let Ranieri walk all over them?
And the answer is that, you know, at some point prior to this conversation, this caller has accepted a bunch of stuff about Stefan, about his, about his, you know, power dynamics, about his insights, about him being the leader.
And yeah, I mean, it's incredibly frustrating to me, too, that that happens.
But I guess that's the answer, right?
It is.
But this guy's smarter than Stefan.
He's smarter than Stefan.
And he's right in his little philosophical thinking, which there's no harm in what he's interested in talking about.
And instead, he now, in front of this manipulative bully, has to give in to him about like personal family stuff.
I just, I hate it.
And I, I'm not, you're right.
I understand there's a, there's a whole bunch of stuff that go into this, but it's just like, you really want the person to say, you know, just shut up, Stefan, you, you blow-veating bold bastard.
Like, you're so you.
He needs that so bad.
I almost look, we need to join.
We need to join this Stefan's cult thing just so we can watch him.
Yeah, but he'll just cut you off.
I mean, if he did that, he'd just cut him off.
So it wouldn't make a difference.
He's had loads of interactions with people fighting with him.
Okay, so let's continue to the end of this segment.
So here's the somewhat inevitable way that this was going to go.
And this is what Stefan does.
You say your father is not responsible because he had trauma.
And I say, so your father's not responsible.
You say he is responsible, but he lacks this blah, Right?
Yeah.
All right.
So you understand that's contradictory.
And I'm not, I'm not trying to nag at you.
And I'm not trying to corner you.
And I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
I'm just trying to give you a microcosm of why it's confusing.
Yeah.
No, I see my, it's my bad communication of being ambiguous.
If I were to be more precise, what I would say is that he is responsible.
But what I meant by the trauma thing is that I've lowered my expectations because my mental model of who he is and what he's aware of is he has a low self-awareness that, you know, because he needs a certain level of self-awareness to be aware to improve his behavior.
If he doesn't have that level of self-awareness, he's not going to improve his behavior.
So that's what I meant.
And I didn't elaborate on that, but yeah, that's what I meant where he is responsible, but I've abandoned my expectations on, you know, an improvement there because I don't think he has the self-awareness.
I don't know what you mean by have the self-awareness.
Self-awareness is something that you just choose to be honest with yourself or not.
Let me ask you this.
How old is your father?
50s.
He's in the 50s.
Late 50s.
It's funny.
It's funny.
I don't even know exactly the day.
I have to think about it.
I think getting close to mid-50s.
I should know the exact number, but he's almost exactly my age.
Okay.
You think that's a coincidence?
Yes.
Stephan, but here he's got the Rosetta key.
This calls to me like the Dr. K, you know, when he was talking to Ludwig or various people where he hones in on an interpretation, right?
And in this case, all of this obstinence, all this daring to disagree, it's because this person has unresolved polar issues and Molly.
He projected them onto Stefan.
That's why he can't accept them.
It's so silly.
It's so stupid.
Yeah.
And sadly, Matt, sadly, the caller acquiesces to this.
So listen to this.
Hey, yeah, it could be, it could be the mirroring archetype.
That's right.
You know what?
That's interesting.
So why I'm getting emotional, I think that's a fair call out because I do remember now that you mentioned it, you know, when I was 14 years old, I tried to have discussions about the big topics.
And then for him, he rather than addressing my arguments, he would get into the whole, well, you're inexperienced, do you this, that?
It would be all these kind of sidetrack things rather than dealing with the argument.
And then whether whether it's happening here or not, my perception was like, man, I feel like Stefan's not addressing my argument.
He's maybe doing what my father was doing.
And so maybe that's why I'm getting emotional.
It's a thing coming up for me on the emotional level.
I appreciate that honesty.
So what did your father do in regards to leaving the family?
How did that happen?
He was right.
His perception that Stefan was not addressing his argument, he was quite right.
And it had nothing to do with the fact that they're approximately of similar ages to his father.
Oh, dear.
So this must place this young man in his mid-20s, perhaps.
No, no, he must be.
Oh, is he?
God, I was thinking of him as like someone in his 30s or 40s, but I, you're right.
Like he, he has to be younger than that.
It kind of makes it worse, doesn't it?
Like this, this Stefan Molini basically predating on young, impressionable, like you said, they're somewhat lost seeker types, perhaps too sucker socially, not very good at standing up for themselves.
And I guess maybe that, yeah, they're quite happy for someone like him to, yeah, I don't know.
Oh, he's got a, he's got a very storied history of preying on like young people who are, you know, just like teenagers or people who are having family issues or so on, right?
So that's like a lot of Stefan's audience.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
Like he is, you know, he keeps bragging about who he's so experienced.
He's had, you know, decades and decades of doing this stuff.
Decades of manipulating people.
Yes, right.
The nugget of truth in that is he's incredibly experienced at manipulating vulnerable people.
That has been his career.
And you have to hand it to him.
He's, he's reasonably good at it when he's got a lot of people.
Oh, the manipulative stuff is pretty good.
Yeah.
He's not going to philosophy.
No, no.
And just to mention about, so I mean, we've went, we've plumped various horrible depths, right?
But this is the kind of parting part of this conversation.
So the guy's going to leave because he's got family commitments.
Now, you might imagine that Stefan would be like, well, that's good.
You know, I like to see somebody prioritizing their family.
No, not exactly.
And sorry, just a heads up, I got about three minutes because my family's also calling me.
So I'm sorry to, I know it's a really good thing we're doing right now.
I'm just, I'm getting the nudge as well.
So I apologize for that.
But I mean, honestly, I tell you, this is a more important conversation than what's going on with your family right now.
Well, I actually would agree with you, but I also feel guilt as a father who's responsible and taking care of others that sometimes, yeah, I can take care of myself, but I feel like I also have to balance the needs of the other people I'm responsible for.
So I always feel that tension.
Well, I mean, if you got to go, you got to go.
But if you have, well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in two minutes or whatever.
Right.
Yeah, no.
So my assessment of this is that you're angry at your father, but you've cloaked it out with a sort of feminine forgiveness thing, which isn't really real.
So you've still got a lot of anger towards older intellectual authority figures, which you're really frustrated and angry at your father, but you're not admitting it to yourself, which I understand.
And so emotions that we don't admit to ourselves, we tend to recreate within others.
So because you're frustrated and angry at your father, you then call me up as a father figure and frustrate and anger me as a kind of vengeance.
And I won't obviously do that because it's not healthy for either of us, right?
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So he didn't like that.
Stefan didn't like that, this kind of, I'm leaving you.
I'm ending the conversation.
Yeah.
And such, I mean, I thought it was a joke initially when I heard him start to do that.
You know, like he was, well, you know, you should really prioritize this cover.
And I was like, no, that's not a joke.
He's actually nagging the guy for saying he's got to go take care of his family.
Like, what a fucking manipulative snake.
And that's the kind of cultish thing, right?
Like, well, we are making progress here.
This is very big.
But, you know, if you got to go take care of yourself, you got to go to, you think you need to go to work or look after your family.
I mean, you got your priorities wrong, but you really need to.
What am I going to do?
Minutes, you know?
And that and the summary at the end.
Oh, I mean, that reminded me so much of the Dr. K episode, Chris.
Do you remember when after the person he was talking to?
I think it might have been the poor chap who committed suicide.
Reckful.
Yeah, he, it could have been someone else.
I can't remember.
But he'd only told Dr. K like two or three brief things.
And then Dr. K rattled off this detailed speculative diagnosis with complete confidence.
And you see how quickly Stefan does it too, based on basically nothing, just a couple of little nuggets of information.
Yeah.
And you heard like feminine forgiveness, right?
You've cloaked up your mind.
Just not good.
Yeah, not good.
It's the chaos dragon coming in there.
But yeah, and I mean, they should hire him as a writer for a speculative fiction because his alternative reality there is very detailed and completely unconnected or like very loosely connected with actual things that happened in this conversation.
But in Stefan world, this has now been a revelation where he's came to the real core of the thing, which is his caller's issues with his father, instead of the fact that Stefan contradicted himself and then went on a fucking entire Lord of the Rings journey to avoid admitting to avoid answering a question.
That's right.
What really happened is Stefan couldn't answer a simple question about his own little philosophy and then spazzed out as he said and spent the rest of the conversation attacking this poor fool and gaslighting him.
Yeah.
And the guy, the one choice I will say, in credit to the guy, one, he's kind of repeatedly, subtly hinted that he still thinks Stefan is wrong, right?
Like, which I appreciate that he still has the guts to do that.
But the other thing is he made the right call here.
He prioritized his family and he does leave the call, which is, you know, come on, more of that.
More of that.
Stop calling in.
Yeah, please stop calling in.
Yeah.
God, I hope, I hope this young man just goes away and, you know, maybe focuses on his family and real things and stops thinking about different theories of fucking truth.
Or if you have to, if you, if you really must indulge your interest in philosophy, go take a course.
Enroll in an online course.
You know, do that.
Don't stay away from this man.
Get away from it.
No.
Well, one last clip from this part map before that color is gone.
Or I think he leaves during this, but Stefan kicks the chance to kind of monologue about it.
But you'll hear the color annoys him one last time before he leaves, which I'm kind of glad for.
So here you go.
Yeah, I think whether there's psychological patterns happening or not, I do think, and we can listen to the recording, or maybe I'll put it in Stefan AI.
I do think there's an actual substance of disagreement that we have that I don't think was understood, but I guess we'll leave it to the recording and we can evaluate it.
No, I don't agree with that.
I mean, you can drop it in an AI.
That's kind of a cop-out.
No, it's not that we disagree.
See, see, that's also insulting to me.
You're still being passive-aggressive.
So the fact that we disagree is not a problem.
The fact that we were having trouble finding the right definitions, that's not the problem.
The problem is the falsehood in the moving goalposts and the passive-aggressive jabs at my system and things like that.
It's just too much hostility that's underlying the conversation.
So, again, you're back to being passive-aggressive, which is your frustration at your father, or maybe you've internalized your father to that degree, and now you're trying to treat me like your father treated you, or something like that, because you're back to passive aggression.
It's not that we disagree, that's fine.
The whole point of the show is: I say people call up and they disagree with me, and we can have very productive discussions.
The problem is, ironically, that you claim your father lacks self-knowledge, and that's why he does bad things.
And I would say that you lack self-knowledge.
And listen, I say this like we all lack self-knowledge.
And I say this with all the humility that I'm certainly not perfect in self-knowledge either, but I think I'm a little further ahead in that particular regard.
Maybe because my father's dead and the whole story is done.
There you go.
More, more of Stefan's gaslighting, being incredibly passive-aggressive while accusing the other guy of being passive-aggressive.
Yeah.
And this, and this amateur our psychoanalysis.
And yeah, he gets away with it.
The guy defers to him, clearly accepts him as the guru and accepts all the little jabs and jibes and insults like he deserves.
So he does, he does suggest the thing that annoys Stefan, right, where he was like, He's still doing it.
You're still doing it, was he suggested, you know, maybe I'll put the conversation in Stefan AI.
I don't know if that's something that Stefan has released of his own kind of prompt AI, or it's just something that that caller has made himself.
He didn't like that, right?
Because I think he rightly anticipated that the AI applied that there's even if you've loaded it up with like all Stefan's assumptions, it will still detect the very obvious contradiction that he made.
I know what you're saying.
This guy's kind of interesting because he's like a bobo doll.
Like Stefan keeps pummeling him and he falls down and you know, grovels at somebody.
Yeah, he accepts it, but he also pops back up again.
Like he never actually concedes.
No, Stefan's right.
And that really annoyed Stefan, which made us both happy.
Yeah, I just, I love if you trace that conversation, right, from the initial things where Stefan, like, because he's still saying the same things at the end.
I really enjoy conversations.
You know, these create, it's great we have philosophical, but that's not what the issue here, right?
Boys, that's not the issue.
But like, you heard him go from, I'm sure I'm just not communicating this.
Tele, it's not your fault, right?
It's probably my fault to at the end, you are just refusing.
And it's probably because your dad have to do this.
Yeah.
I'm a stand-in for your following.
That's why you've made me so aggressive and so annoying that the reference.
You just give it the torch of me because you think I'm your follower.
Yeah.
So oh, God.
What a character, eh?
Well, we're almost at the end, Matt, but there was one more caller in this segment.
I'm not going to play as much clips from this, but it's just to highlight the full smortes part of what you get from like a colin segment with Stefan.
So we had the guy at the start, you know, talking a little bit about politics that got him to talk about leftists who are, you know, hateful monsters and whatnot.
Also had the interesting question about Halloween, and you know what's the scariest philosophical thing?
And he'd give a crap answer.
And then we had the interminable discussion with Color too, about truth and his follower issues and so on.
The last caller is a woman Carrie, so let's hear from her.
Yeah, and just for those who don't know, Kerry was the fine young lady that I was referring to in the show from 30th October 2025, who gave me a great question that had my mind tumble down a whole row of thoughts and insights.
So I really do appreciate it was a great, great, great, not just one.
I think it was two questions in your ex post.
Yes, thank you.
It was excellent answer.
I had my husband listen to the whole thing afterwards and he's learning more about me by my interactions with you and just the things that I'm, you know, being able to sort out by listening to you.
So I'm glad to hear that.
And, you know, if what I do brings you and your husband closer, I couldn't consider that time better spent.
So thank you for that, that thought.
Very, very like all of these callers, Matt, the making bad choices, like, you know, playing back your interactions with Stefan to your partner so they can understand you better.
It's a bad choice, Carrie.
Bad, bad choices.
So, but I guess, so Chris, this is a question for you.
Like, this is the general pattern where he is like a like a self-help like, you know, like some sort of combination of amateur psychologist and amateur philosopher, therapist, whatever.
And so he's, he's in there.
He's, he's sort of helping people with their relationships and insinuating himself into families and so on.
Yeah, I think the amateur part is the very strong qualifier.
Like he has been doing this for decades.
Like, but he's, he's, he's like a pro at manipulation, but his actual insights are all fairly limited.
But yes, this is, this is one of the elements, right?
He does do other things where he does kind of extended monologues on topics.
And he used to do YouTube explainers on issues like we talked about at the start.
There was a while where he was trying to get attention by just hopping on whatever the kind of culture war topic was at the time and doing the real facts behind XYZ event.
And it was him with a PowerPoint going through what he presented as the facts with this kind of delivery.
So yeah, but there always was this element.
This was a big part of his content is interacting with Carla Rose and like giving them life advice.
Right.
So yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Any more from Carrie?
Yes.
Well, let's hear what her advice is in pertains to.
And you'll hear little interjections from Stefan along the way here.
So I think nice guys get used on one hand, because let's say, like, for example, you know, one time I was moving back to my hometown to go to grad school and I needed help and I don't have family to help.
And I asked an old friend that I knew, I guess, you know, he never really dated any of us girls, but he always liked us.
And I asked him to help me move, right?
And no intentions of dating him or anything like that.
And so years have gone by since I'd seen him and he'd never know.
Wait, wait, wait, hang on.
Sorry.
I'm so sorry to interrupt.
I hate interrupting.
I really do.
I just want to make sure I understand this.
So you need help moving and you ask a guy you haven't talked to in years that you never dated to come help you move.
Yes, he was one of, he was almost like one of the girls.
He was just one of our guy friends, but I would have kept in touch over Facebook and things, you know?
No, but you hadn't talked to him in years.
Right.
So I was using him.
Okay.
So as long as we agree.
Okay.
I was using him as my little buddy.
He's one of the girls, but you need a guy with a strong, you need someone with a strong back.
So he's no longer one of the girls.
He's one of the guys who can help you move.
Okay.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
So on one hand, yes, they get used, but then he turned around and quid pro-quode me after he helped me move.
And it just offended me to no end.
I just could not believe it.
What do you mean he quit?
He quit pro-quote you.
He said, he helps me.
He gets done helping me move all my things in.
We sit down at the table and then he's like, well, you know, to thank me, such and such.
And I was so offended and could not believe that came out of his mouth.
How dare the slave have preferences of the master?
That's not how this works.
Yeah.
Okay.
So she's calling in and describing a situation where she was relying on some guy to help her out with moving and stuff like that.
And they get into the dynamics of that.
So she wants to say she relied on some guy that she used to know.
And then after he helped her move, he like made a move or he suggested that she repay him with sexual favors or whatever.
Right.
And Molyneux does at times in this interaction like come out and say, well, that's not, you know, that's, that's creepy and weird, right?
Like you can't do that.
But you can hear like his immediate reaction is like to constantly say, oh, so you're just making use of a man, right?
Like you, you understand you're using him and, you know, you know what the dynamic is here and you're just like willing to abuse his strength, right?
With your feminine wiles, the sleeve and the master, as he put it at the end, there.
Sure.
Yeah, but so he does at least manage to condemn or, you know, at times say that, well, if he expected sex, that's, that's bad on him as well, right?
So at least you get that.
But throughout this, you can constantly hear him wanting to insert his misogynistic kind of interpretation of things.
Or women are always these manipulative harlots, right?
And you can also hear his like fairly strong, what would be the word?
Paternalistic, his kind of like paternalistic philosophy regarding people who don't have high enough income or this kind of thing.
His view is often, well, you'll hear, right?
So just listen to this.
Yes, you're right.
So, you know, sometimes though, like in my situation, this is not an excuse.
Like I said, I feel like I was the jerk also for asking someone that I knew maybe expected to date.
And I took advantage of that by getting free labor.
But, you know, if you're, you know, a poor person and you can't get your car fixed or you can't hire a mover, then you ask for help from people that can help you without you having to pay.
But at the same time, in return for what?
Right.
That's always the question.
And now, of course, there are times when we're generous and there's times when we do things for other people.
And I get all of that.
But I would say that one of the reasons why you were poor at that time in your life, I know a little bit about your history, but we don't have to get into anything specific.
But I think one of the reasons why you were poor, I look back sort of when I was poor at times in my life, and that's to some degree because I was not good at negotiating and I was not negotiating in good faith and I was not negotiating up front.
And when you have hidden motivations and you're not up front, it tends to be very hard to be efficient.
It tends to be very hard to be honest.
And that shows up in work.
That shows like you can't negotiate well at work.
And so I think it's all tied in together.
I don't think it's right.
I could be wrong again.
I'm not trying to tell you your life.
I don't think it's right to say, well, I was poor, therefore I needed help and therefore I couldn't be honest.
And I would say, well, perhaps part of the poverty was not being honest as a habit, which again, I'm not blaming you for.
It's how you were raised.
It's how most of us are raised is to not be direct and honest because we're usually punished for it.
So more amateur self-help psychologizing.
She was asking help from a male friend.
And, you know, and one reason why is because she doesn't have money to pay for professional movers.
So she's got to rely on friends to ask them to do things for her.
So she's poor.
She's poor because she's not dealing with people honestly, but she was trained to do like that.
Probably her parents.
She's out there in the corrupt world, not in Stefan's, you know, under his influence yet.
So of course she was behaving badly.
No, and we know from like the clips that you heard earlier, which are much more overt, right?
This is Stefan being charming.
Yes.
But he fundamentally thinks that women are the root cause.
Even when men behave badly, it's because women have like kind of led them on.
And like, so this guy, yes, he's doing bad things, right?
And he's not being chivalrous or any of these kind of things.
But like fundamentally, the issue is that a woman tried to exploit him and his affection for them.
And like, that's what Stefan is really interested in, right?
Like he'll he'll make reference to men being bad and they're arshole men, right?
His follower is an arsehole.
Anyone that disagrees with him is an arso, but his real venom is reserved for women.
And the caller here is totally on board with this general.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She sort of sets him up with it, you know, and basically is, you know, is quite eager to adopt his explanation, but she was largely at fault here.
Yeah, so now the last clip of this interaction, there's not much to it.
They basically, this is the kind of thing they go back and forth on, right?
But I like this one, Matt, because at the start, it shows that the second color Drago is still on Stefan's mind.
He's still playing.
That kind of got him.
I kind of like that.
He's out of the call, but he makes reference to him.
And then he goes on to link this to his broader philosophical system, this specific example, like how does this relate to his thing?
And I think it's just a good illustration of what he's constantly doing, which is like, you know, always trying to maneuver things into his little realm where he can, you know, put things into this framework he has for how human interactions are.
And his realm of how human interactions is, is like Scott Adams in a way.
It's very zero-sum.
It's very...
It's very cynical.
Yeah, it's very cynical.
And it's, it like often pretends to have behind it that he wishes, you know, people would be more authentic and honest and have more genuine relationships.
But it's, it's like that thing at the start where he's saying, you know, if you don't respect my libertarian anarchist anarcho-capitalist philosophy, you want me dead, right?
That's the, that's the only logical conclusion.
So yeah, just bear that in mind as you listen to this.
And good on color too for sticking to this crow.
I think it's all kind of tied into: can you be upfront with what you want?
Can you negotiate, right?
So, in the caller, I don't know if you listened to the call prior, but in the call before, I wasn't getting what I wanted, which was a productive and enjoyable discussion.
So, I had to put the discussion on hold and try to get to the emotional roots, which I think we got to.
I mean, obviously, not very deeply, but we did.
We did get to them.
So, I think that it's all tied in together.
It's not like, well, I'm poor, so I need free stuff.
It's like, I think you're poor, or I was poor because we have not yet developed being direct and honest with our negotiations.
I agree with that.
But from the beginning, I just wanted to say when it comes to the nice guy issue, I think, you know, it is true on one side, the truly nice guys are getting used, and then the girls are using them.
And like you said, the answer is to be upfront on your expectations and what the payment is ahead of time.
But I would also argue in your defense that they're also using you because either they're going to get a date or this bizarre, let's have sex because I helped you move now that I'm sweaty.
But they're also using the girls because maybe this is the closest they can get to a date.
Maybe they fantasize later and get good spank back material out of the interaction or something like that.
So there's nobody who could be used.
I mean, you weren't using violence.
You didn't kidnap him and throw him in a windowless van, although that may have been his next fantasy.
But it is mutual exploitation.
The quote, nice guys are exploiting the girls, and the girls are exploiting the nice guys, but nobody's forcing anyone.
The only thing that's really driving the interactions is the avoidance of directness and honesty.
Yeah.
Compassionate Stefan.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but you're right.
It is, he is like Scott Adams in that cynical worldview.
Like there isn't any space for that.
In kind of there might be two people who are friendly, and one of them asks the other to help them move, and they go, okay.
Because yeah, and maybe one of them got the wrong impression.
It's a misunderstanding.
Yeah.
You know, yeah, like, but in his framing, it doesn't, you know, there's a negotiation, you know, and, you know, it's about getting what you want and bargaining terms and so on.
And yeah, no, it's just, it's interesting to see where he takes it.
He doesn't, he doesn't really consider the less sinister interpretations of the event, which is maybe a misunderstanding.
Yeah.
Or, and, you know, the other thing that he does is there, right?
You know, he, in general, is kind of condemning people for being poor, lacking negotiating skills or whatever, right?
Like, that's, that's likely the cause, right?
You know, this is the kind of thing you should be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?
And it, it also applies because he's, you know, somebody who wants to focus on psychology and philosophy, like his particular brand about it.
So talking about socio-ecological things, it doesn't really help like with what he wants to do, right?
So best to say, well, they might be a factor, but you know, that's not what we have to deal with.
But the other thing I noticed was whenever he's condemning people for being poor or whatever, when he wants to soften something, he will imply that he's also including himself there.
I wasn't good when I was poor.
It was because I lacked.
So I'm not saying that that's what applied to you, right?
Maybe it does or it doesn't.
I don't know your full life story.
But so like when he wants to give himself wiggle room or come across as more reasonable, he'll often suggest that, no, I could be wrong about that.
Like this is just an idea, but I know for me, this is what was holding me back at that time, right?
But he very strongly wants to imply she was in this situation because she lacked the skills, right?
But She was weak and lex girls and was also a harlot leading him on, exploiting exploiting him.
I mean, that's that's what he thinks, and that's where it would go.
But you know, as you said, he's in charming mode here.
This is charming for Stefan.
This is charming, Stefan.
Yeah, this is charming.
This is him playing nice, but if you don't agree with every little thing he says, then he starts moving towards less charming.
Less charming.
Yes, charming.
Yes.
Imagine if she strongly challenged him here, how this would go, right?
So, yeah.
Anyway, after all that, it's very short after that clip that I just played that the session ends right then.
Literally, my, I've been subscribed to his sessions every day, like this, coming out every day.
He's doing this, you know, multiple times per week.
So this is a sample, but it is representative of what his content's like.
But here's the outro of it, just so you can hear.
Okay, listen, I know we got a bunch of people who want to talk.
I'm really, really sorry.
Now I have to go, but I actually do.
So, but I will do a bonus show tomorrow.
Just keep your X running and I'll throw it up because I'd love to hear what people thought about the earlier discussion, which I found really, really interesting.
And I would love to go longer now, but I can't because it's Halloween.
So have yourselves a glorious, lovely evening.
Freedom.com slash donate.
Everybody who donates today gets a bunch of free goodies.
You don't have to necessarily know what they are, but it's offers to help you move and I will show up in a thong.
Great.
And the thong won't even be where you think.
And it might.
Okay.
Sorry, I'm going to gross myself out with that whole analogy.
So thanks, everyone.
And again, thanks, Kerry, for a great conversation and for great questions yesterday.
Lots of love to everyone.
We'll talk tomorrow.
And don't forget Sunday morning, 11 a.m. We've got our donor show, which you can get a hold of by subscribing at freedom.com slash donate.
Love you guys so much.
Thanks, Amel.
Bye.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
He's kind of a creepy guy.
He's very creepy.
He's just like naturally creepy, right?
Even when he's making jokes, which are, you know, like in another context, it could just be, oh, he's making, you know, an off-color joke about something and highlighting.
Oh, that would be inappropriate.
But with him, it comes across like it's lazy.
Yeah.
It's amazing that it works because I get that he's got the gift of the gab and all of that, but does he have charisma, Chris?
Would you call it?
I mean, he really does for some people, but I find him repellent in his core essence.
Like he, just the way that he's constantly manipulated, constantly undermining, constantly projecting, being hypocritical and everything.
And even when he's being nice, there's like sinister undertones.
So yeah, I just under and overtones.
The tones are just echoing around the corridor.
And yeah, like the thing is, Matt, if you remember, you know, just to give my overall thought on this, when we started, we played clips that were, I think from 10 or 15, 20 years ago, right?
Stretching back to his early content.
And you heard him being a horrific person.
As I said, I interacted with a friend who got interested in his material because he was doing the kind of right-wing polemical stuff and listened to some of this kind of content years and years ago.
And it was full of the same things.
And here we are in 2025.
And he's still doing the same things.
And he's been through times when he's had, you know, actual like physical locations with young, impressionable people living near him in like cult-like settings.
He's been profiled in documentaries about online cults and he's become a MAGA Republican.
He's went on tours with Lauren Suffering, he's done like a whole ton of things and now he's in like a little.
You know the little niches that exist.
He's back on Twitter.
Elon put him back on he's.
He's able to carve out his niche online and uh, he's insidious.
Like I, I find him as rebunt as I do Scott Adams and the worst figures that we've.
That we've covered.
He might not have the most reach, but he, I think he he does a lot of damage to people that um fall into his web.
Yeah, yeah.
He just seems like a pretty terrible person.
And I think we kind of deliberately didn't focus too much on all of the big ticket things that just makes him a terrible person, like his, you know, being basically a racist, you know, pushing the white genocide conspiracies and stuff, supporting eugenics type policies.
And I mean, we have covered his misogyny stuff.
It comes through entirely, but it's really quite intense.
And it just, it is every part of his philosophy, it's just imbued into it.
I shouldn't call it philosophy because it's not.
It's a weird culty system.
And speaking of the cult dynamics, like, as you said, he's found this little niche for himself.
He's got these various paywalls.
He's been kicked off and banned from pretty much every payment providing type platform.
But he's still there on locals and on his own domain, whatever it's called.
Free domain.
Free domain.
And, you know, he's coined for those terms, like defooing, departing from family of origin.
Yeah.
Encouraging people to sever their ties with their families if they don't meet his very specific moral and philosophical standards.
And like, it's good that he's been sort of pushed into this tiny little bubble.
It's good for the rest of us.
It's good for society.
But the flip side to that, too, is once you get past his teasers, if you find his teaser, like free material, interesting, whatever, and you, and you cross that threshold, then you're in a very high-intensity thing where, where, you know, you'll be calling up, he knows you, you're having repeat conversations.
Apparently, we had this allusion to it, but he seems to have created these, and the thought is horrifying.
Stefan Molnew AIs that have been trained on all of his content and are kind of there with you all the time to answer all of your life questions.
Though it does sound like he doesn't trust them to be as manipulative as him, like, but the guy was like, why don't I play the transcript to the staff AI bot?
He's like, that's a cop art.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, what can you say about this person?
Like, it has given us like, I think, better insights into the interpersonal nature of how cult leaders operate, right?
We saw it with Raniere, we saw it with, who was the other?
Who was the other cult person we covered?
Reverend Moon.
Yeah.
And, you know, they're, you know, I think you're getting a feeling for how they operate, like one-on-one.
Like, there is like all of those toxic behaviors that you might see in your everyday life.
You might see it in your workplace, like, you know, to varying degrees, but you see them here at full intensity.
The gaslighting, the passive aggression, the manipulation, all of those little tricks, those little judo flips and stuff to sort of turn the spotlight back on you and put you on the back foot, where the intention is always for you to essentially submit to them and accept everything that they're telling you.
So I think it's helpful for people to hear these techniques because hopefully you'll never run into a real life cult character like this.
But people do run into like watered down versions of this in all kinds of contexts.
And I think it's just good to be able to spot the red flags.
Yeah.
And I also think it's worth noting that some of the more kind of unpleasant aspects, like the direct challenging, the accusations, the calls for submission, they're usually wrapped within softer stuff, which is expressing, caring, expressing.
I'm a deep philosophical.
I love having conversations.
I like to be challenged, right?
And you've heard how much Stefan enjoys being challenged, but you also heard how many times that he explicitly stated that's what he's about, right?
Like he loves having challenging discourse about philosophical topics.
Does he?
Everything he says, everything he says is a lie.
Everything he says is untrue.
It's the opposite.
It's more than untrue.
It's the opposite of the truth.
But no, it's true.
Like everything is wrapped in a sugary little coating.
And what they are good at, this was true of Ranieri as well, which is like listening and being quiet, like letting, they let the person talk, right?
And they definitely like they give the people the feeling of being seen, I guess, like really paying attention to.
And as long as you do what you're told, there is a lot of sugar there in terms of that deep connection that they're forging with you.
And I kind of am getting some insight into why it works.
Well, I also noticed, like, I swear to God, this is a warning sign.
When people are willing to take such long pregnant pauses when responding to people, like the only people I've seen do that are guru types or a couple of academics, right?
But it's not actually that common.
And it's unusual, right?
Because they're like pausing for effect for their words to hit.
And it's also like a power dynamic where you're able to just like, you know, stop and silence until someone responds or give like a long dramatic pause.
And yeah, I think that's an interesting thing that we've heard that in the Keith Ranieri stuff and the Stefan stuff.
And I suspect we'll hear it more.
Oh, that long pregnant pause.
You hear it amongst most of our gurus.
Eric Weinstein absolutely does it.
Yes, exactly.
And I know.
So, but not normal people, man.
They don't do that because it sounds.
So it's just, it's kind of part and parcel of the performative nature of like gurus and cult leaders is that they're skill maxed in like linguistic abilities and you know manipulative rhetoric.
So yeah, just you know, when you hear the things repeating, I think it's worth registering.
I think that's key.
They have a very specific set of skills, just like just like Liam Neeson.
Liam Neeson.
Yeah.
Like, you know, like take this guy, Stefan.
Like he's, he's an imbecile.
He knows nothing about any of the topics he pretends to be an expert on.
I mean, nothing.
Be careful.
You know.
He has a very superficial body of knowledge.
Yes.
Yes.
Incredibly superficial.
Certainly cannot apply it.
Like it's Nikki now's stuff.
You know, like that psycho, psychologizing or whatever you want to call it that he's doing there.
Like it's, you know, it's nonsense.
He has no skill set in the stuff that he professes to have.
But what they are good at is what we've been talking about.
All of this manipulative stuff.
That is, and Stefan, he keeps talking about his decades of experience in this area.
He does have decades of experience in just being an arsehole.
Being an absolute piece of shit.
I have four decades of being a terrible arso.
Maybe five decades.
Yeah.
Just an absolute, you know, contributes nothing to society, Chris.
Just a complete, a complete cancer on.
I wonder, we'll see when we get to the grometer if he dings up all of the things or if like Keith Ranieri, he's kind of maxed in specific areas.
And yeah, I'm not sure because I thought, like you, that Ranieri would score high across the board.
And then he didn't.
And Stefan could be the CM in that respect, but we'll find out.
You'll find out soon enough.
Yeah, that's the interesting thing about the Gromo.
Like, we're often surprised, aren't we?
It's not until we actually come to do it that we that we find out.
Okay, useful thing.
Useful thing.
Okay, yes.
So now I'm at, we're done with that.
We got to give the patrons the kindly support, the good ship DTG, a little shout out.
I've got their names here in front of me.
Would you object if I were to give them a little acknowledgement?
All right.
Go on.
All right.
All right.
So conspiracy hypothesizers, the least of the Petro community.
Chris, good.
Well, they're the least financially, but you know, everyone is equal in our, what is it?
Luxury, communist, future, whatever you're doing.
Fully automated luxury, gay space communism.
Yeah, that's right.
The meek will inherit the earth.
That's right.
That's right.
So there we have Gary Bushwell, R., Deanne Gregory, Thomas Jones, Patrick Van der Wael, Ogil, Ogilus Goetz, Ellis Edlund, Ida DuPont, Jacob Kachar, Autumn Fox, Kevin Kay, Dougie Jones, Feo O'Donnell, Dan Hartold, Need Cross, Andrew Copeland, Sean Saunders, Joseph Boyle, Gregory Hodge, Maple, William Chandler, Yo-Yo, Almond Kadna, Tiano Gefleo, Zavier,
Diev, Victor Meon, Brennan Drury, Danny Pearsons, Nick Sim, and Nikolai Sundby.
Those are our conspiracy hypothesizers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Od and all.
I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions, and they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man, it's almost like someone is being paid.
Like when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Now we will.
Now we will.
Yeah.
Please, please never put Stefan Molinier in this super.
I was actually thinking as there's a couple of clips that could certainly go in there.
I could, I could.
JVJ, please.
Revolutionary geniuses, Matt.
You know, the ones that are not showing off, they're like middle of the pack, just like us.
They're your average, average shows of the coding the guru community.
There we have, oh, and they get access to the coding academia series, amongst other things.
There's tons of other benefits, but hardly worth mentioning.
Just saying, we have Hans Bernhessel, J.W., Christian Colombo, Hugo Roman Ward, Danny, Jay Scott, N. Dogg, Vera, Ballant Magar,
Daniel Johnson, Alberto Pagoda, Peter Creon, L.D., Anna Maria Bluek, JG, Chris Laurel, Abrad, Kostja Paschalides, and yeah, that's them, the revolutionary geniuses for this month.
I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.
And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.
I'm someone who's a true polymath.
I'm all over the place.
But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.
Now, that's just a guess.
And it could easily be wrong, but it also could not be wrong.
The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.
Stunning indeed.
And you know what's also stunning, Chris?
The highest tier of how the class of people in that tier.
I mean, the peacocks of the Patreon subscribers.
They are showing off.
Peacocks.
Is that what they are?
Yes.
Well, there we have Chris Constantine, David Rosenman, Old Squeaky, Jason Kuzma, Matt Danner, Rachel Price, Cindy S., Andrew Perbliski.
Perblisky.
He told me how to pronounce this, and I keep saying it wrong.
God damn.
We're going to interview him, Matt.
Andrew Smith, Jonathan Kean, Ryan Ernest, Chris Sullivan, Kismet Fertim, Curtis Freeman, and John Schumacher, and John.
Excellent.
Well, thanks to all of them, but especially old Squeaky there.
You just reminded me.
We've got an update on Old Squeaky.
There's some news.
There's some news, but not going to tell you now.
Wait to the next supplementary material.
Steve for the supplementary materials.
I know that I think, I mean, I do know what it is, but it's very big news.
And Squeaky related.
Yeah.
He joined the Patreon.
See, even Old Squeaky supports.
That's a surprising thing about him.
You got to keep it.
We do appreciate all of the support from all of these nice people.
We do.
Checks aside.
And if you want to, you can come and talk to us in the live streams we do every month.
We can't promise it'll be particularly interesting, but we promise we'll be there.
We can promise there won't be any passive aggression or there won't be anything.
We can't promise that.
As about your personal problems, I wouldn't advise it.
I'm just advising.
So it's all we can do to deal with our own personal problems.
We can't help you.
We can't.
No, sorry.
But what you do get is this lovely audio clip.
So here you go.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
You may not be aware that your entire reality is being manipulated.
Become part of our community of free speakers.
We are still allowed to say stuff like this.
Science is failing.
It's failing right in front of our eyes and no one's doing anything about it.
I'm a show for no one.
More than that, I just simply refuse to be caught in any one single echo chamber.
In the end, like many of us must, I walk alone.
A great combination of people there, each with their own particular brand.
Yeah, they're all so unique, yet so, so fucking similar.
They're very predictable, very predictable.
But I will say that all three of those people, well, maybe with the exception of Russell Brown, but I don't rank as manipulative or dangerous as like Stefan.
Yeah.
But Russell Brand, I realized that probably wouldn't go to that bracket.
So I don't think I don't think that Sabina or Lex is currently at the level of giving their listeners interpersonal advice on the relationships, right?
Not yet.
No, no, no.
So, you know, well done, both of you.
Yeah, congrats.
They cleared that bar.
Yeah, cleared that bar.
Good stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there we go, Matt.
This was uh, this was uh an epic length, but that's classic DTG.
That's what it that's what we do here.
Yeah, and no, no more, Malnu.
We're done with him.
We're now back in this little box, back to the Stefan box.
And um, yes, we'll carry on.
Cult season continues.
Look forward to more coming in the next episode of Cult Season.
