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Nov. 20, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:13
520 Freedomain Radio - One Year Old!
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Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph, 1703, on the 19th Monday of November 2006.
Now, two things have coincided, which have produced this podcast, which I hope doesn't sound too much like a vanity podcast, but we shall see.
A poster has posted, Hey, Steph!
I was wondering if you would do a podcast on your experiences with your writing, entrepreneurship, and creating a free domain radio in regards to your feelings, obstacles, and struggle.
Was it hard for you?
Did you ever want to give up?
What did you do to get through?
How did you cope with the doubts?
Did you have time, progress, anxiety, and what was the payoff like?
I like how that's all in the past tense, like I've retired or something, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment.
Somebody else said that would be an interesting topic, and lo and behold, I get to talk about me for, oh...
I think it was certainly early to mid-November of last year.
I posted my first podcast, which of course was a reading of the article that was the first one that I had gotten published on LewRockwell.com, which was the Stateless Society, An Examination of Alternatives.
And now, of course, the general theory of the podcast is rational thought and examination of alternatives, humorous podcasts and examination of alternatives, or just making sense and examination of alternatives.
So we've really tried to keep the same theme going with some minor variations in intent and purpose.
So I think it's interesting.
I certainly think it might be worthwhile to have a chat About the sort of show and its history, which was Kenneth Branagh, who was 27 years old when he wrote his autobiography of his life in the theater, which was an act of mad presumption that we can sort of all understand and appreciate.
The man has huge talent.
He's certainly better at...
He's certainly better at being directed by others than he is at directing himself.
Sorry, one sec.
Let me just get to...
Is this guy gonna know?
Nobody lets me in.
There we go. Now I will let somebody else in because we like to pay it forward.
So this is going to be a...
Okay, let's settle in.
I also brought a backup podcast topic, which is a dream that somebody had.
So we will attempt to do the second if we run out.
If... It's fairly inconceivable, of course, but if it should be the case that I end up running out of things to talk about with regards to moi, then we will switch to a backup topic, which is somebody's dream that I thought would be interesting to have a go at.
Now, there was a lot that was being asked to be talked about.
I don't think I'm going to go into all of it because I don't think it's so scattered to some degree around the podcast, and I don't know that it would be that interesting to everyone.
But certainly, if you're up here in the stratosphere of Free Domain Radio Numbers, which I'm sure will be base camp for the future, it may be worth knowing what it's like on this side of the mic in certain ways and the experience of running something like this because it could be helpful for people who are thinking of doing it themselves, some of the pitfalls and pluses that have occurred for me in this process.
Now, for those who don't know, the actual genesis for the show as a whole was a Christian.
It was a Christian youth, predictably named Adam, who was an employee of mine, who was a co-op student, who was an employee, I guess, in two levels down.
Who was quite philosophical, quite well versed in theology, appallingly badly versed in economics and politics, although he had no idea about that because he was in the mainstream as far as that went, and was very passionate about ethics, was very passionate about virtue, and he and I got into conversations about these topics.
Now, I don't know if you know the history of Kant, but it was the nihilism implicit in certain kinds of radical skepticism that, as Kant put it, roused him from his dogmatic slumber.
And I wouldn't say that I was in any form of dogmatic slumber.
But I certainly would say that I had not written any philosophical or economic theory in quite some time.
At least, at least, oh gosh.
Well, I would say that the last major, no, it had been seven or eight years since I had written anything in the realm.
I'd written some fiction. I'd written actually quite a lot of fiction at this point, which I was gamely flogging throughout the universe.
But I had not written anything in terms of philosophy or economics since my graduate school days, which was, I guess I was in my, I was 26 or 27 when that was occurring.
So it was quite a while back.
And what happened was I was having the usual debates with this gentleman and a friend of his who was also working at the company that I was the chief technical officer at.
And we would get into pleasant chats wherein it's like, come in my friends, let me close the door and let us pretend we are in a meeting.
You know, even then I was a slave bitch to philosophy.
And so we began to debate these issues, and most of it was rote, right?
Most of it was, well, you don't understand this.
Well, you know, they just mouthed the platitudes about the Great Depression and then the need to help the poor.
And so all of that was... But then they really hammered hard on the question of air pollution.
And I got the insurance, it sort of came to me in a flash, the DRO or slash insurance model, which was very exciting.
And then when I sort of, when he said, well, how would they pay for it and why would they pay for it, the DRO model, which if you've seen the speech that I gave at the Libertarian Conference recently, This was pretty much the same idea.
It came to me in a flash, of course, and even the figure that I used, $2 million or whatever, is exactly the same figure I used when it first came to me, where it was just like, oh my God, these people could actually...
As an insurance company, you would have up to $2 million to spend on reducing air pollution if people had insurance for it.
And with a whole sort of big bang and a crash, that...
The whole last justification for the state that I had, which is around things like collective property or collective self-defense, once I got that air pollution thing, that was like the end of the old world and the beginning of the beginning of the new world.
And that was when I really began to understand how powerful it was, the possibilities that you might not have a state at all.
You might not need a state at all.
That sheer market incentive could be enough to do it.
And once you get that, then you really get that not only is it enough to do it, but it's the only way to do it, right?
The market incentive and so on.
Now, the influences on me at the time, I'd been listening to The Great Brown, Brown with an E on the end of it, for some time.
I'd been listening to other kinds of libertarian podcasts and Mises stuff, and that was the real revolution for me.
And what happened was I began to write, and I didn't know where I was going to send it or anything like that, but again, began to write a series of articles about this issue and post it on...
Posted on a blog. I learned how to do all of that.
I hadn't really done any of this stuff before.
And so I learned how to do that.
And of course, I'd heard about podcasting.
And I hadn't thought at all about podcasting from my car.
But it seemed to me kind of like a natural thing to do to have an alternate mechanism.
The reason being that I so much enjoyed, and still do, enjoy audio as opposed to reading.
I mean, I certainly read. But if I can get it on audio, so much the better.
Because you can roll around. I can do the bathrooms.
I can clean the bathrooms. I can...
Go to the gym and so on, listen to these audiobooks.
So for me, I had had such a great deal of pleasure.
And I'll put a plug in here for a great product, I think.
It is audible.com, where you can sign up.
They have like 20,000 books that you can download.
Actually, I take that back.
That might interfere with our time together.
But no, really, it is great stuff.
And you can get some great stuff on economics.
Mark Skousen's History of Economics, Money Mischief by Friedman.
You can get, I mean, the great classic, Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt.
I mean, lots of really good stuff about that.
There's a good history of philosophy by Will Durant, who is an excellent writer and a good psychologist as well.
But they have lots of great stuff, and there's a popular fiction and so on, and you just sort of sign up for a monthly.
You can buy them, sort of sign up for a monthly thing, and you get two books or more to download a month, which should be great.
So I'd listened to audiobooks for quite some time, and the interesting thing that I sort of noticed when going back over The God of Atheists, which I wrote a number of years before I podcasted or even again these articles with, was that this guy has a video blog.
I think before the term was even invented, I had him doing his webcam speeches because it was a good way for me to give some speeches without sounding speechifying.
That was all to come, as you well know.
But I had that as an idea, but I had never really thought about it myself.
And so I began to look into podcasting and spent a ridiculous weekend trying to figure out XML feeds and hosting and all this kind of stuff.
And so I started off by hosting stuff on my wife's site.
And I started off just by reading the articles.
And it was interesting.
I didn't find it particularly thrilling to read my own articles.
But at the end of one of the articles that I wrote, I just sort of went off book, right?
Otherwise, it was just like, hi, it's me, here's the article.
But then I went a little bit off book just to sort of see what it was like.
And interestingly enough, interestingly for me, I don't know if it's interesting to other people, but hey, this is an optional relationship, so you can hit the pause whenever you feel like it and move on to another free domain radio podcast.
That's what you were thinking, right?
I think it was. I had also, for reasons that I know not, I had practiced podcasting in my car without any equipment whatsoever.
Off and on, and more on than off, I don't sound like screaming at myself in the car every day, but I had been...
Podcasting without any equipment, just sort of practicing speeches for some reason.
And I just, you know, I thought maybe I would end up joining the Libertarian Party, running for politics.
I mean, at this point, I was still not exactly a minarchist, but definitely somebody who believed that the state was possible and valuable.
You could work within it to minimize it and so on.
And so after I was in contact with the Libertarians Party, I practiced doing some political speeches in my car.
I had a very stirring one about, you know, if you want to know who's responsible for the deficit, you need to look in the mirror.
And, you know, all these kinds of things, which I would not necessarily subscribe to now.
But I did a fair amount of that kind of speechifying because I've never been much of a public speaker.
I don't mean I've never...
I've just rarely done it.
I've done it to some degree in my career, you know, sales presentations to a dozen people or whatever, or maybe a few less for the most part.
I've done some training, you know, in software and stuff like that, but I've never really been the go-to guy for public speaking.
You know, people don't say, hey, we need public speaking.
Although, I shouldn't say, actually, people have sort of enjoyed what I've done in the past, and I've had some opportunities, and I've presented at some conferences, but I've never been like, you know, well, we have to get that guy here for public speaking, so...
It was never something that I really thought I would get into.
And the reason for it partly was that I had this habit of preparing myself.
And I know that's shocking.
In fact, you might need to take a moment to pick yourself, peel yourself back up the floor, man.
Shake it off. But I... Would over-prepare, and when you over-prepare, it's like over-inflating your tires.
You just burst the pleasure right out of it, and it becomes sort of rote, right?
The sort of brain-surfing that goes on for me in Freedom Aid Radio is an enormous and exciting challenge, other than writing a large novel is the hardest thing that I've ever done in my life, and that's what makes it fun for me, right?
That's what makes it exciting for me, and I guess some of that immediacy rubs off In order to make it pleasurable for other people.
I think the pleasure that I take in the podcasting is something that is one of the reasons that people kind of get it across, kind of get that pleasure and it becomes pleasurable for them or for you as well.
What happened then was when I went off book, I kind of decided that that would be an interesting thing to try.
So I didn't ever...
I don't think I tried doing any off-the-book podcasts at home.
I'm pretty sure I didn't. But I had all this time in a drive, right?
And I'd listened to all these podcasts.
I'd practiced doing some political speeches on my own in the car.
And so I thought, well, why not give it a try?
And I did that, and I sort of enjoyed it, and it came very easily to me.
I haven't really gone back to listen to the really early podcasts, but I'm sure that they're not bad.
I'm sure that they're fine.
I know that I've gotten better as I've gone along, but I don't think that that's the end of the world and an embarrassment to the show.
And, of course, people do sort of continue to plug along, and I do get...
I mean, I get some drop-off rate between the earlier to later podcasts, but people as a whole do sort of hang out and continue the conversation, which I'm obviously pleased about.
There were some things that I absolutely had to deal with in an emotional way or personally before I was able to podcast, and it's not easy to...
I'm sorry to pause.
I'm just sort of trying to mull something over in my mind because I've had artistic stuff out there do well and do badly, mostly do badly, novels and poems and so on.
I've had artistic stuff out there, and that's tough.
But there's something quite different about...
Art is vanity in a lot of ways.
And that doesn't mean that it's bad and it doesn't mean that there's not philosophy in it and so on.
But when someone doesn't like a book that you've written, they don't like your writing or they don't like your choice of topics or they don't like your characterization or whatever, right?
But although there is a moral message buried in the art, it's not exactly the same as a podcast on philosophy.
The stakes are enormously higher in a podcast on philosophy than they are in a novel, right?
So if I read a bit of a novel, and Christina's just working on this, so we'll post it the next day or two.
If I record some part of a novel and people say, well, I don't like it, or they're indifferent to it, and so on, well, it's just artistic stuff they don't like, and it's kind of personal, right?
It's like it's about me, to some degree.
But philosophy is quite a bit different.
Philosophy is not...
Maybe vanity is the wrong word to use, but when somebody doesn't like philosophy, your philosophical propositions, it's not personal.
Because you can't prove that a piece of art is a good piece of art or a bad piece of art.
There's no syllogism. You can't force anyone in a sort of logical manner.
To be a good person, you have to like this piece of art.
Well, you can't ever do that.
There's a lot of Pseudo-subjectivity.
We won't get into the degree in depth.
And of course there is a relationship between the art somebody is passionate about and who they are as a moral and rational human being.
But we won't get into that. It's certainly less syllogistic than philosophy is.
So if somebody doesn't like a piece of art that I've done, it's a little bit more personal and it sort of pricks the vanity a little bit more.
But if somebody doesn't like a philosophical argument, then You can saddle up and respond in a way that, as an artist, you just can't, right?
Like, you don't call up an art critic and say, well, what do you mean you didn't like my play?
Are you crazy? Check out this.
Check out that. You don't get...
This is kind of quality dialogue you don't get anywhere else, right?
Because that's just kind of...
would be kind of a strange thing to do.
And so... You can't really respond to critics of art, but you sure as heck can respond to critiques of your philosophy.
Because it's not my philosophy.
I'm certainly not trying to get people to believe in anything that I say.
I'm just trying to get us to join together in a conversation about rationality and to sort of feel my way to some truths that I have a good faculty or facility for putting together.
So, if somebody says, the argument for morality is incorrect, then that's a whole lot different from them saying, I didn't find your characters convincing in your novel, or whatever.
So, it's a lot less personal in the realm of philosophy, and I kind of like that.
I kind of like that, because I have a high opinion of the art that I'm able to produce, which is not shared by as many people as I would like, at least certainly not outside the conversations or the listeners here.
But, of course, you can't argue anyone into liking your novel.
But if somebody says there's a logical problem with your philosophy or the philosophy that you espouse, then you can dig into it with them and you can have a response and, you know, may the most logical syllogism win.
So when I began to go sort of off book and realize that I had a fairly good ability to feel my way through debates, then I had to have the ego strength, the self-esteem, if you will, To separate myself from my arguments.
And that's not rendered any easier by the fact that so many people attack you personally when they don't like the argument that you're putting forward.
And the reason that they do that is that they themselves don't have the ego strength to separate an argument that opposes the way they live from An attack upon them personally, right?
So if I say, you know, I don't know, the state is bad and here's why, and then people get really huffy and offended, they feel and they attack me back sort of personally, you know, calling me stupid, however they do it, right?
Like you always get this, and you get this all the way from you jerk, you idiot, to...
I'm afraid that it was a noble effort that you made.
You know, it was a good and kind effort, and I'm trying to be gentle with you because I know that you're an eager amateur, but I'm afraid that you didn't quite achieve what you wanted to achieve, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So there's the F.U. that comes with the fist, and then there's the F.U. that comes with the caress, and it runs everywhere in between.
And people respond like that because they themselves, they sort of at their gut level, they feel that I'm attacking them, right?
Because as soon as you start focusing on rationality, you threaten the hold of the false self, which is decidedly anti-empirical, over the personality, and you're giving fuel to the true self.
So the false self experiences that as aggression, and then it responds in kind.
The false self takes the truth personally and therefore it attempts to attack back and it attempts to provoke my false self weakness, right?
Weakness and a lack of self-esteem generally almost always come from the false self and I maintain through the false self.
So you have to...
It's kind of like a ninja thing, at least I find it to be the case.
And you have to sort of will this matrix move where you slow everything down and examine it critically because, you know, I'm as sensitive as the next guy when it comes to criticism.
And so I had to have...
The strength to be able to separate and to understand the criticisms that people have brought to bear on my propositions and understand that, you know, if they prove me wrong, logically, fantastic.
I can't do anything but thank them and I think that's wonderful.
And so, recognizing that it's only important to be wed to the process and recognizing that When somebody attacks you on a personal level, it's more shame on them than shame on you, but that takes a fair amount of will.
And the reason for that is not because I'm innately insecure, although I have my insecurities like everybody else, but the reason that it's so hard to do is that I think it's more of a Nietzschean thing, where it's more disgust with the species that makes me want to take it personally.
Because when people attack me in one form or another, it's not so much that I think that they may be right and I feel bad because of that.
I think what happens for me unconsciously is I have sort of one of two choices.
I can either take it personally, Or I can get disgusted with a whole lot of people.
That's not a pleasant proposition either way.
And there are times when I'll take it personally because I've had my fill of disgust with the immaturity, the pomposity, the hypocrisy, the viler and self-aggrandizing and self-righteous aspects of just so many people out there in the world.
So when I've had my fill of disgust with that kind of stuff, then what I do is I'll take it personally for a while so at least I don't have to feel disgust anymore.
So it's kind of like a balance.
And I don't want to, you know, make it sound overly dramatic and that, you know, I veer between disgust and self-loathing or anything like that.
I don't mean that at all. Actually, I do mean that a little bit except for the self-loathing part.
But... It is certainly a balancing act.
There may be some sort of Randian promontory out there where people can stand astride their own principles and never feel the slings and arrows of outrageous responses, but that's not me, for sure.
I bend with the wind.
On a gale of criticism and hostility, I definitely bend.
I then break it down, talk it over with Christina, talk it over with myself.
Try to understand where the person is coming from, which doesn't mean sympathize, but it does mean empathize so that I can figure out and understand that it's not me and all that kind of stuff.
So there's a certain amount of dismantling that I need to do with the hostility that comes my way.
And don't get me wrong, it's not like I get 50 hate mails every day, but it can be a little bit wearying.
Now, so that's sort of one aspect.
I don't think that I would have been able to do that without the two key ingredients that propelled me towards maturity outside of my intellectual development, and the one was, you know, years of therapy, and the second, of course, was Christina, right, who is my absolute bedrock when it comes to understanding these things.
So, without those two things, I just don't think I would have the strength to be able to do these ninja moves, these matrix moves, to sort of snatch the pebble from the hand of the baddies, so to speak, and to try and turn them around.
And I do believe that, in the direct absence of physical attack, which of course I don't think is ever going to happen, but...
I think that it's important to both be firm, but also to be compassionate.
And I certainly have not made that every single time I've responded.
I think it's important, though, to be firm and to say, no, I won't bend my principles because you're upset.
That would be cruel to us both.
I certainly don't want to feed your false self by bending rational principles because you're upset.
But at the same time, and I do have compassion for that which is making you so angry, but, you know, I'm not going to be talked to in this manner or whatever.
And it does seem to be a fairly effective technique that, you know, whenever I can muster it, which is I think fairly often, but certainly not perfectly.
There is a certain amount of that because there is, I mean, there are no sort of massively evil people who email me.
They are often well-meaning and emotionally volatile and immature and petty and broken, but there is, I still believe, in a lot of people, a false...
A true self there buried under all the wreckage and hostility and self-hatred, and that's what I want to reach my hand out to.
It doesn't mean that that's going to work, but it means that I've certainly given it a shot, and I may have given them their best shot of getting a positive response to a negative attitude.
And so I think without therapy and without Christina's help, it would be...
It wouldn't be that I wouldn't do it, but I think what would happen is that I would end up escalating the conflicts because I'd be angry or I'd be hurt more often than not.
And I think that would make the boards less inviting.
I think it would make my podcast less inviting.
I do have, because of this sort of working this out within myself and remembering The mission, right?
I mean, you've got to have the mission if you want to do this kind of stuff, and the mission is not to be right, and the mission is not to be smart, and the mission is not to gather listeners, and the mission is not to change the world, right?
The mission is to speak the truth as best as you can, as often as you can.
And if the truth is that when somebody attacks me out of nowhere, that it's got nothing to do with me, and of course that is the truth, right?
right, and they don't know me, or they just have listened to some podcasts or whatever, then to get angry with them as if they were angry at me directly would be false, right?
So whenever I do get the temptation, I sort of go back to, you know, what's the mission?
Well, the logic of personal and political freedom, right?
So freedom means freedom from false self-reactions for me, right?
I can't remember the Freedom Aid radio song from Podcast 500.
No false self-defenses.
No pseudo-defenses. That's an important part of the whole recipe of the show and of the approach.
So there's that side of things that is important.
Picking show topics can be a real challenge for sure.
And there are times when I'm really racking my brain.
There are times when I have 50 of them and then forget all but one of them the next day and sometimes all of them.
Knowing what, because there's a very great variety of topics that we talk about, and knowing what is going to work for people, what is enough religion to make people interested, but not so much that they get bored, what is enough economics that's fun for the geeky male guys, and what is enough relationship stuff that's fun for the not-so-geeky females, and, you know, just to broadly stereotype.
So knowing the right balance of show topics can be quite a challenge as well, and so...
That's not the easiest thing in the world to find that pleasing mix that makes people want to listen to not only stuff that they may be more familiar with that expands what they know a little bit, but stuff that they're not familiar with at all that will give them some options.
And of course, every...
People don't write to me very often and say, I really like this topic or I really like that topic.
I think that's, hopefully, that's a taken for granted and that's actually quite a positive thing.
But, you know, I do a dream analysis and I'll get 10 emails about how dumb dream analyses are and I shouldn't do them.
And then it's like, well, what does that mean?
I better check the stats. How many people are downloading it?
How many people are reading it and are writing to me telling me it's bad?
And so there's a certain amount of, you know, under the hood tweaking of the show topics and of the general themes.
There is, broadly speaking, an overall theme to the podcast series as a whole.
Now, of course, I'm not going to claim that when I started I knew it was going to go this big and this well, but definitely there is a theme and a sequence of the ways in which I present things, so we've talked about that before.
That there's a seesaw between the instance and the abstract and they always have to be sort of in sequential with reference to each other and that I will make the case with that which is further away from you before making the case with that which is closer to you.
So we talked about the state and the government before we talked about the family.
We talked about Sorry, the state and religion.
We talked about Christianity and its effects on children before we talked about the irrational effects upon you.
We talked about corruption in the abstract before we talked about your family in the specific.
We talked about your family in the specific before we talked about you in the personal, and so I generally tried to sort of You know, look, over here, some fun knowledge that's abstract and not too dangerous.
And then once you're interested and intrigued and listening on a regular basis, then, you know, the sucker punch of it's all about you, it comes in in hopefully a way that doesn't land too unpleasantly or at least lands in a way that has some context.
So I definitely try not to, you know, rip the grenade of self-knowledge and jam it up your butt.
So to speak. I try to, you know, make it a little bit more sequential than that because I don't want the truth to whatever degree it applies to you in those areas to be shocking or difficult or unpleasant.
So there's that challenge as well.
I mean, there's another one which I sort of was mulling about whether to talk about because I don't want this to sort of be perceived as a plea, but it certainly is the case that if you want to get involved in this kind of stuff, and I certainly would encourage everyone who's interested in it to give it a shot, it's quite a wild ride and definitely worth giving it a whirl.
Don't hold your breath for positive feedback.
And I know that this sounds ridiculous in some ways because I have had some very positive feedback over the last year, some enormously positive feedback.
So don't hold your breath every day for people to prop you up by saying that what you're doing is good or important or essential or great or whatever.
And I say this a little bit more to do with the earlier podcasts than now, but...
You can't do it for your ego.
You can't do it because you want positive feedback.
That's never going to work. And if you do try that approach, then all that's going to happen is you're going to end up, as I did early on in this process, second guessing the natural ebbs and flows of positive versus negative feedback.
And you're also, if you go for positive feedback, you're going to end up being a slave to the good opinions of your listeners.
And you're not going to then be able to challenge them in a way that I think is positive and constructive.
And you'll then be left with sort of safe topics, right?
I mean, there's, you know, an example of this is, you know, either the sort of liberal or conservative or left-wing, right-wing talk radio that goes on in the United States.
And other countries, too, but it's most prevalent in the U.S. Right?
You're never going to tune into the O'Reilly factor and hear anything that's going to challenge you, right?
I mean, if you already have these opinions, then...
You're never going to hear anything that's going to challenge you.
In the same way that if you're an objectivist and you, I don't know, you go to Ayn Rand forums, you're almost never going to hear something that's really going to challenge you at a personal level.
And it's going to cause you to expand your horizons from a personal level.
You're going to hear a lot of agreement and you're going to get a lot of positive feedback and reinforcement.
But the great danger, of course, of...
Having ideas that are out of the mainstream is you kind of want to hide in a bubble and hear only the same ideas reflected back at you in a kind of social metaphysics way that is really ultimately unhealthy and destructive because it doesn't foster the curiosity and the continual growth We grow or we spoil.
If you take a fruit from the tree that gave it life, it's going to start turning brown and saggy and crappy immediately.
So you need to stay connected with new information, new perspectives, new arguments, new and startling things that you can evaluate so that you can continue to grow, which makes me sap, I guess, or something like that, or part of the sap that you imbibe.
But, you know, you need to keep the ecosystem alive, which means you need to keep evolving.
And one of the things that happens with people who have unusual beliefs is that they have a great tendency or temptation to sort of burrow into the ecosphere, into the biosphere of like-minded theories, and that sort of becomes their world, and they're not testing it against their own personal experience, they're not testing it against their own realities, and so on.
Or against reality as a whole.
They're simply sort of replicating this kind of reality.
So that's not what I wanted for this show.
I certainly didn't want a show wherein people were going to hear the same stuff that they heard elsewhere.
I mean, why would you do it, right?
I mean, I largely do it for free.
And so why would I want to reproduce stuff for free that's already out there in a commercial sense?
And if I wasn't going to do it for the money and I wasn't going to do it for the praise and I wasn't going to do it for groupies, then you have to have a goal or a project or a process or a destination.
And it's not a destination, of course.
It really is a process. But you have to be part of a process that's much larger than you are.
I mean, you have to be committed to the species.
And I know that sounds grandiose, but it is absolutely true for me.
I mean, you have to be committed to the species.
You have to be committed to the world.
You have to be committed to making this planet a better place.
And that's not about you.
And that's not about me.
And that's not about praise.
And it's not about positive feedback.
Those things are nice. It's not about donations, although those things are very nice.
But it really is a commitment that you have that gets you through the hard times.
It's a commitment to something that's much larger than yourself.
And the truth and philosophy and reality, of course, are much larger than any of us in this conversation, much more essential than any of our lives, which doesn't mean I'll give up my life for it, but you have to have access to something that's far greater than yourself.
And the truth is far greater than me.
I am but a tiny fragment straining to achieve a whole.
And you have to have that so that when you get those days which are tough and those days which are down and those days where you feel like Nobody understands.
Nobody's listening. Nobody cares.
Nobody is positive. Nobody's donated in a week or whatever, right?
When you have those days where you...
At least I get prey to the resentments of like, you know, oh, well, it's not really that important to people if they're not willing to donate or it's not really that important to people if we haven't had any new members of the board for, you know, a couple of days or...
In August, when there was a considerable dip in the growth of the show, which now has been more than recovered from, but then there's that, oh, okay, well, I guess I've reached a couple of hundred people who are interested in this, and that's it.
We're not going to grow any further.
And then it's like the idea of spending a Saturday gathering emails and sending off invites to people to come and listen to the show feels sort of futile and So there's a lot of those days.
And that's true of anybody who's got any kind of endeavor.
It's the same thing in business. But I think it's even more true when you're kind of putting raw soul intelligence and logic and insights out to sort of try and change people's worlds.
When you get those days where...
You know, technically there are problems and the server's down again and then GoDaddy says, I need X amount of dollars for you from bandwidth and nobody's donated in a while and the activity is low and, you know, those kinds of days.
Well, how do you get through it?
Well, you get through it. First of all, by, you know, having that commitment to something that's greater than yourself and your own ego and your own particular momentary or even semi-momentary preferences, which is that, you know, I'm a servant of the truth, right?
I'm a servant of reality.
I am a slave to virtue.
And those things are much larger than I am.
I try to continually refer myself back to those things.
Those standards and that central driving force and factor, which is that the world can be such a beautiful place, and if not me, then who?
This doesn't mean that I'm the only one who can do it, but when it sort of comes down to it, and I looked across the cultural landscape and didn't see anyone, Who was able to do this kind of stuff and was doing it, then it's sort of like, you know, who?
Me? Right? It's like, but if not you, then who?
Right? I mean, if it's not going to be you who's going to live a free and rational life and not listen to the nonsense about family and not listen to the nonsense about the state and the church and, you know, the social norms that are out there, which are all crazy, if not you, then who?
Who's going to do it? Right? And I sort of felt the same thing myself, right?
Which is that it's a reluctant spotlight that sort of falls on you.
At least it was for me. It was sort of a reluctant spotlight.
It's like, gee, you know, I kind of wish there was somebody else who was doing this so I could sit back and just absorb it, right?
But of course, I didn't pay...
Anything to Harry Brown, other than ordering a book of his for his shows, and that was the thing that conditioned me early on about not charging overtly for the podcast, but asking for donations, that I received an enormous amount of benefit from the Mises Institute, from Harry Brown, and none of whom charged me for the podcast.
And of course, if they had charged me for the podcast, and I know this sounds ridiculous coming from a capitalist, but if Harry Brown had said, you know, it's a buck a podcast, It would have cheapened it for me.
I mean, it would have cheapened it for me.
And I fight this battle five times a week.
Right? About podcasts free, podcasts charged for.
Advertisers, no advertisers.
And I've stuck to the straight and narrow of having non-commercial podcasts without charging people for downloading them.
And of course, that's also partly because...
I want young people who don't have a lot of money to get into it, right?
Because I had this guy email me recently.
He was rather plaintiff, right?
And he said, you know, I don't know that I can pay you $260 for your podcasts, right?
That's a lot of money. And I said, well, I appreciate the sentiment and I appreciate the forethought, but download and consume the podcasts as if they were free, as if you found $5,000 in a bag in the woods that was old and obviously not owned by anyone.
Enjoy it and spend it.
And then as you go forward, as you find value, then...
Pay me for it, right?
I mean, pay me for it if you find that there's value.
And that's a hard thing for me to do.
I'm a gosh darned charged people an hourly rate capitalist from way back, right?
I mean, my hourly rate was charged out at 300 bucks an hour.
I mean, that's... It's not easy for me to sort of work for free, but it is important, and it's important in ways that I know, and it's important in ways that I don't know either, right?
And if you have any ideas, let me know.
I do believe that advertisements would cheapen the message.
You know, it'd be like, and here's the truth about your soul, maybe, right?
And now, here's an ad for Hootier, right?
Or whatever, right?
And of course, if at some point I get the quality...
Sorry, that's entirely the wrong thing to say.
If I get the number of listeners at some point that justifies me being able to go to very big, expensive, and well-produced advertisers and have them come up with funny free-domain radio-specific ads, I would do that.
But we're not there yet. And so that is sort of another, when you're kind of going through this process, if this is of help to people, I think it is.
If you're going through this kind of process, there's a lot of gut instinct.
And please have someone in your life that you can double check stuff with.
Because when I sort of get impatient and then it's like, that's it, I'm ripping down the podcast and I'm just going to charge people for it because of X, Y, and Z. My wife is the one who says, well, you know, I don't feel that that's the right thing to do right now.
Let's explore it. Let's figure it out.
And she's always been right, as she generally is about these and every other thing she talks about.
But have someone around that you can, because it's a bit of a lonely world, even with Christina's participation.
It's a bit of a lonely world to have this voice in the wilderness, so to speak, not relative to the conversation that we're having, but relative as a whole.
And the other thing to do as well is to make sure that your relationship, in terms of what you define as success, is not...
It's something that is measured with reference to another human being or some other people, right?
Because, oh, I don't know, I mean, you can, you know, when I first started out and there's like a podcast out there which have like, I don't know, 40 or 50,000 subscribers in there, you know, about a guy bitching about life to his girlfriend and, you know, all this sort of stuff.
And, you know, there's another one that's just, you know, seems to be pretty crass jokes.
There's porn ones. These all have, like, great subscriber bases.
And when I was sort of starting out, and the subscriptions are certainly coming up, which I appreciate as well, but when I was starting out, what I'd sort of compare myself with these people and go, oh, man, you know, like, I'm pretty insignificant relative to all of that sort of stuff.
And that's just in the podcast world, God forbid, that you start to compare yourself with...
I don't know, Al Franken, who's got a radio show, or Rush Limbaugh, or Howard Stern, or these sorts of people.
And then you go like, oh man, I'm podcasting for my car for like 50 bucks a week, and I'm reaching three people.
You get that kind of stuff, at least that was for me early on, and I was getting nothing for it for the first six or seven months.
But all of that kind of stuff is you can't compare yourself to those kinds of stimuli, if that sort of makes any sense, because you simply drive yourself nuts.
And it will be a form of self-humiliation, right?
So that's something that's important to understand.
And you have to compare yourself again.
You know, what is it that I'm trying to do?
What is my goal? What is my purpose with this sort of stuff?
It's not to fill up my drive, although I'm sure at certain podcasts it's felt like that.
It really is to work every muscle that I have in my head to communicate the truth as best as I am able in as positive and pleasant and enjoyable a manner as possible.
Because the truth is not a sentence that, well, he speaks in a monotone, but what he's got to say is important, so I guess I'll sit there and listen to the guy.
Man, I wish he'd put some inflection into his voice or whatever.
So you don't want to compare yourself to other people who are successful in a corrupt culture.
And that has been a very hard thing.
You know, we are, you know, we few, we happy few, we are out here on the perimeter where there are no stars.
Like, we are out here right on the edge of knowledge.
We are right on the absolute bleeding edge evolution of human thought.
And so the last thing that I'll sort of say, and I could go on sort of day and night about this, but I don't want to, you know, necessarily test everyone's patience.
But the last thing that I'll say is, you know, don't look ahead to anyone to help you.
Don't look ahead for someone to help you.
Don't look for a mentor. Don't look for somebody who's going to reach down and give you a hand up.
Don't wait for that email that comes in from somebody who runs a...
A radio show or somebody who runs something on satellite radio or whatever who says, my God, I've listened to your stuff.
I'm going to make you a star, son!
And don't, you know, publish your blog, publish your thoughts.
Don't wait for the publisher to phone you up and say, I really want the Freedom Aid radio book or I really want the show book that you can write and we'll do this and we'll do that.
We'll have this publicity campaign.
We'll make it all happen and Because that's not going to happen.
There's nobody who's out there.
This is a conclusion I've come to more recently, which I'd sort of like to share for those who are interested in pursuing this.
And this occurs as well. All of this in terms of conversation as well as podcasting, right?
And podcasting is one way of doing it.
Conversations are a very powerful and important way of doing it as well.
But... Nobody is going to bungee down from somewhere higher up and help us up because there is nobody higher up.
There is nobody higher up.
There is nobody further along that I have ever heard of from where we are as a community and the exploration and conversation that we're having.
We're inventing logic.
We're inventing ethics in a way that I've never seen done before.
We are doing all of that.
We are out here on the perimeter, and we are beating back the jungle, right?
And when you're beating back the jungle, for them to say, Jesus, I can't believe we still found no roads, right?
You're in the deepest, darkest jungle, beating your way away, and you're far away from anything civilized, and I would keep grumbling to myself.
It's like, man, I'm not hacking my way through to a clearing where there's a house and a McDonald's so I can get something to eat.
And nobody's, you know, building a bridge towards me and nobody's, you know, hacking their way to the jungle before me.
No helicopters coming down to pick me up and help me along.
And it took a long time for me to kind of get why, sort of understand why, that, you know, we are at the forefront.
It's like the first mammal saying, my God, I can't believe that there aren't any other mammals out here that I can hang with.
Well, of course not. You're the first mammal, right?
So I think that after spending 40, 30-odd years, 25-odd years reviewing freedom literature and all this kind of stuff, I think that it's important to understand that we really are out here on the perimeter.
We really are beating back the jungle, right?
And there's nobody ahead of us who's going to come back and help us.
There's nobody embedded in the media who's going to bungee in and give us a leg up because there is no up.
We are creating the ladder as we go up.
There is no ladder that we're climbing that has rungs above us that have been traversed by other souls.
Unprecedented in a very fundamental way.
The conversation that we have about the universality of logic and ethics without God and ethics without violating the is-ought dichotomy and so on, there is nobody ahead of us.
There is nobody ahead of us.
We are sailing out not to find a new land populated by others, but to find the world and populate it and pull people out of the fantasy land of horror that they live in.
But that's the thing that I would really strongly suggest you keep in mind.
Don't wait and feel bad that nobody's bungeeing in to give you help.
There is no help that can be provided other than the help that we can give each other because there is no greater knowledge that is out there that we are trying to carve towards that is inhabited by other people.
And, you know, however grandiose you feel that may be, and maybe it is, maybe there's a big galt scotch out there that I don't know about, but...
The work that we're doing is so far ahead of what's been done before and so far consistent with what has worked before in human society that there is no one out there who is going to be able to reach back and give us a hand.
The best that we can do, this sort of icebreaker approach that we have to take, The best that we can do, and I think the greatest satisfaction that we can take from this hazardous, difficult, and unbelievably pleasurable journey, the greatest consolation that we can take, if this makes any sense, is that...
We sort of become what we don't have.
We give what we never got.
And what we can do with this conversation that is the most powerful thing is not only do you think of the future, right?
The podcasting is great because unlike conversations, it will be around for 10,000 years or more.
But we are the reach down that we want so desperately for ourselves.
We become that for other people.
We become the ahead of them that reaches back and helps them up even though we're so far on the frontier that nobody can help us up.
We can become that for other people.
And I think that as you look at the growth of Freedom Aid Radio over the past month or two, which has been quite stellar, I think that we are becoming that for people.
And that is only going to gain momentum as we move forward.
And that's something that moves me enormously.
And thank you so much, everyone, for...
Thank you for joining in that conversation.
That is a beautiful thing and I know that you get great value out of it, but I just wanted to salute you because it is wonderful to me and to Christina that we are not alone in this conversation.
And in this journey that we have a stalwart tribe with us as we move forward and that it certainly means the world to me and I can tell you that it means the world to Christina that we are all now those of us out here on the perimeter that we have very few lights to guide us and we have hails and arrows of outrageous others all around us and we have the calumny and contempt of many people but we do have each other and that is a very powerful thing.
And it is in the conversation that the species moves forward.
And it is in the depths of the reasoning that we are putting out there that the world can be healed.
And I think that we will have schools named after us in the future.
Thank you so much for listening.
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