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Feb. 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:39:51

658 Call In Show Sunday Feb 25 2007

Debating a Christian, natural rights and dangerous bananas.

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	Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us.
	It's 4 o'clock, a little after, Sunday, February the 25th, 2007.
	And I appreciate taking the time to drop past the Free Domain Radio Sunday afternoon chat show.
	And if somebody could add me to the chat that's going on, since I had to reboot, I think that I'm not part of that.
	If you could throw me in, that would be excellent.
	Now, I just wanted to give a quick update, just clean up some, do some housekeeping, so to speak, to begin with.
	I have finished the first pass of sort of coming up with some ideas for the Free Domain Radio business media enterprise, the global multinational that will at least be not quite multinational until at least this time next year.
	So thanks so much for your patience as I work forward.
	I know that a little while back I talked about my feelings about moving forward to this full-time, so I'm starting to flesh that stuff out.
	As a sort of technical exercise that has sort of been long overdue, I've spent the last weekend or two categorizing in a database the shows, of which of course this is 660 or something like that.
	So thanks so much to the people who sent in their categorizations.
	It's been very helpful.
	I would like to provide a number of different ways of viewing the shows so that people don't get A big pile of 650 and figure out which way they should went their way through.
	So thanks so much. If you do have, if you haven't sent me anything and you do have a classification whether you can export it from iTunes or whether you've developed it on your own, maybe it's in a text file or a spreadsheet, I would really appreciate it if you could send it to me.
	I would just like to provide as many possibilities as I can for people to be able to classify the shows for obvious reasons which we don't have to talk about right now.
	So thanks again for the people who sent in their classifications.
	If you have others, I would really appreciate seeing them.
	It would help me a lot. I, of course, have my own, but they're just mine.
	And, of course, it's been a while since I've listened to some of these, and people have listened to them more recently, so I think that people have a much better way of classifying them sometimes than I do.
	So I would appreciate that.
	Thank you so much. So I'll start with a suggested topic, and then I'll keep it relatively brief, introductory remarks relatively brief, and then we can get to the real brains of the outfit.
	You! You sitting right there listening to this.
	I did a podcast, 657 I think it was, wherein I talked about the challenges that we have as philosophers.
	Relating to others, and it's not an insignificant challenge.
	It's something that's been quite well recorded throughout history.
	We are not the first. We shall by no means be the last, though I think that we are making a pretty good stab at putting a good foot forward in terms of bringing this conversation regarding humanity and reality and ethics, psychology, family, God... The state, politics, and so on, bringing this, I think we're making quite a catapult forward, and I think that's going to help.
	It's only going to help people in the future, but we don't get to live in the future.
	We don't get to live in the world that the ideas will eventually create.
	But I wanted to sort of point out a few things that I've thought about in this realm, in this area, and then open it up to questions you may have about this or about any other topic that's on your mind.
	I was talking about this with my wife on Friday night.
	And I had this sort of interesting thing that happened for me emotionally last week.
	I think it was Thursday night.
	I was just walking down the hallway, just checking out the board while I was brushing my teeth.
	Tooth minus one. And I was walking down the hallway.
	And, you know, my whole life, I don't know if you've ever felt this, but my whole life I've sort of felt that there was a big thing coming.
	You know, there was a big thing that I was going to achieve.
	There was a big thing that I was going to be part of.
	Or, you know, it's just going to be something big, rich, deep.
	And, you know, there's a certain part of it which, of course, was vanity-based, right?
	You know, like I would open the, or the double doors would be open for me, and I would stride up to the podium to make a speech, and there would be thousands of cheering people.
	And there was some sort of messianistic vanity involved with all of that.
	I sort of had this feeling for, you know, and of course I worked on novels, I was an actor, a playwright, was a graduate student and so on and wasn't able to find traction in that kind of area and it's sort of become a little bit more clear to me as I've gotten older why that was and why I have sort of in a sense been shunted by my unconscious to this particular mode of communication.
	I do believe that it is the most valuable But what I sort of recognized when I was sort of walking down the hallway, away from the board towards my bed last Thursday Eve, was that the newer the conversation, the smaller the steps.
	That the newest, and I would, in a sense, say the most important, but let's just say the newest conversations gain the least traction.
	There are no big things at the beginning of things.
	There are no big events. There's no momentum.
	There's nothing but a slog.
	And, of course, I've got wonderful companions in the case of yourselves and some friends of mine and my wife, of course.
	But it's a slog. It's a slog.
	The newness of the conversation, the essential truth of the conversation is...
	It actually means that large snowball-like momentums are impossible.
	So, of course, what I do is I check...
	The downloads of the podcast.
	And I'm waiting. You know, every month since this started, I've been waiting and hoping and working up a feverish sweat in doing the podcast in the hopes that the momentum is going to just snowball.
	That it's going to be like...
	We're up to about 150 podcast downloads a month, which I think is excellent.
	It means there's lots of new people coming on board, which is great.
	We have 538 or so board members, which I think is good, and it's accelerating quite rapidly.
	But, you know, I would like it to be 5 million downloads.
	I would like it to be 50,000 board members and so on.
	And so I've had this sort of standard of where it is that I want to get to and what it is that I want to achieve with everybody's participation.
	And so because of that I have felt falling short of that even though when I first started it was more of a hobby than anything else.
	But I have sort of reconciled myself into, I think, a realistic perspective about what is achievable and what is possible.
	And of course, we have the greatest technological apparatus to be able to talk with each other in this kind of manner, to be able to share ideas both on the board and the give and take within the podcast, the free and easy email and so on.
	So we have an incomparable communication advantage to any other philosophical group that came before, which I think is fantastic.
	But we are not able to take advantage of any existing metaphors, any metaphors that exist in the world.
	We're not like anything else and of course we are to a large degree about the conceptual eradication of metaphors as modes of thought that have anything to do with anything other than Fantasy and internal processes.
	We don't get any kind of leverage, right?
	I've just been watching a bit of the West Wing and you can see where in the West Wing they get the idea of the Father and they get the idea of God and they bundle it all together.
	In terms of the protection and in terms of the security of children, they bundle it all together to gain a real emotional traction.
	And that's really not available to us because we're about undoing false moral values.
	So there's just...
	It's a slog. And I sort of wanted to point this out.
	I don't know if other people are feeling that themselves.
	But there does come a time in every philosopher's life when that philosopher has to accept...
	The slog factor of what is occurring and that there is going to be nothing but as it feels like swimming up a waterfall sometimes.
	There is no surfing, right?
	There is no wave that is going to raise us up and carry us forward.
	There is simply striking out for Distant shores that exist largely only in the mind, though of course our philosophy would say that they exist mostly in reality and that where people are living right now are cloud castles of pure imagination and fantasy, but I think that in conversations that I've seen on the board and some emails and so on,
	that I think people, and certainly this is part of my process of understanding what's going on, that people are beginning to understand the gulf between where it is that we're going or what it is that we're processing and where The general mythology of the species is, and it's really quite a long way away.
	This is not an incremental step.
	This is a willed quantum leap.
	It's a teleport, it's not a journey.
	And I think that when you, at least when I sort of process that, it really helps me understand that things take a lot of time, even with this incomparable communication capacity that we have, unprecedented in the history of human thought.
	We still find that it is incremental, that it is difficult, that it is emotionally really challenging, that it can be very painful.
	And so I used a metaphor in 657 around how we are not trying to rejoin, to repair ourselves, to join the majority, that where we are is a quantum leap forward, I would say, the conceptual or mental evolution of the world, and there is no healing ourselves to rejoin the majority, that we are far, I would say, beyond it, or however it is that you'd like to put it, would be fine with me.
	I think it's definitely beyond it.
	And the question has come up, and I think it's a perfectly sensible question, of course, which is, but if we are inventing a language or have a language called Mandarin that nobody else speaks, and we can't expect other people to speak it, and we can't feel frustrated, I mean, we can, but it's not too rational when they don't speak it,
	because, of course, one of the challenges that we talk about here is curiosity in the face of difference, curiosity in the face even of hostility, curiosity In the face of opposition, which is very hard, right?
	It's very hard. And invitation in the realm of correction, right, that the best way to correct others is to try to learn from them, and this is the Socratic method that we've talked about quite a bit, to try to learn from others, even if we truly believe that they don't know what they're talking about, The issue that we try and communicate with others is based on enlightening them, not on proving them wrong, not on proving ourselves right, not on winning an argument or winning a debate, but on enlightening other people.
	And so the question is, is it kind of fake to put forward a pretend ignorance when you don't really feel it?
	And I would say, I don't care.
	You know, rightly or wrongly, if the goal that you have is to educate others, then the techniques that you use can be very valuable in achieving that.
	And when you are trying to educate children, you can pretend to explore a question together, even when you know that the answer to 2 plus 2 is 4.
	You still pretend to explore it with the child, so the child feels invited and opens up into a space of learning that is motivating for them.
	So... I think that this question of the language that we have, the concepts that we're processing, the depth that we're reaching, the community that we're building, And its relationship to everyone else is a very challenging one.
	I don't think there are any simple answers.
	I really don't think there are any simple answers.
	And the only thing that I can say that I have sort of found to be of value is that at least our heroism is recorded.
	Believe it or not, for me at least there's some comfort in that.
	There are so many people who have tried to advance the conversation of the species who have met with either bloody, tortured, dismal and most often forgotten ends that at least our conversation and our struggles are being recorded which I think is again only going to do good for those who come after us.
	But I think that if we do speak a new language Then one or two things make sense to me, and you can let me know what you think.
	The first thing is that we need to recognize that we speak a new language.
	I think it's a very good language.
	I think it's a very true language.
	I think that the people who invented logic, Aristotle and so on, they spoke a new language, although it was intuitively understood by those around them, as logic generally is, unless it conflicts with psychological defenses.
	And when people began to speak about the scientific method, they were speaking a new language.
	When people began to speak about universality of human rights in the face of things like slavery and the oppression of women and children, they were beginning to speak a new language.
	And since we do try to ground ourselves on the reality and the empirical observations of the world, the new language that we're trying to speak is just not spoken by others.
	And we can spend our lives irritated and frustrated and aggressive.
	And this does sometimes happen.
	Got reports of this from people in their personal life, of course, and I can see it happening sometimes on the board.
	That there's a lot of frustration, there's a lot of impatience, there's a lot of, well, damn it, it's just like this.
	And that's really bad teaching.
	And as somebody who more often than I would like slip into bad teaching myself, I'm just sort of pointing this out.
	That's bad teaching. If you're going to try and teach someone, then I think you need to have empathy for the fact that they don't speak Mandarin.
	And it takes a long time to learn how to speak a new language.
	Years! It took me 25 years to come up with, like, two basic sentences about the state and universally preferable behavior, so you would not be a very good Mandarin teacher if you just snapped at people, well, the word sentence goes like this, dammit, the structure of the sentence is like that, the syntax is like that, just forget all this other stuff, it's like this.
	Well, that would be a pretty bad language teacher.
	And I think that if we help...
	If we understand ourselves that we're trying to teach a new language to people, and it's far more emotionally volatile than teaching them merely Mandarin, right?
	Because... This, as I mentioned before, logic, people grasp intuitively until and unless it conflicts with their psychological defenses, which the language that we're trying to teach, it does more than conflict with their psychological defenses.
	It detonates their psychological defenses.
	We are trying to disarm a bomb while talking down a rabid dog while being snipered at, and it is a challenge, and if we recognize the Depth and degree of the challenge, I think that we can be more patient, we can be more positive, and we can also then not bother investing our time and energy into people who just don't want to learn.
	And so I would say that that would sort of be my approach.
	That's sort of what's been helpful for me.
	Because, of course, as I've mentioned, the last thing that I'll sort of say is that our purpose is not to teach the world.
	Our purpose is not to educate the species.
	Our purpose is not to catapult mankind's discourse into new heights.
	Our purpose is to be happy.
	And there is great pleasure in conversing for the sake of educating others.
	But the rage and anger and frustration that we sometimes feel when talking with others is not really the purpose of what it is that we're trying to get across.
	So where do you find companions?
	Well, the only thing that I can suggest, and this truly, I mean, I try and speak from my heart, this one really comes from the depths of my heart, that the way that you try, if you want to, and I think it's perfectly healthy to, we are social animals, if you want to find companions with whom you can speak Mandarin, You don't work on trying to teach them Mandarin.
	You work on trying to perfect your knowledge of Mandarin.
	I guess we're overusing the Mandarin metaphor, but I think it works.
	You don't try and turn other people into philosophers.
	You don't try and turn other people into anarcho-capitalists or rationalists or empiricists or those who have great respect for the scientific method or who believe in universally preferable behavior or whatever it is that you're trying to talk to them about.
	The best way to teach others is to learn yourself.
	The best way to teach others is to teach yourself.
	When you are perfect in the conversation, and we're never perfect, but you know what I mean.
	When you are perfected in your understanding, then you will change other people without even noticing it.
	If you go out in the world as a push debater, as we talked about recently, and you try to grab people and drag them to the water and make them drink and make them thank you, they will just resist and fight you.
	And It's only going to make you feel more alienated, and that's part of the devil that's in the world, so to speak, that philosophers who get close to the truth, the last trap is frustration, right?
	You pass through all of these traps, as Eddie Murphy in some film says, is this where the flying monkeys come in, or the flying bats or something?
	We pass through all these trials as philosophers, and the last trial is frustration with our fellow man and incomprehension at the distance we have traveled.
	And that is a very dangerous trap.
	And this is where most philosophers and all philosophers tend to fall.
	I think that's where Ayn Rand fell.
	And I think that the best way to become a communicator that truly motivates others is to, with all humility, devote yourself to wisdom, to knowledge, to learning, to depth.
	And to learning from others.
	And to trust that through conversation, through gentle and inviting conversation, which again, I'm not saying I always achieve, but through gentle and inviting conversation with others, that is how you can teach people.
	People are very frightened in the world.
	Everybody's faking it. Everybody pretends that they know something that they don't know.
	How to live. What is right.
	What is good. What is noble.
	What is true. How to determine truth from falsehood.
	People have no clue about that.
	People don't even know how to determine truth from falsehood.
	And of course everybody, as we talked about in Jennyism Part 2, wants to rush off and start arguing about gay marriage and so on, but if you haven't figured out what is true or false, that is just a massive waste of time.
	So, the last suggestion is just to say, when you start debating with someone, Just say, okay, well, you know, before we start, we need to have some ground rules, right?
	If you're going to go and play tennis, you don't bring along a bowling ball and a cannon and just swing wildly and shoot stuff, right?
	I mean, you've got to have some rules.
	You don't just sort of play chess by sitting down and then try and fence with the two queens, right?
	I mean, you've got to figure out what the ground rules are, and if you sit down with somebody who's got an opinion about something that you disagree with and so on, You can just say, OK, well, how are we going to know who's right?
	How are we going to know? You have these opinions.
	That's fantastic. But can you tell me how you know whether those opinions are true?
	What's the difference between true and false?
	And what's the difference between true and false?
	Now, that's the most essential question.
	If they can't answer that, then there's one or two things that's going to happen.
	Either A, they're going to say, holy shit, you know what?
	I don't know what the difference between true and false is.
	And they're going to have the ego strength, they're going to have the maturity to reveal to themselves their inadequacy in this area.
	They just don't know. They don't even know what the difference between true and false is.
	And there's no point studying the theory of relativity if you don't know the difference between a true and false scientific proposition.
	If they have the strength and the humility to recognize that they don't know the difference between true and false, then you can really start to build a relationship where you explore truth and so on.
	You can make some suggestions. You can ask some questions.
	But if you start launching in with, well, you're wrong, the state is bad, the family is corrupt, God doesn't exist, and so on, then it's just two television sets yelling opinions at each other.
	It doesn't really go anywhere. And this just further increases the alienation of frustration.
	Philosophy should be a source of deep and abiding joy, which is not to say that it's not often frustrating.
	It can be frustrating to have children too, but they are the source of deep and abiding joy.
	So... That's sort of my suggestion in terms of alienation.
	You learn the conversation yourselves.
	You steep yourself in wisdom like a thousand-year-old teabag.
	Boy, there's one for the bumper stickers.
	You steep yourself in wisdom and through that the world will simply change around you.
	You focus on your own integrity.
	You focus on your own gentleness.
	You focus on your own approach.
	And you focus on your own desire to change and help others.
	To some degree, I think it's true, you have to love other people to want to change them.
	You have to love them. You have to respect them.
	Because if you don't, then you're too liable to go into bullying.
	Too liable to land into bullying.
	Anyway, those are sort of my thoughts as they have come out this week about the challenges that are occurring.
	But I would like to say that it's an essential part of the conversation that we're having here.
	You can take a lot of the pressure off yourself.
	Every conversation that you don't have, that you bypass, is not a massive change of integrity.
	I was getting a haircut this week, and this was as a Greek woman.
	Who was asking me, oh, did you get married in a Greek church?
	Oh, did you have a Greek priest there?
	Oh, this. Oh, that. And I said, no, we didn't get married in a Greek church.
	We got married in a beautiful hall overlooking the lake.
	And no, it was a civil ceremony.
	And no, we didn't have the Greeks.
	And no, our children aren't going to be baptized.
	Now, did I go into, well, because God doesn't exist and you're a religious fanatic and this and that?
	No. Why? Because I'm just getting a haircut.
	If I change, it's around triage, it's around marshalling your resources.
	Let's say that I stayed there all afternoon and changed the mind of one hairdresser.
	Well, I must say that I don't think that's a home run.
	I would much rather talk with you people.
	Wait, you pay for haircuts.
	Oh, yes, that's good!
	Let's cap this heartfelt confession with a bold joke.
	Actually, I thought of one myself, so I'm not going to blame you for that.
	Yeah, no, it's pretty quick.
	All right. So that's where all my donations are going.
	Absolutely. You know, I've got to tell you, there is a moment in every band's life, and perhaps you've reached it, and perhaps you haven't, when your barber says to you, there's nothing I can do about the top, but would you like me to trim your ears?
	That is a moment that I passed a few years ago.
	And, uh...
	Sorry, but we...
	Not in our 20s, let's put it that way.
	Not even in our 30s.
	Let's not even start getting on the pencil and trawls I've got coming out of my nostrils either.
	I look like the space shuttle taking off with hair.
	Alright, so I would like to open it up.
	If you would like to ask questions, if you would click on Request Mike, I am more than open.
	And I also wanted to mention that if you do have Ask a Therapist questions, feel free to send them in.
	We do get flurries of them and then they dry up.
	We've only had one this week, I think.
	One or two that we didn't get to from last week.
	So please send in your Ask A Therapist questions.
	It is a staggeringly popular podcast.
	These shows and the Ask A Therapist are what people want to listen to.
	I think that they put up with me in the car, but this is the stuff they absolutely want to get to.
	So if you have Ask A Therapist questions, feel free to ask them.
	We'd really appreciate those questions.
	Of course, we'll keep it perfectly anonymous, Greg.
	So don't worry about that.
	And feel free to participate here as well.
	Just kidding. Look, you know, I find it almost impossible to avoid the ball jokes as well, so what are you going to do, right?
	Don't worry about it. All right.
	I am waiting for somebody who wishes to talk to me.
	We do have a number of people in, so feel free to chat away if you have any questions.
	Otherwise, no problem, we have another West Wing to watch.
	I can wait all day, class.
	Is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?
	Did you bring enough gum for everyone?
	I'm a little tacked out on topics, says the FreeDomainRecorderBot.
	I have a media recommendation.
	Absolutely. Let's go deep, baby.
	Did anyone see? We watched a little bit of Babel without the subtitles.
	I just downloaded the first little bit, and just to see if I liked it enough to go and see it in the theater, it really did seem kind of confusing.
	So, anyway. I know Greg recommended it, but I didn't get very far in it.
	And The Departed also didn't really seem to work very well at all.
	The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis.
	Well, let's hope that we all get to keep ourselves for at least a century.
	That would be great. What's it about?
	Maybe you have a question, sweetie.
	Can we go back downstairs? Is that your question?
	Freud propaganda and so on, politics and advertising.
	Noam Chomsky has quite a good number of both books.
	Oh, you know what? If we're going to do media recommendations, Life in the Emerald City is a very interesting book to read.
	I think I've mentioned it on podcast before.
	I'm also plowing through a book called Overthrow.
	It's like a century and a half of U.S. foreign policy that is involved in the overthrow.
	Of foreign governments, the undermining and overthrow of foreign governments, and it's really romantic, you know, so if you're looking to get it on with your favorite lady, a little bit of foreign policy stuff, it's absolutely fantastic.
	Century of the Self argues that Freudian psychoanalysis is the basis for modern conformity and the dysfunction it breeds.
	Well, I think I will try and have a look at that.
	A four-hour documentary would require that I not talk for four hours, so naturally it would be an absolutely staggering strain, so we might have to take that a little bit at a time.
	Duct tape. I knew you people were going to turn on me.
	on me, I can't believe it lasted this long.
	Some of the comments in recent podcasts regarding the penal system, that's the system of penises I think, are jailers to blame for violence in prison cells, Sounds like it's approaching positive obligations.
	No? Can you clarify that a little bit more?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	So if you can type it in, that would be great too.
	Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
	I just wait for him to type it in.
	Are jailers to blame for violence in prison cells?
	Well, you know, this is the whole complicated mess that goes on in terms of integrity in a coercive system.
	And to me, this is a big foggy arena with some bodies at one end and some meadows at the other end, but in the middle is a whole load of confusion.
	And this is, of course, based on the questions that people have about, well, I pay my taxes and therefore I'm participating in war and the oppression of the poor.
	And the subjugation of races and foreign policy that is highly destructive and so on.
	Well, what I would say is that if you do take on a job as a prison guard, almost by definition you're a sadist to begin with.
	And so you have some pretty corrupt and dysfunctional, if not downright evil, personality structures in place already.
	But I would say that the state as a whole, and of course the whole point of the state is you can't pin the damn blame on anyone, it's this big amorphous pass-the-buck mechanism, but I would say that the state as a whole is responsible For the violence that occurs within the prisons,
	and I'm not even going to try and throw the dart at the fog and hit anyone, but individual prison guards, I would hold them morally culpable in the same way that I would hold...
	Soldiers, morally culpable.
	Soldiers will shoot people, and if you are regularly going to a job where you are in control of everybody's lives, and you do not help...
	Can you just let those finish?
	and you do not help the people who are asking you for help then yeah I think that there's something that is not too right about all of that because of course you're the one as the prison guard fundamentally who is preventing the prisoners from leaving right you are the one who is going to shoot them if they leave so yeah if you kidnap someone and you don't feed them you're responsible if you're the guy who's holding the gun to that person and say you'll shoot them if they leave your house then yeah I don't think it's a positive obligation in the sense that you are required to intervene in every potential crime and rape that could ever occur in the world.
	But if you have the gun at your pocket and you will shoot the prisoner who tries to leave, then yeah, I think that you're kind of morally responsible because they're only there and getting raped because you won't let them leave.
	So, and again, we're not talking about the violent criminals, and there would be some solution for that, and so on.
	But, the prison guard is guilty, says this gentleman, the prison guard is guilty of kidnapping, yes, but the prison mate is the one guilty of rape, wouldn't you agree?
	Oh, absolutely, without a doubt.
	Without a doubt, I've not tried to intimate that the rape is the responsibility of the prison guard, for sure.
	I mean, if I kidnap a woman and lock her in my basement and keep her there upon threat of murder, and I let other people in to come and rape her, then I am not responsible for the moral crime of rape, except that I am responsible for kidnapping, for threats of murder, for forcible confinement, and so on.
	And the rape is only possible.
	The rape is only possible because I have kidnapped the woman and have locked her in my basement.
	And I'm taking money from people who want to rape her.
	So I think that I'm definitely causal to the rape.
	I am not primarily responsible.
	I'm not enacting the rape.
	But I am that which makes the rape possible.
	So I am not innocent of the rape, as well as all the other crimes that I have committed.
	Of course, the people who are doing the raping are morally wrong as well, but...
	This is all a very difficult situation for the prisoners, right?
	This is a very difficult situation morally to untangle.
	So, for instance, if you're in a concentration camp, I mean, if I just come over to your house and steal your dinner, then obviously there's something wrong, right?
	I could go and get my own dinner.
	I could go to a charity or whatever.
	If I'm in a concentration camp and I steal your dinner because somebody stole my dinner and there's just not enough food to go around and it's kill or die and it's starve or be starved, Who knows?
	Who knows what the ethics are in those kinds of situations?
	The people who are the most ethically responsible are the people who are forcing us to stay in the concentration camp.
	The crimes that occur within the concentration camp are largely a result of the forcible confinement and the resulting brutality that occurs.
	So I would say, I'm not trying to say that the prison rapists are all angels or anything like that, but It's very hard to say exactly what their actions would be.
	There's lots of criminals who will rape or will at least have homosexual sex when they are in prison who then would never do that when they weren't in prison, right?
	So it's hard to say.
	And I don't think it truly matters because the real issue is that nobody should have the right to...
	No one should have a monopoly of the right to grab people, lock them up with other sociopaths, and never intervene when the inevitable brutalities occur.
	I mean, nobody has that capacity.
	Nobody can logically or justifiably in any rational moral system have that ability or that right.
	So once we deal with that, then we can start to deal with the other stuff.
	But I think focusing on the rapes and the crimes of the rapists within the prison, it's just not...
	I think it's whacking the dog.
	I think it's looking at the problem from the wrong way, but that's just...
	Alright, we have a listener who wants to talk.
	Okay, Brother Harmonize. Go for it.
	I'd say that I do that if I'm in prison or not.
	I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?
	No, it's not a question.
	I'm saying I do that whether I'm in prison or not.
	You do what? What you just said.
	Oh, you mean like rape people?
	No. Okay, I'm not even going to bother responding to that.
	I don't even know what that question is.
	Sorry, just had to bump the guy.
	So, yeah, if anybody else wants to talk, that would be great as well.
	But I'm not going to go down that road.
	One other thing that I can sort of mention that may be of interest to people to move on to a more pleasant topic than prison rape and talk about equatorial dictatorships.
	There is a hand-wringing, a Bono-inspired hand-wringing, about the 42 trillion dollars that has been poured into Africa.
	Over the past 40 years or so, and gee, where did all this money go, and what could be wrong, and how could things have worked out so badly that the standard of living in equatorial Africa, or in Africa as a whole, is lower now than it was 40 or 50 years ago, after 42 trillion dollars.
	And people just, of course, have no capacity processing this, because it's very hard for people not to think in collectives, right?
	So they think there's a big bathtub called Africa, That we filled up with 500 million gallons of water and it's bone dry.
	And it's like, this is incomprehensible.
	We poured all this money into Africa and Africa's poorer.
	How could it be? And this is, of course, the great and basic fallacy of thinking in terms of collectives.
	And this is the kind of moral mess that collectivized thinking obscures, right?
	I mean, what is the real issue with Africa?
	It's not really that difficult to figure out.
	In fact, it's very simple to figure out, but you just have to stop thinking of it in terms of continents and countries.
	The money was not given to Africa because Africa does not exist.
	There's a land mass and there are some people and that exists, but Africa as a whole, you cannot give money to a concept any more than you can spend the idea of money.
	So the money was not given to Africa.
	Who was the money given to?
	Was it given to the individual people themselves?
	Well, no, of course not.
	The money was given to the warlords.
	And I find it really quite shocking that this is not...
	Well, I shouldn't say shocking. Although, you know what?
	I am still shocked. I'm going to be perfectly honest.
	I continually beat my head against this wall and continually go, ow, a wall!
	So, I do find it shocking that this just seems to be something you don't talk about, right?
	I mean, because foreign aid is, you know, foreign aid.
	Setting up clinics and trying to educate children and all these sorts of wonderful things and...
	And I just find it absolutely shocking that nobody's pointing out that the money was forcibly taken from taxpayers.
	Oh, actually, that I would be surprised at.
	But that the money is handed to governments, to warlords who are ruling over their people.
	And not only, of course, is money given, but arms are given.
	In fact, the money is often given just so that people can buy arms from the host countries.
	So England will give...
	I don't know, Nairobi is a city.
	England will give, I don't know, Kenya a whole bunch of money as long as Kenya buys a whole bunch of arms from England, right?
	That's the big circle. It's a way of, you know, you tax people, you give it to the foreign governments, it comes back in terms of purchases or...
	Hiring of local contractors or people or whatever in a lot of its arms, right?
	So what would absolutely I think be a far better way of putting it in terms of understanding what happened to Africa and conversely of course in a smaller way what's happening to the poor in the welfare state as a whole is to say the following.
	Isn't it mysterious? Isn't it absolutely mind-boggling that when you give an enormous amount of money and weaponry to brutal cannibalistic dictators that a country becomes poorer?
	Isn't it amazing that we have armed and subsidized bloodthirsty, murderous psychopaths and given them the power to shoot up an entire continent?
	Isn't it shocking that that continent isn't doing better?
	I wonder when they're going to take that same approach at home, right, and there's some poor neighborhood, and what they're going to do is they're going to ship a whole bunch of Mafia in, and they're going to give the Mafia tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're going to give the Mafia an enormous amount of arms and say, gee, I wonder why that neighborhood's doing so badly.
	I just, to me, it's just completely, I mean, you don't even have to be an anarcho-capitalist to get that one.
	Whatever you subsidize increases, whatever you tax decreases.
	If you subsidize brutal dictators and arm them to the gills, what do you think is going to happen to the continent?
	But of course, that's something that people don't really like to talk about because that gets painfully close to the basic issue that nothing good can come from violence, right?
	That the issue is not that the money is given.
	To the foreign dictators, the issue is that the money is taken from gunpoint from the domestic citizens because you don't get the foreign dictators without first taking the money.
	You don't get to give the money to the foreign dictators without first taking the money from the domestic citizens.
	So when you start to look at that, that violence doesn't work.
	in Africa, then if you start to really probe that, then you have to say, well gee, it went on for so long, and it wasn't like Africa got a whole lot better and then weirdly got a whole lot worse.
	Africa went into the shitter the moment that they started doing all this foreign aid.
	Then people have to ask questions about the nature of the government, that if this has been going on for 50 years, Why didn't anyone stop it?
	Why didn't anyone notice that everything they were doing was simply making two generations of helpless Africans livestock fit only for slaughter and hurting?
	Why is it that the government will continue with these things?
	Well, people don't like asking those questions.
	They really, really, really don't like asking those questions because that leads them to the lack of benevolence of governments, it leads them to the lack of existence of God, and fundamentally and finally, of course, it leads them to the lack of benevolence within their own families and their own slavish devotion to authority as a way of escaping moral responsibility on their own.
	So, I just was reading that the other day, and it's just one of these topics that...
	It doesn't take any thought to figure it out.
	You don't need to wade through a whole bunch of statistics.
	You just need to say, gee, I wonder what happens when you give lots of money and guns to criminals.
	That's not how they do it at home, right?
	I mean, they find some crazy guy shooting up the town.
	They don't say, let's give him a million dollars and a trunk load of Glocks and turn him loose.
	That's not how it works at home.
	It's only how it works overseas with those who have no voice.
	Did we have anything else? Yeah, the protection of Western business interests is a very important aspect of this, of course.
	Wherever the US, and I don't mean to pick on the US, it's common to all colonial powers, but wherever the US intervenes, there are significant resources, strategic or otherwise.
	I mean, in South America, it's metals and copper and coffee and all these sorts of money makers.
	And in Iran, of course, which was overthrown by the first successful CIA coup in the early 50s.
	To fight the Spanish, they ended up taking over Hawaii, which they then were able to use as a launching pad for an attack on the Philippines.
	So yeah, I mean, these resources are absolutely common.
	The funniest thing when you sort of dig into this kind of stuff is that in the late 1940s, early 1950s, Iran, recognizing the weakness of the colonial powers after the decimation of World War II, decided to nationalize the oil industry.
	That the British and other colonial powers, the French in particular, had set up in the Middle East, and they decided to nationalize it.
	And the British, of course, went apeshit because this was a huge cash cow for the ruling class, right?
	I mean, it wasn't going too, too much to help any of the Iranians or to help any of the British, but this is where an enormous number of British fortunes were based on, was this sort of violent predation, this land piracy of oil.
	The funniest thing in the world, at least for me, was that during this phase, England was nationalizing all of its key industries.
	So England was nationalizing gas production, coal production, electricity, I can't remember what else, but it was a huge amount of nationalization that was going on In the late 1940s and early 1950s, because you see, England had just lost, what, 8 million souls dead to fight socialism, so the best thing to do with that kind of victory is to start socializing your own economy, because that's what governments do.
	And at the same time that England was nationalizing all of its own industries, Iran decided to do what?
	Nationalize an industry. And one of the foreign diplomats, one of the British diplomats in Iran, was sort of, when this was pointed out to him, it's like, well, how could you object to nationalization?
	It's exactly what you're doing at home.
	They said, well, you know, that's fine to home, but out here in darky land, you know, it's just not done.
	That's just the funniest thing.
	You know, this is the kind of principles that people just invent to continue to pillage the general population and the resources of the planet.
	But this is continual.
	This is perpetual. You do not have imperialism without resource predation and resource destruction.
	Copper, as I said, in South America.
	And Fruit, the banana companies of South America, Legion, for going into partnerships with the government.
	To simply take all the land, they pay off the government who shoot the peasants who might try and take the land back.
	Everybody makes a fortune, the peasants live in misery, and then because we have a whole lot of really shitty intellectuals on the planet, the peasants are told that the companies are the enemy, that the multinationals are the enemy, not the government, right?
	The multinationals make a hundred million dollars a month.
	Of picking bananas and selling bananas, of which they then pay $10 million to the government, who pays $5 million to the troops who shoot anyone who tries to interfere with the scheme.
	And who is considered to be the big problem?
	Is it the government? Is it the troops?
	No, it's the McAntelist company.
	As if that could be changed.
	As if you get some other company in there and the exact same thing isn't going to happen.
	Whenever you look for social change, you want to look for something wherein you can't reproduce it.
	Let's say what happened in Chile and in other places in South America was they said, well, you know, it's really bad that these foreigners are exploiting our resources, so we're going to nationalize it.
	This is what I end and other people did in South America.
	We're sick and tired of these Yankee bastards and these European bastards pillaging all of our resources, saith the government leaders.
	So we're going to nationalize it ourselves.
	And, of course, that's one of the reasons why the U.S. is continually intervening in places like Mexico and Chile and Nicaragua and so on, and Brazil and Argentina for the beef.
	And so that's what's so funny, right?
	And then they say, well...
	Our government is going to control this resource now.
	Well, so what? Who gives a shit if it's a Yankee imperial bastard who's doing it or some bastard who was born a little bit closer to you?
	Is there some mileage limit wherein a bastard turns into a saint?
	No. Oh, he was born 100 miles from me.
	He's a good guy. 101. Oh, he's a bad guy.
	What does it matter? All that happens is people keep getting told a different leader will be better.
	A different slave owner will be better.
	No one is ever told, huh, I wonder if we need a slave owner at all.
	All right. Oh, sorry.
	Here I am looking for G and its free domain recorder bot.
	Yes, go ahead. Yeah.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, sort of.
	That kind of stuff.
	I was wondering, you say, about 400 minutes ago.
	Greg, if you could just pause the downloading of porn in the background, that might help a little bit, just because it seems like your bandwidth is being eaten up quite a bit.
	So if you could do this sort of shave goat thing a little later, that might just help a bit in terms, just in terms of throughput.
	Oh wait, I'm so sorry, that's me!
	Oh my god, it's my porn!
	I'm so sorry.
	Go ahead.
	Greg, is that you?
	Sorry, I'm just looking at this point. No, I'm kidding.
	I'm sorry, you really are breaking up quite a bit.
	You don't have anything else going on in the background on the computer, do you?
	No, I don't.
	This didn't work well.
	I just got a sense based on your tone that it was going to be a very tough question.
	So I'm just putting the bandwidth throttle on.
	Greg sounds like a Dalek.
	Exterminate! Exterminate!
	Ron Paul, 08.
	Oh, do we even want to get into that?
	I'm just not sure that we do.
	Oh, it was further up.
	Ron Paul in 08, because...
	Oh, I think he's sort of saying, based on some new slave owner, we'll do us a whole lot better.
	All right, sorry. Greg, see if you can do something with your bandwidth stuff.
	See if there's anything else that's going on.
	You might, you know, and this is a weird thing, but you might be having something like a virus scan is being loaded up or something like that could be occurring.
	So just see if you can see if anything's eating up your bandwidth.
	And sorry, Mr.
	Nate had a question.
	Yes, Nate, go ahead. Oh, I didn't have any.
	Actually, I just came in on the middle of this.
	I have no idea what's going on.
	We just solved all your problems.
	Yes, they're all solved.
	Every single one of them. Absolutely.
	We solved all of your problems and we gave you some very helpful sex tips.
	So you might just want to rewind this and play it a little bit later.
	Yeah, I don't... Oh, never mind.
	We think that the thong of the gas mask, definitely not the way to go.
	But again, you can sort of rewind and hear that.
	Actually, I think Greg said it was the way to go, but that wasn't my opinion.
	I'm afraid to rewind it back.
	All right. Well, listen, I'll let you move to listening.
	And if you have any questions, just click on the ask for mic.
	All right. All right.
	Thanks. Greg was asking about why the African age started in the first place.
	What is the business incentive?
	Greg, is that right? Well, I don't know the details, but I will tell you based on a book that I read a little while ago called Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
	That a power vacuum opened up in the traditionally Western-dominated, Western-state-dominated countries in the Middle East, particularly, of course, and in Africa as well.
	As you know, the age of imperialism, the 18th and 19th centuries, the age of imperialism and mercantilism Which struck down domestic rule in South America, in Africa, in Europe, sorry, in the Middle East, in Asia, and in sort of other areas spotted around the globe.
	The predation of resources that occurred through the mercantilist system, wherein governments would...
	I mean, the basic three-part ugly devilish harmony of pillaging the domestic population is that the government allows some company to come in and take over thousands and thousands of acres of land, or something like that.
	Or maybe the government is simply displaced to begin with.
	But because you don't allow the free market to occur, In the realm of hourly income, normally when there's a great demand for workers, the price of those workers, like anything where there's an excessive demand for, will begin to be bid up, right? So you all know these stories of Nike and the sweatshops that they're paying these guys, you know, 50 cents an hour, 25 cents an hour.
	Well, the question is why?
	Why are they only being paid 25 cents an hour?
	Well, obviously it's because their marginal utility, what it is that they can produce from an economic standpoint is very low.
	So, of course, you would expect That every capitalist enterprise on the planet would go thundering over to these sweatshops somewhere and start bidding up the price of these laborers.
	I mean, that's exactly what would occur.
	And would that cause dislocations at home?
	Of course it would. But so what?
	So to agree in the big picture because The goods that are then being produced by people working for one-tenth the price are going to be one-fifth the price when they end up in the home country.
	So, yeah, there's a shift of resources.
	People lose their jobs, they have to retrain, but economically it's net positive because the goods that are produced with this cheap labor are that much cheaper in the home market.
	Of course, what happens is the price of labor gets bid up over in the third world country.
	But when you get the multinational slash government cartels set up, this doesn't happen.
	So what happens is, and I'm not accusing Nike, I don't know, but this is sort of my understanding, That Nike goes over and they get a concession from the government to hire all these people.
	The government does not allow other people to come in and bid for that resource.
	And certainly this is the case with the banana companies in South America and the copper companies, that there are banana companies in say the Honduras that had like 200,000 Acres of land.
	And how did they get that land?
	Well, they didn't plant it. In fact, vast amounts of that land weren't even planted.
	They just kept them aside for future expansion.
	But they drove all of the peasants off.
	This is why the peasants end up living in the mountains, starving to death and becoming revolutionaries.
	This is where the Che Guevara's come from.
	These people don't just pop out of nowhere.
	They're all driven off their land and then There's nowhere for them to go, right?
	Because the economy is not growing.
	It's all the resources and the money being siphoned off, right?
	So the banana company will make investments in politics, right?
	Not in land development.
	So they make $100 million, they give $10 million to the government, the government gives $5 million or probably about $50,000 to a bunch of troops who shoot people who try to contest the land That the banana company owns.
	There's no competition.
	Nobody else can come in and bid.
	There's no competition from local people who are going to be growing bananas because they're all driven off their lands.
	This is why you get this continual cycle of violence that occurs in South America to some degree in the Middle East and in Africa, of course.
	It's just ridiculous. So, yeah, there was a huge power vacuum because the allied powers, with the exception of America, which emerged from World War II as a superpower, and the only superpower until Russia got the bomb in 1952, I think it was, but...
	There was a massive, soft, slow collapse of power around the world because all the soldiers were dead or exhausted or wounded, and they just couldn't send them overseas.
	And this is why, of course, all of the nationalizations of the domestic industries occurred, because you've got this massive, rapacious, bastard, scum-sucking ruling class that is used to getting all of its money from overseas cartels.
	From these overseas monopolies, from having nationalized the industries and the resources of foreign countries.
	At the end of the Second World War, they didn't have the muscle.
	They didn't have the muscle to go and get all of this money from these other neighborhoods.
	So what did they do? Well, they began to steal from the home country.
	I mean, the mafia guy, he's got a great business set up ten blocks over, but then he loses his muscle.
	He's just going to have to use...
	His local muscle to get the street won over, or his own street.
	So what happened was they ran out of soldiers, so they couldn't patrol the Third World, they couldn't patrol all of the countries that they were ruling.
	And what did they do?
	Well, they still had the policemen.
	So you lose the ability for the soldiers to go and shoot up people in foreign countries, but you still have the police who are more than happy to shoot up people domestically.
	So that's why at the end of the Second World War, the socialism in a sense, the nationalization of resources, both human and environmental, the nationalization of resources that occurred in the Third World was brought home.
	This is why all of the Western countries went socialist after the Second World War.
	Because, except for America, of course, which could continue to prey on overseas people, right, who don't vote, who, you know, you could defer the effects of it that much greater.
	America continues to prey overseas because its military wasn't destroyed.
	Its military-industrial complex wasn't destroyed and wrecked by the Second World War.
	It was only limited by the Russians, who may have shot back, right?
	I mean, so... So the basic motive was that there was a power vacuum.
	And where there's a power vacuum, you are going to try and gain control of the resources that are available, right?
	I mean, this is what happens, right?
	Some mafia guy dies and all of the people he was getting protection money from get like two weeks of not getting protection money before some other asshole comes in, swoops in and tries to grab everything that's now on the table.
	So I don't know the details, but I can guarantee you that that's the general movement, that with this power vacuum, what happens is...
	And you can see this, of course, this is exactly what happened in Iran, right?
	So when the Iranians were going to nationalize the British and pay, and pay them, right?
	I mean, I'm not to say that the Iranians were good guys or anything, but they were going to pay.
	Before the value of what they were going to nationalize, the British knew that there was just no way they could go and invade Iran.
	They were four years out of the worst war they'd ever had.
	Nobody would accept it at home.
	And this is why, of course, they were nationalizing everything at home, because these assholes need to feed on something.
	They don't like to work. They don't want to get up and have a job.
	So they've got to steal from everyone else.
	They can't steal overseas, so they have to start stealing domestically.
	They can't use the military, they'll use the police to terrorize the citizens at home and nationalize all their stuff.
	But the British knew they couldn't do it, so they had to get the Americans involved.
	And then it was the Americans that funded the disruptions that occurred that ended up with the Shah being overthrown and putting in the new guy.
	Does that make transition to Libertopia difficult, this power vacuum?
	Oh no, the transition to Libertopia is not difficult at all.
	It's not difficult at all.
	It's impossible. And I only say that slightly facetiously.
	I mean, for me, if you're holding your breath waiting for Libertopia to appear in some external sense, like the state being gotten rid of, the church being gotten rid of, and so on, I mean, you can give it a shot and maybe you'll be right, but I'm pretty sure that you're going to end up kind of frustrated and crossing your fingers for the second coming that isn't going to come.
	So what I would say, again, don't worry about the transition to libertopia.
	Achieve the libertopia in your own life.
	Achieve the libertopia with the people around you.
	Get the corrupt people out.
	Get the good people in. Learn how to communicate as best you can in the...
	Expostulation of freedom and the communication of freedom and the beauty of virtue.
	Let's take care of the pennies.
	The pounds, so to speak, or the dollars will take care of themselves.
	Let's focus on our own lives and let's spread libertopia through example and not through worrying about the state.
	I don't think about getting rid of the state.
	I really don't. I think about trying to do a good show about freedom that's going to engage people.
	Testify! As long as you're afraid of freedom, you'll fear a power vacuum.
	I am Gold Gulch. Yeah, look, I mean...
	The only way that the state is going to be gotten rid of is to get people...
	To stop being afraid of each other, right?
	I mean, the state is continually turning us against each other, right?
	It's making us afraid all the time.
	This is the drive that people have to watch cop shows, and this is why mafia movies are so valuable, and this is why 9-11 is so valuable.
	It's just, we're all supposed to be afraid of each other, and that's why we're supposed to run to the state for protection, which is nonsense.
	We're not supposed to be afraid of each other.
	We're supposed to be afraid of the state.
	But they say that the danger in your life is criminals, and the danger in your life is bin Laden, and the danger in your life is from overseas, and the danger in your life is global warming, and the danger in your life is, oh, remember acid rain?
	Ever hear about that anymore?
	No, because it turned out to be total bullshit.
	So they're always trying to tell you that you must be afraid and only we can protect you.
	And whatever it is that we're supposed to be afraid of just keeps changing and changing and changing and changing, dizzyingly, over and over again.
	Everything's changing. Global warming, global cooling, nuclear war, nuclear accidents, terrorism, criminals.
	Now it's what? Fast food?
	We're supposed to be afraid of fast food?
	Yeah, because the Big Mac's the big fucking danger in my life.
	Not the state that takes 60% of my income and will throw me in jail if I even try to resist.
	Yeah, it's the big fucking Mac that I've got to worry about.
	Yes, you're absolutely right.
	Parents do do the same thing, but tell me more.
	Parents teach us to fear each other.
	I used to think that it was my brother who tormented me.
	We were just in the same cage.
	I think that's very true.
	I think that's very true. I think that's very true, and that really does sort of spark some thought in me about sibling conflict, which I'll have to mull over a little bit more.
	One thing that my therapist, I've mentioned this before, but one thing my therapist said about my mother after hearing me talk about my life with her for quite some time, she said, Steph, your mother had an unlived life of a murderer.
	She had murderous impulses, but she didn't act them out, but the violence and the desire for destruction was acted out within the family.
	And certainly my brother seemed to be the club that worked when her hand wasn't around at times.
	And that degree to which parents control, in a sense, the psychological violence of the children towards each other is quite important, I think.
	Yeah, they do pit siblings against each other, I think.
	But they also pit themselves against their kids.
	Yeah, and of course, the fundamental thing that occurs with children, which I talked about in the podcast I did yesterday, which I was actually quite pleased with, The most fundamental destruction that somebody can do is to set you against yourself.
	They do that by putting you in impossible situations.
	You can never think of sex.
	You can never masturbate. You can never have any doubt in God.
	You can never doubt the virtue of your parents.
	You're lazy. You're selfish.
	You're bad. You're mean. You're this.
	To set you against yourself, to look upon yourself As a rabid beast that needs to be locked and chained and controlled and that your basic human nature is violent and evil.
	You get all this stuff on the board, and I get emails like this fairly continually where people say, well, yeah, but if we get rid of the state, it's going to be just a jackal fest of endless murder.
	All that's telling me is that this is what these people were told about themselves when they were children.
	That they were bad, that they were wrong, that they were mean, that they were vicious, that they were this, that they were that, and they had to be brutalized and beaten into, I'm gonna beat some sense into you, I'm gonna beat some virtue into you, I'm gonna beat the devil out of you.
	Almost always when people are talking about human nature, they're just talking about what they were told about themselves when they were two years old.
	And to confuse that With any empirical statement about human beings, I hate these conversations about human nature.
	People don't know what the hell they're talking about.
	They're just projecting, projecting, projecting, projecting.
	People would so much rather think that the world is evil than to think that their parents were evil.
	Yeah, my mom's martyr complex was especially hard.
	This is just stuff that I'm reading from the people who are not...
	Wanting to talk to me? You're helpless.
	Why aren't you helping yourself? There is no such thing as human nature.
	The only thing that human beings have is adaptability.
	There's no such thing as human nature.
	There's no such thing as rights.
	There's no such thing as virtue.
	There's no such thing as truth.
	There's only compared to what?
	There's only compared to what?
	There's only the comparison between ideas and reality and the principles derived from reality.
	But people will constantly use these terms because these terms are malleable, these terms are chameleons, and they can be a gun that fits any sized hand, right?
	People talk about rights, and I hate the term rights.
	I know I use it myself, and I'm trying to wean myself from it because it's very convenient, but it is a bad, bad word to be using.
	People have a right to nothing.
	All right, can you put me on now?
	I'm on my Mac.
	I think he means he's sitting on his hamburger.
	I'm not sure what that means. Yes, I will in just a moment.
	We have another gentleman who wishes to talk.
	The waiting?
	Oh, he did? Oh, okay.
	All right, well, we'll put Mr.
	G on, and then we will go to the other person, Avrupali, and see if he wants to talk as well.
	All right, go ahead. Hey, Steph.
	Is that better? Just kidding.
	Go on. It's not still choppy, is it?
	No, no. I'm just fighting with you.
	Oh, okay. Okay.
	Well, I didn't actually have anything specific to say, but...
	Well, thanks for joining.
	If you'd like to come back, no, go ahead.
	I was just letting you know it was working out, that's all.
	But on human nature, as long as we're on the subject, would it be reasonable to, I mean if we were to use that label to define a,
	I don't know, a specific As a way of subsuming specific biological characteristics, like the desire to maximize resources and minimize risk and that sort of thing.
	Well, I mean, that's true of all creatures.
	And I would certainly say, you know, rational animal, specifically enlarged or almost mutated language abilities.
	I would say that the ability to evolve in a conceptual format without having to wait Yeah, I think that's biology.
	You don't say there's a paramecium nature.
	There's just characteristics of dogs and characteristics of parameciums and there's characteristics of human beings that biologists could tell us about for days and then everyone else could say, oh yeah, well dolphins use tools and otters use tools.
	Everyone will find those exceptions but of course otters don't do as many podcasts as they should so I've got to assume their language skills aren't quite as good.
	Certainly, whenever I want them on as guests, I get nothing.
	Well, actually, I don't get nothing. I get some broken clams, but that's not really what I'm looking for.
	So yeah, there's characteristics of human beings, but human nature is just always used to justify power.
	Human nature is basically evil, and that's why we need a government.
	Human nature is basically corrupt and must be saved through Jesus.
	Okay, you start talking about the nature of a clam, and I'm with you, right?
	But it seems to me that all you're going to end up doing is talking about the physical or biological characteristics.
	Okay, so then what it means exactly to be a human being then is simply the rational consciousness.
	Well, sure. I mean, and there's lots of other characteristics.
	You know, we are the bald apes.
	And so, I mean, there's lots of other characteristics that, you know, we...
	But yeah, they're physical characteristics, right?
	There is no such thing as human nature, right?
	You don't... I mean, you open up the human brain, you'll get electricity, you've got chemicals, you get neurons, you get all of this kind of stuff.
	You don't find a little chunk of nature lodged somewhere in the frontal lobe, right?
	I mean, it's just a metaphor. It's exactly the same as the word soul, right?
	It can have some utility.
	From a really metaphorical standpoint, but it doesn't mean anything as far as reality goes.
	And just one clarification, you're the bald ape.
	See, that's why I keep talking about these banana companies, you know?
	It's just jealousy. No, but there has to be, you know...
	There has to be a set of characteristics that is unique to the human being, otherwise there's really no point in using the term human being, right?
	Well, sure, and there are.
	I mean, you know, rational consciousness, language ability, I mean, the stuff we've talked about.
	I mean, I'm no biologist, but I'm sure that the definition, if you're not just going to look at a big DNA printout, it's going to be something like that.
	And it's the old thing. We don't know exactly what a human being is, but we sure know it when we see it, right?
	But it would be invalid, then, to try and boil that down to one or two specific isolated things.
	It could only ever be a large collection of characteristics.
	Yeah, I mean, I think so.
	Again, I'm no biologist, and I don't know exactly how biologists determine a new species versus a, you know, a mutation of an old species versus whatever, whatever.
	But, you know, I mean, it's not like apes aren't rational.
	It's not like apes don't have language or use tools or anything like that.
	But still, there's quite a bit of difference between an ape and a human being, right?
	I think that human beings have the largest difference between any other organism compared to, and the only larger difference is between being alive and not being alive in terms of organic and inorganic, but I certainly would not be a good person to figure those things out, but I'm sure there's nothing but mountains of biological literature on what makes a human being a human being from a biological standpoint.
	Okay. I guess it kind of clarifies my position then.
	Really? Come on.
	Are you okay? Did you fall down?
	Are you okay? Just check the back of your head.
	Are you okay? Blood? Anything?
	No way. I'm a little busy, but I'll be okay.
	Okay. Well, if you have any other questions, feel free to jump back in.
	So, let's take a risk and see if this person actually wants to talk to me, or whether or not Everup Powell was on before, right?
	Somebody else has just come on.
	All right. Number 39, I do believe that you are on.
	Hello? Hello?
	What's wrong? I'm sorry?
	What's wrong? I'm from Canada, and where are you from?
	All right.
	This is a shot.
	I can't quite hear what you're saying, but if you do have any questions, feel free to...
	I was not sure exactly.
	I think that we were actually in a mosque, which is someplace I haven't been to since I was in Morocco.
	Yes, alright.
	Next we have up in the lottery of Skype listeners, an underscore 6104.
	Hello. Testing. Hello.
	Alright. I don't think he's in.
	Oh, he's vanished. Truth777, so much better than the one who came 101 before, Truth666.
	That was quite a different conversation.
	Alright, Truth777, you're on.
	How are you? I'm great, how are you doing?
	Yeah, really good, thank you.
	Excellent. Do you have a question?
	Yeah, I've been listening for about five minutes.
	Excellent. I find things a little bit hard to swallow, basically, some of the things that you guys are talking about, you know, about what a human being is and what an animal is.
	I think it's, yeah, where do you get all your facts from?
	Where do I get all my facts from?
	Well, that's a rather large conversation, but maybe you can tell me specifically what you didn't like about what we were talking about.
	What I'm saying is I hear a lot of people saying things, but I'm just sort of saying, is it just your personal opinion?
	Is it just what you think out of your own sort of viewpoint, or is it something you've looked into and researched?
	Oh, I see your question.
	No, absolutely, and that is a perfectly sensible and perfectly valid question, and I certainly appreciate you bringing it up.
	No, I'm not a biologist.
	I definitely have studied quite a lot of the history of science as a grad student, but I'm not a biologist.
	I would certainly say, though, that the definition of what a human being is would be grounded in the physical characteristics of a human being.
	It would not be grounded, for instance, because I'm an atheist, I would not ground The definition of a human being in terms of, you know, a child of God or the possessor of a soul or anything like that.
	But I would say that, as a biologist, would classify a human being that that would have to be grounded on some physical or material characteristics of the human animal, something that would be defined through DNA or through some sort of body or conscious mind characteristic.
	Like a lot of the things that you're saying, they're personally listening.
	Like, I think a lot of the things that I hear people saying, it's just their own personal opinion.
	It's got nothing to do with fact.
	Okay, but can you tell me how you would define a human being then, if you feel that the definition that we're working with here is incorrect, which of course maybe it is, but perhaps...
	Well, atheism, atheism, atheism, like you said you're an atheist, is that correct?
	Yes, that's correct. Well, atheism is actually just another form of, just another religion.
	Well, that certainly could be the case.
	Atheism is just another belief system, atheism.
	Well, I would certainly say that atheism is a belief system, but I would not say that it is equivalent to religion, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.
	Perhaps you can tell me your definition of religion so that I can understand where you're coming from.
	Well, religion I believe is something that you believe by faith and by not actually being there to observe what happened.
	Religion is something that you believe through faith and atheism is basically something that you've decided to believe through faith.
	Like you've got a faith in atheism.
	You think that man evolved from Basically from nothing.
	You believe that man, animals, creatures, cells, germs, whatever, that there was the beginning and the beginning was nothing and then something came out of nothing.
	To me, that is religion.
	You're teaching something that is out of faith because you weren't there to observe the beginning.
	You weren't there to see it.
	So that means you have to have faith to believe it.
	I certainly understand where you're coming from, and you could well be right.
	I'm not going to try and convince you of my position.
	But I would ask you this question.
	I've never been to Ecuador in South America.
	I've never been to Ecuador, but I believe that Ecuador exists.
	I've seen pictures.
	I know that different countries exist.
	I've talked to people who've been to Ecuador.
	And the existence of Ecuador doesn't contradict.
	All of the other known facts of experience that I have directly experienced.
	So I've never been to Ecuador, but I believe that Ecuador exists.
	But I think that that's quite different from believing that consciousness, like God, that consciousness exists without any material form, that a being can be all-knowing and all-powerful at the same time, which of course is a contradictory set of characteristics.
	And so, I think that for me, if you say that you have no direct experience, therefore it's nothing but faith, I think that there's a difference between believing things that don't contradict my direct daily experience, like the existence of Ecuador, versus believing in things that not only have I never experienced, like God, But also things that are directly self-contradictory, like you can't have life without matter or energy, but that's what's claimed for God.
	You can't have consciousness without life that is composed of matter or energy, but that is what is claimed for God, and so on.
	So, I'd sort of differentiate those two things and let me know what you think.
	Yeah, you know, a lot of things, like I understand what you're saying, but Really, you know, it's a difficult thing for me to explain, but what I'm really trying to narrow it down to is there's a lot of people, you know, they've all got something to say,
	but when they say it, are they basing it on fact or just something that they've decided, well, this is what I believe, this is where I believe man came from, or this is what I believe a human being is, or this is what I believe about the solar system.
	A lot of people... They have their own personal viewpoint, and there's millions and millions of different viewpoints around the world.
	So then what happens is everybody has their own viewpoint, and people basically just clash and have their viewpoints.
	And at the end of the day, our viewpoint is not really what it comes down to.
	It's not our viewpoint.
	It's not our opinion. We've got to find the facts.
	And the way we find out facts is by looking for the truth.
	We need to look for where is the foundation of what a human being is.
	How can we find out the truth about how man came into existence?
	Is there any records?
	Is there any evidence?
	Is there any scientific evidence?
	We need to study those things and examine them instead of just coming up with our own opinions.
	I'm probably not explaining myself real well, but...
	No, I think you're doing a very good job, if you don't mind me saying that, I think you're doing an excellent job of explaining yourself, and I'd just sort of like to break it down into two aspects.
	First of all, I completely and totally agree with you that the difference between opinion and fact has something to do with science, with measurability, with empiricism, with evidence, And that, yeah, I also agree with you completely that I would go one degree of magnitude further and say there's not just millions, but billions of people out there running around with a whole bunch of opinions that they believe are facts where they have no evidence and so on.
	So we're in complete agreement there, if that helps you at all.
	The second thing that I would say is that you do not need to know the origin of something in order to be able to define what it is.
	So a human being can be defined in the present based on physical characteristics, biological, DNA, whatever it is, right?
	So to be able to define what a human being is, is certainly something that you can do without being able to prove whether human beings evolved from teacups or parameciums or whatever.
	So what we were talking about in the present was not so much the origin of human beings in terms of evolution or whatever, but really just in terms that a human being must be defined by some scientific or biological characteristic that's based on Biology, DNA, matter, and so on.
	So I agree with you that the theory of evolution, if this is sort of what you mean by that, is not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and there'd be very few scientists who would say that the theory of evolution is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
	There are very few scientists who would tell you that they know where matter comes from, right?
	There's this Big Bang, which they still can find the residual radiation for scattered throughout the universe, and they can get to within a couple of nanoseconds after the Big Bang, but they have no idea where it all came from.
	My response to that uncertainty, which is endemic or natural to the scientific process, my response to that is to say, well, I don't know.
	Can I prove to you that human beings evolved from seashells?
	No, of course not. I mean, we don't have a time machine, and if we did, we wouldn't have the time to follow all of the evolutionary patterns and paths and alleyways and blind alleyways and so on.
	And I also can't take you back to the Big Bang and say, ah, you know, this is what happened.
	But what I can do is tell you that where knowledge breaks down for me, and this is true for any decent or reasonable philosopher or scientist, where there is no knowledge, substituting the word God doesn't gain you any knowledge, right?
	So I'm perfectly willing to say, I have no idea where the universe came from.
	It doesn't mean I can't classify matter and energy in some intelligent manner in the present.
	But I have no idea where the universe came from and neither does anyone else.
	I don't have any idea how consciousness works.
	How does a brain produce a mind?
	Nobody knows. And that's fine.
	For me, and I'm not saying this is your approach, but for me, then saying, I don't know where the universe came from, so I'm going to call it God, doesn't add anything.
	That's truly making up an answer and saying, what is it that defines a human being?
	Well, it's an immortal soul.
	It doesn't add any knowledge.
	That, to me, is just elevating rank superstition and opinion to the status of fact.
	Yeah, well, I just thought, I don't want to I'll let you know what I believe and we'll leave it at that because I'm not here to debate or have an argument.
	I basically believe that there is a Creator.
	I used to be an atheist.
	I sort of basically grew up in a family where we didn't believe in God.
	Suppose everybody comes to a point in their life where they experience something, you know, supernatural, if you want to call it that, and then you realize, hey, there is something bigger out there.
	There is something that humans cannot comprehend.
	And did you have an experience of, sorry to interrupt, did you have an experience of this kind?
	Yeah, I've had, my background was basically How can I put it in a short word?
	I was very miserable in my life.
	I grew up with a very miserable life and I suppose I got to the point where I thought, well, is life just meaningless?
	Is there no purpose?
	Do we just live and die?
	Is that it? I suppose I started asking questions and I started looking into different things.
	Ultimately, what I basically did was I asked, hey, if there is a God, well then something has to happen for me to believe in God because I'm not going to believe in God unless something happens, you know?
	I'm the type of person where I need to have some sort of an experience to believe in God.
	You needed evidence. And God did a few things in my life that made me not doubt anymore that there is a God out there, that there is a...
	A power that is just beyond our human comprehension.
	It's so big, it just won't fit in our brain, you know, the eternal God.
	I mean, I look at the universe and I think, you know, come on, you know, this couldn't have come from nothing.
	It just couldn't, you know, like, but that's my personal opinion and, you know, I don't, you know, people have to see confined and Keep looking into the meaning of life.
	That's what I encourage everybody to do.
	Well, we're certainly together on that, and I'm going to put an invitation out there that's completely insane, and I fully recognize that it's totally insane, and you can do with it what you will, because who am I, right?
	I'm some voice on the internet, and the idea that I might have any answers in this realm would strike me as absurd if I was listening to me, so I'm fully aware that making this claim is ridiculous, and I'm certainly aware of all of that.
	I fully, fully sympathize and empathize, With the difficult start that you had in life, I think that you and I probably had the same or similarly wretched early existences and so on.
	So I fully understand that there's a lot of misery in being a child in certain families and so on.
	If you'd like, and again, I'm just some voice on the internet, and the idea that I would have any answers that could help you would be ridiculous.
	But, you know, for funsies, if you just want to sort of come by and try it, I do have a website where we have quite some wonderful discussions about philosophy.
	There's a number of podcasts. There's a video series on an introduction to philosophy.
	I'm fairly well educated, so I'm not going to be just making stuff up.
	I'm fairly well educated in science and logic, so...
	If you'd like to come by and give it a shot, I certainly would appreciate it.
	I think it would be quite stimulating for you because you and I are both in the same boat as far as wanting to find truth and values and meaning in life.
	I haven't quite made it to the God thing, and I doubt that I ever will, but if you'd like to go, the website is freedomainradio.com.
	Listen to a couple of podcasts if you'd like to get involved since you are a seeker, right?
	You are a truth seeker. It may be a community that's of interest to you.
	I will definitely log into your website and have a look at it.
	I think I saw it on your info thing, your information link thing.
	Is that your website? I think it is, yeah, freedomainradio.com.
	And just drop my, again, I don't want to be like Joe Pushy, but I think you would really enjoy it.
	I appreciate that.
	My last word before you let some other people speak is don't push God away.
	Always allow the opportunity that there is a God.
	I used to be an atheist and just allow that bit of space in your mind.
	The knowledge that I don't have, maybe within that knowledge there is a God.
	We need to seek, continue to find, because this life is very short.
	The Bible says, we're here today, gone tomorrow, like the grass.
	One day we're here, next day we're gone.
	You could be here today and gone tomorrow.
	Your life is just unpredictable.
	You don't know when you're going to die.
	You're not a doctor, are you?
	Can you hear something in my voice?
	Because now I'm worried. Sorry?
	You're not a doctor. Can you hear something in my voice now?
	I'm all worried. No, I agree with you.
	It is a very important time that we're here.
	I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor, but I am.
	Like I said to you, I'm a Christian, and I don't care about your physical life here on Earth.
	I care about your eternal life.
	I care about what's going to happen after you die, not about what's going to happen here on Earth.
	Like, what happens to us here on Earth, alright, there's a lot of terrible things that can happen to us, but ultimately, It's what happens after we die.
	As a Christian I believe that people that have done bad are not going to get away with it.
	God is a God of justice.
	He's not going to let murderers, liars, evil people, child molesters, He's not going to let those people get away with it.
	This life is short, mate.
	I agree with you.
	I was not going to debate until the last point.
	But look, I've got to tell you, if you don't believe that God is going to let child molesters get away with what they do, then why the hell does he let child molesters get away with what they do in the world?
	Well, the thing is, this life is short.
	You've got to realize everybody has a lifespan.
	Let's say, how old are you now, 40, 50?
	I'm 40. Alright, let's say in 30, 40 years, you know, you live for another 30 or 40 years, you will, like as a Christian I believe, God has given everybody 80, 90, 100 years to live and within that 80, 90, 100 years of average lifespan, I mean some people don't live that long, but I believe that everybody has the opportunity in this life to do the right thing.
	If you don't do the right thing in this lifetime, Then I believe you're going to stand before your Creator and you're going to give account for everything you did.
	And God is like a judge.
	He will judge you according to your deeds.
	He is a righteous judge.
	So don't think you're going to get away with that.
	It doesn't matter what you believe in this lifetime, the fact is The day will come when you stand before your Creator and you have to give account for everything you did here in this life.
	Hey, as long as God is willing to answer some questions that I will have for Him, I am more than happy to stand before a Creator and answer questions.
	But of course, I'm sure, as a just God, He's going to be able to answer the questions as to why He commands us to help those who are in trouble through the parable of the Good Samaritan.
	But He does not lift a finger Himself to help those who are in trouble.
	I agree with you that I would love for there to be a justice that goes beyond this world.
	I would love to live forever. I would love to be immortal.
	I think that would be excellent.
	For me, it's not a question of resentfully pushing away God.
	I actually have to fight because I think it would be the coolest thing in the world for there to be a deity and to live forever and so on.
	So I don't want to take up too much of your time.
	Have a listen to a couple of podcasts.
	Feel free to email or post on the awards.
	I really appreciate you taking the time to dip into a conversation that's different than what you believe.
	And thank you so much for joining us.
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you. Goodbye.
	Alright. Next we have JJX2007. Yeah, good evening, Stefan.
	Thanks for having me on tonight.
	My pleasure. Thank you for calling in.
	You know, as we all know, there is a lot of evidence that supports both sides, evolution, God.
	But my question is, is having hope, some type of human evolution that we were pre-programmed with, you know, a hope that there possibly is some type of God to take us into the heavens and have a great life after we die?
	Well, I mean, that's a fascinating question.
	Richard Dawkins writes about this quite a bit in the book that is still on the number one on the Canadian nonfiction list, which gives me some comfort.
	The God Delusion, if you get a chance to pick it up, it's very...
	And I won't go into all of his theories because, I mean, I'm sure he can talk about them a lot better than I can.
	But what I will say is that we don't know because we don't have a very strong comparator, right?
	Almost all children are raised with a very strong knowledge of religion.
	Even if they're not raised in specifically religious families themselves, just about everyone is raised with a very strong knowledge of religion.
	And of course that gives people certain ideas that they may not otherwise have.
	So the parable that I could sort of spin and you can let me know what you think is that just about every child who was brought up in Soviet Russia under Stalin became a communist.
	And why? Because that's what they were taught.
	So for me it's very hard to know what children or what the human mind Would be like in the absence of religious instruction.
	So I don't know that it's innate for people to believe in religion.
	I do believe that it's innate for people to have sexual drives that take over your brain when you hit 13.
	I believe that puberty is innate, which is why you don't need to go to puberty school for 20 years, right?
	It just happens, right?
	So I think that Sexual desire is innate.
	And just picking one example, there's others.
	I believe that the capacity for language is innate and other things.
	So for me, if religion was innate within our minds, then we would not need to be taught it any more than we would need to be taught about sexual desire.
	Until we have a society where children do not have religious instruction inflicted upon them, I think it's going to be very hard for us to see what is natural within the human mind.
	Oh, well, either that was a very good answer or a very bad answer.
	I either answered his question completely or insulted him eternally.
	Anyway, I'm sure I will pay for it after I'm dead.
	So, if we have any other questions, questions, issues, comments, problems, you can click on the Ask to Talk The Non-Existence of God by Everett is a much more rigorous philosophical defense of atheism than Dawkins' book.
	Yeah, Dawkins is kind of annoying that way.
	I agree with you. He's a bit chit-chatty, which is, of course, probably one of the reasons why his book is a bestseller.
	The one that I read was when I was about 18 or so, which clinched the case for me, although I hadn't been religious for many, many years, was a book called Atheism, colon...
	The Case Against God. Sorry, not that the colon is a case against God, because colons are actually quite useful, but Atheism, The Case Against God, is a very good book to read for this kind of clarity.
	I think that guy was already in, right?
	Oh, he was asking a question, right?
	Alright, so it looks like this guy who wanted to speak has vanished.
	I've driven about everybody else off.
	I don't think we have anyone else who wants to speak.
	I'm out of topics for today.
	So if you have any questions, I'm certainly happy to take one or two more.
	Just click on the Ask to Speak or Request mic in your Skype window.
	Other than that, though, we can shut down the chat for the day, and Christina and I can stare with horror at the endlessly falling snow and try and figure out how long my podcast is going to be in the morning should I choose to do one.
	Oh, yeah, so when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when?
	Well, that's an excellent question, and I was actually supposed to have received an answer to some degree about what kind of transition is going to be occurring for work at me.
	From my boss, the question is whether I'm just going to quit outright or whether I'm going to do like two or three days a week for a little while at my job and work on the, to sort of finish up the business plan and get, get everything ready to roll.
	If anyone's out there and interested, I'm going to set up a Skype thing for anybody who wants to give their two cents about the way to approach.
	I'll put a short thing together about what my ideas are and then we can shoot them back and forth if anybody has more experience on how to make this kind of thing a go.
	I certainly would appreciate feedback.
	I'm always open to wiser and more experienced people telling me what the heck to do.
	Isn't that right, Annie? So, I'm sorry, I can't tell you yet, but I certainly can tell you that I'm preparing quite strongly for it, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.
	And this, of course, is a massive shout-out of enormous and monstrous thanks to everybody who's donated.
	I'd love to say everyone who's participated, but mostly those who participate without donating are a mere drain on my time and energy, although I'm certainly happy that they're around.
	But for those who've donated, massive glowing gold stars of thanks, it does make it all possible.
	And I hope and I will strive with great consciousness of the trust that those who donate are giving to me, I will strive to make every dollar that you donate something that you are proud of.
	I will work my absolute hardest to make that something you can be truly proud of and not feel like you just paid for a guy To sit around and scratch.
	Don't worry, there will be some scratching and there will definitely be sitting around, but it will be to propel myself forward to make you proud of what you have provided.
	No more haircuts, Steph. Absolutely.
	And you will see this general, you could say, Dan Haggartization, the Grizzly Bearization, or perhaps we could call it the Billism, Billization, of my growing beard.
	And hygiene washing checkups, haircuts, razor blades.
	All of these, of course, going by the wayside as we strap down to the bare minimum for the new Free Domain Radio.
	So I hope to have an answer this week.
	But I'm sort of trying to play this thing, right?
	Wherein I don't really like my job.
	I don't think they really like me too much.
	But I'm trying to sort of be as accommodating as possible because I wouldn't mind another couple of weeks of part-time work to sort of help me finish the business plan, make the transition, have a little bit of extra cash to start with.
	And so I will hopefully find out this week.
	Hope that helps.
	Paychecks are nice. Absolutely.
	Well, you know, as they say, if you can't make a lot of money, marry somebody who does.
	So I just, again, I apologize to Christina repeatedly.
	But hey, when we met, I was unemployed.
	So I hadn't worked for two years, except on writing four books.
	All right, so we have nobody who wants to talk to me, which is fine.
	I don't think that there's anything else.
	Oh, he's such a tease waiting to the end.
	Oh, I could almost taste dinner.
	Did you tell me that?
	Roz?
	458. You're live, baby.
	you Hello? He doesn't want to talk to me now.
	Did I startle him? Actually having some sort of response is blowing his mind.
	Oh, okay. I'm so sorry.
	I'll move you back to listening. Alright.
	Any other questions? Issues?
	Comments? Problems? Questions?
	Praise for the accent. I hope you enjoyed my song.
	I hope you didn't mind. You haven't heard it yet, Christina.
	I did Okeke to them.
	Just the first little bit. Oh, and a podcast a little while back.
	The song that's been stuck in my head for months.
	I podcasted a little bit of it.
	Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, hey, you know, and the reason I had to tell you that is I doubt you could recognize it if I didn't tell you so.
	I certainly appreciate your patience with that.
	I have found that when I podcast a song, it goes out of my head.
	I don't know why. It's like I pass along the infection.
	It's ground zero for the Queen thing, so...
	All right. Any other questions?
	No? Okay. Well, listen, thanks everyone so much for dropping by.
	I hugely appreciate it. Great chat.
	I really enjoyed it. And have a great week.

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