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May 17, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:03:40

1357 Sunday Show May 17 2009

When a day goes very wrong, appropriate communication with children, and the latest parenting update!

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	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	Sorry about the plethora of baby pictures, but I'm a dad.
	It's all I have to talk about. It is, yeah, I'm completely besotted.
	It is little after four on the 17th of May, 2009.
	Thank you for those who joined in to the Star Trek chat-a-thon last night.
	It was quite a lot of fun. We probably will release it unless anyone has any particular objections.
	And I would like to thank Greg for the pictures of his excellent Uhuru impersonation.
	I don't think her dresses were ever quite that high.
	But it certainly was...
	Well, striking, I guess, would be the word.
	As in, you'd like to strike out your own eyes.
	So, I guess nothing particularly new.
	Philadelphia has been confirmed that I will be giving a speech to what will hopefully be a fairly large crowd, larger than New Hampshire, which raises the possibility of mob violence considerably, which is...
	Well, I'm balanced.
	I'm ambivalent about it.
	And so July the 4th 2009 in Philadelphia I will be giving a speech and it will be basically about stateless society and social organization.
	So that should be a lot of fun.
	I'm looking forward to it and I hope that you will be able to join us and perhaps we can do a brunch on Saturday or depending on how many people are going to be around if you all want to see I guess Izzy In the flesh, Christina and Isabella will be traveling with me, or I will be traveling with them, or basically Christina and I will be traveling with Isabella, who really sets the schedule.
	So I hope that you will be able to join us.
	Of course, we will be videoing and releasing this, that, and the other.
	Excellent. I'd also like to thank Paul once more for the wonderful, wonderful work that he did on the New Hampshire video.
	My understanding is that that is only phase one.
	Phase two is going to be IMAX 3D and include a scratch And sniff that you may not want to open.
	You know, it's really up to you.
	It depends how vivid you want the anarchist flop sweat to be entering into your sensual media experience.
	Yes, I'm still working on the software.
	Still working on the software.
	Yeah, absolutely. I think the software for that scratch and sniff is considered illegal virus.
	So that's just something to remember.
	Actually, no. The Scratch and Stiff is not bad because I was traveling with Christina, so the morning sponge bath was, as usual, sponge bath.
	Squarepants is, of course, my married name.
	So, we took Isabella to see her first movie last week.
	We went to go and see The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and it was really quite interesting.
	Not a good film, in particular.
	Pretty forgettable. But I will tell you that, yeah, it's called, what's it?
	Stars and strollers.
	But I will say that Matthew McConaughey does make you want to do sit-ups.
	And brush your teeth until they just turn into this diamond polish.
	But yeah, it's not a great film.
	I quite like Jennifer Garner, but she doesn't have much to work with in this film.
	But what was interesting was that there were probably at least 50 other kids there.
	Babies. I'm gonna go with my number.
	And so there were quite a number of other babies, and none of them were particularly over, at least one of the moms we talked to over six or eight months, right?
	And some a little bit younger.
	And I will say this, that the empirical evidence so far is that Isabella is simply not like other children.
	I think is that a fair statement?
	She is just not like other children.
	Would you like to tell?
	You tell, you tell.
	She was the only baby in the entire theater that was blowing raspberries.
	Some were crying.
	You could hear some cries in the background.
	Little sniffles here and there. But Isabella couldn't sit still.
	She was in my lap.
	She had arched her back. She was reaching up for my face.
	She was looking everywhere but at the screen.
	She was looking at the exit signs and at the lights on the walls.
	And she started blowing raspberries and making cooing sounds.
	And yelping. And not interested in the movie.
	She also needed a diaper change in the middle of all of that, so unlike the other children who sat calmly for two hours, Isabella was up and about, and we could no longer contain her in our arms in the chairs, so for part of the movie I took her and walked her up and down the aisles, and for the other part of the movie...
	Steph took her up and down the aisles and walked her while she cooed and laughed and burbled and blew raspberries.
	And all the other children sat calmly in their mother's laps.
	So this is our daughter.
	Makes me wonder if she has ADD. Yeah, it was quite fascinating to see all of the other parents were sitting there.
	Well, moms, really. I was the only dad there.
	There was another dad? No, I think that was a Russian woman.
	Just kidding. Full beard. No, half beard.
	That's how you can tell. But yeah, it was interesting to see all of the other parents were just sitting there, you know, and bouncing a little.
	But basically what they were doing was holding some, holding what effectively were glassy-eyed, vaguely drooly sacks of small Canadian potatoes that were pretty inert, right?
	And our baby's just arching her back, looking around.
	And She's got like 90 stories of Ebenezer Scrooge with Pex, which is basically the story of the film.
	She's got nine stories of vivid entertainment in front of her, and all she wants to do is peer back into the darkness at the other babies.
	And so Christina saw, I saw the first half of the film, Christina walked her around, and then Christina saw the second half of the film, and I walked her around.
	Up and down the corridor and so on, because she just was not interested in the film in particular, but rather in everything else.
	And in adding her own soundtrack, which was really quite exciting.
	The only baby. The only baby.
	Every other baby is just sitting there completely placidly.
	And ours is like, I don't know, like somebody just dumped fire ants in her diapers.
	But she wasn't in any discomfort or distress.
	Yeah, she was really enjoying herself, but man, exuberant.
	Oh yeah, then of course the moment we leave the movie theater she completely falls asleep.
	So we're still working on her timing as far as all that goes.
	But she's doing very well.
	She actually today rolled from her front to her back and I didn't have to use a spatula or any spring mechanisms this time.
	Pancake flipper. Pancake flipper, that's right.
	No, she rolled once before, but we got it on video, which is kind of cool.
	She's been rolling obviously from her back to her front, but now she's rolling from her front to her back, which is pretty cool and means that the great beginning of chasing your child around like Frankenstein, you know, with your arms outstretched is...
	No more leaving her on the bed. Yeah, no more just leaving her on the bed and just, okay, well, we'll be back, right, you know, after we go to the gym.
	But no, there's none of that, right?
	So that's all starting, which, you know, parents will always tell you that the next phase is the really difficult one, right?
	And her sleep is still pretty light.
	The last couple of nights, she's been getting up at 5.30 in the morning.
	I think she's having dreams that we're farmers.
	I don't know what that is.
	Roosters. Roosters, yeah.
	And she's moaning in her sleep, and I think that's because her dreams are very vivid.
	She's going through a growth spurt right now, and that also creates some discomfort for her baby, so...
	She's completely delightful.
	For me, pretty much, all the time, because I don't take her much at night.
	But for the increasingly haggard and bitter Christina...
	Yeah, 5.30 in the morning, it's definitely a little rough.
	Like, wow, there's light!
	Cool! All right, well, that's it for the introduction.
	As far as that goes, I'm very, very pleased with this...
	Tripartite series on the psychology or certain characteristics of political parties.
	I was quite pleased. I'm really, really sorry.
	I mentioned this in the podcast.
	I am sorry about the background noise for some of these gym casts and so on.
	As I mentioned in the podcast, podcasting for me is a kind of disinhibition.
	Like I have to sort of relax into the insights and the language center just has to kind of pump them out.
	So I really have to get out of my own way when I'm doing podcasts.
	And I've tried a number of times to do podcasts, you know, sitting at a desk in a room.
	But I have to be doing something.
	I have to be cleaning. I have to be at the gym.
	I have to be driving. I have to be juggling.
	And so I'm sorry about that.
	I know it's a little bit of a distraction, but the quality of the podcast is better when I'm not concentrating on the podcast.
	It's strange, but true.
	So you might want to check that out there.
	I also put them on YouTube in case.
	You wanted to listen. Occasionally, if I have stuff that I'm really happy about, I will put it on YouTube just as a sort of with the logo and all that.
	So I hope that you will check those out.
	But I was very, very pleased with the way that those came out.
	And people who wanted to do libertarianism, they've asked anarchists and so on.
	But I don't know enough about non-ANCAP anarchists to do anything psychological about them.
	And I've already... I mean, my analysis of the libertarian movement is in my book, How Not to Achieve Freedom, so I don't really feel that there's any need to repeat that analysis anywhere else.
	Barbecue? Yeah.
	You had some questions? Just a reminder, the barbecue is coming up on May 29th.
	No, sorry, May 30th.
	Saturday, May the 30th. I know a bunch of people are coming up a day or two early.
	And... I guess we need to know before May the 20th or by May the 20th if you're going to be attending so that we can go ahead and make appropriate reservations.
	We're planning to go out for a nice dinner on Friday night.
	I'm trying to find a A restaurant with a private room that we can, if there are going to be 20, 25 people as it seems so far, there may be more if you haven't signed up, you still have an opportunity to.
	So trying to find a nice place where we can have a nice private room and we can all get together and have a nice dinner.
	Then Saturday is the barbecue here at the house.
	Saturday night, Steph has arranged a karaoke party.
	And then I guess on Sunday, the day has yet to be planned, but I'm sure it's going to be fun-filled and full of activities.
	If you haven't signed up, please do so by the 20th so that we can make all the necessary arrangements for reservations and food and drink and all that stuff.
	And we're really, really looking forward to having everybody out here.
	So please come and join us. It does tend to be a lot of fun.
	Once again, looking really forward to it.
	And if you would like to please remember that since we are going to be feeding y'all and there will be we've we've dug out the big trough around the house actually well what we've done we've already got the big trough around the house with the flaming alligators what we've done is emptied that out and we'll be throwing some I think what's technically called slop into it and we will all be rooting around like badgers which should be a lot of fun oh yeah and you will of course be doing a lot of gardening right we want to build a multi-layer Gazebo hanging gardens thing so we'll spring with waterfalls and and of course the requisite flaming catapults so hopefully you will be so tinyurl.com forward slash 2009 FDR BBQ if you could go there I would really really appreciate that so let us know if you're coming and that would be fantastic how many people do we have we have 29 participants but some of those are bringing more than one person I think if that's right Oh,
	James! Oh, James!
	Is it 29 bodies? Or 29 plus guests?
	No, it's a count. So that's, yeah, so 29 bodies.
	So, yeah, we can always do more, but it would be great if you could let us know if you're coming.
	So, yeah, that should be a lot of fun.
	Last year was, first year was about 20?
	Yeah, first year was 12.
	Was it really that few?
	Oh right, sorry, 12 plus the ecosystem, 20.
	Last year we had about 15, but there was a number of people who couldn't, 20 signed up, but a bunch of people couldn't make it.
	And so there'll probably be a bunch of people, some at least, who can't make it.
	But it's nice that it's increasing, you know, the more the merrier.
	So we hope that you'll be able to come by.
	Alright, that's it for enough boring philosophy slash business slash social bidness.
	So this is, of course, supposed to be your show.
	So why don't we say I stop talking and you start.
	Oh, Paul. Hello.
	Hi. Yes, I thought I would share with people the emotional rollercoaster ride that I went on yesterday.
	Having to do with the get-together in Santa Barbara.
	And I... After going to the New Hampshire Forum, I really didn't have it in my resources to be able to go to the barbecue at your place this year, although I would dearly enjoy that.
	So when Alan posted a thread about getting together out here in California, I thought, this is so cool!
	And I asked Laura, who was the person I brought with me to the symposium in Miami, so I was just all psyched up about going there and meeting people and having a fabulous day talking about all kinds of cool stuff.
	And as I was driving up to her place Saturday morning I was like having one of these Maslow Peak experiences of how great I was feeling and everything was just fabulous and the world was beautiful and it was like wow I'm gonna have a fabulous day!
	And I get to her place and she makes me a nice breakfast and we just She asked me, what car do we want to take?
	And I decided that, well, gee, we usually when we're out, well, a lot of times we're out together.
	I'm the one driving. So I say, well, gee, why don't we take your car?
	Okay. And so we take off and we're about halfway there.
	And she says, you know, I better get some gas.
	So we pull off the freeway and we spend about 20 minutes getting gas.
	And then we get back to Penn Road and I'm saying, well, how far have we yet to go?
	And he says, well, about half an hour.
	And I'm going, oh, crap.
	Now, the night before, I tried to private message Alan with my phone number, but my Internet was down.
	So we finally left about three something or other.
	And, you know, all last night I kept running through my mind about, you know, What happened, you know?
	And it's like, well, of course it was all my fault because if I really, you know, had wanted to participate, I'd have been there on time.
	And so all kinds of emotional stuff going through my head, you know, from self-attack to anger.
	Sorry, so what happened was that you had the wrong time, is that right?
	Well, I knew it started at 11 and I got there at 11.30.
	I figured, well, if people were having lunch, they'd still be there.
	I still don't know what happened.
	Nobody's talked to me. One of the people on this call has said, oh yeah, they left at 11.30.
	Right. So, I mean, what is it that you would like to talk about with regards to this?
	Well, obviously I missed the boat, and obviously it's nobody else's fault.
	It's just that I was thinking that, gee, it would have been nice had somebody...
	I made a remark to the restaurant people saying, well, if anybody comes in here after looking for us, we've gone over to the blah, blah, blah.
	But, of course, they didn't have to do that.
	So I'm just sitting here in an interesting stew of emotion, mostly of my own manufacturer, and just sort of going, isn't that interesting?
	I don't know what to do with this.
	I mean, look, I totally understand it.
	It is really frustrating when you're looking forward to something and you, I mean, for things to go wrong like that, like a whole series of things have to go wrong, right?
	Like you need to get gas and that takes time and then people are leaving lunch early and so on and your internet is down and so like a whole bunch of things have to go wrong in order for something like this to occur.
	And that's sort of the way that things shake out in life sometimes.
	It is frustrating. It is annoying.
	But it is just part of the natural accidents of being alive, right?
	That stuff just goes wrong sometimes.
	And it sort of goes wrong in a...
	I mean, so you were kind of chasing ghosts all day, right?
	And that is really frustrating because you don't know whether to sort of keep going or whether to just stop and enjoy the day with the woman you're with and so on.
	So, yeah, I totally understand that it is definitely frustrating.
	But... You know, if any one of these things hadn't gone wrong, if we hadn't gone for gas, or it hadn't needed gas, and it hadn't taken so long, if your internet had not been down, blah blah blah blah blah, then it would have been fine, right?
	But there are some times where just these cluster of things goes wrong in life, and our tendency then is to...
	We'll often make a mythology about it, like we'll make up a whole bunch of stories.
	You know, like when a bunch of stuff goes wrong, we will often end up saying that this is somehow Essential to life or this is the essence of life, you know, things going wrong and then we end up getting frustrated and so often what will happen is when a bunch of things go wrong and particularly if we're with someone else what can happen is we end up fearing attack from others,
	right? So I'm sure your friend didn't but you know it could have been when...
	I'll give you an example.
	So when Christina and I were driving and Isabella were driving to New Hampshire In early March, I put the address of the hotel into the GPS, but I did not bring the phone number or the name of the hotel.
	And we got there at 4 in the morning, 3 in the morning, 3, 3, it was some god-awful time just because we were traveling with a baby and we decided to push on rather than stop and show up the next day.
	And the GPS takes us to a hotel that is still under construction.
	And so that wasn't particularly helpful.
	And I didn't have the name of the hotel.
	I didn't have the hotel phone number.
	I simply had an address that the GPS had gotten wrong or whatever, right?
	Now, fortunately, Christina did have, did remember the name of the hotel and we were able to find it.
	But if she hadn't, we would have had to go to another hotel, right?
	Pay for a hotel and then switch hotels the next day and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And You know, we were both very tired and so on, right?
	So I started to, as I'm sure most people do, I started to get mad at myself, right?
	Why didn't I write down the name?
	And I start thinking, okay, well, I have a computer, so if I can find internet access, I can get the name of the hotel from blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But Christina had remembered it.
	That was the one thing that didn't go wrong, right?
	I was involved in everything else that did go wrong.
	The one thing that didn't go wrong was what Christina remembered, which is another reason why she's so great.
	But a whole series of things.
	So we had to come in really, really late at night.
	Because otherwise, I had the phone number of the organizer of the event.
	I would have just called him. But of course, at 3 in the morning, he's not up, right?
	Even though he's supposed to be a libertarian, which means never sleep.
	You don't sleep. You just wait.
	But... So when a whole bunch of stuff goes wrong, there is a tendency to self-attack, which comes out of our history, right?
	That we were in a family situation, usually when we were kids, we'd be in a family situation, and whoever was responsible for something, if the family was sort of bad-tempered, like families that don't want to be together are almost always bad-tempered when they're in a group, and they're just looking to pick on someone to discharge that negativity.
	And so, I don't know if this was the case with you when you were a kid, but it was the case with me, that we'd go on some trip, and nobody wanted to go.
	We'd just go... I don't know, to a movie or go downtown or we go, I remember we went raspberry picking once.
	And nobody really wanted to go except the one person, I think it was my mom, who wanted to go raspberry picking or whatever.
	And we got lost and everyone just gets more and more crabby.
	So those situations for a lot of us, not everyone of course, but for a lot of us, they historically have a certain amount of tension because Of the way that we were raised that whoever is organizing it if a mistake happens and people are just kind of grumpy in general They'll kind of turn on that person.
	You know like jackals on a wounded jackal and So it probably has something to do with that and then what will often happen is we will because we are self-attacking and Either the person we're with will join in the attack of us, in which case we'll often end up fighting with them, or if they don't, we will end up attacking the people we were supposed to meet.
	As if they should have done something to foresee or plan for what went wrong in our meet-up with them.
	Of course, there is a baseline of screw-ups in life.
	Everyone has them all the time.
	There's just a baseline of things that go wrong in life.
	And if you get yours out of the way now, you're probably not going to have another one for another couple of months, but then you will, and then you'll have another one, right?
	So it's just a matter of adjusting your expectations and recognizing that the pattern of mistakes leading to attack is not inherent to a situation, but it's almost always learned, I believe, or at least in my opinion, is learned from family situations.
	But it doesn't have to be that way.
	Stuff goes wrong, it's frustrating, And there's still ways to enjoy everything going wrong, if that makes any sense.
	No, no, and I understand.
	And I see this as a way to learn about myself.
	And I can make peace with it.
	It's just the not knowing, you know.
	I guess if I had realized that they would have left by 1130, you know, I probably would have thought things differently.
	And it's just sort of like the...
	It seemed more informal than it actually was.
	I guess the one thing that was nailed down was that they were going to start at that restaurant.
	But apparently I misinterpreted how the schedule was going to go.
	And had I just gone straight to the planetarium, I probably would have connected up with people.
	So it was a whole series of decisions that I made that I had control over.
	Well, and not just you, right?
	I mean, others. Generally, when you're meeting with a bunch of people in a city that people don't live in, you know, the mutual exchange of phone numbers is usually the best course of action, right?
	Just in case someone, in any group of five to ten or more, someone's going to have problems meeting up.
	There's going to be traffic, there's going to be gas, there's going to be, someone's going to get lost.
	Sorry? Directions are going to be a problem.
	Someone's going to, you know, I don't know, get a sudden attack of lightning quick gout.
	Lots of things can occur.
	So generally it's a good idea to just exchange phone numbers and that's, you know, a lesson learned kind of thing.
	It is important. I know it's frustrating, but the important thing is just to remember that you've got your frustrating day out of the way, and now you won't have one for another couple of weeks or couple of months.
	And if you can keep a frustrating day down to once every couple of weeks or couple of months, why is this a pretty damn successful life?
	No, and once again, I want to give total props to Alan for being the guy that put this together, and I think it was great.
	I'd be curious to know how it went, what they did.
	I mean, all I know is that they went to the planetarium and hung up at the museum for 11 o'clock.
	And by the way, James, you put in here, stop yelling.
	Was that referring to me? Yeah, I think it was, because you were raising your voice a little earlier.
	And I think the important thing to remember is that, remember that for...
	The very first item, I think, on the agenda for the Southern California meetup was discuss that guy Looney on the board.
	And that may have influenced where they said you should meet them, just so that they could get that topic squared away, which I believe took them most of the day, if I remember rightly.
	I was trying to get to sleep last night and I stepped my mind kept making up crap up like, well, gee, you know, maybe they decided they all private message each other and says, Oh, God, this guy Looney and his crazy girlfriend, we don't want to deal with them.
	Let's find another place to meet.
	Right, right. And that's when you know that you've kind of you've you've gone off the reservation as far as processing empiricism goes.
	And look, we all get those kind of thoughts from time to time.
	And so I realized that, hey, this is just one of those situations you just got to laugh, you know, and go, okay, well, I found out one way it doesn't work.
	So I want to put the idea out there that I totally, you know, everybody else is totally cool.
	And obviously, I'm not blaming anybody.
	And it's just one of those things that just kind of happened.
	But I'll know next time if I want to be a part of something like this, I'll make sure that I'll Do something like make sure there's better, you know, agreements, get phone numbers, get a plan of if somebody is not, doesn't meet us at this time, leave some sort of way for them to get back to it, etc., etc.
	But, you know, people do what they do.
	Well, and remember that that won't solve all the problems, right?
	I mean, there's certain precautions you can take, but there will always be the problem of mistakes and so on going on in the world.
	So precautions are great. It's what we were talking about with Nathan.
	A week or two ago about his bicycle.
	Precautions are great, but risks are always going to be there.
	Yeah. No, and I understand it.
	But I just want to just...
	A, just curious what did happen, because I had no facts.
	And B, you know, hope they had a great time.
	And C, I'll just, you know, hey, move...
	Well, yeah, I'm sure that they will post some feedback on what happened.
	And I certainly appreciate you bringing this stuff up.
	Because we all deal with these situations in life.
	And I think it's crazy to say, let's just be zen, go with the flow, and never get frustrated or irritated.
	Because I think that's an unrealistic expectation.
	But I think it's also important to recognize that these kinds of mistakes are just a part of living.
	And certainly early on when MapQuest was starting out, it would get stuff, it seems...
	Wrong more than right sometimes and I ended up in some pretty strange locales trying to get to business meetings and so on.
	You know, it just happens, right?
	And we do sometimes construct this fantasy that it never happens to anyone else.
	It only happens to us.
	And then we start to escalate, right?
	As you say, like, oh, maybe they all just said, well, let's not have this guy.
	Let's tell him the wrong place. And that is, I mean, it happens to everyone.
	It happens to everyone.
	You know, every time we get the cold, we think, oh, my God, everyone else is healthy, and I'm the only one who's sick.
	I mean, it's nonsense, right? I mean, a tenth of the population has the cold, I think, at any given time in the winter, and statistically, it's just part of life.
	So I think irritation and frustration is natural, but I think we want to make sure that we don't start to create some Alternate reality mythology that kind of nails us to the wall, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, but once again, I'm taking this as an opportunity to learn about myself, and I really appreciate all the feedback I'm getting in the chat right now, because, you know, I'm sorry, look, if my, you know, energy and my anger, you know, I scrolled off the screen here for a second, where'd that go?
	But somebody was saying something about how my Raising my voice made them feel uncomfortable.
	I'm sorry. Wow, I need to know this.
	So thank you. Oh, I guess it was Dan.
	Please, thank you for sharing that.
	As you and I, Steph, have discussed at other times, how I land on other people is something I need to know.
	Yeah, and the other thing that I would do, which I think would be even more important than talking to me, would be to ask Your travel companion, what her experience was of you that day, and if there's anything that you might need to apologize for, because I think we've all been there, right?
	Where we get progressively less enjoyable to spend time with because we're going off on some trip.
	So I think it would be probably good to talk to her and get her feedback on what it was like to travel with you when things were going wrong, as they so often do in life.
	Yes, thank you for the advice.
	I was keeping myself under pretty good control and she was very sympathetic to me.
	I didn't really start getting into the anger stuff until I was trying to get to sleep last night.
	Thank you very much for all your good advice and I think RTR is ultimately the answer to every relationship.
	Let's hope so. Thank you so much.
	I really appreciate you bringing that up.
	Alright, we have time for Pi more questions.
	Hello? Hello.
	So last week I... I'm sorry to interrupt, but your mic is very buzzy.
	Could you just try taking back a little bit your mouth from the mic?
	Okay. Is that better?
	Yeah, I think so. Go ahead.
	Oh yeah, so last week I showed my mother real-time relationships and she came up with some interesting criticisms.
	She's only read about a quarter of it, but there were quite a few that were about little bits of detail and things all the way through, but one thing is that she said that Or she thought you were a misogynist, which I found quite surprising.
	Do tell! I was always happy to hear feedback from listeners, so what does she have to say?
	Well, it's to do with, I think, because you said negative stuff about women more than you did about men.
	And, yeah, I just, it's not, I'm just wondering why, I'm sort of wondering why she felt that way.
	Maybe...
	Because I mentioned to other people and I don't think anyone else, I think everyone's quite surprised about it.
	And by that I would assume that I talk about, and I don't know obviously the proportion, but let's say that it's true that I talk about moms more than I talk about dads.
	I think so. I think, well, since it was the first bit of the book, it was about adult relationships, so, yeah.
	Right, okay, because I'm just trying to think back to the beginning of the book.
	I talk about sexuality and relationships being a bit of a problem, and I analogize it to a man who is wealthy, who gives a lot of, like for a woman who, you know, couples who have sex too quickly, it's sort of like a guy buying drinks for everyone and then complaining Because nobody really feels like his friend.
	I talk about that.
	I certainly think in the example that I give in the beginning of the book about the couple, I don't think that either one of them come off particularly well.
	I don't think that the man is the victim and the woman is the victimizer.
	Of course, she doesn't get to really the core metaphor, or one of the major metaphors in the book, is the Simon the Boxer, which is around men and violence and repetition in relationships.
	So I don't think that...
	Like, equal opportunity negativity, I think, is the key phrase in the book.
	But I'm sure, like, what I'm quite sure about is that my writing about mothers is more detailed and vivid than my writing about fathers, right?
	For the simple reason that I never really knew my father, and therefore I can't write with the same degree of knowledge, personal knowledge.
	I mean, that's a limitation of my history, and I can't overcome that, because it would be like pretending I speak a language that I just don't really speak.
	So you might want to pass along to your mother that, obviously, as a man, my dating relationship has been mostly with women, the occasional farmyard animal if I'm far away in the woods, but mostly with women, and therefore it would be more vivid for me to talk about women in relationships rather than men because I can only judge men by the men I've talked to about relationships or myself and so that's less vivid for me and also I grew up without a father and therefore I'm probably going to write a little bit more vividly about moms than dads but I don't think that there's anything like where I have an equal I don't think I have an equal balance of experiences between men and women but I simply write more negatively about women I would say that my experience As a son with a mother and a man dating women would be more with women than with men,
	and that would be my answer to that.
	I don't know whether that would be satisfactory to her or not, but you can also remind her that men get a fair amount of slagging later on in the book, so that might help her.
	Yeah, I think that's sort of what I felt.
	Because she kept on...
	When she was talking about it, she repeated that quite a few times, so obviously it felt quite important for her.
	Yeah, I mean, sorry to interrupt.
	I think that misogyny is sort of like, it's like the charge of racism.
	I think, look, maybe there's some misogynistic aspects of myself that I don't know about, that female listeners have never called me on, that my wife doesn't know about and has never called me on.
	I don't think that's the case. I think that would be stretching the possibility of a lack of knowledge To the point where we might as well just say God might exist, right?
	So maybe there is that.
	I don't think so. But I think that misogyny, like racism, is one of these...
	It's a very negative thing to say about someone.
	And I think that you don't want to...
	If I were to say to your mom, I would say...
	And certainly if she ever wants to talk to me, I'd be happy to talk to her if she would consent.
	But I don't think that your mom would want to lay that charge on me without...
	Without evidence sounds like she's got to prove a case or something, but just based on this makes me feel uncomfortable, therefore maybe it's misogynistic.
	It's one of these charges that when you throw at people, it's a little bit like the word cult.
	You throw it around and for some people it's just going to leave a residue.
	And the terrible thing really about charging someone with misogyny, if that person is not misogynistic, Is that what you're basically doing is you're charging someone with bigotry without evidence, which is itself bigotry, right?
	Yeah. So you don't want to point that gun and have it go off in your face.
	And that is, again, not to say that maybe there's something that I'm missing, either in my own character or in the book as a whole or any of my books.
	I don't, and certainly the women in the call here can, you know, put in the chat room, please be frank, right, as always, that if they feel that I have negative views of women, That I'm not aware of, you know, please let me know because that kind of feedback is obviously very important for me.
	I'm raising a daughter, right?
	So I want to make sure that that's not there.
	I've certainly not heard that from any of the female listeners.
	It's not been part of something that I've been accused of before.
	Christina doesn't feel that that's the case.
	So I think your mother might want to, you know, revisit that or you might want to talk about that with your mother.
	Not with regards to me, but If she's going to use a bigoted judgment of someone without evidence or counter to the evidence, then she's actually doing the wrong that she's accusing someone else of, and I think that's not a good way to approach an ethical evaluation.
	Yeah, that's a very good idea.
	I did talk to her about what she was saying after reading a tiny bit of the book, and she agreed, but she did say it But she should have known that herself.
	She should have read a bit the day before and came up with a whole list of criticisms.
	Right. I mean, I think the thing is, you know, just ask for the evidence, right?
	And if it's just a feeling, right, then you might want to point out that calling someone...
	Immoral or unjust, just based on a feeling, how is that distinguishing from racism?
	Just saying, well, blacks are X or Chinese are Y or whatever, just because you feel that way.
	You do sort of have to provide, I think, proof of these things.
	And if you don't, then you're actually manifesting the sin that you're heaping on someone else.
	A woman has just written in the chat room, she says, when I first started listening to Steph, I told, I guess, X some guy, That I thought he didn't like women, but that had more to do with my fear of what Steph was saying.
	It made me uncomfortable.
	And I think, I mean, I'm not going to say that that's the case with your mom, because I don't know, but it may be something to examine.
	I think it's tough to be accused of misogyny if you are an anarchist, because the state is so overwhelmingly male.
	That I think it's hard to say that you dislike women when the major target of your moral vituperation is the state, which is overwhelmingly male, or the church, particularly the Catholic Church, which is, of course, overwhelmingly male.
	So I think...
	I guess I could be accused of being a misanthrope, but I don't think I could be accused of being against women.
	Yeah. Okay, yeah.
	And hopefully she will read a little bit more and realize that it's people as a whole I just don't like.
	No, I'm kidding. But hopefully she will read a little bit more.
	And I'm also thinking, and if you're in the chat room and are listening to this or if you hear this in the future, please let me know what you think.
	I'm working on a second edition of the FDR books and one of the things that I was thinking of releasing was RTR without politics.
	RTR without any examples from statism or foreign policy or whatever.
	So just The pared down version just for personal relations.
	So let me know if that would be of interest to you.
	I think that would be something that people would be more comfortable in handing out to people without feeling that they were being asked to march in the parade against the corporate fascistic structure or whatever.
	I mean, I like the stuff that's in there, but I think it's more for people who are familiar with this conversation, this philosophical conversation, rather than newbies who are just interested in their relationships.
	So I'm very pleased with the way that the book came out with regards to this conversation, but I don't think it's something that can be easily handed out to others without context.
	And it is the book that I think can be most easily handed out to others if I were to take out some of this stuff.
	Yeah, thanks.
	alright Thank you. All right.
	Well, do let me know what she thinks of the rest of the book.
	And certainly if she feels at the end that there is aspects of misogyny in there, I would certainly be happy to hear.
	If she would like to talk to me, I would certainly be happy to hear more criticisms about that.
	Yeah, I'll listen to that.
	All right. Well, thank you very much.
	Appreciate that. Oh, it's so early.
	And Isabella is now up and writhing around on Mommy's lap because stillness is death.
	Failure is not an option. Failure is not an option, and stillness is failure.
	Her body moves like the surface of the sun, you know, boiling, rolling, squirming, arched back, rolling around.
	Yeah, she's not a baby to sit placidly in your arms and stare meaningfully into your eyes, for sure.
	She's a twisty-bot, no doubt.
	Somebody asked, how is the superhero series coming along?
	It's coming along alright, but I can't find the right tightness of tights for the video.
	So there is a certain amount of challenge.
	It's either too loose, which feels wrong, or it's too tight and the package outline is just going to make everyone uncomfortable.
	So we're still working on that.
	But I think that it's going to come down to spray-on spandex.
	But obviously...
	I'm going to apologize right here for that mental image.
	Oh dear, everyone's leaving the chat room.
	Can't blame you.
	Next question, please.
	Steph. I wanted some tips on working with children and with the Upfront acknowledgement that I know you've had some questions about the particular kinds of volunteer programs working with young children that may be from a broken home that you don't want to put them in a situation where they realize they're stuck there forever.
	But I I went ahead and volunteered, because there's still things that I can do that can make a difference of night and day.
	Oh, listen, I don't want to get into whether it's good or bad.
	I think it's fantastic that you're doing it, so why don't you just go ahead with the questions?
	Well, I kind of want to know what kind of things that I can do, or what I should and shouldn't be saying.
	It's more like it Because I don't want to.
	I don't want to. What happens?
	Let me just tell you about the situation.
	So what happens is I visit once a week at his elementary school and I work with this teacher on the time and stuff like that.
	And we just we kind of hang out and either we play video games, we throw the ball around.
	Of course, it's Houston and it's really hot right now and we can't.
	I don't really do that as much, but at first we were kicking the ball around outside and I go every Wednesday at lunchtime and we'll play a board game.
	He's not really particular to board games.
	He likes the video games and there's stuff that you can play on the computers there.
	And we just sit there next to each other and have fun with that.
	Every now and then, he'll open up and say something about his family, or ask me a question, and I'll try to answer it.
	And just last Wednesday, he asked the big question about my family, you know, and where they are.
	And I don't know if this was a mistake, but I mentioned that I don't see them anymore, that I haven't seen them, and they weren't good people.
	And he reacted in a way that's like, wow, you hate your parents?
	And he's like, I-- I'm like, well, yeah, they aren't good people.
	I just sort of left it at that.
	I don't know if I should have said that.
	I feel a lot of doubt about how much should I tell him.
	If I don't open up to him, how can I expect him to open up to me?
	I'm just sort of flying by the seat of my pants and going with whatever my gut tells me and it's kind of...
	I'm afraid.
	I feel like I'm going to ruin something or mess something up the whole time.
	What was his experience of you telling him that you hate your parents?
	He seemed shocked and...
	I don't think it was a genuine shock.
	It was more like, that's bad, because everyone tells me that that's bad sort of shock.
	Right. Now, why is it that you didn't ask him what he thought or felt about what it is that you were saying?
	I don't know.
	Why I didn't ask. Oh, look at him.
	He's so cute saying he doesn't know.
	Oh, come on. Say it again.
	Say it again. I like it when people do this.
	Damn it. Of course you know these things by now.
	You were uncomfortable with the topic and you wanted to move it along as quickly as possible, right?
	As if you'd just driven over a dog in the middle of the night and didn't want to go back, right?
	Right. So that was probably the worst thing.
	No, no, no. Forget worst, best.
	I mean, who cares, right? Because we're just trying to figure out what your experience was.
	Because if you can't process your experience, then he can't process his, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, you tell him...
	Sorry, someone just asked.
	Roughly, how old is he? Early teens?
	Late... 10. He's 10?
	Yeah. Sorry?
	10. 10.
	Okay, so... So he asked you this question, and you immediately felt anxious, right?
	Right. Yeah, anxious.
	And the thoughts were what I just previously mentioned, that I don't know how much I should be telling him.
	Oh no, I'm telling him too much.
	I'm shocking him. I'm doing something wrong.
	What do I do? What do I do?
	I panicked. Right.
	And I don't know your relationship.
	I don't know the maturity of this kid.
	But what would have been the most honest thing to say to...
	the boy, the moment that he asked you?
	That I'm anxious about telling him that?
	Well, you're asking me like it's a question.
	That I'm anxious about telling him that.
	I find it very difficult to talk about my family.
	I feel very anxious about this.
	And I would rather focus on my relationship with you rather than my relationship with my family, which is a whole other topic.
	Because you would rather he hadn't asked the question, right?
	Right. Actually, I'm kind of ambivalent about that.
	Because on one hand, if I'm not opening up to him, how can I expect him to open up to me?
	No, no, no. But this is not an equal relationship.
	I mean, it is true among friends that you should have equal level of openness, right?
	But it is not true that between adults and child, you should have equal level of openness, right?
	Right, and there's that whole age-appropriate information thing that I'm not sure...
	Yeah, but I mean, to take, I don't know, some example, I get a pimple on my ass, right?
	I might tell Christina.
	I'm not going to tell Isabella, right?
	Right, because it is not an equal and reciprocal relationship between parent and child, right?
	between adult and child.
	So, um, I mean, sorry, just, just another example, right?
	So if, uh, if we have, um, If Christina and I have money worries, or if I have money worries, donations are down, whatever, then I will talk about that with Christina.
	When Isabella is older, I won't talk about it with Isabella, right?
	Because she can't do anything about it.
	You don't give people information when they can't do anything about it, in my opinion.
	Children, let's just say, right?
	Okay. Alright, because I was going to ask...
	How do I know? But yeah, okay, I can go by that.
	Another example which Greg has pointed out in the chat room is that a therapist expects the client to open up to the therapist, but the therapist is actually not supposed to open up to the client, right?
	Right, that's true.
	Because that is also not an equal relationship.
	It's a mentor relationship.
	Right. Like, your boss can come and say, what did you do this morning, right?
	But you can't necessarily go into your boss's office and say, what did you do this morning, right?
	Right. Right.
	Wow, I didn't think of...
	Well, you're not used to being in a position of authority, right?
	No, and this is really scary for me.
	I don't know what...
	I feel like I'm just flying by the seat of my pants, and this is the most I've revealed to him about me, other than, you know, well, he asked me where I work and stuff like that, and that's fine.
	It's like, well, I do this.
	Right, but you don't need to have a project plan.
	You need to be emotionally honest, right?
	And your instincts are telling you that this is not something that you want to discuss in great detail with him, right?
	Because the anxiety is actually not a bad feeling.
	Right. Right, because your anxiety is saying...
	If you and I are having a conversation, you don't normally bite your tongue six ways from Sunday because you don't want to share, right?
	Normally you're quite pleased with and eager and comfortable with the sharing, right?
	Yes. So that's a situation where your anxiety is not spiking because it's appropriate, at least I hope it's appropriate, to share in a conversation with me, right?
	Because we're both adults and so on, right?
	Right. But in this situation, since it's adult child and it's mentor, mentee, or mentors, I don't know, whatever you would call that, then your anxiety is rising because part of you knows that it's not appropriate to talk about that with a kid because he's not going to have a context.
	It would take a long time to explain the context of your relations with your family to a child and it would actually probably be quite scary and traumatic for him to hear all of that, right?
	And inappropriate in certain areas as well, right?
	Because telling a kid about your family is like taking him to see Saving Private Ryan, right?
	Yeah. It's like, holy, that's kind of overwhelming, right?
	Yeah. Wow, how do I do a disaster recovery on that?
	Well, first of all, I would not say that it's a disaster, right?
	Don't escalate, right? I mean, a disaster would have been, and here's a picture of my bruised face when I was 12, right?
	You gave him a full-on multimedia presentation and sat and bored and frightened him for two hours talking about your history.
	That would be a disaster. So first of all, I think recognize that you handled it quite well, in my opinion.
	You gave him a bare minimum of information.
	You didn't lie. Now, I don't think that you listened to your instincts and were honest with him, were saying, you know, I don't feel comfortable talking about this with you, if that's all right.
	Or I don't feel comfortable talking about this, if that's alright.
	It's not really relevant to our relationship.
	You could say, well, my family is all kinds of complicated and I really want to focus on my relationship with you and not bring all that stuff into it.
	Because that's kind of what you...
	You didn't want to talk to this kid about your family, right?
	Right. So it's okay to say to someone, I don't want to talk to you about this.
	You can say it in a nice way or whatever.
	You trusted your instincts in that you gave a bare minimum and you're bringing it up, which I think is a fantastically useful thing to do.
	But this is just part of trust your instincts.
	I don't feel comfortable talking about it.
	The reason why we're so scared to set boundaries, because what we're talking about here is setting a boundary in the relationship.
	The reason that we're so scared about setting boundaries, Nate, is because whenever we set boundaries, if we came from these kinds of families, whenever we would set boundaries, We would be attacked, right?
	Exactly. Right, so boundary setting is equivalent to attack.
	And so the anxiety, the confusion, the not knowing what to do, the impossible situation, the stress, the tension, all of that arises because of the history of attack.
	And I think it's just important to muscle through all of that stuff in your own mind and say, look, if I'm feeling this tense about it, it's not a good thing to talk about with this person right now, right?
	Right. Which was the same thing that was going on with this woman at the sports league, right?
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, you just trust your instincts.
	I don't feel comfortable talking about this right now.
	Look, and I say this as a guy who, I mean, it's not like I'm always listening to my instincts.
	I really try to, but I miss the boat at times as well, without a doubt, right?
	So, again, right in the trenches there with you trying to listen to this.
	Because my instincts are either too quiet Or they're overwhelming, right?
	I'm trying to get them to the right volume where they're informative but not short-circuiting me.
	So that is a real challenge and that just involves a more ecosystem balance and openness.
	But I find that either I just feel a slight bit of unease, which I kind of dismiss, or I feel sort of an overwhelming tension, which kind of is more paralyzing than motivating.
	So, I mean, I hope that you understand.
	I'm not trying to yell down from the mountaintop of perfection on this issue.
	It is A very challenging and difficult issue because so much of a statist and religious society is about attacking the instincts because the instincts lead to egalitarianism and atheism.
	Yeah, it's become a lot like, and I thought of this as a metaphor when I started doing this skating thing, how if I go with my instincts when skating, I'm going to fall down. Because it's not the same as walking or anything like that.
	It's like if you don't speed up instead of slow down and curl into a ball, then you're going to fall.
	So it's kind of like that for me in terms of my defenses or my instincts or trusting them.
	Because it feels like with the lady with the singles group, I had all these what ifs, you know, what if this time my instincts are wrong and I'm being prejudgmental and I'm not right this time, maybe she's just having a bad day or...
	Well sure, and there's nothing wrong with empiricism is always the key, right?
	So there's nothing wrong with saying, is she having a bad day?
	Because then what you do is you wait until the next day.
	And you wait and you see if she comes back in you and says, oh man, I was really abrupt with you yesterday.
	I'm very sorry. I won't do it again or whatever, right?
	Right. But if that doesn't occur, then, you know, your instincts gain validation, right?
	And then at some point it's just, you know, there's nothing but validation, right?
	Right. So my suggestion with the boy, and again, I don't know your relationship, so please never, anybody, substitute my judgment for yours, right?
	But this is just my thoughts about it, and you can mull it over or tell me I'm full of nothingness.
	But my suggestion would be, I don't think you want to now completely ignore the topic, because you opened a can of worms, right?
	Yeah, I was going to ask. And then you'll be teaching him, like, if something awkward happens, you just ignore it, right?
	Right. Right. Right, so say, this would be my speech if I were in your situation.
	And, you know, obviously don't take anything I say with any particular significance, but this is just the way that I would approach it.
	I'd sit the kid down and I'd say, look, you asked me about my family the other day, and it kind of caught me by surprise.
	My relationship with my family is complicated.
	And so...
	I don't want to talk about my family with you, not because I don't think you're smart or not because I don't think, you know, we're close or whatever, but just because it's, you know, I don't want this to be about me and my family.
	I want this to be about you and me, like our relationship.
	And my stuff with my family does not come into our relationship.
	But that having been said, you know, you did seem to me to be surprised or maybe even shocked when I told you.
	So tell me what You thought about, if anything, or what you felt when I told you this, right?
	And I would stay on his feelings and not give more information about your family, but focus on his feelings so that you've got a boundary, but the boundary is not dissociation.
	The boundary is not ignoring things, right?
	Because that's not a boundary. That's just fog, right?
	That's just getting lost, right?
	That's not having a line.
	That's just having murk, right?
	So I wouldn't, because he was surprised and shocked, and this is a big fundamental thing, right, to pierce the Automatic virtue of the family or whatever is a big thing and What it will do is uncork any ambivalence he may or may not have about his family and again I don't want to know I'm just it may or may not so I don't think that you want to I don't think you want to ignore this because there was some awkwardness I think you want to ask him how it was for him with the goal of of having and then if he asks you more about your family say listen I mean I really want to stay focused on what you thought and felt right I mean We can talk about my family maybe at some point in the future or maybe when you're a little older,
	but I really do want to understand what you thought and felt when I said it and afterwards and if you thought and felt anything about it since.
	Just stay focused on his thoughts and feelings and experiences.
	I think that would be the way that I would approach that, if that makes any sense.
	That sounds good. I can do that.
	Fantastic for you, right?
	You're teaching him a lot.
	Right. That his feelings are valid and that they mean something to somebody and not all adults are...
	Yeah, that you can say something that you weren't particularly comfortable with.
	You're not going to ignore it.
	You care enough about your relationship with him, about his feelings, about your feelings to come back and revisit the issue and make sure that he's okay and listen to whatever he's got to say about it or whatever, right?
	So I think that's really important, right?
	So it's not a mistake. Unless you fumble afterwards, right?
	Right. I'm not sure you would, right?
	I'm sure you wouldn't, right? But if you were to say to yourself, well, let's put the cork back in this topic and let's pretend it never happened, that would be a mistake, right?
	Giving a little too much information while in a surprising situation of stress, bah, you know, so what, right?
	On the scale of problems in this world, it doesn't even register, right?
	Because every mistake is an opportunity, and I know it's a cliche, but it is absolutely true.
	Right. Right.
	But going back and circling, right?
	Like getting mad at someone, lashing out at someone, which I know you didn't do.
	But even if you did, that's not the mistake.
	The mistake is what happens afterwards, right?
	right if that makes sense right um okay so yeah i'm gonna do that on on wednesday then and just let you know how that goes um Have that conversation.
	I listened to your podcast on Wednesday.
	What was it? Teaching? It was like a really old one.
	They were giving some guy advice on how to get the attention of the class and to be honest or just poll the class on what their thoughts or feelings are about being taught.
	I've kind of tried to use that.
	I've been ambivalent about how much honesty is appropriate in this particular situation.
	I take a look around and I look at the school he's in and the way they treat the kids.
	It's just not optimal and it's quite suboptimal.
	I would say it's pretty bad.
	I think that these are all very difficult issues to deal with children and I think that you have a lot, a lot, a lot to be proud of in what you're doing with this kid.
	Thanks. Yeah, I'm going to try that on Wednesday then and let you know how it goes.
	Yeah, and look, he may just shrug and say, oh, I'm nothing, right?
	Yeah, I kind of expect that.
	Yeah, absolutely. And then my suggestion would be, you know, wait a week or two and just say, listen, just in case you had any other thoughts, I'm not going to bring it up again.
	I'm not going to keep backing you about it.
	But just in case you did have any other thoughts, I'm happy to hear about them.
	And if he doesn't want to talk about it, then just leave it, right?
	If he does have thoughts about it, doesn't want to talk to them right now, trust his instincts.
	And then trust him to bring up what he wants to bring up at the right time.
	We trust his body to go into puberty at the right time.
	We can trust his instincts to bring up certain topics at the right time as well.
	The reminder of availability and remembering the issue is important.
	And then we don't want to stalk other people's inner lives, just being available.
	is the important thing and if he wants to talk about it, it's the right time.
	If he doesn't want to talk about it, it's the right time too.
	Great, great. Just one more question about, and this is more practical maybe.
	Let's say we're playing a game and we were playing Battleship in this situation and I I kind of gathered that because he was not so interested in following the rules, that he was probably not interested in the game.
	Do you think I might have been right on that?
	He was a little hyperactive.
	He was happy that day and that's kind of unusual for him because he's usually a calm one.
	I don't want to Try to control him in any way.
	I want to let him feel free to just express himself and do what he wants.
	And if he's not interested in following the rules, and I assume he's not interested in playing the game, so I kind of, you know, wrapped it up there and said, well, hey, let's pick all the pieces up and we'll do something else.
	So you were trying to play Battleship, and what was he doing that was not in the rules?
	Was he using the long class of U-Boat?
	Sorry, go on. Right.
	I'm not sure if he just maybe didn't understand them well enough, and maybe this is, I don't know if that's, on the box it says, you know, that it's within his age range.
	Well, sorry, what is the upper limit to the age range?
	Because it may be that you're too old for it and don't understand it.
	Sorry, go on, just kidding. Actually, I like that game.
	It's one of my favorites. Right.
	I mean, my suggestion would be, like, if he's just not that interested in the game, just say, well, what do you think of this game?
	Do you think it's a good game or it's a bad game or whatever, right?
	He may not feel comfortable because he's been in public school, right?
	So he may not feel comfortable saying he doesn't know, right?
	Because that's something that the teachers always get other kids to laugh at you or whatever, right?
	Or at least that's what generally happens.
	Or at least they don't. So just ask him, what is his experience?
	You know, tell me, do you think it's a good game?
	Do you think it's a bad game?
	Were you interested originally and now you're not?
	Or, you know, just try and understand what his process is, right?
	That's what I thought. I need to just do that.
	Yeah, and the other thing, you remember, if he asks you questions, look, there's a reason he asks you about your family.
	And You know, kids are incredibly smart, right?
	I've been meaning to do this for a while, right?
	Which is to do a parenting podcast reminding parents, I am absolutely planning for Isabella being smarter than I am.
	Right. Right?
	I mean, because genetically and statistically, it may not happen, right?
	But genetically and statistically, that is the most likelihood.
	And certainly, she's way ahead so far, at least.
	Who knows, right? But she's done everything really early so far.
	Yeah, and she's sitting now, actually just today.
	We'll maybe upload a photo at the end of the show.
	She's actually sitting up, right?
	With better posture even than me.
	Actually, it's not hard. So I plan for her to be smarter than I am, which means that I better not...
	Yeah, he's been teaching me math. I'm sorry?
	He's been teaching me the math.
	I'm like, do you need help with your homework?
	He's like, yeah, and then I end up teaching me stuff that I didn't know.
	Absolutely. And also, they have access to more information than we ever did.
	And they have access to a greater variety of information than we ever did.
	You know, they're growing up digital.
	They're just smarter, right?
	And I mean, if you heard Tom's interview with Tom Whipple from The Times...
	I mean, Tom was just stone genius during that.
	I mean, there's no way in hell I would have been able to do that at 18.
	So the next generation is just a damn sight smarter than us creaky old fogies.
	And so he's going to be smarter, right?
	So if he's asking you a question about your family, I can guarantee you it's because he's picked up on something.
	And I can also guarantee you that because he's a kid, His empathy centers are still developing, and so it's most likely to be about something that triggers something in him.
	Not because he's, you know, there's no such thing as a narcissistic kid, right?
	It's just that that's where they are in terms of empathy development.
	And so if he asks you something about your family, you can say, well, we can talk about that perhaps, but first I want to know, why did this thought come to you?
	Can you tell me what?
	Getting kids to understand the sequence of their thoughts is so, so important.
	If there's one thing that you can teach kids and nothing else, it is to understand how they came to that thought.
	This is going to sound all kinds of stupid, right?
	But when I was a kid, and I remember this from the age of five onwards, I would literally sit there and I'd say, I'm thinking of a red truck.
	Now, why am I thinking of a red truck?
	And I would sit there and I would trace my thoughts back And it would start off at something complete, like I saw a cloud, which then was like a tree, and then underneath the tree was, you know, a green bush, which reminded me of a green truck, and then I would think of a red truck.
	Like, I would follow the patterns of association.
	It was just something that I did for amusement.
	And teaching him that his thoughts are important, and the source of his thoughts, the pattern of his thoughts, the associations of his thoughts are absolutely very critically important.
	I think to say, well why is it, what made, when were you thinking about this, why do you think you're asking the question, what thoughts came before, and why do you think you want to know, like getting him to understand the sequence and pattern of his own thinking is absolutely, that's giving him that third eye to observe his own thought processes is the fundamentals to a happy life.
	You cannot have a happy life if you don't have that third eye that views your own actions and is curious about them.
	That fundamental ecosystem of the observing ego is absolutely essential.
	And you can do a huge amount to teach him that just by being consistently curious about his thoughts.
	What did you think just before that?
	And what did you think just before that?
	And why do you think you were thinking about this?
	And getting him to think about his own thinking, that is the highest order of intelligence that you can give to him.
	And it will be the source of maturity, wisdom, happiness, and intimacy.
	Because if you can't describe your own thinking properly, And understand your own thinking, you cannot open your heart to anyone because you remain a locked box mystery.
	Wow, that's awesome.
	I want to do that. I almost can't wait to see him again.
	That's very helpful.
	Right, right. Okay, well, good, good.
	And, you know, in teaching that to others, I mean, I've grown so enormously through this conversation, right?
	Because in giving that gift to others, you remind yourself how important it is, and it really helps you with that, too.
	But, I mean, that's something that is so important for kids.
	One gift I could give to kids would be to give them the gift of noticing their own thinking and the patterns and sequences of their thoughts, because that is the essence of a wise, mature, and happy life.
	That's just great. I do that, too, now, actually.
	Yeah, how the hell, like, why am I thinking about this, right?
	And to notice that repetitive thoughts are not demons to be, you know, fought down and attacked, right?
	In primitive movies, horror movies, right?
	The monster is always something that they keep attacking, and then the monster keeps coming back to life, right?
	Right. And, you know, they stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast, right?
	The beast. But that's not how things work in reality, right?
	You have to hug the monster, right?
	You have to embrace the monster, and you have to try and figure out the origins of the monster.
	And remember, Frankenstein was the doctor, not the beast, right?
	The one who created it, which is us.
	Yeah, I remember you included that part in The God of Atheists.
	Okay. Well, thank you.
	I think that was an excellent topic as always.
	And thank you so much for bringing all this stuff up.
	And you got some fantastically positive feedback, as always, in the chat room.
	So thank you so much for bringing that up.
	All right. I noticed that we have some people in the chat room, and I'm not going to point them out by name.
	But I was just wondering if these are the people who embrace the psychological topics much as a man with a chicken box might embrace a cactus.
	A what? No, no, they don't embrace it.
	And given that there are philosophical and economic topics which we have been known to dip into, or even political or current event topics, if the people who don't like so much the psychology would like to jump in with another kind of question, I would be more than happy to talk about other issues.
	And this can be something which isn't even a question, but just something that you've noticed about current events or some observation that you would like to make, which I will then turn into A criticism of your psychology.
	No, I'm just kidding. I will be more than happy to listen to it if you would like to bring it up.
	Alan, sorry, frog in my throat.
	Hello.
	Hello, is this Pizza Pizza?
	Not quite. Not quite.
	Hi, you wanted me to call.
	Was that because you wanted to listen in or because you had a question or comment?
	I had a question on the show.
	Actually, I wanted to post to you on the show.
	There's no way you could go a little closer to your mouthpieces there.
	I'm sorry. I'm babysitting.
	I'm baby-watching, I should say.
	I have a daughter that I'm watching.
	But I wanted to discuss my feelings about the Free State Project.
	Sorry, can you just hold on for a sec?
	I've got to try and adjust your volume because I'm finding it really hard to hear you.
	You don't have Skype, I guess, right?
	No, it's not Skype. It's a cell phone.
	Do you have a landline by chance that I could call you?
	Landline, unfortunately, no.
	Okay, go ahead. Just try and speak slowly because your connection is a bit rough.
	So I just want to make sure I follow what you're saying.
	So if you could just speak slowly and try and be as annoyingly distinct as possible.
	Sure. Let me try to get better reception in a different room.
	I've been thinking recently about...
	I've been listening to a different show that was talking about the idea of, I guess, people that are kind of like us, people that are liberty-minded, moved to one place, etc.
	And I think it's a great idea, but I kind of feel like, you know, if I think it's such a great idea, why am I not actively, you know, trying to actually get it accomplished?
	And I've been kind of just walking through it in...
	Well, I think the main thing is I live in Miami, so it's really nice down here.
	So, you know, it's really hard to think about leaving Miami to go to a place that's very, very cold.
	So that's my first thing as far as, you know, the reason why I think I haven't really done much about it.
	But the other part, of course, is, you know, the whole having to find a new job, etc.
	So that's kind of a frustration with that.
	So I just think, you know, is it weird to believe in something and see that the only...
	The only opportunity that I can see at this point that can actually turn into something real in my life and I'm not taking that opportunity.
	It's just kind of weird. It's just something that I'm trying to work with.
	I'm not sure how to go through that.
	Right, so I'm trying to make sure that I understand what you're saying.
	So your question is, you believe in involuntarism or statelessness or whatever.
	And you would like to find ways to bring that more into your life in a practical way, is that right?
	That's correct, yes. Not just in my life specifically, but...
	Sorry, you also said that you were listening to another show, and I have no problem with you mentioning the name of that show.
	Was it Free Talk Live or something else?
	Yeah, yeah, Free Talk Live.
	Free Talk Live. Yeah, listen, I mean, I have no problem with...
	Free Talk Live, as far as the stuff that they go, I mean, you know, more power to them, right?
	And I, you know, I was on their show in New Hampshire when I was there, and I've been on their show before, so I certainly don't mind, you know, pimping Ian and Mark.
	So, now, have you listened to much of the shows here, or are you more of a Free Talk Live guy or other kinds of shows?
	Actually, I listen to a lot of different things, and I started to listen to you a while, I'll say maybe two months ago, and I've been going back to the very first, the beginning of your podcast, because I've gone to iTunes and all that.
	So I've been listening to you extensively recently, but before that it was mainly Free Talk Live and some other liberty-minded type of individuals.
	But as far as my main thing, my main struggle is really...
	I feel like there's a conflict there.
	I can see the practicality of it, which is it's hard to just pick up and go somewhere else.
	But at the same time, how else can you possibly change?
	If you want to make a real change in the world, I mean, definitely you go one person at a time.
	For instance, in my job, I think that works very well.
	Just having big conversations with people, you can see how some of their mindsets change, but very little.
	For example, here in Miami, Making a substantial difference would pretty much take my entire lifetime.
	Oh, look, I totally understand.
	Now, tell me what it is that you have as your goal, right?
	So obviously we'd all like to live in a stateless society.
	I mean, at least I assume that most of us here would, so we can understand that as a goal.
	But I think we all understand, I don't care how old you are, you're not going to live in a stateless society.
	I mean, maybe our grandkids, maybe our great-grandkids, but...
	We're not going to...
	Like, there's no way that this giant monolith of the state, which is supported by 99.9999% of the population, is going to go away in our lifetimes.
	I think that that is an unrealistic goal to have.
	And if you have that goal, then you're just going to spend your life completely frustrated and then feel like a failure.
	And I don't think that the purpose of wisdom, philosophy, knowledge, and excellence in the realm of human thought is designed...
	To make you feel like a dismal, futile, frustrated failure, right?
	No, I agree. I agree with you on that.
	And it really is. It's not about the actual, you know, bringing, you know, liberty in my lifetime.
	I don't think that's really my goal, per se.
	It's just, you know, when, for instance, you just turn on the news and you watch, you know, half an hour's work.
	Actually, not even. Ten minutes worth of news.
	And there's so many things that are just contrary to what reality should be.
	You know, it's just, you know, where do you start if you want to start, you know, changing this, you know, turning this massive, massive ocean liner?
	And it seems to me, not that it will actually happen as far as, you know, having a liberty in one's lifetime, but, you know, it seems to me like the most logical point as far as, like, how can I actually start steering this ship and this thing to actually be something that's effective.
	It seems to me that it can be an effective idea.
	Right. And I feel like by not participating in it that, I don't know, does it feel conflicted about that?
	Listen, I totally understand, and this is to some degree the content of a book that I'm rather endlessly working on, so I'm not going to go into a too big a spiel here, but I will because the book will be out soon, I hope. Yeah, I'll give you my sort of two bits of it.
	First of all, The concept of liberty and our lifetime is definitely the goal of what we're doing here, or at least what I'm doing here, what I'm trying to do here.
	And so I think we're on the same wavelength as far as that goes.
	Now my fundamental approach to liberty is that liberty cannot be dependent upon the permission of others, and it cannot be dependent upon the agreement of others, because You can't be free if you attempt to control that which you cannot, in fact, control. Right?
	Because if you have the illusion that your freedom is dependent upon the agreement of other people, then your freedom is dependent upon things outside your control, which means you are not in control of your own liberty.
	Does that make sense? Actually, that makes a lot of sense.
	I see where you're coming from.
	In a sense, for instance, if you're seeking the validation of society in a way to affirm that you are free, in a sense, you're far from your goal.
	That's the way I take it.
	For instance, if I need...
	One of my goals is not to say, hey, society, you must conform to my ideas.
	It's more like, okay, you can have your ideas so long as you don't bother me with my ideas.
	Does that make sense to you?
	It really makes sense.
	Now this notion of mine, I'm not saying it's only my notion, but what I keep pumping in this show, is Also, it's important to recognize, which I'm sure you do, but I'll just mention it, that although we say, well, we don't want our liberty to be dependent upon the agreement of others, because that gives us the desire to control that which we cannot control, but the reality is that our liberty is constrained by the disagreement of others, right?
	Because other people say, we need a state, and therefore you and I have to pay taxes and obey certain laws, right?
	Well, that's what I'm trying to get to.
	I'm trying to get to a point where does liberty have to be one or the other?
	Meaning that can someone consent to be enslaved?
	Well, not to be enslaved, but to be told what to do until it violates whatever their contract is.
	And I think people have that right as well.
	So that's why I think as far as the idea of liberty can coexist with the ideas of the state.
	It's kind of odd to work through, but the truth is I do think it Right, so we can't control other people's opinions,
	but yet Their opinions have a direct impact on our freedom, and that's sort of the paradox that we have to wrestle with, then it's not an easy paradox by any means.
	So the questions you're asking are, in my opinion, entirely core, central, and brilliant relative to the challenges that we face.
	So I'll give you the two seconds on my approach to it.
	You can, you know, this is just my opinion.
	Obviously, no state in the society has been created through this process, so I'm not going to say this is proven, but this is the way that I've approached it, at least, and it certainly has worked in my own life and in the context of this show.
	I'll give you a little fable and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
	So let's say that we all grow up in the land of the obese, right?
	And we're all force-fed junk as children by state schools, let's say.
	And we all end up in our teenage years obese.
	And I think that is largely true.
	Obviously, metaphorically, the state pours a huge amount of propagandistic junk into our brains and we end up With, you know, just religion and collectivism and junk and crap like that.
	Not to mention some of the pro-family propaganda, which I have some issues with.
	So we end up with a lot of junk and garbage and we just, we're fat, right?
	We're just obese. And everyone is obese, right?
	And because everyone's obese, people don't even know what being slender is, right?
	Because the standard is everybody's 300 pounds, right?
	Now, if I'm 300 pounds and I want to live in a world of thin people, there's not much point me running around telling people to stop eating if I'm still 300 pounds, right?
	So the first thing that I need to do is, if I believe that there's this better state called being slender, or at least not being morbidly obese, Then the first thing that I need to do is to start eating better myself, right? It's like that thing they have in the airplanes, right?
	Put the oxygen mask over yourself and then help other people, right?
	Right, right. So what I would need to do is to become slender myself.
	Now, if by becoming slender I am happier, I am healthier, and so on, then How is it that I'm going to motivate other people to start losing weight?
	Well, the first thing is that I'm going to know that nagging them never works, right?
	Nagging them, confronting them, none of these things ever work when it comes to motivating other people.
	You might get, because it's essentially a statist approach, right, to nag and bully people into doing stuff.
	So what I should do, I think, is I should be openly thin or slender or whatever, a normal way, not obese, right?
	I'll just say the word slim. I'll be openly slim, and I will be quite vocal about how genuinely happy I am now that I'm not carting around all that extra weight, right?
	Now, in the fat land that I live in, there will be a number of people who don't want to lose weight, a number of people who think that excess weight is healthy, a number of people who believe that I am diseased and sickly.
	They look at me the way that you and I would look at an anorexic, who's like, 80 pounds, you know, on death door or something.
	But there will be a few people who will be attracted not to my slimness, but to my happiness and to my health.
	The McDonald's lobby, I guess, right?
	I'm sorry? The McDonald's lobby, I guess you can call them.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure.
	Now, those people will come up to me and will say, you seem quite happy.
	Is it, and why is it?
	And you say, well, I'm happy because, you know, I can climb stairs without breathing hard, because I can run around, because I can do cartwheels, because, because, because, right?
	I'm happy because my cholesterol is low and I'm going to live longer and I'm healthier, whatever it is, right?
	And I'm happy. And those people will say, damn, I want me some of that, right?
	Right, right. And then they will face the same challenge that I faced, which is that all the overweight people in their life will start to get anxious and upset if they start losing weight, right?
	Like if the person who comes up to me and says, why are you happy?
	I want some of that, right? And so in this way, I gain the benefits of losing weight, obviously, which is first and foremost liberty and freedom and wisdom and knowledge, self-knowledge in my own life.
	And secondly, because I have actually lost the weight and it's visible, I will attract the small number of people who will be interested in doing the same thing.
	See, I'm not surrendering anything to anyone else.
	I'm not turning myself into a slave who has to run around yanking on people's collars and telling them that by God they've got to lose weight, right?
	Right, right. Because that's not a free life.
	If I ignore losing my own weight because I've got to run around getting everyone else to lose their weight, A, I'm not free, and B, it's never going to work anyway.
	Because if I run around pursuing people to become thin, I can't figure out who the hell is interested in being thin or not.
	But if I am thin and happy, and people are attracted to me because of that, then that is a beautiful selection process, right?
	That's right. The problem with initiating conversations about liberty is you can't figure out who the hell is even remotely interested in it and who the hell is going to be offended or upset or angry or turn trolley on you or whatever, right?
	But if you're free and happy with great relationships in your own life, then the people who are interested in that are a self-selecting group of the people you actually want to spend time with rather than running around trying to, you know, grind everyone down to become free Which is not a self-selecting process.
	We know how rare it is that people are genuinely interested in liberty and want to pursue it and want to take the bullets that come with trying to lift up the human condition, right?
	We know how rare those people are.
	So the last thing we want to do, like if you're looking for one, quote, customer in a thousand, the last thing you want to do is drop leaflets, right?
	The whole thing about business is narrowing your customers, right?
	That's why the Republicans Don't spend a lot of time trying to get Barack Obama's wife to vote Republican.
	But they focus on the people who they can propagandize, who are on the middle, who are in the swing states, right?
	They focus on those people.
	And I'm not saying that we would do that, but that's just an example of the first thing is to select.
	And the best way to select is to be happy yourself and see who is genuinely interested in happiness based upon their excitement about being around your example.
	And so working on freedom, and as I've said a number of times and I'll mention it here again, the only freedom that really counts, the only freedom that really matters is the only freedom fundamentally is freedom from illusion.
	The state is an illusion that doesn't exist.
	Collectivism, the tribe, is an illusion.
	The country is an illusion that doesn't exist.
	God is an illusion that doesn't exist.
	The only freedom that we fundamentally have is freedom from illusion.
	And so if you work on organizing your own thinking, becoming more rational, discarding the illusions, challenging the errors that we've all inherited by being force-fed all the garbage we were when we were kids, then you will emerge from that process as a real beacon, right? A real beacon of freedom.
	And so what you are is you're like a, you're like a, this is a silly metaphor, but it's what pops into my mind.
	You become like The lights on a landing strip.
	So people are flying, they look down, they see nothing but darkness.
	It's nighttime for everyone. They're flying through the night sky, they can see nothing.
	Now you, by becoming free, turn yourself into landing strips.
	Now most people don't want to land, don't want to go out of the murk, they're just going to keep flying because that's all they know how to do.
	But for those who are interested in landing, they have a guide now which they didn't have before.
	Those who are interested in coming out of the clouds of illusion and putting their feet on the ground of reality, there's a place for them to land, which wasn't there before.
	Now, you can't shoot people down, right?
	Again, to stretch the metaphor beyond all sense, you can't shoot people down because you can't hit them, right?
	Because they can always just stop talking to you.
	But you can become a beacon.
	You can become an airstrip.
	You can become a lighthouse.
	You can become And inspiration to others who are interested in being free.
	You have control over that.
	And even, see, what I'm aiming at is that even if nobody cares about the fact that you're free, you are still free and much happier thereby.
	Free from error, free from illusion, free from confusion, free from randomness, free from unexplained, unconstrained emotion.
	And so even if nobody, like even if you're the only thin guy in fat land, You at least get the health benefits of being free if nobody else wants to be free.
	And that makes your life better.
	So that's my brief thing about...
	Yeah, I'm pretty sure I agree with you on all those points.
	But it's still amazing, you know, as far as which one is a better idea.
	You know, am I better off, you know, staying here and, you know, finding those people that, you know, I'm not finding them, but just kind of being myself and living freely as much as one can live freely and hope that I run into these other people.
	Especially with the fact that I have a new 10-month-old.
	Is this the best environment for her to be growing up in?
	Is something else that comes to mind?
	I don't know. So you mean like it's just how to define these kinds of people?
	Is that what you mean? Well, yeah.
	I live in Miami, so we're talking about Republican, which is not really Republican, and the Democrats, which are just, you know, basically Greenpeace mixed with a combination of PETA, essentially.
	So it's just a very weird case to be.
	But yeah, there are definitely, you know, some people out there that, you know, think like I do.
	It's just, you know, they're so few and far between.
	And, you know, when you're raising a family in that environment, you know, even if you try your best, you know, and try to surround them with people that think like you, The odds of them finding a whole bunch of other people that are, the majority, the overwhelming majority, that seem completely different is pretty large.
	I'm hoping that my parenting skills will be strong enough to overcome society, but it's kind of like swimming upstream.
	Which one is the best idea as far as getting those scenarios?
	Yeah, look, it is really hard to find these people.
	I mean, I know that for sure.
	I mean, we've had...
	This show's been running, I don't know, probably around three and a bit years.
	Yeah, a little over three years.
	We've had maybe 100,000 people come through, and there may be 50,000 regular listeners.
	That's out of a pretty worldwide audience, right?
	And now, again, I mean, lots of people, the vast majority of people never heard, but it's hard to find...
	These people, that is a pretty small number of people for such an important conversation.
	But, I mean, that argument for me is like, well, the further out at sea the ships are, the brighter the lighthouse needs to be, right?
	So the more free you need to be because people are so rare who are genuinely interested in freedom, the more free you need to be and the more open you need to be, right?
	I mean, genuine philosophical liberty lovers, you know, we're like...
	We're like gays in the 15th century, right?
	We've got to come out of the closet and unleash our boas of freedom and stride confidently down with the assless chaps of philosophical wisdom and have our own pride parade, so to speak.
	I think we have to be open and honest about the freedoms and the joys that we have in our lives.
	And simply because it is so rare to find people who are genuinely interested, so the more visible, I think, and open we need to be, if that makes sense.
	And I think you're right in the sense that, you know, it feels like the time is right, you know, for our movement to finally step out of the shadows, because before we just couldn't reach the amount of people that, you know, we couldn't reach before.
	And now, with, you know, with the access of the internet, etc., it just seems it's a lot easier to reach people that would No, that's right.
	Philosophy's a bitch, right? It absolutely is.
	And I'm going to do a whole video on this, but basically, what other time in history would you prefer to be?
	That's true. Do you want to be around in the 1950s or the 1850s or the 1750s or the 50s, the 050s, right?
	Do you want to be around when guys who claim to be able to come back from dead and walk on water were treated as non-epideptic lunatics but instead the sons of God?
	Do you want to be back in the Roman times?
	Where, you know, the majority of the population was enslaved?
	Do you want to be in the ancient Greek times where pederasty, child abuse and the subjugation of women were the backbone of society?
	I mean, do you want to be around in the 13th century with the Black Death or the 15th century?
	With the expansion of the slave trade or the 19th century with the expansion of the European empires and subjugation of foreign people?
	Do you want to be around with monarchies?
	I understand, do you want to be around where it was impossible to have alternate viewpoints or to be an open atheist because you would be killed or at least thrown in jail?
	You and I can have this conversation without fear, or at least with almost no fear, of political or legal repercussions.
	We can have this conversation for a very small investment in technology.
	We can record this conversation and repeat it at relatively low cost to anyone in the world who wants to listen.
	I certainly would have vanished like a bird flying overhead in the night.
	I would have vanished in history in any history before the present and I know that for a fact because I tried to get books published for 20 years before FDR and quite wisely the publishers were not at all interested because the amount of marketing versus return on investment the amount of marketing to find somebody who actually wants to get involved in what I'm talking about is so ridiculously excessive that they would have to spend $10,000 in advertising In advertising for every one book that I would sell,
	right? So they were quite wise in not publishing my books.
	And so prior to the internet, prior to this conversation, I would have utterly vanished.
	There is no possibility that I ever would have been able to achieve anything prior to this particular tiny time slice of history, like over the past four or five years, since broadband, since podcasting, since iPod, since all of that, since burning CDs and DVDs came into I simply would have completely vanished.
	So I know that for myself, there is no other time in history that I would rather be born.
	I could say, wow, what about the future?
	Well, who knows what the future is?
	And even then, I'd still rather be here now, at the beginning of things, laying the foundation, rather than in the future, just doing the mere building up.
	So I know that for myself, there's no better, more exciting, more wonderful, more possible chance and no better time to be around than now.
	It is the most exciting supernova of human thought in human history, and I don't mean this.
	I mean the internet as a whole, of which this is a part, right?
	So I just think, gosh, yeah, it's tough, but my God, what an incredible series of rockets we have underneath us now for the first and so far the only time in history.
	Yeah, definitely.
	So now pretty much all I'm doing is a lot of the things that you said, which is try to live as I guess as morally as I can, and at the same time, I'm trying to better myself on a day-to-day basis.
	But yeah, definitely. Thanks a lot, Steph.
	I appreciate your time.
	Thank you. And do keep us posted about how you...
	We get into some of this stuff pretty early on in the podcast series, so just let us know how you enjoy it as you go forward.
	Thank you so much. Well done.
	Thank you. All right. Take care.
	Oh, I was just muted there, wasn't it?
	Yes, thank you so much for that.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	Thank you so much for that.
	And then I segued into something else.
	Oh, it was just fantastically exciting as well.
	Sorry, I muted because Christina wants to listen to the show.
	I have it on speakers, but then I have to mute myself.
	And I'm sorry, I forgot to. To unmute there.
	And it is the best time in the world for us to be doing what we're doing.
	And I think we should be very grateful for the opportunity to have this kind of community.
	Somebody asked if I'm going to do any more UVU shows.
	We want to see Izzy. Yes, I would love to do more UVU shows.
	I'd love to do Sunday shows where people dial in and we talk, because then I'd also have a video as well.
	But that is a challenge because a lot of people don't have the bandwidth or the webcams to do that.
	You may have noticed when you come into the FDR chatroom that There is a link to a video chat at the top, and you're welcome to play around with that.
	That comes out of the Uvu subscription that I have, where we get a chatroom as part of the bundle.
	And that is, of course, something paid for by subscribers and donators.
	Just as a reminder, all of the goodies here are paid for by subscribers and donators.
	I don't have any advertising, and the book sales, the profits from the book sales are pretty negligible.
	Because, you know, they're free for people who don't want to buy.
	So if you haven't, and remember, we just got this, I guess, relatively recently got this fairly exciting $4,300 bill for the FDR server.
	And if you would like to chip in for that, that would be most appreciated.
	That does not count the bandwidth costs.
	We're up at around 2.5 terabytes of podcast downloads per month.
	So that's quite a few people who are downloading the podcast and quite a lot of podcasts as well.
	So if you would like to chip in for those server costs, the best way to do that is $10, $20, $50 subscription per month.
	Gratefully appreciated. $10 subscription.
	What is that? $0.30 a day?
	I hope that you can find the conversation worth at least that.
	And this does give you access to premium podcasts and private boards, which you can use for discussing more personal topics.
	So if you would like to, just go to freedomandradio.com forward slash donate dot html.
	Alright, so we do have time for one more question, if somebody wishes to ask it.
	Oh yes, sorry, the video chat is not cross-platform.
	We've looked into a variety of solutions for that.
	We haven't found anything particularly satisfactory as yet.
	We did have one, but I think they went away.
	But it is, at the moment, not Mac-compatible.
	With the Mac, you can take webcam pictures of an Etch-a-Sketch and upload them.
	Oh, it does work with the Mac.
	Okay. And remember, if you are, somebody wrote here, after being unemployed for almost six months, I can't make donations.
	And that I fully accept and understand.
	But remember that there's lots of things that you can do if you are interested in helping to spread the value of philosophy, right?
	Because I haven't advertised in a while particularly new members of the community it seems likely that I mean you I guess you either did a Google thing or whatever but a lot of you have mentioned that you have been referred by other people or someone sent you an email or whatever and I don't do email campaigns at least very rarely so the likelihood is that somebody sent you an email or you got some sort of contact from someone about free domain radio and remember that You can do that as well, right? There is freedominradio.com forward slash referrals dot html.
	Is it forward slash referrals dot html?
	Let me just double check that. But you can send podcast links to whoever you want.
	And there are tools on the website to help you do that, which I think will be very helpful for you.
	freedominradio.com forward slash referral.
	You can send podcasts off.
	Send the greatest hits feed.
	You can send books off to people embedded automatically in the email.
	You can send it to yourself if you want to.
	So, we've tried to make it as easy as possible.
	Obviously, don't spam people if you can avoid it.
	If you spread the word, that is a wonderful way.
	Put on a TV show or something or watch something fun on the web and just do a search for people who are interested in philosophy or libertarianism or anarchism.
	Grab an email and send an invite.
	Just do it once. These are my suggestions because you certainly don't want to be intrusive.
	It's not like you're trying to sell anything.
	It's not multi-level marketing because there's nothing to sell on the site.
	I hope that you could I hope that you would spend a little bit of time if you don't have the money to support the show.
	I hope that you will spend a little bit of time maybe sending around some referrals and getting other people interested so that they can also gain some of the benefits of the wisdom that we hopefully talk about here.
	So that would be really appreciate that as well.
	Yeah, I did mention July 4th.
	It's earlier in the show for the person who just joined.
	Any updates on how to achieve freedom?
	There are three chapters that I still need to write.
	The core of the book is done, but there are three chapters that I need to write, which I'm still mulling my way through on how best to organize.
	If I'm going to make the case that the state is in effect of the family, I think that I need to Do the research and make that case.
	And the way to make that case, in my opinion, or at least the way that I'm approaching it, is to go through a number of the major political and philosophical thinkers and see the degree to which they use the family as a metaphor for the state, right?
	And that is slow going and that is a challenge.
	So that is...
	I don't want to just say it.
	I want to actually make the case.
	And we saw that in the Socrates series.
	If you haven't seen that, you might want to check that out.
	It's a playlist on my youtube.com forward slash free domain radio.
	We saw that very clearly in the Socrates video, how the state was metaphorized out of the family for sure.
	And if we can find that, which I know I can, because I've gone through that once before, if I can find consistent quotes from the major philosophical and political thinkers metaphorizing the family as the state...
	Or rather the state as the family, then I think that that case will be as close to being clinched as it possibly can.
	I don't want to just make that statement without the...
	Yeah, I've asked for some help from the psychohistory group from this as well.
	And there I'm sure will be helping me out with some of that as well.
	It doesn't need to be, you know, an entire book in and of itself because, you know, for some people a reasonable amount of proof is enough.
	For those with whom it's not, more proof won't help anything.
	So I sort of want to balance that.
	And there are two other chapters, mostly which involve research, which I will have to do, mostly to do with the correlation of some correlation between criminality and child abuse and so on, right?
	Because we want a stateless society, which means that we need fewer criminals, which means that we want to try to find the causes of criminality so that we can reduce it.
	And of course, better parenting results in lower criminality, which means that a stateless society becomes more conceptually possible, so...
	Or at least easy to understand for people.
	So that's sort of where the book is at the moment.
	It is slow going.
	And I am still working, of course, on regular stuff and some of the second edition stuff with the books as well.
	And so, yeah, that's just a lot on my plate along with that pesky parenting thing.
	So that's sort of where things are.
	I sort of bore everyone with these updates.
	But... I was thinking for the PKs, for the Philosopher Kings, the most generous donators, I was going to release the audiobook preview of where the book is.
	The book is whole and complete, and I could release it right now, but it just doesn't have the empirical evidence, which, if I'm going to make startling claims, I really need to provide.
	Otherwise, I'm just preaching to the choir, so I want to be able to have the lever that is going to move people who disagree, which, of course, is a perfectly valid and fair requirement, and that is really the empirical evidence that I need to To provide, so maybe I'll post the audio preview of the book up in the PK section if people are interested.
	People have said, would some of our stories be helpful?
	I mean, I find them always helpful, but I don't think that I can quote them because people need the independence of being able to go and look up the quotes and references themselves.
	Can we help at all? Well, that's wonderfully kind.
	The problem that I have is that this kind of research You know, once you get into a rhythm of doing the lookups, and again, thank heaven for Gutenberg texts and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Because otherwise it would just be completely brutal to, you know, go through all the books that I have, that I went through in various times in my education, find all the references that I need.
	But I certainly will keep that in mind, and that's very, very kind.
	Thank you. Right now, it's the kind of thing where once I get into a rhythm of it, it's easy to do.
	If I do find out that there's just simply more than I can do and it's easier to sort of get other people up to speed on how to do it, I will definitely do that.
	And thank you so much for the offer.
	Alright, last call for questions, just before I completely put everyone to sleep with the minutiae of FDR business.
	You torturing her with breast milk again?
	Isabella can be quite a thrashy feeder.
	We've actually found something, and I hope it's not mocking, found something kind of interesting, which is when she's upset, and we've only really seen her cry four times that I can recall and we've only really seen her cry four times that I First time she got an inoculation.
	When we trim her nails, it is really, really a tricky surgical business.
	Because her nails get so long she scratches herself and then she caresses.
	She's got this really, really, she's developed this really gentle touch as she gets better control over her.
	Like originally it was just like, you know, grab and squeeze.
	But now she actually caresses, which is a beautiful thing.
	But her nails are so long or were so long that she would sort of grab a part of you and you'd be like, oh, I don't want, you know, but because if she closes her hands, yeah, it's like a cat, right?
	And so it's really because we swaddle her quite tightly so that she sleeps better, so we can't cut her nails then.
	Whenever she's awake, it's impossible to cut her nails because her hands are always in motion.
	And so she fell asleep and we were able to cut her nails, but her hands will twitch.
	And of course, if you snip wrong, you can end up cutting her.
	Just her little fingertips, you don't snip anything off, but it's painful for her, right?
	Christina did it once and I did it once and it's just heartbreaking because she starts in her sleep and then she takes...
	She literally will open her mouth, not cry, turn beet red, and Christina's like, breathe, breathe, right?
	And then, you know, out it comes, right?
	Oh, no, the one other time is we put her in a bouncer, and she bumped her head, and she also didn't like that very much, so that's not going to be coming out for another month or so, because she's two days, three days away from being five months old.
	Two days away from being five months old.
	And so, yeah, so there were two inoculations and two, I think, now clipping incidents where she really had Had a big cry.
	But other than that, she really doesn't cry at all, which is just fantastic.
	But she definitely is a bit of a thrashy feeder.
	And that can be quite exciting.
	Oh yeah, the part about mocking her.
	So when she cries, she sort of goes, She uses these phonetics that she doesn't use at any other time, right?
	So she's doing her raspberries, and she's doing a little bit of gurgling and burbling, but she's not really doing ba-ba-ba-ga-ga-ga as yet, a little bit here and there.
	But when she cries, it's very specific.
	She uses M's, right?
	She goes, me-me...
	Like, it's completely heartbreaking, right?
	And so when she starts to get upset, just...
	Out of curiosity I tried going to her and she actually just started laughing.
	Which was completely strange.
	So we do that from time to time.
	She is not sleeping through the night.
	In fact that is a big problem.
	It is a big problem. Her daytime sleep is much better.
	She's getting two naps in of two hours at a time.
	Obviously she's following daddy's schedule.
	Night times are either okay to brutal.
	Do you want to step people through last night just in case they're thinking of breathing?
	So last night I successfully put Isabella to bed at about nine o'clock.
	It wasn't a struggle at all.
	Getting her to sleep isn't a big struggle.
	Usually I can rock her to sleep within five to ten minutes.
	Yesterday she was obviously very tired.
	She didn't put up a struggle and she closed her eyes and fell asleep very quickly.
	So I proceeded to go to bed.
	Actually, it was exactly 10.52 when I took my glasses off, put them on the nightstand and pulled the covers over my head.
	And at precisely 10.57, so five minutes later, Isabella let out a wail.
	So I got up and I gave her her pacifier and she settled and seemed to go back to sleep.
	It was an hour later, so it was 11.56 when she wailed again.
	She woke me from a sleep.
	I think I must have been pretty deep in sleep because I was completely dazed.
	I couldn't soothe her. I couldn't rock her.
	I couldn't carry her either, so I just brought her into bed.
	And I fed her in bed.
	She hadn't slept, oh sorry, and she hadn't eaten since about, she had a real good meal, a real solid meal, about 6.30, and she had a little snack before she went to sleep at 8.30.
	So I fed her. And she seemed to fall asleep, and then it was once an hour every hour from that point on.
	So every hour she would wake up, she moans, she does this thing where she's just moaning in her sleep, and she's swaddled tightly, and we have her lying on her back.
	So the only thing that's really movable, she can raise her legs and thump them, or she can turn her head from side to side.
	And she does that with her eyes closed, and she moans.
	And it's pretty consistent from 2 a.m.
	last night until about 5 a.m.
	And at 5 a.m. I'd had enough.
	Three hours of moaning.
	No way to calm this child down.
	And I went and got stuff.
	And the interesting thing is that when she woke me, I went, Mimi!
	That was it. I was up with her for a couple of hours and then I got a nap in this morning and you took her then.
	And she went back to sleep again this morning.
	She's been fine all day, but...
	Yeah, she's having a lot of vivid dreams, a lot of growth, and she's just very active physically and mentally.
	Yeah, so that's sort of what the night looks like.
	Her first two hours, two to three hours of sleep at night are pretty good.
	She's pretty calm. We've had successfully once when she was about 10 or 12 weeks old, she slept seven hours.
	We were shocked. We kept expecting her to wake up with a whale, but she didn't.
	She's never repeated that.
	The next longest period of time that she has slept has been six hours, and that's only happened once or twice.
	And then for a period of time, she was doing at least four hours, which was great, and we thought we were on an improvement schedule, but now it's more like two or three hours before she wakes and needs to be soothed or needs to be fed or something.
	I'm tired. That's all I have to say.
	Yeah, somebody, I don't know if you heard that, somebody wrote in the chat window that their child started sleeping in about six months.
	And certainly, you know, the interesting thing is she's done twice now, she's been able to fall asleep where I've just laid her down awake, and she's actually put herself to sleep without rocking, without feeding, without anything, but definitely with a swaddle.
	So, I mean, there are definitely signs of improvement, but the nights are brutal.
	The nights are just brutal. But you know, she's happy, she's healthy, she's vibrant, she's energetic.
	So she knows what she's doing. Daytime, she's a perfect baby.
	Yeah, daytime, she's a perfect baby.
	It's naughty nights and daddy gets to sleep right through them.
	- Not always. - Anything you want to say to the audience three times?
	No eating the microphone.
	That's all she does. And swear to God, she breastfeeds like she's being waterboarded with breast milk sometimes.
	The thrashing, the avoidance, and all that.
	It's like, you will sleep at night or we will continue to waterboard you with food.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Here we go, mommy. - Alright, sorry, we're going to bore everyone with not just 50-hour business, but parent nonsense.
	So, Any questions?
	Oh, she's fantastic.
	She is just a wonderful, wonderful kid.
	And this is a time when...
	This is a time when she's just doing new stuff all the time.
	I mean, the growth that is occurring for her is just fantastic, mentally and physically, and the skills that she's getting is just fantastic.
	So this is a very, very exciting time, and definitely over the next couple of months as she learns to crawl and walk and then stick the landing with the backflips, that's going to be all too cool.
	Yeah, somebody's saying we've been pretty lucky with Ara.
	She's been pretty easy to put down, put her to sleep since she was four months old, but her She's down and she's out in five minutes without much fuss.
	And that is fantastic.
	We've heard that. I was just talking to a neighbor of ours down the street whose wife is pregnant with their second boy.
	And he was saying, oh yeah, our boy, we put him down to sleep anywhere and he sleeps for like 12 hours.
	And I said, that's wonderful. Don't tell my wife or she's likely to strangle you involuntarily.
	And no court of sleepless mothers would convict her.
	But that is fantastic.
	Definitely such...
	Such children are a real joy and of course she is a real joy as well and you know what we sort of talk about or the way that we process is it certainly is a phase that will pass although we when we went to see her doctor her doctor was saying that her her sister is still having huge sleep issues with their kid who's two two-year-old right so obviously we don't we don't want to be going there but I don't think that will be that will be the case yeah it's definitely getting better and of course She would rather sleep,
	right? She's certainly not doing anything to us, right?
	She would rather sleep well.
	She would rather sleep comfortably.
	So it's much tougher for her than it is for us.
	She has the metabolism that she has, and you get the baby that you get, right?
	And we are completely thrilled with her and would not exchange her for anything or anyone.
	And all babies are going to have something, right?
	So either, oh, there's a little slow in their development about certain things.
	You worry about that. Or, you know, she's never even had a cold, right?
	Or they're consistently sick and you worry about that.
	It's always something, right?
	And so we're not going to complain about the deal we've gotten, which is a very positive and wonderful thing.
	People have been asking for more photos, so we will put a photo in.
	Is that one okay? We just took this photo during the show, so this is fresh Izzy.
	She's just learning how to sit.
	And so... All right, so we'll just post this as soon as people are asking for photos.
	And look, we appreciate that everyone's interested.
	It is a fascinating thing and a wonderful thing to be a parent.
	Highly, highly recommend it.
	Yeah, sometimes Isabella looks really intelligent.
	This picture is not one of those times.
	She was tipping. She was tipping.
	That's right. So, you know, just so you can see the full...
	Oh, that's a nice picky.
	Which one? No?
	Okay. Whenever she says something exciting, she stops talking.
	It's right in her mouth. Oh, it's slobbered.
	Nice drooly. She's marked it.
	The territory. Her immune system is quite powerful, but remember, we don't have a lot of friends, so it's not like she's getting exposed to a lot of germs.
	Somebody has mentioned, I don't know, I think it's to do with sleeping.
	I mean, since nobody else has any questions and we still have a little bit of time, if you'd like to bring it up.
	Do you have a mic?
	Do you have a mic?
	Yeah, and you can tell it's Sunday because that's her bib.
	yeah absolutely yeah Sunday call in bib that's right okay alright well I think we are probably done with the show as we come to a highly professional end as usual but
	But I think that's all we have.
	So, right, that's it.
	Goodbye everybody. Have yourself a wonderful week and thank you so much for the calls.
	And we really do appreciate that.
	And have yourselves a fantastic week.
	I will be around this week, of course.
	And we will talk to you.
	Same bat time, same bat channel.
	And we will also post the...
	Oh, yeah. I was thinking of this.
	And I think you probably would be interested.
	I was thinking...
	So, in order to take a break from podcasting and continue to work on the books, I was thinking of releasing the Symposium audio from last year.
	Which was our symposium on real-time relationships, where Christina gave a most excellent presentation on every aspect that I fall short of in RTR. And so obviously that was most of the day.
	But I was thinking of just releasing the audio from the symposium, which I thought was very interesting.
	It's been 20 bucks for a while, but nobody's bought it for a while, so I thought I'd just release it to the general stream, because I think people would really enjoy that, and people do have.
	Of course, a lot of questions about RTR, which we went into in some pretty great detail during that weekend in Miami last January.
	So thank you all so much.
	Have yourself a wonderful week. And we will talk to you soon.

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