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Jan. 13, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:55:50

2586 How to Get Your Dream Job - Sunday Call In Show January 12th, 2014

The end of the United States, the celebration of conformity, fear of going against the tribe, public speaking anxiety, demanding respect, a child support commission, extreme pornography, sexual inappropriateness, visibility as danger, turning on the dependent classes, finding people who can provide value and how to get your dream job!

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	Good morning, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Radio, 12th of January, 2014.
	A wee note.
	I am looking forward to the cavalcade of articles from people who've claimed that because Bitcoin generally gains in value, people won't spend it.
	The very first day, the very first day that Overstock.com started taking Bitcoin's They did $130,000 worth of Bitcoin sales.
	Huh!
	But wait, don't these people know that Bitcoins gain in value, therefore they will never spend it?
	Anyway, it's the same reason why we know that there's no such thing as computers because computers constantly gain in value in that you can get far better computers six months down the road from what you can get now.
	But given that we're not immortal, we do like things now.
	They did, I think, 600-plus transactions.
	Average price, $150 a piece.
	So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
	Because when you have a theory, then the empirical evidence comes in.
	It's time to revise your theory.
	So I'm looking forward to that.
	Let me just Google that.
	No, nothing yet.
	But I'm sure that people will be checking it out.
	And hoisting themselves on their own petard.
	Because they got Bitcoin, baby.
	Theory versus practice.
	Let's see where the thinkers land.
	All right.
	I know we've got a lot of callers today.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	But yeah, go to Overstock.com.
	I don't have any affiliation.
	I make no money from them.
	But go to Overstock.com.
	And if you have understocks in your home, you can balance them with Overstock.
	I don't know much about the website, but apparently it evens out.
	And...
	So do that.
	Overstock.com.
	Check out.
	They take bitcoins, and I believe they're quite large.
	So, all right, Misty Mike, let's go on with the callers.
	All right.
	Up first is Haplo.
	Go ahead, Haplo.
	Hey, how you doing?
	I'm well.
	How you doing?
	I'm all right.
	Your name seems eerily familiar to me.
	Either I dreamt about you.
	Do you often wear Boas and just a rain hat?
	No.
	No.
	Why do I know your name so well?
	Anyway, it doesn't matter.
	But go ahead.
	What can I do for you?
	Oh, well, I've recently, within the past couple months, found a YouTube person.
	I found you on YouTube and pretty much pawed through everything you've put out on YouTube.
	And I have not found one thing that I can't disagree with.
	Or can disagree with, however you want to put it.
	Well, I think that...
	You might want to find the right way to put it because those are completely opposite positions.
	I think you're beautiful.
	I hate you.
	But my dilemma is that I've always been the type of person to see things for as they are.
	Maybe I was raised by German parents that migrated to America when I was eight and I've seen things in a slightly different light than most of my American friends here and I'm appalled and shocked at everything I see that goes on in this country, in America, and their imperialism and everything else that goes along with it.
	And I see the decline and everything just falling to pieces.
	It's like the Titanic sinking slowly because they just keep patching it and hoping for the best and expecting the worst, but knowing in the end it's going to fall apart.
	And seemingly now that the US government has got most of American minds completely, you know, everybody's hypnotized through their media and all of the propaganda they put out to keep people stupid so they can pull the strings behind the scenes and get away with what they get away with.
	Those that wake up and stop buying into the things that the US government pushes on them through the news media agencies and all of that and this fake two-party system that they like to push on people because I think the smart people really know that the two-party system is a farce and that it's just I think both of them are in cahoots with each other.
	They high-five each other afterwards.
	In an election, they all know each other.
	They got snorting coke off of a whore's ass together after the election.
	And they're partying and knowing that they got us all duped.
	I'm not really sure if I want to be here any longer.
	I've been making moves to get out of America.
	I have been tied here for several different reasons.
	I did grow up here.
	I've been here most of my life, been back and forth from Germany and America, but most of my family now, which is cousins and an aunt and uncle now in Germany, then my father in Australia.
	So I'm literally all by myself here, but I've got a few kids here that I stay for.
	But I'm worried for my children and what the future that they have here in this country and if this country is actually going to exist any longer.
	Well, it certainly won't exist in its current form.
	No.
	I mean, that's not...
	In a long enough time frame, the survival rate of all statist economies goes to zero.
	Right.
	And so, I mean, I used to think...
	So Ayn Rand sort of had this theory that basically people just wanted to die, but they were too cowardly to do it.
	So what they did was they kind of piled on A truck that was heading off a cliff and cheered the whole way down and pretended it was compassion and all this.
	I don't think that's necessarily true.
	I think that's a fairly damning indictment.
	I think the basic reality, one of the basic reasons why...
	Let me just use the word basic again, basically.
	But one of the reasons why statism is so destructive is because people choose conformity over life itself.
	Mm-hmm.
	And that's not some fundamental weakness in the human character or anything like that.
	It's just a basic reality that we needed the tribe to survive.
	I mean, that evolutionary psychology is important.
	We needed the tribe to survive.
	Women needed the tribe to bring her food and keep her warm and sheltered and all that when she was late and big with child and then Young and new with child and all that.
	And in order to survive, we needed cooperation of our fellow people.
	So we are fundamentally a conformist species.
	And this is not...
	A conformist is considered a bad thing.
	You've got to be an iconoclast and an eccentric and all that.
	But it's just a basic biological reality.
	And in that is the greatest strength of voluntarism and the greatest weakness...
	Of statism.
	So, the fact that we evolved to be a species which requires social approval in order to survive.
	I mean, we don't need it so much now.
	You can make money playing poker off the internet and, you know, never deal with anyone face to face if you don't want to, but it doesn't matter.
	I mean, we, you know, we evolved to like sugar because...
	Fruit fixed certain medical issues that we might have, right?
	Yeah, someone corrected me.
	I said it's vitamin D for rickets and scurvy for vitamin C. But now the sugar addictions are killing us, right?
	And so this is just the reality.
	If you chose the tribe, you had a chance of survival.
	If you rejected the tribe, you may have a chance for personal survival, but you had almost no chance for Biological, for genetic survival.
	Your genes just weren't going to be passed on.
	I mean, Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in history.
	It's basically the story of this.
	Two lovers go against the social conventions.
	Look at the Romulans versus the Capulets.
	I don't think it's the Romulans.
	Who is it?
	I can't remember.
	But yeah, these two warring families in Verona and their kids fall in love with each other and they die because they're breaking the tribe.
	You break the tribe.
	You die.
	And this is something that's consistently reinforced.
	What that means, of course, is we're incredibly dependent upon social approval.
	And, you know, studies have shown that if you go against social approval, if you are ostracized, it actually is biologically the same as physical torture.
	So what this means is we don't need a state, right?
	All we need is because we already are a socially conformist society.
	And, I mean, I get a unique view of this because I get...
	All of the emails from people who are currently tortured by being ostracized or being threatened or feeling...
	I mean, not threatened with anything violent, but just threatened with ostracism for independence, rational, philosophical thought.
	They come pouring in.
	This tells me why we can't have a state.
	Because...
	People will not go against the dominant tribal ideology.
	And if that's the state, it means that people will not go against the state, which means the state has room to grow and grow and grow until it destroys society.
	What that means, of course, in a free society is that you don't have that state issue.
	So conformity will only breed personal consequences.
	It will not breed social consequences.
	I mean, if you're in a free society and a bunch of people want to go and create a resource-based economy, fine.
	You know, I would watch it with interest.
	I think it would be great to see what would happen.
	And, you know, I'd be happy to be proven wrong about my thoughts about what happens in the absence of money and price.
	But it wouldn't fundamentally be disastrous for me if it was disastrous for them.
	I'd care about it.
	I'd like to help them out if it turned out to be disastrous for them.
	But it's not fundamentally disastrous for me if someone wants to have a different style of society.
	Of course, if there's a state, then that's a huge problem.
	Because if there's a state, then...
	They can't have their society if, you know, democratic capitalism in its current form exists.
	And I can't have my society if the resource-based economy ends up in the hands of the state because then it's, you know, money is banned and all that kind of stuff.
	I'm not saying that's what they'd want.
	I'm just saying that that is the reality.
	So I know how conformist people are and I don't mean that in any negative way.
	It's like blaming human beings for not being 12 feet tall.
	I mean, it's just, it's the way we evolved.
	And it has radical and positive efficiencies in our evolution.
	It's why we're here.
	You know, I can say, oh, you know, it should have been more rebels throughout history.
	But there'd be far fewer people if there were more rebels, because the rebels didn't usually tend to last or breed.
	So, I mean, I do have some dislike of the conformity.
	I mean, it is so fundamentally hypocritical, and people constantly use philosophical jargon to...
	Cover up their own basic conformities.
	You know, forgive your parents no matter what.
	Well, it's just general conformity.
	The elders had the resources.
	The elders controlled the social discourse.
	The elders could ban people or accept people.
	And so, like slaves who were told to forgive their masters because they have no other choice, they turned it into a virtue.
	The meek shall inherit the earth, says Jesus to the slaves.
	Hmm, I guess the slaves can make slavery a virtue because they can't do much about it.
	So, that's sort of my issue, is not the fact that people conform.
	It's that they pretty up their conformity with all sorts of abstract, nonsensical things.
	And, you know, you just need to be honest about it and say, I'm scared to go against my tribe.
	Yeah, I respect that.
	I accept that.
	I understand that.
	I feel that.
	I think that's an honorable position and an honorable thing to say.
	But what people do is they say, it's a virtue to do X, Y, and Z. We want to help the poor.
	No, you don't want to help the poor.
	You don't care about national defense.
	You simply don't want to go against the tribe, which I completely understand.
	I completely understand not wanting to go against the tribe.
	That's how we're wired.
	It's how I'm wired.
	I mean, I have a different tribe now.
	I don't have no tribe.
	You know, human beings are social animals for the most part.
	So that's all my, you know, I don't damn the conformity.
	I damn the sort of self-serving, mealy-mouthed justifications for it.
	And again, this just comes out of my childhood.
	I was told that my boys in particular have a desire to compete and dominate, right?
	Right.
	And I was told that, you know, we should all, you should resist that desire.
	You know, boys don't want to sit in rows and do math problems and have tea parties and all that kind of crap.
	Like all the stuff that is just killing the brains of boys in sort of modern education that's so focused on girls, right?
	Boys are basically just perceived in the educational system as broken girls.
	And you can read Christina Hoff Summers' The War Against Boys for more on this.
	Right.
	But I was told when I was growing up to resist my natural impulses.
	Don't fight, cooperate, share!
	And don't kiss the girls if she doesn't want to, right?
	I think that's reasonable advice in some ways.
	So I was taught to overcome, to use virtue to overcome my biological drives and desires, and I think that's fine.
	I mean, it was my 11th wedding anniversary yesterday, and we went out and had just a honking meal, like huge.
	And because, you know, because I don't want to gain weight and I'm over 40, I'm constantly on the edge of hungry.
	Little snacks just to stave off the beast.
	And I just, you know, it was great.
	Went out, had a giant meal.
	You know, if I ate one of those every day, I wouldn't be able to fit through a double door in two weeks.
	But it was really nice.
	But yeah, most times I have to sort of resist what I want to eat or what my body says to eat because, you know, the body's always like, we could starve, so let's pack it in.
	And so yeah, resisting the biological impulse for the sake of virtue, for the sake of practicality, that's how I was raised, that's how I was taught.
	I mean, how many times as a kid were you told?
	Don't do what your impulses tell you to do.
	And so it's just that society has this whole value and this whole virtue It doesn't matter what your biological impulses are, do the right thing.
	And then when we have the biological impulse to conform or to surrender to the power of the elders or whatever, it's unusual.
	It's just very unusual.
	For us to be in that situation now where the elders have less power.
	I mean, they have more power because of political power, but in a free society, they would have less power because they would not be participating in the workforce.
	They would have their pensions and so on.
	But in a free society, the young and the energetic would tend to have more power, whereas in a status society, the ancient and politically motivated have more power.
	So...
	Anyway, this is just a few of the thoughts that I have about that.
	You will face this conformity covered by hypocrisy everywhere you go.
	There are some places which are more skeptical of the state, sort of South and Central America, but in America it's particularly virulent.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I just can't disagree with what you're saying.
	I don't know.
	I just don't know what to do.
	I don't think there is anything I can do except just stand by and watch it go as it goes.
	Sorry, what do you mean?
	When you say there's nothing you can do, what do you mean?
	Like, in what context?
	Well, I mean, I can protest, which I have.
	I've got it and used my voice.
	It usually falls on deaf ears, and most people look at people that have anything to say against the state as crazy people.
	But it is fundamentally kind of crazy.
	Like this Chris Christie thing, right?
	His staff ordered the bridge closed.
	Leading up to the George Washington Bridge as payback, apparently, for some mayor of Fort Lee who wasn't going to support his re-election bid, so they closed...
	The roads leading to his town so that, you know, it's a big mess.
	And again, as somebody said on YouTube, well, without the government, who will close the roads?
	And the other great comment was, I wish I'd thought of it myself.
	It would have been great.
	But the other great comment was, no, no, it's a big misunderstanding.
	Chris Christie, who's obese, was going to go on a diet and he asked his staff to close the fridge.
	The fridge, not the bridge.
	And...
	But people are getting all upset about this.
	But the reality is, like, once you're on the other side of power, once you're past that bloody veil of where the guns are pointed, you can do whatever you like.
	Yes.
	I mean, the mayor of New York was sworn in by Clinton, a truly disgraced public individual who, you know, was impeached and disbarred.
	It doesn't matter.
	He's on the other side of power.
	He's on the other side of power.
	Al Gore's personal fortune went up approximately 10 trillion times because of his involvement in global warming.
	An inconvenient truth is an advertisement which allows him to make money off his carbon credits and all that kind of political connections.
	It's all nonsense.
	Once you get on the other side of power, who cares?
	People are yelling saying, well, you shouldn't do this with my stolen money.
	It's like, well, they've already stolen it.
	They've already got it.
	I mean, the fact that they stole it is the important thing.
	Crabbing at the mafia for what they do after they rip you off is...
	Most of anything I had to say was in my youth.
	As I've aged and gotten a little wiser, I've realized, yeah, the money is already stolen.
	I don't agree with what they do with the money I pay in my taxes.
	I don't agree with anything that they do with it hardly.
	Yeah.
	But as it stands now, yeah, what is there to do?
	I can speak my voice, I guess, as I'm doing now, is that I do believe that it is time for a change, and that if people actually stood in unison and said that we want our country back, they won't do it.
	No, they won't.
	This is like the plan, well, if nobody paid their taxes, then...
	Right, or if nobody voted.
	Well, you know, I mean, just look at the federal level in the U.S. I mean, first of all, More than half of people don't pay any taxes anyway.
	I mean, not paying your taxes is sort of the point of the state.
	In other words, profiting from the state is the whole point of the state.
	Democracy cannot work if people can't profit from it.
	That's right.
	You know, like special interest groups and, you know, this is both the poor and the rich and, to some degree, the middle class and, you know, the teachers' unions.
	A bunch of teachers' unions in the U.S., you know?
	The teachers won't write recommendations For promising students, unless the parents promise to write a letter to the local politician demanding an increase in teacher salaries.
	They hold hostage their children's future for the sake of a couple of extra fucking bucks.
	Oh, these noble and heroic.
	It's just wretched.
	Of course people aren't going to pay their taxes.
	Half of America gets money from the government.
	Exactly.
	And a significant portion of those people get far more money from the government than they pay in taxes.
	Exactly.
	A lot of people don't even pay taxes.
	They get money back.
	Yeah, and that's the whole point.
	You've already got a huge number of people not paying their taxes, so to speak.
	You have a huge amount of people.
	I see these things in inconsistencies, and I guess I'm just sickened by it.
	People say one thing, but there's another thing.
	I mean, you take gun control.
	I worked with a guy that was pro-gun control, and he's got an arsenal of weapons, handguns and rifles and things.
	One of his favorite statements was, well, you know, We need our weapons to fight against the government.
	And I said, I think that ship is sailing.
	Wait, he wasn't pro-gun control.
	You said he was pro-gun control.
	He is pro-gun control.
	I'm sorry, pro-guns, but not...
	Gun rights.
	Yeah, I was going to say, he's pro-gun control with a massive arsenal of weapons.
	I'm sorry.
	He's anti-gun control.
	I woke up just about 20 minutes ago or a half hour ago.
	But you get the gist.
	But his argument is that he needs his weapons to fight against the government if they come in and try to take his freedoms away from him.
	I tell him, I said, that ship's already sailed.
	What are you going to do, fire your 9mm against the Abrams tank?
	I think they actually have an arsenal pointed at you saying that they can do whatever they want.
	You are going to lose your rights eventually.
	They're going to come in and take your weapons away from you.
	And there's nothing you can do about it.
	Well, no.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Look, that's...
	It's not necessarily true that you just...
	You lose your rights and then the future is just some Orwellian nightmare.
	Well, I know that.
	I mean, it may happen for a time.
	It may happen for a time, but there's this stupid pendulum that goes on whenever people are in dysfunctional relationships.
	You know, which is...
	The guy beats up his wife and then buys her flowers and is on his knees in his Stanley Kowalski fashion and apologized to her.
	And dysfunctional people, they have no connection with other people.
	They don't have any of the calm, relaxed, deep pleasure of intimacy.
	They can't just sit there relaxed and chatting and enjoying the conversation.
	They are thrill junkies.
	Those who lack connection Seek stimulus.
	Sort of the roots of all kinds of addiction.
	Those who lack intimacy, particularly with themselves, seek stimulus.
	And so fundamentally, if you look at society as a whole, I mean, you can just look at China, India, Russia.
	I mean, they had these totalitarian nightmare systems.
	And now they have significantly more freedoms in many ways than the United States.
	Exactly.
	So what happens is, again, because people don't have intimacy, they don't have truth, they don't have knowledge, they don't have good relationships with themselves, they don't have connection with other people, and there's no conformist like the person who has no connection.
	I mean, they seek to hide their lack of connection through conformity.
	Because they can't be close to people emotionally, so all they can do is be close to them physically.
	The herd is always empty.
	And it is the emptiness which drives the herd instinct.
	And that's why I say to people, know yourself, learn about yourself, figure out your childhood, deal with your issues, and then you'll feel much less of a drive to conform.
	Lemmings all look the same from a certain altitude.
	And philosophy elevates your altitude and you realize that it is sameness and emptiness which drives conformity.
	Because once you've tasted true intimacy, I mean...
	Conformity is just like someone taking a slow Indian food-fueled Jabba the Hutt-style dump on your sirloin.
	So, I mean, they're not going to break this conformity.
	The idea that these weapons are going to save you from the government and also the idea that we're going to end up in some hellhole forever.
	No.
	I mean, there'll be a crash.
	There'll be an attempt to conform and an attempt to control.
	And then, when that gets bad enough, just as in Russia and just as in India and just as in China, when that stuff gets bad enough, then there'll be a cycle of freedom coming back, and then there'll be a cycle of freedom.
	And when the cycle of freedom starts generating all the wealth that freedom does, then that will feed the state more, and the state will grow, and the state will grow, and the state will...
	kill the economy, and then there'll be a cycle of freedom again.
	I mean, it's so dysfunctional, it's ridiculous.
	And it is tragic because, of course, the people who – like a woman who's with some abusive guy, I mean, if she doesn't have kids, it's her who's paying the price, right?
	But when society goes through these things, I mean, some poor bastard happened to be born in 1920 in Russia, you know, could well have lived into old age and died before communism ended – Well, that's his life.
	He's fucked.
	That was it.
	Only go around and he's stuck in a dictatorship his whole damn life through no fault of his own.
	So again, society...
	Statism is a way of turning personal tragedies into national disasters.
	And it is tragic.
	But go ahead.
	Well, I try to explain to people with the same mentality exactly what you just said.
	This wouldn't last forever.
	People...
	Come at me and talk about the FEMA camps that they've got in place, that they're going to be rounding up Americans and stripping them of their rights and incarcerating whole families and things like that.
	Yeah, no, no, sorry.
	That almost certainly will happen.
	Oh, of course.
	I told them it's not going to last forever, though.
	No, it won't last forever, but...
	Hey, last for the lifetime of the people incarcerated.
	Right.
	Oh, no question.
	Like, I mean, so, I mean, FDR rounded up the Japanese, told all their property, and threw them into internment camps in the 20th century, even those who'd been multi-generational Americans.
	Here in Canada, I used to work with a guy who was in the military, and when Canada was going to cut its spending, which it did in the 90s, in very significant ways, and again, you don't hear about this.
	I've done a whole show on this with Redmond Weissenberger, who's the director of Mises Canada at Mises.ca.
	and he told me we were having lunch one day and he told me uh oh yeah you know we we in the military were completely gearing up for urban combat because when when the government was was going to cut its spending uh you know there was genuine concern that there might be some sort of revolt and oh yeah they were all training for urban combat for basically doing whatever needed to be done to keep the sheeple in place while the government cut the food ration so to speak and And none of that happened.
	But in America, it's more likely to happen because it's got more of a revolutionary anti-government kind of flavor.
	But yeah, I mean, it is almost for certain.
	I mean, they're not just going to give up, I doubt.
	It's possible.
	It's possible.
	And certainly I'm, you know, and millions of other people are working day and night to try and ensure that That the people have enough knowledge that tyranny can't return, that people have enough self-knowledge that tyranny can't return, because tyranny is internal to the personality and only then external in society.
	But, oh yeah, I mean, let's not kid ourselves.
	I mean, it's almost certain to happen without significant intervention.
	That doesn't mean forever, and that certainly doesn't mean for everyone, but I definitely believe that.
	Let me ask you this.
	What do you think the solution is?
	To this.
	You think there is one?
	Solution to what?
	To the problems that we have.
	Do you have a solution?
	Oh, sure, yeah.
	Any ideas?
	Yeah, I mean, it's basically...
	On the train car, stick in the ride.
	No, it's...
	It's the same as if you have a nation of 70-year-old chain smokers.
	Well, you say to the 70-year-old chain smokers, there's not much I can do for you, but what I can use...
	I can use you as an example of why people shouldn't smoke.
	Right?
	So the majority of people cannot be saved through any kind of reason and evidence, through any kind of argument.
	It's like trying to turn 70-year-old chain smokers into gymnasts.
	All you'll do is hurt the elderly and insult the sport.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, this is why I say, you know, as Winston Smith used to write, if there is hope, it lies in the prauls.
	And if there is hope, it lies in the next generation.
	You cannot get birds to go south for the winter if their wings have been clipped.
	All they'll do is waddle onto a highway and get smacked.
	But you can build a rational world on the minds of people who can process reason.
	And most people's minds have been so shattered and broken By irrational conformity, superstition, nationalism, religiosity, the schools.
	I mean, they're smashed up, like physically smashed up.
	Most people are in wheelchairs.
	And if you are trying to create a sport, you have to kind of know whether people are in wheelchairs or not.
	Adjust your expectations and so on.
	Now, of course, people in wheelchairs can.
	Do sports.
	But it's different, right?
	Than the sports that people without wheelchairs can do.
	So most people's minds are functionally, irretrievably smashed up by their upbringing.
	Yes.
	Right?
	80-90% of kids in America are still getting spanked.
	40% of babies...
	How a spanked are hit before they're even one year old.
	I know.
	Hitting babies.
	This is the fucking world that we live in where people hit babies.
	I know.
	They hit babies.
	And then we wonder why we have a violent, crime-ridden, self-destructive, sociopathic, predatory world.
	I mean, you're hitting babies, for Christ's sake.
	What the hell do you think is going to happen?
	They're hitting them and putting them in front of a gaming system to show them how to kill people before they're one, too.
	Yeah, and then you remove almost all parental influence and almost all adult influence from their lives and have them focus on being raised by each other, which means raised by the lowest and most brutal common denominator, the bullies and the sociopaths as kids and all that.
	So, I mean, it's completely bizarre to me that people put artworks into a blender and wonder why they can't hang them on their wall.
	Well, you put the fucking thing in a blender.
	All you've got is Mona Lisa goo, right?
	And so, you know, we shred children's brains and then wonder why we have irrational societies.
	We shred children's brains and then we wonder why, as adults, you know, they don't listen to reason.
	Well, they can't, fundamentally.
	I mean, you're asking them to do that which is not possible.
	You are trying to teach calculus to apes.
	I've seen that.
	I've been going to school I'm almost 40, but I've been going to school off and on.
	I've got a couple degrees, and as I've gotten older and seeing the new generation come in and studying around them and being with them, I've noticed an increase in the decline of intelligence.
	The new generation, let's just say that this last year's new crop of kids that came out of high school and going into college, know nothing.
	They do not have a clue.
	They are hopelessly lost.
	Sorry to interrupt, but I think the average boy plays 15 hours of video games a week.
	Now, I was a reader.
	I was a reader partly because we had Basically, a 12-inch black-and-white television and cartoons were on for an hour a week and there were no video games.
	So what did I do?
	It's not a virtue.
	It's just, I mean, I would love to have played video games, but I read, I read, I read, I read, I read, I read, I read.
	And now people are like, oh my God, you know everything.
	But it's just because I read.
	And now, instead of reading, I listen to audiobooks all the time whenever I can.
	So, I mean, the video games have displaced people.
	Social skills.
	The video games have, and other forms of media, right?
	They have displaced social skills.
	They have displaced the irreversible growth in knowledge and capacity to think that comes from exposing yourself to something other than an orc with a flamethrower.
	How about an example here?
	I saw this.
	I'm sitting at a coffee shop reading a book.
	It's something I enjoy to do.
	I read a lot of things.
	And there's a table, there's a round table down in the basement part of this coffee shop I'm sitting in.
	And I look over and I see five, six girls, probably in their early 20s, late teens.
	And they're all just sitting, pounding away on their phones, just texting.
	No conversation.
	I'm looking at this, I think it's weird.
	You've got all these people sitting next to each other and not a word being said.
	And so about 10 minutes of this, I happen to notice one girl, she looks up and looks to her left.
	Yeah, it was to her left.
	Looks at the girl next to her and goes, yeah, that is funny.
	I was immediately just struck.
	I was like, oh my god, these people are sitting next to each other, texting each other in a conversation instead of talking.
	The art of communication is wrong.
	Well, no, to be fair, they may have been, probably they were showing pictures or movies.
	Something they were doing, but there's no conversation.
	I go into places where I used to when I was younger.
	I would go into places in my early 20s and people would be having conversations.
	Oh man, the amount of time that I jazzed up my system probably irreversibly on coffee shop conversations.
	I had a friend.
	He was a really great guy in a lot of ways.
	I won't say his name because I don't know if he wants it to be public.
	But basically he was the son of some very rich Iranian people.
	And he was the guy who directed me in Macbeth.
	And a pretty great guy.
	He gave a great speech.
	We were doing a rehearsal for Macbeth one night.
	And...
	This was way back in the day, and there was a talk that, I think it was, Iraq had targeted Israel with weapons of mass destruction.
	I thought they were, I can't remember if they were biological or chemical, and that, you know, we basically were all alarmed that this was going to be the start of a significant worldwide conflict, right?
	I mean, Israel is a nuclear power, and to attack it.
	Anyway, so, we were all over, and he gave a great speech about basically We are trying to do something good here with this play.
	We're trying to do something powerful.
	And evildoers will do what evildoers will do.
	But if we let them take away our drive to do something good and powerful and even beautiful in this world, then it doesn't matter fundamentally what they do after that.
	They've already won.
	I'm not doing the speech justice, but it was a great speech.
	And it really motivated us to go back and And keep working on the play, which I thought turned out to be a very good play.
	Now, later, he totally undermined it in this very postmodern way.
	I mentioned this speech as being very inspiring.
	And he was like, I don't even remember what I said.
	I just knew I wanted everyone to keep rehearsing.
	And I was like, oh, why?
	Why?
	Why?
	Why did you say more about that?
	I mean, oh, I wish you hadn't.
	But he and I, we played squash a lot together, and we also would have these coffee shop conversations.
	I wasn't here for this, but he had one epic coffee shop conversation Which he ended up in a hospital because he had 20 coffees in a row.
	His heart started fluttering like a butterfly on steroids.
	Right, right.
	And yeah, so I mean, yeah, there used to be tons and tons of conversation occurring.
	And each of those conversations, you know, shapes and benefits you, you know, in important ways.
	Now, biologically, the kids are smarter, right?
	There's this thing called the Flynn effect, which is that the IQ rises a couple of points every generation.
	For reasons I don't think anyone really understands better nutrition probably and so on.
	So...
	They're smarter, but I think that they are, in many ways, lacking some skills that you and I have probably taken for granted as growing up in a pre-digital age.
	But, you know, they have other skills and so on, but I think everything is a benefit with a cost or a cost with a benefit.
	I try to have conversations with some of the new ones and talk about life, about philosophy, things, anything.
	What their opinion is on things.
	And I get a lot of people that look at me like deer in headlights, just a look of what the hell am I supposed to say?
	They don't know how to respond.
	They don't know how to communicate.
	They're not sure of anything.
	I end up sitting most of the time talking to younger generation, being the sole and only person talking.
	And with people who have a look on their face like they hardly know what I'm talking about.
	Yes, for sure, for sure.
	And they don't know how to have the internal stimulation of self-knowledge, the internal stimulation of thinking.
	I mean, I love me some quiet time sitting on a couch only thinking.
	And that doesn't mean thinking about and just waiting for inspiration to strike or thinking about things or whatever.
	I love me some meditative quiet time.
	I don't think there's a huge amount of that in the younger generation.
	There wasn't a huge amount of that.
	When I was a kid either.
	And of course, there were lots of distractions when I was a kid.
	And the distractions don't have to be digital.
	I mean, when I was a kid in boarding school, we would go through these manias.
	Literally tulip manias.
	There was a marble mania.
	There was a conquerors or chestnut hitting mania.
	There was a paper airplane mania.
	We'd go through these sorts of manias.
	And the manias are all about, I don't have anyone to talk to and I don't have anything to say.
	And that is kind of terrifying.
	I watched a show the other day called...
	Happy endings.
	And in it, one of the characters says, you know, they're constantly doing all, you know, 20-something escapades and all that.
	And at one point, one of them turns to the other and says, what do you think would ever happen if we had a real conversation?
	And there was this long pause and then the scene ended.
	Or for a more terrifying, a completely terrifying view...
	Of the younger generation just watched the show Girls, which is a completely, completely terrifying view.
	I mean, it makes Californication look like a Disney film.
	It's a completely terrifying view of...
	I mean, I can't believe it's true.
	I know it's popular.
	I assume it's exaggerated in the same way that, you know, Seinfeld's New York Jewishness was exaggerated.
	But it is a completely, completely terrifying view of the younger generation.
	These are not people who are going to be fit for anything other than being aimless, parasitical hipsters their whole life.
	Oh, yeah.
	But I just wanted to mention that.
	One of my favorites is, about three years ago, I'm at a Prince house and It's fall.
	And we're sitting on the front porch discussing things.
	And right across the street from the house he's dwelling in at the time is a fraternity.
	And they have this big banner over there.
	There are fret symbols and stuff.
	It says, you know, something, something, future leaders of America.
	That's the biggest word, future leaders of America.
	So as we watch this fret into the weekend throwing their parties, We saw some of the most shocking of things happening and incredibly stupid things going on.
	The police were there three times.
	There was fights, people shooting each other with pellet guns.
	There was an ambulance there.
	There was lots of puking.
	People passed out in the front yard.
	We witnessed two couples having sex in the front yard and the backyard.
	And all of this while we're looking at this sign saying, future leaders of America!
	What's that old Doors song?
	I'm a backyard man!
	Yeah, so when I first went to McGill, I was working up north for the summer doing this gold panning and claim staking and stuff.
	And I ended up showing up at McGill, fully bearded, you know, long hair.
	I was wearing ponytail back in the day.
	And I got off the train at like 5.30 in the morning.
	It's just the way it happened to work out coming down from up north.
	And I just had all this luggage with me and I was dragging it.
	I had nowhere to go.
	I had no idea.
	You know, I had nowhere to go.
	No place to stay.
	No money for a hotel or anything like that.
	And I ended up staying for a day or two with an ex-girlfriend before I got a place.
	And the place that I ended up going into a female...
	I didn't know it was a female sorority house.
	There was like a couch and I just crashed there for a little bit and I was told that...
	It was, you know, my little brief experience of homelessness.
	Anyway, so I ended up Renting a room in a frat house.
	Because, you know, I had no money or whatever, right?
	And I shared a room with a guy.
	Turned out to be a great guy.
	And we're still in contact.
	But, um...
	In the frat house, they asked me to join the frat.
	And, you know, which was nice.
	You know, it was a nice offer.
	It wasn't really for me.
	But we did have to leave a couple of times when they had their initiations.
	And one of them involved putting your dick into the barrel of a shotgun.
	And they had goats.
	And I mean, it was just truly insane.
	And I had a friend of mine...
	Uh, who later became a terrible drug addict, but he joined a frat, uh, and the, the, um, you had to, to, to get in, you had to drink a warm beer.
	Like, you know, you had to run around the track and then drink a beer, run around the track and drink the beer.
	Every time you ran around the track, the beer got warmer and warmer and warmer.
	And then you basically had to keep doing that until you threw up and they collected all the throw up in garbage bags.
	And then you had to race under the parapet of a That's awful.
	Oh, my goodness.
	Anyway, listen, I'm sorry, but we do have a lot of callers.
	Pleasant though, the chat is.
	A really enjoyable chat.
	I sympathize with your desire to find a sane corner of an open world.
	But, you know, just...
	The pleasure is in the tribe you can choose.
	A long time ago, marriages used to be arranged.
	Of course, there are still a lot of places in the world.
	And then there was this revolution where you got to choose your husband.
	A long time ago, your occupation was determined by what your father did.
	And of course, in many places in the world, in the caste system in Hindu India, that's still the case.
	But now, we get to choose our own occupation.
	So, it's just this extension of choice.
	Just choose your own tribe.
	That's the only...
	Suggestion I can make.
	There is no prefab tribe out there for independent thinkers to join.
	No.
	I mean, there just isn't.
	You have to find the people.
	Maybe you have to cultivate the people a little.
	Maybe they have to cultivate you where you have, you know, sandy corners of irrationality that need to be sanded down.
	But work at finding and choosing your own tribe.
	And once you have people in your life who are rational, once you have people in your life you can talk to, once you have people in your life you can be close to, Hang on to them like literally grim death.
	Sacrifice.
	There is no sacrifice almost too great to keep those relationships.
	Right.
	I have a handful.
	I've got a lot of people.
	Four corners of the earth, as I say it.
	But there are a handful of people on this planet that I communicate with almost on a daily basis using Skype and other means of communication.
	But yes, I do have a very wide and dispersed tribe, if you will.
	But yeah.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Yeah, do for relationships.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I remember when I, just the last thing I mentioned, just, you know, go move to where those people are.
	Yes.
	I mean, seriously, stalk them as they show up in the backseat of their car and scare the shit out of them or whatever.
	No, but just find the people and then just go there.
	Life is short, you know?
	We're not wed to geography.
	We're not serfs, bought and sold with the land.
	Like, I remember when I was much younger, I was interested in this girl and she was going to go to another town For a school.
	Now, I had a career.
	I had a job and all that.
	And I was talking about it with a friend of mine.
	He's like, oh, she's going to move away.
	That sucks.
	I said, why?
	He said, well, she's going to move away.
	So, you know, it's going to be a long-distance relationship or no relationship.
	And I said, I don't see...
	I just moved there.
	Exactly.
	I would leave my job and I would go and move.
	If this was going to be the right woman for me, that's what I would do.
	And, you know, I don't think we...
	I don't think we accumulate points that we can add to reduce our time in purgatory by withholding commitment from relationships.
	I find that with all relationships, this is what I've counseled with good and bad relationships, just commit to the relationship, commit to being yourself, commit to being honest.
	Now, if this woman had moved away for school, no, a doctor actually, but if she'd moved away for school and I'd have said, okay, well, I'd like to move with you, and she's like, oh, I don't think that's appropriate.
	I'm going to be very busy.
	It's like, okay, well, then she's not the right person for me.
	And so, yeah, if there are people that you like, go to them or ask them to come to you, but be around the people.
	At least within proximity to this.
	I'm going to be coming up to Canada here probably in the next week.
	No, I'm stuck.
	Absolutely.
	Jumping out of my backseat of my car.
	You told me to?
	No, all right.
	I told you to.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I hear you.
	Well, appreciate your time.
	I will be a long-time listener.
	You've got my ear.
	And I will probably try to call in with maybe something more of an in-depth topic next time.
	Oh, I would not doubt how in-depth this topic was, but I appreciate your call, and let's see who's up next.
	All right, Michelle, you're up next.
	Go ahead, Michelle.
	Oh, dear.
	It's the name that is the name of a song, and what that means is now the song starts in my head, and I must fight to stop it.
	Anyway, Michelle, my bell, how are you?
	Don't stop.
	Happy anniversary.
	Oh, thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	I was hoping you could try to help me connect the dots around a difficult personal issue that I'm having.
	I'm all over it.
	I have the dots, and I think they might seem kind of random, but I feel that they're somehow related.
	I think you're going to be able to see it.
	And help me see it.
	Are you getting an ice belly?
	Wait, hang on.
	Are you getting an ice belly at the moment?
	I find that whenever I talk about something that makes me kind of nervous, it's like little shavings of ice forming in my belly and I start to feel kind of cold and jittery and excited and all that.
	Your speech seems a little wobbly.
	Are you getting an ice belly or something like it at the moment?
	Yes, exactly.
	I have freezing cold fingers and I'm sweating.
	Excellent.
	That's good.
	So what that means is that we are talking about a topic that is so important to you, Michelle, that we're activating your fight or flight mechanism.
	So basically, this topic is your tiger.
	And I think that's a great place to start.
	So I appreciate you bringing up such an important and sensitive topic, but I just wanted to acknowledge how important it was and that I will be extremely rude.
	No, but I will try and be as gentle as possible with the tiger.
	But go ahead.
	Thanks.
	Thank you for that.
	So it doesn't happen very often, but occasionally I get a really deep emotional reaction to what I'm going to call visibility.
	I don't know if that's really what it is.
	And it feels like a contradiction or a kind of inconsistency in my character.
	And it comes out when I'm not thinking, like in the middle of the night.
	It's like an intense emotional reaction and I'll wake up suddenly and my heart is like really pounding and I'm really tense and my mind is really racing.
	And when I then am able to calm, it seems to have a lot to do with ambivalence in visibility and leadership.
	I write a lot and I've been a writer and teacher for over 15 years now.
	And so it's kind of a problem because I feel like I'm in this place in my life where There's a push in me to have more visibility, and at the same time, then this comes out.
	And so then it feels like a torture.
	And so then I'm asking myself, well, why would you torture yourself like this?
	It almost feels masochistic or something.
	And I know lots of people have problems with public speaking and speaking vulnerably, so I know it's normal.
	But then so I go back to that.
	Well, you know, it's normal.
	Everyone feels this.
	So just, you know, fashion your life and your role in the future around this.
	And then I have the other part that says, no, push it.
	Push into it.
	Call up Steph.
	You'll know.
	And I do.
	Well, let me just let me just mention something before I want to ask.
	Yeah, let me just mention something before I want to ask more about the visibility thing.
	The public speaking thing is important.
	There's an old Seinfeld joke that says people are more terrified of public speaking than death, which means if there's a funeral, they'd rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.
	Public speaking is something that we are attacked for as children.
	We are humiliated for, right?
	I mean, if you...
	How many times have you seen this, right?
	I mean, it's like the opening of Cloudy by the Chance of Meatballs, right?
	I got spray-on shoes.
	Hey, nerd!
	Right, so we're mocked.
	We're humiliated.
	You say something in public, everyone laughs at you.
	One of the purposes of education, one of the main purposes, is to reduce most people's capacity to compete with the ruling class.
	And the ruling class, as you can imagine, as you see every time on television, makes its money from...
	Public speaking.
	I mean, Barack Obama, you know, with the right teleprompter, is a great orator.
	He's completely ridiculous as a manager, and he's completely incompetent to run anything, but he's a great orator, and that is a source of his power.
	The media, right?
	They're comfortable with public speaking and so on, so one of the things that Jews do is they encourage public performance and public speaking, which is why there are so many People who are in the media or in the entertainment business, which is basically the same thing, who are Jewish.
	So one of the ways that we are not to compete with the ruling classes Is we are made frightened of public speaking and then we're never going to pose any threat to the people who make their power out of demagoguing the masses.
	So you're not afraid of public speaking, you're afraid of humiliation.
	That's important, right?
	I mean, this is important for everyone.
	I just wanted to sort of mention that, but tell me a little bit more about what you mean by invisibility.
	Well, I think when you said humiliation, that is definitely part of it.
	And I do think it goes back to my childhood.
	And my dad is especially the old school patriarch type.
	You know, so much so that if I would say that to him, he would take that as a compliment.
	And, you know, so it was very much, you know, do as I say, not as I do.
	And, you know, this leadership by stupid sayings, I guess.
	Idiot fortune cookies shall be your guide, right?
	One of his favorites was, I'm in charge.
	Do as I say, not as I do.
	Oh yeah, he loved that one.
	He liked, I'm in charge, you're responsible.
	And I was, I was the oldest.
	My parents divorced when I was six.
	And my mom didn't really like me until I moved out.
	I was a daddy's girl before that.
	So there was some abandonment issue there.
	I haven't defood, but I have separated myself very much from my family of origin.
	And when you've been talking lately about hero worship, this struck me.
	And this is what I see in my family that's so just unacceptable.
	And And I think that this is related, like you said, you asked a question about the invisibility.
	It's kind of like, I'm okay with writing for the most part.
	I've been doing it for so long, so it comes natural.
	So I'll put something out there that may be particularly provocative or, you know, I know is going to stir something.
	And it's not in the moment.
	I mean, I feel perfectly fine and rational in doing it in the moment.
	It comes in the middle of the night in this reaction.
	All right, so we have to interrupt you.
	I have to interrupt you because you're talking around the topic rather than...
	It's like I'm saying, how do I get to the park?
	And you're saying, well, the park is green and there are nice birds there.
	And it's like, yes, yes, but how do I get there, right?
	So what is the invisibility when you talk about it?
	You say you wake up in the night and you have, like, whether it's a minor panic attack or your heart is racing or whatever, but it's the anxiety that you don't exist or is the anxiety that you don't exist to other people?
	Because the two are obviously not exactly the same.
	You know, it's not either of those, I would say.
	It's more like, well, I can tell you the time that it most recently happened.
	It was when I wrote you that poem.
	It stirred up a lot of emotion, and that was fine.
	I enjoyed that.
	It was fun for me for the most part, even the stirring of the emotion and getting it out.
	It was the sending it to you that stirred this and it happened really strongly and that's what made me want to explore it more.
	And so what happened was in the middle of the night, Over several nights as I'm considering sending it and then once I had sent it, so I was having that anxiety in the night and at one point when I woke up, it was you in my head talking to Christina and in a very scathing way about me.
	Like, how stupid would somebody, why would somebody do this?
	I don't know how to respond to this.
	It's very silly and adolescent.
	Why would she spend her time doing that?
	That kind of thing.
	And then I realized that's the child self-talking, and I try to calm her down.
	Child self-talking, did you say?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Well, because I have had some therapy around this.
	No, but sorry, how is that your child self?
	Is your child self-abusive?
	Because it's really mean, right?
	I mean, people that you respect, that my wife and I would be like rolling our eyes and mocking and being scornful and contemptuous towards your outpouring of thought and feeling in a poem.
	It's nasty, right?
	So if you say that's just your child self talking, what you're saying is that your child self has the capacity to be nasty and contemptuous and abusive or whatever, right?
	I would not necessarily agree with that.
	Well, so what happened with the therapy was the way that I was able to...
	Where did that language come from?
	No.
	Sorry, what I mean is the language you're talking about, the self-talk about people being contemptuous about your thoughts and feelings, where did the language of contempt come from?
	You know, I suppose it must have come from my childhood and when I was in a rational place later thinking about it.
	No, no, no.
	Your childhood is a state of mind and is a time experience.
	It has no voice, right?
	What I should be more precise in saying is, which person in your life taught you that language?
	I would say probably everyone.
	I would say most people around me.
	Growing up, you know, not exactly supportive.
	And...
	Okay, that's more than not supportive, isn't it?
	Yeah, there are tons of people in India who were not supportive of my show because they've never heard of it or don't speak English.
	That's not abusive, right?
	Right, right.
	I don't want to talk around it.
	That's what I mean by the dots.
	I have these dots.
	No, no, I'll help you with the dots as best I can.
	Well, first of all, you've already told me who it is, right?
	And the fact that you would project a negative response onto Christina and myself, we're both parents, right?
	Right.
	And your daughter is about the same age that was when my own family was collapsing.
	Right, right, right.
	So your parental alter egos, right, the inner parents within your heart, when you wanted to send a poem to me, your inner parents wished you to remain isolated and therefore they poisoned the well, right?
	They showed or depicted Christina and I being nasty people about your poem.
	So that you would remain isolated, right?
	So that when you would reach out to someone they'll say, well, this person is going to hurt you, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So to get beyond it...
	Okay, sorry.
	Well, hang on.
	No, I don't even know what we're getting beyond yet.
	We're just starting to sort of...
	We're spraying in the air to find out where the lasers are.
	I'm doing this little gesture with my hand like you can see it.
	But anyway, we're spraying the water in the air to find both the lasers and Catherine Zeta-Jones' butt, who I already did a video about.
	But anyway, so when you were a kid and your family was collapsing...
	What were the symptoms that you remember at the age of four or five?
	You said they separated when you were six, right?
	So things are usually rough for years before that, right?
	Yeah.
	I know my dad was a traveling salesman then, so I know he wasn't around a lot.
	And that was, you know, from my mom's side, the reason that she was unhappy and I guess he was drinking a lot, too.
	I don't remember that.
	He was a drinker until maybe about 20 years ago he quit.
	15 years ago he quit.
	And I had a lot of responsibility, and I remember liking it.
	And, you know, it wasn't in the, you know, I get to tell my little sister what to do thing.
	It was in the I'm needed kind of way.
	And so...
	You know, I felt like I... I think now looking back, I was, you know, trying to secure my own safety by being needed because I was the daddy's girl.
	And so when he left, I was with my mom, who my little sister is much more like her and I was much more like my dad.
	And so, you know, it was...
	She was...
	She points it out often how much I am like my dad, usually in the same phrases of, you know, that asshole.
	How terrifying.
	So wait a minute.
	So you were told that you were like your father, and who left who when you were six?
	Do you know?
	I don't know how mutual it was.
	He says she cheated, you know, he said she said kind of thing, and that was the story they stuck with.
	And my dad did go on, had another family, and I have a half-sister and a half-brother.
	I also spent a lot of time babysitting them when I visited my dad.
	And we kept a relationship up with him all through school and everything, even though he didn't pay child support, and that was another issue.
	They would kind of pit us against Like, oh, if you can get money from your dad, I'll give you 10%.
	Or, you know, like to kind of motivate us to get money from him.
	Wait, you were given a...
	Wait, your mother offered you a bounty on child support?
	Yes, yes.
	Are you kidding me?
	Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?
	So you became responsible for getting child support from your father?
	Yeah, not quite successfully.
	Well, of course not successfully, but how old were you when this was occurring?
	This was basically all through high school.
	Junior high, when my mom and I were getting along at all, I went to go live with him for a year.
	And that was just a disaster.
	It was even worse, so I went back.
	It was either be controlled by my mother or be manipulated by my father.
	That's how I felt.
	And the lesser of two evils was direct control.
	Wow.
	And then, you know, I moved away.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure I get the answers that at least I need.
	So how old were you when your mother asked you to get money from your father for the first time, roughly?
	I know it's not down to the day, but just roughly.
	I would say right after I... Even before, maybe 12...
	You know, maybe not that young.
	We knew about the problem of the child support from all along.
	I don't think she actually made that particular offer until I was in high school.
	Okay, but were you asked to ask your father for money earlier than high school?
	I don't think so.
	I don't remember specifically.
	I know maybe, I know it was a topic often that he didn't pay child support.
	Why didn't she take him to court?
	I think she tried.
	There was a lot of backup.
	I don't think she remained very proactive about it.
	A lot of backup?
	I don't know what that means.
	Well, because my dad moved state so many times, I guess each time you have to apply in that state.
	And so, yeah, I'm not really sure of the particulars.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	I don't know anything about the legality in particular, but I think if he has...
	Did he change employers?
	Is that because I think you can get this stuff deducted from the salary before your father even sees it, and then it doesn't matter where he lives.
	There was at one point a talk of garnishing wages.
	I don't know why it never happened.
	I know it didn't happen.
	I don't know why.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And when you were with your father...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, I was just going to say, he did change work a lot.
	Changed and changed work a lot.
	Right, okay.
	Okay.
	And when you were with your father for the year, and you said it was worse than your mother, in what way was it worse?
	You said he was manipulative rather than controlling?
	But what does that mean?
	Well, so I used to get up and help him with his business at 5 in the morning and I was exhausted all the time.
	How old were you when you were living with your father?
	Sorry to interrupt.
	13.
	13, 14.
	So you were 13 and you had to get up to help your father with his business at 5 o'clock in the morning?
	Yeah, and again, he had small children then, so I was babysitting a lot, and I was doing a lot of housework.
	His name wasn't Karl Marx, was it?
	Sorry, you didn't notice one.
	Sorry?
	Sorry.
	Oh, I didn't understand what was the problem at the time.
	I just knew that I had to get out or I was going to just die from exhaustion.
	It was the only time in my life I ever had some skin problems.
	Yeah, you know, the one thing that society and schools pretend not to understand is the degree to which dysfunctional childhoods are just fucking exhausting.
	Exhausting.
	I was tired my whole childhood.
	And it is, you know, it screws up your sleep, it screws up your whole circadian rhythm, your melatonin production, predictability.
	It is really crazy the degree to which dysfunctional childhoods are exhausting.
	It is a form of torture.
	Sleep deprivation is a form of torture.
	And dysfunctional, abusive, overworked, neglected childhoods are exhausting.
	And it's like keeping someone up for three days and then saying, hey, go on to Dancing with the Stars and see if you can compete, right?
	It doesn't really work at all.
	And this is true in particular in the teenage years for everyone.
	Teenagers are supposed to sleep in.
	That's how their brains develop, but you've got to get up and get to school and do all that sort of stupid shit.
	So basically, Let me see if I can ask what I think is the most fundamental question about the question of visibility.
	Was there a time, Michelle, that you can remember in your childhood where anyone asked you what you wanted?
	Well, I wanted to get a job when I was 15. - Yeah.
	And I didn't have my license yet.
	And my mom drove me to the job and back from the job until I got my license.
	And, you know, it was very late at night.
	She would have to come pick me up at like 11 when it closed, 1130.
	And I know she did that because I wanted it.
	And did you get to keep the money that you were making?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Well, that's helpful.
	And what about before 15?
	I did a lot of...
	Oh, what?
	Yeah.
	I remember I wanted to change schools.
	Yeah.
	No, not so much.
	No.
	I do remember even before I went to my dad's, I wanted to change schools.
	And that was not an option.
	Even though I don't see why that was an option.
	Well, I can tell you why, but that's for later in the conversation.
	But why?
	Now, when you were a little kid, were your preferences solicited?
	I remember one time when we were driving, this was when they were still together, so it must have been like five years.
	We were driving in the Midwest from one city to another and there was an amusement park on the side of the road.
	And we really wanted to go.
	And my dad said, okay, on the way back, if it's still there.
	Yeah, me and my sister.
	And he said, on the way back, if it's still open, we'll go.
	And on the way back, it was still open, and my mom did not want to go at all.
	But my dad took us anyway, because he said he would.
	I remember that very vividly.
	Okay.
	Okay, the fact that you remember that vividly is not a particularly good sign, right?
	Oh, why?
	Why do you think?
	We remember good memories too vividly sometimes, don't we?
	Yes, but the fact that they're vivid is not a good sign.
	It is a good memory, but why is it not good that it's so vivid?
	Because it's so isolated.
	Yeah, because it's an exception.
	There were a lot of events like that.
	We see the sun because there's a whole bunch of the sky that's not the sun, right?
	Right, right.
	I also remember the spanking conversation very, very young.
	It was, again, before they divorced, so I must have been five or so.
	And what was the spanking conversation?
	I remember everyone was in a good mood and we were in the living room.
	It was my little sister, so she must have been about three.
	I don't know what happened, but my dad or someone must have said something, I think it was to my sister, of Knock off that behavior or you're going to get spanked.
	And I looked at my dad and I said, you say that, but you don't ever do it.
	And he said, well, we did when you were younger and then when you reached age of reason, I guess he was seeing three or so, then we stopped doing it.
	And then I said, well, show me.
	Show me how you spanked me.
	Put me over his lap and it was in a joking way.
	It was all very joking and he just tapped me very, very lightly.
	And I was like, oh, that's not so bad.
	And I'm feeling like myself, oh, I've been scared of that all this time.
	That's not so bad.
	But then my sister was there and she was saying, me too, me too.
	And so my dad did the same thing to her and he swatted her heart.
	And I'll never forget this.
	I was just like so shocked.
	I was like, and I felt like, oh my God, I just made her get hit like that because this was my idea.
	The spanking conversation was my conversation.
	And I knew she started crying.
	How astonishingly, and how astonishingly screwed up is that?
	Hey, hey, we're all having fun.
	And then you ask a serious question.
	So first of all, you were being hit hard before you were three.
	Right.
	I assume on the buttocks, is that right?
	I guess so, because there was never a question later on of...
	Yes.
	Okay, so you were being hit hard, I assume, on the naked buttocks before you were three.
	That's deranged, obviously.
	And then your father, when everyone's having a good time, betrays your sister.
	Because he does a little tap for you, which is a betrayal of you.
	Because what it's doing is it's saying, you have nothing to be scared of.
	But I guarantee you, I guarantee you, Michelle, it was not a little tap when you were a baby.
	So he's basically saying, you have no reason to be scared.
	You're making it all up.
	It was just a little tap, but that's not spanking.
	I would, you know, when my daughter needed to be burped when she was a baby, I would put her over my shoulder and I would tap her on the back.
	That's not spanking.
	You can get a massage with people, right, doing that thing on your back, but the side of their hands, that's not assault, right?
	So, he's betraying you by telling you that he never hit you, but he did, and then he betrays your sister by hitting her when he only tapped you.
	Do you see?
	This is a two-shotgun betrayal.
	Hmm.
	And seems kind of sadistic to me.
	Yeah, it does.
	So, this hero worship question, this hero worship question, does it seem like, you know, because we were still, you
	And, you know, he was, you know, the family man.
	I mean, everything was about the family and how important family is.
	And now still the family still kind of treats him and he still acts in that way, even though the family's kind of a mess and all over the place and divorces here and there and Many divorces, I should say.
	In your family, well, of course, yeah.
	Of course.
	I've imagined that the template for masculinity that the women choose is pretty bad, right?
	Yes, you know, for my dad, you aren't a man unless you are impenetrable.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I'm going to use a term here that is strong, and I hope you will forgive me if it's too strong.
	But the demand for respect is to me the equivalent of respect, rape.
	The demand for sex against the wishes of the victim is rape, obviously, right?
	The enactment of sex.
	The demand for respect against the desires of the child is respect, rape.
	Because it is directly against the wishes of the child.
	The idea that I would demand my daughter respect me is so incomprehensible to me, I can't even explain how insane that is to me.
	Well, he used to say a lot growing up, though, that his father was like that, or that some people were like that, but that he felt respect needed to be...
	This is something he always used to say when we were growing up.
	This is where the whole hypocrisy...
	I mean, I'm absolutely obsessed with hypocrisy, and it's because I just lived it for so long that he would say that respect must be earned.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Oh, so he said respect must be earned?
	Yes.
	But then he would demand respect?
	Well, I'm sure he would say he wasn't demanding respect, that he was earning it.
	In his mind, he's earning it.
	But that's not his choice.
	It's not his choice whether he's earned it.
	It's the choice of the person who may or may not give him respect.
	I mean, that's like me writing my own paycheck and expecting to cash it.
	I mean, what am I, the Fed?
	My show is worth precisely what people donate to it.
	Thank you.
	I can make a case that people should pay more, but fundamentally it's worth what people will donate to it.
	That's it.
	I can't say that people are evil for not donating to the show.
	I can make the case.
	But I cannot...
	I cannot say respect must be earned.
	I have earned it, and therefore you owe me respect.
	That's an entirely narcissistic, self-contained equation.
	With no reference.
	It's literally, this is exactly what it's like.
	Let me tell you this, it's like I run a drugstore and there's a tube of toothpaste with the price tag of a million dollars on it.
	Somebody walks into my store and I then won't let them leave until they give me a million dollars for the tube of toothpaste.
	And I say, well that's the price.
	I put the price sticker on it, therefore that's what it's worth.
	Therefore, you must give me that.
	No, the tube of toothpaste is worth what people will pay for it, not what someone's price tag is.
	Right?
	Thank you.
	Yes, that really makes a lot of sense.
	He feels that he deserves respect, I think, because he works very hard.
	He's always been a workaholic, and this big Protestant work ethic, so because I work hard, therefore I deserve respect kind of thing, because I am successful.
	Oh, okay, so wait, wait, wait.
	So he's a workaholic, and so he works very hard, and you say that he places great value on family, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so let's put these little things together, right?
	So if he works very hard, and he places great value on family, he must have worked very hard...
	To learn how to have a happy and good family.
	To learn how to be a good father.
	To learn how to be a good listener.
	To learn how to legitimately gain respect and love from those around him.
	He must have worked super hard to be a good husband because the foundation of a good family is the relationship between husband and wife.
	So he must have read tons of books.
	Obsessively, he must have read tons of books On how to have a good family, how to be a good husband, how to be a good father, because he's a workaholic, you see, and he places great value on the family.
	Was that the case?
	No, not at all.
	No, I guarantee you that he read no books on the family, he read no books on parenting, he read no books on marriage, and he did not go to therapy.
	Am I right?
	That's right.
	So he's not a workaholic.
	Yes.
	In things that actually matter, which is not how many dollars you have, but how much love you've got.
	Yes.
	Yes, and there's part of me that, you know, because I haven't, you know, formally said my piece, and no one really knows exactly how I feel, except maybe my sister's, There's part of me that wants to be the one that tells him that you don't deserve this.
	You don't deserve to be the patriarch.
	And then, you know, there's the other part of me that says, well, that's really pointless.
	Why on earth would you do that?
	Solve absolutely nothing.
	Okay, solve absolutely nothing.
	So for you, hang on, for you to be honest with your father, and honesty doesn't just mean your feelings.
	Obviously, honesty, you have questions about your dad.
	And for your dad.
	You know, why didn't you pay child support?
	Why did you leave mom?
	How often did you hit me when I was a baby?
	You know, these are questions that you have, right?
	And they're perfectly fair and valid.
	My daughter can ask me anything.
	I mean, age-appropriate answers and all that, but she will regularly ask little Steph to come and live with her because her parents are super great and my mom was not, which is a lovely and touching gesture.
	But you have questions for your father which are very important to get answers to.
	Some of the questions, some of the answers that I got from my Parents.
	And some of the avoidances of the answers that I got were incredibly important to me.
	And we need to get the truth of our history.
	Or we need to get the truth that we cannot get the truth of our history.
	That's also important.
	But so yeah, you can tell your dad how you feel.
	You can ask him questions.
	Wouldn't that be a very helpful and useful thing?
	But it's terrifying, right?
	Yes, it is terrifying.
	But I feel, you know, I'm 45.
	I feel kind of like, I don't know, maybe this is the same ambiguity from before, but what am I going to learn that I don't already know?
	I know that nothing is going to change.
	I know that nothing I say will penetrate him.
	I really can't imagine.
	Michelle, Michelle, Michelle.
	No, no, no.
	Again, you can do whatever you want.
	I'm simply giving you my ideas.
	I can't tell anyone what to do, particularly in these situations.
	But you are not clear with your dad.
	You are not clear about your dad.
	And I say that because of a number of reasons.
	I think that some of the things that I pointed out in this call are kind of new to you, like the double betrayal with your sister and the spanking story, and the whole betrayal of the family by turning a fun time into a shitty time.
	There's actually three betrayals.
	So that was kind of new to you.
	Asking about, like when I pointed out that your vivid memories of good times are important because of their vividness, that was news to you.
	And also, Michelle, you referred to yourself as a daddy's girl.
	Right, right.
	That's not good.
	But no, but you refer to yourself now as a daddy's girl back then, but that's unprocessed.
	Because I don't think that you know what daddy's girl means in this kind of relationship.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Like too eager to please daddy?
	Is this what you're saying?
	Well, I would guess, again, it's all just a guess, but I would guess that you were served up to serve the narcissistic needs of your father at your own expense.
	Yes.
	You had to placate and appease him for fear of violence, of beatings for you, of disruptions, of abuse, that you had to go and appease this guy...
	And he chose you as the victim to be appeased, to appease him, and your mother chose you as the victim to appease him.
	And I think saying, I was forced to appease my father for fear of his temper is different than saying I was a daddy's girl.
	You're right.
	It's very different.
	And that's what I mean when I say...
	Yes.
	You say, well, I know some stuff and, you know, what would it change?
	Well, what it would do, I think it would give you an accurate understanding of your history.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Or as somebody said in the chat room, daddy's girl...
	Yeah, sorry.
	Somebody said in the chat room, daddy's girl equals surrogate mother.
	I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's an interesting thought.
	When he was going through his second divorce, That was probably the closest time I was ever with him.
	I was just starting in college.
	It was probably my second year of college.
	And he was having a very, very hard time.
	And then I definitely did become like kind of a surrogate, I would say, because I was listening to him about the problems and trying to take care of, you know, my half-sister actually moved in with me for a short time.
	I don't know, six months or maybe more when I was in college.
	And again, there's very little parenting happening.
	It's my whole childhood and I would like to ask you about one more thing that really seemed to me as off and to see if you also feel that way.
	Is that alright?
	Yes, of course.
	So it has to do, like, there's another hypocrisy around sexuality.
	And I was very, very curious.
	Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	You said another hypocrisy around sexuality.
	Did I miss the first one?
	Oh, I was just mean, because before the hypocrisy was around, you know, the respect thing.
	Oh, like another hypocrisy, but this time around sexuality.
	Okay, I get it.
	I just wanted to be clear.
	I didn't miss anything.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	And I remember several distinct things that felt very uncomfortable to me, even though I don't remember any sexual abuse.
	And I think it also helps nowadays to think about this because pornography is so prevalent now.
	But I know that I was, I first saw hardcore pornography when I was very young, like 11, I want to say.
	And again, I saw, you know, my mom had the erotica in the bathroom.
	And, you know, I was in charge of cleaning the bathroom, so it wasn't like I was snooping, although that was constantly an accusation that I'm like, why am I snooping?
	And there was no snooping happening.
	I was in charge of cleaning the bathrooms.
	It was very obvious.
	But then my stepfather's stash, which was hardcore pornography, was in the basement.
	So in this case, I really was snooping.
	But when I say hardcore pornography, I mean it's like as hard as I've ever seen to this day.
	And this was my first introduction to sexuality, basically, to couples, although that's not really what was happening.
	Sorry, again, I don't mean to be overly purient, but I'm not sure what you mean by hardcore pornography.
	Because, I mean, pornography obviously has the whole range, right?
	And some of it is sex, and some of it is abuse.
	It was abuse.
	Now, you could argue that all of it is abuse and all that, but...
	Oh, so kinky stuff, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And...
	And so, hang on, sorry, I just want to make sure...
	So this really stuck out.
	Hang on, sorry, I just, again, not to be overly prurient, but I'm sort of trying to understand what it is that you were exposed to at the age of 11...
	Was it like bondage with people with like those, I don't even know what they called those balls in their mouth?
	Was it people pulling on hair?
	Was it sadism?
	Was it masochism?
	Again, I'm just trying to get a sense of what you were exposed to.
	Well, I think he had the whole collection going there.
	But the ones that stick out in my mind were the sadistic ones.
	Like what you're saying.
	Bondage, humiliation.
	Yes.
	Implements.
	Like sort of mild physical torture?
	Like candle wax on that stuff?
	Like also gang bang type stuff.
	Oh, and with the woman sort of in a victimized position?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	So, lots of men, double penetration, and a woman in a victimized position, is that right?
	Yes.
	And I do remember that these were the, out of all of his collection, these were the ones that I most felt drawn to.
	I don't know why.
	I was obviously very young, maybe just because it was so bizarre.
	And so...
	Well, and also, can I tell you something about sexuality?
	Let me just tell you, and again, I don't mean to lecture you on sexuality, but...
	The sexuality that we're exposed to as children, and hopefully it's really nothing, but if we are exposed to sexuality as children, then it imprints upon us as that which is sexually desirable within our tribe, right?
	So every tribe may have different sexual practices, or, you know, so like in Spanish culture it's a big butt.
	In some cultures it's boobs.
	And so on, right?
	So every culture may have Different.
	Like, there's this one tribe in Africa where a long neck is considered to be attractive, and therefore they put these steel hoops on the woman's necks to elongate them to the semi-giraffe status to the point where the women can't even hold their own necks up without...
	Like, in Victorian England, it was a thin waist, so they had these whalebone corsets that would mash the inner organs to the point where women would lose their abdominal muscles and die far more often in...
	In childbirth and so on.
	Kim Kardashian recently tweeted a picture of herself with a friend of hers and these two giant butts.
	To me, that's gross.
	That is not an attractive butt to me.
	It looks like something that you should apply anti-inflammatories to or cut to reduce the size of.
	They look like something that needs to be lanced or something like that.
	So, but for a lot of people in a butt-centric culture, this is like hugely attractive.
	To me it looks gross, but you know, again, I'm not in that sort of butt-centric culture.
	And so, the first sexuality that we're exposed to imprints itself upon us as that which is sexually desirable within the tribe.
	So this is probably one reason why it's so vivid for you.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does.
	It's hard to know exactly what I was thinking at the time.
	I certainly never thought of it.
	I always thought of it as my fault.
	I'm looking.
	I shouldn't be looking.
	I know I'm not supposed to be looking at this.
	And so I think about kids today.
	And that was like magazines in the basement.
	I really did have to go look.
	But now, it's all over the place on the internet, and I wonder what you think about that.
	Would you consider that a form of sexual abuse?
	Well, just before we get into that, and again, please don't answer anything you're uncomfortable with, but would you say that your exposure to this material when you were, I guess, pubescent or prepubescent, do you think it had an effect on your adult sexuality?
	Uh, I know, I don't think it does still to this day.
	Um, but I've been married for a decade and, you know, happily married.
	Um, but I do know in my, in my twenties, I certainly had always a boyfriend or, you know, kind of a A group of suitors, let's say.
	I mean, I was monogamous, but I kind of knew that there were ones in the background waiting.
	And I see now that that came from father issues and maybe sexuality issues.
	But yeah, at the time, I don't know.
	Otherwise, there were a couple more episodes that I remember around just feeling like there's something, the undertones of sexuality were very unhealthy.
	And one time was when my, I was at the period that I was living with my dad and my cousin was also living there.
	She's three years older than me.
	And she's very beautiful.
	And so at the time, like I said, I was, you know, 13, 14.
	So she was like 16 or so.
	And so my dad was having a big party and he wanted us to dress up like French maids.
	So we did.
	And, you know, this is a very sexy outfit for, I think, now I look back at the pictures and I remember how I felt and I was very uncomfortable.
	And now I look at the pictures too and I... 13 or so?
	13, 14.
	Not...
	13, I must have been 13.
	So your father had you dress up in sexy little French maid outfits for a party?
	To serve cocktails and stuff at this party, at his party.
	And he paid us for this.
	Wait, I just feel like my entire skeleton has turned into a millipede.
	Sorry, I just wanted to give you my visceral reaction to that.
	Well, good.
	I'm glad to hear that because that's kind of how I felt.
	I got another body chill.
	Hang on.
	Well, wait, let me give you another one because in the pictures we were told to pat.
	Oh, please do.
	Just kidding.
	Go on.
	Yeah, so that's what I really remember.
	He's, you know, they're like, okay, pout, like you're supposed to put on this kind of sexy pout.
	And I mean, I was just beside myself already, like, I don't even know what that means.
	And you can see in the picture that I'm like, grimacing.
	Uncomfortable.
	Because I could feel, yeah, I felt the, even though I couldn't explain what was making me so uncomfortable, I definitely felt it.
	And it's dangerous.
	Right.
	It's dangerous to parade your 13-year-old girl around a bunch of guys dressed as a sexy maid and telling her to be sexy.
	It's dangerous.
	Yes.
	Here's one more.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	It sticks out in my mind.
	Are you feeling visible now?
	Oh yeah!
	Naked is a state of mind.
	So 10 years, I was probably 10 or 11, and we were going to my grandma's house.
	Me and the cousins.
	We were all very close when we were younger.
	And my cousins are older.
	And we were all staying in the room, guest room together.
	And we were going to put our clothes in.
	So we put our clothes in all the drawers and all the drawers are empty, but one on the nightstand.
	And in the nightstand is the book, The Happy Hooker, which is like...
	Xavier Hollander, if I...
	Yeah, that was a book that was big in the 70s.
	Yeah.
	So we're thinking, of course, oh, it's a big mistake and we're going to read this book together.
	My little sister was too young.
	She didn't even get it.
	But my older cousin, she's five years older.
	She got it and we were reading passages and not supposed to be doing that.
	But later on, I started to think, well, wait a minute.
	Every drawer was empty.
	Obviously, she knew the book was in there.
	She had to have known.
	Right.
	The room is spotlessly clean, every drawer is empty, and the only thing in there is that one book.
	Right.
	It's weird, isn't it?
	Yeah, it's a plant, probably, right?
	Well, that's what I thought.
	But nobody thinks twice about this stuff in my family now.
	Nobody's really asking questions.
	Yeah, and I'm sorry, but in the 70s, sexually explicit material was everywhere.
	I mean, again, I don't know now.
	What do I know, right?
	But yeah, I certainly was in my little apartment.
	Sexually explicit material was everywhere.
	I remember reading that book as a kid.
	My mom had other books and magazines and pictures.
	And I mean, it was, yeah, it was a really, you know, there's this movie called The Ice Storm Podcast.
	Where they talk about the key party.
	Like you go and you have a dinner and then you take each other's keys, car keys, and you go home with that person and have sex with them.
	And it is...
	It was...
	I have this sort of impression of the 70s as a pretty sexually sick time.
	And there's a variety of reasons which we kind of...
	It was the dark side of the free love of the 60s, which had its own dark side as well.
	It also had a lot to do with marital breakup and all of that.
	But it was...
	A time when sexuality was being socialized in a weird and creepy way.
	It was a time of the breaking down of the barriers from adult sexuality to child innocence, which I think are very important to maintain.
	And so...
	And yeah, as someone has pointed out, Fifty Shades of Grey continues that, but basically it's a novel about pedophilia because the woman is a child.
	I mean, you might as well give her pigtails and a lollipop and call her Lolita.
	And there was...
	A lot of kinky, weird stuff going on in the 70s in households, and not just mine.
	I remember a friend of mine staying over at his place one night, and in the morning his single mom had been playing Scrabble and left it all out, and Scrabble was like all sex words, right?
	And so it was...
	It was a pretty kinky time.
	And I'm really sorry for all of that.
	I'm sorry for this exposure to what I would think is some pretty sick sexuality.
	And I'm sorry for the spanking.
	Again, spanking, not in every case, but in a lot of cases, creates sexual dysfunction.
	Exposure to bondage at the age of 11.
	Yeah, I consider that abusive, I think, to leave that material around in any place where a child can find it.
	Is incredibly destructive.
	So I am very sorry about that.
	Thanks.
	Thanks for letting me talk about all of that.
	There's such a, you know, kind of, I don't know if you call it double standard, but when we think of, you know, boys looking at this stuff at that age, we don't have the same reaction, I think, as when we think about girls.
	And I wonder why that is.
	Like if it's somehow less unhealthy for boys to be exposed at a young age compared to girls, which seems to me it would be equal.
	Yeah, I think it's pretty bad.
	I mean, male sexuality is a little different from female sexuality.
	Obviously, I mean, sorry, I don't mean to say obvious like everyone should know it, but I mean, a woman, to raise a successful child, a woman really needs commitment from a man.
	She needs more virtue, whereas a man needs more fertility.
	Because a man, obviously, sperm are disposable and, you know, And to some degree, men are disposable because there's always someone else willing to have sex.
	So a man needs fertility more and a woman needs virtue, like the capacity to provide, to protect, to shelter, to bring resources while she's pregnant and having endless kids and breastfeeding and, you know, just kind of unfit for work in many ways.
	So a woman's sexual standards need to be higher than a man's, which in turn raises the man's.
	So virtue in romantic relationships starts with women needing virtue from men, and as a result, men strive for virtue in order to pair bond with a woman.
	One of the catastrophic things that the welfare state has done, and it's no accident that after the feminist revolution of the 60s saw the family collapse of the 70s, which was made possible by the welfare state of the 60s again, right?
	I mean, couldn't really have as much family breakdown without the government picking up the tab for the single moms, which is really the foundation of the welfare state.
	What's happened is women's need for virtue has collapsed, and with it, male virtue has collapsed, which is why you have these endless man boys who...
	Can't seem to grow up and become responsible.
	And so it was a tragic decade.
	And the result of state-funded and CIA-backed feminism and the welfare state and a variety of other things, a lot to do with debt, And it destroyed what was left of some of the good conservative virtues that sort of were around prior.
	So, yeah, I'm sorry.
	I mean, you and I, I think, and you more than me, got swept up in this flesh abuse hedonism of the 70s that was unleashed by the massive expansion of state power in the 60s.
	So, okay, and thanks again for empathizing with me.
	Back to the original question then, as far as connecting the dots.
	So don't, sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	So when you refer to yourself as a daddy's girl and then you talk about him teaching you how to be sexy in a French maid outfit, you get that that's a whole other dimension of creep, right?
	Right.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Right.
	And now I can see, now that I'm actually hearing what you're saying and voicing all of this, I can see how that panic in the middle of the night could be related to all of this, because when you're visible, and the more visible you become, obviously the more, you know, risk that you're taking, and maybe that is what's happening.
	Well, if you were being groomed at the age of 13 as a sexual object on display for other males, then visibility would be a problem, would be a danger, right?
	Right.
	You know, if the drunken woman's breasts are visible at the frat party, then her visibility is kind of dangerous, right?
	Yes, right.
	Sorry, you were saying?
	Just as a kid, I was always in dancing school, and I danced on stage a lot.
	And I was also in that age where, you know, 16, you're kind of transitioning from, you know, little girl dancer to what's available as a big girl dancer.
	And that's when I quit.
	And so maybe that has to do with it too.
	Worst name for a strip club ever.
	Oh no, the worst name for a strip club is Little Girl Dancer.
	The second worst is Big Girl Dancer.
	Anyway, go ahead.
	I enjoyed doing it and there was always the nervousness before going on stage, but once I was on stage, the body takes over.
	And the mind can be blank, and you can't do that when you're public speaking.
	The body doesn't take over.
	The mind still has to be thinking.
	Look, and the fact that you have panic attacks at nighttime when you lived in a highly sexually inappropriate household may not be unrelated.
	Right.
	Maybe it has nothing to do with the writing at all.
	I don't mean necessarily that you were sexually abused.
	I don't know.
	But what I mean is that you may have woken up if your stepdad was into bondage and torture sexually.
	I mean, that's a highly disturbed personality in my opinion.
	But you may have heard ugly, painful, vicious sexual sounds in the middle of the night.
	I never thought about that.
	Or you may just have not felt safe.
	Like, you may just have not felt safe in that house at night as a young woman.
	Whether anything happened or not, I don't know.
	Obviously, I mean, that's not for me to say, and so on.
	But I could certainly see why you'd feel a little nervous.
	Right?
	Knowing that your stepdad, at least, was into weird, kinky, brutal sex, and also that your mother...
	Which, you know, we've talked almost not at all about your mom, and we could probably do another hour on that, but I'm certainly no therapist, so that I think would be something to take up with a therapist.
	But you've been completely silent about your mom, and as I talked about in a show that I think is yet to be published, your mom chose these men.
	Right.
	And they were in your life because of your mom.
	So we haven't really talked much about her, but this is someone else.
	Like, How the hell did you expose me to men like this?
	What's the matter with you?
	And you can ask about her history and find out what happened with her as a child.
	And I can guarantee you, or at least virtually guarantee you, based upon the inevitable physics of intergenerational dysfunction, that she had a veritable boatload of Uncle Spanky Fingers creepy guys Around her when she was a kid, and this is what she got used to, and this is what she normalized by not being upset about it, and thus she reproduced that for you, and all other kinds of creepy stuff.
	Yeah, that's FDR 2582.
	I've got a good speech about females' role in the cycle of dysfunction, which again, you know, I talk about women's role in the cycle of dysfunction, and people say, well, what about men?
	And it's like, we already talked about men for about the last 10,000 years.
	What we don't talk about is women, so excuse me for trying to bring it up to 50-50, but sorry, go ahead.
	No, I completely agree.
	And I realized before that a lot of the focus is on my dad.
	And when I talk to my husband and stuff, I also said, it's interesting how I just kind of leave my mom out of it or even think about talking to my mom.
	It's like a whole different level of nervousness or anxiety because, you know, I can picture myself yelling at my dad or being angry, you know.
	No, the prime mover...
	The prime mover in the formulation of the family are the women.
	Women choose the men.
	Men will ask a lot of women.
	I know this.
	Men will ask a lot of women out.
	Some women will say yes.
	Some women will say no.
	And unless it's rape, the woman has decided the man to marry.
	I assume that your mother did not look like the ass end of a troll, right?
	No.
	I assume that she was actually very attractive.
	I understand that.
	And the fact that she got married young and you were sexually displayed at a young age is probably not unrelated, right?
	Right.
	But I assume that she was quite attractive.
	Yeah.
	And this is in general, in general, and I generalize, and fifth-rate thinkers can find exception to that.
	But, you know, hey, a lot of Japanese people are kind of short.
	I know a tall Japanese guy, so you're wrong.
	Anyway, that's not you.
	It's just all the idiots out there.
	But in general, the equation that I use is the more asshole the dad, the more pretty the mom.
	Ah, interesting.
	Well, that fits.
	And I've seen this repeated so many times.
	So many times.
	That it's not quite a law of physics, but I have yet to find a significant exception.
	The moment that your dad was financially successful, I would assume, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So he buys 624-36 and he buys even features and he buys lustrous hair with his financial success.
	And his financial success came in general out of him being a jerk and being neglectful of his family and being a dominant guy and being kind of bullying and all that kind of stuff.
	And so, yeah, I mean, the prettier the woman, the jerkier the guy.
	In general, there are exceptions, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	I'm not calling every woman with a nice husband ugly, and I'm not saying that everyone who married a pretty woman is a jerk.
	I think my wife is gorgeous.
	But I'm just saying it's, in general, it's not a bad rule of thumb.
	So when people say to me, well, my dad was like this, I know all about their mom.
	Well, So.
	Well, this has been really helpful because I see maybe what the block is that I've been wanting to skip over some of this stuff, especially the confronting them with it.
	I was thinking it was okay to do that because, you know, I'm older.
	I don't have kids.
	They don't have any hold on me.
	They don't ask anything of me.
	Of course they have a hold on you.
	Come on, come on, come on.
	Don't end our conversation with something so unenlightened.
	Of course they have a hold on you.
	It's much worse.
	They're your parents.
	They will always have a hold on you.
	But we're not talking about your sisters and they're not calling this show.
	Don't give me the, you know, I only live on 500 calories a day but there are people in India who live on less.
	You're still hungry, right?
	Of course, look, if they didn't have a hold on you at all, you'd be able to have any conversation you want with them.
	If they didn't have a hold on you at all, you'd be able to be frank and clear about your relationship with them, which you're not as yet.
	You're quite clear, but not, right?
	60-70%, but a ways to go, right?
	And I say this as a guy who's still not 100% with my own family of origin.
	You know, I used to be frustrated sometimes that the most beautiful women wouldn't go out with me when I was younger, although one or two did, but most of them.
	And now I'm like, well, thank God.
	Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, beautiful women, for wanting assholes, because, anyway.
	Oh, thank you.
	What a relief.
	But no, of course, look, they have massive, massive effects on you, and that will never change.
	It will not even change after they're dead.
	Right?
	Be clear on that, because otherwise you may have a standard called, well, I'll achieve mental health when my parents don't have any effect on me.
	That's not possible.
	It's no more possible to untangle your parents' effects from you than it is for you to stop learning English, to stop understanding English, to stop knowing how to speak English, right?
	That's your native tongue.
	For the rest of your life, unless you get dementia or some horrible brain injury or disease, for the rest of your life, Michelle, when someone speaks to you a sentence in England, in English, sorry, or England, I guess, will you be able to not understand it?
	Right.
	Yes, I hear exactly what you're saying.
	And I've had times, too, where somebody has said something to me innocently, and I immediately took it wrong because it reminded me of something like, you know, oh, you're so eager to please, and they're saying it as a compliment, and I'm immediately taking it defensively.
	Like, oh, I'm being too nice.
	I'm being too eager to please, and I better back off.
	Right.
	Right, so...
	And this is why parental relationships are so challenging.
	We cannot eliminate the massive effects that our parents have on us, for good or for ill.
	I can't be around my mother because she has a dominatingly powerful effect on me which will never change.
	If my mom screams at me, my physiological response will never change.
	Mm-hmm.
	And since you know that...
	And to imagine that I can be around my mom and not have the history I had with her is irrational.
	I'm not saying you're suggesting it or whatever, but that's what I'm saying.
	Like, parents have such powerful, fundamental, irreversible effects on us that if they remain destructive, it is to our peril.
	We cannot rise above that.
	That's impossible.
	But couldn't we get over it without having...
	Because we've got 20 years of formative experiences.
	I'm sorry?
	Yeah.
	Oh, and I just wonder, couldn't we get over it without actually having to have the confrontation?
	Well, I don't know.
	I found the confrontation to be very helpful because with the confrontation comes certainty, comes closure.
	Closure doesn't mean the end of the relationship.
	It means I now understand it for what it is, for better or for worse.
	Okay.
	Nobody has to have this conversation.
	Like, I got this tortured message on Facebook from a guy, let me see if I can find it, just the other day, where he was talking about, you know, I would like the blue pill back kind of thing.
	And, you know, I can understand that.
	I really can.
	It is tempting.
	But the reality is that, well, A, you can't go back.
	I mean, it's sort of a dream.
	You can't unlearn something.
	And...
	Mike, do you mind having a quick look?
	I think somebody posted it on Facebook or in my inbox.
	If you can have a quick look for it, just so I don't lose connection with the caller.
	You don't have to have the conversation at all.
	But the important thing is that you consciously decide with full clarity that you're not going to have the conversation.
	So, you fully say to yourself, I am never going to talk about what I think and feel with my father.
	I consider my father incapable of handling the truth about me without being abusive.
	I am now going to fake everything with my father.
	I am now going to pretend to be someone else with a different history and strenuously avoid any real connection with my father from now until he's dead.
	That's all.
	Just be conscious of it.
	All is permitted with full knowledge.
	And permitted is a silly term because there's no deity or philosophy that's going to punish or reward you.
	I mean, there's a conscience, right?
	The only thing that is disastrous is dissociation, is zoning out, is, as Ayn Rand said, we have the choice to think or to not to think, to feel or to not to feel, as Nathaniel Brandon revised as well.
	So if you say, I am not going to have the conversation with my father, then take a month or two and meditate on exactly what that means.
	Right.
	Right.
	I am now going to let the lies and defenses of my father win over the genuine experience of my history.
	And I know I sound like this is a terrible thing to do.
	It's not terrible.
	Just know it for what it is when you make that decision.
	Right?
	I know exactly what you're saying.
	And when you say that, I do feel like, okay, I can't do that because there's other people.
	There's my sisters.
	Well, you can.
	Right.
	No, again, can and can't, you can.
	I mean, if someone paid you a million dollars to sit down with your dad and not talk about the truth of your thoughts and feelings, you could do that, right?
	I mean, you've done it for 45 odd years, right?
	Yes.
	So you can do that.
	Right.
	No, I just want to be clear.
	It's a choice.
	But all choices have consequences, and we must be honest with ourselves about what we're doing.
	So we can choose to lie to people around us.
	We can choose to falsify our experience.
	We can choose to support their narcissistic vanities.
	We can choose to self-erase around them if we want.
	That has consequences and we must be honest about it because otherwise you will go spend time with your parents, you'll dissociate, you'll come back and you'll be problematic for the people who actually care about you, right?
	Right.
	Do you think self-effacing or self-erasing, I'm sorry, self-erasing is the same thing as low self-esteem?
	Well, self-erasing is worse than low self-esteem.
	Okay.
	Right.
	It's not like getting less money.
	It's like getting no money, right?
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	Low self-esteem is I'm not worth much.
	Self-erasure is to exist is to be destroyed.
	Right.
	It's a fundamental contradiction.
	And this is what, fundamentally, you're afraid of.
	To be blunt with your father.
	That if you are honest, you will be destroyed.
	That to exist is to be destroyed.
	Yes, it's true.
	And with your mother, too.
	If you exist, you will be destroyed.
	Existence is destruction.
	Life is death.
	Truth is suicide.
	Let's...
	And then you say, I feel invisible.
	Well, of course.
	Yeah, of course.
	Right.
	You fear non-existence.
	You fear, right, that for you...
	You have the choice.
	To not exist is to survive.
	To exist is to die.
	Dishonesty is breath.
	Honesty is strangulation.
	I mean, that's terrible, right?
	What a terrible choice to give to a child.
	Right.
	Well, I am feeling like I have a lot.
	Let me just read this thing.
	Yeah, no, it's a lot to process.
	And look, I mean, magnificent, fantastic work.
	Good for you.
	I mean, good for you.
	This is what the guy wrote to me.
	See if it...
	resonates with you.
	Steph, hope you're doing well.
	I need help.
	Or maybe just a virtual hug.
	I've been listening to your podcast for five or six months now, and it completely changed how I see life.
	Raised completely religious and a statist.
	The whole deal.
	Tonight, me and my brother-in-law were discussing the need for the state.
	He said, we need one because people are bad.
	I countered with the observation that bad people will obviously seek power and that I don't believe that people are bad.
	He instantly went hostile, stating, that's in the Bible.
	And I said, well, you're not killing your one-year-old every time she disobeys you.
	So that brought on a long interrogation of what I believe.
	I buckled like a coward, telling him half-truths of what I believe.
	I left their house minutes later feeling ashamed, and a whole new fear of what this means.
	I'm extremely close to my family, so what if my family actually shuns me for not buying into what I was raised to believe?
	I've been toying with the idea of telling them, knowing it would be hard, but tonight made it much more real.
	And I think that if they actually shunned me over it, we were never really close.
	Just codependent.
	I guess I never thought living up to my own morals would mean I might lose my entire family.
	You wouldn't happen to have an extra strength blue pill to put me back in the matrix?
	Ha ha ha, he said.
	And I wrote to him back.
	I said, gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
	What a terrifying and terrible experience.
	Coming face to face with that kind of propaganda is pretty horrifying.
	My sympathies.
	You don't have to tell them any truth that you're not comfortable with, of course.
	In my opinion, as long as you can consciously decide to avoid certain topics, I don't think that is particularly dangerous or unhealthy.
	You just have to recognize what you're doing and why you're doing it.
	But again, my sympathies.
	And then he said, I appreciate that.
	I really do.
	So, got any of those blue pills?
	Ha ha ha.
	Right?
	And this is what we're facing, right?
	I mean, it's tough.
	It's very, very tough.
	I mean, there's a reason why statism flourishes, religion flourishes, and philosophy is still a tiny sidebar in human history and human thought and human decision making.
	And it is.
	It is pretty horrifying that you say, well, if I am honest, if I tell you what I really think and feel, And I have reasonable reasons for what I think and good empiricism for what I feel.
	What happens?
	What happens if I'm honest?
	What happens if I'm honest to a family that always told me to tell the truth?
	Well, of course, like most power structures, a lot of parents basically say, truth is a virtue when I need information from you.
	Truth is not a virtue when it makes me uncomfortable.
	Then you have to be polite and respectful and nice and diplomatic and give me respect and whatever, right?
	So the value of truth changes upon the needs of the powerful.
	And so I am...
	I'm sorry.
	I'm very sorry that you had this experience as a child, these whole series of experiences.
	I am incredibly...
	I admire you immensely for the work that you're doing.
	And I know I was like, well, here's what you're not seeing and here's what you're not seeing.
	But what you're seeing, for the most part, is incredible.
	And I really want to sort of acknowledge that, right?
	The coach gives the most instruction to the most promising dancer, right?
	The dancer who's like chain smoking and 200 pounds on the couch, they don't give anything instructions to, right?
	So more instructions go to the most promising people.
	And so I really wanted to recognize that you have a Deep emotional intelligence and obviously a great philosophical mind.
	And you have a natural affinity with universals, which you've obviously worked to achieve.
	And I really wanted to mention and acknowledge that.
	What amazing work you're doing.
	And, you know, what a lucky man your husband is.
	I hope that he appreciates the grand treasure he has.
	I would dare say in his possession.
	That makes you sound like a possession.
	So that's not fair.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	Great work and fantastic job.
	Yeah, and I mean, just judging from the comments of people in the chat room, like, great job, very helpful for other people as well.
	And thank you for, you know, the Sausage Festi to call it in a little bit.
	That's always nice.
	Thank you, and I don't want to take the blue pill again after discovering you.
	Not even close.
	I'm so excited about the work you're doing.
	I feel more hope all the time.
	Yeah, I appreciate that.
	When I did this Marxism video, doing the research for it and doing the video, I was depressed for the rest of the day.
	It felt like I'd literally rubbed my face in maggot-strewn feces.
	Being up against that kind of utterly revolting personality structure is just repulsive to me.
	It is...
	It is ghastly.
	Even just to read about it, even just to describe it, it's just gross.
	So, I mean, that's what you lose if you go back to the red pill world, is you lose that self-protection of being revolted by vile personality structures.
	So, I don't want it back at all.
	My husband particularly loves the Truth About series, so he thanks you too.
	Oh, good.
	Well, we'll call this one the truth about Michelle.
	Just kidding.
	I don't know.
	It's tough to make that about a caller.
	But thank you so much for calling in.
	I hope you don't mind if we move on to the next caller, but we do have quite a lot, and great job.
	Thank you.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	Mr.
	Mike?
	All right.
	Graham, you're up next.
	Go ahead.
	Graham.
	Graham?
	Hello.
	How are you doing?
	Hey, pretty good, man.
	How you doing?
	Well, thanks.
	I kind of wanted to talk a little bit more about what that first caller was talking about.
	Well, we covered quite a range, so...
	I'm kind of in the same boat as him.
	I've already left the States.
	I'm in China now.
	And I was kind of wondering...
	I'm trying to learn Chinese right now and then move over to South America and...
	Started a little travel business.
	And I was kind of wondering, like, I was interested in what you were talking about, about, like, when you have free economics, it kind of feeds the cancer of the state.
	And I was wondering to get your thoughts on what countries have kind of the best, the freest economics, and, like, how to kind of forecast Like, political, uh, like, political, like, the political climate.
	I don't know, I guess, like, how to say that, but, uh, like, how to get a reach.
	Yeah, so, like, where's the best place to move, right?
	Yeah, yeah, kind of, but, like, well, yeah, yeah, and also, like, I don't want you to just tell me, uh, you know, which country, but I want to kind of get it, like, develop my own skill set for, like, how to, uh, How to read, like, what's coming in the political future for, like, wherever I would be?
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, so, I mean, you can look at...
	You can go to heritage...
	Sorry, heritage.org slash index slash ranking.
	And you can see the top countries in the world.
	Those heritage...
	In terms of freedom.
	Yeah, so heritage.org slash index slash ranking.
	According to this, the freest country in the world is Hong Kong.
	The second is Singapore.
	The third is Australia.
	The fourth is New Zealand, because, of course, most of their work is done by hobbits.
	The fifth is Switzerland, where you will have to get paid in chocolate, watches, and cheese.
	Number six, Canada.
	Our home and native land.
	U.S. clocking in at number ten.
	Number seven is Chile.
	Mauritius.
	It's number 8.
	Number 9 is Denmark.
	Number 10 is the United States.
	Number 12, Bahrain.
	Number 13, Estonia.
	Anyway, I'm going through the whole list.
	But I can pretty much guarantee you that you do not want to be in North Korea or Cuba.
	Or Zimbabwe or Venezuela, which are just terrible for these kinds of things.
	So, you know, it's not my opinion.
	There's lots of people who do lots of work, and they try and figure out property rights, freedom from corruption, government spending, fiscal freedom, business freedom, labor freedom.
	They've got all of these indexes.
	And I would suggest have a look at that.
	I can't vouch for it.
	I didn't do the work.
	But it seems like not a bad place to start.
	Okay, cool.
	What kind of statistics do I need to look for?
	Like PPP, GDP? What does that stuff mean?
	Because when I was...
	I don't know.
	I don't get economics.
	Because I feel like...
	So the way I think GDP is, is it like measures how often money is changing hands?
	Is that right?
	No, that's velocity.
	That's monetary velocity.
	So GDP is gross domestic product.
	It's a sum total of all of the goods and services, the value of all the goods and services produced in an economy.
	Okay.
	But it's a very silly statistic in many ways.
	So, you know, if someone gets sick, that's considered to be a boost to the economy.
	If someone crashes their car, that's considered to be a boost to the economy.
	If a hurricane destroys a town, that's considered to be a boost to the economy.
	So GDP does not solve the broken window fallacy, which is that destruction is a negative factor.
	It measures it as a positive economic activity.
	If the government starts, say, the Department of Homeland Security because they need the 12 millionth Department of Guns, then that's considered to be an increase in the gross domestic product.
	It does not take into account significantly national debt and all these other kinds of things.
	And of course, it always has to be adjusted for inflation.
	If people bleed off their savings and spend them, That is considered to be positive for economic activity.
	If people get unemployment insurance, which is funded through debt and inflation, and spend it rather than not spending it because, you know, they have to do something else, that is considered to be positive for the economy.
	There's a website called ShadowStats that I think is, let me just, I think it's.com.
	Let me just check here.
	ShadowStats.com.
	Yes, shadowstats.com, which is shadow government statistics, and they attempt to, and I think with some significant success, they analyze government economic and unemployment statistics based on what used to be used.
	Of course, the government, every time they have a problem with the numbers, they simply redefine it, right?
	So the government, in terms of inflation, will take out gasoline and housing if those prices are going too high.
	So, I mean, everything, as Nietzsche said, everything the government has that is stolen and everything that it says is a lie.
	So government statistics are worse than meaningless when it comes to figuring out...
	I mean, if you have an overhead of $150,000 a month, and you make $77,000 a month, and you say to your investors, we made $77,000 this month, that's great!
	What you don't say is, we lost...
	What is it?
	73,000 we lost.
	So when they say the U.S. economy added 77,000 jobs in December, that is a net loss of 73,000 jobs because 150,000 people a month come into the workforce.
	Or they don't say 93 million Americans are now out of the workforce even though they could work.
	That is catastrophic.
	So, I mean, the government numbers, anything that comes out of the government is just serving political purposes and It's all nonsense and lies, and you can go.
	Peter Schiff's got some good stuff on inflation as well, but you should...
	I wouldn't trust anything the government says.
	It's all nonsense and propaganda.
	Just you, Peter Schiff, and Adam Kokesh, right?
	No, I think there's a lot more people than that, but not the worst place.
	I scare myself enough with other YouTube stuff, so I'll try to get...
	Yeah, and don't, you know, don't mentally whack off to doom porn from here to evermore.
	You know, the doom porn is pretty rife in the libertarian universe.
	And it has been rife for the last 40 years.
	I mean, you go back 40 years and the imminent collapse of the U.S. economy.
	David Friedman talked about this at Libertopia one year, you know, for the last 40 years, the American economy has always been about to collapse.
	And something new always comes along.
	I mean, the U.S. economy would have collapsed long ago if it wasn't for the efficiency brought about by computerization, by robotics, and all that kind of stuff.
	Something new is going to come along.
	There is no John Galtz who's out there plucking useful industrialists out of the mix.
	People are always trying to make a buck, always making things more efficient.
	It's just that...
	The high price of labor has artificially stimulated the robotics and electronics industry.
	I mean, there's no greater driver to robotics than unions.
	And so it has become, you know, I was at a mall yesterday and there was some little, you know, they have those little carts or booths in the mall.
	And I always think about this.
	There was this woman sitting there.
	You know, nobody was coming because I guess everybody's phones were already laminated like shields over the enterprise.
	And, you know, she's just sitting there for eight hours.
	She's getting like, I don't know, eight bucks an hour or whatever to sit there for eight hours and, you know, do the odd phone or whatever.
	And this is a human being with dreams and capacities and opportunities and thoughts and visions and preferences and all that kind of stuff.
	And it comes down to eight bucks an hour to just sit there.
	And I think that's pretty tragic.
	It just means that, again, she's had all human capital stripped from her through crappy government education and propaganda and never being taught how to think.
	And that is pretty wretched.
	But the reality is that, tragically, that's all she's worth.
	But if the minimum wage were to go in and Now it's 20 bucks an hour.
	Well, the place would just close down.
	There'd be no job.
	Or they'd find some way to make it self-serve or whatever it was, right?
	Something, right?
	So the doom porn stuff is, you know, and mathematically it can't continue, but that doesn't mean, I mean, Canada just cut government spending by 30% and closed entire industries.
	Sorry, closed entire departments in the federal government and so on.
	So it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be doom in a bag.
	And, you know, the ruling class is pretty good at trying to keep things going.
	And they have access to much more information now than they did in the past.
	I mean, when it took two months for a message to travel the Roman Empire, you know, it was harder to keep things together.
	But with instantaneous communication, it's a lot easier to keep the rotten structure propped up.
	And, you know, I mean, they'll just cut off – they'll turn on the dependent classes very, very quickly when they can't sustain them anymore.
	And then the media will go right along and everybody will go right along with that.
	Mm-hmm.
	Thank you.
	Okay, cool, cool.
	Yeah, that's pretty much all I really wanted to ask you, except for how do you research so well?
	I mean, like, you come up with so much new and interesting information that I've never seen before.
	Like, you're, uh...
	It wasn't Morgan Freeman.
	Who was it?
	Oh, David Freeman?
	No, no.
	I'm just playing Nelson Mandela.
	Your truth on Mandela was just full of stuff that I had never heard before.
	Well, it's not hard.
	You simply look for decently reputable sources that have nothing to do with the mainstream media.
	Okay.
	What are a few of those?
	Oh, you know, I really...
	I read the Drudge Report.
	I like conservative sites quite a bit.
	I'll read a little bit of the Huffington Post, but I find it pretty nauseating.
	I think the Drudge Report is good, you know, just in terms of getting a different perspective.
	I mean, they won't post a lot of stuff about Christie.
	The Huffington Post is all over it, but the Huffington Post won't post a lot of anything critical of Democrats and so on.
	So you can get a fairly rounded picture.
	Go to some of the foreign press sites.
	I think that's important, but...
	I find it's not a bad thing to do to start.
	Just type Nelson Mandela, libertarian.
	And you'll get some libertarian perspectives on Nelson Mandela.
	Now, since I come from the libertarian background, it's not a bad place.
	But you just, you know, have to be patient.
	And sometimes you go to message boards where people talk about this stuff and they'll have sources there that you can follow and see if they're of any utility.
	I love to browse.
	I love to read.
	I love finding out information that are outside of the matrix.
	So for me, just keep plugging away.
	And if you find people who are reliable, just subscribe.
	Just try and...
	Yeah, I mean, Mises.org is great.
	Mises.ca for Canadian stuff.
	You can get some useful stuff out of there.
	But I mean, for me, I like the conservative writers in general better because I just find them to be better researched and more engaging.
	I got the 16 hours a week work for the poor family.
	I got that out of Glenn Beck, which led me to a book on the generosity of conservatives where I got more information from that.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, and again, look for conflicts of interest, right?
	I mean, so a lot of libertarian guys, you know, they get their money from gold advertisers.
	And so that's going to color what they say about gold and competitors like Bitcoin.
	There are no Bitcoin advertisers, really, not that many.
	But...
	So just look for those conflicts of interest and be aware of this.
	Yeah, like when anybody's trying to sell you something online or anywhere, I guess, you know that they don't want it.
	And if anybody wants to buy something, then they want...
	I don't know, but I like...
	Yeah, Apple has more iPads than they need.
	Right, okay, yeah.
	But it seems like with gold, that's kind of the one thing that somebody could be telling you to buy, but it's not like...
	They're gaining a profit off that, are they?
	How are they?
	Well, of course, yeah.
	In terms of advertising, yes.
	I mean, if you go to a libertarian site with lots of gold ads, then the gold ad people are paying money to the site, right?
	Right.
	But when Peter Schiff tells you, invest in gold, he's not trying to tell you, buy my gold.
	I'm keeping my gold, is what he's saying, but you should buy gold.
	Well, no.
	And again, I don't know much about Peter Schiff, but to take a theoretical example, if someone who has a lot of gold is telling you to buy gold, then they are going to profit from that, right?
	How so?
	Well, if you buy gold, the demand for gold goes up, which means the value of their gold holdings goes up, right?
	Okay, okay.
	And also, if they are getting advertisers who want to sell gold, and if they then say, well, you know, gold has now hit its lowest point, what is it, like $1,100 and change now?
	I mean, down from $1,800?
	So, if they say, well, look, obviously the price of Bitcoin is going up hugely, and the price of gold is going down, so I need to re-evaluate my position...
	And now I can no longer recommend gold.
	What's going to happen to the advertisers who want to sell gold through their website?
	They're going to...
	I don't know.
	Well, they're not going to be that happy, right?
	So they're going to probably pull and then they have to go and find new advertisers for Bitcoin, right?
	Now, if they find new advertisers for Bitcoins, What if they change their mind about Bitcoin?
	Then they have a problem with the new advertisers, right?
	It's one of the reasons why I'm just not that keen on advertising as a whole.
	I just want to stay focused on the listeners, right?
	I just want to tell you, I love what you do, dude.
	The fact that you just give it out and say, hey, if it's worth something to you, then...
	Then give me something for it.
	I think that's very commendable.
	Well, thank you.
	Now, I mean, to be fair, right, I have bitcoins that people have donated to me, and if people buy a lot of bitcoins, then the value of my bitcoins goes up.
	Now, that would be a conflict of interest if I were telling people to buy bitcoins.
	I have never once told people to buy bitcoins.
	I wish to answer some erroneous arguments against bitcoins, I.e., they have no intrinsic value, they're worthless because they're digital and so on, right?
	It's all speculative and so on.
	And so I wish to answer those questions, and I try to answer them as honestly as I can, and I say it is speculative, nobody knows what the future price is going to be, and I've never told people to buy it.
	Sure, sure.
	But, you know, if people accept my arguments that Bitcoin has value and buy Bitcoin, the value of my Bitcoin holdings will go up, for sure.
	But I actually was saying all of this stuff before I had any bitcoins.
	So hopefully that's not...
	Oh my god, I missed the...
	I knew about bitcoins when they were five bucks a coin.
	And I wanted to buy them, but I'm here in China and I had to go through some...
	I didn't know how to speak at all at the time.
	So I'm like, ah, whatever.
	And then six months later they're 200 bucks a coin or something.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah, well, you know, it may not be too late.
	It may not be too late.
	So it's just something to think about.
	Anyway, listen, do you mind if I get on to another caller?
	Because we have quite a queue today, and I really maxed out on the first couple.
	Go for it.
	I really thank you for your time, and keep doing what you're doing.
	Thanks a lot.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I really, really appreciate your listening and support, and I hope that you make lots of money.
	Because, you know, the more money my listeners make, the happier I'm sure I'll be.
	So, Mike, if we have a fairly short-ish call for the next one, I actually do have a play date to get to, but I can do another little bit.
	Colby, is it a short call?
	Yeah, I can make it short.
	Alright.
	Alright, so basically my question, I'll get right to it, is having trouble trying to find a good business partner.
	I've spoken to about 15 different potential startup groups over the past couple of months and started work on three different prototypes, spent a couple of weeks working with three different groups, and so far haven't found anybody that I've found, I guess, agreeable enough to continue working with.
	Right.
	Have you tried this community?
	A little bit.
	I guess kind of the problem in the free domain community is just how everyone's so spread out.
	It can be kind of difficult at times to work with people when they're in different time zones, different places, things like that.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, you can certainly keep looking as far as that goes.
	Look, I certainly respect your discrimination, I guess I could say.
	I think that's very wise.
	I've been taking some advice from you on that for sure.
	Yeah, I know.
	Wait to get it right.
	You know, that's really, really important.
	And so I really appreciate your discrimination in that area.
	And good for you for waiting.
	A business partnership, you know, it's very important.
	I mean, it's really second only to third only behind parenting and marriage choices that in terms of quality of life issues, I guess, maybe fourth after friendships as well.
	But it is very important.
	So I really appreciate you Taking your time and trying to get it right.
	And now where is the discrepancy?
	Is it practical, ethical?
	I mean, those are really the only functional things that really matter in business is whether people get shit done and whether they're...
	Honest and good.
	I mean, that's really all it comes down to.
	I mean, obviously intelligence and all that, but a smart person can learn just about anything.
	And where is it you're finding the deficiencies showing up?
	I guess the first issue I usually have is that in the communities I'm looking in, I don't know if it's the kind of groups that they are learning from, these startup groups or whatever, but I kind of see them in the...
	Kind of taking the Wall Street mentality where the first thing on their mind is trying to figure out how to get funding, putting contracts in place, non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality agreements, all this paperwork and contract before they even have one line of code written or even, you know, a semblance of a real business plan for a product.
	And that's kind of annoying.
	Well, but you know why they're doing that, right?
	Because they think they have a million dollar idea.
	Well, yeah, to some degree, but I would imagine why they're doing that is because it's really tough to sell a business if you don't have that stuff in place.
	Well, right.
	I mean, when I say start a business, I mean people who have an idea but haven't even begun work on producing anything of value, if that makes sense.
	No, no, I've got that.
	I've got that.
	And I'm not saying that that's necessarily the best way to do it.
	But having sold a business, the one thing that was key to the buyers was that, I mean, particularly in software, right?
	As has been said, like 95% of your value goes down the elevator every day.
	Right.
	Usually at 2 a.m.
	for programmers and stuff, right?
	But the only value is the people fundamentally.
	And so one of the things that...
	The business people want to do if they're interested in the long term, right, in growing and selling the business is they want to lock people in.
	So you get your non-compete, you get your non-disclosures and all that kind of stuff and that way you've kind of surfed up S-E-R-F-E-D. You've surfed up the people in the organization and then you make sure that they're not going to, you know, if you sell the company, they're not going to sell and create some competitor and take your customers, right?
	That's why the non-competes and non-disclosures Are in place, particularly the non-competes.
	I think they're terrible, myself.
	I think they're pretty wretched.
	And it's driven a lot by, again, the overabundance of stock market financing money and so on.
	I mean, they're very tough to enforce.
	Because you can't prevent someone from actually earning a living and if all your skill set is in a particular area.
	But they're used to harass people and all that.
	And they keep people out of the marketplace and thus raise the value of the share price of whatever it is you're going to buy and sell in terms of a company.
	So I think they're wretched.
	I think they are vile.
	I think that they are a product of, obviously, they're a statist, and they're based upon the statist manipulation of the economy and statist enforcement of laws.
	In a free society, a non-compete would be, I think, a ridiculous idea.
	So that's probably why they want all this stuff in place.
	Investors will probably want it, because the investors are looking to I kind of get the feeling that they...
	Are kind of using it to compensate for their lack of providing value in many cases?
	Well, it depends what you mean by value.
	In terms of financial value, there can be significant financial value in selling the company having those things in place.
	Right, yeah.
	And in terms of securing investment, that's something that they want to have in place.
	So it does provide value.
	It's just not short-term business value.
	It's long-term financial value.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	I kind of get the feeling like they feel like they want to lock their position into the company.
	And especially people who don't have very much business experience or experience in software or anything like that, Like, I'm trying to figure out how to find people who are going to be able to provide ongoing value and have to go through...
	Why do you, sorry, but why do you need a partner at all?
	Why do I need a partner?
	Why do you need a partner?
	Well, I have a full-time job right now, and starting a business is something I want to do, but I don't want to go it alone.
	I start lots of projects and things like that, and it's hard to, I don't know, enjoy the collaboration.
	I want to work with somebody else.
	It's just, I guess, a preference.
	I don't have any particular reason that I can think of.
	If you got a partner, would you quit?
	What I'd like to do is, in my spare time, start the business.
	If I had a product that I thought was going to go somewhere, then, yeah, I could quit my job.
	Okay, yeah, just because you're not going to be able to provide much value if you're working full-time, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I only work eight hours a day, five days a week, so when I come home, I work on my own.
	Yeah, but that's often time when people want to be sold stuff to, right?
	I'm sorry?
	Not a lot of business sales calls on Saturdays in the B2B world in particular, right?
	Oh, right, yeah.
	So, you are going to be providing less value.
	And you're going to be tired, right?
	I mean, you've got to get up to go to work, and so, you know, you're just not going to be as valuable if you're working full-time someplace.
	I just want to sort of mention that, you know, just so you're aware of how other people may look at that experience.
	Right, right.
	So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a good idea to try and find the right people.
	If you are interested in growing and maintaining business value, I would never ask someone to sign a non-compete now.
	Or a non-disclosure.
	Because I think that makes me less valuable as a manager.
	So, for instance, you know, if I said to Mike, well, you have to sign all these documents that say you can't ever work in podcasting again except for me.
	Like, I mean, all I'm basically saying is, hey, Mike, I'm going to be a shitty manager because I've got a monopoly.
	And I don't have to tell Mike I'm going to be a shitty manager.
	I'm sure he's aware of that before he joins.
	Is that fair to say, Mike?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean Grabby.
	Grabby manager.
	No comment.
	Yeah, well, I pretty much resign myself to the fact that I'm going to have to sort through a lot of people, and I'm trying to figure out the best way, kind of figure out a model of sorting through those people, like how the first few emails and conversations should go in order to get to the point where I can make a decision like how the first few emails and conversations should go in order to get to the point where I can make a decision as quick as possible before I decide,
	Maybe have them to walk through and explain to them how particular parts of developing software work, or kind of like you were talking about a little bit earlier.
	Is this person worth investing time to kind of cultivate and bring along?
	No, I would say that... you know, I'm very big on the Blink stuff.
	You should read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, that you don't need to spend a lot of time trying to figure out.
	Right, so if you have an idea and somebody wants to work for you, and again, I know I'm going to get more emails to Mike on people who want to work for FDR, but the way that you know if somebody's going to work out for you in terms of business is they focus on how they can provide value to you.
	Right, so we get countless emails into Free Domain Radio.
	People are saying, yeah, I love...
	I love what you're doing.
	I know PageMaker.
	I want to help.
	And like, we're supposed to connect all these dots, like figure out how you're supposed to help and all that, right?
	Now, you know, a more valuable email is, you know, I've studied your SEO and I would recommend these tweaks and this is how much you can measure the value of what it is I'm providing and so on.
	Like, when you are auditioning for a musical, they actually make you sing, right?
	Right.
	And if you're a good singer, then you have a chance at being in the musical.
	If you're not a good singer, then you don't.
	And so in the entrepreneurial world, if you want to join someone's business, show exactly how you're going to provide value, how it's going to be measurable, and as a bonus, have provided value already.
	You know, so people could say, Steph, like people say, Steph, I'd really like you to do a presentation on Che Guevara, right?
	Yeah, okay.
	And I'd love to have wings and fly.
	And unicorn horn would be cool too.
	But that's sheep thinking.
	And again, it's just the way people are raised.
	They don't know anything about this stuff because they obviously don't have any entrepreneurial experience.
	Now somebody who really wants to work for Free Domain Radio, what they do is they say, here's a 25 rigorously researched set of slides on Che Guevara.
	Right.
	Right.
	They have automatically provided value.
	How long does it take them?
	A couple of hours.
	Well, if you don't spend a couple of hours preparing for an interview, you don't deserve to get the job, right?
	Every time I'd have an interview anyplace, I'd read up on the industry, read up on the website, I'd try and figure out their business model, try and figure out how they provide value, look up their call.
	I mean, you do the research, for God's sake, right?
	But people just send us a resume and say, you figure out how I can provide value and then pay me.
	And it's like, no.
	Because you don't understand how to provide value already, and I can't teach you that in any time that would be something you wouldn't have to pay me a lot of money for.
	Yeah.
	I'm not going to pay to train you on how to provide value.
	I'm just throwing this out there.
	I did make two Chrome extensions for FDR already, so I just wanted to put that out there.
	Oh, you guys did the quote of the day stuff.
	So you're an entrepreneur, right?
	Yeah, I'd like to think so.
	I hope so.
	So, you know, right?
	You provide value.
	And if you continue to provide value, then we'll be like, hey, you know, we'd love to pay you more or we'd love to pay you or whatever, right?
	I mean, Mike converted podcasts into videos and uploaded them and it was great.
	And you know what?
	I'm like, you know what?
	You should totally work here.
	We should totally pay you, and here's what we're going to pay you.
	And Mike says, and do I get bus fare home as well?
	And I said, no.
	Yeah.
	He said, I'm supposed to eat what, exactly?
	And I said, well, you know, you live in America, hunt the homeless.
	Hunt and eat the homeless.
	That's been quite a challenge to learn, too.
	They're faster than you think, eh?
	Like, you'd think.
	They move kind of slowly, but, you know, you come at them with pitchforks and flamethrowers, they get all kinds of lead on their foot, right?
	Oh, they move the area, too, so they duck in between dumpsters and under bridges and stuff.
	It's quite the nightmare.
	And plus, like, once they know what you look like, they know what you look like, and they'll, like, start running right away.
	So, yeah, it's a challenge.
	And so, obviously, Mike is getting fairly lean, but faster and more desperate, which is exactly where you need to be for philosophy.
	I was kind of in that mindset, and kind of what my goal has been so far is to jump right into trying to start making the product.
	And within the first few days of working with people and talking and communicating about actually making the product is kind of when I feel like I'm able to decide if they're going to provide value or not.
	It's just...
	So many people put that barrier in place before we can even begin making a prototype or something like that.
	So that's why I was trying to see if there's some advice you can give on trying to speed up that process.
	Or I guess maybe if they're wanting to focus solely on all the barriers to making the product, maybe that's not a person I should work with.
	No, I mean, look, here's what I would suggest for you.
	And again, I can't obviously write anything in terms of a business plan.
	So you've got a great idea for a product.
	I think it's fine to build a prototype.
	Prototypes are really important.
	Like, I got really great value out of being a software manager when I said, screw paper documents, we're going to build a prototype, we're going to build working prototypes, and we are now going to get people to sign off on what...
	See, we would sign off on all the functionality, but that's not what the user sees.
	What the user sees is screens and buttons.
	And so I would...
	I would end up, like, what we ended up doing after a year or two of screwing up projects, basically, which means we'd get them to the client on time, but we'd die from exhaustion and coding all night, is the client had to sign off on the user interface and the functionality, but the user interface first, right?
	And then they couldn't say, well, I don't like the way the software is, because what they see is what, you know, if you sell a house, you can't just sell the floor plans, you need to sell the artist's conception, right?
	So they know what it's going to look like.
	Right.
	And so if you're going to start building a prototype, I think that's great.
	What you need, I would assume, is someone to come in and say, here's the market research we need to do to find out if this can be sold.
	Here's the competitive research, here's the market space, here's the number of people who might buy it, here's the price bond of the competition, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And that's what I did for the sort of second, I guess the last third of my business career, I was really into figuring out the market stuff.
	I'd already built so much software that it wasn't, you know, a huge amount of value, me doing another one.
	But, um, really trying to, uh, figure out the, um, the market size and the market research, figuring out competitive advantage and interviewing people who might want the software, showing the prototypes and figuring, I mean, all of that stuff to make it ready so that when you, you know, So that there's a target to hit when you finally get arrow in bow, so to speak.
	So if you, you know, I think you would need that, right?
	And that would be...
	And somebody who does that to you, you know, so you talk to somebody and say, oh, I'd be interested in working together, right?
	Here's the prototype, right?
	Then just leave them the fuck alone and see what they come back to you with.
	Now, if they come back to you with some work...
	That shows you very interesting things about the marketplace that will help figure out how to build the software and how much it should be sold for and what the competitive situation is and so on.
	Which for a competent person is no more than a day or two's work.
	Then they really want to work with you and you know they can provide value.
	And they know they have to provide value in order to be hired as a partner.
	Hiring an employee, you know, I used to hire out of University of Waterloo.
	And, you know, I'd go down, spend a day talking to the students and, you know, bring some of them back for in-depth interviews and hire them and so on.
	And that was great.
	Loved doing it.
	And it was really, really great to help people get started on their business careers.
	They already knew computers, but I could at least teach them some business stuff, which I know from emails I've gotten subsequent that's been very helpful to them.
	But in the entrepreneurial world, you need to provide value before you get hired.
	And people, you know, they don't understand that FDR is, you know, what is my 20th, 23rd year of entrepreneurial, of my entrepreneurial life, right?
	And if people want to work here, they have to provide value already.
	They have to show value already and then they get.
	And that's because the job is better, right?
	I mean, Mike, how's the job compared to your last job?
	Oh, infinitely better without any question.
	And I work a lot harder now and I'm a lot happier doing so than I was at my previous job, that's for sure.
	Yeah, and it has some meaning.
	We're doing some good.
	And it's not like your last job didn't have meaning.
	You didn't do some good in the environment.
	But this is like good for the world in perpetuity.
	I mean, this is, you know, helping people get out of bad relationships and helping people not hit their kids and helping people not make destructive life decisions and so on, right?
	So this is a much better job than people get.
	And anybody who understands economics knows that if you want to get a really great job, you have to do extra work.
	And, you know, if you want to be an actor, then you have to do the sit-ups.
	You have to get the headshots.
	You have to go to acting school.
	You have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars, probably, before you really even get a chance to get paid as being an actor.
	And you have to do, usually, amateur theater.
	So you have to work for months or years for free before you become an actor.
	Right?
	And so everyone understands because being an actor is a very desirable job, right?
	Right.
	You don't have to be a waiter for free for years before you become a waiter because how many people want to be waiters?
	Well, relatively few compared to those who want to be actors.
	So if you want a great job, then you have to really show how much value you can bring to the situation before you're even considered.
	Mike, does this make any sense?
	Because I think this is how it went with us, right?
	No, absolutely.
	Yeah, it's making perfect sense to me.
	And so for this guy, for the people who want to send stuff in, don't send us your resume.
	You know, literally it's like finding Steven Spielberg's address, sending him your headshot, and waiting for a starring role.
	No.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Madonna is a huge star now.
	She's one of the biggest female earners, if not the biggest female earner.
	I think her and Taylor Swift.
	And when she wanted to get the lead for the movie version of Evita, She did auditions.
	She called people incessantly.
	She had her agent call people incessantly.
	She made her own audition tapes.
	She did costumes.
	She really worked like hell to get that role when she was already one of the biggest stars in the world.
	Right?
	She didn't just say, I'm Madonna.
	I want the role.
	I'm the biggest star in the world.
	She worked like hell because they didn't think she could pull it off.
	I'm not the right voice and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And I thought she did a great job myself.
	Yeah, that's awesome.
	And this is true for a lot of actors who really campaign to get roles.
	They get a role they love.
	They work night and day to get the role.
	And they're already millionaire, world-famous, Oscar-winning actress.
	Madonna didn't get an Oscar.
	But even, you know, they work really hard to get these roles.
	And the reason I'm sort of boring you with FDR stuff is that...
	For people who want to be your partner, let them show you their value.
	Just say, I would like to do this.
	I've already worked on a prototype, so I'm already bringing value.
	Right?
	So wait for them to bring value.
	Like if you say to someone, I'm going to invest 10 grand in this partnership, and they say, oh, I want to be a partner too.
	What would you expect them to do?
	Provide $10,000 or more value?
	Exactly!
	Exactly!
	And so if you've already spent...
	A week or two building a prototype, and you say, I'm interested in being a partner, wait and see if they are smart enough to know that they need to spend a week or two, or at least a couple of days, coming up with something of value to bring to you.
	Yeah, and I've kind of done that, like I said, I did make three prototypes for three different startups, and I did kind of see what they would come back with if they would put in the work for the next steps to kind of start moving things forward, and it seems like they've just kind of fallen down.
	And didn't come back with anything that I thought was valuable or would be helpful or, you know, not even...
	And you know what I say to that?
	Exactly what I said to the early guy.
	Thank you for the information.
	Right.
	Thank you for the information.
	You don't understand how to provide value.
	You don't understand how to be proactive.
	Well, my God, if there's two things you need when you're an entrepreneur, provide value and be proactive.
	I mean, do you think I... Was I sitting around waiting for Noam Chomsky going to call me?
	Absolutely not.
	Absolutely not.
	I mean, the people I try to get on the show versus the people who want to come on the show is like, what is it, 50 to 1, Mike?
	I wouldn't say it's that high.
	I mean, if we discount the guy with three flight visitors.
	Not 51.
	I'd say maybe 10?
	10 to 1, I'd say.
	Yeah, okay.
	All right.
	But it sure as hell was about 100 to 1 when I... It was a billion to 1 when I started, right?
	Yeah.
	And so I'm just pointing out, you know, we are not fending off Sam Harris to get on the show.
	Oh, Sam, I don't believe that we have room for you because I need to do a show about Chris Christie.
	Oh, and by the way, you can't even be upset with me because apparently I have no choice.
	Anyway.
	You guys will get there.
	Give it a few more years.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm in no rush.
	To me, this is just...
	What was the name of that book you said by Malcolm, someone called Blink, was it?
	Oh, it's Malcolm Gladwell.
	The book is called Blink, and it certainly is available on Amazon.
	Sorry, it's available on Amazon.
	I'm a big fan of Audible, audible.com.
	That's why I've used those guys for audiobooks for like eight or nine years.
	Yeah, I get three books a month, bro.
	Yeah, yeah, it's great.
	I don't have any consideration with them, but it's definitely worth checking them out.
	I think they've got it too.
	Also, I think his new book is quite good as well.
	He's gone a bit out of the suburbs with the new one, which is good.
	He's a bit white bread for me sometimes, but David and Goliath is good too.
	But anyway.
	Okay.
	So I hope that helps.
	But yeah, you're already bringing value.
	You basically need to see if anyone's going to bring value back.
	And until they do, you know, hey, thanks for the information.
	You know, with Mike, too, it's like, wow, you're really working hard on this stuff.
	You've got great ideas.
	We're having great conversations about where the show can go.
	Let me give you some money.
	You know, because I've already brought a lot of value by doing philosophy show for six years and building up a listener base and audience base, right?
	So if Mike wants to come on board, he needs to provide some equivalent information.
	I'm sorry, some significant level of value before he's even open for consideration because it is such a sweet gig.
	I mean, I'm a great boss to work for.
	I'm a great friend to work with.
	And it's, you know, I think, you know, survivable pay and, you know, growth and all that.
	And so and, you know, he can work whenever he wants.
	I continually tell him to take some time off.
	And but, you know, not ever when I need anything.
	So, I mean, the challenge for Mike is to figure out when I may have lost my keys and need him to remotely control the robot webcam help Steph bot.
	But, so yeah, no, Mike is perfectly willing, perfectly, it's essential for Mike to take off time at any time when I don't need anything.
	And knowing that ahead of time is part of his skill set.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yes.
	I'm still trying to figure out when he won't need something.
	We'll work on that.
	Somebody said, I don't know what kind of magic Mike uses to rope guests like Joe Rogan in.
	I think the magic is youth.
	I think the magic is knowing youth culture.
	I mean, I had no idea, literally no idea who Joe Rogan was.
	And so I think that...
	And Mike has helped me to appear slightly less stodgy and slightly less...
	What was it?
	So square I'm a cube?
	I can't remember what your phrase was.
	But he certainly helped me with that.
	Apparently, there's a movie called The Fast and the Furious, which young people seem to quite like.
	And Hunger Games also.
	Not just a description of my childhood dinner experience, but also apparently movies.
	Yeah, so I mean, Mike brings enormous and fantastic value.
	And so I would suggest that people who have this kind of stuff, want to get involved in this kind of stuff.
	It's a great job.
	It's a great gig.
	It's a lot of fun.
	And just provide a lot of value and have it work from there.
	A lot of people who work in Hollywood, they just do stuff for free.
	I'll work in the mailroom for nothing or for free or whatever.
	If you want a great job, pay the price.
	You pay one way or another.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	Well, I will continue my search, and thank you very much for the advice.
	You are very welcome, and thank you so much for a great call.
	Thank you, everybody, as always, for making the Cathedral of Philosophy Sunday mornings for me so fantastic.
	I look forward to these calls.
	I'd like to do more of them, but they're just so long, and that's my fault, I guess, but also because you people are so damned interesting.
	So...
	If you'd like to help out the show, of course, what did we get?
	New Coinbase?
	FDR URL, Mike?
	Oh, yeah, that's our affiliate link for Coinbase.
	If anyone's interested in signing up with Coinbase.com to buy some Bitcoins, it's probably the easiest company to go with if you're based in the U.S., buying in U.S. dollars, Coinbase.com.
	If you go to FDRURL.com, I think we get like $5 in Bitcoin for every person that signs up.
	So we're not getting rich from it.
	But if you're going to sign up anyway, please use your affiliate link.
	It's much appreciated.
	And we looked at a bunch of different places.
	This is the easiest and would consider to be the best.
	It's the one I use for anything that I buy in US dollars.
	It's by far the easiest to get money in and out of.
	They do not accept Bitcoin.
	Well-oiled webcam dances from people over 40.
	So in fact, they will vociferously complain if you crash their servers with that stuff.
	So don't do that.
	I can say that from significant experience.
	But yeah, so fdrurl.com forward slash Coinbase if you want to buy some Bitcoins.
	That is helpful for us.
	And, you know, it doesn't cost you anything.
	So if you'd like to do that, that would be great.
	fdrurl.com forward slash donate.
	For helping out the show.
	I really appreciate that.
	FDRURL.com forward slash iTunes.
	We got to top ten, right, Mike, after Joe Rogan?
	Yeah, it was top ten in the news category.
	And I think the podcast that you did with Joe was as high as three.
	Some people sent in screenshots of it being at number one, so it might have hit number one for a brief period.
	But it was high up there in the rankings.
	I'm not sure exactly where it is now, but definitely threw a lot of traffic our way.
	So much thanks to Joe.
	Alright, you all heard Mike use the word brief.
	I consider that absolute dictatorial commandments about what I'm supposed to wear on my next show.
	Brief.
	Not even brief.
	Brief.
	Which I assume is...
	You see what I have to work with, folks?
	Anyway, you all heard it.
	It's recorded.
	Shit.
	Yeah, right.
	Because it never happened the other way.
	But, yeah, so thanks everyone for your support.
	What was our download bandwidth thing the other day, Mike?
	Something pretty cool.
	Oh, was it 550?
	600?
	Right around that number for gigabytes per day.
	Yeah, gigabytes.
	So 600 gigabytes per day.
	And we've actually reduced the file sizes just because bandwidth is pretty expensive.
	Yeah, for the first Rogan show, we actually touched 800 one day, and that just destroyed the server.
	So now we have a CD on.
	It's funny.
	You can only get so much philosophy through one pipe.
	That's what she said.
	Anyway, 600 gigabytes a day.
	The show is doing very well.
	Massive thanks to Mike and, of course, to Joe.
	He's a scholar and a gentleman to chat with.
	I look forward to doing another show with him in March.
	Have yourselves a great week, everyone.
	Thanks, as always, for your support, your enthusiasm, your honesty, your openness, your courage.
	Massive kudos to the listeners, as always.
	Have a great week.

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