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Aug. 1, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

04:05:36

3038 Gandalf The Hypocritical D-----bag - Call In Show - July 29th, 2015

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	Howdy everyone, it's Mike.
	Before we get to the show today, I just want to give you a heads up that during the second call, for the first time in just about an eternity, we actually lost some of the call audio at certain points.
	So, when you hear Billy, the technical difficulties goat, That's where the dropped audio happened.
	That's where the cuts are.
	Just give you a bit of an audio identifier so you can pick it up.
	But yes, Billy the Technical Difficulties Goat will help us identify where the drops happened.
	All right.
	I hope you enjoy the show, everyone.
	Take care.
	Good evening, everybody.
	Stefan Mullen, even free domain radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Thank you to those who are stepping up and subbing and donating because, of course, we just passed a quarter of a billion billion.
	No.
	Quarter of a million.
	Yeah, we'll take that.
	Quarter of a million subscribers on YouTube.
	Yes, indeed.
	That is, of course, for celebration.
	And we're doing about 4 million views and downloads a month.
	Just past podcast 3,000 as well.
	Lots of milestones.
	Yeah.
	So we have quality and quantity together at last.
	It is not a false dichotomy.
	You can't have both.
	This podcast is not the kind of album that an artist produces when they're contractually obligated to produce an album and hate the record company.
	If you're under 30, look up record company.
	If you're under 10, hopefully you'll never need to know the term.
	So yeah, thanks everyone.
	Honestly, so much.
	I mean, it's an incredible thing to be doing what we're doing as a community.
	It's an incredible thing to be, I guess, kind of involved in the way that I am.
	And I hugely appreciate everyone's support.
	And you're the reason why it works.
	You're the reason why it happens.
	You're the reason why philosophy is spreading.
	Without you, there is no me.
	Without you, I am nothing.
	So, thank you so much for supporting the show, for sharing, for taking on the challenge of bringing philosophy into the lives of those around you.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	I think the future of the world appreciates it too.
	FreedomMadeRadio.com slash donate if you would like to keep that all coming in a juicy way for our good friends who inhabit the future and the children who will be raised peacefully as a result of what we're all doing here.
	So thank you everyone so much.
	Thank you to Mike and Stoyan for being the most amazing crew that anyone could ever hope to work with.
	Likewise.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And let's...
	Let's put the mushy stuff in the rearview and start taking about some listeners.
	No, it's just Mike.
	That's all the sentiment I can take until I've had my next coffee.
	Well, the first to be disassembled today is Tim.
	All right.
	Well, Tim wrote in with a message, and I said, oh, Tim, come on the show.
	Let's chat about this.
	So this is his original message that he sent in.
	He said, I was fascinated by the idea of libertarianism and found your arguments compelling and your logic faultless.
	However, I could not stomach the idea of libertarianism and could not see how it could possibly work.
	An economist friend I discussed this with put it to me like this.
	If you were about to be born tomorrow and you didn't know whether you'd be rich or poor, smart or stupid, strong or weak, what kind of society would you want to be born into?
	My answer?
	A slightly socialist democracy.
	Some weeks later, one of your respondents, I assume he means one of the callers, put in the words what I have been struggling to articulate for some time.
	The world is not exactly chock full of people who are voluntarists, who've got some self-knowledge, people who've been to therapy, people who have good relationships, people who reject the state and the initiation of force.
	And this is his comment.
	Nor will it ever be, Steph.
	Not even close.
	And therein lies the fundamental flaw in your brand of philosophy.
	Your ideal society requires that the average human have a minimum threshold of intelligence and morality that cannot be met.
	I find many things you teach very useful on a micro level, and that will help many individuals in their quality of life and their relationships, but the debate about extending them to a large enough population to change our societal structure is moot.
	I am still very sympathetic to some libertarian principles, though, and remain open and willing to learn more.
	And that's from Tim.
	I thought that's definitely something worth discussing on the show, so thanks for agreeing to call in, Tim.
	I'm looking forward to it.
	Cool.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Is there anything you want to add to that?
	Well, no doubt you'll recognize those words from a few weeks ago.
	I didn't write them, of course.
	But they...
	Put into words what I had been struggling to do so myself.
	Wait, which words didn't you write?
	Sorry, I'm a little confused.
	Oh, from the world is not exactly chock full through to the idea of moot.
	The debate is moot.
	So, um, my, um, what I, uh, found was that when I was discussing this with a friend, um, and I, and he put it to me like this because six months ago I had, I hadn't heard of, well, I had heard of libertarianism, but I didn't know what it was until I stumbled across your channel.
	And when I, um, was discussing this with my friend, um, he put this idea to me, you know, what if you were about to be born tomorrow?
	You don't know whether you're going to be rich or rich.
	You know, that's not his idea, right?
	Did he put it forward as an original idea?
	I think he did come to think of it, yeah.
	Well, it's not.
	Okay.
	And look, I mean, I'm not saying that everyone has to always give credit to every single...
	But this is a very well-known argument in the philosophy of government and the philosophy of law.
	And the argument is from a philosopher named John Rawls, R-A-W-L-S, and it's from a book of his called, I think it's called The Theory of Justice.
	And so, this is not, nothing here is new.
	That doesn't mean that it's not worth discussing, because it's new to people, it was new to you.
	But your friend did not, this is like me saying, my theory of relativity that I came up with, right?
	This is a very well-known argument for a sort of limited social democracy.
	And it says, look, if you're really dumb, then you want socialist aspects and the welfare state to take care of you.
	If you're born really sick, you want some aspects of socialized medicine.
	But if you're born really smart, then you want to have scope, which a pure communist society wouldn't give you to exercise your intelligence, to make some money, to whatever, And therefore you'd want some aspects of the free market to allow you.
	So, you know, somewhere in the middle between pure market capitalism and pure communism is the sweet spot because it allows the dumb to be taken care of, the sick to be taken care of, but it also allows the really smart to have scope to exercise their abilities in a market environment.
	Is that sort of along the lines of what...
	Yes, that's exactly how I took it.
	Yeah, it's a well-known argument.
	I mean, I've got a whole podcast on it way back in the podcast stream, but it's one of these arguments that because we want to believe it's true, it feels true.
	And because it feels true, what happens is we lower our guard against skepticism.
	Or we lower our skepticism.
	And the arguments that feel like they should be true, and particularly those arguments that accord with our current society, those are the arguments we really need to watch out for.
	Because they feel true, they justify our existing system, and thus remove from us the need for any particularly large changes.
	And therefore, we have to be skeptical of it.
	Because this argument kind of felt true, right?
	Right.
	Yes.
	Can I put forward something I saw the other night?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Tim, we're right in the middle of a conversation.
	Why are we jumping somewhere else now?
	Just because I say it's not true doesn't mean I'm not required to prove that it's not true.
	I was going to give an example that exactly speaks to this question, but go on.
	I don't think we need one, because I think everyone understands it, but if you feel it's going to add a lot, then go for it.
	Okay, I was watching Highway Patrol.
	You've probably got a similar program there.
	It's a reality TV where you follow the police and they're pulling up people on the road and checking their licenses and writing infraction notices and so on.
	Anyway, this idiot driving an old jalopy, no license, borrowed license plates and Several outstanding warranties and so on.
	And I'm thinking, you know, in a libertarian society, which I would love to live in, by the way, in a libertarian society, where does a guy like that fit in?
	I mean, he has no thought for consequences.
	He cannot, you know, he would be dropped by his DRO very quickly.
	And you'd get a lot of people like that.
	So what happens in such a society?
	What happens where you have people like that who can't fit in?
	I have to admit, I haven't fully thought this through myself, so I'm just throwing it out there as a...
	I have no idea what that has to do with the previous argument that we were on.
	I mean, we were talking about the welfare state and the need for...
	I'm just not sure how this guy without a license fits in.
	It's a guy who cannot...
	Oh, no, I know.
	Now, Tim, what you're doing is you're throwing more arguments at me so that I don't reply to an argument that you've already made so that you won't get in trouble with your friend.
	That's not my intention, believe me.
	I know, I know.
	I was just about to answer the argument you brought up to begin with, and now you've brought up a completely different perspective and position and argument right before I was about to answer the previous one.
	That's not an accident, right?
	You don't want me to answer this question because right now you're swimming with the stream of your existing society, and if I answer the question or the objection that your friend brought up, then you might be set at odds with your existing society, so you're kind of ambivalent about what my answer is.
	Stefan, I told myself I wouldn't get into a debate with you because I would lose.
	No, this is not a debate.
	I was just about to answer something, and you said, well, let me bring up another perspective.
	And I said, well, we're right in the middle of talking about something.
	Why would you bring up something else?
	You said, no, I think it illustrates this point really well, and then it's got nothing to do with this point.
	So you're trying to get me to not answer the question.
	Now, if you don't want me to answer the question, that's perfectly fine.
	Or if you do want me to answer the question, that's fine.
	But coming up with another scenario when we not even dealt with the first one is a way of having me not answer the question.
	Okay, that's fine.
	I just didn't realize that it was an entirely separate scenario.
	But go on, please.
	Okay.
	So let me ask you this.
	Pretend that you're a woman.
	All right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And I say to you, I don't know, what's a female version of Tim?
	Usually there's like John and Jane, you know, and all that.
	I don't think there's a female version of Tim.
	Tammy.
	Let's go with Tammy.
	We'll call you Tammy and I say to you this.
	Tammy, let's say that you're a woman and you're not born yet.
	You're floating around in the Celebrity-fueled pre-life that all women seem to stew in, or at least most women do seem to stew in.
	And you don't know how pretty and how attractive you're going to be.
	Now, if you're very attractive, I don't just mean physically, but like as a person as a whole, right?
	If you're physically very attractive...
	No, just physically.
	Forget.
	We just make physics.
	So if you're physically very attractive, you're going to get lots of attention from boys and you're going to get lots of date offers and you're going to get lots of marriage offers and so on, right?
	On the other hand, if you're really ugly, then you're not.
	So, Tammy, you don't want a system where dating is purely voluntary.
	Because if dating is purely voluntary, then what's going to happen is You're not going to get a lot of dates.
	It's going to be really tragic, really sad.
	You have the chance to, you know, you might end up lonely.
	You might end up not being a mom if you want to be a mom and so on.
	Just because an accident of birth has led you to be, you know, physically unappealing to men.
	So you don't want a system where you can just date whoever you want.
	What you want is a system where if you're below a certain threshold of attractiveness...
	The government forces a man to marry you.
	But you don't want everyone to end up in that situation because you might actually be attractive.
	Now if you're attractive, you want to be able to get your own mate because your own mate will be better than the one that the government assigns to you and forces to marry you.
	So the best conceivable system is one wherein the government allows some dating In the dating market that's voluntary, that's chosen, some sex that occurs with consent.
	But if, look, ugly people need sex too, and need dates and need marriage, and so if you're below a certain level of attractiveness, then the government will force a man to have sex with you, and will force a man to marry you.
	But if you're really attractive, you can just date a bit more freely.
	And what do you think a woman would say?
	You can't push a rope.
	Oh no, you can.
	You can rape a man.
	Okay, go on.
	No, you can.
	So what would a woman say to that?
	If you said that to, I don't know, your average garden variety feminist, what would she say?
	Actually, I don't know.
	Your average garden variety feminist?
	Do you mean after she slapped him?
	Let me try it the other way around.
	What if it's men?
	If a man is below a certain level of attractiveness, Then the government will force a woman to have sex with him, because he can't get sex on his own, right?
	If he's like Elliot Rogers-style, crazy, unappealing, deranged, nutty, homicidal, monstrous, or whatever, right?
	You want another Isla Vista?
	The government's got to force women to have sex with unattractive men, because they can't compete in the dating market.
	What do you think a feminist would say if you said that men who are below a certain level of attractiveness need to have the government force women to have sex with them?
	She might say that sounds fair.
	Oh my god, have you ever met a feminist?
	We're talking about institutionalized rape here.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what you're getting at.
	Please continue.
	Tim, okay, I'm not sure what you're getting at, which is, I'm just talking about the government forcing a man to have sex with a woman or forcing a woman to have sex with a man.
	Do you have any emotional reaction to that?
	Oh yeah, it's abhorrent.
	Okay, good.
	So, it's abhorrent.
	So maybe we shouldn't have put the feminist in there, but just you.
	It's abhorrent.
	Now, why is it abhorrent?
	Well, it's legalized rape.
	Okay, good.
	So, having the government forcibly transfer money from one person to another, how is that not legalized theft?
	Oh, look, I'm not denying that.
	I accept your argument there, yeah.
	Good, okay, so we've disposed of that.
	I mean, there's so much else that's wrong with that argument as a whole as well, because it changes people's behavior.
	And we know this, right?
	The welfare state has not solved the problems of poverty.
	I just pointed out, we just did a video on Bernie Sanders, and I'm pointing out that in the 1870s, the GDP, the gross domestic product of all the European countries combined, is about what America transfers in welfare payments to the poor every single year now.
	And this is when socialism, I mean, it doesn't work.
	Because people change their behavior.
	Because if you say, well, everyone who's marked below an attractive scale of three gets free sex for life, then guys who are four will just maim themselves so they look like threes, right?
	I mean, people would just change their behavior.
	And so it doesn't work.
	And also, of course, the idea that you can just have these programs in place, right?
	They're not run by fallible human beings who want to stay in power and who get votes from people and there's nothing corrupted, nothing's going to happen that's going to corrupt anything.
	You're not going to set up a huge bureaucracy whose existence continues to depend upon the existence and entrapment of the poor.
	I mean, it's all...
	But I think that the Sachs example is important.
	Yes, yeah.
	Because it clarifies the issue.
	And the reason why...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	The reason why...
	It's just part of sexism against men.
	Yes.
	I mean, which is so prevalent.
	I've been watching a little bit of a series called The Fall, set in Ireland.
	And in it, the lead character, played by Gillian or Gillian Anderson...
	A man is predictably sobbing and weeping and the woman is perfectly composed and perfectly rational.
	And he says, why are women so together and so emotionally mature?
	And she says, well, because the essential human form is female.
	And masculinity is best understood as a kind of birth defect.
	Now, she's a positive character in the show.
	She's someone to admire.
	She's together.
	Can you imagine saying that?
	If a black man was sobbing and saying...
	A black woman was sobbing and saying to a white man, why are white men so together and so mature and so wise and so smart?
	And the white man said to the black woman, because Caucasian is the essence of humanity.
	Yeah.
	And being born black is a birth defect.
	Can you imagine?
	I mean, people would go completely mental.
	But because this is only against white males, it's like, yeah, okay, that sounds legit, right?
	And so the reason why property crimes against men are not viewed as anywhere close to equivalent as sexual crimes against women It's just because of anti-male prejudice.
	Anyway, again, I'm not saying that property crimes are directly equivalent to sexual crimes, right?
	I mean, obviously, sexual crime is more traumatic and so on, right?
	Yeah.
	But, you know, 50% taxation takes away a man's sexual market value enormously.
	Yes.
	It harms people.
	A man's reproductive powers and capacity in the same way rape does for a woman.
	Anyway, so the rape example just helps clarify that a little bit of rape is not alright.
	Now, people can say, ah, well, but you can live without sex, but you can't live without food.
	Well, first of all, there's gene death, which is kind of important.
	The whole reason we eat food is to avoid gene death, right?
	So if you don't have sex and can't reproduce, That's it for your genes, and that creates a special kind of torture for a human being.
	And it's designed to.
	Genes are designed to torture us if we don't reproduce.
	And so it's something that just helps clarify that if you have a principle called the non-initiation of force and respect for property rights, it doesn't change into an alternate universe when people get to be below a certain amount of money.
	Of course, there is also the argument that The government must provide charity to the poor because there's no other way that it can happen, right?
	Well, you'd want to be born into a social democracy because you see, if you're poor or you're sick, then no one is going to help you unless the government forces them to.
	It's like, well, if nobody wants...
	If nobody wants to help you, then the government won't have those policies because nobody will vote for them.
	If a majority of people vote for a government to enforce welfare, why the hell do they need the government to enforce welfare?
	Because the majority of people want to help you anyway.
	And this argument is only appealing to people who are fundamentally unlikable.
	And I don't mean you in this case.
	I don't even necessarily mean your friend.
	But, you know, when I got sick a couple of years ago, I put the call out...
	For people to help me out with the costs of having to flee socialist hell Canada nightmare medical system from hell and go to America where I could buy my life.
	And people stepped up and helped me out with my bills.
	Because they like me.
	You don't have to worry about, oh, what if I fall into poverty and what if I get sick?
	If you've helped people, if you've been generous, if you've been helpful to other people, if you've been kind and you're around relatively decent people, you'll be taken care of.
	But people who are selfish, people who don't lift their fingers to help others, people who don't work within their community to make their community a better place, People who don't make other people smile when they see them walking down the street.
	People who don't have neighborliness.
	People who don't invest in those around them.
	Well, if you're like the selfish, lonely, isolated guy who rushes past his neighbors without looking up, never says hi because, I don't know, there's a new patch out for World of Warcraft.
	Well, yeah, you get sick and not really anyone's going to give much of crap about you.
	And those people want the government, right?
	Because it's a lot easier to offer your vote up to a politician in return for resources than to actually get involved in your community in some productive and positive manner and make other people's lives a better place.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes, of course.
	You know, for the people who feel that they're unattractive...
	Look, I remember there was this woman when I was at McGill...
	No names.
	When I was at McGill, there was a woman...
	Man, alive.
	I swear she had a face like an orc.
	She really did.
	And yet, she also had the most amazing figure.
	Because she went to the gym.
	I don't know, whatever she did, right?
	She just really made herself toned and attractive, right?
	And she got dates.
	You know, if you're deficient in some area, become better at something else.
	You know, and...
	That's always possible.
	And I'd rather take my chances with that than having the government force someone to have sex with me because I was unattractive.
	You know, there used to be a time when taking ill-gotten gains and taking other people's money by force was considered a shameful thing.
	Profiting from crime.
	And even when it wasn't directly considered a crime, as I've said before on this show when I was a little kid, those who were on welfare or on unemployment, they were just viewed as Pitiful, pathetic failures.
	And nobody really wanted to socialize with them.
	And nobody had any respect for them.
	And they were kind of shunned by all the taxpayers.
	But of course, you know, that all changes over time.
	Just as single moms used to be viewed as highly destructive and dangerous elements within society.
	That all changes.
	Now, the other point that you had...
	Wait, sorry.
	Just before we move on to that.
	I know that's not a perfect answer.
	And you can listen to more to my podcast on John Rawls' The Theory of Justice.
	But...
	Is that relatively a decent way to begin looking at that?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	That makes perfect sense.
	In fact, shortly after I gave that answer to my friend, that is, obviously, you would want to be born into a slightly socialist democracy.
	Shortly after I gave that answer, I began to have second thoughts and thought, no, I don't think that's necessarily true.
	And you, of course, have just...
	Given a beautiful explanation of why that isn't necessarily true.
	Now, the second point that you had...
	Well, okay, we'll get to the point that you just brought up last.
	The next point you had is the argument from livestock.
	And the argument from livestock is, Steph, okay, if everyone was like you, and everyone was like me, and everybody was really smart, and everybody was really good, and everybody was really philosophical, then your system might work.
	But we are surrounded by cheese-eating, neckbeard-growing dunderheads, and therefore we can't have a free society, and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	Is that sort of along the lines of that?
	Perhaps, perhaps.
	But I was more thinking, look, it's never going to happen anyway.
	It's not going to happen anyway.
	Wow, you are very confident about all the possibilities throughout the entire future of human society.
	Unless there's some sort of holocaust.
	Unless there's some sort of holocaust and we're left to rebuild.
	Hang on, Tim.
	Who the hell are you to say what is and isn't going to happen in human society?
	How is that?
	I mean, look, do you know what the price of Apple stock is going to be tomorrow?
	Because if you do, man, we can make a killing.
	Okay.
	Wait, you don't know the price of Apple stock, but you know the entire future of human society.
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	I don't know.
	Can't follow you there, man.
	Can't follow you there.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, this is another argument that occurs because it's scary to promote change within society, right?
	So it's easier to sink back in the dull black hammock of enveloping Venus flytrap despair and say, well, it's never going to change, can't win, why bother, why try?
	And then withdraw into cynicism about human nature and human beings and blah-de-blah, right?
	Well, how do you see it coming about without bloodshed?
	Well, I've talked about it on the show a million times.
	Maybe you've missed it.
	Have you ever heard me talk about that?
	Okay, I apologize.
	I must have missed it.
	Oh no, you don't have to apologize.
	I'm just curious because, I mean, there's lots of shows.
	But yeah, we promote peaceful parenting and more and more parents raise their children without aggression.
	And then those children are raised up to be so functional, so happy, so healthy.
	That they, A, won't believe that a state is ever necessary, and B, will be such shining examples of greater humanity that everyone with any shred of decency is going to want to raise their kids that way as well.
	And through that process, we no longer need a state, and of course, through that process, we also eliminate criminality and abuse and human destruction, because it won't be bred through traumatized children, and next thing you know, we are...
	Tipping over to a freer society.
	And of course, it doesn't require that everyone becomes like that any more than everyone had to be anti-slavery in order for slavery to end.
	But are you suggesting, Stefan, that eventually there'll be a critical mass of such good people that there will be enough of them in government that government itself will say, hey, we don't need to exist anymore?
	Oh, God, no.
	Why on earth would a child raised in a healthy and peaceful environment want to go into the government?
	So how is the government ever going to say, we don't need to exist anymore?
	Let's just go home.
	Well, in the same way that slavery ended in virtually every country throughout the world except for America.
	Okay.
	People stopped believing in it.
	Right.
	Look, do you believe in God?
	No.
	Okay, so if I come along and say, I'm going to sell you spiritual insurance for demonic possession for only 50 bucks a month, what are you going to say?
	I'll say, try next door.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, it's sort of a vaguely incomprehensible question, right?
	And so, you know, when the government comes along and says, I'm going to sell you protection from all these bad people out there, your basic comment will be, bad people where?
	Where are all these bad people you're going to protect me from?
	Because enough people are being raised well that society is not full of disastrous people.
	Will there be combat?
	Of course there'll be combat, but there's not going to be any physical combat.
	Okay.
	Don't need it.
	Don't need it.
	All you need is confidence to win moral battles.
	I see.
	Okay.
	You know, the moment that people decide to intervene when they see other children being harmed or abused, Well, that gives a child a fundamentally different view of society.
	Okay, my parents are abusive, but there are good people out there who really disapprove of what my parents are doing.
	Okay, so we are the outliers, and there's a healthy society that's battling the evil of my parents.
	That gives a child a fundamentally different relationship.
	Like, every time people avoid intervening with the situations of child abuse, What they're doing is they're telling the children, well, see, evil people are in charge.
	Evil people are in control.
	Evil people bully.
	Evil people win.
	And good people scurry away and slide away and don't make eye contact and don't cause any trouble and just scurry back to their holes.
	Any child with any gumption is not going to be swayed by the frightened sheep, but rather is going to follow in the shadow of the big bad wolf.
	So just convince people to do the right thing in their own lives, spread peaceful parenting, spread anti-spanking messages, intervene in situations of child abuse and so on.
	You'd be absolutely surprised how remarkably quickly all this can spread if people really commit, which is why I keep nagging people to do just that.
	Okay, well that is probably the most powerful message I've heard in six months of hearing about libertarianism.
	Well, you won't hear about anti-spanking from libertarians in general.
	No, no, no, anti-spanking as such, but just continuing to do good in your own life and encourage it in others, and that in itself will bring about change.
	Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of people.
	It just takes a lot of certain people.
	Like a lot of people who are morally rooted and have a deep understanding of the arguments and perspectives that they're trying to bring across to people as a whole.
	And, you know, you move the needle.
	This is Archimedes' old statement, give me the lever big enough and I can move the world.
	You plunge yourself deep enough in your beliefs and are open enough about the truth.
	The world begins to revolve around you.
	I mean, you say to your friend, okay, that's an interesting argument.
	You're kind of appealing to my fear and my greed.
	That's the problem with the Rawlsian argument.
	Ooh, what if you're broke?
	What if you're poor?
	What if you're dumb?
	What if you're, ooh, you want to be safe from that, don't you?
	Yeah, okay, I'll give up my freedom for that.
	Ooh, yeah, but on the other hand, what if you're really smart and ambitious and entrepreneurial?
	Well, you don't want to be stifled by, you want to be able to make lots of money, you want to be stifled by communism.
	So fear, oh, I don't want to be scared of greed.
	Ooh, what if I want to make a lot of money?
	I mean, it's not even an argument.
	It's a cattle prod.
	Right, okay.
	No, look, if I'm dumb, then in a society where people are helpful and happy and raised well, dumb people will be taken care of.
	Of course they will.
	And in a society where people are...
	Now, but the real fear is what if you're just mean and nasty and irresponsible and a jerk and all that kind of stuff?
	Well, of course, if you're raised well, unless you have some brain injury or brain tumor, the odds of you ending up like that are virtually nil, which is why it starts with the parenting.
	You've got to cut the supply of evil off at the source, right?
	I mean, if your bath's overflowing, there's not much point taking a...
	A teaspoon to bail it out.
	First thing you do is you turn off the tab, right?
	And what is causing the flood of evil people into the world?
	Terrible parenting.
	Abusive parenting.
	Violent parenting.
	Neglectful parenting.
	Punitive parenting.
	You turn the source off.
	Then you can deal...
	Things evaporate.
	You've got to cut evil off at the source.
	And that is where children are broken and reshaped into monsters through abusive childhoods.
	This all, let's just keep bailing with teaspoons.
	I don't know.
	You can't bail out evil faster than evil can spread.
	You just can't.
	Because 150,000 people a month turn 18 in America.
	And...
	You can't convert 150,000 traumatized.
	Well, I shouldn't say.
	Let's say only a third of them are traumatized, which is very conservative.
	But you can't make 50,000 people into good people every month.
	You can't.
	So you have to stem the tide at the source.
	And that means dealing with the childhood side.
	This is not just my opinion.
	I think through bombinthebrain.com you can look through my whole presentations on all this stuff.
	The science behind it is beyond reproach.
	Okay.
	But you did sort of...
	Mike, can you read that bit in the letter where Tim was talking about...
	He used that just delicious phrase, my brand of philosophy.
	Steph, your brand of philosophy.
	Again, not my words.
	Your brand of mathematics.
	It's like, well, no, it's either math or...
	Anyway, sorry.
	Yeah, that bit in the letter was, nor will that ever be, Steph, not even close.
	And therein lies the fundamental flaw in your brand of philosophy.
	No, but right before that was the argument from livestock, like people are just too stupid, they need a ruler.
	That was what the caller had brought up that Tim had quoted.
	The world is not exactly chock full of people who are voluntarists, people who've got self-knowledge, people who've been to therapy, people who have good relationships, people who reject the state, and the initiation of force.
	That was a quote from them.
	And that's entirely true, Tim.
	Sorry to interrupt, Mike.
	It's entirely true, Tim.
	And you know, before the first iPod came out, the world was not exactly chock full of people Who have iPads.
	Or iPods, right?
	Before the first telephone came out, look man, the world is not exactly chock full of people who have telephones.
	So let's not build any.
	It's like, well yeah, I get that.
	That's why we're building them.
	There's a market opportunity.
	And so the idea that there's not a lot of people out there who are very rational, okay, yeah, I agree with that.
	So we'll fucking change it.
	Yeah, I get that.
	Not a lot of people out there who are really great parents.
	Okay, I accept that.
	Am I going to just sit back there and say, well, let the world go to hell then?
	No.
	Not a lot of people out there with mobile phones in 1970.
	So, people said, let's get them some mobile phones.
	Next thing you know, everyone's ass-dialing ex-girlfriends when they sit down at a restaurant, right?
	The, the, the, I mean, slavery, right?
	Every human society for the past 100,000 years has owned and kept slaves.
	The world is not exactly chock-full of societies that have no slavery.
	Let's change that.
	So saying that something is not prevalent is in no way an argument as to why it can never be prevalent, right?
	Yeah, I think the intention of that argument perhaps is that This is inherent in human nature.
	Am I not a human being then?
	Anytime anybody defines human nature as something that does not include the attributes, say, of myself or my friends or my wife or my listeners or my daughter, it's like, well, what are we, space aliens?
	When people say human nature, what they really mean is that there are people around me Who have bad characteristics.
	And I'm too lazy to go and find a better crew, so I'm going to pretend that everyone is like them and call it human nature.
	Right, okay.
	There is no definition of human nature that I know of that doesn't exclude enormous swaths of human beings.
	Okay, I get it.
	The mammal doesn't lay eggs, except the platypus.
	Okay, one exception.
	But tell me a definition of human nature that doesn't exclude vast numbers of people.
	It's human nature to be irrational.
	Well, you're trying to make a rational argument.
	By saying that human beings are incapable of making rational arguments.
	And there are lots of people who are very rational in particular areas of their life.
	There are some people who are rational in many areas of their lives.
	So what does that mean to say it's human nature to be?
	I'm not saying that it's human nature to bow down to authority.
	Well, if it was human nature to bow down to authority, why on earth would we need so much propaganda through churches and parents and governments?
	To bow down to authority if it's human nature.
	We don't know what human nature is because it's a human zoo we live in, Tim.
	If the only animals you study are monkeys in some god-awful Mengele-style cosmetics testing cages where they're driven crazed, they're driven mad by having acidic drops put into their eyes every day, Well, monkey nature is violent.
	Monkey nature is very blinky.
	You don't know because you're viewing caged animals who are being tortured.
	And anybody who says anything about human nature while imagining that we live in some environment where human nature and human possibility in the human mind, the human spirit is given free play.
	It's crazy.
	We're in a very difficult and unpleasant zoo, in particular when we're growing up in government schools.
	That is not a natural environment for human beings.
	It's a caged environment.
	You might say, ah, but it's human nature to be caged.
	It's like, okay, well then why are there jailers?
	Then you're excluding the jailers from human nature.
	The human nature argument is you grab and fog.
	The only constant is change.
	The only thing that we know for sure, I think, about human nature is that it adapts to violence.
	It adapts to rejection.
	Those are the two things.
	It adapts to violence to comply with threats of violence because personal death is gene death.
	And so it's better to survive and try to reproduce than to take a stand and to die, right?
	That's the way the genetics work within us.
	And there are exceptions to those.
	People, right?
	But for the most part, the genetics program has to submit to violence in the hopes of reproduction.
	And the reason why we respond to rejection is that the purpose of our genetics is not just to reproduce, but to have our children grow up and reproduce as well.
	There's not much point having children.
	If they die before sexual maturity, then you've just actually committed yourself to a massive waste of resources.
	And the opportunity costs of not having other kids mean that you basically just – it's worse than gene death.
	If you never date, at least you don't spend a lot of money on kids who either grow up and die, grow up and are banished or grow up and are rejected by the males or females in their tribe.
	And so we conform to violence and we conform to threats of ostracism because both of those spell gene death for us.
	And that's all we know, really.
	And that's not human nature.
	That's just DNA. And it's generally waving antennae-like boners looking to make more of itself.
	And so outside of that, I don't know really what it is to say anything about human nature.
	It's just life.
	We adapt.
	And so if you change the environment, human nature is like water.
	You pour water into a cup.
	Hey!
	It's the nature of water to be a cup, right?
	Or you pour it into a pitcher, it's like, hey, it's the nature of water to be a pitcher.
	You change the environment and you change the nature.
	And that's the only thing that I know for sure.
	And that's why we work at changing the mental environment so that people are free to be who they are.
	Right now, they're just forced and caged and coerced into being something or not.
	Yes.
	And this argument is also not new, right?
	The argument that, you know, Plato, who saw his hero Socrates poisoned for the twin crimes of not believing of the gods of the city and of corrupting the youth, he made the same argument, which is that people are too stupid and you've got to have philosopher kings rule over them and if you let the people...
	Have any authority over the state of the nation.
	It will be a horrible mob rule of all against all.
	Democracy is the worst thing ever.
	And we need a rule of philosopher kings.
	I mean, again, these arguments are thousands of years old.
	And they always ignore the reality that power corrupts.
	Power corrupts?
	Even peaceful power can corrupt, like the power of beauty or the power of great talent.
	Or the power of great wealth.
	All of these things can be corrupting, but they're not coercive.
	But the power of coercion almost instantly evaporates.
	I don't know if you've ever done this, you know, you're cooking something and you want enough, the pan is hot enough, so you take some water and you flick it into the pan, right?
	And it boils and it dances and it hisses away.
	Well, this is what power does to the human soul, to the human spirit, to the human conscience.
	It just boils and hisses it away, almost upon contact.
	And we've seen this before, right?
	The Milgram experiments and the Stanford prison experiments.
	Stanford prison experiments is where a bunch of students were randomly divided into prisoners and guards, and there was supposed to be this experiment that was going to run for a couple of weeks.
	I think they had to stop it after two or three days.
	Because the guards were all becoming incredibly abusive and the prisoners were all becoming depressed.
	Like really depressed.
	Like they were afraid of suicide.
	In a couple of days.
	That is how corrosive and corrupting power is.
	Just randomly selected college students who know they're part of an experiment are given imaginary power over others.
	And almost instantly transform and translate into, transmogrify, transform into sadists and masochists.
	That's what power does, at least with the people that we have at the moment, who've been exposed to power relentlessly from birth onwards.
	That's what power does.
	And that's just a little experiment for a psych class, right?
	Phil Zombardo ran that, I think.
	And his girlfriend at the time had to come in and say, Phil, you've got to stop.
	This is going hell in a handbasket, right?
	And so anybody who says, well, we need this power or the government needs to have that power, it's like they've never even heard of these experiments where human beings are almost instantaneously recast from normal people into sadists or normal people into masochists.
	Simply through the provision of even imaginary power.
	Give them real power, not just over two or three days, but real power for months or years.
	I mean, their souls are lost forever.
	So I don't believe in philosopher kings.
	If you are a philosopher, the last thing you'd ever want to be is a king.
	If you are a philosopher or...
	Just a decent human being.
	The offer of power is like an offer to play a game of Russian roulette where there's a bullet in every single one of the chambers.
	Reminds me of Gandalf.
	Do not tempt me with this.
	Yeah, Gandalf, the hypocritical douchebag.
	You know, Gandalf went...
	When Frodo says to Gandalf, oh, I wish Gollum was dead, right?
	And he said, Gandalf said something like, yes, there are many alive who maybe should be dead, and there are many dead who maybe should be alive.
	Do you have the power to grant that to them?
	Do you have the power?
	Then do not judge who should be alive or who should be dead.
	And then he's like, oh, look, there's 19 goblins.
	Let me explode them with electricity.
	Wait a minute.
	Gandalf, like, kills a million things and then says, well, we didn't really have the power of life and death over others because I need this plot device at the end in Mount Doom.
	Anyway, it's just kind of funny.
	Gandalf the hypocritical douchebag.
	We have a show title.
	True.
	We have a show title.
	Well, am I wrong?
	I mean, you've seen the movies too, Mike, right?
	Do not be so quick to judge who should live or die.
	Never quite dawned on me, but when you put it that way, it's pretty indisputable, you know?
	Unless they're goblins, or orcs, or demons, or devils, or bulrogs, or other things that I might not like.
	Then kill them, absolutely.
	But Gollum, he's an essential plot device.
	Can't kill him.
	Future CGI people need their jobs.
	Don't be so selfish, Frodo.
	So Tim, does that give you, I mean, it's not perfect answers or anything like that.
	It's a big, long topic, but hopefully that gives you something to work with.
	That has clarified a lot of things for me.
	Thank you.
	Ah, good.
	Good, good, good.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, man.
	And let's move on to the next caller.
	Great, great.
	And yeah, thanks again for calling in, Tim.
	Really appreciate it.
	Great call.
	Great call.
	I really appreciate the questions.
	I always love when people reach a sticking point with something.
	Sometimes I get emails and it's like, oh, come on, call into the show.
	And people are like, nah, not interested.
	It's like, oh, come on, be a good conversation.
	Maybe break through that barrier.
	Maybe not.
	Maybe we'll learn something from it.
	You just reminded me of when I played Macbeth as a young man.
	Screw your courage to the sticking place.
	That actually means stabbing someone with a knife.
	So I just wanted to clarify that.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, up next is Eric.
	And Eric wrote in.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Up next is Rico.
	And Rico wrote in and said, Why does Stefan have a love-hate relationship with women's aesthetic preferences and reactions?
	Why does Rico like begging the question?
	Okay, go ahead.
	Hello?
	Hey.
	Hi, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	I'm doing all right.
	So, okay, first of all, you have to establish that I have some love-hate relationship with what?
	Women's romantic or sexual preferences?
	Aesthetic preferences.
	Okay, so hang on a sec.
	Are you saying that all women have the same aesthetic preferences and I have a love-hate relationship with all of that?
	No, I'm sure you can find exceptions to the rule.
	Well, okay, so what proportion of women, sort of zero to 100%, What proportion of women do you think I have some love-hate relationship with their universal set of preferences, at least for that subgroup?
	Most.
	Like 70-80%?
	Alright, so we left off with Rico.
	He answered your question and said 90%.
	90%.
	Okay.
	Alright, so Rico, will you be back on?
	Rico.
	I can't hear you, Rico.
	Rico, Rico, Rico.
	Yeah, you been there?
	It's Rico.
	You know why I'm...
	Never mind.
	All right, let's...
	Okay, so are you saying...
	So let me just make sure I understand the parameters of your criticism.
	So you're saying that 90% of women have the same aesthetic preferences, and I have a love-hate relationship with those preferences.
	No, I'm not saying 90% of women.
	I'm saying 90% of the women that I know and have shared pleasurable experiences with Steph.
	But that's not what you said in your email.
	Because you said, I have a love-have relationship with women's aesthetic preferences.
	I'm just trying to understand what that means.
	Let me delve into it.
	Then a significant, you say 90% of women have to have the same aesthetic preferences, which I have a love-hate relationship.
	So then I have, you can say I have a love-hate relationship with most women's aesthetic preferences.
	But if you're going to change it now to point out that it's your friends, then that's kind of different, right?
	Well, I did say most women, right?
	Let me just check that, Mike.
	Was that, he said, did he say I have a love-hate relationship with most women's aesthetic preferences?
	First you asked me all women, and then I said most women.
	And then 90%.
	And then I said there are exceptions to the rule, right?
	Okay, so you said all women, now you're changing it to 90%, and now we're changing it to women you know?
	The goalposts do appear to be moving.
	If you'd like me to start off with my first example, maybe that'll make it...
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	I'm trying to understand what your criticism of me is.
	I'm not trying to rebut anything, I'm just trying to understand what it is.
	Right?
	Because if you're saying, you started off by saying all women, then you said 90% of women, and then when I questioned you further, you said, it's the women that I know of and have had romantic interactions with.
	with us, is that right?
	I'm not trying to be a jerk, like Like, I'm really trying to understand the criticism.
	Right.
	I haven't, you know, I understand your question.
	I've heard your question, and I'd like to start off with an example of something that you've said.
	No, no, we can't go to an example until I know how many women, in your view, how many women's aesthetics I have a love-hate relationship with.
	If it's not all women, and it's not 90% of women, then it must be the women that you know, right?
	I don't know the number.
	Mike, tell me if I missed something here.
	Maybe I got something garbled.
	But didn't Rico say that it actually was the women that he knew or had romantic relationships with?
	Yeah, it was 90% and then it was, I guess, 90% of the subset that you know and have had interactions with Rico.
	Is that correct?
	And how many women is that?
	Yes, it's an extrapolation.
	Okay.
	Well, no, hang on.
	But then you need to say it's an extrapolation.
	In other words, we need to, first of all, establish what the sample set is that we're looking at, and then we can figure out whether it's justified to extrapolate.
	So the sample set that we're looking at is composed of how many women...
	That you know or have had romantic relationships with?
	Okay, so let me ask you a question, Stefan.
	No, no, no.
	Rico, Rico, I'm asking you a question.
	You can tell me you don't want to answer, but you can pretend I didn't ask a question.
	How many women have you had romantic relationships with that you're basing the foundation of this aesthetic preference on?
	So if I throw out an exact number, will that help?
	Wait, I'm asking for an answer and you're asking me if giving me that answer will help?
	Well, I wouldn't be asking it if it wasn't going to be helpful, right?
	So how many women are you talking about in terms of your understanding if there are static preferences that I have a love-hate relationship with?
	Let me see if I understand your question.
	You're asking me...
	That if my question pertains to all women, right?
	That's the first part of the question.
	No, no, Rico, it's simpler than that.
	You said it pertains to women that you know, and I'm asking how many women that is.
	I don't know, let's say a thousand.
	It's not a thousand, it's not zero, it's just a number, right?
	Right, a thousand.
	Wait, you know and have had romantic relationships with a thousand?
	You know women's aesthetic preferences, you know a thousand of them?
	Yes, I guess we're different.
	You can't really expect me to believe that.
	That you've examined in great detail a thousand women's aesthetic preferences?
	Personally?
	Rico is a pseudonym for Wilf Chamberlain.
	Well, I don't think those are aesthetic preferences, Mike, but...
	No, come on.
	I mean, if we're going to have a serious conversation, let's have a serious conversation.
	If you don't want to have a serious conversation, we can move on to the next caller.
	But I'm just trying to understand what it is that you're criticizing in me so that we can have a discussion about that.
	that, but I need to know what sample set you're working with.
	Stefan, I mean, you can either believe me that I've examined a thousand women or you cannot.
	Yeah.
	I don't believe you.
	And there's nobody on this planet who believes you, who's got any sense.
	Maybe you believe you, in which case you go see somebody who's a mental health professional, but there's no possibility that you have closely examined a thousand women.
	I mean, that's just, come on.
	I mean, seriously, if you're going to stick by that story, I'm just going to move on to the next caller out of respect for my callers who like to tell the truth.
	So let me ask you a question.
	What do you mean by seriously examining aesthetic preferences?
	Well, if you know enough about a woman's aesthetic preference to even formulate the thought that I have a love-hate relationship with that preference, you must have some significant idea what those preferences are in women, right?
	So, if I say I went on a date with a thousand women and I spent over an hour with them, that's not kind of getting to what you're describing there?
	Have you gone on dates with a thousand women?
	Yes, I have, and that's not difficult to do.
	You can go on four dates in a weekend.
	If you have the lifestyle that I have, you can go on a date every single night.
	Okay, and how many of these dates turn into, sorry to interrupt, how many dates turn into second dates for you?
	A significant number of them.
	I don't know the actual statistics.
	What does that matter?
	Well, it matters because if none of them go into second dates, then you don't have any clue what women's aesthetic preferences are other than it's not for you, right?
	They don't have a preference to you.
	Whereas if 1,000 of those have gone on to second dates, then we're talking about 2,000 dates.
	And if 500 of them have gone on to three dates, then we're talking about, what, 2,500 dates?
	Because 1,000 plus the 50, yeah.
	So I'm just trying to figure out what the reality is.
	So your argument is that you've gone on first dates...
	with a thousand different women, and what proportion of those would you say have gone on to second dates?
	Stefan, I can't...
	Is it 10%?
	Is it 90%?
	Just, you know, it doesn't have to be an exact number.
	I'm just curious.
	I'm trying to see where you're going with this because I can't provide you with video evidence of this, right?
	No, no, no.
	I'm not asking you for evidence.
	I'm asking you what proportion of your dates have gone on to second dates.
	I'm trying to answer your questions and I was trying to get on to kind of show you what...
	Actually, no.
	Rico, you're trying enormously hard to not answer my questions, which is obvious to everyone except you.
	My question is, how many of your dates have gone on to second dates?
	Rough approximation.
	Let's say...
	50%.
	Okay, so 50% of the women have second dates.
	Now, with the women that you're dating, do you tell them that you're having four dates that weekend?
	No.
	So, you withhold very important information from them, In order to go out on dates with them.
	Is that very important information to give out on a first date?
	Yeah, absolutely it is.
	If you say, listen, I'm dating dozens of women at the moment, that is important information for a woman to have.
	Because it speaks a lot as to your character, your judgment, your sense of quality.
	I mean, if you can find that many quality women to date, you may be living in a different dimension than me.
	But yeah, it is important.
	So you're withholding information about how many dates you're going on.
	When you have a date early, are these dates like early evening and then late evening, or are these like lunch dates and dinner dates?
	That's right.
	Or a mix, I guess, right?
	A mix.
	A mix, okay.
	Now, when you have an early date that's going well, do you say to the woman, I have to go because I have another date later tonight?
	No.
	Why do you say that you have to go?
	Because I have another engagement.
	And if she says, do you mean a date, what do you say?
	Well, she doesn't ask that question.
	She doesn't ask?
	Out of a thousand women, not one of them have ever asked if you're dating someone else?
	Not that I can recall.
	Seriously?
	Second, third date.
	They've never ever asked if you're dating someone else.
	Even though you're not particularly available.
	Because you're on other dates, right?
	At least half of them ask if they can see me again.
	Oh no, I get that.
	But have they ever asked if you're dating someone else?
	Not that I can recall.
	And again, you're going to have to take my word for this.
	Oh, I do.
	I completely take your word for it.
	Now, why do you think that they want to see you again?
	I assume that you're very good looking.
	Sure, but I don't think that's...
	But it's not your emotional maturity, I can tell you that for sure.
	So it's got to be something else, right?
	Why is it not my emotional maturity?
	Because you're a maneuverer, right?
	You don't give me direct answers.
	You try and figure out where I'm going.
	You're just not direct with me.
	You're trying to play game.
	You're trying to figure out where we're going and how you can win and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Like I'm asking you, you wouldn't believe.
	You'll listen back to this, man.
	You won't believe how long it takes me to get a simple answer out of you.
	So you're not a direct person and you're not very forthcoming and you're also not very trusting insofar as I'm asking you questions because I'm trying to understand your criticism and you're really not forthcoming, right?
	You're not direct, right?
	Right.
	Because you feel like I'm trying to game you or trying to win or you're trying to maneuver everything.
	Right.
	Well, you know, it can't be an excess of emotional maturity that is drawing these women back to you.
	So it must be something else.
	Maybe you have a lot of money.
	Maybe you are very good looking.
	I mean, maybe you've got a gorgeous physique.
	It could be any number of things, right?
	I'm sorry?
	I think they want to see me again because I provide them.
	Are you sure you lost 23 minutes?
	I'm afraid so.
	Oh, man.
	I'll do a quick recap.
	All right.
	Are you there, Rico?
	Yes.
	Okay, thanks for your patience.
	Just a quick recap.
	I think we lost a little bit of recording, but you were talking about how...
	You've dated a thousand women and you've slept with a little under half, so, you know, 400 women or so, give or take.
	You started dating when you were 16, but you said, I think, you were a brute and weren't particularly doing well with women.
	And then there was a period where you were listening to my show and you had absorbed some of my criticisms of immoral women and that was causing you problems on your dates.
	I'm sorry, race through, is that a fair summation?
	That's right.
	I internalized some of the messages in your podcast, like when you said that they're not just drawn that way, they are bad.
	Did you mean all women then?
	That's actually a Roger Rabbit joke.
	Yeah, that's a joke from a movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Bob Hoskins?
	The late and much lamented Bob Hoskins.
	And Jessica Rabbit is a very sexy rabbit, I guess.
	Things I say on the show.
	And she says at one point, I'm not bad.
	I'm just drawn that way.
	Because she's like a real sexy siren and so on.
	So that was just a joke about a cartoon movie.
	But wait, are you saying that I thought that...
	Do I think that all attractive women are immoral?
	Is that your question?
	My...
	Actually, from the summary that you posted, I wanted to finish and say how my perspective changed that allowed me to start sleeping with women again.
	Right.
	While still listening to your show.
	Okay.
	Would you like to know?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Sure.
	I figured out after, it's actually pretty interesting, what happened was that as I was going out on these dates, I felt this kind of mental tear because on the one hand I felt kind of, I understood the philosophy and the principles behind the things that you talk about and they are the most important things in my life.
	And on the other hand, I had a strong desire to get laid.
	So for a brief moment, I basically made this decision that I would drop my principles in order to get laid.
	But in the process, I was introduced to the concept that women might not want to hear about female corruption on a first date.
	And once I understood that, I realized that I could continue to go on first dates while not breaking my principles, and I'm a better person because of it.
	A better person defined how?
	A person that achieves more of the happiness that he's desiring without breaking any of his moral principles.
	I'm sorry, you said that you abandoned your principles to get laid, but now you're saying that you're not abandoning your principles.
	I said that I thought that I was abandoning my principles to get laid, and it was tearing me apart because when you understand something on the logical level, You cannot continue in a path that is self-destructive, right?
	I mean it just it just it doesn't work.
	You can't do that if you truly understand it, right?
	If you don't understand it then it makes you angry and you You fight against it and things like that, but if you understand the principles Then you cannot continue in a path where you're denying those principles.
	It's just not possible I So you found a way to have sex with lots of women and that made you a better person?
	No.
	Okay, what am I missing?
	The sex with lots of women you're talking about because you're talking about 400, right?
	No, that's not what I'm talking about.
	I'm saying that I had a desire and my desire was to have a...
	To get laid.
	Dude, stop changing your story.
	You said your desire was to get laid.
	So when I talk about you having sex with lots of women, the number you put at 400, don't tell me that's not what it's about.
	That's exactly what you told me what it was about.
	You can change, but don't pretend you didn't say it.
	I'll accept what you're saying.
	I'll accept what you're saying.
	Good, because it's what you're saying, so I hope that you accept what you're saying.
	So you wanted to have sex with lots of women, and you found a way to do that, and you said, and that makes you a better person, because you're getting what you want without compromising any of your ethics, right?
	Right.
	And when you sleep, hang on, do you end up sleeping with more than one woman at a time?
	I don't mean like a menage a trois, although that could certainly be in the cards, but I mean, are you ever having sex with more than one?
	I mean, you're not a serial monogamist, right?
	So you're having sex with more than one woman at a time?
	Yes.
	In your life?
	And do these women know that you're having sex with other women?
	Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
	And they don't because you're not telling them.
	Because they don't ask.
	Because they don't want.
	Listen, listen, man.
	I'm sorry.
	I've got to be perfectly frank with you.
	That's a scummy move.
	Do you know why?
	Because you don't know what kind of STDs these women might be having.
	And if you're having sex with someone else, at the same time as you're having sex with a woman, that woman has a right to know because she needs to have some protection.
	If you're going to have sex with other women, you could be picking up some god-awful disease from that other woman and bringing it to woman A. I totally understand that you have a...
	I just heard a drop call.
	First of all, I do wear protection.
	But second of all, I totally understand that you have an aesthetic repulsion to what it is that I'm saying, and you're totally welcome to that.
	But I'm curious as to see where it is that I'm dropping my morals, my moral principles.
	Well, first of all, condoms don't protect against all sexually transmitted diseases.
	You can still pass along crabs, right?
	Because they nest in the pubic hair, which the condom doesn't go over, right?
	So you can still pass along an STD to somebody else, even when you're wearing a condom, right?
	Herpes, there's quite a few to my understanding that it's not like condoms are a cure-all.
	Right.
	So you could still be transmitting sexual diseases from woman A to woman B. And if woman B doesn't know that you're sleeping with woman A, then she doesn't have the capacity to make the decision.
	So one of two things is happening.
	Either A, the woman is not even asking whether you're exclusive.
	Or B, she's asking And you're not telling her the truth.
	And you said sometimes it's A and sometimes it's B. So sometimes the woman says, are you sleeping with anyone else?
	Or are you exclusive?
	And you don't tell her the truth.
	No, I never lied.
	You've never lied?
	I never lie.
	But you withhold information that the other person needs?
	No, they don't need it.
	It's her choice, not yours, Stefan.
	No, if you're sleeping with someone else, you can be bringing diseases home to this woman, right?
	So it's important for her to know if you're exclusive or not.
	No, it's her choice.
	And she chooses not to pass.
	No, it's not her choice if you withhold the information that she needs to have.
	Let me put it to you this way, right?
	So if I say I'm selling you a car, right?
	And I neglect to tell you that it was in some terrible accident and it's been restored to almost new, but it's still holding together like a house of cards, right?
	And then you buy the car, and then it falls apart, and I withheld that information from you.
	Have I been dishonest?
	I'm failing to see how this example connects to...
	Just answer me this theoretical.
	I'm not saying it...
	I haven't had the opportunity to give my examples on anything today, right?
	Yeah, you have.
	I have, really?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	You gave me examples, for instance, I asked you, hang on, hang on, no, you're accusing me of not giving you the chance to give your example, so I'll give you one, if you've forgotten.
	The example that you gave was I said, what is aesthetically pleasing to the woman?
	And you said, well, if sometimes she wants to change venues, then I'm happy to go along with that, right?
	And sometimes I won't.
	So that was an example that you gave, okay?
	Okay, so I agree with you.
	So then how am I like a broken car?
	Okay, so first of all, you accused me of something which was false, right?
	So what do we do when we do that?
	I just accepted what you said, Stefan, and I'm asking you, how am I like a broken car?
	Okay, I'll pretend you apologize for mischaracterizing what I said and we'll move on.
	What I'm saying is that I think we can all agree that if you withhold information from somebody buying a car, that would materially affect their decision to buy the car, that's dishonest.
	Now, if you are materially withholding information from women that might affect whether or not they want to sleep with you, that's equally dishonest.
	In other words, if the woman knew that you were sleeping with one or more other women, she might choose not to sleep with you.
	If you withhold that information from her, then you are not giving her an accurate choice as to whether to sleep with her or not.
	any more than I'm giving an accurate choice as to whether this person should buy my car if I don't tell them that it's about to fall apart, which I know and they don't.
	So you're saying that you know what all women want to know?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I don't know what you're saying.
	I'm just pointing something out here.
	If you withhold information from a woman which would materially change whether she wants to sleep with you, then you're lying to her.
	You're withholding.
	You're falsifying things.
	You're cheating her.
	Well...
	And are you saying that of these thousand women, or the 400 that you slept with, not one of them has ever asked if you're sleeping with someone else at the same time?
	Has not one of them ever said, are we exclusive?
	No, actually most of them actually do ask, are we exclusive?
	And you say?
	I have a girlfriend.
	I'm sorry, what?
	You say you have a girlfriend to these women?
	Yes.
	Rico, earlier in the call you mentioned that you don't do that, that no one has asked you.
	That's not the case.
	I said that sometimes they ask me whether I'm involved with other women, and sometimes they don't ask me.
	That's not what I remember, Steph.
	Okay, because we don't have the recording, let's just keep moving.
	So wait, so if a woman says to you, and I'm not, like, I'm really curious about this.
	I hope I'm not coming across like a jerk.
	I'm really, really genuinely curious about this.
	So if a woman asks you, Rico, are we exclusive?
	And you say, I have a girlfriend.
	Yes.
	Now, is it true that you have a girlfriend when you say this?
	Yes.
	So do you have a constant girlfriend and then you sleep with these other women on the side?
	I'm trying to figure out how that works.
	That's right.
	So you have one constant girlfriend and you sleep with 400 other women on the side?
	She hasn't been with me since I was 16, but I mean, yes.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Now, when you first go on a date with these women, when you ask these women out, do you say, I want to go out with you, and I have a girlfriend?
	No.
	Why don't you tell them that?
	Well, Stefan, because women are not interested in those questions when they want to show up to a first date.
	At least the women that I've been with.
	Oh my God.
	Tell me you're not seriously telling me what all women want.
	And if women don't care about that question, why the fuck wouldn't you just tell them?
	Hey, I would like to go out with you.
	By the way, I have a steady girlfriend and I can't come up to you.
	Just like I could just start talking about estrogen-based parasites?
	Yeah, I know.
	I could start talking about a million things, but what I'm trying to do is...
	No, no.
	This is an important one.
	Man, come on.
	Come on, you can't be this obtuse.
	You seriously can't be this obtuse.
	No, I'm not obtuse, but it's not.
	Do you think that it's fair to ask a woman out on a date without telling her that you have a girlfriend?
	It's not a moral one, correct?
	Do you think it's fair?
	Do you think it's important information for her to have before she goes on a date with you?
	Do you think that there's an assumption when you ask a woman out that you don't have a girlfriend?
	No, there is no assumption.
	So she thinks that he might have a girlfriend, he might not.
	Do you think it's important information for that woman to know whether you have a girlfriend or not?
	It's not aesthetically pleasing and they're not asking...
	No, I didn't ask that.
	Is it important information?
	I'm just trying to give you some empathy here, man.
	Is it important information for a woman to know when you ask her out that you have a girlfriend?
	Well, if it's important, she'll ask.
	If it's not important, she won't.
	No, I'm asking you not to surrender your judgment to what the woman asks, but for you to have a thought in your head.
	I'm sorry, Stefan, but I've been asking you all night what you think other women would, how they would react, and you...
	No, I'm asking you whether you think it's an important piece of information for someone else to have.
	Let me ask you an analogous question, then.
	If you go in for a job interview, or if you phone up and you say, I want to get a job, and the person says, well, come on in for an interview.
	And then, after you come in for two or three interviews, they say, oh, we filled the position years ago.
	How would you feel?
	I'm not seeing...
	I mean, let me think. - I'm just asking you how would you feel? - Stefan, not every woman that goes on a Okay, so you're not going to answer.
	No, no, no.
	But the answer is that you would feel pretty upset.
	And you'd say to me, you'd say to whoever was hiring you, well, hang on a sec.
	If you invite me in for a job interview, the assumption is the job is available.
	If you filled the job years ago, why the hell are you auditioning?
	Or why are you having job interviews for new people?
	That's important information.
	And they say, well, we just kind of want to know who's out there.
	And I like having interviews because it's easier than working and so on.
	It's like, well, don't waste my time if the job's already filled.
	Stefan, not every girl that goes out with me wants to be my girlfriend.
	Oh no, I get that.
	I get that.
	So the question is, why don't they want to be your girlfriend?
	What's missing in you that they don't want to be your girlfriend?
	It doesn't matter.
	It does matter.
	I mean, why do they want to spend time with you if they don't want to be your girlfriend?
	Can you repeat that last question?
	Why don't they want to be your girlfriend?
	Is it because they don't think you're worth dating?
	Is it because they don't like you that much?
	Is it because they don't find you that interesting?
	Like, why wouldn't they want to be your girlfriend?
	I don't know, Stefan.
	You have no idea?
	So you've dated these women and you've slept with them, but you have no idea whether they really like you or not?
	I can speculate for you, but I cannot speak for those women.
	Okay, I get it.
	I understand.
	I understand.
	So, let's go back to this question of, do you think that it's important for a woman to know whether or not you have a girlfriend when you ask her out?
	Now, I'll tell you this.
	I mean, just, Mike, help me out here, because if a woman asked me out on a date, and we went out a couple of times, and then she said, and I have a boyfriend, I mean, what would your response to that be?
	Thank you for wasting my time and you're a lying, manipulative human being.
	Goodbye.
	Yeah, like how horrible is that, to not give me the choice to date you?
	I mean, this did happen to me once.
	I picked up this woman in the gym and we only went for coffee and it wasn't even a date, right?
	But obviously there was some interest.
	And then she mentioned that she was married and I was like, I mean, I wasn't that mad because it wasn't like we went out for this big date or anything.
	We just had a coffee.
	But she's like, yeah, but I'm not happy with my husband.
	And I'm like, okay, well, I appreciate you telling me that, but you told me at the gym.
	And she's basically like, but let's have an affair anyway, because you're hot.
	And I was like, I'm sorry, I really can't do that.
	And she's like, well, why not?
	And I said, well, either A, I'm really going to fall in love with you, in which case, welcome to Torture Heart Central because you're married, or B, I'm not really going to like you very much, in which case the sex won't be any good, right?
	So there's just no way to win in this situation, and I never went out with her again because she told me that.
	Now, imagine if I'd fallen for her and I'd slept with her, we'd gone away for weekends together, and then she told me that she was married.
	Because she doesn't have a ring.
	Her husband doesn't pick her up from the gym or anything.
	That would be unbelievably horrible.
	A truly hideous thing to do to another human being.
	Can you at least get sort of where I'm coming from in that perspective?
	You're asking me?
	Yeah.
	I totally understand that you find it aesthetically displeasing.
	No.
	I don't know how you're using the word aesthetically.
	That would be a horrible, nasty, false thing to do to somebody else.
	It's not the initiation of force.
	That's right, which means it's not moral, correct?
	No, no, I said horrible.
	I didn't say evil.
	Right, and that's why I responded with aesthetics.
	All right.
	Okay, yeah, so it's a horrible thing to do.
	It's more than just being late, right?
	Right, so I understand that we heard...
	How Michael would respond.
	And then we can juxtapose that to the reactions of the women that I've been with, which is that they had a really good time and often they want to see me again.
	When they know that you have a girlfriend.
	Sometimes, yes.
	And sometimes...
	Well, because sometimes you don't tell them.
	Because sometimes that's not important to them.
	Although I understand that it's important.
	No, no, no.
	If you don't tell them, it's because you're withholding important information.
	It is important information to know whether you have a girlfriend.
	Because if she wants to be your girlfriend and the position is already taken, she needs to know that, right?
	Hello?
	Hello?
	There are a million things that are important For a woman to know my genetic history my family history my history with what?
	Oh No, no, no.
	I don't know what you're talking about, your genetic history.
	If she doesn't want to have kids with you, right?
	And you're wearing protection or whatever.
	But the reality is, if she wants to be your girlfriend, it's important for her to know whether that's possible or not, right?
	In the same way, if I go for an interview, it's important for me to know that the job is available, right?
	Right.
	And so, how do you think that women in the modern day go about choosing a mate?
	Okay, you're just going off on some other tangent now.
	Let's just stick with this topic.
	Unless you want to abandon the topic, in which case, do so explicitly and don't be manipulative.
	I'm not trying to...
	Because you're just changing the subject, right?
	When I'm trying to ask you a series of questions, just jumping off onto some other subject, right?
	They always have a chance to be my girlfriend.
	And I'm asking you...
	Based on your job analogy, how do you think they go about evaluating whether they want to get the job or not?
	You mean how do women go about choosing a mate?
	Well, I have no idea because I'm not dating in 2015, but I can certainly tell you what a woman of quality would do.
	No, that's right, Stefan.
	And so what I'm trying to make clear...
	Okay, so let me tell you since you asked what a woman of quality would do.
	First of all, she would recognize that you're a very evasive and manipulative human being.
	And then, if she was even remotely interested, she'd say, are we monogamous?
	She might go out for a first date with you, and if she wanted to see you again, she'd say, well, I assume we're monogamous.
	And then you'd say, oh, actually, I have a girlfriend.
	In which case, she'd say, well, you're a lying sack of shit, because you should have told me that at the beginning, and she'd get up and she'd walk out.
	And this is based on your information from dating in what decade?
	A woman of quality is a woman of quality.
	A woman of quality, by definition, wants honesty and forthrightness and directness and openness up front.
	That doesn't change from one decade to the next.
	That goes all the way back to Jane Austen.
	That goes back to ancient Rome.
	That goes back to the plays of Euripides.
	That goes back to, I mean, that's not a new thing to want someone to be honest.
	I mean, that's not like, oh my god, it's 2015.
	Up is down, black is white.
	Women of quality want people who lie to them.
	I'm a little bit unclear on how you can use definitions to predict behavior, Stefan.
	I have no idea.
	Again, I'm getting kind of bored of this because I basically keep trying to make points and you just keep jumping to new topics because you don't like where my points are landing and you're not being honest about even that.
	I think I'm ready just about to move on.
	Mike, what do you think?
	Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of this too.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, thanks for the call.
	I appreciate that.
	I hope that your dick doesn't fall off from some sort of horrible crotch rot.
	And I certainly would recommend considering telling women that you're dating about all the other women you're having sex with and the fact that you have a girlfriend.
	But I doubt you will.
	But for those who are otherwise inclined, this may be an important object lesson.
	And ladies, if you see this guy and you hear his voice, I think you know what my recommendation would be.
	But thanks for calling.
	All right, Mike, let's do one more.
	Alright, so up next is Eric.
	Eric wrote in and said, I find it extremely difficult or even impossible to build good habits slash behaviors.
	This is frustrating because I believe it is very important to have consistency in my life.
	I want it, need it, and know it's important to reach my full potential.
	One reason is impulsivity.
	I'll create a list of mental or physical goals, but when I'm in a situation in which I need to do something to reach one of those goals, I very often will look past it and do what feels right in the moment.
	Another reason is forgetfulness.
	I forget that I have a goal and just go with what feels good in the moment, and then later realize that I failed to act in a way that would forward my progress towards that goal.
	How can I learn to control my impulsivity, fix my forgetfulness, and ultimately manage and discipline myself better?
	That's from Eric.
	Right.
	Hello, Eric, and welcome.
	Hey, Steph.
	Thanks.
	How's it going?
	Good.
	Have you been listening?
	I don't know.
	How did you last...
	That long in that last call.
	Patience of a safe.
	That was unbelievable.
	No, listen, no, it's not that.
	And look, I appreciate that.
	People say, oh, Steph, that's so patient and so on.
	Look, I mean, if this was a guy I met on a plane, I wouldn't have a conversation like that.
	But I think it's important for people to see these kinds of dysfunctions in action and to really see what it's like, to see the incompatibility between someone who's direct and honest and somebody who's not.
	And also to see how, you see, this guy was critical of me.
	Right?
	He's just...
	He's critical of me because somehow I'm negative towards women.
	Whereas he's having sex with women and not telling them he has a girlfriend or that he's having sex with lots of other women.
	But the difficulty, you see, the problem is that I have some sort of love-hate relationship with women's aesthetics or something like that.
	But I'm not actually currently doing...
	It just kept going in circles.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, but I think it's important for people to see that...
	Even a pretty skilled communicator like myself can't break through somebody who's relentlessly dedicated to being dodgy.
	I respect you for that.
	Appreciate it.
	Is there anything more you wanted to add to this situation?
	There's a lot more that I could add, but I think if you want to base it off the question itself, then we can go from there.
	Alright.
	There's a great quote from Nietzsche which says, give a man a why and he can bear almost any how.
	I wonder if that has any resonance for you.
	Are you saying that I should start asking myself why I want to have consistency in my life and then I can figure out how to do it better?
	Yeah, like what's the goal, right?
	I mean, a lot of what I do can be tough and difficult and nerve-wracking and so on, right?
	But I have a goal that makes it worthwhile, right?
	Like if somebody wants to get the Olympic gold or whatever, then they'll get up at dawn and train and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, okay.
	And if they have a why, like why would I do this?
	If they have that answered, they can bear almost any how.
	Like how does it actually get achieved?
	So I think there's a couple...
	I'll give you an example.
	One is being physically fit.
	I'm a shorter guy.
	I'm like 5'6", and I realized probably a year ago that I wanted to gain weight.
	I was probably 130 pounds, very skinny, and I was like, I want to reach 160 pounds, and I want to be fit.
	It could be windy.
	Yeah, it could be real windy, and I was getting cold often.
	I So, I realized that this was something that I wanted to do, and I started going to the gym, and I was going to the gym four or five days a week.
	I wasn't hitting my goals, though, and so I tried to make adjustments to my diet, and I tried to make all these adjustments, and it just felt like I couldn't keep it consistent every week.
	Even though I was seeing small incremental changes, it just felt like one day I wouldn't Meet my calories and that would frustrate me.
	And then it would go a whole week because I'm a musician and I had four different shows that week and I couldn't get to the gym and so suddenly everything would fall off.
	Did you have a trainer?
	No, I didn't have a personal trainer.
	And so how were you deciding what to do?
	A lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of blogs, just trying to put things together that made sense.
	So, hang on.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	But you weren't getting what you wanted, right?
	You weren't achieving.
	Because like four or five days a week, that's a lot of gym time, right?
	You should be seeing some pretty significant results fairly quickly, I think, if you're doing it right.
	So that's my sort of question about...
	Yeah, and I was seeing results.
	There's no question about it.
	I was seeing results.
	But it was less about the results...
	That I was seeing and more about the fact that I couldn't continue to keep doing it the way that I wanted to.
	Like, I reached 150 pounds, but once I got to 150, I pushed and pushed, but I just felt myself, you know, getting off track.
	And that I couldn't...
	Wait, sorry to interrupt.
	So you plateaued, which is, I think, a pretty well-known phenomenon in working out.
	Mm-hmm.
	And you then didn't seek any particular advice on how to change that if you wanted to go further, right?
	You put on 20 pounds of muscle on a $1.30 frame.
	That's significant, right?
	Yeah, it was pretty significant, and I was happy with it.
	I really was, for sure.
	And what was wrong with just going to maintenance after that?
	How big did you want to get?
	I wanted to be bigger than 150.
	What did you want to get to?
	160.
	So you wanted another 10 pounds of muscle, and you plateaued, and you still didn't seek out any advice, right?
	No, I definitely did not seek any advice, but that's because I had decided at that point that I was doing things right, and that I needed to keep trying to keep doing what I was doing.
	But you worked, because you plateaued, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I didn't have the awareness, I guess, that I was plateauing.
	So...
	I mean, it was something new for me.
	New things weren't changing, right?
	Because if you did a lot of research, right?
	Most people, you know, who write about this stuff will say, yeah, you'll get an initial burst of Hamana Hamana, and then your body will adapt to it, and you have to, like, crazy mix up your workouts if you want to go further, right?
	Like, you have to hit your body from, like, weird, different, crazy workout angles in order to shock it into continuing to build muscle, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no question about it.
	Okay.
	I mean, I... So you didn't ask for help?
	Nope.
	I'm not criticizing, I'm just sort of pointing out that you just tried to muscle it through against all evidence without asking for help.
	And the reason I'm saying is that whenever you have a goal and you hit the point of diminishing returns, then you either have to adjust your goal or you have to figure out how to get better returns, right?
	Yeah.
	And just giving you basic motivation 101, right?
	Certainly.
	Which is, you got a goal, right?
	You wanted to get to...
	Well, you said you wanted to get to $1.50, right?
	You wanted to get to $1.50, right?
	$1.60, sorry.
	And you were stuck at $1.50?
	Yep.
	Yeah, you were stuck at $1.50, you wanted to get to $1.60, you wanted to get 10 pounds of muscle.
	That's piling a lot of muscle on.
	Now, why did you want the extra 10 pounds of muscle?
	Because everything you built, you've got to maintain, right?
	Right, yeah.
	So obviously, the more weight that I gained, the more calories I had to...
	I had to take in.
	No, I know.
	But even to maintain that weight, right?
	Because, you know, gaining that muscle, it means you've got to maintain it.
	Because it's difficult.
	Again, please understand, I am no nutritionist.
	But I've been working out for decades.
	And I'm not, don't take any of my advice on this.
	It's just my particular thoughts, having exercised for so long.
	But if you gain, I mean, you must have noticed your appetite went up, right?
	When you had all that extra muscle?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so, because muscle burns more calories than fat, which is why working out helps you even when you're not working out, right?
	And so, I mean, I notice when I have a big workout, I basically eat half the fridge and the door, and I'm still hungry, right?
	But what happens is, like, I had an arm injury, was not able to work out for a little bit.
	My appetite is still high, because, you know, my muscles are still there, but fading.
	But because I'm not working out, I have to cut back on what I'm eating, even though I want to eat more because of my previous workouts, right?
	And so the challenge is, of course, if you gain that amount of muscle, your body's going to adjust to a particular calorie consumption, and then if you start to fade out on that muscle, that's how you convert muscle to fat, right?
	And this is why it's tough.
	You see this a lot of time with jocks, right?
	Like the jocks in high school can often end up getting pretty pudgy later on because they've got those eating habits, but then they don't have that same calorie burn habit of working out as much.
	Anyway, again, so when it comes to motivation, okay, so you wanted to get there, you weren't getting there, and then did you just give up?
	Like, did you stop going to the gym?
	No.
	I mean, I had a situation a few months ago where I broke my ankle.
	I was playing in a large ball, broke my ankle, and that made it difficult.
	So I stopped going to the gym then because I physically couldn't.
	So that derailed me a little bit.
	I mean, this is just one...
	The gym and working out and having this goal of gaining weight is just one small piece of the question.
	No, it's not.
	I don't think it is.
	And again, I don't want to stick the whole time on it, but do you feel that you failed?
	I mean, what's your reaction?
	What's your emotional relationship with what happened at the gym?
	Yeah, I guess...
	I mean, it is failure to a certain degree, I would say.
	Okay, and did you fail at trying to get to 160?
	Yeah, I didn't get there.
	I haven't gotten there.
	Okay, right.
	But it's not failure, really, if you don't try.
	I mean, if I failed to become a ballet dancer...
	No, because I've never really tried.
	And you didn't do what was necessary to get to 160, right?
	Right.
	So you kind of didn't fail.
	You just stopped doing whatever you might have needed to do that would be different to get to 160, right?
	But what I feel like the problem was is that my own self-discipline...
	I need to be able to discipline myself better.
	And that I didn't get to 160...
	Not because I stopped trying, but almost because I got distracted.
	I would forget.
	Well, no, you were still going to the gym, right?
	Oh, no, you said you had a bunch of gigs, right?
	So that got in your way.
	Just an example of one week where I would get off track, and that would make me feel bad.
	Or I would...
	I'd have a buddy that would say, hey man, let's go see this show on Friday night.
	And I would think about the show, and I wouldn't think about going to the gym.
	And then the weekend comes, and oh shit, I didn't go to the gym on Friday.
	You know what I mean?
	Sorry, have you maintained your muscle weight as it stands, or has it diminished?
	It's diminished.
	Has it diminished a lot?
	Are you back to sort of, like so you went from 130 to 150, and you went to what, 145?
	145, 143-ish, yeah.
	And are you maintaining that or is that diminishing further?
	No, I'm doing my best to maintain it.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, the important thing to get from this is that, and I'm not talking to you in particular, but, you know, we've got a wider audience.
	And again, this is just all my amateur opinions and so on.
	But if you want something that is foundational, like losing weight or gaining muscle and so on, Your life changes permanently.
	Your life has to change permanently.
	There is no temporary reshaping of the body, right?
	And so, if you wanted the extra muscle, then that is a permanent lifestyle change.
	Right?
	Like, I mean, so I lost like, I don't know, 30 pounds or 25 pounds or whatever, six or seven years ago.
	And I'm like one of the 1% of people who've lost the weight and kept it off.
	And why?
	Because that's a permanent change.
	I don't eat desserts.
	Well, very rarely.
	Like maybe once a month or two.
	I don't eat desserts.
	I don't have cookies in the house because I like the cookies.
	I got a sweet tooth, right?
	I mean, I'll still have a little bit of sugar here and there.
	I'm still working to try and cut that down.
	But I used to have like a candy bar every day or two.
	You know, a candy bar and a Mr.
	Big and an orange.
	That was my snack.
	So I'd have no scurvy and homicidal sugar rages.
	But...
	But it's a permanent change.
	Like, you can't go back.
	You can't have chips and dip.
	You can't have sugar as much.
	You can't have that stuff.
	Like, I don't eat jam.
	I don't eat Nutella.
	Just like, that stuff's gone.
	And it's never coming back.
	It's not like, well, I'll lose the weight and then I'll see.
	It's like, no.
	That is permanent.
	If you want to get to $1.60 a muscle, that's the rest of your life.
	Now, if you're willing to do that, then you can do it.
	But if If any part of you views it as temporary, you need to deal with that, right?
	Right.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, no, it certainly does.
	And I can draw parallels.
	It's really bad to gain that muscle and lose it.
	Like, it's really bad to fluctuate up and down 10 or 15 pounds, right?
	You pick your new weight, and you change your life until you're there, and you never change your life back.
	You can't go back.
	And so if this is your, and I'm, you know, again, I'm sure, I don't know what personal trainers say, but I'm sure they would say something along those lines, right?
	And so if you want to, oh, I want to gain weight, are you willing to do that for the rest of your life?
	Now, if you say, oh my God, that's exhausting.
	I can't spend four or five days a week at the gym for the rest of my life.
	I get that.
	I can't either.
	And so you have to then adjust what it is that you're like.
	Whatever you want to do that's going to fundamentally change your body, it has to be something you can commit to for the next 60 years.
	Like I've been doing weights and cardio.
	Try to do three times a week for about an hour at a time.
	You know, half an hour of hard cardio, half an hour of weights, and then maybe like another 10 minutes of like lifts and sit-ups and so on in front of the TV or playing a game or something like that.
	And I've been doing that since I was 16 or 17 years old.
	So that's close on, like over 30 years.
	And I hopefully keep doing that until they put me in a pine box.
	Because that is just, that's your life now.
	You have to do that.
	That's what you do.
	And so if you say, okay, well I want to get to 160, that's a lot.
	That's like 30 pounds of muscle.
	That's going to be a lot to...
	Grow.
	It's going to be a lot to maintain.
	Like, are you willing to do that for the rest of your life?
	And you say, well, you know, gosh, not really.
	That's fine.
	That's perfectly fine.
	Then aim to put on 15 pounds of muscle and work to maintain that.
	Then if you want to go up from there, maybe, right?
	But it may be that you aimed too high and you're adjusting down to what is realistic.
	Because it's not your job.
	I mean, you're not a bodybuilder.
	You're not like a martial artist.
	You're not like a superhero.
	You're not a superhero, are you?
	No, I'm not a superhero.
	Okay.
	So then the question is, what do you want to pack on 130 pounds?
	That's almost a quarter of your body weight in extra muscle.
	That's a big deal, right?
	That's like me putting on 40 pounds of muscle.
	Like, I'm just under 200 pounds.
	40 pounds of muscle?
	That's a huge amount of work to grow and maintain.
	So maybe you just overshot, right?
	Yeah, no, certainly possible.
	Definitely.
	So maybe if you'd gotten to that, it would have been the failure.
	Because if you got to 160 and you were unable to maintain it, all those muscles go straight to your ass, right?
	With the King Kardashian blue plate special, right?
	So maybe you didn't fail, right?
	Maybe you landed in some place that's realistic, which is like the 147-148 territory, if I remember rightly.
	Yeah, I think what I'm hearing you say is, because I'm drawing parallels to what you're saying in other, you know, goals that I have, is that I need to understand that I have to sacrifice other things.
	And it's...
	It's just difficult for me.
	It's difficult for me to control my impulsivity.
	I'm going to...
	It's the how.
	But hang on.
	How do you know it's the right thing to control your impulsivity?
	I mean, isn't it better as a musician for you to go see concerts sometimes than to go to the gym?
	I mean, you're paid to be a musician, not to be a muscle guy, right?
	Yeah, no question about it.
	So you say, oh, this impulsivity.
	But what I'm trying to get you to do is to look at a larger map of your life.
	And say, what is an appropriate level of focus for different things?
	Does that make sense?
	It may not always be a bad thing for you to go and see a show as opposed to going to the gym.
	It makes me feel bad about myself, though.
	And I get that.
	I get that.
	And my question is, what's the why of your life?
	If you have a why, you can bear almost any how.
	I assume that your why of your life at the moment and for the foreseeable future is to kick ass as a musician, right?
	Yeah, it's to kick ass in almost every aspect of my life.
	No.
	That is a very bad idea.
	That's a bad idea.
	Can't do it.
	Can't do it.
	I'm going to be excellent at everything.
	I'm going to be a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing whatsoever.
	I know.
	Sorry, Mike.
	It sounded like that may have hit a chord in my head.
	Oh, it's just, you know, there's only a certain number of hours in a day, and all the time that I'm, I don't know, researching the fall of Chicago is time that I'm not doing other stuff, for example.
	And all the selfish sleep.
	Oh, the damn sleep stuff.
	Don't get me started.
	My love-hate relationship with sleep.
	Sleeping is the same as stealing from philosophy.
	Oh, this definitely struck a chord, because I... Yeah, take it away, man.
	You can have this one.
	Well, Eric, I would fall into kind of a similar thing, too.
	It's like, well, I would like this, I would like this, I would like this, I would like this.
	This is stuff I want, and it's just way too much for anyone's plate, way too much that anyone could possibly accomplish in any type of reasonable time frame, unless, you know, a pill is developed tomorrow that enables us to not sleep, or somehow space-time bends to put You know, a year's worth of time into a single day, which I'm not holding my breath on anytime soon.
	So ultimately...
	Go ahead.
	Well, I set up all this stuff for me to do, and it's, you know, it's pretty much just setting myself up for failure because, you know, even if I accomplished a couple of things on that list, there's going to be stuff on that list that I didn't get done.
	And when I did that, I wouldn't focus on the stuff that I accomplished that I was happy with, where it's like, hey, I met this goal.
	No, I'd focus on the stuff that I didn't accomplish and go, God, you know, that sucks, you know.
	Or I'd talk down to myself and I'd feel guilty that I didn't get, you know, the things on the list done that I didn't get done.
	And I wouldn't even focus and be like, ah, congratulations, we achieved this goal that we set in these other areas.
	And that guilt is so fucking exhausting.
	That little nagging guilt.
	Like, oh, like if you're trying to lose weight or something.
	I was heavy when I was a kid.
	And when I went through the period where I was trying to lose weight, it's like, well, you know, I really want this cookie.
	And I'm going to eat this cookie right now, but I shouldn't eat this cookie because I'm trying to lose weight.
	And it's like, listen...
	Eventually, I just got so tired of being exhausted with the internal debate.
	It's just like, listen, if I'm going to eat this fucking cookie, I want to enjoy this cookie.
	I don't want to have a back and forth debate about, well, you know, this is going to mean what for my diet and this and that.
	No, if you're going to eat the damn cookie, enjoy the cookie.
	Revel in the fucking cookie.
	Eat every crumb.
	Enjoy it.
	Have a great time.
	Don't be like binge hate.
	Don't be hate eating the cookie.
	Don't do it.
	You're not even going to enjoy the extra calories you're putting in and detouring your goal.
	So, you know, if you're going to eat the cookie, enjoy eating the cookie and go, okay, we'll pick up the diet tomorrow.
	But recognize that if you eat too many cookies, you need to reexamine this goal of being on a diet and losing weight because that's not going to happen.
	And then you're going to continue to feel guilty.
	And the big question I would have...
	And the big question I did have when I read your initial question is what type of system do you have set up for yourself to do a post-mortem on your days, weeks, months, six months, year?
	Do you have any type of accountability thing?
	Nothing.
	Blank.
	Zero.
	That's important.
	Do you have anyone around you that's kind of, I don't want to use the word accountability buddy because that sounds all types of strange, but is there anyone around that'll be like, hey, you mentioned this a week ago.
	You mentioned this two weeks ago.
	How's that doing?
	How you doing on that?
	Is there anyone that does that for you?
	I can't, and maybe this is a problem, but I can't imagine a single person in my life that gives a shit about me meeting my goals more than myself.
	Or just as much as myself.
	Well, the fact that no one cares more than yourself, I think that makes sense.
	But is there anyone that cares, period?
	It's not going to be a disadvantage for trying to achieve any goal, because achieving any great thing in isolation is just...
	I don't feel it's appropriate for me to ask somebody to hold me accountable when I would never be able...
	I can't hold myself accountable, let alone anyone else.
	Mm-hmm.
	How can I ask?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Tell me why not.
	Go ahead, Steph.
	I want to hear it.
	So you still don't like asking for help.
	That's what you're telling me.
	I mean, it's come up twice.
	Yeah, no, I don't like asking for help.
	Yeah, don't like asking for help.
	No, because that makes you vulnerable.
	That makes you accountable to someone else, right?
	But you know that there's lots of organizations.
	I don't know whether, you know, I agree with everything they do, but, you know, they've got sponsors.
	They've got people who help you and all that kind of stuff, right?
	You know, success should be a social goal because people should care about whether you get what you want.
	But this, you know, I'm the one who must hold myself accountable.
	I am the only sergeant major in my boot camp.
	Right?
	I mean, that's, you know, I mean, people should be invested, you know?
	Like I say to my wife, ooh, StephBot could use a little less StephBot.
	And she's like, you know, I guess I'll get on board with that, right?
	I think that's a reasonable thing.
	You don't have to make them.
	My wife doesn't use a blow dart to keep me back from cheesecake.
	She doesn't use a boomerang to knock pieces of pie out of my hand.
	She's not like Kato or whatever his name was in the old Peter Sellers movies like dropping from the ceiling.
	I see a cookie!
	I mean, she's just, you know, part of the general, this is what I want to do with my life kind of thing, right?
	Yeah, she keeps you in check.
	Well, yeah, she just, you know, she's just there as part of what I'm doing in my life, right?
	I'm going to hide it from her.
	It's interesting that you framed it, keep it in check, Eric, because that is a bit of a negative connotation to it.
	As soon as I said it, I didn't I still said it.
	I mean, I still said it.
	No, I'm glad you said it.
	No, listen, be honest.
	Be honest about what you're saying.
	Don't hide anything from us.
	What the hell's the point of that?
	Doc, it doesn't hurt wherever I point to, right?
	What's interesting, if I was to say that your wife keeps you in check in certain places, if I think about myself having a wife, and somebody's saying, oh, your wife keeps you in check, that would not sit well with me.
	No, she doesn't.
	She doesn't, but because...
	But what happens is, you know, on the grocery list, there's just, you know, nothing from the inside of the supermarket.
	It's all around the edges, right?
	Yeah, are the people around you doing stuff to support or hinder your goals?
	Or are they just completely aloof and neutral, which you can say is hindering, ultimately?
	I mean, I've been thinking about how much does my environment play a role in What I want to accomplish.
	I think it's a chunk.
	I don't think it's 50%.
	I think it's maybe 25, if that.
	I live with three of my buddies.
	It's distracting.
	It's hard.
	I want to move out.
	What's distracting?
	Are they really hot?
	They're all incredibly attractive.
	It's really difficult.
	That's tough.
	That's tough.
	That's why you want to do muscle, right?
	Because you're in a gay orgy.
	I'm just checking.
	I'm open to these thoughts.
	I grew up on computers and video games.
	I love video games.
	I love them.
	And a lot of them play video games.
	And so if I come home from work and they're playing a game in the living room and I'm impulsive and I sit down.
	I want to play video games with them.
	And if I live by myself, maybe I go upstairs and I start composing a new piece of music.
	Or maybe I go right to the gym.
	You know what I mean?
	That's the environmental part.
	Join us on the couch.
	Don't go with a joystick because it makes you sad.
	Come hit this joint, man.
	It'll be fine, man.
	You'll do it later.
	I'll make sure you do.
	Well, the whole idea that you are essentially the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with, I find that idea to be just incredibly, incredibly valuable.
	Is it five?
	Is it four?
	Is it 6.2?
	Essentially, the people that you spend a lot of time around are going to rub off on you.
	And that's important to be aware of.
	Just something to certainly keep in the foreground of your mind if there are goals that you want to accomplish and the people around you are not exactly conducive to you getting where you want to go.
	Do these other guys, your roommates, do they have big plans?
	Are they involved in challenging situations?
	No.
	I don't think that...
	So they've got time to kill and energy to burn and they're not going anywhere in particular.
	So what's their relationship going to be like with you and your goals and your ambitions?
	Mindsets are completely different and the I've had situations where I'm like, hey guys, I can't go out tonight.
	I'm going to the gym and I'll be back at 10.
	They're like, oh man, really?
	Come out with us instead.
	Yeah, you can go to the gym tomorrow, man.
	You've been going to the gym too much lately.
	Anyway, you're too buff.
	It's getting weird.
	You're looking sick, man.
	You see, if you work out and you go to the gym and you really commit to something, it's going to highlight for me the fact that I'm not committing to anything.
	I'm not going to the gym.
	I'm sitting here on a couch eating pizza, and that's going to make me uncomfortable.
	So I'm going to tempt you with distracting you from your goals so you don't accomplish them, so therefore I don't feel insecure relative to you.
	It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
	You know, it's amazing the degree to which my daughter is committed to me not exercising.
	Yeah.
	Because, you see, when I exercise, I'm not playing with her.
	And so, for my own good, she's just concerned.
	I mean, she really wants my arm to get better.
	And she's really concerned that I might sweat too much.
	And she's really concerned that I don't get enough sunshine.
	And she's looking out for me.
	It's beautiful.
	How much she's looking out for me.
	How old is your daughter?
	Six?
	Seven?
	Seven?
	Six.
	A comparison to Isabella, I think, is an immense positive, but I don't think that's what Steph was getting at.
	No, I would make that comparison.
	Let's just put it this way.
	She has a slightly shorter time frame for what I should be doing than I do, right?
	I could play with you today, but I'd really like to have the muscles to be able to play with you tomorrow as well.
	It's funny, Mike, that you brought up.
	I mean, just revisiting the Jack of all trades, master of none, it's something I think about often.
	I was debating between...
	I know I'm switching gears a little bit here, but I was debating asking the question that I asked, and the other question was, how do I decide how to use my time, utilize my time?
	Because there are many, many things that I'm interested in, and I I don't know how to decide what I want to do, what I want to invest my time in, and that frustrates me.
	I think it kind of coincides with the question that I asked, too.
	Yeah, no, and I think this is sort of what I was getting at earlier.
	Sorry, Michael, shut up for a sec.
	But this is sort of what I was getting at earlier when I say, well, what is it that you're actually doing?
	Mm-hmm.
	I think the only really rational philosophy, the only thing that qualifies as the term philosophy, is a combination of reason and evidence.
	And this is essential for planning and executing and achieving on life goals as well.
	So have you ever known someone who's like, all I want to do is X, but they never really do X. You know, like, I bought a guitar, man, I'd really love to learn how to play guitar.
	And they'll like learn smoke on the water.
	And, you know, for me, it was the baseline from an old Sting movie.
	And, you know, I played it pretty well.
	And then it's like, oh, something shiny over there in the grass.
	Oh, look, there's a video game.
	Oh, I think I'd like to write a poem.
	Oh, I think I go get a coffee.
	Now, I could keep saying, oh, I want to learn guitar, but at some point, reason has to give way to empiricism.
	And that's why I was sort of saying, well, what's the evidence, right?
	So we can have goals, but we also need to track empirically whether we're doing anything about them.
	Now, when there's a gap between the goal and what we're actually doing, the temptation is to attack ourselves for failing to meet our goals.
	And I think that is not healthy.
	It's kind of self-abusive.
	The point is not to attack ourselves to failing to meet our goals, but simply to observe the empirical evidence that we are not acting to achieve our goals.
	And then that's the beginning of a negotiation, right?
	When we have a goal, it's not like we don't sell ourselves into slavery.
	I must meet this goal or it's 40 lashes for me, right?
	You say, okay, I've got a goal, right?
	Oh, you know, like there's been times where it's like, I really, I want to do a show today.
	Like, there's something that's about, I've got a good idea.
	And, you know, I don't know, I'm parenting, I'm parenting and I'm doing some reading and then, you know, come mid-afternoon, sorry, I'm nappy, right?
	Right?
	And am I like, oh, no, I said I wanted to do a show today, so get down there and do that show, or you're, you know, like that guy out of Full Metal Jacket, you know?
	Rip off your head and shit down your neck.
	Rip out your eyeballs and skullfuck your head, you know, just horrible, godforsaken things.
	I don't say anything like that to myself, but, I mean, I just, it's a seesaw between the goal and the empirical evidence, right?
	And things can change.
	Well, let me just say too, Steph, if you did do the full metal jacket thing, get down there and do a show, do you think you'd do a good show?
	If you were essentially holding an internal gun to your metaphorical head to go down and do something that you didn't want to do?
	Well, no, I mean, I would do a good show if I wanted to get people into the army.
	I think I'd do a great show.
	That's just not in line with several other objectives we have in the conversation, right?
	Yeah.
	But the empirical evidence is important.
	The empirical evidence, you know, the body has its say in things too.
	And the empirical evidence of what we're actually doing is very important to incorporate in our goals, right?
	So you had this goal, I want to get to 160, a muscle mass, right?
	And then you got to 150, high 140s, and you just didn't really go any further.
	So the empirical evidence is you don't really want to get to 160.
	And there's nothing wrong with saying, okay, well, this is where my body's at.
	I don't really want to mix things up.
	I don't really want to spend more time at the gym.
	So this is where I'm at.
	You know, I mean, like everyone who's over 40, could I lose another 10 pounds?
	Yeah, I probably could.
	I mean, I've been sort of plateauing here for six years at a sort of, you know, buck 98 kind of thing, buck 97.
	Could I lose another 10 pounds?
	Yeah, I probably could.
	I could say, well, I want to, but I know how important that is.
	Like, there's, okay, there's another bunch of calories I have to cut out during the day, and do I want to be hungry for the next year?
	You know, all that kind of shit, right?
	And is there really going to be any health benefits?
	I don't think so.
	And also, isn't there a risk that I could end up, you know, bird in the hand with two in the bush?
	There's a risk that if I try and lose 10 more pounds, my body's going to think I'm starving to death, and I'm going to end up at 210.
	Right?
	So, if I'm willing to really commit, consult with a nutritionist, set out a plan, measure my calories, like, for what?
	For 10 more pounds?
	Eh, you know, I'm pretty healthy weight.
	My doctor doesn't say I need to lose any weight and all that.
	So, I, you know, I could say I want to lose this, but empirically, it's not that important to me.
	And it's really tough to make a good case for that.
	Like, if the doctor said, lose 10 pounds or get diabetes, I mean, I don't know how the hell Tong Hank didn't do that, because that's what his doctor said, then I would lose 10 pounds rather than get diabetes, because it would be clear, you know, health.
	But, you know, my blood work is all great, and I can do everything that I want to do in terms of exercise and play tennis and all that.
	So, you know, I don't want to make this about me, but the empirical evidence is I don't really want to do that.
	That.
	And I can say, well, I should, but the empirical evidence is important, right?
	It's a pendulum between the ideal and what you're actually doing.
	And what you're actually doing has to have a seat at the table in negotiating what your ideals are.
	I don't know if this makes any sense.
	It makes sense.
	But what Mike said earlier was, do you have a system to track your progress?
	Do you have It's called what you're doing!
	This is your system!
	I have none of that.
	You do!
	You absolutely do!
	I mean, the system is you're not doing it.
	I guess you don't have a formal, like, I'm going to accept that I'm not doing it.
	And I'm either going to commit to doing it or I'm going to adjust my goals.
	But you kind of hang in this limbo of self-attack, right?
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	You're neither willing to adjust your goals nor adjust your behavior because the purpose is self-attack.
	The purpose is not feeling good enough for something.
	And the fact that you're with people who are working against your goals and have no particularly strong goals of their own indicates to me, my friend, that you are breaking some kind of historical mold that is making you very uncomfortable.
	In other words, that it's going to be difficult for you to succeed to the degree that you want to succeed emotionally.
	Yeah, no question or not.
	And what's that?
	What is my...
	No, tell me what is that?
	What mold are you breaking historically?
	What's going to happen to you emotionally if you go and write great songs and then you end up playing Carnegie Hall and you end up with a top-selling album and you end up touring the world?
	Whatever it is that your dream is.
	What happens to you?
	What happens to your environment?
	What happens to your surroundings?
	What happens to your family?
	What happens to your friendships if this happens to you or you make this happen?
	All of that changes?
	Well, of course it changes, but I don't think we react emotionally to change.
	I mean, the weather changes too, right?
	But what happens to you emotionally with that in place, with that occurring?
	Are you asking me what I think is going to happen, or is there an answer?
	Since it hasn't happened, it has to be hypothetical, right?
	Unless you're calling from the Sting's lap or something, right?
	I mean, it has to be hypothetical, right?
	But what happens?
	What happens to you if you get what you want as a musician?
	I guess I envision more consistent satisfaction with my life.
	Okay.
	That's not true.
	Awesome.
	Sorry.
	I'm not saying you're lying.
	I'm just saying it's not true.
	You have to be...
	Look, if what you're doing is provoking a lot of self-attack...
	I like to ask questions sometimes, man.
	It's awesome.
	I knew the answer I was going to give you was...
	Whatever.
	Anyway, keep going.
	You knew that was a bit of a stock answer, right?
	Totally, but I loved it.
	I love it.
	I love everybody.
	I'll be overjoyed because nobody ever has any ambivalence about success.
	It never causes any problems in people's life.
	I'm sure it'll be fine for me.
	Look, do you have a sibling?
	Do you have somebody who's underachieving outside of your roommates?
	I mean, is there someone who your success is going to be a challenge for?
	No.
	I mean, my father is...
	My parents are divorced.
	My father was a cop for 25 years, remarried.
	He's all about my success, and this is a whole other topic, but as long as it fits his...
	You know, his vision of my success.
	My mother has always been super supportive of me, though.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Oh, my God.
	Mike, did you hear that flyby?
	Yeah, I heard that flyby.
	We moved on.
	My father's are all, but let's move on to my mother's.
	I mean, we can talk about my dad.
	I'll talk about my dad all day.
	That is very acrobatic flying, my friend.
	Good job.
	Hey, I just want to keep it on topic.
	If we want to talk about my father, I'll talk about it all day because it's a huge part.
	It's just the topic if we're talking about you achieving goals that you set.
	Keep it on topic.
	Big part of the topic.
	Oh my goodness.
	Fuck you guys.
	Mike, Mike, first of all, I appreciate that honesty.
	Second of all, Mike, I told you to stop sending the pig oil to the listeners so that when they need to grease themselves up, they're hard to catch.
	It's supposed to come with every FDR call, you get this packet of Crisco.
	Well, you see, I've set the goal for myself to stop sending the pig oil, but I just, I, you haven't been held me accountable for it, so...
	No, that's true.
	And I shudder to think what our good friend Rico is doing with the pig oil.
	Anyway.
	Okay, so let's go back to your dad.
	He's all about your success as long as it conforms to his definition of success.
	Is that what you were saying?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I would say that's accurate.
	What does that mean?
	He is...
	I mean...
	An example would be when I was...
	So I'm 26.
	So an example of his vision and something that didn't match up with it was when I went to high school, I fell in love with playing music.
	And he was supportive, but I always, always knew that had I chosen to pursue...
	Maybe sports or criminal justice as my passion, that how proud he would have been of me would have been different.
	Does that make sense?
	It does.
	I'm trying to think, so what would that mean?
	If you became a success in his field, then he would have felt better about it?
	Yeah, I think so.
	Why?
	Why would it have to be in his field?
	I mean, I can try to answer that question.
	I think it's...
	Yeah, why don't you?
	Because the questions that are the hardest to answer are usually the ones that are most fertile, right?
	The heaviest weights, build the most muscle, you know how this goes, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I think it's because it's...
	Change is difficult for him, and unfamiliarity is different for him, and he doesn't...
	Music doesn't equal success in his eyes, you know?
	You know what I mean?
	Wait, does he not have a CD? Aren't cops in unfamiliar situations every single day?
	Isn't that essentially their job description?
	They are, but it's a different type of unfamiliarity, wouldn't you say?
	Sorry, but does your father know, does he like music?
	Does he listen to music?
	Yeah, and he expresses being proud of me in what I've done and what I've accomplished with music.
	I mean, I am not a musician full-time.
	I manage an IT department, and I'm in a 9-to-5 job, and that's what I've chosen to do, and I like it, I love it.
	Oh, are you kidding me?
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	Hold a phone.
	Hold a phone.
	Oh, man.
	Okay.
	Oh, my God.
	Put down the pig oil, Eric.
	Put down the pig oil.
	I understand it.
	No, no, no.
	That was not oily because this is all completely unconscious for you, right, Eric?
	All right.
	So, you work a nine-to-five job.
	Plus commuter.
	And you're a manager of an IT department.
	I know what that's all about.
	It's not just a 9-to-5 job, right?
	Yeah, I say I manage the IT department.
	I don't manage people.
	I mean, I manage the department and I manage the systems.
	So I don't want to imply that I'm managing other people.
	But it's a busy job, definitely.
	You manage the department but not people?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I manage the systems there.
	I manage the network.
	I administer.
	I guess I should use the word.
	Okay, so you're like a network admin.
	Yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	But it's a busy job.
	I assume that there may be some on-call aspects to it?
	A lot, yeah.
	Right.
	So that's what I mean when I say it's not just a 9-to-5 job, right?
	Not just a 9-to-5 job.
	You want to become a musician, which is a fiercely, fiercely competitive field, right?
	Yes.
	And your goal, in the midst of working a full-time job and entering to possibly what is the most competitive field in human endeavors, you also say, you know what would be great?
	If I packed on 20 or 30 pounds of muscle.
	Aha!
	It would be great.
	Aha!
	Aha!
	So this has...
	I mean, that is completely setting itself up for failure, right?
	I... I feel like it's achievable.
	No, it is not.
	Look, as a musician, is it better for you to spend eight hours a week writing music, or is it better for you to spend eight hours a week in the gym?
	I don't mean forever, for the rest of your life or whatever, but what's better for your career?
	Yeah, I mean, that's the whole...
	Question.
	I mean, yes, spending more time writing music, spending more time doing anyone, anyone spending more time doing whatever it is that they want to do to become a master of that thing, you should spend more time doing that.
	Okay, okay.
	Oh my god, Mr.
	Abstract.
	Let me ask you again.
	Please don't give me a lecture on how to get things done.
	Theoretically, excellence is better than non-excellence.
	Right, okay.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Is it better for you to be writing music eight hours a week or to be going to the gym eight hours a week?
	Is it better for me?
	Since you want to be a musician and not a weightlifter or an athlete, is it better for you?
	Like if I said to you, man, I work a full-time job.
	I really want to become an Olympic athlete.
	So what I'm doing is spending eight hours a week learning guitar.
	What would you say?
	I'd say you're spending your time the wrong way.
	Oh, so now you hate music.
	I hate it.
	But do you understand?
	So you're saying, I really want to be a musician, so I decided to put on 30 pounds of muscle.
	It's like, how big is your fucking instrument?
	Jesus, God, what are you, playing Stonehenge?
	You have to lift the damn thing and clap it together?
	Are your guitar strings the size of telephone wires?
	I mean, what...
	My drums are pretty heavy.
	But do you actually have to beat them with a tree through the floor?
	That's my question.
	Are you beheading people?
	Is that your drumming?
	Are you an executioner?
	You'd be surprised how heavy gong mallets weigh.
	Yeah.
	Is it a caber toss with a kettle drum at the other end?
	No.
	So the muscle is not helping you be a musician, right?
	The muscle was never about the...
	It was about...
	Okay, the last caller, not using the word aesthetics correctly, by the way.
	But the muscle...
	No, I get it.
	I thought that you were a guy who made some money doing music and wanted to buff up some, right?
	But if you've got a full-time job and you want to become a musician, throwing in four or five days a week at the gym is a terrible idea.
	Yeah, I sacrificed and I continue to sacrifice...
	Music for other things.
	Right.
	And you also, Eric, let me just point out too, when you said that you worked as a manager or administrator and that you did music on the side, you said, and I love it.
	I absolutely love it.
	I question that statement.
	What would you rather do?
	Would you rather be a full-time musician doing that without the IT stuff on the side?
	Are we talking purely on...
	My enjoyment of that thing outside of...
	If you could choose right now how you're going to spend the next 20 years of your life, would it be 60% IT and 40% music?
	Or would it be 100% and 60% IT? I mean, I make...
	Probably...
	20 times more money.
	20 times the amount of money in IT as I do.
	Mike, do you hear that?
	We have to have a Crisco sound.
	You know what?
	We need a sound.
	Eric, maybe you make 20 times more money in IT because you're spending more time on IT and bodybuilding than you are.
	No, no.
	Mike, don't get dragged into that.
	That was not your question.
	Mike, don't follow him down the rabbit hole.
	It's our job to pull people out.
	It's oily.
	I know.
	I know.
	It's definitely deep-fried and a well-oiled whole...
	Anyway, let's talk back for another time.
	But no, the question was, you would rather be a musician than an IT guy, right?
	Yeah, no question about it.
	Okay, right.
	So the question is, what are you doing at the gym?
	Are you asking about my workout?
	Why would you be at the gym if you already have a full-time job and you want to be a musician?
	Because I feel like it increases my sexual market value.
	Okay, all right.
	More than being a musician.
	It enhances it.
	Okay, so you want to get laid more than you want to be a musician.
	I didn't think those two were so opposed, but that's what you feel, right?
	Is it because you feel short and slight and therefore you want to have more muscles?
	Yeah, I would say that's part of it.
	I think that my height is a disadvantage in the sexual marketplace and so I want to be in shape.
	Right.
	Okay, got it.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, no, I completely understand it, but it means that you can't be a musician.
	Why?
	Because there's only one way to be a musician.
	I mean, unless you're just ungodly dedicated and you can become a session musician, to my knowledge, there is only one way to be a musician, and that is to write great songs.
	I mean, unless you want to be a cover band making beer money and gas money, right?
	I mean, you have to write your own material, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Is it a hobby or is it a career?
	Yeah, I mean, that's the only way that you can do it.
	And like, you know, 95% of the money in the music goes to 5% of the people and those 5% of the people are the 5% who write great songs.
	And you don't even have to write that many.
	Like, what was the last hit that Jon Bon Jovi wrote?
	I mean, what is it, 20 years ago or something like that?
	But his hair looks great.
	I don't know how old he is, but it looks.
	He's living on a prayer, man.
	He's living on a prayer.
	He's just living on royalties.
	His prayer is royalties.
	I pray for royalties.
	Screeching on a prayer!
	Right?
	So, I mean, it's...
	You don't even have to write...
	I mean, what was Billy Joel's last hit, for God's sakes, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, other than him plowing into a tree half-baked in his car, right?
	I mean, his last hit was, gosh, 30 years ago?
	Guy's still touring.
	Elton John, when was his last hit?
	Right, so you write yourself like a half dozen or dozen hits.
	I mean, you are a multimillionaire for life, right?
	I mean, I get that.
	The gym is four hours a week.
	No, but it's not just that.
	It's the mental space.
	It's the research.
	You said you did lots of research and reading.
	It's traveling too.
	It's extra showering.
	It's doing the laundry for your gym clothes.
	It's a lot more than four hours a week.
	How much time did you spend mentally feeling guilty?
	How much mental space did you accumulate feeling guilty for not having achieved your goal of putting on the extra muscle?
	That's factored in as well.
	It's spinning the bandwidth in your mental space.
	Let me ask you one other question, Eric.
	Did it work?
	Did you up your bangability?
	I don't mean drum-wise.
	Yeah, I did.
	I haven't slept with a thousand women.
	I can't claim that.
	I haven't even been on a thousand days.
	I think you're the first person to say it honestly, but go ahead.
	Yeah, I mean...
	I've slept with probably 40 women.
	No, but what I mean is, did it go up since you got more muscle?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah, definitely.
	And have you got yourself a high-quality girlfriend out of your abs?
	No, but that has been a specific...
	That has not been part of my goals.
	I don't...
	Oh, you were just bulking up your inner man whore, right?
	Like, you weren't looking for any kind of quality relationship.
	You were just looking for, like, low-quality women who were into abs.
	No.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I... I would definitely consider being in a relationship if I found the right woman, but the idea was that I wanted to date women and meet women and see if...
	No, no, no.
	You didn't want to date women and you didn't want to meet women.
	You wanted to have sex with women.
	Yeah, I wanted to have sex with women, definitely.
	Okay.
	And so you found women that you could have sex with, but not women you wanted to get into a relationship with?
	Hmm...
	I'm not criticizing.
	No, I know, I know, I know.
	Let's be frank about it, right?
	Guy to guy.
	I... I got...
	Okay, so to give you an idea...
	You wanted to use your abs like a kind of semi-swipe easy pass.
	I had a previous relationship.
	Got burned.
	How?
	Cheated on.
	Oh, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	What happened?
	It's okay.
	You were a drummer, right?
	Yeah.
	Now everyone knows I have this rational hate on for drummers.
	I'm willing to make an exception in your case.
	I didn't know that, actually.
	Well, you know it now.
	And it's obviously just sexual jealousy.
	But anyway.
	But...
	Yeah, what happened?
	We met going into my freshman year of college.
	And...
	We slept together probably the week that we got there.
	We had hung out a little bit before that.
	We met the summer before.
	Slept together.
	Asked her out.
	She said no.
	Wait, wait.
	You slept together and then you asked her out?
	Yeah.
	Oh my god.
	I just can't understand.
	Dude, I was 18.
	Okay, okay.
	That was not going on when I was a kid.
	I was eight years ago.
	It's crazy.
	Okay, so yeah.
	We slept together...
	Drunkenly slept together.
	Asked her out.
	She said she didn't want to get in a relationship.
	Why did you want to go out with her?
	I liked her.
	I thought that was the right thing to do.
	I don't know.
	What did you like about her?
	I liked that she slept with me.
	Okay.
	I appreciate the frankness.
	Wait.
	I can do this again?
	Can I buy you a ring for that?
	Is that okay?
	Would you like a car?
	Excellent.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	I'm gonna open up the hatchback.
	This is not a hint.
	Okay, it is.
	Alright.
	So, you like the fact that she slept with you.
	You wanted to do it again.
	And she then said, no, she wasn't gonna go out with you?
	Yeah.
	She didn't want to go out with you.
	Right.
	And you said, but I'm a drummer.
	And you said, well, this guy on the internet doesn't like drummers.
	He's not allowing any of us to date drummers.
	Anyway.
	So, then what happened?
	So, we stayed friends.
	No.
	No.
	You orbited.
	Orbited.
	Hoping for an opening.
	Absolutely.
	If I hang around long enough, maybe she'll get drunk again.
	I did date other women.
	I did sleep with other women my freshman and sophomore year.
	I was dating around.
	I didn't...
	I know an orbiter when...
	I see one.
	Now, I was friends with her and I orbited a little bit, but I still maintained outcome independence.
	I think.
	Okay, and then?
	She was active, sexually active.
	Should I use the term cock carousel?
	It's fine with me.
	Okay, cool.
	I mean, what was it Hulk Hogan was talking about?
	Oh dear.
	He would allow his daughter to date a black man if he was eight foot tall, like a basketball player.
	So in other words, his daughter is sort of like a carnival ride, but with a height requirement.
	So, okay.
	Yeah, I'm fine with that.
	Oh, you found a place for that joke, Steph.
	Shh.
	It's all spontaneous, Mike.
	It's all off the cuff.
	Not stolen from any YouTube comments anywhere.
	Eric, I'd like to thank you, and I'm pretty much done with this show now, now that I've got a chance to get that joke out.
	That's it.
	That's all you needed me for.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm done with you.
	Get lost.
	I've sobered up.
	Get out of my bed.
	And then what happened?
	So, two years passed, and it is the...
	Years?
	How hot was this woman?
	Oh, man.
	She was not that attractive.
	I mean, she was attractive, but she was probably...
	Want to get me a number rating?
	I don't know.
	Six and a half, seven?
	You were hanging around for two years for six and a half, seven?
	What unholy godforsaken satanic shit did you guys get up to in the bedroom that you were hanging around for two years for this?
	What did she come with?
	A live ferret?
	Like, what the hell?
	So, then, so she's dating a guy in her This is our sophomore year.
	She's dating a guy.
	Sorry, this is bringing back a lot of memories.
	I haven't talked about this in a while.
	He broke up.
	We ended up hanging out again, slept together maybe a few times.
	Then she told me she was getting back together with him.
	I got wasted, punched a wall, broke my hand.
	Absolutely over that.
	Wait, you mean over this woman?
	Yeah, I was really upset that she had gotten back together with him.
	So, then she gets back together with him, then starts, I think, seeing another guy.
	I kind of forget about it.
	And then...
	What do you forget about?
	I kind of...
	You don't want to date her anymore?
	Oh, no.
	I was still totally into her.
	God damn it, man.
	Why?
	Dude, I'm just telling you the story.
	No, I'm asking a question.
	Yeah.
	I did not have the...
	Whatever I have now as awareness...
	I didn't have back then.
	How much like your mother was she?
	I could be way off base.
	This is the first question that pops into my head.
	Because that's some serious anima stuff going on.
	There's a lot more to it, Steph.
	There's a lot more.
	But I didn't see a lot of parallels between them.
	Okay, that could be completely unfair.
	That's just because I can't understand why this not exactly wholesome young lady would be the object of your affection year after year.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	What I attribute it to, I mean, I've thought about it a lot, but I mean, I told you, my parents got divorced when I was two.
	And I was raised by a single mother.
	I've listened to your single mother podcast many, many times.
	And the way that I carried myself around her and what I thought was...
	Wait, her being your mom or this woman?
	No, sorry, this woman.
	Okay.
	The way that I... The way that I thought I should act around her and the things that I should do to gain her affection were off base.
	I learned the wrong things.
	I didn't have a consistently strong male influence in my upbringing.
	I had my father.
	I saw him on the weekends.
	But it was very surface level.
	Did you talk about this woman with your parents?
	During this time, no.
	Why?
	This is your sexual obsession?
	I mean, I'm not saying you give them the grim details, but wouldn't you talk about this stuff with your parents?
	I mean, I might have mentioned like...
	No, no.
	I mean, really talk about it.
	No, no.
	Because it wouldn't take a lot of knowledge to give you some perspective, which is like, no, this is not a wholesome woman.
	She slept with you the first time you got together because she was drunk.
	This is not queen of good judgment, so to speak.
	Not that sleeping with you is bad judgment, but sleeping with anyone you just met because you're drunk is bad judgment.
	Yeah.
	No, I didn't have this conversation with anybody at the time.
	So here we have again asking for help, right?
	You fly solo.
	Yeah, yeah.
	In storms without instrumentation, you fly solo.
	And every time you crash, it's your fault.
	I mean, that's your...
	Roadmap, right?
	Yeah, it's a common theme.
	No doubt about it.
	I'll do it by myself.
	I'll sort things out by myself.
	I'll figure it out by myself.
	It's a lonely way to go through life.
	And it's an exhausting way to go through life.
	Because you have to reinvent the wheel all the time.
	Like you had to, you got a plateau with your Muscle adding and try and figure it all out by yourself, right?
	With this woman, you're orbiting around or you're floating around or circling around this low-end woman.
	I don't even want to tell you the rest of what happened.
	No, no, tell me.
	Especially if you don't want to tell me.
	Absolutely.
	Now, I'm sold.
	Give me the next installment.
	I'm in.
	Okay, you ready?
	I am.
	So we're going to school in Burlington, Vermont.
	And this is the first summer after sophomore year that we decide to live in Burlington.
	We're living in separate spots.
	I'm playing in the band.
	I'm living with my band.
	And she's living in an apartment.
	And we start hanging out and we start dating.
	And things are swell in my book.
	They're great.
	Things are really good for the summer.
	They feel good.
	Everything seems fine and dandy.
	Wait, like good more than just regular sex?
	Like good like she's a good person, like she's supportive, like she's helpful?
	Everything felt right.
	It felt great, honestly.
	There was communication.
	We were...
	Spending a lot of time together.
	The sex was good.
	She was coming to see my shows.
	You learned about her childhood.
	You figured out the dysfunctions she may have, how she dealt with them.
	No, I mean, we talked about family all the time.
	I knew exactly what her...
	Okay, not exactly, but we talked about family a lot.
	I met her parents.
	I knew her parents very well.
	Did she have a fairly functional childhood?
	The only thing that was a red flag for me was that she got drunk a lot in high school and got grounded a lot by her parents and I know that her father got really upset with her often and she would lie to her parents consistently about where she was going and who she was hanging out with.
	So sleeping with guys she just met when she's drunk is not a red flag?
	Oh, yeah.
	That's a good flag.
	That's a good red flag.
	If it was me, though...
	Not if that guy's you.
	No, it's me.
	Access, man.
	Okay.
	There's more than one red flag here, I'm just telling you that.
	But you'd need really pretty together people in your life to tell you that, I would assume.
	I didn't even understand the concept of what a red flag was at the time.
	If you had said the word red flag to me...
	Warning signs or how to evaluate someone's character to give your heart to them or whatever, right?
	I mean, I had dated a girl, two girls in high school that...
	Tons of red flags, too.
	What that means is that your mom has got to have had tons of red flags.
	She does have tons of red flags.
	And what are your red flags for your mom?
	Well, she recently physically assaulted my stepfather.
	Very recently.
	How bad?
	Punches, scratched him in the face.
	Bleeding.
	Wow.
	And why?
	What was the cover story for this viciousness?
	Trying to recall.
	Also, they have a six-year-old daughter, too.
	And my half-sister.
	Did she witness this?
	I don't think that she visually witnessed it.
	I know that she was crying and she was...
	Was she in the house when this happened?
	Yes.
	I heard everything.
	Oh my god.
	That's unbelievable.
	Yeah.
	So, from what I... Red flags.
	Sorry.
	You said red flags.
	This would be one of them?
	So your mother is...
	Physically assaults her husband.
	Physically assaults her husband when there's a six-year-old child in the house.
	Okay.
	Anything else?
	Red flags for my mother?
	Well, she was...
	I don't know if this is a red flag, but she was adopted, one of four, three other adopted children, one birthed One that her parents had one child biologically and three adopted children.
	She was one of them.
	And do you know why she was adopted?
	What happened to her birth mother?
	She gave her up for adoption because she had her too young.
	Abandonment.
	No question about it.
	She's aware of that.
	She mentions it a lot.
	What does she say about it?
	Abandonment issues.
	She's like, I've been dealing with abandonment my whole life.
	I was given up for adoption.
	That's what I think.
	How old was she when she was given up for adoption?
	My mom?
	Yeah.
	I mean, at birth.
	Oh, at birth.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	That's usually, as far as I understand, not quite as bad as if she's been badly parented for a couple of years and then is given up for adoption.
	Right.
	I know that she physically assaulted my father, too, in their marriage.
	I mean, she clearly, you know, referencing the Single Mothers podcast, she couldn't keep a marriage together.
	And so...
	Did your father know about her?
	Obviously, he knew about her violent streak, right?
	My father?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it happened to him.
	And then...
	Right, so did he ever try and gain custody so that you didn't have a violent woman in control of your life as a child?
	No, he actually moved farther away from her.
	So he couldn't handle her violence, but you as a two-year-old, I mean, you'll be fine, right?
	Because you're two, and he's only a cop, so what chance would he have with you, like the all-powerful Superman two-year-old, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	Well, so what's really interesting, Steph, is the relationship between my mother and my father in their marriage and I think early into their divorce.
	I draw serious parallels to the relationship that I'm describing with my ex-girlfriend.
	Because my mother and father describe a situation where they were in marriage counseling and My mother is sitting there in the therapy session with her arms crossed, scowling something.
	I don't know what they're talking about.
	My father is sitting there with his hands in his face, just bawling his eyes out, crying, trying to figure out what's wrong and what happened.
	And when I heard that story after some of the experiences that I had with my ex-girlfriend, it was very telling.
	I'm sorry, you just gobbled up for me for a sec when you said after she said, you know, her hands crossed.
	What was after that?
	Oh, sorry.
	So she was sitting there in the therapy session with her arms crossed, scowling, and my father was sitting there with his hands in his face crying, just bawling his eyes out about, you know, whatever it was they were talking about, you know, why she doesn't love him anymore or...
	What's wrong with the marriage or something?
	Just not sticking up for himself and not...
	So she felt rejected as a kid and so she feels that she's reenacting that rejection against others.
	It's that, again, rough amateur hour.
	And you experienced this with your girlfriend, the woman we're talking about?
	Yeah, so if we jump back to when we started dating, we dated for a year, things seemed good.
	And...
	There was a weekend.
	It was our junior year, I guess.
	And sorry to interrupt.
	Did your mother met her?
	Did your mother like her?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, they got along.
	So you should have dumped her right then.
	No, seriously.
	I know.
	I'm not kidding.
	I'm not kidding.
	I'm deadly serious.
	If an abusive person really likes someone, dump them.
	If a violent woman really likes your girlfriend, no problems with her whatsoever, dump the girl.
	Anyway, go on, if you don't mind.
	You've been dating for a year.
	Sorry, I interrupted you.
	You've been dating for a year?
	Dating for a year.
	Things were going all right?
	Things were okay, yeah.
	I later found out about things that had happened that year.
	Later.
	But in my perspective at that time, things were great.
	We get an apartment together the following summer.
	So this is the summer after junior year.
	And I was having band practice one night.
	And I knew that she was hanging out with her girlfriends and they were drinking.
	And we're texting back and forth, and then the texting drops off.
	I don't really think twice about it.
	Come back to my apartment late night and walk into the apartment, and she is passed out naked on our bed, puke all over the place.
	She's the icy guy's boxers on the floor and a condom on the floor.
	And I'm freaking out, obviously.
	The memory is...
	Vivid, but...
	Did you think she'd been raped?
	If you have sex with a woman who's passed out, that's not consensual, right?
	Yeah, I mean, she doesn't...
	When I woke her up, she was completely gone, blackout, beyond comprehension.
	She had no idea what was going on.
	So yeah, I... At the time, I considered it cheating.
	But she claimed blackout and she didn't know.
	Yeah, we had a woman like that on once before.
	Yeah.
	It may have been true.
	Who knows, right?
	It may have been true.
	What I did find out later was that she was out with her friends and that she...
	Was talking to a guy and, you know, smiling and giggling, and they walked back to, and she's obviously very drunk at this point, and her friend was with her and was like, hey, you shouldn't do that, but they went back anyway.
	Wait, did her friend say to the guy she has a boyfriend?
	No, no.
	Oh, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Because, I mean, that would be a pretty, you know, did she phone you and say, listen, man, your girlfriend's going home with some guy, you've got to get here.
	Nope.
	So not a wide tribe of quality people that are going on around here, right?
	No.
	Or even halfway decent people.
	Gets worse.
	Alright.
	So I wake her up and she's beyond comprehension and we're still living together obviously and I don't know what to do.
	I have this...
	I remember writing this long letter Just like totally in disbelief, you know, not knowing what to do.
	Wait, so your girlfriend was still passed out.
	The guy's boxers and condom were on the floor?
	Yeah.
	Where was the guy?
	Not there.
	Oh, he left his boxers behind and his condom on the floor.
	Classy.
	Yeah.
	So my thought, when I thought about it later, was that it might have been somebody we lived with, because we lived in an apartment complex.
	But...
	Oh, you didn't know about the bar and the flirting and all that, right?
	No, no, no.
	No.
	So, we, uh...
	I'm like, you know, oh, you were blackout?
	Well, you know, blackout's not cheating.
	But I don't understand why it matters.
	What does it matter whether she was blacked out or not?
	Steph, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
	At the time...
	And I don't mean...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I don't mean does it have no impact in terms of the moral quality of the situation.
	Yeah, it does.
	Because if she consented to sex, then it's cheating.
	And if she was passed out, then the guy kind of raped her, right?
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Right.
	So I understand it has a moral quality to it.
	But from a boyfriend standpoint...
	It doesn't really matter.
	No, and just so you know, I found out that she had slept with other guys before this one.
	The previous year.
	Well, we don't even know if she slept with this one or whether she was raped, right?
	Right, right.
	So we stay together and we are together going into our senior year.
	Well, hang on.
	How was this resolved?
	What was...
	We...
	I was trying to make a decision whether I wanted to stay together with her or not, and I eventually...
	No, but what was she doing?
	Did she say, okay, I'll go find this guy and press charges?
	Did she say, I'm going to go to Alcoholics Anonymous?
	Did she say, I'm never going to drink again?
	Nope.
	What did she do?
	Or was it just like, hey, shit happens, right?
	It was apologies, and it was, I don't have any...
	But excuses?
	Excuses, yes.
	Right.
	I'm sorry that it happened.
	I had no control over it because I was drunk.
	Of course, then it's like, well, why is the guy even in the house to begin with?
	Well, I don't remember.
	Where were you before that?
	Well, I don't remember.
	Like, would you get in lots of evasion?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Lots of I don't remember.
	But did you talk to her friends?
	Right, because you've got to put on full, like, Agatha Christie mode, right?
	Inspector Pureau, right?
	Because with this kind of shit, you've just got to get to the bottom of it, like, and right away.
	I wanted to run away from it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	Because you're a single mom and no good role models and so on.
	But just for those who, you know, you've learned better.
	But for those, you get to the bottom of this stuff and you don't, like, put your head to the pillow until you figure it all out.
	Right?
	So you ask her to retrace her steps.
	Where were you then?
	Who were you with?
	Okay, give me their number.
	I'm going to call them.
	I'm going to find out what happened.
	Right?
	Let's keep this condom.
	It's got physical evidence.
	It's got semen in it, right?
	In case we need to press charges, right?
	Let's go get you a rape kit.
	You've got to get to the bottom of it, because if you live in that fog land, it's just going to get worse for everyone.
	Yeah.
	Lived in the fog land, though.
	I'll just point out, too, that unless she was drugged straight away, she still made the decision to imbibe that much alcohol to put herself in that state, which carries with it a moral culpability for that kind of thing.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, it's not like you don't get to say, well, okay, I crashed into your dog, but it's okay because I was drunk and I didn't mean to.
	The drunk just makes it worse.
	She drunk pussied, right?
	She got drunk and she drove a pussy.
	It doesn't make it better.
	I mean, it was the same type of behavior that I had seen before.
	Before we had even started dating.
	Yeah, it's exactly what happened with you, although I assume she wasn't that drunk with you.
	No, certainly.
	Right, so I mean, the end is in the beginning, that's right.
	But nobody told you that the end is in the beginning, right?
	Nope.
	I mean, how's your mom going to warn you away from crazy women, right?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So then what happens?
	You say, does it get even grimmer from here?
	Uh-huh.
	Alright.
	So we're together going into our senior year, and I'm just constantly reminding her of that event.
	Because it's not resolved for you, right?
	Nope.
	Because she still hasn't accepted responsibility for what she did and made rational efforts to amend and ameliorate.
	No closure for you yet?
	No closure for me.
	I'm involved in a research project.
	I was a psychology music undergrad and I was involved in a research project and I was working at Staples and I was also working at a restaurant.
	So I wasn't putting a whole lot of time into her, I guess.
	She had a job at Best Buy, and I don't remember how it happened, but I began to notice she was getting distant, and I logged into her Facebook, found messages between her and another guy that she worked with, Um, you know, pretty obviously flirting and, you know, oh, I can't wait to see you later, smiley face, that type of shit.
	And, uh, you know, asked her about it, oh, we're just friends, we're just friends, like, uh, all this stuff.
	And I was, like, you know, completely devastated.
	I didn't have the awareness to even think that she had been getting physical with him at all.
	She just lied to my face, you know, never been, no, we never kissed, no, we never, none of that, uh, And then I... You know, time passed and she asks for a break.
	And I say, okay.
	And, uh...
	I hear there are other penises out there in the forest I'd like to go exploring.
	There are other penises out there, yeah.
	Yep.
	So, um...
	So that happens, and I find out that she goes skiing with him, goes snowboarding, whatever.
	And I just remember calling my mom at this point.
	My mom.
	And asking her for advice.
	I'm devastated, just really, really upset.
	And she's asking her what I should do.
	And she's like, well, she needs to know that you're not going to go anywhere.
	What?
	Oh, hey, crazy lady.
	Can I get some help with the crazy lady?
	Yes, I can give you some crazy advice on how to deal with the crazy lady so things will get even crazier.
	I can see why you don't want to go for help, right?
	I never said it was a character flaw, but it's completely clear why you don't like going for help because you get jump-off-the-cliff advice, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've never...
	I've tried to summarize or put together moments in my life where I've asked for advice and have not gotten good advice, but that was absolutely one of them.
	Because I remember going to this woman and just holding her by the shoulders and saying, I'm not going anywhere, babe.
	I'm going to be right here.
	And God, it makes me sick to think about myself saying that.
	But I did.
	And that's the approach that I was taking.
	And you know that mom was all about her, right?
	Your mom was basically saying, don't leave me.
	To me?
	Yeah.
	She was saying this to you, right?
	Yeah, Mike, go ahead.
	What's the principle there?
	Okay, here's someone that's treated you badly.
	Here's someone that's dysfunctional, who's You know, I mean, cheated on you, a whole ball of wax, but still declare yourself.
	Let them know that you're not going anywhere, that you're going to stick around.
	What was she saying to you in that situation?
	Don't leave me, Eric.
	Don't leave a woman that has treated you badly.
	You're going to be there to take care of me in my old age, right?
	If someone needs to wipe my ass when I'm 75, you're going to be there, right?
	This is the principle we're putting down.
	Don't eject crazy women from your life.
	Be there for them.
	Be there for them.
	Alright, anyway, let's go back on to what happens after this.
	So...
	I got to the point where I didn't want to...
	I don't know how this really happened, but I was like, I'm done.
	I don't want to deal with this anymore.
	And...
	I said, this was the advice from my mother, you know, tell her that you're going to be off the radar for a week and that we'll talk in a week and if she wants to make changes then she can let me know that or some bullshit like that.
	So I go off the radar for a week and of course what happens, you know, this girl Messages me midweek and says, oh, I miss you.
	I want to see you.
	So we get back together and we go skiing one weekend and I look at her phone and she had met up with him, this guy, for his birthday.
	And I called her out on it and I was obviously very upset and threatened to break up with her and she...
	It's just the same dancing around, excuses, all this stuff.
	He's my friend and we're just friends.
	At this point, it's the end of the school year.
	I had been working hard this whole semester composing five or six pieces for my senior recital.
	And I remember...
	This is just an aside, but I remember writing my thank yous on my brochure and writing her name and just feeling so horrible about myself and the whole situation.
	And so...
	What happens is that she doesn't have enough credits to graduate.
	She fucked something up and her advisor or some miscommunication, whatever, and she has to move home and take classes.
	And I'm planning on living in Burlington with my band and playing.
	And of course, what do I do?
	I'll follow you and I'll go home.
	And I move back in with my parents and follow her back to Massachusetts from Burlington.
	And...
	At this point, she's away from Burlington and things start to get better from what I see.
	Then some months later, after some couple fights, whatever, she wants to go on a break again.
	So we do.
	And we get back together, and then she gets a different job.
	I'm working in retail at the time, Apple.
	And she and I were doing really, really well, and we go on vacation to Chile to visit her sister who's studying abroad there.
	And after the week is over, I was just finishing up a shower on the last day we were there, or second to last day, and I come out to her and her sister sitting in front of a computer, just bawling their eyes out, and had found out that one of their childhood friends had been killed in a plane crash.
	And this guy that was killed in the plane crash was a very close friend of hers in high school.
	Uh, alpha male.
	She was attracted to him for sure.
	And it really, really, uh, fucked us up.
	I could tell that she had had feelings for him in the past, like way in the past.
	And that it was, it just completely threw a wrench in, in between us again.
	And, um, so then, uh, Our relationship just kind of went downhill and I ended up meeting up with this girl in California on a trip with my family and an old friend of mine and getting real physically intimate with her.
	We're still girlfriend and boyfriend at the time and so I cheated on her and then a couple weeks later I slept with another girl I cheated on her again.
	And I told her about it.
	And I was like, obviously, you know, things aren't good.
	And I ended the relationship because I cheated on her.
	And she was the most affectionate and desperate that I had ever seen her in a long time after that.
	And just doing everything she can to get me back.
	And at the time, she started developing this relationship with this guy at work again.
	And just to wrap it up, she ended up...
	We ended up trying to get back together.
	She wanted to go on a break again.
	She slept with him.
	We got back together.
	She cheated on me with him again.
	And the relationship between the two of us, myself and this woman, you know, finally...
	I finally discovered...
	Came to a merciful end.
	Came to a...
	Yeah.
	I mean, just probably...
	Our actual...
	In quotes, monogamous, what we quoted as a monogamous relationship ended like a year and a half ago.
	And then I read a lot of material about improving myself.
	I read the Rational Mail, I'm sure you know it, Steph and Mike.
	I don't actually.
	Yeah.
	I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.
	Yeah, so I read The Rational Mail and a lot of other material like that and just was completely...
	Enlightened, basically.
	Just realized every single mistake I had made from the beginning with this woman.
	And so I started dating other women.
	And this woman, my ex-girlfriend, still wanted to get back together with me.
	And I told her that I didn't want to get back into a relationship with her and that I wouldn't get back into a relationship with her.
	If she wanted to hang out and fuck, then I would.
	And so I fucked her for probably a year amongst other women.
	All of them, all the while letting her know that I was dating other women and that I would not be in a monogamous relationship with her ever again.
	Is this advice that's in this book, The Rational Male?
	No, no, no, certainly not.
	Oh, good.
	I was going to say, okay, you sound too rational to me.
	Far from it.
	Far from it.
	So the book was influential, but not that influential.
	It was influential in the sense that...
	Understanding the dynamics at play.
	Understanding the dynamics at play.
	I learned that...
	Yeah, dynamics, basically.
	I'll say that, too, because a lot of people with the pickup material, they say, like, oh, there's a lot of value in it.
	And I mean, I understand understanding the sexual economics and the dynamics at play.
	There's incredible value in that.
	I read Neil Strauss's book, The Game, way back when it first came out.
	And there was value in understanding that for me, too, because I had no idea at the time.
	I had no modeling.
	I had no conversations about this kind of stuff.
	I didn't get anything about the sexual marketplace, and that opened my eyes.
	So I understand when people say there's value in that type of stuff, because there is from a sheer, oh, someone has opened the curtain and now I can see standpoint, yeah.
	No more Mr.
	Nice Guy is a common one, too.
	But it didn't keep you safe.
	Because this woman is, in my amateur opinion, kind of disturbed, right?
	Yeah, and it's...
	And she could have turned around and, you know, some guy could have raped her and she could have said, oh, it was Eric.
	Yeah.
	What I mean is in terms of keeping safe, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, yeah, that continued for a while and I dated...
	I don't know, just to give you a timeline, I guess, that...
	She might have said she's on the pill or she's got some sort of birth control and not, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	You certainly had people call into the show with those kind of stories.
	Yeah, I, it was something, it's something that I would never, that I wouldn't have put faster.
	Mm-hmm.
	So this whole story originated from, Steph, you asking me about being in a monogamous relationship again.
	And when I observe my past and myself, one of the reasons why I don't want to get into a monogamous relationship is because Trust is obviously something that...
	I don't know if I trust women now.
	It's hard.
	No, you don't trust yourself.
	If you trusted your own judgment with regards to women, then you'd be fine, right?
	Yeah, no, I don't.
	I do not trust my ability to judge a woman.
	Right.
	I have no idea.
	Steph, mind if I? There's something that's been burning in my brain, Eric, as you've been telling this story.
	Are you aware of the shift that happened regarding your relationships with women, period, within the context of the story that you have told, Eric?
	I was very broad.
	I know.
	Do you mean...
	A shift happened when a good friend of mine introduced me to that book, The Rational Mail, amongst some other materials and blogs and whatnot.
	Okay, so that's the point I'm thinking of, but what dynamic changed within your relationships upon having access to that information?
	Because I think there's a stark shift Yeah, it was putting my needs before others.
	The idea was to switch from beta to alpha.
	The thought that came up in my head is you spent a whole lot of time getting rejected.
	Now you're the one that's going to be in the position of doing the rejection.
	Power.
	When you have a relationship, someone is getting rejected and someone is doing the rejection.
	That's the template.
	So now you have this information.
	Now you're switching within the context of this relationship template where someone always has to be rejected.
	Now you're going to be in the alpha position of doing the rejection.
	Yep.
	Right.
	Yeah, that was absolutely the shift.
	And would you say that remains your template now, where relationships, there's got to be someone that's getting rejected and someone that's doing the rejection within the context of a relationship?
	Yes.
	Do you think this has anything to do with the fact you were hoping to put on extra muscle weight?
	Yes.
	I didn't have to finish the sentence.
	Okay.
	No doubt about it.
	No doubt about it.
	The idea of starting to work out and lift and get in shape was I want to...
	You're not going to get rejected anymore.
	Yeah.
	Remove rejection.
	Reduce it.
	Right.
	And that's not the only template that's available for relationships.
	Right.
	And it certainly sounds like that hasn't been modeled for you.
	And you don't have many examples of that.
	But I'm telling you, that is not the only template that exists.
	In friendships, romantic relationships, it's not always someone wins, someone loses.
	There's a whole lot of that going on.
	Don't get me wrong.
	But win-win relationships can and do exist.
	And breaking outside that template of someone's gotta lose within this interaction is gonna lead you finding the type of people that, to play into your earlier question, are gonna be nurturing and supportive of your dreams and passions.
	I feel like the win-win Relationships are at least non-platonic ones.
	My romantic relationships are rare or non-existent.
	I have yet to encounter any of them that felt like they were both, that it was win-win.
	It has always felt like somebody is winning and someone is losing.
	Have you been aware of this pattern at all before we've kind of talked about it today?
	Or is this something that's kind of new with what's been playing out since you were exposed to the rational male material and that type of stuff?
	I was...
	I don't know.
	I think that...
	I think it is new.
	I think that when you say that is not the template that relationships need to adhere to, that's a new statement for me.
	How long have you listened to the show, Eric?
	I have no idea.
	How long have you listened?
	Six months, seven months.
	I'm sure somewhere in there you've come across the idea of win-win negotiation within the context of relationships, because it's not an infrequent topic.
	I've read...
	Well, where I get...
	Where I know win-win from is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
	And so...
	I want to make the distinction if you were aware of it at all, or if, like, I think a lot of people do, especially when we talk about virtue and relationships and that type of stuff.
	I think a lot of people are like, well, that's a nice idea, but practically that just, I don't see any good people in my periphery.
	I don't think that's possible because it doesn't, there's no one immediately around me that fits that bill.
	I can't see it being plausible.
	So it's a nice idea, but it's all intellectual.
	It's not practical.
	It was practical to me at one point, and the point at which it was practical to me was when I read the book, and I was still in a relationship with the woman that I'm speaking of.
	I wish we could just give her a fake name.
	I should say Jane.
	When I was in a relationship with Jane, I read the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I remember bringing it to her and saying, please read this.
	Please read this.
	I think that you would learn a lot from it, and I think it would be great for us.
	And she didn't read it.
	She read a couple of chapters, and I don't get it.
	It doesn't interest me, all this shit.
	So you tried to bring win-win, and you got rejected?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	I remember specifically, Mike, bringing up the topic of win-win to her and saying, this is how we can think about the situations that we encounter every day, that we can both, that we can compromise, that we can figure out a way for us to both be happy with a situation.
	I mean, in Seven Habits, he applies it to business.
	Please become a vagina that I like.
	Oh, that boils it down.
	Please become someone I don't have to have embarrassing hate sex with based upon my bottomless physical needs for sex.
	Please become a vagina I don't hate.
	Not working?
	Okay.
	Well, that's fine.
	Let's just keep going the way it was.
	So, yeah.
	And then, you know, that ended the way it did and I guess I stopped thinking about it being a possibility.
	No, but my point is somewhat important, which is what was likable about her?
	If she didn't have an accessible vagina, what was likable about her?
	What did you really respect?
	What did you really...
	Being blunt and honest now, we're...
	You're amongst friends.
	If all she's bringing to the table is a vagina, I'm not saying there was nothing else of any value about her, but if that was the foundation of the relationship, then you're lost before you start, right?
	You're treating her as an object to fulfill your own sexual lust with no particular regard to who she is as a human being.
	Of course that's not going to work out well.
	A lot of boat, but if you could turn into a car, that'd be great.
	We...
	Yeah, there's no defining...
	There is nothing about her that I can say...
	Really brought value.
	I mean, we enjoyed the same music, and we...
	No, no, your little imitation of her?
	I don't get it.
	It just sounds like a dunderhead.
	Yeah, totally.
	Okay, so you've got to stop using women for sex.
	Like, this is shitting up.
	I mean, and I'm sorry that we need this lesson, right?
	And I'm not, look, I mean, I'm not speaking from some big place of, oh, I can't imagine ever doing that, right?
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	But this is sort of an old wisdom that if all a woman is bringing of value to you is her sexuality, then she's not bringing anything of value.
	And the opportunity costs are huge because when you're having sex with women you don't respect simply because they have a vagina, you're keeping all decent women at bay and missing out on your opportunities to get a quality woman that you really love.
	Who you trust, who you respect, who you admire, you know, all that kind of good stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	It's not just women and romantic relationships, it's other relationships and friendships, too.
	If you're sending up these signals and witnessing this behavior, quality potential friends are going to see that and go, I don't know.
	If this is who the guy has in his life, you know...
	So you just have to make that commitment, you know, to...
	And I'm concerned because your answer is like abs, right?
	This is more of this game shit, right?
	Abs is not going to get you what you want.
	When you say abs, I mean, are you...
	I assume you're using that as a term to refer to, not just like physique, but also just like that.
	You're extra pounds of muscle.
	Yeah, so you just mean extra pounds of muscle.
	Yeah, you're doing that, you said, to up your sexual market value.
	Yeah, I know.
	But only among shallow women where that's their standard.
	Again, you're just driving away the quality women.
	And I don't mean to say don't exercise.
	You know, I'm not even going to talk to people who think that's the nonsense because that's just defensive crap.
	I'm not putting you in that category, right?
	But if you're spending that much time working on abs, you've got to say, well, okay, so what kind of women do I want?
	Women who like abs, you know?
	I mean, come on.
	You can't listen to this kind of show and then say, I want a woman who thinks abs are the be-all and end-all of, you know, male attractiveness.
	I mean, do you think my daughter would love me more if I had abs or more muscles or my wife would?
	I mean, it's just not...
	Eric, I've enjoyed this conversation, but could you just put on another 15 pounds of muscle?
	I don't think I'm going to want to chat with you until, you know, a little more vascularity, if you could.
	If you could just not consume any water and dehydrate yourself for at least a week, maybe eight days, push it to eight, I'd prefer that.
	That would be great.
	Don't forget the tanner now.
	That's a crucial step as well.
	I mean, you get how ridiculous that is.
	It does.
	And I have...
	I've yet to encounter a woman who is obviously that overt.
	Obviously they communicate much more covertly.
	But yeah, the idea has been that I think that that would be a primary factor in terms of attracting women.
	Right.
	But I can't get out of my head that I don't trust myself in my ability to judge women.
	That's going to stick with me.
	I mean, this whole thing will.
	But you've got to judge women like they have no vagina.
	How do you do that?
	Well, here's mental trick.
	Philosophy.
	You're at the right place.
	Philosophy.
	Elderly Asian gentleman.
	Yep.
	300 pound elderly Asian gentleman.
	Can I, so I was listening to the last caller and he says, he says, what was it?
	Oh, Rico.
	Rico Suave.
	He says, he says, there's, he says, Steph, but there's unicorns out there.
	I don't believe that.
	I don't believe that for a second.
	No, he was being facetious, right?
	You think?
	I think he was being serious.
	Oh, yeah.
	He didn't.
	No, he was not.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I don't think anything he said in particular was.
	Anyway.
	But, well, yeah.
	But, I mean, they're not unicorns, you know?
	I could tell you for a fact they're not unicorns.
	But you've got to earn them, right?
	Listen, there are good women out there who are thinking exactly the same as you think about women about men.
	Because they're meeting guys like you.
	At the moment.
	Not you after this call, but you at the moment, right?
	Right?
	Women of quality who are like, well, I want a guy who's really smart and really great, and I'm just meeting all these guys who want to show me their fucking abs.
	And it's like, what is this Jersey Shore, for Christ's sakes?
	Well, Steph, I mean, I hear what you're saying.
	I also...
	So, I feel like when I meet a woman, I'm not looking for...
	Just to get laid that night.
	I think that good sex comes from a good emotional relationship too, obviously.
	At least I think that's obvious.
	And so I like to build emotional relationships with the women too, and I'm honest with them.
	And I will tell them I'm not looking for a relationship right now, and if you don't want to date me, then that's okay.
	I'm dating other women if you don't want to date me as I'm dating other women.
	Dude, but you're in your late 20s.
	Why the hell are you not looking for a relationship?
	I don't know.
	I'm not saying you have to be looking for a relationship, but...
	Why aren't you looking for a relationship?
	I mean, are you going to live forever?
	I mean, do you want to be a dad or any of these things?
	I'm not saying you have to, but I mean, is this part of your plan?
	Yeah, I do want to be a dad, I think.
	I think I do.
	Well, get fucking busy, man.
	You're getting older.
	I know.
	So what's this, I don't want to be in a relationship?
	Baby, don't hurt me.
	How I think about it is that I... What you said is that I don't trust my ability to judge women, but I also am afraid of...
	So then be honest about that.
	Don't say, I don't want to be in a relationship, but just be as honest as you can.
	Say, I really want to be a dad.
	I really want to have a loving relationship, but I'm terrified of my ability to judge women.
	Can you imagine saying that to a woman?
	I think that that type of vulnerability now makes me think that I would turn them off.
	Why?
	Isn't that honest?
	So who you are and what you're actually experiencing is a turn-off?
	At least in the immediate.
	Not that if I had developed a strong relationship with them that I wouldn't be afraid to be vulnerable with them, but on the second or third or fourth day...
	How do you develop a strong relationship with someone you're afraid to be vulnerable with?
	Are you suggesting to immediately be vulnerable?
	Yeah.
	Because you don't have a lot of time.
	If you want to be a dad, you've got to get busy, right?
	You don't have a lot of time to screw around, right?
	Be honest, yeah.
	What do you got to lose?
	Let's say some woman says, oh, that's the totally gross turnoff.
	It's like, hey, man, thank you for saving me some time.
	Now I can trust my judgment.
	You are a horrible human being who dislikes honesty.
	I'm really glad that I saw that right away.
	Filter.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Get your signal-to-noise ratio, right?
	And all will be well.
	Yeah, I don't...
	I have...
	Because of my previous experiences, I think I have this desire.
	I know that I have this desire to be this...
	This Chad Thundercock, this elusive male that can go down on spring break and just sleep with whatever girl he wants, and then those same girls return to their cities and meet Mr.
	Beta, and he takes them out to dinner and buys them whatever they want, and they settle down and get married.
	And I have this desire to be the former.
	I have this desire to be the guy in power that is just like the...
	You spent a lot of years getting your heart broken, now you want to be the heartbreaker.
	Yeah.
	I get it.
	Yeah, I don't know when general sociopathy became the definition of masculinity.
	I may have missed that particular phase, but...
	I don't know that term stuff.
	Sociopathy?
	Oh, just, you know, just using people and it's all about your needs.
	Oh, sociopath.
	Okay.
	Is that the character?
	Sociopath.
	And I'm not, you understand, I'm not calling you that.
	I'm just saying that that seems to be like this weird mayo fantasy about just being in control and being a superhero of sex and all that kind of stuff.
	And it's like, but you're a slave to a woman if all you're thinking about is her vagina.
	I mean, you will biologically be her slave.
	Because that's how the male brain works, or rather doesn't.
	During a time of sexual lust, you will be unable to think.
	So, you know, saying that you think this is going to give you power over women, it's not.
	It's really not.
	That's not how your brain is going to work.
	It's not how your brain is going to do its thing.
	Right?
	Because when you're around and you've got lust going on, your judgment is impaired.
	And again, no problem with lust.
	Love lust.
	I'm just telling you these are the biological facts.
	And this is not...
	That's in particular why men need philosophy so much.
	Because our brains are trying to kill us with vaginas.
	women stay you know in general women can stay fairly cold and calculating when it comes They're weighing the pros and cons.
	They're doing that hypergamy thing, you know.
	But men, like we fall head over heels and we can't think.
	I mean, you just went through it for years, right?
	Which is why we need a quality woman to have sex with.
	Someone we can trust because we can't trust ourselves when it comes to judgment.
	In terms of just judging from a mere sexuality standpoint, we just don't have that judgment.
	And I don't think we ever will.
	I think expecting it to show up is a fantasy.
	But we really need philosophy.
	This is why honesty and openness and vulnerability is really, really important.
	If you want to be a dad, you are going to subject yourself to an extreme amount of emotional risk and financial risk with regards to a woman.
	As people constantly point out to me, it's dangerous.
	Yeah, it is.
	So be careful.
	Lots of stuff in life is dangerous.
	That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, right?
	I mean, climbing mountains is dangerous.
	Does that mean we give up on climbing mountains?
	No, you do your risk intelligently.
	Well, the contrast with that is having sex with potentially unstable women who may get pregnant or sperm jack you.
	Oh, yeah, that's dangerous.
	That's pretty damn dangerous in and of itself.
	I correlate the vulnerability that I showed with Jane.
	Uh...
	With getting hurt.
	You know?
	I correlate all of those experiences as mistakes that I made.
	That because I was vulnerable, because I said, oh, I'll always be here, baby.
	And because I said, you know, because I forgave her.
	I rewarded her.
	It doesn't have anything to do with her.
	That's all about your mom.
	There's nothing to do with this girl, in my humble opinion.
	It's your mom saying, be there for the crazy women.
	She doesn't care about your happiness as far as that goes.
	Sending you back to some woman like this?
	Are you kidding me?
	That's terrible advice.
	But it's not terrible advice if she wishes to keep you uncritically in her orbit, right?
	I mean, let me ask you this question.
	It's a harsh question, and I hope you'll forgive me.
	Your stepdad, right?
	Married to your mom, of course, right?
	Yeah.
	Why is he married to your mom?
	Steph, I have had many a conversation with him.
	He is also divorced.
	Okay.
	She beats him up.
	What's he there for?
	Would you be friends with the guy who beat you up?
	No.
	So what's he there for?
	He's dicknapped.
	Yeah.
	So you see how dangerous it is.
	So you can swear off women completely, obviously.
	I'm not suggesting that, but I mean, you can.
	But if you're not going to do that, then you need to be really careful and really be very judgy with the women you're going to go out with.
	And the idea that you've got to make yourself attractive to women, god damn, that's so beta.
	That's what bugs me so much about this pickup stuff.
	It's so beta.
	Forget about making yourself attractive to women.
	That's just being a slave.
	Be yourself and see if women are attracted to you.
	If they are, great.
	But be relentlessly honest.
	This idea that somehow I'm gaining power over women by lying, by becoming a liar, you've just given up your integrity for the sake of pussy.
	And you think that, not you, but people think that this makes them somehow alpha?
	God, to me that's lunatic.
	What am I lying about?
	You said yourself you don't want to be honest.
	Right?
	You associate vulnerability with getting hurt.
	Yeah, you're going to hide who you are from the woman, right?
	That's weak.
	And I don't mean you're weak, because I completely understand where it comes from, and I sympathize with where it comes from.
	But don't mistake that for strength.
	Yeah.
	That's just, you know, remember I made that thing, a baby don't hurt me.
	Like, I'm not kidding.
	I think I, in a lot of my...
	I'm going to use the word research, but...
	I don't know if that's the right word, but in a lot of my reading and research...
	I read about guys and men that were raised in a healthy marriage and a healthy upbringing and good parenting.
	And because I wasn't, I... I feel like I'm trying to compensate for that.
	Men raised in a healthy marriage aren't vulnerable the way that I am because I was raised by a single mother, so I'm more vulnerable than...
	No, but a healthy marriage is about honesty.
	You cannot sustain any relationship where you have to keep lying.
	Right?
	You just can't.
	To be honest and open about who you are It's the easiest thing in the world in the long run.
	I mean, you know, I don't know if you've ever, you know, get caught up in, you know, whenever you're a kid, like, everybody experiments with lying, right?
	It's natural.
	There's nothing wrong with it.
	It's just, you know, it's part of your experimentation, right?
	You try to create a meal by mixing together everything you find in the kitchen, and you try lying, right?
	That's what kids do.
	And it's exhausting.
	And that's why it's not a sensible strategy.
	And hiding who you are, pretending to be something else than who you are, is an automatic surrender.
	You've just lost.
	I've been doing it a lot lately.
	Because someone has forced you to be something other than who you are.
	And that just reaffirms the power that women have over you.
	But I felt like I was being...
	In all the situations with Jane, I felt I was being my true self.
	I felt I was being...
	No, you weren't, because you were being told what to do by your mom.
	Well, I also made a lot of decisions on my own, too, without her advice.
	Yes, but without rational values, and with terribly bad modeling on behalf of your mom.
	No template whatsoever for healthy relationships.
	It's like what Rico was talking about in the last call.
	He's aesthetically pleasing to women because he just kind of does what they want.
	It's like, okay, I don't see how that's either authentic or honest or like have the slightest slice of integrity.
	How is he in charge of women?
	Not that you should try and be in charge of women, but how about seeing if women are interested in you based upon who you are?
	Again, I know this sounds like it's a weird thing to say that this is a radical concept, right?
	Well, it's just that...
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Well, no, go ahead.
	It's just that, like Mike, when you mentioned the shift, I... Associate myself being one way before that shift, and then I associate myself being one way after that shift.
	And, you know, the concept of like who you are is a person should always be malleable.
	I should always be able to change myself to improve my experiences and to improve myself and to make things better and more healthy.
	Do you think what we're suggesting, though, in any way, shape, or form is that you should never try to improve yourself?
	No, no, no, no.
	No, whatever you're saying, stop saying it.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	Like, I just have to be frank with you here.
	I don't know what you're saying, but you need to stop saying it.
	Because if you're saying, well, there's some way of being that is dishonest that is really great.
	Like, you have to not do that.
	This is a philosophy show, and we talk about being honest.
	So, if you can be honest with a woman, be honest with a woman.
	And if you can't be honest with a woman, don't put your penis anywhere near her.
	Like, I don't know what machinations you were going through there, but it had a lot to do with maybe there's some beneficial way to be dishonest.
	There isn't.
	You asked me, like, why don't you want a relationship?
	Because it's a sentence of, right now, it's a sentence of endless lying.
	No, I mean, I don't know how to honestly answer that question stuff.
	I'm telling you why you don't want it.
	Okay.
	Because you have to be someone other than who you are.
	And why would you want to do that for the rest of your life?
	That's exhausting.
	You know, if somebody said to me, hey, would you like to be an annoying pedant for the rest of your life?
	No!
	The character from a couple of shows.
	Other than Mike, I mean, who would really enjoy that?
	Right?
	But if I had to be someone else, like if a woman said, well, okay, I'll get married to you, but you have to put on an outrageous gay Scottish accent for the rest of your life, it'd be like, um, no, I think I'm okay, thanks.
	I think I'll survive without that.
	If that's alright with you.
	So I, uh, in the I need to ask what your thoughts on this are because this is something that I've been thinking about, the woman that I've been dating.
	If I go on two dates, three dates maybe with a woman, and we don't sleep together, I automatically assume that I've basically put her at this...
	She's put me at this level of not being attracted to me enough.
	That if she were really attracted to me, then we would sleep together after the second or third date.
	But if she makes me wait, then that is me essentially...
	No, no, God.
	Put the vagina on the shelf, for God's sakes.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Forget the sex.
	Do you like her as a person?
	If she said, listen, it's physically impossible for me to have sex, would you still say, wow, but you're such a great conversationalist, I still want to go out?
	And I don't mean marry, but would you want to have something to do with her if the vagina was for some reason completely off limits?
	Honestly, no.
	Okay, well then don't date her.
	Okay.
	Because you're talking about wanting to get married, and wanting to get married is a whole fuckton of time together.
	I don't know if I want to get married.
	I mean, I know that...
	You said you want to be a dad.
	Okay.
	Oh, right, right, right, right.
	I want to be a dad, and...
	Oh, right.
	The thing I said.
	Right, the thing I said, Steph.
	Which I did say that.
	I said that I want to be a dad, and if I want to be a dad, I need to get married.
	And a marriage is the best.
	A marriage is the best for dads, right?
	And I'm not talking about the government thing.
	I'm just talking about that, which is sort of developed over...
	Committed, pair-bonded relationship.
	Yeah, committed, pair-bonded relationship.
	And don't blame me.
	That's just Mother Nature, right?
	Doing her thing.
	It's what's evolved to be best for kids.
	You want to be a good dad, you've got to be in a committed pair-bond relationship.
	Well, you know that, right?
	How did that single mom thing work out for you?
	Not very well.
	Not very well.
	How do you want to hear about the fucking bonobos?
	Don't even get me started.
	We've got a presentation on that in the near future, but don't get me started.
	You can't believe how much Mike begged to be allowed to look up fucking bonobos.
	It's embarrassing.
	You can't believe how much we had to fight him for.
	That's the new quantum.
	Bonobos.
	Oh, yeah.
	Want to justify being a man-whore or other kind of whore?
	Bonobos.
	I wonder what else.
	Bonobos also throw their own shit, but you don't see a lot of people doing that.
	Outside of leftist newspapers.
	Yeah.
	No, that's what I'm saying.
	Forget the sex.
	Because I'm telling you, man, if you get married, you will spend a lot of time not having sex compared to how much time you spend together, especially if you have kids.
	You know that, right?
	No, listen, you go away for a weekend with a new girlfriend, right?
	We all know what going away for the weekend means, right?
	It's a weekend of seven or eight times in a row, right?
	That is not married life with children, right?
	If sex is the basis of your relationship, your relationship will fail because you have to spend a lot of time not having sex with someone when you're in any kind of committed relationship.
	You simply can't have that much sex.
	I don't want it to be the basis.
	Go ahead, Mike.
	That's the same baby gets up at 2 in the morning.
	Everyone's sleep deprived.
	Everyone's kind of cranky.
	Oh, yeah.
	And it's not bad or wrong or anything like that.
	It's just the way it is.
	You spend a lot of time not having sex.
	But that's fine.
	I don't want sex.
	It's fine because you know what?
	You still end up having more sex than if you're with a woman you don't like.
	Without the casual concern of having...
	Without the moral horror of having sex with someone you really dislike.
	Well, not just that.
	I'm, you know, gun to your head of if this person is potentially unstable, am I putting myself at massive risk?
	Jacked, pregnancy, dragged through the custody and...
	STDs or baby jail.
	I've learned way too much about ways that men can be completely destroyed by the wrong woman.
	The show.
	That's got to be somewhere in your mind at some point, having been exposed to this information.
	Yeah, I mean, I consider my father and my stepfather both in that camp.
	I mean, my stepfather...
	I think that him...
	Maybe I'm out of line here, but if I meet a woman and she has a kid, that...
	From a different relationship, I don't want to date her.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I think that's out of line.
	I think that's called valuing your little friends in your nutsack.
	Cool.
	And then my father had two kids, didn't have custody, pays child support, got physically abused, and emotionally.
	My mother...
	I abused the two biggest male role models in my life.
	And so, yeah, being in a marriage and a committed relationship, it scares the shit out of me.
	I get it.
	And until you get this stuff sorted out, I don't think that you should, in my opinion, I don't think you have the judgment at the moment to be able to do this stuff effectively.
	But this is sort of like, well, I have sex.
	Yeah.
	How do I date in a healthy way?
	We've told you.
	Do you want to keep pretending we didn't tell you or are you just not able to process the information?
	Be honest.
	Yeah, be honest and pretend that she's like one of these mannequins in a store.
	You know, all shape, no orifices.
	Seriously.
	A mannequin stuff?
	Yeah.
	I'm telling you.
	Because, you know, those mannequins in the stores, you know, where they put the female clothes on, those don't have any vaginas, right?
	Lord knows stuff is locked.
	I mean, for Christ's sakes, you should see him at the department store.
	Don't take him to Macy's for crazy.
	You won't see me for very long at the department store, at this point.
	Bunch of squares.
	What, I can't come in there with a black and decker and experiment?
	Come on.
	Yeah, but you date like...
	Listen, would you ever want a woman to go out with you just because you had money?
	No.
	You're willing to do it for the abs, but you wouldn't because it would be gross, right?
	She'd be using you.
	I can tell you...
	The number one thing why I would want a woman to go out with me.
	And that is because she comes to a show, listens to me play music, and is absolutely in love with the music that I play.
	Yeah, that's definitely a core part of who you are, right?
	Right.
	That's it.
	But I get what you're saying.
	Right.
	But if she just wanted to be with you because you had money, that would be gross.
	Would you want male friends who only are friends because you bought them stuff?
	No.
	No, of course not, right?
	That would be, like, pretty gross.
	And it's the same thing for a woman of quality.
	She does not want you to be there just for the possibility of sex, because a vagina is as common as a nose.
	In fact, I think statistically, they're about half as common as noses.
	You're saying there's twice as many noses as vaginas?
	Yeah.
	Right, yeah, that makes sense.
	Takes a moment for me to...
	I know a couple of the Kardashians are screwing up these things, but nonetheless, we'll go with the generic average.
	I forgot about those male noses.
	That's another important thing not to forget about.
	I'm still trying to figure out the male vaginas myself.
	But no, I mean, a woman of quality does not want to be judged as having value because she has a vagina, because she did not earn the vagina, and all the other women have one.
	Right?
	She's not unique in having a vagina.
	Where she wants to be loved for who she is.
	And you can't love a woman for her vagina because it's not personal.
	It's not about who she is as a person.
	Is that not their biggest...
	I mean...
	Uh-oh.
	Go ahead.
	No.
	Say it.
	Let those words escape.
	Let them...
	No, no.
	Do it.
	Do it.
	Listen, you're not alone in thinking this stuff, so...
	Isn't this the only thing they have to offer?
	Isn't that their biggest value?
	No, it's not.
	No, it's not.
	But I can certainly see why you think that.
	I'm not saying it's their only selling point.
	I'm just saying it's their most valuable selling point.
	Right.
	Well, it's what you've seen and what's been demonstrated with you.
	That's what the man in your life is put up with, right?
	Like your dad's willing to get beaten up and your stepdad's willing to get beaten up because vagina, right?
	But they don't...
	Yeah, but...
	Now it's because of power, right?
	Yeah.
	State power and all that.
	It can't get away, right?
	But no, you have to date like the woman doesn't have a vagina.
	You have to.
	Otherwise, you're just going to get dicknapped and you'll be doomed.
	And I'm not saying it's like some immediate, oh, we'll just do that and it happens, but it's got to be a goal, right?
	You don't have the goal even, then you haven't got a hope, right?
	And this is a slight detour, but it's a really important part of this, and I've been holding it in for half hour, so I just want to say this.
	You mentioned that one of the most attractive things would be someone that's interested in your passion, that sees you play your music and says, wow, I want to talk to that person, I want to get to know them, that they're enthusiastic about what you're doing.
	That's what I took from what you said.
	I assumed you didn't just mean, oh, wow, he's a drummer, let me throw my panties at him and spread my legs.
	Someone that You understood you were passionate about this and enjoyed what you were producing, right?
	Absolutely.
	Now with, you know, go to the gym, work on your body, try to raise your sexual market value in that kind of way, I mean, just from a sheer heterosexual standpoint, Eric, the way that I would probably find you the most interesting Is if you were fervently pursuing a passion that you were wildly enthusiastic, dedicated to busting your ass in, and were just creating value all over the place.
	There's nothing more attractive to me and anyone, I don't care what sex you are, than just sheer enthusiasm, dedication, and working towards something that you find incredibly valuable and important.
	This was the why that Steph was talking about earlier in many ways.
	And I think...
	I know we said before, looking, you know, you're 20, 26, if you do want kids...
	No, he's older than that, isn't he?
	How old are you?
	26.
	26.
	Sorry about that.
	Okay.
	So you're 26, and, you know, if you do want kids...
	He was 26 when the conversation began.
	Mid-40s now.
	But if you...
	Oh, God.
	Train of thought derailed, damn it.
	Damn you, Seth.
	Actually, that was my fault.
	That one was my fault, that one.
	No, if you do want to have kids, and I know we mentioned, you know, like, 26, so...
	You know, if you want to have kids, starting to look is probably important, but I think...
	And this is a mistake that I see everyone making, and who the hell am I to make this comment?
	So just take it with all the grains of salt in the world.
	Dating websites and all this stuff.
	I think if you are doing something incredibly awesome, you're really dedicated to something, you're incredibly passionate about something, you're incredibly enthusiastic about something, you are shining up a giant fucking spotlight into the world.
	For people that also are enthusiastic, also are creative, also are passionate, to see and find.
	I think you're going to have a whole lot better chance finding someone that you're looking for, someone of quality, by being very dedicated to what you are incredibly interested outside of sex.
	If it's music, if it's art, if it's philosophy, if it's I want to be the world's best, whatever.
	Someone who's incredibly dedicated and in pursuit of greatness and works incredibly hard to achieve it, they send up spotlights into the world and it just radiates off them, the enthusiasm, the passion.
	That is like the most attractive quality to me.
	If I find someone that's really passionate, really enthusiastic, oh my god, it's like you are the needle in the haystack because there's oh so many people that walk around and they're just, if you have enthusiasm...
	Oh my god, it's a drain!
	I'm standing in line at the grocery store, and just being in your physical proximity for 30 seconds is draining me of my will to live, let alone my desire to do important and great things in the world.
	There's people just, they've given up, they've long since thrown in the towel, and if you succeed, it makes them realize that.
	So they're going to do everything, both actively and passively, just through their sheer radiance, To drag you down to their fucking level.
	And someone who's passionate, enthusiastic, it's going to be a spotlight if you're out there doing the same thing, if you're fervently pursuing something that you're really excited about.
	I mean, oh my god, there's no more attractive quality.
	I don't care how many pounds of muscle you have.
	I don't care how big your dick is.
	I don't care how much money you have in the bank account.
	Someone that's incredibly enthusiastic about what they're doing.
	I mean, I think when those types of people bump into each other, sparks fly.
	And, you know, you're certainly going to push away the types of people that are unmotivated or lax or not doing anything or just, you know, you're going to attract.
	I met Christina because basically because I'd just written a book.
	If I hadn't written the book, we might have never got together, which is something that chills me every time I think about it.
	I had a girl over a couple weeks ago, and this is related to what you were just saying, Mike, but it paints it a little bit more in a manipulative light, I guess.
	She's over, and We're hanging out.
	We sleep together a couple times.
	Weird night.
	And I have my computer open and she starts asking me about the music that I play.
	And so I'm in three bands right now and I start just playing her records that I've recorded or whatever.
	And I just see her eyes light up.
	And at this point, I don't have any interest in pursuing a relationship with her.
	But I can see how attractive it is.
	And it's almost like I know that I'm genuinely...
	Hang on, hang on, sorry.
	Why don't you have an interest in pursuing a relationship with her?
	Because I... She hasn't...
	You understand.
	I'm not saying you should.
	I'm just trying to understand why you wouldn't.
	At this point, she hasn't shown me that she is worth me committing to.
	Why?
	Not enough evidence.
	Which means what?
	Again, I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I'm just curious what your judgment is.
	The time that we've spent together have been...
	You know, it was three dates at that point.
	And I felt like it wasn't at the point where I was comfortable committing to her.
	I didn't know her well enough.
	I didn't know about her.
	I haven't talked to her about her family.
	I haven't talked to her about her background.
	I feel like I don't know enough about her to say, yeah, I want to commit to you.
	Wait, didn't you sleep with her?
	I did.
	So you don't know enough about whether you want to have a relationship with her, but you're willing to be a sperm donor to God knows what, right?
	Right.
	I mean...
	Yeah, it's hypocritical.
	No, I'm not criticizing.
	I'm just pointing out that this is going to keep good women away from you.
	Would you...
	Okay, so would you say that I am deliberately...
	Are you saying that I'm spending time with the wrong women or that I am pushing away women that may be potentially...
	No, you're having...
	Does she know that you don't like her as a person, really?
	I don't know if I... I do like her as a person.
	I think she's cool.
	But you don't trust her.
	That's vague.
	I don't...
	Something's wrong with her that you don't want to have a relationship with her.
	Other than a mere sexual relationship.
	How can you know...
	How can I know if I want to have a relationship with somebody after spending a total of 12 hours with them?
	Stop having sex with her and see if you like her without the sex.
	Because once you have the sex, your heart will start bonding with her.
	That's how men work.
	She's kind of overweight.
	Ah, okay.
	So is it that she's overweight, that's why you don't want to have a relationship with her?
	That is probably, that is definitely part of the reason.
	And does she know that you're willing to have sex with her, but you'd never want a relationship with her because she's overweight?
	No.
	Why?
	Why doesn't she know that?
	Because you're hiding it from her?
	Uh...
	It's an incomprehensible question.
	No, I am hiding it from her.
	Yeah, I have not told her that.
	Isn't that kind of gross?
	Yeah, that is not honest.
	Yeah, I mean, that's pretty gross, right?
	Yeah, no, it is.
	You're a fatty, so I'll have sex with you, but I don't really want to be seen in public with you.
	Oh my god, that's actually what it is.
	Yeah, no.
	It is.
	And that's what I mean when I say this is harmful to you, because it's going to hurt your capacity for empathy, and it's going to hurt a quality woman's desire to be in your general vicinity, right?
	Can you...
	Can you elaborate?
	This stuff kind of slips out too, Eric, right?
	You weren't aware of what you were saying when it came out of your mouth initially, which led to us asking more questions.
	A smart woman will understand what's going on here, right?
	Because you said, well, you know, I had sex with her, right?
	And then you said, well, but I wouldn't want to have a relationship with her, right?
	And to you, that sounded perfectly normal, right?
	Yep.
	But to a good person...
	And again, please understand, I'm not saying you're not a good person, right?
	I'm just sort of pointing out how it looks from the outside.
	A good person will say, well, wait a minute, he's having sex with her, so why doesn't he want to have a relationship with her?
	He must like her to some degree, or he has sex with people he hates, in which case, like, ew, I don't want to have anything to do with that, right?
	So he must like her to some degree, so why doesn't he want a relationship with her?
	Is there something wrong with her?
	Is she a bad person?
	Right?
	If she's a bad person and he's having sex with her, then he must like having sex with bad people and I'm a good person so I don't want to have anything to do with him, right?
	If she's not a bad person, then there must be some other reason that he doesn't want to have sex with her and she'll ask the questions patiently and persistently and she'll find out that He doesn't want to have a relationship with her because she's overweight.
	But he's perfectly happy to have sex with her.
	He just doesn't want to date her because she's overweight.
	And then she'll see you as somebody who uses people, right?
	And then she'll see not only do you use people, but he doesn't even know it.
	So he's not a safe person to be around.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I know.
	This is the view from like Really healthy people.
	And I get, like, you haven't really been around that.
	But that's what it looks like.
	And it really comes very quickly.
	Not even aware of it.
	Right.
	And that's, I get that, right?
	I mean, you sounded genuinely surprised, and I believe you, when you went, oh my god, I'm not dating her because she's fat.
	Like, that was like, whoa.
	Whoa, Keanu Reeves moment.
	Yeah.
	Seriously, though.
	I'm not saying the thought hadn't crossed my mind, but obviously when you guys ask direct and overt questions like that, it makes it a lot more clear.
	There have been conscious thoughts in my mind where, like, oh, I would like her to lose weight, or I would find her more attractive if she lost weight.
	But the sticking point is, does she know that you don't want to date her because of Oh, she knows.
	Oh, she looks.
	Yeah, she knows.
	Yeah.
	I mean, yeah, she knows.
	I mean, that's one thing that women are sort of biologically designed to do is figure out where they are in the pecking order, right?
	And she is putting out extra effort to be appealing because she knows she's got to make out for the weight, which is why she's all enthusiastic about your music.
	Now, please understand, I'm not saying she's not enthusiastic about your music.
	She probably is.
	But she's willing to be that vulnerable because she's behind on the sexual attraction curve and she knows that and so she's got to make up for it by being enthusiastic.
	Because the enthusiasm is vulnerability.
	She's saying, you really are a very attractive person to me.
	And only somebody who's lower on the sexual market value is generally willing to be that vulnerable.
	And that's why it's hard for men to be vulnerable because it makes us feel like we're Going down on the sexual market value, right?
	No, that's exactly right, yeah.
	Yeah, but only going down on the sexual market value to shallow, status-seeking ignoramuses.
	Like, who wants to win against trolls?
	It's hard to keep that mindset when there's so many of them.
	Yeah, of course.
	But you're one of them, a little bit, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Mm-hmm.
	And to harken back to what I was talking about earlier about, you know, being passionate, being enthusiastic, shooting up a spotlight.
	In that context, passion and enthusiasm is the ultimate vulnerability in this world, which wants to do nothing more than squelch any passion and enthusiasm.
	Yeah, Mike may be overstating it a ton.
	But then he deals with the emails.
	So you may not be getting the most objective view of the planet.
	You know, because we do have a show because people support the show.
	So it is not like welcome to hell, little flower of hope, always.
	But again, I'm not saying I felt much different when I was doing the emails, but it's there.
	I know we've obviously given you quite a bit, and I'm getting pretty tired, but hopefully there's some stuff to go there.
	This kind of honesty, I think, is really important and something to think about.
	Can you say to this woman, you know what, I really like you as a person, and it probably is a terrible thing, but I'm hung up on the wave thing.
	Yeah, I mean it should be able to be said.
	Well, it might be one of the best things, right?
	And maybe there's something she can talk about with regards to her weight, and maybe you could have a great conversation.
	Because the interesting thing is that you have your own weight issues.
	Right?
	You want to gain...
	My own self-image issues.
	Yeah, listen.
	Men have lots of self-image issues.
	I think it's all because it's all about the women, right?
	Oh, the only women have self...
	No, come on.
	It's hard to be a guy since this stupid six-pack thing came along, right?
	Body dysmorphia disorder.
	Now we must see these muscles, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Oh, great.
	It means I've got to watch hyper-charismatic Asian guys on the internet now.
	Yeah, you really got me thinking with even just talking to...
	On the previous caller, when you were kind of telling him...
	The type of woman that he's dating.
	And it makes me think about the type of woman that I date, too.
	Yeah, and I didn't mean to be mean to the guy.
	No, I'm not saying that.
	I think it was great.
	I wrote it down.
	You go...
	You go, you date below average women.
	And he goes, how do you know that, Stefan?
	And you go, because I've been talking to you for the last half hour.
	Oh God, can you imagine?
	Like, he can't see it, right?
	He couldn't even see it.
	But you know what?
	Like, it's swimming in the water.
	You know, it's like, what do you mean there's water?
	What do you mean?
	It certainly makes me reconsider the way that I, uh, that I approach my relationships.
	That's all.
	Yeah, listen man, I mean, if you want to be a dad, I mean, I want you to have a great woman to co-parent with.
	Me too.
	More than anything.
	And that means you've got to really love that person for who they are, right?
	And I'm sorry that you had the example of these dunder-headed idiot men who obviously are willing to humiliate themselves for any access to the vagina, and that's, you know, that's terrible.
	But, you know, I don't know, the whole conversation about this game thing to me is, it's a very interesting conversation, because obviously, It seems to be a pretty big deal for guys and it's a lot of single mom stuff like we don't know how to talk to women so we need to have books on the internet tell us how to talk to women and like there's some weird species that needs to be surrounded and cornered and lied to and it's like that just seems to me like hey who do I have to not be to get a woman to sleep with me it's
	like ew Well, at the same time, any conversation about the tactics or the manipulative aspects of it, people think you're throwing the complete baby out with the bathwater in saying that there's no value to understanding the dynamics at play Which there is tremendous value in, but I mean, especially since I was in that situation, I've read those books.
	It's like, oh, I understand things a whole lot better now than I did previously.
	But saying that there's manipulation and dishonesty inherent in some of the stuff that's talked about isn't invalidating that value that's provided by understanding the dynamics at play.
	But people, you're saying there's no value.
	Well, there is, yeah, I think understanding how sexual marketplace value works and all that, very helpful.
	Absolutely.
	But, you know, you use the power for good, not for ill, right?
	And the other thing, too, and somebody made this point on a YouTube comment that I thought was a good point, which was, has any of this PUA stuff actually been proven?
	Like, really proven?
	Like, empirically?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't...
	We'd probably have to narrow it down into something specific as opposed to this general PUA stuff.
	Well, I mean, that someone has game that works more...
	Like, if you feel like you have game and you just go and approach a whole bunch of women, then you're gonna just, by the law of averages, end up sleeping with more women, right?
	Like, if it gives you confidence?
	Well, yeah.
	In other words, it doesn't matter so much what the supposed technique is, it only matters that it gives you confidence, right?
	Yeah.
	And what I want to know is, like, have pickup artist stuff, has it been like, okay, well, this guy, you know, we put this empirical test in place, and we got this much, and put this empirical test in place, got this much, and this one is much better than this one, and here's how the proof and all that.
	Because there's a lot of claims, but, you know, I'm an empiricist, which means I want proof.
	Well, the ultimate empirical test for me is, you know, are these people that are incredibly successful at it, are they happy?
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't know if the PUA stuff says they're going to make you happy, it's just going to get you laid.
	I think the happiness is kind of the carrot dangled at the end of that.
	The getting laid will lead to you becoming happy.
	It just seems like this giant rage against the breast stuff.
	I'm angry at my mom, so I'm going to screw a lot of women, and that's going to make me stronger and better.
	Rage Against the Breast.
	I miss that Nine Inch Ales song.
	Hard to miss.
	They're all that.
	I just want to say, Steph, I'm proud that you made it through this conversation.
	Well, not proud, but surprised that you made it through this conversation without referencing R versus K at least once.
	Yeah, I'm, you know, obviously, it's a process, this recovery.
	Yeah.
	Do I need to Google that?
	Yeah, I'm sorry for such a long call.
	Was it helpful?
	Wait, sorry, Steph.
	Did you just apologize for the long call?
	Yeah, I mean, I always sort of feel like, is there any way we could have done it more efficiently?
	You are such a dick, man.
	How dare you keep me on the phone this long?
	Wow.
	I wish we could be able to make it a little bit faster and more efficient.
	Shocking.
	Alright, good point.
	I stand corrected.
	Was it a helpful call for you?
	Absolutely, man.
	I'm so glad that I got to spend this time with you guys.
	It was incredibly helpful and I can't wait to listen back on the conversation.
	Is the recording working?
	Yes, mine is counting up.
	You know what, Mike?
	I think that the last recording failure may have actually been Pamela being kind to our listeners.
	Is that a potential?
	Yeah, Pamela's just like, I can't listen anymore.
	Is she on the line?
	Pamela has become self-aware.
	It's Pamela.
	Yeah, and doesn't want to be.
	That's the call recorder for anyone that doesn't understand what we're saying.
	Yeah, it's called Pamela.
	And it's a great recorder.
	And it's been pretty stable lately, but we've had some problems.
	Yeah.
	It got a little hairy, but you know, it's actually, I'm not too bad.
	I'm not too sad that it lasts some of that stuff.
	I want to say too, Eric, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
	Good on you, mate.
	I really enjoyed it.
	It was great talking with you, and welcome to call back anytime.
	I was going to ask you guys if that was the thing.
	That you did.
	I have repeat callers.
	What I want to know is if we get women who want your contact info.
	Yeah.
	Zero.
	Nah, maybe a couple.
	Really?
	Would that happen?
	That'd be cool.
	Oh yeah.
	Oh, trust me, it'll happen.
	You're a drummer, man.
	You're a rational hatred of drummers.
	Well, maybe not so rational given most drummers, but...
	Alright.
	Well, goodnight guys.
	Thanks again for a great call and remember for those of you who enjoy these conversations, freedominradio.com slash donate.
	I must do my service to philosophy by getting people to give us money.
	So have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful night everyone and we'll talk to you soon.

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