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Jan. 15, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

04:25:59

3559 She Wants It All - Call In Show - January 13rd, 2017

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	Okay, okay.
	I know it's weird, but every single show I want to tell you, please, please, please listen to the show.
	It's the greatest show ever.
	This was a great show, so I hope you will.
	The first caller wanted to know if this sort of gene war stuff that we've talked about, the RK selection stuff, if Winter can help select for intelligence among a human population...
	What about economic hardship or hardship as a whole, such as takes place in India or at least took place in India for most of its history?
	Wouldn't that also have the same effect?
	A great chat about that.
	Bob is back.
	Bob wanted to know, what is racism?
	What does it mean to be a racist?
	And where does it show up in society these days?
	I just love these honest, frank conversations about topics, which a lot of people think are challenging, and I can understand why, but he was a great guy, always has been a great guy to chat about these issues with.
	Really, really enjoyed that.
	Now, in the third call, oh baby, we went deep.
	A caller wanted to know if determinism can lead to helplessness, hopelessness and depression.
	Of course, I asked him about his childhood.
	The child is the father of the man, as the poet says.
	And I think you'll be pretty surprised at what comes out.
	The fourth caller, it's a long call, but it's an essential call.
	If, say, you want to have children, or you're a woman, or you'd like to date, or you don't want to squander your youthful sexual market value on nothingness or bad men, she put up a fight and a half.
	I don't think consciously or knowing it, but she did.
	And it was quite a challenge, and we went long, but it was essential that we do so.
	So I hope that you'll listen to that, and I hope that you'll drop by freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Do your shopping at fdurl.com slash amazon, and don't forget to follow me on the Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
	Alright, up first today we have Ravi.
	He wrote in and said, According to RK Selection Theory, cold winter, saving seed crops, and deferring gratification has made certain sections of people higher in IQ. On the same lines, shouldn't people in third world countries grow in IQ because of economic winter, i.e.
	lack of resources, lack of freedom, and other economic backwardness?
	I am from India, and I first-hand witnessed...
	Beautiful locust flower blooming out of the dirtiest mud.
	That's from Ravi.
	Hey, how you doing?
	Did we get that emphasis right on the right syllable?
	Is it Ravi?
	Yeah, shouldn't be a problem.
	Back in India, they called me Ravi.
	And here, people are comfortable calling me Ravi.
	Ah, Ravi is fine with me.
	Wonderful.
	So, did you want to put more into the question, or shall I take a swing at it as it stands?
	Where I'm coming from, I see this phenomenon wherein, because of this, I want to say economic winter, for lack of a better word, there is this people in the third world who are becoming smart, taking smarter decisions, and getting better in their life.
	While I also see in other places where there was the natural winter in the past, but because of automation, implementing technology, 24 bars of an availability of electricity and things of that nature, I don't want to completely generalize, but you understand, right?
	They tend to make less smart decisions.
	And my question is, like, is there a reversing of, you know, these sections happening?
	Something like Ks, usually they were in the natural winter section.
	Are the Ks growing up in the economic winter section?
	And will there be a balance in future?
	That's where my question is.
	Do you get what I'm saying?
	Yes, yes.
	So...
	I think I understand what you mean.
	So your question is something like this.
	If hardship breeds muscle, couldn't we view economic winter as similar to climate winter in terms of the challenges that it might have in selecting for a more intelligent population?
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Yes.
	So, exactly.
	No, no.
	If that's a fair way to put it, then I'll keep going.
	Unless it's something you desperately want to add right now.
	I don't know.
	I mean, my command over the vocabulary in English is pretty weak, so I just wanted to...
	No, it's doing fine.
	Now, first of all, of course, I completely agree with you that a lot of people in the third world seem to be getting smarter, and I think that's a wonderful, wonderful development, as I'm sure do the people in the third world, even more than me.
	And, of course, a lot of this has to do with better nutrition, better medicines, better education, and...
	Clean water, you know, like every...
	However much your body needs to devote to protecting itself from virulent pathogens and diseases is just that much less energy it has to sort of grow a brain and that kind of stuff.
	So there are increases occurring in intelligence in the third world, which is a wonderful development.
	And the question is, of course, how far does it go?
	And the idea behind...
	Environmental factors which select for intelligence doesn't have just to do with hardship.
	It doesn't have to do with hardship in particular.
	It has to do with hardship that intelligence can solve.
	If the hardship can't be solved by intelligence, then intelligence won't be selected as a positive trait, at least as quickly or as fast, if that makes sense.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, for instance, if you have a problem called winter in Europe or Siberia, which is where the Asians come from, or Russia, if you have a problem called winter, well...
	Clearly, intelligence can help you with winter, right?
	You can build barns.
	You can learn to control fire.
	You can tame animals.
	You can restrict your caloric intake in the winter so that you have enough food to make it through the winter.
	You can set up innovative traps.
	You can, like, I don't know, off the top of my head, that's probably six million other things that you could do.
	But you see, winter is not a malevolent force.
	Unlike human control, unlike totalitarianism, unlike superstitious theocracies and so on, winter is not a malevolent force.
	Winter is not profiting from you losing to winter.
	But kings and certain kinds of priesthoods, they profit from you losing to them, right?
	They sort of own you.
	Winter doesn't own you.
	So winter, as a sort of blank natural force, is something that intelligence can conquer without fear.
	But trying to conquer your local warlord, well, there's quite a lot of fear in that.
	And so I think the question is, not is there hardship, but can the hardship be solved by intelligence?
	And by that I also mean, can it be solved in a graduated way by intelligence?
	So there's a lot that smart people can do in northern climates to deal with the challenges of winter.
	And it doesn't require that they understand germ theory.
	Like, sure, there's things that you can do to...
	Develop better medicines in the third world, but it's kind of a leap.
	You kind of have to go through all of that other stuff first before you get all of these sophistication and free market forces that let you create and deliver those kinds of medicines to that kind of environment.
	So I think it's important when we look at the role that the environment may have played in selecting for intelligence...
	That we look at whether the adversity is man-made.
	In other words, if it's political or religious in nature, if it's oppressive in nature.
	That's number one.
	And number two, I would say, can intelligence solve it in a graded way?
	In other words, I guess you could solve a lack of sunlight by going into orbit, but that's not something that Inuit or Eskimos are going to do.
	With, you know, previous levels of technology.
	So it has to kind of be a step up.
	It's not like you go from the zero to the 40th floor immediately.
	So that I think would be my first response.
	And the other things that I would say, of course, is that the challenges that have been erected between people in developing nations and their potential are Are, of course, to some degree local and tribal and traditional and religious and so on.
	But, as I've mentioned before on this show, there's a lot that Western governments and other governments have been doing to make life in the third world even worse in some ways than it already is.
	You know, foreign aid.
	Foreign aid sounds like this wonderful thing.
	Like, you know, your neighbor has broke her leg, so you're going over with a lasagna or a nice butter chicken to give her some food because she can't cook easily because of a broken leg.
	That's not how it works, right?
	The way it works is governments pour a huge amount of money into foreign governments, and if those foreign governments are corrupt, and one of the things that's fairly true about third world governments is they tend to be enormously corrupt, They basically sell arms and give money to third world countries and they like giving money to third world countries because as I talked about I think close to 10 years ago in a podcast called The Round Trip of the Foreign Aid Dollar.
	They give dollars to foreign governments.
	Foreign governments will then either buy directly or give it to companies to buy things from the host country.
	If the Canadian government gives money to Sri Lanka, then Sri Lankan businesses have to use that Canadian money to buy goods and services, usually from Canadians, or at least it has to end up somewhere along that continuum.
	So foreign aid has caused enormous amounts of corruption, escalated corruption in third world.
	Governments, which is pretty wretched.
	The dumping of food in third world markets is brutal because it destroys incentives for local crop production and so on.
	A mess as a whole.
	And if we continue to sort of move forward, this all has to change.
	This all has to stop.
	Destroying the local economy creates dependence on the government.
	And this is, of course, one of the reasons why the warlords in third world countries like Foreign aid coming in.
	Foreign aid in particular because it stuffs their own coffers full of money, but they like the food coming in from other countries because the food then destroys local economies and makes people more dependent on the state, which reinforces the power of the warlord because anybody who wants to reduce the size and power of the state, as we're going to find out relatively soon.
	Anyone who tries to reduce the size and power of the state when a lot of people are dependent on the state runs into a lot of fairly self-interested opposition from the people who are dependent on the state.
	So those are sort of my first initial thoughts on the subject, but I'm certainly happy to hear more about what you think.
	Yeah, I mean, I agree to all of that you mentioned, just that Where I come from is, if you take the West right, one of the greatest milestones I want to say is people coming to America and Coming up with the free market capitalism, less government concept.
	I even saw your Thanksgiving video, which was a wonderful video.
	So in the similar sense, what has been happening back in the third world is they took up the socialism and communism, assuming it to be a wonderful idea, right?
	And then they ended up losing a lot.
	And somewhere, China somewhere around 1960s and India somewhere around 1991, they totally lost all the money they had.
	They didn't have money to even run the government for one more day.
	And they ended up, you know, taking up capitalism.
	And after that, so many new...
	Of course, it's not totally a free market like I would like any country to be, but a lot of enterprises started to come up and even, you know, 13 or 20 percentage of the Software market is now in the hands of Indian companies and things of that nature.
	So where I'm coming is this kind of bad decision, economic bad decision, which created this kind of stressful situation made people to...
	Take some right decisions, right?
	Even when you mentioned, like, the food, donation of food or dollars, money to the third world countries, destroying them, which is something that India has realized in the past five years, and they want to, you know, become a self-sustaining market.
	Even as I speak right now, there is a lot of things happening out there where, similar to the, you know, Right-wing revolution that is happening in the West.
	There is this self-sustaining, close borders kind of revolution happening back in India as well, specifically the southern part of India.
	So I'm just thinking, because of these bad decisions, didn't the Well,
	let me just jump in for a sec there Ravi, which is To blame Whitey even more, which I think Whitey desperately deserves.
	As you know, when India achieved its independence in the late 1940s, Nehru and a lot of the other people who were in charge of the Indian government at the time, a lot of them were educated at Oxford and Cambridge and in the British school system.
	And that's where they imbibed all of this socialism.
	Socialism and communism was not something organic to the Third World any more than it was organic to China.
	And the great curse of...
	Hang on, let me finish.
	Just the great curse that the West bestowed upon the developing world was socialism, was communism.
	I can't imagine what people in China...
	The communist experiment in China, I just finished recording the truth about McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, and the communist death toll in China has been estimated from anywhere...
	50 million to 74 million people.
	And that's just the direct death toll from communism, let alone just the immense suffering and horrifying emotional experiences and trauma and fear that everyone lived under decade after decade after decade.
	And the social experiment in India was catastrophic for the region as a whole.
	Produced a huge amount of destabilization, produced of a corrupt parasitical class, and the Development of more free market reforms in India has also shown just how callous the left is towards that, which helps those who are poor.
	Because the left always says, oh, we care about the poor, we care about the poor.
	You know, since India has developed a free market system, 50,000 people a month are being lifted out of poverty.
	You'd think that the left would be very happy about that.
	But they never, I've never heard a leftist reference it even once.
	And it is the greatest, like over the past couple of decades, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.
	Through the free market, largely.
	And the leftists, I mean, it just shows just how much they don't care about the poor.
	If the poor are becoming less poor, but it's not because of leftist ideology, they simply won't look at the facts.
	I completely agree.
	So, see, Jawaharlal Nehru, I'm not a big fan of anybody.
	Even Gandhi was an anarchist.
	That is a good thing.
	What I was trying to say is, let's imagine whenever Jawaharlal Nehru was taking this decision like, hey, let's become a socialist country.
	That time, the IQ level, let's say, the average India's IQ level was somewhere in the 60s or 70s.
	And nobody had any idea of something like individualism or Anarchy or capitalism, free market, anything of that nature.
	I'm pretty sure no one would have any idea about that.
	And I would just say, I'm sorry to interrupt, and I don't mean to tell you about your own country.
	I think 60 to 70 would be a too low estimate.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So it's probably higher than that.
	I just there's only one group I think which has 60s the aboriginals in Australia.
	So I just wanted to mention one like the passing unexamined but please go on.
	Yeah sorry I didn't it's not an accurate data that I'm saying but I think somewhere I thought right now it is 80 for India so anyway so what I was trying to say is like when they made that decision of you know taking up socialism I'm pretty sure like India as a whole wouldn't have been so smart.
	That's why even they took that decision.
	And what I'm saying is because of that bad decision, I'm pretty sure at that time West was so smart.
	And that's why they have all this wealth and everything, right?
	They're doing so great because they took a smart decision.
	I completely agree with that.
	So let's take that time slice.
	We'll keep it as a snapshot.
	And then, you know, after they took that bad decision, you know, they burned their fingers, they had a lot of bad things happening to their countries, and then when they were in a situation, which I call it like an economic winter, Where they have to do some smart decision.
	If not, they're going to die.
	That's when they took, either they started thinking and came up with their own idea, or they saw that, hey, you know what, why should we think so hard?
	The West is doing so good with this great idea of capitalism.
	Let's take it.
	So maybe they just grabbed the idea.
	So in the 1990s they took that idea and they are pretty much successful today.
	Not at the rate wherein if it was a complete free market it would have been, but relatively they are doing well.
	So, if you take today's snapshot, they're kind of relatively doing well.
	My question is, let's take another snapshot like 20 years after.
	What will happen?
	Will East, you know, after continuing so much of capitalism, enterprise, free market, etc., will they become so well?
	And in West, because of this, so much of leftist ideologies being taken over, people staying in the couch, not staying with their families, things of those things, will West become something like an East, is my question.
	Do you get what I'm saying?
	Yeah, I mean, in the arc of civilizations, it is natural to be dominant for sometimes hundreds of years, and then for that dominance to collapse into decadence, and hedonism in particular is a big problem.
	People become lazy, they become fearful, they become anxious, they become depressed, they become...
	Neurosthenic used to be the old word for it, but...
	The people who've gone through challenges are willing to take the steps necessary to improve their societies.
	I mean, there were people who when China and India, the two great salvations of poverty were China and India pursuing free market reforms in the 90s.
	And those caused some people in India and China to suffer.
	And there was enough strength and will in the people and in the leaders to say, well, I'm sorry that you've suffered, but things have to change.
	And this capacity to endure suffering, Even significant suffering is the hallmark of a society that is going to improve.
	A resolute avoidance of suffering, which is what the West has degenerated into.
	A bunch of precious snowflakes who, you know, call the ambulance when they stub their toe on the cat.
	And so cultures which become hysterical, cultures which become what's called the snowflakes.
	You know, there was a guy who tweeted recently...
	Something like when Trump refused to call on a CNN reporter and called them fake news, he said, you know, this news conference was horrifying.
	I don't know what to say.
	Go spend time with your family.
	Hoard food.
	It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.
	It's like, it's just a press conference, you know, like this level of hysteria.
	And it's natural, of course, on the left, on the left.
	Everyone who's in charge is an exploiter, and everyone who's a victim is virtuous.
	And since everybody wants to be good when you define society that way, the only way to be good is to be a victim.
	And the only way that you're going to end up being bad is if you're in charge or if you're successful.
	So it's a very pathological view where to be a victim is a mark of virtue, and to be successful is a mark of vice.
	And, of course, this is undermining The economic gains or potential within the West enormously because it undercuts ambition and willpower and all these kinds of things.
	So naturally, and then it'll happen to China and it'll happen to India, that China and India will get significant amounts of resources and wealth.
	And I guess as soon as the hand of God wafts across the brown landscape of China and we could see it again under its air pollution, it will continue to grow and to flourish and it will achieve an excess of wealth.
	And then when it achieves an excess of wealth, it will be able to indulge itself in all kinds of social engineering and all kinds of fantasies of egalitarianism and let's make everyone equal and men and equal completely to women.
	And it will give all of this power to groups that...
	It doesn't work out for in many ways.
	And then the inevitable decline will occur.
	And then, you know, it's the old thing.
	It's the old saying, right?
	That bad times breed hard people.
	Hard people breed good times.
	Good times breed soft people.
	Soft people breed bad times.
	And we're kind of in the marshmallow phase of that in the West at the moment.
	And there are some tough-minded people who are attempting to change that.
	I certainly put myself in that number.
	But it's natural.
	And...
	But prior to the internet, I didn't think that there was any way, I don't think there was any particular way to stop it with the internet.
	Now, I think there might be.
	Wonderful, yeah.
	So, yeah, I also was thinking, you know, prior to industrial revolution and then discovery of America, maybe, I'm not a historian, but maybe India would have been an America because everybody wanted to go there, like today.
	And after the Industrial Revolution, after the West, everybody wants to go to America.
	I agree to what you're saying.
	It's kind of a shifting paradigm.
	And I have another thought.
	If eventually East becomes kind of wealthy, what do you think will bring them back to their knees?
	What I think is...
	But both China and India, they are highly populated, right?
	And their only strength is manufacturing.
	And manufacturing, by that what I mean, is unskilled labor.
	And I think the automation will bring them down.
	What do you think?
	What is your two cents?
	Oh, no.
	No, I don't think it's automation that will bring...
	I mean, you know, the end of labor by automation has been predicted for...
	It's all the way back to the agricultural revolution of the 18th century.
	So, no, I don't think it's that.
	No, I'm not against automation.
	I'm just saying, like, from an economic standpoint, because they're highly populated, and most of their population is, you know, unskilled labor to an extent.
	If their economy goes down, will it be because of less unskilled labor, less exporting of unskilled labor?
	What do you think?
	I'm not against automation, not at all.
	I'm not sure what you mean by less exporting of unskilled labor.
	So by that, what I mean is, let's say, you know, if Apple wants to manufacture its phone in China, right, and then everybody in the West, they want to manufacture clothes in India, so shoes in India.
	So there is a lot of Service export that is happening from those two countries and it is gradually increasing.
	They are getting better and making good products.
	But they are all, most of the products are, you know, based on the cheap unskilled labor that is available out there.
	So if the automation increases and let's say, you know, West manufactures everything in West itself, that will bring down, right?
	Well, no, it wouldn't bring anything down if there's a free market.
	Because if, let's say, that less intelligent people, unskilled labor, let's say that they don't make much money, well, then they don't have many kids, right?
	And if they don't have many kids, that means that if the genetic...
	The genetic component of low IQ will begin to diminish within society.
	You'll get fewer and fewer less intelligent people as time goes by, because less intelligent people will have lower sexual market value, they'll have lower income potential in the marketplace, and so they will not have as many children.
	And the smarter people, the people who make more money, who have more education and so on, will have more children.
	Now, of course, the less intelligent people, they don't want that to happen.
	And so the big crossroads will be when the welfare state is introduced or expands, then the less intelligent people want the welfare state because they don't They want to have their kids.
	I understand, right?
	I mean, it makes perfect sense.
	I mean, there's a gene set just like everyone else.
	It wants to survive and wants to flourish.
	And the smart people, of course, will feel guilty and bad.
	And there will be this kind of economic determinism.
	See, it's hard to have a welfare state without determinism of one kind or another.
	And we've got a caller in tonight about this topic in general.
	But the welfare state is predicated on the idea that it's not the poor person's fault that he's poor and it's not the rich person's fault that he's rich or responsibility that he's rich.
	And so the welfare state seeks to, what do they say, redistribute income like it was just distributed I was supposed to deal an even hand to everyone, but this guy got 50 cards, and these two people got six cards.
	So we need, oh sorry, we redistributed these wrong, we gotta redistribute them.
	So, the fact that as society gets smarter, there are fewer economic opportunities for less intelligent people is not a problem in a free society, because the less intelligent people, they'll just be fewer and fewer of them as time goes by, and they'll be more and more intelligent people Because of the genetic component to intelligence and because the smarter people generally have more resources and the less intelligent people have fewer.
	Got it.
	And, you know, frankly, for decades, India is trying to have just one child per family, and still the population is nowhere going less.
	I don't know.
	Anyways, maybe people are growing in the trees in India.
	Maybe.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much for the call.
	I appreciate it.
	And it's always good to hear from the overseas listeners.
	So thanks so much for calling in.
	I hope we can talk again.
	And let's move on to the next caller.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	Alright, up next we have Bob.
	Bob's called into the show before.
	He wrote in and said, This Chicago kidnapping situation was a milestone moment in our politics as it tested our tolerance for this silly hate crime idea that they created.
	Why are we so quick to play the left's game of racism and hate crime when we don't even agree with their position in the first place?
	That's from Bob.
	So, Bob, Bob, Bob, how's it going?
	I'm just kidding.
	How you doing?
	Great.
	Wow, that question sounds way more intellectual than I do.
	So, I think you might have fallen into this trap also.
	So, what basically happened was...
	The left's been calling every— not everything— been calling things hate crimes, and for the most part, the right disagrees with the idea of hate crime.
	For instance, I and many people I know think of it as thought crime.
	And we think, well, rapes hate—a hate crime by definition.
	First-degree murder is a hate crime by definition.
	Why are we attaching hate To a crime that's already heinous.
	So let's start off with that.
	Let's start off and see where we differ or unite on this idea of hate crime.
	So the justification for it, which is not the case I'm going to make, but just the case that I think we need to agree on, the justification of it is that If you go and punch someone, that's bad.
	But if you go and punch someone because you hate their race or whatever, their religion, then that is aggression plus bigotry, right?
	And the bigotry adds a special layer of unpleasantness or in this case, I guess, additional criminality to the attack.
	And I think the goal is to say that we should apply additional legal sanctions against people who are motivated by racism or bigotry or sexism more so than somebody who just, you know, doesn't like the look of someone's face and they punch them or something.
	Okay, so I think, and this is my ardent desire here in this conversation, to argue against that position that you just said.
	However, but before we get there, I'd like to do two things, which is first tell you that I wanted to do a little research, a good bit of research on racism around the world.
	Because racism, it is my belief that racism exists in different forms around the world.
	Substantially different forms.
	Can you define racism before we start?
	And that's my second thing, that we find common ground on what racism actually means.
	So, thinking about it for a moment, sitting at a computer about a day ago, I was going to go through the list of what racism is in general.
	If you get a thousand people together, what will the top few choices be?
	What is racism?
	And racism in this country, I think the most popular choice, you might disagree with me, but the most popular choice is any prejudice toward what the left deems a protected group.
	Yeah, I think in practicality, the left probably wouldn't define it that way, but in practicality, it's hard to avoid the sense that that's the correct definition.
	That's that, well, the more prevailing definition.
	My definition would be more a system put in place, for example, the Jim Crow laws, to specifically target people and oppress them socially and economically by their race, by their ethnicity.
	That is my definition.
	Right.
	And is that so you feel that the Jim Crow laws, segregation laws, were put in place out of negative judgments against blacks as a whole and it was all motivated by racism?
	Yes.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I think the Democrats who were sore losing the war, losing their slaves, I found some way to subjugate these people who they saw.
	I mean, these people were slaves or children of slaves.
	Now, I had a conversation with Reverend Jesse Peterson some while back, and he had a sort of profound impact on something that I had sort of gotten in my gut all along.
	I recognize none of these arguments, Bob, so, you know, throw them back in my face if they make no sense.
	But he said, we don't judge race, we judge behavior.
	Well, I think that many of us do.
	I certainly think you do.
	I certainly think I do.
	And I've been in many conversations with young black men where I call them a thug or a, well...
	Close your ears, listeners.
	I said to one guy, isn't there a jail you're supposed to be reporting to?
	Or something like that.
	Because he was just a total thug.
	And just for those who haven't heard Bob and I chat before, Bob is black, so he has at least to some degree.
	No, listen, this is important because I don't want white people thinking, oh, let's go have these, you know, whatever, right?
	So there's a certain amount of, you know, brother-to-brother stuff that you can play that line a little bit more easily than some others.
	So I just really wanted, you know, everyone to understand that.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	And the immediate response between...
	I remember I was on a basketball court and this guy was always harassing me.
	I'm terrible at basketball.
	And I just played to have fun.
	And the immediate response was, that's racial profiling.
	And my response then was, do you see what color I am?
	Do you see me?
	It's his behavior.
	Why can't we see behavior?
	So...
	Without getting too much in the weeds here, what I think is happening, and I don't—I want to set this up exactly right.
	So before we continue, are we in somewhat agreement on what racism actually is?
	Well, no.
	And I just want to make sure I understand what it is that you are— Trying to get across to the term racism, do you mean that it's a negative judgment against a group that the left deems a protected class?
	Or is that what you think it officially is?
	Or is that sort of the working social definition that we're going with because that's what's implemented?
	That's what I want to...
	Okay, so that's what I think is the prevailing definition.
	I think it's ridiculous, too.
	I think the idea of a protected class is ridiculous.
	I think the idea that CNN regularly espouses that black people can't be racist Is also a ridiculous idea.
	What I think is racism is clearly a system put in place.
	If we can think back to the Willie Lynch letter, do you know what I mean when I say that?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, but just give me some details.
	Okay.
	So, well, in the Willie Lynch letter, this was when...
	Ah, this is extraordinarily...
	This is extreme racism.
	So I guess this might not come across too well.
	But when people get together and devise a system to completely disenfranchise a group of people because of race, not when one black guy beats up a white guy because he doesn't like white people.
	Do you understand the difference I'm trying to make?
	Well, this is power, right?
	The left's formulation is that racism is a negative judgment against another race plus social power.
	And since whites are perceived to be the only group with social power, although there are a lot of white people I know who'd be a little confused by all of that, because blacks don't have power, they can't be racist in any practical way because they don't control the government, they don't control the police and that kind of stuff.
	Okay.
	So because this happened, so this situation happened, the kidnapping, the non-BLM kidnapping, and it occurred, and the right immediately took the bait.
	The right said, wait a second, this is a hate crime.
	You've said these are hate crimes, right?
	You define hate crime as an egregious criminal act against a person Where their race, they're targeted because of their race.
	And so the right took the bait and jumped on a thing with which the right does not readily agree in the first place.
	And I find that to be problematic.
	Well, I mean, this is the strategy of punching back, right?
	Which is that if the left has defined these terms and these terms have been passed into law, That you're going to use the weapons that are around and punch back the same way.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I guess that, well, that's certainly acceptable, I guess.
	But what I think we, what I think, and this is where the conversation, this is the conversation I wanted to have.
	I think we don't recognize what I call tribalism.
	What I think is a naturally occurring thing.
	I believe it is a naturally occurring thing for a human being to associate with those that he finds familiar.
	And I think this is very easily understood from a biological perspective.
	And we see it.
	We see it regularly.
	People self-segregate.
	Whether they're in schools or whether they're at the job site, they always self-segregate.
	And I think the problem that we're having is that we, as a culture, the American culture, aren't ready to deal with that.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, because the segregation that occurred in the past was a government program.
	As you point out, Jim Crow was a series of laws and, of course, was wrong because it was the initiation of the use of force against people who otherwise might segregate, might mix, but it was...
	was a initiation of the use of force.
	And sure, I mean, people have pointed out that 90% of churches in America are either 90% black or 90% white.
	There's the lunchroom test, right?
	There's, unless there's forced integration in prisons, then people tend to gravitate towards their own ethnicity.
	This is something that, you know, the left is constantly railing against the right for being said, anti-science is science deniers.
	And so, well, Come on, I mean, we all know.
	We all know that evolution works because of a preference for one's own genetics.
	I mean, specifically one's own children, but one's own genetics as a whole.
	And so I think that...
	If people were free to associate or dissociate at will, then I think there could be more genuine friendships, there could be more genuine conversations, there could be more genuine affections.
	It's sort of like the arranged marriage might destroy a love that might otherwise be there.
	And I think that the government...
	It's resolute inability to stay the fuck out of race relations is really, really annoying.
	It's just stay out of it.
	Let people work it out.
	Don't subsidize.
	Don't have affirmative action.
	Don't have Jim Crow.
	Just back the hell off and let people work it out.
	If letting people work it out means that there are white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods and Asian neighborhoods, then that's what people want.
	And you can make a case if you want, like you can come out and you can say, oh, I think that people should benefit from living cheek by jowl with other cultures and languages and ethnicities and religion.
	Great, make the case.
	If you're really enterprising, you can go and found an entire, you can go buy up 100 acres of land once the federal government loosens its death grip on 90% of the American landscape, it seems.
	You can go up and buy 100 acres of land and you can build a community and you can say, nope, we're only going to do a complete rainbow community.
	Like every single house has to have a different race and a different religion and a different ethnicity and so on, right?
	A different sexual orientation, if you want.
	And then people can come and see.
	You can see if they like it.
	But the idea that we just let people go where they want to go, we let people hire who they want to hire, we let people fire who they want to fire.
	We let people not like groups they happen to not like, and we make the case.
	We say, look, you shouldn't dislike this group.
	It's wrong.
	It's bigoted.
	Fine.
	You make the case.
	But the idea that we have to herd people around.
	First of all, you know, there's keeping blacks and whites apart by force.
	And now there's jamming blacks and whites together by force.
	And it's like, can you just back off?
	Let us have a goddamn conversation and come to some sort of resolution, which will be in constant flux as time goes along.
	Let us come to some sort of resolution amicably and voluntarily.
	But it seems like the government, you know, like...
	When you were a kid and you'd lose a tooth, your tongue would keep going there, you know, licking the blood.
	And it's like, this is the government.
	It just, it cannot keep the law out of some of the most delicate, spider-webby, complicated human relations.
	You know, living together, disparate ethnicities, different races, different religions, it's complicated stuff.
	And the most complicated stuff needs the most voluntary environment.
	I sort of feel like it's this incredibly delicate machinery And all the government has is a sledgehammer with which to adjust the tiny clock, and it just boom, boom, boom.
	Back off.
	We'll work it out.
	Everybody be patient.
	It will work out, but we can't have it work out.
	While the government is hurting and forcing, first of all, slavery, and then Jim Crow, and now Affirmative Action, and all these HUD programs designed to jam everyone in together, it's like, whoa, government, boom.
	Back off!
	Let us come to a marriage.
	Let us not have it arranged by the state, if that makes any sense.
	Okay, so I'd like to get some closure on...
	I want to get right back to right at this point.
	I will in about 45 seconds.
	I want to get to some closure on the question.
	The question was particularly...
	And you gave an answer.
	Your answer was, we use the tools that are available.
	Hate crimes are the law.
	We use their tools against them.
	But I agree with you.
	I don't think there should be a separate category called hate that layers onto a crime.
	A crime is a crime is a crime.
	I don't care about the motivation.
	I do care.
	I mean, I don't care about the motivation insofar as it makes some crime magically worse than another.
	I think a crime is a crime.
	I don't agree with hate speech.
	I don't agree with hate crimes laws.
	I think that they're all ridiculous and immoral and inflammatory.
	But I can understand why people are pushing back at the left against this stuff.
	I see.
	And so, well, I wonder, and we might have some disagreements here, I wonder, is the better path to take to not fall into their trap, to try to eventually get rid of hate crimes in general?
	But we definitely can't do that if we jump on the hate crime bandwagon.
	Well, I don't know, definitely.
	Pardon?
	You know, I mean, I don't know.
	The strategy of taking the high road has not worked with the left.
	Like, this is what the right is all about now.
	That's absolutely true.
	Since Gamergate, it's been like, nah, screw that.
	You know, this, well, you know, we're not going to mention hate crimes because abstractly we are against them.
	It's like, no, look, you all want hate crimes.
	This is clearly a hate crime.
	And I wonder, I do wonder if social media hadn't pushed...
	For this kidnapping to be classified as a hate crime, whether it would have happened or not.
	But the fact that it has happened, that they are being charged with a hate crime.
	I think the hate crime that they're being charged with is more to do with the young man's disability, his mental disability, than his race.
	But it has effectively pushed back against the narrative that black people can't be racist.
	Because if black people get charged with a racial hate crime, that kind of pushes back against that narrative.
	Oh, well...
	Well, that I did not consider.
	That is a small win, then.
	I think it could be.
	I think it could be.
	Listen, I'm not a strategist.
	Like, I'm the abstract guy, right?
	So I'm, like, the principal guy.
	I'm not a, like, here's how we move this particular chess piece to win the next round, right?
	I mean, so I can't really comment that much on strategy and its value, because it's not my wheelhouse, other than to say...
	The right will use...
	Like, the left has used every single weapon that they can get their hands on, and this is what they openly say.
	And the left, you know, in its more extreme forms, but this sort of Saul Walensky stuff, they say, we don't have any values, we don't have any principles, we don't have any standards, but we know other people do.
	We know people on the right do, so let's use those standards against them.
	So the left is perfectly willing to use standards that they don't believe in in order to beat the right.
	And I think the right has...
	I figured that out, that if your enemy has an access to a wide array of weapons and you only have moral indignation, you're going to lose.
	You're going to lose.
	Okay, so, well, this was much more than 45 seconds, but I'd like to get back to where you were, speaking of the government just getting out of the way in the first place.
	I was at the, there is a civil rights museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
	It's at the hotel where Dr.
	Martin Luther King was shot in 1968.
	And I went to see that place, and they show a history.
	It's basically as much African-American history as I think.
	Well, African to African-American history they can cram into that place.
	And there's a point where they show videos of the sit-ins.
	Now, I don't know the detail of this.
	I'll try to explain this pretty quickly.
	Blacks were not allowed in certain restaurants, certain whatever, bathrooms, whatever.
	And so Black people would go and their form of peaceful protest would be to go in a restaurant where they weren't allowed and sit at a table until someone served them.
	And no one would serve them.
	And then they got, you know, people tried to forcibly remove them and they just kept doing this over and over and over.
	And I watched that.
	And an alarm bell went off in my head immediately.
	And the alarm bell was, why is the government forcing a business, a private business, to tell them who their customers can and can't be?
	Right.
	I mean, this is the Rosa Parks situation as well.
	Sorry to interrupt, but Rosa Parks, communist trained, Martin Luther King, noted communist.
	Just wanted to mention, communism has not been very friendly to third world people of every stripe, color and hue.
	But I mean, blacks were poorer.
	And of course, bus companies are interested in poor customers because the rich customers have cars.
	So, I mean, the idea that the bus company would say to all the blacks, you have to sit at the back, thus alienating a prime constituency of their customers is ridiculous.
	They were forced by the government to seat the blacks at the back.
	And again, what this does is it creates an environment where people aren't mixing, people aren't having conversations.
	And it increases tensions.
	And of course, there were some genuine asshole racists who got into the government and got their way by putting the government, making the government pass laws or having the government pass laws that would segregate the racists and so on.
	And of course, the government shouldn't have anything to do with this stuff.
	If you run a restaurant and you don't wanna have red-haired people coming into your restaurant because you were kidnapped and beaten up by a rabid group of red-haired people when you were younger, Fine.
	I mean, I may disagree and I may say, come on, not all redhead people like that.
	I knew a redhead guy who wasn't like that at all.
	But if you want to do that, that's your business.
	It's your business.
	It's your property.
	And I mean, how is a restaurant different from your house?
	If you want to have a party and have your black friends come over, what am I going to like lodge a complaint against you and say, hey, You're not allowing me to show you my moves on the dance floor.
	What's the matter with you?
	Think of everything.
	Think of the cultural enrichment you could watch me doing my 50-year-old Buster Dad moves.
	But no, it's your house and it's your restaurant.
	You can do what you want.
	There's going to be economic penalties, right?
	If you don't want to hire redheaded people, there are some very skilled and intelligent redheaded people out there.
	And if you don't want to hire blacks, you're going to miss out on the talent pool represented by the black community.
	And So you're gonna pay a price, and that's gonna weed out inefficient or unproductive behaviors over time.
	But sure, yeah, why would the government say, you can't serve blacks in your restaurant?
	What the hell would they be doing with that at all?
	Well, you can or you have to.
	I mean, the point that I'm trying to make is that they simply have no business in the first place.
	And I realized this recently, and I'll try to rush through this really quickly, After the 13th Amendment, which was freeing the slaves, there was the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship, I think, and the 15th Amendment, they gave the right to vote.
	And then I realized something, reading this a while ago, I realized that the federal government, in doing this, and of course, I agree, well, I wouldn't be me if, anyway, forget all of that.
	Of course, I like these amendments, but they They did a power grab from the states.
	The states before that were pretty independent as states.
	They made their own voting rules.
	They had their own rules for virtually everything.
	And then the federal government came in and said, okay, no slavery.
	Okay.
	This is who citizens are.
	This is who can vote.
	Now, that all sounds pretty good, arguable, obviously.
	But then the 16th Amendment was in context.
	And then the 17th Amendment is pretty inconsequential.
	It changes voting dates or something like that.
	And then the 18th Amendment is prohibition.
	And so you just see a step-by-step grab of the federal government just getting larger and more power into the, what am I trying to say, the details or the laws of how the states are run.
	And then in 1964, the Civil Rights Act That Lyndon Johnson signed against his own will, it seems.
	They basically made racism illegal.
	And I'm going to come to a question here, and this is the most important question.
	I'm trying to write a book about this right now, actually.
	When they made racism illegal, not really, but you understand what I'm saying, figuratively.
	When they made racism illegal...
	Black people said, wait a second, if something happens that I don't like it, I can just call it racism.
	So that happened for a while, and that is the career of Jesse Jackson.
	And then the Mexicans said, wait a second, I'm brown, I can use that.
	And then, magically, the Muslims said, wait a second, I'm going to try it, maybe it will work.
	Right.
	And so right now, I think we are at a fever pitch of that word.
	I don't even know how many times I've heard the word in the last week.
	It's, you know, all you have to do is watch Trevor Noah, just one of his shows, and you'll hear it about 300 times.
	So the question is this.
	Wait, hear what?
	Huh?
	Hear what?
	The word racism.
	Racist or something.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He's got a bit of a shtick.
	So this is a question, and this is a bigger question.
	The other one we kind of solved pretty quickly.
	But this is the bigger question.
	How can we be a country that's free while we make discrimination illegal, when discrimination is part of being free?
	I like that.
	That's good.
	Forced association is violation of freedom of association, right?
	It is.
	Yes, of course.
	I mean, forced association, to take an extreme example, forced sexual association is called rape.
	Voluntary is called lovemaking.
	One is a crime, and the other one makes me sleepy.
	It is important that we, I think, process this basic fact.
	And, of course, this was the communist plan.
	The communist plan was to set blacks and whites against each other in order to weaken capitalism, to weaken the free market.
	And, you know, it seems like, tragically, they are doing pretty well.
	Communist Internationale, I'm sure you've heard this before, but for those who haven't, an international communist organization based in Moscow.
	It began operating in 1919 under the supervision of the Soviet Communist Party, chief goal spreading communism and establishing Soviet-style governments throughout the world.
	A few months later, Communist Party USA was established as part of the Comintern Network.
	And yeah, their goal, civil rights and immigration reform.
	And one of the most powerful driving forces, Communist Party, behind the civil rights movement.
	Communism quickly spread throughout the black population in In America.
	And a lot of African Americans, of course, started their own communist organizations, began spreading the Soviet message in their own communities and so on.
	And this was the goal.
	This was the goal to...
	To use minorities, and I think this is tragic.
	I mean, I think this is horrible.
	Because to be used for a white person's agenda and communism coming out of Soviet was a white person's agenda.
	To be used as part of a white person's agenda was kind of the point of slavery, too, and the evils that were all associated with that.
	And so for the communists coming along and saying, well, we're now going to use the blacks for our own anti-capitalist agenda.
	It's like, can people just stop fucking using the black community for their shit?
	Sorry.
	But it's like, Jesus Christ, leave the people alone!
	Stop using them as tools for your agendas.
	Well, this still begs the question, though.
	I mean, we have two conflicting values in our country.
	We have the value of freedom, which made the country what it is today.
	Probably won't get much argument from you on that.
	And then we have this new value since the 60s, which is can't discriminate.
	And it's not itched in stone.
	No, no, no, no.
	You can discriminate, Bob.
	Well, it's not itched in stone.
	You can discriminate against whites all you want.
	Oh, well, of course.
	Of course you can do that.
	You're not in the position.
	You can discriminate against whites all you want.
	And now, and now, you can also discriminate against Asians all you want.
	No.
	Right?
	So Google has run into trouble because the number of Asian engineers that they have is larger than the local proportion of Asians as a whole.
	And they don't have as many blacks as they like.
	So now it's an Asian black thing.
	You can discriminate legally.
	In fact, if you don't discriminate legally against white males in particular, you can get into a whole heap of trouble, right?
	Well, okay, barring the exceptions, sorry, I'm sorry, Mr.
	Mullen.
	Oh, we're just going to step over that one, aren't we?
	Yeah, yeah, we're going to step over the people in the unprotected class.
	I'm sorry, it's really just you.
	No offense.
	Right.
	I mean, even women, for some reason, are called a minority.
	I still haven't figured that one out.
	Because eggs.
	Oh!
	Thanks!
	Because eggs are rarer than sperm.
	Anyway, that's a topic for another time.
	So, but borrowing the unprotected class, I certainly feel your pain in the unprotected class.
	I really do.
	But how do we manage this?
	I'm free in this country to do what I want, but the government gets to tell me who my customers are.
	The government gets to tell me That I have to cater a gay wedding, even if I really don't want to, even if gays disgust me.
	How do we manage those two things?
	Which one is going to win?
	Can they coexist?
	Well, you know, I mean, for all the left gets mad at Christian bakers who don't want to Theoretically baked cakes for theoretical gay weddings, try and get a leftist to hire a conservative and see just how prejudiced they are.
	No, I mean, one of these is going to have to go by the wayside.
	I mean, at some...
	Where does this end?
	Right?
	Where does this escalation end?
	Right?
	Where does this...
	Because you know the goal as well as I do.
	And we'll just be perfectly blunt with each other as we've always been because, you know, these things all get resolved with honesty as best they can.
	But...
	You know the leftist game.
	You find disparate outcomes.
	You ascribe all disparities to bigotry.
	And then you use the state to attempt to force these numbers to match, right?
	So, I mean, just in Florida, that's sort of one that pops into my mind is that young black kids, sorry, it's kind of redundant, black kids get disciplined or sent to discipline more often than white kids.
	And, um...
	And certainly more often than Asian kids and, I don't know, one Jewish kid, I don't know where he stands.
	And of course, this is a problem because, you see, there's a disparity in the outcome.
	More black kids are being sent for discipline.
	And because, you see, we're all exactly the same, all the same culture, all the same family structures, everything's the same about us all, then the only disparate outcome can be occurring because of racism.
	And as long as we have this belief that, you know, genetics don't matter, culture doesn't matter, history doesn't matter, like, none of this matters.
	All disparate outcomes must be the result of bigotry, must be the result of racism with regards to races, must be the result of sexism with regards to gender, must be the result of whatever it is, some phobia with regards to whoever, right?
	Well, you're never going to end.
	It's never going to end.
	It's never, ever, ever, ever going to end.
	And to sort of push back against this narrative is risky for a lot of people, right?
	I seem to be without fear in this area because I damn well want to solve these problems because I think this is tearing us all apart and a great society is in grave danger.
	But there are reasons for disparities.
	I've talked about them before.
	Some genetic stuff, some race and IQ stuff.
	There's cultural stuff.
	There's single motherhood is a huge issue.
	Like, I've literally been haunted by, and I know we mentioned him before, the great, I mean, I've had a criticism of two of them, of course, right?
	But the great Dr.
	Thomas Sowell.
	You know, when he was, he just wrote his last column at the age of 86, 86.
	He's retiring, right?
	And when he wrote his last column, it haunted me because I've done enough reading and research to know where the black community was heading in the post-war period, and it was to a much better place than where it's ended up now.
	And it's just terrible.
	And he wrote, this is sort of his last column, and he wrote about when he was younger.
	He said, with all the advances of blacks over the years, nothing so brought home to me the social degeneration in black ghettos, like a visit to a Harlem high school some years ago.
	When I looked out the window at the park across the street, I mentioned that as a child, I used to walk my dog in that park.
	Looks of horror came over the students' faces at the thought of a kid going into the hellhole which that park had become in their time.
	When I have mentioned sleeping out on a fire escape in Harlem during hot summer nights before most people could afford air conditioning, young people have looked at me like I was a man from Mars.
	Oh, it's just horrifying.
	Where things were, where they could have gone...
	And where they've landed.
	And I think the government, you know, the welfare state and affirmative action and all of this stuff has combined to create a significant degradation.
	And in particular, of course, it's the black family.
	The black family.
	Blacks had a lower divorce rate in the 1920s than white families did.
	And the black families that stayed together gave the best launching pad for their children.
	And I'll tell you this straight up, you know, I've talked about the race and IQ stuff.
	If somebody said to me, You could give up 10 or 15 IQ points, but you could have come from a stable two-parent household.
	I would take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
	And so where the blacks could have ended up, if the community had stayed strong, if the marriages had stayed strong in particular, I just, I have this, I mean, I'm sorry, it literally breaks my heart just thinking about What has happened?
	As the government has moved in to fix things, what has happened and how unbelievably unpleasant it's going to be to try and fix it.
	Well, you're...
	I hate to insult you, but we're not coming to an end.
	We're coming to an unending fight, right?
	No.
	What, you and I? No, no, not you and me.
	Not us.
	Okay, but it has to be through basketball because you've already revealed to me your weakness.
	Your kryptonite is ball, right?
	Hey, I'm bad for a black guy.
	That's probably still better.
	Right.
	So I'm average for a white guy, so it's an even match, let's just say.
	But no, no, I mean, a constant fight against the encroachment of Government power.
	By any means.
	I mean, the fact that they're doing it by immigration instead of by the civil rights movements or whatever, it really doesn't make any difference, right?
	Because the end result is the same.
	They hurt the people, they hurt everyone, including the people they pretend to purport to help.
	Oh, well, this is, of course, a case that has been made over and over again, that the immigration policies pursued by the Democrats have shredded a lot of opportunities for blacks and has driven down black wages.
	And, of course, as welfare becomes more and more lucrative over time relative to wages, again, it just further shreds the families.
	Well, of course, like I ask people, have you seen a paperboy recently?
	It's really that simple, you know?
	Everyone says, well, who's going to cut your lawn?
	Who's going to do your gardening if we kick out all the Mexicans?
	I say these magical things that were called teenagers.
	We had these things a while ago.
	They were amazing.
	I guess, you know, they don't exist anymore.
	It's ridiculous.
	Well, no, that's, I mean, a lot of the jobs that I had when I was younger, I'm sure, have been replaced by immigrants in many places around the world.
	Now, Bob was trying to follow along with this.
	His connection got all kinds of wonky, so I'm sure he'll have comments the next time he calls in.
	But thanks so much, Bob, for a great conversation.
	I look forward to our next chat, and let's move on to the next caller.
	All right, up next we have Richard.
	Richard wrote in and said, I don't believe that free will exists.
	I also have struggled with depression, lack of motivation, and a feeling of meaninglessness throughout my life, even before I realized that free will doesn't exist.
	How do you think the one, depression, lack of motivation, feeds into the other?
	Do I somehow need to start believing in free will in order to feel better?
	It doesn't logically follow from a belief in determinism that you will be depressed and lacking motivation, although it seems to be the end result for a lot of people.
	That is from Richard.
	Hey Richard, how you doing?
	Hey Steph.
	Do you know where I'm going to start with my questions?
	I've listened to a lot of your determinism discussions.
	I'm guessing you're going to start with why am I even bothering talking to you?
	No.
	I know why people bother talking to me.
	I get to do it every day.
	It's a rare privilege, let me tell you.
	What was your childhood like, Richard?
	See, this is a difficult question.
	I know that it wasn't good, that I ended up hating my parents, but when you ask me that question, I don't really feel anything, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, no, but I didn't ask what you feel about your childhood.
	Just give me the documentary description as if it was somebody else.
	What happened?
	I guess you could say I was scapegoat.
	It seemed like I was to blame, like I was too insolent or too argumentative or I would answer back or So my dad would get really angry at that.
	I don't know, I just ended up hating and despising my parents.
	And what would your dad do, Richard, when you would argue back?
	See, that's the thing, I don't really remember.
	Like I know he would get angry and shout and call me names and spank me as well.
	And what kind of spanking are we talking about?
	Yeah.
	Hand, bare butt, implements?
	Yeah, hand and I know it was bare butt sometimes.
	I don't know if it was every time.
	Like I couldn't even tell you the frequency or anything.
	Give me a rough sense of the frequency.
	See, I don't know.
	I can't...
	once a week, once every two weeks maybe.
	I can only really remember two specific instances, but I'm sure it must have been more than that.
	And from what age until what age did this occur?
	I know it was from at least three or four until maybe nine or ten, eleven.
	Right.
	Well, that's a lot, right?
	I mean, just looking at this, let's just take an average.
	Let's say 3 until 10, right?
	And we'll just say once a week instead of twice.
	Once every two weeks, say once a week.
	So that's 52 times a year times 7 years.
	364 stankings or beatings.
	I would probably put it lower than that, but I can't know for sure.
	Divided by two, that's fine.
	182.
	I would guess that might be about right.
	That is a lot of hitting.
	And what about language?
	What about the words that were spoken?
	So yeah, insolent, lazy, rude, not respecting your elders, thoughtless, not respecting your elders, thoughtless, uncaring, selfish, Only thinking of yourself.
	Stuff like that.
	And I would assume those hurt, those words?
	Again, it's hard to say.
	I would imagine they did, yeah.
	And that they've left an effect on me.
	They have.
	In your Adverse Childhood Experience score that you filled out, you have physical abuse, non-spanking.
	What was that?
	Oh, I thought that meant, like, I thought that was two different categories.
	So, like, physical abuse was one thing and then non-spanking was the other.
	I think maybe I misunderstood.
	Okay, so we don't have physical abuse outside of the spanking, is that right?
	I don't think so, no.
	I don't know what that would mean.
	Household member depressed, mentally ill or suicide attempt?
	Yeah, I'm pretty sure my dad was depressed a lot.
	I can remember him just starting crying for no reason or seemed like for no reason.
	Right.
	And what about your mom?
	What about her?
	Thank you.
	Where did she fit into this parenting scenario?
	It's strange.
	I don't really know.
	She was a stay-at-home mother for early years and then she went to work and like During the time she would stay at home, my dad was working away during the week, so it would be only her, but I don't really have any memories of that.
	Was she present when your father was spanking you?
	Yeah.
	And what does she say or do about it?
	Nothing.
	Did she comfort you at all afterwards, or did you know if she ever spoke negatively to your father about hitting you?
	I don't know.
	I don't remember comforting me.
	What choices, Richard, were you allowed to make as a child?
	It seems like very few choices.
	Or none.
	Or it didn't seem like my preferences or choices were taken into account a lot of the time, maybe.
	Right.
	So like if I was upset or arguing back or then I would be punished more for that.
	Or if I was angry, I would be punished more for that.
	Right, so your parents were allowed to be angry, but you weren't.
	Yeah.
	And do you know why I'm asking about all of this?
	Because it feeds into how I see choice and responsibility and what's the word?
	Actions and things like that.
	Right.
	Let's forget about the free will part of it for now.
	We're all born with willpower.
	The willpower to try and affect our environment and we know this because babies cry and they giggle and they sigh contentedly and they calm down and they're soothable and right the babies cry because they want or need something yeah they laugh because they're entertained they coo because they're secure they relax and are comforted because they're loved and babies Are born with very strong willpower.
	And babies are born only thinking about themselves.
	Of course!
	It's exactly how we want things to be for babies.
	So babies are born, and they don't sit there and say, well, I am kind of hungry, but it is three o'clock in the morning, and I bet my mom needs her beauty sleep, so maybe I'll just hold off for a little bit.
	No, they wake, they're hungry, they cry.
	Right?
	Right.
	They are selfish.
	And...
	It's good.
	It's good because if they, you know, the babies who were overly considerate of their parents' feelings didn't get enough food to survive, right?
	Right.
	So, babies are born strong-willed.
	Children are born strong-willed.
	Not all equally.
	I just talked to a researcher today who was saying that there's no aspect of humanity that is not touched by genetics, which is a wild thing to think about.
	But to whatever degree, we're on a continuum, but nobody's at zero as far as being strong-willed goes.
	Under that definition, I was strong-willed because I was fighting back and arguing back and answering back.
	And do you know what you were fighting for, Richard?
	No.
	Identity.
	You were fighting for existence.
	You were fighting for life.
	Where we're not allowed to make choices, and forget about the free will, just the subjective childhood experience of making choices and having preferences.
	Where we're not allowed to have choices, we're not allowed to exist.
	We're not allowed to be.
	We're not allowed to have an identity.
	We're not allowed to have a personality.
	We're not allowed to have a mind, a brain.
	Will and choice is identity.
	It is who we are.
	It is all that is recorded after we go.
	It is all that we leave behind is our choices and our will.
	You know, the mere thoughts that we have in passing leave no record in the world.
	But what we think and choose and will, what we choose and will, that's the footprint we leave in the world.
	So when you were, I think, when you were fighting back, you weren't fighting because You were annoyed.
	I'm sure you were.
	You weren't fighting because you were frustrated, though I'm sure you were.
	You weren't fighting because you felt confined or constricted or anything like that.
	You were fighting for life itself.
	You were fighting to have existence.
	You were fighting to have an air bubble in a deep ocean of undoing.
	And this is why family fights are so ferocious often between parents and children.
	The parents say, eat this.
	The child says, no!
	And this is, it's a conflict about identity.
	It's a conflict about existence.
	It's a conflict about do I get to be here or not?
	Am I a slave or not?
	Am I a shadow cast by your dysfunction or am I my own animated existence?
	And the projection that comes out of people to me is really, it still shocks me.
	Still after all these years, your father says, you're selfish!
	You're selfish!
	You're only thinking about yourself.
	Well, isn't it selfish to take out your frustrations by verbally abusing your child?
	Is he thinking about himself and his frustrations and what he wants to squelch in you for whatever reason he has?
	Is he thinking about any of that or is he just thinking about how to express his venom, how to erase you as maybe he was erased?
	Is he only thinking about himself or his selflessness, so to speak, his lack of identity?
	Totally.
	He's only thinking about himself, yeah.
	But he says, and that's why when people accuse you of stuff that has a peculiar emotional intensity to it, It's easy to think that that's because they know something about you and they really get you.
	No.
	It's almost always because of projection.
	Right.
	And there are people, you say, free will doesn't exist.
	Well, it certainly existed when you were a baby.
	In some, will certainly existed.
	Free will doesn't exist around some people for sure.
	Free will didn't really exist around Joseph Stalin, right?
	Chairman Mao.
	A prison guard.
	Free will does not exist around certain people and in certain situations.
	But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist as a whole.
	But the way we will often deal with early trauma As we say, it wasn't my parents, their specific choices, their specific parenting, their specific decisions.
	It is somehow the human condition, right?
	Isn't this what people say a lot of times?
	I'm not saying it's you, but people say this a lot.
	Angst is the human condition.
	Anxiety is the human condition.
	Depression is grappling with the human condition.
	Bullshit.
	Yeah.
	If somebody cuts off my big toe with a hacksaw, I don't say, missing your big toe is the human condition.
	Grappling with a slight loss of balance is the human...
	No.
	Someone cut off my big toe.
	They made that choice.
	They performed that action.
	It's not the human condition.
	It's specific people making specific decisions.
	But if it is the human condition, you can't escape it, right?
	Right.
	And when I first...
	Realised or saw that free will didn't exist, then I kind of forgave my parents.
	I was like, oh well, it's just because of their parents and they had no choice.
	And that's a fine argument, except for one basic problem.
	If your parents hit you to punish you for making bad choices, then they themselves cannot claim to be determinists, right?
	Thank you.
	Right.
	If they hit you because you are choosing bad things or making bad choices or being a bad child or being a disobedient child or whatever, then they are fully accepting that you At the age of, as you say, three to four onwards, that you are fully possessed of moral choice, moral understanding, moral responsibility, and free will, and must be punished for making bad mistakes that you damn well shouldn't have made because you know better, right?
	Right, but that doesn't disprove determinism, though.
	No, of course, I didn't say anything.
	No, no, no, I didn't say it disproves determinism.
	I said it's a logical problem.
	That If your parents punished you because they thought you had free will and choice and were making bad decisions of being a bad child, a naughty child, a disobedient child, then saying that they were mere products of their environment is something that they would significantly disagree with because they say, well, no, you have a moral choice as a three-year-old and therefore we have moral choices as 30-year-olds.
	Again, it doesn't disprove determinism, but it proves that your parents believed in free will.
	Just not for you.
	Yeah, but it's funny, when I asked him about this a year or two ago, and my dad was like, oh, well, it's mostly nature.
	You're a loner and that's just the way it is and deal with it.
	Oh, he said to you, you're a loner?
	Yeah.
	He said, I'm a loner, so you're a loner as well.
	But then my question to him would be, if it's all nature, then why was I being punished for who I was?
	Right.
	I mean, it's easy to be a determinist when your kids are all grown up, right?
	Because it allows you to avoid guilt at bad parenting choices.
	But if you're ferociously attempting to modify your child's behavior, when your child is young, you can't claim to be a determinist anymore ever, ever again.
	No, it's just dishonest bullshit, really.
	Yeah, but if your child then grows up and, as you say, is a loner, say, well, you know, it didn't have anything to do with my parenting, it's just that's his nature.
	Yeah.
	Bullshit.
	I mean, did your father give you forgiveness for your nature when you argumented it?
	Well, he's just argumentative.
	That's his nature.
	No need to punish it any more than we punish him for being tall or short.
	No, definitely not.
	Right.
	So you...
	Had an emotional predilection to believing that free will doesn't exist.
	Again, this is not proof or disproof of free will, but it's important to know our own biases, right?
	Yeah.
	If you truly believed in free will, you would have a different conversation with your father in particular, and your mother too, but with your father in particular about punishment, right?
	I did try.
	But I guess because I don't...
	It's all a bit cloudy and wishy-washy and...
	Do you know what I mean?
	You're not the only Scottish person I've known with a harsh, harsh, harsh childhood.
	No.
	Read Alan Cumming.
	Anyway, so if you know your predilection for believing in determinism, if you know what's called the secondary gains, in other if you know what's called the secondary gains, in other words, if I believe in determinism, I can forgive my parents.
	Because they were just like damaged robots, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, you don't spank your shopping cart for having a wobbly wheel, right?
	Well, I guess...
	They were like that in a way.
	No, no, because they don't believe that you had a wobbly wheel, they believe that you were acting willfully and negatively and badly against them.
	Like if something happened, if the car went wrong, or if they could get angry or pissed off at an inanimate object.
	Sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but it just reminds me of a scene in John Cleese's old comedy called Fawlty Towers, F-A-W-L-T-Y, Fawlty Towers, where his car doesn't work and he starts beating it with a shrub.
	Yeah.
	And it's funny because it's mad.
	And we had a dog that my dad was training to be a sheepdog and he was so brutal to that dog.
	Right.
	Thank you.
	Because he probably anthropomorphised the dog as disobeying him willfully.
	He did, totally.
	And you could see the dog was trying her hardest and was in total panic and fear.
	And now we have a determinist sheepdog somewhere out there too, right?
	Probably.
	Free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	And there's no way to argue against that without assuming it to be true.
	It's one of these, you can't argue against it.
	You can choose not to engage in a conversation, like I don't have conversations with Rocks or the weather or shrubs or cars, right?
	I have conversations in cars to start this show, but not with cars.
	You can't argue against this definition of free...
	I'm not trying to set it up like it's some cunning trap.
	It's just...
	I've had this argument out there for years.
	I've got a three-part free will series on YouTube about this.
	So, your father...
	Had ideal standards for you.
	You failed to achieve them and you were responsible for the gap and had to be punished, right?
	Right.
	So free will was...
	painful for you.
	Free will was used against you, right?
	You made a bad choice.
	Boom!
	You must be punished, right?
	You chose wrongly.
	You chose badly.
	I am going to beat you.
	I am going to hit you.
	I am going to spank you.
	So free will was the necessary ingredient to the humiliation of punishment.
	You are choosing to disobey me.
	You are choosing to be selfish.
	You are choosing to think only of yourself.
	You are choosing to be rebellious.
	You are choosing to talk back.
	And you must be punished.
	So the...
	To ascribe to you, Richard, free will was the precursor to the blow.
	So free will was your enemy.
	Do you understand?
	Yeah.
	Free will was your enemy.
	And if you could ascribe the punishment to free will rather than to your father, well, you can ditch free will.
	And feel safer.
	Because whoever ascribed free will to you did so generally right before punishing you, right?
	You made a bad choice.
	Boom!
	And the hammer comes down, right?
	It makes sense because...
	I find it so hard to make decisions or to decide something.
	Sure, because you were punished for making decisions that your father disagreed with.
	To have free will, like, to be ascribed, to have free will ascribed to you as a prerequisite to punishment, for you to believe that you had free will would be to invite further punishment.
	And as children, we do whatever we can to avoid punishment.
	I vanished.
	I became the invisible child.
	I became a ghost.
	I became silent.
	My mother said, don't think.
	I went limp.
	I had to.
	I had to.
	The level of violence I was subjected to made it a physical necessity.
	Right.
	I could not exercise will or choice.
	I could not explain why I was doing what I was doing.
	If I was disapproved of, I was bad and would be beaten.
	I remember you saying that you didn't even know, like you couldn't know whether an action was going to bring punishment or not.
	It was like totally random almost.
	Which is sort of a foundational aspect of totalitarianism, right?
	The not knowingness.
	What are the laws?
	If I don't break the laws, I'm safe.
	But you don't know the laws.
	Nice.
	There's no laws.
	You know, I could be tidying up my room.
	And my mother would want company and would be annoyed that I was tidying up my room and snap at me to stop.
	Stop being so compulsive and obsessive.
	And if she wanted my room to be tidy because she was irritated about something else, I would be at fault for not tidying up my room.
	You know how this goes, right?
	Yeah.
	Can't win.
	And the corollary of can't win is don't try.
	It's the only sensible response, right?
	Yeah.
	Now I put the moral blame where it resides.
	I invite you to do the same.
	To speak the truth.
	Your father's morally responsible for hitting you.
	Yeah, since I started listening to the show and I went into therapy and stuff and I did try to talk to them and See what they would say.
	But it wasn't any use, really.
	And again, your choice can't be implemented, right?
	You want to talk about something with your parents, but they block you.
	You can't do it.
	You can't do it.
	And this is the price of being around people who turn us into ghosts.
	And I do believe it does, to return to your original question, I do believe it does follow.
	Yeah.
	That a belief in determinism must result in a lack of motivation, of course.
	If it doesn't, you're believing in something other than determinism, right?
	If my choices don't matter, if I can't make choices, then making choices is like sacrificing to a deity you no longer believe in.
	The deity of choice, identity, responsibility.
	All these things must be thrown out of the car on the journey to determinism-ville, right?
	And if they're not, then okay, well it's not really determinism then.
	But even before I believed or saw that determinism was true, I was still depressed and unmotivated.
	Well, we've already gone over this, right?
	Yes.
	You need to rouse yourself for this conversation, right?
	But it wasn't because I believed in determinism that I felt that way.
	I know.
	I know.
	I understand.
	But determinism has prevented you from fixing it.
	Right.
	You have no choice.
	You are punished for free will.
	You are rewarded for empty compliance.
	And therefore, free will becomes your enemy.
	Free will becomes something that produces fear, anxiety, you're trained out of believing in free will, because free will is the precursor to punishment.
	You have freedom, you have choice, you make bad choices, you're punished, right?
	And then, determinism seems very true to you because it emotionally aligns with what hurt you as a child, covers the wound, But it also prevents the wound from healing.
	Short-term benefit, long-term cost.
	I feel better in the moment about what happened to me as a child if I believe my parents didn't make a choice.
	But, if they have no responsibility, then I have no responsibility.
	If they're not morally responsible for what they did, I'm not morally responsible for what I do.
	If they couldn't make a choice, I couldn't make a choice.
	We can't define our parents as the essence of the human condition and escape that condition ourselves because we're human.
	It's basic intro to deductive reasoning 101.
	Socrates is a man.
	All men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal.
	All human beings are X, my parents are X, therefore I am X because I'm a human being.
	If my parents get to escape moral responsibility, and that's the human condition because determinism is true, then I have no moral responsibility, I have no will, I have no choice.
	That's the price of false forgiveness.
	Right.
	that.
	Thank you.
	And it is like I've ended up wanting nothing and believing in nothing.
	Because you have a great deal of integrity and a great deal of intelligence and you're taking determinism seriously.
	Most people just say it.
	Oh, I'm a determinist.
	They just say it.
	But you've taken it very seriously, which is to your credit in many ways.
	Now, your question is, do I somehow need to stop believing in free will in order to feel better?
	I don't believe that...
	I would not argue that we should pursue false beliefs to make us happy.
	Because as a philosopher, I'm sorry, that's not my...
	You know, that's like, I don't know, some psychologist saying, yeah, yeah, go take some heroin, it'll make you happy, right?
	It's not the gig.
	It's not the gig.
	No.
	You were surrounded by people.
	Oh, let me ask you this.
	I don't want to lead you on.
	Does your father believe in free will?
	Does he believe that he's morally responsible for the choices he made and is making in his life?
	He didn't seem to want to accept moral responsibility when I questioned him about my childhood.
	Maybe that's not answering your question.
	I don't know.
	No, that answers.
	That answers the question.
	Now, does he say, other people have moral responsibility, Richard, but it's just me who doesn't?
	I'm an exception.
	I'm special.
	I'm a deterministic snowflake in a blizzard of free will.
	He did seem to assign moral responsibility to me, yeah.
	Sure.
	Certainly when you were a child, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, he even assigned goddamn moral responsibility to a sheepdog he was training, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Now this is hypocrisy.
	Right?
	Right.
	You, as a three-year-old, had 100% moral responsibility.
	Me, as a 30-year-old, zero.
	I hit you because you make bad choices.
	I had no choice about hitting you.
	You are capable of making bad choices.
	I am incapable of making bad choices.
	Boy, that's a pretty sweet perspective if you want to get away with a whole lot of bad stuff.
	I always end up questioning What I'm doing.
	Maybe he's right.
	Maybe it was just...
	I don't know.
	It all gets...
	Maybe it was just what?
	Maybe it was just nature, or maybe it was just me.
	If it was just nature, Richard, why is he hitting you?
	If it's genetics...
	Do you think that hitting a child makes a child taller?
	No.
	Do you think hitting a child changes the colour of his or her hair?
	No.
	Eye colour?
	Complexion, number of limbs, number of toes, number of belly buttons.
	I guess it could change the number of limbs if you hit hard enough.
	Well, that's tragically true, yes.
	Or the number of children if you hit too hard.
	No, if you believe something is genetic, you don't hit it.
	But that would be genetic as well.
	It's all just robots doing things.
	No, but his robot assumes you're not a robot.
	But that could be part of him being a robot.
	And I know that's No, that's a paradox.
	Yeah.
	Sorry.
	Can't give you...
	Unless you're going to say absolutely everything is determined, which would be a tough...
	I don't believe that.
	No, he hit you because there were standards you weren't fulfilling.
	There was an ideal and you failed to reach it and you were responsible for it.
	He cannot ascribe responsibility to you and then remove it from himself.
	I mean, he can do whatever he wants, but he's wrong.
	Now, you could say, of course, that there are people...
	And this is your point, right?
	That maybe people are deterministically programmed to ascribe free will to others, but not to themselves, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	How does that sit with you logically?
	Like, I can see that in a deterministic world, that would be true, or that could be true.
	No, if the world is deterministic, there's no such thing as truth.
	Well, in a deterministic world it would be possible for someone to hold those beliefs at the same time.
	But they would not...
	So you're saying your father was deterministically programmed to ascribe free will to you and determinism to himself?
	Yeah.
	But then he would still ascribe...
	Sorry, then why would those perspectives change when you got older?
	When you got big enough to fight back?
	Why would he no longer hit you?
	He was deterministically programmed to not be hit by a bigger person.
	So he changed once you got big enough that you could hit back.
	He changed his behavior in response to his environment.
	Right.
	He changed his behavior.
	Right, but I don't think this is a good way to go, because it's just going to end up going round and round.
	No, it doesn't go round and round.
	It's that you have an answer called determinism, which you can wave to explain away everything.
	That's what I mean.
	And it's a god to you.
	Right?
	So this is the same.
	Determinism is a form of nihilistic religion.
	Because you have an answer called determinism, which can be used to explain, well, he's not a hypocrite.
	He was predetermined to be a hypocrite.
	Right?
	Well, he didn't Stop hitting me because I got bigger.
	He's just deterministically programmed to minimize danger to himself.
	And so when I got bigger, he's like, you have an answer in the same way that, you know, people have an answer for, where did the universe come from?
	Well, God did it.
	Where did this come from?
	God did it.
	God did it, right?
	And if you can't explain it, it's a mystery.
	And if you can't explain it, it's determinism.
	And it's even predetermined that you can't explain it.
	You understand?
	I get it.
	It's a nihilistic religion.
	Because there's nothing it can't explain, and no paradox that it can't resolve.
	But it explains nothing.
	Because, you understand, there's no null hypothesis for it.
	No, I know.
	That's part of the reason I phoned out.
	You can't disprove it.
	You're trapped.
	Yeah.
	You can't disprove it.
	And if you can't disprove it, it can't be true.
	But when you look at it, there's no way...
	There's nothing to have free will.
	What do you mean?
	Like, there's no ghost in the machine, there's no soul, there's no spirit.
	Of course!
	There's no entity.
	If you accept determinism as true, then you have just exercised the ghost of free will from your machine, right?
	You couldn't say a computer had free will.
	I agree, a computer does not have free will.
	And we're just more complex computers.
	How do you know?
	That's a hypothesis, right?
	How do you know?
	There can't be any...
	Sure there can be.
	Come on, you've heard me make this argument before, Richard.
	Let me ask you this.
	You are composed largely of carbon atoms, right?
	Not counting the water, right?
	Carbon atoms?
	Yeah.
	Are any of your carbon atoms alive?
	Are any of your carbon atoms alive?
	No.
	Are you alive?
	But that's just...
	No, no, no.
	Answer the question.
	Don't start dodging me, bro.
	If you want to come in and you want to talk about a philosophy show, you want to talk about philosophy in a philosophy show, you owe me the answers.
	I've invested a lot of time into learning about your history.
	Just answer the question and don't pull any bullshit dodging.
	Because I ascribe to you choice.
	Don't say you would...
	Are any of your carbon atoms alive?
	No.
	Are you alive?
	I can see that's a dodge, but this is where I always pull.
	Are you alive?
	You're going to hate me if I say yes, depending on the definition of a life.
	Sure.
	Look, I don't care if you want a hedge definition of a life.
	Sure.
	So you have a property that your components do not.
	None of your atoms are alive, yet you are alive.
	Oh, look, an emergent property.
	Can any of your atoms have a nightmare when you sleep at night?
	Come on, this is not complicated.
	Come on.
	Don't make it harder than it is.
	It's not hard.
	Can any of your atoms have a nightmare when you sleep at night?
	You could say that they all do.
	No, no.
	Not one of your atoms can have...
	No, come on.
	Don't give me...
	You could say if you define...
	No.
	None of your atoms...
	If I remove any of your atoms, it can't even sleep, let alone have a nightmare.
	If you remove one atom...
	It's not alive.
	If you remove one atom...
	None of your individual atoms can have a nightmare when you sleep at night, right?
	No.
	That's true.
	Okay.
	Have you ever had a nightmare when you sleep at night?
	Yeah.
	You're Scottish!
	Of course you have!
	Look, here's another emergent property.
	Can any of your atoms daydream?
	But you can daydream.
	Can any of your atoms digest a chicken?
	But you can digest a chicken.
	Can any of your atoms screw some woman and make more atoms?
	No, but you can.
	Emergent properties all over the place.
	Do any of your atoms go by the name Richard?
	No, but you go by the name Richard.
	Oh look, another emergent property.
	So don't tell me you know for sure you don't have free will and you're just a machine, because all you are are emergent properties.
	That's all you are.
	That's the entire definition of humanity.
	It's consciousness.
	It's life.
	It's an emergent property shared by none of the component parts.
	None of them.
	And it's weird, because it's not how anything else in the universe works, particularly consciousness.
	It's messed up.
	But consciousness doesn't do anything.
	Hang on, hang on, let me finish.
	Each atom has mass, and mass has gravity as a property, right?
	It attracts gravity.
	Other masses, right?
	So yes, I weigh 190 pounds, and each of my atoms contributes to that 190 pounds.
	190 pounds of my weight is not an emergent property, it's just a stacked property.
	And a little ripped, if I may say so these days.
	Right?
	So you understand, from that standpoint, 190 pounds, it's not an emergent property.
	It's not like zero, zero, zero, ping, 190.
	It's like tiny microgram, tiny microgram, ooh, 190, right?
	Ooh, look at that, me mixing my measurements and all that.
	So you understand that there's so much about me that is not an emergent property.
	But who I am is an emergent property.
	My body, in its physical properties, not an emergent property.
	But life, and in particular consciousness, is an emergent property and we know that because only the brain produces it and you have you say it determinism it's bullshit because you're only talking to me you're not talking to a computer you're not talking to a light you're not talking to a camera you're not you're talking to me to my consciousness so when you want to have a conversation Richard you don't go To
	any other entity in the universe than human consciousness.
	No.
	So you can't say, even by your own actions, you can't say human consciousness is just like everything else.
	Because you treat it with the singular respect and unique interaction capabilities that it possesses.
	You treat it as incredibly unique in the universe.
	Right.
	It is the only thing you can have a conversation with is human consciousness.
	It's the only thing.
	I was going to say...
	And so you can't say that the human consciousness is just like everything else when you treat it as completely and totally unique.
	I was going to say, but consciousness, consciousness doesn't do anything.
	Consciousness that believes in determinism doesn't do very much.
	I agree with you.
	Do you think I don't do anything?
	Consciousness doesn't think thoughts.
	What do you mean?
	What does think thoughts if it's not consciousness?
	Is it your elbow?
	It doesn't choose which thoughts you think.
	It doesn't produce the thoughts.
	It doesn't produce the emotions.
	It doesn't What doesn't produce the emotions?
	Consciousness.
	Well, consciousness is not just the neofrontal cortex.
	It's not just the seat of higher reasoning.
	Consciousness is the whole bundle.
	Right.
	You know, they've done studies where they switch emotions.
	The ratio of cards ever so slightly in a deck, and they give people the reward for however number, red, right?
	They put one more red or something like that.
	And within 30 seconds of playing, of just turning over cards, people start to show signs of anxiety, even though they have no conscious knowledge that anything's wrong.
	But their bodies have noticed that the ratios, the odds are off somehow.
	Right.
	Right?
	It's our gut.
	It's unconscious.
	It's subconscious.
	It's the neofrontal cortex.
	It's the amygdala.
	It's the hypothalamus.
	It's the whole thing.
	It's consciousness.
	That's something I was going to bring up to support my side.
	They've done studies where people made a choice between two buttons and they could tell six or seven seconds before the person consciously knew it which button they were going to choose.
	Mm-hmm.
	And then the person says that they chose right beforehand.
	Yeah.
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Do you know there are lots of people who can't hit a tennis ball?
	Yeah.
	Does that mean that nobody can hit a tennis ball?
	There are lots of people who aren't aware of why they make decisions or aware of the fact that they have impulses below conscious knowledge that Can condition their choices.
	Lots of people don't have self-knowledge.
	Don't know themselves, don't know the source of their ideas, don't know the source of their thoughts, don't know the source of their emotions, don't know the effect that their history has on their life, on their future, everything.
	So isn't that just being a robot then?
	To some extent?
	If you lack self-knowledge, it's kind of robotic.
	Free will isn't just this soul that you're born with.
	Free will is something we're born with, and hopefully our parents and our educators help us develop our capacity to choose, to understand, to know.
	And the more self-knowledge you have, the more choices open up for you.
	I know that I was a ghost in my childhood, and I know that's partly why I don't mind being a public figure now.
	I know that.
	This is not complicated for me.
	I know my mother told me not to think.
	And what do I do 10 hours a week publicly?
	I think.
	I know that I'm really good at unraveling irrationalities.
	I know I learned that as a child, as a survival mechanism, which is why I'm so good at it.
	It's baked into my brain.
	Like the reflex of a gazelle, predator, boing!
	I'm hardwired because of my history to handle this, to do this.
	I know all of this, which is why I can do it without screwing it up.
	But a lot of people who gain the kind of influence, fame slash notoriety slash whatever that I have would mess it up.
	We'd go to their heads, you know, and people have this, oh, Steph's becoming arrogant, he's gone to his head, it's successful, no, no, no, no, come on.
	I know all of this.
	The amount of self-knowledge I share on the show is much less, because the show is about the listeners, about the topics, about the subjects, about the arguments, not that much about me.
	But I have a pretty good degree, pretty good degree of self-knowledge.
	That was the thing that I noticed when I first started listening to the shows.
	I was just in awe of how you Could see through people's bullshit and call them on it.
	Right.
	And that's why you're calling in.
	Yeah.
	And I appreciate that.
	And I respect that.
	You know, the people who call in, I have huge respect for.
	No matter what happens.
	Massive respect.
	So if you don't have self-knowledge, for instance, you're easy to intimidate, right?
	Yeah.
	And, you know, One day I may receive a negative comment in the line of work that I do.
	You never know, right?
	But I can't really be intimidated.
	And that's because I don't have a big giant mommy button in my head that people can hammer and pound because I've resolved it.
	I've dealt with it.
	I went to therapy for years.
	I've done it.
	I know.
	And because I know, it doesn't mean I have perfect self-knowledge.
	Such a thing would be impossible.
	It doesn't mean that I'm never surprised by my reactions.
	Such a thing would be impossible.
	And it would also indicate no growth, right?
	But it does mean the choices are available to me that wouldn't otherwise be available to me.
	And the people who lack self-knowledge are very easily overwhelmed by their emotions.
	In your case, helplessness.
	Hopelessness, maybe.
	But when you have self-knowledge, emotions are just information.
	They're not bad, they're not great, they're essential.
	And people who've lost, like they have brain injuries, they lose their capacity to experience emotions, They make terrible decisions.
	No matter how smart they are.
	No matter how abstractly engaged and involved they are.
	So I am very friendly to feelings, to instincts.
	They are essential to guiding us.
	I mean, I wish people in Europe would freak out!
	Have some emotions!
	You're all raised by women!
	Be emotional, for God's sakes!
	And I love the emotions.
	They are welcome always at my table to have a conversation with.
	I don't rule them.
	They don't rule me.
	We negotiate.
	We inform each other.
	We play.
	So if people lack self-knowledge, they're kind of like machines.
	Right?
	Don't you know this, Richard?
	Maybe even from your own parents.
	Don't you know what they're going to say next?
	It's like a script.
	Input-output.
	Like a machine.
	Quite often, yeah.
	Like that old Eliza program that pretended to be a therapist.
	You can still probably find it running somewhere on the internet, but it's just input-output.
	And if you're around people like that, yes, they kind of look like machines.
	like a catechism, but it's still a choice to be a machine.
	A computer doesn't have the choice to have free will, but we do have the choice to be like a computer.
	And we do that by avoiding self-knowledge, by avoiding responsibility.
	Does that make sense?
	Do these people even have that capacity to go, oh well, today I'm going to get some self-knowledge?
	I don't know.
	But I do believe that it is diminishing over time.
	I don't think some of the people from my youth, I don't consider them any more capable of pursuing self-knowledge at this stage in their lives than of pursuing a career as a lead ballerina at the Bolshoi Ballet.
	Opportunity can pass you by.
	And you're calling because you're close to that.
	Point of no return.
	Richard, I'm telling you this right now, I know you're- I've already blown it.
	No, you haven't already blown it, otherwise you wouldn't be calling.
	You haven't already blown it, otherwise you wouldn't be calling.
	Unless you are a complete masochist, in which case I think I would have detected that before now, right?
	No, you haven't.
	You may only be halfway through your life.
	So, Your parents don't want you to start ascribing moral responsibility.
	You understand that?
	Your parents do not want you adopting the free will perspective.
	I understand none of this is proving free will.
	Please accept that.
	We're just talking about the emotions, right?
	If we can get to the emotions, then we can figure out what your resistance may be.
	If we don't deal with your emotions, the logical argument leads nowhere, right?
	Yeah.
	Let's say you come out of this conversation 100% convinced of free will.
	And this doesn't mean that you walk in and convince your parents they have free will.
	But it means that at some point they had free will.
	And chose not to exercise it.
	And then, like all non-exercised muscles, it ate trophies, right?
	Yeah.
	And eventually, it goes from vestigial to practically non-existent.
	It also often will metastasize.
	If we make bad decisions in our life, we justify it by provoking other people to make those bad decisions.
	We all know this from drinkers, right?
	People who drink too much, you go to their party.
	Come on, have another drink!
	Don't be such a square!
	Loosen up!
	Have fun!
	It's like, no, you're just making shitty decisions and you want me to mirror your shitty decisions so they don't look so shitty.
	You want to de-shit your decisions by placing them in front of an infinite set of mirrors.
	No, thank you.
	I like my liver.
	So, how much of what you think is your dedication to determinism is your father's need for you to be a determinist?
	This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about self-knowledge.
	You say you admire my ability to cut through people's bullshit.
	I don't view it as people's bullshit.
	I view it almost always as that which is necessary for those around them.
	That which is necessary to maintain relations with dysfunctional people.
	That which is necessary usually for the comfort of their parents.
	I don't view you as being a determinist, rightly and wrongly.
	I'm just telling you, I'm being honest.
	I don't view you as a determinist.
	That's why I asked you about your childhood.
	I view your determinism as extremely valuable to your father.
	Because it gets him off the hook.
	And it has you, instead of blaming him, blaming nature.
	Blaming the machinery of man.
	The mechanism of the mind.
	You can't get mad at him because when he got mad at a car, he looked crazy.
	And he's just another kind of car.
	And you don't want to be crazy, do you?
	No.
	And this is why your emotions won't be there for you.
	Because your emotions say, wait a minute.
	You want me to walk 13 miles in a blizzard of hail to go to a restaurant that's already closed?
	What do your emotions say?
	that's a good question no way No thanks.
	We're staying home.
	Yeah.
	You want us To get angry?
	You've defined your father as a machine.
	You want us to get angry at a machine?
	You've told us it's a machine and that we're unjust.
	And then getting angry at a machine would be crazy.
	You already said we're crazy.
	You already said we're nuts and unjust and a delusion and worse than religious faith.
	We're insanity itself, personified nestling in your brain.
	And then you say, you know what?
	I seem to lack enthusiasm.
	Guess what, Richard?
	Enthusiasm is an emotion, and you've told your emotions, they're crazy!
	Right.
	Because you don't get emotional about a car unless you're crazy.
	Unless it's a really, really good Mustang.
	Topic for another time.
	I'm crazy about a Mercury.
	So...
	That makes...
	It's so much sense that...
	That's what I do!
	I totally don't even trust anything.
	Or I'll think something or feel something and go, oh well, but maybe this or maybe that or maybe I'm just wrong.
	You're constantly engaged in a vicious cock block against your own emotions, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And then you say, I feel depressed.
	Depression isn't sadness.
	You know why?
	Sadness is an emotion.
	Depression is the emptiness, the hollowness, the why get out of bed, why stay in bed.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And that is preferable to those who did you wrong.
	I mean, you kill someone, you don't want them coming back to life, do you? - Right.
	No.
	That's all monkey's paw kind of crazy, right?
	Emotions require free will.
	Thank you.
	Again, it's an argument from effect.
	I'm just giving you the landscape.
	This is partly what you asked.
	Enthusiasm is required for that which is very wanted and very hard.
	I mean, you don't need a lot, if you're just walking down the mall, walking through the mall and you really feel like an ice cream and then there's a nice ice cream store right there, you want an ice cream, but you're not like really enthusiastic for it.
	It's so easy to get.
	Just walk over, give them a couple of bucks, get an ice cream, right?
	But enthusiasm is for something you really want that's really hard.
	You might not get it.
	You gotta work hard.
	You gotta will, you gotta commit.
	But if you're a machine, why bother?
	Don't you feel that machinery like you...
	Have you ever had a bike where the chain keeps falling off or breaking?
	Yeah.
	Fuck, that's annoying.
	Fuck, that's one of the most annoying things on the planet.
	Because, you know, because I always had to, you like that Adam Sandler song about, I got a piece of shit car in seven different colors, got to open it with a coat hanger, right?
	I used to have to pillage bikes, because I could never afford a bike as a kid, but wanted to have a bike, got to get around.
	And so, you know, we'd go to garbage dumps, my friends, we'd get bikes, people were throwing out, and we'd assemble these bikes, and they were always crap.
	And I had one, the chain would just come off.
	Oh my god.
	So insane.
	Because also you can fall and slip, right?
	You're trying to power up a hill, chain comes off.
	Bam!
	Oh, my leg!
	It's like, basically, it looks exactly like a shark bite.
	And that's like you with your feelings, right?
	You have an impulse, then the chain comes off.
	Right.
	And...
	Sure, because your feelings listen to you.
	Even if there's something...
	And you say, well, we're all machines.
	Right.
	And machines shouldn't have feelings.
	Emotions are based on the delusion of free will.
	And once you have broken through to determinism, emotions are revealed as faith, as superstition, right?
	Machines don't have emotions.
	And there used to be religions that would worship trees, druids, right?
	They believed there were these dryads living in these trees.
	They would lay little sacrifices in front of the trees.
	They'd literally give the trees a hug, you know, the original tree huggers and so on.
	And there were religions in the East where they would apologize for picking up a rock and moving it out of the way if they needed to plow the field because that was the rock's home.
	Oh, there's a Charlie Brown cartoon from when I was a kid.
	Charlie Brown is sitting at the seaside and he reaches down into the ocean.
	He picks up a rock, throws it in.
	He turns to Linus and says, that was a pretty good throw.
	Linus, who could be a passive-aggressive little prick, Linus said, oh good, Charlie Brown, that rock just spent three million years getting to shore and now you've thrown it back in the ocean.
	Linus walks off.
	Charlie Brown says, everything I do makes me feel guilty.
	Now that's an asshole move to pull on Charlie Brown, who is Like Caillou clearly suffering from some sort of god-awful disease where his hair's falling out.
	But...
	The Rock has no feeling.
	The Rock doesn't care.
	I just spent three million years getting to shore and now you just threw me back.
	Like, Linus, you are an anthropomorphizing asshole, I'm afraid.
	Right.
	And picking on...
	Poor Charlie Brown who has enough issues with his own sexuality.
	But anyway, so they would worship trees and rocks.
	And in this instance, Linus thinks that a rock has a preference and is desperate to get to the air.
	I remember, this is completely irrelevant, but I remember once when I was working up north, I had to, I went to the, I went to take a crap in the woods at night.
	Now, when I was working up north, I was just a gold planner, a prospector and so on, and normally we'd just cook up this massive breakfast.
	Like, 2,000 calories easy, because I didn't want to carry lunch.
	Whatever you carried with you in minus 25 degree weather would just freeze.
	And frozen sandwich?
	Never good, right?
	So you'd maybe suck on some frozen juice or whatever, but we'd have a giant breakfast, I'd have a big dump, we'd go out and work for the day like crazy, and then we'd have a big dinner, but I wouldn't really have any lunch.
	Anyway, one time, I'm taking a dump in the woods.
	I don't remember what time it was, but it was late.
	And it was crowded trees.
	Some of them were deciduous.
	Some of them were evergreens.
	And I turned down and looked.
	I can't remember why.
	I turned down and I looked, and a moonbeam was hitting my ass.
	And do you know what I thought?
	You've got some time in the woods to have these kinds of...
	This is what I thought, Richard.
	I thought...
	All right.
	From the exploding thermonuclear fields of volcanic sunlight, the sunbeam goes shooting up, travels, what is it, eight minutes to get to Earth or whatever, another quarter second to get to the moon, bounces off the moon, and this light beam, this photon, whatever it is, that has traveled for 93 million miles, lands on my ass.
	Now that photon, that light beam, if it could think, it would say, wow!
	Wow!
	I can't believe that.
	Normally, we just go spraying off into space and do very little whatsoever.
	But I actually went bouncing through space, well not bouncing, I went rocketing through space at the speed of light, bounced off the moon at just the right angle, hit this giant blue marble orb, Went through the clouds, went through all of these branches, went through these evergreen trees, threw a bunch of tree limbs and everything, and landed on this guy's ass.
	What are the odds?
	Which is why, if there was...
	If there was a sunbeam that was sentient that went through that journey, it would believe in the religion of us.
	It would believe that this couldn't possibly be a coincidence and the emergent property of exploding from the thermonuclear pastures of the sun would be to land on a fairly pale buttock deep in the woods.
	Anyway, the thought I've had for 40 years or 30 years.
	Anyway, so for you, if you want...
	To be enthusiastic, if you want to disinter yourself, I don't even believe that's a living death, right?
	This level of depression, lack of motivation, hopelessness.
	If you want to come to life, come back to life, there is a price of entry into the effective universe, and that price is an acceptance of the emergent property of free will.
	I know this is an argument from a fact.
	I get that.
	But if you accept that you have an emergent property called life, if you accept that you only have conversations with human brains, then you have accepted that there are emergent properties that are qualitatively, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively different from their components.
	Life, right?
	I am 190 pounds of assembled atoms.
	Each atom contributes to that, to whatever percentage it does.
	But no individual atom creates life.
	Life is the emergent property.
	It's not like gravity.
	It's not like weight.
	It's not like mass.
	It's something else entirely.
	And given that you are alive, you embody the emergent principle called life.
	Given that you only talk to human consciousness, you recognize that human consciousness is unique in the universe.
	Nothing else like it.
	You wouldn't want to be out there like King Lea raging away at a storm.
	Right?
	Right.
	And that's what I was going to ask.
	There's an emotion property called consciousness.
	There's an emotion property called life.
	There's an emotion property called consciousness.
	It's like nothing else in the universe.
	Nothing else in the universe has free will.
	All of this follows.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I act as if it's special and it has free will.
	Just by talking to you or by...
	Yeah.
	Even though I'm saying that determinism is true.
	Four plums on a table, I say, Richard, they're all the same.
	You pick me one plum and say, eat it.
	I say, fuck no, that's poisoned.
	I'm only going to eat that one at the end.
	All the rest of them will kill me.
	And you say, well, you said that they were all the same.
	I said, well, they are all the same.
	I said, well, eat any one?
	No!
	I'm only going to eat that one at the end.
	They're all the same, but only that one at the end.
	The others will kill me.
	You understand?
	This is a contradictory position.
	Yeah.
	Human consciousness, the human brain is like everything else in the universe.
	It's just mechanics, atoms, physical properties, physical laws.
	It is a machine like everything else in the universe.
	But I'm only ever going to talk to a human brain.
	Nope.
	Pick one.
	Pick one.
	And if you're only ever going to talk...
	We learn things about ourselves.
	We don't always have to go so abstract.
	We learn things about ourselves by what we do.
	You wouldn't have this conversation with me, Richard, if I wasn't here.
	Or if I really believed.
	Yeah.
	No, if you really believed I was just a machine, you wouldn't have the conversation, right?
	And if you, you know, even how you characterized it, my ability to cut through other people's bullshit.
	Well, if we're all machines, there's no such thing as bullshit.
	The computer doesn't care if the code runs or not.
	Only people care, right?
	Computer doesn't care if your program crashes or not.
	Only Mike cares about Skype.
	Skype doesn't care about Skype.
	So you just look at what you're doing.
	You are treating human consciousness as absolutely unique in the universe with an emergent property called consciousness that can't be reproduced anywhere else through any other mechanism that we can imagine.
	There's an emergent property.
	It is completely unique in the universe.
	You treat it as if it has free will.
	Empirically, I don't have to convince you that you believe in free will.
	Well, you've already convinced me by talking to me.
	I don't have to make an argument.
	Richard, I only have to hold up a mirror.
	All you have to do is commit to what you're already doing.
	Without reservation.
	Oh!
	I treat the human brain as unique.
	It has an emergent property called consciousness that I can't find reproduced anywhere else.
	Huh!
	I have arguments.
	I listen to conversations.
	I enjoy watching Steph...
	Cut through people's bullshit.
	Huh.
	I believe in truth.
	I believe in a better standard.
	I believe in the pursuit of veracity.
	All you have to do is take what you're doing, Richard, and commit to it.
	Years ago, before John Oliver got owned by the globalists and had some giant scrotum banging against his chin, Long ago, he used to do this show called The Bugle.
	I don't know if he probably still, maybe I don't know if he does or not.
	And in it, he did it with a friend of his.
	And in it, at one point, he was doing some comedy bit that wasn't going particularly well.
	His friend was.
	And John Oliver said, no, no, no, you have to commit.
	It's comedy.
	You have to commit.
	And that really stuck with me.
	This was early in this show, if I remember rightly.
	A couple of years in maybe.
	It doesn't matter.
	It was early in the show.
	And I remember thinking, yeah, that's pretty good.
	That's pretty important.
	You have to commit.
	You have to commit.
	What does that mean as far as...
	It means commit to your acceptance of free will.
	Empirically, you accept free will.
	Empirically, you embody it.
	Empirically, you listen to this show because I accept it and embody it.
	You already accept free will.
	You just have to commit to it.
	Because you have Eros and Thanatos, right?
	The life impulse and the death impulse at war with you.
	At war in your heart.
	I mean, aren't you half heading up and half heading down?
	Aren't you half heading to the light?
	At the end of which is a pale ass in the moonlight.
	Aren't you heading partly towards the light and partly towards the inky depths of dissolution in some ways?
	Do you have a choice?
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	Well, if you go full determinism, what's the end?
	Where does it go?
	Can't have these conversations anymore, right?
	Not much point listening to this show.
	I could just stay where I am in some sort of vague, cloudy, Nothingness.
	And where does that go?
	You've still got another 30 or 40 years to go, man.
	Right.
	It turns toxic.
	I'll tell you where it turns.
	It turns toxic and you start to poison others.
	It's already horrible.
	I can see it's getting worse.
	I wasn't always like this.
	Right.
	There are great pleasures in determinism.
	Like any drug, there are great pleasures in determinism early on, right?
	I can relax.
	I don't have to be so judgy.
	I don't have to be preachy.
	I can be forgiving.
	I can be sort of wise, pseudo-wise.
	Because I can loft myself up above all of these mere human concerns and these mere Emotions.
	I can rise above them.
	I can be bigger.
	I can be more lofty.
	I can be more detached.
	The hurly-burly of people who think they're making choices is so beneath me.
	That's probably why the gurus and enlightened people and stuff head off and live in the mountains for the rest of their lives because they've fully committed.
	Don't tell me about creating a program for determinists called Go Somewhere Else.
	Maybe.
	Maybe that's why I need you went crazy.
	I don't know.
	It could be syphilis too.
	Kiss a horse and live in your sister's house for a decade.
	But it doesn't lead anywhere good off for a while.
	You know, if you have kids, I've been around a lot of kids in my day.
	I've worked in a daycare and all that.
	But if you're around kids, the stuff they bicker over can be really annoying.
	And, you know, the one kid doesn't want the toy the second kid is playing with until the second kid starts to play with it.
	And then they desperately have to have it.
	It's the only thing that will make them happy.
	You know, all of this stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	And as an adult, you look at that and say, this really doesn't matter.
	This really, really isn't important.
	It doesn't matter.
	But of course, it's important to the child.
	Now, determinism makes everybody look like squabbling children.
	Right?
	Right.
	Because you're above it.
	I mean, they're fighting over things that they think are true, that they think are real, that they think are important, and their emotions are running them all over the place.
	And you look and go, it's so petty, so silly.
	And children don't believe in determinism.
	They totally...
	Oh, hell no.
	They totally ascribe moral...
	And you didn't, Richard.
	Because, Richard, if you believed in determinism, you wouldn't have needed to be beaten 200 times.
	You wouldn't have had to have free will beaten out of you a couple of hundred times.
	You understand?
	Yeah.
	I'm trying to get back to the Richard right before the first blow, or the 50th, or whatever which one it was that pushed you over, into needing determinism to survive.
	I think that's where I'm trying to go as well, but...
	Right.
	Right.
	But to go back to the pre-hurt means recognizing the hurt.
	You can't get back to the pre-hurt until you accept the hurt.
	Rejecting the hurt means you never get back to who you were before you were hurt.
	I know this sounds all fortune cookie bullshitty, but it's really, really true.
	I am the old me.
	I am the original me.
	I am the me before the beatings.
	That's who I am now, because I've walked through that fire.
	Yes, it took off an eyebrow and half a nipple, it felt like, but I went through the fire.
	I am now the pre-me.
	I can be playful.
	I can have fun.
	I can be enthusiastic.
	I can wear my heart on my sleeve for the whole world to see.
	I can cry.
	I can laugh.
	I can make goofy jokes.
	I can swear.
	I can do anything.
	I am spontaneous.
	I am alive.
	Because I walked through the giant curtain of hurt.
	I gave it the moral responsibility.
	Who hurt me?
	I gave them the moral responsibility and took none from myself.
	And now I am big, but before I have power and I'm pre-hurt.
	That's the power of accepting the pain, but you can't get the pain unless you ascribe the moral responsibility.
	The people who hurt you, 100% responsible.
	And if they hurt you because they didn't know better, too fucking bad.
	It was their job to know better.
	You know, I can't jump in a helicopter, fire it up, crash it into a building and say, well, it's not my fault.
	I didn't know how to fly a helicopter.
	Then what the fuck were you doing in a helicopter, asshole?
	Yeah.
	Well, I hit kids because I was hit.
	What the hell would you do in having kids if you hadn't processed the pain of being hit?
	And there's no other...
	There's no other crime in society that that bullshit excuse works with.
	Try beating your wife.
	Cops show up.
	And you say to the cops, well...
	My father beat my mother.
	What are they going to say?
	They're just going to laugh at you.
	They may not laugh, but they sure as hell won't say, okay, off we go.
	It's okay, everybody.
	His father beat his mother.
	Everyone, you woman, get back in the house.
	You can't leave him.
	You can't leave him because his father beat his mother, so of course he's going to beat you.
	Well, officer, it's true I did rob a bank, but my father was a bank robber, so it's just nature.
	Well, off you go then.
	Sorry.
	Your Wentworth-Miller series ends here.
	No prison break for you.
	There's no other crime where we get to say, oh no, it's determined by history, so no moral responsibility for me.
	Right.
	Some guy, a couple in Canada, put their little kid on an all vegan diet.
	Kid got sick.
	Hey, funny, you know, I mean, vitamin B12, things don't go well.
	And significant negative repercussions.
	Another family in Canada, their kid had meningitis.
	They took them to a naturopath who gave them some I don't think specifically medical treatment.
	Kid got worse and worse.
	They couldn't even bend the kid to get him in the car, take him to the hospital, he dies.
	Well, they're going to jail.
	Only four months.
	Anyway, but no, you tell me, where is the legal defense called?
	Well, my parents did it, so I'm fine, right?
	I can do it, right?
	Yeah, there's no such thing.
	There's no such fucking thing.
	You know, if I normalized what my mother did, you know what I'd be doing as a parent, right?
	Yeah.
	That's the price you pay for forgiveness, which is not earned.
	And people who wronged me, oh, I gave them all the opportunities in the world to earn my forgiveness.
	I wasn't cold-hearted.
	I didn't snap my fingers and cut the cord without looking back.
	Sat down, had conversations, and gave them the opportunity to do the right thing, which is much more than they ever gave me, by the way, when I was a child.
	And the beauty of that is you get closure.
	You're not done having conversations with your parents, in my humble opinion.
	No.
	Like...
	I have ditched them, but...
	But the effect lingers.
	Yeah, I'm still...
	Right, the dad in your head is still running a lot of the show, is it fair to say?
	Yeah, and I think that's what I recognised in you, is that you were free and...
	See, I can be angry without being abusive.
	That's not what was imprinted upon me when I was growing up.
	Anger equaled raging, murderous destruction.
	I can be angry without being abusive.
	I can be assertive without being vicious.
	I can be challenged without being defensive.
	It doesn't mean I'm completely zen and pretty understand, but I have flexibility.
	I have empiricism to the now rather than conformity with the then, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	I'm reacting to the actions of people in the moment rather than hyperreacting against people's actions in the past.
	Right.
	So I have choices because I ascribed moral responsibility.
	I have choices Because I ascribed free will.
	Or more fundamentally, you can't get the gift of free will without giving the gift of free will, if you understand my meaning.
	Yeah.
	So if you...
	This is what you can try.
	You sound like...
	Scots are an empirical bunch.
	And...
	Try this.
	This sounds like a...
	Sophist trick, but...
	It's not.
	For reasons I'll say in a moment.
	If you say to yourself...
	By my actions...
	I accept free will.
	And as Nietzsche says, do not leave your actions in the lurch.
	Do not disavow your actions.
	Doesn't mean never change your mind.
	He means something more fundamental than that.
	Don't be split.
	Don't act one way in reality and have an opposing perspective in theory.
	Don't act as if there's free will and then have a theory called determinism.
	That is going to mess you up.
	Yeah.
	So given that you act as if there's free will, try committing to it.
	My choices matter.
	I have choices.
	Other people have choices.
	Some people have made good choices.
	Some people have made bad choices.
	Other people's rejection of their choice does not, does not reject that they chose.
	Right?
	I can say, I didn't have a choice.
	That's just my statement.
	So what?
	I can say, I'm legally blind.
	So what?
	I'm not.
	Doesn't matter.
	People's self-perceptions, that's why we need philosophy, because self-perceptions in general are bullshit.
	Just look at how people fill out forms.
	Oh, what do you want to hear?
	What do you want to hear?
	Oh, you want me to shock this actor, Mr.
	Milgram?
	Okay, I'll kill him.
	So, other people may reject their capacity for choice.
	So what?
	They're wrong.
	Doesn't matter.
	I may think I can fly.
	I step off a building.
	Gravity will teach me otherwise, right?
	So if you commit to free will and just start getting that muscle going, the muscle that you're working empirically but you don't commit to intellectually, just bring your mind in line with what you're doing in the world.
	What you're doing in the world is really important.
	You know, it's the same bullshit that leftists...
	Don't judge, they say.
	Don't judge!
	Oh, are you going to judge me negatively if I judge?
	Aren't you judging?
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Lefties are the most judgmental people in the known universe because they don't even have a God who can forgive you, right?
	I mean, look at Joseph McCarthy.
	They'll pursue you into the grave and far beyond for decades until Anne and me write in.
	Bring your thoughts in alignment with what you're doing.
	What you're doing.
	The empiricism of the everyday is the foundation for your philosophy.
	It doesn't mean you can't change what you think and what you do, but you first of all have to get them in alignment.
	You can ride the horse, but you have to be on the horse, not running in the opposite direction.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Usually the thought will come up, oh well, It doesn't matter because or...
	Well, it's just...
	Yeah, because I'm a machine, right?
	Yeah, or it's just...
	Thanks for the input, Dad.
	But it's my life now.
	Thank you very much.
	How do I... I don't know.
	Engage that.
	Engage that.
	You need that energy.
	If you can't convince your inner dad, it's probably going to be a failed project.
	You need to engage that energy.
	It comes out of shame.
	This is my basic perspective.
	This is not an argument.
	This is just my basic perspective.
	Right or wrong, I'll be completely upfront with it.
	Determinism comes out of shame.
	Your father's ashamed of how he parented.
	Your father's ashamed of how he treated you.
	And he takes refuge in determinism and he's transmitted that to you because he feels shame.
	And fear.
	Fear that you're going to judge him.
	And that he won't be up to the task of saying he's fucking sorry.
	And he did wrong.
	And you deserve better.
	He doesn't want that.
	Moment.
	He'll do just about anything to avoid that moment.
	Determinism is when people have done bad things and want to have the fruits of relationships without the cost of an apology.
	Ah, we're just machines.
	I didn't have any choice.
	You can't have a relationship with a machine.
	That's all the problem.
	They want all of that.
	of that.
	It's all so contradictory.
	And you, as you said earlier, Richard, you are scared that it's too late, which is why determinism is such an addictive substance which is why determinism is such an addictive substance for you, right?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You said earlier, I've missed the boat, right?
	I have.
	You have?
	I have missed the boat.
	It doesn't mean it's the only boat.
	It doesn't mean that you can't fucking walk or swim or something.
	True.
	What is the boat you've missed?
	Sorry, let me not give you feedback without asking a simple fucking polite question.
	Sorry about that.
	My apologies.
	It's very rude.
	What is the boat you've missed?
	I've spent...
	Not that Viking one where they set fire to you, right?
	When you're dead.
	Please don't tell me you've missed that boat.
	No.
	We have a very, very strict rule of no dead people on the show.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I've spent my whole life doing nothing.
	I'm like 30 years behind everyone else.
	I've lost the chance for most of the things that most of the people seem to get happiness from, even if I did want them.
	So it seems like I'm just left...
	I don't know.
	Like I'm too old for a family.
	That's not true, but go on.
	I mean, if you're a woman, yeah, but you've still got a couple of squidgy tadpoles there with some fedoras on, right?
	I'm probably two or three years away from even being able to deal with anything like that.
	Same for friends and how to relate to people.
	Thank you.
	I don't know, it just seems easier to sit on the internet for the rest of my life.
	And you know what that means?
	No.
	No.
	It means that your father is very very very ashamed.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	If you would rather have no life than accept and ascribe moral responsibility, it means that your father, I believe, really, really, really does it means that your father, I believe, really, really, really does not want you to develop this
	Thank you.
	Maybe I don't want him to either then.
	But it's going to be painful, right?
	Because if you accept the empirical reality of your dedication to free will and start living it consistently, it's going to be painful because you're going to look back as you do at this time that you feel you may have wasted and say, oh man, this belief system, this conformity to history cost me a lot.
	It's painful.
	But you think it's going to be any less painful tomorrow, or the day after, or next year, or the year after?
	No.
	You're going to get this pain no matter what.
	I mean, unless you get hit by a bus, right?
	You're going to get this pain because you're going to get old when it genuinely is too late.
	You're going to get old and this pain is going to be the last 20 years of your life and it's going to be god-awful, I think.
	So you don't get to evade this pain in the long run.
	Like you may pray to get hit by a bus, I don't know.
	But you don't get to evade this pain.
	You either do it now or you do it later.
	You do it now when you can do something about it or you do it later when you can't.
	Is there something in your life over the time that you've been an adult, Richard, that we haven't talked about that you're ashamed of?
	Other than the sort of avoidance and stuff like that, is there any sort of specific thing that you feel that free will would damn or curse you for?
	Nothing I can think of, no.
	Good.
	Good, good.
	Okay, that means that it's externalities and avoidance that you have to deal with, right?
	Which is better in many ways than, you know, personal guilt.
	Like if you had, I don't know, taught 20 young people that determinism was the best way to go, or if you'd become a carrier.
	I suppose it has seemed important to me to talk about it to other people.
	Not necessarily young people, but...
	Right.
	Well, you can, of course, circle back and change that, right?
	Right.
	And the fear that it's too late and therefore action should be avoided, you understand, you're easily intelligent enough to understand that that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	Right.
	It's too late for me to change, so I'm not going to change.
	Oh, look, it's too late for you to change because you believed it was too late for you to change, right?
	Right.
	This is, again, this is the free will thing, right?
	I think it's more...
	It's the old Henry Ford argument.
	If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
	I'm probably just too scared to, maybe.
	Right.
	That may not be your fear.
	This is what I'm talking about in terms of self-knowledge, Richard.
	This may not even be your fear.
	Right.
	Maybe your father's fear.
	Or maybe your fear of being rejected by your father for non-conformity with his violence when you were a child, when we're all programmed to obey our parents.
	That's how we survive.
	Because you're kind of in a place of no time.
	And this happens for men in middle age, right?
	Kind of in a place of no time.
	Time's not passing.
	That's what it's been like for most of my adult life.
	And that's what happens when we can't move forward and we don't go back.
	we end up circling the drain of mortality, right?
	But try it.
	Just try living like your choice matters.
	Because you're doing it anyway.
	Might as well go all in, right?
	go big or go home because the home is a grave.
	It's got to be worth a try.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I think so.
	Will you keep us posted?
	I will do, yeah.
	And I can't thank you enough for the time you've spent with me.
	I appreciate that.
	There's only one payment I require.
	Get off your fucking ass and have a life.
	Go make choices.
	Make a difference.
	Make mistakes.
	Make something happen.
	That's the only payment.
	Don't ever pay me a penny.
	Just make some ripples in the universe the size of a tsunami or two.
	You've already helped me find a job, so...
	Oh, good.
	Good.
	Good.
	All right.
	Well, keep me posted, Richard.
	I really, really appreciate the conversation.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much for your honesty and for letting me root around in your cellar, you know, to try and get the edifice built correctly.
	So I really appreciate that.
	Thanks so much.
	And let's move on to the last caller for tonight.
	Alright, up next we have Lindsay.
	Lindsay wrote in and said, I was wondering if you have any advice for the millennials who have been screwed by excessive student loan debt in a tough job market.
	I accept full responsibility for the fact that I went to college at 18 on a full academic scholarship and chose basket weaving majors that I found interesting, history and film, which amounted to nothing for me.
	I tried teaching, and I had to go through another crushing debt cycle to do that, only to find out that I would rather dig ditches than be a high school teacher.
	For those of us feeling left out of the economy of good jobs, do you have any advice on how to get out of a crappy cycle of entry-level job hell, feelings of failure, and find something both profitable and meaningful?
	That is from Lindsay.
	Hello, Lindsay.
	How are you doing tonight?
	Hi, Stefan.
	I'm doing great.
	Thanks for taking my call tonight.
	My pleasure.
	I'm calling down the well of debt.
	Oh, I remember it.
	I remember it.
	Yeah, I had to get into some debt from my masters.
	Just ran out of cash.
	And yeah, it's a crab and a half.
	History in film.
	Yeah.
	Honestly, it's so much debt that I really have blocked it out of my mind and I don't think about it because...
	It'll never be paid off, even if I'm like 80 years old, so why think about it?
	But yeah, I had really idealistic expectations at 18.
	I chose history for a pre-law thing, and I shadowed some lawyers and I thought, wow, I really don't want to do this.
	Oh, come on.
	20-hour days for years, sleeping in the office, stinking up your shirt, endless paperwork, bleary eyes, artificial light for the next 20 years.
	Come on!
	Yeah, depressing cases, criminals, divorces.
	It just wasn't my thing.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And film, I was really more into, and I guess that kind of leads more into my question, too, in terms of, like, Jobs that people actually enjoy.
	So I was interested in film and I did some internships like a TV show and I ended up working for a website for a little while and it was kind of like a crappy experience and then after that I Didn't want to go to becoming like a McDonald's fry cook, so I went to school to be a teacher, which was a big mistake.
	Which is why I called in today, because a lot of these career choices and things that, you know, it's like, try one thing.
	Okay, that didn't work.
	Try another thing.
	That didn't work.
	And it's just getting to be like an endless cycle.
	And now I'm currently studying computers and night classes.
	And, you know, it's like throw it at the wall and see what sticks.
	Boy, that sucks.
	How's your dating life?
	Well, I actually wrote some notes and I was going to talk about like feminism and how.
	Sorry, you actually did.
	I didn't miss that.
	Well, I was going to bring that up a little bit.
	I mean, I do have maybe one potential, but yeah, I'm 28 and, you know, I... Hello?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay.
	I had thought, you know, oh, going to college, that's a great way to meet people, blah, blah, blah.
	It really wasn't because, you know, if you meet people who suck, then you're...
	Anyways, you get what I mean.
	Wait, are you saying that you didn't find a lot of good alpha male providers in the film and history department?
	I did not.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So it was, you know, it was an, you know, college and experience that you have very high expectations for.
	And, you know, as a female, you know, cutting through the bullcrap.
	You do just want to go there to meet a guy and get married, so I'm not even going to BS about that.
	And I think 99% of people would agree with that who are female.
	Wouldn't maybe admit it, but it's true.
	That you want to get married?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't see how the working thing is working out.
	It's not.
	All it's done is lowered your sexual market value, right?
	Because some guy is going to be like, wow, you're wonderful.
	Tell me a little about yourself.
	And it's like, here, let me bring out volume one of my debt obligations.
	And he's like, I'll be right back.
	And then he's going to see if he can fit himself out through the bathroom window, right?
	Exactly, exactly.
	And the whole...
	I didn't want to come across as sounding like a lazy woman, but, you know, there are...
	No, you've been working very hard.
	Yeah, and I'm currently working at a job which is really, really, I guess you can say, dreadfully uninteresting.
	And it's just, you know, you're always told if you study hard and you work hard, go to college...
	Don't be a screw-up.
	You'll be rewarded with a great job, which I'm finding out is really not the case.
	And I know that life isn't fair.
	I know that not everybody has sunshine and lollipops, but...
	But what happened with being a teacher?
	What was that like?
	Being a teacher was...
	I've never been a prison guard, but I feel like it was really similar.
	Oh, come on.
	I mean, are you trying to tell me that working for a government bureaucracy, trying to wrangle the children of single mothers isn't fun for you?
	It was so awful that that's something I've even repressed and it wasn't even that long ago.
	And the fact that I even managed for, I taught for a half a school year.
	You know, it was like a one semester, a two semester year.
	So I taught the first half of the year and the full course and I just had to leave.
	If you ever feel like Googling teaching sucks, you'll find a lot of dread forums on how...
	Were you in a multicultural environment?
	You could say I was in a multicultural, low socioeconomic...
	It was a very big mix of students and...
	When I was a student, my whole logical progression was, wow, I love learning.
	I loved being a student.
	I did every homework assignment anyone ever gave me.
	I'll probably be a great teacher.
	You apple polisher.
	You girls made it so hard for us boys.
	Oh, here's your apple nicely polished teacher.
	I did some extra assignments.
	And all the surly boys are in the back like, oh, great.
	Anyway, go on.
	Yeah, and then I kind of...
	I came to find out later on, getting A's doesn't mean you're smart.
	And those surly boys probably all became like electrical engineers.
	And they got C's and D's.
	Or podcasters.
	Yeah, so you know, it's just finding out a lot of things in life after the fact.
	But yeah, teaching was...
	To put it nicely, it was just horribly suited to someone with a more introverted personality.
	Being in a room with 30 high school kids who are like 16, basically, a lot of them attacking you all at once.
	Not physically, but arguments, confrontations all day long.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, we used to be scared of our teachers.
	And that's the way the order was restored.
	But that's all gone by the wayside now, right?
	Yeah.
	And, you know, people always ask me like, oh, you know, you quit teaching after four months.
	You know, what's the problem?
	And I want to say, you know, maybe I would have liked it if it was 1950 and I was teaching.
	But I just couldn't.
	I just had no desire to handle like that uphill battle of What it was like in the classroom every single day.
	And not only that, you know, you have to give up your whole life on the side doing lesson plans and all that stuff in your free time.
	And I really thought, wow, if I'm working 80 hours a week and getting paid for 40, I'm never going to get married.
	So I need to get out of this quick, you know.
	Were there no eligible guys in the teaching profession?
	I'm saying this with a straight face, although I don't necessarily feel that way inside.
	A lot of married people, a lot of older people, you know, and this is even another thing I could bring up.
	My age group, my demographic of guys is pretty terrible in this day and age.
	Why?
	Why?
	Well, you know, you just have a lot of Well, starting with the sexual revolution, guys are able to get things for free that they used to have to work very hard for when that's what they expect.
	My basic opinion is that it's worse for women nowadays because of the sexual revolution and If men are not getting what they want, or they're basically overgrown boys, they'll just move on to someone else.
	They don't have that much of a desire for a commitment to marriage.
	They're more like flaky goofballs who don't know much about anything.
	Or they could even be worse.
	They could be like...
	Like social justice warriors or unattractive trendies.
	They could be basement dwelling video game guys.
	There's just so many different scenarios of things that are unattractive.
	And there are a lot of reasons for that too.
	And I'm not attacking all men.
	I'm just saying that In the particular age group of the 20s, there's some pretty bad options out there, and all the good ones are taken.
	And, you know, I mean, of course, not all men, blah, blah, blah, but you've been...
	I don't want to say you've been around, but you've been in a variety of environments around men.
	And this is what you're seeing, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, even if you see, like, a good one, they're usually taken.
	And if you see one that's not taken...
	There's usually a reason why.
	And I've listened to a lot of your other podcasts before, and you've spoken about that, which prompted me to want to call you.
	Right, right.
	No, I think it has become very tragic for women.
	Turning women into men has just turned men into boys.
	It has.
	And that's a huge tragedy.
	And yeah, odds are you'd be happier if you were debt-free running a household of energetic kids, right?
	I think so.
	I mean, if I'm...
	Most women are.
	A household...
	Sorry, a homemaker, a mother, is the happiest...
	Occupation for women.
	Doesn't mean all women, right?
	But in general, it's in the mid to high 80s of percentage of women who are households who are happy and satisfied with their lives, who are household managers, who are parents, who are running kids and all that.
	And it goes downward from there.
	Yeah, and I have some reservations about that.
	I had another question that I wanted to tack on to it.
	I mean, maybe I'll just bring it up because you brought up like being a homemaker.
	You know, the concept of having kids in this day and age, technically, we do have a choice.
	And, you know, I study a lot.
	You know, I listen to your podcast.
	I listen to a lot of news and everything.
	And what is your opinion of the...
	There's this line of thinking, the world is a horrible place.
	Therefore, you know, why even have children?
	Like, Well, you like being alive, don't you?
	It's a lot of work.
	I know it's a lot of work.
	I get that.
	I'm 50.
	Trust me, the work gets worse.
	But you like being alive?
	I mean, I didn't know anything else, so I guess...
	Well, you're here, aren't you?
	Yeah.
	So, and you have the kind of wisdom that could help your children make much better decisions, right?
	So their lives will be easier and better in many ways because they have access to your wisdom, which you've gotten through life experience, through this show, through other things, right?
	So, you know, you get a gift from the universe called life.
	You know, gifts are supposed to be reciprocal.
	I mean, how many times, how many people do you have in your life where you go out and buy them a big expensive birthday present and they don't even call you on your birthday?
	Yeah.
	It's kind of being a dick, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, gifts are supposed to be reciprocal.
	The universe, your parents gave you this giant gift called life.
	Pay it forward a little.
	Go make some life.
	You like being alive.
	It's a great gift.
	You have the power to give it.
	The universe gave it to you.
	Give it back.
	That's a good way of looking at it.
	I just, you know, sometimes I think I don't like working in a cubicle.
	I don't think my kids are going to like working in a cubicle.
	Why would your kids have to work in a cubicle?
	You have fewer choices because of debt.
	You will help them avoid that debt.
	And I'm sorry for all the propaganda you got about college.
	I got it too.
	And it can be a great place to tread water and think you're getting on with your life, right?
	That's exactly what it is.
	It's like a four-year sleepover.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, not too much work.
	It's really not that challenging.
	You know, you get to have a lot of fun.
	I mean, I... And the thing is, too, I thought I was working hard.
	I was doing all my assignments, reading my brains out.
	You know, of course, reading my brains out about a lot of social justice things, which are of absolutely no value.
	But it's just, I think, a little bit cruel, the whole system.
	You know, put these kids in, sign them up for these massive debts, and teach them something that's basically...
	Designed to lobotomize them.
	I think that people come out of the arts these days worse than when they went in.
	Yeah, and I did maintain my political views the entire time, but I got more than my fair share of all that brainwashing, all those attempts.
	I just deflected it, but at the same time, I still had money.
	I had to pay money to sit there and listen to it.
	Yeah.
	Mm-hmm.
	And of course, the current colleges are cashing in on the reputation that colleges had in the past.
	Yeah, in the past, if you got into college, even into an arts degree, and you did fairly well...
	You did pretty well afterwards because college used to be this big giant IQ test.
	But now, I mean, they're just stuffing everyone and their dog into college, you know?
	Can you breathe?
	Can you sign this?
	Okay, and X will do.
	Off you go, right?
	And the standards are cratering and the achievements are cratering.
	And now, I wonder if employers don't look at an arts degree as a negative rather than a positive.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I'm trying to think, sort of, it's been a while since I've hired people, but I would wonder.
	I was in the computer field, so it was a little bit different.
	But it used to be that college meant something.
	Just as it used to be that high school meant something.
	But now high school means nothing.
	And college is in the process of meaning nothing.
	But at least you didn't go into debt for high school, right?
	No.
	Thankfully.
	And, you know, I was...
	Given a full academic scholarship, which when you still have to pay for dorms, it ends up still racking up tons and tons of debt.
	And I was a genius and I figured, oh, I'll just add a second major because I got all this other stuff for free.
	And yeah, look how that turned out.
	But it's just one of those things that...
	I guess my question is kind of revolving around whenever...
	They are forcing so many women to go through this cycle.
	Wait, forcing?
	Well, not forcing, but you're basically...
	Yeah, let's be precise here, right?
	You're basically told, as I felt when I was 18, you're a loser if you don't go to college.
	What are you going to do?
	Become like a welder?
	You know, if you're a female, no.
	You're not going to do that.
	So, it's...
	I guess I'm trying to ask my question in the sense of how this is affecting women in terms of number one, not being able to even have time or energy to get married or date or all of those things.
	And then at the same time, the other side of the question is finding a career you're even interested in Oh God, why a career?
	What's wrong with getting married and joining the enormous number of very happy women who run households and raise children?
	That's a big deal.
	Raising children is more complicated, more challenging, more intellectually demanding and stimulating than just about any job you're ever going to get in a cubicle.
	That's where the smart women go, in my humble opinion.
	Well, and that's the thing.
	I do want to do that, and...
	But, in the meantime, you know, as kind of like the fallout of feminism, I have to go to work, I have to pay taxes, I have to, you know...
	You gotta pay your debt.
	Yeah, be a productive member of society.
	I can't just sit around and watch TV all day.
	And there's no guys really anywhere, so...
	What else am I supposed to do with my time other than work, you know?
	But it's just...
	Is it more than $50k?
	No.
	It's not.
	Okay.
	Is it more than $25k?
	Yeah.
	Before taxes.
	Right.
	Do you have a payment schedule that you can live with?
	I do.
	I mean...
	That's the one advantage of, you know, part of the tax system is like when you don't make a lot, you don't have to pay a lot.
	But I'll be like 350 years old before it's paid off.
	So I just can't even think about it, really.
	Well, I know you want my advice, but I'm going to just ask rhetorically once more to double check.
	Do you want my advice?
	Of course I do.
	I can take it.
	Then make it your job to get married.
	Yeah, I mean...
	If you want to have children, make it your job to get married.
	Because, listen, 28, Lindsay?
	You've got to start planning right now.
	Job one.
	Seriously.
	Your fertility is already in decline.
	It's not for lack of trying.
	It's just...
	No, I don't care.
	I don't care about you.
	Don't give me this try thing.
	You've got to try different.
	You've got to try harder.
	You've got to try new things.
	I don't care.
	But you go and you find where the men are.
	You know who wants to settle down?
	Christian men.
	You know who wants to settle down?
	Conservative men.
	Even if you, you know, hey, me and Christianity...
	A lot more friendly than we used to be.
	Hang on.
	There are demographics that you can find men who want to get married, who want to settle down, right?
	And you can pursue that.
	There are places where you can go where you know more men who want to settle down are going to be.
	You also know that there are men who may have a lower sexual market value in terms of physical attractiveness who may be fantastic providers and husbands and fathers for your children, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	What's your number, 1 to 10, for physical attractiveness?
	Everyone's got a number, so don't play coy.
	I could accept maybe like a 7.
	Oh, you mean my number?
	Perfectly respectable.
	You mean like trading my own self?
	Yes.
	I'm probably like a 7 or an 8.
	Okay.
	If I was a little skinny or a 9, I don't know.
	That's arrogant.
	I won't say that.
	No, no.
	Not arrogant.
	No.
	We all need to know this number.
	No, we do.
	We do.
	Because it's important.
	It matters, right?
	It doesn't mean it's our only choice.
	It's certainly not the only thing that defines you.
	I fully understand that, right?
	But...
	Okay.
	So if you're a solid eight or nine, nine potential with skinny legs, I don't know.
	I like a little bit more meat on the bones, but everyone has their preferences.
	But...
	So you can attract men, right?
	Physically?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So, are your parents still together?
	Yes.
	What did they think about you going to college and taking film and art?
	Well, my dad had a very good bit of advice and he said, you can't be a history.
	He said to major in something that you can actually do, like accounting or nursing, engineering, one of those that is actually leading to it.
	A thing?
	A thing, yeah.
	And I was like, well, don't worry about it.
	I'm going to go to law school.
	It'll be great.
	18 in my infinite wisdom with my not fully...
	But law?
	Yeah.
	You've got to do something before law.
	You've got to just go straight into law, right?
	Yeah.
	I could go straight to law school from undergrad, so that was my thing.
	Yeah, so you had a plan.
	I mean, you can be a lawyer, right?
	I mean, that's a thing.
	Yeah.
	So you had a plan, but then you didn't want to be a lawyer.
	Yeah, I started to realize, you know, in terms of happiness, how much do I want to hate my life versus how successful do I want to be, you know?
	But why not look for a man...
	And I know you say, well, they're hard to find, hard to find.
	Come on.
	There can't be none.
	There's not none, but...
	Oh, good.
	Yeah.
	Oh, good.
	So there are not none.
	Yeah.
	Especially, you know, I'm taking these computer classes and I'm the only female.
	Yeah.
	A bit of a sausage and keyboard fest, isn't it?
	Yes.
	That's exactly what it is.
	Yeah.
	But I guess it's good to be the only female.
	I don't know.
	Okay, okay.
	So you're into computer science, right?
	So dudes are plenty, right?
	So you're a solid seven or eight in computer science.
	But there are no men around, you say?
	There is one.
	There is one who has started to show interest.
	Well, for God's sake...
	Bring him down!
	Chew his neck!
	Be a tigress!
	Bring him down!
	Bring him home!
	Take him out!
	Headshot!
	It may in fact be a headshot, but bring him down, woman!
	Don't be coy!
	Don't be delicate!
	Go and chew his jugular until he faints into your marital bed!
	I was going to bring that up when you said Christian and conservative men.
	So this is kind of maybe I should have said this before.
	This is like a big monkey wrench in the system that I'm Christian and they have a lower percentage in the population.
	Good.
	Change that by having nine children.
	If I get started tomorrow, okay.
	But Yeah, they're harder to find.
	I've looked under a lot of rocks.
	No, no, you've got one.
	Well, I don't think he's...
	This is like a sniper game.
	You're just aiming at a finger, right?
	Yeah, I don't think he's...
	You've got one, you're zoomed in, fingers on the trigger.
	Bring him down.
	And you know how you do it, Lindsay?
	Can I tell you?
	I don't know.
	Talk about C++. Yeah.
	Yes, that's part of it.
	No, be so incredibly great that he has no choice.
	This doesn't mean be false or be fake or, you know, whatever, right?
	I mean, but just be great.
	Listen, I'm loving the chat.
	You're a great person, right?
	Oh, well, thank you.
	So be great.
	And tell him what you want.
	Yeah.
	Just really direct.
	I'm ovulating!
	No, I'm just kidding.
	I'm just kidding.
	Yeah, he couldn't mess that up.
	I'm doing the egg rolly dance.
	It's like a bag with bowling balls.
	They're getting heavier.
	But no, tell him what you want.
	I say this because I was brought down by a wonderful woman who told me what she wanted.
	You know, we really don't have a lot of will in these areas.
	Big secret.
	We can build the Golden Gate Bridge, but if a woman wants us, she pretty much gets us.
	Well, that's good to know.
	You know, we're basically...
	You ever seen the original Jurassic Park?
	Of course.
	Alright.
	In the original Jurassic Park, for those who don't know, this is not a spoiler.
	There's a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
	Okay, it's in the...
	It's in the poster.
	And they try to feed the Tyrannosaurus Rex by tying a goat to a stick.
	Okay.
	Now, in this analogy, Lindsay, the boy is the goat tied to a stick.
	And you, my dear, are the T-Rex.
	Go and eat him.
	Okay.
	If you want him and you are clear and you are explicit, I don't mean sexually, nothing to do with that.
	I'm not talking about go jump his bones.
	This is not what I'm talking about.
	Don't daze him with sexuality because that's like grabbing a bar of soap too hard.
	Off it goes.
	Although all of this could occur in the shower.
	But anyway, what I'm talking about is go be explicit about what you want.
	Go be decisive.
	Men propose women disposed.
	You go and tell him what you want.
	The thing is, I think he might not be Christian, so that...
	Be so great.
	Be so great.
	He'll come to church.
	You know, he hasn't run away screaming, so I think there's a chance.
	Or maybe he's got something to offer you, right?
	I don't know.
	But whatever it is, if he's the guy, don't let him slip away.
	Yeah, I mean, it's so...
	Don't wait!
	It's hard to know, like, who is right and who's just mostly...
	For God's sakes, woman!
	Stop dithering!
	You're 15 years past fertility!
	Seriously, in the Middle Ages, you'd be a grandmother by now.
	I guess I would have had, like, a child at 13, I guess.
	You've had 15 years of rhythmic blood, for God's sakes!
	Yeah!
	Yeah, and it's just, you know, we're told that have a career, be successful.
	No, that's terrible advice.
	That's advice given to you by people who don't want you to have children.
	Who gave you that advice?
	People on the left.
	You're on the right.
	Huh.
	I wonder how that works.
	Look at that.
	We get to get all the case-elected people to not breed.
	And now we win the election.
	No, listen.
	Have children now.
	You have two kids, you're home with them for five years, seven years, you're 35, you've got another 30 years to work if you want.
	But don't wait till later.
	Have a career now and have children later is either having few kids or no kids.
	Do it now.
	Because the career you can always do.
	The kids, that's a now thing.
	Yeah, there's no negotiating that.
	Is he hostile to Christianity?
	He's not.
	He's, I think, just very kind of like in a positive way, not hostile, just ignorant of it.
	He was raised Catholic, but I'm Protestant, so it's very different in terms of, you know, the upbringing and the views of it.
	Catholicism has a lot more to do with, like, Your culture and your ethnicity and that sort of thing.
	Not anymore.
	Well, not anymore, but...
	Catholicism has a lot to do with opening the gates to Africa.
	But anyway, go on.
	Yeah, I mean, where I'm from, it's kind of like, oh, you're Italian, you're Catholic.
	Okay.
	Like, one of those types of situations.
	So we have a very different view on religion, but...
	And I don't want it to be to the point where we're incompatible.
	See, that's what I don't want, is I don't want to, you know, settle down with somebody who, after three months, I can't stand.
	But you like him.
	I do.
	Have you had a lot of relationships already?
	No.
	Just maybe, like, one, and it went pretty bad, and that was, like, four or five years ago.
	Holy tumbleweeds in the desert, Batman.
	I know.
	I feel like I'm wasting my life.
	Well, you're just wasting your eggs.
	Your life is continuing.
	Yeah.
	Eggs have fallen down the well of history.
	Bye-bye.
	I know.
	Bye-bye, West.
	I know.
	It's like I feel like I have so much potential either in a job or as a mom or a wife, but...
	You know, here I am just spinning my wheels in a cubicle all the time and just trying to see what happens next.
	You know, maybe my next job will suck less.
	No, no.
	Your next job is going to be great.
	Do you know why?
	Because I'll be a mom?
	Yeah!
	I could create life.
	I could create new thoughts in the universe.
	I could bring eyeballs.
	To life.
	You know, this is an incredible thing.
	Lindsay, think about it.
	Do you ever buy anything from Ikea?
	Yeah.
	Did you have much fun putting it together?
	No.
	I probably made a man put it together.
	Right.
	I don't know if in my entire existence, I will ever build something that at some point I don't have to unbuild and rebuild again.
	If you ever want to, you think I'm a smart guy.
	Maybe some people out there think I'm a smart guy.
	Let me correct you.
	I will one day install a webcam when I'm putting together a ping pong table.
	And everyone will say, think this guy's a smart guy?
	What is he doing?
	Now, I did try putting together a treadmill once.
	It took me two days and it turns out I was missing a part.
	Got me!
	And of course you do have these fairly pigged in Chinese Google Translate things that don't really make a lot of sense.
	But anyway, I can't put together a home entertainment console, but you can make eyeballs.
	They're just sitting with like tiny little eyeballs right there in your belly, just waiting to grow.
	It's incredible.
	You can build an esophagus.
	I don't even know what that looks like, but you can make one.
	Right?
	You can make a kidney.
	You can make a liver, and not just like a gross liver dinner.
	Liver is literally some of the ugliest food I've ever had as a child.
	It's like, when I ate a liver, I'm like, when I was a kid, I could kind of blank out, okay, it's meat, but you know, whatever, it's ground or whatever.
	A liver is like, okay, I'm eating an organ.
	I mean, there's no doubt about it.
	You can make a liver.
	You can make toes.
	You may even make webbed toes if things get kind of exciting, but I don't know.
	You can make someone who can make someone.
	You're like one of those Russian dolls with more dolls inside of you.
	You can make people who can make people until the end of time.
	Doesn't that blow your mind?
	See, it does.
	And it's amazing and it's awesome.
	But I do have one misgiving because I've always had a ton of jobs and I've always had jobs that I could quit, you know.
	This sucks.
	I hate it.
	I'm leaving.
	If I'm a mom, that's like one job you can't ever quit.
	So I'm like worried.
	Sure you can.
	What do you mean you can't quit?
	If you're like a scumbag and you like leave your kid like on the side of the road somewhere.
	No, no, no.
	You can drop your kid off at a police station.
	You can drop your kid off at a Salvation Army.
	You can drop your kid off at a hospital anytime you want.
	Yeah, but you don't know you suck within the first like three months of its life.
	You know when they're like 17, if you suck or not.
	No, come on.
	You've listened to the show before.
	Are you saying that there's not a single parenting standard that you could possibly apply that would give you some sense of confidence about whether you're a good or bad parent?
	I do feel like there are standards and I feel like I would be a good mom, but you don't know what they're going to turn out like.
	You know, they can hate my guts.
	Of course you know how they can turn out.
	For God's sakes, they're not random.
	It's not like you're raising a fucking pack of wolves, you know?
	They can turn on you anytime.
	Chew you.
	Chew you.
	You've got a parent with one of those dark training armbands.
	If you're great to them...
	See, this is...
	Oh my God.
	It's like we've all just been trained to think that everything's so random that we have no control.
	I mean, the opposite of determinism is not randomness.
	But it's a kind of determinism.
	Because you can't trust anything, right?
	Yeah.
	I knew I was going to be a great husband.
	I knew I was going to be a great father.
	Guess what?
	Great husband, great father.
	I knew I was going to be a great philosopher and a great...
	Podcaster.
	Guess what?
	Great philosopher.
	Great podcaster.
	You know these things.
	Didn't think I'd ever be a great singer.
	Liked to do it.
	Doesn't like me back so much.
	I'm okay.
	But the things that I knew, I was good at.
	Yeah.
	It's not random.
	You're going to have a baby.
	That baby's going to breastfeed.
	It's going to stare at you with these big neotenous liquid monkey eyes.
	You're going to bond.
	It will be flesh of your flesh.
	Your child will be incredibly sensitive to your moods.
	You will be incredibly sensitive to your child's moods.
	You will over-parent.
	Why?
	Because you're a mom.
	You will be utterly unable to see that your child is growing up and needs you less and less.
	Why?
	Because you're a mom.
	And that's what fathers are for.
	Women raise great children, men raise great adults.
	This is why you have a man around who can trust you.
	And who trusts you and who you can trust.
	And you will love that child and you will do the best for that child and you will explain things to that child and you will bring consistency and clarity and reliability to that child's life.
	And that child will love you like there's no tomorrow.
	The other day, I was trying to explain something to my daughter.
	And I said, I asked her a rhetorical question.
	You know, what would you miss most in the world if you lost it?
	And she said, well, you and mom.
	Oh, that's awesome.
	Are you kidding me?
	That's amazing.
	Yeah.
	How old is she?
	Just matter of fact.
	Eight.
	Oh.
	Yeah, I guess I just have a lot of fears.
	It's not random.
	No, you've just got to stop thinking and start doing.
	I'm sorry, Lindsay.
	You are an intellectual excuse and egg blocking machine at the moment.
	Well, but yes, but yes, but yes, but yes, but yes, but yes, but yes, but stop it.
	Stop it!
	Stop it!
	You know there's always six million reasons not to do something, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Always, always, always, you can find something.
	Find some reason to not do something.
	The yes, but personality, not to go back to my daughter, but we were talking about determinism the other day.
	And I said, you're rolling down a hill.
	You can decide to stop rolling down a hill, right?
	She said, yeah.
	And I said, well, the rock is rolling down a hill.
	Can the rock decide to stop rolling down a hill?
	And she said, well, yeah, I mean, if there's something inside the rock.
	And I said, oh, really?
	What would be inside the rock?
	She said, an anthill?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	And I said, Izzy, don't be a listener.
	Because she hears about some of these conversations, right?
	So there's always a reason, right?
	And the yes, but is fine.
	But can I paint you a portrait?
	There used to be these...
	You know what, now that I'm thinking about it, let me find one.
	It'll just take a second.
	So there used to be this painter in the Victorian era.
	His name was Hogarth.
	Which I always think is a Scrabble word when I'm wrong.
	It's actually Hogwarts, but no, Hogarth.
	Oh yeah.
	English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist.
	Dare I say the Ben Garrison of his time.
	And he made these pictures.
	And they generally are...
	This is 1731.
	A series of moral works.
	And one is called A Harlot's Progress.
	And they were originally paintings.
	Paintings are all lost, but they were reproduced as imprints.
	And you can look this stuff up.
	But basically, it's...
	Have you ever seen these pictures of...
	You know, people, it's often women, like before meth and after meth.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you've seen those, right?
	It's a picture of before Obama, after Obama, it's the guy who was kidnapped by the four black guys.
	Anyway.
	And he did these sequence of pictures.
	You know, this woman, you know, she's young, she's healthy, she's enthusiastic and so on.
	And spoiler, she ends up dying of syphilis.
	Hmm.
	And he wrote a, he made a bunch of paintings that were moral stories and you didn't need to read to be able to get these moral stories.
	I do this.
	Yeah.
	I do this.
	And I need to do this to you.
	You need me to do, your eggs need me to do this to you.
	Western civilization.
	No, no, no, no.
	I get that.
	You get that.
	I'm not talking about lie back and think of Plato.
	Although, anyway, no, that's a whole different story.
	So, 28, you know you're going to hit the wall soon, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	But your capacity to attract men is going to diminish.
	People call it the wall.
	You've probably heard about it, right?
	I've never heard it called that, but I'm definitely afraid of looking old.
	Right.
	Right.
	You know how mushrooms are drawn to the light?
	You're going to be drawn to the dim.
	The lights are too bright.
	This is the vampire myth, right?
	You can't stand bright lights.
	It's in A Streetcar Named Desire, if you ever want to watch that to see what happens or what can happen.
	But you're going to lose the capacity to attract men.
	And you know what?
	It's going to be weird when it happens.
	It's gonna be weird.
	It's gonna be like you've just lost a superpower.
	Boom!
	You wake up one day and it's like, whoa, what the hell?
	You will know when that power vanishes.
	And that's when your baby hunger is going to be ravenous, ferocious.
	You'll be hungrier than somebody in a food lineup in Venezuela for a baby.
	So you'll have a great desire For a baby.
	And it could be like you always have to pee or you're always hungry.
	You want a baby.
	A baby is crying to be released from within you.
	But you can't get a man because you hit the wall.
	And you will be anxious, depressed.
	And you will look back at your 20s and you will say, what the hell was I doing?
	What the hell was I wasting my time on?
	Why didn't I do something?
	Why didn't I get the man?
	Why this guy might slip away some other...
	And then you look around, you're like, I've got to get a man!
	And who's around?
	Ooh.
	It's not a total freak show.
	I was single in my 30s, but it's a challenge.
	You know, it's this used car thing, right?
	All the good used cars are not on the market.
	Because...
	People want to keep them for obvious reasons, right?
	The only cars that are on the market that are used are usually ones where there are some problems, right?
	So you're getting older.
	And because you're depressed and anxious, you can't perform that well at work.
	So it's not even like you have this great career.
	And then people you know have babies.
	And it breaks your heart.
	You want to show that you're happy for them.
	But these little bundles of joy, this rosy glow, this connection, this power of making life.
	New eyeballs staring right at you out of a pink blanket or a blue blanket.
	And it will hit you like a mule kick to the ovaries.
	And you will want that so badly.
	It's stronger than sexual desire.
	It's what sex is for.
	And you will want to be happy for them and it will break your heart and you will cry.
	You won't even be able to stop crying on a bus on the way home because they have what has slipped away from you.
	They have purpose.
	They have a house full of laughter and noise and games and mess.
	It's lived in.
	It's alive.
	There's a future.
	Their children will grow strong as they grow old and they will have companions and they will have friendship and they will have love and they will have care as they age and they will have grandchildren.
	And they will be sitting at the head of a very full table.
	And you will be binge watching Netflix with some frozen shit on your lap.
	No one to cook for.
	Your house will be tidy because there's no one there to mess it up.
	There's no life to knock anything over.
	There's no stains called existence.
	Can I just bring up one thing, though?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, in, I guess you would call it the sexual marketplace, there's I'm trying to build this career.
	I'm trying to have a job that is somehow respectable, like computer networking, blah, blah, blah.
	There's a lot of guys who are the ones you would want, and they look down on people who have crappy jobs.
	So wouldn't it be in my best interest to get a better job because guys who are really good, they don't date girls with really shitty jobs?
	Be so great he can't say no.
	Even with a shitty job.
	Be so great he can't say no.
	Do you know what happened?
	Listen, you're talking to a guy running a philosophy show with no degree in philosophy.
	Do you think people don't have every reason in the world to say no to me?
	Mm-hmm.
	Do you know what I do?
	I'm so great people can't say no.
	I mean the show.
	This is including your contribution to this conversation, right?
	The show is so great people can't say no.
	You up the quality until you become irresistible.
	But isn't having a good job like part of the quality?
	No.
	Absolutely not.
	And any man who thinks that your job is essential to your sexual market value is an idiot.
	Do you know why?
	Because you want children.
	So how long is that job going to last when you have children?
	I just feel like if you're dating...
	No, no, wait.
	No, no, no.
	Stop.
	Stop.
	Stay with me.
	Okay.
	Stay with me.
	This is like grabbing a bar of soap.
	I always have...
	No, you know what it's like?
	It's like my daughter makes these bubbles, you know, with soap and her finger blows them out and I've got to catch them and it's tough, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	The man, if he's really, really interested in a woman with a great job, then he probably doesn't want to be a father.
	Because if he becomes a father, any responsible woman is gonna stay home with the children.
	Therefore, she's not gonna have that great job.
	So what's the point?
	You having a great job is gonna vanish if he marries you and gets you pregnant, right?
	So what's the point?
	The thing is though, I just feel like there is this caste system and to get like these smart guys with actually good jobs who aren't, you know, working at GameStop, you know, you need to have something that impresses them.
	Stop!
	Do you think a rich guy with a great job is going to date a woman in her mid-30s with very little relationship experience?
	Even if she has a good job?
	Are you saying they would date a 22 year old?
	I don't know.
	They would go for a younger model.
	And I tell you this, I know this.
	I know this.
	I know this from personal experience.
	That I was interested in a woman and asked a woman out.
	She was older than me.
	I was in my early 30s.
	She was in her late 30s.
	And I couldn't make a go of it.
	Do you know why?
	Why?
	Too much time pressure.
	Great woman.
	Liked her a lot.
	Couldn't make a go of it.
	Too much time pressure.
	If I wanted to be a father, I would have had to move quickly, very quickly, too quickly for me.
	And I'm still not at the age to date younger guys because, I mean, that's still a little gross to me.
	If he's the guy, he's the guy.
	Yeah.
	I just, I don't know.
	I think I'm kind of in like a nebulous delayed adolescence based on like the fact that I'm still in college.
	But I don't feel like I'm that old, although I know in my mind that I am.
	All right, how long do you want to, we'll go through the math, you're taking computer science, you know math.
	How long do you want to date a man before you get married?
	Well, I'm Christian, so it doesn't have to be that long.
	A year?
	A year, yeah, that's fine.
	Okay, good.
	So let's say you meet the guy over the next couple of months, or maybe it's this guy, and you start dating, and you get married when you're 29.
	Okay.
	How long after you're married do you want to start having children?
	Well, in this scenario, probably after maybe like one or two years.
	Okay, let's say two years.
	You're 32 when you start trying.
	How many children do you want?
	I guess three.
	Alright.
	Two years between each children, you're having your third child when you're 38.
	Already in a risk category.
	I'm not kidding when I say plan ahead.
	And it's not my fault nature does this to your eggs, but she does.
	So what is your advice on the whole aspect of, like, Emotionally, you just keep gliding past all this stuff.
	No, I am.
	I really do understand that...
	I guess I just feel like I have to do one thing before the other.
	I have to get a decent job before having a family.
	No.
	No.
	Please, don't.
	I really, really want to dig into a company for a year and then quit.
	No.
	No.
	Leave the job for some man to have so he can support his family rather than costing your employer a lot of money in retraining someone because you quit to have babies.
	Be nice.
	Be helpful.
	This is not about your ego and your vanity and what you think is necessary.
	I just don't want to feel like I'm unsuccessful, I guess is what I'm getting at.
	You will be unsuccessful if you want to have children and you haven't even started your career.
	You will be unsuccessful because you want to have children and you want to be a good mom, which means you want to stay home with your children and breastfeed them and you'll be unavailable to work.
	Your career will suck.
	Because even if you start right now and you're willing to have your third kid at 38, which isn't great, you're not available.
	When do you finish your education right now?
	Probably like next, not this coming up spring, but the year after.
	Oh my God, are you kidding me?
	I mean, I could definitely- Come on!
	Are you incapable of doing math?
	I'm not incapable.
	You're still a year and a half away from finishing your degree?
	And then you want to have a career?
	And then you maybe want to find a guy, get married and have three kids?
	Do you have infinity eggs?
	Do you wish to give birth to a dinosaur?
	I don't understand your math here.
	I mean, I definitely would get married like next Tuesday if the situation were available.
	And then would you quit your degree?
	No, I would still go.
	Excellent.
	So you'd be consuming society's educational resources for computer science when you stay home and raise children.
	So we're down one computer scientist as a society.
	Do you see where I'm coming from?
	I guess I'm trying to like have both and it's not possible.
	You think?
	A woman who wants it all?
	I've never heard of such a thing.
	I mean, I know...
	A woman who's been convinced she can have it all?
	I've never heard of such a thing.
	And I know feminism has, you know, brainwashed everyone to think that.
	But it's...
	Well, it sure hasn't helped break the stereotype that women aren't great at math.
	But anyway, go on.
	I mean, I know that I'm old.
	I don't really want to like...
	Calculate just how old, but I guess...
	You do.
	You do.
	You're not going to get anywhere running away from reality, right?
	I mean, you will.
	It'll just be a sad place of frozen dinners and cats who don't like you because you're too fucking needy, right?
	Dogs, but yeah.
	Okay, dogs who don't like you because you're too needy.
	Yeah, so...
	You can't have it all.
	You can't.
	I mean, you can't have it all.
	You can't be a good mother and have a great career at the same time.
	You can't.
	I don't care what Sheryl Sandberg says.
	You can't.
	You know who had a great career?
	Madonna.
	You ever want to look up how her kids are going?
	She's gross.
	You know who else had a great career?
	Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
	Yo!
	You know who else had a great career?
	Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
	The thing is, I know that I'm going to have to work to support my children, so I... Why?
	Why?
	Because I don't think I'm going to marry someone wealthy.
	Why?
	Be so great, he can't say no.
	I don't understand why this is so complicated.
	Be so great, he can't say no.
	It's not easy to land like wealthy guys, let alone guys who just simply don't suck.
	Okay, fine.
	Fine.
	Guys who don't suck, I assume you mean straight guys, but let's just put it this way then.
	Let's put it this way.
	You don't need a super wealthy guy To have someone who can support you raising children.
	You know why?
	Because you can lower your expenses.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You can go live in a small town.
	You can go live on a dirt road.
	I mean, there's tons of things you can do to lower your circumstances so that you can afford to stay home with your kids.
	And your husband can support you.
	It won't be a mansion, but...
	Jesus Christ, people had kids in the Great Depression.
	People had kids in the Middle Ages.
	People had kids before there was Rome.
	Serfs had children, lots of them.
	So you're saying there's no excuse.
	There's no excuse, but I'll tell you this.
	I'll tell you one thing for sure, Lindsay.
	Are you ready?
	I don't know.
	Yeah, you're ready.
	You're ready.
	You're ready.
	How attractive do you think this yes-but personality aspect of yours is?
	I know I have a lot of aspects of my personality.
	No, no.
	Asking a question.
	Asking a question.
	How attractive, on a scale of minus 10 to plus 10, how attractive do you think that this excuse-manufacturing yes-but blocking reality aspect of your personality is?
	Just out of curiosity.
	Give me a ballpark figure.
	It's like a zero, but I wouldn't show it to a guy, so it doesn't...
	No, it's not a zero.
	I said minus 10 to plus 10.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Minus.
	It's a trick question.
	It's a minus.
	It's minus infinity.
	It's minus infinity.
	It's a little dash with that Mobius strip eating itself thing.
	Minus infinity.
	If you want a guy who's successful, do you think yes, but guys are successful?
	No.
	No.
	I could start a philosophy show, but I don't have a degree in philosophy.
	I could start a philosophy show, but I don't have a studio.
	I could start a philosophy show, but I'm just driving in my car.
	I could start a philosophy show, but I don't speak ancient Greek.
	I could start a philosophy, right?
	How attractive would that be?
	Would I ever get a philosophy show going?
	No.
	So if you want a successful guy, he won't be a yes-butt person.
	He won't be Blocking every possible solution to every pressing problem, right?
	So, how compatible do you think your yes-butt personality structure is with a successful guy who makes things happen, who can provide for you as a mother?
	See, I mean, that is what I want to fix, to make myself, like...
	Doesn't sound like you want to fix it, because I keep pointing it out, and you keep doing it!
	I... I do.
	I just don't know how.
	I mean, that was a yes button in and of itself.
	At least we've admitted a problem, which I consider a massive slab of progress.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm not trying to be difficult.
	No, I know.
	I know.
	And I'm sorry that this hasn't been pointed out to you bluntly before.
	Maybe it has.
	I don't know.
	But no, this is why you're not finding quality men.
	You know that, right?
	Yeah.
	Because...
	It's not just because they're not out there.
	They're out there.
	They just see this yes-but-coming thing and fucking run.
	In what way, though?
	In what way?
	Do they see me as negative?
	Do they see me as Debbie Downer?
	Do they see me as...
	Like, in what way?
	I would characterize it as a joyful combination of both inert and paralytic.
	In other words, you haven't been able to get your life going in a productive direction.
	And you also infect other people's enthusiasm for getting things done by endlessly drowning them in, yes, but strangleholds.
	It's not all you are.
	I'm just pointing out this particular aspect.
	And it is.
	It is fixable.
	It's not even that hard to fix.
	But you have to know that it's there, right?
	And we all have it, don't we?
	We all have it, right?
	We all have it.
	Mike sometimes makes suggestions for topics and I'm like, yeah, but...
	We all have it.
	You understand?
	And there's nothing wrong with it.
	It's an essential...
	Sometimes we do need to say, yes, but...
	And that's why I won't marry Steph.
	Well, Mike just hasn't checked the fine print on his contract.
	He thinks that we're not legally married.
	But no, we do this, right?
	With Mike with each other?
	Well, I don't know.
	Yes, but...
	We had a conversation about something, and now I'm even more paralyzed than before we had the conversation.
	Oh, well.
	It happens.
	Well, we did record a great show, but I want to release it.
	So, yeah, it happens.
	And see, that's how I am with my career.
	I know I'm like that.
	Like the yes, but thing?
	Yes.
	I know that I'm like that, and I've been told that I'm like that.
	Right.
	Which means your career probably won't be that successful anyway, right?
	If I can change it, it could be.
	But if you can change it, you should use it to get a great guy so you can have three kids!
	Because you're saying the guys are kind of inert, and it's like, hello?
	Hello?
	Would you like to meet this lovely reflection called Lindsay in the mirror?
	She's really cool, but there's just a little bit of a hiccup in her personality, which we're going to take out with pliers if we have to.
	I know that I'm like this, but I don't think that I present this to other guys, like when I'm talking to them.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, no.
	I don't.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	You're not like Ariel Winter with her enormous fun bags before they got reproduced where they strap her down for Modern Family.
	This is front and center.
	Because if you want an intelligent guy, if you want an ambitious guy, if you want a guy who's successful, he's going to know how to read people.
	Right?
	And you've got to listen back to this conversation.
	I got it right away.
	Smart guys, you can't hide anything from smart people.
	They may pretend you're hiding something from them.
	They may pretend to collude with you.
	Yeah, yeah, fine.
	It's because they don't really care.
	Because they've already given up on you.
	I haven't.
	I can't.
	I can't.
	I want to give you those three babies.
	Lindsay, take these three babies from me.
	On a platter.
	It's this on the frozen cat food or whatever the hell we're talking about.
	Dogs!
	Sorry, it's this.
	Oh, you know what?
	It's this.
	Because if you've got dogs, it's wonderful because it means that they'll eat your body when you die alone and then nobody's going to have to get you cremated.
	Saves us money as taxpayers because there won't be anybody left to cremate you.
	So let me just bring this full circle.
	So they know.
	They know.
	No, no, we're not done.
	They know.
	They know the yes-butt thing.
	They know from your history.
	They know from your attentiveness.
	And they know from the bike chain.
	I don't know if you listened to the last call, but I was talking about a bike I had that I put together from crap where the chain kept slipping off.
	Having a conversation with you is like, we're getting some, oh, chains come off.
	Oh, going up the hill.
	Oh, chains come off and I got holes in my leg.
	So do you think that...
	The stalling, the stalling, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, yes, but.
	You say, well, I know this about myself, but I want to fix it.
	But do you know, Lindsay, how you presented men to me in this conversation?
	Well, it's the men's fault.
	They're just not mature.
	They're just not grown up.
	They're just, they're no good men out there.
	You didn't say, well, you know, I have a bit of a habit of coming across kind of negative and yes, buddy, and I think that may have dry quality.
	You didn't say any of that to me.
	So don't give me this, oh, I know all about it.
	Come on.
	I know about it in my career.
	I really do.
	I... It means that you can't have enthusiasm that sustains, which is what's happened in your life, right?
	You like something and then you don't, because you've got the yes-butt thing.
	I know that I'm doubtful of, I guess you could say, how things are going to turn out.
	Right, which means that It's gonna be impossible for a man to trust you.
	You know, I mean, I'm sorry for this reality, but this is for women as a whole.
	You guys have to be so great because marriage is legally terrifying for men.
	Right?
	Men know what divorce is like.
	They've seen it in their own families, or they've read about it, or they've seen Divorce Corps, or they've watched the Red Pill movie.
	Men know what divorce can be like.
	When you say trust, I mean, I wouldn't cheat on a husband.
	No.
	No, but you can't get the kind of enthusiasm that has you commit to someone or something.
	I mean, this is your fourth career option now?
	So he's going to be like, why she just quits?
	And then I, you know, I say, well, let's go out.
	She's like, yeah, but.
	Or I say, well, let's go away for the weekend.
	You're like, well, I don't know if we're going to get along.
	You can't commit to enthusiasm, which means you can't bond with someone beyond the shadow of a doubt.
	Isn't there nothing wrong with quitting a career if you hate it, though?
	No, but it shows that you think you love something and then you hate it.
	I love you, man of mine.
	Yeah, well, didn't you love being a lawyer and then you hated it?
	And then didn't you love in the art and film and then you hate history and then you hated it?
	And then you love being a teacher and then you hated it?
	So you say you love me?
	Who's to say you won't hate me in six months?
	It's just because I don't know what I like.
	I mean...
	Right!
	That's what a man is going to understand!
	You don't know what you like!
	I know what I like in guys, just not for myself.
	No, you don't!
	No, you don't!
	Because you were just telling me that it was the guy's fault that you hadn't settled down or got a steady boyfriend.
	Because if you knew what you liked in guys, you'd also know what guys like.
	If I'm not seeing people who meet what I want, then I don't bother with them.
	You're not thinking about what is attractive to men.
	Your tits and ass won't cut it.
	Because we're talking about marriage, we're not talking about a fling.
	It's your personality characteristics, your trustworthiness, your reliability, your commitment, your consistency, your integrity, your honesty, your self-knowledge.
	Women who have self-knowledge are almost perfectly safe to date and almost perfectly safe to marry.
	Because they're not random and they don't overreact and they don't blame others when it's their fault.
	And they don't accept blame and it's someone else's fault.
	Because they have self-knowledge.
	And a man who's going to be a quality man, who's going to be successful, is going to have some degree of self-knowledge.
	I don't just mean financially, right?
	Steve Jobs, I don't know how much self-knowledge the guy had, but a guy who's going to be a good husband and a good father is going to have to have self-knowledge, which means that he's going to know your degree of self-knowledge in about 30 seconds.
	And you can't hide it.
	Any more than you can go to Japan and pretend to be speaking Japanese when you don't speak Japanese.
	The people who speak Japanese will know you don't speak the damn language in about 10 seconds.
	So you're thinking there, and there's nothing wrong with anything that's going on with you.
	I want to sort of point this out, and this is why I want to shock you before time does.
	Lindsay, everything makes perfect sense to you because you've had...
	The very highest sexual market value that is possible in the world throughout history.
	An attractive, young, single female in a Western country.
	Highest sexual market value.
	Maybe higher if you were Asian.
	I don't know.
	Maybe you are.
	But you've had the highest sexual market value and so you've only been thinking what you find attractive.
	Why?
	Because everyone else finds you attractive because eggs and youth and fertility and hormones.
	But now that you're trying to think about how to settle down and have a real family with a husband who's going to be a great father and a steady provider and someone you can trust and grow old with and get ugly with and get liver spots with and have minor procedures you won't refer to as operations with.
	You need somebody that's more than physical attraction.
	You need to provide more than physical attraction.
	You have to start thinking about whether you're attractive to a good man.
	Not about what you want only.
	I mean, do you know why this show is successful?
	Because I'm thinking about what the audience wants all the time.
	Yeah.
	Why are you in this conversation?
	Because you know I am desperately fighting tooth and nail to get you what you want.
	I'm not thinking about what I need.
	I'm thinking about what you need, or more specifically, what your eggs need.
	Stable sperm and money, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I guess my question is...
	Oh!
	Okay, at least it wasn't a yes, but...
	Okay, I guess it's alright.
	Go on.
	I consider myself not super, super smart, but, you know, pretty smart.
	I think I have some degree of self-knowledge, but how do I improve that?
	You have to overcome playing it safe.
	If you want something great, playing it safe is the wrong way to go about it.
	You need to commit to being enthusiastic.
	You need to commit to the cynicism and scorn that will inevitably arise from some people around you when you are enthusiastic.
	Oh, she's such a cheerleader.
	Or, you know, I even did it myself.
	Thinking back on this conversation, when you talked about how good you were in school, what did I say?
	Apple polisher, right?
	I mean, I was joking and all that, but when you are enthusiastic, when you wear your heart on your sleeve, when you're emotionally vulnerable, when you're open to the skies above, sometimes you get rain and sometimes you get hail and sometimes you get half frozen frogs.
	And so this yes, but, you're not living.
	You're not alive.
	Fundamentally.
	You're hedging your bets.
	For what?
	You can end up being thrown into a grave at the end of your life.
	Like a sack of enclosed meat.
	And whether you live big or live small won't matter then.
	I don't want people to get the reality of what playing it small costs you when it's too late to play it big.
	You know the number one concern?
	The number one regret that old people have.
	I wish I hadn't been so scared of what other people would think.
	I wish I hadn't played it small.
	I wish I'd taken more risks.
	You're 28.
	You want three children.
	You're not going to get there by playing it small.
	You're not going to get there by waiting.
	And you're certainly not going to get there waiting for your declining sexual market value to hoover you in a great guy without working on your personality.
	You might have a fling.
	You won't get a ring.
	I want you to get a ring.
	I want you to get a ring and I want you to have those three kids.
	But you...
	I've got to start being enthusiastic and honest.
	You like this guy?
	Ask him out.
	Tell him you want to settle down.
	Tell him you want three kids.
	It's what my wife told me on our second date.
	She said, you look like a player.
	I said, thanks.
	She said, I don't want to fling.
	I don't want to be a girlfriend.
	I want to be a wife.
	Know what she is?
	A wife.
	And a mother.
	And we couldn't be happier.
	I am forever grateful that she was that direct and honest with me.
	Forever grateful.
	Best thing that ever happened.
	She was enthusiastic.
	And irresistibly great.
	We went out for dinner.
	By accident.
	It was supposed to be the whole volleyball team.
	Everyone else canceled out.
	We went out for dinner.
	We met again two days later.
	We never spent a day apart until we were married 11 months later.
	It's 15 years now.
	Just had her anniversary.
	And she's still enthusiastic.
	And she's still direct.
	So she got a great guy.
	You need that.
	You gotta stop playing it small.
	What are you hoarding your enthusiasm for?
	What are you protecting with all this yes but?
	Go out, play hard.
	Go out and get what you want.
	And look, if you end up not getting what you want, you won't have failed because you will have given it everything you had.
	Before I do what I do now, I was many things.
	As an actor, as a playwright, as a director, a novelist, poet, a business entrepreneur, then a writer again.
	I don't regret all of the things that I tried to do And it didn't work out because I gave it my all.
	When I wanted to be an actor, I went to the National Theatre School, I studied acting.
	When I wanted to be a playwright, I went to the National Theatre School and I studied playwriting.
	When I wanted to be a novelist, I wrote novels.
	When I wanted to be a businessman, I co-founded a company and worked 24-7 to build it.
	I wanted to have the greatest philosophy show in the history of the world, the greatest philosophy show there ever will be, because after this, whatever comes after this has the example of this, and give it my all.
	Maybe I'll fail.
	Maybe everyone will stop listening tomorrow.
	But it won't be because I withheld anything.
	It won't be because I held anything back.
	This yes-but thing, it's not buying you security.
	It's not buying you safety.
	It's buying you nothingness.
	It's gonna buy you solitude and bitterness and regret and childlessness.
	Go open-heartedly embrace the future that you want and make it damn well happen.
	And when the yes-but comes up in you, you can demand the yes-but.
	Oh, yes-but, are you here?
	Are you going to give me children?
	Are you going to provide for me while I'm home with those children?
	No?
	Then no.
	Sorry.
	Come at me some other way.
	Well, what do you say to me applying those same principles to, say, a better job?
	Do you want me to raise my voice?
	Do you?
	I won't.
	Because it would be too satisfying.
	Because you want me to be unpleasant to you so that you can dismiss what I just said.
	No, no.
	No, you do.
	You do.
	Let's be honest.
	Let's be honest.
	Because how many times have I already said, if you want the kids, there's no point going for the career?
	And the guy who's in high quality doesn't care about your career because he knows you're going to stay home with his kids anyway.
	But you keep going back to the career thing.
	And what you're doing, because you're a smart woman who has been listening, what you're doing is you're trying to provoke me into a negative reaction so you can dismiss what I said because it's scary to you.
	But I'm not going to be provoked into a negative reaction.
	I'm not trying to provoke a negative reaction.
	I just feel like there are other goals that I have.
	In my career that I have been very yes, but about, that I still want to achieve.
	It's too late.
	We just did the math, right?
	Do you remember?
	Yes.
	Let's say that you work for two years and then try and get married.
	Okay, you're 30, and you're busy in a career, and if you really want to be a success at a career, you're going to work a lot at that career.
	Less time for dating, less time for self-maintenance, less time for going to the gym and exercising.
	Let's say that somehow by miracle you do manage to get married in two years.
	Then you're just having your third kid at 40.
	To help with the career, that ship has sailed.
	If you want to have kids, go get the man now.
	Be so fantastic, he can't say no.
	It's one or the other.
	I'm here to tell you, it's reality.
	You can't have both.
	Nobody gets both.
	I don't get both.
	Did you notice me writing any books over the last eight years?
	No.
	Why?
	Because I'm a dad.
	I used to write two books a year, as well as doing podcasts.
	Two books a year.
	I could have written 16 more books.
	Instead, I have an eight-year-old daughter.
	Much better.
	I guess I just have a very deeply held belief that Guys want a girl with a good job.
	Not good as in money, but good as in like, she doesn't hate her life.
	Wait, she doesn't hate her life?
	Yeah.
	What do you mean?
	The alternative is have a...
	Really great job or hate your life.
	No, no, no.
	Like, guys don't necessarily want a girl who's loaded.
	They just want a girl who has a job that she enjoys that doesn't suck out all of her.
	And why does a man want that?
	Why does a man want that?
	Because they don't want to see you coming home every day miserable.
	Right.
	We covered this.
	Do you remember what we talked about?
	You're not coming home miserable because you're staying home with babies.
	You understand?
	But I have to not be miserable before the baby is born.
	Why?
	I don't understand.
	Like one reason I left teaching is because it made me miserable and I didn't want to be miserable and I didn't like...
	So you want to have kids.
	So if you marry a guy, get pregnant and have kids, why would you be miserable?
	You got what you wanted.
	I guess I'm more referring to the dating process.
	You're dating the guy, I guess you can keep going to do your classes while you figure out whether the relationship is going to work out, sure.
	But once it works out, why wouldn't you just get married and start nesting?
	Yeah.
	I guess he would be starting his career, right?
	Is he your age?
	He's older.
	Oh, good.
	Okay, so he's more mature.
	He's hopefully got some savings.
	You have to be extra special great, though, because you come with significant debt, right?
	Which he's going to have to pay off.
	Yeah.
	That just means you have to be greater.
	Yeah.
	I do want to be more positive.
	I do...
	I consider myself very bubbly and nice.
	And you claiming self-knowledge?
	Well, it's rooted in insecurity.
	It's rooted in insecurity and not wanting to be perceived as, I guess, mean or...
	I don't know.
	I mean, you failed at a whole bunch of stuff in your life, right?
	I mean, I'm not trying to be down on you, but this is an empirical fact.
	You can't be trusting your own judgment hugely, right?
	I mean, you're 28 and you're trying to start some new education, some new career while you're already in debt after having failed or bombed out at two or three before?
	I mean, I'm not criticizing you.
	We just have to be honest, right?
	You've not made good decisions to be where you are at the age of 28.
	Right?
	So I can understand why you'd have some insecurity about your decision-making capacity.
	And this isn't just you.
	Tons of people, as you say, this is a millennial issue, tons of people are in this situation, Lindsay.
	And I'm sorry that there weren't more people around you who were able to have these kinds of conversations.
	To help get you on the right path.
	And I say this is a guy who also bombed out of a bunch of stuff too.
	So you can't be that keen on your own judgment if this is where you are, right?
	Starting out, hugely in debt, 28, want kids, no guys, you know?
	I mean, this is not where you wanted to be when you were younger.
	I mean, high school was 10 years ago.
	ago, where are you?
	So I can understand why you're unable to be enthusiastic and commit.
	Maybe that's part of why you bombed out of stuff.
	But this is why go be a mom.
	You'll love it.
	And let all this stuff go.
	If you want to be a mom.
	If you don't want to be a mom, fine.
	I think it's a shame and I think you'll regret it.
	But if you don't want to be a mom, then keep plowing on, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	If you do want to be a mom, and I think Christian women can make some pretty great moms, to be honest with you, they're certainly better than some atheists, but if you want to be a mom, let all this stuff go.
	You can't have it both ways anyway.
	And look, if you want to have a career later when your kids get older, you've got, you know, 40 till 70, you've got a good old 30 years, longer than you've even been alive, you can have a job.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I guess it does have to be a top priority at this point.
	I just feel like I'm trying to make up for the past, you know?
	You are going to have to make up for stuff, for sure, because you come with a debt, which means you have to be so fantastic.
	Look, when I met my wife, I didn't have a job.
	I mean, I was taking time off to write books.
	I didn't have a job.
	I just had to be greater.
	I had to be more fun and be more engaging, more, right?
	Everybody's got stuff to overcome.
	You come with debt and with some insecurity about your life choices.
	But the good news is you have not been great at making life choices.
	So surrendering to motherhood and having those choices made for you by circumstances will probably be a better thing for you.
	Right?
	You running your own life hasn't worked out that well.
	Having children run your life may be the very best thing that's ever happened to you.
	You know what I mean, right?
	You'll still be in charge, but you know what I mean.
	I mean, your life defined for you by being a mom.
	I guess it just...
	I mean, I know this is all true.
	It just sucks to realize, like, I'm somebody who's supposed to be a smart person, and this is what happens.
	Like, what did have...
	It doesn't mean you're not smart.
	Look, the ground has shifted underfoot.
	What your parents told you, what society is telling you, used to work when your parents were young.
	Used to work when all the people giving you this advice were young.
	It doesn't work anymore.
	College degree is not a ticket anymore.
	It's a liability in many ways.
	I don't want you to come out of this like, Steph thought I was dumb.
	Steph didn't think I was smart.
	I'm not smart.
	That's not what I'm saying at all.
	It's not that I think you said that.
	It's just that realizing that...
	I've made so many decisions, and I've done the best I could at the time, and, you know, it's all come to, like, the worst possible conclusion, and I'm not even, like, a dumb idiot girl.
	What is the worst possible conclusion?
	Well, I mean, just not being successful.
	And what would have been successful look like?
	What would it have meant?
	All the typical things like having a job that I enjoy at maybe age 25, meeting somebody, maybe getting married at 26.
	And then when would you have had kids?
	27.
	So what was the point of all that then?
	Like why have a job that you love at 25 so that you can leave it to have kids at 27?
	What's the point?
	I guess it's just part of that societal brainwashing that, you know, you have to be successful, you have to be interesting, you have to have skills, you have to be all these things.
	Do you find that society has given you a lot of good advice, Lindsay?
	No.
	Has society given you advice trying to help you To achieve or attain that which will make you the happiest?
	I know intellectually it is rooted in, you know, feminism is rooted in making women miserable.
	And it's worked.
	It does.
	It has worked and I'm trying to unwork it.
	I'm trying to work it, baby.
	I like to work it, work it.
	But it does.
	It does.
	You know, people on the right are more physically attractive than people on the left, on average, according to studies.
	It's true.
	And you're more into the free market.
	You're more focused.
	You're an attractive person.
	You're a smart person.
	You're a charming person.
	You're an engaging person.
	You're an honest person.
	And You can get a great guy.
	But all these unattractive people who can't get great guys are trying to block you from getting what you want.
	Why?
	Because they're miserable.
	And they want other people to be miserable.
	Oh, and the government wants you in the workforce so that they can tax you.
	And they don't want you making babies because making babies cost politicians money.
	They got to provide services.
	Whereas having you single, childless in the workforce generates money for the government.
	It just generates misery for you.
	And what is this oasis where they, who do you know who loves their job?
	I guess I look to people that I admire who are, I guess, more famous, you know, people like you or people like who are doing careers that are, you know, prominent.
	I like Alex Jones.
	I like a lot of I'm interested in a lot of things that I shouldn't necessarily talk about on a date.
	Well, first of all, you should.
	You should talk about those things on a date.
	Alex Jones?
	The content of what Alex talks about?
	Yes, that's what I care about.
	I think Alex is single now, isn't he?
	I wish.
	No, he is.
	You may be getting a call.
	Hello.
	I'm going to speak slowly and dirty.
	And I actually did.
	I have not that much to hide and I did tell this guy that I'm into that and he still hasn't run away.
	Right.
	I mean, you get that this is a very traditionally female thing to hide who you are in the hopes of making a guy, right?
	I mean, that's kind of manipulative.
	It is, which is why I told him Yeah, being honest, yeah.
	That's good, being honest.
	I mean, I didn't get to where I wanted to get until I was 40.
	And even after that, I mean, this show I've been doing full-time for seven or eight years.
	It was a long haul.
	When I was 28, let's see, when I was 28, I'd finished my master's and I was working...
	At a coding job.
	It was probably pretty dead end, come to think of it.
	But I was starting to transition into being an entrepreneur.
	And I'd already gone through two or three different things that I wanted to do but didn't.
	Or thought I wanted to do but didn't like.
	I liked acting.
	Still do.
	Actors, directors.
	Bunch of lefty, state-sucking pond scum.
	Bunch of Marxist nutjobs.
	Couldn't do it.
	Couldn't do it.
	I just could not participate in another fucking anti-capitalist play.
	I couldn't do it.
	Or another victim celebration play or another politically correct bullshit play.
	I couldn't do it I couldn't do it I couldn't watch another improv of Native Canadian throat singing I couldn't do it I couldn't do it It was like I was having physical reactions to it Mm-hmm.
	So I understand what it means to think you'll love something and find out that the environment is detestable.
	Thank you.
	It wasn't the teaching you disliked.
	It was the environment.
	It wasn't the lawyer, lawyering.
	It was the environment.
	I understand that.
	The people.
	The circumstances.
	But you have, like all of us, you have been programmed to think that you need to do things a certain way.
	To hell with what people say.
	To hell with what people say, Lindsay.
	You want to be a mom?
	Be a mom.
	You don't need all these, you don't need a resume.
	You don't need all these prerequisites.
	You don't need to have stock options.
	You understand?
	What you will have to do though, and I think it comes down to this, you will have to trust a man to take care of you and to pay your student debt.
	You will have to trust a man.
	And if there's one thing feminism has done, it has destroyed women's trust of men.
	Which is why women feel like, oh, I gotta have a career.
	I gotta have a fallback position.
	I mean, what if he leaves me?
	What if he just turns out to be a jerk?
	What if he's a secret drunk?
	What if he's a secret pedophile?
	No.
	Find a great man.
	Be so great he can't resist.
	Be excellent to each other.
	Be fruitful.
	And multiply.
	Amen.
	Amen.
	And that's all I got.
	It's a four hour and 40 minute show.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I'm done standing in one spot.
	I'm turning into a garden gnome.
	Was this helpful?
	It really was.
	I thank you so much.
	Was I horrible?
	No, you were really...
	I was expecting you to be a little harsher on me and I appreciate you.
	I am not trying to be horrible.
	I am desperately fighting to try and get you what you want.
	I hope you know that.
	I do.
	I do.
	And I appreciate what you do on your show and how you stand up for these values that are under attack every day.
	Will you let us know how it goes?
	I will.
	Thank you so much.
	Will you name your first born free domain radio?
	We can negotiate on that.
	I'll have to take a human name, maybe Stefan.
	Stefan and Alex.
	You can call your firstborn, Stefan.
	Just please do me a favor.
	Follow the branding and just try and misspell it as much as you possibly can.
	That's the branding.
	It's only five letters and they're all pretty obvious.
	There's no four M's and a silent Q. Anyway.
	And I hope you will listen back to this conversation.
	I will.
	And yeah, if you like this guy at some point, play it to him too.
	Have him call in.
	Happy to chat.
	All right.
	Thanks, Lindsay.
	Thanks, everyone, so much for a great call.
	Lindsay, you've got Mike's email, so less than seven days, we'll need a sonogram, but we'll obviously get back to you more about that.
	But thanks, everyone.
	Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful day.
	Please check out the new presentation.
	Yes, it is another lengthy masterpiece, I dare say, called The Truth About...
	McCarthyism, Modern Parallels.
	It is, well, I think some people, actually a few people have said that it's even better than The Fall of Rome.
	I think it's interesting.
	And yeah, it's a great, great presentation.
	I know it's long.
	You can download it, listen to it on the podcast at fdrpodcast.com.
	You can even watch it, if you want me to sound like a fax, at double speed, something more human, 1.25 or 1.5 speeds.
	And yeah, I really appreciate everyone's very, very kind words.
	What have we got here?
	Okay, but how many times have I complimented on you?
	You on the best presentation to date, but this is so good and so on point, it should be required listening for all Americans.
	Finally, someone has breached the real truth on this topic.
	Exquisite.
	This guy said, damn, Stefan, you keep getting better and better.
	As an old geezer, Vietnam vet, retired lawyer, I sort of remember McCarthy.
	He was totally correct.
	Really respect your videos.
	Many...
	Thumbs up.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	And lots of great comments on what a great presentation it is, which I was totally not checking during the show because that would be entirely rude, but just looking at it now.
	And so I really hope that people will check out that presentation.
	It's very, very important.
	And the modern parallels are really, really quite chilling and will become more so over the next year or two.
	And so thanks so much.
	FreeDomainRadio.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Don't forget to follow me on Twitter and do your shopping at...
	Oh, sorry.
	Follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux and do your shopping at FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
	And now I must move my legs, which have turned into stumpy tree trunks of numbness.
	So have a great day, everyone.

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