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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:51:59

The Joe Rogan Experience with Stefan Molyneux (#538)

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	Greetings, ladies and gentlemen and people who consider yourself neither.
	Folks, its, thems.
	We live in strange times.
	Sometimes people don't want to be defined by a gender or anything.
	They're an it. And I support that.
	You go, it.
	You go, girl.
	You go, boy. You go, whatever the fuck you want to be.
	You go, furries.
	You go mascots. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom.
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	Why fuck around?
	Let's cue the music, Jamie.
	Stefan Molyneux is here.
	Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out.
	And so am I.
	The Joe Rogan Experience.
	Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
	Ladies and gentlemen, from the dark north of Canada, the white north, enjoying the fabulous sun here.
	Well, it's sunny where you are too now, right?
	It's all right. Staggeringly beautiful.
	It's beautiful. Oh, yeah. Summertime is fantastic.
	She is a seductive bitch in the summer, Canada.
	She really is. She's like, hey, hey, come.
	No problem. Yeah, come on.
	Set up a house. Build some stuff.
	Couple of bugs, no biggie.
	And then, bam! Ice fist of snow around your heart for all eternity.
	Yeah, I have friends that live several hours north of Edmonton.
	Oh! Yeah. Oh!
	And I visited them in the spring, and it's fantastic.
	It's just great. The green and the walleye fishing is great.
	Absolutely. How do you end up living a few hours?
	Like, did they disturb a mummy's tomb?
	Did they get cursed in some horrifying way?
	What happened? That's a good question.
	They're from there. Are they Shrek?
	Are they just dodging villagers?
	They're really nice folks.
	Wow. And they're from there.
	my friend Johnny Rivet and Jenny Rivet, and they actually run a hunting camp up there.
	So they do a lot of their business up in the bush, as they say, the Canadian bush.
	But yeah, it's so beautiful up there in the spring and summer.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's fantastic.
	And for a little bit in the winter, pretty sparkly, and then after a while, it just becomes this ice dungeon, and you chew your way out like a ferret in an upturned aquarium.
	Yeah, that's really not good for your health, your mental health at least, to be trapped in those environments.
	Well, you know, so after high school, I went into college.
	I broke.
	And I got a job as a gold panner and a prospector.
	I spent about 18 months Yeah,
	that is one of the weird things about smokers is that they're more than willing to impose that on other people.
	That's a strange thing that they don't find.
	Like, it would bother me if I was a smoker and I was sitting in a box with somebody and just subjecting them to my toxins.
	I know it's minus 40, but come on, step outside.
	I mean, how often do you go to a pool party and say, you know, I don't feel like going inside to pee, so I'm just going to let it go, you know?
	I mean, there's no non-pee side to that pool and there's no non-smoking side to a restaurant anyway.
	Yeah, smoking.
	And the other thing about smokers is there's a lot of them that don't have any problem with littering.
	And I think it has something to do with the fact that they're fucking their body up.
	So there's this cognitive dissonance.
	There's something involved.
	You have to have a separation of clarity.
	It's your will. You're lighting the cigarette.
	You're putting it up to your lips.
	You're sucking in poison, and so many of them throw their cigarettes on the ground.
	So many of them. And I really think there's a connection, because it's very rare that you see someone drink a soda and then throw their can on the ground.
	But in front of people, you'll see someone take a cigarette, throw it on the ground, step on it, and just walk away.
	Right. Like as if it's out of sight, out of mind.
	Yep. I think it has a direct connection to this connection.
	You could test that. You could go to the healthiest food store.
	Up the street, there's this vegan sit-down food store or whatever.
	You get a vegan cafe.
	It'd be interesting to see if people come out of that with the kale shakes and just throw crap on the ground.
	I bet you that almost nobody would.
	But you're hanging outside some skeevy pool hall with a bunch of smokers and it's all litter out front.
	Yeah, your body is the world.
	It's all that kind of stuff, I think.
	Yeah, it's like the one thing where it's really common to litter with.
	Like Survey says, if you're on Family Feud, most common thing to litter.
	I'm not doing the old dude who's dead.
	Meanwhile, it's been like five guys.
	Richard Dawson. Richard Dawson, that's right.
	From Hogan's Heroes, remember?
	Yeah. Wow. But now it's Steve Harvey.
	Steve Harvey. Yeah, it's not the same.
	But yeah, I would think that that would be like the number one thing.
	Like cigarettes. So you're stuck in this tent with these dudes and they didn't have any problem smoking in front of you in a tent?
	Just nonstop. And they were like light cigarettes off the previous cigarette.
	Like I think they're the kind of smokers who other than sleeping had not had a breath of fresh air in about 10 years.
	Like they hadn't had anything coming into their lungs that wasn't tar-based.
	And I know one of them is dead now and I'm not sure where the other one is but...
	Yeah, if you were an alien and you were studying human behavior, cigarettes would be one of the weirdest ones.
	One of the weirdest things you'd have to pay attention to.
	Like, how the fuck did that take root on so many people?
	No, it's a legitimate payback for the, like, smallpox-laced blankets that the early settlers gave the Indian.
	It's like, okay, fine, Whitey.
	You can give us the TB-laced blankets.
	Here, smoke this.
	And like, ooh, that's good.
	Well, it's going to wipe out more of us than of you, but it'll take time and it'll go with a smile on her face.
	Well, I wonder, I don't think they use tobacco in the same way.
	I think most native tribes that use tobacco, they use it like a cigar or like a pipe, but they're not inhaling it.
	They just get it into their mouth, and when you get it into your mouth, it gets into your bloodstream.
	You get the nicotine. Ah, okay. You can get cancer from cigars, but it's more rare.
	Yeah. Even people that are like really rabid cigars.
	That's like the Freudian cancer because he had like 20 cigars a day and he got, I think, half his cheek eaten away with cancer and stuff like that towards later in his life.
	Yeah. A lot of the chewers get that too.
	Those people that keep that stuff like tucked in between their lip and gum.
	Yeah. Weird habits.
	Yeah. But it's not that common with pipe smokers.
	Pipe smokers, that's the original way to do it.
	You just sort of take in the nicotine.
	In fact, nicotine is like a part of a lot of psychedelic rituals in the Amazon.
	They blow nicotine smoke.
	They blow tobacco smoke on the people that are going through these psychedelic rituals.
	Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
	For whatever reason. I don't know how the fuck we got on this subject.
	But... So, I was on Anna Kasparian's show, your good buddy, your good friends yesterday, and we had some interesting conversations, and part of it was about you.
	And I appreciate that.
	We were talking just before the show, I don't care what you say about me, just make sure you spell my name right.
	Well, that's what I was telling her in a way.
	She was getting upset at the things that you had said about what she had said.
	And I said, well, you got to – look, this is a weird thing that goes on where people make these sort of call-out videos.
	Everybody likes to do a call-out video.
	But nobody likes a call-out video turned on them.
	And what Anna did is essentially she listened to Adam Carolla's rant about conservatism.
	And she made a rant about that, and then you made a rant about her rant, and then she's pissed at your rant about her rant, about Adam's rant.
	And I'm like, first of all, this is like an incredibly ineffective way to communicate.
	That's one of the things that I don't like about blogs.
	I think blog entries are great in some ways, because I think it gives someone an opportunity to really expand on their thoughts, and you put a lot of energy and effort into writing something down.
	Whereas I think you might be able to get in a deeper detail than you would in a conversation where you're perhaps searching for words or trying to clarify your position.
	Like a lot of things you need to look up and you can't do that necessarily in a debate.
	So it's nice having a back and forth when it's database.
	But it's a massive amount of time involved and it doesn't give the other person the opportunity to respond.
	And when you do it like one person goes on this long rant describing you in very disparaging terms and minimizes you.
	And then you have to respond to that.
	And then you go to – it's way better to just sit down and talk through ideas.
	So there's a lot of these ideas that you have said that are very controversial that we're going to give you an opportunity.
	Little old me? There's no way.
	I know. It's crazy. No, and to be fair, I mean – I was working on the flight down.
	I was working on a response.
	I was hoping to go in and talk to them.
	We tweeted them and emailed them and said maybe we could go and have a debate.
	I think that would be interesting and fun and useful.
	I mean, there are very important issues that are being talked about, but we didn't hear back.
	Yeah. Well, you probably pissed her off.
	That's what it is. Good. I mean, if you're not annoyed, it's not a good debate.
	It means it's not that important, right?
	I guess. Yeah, I guess.
	The core of the conversation was Adam's position on being a conservative and how the term conservative has become a pejorative and then the term conservative has become a negative way of describing a person's behavior and a person's thoughts.
	It's more like it seems that it's become maybe like a badge of callousness or a descriptive term of someone who is insensitive or who does not care about the underclass, who does not care about poverty, who does not care about poor people.
	And she had this...
	You had a take on it and then you had a take on her take on it.
	Do you consider yourself conservative?
	You consider yourself a libertarian, right?
	I'm an anarchist. An anarchist.
	And what does that exactly entail?
	Exactly. Well, I mean, so – and I was a resistant anarchist.
	Like for me, I was 20 years of what's called like an anarchist.
	It came sort of out of the objectivist Ayn Rand school where your government is basically law and national defense, maybe a court system.
	Maybe that sort of tiny, tiny government.
	It's called the night watchman state, which is, you know, keep other people's mitts off my stuff and keep their shivs out of my kidney kind of thing.
	That's the basic function of government.
	And I was like, but it always bothered me because that would still have to be funded through taxation, right?
	Taxation philosophically, morally is the initiation of force, right?
	I mean, it's like, I have a good idea.
	You have to pay for it.
	And if you don't pay for it, you are going to get some letters.
	And if you don't pay for it still, we're going to send some We're good to go.
	Nobody wants to go with these particular directions.
	It's just principles, right?
	You have to sort of hang on to your principles no matter what, right?
	So if you're into the non-initiation of force, right, that self-defense, perfectly morally legitimate, but you can't go around popping people in the head without provocation.
	You can't go around stealing people's stuff.
	So the non-initiation of force.
	And if you accept that as a principle and if you try to get philosophy as close to like the physical sciences, physical sciences, they don't have exceptions.
	You know, they say, well, this rock will fall this fast in, you know, I mean, this is universal, right?
	So if you're going to go with the non-aggression principle, then the concept of government is morally illegitimate because the government is that group of people in a geographical area that initiate the use of force against others.
	And some people agree with it and some people don't, but those who don't do end up being on the receiving end of force that they don't agree with.
	So in an anarchist state, the idea would be that there would be no taxes.
	So how would people fund roads?
	Would they voluntarily donate?
	How would they fund education?
	How would things get done?
	Well, the first answer is I have no idea, right?
	Because, I mean, if you could design a future, then everyone should put me in charge of everything, and that wouldn't make any sense.
	People build roads. Government don't build roads, right?
	And there's no entity called government.
	It's like this big amorphous flag that goes around and lays the tarmac.
	It's just people who receive money.
	So, I mean, if you're going to build a bunch of houses, you have to build a road there.
	I mean, malls build parking lots.
	Airports build roads.
	It's not government. It's all private.
	And, you know, in a GPS, you could charge people.
	You know, there's a private highway up in Canada where, you know, they take a photo of your license plate or if you have a transponder, it's even cheaper.
	They just charge you when you go on.
	And however, you know, when you go off, then they charge you for that.
	Isn't that taxing you?
	Well, no, because that's voluntary.
	Just paying for use? Well, it's voluntary that you use it.
	Yeah. But if you have to get over there, is there other options without paying?
	Sure. Those are those other roads.
	Oh, yeah. Because that will be competition, right?
	I mean, hopefully – well, not to the point of wasteful duplication because that would not be very efficient economically.
	Yeah, if there's 100 roads going the exact same direction, all side by side, one costs a dollar, one costs 90 cents.
	Well, that's a lot of competition, but I haven't seen a tree in four days.
	Or it'd be like, you know, the movie Brazil where they have those billboards maybe on either side?
	Yeah. So I think you're pretty open in the idea that you don't have a solution, but what you're doing is saying that the current problem is unacceptable.
	Is that a fair way of assessing your take on current government?
	It's not good philosophy to have a universal called the non-aggression principle, which you and I and this fine fellow here and the listeners, we all accept, right?
	We're all here voluntarily.
	You don't force anyone to come to your shows.
	I don't force anyone to listen to what I do.
	So we all accept that at our personal level, and that's what we teach our kids, right?
	Don't hit. Don't take other people's stuff.
	Don't push, you know, that kind of stuff.
	And so if we're going to have these rules, you know, much like science, like how far can we push these rules?
	Now, I think that it's kind of wrong to say, well, we have these rules, but right up to here, we'll completely abandon them and go to the opposite.
	Or at least we need to acknowledge that is what's going on in society.
	So if we say that the non-aggression principle is the way that we should live, well, the government is just people.
	people, how do they get this get out of jail free card where they can do stuff that is specifically illegal for the private citizens like print money, like take out debts on behalf of other people?
	You and I can't do that.
	I can't go buy a car and send you the bill.
	They can invade countries.
	They can force people to pay for things.
	They can incarcerate huge numbers of people, largely on a whim.
	They can tell people who are doing things like drugs, which is a purely voluntary form of enjoyment and self-medication.
	They can throw them in jail.
	I can't do that. You can't do that.
	If I want to pay for my kids' education, I don't get to walk up and down the street with a machete saying pay or die.
	I mean, but this is the way that we've set up or the way we've inherited society.
	Sorry, I don't want to go on too big a rant.
	No, but it's a good rant. It's a good point as well, the idea that society has been sort of inherited.
	You know, that we have sort of been born into this system that is really not that well engineered and has massive flaws in it.
	And it's a very good point when you talk about the taxes, like enforcing tax laws, that you can lock people in jail for owing money.
	It's one of the only times where someone gets locked in a cage because they owe money, even if you choose to pay that money.
	Wesley Snipes is a perfect example, the actor.
	He chose to not pay his taxes based on an erroneous belief.
	He had this belief that the Constitution does not force you to pay taxes and that it's a misunderstanding that if you fight it in court, you would win.
	He had these terrible advisors.
	So he decided to not pay taxes for a long time, and he made a really large sum of money.
	And that is when they go after you.
	When you're one of those people that is already the privileged few making an exorbitant amount of money and then you step up and say you don't have to pay taxes and you do it blatantly, it didn't even matter if you tried to pay the money back.
	They were going to lock him in jail no matter what.
	They're like, this is, it's a crime.
	And it's the only time it's a crime to owe money.
	Every other time, it's like we have a debt and you have to pay that debt off.
	Say if I loaned you 100 bucks and we went to court and the court found out that you didn't pay me that 100 bucks, you don't go to jail.
	You just have to pay me the 100 bucks.
	But if you owe the government 100 bucks, they have the option to lock you in a cage.
	That to me is akin to shitty parenting.
	You're a strong believer in not hitting kids and not screaming at them.
	If you're tired and you're dumb and your kid doesn't want to listen, one of the best ways to get them to listen to you is violent force or fear.
	Those are the best ways.
	And it's been a huge problem throughout as far as recorded history.
	People have been beating their kids.
	People have been yelling at their kids. People have actually even defended it.
	And I think that this lazy use of force is very similar to what the government does.
	It's almost like they feel like their hands are tied.
	There's 350 million people they have to get money from.
	What's the best way to do it? Scare the fuck out of them.
	Lock that actor in jail, that Wesley Snipes.
	You put him in a cage, make an example out of him, and anybody else that steps out of line, lock them in cage too.
	Lauren Hill too. Lauren Hill.
	Yes. A solo artist. A fantastic singer.
	And yeah, she's serenading like James Brown in the echoing halls of the incarceration station.
	And no one talks about that either.
	She never hurt anybody.
	She didn't do anything. She's got some wacky ideas.
	You ever heard that broad talk? Well, you know, if you're pretty and talented, sometimes people don't step up to say.
	But the other thing, too, is that there are things that I find extremely morally objectionable, like at a skin-crawling, visceral, base-of-the-spine electrification kind of feeling.
	I hate the imperialism of a lot of the Western countries, particularly in America, the invasions of Iraq and all that.
	I find that stuff unbelievably reprehensible.
	And as you can see, the entire society has disintegrated now.
	I hate the war on drugs.
	I really – I mean at a very visceral, fundamental level, I think it is absolutely abhorrent and destructive.
	We saw some of the – I think the shakeout of that in Ferguson, Missouri recently, which I think war on drugs had a lot to do with that stuff.
	And the fact that I'm forced to fund this, it goes violently against my conscience, and I feel very helpless to not support the things that I find incredibly objectionable and incredibly destructive to particularly minorities.
	It's unbelievably horrendous.
	And I'd like to have the right to say no.
	I really would like to have the right to say no to that kind of stuff.
	I mean, I do charitable work, and I give away my shows for free, and I'm very happy to share whatever goodies I've accumulated in life with people who are less fortunate or needy.
	But there's so much that goes on in the world that governments do that I find just so horrendous.
	And I would really like none of the above as one of the options.
	Yeah, none of the above, but how do these things get funded then?
	How would they fund war?
	How would they fund, you know?
	That would be very tricky.
	They would have to get creative.
	Yeah, I was listening to Hardcore History.
	You ever listen to Hardcore History?
	Dan Collins? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
	We've done some shows together. Fantastic show.
	I really love it.
	And he's got a new episode, and it's about World War I.
	And it goes into great detail about the massive losses that were just wrecking the French forces and the German artillery and all this shit that was going on and how it was becoming increasingly difficult to get people to sign up for the war, especially with English, the English folks trying to get them to sign up.
	Like, it had gotten to the point where they had lost 500,000 people, 500,000 casualties in a short period of time.
	Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it gets to that point where people aren't buying it anymore.
	Like, in the beginning, it was easy to sort of coerce people into doing it by – he was actually going into depth about people would shame people, like women, like pretty women.
	The white feathers, yeah. Yeah, they would put a white feather on you if you weren't in uniform, if you weren't a military person, you were a coward.
	You were considered to be a coward.
	And it was so much so that they had to kind of figure out a way not to because there were many people that were involved in the war effort that weren't soldiers, the people that were building munitions, the people that were making guns, and people that were involved in all sorts of different levels of government that weren't cowards in their eyes, but they were getting attacked the same way everybody else was.
	It was sort of like a feeding frenzy.
	And it's interesting to see, especially when you're talking about the early 1900s, essentially 100 years ago, talking about this The use of manipulation, trying to get people to go along with war, especially back then when there was so much less information available to the average person, whereas today, trying to get someone to go along with war is far more difficult, far more problematic.
	Well, and there's this terrible power that the government has to create money at will, which the First World War largely engendered, and the First World War could not have been fought on the gold reserves that the countries had at the time.
	It would have been over in 6 to 12 months.
	And so right now, they can just create this money out of thin air, right?
	So, I mean, the war in Iraq did not come with equivalent – the war on terror did not come with equivalent massive tax increases to pay for it because they just printed all this money.
	And this messed up the economy.
	It was a significant contributor to the housing crash and all of the mess that's gone on ever since then.
	And so for me, it's like, well, wouldn't this make war more difficult if you had sort of privatized defense systems?
	It's like, yes, yes, yes, that's what we want.
	Let's make more. More difficult to embark on and pursue and make sure that it's defensive.
	Aggressive wars are very expensive.
	Defensive wars are relatively cheap.
	I mean look at what defeated in a sense the American military in Iraq.
	I mean what was the cost?
	How much did America spend versus how much did the people defending themselves spend?
	Look at Vietnam.
	What people were defending themselves in Iraq essentially is a bloodbath though.
	But just in terms of dollar cost, right?
	So you can bring down a $20 million plane with a $20,000 Stinger missile.
	Attacking is very expensive.
	Defending is very cheap. But look at how poor a job they did at defending.
	I mean, a million civilians were wiped out.
	Their entire country was essentially taken over.
	The only reason why they don't...
	The United States doesn't have full power of Iraq is because that was never the objective in the first place and because we abandoned it and pulled out.
	Right. I mean, their defense of the military, the United States military, was woefully ineffective.
	So, like, saying that it's inexpensive is kind of silly because it was also incredibly ineffective.
	Right. Well, the stated goal of the leaders of Al-Qaeda was to provoke America into the same kind of war that Russia got into in Afghanistan that broke the Russian economy and collapsed their empire.
	It was to get America to start waging war In a way that was much more costly to the Americans.
	I mean, human side, I agree with you.
	I mean, Iraq is just a complete mess and not just physical but genetic damage from all of these depleted uranium shells.
	They've wiped out the genetics of an entire population, birth defects and leukemia.
	And I mean, it's literally like hell.
	Since Desert Storm, since the first war.
	Yeah, since the first one, but even more so, I think, in the second.
	But from a pure dollars and cents standpoint, their goal was get America into these unwinnable wars against these insurgents because, I mean, this is what the CIA taught Bin Laden in the 80s with the Mujahideen was go get the Russians to come in and then just keep pinging them off and pinging them off and pinging them off until they go broke.
	Well, we're talking about two completely different locations now.
	We're talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, two completely different environments.
	And Afghanistan, one of the reasons why it's almost an entirely unwinnable war is because of the terrain.
	I mean, Afghanistan is like trying to fight a battle in the Rocky Mountains.
	It's insane. I mean, if you look at the terrain these people are involved with...
	It's just crazy.
	It's mountains and there's no cities.
	You have warlords that own these particular parcels of land and it's a crazy, crazy place.
	The idea of taking over Afghanistan.
	I mean, you would literally have to comb the mountainside and pull everybody out and encamp them or something.
	I mean, there's no way. You can't...
	There's no cities to take over.
	It's a completely unwinnable geographic situation.
	But Iraq, totally different story.
	I mean, Iraq... It's a desert with cities.
	Yeah. For the most part, right?
	So you've got a lot of places you can take over, but...
	But if we were invaded like that, in this anarchist version of society, what would you do?
	I mean, you obviously could enforce your version of society on other people.
	If you have dictatorships like, say, North Korea or So let's say you have an anarchist society and next door you have some status society, right? Because what are you going to take over?
	So if you look at countries that invade other countries, they take over the tax system.
	Natural resources. Well, to some degree.
	Isn't that one of the main reasons why we invade countries?
	It's like the hugest reason.
	Well, I'm not sure.
	I mean, that doesn't really explain much about Afghanistan, although there are some arguments that there's some minerals.
	Trillions of dollars in minerals.
	But you can get that stuff through trade, right?
	I mean, you don't have to go and invade a country.
	Why would you do that when you can just take it?
	If you have no cities, you have Kabul, and then you have like a bunch of dudes with goats.
	And you go, yeah, I think we're going to just go over there and take your shit.
	Why would you do that when you're this giant military force?
	And you also make money in invading.
	Right. Because the people that are contractors, they get government funds to go over there and spend money on tanks and planes.
	And it's a huge business.
	Yeah. The business of the military industrial complex cannot be denied.
	But have they made money?
	Because I know that there's the theory. They have.
	So who's made money from the invasion of Genesis?
	First of all, Halliburton.
	Halliburton made massive amounts of money.
	But in terms of the minerals, like in terms of getting the minerals?
	Because I know they're there for sure.
	Yes. But who's actually making money from them?
	Well, they haven't yet because they have to figure out a way to extract them.
	It's lithium. There's a lot of minerals that we need for...
	Tesla cars and cell phones and all the battery-operated things that we use, for the most part, we use lithium-ion, that's the current technology, and trillions of dollars worth of that stuff in Afghanistan, one of the biggest supplies of it in the world.
	They've located it, and it's like, even if it hasn't been extracted, it's like, we're not going to let anybody else go over and control that area, because you're talking about massive, massive amounts of money and resources.
	Well, it sort of remains then to be seen because if the argument is, well, they went in for the resources, they've been in there for, what, 12 years now?
	And if they still haven't extracted the resources, that argument – I think it's much more around Halliburton and the military-industrial complex making a huge amount of money by basically picking the pockets of the unborn through inflation and debt.
	So I think that's much more immediate.
	I think that's like a 12- or 15-year plan to get the resources.
	I think that's maybe something that's in the back pocket, but I think they really make money off the Fed.
	Yeah, that's certainly the current way that they're making money, but I don't think it's an either or.
	I think without a doubt, there's plans on trying to figure out how to get those resources.
	But I think that's the main reason why people invade countries.
	It's natural resources. They don't invade because they want to control the population for no reason and turn them into slaves.
	They invade because they need something that the other people have.
	Okay. So, I mean, Germany would generally invade countries.
	I mean, they invade Czechoslovakia and Austria and France and so on.
	They invaded and took over the tax base so that they got all the tax money and they got the gold and all that.
	So, if there's no tax structure, then it's less profitable to invade and take over a country.
	That's not a final argument.
	That's sort of one… It's sort of like if you've got two areas that you're thinking of taking over, one of them is a farm and the other one is just a forest with nothing there, you'd want to take over the farm because everyone's already domesticated and there's already a system of production.
	So the farm is like the government system where the human livestock, the tax livestock already domesticated, the whole system of payment is all set up and so on.
	So it's more profitable usually if you want to just get money and resources to go and into an existing country with the state.
	To go into a country without a state, it's tougher.
	You can still do it, but you don't have that farm domestication production system all set up for you to take over.
	The second thing is that nuclear weapons generally mean you don't get invaded, right?
	I mean, why did Europe suddenly find Kumbaya, you know, let's hold hands and be peaceful after capitalism?
	10 billion years of warfare because they got nuclear weapons in the post-Second World War period.
	And with nuclear weapons, suddenly it's like, blessed are the peacemakers.
	So, of course, if you get a couple of nukes, then you're most likely not going to be invaded.
	Right. And how do those nukes get funded?
	They get funded by the state.
	Well, people will pay. No, no, no, no. Funded by taxes.
	No, no. Isn't it?
	No, no. But this is the thing, right?
	I mean, because – and this is what I was making the beef at with Anna as well.
	Something needs to be done.
	Going to say, therefore, we need a coercive redistributionistic state is, to me, sort of similar to saying, well, where did we come from?
	Well, God made us. It's not really much of an answer, right?
	So, yes, you'll need nukes.
	Now, running a nuke for a population of any kind of size, having a couple of nukes will cost you like $5 a year, $10 a year for everyone to chip in.
	People will generally do that.
	People tip waiters, right?
	I mean, you've worked in nightclubs.
	The waiters start starving and emaciated, right?
	So people will generally pay for things that can be shown have value to them.
	But aren't you, I mean, the nonviolent principle?
	Aren't you the person that doesn't advocate violence, doesn't want war, doesn't want to support the military?
	Self-defense is different. Okay.
	So you're in favor of using nuclear weapons for self-defense?
	I think it's one possibility.
	It's one possibility. The execution of nuclear weapons?
	I would absolutely view that as a last resort, for sure.
	Because, of course, there's so many innocents who get caught up in that.
	Let me give you another couple of possibilities.
	There are weapons you can create that are targeted to people's specific DNA. In other words, you can release an illness that only will kill somebody's specific DNA. Oh, that sounds like a fucking dream.
	That doesn't seem like it would be possible.
	I'm telling you. I'm telling you.
	Has that been done? Is that a proof of concept?
	I'm not sure if it's been done, but there's certainly ways of targeting people.
	That sounds like the start of a movie where shit gets terribly out of control and then it's Mad Max.
	Well, but whether or not, right, when you have a bunch of people who all have governments invading each other, there's kind of an unwritten rule which says don't target the leaders because they don't want that to happen.
	On the other hand, an anarchic society is perfectly comfortable targeting leaders, which would really be the best thing to do.
	I would much rather target a leader and disable that person or even kill them if that leader was initiating aggression against a free society.
	That, to me, would be the way to go, and that would be a significant disincentive.
	That sounds like a beautiful idea, but that seems highly unlikely.
	We passed the first hurdle. Yeah, but doesn't that seem highly unlikely that anybody would be able to engineer a genetic disease that's going to cause peace?
	I mean, if that's the way to go about doing this, I mean, is that the only way?
	If you can target the leaders of people who are going to invade you, that just seems to me like the best sense, right?
	I mean, why are all the serfs killing each other in France in the First World War?
	It's the leaders who started it all, you know, that old Pink Floyd son, you know, generals sat while the lines on the map moved from side to side.
	I mean, it's the generals who are starting the war.
	Well, it's a different time.
	Back then, it's completely different because the only way you were getting information was through newspapers and you weren't able to have independent journalists giving you the full facts of the situation like we're able to today.
	Right. But if you did do that, you create a power vacuum.
	One of the things that people don't understand about what's going on in Chicago, everyone's like, why is there so much violence in Chicago?
	I talked to a cop when I was in Chicago and he gave me a unique point of view and what he said was, what happened is They arrested some of the big-name drug dealers.
	They arrested some of the top dogs.
	And when they arrested these guys, they created a power vacuum, and boom, that's what's going on.
	That's also what we see going on in the Middle East with ISIS. What that is is we see a power vacuum.
	The United States is pulling out of Iraq, and then we're being forced to go back in there now and try to deal with this.
	Was that journalist that was just beheaded?
	Fucking crazy shit going on.
	These guys, the ISIS videos that they're putting out on YouTube, it's like...
	They're taking extremism to a completely new level.
	They're taking violence and they're taking the shockiness of it all, the fear tactics, they're taking it to a whole new level.
	Putting these execution videos on YouTube, brutal, brutal videos.
	I don't know how they're on YouTube.
	Got taken down right away.
	They weren't though. There was over 100,000 views and it had been up for a couple of months, this one that I watched.
	Yeah. It had been up for at least 30 days.
	I know that for a fact.
	And it was over 100,000 views and it was brutal.
	It was execution style.
	They were shooting these guys that were on the ground and they cut this guy's head off while he was alive.
	That's a power vacuum.
	I mean, that's the result of a power vacuum from the United States pulling out.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I think this idea of this anarchistic society is interesting.
	It's an interesting alternative.
	It's certainly – look, the society that we have right now has massive flaws.
	It's certainly open for improvement.
	But I don't know how you fight off bad guys.
	I just don't know.
	Yeah. Well, but that is to not view certain aspects of the state as the bad guys, right?
	So to me, I think there's better ways to protect my property than giving people the right to take half of it away at gunpoint.
	I agree with you.
	That doesn't seem sort of logical, and I don't know how it's going to go, but let me give you an analogy, and I've used this before, and I'll keep it brief.
	Okay. We've learned how to do without evil and problematic institutions before.
	I mean, the institution of slavery obviously was central throughout human history, all throughout the world, for all of human history that has ever been known or recorded.
	So like 100,000 years, basically, people had slaves.
	And then there was a crazy bunch of people who came along and said this stuff is wrong and bad and so on.
	And people spent a lot of time and energy and money to end slavery.
	And now we have, I think, some fantastic benefits from that.
	You know, we have, I mean, obviously a more moral society.
	We have better economic efficiency and all that kind of slaves was very inefficient.
	So we do end a subjugation of women and things like that.
	Like there's things where we've said or serfdom or bondage for debt.
	There's things that we've done away with that haven't created necessarily the same kind of power vacuum.
	Like when we get away with things from a moral standpoint, there usually isn't a power vacuum.
	If there's some decapitation of power without principles behind it, then people rush in to fix it.
	But I think we're not done yet as a species.
	I think we have more to go.
	And I think the question of the state is one that we really need to examine.
	So if you were to say to somebody in like the 17th century, you say, okay, wait a second.
	Almost like basically all agricultural...
	Productivity is done by slaves.
	So if you get rid of slaves, what's going to happen, right?
	And if I were to say to you, oh, man, I got a great idea.
	Here's how it's going to work. We're going to have these giant robots that go sweeping through the fields, which have the energy of a thousand horses, and they run on the crushed tree juice from the dinosaur era.
	And you'd say, what the hell are you talking about?
	That's impossible. It makes no sense.
	It could never happen. But that is what happened.
	We got these giant combine offices that run on gasoline and oil that comes out of crushed trees from hundreds of millions of years ago.
	So what happens when you get rid of an immoral institution is unguessable.
	We don't know. Because you'd say, well, look, 80% of people are involved in farming.
	So if you're going to get rid of slaves, first of all, nobody's going to pick the crops because it's unpleasant work or whatever.
	And 80% of people will – 40% of them will be out of a job.
	But now like 2% of people are involved in farming because we got rid of slavery and it became much more efficient to invest in machinery rather than maintain the value of slaves by relying on manual labor.
	So what I'm saying is we focus on the principles.
	The non-initiation of force is I think a universal principle.
	What happens on the other side of that is absolutely unguessable.
	It's like saying what a phone is going to be like in 200 years.
	Like nobody knows. Right.
	So you're saying that the most important thing is to get rid of what is essentially a corrupt and evil institution, get rid of that and then figure it out?
	I mean, you didn't – no, you didn't – nobody ended slavery because things would be better afterwards.
	We ended slavery because it was an immoral institution.
	And the state which relies on the initiation of force is fundamentally immoral.
	But isn't there a difference between ending slavery, which is essentially a crime against humanity, and ending government?
	Because government is essentially how we keep order in our country.
	Is it really? Do you feel like you're bathing in an excess of order these days?
	I don't feel like it's perfect, but it's more order than chaos.
	So I don't think that it's ideal.
	No, absolutely not.
	But is it some form of an order?
	Clearly. It's flawed.
	Clearly. I don't like the tax scenario.
	I mean, the tax situation is grotesque.
	I mean, the idea of being forced to pay money for crimes against humanity in other countries, which is essentially what When you see thousands of people that are innocents that got killed by drones, a million innocents killed in Iraq, if that's not a crime against humanity, what is a crime against humanity?
	If millions of people dying isn't a crime against humanity, what's a crime against humanity?
	Well, clearly slavery was a crime against humanity.
	Taking people, locking them up, making them work against their will, selling them as objects, as property.
	Abolishing that is not the same as abolishing any form of government.
	It was a foundation for all of human society all the way throughout history and it was central to how the economy worked.
	Like why was there no industrial revolution in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations?
	They'd even discovered the steam engine.
	They knew all about this stuff. Why?
	Why was there no industrial revolution which was really the basis of all the wealth we have now because they had slaves?
	And so when you buy a bunch of slaves, you don't want to invest in labor-saving machinery.
	You have to get rid of slavery in order for machinery to do the work of slaves or of human beings because then it becomes cost-efficient and cost-effective.
	So it's central to how society self-organized.
	Slavery was essential, I would argue, to historical societies as government is.
	It's how everything was done.
	There's an old story about Rome.
	Where one guy, one patrician was saying, I don't know, I can do some bizarre upper class Roman accent.
	I don't know what that would be like.
	I don't even know what the sound, it's always English.
	Let's just pretend it's some British guy.
	Oh my god, I was walking down the street and I said hello to a slave.
	I don't even know which ones are slaves and which ones aren't slaves.
	We should make them all wear yellow tags on their shoulders so none of us end up talking to slaves.
	And the other guy said, are you crazy?
	We can't put yellow tags on the slaves.
	Otherwise, they'll see how many there are and how few we are.
	Right.
	So like 70, 80 percent of the population in some cultures were slaves.
	And so it was as central to the ancient world and to a lot of the modern societies up until sort of the 17th, 18th century as government is now.
	And it's as incomprehensible for them to think post-slavery as it is for us to think post-state.
	But the moral principles, I think, have to win out rather than consequentialism like – because we can't possibly guess what will happen in terms of spontaneous self-organization when you get rid of the coercion of the state.
	The problem with your analogy, though, is that during the same time that the South had slavery, the North had abolished slavery, and the North was prospering.
	So they were coexisting.
	So not only was there a clear example of a profitable...
	Forward-moving society without slavery.
	It was connected on the same continental mass.
	I mean, it was a part of North America.
	It was the country.
	It was even a part of the actual union.
	They were trying to secede, but they had, I mean, the North had no slavery, and they had excellent cities, and they had buildings, and they were building ships, and It was all done through paid labor, whereas at the same time,
	the South had slavery. I saw something that I thought was really fascinating that you argued, and you argued that the South should have been allowed to secede, and that if the North wanted the slaves to be freed, they should have purchased them from the South.
	Well, that's how slavery ended everywhere else.
	I mean, the British government and the British taxpayers paid for a lot of the slaves.
	There's a record of some British priest, a bishop, I think, was paid like £12,000 for his slaves.
	Basically, the way that slavery ended throughout most of the rest of the world was the government stopped catching slaves.
	And when the government stops catching slaves, they just – it has to be socialized.
	You can't go around chasing slaves who are running all over the place.
	It doesn't work anymore.
	The government is the one – You mean by catching slaves that are escaping?
	Yeah.
	That's what you mean?
	Yeah.
	So if the government stops catching the slaves, then it's not cost efficient to keep them.
	You have to socialize that cost.
	And of course, the government – in the south, the government forced white people to go on slave patrols all the time or they'd throw them in jail.
	Looking for slaves.
	Yeah, looking for slaves.
	They hated that.
	Did it take 600,000 people dying to end slavery?
	Well, only in America was that a requirement.
	Everywhere else, it was money and moral browbeating and all that kind of stuff and legislation.
	Only in America was that required.
	Isn't that – wouldn't it be required that they would agree to that though?
	I mean what if they didn't want to give up their free labor?
	I mean the whole idea was you're saying that the reason why certain societies did not advance past a certain position was because they relied on slavery.
	If you come along and you say, hey, we're going to buy all the slaves from the South, what if they say, no, we want to keep our free labor?
	It's more profitable for us to keep these slaves and make them work.
	But you keep bidding up until it's more profitable to sell them.
	Where does the United States get all this money?
	Where does the North get the money to buy all those slaves?
	Where does that money come from besides taxes?
	It comes from not having 600,000 people dead, right?
	But does it come from taxes?
	Before the people are dead, there's no debt of death.
	No, but what I mean is that the war was hugely expensive, right?
	I'm just saying from a cost standpoint, it would have been much less expensive to buy the slaves than it would have been to wage that entire war.
	That's a hindsight is 2020 argument though, isn't it?
	Because no one knew how many people were going to die in the war.
	No one knew how expensive it was going to be.
	They just decided that they were going to go to war and they were going to win.
	And that's how a lot of wars are fought.
	That's how we got in Iraq and that's how a million people are dead and countless amounts of money have been spent.
	Who fucking knows how much money was spent in Iraq since 2001?
	Didn't they just fly over like giant crates full of $100 bills and basically just throw them into the wind?
	I mean, huge amounts of cash itself just went there.
	But that's the big lesson of history is that once you let slip the dogs of war, you don't know who they're going to take down.
	You don't know how long it's going to last.
	You don't know what the blowback is going to be.
	That's one of the big lessons is that there's very few examples of contained wars and very few examples of wars that match the expectations of people going in.
	So with hindsight being 20, 20 and 600,000 people dying, what were the actual numbers of slaves that were Yeah, I've done a whole video on the history of slavery.
	I can't remember, honestly.
	I feel sometimes like a pipe through which knowledge passes, leaving no residue, like in these presentations.
	I know what you mean, yeah. You know what I mean?
	You've had hundreds and hundreds of great conversations, but somebody said, oh, what did the podcast want to do?
	Yeah, my memory sucks.
	I mean, it's pretty good, but it sucks compared to what I would like it to be.
	I'd love to be this giant museum of everything that happened.
	So the arguments, I think, are pretty strong that it would have been much cheaper to simply buy them.
	The other option, of course, is that you let them secede and you let them have their slaves and then the north gets more and more prosperous and the south generally stays or becomes less and less prosperous relative to.
	You can't allow that on your watch.
	How can you allow people to be enslaved?
	I mean, if there's anything that as a person with morals and ethics, a person that wants the human race to advance and evolve, if there's anything that you would want to stop, it would be slavery.
	That's one of the first things. First, you know...
	Abuse of children, child slavery, I mean in that order.
	Slavery, it's like number one.
	Murder and slavery would be like right next to each other.
	Those are the things you would want to stop.
	But you can't fight slavery with conscription.
	Conscription meaning what?
	Meaning that you're forcing people to come and fight your war because that's even worse than slavery.
	Okay, so did they draft people during the Civil War?
	Is that a draft situation?
	Did they force people to fight against the South?
	Look, it wasn't a good plan.
	It didn't work out well.
	The only good part of it was that the slaves were freed and slavery is illegal.
	Yeah. And I mean, I think there's a way – like I never advocate violence with regards to the state.
	It's something we outgrow.
	It's something we reason about.
	It's something we discuss. It's something we look for alternatives for.
	And you can see a lot of these things showing up even in Detroit.
	There's private police forces now because the police have basically said, you know, if you call and you get an answering machine, you're lucky.
	I mean, the police have basically abandoned sections of Detroit.
	There are wild dogs going through there.
	People have set up their own bus systems where you can have a beer and there's Wi-Fi on them.
	I mean, there's lots of things that rush in to take the place of decaying or diminishing state systems.
	And I... It's just something we outgrow over time through a conversation and it is a multi-generational change.
	It's not going to happen anytime soon.
	But I do think that we're still a long way from done as far as a really great society goes.
	And I look at the biggest institutions around and I think that everything's open to question.
	I think you do as well.
	But I just – I can't sort of say, well, what's on the other side of a truly free society where people are not subject to the initiation of force known as the state?
	I don't know. I don't know. I don't know either and I like having these conversations with you.
	I like having these conversations in this sort of a form – We're bouncing these ideas back and forth and we admit we don't know and there are possibilities.
	When you do your videos, however, you're doing essentially these hour-long pieces and you're very eloquent.
	You're a very good speaker and it's very unusual how eloquent you are because you don't use ums or uhs.
	You don't stammer a lot.
	And no jump cuts, right? Yeah, you're not having any cuts.
	You're obviously very impressed with yourself doing that.
	I'm just mentioning. I am happy with it.
	They're good. You're great at it.
	I've worked at it for a while. But in that aren't a lot of these ideas.
	These aren't essentially black and white issues.
	And when you state them as if they are black and white issues, that's what opens up all these portals of debate and dissent.
	And there's quite a few places online where people are upset at you.
	And quite a few things that you have said in these hour-long eloquent pieces that people have vehemently opposed.
	Okay. Yeah, and I'm annoyed that it's not more.
	Really? But don't you try to stop them?
	Stop them, no. Don't you pull videos down?
	Don't you pull videos for copyright infringement and tell people to not make videos?
	Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry, this just recently happened.
	So, yeah, this is a guy who worked at FDR. There was a troll out there.
	FDR, Free Domain Radio.
	Free Domain Radio, sorry, Free Domain Radio. Which is your organization.
	Yeah, so there was a guy – I'm going to say troll is going to poison the well, right?
	There was a fellow out there.
	A gentleman. A gentleman of trolly persuasion.
	And he – I do these call-in shows, so people call and we talk about sort of philosophy and ideas and whatever, right?
	And he had gotten some of those calls and through a means I don't pretend to understand, he had, you know, doxing where you start revealing people's personal information.
	He got pictures of their kids.
	He found out where they live.
	What? He had just done stuff where he was...
	Someone just called in and he got pictures of their kids?
	What can I tell you? Why did he do that?
	Can I pretend to know why people do this?
	No. When this person called in, but just to elaborate, sorry to interrupt you, but were these people being threatening?
	Were they criticizing you in some sort of an...
	Oh, no. I think we were just having a conversation about something.
	So why was he trying to get this information about their families?
	Well, so let's say I called – someone named Bob called in.
	Okay. And then someone took that slice of our conversation and worked like crazy to try and find everything out about Bob and then published videos with pictures of Bob and pretty personal.
	So everybody uses my stuff and I don't care about it.
	And you can do a search on YouTube for my stuff and everybody who said, I'd really like to reuse your stuff, I'm like, hey, go for it, right?
	Mm-hmm. But we had a number of listeners who called in and said, listen, this guy's doing some pretty creepy stuff with my personal info here.
	I'm not comfortable with it.
	So we used that mechanism to take that down.
	It's got nothing to do with copyright or anything like that.
	I just felt that listeners were being acted against in a negative way, significantly negative way.
	That's what we did. But it's nothing to do with copyright or anything like that.
	People use my stuff all the time.
	That's incredibly bizarre.
	So was this a scare tactic to threaten people that were criticizing you?
	No, no. It's a scare tactic to try and get people to not call into my show.
	So we'll target people who try to call into your show and then we will start trying to find out personal information about them and so on.
	It's only one or two people and it's only happened once, but that's why we did that.
	That's why Mike decided to do that thing on YouTube, which I fully agree with.
	I think it's a terrible use of time and it's a negative thing to do.
	But people, I mean, if I was interested in taking down people who use my stuff, then why on earth would there be so many of my videos reposted all over YouTube?
	Do you think that maybe part of the problem with your perception, the public perception of you, is that you don't engage in these kind of conversations where you're allowed to elaborate and you're questioned on things and people get to see a more nuanced perspective?
	What do you mean? Instead of this hour-long echo chamber where you do these videos and it's your thoughts, bang, bang, bang, bang, thank you, goodnight.
	You know, there's a bit that I've done on stage where it's amazing that you can get someone to sit down and listen to you talk for an hour.
	Because most of the times when people are talking...
	It's – they're having a conversation.
	It's a very unnatural form to have like a long rant or a lecture.
	It's a fairly recent thing in human history, right?
	And that most of the time when people are talking for an hour, you're like, fuck, I got some shit to say too.
	Isn't that what's kind of going on with a lot of the criticism against you?
	Well, no, but see – I do six to seven hours of call-in shows a week, right?
	So it's not like a one-way street in what it is that I do.
	And we've had a standing policy for, I think, three years that if you have a criticism of me, you go to the front of the line.
	I mean, we're booking people into the winter now who want to talk on this show, on Free Domain Radio.
	People are booked up until November.
	But if you have a criticism of me, You get to the front.
	You bump everyone. You get to the front of the line.
	So as far as people who have issues with me or disagree with things that I say or have better reason than evidence, fantastic.
	I mean I've done entire shows where I've read out somebody's criticisms of me and things that I got wrong and all that.
	I am very open to correction.
	Lord knows. I mean I'm one human being with some researchers and all that.
	So yeah, mistakes are made and I've admitted to mistakes that I've made in researching and so on.
	But if people want to tell me that I'm doing something wrong or want to debate with me, they get to the very front of the line every time, but they just never really show up.
	But it's not necessarily things that you're getting wrong.
	It's people disagreeing with positions that you have that… You can't say it's right or wrong, but these are very strong positions that you have.
	For one, there's a video of you where you're talking about being an – you consider yourself an anarcho-capitalist.
	Is that the best way to describe it?
	And you were telling people that if they weren't – if their friends were not also anarcho-capitalists, that they should abandon those friends.
	They should cut those friends out of their lives.
	I don't think I've ever said – there's one time in sort of an eight-year show history where I said to someone, I think you need to not have these people in your life, and that's because he was suicidal.
	But there is a principle that is, I think, really important, right?
	And it is part of a long-term conversation that you have with people.
	So let's say that I like to smoke marijuana.
	Let's just go out on a limb here and say, I like to smoke marijuana.
	Now, people who support the war on drugs literally do support me being thrown in jail for the peaceful activity of smoking marijuana.
	Now, that's a very real thing.
	People who support the war on drugs support me being thrown in jail.
	And that is a pretty aggressive thing to have around you.
	Now, this doesn't mean, oh, you disagree with me.
	I'm never going to talk to you again.
	I talk all the time to people who disagree with me.
	But I will say that in my very personal relationships, in sort of my close friends and family and so on, I really can't – myself, I can't get past this idea that I have – if I have people in my life who say, Steph, if you disagree with me about the welfare state, I think the welfare state is a complete disaster and incredibly destructive to the poor.
	Then you must pay the taxes to the welfare state or I support you being thrown in jail.
	Or if people are pro the war in Iraq or say, I mean, I'm Canadian, but let's say I was in America.
	And if people say to me, Steph, I think you should be thrown in jail for not supporting the war in Iraq.
	Well, that would be a pretty aggressive action for somebody to sort of eyeball you and say, yes, people should come and throw you in jail where god awful things are going to happen to you.
	That, to me, is a very aggressive and very real thing that happens.
	And if you are committed to a belief system, then in the long run, again, this is not a short-term scenario, and I've done speeches, full speeches.
	There's one in Libertopia 2010 where I sort of go into this in more detail.
	But if you are committed to something, like let's say you're against racism, which is, of course, a wonderful thing to be against.
	At some point, if you got friends in the KKK, you got to make a choice.
	You have to make a choice.
	If you say, well, I really want the friends in the KKK, then fine.
	Then you're just not that much of an anti-racist.
	I get it, right? But if you say, well, I want to be a committed anti-racist and I want to maintain my friendships in the KKK, that's kind of a problem.
	Right? And so I say, look, if you want to hang around with a bunch of people who want you thrown in jail for following your conscience, do it.
	That's completely fine. But don't say that you're committed to the belief system then, right?
	If you are committed to the belief system, this is going to be a collision at some point.
	I mean, that's not something I'm making up.
	That seems to me to be pretty true.
	But that's sort of where people, I think, get upset.
	I don't think that's very controversial.
	I think what you're saying is very reasonable and makes a lot of sense.
	But the video that I saw was you talking about people that support the state saying that if you support the state, you support people that want you dead.
	These are your exact words.
	The state wants you dead.
	That's what laws are, though. If you disobey laws and you resist a police officer, then you get.
	Sort of.
	I mean, which laws are you talking about?
	I mean, the state encompasses a broad range of laws that range from traffic lights to...
	You know what I mean? There's a lot going on there.
	Supporting the state. I mean, if you're not an anarcho-capitalist, you support the state and you're saying that you should cut those people out of your life.
	Anyone who supports the state.
	I mean, that is a... But you're boiling down like I gave you a sort of very compressed speech.
	You did there right now.
	But in the video that I watched, you were going on and on about cutting people out of your life that support the state.
	And essentially this idea of this philosophy that you have about how to live life being the one that these people should espouse and everything else is dangerous and you should cut these people out of your life.
	Well, was that at the end of me making the argument?
	I mean, if somebody just takes sort of the tail end, right?
	So I sort of gave you the argument here that if you're an anti-racist, at some point, you've got to stop hanging with the KKK people or give up on your anti-racism.
	I mean, that's...
	But calling it the state, it's such a crazy term.
	It's such a broad term, saying that anyone who supports the state, you need to cut out of your life.
	No, no, no. You don't feel that way.
	So... Should I play the video so you can listen to what it is that you said?
	I think that would be... Probably, probably.
	Because I'm sort of trying to, you know...
	I understand. I remember 3,000 shows or whatever, but yeah, let's hear it.
	Okay, let's see. Can you...
	I emailed it to you, right, Jamie?
	Because it's a fascinating clip, and I think...
	You elaborating on it enlightens or illuminates, rather, your positions on these things.
	It's easy to, like, say something in a rant and then have people go in all sorts of different directions with it.
	So let's listen to what it says.
	You'll be free by this time tomorrow.
	You call up the people you know, and you say, I've got a question to ask you.
	I know it's going to be uncomfortable, and you know something about my beliefs, and I don't mean to put you in the...
	I'll put you on the spot, but you kind of got a gun against my temple, so I just wanted to talk about that.
	I know we've talked a lot about all the abstract things in the universe, but I want to ask you a question directly, and it's better to talk to people face to face.
	It's harder to point a gun at somebody face to face, even In an abstract manner.
	I talk to them face to face. Go sit down with them in a coffee shop and say, so I just want to understand the basis of our relationship.
	So you claim to have some affection for me, some love for me, some respect for me or whatever.
	Assume there's something positive in the relationship.
	And you say to them, sitting across from them, you say, excuse me, you say, do you support the use of violence against me?
	And they'll, of course, oh, no, of course not.
	It's like, oh, okay, so then we're on the same ground.
	So you don't support the use of violence just against me, or do you support the use of violence against everyone except me?
	It's like, no, I don't support the use of violence against anyone.
	It's like, well, then you must be an anarchist, or an anarcho-capitalist, or a voluntaryist, or whatever the hell.
	You must be a philosopher. You must be basically decent.
	And they say, well, no, I don't...
	I still believe in the state.
	I still believe in taxation. I still believe in government.
	I still believe in...
	Okay, well, then you do support the use of violence against me.
	And they will do whatever they can to disconnect these two things, theory and practice.
	So they can get all the emotional comforts of conformity with the theory with none of the emotional discomforts of actually advocating somebody getting shot, which people are relatively uncomfortable with.
	But don't let them have their cake and eat it too.
	That's not because you're mean, that's just reality.
	If you support me getting shot, at least have the courage, the balls to look me in the eye and say, Steph, I support you getting shot.
	And then I can get you the fuck out of my life.
	Because how can I have even a shred of self-esteem, a shred of pride in my own existence, if I'm willing to hang out with people who want me shot?
	I mean, that's sick!
	That is self-abasement, self-groveling, self-denigration of the most revolting kind.
	Well, I know that you want me shot, but hey, can I maybe get a little more meatloaf?
	And if we're not willing to do that, like if we're not willing to put our personal relationships to the test, if we're not willing to do that, if we're not willing to do that, that's fine.
	Nobody has to do anything. But don't imagine you have anything to do with libertarianism.
	And don't imagine that you have anything to do with virtue.
	That you're using these ideas to play the clever card, to play the cool card, to play the alternative card, to play the I'm smarter and no more than you, and I'm out of the matrix, and you're in the matrix, and they play all this nonsense.
	Don't try and use philosophy.
	Don't try and use philosophy.
	Don't try and use ethics for your own personal comfort and to feel superior and avoid the anxiety of asking people that basic central question which you yourself bring up.
	You yourself bring this question up.
	About taxation is violence.
	That's the initiation of the use of philosophy.
	You bring it up. Other people don't bring this to the conversation.
	You bring it to the conversation.
	So do it. Bring it to the conversation.
	Okay, I think we got the gist of it there.
	Yeah, I think I didn't tell anyone to leave anyone.
	I said, if you are committed to the non-aggression principle, then...
	And I said at the beginning, I said, we've talked about these things many times before.
	So this isn't sort of like the first time you sit down and chat with someone.
	It takes a long time to have these conversations.
	It took me years to get anywhere useful in philosophy.
	So, yeah, I mean, I'm always sort of curious about, you know, people say, oh, this is terrible stuff that you said.
	Not that you were saying that. Oh, this is really controversial stuff that you said.
	And then they play it and I'm like, did I say something really crazy?
	And then I watch it and I'm like, yeah, I still believe even more of that now than I did.
	This is probably back in 2008, 2009.
	But does the state want you dead?
	This is my problem with it.
	The state doesn't want you dead.
	The state wants order over 350 million people.
	They want to figure out how to keep...
	Schools in order, roads in order, law enforcement in order.
	That's what they're trying to do.
	They might be doing a really shitty job of it, but the idea that they want you dead.
	They don't want their population dead.
	If everyone was dead, there'd be no money, there'd be no life, there'd be no civilization.
	In my opinion, that's not an effective way to phrase that, and it's misleading, in fact, because it's not the goal of the state is to kill you.
	You keep saying the state wants you dead.
	That's an unfair way of describing their position.
	No, no, but I wasn't describing that the state wants you dead in that clip.
	What I was describing was, so again, if I like marijuana and you think I should be thrown in jail for marijuana, then I must comply with the laws that you support or I will get shot.
	I mean, at the base of every law is a gun.
	I mean, that's what the state is.
	That's how it's different from a restaurant or the Boy Scouts.
	I mean, at the bottom of what the state does is a gun that is the initiation of force.
	That is the upside-down pyramid that it rests on is a bullet.
	And so when people say, I want the government to do this or the government should do that, what they're saying is that violence, the initiation of violence is how we're going to solve this problem.
	And that initiation of violence goes against specific individuals.
	And so if you're for the war on drugs and I enjoy using drugs, then you want force to be used against me.
	You want people to come and use force against me to prevent me doing my peaceful activity.
	And that is, I mean, stripped of all the rhetoric and all of the flag-waving and all of the matrix-y stuff that goes on that we're raised with, law is an opinion with a gun.
	That's what government law fundamentally is.
	And To resist the state is to risk death.
	I mean we've seen this over and over again.
	Do you regret saying it the way you said it?
	Do you think that it could be perhaps said in a way that more illuminates that position rather than this continuing use of this phrase, they want you dead.
	They want you dead.
	And then you separate from the people that support people that want you dead.
	Because that's one of the things that people are worried about with you, is that they think that you have this main principle that you bring up about cutting people out of your life.
	Cutting family members out of your life, cutting people out of your life that disagree with your views on the state, cutting people out of your life that disagree.
	And by doing that, you're separating these folks.
	foundation of cults.
	That is a big part of cults, is that cults separate you from your friends that might disagree with the cult, separate you from your loved ones, separate you from your family that may have some sort of a control and bond over you, so that the cult can have more control over you.
	Like, this is the- So, are you saying I'm running a cult?
	Is that- Not me. I'm saying that that is the argument.
	If I thought you were running a cult, I wouldn't be having a conversation with you.
	But people, that is a main principle of cults, that they separate you from all the dissent, from their ideas.
	Anybody that would disagree, anybody that would interfere with their control, anybody with...
	So when you're saying things like...
	Why would you say to someone like anybody who agrees with the state, cut them out of your life?
	What would be the goal of that, just to try to enhance that person's life, to try to say, look, my advice to you would be- Because, Joe, it's a true statement.
	There's no sort of effect or intent in that particular thing.
	It is a true statement.
	If people are concerned about being separated from families- They should be a hell of a lot more concerned about the war on drugs than anything some internet podcaster is saying.
	You know, as well as I do, how many families are smashed up by the war on drugs.
	So if somebody is for the war on drugs, then they are for people getting ripped out of their homes, separated from their children, thrown in prison.
	That smashes up families.
	If people are for family cohesion, which I'm married, I have a child and love it.
	If they're for family cohesion, they should be against...
	The military-industrial complex, which separates people from their families, sends them overseas, gets them traumatized, has them come back, dumps them back in with very little support into society as a whole.
	If people are very much into family cohesion, then forcing parents to pay for government schools where parents and children are separated from each other for seven or eight hours a day, that is a significant issue.
	So I'm sort of a little baffled sometimes when people say, When I say, look, if you're going to take a committed stand on a moral issue, at some point your personal relationships are going to have to become part of that equation.
	Now, if you don't want to take a committed stand on a moral issue, that's perfectly fine.
	I said that right there in the video.
	Then give up this philosophy if you want to keep your relationships.
	That's perfectly fine. But if you do want to take a moral stand on an issue, Then at some point, your personal relationships are going to be part of the equation.
	Otherwise, you're kind of a hypocrite, right?
	You're saying, well, this non-aggression principle is really important to me.
	But all the people who want me thrown in jail for following my conscience, well, that's okay.
	But do they want you thrown in jail just by simply saying that they support, quote unquote, the state?
	Is that what they're saying?
	Are they saying that they want you in jail?
	They don't want you breaking laws, but do they want you in jail?
	I mean, are they saying they really want you dead, or are they saying that they don't think that it's the worst situation ever to have a government?
	Well, no, but you see, again, in the clip that you played, I said when you sit down with that person, you say, I've talked about this for years, right?
	Right. So, at some point, people do have to get down to the essence of what's being talked about when we talk about the state.
	And what is being talked about fundamentally, in essence, is the initiation of force.
	It is the only agency in society that is able to initiate the use of force and do that which is illegal for private citizens to do.
	And that is a great and deep and, I argue, terrible power in the world.
	It gets, like...
	if I was I don't mean to pull the J card but let's just say the J card The Jewish, right? But let's say that- I don't think anybody's ever said that.
	Somebody was talking about Holocaust is not a big deal or who cares, right?
	And this is an extreme example and obviously it's contentious, but- At some point, if somebody was a Holocaust denier, I would at some point have to say, look, I mean, this is really not acceptable.
	I mean, we can't, right?
	Or I can say, well, I'm not, you know, for reality or truth or Judaism or anything like that anymore.
	That is the reality of having a committed moral principle.
	If you are in the 18th century and you are for the end of slavery and everyone around you is like, I think slavery is a necessary and moral institution, and you had years of conversation with them about the moral reality, and you've shown them the pictures.
	In the 20th century alone, Joe, governments murdered a quarter of a billion human beings, not including war.
	A quarter of a billion human beings, 250 million human beings were murdered by governments in the 20th century.
	That is some serious shit that goes down.
	That is like, I don't even know how many holocausts, right?
	And so people who support the state, and I'm talking about after years of conversation, right?
	Because it takes a long time to change these paradigms.
	But at some point, if you are committed to a moral goal, Then people who are happy or comfortable or positive or pro the initiation of force against you in pursuit of that moral goal, I think that I cannot have people in my life who are going to, after I have explained it and after they have agreed with the general principles, as I said, In the clip that you just played, I can't have those people in my life.
	I can't have people in my life who want me thrown in jail for following my conscience.
	When you say support the state, you don't want people in your life to support the state.
	To what end do they dissent?
	I mean saying you don't agree with war is fairly commonplace, yet there's war everywhere.
	Saying you don't agree with taxes, Pretty much most Americans don't agree with the current tax structure, but what are the options?
	I mean, by saying you don't agree with them, that's all you require, or do you require action?
	Like, by saying you don't support the state, nothing gets done.
	There's nothing different. If you don't pay your taxes, you will get thrown in jail.
	You will get in trouble.
	And what happens if you resist?
	You get thrown in jail. What happens if you resist the people who come to throw you in jail?
	They'll probably shoot you. That's what I'm talking about.
	Even if you don't support that, like what do you do?
	Oh, the doing part.
	The doing part is everything because otherwise you're just saying you don't support it, but you are supporting it.
	By saying, do you support the state?
	If you send in your tax dollars, you support the state.
	If you follow the laws, you do support the state.
	I mean, you are essentially doing their bidding.
	But I think that's using the, you know, if a slave doesn't run away, he doesn't support slavery.
	He just recognizes who has the whip.
	But if you're saying that you're going to cut people out of your life that support the state, to what extent do you have to not support the state?
	I mean, if you're paying taxes, you're supporting the state.
	If you're following the laws, you're essentially supporting the state.
	You're following laws that you don't agree with.
	Like, when someone says, I don't support the state, what the fuck does that even mean?
	I mean, come on, Joe. Someone who's in a concentration camp is not supporting the regime even if they're not fighting it.
	So are we all in a concentration camp if we're going about our business and we're paying the taxes?
	I'm analogizing that obedience to force is not supportive of force, right?
	I pay my taxes. I obey all the laws.
	Right. But then the dissent of that obedience, the disallowing of the state or the – Disapproving, rather, of the state.
	To what extent do you require to maintain a friendship?
	All I require for friendships with me, all I require is for somebody to say, I do not support the use of force against you for peaceful activities.
	That's all I require. They don't have to do anything.
	They don't have to join a march.
	They don't have to chain themselves to an IRS officer or anything like that.
	All I require is for people to say, I do not want you shot for following your conscience.
	I reject the use of force against you for peaceful activities.
	That's it. That's the magic key to the kingdom of me.
	Well, that's all very, very reasonable.
	And in saying that, but also saying that you also are following the laws, you're still sort of supporting the state, aren't you?
	Yeah, again, we're back to this question of support.
	I don't think that enforced compliance could be considered support.
	Otherwise, you know, rape, there's no such thing as rape because if the woman's not fighting back, right, obviously it's, you know, a terrible situation.
	So, no, I just – all I require is for people to say it is coercion and I think it's wrong.
	That's all. I mean nobody has to do anything because I think that once everybody gets that, then – Evil is a very tough thing to fight.
	Because most people...
	Once someone identifies something as evil, it's usually done.
	Once immorality is clear to people, it's usually over and done with.
	That's why nobody says, let's bring back slavery.
	Because everybody recognizes what a social immorality it is.
	So it has no power. Which had huge power throughout most of history.
	Slavery now has no power.
	Or let's say, let's take away the...
	Rites of women. Nobody suggests that because it would be wrong.
	But it's from a lot of history.
	That was how a lot of societies functioned.
	So once people see immorality for what it is, it loses all of its power and society fundamentally changes.
	That's why all I want is for people to see what I call the gun in the room, that when people are talking about the state, they are at the bottom talking about the use of violence and the initiation of violence.
	If people see that, I think that and peaceful parenting is the very best way to bring about a peaceful change.
	Revolutions suck. I mean, I think maybe three times in human history they ended up with something better.
	Most times it's just terrible.
	And, of course, most people who do follow the state follow the state just as I did and approve of and appraise the state because that's how they're raised.
	So it takes years of conversations to change people's minds.
	But at some point, again, committed to, all people have to say is they reject the use of force against me, and that's great.
	Yeah, I think that the issue that people have with it is this stern stance of cutting folks out of your life.
	I mean that seems to come up over and over again in the criticisms of you is this idea of cutting family members out of your life, cutting your parents out of your life, and that even people that have thought that they had happy relationships with their family, you don't believe they're happy relationships and you and that even people that have thought that they had happy relationships with their family, you don't believe they're happy relationships and you don't believe that these people – you essentially have Well, I mean technically it kind of is.
	My daughter can't go anywhere.
	It's not wrong. It's just that, you know, she's completely dependent on me and she has no rights.
	She has no economic independence and so on.
	So that's more a biological description of dependence rather than it's terrible like a government prison.
	Yeah, I don't think I would ever describe it as a prison.
	I think I would more describe it as someone developing and more of like a scenario where you're mentoring and raising them and protecting them and then slowly nurturing them to the point where they're independent.
	Yeah, I mean, I consider that prison.
	No, I can't remember if and where and when I've said anything like that.
	But I mean, I obviously am a parent and I've been a stay at home parent for five and a half years now.
	You've cut your parents out.
	Your wife has cut her parents out.
	And you've recommended this to many other folks.
	No, no, no, no, no. You haven't?
	No, I didn't recommend it in that.
	I say there are consequences to holding certain beliefs, right?
	And if you want to keep people in your life who are destructive towards you, that's absolutely your choice.
	But then don't say you're against destruction.
	That's all. Right. This is the consequences of beliefs.
	I really, really want people to take philosophy seriously.
	I don't want it to be like a dilettante science.
	I don't want it to be a poser habit.
	I mean, when you hold moral beliefs, they're very serious, very, very important.
	And that's how things change in the world, is people who take their moral beliefs incredibly seriously and are willing to go to the wall for them, right?
	And so if you hold moral beliefs, then they have to inform your relationships.
	Otherwise, it's pretty hypocritical.
	Now, if you want to hang on to your relationships, as I've said millions of times before, fantastic!
	Then recognize that you don't really hold those beliefs.
	That's fine. No one can tell anyone what to do in that regard.
	But if you hold the beliefs, they have consequences in your life.
	Otherwise, they're just noise.
	They're just talk. So essentially what you're saying is that your idealistic view, your utopian view, must be and somehow acted upon.
	And that if you have this idea of what is correct, what is morally correct, what is ethically correct, what is the best way to live your life, if there are any impediments to that that you are enforcing or even nurturing, you need to remove them from your life.
	Impediments to progress.
	I think there's a certain amount of real – there's a certain amount of momentum that we were raised with.
	I think many of us – I can give you my own personal example.
	We were raised by people who were raised by people who really didn't know much.
	And a lot of how we developed and a lot of how we were taught around the home was by people that really didn't – they weren't aware of the consequences of their actions.
	They were essentially acting on the momentum of how they were raised and also what is convenient.
	They're working all day. They're tired.
	They want you to shut the fuck up, and so they yell at you to shut the fuck up.
	Is it that they're evil or is it that they didn't really know what the fuck they were doing?
	I think that taking a stand to do things differently is incredibly important.
	And if you have grandparents or parents or whatever that are destructive to your children or they give your children – put bad thoughts in their heads or teach them that what you're saying is incorrect and that these ethics and morals that you're teaching them that you feel so strongly about are in fact – Against the Bible.
	I could see cutting those types of folks out of your life.
	I honestly can see that.
	But I think people have a problem with you saying it because you're so charismatic, because you're so eloquent, because when I hear someone talk that talks better than me, I assume that person's smarter than me.
	I want to listen to that person more than I want to listen to my own mind.
	Because most people's minds are filled with doubt and insecurity, and it's one of the reasons why cults get formed in the first place.
	If someone can talk clearly and confidently, and I say this with all knowledge that I've been accused of fucking starting my own cult, alright?
	I'm not any sort of a leader whatsoever.
	What I am is entirely a person who's curious and who asks questions, and I give advice based on what I have learned about myself.
	And I try to be as open and honest about all my flaws and all the Mistakes that I've made totally in the interest of disclosure so that other people can learn from the mistakes that I've made without having to make them yourself.
	But I think that when people hear that, this idea of cutting people off, defooing as you call it, cutting people off, it makes them nervous.
	Why? No, no, why?
	It's a principle directive of cults.
	It's not. It's not.
	That's not a principle directive of cults to cut people out of your life?
	No, no. No, listen.
	Let me ask you this, Joe.
	Do you think that a woman who's being abused by her husband should stay or leave?
	No, stay. She should stay?
	No, of course not. Of course not.
	She should leave. Right. Yes, of course.
	Yes. So why is it any different between adult children and their parents?
	No, you're right. If your parents abuse you, I absolutely 100% wholeheartedly agree.
	If you have abusive asshole parents, you should cut them off.
	And furthermore, I strongly suggest, and I've been to therapy myself, and I think it's a wonderful discipline if you get a great therapist.
	I have consistently said, if you have problems with your parents, sit down with them and talk about them.
	Screw the philosophy. Screw all this other stuff we've been talking about, the state and so on, right?
	If you have Issues with your parents, like if they beat you up or if they never paid any attention to you, sit down and talk with them and air your grievances.
	Because you have to be honest in relationships if you're going to have a relationship.
	I agree. And have conversations with them and talk with them.
	If the abuse escalates, if it gets worse, try and continue to have the conversation until you just can't take it anymore.
	If you're considering family separation, talk to a therapist.
	And don't do it without a therapist.
	It's been my consistent mantra for eight years.
	Go talk to a therapist.
	And make sure a therapist reviews the whole situation with you, goes with you through the whole process.
	Now, that's a heck of a lot more than women who are being abused by their husbands usually get in terms of advice, right?
	But as far as I know it, the people who have left their families have done so under the care of a therapist, which I think is really essential and important because it is a challenging thing to do.
	And as I said at the beginning of the show, Joe, I mean, it's all about principles.
	It's all about the extension of principles.
	Women who were abused by their husbands chose those relationships for bad reasons, obviously, and probably for own personal histories of abuse as children and so on.
	Women who chose their husbands are in those relationships voluntarily and can leave at any time and have massive support systems around in the world to leave.
	Now, when you're a child, you really can't leave your parents.
	I mean, that's why I think I've jokingly referred to it as like a prison because you can't leave.
	You can't get out. Now, if you were abused by your parents when you were a child, you couldn't leave.
	You couldn't get out.
	I mean, where are you going to go?
	And so then if you become an adult and the behavior has not reformed and the parents are still negative or difficult or abusive, absolutely sit down and air your grievances with them.
	If they continue to be abusive, you don't have to stay.
	Well, how do you define abusive, though?
	What is abusive?
	I mean, there's a broad range of what many would consider abusive.
	There are... So, I'll do a minor little pitch here.
	FDRURL.com slash BIB is my presentation on the bomb in the brain where I go through what's called the adverse childhood experiences, which is a test developed by Dr.
	Vincent Felitti, who's also been on my show.
	And I think it's a nine or 11 part questionnaire about things that you experienced as a child that are considered to be So being beaten, not receiving proper medical care or food or shelter, and living with a family member who is incarcerated or mentally ill or addicted to various substances and so on.
	So there is pretty objective questions out there.
	You know, how comprehensive?
	I didn't develop them.
	I haven't obviously vetted them compared to what I don't know.
	But there are sort of standards out there by which people can sort of find out to some degree whether or not they have experienced abuse as a child.
	But this practice of defooing, this is – I mean it's pretty widely criticized, right?
	I mean your wife got in trouble for this, for advocating this on your show, right?
	No.
	She didn't?
	No.
	Didn't she get suspended?
	No, none of that is true.
	So that's just lies?
	It's online? Yeah, none of it is true.
	She was never suspended.
	Her practice continued. They had some questions about the podcast, and at the end of it, they said, listen, we thought that maybe you had been given advice without giving a full psychological question or workup.
	The quote that I had written down was that she had been told her statements in support of defooing are not supported by current professional or consistent with...
	That was in the complaint.
	The final result was that defooing is perfectly consistent with best psychological practices.
	So this was just in the complaint.
	So people are taking this out of context.
	Can you believe it? Something on the internet is being taken...
	Well, that's very illuminating then.
	That makes people feel a lot better because that – I mean that is the one thing that people consistently have issue with a lot of the teachings of you and your FDR. Well, let's look at it this way, right? So in the 60s – I'm sorry to interrupt.
	But in the 60s, there was – I mean it's great.
	I'm really – I appreciate you bringing all this stuff up.
	I mean I generally don't address it because – Well, I want to give you an opportunity because it's interesting stuff.
	So – In the 1960s, feminists, and I think really great feminists, came along and said to women, don't put up with abuse.
	I had this woman on my show.
	She's Erin Pidsey.
	She created the first women's shelter in England.
	And women would come beaten up and broken down to her shelter.
	Everybody was appalled.
	Absolutely appalled. Until death do us part, was the mantra, right?
	That you can't leave your husband no matter how abusive, no matter how terrible, no matter how drunken, no matter how whatever, right?
	And she basically said, well, I don't think that's right.
	I think that you should not stay in abusive relationships.
	Now, if the only people you ever talked to were the husbands, the abusive husbands that these women had left, what would they say about this woman?
	Yeah. No, I see your point.
	It's not the children. It's not the adult children who are complaining about this.
	It's the parents. I mean, what would you expect?
	I mean, if you promote volunteerism in relationships and then people go to a therapist and, you know, like I was, I think, I don't know, 2000 and whatever it was, years and years ago, there was some write-up in the newspapers about some guy who left his family.
	He was – a therapist was helping him through the whole process and the therapist was recommending it and the therapist was the one who was helping him through the process.
	But somehow it's the podcast in Canada that is the sole cause of all this stuff.
	Well, I certainly think there's arguments for cutting people out of your life, whether it's a sister or a brother or a mother or a father.
	They are abusive people that you are unfortunately just given a relationship with.
	You don't choose them. They are just a part of your life.
	And I think it certainly can be argued that an engineered life where you choose the people in your life and you choose the positive influences that you have can be more rewarding, more satisfying, more beneficial than being committed to this blood is thicker than water bullshit where you have a bunch of people in your life that are fucking assholes.
	I think that...
	In illuminating it like this and speaking about it in this sort of a form where you get a chance to go back and forth with someone, people will get a better idea of your point of view and your perspective on it.
	And it's really easy to look at what you've said and say, oh, this guy's fucking starting a cult.
	This guy's telling people, cut everybody out.
	If you support the state, cut them out of your life.
	Cut everybody out.
	If your mom yelled at you to do your homework and called you a loser, cut her out of your life.
	Everybody cut out. Come to me.
	Send me your money. Get in my inner circle.
	I need about 50 bucks a month.
	I don't have an inner circle. Come to my house.
	We're going to have powwows.
	We're going to sit around the campfire, and I'll wax eloquently while you all stare in a maze.
	I will give you access to the basement of fertile women, and then everything will be set.
	They're in the basement. Yeah.
	No, I mean, look, it's a podcast.
	I'm making arguments. Every philosopher throughout history, and I'm not trying to put myself in such illustrious company, but every philosopher throughout history has been accused of corrupting the young, right?
	I mean, if you're not accused of that, you're just not even in the remotely right field.
	You're not trying hard enough.
	Yeah, you're just not doing hard enough.
	You're lazy. You're a lazy philosopher.
	And... Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I'm sorry. There is, without a doubt, there's problems with the society at large and many of the problems are because it has not been engineered in a very ethical or moral way.
	It's been engineered out of convenience.
	It's been engineered out of momentum.
	It's been engineered by the ignorance of the past.
	It's just history. It's inertia, right?
	It's just what we've inherited. Plus, we've got this brain that's like...
	It's like the lizard bit, and then there's a bit above the lizard, there's an amphibian, and then we've got this monkey.
	And now we're trying to operate on this post-monkey beta expansion pack of the frontal cortex, which is all layered on crap, and it's kind of unwieldy.
	We evolved from some pretty primitive life forms, and it's not like that stuff's all vanished, which is actually quite a good thing.
	Well, all these discussions and these conversations and these heated debates, what they essentially do is they bring up very important points and they allow people to give opinions and bounce ideas back and forth.
	And that's very important.
	And that's one of the major things that society benefits from when it comes to philosophy.
	Well, I certainly hope that is the case.
	And I'm very much into consistency.
	And I was raised that if you're in abusive relationships, you should leave them.
	That's how I was raised.
	I mean, because I saw that all the time, you know, the movie of the week, the woman in peril, the husband is a creep, and she just gets out.
	Why do you think there's been this blowback against you then?
	Why do you think people take these clips out of context, put them up and make it look like...
	I've always talked about like I guess jokes are very different because it should be inherently known that when someone's joking that most likely they aren't serious but people love to take someone's jokes take the words in quotes on and put them down in text form completely out of context and some of the things that people say look absolutely horrible because of that and that that's not exactly what they're doing with you but they're doing They're trying to label you in a certain way and trying to label you as a destructive influence.
	Why do you think that is?
	Well, I think I am a destructive influence to them, to their interests.
	But is it the interest of – who is the interest of?
	The state? Interest of the family?
	Oh, the state doesn't care about me at all.
	You know what I'm saying? A lot of these – they might if you keep getting bigger.
	We'll see. We'll see.
	You'll be happy one day if the steak cares about you.
	You've made it. Oh, yeah, that's right.
	Hey, look, lasers!
	Yay, I've arrived!
	I've arrived. I'm sweating.
	But why do you think that these folks who have left and start these blogs against you and all this nonsense, or I shouldn't even say nonsense, all this criticism, what do you think that's about?
	Well, I think that the promotion of volunteerism In any relationship, harms the interests of those who are relying on things other than voluntarism.
	God, that's a bad way of putting it.
	Does that even make any sense?
	A little bit. Okay, so let's say that the UFC has issues in New York with a union.
	You've probably never heard of anything like this, but let's say that the UFC has problems with a union, right?
	I mean, don't you have to go to New Jersey to see a UFC? Yeah, you can't go to New York.
	So why is this union so negative towards the UFC? Well, I'll give you the full details.
	It's the culinary union.
	The reason why the culinary union is against the UFC is the UFC is owned by Zufa.
	Zufa, the parent company of the UFC, also owns station casinos.
	There's 20-plus station casinos, and they are non-union.
	So the culinary union does not control them.
	They don't reap benefits and rewards and money from them.
	It would be worth upwards of, according to many sources, more than $15 million a year.
	So they spend exorbitant amounts of money to make the UFC look terrible, to highlight anything that any fighter says that's politically incorrect, and harp upon it, and pay off politicians to keep it out of New York State.
	That's the last place where it's illegal.
	But it's also just New York is a deeply rooted, corrupt institution.
	I mean, it's showing it.
	I mean, some of the people that have commented on the UFC, they've done so with complete disregard to the truth, to the facts of the competition itself, to the laws and the regulations and the safety record of the UFC. I mean, their distorted perceptions or distorted depictions, rather, of mixed martial arts have been just grossly inaccurate and willfully.
	And they've done so because they were being paid to do that.
	Right. Yeah, so something the UFC is doing is to their perception negative to their interests and therefore they become very hostile towards the UFC. Mm-hmm.
	This doesn't mean that everyone who's upset with me is in this category.
	I'm sure there's many legitimate reasons to have a negative opinion of me.
	But I think that the people who are the most upset are the people who their adult children listen to my show.
	And I said, just as everyone has been telling women for 50 years, I said, you don't have to put up with abuse.
	But you should sit down, talk to your parents, and you should get a therapist if you're going to think about separating.
	So you think it's just people that are like the parents of these people that are separating that are pissed off at you because you're challenging the rule that they have over their children?
	I know a lot of the people who have a...
	Who have websites. In fact, one of them was even on my show.
	And so it's not a huge mystery to me as to what their identity is.
	Now, the other thing to remember is that I don't have a lot of shows about this.
	I've done 3,000 shows of which three or four have been me talking about this topic, right?
	So this is not any kind of central focus of what it is.
	It's just if people ask me where the principles apply, I have to say where I think the principles apply and And I have to provide my arguments.
	So it's not a big topic for me.
	I understand, of course, it's a big topic for other people.
	And so if you are a parent and your child has had significant issues with you, that child has grown up, that child has listened to me, and they have sat down.
	Like, if I have any influence over someone, then what they should do, let's say, is do what I say, which is sit down, talk with your parents, try and work things out, remember that adult relationships are voluntary, and engage with a therapist if you're thinking of separating.
	Very reasonable. If people listen to me, then that's what they'll do.
	Do you think it's just a matter of the...
	Oh, sorry. Please go. But if people aren't listening to me, then don't claim I have any influence.
	Like if somebody just says, well, I listened to three podcasts and I walked right out of my family, then that's not me because they're not doing what I recommend then, right?
	So if I have influence, by definition, then the onus shifts to the parents and the therapist, right?
	Because that's what I'm saying. Go talk to your parents and engage with the therapist if you're thinking of family separation.
	It's what I did. And so if I have influence, then it shifts to the parents because people are, quote, doing what I tell them to do and going to talk to their parents.
	And then the onus shifts to the therapist because I say, go and don't do this.
	Don't even think of doing any of this without a therapist.
	I'd recommend that in divorce and stuff like that, too.
	I think it's beneficial in those situations.
	So the people who have hate-ons, well… Is that like a hard-on with hate?
	Yeah, it's a hate-on. Is that what you're calling it? A hate-on?
	Is that your own term? A giant foreskin of horror.
	Is that your own term? A hate-on?
	A hate-on? I guess so, yeah.
	I've never heard it. I've never heard it.
	Jamie's never heard it. If you've got a raging hate-on.
	Wow. How does one rage with a hate-on?
	So, I don't know, but I assume it involves thigh-high leather boots and plaques on the nipples and stuff like that.
	But, yeah, so if your kids came to you when they're adults and they say, listen, I had all these problems and you didn't listen and you got angry and you escalate and they went to a therapist and the therapist said, wow, this is a really toxic relationship.
	You should try and get out. Well, is it easier?
	They can't even find the therapist probably, right?
	Who's the easiest person to target?
	And by definition, if they're just pouring hate and vitriol on me, Is it really that surprising as to why their kids might not want to be in their lives?
	Like if this is what they do in response to a challenge, if they just create hate sites and pour all this venom and scour around and manipulate and cut things out of context, then maybe this is something to do with why their kids aren't in their lives.
	This thing went down with Adam Carolla and then Adam was criticized by Anna and Anna was criticized by you.
	I think part of the issue is when people communicate in essentially an echo chamber.
	There's one person talking for long periods of time and you can take any one of those chunks and decide this is something you want to highlight and out of the context of the entire conversation, you might be able to manipulate it and make it look in a way that it's entirely negative.
	Your position, however, what you're saying now on this podcast...
	Obviously, I haven't listened to all your shows.
	I've seen many of your things online, but I haven't listened to...
	Quite honestly, I don't think I've ever listened to any of your positions on defooing with your family.
	I think everything I've gotten from... Because I don't talk about it that much.
	Everything I've gotten from is just communicating with you and then reading the criticisms of it.
	But your position on this podcast, I think...
	It's very difficult to argue.
	I think it's very reasonable.
	It's very- And if I've done wrong, people can tell me.
	But then the problem is it has to go to everyone then.
	I just can't slice and dice ethics.
	I'm so sorry, Joe. I've never really had a chance to talk about this kind of stuff, and I don't really address it.
	I'm excited to be able to talk about it.
	I'm glad we're talking about it, because I think it's important sometimes to give people an opportunity.
	Like, I've had people email me like, why are you friends with Stefan Molyneux?
	That guy's a dick. And I'm like, Peter Joseph, fucking very upset at you.
	Peter Joseph, the Zeitgeist guy?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. P. Joe.
	Yeah. I like that guy.
	He's got some great ideas, but he was very upset with you as well.
	But whatever, that's not important.
	I think that it's important to have these kind of conversations.
	I think I need to have them too with people too where I go over my own ideas.
	When you have someone disagree with you, you get a chance to look at your position from a different angle as well and look at the perceptions of your positions.
	One of your positions to get criticized or one of the other things that gets tossed at you is the term misogynist.
	And I'm sure that's upsetting to you as well, right?
	You're not a misogynist, are you?
	I don't even – if people could define to me what that – if it means general hatred of all women, then I made a really bad choice of who to get married to.
	Isn't it interesting, though, that that's what a misogist means?
	It's like if you criticize anyone who's gay, you're a homophobe.
	If you have issue with someone who's black who does something stupid like Al Sharpton, you're a racist.
	It's a cute way of dismembering your argument or dismembering your position right away.
	But you've said some stuff about...
	Women that I have even disagreed with and one of them you did this thing recently we were talking about how the way to get Assholes out of society, it's women's responsibility because women are breeding with these assholes and they're making assholes.
	It's not only women's responsibility, but it's a key part of the equation that I think is not discussed enough, which is the sexual choices of women.
	That expression or that sentence is really critical.
	It's not only women's responsibility.
	And what I saw, the thing that you went off on, I think it was the Elliot Rogers thing.
	Is that what it was? Where you're talking about that fucking crazy kid up in Santa Barbara that killed everybody?
	Yeah. By the way, he killed more men than he did women.
	It's one of the things that I found fascinating that this whole yes all women, hashtag yes all women thing came out after four men were murdered and two women.
	And that guy was a piece of shit regardless of gender.
	Gender had very little to do.
	He was mad at the men that women found attractive.
	This is not an even game, this life.
	You know, there's people that were born and they look like Beyonce.
	And then there's people that are born that look like Bridget the Midget.
	I don't even know who that is.
	Who's that? Beyonce or Bridget the Midget?
	The second one, I don't know.
	How dare you pretend you don't know who that is.
	She's a porn star. Oh, is she?
	Yeah, she's a small person porn star.
	All right. My point being, you know, it's not like you earned being Beyonce's looks.
	You know, no one earned that.
	No one worked really hard.
	She might have worked really hard to get that body, but she's a beautiful person.
	She was born extremely physically attractive.
	And the singing voice.
	Yes. I mean, you know, I could practice forever.
	I don't could sound like that. And this Elliot Rodger guy, he was socially awkward and probably mentally there was something wrong with him.
	Asperger's, whatever the fuck it was.
	I don't know what was wrong with him, but if you watch his videos where he's talking, there's clearly some sort of a weird social disconnect.
	He had a really hard time connecting with people and couldn't get a woman to like him properly.
	For various reasons.
	Blame them for his hate and his feelings.
	When people see, when they look around, they see all these people that are attractive.
	They see all these people that are attracted to each other and then they're left out of that.
	They're frustrated.
	They're angry. It drives them fucking crazy.
	And I think that's where this Elliot Rodgers guy fit in.
	And when this Yes All Women thing came about...
	On one hand, I agree with it.
	It's got to be way more difficult to be a woman, way more difficult to constantly worry about your own physical safety, worry about men wanting to sexually assault you, which is very rare for a man to fear.
	I mean, maybe in prison, yeah, but in real life, it's very rare for men to worry about other men.
	Physically, sexually abusing them or wanting to get them somewhere, roofie them up and sexually abuse them.
	But for women, it's a super common occurrence.
	So women in bars are always worried about covering their drink.
	I've talked to at least five women over the course of my life that believe or were definitely roofied or were definitely drugged by someone, you know, unknown drug.
	They woke up in someone's hotel room.
	It's disgusting and evil and creepy.
	And it's something that men don't have to worry about, but women do.
	But when a guy like that comes along, I think it's not a matter of It's a matter of a mental illness, is what it is.
	That guy was a mentally ill person.
	I don't know what causes a person like that to be mentally ill, but I don't think that women can prevent that by not breeding.
	I don't think that women can prevent a guy like that from being born.
	I mean, I don't think his parents were abusive.
	I've never read anything that said that his parents did anything evil to him.
	So how does an evil guy like that come about?
	He's mentally ill. Something happened during his childhood, and I don't think anybody could have prevented that by being a woman, not allowing him to have sex with them or whatever you were talking about.
	I think, especially in this particular example, that guy was sick.
	There was something wrong with him.
	There's sick people all the time.
	You can go down the street, and there's a guy who pushes his car to talk to himself, and I don't think it's because no one fucked him.
	I think that guy's got something wrong.
	There's an issue there.
	And I think that was what this Elliot Rodger guy...
	There's an issue with him. That guy was a monster.
	That guy was an asshole. And it's no woman's fault.
	Well... Okay, so...
	Let's pull back from Elliot Rodger because we don't know much about his childhood.
	We know that he had some complaints about the way his stepmom treated him, but I went over that in the video.
	So a study came out recently.
	And again, I had the guy on my show to talk about it.
	And what he did was he...
	Went to a sort of middle class neighborhood and went to a daycare and he said to the women, listen, I really want to study aggression, yelling, whatever in families.
	I need you to wear this recorder for, I don't know, a week or 10 days or whatever it was.
	And so he had the women wear this recorder and then he got the footage back or the audio back.
	And he found that the women were hitting the children a lot.
	A lot. Like 936 times a year.
	An average of three times a day from 16 months to four years of age.
	Where was this study? Where was it taking place?
	I can't remember where, but it was...
	A city? Yeah, I'll give you the link for...
	Maybe Mike can dig it up.
	I'll give you the link for the show. 936 times.
	How many people were involved in the study?
	I think 40 or so. So it's not comprehensive, but this is a middle-class neighborhood.
	Comprehensive enough. So this isn't even poor, right?
	40 is a pretty good number.
	And out of those 40 people, what percentage of them were hitting their kids?
	I think all but two.
	And the other two were verbally aggressive.
	Whoa. So the idea that women are not part of the cycle of violence to me seems...
	And again, this doesn't explain Elliot Rodger.
	But the reality is that women – and men too.
	Like again, and not all women, right?
	My wife is an incredible mom.
	But there is a lot of aggression coming from women towards children.
	Now, it's funny because when people talk about – when I talk about this kind of stuff, people will say, well, what about men?
	It's like, but we know about men.
	We need to look at the stuff that's not seen.
	Right? Because right now it's like, you know, like it's just men are nasty and men need to change.
	Yes, men need to change.
	Absolutely. Of course men need to change.
	But saying that women are not part of the cycle of violence is not correct with the data.
	And I am committed against all calumny, against all insults, against all hates and trolls.
	I am committed to doing everything I can to maximize peace in the world.
	I know that sounds like crappy and deluded and all that, but that is my commitment, you know.
	In life. And if we can get women to stop hitting children, the world will become a much more peaceful place.
	If we can get men to stop hitting children, absolutely.
	But male aggression has already been focused on so much that there is this blind spot, which is the degree to which women use aggression in the raising of children.
	80% of British mothers spank their child before the child is one year old.
	Wow. I mean, it's mad.
	And those of us who have great wives and peaceful girlfriends and all that, there is a whole world out there of people who – and men and women.
	But again, we've talked about the men a lot.
	Focus on the women. Well, just that is very different than what we're talking about.
	What we're talking about is horrific.
	What we're talking about is just – anytime you're hitting a fucking baby, that's sick.
	The fact that so many people do it is really hard to believe.
	I don't have any access to any statistics and I believe you.
	I'm not saying that I – Mike's going to put it out on Twitter.
	My Twitter handle is Stephan Molyneux.
	People can look at the study.
	I'll retweet that study because that's incredibly disturbing.
	The issue, of course, is that when kids are hit by their loved ones, they're way more likely to hit their loved ones.
	They're way more likely to accept violence.
	Some of the scariest kids ever are kids that were abused at home.
	I remember growing up with this kid That was abused at home and he was so quick to violence.
	We find it in the UFC as well.
	Some of the best fighters were bullied when they were younger.
	They were beaten up by their brothers.
	Some of the scariest guys are guys who had older brothers who used to kick their asses because they get used to having that from their family and their loved ones and they have a certain tolerance to violence and a certain tolerance to aggression.
	That other folks don't have.
	They have a peace with it.
	So they're not as afraid of fighting.
	They're not as afraid of competition as the other folks are.
	And yeah, that's a terrible cycle to be a part of.
	And those numbers are absolutely incredibly disturbing.
	Right.
	Right. Right. And I've certainly held men's feet to the fire as far as aggression and violence goes as well,
	and I've talked to dads not to hit their kids and all that, so I'm not saying, well, no, I don't need to talk to you.
	You're the dad. Let me talk to the only person who is ever aggressive to children, which must be the woman.
	But the reality is, I think, and I think this is, you know, Somewhat debatable.
	I think it's fairly well established that, in general, men ask women out and women say yes or no.
	That's generally how it works.
	And there are exceptions and all that, right?
	But in studies I've read, about 90% of dates are initiated by men.
	And so women are doing the choosing.
	And I'm saying to women, one of the ways that women can incredibly contribute to reducing the cycle of violence is to choose better men.
	There's a part of women, and again, this is fairly well established, at least as well as these things can be established.
	There's a part of women that likes the alpha guy, right?
	The guy who's kind of cold and efficient.
	And I mean, I'm plowing my way through Fifty Shades of Grey.
	God help me.
	How dare you?
	I'm telling you.
	How dare you even know it?
	I'm telling you.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	She's not a midget porn star, but I guess this is all I got, right?
	And I get that.
	I mean, men are attracted to particular physical things which indicate fertility, and women are attracted to particular male traits that indicate good provider.
	And again, there's nothing wrong with any of that.
	That's perfectly natural. But the reality is that we do need to be wise in who we choose to raise our kids with and who we choose to have kids with.
	And I berate men all the time for choosing looks over virtue.
	I mean, on my show, I'm horrendous on men for choosing looks over virtue.
	And we've all been there, we've all done it, and we all know what a mistake that is, right?
	What is it that someone says, I don't care how good looking she is, there's some guy out there who's tired of screwing her, right?
	And so I talked to Matt about don't just go for virtue.
	Virtue is the big tits of philosophy, right?
	I mean, that's what you want to go for when you're going to get married.
	And for women, I say the same thing, go for virtue.
	But I think men's tendency to choose on shallow standards is fairly well known.
	And again, I'm just trying to sort of shine the light on that other side and say, look, if like you need to sort of cross your legs and grit your teeth and say he may be sexy, but he's not a good guy.
	I'm not going to have kids with him.
	And I think that will help a lot.
	I mean, I want to empower women to be like not to be victims alone.
	Right.
	I mean, I'm trying to empower once you give people like if you say, look, women are part of the cycle of violence, then women aren't helpless and just need to sit on their knees and beg men not to be violent.
	Women can actually talk amongst themselves and be empowered to do things to help reduce the prevalence of violence in society.
	Choose better men. Don't punish your kids.
	Don't yell at them. Don't hit at them.
	Reason with them. That gives women something to do rather than cross their fingers and hope that men get better.
	You also did this thing on Robin Williams, and you do a lot of these The Truth About People, and you do these one-hour-long And I don't even blink.
	I don't even blink.
	My eyes are so dry at the end of it.
	Just before, I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	We'll get right back to Robin.
	So this is from the Dr.
	Phil website. I had this bookmarked.
	How dare you bring up Dr.
	Phil? No, but look, Dr.
	Phil has on his advisory board all of the top stars.
	Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who was past head of the APA and all that.
	So he's got the top guys.
	And this is what he says if you were abused, right?
	And I'll just read the last bit, right?
	And we can tweet this as well.
	Do what is best for you.
	Consider the possibility that it may not be healthy to have any sort of relationship with your parent.
	It's a difficult pill to swallow and it should be used as the last option.
	However, it may be the option that helps you the most.
	Dr. Phil also said that if a man is masturbating to a video, that's just as much of a betrayal as if he had another woman in that room.
	Actually, that's Jesus. No, but I mean, so that's not his psychological science, right?
	Jesus know about videos?
	Jesus was so ahead of his time.
	Anyway, so I just wanted this question of sort of voluntary family stuff.
	You know, people can get mad at Dr.
	Phil, but I'm basically just echoing what...
	I think people should get mad at Dr.
	Phil just for his fucking mustache.
	How about that? All right, sorry.
	Back to Bobby W. Yeah, back to Robin Williams.
	These videos that you do, I think they're very interesting, but...
	To do a biography on someone requires an extensive amount of preparation and massive amounts of research.
	So when you do the truth and the word the truth is a very tricky thing because there's many truths, there's many versions.
	Like I've had conversations with people, they'll say, oh, you know, I heard that this person met this person and that person was an asshole.
	And I'm like, well, actually I was there and that's not what happened at all.
	That person was annoying as fuck and the other person was trying to get away from them and that's why, you know, they looked like an asshole.
	Right. You did this, the truth thing about Robin Williams, and your conclusion was that Robin Williams died because of women's addiction to free stuff, and that he essentially killed himself because of the fact that he owed money, because of the fact that he spent a lot of money in his alimony.
	I think that's a I think that's an irresponsible statement.
	Because I think, first of all, it may have been a factor.
	It certainly was a factor in his unhappiness.
	But we're not even aware of what kind of behavior he had in those relationships.
	It was probably also a factor in the breakup of the relationship.
	Also a factor in the antagonism that he shared with his ex-wives.
	If and whether or not that did take place.
	But also his...
	Alcoholism, his drug dependency, his medical state, the state of just the natural body and brain chemistry after years and years of abusing drugs and then going back into it, and then depression itself.
	Then on top of that, Parkinson's disease.
	Then on top of that, whatever medication that he was taking for Parkinson's disease, which many have been proven to cause depression in people.
	So to boil it all down to Robin Williams died because of women's addiction to free stuff, I think that's irresponsible.
	Well, I mean, and again, I said at the beginning of the video that this is not all set in stone.
	This is just my thoughts.
	But I think that's a good case to be made.
	I really do. I mean, because the timing to me is like right after his show was canceled and he's paying $600,000 a year to his first wife from the 80s.
	I mean, that's what the settlement – he had a prenup with her, but it got thrown out, right?
	How does his prenup get thrown out?
	How does that work? Oh, if the judge thinks it's not reasonable.
	I mean, people sort of – because people posted back to me and said, well, he should have got a prenup!
	Right. A prenup is not bulletproof.
	I mean, how many things happened that aren't – you know, Congress is supposed to declare war.
	How many wars has Congress declared?
	Like three out of the hundred wars that America has been involved in?
	It's just part of the law.
	So a prenup – Steven Spielberg's wife, I think Amy Irving, they were married for four years.
	They had a prenup. And she ended up taking $100 million from him.
	Yeah. Pretty reasonable.
	Yeah. A prenup is not a magic bullet.
	Weird. She hasn't worked since.
	I wonder why. Lost all her ambition.
	I'm sure that Denny probably isn't hiring.
	She was an actress.
	How dare you? She was an accomplished actress.
	Right. And look, the guy shelled out $20 to $30 million.
	In alimony. Yeah, but he also made 200 and something million over the course of his career.
	He made an insane amount of money.
	The fact that he's broke, even if he did have to pay out $30 million, it can't be totally attributed to the fact that his ex-wives took an incredible amount of money.
	It has to be attributed also to poor management of his finances.
	It has to be attributed to just the overall recklessness that he exhibited in his life.
	He was a very impulsive guy, as many great comics are.
	It's an attribute that many great comics share is this wild, impulsive behavior.
	I've struggled with it myself.
	Most of my friends have struggled with it or aren't struggling.
	They just fucking embrace it.
	It's a part of what makes someone a comic in the first place.
	And that is as much of Robin's problem, his poor financial management, as the divorce settlements.
	Because if he had been prudent with his finances and had been really good at managing his career, he would still have a shit-fuck ton of money even after giving away 30 million bucks.
	But the $30 million still means something, right?
	It sucks. It sucks.
	That's a lot of money. It sucks now because he was 60 years old.
	Do you think that's just? I don't know what just is.
	I don't know if it's just that someone makes $300 million by making people laugh.
	I mean, I think... If you looked at it in terms of commerce, it clearly is because people paid to see his movies.
	He was a draw. Everybody wanted to go see Robin Williams.
	He's a hilarious guy.
	He's a lovable personality.
	I think the real tragedy is not as much that he had to pay so much money.
	It's that here's a guy who the world loved who died alone hanging himself because he was sad.
	I mean, that's the real tragedy.
	The factors that led to him taking his own life by cutting his wrists and hanging himself.
	I mean, that's a fucking guy who wanted to be dead.
	There's many, many, many, many, many factors in that.
	Poor choices, a life of regret, accusations of plagiarism that haunted his professional stand-up comedy career.
	All the various things that were wrong in the life of Robin Williams, the alcoholism, the cocaine abuse, and then of course his health failing.
	There's so many different things that were wrong there.
	The $30 million certainly hurt, but Robin Williams made an ungodly sum of money throughout his career.
	He was a huge fucking star.
	He was making shitloads of money.
	He could have been fine if he had managed his resources better.
	I don't think you can say that the $30 million that he gave his wives was the problem.
	Well... It was a problem for sure.
	It certainly was. Other than the real estate, right?
	I mean, he had, I think, a $30 million ranch that he was trying to offload.
	Yeah, he was trying to get rid of it, but he could have let them foreclose on that.
	I mean, he just didn't want the shame of losing the home.
	And by the way, he still had money.
	He wasn't destitute.
	It's not like we're talking about Robin Williams is living in some fucking sleazebag motel somewhere.
	He said himself he took the TV gig for the money.
	Sure did. Yeah, because he wanted to keep his lifestyle the way it was.
	And look, it's still a fucking TV gig.
	It's not like someone told him to work in a coal mine.
	No, no, no. He's on CBS. I get that.
	I get that. In a sitcom. Yeah, no, I get that.
	I mean, it's a great job.
	And it failed. And one of the reasons why it failed had nothing to do with his ex-wife.
	People said that he looked like he was sad.
	People who watched the sitcoms said that he looked tired, he looked sad, he didn't have the energetic persona.
	It was a downsizing to him.
	And it was a downsizing professionally in a way that's embarrassing to many film actors.
	When film actors go from film to television, it's a loss.
	And it's so hilarious.
	It's like, my God, you're on a fucking television show.
	But the hierarchy of stars is, if Jack Nicholson all of a sudden started doing a sitcom, everybody would be like, oh, Jack.
	Want to come down. Right.
	But if I did a sitcom, everybody would be like, hey, congratulations on your sitcom.
	You know what I mean? It's not a consolation prize for you, but it would be for Jack Nicholson, right?
	Yeah, I'm a D-level celebrity. So if I did a sitcom, it would be a bump up.
	I'd be a C. You know what I'm saying?
	But with an A guy like Robin Williams does a sitcom, all of a sudden he's a B or whatever.
	Right. It's just the hierarchy of things.
	To be fair, I also talked a lot about the stuff that happened in his childhood, right?
	Yes, you did. That he himself had talked about that he felt that he had to be what I call the me plus.
	In order to get people's attention, in order to get their positive response, I can't just be me.
	I have to be me with a show.
	I have to be me with money.
	I have to be me with good looks.
	Whatever it's going to be, right?
	Right. And I think that stuff came out of his childhood.
	Now, you can't be definitive about that stuff.
	I would love to have chatted with him, but sadly, that never will happen.
	But I think that stuff came out of a lot of his childhood issues, and I think that's really tragic.
	I really wanted to – there is no external solution to the problem of insecurity, to the problems of feeling unlovable, to the problems of feeling not enough.
	People will try – I think until the end of time it seems like people will try to stuff the holes in their heart with whatever they can grab from talent or money or looks or fame or whatever it is.
	But I really try to urge people you have to look inside and deal with that stuff in a very proactive way because the idea that you can just basically glue eyeballs of attention to yourself and become whole I think is a very dangerous myth.
	It is a very dangerous myth but it's also what propels great comics to become great and that's where it's ironic that a guy like Robin Williams, his horrific childhood – it wasn't horrific.
	It just wasn't good. But that childhood – I mean he was wealthy.
	He was – He was just ignored.
	But the lack that he had in his childhood was what led him to be this magnanimous, just energetic, explosive, like, look at me!
	Look at me! And he was this look-at-me guy because no one was looking at him.
	I know this from my own personal experience of becoming a stand-up comedian.
	My parents broke up when I was five years old.
	My father was very physically abusive, violent, very terrifying.
	And then my stepfather was very young when my parents got together.
	I was ignored a lot.
	And that's what led me to become a fighter.
	Part of it was being bullied.
	I was small. And the other part was...
	What led me to become a comic was this lack of attention.
	And I figured out a way to manage it.
	And I figured out a way with constant objective analysis of myself, constantly pushing myself towards new goals, constant research in terms of psychology, in terms of philosophy, in terms of meditation, in terms of Psychedelic experiences and all sorts of different things that I've done to try to manage my own particular insanity.
	But my particular insanity was more manageable than someone who's a drug addict.
	The people that are drug addicts with that particular insanity, the real problem is you're also creating this massive chemical imbalance in your mind.
	And I could be argued that I'm a drug addict.
	Some people said I'm a drug addict because I like pot.
	But I disagree because I don't smoke it every day and I've quit for weeks on end and it doesn't bother me.
	I like pot. I think it's like saying I'm a coffee addict or I'm addicted to steak.
	Wait, you're not going to take my coffee, are you?
	Nope. You're not going to take my coffee? I'm not addicted to steak, but I love it.
	I love weed, too.
	I think it's a beautiful, calming, insightful, introspective drug.
	I think it makes food taste better.
	I think there's a lot of benefits to it as far as the way you deal with people.
	It makes you more compassionate.
	I believe it makes you more creative.
	I think it's a tool that Mother Nature has given human beings.
	It's not physically addictive in terms of what it does to your neurochemistry and what it does to your body's actual need for it, where you have to go into fucking rehab.
	If you go into rehab for weed, you're either some sort of a weird case, like one of those people that's allergic to sweat or something like that, or there are people that are allergic to their wives who are allergic to their husband's sperm.
	I've heard of this.
	That's not just a line? Yeah.
	That's what I would say.
	I would say it's a line.
	But no, it is true. There's medical proof that some women are actually allergic to their husband's sperm, allegedly.
	What am I, a doctor? Medical proof.
	But my point is, Robin had a physical addiction to chemicals, without a doubt.
	And one of the big ones was cocaine.
	He did a fuckload of cocaine.
	And I personally have had several friends that have had real problems with cocaine, and it is a goddamn rollercoaster ride.
	And the downs are awful.
	And when they go up, they're riding this manic wave, and when they crash, they are fucking dead.
	They are just miserable.
	It's horrible to watch.
	The best way to keep people from doing coke is to put them around someone who's done coke.
	Because it is just seeing how fucked up they are when they're high and seeing how low they are when they're low.
	And, you know, that was without a doubt a problem with Robin.
	He filled up his hold not just with attention, but he did it with hardcore damaging drugs.
	And there's this Vancouver physician.
	I can recommend your listeners to check out his book.
	His name is Gabor Mate, M-A-T-E, and he's written a book called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
	And he specializes in treating people with significant drug addictions.
	He's a doctor in Vancouver's I think?
	It goes into, and I've had them on the show too, but it goes into a significant amount of detail about the biochemistry of addiction, that generally if people have gone through these very hard childhoods, and neglect is underrated as far as how harmful it can be for someone, which is why children act out in order to get hit.
	They'd rather get hit than be neglected in many ways.
	And his basic idea is that when you have a neglected or abused childhood, your brain is missing particular receptors for certain chemicals.
	And then when you take drugs, you begin normal.
	You feel normal because you finally feel what it's like, what everyone else feels who didn't have those kinds of childhoods.
	And that's why the addiction is so strongly there.
	You know, a person of regular happiness, like just make up a number of happiness, 100, they take Coke, they go to 150, they go back down to 95, and then they settle around that.
	But somebody who's got a happiness of 30, they go to 110, they feel like normal happiness and what everyone else feels for the first time.
	And then when they crash back down, their life, which formerly was just normal, now feels unbearable.
	And that's one of the reasons why there's this drive for addiction.
	And I did a whole speech of this at a college in Canada recently, so I won't go into the details, but I think there is a lot of ways in which you can see really difficult childhoods producing brains that are very susceptible to getting the re-ups from external substances that should be naturally occurring but didn't develop as a result of childhood trauma.
	No question whatsoever.
	And we're learning more. They are learning.
	The people that study that are learning more about that every day.
	And it's a fairly new science.
	Over the last X amount of decades, they've just started to delve into these responses.
	And then understanding genes and understanding how you could actually pass on depression.
	And pass on these sorts of behavior patterns to your children.
	And a guy like Robin Williams clearly had demons.
	And there was many, many, many, many issues.
	The divorce part was something.
	It was definitely something.
	But, you know, it bothered me listening to you talk about that because I've had friends that were depressed.
	I know that, you know, it's going very clearly against...
	The current of modern medical thinking in – which recognizes depression as a disease to say that this guy was killed because of divorce.
	When he died, he still had millions of dollars.
	He wasn't broke. Well, and I think – I mean listening to you talk, I think I will retract what I said.
	I think I went too far in saying that that was – if I said that that was the sole cause, that's wrong.
	Yeah. I can't definitively say, of course, that that was the sole cause.
	So for those – for saying – if I said that, I'm sure I did.
	You've listened to it more recently than I have.
	Then, yeah, I retract that. That's going too far.
	You think you just got worked up over this idea of alimony, this idea, which I agree with you that it's a very strange thing.
	And the way you put it, I think, was a good way that you said that if people get fired from a job, you don't get fired and say, well, I still want money.
	I want you to continue to pay me even though I've been fired.
	But if someone is married...
	I have a friend who is married, and I talked about this yesterday briefly.
	His wife, not only did she divorce him, but she planned it out for several months and went to all the best divorce attorneys and consulted with them so that he couldn't consult with them because it would be a conflict of interest.
	And she – they don't have any children, but they were married for a while, and she will never get married again because if she did, she wouldn't receive these payments.
	So she has her boyfriend living in his old house, and when they send inspectors over there, the guy moves out.
	He gets his shit out, like waits around the corner with a U-Haul.
	She calls them. The inspector's gone.
	He turns around, and my friend knows about it, and it drives him fucking crazy, because he worked 12 hours a day while she was at home doing jack shit.
	She never had a kid, had a little dog, the whole deal, got her nails done every day, and he's just a fucking workaholic maniac, and she benefited from it greatly.
	And to this day, his lifestyle is impaired because he has to send her money.
	And he's not Robin Williams.
	He's not making that kind of money.
	He did very well for himself, but the guy earned every fucking penny with labor.
	I mean, he's a hard worker, and he's got this fucking ex-wife that's an anchor tied to his neck.
	And he can't get free of it, no matter what he does.
	There's something Norman Mailer, an American writer, he said.
	He said, you never know your wife till you meet her in court.
	Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that's pretty cynical for all wives.
	But I think he's the guy who stabbed his wife and he said, as long as you're still using a knife, there's still some love there.
	It's only a knife.
	But no, I think the alimony thing is funny because it actually is pretty not that common throughout history.
	It really came out of the Catholic Church.
	Until death do us part, you can't – right?
	The reason that the alimony thing basically got its root in Western common law was because the Catholic Church didn't allow divorce.
	And so people would just kind of separate.
	The way it used to work is you take a dowry for marrying a woman.
	If you divorce it, you have to give the dowry back.
	But that was about it.
	But then this idea of until death do us part kind of came out of the Catholic Church.
	And that's sort of where it came from.
	It is brutal. Some people got upset and say, well, are you saying that being a wife is only a job?
	Well, kind of. And being a husband is kind of a job too, right?
	I mean there is a financial aspect to marriage that it's foolish to ignore.
	And I think it is.
	I think it is pretty terrible.
	I think that's also something that breaks up a lot of families too because more than half of people who are considering divorce, if they stick it out five years later, they say, I'm really glad I did.
	You know, there's a lot of – People who go through challenges, rough spots, tough spots, transitions.
	You never know. You get sick or you lose some money or you lose your job.
	I mean things can happen that are really tough.
	People have affairs. But the majority of people who stick out their marriages – and again, it's not like 90 percent, but certainly more than 50.
	The majority of people who stick out their marriages, Joe, are really happy that they did.
	I hate using those terms.
	I hate saying the majority of when you're dealing with individual relationships because they vary so widely.
	Sure. That I don't think that you can really narrow them down to statistics.
	I think every individual interaction between two unique people is unique in and of itself.
	And that person, I'm different with my wife than I've been with anybody I've ever dated.
	And I think that that's how it is with most people.
	Sometimes you find someone who's compatible and it works great for you.
	But there's other times where you're thinking about getting away from them where that's probably the best fucking decision you can ever make.
	And I know people that say, why does divorce cost so much?
	Because it's fucking worth it.
	There's a lot of people who think that, too.
	I agree with you, though, that there are some ridiculous alimony settlements that are just unreasonable and don't make any fucking sense whatsoever.
	In Europe, there's really no such thing.
	And people can check out the movie Divorce Corps.
	I don't get any money from this stuff, but I think it's a good movie.
	And they sort of compare what goes on in Europe.
	So in Europe, the worst that can happen is you have to pay alimony during the period that the divorce is going through.
	But once it's done, it's done.
	Now, there can be child support and so on, but it's not much.
	It's a weird thing, this idea that once a woman has separated from her husband, that she's no longer able to live her life as an independent.
	That's so strange. I don't understand how that ever came to be.
	And this idea that you have to keep her in the same fashion and style that she's accustomed to.
	In the style to which she has become accustomed to.
	That's so crazy. Like, if you're a woman and you are used to being a waitress and you're used to living in an apartment, there's nothing wrong with that.
	And then all of a sudden you meet some guy...
	Some real estate mogul who's worth a billion dollars and he puts you up in his Beverly Hills mansion and you live with him for a year and you get married.
	Should you discount the 30 years of your life that you lived as a waitress?
	Should there be an average?
	One of the things that we talked about the last time we were here was we were talking about poverty.
	And we were talking about how people in poverty work a shockingly small amount.
	And you were saying that people that live below the poverty line work an average of 16 hours a week.
	That's two people.
	My argument with that is also, of course, that you're dealing with people that mostly are unemployed.
	So if you have one person works 80 hours a week, one person works zero, you meet those two in the middle and you find out what the average is.
	So it's not like most people are just saying, oh, I'm going to work one day a week.
	Most of them are unemployed. And when you're dealing with something when it comes to like alimony, when you want someone in the style they've been accustomed to, you should take into account their whole fucking life.
	You know, you shouldn't take into account the style they've been accustomed to over the last 12 months living with this crazy rich guy.
	Right. Like that's preposterous.
	Right. Somehow or another, this man that you married who's worth a billion dollars that you helped earn him, you know, half of what he made during the year that you were together, where's the evidence that you've ever been successful at making that kind of money in the past?
	Why should you be entitled to that kind of money?
	And I think the same is true with men.
	When Kevin Federline was married to Britney Spears, that motherfucker never made a nickel, okay?
	And I've seen him drive a Ferrari, and that fat bitch didn't earn that Ferrari on his own.
	He earned it You're forgetting his rap career, Joe.
	I am forgetting. Okay.
	I'd like to. I'd like to.
	Unfortunately, it's burned into my brain.
	It's the whitest thing I've ever seen.
	There's two cases. Kevin Federline and Tom Arnold.
	We won on both of those cases.
	Those cases are all men.
	But remember, it's only 3% of alimony payments are men to women.
	Yeah. Sorry, women to men.
	Women to men. Yeah. And it's $10 billion a year.
	It's a $10 billion a year money transfer thing.
	Yeah. And it's pretty brutal.
	I think it's brutal on men. And I think it's brutal on women.
	I mean, free stuff is bad for the brain unless you're like- It's bad for the soul.
	It's bad for the soul. You know, free stuff, again, hey, you know, I mean, you're injured, you know, absolutely charity and all that.
	But the focus on free stuff, I think- Personality is like a muscle.
	It needs resistance. You need to have challenges in life.
	Actually, if you have another topic.
	No, no, no. We can go on.
	So one of the questions I get quite a lot in my call-in shows is people who say, I lack motivation.
	I don't know what I want to do with my life.
	I wanted to get your thoughts because you seem to be a guy who's almost vibrating with work and projects and you're like this tuning fork that never stops.
	What do you think is it that really gets your juices going and gets you committed and focused on achieving the things that you achieve?
	Well, I don't think of it in terms of achievement.
	I think of it in terms of interest, what things fascinate me.
	I'm fascinated by martial arts.
	I'm fascinated by comedy.
	I'm fascinated by many, many different things.
	I don't understand when people say they're bored.
	Because if I had the time to live a hundred lives, I'd be speaking different languages.
	I'd be living in different countries.
	I would try a number of different careers because I think there's a lot of unbelievably fascinating, puzzling, complex things that you could study in this world.
	That's just me and my personality.
	But that's a personality also that I've cultivated over years of challenges.
	Would you like that as a kid too?
	very early.
	And I think that is one of the things that motivated me to explore difficult tasks.
	Because through difficult tasks, you learn an incredible amount about yourself.
	And you, through the fire of competition, you get to understand motivation.
	You get to understand the resistance that you have inside your mind to doing hard work.
	You get to understand the rewards of discipline.
	You don't truly appreciate relaxation unless you've worked hard.
	And that is the yin and the yang of life.
	And I've said this to the point of people getting sick of it, but one of the worst decisions a man can make, I can only speak for men, obviously, Is to be comfortable.
	I don't think you should try to be comfortable.
	I think what you should try to do is try to earn comfort.
	And if you can get a day off where you've worked hard and you've accomplished goals, that day off will be so sweet.
	When I work hard and I sit in front of the TV, I enjoy the shit out of it.
	I put my feet up.
	I have a nice drink. I enjoy my free time.
	Do you have one of those chairs that knits your back or something like that?
	I do have one of those. Do you really? Those are great.
	They're great, right? I don't use it that much though.
	Honestly, I'm more of a workaholic than I should be, probably.
	The balance was I probably should relax more than I do, but I never feel like I earned it.
	But that's part of the reason why when I do feel like I earned it, I can enjoy it.
	It's because I am more connected to the idea that I need to...
	For anybody else's benefit other than my own or anybody else's approval other than my own.
	I just – when I have a task, whether it's today I'm going to write 1,000 words or 2,000 or whatever the number is.
	If I don't do that, I write things down.
	Like I'll write down a list of things that get accomplished that day.
	And if I don't accomplish that, I'll get sick.
	It will drive me fucking crazy.
	If I can't fill out that list, that drives me nuts.
	But that's what led me to be a championship-level martial artist.
	That's what led me to achieve...
	It's like that...
	It's the reinforcement of...
	Those goals, like understanding that you can achieve those goals, it's going to be difficult, you're going to push through the difficulty, and then you're going to understand what difficulty truly is and how much of it is just mental, how much of it is just in your mind, this adversity to difficult task or to struggle.
	And a lot of people have that.
	They're scared.
	They're scared of complications.
	They're scared of failure.
	Failure is a big one that people are afraid of, but failure is one of the most important things you could ever have as far as like the motivation to do things differently.
	One of the reasons why I think that I'm good at friendships and relationships is because I've failed at them in the past.
	One of the things that I'm good at comedy is because I bombed on stage.
	One of the reasons why I'm good at work is because I've been a shitty worker in the past.
	And I know the feeling of failure, the feeling of shame, of being like a weak, non-motivated, lazy person.
	It's a weak feeling.
	You don't respect yourself.
	And I have this phrase that I use all the time to people to try to motivate people.
	Be the hero in your own movie.
	Pretend that if your life was a movie and your life started now, what would the hero do?
	What would the person that you respect do?
	What would the person that you admire, the person that inspires you, what would they do?
	Well, do that shit. And if you do that, you slowly build momentum.
	Like, today I did what I wanted to do.
	Today I started a class in yoga.
	I did this. I did all these things that I was saying I wasn't going to do.
	And now I feel momentum.
	And momentum is a very important point in people's lives.
	That's why some folks don't like to take days off because they feel like they're losing momentum and they sort of have to restart the wheel up again after a vacation.
	It's like what they say.
	If you want something done, give it to the busy guy.
	Yeah. There's certain people that I know that just are lazy as fuck and they can never get anything done.
	You're like, did you do that thing? No, I just didn't get to it.
	What are you talking about you didn't get to it?
	What did you do? You were out Instagramming pictures of you at a strip club two days ago.
	Right. Like, how the fuck did you not get that done?
	Right. Like, you had all the time to do all these other things, but you don't have the time to do the thing that's going to enhance your life, that's going to benefit you, that's going to move forward your career, your life, your prospects, your art, whatever it is you're working on.
	Mm-hmm. I think that it's hard for people because we operate on the momentum of the past.
	And a lot of times our past has been just fucking just a graveyard, just a wreck of disasters, one after the other.
	And you look at that and you go, well, that's who I am.
	I'm a failure. I drink too much.
	I fall asleep at work.
	I do this. I do that. And we put kids in these schools where they just sit there passively receiving stuff rather than actively doing stuff.
	And then we wonder why they may.
	Some of them lack motivation when they get older.
	And I think there's a big problem in the fact that the job of being a teacher should be a revered position that's incredibly difficult to earn.
	I think it should be just like, you know, being someone who is in charge of the development of the mind of your child is such an incredible position.
	An incredible...
	Just the...
	The amount of responsibility involved in influencing a young, developing mind can't be overestimated.
	Do you have teachers that you remember from when you were a kid?
	Yes. I do. Like, stand out like the sun in the sky.
	You can't see any star.
	I can't see the other teachers in my head for the few good ones that I had.
	What an incredible – if they could all be like them, obviously, it would be great.
	But, I mean, teachers, yeah, awesome responsibilities.
	Yeah, I had some great ones.
	I had a few great ones that were just really good people that were smart and kind, and they profoundly influenced me.
	I had a science teacher in seventh grade that I had a discussion with him, just me and him one day, and I never forgot it.
	We were talking about space, and he was a really interesting guy.
	It was a bad neighborhood where I lived, and I lived in Jamaica Plain, which was like this...
	Neighborhood in Boston, just outside of Boston, is a really shit neighborhood at the time.
	It's become a little bit gentrified now, but back then it was just really sketchy.
	Very poor kids, and there was a kid that was in my class.
	I guess it was 7th grade.
	9th is 8th grade, because it was right before high school.
	And this kid was 17 years old in the fucking 8th grade.
	I mean, it was crazy, because they would be there for the beginning of the year, and then they would drop out.
	And this science teacher was in this shit school system, but he was this genuinely kind, curious, patient man.
	And he talked to me about space.
	And I'd never considered the idea that space is never-ending.
	And he was explaining the concept of infinity to me, and that there truly is no boundary.
	And I remember he said, do you ever really want to make your head hurt?
	Just stare at the sky and try to wrap your head around the idea that it never ends.
	And we had this long conversation about it in between classes one day.
	Not even a long, you know, ten minutes maybe, but enough that I thought about that for years.
	To this day, I remember that guy.
	There's a great – Richard Feynman was this physicist, fantastic guy.
	And he told about his father, that he was pulling some wagon and he had balls in the wagon.
	He said, you know, it's when you pull the wagon, the balls stay for a bit and then they bump up and then you stop the wagon, they keep going.
	So he was talking about momentum and physics and all that.
	And so like all kids, he said, well, why, why, why?
	And then he got to a point with his father where he said, well, why?
	And his father said, that nobody knows.
	Like, why is there gravity?
	I mean, that nobody knows.
	And I think those kinds of questions where you really stimulate your mind, I think, is a great idea.
	I was telling my daughter a couple of...
	I mean, two months ago about – there's an old Spanish proverb that says, habits begin as cobwebs and end up as chains.
	Way easier to break in the beginning than later on, right?
	That's a great way to put it.
	It's a great way to put it.
	Wow.
	And anyway, she just brought this up, you know, that we were talking about someone she knew and something that she didn't like that they did.
	And she said, yeah, but they're still pretty much in the cobweb phase.
	So they can probably still change it.
	And she's like, well, I even I didn't remember.
	She's like, oh, yeah, the cobwebs and change things like she really that sunk in her and she's like five and she can remember those things that can really take you through life and give you real clarity.
	I think that stuff is great.
	And I remember those people who gave me those important lessons as a kid.
	Yeah, that's a great statement.
	That's a big one, man, because that is so true.
	If you can break them in the beginning, they say that if you do something for 90 days, it can become a habit.
	It can become an ingrained part.
	Positive or negative, yeah. Yeah, positive or negative.
	That's why I've run into people that all of a sudden, you look at them, they look great.
	They've lost all this weight. What did you do?
	I just started every day doing this.
	I started walking. I started eating healthy vegetables and all this different shit.
	Now, look at me. 90 days later, I'm all healthy.
	It can be done.
	It's just very difficult.
	And it sort of flies in the face of a lot of people like to harp on free will and determinism and there is no free will and these sort of – I think those can be fascinating philosophical debates.
	But I think as far as like your own life, it could be a massive distraction, this idea, this concept that there is no free will.
	Yeah, throw that shit out the window and just fucking get off your lazy ass and get shit done.
	Because that's like this pontificating of whether or not free will is a real thing.
	It's not going to fucking help you.
	Well, and for me, I mean...
	I act as if I have free will because I know it's going to get me a better life.
	And if I don't have free will, it was predetermined that I'm going to act as if I have free will so I don't lose anything that way either way.
	So, I mean, I'm just going to pretend like I have free will, maximize it as much as I can.
	And if it turns out I don't, then I was predetermined to believe that anyway.
	So it doesn't matter. Yeah, I don't understand it.
	I mean, the argument one way or the other that can be proven in each – well – Sam Harris will be on soon and I'll have a conversation with him about it because he can go into it from a neuroscientific standpoint because apparently they can determine that you make decisions before you make decisions.
	Deep down in the amygdala like the base of the brain top of the spine.
	That impulse is there and then people make the decision and they experience the decision up here but the decision is happening down here.
	I don't think that means that's inevitable for everyone.
	That's part of self-knowledge is learning what your emotional triggers are so that you can make decisions, right?
	You're not just ex post facto rationalizing stuff that you want to do anyway.
	You learn about yourself and I think that you can expand free will through self-knowledge.
	It's what Socrates said at the very beginning of philosophy.
	The first commandment is know thyself.
	And that way you can figure out your own cognitive biases and you can figure out what blocks you and what your prejudices are.
	And then I think you get choices.
	But I don't think you get choices just for having a brain.
	You really have to explore it.
	Like you don't know a country just by falling into it.
	You jump out of a plane, land somewhere.
	You have to explore it. You have to map it.
	You have to know the terrain. And then...
	You're competent at the country.
	And I think that free will is pursued through self-knowledge, and that gives you the choice.
	But so, yeah, if you think you can, you think you can't, you're right.
	I mean, if you think you have free will or you think you can't, you're kind of right.
	Yeah, and that impulse, I would love to know if there's been any studies done on whether or not people ignored that impulse, because there's a lot of impulses that you have that you never act on.
	You have a quarter second.
	Scientifically, you have a quarter second to interrupt an impulse.
	How much research has been done on that?
	How many people were observed?
	How many different complicated periods of their life where they've been forced to have weird situations?
	How many people wanted to strangle somebody and didn't?
	I think most people, given how few strangulations there are in the world, I think most people managed to slap down the strangle hands.
	That's really important. Wouldn't that be the number one argument against free will is how few people get strangled?
	We've all been there. Oh, we've all been there.
	Now, what about the days when...
	Do you have the days where you're just like...
	The elephant of inertia sits on your chest and just farts up your nose and you just don't want to get anything done.
	Do you deal with those?
	Do you just let them ride? I don't have those days that much.
	No? No. If they do, I'm usually sick.
	It's usually a health thing.
	If I'm sick, I've gotten really good at not doing shit when I'm sick, but just drinking liquids and eating healthy foods and relaxing and I'll go in the isolation tank and meditate and I'm not a big...
	I think if there's something wrong, I'm like, I usually don't do anything.
	I just usually let everything recover.
	You listen to your body, which basically is saying we need some downtime, we need some recharge time.
	Well, that's where my energy comes from because my mind is usually pretty damn energetic.
	My mind is always filled with a bunch of different things that I'm trying to accomplish and different things that I'm interested in and pursuing.
	But if I'm down, usually it's my body.
	I get that sometimes I've worked out too hard.
	If I'm overtrained, I get exhausted.
	But I just recover.
	But I don't discount people's, the mental blockades and the different issues that some folks do have with motivation and with depression.
	And whether that depression comes from chemical abuse, abusing substances, or whether it comes from a biological perspective, Cara Santa Maria will be on next week on the 1st.
	No, I mean, soon.
	Next week? Yeah.
	Next Monday, I think. And she's a neuroscientist as well.
	And she's had issues. The 25th, that's when she's coming on.
	And she's had issues herself with depression.
	She's pretty open about it.
	And she understands it much more from a chemical standpoint, from what's going on inside the mind.
	And there's a lot going on there that keeps people on that fucking couch.
	Yeah. What's interesting is it doesn't exist in all cultures and that it may be also the society that we live in that this is a very unnatural way to live your life and that the human body is essentially not designed for sitting in cubicles, sitting in cars, no motion.
	And they've also shown that exercise has been as effective at mitigating...
	I think physical exercise plus therapy is your best chance for long-term recovery from the data that I've read with regards to depression.
	Yeah, I think people need to get their juices flowing.
	I think it's so underrated and it's associated with vanity.
	It's associated with all sorts of insecurities about your body that you're trying to pump yourself up and your ego.
	Put all that out of the window.
	I mean, God damn it. Put a fucking bubble outfit over your head so you don't have to look at your body if you're really tweaking on that.
	It's not about that. It's about movement.
	It's about getting all your endorphins flowing.
	It's about getting your body into a natural state because the body's natural state is in motion.
	We're not supposed to be sitting around doing nothing all day.
	We're supposed to be hunting and gathering and that's how our body was designed.
	And you know, I mean, we're not the strongest species and we don't have the biggest teeth, but you know one thing that human beings have is like ridiculous physical endurance.
	Like what I've read is that the ancient hunters, do you know how they used to get their prey?
	Persistence hunting, yeah. You just, you chase that animal until its heart just fucking explodes in its chest and then you're like, I win!
	And you drag it back to camp, like 20 miles of running and then the zebra's heart just dies and you get it.
	It's also in Africa because it's extremely hot and they don't sweat.
	Animals sweat from their tongue.
	That's why a dog has his tongue hanging out when it's hot.
	Their body doesn't sweat water.
	So they overheat very quickly.
	So they're good for sprints.
	But they're not good for long-term, long endurance runs.
	Yeah. And we get that, of course, being bipeds, right?
	I mean, I think I read somewhere that one of the ways that we were able to get our most expensive organ is the brain, right?
	But one of the reasons we're able to have the brain is because when we were on all fours, more of our back was exposed to sunlight and so we had to spend more of the water and energy cooling ourselves off.
	Once we went bipedal, much less sun is hitting the body so you have more water available to grow the brain because the brain requires a lot of energy and water.
	Just really cool things. I love that biological development stuff I think is really fascinating.
	Yeah, that is unbelievably fascinating.
	The development of the human brain as opposed to the brains of lower hominids is one of the biggest mysteries in all of science.
	So many different things have been attributed to what caused the human brain to grow double in brain size over a period of two million years.
	It's pretty fascinating. But thank God it happened, I guess.
	But this conversation would probably be a lot less entertaining if we were just grunting and pounding our foreheads into the microphone.
	Not only that, if it was the same conversation, who the fuck would listen?
	True that. They wouldn't be able to understand.
	Yeah, I think there's a huge amount of human potential that's locked up in people's insecurities and inertia.
	And I really...
	I really would love to find a way and just get people to understand how much fun being in motion is and how much fun exploring and challenging yourself and challenging the world, how much fun it is.
	But I think that there's just a lot of, I don't know, negativity, hostility.
	Of course, on the internet, as we were talking about earlier, it's kind of not all over the place, but it's definitely there.
	And I just wish people could understand that there is very little to be afraid of in life.
	I mean, other than death, which is going to happen whether you're busy or not.
	Well, it's interesting. We're talking about essentially like if we could talk to Robin Williams, if we could pull Robin Williams aside before he committed suicide and have these conversations with him.
	If you look at that guy, he is in a way a great example of someone who on paper should be unbelievably happy.
	He's been insanely successful.
	He is loved by millions and yet still not happy.
	And one of the reasons is You look at his life and it's this series of things that went wrong.
	Series of coke binges and alcoholism and breakups of the marriage and regret for the way he was raised by his parents and all these different things that carry around with you like weight.
	And it's very difficult to shed that weight.
	I don't know what he did besides counseling.
	I don't know if he was an exercise guy or if he did yoga or what his diet was like, but there's a lot of people out there that are dragged down by their past.
	Right now, their heart's beating.
	They're breathing out of their mouth.
	Their fucking brain is functioning, but they're just burdened.
	They're burdened by their past.
	And it's a huge issue with folks.
	Like, getting a fresh start.
	Like, getting a reset.
	Getting this... You know, this...
	Escaping all the bullshit of their past.
	Very, very hard for folks to do.
	When I was...
	Yeah, about 20.
	I was at the National Theatre School studying acting and playwriting.
	And I was in the play King Lear.
	And we had this delightfully insane director who was...
	And so something bad happened on stage in the play.
	And we were all method actors, you know, all grew up on Brando and stuff like that.
	So it was all internal.
	And we were just...
	And so he said...
	Basically, he stopped the rehearsal when this thing happened in the play.
	And he said, why isn't anyone reacting?
	And we said, we all said, well, but I felt it inside.
	And he's like, this is theater, right?
	Nobody has a window into your head.
	You've got to do something.
	And he got himself, he actually ended up throwing chairs.
	He's like, just do something.
	Do anything. I don't care.
	Do a somersault. Produce a dove from inside your cloak.
	But do something so the audience knows that something is happening.
	Don't just stand there and expect them to be mind readers.
	And I think that that had a big impact on me just in terms of life as a whole.
	You have to be out there doing stuff.
	I mean, what goes on in our heads is great, but if it's not out there in the world, we'll take it with us when we die and nobody will ever know anything about it.
	And I just never really wanted to have a life where I sort of go through life and into death like a spear into a still lake, barely leaving a ripple.
	And I think that the challenges of an active and challenging life where you're Messing with society's perceptions and trying to advance the moral course that you are passionate about I wish people could just live one day on the other side of that fear.
	I wish people could live one day in motion and then they would never be satisfied with the inertia of their lives.
	But until you get there, I think it's really tough for people to picture what it's like.
	I mean, you know, we were talking before the show.
	I mean, you've got a special coming up.
	I mean, you're doing this.
	I mean, you're ferociously busy.
	And I think if people who are inert could live a day In your shoes and recognize just how much fun it is and what a great challenge it is and how wonderful it is to be testing yourself on the edges of your capacities for significant periods of time.
	I think that they would go back and say, oh, I can't do this anymore.
	But I think until you've experienced it, that's the tough thing.
	Until you've experienced it, I think the inertia feels safer and better, if that makes any sense.
	It's also important to surround yourself with other people that are also trying to accomplish things.
	When you surround yourself with lazy people, it's very taxing.
	And you surround yourself with self-sabotaging people.
	They kind of cock-block your ambitions a little bit too, right?
	Because they're like, oh, I don't know if that'll be a good idea.
	I don't know if that'll work. I don't know.
	Yeah, well... I lost my spinal fluid.
	I can't feel my legs. So there's a negative aspect to them being around, but there's certainly not the positive aspect of being around ambitious people.
	If you're around happy, fun people that are full of energy, you feel happy and fun, and you're full of energy as well.
	With stand-up comedians, that's a really important factor.
	We grow the best...
	We grow the most when we're around others like us.
	The best comedy communities, it's not one comic that stands out.
	I started out in Boston and there was like 10, 12 great comics where I was.
	Right.
	is you would see all these great comics and they would inspire you.
	And there's other towns where there are no great comics and there's no great comics coming up.
	And you'll see like the local guys and they're dog shit.
	Their acts are terrible.
	And the reason why is they have no one to emulate.
	There's no one around to build them up.
	There's no community.
	And stand-up comedy, it's very important to have a community.
	I did all my growing as a comic in the communities of Boston, then New York, and then LA. The three, rather, strongest communities in the country.
	Boston, not so much anymore, but at the time, huge.
	And now New York is still just as giant, and LA is giant.
	Being in those clubs and being around those guys and seeing those other people that are out there writing new jokes and constantly expanding and creating and growing and getting better at the art form inspires people.
	And that's... That cannot be underestimated.
	Surround yourself with positive people, and you'll be positive.
	Surround yourself with shitheads, and you'll be a shithead.
	Or at least you'll be fighting against being a shithead.
	Yeah, I mean, nobody expects to become a great tennis player if they play people who can't play.
	I mean, you have to match yourself against the best.
	And this is another thing, last rant on promise of the day, but...
	The people who have low expectations and low ambitions, I also find a little frustrating at times.
	I mean, I think aim your sights as high as humanly possible.
	I mean, there's no Schwarzenegger films unless that crazy bastard from Austria comes and says, I don't barely speak the language, but I'm going to go marry a Kennedy, run California and make some great movies.
	Don't forget, fuck my maid.
	Well, there's that aspect, too.
	That's the problem with hyper-ambition.
	It manifests itself in sometimes unfortunate and uncomfortable ways.
	Absolutely. Shag the alpha. But the people who, I mean, again, I sort of feel like, you know, I was sick last year and confronting mortality and all that.
	And it's sort of how I've lived as a whole is whether you're great or not, whether your ambitions are high or low, death's going to take you either way.
	I think that it adds to the human capital of the world to strive to communicate passion, power, magic, creativity, virtue, whatever it is that you're good at.
	It adds to the human capital of the world.
	We all inherit this great stuff that comes rolling down the mountain of history from all the great people who've come before us.
	Add a little bit, anything that you can to that human momentum of energy and positivity.
	I think that's so important.
	And the people who want to do a little or get by, I just wish – it's the biggest regret that people have when they're old is that they played it small and they didn't take the risks that they wanted to because there's this disaster on the other side of risk that never seems to materialize.
	And really, it's like you're in some fight to the battle with your own hand puppets, you know, a fight to the death with your own hand puppets.
	I think that people just take those gloves off and go and take life and have high ambitions and forget everybody who ridicules you for high ambitions and great things.
	They don't matter.
	That's a great speech that Robin Williams has.
	Forget them.
	Forget them, he says to the man who's talking about the sweaty-toothed madman, the boy who's got the poetic imagination.
	He said, "Forget them.
	Focus on your creativity and what is making you great.
	I think that human potential is the great untapped resource of the planet.
	I wish that there was ways to communicate.
	I try to do this, of course, as best I can, but ways to communicate to people just how amazing a life can be, which is active, enthusiastic, passionate, and challenging.
	And we get this incredibly brief opportunity.
	I said recently in a podcast, the universe has repulsively fucked itself senseless to give you life.
	I mean, in order for us to be here, like, one single-celled organisms had to mate with each other.
	I mean, that's gross. I don't even know where they put what, but it's really disgusting stuff that goes on in a magnifying glass.
	That's like the worst porn ever.
	But we're all here because of this incredible striving for billions of years of this life.
	And To not embrace that gift of existence in this brief time that we have it just seems to me such a waste and such a disrespect to the incredible odds of us actually being here and being in this relatively free country and being in this incredible time of communication technology and human opportunity.
	I really want people to try and grab that as much as possible.
	You do not save up points that you get to redeem after you're dead.
	Spend everything, leave nothing on the table.
	And that's what I hope people can find a way to do.
	Well, I think by living your life like that, you set an example that people can be inspired by.
	And I think that having these conversations and having something that someone can listen to when they hear this and they go, you know what?
	I'm going to go fucking run up a hill.
	I'm going to go do something.
	And people do do that.
	I get messages from people that do hear these conversations and it enhances their life.
	And I've had so many people come up to me after the show and say that the podcast changed their life because they become motivated, because they never had anybody around them that was inspiring in any way.
	And then all of a sudden they get to hear conversations with inspirational people and they take these conversations and it fuels them.
	And we need that. If you can't have that community in your neighborhood, you can have that community online now.
	You can have that community by having access to these kind of conversations, by listening to songs that fire you up, by reading a book that gets you going, by hearing a conversation.
	There's many, many, many methods, and it's all about just having the access to these influences, by having the access to these positive things, and you can enhance your life.
	What one man can do and what one woman can do, another man and woman can do.
	And nobody needs to be denied a great life, but it will not come to you.
	You have to at least go and meet it halfway.
	I know that your show gets a lot of people roused and gets a lot of people energetic, and that I hugely applaud you for.
	I think it's a fantastic contribution to the world to be able to inspire people, certainly in your comedy, which is fantastic.
	By the way, if you haven't seen Joe, go see Joe.
	But I think that that energy is incredibly positive.
	And I think people who grew up around negative people or neutral people, they don't even know what it's like to have any kind of incandescence around them.
	And if they see that, then it awakens in them a possibility that probably was not possible even within their own imaginations before.
	And I The internet and YouTube, it's giving people access to conversations that they probably have been sealed off from.
	Who knows how many generations?
	Certain sectors of society have not had access to enthusiasm, positivity, competence, efficiency, energy.
	And now there's this amazing cross-pollination of energetic, enthusiastic people.
	We can pollinate people who otherwise would never have had access to it.
	I think what an amazing opportunity that is to unleash more human potential.
	Yeah, we live in awesome times.
	And I want to thank you for addressing all the criticisms and all the different things that I've been fielding, and I think we really illuminated a lot of these issues.
	I appreciate the opportunity. And if someone wants to follow you, it's Stefan Molyneux on Twitter.
	Can you spell that out for folks?
	Can I give the secret handshake and cling on to enter the cult compound?
	That's most important to me.
	So they can go to Free Domain Radio.
	They can YouTube.com slash Free Domain Radio.
	Twitter is Free Domain Radio.
	And Stefan Molyneux, the spelling is, it's an F-S-T-E-F-A-N-M-O-L-Y-N-E-U-X. Amen to that.
	Molyneux. That's right. That's it.
	All right, brother. Well, thank you very much, man.
	That was a lot of fun. Thank you. I enjoyed it.
	And thanks to our sponsor.
	Thank you to LegalZoom.com.
	Go to LegalZoom.com and use the code word ROGAN at the referral box at checkout to save yourself some cash.
	We will be back next week.
	As I said, Monday, Cara Santa Maria.
	Tuesday, Steve Rinella returns.
	And we've got some other podcasts for later in the week as well.
	Denver! See you guys soon.
	I'm coming. This weekend, recording my Comedy Central special, Saturday Night Comedy Works in Denver, downtown.
	Big kiss.

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