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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:53:43

Parental Bonding, Guilt and Confession

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	Good evening, everybody. Sorry.
	Oh, so sorry for the late start.
	But it is 8-11 on the 28th of August, 2013.
	So, few people have asked me for my thoughts on Miley Cyrus, to which I had to say...
	I'm sorry, who now?
	It's something to do with Belucky, Kentucky.
	No, Hannah Montana.
	That's it. And...
	So I did grit my teeth and watch the satanic gyration slutfest known as her VMA performance.
	And, well, it's trashy.
	I mean, it's horrible.
	It's degrading.
	It is hyper-sexualized.
	It is, you know, with those little horns and that tongue sticking out and so on, there is a demonic thing.
	To it, the man is fully clothed and appears not to even notice the woman gyrating around him, which means he's in a position of power and she would be a subjugated Conan the Barbarian-style sex slave, which is pretty sad for a woman reportedly worth $150 million, but not wildly unpredictable.
	Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, you do not earn sexual desire.
	Like, A man has to go out and earn his money, usually.
	I mean, some men inherit it, but a man generally has to go out and earn his money.
	But women, when you're young, men want to have sex.
	You don't earn that, and that does not make you a desirable person.
	It doesn't make you a better person.
	It doesn't make you a valuable person.
	It simply means that genes like to reproduce.
	And the way they do it is to put hormones and desires into men's bodies and men's penises.
	That is not something that makes you really valuable.
	It's not something that makes you any good.
	It simply makes someone that somebody wants to play hide the sausage with.
	That's all it's about. So yes, she can gyrate and she can wear a flesh-colored bikini on stage.
	And that does not make her a valuable person.
	That doesn't make her a good person.
	It doesn't make her a contributing to humanity person.
	It simply makes her the object of lust.
	And I have no problem with lust.
	Lust is a wonderful thing. But being someone that men lust after does not make you a valuable human being.
	It simply means that your toe wants to make another toe using you as the carrier.
	And the way that your toe makes another toe is to provoke sexual desire and to be wanted...
	It is, of course, the dream of the narcissist.
	People want to be me.
	People envy me. I think there was Paris Hilton wore a shirt.
	He wants to have sex with me, and he wants to have sex with me, and he wants to have sex with me.
	And it's really quite dull.
	Now, of course, Hollywood and the media as a whole is brutal on child stars.
	It's brutal on child stars.
	I mean, there is the obvious financial exploitation and all that kind of stuff.
	But this, like, virgin Cupid doll to slut is ridiculously old by now.
	Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan.
	I mean, this former child star turns basically stripper is a very – it's depressingly common.
	And there are, of course, huge numbers of people around her who profit.
	Who profit from album sales, who profit from concert performances, who profit from public appearances, and they will refer to all kinds of humiliating stuff in order to make the money.
	So here's an article from ABC News, which says, actor Corey Feldman says, Pedophilia is the number one problem for child stars and contributed to the demise of Corey Haim.
	So for those of you under 40, I guess under maybe 35, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim were two It boys of the 80s, I would imagine.
	And he says here, Corey Feldman has no idea what it's like not to be famous.
	After all, he starred in a McDonald's ad when he was just three years old.
	He said, I was literally famous before I even knew my own name.
	The act led to roles in films such as Stand By Me, Goonies, and License to Drive.
	He was a household name before he could read.
	Being famous and underage, he said, caused serious damage to him and his friends, including the loss of innocence and a lost childhood.
	Feldman blamed the adults around him, not just those looking to profit from charming children, but also some with far more sinister motives.
	He says, I can tell you that the number one problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia.
	That's the biggest problem for children in this industry.
	It's the big secret.
	The casting couch, which is the old Hollywood reference to actors being expected to offer sex for roles, applied to children.
	Feldman said, Oh yeah, not in the same way.
	It's all done under the radar, he said.
	I was surrounded by pedophiles when I was 14 years old.
	Didn't even know it. It wasn't until I was old enough to realize what they were and what they wanted until I went, Oh my God, they're everywhere, Feldman said.
	He's now 40 years old.
	The trauma of pedophilia contributed to the 2010 death of his closest friend of The Lost Boys co-star, Corey Haim.
	He said, there's one person to blame in the death of Corey Haim, and that person happens to be a Hollywood mogul, and that person needs to be exposed.
	But unfortunately, I can't be the one to do it, he said.
	And he said, there are a lot of good people in the industry.
	There's also a lot of really, really sick, corrupt people.
	And there are people who have gotten away with it for so long that they feel they're above the law.
	And that's got to change.
	So this is a...
	Appears to be a fairly common problem.
	Of course, if you know anything about the BBC scandal that occurred recently where the main BBC guy, one of the main presenters, was accused of 80 or 90 child rapes and all this kind of stuff.
	Well, I mean, did this happen to her or not?
	I have absolutely no idea.
	But these are not the actions of a healthy, well-adjusted person.
	And it is tragic.
	I mean, what an empty self you have to be And what a lack of self-respect and self-regard you must have inside in order to do this gyration basic slut walk.
	As Bill Maher tweeted, he said, I haven't visited a strip club in a while.
	Glad to see not much has changed.
	And it really was sad.
	As I mentioned before, women are born rich and get poorer as far as allure goes, whereas men are born poorer and get richer.
	As far as their allure goes in terms of havoc resources and so on.
	And it is tragic the degree to which women take the height of their sexual attractiveness and waste it on garbage art, garbage men, garbage media.
	And I don't think it can ever really be recovered from.
	Something that Rupert Everett said in a GQ interview from probably like 20 years ago.
	He was an actor.
	He's in My Best Friend's Wedding and he did a very good Oscar Wilde play.
	He said, when you have a lot of sex when you're young, something gets smashed up in you.
	I think that's kind of true.
	I mean, he's gay.
	He's in the gay community. So I remember talking to a guy who was one of my roommates.
	And he was a pretty attractive guy.
	He had a great body. He was a dancer.
	And he had just come out.
	And he came out when he was, I think, 18 or 17 or 18.
	And he was very young-looking, so he basically looked like sort of 15 or 14.
	And he said the number of, I think they were called chicken hawks, I don't know the exact phrase, but the number of older men who just wanted to prey upon him and who just clustered to him and attempted to seduce him and were very aggressive in that pursuit.
	It is a great tragedy.
	You know, I mean, this child's sexual assault is a great tragedy and horribly common in society.
	One in three girls and one in five boys claim to have had a Experience of some form of sexual molestation.
	This doesn't mean full penetration and so on.
	But I look at Miley Cyrus and I see a twisted amount of sexual exploitation and I would imagine a fairly copious amount of drug use.
	And the last thing I'll say about it is, in a recent poll in the UK, in England, They said to kids, I don't know, 8 or 9, what's your dream?
	What do you most want? What's your big thing?
	They said, famous.
	I want to be famous. Not famous for anything, not good at anything.
	Just want to be famous.
	And like down at 9 or 10 was like spending time with family or something like that.
	I mean, it was to be famous.
	One of the great challenges of my life I think of most people's life is overcoming envy of the famous.
	I saw an interview with Sting was the big guy when I was a kid.
	I think I can't remember how old I was.
	I think I was in grade eight when Roxanne came out and everyone who liked to sing went, wow, that's really fucking high.
	But Sting was the coolest guy.
	You know, I mean, great singer, great musician, great songwriter.
	Had this, you know, demonically handsome face and slender and muscular and rich and whatever, right?
	And there was a...
	Sting was being interviewed, I don't know, many years ago, and he said there was a New Yorker cartoon, two guys in a bar.
	One guy turns to the other and says, how's your life going?
	He's like, well, it's not bad.
	It's not bad. I just...
	I wish it was a bit more like Sting's.
	Yeah. And Sting, of course, you know, basically said, look, I have my problems.
	I have my life. You know, his accountant ripped him off in this Freddie Mercury victimized kind of way and he had to go to court and he's had, you know, his problems and so on, right?
	And so from Sting, he's like, well, I just have this life or whatever.
	And one of my great instructional mentors has been Freddie Mercury, of course, who was, I think, the greatest singer and songwriter and performer in history to date.
	And... Even he didn't want the life he had, because he basically killed himself with cock, which is, I guess, not the worst way to go if you're gay, but not, you know, bastard robbed me of my voice by smoking the flesh flute way too much.
	Anyway, even the people who are rich and famous and beautiful and talented, overcoming the desire for that life I mean, does anybody really want to be Lindsay Lohan now?
	I mean, yuck.
	Anyway, so I just wanted to mention that I think there is a lot of tragedies involved in this.
	It's not empowerment. It's simply a surrender to the most basic biological instincts that we share with jellyfish.
	It is very, very low rent.
	Nothing wrong with sexy, nothing wrong with lust, but That kind of sexy is to a fine meal as junk food is.
	Like that kind of sexy to real sexy, that kind of slutty to real sexy, that kind of trailer park trash is just junk food.
	It's junk food for the cock.
	And if we eat junk food, we get fatter.
	If our cock eats junk food, I guess everybody would have their penis eat Cheetos if that were the case.
	Don't cheat with your penis.
	But... It is junk food and I think it coarsens our enjoyment of healthy sexuality.
	Somebody said, I want to be Lindsay Lowen's washcloth.
	You know, I think that would be okay if she used one.
	But I think it may not be her first choice.
	I'm sure there's some kind of drug she can ingest through her skin that she'd use instead of a washcloth.
	Alright, should we move on with the callers or shall I just keep talking about penises?
	Let's have the callers talk about penises instead, shall we?
	All right. Speak up, Dick.
	Please save us first caller.
	Come on, give me a Richard.
	Give me a Richard. You know you want to.
	You know you want to.
	Marquise, go ahead. Oh, come on.
	Okay, somebody look up a language in which Marquise means penis.
	If not, we'll have to invent one.
	Okay, sorry, go ahead. Hello, Stefan, can you hear me?
	I can, go ahead. All right.
	I sent in an email.
	I don't know if you read it or if you're able to read it.
	I'll just kind of go over it so the rest of everyone can hear.
	I'm a 21-year-old college student, and over this last previous summer, I made a pretty poor decision and ended up sleeping with this girl, and she is now pregnant.
	And I just wanted to ask you some questions so that maybe I could help prepare myself.
	Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean you... You ended up sleeping with this girl, so...
	Suicide by vagina.
	Tell me a little bit about...
	I don't need any graphic details, but you met the girl, and was it a one-night stand?
	It wasn't intended to be, and it wasn't actually, but I met this girl, and I spent about a month or so just getting to know her, and What I thought was kind of like an understanding of maybe some type of, you know, principles or something ended up just to be kind of like an awareness of things.
	Like, she kind of knew about things, but wasn't as deeply involved.
	What are you talking about?
	An understanding of principles turned out to be an awareness of things?
	You get funky language alert award of the evening so far.
	Perhaps you could just start speaking and whisper breaths.
	I apologize, Stephon.
	No, that's fine. So...
	So you wanted to be boyfriend-girlfriend and then you had sex after a month, is that right?
	Yes, which was just a terrible decision that's rushing things in the worst possible way.
	Okay, but look, a month is actually, to me, as far as I understand the younger generation, a month is actually like something out of a Jane Austen novel these days.
	But how the hell did you get pregnant?
	Did you not use any protection? Um, I didn't, though.
	She was on, I think, a type of birth control and also has a condition that...
	She's on, I think, a type of birth control.
	No, did I say I think?
	No, I mean, she was. She had, like, an implant-type birth control in her arm, and also she had, which kind of runs in her family, a condition that normally renders someone infertile.
	I mean, I don't have the...
	Go into two deeper details, but it has kind of to do with like cysts and like fallopian tubes and things.
	So normally that renders someone infertile.
	I should have, you know, used some type of protection anyway.
	Again, it's my terrible decision.
	So yes, and so I stopped with this girl and now...
	Okay, but wait a second. Do you want any more history than that?
	Wait, wait. Yeah. So...
	When it comes to the birth control, she had this, it's what, like a four-month thing, a hormone release thing that gets implanted under the skin?
	Yes. And when did she get that?
	Relatively recently.
	It was within a month or so.
	It was meant to last, I believe, a few months.
	So did she get it before you started dating?
	Yes. Yes, she had it beforehand.
	And why did she have it?
	She was originally planning on entering the military because her parents kind of pushed her into doing that, which obviously she is not in now, but she was kind of being like shuffled and pushed into that.
	She had some pretty...
	What the hell does that have to do with birth control?
	They make you take one if you're a woman, if you're going to enter into basic training.
	I suppose it's supposed to be something so you don't get pregnant before you go into basic training.
	Wait, is that right? The military forces you to take birth control if you're going into basic training?
	Is that right? I've got to look that up.
	I've never heard anything like that.
	I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm quite amazed.
	Go ahead. At least that's what I've been informed about.
	I mean, I could be wrong, but yeah, they require birth control.
	But, yeah, so I assumed very wrongly that I would have been safe, but no.
	And so now, if it's all right, I'd just like to ask a few questions about, you know, some things maybe I should do, because I do have some concerns about Hang on a sec.
	I just want to clarify this for the general audience.
	So medication, this is from usmilitary.about.com.
	And this is the Navy, but it says, over-the-counter medication is not allowed in basic training.
	If you bring any with you, it will be taken away.
	All prescription medication will be re-evaluated by a military doctor upon arrival.
	If the doctor determines that the prescription is necessary, the civilian medication will be taken away and the recruit will be reissued the medication by the military pharmacy.
	This includes birth control pills for women.
	Women are usually encouraged to continue taking birth control pills during basic training.
	If they took them before going to basic to ensure that their systems maintain their regular cycle.
	And so, again, this is not conclusive, but it would appear that they don't have to take birth control to do basic training.
	But if they were taking it beforehand to keep their cycles regular, they are encouraged, though, of course, not required or forced to do that.
	Now, is this something that the woman told you?
	No. What I was told was that it was required beforehand.
	Like, there was a period before she went into...
	But who told you that? The woman I slept with.
	So, I could have lied to.
	It's very possible. I could have been deceived here.
	But what she told me was that there was a period before she entered basic training.
	The birth control implant was to be removed before actually going into basic training.
	So it would have been like, when there's a sign-up period and then the period between her actually being shipped out to basic training, she said that she was required to have it.
	You could see and feel it underneath the skin, but again, I could have been deceived.
	It's definitely possible.
	Okay. All right. So, if she may have been misinformed, she may have misunderstood, but a woman who's on birth control, again, there may be some reasons if she has really difficult or painful menstrual cycles, there may be some medical reasons to be on it.
	Or not medical exactly, but comfort level reasons.
	But a woman who's on birth control is expecting to In general, it's expecting to have sex, right?
	And I would in general expect to be having unprotected sex.
	And it sounds all kinds of foggy about this kind of stuff.
	In general, for men, until you get to know the woman really, really, really well, It's not a good idea to have sex without a condom because, of course, she may have STDs, right?
	I mean, one in four, I think, American teens has an STD. I mean, there were two STDs that were problematic in the 1960s.
	Now it's 16 and counting.
	It is a big problem.
	So use a condom.
	Use a condom. Use a condom.
	I'm sorry that you didn't.
	I just want to put that message out for the general male listenership.
	You know, no glove, no love should be a male chant and not just a female chant.
	But all right, go ahead.
	Thank you for that.
	But I really don't deserve an apology for that.
	That was entirely on my fault there.
	But is it okay if I move on with more questions or anything else that you'd like to ask me before I continue?
	Yeah, go ahead. So, at this point, I was contemplating either moving into, because right now I'm living with my parents while I'm going to school, but I do have the ability, I could get an apartment.
	Now, I didn't know if that would be a better idea, so obviously the woman would be living with me in the apartment, but I don't know if that would be the best way to go about things, because I know that My parents, or rather my mother, really would be very, very supportive, and I could really use the support at this time, but I don't know if that would be something that I should or should not do, because I don't want to burden her with...
	Wait, sorry, are you talking about getting married to the woman?
	No, not getting married, but just kind of moving in together, because...
	As I found out very rapidly after, well, actually, this is another important point of history.
	I should really bring this up.
	Like I said, the woman's parents were pretty terrible, and after she found out she was pregnant, she was living with her mother and her stepfather.
	Her stepfather became violently abusive, and so she left and is now living with her I guess it would be her stepmother.
	And after she moved away from her parents, she began to very, very, very rapidly change her behavioral patterns and began to show, which it's my thought I should have picked up on this beforehand,
	but she began to show a lot of emotional immaturity and just almost a I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I can tell you with almost no doubt in my mind and heart whatsoever that if you try to raise the child with this woman, it will be a catastrophe.
	She is a victim of child abuse.
	You did not choose to become a father.
	It is the wrong time in your life for you to be pursuing this.
	You have... No basis for a marriage or no basis for compatibility.
	This is all just my opinion. Obviously, you can do whatever you want.
	I'm just telling you my opinion.
	So if the woman wants to keep the baby, the only responsible thing to do for that child, in my humble opinion, is to give the baby up for adoption.
	With a stable couple who wants a child, who is prepared to raise the child, who has the financial and emotional resources to raise the child...
	To keep this child, for you to move in with your mom and with this woman who you barely know, who either lied to you or didn't understand why she was on birth control, neither of which looks pretty good, who may have in fact just had a baby so she doesn't have to go into the military.
	Who knows? But this is a disaster.
	Neither of you sound like you're even remotely ready to get married and have children.
	So it's, in my opinion...
	The very best thing for the baby will be to get to some place where there are resources.
	I mean, if she's a young, unprocessed victim of child abuse, what kind of mother is she going to be?
	I mean, is this something that you've thought of or talked about at all?
	Yes, actually. That was the real reason for my call, is because I was so concerned about that.
	But I had thought about adoption, but I did not know if that would be a moral thing to do.
	I kind of thought of it as I have a responsibility.
	I agree with you, though, that I'm definitely not in a good place in my life.
	I'm really very concerned about what kind of mother that she would be.
	Well, it's a disaster.
	It's a complete disaster.
	It will be terrible for the child, it will be terrible for you, and it will in fact be terrible for her.
	She's in no way, shape, or form ready to be a mother, and you're in no way, shape, or form ready to be a father.
	Certainly not with this woman.
	Right? I mean, so she had all these warning flags around her, and you had unprotected sex anyway, at least from your side, right?
	So if these are the kinds of decisions that you guys are making, if these are the, like, I don't understand this thing where, I don't know if she's got endometriosis or something like that, where she says, well, I've got something which runs in my family that says, you know, we don't get pregnant.
	You know, things where you don't get pregnant generally don't run in families because the whole point of running in families is you get pregnant.
	Come on! You know, all the women in my family are lesbians.
	Well, with a couple of exceptions, I would say, or at least with a couple of exceptions in times.
	But this is a very confused and messy story and situation.
	So, if she's on birth control and it's the pill, the pill is like 99% effective if you take it.
	But a man doesn't know if the woman took it.
	And the man doesn't know if the woman honestly forgot she didn't take it one day.
	It only takes one day to not take it or two days to not take it.
	You get it. We've got a baby on board.
	So the story that she gives about her pregnancy is confused.
	She's so bullied by her family, she's thinking of joining the military.
	She may have had a baby to get out of joining the military.
	She's thinking of moving in with you and your mom, a guy she barely knows.
	I mean, this is a complete disaster.
	And you don't have loyalty to her fundamentally.
	You have loyalty to the best interests of the baby, right?
	Yes. Now, there are lots of couples out there who really want a baby.
	Maybe they want another baby.
	Maybe they can't have children.
	They really want a baby. You know, they're professionals or they're well-educated.
	They've got money. They're in their late 20s or early 30s or maybe even older.
	And they will give that baby a good, stable home.
	And these are couples who've been married for 10 years and love each other and want that baby and will give that baby a great home.
	It, to me, would be the height of immorality and selfishness to not even discuss whether the baby should be given up for adoption or not.
	And adopted babies do...
	As well as non-adopted babies, like statistically, right?
	If you give a baby up for adoption, they have no worse outcome than a baby who was born the old-fashioned way to a couple.
	But babies who start out in this kind of environment with unmarried parents who don't love each other, where there was an unwanted pregnancy and they're young and it blows up their chances for education and a future and they have unprocessed histories of child abuse and blah-de-blah-de-blah, I mean, that's terrible.
	That is a terrible environment to bring a child into.
	Again, it's all my opinion, but I think that by far the best interest of the child is for you guys to look into putting the child up for adoption and have this be a very difficult life lesson that doesn't have to be something that ruins the next 20 years of your life and a child.
	Thank you for sharing that with me.
	I really do thank you for that.
	I'm still a little bit nervous, which is why I'm stuttering a little.
	But yes, I'll definitely look into that.
	Okay, yes. Is there any way, because I almost feel that I owe more, right?
	I owe more to the child. Like, yes, giving a child to adoption does look like the best option, but it seems as though I owe even more to that child, because I'm the one who put the child in the situation.
	No, no. You're not the one who put the child in the situation.
	Unless you have some way of cloning yourself and implanting it in women against their will or unless you're the Holy Ghost or something, right?
	You had sex with a woman not to get pregnant, right?
	With the understanding that she was not in any way, shape or form going to get pregnant from that, right?
	Yes. Yes. Now, obviously, in hindsight, not the smartest move, but it's a move that lots of men make every day, and not all of them end up potential fathers, right?
	So, you do not want to become a father.
	You would not have had sex with the woman if she'd said, it's my most fertile time of the month.
	Put it in there, big boy, right?
	Somebody's going to resample that for a mix, I'm sure, right?
	That would be Mike, right?
	But you did not want to...
	Be a father. And you had sex with the woman with the explicit and talked about goal of not being a father, right?
	Yes. Now, we can take her, I don't know what the truth of the matter is, but let's take her at face value and say that she had sex with you with the goal of not becoming a mother.
	Right? Yes, sir.
	So, you didn't want to become and don't want to become a father and she didn't want to and does not want to become a mother, right?
	That's correct. But you can still achieve that goal.
	You have the baby and you don't have to be a father and she doesn't have to be a mother.
	You can achieve the goal that you wanted when you had sex, much to the betterment of the baby.
	Like your goal was to not be parents.
	You don't have to be parents, and you're not ready to be parents.
	Do you have a job? No, you're in school, right?
	Yes, right. Right.
	Does she have a job? No, she's in school, right?
	Do you have skills?
	No. You're students.
	You're not ready. So, you don't have to be parents.
	You didn't want to be parents.
	That's why she said, don't worry, I can't get pregnant.
	All right, let's go, right?
	But you don't have to be parents.
	That's what I'm trying to say.
	You're not now locked into this thing.
	Because, my God, man, let's say that you get older and you could become a great dad.
	Hey, keep listening to this show.
	It's going to happen, brother. Let's say you get older and you could be.
	But you see, if you lock in now, your life is over.
	This is not going to work out with this woman.
	You get that, right? It's not going to work out.
	You're not going to stay living together.
	You're not going to raise. It's going to be a disaster.
	So she's going to leave and then she may hit you.
	She's going to hit you for child support.
	She's going to hit you maybe for alimony if you end up getting married and you're going to spend the next 20 years of your life paying half or two-thirds of your income, which is going to be low because you didn't finish your education, to a woman and you may not even get to see the kid or you may only get to barely see the kid, right? And what that means is that who else is going to marry you in that situation?
	You know, you didn't finish your education, you're stuck in some dead-end job, you're paying massive amounts of child support and possibly alimony.
	What woman is going to want to marry you who's any kind of quality woman?
	It means that if you follow through on this, you're probably going to scotch your capacity to have a family in the future.
	So, For you, for the woman, for the child in particular, please look into giving the child up for adoption, because that's what you both wanted in the first place.
	You're just getting it late, and there's one extra human being in the world, which I think is a wonderful thing, but do not have, in my opinion, right, do not have the child in this situation.
	You don't love each other.
	You're not ready. You're not married.
	You're not stable. You don't have incomes.
	You don't have education. You don't have goals.
	You don't have life plans.
	This is the worst conceivable situation to bring a child in outside of open war.
	My opinion. Well, I thank you for your opinion, and I definitely...
	We'll consider it to the fullest and that actually completely changes my plan of action.
	And yeah, I definitely see how that is the best decision.
	And again, thank you because this is really going to help me.
	I was really concerned about the well-being of the child and that does seem like the best decision.
	Yeah, obviously do the research, talk to the experts.
	I'm just some idiot who knows very little about Things on the internet.
	So I'm just giving you all those caveats.
	And if you're going to have the conversation with your pregnant, I don't even know, woman, girlfriend, whatever, right?
	Don't go into the conversation unprepared, right?
	So if you try this out, she's going to end up as a single mom.
	And you can show her. I've got presentations.
	Ann Coulter's written extensively about it.
	The disastrous...
	That awaited child of a single mom.
	And she's going to be a single mom, which means that no man of quality is going to want to get married to her because she didn't finish her education, she's got a kid, she's, you know, dependent on a man's child support and so on, right? So, it's going to be a disaster for her life.
	It's going to be a disaster for the kid.
	There's no single worst predictor Of the outcome for a child than whether he is raised by a single mom or not.
	It's more important than race.
	It's more important than gender.
	It's more important than socioeconomic standing.
	The worst outcome, the worst possible thing that a child can have is a single mom.
	And again, not to back on single mothers.
	It's just these are the facts.
	And so get that information together.
	And then... Get the information about adoption.
	Just don't go in blind, because she's going to be sentimental and think about holding a baby and stuff, right?
	Don't go in blind. Okay, so prepare, get the information, and then talk to her about...
	Okay, thank you. Remind her that the whole point of having sex was to not have children, but to have fun.
	But man, I tell you, if you go through with this, I can virtually promise you, at least from my perspective, if you go through with trying to Raise this kid with this nutty woman.
	I mean, you will look back at this call and you will be like, oh man, why didn't I do something different?
	You will kick yourself and I don't want you to do that.
	I'm more concerned about the life of the child than myself.
	Definitely, I think the right call is adoption.
	Yeah. I believe so.
	I believe so. It doesn't sound like the right situation.
	But listen, best of luck, and do drop me a line if you can, and let me know how it goes.
	I really care about what happens from here.
	Yes, sir. Thank you for having me.
	You're very welcome, and thank you so much for calling in.
	I hope that it was helpful, and thank you so much for caring about your fetus.
	I really appreciate that.
	I wish more people cared as much as you do about it, and I wish you the very best, my friend.
	All right. Thank you. Right, JP, go ahead.
	Hello, Stefan. Hello.
	How's my level? I got a whole buffet of baggage over here.
	I don't know how to go at this, and that last call kind of shook me up because in a lot of ways I feel like that child, 37 years later, my mother divorced when I was...
	Oh, the child is sort of like really young and dysfunctional parents?
	Yeah, my parents split when I was three, and I pretty much grew up with no male influence in my life.
	So what do you want to tell the, I mean, I'm sure the caller will listen to this too, so what do you want to tell him?
	Was I on the money? I mean, do you tell me?
	I mean, you've lived it. I feel so, yeah.
	I think so. I think, yeah, just the...
	I think it's a weird societal thing that happens now that, you know, as soon as the child comes in, people expect...
	Love to come out of thin air and a relationship to form.
	And I don't think that's the case at all.
	You know, I think even the rate of people that decide to be together that change their mind is so high that, yeah, I think you are on the money.
	I don't think...
	And this was the free market solution in the past.
	The free market solution in the past was give the kid up for adoption.
	I mean, that's what used to happen.
	I mean, if you got pregnant in like the 50s, then you went on a little trip to go visit an aunt for, you know, maybe a couple, three months.
	And you then came back and nobody spoke of it again.
	And the kid was put up for adoption.
	That's what happened before the welfare state.
	That's what happened before all of these subsidies and so on.
	And kids ended up in a better place.
	I mean, who the hell wants to be the kid of a teen mom Who didn't want to get pregnant and whose life is completely smashed up by this?
	I mean, who the hell wants that?
	That's not what you want. I mean, who the hell cares whether your parents are biological or not?
	You care whether they're competent, whether they're in love, whether they're stable, whether they have resources to raise you.
	I mean, anyway, so I hope that people remember this.
	It's like an option that's not even talked about anymore, I guess, because we've had so much of the state these days that nobody thinks about what used to be the solution.
	Anyway, but go ahead.
	Yeah, back to the buffet, I guess.
	Maybe just some history.
	I guess the most pertinent detail is that I'm a cancer survivor coming on 20 years now.
	Hey, I hope to join your club.
	Thank you. Well, yeah, I hope to join your club of moving on and...
	Living life and not feeling like there's been a death sentence put on you.
	I think in a lot of ways, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think it really fucked me up.
	And the timing in my life was most inconvenient.
	I was 17 and had already been a high school dropout on a couple of occasions and it pretty much led to the situation that was my final dropout and my initiation into the world of hard labor.
	And I never, you know, there was no counseling or that sort of therapy at all with the cancer treatment.
	And I really wish there had been.
	I wish there had been better communication with my family, you know, who were supportive as much as they were there with me.
	But I really don't remember any Being given opportunities to talk about it as much as I would have liked.
	I'm 20 years out and I've had no serious recurrence, so it's pretty clear to see that I'm clear to move on.
	I treat the cancer as this little shell that I can climb into and escape all responsibility and need to To do anything, you know?
	But it's so outdated.
	It's not accurate.
	Wait a minute. So how does cancer get you off the hook for having a...
	I don't even know what that means.
	Not having to do anything?
	What does that mean? Like in my own head, I think.
	I use it as a way to keep myself down and to keep myself from trying.
	Or maybe that's just the latest.
	Keep yourself from trying what?
	For God's sake, man. Get some specifics into your sentences.
	I mean, don't give me these...
	Keep myself down to keep me from doing things so I don't do things.
	I mean, what are you talking about?
	What is it that you want to do that you're not doing?
	Honestly, it's not that I'm being vague, but it is that general.
	I don't have ambition.
	I've been working a job for 10 years that doesn't require me to leave my house, so I've become very isolated and I don't try to have social interactions.
	I don't try to Okay, sorry.
	Go ahead. I'm sorry about these interruptions.
	Some technical stuff on Skype just keeps dropping.
	No problem. So you've been working a job for 10 years and you don't socialize.
	You don't what? Yeah, I have really been just becoming more and more isolated in the last decade here.
	Well, you know that's not the cancer, right?
	Yeah. I guess I don't know that.
	Okay, you don't know that's not the cancer.
	Well, okay, but take a moment to think about it.
	Does everyone who has cancer do what you do?
	No. Hey, look, we get to the answer of whether it's the cancer or not, right?
	Yeah, and I was never a very social kid.
	I didn't... I've never had a lot of friends or a lot of involvement in extracurricular activities, you know, more so later in junior high.
	I think with me, though, too, I wanted the cancer to win when I was at that point.
	It's an excuse. No, I got that.
	But why don't you think you had friends as a kid?
	Because my mother didn't have friends and didn't encourage...
	Me too, or encourage a lot of activity outside of the house, I think.
	Anytime we interacted with other people, it was the extended family, which is made up mostly for sisters.
	Well, I mean, but you can learn social skills from an extended family, right?
	Theoretically. But not from your extended family?
	Well, no, because it was always such a structure to it.
	It was Sunday dinners or I don't know that there was ever just the experience of time together or building something together.
	You know, and I don't participate in it.
	Would you have exploring or what?
	Yeah, I guess that's been a problem I've had too is always finding things boring and being Somewhere else in my head, you know?
	Did other children make over?
	Did they ever want to be friends with you?
	No, it usually came down to the geography of it.
	You know, I'd be friends with the kid down the street or the person that rode the bus, the same bus home.
	You know, and I honestly don't remember what the...
	Sorry to interrupt, but most childhood friendships are based on availability.
	They're not based on values.
	It's like, hey, you're close.
	You're my age. You're not busy.
	Let's play. Most children's relationships, at least from my standpoint, the fact that you were friends with kids who were close by, did they ever come to your house?
	Not that I remember.
	Maybe for a very awkward birthday party.
	And why didn't they come to your house?
	Probably because there was never an invitation extended.
	Why was there an invitation extended?
	I don't think I was ever taught that that was a way to interact with other humans.
	It feels really weird to say that.
	Yeah, my memories of people from childhood are babysitters, you know, that were mean and, you know, looking at other kids that I wanted to play with but didn't know how to just jump in, right? Or ask or whatever the...
	Did your mother isolate you?
	Did your mother isolate you? What would be an indication that she isolated me?
	How would I know? Well, I mean, isolation obviously is not introducing you to other children, and isolation is also not making your house a welcoming place for other people to come and visit, and for other children in particular to come and visit.
	You know, oh, here's some lemonade, here's some cookies, you guys go have fun.
	If you need anything, let me know.
	Here's some board games, here's an expo, whatever, right?
	I mean, it's just making the home someplace that other children feel comfortable to come and visit, right?
	And here's a point back to just the nature of the single mother.
	Yeah, and I guess the problem there is that we, me and my sister, would have had to babysit the other kids because a lot of times my mom was working and we were looking after ourselves or putting herself through school and, you know, the same situation.
	I'm sorry, what? You would have to babysit the other kids?
	I don't understand that. Yeah, like we couldn't have kids because there's no adult there.
	We couldn't have friends. Oh, because you didn't have an adult in the house.
	Well, wait a second. How old were you when you were home alone like this?
	I guess six and seven, me and my sister, a year and a half apart.
	Are you kidding me? Wait a minute.
	Your mom left you alone in the house when you were six or seven years old?
	Yeah, at that point it was a weekly...
	It was just one night a week, but it was...
	I don't care how many nights I wish it was.
	That's when I had my first Hungry Man TV dinner.
	You know that's illegal, right?
	I guess I've never thought of it.
	I think a lot of what I experienced in childhood is probably illegal and that's something I struggle with now is what's the value in understanding it or Well, hang on a second before we get to the meta questions, right? I mean, I don't know where it is where you are.
	I mean, maybe it is legal if you're in like 1830 or something.
	But at least here in Canada, until your kids are 12, you can leave them alone, right?
	I mean, you cannot leave it alone.
	I mean, what if somebody falls?
	What if somebody burns themselves?
	What if somebody gets their finger stuck in a door?
	What if somebody trips down the stairs?
	I mean, parents got to be there because kids, they don't know how to call 911.
	They don't write 911. They don't know how to handle emergencies, right?
	I had a Simon the Safety Bear coloring book.
	Oh, well, then obviously that makes everything okay, right?
	No, I mean, we're joking, but you understand that this is abusive.
	Okay, you want to talk abuse, so let's talk about the times when I did have babysitters in that same house.
	I can specifically recall these two twins that were our babysitters, and they decided that they wanted to invent a game called Cat, which involved taking the cat, running downstairs, throwing it against the wall, and having...
	I don't know why the cat would chase them upstairs, but it did, and so it was this cycle of They broke the cat's back?
	And the two girls...
	Again, based on location.
	Based on what? Location.
	Proximity. They were the closest.
	I don't know that there was any other standard really put...
	Well, let's reserve judgment on that one.
	Let's reserve judgment on that one because we don't know what your mother...
	And then these two girls threw your cat against the wall until they broke its back, right?
	Yeah, and what I find most disturbing is that neither me or my sister could identify the problem and talk to our mother about it and tell her what had happened.
	It was the next day that she observed the cat in its condition and assumed it had been hit by a car and went and had it put down.
	Wait, wait, so you told your mom what happened?
	I think it was early adulthood that we...
	No, that's what I'm saying.
	We did not. Why didn't you tell your mom what had happened?
	Because we were sucked into the game, I think.
	We didn't understand how twisted and really wrong that was.
	And I don't know how, you know, like six or seven?
	Right. So you didn't feel any horror about your cat having his back broken?
	We didn't talk about it, no.
	No, I didn't ask whether you talked about it.
	Sorry. What did I ask?
	I didn't hear you.
	Did you feel any horror or any negative emotion at your cat, your pet, having its back broken by being thrown against a wall?
	I think what I felt was the...
	Probably the result of the threats that might have been leveled along with that.
	You know, if you tell anyone about this, you'll be in trouble and they won't believe you and just all that bullshit that goes along comes out of an abuser's mouth, you know?
	You're giving me the reasoning that's not what I'm asking.
	What am I asking?
	You're asking what I felt.
	Right. Right. You're giving me, well, we got sucked into the game and, well, they told us that we would be in trouble and no one would believe us and those aren't feelings.
	My question is, what did you feel when your cat got hurled against the wall and its poor little back cracked in two?
	I don't think it was such a definitive moment as that.
	I think the nature of that game, like, sadly did it slowly and the cat kept pursuing them and...
	You're still dodging the question, right?
	And let's say I felt fear.
	I think that's probably the thing I can identify most with that whole...
	No, I don't want an abstract.
	Let's say this is not a theoretical...
	You brought this memory up for a reason.
	You do understand that it is a horrifying, satanic, evil, abusive, and vile story, right?
	I mean, this poor animal being tortured and slaughtered, basically, in front of two little children.
	I mean, this is about as evil a story as I've heard.
	On this show. And I've heard some pretty dark shit on this show, right?
	So you brought this story up to me for a reason.
	So I'm asking you, what was your emotional experience?
	I got it. What was your emotional experience of seeing your cat basically murdered in front of you?
	By somebody, by two people that your mother had put in charge of you to take care of you.
	I don't think I had one, you know?
	This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like a sociopath, that I just, that that would have been a time, you know, and it's obviously a time that's changed my life, and I'm an animal lover, you know, and the, like, I'll look at some twisted shit on the internet, but the one thing I can't tolerate is child abuse and animal abuse.
	Right. You know? Well, I would imagine that more than the cat's back got broken that night.
	Most definitely.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	I mean, I've heard some seriously crazy shit from babysitters, like kids' stories of fucking psycho babysitters.
	I mean, I won't even go into any details because I don't have permission to talk about them.
	But some hair-raisingly ugly shit that some babysitters do.
	And, I mean, of course it's the babysitter's responsibility, but fundamentally it's the parent's responsibility.
	You don't let anyone take care of your children without vetting them thoroughly.
	You just don't.
	It's your responsibility as a parent to make sure that your children are safe.
	And if someone is going to take care of your children, You make sure that they are safe.
	And the best way to make sure that a caregiver for your child is safe is to make sure that the caregiver understands that the lines of communication between your child and you as the parent are wide open.
	And if any crazy shit goes down, they will go to prison.
	I mean, you understand that to To basically kill a cat like that, particularly in front of children, would land people in jail.
	I mean, that's criminal action.
	And rightly so.
	And the mom...
	The mom who let these psychos damage her children and kill the cat in this way, basically...
	I don't even know what to say about that.
	I'm not often at a loss for words, but I don't even know what to say about that.
	I'm so incredibly sorry that this was your environment as a child and that you couldn't even talk to your mother about the torture and murder of your pet.
	I assume you had some feelings for the cat.
	Cats are lovely little animals and Usually very affectionate and playful and fun.
	And they sure as hell don't deserve to have their backs dashed out against the basement wall.
	And I'm just so bottomlessly sorry that this was your environment at all.
	And I can certainly understand, if this was your environment, why it might have been just a little tricky to have friends over, right?
	Yeah, I can remember one babysitter that was good.
	And it was a family situation.
	A husband and wife and their three kids who were close in age to us.
	And it was, you know, Canadian version of the Waltons.
	But even that was weird because that gave me perspective, right?
	That was my glimpse into what a, quote, normal family is like.
	Right. Well, do you still chat with your mom?
	I mean, is this something you can talk about with her?
	The communication with my mother is a definite issue.
	And we're actually looking at counseling together, which is something we've tried with limited success before.
	And a lot of that is about the more recent issues of her suicide attempt and the fallout of me trying to be a part of what was going on with her treatment, which unfortunately was ECT, which didn't really work for her.
	Oh, electroconvulsive therapy?
	That's right. Yeah.
	And so she was obviously, I would imagine, in severe depression if that was considered to be the solution, right?
	For those who don't know, it used to be called electroshock therapy, but I guess that was too accurate, electricity-causing shocks, and now they call it electroconvulsive therapy, which is running electricity through the brain in an attempt to overcome extremely dangerous depression.
	I mean, I'm no expert.
	Is that a fair approximation? Yeah.
	Yeah, I think really the only thing that's changed between the treatment of the 50s and the treatment today is the addition of medications which relax you because it induces a seizure.
	And the problem was people would seize so hard that they would, you know, break their own bones, you know, while strapped down to a table just by flexing.
	Or bite their tongue in damaging ways.
	Yeah, so now it's a heavy dose of muscle relaxants too.
	But yeah, that event, just of me trying to participate in what I thought was a family meeting with the doctor, went horribly sideways.
	And I was trying to ask questions about how the treatment would be Administered and what the dose and duration of the shock would be.
	You know, I was kind of making the mistake of thinking about it as medicine and, you know, in those sorts of situations, you don't meet the doctor that gives the treatment.
	They don't talk to you about dose and duration.
	They won't, you know, take a brain scan or an x-ray to assess the thickness of the skull.
	I think quite often women are given a dose that's more suited for men who have a thicker skull.
	Literally, physiologically. I had concerns, you know, and it was a treatment I considered for myself even at one point.
	But upon doing research, I realized, like, this is some freaky shit.
	And I don't know how they're assessing the success rate.
	I think it's, you know... I don't want to get into the details of ECT, but your mom had a suicide attempt.
	Was this her first? No.
	No, her third, in fact.
	I think her first was in her teens and then the two more recently.
	I'm really sorry about that too.
	Can I tell you something? Yeah.
	This is my opinion.
	My opinion only.
	I really hate suicides.
	I really hate them.
	Let me tell you why. My opinion.
	If somebody finds life so unbearable, but they have people in their life, you know, sons, mothers, brothers, whatever, right?
	If they find life so unbearable, I have sympathy.
	I really do. Life is tough sometimes.
	I get it. If they find life so unbearable and they can't find solace in therapy and they can't find solace in relationships and they can't find solace in work or art or music or literature or the beauty of nature or exercise or...
	Any of the amazing, or sex, or any of the amazing and wonderful things that life has to offer.
	Look, I'm not one to say how much people should take in life or whether they should take their own lives or not.
	I hope that people don't. I hope that they find ways around it.
	I hope they find ways to avoid it.
	I hope they find ways to not do it.
	But let me tell you something. If someone decides to do it, the least they can do Is make it convincingly look like an accident.
	The least they can do.
	Do you know what an incredibly hostile, vicious, and ugly thing it is to do?
	To openly commit suicide when you have other people in your life who care about you?
	It is a complete fuck you to them for the rest of their lives.
	It fucks people up unbelievably when there's a suicide, particularly in a family.
	At least have the goddamn decency to make it look like an accident.
	But the people who obviously suicide and leave a note, it's a fuck you to everybody who cares about them for the rest of their lives, and it's the last word, and there's no negotiation, and they've just got to fucking live with it.
	I hate that stuff.
	I hope people never kill themselves.
	I really do. But if they do...
	And they do it in a way that lastingly, permanently scars everyone around them and strips the life and joy and happiness to a significant degree out of everyone around them for the rest of their goddamn lives.
	I consider that such a despicable action, such a vile, abusive, and destructive action that I don't even have any words for the contempt I have for that level of abuse and cowardice.
	So I just wanted to point that out.
	And it's not a fact. It's not even an argument.
	It's just my perspective.
	No, now you've got me thinking about my uncle who died of an overdose.
	And maybe that's exactly what he was doing.
	No, I mean, I don't mean an overdose.
	You know, I mean, like, find some way to make it look like a real...
	I don't know. I've not thought this stuff out.
	I'm not suicidal. But just find some way that nobody can guess that it was a suicide.
	that's all have at least the consideration for everyone else in your life who's got to live with your passing and I think it is leaving people to deal with the suicide is such an ugly thing to do to other people that I just I don't have words Again... Well, I guess people kill themselves.
	They do it. I guess you could say, well, if somebody had the presence of mind to care about anybody else to the point where they wouldn't want to inflict their suicide on them, they might want to live anyway.
	But anyway, I just want to point that out.
	Well, and I need to hear that because that's a very different perspective than mine.
	I think it was at the age of 12 that I decided the best way to die would be at my own hand.
	Just as a matter of control, I guess.
	And you can do it at your own hands, right?
	I mean, you can. But just don't let everyone else live with the fact that you killed yourself.
	Just find some way to do it at your own hand that's an accident.
	Not you, obviously. I'm just saying, like, someone.
	Yeah, I don't know if that would work for someone, though, that's been open about their suicidality, you know?
	Well, yeah. Be creative, I guess.
	Yeah. And also, I mean, you know, when somebody drops the S-bomb in a relationship, I really don't know where you go from there.
	You know, when somebody drops the suicide bomb in a relationship, isn't everything after that just fear?
	And appeasement and, God, I hope they don't.
	And, I mean, there's no negotiation, really.
	Isn't it just fear? Again, I don't know.
	I don't have to face this situation, but...
	What do you do with somebody after that?
	It's the ultimate ultimatum.
	It's another...
	I don't know that it's always a threat.
	You know, I think it can be talked about as a...
	As a thought and a desire and something that gets contemplated.
	I mean, I think for me, it's been another form of escape that it's me keeping an eye on the exit.
	You know, always know where your exit is.
	Wait, I'm not sure who we're talking about here because we started talking about your mom.
	Do you mean you? Yeah, it's a family trait.
	I'm not going to deny it.
	I haven't thought about it for myself.
	This is the silver lining of my lack of motivation.
	You mean that you feel if you were more motivated, you might kill yourself?
	Yeah, I guess.
	I shouldn't be so glib about it because I do the right thing and there have been times this summer when I felt at risk and so I took myself to the hospital and enjoyed a night in their luxurious facility and experienced the totally vapid personnel there and lack of guidance or suggestions.
	But I can at least recognize that I shouldn't be alone.
	Yeah, I mean, certainly people call the suicide hotline, get to emerge or whatever.
	Now, I mean, you know my, you know, I personally would go and, if I were in your shoes, I would go into therapy myself.
	I'm not sure I'd do it with my mom at this point.
	Are you just taking a crap on the show?
	That's not me. That's not you?
	Okay, good. It's just like, well, I'm glad that you're so intimate now.
	I'm sorry? That's what I think of therapy.
	Yeah, yeah, that's right.
	And I believe our goal is done.
	But yeah, I mean, I think you need to talk to therapists and I think that you would be better off connecting with some of the seriously terrible stuff that you went through.
	It's the shopping for the therapist that I find intimidating and I don't connect well with a lot of people.
	I'm a Well, you can give yourself all these labels if you want, but they're not accurate.
	You're a victim and you're a survivor.
	And being a victim and being a survivor gives you certain scar tissue.
	But you're not that scar tissue.
	You say, I'm a cynic, like this was a choice of yours.
	Or I'm a thinker, like this was a choice of yours.
	You've partly become a thinker because of a lack of access to authentic emotion, right?
	Because you have to think through.
	Like an anthropologist visiting some crazy, dangerous tribe has to really think things through, right?
	Because it's not part of the culture.
	Yeah. And so you have to figure things out with people because you don't have an organic natural response.
	You can't be spontaneous. You haven't learned the language of social interaction, right?
	And you're a cynic because you lived in a world where this happened to you and the world let it happen to you, right?
	You went to school, I assume.
	You had extended family.
	Why the fuck didn't they say anything about this crazy situation?
	Why didn't the teachers notice anything?
	At that point, I think.
	I mean, the way the family supports each other is financially, and I've never really...
	You know, or maybe it's just the whole fact that I'm a man, and it's a very...
	Oh, did your sister get a lot of support from the family then?
	Yeah, I think, you know, I was the problem child.
	She had issues. You know, you can deal with issues.
	You can't really deal with a problem child.
	So then she didn't grow up with nearly as many of the buffet of issues that you had?
	Bulimia, I guess, would be the big one in her life.
	Or the little one, I guess, waste-wise.
	But yeah, okay.
	So she had some significant issues.
	Bulimia is a very serious mental health issue, as far as I understand it, and very difficult to treat.
	And so I wouldn't necessarily assume it's because you're a man.
	You seem to have a lot of assumptions, that's all, and I think curiosity would be your better bet.
	Instead of giving yourself labels and having answers, just keep asking questions.
	What the hell was going on?
	Why the hell didn't people help me?
	That's been my pattern, and that's what seems to enrage my family.
	Well, sure, it enrages your family because people who've done significant harm to children don't like a lot of curiosity, right?
	I mean, how the hell do...
	To take an extreme analogy, how do people who've got bodies buried in the backyard like it when somebody's dog comes sniffing around?
	I'm calling you a dog, right?
	but they don't like curiosity that might uncover the bodies.
	When you start becoming curious about your history and curious about your family, the people who've done literally criminal things don't really like it.
	Of course they don't, right?
	because they're criminals.
	You know, some depression, in my opinion, we used to have a better word for it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	It began with a G. I used to say letters, but now that I'm a dad, teaching my daughter how to read.
	What was a word that began with G that we used to apply to the negative feelings that people experienced who'd done evil?
	Catholics used to do it a bit.
	Guilt. Guilt.
	We used to have these great words.
	Wonderful. I remember I interviewed Thomas Sass a while back ago before he died.
	And we were talking about Jared Loner, I think it was.
	And I said, because I was still in the Matrix as far as this stuff went, and I talked about mental health issues.
	What's wrong with just calling him a murderer?
	You know, we used to have these great old words for things.
	Which kind of came from the free market.
	They didn't come from pharmacies.
	They didn't come from psychiatrists.
	They didn't come from social workers or mental health workers.
	They came from an understanding that to do evil is to suffer emotionally.
	I mean, there was a whole play called Macbeth about this.
	Macbeth murders the king and then he can't sleep and he goes mad because his guilt consumes him.
	And his wife, who appears to be quite down with it, ends up being unable to wash the king's blood off her hands while she sleepwalks in a truly terrifying scene.
	I played Macbeth, so I know the play quite well.
	We used to have these great words for people who did evil and felt bad about it.
	It was called guilt.
	But now, oh, well, they suffer from depression, anxiety.
	And I don't know, I, you know, we've got this kind of medicalized model, you know, and I think that some of it is what used to be called a spiritual sickness or a disease of the conscience.
	And the cure, the cure was quite clear in the past.
	It wasn't electricity.
	It wasn't SSRIs.
	It wasn't psychotropic medication.
	It wasn't even therapy.
	Do you know what the cure for guilt was in the past?
	Just pay it off, right?
	What does that mean?
	Pay what off? Taxation of a person?
	No. The cure for guilt was confession.
	You've got to read your Dostoevsky, man.
	You've got to read Crime and Punishment.
	The cure for guilt is confession.
	Because confession is, I did it, I am responsible, I harmed you, you were not to blame, I did wrong, and those are the facts.
	And this is my emotional experience of having tortured my children, or beaten my wife, or abused my husband.
	Or hit my sister. Or murdered a cat.
	Confession was the cure for guilt, and guilt was the result of evil actions, particularly against the innocent.
	And it's not exactly like religion is the free market, but it sure isn't a government.
	And that was, even in Secular literature.
	You do evil, you feel guilt.
	And the cure for guilt is confession.
	And if you do not confess, but rather avoid and defend, you are only continuing the evil that you started with.
	You are continuing to harm the people you harmed originally.
	And the degree to which you avoid confession and continue to bully other people, say, with suicide attempts, Is the degree to which you will continue to suffer and there will be no cure save death except for confession.
	An acknowledgement of the evil that was done.
	An ownership of the evil that was done.
	Because that carries with it the explicit or implicit absolution of the innocent.
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	I do. Yeah, and it's messed up that I even have to ponder...
	How much guilt I should have regarding the cat?
	Well, I personally would give you, at the age of six or so, no particular guilt because you were just trying to survive in a truly terrifying environment where cats were being murdered and you couldn't even tell your caregiver because your caregiver put the people in the house who killed the fucking cat, right? How the hell are you supposed to appeal to safety in that environment?
	To who and where the hell was your dad?
	I know you divorced when you were three, but we haven't talked about him at all.
	Oh, well, because the divorce also meant moving about 500 kilometers away.
	Not if your dad didn't want it.
	If your dad didn't want it, your mom wouldn't have been able to do it.
	It's illegal to remove a child from the orbit of a parent.
	No, and that was a real eye-opener when I pretty much realized that it was a kidnapping situation.
	Right. But it was for her to come back and live with her mom, get the support of her sisters.
	Live with your mom so your dad knew where you were.
	Right? Right.
	Yeah, and he wasn't totally out of the picture.
	It was limited visits.
	We would do New Year's.
	We would leave town and go up.
	This is just more abuse.
	Not from him, but from that side of the family.
	This is the sexual side now.
	You mean it was sexual abuse?
	Sexual inappropriateness from one of the other children.
	Now that I realize the kind of stuff that was going on, I really suspect that she was being abused.
	When troubles come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.
	You know, this is one thing that's true about dysfunctional families is there's almost no end to the dysfunction.
	I mean, unless an asteroid strikes the entire gene pool, or people like you courageously begin to pull away from this level of dysfunction, with dysfunctional families, it's like a house of horrors that never ends.
	There's no exit. It's just everywhere you go.
	It's another dungeon, another horror, another wounded, another crippled child, another raped child, another beaten up child.
	It just goes on and on and on.
	So I'm not shocked to hear what you're saying.
	I'm horrified, but I'm not shocked.
	Can you believe that it's affected my ability to have a relationship?
	Do you think? Do you think?
	I don't even know that you've had a relationship yet.
	At any time. Well, I just ended one.
	I'd like to tell you about it.
	Do we have another call? Because I think it indicates...
	I can't. You know, I'd love to.
	Yeah. I mean, and I really mean that.
	I mean, I care enormously about your situation, and I'm incredibly sorry for everything that you went through.
	And maybe we can talk again.
	You can always email my operations at freedomainradio.com.
	We can talk off the record if you like.
	But I'm very sorry.
	And that's what I meant when I said it wasn't the cancer, right?
	No, but I think I'm starting to see why that's such an easy place to put it, because it's very contained, you know, and not spread out over my whole life.
	You can hide the evil of your family behind a tumor.
	Mm-hmm. So, I wish you the best.
	I appreciate your time. Therapy and self-work.
	I appreciate you bringing up all this stuff.
	I'm incredibly sorry it happened with you, and I hope we get a chance to talk again.
	Thanks so much. All right.
	Go ahead, my friend. All right, Josh, go ahead.
	Hey, Steph. Hi.
	All right, so I had a few things, like, run through my mind this week when I decided that I wanted to talk to you about it.
	And I really, like, I wanted to script things out almost, but I decided that, like, that wouldn't be very honest to myself, like, emotionally, like, as far as, like, My ability to communicate honestly in the moment and practice RTR and stuff.
	I'd like to...
	You said something to our last caller who was saying about how when you can't really connect with yourself emotionally, you tend to overthink.
	That's me. Basically, bro.
	I'll like... Get so much into my own head at times that I won't even be able to act.
	I'll just be stuck thinking at times, and I'll just paralyze myself sometimes in situations where I should just go ahead and do something and say something in a situation.
	But I just won't be thinking like, I don't know too much about what other people think about whatever it is that I want to say to them.
	I can remember times as a child, I'm spending the night with other friends or something.
	I'd wake up early in the morning and my other friend would still be asleep and I'd want to nudge them to wake them up or something.
	But I'd be like, no, I'll just let them go.
	And I'll just lay there wide awake waiting for them to wake up for an hour or something like that.
	Won't really assert my own needs or something where I'll be in a situation to communicate something to someone else but I just won't for the sake of just holding my peace or something.
	And that's sort of something I'd like to maybe inquire a little bit about.
	So you play both sides of the conversation in your head before it happens?
	All the time. And tell me, what's your accuracy rate in predicting how the conversation is going to go?
	In my mind's eye, I'm seeing a big fat goose egg followed by a rolling bagel.
	Wait, wait! I see a donut!
	Donuts! It's a Timbit with a hole in the middle.
	Wait, wait! Now I'm looking down at a coffee cup and seeing a circle there too.
	What is your rate of success in accurately predicting how conversations are going when you rehearse for them?
	It's been awful in the past, but lately, as I've gotten older, I'm 19 years old, I'm a sophomore in college.
	This was more or less what happened to me a lot through my childhood and through the earlier parts of my teenage years, but lately I've been really trying to reinforce this part of myself, just to communicate with people honestly without trying to outline my thoughts too much and just go in and say whatever it is I have to say honestly.
	I feel like I've been making some pretty good strides lately, but the whole thing is, like, why did I have this problem in the first place?
	Like, why couldn't, like, what's my, like, what are my parents or my siblings' roles in this that, like, where I, like, something in, like, my relationship to them, like, Okay, I get the question.
	Do you want me to ask you questions that might help clarify that?
	Sure, if you have any.
	Okay, I may have.
	Let me just dig in my armpit here.
	Ooh, ticklish. Well, intimacy is spontaneous, and spontaneity is the opposite of Pre-planning, right?
	Like if you say, let's spontaneously go out for dinner, you don't have a reservation, at least when you say that, right?
	Sure. And so, the question is, what is the enemy of spontaneity?
	The enemy of spontaneity is danger.
	And what I mean by that is, If you have conversational topics that other people are going to get upset about, then you cannot be spontaneous in what it is that you want to say.
	You can't be honest.
	You can't be self-expressed.
	You can't be connected.
	You can't be intimate any more than you can, in a relaxed and whistleblowing manner, stroll your way through a minefield, right?
	That's very right.
	I can think of times...
	Like, I live a few hours away from home, but I come home, like, every so often when I have breaks, like, at college and stuff.
	And when I first started listening to stuff before, I basically learned not to bring up these topics with my family because I learned, like, how dangerous it could be.
	I would try talking about general virtues and stuff or anarcho-capitalism or just anything that relates to being honest and stuff.
	And I saw how my family reacted and it was just...
	I mean, it's sort of frightening, like, looking at my family now, because I see that, like, all my relationships with them, like, there's, like, nothing to it.
	Like, it's just, like, hollow shells of people who say they're my family and they love me, but they really, like, aren't even curious and don't even want to understand what my virtues are.
	And it's a really lonely feeling.
	Right. So can you tell me about the topics that your family is interested in?
	Sorry. Can you tell me about things that you're interested in, that your family is interested in only because you're interested in them?
	Boy, there's a mouthful.
	Let's see. So, do you understand what I'm saying, right?
	So, let me sort of give you an example, right?
	So, I got very into Ayn Rand and objectivism.
	And, you know, my family hated it.
	They scorned it, they mocked it, they rolled their eyes, and so on.
	I really like listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
	I just talked about this in a podcast today, and my family mocked it and derided it.
	So I was interested in something, and my family was not interested in it, and therefore it wasn't interesting to them, right?
	Does that make sense? So my question is, what is your family, what are you interested in that your family is interested in only because you're interested in it?
	Um... I'd say exercise and fitness and stuff, only because I'm really into...
	I'm going to school to be a physical therapist, so I'm really into physiology and nutrition and stuff, and I'm training as a natural bodybuilder just because exercise is something that I find...
	It's really fun and it's something I feel like I can devote myself to.
	It's something that I really enjoy.
	That's just something I do.
	Whenever I talk about it to them, they're like, oh yeah, that's really cool.
	You're so smart. You know all this.
	But really, it's something they wouldn't care about if I didn't care about it.
	So they do care about it.
	That's probably one of the only things that I can think of that they care about because I care about it like nothing to do with virtue or anything real.
	Yeah. Okay, so when it comes to conversations, what are the topics that you feel anxious about talking about with your friends or family or whoever?
	It doesn't really matter. Maybe, I guess, anarcho-capitalism and things relating to the free market and the corruption of government and everything related to that.
	If I want to bring up something that would challenge any of my family members' beliefs, to make them think, that would create anxiety in me because I know they would get angry.
	Why would they get angry?
	Because they know that what they believe is bullshit, but they don't want to admit it.
	Why do they want to admit it?
	They'll probably think that within their own social circles they'll get attacked for confessing their false beliefs, maybe.
	And what about religion?
	Well, as I said, my family raised me, not raised me, indoctrinated me, threatened me into being a Protestant Christian child, and that's what they still think I am, but...
	Well, I started listening to you close to about a year ago, and three months after that, I completely gave up on religion.
	I accepted the truth, or gave up on the falsehoods, I guess.
	I've been an atheist for, I guess, at least six months now that I can think of.
	I don't know. I didn't mark my calendar.
	Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
	I'm going to prime myself on my math skills.
	You started listening to me a year ago.
	Three months after you started listening to me, you have now been an atheist for nine months, if I do my math correctly.
	Okay. Yeah, excuse me.
	Do they also think you're good at math?
	No, I'm just kidding. Go on.
	No, I was just flundering around.
	When I first heard of you, and then when I actually started listening to you, I was sort of getting mixed up at those times.
	Yeah, no problem. I'm just having some fun.
	Go ahead. My family still thinks that, or at least they don't know that I'm atheist.
	Were you spanked as a child?
	I was. Wait, Christians who spank?
	Mike, can we just make a note of that?
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know why every babysitter in a Christian household has to be named Rod.
	Apparently, if you don't send that child, that babysitter named Rod, you spoil the child.
	Anyway, so the point is that there's lots of things that you can't talk about with your family.
	I mean, the violations of the non-aggression principle that occurred.
	Next, you're going to tell me, oh, you're Protestants.
	You're probably not circumcised. Is that right?
	I've seen all your recent videos and stuff.
	I understand all the cruelty and the Violation of the non-aggression principle, that circumcision.
	I've been really reluctant to bring out these topics with them.
	I get it. So there's stuff that there's a lot of hot topics, right, in this family environment.
	You can't talk about your atheism, you can't talk about your anarchism, you can't talk about your philosophy, you can't talk about your ethics, you can't talk about the non-aggression principle, you can't talk about spanking, you can't talk about circumcision.
	So what do you got? Sports and the weather?
	Basically. And hobbies.
	And I see it as that.
	And it really bothers me because these are basically my only relationships.
	You and I may use the word relationships quite differently.
	To me, a relationship is not where the most important things in your life are things that you are desperately afraid to talk about.
	That to me is a dictatorship.
	It's not a relationship.
	Yeah. So you can talk about sports or whether you can talk about hobbies and hobbies are time wastes that people lend so they don't have to talk about anything real.
	Yep. And so I'm very sorry about that.
	As far as communication. Right.
	So you are...
	I don't know if you've ever been around kids.
	You obviously were a kid, but you know kids love hide-and-seek, right?
	Hide-and-go-seek. Yeah.
	They love it. Yeah, I played that.
	Yeah, I mean, and why do you think kids love Hide and Go Seek so much?
	Because the suspense. Yeah, yeah, but why do they love the suspense?
	How does it recreate something for them?
	Well, I think the answer is that I think you're right.
	I mean, I think that the suspense is part of it, but Children love hide-and-go-seek because as human beings we are hardwired to continually prepare for danger.
	What is hide-and-go-seek?
	Hide is hide from a predator.
	Do you see why children would like to do that?
	Like to learn that? Yeah, it seems kind of like important.
	Yeah, it's pretty important.
	A wolf is coming, you better hide, right?
	A tiger is coming, you better hide.
	Right, learning how to Hide from danger is something the kids do.
	I mean, if you see baby lions playing or anything like that, they're continually playing hunting.
	Again? Oh, me?
	You're back. I'm back?
	Okay. So, when baby lions are continually practicing hunting, right?
	Because they don't actually have to worry too much about danger, but the danger they have to worry about It's not being able to eat gazelles, right?
	So they're constantly practicing danger.
	My daughter, we play this game called Smorg after the dragon in The Hobbit, and Smorg takes her treasure or her kitties or something like that, not her original kitties, but the toy kitties, and he hides it in his lair, and then she has to come and retrieve these things that he's stolen,
	and he goes chasing after her and And it's interesting because up until about a month or two ago, she would run and she would hide from Smaug.
	So she'd take her stuff and she'd just go and hide from him.
	And I would pretend to be going around trying to find her, sniffing the air and all that kind of stuff.
	And she would be hiding.
	But you know what happened a month or two ago?
	She started turning around and fighting him.
	Because when she was a little toddler, she couldn't possibly fight any kind of predator.
	Even a fox would have been too much for her, right?
	But now that she's four, I guess four and two-thirds or something like that, nature is saying, you don't just have to learn or you can't just learn hiding.
	Now you have to learn fighting.
	And so it really surprised me.
	I'm chasing her. We've been playing this game for like two years.
	I'm chasing her and she suddenly turns around And she's fighting me with her unicorn horn magic powers and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And the reason that I'm going into all of this, and if you look at children's games, it's to do with hunting or fleeing.
	You're playing tag, which is practicing for hunting, or you're playing hide and go seek, which is practicing for fleeing and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And the reason that I'm telling you all of this is that we Obsessively rehearse for danger.
	Like all animals, obsessively rehearse for danger.
	And they teach the kids about danger, and the kids obsessively play games designed to reduce danger, right?
	Yeah. So why am I telling you this?
	Oh, let's ask the listeners, see if they are paying attention.
	Don't make me breathe fire on you.
	I'm ready. I'm ready.
	And you don't get a unicorn shield.
	My daughter has it. Oh, no.
	Because I've been in danger in the past.
	I'm still on. But why are you obsessively thinking about conversations and how they're going to go?
	Because I want to try to prepare.
	Oh, man.
	I'm totally sorry about that eyebrow.
	It'll grow back. Well, yeah, I mean, sorry, let me take that out.
	But, yeah, you want to prepare, but why is it that you're thinking about conversations all the time and how they're going to go?
	Well, because I'm afraid of what will happen if they go badly.
	Yeah, because they're dangerous, and as human beings, we obsessively rehearse for danger.
	So you want to have these conversations, right?
	The conversations are very dangerous, and we obsessively rehearse for danger.
	Does that make sense? Yes.
	I mean, parental rejection is the tiger and this is your hide-and-go-seek, right?
	Mm-hmm. And if you want to stop obsessing about conversations, you have to give yourself the permission to not have them.
	Right? That's right.
	Yeah. Because do you sort of feel like these conversations are like a train coming to the station you're tied to?
	It's just getting closer and closer and it's going to happen?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	It doesn't have to be that way.
	You're in control. You can have these conversations.
	You cannot have these conversations.
	They are in no way inevitable.
	We are not determined. It's not deterministic to have these conversations or not, right?
	Yeah, that's something I didn't really see in the past, but now I sort of understand that, okay, I can see that there would be dangerous.
	This is something I wanted to bring up, like any of these topics that would be dangerous, and I usually just leave it and let it go, but every time I do, I have to let it go, like a little part of it that sort of wants to help Yeah, I mean, look, because this is not a danger that is going to surprise you, right?
	Hide and go seek and tag.
	That's all about preparing for dangers like hide and go seek in particular.
	A fox jumps out of the bushes.
	What do you do? You run, right?
	And you hide, right?
	But this is different because this is something that you may initiate and it's not going to happen unless you initiate it.
	So this is different.
	So if you knew that in like six months...
	You had a gladiatorial fight to the death.
	I mean, you'd probably spend quite a bit of time practicing, right?
	Because you wouldn't want to lose that, right?
	And so this is more like preparing for mortal combat, or at least that's kind of what it feels like.
	And what I'm saying, you'd never have to step into that ring.
	Okay.
	Now, the reason why we want to have these conversations is we don't want to accept the consequences of not having these conversations.
	Because if you say about your family, I will not talk to them, I choose not to talk to them, them about the most important things to me, that has consequences when it is admitted, admitted, right?
	Yes.
	So what we kind of want is to be in the preparation stage but not actually doing it because Because if we're in the preparation stage, we don't have to accept the consequences of not doing it, but we don't actually have to do it.
	Right? Doing it is terrifying.
	Accepting the consequences of not doing it is depressing, right?
	And so we just like to stay in this...
	The readiness is all Hamlet phase, right?
	Hey, it's my Shakespeare night. Yeah.
	So what I'm saying is that you don't have to have these conversations with anyone in your life, but to be a good philosopher, to have integrity, to live with honesty, you have to say to yourself, for the foreseeable future, at the time being, I don't know when, if or how it's going to change, I choose not to talk about what is important with those around me.
	I choose not to talk about what is precious.
	I choose not to be honest and open with those around me.
	I choose not to express my thoughts and feelings to those around me.
	I choose to hide from those around me because my nervous system views them as predators to one degree or another.
	If you accept that is the fact, that's something you have to process.
	But we like to keep ourselves in this nervous Nelly kind of abstract land of preparation because we neither want to have the confrontation Nor accept the reality that we're not going to have the conversation and the consequences of that.
	Does that make any sense? Yeah, and the consequences of that would be the implications that I'll never have a real honest relationship with those people around me.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	You're now going into the future and making absolute statements.
	What you're saying is that at the moment, I choose not to be honest with these people.
	I don't know what the future brings.
	You may change your mind tomorrow.
	They may change your mind tomorrow.
	You see, you will change the relationship if you accept that you can't be honest or choose not to be honest in that relationship.
	Anybody who's sensitive to anybody else will notice when a big transition like that has occurred.
	They say, hey, you used to talk about things that made me uncomfortable and now you don't.
	What's up with that? You used to be more enthusiastic about our conversations and now you seem a little bit sad and resigned.
	What's up with that? They may say things like that and they may actually, without you trying to, in a sense, push ideology on them or philosophy on them, I'm not saying that's wrong, but without that occurring, they may actually become more curious and you may end up having these conversations in ways that you never could have anticipated when you were thinking about how to push it on them.
	I'm just saying it's possible.
	So I don't know what's going to happen with your life.
	I'm sorry? I said, I can hope so.
	You can hope so, but I wouldn't do it for that purpose, right?
	I mean, just recognizing the reality that you're not going to be honest at the moment.
	But saying, I will never have, I mean, that's, come on, that's catastrophe.
	And where that comes from is you never have in the past, and therefore you want to push that in the future so you don't have to deal with the past, right?
	The never has already occurred.
	Because it hasn't happened up to now, right?
	Andrew 19. So it's almost two decades, right?
	Give or take. So I would not jump into the eternity of the future.
	I would simply point out that it hasn't happened yet.
	You can choose to have the conversation or you can choose not to have the conversation but don't avoid the choice and don't avoid the consequences of the choice.
	Okay. All right?
	Thank you. You're very welcome.
	I hope that's helpful. And, you know, drop me a line.
	Let me know how it goes. Either way.
	Yeah, I will. I mean, it may be for some time.
	I mean, I'm not in, like, constant communication with my family members and stuff.
	I mean, I might talk to them. Oh, yeah.
	Whenever it happens. Whenever it happens.
	Listen, I mean, I have a strange kind of brain.
	I can't tell you for the life of me where my car keys are, but if you email me in six months, I'll remember this conversation down to the last detail, usually.
	But I do regularly wander around asking my wife, where are my sunglasses that are on my head?
	Should I do the blue dot story?
	I should do that with video, right?
	Blue dot? Alright, so let me tell you a story about how my brain works.
	And this will make you feel better for not being me.
	Let me tell you how my brain works.
	This is Steph's brain in action.
	I'm sorry for not being what?
	Don't worry about it. So the other day, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a blue dot, a little blue dot on my chest about the size of a grain of rice cooked.
	Okay. And I'm like, well, that's not a color that I want to see, right?
	That's not good, right?
	And so I just sort of waited a couple of days.
	It was still there. And so I went to see my doctor.
	My doctor said, oh, it's just a little burst blood vessel or you had a bug bite or something.
	Don't worry about it. If it's still there in two weeks or whatever, we'll send you to a dermatologist.
	So I was like, oh, good.
	Okay, that's great. So then I just kind of went back around my life and every now and then I checked my blue dot and it's now growing an eyeball.
	No, it's not. It's winking at me.
	It's eyeing me viciously.
	It's running its eyelashes up and down.
	Anyway, and it doesn't go away.
	So then I'm in at the hospital to get my radiation treatment and I have to see the doctor.
	So I see the doctor and I say, by the way, doc, I got this blue dot on my chest.
	Like, can I just go see a dermatologist while I'm here at the hospital?
	And he's like, I hate to tell you, that's the tattoo for your radiation therapy.
	I said, what? He said, well, remember like six weeks ago when you came in, you get a mask fitted for your radiation to keep your head steady while they're doing it.
	They put a tattoo on your chest so that they could always line up the laser with the very center of your chest.
	Get the fuck out of here.
	Or some non-ghetto equivalent of that sentence.
	And I'm like, no, I don't remember that.
	Really? They put a tattoo on me and I don't even remember?
	Normally when you don't remember a tattoo, you know you had a good time.
	Anyway, so I didn't believe him, but I went back to the You know, the radiology interns, and I said, this thing on my chest, and they said, yeah, that's the dot for the radiation treatment.
	What are you getting? Radiation to the brain?
	Write something important?
	And I'm like, damn, I guess I had a blue dot put on me that I don't remember.
	I had a tattoo that I do not remember, and I really thought that was going to be associated with a cooler story than radiation treatment.
	But that's embarrassing.
	I mean, you know, oh, I'm going to try and unlock the secrets of morality in the state and God and religion.
	Hey, what the fuck is this blue dot doing on my chest?
	I mean, they put it on me.
	I assume it hurt a little because it's a tattoo.
	And this is embarrassing.
	This is how my brain doesn't work.
	So anyway, enjoy being 19 because you can probably retain things.
	But I do remember shows very, very well.
	So I just wanted to point that out that...
	The blue dot is really quite a catastrophic and humbling story about brain not functioning.
	I still don't know how I got a tattoo and didn't notice it at all.
	And then went to the doctor and said, why have I got a blue dot?
	Oh, it's a bug bite. Oh, it's a burst blood vessel.
	You people just make shit up.
	You know, oh, it's a space alien laser.
	It's going to guide them to your ass when you get abducted in Topeka, Kansas later this month.
	I mean, they just make up whatever shit they want.
	Oh, yeah, it's a blue dot.
	You're growing a second eyeball, third eyeball.
	Anyway. It's the blue pill stuck to my chest, somebody said.
	Anyway, it is kind of embarrassing, but that was my saga of the blue dot that...
	I must say, podcasting that afternoon, I was on the way home from the hospital, I was humbled.
	And I do remember that occasionally I can be literally Spongebob retarded.
	So, anyway. All right.
	So, thank you very much for your calls, everyone.
	Go ahead. I was just going to say that I'll be sure to email you and let you know how things go in the future.
	And thank you very much for your help tonight.
	Yeah, remember the sword is not a truth.
	I can't even quote myself.
	This is something I wrote in a novel.
	The truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs.
	Sometimes the dragons are bigger than us and we smile and walk gently by.
	And you are free to not inflict philosophy on people and you are free to encourage them to be philosophical as you see fit.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate would be fantastic if you could help out.
	Again, if you lean a little bit more towards the subscribe button than to the donate button, that's great.
	I do find it hard to order the hookers and blow if I don't know how much money I'm going to have to actually pay them because then Mike shows up with baking powder, which is really not exactly the same thing, no matter what he's wearing.
	And remember... If you're going to include money for Mike's outfits during these particular roleplay sessions, do not include very much money because, trust me, there's precious little cloth involved.
	So, thank you very much. Have yourselves a wonderful week.

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