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May 2, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:49:59
THE FOUR WORDS THAT SET YOU FREE! Freedomain Call In
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Hi, everybody.
How you doing? It's the Speckled Ostrich Egg of Philosophy here.
It is Friday night.
Friday night, and the living is easy.
It is, oh, end of April.
April 30th, 2021.
So, what is it next?
Pinch, punch, first day of the month.
Did you ever learn the... Wait, January, February, March, April.
Like the knuckle thing? January long month, February short month, March long month, April short month, the knuckle thing?
Anyway, it's just something I remember from when I was a kid.
So one thing I wanted to just mention before we start here.
People are, and I've talked about this, so people are concerned about the...
Vaccines, right? Like the vaccines didn't go through the right level of testing.
They haven't been proven to reduce birth death rate, and there doesn't even seem to be any plans for doing that.
But the one thing I also wanted to mention about all of this is that the lockdowns are a form of medical intervention.
And you should, of course, run them through debate and testing and cost benefits and all the kind of stuff that you have to do.
For any other medical intervention.
You know, like, I remember Cheerios.
Was it Cheerios? Something like that.
Cheerios, you know, said, helps improve heart health or something like that, because they had something in them that brought down cholesterol or something like that.
Something like that. And the FDA was like, you can't say that!
And so they couldn't.
And I remember there was this pimple cream, probably still around.
Clearasil, something like that.
And did it eliminate acne?
No. Did it cure acne?
No. Did it stop acne?
No. Did it prevent acne? No.
I remember when I was a teenager, it was probably still around.
What does it say? Anyone remember?
Helps control the acne cycle.
What does that even mean?
Helps control the acne cycle.
It's really vague, right?
So we've got this whole government blob that is supposed to, you know, keep us safe and make sure that unreasonable medical procedures don't make it to the forefront.
So the lockdowns should have gone through the whole debate and review of everything.
But, of course, you know, the purpose of all of this stuff just seems to be totalitarianism, so obviously it didn't.
But, you know, it really should have.
All right. So somebody says, you aren't sleeping.
Your bags under your eyes are bad.
Are they? It could just be the lighting.
Could be the lighting. I'm sleeping fine.
What's it I said the other day?
I said I had a rest before the show.
You know, it happens.
It really does happen every now and then.
You know, I've always been a little bit of a nap guy.
I just, a nap, like a good nap is like such a beautiful thing where you just get that nice rest.
And maybe you listen to some audio book and no one raises their voice and all kinds of beautiful things are happening.
And then you float back to consciousness like a flower, a petal in a gently rising wind coming up to the giant sun of your consciousness.
And it's such a beautiful thing.
Unfortunately, that happens about 5% of naps.
The rest of the time, it's like a foggy horse who've cracked you in the head and left you like, oh.
But, you know, that 1 in 20, when you roll a 20 on your nap dice, that works out really well.
But I do.
You know, if I've got like a, sometimes these shows can like 2, 3 more hours, right?
And I want to be refreshed.
And yeah, sometimes I'll just take a little rest.
If I get that mid-afternoon lull, do you ever get that mid-afternoon lull?
And I remember I used to do this when I was a student in university.
I'd been reading some godforsaken boring book.
And the worst were the ones in my Marxist classes.
Those books were so boring.
Oh my God. No playfulness, no curiosity, no intellectual stimulation, just this grim death march of mother courage.
And I used to lie there and say, okay, I'm going to finish this book.
Okay, I'll, uh...
I'll read, I'll read, I'll lie on my side and I'll read on my side.
Okay, I'll just close. You just lure yourself step by step down that foggy staircase.
Anyway, so I had a bit of a rest before the show and next thing you know everyone's like, Steph has COVID! No, I just, I just, I like, don't you like a nap?
Hit Y if you like a nap once in a while.
I love it when naps are too long and you don't know what day it is.
That's right. That's right, you just rope up from a nap yourself.
Yeah, naps are great. I remember when I was doing research for my novel, almost reading endless books on Churchill.
Churchill was a big one for napping.
In fact, he napped through one of the most important days of the Battle of Britain.
He woke to find out whether there was a good, whether they won the battle or not.
Okay, so we have a caller for tonight.
Now, it doesn't mean that it'll be the whole show, but it'll certainly be out there.
I've got a list. Making the truth about men.
Yeah, I've got a list about that.
I'm just trying to figure out, you know, how much of my body I should show in the truth about men.
Because it's a lot of truth.
It's a lot of truth. A lot of hanging truth.
All right. So, we do have a caller for this evening.
Her name is Sophia, which I'm sure you're aware is Greek for wisdom.
Okay, so let me just see if I can find her.
There we go. All right.
Sophia, would you mind requesting to talk?
Request to talk.
Intruder in my ear.
Intruder in my ear. Intruder alert.
What video game was that from? That's right.
Berserk. Hello?
Hi, how you doing? I'm good.
How are you? I'm well, I'm well, I'm well.
What's on your mind? What's on my mind?
Do you want to read the letter, or do you want me to read it?
Oh, yeah, if you could read my email.
I can, I can.
I just have an ungodly slow chat app here, so give me just one second.
Here we go. All right. My name is Sophia, and I am 20 years old.
My perception of my family has shattered my It seems as though I am constantly uncovering more secrets, lies and deception from the past and present as I continue to emerge in my adulthood.
Sexual abuse, affairs, cults, abortions, suicide attempts, gaslighting, etc.
The list goes on. I'm hesitant to bring my partner around my family as I do not want to invite him into this world of delusion.
I am also chemically ill from a sickness my parents refused to acknowledge for a number of years, and still do to an extent.
In the interest of keeping this email short and concise, I love listening to your show and would be immensely honored to have the privilege of receiving your wise insight.
One last thing. Did I mention my family are devout Christians?
Thank you for always posting thought-provoking and quite, frankly, entertaining content.
Wow, that's quite an intro.
That's quite an intro. And I really do appreciate you taking the time tonight.
I'm sure we can get to someplace helpful and useful.
How do you feel being on the line?
I feel nervous.
I feel pretty nervous.
But I'm really excited to talk with you tonight.
All right. Now, I just wanted to get this out of the way.
You said this chemical illness, chemical imbalance illness.
What's the story with that? Oh, yeah, I have a chronic illness.
It's called SIRS, which is Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome.
So it's kind of like I have a cold all the time, and it's a result of mold illness or mold exposure.
And it developed about four or five years ago.
And with that, I've had a lot of co-infections, like recurrent strep infections.
I'm sorry, you just kind of went quiet for a sec there.
Did you change something? Oh, no.
Can you hear me? All right.
Yes. Can you just say again?
Yeah, so this illness started about four years ago and it's a result of mold exposure and with it I've also had a series of co-infections like recurrent strep and tonsillitis and just like chronic fatigue and nausea, a lot of other, yeah, it's just like I'm always having a bad cold.
I'm so sorry. And do you know about where the mold was or how you got exposed to it?
Yeah, it was this house that I was living in.
I remember there was a leak in my closet and the floor was always wet in there.
And so there was mold growing out from there.
And there was also mold in the basement as well, black mold.
Where I live, Like 80% of homes have a mold problem.
But yeah, it just affected me worse than it did my family members.
They were able to, I guess, properly detox is the term from the mold.
And there's like a threshold that you can be exposed to that your body is able to detox from.
But after a certain amount of Your liver can't detox of it properly, so you actually start to have mold in your body, which I have that I recently got tested for, and I have pretty high levels of mold in my body.
And is there a cure?
Yeah, so I'm supposed to try to find a mold-free house, which is pretty damn near impossible where I live, and it's also I'm living on a budget, so I don't really have the Capacity to pay for a brand new home, to live in a brand new home.
But in the meantime, I just have a diet, a strict diet, and I take a binder, which is charcoal or cholestyramine and some various other supplements and things that are supposed to help my body detox of the mold.
Wow. Wow.
Okay. I'm sorry.
It could also have been, of course, because you were younger, right?
So if your other family members were older, they would have a more mature immune system and they may be out of the house more.
And so maybe it just played better for them because of that.
Yeah, actually, I recently was listening to some doctors talk about how adverse child experiences can affect this illness.
It has something to do with your amygdala, and I don't know what else, but it can make you more susceptible to developing mold illness.
Yeah, stress is rough on the immune system, for sure.
Stress is rough on the immune system, which is why this whole COVID thing and lockdowns and stress and panic and people out of work.
And I was just talking to a friend of mine the other night, and he had surgery.
He managed to get, he was in considerable pain, and he managed to get the surgery to correct that pain one week before they shut down what they call elective surgeries.
It's such a terrible term.
It's such a terrible term because elective surgery is like, oh, maybe I have a hangnail or maybe I just want a nose job or maybe some LASIK.
No, elective surgery is a serious, serious business.
It just means like you didn't get hit by a car on the highway and you're dragged into the ER by, you know, with your arm hanging by a thread.
And so he managed to get this.
His pain, you know, after a month or two of rehab, his pain is gone.
Because otherwise, I assume what they do, if you're in chronic pain and they've canceled all the elective surgeries, they just give you fistfuls of opioids and then wonder why there's an epidemic in ODs.
Anyway, it's just terrible.
So the story with your family, what...
Was your journey to, hey, maybe there's something not quite right here.
And how did that play out for you?
Because we normalize things.
We may know that there's something kind of odd, but usually there's a process of peeling back the onion layers with the accompanying tears.
And what was the journey for you when you first began to think, like, maybe not super normal?
Well... It really started when my parents got divorced when I was about eight years old.
I've always been pretty perceptive of people and their behavior and I think I also have a pretty strong intuition.
But when I said that my perception this past year has really been shattered, I graduated two years ago.
Yeah, about two years ago from high school and my mother went back to her country.
She's from Ukraine and she didn't tell me she was going back to Ukraine until two weeks before she left.
This was right after I graduated and I was living with her and from then on I kind of It was like she was like my number one support in my life and then I kind of just felt like I was just totally blindsided by that.
And then from then on I have been reevaluating my relationship with my family and my dynamic with them which I think is probably my biggest question to you is like how do I navigate a relationship with my family as time goes on without just completely eliminating them from my life?
So that's what we call a skim buy.
Do you ever do this?
Most people do, right?
I love this. When you go down to the lake, the smooth lake, smooth as glass, and you get that nice flat rock, and you tuck it into your finger, and you just whip it across the lake, and you can get like 10, 15, I think I had 18 once, like skips.
So you're real bouncing along the top here, and I completely understand that, but we're going to have to circle back and...
Put on our scuba deer and go down and check out some wrecks here, right?
So it's very, very top level, and that's totally fine for the first pass, but I'm aware that the gap between what you sent in your message and what you just described is interstellar, if that makes any sense.
So let's go back and talk about early memories and what happened when you were little.
So my earliest memories are...
My parents were always very distant.
They were quite emotionally neglectful.
I remember my parents having arguments at night with each other and I would sneak out and try to listen from the kitchen what they were arguing about.
I have really early memories of waking up from naps and no one being home, my mom just being gone and just like crying and trying to...
Trying to figure out how I could get in contact with someone.
Yeah, just pretty lonely, like left alone a lot.
Another thing is my brother was my playmate.
We're 15 months apart and I spent a lot of time with him as a kid and my mom would We would consistently leave us unattended at playgrounds.
And we would have to find a stranger and ask them to use their phone to call our mom to come and pick us up.
So I have a lot of my early memories.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I was just reading a message and I apologize.
I just gapped out a little bit. Where were you when you called your mom?
Oh, at playgrounds.
My mom would leave my brother and I alone at playgrounds.
And we would try to find strangers to use their phone to call her.
What age were you? Six, like this pretty early memory, six, seven years old.
It was before my parents got divorced.
I remember coming back from just by the by.
I used to go to Camp Bolton like half the summer when I was in my early teens.
And I remember coming back Yeah.
Yeah.
She gave me a big – I had my big backpack and tennis racket and all this kind of stuff and she just kind of turned me loose and then I realized, of course, I had no money.
She turned me loose downtown, no bus fare and I mean it was a long – it would have been a couple of hours to walk and I had my stuff with me and it was kind of messy.
So I just remember I was asking people for money on the street.
I distinctly remember a guy with a beard gave me a really skeptical look like there's no way that you actually need 20 cents for the bus.
I think it was 10 cents or something like that.
But he gave me the 10 cents and I bussed home.
So I just remember that kind of stuff.
I shouldn't laugh because – and that was just the kind of chaos that sometimes would be around.
Yeah. So that's strange.
So you sit there and you wait for your mom to come back, right?
And then you have that, okay, well, the park is emptying out.
It's getting dark. What the hell do we do, right?
Right, yeah. Yeah, it would happen a lot, too.
And she would kind of be proud of the fact that she would leave us places.
You're so independent.
Yeah, right.
Exactly. Oh, God save us.
God save us from the self-consciously cool moms.
Oh, my mom was constantly praising herself.
I don't mean to make this about me.
Like, I just tell you, I think we kind of overlap a little here because my mom was always like, yeah, I just do things differently.
You know, like, when we're at the mall and your friends just, like, they're embarrassed to see, you know, they want to make you feel embarrassed.
You know, when I'm at the mall, I just take the mall for ice cream because I just know how to make people like me.
And it's like, please don't give me alternative cool mom here because, you know, you're pretty vicious with a saucepan to the head.
That's right. But yeah, God spare us from the, you know, well, I'm trying new things, you know, like abandoning you at the park, because I'm alternative.
It's like, yeah, alternative is, I mean, I don't mind breaking the mold a little bit, but you have to have some idea what the hell you're doing.
Right. Okay, so then what?
Well, like for early memories that I have.
Yes. Yes. There's not a whole lot.
My dad wasn't really around.
He was a missionary, so he was always away.
He would go to Siberia for months on end sometimes.
So he wasn't really around, or he was always working.
And when he was home, he didn't really pay much attention to the kids.
He would just be on his computer or...
I don't know, doing something else and I never really felt like I could connect with him.
Occasionally he would take my brother out My brother and I out and we would go on adventures or something.
But he was pretty absent as much as I can remember.
I was mostly in the care of my mom as a kid.
But some other early memories I have is noticing the disparity between my parents and the lack of communication between them.
Even when they were together, like when he would come back from trips, she wasn't really excited to see him or anything.
And I remember asking her if she loved my dad from a young age and she would always just stonewall me or not respond.
And then I would keep asking and then she would just kind of explode at me and just like get really mad at me for asking her.
If asking her those questions because it wasn't my business.
And then one day she told me no, that she didn't love my dad.
And shortly after that, I found out she filed for divorce from my father.
Yeah, the missionary thing.
I mean, I admire the commitment, obviously.
It's pretty wild.
But it often seems that the people who are very invested in the missionary thing I'm not happy at home.
Ah, God has called me to abandon the place where I'm uncomfortable and go to a place where I have authority.
It's like, I don't know that that's necessarily God.
Or I sometimes call them the radar parents.
Like, so radar, as you know, it's like using sound waves to find metal objects like hundreds of miles away.
And it's great if you need to figure out if Messerschmitt's 109 E's are coming across from France over the British Channel, but it's like everybody's sensitivity is really distant.
He's like, I've got to go and help the people in...
Siberia. It's like, you know you have two kids.
No, no. Siberia.
That's where I've got to focus my moral intentions.
Yeah, Siberia. Thousands of miles away.
Yeah, that's Africa.
Yeah, that's where I'm...
I mean, I remember my mom being in tears over, you know, the bloated-bellied kids in Ethiopia and so on.
Oh, it's so terrible.
It's so sad. It's like, you know, you beat your own kids.
No, but the children in Africa, they're so sad.
I can't believe this. It's like, but you, what?
What? You mean if I go get a tan and a bloated belly, you'll care about me?
What the hell? What's with the, like, people have this thing where they just, they care for the really distant stuff.
And they won't actually focus their eyes on the stuff in their actual environment which they can do something about.
Oh, I hate the Fed! Do you feel like ending spanking?
What? No. God, no.
Fed! The Fed! The Fed is the, you know, it's like they just, it's the radar curse.
It's like all you are is sensitive to things in the grand distance that you can do little to effect and everything that's up close to you just completely escapes your radar.
Right. Yeah, I actually have two other siblings, so he has four kids and he would leave us at home.
But sometimes he would take a kid with him to Siberia.
He never took me, but I know he took one of my sisters and my brother.
And my sister has some pretty bad memories from that, like my dad leaving her with strangers for hours in Siberia.
Yeah, that's not good.
And do you know what he was doing in Siberia?
Not really. I know that there was this family he would go and help out with because the church was always raising money for this family and he would have a picture of them on their laptop and I remember getting really upset with him because I thought that he loved them more than he loved us and I could never understand why he was so passionate about them and That's why God was calling him to these people and not his own family.
So... Wow.
Yeah, that's a bit odd, right?
It's a bit odd. Yeah.
Was he actually like a priest-priest or was this just like a hobby...
Or what? No, he's not a priest or a pastor.
I mean, he tried, or at least not, what is it, seminary?
He's not a certified pastor in any capacity.
I know he tried starting some churches in Ukraine, which is where he met my mom, when they had my sisters.
Hmm. But it's more like a hobby thing.
It's just more like a hobby thing.
I don't really know. What's that song?
It's been floating in my head.
I'll just get it out of my head.
My mother told me good, my mother told me strong.
She said, be true to yourself and you can't go wrong.
But there's just one thing that you must understand.
You can fool with your brother, but don't mess with a missionary man.
Anyway, it's a pretty good song.
It's a pretty good song.
Oh, the missionary man. He's got God on his side.
He's got the saints and apostles backing up from behind.
Black-eyed looks from those Bible books.
He's a man with a mission. Got a serious mind.
There was a woman in the jungle and a monkey on the tree.
The missionary man. He was following me.
He said, stop what you're doing.
Get down upon your knees.
I have a message for you that you better believe, believe, believe.
All right. Annie Lennox belting it out like nobody's business.
A great song. Great harmonica in here.
All right. Musical interlude aside.
With your mom, you said your mom was your big champion earlier, your big confidant.
So how are things with your mom when you were young?
I was pretty scared of her.
I was very scared of her.
She didn't speak English very well and so there was always a language gap between us and she also spanked us a lot as kids.
So yeah, I never felt secure in her presence whatsoever.
Right. Just angry at her a lot as a child.
Right. And how old were you when they split?
So I was eight and then the divorce was finalized when I was 10.
So I guess it's always a big question I have if they're like, we're Christians, it's like, okay, but you did make a vow before God, right?
So how did they square that circle?
Well, there was just a lot of lies, a lot of secrecy.
I didn't know, but I found out that my mom actually cheated on my dad with a pastor from another church.
But when she was getting divorced, she told me that That he wasn't putting the family first enough and she just couldn't handle it anymore and he just wasn't supportive enough and she didn't love him anymore.
Right, right.
Do you know what drew them together in the first place?
I just know they met at a wedding and my dad was this foreign exchange student, this attractive young foreign exchange student that...
All the Ukrainian girls were kind of falling for.
And my mom was incredibly beautiful and kind of just gave him the cold eye.
She didn't really look at him or really want to talk to him, but she caught his eye.
And then that's, I guess, it was just a physical attraction that probably just lust that drew them together.
And I think they got married six months later after meeting.
Well, I'll tell you this.
My very first serious girlfriend, Svetlana.
Very Russian. My second serious girlfriend, very Ukrainian.
Anyway, just bye-bye.
You all bake some lovely crumpets.
Yeah, she was really gorgeous when she was younger.
I mean, she still is. You take what you want.
And then the bill comes due.
All right, all right.
Actually, no, I shouldn't say. They were nice women for the most part.
Or girls, I guess, at that point.
Yeah, I'm almost in my teens.
Anyway. So...
Yeah, Steph, Russia Connection confirmed.
Somebody pointed out, and it's an interesting question, that's why it's great to have these comments, is that, do you ever get the feeling, or if you look back, do you think some of the times when your mom was dropping you off at the, for hours and hours, I guess, at the parks, was she having an affair?
Was she dropping you off so she could be with a lover?
I have no idea. Not to my knowledge.
She still hasn't ever said what she was doing, other than Aaron, supposedly, when she would drop us off.
Okay. Okay.
Got it. All right.
We have not yet excavated the Heart of Darkness.
Which is fine. I just wanted to know the progress here, but I've put on my pith helmet and my goggles for, I assume, the next part of the story, because it does get pretty dark, right?
I mean, we're kind of joking around a little bit here, but the story does get pretty dark as we go forward, right?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. So what happens next?
So my mom files for divorce, and she remarries this guy who kind of comes out of nowhere, which is this pastor from another church.
And within the same year, my father also remarries, and he remarries my sister's best friend, my oldest sister's best friend, a woman who is 23 years younger than him.
Who marries your oldest sister's best friend?
My dad. Your dad marries your older sister's best friend, 23-year age gap.
Yes. It's your father, Leonardo DiCaprio.
I just gotta check these things.
No. I mean, he's a handsome man, but he's not that handsome.
I still don't understand.
They're still married and I don't understand.
No one understands that relationship.
Did they have more kids?
So they did.
They had two. One child died and they had another child who's a young girl.
Okay. Wow.
Wow. Yeah.
Oh, man. Okay. Creep factor, not quite maximum, but certainly creeping up.
Creep factor, creeping up.
All right. So we got to, before your parents separated, how much you said that they would be fighting and you sort of crawl out to listen, what sort of conflicts were going on?
I didn't always understand because they would switch in and out between talking in Russian and English and my Russian isn't good at all.
I can't speak and I can only kind of understand if like they're talking to me slow enough and they would be talking really fast and or sometimes they would just be yelling at each other.
Plus as a child you may not know some of the words they'd be using.
At least I hope you wouldn't, right?
Right, yeah. So I don't know what it was exactly that they were arguing about other than that my mom was mad at my dad for not being around or something.
I think money, I know money was always a really big issue because we were pretty poor growing up.
We lived off food stamps and got our food from a food program and we actually didn't pay for rent either.
We were living in this house with quite a few other people living in there as well, and there was a woman who kind of ran the whole show, and she paid for our rent, which I didn't know until this past year, actually.
Well, how did that go about?
I mean, that's pretty nice.
She is...
It's kind of complicated what her...
She supposedly she's my Grammy or she would make everyone call her Grammy.
She was kind of the head of the church.
She was definitely running the show.
She was like a big time.
She was actually a divorce lawyer, funny enough.
And she had this house, this big house that was split up into apartments.
And we lived in one of the apartments.
And I think she was married to my dad's dad, so my actual grandfather.
I'm going to take up half the wall with the lines here, like just coming in and out of these relationships.
Wow, that's something else.
All right. So your parents, they split, right?
They didn't sort of hang around in the same place while the divorce was going on.
Did they like physically separate?
No, so my mom was...
We moved into another house.
We actually got a house and we moved out of the apartment.
And my mom was planning on living downstairs in this extra bedroom, kind of running the household and taking care of the kids.
I don't know why she ever thought that was going to work out.
And then my dad was pretty pissed off at her because he found out about this pastor that she was seeing because he would actually sneak into the house at night to pick her up or see her.
And he caught him coming into the house one time.
So they were around for a little bit together in the same house.
And then I don't know if my dad kicked my mom out or what happened, but she ended up moving out.
And then the young wife moved right in after my mom moved out.
You mean the friend of your eldest sister's?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that's a bit of an F you to your mom, right?
The moment that you break up and you say to someone, you're replaceable, you're trying to destroy their sense of individuality or being loved or lovable.
Right. Okay. And then what happened?
Well, and then I had to decide who I was going to live with, whether I wanted to live with my mom or my dad, and I chose my mom because I wasn't really ever close with my dad, didn't really know him, and didn't like this woman who was suddenly moving in, this young woman who she also had two kids previous to from another marriage.
You mean the 23-year-old?
Yeah, yep. She was okay.
All right. I guess a slightly different cultural timeframe, but all right.
All right. I'm there. Yes.
She's a single mom.
And yes, so she moved in with her two young kids who were pretty annoying and I didn't really like them.
And my mom always talked pretty badly about my dad.
And so I decided to live with her because I thought my dad was like the devil and So I moved in with her and her and this pastor that she remarried.
And we were actually homeless for a little bit.
We were living with his parents for a little while because he didn't have a house.
He didn't have a place to live and he was living with his parents.
50-something-year-old man, and we were living in his childhood bedroom, and I would sleep on the floor.
Oh, my God. I have this vision of the house collapsing, but the mold staying up.
Right. All right.
So you're sleeping in your dad's childhood bedroom while he's sleeping with a 23-year-old down the hall.
Oh, no, sorry. Your mom.
Yeah, I'm living with my mom.
That's who I decided to live with.
Okay, so he moved back in with his parents.
I mean, I guess he didn't make money.
He didn't do much professionally.
Is that right? My stepdad?
Yeah. Yeah, well, he was a car salesman and he always talked about making a lot of money, but clearly he didn't make much money.
That's why he moved in with his parents.
He said that the housing market was too hard to find a place.
But we were living with his parents for quite some time.
And then we moved into his sister's house.
And that's where we lived for quite a bit.
I'm sorry, is this...
Which country are you in at the moment?
I'm in the US. The US, okay.
Okay, got it. Got it.
Okay. And then?
Oh, and then...
Well, then I kind of started to see my stepfather as my father.
He... Took the place of my already pretty absent father and I really admired him and I loved him a lot.
And he loved that.
He loved that I was his new child.
And we had a good relationship.
But I started noticing from an early age, like just feeling uncomfortable around him because he would say graphic things.
Like he would say some sexually graphic things around me.
I would also hear them having sex, my mom and my stepdad.
And he would, like, almost make a show of it.
It was pretty uncomfortable.
Sorry, how old were you at this time?
I was nine. Oh, God.
Parents, please, please, please keep it quiet.
My God. Yeah.
You know, to kids, it just sounds like assault.
It just sounds like violence.
Yeah. Wow.
Okay. Okay.
And do you remember what sort of graphic things would he say?
Oh, like, stuff like your mom and I don't need lube, and, um, like, I used to fuck 20-year-olds before I met your mom, and I could get whoever I wanted, and, like, you know, you're gonna start getting boobs soon, and all men just wanna fuck you, and just, like, stuff like that, and it would be explicit like that, too.
Like, he would just say, fuck in front of me, and Oh my god.
But at the same time, sprinkling God on top of it all.
Right. I'm...
Oh god, I'm so sorry. Sophia, that's just unbelievably appalling that you've got this creepy, freaky, greasy, scummy guy bragging in graphic terms to a nine-year-old.
Um... Was your mom ever around when this was going on?
Yeah, oh yeah.
She never said anything.
She wasn't always around, but yeah, I remember he used to brag that the neighbor was always flirting with him and she would talk naked from her window to him because we made a garden in their yard.
They let us use part of their property.
And, uh, he would always brag about that, and I think I told him one day that to stop talking about it, and he just, like, lost it on me and said I can't talk back to him, and, uh, I have no right to do that and that he's the head of the household.
Well, and listen, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just wanted to sort of point out two things somewhat to the audience.
But the first is that, you know, people are saying, oh, this was a pastor.
oh, they're Christians, it's like, okay, well, Christianity fully accepts, fully accepts that human beings are sinful and fallible.
And it also fully accepts that there will be a lot of evil people who cloak themselves in the cloth, right?
There will be a lot of evil people who will enter into positions of authority within Christianity, but that the first place that the church is going to, the first place the devil is going to target is the church.
So I just really want people to understand that Christianity has explicitly and for thousands of years warned that the church can be the greatest source of immorality because that's where the devil is going to target and the devil is very cunning and all that.
So if people think that somehow Christianity is detonated by this pedo-priest or whatever you want to call him, Then just understand that Christ was the first person to warn about the corruption that comes from cloaking yourself in moral virtues.
So that's the first thing that I wanted to mention.
About this aspect of things.
So just don't jump to the conclusion that this is somehow damning Christianity.
It would be like somebody using UPB to hoodwink people would not invalidate UPB, especially if UPB warns that people, as I've always have, that people will attempt to use virtue to mask what is happening, to mask corruption and all of this kind of stuff.
So I just really wanted to...
To point that out. The second, I guess, is I always find it incredible what kind of guys get women.
I always, like, literally find it jaw-droppingly shocking.
Like, your mom, as you said, is a beautiful woman.
And this is who she ends up with.
As a beautiful woman, she could have got a nice guy, I assume, right?
And I hear this, you know, I listen to this podcast on occasion, Crime Junkies.
And, you know, there's shows where, oh yeah, some guy, he kills two girls, right?
And then, you know, he ends up getting caught and he's like, oh yeah, his girlfriend then came forward and said, oh yeah, he'd sit in front of the TV and he'd be staring at some horror movie and he'd said, I've done that stuff.
And so guys who literally will strangle women in a ditch get girlfriends.
Guys who put creepy, oily, I don't need no lube tentacle fingerprints on innocent little girls, well, they get a beautiful woman.
I remember this when I was a teenager.
Like, some of the hottest girls, some of the most attractive girls, some of the prettiest girls, would just end up with these trolls.
And it's just like, okay, and I understand it now.
Self-image is everything.
And it doesn't matter what you look like from the outside.
It's how you feel on the inside.
That's what's going to dictate who you end up with.
But it is really, you know, it's one of these things kind of annoying for men, right?
That it's like an insult to all good men that a beautiful woman is going to end up Yeah.
Well, he was really handsome.
I mean, he was a really handsome guy.
And he was also very charming.
He was very, very charming.
He knows how to, I guess, I don't know, make people feel good.
Well, he's a car salesman.
Yeah, he's a car salesman.
But he's not that charming because he's a failure as a car salesman, basically, right?
Yeah. Right.
So he's not that charming and he's not that good.
He's not like Bernie Madoff, charming, right?
Right. I mean, Bernie Madoff was so charming that a woman who was writing a book about Bernie Madoff went to Bernie Madoff in prison And said to Bernie Madoff, listen, I need an exclusive because it's going to take me a while to write this book.
And if you give interviews to other people, it's going to be really bad.
And he's like, absolutely.
I totally understand.
I will give you an exclusive, right?
And then, of course, she hears rumors that he's talking with a bunch of other reporters and this, that, and the other.
And she confronts him and he gives all these explanations and all of that.
And then she goes home and one of her colleagues says, wait.
You're writing an entire book on how fraudulent Bernie Madoff is and he defrauded you.
I mean, how good is this guy?
So, you know, Bernie Madoff, I mean, complete human predator on the nth degree.
And by the way, the SEC was informed by multiple people for many times.
There was one guy who handed over all the data as to how Bernie Madoff was a complete and total fraud and a liar who was stealing billions of dollars.
And the SEC just, you know, you know, we'll get to it someday.
Anyway, so sorry, just by the by, it's just wild to think, you know, because I'm sure there are a lot of men who would look at someone like your mom and say, wow, she'd be really like to take her on a date.
It's like, nope, because the uber creep, the turbo creep has her.
Yeah, she's got a track record of not picking the greatest men because she was actually married before my dad that I found out about later.
She was in a very abusive marriage and I think my dad helped her get out of that marriage.
Wow, good. Okay, so how did things progress with Uncle Spanky Fingers?
Well, around the age of 13, I started to see him for who he really was.
I started to realize how much of a hypocrite he was.
And then that just grew into this hate, this, like, Really deep hate that I had for him.
I'm sorry, because we just kind of jumped from 9 to 13, and that's fine.
I just wanted to know, was there a progression?
Or did he kind of just do this shark circling at the same distance, or did it slowly wind in?
Or did he get further away?
Or where was the creep factor over those four years?
Over those four years, so...
I remember he told me he saw one of my sisters naked one time.
And he said that he was appalled or something.
And that was a big thing.
My sister said that never happened, but he says that he saw her naked.
And then he – I've locked out a lot of stuff from this time as things started to go south with my relationship with him.
So I don't recall a lot of information.
Are you recalling it but don't want to share?
Don't share anything you don't want to, right?
I mean, I think the more you share, the better it is, but don't share anything you don't want to.
Is it that you recall but don't want to share or like there is a big block there?
No, there is a big block there.
He was just very manipulative.
He would tell me...
That I needed to go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate, get married, and just be a great wife.
Always telling me I was going to be such a good wife.
And like point out how my body was changing too as I was going through puberty.
And I remember I wanted to wear leggings because leggings got popular.
And he like got really mad one time when I walked out wearing leggings and Like, refused to let me go to school and my mom made me change into a baggy sweater and baggy pants.
Yeah, because, I mean, what if you go to school and some guy says there's something inappropriate to you?
Right, yeah. Like, I F 23-year-olds and I don't need no lube with your mom.
You're like, oh my god, oh my god.
Yeah. And your mom knows about this stuff, knows about it.
She's in the room sometimes, right?
Yep, absolutely, yeah.
Can we pray together for a cleansing fire?
Would that be okay? Like, we just get on our knees?
And, you know, I don't even want a flood because a flood is too gentle.
I just want cleansing columns of fire.
I want society to put the same effort into dealing with these guys and sometimes women as it does with a bad flu.
That's all I'm asking. Just can we throw the same level of effort into dealing with pedophilia as we do into dealing with...
COVID. Anyway, cleansing fire.
I don't know what that is in Latin or Ukrainian or Russian, but, you know, maybe we'll do the chant afterwards.
Cleansing fire from above.
That's what we need. That's what we need.
Good Lord. All right.
All right. So the creep factor, it sounds like it's going up a little bit, but not too, too bad.
Yeah. So, and then apparently, when I was about 11 years old, my oldest sister approached me, who's 10 years older than me.
So she was 21 or 22.
I can't remember if I was 11 or 12.
But she approached me and asked me if he'd ever touched me inappropriately or if I was scared at night.
And I... I was surprised by that, kind of, because I knew that he was creepy, but it didn't really register with me at that age.
I didn't understand.
It had just become normalized to me, like, oh, this is just how he is.
This is normal.
And she told me that he molested her.
Yeah. And I asked her if she had told mom, and she said yes, and my mom apparently didn't say anything or didn't believe her.
Okay, so sorry, and I'm absolutely appalled, of course, but I'm just trying to get my time frame correct.
So you are 11.
Your sister is 21.
Your parents separated when you were eight.
So he's been around for three years.
So that would have made her 18.
And when did he...
Was he around before? I'm just trying to sort of figure out where she was in this situation or how old she was.
She... Or why she was there?
No, no, no. How old was she when he molested her?
Oh, it happened when she was like 21.
It happened a few weeks prior before she told me this, apparently.
So it wasn't child molestation, which is obviously even worse, but it was like a form of sexual touching against her will, obviously, right?
Yes. Yep. Okay.
And why is she...
Okay, so she's trying to figure out...
I guess she went to your siblings as a whole and tried to figure out if this was a pattern of behavior.
Is that right? No, all I know is that she went to me and asked me because I was the only one living with my mom because I was the youngest.
My brother chose to live with my dad and my other sister was also out of the house.
I'm trying to figure out why she's coming to you and not the police.
I mean, you're 11. Okay, she's trying to gather evidence to whether she can go to the police or like I don't go to the police for God's sakes.
Her and I actually had a big argument about this a couple months ago because I demanded this.
I asked her precisely that.
Why didn't you go to the police or call Child Protective Services?
And she said she did go to the police.
She said she went to a friend of hers, some friend who was a police officer and told the police officer who didn't believe her or said that because she doesn't have any evidence, it wouldn't hold up in court.
Do you believe that?
No, I don't.
She's a pathological liar, so I don't believe that.
Right. I mean, look, it's an ugly and difficult thing to do.
Lauren Southern just released a video she did with a cop because some guy grabbed Lauren Southern by unmentioned lady parts in a grocery store and she went to the cops and the cops said, oh, yeah, well, you know, we'll take your clothing.
We'll get the DNA off it.
And now in this situation, there was CCTV, there were witnesses.
So this guy, I think, was on probation or so I think he went back to jail for good, right?
But... The he said, she said stuff can be tough, but at least you can establish whether there was touching, and of course, if there was touching, it's a stepdaughter, and there was touching in a sexual, like a breast or a butt or genitals, that would be pretty bad, right? Oh, and by the way, the woman, if I remember rightly, if I understood the video that Lauren put out correctly, the cop said about half the complaints from the women turn out to be false.
Half the complaints from the women turn out to be false.
My God. Absolutely appalling.
I mean, to me, you make a false accusation, you get the jail term that the person you accused would have gotten.
Just the way it is. All right.
Okay, okay. So...
You said no, right?
I mean, did you say, oh, he's being creepy and inappropriate, but that's a no as to the actual sexual touching, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I said no.
I said no.
You know, he's just the typical, the way he acts, creepy.
You know, he says creepy things, but he's never touched me.
And she said, okay.
And then I... Honestly, I didn't believe her at that time either because I didn't understand any of it and I had a hard time believing it was true.
And she was pretty in and out of the house anyways.
And she had just been divorced too, actually.
She got married at 19 and then divorced a year later.
Right. Okay.
So we got you to 11.
Then there was a bit of a Fast forward to 13, right?
Yeah, 12, 13.
And did you feel uneasy at night?
Did you feel like you can't be alone with the guy?
Was it just, oh, he just talks and you just kind of ignore it?
Or how did that play? Yeah, I definitely felt, I always felt scared at night.
I always was like waking up and like just wide awake.
Looking at my door, making sure my mom shut my door tight at night with it locked.
I remember I had an obsession with that, making sure that the windows were closed and locked and the doors were locked.
So I definitely was scared at night.
I just remember having a constant...
Just crippling fear at nighttime.
When I was alone with him, I was definitely uncomfortable.
I was always a little bit uncomfortable.
Was he fairly...
Because this stuff can be a little compulsive for these creeps, right?
Like it's just they can't stop themselves.
Almost it seems that way, right?
Was it fairly constant?
Were there times when it was less or...?
Yeah, there were times when it was less.
I definitely have some good memories with him, of him taking me fishing or driving me to school in the morning.
It wasn't a constant flow of inappropriate comments, but yeah, it would happen pretty often.
What happened next?
After I was...
Yeah, so 12, 11, 12...
Let's see.
I switched schools a lot during this time because we moved around quite a bit.
So I was always in a new environment around new people and...
My parents or my mom and my stepdad at the time decided when I was 12 to take me out of public school and put me into a private school.
So they put me into this private school which was a very liberal private school and I was able to get a scholarship and financial aid to go there.
And my whole world changed when I started going to that school because my parents were pretty conservative and I started thinking quite liberal because I had all these liberal teachers and Yeah, thinking pretty left, I guess, is a better way to put it.
And my parents thought I was getting indoctrinated at the school, which, I mean, they're right to an extent.
But it also started to make me realize how much of a liar he was because he was putting up this front of being this, like, pastor, family man in church.
But at home, he was pretty emotionally abusive and...
Creepy. And sometimes volatile.
He had anger problem, anger issues where he would punch a hole in the wall or like go and punch his car door.
One time I remember he threw out the food that my mom made for dinner because it wasn't cooked the way he wanted it to be cooked.
So... Well, okay.
Okay. And then...
And then I started rebelling a lot at this time as I was getting into my teens and just trying to stay away from home as much as possible because I had this hatred of him.
Um, and things became pretty dicey between him and I. We would, he would instigate arguments with me.
It was usually about like, I don't know, politics or something that I wasn't really educated on whatsoever.
And He would just start these arguments with me and make me feel pretty pathetic and kind of dumb and just embarrassed.
I was really embarrassed to always talking to him or being around him.
When I would fight back with him, he would threaten to kick me out or say things like, I can ruin your reputation.
I have things I can say about you.
That will make you never have friends again or just like all sorts of threats.
Wow, I mean this is like the early de-platforming, right?
Yeah, right.
And how was your mom getting along with him or how was he getting along with your mom at this point?
Um, they would fight and they would get into arguments.
Uh, but my mom, she's really non-confrontational.
So she just tends to default to stonewalling and not saying anything.
Um, and he would usually just like dig into her for something.
Uh, and sometimes she would yell back at him, but she mostly took her anger out on me.
I noticed she would like, if I broke a cup or something, uh, Did something, she would just yell at me.
So she wasn't really that present either.
And again, she would disappear for hours on end in a day.
I have a memory of my mom always, always being late to pick me up from school and being the last kid.
Waiting on the curb for her and always having to call a teacher come and get me and ask, where is your mom?
Is she coming? Does she know that she was supposed to get you an hour ago?
So she was just absent, just like totally emotionally and physically absent.
Right, right. Do you know why she stayed with this guy?
It wasn't the money, right?
I mean, was it the looks? What was it that would keep her?
She said she had no choice.
When I ask her now, I've tried having conversations with her about it, and she said she had no money and no choice but to stay with him.
So she didn't have any kind of income or anything like that?
No, no. She's never had a job in the US. Too pretty to work, right?
Too prideful, yeah, as well.
Too pretty and prideful.
I mean, would she say that she had more choice than you?
What do you mean? Have more choice than me?
Yeah. In what context?
Well, you're the kid. You couldn't do anything at all, right?
Really. Oh, right.
But she could stay.
She could go. There's shelters.
There's welfare. There's lots of...
There's other guys. There's like, you know, there's lots of options for her, but there's no option for you, right?
Right. So she basically gave up the security of her children for money, if I understand this correctly.
Yes. Like she sold you in a way.
So that she didn't have to work.
She was willing to offer up her kids to this turbo fucking creep.
Yeah. If I'm wrong, if I'm being unfair, you know, please tell me.
I mean, I don't want to characterize things unfairly.
That's sort of where my heart is leading me, which doesn't mean that that's rational or philosophical or anything.
I'm just telling you what's in my heart.
No, that's... That's totally right.
I mean, yeah, I don't know how much she really cares for her kids over herself.
Oh, no, you know that.
No, you know that. No, that's one thing we absolutely know, how much she cares.
Like, we have, I mean, we have, like, an hour of empirical evidence so far that is unbelievably damning.
So, like, there's lots of things I don't know.
I don't know where you lived.
I don't know your middle name.
I don't know your birthday. And don't tell me.
I'm just saying there's lots of things I don't know.
But there's a couple of things I do know, and one of the things I do know, and please, audience, correct me if I'm going astray or I'm letting my heart take me on a journey, but we absolutely know how much she cared for her children.
She put them directly and clearly in staggering harm's way for money.
Yep. Yeah, exactly.
And I'm incredibly sorry for that.
I'm incredible.
This should not have been your experience.
You know, you're supposed to be treasured and protected and loved and people are supposed to enjoy spending time with you and you're not supposed to be exposed to anything age-inappropriate and you're supposed to be guided you're supposed to be treasured and protected and loved and people are supposed to *Sigh* Yeah. Yeah, I definitely felt like things were...
It was always my responsibility to handle things well.
Because she told me, always told me, that I was handling the divorce the best and I was the only one that understood.
Because I felt like I always had to defend her and their relationship.
Because everyone told me that...
Well, everyone hated him first.
This was before I grew to hate him.
But the one thing that I don't understand is how everyone knew that he was such a creep and no one did anything.
No one did anything.
So I have to get back to your biological dad.
Which, for all of his faults, and it seems like there were quite a few, he didn't seem to have that, well, yeah, I guess he did marry your sister's friend, right?
Yeah. Okay, that's a little weird, but that's not quite in the realm of, I mean, certainly nowhere near this guy's creep planet, right?
Right. So, I mean, I assume your dad would have known or heard about it, or did you say, or did your mom say, or was he ever present for it, or what?
I would tell him, I would definitely always tell him what I was experiencing and he just would get really quiet and wouldn't really say much.
He was pretty cowardly about standing up for himself or the kids and then he, whenever he did show emotion, it was anger and just anger.
I remember during the divorce, he was pretty violent toward my brother.
I have a memory of him actually throwing him down the stairs and my brother getting a big gash on his back.
So my dad...
He knew. I don't know if he knows about the molestation with my sister, but he knew that this guy was a creep because he used to sneak into the house during the beginning of their divorce when my mom was still living in the house.
The stepdad, before he was married to my mom, would sneak into the house and my dad just Didn't really do anything.
He said, get out of my house.
But he never threatened violence or called the police or anything.
No, because that other guy is an adult.
And people who bully children, they don't want to bully adults.
Because adults can fight back.
Adults can go to the police. Adults can punch them.
Adults can throw them down the stairs.
I mean, if you want to bully someone, that's no good.
I mean, you want to bully a little kid, right?
Because little kids don't have any power.
Little kids have nothing to do but submit.
Little kids can't fight back.
And so, yeah.
I mean, if you're a bully, of course you don't want to take on an adult.
You just want to corner a little kid and throw him down the stairs so you can feel like a tough guy, right?
Yeah. That's pretty accurate of my dad.
So... How did things play out post-13?
Post-13, I tried to get away from the house as much as I could.
I stayed at friends' houses a lot of the time and just tried to avoid being home as much as possible around my stepdad and my mom.
And yeah, I just was, I started partying a lot in high school and I was like, I was Um, being kind of promiscuous, but always, always doing well in school so that, you know, my parents couldn't really do any...
I just was really secretive, too.
I kept everything a secret with what I was doing.
Um, and my...
But I feel like it was definitely obvious that I was getting up to no good, but my mom never confronted me about it.
And my dad sure as hell didn't know anything that was going on because he wasn't really in the picture at all because he was starting a new family with another woman.
Right, right.
But he didn't molest you, right?
It was just your sister. The stepdad, yeah.
And I'm sorry, I don't mean to say just your sister, like, well, that's all right, I mean, or anything like that.
I mean, but in terms of who he focused on, to your knowledge, it was only, so only is better, only your sister.
Yeah, to my knowledge.
Right. And did the creepy comments stop at some point?
Yeah, he pretty much started to ignore me when I was 15 years old.
15, I would say. He just stopped talking to me altogether.
And do you know why he did that?
Not really. I think it's because he knew that...
I think he knew that I hated him.
No, no, he knew. No, it's not that.
Sorry, you're a very, very nice young lady.
You really are. And it's not because he knew you hated him the whole time, right?
So why would he stop when you're 15?
I don't know, because I've gone through puberty.
I No, you went through puberty before then, right?
Right, yeah. Well, can I tell you?
Yeah. So, when did you start dating?
I started dating when I was 15, yeah.
So, what's the new factor for him?
Oh, other men?
Younger boys?
You start dating.
He doesn't know. You could be dating a 16 or 17-year-old who's built, right?
Who's worked out. And so if he lays a hand on you or creeps you out, then you could tell your boyfriend and the boyfriend could come beat the shit out of him, right?
Right. Wow, it's never crossed my mind.
So, I mean, it's not super uncommon that a man who's creeping out on a stepdaughter or a daughter, the moment she starts dating, he's like, whoa, that's enough of that.
Because now some guy and his brothers could come over and say, did you say this to my girlfriend?
Let's have a talk outside, right?
Right. Right.
I mean, if you look at the patterns of your life, if you've had abusive parents, if you look at the patterns of your life, it's all driven by abuse.
By covering up, by keeping it quiet, by keeping it silent.
There's a reason why you kept moving.
It's so you couldn't form permanent social bonds.
There's a reason why they put you in a school that was skeptical of Christianity and And hostile to Christianity if they're very liberal, very left, right?
So you wouldn't gain any allies.
You wouldn't meet any real Christians probably that way, right?
But you see, here's the thing, and I'll say this to the audience, and I'm sorry to pause on this, and I really want to keep on with the story, but it's just too important to drop.
So listen, if you have not done significant immorality in the world, And by that I mean things for which there really is no restitution.
If you've not abused children, if you've not beaten people up to the point where they're physically injured in some significant way or beaten people up at all, if you've not terrorized people because you're an addict of some kind and you've emotionally brutalized people and stolen from them and so on,
if you've not done significant evil in this world, you don't know what it's like To have this problem in your brain, which is what if I get caught?
What if I get found out?
What if somebody goes to the cops?
What if somebody beats me up?
What if somebody retaliates?
You don't know what it's like to have this crazy bat in your room, so to speak.
Like you and I, we just go to sleep or whatever, right?
But if there's a bat in the room, we probably can't go to sleep.
We can't rest until we deal with the bat in some manner because we don't want the bat chewing on our jugular while we're sleeping.
We don't know what it's like to have a bat in the bedroom.
We just don't. And so for you, this is what I say, like you're a very nice young lady and I respect you enormously and you're doing great, very, very well in the conversation.
And so it's hard for you to look at life and say, oh gosh, okay, well what if I've been creeping out on an innocent little girl since she was eight or nine years old?
You don't have that in your head as something that needs to be managed and figured out.
And of course, all of the people who did this shit were not exactly expecting people like me to come along and open this whole can of worms on the internet.
This is one of the reasons why people are so hostile to what it is that I do.
Because, you know, I kind of get where they're coming from.
Because society... Society used to be about the uncovering of crimes, and now society is just the covering up of crimes.
It's all society does, is cover up crimes.
It covers up theft from the young, abuse of the young, drugging of the young, exploitation of the young.
It covers up counterfeiting through the Federal Reserve.
It covers up intergenerational debt slavery through the national debt.
All it does is cover up crimes.
I mean, take a silly example, not a silly example, but a distant example, right?
One of the reasons why the Taliban was popular...
In Afghanistan, was that the traditional Afghani culture has significant portions of child rape involved.
Because there are these, I can't remember the name of it, but there's this ritual where the little boys dance and then the older men rape them.
And the Taliban put a stop to that.
Whatever other horrors the Taliban do, they put a stop to that.
And then when the U.S. overthrew the Taliban, this practice came back.
And in fact, the soldiers, the American soldiers in Afghanistan were told not to interfere with this pedophilia, not to interfere with this child rape, because it's cultural.
So now, right, so this crime against this rape of children was assuaged by the Taliban.
The U.S. got there. It's back.
And, you know, now, of course, the U.S. is going to leave.
This pact is just going to spread even more.
The Taliban is going to come back because people just don't want this happening to their children.
And they're, well, okay, well, the Taliban will stop it.
They'll just run to that, right?
And if it comes with, you know, fundamentalist beliefs, then okay, but at least my boy isn't going to get raped in these horrible ways.
So that, this covering up of crimes, that's all society is doing these days because generally the government has become so powerful that if you've committed a crime, that's where you want to be.
That's where you want to be is in the government and all of that.
And so... It's really, I mean, if you want to understand the world, and I know we all do, and I'm still on this journey, right?
But if you want to understand the world, you have to think of a bat in the bedroom.
You have to think, okay, I don't have a bat in my bedroom, so I can just go to sleep.
But what if there was a bat in the bedroom?
And what if there was a bat in the bedroom every night?
And what if everywhere I went, there was a bat that followed me?
What if everywhere I went, there was a bat flitting around my head?
And it never fed? And it never went away?
I mean, that would be, it would drive you crazy, right?
So if you don't have a significant amount of guilt and self-horror and potential criminality to manage, then you really don't know what it's like out there in the world for a lot of people.
You know, most people, you know, they circumcise their kids, they put their kids in terrible government schools, they will be happy to drug their kids, they will hit their kids.
So we don't do that, most of us here hope, right?
We don't do that. So we don't know what it's like to be on the other side and have these bodies, like you're walking around just dragging all these corpses around you, except the corpses are dead, except shows like this bring them to life.
So you drag around all these bodies, which is really unpleasant and stinky and smelly and dangerous from a health standpoint, but at least they're dead.
And then shows like this come along, and we start saying the magic words that bring these bodies back to life, and they are angry, and they are red-eyed and horror and hunger-filled.
And so this ritual that we're doing of bringing the dead back to life, and I don't mean you, the dead, I mean their guilt, right?
This ritual that we do, this public magic spell that we speak with each other that brings the dead back to life, turns a guilt movie into a horror movie.
Like we are literally changing the script of people's lives and inserting the zombies of their own bad conscience.
And they really get angry and they're really full of horror because these bodies stay down until we bring them out of the graves, right?
I mean, this is what Jesus is supposed to do in the end days, right?
He comes and he brings the bodies back to life.
And we're kind of doing that in a little way here through these conversations.
Not your bodies, but their bodies.
The horrors of what they've done.
We are bringing them back to life.
And people are hearing movements in their house.
They are looking behind at the chains with which they have tied the bodies because you can't ever get rid of those.
And they're seeing that the hands are beginning to twitch and the heads are beginning to turn and the growls are beginning to come.
And the arms are beginning to reach.
And they're absolutely, completely, and totally terrified.
And of course, they can't look at themselves, they can't fight the bodies, so they try and fight us instead.
Just so you understand the world that we bring into being for other people when we talk about this stuff.
So yeah, look at the Catholic Church.
There's been pedophilia there, of course.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, what is it?
Prince and Michael Jackson, the Lutherans.
You look at Orthodox Jews, high levels of child abuse, and you look at Islam, high levels of child abuse.
The ancient Aztecs had a God that required the tears of children, and they would actually pull out the fingernails of children and physically torture them in order to...
Make sure that they got the tears of children.
This society is built on the bones of children, you and I. When I was a little kid, I've not mentioned this before, I'll just touch on it briefly here because I want to make sure that we keep the focus on you.
My mother had a boyfriend who had a lot of money.
Do you know what else he had in our apartment?
Entirely illegal photographic material.
I'll leave it at that. Entirely illegal photographic material that really revealed to me what kind of danger I was in and what she was willing to put me at risk of.
So it is just appalling what is going on out there.
So let's get back to you.
We've got the teenage years.
You're starting to date. In terms of promiscuity, where...
Did you sort of fall on this particular spectrum?
Was it like a different guy every weekend?
Or was it like serial dating?
Or how did it go from there? I was...
Yeah, I wasn't sleeping.
I didn't have sex until I was 16.
But I was definitely getting a lot of attention.
And sorry to interrupt.
Did you inherit your mom's looks?
Was that part of the issue?
No. Yeah, I definitely look a lot like my mom.
So that's a lot of power for a person who has felt powerless for a lot of their life.
Now there's a lot of power because you're getting a lot of male attention, right?
So you're kind of going from feeling really helpless to a like, you know, surging amount of electrical sexual market value power, right?
Right. Right. Yeah, and I was confused about my sexuality, too, for a little bit.
I didn't know whether I was straight or not.
Well, straight didn't look very good, right?
Yeah. Just like, oh, yeah, I know a lot of straight people.
They're horrible, right?
Yeah. So that was for the promiscuity bit, just...
Getting a lot of attention and going out on dates, dates with seniors when I was a freshman.
Definitely getting attention from older men and really enjoying that, really liking older boys looking to me and Wanting to be with me or something.
That just gave me such a rush.
So help me understand the rush.
Was it that they would take you out for a nice dinner so you had access to some resources that you wouldn't otherwise have had?
Or was it mostly the attention?
Was it like flowers and presents?
What was the major part of it for you?
Oh, access to resources I didn't have.
I wasn't allowed to take driver's ed.
They wouldn't let me drive and my mom also tracked me on my phone.
So I was trying to get away as much as possible, away from my mom and my stepdad and just their tight grip on me.
So I turned to older boys who had more resources.
Right. So a guy would ask you out, he'd take you out for a nice dinner, maybe you'd go see a movie back in the day when you could, and you felt special, and you felt desired, and you felt wanted, and that's pretty, it's very tempting, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Right, right. And did the guys meet your stepdad?
Did they, I mean, did they...
No, no, I never brought them... There's a big shield usually there.
Like, I want to stay attractive, so I'm not bringing you home, because then you'll see the...
Right. I never brought anyone around.
I was too scared to.
I didn't want to bring anyone around him or my mom, but especially him.
And what were you scared of?
His reaction, their reaction, both or what?
I was scared of his reaction, yeah.
Because he always told me I wasn't allowed to date until I was 30.
30? Yeah.
Okay. I mean, I assume that was kind of like one of these not great jokes?
Yeah. They're a pretty bad joke, I guess, if it was a joke, but definitely always told me I was forbidden to date.
I wasn't allowed to do that and that I was on this path that I needed to stay on if I wanted to be successful so I didn't end up like my sisters is what he would say.
Right, right. Okay.
Okay. Well, and of course, you can't date because the boys could be dangerous, right, to him?
Yep, exactly.
Right. Okay.
And what would happen, I mean, with a young man or boys that you liked, and it just didn't kind of work out?
Or how did that play?
Okay. I got a thrill from just getting attention from as many different guys as I could.
I never really wanted a boyfriend.
I never wanted just one guy.
I kind of just wanted to keep on charming as many as I could.
So I never had a boyfriend in high school.
Well, until I was a senior, but yeah.
And was it in the nature of like an addiction, you'd get the high and then would there be a crash or would you just want another high or how did it work in terms of like wanting lots of boyfriends?
Yeah, I would get a high and then I kind of would lose interest and then move on to another.
So that's what I did.
And did the boys want to keep dating you and you would just like ghost them or how would that play?
Yeah, exactly. I would always get them to like fall in love with me and then I would break it off or move on.
And why would you do that, do you think?
I mean, I know that there's the new resources thing, but what was your thought about that?
It made me feel powerful.
It made me... I feel like I was in control.
And yeah, it gave me a rush.
I mean, it's a little cruel.
And I don't mean to say that you're a cruel person, but I assume that some of the rush was, you know, men have caused a lot of trouble in my life.
Men have creeped me out.
They haven't defended me. They've hurt me.
And, you know, take that, male.
Right. I don't want to say what your motivation was in all of its instances, but that's one that strikes me, and if you tell me that's wrong, I'd certainly believe you.
No, I would say that's right.
I had a Yeah, I was definitely hurting a lot of boys and getting them to like me, fall in love with me, and then just ghosting them or ignoring them or sometimes, yeah, yeah, just doing that.
I remember I- Wait, sometimes, sometimes what?
Hang on, hang on. Hang on.
What was that? What was that little, we just hopped, little wee hop, skipping a jump over there.
What was that? I remember I cheated on my first boyfriend.
I would definitely be flirting with other guys while I was dating.
Whoever I was dating, I would try to make them jealous or envious.
I would be quite deceptive.
It's definitely very deceptive.
Right. Was there any boy who did want to...
who you were tempted to make a go?
Yeah, so I had a serious boyfriend who I moved in with right after I graduated, who was older, a little bit older, who I started seeing when I was 17.
And we dated, well, like a year and a half, maybe.
Yeah, I think I was...
Oh yeah, about a year, so 17 to 18.
And if there was a guy, I mean the guy that you were more interested in, what happened with that?
I found out he cheated on me and Then I moved out, and then I moved back in to give it another go, because I was on, I don't know, I was on the Jesus train.
I thought that bringing him to church was going to fix things, but it didn't.
He... Yeah, he just was pretty emotionally abusive and then I found out that he had a physical abuse record or domestic abuse from a previous girlfriend before that he lied about that he never had been arrested before because I remember I asked him that but I found out about it.
And sorry, there's just a couple of dudes in the chat who are struggling with empathy.
So listen, guys, I mean, did you ever know a friend of yours who got a lot of money as a teenager?
For some reason, right?
Maybe it was an inheritance. A friend of mine, his mother died, and he got $100,000 from her life insurance.
He was still in his teens.
And how sensible was he with that money?
Well... Not sensible at all.
He bought a computer, he bought a truck, he bought, they just blew it all, basically.
And, you know, so if you were, let's say you were 15 and somebody gave you a million dollars cash, how wise would you be with that?
Well, the answer is you wouldn't be wise with it at all, because you're still 10 years away from brain maturity.
So this young lady got a lot of power, a lot of demand after a rejected and abused and neglected childhood.
And she deals with it in the same way that men deal with getting a million dollars when they're 15.
Boys, right? I mean, what are you going to buy?
Is it going to be, oh, no, I'm going to go invest in Bitcoin.
Like, you wouldn't do that, right? So just...
Have some understanding, and people are probably processing...
Because here's the thing, too, right?
Here's the thing, too. So your process of, in a sense, seducing these guys...
Now, I understand it wasn't all sexual, so we're talking about...
You said you charmed them and they would fall in love with you, right?
Yeah. So you were...
And the reason you went from guy to guy...
Do you know why?
Do you know why? Um...
Not really, other than the fact that I got a rush from it or that I was bored or whatever.
Yeah, so I can tell you why you went from guy to guy.
And listen, when I say I can tell you why, if you disagree with me, you can totally tell me and it's your life, so don't let me tell you why.
But I'll tell you why, I think.
You went from guy to guy because you still hated men, and the reason you hated men was everyone thought you were so wonderful, but you were wounded, deeply wounded, from your childhood.
So you wanted to find a guy who would see through the beauty, who would see through the charm, and actually see you for who you were, but all of these guys were like, oh, you're the best, oh, you're the greatest, oh, I love you.
It's like, but you didn't feel like a strong and virtuous and courageous person.
You felt like a pretty hollowed-out shell from a brutalized childhood.
And the guys were all lying about this in a way because it was just lust and charm, not who you actually were.
And so you were like a punishment for the men who were lying to you, and they were lying to you because a man should get to know you, should find out about your childhood, should sympathize with all of that, and not just like, oh, you're so pretty, let's go on a date, and you're so charming, and you're so welcome, and you have great verbal skills, and you get a great sense of humor, and so you are very charming, but you wanted a guy...
Who would see through this shadow puppetry of I'm cool and pretty and unapproachable and sexy.
And you wanted a guy to actually see the wounded person there and empathize with that.
But instead, it was just this lusty shell bullshit that was going on.
And yeah, I'm with you, man.
Make him hurt. Yeah, make him pay.
Make him pay. I'm totally with you on that.
Make him pay. Until they stop lying to you.
Yeah, wow. Wow.
And none of them punched your creepy stepdad, right?
So, you know, it's, yeah, like, you need the woman and the man, right?
People need to see the real you.
They need to see the real you.
If you're going to have any empathy for them, why on earth should you have empathy for them?
They have no empathy for you.
They had no empathy for your history.
They didn't care to pierce through to the real you.
They didn't have any sense, like, why on earth isn't she bringing me home?
What's going on at home? What was her childhood like?
They weren't being empathetic to you.
They were trying to use you completely.
Why on earth would you have, like, yeah, use them, get some free dinners out of these lying bastards, right?
I'm with you. I'm with you, man.
And all these guys were like, oh, that's cruel.
Yes, there's a little bit of cruelty in it, but they were older for the most part and they should have been wiser.
So, yeah, screw them.
Or rather, don't screw them, but take their money.
Take their money. Right.
I hope that gives you some sense of like you weren't just being, you know, a bitch or mean.
But no, these guys are all bullshitting you, right?
All bullshitting you. Like, I remember when I was a teenager...
I was... I'm sorry, I'm just filtering here to make sure that I keep people anonymous, because it's not their fault I'm a public figure.
But anyway, so I went on a couple of dates with this girl, really, really liked her, and just it never clicked.
It never clicked in terms of like, I don't mean sex or anything like that, but just in terms of like any kind of real romance.
Anyway, so... Many years later, I had a couple of lunches with her because I ran into her downtown when I was working in the software industry.
And, well, don't you know, and I won't get into detail, she had an unbelievable, immense, horrifying personal family tragedy going on at the time.
Now, I was like, I don't know, 15 or 16 or something like that.
And so it's not like I had many skills to figure these things out.
If she had talked to me about it, I certainly would have listened.
I was a pretty good listener even back then.
And I didn't know the real her, but she was very pretty.
But I didn't know the real her.
I didn't know what was going on in her life.
Now, I didn't have any resources for an exploit because I was broke ass at that age as I have been from a good chunk of my youth.
But no, these guys, they weren't interested in the real you.
They didn't want to get to know you. They just wanted to stare at you and be charmed.
And yeah, you know, the brightly colored snakes tend to be pretty poisonous.
You don't pick them up. You get to learn about them, right?
Yep. So, yeah, I'm with you, man.
They need to be punished until they stop lying to you.
And I'm sorry that they didn't have a dad saying, okay, she's very pretty.
That's wonderful. You know, there's nothing wrong with being pretty.
Being pretty is my only crime, right?
So there's nothing wrong with being pretty.
But, you know, don't lie to a woman and say, oh, I just think you're wonderful.
It's like, no, you're pretty and you're charming.
You know, it's like the girls who's like, oh, I just want a boy who's cute and funny.
Do you want to get to know him as a human being?
Do you want to go through life and trials and struggles and tribulations and get old and sick and die?
No, he's cute and funny. She's pretty and charming.
It's like, come on. I mean, you deserve to smash up against these rocks if you're sailing that badly.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sorry, can you just back off your mic a little bit?
Because I'm getting this breathing thing, you know, which...
Oh, sorry. You're creeping me out, lady.
No, I'm kidding, right? So, yeah, just...
And this is to the guys out there, too, you know?
I mean, get to know the woman.
Get to know the woman as a person, as not just a pretty vagina with stilts, you know?
Like, just get to know the woman.
She said she broke up with them after they fell in love with her.
I don't think so, Stefan, but they didn't fall in love with her.
They didn't fall in love with her because they didn't know her.
They didn't know her history. They didn't know how she'd been wounded.
They didn't know the horrors of her childhood.
They didn't know how alarmed she was at men and sexuality.
They didn't know how she'd been creeped out by a stepdad at the age of nine talking about not needing any lube with her mom and banging 23-year-olds.
They didn't... And I'm not saying this means she's not lovable.
She is lovable. But you can't fall in love with someone while ignoring their entire history.
You can pretend to.
But it's not real love.
Right? Because they need to know the real person.
And you were... You know, when you were a kid, right?
You were a teenager, right?
You were putting on a show.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's kind of how we start.
Because we're not usually raised very authentically.
But you were putting on a show, right?
And that show...
Fooled a whole lot of people.
They were all there voluntarily, right?
So, and who can blame you?
Because you didn't have anybody around you who wasn't lying to you, or misleading you, or abusing you, or exploiting you, or ignoring you.
Like, you didn't have anyone.
How are you supposed to learn a language if nobody's ever spoken it?
You don't even really know it exists, if that makes sense.
So no, I sympathize.
I really do. Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And you should be known for who you are.
Because that's the only thing that's going to sustain you in a lifelong relationship.
You can't keep up bullshit forever, right?
You can't. You can't just keep a charm up and a lie up and all of that.
And the real person is the person that people should want to get to know.
Because that's the thing that's going to outlast, you know?
I ain't as pretty as I was 30 years ago, but hopefully I'm wiser and smarter and have more courage and whatever, right?
So that the love can grow from there.
But, you know, looks fade.
We all know this stuff, right? And again, you're 20, so I know it's still a ways over the horizon.
But, you know, so it was for me when I was 20, and here I am 34 years later.
So, you got to build your foundations deep for, you know, a permanent relationship.
All right. So, we are, we got to 1516.
Now, and you don't have to answer this, and it's important for me to know, but that doesn't mean you have to answer it.
With regards to the dating guys, was it often sexual, sometimes sexual, not particularly sexual?
I mean, did you break up with them before it got that far, or how did that work?
Yeah. It wasn't particularly sexual.
No, I would say I'd break up with them before it got too far.
Did you get any guys who weren't so down with the breakups?
In other words, they're like, no, give me another chance.
I'm the guy. Did they get any stalkers or anything like that?
Because it can be a bit of a risk that way.
One. There was one who threatened to hurt.
Actually, there was two. There was two.
There was one who threatened to hurt himself.
He would send me pictures with a knife up to his neck.
If I didn't respond to him or be with him and there was another who actually attempted suicide and he wrote me a letter from when he was in rehab somewhere but he also We weren't exclusively dating.
When I saw him, he was still messing around with other girls.
And he was actually with a girlfriend of sorts, I don't know what she was, when he overdosed on some pills.
So there was only two that ever put up a fight about it.
Right, okay. Yeah, because that can be a risk for sure.
All right. So how did things play from there?
I think we only got four years to go.
Yeah. So when I was 16, I was convinced that there was something about my stepdad's past that I didn't know about.
I knew that he'd been previously married before and that he had five kids that he hadn't spoken to since 1992 or something like that.
And he always said it was because his ex-wife turned them against him, and I didn't believe that.
So I found them on Instagram and Facebook, I think it was.
But I was able to reach out to them on Instagram, and they all blocked me, except for the oldest daughter.
uh, talked to me and told me that the other siblings were scared that they would find out where he, where they are.
So they didn't want to talk to me.
Um, so sorry, just, I didn't realize I could get messages from this.
Um, Ignore the messages. I'm ignoring the messages.
So, where was I? Oh yeah, so I talked to his oldest daughter from his previous marriage and she told me that he was very abusive to all of them and that he sexually abused her and his other daughter and they had a restraining order against him and that their mother took the kids and ran away to another state to get away from him.
And that's why they hadn't talked to him since 1990 or something like that.
So, hang on. So, he sexually abused his children, according to their reports.
Was it the mother who had a restraining order?
Because, you know, the penalty for pedophilia is not a restraining order.
Right. Yeah, it was a mother who had a restraining order.
So, the mom took steps to protect herself...
And I guess moved her kids, but she didn't report to the police to the point where other children or your sister could have been protected.
Right. Oh, man.
Do you know how much more peaceful the world would be if women actually did work to protect others in this way?
You know, if your mom had worked to protect you, if this woman had worked to protect other kids, and look, I'm not saying it's only women, but we all know that men can be abusive and neglectful and so on.
This is why I keep talking about women's responsibility in the cycle of violence, right?
Oh, my kids are fine now.
I got him out. I got a restraining order.
It's like, you know, he can be around other kids now, right?
You know that you know that he can be around other kids and it's not gonna be pretty right Yeah, yep
So I found out all this information when I was 16 and I didn't know if I should tell my mom right away because I didn't really want to go live with my dad and I didn't know where else I could live.
So I thought I should hold off on telling her.
Until before I graduated, right before I graduated.
So I had this information and I actually told my dad about it and he, again, didn't really have much of a reaction or say anything.
You told your dad that your stepdad had accusations of pedophilia from his previous children.
I did, yes.
Oh man, Sophia, I am so sorry that...
That you were surrounded by these cowards and weaklings and selfish, selfish people.
I'm so sorry. My God.
Because this is a guy who molested one of his kids, right?
Or when she was an adult, but, right?
Yeah. Yep.
Oh, man.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I mean, that's incredibly disappointing then as well, right?
That you come to your dad who's supposed to help and protect you and you're still a kid here and you're still in this environment.
Oof. Yeah.
Yeah, so I eventually told my mom, I sat her down I think it was like within the next...
It was in the summer of I think 2017 and I told her either...
2018 or something.
I told her like a year later about what I had found out talking to his children and she just got really silent, didn't really say anything and then she demanded to speak to the kids, to the daughter from his former relationship, from his ex-wife.
Well, that's a kick in the nads, so to speak.
Do you know why? Uh, why she responded that way?
Yeah. Um...
Because she would finally have to confront the reality of who he was?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You're such a nice young lady.
You really are, but that's not it.
No, that's not it.
Because she didn't She doesn't care about her kids.
Because the odds that those kids are going to talk to her are virtually nil.
And she's saying, I don't believe you.
Why would she need to talk to these strange kids, right?
You told her what happened.
So she's saying, I don't trust you.
I would like to put up a standard wherein it's impossible to achieve and therefore I don't have to act.
I mean, did the kids end up talking to her?
Yeah, actually, one of the kids, the one who talked to me, she agreed to talk to my mom.
Okay, and then what happened?
Then my mom tried to keep it a secret from my stepdad and their iCloud accounts were linked.
Somehow she was emailing the daughter or she had an email about the daughter and he got a notification on his phone.
And the following day the police showed up at our house and he said he was moving out and that the police were there.
The police were there to keep the peace while he moved his stuff out.
Gah! Auga, plot twist.
Okay, okay. So, okay, I'll back up.
And so she didn't want to act on this.
So she probably threw up a standard which said, okay, I need to talk to these kids with the idea that they wouldn't talk to her.
But then when they talked to her, she still didn't act.
So the purpose, of course, was not to act.
But in my first response, and again, I say this as an older person, not in the situation, so it's easy for me to say, but my response would be like, no, you don't need to talk to anyone.
I'm telling you. I talk to them.
Do you not believe me? Do you think I'm lying?
Do you think I'm making something up?
I'm your daughter. Right?
She should trust you, not need to go and...
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah, I do.
You know, if my wife comes home with a black eye and she says, oh, this guy at this store, the shopkeeper at my store punched me, what am I going to say?
Well, I'm going to need to get this confirmed from him.
No, I'm not. I trust my wife.
Of course, she's not going to lie about it, right?
So, oh my God, so the...
The stepdad, by accident, found out that your mom was in contact with his former children or his children from a former marriage, right?
Yes, yep.
And then, what was his thought process, do you think, at this point?
I need to protect myself.
I need to get the bat under control.
Haha, good use of metaphor.
Well done. Well done.
Alright. So, he's like, oh my god, we have to deal with this, right?
This has got to be fixed, it's got to be solved, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
So, he feels the walls closing in, right?
That it could be the case that his wife is going to talk to his kids from the kids he molested, or at least one of them, and then she might go to the cops, right?
Or she might convince them to go to the cops, or it might be further corroboration.
Sorry, did her daughter who was older, the 21-year-old, did she tell your mom that you remember or no?
Yeah, she did tell my mom.
Okay, so now she's got, you know, she's seen the guy be creepy with you.
Her daughter's talked about this and now she's got other kids.
So there's that situation going on.
So he's like, he's bugging out, right?
He wants to get out, right?
He's got to get out, right?
Now, Lord knows what he told the police, right?
Yeah, that's the thing I don't understand.
I have no idea how he got the police involved.
I think my guess is he wanted the law to be on his side before my mom could get it on her side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably that's it, right?
Right. Okay, so...
So he's out, right?
He's out, yep. And how does that play?
He moves out and then we're renting.
So now we don't have money to rent this house.
So my mom is left with a house full of stuff because she's also a hoarder.
So the basement is just filled with crap.
And she has about a month to pack up her things and move out.
And I have to figure out where I'm going to go.
Are you 16 at this point?
I was actually 17 at this point.
Wow. Wow.
And how's your mom doing with all this?
During the time?
Yeah, yeah. She stopped eating.
She lost a lot of weight.
She just completely shut down.
She wasn't really talking to anyone anymore.
And just became fixated on the stuff in the house and yard sales, selling things, just running around, thinking about getting a lawyer, but said she couldn't afford it.
I offered to pay for a lawyer.
I was working at the time.
I was trying to offer my support to the best of my ability, and I told her we could live together, I could get a full-time job, and I could hold off on school.
So she just totally shut down.
Now, do you know why she stopped eating?
I mean, I assume you say stress and depression or whatever it was, right?
It's probably another reason. I don't know, to make herself more attractive?
Oh yeah, she's got to get ready for the next guy, right?
Wow. I'm telling you, you and I are blessed not to have bats in the bedroom.
So it's hard for us to, you know...
I've written a lot of bad guys in my novels, so I kind of know how this process works.
But the body's like, oh my god, we've got to crank it up again, man.
We were just getting comfortable, now we've got to lose weight because we've got to get another guy.
Right? Right.
Right. Yeah, so she was moving out and she was mentioning here and there that she might go back to Ukraine.
And I was like, oh, that's a great idea.
eventually you could go back there right and how does she survive in this brave new world that has consequences in it Oh, running away.
Did she go back to Ukraine?
She did, yes.
So I graduated and she went back to Ukraine.
She told me she bought a plane ticket, a one-way plane ticket, two weeks before she left.
And she's just like gone, baby gone?
I mean, that's it? Gone and didn't talk to me.
What was her game plan in...
Sorry, how old was she?
Just give me a rough... Like, was she in her 40s, 50s?
50s. In her 50s.
She's in her 50s, right. Mm-hmm.
So she's done the equation and said, okay...
I can't get a guy who's going to be super wealthy at this point or provide to me in the manner to which I've become accustomed.
My kids are old, so there's not much older.
So there's not really much point going for child support.
Can't really get any alimony.
So I need to reduce my cost of living.
So I'm going back to Ukraine. Exactly.
That's exactly what she said.
She said she had nothing here.
Her kids... We're grown up.
She has nothing going for her.
She has no money. She was trying to get alimony.
She couldn't get alimony.
She couldn't afford a lawyer.
She couldn't do anything. So she decided to go back to Ukraine.
See, if she was younger, she could have just got a lawyer by sleeping with him, but she's in her 50s now, so it doesn't work as well, right?
Right. Right.
Okay. So she buggered off to Ukraine, right?
Yeah. And is she still there?
No, so she traveled around from Ukraine.
I know she was in Jerusalem for a little while.
She was in Portugal, I think.
Then she was in the Netherlands.
She was doing work away, which is like woofing, I think.
She doesn't have any family.
I feel like you broke it into Russian here.
She's doing work away, which is woofing?
What are you talking about?
Woofing. It's like working on farms, working for people in exchange, getting living, or people giving her food and housing.
This is called woofing?
Yeah, woofing.
Okay, I've never heard. You're making things up now, right?
You're just trolling me at this point?
It's called being a cockatoo.
Why? Why do you ask? Woofing?
Literally working on a farm for free to stay home.
It's slavery. No, it's not slavery.
It's voluntary. Working for a place to stay.
It's called woofing. Wow. All right.
I've conditionally said that you may not be lying to me.
Or if you are, it's...
Oh, my God. It's a whole circle of people lying to me.
Okay. I got it. I got it.
So she's woofing.
Now, that's an odd thing to start...
I mean, she didn't do any physical labor.
Did she do physical labor while she was married?
No, other than raising kids.
She would fix things around the house, but she never had a job.
Because that's kind of like a weird thing, right?
In your 50s, listen, I mean, I tell you, you know, if you ever want to feel mortal, like, don't play a sport for a while and then pick it up again in your 50s, and you're like, oh my god, I'm a wreck.
You know what I mean? I didn't play squash for a long time, and I'm like, hey, I'll just jump into squash again.
It's like, and my body's like, yeah, yeah, right.
No, you won't. No, you won't.
I mean, you can jump into squash if you want, but I will make you cry for your mother.
And that's, you know, I have to be in a pretty big extremity to actually cry for my mother.
But... So I'm just like, she's diving into physical labor in her 50s?
That's like, oof. Hey, I just said it.
Maybe that's oof. It's like, oof, it hurts so much.
Maybe that's where the word comes from.
Wow. When you said she's traveling, I just thought maybe she had boyfriends who were going to visit or...
Yeah, well, I don't really know is the thing.
This is just what I've heard secondhand.
And she hasn't really talked to me much about it.
She didn't talk to me really at all while she was away.
And she actually, I haven't spoken to her in a while even now.
Yeah. Wow.
Okay. So is she still, no, some woman in her 50s went all eat, pray, love.
No, no, she didn't go all eat, pray, love because eat, pray, love isn't cleaning out pig shit while you're hobbling around with tendinitis.
So is she still doing this Roman and the Gloman stuff, the woofing?
Is she still doing that or?
No, she came back in the fall and she was living with a family friend and And then she took off somewhere.
No one knows where she went a couple months ago.
And then come to find out that she's in Florida and she's with God knows who.
She won't tell anyone who she's with, but apparently she's in not a good situation and is stranded in Florida.
And do you know why she's back in the States?
Why is she stateside? I can tell you why.
He said being annoying for the fourth time in the conversation, but I can tell you why.
She was looking for another husband?
No. No, she's too old for that, probably.
Any guy who's got decent resources is going to look for someone who's not her.
I mean, I know she's good looking, but she's just going to look for someone who's younger.
Bum off her kids' resources.
Yeah, that's right. So she knows she's got a very pretty daughter, so she's hoping that the pretty daughter lands somebody who's got money that she can sponge off.
In other words, she's hoping to pimp you out in a way that she did when you were a kid, right?
Right. Actually, well, before she left Ukraine, she tried to do that.
She tried to move in with me and my boyfriend at the time.
She was like, oh, I can just come and live with you guys and I'll clean the house and we'll be fine.
And my boyfriend was not going to do that.
Sorry, she wanted to come and live with you and your boyfriend?
Yeah, this was before she left.
Yeah, yeah. So she's, you know, she's hoping that, oh, yeah, I've got an attractive daughter.
She's very charming, very pretty.
So I'll just, you know, she's like flailing around just trying to find something like an octopus in a toilet swirl, right?
She's just trying to grab onto something so she doesn't go under, right?
Right. Boy, that's a vivid image, isn't it?
Yeah. And I'm sorry.
Like, I'm really, really sorry that she's ended up in this situation.
It's no obligation to you, obviously.
I mean, a woman who put you in proximity to a potential, well, to a pedophile, according to his kids from the previous marriage.
Yeah, a woman who gave a pedophile dominion over you and knew that he was creeping you out with his language and didn't do anything to protect you.
Like, I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry that people make these decisions.
Again, no obligation on you.
But God, I mean, it would be, you know...
There's no obligation on you, God, but I'm really sorry.
In the same way, if your mom smoked like a chimney and you kept begging her to stop, it doesn't mean that you've got to give her a lung when she gets lung cancer, right?
I'm really sorry that she made these decisions, or maybe she was beyond free will by the time you popped out.
I don't know, right? It's terrible.
It's terrible to see How this plays out for people.
You know, like in this endless, fairly mediocre movie, The Irishman, you know, the guy is like, hey, I'm a bad guy.
And then his kids don't see him when he gets older.
And it's like, yeah, that's a shame. But maybe he shouldn't have been such a bad guy.
It's like, you know, what can you do, right?
You can't change the past.
You can't change what the decisions are.
That people may have done to you.
You can't get your childhood back.
Too late. It's too late.
It's too late. And it doesn't sound like she's learned anything.
And it doesn't seem like she's had any revelation or growth or knowledge or understanding or anything like that, right?
No, I mean, she says she has.
She says she's grown a lot closer to God within the past year.
But she won't talk about the past in me.
She refuses to have any sort of humility in conversations.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I mean, so she...
The best thing...
I'm so sorry.
I'm just about to blurp some advice-y speech, which, you know, I don't know where we are relative to the information you want to get across to me.
So... Go.
If there's more, I really want to hear it.
Oh, no. Please. Please.
I'll take any advice.
The kindest thing that you can do to people who won't listen to reason is let them hit rock bottom.
Say that again. The kindest thing you can do to people who won't listen to reason is to let them hit rock bottom.
She's not listening to reason.
She doesn't have...
A sense of shame or guilt or any horror at what she's done and what she exposed you to.
I don't know that she's ever sat down and really apologized to you for the incredible danger she put you in as a kid for money.
And the number of women who use their children as financial fucking leverage is truly staggering.
The number of people, of women, who use their children as financial leverage Is really appalling.
I mean, we know about this in the family courts, but in this particular instance, he had money, he was willing to spend it on her, and she was willing to put you in unbelievable levels of sexual and physical danger by having you shacked up with a creep pedophile.
God knows who he was thinking of when he had sex with your mom.
Actually, God wouldn't know.
That's too much even for God.
Satan would know, but not God.
And It's just, where could she possibly get any kind of self-knowledge or wisdom or potential for salvation from?
Well, she can't get it as long as people are pretending that she didn't do terrible things and holding her accountable.
And, you know, there's a show called Intervention, which I've watched a couple of, and the pattern is always the same.
There's this drug addict, or usually it's a drug addict or alcoholic, but some addict, right?
And they're emotional terrorists, as these people tend to be, and, you know, if you don't drive me to go and get my drugs, I'm going to kill myself.
If you don't drive me, I'm going to set fire to the house.
If you don't drive me, I'm just going to go and sell myself on the street, and God knows what's going to happen.
And so, you know, the parents being terrified or whoever being terrified will go and drive her and make sure she's safe and get the drugs and pay for her, right?
If you don't give me money for drugs, I'm going to go and steal it and I could get shot and I could end up in prison for 10 years.
Again, it's the drug talking.
They're beyond free will.
They have just become, in a sense, kind of rabid animals or emotional terrorists is probably the better way to put it.
What happens is the counselors, they have the same advice every time.
Stop enabling her. And you have to absolutely say, like, you have to go and get help and stick with the program, or I'm having absolutely nothing to do with you.
I'm having absolutely nothing to do with you.
Like, you're cut off from money, from my house, from emotions, from loyalty, from love, from anything.
That's a pretty standard way as far as I understand it of dealing with people.
So they're saying, listen, you didn't stop it when it was easy to stop back in the day, right?
Like all habits start as cobwebs and end up as chains for better and for worse, right?
And so you didn't stop it when it was easy to stop.
You're escalating now and me trying to help you is only making things worse, right?
There are some people you help them and things get a lot better and it's wonderful.
And there are some people who...
they just need to hit rock bottom.
I mean, isn't that the story of the flood in the Bible?
Humanity has to hit rock bottom in order to change its ways.
And letting people fall is the only chance they're going to bounce.
You try to hold them, everybody goes down forever.
Letting people fall...
It's the only way they can possibly have a chance of bouncing.
It's just no guarantee, right?
I mean, I've let my mother fall for 25 years, and she never did bounce, which means that if I had held on to her, we both would have fell forever.
I wouldn't be having this conversation.
I wouldn't be married to my wife.
I wouldn't be a father. I wouldn't be doing the good that I'm doing.
In the world, right?
So if people bounce, if they wake up in a gutter, blood on their hands, sirens around them, then okay, maybe they can change.
Maybe. But if they simply fall forever, they would have just taken you down with them.
And I can't let my own soul and free will and moral integrity be compromised by evildoers I had no control over.
I can't. I just can't.
Then that's how good disappears from the world, as evil drags it into the void.
By promising change, which can't be achieved.
You know, one of the things that kept me around my mom for so long was this belief in free will, that she could choose better.
Once I accepted, as I had been working with rather recently, to say, okay, she was post-choice.
She was post-free will by the time I knew her.
If I'd have thought about that earlier, I would have not spent as much time with her as I did, trying to help, trying to fix.
And all she was doing was dragging me down into the void with her.
You know, some people, you swim out to try and save them from drowning, and they're grateful, and you pull them to shore.
But a lot of people will just drag you down with them, and the Grim Reaper gets two for the price of one, and that's no good.
So I just wanted to sort of point that out, that your mother has done, in my view, unbelievable immorality in her life.
You don't sell your children for money.
I mean, I... Maybe things were never put that starkly to her.
Maybe she never really understood it.
I did an interview. It's not out yet what the guy was saying.
One thing I said, if you ask the right questions, what you need to do becomes blindingly obvious.
And if somebody had said to her, wait, are you taking this guy's money and offering up your kids in exchange for money?
That's not good. That's, like, if it had been put to her that way, not that you would be able to do that, but if it had been put to her that way, which, of course, her religious community or moral community should have done, then that would have been pretty clear, right? Right.
But either she never thought of it, or it never occurred to her, or it occurred to her and she ignored it.
But... You can't help her.
You can't.
Yeah, and the thing is that I have tried to tell my siblings and the family friends she was living with that I was concerned that we were enabling her bad behavior because I noticed she wasn't any different when I saw her over a year later for the first time because she just went right into lecturing me on things I was doing wrong or Just pointing out how I've gotten ugly in ways and just being pretty cruel to me.
And I've told my siblings that we have to stop enabling her.
We can't give her a car to drive or buy her a place to stay.
And I've just been...
I've just received a lot of harsh comments and have been pretty alienated from my family and I'm at a place right now where I just don't know how much effort, how much responsibility do I have to try to put in fixing, doing damage control or trying to make my family realize that this is toxic behavior.
Is there doubt on the part of your...
I mean, your mom doesn't admit faults as far as I understand, but is there doubt on your sibling's part that this is toxic behavior or was on the part of your mom?
Is there doubt that it isn't toxic?
On your sibling's part, that your mom is toxic behavior or toxic history in your family?
Well, they just come up with excuses for her.
They say that she just grew up...
She grew up harshly.
She grew up in the USSR. We can't blame her for how she is.
And we have to help her. Oh, okay.
So all you have to do...
Universalism is self-defense.
Universality is self-defense.
So what they're proposing...
Is a rule. And listen, I'm a UPP guy.
I'm a universally preferable behavior guy.
People propose rules. I'm like, yep, let's put it through the machine, man.
Let's put it through the wood chipper and see what comes out, right?
So they're saying you can never hold someone responsible if they had a bad childhood.
Is that right? Yeah.
Okay, so you had a bad childhood.
They can't ever hold you responsible.
So if you decide to cut off with your mom, they can't ever blame you because you had a bad childhood.
Now, the moment they blame you...
Then they can't say, your mom is not to blame because she had a bad childhood.
You had a bad childhood. Right?
So that's...
I mean, I won't say that... Like, that's easy from an intellectual standpoint.
Right? Because all you need is the right words.
So they say, well, mom had a bad childhood, so she's not responsible.
Okay. Then why are you holding me responsible?
I had a bad childhood. Well, it wasn't as bad.
It's like, you don't know that? And how much of a bad childhood do you have to have in order to not be responsible?
Why am I responsible? When I had a, you know, creepy pedophile around me my entire childhood, there was abuse, there was violence, there was divorce, there's been no acknowledgement of any responsibility.
My stepfather molested my sister.
How bad exactly does it have to be before we get let off this wonderful skyhook of free will and moral responsibility?
Because it seems to me my childhood was pretty bad.
You could say, yeah, your childhood's pretty bad too.
But if we're going to start creating this magic fucking wand of bad childhood means no moral responsibility, then don't try and pressure me with any moral arguments.
Because the moment you pressure me with moral arguments, you're saying, oh, well, it doesn't matter if you had a bad childhood, you're still responsible, in which case, go talk to mom.
And if you don't want to talk to mom and instead you want to bully me, then you're just bullies and cowards.
And you're picking on me because I was a kid with you, because I'm younger than you, because I'm a nice person.
But if you guys try to use my niceness against me, you're as bad as mom.
If you try to say, well, we're going to try and get Sophia to do this, rather than mom, because Sophia listens to reasons.
She's not a dangerous person.
She's not going to bully us. She's not going to use emotional terrorism on us.
She's a nice, reasonable person.
Nice, reasonable person.
So we'll bully her because she's the reasonable one.
So the moment that anybody tries to hook you in with a universal rule that they would never in a million years apply against someone actually dangerous, fuck them, man.
I'm sorry, man.
That is about as bad as things get in a relationship.
What do you want to do?
Forget obligation, right?
Because if obligation is important, then your mother was obliged to protect you and keep you safe, as was your father, as was your stepdad, as was everyone in your environment, as were your siblings and everyone, right?
Your sister was an adult, 21 years old, when she was molested by this guy.
Did she go to the police and keep you safe?
No. No, she did not.
She was an adult who knew that you were in the house with a pedophile.
Did she work to keep...
And you had seven years to go to adulthood.
Good luck, sister of mine.
But we've got obligations to mom.
Okay, where were your obligations to me, sis?
Yes. Where are your mother's obligations to me?
Where are dad's and stepdad's obligations to me?
Where's the entire fucking society's obligations to keep me safe?
Don't start talking to me about obligations.
You all were the older siblings.
One of you was older than me by 10 years.
You knew how dangerous the situation I was in and you did nothing to keep me safe.
Don't talk to me about obligations, you intergalactic hypocrites.
You did not fulfill any of your obligations to me, to protect me as the youngest in the family.
So if you want to start talking obligations, go look in the mirror for about five to seven years and then come back to me with an apology that makes Mars look like a grain of sand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My sister, my oldest sister, was actually living with me a couple months ago because I got my own apartment and I'm doing pretty well for myself.
And she had no place to go.
She's in a lot of debt.
And she came and lived with me.
And she's 30.
They will never let you accumulate any resources.
You know that, right?
The moment you start doing well, what's going to happen?
Just going to latch on and try to use my resources and pull me back down.
That is correct. They don't respect me.
Well, I wouldn't say that, and again, I'm sorry to disagree with you.
I wouldn't say, I think they do respect you.
They respect your wisdom, they respect your maturity, they respect your capacity to organize your life and make some money, right?
Right?
They respect that.
As something to pillage.
You know, the warlord respects the farmer's hard work.
Just doesn't respect his property rights.
And this is sort of back to your original question.
The dysfunctional people in your life function as a moat, except filled with vitriol, abuse, manipulation, pretend UPB, alligators, and fire. They serve as a moat.
Do you know what I mean by that?
I'm not quite following that.
So a moat, you know, like a moat, so you've got a castle.
Sorry, you may never play Dungeons& Dragons and built one of these things from Popsicle sticks, but a moat is the waterway, the canal that goes around a castle so that people can't invade easily, right?
And you've got a drawbridge over the moat and you lift the drawbridge and then people can't, like, they go in and they swim and they're in heavy armor and you just shoot them full of arrows, right?
So that's the moat, right?
It's soft on the bottom so they can't put ladders.
So you've got this moat, which is a protective ring around your castle.
So when you have dysfunctional, pillaging, predatory people around you, people who just manipulate resources out of you because it's easier to bully and manipulate you than it is to go and get their own shit, then they serve as a moat because they know that if anyone truly functional comes into your life, what's that truly functional person going to say about these parasites?
Yeah, that they're fucking crazy.
Crazy is another form of forgiveness.
They're not crazy.
They're not moral. But crazy people act randomly.
These people act with almost perfect consistency to protect the resources they can get from you.
Did you see what I mean? Yeah.
I mean, I was able to predict with almost complete accuracy what your mom's moves were, right?
Yeah. That's not a crazy person.
A crazy person, you don't know what the hell they're going to say next, right?
When people are perfectly predictable, you can't call them crazy.
And the fact that your sister who failed to protect you is now exploiting you because she's concerned about her own preferences rather than anything that's good for you.
In the same way that in the past she didn't want to protect you.
In the same way that your stepfather's first wife didn't want to protect the kids who came down the pipe for him later, so to speak.
So, my wife's best thing that ever happened to me as an adult.
Now, I won't say who, but I will say it was somebody who was supposed to be really, really, really close to me.
When I told him that I had decided to propose and to marry my wife, my then girlfriend, and I said, you know, if she says yes, and I think she will, we should get together and celebrate.
And do you know what this person's supposed to be just about the closest to me in the world?
Do you know what this person said to me?
I don't think so.
I don't really want to get to know your wife.
I mean, just going to get divorced anyway.
Now that was a very beautiful and generous thing to say to me.
Thank you.
I'm not kidding. It was a beautiful and generous thing to say.
I mean, I was a bit shocked and appalled at the time, although not that shocked.
But it was very frank and it was very honest.
This person said to me, I am committed to the destruction of the relationship you have with the woman you love.
I don't want to get to know her because you're just going to get divorced anyway.
I don't even want to bother getting to know your girlfriend, fiancé, wife, because you're just going to get divorced anyway.
Now, that's harsh, don't get me wrong.
I'm not just like, oh, it was totally fine, but I was just like, oh my God, has that ever switched the lights on in my brain?
It means if I want to have a happy marriage, I've got to keep this person the hell away from me, because they are now committed, openly said, they are committed to the destruction of my marriage.
Now, that person was absolutely right.
In the essence of what he said.
He was absolutely right in the essence of what he said.
A divorce did come.
Just not with my wife.
So people are pretty frank.
They're pretty frank.
And if someone is in your life, I hope it's your boyfriend, probably as if you're talking to me, right?
But if someone is in your life who sees losers exploiting you, and, you know, you said with regards to your dad, what he's like a 50-year-old guy living in his parents' house, Your mom is in her 50s, has saved no money and is, what, trying to save for some retirement by working for no dollars on an organic farm?
Work is on organic farms.
That's the woof thing somebody said, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And your sister is 30 and needs a place to stay.
They're losers. And again, I don't like the term.
I really don't like the term.
But a spade is a spade is a spade.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
And a loser is a loser is a loser.
And as long as you're helping them out, they're going to stay losers.
As long as you give them a place.
Like, people got to hit rock bottom sometimes.
I mean, it's happened to me.
You hit rock bottom, and then you find out what you're made of, and you can get somewhere.
But... If there's a healthy person in your life, well, first of all, the dysfunctional people will try their very best to keep healthy people out of your life, because healthy people will look at the situation and call it for what it is.
Your mother put you in the path of a predator to make money.
That's the way I see it.
Your sister kept you in the path of a predator For an unknown reason.
And it doesn't even really matter.
Does it matter what her reason was?
There's no reason that justifies it.
Your stepfather's first wife did not act to protect other children from his predatory ways.
So all the people who failed to protect you when you were a kid, now you're a strong adult person, you don't need that protection anymore.
What do they have to offer you?
Other than a history of failing to protect you, and in fact, putting you in harm's way and in danger's way.
What do they have to? And this is a big question.
The question I asked myself when I was younger, although still a lot older than you, but the question I asked myself with regards to my mother or other people, right?
I say, okay, let's do the dinner table test.
Let's do the dinner table test.
Dinner party test. Dinner party test.
The DPT, the dinner party test.
The dinner party test goes something like this.
Let's say I'm invited to a dinner party by someone I know.
There are other people there that I don't know.
Let's say I get sat down next to my mother at this dinner party and we chat for the evening.
Would I want to see this person?
Forget, she's my mom, she's some woman, right?
I sit down next to this woman for two hours at a dinner party.
We talk. Would I want to see her again?
In other words, if there was another dinner party and they said, oh, this woman will also be there and we're going to sit her next to you, would I want to go to that dinner party?
If I didn't know my mother at all, just met her at a dinner party, would I want to see her again?
No. Ask that question about everyone in your life because it's the only way to get out of the trough of history.
So, You're at a dinner party.
Oh, we invited this woman.
She's in her 50s, and she's fascinating.
She travels all over the world shoveling manure in organic farms.
You're like, oh, well, all right.
I guess kind of odd, but could be interesting.
And then your mom sits down.
You don't know. She's not your mom.
She's just some woman. And you chat with her through the evening.
Do you want to see her again?
No. What about your sister?
Definitely not. Right.
Do you remember, I don't know if you watched, but recently I put out this little green man hypothesis that you just...
You come to the world as if you've never been here before.
And you've got to come to your own... To live philosophically is to come to your own life like you've never lived there before.
With totally fresh eyes.
Totally fresh eyes.
You come to your own life like you've never...
Lived there before. You've never been there before.
And you look at the people that nature, circumstances, history, and mostly bullshit have put in your life.
And you say, if I got to start from scratch, would these people be in my life?
Now, my friends, current friends, people I work with, my wife, my daughter, absolutely people I desperately want in my life.
Absolutely completely. I mean, if I said, oh, I had never met my wife before and I sit down next to her at a dinner party, I'd be like, yeah, I want to see her again, for sure.
It's wonderful. If I had a kid and I met my daughter who was the kid of some other family and, you know, the family said, oh, I think our kids get along, would you like?
Yes, I think that would be great.
She's wonderful. To live with new eyes.
To visit your life like a stranger is the way that you overcome manipulation.
I'm telling you right now.
Because people use accidental history as grappling hooks to control your resources.
But I'm your mother.
I'm your sibling.
I'm your uncle. I'm your grandmother.
Didn't use any of that.
Don't use that.
You didn't earn that. You didn't earn being my mother.
You didn't earn being my aunt or uncle or sibling.
You didn't earn that shit. It's just accidental.
You can't cash that in.
You can't cash accidents in.
You didn't earn any of that.
I don't owe you anything because of genetic proximity and accidental history and we grew up together.
I owe you nothing for what you didn't earn.
I reject paying a bill That I did not voluntarily incur.
I will not pay it.
If I choose to have you in my life, I owe you loyalty, I owe you respect, I may owe you resources, I'll lend you money if you need to, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But I will not pay a bill that I did not voluntarily incur.
Are you crazy? I didn't voluntarily have my family of origin in my life.
It doesn't mean I'm going to hate them.
Just, I mean, they may be wonderful people.
In which case, fantastic.
If they pass the dinner party test and you'd see them for two hours and you'd love to see them again, wonderful!
Enjoy! But that's because of the virtues and values that they brought in the past and bring to the present.
Not because of accidental biological caging through unwilled circumstances.
You cannot profit off the accidental.
You can't consider yourself a great businessman because your father gave you a million dollars.
And you can't consider yourself a virtuous person because you happen to be pretty or handsome.
It's accidental. You didn't earn it.
Didn't earn it. And I will not pay a bill that I did not incur.
I mean, it's like somebody in a restaurant.
They send their bill over to me.
Hey, I want you to pay this $200 dinner I had.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Why would I pay it? I didn't eat any of the food.
I didn't choose any of the people.
I didn't agree to do it beforehand.
No, I'm not paying your bill.
Although it is kind of funny, I do occasionally, when I go through a drive-through, I'll just pay for the person behind me because I think it's kind of fun and funny and hopefully gives people a little lift in their day and a lot of people need it because they're not quite as lucky as I am during the quarantine or during the pandemic.
So, no. You didn't sign for it?
You didn't order it? I mean, if something gets delivered to your home, somebody's like, hey, here's the car you ordered.
You just sit there and say, okay, I'll pay for the car.
No. You didn't order the car.
You didn't choose to have that car in your life.
It's the same thing with your family of origin.
Now, I'd say give them more consideration than you would a stranger because you have a shared history for sure, which is why I say go and talk to people and try and work things out and look for apologies and all of that.
It's wonderful because, you know, there is more obligation than there would be to strangers because there is a shared history.
And if people can be virtuous and they've also known you for 20 years, they can be a very positive force in your life.
So give them more respect than you'd give to a stranger.
But the dinner party test is really, really important because it gets right to the core.
Or what else I used to say.
So tell me what you feel.
Sorry, this is back to where you're in the convo.
So what do you feel when your boyfriend calls?
Joy. So much joy.
Of course. He's your boyfriend.
How are you doing? Oh, yeah, right.
Great, right? Right.
Now, Phone rings.
It's your mom. What do you feel?
Dread. So much dread.
Oh God. Anger.
So your emotions, your deepest emotions are telling you what's good for you and what's bad for you.
And do you know how much bullshit we have to swallow to override our basic survival instincts?
It's amazing how much propaganda has to go into...
I don't like this person.
I'm sorry, I don't like this person.
I don't feel happiness when they call.
And you just have to sit there and be patient with yourself and say, you say to your hand, hey, do you want to pick up, do you want to answer?
Okay, we'll wait till next time.
Whereas if your boyfriend calls and you say, do you want to answer?
Yes, right? Yay, boyfriend, right?
Even if you had a conflict, you still want to talk to him, right?
So you look at your hand. You say, do you want a yes-no?
No. Do you want a no?
You can't see the video. Maybe you can.
Right? So let your hands do the talking.
Let your heart do the talking. You know, you've got this gut.
Your second brain, right? The write-down is called your gut instinct.
Your second brain is very, very important.
Very important. And almost all of modern bullshit society, woke society, is about cutting you off from your gut, right?
So you get all this intellectual bullshit that dizzies and confuses you.
And a lot of abusers will try and cut you off from your gut, right?
Your instincts, your element.
This is where your fight-or-flight mechanism is.
This is where it's good for me, it's bad for me.
This is where your independence is.
This is where your sovereignty and your boundaries are in your gut and your head is...
I don't know, great for typing or whatever, right?
But your gut is going to want to keep you safe.
That's your fight or flight. And abusers will always try and cut you off from your gut.
So you've got an instinct which says, I don't want to answer the phone from my mom.
And then everyone's like, but she's your mother.
You have to answer the phone. She took care of you.
She wasn't perfect. But nobody's perfect.
And she had a bad childhood. And you've got to have sympathy.
And she's got no resources. And she's got no one else to turn to.
Right? And all it is is it saw your spine off from your gut.
Screw completely your fight or flight mechanism.
Screw your instinctive understanding of what's good and healthy for you and what's bad and toxic for you.
Everyone's just breathing more mold into your veins.
Look at that. I went all the way back to the beginning of the convo.
I boomeranged, baby.
I'm all the way back to the beginning.
I'm like, hey, there's shiny stuff here.
I can use it. Yeah.
No one is in support of my new relationship, which is the partner I've been with for, I guess, yeah, about the past year.
And he's the one who introduced me to you and your show.
Well, because he's got nothing to fear for me, right?
I don't think, right? Right.
And he's also the first one to tell me that I'm enabling my family and that they...
Are just using me.
They've had their life.
I mean, think of your mom, right?
She's had her life. She's made her choices.
She's over 30 years older than you.
It's time for you to have your life and make your choices.
And they're perfectly, perfectly free to make different choices.
In fact, if you want a different life from your mom and not be hauling around donkey shit in your 50s for no money, yeah, you probably should be making different decisions, right?
Yeah. And if I say, you know, love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
When I say that, do you sit there and say, oh, my boyfriend's a bad guy?
Oh, my God, right? He's got no problem.
But if I say, with regards to your family, if I said to your family, oh, you've got to earn love by being virtuous.
You can't just manipulate it and use language.
I mean, you can, but it's false.
It's not valid, right?
You can try. But I'm aiming to give people shields from the parasites, right?
Neck braces for the vampires or whatever you want to call it, right?
Get you away from the Wuhan bats.
I don't know. I'm mixing too many metaphors here, but...
But yeah, so your boyfriend is like, oh, talk to Steph, right?
Now, is he going to sit there and say, oh my God, Steph's going to convince my girlfriend to break up with me and hang out with her family?
I need not, right? That's another, yeah, it's another, somebody just pointed at this, another helpful thought.
If I met myself at a dinner party, would I call myself later?
I know I would, right? Hopefully I have a lot of stuff to offer myself, right?
But that's... Your gut instinct is trying to keep you safe, and your gut instinct is trying to draw you to a higher place.
This is bad for me. And we used to just be simple and honest with ourselves in many ways, right?
Now we've got all of this clutter and tentacles and hooks.
I mean, maybe it was always the case.
I don't know. Maybe this is our first chance to actually break free and do something right rather than something habitual, but...
No. You gotta do the most.
The four words that will set you free.
Are you ready? Yes.
Four words to set you free.
This is for everyone out there.
This is your chant of liberation.
Do I want to? Phone rings.
It's mom. Answer it.
Do I want to? Take that pause.
Do I want to? A boyfriend's phoning you out.
Yes, I want to. Okay, answer the phone.
Just you pause and you ask yourself.
Do I want to? Do I want to?
You know, I mean, I was, you know, a couple of months ago, it just sort of popped into my head.
I think I saw someone who used to be on my show doing something really, really cool or something like that.
And I think Dave Smith just went on Joe Rogan, though he knew how Joe Rogan treated me in the past.
And it's like, you know, so every now and then I'm like, oh, I kind of miss being on those big shows.
Like, do I want to?
Yeah. Not really.
Do you know what I mean? Do I want to is incredibly liberating because it allows you to pause and ask yourself and check in with your gut because you can ignore and override your gut instinct and your fight-or-flight mechanism, but man, you'll end up unhappy because you can't eliminate it.
You can just oppose yourself and a wall with yourself is a terrible place to be.
So, you know, when somebody says to me, oh, Steph, you've got to, right?
I'm like, do I want to? Hmm, not really.
Or, yeah, I kind of do.
Or, I'm at least open to it.
I'll talk more or whatever, right?
Do I want to? Because do I want to is having boundaries and saying to other people, I'm not your fucking slave to order around and provide resources because you need something.
A failure to plan on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part.
Do I want to? Oh, the family dinner is going to be in a week.
You've got to come. Do I want to?
Do I want to? And maybe you have to think about it.
Maybe it's complicated. Maybe you've got to talk it through.
Maybe you've got to journal it. You've got to talk to a therapist.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know yet. I don't really want to.
I immediately don't want to, but do I want to?
These four words were incredibly liberating.
Do I want to? Because it signals to other people That they actually have to appeal to something that's going to benefit you in some manner.
That's going to change who's in your life.
Because people who just want to prey on you and exploit you, they're not going to want to hear that Do I want to?
Because they've got nothing to offer you.
Other than they'll get mad at you and smack you.
You know, when I was a kid, the TV would kind of flicker and you'd thump the top and sometimes it would settle the vacuum tube.
Just thump things until you get what you want.
That's what abusive and destructive people and exploitive people do.
They just thump you. Well, I can't offer you anything positive, but I can call you a bad daughter if you don't do what I want.
You're not a good friend.
You're a bad sister.
You don't take care of people.
We took care of you. It's just thumping to get...
That's not giving me anything.
It's just... If you don't give us what we want, we'll emotionally beat the shit out of you.
It's not a healthy...
Right? It's not a healthy relationship.
You're selfish. Yeah, yeah.
Boundaries? Wanting you to provide something of value in my life?
No, I want to provide value of things to people in my life.
I mean, I want to... You almost hear me in my convo.
It's like, did I provide value?
Was it good?
Was it helpful?
Right?
So, these are the four words that set you free, man.
Thank you.
Do I want to? Phone rings.
Do I want to? Do I want to answer?
Until you get a strong yes, you don't have to answer.
And here's the interesting thing.
You'll see what happens when you don't comply.
Right? So, I can't think of a good example, but If, if...
If you don't answer the phone, what happens, right?
Now, a healthy person will probably won't let things get so bad that you don't want to answer the phone.
They'll figure out what's wrong or try and figure out what's wrong or talk to you about it.
But let's say you get to some relationship and you don't want to answer the phone.
A healthy person will be like, okay, I've got to think.
Why doesn't Sophia want to answer the phone?
What happened?
Okay, the last thing that happened was this, and then we had this.
Oh my gosh, I bet you it's that.
And they'll send you a text and say, you know what?
You seem kind of avoidant.
And I've really been thinking about it.
I think it's this.
And I'm really, like, it didn't cross my mind.
I just, whatever, right?
Right? You know, not that Dave Smith's about to call me or anything like that.
But, you know, if he did and I didn't, I wouldn't be jumping to call him.
I don't mind that he went. I don't waste any particular thought on Joe Rogan.
But I wouldn't be like, oh, let's talk, right?
Right. And it would be, you know, he'd sit there and say, oh, yes, well, I guess I went on Joe Rogan, who kind of shafted Steph, and it was pretty ugly and all of that.
So maybe that's it. Oh, whatever.
So I could say that, whatever.
And again, I don't really care.
It doesn't really matter. But it's just something that popped into my head.
So that's what a healthy person would do.
But you know what an unhealthy person does if you don't answer the phone right.
Chaos usually ensues.
Oh, abuse, aggression, escalation, ugliness, verbal nastiness, whatever, right?
Why aren't you calling me back?
Are you okay? Don't you care?
Yeah. The third message, they escalate, right?
And they start threatening.
And then they rope other people in to corner you, to circle you, to force you.
And that's... Having hesitancy is so important in life.
Do I want to? Not really, not right now.
I'll see if I want to tomorrow.
I don't really want to tomorrow either.
That's interesting. Now, at some point, you may say, I would like to try and figure out what the issue is.
Whatever, right? But, my God, we have to obey the government.
We have to obey gravity.
But we don't have to return people's phone calls.
You don't have to.
And you just see how you feel.
Oh, what was that?
I heard this ugly, unpleasant theory online.
I'm fine.
Now I would. It's something to do with Wuhan and how we could have solved the issue, but anyway.
So... Yeah, just see what happens.
If you don't comply with other people's immediate needs because you don't feel like it, what happens?
I usually get gaslighted from my family.
Right. Now, and then what you'll do is you'll say, okay, well, they can apply a negative to me, so they'll bully me, and you reward their bullying by compliance and resources.
And then you wonder why they bully you.
Well, they bully you 150% self-ownership.
Why do they bully you? Because it works!
Because it works. Because it works.
If I had self-censored because of desperate fear of being deplatformed, then I'm already a slave.
I saw this cartoon of a homeless guy with a sign saying, spoke my mind!
Right? It's a little true, right?
It's a little true. But, you know, why do they bully you?
Because it works. Now, it works because they will escalate and you'll feel terrible, but you've got a boyfriend now, you've got people who care about you, you've got healthy people in your corner, in your environment, to survive the onslaught and even learn from it and never let it happen again, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So that's my...
Those are my major thoughts.
Is there anything you wanted to add as we wind down?
No, that is...
Just so reassuring because I have definitely been spinning with if I'm doing things right in my family and, you know, how much do I really need to put up with.
It just really is such a relief and it gave me some really incredible insight into everything that I'm dealing with.
This conversation has been immensely just...
Valuable. So valuable to me.
Well, I'm thrilled. And if Sophia, sorry, if any of Sophia's family ends up listening to this, I know you're mad at me.
And yeah, I understand that.
And I sympathize. I really, really do.
I really sympathize. But try to offer her something that's positive.
Don't just threaten her with a negative.
Try her offer something that is positive, that's going to be beneficial and helpful to her life.
I would love it if you all got along.
I would love it if you all were close and connected and a family of origin turned into a positive unit of help and love and support.
Nothing would please me more.
So, you'll be tempted to get mad at me.
And you will be. And I'll take that.
It's my little cross to bear.
That's fine, right? But...
If she is, and I think she will, hold strong with the support of the people in her life, then all you have to give her is the answer to, do I want to?
Yes. I mean, so Sophia, I mean, we spent, what, three hours on the phone here, right?
Not three hours talking, right? Yeah.
I mean, did you want to?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure some people have wanted to pee when they're on the phone with me, right?
Hopefully people can hold off, right?
But that's the thing, right? So this is a long conversation for somebody you've never talked to before, right?
And, you know, we really did, you know, we went deep into your history and all of that.
And, you know, you wanted to.
And I get people saying, oh, I'd like to come back and all of that.
And... Your boyfriend says, hey, you should talk to Steph.
And, you know, obviously you thought about it, mulled it over, and it's like, yeah, I would like to, right?
And I'm glad it's been helpful. I really am thrilled that it's been helpful.
But that's all this show is, is that, you know, people want to chat.
Yeah, I think I will, right?
I would like to. But do I want to?
Just ask yourself that question.
Somebody has a demand, do I want it?
Somebody asks you, bullies you, do I want it?
The phone rings, do I want to pick it up?
Just ask yourself. That's free will, man.
That's free will. Do I want to?
Because if it's just like, oh, I want to avoid the negatives and beg for a couple of positives and I don't want to get yelled at, I don't want to get, then you're not free.
Not free. Not free.
Not free. All right. Well, thank you very much.
Will you keep me in touch or will you keep in touch and let me know how it goes?
Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic.
Do say hi to your boyfriend for me.
I will. He'll be thrilled.
Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate that.
Was he listening or is he going to listen later?
No, no. He's going to listen later.
He wanted to give me the space that I needed, but he really wanted to talk to you.
He calls you his second dad.
I appreciate that.
Well, thanks very much, and thanks everyone for your support.
FreeDomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
I hugely appreciate that as well, and have a great weekend.
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