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Jan. 21, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:14:06

STEVEN CROWDER vs THE DAILY WIRE!

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	So, Steven Crowder was at The Blaze.
	That's Glenn Beck's thing, right? Steven Crowder's contract ended late last year.
	So, he was a free agent and he was looking to get a new place to stream.
	Of course, the logical place is Ben Shapiro's outfit, The Daily Wire.
	And so what happened was Shapiro, and he's got a, I think it's a CFO or maybe something somewhere out there, his name's Boring, Boring or Boring or something like that.
	So they put together a non-binding term sheet.
	So if you've not been involved in this kind of stuff, then a non-binding term sheet is just haggling.
	It's not legally enforceable, but it's a way to make sure that people don't hire lawyers and draft detailed contracts when they're nowhere close in price.
	Right? We're nowhere close in price.
	So if Steven Crowder wants $100 million, but they're only willing to pay $20 million, there's no point going through all these negotiations about terms, this, that, and the other, and then finding out that they're way too apart on price, that he wants five times what they think he's worth.
	So a term sheet, in this sense, is just saying, are we talking even about the same numbers and the same general conditions?
	And from there, if you can agree...
	On the general number, which doesn't mean anything specific, but if you want $100 million, they only offer you $20 million, then you don't go any further.
	But if it's like, okay, I want 20% more, 50% more, maybe even 100% more, you can maybe work these things in.
	And it's general terms, so that if there's some general term in there that you don't like, you can say, I want this struck, I want this modified, I want more time off.
	So it's just putting out feelers and seeing if you're even remotely on the same page.
	It's dating. It's dating, right?
	Dating is non-legally binding.
	You can't go after palimony from dating.
	It's dating... You date before you get married.
	And so, this is the situation.
	Now, what...
	My jaw hit the floor.
	I don't know if you guys hit me with a Y if your jaw hit the floor about the sums of money involved.
	Holy crap! 50 million over 4 years?
	25 million extra?
	What? For a two-year extension, like, holy crap!
	I mean, Steven Crowder, SC, good for you, man.
	I mean, we did a couple of shows back in the day, and I don't particularly enjoy his style that much, but, you know, good for him, man.
	Obviously, he's got 6 million followers on YouTube, and if he's able to command these kinds of sums, fantastic.
	Fantastic. So, 50 million.
	That's really something.
	Tim Pool is in that range as well.
	Yeah, isn't that wild?
	Isn't that wild? So good for them in a way.
	I have some questions, which we'll sort of get to in a bit here.
	So, basically, a couple of the issues that came up.
	And I'm no contract expert.
	I'm no lawyer. I've done a bunch of contracts.
	I took a company public, so I've had some experience with this kind of stuff.
	And so on. And I remember having to hire a lawyer to fight like hell against a non-compete clause and all of that.
	So I've, you know, gone through fine detailed contracts in fairly great detail.
	So here's the model contract, the non-binding starting place, right?
	So... What the Daily Wire said, it's like, okay, we'll pay you this money, pay you $50 million over four years, $25 million for a two-year extension.
	So it's a million bucks a month, give or take, right?
	It's a million bucks a month or $12.5 million a year or whatever it is, right?
	So a million bucks a month. Now, from that, though, Stephen would have to pay his own people, his own...
	Like, they wouldn't give him a whole studio and everything, so there's some deductions.
	He doesn't get to keep it all, obviously, right?
	It's not salary.
	It's paying for his entire production company to do stuff, right?
	So the issue is that there were contract clauses in the Daily Wire's contract where payouts are going to be lowered if the revenue from big tech drops, right?
	So one provision says, if 50% of advertisers drop Crowder...
	And the revenue can't be recouped within 90 days.
	Crowder's prorated salary of $12.5 million a year would be reduced by 25% until such time as the advertising revenue was recouped.
	Right? So they're not paid.
	See, here's the thing. This is what people don't understand about corporations.
	Oh, man. I used to say this to my employees all the time.
	When it comes to prioritizing tasks, remember, I'm not paying you.
	I'm not paying you.
	I'm not going to my bank account.
	I'm not pulling out money and putting it in your pocket at the end of the week.
	I'm not paying you. You know who's paying you?
	The customers are paying you.
	Now, I'll work very hard to make the customers happy and make sales, but I'm not paying you.
	The customers are the ones paying you.
	That's really important to understand, right?
	It's like the news business. The news business is not in the business of delivering the news to you.
	That's not their business.
	Their business is not to deliver the news to you.
	What is their business? Their business is to deliver you to the advertisers.
	That's their business. And anybody who doesn't understand that...
	Didn't understand the last couple of years, right?
	The news business is in the business of taking your eyeballs and putting them on advertisers so you'll get off your ass and buy their products.
	That's their job. That's the entire business model.
	So the business model of The Daily Wire is to deliver advertisers to Steven Crowder's audience.
	That's their business. That's their...
	Like it or not, right?
	That's their business model. That's what they've gone with.
	I haven't gone with that. My goal is not to deliver you to anything or anyone except philosophy.
	That's the goal. That's the entire business plan is to find a way to provide enough value in philosophy for you To keep me alive.
	That's the whole goal.
	Find some way, dig deep, dig hard, dig fast, dig wide, dig a trench if I have to, with my bare, nailed hands.
	Find a way to unearth enough value to philosophy that I can give that to you, deliver philosophy to you, and you will Keep me in food and shelter and heating and maybe some electricity.
	I'm not in the business of delivering.
	That's why I want the donation model.
	If it was good enough for Socrates, I'm not going to complain about it too much.
	But the business of the Daily Wire is to deliver Stephen Crowder's audience information.
	To advertisers. That's it.
	Now, if there aren't advertisers to deliver Steven Crowder's audience to, Daily Wire can't make any money.
	Can't make any money.
	If Steven Crowder is getting money from advertising and 50% of advertisers drop him, what will happen to Steven Crowder's money?
	Well, it will diminish.
	I know he's got this mug club.
	I don't really understand the mug club.
	Do you get a mug? I tried looking it up.
	I couldn't find anything.
	I don't understand the mug club.
	It just seems like it's a premium, right?
	It's premium, right? A bunch of his stuff is free.
	But if you join the mug club, you get the spicy stuff or the edgy stuff or whatever it is for that price.
	So I understand it, right? So he's got some subscriptions and I assume that kind of stuff.
	So all of that is...
	It's subcontent, subscriber content like Google's.
	Okay. All right.
	So... So that's the reality.
	So if you're paying...
	Sorry, if the advertisers are paying Steven Crowder, which they are, if the advertisers are paying Steven Crowder for access to his audience through the Daily Wire...
	Daily Wire is just a flow-through, right?
	Then if 50% of advertisers drop Crowder...
	And this most...
	The contracts for significant talent have what's called a morality clause.
	I guess as Kanye West has found and as Jordan Peterson is finding with his college, there's a morality clause.
	The morality clause is don't say things so egregious that the majority of civilized people will look at you like they've got to scrape you off the bottom of their shoe.
	Don't say anything just so horrible and monstrous and heinous and like so...
	So the morality clause is kind of important, right?
	So they're saying, if for some reason 50% of advertisers drop you, we're going to try like hell for three months.
	It's a long time. We're going to try like hell for three months to try and get new advertisers, try and get new revenue or something like that.
	But if we can't, then your salary has to be reduced by 25% until it's recouped.
	Now, you can like, you can not like, you can...
	But as far as the Daily Wire's business model goes, that's incontrovertible.
	Because they're not paying Steven Crowder.
	They're not paying Steven Crowder.
	The advertisers are. And if the advertisers stop paying Steven Crowder, the only choice that the Daily Wire would have would be to borrow, to go into debt, to cut other shows, whatever it would be.
	Someone's going to have to make up that deficit.
	So... Let's see.
	Another would have implemented.
	So this is the same issue, right?
	So if YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, etc., if there's content strikes that prevent the Daily Wire from monetizing Crowder's content, now Crowder's demonetized on YouTube, but the other ones where he's got money, he's monetized, right?
	Now, if there's a content strike that prevents the Daily Wire from monetizing crowders' content for more than 90 days...
	Now, a lot of content strikes...
	I remember when I was back on YouTube, I would get a content strike that says, you can't upload thumbnails for a week, or you can't livestream for a week, or something like that, right?
	So, 90 days, that's a long time to be demonetized, right?
	So, again, the business of the Daily Wire is to deliver a crowded audience to advertisers.
	And if they can't monetize his audience, they can't afford to pay him, so he'll have to take a salary cut.
	Now, I mean, if you've ever worked in sales...
	Let's find out this audience here.
	I love you guys so much. Let's find out this audience.
	Okay. Hit me with a Y if you've ever worked on commission.
	Yeah, so some of you have worked on commission, right?
	Okay. I mean, I worked on commission in a sense when I had a paper route when I was 12 years old, right?
	You work on commission. In a sense, I kind of worked on commission in a way when I was a waiter because you've got to get tips and so on.
	Of course, I worked on commission in sales and so on, right?
	So people who are used to salary don't understand what's...
	It's eat what you kill. Eat what you kill.
	And there's a significant upside to that, right?
	So... When you're on salary, salary is really dangerous.
	I'll tell you why salary is dangerous.
	Because salary, it's on or it's off.
	It's binary. It's not variable.
	So salary is, okay, you get paid $40,000 or $50,000 a year.
	And if the company goes bankrupt, that goes to zero.
	But it's not variable, right?
	So if you're on sales, if you have a really good month, you make a lot of money.
	If you have a really bad month, you make less money.
	That's the way it is.
	That's the way it is. So, yeah, content strikes where you can't monetize Crowder's content.
	Where's the money going to come to pay for Crowder if you can't monetize his content?
	So that was the second one.
	The first was advertisers drop him, and it's 50% of advertisers, not 40%.
	If 40% of advertisers drop him, the term doesn't go in, right?
	Now the third issue was say, okay, Crowder's salary is reduced by 20% if he's banned by YouTube or Apple Podcasts and 10% if he's banned by Facebook or Spotify.
	Yeah. Because that's going to cripple or significantly diminish the advertiser's access to his audience.
	So here's an analogy, right?
	Give me the name of the band you've ever seen with the biggest audience, right?
	What's the band you've ever seen with the biggest audience?
	I saw The Stones at the Soros concert in Canada with like 120,000 people in the audience or some insane thing.
	Okay, Coldplay, Kiss, Elvis.
	Sounds like a bizarre haiku.
	Metallica. Oh yeah, I saw ACDC at that same concert.
	It was the Guess Who, the Who...
	Was the Who there? No, I don't think so.
	The Guess Who...
	Oh, I also saw Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, and Sting, and Bruce Springsteen at another concert, so Taylor Swift.
	Okay, so you were in a massive concert arena, like a Wembley Stadium thing with, what, I don't know, 20,000 people?
	20,000 people. All right.
	So let's say that you are...
	In charge of selling tickets for Taylor Swift, right?
	And then Taylor Swift wakes up one day and says, you know what?
	I'm done playing stadiums, man.
	They're too big. They're soulless.
	They're impersonal. I can't see the audience because the lights are so bright.
	That's one of the reasons, by the way, Freddie Mercury was so great at Live Aid is they could finally see the audience for the first time in their career because they didn't have bright lights in their faces, right?
	So, if you're in charge of Taylor Swift's merchandise, you're selling merchandise at Taylor Swift concerts, and she suddenly says, you know what, I don't want to play stadiums anymore.
	I'm going to play jazz clubs.
	I want to play small, intimate jazz clubs, no more than 75 people in the audience.
	Okay, what happens to your merchandise?
	Your revenue, your profits from merchandise, it completely collapses, right?
	So that's just a way to understand it.
	If Sting says, I'm not going to play stadiums anymore, then, you know, people who sell merchandise at Sting Concert is going to take a bit of a hit, right?
	Now, I'm going to paraphrase, obviously, go listen to Crowder and so on, right?
	But Crowder has an issue where he says, look, if you're going to penalize me for being Censored by big tech for being, again, content strikes, for being banned, for being demonetized.
	If you're going to penalize me for...
	Big tech censorship, then you're in league, you're in line with big tech, you're harming up-and-coming young talent if this is the issue in their contract as well.
	And I'm paraphrasing, so, you know, if I've gone astray, please let me know, as always, right?
	Try to get things right, but I'm not going to play you the whole 17-minute video.
	So he says, look, if I get penalized because big tech censors me, then you are aligning with big tech at my expense.
	And that's bad for me. You're a gatekeeper and it's a big con and this, that, and the other, right?
	So that is the issue, right?
	He also had an issue with burnout, right?
	And burnout can be a thing.
	Burnout can be a thing when you've got that hamster wheel of stuff.
	You end up spending so much time working that you don't really enjoy what you do.
	So the contract also says...
	Well, not a contract. Sorry, it's not a contract.
	I have to correct myself, right?
	The non-binding term sheet, right?
	So Crowder would have had to produce 192 shows a year And would be penalized 100 grand for every show he didn't produce below that number, right?
	So, yeah, 192 shows a year.
	And he gets four weeks off.
	He doesn't have to work Fridays if he doesn't...
	And they don't say the length of the shows, right?
	Right? So...
	Basically, they're saying we expect to make about $100,000 for every show you make, right?
	So they're paying him $12.5 million a year.
	They get $19 million from his shows.
	There's a profit and there's risk involved, which is why the profit is higher and so on, right?
	Crowder, since 2018, did 900 shows.
	So is this...
	I mean, we don't really count this year, right?
	So let's do four divided by...
	Sorry. 900 divided by four.
	Divided by four, right? So he's been doing 225 shows, give or take a year.
	So he's going to have to do 192 with this.
	Now, there was other stuff, too.
	He'd have to read some ads.
	I think they wanted him to do a documentary.
	And those are big things. Those are big things, right?
	Yeah. And some of Crowder's shows are like 15 minutes.
	Some of them are more than three hours.
	Most of them are about two hours, right? Now, there's a penalty every month or quarter that he doesn't produce his quota for that time period.
	He gets a $250,000 penalty.
	If he doesn't meet his annual quota, the contract fines him a million dollars, right?
	Okay. So he's getting $12.5 million a year.
	So he's getting fined 8% if he doesn't produce the shows that he says he will.
	And there's stuff in there about serious illness or disability or whatever it is, right?
	So... What's the issue with that?
	I mean, the Daily Wires guy, Boring, said it's certainly not unfair to expect someone that is making $50 million over the next four years to work 192 days a year.
	I do. I'm not getting paid $50 million over the next four years.
	But... And you don't see me quite as much because I'm working on a book, so that's...
	I don't think I'll just hand out that book like handy.
	I think so. Anyway. So he's saying, like, that's a lot of content, man.
	It's going to be tough. But he is getting paid a million dollars a month.
	Again, I know that's gross, not net and all of that.
	And he's getting paid for his 6 million YouTube subscribers.
	And why does Daily Wire want to pay that much?
	Because Ben Shapiro has 5.3 million on YouTube.
	Candace Owens, 1.3 million.
	But that's on two different channels.
	And Matt Walsh of what is a woman fame, 2 million.
	He has twice... So Crowder has twice as many as the Daily Wire itself, which only has 3 million, right?
	So that is...
	And also... You can stack shows, right?
	So let's say you do a banger of a three-hour show.
	You could split it into two one-and-a-half-hour shows, two 90-minute shows.
	So you can book ahead of time.
	You can do shows ahead of time. You can do whatever ahead of time.
	Now, the idea that this is anything other than an opening offer, I don't understand it.
	I find this incomprehensible.
	Right? So, some people say, I don't know what the truth is.
	Some people say, the Crowder came back and said, no, I don't want 50 million, I want 120 million.
	I want 30 million dollars a year.
	And, of course, if you've been in the business world at all, or haggled for anything at all in this life, which is just about everyone, you know that the Daily Wire would be absolutely thrilled to pay him 30 million dollars.
	A year. They would absolutely love to pay him $30 million a year.
	Which is why everyone sends scripts to Brad Pitt, right?
	They would love to, but he has to make more than $30 million a year for them, right?
	Or, sorry, he has to make more than they're paying him.
	Right? So, it's not, what am I worth?
	You say, what am I worth? It's like, no, that's not the issue.
	What am I worth? No, the issue is how much value can I deliver?
	How much value can I deliver?
	If you can make a case that you can deliver good value, then people will pay you accordingly.
	I did this in a job interview video in 2007, right?
	So a long time ago.
	So... He is also saying, of course, Trout's issue is like, it just gives a target for the advertisers if they know they can hit my income.
	But the activists target the advertisers and then that hits his income.
	But that's going to hit his income either way.
	It's going to hit his income either way.
	So, what else was there?
	He felt that the offer, he characterized it as immoral.
	And I think that mostly had to do with what he perceived as the collusion between the Daily Wire and big tech to censor independent voices, independent thought, and so on.
	It's kind of an insult to the people who've already signed these contracts.
	But, you know, obviously, if they get offended, that's their issue.
	And, of course, they did. Our good friend, Miss Fiery Candace Owens, was on Tim Kast's railing against this.
	And, you know, I can certainly understand why.
	He kept saying it wasn't about the money, though.
	Well, if it's true that he came back and said he wanted $30 million, it's about the money.
	It's about the money. Because if you make a counter-offer that is almost two and a half times what they're offering, well, then it's about the money.
	And there's nothing wrong with it being about the money.
	There's nothing wrong with it being about the money.
	I have no issue with it. I mean, who would?
	It's voluntary and so on, right?
	If you can produce that kind of value.
	So if he came back and wanted more money, then it's kind of about the money, right?
	Now, he can say, of course, and he has, he said, no, no, no, it's not about the money.
	I walked away from this money.
	Well, if you're saying I have to work too hard for it and I'm worth more, you're not walking away from the money.
	You know, if you are an experienced computer programmer and somebody offers you an entry-level job at $30,000 a year and you say, well, I just walked away.
	I just walked away from that.
	It's like, well, you don't want that because you can get much more elsewhere and also if they want you to work 70 hours a week and be on call 24, whatever, right?
	So, yeah.
	So, offers are not immoral.
	It's not immoral to offer Stephen Crowder $1 a year.
	It's not immoral. I mean, he'll laugh in your face, and he should.
	It's worth much more than that, obviously.
	But how is it immoral?
	How is it immoral to make an offer?
	Help me. Educate me.
	If there's something that I've missed, I absolutely want you guys to school me on this.
	What have I missed? Where an offer is immoral.
	If he doesn't like having his income reduced, if his advertising dollars go down, then he can say, I want that removed, or I want that changed, or here's how we can work around it, or blah, blah, blah, or I'll take less money up front.
	But I don't understand the logic of saying...
	Again, I'm happy to be schooled, happy to be educated on this.
	I don't understand the logic of saying, the advertisers pay my income.
	If advertising revenue collapses, my income should remain the same.
	I don't understand that.
	The reason why he gets paid so much is because of his audience and access to the audience by advertisers.
	If advertisers can't access the audience...
	He doesn't get paid as much because the advertisers are paying his salary.
	Oh yeah, there's a guy who ran a Twitter account for Crowder's dog and yeah, it apparently got pretty ugly but I won't repeat that because I don't know.
	I don't know the facts behind that and you know allegations are pretty easy to make.
	So the problem is crowded with see none of the upside of increased ad revenue.
	But that's not a problem.
	Like, that's not a problem at all.
	Because if Steven Crowder is able to double his ad revenue, or double the ad revenue that's going to Daily Wire, then he would simply say, okay, I'm taking a downside risk if the advertising revenue goes down, but I also want an upside risk if the advertising revenue goes up.
	You negotiate. I don't understand.
	I mean, imagine my wife comes to me and I don't feel like eating Greek, right?
	And she says, I want to go for Greek dinner tonight.
	You're enslaving me.
	I really don't feel like Greek.
	Can we try, you know, do you feel like something else and we'll find something out, right?
	Or, you know, worst comes to the worst you could order in Greek or whatever, right?
	So, I don't...
	There's no problem.
	So if something's missing from the contract, as a human being over the age of 12, what do you do?
	You say, well, look, I'm taking all the risk for the downside of the advertising revenue, but if advertising revenue goes through the roof, I want an upside.
	And he could say, I don't want to read ads in my show.
	And, of course, you can say anything you want.
	It's an offer.
	It's an offer. Crazy.
	All right. Let me just see here.
	Stephen self-censes a lot.
	He used to be way more controversial.
	Maybe it was the recreation of the Epstein suicide.
	I don't know. Or maybe the George Floyd thing.
	I don't know. Okay, so...
	Here's the thing. So Stephen Crowder, I assume, has an issue with Daily Wire and says, look, your business model that's so reliant upon advertisers is a bad business model.
	And what you should do is you should have paid subscribers.
	That is a fine case to make.
	I mean, I have donations, so I'm not going to argue with that business model.
	But that is their business model.
	That is their business model.
	I mean, you don't go to a car dealership and want a boat, or at least you're not going to get one because it's not a boat dealership.
	So the Daily Wire has gone all in on advertisers, which gives them obviously a great deal of revenue.
	I don't think they can talk about very important stuff, in my humble opinion, but that's neither here nor there.
	there.
	I haven't obviously consumed the vast majority of their content, so I don't know.
	But that is their business model.
	And if you all in on advertisers, you develop very strong relationships with advertisers, your entire revenue model, your expertise, the people you've hired, that company is, you know, it's aligned itself to the entire model of advertising friendly content.
	Now, to say you should change your business model from advertising to subscription revenue, and I think they do have some, I mean, I know that they do have some subscription revenue on Daily Wire.
	So Stephen Crowder is saying, I have a better business model for you.
	So put that in the country.
	Again, I don't understand the difficulty here.
	I don't understand the controversy.
	I genuinely don't. If he thinks that a subscription model is vastly better than an advertising model, it gives you more independence, then you're more bulletproof, then there's, like all things economics, there's plus and minuses to both.
	Then what he should do is he should say, look, I don't want this advertising revenue crap in my contract.
	I want a subscription model.
	I want to be paid X percentage of every subscription dollar that I bring into the company.
	Well, that's fine. I assume that that number is lower than the advertising revenue.
	Otherwise, you wouldn't be even tempted by the advertising revenue.
	But you would simply say, you know, this is your contract for the advertising model.
	I don't want to do the advertising model.
	It doesn't work for me. I could demonetize on YouTube and so on.
	So I want a model that's based on subscriptions.
	People sign up and they pay every monthly or whatever, right?
	So you would go to them and say that.
	And then they would say, okay, so we don't need to assign any ad executives, any ad sales, anything like that.
	You don't need to read stuff out.
	You don't need to do this, you know. But we will just take a percentage of Of your income from subscriptions.
	Now, the problem, of course, is that that would mean that Daily Wire wouldn't actually have that much to offer him because if their entire specialty...
	I mean, they're not offering him the studio space, which they offer to other talent because he has his own studio crew and studio space.
	So they would be offering him all of the expertise that they have in placing ads and the revenue generation that they have in placing ads.
	And look, Stephen is a huge talent.
	He's very popular.
	He's very engaging.
	He has had a great deal of success in getting eyeballs and so on.
	So maybe the subscription model could work for him.
	But I assume he's getting money from ads on some platforms.
	So if he doesn't want to do the advertising model and The Daily Wire is an advertising beast of a company, I think they are, then he should go with a company that wants the advertising model.
	Or, and there may be some reason for this I simply don't understand at all, or...
	Why doesn't he just run things himself?
	Maybe, again, I'm happy to hear why this is nonsense and nuts and crazy, but why doesn't he just advertise?
	Sorry, why doesn't he just monetize his own content?
	He already has his own crew.
	He already has his own team.
	He already has his own studio. Why doesn't he just work for himself?
	Why doesn't he just have himself as the company?
	Look, let's say I'm a car designer back in some time in the past, right?
	Way, way in the past, right? And I say, you know what?
	I'm tired of designing these cars.
	I want to design a convertible.
	It's going to be beautiful, right?
	Like the old Peanuts cartoon says, you know, the secret to happiness in life is having two things.
	Number one, a lake.
	Number two, a convertible.
	And that way, when it's raining, you can't use your convertible, but you're happy your lake is being filled.
	On the other hand, if it's not raining, you're unhappy that your lake is shrinking, but you're happy you can drive your convertible.
	So, I'm a car designer.
	I'm like, I don't want to dine any of these stupid cars.
	I want a convertible. And they say to me, yeah, you know, we're a close-up car company.
	We're not going to do a convertible.
	We don't want to do a convertible.
	That's immoral! It's like, no, you just, you quit and you start your own car company and you make a convertible.
	Again, I don't understand the slave aspect of it here.
	I don't understand the offense.
	If you think that they're doing something wrong, you should do something better.
	I'll give you another example, pointing at himself, he said, for the people who are visually impaired.
	I will give you another example, yours truly, giant freckled ostrich egg guy himself.
	The guy whose daughter regularly asks, because she's now 14, why are you like this?
	I was incredibly dissatisfied with how philosophy was being taught.
	It wasn't relevant. It wasn't practical.
	It wasn't actionable. It wasn't funny.
	It didn't come with a soundtrack.
	It wasn't goofy.
	People didn't wrap it with lit up candy necklaces like I did with my Eminem parody, right?
	So I thought philosophy was being taught really badly.
	Did I try to go to some existing and established philosophy educational place and say, I want to do this, and if they didn't want to do it, say, well, they're just evil and immoral and they're gatekeepers, right?
	I don't know why people do that.
	I don't know why people do that.
	You know, in life, here's the thing, man.
	This is my big, special, rip it open thing.
	Chinese fortune cookie right here.
	It's a fortune cookie right here.
	You want in life to be as water.
	To be as water. You know what water does when it hits a big rock?
	It goes around it.
	It finds a way.
	It finds a way.
	It doesn't just sit there and attempt to beat up the rock with its little liquid fists.
	Be as water. Be as water.
	You're trying to get to a destination.
	I mean, when you hit a dead end, do you just park the car and die?
	No! You back out, you go around, you find another way.
	If the subscription model totally beats...
	The advertiser's model, easy peasy, nice and easy.
	You go and prove it to everyone, and then the whole business will change.
	The whole business model of everyone will change.
	I don't, genuinely don't understand it.
	Why? People would be mad about this.
	A wise, mad, a slave contract.
	My God, what an insult to actual slaves, obviously, right?
	That's crazy, right? This is a common misconception.
	Mug Club makes him zero dollars.
	He sold it to Blaze. Sorry. Okay, I don't know.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	Also, does Crowder know how profitable his business is because he's been under the umbrella of other organizations?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	Yeah, Daily Wire does have a subscription offer as well.
	I think I bought it once.
	So... And somebody's saying here, Daily Wire does get subscriptions, they get ads from Big Tech, they get ad reads, and they have radio ads.
	Subs are the least. Okay, so I assume so.
	I mean, otherwise they would buy.
	And there's a reason for that.
	Maybe they're wrong. Maybe, you know, there's some very smart guys over there at the Daily Wire, right?
	I mean, very smart guys over there at the Daily Wire.
	Maybe. Maybe they're totally wrong.
	Maybe May's subscription model is the way to go.
	I don't know. But it's tricky.
	And even with the subscription model, you still have an issue.
	Even if you have the subscription model, you have the issue that if you're deplatformed or shadow banned or suppressed on big tech, you're going to have problems with your subscription suits though.
	Yeah, it's Daily Wire, has subs, read only $4 a month, built annually, inside a plus, $12 a month, built annually, all access, $20 a month, built annually.
	Okay. Yeah. So I... There's a couple of things.
	So what people don't understand is why he has 2 million subs and they can't understand he doesn't have revenues.
	He has no email list. Yeah, I'd heard that too.
	I don't... That's amazing to me.
	He doesn't have an email list, but hey, what do I know?
	What do I know? All right.
	Let's see here. The idea that Crowder is saying this is ownership of you and everything you do...
	Well, no. As far as I understand it, the offer terms...
	And again, if you don't like the offer, make a counteroffer.
	I don't understand that.
	Oh, my gosh.
	I mean, is it immoral to make a counteroffer?
	Like, you go and ask a girl out.
	You say, hey, you want to go see a movie?
	She says, no, no, but I'd love to go for a walk in the park with you and Robert Plant.
	They're like, oh, this...
	It's a counteroffer.
	It's life. All we do in life is we make offers and counteroffers and we negotiate with people.
	It's what we do. Like water, I tell you.
	Like water, right? This is ownership of you and everything you do.
	No, it's not. If it's voluntary, it's not ownership.
	Yes, they own his back catalog until the contract ends, and then he gets his back catalog back.
	They remain owners of his shows that he creates under their paycheck in perpetuity.
	Well, guess what? Guess what?
	When I was a computer programmer and writing code in COBOL to help people trade stocks at high velocity, when I left that job, they kept all my code.
	Why? Because they pay me to make it.
	So I didn't get to get paid to make the code and take the code with me.
	I mean, the fact that people own what they pay you to make...
	I don't know, it's just bizarre.
	You pay someone to make you something...
	and then they get to keep owning it after they leave?
	I don't know, it's just bizarre. I mean, could you imagine that...
	You pay someone to come and refinish your couch and then they just take the couch.
	It's like, no, man, I invested labor into this couch.
	It's my couch now.
	It's like, no, no, no, I paid you to refinish it.
	Well, I did refinish it. I did reupholster it.
	Now it's my couch. I mean, isn't there a common sense thing?
	Like every single day you ever have an experience?
	Every single day? You drop your car off to get an oil change.
	You say, hey, man, we're keeping the car.
	Why? Well, we changed the oil.
	We invested labor into it. It's our car now.
	It's like, no, no, no, I paid you to change the oil.
	You don't have to keep the car? That's wild.
	I made that hamburger.
	Give it back.
	So as far as arguments go, it's not a contract.
	So the fact that people are referring to this as a contract is false.
	I mean, that's just your number one thing.
	And I've slipped a couple of times, but it's not a contract.
	It's an offer. Now, you can be upset at an offer.
	Oh, that's a lowball offer.
	They're devaluing me.
	But, you know, be aware.
	You know, this is my sort of advice to Stephen, right?
	So listen, dude, you shaggy-haired, full-bearded genius, right?
	You've got to understand that people in America...
	Really struggling financially.
	Really struggling financially.
	Now, one of the things that conservatives do, in general, is, and this used to be more on the left, when the left cared more about the working class rather than big corporations, when the seeds of the power of the left were in the working class, not in the big corporations, they flipped now, of course, but the populist, the party of the populist, the populist party is now the Republican Party.
	That's the populist party.
	That's the working class party.
	That's the lower middle class, middle class party.
	Now, if you are outraged at a lowball offer and people hear $50 million, You may lose a little bit of that polish of a man of the people.
	You know, the amount of credit card debt that Americans are in is truly staggering at the moment.
	Like, it's unbelievable how low the savings rate is and how high the credit card debt is.
	It's staggering. And post-Christmas, this comes, this drops post-Christmas, right?
	So post-Christmas, people are facing this staggering set of bills from Christmas, right?
	Just for aches. And you claiming about a slave contract of $50 million?
	After bitching endlessly about Colin Kaepernick calling the NFL contracts slave contracts and saying how ridiculous that was, it's not very brand-friendly, my bro.
	It's just not very brand-friendly.
	Now, if you're going to say, I don't want...
	Here's the thing too.
	If you're going to say, I don't want any penalties for ad revenue losses, that's fine.
	I guarantee you, I guarantee you 150% that...
	The Daily Wire will be perfectly happy.
	I say this with absolute confidence.
	The Daily Wire will be perfectly happy to remove every single one of those deductions For loss of audience based upon strikes of more than 90 days or full bans.
	You get banned, you get a strike or advertiser, 50% advertiser drop, 90 days you can't resolve it.
	They will take all of those out.
	Guaranteed. Some people say it's not about the money, it's about the principle of the thing.
	I guarantee you that the Daily Wire will take all of those clauses out.
	You just have to ask and take less money.
	It's perfectly simple, my dude.
	It's perfectly simple.
	You say, I want these clauses about any reduction in my salary, any reduction based upon demonetization, bans, advertiser revenue drop.
	I want all of those taken out.
	And the Daily Wire will do that.
	Because they're good businessmen.
	But they won't pay you $50 million.
	This is what I mean. When people say it's not about the money, that just doesn't make any sense.
	Of course it's about the money. Of course it's about the money.
	Let me put it to you.
	If it really isn't about the money, right?
	If it really, really genuinely isn't about the money, and it's just about these clauses, let's go out on a limb.
	If Stephen were to say, listen, I'll take no money at all, but you've got to get these contracts.
	These parts of the contracts have got to come out.
	Now, you've got to pay my people, but I won't take, right?
	Then they will absolutely take those out because the bulk of the cost is one Stephen Crowder, right?
	So people say, well, it's not about the money.
	No, he wants to make more money With more risk to the Daily Wire, because he's very upset that the Daily Wire would reduce his income if the Daily Wire's income is reduced, otherwise known as reality.
	So, of course it's about the money.
	If he was willing to accept less money, he could get these clauses struck, no problem.
	I mean, I'm not saying the Daily Wire would be super happy like, yay, that's great, but they would absolutely rather have Steven Crowder if they were able to pay him less if he didn't want these clauses.
	Right?
	So.
	All right.
	Let me get to your comments because I don't want to miss that.
	I have a little bit more stuff to say.
	And listen, if I have left something out, if I have misunderstood something, please, I'm begging you, correct me.
	I am perfectly thrilled to do that.
	Thank you for the tip. Again, freedomain.locals.com.
	Hey, tip. This is not, understand, this is not about Stephen Crowder.
	It's not about the Daily Wire.
	It's not about $50 million or $120 million or whatever.
	It's not about any of these things. It's about you.
	It's about you and me. It's about you and me.
	I'm telling you, this is how you work at life.
	Here's another tip.
	Don't record private business conversations with friends and release them to the public.
	Just don't do that. Don't do that.
	Don't record private business calls with friends and release them to the public when really insulting the people who you claim to be friends with.
	That's wild. Somebody says, I love you, Steph.
	Philosophy was my first degree and the college experience nearly knocked it out of me.
	Oh yeah, the number of people I've talked to who've taken philosophy in college and barely survived the experience, myself included, I wrote about my college experience in philosophy in my novel, Almost.
	You can get it at almostnovel.com for free.
	I mean, I think people say, well, what's he up to and so on?
	Well, I don't know, but I would guess that part of him just wants to strike out on his own and he's flailing about trying to find some way to do it.
	If he has a business model that's vastly superior and vastly more moral, Then the Daily Wires, maybe he does.
	I have my doubts. Again, I think the Daily Wire are very smart people, very astute businessmen, businesswomen.
	But if Steven Crowder has a business model that is just fantastic and is going to blow theirs out of the water, then Steven Crowder should absolutely implement it himself.
	Again, I felt that the teaching of philosophy was bad and wrong and disincentivizing and demotivating and an insult to philosophy, so I didn't just rail against all the people teaching philosophy.
	I just went out and started my own philosophy show.
	And what you're supposed to be doing?
	I think in the long run this hurts Crowder.
	Well, people are going to not want to negotiate with the guy.
	Yeah, they're really not going to want to negotiate with the guy.
	And you have to negotiate.
	I mean, I won't get into any details.
	It doesn't really matter. It was a long time ago.
	So I've been offered some stuff for this show, and vaguely tempting just as a flyby.
	But yeah, back in the day when this show was, you know, a real mover and shaker, before I'm put into the intimate jazz club setting with which we now reside, I was offered some stuff for the show.
	I was offered some...
	Whatever, right? It doesn't really matter.
	But for me, it just comes down...
	And I'm not going to rail against people.
	Oh, it's a lowball. There's too much constrictive and all that.
	It's just like, no, no, no. I want to just...
	I don't want anything cluttering up my relationship with you.
	You, you, you.
	That's what I'm focused on.
	You as the joyous receptacle to heaven-sent philosophy through whatever I can wrestle up with in myself.
	That's what I want. I don't want anything distracting from this relationship.
	This is why I don't have a big studio and blah, blah, blah.
	Plus... Here's the other thing, too.
	If you want concessions in a contract, there's ways that you can end up making the same amount of money, but find a way to save money on your production costs.
	Maybe shoot two shows at one time.
	Maybe find some way to automate.
	Because all the Daily Wire said was we expect shows at the same level of production quality that you have.
	So maybe there's ways that you could automate stuff.
	Maybe there's some tap device that you could have to change cameras or something like that.
	Maybe there's some way... That you could automate the production of your shows to make them cheaper to produce and then you could still make the same amount of take-home pay.
	You could lower your ask or at least not raise it as much.
	You could lower your ask and not raise it as much and get some clauses stripped.
	There's so many different ways that you can negotiate.
	I don't know. Crazy, crazy, crazy.
	Louder is doing all this retention?
	It could be.
	It could be. But yeah, the private conversation stuff, that's a big no-no.
	That's a big no-no. I've had that in my life and it's just, it's absolutely awful.
	It's absolutely awful.
	Send Crowder a term sheet to join Freedom Aid for the loss.
	Ha ha ha ha ha Yes, I'm sure he'd be calling me right back.
	It's funny. Under this arrangement, it still sounds like Crowder would be making a boatload of money if he was kicked off a platform.
	Sounds plenty fair to me. Yeah, for sure.
	How many people having these conversations credit Steph for his model and integrity over the years?
	Has Crowder brought up Steph as an example of the integrity he claims to care about?
	I very much doubt it.
	I very much doubt it.
	Very much doubt it.
	Because, Steph, the offer was so bad, he probably was advised to just walk away.
	If someone offered you half the price of what your house was worth, saying nothing is probably the best bet.
	Yeah, if you feel somebody's lowballing you, have a highball and don't say anything, right?
	All right, let me just get this.
	Well, so, again, I can't claim to have...
	I haven't spent days on this, and I haven't dug into it in massive detail, but I did listen to Crowder.
	First of all, I didn't want to do this.
	It's like, of course you did, otherwise you wouldn't, right?
	I didn't want to do this, and then he plays this recording of the private business call.
	I think it's with Borman, the negotiating guy over at Daily Wire.
	And Borman says, well, you know, just do slave wages for a bit or be a wage slave for a bit or something like that.
	That's a joke. Like, I really, really, really dislike it when people take things wildly out of context like that.
	You know, well, I called it slave wages and he referred to it as wage slavery.
	It's like, dude, it's hilarious to say, here's $50 million, you wage slave.
	Like, be a wage slave for $50 million.
	Come on. Come on.
	AKA 50 bitcoins at some point, I think.
	Just my thought. Although I did say it was going up this year.
	Anyway, so, yeah, it's...
	That's not...
	That's not...
	That's not good.
	Yeah, you cannot share conversations held in confidence.
	You cannot. You cannot do that.
	Because people can't trust you.
	People can't trust you.
	Everybody has their private conversations and their public conversations.
	Everybody has their private conversations and their public conversations.
	And we're not the same people.
	Do you think I'm at dinner talking like this?
	No. I'm a character.
	No, I'm kidding, right? I'm anime.
	So, I'm shaggy philosopher dildo head.
	So... Of course you have your private conversations, and you can make jokes, and you might make fun of someone, and it could be any number of things, right?
	You might say, I mean, things you'd never say in public, just because when you're talking with friends, they know when you're joking, but stuff can be taken out of context and put in some other thing, right?
	Yeah, that's really, really bad.
	I mean, that's just bad.
	There's no way that this is defensible in any way, shape, or form.
	What's your favorite jazz music?
	I'm only one for a deep saxophone myself.
	All right, let me just...
	Yeah, I mean, the cost-benefit is just...
	I mean, if you're in a court of law and you've got a phone call that contradicts, okay, that's what...
	It's not... I don't know.
	It's just all so tragic.
	It's just all so tragic.
	Did we touch on Crowder not keeping ownership of any of the content he made during the term?
	Yes, of course he doesn't get to keep any of the ownership of any of the content made during the term.
	I mean, you work at a restaurant as a cook, you make a meal, do you eat it?
	No. It goes to the guy who paid for it.
	You don't get to eat the meal? Maybe they'll give you a house meal or something.
	Of course, if they're paying you $50 million, they get to keep it.
	And if you don't want them to keep it, that's fine too.
	You say, I want to adjust this potential contract, this term sheet.
	I want to adjust this so I keep.
	I keep. All the stuff I create.
	And they'll be like, okay, fine. It's now $25 million.
	Because part of the reason we gave you $50 million is we could monetize forever all the stuff you made while we were paying you.
	Oh, I want to keep it.
	Then keep it! But negotiate for that!
	I don't understand why people don't negotiate.
	I don't know. We're going to keep all this.
	I don't want you to do that. Okay, then give us a counteroffer.
	But it's not going to be as much money because we can't monetize it forever.
	I don't know. Bizarre.
	Just bizarre. I don't understand.
	And these people, you know, they claim to be free market people and so on, so I don't understand.
	All right. And listen, we don't have to spend the whole show on this.
	Absolutely not. It's great to chat with all of this.
	So, Steph, how do you reconcile tipping restaurant service or food delivery folks when minimum wage is $15 an hour?
	Well, dude, again, I don't know where you're from, but most places, the minimum wage for waiters or people who work on tips is much lower than the minimum wage as a whole.
	Like, when I was a waiter, my minimum wage was like half the minimum wage of other people.
	So the reason you tip is because you're not parasitical.
	Because if you don't tip...
	Then you're living off the tips of other people because the food price is lower because people tip the waiter staff.
	You don't get to save money if nobody tips.
	It just means that the price of the food has to increase.
	So the price of the food is decreased.
	You get a cheaper meal on the assumption that you tip.
	If you don't tip, it's not like you're stealing from other people because it's a social convention, but you can prey on other people's kindness and sense of responsibility.
	Perhaps it was win-lose according to Crowder, but instead of negotiating for a win-win, this is now taking a lose-lose outcome.
	It feels that way. I could easily be wrong.
	I honestly, you know, a lot of this stuff was kind of debatable in many ways until the private business phone calls were released.
	I lose all sympathy for that.
	I have nothing left after that.
	I have nothing left after that.
	That's unbelievably wretched.
	Let's see here.
	Really don't care for Crowder's comedy.
	Ben Shapiro is naturally way funnier.
	It's Eminem, Diswrap, Parody, Novena, Smelties, Epic, though.
	All right. I've never found Ben Shapiro funny, but I'm...
	Okay, is there anywhere I can get a physical copy of the future?
	Will there be for the present? The present, probably, yes.
	The future, I will probably get to it at some point, but I'm just one man.
	Stop bullying me.
	Oh, you're immoral.
	All right. Let's see here.
	Oh, I have completely neglected the other people.
	Let me get back here.
	So nice to chat with you guys again.
	All right.
	I'm only curious of your response to how Stephen reacted.
	Can we teach people how they should react?
	Stephen thinks he's a model for youth.
	How old is he? Because, you know, he's got this shock of hair and I don't know if he dyes his beard.
	I don't know how old he is, right? I mean, this is me without makeup and I don't dye anything, right?
	So how they should react?
	Well, I mean, that's very interesting.
	So the rage quit and betraying confidence and all of that and claiming to be a victim and calling people immoral who aren't doing anything immoral as far as I can see, I don't think that's a good model for youth.
	I think what you do want to say, if you were to do this, is you would sit down with the Daily Wire and you would say, listen, I've got this idea.
	Why won't we make it?
	What if we made...
	This is what I would do if I was in Stephen Crowder's shoes, right?
	What I would do is I would say, okay...
	There's a lot of young people out there who don't know how business works, who don't know how negotiation works, who don't know how contracts work.
	You're a transparency kind of place, and to their credit, the Daily Wire is very transparent.
	They have their whole town hall meetings, they're live-streamed and all that, right?
	So I'd say, listen, how about this?
	It's a crazy idea, right? Maybe it'll work.
	Why don't we film all of our negotiations?
	Why don't we film? Now, maybe we'll do nothing with it.
	Just stick a camera in the corner.
	But if we film all of our negotiations, we can bleep out the amounts, we can do anything, but what I do want to teach young people is how to negotiate.
	Negotiation can be a lot of fun, and it really can be.
	Negotiation can be a blast.
	It can be hilarious.
	I've been through this process a number of times.
	It can be so much fun.
	So, if I was Stephen Crowder and I wanted to teach young people, I'd say, listen, let's just film every negotiation.
	Let's record every call. And we can go through it and review and take out proprietary, blah, blah, blah.
	We can bleep out numbers. I don't care.
	But what we will show is we will...
	My first documentary deliverable will be how to negotiate $50 million.
	How to negotiate... I think that the Daily Wire guy said that they might go as high as $75 or $100 million rights.
	How to negotiate. How do you negotiate?
	How do you negotiate? What an incredible lesson that would be.
	And what is he teaching people now?
	Well, if you don't get what you want, you insult people, you rage quit, and you release private information.
	I don't think that's a good model for young people at all.
	I don't. I think it's actually a very dangerous model for young people.
	Because there's a kind of, I don't know, maybe there's a kind of swaggering, tough kind of, yeah, but boy, I think it really harms people in the long run.
	All right. Steph, which model do you think is preferable for the advancement of the conservative movement?
	A model of a subscription or the Daily Wire model?
	It's Crowder 35.
	Wow. There's a young guy.
	There's a young guy. Well, subscription models or the advertising models?
	The more truth you want to tell, and I say this as a guy who's face-blasted quite a number of truths over my day, if you want to tell really tough truths to the world, a subscription model is far better because it's decentralized, right? It's like the Bitcoin of income, right?
	If you have, and this is, I mean, just by the by, I'm sure you guys know this if you've heard this before, so I'll keep it very brief, but this is very early on.
	I was like, look, I have a rare ability to To communicate complex ideas in a way that's engaging and enjoyable, right?
	Here we're going through the complexities just today, right?
	Right now, tonight, we're going through all the complexities of business negotiation.
	I think it's getting across pretty well, and it's just like an MBA and all jammed into one, right?
	So, I, you know, if I was sort of praying to the philosophy gods, so to speak, and saying, look, I'm willing to take on really tough topics.
	I'm willing to burn my reputation to the ground to get essential truths across to the world.
	Why? Because that's what all my heroes did.
	Including Jesus. So what all my heroes did is they burnt their reputations and sometimes their lives indeed all the way to the ground in order to get essential life-saving and moral improving truths across to the world.
	That's the deal. That's the deal.
	You can be safe and vanish or you can be dangerous and live forever.
	So I don't want, I'm not going to live forever, but I want the ideas, the arguments to live forever.
	And, of course, as time goes past, I'm more and more correct.
	I mean, Alec Baldwin just got charged.
	I called that out as a crime right away.
	I could just sort of go on and on, right?
	So, if you want to tell tough truths to the world, and the tougher the truths are, the more you need a subscription model.
	Or, I don't know, somebody's got to leave you a bazillion dollars or something like that.
	Yeah, can you imagine Cernovich releasing part of a conversation he had with Steph?
	Yeah, I mean, I can't picture anybody with respect to release private conversations.
	To not even tell people they're being recorded and then to release private conversations, oh, that's wretched.
	Stephan, he called them a week before releasing it for the purpose of recording incriminating soundbites.
	Yeah, that's tough.
	Very, very tough.
	It's very tough because here's the thing too.
	If you know that you're recording and the other person doesn't, it gives you a kind of special advantage, right?
	So you can initiate jokes knowing that you can splice out their response, right?
	So, it's unfair.
	Like, if you say to someone, I'm recording this and I might release it publicly, then people can choose to be in part of the conversation or not.
	But if the other person has every expectation of privacy and you are recording with the goal of getting dirt, then it just puts you at a ridiculous and unfair advantage.
	And I think it's dishonorable, I think, significantly.
	And here's the thing. I mean, I like...
	I like Stephen Crowder, too.
	I think he's an interesting guy, and obviously very talented and all that, and works very hard, and he had some pretty serious health issues.
	Do I have some memory of him having health issues not too long ago?
	I have a whole thing about Conservatism, Inc., but I think I will not talk about that tonight.
	I will save that for another time.
	Alright, let's see here.
	And he didn't even get incriminating soundbites.
	Yeah, yeah. Has Crowder ever spoken up about children being hit?
	I don't know. Obviously, 900 shows in the last couple of years.
	I have no idea. Crowder's sternum was pressing against his heart.
	He had to get it surgically reconstructed.
	Yikes. Yikes.
	Yikes. Alright, let me just go back here.
	He had surgery some time ago.
	Yeah, I think I remember seeing pretty rough stuff from a hospital bed, and of course, massive sympathies for that.
	All right, so listen, I think that's all.
	I'll do the conning thing another time.
	Another time. Let me just make sure I got everything here.
	Yeah, if you have a better business model, that's what you should do.
	If you can't convince other people to improve their business model, it's a fantastic business opportunity for yourself.
	Somebody says, I believe Kraut has said he's post-banking.
	I don't want to say that, because unless you have a real solid stuff about that, I wouldn't want to put that out there.
	No, I don't want to say that at all.
	All right.
	Yeah, so if you have questions, anything that's on your mind, I've got another little bit of time, and I'm very happy to hear what you have to say.
	Let me just check in my various places.
	I say here, questions.
	Oh, there are a bunch of comments here.
	Little, little.
	Yeah, I mean, for somebody to be, oh, how dare you only offer me $50 million?
	I mean, that's, even in boom times, that's tough in, you know, when people are paying 10 bucks for eggs.
	Oh, man, that's a little bit of a Marie Antoinette thing there, right?
	A little bit of a let-them-eat-brioche kind of thing, right?
	Rush or ELO? I've got to go with ELO. Yeah, I'm afraid.
	So even though Geddy Lee has an indistributably superior voice, I just, and the funny thing is, too, I quite like high voices.
	John Anderson, great singer.
	Sting, great singer. Countertenors can be lovely.
	Listen to Prince. I can even get through most of Kiss.
	And if you listen to Queen off Hot Space, a song called Cool Cat.
	Freddie does the whole thing in this beautiful falsetto, which he also does in Rock in Rio Live.
	It's fantastic. I like me a high voice, but not his.
	And I've seen Rush three times live, because I've got a friend of mine who was madly into Rush.
	That's how I ended up getting into Ayn Rand, through the drummer.
	But, yeah, I just can't get through to Rush.
	Very good musicians, obviously, but I just can't get it.
	Don't bring me down.
	ELO, I think some of their earlier hits.
	Discovery is a great, great album.
	The music is reversible, but time is not.
	Turn back, turn back. So, but I mean, the double album, Out of the Blue, I mean, almost every song in it is just fantastic.
	Fantastic. All right, what have we got?
	Oh my gosh, I didn't even, I didn't even check this one.
	Dun, dun, dun!
	All right, what do we got?
	Have you read Children's Justice?
	No, but I suppose I've tried to live it.
	All right. Shall we...
	Yeah, a few guys are mostly here for that.
	Blue Sky is a great song.
	I mean, burning down the avenue.
	That's a great song. All right, last questions, last comments.
	I am more than happy to hear.
	For some reason, is it just me?
	Maybe I just put out a lot of energy today, but it's freaking hot in the studio here.
	I mean, I don't have massive amounts of lights, as you could imagine, but...
	I'm fainting with the heat.
	And I also spent a lot of time editing my book today.
	The show seemed very quick tonight.
	Well, I guess it was somewhat short than usual, but yeah.
	If most people are here for the crowd of stuff, I don't want to milk it past mine.
	Does this situation change your ideas for the future?
	If you got offered $50 million, what would you do with it?
	Well, look, okay, here's a little thing.
	This is a thing for yourself as a whole.
	When is enough? What is enough?
	When is enough? A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou.
	What is enough? More money, more problems.
	If somebody offered me $50 million, what would I do with it?
	I wouldn't. I can't think of a situation in which I would take it.
	Because what I'm doing now is the very best that I can be doing.
	I mean, if I had a better way of doing it, I would do that.
	I have incredible freedom other than some, you know, Friday nights and Wednesday night shows.
	I have complete flexibility.
	I'm like, hey, I want to write a novel.
	Okay, so I wrote a novel a year ago.
	I'm writing another novel right now.
	You know what? I'm just going to do this Crowder Daily Wire stuff.
	I can do that. There's nobody looking over my shoulder, for better or for worse, right?
	So I can't be doing any better than I'm doing now, and $50 million would not help me do any better than I'm doing now.
	And, you know, all of that money comes with strings attached.
	I mean, that's why there are these term sheets.
	That's why there are these contracts.
	That's why they're not Jay Garrett and Computer Stew were under NDAs, as far as I understand it, which doesn't seem particularly great to me.
	It would always come with strings attached.
	And the reason people pay you is they want you to do things that you don't want to do.
	That's what pay basically is.
	They want you to do things that you don't want to do.
	I mean, pay, right?
	Because if you would do it for free, you wouldn't need to get paid, right?
	All right. You mentioned feeling angry while doing the History of Philosophy audio series.
	Would you enjoy doing a documentary on it?
	Well, there's nothing wrong with being angry.
	And I was enraged at parts of that History of Philosophy series because philosophy is so unbelievably frustrating.
	It's a basic, simple thing.
	It's like libertarianism. Non-aggression principle?
	Huh. Okay. Non-aggression principle.
	What's the greatest and most numerous and most widely spread violation of the non-aggression principle that people can do the most about to fix?
	Spanking. Oh, we don't want to talk about that.
	Let's talk more about the Fed. All right.
	My youngest daughter finally married, says someone.
	She told her husband her eggs are old and she needs babies now.
	She's 24 years old.
	That's very good. That's very good.
	That's very good. All right.
	You see... Did you see Candace getting bent out of shape on Tim Cost?
	Oh, don't do that, man.
	Sorry to be annoying and be a Karen nag, but don't do that.
	Don't... Like, if she's wrong, find out a way that she's wrong and say so.
	But don't just use crappy little phrases like getting bent out of shape.
	She's upset. She's angry.
	I understand why she's angry.
	It makes sense to me why she's angry.
	I mean, this guy insulted.
	And basically, she's got a contract with Daily Wire, right?
	As does what Jordan Peterson and other people, right?
	Matt Walsh, I think. So, if Stephen Crowder, who is bigger than her by a factor of four or five, right?
	If Stephen Crowder is calling the Daily Wire gatekeepers, big tech enablers, censorship enablers, and corrupt, then her being there and her having signed this contract, there's a lot of splash damage on her.
	Of course, Of course she's going to be angry.
	I don't understand why you wouldn't be angry if somebody said that the organization that you're involved in is corrupt and immoral or whatever he was saying about this.
	So, yeah, don't do that.
	Don't do that. I'm just saying that because it's really a kind of crappy way to characterize things.
	Now, maybe she's wrong about things.
	I don't know because I don't know.
	But the idea that she wouldn't be angry and she wouldn't be outraged and she wouldn't voice that...
	Of course she would. I mean, she's a pretty fiery personality to begin with, and you put this kind of provocation in front of anyone.
	I mean, if I was in her shoes, my feet would hurt.
	Now, if I were in her shoes, I would have done the same thing.
	I probably would have been even louder, so...
	If somebody gets outraged at being called an associate of something immoral, if you think that's just getting bent out of shape, then my concern is not you and Candice.
	You have no relationship. My concern is that does that mean that you can never get outraged when you get lied about or something happens that puts you in a bad way?
	I would say that you would want to get that right.
	Ah, Oh, Oh, I don't care.
	So long ago. So long ago.
	So long ago. Yeah, see, here's the thing, right?
	So you, I think, put her in a pretty negative light and look...
	Give people a time out for mistakes, right?
	Let's say whoever, somebody makes a mistake.
	It's years and years and years ago.
	You got to move on. People make mistakes.
	You got to let them move on.
	But not Twitter. I'm just kidding.
	That's a whole different matter, right? But yeah.
	So yeah, just if she's wrong about something, make the argument.
	But don't just characterize her as getting bent out of shape.
	And not because it's bad for her, but it's bad for you.
	Because it means then if you are Lied about or harmed in some manner?
	Do you give yourself permission to get angry?
	Or do you just say, well, I don't want to get bent out of shape?
	I understand it harms you a lot more than it harms anybody else.
	All right.
	Let me just check here.
	This woman posted, somebody forwarded, a woman posted, one time on a date I told the guy I had an OnlyFans Later the night he subscribed and sent the photos to my mom.
	There was another guy who would report the women to some tax collection agency where he got a percentage of unpaid taxes.
	It was crazy. All right.
	I think we're done here.
	Alright, well listen, thanks everyone so much for a great chat this evening.
	What a great pleasure it is to chat with you guys again.
	And freedomain.locals.com if you want to join a great community.
	All caps UPB2022 is the promo code.
	You get a free month. You can get my free book, History of Philosophers Series.
	Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I'm really, really loving the new book.
	I think it's some of the best stuff I've ever done.
	And I actually just reposted on freedomand.locals.com my very first philosophical book from like 2007 or something like that called On Truth, The Tyranny of an Illusion, which I thought was a great book.
	I'm very pleased with it still and has a lot of depth and meaning, I think even now.
	So... All right.
	Freedomain.com slash donate.
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	Lots of love from up here.
	Thank you so much for joining me tonight.
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	That's the way to go. Take care, everyone.

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