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June 22, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:54:27

The Inappropriate Show!

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	All right, let's get going.
	So, we got ourselves the 21st of June 2023, 1990, and songs from 2000 and afterwards.
	Somebody says, been talking with my parents about my experience of my childhood.
	It's difficult conversations, but they have been mostly receptive.
	Thank you for providing the words and ideas to help me solidify my thoughts and have this conversation.
	Excellent. Hi, Steph.
	Thank you for your recent relationship content.
	It has really hit the nail on the head for me.
	Very grateful. Somebody says, I prefer the human, Stephan.
	Well, of course you do, but maybe I'm not available, or maybe you want to just ask me a question in general, in generic, and so on.
	Oh, did I forget to put, I think I did.
	Oh, I think I did.
	Right, hold on just one sec.
	Because I just need to get my daughter and I's review of the godforsaken eye-poking epileptic nonsense known as the movie Elemental.
	I forgot to put that out as a podcast.
	One second.
	Give me one reason to stay here and I'll turn right back around.
	I saw her live, actually, Tracy Chapman.
	I saw Tracy Chapman, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen.
	I've never been a big Bruce Springsteen fan unless it was like the summer that Born in the USA was absolutely everywhere.
	And I remember I was dating this girl.
	We were out at this concert and I said, man, if he starts with Born in the USA, we're out of here, man.
	And he started with Born in the USA and we were, in fact, out of here.
	Alright, looks like that's Chugin.
	That is Chuginilung.
	Chuginilung. Alright. How was Chapman live?
	She was fine. She was fine.
	Nice voice. Your recent rant about spending money was gold, baby!
	I recently went out on a date and the girl stole something that was literally a dollar.
	Kind of funny. If you are reviewing bad modern movies, watch Indiana Jones 5.
	Oh, man. I don't know, man.
	I don't know if I can do that.
	I don't know if I can do that.
	Well, I stole it from you, and you stole it from him, and you stole it from him.
	That's capitalism, man!
	And somebody was saying, well, I guess if Disney thinks that stealing is capitalism, they won't mind if I pirate their movie.
	Not that I of course approve of those kinds of things, but it's kind of funny
	All right, so hit me with a one to ten and I'll see you again soon.
	Hit me with a 1 to 10.
	Look at that. Sorry, how rude.
	I have something stuck to my face here.
	One moment, please. There we go.
	Ah, look at that. All better.
	My makeup lady is delayed.
	Minus 10, things are going swimmingly in terms of the service and the quality of everything you're being provided.
	Plus 10, you're about to rip what's left of your hair out because everybody's so incompetent.
	What are you? Minus 10, everything's great.
	Plus 10, you are just going insane with the incompetence of everyone around you.
	Yeah, some people doing all right.
	A lot of people at the 10. Minus 20.
	Oh, you're totally chill. No, no, no.
	Not this show. Just things in general.
	Yeah, the death of meritocracy.
	You know, those poor buggers who went down to poke around the wreck of the Titanic slightly deeper than the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
	And yeah, they're down there, man.
	They're... Their air runs out tomorrow morning.
	And yeah, they heard banging in the past, but they're probably stuck inside.
	So there probably hasn't been a total collapse of the submarine, but they do seem to be down there, and they're probably stuck in the wreckage and so on.
	The first guy who went down, they got stuck against the propeller and couldn't get out, and it was pretty nuts.
	Thank you for the tip. I really appreciate that.
	Thank you for the tip. It's Bioshock.
	Yeah, you've got a couple of billionaires stuck under the water, right?
	It's Bioshock in real life.
	Now, let me ask you this.
	They're low on oxygen. It's a macabre question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
	They're low on oxygen. If someone dies...
	Does that give them more oxygen over time?
	Because they're not breathing, right?
	If somebody dies, does that give them more oxygen, the same or less?
	M, S, L. M for more, S for the same, or L for less?
	What do you think? Somebody dies down in there, right?
	Somebody says, S, M. Feels like a trick question.
	More? It would think more.
	You'd think more, right? You'd think more.
	S the same? The answer apparently is less air.
	They have less air. Because when a human being dies, he or she starts to decompose and the decomposition eats up oxygen, actually at a faster rate than breathing.
	So apparently that's the answer.
	And it is actually kind of chilling to see all of the people who were like...
	Yay! Billionaires are dying and so on, right?
	Which is crazy. Do you know why I love the wealthy?
	I mean, one of the reasons I love the wealthy is they are the icebreakers for all of the stuff that ends up cheap for everyone.
	You know, when the cell phones first came out, I didn't have one.
	They were like the size of a Kleenex box and a half.
	You couldn't even stand under a tree or you couldn't be anywhere in a building.
	And you have to have a clear view of the sky and these things cost like $2,000.
	And I remember the first time a friend of mine called me and he's like, hey man, we're in a friend of mine's dad's car.
	I'm calling you from the car!
	And all I could think of was, you know, what happens when the cord runs out, get yanked out of the car or something.
	So, yeah, they're two miles down there.
	It's pretty brutal. And the CEO who's down there piloting this sub, do you know what they're piloting with?
	Have you read this? Do you know what the sub control thing is?
	Do you know what they're using to control the sub?
	Anybody? Bueller?
	Anybody? Yeah, it's a Logitech Bluetooth controller.
	That's a pretty vivid game, I've got to say.
	That's a pretty vivid game. But yeah, all of these people who were like, yeah, serves them right, you know, blah, blah, blah.
	People don't understand just how when you get wealth in a society, when wealth accumulates to individuals...
	They're the ones who get to invest large sums of money for the improvement of things, right?
	And they are the ones who buy the very expensive products, thus allowing the price to be driven down over time.
	And wow, it's wild.
	Somebody says I would honestly be doing this kind of thing if I was a billionaire.
	I'd have been a bit more critical of the sketchy sub, though.
	The sub...
	Yeah, you've got to figure out the cheat codes at the moment.
	What are the cheat codes that let me beam back?
	Now, the sub also is designed that if there's a big problem, the sub is supposed to flow to the surface.
	I don't know if you know that. Like, if something goes bad, something goes wrong, there's some issue, it's supposed to just go back up to the surface.
	And it could conceivably have come back up to the surface, in which case I suppose that they would...
	I suppose that they would be able to find it through Starlink or something like that, but it doesn't seem likely that it's at the surface, and they haven't heard any banging sounds for a couple of hours, much like my honeymoon.
	And so, yeah, they're probably toasting.
	How would you prevent getting into such a situation?
	I looked at the company's website and it doesn't seem that woke.
	Oh, no, no. The CEO has said, we don't want to hire any experienced 50-year-old white engineers.
	They're just not inspiring.
	So, I mean, I guess they're a bunch of white men in charge and all of that.
	But, yeah, they've definitely eschewed meritocracy, right?
	They've rejected meritocracy.
	Personally, I'll tell you how I would avoid these kinds of situations.
	I would look and say, are there laws that prevent meritocracy from functioning at this, right?
	Now, in some countries there are, and in some countries there aren't.
	So, for instance, if you were over in Japan and you were relying on top-notch engineers to keep you alive, Japan doesn't have any anti-meritocracy laws or initiatives, right?
	They just, like, made the best man or woman...
	Win. So, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with that.
	But wherever you're in a country where there are laws against meritocracy, you're taking your life in your hands.
	I don't even want to fly a plane these days.
	I mean, whether the pilots are going to pass out from this, that, or the other, or...
	Yeah, it's a bunch of stuff.
	They've been down there a bunch before. Actually, one of the showrunners from The Simpsons went down there, I think, last year or the year before to look at the wreck.
	I don't know. It's not something that I would particularly do.
	You can't even stand up in this submarine.
	It's so small. There's only one toilet, which is like a little tiny alcove behind a curtain.
	You're supposed to bring some lunch and maybe a jacket in case it gets chilly, which I assume it would down there.
	So, no, I, uh, listen, I don't want to make this about me, so I'm happy to take your questions, but just remind me, hit me with an R if you want a little bit of a rant.
	Just hit me with an R. Again, I'm really happy to take questions.
	You want a little bit of a, you want a little bit of a rant?
	Arr! We got pirate stream here.
	Arr, okay. Alright.
	Hit me with a why. Do you do blood work on a regular basis?
	Like, do you get your blood tested for testosterone, for LDL, HDL, for prostate markers, for all of that kind of stuff?
	Do you do that on a regular basis?
	I, of course, would be the last person ever to give you any kind of medical advice, but I will tell you that I, for myself, find it important to get tested on a regular basis.
	I want to keep the brain trust of the brain going, and so I do get this tested on a regular basis.
	You do the poop test and all of that for markers for cancers of the intestines or the bowels or whatever they do.
	So yeah, I think it's important for myself and you might wanna talk to your doctor
	and see if it might be important to you.
	So I went with my wife a couple of weeks ago to get the blood work done
	and she got her test results back and mine weren't back.
	And it was like, I don't know, four or five days till mine came back.
	So they called me, I was busy, they left a number.
	I called the number back, the number was out of service.
	I called the main line, they said, we'll patch you through.
	And I was on hold for 10 minutes and then I was disconnected.
	So then I call back and they say, oh yeah, no, there may be a problem with the phone lines.
	We've heard some of this kind of stuff.
	So what I'll do is I'll call them.
	I'll put a high priority message.
	I'll get them to call you before the end of the day.
	The end of the day for them, I think, was 7 p.m.
	Nothing, right? So this morning, call them again.
	Oh no, this morning I got a message.
	They called super early. I was not awake.
	And I call the number back.
	It's out of service. So again, twice they gave me the wrong number.
	And I did double-check right on the message.
	So then, of course, I call the main number.
	They say, we'll patch you through.
	I'm on hold for 10 minutes.
	And then what happens? I get disconnected.
	So then I call back. How are you doing?
	Well, I'm not doing that great, to be honest, because...
	I keep trying to get my test results, I keep getting put on hold, and then I get disconnected.
	So, and the number that people leave is not a number I can call back in, so it's really getting kind of annoying, and I just want to get my results.
	I said, you know, I always say, like, I know it's not your fault, but I'm annoyed anyway, right?
	I'm not annoyed at you. I'm just annoyed at this whole process.
	Because you can never talk to anyone who's responsible for anything that you're suffering through.
	Like, that's the whole point of modern organizations.
	Is there some faceless, daub, blob bureaucrat somewhere back there, and you can't ever talk to the person who's messed up.
	You can only ever talk to someone else, and so you can't get mad at them because it would be unjust.
	But you can't ever talk to the people who actually make the mistakes.
	Anyway, so... There are like...
	Okay, we'll put you through again.
	They put me through again. I'm on hold for 10 minutes and then I get cut off.
	Anyway, so I call back and they're like, okay, yeah, obviously there's a problem with the phone systems.
	It's like, you know, that's the one thing you have.
	It's calling people about their test results.
	So we'll have someone call you back.
	I put a high-priority message in, right?
	They all say high-priority, even though I don't imagine there is any such thing.
	So I don't get anything.
	I don't get any callbacks. Now, what am I supposed to do?
	I'm going to just sit there and stare at the phone waiting for the callback.
	So anyway, long story short, I finally get through to someone and, you know, we go through the test results.
	Everything's fine. Everything's good and all of that.
	So... We're like, okay, so that was my morning, right?
	My morning. I just, I needed a five-minute conversation about my test results for them to say everything's in a normal range, everything's good, and this was like forever, right?
	So then I'm like, I was supposed to go to brunch with my daughter, so then we went for lunch because this had taken so long.
	She's working on a script for a little movie that she's going to animate, so we were going, I shouldn't say little movie, a short movie that she's going to animate, so we went, we were going to go to lunch to go over the script.
	So we did that. We go for lunch at a, not fast food, but not super nice restaurant.
	Medium, like medium to low end.
	And the food takes 50 minutes to get to us.
	And the waiter's like, oh, I'm sorry, man.
	You know, we're backed up in the kitchen.
	It's like... 50 minutes to get some food.
	I don't generally eat in the morning, so anyway, we get the food, right?
	Now, before we order the food, you know, it's one of these restaurants where you can get a little meal to go, and I always like ordering those because they're just a couple of bucks.
	You can throw them in the freezer. If I'm busy during the day, my wife's out, my family's out or whatever, I can just nuke that or bake it and sort of make a meal.
	So I ordered one of these. I think it was like six bucks for a meal to go.
	So we get the bill, and there's no meal to go.
	Because you order at the beginning, they're supposed to prepare it, and then just give it to you as you walk out.
	So I'm sitting there, and we've finally eaten.
	The meal wasn't that good. We've finally eaten, and the waiter, of course, is not coming back.
	And... I'm the kind of guy who's like, okay, it's six bucks, it's not a king's ransom, but there is kind of a principle of the thing, right?
	So I have to flag down a waiter and say, hey man, I just show you, like here, I ordered this food to go, but it's not here.
	It's like, oh, I'll go check on it for you.
	Does he come back? He does not come back, right?
	And eventually I go to my waiter.
	I finally find my waiter and I say, we've got this meal to go.
	It's just now an hour and a half since we got here.
	I want to go. And he's like, I put that order in like 15 minutes ago.
	I don't know what's happening.
	And I'm like, because then you say, okay, well, can you at least just take this charge off the bill?
	But I don't want to go into that quicksand either.
	So you just get kind of worn down and defeated by the incompetence, by the slowness, by the errors, and by all of these people.
	Who don't seem to have any sense whatsoever that they're providing absolutely terrible service.
	Hey, I guess the phone, there seems to be a problem with the phone.
	As opposed to, look, I'm so sorry, man.
	You're just waiting for these results.
	And one thing we should do is get you these results.
	And it's frustrating to sit there on hold and then be hung up on it like three times in a row.
	It's just like, yeah, I guess it's a problem with, you know, hey, man, we're all in this together.
	It's just a problem with the phones, I suppose, right?
	So anyway, I like to give objective feedback, right?
	If someone's doing a great job, I really love to say it.
	I will write up. I'll say to, if I get a great waiter, I'll say to the manager on the way out, great waiter, you know, really good service and fantastic and all of that.
	And in this one, I was kind of hesitating because I like the restaurant.
	And then on the way out, I said to the woman behind, you know, the, what do they call them, the, not the maitre d', the, and not the server.
	The hostess. I say to the hostess, I say, look, you know, when you guys do a great job, I'd like to tell you, but I got to tell you, this was pretty bad.
	It took almost an hour for our food to come.
	You all charged me for a meal which you didn't deliver, and I've got to go, and, you know, I'm just, I'm out, you know, six bucks, and I don't have my meal, and this was not a positive experience for me.
	I just wanted to let you know that.
	And they're like, oh, okay, well, you know, thank you for telling us.
	I mean, I'm not expecting, you know, all our salam, but, you know, maybe a little like, wow, that's really terrible.
	I'm so sorry. You know, why don't you take something from this station?
	There was a station there with some other stuff which we could have taken or, you know, here's a gift certificate or, you know, whatever, anything.
	Because, you know, it costs 10 times more in most businesses to get a new customer than to satisfy an existing customer and I won't go back.
	And so, the first half of my day was just thrashing around like the fish on the bottom of a boat with just things that don't work and people who don't care.
	Things that don't work and people who just don't care.
	Oh! God!
	Am I alone in this?
	It just seems...
	It's a great slowdown. It just seems to be happening.
	It's like... It's like I'm just trying to run through Jell-O or those nightmares where you've got no gravity but you're being chased.
	Is it just me?
	Stuff just doesn't work.
	You know, like I go to a website, I want to return something and say, oh, here's your QR code.
	Just download the QR code.
	click here, I just get a blank screen.
	I mean you got to try and make things right, don't you?
	you.
	.
	Isn't that just wild?
	And here's the thing, too.
	I'm old enough.
	I'm like that old guy in 1984 who thought of the wedding when questioned by Winston Smith.
	I'm old enough to remember when shit worked.
	God, it was beautiful.
	You could sail through and just boom, boom, boom.
	Things are flowing in. They're flowing out.
	You pass out a complex question.
	People call you back.
	People call you back. Do you know how hard it is to give people money these days?
	Actually, it's quite easy at freedomain.com slash donate.
	But do you know how hard? A couple of things I need done around the house.
	I'm not a big handyman guy, right?
	A couple of things I need done around the house.
	Trying to get people, hey man, I'll pay you.
	Come out. I'll pay you half a day.
	I'll pay you a day. Just come out and do these things.
	Nobody calls you back. Nobody wants...
	I'm busy. Or people, they'll say we'll come and then they don't come.
	And it's like, I'm old enough to remember when things worked.
	They just worked.
	And you didn't have to circle back all the time.
	And people were like, yeah, I guess we're all in this together.
	Your food was late and we charged you for a meal.
	We're not even giving you. It's like, well, you know, hey, we're all in this together.
	It's like, no, we're not. I'm the customer.
	Oh, my gosh.
	It's just maddening.
	It's just maddening.
	You know, they're dealing with some companies trying to get the StephBot AI working and so on, and everything's just slow, and it's just this great slowdown, right?
	And people tell you this stuff like, well, I guess the phone lines are down or I guess there's a problem with the phone lines.
	It's like, okay, there was a problem with the phone lines yesterday.
	Given that your entire job is phoning people about their medical test results, shouldn't you have someone in like all night fixing the phones?
	Because yesterday you had a problem with the phone lines.
	That's your one job and it's a pretty important job because if somebody's sick, they probably want to know about it.
	It's like, you had the problem yesterday.
	Well, I guess we still have the problem today.
	We're all in this together.
	No, we're not. I'm the customer.
	They don't seem to care. I mean, I feel, you know, if I put out something wrong or, you know, the other day I did a show on the philosophical and UPB justifications for self-defense.
	And unfortunately, when I put the microphone on my neck, I accidentally muted it, which means I had to really boost the volume because it was very quiet, which meant there was a bit of a background hiss.
	And I apologized. I didn't want to re-record the whole thing because it was pretty inspired.
	But it was like, I feel bad.
	I feel bad about this stuff.
	Oh, my God.
	It's just wild, right?
	Like, we're not all in this together.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Because they say, like, well, I guess the phone systems are down.
	It's like, an excuse does not fix bad service.
	Well, it's true that I did...
	Amputate the wrong leg.
	So sorry, you're going to end up stumpy.
	We did amputate the wrong leg.
	But hey, you know what happened was I was holding it upside down and the nurse had written it in invisible ink.
	And it's like, does that get me my leg back?
	It does not. Well, the kitchen is just backed up.
	It's like, you know your entire job as a restaurant owner, as a restaurant manager.
	Your entire job is to make sure that food gets out quality and on time.
	That's it. Like telling me why things are fucked up doesn't unfuck them up.
	But people explain to me like why things are fucked up as if that solves it.
	Well, you know, the reason why you didn't get your food is the kitchen is backed up.
	It's like that's not why I didn't get my food.
	I didn't get my food.
	The reason is not because the kitchen is backed up.
	The reason is somebody didn't plan right for the kitchen.
	Well, you know, someone didn't come in today.
	It's like you're supposed to have backups.
	And if people don't come in, you're supposed to fire them.
	And if they don't show up, you're supposed to fire them.
	I know that's progressively getting more and more of a nightmare.
	But people, they explain this to you.
	They explain this to you.
	Like, that's the answer?
	That's not the answer. Well, our phone system has a problem.
	Well, the kitchen is overstuffed.
	Well, I'm busy. Well, I don't...
	I have too many tables. It's like...
	I don't understand how that is...
	Like, I was never allowed. And I worked retail.
	I worked as a waiter.
	I worked, like, a bunch of places.
	You just got to make things work.
	You just got to make it happen.
	I never got... An answer.
	I was never given an excuse.
	Like, can you imagine? I don't know how it works now, but when I was a kid, if you didn't get any sleep before a test and you got, you know, maybe you got a 70 instead of a 90 or something like that, I mean, did you get to say to the teacher, well, I got to retake this, man.
	I was tired. Like, I just didn't get any sleep.
	They'd be like, the reason as to why you did badly is not a solution.
	Why you fucked up doesn't solve that you fucked up.
	They explain it to me like this solves it.
	Completely bizarre to me.
	I don't want an explanation.
	I just want what I paid for.
	I want to talk about my test results and I want my food to come before the next fucking ice age.
	That's all I want. The way that things used to work until about six or seven minutes ago.
	The way that things worked when I was a kid.
	The way things worked when I was a waiter.
	The way things worked when I was in retail, where you just bend over backwards, you try and make it work, and if something does go wrong, you bend over backwards to make sure the customer is happy and satisfied, and you make things right.
	I don't know what I'm supposed to do with all these excuses and explanations for nothing.
	You stole six bucks from me because you didn't give me the meal I delivered.
	And I'm not going to sit here and wait for the waiter to take it off because I have no faith in the competence of anybody here.
	You're going to end up charging me for a kidney.
	I'm going to end up on some donor list in Wuhan.
	Oh my God, I just don't understand it.
	Alright, so, not often do we get to hear Steph complain about first world problems.
	Look, it didn't ruin my day.
	I get this. A good rant and all of that.
	But the reason why it bothers me is because this is the stuff I see.
	This isn't the stuff I don't see.
	Like, if people can't even fix their phone lines, how do I know if my lab results are correct?
	If people can't get my food out on time, if people can't give me the things that I've bought and they're too incompetent, in my view, to take it off the bill, what else is going wrong?
	It's a general sense of unease.
	Don't you get this? It's not like, oh my god, my food took almost an hour to come and they overcharged me six bucks.
	Yeah, I get that's a first world problem, but it's a sign, it's an indication that Of other issues.
	These are the things that you see that are on the surface.
	What about the infrastructure? What about the sewage system?
	What about the water delivery system?
	What about the electrical grid? What about nuclear power plants?
	What about wind farms? What about all of these things?
	Somebody says, I hate it when I call customer service and the person on the other end sounds so depressed.
	I catch a little bit of their depression.
	Hit me with a Y if you've called customer service and it's helped.
	Hit me with a Y if you've called customer service and it helped.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	Do they tip in Canada? Oh, yeah.
	Oh, you have? Okay, good, good.
	Generally, I don't. I don't bother.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	If you have a technical or computer problem or a phone, like some tech issue, do you call customer support or do you search the internet?
	Yeah, you go to the internet, right?
	You never call.
	You call YouTube.
	Yeah, you search for the internet. You don't have a call.
	You don't have a call. And, you know, I'm...
	A friend of mine was saying, like, I call, I hear a female voice, I hang up.
	And that's probably unfair, but that's sort of what he was saying.
	Yeah, it's brutal.
	Let's see here.
	Let's get your comments.
	Let's see.
	.
	It was me all day.
	I even had an ATM steal my money and I had to call the bank for 40 minutes.
	Yeah. God help you, right?
	Employees don't care. It's not their business.
	No, no. This is the thing, man.
	They used to care. They used to care.
	It used to matter because they used to get trained.
	If a customer is unhappy, do whatever you need to to make that customer happy.
	This is what was always drilled into me.
	A friend of mine, so when I was working at Bailey's Home Hardware back in the day at the Don Mills Mall, Long gone now.
	But a guy came in.
	He was moving houses with his family.
	They only had one key.
	The movers were all there. They only had one key.
	It was a Sunday, I think.
	They only had one key. No, it was a Saturday.
	I don't think it was open on a Sunday.
	They had one key, and if you've ever made keys, which I did many times, of course, mixing paint, cutting glass, and making keys, that was the fun stuff to do in a hardware store.
	everything else was mind-bogglingly dull, along with the fact that there was,
	they would have these ads playing, I remember there was one with some
	Chilly the Willy Penguin or something like that, they'd have these ads playing
	which were like two minutes of shrieking voice actors and they'd have it on a loop and
	sometimes you'd be there.
	I used to work Tuesdays and Thursdays 5.30 to 9.30 and then I'd work 9 to 5 on Saturdays
	and I got two dollars and fifty cents an hour, so it was a cozy forty bucks
	a week, a hundred and sixty bucks a month, but that's when you could basically buy a
	jumbo jet with that kind of money.
	So, I remember I had a little calculator watch and I used to calculate how long it was gonna,
	how many hours I had to work in order to buy an Atari 800.
	So, My friend.
	So you put the key in that has the jagged stuff, and then you put a flat key in, and then you use the machine, right?
	Copies it. Like, you just rub it up again.
	And he put the wrong way around.
	So basically, he shaved a key down to nothing.
	And the guy went completely ballistic, right?
	Because he's like, my family's here.
	I've got the movers. I can't get another key.
	I can't get into my house now.
	And yeah, the manager came down, and it was a big thing.
	And they used to care.
	Somebody says, was bounced between seven calls for phone service, two of them were robo-attendants.
	Yeah. Oh yeah, push 666 to go slowly insane in this Kafkaesque voicemail jail, right?
	It's sad how bad service has gotten since COVID, yeah.
	Somebody says, I'm in the same category.
	Service is slow and bad and increasingly so.
	That's like everything's become the DMV. It's wild.
	The cashier couldn't make change.
	I was like, really? Oh yeah.
	Somebody says my new internet service provider took three different techies to install my internet.
	Then a fourth one came to install the same modem again.
	Oh no. Oh no.
	Oh yeah, God help you.
	Heaven above help you.
	The saints and the apostles help you if you have an ambiguous tech issue.
	My phone's just kind of slow.
	It used to be faster, now it's just kind of slow.
	Forget it. Just move countries.
	Just forget it. Somebody says, I see the slowdown too.
	People aren't motivated and often don't account for their work like they used to.
	We're all getting screwed together, yeah.
	Bro, my cable company made a mistake in offering a promotion that wasn't valid, savings of $100 a month.
	They made no attempt to tell me if the mistaken kept charging me and made no restitution, took my business elsewhere.
	Yeah. Yeah, somebody says, I had to find a new bank for financing for a house because every time I went to fill out more paperwork, I had to gather something new to bring another time of circle back to that bank six times for stuff that could have been handled in two meetings.
	Exhausting, yeah. And people aren't even like, man, I'm really sorry, but, or, you know, boy, it's just like, no, I'm going to need this.
	Come back. Well, I'm going to need this.
	And there's like, yeah.
	If they tell you why, it's supposed to be sympathetic.
	Like, it's supposed to make you sympathetic?
	No, it's not supposed to make you sympathetic.
	You're not supposed to.
	I mean, maybe you're supposed to, like, this is part of the, we're all in this together.
	It's like, no, we're not. You're getting paid, and I'm the one paying you.
	We're not all in this together. This isn't like some washboard that we're, some washboard bucket or barrel that we're sitting in the middle of the ocean with.
	No. Somebody says, I put off switching phone or internet providers because I know it will be painful.
	Yeah. 2000 kid.
	2000s kid. Yes, I got to ask the teacher to retake.
	Really? You didn't.
	You got to retake a test because you were tired?
	Somebody says, I see the slowdowns with other teams in engineering at my job.
	Always excuses. I encourage my team to do as much as possible so we don't have dependencies.
	We're supposedly magic, but no, we work hard.
	That isn't sustainable. Yeah.
	It's shrinkflation degradation of quality.
	It seems to be getting worse too.
	It does seem to be the case that it's getting worse.
	And you have to see the massive amount of infrastructure that is held aloft by brilliant and dedicated human intelligence.
	And you start taking that away.
	It's like you're just taking supports off the bridge and sooner or later it's just going to all come crashing down.
	Last year in the hospital on night shift, I had to manage and guide the indifferent nurse in fixing stomach suction tube coming out of my nose.
	Second night out of surgery.
	Unreal. And there's just this kind of bovine indifference to Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.
	I forgot about this. So the very same place that I went to go and get my blood work done, like, I have good veins.
	Like, you can see this vein here, right?
	Look at this vein.
	This is not a heart... Like, I'm not the elephant man.
	I'm not, like, a tubby pear-shaped guy, right?
	So look at that vein, right?
	That's, like, that's relief vein.
	That's top... That's braille vein, right?
	What was it, like, one of the first jokes I ever heard as a kid was, my varicose veins are so bad that...
	I'm just going to go to the next fancy wrist ball naked as a road map.
	So yeah, look at that vein, right?
	That's a good vein, right? Easy, easy, easy vein to find.
	And that's the same on both arms.
	Now, I generally would get my right arm done because I'm left-handed, right?
	It's a good vein, right? And the nurse goes in, misses, goes in, misses.
	And then finally she's like, I'm going to have to take you to a different room.
	It's like, why? Are you better in a different room?
	Like, why? My gosh, that's crazy.
	And then what happened? And then I was waiting for something.
	Oh yeah, yeah, so when last time I got my teeth cleaned and checked and all that, they did x-rays and so on, and it's like, oh yeah, just hang out here.
	The dentist will be right in to discuss your x-rays.
	Okay, right? Literally in their 25 minutes, and I'm like, no, I'm, you know, she can call me if there's any issue, right?
	Nobody came in to say, oh, blah, blah, blah.
	It's just, again, I don't want to blame any individuals because it's just a systemic thing, but it's just like, I just assume things aren't going to work.
	I just assume things aren't going to work.
	Mmm.
	Oh, yeah, Anthony Bourdain once said, check a restaurant's bathroom.
	That's the behind-the-scenes part of the restaurant that you're supposed to see.
	Well, let me tell you about this, too.
	What kind of cherry bomb, swallowed-a-grenade, bowel surgery nonsense is going in on bathrooms these days, in public bathrooms?
	Like, you go to the gas station, you've got to hit the head, and it's like...
	I'd rather pee myself while the seat warmer is on and electrocute my ass like a gridiron.
	Like, I'd rather get waffle marks on my ass from the seat warmer than go into this absolute filthy North Korean pigsty of a lower-intested explosion room.
	What the hell? Have people completely given up on flushing the toilet now?
	Is that what you're supposed to do?
	Just drop a load and run?
	It's just completely bizarre to me.
	And since when was it completely impossible to pee into the toilet?
	You know, if God help you, if you go into one of those like restaurants in a, oh sorry, one of those bathrooms in a gas station where there's no urinal.
	If there's no urinal, it's like apparently people are just being machine gunned to death while trying to pee.
	All over the place, right?
	Like what? It's like it's completely vile.
	And this isn't even like, you know, you're in some really bad section of town.
	I don't go to bad sections of town.
	I'm mortal. But since when I was a kid, like, again, we checked the bathrooms every 15 minutes.
	Had to be squeaky clean.
	Had to be great. I don't want to see sedimentary layers of deuces just piling up to almost seat height.
	I don't want it. I don't want it.
	I don't want to be sitting there And flush, and the water's just going everywhere.
	It's like, no, I'm actually thinking of switching to fucking photosynthesis, because it's just become too vile to use a public washroom.
	I don't know what the hell is going on there, but it's just become...
	Like, the toilet is not a guideline.
	It's not an approximation.
	It's not a nice if you could be in the vicinity.
	It's a bullseye situation.
	It's a bullseye situation.
	And people either, like, either you see the dookie with nothing on top, which is actually kind of terrifying, because, like, what did you wipe your ass with?
	A garden gnome? Your hands?
	An air elemental? I don't know.
	Or, for some reason, there's this mountain, like, they just wiped their ass with half a redwood and just left it in the toilet.
	I don't understand. What the hell is going on in these public bathrooms anymore?
	I'm terrified to even imagine it.
	And this is even at decent places.
	And where are the signs now?
	Checked by, checked by.
	And there's always this sign that somebody's wiped half their last night's Indian meal on.
	Like, if there are any problems with this bathroom, it's like, can't you check?
	Can't you check? You know, you look at this thing, you know it's been a complete crapaholic explosion fest for the past eight hours.
	Nobody's checked. Nobody cares.
	Doesn't matter. Well, I either pee and my immune system gets an ungodly workout, or I'm just driving with my legs crossed all the way home.
	Ah, monstrous. Monstrous.
	Ah, all right.
	Glad you're enjoying the rant.
	Canadian healthcare is garbage.
	Yeah, in general. Yeah, when I had a sort of issue, not a huge issue, it was like, yeah, we can get you in in 16 months.
	months it's like well I'm either dead I'm either better or dead so I ain't
	making that appointment.
	All right let's see here.
	Let's get to your comments.
	When I worked at a bike shop, customers would pick up a bike, take it home,
	Didn't work quite right. I get in my car, drive two towns over and fix it in their house while they told me about their cats.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I used to like, it's a British thing maybe or just a, I don't know, European thing, but it's like if a customer was unhappy, like I would just feel terrible and I'd do whatever it could, but now it's just like, yeah, that's a drag.
	Yeah. I don't want you to commune with me here.
	We're not doing some kumbaya, two trees growing together empathy sachet.
	Oh my god. Ah. We should replace Raiders with Chet.
	GPT, yeah. Alright, thank you.
	Thank you for being a voice of reason in our society of irrationality.
	That's wild. It's so hard to fire people at government contractors, I've heard.
	You have to do literally nothing for two years to get fired, yeah?
	Hey Steph, I'm curious about what you think of the bare minimum Mondays trend that's becoming popular in large companies.
	Well, of course, a lot of this has happened because the whole social contract is completely fucked these days.
	Like, there's no social contract.
	Because wages have stagnated since the 70s, right?
	Wages have stagnated since the welfare war for a state went in.
	So you may get a raise, but it's all eaten up by inflation.
	So you can see, like, in the Second World War, Second World War to the 1960s, The rate of poverty in the U.S. was declining by 1% every year.
	Like, we were literally within a stone's throw of eliminating all but voluntary poverty.
	Poverty like people who want to quit their job to write the great American novel or something like that, right?
	I have porn veins?
	What does that mean? Is that like dick veins?
	I don't know. So...
	People don't believe that there's much of a future.
	They can't get ahead. They don't get married.
	They don't believe they're going to be able to own a house.
	So, yeah, they just come in and do the bare minimum, and I think that has a lot to do with it as well.
	You're so vain.
	Like she's playing darts with your arm.
	They didn't have a problem with my veins, fortunately.
	Well, this is the only time because I have such easy and accessible veins, I never have any problem.
	Like before I had cancer, I used to go and give blood all the time and every couple of months and now I can't because of the history of blood cancer.
	But yeah, never had any problem whatsoever.
	A small taste of Soviet life.
	Yeah, no kidding, right? When to get my phone screen replaced would have cost as much as a new phone.
	Did it for myself at one-third the cost.
	Oh, you've hit a bit of a vein for me, right?
	You've hit a bit of a vein for me.
	All right. Hit me with a why.
	Hit me with a why if you've ever tried to exercise your damage insurance on a piece of tech.
	Hit me with a why if you've ever tried.
	You know, you buy that, you pay six or eight bucks a month for like, hey, if you drop your phone, we'll just give you a new one.
	Have you ever, ever tried to use that ever?
	Completely ridiculous. I won't pay a penny for it.
	For those of you who never believed it, you're absolutely right.
	Absolutely right. I was a fool.
	I was a fool. Okay, it was on the business.
	It was a business phone and all that.
	But yeah, I had a phone and it just bricked.
	Like I couldn't turn it on, couldn't charge it and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And I've been paying for the replacement thing.
	And I went in and it's like, oh yeah, well, you know, it's $100 or $98 plus this and you have to ship in your old phone.
	We can't get you anything.
	It's going to take three weeks, blah, blah, blah.
	And it's just like, so what the hell was I paying for?
	It's completely mental. Don't even get me started.
	Don't even get me started on that kind of stuff.
	Alright, let me get back to your comments here.
	It's a nice old rant.
	Alright. The lab report ranges are a total scam because you have to be out of the range of 95% of normal people for you to be not normal.
	Is that right? I don't know. Gas station bathrooms are like Russian roulette.
	Some will be pristine, some will be hell.
	Yeah, yeah.
	The great slowdown is certainly happening in the trades.
	The amount of bad work that I encounter is staggering.
	Oh yeah, like a friend of mine who lives in Florida was like, the biggest business is repairing the hastily built Florida houses.
	The biggest business in Florida, the biggest housing business is just fixing, hastily built, shoddily constructed Florida houses.
	Blood all over the bathroom is no joke.
	Looks like murder. I don't know, I've seen that, but...
	I'm from a post-communist society.
	What you're describing was always normal for me, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Show is good tonight.
	Love these metaphors.
	I'm glad. I'm glad.
	Stayed at a hostel and someone pooped inside of the shower.
	Hostels are hell. Many years ago, I went with a bunch of friends to bike the five boroughs in New York.
	They shut down the roads and you could basically just bike all the five boroughs in New York.
	And I was foolish and cheap.
	And he's like, let's stay in a hostel!
	Hit me with a Y. Have you ever stayed in a hostel?
	You ever stayed in a hostel?
	You ever stayed in a hostel?
	Oh my God. In other words, have you ever gone a couple of layers down from the bottom layer of Dante's hell?
	All right. How would you rate your hostel experience for minus 10 bad, plus 10 good?
	Minus ten, bad. Plus ten, fantastic.
	Worth every penny. Three pennies.
	Great showers? Yeah.
	You've been living in hostels for the past 18 months?
	Minus seven. The hostel was better than my parents' house.
	Yeah, it was pretty horrible.
	Everybody was loud.
	And you know, like, God, I hate these guys.
	I really, really hate these guys.
	You know, I don't have a lot of hate in my heart.
	I really don't. And I don't experience it on a daily basis.
	But when I think about these kinds of things, here's what I hate.
	I hate these fucking guys who come in and like, man, we got to be quiet.
	There's people sleeping, man.
	Crash, boom, bang. Hey, man, be quiet.
	We don't want to wake people up.
	Let them get their sleep. They got like, I don't know, there's some kind of bike ride going.
	Crash, boom, bang. Oh, sorry, man.
	I trip over you. You can go back to sleep.
	Oh, my God. Oh, be quiet, man.
	It's like, oh.
	I'm glad that we can't summon mental snipers with just a will kill.
	So, yeah, got no sleep at all.
	Got no sleep at all.
	And then in the morning, I just woke up.
	I looked over at my friends and they were all bleary-eyed and just like we feel like crap and now we've got, you know, an entire day of bike riding.
	And the bike riding's okay, like once you get going, it was fine.
	But I was just like, man, I know why they call it a hostile because I'm feeling pretty fucking hostile right now.
	That's why. That was my hostile thing.
	I'd never do that again. Do stuff the right way or don't do it at all.
	Half-arsing anything is annoying to look at.
	Yeah. If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie.
	Wipe the CD. Maybe I shouldn't be watching this during dinner.
	Yeah, sorry about that. Thank God I work from home.
	I'm laughing my head off over this.
	Laughter of recognition, of course, yeah.
	Somebody says, I worked at a truck stop growing up.
	We would have to call plumbers to run snakes because of how bad the clogs were.
	Okay, that's mostly English to me.
	God bless the hourly bathroom clean.
	No, it needs to be like every other time.
	They need to go in there with sandblasters, priests, and holy water because it's just crazy.
	What the hell are people eating?
	Well, of course, I found this particularly true in the States because obesity in the States runs rampant, which means when you're that overweight, I assume that you're Your massive excrement sessions come with angel music and beckoning relatives because you're just about turning yourself inside and out.
	And, you know, 8,000 calories a day going in is pretty disgusting to look at.
	I imagine 8,000 calories a day coming out is like a slow-motion launch of SpaceX but with Kummer powder as your inflammatory device.
	Bro, I went to a fast food chain.
	There was diarrhea on the floor for God knows how long.
	I had to be the one to tell the workers.
	Like, how did no one smell it or say anything?
	Well, but they're like, who gets the short straw, right?
	Who gets the short straw?
	Who's got to go in and do that?
	Because that's really vile, right?
	Somebody says, I just flew into Denver over the weekend and it feels like it's a failed society.
	Homeless all over, trashy people, can't even wear something other than pajamas.
	Yeah. Gosh, I mean, boy, the paradise.
	Detroit was an absolute paradise back in the day.
	Like, you look at the pictures of Detroit in the 50s, unbelievable.
	Like, it was like a city of the future.
	It was incredibly beautiful.
	I used to do a lot of business in San Francisco, in California.
	I used to do a lot of business in San Francisco in the 90s.
	The place was paradise.
	I remember going with a salesman.
	We went over the bridge to these beautiful like Hobbit restaurants set into the side of the hill and we had a fantastic steak dinner and walked all night and oh man, it was just fantastic.
	It's just beautiful. It was like the London of my childhood.
	I could travel anywhere, do anything from the age of five onwards.
	I got on buses, roamed all over the place, went to the War Museum, went everywhere, went to swimming pools and just everything.
	Perfectly safe. Never, ever had any concern about anything whatsoever.
	Ah. Oh, no.
	Not damage insurance. Sorry, I just phoned and complained because it broke.
	Yeah, yeah. The damage insurance stuff doesn't really work at all.
	Let's see here. Yeah, ship it and be without your device for three weeks.
	And we'll try to find you something similar.
	So you can, at least for me, kind of roll in the dice.
	Or, you know, well, you don't get a new one.
	We'll just try and replace this one.
	So could it be a used one?
	Yeah, it could be. Okay, so I get crappy battery life, right?
	Oh, much. Public toilets are hideouts for addicts.
	And the ex-George Michael, right?
	Do you think inflation will flatten out or do you think we will have new double-digit normal?
	Oh, inflation's not going to flatten out.
	Come on, man. Look, they've printed, what, $14 trillion in the last couple of years?
	No, that's garbage in, garbage out.
	Steph, the bare minimum Mondays is supposed to be an inoculation for the scary Sundays where workers dread going back to work and instead have a gentle start to the week by doing yoga, walking the dog, doing house chores, doing work hours and ban all work meetings and just do like easy pickings work that doesn't have much stress involved.
	Have you seen these a day in the life of a tech worker?
	There's this, like, twinkly, dreamy, spaced-out piano music, and this girl, like, you know, she's wandering around, and, uh, oh, yeah, we got a really nice latte here, and I picked up a Cinnabon, Sinfall, and then I did a little bit of work, and then we went for lunch, and then we had a little walk, and we put a little hacky sack in the quad.
	I'm really terrible. And then we did a little bit of mold work, and then we went to the massage room, and then we had a meeting, and then just like, oh, my God.
	This has nothing to do with the tech stuff I was doing in the 90s.
	It's like I need toothpicks to prop open my eyeballs because I've been coding for two and a half days straight.
	My coding, when you're nested deep, particularly when you're in nested loops like recursive calls where you're calling the same code back and back and looping in and all this kind of stuff, I literally would be terrified to go to the bathroom because in the time it took to go to the bathroom, I would lose the thread of what I was doing.
	I remember like literally my eyes turning yellow, like urine oozing out of my gums in my mouth.
	I was so backed up because I just couldn't leave my desk because I would lose track of what I was doing.
	So many plates and balls in the air, so to speak, right?
	Now it's just like, yeah, well, I needed a little bit of a break.
	So I went to the Vibra massage room and then I went to the meditation room.
	Oh my god.
	Oh my gosh.
	Alright, let's get up to your comments.
	Uhhhhhh.
	Let's see here. The hostels are not always that bad.
	It depends on the hostels and the people who just happen to be in your room.
	There are nice hostels and nice people too.
	Oh. Oh.
	You guys are just pulling rants out of me.
	You're just pulling rants out of me.
	Alright, let's get to this and I'll get back to the rant.
	I never thought about the size of what you eat must be the size of what you excrete.
	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
	I mean, honestly, I think if you're very obese, like taking a crap is like giving birth to triplets.
	Where do you think this decline is headed?
	Do you think it will get better? Well, it depends what your timeline is.
	Things always get better. The question is, how long and how deep?
	And for more of that, you can get my free novel, The Future, at freedomain.locals.com.
	Ah, I made my laptop and got one twice as expensive in return.
	Oh, good for you. Yeah, and if I've ever had, like, this computer that's running this, I ordered it, and it kept rebooting after a while, and it turned out, I didn't know what was happening, but it turned out that the liquid cooling wasn't working.
	And I was like, well, I could ship it back, or I could just take it to my local repair shop and get them to fix it.
	And I just, I can't handle this, packaging it all up, sending it back.
	I just want it someplace local, and I'll just pay for it, so...
	A day in the life of tech workers never seems to involve programmers.
	Yeah, no kidding. No kidding.
	Molar is floating. Yeah, yeah, when you haven't peed that long, right?
	Software development used to be to shove a bunch of nerds in the basement with no windows, give them a stash of coke and bananas and leave them be for a few months.
	It was Jolt Cola back in the day.
	It was Jolt Cola back in the day.
	All right. Liquid cooling.
	You own a Cray? No, I just...
	I don't like background noise as much as possible, so I just wanted to get a very...
	It's an i9, and so it does get pretty heated up.
	And I just wanted it quiet.
	And, you know, when you get an i9, you have a fair amount of fan noise.
	Plus, it's got a big, meaty video card.
	You know, just for... It's always with NVIDIA. It's like, do I install the graphics drivers for games or for media production?
	Hmm. Well, it's a business computer, so I have to do media production.
	Those perks used to be for overworked engineers to keep them in the building.
	Then other departments hijacked them without the underlying productivity.
	Yeah, yeah. Once HR gets a hold of things.
	All right. Am I caught up?
	I don't want to over-ranch you guys.
	I really don't, right? It may be overdoing it.
	R for rant, or should we do more questions?
	You came here for a rant?
	Well, you might give more than one.
	Alright. Can I ask for tips?
	Anybody? I mean, we're all joining together in our...
	What was it I said in my show last night?
	Why does Jesus command you to love your enemies?
	Because it's the only way you can avoid hating the planet as a whole.
	Can I ask for, would it be a rant about spending money?
	I really enjoyed the previous one.
	Well, you've got to give me more of a hook rather than just spending money.
	A tip? Yeah, I appreciate that.
	You know, we're coming up on my three-year anniversary of deplatforming from YouTube.
	That's the three-year anniversary for my deplatforming from YouTube.
	Rant in a Norm Macdonald voice?
	That's not easy to do. I heard a joke from him.
	Do you guys want to hear a joke? It's a little rude.
	Why for a joke? You want to hear a joke?
	Yeah. I don't really do a Norm Macdonald.
	He's a tough guy to imitate. Thank you for the tip.
	So I'll tip if you show a foot. Listen, I would show a foot but obviously can't show.
	below.
	...
	My actual penis on the live stream, so...
	Because that would be... Actually, that's unfair.
	There's much more than a foot. So, please don't.
	Fair. I think we're all agreed on that.
	Plus, you know, you need a fisheye lens.
	You need a Derek, a couple of helpers, so...
	All right, so joke.
	So my wife is in a coma.
	So it's actually really, really sad.
	My wife's in a coma and I'm at the hospital and the doctor is like, okay, I've got an unorthodox way that you can get your wife out of a coma.
	It's not...
	I've seen it work before.
	I'm not going to stand behind the science.
	I've seen it work before. But the best way to get your wife out of the coma is to go in there and give her oral sex.
	I know, it's weird. I can definitely give to some privacy.
	I, you know, have someone stand out the door, but if you go in there, you give her oral sex, that's your best chance of getting her out of the coma.
	So I went in, and I don't know, five or six minutes later, I come out, and the doctor says, well, did it work?
	How did it go? And I said, doc, it didn't work at all.
	She's choking.
	That's my normal McDonald joke song.
	LOL.
	It's not bad. It's not bad.
	Dustin Canada used the metric system.
	Oh, aren't you pedantic?
	We just do jokes all night.
	Saw the joke. Big finish.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Um... You came here for deep thoughts, not deep throat, right?
	So, okay, so to the guy, here's the thing.
	Do you want to know what most repels quality people from your life?
	Hit me with a why. I want to make sure I'm providing value here, right?
	Thank you for the tip. Do you want to know what most drives quality people out of your life?
	It's not being cheap. Okay, I will tell you, I will tell you what most drives quality people from your life.
	It is when you talk about a generality, so when somebody else, somebody in your vicinity talks about a generality and you think that you're being giant bowling ball brained coming in and skittling apart the conversation because you point out an exception.
	That is so eye-rolling, I can't even tell you.
	Now, I know you guys don't do that, but I'm going to talk about the you because, you know, maybe you can play this for someone else, right?
	So I said, well I had a bad experience in a hostel and I've had more than one but
	and somebody says, well they're not all like that.
	It doth weary anybody with a brain.
	This is probably just a reaction, maybe something you're taking personally, but the number of times I make a general statement and people think that they're just being giant-brained helpers by pointing out an exception.
	I know a tall Asian guy!
	You know, a lot of women are shorter than men.
	In general, women are shorter. I know a tall woman!
	It's such a...
	It's a brain killer like a picture of...
	Like a picture of Friedrich Hayek in a bikini is a boner killer.
	Like, it's just a thought killer.
	It is absolutely crushing to the conversation because it's so wearisome, it's so boring, it's so unhelpful, it's so uninteresting, it's so unnecessary, you know?
	In general, this... Yes!
	When I was a kid, or when I was younger, I got trained out of this pretty early.
	Because there used to be...
	There used to be a saying.
	You're a fucking idiot.
	Well, there was that saying too.
	But there used to be a saying which was, well, that's the exception that proves the rule.
	That's the exception that proves the rule.
	And what that means took me a little while to understand what it meant as a kid.
	That's the exception that proves the rule.
	Women are shorter than men. I know a tall woman.
	Well, the reason you remember her is because she's an exception that proves the rule.
	It's the exception the reason you remember her.
	You know, a lot of guys who are really good with computers aren't necessarily good at sports.
	I know a guy who pre-programs in machine language and he's on the varsity team.
	It's a brain killer because it's like...
	You then have to put in caveats all the time to appease the mouth breathers, right?
	The neck beards. The people who think that finding an exception to a generalized statement is just owning the guy who's trying to make a point.
	You don't understand.
	You know, a lot of baldness is considered unattractive.
	Well, I know some bald guys who are considered very attractive.
	Ah.
	You don't even... I honestly have no idea what to say to people like that.
	I don't know what to say.
	Other than some extraordinarily...
	Yeah, men are on average stronger than women.
	I know a woman bodybuilder.
	She could kick your butt.
	That's just wild.
	It's just wild. And even if somebody, like, so, the person who was like, well, you were wrong.
	First of all, they never said all hostels were bad.
	So it's a complete straw man to say, well, some hostels are great.
	Yeah, listen, I mean, a guy said I've been living 18 months in a hostel.
	I didn't, I said, oh, cool. I didn't say, well, you must be in hell because all hostels, like, I didn't even say that.
	So when I say I had a bad experience at a hostel, I say, well, they're not all bad.
	You understand? I never said all hostels are bad.
	That I'd remember. To me, honestly, if I'm at a dinner party and I make a general statement, right?
	I make a general statement and somebody's like, well, there are exceptions that are general statements.
	I'm like, ugh. Honestly, I want to pick this person up, move them over to the children's table, give them some plasticine to play with and a sippy cup so they don't spill.
	I know an engineer who has good hygiene.
	No, that's actually... That's an absolute...
	There's no exceptions to that whatsoever.
	No exceptions to that whatsoever.
	It's like the hot-crazy matrix.
	I know a woman who's hot and not crazy.
	I'm married to her, fortunately. So, yeah, it's...
	This just...
	It's tempting, right?
	It's tempting. I understand that.
	It's tempting. You think that you're adding something by pointing out an exception to a general rule.
	It's literally like...
	Somebody says, birds fly south for the winter!
	And you say, but not in a straight line.
	You know, they deviate.
	Sometimes it's southwest, sometimes it's south-southwest, sometimes it's southeast.
	Sometimes, if there's a really strong wind, they even head north a little bit, you know?
	It's more detailed and sophisticated than you think it is.
	They don't just fly straight south.
	It's like, I know!
	I know!
	I know. I get it.
	You know, when Steph's eyebrows goes above his glasses, I'm laughing.
	That's right. That's right.
	You know, I was watching one of Tim Pool's shows.
	I'm like, why does my very expensive camera still look like crap?
	Why do I still look like ass?
	Ass with glasses. Why do I look like a slightly fuzzy potato with wisdom?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I even had a professional director once help me with the camera.
	I'm afraid I'm just ass with traps.
	That's just the way it is. I'm just head ass with traps.
	Why do I look so bad? Well, I'm 56.
	All right. Yeah, he's got nice cameras and all of that.
	Although, yeah, what's under Tim Pool's head?
	I assume another Tim Pool or possibly even Dubbin from Harry Potter.
	And what is it? Tim Pool and Rolo Tomasi.
	He also is like Mr.
	Headsock, right? Okay.
	Yeah, because somebody...
	Yeah. Oh, so, sorry.
	Somebody donated, and I don't want to be nice to them, so I will try to be nice to them.
	If peaceful parenting is so important, why haven't you written a book on it yet?
	Oh, that's kind of passive-aggressive, bro.
	I appreciate the donation.
	I'm just being kind of honest.
	That's kind of passive-aggressive.
	Am I wrong? If I'm wrong, I'll back away.
	I've got a collective wisdom here.
	If it's so important, why haven't I written a book on it yet?
	Does that strike you as kind of passive-aggressive?
	No, that's not passive-aggressive?
	Hey, I'm happy to hear.
	I could be misinterpreting.
	Sorry, let's start again because I may have gotten the question wrong.
	Hit me with a why if you think that's kind of passive-aggressive.
	Yeah, it does seem kind of passive-aggressive, right?
	It does seem kind of passive-aggressive.
	So... Do you want me to answer that, just out of curiosity?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Okay, well, let me ask you this.
	Do you think that podcasts get more views or books get more downloads?
	Do you think that podcasts sit P or B? Podcasts, do I get more podcast downloads or book downloads?
	Yeah, P. That's right.
	There are way more podcast and video downloads than there are book downloads.
	For sure. Yeah. So, peaceful parenting is best explicated in podcasts, in presentations, in interviews, and of course I've got a whole A to Z of peaceful parenting in my book, The Future.
	So... Now, another one of the reasons why I haven't written a peaceful parenting book, I've actually, I think, tried two or three times.
	The problem is that for most people, if it's just theory without evidence, it's tough for them to accept it.
	So I do want to provide evidence...
	Finding the evidence, evaluating the evidence, making sure the sample size is big enough, making sure the methodology is good enough, making sure that, and all of that sort of stuff, then that is going to, that's really, really a lot, a lot, a lot of work.
	So... That is...
	That is tough.
	That is tough. And it's on the list for sure.
	Like, now I'm working with Jared. It's on the list for sure.
	But, yeah, the reason that I didn't do it is I kept...
	And the other thing, too, I've got to tell you, you know, it was...
	The parenting stuff was quite a burn back in the day, you know, when I cared more about these kinds of things.
	Like, when I had just quit my big corporate gig, I took a 75% pay cut to do this show.
	You know, I almost immediately got attacked...
	In the mainstream media, like the first prominence I got was like, in the mainstream media, I'm a terrible guy, I'm a cult leader, I'm smashing up families for fun and profit and all that kind of stuff.
	So it was tough to get the motivation to write a parenting book, given that peaceful parenting was causing It seemed like half the entire planet to go insane and become dangerous.
	So it was a little bit tough for that kind of stuff.
	So yeah, it's on the list and so on, but I do a lot of calls with parents.
	I've answered endless questions about peaceful parenting.
	I've got presentations about it.
	You can just go to... I've got introductions to peaceful parenting, which are videos and podcasts, and I've got interviews with people who are experts in parent effectiveness training, which is a way of negotiating with kids.
	So if you go, and there's a whole, gosh, where is it now?
	So go to this site.
	Let me just make sure.
	I've got it correct.
	Yes, there we go. So go to freedomainplaylists.com freedomainplaylists.com right at the top left.
	I've got I don't know, 100 shows on peaceful parenting?
	Yeah, freedomainplaylists.com It's right here.
	free domain playlist dot com forward slash peaceful dash parenting
	yeah I mean the blow back from the parenting stuff was pretty pretty wild
	It was pretty wild. And it was a real shock at the time.
	I couldn't, honestly, for the life of me, I could not.
	I remember sitting in my study, like just sitting there in the dark.
	Racking my brain, like, what on earth is going on?
	Why would I be attacked for saying that you don't have to spend time with abusive people?
	Because, you know, it was a wild thing, like, when I was...
	I don't know. Do you care about this history?
	Does it matter to you? Hit me with a why.
	If you care about this topic, I'm happy to talk about something else.
	Just sort of show history, if you're interested.
	Yeah? Okay. And I hope that this answers, and I do appreciate the donation, and if there's more that people want to throw, I'd be happy to accept that.
	I really would be. Thank you for your support.
	I remember racking my brain.
	See, the way that I was raised, what was all, and this is true from anyone who's younger than me.
	So I was raised with If you're dissatisfied in your relationship, like this is the feminist thing, right?
	If you're just dissatisfied or unhappy in your relationship, you should leave.
	You should leave. You should leave.
	Like, I remember as a kid, I was fascinated by the movie Hit Me With a Y. If you've seen the movie Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs.
	Kramer, you ever seen that movie?
	Thank you for those tips. I really appreciate that.
	You've seen that? Yeah.
	Yeah. I think it's worth watching.
	I think it's worth watching.
	So in Kramer...
	Sorry, in Kramer versus Kramer...
	There's a guy, he's responsible for paying for his wife and his son in a very expensive, I assume, very expensive New York apartment.
	And he's working kind of late and all of that.
	And he comes home. He's not abusive.
	He's not a drunk. He's not mean.
	You know, he's a little short-tempered and so on.
	But the Lord knows his wife isn't perfect.
	And she is so hysterical about being home and taking care of their son and so on.
	And she's like, if I have to stay here another minute, I'm going to throw myself out the window.
	Like, she's a complete hysteric, right?
	Now, what's she hysterical about?
	He provides, he works hard, he cares for her, he cares for the kid.
	But she's just, he's not abusive, he's not mean, he's not, she's just unsatisfied.
	She's just, you know, she wants more.
	You know, this is the constant programming that goes into women's brains.
	Everything. It's even a cliche in every Disney movie and every Pixar movie.
	There's the heroines. They call it the want more song.
	She's, I want more. I can't just be another person.
	I love books and everybody else just likes doodling and I'm going to be magnificent and I just want more and I've got to burst out of this little town and I've got to, right?
	The want more song. It's just infecting women with dissatisfaction because when you infect women with dissatisfaction, you take...
	A massive axe to the base of the tree of the stabilizing essence of society known as the nuclear family, right?
	So you've just got to constantly tell women that if you're unsatisfied, if you're dissatisfied, if you're not getting enough, if you're not, right?
	If your husband is just kind of distant and if you feel like your life is not satisfying and, you know, they always lure these women out, oh, you're in, you know, this is a guy, he's, you know, he's a little pompous, maybe he's a little shallow and so on, but you know, there's this...
	There's a really cool, lean-jawed, muscle-bound sculptor right down there in the little village down there by the docks, and boy, you know, you leave your husband, you're going to take up with him, you're going to have the very best sex of your life, he's going to be passionate about you, or you're Bridget Doans, you're a single mom, and there's going to be two men, both billionaires, fighting over you, and it's completely fucking psychotic.
	Like, if men watch porn, at least they know that's not real, but women watch this stuff and somehow it wires into the dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction, just promote dissatisfaction all the time.
	So when I was growing up, it was continual.
	Look, if you're just not...
	He doesn't have to be mean.
	He doesn't have to be... If you're unsatisfied, get out.
	Get out and go carve your own life.
	Live, laugh, love. Live your best life.
	Oh, I hate... I hate that phrase.
	I'm out here living my best life.
	That's so narcissistic, vainglorious, and hedonistic.
	It's never a virtuous life.
	It's never a courageous life.
	It's never a charitable life.
	It's never a generous life.
	It's never- My best life was best for me me me me me me me me me me!
	I mean I'm satisfied So when I was growing up, this is all I heard.
	Hey, if you're unsatisfied in a relationship, just leave.
	It doesn't have to be abusive.
	It just has to be not great.
	If you don't have 19 orgasms before your morning latte, just get out, right?
	And I was talking to people on my show whose parents were legit abusive.
	Like, legit abusive.
	I won't even get into the details but you guys heard enough call-in shows to know what that is, right?
	And now suddenly it's like when an adult in a relationship he or she never chose
	decides to leave because of continual abuse, that is the worst thing ever.
	And I was like, what the...
	Honestly, I didn't get it.
	Because I was still kind of naive about the hypocrisy of society.
	And I was like, well, wait a minute. I was raised with like...
	If you're just mildly dissatisfied, you can smash up a whole family.
	You can leave a guy with kids.
	You can leave a guy you chose.
	You can leave a guy who's not abusive.
	He's not mean. He pays the bills.
	Kramer vs. Kramer, you're just not particularly happy.
	And you can leave and you should leave.
	And of course, Kramer vs. Kramer was like, the moment she left, she was making more money than he was.
	Isn't that amazing? Like, he's a professional.
	He's been working. He's got an office job.
	He works nights and she just leaves and she just goes and gets a job and just makes way more money than he does.
	It's incredible. Again, breadcrumbs off a cliff.
	That's all art has been for the last 60 years.
	Breadcrumbs off a cliff. Here, just follow these breadcrumbs.
	Fall off. Destroy the family.
	Wreck the bond. Well, there's a bed of penis over there.
	Oh, you think this penis is good?
	Over there, there's a penis that you can use as a weather vane.
	Over there, there's a penis that salutes like an admiral when a battleship goes by.
	Over there, there's a penis that gets medals.
	Off you go! Breadcrumbs to bonking.
	And that's what they've got, right?
	Yeah, Hansel and Gretel, yeah.
	Over there is paradise. And it's never over there.
	I mean the amount of women who regret getting divorced is just legion.
	And so it was incomprehensible to me.
	Like, genuinely incomprehensible.
	I did not... I didn't get it.
	Like, why is dissatisfaction a great reason to leave a relationship that's not abusive, but that you chose?
	Like, dissatisfaction with a relationship you chose where there are children involved...
	It's perfectly legitimate.
	In fact, it's praise to leave.
	Yes, you shouldn't stay in a relationship that's unsatisfying for you.
	Yes, you should go out and conquer the world.
	Yes, you should go out and build an empire and be a girl boss and all this other kind of crap, right?
	Yes, you go, girl. Yes, slay queen.
	blah right? That's what was everywhere, everywhere all the time. Wild. And so when I said to
	adult children in meshed in abusive relationships, like legit abusive relationships, they never
	chose.
	.
	I said, I never told anyone to leave.
	I just said, you don't have to be there. You're not physically required to be there.
	You never made a vow.
	You don't have children when they're your parents.
	You don't have children with them. You never made a solemn promise to God to be together forever, no matter what.
	It was too brain-bending a contradiction.
	It was foundationally incomprehensible to me.
	And this was part of me just, to be honest, this is part of me just, this is a mistake I think most young people make, or I was younger then, somewhat naive, is you look at the world and you think, well, it can't be that different from me.
	Like, I'm human, they're human.
	It can't be that different from me.
	I mean, yeah, we have differences of opinion, we have differences of morals even, but we can't be that different.
	Because when I'm caught in a contradiction, I won't say it torments me, but it bothers me.
	There's a great Alan Dean Foster novel many years ago about Star Wars called A Splinter in the Mind's Eye.
	A Splinter in the Mind's Eye is really good.
	And that's what it's like for me. If I've got a contradiction, you know, like the issue of free will nagged at me for years, the issue of ethics nagged at me for years, the issue of self-defense has been nagging at me for a while, so I took time, I think it was yesterday, and I did an hour on self-defense to make sure I've got it down, down, got it solid, it just bothers me.
	So, understanding that
	Like, it took me a while to get the principle, right?
	It took me a while to get the principle.
	And it took me a while... See, when I was growing up, you know, my mom was by far the worst parent I knew.
	Like, my mom was by far the worst parent I knew.
	And I know that...
	It's easy to say that. Well, maybe there was suffering you didn't know about with other kids.
	But I was over at other people's houses a lot and I spent a lot of time with other people and so on.
	And my mom was like, my mom was the only parent who was literally institutionalized.
	So for me, I was like, okay, well, my mom was really bad.
	And there are some moms who weren't great.
	But most parents are, okay, you know, good enough, decent, okay, right?
	Well, but the moment you start proposing voluntary family relationships, you know, it's sort of like when you think of privatizing some government thing, right?
	You say, oh, it's privatized schools, right?
	Like, schools voluntary and peaceful.
	You'd say, okay, well, you know, people will put up a fight, but, you know, they want to educate the kids, they'll find some way.
	It's like, nope, that's not a lot of what goes on, man.
	There's this almost like a fight to the death thing that goes on.
	People are just existentially terrified by the expansion of virtue
	They're existentially terrified and so the fact not so much that all these articles were written but that people
	Read them and I would check the newspapers afterwards be like well there must be people writing it and saying well
	no no no come On this is if the parents are abusive of course the adult
	children don't have to spend time with them I mean this is consistent with all of our other views of
	relationships And I remember I put out an analogy, and I said okay, so
	let's say that you have a friend, and she's some woman from Pakistan and
	She's 20 years old and she was She's been in an arranged marriage, and she was like 12 and
	her husband is abusive towards her He beat her when she was younger and now he screams at her and insults her and manipulates her and she says, but I can't leave him.
	You would say, no, you can't.
	It's physically possible for you to leave him.
	I don't know whether you should or shouldn't.
	That's up to you. But you can.
	If she says, I can't leave him, you would say, you can leave him.
	I mean, it's legal.
	You can leave him if you want, right?
	You would correct her on her misperception.
	So when people would say, well, but they're my abusive parents.
	But, you know, I've got to spend time with them.
	And it's like, no, you don't.
	I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't, but you don't have to.
	It's not like gravity. It's not like, you know, thou shalt not kill.
	It did not seem to me to be even remotely controversial.
	Time for a dad joke?
	Time for a what, you say?
	I'm sorry, I can't quite read this because it's reversed on my screen.
	Time for a what? Shall we?
	Should we dip in? My wife got these for me.
	All right. Shall we?
	Yes, oh no. He has a box of them.
	Be afraid. You thought that was an abyss.
	You wait. You wait until I get some of these.
	All right. Let's do some of these.
	All right. All right.
	Oh, this is appropriate.
	My friends keep saying, cheer up, man.
	It could be worse. You could be stuck underground in a hole full of water.
	I know he means well. Oh my gosh.
	The fattest night at King Arthur's round table was circumference.
	He acquired his size from too much pie.
	Oh! I feel that one.
	Like a fat guy on a bathroom toilet.
	All right. The three unwritten rules of life.
	One. Two.
	Three. Yes, I'm afraid so.
	I'm afraid so.
	Oh, you can't trust atoms.
	They make up everything. Oh, what's that joke you...
	If you're feeling, like, really risky, you go up to your girlfriend and you say...
	No, I can't do that one.
	I can't do that one. That's too much. All right.
	Somebody says...
	What do you call somebody with no body and no nose?
	Nobody knows.
	You should I? Are you guys dragging me over the abyss here?
	Okay, I'll ask you don't do this to any woman in your life, but this is a black joke I heard somewhere.
	Bye.
	Um...
	You go up to a woman and you say, what does a man say to a woman whose vagina is too tight?
	She says, I don't know. It's like...
	All right. Oh, I get it.
	I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon.
	I'll let you know. Which comes first, I guess.
	Let's see here. What is the least spoken language in the world?
	Sign language. Let's see here.
	Oh, that's too bad.
	All right. Justice is a dish best served cold.
	If it was served warm, it would be just water.
	Just ice, just water.
	I'm going to get it right. I like telling dad jokes.
	even though I'm not a dad, I'm a faux-pa.
	Did you hear the one about the dragon who refused to hunt on the Sabbath?
	He refused to pray on weeknights.
	Oh, nice.
	What do you call a deer with no eyes?
	No idea. Can I pronounce this one?
	What do you call...
	Hang on. What have we got here?
	What do you call a magic dog?
	A labracabra...
	Dabra door retriever.
	I think I got that right, probably not.
	No, I can't do that one.
	That's too bad. I used to have a job at a calendar factory, but I got fired because I took a couple days off.
	Crazy. Alright, so this one's upside down.
	This could be dangerous. I'm only familiar with 25 letters in the English alphabet.
	I don't know why. What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
	Frostbite? I'm reading a book about anti-gravity.
	It is impossible to put down.
	If you donate, I'll stop.
	How's that for a business deal for you?
	If you donate, I'll stop.
	Alright, um...
	As a lumberjack I know that I've cut exactly 2,417 trees.
	I know because every time I cut one, I keep a log.
	Oh, why couldn't the bike stand up by itself?
	It was too tired.
	If a child refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting arrest?
	My wife is really mad at the fact that I have no sense of direction.
	So I packed up my stuff and write.
	What did Spock find in the toilet of the Enterprise?
	Captain's log. This one I did.
	Okay, let's do one more. Two more.
	Oh, you guys aren't donating.
	You really just want me to keep going.
	This could be the rest of the show. Oh, did I do this one?
	Yeah, I did this one. Okay, let's do a couple more.
	Alright, what do we got? How do you cut an ocean in two?
	With a seesaw. Spring is here.
	I got so excited I wet my plants.
	What? Why can't a leopard hide?
	Well, because he's always spotted.
	Why did the invisible man turn down the job offer?
	He couldn't see himself doing it.
	What did the duck say when it brought chapstick?
	Put it on my bill.
	How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?
	Why? Ten tickles.
	Why did the crab never share?
	Because he's shellfish. Why wasn't the woman happy with the Velcro she bought?
	Total rip-off. Oh, those are like...
	I don't even know what to say.
	What did the ocean say to the shore?
	Nothing. Just waves. Nice.
	Have you ever been surfing?
	This is not a joke. I'm just curious.
	Hit me with a why if you've ever been surfing.
	Yeah? No.
	I've never gone surfing.
	I've gone... Body surfing is a blast.
	Although, body surfing is absolutely this close to voluntary disassembly.
	Because you know, like you just know, if something's going to happen, you're going to go face plow into the sand and just turn over and sober.
	I mean, I love body surfing.
	I don't do it too often because you know it's just countdown to decapitation or you're going to come out with your head at a permanent angle.
	Yeah, body surfing is great.
	And of course, God help you if there are any rocks.
	How high are the waves? I guess I've gone body surfing with maybe five foot waves, maybe six foot waves, sort of base to top.
	So like real tumblers, real tumblers love body surfing.
	When you get that rush, I guess that's what the whole point of surfing is, although I've never gone surfing.
	All I can see is that surf going through my eyeball, right?
	That's, yeah. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun.
	My daughter absolutely loves body surfing.
	Why was the housewife upset after she baked her husband a cake?
	Oh, he took it for granite.
	He took it for... Oh, the housewife upset.
	I don't quite get that. I don't get it.
	He took it for granite. We'll try body surfing.
	I'm about to move to a beach town for college.
	Yeah, yeah. How do you make a Kleenex dance?
	Put a little boogie in it.
	Oof. Oof.
	All right. I know this is a ridiculous thing to ask right after these bad jokes, but you know, these boxes don't come for free.
	No, if you have any donations, I'd be happy to hear, and any other topics.
	Why did the cheetah go to bed hungry?
	Because cheetahs never prosper.
	That's not quite bad enough to be good.
	I learned a lot about comedy when I was a little kid and there were these jokes going around.
	I mentioned this years ago, but there were these jokes going around like I'd tell you the joke about the blunt pencil, but you'd never get the point.
	Or I'd tell you the joke about the high wall, but you'd never get over it, that kind of stuff, right?
	And I told these jokes to a friend of mine, and literally he was trailing around, like the rest of the day he was trailing me around, being like, no man, listen, you can tell me the joke about the pencil, I'll get the point.
	Like, you can tell me the joke about the high wall, I'll be fine, I will get it, like, honestly, right?
	How do you get a one-armed man out of a tree?
	Wave. All right.
	Any last comments, issues, questions, problems?
	Topics. Topics.
	My dad's favorite book is Under the Grandstands by Seymour Butts.
	From the park you hear the happy sound of the carousel.
	Love that song. You can almost taste the hot dogs and french fries they sell.
	Under the fart walk.
	Anyway. Thanks for the rants and the laughs.
	I don't consider my comment to be the exception comment.
	You were suggesting that hostels in general are horrible, and my point was hostels in general are okay.
	I'm the guy who spent 18 months in hostels.
	Right. Right.
	So when you say you were suggesting, what you're saying is you hallucinated, right?
	I didn't say that hostels in general are horrible.
	So here's the thing. If you say hostels in general are okay, then I was talking about an exception, right?
	So, why is it that you get to claim an exception when I'm claiming an exception?
	So, why are you 18 months in a hostel?
	Why did you spend 18 months in a hostel?
	Just out of curiosity.
	It's a pretty wild thing to do.
	Why? Did you lose a bet with Tutankhamun?
	Did you disturb the wrong mummy's tomb?
	What were you on the run from?
	Oh, traveled around the world. Oh, okay, not in the same hostel.
	All right, got it.
	Sorry, people are typing. I'm just waiting for this to come in.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Hit me with a Y if you've tried AI. StephBotAI.
	Hit me with a Y if you've tried StephBotAI.
	Now, all right, I'm going to give you the link here.
	There you go. You should try it.
	It's actually pretty good.
	Let's see here. Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey?
	His views on debt have helped me be able to afford my current lifestyle.
	I have not, I'm not familiar with Dave Ramsey.
	My basic financial approach is hodl and spend money, spend as much money as you can on things
	That's my whole thing.
	Spend as much money on things that make money.
	The fact that I spent an ungodly amount of money on this computer...
	It's great because it's bulletproof.
	It works perfectly. It produces things fast.
	it's never had a hiccup other than when the cooling wasn't working.
	So, yeah, just...
	and spend a lot of money on things that make money and spend as little
	money as you can on things that depreciate.
	So.
	Why was it so expensive, the hardware or the licenses?
	Well, no, it was expensive because I wanted a very fast processor, I wanted liquid cooling, and I wanted a very fast graphics card because I was tired of just waiting and waiting and waiting for shows to get produced.
	So here's the thing, let me tell you, do you guys, do you work from home at all?
	Do you work, are you in charge of your own schedule or are you like some person on an hourly conveyor belt thing, right?
	Alright, do you want a huge productivity, Jeff?
	Maybe you know this one. This will triple your productivity.
	Boom. I'm telling you.
	Absolutely. Absolutely.
	Okay. Let's end with this.
	Okay. So here's your productivity tip.
	How much time do you spend killing time waiting for something to finish?
	Right? So, I just want to give you my example.
	So, I do a show, and the show's on the camera.
	I've got to get the show off the camera.
	I've got to put it onto a hard drive.
	Then I've got to put it into a video program.
	Then I've got to add some, you know, donation requests at the bottom.
	And then I've got to export it, the audio, because it records in stereo, which I don't need.
	And then I've got to convert the audio from stereo to mono.
	And I've got to put it back in the video.
	And then I've got to produce it, because it takes at least a gig off the video size and all this kind of stuff, right?
	So, whatever you can do to shave down, to shave down what you have to kill time for to wait is insanely great for your productivity.
	So, if something's gonna take two hours, then you can do something else, right?
	But there's a tipping point.
	There's a tipping point in time where It's just an annoying time slice.
	Like, for me, it's like, okay, something takes, like, I'm doing a copy-paste or something like that, and something is like, it's like 14 minutes.
	Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with 14 minutes, right?
	So often, you know, I'll get a coffee or, you know, I'll answer a couple of emails or whatever.
	Just 14 minutes, right? If I can get that down to, like, three minutes, fantastic, right?
	So whatever you can do to shorten your dead time, It's like you get to be immortal.
	You get to live forever. People say, how are you so productive?
	How are you so productive? Well, because, you know, I crank out these shows pretty regularly.
	And part of it's practice and part of it's, you know, I'm thinking all the time and really trying to come up with new things to provide value.
	But a lot of it has to do with the fact that I just...
	And I get a little tense around this kind of stuff even with sort of friends and family where, you know, if somebody says...
	I need 15 minutes and then we can go, right?
	So I have 15 minutes and then we go, well, I can't really do anything with 15 minutes, right?
	I can't. What can you do with 15 minutes, right?
	But if somebody says, I need 45 minutes, okay, now I can do something, right?
	Now I can do something.
	I've got 45 minutes.
	So what I would say is that the more throughput you have and you can...
	the better, obviously...
	Lengthen or shorten your tasks away from that dead zone of you can't do anything.
	Which again, it's different for everyone.
	For me, you know, 12 to 18 minutes.
	20 minutes I can start to do a little bit more.
	I can actually start to get something.
	20 minutes I can do like maybe a short video, a short podcast or something like that.
	12 minutes I can't, right? So with this...
	I was going to get either a second computer with a slow graphics card, and then it's going to be like, okay, so when I first started doing this, it was like three to one.
	To produce an hour-long video took three hours, because video cards were slower back then, right?
	Now, with this computer, to produce a three-hour video takes 25 minutes, right?
	And it's really fast.
	And this is a fast enough computer that I can keep working even while it's making a video.
	I mean, I probably wouldn't want to play a video game, but I can keep working.
	So try to eliminate as much as humanly possible.
	You can keep track of this during the course of the day.
	Here's my dead zone.
	Here's my time slices where I can't get anything done.
	And this is one of the reasons why I got annoyed with the lab today.
	Because the lab was like, okay, stay by the phone, we'll call.
	Okay, well, I can't necessarily go for a long walk.
	I can't go and work.
	I mean, I can. I can't do something with my daughter, right?
	I can't review this script that she's working on, so see if I can give her any tips or hints, right?
	I hate that dead time.
	I hate that dead time with a biblical, burning Old Testament, rain of fire, meteor to the forehead, passion and hatred.
	I just hate that dead time.
	So, whatever you can do, keep track over the course of your day.
	Over the course of your day, what's your dead time?
	What's the time where you're just waiting for something?
	What's the time where you give yourself the excuse to get up and make a coffee or grab a snack or, you know, whatever.
	Or I go and chat with someone.
	Oh, well, I'm just waiting for something to finish.
	Like if you look for that time and you track it, my guess is it's probably an hour or two over the course of your day that you give yourself, and I too, give myself the excuse, it's not enough time to do anything else.
	I'm just waiting for something else to finish.
	And I really, really try to avoid that time as much as possible.
	And if you have to invest, like in the couple of grand that I spent on this computer, but it gives me back probably 500 hours a year or maybe 700 hours a year.
	Now that's a lot. That's a lot.
	Like 500 hours is like 12 work weeks, right?
	So if you want to get maximum productivity, which is great, I mean not to be hysterical about it, you have a time to stand up for the computer every hour, yeah, the 20-20-20, right?
	Like every 20 minutes take 20 seconds to look at something at least 20 feet away as best you can.
	So, keep track, keep detailed track of when you have that dead time and figure out what you can do to eliminate it.
	So, for me, when I had a computer, I had one computer for the show back in the day, and it would be tied up for like two hours, and I'd be like, okay, well, I guess I'll go do something else, right?
	When I got down to like, I don't know, it's tied up for half an hour, 20 minutes or whatever, it's like, You know, maybe I'll just, you know, check email.
	Just kind of dead time, right?
	But see where your dead time is, where your task gets interrupted, your flow gets interrupted, and so on, and try to work for the elimination of that dead time.
	It's like defragging a hard drive.
	You know, you end up with all the scattered data all over the hard drive.
	You can still the data back down.
	It gives you that. Like, whatever you can work on consistently is really important.
	Look for those little bridge times where you get up and do something else, where you lose your concentration, whatever it is, right?
	And try to eliminate those.
	Defragment your day so you get more throughput.
	You'd be just amazed how productive you can be.
	So look at all of that.
	Look for when you give yourself an excuse to just kill a little bit of time because you're waiting for something.
	And just try and figure out how you can eliminate that kind of stuff.
	So for instance, when I was in the business world, what I used to do was I noticed this during the day.
	I like email something urgent to someone and then I just kind of kill a little bit of time waiting for them to email me back.
	So what I did was I said, okay, I'm going to put emails in a sent folder, but I'm not going to send the emails until 4 o'clock or whatever, right?
	Unless it was super, super urgent.
	Like, there's always exceptions, right?
	So I'm not going to send my emails until 4 o'clock.
	Now, I send my emails at 4 o'clock, then 4 to 5, like that hour is just bang, bang, bang, responding to the emails.
	Maybe some of them don't come in until the next day.
	But when I would send, say, 10 emails I needed a response to over the course of the day, it would just be constant slice and dice interruptions, right?
	So try and find a way that you can eliminate those slice and dice interruptions, right?
	You don't have to answer the phone all the time.
	You don't have to respond to every email.
	Unless it's hugely high priority, you don't have to respond.
	Whatever you can do to eliminate those constant interruptions, because constant interruptions will absolutely murder your productivity.
	It will murder your concentration.
	It will murder your ability to support complexity in your head, which is the real value add that you bring back.
	To what it is that you're doing.
	So whatever you can do, when I am writing, I have a whole different setup.
	I'm nowhere in the studio.
	I have a whole different setup from when I'm writing.
	And, of course, the phone, too.
	The big thing is, oh, well, I'm waiting for a return of email, a phone call.
	I'll just check Twitter or whatever it is that you're doing.
	Just try and avoid that.
	Absolutely. So the way that I write is a couple of different ways.
	One is that I will go on a treadmill with a computer in front of me with a headset and voice dictate, or I have a computer that's also hooked up to a big TV, And I can voice dictate while walking around.
	I don't like to sit and write.
	I don't generally like to sit and do shows.
	I find for some reason these kinds of shows where I'm doing conversations and reading, sitting works well for me.
	But yeah, I have a laptop that is attached to a big laptop.
	TV, and that allows me to dictate and see with the TV, and I have a keyboard that is remote, right?
	So I can just, if I need to fix something, repair something, something has been transcribed wrong from the voice dictation software, I can fix that very easily.
	So that's the way that I do it, and I've got a computer that's fast enough that it really can keep up with what it is that I'm talking about, so...
	Yeah, whatever you can do to defragment your day.
	Because send stuff, you've got 10 minutes, 15 minutes.
	You don't generally start something else.
	If you defragment your day and give yourself that through time, you'd be absolutely astounded at what you can produce.
	But look at your day.
	How much is it defragmented?
	How much does it turn into a disco ball rather than a clear pane of glass you can see the world through?
	Anyway, that's my productivity tip of the day, and I have found it incredibly helpful over the course of my life, and I hope that you will find it helpful as well.
	And again, I was in the business world before there were phones.
	Well, there were phones back then, but it was like, I don't know, Bluetooth.
	I'm sorry, it was BlackBerry LED screens, like just gray and black and all that kind of thing.
	You couldn't really do anything with that stuff, so...
	Somebody says, having several meetings with a 30-minute gap between them is a challenge.
	Depends on how much of a contact switch is involved.
	Yeah, that 30-minute stuff is murder.
	It's 30 minutes is too short to get anything in-depth done.
	And it's too long to get a bunch of shorter tasks done.
	Sorry, it's too short to get anything big and concentrated done, and it's too long to just kill time for that amount of time.
	So yeah, I try and avoid anything that's going to time slice me.
	I will just avoid like the plague.
	whatever I can do to set up my day so I don't get interrupted, so I don't get time sliced,
	so I can defragment things, that is absolutely essential to me for getting things done.
	I can't stand interruptions.
	Like I am ferocious about interruptions.
	They actually kind of enrage me, like a stupid little thing.
	I'll tell you something that just bugs the living hell out of me.
	So if I'm walking around, because I find walking, particularly with call-in shows, I got to
	listen so hard that walking really helps and it also helps brain flow and it helps creativity
	because I don't want to have the same call-in shows ever.
	I want to be able to provide new value with every single call-in show.
	But sometimes, like, I don't know, I'm reaching to get a glass of water or something like that, I turn, and the headphone cable catches on something and yanks out.
	That enrages me.
	Like, I'm back to, like, being 14.
	Because it's just such an interruption.
	When people are in call-in shows and there's a lot of background noise or I can tell that they're tapping on something, like it's so distracting.
	So anything that distracts me and gets me out of the moment, I mean, this studio is absolutely sanitary.
	I got nothing else. I got no social media going.
	I got nothing. It's just, you know, and I remember back in the day, sort of back in the old sort of politics days, you know, I'd be talking with people.
	I can't do it.
	Okay, I will never do that.
	So... Yeah, it's whatever you can do to avoid interruptions.
	Try and arrange your entire day to avoid interruptions and you'll just be astounded what you can get done.
	It's literally like you get a second brain or 10 times your brain.
	Like the 10x people, like the people who just produce 10 times as much.
	I virtually guarantee you those 10 times people, those Pareto principle or prices law people, the square root people, the multiple people, it's all about not slicing and dicing your day.
	You slice and dice your day.
	You know, days are not fungible.
	You know, Bitcoin is fungible, right?
	You can... Slice it into Satoshi's and then reassemble it back into a full Bitcoin.
	Nothing's been lost, right?
	But concentration, productivity is the exact opposite of fungible.
	You cannot slice and dice your day and have a productive day.
	And I can't slice and dice my day and even have a happy day.
	So, yeah, I just wanted to, you know, really try to be as rigid and ferocious to guard your throughput, to guard your concentration.
	Really, really important.
	Have you heard about nootropic substances to make you more productive?
	No. No, God, wouldn't that be horrible?
	You know what makes you more productive?
	Philosophy, exercise, good nutrition, good sleep.
	That's what makes you more productive.
	Please don't, as far as I'm concerned, don't get into any artificial substances.
	Don't be Ayn Rand on speed for 30 years.
	Blech. Multitasking allows you to mess up several tasks at the same time.
	Yeah, there's no such thing as multitasking.
	That's just a complete lie.
	Multitasking is just people who like to be distracted claiming they're being productive.
	That's people with no discipline to actually focus on something.
	They claim they're just getting a bunch of stuff done, right?
	All right. Thanks for the show tonight.
	Any last tips? T-I-P-S to ensure prompt service.
	A little bit too late since I've already serviced you to here and gone.
	But any last tips as we close off?
	And if you don't tip me now, that's fine.
	Honestly, try this Try this for a couple of days.
	We'll talk Friday night on my Friday Night Live.
	We'll talk Friday night. You let me know.
	Let me know how it's going. Try and really spend tomorrow sliced and diced.
	Somebody says, I let my days get sliced and diced often.
	I completely agree. It's really difficult to concentrate.
	Yeah, you're just nothing.
	Your productivity goes out the window and off a cliff when you are sliced and diced.
	And defragment your day.
	You'll just be astounded.
	Like, ferociously guided. Get angry at people who interrupt you.
	I mean, I'm not going to yell at anyone, but, you know, have that level of ferocity to guard your throughput.
	It's absolutely essential. Absolutely essential.
	The brain really begins to cook when it feels shielded from interruptions.
	All right. Well, thanks everyone so much.
	If you, the credit card this week, promotion next, staff training CEOs of the future.
	And go listen to this show that I did about the guy who's the 27-year-old hottie reported him to HR. Really quite something.
	It was really quite something.
	Love you too, Nina. Thank you so much for dropping by tonight.
	It was really a really enjoyable show.
	I'm really, really glad we have this incredible opportunity to talk about These things.
	Having my focus broken is the worst thing?
	Man, you just interrupted me!
	Just kidding. Thank you. I really appreciate that.
	I appreciate the tip.
	Yes, that call was something for sure.
	Yeah. Yes, it was.
	I very often disagree with callers quite so vehemently as that role play, but I think it was really important.
	All right. I think my daughter is going to be okay releasing her new movie to the general public.
	It's really very funny.
	She has this uncanny ability to do a valley girl accent.
	You may have heard it in our shows.
	It's wild. I don't know how.
	It's like something baked into every female DNA. If there is such a thing anymore.
	But yeah, it's really great.
	Last night's late night show with the 27-year-old hottie was riveting.
	So informative and entertaining.
	Yeah. I wanted to go do something productive, but now I'm curious about the call-in.
	Oh, the call-in is productive.
	Biggest takeout from that call-in.
	The thing that damages you the most from having an abusive childhood is not the abuse, not the grief, not the isolation.
	It's the excuses that you bring out of that for your parents and then for yourself.
	That's the big takeaway from that show.
	All right. Thank you guys so much.
	If you're listening to this later, freedomand.com forward slash donate.
	I really, really would appreciate your help and your support.
	Love you guys so much.
	I honestly cannot.
	I'm a fairly expressive person.
	I literally cannot express how grateful I am that you guys come by, how grateful I am that you support what it is that we're all doing together here, and how incredibly grateful I am that your words and our Borg brain spark such wonderful stuff.
	It is just a real honor to be anywhere near the center of this conversation and you guys really do bring out the best in me and you are the greatest ingredients with which to create a feast for the mind that could be conceived of and I thank you everyone so much for supporting, coming by, questioning and commenting and criticizing.
	I enjoyed the variety tonight more than usual.
	Well, it was interesting because we kind of went off the reservation.
	Last Friday. And it seemed to work out pretty well.
	So I'm trying to expand our horizons and see what else we can get done.
	So if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	We'd really, really appreciate that.
	And we've got some great stuff coming up over the next week or two.
	Some very good truth abouts.
	And I hope that you will use this link again.
	Oops. I hope that you will use this link to check out The AI really is great and there's some stuff.
	Improvise. It is a jazz club after all.
	FGRpodcast.com is an incredible resource.
	Yeah, we've got 5,200 plus shows and I've got another couple of hundred.
	I'm still working on figuring out how to release without completely overwhelming the population.
	Boy, talk about your body surfing.
	All right. Thanks, everyone.
	Lots of love. Take care. I'll talk to you soon.

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