Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - 5351 FREEDOMAIN 2023 REVIEW!
Aired: 2023-12-31
Duration: 11:05

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain.
[00:00:02]  Hope you're doing well.
[00:00:03]  So, as I head into, really can't believe this, my 19th year as a public philosopher, I wanted to get you up to speed, get you up to date on what's happened this year, my evaluation of where we are in terms of a conversation with the world about philosophy, things that have happened, things we're looking forward to, and so on.
[00:00:23]  So we ran the numbers, figured out what had been going on this year.
[00:00:28]  So this is, of course, 2023.
[00:00:30]  It's the end of the year.
[00:00:31]  It is 1-2-3-1-2-3, 31st of December, 2023.
[00:00:36]  And so what's happened?
[00:00:39]  Well, over the course of this year, just this last calendar year, I've done 250 shows.
[00:00:46]  That's pretty good.
[00:00:47]  That's quite a lot, but not only, but also there's more.
[00:00:51]  I've completed two books.
[00:00:53]  Of course, I completed my novel about contemporary society and where we're heading, which is called The Present, and you can get that at freedomain.com books, and I have finished
[00:01:05]  Peaceful Parenting, and I'm reading it as I'm going through the final draft.
[00:01:09]  I'm about forty percent of the way through my book on Peaceful Parenting.
[00:01:12]  So the text is done, but there's just a couple of things I'm ironing out as I'm going forward.
[00:01:17]  I did eleven and a half hours on
[00:01:23]  The Deep History of the French Revolution, which is amazing stuff, incredible stuff, and it is the kind of historical analysis you're not going to get anywhere else.
[00:01:31]  So that's been done.
[00:01:33]  I've done 22, a 22-part series
[00:01:37]  I don't know.
[00:01:59]  We have released 50 premium shows.
[00:02:02]  These are call-ins that were just a little too, I don't know, spicy or whatever you want to call it for the general
[00:02:11]  Audience could be too triggering for the general audience.
[00:02:14]  So there's been 50 premium shows and a number of premium live streams.
[00:02:19]  I got back into doing interviews.
[00:02:21]  So I did a couple of interviews this year.
[00:02:22]  I did a couple of truth abouts.
[00:02:24]  We did the truth about AI and the truth of two truths about AI, truth about Bitcoin and so on.
[00:02:30]  So I know that people really like the truth about, so I'm back into those.
[00:02:34]  If you are a subscriber at freedomain.locals.com, then, or you can do that at Subscribestar as well, it was kind of hard to find the premium shows, and so the great James put together a search engine just for the premium show.
[00:02:53]  So if you wanted to, like lengthy call-ins or call-ins with couples or whatever, you can do that search, and you can find the premium shows, whether they're call-ins or not.
[00:03:01]  Very, very easily.
[00:03:02]  This includes my album analysis of Pink Floyd's The Wall and things like that.
[00:03:06]  So, a premium podcast search engine.
[00:03:09]  Now, if you go to fdrpodcast.com and you do a search, you will see thumbnails for what it is you click on, which can be a little bit easier in terms of figuring out what's going on.
[00:03:18]  We're working pretty hard on a natural language search engine or an easier search so that you can just type in natural language
[00:03:27]  I think so.
[00:03:44]  We're good to go.
[00:03:59]  If you're a non-English speaker or non-native English speaker, you can ask questions of my books and works.
[00:04:05]  And it's pretty good.
[00:04:06]  It's pretty accurate.
[00:04:06]  We put this through a lot of testing.
[00:04:09]  And so a multi-language support, Q&A support at StephBot AI was a big project, but hugely satisfying and well worth it.
[00:04:18]  And we've also taken a bunch of shows that were premium shows
[00:04:24]  In another manifestation of the website in the past and we've remastered those shows and we've re-released those shows.
[00:04:30]  We used to have a message board way back in the day which had premium content.
[00:04:34]  We've been remastering and re-releasing that so it sounds even better.
[00:04:38]  I've been resurrecting a couple of old speeches and remastering those so that you get better audio and also you can get captions now as well.
[00:04:47]  So, I mean, an incredibly productive and positive year.
[00:04:52]  The foundation that we're laying for the future of philosophy is second to none throughout human history.
[00:04:58]  Now, of course, some of that's to do with me, some of that's to do with James and Jared, some of that's to do with the audience and the participation, the live streams.
[00:05:05]  The quality of the live streams has a lot to do with the great questions that I get asked.
[00:05:07]  So, it really is, while I may be a little sort of front and center, a giant thumb in the face kind of guy,
[00:05:13]  It is very much a collective effort that we are, I think, dragging, sometimes unwillingly, the discipline of philosophy.
[00:05:21]  Honestly, I think that
[00:05:23]  Again, a lot of it has to do with the technology.
[00:05:25]  I'm not trying to take some sort of personal credit here because the technology has allowed for these kind of conversations.
[00:05:30]  But I think in terms of practical, implementable, actionable philosophy, we've dragged the discipline of philosophy further forward in the last almost 20 years than I think has been happened for a long time before that.
[00:05:45]  I've got a number in my head, but I don't want to appear too crazy.
[00:05:47]  A little crazy, okay.
[00:05:48]  Not too crazy.
[00:05:50]  I think we've really accelerated what philosophy means, how philosophy can be acted upon, exhortations to virtue without condemnation of temptation, which we all suffer from.
[00:06:01]  And, of course, I also know, just based on the feedback, and I just published these testimonials at freedomain.locals.com recently, the feedback that I'm getting from the call-in shows, I just got an email from a guy from three years ago who's quit drinking and a great marriage, number of marriages, number of children, and so on, that's coming out of this conversation.
[00:06:19]  Absolutely beautiful.
[00:06:21]  So listen, I mean, if you're a donor, I take your support incredibly seriously and I always, always, always try to do what is the very best, given your support.
[00:06:34]  You support me, you subscribe, you donate.
[00:06:37]  I take it very seriously and I'm always working in my mind
[00:06:42]  to ensure that your donations are helping to advance the discipline of philosophy as much as humanly possible.
[00:06:48]  I mean, there's a certain amount that you could do.
[00:06:49]  There's a certain amount you kind of need to skirt.
[00:06:52]  But I think as far as, you know, that Aristotelian mean of courage, not foolhardy, rushing in where angels fear to tread, nor cowardly, not taking on essential but survivable risks.
[00:07:02]  I hope to think that I'm walking that line in a way that is positive and helpful to you.
[00:07:07]  So, of course, if you have supported the show,
[00:07:11]  I don't even want to get emotional, but I might a little bit.
[00:07:13]  I just I'm so incredibly grateful and I do like to think that the world is grateful.
[00:07:18]  I mean, of course, not everyone in the world is grateful right now, but over time the world will become incredibly grateful for the work that we're doing here with regards to philosophy, which I can't do without your help and your support.
[00:07:28]  And so if you have supported the show, if you've donated,
[00:07:32]  I am so incredibly grateful and humbled by your kindness and your generosity and your support.
[00:07:39]  Of course, you know, the show's taken a lot of body blows over the last couple of years, but you've helped me to stick it out.
[00:07:44]  You've helped continue this, which is, in my view, of course, the most essential conversation in the world.
[00:07:49]  You've absolutely given me the foundation from which I can continue to do the work that I do, and I'm deeply, humbly, enormously
[00:07:59]  I'm almost pathetically grateful for your support, and I just thank you guys so much for that.
[00:08:04]  If you haven't supported the show, or if you haven't supported the show for a while, it might not be.
[00:08:09]  It's the end of the year.
[00:08:10]  It would certainly help out in terms of planning for what's coming up next year.
[00:08:13]  But if you could help out the show, I would just be, again, enormously grateful and appreciative and
[00:08:19]  I'll send out a special bonus.
[00:08:22]  If you support before the end of the night today, I will send you the audiobook feed for Peaceful Parenting, which is normally just for subscribers, but I will make sure you get that.
[00:08:34]  I'm just so grateful.
[00:08:35]  The Peaceful Parenting book is really the point, in many ways, of what's been going on here.
[00:08:41]  I'm sorry it took so long to write, but I really needed to get into the right mindset, and I've really attacked this whole challenge and problem.
[00:08:49]  With a sort of loving ferocity that I hope comes across in the final version that makes sense to everyone.
[00:08:54]  But yeah, if you haven't supported for a while, or you haven't supported at all, I like to think it's the right thing to do because the show does cost money.
[00:09:01]  People gotta eat, and there's server costs, and there's bandwidth costs, and there's technical costs, and all of that.
[00:09:07]  And if you could help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate, I think it is a very good thing to do.
[00:09:14]  I know it's very helpful.
[00:09:17]  I know it's incredibly helpful for people in the present because it's the most actionable philosophy, I think, that has ever been discussed in the world.
[00:09:23]  The most rubber-on-the-road philosophy with traction, philosophy that changes things.
[00:09:29]  Theology, of course, has done more in many ways, but this is how philosophy has become practical and actionable in people's lives, and it is due to
[00:09:37]  The support of people just like you.
[00:09:38]  So if you could, I know it's New Year's Eve and of course I want you to have an absolutely wonderful New Year's Eve, but if you could take a minute or two, go to freedomain.com slash donate.
[00:09:47]  Help out the show with whatever you can.
[00:09:49]  I would massively, massively, deeply and humbly appreciate that.
[00:09:52]  If you go to freedomain.locals.com or subscribestar.com slash freedomain, you can also help out the show that way and you can join a great community.
[00:10:01]  We're good to go.
[00:10:24]  The next year and of course people were saying maybe we should have a big celebration and meet in person.
[00:10:28]  That would be interesting and maybe we can do that and we'd certainly look into that.
[00:10:31]  So thank you everyone so much for the most incredible close to two decades of public philosophy.
[00:10:37]  There are millions of people around the world with a better life because of what it is that we're doing here.
[00:10:43]  There are millions of children not being hit, not being circumcised, not being screamed at.
[00:10:49]  There are millions of people leading better, happier, more moral lives.
[00:10:55]  And it's all the result of everything we do together.
[00:10:58]  And what you can do is support philosophy at freedomain.com slash donate.
[00:11:03]  Thank you everyone so much and happy, happy new year!