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Year In Review
00:11:01
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| Hey everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine. | |
| Hope you're doing well. 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. | |
| So, we ran the numbers, figured out what had been going on this year. | |
| So, this is, of course, 2023. | |
| It's the end of the year. | |
| It is 1-2-3-1-2-3, 31st of December 2023. | |
| And so, what's happened? | |
| Well, over the course of this year, just this last calendar year, I've done 250 shows. | |
| That's pretty good. That's quite a lot, but not only, but also there's more. | |
| I've completed two books. | |
| 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 slash books. | |
| And I have finished... | |
| Peaceful Parenting, and I'm reading it as I'm going through the final draft. | |
| I'm about 40% of the way through my book on peaceful parenting, so the text is done, but there's just a couple of things I'm ironing out as I'm going forward. | |
| I did 11 and a half hours on I've done a 22-part series series I hired two people to work on the show, which has been fantastic. | |
| We have released 50 premium shows. | |
| 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 | |
| audience. | |
| Could be too triggering for the general audience. | |
| So there's been 50 premium shows and a number of premium live streams. | |
| I got back into doing interviews, so I did a couple of interviews this year. | |
| I did a couple of truth-abouts. We did the truth about AI and the truth of two, two truths about AI, truth about | |
| Bitcoin and so on. | |
| I know that people really like the truth about it, so I'm back into those. | |
| Yeah. | |
| If you are a subscriber at freedomain.locals.com, then 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. | |
| So if you want to do 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. | |
| Very, very easily. This includes my album analysis of Pink Floyd's The Wall and things like that. | |
| So, a premium podcast search engine. | |
| 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. | |
| We're working pretty hard on a natural language search engine or an easier search so that you can just type in natural language search. | |
| And figure out what's going on. | |
| I just want to mention about the, of course, the Steph Bot AI is an amazing project. | |
| We loaded up an AI engine or model with a lot of podcasts with, of course, All of my nonfiction books, all of my articles, and so you're able to ask questions in dozens and dozens of different languages. | |
| Like, you can ask it a question in any language and you will get the answer back in your own language. | |
| If you're a non-English speaker or non-native English speaker, you can ask questions of my books and works. | |
| And it's pretty good. It's pretty accurate. | |
| We put this through a lot of testing. | |
| And so multi-language support, Q&A support at StephBotAI was a big project, but hugely satisfying and well worth it. | |
| And we've also taken a bunch of shows that were premium shows In another manifestation of the website in the past. | |
| And we've remastered those shows and we've re-released those shows. | |
| So we used to have a message board way back in the day which had premium content. | |
| We've been remastering and re-releasing that so it sounds even better. | |
| 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. | |
| So, I mean, an incredibly productive and positive year. | |
| The foundation that we're laying for the future of philosophy is second to none throughout human history. | |
| 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. | |
| The quality of the live streams has a lot to do with the great questions that I get asked. | |
| So, it really is, while I may be a little sort of front and center, giant thumb in the face kind of guy, It is very much a collective effort that we are, I think, dragging sometimes unwillingly the discipline of philosophy. | |
| Honestly, I think that, again, a lot of it has to do with the technology. | |
| I'm not trying to take some sort of personal credit here because the technology has allowed for these kind of conversations. | |
| 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 happening for a long time before that. | |
| I got a number in my head, but I don't want to appear too crazy. | |
| A little crazy, okay. Not too crazy, but I think we've really accelerated what philosophy means How philosophy can be acted upon. | |
| Exhortation is the virtue without condemnation of temptation, which we all suffer from. | |
| And of course, I also know, just based on the feedback, and I just published these testimonials at freedomandlocals.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. | |
| Absolutely beautiful. So, listen, I mean, if you're a donor, like I take your support incredibly seriously, and I always, always, always try to do what is the very best, given your support. | |
| Like, you support me, you subscribe, you donate. | |
| I take it very seriously, and I'm always working in my mind. | |
| To ensure that your donations are helping to advance the discipline of philosophy as much as humanly possible. | |
| I mean, there's a certain amount that you could do. | |
| There's a certain amount you can indeed skirt. | |
| 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. | |
| I hope to think that I'm walking that line in a way that is positive and helpful to you. | |
| So, of course, if you have supported the show, I don't even want to get emotional, but I might a little bit. | |
| I'm so incredibly grateful. | |
| And I do like to think that the world is grateful. | |
| 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. | |
| And so, if you have supported the show, if you've donated... | |
| I am so incredibly grateful and humbled by your kindness and your generosity and your support. | |
| 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. | |
| You've helped continue this, which is, in my view, of course, the most essential conversation in the world. | |
| 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 grateful I'm almost pathetically grateful for your support, and I just thank you guys so much for that. | |
| If you haven't supported the show, or if you haven't supported the show for a while, it might not be. | |
| It's the end of the year. It would certainly help out in terms of planning for what's coming up next year, but if you could help out the show, I would just be, again, enormously grateful and appreciative. | |
| I'll send out a special bonus. | |
| 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. | |
| I'm just so grateful that the Peaceful Parenting book is really the point in many ways of what's been going on here. | |
| 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. | |
| With a sort of loving ferocity that I hope comes across in the final version that makes sense to everyone. | |
| 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. | |
| People got to eat and there's server costs and there's bandwidth costs and there's technical costs and all of that. | |
| And if you could help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate, I think it is a very good thing to do. | |
| I know it's very helpful. For the future, 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. | |
| The most rubber on the road, philosophy with traction, philosophy that changes things. | |
| 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... | |
| 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, help out the show with whatever you can. | |
| I would massively, massively, deeply and humbly appreciate that. | |
| 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 of people to chat about philosophy with and | |
| discuss how it's working in your life, the challenges that you're facing. | |
| Don't do it all alone. | |
| Don't do it all alone. | |
| There's a great community out there of people who very much want to help. | |
| So I hope that you will decide to do that. | |
| I hugely, deeply, humbly and thank you for the last 18 years. | |
| I'm incredibly looking forward to The next year, and of course, people were saying maybe we should have a big celebration and meet in person. | |
| That would be interesting, and maybe we can do that, and we'd certainly look into that. | |
| So thank you everyone so much for the most incredible, close to two decades of public philosophy. | |
| There are millions of people around the world with a better life because of what it is that we're doing here. | |
| There are millions of children not being hit, not being circumcised, not being screamed at. | |
| There are millions of people leading better, happier, more moral lives. | |
| And it's all the result of everything we do together. | |
| And what you can do is support philosophy at freedomain.com. | |