Dec. 31, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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FREEDOMAIN 2023 REVIEW!
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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.