5390 Justification is Death! Freedomain Livestream
16 January 2024 Flash Livestream"This guy had a problem with his life in that he had two moms and three kids, wasn't married, had broken up at the last, so he'd messed up his marriages. So rather than say, 'gee, what have I done wrong in terms of my marriages and relationships?' He says, 'well, you know, clearly evolution has programmed us to find new partners every seven years, right?'"Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Get my new series on the Truth About the French Revolution, access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Might be worth having a memory card in the old recorder?
Who knows, still shiny.
Look at that, I don't need a hat because... It's a little tough to see.
Is it chemo?
Or is it a haircut?
Well, it's a haircut.
Let's be on the plus side with regards to that.
It be haircuttin' time.
Alright, it's too early to ask for tips.
Yeah, I should probably do a little foreplay first.
Happy Tuesday, how are you, Steph?
I'll tell you.
Cold is cooking along nicely.
Sore throat is gone.
I'm no longer giving birth to baby elephants in the form of mucus nose blows.
That's always a plus.
Energy remains just a little sluggish.
I like to think of this as a fast forward preview, like a special events coming soon preview or what it's like to be 80.
Ew!
Have I been up for four hours?
I think I might need a nap.
So yeah, it's good.
I'm looking forward to it being done.
And you know how they say, if you're suffering adversity, just tell yourself the universe is trying to teach you something.
Just gaslight yourself.
So here I am with the cold and I'm like, well,
But it's good for my immune system to have a cold once in a while.
Just gaslight yourself.
It's good.
It's fine.
It works out.
It's no problem.
Look at me glistening away.
I'm like a diamond.
Diamonds on the sole.
Diamonds on the top of her head.
All right, so yeah, if you have questions, issues, challenges, anything you want to hear, anything you want to say, anything you want me, me, to talk about, I am happy to do so.
I suppose it's fairly decent that Bitcoin is starting to worm its way back up.
And I suppose that's good.
Yeah, that's me.
So yeah, I also published a set of Q&As, well, answers to the Qs, freedomain.locals.com.
I hope you will check that out.
They're just kind of wenty-outy.
Ah, Bitcoin almost 58.
It's fine.
I mean, it's so funny, right?
Anything you want to see on Bitcoin, I'm not sure what that means, but it's kind of funny because if you could be a wild animal, what would you be?
If you could be a wild animal, what would you be?
Favorite WW2 plane?
Great questions!
Great questions.
If I could be a wild animal, what would I be?
I would say probably a peregrine falcon, because the way they can fold their wings and drop like a 200-mile-an-hour stone would just be too heady for words.
Birds are great, but, you know, the fast-moving, fast-diving birds that pair bond and all of that, so I think that would be just amazing.
Amazing to try.
Favorite World War II plane?
Well, that's easy.
That's easy, and of course I wrote about this in my novel, Almost, which you should definitely check out at freedomain.com slash books.
It'd be free.
My favorite World War II plane, without a doubt, is the Hurricane, which is a British plane.
The Spitfire was slightly more flash, slightly more sexy, and a faster turn radius.
But the Hurricane, I'll tell you what I liked about the Hurricane, and of course, you know, the obvious parallels with my childhood are too obvious to even mention.
What I really liked about the Hurricane was
It was virtually indestructible.
Like, there's these stories of planes coming back with the most ridiculous, like, half a wing, half a tail, and still making it back and able to land.
I have a huge amount of respect for people who can just take a lot of punishment and keep on going.
Like this guy right here.
Take a huge amount of punishment and just keep coming back.
It's the get up, stand up.
I get knocked down, but I get up again stuff that to me is some of the most admirable stuff.
That just kind of doggedness to keep on going.
So, let's see here.
Yeah, Gonzalo Lira.
I mean, it's very sad.
I don't really know much about the backstory, but I assume he wasn't having a whole lot of fun in prison, but look.
Sympathies, though, I may have.
I don't know.
Hit me with a why if you watched my Hong Kong documentary.
Hit me with a why if you've ever watched my Hong Kong documentary, because there's an important
There's an important lesson in that.
The reason being, so, I went with the protesters, I took tear gas, I went back for more, and all of that.
And then, when the tanks came, I was out of there.
Well, essentially the tanks, right?
The shock troops.
When the shock troops came, I was out of there, because that's the nature of the state.
You don't go into a war zone and think that you have free speech.
Look, I have massive amounts of sympathy for people who are victimized by the state, of course, right?
Well, no, see, I don't know that ballsy is the right word.
I don't know that ballsy... I'm a big fan of the Aristotelian mean.
Which is, a deficiency of courage is cowardice, an excess of courage is foolhardiness.
Obviously, I think that I have done a fairly good job navigating a deficiency of courage and an excess of courage.
I think so.
I mean, really that'll be for history to determine and figure out.
But I think I've done a fairly decent job of trying to navigate the deficiency of courage and the excess of
Courage.
An excess of courage is not really courage.
It's like saying, well, you're really courageous because you provoked a cop into shooting you, like the suicide by cop stuff.
It's like, hmm, I don't know, man.
I'm not saying these situations are analogous, but it is, um, there's a certain amount of just poking the bear that just becomes kind of, kind of strange.
It's kind of strange.
What's the maximum good you can do?
I mean, it's a war zone.
It's a war zone.
And, you know, people can say, well, you know, but he still should, still should.
I mean, I'm not sure what the should stuff matters.
You know, it's sort of like saying, well, I did go and try and ride that bull shark, but I saw that the bull shark had just eaten half a seal.
It should have been full.
But you're still trying to ride a bull shark.
So I have, um, challenges with people who are acting in that kind of way.
And again, I don't know much about the guy and I don't know much about the circumstances of his ending, but you know, he should of course have known that he wasn't Brittany Grineer, right?
I mean, Grineer or whatever her name was, right?
He wasn't going to get traded.
He wasn't going to get protected.
What about Julian Assange?
What do you mean, what about Julian Assange?
Oh, an excess of courage?
I have some more sympathy for Julian Assange sort of back in the day.
He was really one of the first people with regards to this.
He was one of the first people with regards to this sort of stuff.
So with Julian Assange,
Yeah, Gonzalo Lira had a wife and kids too, but as far as I understand it, didn't she leave him and all of that?
So, you know, if I had stayed in the Hong Kong protests, that would have been extremely dangerous.
You know, when the guns come out, don't the thinkers go home?
I mean, that's sort of been my whole approach to politics over the last couple of years.
When the guns come out, don't the thinkers go home?
Right?
Funny game, violence.
The only way to win is not to play.
At least for me, right?
There's, you know, other people who can do it and, you know, it's not my crew.
Certainly not my preference.
And so, yeah.
It is very sad.
But, I mean, you do have to navigate the world that is, right?
I mean, you don't have to, obviously, but I think it's wise to navigate.
The world, that is.
Seth Rich had an excess of courage.
Hmm.
Yeah, I wonder if we'll ever find out about that.
Wife leaves him, but he still needs to live for his kids.
Right.
Oh, it is.
Yeah, it's a desperately terrible way to go.
You know, Ukraine, I mean, I've done shows on this as a pastor, of course, but Ukraine with the Holodomor and, you know, millions starve to death, that leaves a sort of psychological scar on a society that can take centuries to diminish.
It's a hugely traumatized area of the world, and going to hugely traumatized areas of the world is quite dangerous.
And, of course, war zones, I mean, it's not like war zones bring out the best in people, even in the best of circumstances, and it's hard to argue that that is the best of circumstances.
So, at least for me.
So, yeah, it is very sad.
Can I, you know, can I tweak a listener?
Can I tweak a listener?
Probably.
Probably.
Um, so maybe I'm obviously perfectly willing to be wrong about all of this.
Perfectly, you know, willing to be wrong.
No question.
No question.
But.
There was a listener who was talking about how, and tell me if you've heard this kind of story before where somebody says, Oh yeah, no, I was being bullied and you know, I just threw punches at my bully and beat him up.
And, and then I was never bullied again.
Right.
Have you heard these kinds of stories that I.
Stood up to the bully, and then lo and behold, I just wasn't bullied again, and it worked out really well, and aren't I great, and all that kind of stuff.
Have you heard these kinds of stories?
Well, first of all, before I sort of chime in with mine, tell me what
What do you guys think of these kinds of stories?
What do you think of these kinds of claims?
Look, I'm not gonna doubt it.
I sometimes think the tale grows a little or shifts a little in the telling, but tell me what you think of these kinds of stories.
That's risky.
Happened to me.
Yes, came from my dad who was still clearly bullied by women.
Hero journey.
I mean, I've stood up to this kind of stuff verbally, I mean, I've, you know, stood up to this kind of stuff verbally, and that's been okay.
Oh, look at that, I can, these are my, these are like my original, my very first set of glasses from like 15 years ago.
Well, I didn't realize, I guess I, I guess I can read with them.
But yeah, so I've done it sort of verbally, but
The risk outweighs the benefit.
However, we are usually younger and immature when these instances happen, right?
So, look, I mean, if somebody's being bullied and they choose to throw fists at the bully, I'm not going to have any particular issue with it.
Unless the bullying is purely verbal, in which case I think a verbal pushback is better.
But if you're being physically bullied, you know, it's self-defense and all of that.
What I don't like though, and I, again, I'm perfectly willing to be corrected on this, this is everything, but what I really don't like is this.
What I really don't like is when people say, you know, well, I did this and I never got bullied again.
And basically it was great, right?
Ah, you know, it was, this is what I did.
And basically it was great.
Well, I'll tell you what, so if you were being pushed around and you beat up the bully, so this guy said that he found out later that the bully's wrist had been broken, right?
Yeah, just do this!
My particular caution with regards, and I really wasn't bullied as a kid, I mean once or twice, but nothing really of any particular significance,
But what I was always concerned about was the escalate.
It always escalates.
If you push back with words, fists usually come.
Well, you've gone from always to usually in one sentence without noticing it, so I'm sorry if I'm a little skeptical about that.
But... What about the case where you beat up the bully and he then chases you down with three friends?
Become a bigger, more crazy threat than the bully.
What if you hurt the bully and then the bully's parents sue your parents?
In my school, if someone stood up against some bully, they would just get beaten up harder.
It's an interesting question.
I don't know what percentage of bullies escalate if humiliated.
I don't know what percentage.
But there's always this fantasy that it just always goes one way.
Like, why on earth wouldn't you do this?
It always goes one way.
You know, you can see this in about a zillion movies.
From, gosh, what was it?
My Bodyguard to even Back to the Future.
It always goes the same way.
And it's like, well...
I, you know, you see this with Spider-Man and, and I just, I punched the bully and all the other kids cheered me and the bully then avoided me and I was the hero of the school forever and ever amen.
You've seen this a million times, right?
Jared says, beat up, beat up the bully once.
The next day, him and two other, two others, one virtually grown man were waiting for me at the bus stop, right?
I had a high school friend who got into a fight at an extracurricular event and his parents were sued, yeah?
My dad stood up to a bully and then ended up in the hospital after getting jumped by multiple assailants.
Dissociation, while not always an option and requires a bit of pride swallowing, is better than engaging in cyclically toxic behavior.
So this story that is put forward all the time, that if you just stand up to bullies, you'll be fine.
You'll win.
I mean, it's to the point where in, there was a Crispin Glover who plays the guy in Back to the Future.
He stands, he punches the bully and then he ends up with everything he wants in life.
And the bully is waxing his car.
I remember someone gave me the advice that people should think you're capable of violence so it's a deterrent and no one bullies you.
Well, I think bullies are better at assessing your capacity for violence than you are at pretending your capacity for violence.
Because the whole point of bullying is to accurately assess people's capacity for violence, right?
That's their whole job.
The whole job of the lion is to figure out which zebra he can catch.
The whole job of the bully is to figure out who to bully.
So they're pretty good at figuring out your actual capacity for violence.
They've had lots of experience doing that.
How much experience do you have mimicking somebody who's capable of violence?
Someone says, I'm glad I usually never had to escalate to fists.
From my understanding, Sis' Jared, the only bullies who don't retaliate are the ones who are given more status by his friends for taking a punch and not crying.
Any embarrassment of the bully causes extreme reactions.
I don't quite follow that, sorry.
That's why you don't go after the head bully, you find one of his new recruits of the bully gang who hasn't taken a hit yet.
See, all these strategies.
Honestly, I think you're just full of crap, to be honest.
Like, again, I could be wrong.
Well, no, no, here's your strategy.
You pretend you're capable of violence.
You just go after the non-head bully.
You've got this, this, this, this, this.
Says, I think it's important to pick your battles if you want to get revenge.
Because there's all this stuff about standing up to bullies, in movies and stories and so on, right?
But if you have a bully who's gonna escalate, you're in serious shit, man.
Right?
So if you push back, you hit a bully, and you have... you just happen to come across a bully who will escalate,
Then he's going to plot his revenge, right?
You're gonna wait for a crowded hallway and push you down a flight of stairs or over a railing down a flight of stairs, right?
You don't know.
You don't know.
He's gonna put X-Lacks in your lunch or something worse, right?
It's a game or a rush to them.
Now, I mean, I don't pick your battles
What does pick your battles even mean?
How the hell does that?
Pick your battles, son.
Well, of course you pick your battles.
Which battles to pitch, to pick, based on what, by what standards, to what, like... Do the right thing.
Okay.
Thanks.
Appreciate that.
Pick your battles.
Wow, that's a mind burst of illumination.
I'm sorry.
That's... That's really sad to say.
It's a sad thing to say.
Pick your battles.
Keep your nose clean.
Don't overdo things.
Don't, don't over-exaggerate.
You know, do the wise thing, not the popular thing.
Yeah, okay.
This fortune cookie stuff doesn't do much for anything.
It just makes you sound like you know what you're talking about.
But yeah, I mean, honestly, it would be interesting to see a movie where some kid fought back against a bully and was put in the hospital.
Yeah, so much worse nowadays that they can bully you and post it to social media.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
And racial tensions and so on, right?
Yeah, because all of this stuff, I think it's designed to humiliate.
Like, honestly, I think the story's about, well, I beat up the bully and my life was immeasurably improved.
I can't believe I didn't do it sooner.
I never had any blowback and I just got the girl and I got my pride and I got a book publishing deal and now he's cleaning my car.
It's just a form of bullying.
Honestly, I really believe it's a form of bullying because it's saying like, well, why?
Why wouldn't?
Of course you would do this.
And if you didn't do that, that's crazy.
Because to me, that's a form of bullying to say, beat up your bully and your life will be great.
You'll get the girl, get pride and all the kids will cheer you and there'll be no blowback and the kid will be humiliated and they'll end up waxing your car.
Because then what it does is to all the kids who, for whatever reason, didn't beat up their bullies, what does it say to them?
Eh-heh, you failed.
Eh-heh, you should have done it.
Eh-heh, you're a chicken.
You just, you didn't face your fear.
You didn't just do the right thing and stand up for the huh, right?
And of course, um, in Back to the Future, the bully, I mean, the guy didn't even stand up for himself.
He stood up for the girl, right?
He stood up for the girl.
So I have a problem.
And also, of course, it's implicitly saying that the problem of bullying is to be solved by the smaller, weaker child.
The problem of bullying is to be solved by the smaller and weaker child.
It's not the job of the administrators.
It's not the job of the parents.
It's not the job of the teachers.
It's not the job of the psychologist.
It's not the job of the healthcare profession.
It's not the job of any of this kind of stuff.
Any kind of stuff.
So I don't like the... Well, and of course, the people, look, and listen, I'm not doubting people who say, I beat up my bully and it worked out perfectly.
Boy, I'm so glad I beat up my bully.
It worked out.
I'm sure there are times when it does.
Absolutely.
I'm not saying it's exactly the same as people.
I can't believe that you save any money, man.
Why do you save money?
Just play the lottery.
I won a million dollars in the lottery.
So I don't even know why you haven't bother working.
It's like, did you win the million dollars in the lottery?
Yes, you did.
Somebody says, I could believe this.
This advice always came from men who were already using threats against me, either my father or friends with violent tendencies.
Yes.
So of course, if you have a violent father, who's kind of beating you down and then he's like, well, you just got to beat up on your bully.
It's like hit him with a tea tray.
See how he likes it.
Right.
Not that I'm recommending it, but right.
So, uh, it is just a way of humiliating kids and saying, well, the problem with the bullying is that you didn't beat up the bully.
Is it really?
Is that the only problem with bullying, is that the smaller, weaker kids don't do that, right?
Somebody says, I think the first thing I did was go to the teachers, but they don't work.
Yeah, how on earth are the teachers going to deal with that, right?
Like, you understand, it's absolutely dead simple to deal with bullying in school.
It's beyond ridiculously simple to deal with bullying in school, and anybody who pretends otherwise is just completely gaslighting you.
Alright, how do you deal with bullying in school?
How do you deal with bullying in school?
What would you do in a free market school system to deal with bullying?
What would you do to deal with the bullying?
Tell me, tell me, tell me!
Somebody says, interesting, I complained, my father was being teased in the first second grade and he said, you beat them in the classroom, they beat you in the playground.
Which was kind of useless, it served his interest for me to be passive, but imagine if I had.
Seemed like the road to juvie.
You beat them in the classroom, they beat you on the playground?
What does that mean?
You get better grades from them than them?
I don't know what that means.
You beat them in the classroom, they beat you on the playground.
I don't know what that means, sorry.
Have friends?
No.
The point I was trying to say is if you actually want to get revenge on a bully, there is a lot of things to weigh out.
If someone has the upper hand over you in any way, it's really a risk.
There are risks and things to consider.
Hold the bully's parents responsible?
How, exactly?
Was bullied a lot in high school since Danny so learned to box and never was in a fight since?
Deterrence is the best way to stand up?
Get out of that school and get a real education?
No I'm talking about a private school, like a free market school, a sort of future school kind of thing.
How do you deal with bullying?
I think it's best to just now play the bully's game.
I don't think it is.
I don't think it is.
Yeah, Zinf, I think you're onto it.
So, I mean, the free market way to handle bullying is very simple.
You put a hidden recorder on the kid, right?
With permission, parents permission, you put a hidden recorder on the kid so that you can record the bullying.
And the moment you have confirmation on the bullying, you expel the child from the school and you ban him from the school property and you say if you're ever found on school property again, you're going to jail.
If they're old enough, like if they're teenagers or whatever.
Or if they are... Or you hold the parents in contempt of court or for violating a protective order.
So, does this make sense?
You have to, obviously, you don't want some mean little kid to get an older kid kicked out by calling him a bully, so you have to have some kind of proof, right?
But, you know, once you have that proof, what do you do?
Once you have that proof, you expel the kid from the school.
Now, you can say, if there's an anger management course that's completed, or whatever, whatever, whatever, right?
But you just say that, right?
Someone says, as a child, I was bullied.
Teachers knew.
Parents knew and did nothing.
I truly hated going to school.
Yeah, it's a prison situation, right?
It's a prison.
It's a prison situation.
Except, it's a prison situation with vastly different size disparities, right?
Yes, it would work in a less corrupted school.
But yeah, that's what you would do, right?
So then you would simply know that bullies would know that they would get kicked out of school, and that would be it.
And there'd be no refund, right?
No refund to the parents, right?
No refund to the parents.
And that would be it.
So it's pretty easy to deal with bullying, if you want to.
It's easy to deal with violent crime.
Violent crime, of course, follows the same Pareto principle as everything else, which is that the vast majority of crime is committed by a very small number of people.
The vast majority of crime is committed by a small number of people.
That includes verbal bullying.
Well, it's hard to tell from sort of trash talk, but verbal bullying and so on, but you'd have to have some way of defining that.
With verbal bullying, you'd probably get a warning and then do it, right?
I asked the teacher to set up a recorder in the class as proof.
They said no.
Do what Rosa Parks did and stop showing up to school.
Yeah, but in some places that can get you in serious trouble.
Dealing with bullying is dead simple.
Dealing with violent crime is dead simple.
In New York City, the vast majority of shoplifting is done by 300 people.
Right, but because those 300 people can't be arrested and kept in jail, everything gets locked up, stores close down, the entire economy gets harmed, people get thrown out of work, and all kind of stuff, right?
Alright.
To what extent, though, is a bully produced as a product of his household environment?
I'm curious as to what kind of authority would be in that household to have a son to be an antagonistic force in their school.
How would they not know, or how would they not care?
Well, but it's not the job of the school to fix the bully's home life.
I mean, it would be referred to some equivalent to social agency or whatever that would happen in the future, and I write about that in my novel called The Future, right?
So, yeah.
But it's simply the job of the school to preserve the sanctity of the learning environment.
That's the job of the school, to preserve the sanctity of the learning environment.
And you can't learn when you're scared.
You can't learn when you're threatened.
You can't learn when you fight a flight mechanism.
Physically, it's hard to retain memories when you're frightened.
You can retain vivid impressions, but you can't form complex memories.
You can't learn chains of reasoning because you're in fight or flight.
Like try, you know, next time you're being chased by a bear, try and do math in your head, right?
It's just not going to work.
Taylor says, would have been good at my private boy school education the bullying was a nightmare against the precocious non-footballer ones.
We tortured once was tortured once with a piece of hot piece of metal little psychopaths in school and back in the day there wasn't as much knowledge about suing in the 90s by the parents.
Yeah, I mean if you were
If you were tortured with a piece of hot metal in a school, yeah, you would absolutely sue.
Because, you know, the school has to keep your kids safe, and your kids are being physically tortured to the point where they could lose an eye, or, like, you would absolutely sue.
Yeah, of course, right?
Absolutely.
Just don't get in the bus, don't go to school, but do the work.
I used to be homeschooled.
If mommy and daddy are cowards and say, man up and fight back, then you just obey and skip school.
Get signatures from witnesses and present this to parents so that they helpfully consider legal action against the schools.
Schools love bullies.
Yeah, it's funny, like you couldn't design a school system to facilitate bullies more if you tried, right?
I went to public school in one of the worst areas.
The, quote, children there were just savages.
The majority of these kids were beyond help.
Well, I mean, the help thing, it doesn't particularly matter, right?
Uh, I recently waited 30 minutes for Walmart to unlock a pair of- a pack of underwear for me, then had to ask for it at the register.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I felt bad for the scrawny kids who were one year younger than us.
Yeah, for sure.
Taylor says, I literally started throwing up before going to school.
How do you think that helped the love of schooling?
Oh, yeah.
No, it's just absolutely appalling.
Absolutely appalling.
The amount of fear that, and I think it's just getting worse, but the amount of fear that so many children live in with regards to going to school, it's just appalling.
I mean, it's natural for that level of violence, but it's just appalling.
What's that line in Succession?
You've been reading the prison blogs again, haven't you?
You've been reading the bullied school blogs again.
Many years ago I did, you can find this on my FDRpodcast.com, The War on Kids.
I interviewed the director of a pretty good comedy called The War on Kids.
I mean, to me, it's absolutely appalling that you, as taxpayers, you pay for government schools, but it's completely impossible to record within them and publish stuff, right?
So, yeah, it's really sad.
He says, I still have the scar on the leg, a memento mori of sorts about people.
We are all kids in adult bodies.
We are all kids in adult bodies.
I don't believe that's true, but I can certainly understand how you would come to that conclusion.
School buses are terrible, the driver usually doesn't care, or is too busy driving to see the bullying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Confine and punish the innocent, right?
Isn't this the modern world?
Confine and punish the innocent, right?
Confine the innocent with the guilty, and then punish the innocent for attempting to protect themselves.
So it's bad.
It's bad.
But, you know, there are still options for a lot of the West, right?
All right.
I read this.
I thought it was posted on the Signal channel, which I thought was very, very interesting.
Which is, hey, here's six ways to lower your kid's IQ.
How many are you doing?
OK, so let's do a wee bit of guesswork here.
What are the things that
People do that lowers their kid's IQ.
What are things that people do to lower their kid's IQ?
Now, these aren't validated, right?
I haven't gone through all the scientific sources, so these are more stimulants of thought.
Spank them, beat them.
Alright, so here's what, this is from Joshua Lysak, and this is from 2022.
Six ways to lower your kid's IQ.
Feeding young children processed foods.
Artificial colors and flavors, corn syrup derivatives, canola oil, etc.
Lowers their IQ permanently.
And this is from a...
Study the results showed that after taking account of potentially influential factors, a predominantly processed food diet at the age of 3 was associated with lower IQ at the age of 8.5, irrespective of whether the diet improved after that age.
Every 1 point increase in dietary pattern score was associated with a 1.67 fall in IQ.
Now of course, of course, in the
In the world of correlation and causation, in the world of correlation and causation, it could of course be the case, and I have no way of knowing in any great detail whether the study controlled for this, is to say that parents who are less intelligent are probably feeding their kids more crap, and therefore it's really the intelligence being transmitted genetically rather than the food lowering it.
But, again, maybe that was dealt with.
Spanking your kids!
IQs of children ages 2 to 4 who were not spanked were 5 points higher 4 years later than the IQs of those who were spanked.
The IQs of children ages 5 to 9 years old who were not spanked were 2.8 points higher 4 years later than the IQs of children the same age who were spanked.
Now, again, near cause and effect.
Parents who are better at reasoning and better at negotiation and have better language skills might be less likely to spank again, so we don't know, but it's interesting that we don't really hear about these things.
Divorce lowers children's IQ.
Scholars have also attended to the degree to which children's skills, both cognitive and non-cognitive, explain the lower level of educational attainment of children whose parents divorce.
Some prior research treats these two components of children's skills as parallel mechanisms that decline in response to family breakups, family issues.
So that's interesting.
So why do you think, somebody says,
Amen, McDonald's mom.
Somebody says, I'm sure I would be much taller and smarter if I didn't spend a decade eating school lunches.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's interesting.
Well, my brother was in England for a couple of years over the course of puberty getting really great home-cooked meals from our aunts, whereas I was stuck in, you know, nutritional hell, and he ended up a couple of inches taller than me.
Again, could be any number of things, but that is just the way that things happened.
So why do you think divorce would lower that, right?
Why do you think divorce would lower cognitive skills?
I mean, I have some thoughts, but I don't know.
I don't know why.
I don't know if anyone knows why for sure, but I mean, we can theorize, of course we can theorize, but why do you think divorce lowers children's IQ?
Lack of emotional security?
Divorce equals foster development and abandonment of mom support?
Cortisol?
Um...
I don't know.
I'll share my thoughts.
This is absolutely nothing absolute in what I'm saying.
But I think it would go something like this.
I think it would go something like this.
So why do kids work hard in school?
Because they want to succeed as adults.
They want to get the benefits of social acceptance, they want to get the benefits of love and marriage, and they want to provide for their own children and so on.
So if you detonate kids' belief in marriage, you detonate their motivations to do well in school.
Like, why would you bother?
Oh, I'm going to work really, really hard for the next 20 years so I can end up with a shitty life like mom and dad's.
I can end up just divorcing as well.
I can end up having two homes and they're being lied to because the truth about divorce is almost never said to children.
Almost praxeologically, almost by definition, children are constantly lied to about what's going on in a divorce.
The parents are blaming the other parent or they are, yeah, if life ends in divorce, what's the incentive?
Why?
Why would you bother?
And you're just surrounded by an absolute, acidic, brain-eating fog of absolute falsehood.
We're good to go.
There's a lie.
There's a lie here.
If you still love each other and you still get along well and you're going to be friends, why are you divorcing and screwing up your children's lives?
Yes, says a listener, when my parents divorced in the beginning of high school, I lowered my academic effort.
Yeah, why would you?
Why would you?
I relate to this 100%.
After the divorce, I asked, what's the point?
She'd come up with excuses.
Well, it's kind of like, you know, for some people it's hard to get work, right?
Males and all that, it's hard to get work.
And so it's like, okay, well, if society doesn't have much to offer me, why would I conform to society?
Like, at least when I was a kid, there was a sort of belief that, you know, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you walk straight and narrow, then you can get a job, you can get a house, you can get a family, you can get kids, and all of that kind of stuff, right?
Someone says, parents divorced when I was seven.
By ten, the effects caught up with me and the boys around me subconsciously sensed the connection with my father had been broken.
Severe bullying began.
I truly, truly believe that if the effects on children were clear to society, only sociopaths
If the effects of divorce were clear on society, only sociopaths would divorce.
And, you know, you could make a case that might be for the best for the kids.
But yeah, divorce is just unbelievably brutal.
Staggeringly brutal on children and on almost every conceivable level.
All right, here we go.
Early school start times lowers kids' IQ.
As far back as the 1920s, Dr. Lewis Terman, a Stanford University psychologist and pioneer in testing and nurturing intelligence, studied many factors to promote a child's success in school.
He discovered that sufficient sleep was one such factor, and a critical one at that.
In his book, Genetic Studies of Genius, he found that the longer children slept, the more intellectually gifted they were, no matter what the age.
And in careful studies and research papers, projects lasting for years, he showed that quality sleep time is deeply connected to a later school start time.
Yeah, you get up at the butt crack of dawn so that your brain can't grow.
Somebody says, I still have memories of my parents parking what seems like a football field apart for the transfer.
Almost felt like a walk across frozen Serbia as a memory.
Yeah, yeah.
I went from top 10% to bottom 10% in everything.
Yeah, for sure.
If parents were honest about their divorce, the children will be less likely to emulate their parents.
But of course, if these parents were that honest, they wouldn't have separated to begin with.
It's, you know, when you learn the truth about inflation, how much do you want to save money, right?
Steph in 10th grade, a girl I sat next to and talked with one day, couldn't stop crying.
I did nothing, and everyone just ignored her.
Still haunts me, sometimes, that I did nothing.
Well... It's not your job.
How could you fix things?
You know, I mean, listen, I'm all for being sensitive and helping kids when you can.
But how could you help her?
Let's say she said, I'm being beaten up at home.
What would you do?
You'd report it to the school and nothing would happen.
What would you do?
Kairos, good to see you, man.
He says, man, I never got more than three, three to five hours of sleep per night because of the chaos of my home.
I may have physically been at school, but I wasn't there mentally until at least 11 a.m.
Jared says, one of the most miserable times of my teenage years was getting up at 6 a.m.
to get to school.
I mean, you know, people are like, Steph, how can you be so productive?
It's like, I sleep till I'm rested.
I sleep till I'm rested and I can spend a lot of time in bed.
Right?
I can spend a lot.
I mean, I sleep till I'm rested.
I sleep till I'm rested.
And then I have lots of energy for it.
Except when I have a cold.
But, for the most part, I sleep till I'm rested, and then I have tons of energy for what I want to do.
So, yeah, it's... This early stuff is just brutal.
It's just brutal.
It's the endless question, right?
It's the endless question.
Why on earth are the hours from 6 to 9am considered just automatically more moral than the hours from 10pm to 1am?
Because if you're up till 1am and you wake up at 9am, you've had 8 hours sleep, right?
If you go to bed at 10pm and you get up at 6am,
You've had eight hours of sleep.
You still get the same number of hours in the day.
Oh, no.
It's like voodoo.
No, you see.
10 p.m.
to 1 a.m.
That's the witching hour.
That's the hours when the demons come out.
That's the bad hour.
That's the bad time.
Only evil is done.
Only malevolence strolls the land in the midnight hour with the stars blazing down, illuminating the catatonic, catalytic, conniption steps of the congenitally damned.
You know, I just, I'm very productive late at night.
I mean, what is it?
10, 16 now.
I'm very productive late.
I'm a night owl.
Hey, you know why I'm a night owl?
Cause someone had to guide your lazy ass while you slept.
Cause all the people who are like, ah, why are you getting up?
It's nine o'clock.
It's 10 o'clock.
What the hell are you getting up for?
Cause all they do is they see you like, I've been up since six.
Oh, so virtuous.
Whereas what I do when I was younger, if I had a roommate who went to bed early, it's like,
I'd be like, one o'clock in the morning, it's like, dude's been passed out for a couple of hours, what a waste.
It's just funny, right?
Preparation for factory work.
No, no, because factory work is shift work, right?
Factory work is shift work.
The prejudice against night owls is, honestly, I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but the prejudice against night owls is really terrible.
Is really terrible.
Yeah, I mean, how come you went to bed so late?
To guard your lazy ass against predators, doofus.
Do you enjoy waking up without a fucking host of wolves attached to your ass with their canines?
Well, thank a night owl.
No, we will condemn and damn the night owl because we just feel super virtuous because we wake up at six.
Like, hey man, the fact that you have such a bad conscience that you can't sleep in, man, I sleep in like a baby.
My conscience is clear.
I'm very happy with what I've done with my life.
I have no moral issues with my adult life at all.
Very happy and proud of what I've done, so I don't wake up like, Oh, Satan's gonna get me at six o'clock in the morning and can't sleep in.
My question to the morning people is A. How boring are you that you gotta pass out at 10pm and B. How guilty and shamed are you that you gotta get up at 6am?
No!
Then I feel like I'm a good person.
Okay, if you need that.
I'll just do moral things and not worry about when I go to sleep and wake up.
Oh my gosh.
Taylor says I've made peace with my night owl status.
Made money with it.
And jet lag gives me an occasion to early morning wake up at 4am to see the sun rise and swim.
I find, I honestly, I find getting up early, I, I, I'll be straight up with you guys.
Oh, I don't know, should I be this honest?
Should I?
No, I should, I should just start.
You know what?
It's been 18 years.
I'm just going to start lying.
That's it.
I'm just going to start lying.
See, no good shit happened to me when I had to get up early as a kid.
Like, no, nothing good.
Like, why did I have to get up early?
Well, cause I'm taking a train to boarding school.
Oh God.
Right?
Like, whatever, what good things ever?
I still, I've, like, this sounds kind of sad.
Like, literally one of the greatest memories of my childhood was, um, dragging my ass out of bed with this, I had this, you know, stupid alarm clock.
You know, those memes about how Android users wake up.
Dum de dum dum dum.
How iPhone users wake up.
I had one of these annoying alarm clocks and it would be like, which goiter of the universe do I have to massage to get another five minutes of sleep?
But I remember I was probably eight, maybe eight years old.
This was post boarding school.
And I woke up and I got myself into my little school uniform and all of that and I came down and I was gonna have my stupid sad piece of Weedabix with skim milk or whatever and I remember like I gotta go to school and my mother and my brother turned to me and... No, it's March Break.
Holy anti-schoolgasm, like holy crap.
Premature!
Education was averted.
And I just, that was literally one of the happiest moments of my childhood was thinking I had to go to school and then realizing, because you know, when you're a kid, a week is like a decade, right?
I didn't have, I could go back to bed.
I didn't have to go anywhere.
Oh my gosh.
Every snow day.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
One of Rothbard's main goals in life was doing the work that allowed him to sleep until noon.
Even now I feel bad for sleeping late.
No, I feel, I hate getting up early.
I literally, I like, I find it depressing to get up early.
Getting up early makes me feel like I'm in prison.
The only time I willingly woke up at 5 a.m.
was to catch the school cancel message on the radio.
Yeah.
Or, you know, if you have to get up early, it's for a flight or something like that, which makes you feel like half a slave.
Cause I still remember the days when there wasn't barely any security.
Like I remember cause I first started flying when I was like five or six years old.
I flew to Africa with my brother when I was six years old.
And I still remember when flying was like a civilized affair.
Flying was like fantastic.
And so now it just feels like, well, I got to get up early because you know, foreign policy or whatever.
Right.
So.
Yeah, it was absolutely glorious.
So I find it depressing to get up early.
I mean, I feel aristocratically privileged and thank you all, although not tonight for tips, but thank you all so much for your support.
Freedomain.com slash donate, or you can tip in the show.
I enjoy getting up early, have time to myself before the wife and kids wake up.
Right.
Wall Street traders wake up very early.
I'm sure if I had an entire sinus cavity caked with cocaine I could probably get up early too.
What hours do you sleep?
I'm a sort of 1 to 9 guy.
Maybe 2 to 10.
But often 1 to 9.
That's my sort of sweet spot.
I've changed it around from time to time but that's kind of where I usually drift back to.
And that's just perfect for me.
That's perfect for me.
Thanks for the comments on early rises.
I've got an annoying co-worker whose only claim to fame is getting up at 5 a.m.
But he does nothing but hang out at work and watch YouTube and does no work.
So I have to come in later and pick up the slack.
I myself am a night owl.
Yes, getting up early does make me feel like I am in prison.
Oh, it's horrible.
No, I get that.
I got the 7.30 baby alarm, so I had to get... Yeah, yeah, of course, when you have kids, it's a little... Right?
Do you feel more inspired at night?
Yes!
Absolutely, night is when the ghosts in my head come out to party.
That's when the ancestors arise from their infinite tombs and grant me strange blessings and visions and inspirations.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, can you imagine me?
You know, one day, for shites and giggles, one day I'll do a 6am- What?
Is something really sad?
I'll do a 6am livestream.
Okay, here's my imitation of me doing a 6am livestream.
Oh, everybody just fuck off.
There we go.
That's my 6 a.m.
livestream.
I do not love the planet.
Oh, thank you, Ground Beef.
I appreciate that.
I did say tips.
Yes, I don't like the planet at all until at least 9 a.m.
Like before that, it's like, um, Gabriel, blow the trumpets.
Um, it's not like I would summon a giant meteor to take out most of humanity before 9am.
I just wouldn't necessarily fight to the death against it.
That's all.
That's all.
If I do homeschooling, I would start school later for sure, if possible.
Don't know any kid who likes getting up early.
It's horrible.
Well, and, and teenagers and in particular teenage boys desperately need their sleep.
Like you wouldn't believe how tall homeschooling boys are.
It's insane.
It's insane.
Now, with this correlation causation, I get all of that, but nonetheless, holy crap.
Rapid eye movement or deep sleep starts early morning is what I've heard, the time the brain is most creative.
No, it, it, um... Yeah, driving in a traffic jam before the sun comes up.
Oh, God.
I remember once when I was in the business world, I was supposed to give this very important meeting.
I was sitting with a sales guy.
We completely missed our flight.
Either they didn't announce it, or they announced the wrong gate, or whatever.
So we ended up renting, and a bunch of other people missed their flight as well.
I think it was the airport's fault.
We ended up getting the last rental and there were a bunch of other guys who had to get to this other town too, so we all piled in and I drove all night to show some software.
And yeah, it was like just driving all night, driving into the sunrise and it's like, man, this is depressing.
I associate getting up early with just having the worst jobs in the known universe.
You know, street sweeper, garbage man.
Do we blame the Protestant work ethic for having to get up early?
No, honestly, I think it's just base superstition.
It's just base, well, night time is when the bad people roam.
The morning is when the good people, like early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
No, as one of the night people who've kept humanity alive for 250,000 years, I say fuck off to the morning cult.
Fuck off, morning cult.
I don't care.
The idea that you think that you're all so absolutely wonderful and virtuous because you can arise with a start of guilty conscience as the orange ball rises to scold your
Bad mindset with yet another day.
It's like, I don't vote you.
I don't view you as any better for getting up early at all.
Hey, listen, don't get me wrong.
You're not a bad person for getting up early.
You're not technically evil.
And I suppose I'm happy that all of those wolves that come at 6 a.m.
Not really, they're night hunters for the most part, right?
But, ooh!
See, you are gonna guard us when the sun's up!
Wow, boy, what a noble hero!
Boy, you're just, you're gonna guard the wife and kids when the sun's up?
Wow!
Absolutely incredible!
All those pre-dawn raids from the raccoons.
Oof, man, you've got it covered, man!
Whereas me and people like us, we night people, we had to guard against bears and wolves at one o'clock in the morning.
A little bit darker, a little bit more challenging to guard against a bear and a wolf, or a pack of wolves, or a pack of bears and wolves, or a pack of cars and bears and wolves all playing Canasta.
We had to do that shit at one o'clock in the morning.
You only gotta get the firelight on the eyes all around you and we gotta launch spears into the darkness and drive things away when they're, you know, we can't even see them until they've got their nose clamped on your girlfriend's leg.
So we had the night guard and you guys have a, oh, wow, 6 a.m.
A lot of light around.
I guess I can see for miles and miles.
I'll guard now.
Thank you for taking the night shift.
I'm now going to insult you for being a bad person for staying up at night when the guarding is actually quite difficult.
I'll claim to be a hero for getting up in the morning.
Well, it's easy.
Really, really sad.
I'm a morning person.
Love the peace and clarity of the morning, but I'm not prejudiced against the night owls.
Yes, you are, Danny.
You absolutely are.
You see, apparently, your honor, peace and clarity only exist in the morning.
There's no such thing as peace and clarity at night.
It's just impossible.
It's just impossible.
Peace and clarity at night?
No, you see, peace and clarity are impossible at night because only evil, witchery, sorcery, and demonic possession occur at night.
In the morning, it's just all Buddha.
At the night, it's all Satan.
How did we get here?
I'll tell you how we got here.
Cause night people guard your ass in the dangerous hours.
That's how we got here.
Oh yeah, all of these morning people would like, but it's so wonderful and peaceful and I get me time.
It's like, it's wonderful and peaceful in the middle of the night too.
Just don't live downtown.
In which case it's loud even in the morning with the garbage trucks and all of that, right?
So, oh yes, all of this lovely, wonderful, special, peaceful time at night.
It's like in the morning.
It's exactly the same at night.
It's exactly the same at night.
And do you know why it's so wonderful, calm and peaceful at night?
Because all the morning people have stopped nagging you to go to bed.
Why?
Do I yell at you in the morning to... Anyway, do I yell at you at night to stay up?
No.
I don't know.
It's just, it's a bizarre prejudice.
It's always really, really bothered me.
What about people who say testosterone levels are at their highest between 7 and 10 a.m.?
What about them?
I'm sure that's true for morning people.
And I have no problem with the morning people.
Just don't tell me you're even one tiny bit better or get more peace and me time.
Oh, yes.
See, I can't get any me time at midnight.
Why?
Because I'm Neo, and I get copy-pasted from here to Claudine Grey Eternity.
Accordingly, Gay Eternity, because, you know, it's just a multiplicity.
Midnight, I just multiply.
I'm like a hall of reflective mirrors.
Combined with the Matrix copy-paste routine, I just can't get any me-time.
All I can get is we-time and us-time because I just get infested with massive copies of myself.
Come on!
I get as much me-quiet time at midnight as you get at six in the morning!
Be ridiculous.
People are all like, no, no, it only happens in the morning.
No, it doesn't.
Oh, my gosh.
Anyone else like long night drives?
Yeah, I worked with a guy who's like, yeah, I just wanted to go for a long drive and clear my head.
I'm like, what?
Why do trees have to die so you clear your head?
Oh.
Thank you for the tip, I appreciate that.
Yeah, the defense of the morning people is absolutely, absolutely essential.
How much of your novels were written at night?
So, I would often write sort of late afternoon.
Early on I would write at night, but I would often write late afternoon was a real positive time, a real positive time for me.
I'm such a night person, I missed the first hour of this late show.
What, you didn't get up?
That's just being Australian.
I don't know what that means.
In Vietnam, they wake up at 6 a.m.
but they sleep 12 p.m.
to 2 p.m.
after lunch and they stay up till 11 or 12.
Karaoke blaring in the concert ghettos at 6 a.m.
Super annoying.
Vietnamese can say I'm sleeping now and nod off.
Some do.
Shout out to my neighbor who mows the lawn at 7 a.m.
Love to hear the progress.
In legal HOA, snipers are fine with that.
Let's see here.
What did I get?
I was pretty close for the six reasons for dropped IQ.
Feeling good.
Did I finish those?
Who can possibly tell?
Oh yes, yelling at your kids.
I only got to four of them.
Yelling at your kids.
Studies show that spanking reduces IQ by 2.8 to 5 points.
Yelling at your children can be detrimental as well.
Harvard research suggests that parental verbal abuse damages a child's verbal IQ.
Yes.
Uh, here we go.
Manipulating your children with punishments and rewards to alter behavior lowers their IQ.
According to Alan Kasdan, director of the Yale Parenting Center, boy, that's the key, while punishment might make a parent feel better, it won't change a child's behavior.
And he quotes, I quote him, parents might start out reasoning, but they're likely to escalate to something a little bit more like shouting, touching, firmly dragging the child, even if they're well-intentioned.
Even wonderful gentle punishments like a timeout or reasoning, those don't work.
So that's not good.
So that's not good.
I'm guessing it lowers the child's curiosity, yeah?
Didn't mean the morning is the only time for peace and clarity.
I know.
I'm just kind of messing with you a little here, but you kind of get where I'm coming from.
It's kind of annoying when morning people say, ah, all that peace and quiet in the morning.
It's like, the world's pretty quiet at one o'clock in the morning.
You can get a lot of stuff done.
Anyone who vacuums or mows before 11 o'clock gets to me.
Oh man.
So I, I lived in a, I lived in a little, uh, on the ground floor of a little house once.
And there were these three women.
Who lived upstairs, and it was hardwood floors, and it was insane in the mornings.
I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's a little bit more of a female thing, but it seems impossible for women to just leave the house and not have to come back.
I don't know why that is the case, but there's always something.
It seems to be just impossible.
Physically, biologically, it's a law of nature deeper than gravity that women simply cannot leave the house with everything they need.
There's always a hostage, there's always somebody who's abandoned, and it's nothing that can be left behind.
They're like Marines with a wounded colleague.
We always go back.
We have to go back.
I forgot this.
And sometimes it can be two or three trips.
But what would happen is these girls would lace their S&M way, their
Iron Maiden way into their clickety-clackety brain castanet shoes, and then they would forget things, right?
So you could hear them, like there was a thump-thump-thump with their stocking feet or whatever, right?
And then they put their heels on.
And then they'd be like, oh, I've left something behind!
Clickety-clickety-clickety!
Like some epileptic tarantula with tap shoes doing a castanet on your brain,
And they'd come back and they'd... loud, right?
And then they'd head out again.
And then you'd know, you'd know.
Oh, wait!
And they'd come back.
Can't you just get everything ready the night before?
Don't put your shoes on and do the cast net on my brain!
Oh.
Hey folks, here's the story about Minnie the Moocher.
Oh my god!
Crazy.
Crazy.
To me, it would be like there's a couple of rules that I want in life, right?
A couple of rules I want in life.
One of the rules I want is, if you've got your turn signal on, after 15 seconds your car just goes that way.
I don't care if you're on the highway.
Like, if you've got your...
On, you got your turn signal on.
If you just leave it on, your car just goes that way.
Because that'll teach you to turn the damn thing off.
I mean, it's really easy these days, right?
You know, if you're just, if you're exiting, just ding, just a little honk.
And the other thing, of course, is that if you don't signal, you can't turn.
Like, if your signal is not engaged,
You can't turn.
Sorry, you're going to miss your exit, but you're not signaling.
Like, it was a pretty funny meme about it was a space shuttle with a BMW right behind it.
And it said, ah, BMW driver when the space shuttle is only going 16,000 miles an hour.
Right up your tailpipe.
So that would be, that would be one.
And secondly, it would be, you maybe get one or two gimmies a week, but if you leave your house without something, your house is now sealed.
It goes, like it literally goes to another dimension.
You close, you lock, you get, the moment you touch the car,
That's it.
You can't go back.
Like the lock changes for an hour at least.
Like the lock key or whatever it is just changes.
So you have to learn how to get things ready so that you don't have to keep coming back.
That's just basic fact of sanity with regards to this.
Just a basic fact of sanity.
And then, at some point, somebody will explain to me why it is the man's responsibility to lower the seat but not the woman's responsibility to raise it.
That's a whole different kettle of fish.
That's a whole different kettle of fish.
If you really loved me, you'd...
Oh man, I hope my future wife is not like that.
How can this be avoided?
It can't be avoided.
It's like aging and gravity, and the fact that you just need to continually eat less as you age.
You know, I had this dream last night.
I still have dreams of being able to eat as much as I did in my 20s.
I mean, in my 20s, I could literally be an entire fucking combine harvester.
You ever see those pictures of the fields?
And there's like a row of 19 combine harvesters just going and mowing.
That was me.
I could just eat anything.
I remember being genuinely shocked and I talked to friends and be like, I eat ridiculously much.
I love to eat.
And I can't believe I'm not gaining weight.
Just incredible.
Just incredible.
I never feel full, I'm never done, never done eating, never done eating.
As I said, my daughter and I were out for lunch and we saw, we have this game, we grabbed the menu, because she's very calorie conscious, right?
She's a teenager, right?
And I am, though not quite as much.
We grab the menu and it's like, highest calories, go!
And we try it and, you know, it's never as good as when we were in America.
I mean, when we were in America, basically all the food just has a little infinity symbol with a defibrillator number.
You can order this pasta, you will die with a cheesy smile on your face.
But we found a dessert the other day, it was some, you know where they just have like,
Everything.
The dessert is everything.
It's brownie with sprinkles, whipped cream.
We're going to put some ice cream on the side and we're also going to shoot some key lime pine up your nose with a tiny hand cannon as well.
Uh, maybe some bread pudding, uh, and, uh, and then they have a little suitable for sharing, whatever.
But of course, if it was in America, it would be like suitable as an appetizer.
But, oh man, 1,500.
And I remember I said to my daughter, I said, listen, I could mow down this whole, I could mow down that whole 1,500 calorie dessert and I would still want to eat.
Like, I'm never full.
I always have to say, close your face hole.
Close your face hole.
Cheesecakes are so dense with calories.
Had one slice that was almost 2,000 calories.
They really are.
They really are.
And then, of course, it's also like, well, we're also going to get Satan to, um, to shit some chocolate sauce on the cheesecake just in case the cheesecake wouldn't kill you.
Uh, well, the cheesecake will kill you and then the sauce will preserve you so you can have an open coffin.
Cheesecake is the Jupiter gravity calorie treat that will always get me.
Ugh.
Way back in the day, a couple I knew, they introduced me to vanilla bean cheesecake, which used to be, I don't know if it still is, at Red Lobster, or as my friend referred to it, Dead Lobster.
And it was like, oof.
Oof.
Uh, in my teens I had a small phase of eating at home frozen pizzas.
Would not recommend it to anyone.
Gained like 60 pounds.
There's a lot of preservatives there.
A lot of preservatives in that.
So, yeah, but at least you stop aging.
You stop aging.
Sleeve of Oreo, serving size, half an Oreo.
Pumpkin cheesecake is your guilty pleasure?
I can't do anything with pumpkin.
I just, I can't handle.
I just, I can't do the pumpkin stuff.
It's just, that's just not right.
I mean, cause I grew up, I guess in England, so I didn't just, they don't do the pumpkin stuff in England.
That's more of a North American thing, or I guess a Canadian US thing, but yeah, I can't do pumpkin stuff much at all.
Christmas is the only time I really let it go and just eat all day until my stomach feels like it has a brick in there.
Yeah, that's tough, man.
Hot and cold freshly combined tiramisu is the most wonderful combo.
Hot coffee and cool cinnamon wine.
Ooh, a nice warm mulled wine when you've been cold outside.
That's really nice.
Dead Lobster, Taco Hell, Mickey D's.
Dad's name for restaurants.
I'm not sure they'd all be considered restaurants, but I get where your dad's coming from.
Yeah, I just can't have stuff.
I just can't have stuff in the house.
I love chips and dip.
Can't have them in the house.
Boursin cheese.
I will occasionally, like once or twice a year, I'll pick up a little square of boursin cheese, a little cube of boursin cheese and have that with crackers.
So nice.
So nice.
I'm so grateful for not being a big fan of dessert-type foods.
Yeah, it's nice.
It's nice.
So yeah, I still dream of, uh, I still dream of being able to eat like I was in my twenties.
It was so good.
It was so good.
But you know, time marches on and it's certainly better to eat less than not at all by being dead.
So, but yeah, I probably am down.
I'm probably down from my twenties.
I eat probably a thousand less calories a day.
Can you spell that cheese name?
Uh, you need another... Bursin.
B-O-U-R-S-I-N.
I think it is.
It's, um, foreign.
That's Dutch, or something like that.
Uh, recalled Steph mentioning finishing customer's food while working as a waiter.
Wonder if there was carrot cake involved.
No, I didn't really eat desserts, um, but...
Oh god, profiterole!
I used to have this whole patter to sell profiterole.
You know, profiterole is incredible.
It's like pastry, warm pastry, and then ice cream, warm pastry, and then a little bit of whipped cream, and then drizzle of chocolate and sprinkles.
It's unbelievably good.
Unbelievably good.
No, I would just generally finish, so the restaurant that I worked at, well one of my favorite restaurants that I worked at, was called The Mermaid, and it was a seafood restaurant, and they also had a party room upstairs, so you'd have to run, literally sprint up and down these stairs with full trays of food and not spill anything, and it was wild.
How many people your age do you see who are fit?
Fit?
Fit.
Well, um, it depends what you mean by see my age.
Um, I don't have, I don't think I have any friends who aren't fit.
I have a couple of friends who go up and down in terms of weight, you know, 10, 15, 20 pounds, but I don't think I have any friends who aren't fit because we just really wouldn't have that much, uh, in common.
So, and you know, most of my friends I will do at least some kind of sports with from time to time.
So I would say most of my friends are fit, but in terms of,
I mean, I'm a little bit cut, I'm a little bit muscular, and as far as all of that goes, and I'm like 188 pounds and 6 foot tall, so not bad, not bad.
I'm probably still going to try and drop another 10.
I'm just kind of curious to see what it's like, and I think it'll be easier on my lunge muscles as I age to be lighter, because, you know, a pickleball or whatever is a lot of change of direction and all of that, so.
But most people, it depends where you are, but of course, most people my age are just not fit.
Not even close.
Not even close.
Like, I think it's appalling.
It's absolutely appalling to me.
Just joined, so jazzed to be here.
Well, thank you and welcome.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Health is the sweetest treat of all.
It's admirable to see middle-aged people trying to get healthier.
I think I'm getting just on the downward slope of middle age, I think.
Health is wealth.
Yeah, because I'm very rarely sick.
Like, as far as... I'll get a cold every couple of years, and... I had COVID, I guess... 18 months ago?
Which blocked my Eustachian tube up just a little bit, but nothing major.
My weakness is shitty gas station food, processed saltiness.
I found the weight where I feel my knees was the biggest wake-up call.
How do people put up with that pain?
Howdy howdy, Night Owls from Texas!
Texas?
Gotta be one of my favorite places.
Gotta be one of my favorite places.
I love me some Texas.
I love the people in Texas.
I should visit.
I should visit.
I try to discover a little something to make me sweeter.
Oh baby refrain.
Which part of Texas?
I used to do a lot of business in the Houston area and just loved it.
I also, I remember of course being in San Francisco in the 90s when it was absolute paradise.
I remember driving with a salesman across the bridge and having
A fantastic steak dinner in a place like, it was like Hobbiton.
It was all these restaurants and stuff set into the side of hills.
Ah, it was just beautiful.
Beauty.
When I had COVID and no taste, I just ate meat and green beans to take advantage.
Once I started taking cod liver oil, 2,000 milligrams, 95% of sickness gone.
Oh, did you get sick a lot before?
That's why you em the woodlands?
You could do a set at Joe Rogan's Comedy Mothership.
You're funnier than most of those clowns.
Oh yeah, no, I'm absolutely sure that Joe Rogan would be like, oh Steph, love that guy.
Let's get him on stage.
Have you been to New Mexico?
If not, can you come here and save me?
Well, what can I do to help?
You can just do call in at freedomain.com.
Somebody says, my waking call was one day finding a bathroom scale in the house and freaking out at the number.
It was never that heavy again.
Think it was almost 190 pounds.
I was close to 220 at one point, so I'm down over 30 pounds from my max.
Did you have any topics for us tonight?
That sounds almost like a passive-aggressive prompt.
I could be wrong, but it sounds almost like a passive-aggressive prompt.
Yes, I have had topics tonight.
Do you think Sweden's going to war?
I wonder.
I wonder.
Yeah, get your flying in while you can.
Get your flying in while you can.
Before you probably can't.
All right.
Boy, if there's one place you think a meritocracy would be respected.
But no, absolutely not.
Ideology is everything.
Have you seen the video where there's a short guy, now he's a little homely, he's got a high forehead and a little funny looking, there's a short guy and these women are all asked to choose this short guy among the tall guy.
Have you seen this?
Steph, can you give us a speech that inspires us to excellence?
Uh, I probably can, but I'm not sure tonight.
Because I think with dragging my mental butt with the cold, I'm not entirely sure that I can give you the kind of speech, but I will absolutely do it.
I missed this beginning and didn't know if you had something juicy.
Well, let me just rewind because you were late.
I hope you brought enough gum for everyone.
Steph, when are you going to Bangkok?
Clearly you've missed my OnlyFans.
I will buy a five-star hotel for a few nights.
See, now that's a contract.
See, everyone, let me just copy-paste this.
Everyone, let me just copy-paste this.
Everyone can see this.
He's not buying a five-star hotel room for a few nights.
He's buying a five-star hotel for a few nights.
Well, that's something.
I don't know, can we do a meet-up in Bangkok?
I did a meet-up in Hong Kong that was great fun.
I admire you looking after yourself, looking good and healthy, even with a cold.
Yes, well, de-jowling a bit.
De-jowling a little bit.
My wife has this amazing chin with like no fat, so I have to de-jowl a little bit.
I'm in on the hotel rental.
Nice.
I would love to go to Bangkok.
I mean, the Far East as it's called, which is of course just outside your window for you.
Absolutely love it.
Absolutely love it.
I love authentic Thai food.
Always wanted to visit Vietnam and Singapore would be fascinating and fantastic and yeah, there's so much of the world that I want to see.
So much that I want to see.
But I made a note about the speech that inspires you to excellence.
Meeting in Bangkok would be awesome!
Your family would love it there.
So much to do and excitement.
Yeah, so here's the slight challenge.
I really, I can't tell you guys, they're so pretentious.
I'll do the Men in Black pen afterwards.
But do you think having a good jaw made going bald easier?
Yeah, I think so.
I think so, but of course I have a good jaw because I chew gum all the time.
I chew food that isn't too soft, don't just eat yogurt and all of that, right?
So chewing is good for your jaw, good for your face, right?
Bone resistance grows and all of that.
So here's the problem, right?
And if you've had teenage kids, you all kind of know where I'm coming from.
But if I were to say to my daughter, you know, just in general, if I were to say to my daughter, we can go to Bangkok.
She'd say, I don't want to see a chicken explode.
No, she would say that, um, you know, like I can literally say we're going to Mars to play volleyball in low gravity.
And she'd be like, because, you know, she's.
He's all about the friends.
She's all about the friends, she's all about the group, the hangout, all of the kind of stuff.
You have famous guy head in your opinion.
I think that's true.
I think that is fair to say.
I think that I have noble philosopher egghead.
I just have that kind of noble philosopher egghead.
I hate to say it, but if you look the part, it just seems more credible.
I'm not proud of it.
It's not like anything I earned other than chewing a lot of gum and exercising and all of that.
But yeah, if you look the part, it just helps a lot.
Anyway, so this thing, I'll give you the link.
It's interesting.
The really sad thing, of course, is how much they had to pile on the short guy to make him as attractive as the tall guy.
Or tall guys.
Except there's a more handsome Bruce Willis.
And it's really sad.
Stef Hedrum.
Yes, that's right, that's right.
So, the amount of stuff they had to pile on to the short guy to make him even remotely as attractive as the tall guy was really, really sad.
He has to be a doctor, and a world-renowned cook, and a published author, and they were still like, eh, but he is short.
$250,000 needed for the short guy in terms of income.
Yeah, he needed an additional $250,000.
Now, the short guy also did have this kind of, I don't know, this sort of tragic sad sack face and all of that.
So, have you ever met, have you ever, have you ever met someone who is just weirdly confident and you can't figure out why?
Have you ever seen that?
Where you meet someone and they're just really, really super confident and you can't quite figure out why.
It's kind of eerie, isn't it?
It's almost like possession.
Someone says, Steph, have you considered adding some unreleased call-in shows for premium members or even a higher sub-level?
I'd pay more for this for them.
Are you new?
I don't mean to be rude.
Are you new?
Are you new?
Uh, there are tons of premium call-in shows, tons of premium call-in shows.
Uh, we have like 150 plus premium shows, not all of them call-in, but, uh, we have, oh, you're not new?
Oh, so I've talked about premium call-in shows literally forever with regards.
to this show.
So, you know, given that I say, you know, just about every time I do a show, I'll talk about, you know, you get the French Revolution, you get the History of Philosophers show, you get 150 plus premium shows, you get the audiobook of the premium podcasts and all of that.
Oh, James, why don't you give them a... Oh, let's be nice.
Give them a link to the... If you could, James, just give them a link.
Or, Jared, if you can give them a link to the premium.
You guys can have a look at the premium shows.
Fine.
Fine.
Now, way back in the day when we had the community server message board, you could restrict shows by level, right?
So you could say, well, if you donate X amount, you get these shows less, you get less shows and so on, right?
Don't share the link.
It's too late.
Just keep it private.
But yeah, you can go and check out the premium shows.
If you're a subscriber, great.
It's just a reminder.
If you're not a subscriber, hopefully it will be enough to do that.
Bring back the board.
Bring the board back home.
Steph never stops talking.
Content rich.
That's right, I am the philosophy big-jawed cheesecake of the 21st century.
Content rich.
High-calorie brain food.
Omega-3 fatty acids.
You can share that link.
People have to sign in to Locals to get the access code.
Alright.
I didn't bring that up because I know you mentioned a few episodes you haven't released, and really piqued mine and my wife's interest.
Yeah, I, uh... Yeah.
Yeah, I've got one.
It's a woman whose brother was caught by one of those pedophile-catching groups, and it was a pretty brutal conversation.
It was a pretty brutal excess.
Okay, yeah, so there you go.
You can, uh...
Uh, play around with that and do a little searchy search.
You know, just keep it private if you don't mind.
But yeah, there is some really, really great stuff in there and a lot of fantastic premium content.
Uh, you should check out the guy I, um, who was violent towards his wife.
That was pretty, pretty strict and pretty harsh conversation.
We just did some updates for mobile, too.
That's right.
That's right.
Name of that show?
Um... I'm sure either James or Jared.
See, I'd pay to listen to those extra juicy ones.
Okay, so you... I will give you the link.
Super good upgrades on the mobile site.
Yes.
Yes, indeed.
We thank James for all of that stuff.
So here's your promo.
You can check it out for free.
You get your StephBot AI, which you can ask, I think it's 70 languages, you can ask and answer StephBot AI in 70 languages, private live streams, premium call-in shows, 22-part History of Philosophers series, audiobook for peaceful parenting as it goes along, truth about the French Revolution, you name it!
The guy who hit his wife didn't seem like he'd do that.
Well, of course.
I just had a long, well, I spent an hour forty call and show today with a guy who's really despairing about his marriage.
Really in great and deep despair.
about his marriage, and he and his wife, you know, fight.
Fight hard.
And, of course, when he's chatting with me, he ain't fighting with me.
In fact, he's quite coachable, right?
Which shows that he doesn't need to fight with his wife.
It's not some Tourette's epilepsy thing, right?
So yeah, people are talking to me, I guess I'm kind of an authority figure, and I guess people view it as helpful, but yeah, they'll fight with their wife, but they don't fight with me.
Violence doesn't really look like what you think it looks like.
Violence has a lot to do with despair.
And so when people are confronting their violence, they tend to be sad and you don't associate that with violence.
Violence has a lot to do with being angry at your parents.
You can't attack your parents, so you attack your partner.
You're frustrated at what you didn't get from your parents, so you choose a partner who also won't provide what you needed, and you'll attack them as proxy, in the same way that your parents attacked you as a child, as a proxy for attacking their own parents.
The redirected anger is the root of most violence, and so on.
So when people are talking to me, they're usually in a state of sadness and despair, which we don't associate with violence, unless you know that it's the despair that often leads to the desperation, which leads to the violence.
You can't look at Medusa directly, so you attack the faded reflection.
Yeah.
Good album, though.
Annie Lennox.
That makes sense.
You've said something like, if you're not mad at the right people, you'll get mad at the wrong people.
Yeah.
You're either just or unjust.
You understand?
There's nothing else.
There's nothing.
You're either just or you're unjust.
There's no absence of it.
So if you're not angry at the right people who hurt you, then you'll be angry at the wrong people who are trying to help you.
I mean, do you think people are mad at me?
They're not mad at me.
They're not mad at me.
They're mad.
Their inner parents are mad at me for having standards and values and for preaching universality.
Alright, that video is one of the first black pills for many men.
They can get into thinking that looks are all that matters in life and even go as far as to get plastic surgery or breaking their legs in a super painful process with a chance to end up crippled.
Well, and it helps you to, um... It helps you to laugh at women who claim that... You're objectifying me!
It's like... Maybe if there was a little less makeup and push-up bra stuff...
Yeah, no, it's appalling.
Women, I mean, you've seen these exchanges a million times on social media, right?
Somebody posts something where they're on a dating app and they say, the woman says to them, how tall are you?
I'm six foot two.
How much do you weigh?
What?
How dare you ask me that?
You have a standard of height, I have a standard of weight.
Oh, so you just have a small penis, you just can tell me that, lol, whatever, right?
And it's like, okay, so, remember, all women's standards are elevated, all men's standards are controlling and petty.
It's just the way that things work.
Steph, I was hearing an old podcast.
Or a young podcast, if you want to put it that way, where you said you were unsure if your mother truly had free will.
Do you believe some people are just too far gone?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So I don't believe my mother had a lot of free will by the time I was conscious.
Of course, I don't know what she was like before I was conscious and had memories, but I don't believe that my mother had a lot of free will, if any, left by the time I came along and was remembering stuff.
Oh yeah, of course.
Yeah, absolutely.
Change is not a lifelong privilege at all.
Change is not a lifelong privilege.
And a woman who's 50 who changes her mind and decides to have kids has missed the boat.
No, change is use it or lose it.
Absolutely.
Change is use it or lose it.
Right?
There's only so much you can smoke before you can't run a marathon ever.
Right?
There's only so much damage you can do, right?
I mean, I'm sure there's some things you can help, and none of this is medical advice, but that's just an analogy.
Yeah, there's certainly things that you can do.
You know, there's only, if you're too fat for too long, you get those skin sags a lot of times, right?
So... The black pill stuff is so dark, I've seen so many men who just give up because of it.
And what do you mean by the black pill stuff?
That women prefer taller guys?
But if women, see, I don't know, this is just genetics, right?
This is just evolution.
If women preferred taller guys only, there would be no shorter guys.
Right?
So, there would be no short guys if women only preferred taller guys.
All other, but this is sort of like all other things considered.
A lot of guys would like, I don't know, a woman with bigger boobs or something like that.
But yet women with small boobs still exist and have children.
And right.
So I'm shorter and I have five kids.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Would you ever secretly check on your mother to see if she changed?
That may confirm the free will thing.
All right.
Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
How much money would you bet that my mother had changed?
No, Napoleon wasn't short.
That was just the difference between British and French measurement standards.
The British system was slightly different.
It was just British propaganda.
No, he was not.
He was not short.
Yeah, I would put zero money.
Like, there's not one Satoshi that I would put on my mother having changed.
No, it's not a matter of odds.
It's not a matter of odds.
How?
How do I know my mother hasn't changed?
How do I know my mother hasn't changed?
One or two billion to one.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
There's no money you'll ever make on that.
How do I know my mother hasn't changed?
I don't need to check up on her.
Because I would know, how would I know?
She hasn't reached out to you, she hasn't apologized, she hasn't, you know, I'm sorry I wasn't there when you had cancer, and I'm sorry I wasn't there when you were being attacked, and yeah, I mean, of course she hasn't changed.
If she had changed in any foundational way, I would be the first to know.
Or my brother maybe, but yeah, it's, no, there's no question, no doubt.
Blackpillers scare women off with their attitudes and blame society because they're single.
I think blackpillers a lot of times are beauty or porn addicts who can't really get that attracted to an average kind of woman and therefore they pursue these hot girls, get rejected and then get blackpilled.
If she cared to make restitution she'd move heaven and earth to do so, right?
Also, when my father died a couple of years ago, my mother would have been scared and goosed into changing her ways, right?
Honestly, I mean, my father's been dead for three years or so.
I give my mother's chance of changing is exactly the same odds as my father's chance of changing.
Right?
My father went to his grave, never apologizing, never taking ownership, never attempting to make amends, never reaching out, never trying to ease my burden, right?
He went to his grave.
I assume that he knew he was ill or dying for quite a long time, and he didn't pick up the phone.
He didn't write a letter.
He didn't make amends.
He didn't resolve things, right?
Even though he was a devout Christian later on in his life.
He started as a Christian, was an agnostic for a long time, and then went back to.
I honestly cannot fathom that.
Really can't?
What do you mean you can't fathom that?
I don't understand.
You can't fathom that there are people in life who can't admit that they're wrong?
What do you mean you can't fathom that?
I don't, like, are you saying that you've never met someone, or you've never had anyone close to you who can't admit fault?
Have you really lived that, you've never had a teacher who can't admit fault?
You've never had a relative, an uncle, an aunt, a grandparent who can't admit fault?
You've never had a self-righteous right fighter in your life?
I don't, genuinely, I'm sorry to sound obtuse, I can't.
Not that, but that these people would want to at least drag you down before their death.
I don't know what that means.
These people would want to at least drag you down before their death.
Not that, but that these people would want to at least drag you down before... I don't understand.
Sorry, it just repeated.
Did it just repeat?
I feel like something is not correct in what you're saying and I mean like typo or something like that.
Better Bachelor is the definition of black pills.
Alexander Grace is a white pill to alternate and Steph even more so of course.
Now what is the story with Alexander Grace other than his bizarrely high forehead?
What is the story with him?
Is he in a relationship?
Is he married?
How does his deal work in terms of the real world?
Just out of curiosity.
I've heard people that change usually just change for the worse.
We are not getting any younger thing.
Giving a feigned apology or admission of wrong before death so they feel better.
I'm playing chess with my wife while listening to the greatest philosopher in history.
What a time to be alive.
How can anyone be blackmailed?
Thank you, that's very kind.
Appreciate that.
He has a girlfriend of about a decade, no marriage which is not ideal, and a daughter.
Is his girlfriend the mother of his daughter?
Sorry, I'm so... you can't imagine... I'm sorry, I'm not trying to drop this, because I think it's important, and I want to make sure I understand the importance of what it is that you're saying.
So this is... I wish you could filter by name here.
She hasn't reached out to you.
If she cared to make restitution, yeah, she'd move heaven and earth to do so.
I honestly can't.
Oh, so when you say you can't fathom that, you're saying that you can't fathom why they wouldn't have tried to fake apologize to make themselves feel better.
But his girlfriend is the mother and they are together.
Okay.
Well, that's fine.
So, I think you may misunderstand, with all due humility, and I could be wrong, but I think you may misunderstand how the immoral mind works.
In the immoral mind, there is no apologies to be made, because everything is always the fault of the other person.
First of all, there's no such thing as fault.
There certainly is no fault on the part of the evildoer, and if fault is identified, it's always the other person.
So the idea that my father would have tried to give me some kind of fake apology in order to feel better for himself would be to admit that there was fault at all.
Somebody says, I remember my mother telling me I'd do anything for my kids.
My kids are my world.
Yeah, you know that that's completely false, right?
The stuff that people insist is always a lie.
The stuff that people insist on, it's just a basic thing in life, just to give you a shortcut in life.
And if you find this stuff helpful, tips, of course, are more than welcome.
Yeah.
Everything that people insist on is a lie.
I'll do anything for my kids.
My kids are my world.
There's nothing I wouldn't do for my kids.
It's like, it's not true.
Why don't you apologize and make up to the dad?
Well, I can't do that.
He was a bastard.
Okay.
Well then you won't do anything for your kids.
So I remember my mother telling me I'll do anything for my kids.
I told her to go to therapy and I would pay for it.
I explained to her that this will be a great step to repair our connection and improve the connection between us.
She looked at me and said, well, I'm not going to do that.
I'm too old.
This would be funny if it wasn't true, you know?
Yes!
My parents would never admit to any wrongdoing.
No.
They won't do it.
Do parents have a favorite child?
I mean, some parents do.
Sadly, my mother did.
It was very unfair.
It was very unfair.
She associated me with her father, who she, quote, loved to death, and my brother with her ex-husband, who she did not, and it was very unfair, and it was very obvious and very blatant.
Thank you for the tip, my friend.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
That's very kind.
Not admitting fault is the fastest method I have for filtering people these days.
I admit to something that I feel slightly off about and see what they do with power.
Yeah, I did a show just the other day, which, yeah, the NRDNA guy, and it's not black and white guy, with every answer, yeah, that guy was, uh, that was quite something, man.
That was quite the call.
I was real hesitant about whether to go for that.
I'm like Tom Cruise, about do I go for it, do I not?
Should I go for it, should I not?
I'm glad I did.
Yeah, if you can't submit to any higher or rational or objective standard, then you're just narcissistic in my view by definition, so.
Great live stream tonight, Steph.
Henri!
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you, my friend.
I had a, um, I wanted to tear my hair out for you.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting.
I had, uh, oh, how do you guys, how do you guys deal with unexpected bills?
How do you deal with, I had, so I had this thing, I have a computer and the USB-C port wasn't working.
It's not the newest computer, but it's not too bad, it's a couple of years old.
So I have this, it was a notebook computer.
And the USB-C port wasn't working and I needed it for something.
And so I drop it off at a repair shop.
And what do I say?
I don't know.
I mean, I was sort of look back and review these kinds of things, right?
You pay them off, right?
Yeah, right.
So I drop it off and I say, and I've used this guy before.
And I drop it off and I say, listen, if it's not too expensive, you know, if it's just a matter of you could have sold or something, or, you know, something just needs to be realigned or some connection has come loose, if you can fix it, uh, great.
If it's not too expensive, but you know, let me know.
So it's like, I'll send it off to my guy, my guy.
And then I get a call from the guy who says, I fixed it for you.
It's $300.
And I said, what?
What do you mean?
I told him, I didn't hear that.
I just, I fixed it for you and all of that kind of stuff.
Right.
So I went into the guy because the guy who fixed it was different from the guy I was talking to.
And he said, how are you doing boss?
And I said, well, you lied.
And I said, well, you didn't listen.
I was there with my daughter.
I said, you didn't listen.
And he said, what?
And I said, look,
I dropped the computer off.
I've used you guys a bunch of times before.
I dropped the computer off.
I specifically said, do you remember what I said?
He's like, I think so.
And I said, yeah, I said, if it's not too expensive, fix it.
Otherwise let me know.
And he's like, well, that guy was supposed to give you a quote.
And I said, well, he didn't give me a quote.
He already fixed it.
And he said, it's 300 bucks, which I wouldn't have paid.
So anyway, we went back and forth.
He's going to negotiate with the guy and try and get the price reduced and all that kind of stuff.
But, uh,
$300, I'd just use a USB hub at that point.
No, no, no, I get that.
I couldn't.
It's a mixer that needs a direct USB-C connection.
It can't go through a hub.
So, that's just the way it is.
But yeah, it's a little painful.
It's a little painful.
And, you know, I said to the guy, I said, look, I don't want to be the guy who doesn't use you anymore because you don't listen to what I'm looking for, but you, you know, if I say, basically, give me a quote, then give me a quote.
Steph loves Bluetooth.
Bluetooth.
USB-C is nice because you don't spend half your life inserting things three times.
What is it with USB?
It's always the same.
USB is always the same.
Put it in.
Doesn't work.
Flip it.
Doesn't work.
Flip it again.
It works.
What strange reversal Mobius strip portal to another dimension is opening that I have to flip it twice and then it mysteriously works.
This can't physically happen, but it does.
Crazy.
Crazy man.
Crazy man.
I always negotiate the price before purchasing, except on an operating table.
Well, but you can't negotiate the price before people have figured out what the problem is, right?
Yeah, Schrodinger's USB.
Yeah, it's like Schrodinger's Feminism, right?
Well, I don't want equality when it's to my advantage.
Unless... If inequality is to my advantage, I want inequality.
If equality is to my advantage, I want equality.
So... Crazy.
Got matched twice, so gotta bump up a little.
Thanks, tippers.
Don't miss them, Steph.
Uh, yes.
Ari, I saw.
Shankinator, I saw.
I appreciate that.
All right.
Let me just see here.
Yeah, I think I got it.
No, sorry, W.S.
Scott.
Wu Scott.
Wu Scott.
What was it?
There was some... Oh gosh, this is a real vague memory from many years ago.
A friend of mine was talking about some skit he saw, and let me know if you ever find this.
It was a skit he saw with Commander Scott on his way to the South Pole, and there are some girls there.
Hi, Scotty!
Something like that.
I don't know why.
I just remember that from the bowels of time.
He wrote, thanks.
Thank you for all you do.
You introduced me to philosophy and changed my life.
Shout out to Drew for turning me on to you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Just remember that it was you, not me, who changed your life.
It was you, not me.
Dentist did that to me.
Never went back there.
I think it's most common in health industry, yeah?
Would you be okay with elaborating a bit more on that call-in?
Yeah, if you would like to, I'm certainly happy to be your philosophy dollar, swing my purse, show a little leg.
Yes.
Did you have a question?
Do you want me to just elaborate, or did you have a particular question?
The DNA guy, in the context of how people don't admit fault or have different standards, and how this comes to be.
Well, it's a rolling issue, right?
I remember doing the calculation once, and I would say this to clients all the time, if you fix a problem in design, it's at least 10 times cheaper than fixing it in production, right?
So if you write a bunch of code and then people want to change it later, it's at least 10, usually 20, but at least 10 times more expensive.
So it's a snowball effect.
So, what happens is people get viciously attacked when they're kids for making mistakes, and then you feel like you can't admit mistakes, because you don't get corrected, you get bullied, insulted, and it becomes a permanent tattoo on you.
Like I've talked about, one time you poured something and knocked something over, and then for the rest of time in a dysfunctional family you're the clumsy one, and you just
Gotta be careful, don't knock it over!
Because people have so little to talk about, all they have to talk about is exaggerated cliches of predestined, imagined behavior.
So people, they just can't admit fault because they're just going to get attacked and get attacked and it's going to escalate.
And so they can't admit fault.
So they just train themselves to never admit fault.
You can't get me to admit fault.
And then this is what people, the parents will blame children, attack and humiliate children for making quote mistakes.
And then the kids fight back and then the parents escalate.
And then the kids then further don't want to admit fault.
The parents escalate even more.
So you grow up in this situation, you just can't admit fault, won't admit fault.
It just not going to happen.
Right?
And then what happens is anybody who criticizes you, it's not any genuine process of trying to help you or improve you or remind you of higher standards.
They're just there to grind your gears, to humiliate you, to push you down.
It's an attack, it's an assault, it's abusive, and by God, you're just not going to put up with it.
So you just fight back.
And everybody's had it in situations, I'm sure, in life where you've had a correction with someone and they just dig in, fight back, get evasive.
And this guy was doing that too, right?
This guy was doing that too.
But he was doing it in kind of an insulting way.
You know, because I talk about complex things with basic principles, right?
Well, it's not black and white.
False.
Like, it's a straw man, because I never said it was black and white.
It's kind of an insult.
Because...
It's what Vosch used to say in those debates.
Well, what you're talking about is incredibly complicated.
It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you think you're a giant brain and everyone else is an idiot.
Well, it's just so incredibly complicated.
Or like the guys who are like, oh, you're so wrong.
I don't even know where to start with how wrong you are.
Let me see if I can lay it like they've just got to put in all this humiliating shit.
Ahead of time.
All of this posturing bullshit ahead of time, they gotta wind that into the conversation so that they can frame themselves as being super smart and you being super dumb and all of that, right?
And...
So what happens is you simply can't admit that you're wrong.
You can't admit fault.
It's too humiliating.
It's too brutal.
And this is the case, too.
You have to interpret everyone who's correcting you as someone who's trying to humiliate you.
Because if you do actually accept that someone's trying to help and correct you and make you a better golfer or a better programmer or a better employee or something like that, then what happens is
You get benefits from criticism, which highlights how abusive your parents were in their, quote, criticism, right?
Yeah, there are so many examples!
Where do I even start with how wrong you are, right?
Can we just make sure I get, uh, get your comments here?
So, um,
This guy had a problem with his life in that he had two moms and three kids, wasn't married, had broken up at the last, so he'd messed up his marriages.
So, rather than say, gee, what have I done wrong in terms of my marriages and relationships?
He says, well, you know, clearly evolution has programmed us to find new partners every seven years, right?
Now,
The reason it's a cycle is because you can't self-correct, your mistakes tend to escalate and then you end up justifying.
Right?
So because you can't correct yourself, you can't self-correct because you resist all criticism, all feedback, you can't self-correct so your mistakes accumulate to the point where they're so bad all you can do is justify.
I hope that
I hope that makes sense.
And once people are in the justification phase... What can they do?
What can they do?
They can't fix it.
So, this guy had problems in his relationships.
He has problems in his relationships, but because he won't admit fault, those problems tend to accumulate and escalate to the point where he's got three kids by two different women, none of whom of which he's together with.
And he's, of course, made mistakes with his kids and this and that and the other, right?
So at this point, what's he going to do?
He's in his fifties, right?
What's he going to do?
I can't picture
What it would be like, like I'm 57 years old, I'm gonna be 58 this year, right?
I can't picture, and I put this out there as a massive kaleidoscopic warning in the sky, like the northern lights of thou shalt not pass.
I can't imagine what it would be like to look back at my life and see huge mistake after huge mistake after huge mistake.
Huge mistake after huge mistake after huge mistake, which you're too late to correct.
Which you're too late to correct.
I mean, the call-in show I did today with the caller, you know, I'm always very keen to do what I can to save marriages and so on, but you could hear it in his voice towards the end of it.
It's like, yeah, it's been 15 years.
And she still fights so bad that she cries for three days straight.
That was remarkable how you were able to find the projection connection in the conversation in real time, how he was complaining about something he was doing.
Yes, well it takes a certain real lack of blindness for people.
This is a guy who complained that he was talking to this woman who just came up with her own nonsense theories and never took any feedback.
Her own mystical theories and then he gave me all these nonsense theories and never took any feedback.
So, he's in the justification phase.
When people make enough mistakes, they end up in the justification phase, and the justification phase is a one-way street from which nobody returns.
The justification phase, where people are no longer even accepting criticism, all they're doing is justifying.
So when he's telling me all this story about how it's perfectly natural that you have multiple mothers for your children and that's evolution, it's like, that's nothing to do with reality, right?
It has nothing to do with reality.
He's in the justification phase.
In that his conscience is still deep down bothering him, but he's burying it in verbiage, right?
I don't mean to keep going on about this, but what is a good way to handle people like this, and particularly when they sprinkle in admittances throughout?
What do you mean handle?
Why would you want to handle anyone like this?
Why would you want to?
It's not your job to fix people.
It's not your job to handle people.
It's not your job to awaken people.
It's not your job to rescue people who've made massive errors over the course of their life.
What do you mean by handle people like this?
And I don't mean this in any hostile way.
I'm genuinely curious.
I handle them because I find it interesting and fun and people pay me to do it.
I mean, in a way, right?
And I appreciate you guys' tips and support tonight.
Thank you.
But why would you want to handle anyone like this?
You can't undo time.
You can't undo time.
I remember reading a guy quitting smoking in his fifties and he went to his doctor, he'd been a chain smoker forever, and his doctor said, yeah, I mean, it's better for you to quit.
Probably isn't going to do much to save your health, but it's better to quit.
So just move on.
I'm talking about work or in an involuntary environment.
Um, well, let me ask you this.
I'm fairly skilled in this area.
Did I fix him?
Did I heal him or bring him to the light of reality, reason and truth?
I don't think so.
And I wouldn't put any money on that happening.
Yeah, I mean, uh, why?
I mean, what's he gonna do?
So, he's in his fifties, which means his first two kids are probably adults by now.
Light a spark, I hope?
No!
No, don't hope!
Oh, hope will suck you down!
Hope is a whirlpool that takes down entire navies!
No!
No spark!
No lighting!
You didn't heal him, you did shine a giant beacon for those who haven't messed up.
I can't heal him.
Why would you feel bad for this guy?
I feel bad for his kids.
But he made his choices, he could have been self-critical, but instead he fights with me.
He was fighting with me.
Which is fine, I don't care that he fights with me, but I try not to argue with people who are kind of real experts in what they do, right?
I mean, can you imagine?
Imagine me fighting with some physicist in his prime, like some world-famous physicist, and I don't really know anything about physics in particular, and I'm fighting with the guy.
Can you imagine?
Why would you have any sympathy for him?
I have sympathy for his kids, but not for him.
Why would you feel bad for him?
But don't!
Don't!
I'm just gonna light a spark!
I'm just... No!
No!
Save your energies for people who listen!
Felt bad in the sense that he has resorted to finding justifications.
Why would you feel bad for the fact that someone has resorted to finding justifications?
That's the entire result of him not self-criticizing earlier.
Yeah, it's great for me, really motivating me to hold myself even more accountable, especially the examples after, working out, not yelling, etc.
You know, when I mess up, who's responsible?
Me!
I'm responsible!
I'm responsible.
But why would... I'm just... When somebody has messed up and they're experiencing the consequences of their own choices and decisions, I'm trying to understand this feeling bad for people.
I mean, I have sympathy for people who have been victims of others.
I have sympathy of people who were done unto.
I have sympathy for people who accidentally got ill or got hit by a bus through no fault of their own or...
But for people who've messed up their lives voluntarily and by choice and this guy's been as I call it said if nine years you could have called me nine years ago you could have called me when it would have done your kids some good and you could have stayed together with their first mom nine years ago and he's avoided he avoided doing that why on earth would you have pity when somebody could have solved these problems with a two-hour phone call at any point over nine years and chose not to
And then when he does finally get on the call, he tries to baffle, gab, and bullshit me into justifying his bad decisions.
I mean... I'm... Why?
Save your pity for victims!
Save your pity for victims!
Don't pity people who did it to themselves!
Not a strong bad feeling, just... Like, yikes, how do you end up like that in middle age?
Now you're just gaslighting me, bro.
Now you're just gaslighting me.
No, it's not a bad feeling.
It's not this.
You want to hold on to this feeling.
Because you've got someone in your life you don't want to hold accountable.
You've got someone in your life you don't want to hold accountable and you're substituting pity for justice.
Don't talk to me about it's about this guy and don't gaslight me and dodge and do all of this twisty turny crap.
Come on, man.
Let's just be honest, man to man.
You got someone in your life who fucked up their life.
You don't want to hold them accountable.
So you're substituting pity for justice.
Sympathy for self-ownership.
It's common.
We're all tempted.
We all do it, but be honest about it.
Should I feel sorry for my mother or my father?
No.
They did it to themselves.
They did it to me.
They did it to themselves.
Feeling bad sounds like a potential in yourself.
Identify and rip it out.
Feeling bad is the precursor to excusing yourself.
Save your sympathy for people who've rationally earned it.
In my opinion, people like this want you to join them and agree with their own particular flavor of insanity.
They can spread their ideas if you believe that they actually think what they say is true.
We've seen that they don't even believe that what they are saying, right?
Yeah, I mean, the guy was saying obvious nonsense, right?
Obvious nonsense, like evolutionarily you don't need to be an anthropologist, you don't need to be like, I don't know, Kathy Reichs to figure out that there was nonsense, but he just wouldn't take any feedback.
I just kept moving the goalposts and changing his story and kind of insulting me by, it's not that simple and this thing.
Okay.
How can you pull yourself out of the doghouse properly when you mess up badly?
You don't blame anyone.
As an adult, as a kid, right?
You, right?
But you don't blame, you don't blame others.
You don't blame, you don't blame evolutionary pressures as to why you have three kids by two different women, neither of whom you're together with anymore.
You don't blame, wow, that's evolution, man.
That's how we're programmed.
It's in my DNA and blah, right?
You don't correct your children's behavior while giving endless excuses for yourself.
You just don't be a bottomless hypocrite.
And everybody messes up.
Everybody messes up.
It's no big deal.
It's life.
We feel sorry for these people because we have people like this in our lives or want someone to excuse our bad behavior or feel sorry for us.
Yeah.
Messing up isn't the issue.
Everybody messes up.
It's all the excuses and the, you know, but this, but that, and right.
Yeah.
Just take ownership, right?
I mean, was I unjustly treated in my deplatforming?
I was.
Whose responsibility was it?
It was mine.
This goes back to Gonzalo Lira, right?
Was he unjustly treated in the prison?
I have no doubt that he was.
Why was he there in the country to begin with?
200% accountability, to me, is the only way to live.
200% accountability is the only way to live.
It's the only way you can be sure you're not messing up, or when you do mess up, that you course correct.
But people who've... I feel sorry for the guy's kids.
They didn't choose that.
But feeling pity for a guy who's created two single mothers?
Come on.
There's 150% last time.
Yes, but there's been inflation.
I mean, it just is.
It just is.
When you mess up, how do you not hold yourself in contempt too harshly?
You listen to yourself.
If you're holding yourself in contempt, maybe you're worthy of it.
Maybe you deserve being held in contempt.
I don't know.
There's nothing wrong with holding yourself in contempt, because that's your last desperate chance to jump the tracks before you end up into one-way ticket self-justification land.
You know, oh, don't be too harsh with yourself.
Why not?
Maybe you should be harsh with yourself.
I don't know.
Maybe you have been a jerk.
I know I have been.
Right?
Maybe you should be harsh with you.
Oh, so delicate.
You're going to do it just the right way.
Right?
Robert Barnes said a while back that he told Gonzalo to leave.
Yeah.
I mean, going to a warzone and expecting free speech, I don't... I feel this is the livestream marathon, going till 1am together.
I think not.
I'm getting kind of tired, but definitely a very enjoyable livestream, and I really appreciate these sort of spontaneous ones where kind of cool stuff happens in this kind of way.
All right, speaking of which, any last questions, comments, tips?
I had a feeling that call would come up again because it was it was a kind of a ninja move to notice him doing this stuff in real time and to call them on it.
And I do have this weird ability to call people on stuff in a way that doesn't directly trigger them.
It's just like the defensive whisperer.
Well, yeah, it's the old question of, like, okay, you have to organize all your life decisions by how it affects your kids.
I posted a dream in the recent Locals' Questions post.
Will you do a video on it?
I did see that, and I will.
I will.
If you'd rather do a call-in, that's fine with me, too.
Call in at freedomain.com.
I'll just put that here.
I mean... .com.
Yeah, call in at freedomain.com.
You guys get priorities, particularly as donors and all of that.
Really happy to be here.
Thank you for answering my question.
Really, really appreciate the value, particularly with practical examples.
You are welcome, my friend.
And thank you guys for, like, such incredibly great, wonderful, and brilliant questions.
Like, how long until you add Stefan Bolling to the History of Philosophers series?
That's a very interesting question.
Thanks, Steph.
I needed the stream during my shit.
Sorry, shift.
I was just kidding.
I read that right.
Uh, what's it?
What women talk about when they're alone?
It's like... Man, it was like eight inches.
Eight inches!
Did it hurt?
Yeah, a little.
Was it flushable?
I like that idea.
I have mornings open, so I'll DM it.
Yeah, please do.
You followed up to one of my calls a couple years ago and mentioned I was trapping you rough at first, but it was such a good thing.
In the future, I'll be able to tell my children I was on live with the greatest philosopher of all time.
Philosopher's chair.
Boy, wouldn't that be cool?
Greatest philosopher of all time.
We'll see.
Look, I'm telling you straight up, that's what I aim for.
I mean, that's what I aim for every day.
I aim to be the greatest.
Why would you want to aim less?
Why would you want to do anything less?
Aim for the best.
Maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't, but you sure as hell won't get it if you don't aim.
Did you see the video of that woman who said she only brings looks at the table?
Oh, the woman who's like, yeah, I got an expensive body, got a $180,000, $150,000 body, I've had four BBLs, no, five BBLs, two breast augmentations, I got the buccal fat sucked out of my cheeks, and I'm looking for a guy making a hundred million dollars or more.
Yeah.
Well, look, she's frank, she's honest, she's selling herself like a piece of kibasa, like a piece of meat.
Okay.
But a guy who's already masculine that way is not going to want a woman with that amount of masculine energy.
He's just not.
Women make this sort of mistake, and men do too.
Women make this mistake more.
They say, well I want a really assertive masculine man, so I'm going to be a girl boss.
Because what I want is what a man will want.
No?
Would you want a feminine man?
A man who bats his eyes and bows his head and defers and, I don't know, whatever you want, honey.
And would you want a sort of submissive, hyper-feminine man?
And they'd be like, ew, no!
And I'm like, well, hello, welcome to you bringing all of this butch masculine energy to a man's life!
It's just strange.
Was the call-in about the boyfriend who was having thoughts about being violent to his girlfriend released for premium?
Yes.
Why would I buy a 150k body for a hundred million?
That's quite right.
Oh, why would you take money that you can put in Bitcoin and have appreciate, I believe, over time and put it into a woman's looks that it's a depreciating asset?
A depreciating asset.
Bimbo Trophy Wives are gross.
Yeah, I mean, it's not a great book, but it's bits of it that are well written by Tom Wolfe called a man in full about the trophy wives and all of that.
It's crazy.
Crazy.
Alright, any last tips for tonight?
No rush, no pressure, no have to?
It's recent, it just went out over the last week or ten days I think.
Just look for anger or rage in the title.
I'm sure that people will, you'll find it pretty easily.
Got pretty much, I think it really was the worst childhood I ever heard on the show, and I've been keeping the show at bay for three years almost.
It's the worst childhood I ever heard, I ever heard, in the show, and three years I think it's going to go out.
YourTipFriday, thank you Simph, I appreciate that, that's very, very kind.
Very, very kind.
I'm out of money.
Went big paying moving expenses this month.
Hey, congratulations!
I assume the move is a good thing and don't worry about it at all.
I hope you enjoy the show and really, really do appreciate it.
Listen, your support here is just being here.
The tips are really appreciated.
The support is just being here, listening to the show, having questions and all of that, so.
Brief summary of that childhood.
Physically tortured, set on fire, like you just, you couldn't believe what happened to this poor young man.
The honesty in Collins makes all the difference.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I think it's nice to get the example of directness without abuse, of assertiveness without aggression.
I think it's helpful.
We'll prioritize.
Yeah, we should get that out.
All right.
Thanks everyone so much.
Have yourselves a gorgeous, wonderful, sexy, fantastic evening.
