Wednesday Night Live 5 June 2024In this episode of Wednesday Night Live, we discuss challenges with bureaucracy, societal norms, and ethics like assisted suicide. We emphasize the importance of listener support and authenticity in engagements. Encouraging donation support, we foster genuine connections and exploration of diverse topics.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Superman never made any money saving the world from Solomon Grundy.
That guy's got a deep voice.
All right.
Well, oh, so a little close there.
Let me, whoops, whoops, let me not go down.
Let me back up just a smidge.
Bring the marquee in a little bit here.
That seems a little, that's a little too far away, can't reach the mouse.
There we go.
Let's find that nice little midpoint.
Been working a smidge on the old white balance.
And I think we're good to go.
All right, so we had a question, couple of questions.
Hey Steph, I won't be able to join the live stream tonight, but I'm looking forward to listening to the recording tomorrow.
It's okay, we can wait.
If I may leave a question, I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on the origin of learned helplessness and how to differentiate it from a lack of drive or mere procrastination.
As ever, your insight is most appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your consideration and warm regards.
Well, thank you.
Joe, that's very kind.
Thank you very much.
Do you remember soap bars being bigger as a kid?
I don't.
I have giant organic soap bars that are roughly the size of half the Titanic, or at least what the Titanic ran into.
It could be that soap bars were bigger when you were a kid, or it could be that being a kid, you were smaller.
But yeah, shrinkflation is of course a real, a real thing.
All right, so learned helplessness.
Very interesting.
Do you have, hit me with the why, if you have issues with procrastination, lack of drive, inertia, I won't say laziness because that would be to throw a moral judgment into something, and you can of course just remind, you can support the show here, you can of course support at freedomain.com slash donate.
freedomain.com slash donate.
Yeah, you do.
I mean, everyone does to some degree or another, and there's nothing wrong with procrastination.
Sometimes procrastination is a sign of wisdom.
Have you ever had it where there's something that you really, really feel you need to do, gosh, it's just so got to get done, you can barely stand it, and then you kind of put it off, you kind of put it off, and poof!
The need for it goes away.
Oh, I've got this thing to do.
I've got this thing to do.
I remember in the business world, I had a report that a salesman was demanding that I produce.
And then the salesman got, I put it off and I put it off and then the salesman got fired and I never had to produce that report.
Oh, delightful.
See, everybody looks at the downsides of procrastination, but sometimes procrastination is your very best friend in the known universe and so on, right?
So, just wanted to mention that there's an upside to it.
There's an upside to it as well.
All right.
What the heck?
Sorry, I got something popping up here on the screen.
All right.
Uh, no, you really can use the keyboard.
I promise you.
Okay.
That's just fine.
Close that.
There's something in windows where you get to pop something up and it, it, it shows over everything else.
And it's like the worst programmers in the world who use that, you know, pop up and it's no matter what it stays up and they're in install programs that do that to some virus protectors.
Hey, I got the system message.
That's going to be up for about half an hour till I'm done my task.
And if you don't have two monitors and drag it to the useless other monitor, well, sucks to be you.
This is what you're looking at!
It's like this narcissist, look at me, look at me!
So yeah, learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness.
Wait long enough, the marriage.
Wait long enough, the universe will die of heat death.
How urgent can it be?
Yes, I hear what you're saying.
I hear what you're saying.
You love my show on procrastination?
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
You should definitely.
So we are, James, is that, that's not ready, is it?
Is it ready?
The install version of various aspects of the show?
So we're working on
You can change your website so that a page on your website can be installed as a standalone app.
It's very cool.
You can pin it to your taskbar, you open it up, and it's just like... It's just like a Windows app.
So we're working on that for you all, and FGR Podcast is going to be one of the ones.
We also did release, of course... Oh, I'm sure you know about this.
We did, of course, release
The Bitcoin AI.
Yeah, so it's like a phone app, but it's for searching and all of that kind of stuff.
So, uh, I don't know about a free domain phone app.
It was seen as that just countdown to banning and all of that.
So yeah, we've got the beta of FPR podcasts, so you can have as a standalone app searching for shows and listening to shows, uh, and all of that you don't need.
And it works pretty well, even on, um, mobile systems and all of that.
So it's very cool.
We'll get that out over the next couple of days.
Okay, so, The Origins of Learned Helplessness.
Right.
Well, it's right there in the title.
That if you learn that you're helpless,
That's a good thing, right?
So, if some guy is locked in prison, he doesn't keep beating his head against the bars because he can't get through the bars.
He's learned that he's helpless to get through the bars.
He doesn't try and pick the lock with his own earlobe because the lock is immune to earlobe picking.
So, if you learn you're helpless, that's a good thing.
So the origins of learned helplessness are when every effort of your will... Oh, get ready, get ready.
I got a lot of passion about this topic.
The origin of learned helplessness is every aspect of your will is thwarted!
It's like fencing with a robot with a thousand sword arms.
Whatever you try to do, blocked!
Blocked.
You have this when you're dealing with bureaucracy.
Want to do something?
Blocked.
I remember talking to a builder once who was saying, a house builder, and he was saying, you know, the problem is the guy comes over and he's like, he measures something.
Oh, this is like half an inch too far away.
You got to like, just goes on and on.
You want to do?
Blocked.
You want to open a bank?
Blocked.
You want to start a competing business?
Blocked.
You want to start your own thing?
Blocked.
The block initiative matrix of humanity is like a law of fucking gravity.
It's like a law of physics.
When you're a kid, you want to do something, blocked is society's most foundational response at the moment.
Urge, kill.
Urge, kill.
Kill the urge, kill the drive, kill the independence, kill the thought, kill the preference.
Whatever you suggest,
Yes, but.
Yes, but.
Oh, yes, but.
Yeah, yeah, but.
But, yes, but.
But, you have to remember this, and there is that, and this person doesn't have enough, and there's this legal implication that we could get sued, and there's all this bureaucracy, you gotta fill out this paperwork, and block, block, block!
God, I hate it!
I can't even tell you how much I hate the urge to block all initiative that seems so embedded in the petty remnants of our former intellectual glory.
It's just... horrible.
It's just... horrible.
So, learned helplessness.
You are helpless.
And...
Society as a whole, to the young, is about blocking their instincts, their passions, and their urges to the point where they can't get anything done, they give up, and then what do you call them?
Oh, you're just so lazy, and you seem to lack all of this initiative, and you just don't have any drive, and oh, you have such a problem with procrastination, there must be something wrong with you, it's very strange, I don't understand it at all.
Well, maybe if you didn't block everything that children wanted to do, they wouldn't end up going, fuck it, I'm just gonna scroll.
Just maybe.
Just a possibility.
I'm just throwing this out there as a kind of crazy maybe that we could contemplate.
So, yeah.
Initiative is
Killed on array.
Oh, do you want a lemonade stand?
Well, but, you know, health inspections and the glasses might not be clean and the cops could be called and there could be a problem and you don't have a permit.
Oh, it's horrible.
You know, you have kids and they're like, hey, I just want to sell something.
Well, it's not that simple.
I want to grow up, I want to build a great product, and I want to sell that product!
Oh, it's not that simple.
There's 700,000 pages of the Federal Registry you've got to understand, and then there's all of these tax laws!
And then, oh, there's cross-border issues, and you gotta, oh, I don't know.
Oh, God, forget it.
Oh, forget it.
It's like walking in quicksand.
It's like walking into ever-deepening quicksand.
Yeah.
Oh, do you want to sell something?
Ooh, inspections and permits and paperwork and taxes.
Oh my God.
The amount of human energy and achievement.
That the slow fire, the slow starting fire of which is peed on by paperwork into bureaucracy from a great height.
What's that old saying about French waiters?
They treat you like they're peeing on you from a great height.
Well, that's any kind of urge.
I mean, I remember many years ago we used to go to this petting zoo, my daughter and I. We'd go to this petting zoo
And it was great fun.
You could pick up the goats and feed the goats.
You could actually pick the goats up and they loved eating from the trees.
You'd pick the goats up and you'd feed them from the trees and it was just a blast, right?
And, uh, what happened?
Ooh, sorry, you can't touch the goats anymore.
Oh, why not?
Well, a goat jumped up on some kid, he got a scratch and we got sued, so now no- Oh, no, sorry, all the fun and joy and spontaneity of existence gets sucked out!
And there is, and I don't quite understand it, or even remotely understand it, but there's a kind of strange, sick, sadistic pleasure that midwits get from stopping anybody from doing any fucking thing.
You ever notice that?
It's just this, mm, I'm sorry, but I don't really think, oh, there's just, oh, you can see that nipple-hardening sadist pleasure that comes from just blocking all initiative and energy.
And yeah, my daughter's like, oh, it'd be great to make something and sell something.
I'm like, I hate to tell you, man, but there's going to be about 6,000 people who are going to stop you from doing that.
Sorry.
I'd love for you to do that.
And we can certainly look into it, but you know, these kinds of things, right?
So yeah, the block.
I mean, this is why we're not wealthy, right?
This is why we're not particularly wealthy society.
Society is just, oh, but, and it's, it's, it's, you know, a little bit.
Bureaucracy and female voting kind of go hand in hand, right?
Because women are all like, well, but then, oh, it could be, there could be risk.
There could be a danger.
Maybe not.
Right?
Whereas men are like, fuck it.
Let's try.
Let's see how it shakes out.
Let's give it a go.
Come on, let's do it.
I accept the risk.
And I understand that, because, you know, women have to take care of the wounded.
So I understand why they might be just a smidge hesitant, but it is pretty appalling how all of this stuff plays out.
Yeah, but... You wanna sell your pictures on school property?
No, I'm sorry, but...
I mean, I said this story many years ago, but we used to, when I was in my teens, we played soccer.
Like every Sunday, we played soccer on the school soccer pitch.
Right?
And then what happened, right?
Well, oh yeah, you're going to have to book this ahead of time.
And you know, you got to, while school's in, you got to go fill out this form and liability.
You got to pay.
Oh, and by the way, now you have to pay, you know, it was 10 bucks.
And it's like, you know, there's, there's 20 people playing.
Everyone's got to bring their money.
Someone's got to collect it.
People forget their money.
And it's just like, they don't say no.
They just slowly build the barriers until you just run out of juice.
Right?
I'm not saying no, I'm just saying kaboom!
Here's the sack of paperwork you're going to have to fill out to use property you've been using for the last four years straight.
And it's like, well, but there's a place across town you could go.
It's like, we're not going to spend an hour on the bus to play two hours of soccer, man.
That's two hours.
A bus trip, one hour each way.
And it's just like, well, it's not no.
And it's like, well, why did things change?
Nobody knows.
Who put this in?
Nobody knows.
Why is it there?
Nobody knows.
So you can't stop bullying in the school, but... but what you can do is you can go and police kids who might be having fun on the soccer field on a Sunday when there's no school and nobody cares and it's not being used anyway.
So we just stop playing.
We just stop playing.
We're not saying no, we're just gonna keep adding
Difficulties, and problems, and challenges, and paper, and costs, and... You know, more liberties are lost through incrementalism than tyranny, right?
The slow paper cuts that end up beheading your very initiative.
Ah, that's rough.
So we found another place where we could play baseball, and we switched to baseball.
Until... about a year later.
The asshole shows up.
Isn't that always the case?
With everything you want to do, at some point, the asshole shows up.
Well, guys, you know, I got to call you over here.
This is school property and you're really not allowed to be here.
And if you want to play, you're going to have to fill out a form ahead of time.
And then you're going to have to do this and you got to phone this person and it might, it's going to cost this and you know, and it's just like,
Oh, God.
We're not saying no, it's just that, uh, you know, and you could tell, you know, the asshole shows up.
You get that knock, you get that guy, he's walking up, you know, and you can just tell from that slow, ponderous, fat-ass, officious walk, they're just, they're just walking up and they're just like, oh, is there?
What's that I smell?
What the hell's that I smell?
Yeah!
I think I smell child happiness.
Fuck, we can't be having that.
Oh no.
No, that's bad.
We're smelling child happiness.
Children are out there in the sun exercising, laughing, having fun.
No.
No.
Nope, nope, nope.
I'm so sorry, but for the interests of safety, for the interests of protection, for the interests of respect of property, well, I'm afraid...
I don't know, how safe is it when it's too impossible to exercise anywhere so kids just give up and stay home on video game consoles?
Oh, look how safe everything has become!
The children are now fat!
Mmm, tasty safety for the win.
Yeah, the asshole always shows up.
You can't do it, right?
Hey, I don't make the rules!
Blah blah blah blah blah, right?
Well, of course I know that your parents have paid all the taxes in the known universe for this field so that their children can enjoy it.
But I'm sorry, funny story, the kids can't enjoy it.
No, they can't do it.
Can't do it.
Can't do it.
Do you have people like that?
Hey, keep it down over there!
You're too happy, right?
Somebody says, I'm procrastinating on international travel right now due to government requirements and TSA, etc.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
The asshole always shows up.
It's like the, uh, HOAs, one of the HOAs.
Some guy goes and moves to New Hampshire because he wants to be free of bureaucratic control and he buys a house in a neighborhood and then suddenly it's like, what the fuck is that?
What is that weird poison fanged raptor head showing up around the hedge?
Oh, it's your HOA representative.
Excellent.
Thank you, Anthony.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate the tip.
Thank you.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Yeah.
Yep, yep, yep.
Always someone who shows up.
And they love it.
You can tell.
They're just, yeah, sorry, kids.
You know, I'm so sorry.
But you know, you're just right.
I get it.
You were excluded from any of the jocks.
Any of the sports kids hated you.
So now you get to get your own back on the next generation of jocks and sports kids because you were excluded and you get to stop us doing our shit.
How to maintain children's enthusiasm as a parent then?
Well, break some fucking rules.
And, uh, you know, do the stuff where there isn't regulation, right?
Donated on FDR.
Donated last night.
Thank you!
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, I'm very sad.
Very, very, very sad.
Yeah, the assholes always show up.
Oh, you know, we're just being careful and you've got a this and... Responsible and property and respect and it's just all of these keywords.
Yeah, oh my god, that kid's playing alone at the playground!
We gotta stop that!
We gotta stop that!
Children are having fun.
Unsupervised.
They may even be talking.
Sedition.
You speak treason!
Fluently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's wretched.
Children are enjoying themselves.
In an uncontrolled fashion.
We must slowly squeeze the jugular of said children until they give up the ghost and stay home.
See, you know, you remember when everyone was so... because everyone's so concerned about children's safety, you see?
Everyone's so concerned about children's safety that they abso-fucking-lutely made sure that they were dealing with objective, verified science when locking children at home, often with abusers, and forcing them into masks when out in public.
Over the course of the pandemic.
You see, it's all about just taking care of the children.
That's why, you see, there's no such thing as shitty schools.
There's no such thing as a national debt.
There's no such thing as masking children, delaying their language acquisition, sometimes permanently.
Oh, and by the way, kids, we so care about you.
Oh, sorry about the kids who graduated over the last couple of years, but employers will never, ever, ever trust you.
Yes.
Yes, I'm sorry, we just... Because, you know, you were home for a couple of years and you were using ChatGPT to cheat on your tests and exams.
So we don't know whether you know anything other than how to use ChatGPT to cheat on your exams.
We don't know if you really showed up.
We don't know if you were listening.
We don't know if you were multitasking.
We don't know if you were playing a little video game right below the webcam.
We don't know.
Sorry kids, we can't trust whether you know anything.
Because we just care about you so much.
Yeah, then they'll complain that the kids aren't doing anything, yeah.
Parents banned me from the house in summer between lunch and dinner.
I remember there was a miserable old lady always trying to stop us from playing baseball and football in the courtyard.
Yeah.
So there is nothing more enraging to the ears of a sadist than the sounds of happy children.
Oh, you just tipped?
Thank you.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Yeah.
Nothing, nothing more enraging to the ears of a sadist than the sounds of happy children.
It's too loud.
So annoying.
Why don't they shut up?
These happy children.
Somebody says, I was riding my bike on a trail next to a canal and came by some kids playing slash fishing in the water.
I stopped my bike to watch and they turned to me and I could tell they all slightly tensed up ready to be told off, so I gave them a thumbs up to let them know I wasn't a grouch.
I could see them tense from 50 feet away.
Yeah, sad, isn't it?
Well, you can't do that here!
No, no.
No, you can't do that here.
You can't do that there.
You can't here.
You can't play unsupervised.
You can't have a permit here.
I mean, this is weird thing.
You know, someone's just going to march up to you and tell you, you can't do stuff when you're a kid.
And this is, this is different from when I was a little kid.
When I was a little kid, we just roamed everywhere.
We roamed everywhere from the age of four or five onwards.
I was just roaming all over London.
And the funny thing is, of course, some people have rules.
Other people have no rules whatsoever.
Right?
You can't fly untested and unvaccinated.
You can't do this.
Well, people pouring in from the southern border, flying all over the place.
They're not even tested.
Right.
Wild.
Wild stuff.
Tragically, uh, tragically inevitable.
El Salvador has a program where they're giving citizenship to entrepreneurs and specifically mentioned philosophers.
Would you move?
I mean, never say never, but nothing is imminent.
Nothing is imminent.
They have to see our papers.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really, uh, the suppression of child joy is foundational to tyrannical adulthood.
How dare you be happy when I fucked up my life?
How dare you have potential?
How dare you have joy?
The presence of joy is like sunlight to the vampires of misery.
They must crush it, because it reminds them how badly they've screwed up.
It's just appalling.
Thank you, Lurid, by the way.
Sorry, I forgot to say that at the beginning, so... So, a lack of drive or mere procrastination.
Learned helplessness, how to differentiate it from a lack of drive or mere procrastination.
Okay.
How do you escape a bad childhood?
How does a bad childhood end?
When does a bad childhood end?
Spoiler!
It's not when you turn 18.
When does a bad childhood end?
Please to tell.
When does a bad childhood end?
What is the last day of a bad childhood?
Well, the last day of a bad childhood
is when the effects of that childhood cease.
And the effects of your bad childhood cease, as you're right, Zim, the effects of your bad childhood cease when you cease using your bad childhood as an excuse.
The real abuse is the excuses it generates, right?
That's the real abuse, is the excuses it generates.
Because the greatest drug for the victims of abuse, the greatest destructive drug for the victims of abuse, is self-pity.
Trust me.
Trust me on this, brothers and sisters.
Oh, I know.
I feel it.
I sense it.
I breathe it.
I lived it.
Self-pity.
I had it hard as a kid.
Don't expect too much.
I had it hard as a kid.
Of course, I'm going to be volatile.
I had it hard as a kid.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Therefore, right?
Oh, self-pity.
The ultimate drug.
Especially when you've been really badly wronged as a helpless child.
Sucking on that giant space titty of infinite self-pity is a drink that never slakes your thirst.
Oh self-pity!
We all have been there if we've had bad childhoods and we all may in fact know somebody who is still there.
You have to let go of the self-pity.
The self-pity is how they get you.
Because the self-pity causes you to lower your standards.
And if you lower your standards, the bad behaviors continue.
And that's very bad as a whole.
Very bad as a whole.
Somebody says, I had a recital and I had to tell a young student not to touch the inside of a brand new 9-foot Steinway Model D that was rented out, value of about $400,000.
Am I the asshole?
What are you talking about?
That's your property, at least as you rent it.
It's your property.
And you're telling somebody not to touch your property that's very expensive and easy to damage.
I don't see how that makes you the asshole at all.
It makes the kid a little bit of a...
Mildly negative person to touch stuff without permission, right?
So that's sort of a badly raised... A badly raised kid.
Oh, I say, that color looks vaguely human now.
I don't look... I don't look nuclear.
You can still see my nose.
I haven't been totally ghouled.
Ah, fallout.
Boy meets ghoul.
All right.
So... Yeah.
So when do you say?
No more excuses.
When you see yourself as an equal to your parents.
Oh God.
Maybe.
I never wanted to see myself as an equal to my parents.
When you stop the cycle and peacefully parent your kids.
No, you can end a bad childhood before you become a parent.
When you quit politics.
Yeah, maybe.
When you reclaim your emotions from childhood.
When you acknowledge the wrong that was done.
First day of a good adulthood.
I'm not equal to my parents.
I choose to be moral.
Yeah.
So.
If you learned helplessness as a child, and we do in general, because we are helpless, right?
We are.
We are helpless as children.
We can't control what they teach us in school.
We can't control what goes on usually within the home.
We can't control any of this stuff.
We can't control our food intake, we often can't control our sleep schedules.
I mean, I remember that as a kid, my mom would, you know, be loud and she actually had an electric typewriter in my room and when she used to be writing her endless legal crap, you know, just typing away in the middle of the night and I couldn't get any sleep and so on, right?
And so I wasn't even really in control of my own sleep schedule.
And then in the morning she'd be like, she's one of these people when she had a job when I was in England, she'd like run up and down these wooden floors with her heels and she'd forget something, run back like this giant ant with tap shoes on its feet going up and down the corridor on cocaine.
It's just really not in control of your own sleep schedule.
I know that was the case in boarding school as well.
Basically, it was the army with slightly less sports.
Learned helplessness is valid.
It's valid, right?
So, when you realize everything that was taken from you as a child and you get angry about it, then you find your energy, right?
You find your energy.
But you have to get angry at what was wrong in order to reject that mindset and move on.
All right.
Let's see.
Somebody says, last year I helped a teen take the regular four-mile trail back to the bottom of the mountain after he'd spent two days climbing straight up the mountain, completely bypassing the normal trail routes.
I told him it's nice to see young men being adventurous.
However, from overhearing him calling his parents, it seemed like he was going to get grounded as soon as he got home.
Oh, come on!
What's it, uh, Brad Pitt's character in that bizarre alternate dimension Nazi movie, Inglorious Bastards, is like, yeah, I guess I'm going to get chewed out.
I've been chewed out before.
You know, just that way of just taking it.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
I've been chewed out.
I mean, it's worth it, right?
So when I was in grade eight, I was put in a grade 13 writing class.
I think people did recognize a smidge of my language talent and
We went to a bar called The Edge.
And I still, for many years, I kept the newspaper article that said, Rock takes a blow as The Edge closes doors.
I guess they ran out of money many years later.
Not because I just ordered a Coke, but probably related.
So, I went out to, it was my first time going to a bar.
Right?
What was I, 14?
I mean, whatever, right?
So, I was in the bar and I was like, wow, this is it!
This is cool!
I had my Coke and I was in a bar and there were these cool people doing bar things and there was music and it was just really cool!
That was really great.
And then when I got home, my mom cracked me across the face because she didn't know where I was.
I still went to bed with a smile on my face.
Like, come on, give me, give me guys, come on, give me a totally worth it story.
Give me a story.
Which is like, yeah, totally worth it.
That's totally worth it.
That was totally, I got punished.
Totally worth it.
I remember seeing Tom Cochran and Red Ryder at Ontario Place in high school, and my friends and I were all dancing on the seats.
Because you couldn't see, like everyone gets up and if you don't get up you can't see, plus it was fun to dance on the seats.
And I remember the security guys screaming at us, get down, get down!
And I'm like, nope, we're dancing on the seats, too bad.
Too bad.
So long, so long, so long been away.
Boy Inside the Man is a great song.
Great song.
So, what are your totally worth it stories?
Yeah, you got punished.
Yeah, you got in trouble.
Totally worth it.
Totally worth it.
I'm sure everybody has these stories, right?
What was your dad like, Stefan?
Never heard about him.
My father was a geologist, he died several years ago, and he divorced my mother, or she divorced him, I think she divorced him when I was a couple of months old, and her story, I don't know, right, the truth is always tough to know, her story was that my mother was very depressed after giving birth to me and spent several months in a hospital in my
My father came and was staring out the window and said to my mother, I'd rather be fishing.
And apparently that was the last straw.
Who knows?
I mean, I don't know what the truth is.
Everybody involved is crazy and nobody tells the truth, but that's what my mother said.
And so he had his career in Africa, then he retired to Ireland, and I hadn't seen him for probably 25 years before he died.
And he would occasionally contact me, but the conversations were just so blindingly awkward that it was pretty, I wouldn't say unbearable, but it was just like, you know, when the cringe factor in conversation is so high and people are so socially awkward.
He did stiff me once.
I was a broke student and he came to my brother's wedding, then he came to visit me in Montreal when I was going to theatre school, and he forgot his wallet I had to pay for a very expensive dinner, and he never quite got back.
Did you find out how he passed away?
I mean, he was old, so I assumed something, but I don't know what in particular.
For me, kind of a tragic life as a whole.
All right.
But yeah, very well educated and traveled a lot.
And you know, he certainly had some highlights.
He certainly, he wrote a whole biography.
I think I showed up in about half a paragraph of that, like 200 page biography of his life.
And I got a cozy half a paragraph or maybe a paragraph, which, uh, you know, it's just wild.
You know, sometimes people loom so big in your mind and you barely exist for them.
Right.
Strange, but true.
Strange, but true.
It did take me a long time.
You know, I had a sort of tough guy mindset when I was younger of, well, you can't miss what you never had.
And it took me a while to be like, how old was he?
Late 70s, I think?
And he was a pretty fit guy.
You know, he had a pretty good sense of humor at times.
He had this super long pipe.
He had this super long pipe.
And people said, why do you have this long pipe?
And he said, well, my doctor has advised me to stay away from tobacco.
Kind of funny, I think, kind of funny.
But no, he went back to rowing for his university rowing team when he was older, so, you know, pretty hail and hardy.
We played squash when I was younger, when he visited me in Montreal.
I took him to McGill University, we played squash, and it was pretty good.
Pretty good.
Pretty good tennis player.
Pretty athletic.
Gained weight as he aged, as a lot of people do, and I've really vowed to not do that.
I aim to lose at least a pound or two every year.
That's the goal.
Because I just will not.
I will not tub out.
I will not widen out.
I will not fridge out.
Somebody says, after school, I went to a friend's house because I did not want to go home to be hit or yelled at again.
Stayed there until midnight, age seven, and the whole hood was out looking.
Still got my ass whooped, but the look of fear in their faces was totally worth it.
Okay.
Right.
Oh, so you enjoyed the fact that your parents were uncomfortable, not necessarily the thing itself.
Yeah, my dad wrote to me endlessly.
He once said that he collects people through mail, through letter writing.
He collects people the way some people collect postage stamps.
I found that mildly eerie.
But he would write to me endlessly, like a letter a week.
I could never read his handwriting.
Like, it was really tragic.
I honestly, like a tweed-voo second fold was like the South African, these letters, these blue letters that you'd fold over and just mail all at once.
And, you know, he'd be stuck out in the bush and he'd write
these letters and I really couldn't, like it was just such epileptic chicken scratch, I really couldn't puzzle out what the heck it was saying.
But I suppose he enjoyed it.
It's good to know.
I remember that, yeah.
Tweed Voo, second fold.
That was the... Alright.
I was never close to him, and nobody in my family has ever commented on my show, or said anything about it, or, I mean, it doesn't exist.
And nobody changed.
Nobody changed.
Nobody changed after I left my family of origin.
There was never any reconciliation, there was never any reach out, there was never anything like that.
Which is good, because... Which was good.
Alright, let's see here.
Man, it was so annoying, says somebody.
My mom would require me to text her and call her every couple of hours when I went out.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, the women live in desperate fear of the world.
Right.
Most women live in pretty desperate fear of the world, and that...
The fear of the world when manifested through voting and laws creates a situation of fairly rampant paranoia in the world.
And women, you know, imagine going through life, if you're a guy, right?
Imagine going through life in a bad neighborhood half your size with a clear backpack stuffed with cash on your back, right?
You're half your size and you have to wander around this bad neighborhood with all this cash visible to everyone.
You'd be kind of jumpy, right?
Well, women have this fear, right?
The sexual assault, sexual attack, they're carrying something of enormous value between their legs and they go through life pretty nervous.
It's a funny combination of things, right?
It's a funny combination of things because it's nervous of some men but not of others, right?
So, nervous of the men they grew up with for some reason, not nervous of refugees.
I don't understand it, and I probably would go to my grave not understanding it, but it does seem to be a strange but true fact of life and of the world.
Alright, somebody says, I have a question.
It runs deeper than surface-level UPB.
Okay, first of all, there's absolutely nothing surface-level about UPB.
So, I don't really know what you mean.
It runs deeper than surface-level UPB.
UPB is the final, holy grail, secular proof of rational ethics without gods or governments.
So, that's about as deep as things get.
So, I don't know what you mean by it runs deeper than surface-level UPB.
He said the subject of assisted suicide comes to mind with Canada's M.A.I.D.
That's Medically Assisted Death, right?
M.A.I.D.
program.
And the horrific truth of what actually happens is horrific!
Bit tautological, but all that, right?
Uh, they drowned to death while paralyzed.
This was exposed by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Besides that, I wonder if helping someone die say he was terminally ill is actually moral.
It meets UPB standards, at least on the surface.
Can we say someone who wants to die is in a mental state to make a rational choice?
Can we claim the right to overrule their stated preference just because we don't agree with it?
Love to know what the AI bot would make of it and yourself.
Extreme case, but I think a common issue many face.
Thank you, Steph.
Well, you know, in the West as a whole, and not in Canada in particular, but in the West as a whole, the bill for socialized medicine is all coming due.
Right?
The bills for... the waiting lists, you can't get a GP, and without getting a GP you can't get any access to specialists, like healthcare is functionally denied to tens of millions of people throughout the West.
It's not so bad in the States, but in the socialized medicine countries, healthcare is effectively denied to countless people because they just can't get doctors.
So, you know, they have to go to ER, which is crazy, and they have to wait like crazy, and it's absolutely brutal.
Oh, my bride cheated months after marriage.
Small update.
I seem to at least be clean from STD point of view.
Well, that's great.
I was actually just thinking about that today, so I'm very glad for the update.
Thank you.
So yeah, the bill is coming due.
Steph, what do you think of Larkin Rose?
He recently came out with a video criticizing UPB and completely strawmanned it as far as I could tell.
Yeah, he went to jail for quite a long time, as far as I understand it, for not paying his taxes, and he was hoping that he was going to get to present his evidence and give his big speech, and I don't think he got that chance and just went to jail when he had a kid.
So, that didn't seem particularly wise to me, at all.
At all.
So... To talk to my GP on the phone, says someone, I can get one question, maximum five minutes, he can talk in two weeks, yeah?
Yeah, so the bill's coming to you, right?
So this is the problem, is the government programs are an absolute, they're an absolute parallel to what happens with all addictions, right?
So you start taking heroin and you feel fantastic for a while and then it begins to get worse and worse and then you end up in an absolutely terrible situation.
So when you first get a government program, like you have a whole healthcare system that's aligned to the needs of the free market, and it's populated by people who grew up in the free market, and you've got dedicated doctors, they care about their patients, it's all voluntary, it's relatively virtuous, and it's a good thing.
And you socialize it, and you still have all these doctors who care about their patients who are raised in the free market, and then it slowly starts to go out of focus, as all the people who weren't never expecting the free market, don't want the free market, kind of slither in through the medical system, and it just gets worse and worse and worse, gets more and more in debt, and then because people get, quote, free healthcare, their health habits get worse and worse, because, you know, it's like that old Simpsons episode where he gets hit by a car.
It doesn't matter, we're in Canada!
The healthcare is free!
He goes flying through the air or whatever it is, right?
So we're in the, you know, it's like the story of Satan, right?
You sell your soul to Satan and you're happy.
You're gloriously happy for a while.
You get the hit song, you get the movie, you get the career.
You, ooh, right.
Fantastic.
You sell yourself to the sociopaths that run the entertainment industry and you get the high, the high.
And then, oh God, the hollowing out, the emptiness, the repetition, the loss, the catastrophe.
And then you want your soul back, but it's too late.
He's got your soul, he owns you, and you're doomed, right?
So, yeah, we're in the, you know, F-A-F-O, we're in the O, we're find out, we're in the find out part.
So we're in the part where you, um, you pay the price for everything you thought you got for free.
You pay the price.
Now, my conscience is clear because I was telling people about this for 40 years.
So, my conscience is clear.
So, with regards to can someone who wants to die kill themselves?
Or can they get medically assisted suicide?
And this is just a basic property question, right?
It's a basic property question.
I mean, can you destroy your own property?
Of course you can.
Right?
Right?
I got a pair of scissors right here.
You know, for when I need to cut something out of the show.
So I got a pair of scissors right here.
Can I break them?
Can I put them in a vice and break the scissors?
Can I destroy my own property?
Sure.
Well, of course I can.
And do we own ourselves?
Yes, we are our own property.
I mean, stabbing is a form of trespassing, right?
So, we own ourselves.
We are our own property.
We own ourselves and we own the effects of our actions.
Can we destroy our own property?
Sure.
Yes, we can.
So, it's not an outside UPB question.
Am I initiating the use of force if I destroy my own property?
Now I can't destroy your property, so I can't kill you.
Can I, can I steal from myself, right?
Oh, look, I just took my scissors.
Oh, I just, I'm handing it back and forth, right?
Just listening.
Oh, look, I'm stealing my scissors.
Oh, my scissors.
You can't steal from yourself.
Can you assault yourself?
I guess you can punch yourself in the head.
Fight club style, but you don't go to jail, right?
So, I mean, can you rape yourself?
I mean, rape, theft, assault, murder.
So, you can't murder yourself.
That's why we have a different term, right?
So, you can't destroy other people's property, their bodies, their minds, their integrity, right?
If I put my finger inside my mouth, ah, am I invading, right?
If I put my finger in my ear, am I invading?
No, I mean, it's my body, right?
You know, people can touch others.
That's not appropriate.
Touching yourself is, well, you're just a guy and everything itches all the time.
So, this is a UPB question.
Can you destroy your own property?
Yeah.
Are you your own property?
Yes.
Can you destroy yourself?
Yes.
Is it a good idea?
Probably not.
Are there alternatives?
I hope so.
If you see someone, like, you see this video where, you see this on videos, where a golf guy, right, hits the golf ball, hits the golf ball,
And it goes badly, he misses, it shanks, goes into the trees, and he SMASHES his golf clubs on the ground and he breaks and bends them and all of that, right?
Right?
You've seen that, right?
Okay, is that mature?
Nope.
Is he going to jail?
Nope.
Does he have the right to destroy his own property?
Sure he does.
Sure he does.
So does he, somebody, have the right to... Now, nobody can be forced to do that, right?
So if the doctor doesn't want to kill people, then the doctor would never be forced to kill people, obviously, right?
But...
Somebody who says, I remember reading accounts of people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, consistently jumping.
Consistently, everyone who jumped regretted it immediately after jumping.
I prefer the American solution.
Suicide is illegal, but jail time and a $250 fine.
Okay, but, come on.
That's not science.
There are plenty of people who try to kill themselves and still wish that they had died, even if they succeed for some reason, right?
Be very careful.
So for instance, in Catholicism, and of course in lots of flavors of Christianity and other religions, suicide is a sin.
You don't get buried in holy ground because basically your soul and life belongs to God and you can't destroy that which God has created.
And so it's a sin, right?
It's a mortal sin.
You go to hell.
So if you have this kind of stuff, well everybody who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, they regretted it immediately after jumping!
You would get a lot of propaganda about that.
And of course, the other thing too is that this just, sorry, I don't mean to say it's basic thought, but it really is.
If everybody who committed suicide regretted it immediately when they did it, then why wouldn't people try and commit suicide more than once?
And they do.
They certainly do.
So, what happened was you got a data point that was almost certainly propaganda.
It was propaganda.
It's stuck in your head and you think that's everyone, right?
Did Howard Rourke rape Dominique Francois or was there already an established relationship between the two people where Howard and Dominique had a non-verbal romantic understanding of the relationship?
Well, here's the problem.
Right?
Here's the problem.
This is a work of fiction where you get to read people's minds.
Right?
So if a guy goes into a woman's home and has sex with her and she doesn't give explicit consent, but she never considers it rape.
She was excited by it.
She's happy about it.
She had an orgasm and she pursues a relationship and she would never characterize it as rape.
Is it rape?
Like there's no objective stamp that occurs on these interactions.
We wouldn't know.
It was a private moment.
So, if she doesn't consider it rape, she pursues a relationship, she wants to get married, and she would never in a million years press charges against him because she found it very sexually exciting and all of that, right?
Well, if it's not rape to her,
then we're in the situation of consent after the fact.
Now, again, assuming she's not massively traumatized and has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, which she doesn't, right, in the book.
She's a very assertive and dominant character, or, as Ayn Rand said, it is... Dominique Francois is Ayn Rand in a bad mood, on a bad day, right?
So, she did not consider it rape.
She was sexually excited by
the situation.
She pursued a relationship and so on.
So, there's no... Rape is unwanted sexual attention, right?
Unwanted sexual actions.
Now, she did not... not want it after the fact.
And what can I tell you?
I mean, women and rape is wild when it comes to fantasies and so on.
Rape, of course, absolutely one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed, in some ways even worse than murder.
So... Does she call it rape later?
But she doesn't go to the police, she doesn't press charges, she doesn't protect other women from Howard Rourke, she pursues a relationship and they end up married and she's overjoyed.
Right?
She's rising up on the elevator at the end of the book, so.
Why do you think you were drawn so heavily to Ayn Rand's work as opposed to Murray Rothbard?
I didn't know about Murray Rothbard's work.
Remember, this is all pre-internet.
You couldn't find Murray Rothbard in a bookstore.
You could find Ayn Rand in a bookstore.
So, Ayn Rand was trying to go for 50 Shades of Grey level of book sales, right?
So, I didn't come into Murray Rothbard's work until I was in my 30s, I think.
I really had to go, I had to get to the internet to get to Murray Rothbard.
I didn't even really hear about him, and so on.
And of course, Ayn Rand's work is, the fiction aspect of things is very powerful.
It's a very powerful way to communicate.
It's one of the reasons I've worked in novels over the course of my career, is it's a very powerful way to get stories across.
I think Ayn Rand thought that men and women would read her books instead of overwhelmingly men.
I don't know.
I mean, is that confirmed?
I don't know.
I don't think that she would not understand male and female nature to that degree.
Although she did always say that psychology was not her thing, so...
All right, so just a minor nag reminder, you can donate here, you can donate on the app, you can donate at freedomain.com slash donate.
But Ayn Rand had, you know, some particular kinds of kinks herself that were, to me, you know, quite unsavory.
She, of course, was an addict to the speed and upper pills she used to keep her weight down.
She was a nicotine addict.
She had heavy levels of addiction.
She had heavy levels of Old Testament vengeance to her personality, the degree to which she savaged, attacked, and destroyed her own movement because
A relatively young Nathaniel Brandon didn't want to have sex with a woman in her 60s who'd been a lifelong chain smoker.
So...
Is there a crime without a complainant?
This is a sort of foundational question, right?
So, one of the ways that a rational legal system works is no complaint, no crime.
Because a lot of the tyrannies happen when there is no complainant except the state, right?
Yeah, she was not a super big bather later on in her life.
So, I think, you know, this is just something that happens when you get older.
You know, it's funny because, you know, like I'll do these shows in the woods and so on and, you know, I think I look, you know, reasonably decent for my age, you know, sort of 57.
I think I look pretty good.
I've yet to hit that final, you know, face falling Crypt Keeper thing.
But...
There are times as you age, maybe you've seen this with your own parents, they don't look too old, they don't look too old, and then you see them smiling, you know, big smile, full sunshine, you're like, oh, that's old.
Oh, thanks, Kairos, I really, really appreciate that.
Yeah, freedomain.com slash donate is the least cut.
It's the least cut.
So, I remember when I was younger, I dated a woman who was older, and, you know, seeing her big smile on the beach, I'm like, she looked great, she looked fantastic, but then, you know, this is one of the reasons why men have developed the habit of making women smile, because it gives them dopamine, which makes them somewhat addicted to the man, but also, you make a joke so the woman smiles, so you can check how old she actually is, right?
So you can check the
The wrinkles and so on.
Murders accepted, if there's no complainant.
Well, that's, you know, that's absolutely true.
And Douglas, that's a fantastic point.
You're absolutely correct.
Even if some, because normally the complainant is, I came home, my wife is dead, you call the cops, you complain.
But yes, even if it's a homeless person, nobody's complaining, nobody misses, that's still a crime.
So yes, you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
There is the exception, and I appreciate that.
Check your knees, that's a thing too.
Yeah, you check the knees and so on.
I mean, this is the Blanche DuBois thing.
Why are you always in dim lights?
You cover up everything, right?
No reality.
Why do I never see you in the day?
Says Mitch, right?
So, you know, there's this time that's going to happen, right?
And again, you can see this with your parents.
You just look at them like, damn, you old.
When I listened to your call with Nathaniel Brandon, I found myself to be pretty annoyed.
It seemed like he didn't give a shit about what you had to say.
How did you feel about that interview?
Meeting Nathaniel Brandon was quite life-changing for me, and not in a positive way.
So, he came to Toronto, and I was a huge fan of Nathaniel Brandon, read everything that he wrote, did all the exercises, and really, really good stuff.
Thank you, Matt.
I appreciate that.
Really good stuff.
And very important in my sort of self, the psychology of self-esteem to me was, was really a great, a great book.
And, um, the disowned self and, uh, the other things that he was talking about, you know, this thing he says, uh, he's talking to his group patients.
He's saying, um, no one's coming to save you.
And they say, well, you came and he said, yes.
And I came to tell you that nobody's coming to save you.
And so he was good humored and all of that.
And he was talking in Toronto.
I don't even know.
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
Let me just find, I can give you a rough time of when that was.
I was pretty, I was pretty young.
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
When did that come out?
Uh, yeah.
Wikipedia!
Yeah!
When did that come out?
Eh, why does it not say?
Uh, 1994.
It's when it was reviewed, right?
So, 1994.
So, I was pretty young.
I was pretty young.
So, oh, it's not that young.
It says 28, right?
So I went out to see him and he's got this, he's got these pictures, you know, on his, I guess it's like the Tinder thing, he's got these pictures on his books.
Well, yeah, he looks like a good looking guy, good head of hair, nice cheeks and all of that.
And Nathaniel Brandon showed up to give a speech and he looked about 300 pounds.
I don't know, how big did Nathaniel Brandon get?
I mean, he was,
Not exactly lean.
He was not exactly lean.
Does anybody know?
Just if you can kick it in, I would appreciate that if anybody knows.
Like, how much did Nathaniel Brando weigh?
Because he was, like, not quite Marlon Brando territory, but it was pretty bad.
And I remember being kind of surprised at all of that.
Like, why would he be so
Absolutely fat.
I mean, that's kind of like killing yourself.
And it completely restricts what you can do.
And I just was like, holy, he just looked enormous to me.
And the speech was okay.
It wasn't great.
It was okay.
And he had this question like nobody knows.
Why some kids survive their childhoods and end up pretty functional.
They're called the invulnerables or something like that.
Nobody knows, right?
So afterwards, he was hanging around and I went up and I said to him, I said, you know, I have a vague theory about why this might be the case.
You know, when you close a computer and it goes to sleep, that you just kind of shield yourself and you go into dormancy.
And then later you open up and you've survived the damage by going to sleep.
It wasn't some great big theory, but you know, it was something like that.
And he said, uh, he turned to me and he said, uh, Oh, what, uh, what kind of computer do you have?
And I was like, what?
What?
It just seemed so disconnected, so blasé, so uninterested that...
It was strange.
It was a strange moment for me.
And it's sort of one of the things, when I became a bit of a public figure, when people wanted to talk to me, I always wanted to show the maximum respect because, you know, sort of like Robert Smith from The Cure, when he went to go and see Bowie in the 70s, Bowie put on like a 40-minute show.
And this is why The Cure does these like three-hour shows, because he's like, I felt so disappointed, right?
So, it was bad.
And when I did the interview, yeah, he seemed very distracted and it was not good.
It was not particularly enjoyable conversation and he just seemed very... And of course, man, he was old, right?
So, you know, who knows what happens to people's levels of concentration and energy and perceptivity when they get older.
The man in the books was not even close to the man I met or talked with.
I was very happy to have had a chat with him before he died, but it was not much of a high point for me, to put it mildly.
I mean, sometimes you meet your heroes and
It's not good.
So I've always tried, I don't want to fake when I meet anyone, but I've always tried to be, you know, to give people respect and to recognize that, you know, when I was doing my sort of Night for Freedom with Cernovich in New York, this is like
Was that 2018 or something like that?
You know, like 500 people lining up to meet.
Now, the 500 people who are lining up to meet me, it's really, really important to me.
I mean, it matters a lot.
Everyone a big hug and all of that.
Fortunately, no shivs, so that was a plus.
But these are people, I mean, a lot to them and they're new to me.
Right, so these are people, if they're lining up, and we were there till like three in the morning, partly for security reasons and partly I just wanted to meet everyone and at least exchange a few words and give a big smile and a hug and say thanks for the support and listen to their questions and have a conversation at least and be real and be connected and be present and give them respect because that's why I'm there.
I just remember really wanting to give that kind of real feedback and presence to people because these are people I've not met them before.
I didn't know they existed, but they've listened to hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours of me talking.
So there's an asymmetry there, right?
And of course I can't then listen to them for hundreds of hours because there's lots of people and so on.
But recognizing that asymmetry and that whatever I do is going to be massively amplified in their minds.
And I need to be the same in person as I am online.
I mean, that's the basic authenticity thing, you know, like I'm pretty direct and expressed and positive and friendly online.
I need to be that way.
And it's not like I need to, like, it's some obligation or, you know, it's bad if I don't or whatever, but it's like, why would I want to be different when meeting people face to face?
And I remember also, you know, when you read Ayn Rand, she's got this power and this grandeur and this excellence.
And then I remember seeing her interviewed by Phil Donahue and she had this kind of hard, tense, suspicious, kind of half angry, half frightened look in her face.
And I was like, well, that's not
That's not how you seem at all!
That's not even close to how you seem!
Like, when I see versus the seem, right?
The see and the seem.
The seen and the unseen.
And so, when I meet people, and I don't know if there are people here who've met me directly in speaking tours or something like that, but I'm just me.
Like, when we were in Australia, we had dinner with people, Lauren Southern and I, and yeah, I'm just
You met me, oh, you met me at the DC Cerno event, right?
So, oh, he had Parkinson's disease, is that right?
Was he kind of vain?
I think it was, you know what it was, with Nathaniel Brandon, it was such a non sequitur.
You know, well, if you have a computer, oh, what kind of computer do you have?
Like, that's got nothing to do with what I was saying.
And it just seemed very disconnected, very disconnected.
And you would think, of course, that a psychologist of his level of stature would know how to connect with people.
Right.
And if you don't know how to connect with people, don't stay after the event and chat with them, right?
But if you're going to stay and chat with them, then you need to be direct and, oh, that's an interesting theory, like whatever he could have said, right?
How do you think that might happen?
Or, you know, anything, just something, right?
Anything.
Well, thanks, Adam.
I appreciate the support as Matt and Adam again, and I really do appreciate that.
Thank you.
If you don't really know how to connect with people, I'm not sure that... I'm not sure you should be speaking with them, honestly.
And again, it does really... it does make you wonder about how much of it is real.
How much of it is real?
How much can he connect with people, and does he even know that he's not connecting with people?
So, if he was like, for some reason, he just received terrible news, and he was distracted, and he had a headache, he'd say, I'm so sorry, I really can't concentrate on what you're saying right now, but I absolutely will think about it, and I really do appreciate it.
Like, whatever, but just like, well, it could be like going to sleep, and blah, blah, blah, with a computer.
Oh, what kind of computer do you have?
It's like, what does that have to do with?
Anyway.
Your friend's grandpa in the donut shop's like, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, except my friend's grandpa wasn't a professional communicator with people about truth and excellence and personality and so on.
120p Stefan is scary.
120p, I don't know what that means.
A pound twenty?
I don't know.
I think there was a certain amount of vanity, I do, with Nathaniel Brandon, which, you know, a lot of what he got, he got from Ayn Rand.
Like, he was very much jet-fueled by her brilliance.
Like Leonard Picoff, right?
Leonard Picoff wrote Ominous Parallels, which is a pretty great book, but without Ayn Rand's intellectual clarity and energy, these guys really couldn't achieve liftoff on their own, right?
Camera lost focus.
Okay, maybe I will try and get it to re-get focus.
At 120p the resolution video audio quality is jumping around.
Yeah, could be.
So yeah, it is, it is, it is sad.
So he didn't seem to know that it was an on sequitur and he didn't
Seemed to know that there was a complete lack of connection, and it was very much not even remotely related to what I said, you know?
So yeah, it was disappointing.
Well, it was kind of disappointing when I read Barbara Brandon's book, Judgment Day, finding out about what happened to the Ayn Rand world.
That was, uh, that was pretty rough, man.
That was pretty rough.
That was pretty rough.
You're back in focus, all good now.
Yes, because lord knows if I'm not in focus... Terrible things happen.
Alright.
Do you remember the year you met him?
Yeah, I was 1990... Gosh, what was it now?
1994!
Yeah, I was 28.
I think it came... Did it come out in... No!
Sorry!
1993.
So, I was 26 or 27 when it came out.
Wait, it says here...
1994, yeah.
I guess there was previews in 1993.
So, yeah, I was 28.
That was very disappointing.
Because, you know, I put a huge amount into objectivism and then I'm glad I never met Ayn Rand because I think that would have gone pretty badly.
Pretty badly.
And I don't like it when people's interpersonal skills are vastly the opposite of their personas.
That, to me, is odd.
Right?
So, yeah, if you've met me in person, I mean...
Yeah, she probably would have started hitting on you.
Have a cigarette!
Right?
I don't know, something like that.
Smoke them if you got them!
But... So... Yeah, it's, um...
It's really tough.
And if you've met me in person, isn't it pretty much the same?
It's pretty much the same deal, right?
I'm not different in person.
It's not like I have this special connection with the camera, but then when I meet people, it's terrible.
All that kind of stuff, right?
I'll check bandwidth issues and see if people are getting a little bit of blocky stuff, but the good news is I have my local recording, so that'll work out oh so nicely.
All right, any of the last?
You were super personable and engaged in person, it was refreshing.
Yeah, I'm pretty much, yeah, I don't think I'm particularly different in person.
Maybe slightly more blunt, but that's probably about it.
I wonder how much pushing out public content helps with that.
I don't think so.
I don't think so, because
I mean, Nathaniel Brandon had done a huge amount of public stuff by the time I met him.
I mean, he wrote and conducted seminars and entire courses and whole day instructions on objectivism and psychology.
He'd done huge public speeches, he'd done group therapy, he'd done private therapy, one-on-one therapy.
I mean, my gosh, the man had been pumping out public material or being in the public eye for decade after decade by the time I met him.
He just seemed sort of profoundly uninterested in individuals from my experience, which was, you know, kind of sad.
All right, and somebody says, odd dream last night.
I dreamt I was an action hero still in the army.
I was at a train station.
Was it that woman who had all the affairs with the male cop somebody changed on Google?
The police station was changed to a train station?
Pretty brutal.
So, our dream last night.
I dreamt I was an action hero still in the army.
I was at a train station and I stepped away from some local Arab dude I was talking to and turned back and he and a bunch of others got smoked by a bomb.
I was running down the train tracks trying to warn people that we were under attack and nobody listened.
After watching more Sabotage, I ran into another... Okay, this is some political thing about the border, so... I would imagine that would be the case.
Recordings on locals after the stream is live are always a hundred percent.
It's only a problem with the live stream.
Oh, okay.
I hope we get the chance to do a meetup.
I would love to meet in real life and thank you for all you've done in my life.
Well, I hope so too.
I certainly do miss, I do miss talking to an audience is a high.
It's just a blast.
I just love talking to an audience and I do love the after party and chatting with people about that stuff.
That's really great.
That is just de-lovely and de-lightful.
All right, did I get to the questions here?
Yes, and I just did some fantastic answers.
If I do say so myself, I did some fantastic answers this morning for the Locals questions, so I really do appreciate... I've got this little droop on this side of my mouth from having a tooth removed, but it still happens.
So I really do appreciate everybody's questions and answers on Locals.
Alright, so more sabotage run by the Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden who chewed me out for just being an alarmist for the island.
Yeah.
Well, isn't Joe Biden, didn't he just sign some executive order about the border after saying he had no control over it?
Well, it's an election year, so let's give the voters a few crumbs and see if he can get back into power.
Oh, it's so good not to be doing politics anymore.
It really is Groundhog Day.
In hell.
All right, any other last questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems?
Really do appreciate your support.
If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
I would really, really appreciate that.
Do you prefer live streams or the solo episodes where you answer locals questions?
Um, I like both.
I don't like sitting for, you know, two hours.
Sometimes the live streams go on almost three hours.
I don't like sitting this whole time.
I do like,
Walking around and doing the Q&A's that way.
So that's better and that's why I don't do, I used to do call-in shows like just standing and I just, I feel, I just feel such a need to move.
I just got to move.
So there are live streams.
I like the interaction with the audience.
I like playing with you guys back and forth in this way, but I also do like the solo shows because I get to move around.
I like to move it, move it.
Thank you, Steph.
Sorry for dropping the weird dream.
Vivid and strange.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're having dreams about the border and people coming across the border, then it could be that you're having a boundary violation from someone in your life.
Will you ever include some of the ducks on the livestream?
Yeah, we've done that before.
That's a good idea.
We certainly could.
I'm sure Izzy would be completely thrilled to share the ducks.
But we got some new ducks.
We got four new ducks.
They're a little older, and so they haven't quite bonded as much with us.
Because before, we'd get ducks basically right out of their shell, almost, so they'd bond with us.
These aren't quite the follow-me ducks, but they're still very sedate.
We've had some ducks, like, you sit with them, and they're just racing all over your, like, you know, but these ducks are just, like, sacks of cuteness sitting on your lap.
It's very nice.
Very nice.
Um, so yeah, and they're going to be big.
They're going to be big.
We're going to have to get a, we're going to need a bigger coop.
We're going to need a bigger coop.
Izzy has become a real expert at catching crayfish, which is kind of neat.
They're quite a challenge to catch some.
You could have one sit on your head an entire livestream.
I'm not sure that would be totally relaxing because they are poop maestros and I'm not sure that that cracked egg trickling down the back of the head would be totally relaxing for me.
And the smell.
Dear God, the only reason that animals are cute in cartoons and books is you don't get the smell.
Alright, well thanks everyone so much.
Appreciate you guys dropping by.
We'll see you Friday.
For the Friday Night Live and, of course, Sunday for the Sunday morning live stream.
Do not forget, my friends, that you can go to freedomain.com slash call.
You can set yourself up for a call-in and you can also do a private call-in and that won't be released.
You get to keep the recording if you want, but it won't be released to anyone
Anywhere at any time.
Hey, Steph, how would you evaluate a woman with that tattoos?
I would evaluate her as an exit strategy to get out.
All right.
Love you guys back.
Thank you so much.
If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
Don't forget to check out fdrurl.com slash TikTok.
Sign up for TikTok.
There's some fantastic shorts coming up there, which Jared is working assiduously on.
I had a dream last night of climbing a very steep bridge, leading up to a tall mountain, a fatal fall to either side, the last time a flash flood rushes down the mountain towards me, but I wait just before the water hits.
What could the meaning of this be?
Alright, so I'll tell you what the meaning of this is.
Rob!
Rob, I will not rob you of my insights.
Okay, so you're climbing a steep ridge leading up to a tall mountain.
Fatal fall to either side.
Last time a flesh flood rushes down the mountain towards me, I wake just before the water hits.
The meaning of this is that you are aware of two dangers, you are missing the third.
So you're looking to say, oh my gosh, I gotta not fall to either side, but the real danger is coming from ahead of you.
So while you're looking at the two dangers that you do see, a third danger is coming at you that the dream is telling you about.
FDR Podcasts app going live tonight!
Okay, so later tonight, 5th June 2024, you can go to fdrpodcasts.com and there will be a little button that says Install, and you can install it, you can pin it to your taskbar, and it becomes a standalone app.
You can even do this on mobile.
I think Brave is not quite taking it as yet, but other browsers will.
Yeah, and Rob, you can do a call-in show about that if you want, because yes, that is very, very important.
I mean, I had these dreams about waves that carried me and then destroyed me.
That was politics.
That was politics.
Carried me up!
You lift me up!
It carried me up, and I had to get out before it destroyed me.
Steph, it's worth donating to.
I appreciate that.
Philosophy.
Philosophy!
Philosophy is worth donating to, I think.
I appreciate that, because we are really coming up with some amazing stuff.
We're coming up with a shortened version of the Peaceful Parenting book.
I'm going to be working, of course, on the History of Philosophy series moving forward.
And we're getting all these live apps going so you can have standalone apps to interact with the show.
Oh, you're going through a divorce?
It's worth paying attention to?
Yeah, so really do a 360.
See, when you see a danger, it's very easy to get distracted from all other possible dangers, right?
Like, you know how this works, right?
One lion will approach you, you're like, oh my god, there's a lion, and three other lions are creeping up from behind you.
So, be careful when you identify a danger, that's often when you're in the most danger for the things that are 360 around that you're not looking at.
So, it's called the distraction thing.
It's what magicians do all the time.
They distract you with something while they're doing something in the other hand.
So, when you're looking at visible dangers, you have to tear your eyes away from the visible dangers to make sure that you look at all the other dangers that could be coming up, for which the visible danger might be a distraction.
Yes!
Recent peaceful parenting interview.
I had a great interview.
From a podcast host.
His podcast has been running for like over 10 years and you can get that at premium.freedomain.com if you're donating.
If not, you can see all the great premium stuff.
So yeah, it's a great, great interview and I was really happy to do it.
And it's a good intro interview.
So we'll be putting that out for everyone later, but you get a couple of days preview as a donor.
All right.
What is it somebody said?
It's, uh, spam.
Spam!
Philosophy should be thought of as spam.
Socrates.
Plato.
Aristotle.
Molyneux.
I don't mind being fourth!
I don't mind being fourth.
Yeah, the hoodlum, the knife in front of you, beware his pals creeping up behind.
