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Dec. 29, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:29:37
The True Power of Virtue!
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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
It is the 29th?
I should really know this.
Yes, 29th of December 2024. My gosh, it is the last show of the year.
And if you'd like to help out the last show of the year, freedomman.com.gratefully, humbly, and deeply, thankfully accepted.
Let us get to your questions and comments and straight to it.
Somebody asks, how do you deal with arrogant people who think you are a kind of animal?
Well, there's a big secret to life.
Most people have no internal standards and therefore you get what you permit.
Most people have no internal standards and therefore in life you get what you permit.
Carve this in your forehead.
Write this in lipstick on your makeup mirror.
Do whatever you need to do to internalize this because that is a foundation of truth in this rather amoral time.
And, you know, this is the most moral time in history.
Because moralists aren't just being outright killed.
It's a big plus when the job description does not include hemlock and crucifixion.
So, yeah, most people in life, they don't have any internal standards of behavior, and so they do what they can get away with.
I think of people as a whole, as water, right?
As water.
So if you want to contain water, you have to put it in a cup or a bathtub or a sink.
Then you can contain the water.
I remember when I was a kid, I'd get so thirsty that I would fill a sink full of cold water, dunk my whole head, and it'd slurp like a horse.
That was delightful.
But yeah, so most people have no particular structure, no particular values, no particular virtues.
They permit themselves just about anything, and the barrier to what they do are the boundaries of other people.
They spread like water, right?
I mean, if some sort of flood is coming to your home, There's no point appealing to the water saying, hey man, I really worked hard on this home.
Don't flood my basement.
That's where all my photos are.
There's no point reasoning with the water.
The water is just going to spread until the water encounters a barrier.
Now, when the water encounters a barrier, it will stop.
You put the sandbags up around your house, then hopefully you can prevent the water from going into your basement.
If you have a pipe that springs a leak, there's no point saying, hey man, don't go on the couch.
That's like you're going to leave a mark.
You may be able to say that to people, but there's no point saying that to water.
What do you have to do?
Well, you have to get up in your trusty stepladder.
I have to call a friend who's more macho than me, which is not super hard when it comes to home renovations.
I grew up in an apartment.
One of the problems when you grow up in apartments that you rent is that the superintendent handles everything, so you don't need to do anything.
Plus, I grew up with a single mother, so what kind of handyman skills was she going to Spread to me, right?
So I call up a manly handyman buddy and say, how do I fix this leak?
And then you get up there with your duct tape or whatever you do, turn off the water, and I'm better at it now.
But certainly when I first had my own house and I couldn't call anyone to fix stuff, I'd learn how to fix stuff.
Thank you, anonymous Slavic YouTube channels with 12 visitors who tell you exactly how to solve your problem.
So people, they're just They just do what they do until they encounter resistance.
People do what the law permits.
People do what other people permit them to do.
What is it Chris Rock says about guys?
Guys are only as faithful as their options.
So if no one wants to sleep with your guy, then he'll be faithful.
If a lot of women want to sleep with your guy, he probably won't be.
I mean, I don't know that that's entirely true, but it's certainly true in some circles.
And you can see this, of course, when it comes to propaganda.
Propaganda is channeling water.
That's why it works.
That's why it works.
So propaganda is, well, when it comes to abortion, my body, my choice.
When it comes to COVID vaccine injections, not so much, right?
Oh, okay, so I get disapproval if I oppose abortion, so I guess I won't do that.
Oh, I get disapproval if I'm pushing back on vaccine mandates.
Oh, okay, so do you understand?
They have no more self-structure than your average liquid.
I mean, if you have to go into a hazardous area, you wear a hazmat suit.
You don't negotiate with the air particles that could be dangerous, the VOCs or whatever, right?
You don't do any of that.
You contain it.
You create a structure that prevents stuff from getting in.
Without free will and without moral values, most people are indistinguishable from moving atoms.
They go until they meet resistance.
And when they meet resistance, they will fight with the resistance to see if they can overcome it.
If they can overcome it, they keep going.
And if they can't overcome it, then they rage quit.
Can I get away with it?
Is man in a non-virtuous state?
What can I get away with, right?
So, I mean, California had a law where you could steal up to like $980 worth of stuff and have pretty much no repercussions, and they changed that law, and so the people who did steal before, and again, this is not everyone, right?
But they'll stop stealing, and you can see this when a new law comes along, a new law comes along.
Thank you, Anthony.
New law comes along, and people are like, okay, well, we'll just do that.
Right?
We'll just do that.
Oh, that's legal now?
Okay, well, we'll do it.
Oh, it's not legal?
Okay, well, we won't do it.
It's just barriers around liquid personalities.
A hedonism, right?
Do what is most pleasurable.
And this is why when the giant thumb on the bruise of propaganda hits, people change their behavior.
Of course they do.
Well, in the past, formally, you see, formally, it was a plus.
To do this, now we're told it's bad and so we won't do it.
Personal autonomy when it comes to healthcare decisions is absolutely sacrosanct until it's not.
I mean, honestly, like, there were boxes of masks in the COVID hysteria, and COVID hysteria will be studied by a rational future like the South Sea bubble or whatever, right?
But COVID hysteria, you had boxes of masks that people were told to put on to protect them from coronaviruses that literally said, does not protect against coronaviruses.
Can I get a fact check on that?
Can I just get a fact check on that?
I just wanted...
To say.
I just want to make sure I'm accurate on that.
Like I was talking with someone the other day who was complaining that their dysfunctional parents, she was saying, my dysfunctional parents think I'm bad.
And I'm like, no, they don't think that you're bad.
They don't think that you're bad.
However, what they have done is they found out that calling you bad or saying that you're bad gets you to do what they want, right?
That's really, really important.
I mean, I guess some elements of society call me bad.
Do they think that I'm bad?
No, of course not.
They don't have any objective moral standards by which they're judging me to be horribly wanting and corrupt.
But they have found that if they call me bad, then they get what they want, which is, I don't know, deplatforming or whatever it is, right?
So, it's not an objective, any kind of objective moral judgment that they have compared me to some standard of virtue.
And that is universal and rational and found me horribly corrupt and wanting.
No, it's just that if they want me to not have prominence or reach, then if they call me bad, they get what they want.
It's not a moral judgment.
It's just a practical judgment that if I say, I mean, it's sort of like in Lord of the Rings, they're trying to get into the minds of Moria and speak friend and enter, right?
And they have to try all these different words and then they finally remember the Elvish word for friend is what opens it up, right?
So people just try various language on you, like if you want to get into, let me use another analogy, if you want to get into a locked door and you have 50 keys, you'll just keep trying the keys until you get one that opens the door, right?
So people would just try language with you until the language they speak gets you to do what they want or gets other people to do what they want, which could be to ostracize you or something, right?
That's what gossip is about.
Malicious gossip is about Making sure that other people do what you want through the spread of language, right?
Through the use of language.
So, people don't have any judgments, objective for the most part, but what they do is they just try different words.
Okay, well, if I call you selfish, does that land?
Does that get you to do what I want?
Okay, now, okay, I'll call you a bully.
I'll call you a racist.
I'll call you X, Y, Z, phobe.
I'll, you know, I'll call you a supremacist.
Like, I'll just, I'll keep trying these words until you conform to what I want.
So you are free to the degree that you discredit verbal abusers.
Thank you.
You are free to the degree that you discredit verbal abusers.
If you believe verbal abusers, you will be enslaved to people who control you through made up morals.
Because then you're basically just chasing the approval of people who do not give you approval unless they control you.
Unless you're doing what they want.
And you really can't have free will.
You really can't have free will.
So long as you give credibility to verbal abusers.
Because then all you're doing is dodging negative language and pursuing five minutes peace through appeasement and surrender.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Somebody says, I've noticed that a lot of people seem to be keen on moral standards for other people but not for themselves.
I don't understand how they cope with this hypocrisy.
When pointed out, they just get angry.
Can they not see this?
Consistency is only possible outside of a master-slave relationship.
The master has to be hypocritical in his morals.
And he has to say something is virtuous when he only worships power, and he has to pretend that the morals that apply to him do not apply or are the opposite for his slaves.
So a master gets slaves by threatening their life.
But if the slave threatens the master's life, which is exactly what the master is doing to the slave, if the slave threatens the master's life, then the slave is fomenting rebellion and must be killed and is immoral and evil and overturning the social structure and whatever, right?
And doesn't have his place.
So, the only way that you can escape hypocrisy is to reject power.
Power and hypocrisy are united, which is why there is so much hypocrisy, because there's so much power.
And there's so much power in being hypocritical, right?
So, I mean, back to the sort of my body, my choice stuff.
So, if you court women by offering them abortions, then they will vote for you, which gives you power.
But if you want power over the population to compel them to take medical interventions, then my body, my choice doesn't apply anymore, right?
So, hypocrisy and power are two sides of the same coin, and a big, freaking expensive coin and valuable coin it is.
That coffee mug is huge.
You say you limit yourself to one cup of coffee, caffeinated.
I now understand why you have that limit when there's a mug that large.
Well, I mean, not that you particularly care about my coffee habits, but this coffee, I do an 8-ounce coffee into this.
I just kind of like the no coffee, no worky thing.
So this is mostly empty.
When I made the coffee, it was less than half full.
So no, I have two 8-ounce caffeinated coffees a day.
I can't do more.
It just gets unpleasant.
I guess unpleasant to me.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
I don't quite understand that.
I don't understand the Among Us reference.
My apologies if I'm missing something obvious, but I do not follow that.
My apologies if I'm missing something.
I'm not missing any chats over there.
Can someone verify if premium.freedomain.com is working accurately?
So this is the great tech genius, James.
It does appear to be.
Hi there, and so premium.freedomain.com is where you can get all of the super spicy, super juicy free domain shows that are available to donors, including the great history of philosophy.
Or rather, sorry, history of philosophers.
Thank you, Matthew.
If you're here, I appreciate that.
Appreciate the tip.
Let's see here.
Somebody says, A large faction of the USA is praying we go back to a time when one guy had a W-2 with a stay-at-home wife and 2.5 kids like the Simpsons.
Nothing is bringing that back.
The future is universal basic income, digital immersion, and global competition.
What we or you want isn't relevant.
That's what somebody wrote.
Well, I don't like determinism.
There's nothing you can do about it.
I mean, that's blackpilling, right?
That's just pure despair.
There's always things that you can do to promote virtue in the world.
There's always things that you can do.
Now, is that going to change what is coming?
Well, I mean, if everyone believes it can't be stopped, then it can't be stopped, right?
If people believe it can be stopped, Then it can be stopped.
I mean, to go back to my flood analogy, if for some reason everyone in the block thinks that there's no way to stop the flood, then they won't do anything and then the flood will pour into their basements.
If they think there is a way to stop the flood, maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but at least they have a chance.
This idea that You can't do anything to change the future.
It doesn't apply at a personal level, and it doesn't apply at a larger level because what is morality other than the aggregate of people's individual choices?
You change your choices, you change your world, and through changing your world, you can change the world as a whole.
Just to have an example, right?
I mean, I have a very happy marriage and come from a very dysfunctional history, so now it's possible, right?
For a lot of people, it wasn't considered to be possible.
So, showing people something is possible that they don't think is possible or haven't considered is generating choices and free will in their mind and their heart.
you Thank you.
Steph, your take on Albert Camus was great.
Now I understand more why Boomer female teachers in high school forced me to read his works.
The French philosophers are mostly evil.
Yeah, the French philosophers are mostly evil.
All right.
I've got the whole history of the French Revolution.
The truth about the French Revolution is available at premium.freedomain.com.
Do you think weed's popularity will backpedal in 10 to 15 years and people that do it will be realized as to be avoided rather than praised and thought of as cruel rebellions?
Well, it's only going to take a certain number of people losing their brains to weed until people recognize that.
What, like 2,000 Americans are going to die on New Year's Eve because they're going to take a pill laced with fentanyl.
Right?
Narcan, as far as I understand it, Narcan can bring you back, but you still have to get to a hospital.
It only brings you back for a bit.
I'm no doctor, but that's sort of my understanding of it.
So, the weed is a weapon, right?
We used to be somewhat recreational.
Everything that shows up and is popularized in the West is generally a weapon, right?
So, a weed is a demotivator.
A weed, schizophrenia can be the outcome for some people, and...
Weed is saying, I can't get my happiness through virtue, so I'll get it through drugs.
And every time you try to get your, or you aim to, or maybe you do get your happiness through drugs, you diminish your moral muscularity to achieve happiness through virtue.
Let's see here.
What's on the agenda for 2025, for the show?
Any big projects planned?
Yeah, it's interesting.
I was sort of thinking about this this morning.
I feel this is maybe an odd feeling.
I hope it's not too irrelevant to you, but it's an interesting sort of feeling that I have.
There's an old song by Harry Belafonte.
Why don't you sit down?
No, I can't sit down, cause I just got to heaven, I'm gonna look around.
I feel like for the last couple of years, I've been in my afterlife.
I had a life that I worked very hard to build up, a life of speaking and touring and documentaries and all kinds of interviewing people and being part of a sort of larger social network.
There was a chart done some years ago by somebody who was sort of aiming to take down the sort of alternate media and I was like at the center of it and was considered to be the hub.
So I had this life.
High-flying.
I traveled a lot and enjoyed it for the most part.
And that life was taken away, or I gave it away, whatever you want to say.
And it's not like I've been at sixes and sevens, but it is an afterlife to my former life.
To be where I am.
Now, the afterlife doesn't mean in a hole with worms in my eyes, but it means something different.
Now, what I have done, which I think is really important, is I've written three pretty major books since being de-platformed, and I really didn't have as much of a chance to write books prior, like when I was sort of at the height of what I was doing, because it was just all too time-consuming, and I think the books will matter.
A lot more in the future than another interview or an analysis of sort of current political events or whatever it was that I was doing.
So I think, and in particular, the Peaceful Parenting book will have, you know, ripples effects in the future, probably long after I'm dead and maybe even long after you're dead if you're younger, but it'll happen.
That's the way things tend to work.
So it's a little tough to plan.
It's a little tough to plan.
I have not got to it for a variety of reasons, but I have an outline for a new novel that is a novel in reverse, a novel in reverse, which I'm really looking forward to writing.
I really do love the depth of thought and sensitivity and exploration that I get in writing novels.
And of course, I thought I was a pretty good novelist in the past, now that I've spoken to Thousands of people about their core inner lives and histories.
I have a vista, a view of human nature that is much deeper than it was in the past.
So I think that my characters are more realized now.
The nicotine makes you productive.
That's why they discourage cigarettes and promote weed.
Yeah, for sure.
Steph, have you noticed people getting angry when you show them what's possible?
I remember when I lost weight, a lot of people seemed to take it personally.
Yeah, I guess I lost about 30 or 40 pounds over the last 10-15 years, 10 years or so.
Well, you know, it's a drag.
It's a drag.
I miss all the big eating.
I do.
I'm an eater.
I'm an eater.
Love to eat.
But you just have to say goodbye to it all.
Uh, right.
Let me see.
There was another question here.
Let me get there.
Yeah, laced weed is a problem, for sure.
Laced weed is a big, big issue.
It's just too dangerous to, I mean, I don't know if it's the Chinese or whoever it is, but the fentanyl stuff is weaponized.
Get people addicted to drugs and then, I mean, 100,000 Americans are dying every year from drugs that are often laced.
It's a war.
It's a war.
All right.
So, how are the ducks?
We do not have ducks at present.
We do not have ducks at present, for a variety of reasons, but we are duckless.
We are duckless.
And the other thing, too, with regards to the show, I'm very much enjoying what I do now, and It seems that people want what I'm doing now.
I mean, the call-in shows, the live streams, and the solo shows, the Q&As...
I'm very much enjoying the dance with the audience, right?
I had a great question this morning on how you overcome the challenges of being the son of a single mother.
And of course, I have some significant experience with that.
So it's a great question.
And it's not really something I would have come up with on my own, or at least I doubt I would have.
And just being able to play with the audience, dance with the audience, and almost fence with the audience sometimes.
I do miss some of the big speeches.
I do miss some of the big lights, the thousand people in the audience.
I do miss more high-profile debates.
I mean, there's definitely stuff that I miss.
But there's also great...
And also, it's the last...
Well, my daughter's 16, right?
Oh, wow.
My daughter's 16, and it's the last bit of parenting.
Bye.
Thank you.
You know, it's kind of tough for me to say I should have big projects right at the end of parenting.
I mean, I think when my daughter Goes out into the world, I don't think I'll look back and say, I wish we'd spent less time together in that last year or two.
Pretty sure I'm not going to be saying that to myself.
Whereas, of course, you know, I mean, I'm 58, got another 20 or 30 years, so all odds being good.
So let's say I spend the next year or two not doing these sort of major projects.
Well, But I get to enjoy my daughter's company before she moves out.
Yeah, I will be an empty nester, for sure.
For sure, I'll be an empty nester.
Man, and for those of you who've had kids and gone through that journey, it's an almost incomprehensible thing to be an empty nester because your life gets so wrapped up around being, especially if you homeschool, right?
Then your life is so wrapped up with being a parent that it's just going to be bewildering.
bewildering.
And, I mean, I'm immensely proud of my daughter.
I love her enormously, and she's a great, great person on every level that I can think of.
To have overcome what I overcame and to be a good parent despite how I was raised, I'm telling you, man, do the right thing.
The joy that it will bring you is beyond compare.
There is no joy like virtue and there is no triumph, deep, visceral, spinal triumph in disarming all the landmines that evil people set around your heart and being able to love.
And devote yourself deeply and passionately to throw back the invaders of corruption and self-hostility and to reach out and connect with others.
To uproot branch and limb all of the thorny bushes of negative language that people forcibly implanted in your heart to rip it out and have your heart grow.
You really can't do better than that.
You can't.
You can't do better than that.
To have come from where I came from, to live a life of virtue, connection, integrity and love, is to triumph over evil to the point where it feels I've achieved immortality.
I feel like I'm going to live forever in my triumph over corruption.
I mean, everyone around me when I was younger was trying to set me against myself, trying to disarm me of my virtues, of my curiosity, of my All-seeing eye, so to speak.
I have this sort of third eye that I stare.
It's like there's this guy who was talking about Phil Collins' face values, like he's staring into your soul.
I have this sort of eye that orbits my head, like Sopran's eye or something.
It just looks into people's souls and into my own.
And this is why the Collins shows work so well.
And trying to blind that eye seemed to be the central purpose of just about everybody when I was young.
Oh, you're wrong.
Oh, you don't understand anything.
Oh, you don't get it.
Oh, you're selfish.
Oh, you're spaced out.
You're disconnected.
Like, just pound, pound, pound, pound.
I'm like Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
All the bullets just fly past him.
Don't get me wrong, some of them did hit, and it was pretty ugly getting those bullets out, but to not only have survived, but to flourish, to have used the judo of endless attacks of corruption and evil, To wrestle and vault myself into a place of virtue and contentment.
And love is, from this view, it is the greatest journey.
And I can't recommend it highly enough.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
And for the people who are younger, you know, I'm going to be 59 next year.
And if I was not surrounded by good friends, good family, good people, I think it would be pretty tough.
I think it would be pretty tough.
Very tough.
It'd be an emptiness, a hollowness.
And have kids, man.
Just have kids.
Just find someone and have kids.
Just do it.
That's the deal, right?
Most of her ancestors would not have bothered to have children if they knew we wouldn't have children.
Farmers don't buy sterile bulls.
And our ancestors would not have had kids if they had known that we would not have kids.
Would you have kids if you knew that they would be born sterile for some genetic reason?
No, probably not.
The deal with being alive is to pay it forward.
You are alive because you are expected to have children.
Your ancestors only invested in your birth so that you could continue the line.
And if you don't have children when you could, you are robbing life from those who only gave it to you so that you could continue it.
Don't bogart the DNA. Alright.
Hey Steph, my three-year-old is potty trained when it comes to number one, however refuses to go number two in the toilet, opting to go only in pull-ups at night.
What is the best approach to solve this?
It's a good question.
At night.
So, I would imagine that the concern is more night time.
I remember as a kid that I did not like the journey out of my room to the washroom at night.
I did not like it.
Nighttime always feels sinister to children, and this is not some abuse thing.
I mean, it probably is exacerbated by abuse, but it's not some big abuse thing.
Of course, the reason why children, toddlers, dislike the dark is because there are predators, right?
I'm sure you've seen, I've mentioned this from time to time, I'm sure you've seen these pictures of the Plexiglass.
I don't know why I'm sweating so much.
The plexiglass in zoos and the toddlers sitting there and the lions are trying to get their heads around the toddlers.
Around the edge of the firelight were constant predators looking for solitary toddlers.
Toddlers do not like wandering about in the night.
That is hardwired, deep DNA. And if you look at The genetic optimization, which is kind of what you're dealing with when you're dealing with babies and toddlers, you're dealing with genetic optimization.
Is it safer to poop in a pull-up and stay with your parents, or is it safer to wander out and poop beyond the edge of the firelight?
Well, given that there are a lot of predators that hunt a knight who can sniff out your kid, and given that pooping is going to raise quite a cent, then some wolf, some critter, some creature, some lion is going to take the kid.
So stay close to your parents at night.
That's why we're here, because these develop, or to put it another way, of course, is the usual way.
To put it another way, the kids who are like, yeah, I'm totally fine wandering beyond the edge of the firelight to poop in the woods, well, a certain proportion of those kids didn't come back, and that was whittled away.
Toddlers don't know that they're safe.
Remember that.
Babies don't know that they're safe and toddlers don't know that they're safe.
They have deep instincts from our vulnerable past.
So that would be my guess.
You've done a historic job parenting, Steph.
I learn from you in this regard constantly.
Oh, nice.
Thank you.
Watching this with my eldest right now.
Ah, Steve, nice to see you.
Hello to your eldest.
Patty cake.
Probably too old for that, right?
All right.
I'm 24 and living with a roommate here who's in his mid-50s and doesn't have kids.
He's a good guy and tells me to avoid making the same mistake he did and have kids young.
Right.
And that's because he's a male.
And in general, men will instruct younger people to avoid their mistakes.
Women, in general, will justify those mistakes.
And Angela Bell Camarino style say, it's the greatest thing ever, right?
This is this woman.
It's a forehead that I envy.
Let's be honest.
honest, it's a forehead that I envy.
And so she posts, she's, uh, imagine being 42 and child free and not having to pay for a babysitter so that you can go to a bar on Christmas at the imagine being 42 and child free and not having to pay for a Right.
Thank you.
I don't know if she's a troll or a psyop or just someone who is, who she is.
Oh, and she always says, the right hates this.
The right hates this.
Can you imagine?
Imagine being single and going to a bar alone on Christmas?
I mean, ew.
A house full of people at Christmas is a beautiful thing.
But the right hates this?
Well, I mean, the other thing too is, nobody ever says, well, I'm child-free, but what I'm doing is I'm making sure that I have enough money for retirement.
So that I don't end up taxing the hell out of your kids, right?
I'm not having kids, but I really, really want people to be able to take care of me when I'm old, whether it's nursing aides or Uber drivers or doctors or nurses.
And so, I'm only going to have a comfortable old age because everyone is not doing what I'm doing, right?
Everyone is not doing what I'm doing.
Now, nobody knows what I'm doing next, but Steve's kid is there, so...
Lollipop!
Lollipop!
There you go.
I don't know how old she is.
So, probably too old for that, too.
Lollipop!
Lollipop!
Okay.
So, it's all the people who don't have kids at least say...
At least say, I'm glad that everyone else is having kids because I may want to go to a bar in my 60s and 70s and 80s, and so it'll be really nice if people have and make bars.
I really hope that you all have kids so that I have electricity in my old age.
Oh, she's six.
We listen to that song often.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Have you seen that?
It's a pretty funny meme.
It's a guy who's like, there was a cricket chirping all night, so I caught it, and I put tiny headphones on it, and I'm going to play Baby Shark at maximum volume for the next eight hours.
I'm a gummy bear.
I am a gummy bear.
Oh, I could just...
All the songs that my daughter loved when she was very little are carved into my brain.
What was it?
There was some Dora.
Bridge!
Rock!
Waterfall!
We didn't watch much Dora.
Didn't quite...
We didn't gel with the Dora.
But I do remember.
Bridge!
Rock!
Swiper!
No swiping!
Anyway.
We watched...
Actually, we watched Epic again the other day.
We're going on a bit of a nostalgia kick for older movies because all the new movies suck.
And we watched Epic the other day.
That's a funny movie, man.
That's a good movie.
I like how Colin Farrell is just like, I'm going to be Irish.
I'm going to be Irish and no particular reason.
Just Irish.
Everyone else is not Irish, but I'm Irish.
I'm going to be Irish.
I'm just going to mumble and be Irish.
Okay, everyone else is not Irish, but sure.
It's like Sean Connery.
I'm going to be Russian.
I'm going to be Russian.
Nobody can stop me with my Scottish accent.
I'm going to be Russian.
Okay, got it.
Accents are for the week.
All right.
Sorry, did I stop off the question?
Let's see here.
How would you pitch to a married positive woman that you want to be in their life as a single guy?
How would you pitch to a married, positive woman that you want to be in her life as a single guy?
I've tried being helpful and I have her cell phone number, but I'm single and not sure if it's too awkward to overcome with her being very attractive.
I consider her high quality and just enjoy her positivity.
If I had a wedding in the future, I'd want her family slash friends to come for sure.
We're only in contact due to her training program.
Her phone only accepts texts, not calls.
Should I take my chance?
No, absolutely not.
In no way, shape or form should you try to be a friend to a hot married woman.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't do it because you're just going to get your heart tangled up in someone.
It's not going to go anywhere and you're going to take yourself years out of the dating market while everyone else who's good gets taken.
Don't do it.
You're attracted to her.
You want to sleep with her.
You want to have her as a girlfriend.
You want to take the place of the husband.
Don't do it, man.
Don't do it.
Do not pursue married women.
Don't pursue married people.
I mean, if someone's just dating, you know, until there's a ring on the finger, it's not like everything's totally open.
Um...
Thank you, Steph, for the donation.
Wait, did I phase out and donate to myself?
Oh, well.
Okay, so, yeah, don't get involved in it.
Don't get involved in it.
So, let's say that you get what you want.
Let's say you get what you want and she leaves her husband and then starts dating you.
Well, you can't trust her, right?
She'll cheat with you.
She'll cheat on you.
And then you're going to have a pissed off guy floating around.
She's going to have a long, possibly ugly divorce and it's going to take her a long time to recover.
And let's say that her husband is a bad guy and you're a great guy.
She's still going to have to deal with all the reasons why she dated a bad guy.
So it's going to be a huge amount of growth.
It's just not worth it.
It's absolutely...
If you're going to build a house, build it on empty land.
Don't build a house where you've got to knock down a complicated structure and it's going to take a million dollars in five years.
Don't do it.
And you'll get lost and stuck in a wanting phase and not an achievement phase.
And you'll be powerless to affect the outcome.
I would not.
All right.
Hey, Steph, I'm curious if you have any advice for people who stress over the future.
I have friends who constantly worry about finances, politics, war, and so on.
I find myself doing it sometimes, too.
Lots of love.
So, you do the best you can in the world, and after that, it's up to everyone else.
You do the best you can in the world, right?
And after that, it's like health, right?
You do the best you can.
You maintain a healthy weight and eat well and exercise, and after that, You know, it's up to fate, so to speak, right?
It's just up to good or bad luck.
So, I mean, I think that if people worry about finances, stop spending!
Stop spending!
That's it.
Just stop spending.
Stop spending.
You don't need to spend that much.
You don't need to spend as much as you think.
As a whole, right?
I mean, if you've got lots of money, whatever, right?
But just spend less.
I mean, I don't worry over it, but like, you know, I wanted to get a computer with, it's a dual screen, right?
It's fold over, it's got two screens.
I just think it's really cool.
I think it's really cool.
I have some use for it, for sure.
But I've been thinking about it for months.
Is it essential?
Nope.
If it goes super on sale, might I get it?
Sure, maybe.
I don't mind buying secondhand stuff.
Like, my car is secondhand, right?
I don't mind buying secondhand stuff, but I don't like buying secondhand notebooks because the battery life sucks.
Because the batteries are kind of...
I made the mistake of buying a Surface.
I can see it right now.
I made the mistake of buying a Surface tablet secondhand.
The battery life sucks.
And I took it to a shop to say, can you repair the battery?
And the guy said, no, because the battery is right behind the screen.
Together the battery, I often crack the screen.
And I'm just like, okay, well, forget it.
So I just live with the sucky battery life, right?
So, just...
Don't spend.
My wife and I are constantly encouraging each other to spend more, but we don't really.
I mean, I'll spend on a few things, right?
I'll buy some quality coffee.
There's some quality of life stuff that I'm fine with, but yeah, just don't spend as much.
I mean, work hard.
Don't spend too much.
That's all you can do.
I don't know what worrying about finances is.
Just don't spend.
You work hard.
Try and make some money.
Don't spend too much.
That's the best you can do, right?
War and so on.
Well, I mean, sure, it could happen.
Yeah, it could happen.
Meteors could strike the earth.
War could break out.
There could be bird flu.
Air has gone airborne.
Get it?
So, yeah, all these things can happen.
And you do as much virtue as you can in your personal life, as much as it's safe, right?
Because virtue is an extreme sport, right?
Being good is an extreme sport.
So, you do the best you can in your personal life.
And...
After that, it's out of your hands, right?
You have to have this clear delineation between what you can control and what you can't control.
Worrying is often the avoidance of action, right?
So if you're worried about finances, then spend less.
Right?
Spend less.
And if you're not willing to spend less, I have no sympathy for your worrying, right?
Because some people would rather worry about finances than just spend less.
Because people buy dopamine all the time, right?
People, I mean, they literally call it shopping therapy, right?
Women in particular, right?
They buy dopamine all the time.
And so, people have a tough time not spending, because not spending makes them feel depressed.
Not spending makes them feel depressed.
And they don't want to deal with the underlying anxiety or depression, so they worry and spend and worry and spend.
It's just a distraction.
Kids are wonderful.
They're so meaningful that I wonder how I found meaning before them.
Well, kids are very humbling, right?
I mean, I think I've created some pretty cool stuff in my life, but what nature can create in the form of a human mind is absolutely mind-boggling and humbles everything that you create, right?
I always let her know, we, the rights, don't care, and we will win the future by having more children.
Thank you.
Thank you.
She ran off to tell her mother, wife's been listening to you since 2010, when I first began dating her.
Oh, that's lovely to hear, Steve.
That's great.
Lovely!
Hello, my darling.
Hello, my baby.
Hello, my ragtime gal.
Send me a kiss by wire.
Honey, my heart's on fire.
That was my daughter's favorite song, the singing frog one.
If you should leave me, honey, you'll grieve me and I'll be left alone.
So send me a smile and tell me I'm your man.
All right.
Why would I want to go to a bar when I can be with my kids?
The other thing, too, if you're in your 40s, a lot of people have kids who are already grown.
They can still go to the bar without, right?
I had the wife listening to real-time relationships.
Like one month into dating, what a gem she is.
Lovely.
I already asked you to stay away from my wife.
I wonder if Barney the dinosaur responsible for ruining the 90s kids you My cousin grew up with that and she is a mess.
So, Barney the Dinosaur, we never got into.
I would not do Bonnie the Dinosaur with my daughter, and as sure as Sherlock would not do Teletubbies.
I love you.
You love me.
We're a happy family.
Oh, no.
Bonnie the Dinosaur.
No, give me the Power Rangers.
Every color has a power but white.
So, yeah, I mean, just give me something with a little spine.
Give me something with a little toughness.
We did Knights of the Round Table stories.
We did all of that kind of stuff.
But we didn't do...
It's just stupid.
It's like beyond stupid.
And it is this sort of mindless, syrupy, sentimental, hyperestrogen...
Empathy that is soul destructive in the extreme because it has no standards.
So, I do not like it.
And also, I try to avoid, with my daughter, I try to avoid the friendly predator.
Right?
The friendly lion.
The friendly dinosaur.
It's like, no, dinosaurs is like the T-Rex monster.
Chewing the lawyer in half in the toilet in Jurassic Park.
That's a dinosaur.
Right?
A dinosaur is using your belt as floss after he munches you into atoms.
I tried, I mean, I did keep my daughter away from the friendly wolf.
No, we did the big bad wolf, right?
We did...
But yeah, the friendly giant, the friendly dinosaur.
It's like, oh no, it's terrible.
It's absolutely terrible stuff.
And the Teletubbies was just a weird drug trip.
I mean, that's just too bizarre and too strange and too eerie.
It's like the Studio Ghibli stuff.
It's just a bizarre, traumatized drug trip.
So yeah, in my view, keep your kids away from...
You want them to develop some sort of amygdala that senses danger, right?
Well, he's a dinosaur with teeth, but he's super friendly and just wants to give you a hug.
You have to train your kids to recognize danger.
Friendly predators are a way of disarming your kids' fight-or-flight response so that they can be taken over.
No, it's terrible.
It's terrible.
We took a vacation earlier this year and holy cow, it was so much more expensive and draining than 10 years ago.
Yeah, how travel used to be.
Of course, I was doing a lot of business travel before 9-11.
It was amazing.
You could show up, honestly, you could show up like 20 minutes before your flight, zip through and off you went.
It was fantastic.
We were talking about the time, the friendulum time between Christmas and New Year's.
It's like airport time.
It doesn't exist.
Nothing matters.
Nothing's real.
Nothing you eat sticks to your ass.
Everything you drink vanishes.
it's limerence time.
My brother replaced the battery in my Surface 4, it's a major chore.
Even with the new battery, the battery life still sucks.
I speculate it's a Microsoft planned obsolescence.
Well, I mean, I don't know what Microsoft has done.
I think there was a thing with Apple not too long ago where the phones slow down when the battery starts to run out.
With the theory being that if you can only get like two or three hours of battery life with the processor running at full time, once the battery degrades a certain amount, the CPU slows down to try and give you more time.
Thank you for sharing that you have diarrhea that has corn in it.
I saw a meme that absolutely made me laugh until I snorted half of my soul out of my ear, which was, there's a video of a guy, it's from some seafarer's movie, I don't know, Master and Commander or something.
It's a British guy strolling down the walkway of a ship while the entire ship explodes around him.
And it was like, my food being digested, the corn.
Does not get touched by any of the explosions.
Yeah, Korn is immortal.
Korn is immortal.
I think that Korn was around before the universe and will outlive not just us, not just this bowel movement, but the universe itself.
Korn is a vampire of time that is outside the space-time continuum.
All right.
Thank you for the tip.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
It's the last show of the year.
Give me a good year end.
All right.
I've been on a tear the last three months listening to shows and call-ins.
It seems like multiple times of show now something hits me like a lightning bolt.
The past year has been so intense examining my life and it's taken a toll.
But I don't have to disengage and hit an emotional cool-down timer anymore.
New memories of dysfunction and abuse are uncovered all the time.
Now, it's been enlightening beyond words.
Thank you so much, Steph.
I appreciate that, Eric.
Thank you for the tip.
I am very glad to have helped.
And of course, a massive thanks to the people who are opening up their hearts and minds and lives in the call-in shows.
Thomas the Tank Engine.
Trains are your friend.
They're really not.
uh in my after we moved to canada i lived in in dom mills and there was a guy there in a wheelchair because he got run over by a train uh oh eric also says and a massive thank you to the person who helped me and directed me to stefan's show There's no telling how much that helped me actually absorb and process the information properly.
You know who you are!
It all sounds vaguely sinister.
Who's going to replace Trudeau, SPM, and Kakadu?
I don't know.
Polyev here?
Polyev here?
Polyev?
Polyev?
Polyev, probably.
Oh, the friendly panda bear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Hey, uh, we had a big Francine crew in here the other night.
For sure.
A lot of life is building to a full house at Christmas.
The baby's son in Teletubbies is so crazy, lol.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
What about Winnie the Pooh?
I never got too much into Winnie the Pooh as a kid.
I just felt a little uneasy that he never wore pants.
I was a Snoopy fan, for sure.
Alright, going back to your 20s, what would you say was the most harmful effect of having your mom-slash-parents influence in your life, if there was one?
How did it affect your dating with respect to finding a quality woman to marry and have kids with?
Oh yeah, so having my mother in my life kept good women at bay.
Yeah, kept good women at a distance.
I don't blame them for that.
I can completely understand them with that.
It wasn't their job to fix me or wake me up.
But yes, that definitely was the high, high price to pay.
All right.
I stumbled upon the 90s show Dinosaurs on YouTube.
Creepy dinosaur family with a baby dino saying, not the mama, and hitting the dad with implements like frying pans.
The dad is a typical goof.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, women are programmed to not need men so that they need the state and will submit to power in return for money, right?
Cujo the friendly rabbit dog.
Is Fred Rogers good for children?
Mr. Rogers' neighborhood?
It's a lovely day in the neighborhood.
So, I would not say so.
I would not, if I had a son, I would not expose him to Mr. Rogers because it is, um, it's too feminine.
It's too feminine.
It's, uh, it's too nice.
It's too, you know, boys have to be tough.
We have to be tough.
We have to be tough.
And if I could never see the character surviving a battle, it's kind of hard for me to be truly enthusiastic about the show.
So, that's my particular...
I mean, with the sun in particular.
With the sun in particular.
What about the Pokemon show?
I've never watched it, sorry.
I was a huge Bugs Bunny fan as a kid.
Well, Bugs Bunny was kind of cool because Bugs Bunny was a giant, you know, FU to, um, uh, that's Fudge University for Steve's kid, uh, to, to Authority, right?
Because Bugs Bunny was constantly looking at, uh, I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair.
But he was constantly subverting authority and trying to do his own thing.
And he was supremely unimpressed by aggression.
You know, some guy's got a big gun in his face.
He's like, yeah, what's up, doc?
So I think Bugs Bunny was kind of funny and cool in that way.
I couldn't stand the Roadrunner, though.
Roadrunner was just horrendous because...
I mean, it's the myth of Sisyphus, right?
Like, just always trying to catch the roadrunner, never able to catch the roadrunner.
Just go hunt something else.
Like, there's this compulsion, right?
It was too circular.
Like, you never get out.
You never get out.
Peppa Pig?
I never watched that either.
What do you think of this verse?
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth.
I come not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
To me, it seems like Jesus was talking about defooing.
Do you think this is part of why he was attacked?
Well, Jesus was a break with tradition, right?
Jesus was the extension of morality from in-group preference, tribal preference to universal.
That involves breaking with parental authority, and there can be no moral progress without breaking with parental authority.
Most people throughout all of human history believed in slavery, and when slavery ended, you had to break with your parents about it.
You had to say that slavery is wrong, and even if you believe that slavery is right, you're wrong.
So, he was talking about, this is a big foundational question, right?
This is the most fundamental question in society and philosophy, at least at the moment and throughout most of history.
Hopefully it won't be as big a deal in the future.
The big question in society is virtue or blood?
Morals or family?
The good or genetic proximity preference?
Are we animals or are we animals?
Angels.
The animal versus the angel.
The angel says, do good though the skies fall, and that virtue is more important than family.
Now, for Jesus, of course, virtue was more important than his tribe, right?
In the way that he viewed it.
What is more important, family or virtue?
If you choose family, you cannot choose virtue.
Even if your family is virtuous, you should choose virtue because it is virtuous, not because your family told you to.
Of course, if your family is virtue, they would have taught you.
If you're virtuous, they would have taught you about virtue.
But do we choose genetic proximity loyalty, tribal or genetic or in-group preference?
Are we machines for the reproduction of DNA? Or do we choose abstract moral virtues?
That is the big fork in the road.
That is the big fork in the road.
Now, if you choose virtue over your family, if your family is corrupt, abusive, dysfunctional, evil perhaps, if you choose virtue over your family, your family will hate you.
For the most part.
That's the price.
That's the price of virtue, is the hatred of the corrupt.
Wanting to be virtuous without annoying the corrupt is like trying to have a medicine that cures a disease that is also approved of by the disease.
You know, if you have an effective antibacterial agent, the antibacterial agent has to disrupt or be inconvenient to the bacteria.
Otherwise, it's not really doing any good at all.
That's how you know.
You know, if you have something that shrinks tumors, the tumors, if they were conscious, would complain that they're being killed.
Murder.
If you remove a tumor from somebody's body, you remove a tumor from somebody's body, the tumor is being killed.
The tumor is being killed.
People want to feel good and they want to feel good in general by conforming to baser instincts.
Yes.
When somebody behaves better and calls them out on moral hypocrisy, they go from feeling very good to feeling very bad, and they view this as an attack or an assault upon them.
Being in the presence of virtue makes the corrupt feel that they're being assaulted by morals.
They wouldn't identify it that way, but People are corrupt because they're hedonistic, which means that they view that which makes them feel good as the good and that which makes them feel bad as the bad.
Now, morality is about making people feel good about doing good and making people feel bad about doing bad.
And the reason why people get so angry around the moralist is because the moralist hooks into their conscience and they then feel attacked from within.
they feel helpless, which is why they often explode in rage or run away.
So, there is no moral progress without criticism of the ethics of the parents.
Yes.
And I would say that Christianity was the greatest moral revolution-slash-evolution in human history, at least, certainly has the most effect to date.
Think not that I am come to send peace on Earth, if I am not to send peace but a sword.
Now, The sword, of course, is not violence.
There's nobody saying that families should break down into dual-based civil war.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
Well, in the call-in shows that you've heard, I'm sure it's been quite a few, in the call-in shows that you've heard, how many people, when they start becoming philosophical and more virtuous, are attacked, criticized, and condemned by their own families?
Moralists very often come out of bad families because swinging to, quote, the other extreme is the best way to survive.
So the greatest moralists often come out of the most corrupt nests.
In your life, when you discover truth, virtue, reason, evidence, and you begin to behave in a moral, consistent and virtuous manner, which means not bearing false witness, consistent and virtuous manner, which means not bearing false witness, which means telling the truth about evildoers and the harm they've done to you in the hopes that they will become better, How do people react?
I mean, it seems to me that obviously the sword is an analogy, but it seems to me that obviously Jesus had this as his experience and he is talking about something that is very, very...
Spongebob?
I never ever got the Spongebob thing.
I don't get it.
I don't understand it.
It makes no sense to me.
Why is there a living sponge under the sea?
Why does he live in a...
whatever, he lives in some weird thing.
I do not understand it.
Looney Tunes?
Yeah, certainly better than the modern stuff.
But Looney Tunes was epistemologically and metaphysically mad, right?
And I get that.
I mean, it's sort of supposed to be, you know, the old thing that they paint a tunnel and then somebody runs through a tunnel and then they try to follow and it turns into rock, right?
That is dealing with an abuser who constantly shifts reality so that you always lose.
Yosemite Sam was a bit more of a realistic character to imagine.
Yes, true.
Meep, meep.
Right, right.
We did the woodpecker.
I never got into him either.
Same idea with Tom and Jerry.
Yeah, for sure.
And the idea that predators can, I mean, it's just, it's obviously biologically completely ridiculous that you have a predator that never catches its prey.
It's basically saying that predators are goofy and futile and will never win.
And that's a terrible message to give to kids because predators are dangerous and have to win in order to survive.
Like, there wouldn't be a coyote if he could never catch the roadrunner.
It wouldn't exist.
So, I don't like when you train children that predators are goofy and silly and never win.
That lowers their fight or flight and amygdala response to the point where they can't see dangers in their environment.
What do you think of the monkey show for the young demographic?
Um, I like the monkeys.
I thought it was a fun band.
One of the guys, the guy with the hat?
His mother invented liquid paper, believe it or not.
Made a fortune.
Did Izzy watch any of the Studio Ghibli movies growing up?
Many, many, many years ago, back in the days of the old Free Domain message board, which you can actually access it, premium.freedomain.com.
It's a really good archive.
But there was a guy who was recommending Studio Ghibli, and I tried watching it, and I just found it way too freaky.
I did end up re-watching Spirited Away, and I thought it was okay, but just too surreal and too unreal.
It's too disconnected from reality, and it has...
No traction for any of the moral lessons in the real world.
I prefer my stories to be set in the real world where moral virtues can actually be enacted rather than fantasy worlds that you'll never inhabit.
I'm sorry that your family hates you.
I really am.
That can be a mark of virtue for sure.
Have you watched Naruto?
No.
No, I would...
I mean, I don't know.
Naruto, let me see.
Where is that from?
I... You know, maybe anime is great for Asian kids.
Yeah, I... I mean, I like my own history.
I like my own culture, right?
My daughter was into Western stuff, right?
For the most part.
Western fairy tales, Western nights around table stuff, and so on, right?
All right, son.
Happy New Year, staff.
Thank you.
Happy New Year to you as well.
Edenism cultivates a nasty gut biome.
Reversing this leads to bad feelings.
That's very true.
That's a very good way of putting it, Steve.
Thank you.
What's your latest book?
It's a novel set in reverse.
Thank you for the tip.
Happy birthday, Varangian.
There was a Pepper the Pig episode that presented spiders as harmless, but the British program was not something that Australian authorities wanted to show to their country for obvious reasons.
Yeah, this is like the Charlotte's Web stuff and the Babe stuff and all of that, that all animals are friendly, there's no win-lose in nature, and it is absolutely, deadly wrong.
I mean, the older stories are about the dangers of stepmothers, of wolves, of bears, and so on.
What's that?
I don't know why.
No, I won't say that if Steve skits here.
That's fine.
I'll say it another time.
Somebody says, when I started holding higher standards and others accountable, everyone fell away from my old life.
Not before taking a dump on their way out.
Yeah.
Did you ever watch Pat and Matt?
I did not.
I believe there's a real-life reference in SpongeBob.
The area SpongeBob takes place in was a nuclear testing site, hence the weirdness of nuclear references in the show.
Okay, so it's anti-nuclear, right?
I'm not pro-anti-nuclear.
We watched the PewDiePie Japan vlogs They just take their son to fun theme parks and celebrate holidays and birthdays.
Really?
What's PewDiePie doing?
He's not living in Japan, is he?
Are you still thinking of doing something with the Arlo character in the future?
I'm mulling it over, but I think not.
To be fair, in Britain we killed off our dangerous wildlife.
Well, I would not say.
That's a whole other topic.
He lives in Japan?
Why does he live in Japan?
Why does PewDiePie live in Japan?
He moved to Japan with his wife.
Why?
Why?
A Boat's Life is a good kid movie, yeah, for sure.
The Cricket.
Voiced by the eternally sinister...
Oh God, what's his name?
Kevin Spacey.
Thank you for the tip, designer girl.
I appreciate that.
Is PewDiePie's wife Japanese?
Why did he move to Japan?
It seems like an odd thing to do.
I mean, there was a listener who...
Yeah, there was a listener who...
Does he speak Japanese?
I mean, that's kind of an essential.
It's not the easiest language in the world to learn.
Yeah, just...
I don't know.
I mean, there was a listener who moved to Japan early on in the show, but he married a Japanese woman, so that kind of makes sense.
I think his wife is Italian.
Well, of course, Italian, but British equals Japanese.
That's just math.
That's just math.
No, so even if you say, I mean, the greatest predator is political power.
It's the greatest predator in human history is political power.
So how do you teach your kids about the dangerous predator called political power, right?
I mean, the greatest predator are a democide, right?
I mean, governments killed 250 million people over the course of the 20th century outside of wars.
So how do you teach your children about the dangers of political power?
Well, you don't do it with Mr. Rogers.
And you don't do it with Dora the Explorer.
and you don't do it with the Teletubbies.
With anime, the character gets to the next level of strength by following the new master.
And this goes on and on.
There is some sense of conformity there.
Well, but also, your power is moral.
Your most foundational power is moral.
Morality, right?
And I do not like any stories wherein your power has to come from something outside of yourself.
A master being bitten by a radioactive spider, coming from the planet Krypton, being called up by a wizard, right?
All of these stories where the older man comes to the younger man and brings him into combat, Obi-Wan Kenobi style, that's just teaching you to be drafted by the government to fight some stupid-ass war for them to profit off your disassembly.
So, What I've always wanted to do in my novels, and you can read this in the present very clearly with the character Rachel, is that she does not need anyone's permission but herself to have integrity.
She doesn't have to beg for someone else.
She doesn't have to follow someone.
It's almost you simply has to grow and look inside.
I do not like it when the virtues that are needed are granted by someone else.
Oh, this guy, it turns out that he's actually a king and therefore he gets right to be powerful that way, right?
The only power that you are in control of is your virtue.
And all of these stories are there to tell you that your power comes from permission or approval or mentoring from someone or somewhere else.
How do you teach children about the great dangers of political power?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Maybe that's my next book after this.
I love this.
A D&D meme.
Strength is being able to crush a tomato.
Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato.
Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad.
Sorry, if you know, you know.
That's totally nerdy, but it's good nerdy.
It's good nerdy.
All right, any other last tips, questions, issues, challenges, problems?
Love to hear them.
Love to hear them.
Thank you so much for your support as a whole.
And if you are an active supporter, the supporter numbers are going down on locals.
And if you are a supporter and there's something else I can do, different or better, please let me know.
Operations at freedomain.com.
I would love to hear that.
I actually did look into writing a children's book.
I couldn't find an AI that could draw consistent images.
I reckon the most horrific piece of abuse your mother inflicted on you was calling you Basil.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Not the best joke in the known universe.
In the classic Western stories, the moral lessons were learned during the hero's journey.
Did you have mentors in the tech world or most loathe things from reading books or courses?
I did not have mentors in the tech world, really.
All right.
I let my son watch anime.
He stabbed me with a sword.
Oh, dear, oh, dear.
My locals has dropped off about 5% of the past year.
Yes, for sure.
You can train mid-journey to create rather consistent images?
Yes, so if I'm going to do characters in a children's book, I need consistent drawings, right?
I need me some consistent drawings, and that's kind of tough to find, but I appreciate that.
Mid-journey.
Adventures of an average attractive woman.
Ah, I would love to hear your thoughts on your recent interview with Jeffrey Wernick.
I was pretty confused when listening to that.
I had an interview with Jeffrey Wernick?
Who's that?
Let me have a look.
When did I talk to Jeffrey Wernick?
Also known as...
Who the heck is Jeffrey Wernick?
Uh...
Oh, yeah.
Back in October.
Let's see.
my apologies I don't uh Let me just, uh...
Mute here.
Want to take a look?
Want to take a look?
Oh, yes, so sorry.
I remember this guy.
Sorry, this was not supposed to be an interview with him, but he was kind of in on the interview.
Um...
This was somebody I thought was kind of fixed in his ways, obviously a little bit older, and he did not, in particular, want to listen to better parenting approaches, options, and so on.
My apologies.
I don't mean to seem rude.
He was somebody who kind of came in from someone else's interview, and so that's why I didn't remember him.
But yes, I do remember him now, of course.
And it was not...
I mean, it was not a very productive conversation, except for the audience, right?
The people who, when you see people who just can't really respond to reason and evidence in a real-time manner.
But, you know, I enjoyed the conversation as a whole, but I thought it was more instructive on somebody who was not going to be able to listen very productively, which, you know, it's not easy to do.
It's not easy to do.
All right, Steph, come on, the best children's books are illustrated.
Yes, that's why I'm looking for that.
Yeah, sorry, I mean, maybe I live a little bit too much in the now, but I'd sort of forget that.
Find a based illustrator?
Yeah, could be.
Could be.
Could be.
Um, Steve, is your kid still around?
And.
Thank you.
Is your kid.
Still in it?
Dum-dum-dum.
New Jackbooks. New Jackbooks.
Thank you.
Ah, what do we got here?
No, sir.
All right.
All right.
Izzy enjoyed my fee-fi-fo-fum from the past, but we'll do that another time.
The Emperor Has No Clothes?
Yes, that was one of my favorite stories.
Of course, I remember flying.
When I was six, I flew to Africa to see my father, and I remember listening over and over again to The Emperor Has No Clothes and looking at all of the clouds like little puffy sheep on the blue lawn of the ocean.
Way below.
And I remember you could go up and chat with the pilots and all of this kind of stuff.
What do you think of the government pushing bird flu?
I mean, I think they'll try.
And the hypochondriacs will welcome it, but I think most people are past that stuff.
I don't think it'll take.
Anything new for 2025, Steph?
Yes, I did answer that earlier, so you'll have to catch that on the rebound.
You'll have to catch that on the rewind.
All right.
The last thing I'll say here is kind of funny.
I think it was kind of funny.
Clichés.
What is always portrayed unrealistically in movies?
What is always portrayed?
And this is from The Critical Drinker.
How easy slash visually interesting computer hacking is?
Yeah, it's always these screens with this matrix code.
I'm in!
And it's always hopping.
You're just hopping from IP to IP and all over the map and all of that, right?
So yeah, meals, nobody ever actually eats their food.
Well, there's a reason for that.
I directed a movie with a meal scene, my short movie called After, which you can get at fdrpodcasts.com.
Just do a search for that.
And the problem with, you know, you have to do so many retakes.
And so...
Food continuity is a huge issue.
It can take an entire day to shoot one food scene, and so having people not eat their food is a good thing, because sometimes you have to go and retake, and food continuity is a huge problem.
Basically, all male versus female fights, that's true.
That is very, very sad.
How quickly police show up after shots are fired.
Yes.
How powerful shotguns are in combat.
I don't really know that one very well.
Grenades exploding in big jets of flame.
Yes.
The ability of standard civilian cars to stop bullets.
Yes.
Phone calls that last 10 seconds and end abruptly.
What is it they always say, you know, in order to heighten the drama?
You know, somebody calls like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down, right?
So you heighten the drama.
It's always the same.
No, no, no, slow down, slow down, right?
What is going on, right?
Characters knowing every street address in the city without having to consult a map.
Yes.
Supposedly burned-out characters who live on booze and junk food but still have bodies like professional athletes.
Yes, that's very true.
That's very true.
So...
Sex scenes are always between sexy people.
You never see scenes involving greasy overweight geriatrics.
Yes.
What else have they got here?
Poor people living in giant houses.
Always.
Ain't nobody ever shown living in a basement.
It's aspirational.
Let's see here.
Oh yes, romance films that would end immediately if the characters bothered to take five minutes to clear up a misunderstanding.
Right.
So there's always this, you know, this is an old trope.
It goes all the way back to Shakespeare.
Basically, a man dates, a boy dates a girl on a dare, ends up falling in love with her.
She finds out that it was just a dare.
And he's like, no, but I really did fall in love with that kind of stuff, right?
But that's a metaphor for sexual attraction, right?
Alright.
One shot with a handgun instantly drops a person, says someone.
The protagonist is shot at many times and never hit or take a non-disabling hit.
Oh yeah, or people who get, you know, they get hit in the leg and then they're running a scene or two later.
And I know you get adrenaline and all of that, but there's still, like, physical abilities that...
The amount of damage that people take in movies is completely ridiculous, right?
People take multiple beatings still in the fight.
A person gets thrown across the room, smashing into furniture, gets up and keeps fighting.
It really does give people absolutely unrealistic views on the amount of damage that people can take.
What else is there?
Always finding a parking spot without difficulty.
Yeah, I mean, that's just for continuity, right?
How all phone calls end no matter how long they were abruptly.
Yeah, Zendaya killing Sadaka two at a time was cringe, yeah, for sure.
But that's just trying to make women feel like they don't need men and that they're all kinds of tough.
And it makes them feel more masculine, which makes men become more feminine, which disables your defense systems, right?
Oh yeah, they turn on the TV, it's instantly on a news channel that's showing the events the characters were just talking about.
Yeah, for sure.
Sounds of swords being drawn from their sheets.
Twink!
Bowman drawing and holding the bow drawn for more than a few seconds.
Yeah.
Using the fire command to loose arrows in the medieval settings.
Yeah, I guess fire would be based upon cannons and stuff, right?
Yeah, Jennifer Garner was queen of fights that didn't make any sense.
What else?
Oh yeah, this drives me nuts too.
When movies are set in the past but the actors have modern haircuts and facial hairstyles which would require hair clippers to create.
When male actors are portrayed over time yet always have the same length of facial hair, yeah.
So yeah, it always bothers me if you talk about some Viking thing.
Like, their hair would grow.
I mean, I guess they could cut it with...
I remember a friend of mine, when I was working with him up north, he took a bowie knife to his hair because it was constantly getting in his face while he was trying to do his work.
Just saw it off his...
I'm like, must be nice, man, to have so much hair you can just sew it off and know you'll get it back.
*sigh* Thank you.
Oh yeah, the ability of anyone, regardless of age or conditioning, to break into their maximum sprint at a moment's notice without pulling a muscle, coming up lame, etc.
Yeah, I actually, about two months ago, I did a full sprint for the first time in a while.
You know, most people don't sprint after the age of 30. I think it's kind of important to see if you can, right?
See if you can.
All right, let's just see if you guys have anything to add to that.
That could be our last thing.
Oh, yeah, gun sounds in the ear, right?
That's really tough, right?
What was it?
There was some movie where the gun sound was more realistic, like somebody actually did have hearing damage.
Was that...
Oh, the Harrison Ford movie where he jumps off the aqueduct.
Well, witness.
Witness?
Witness?
No.
No, not witness.
Oh, it's another single.
I can't remember.
Okay.
The punch effect in movies is bizarre.
What is the sound?
A real punch doesn't sound like that.
Yeah.
10 Things I Hate About You did that trope.
But yeah, but that was a remake of a Shakespearean thing, right?
People from the 1800s with perfect teeth.
Yeah.
British people with any teeth.
Things get realistic when Alex Baldwin is the lead and producer.
Yeah, that's a realistic sound.
Thanks for another year of amazing work.
You've helped me so much.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I never understood Conan the Barbarian, an ancient bodybuilder body with no gym membership or steroids.
Yeah, that's true.
The Fugitive.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, have yourself a wonderful, wonderful day, everyone.
Happy New Year.
If you're listening to this later, before the end of the New Year, it would be nice to have a little bit of extra cheddar in my fridge.
For the end of the year, freedomain.com slash donate.
freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Massively appreciated.
You can use fdrlocals.com Sorry.
You can use fdrurl.com slash locals to get a free month and try out the premium stuff, which is really, really great.
And have yourself an absolutely gorgeous New Year's if I don't talk to you beforehand.
And next year is going to be fantastic.
I'm looking forward to it enormously.
I appreciate you guys.
Love you guys.
Have a great day.
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