Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Expert vs Podcasters: What Do They Do?
Aired: 2025-04-14
Duration: 07:17


=== Experts Versus Podcasters (06:04) ===

[00:00:00]  So when experts faced with growing competition of alternative media, which is, I'm going to say experts versus podcasters, just because I just need a common phrase for the two.
[00:00:11]  experts are those generally with credentials and
[00:00:14]  support for their perspectives.
[00:00:16]  And the podcasters are, you know, the Wild West, the Freeformists, the Freeballers, and so on, right?
[00:00:20]  So. Thank you.
[00:00:28]  When experts are faced with growing competition, what do they do?
[00:00:31]  I mean, I remember many years ago, showing my daughter, like, I do a tweet, and here's how many people like and read and share it.
[00:00:38]  And then we went to CNN, we went to the New York Times, and so on, and here's their tweets, and, you know, it was night and day, right?
[00:00:49]  So, when experts are faced with growing competition, what do they do?
[00:00:56]  What do they do?
[00:00:57]  Now, two things that heavily influenced me in my life, the business world and the sports world.
[00:01:03]  I was very big into sports, played a lot of team sports when I was younger.
[00:01:06]  I bought a polo team, swimming team, cross-country running team, although that's more solo.
[00:01:11]  I was both singles and doubles.
[00:01:12]  Tennis, volleyball, soccer, a lot of team sports.
[00:01:16]  And I would play several times a week.
[00:01:21]  I'm not a morning person.
[00:01:22]  I would get up and...
[00:01:23]  Practice swimming, right?
[00:01:25]  So I did a fairly massive amount of sports when I was younger.
[00:01:34]  Now, sports are really important because you don't sabotage, right?
[00:01:39]  I mean, I remember seeing there was a couple of episodes of the show Glee where I think the cheerleaders were sabotaging another cheerleader by telling her she had to stop eating or couldn't eat and then she had no energy to, right?
[00:01:53]  To compete with them.
[00:01:57]  So when you're on a sports team and somebody comes along who's really good, it tends to up your game.
[00:02:07]  They've done studies on this that runners run faster when somebody's running slightly faster than them.
[00:02:11]  You get better with competition.
[00:02:13]  So I learned a lot about competition from doing huge amounts of sports.
[00:02:18]  And they still do fairly, fairly significant amounts of sports.
[00:02:21]  So. So...
[00:02:26]  You don't sabotage, right?
[00:02:28]  You certainly don't sabotage on your own team, and you don't sabotage the other team, right?
[00:02:32]  So, in the business world, there's competition, and competition drives innovation, right?
[00:02:37]  So, I mean, because our customers always wanted to change the system, I wrote code that allowed the program to change itself.
[00:02:44]  So they'd just hand over the program, let the customers change the system as they saw fit, right?
[00:02:49]  This gave us a huge competitive advantage.
[00:02:51]  And I learned a lot about, because I did a lot of sales and marketing, so I learned a lot about how you deal with competition when you're talking to clients, potential clients, RFPs, requests for proposals, you go down and give a presentation.
[00:03:01]  So you don't badmouth your competitors.
[00:03:04]  You position your strengths against their weaknesses.
[00:03:06]  You admit where their weaknesses are stronger, where their strengths are better than yours.
[00:03:10]  And you would learn from them.
[00:03:12]  You would try to, you'd go to their website, you'd look at their demos, you wouldn't cheat and pretend to be a customer, but you would try and figure out what they were doing.
[00:03:19]  And so on, right?
[00:03:23]  So, you don't badmouth your competitors.
[00:03:25]  You say, here's where our strength is.
[00:03:27]  They do have these strengths, to be fair, so that you sound objective.
[00:03:31]  And you learn from them, right?
[00:03:34]  And it actually is...
[00:03:35]  It's fierce, but friendly, if that makes sense.
[00:03:42]  Fierce, but good-natured.
[00:03:43]  Like sports.
[00:03:44]  Sports are fierce, but good-natured, right?
[00:03:45]  You try to win, and then you shake hands afterwards, right?
[00:03:50]  Now, and because I came from the sports world, and I came from the business world, entering into the world of media and politics was fucking foul.
[00:04:04]  It was fucking foul!
[00:04:09]  I don't think I've ever, like, other than coming home from a rational universe to my family of origin, I don't think I've experienced anything fouler.
[00:04:17]  It's one of the reasons why I eventually just had to, Busted out of politics and this sort of media stuff.
[00:04:22]  It's foul.
[00:04:27]  It's foul.
[00:04:28]  I don't think, I didn't find it foul among the podcasters, but it's fucking foul.
[00:04:33]  It really is.
[00:04:38]  So, when I was in competition with other businesses to try and sell environmental management information systems, health and safety information systems, all the stuff that I had programmed and worked on, I mean, we fought hard.
[00:04:51]  And I remember calling people up, congratulating them.
[00:04:55]  They called me up to congratulate me.
[00:04:56]  But we fought hard against each other, but we shook hands, right?
[00:05:00]  And we needed each other because, you know, if you've got five competitors, they're all advertising.
[00:05:05]  And that saves you money on your average.
[00:05:06]  If you're the only person, then you have to do all the advertising.
[00:05:09]  So it's fierce but friendly.
[00:05:11]  Now, what I couldn't imagine was Going up against a fierce competitor or a series of fierce competitors, losing to them, and then trying to get them debanked by lying and saying they were money laundering or they were fraudulent.
[00:05:34]  I couldn't conceive of that.
[00:05:36]  I mean, that would be like your concern that you're going to lose a running race to some guy.
[00:05:40]  So what you do is you spike his drink.
[00:05:48]  With some performance-enhancing drug and then you make an anonymous call to get him tested.
[00:05:52]  That's fucking foul.
[00:06:00]  That's incomprehensible.
[00:06:02]  I've never heard of anything like that, honestly.

=== Nancy Kerrigan's Story (01:13) ===

[00:06:04]  Never heard of anything like that in the business world.
[00:06:06]  I'm sorry.
[00:06:19]  Yeah, mis, dis, mal.
[00:06:21]  Yeah, misinformation, disinformation, mal information is all they do.
[00:06:23]  Yeah. Yeah, they run to the government, and that happens in the business world as well.
[00:06:30]  Joe Rogan was pretty foul to you, as far as I recall.
[00:06:33]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:06:33]  That's true.
[00:06:34]  Yeah, you're right, James.
[00:06:35]  You don't go Nancy Kerrigan, right?
[00:06:37]  Well, actually, Tonya Harding was the one who, I think she hired her boyfriend to take a pipe wrench to Nancy Kerrigan's knee or something like that, right?
[00:06:44]  I mean, I used to, back in the day in another life, I've always been – well, I was an introvert, pretty shy as a kid, but I really worked hard to sort of overcome that.
[00:06:54]  And I used to go down to Vegas, and you set up this whole – I'm sure you've been to conferences properly at one time or another.
[00:07:01]  So we would go down, you'd set up your booth, and I would chat with people and make jokes and show them our software, and you'd offer them an iPod if they'd give you a business card, and then you'd go and call them later and so on, right?
[00:07:13]  And, of course, we would go over to our competitors' booths.