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May 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:17:09
BITCOIN BREAKTHROUGH!
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Good morning and welcome to...
It is Sunday Morning Live on the 11th of May, 2025.
And very nice to have you here with me on this interestingly weathered day.
So I'm happy, of course, to get your comments and questions and problems, criticisms.
Whatever is on your mind.
Of course, of course, of course.
Absolutely thrilled to wish everybody a very, very happy Mother's Day.
We all have our mothers.
Hopefully you had a good one, or at least, if not a good one, a reformed one with honest conversations.
And I wish to give my very best love, warmth, hugs, and best wishes to...
The great mothers out there in the world, you are really the foundation of everything that men work for and the continuance of reason, philosophy, civilization, and knowledge.
So I just want to give a big, massive hug and kiss out to all the great mothers that are out there, and thank you so much for everything that makes life worthwhile.
You know, the dedication and devotion of a father and a husband has a lot to do with the beauty of a wife and a mother and to all the women out there who just make life great, wonderful, perfect, beautiful and organized.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
It takes a man often to build a house but it almost always takes a mother to make it into a home so that it's not mere bricks and mortar.
But it's a sanctuary and a place of love and beauty, tenderness and fun.
So happy Mother's Day to everyone who is striving for and achieving beautiful motherhood.
It is a beautiful thing and I love you guys for all of that.
And of course, don't forget peaceful parenting.
All right.
Thank you for your tip.
FreedomMain.com to help out the show.
Good morning, Stefan and community.
Happy Mama's Day to all the lovely mothers in our community and, of course, to Stefan's wife, Izzy's mama.
Happy Mother's Day.
Glad I can jump on with everyone for a few minutes.
Also filled with great perspectives and insights.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I will pass that along to my lovely bride.
Good morning.
Happy Mother's Day.
All right.
Let's see here.
Let's get to your comments.
How do you deal with a family member who is consumed with pride and acts on occasion like a dictator?
Right.
That's a tough question.
If it's constantly, you know, maybe better to...
You obviously try to get the person to change, but view it, of course, as an optional relationship, but if it's on occasion, I think in general, correct me if I'm incorrect, of course, as usual,
but I think in general what you're talking about is people who are consumed by their emotions, people who don't have strict rules of behavior, but instead are ruled by the passions, Of the moment.
That's a tough thing.
So if they're in a good mood, things go well.
If they're in a bad mood, things go badly.
And they don't have, you know, you've got to in life have that fiery line.
You know, there's that fiery line, you shall not pass, right, where behavior is not on the table.
And of course, you've heard me say this to people as a whole in call-in shows.
Other kinds of conversations where I say, okay, so if you were, let's say, out of money, right, you were just broke for whatever reason, would robbing a gas station be on your list of ways to solve or deal with being broke?
And, of course, the answer is that no.
No, that would not be on your list of behaviors for being broke.
I mean, you might beg, you might borrow, you would do whatever, but you wouldn't just go and rob someone because you were broke, right?
So, in the same way, when it comes to Yelling at people, bullying people, calling them names, insulting them, escalation, intimidation.
There just has to be that fiery line.
This is not something that I'm going to do.
I will not cross that line.
I will not engage in that behavior.
And people who don't have that fiery line, Of not going to do it.
It's not on my list of options.
It's not, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, people can annoy us, people can bother us and so on, but we don't have, oh, I'm going to set fire to their house.
Like, that's not, in any rational or moral person, that's not on the list of optional responses to this kind of stuff, right?
So, people who don't have that fiery line, I mean, you really only have three choices, right?
Philosophy is all about clarity, right?
So people who don't have that fiery line, the none shall pass line, the bull rug on the bridge line, where they just don't do that kind of behavior at number one, you can attempt to get them to have that fiery line and not indulge in that kind of behavior, right?
So you would make the case for them that this is not what they should be doing and try to get them to create that fiery line and respect it, right?
And that can take a while, but that's one option that you have, right?
Now the other option that you have is to accept and live with the behavior.
As you say, it's occasional.
It's occasional.
So you have as an option, To accept and just say, okay, once every three months, this person is just going to get kind of squirrely and aggressive, you know, and I'm just going to live with it, right?
That's, you know, again, none of these, I'm not recommending or not, I generally recommend talking to people about moral issues and, you know, attempting to raise everybody's moral standards, create these fiery lines for destructive behavior, for sure.
You can choose, and let's say you've had the conversation and they say, I have no problem with what I do, I'm just self-expressed, I'm a passionate person, blah, blah, blah.
So let's say you have that conversation where you say, you know, this is kind of aggressive, it's kind of unpleasant, here's what I would suggest, and tell me what you think.
And let's say you try to have a reasonable conversation, but, but, but, the person...
Does not even admit fault and defends their actions as being honest and self-expressed and don't try and control me and don't bully me.
Now you're the bully, blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay, so you have the conversation with them.
They don't listen.
So what do you do?
Well, you can choose to live with the behavior.
You can choose.
It's funny, you know, in general, I mean outside of UPB violations, I'm less concerned With what you choose rather than that you choose.
Right?
It matters that you know that you're making a choice consciously, not unconsciously, not in reaction, not in avoidance.
It matters that you are making a choice.
So if somebody has this kind of aggression, bullying, as you say, the pride, You can say, okay, I've had the conversation, maybe more than one.
They're not going to change.
They're not going to admit fault.
Okay, so then you can say, I'm going to choose to live with this behavior.
Now, live with your behavior doesn't mean repeatedly subject yourself to it, but there's enough pluses in the relationship that I can handle or live with the minuses.
So that's your second choice, right?
First choice.
Get them to improve their behavior.
Second choice, live with the negative behavior.
Third choice is not have the relationship.
Right?
Improve, accept, reject.
Improve, accept, reject.
Those are your choices.
Now, what choice you should make, I can't really tell you that.
Because it's complicated, right?
I don't know the details.
And even if I didn't know the details, the last thing I'd want to do is tell you what to do.
Tell people what to do.
I don't do that because there's no point.
I mean, that's like your tennis instructor serving for you.
I mean, you're not learning anything, right?
So that would be my approach and hopefully that makes some sense to you.
All right.
And Nina says, good morning, Steph.
The interview you did with Keith Knight was very, very good.
Love the role-playing.
It's funny, eh?
It's funny.
I remember, oh gosh, long ago, the late Marlon Brando was being interviewed by Connie Chung, who looked like a tiny moon of Phobos orbiting his rather immense bulk.
And she was talking about, you know, what a great actor he was, and he had this whole speech about, I don't really care about who's the best, who's the worst.
But...
What he did say, which sort of reminded me of this kind of stuff, he said, everybody acts a lot of the time.
I mean, his dog came by, and he said, look, my dog is acting like he likes me when he just wants a treat.
He's the greatest actor around.
And it's funny how when people who would say, well, I'm not an actor, I'm not trained, I'm not a thespian.
You get them into a roleplay, and they can usually get it, like, bang on, right?
That's pretty wild.
It's amazing, right?
And the ecosystem idea or argument, to some degree, came out of this sort of roleplaying stuff, which is we must have all of these different characteristics or characters in our head because we can usually slip into them and argue with them in our minds, right?
All right.
Somebody says, parents are spreading gossip about me despite claiming to put God before family.
What would you do?
Well, if you're religious, if you're Christian, the Bible has that as its answer.
That if you have an issue with someone who's in your religious community, you sit down with that person one-on-one and talk about those issues.
So I guess if it's both parents, it would be one and two.
And then the second thing you do is, if that doesn't resolve the issue, you sit down with...
Members of the congregation and talk to the people you're having an issue with in a subsection of the congregation.
If that doesn't work, maybe involve the priest, but you would talk to that person in front of the whole congregation.
And if that doesn't work, then I think the Bible says you need to go your separate ways.
But of course, check.
I'm no theologian.
So talk to your parents.
about the issues you're having individually or together with both of them and then bring more members of the community in and then bring maybe the entire congregation in in conjunction with the priest and take it from there.
That would be my suggestion according to my obviously amateur understanding of Christian dispute resolution.
You are welcome for the answer.
All right.
Do you have any history book recommendations?
You know, a book that influenced me quite a lot was a book called Modern Times.
Modern Times.
It is by Paul Johnson.
I actually read a bunch of his other stuff and I didn't really like it that much.
But that book to me was Just amazing.
The Palimpsests of Freedom.
I sort of remember that.
The Palimpsests of Freedom is a great title.
And so it's really incredibly well written, very fast-paced, and has some really good...
I mean, it was originally the world from the 1920s to the 1980s, and I think it was later updated.
But it's very, very good.
That's a very, very good book.
When was it last revised?
Modern Times Revised Edition.
I think it was last revised in 2001.
But if you have to read one...
Oh, so Paul Johnson...
Actually, sorry, there's two books that I really, really liked.
And one of them I talked about before.
So Paul Johnson has, of course, Modern Times.
The second...
Great Paul Johnson book is called Intellectuals.
So good.
Now, his basic argument goes something like this.
So, modern intellectuals, secular intellectuals, usually on the left, not always, but usually on the left, what they did was they said priests and Christianity and God and religion and worship are not able to create The good world, the good world, the good life.
And so we're going to...
Our basic argument was we're going to get rid of the priests and we're going to substitute these secular intellectuals as our moral guides, as our moral ideals, as our moral heroes.
And we're going to ditch the priests and go with secular intellectuals.
And he said, okay, so...
If the secular intellectuals had such significant issues with the priests as a whole, then they judged the priests as being morally wanting.
Well, let's have a look at the intellectuals and see what their moral character is like.
And it's a very, very interesting...
Read.
And had a big influence on me about intellectuals and their morals and so on, right?
So, from the back cover, it says, A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world in an intriguing series of case studies.
Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Golanz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin.
Kenneth Tynan and Noam Chomsky, among others, are revealed as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.
And this was a revised edition May 1st, 2007.
I don't know what was revised with all of that, but he's a great writer, a very interesting thinker, and really does commit to his hypothesis, and it's really, really, really cool.
So, I mean, those are just two books that I recommend off the top of my head.
We could go into more if you're interested, but that would be my first shot at it.
All right.
more questions, please.
All right.
Good morning, Chris.
Happy Mother's Day to you as well.
Let's get back to your questions.
Oh, the tab I want is where?
Oh, there it is.
All right.
Let's see here.
How does one honor one's mother when they have chosen to cut off contact?
I'm not sure what you mean.
I'm not sure what your question is.
Can you rephrase it?
What do you mean by honor?
What do you mean by that?
And I will say this, I mean, I've said it in call-in shows, but I'll keep it brief here.
I will say this, sort of pretty clearly, that to parent, parent is a verb, not a noun.
So, you have a mother, right?
You had a woman with a womb who gave birth to you, right?
So, you have a mother.
And that's the act of impregnation and gestation and birth.
You were mothered.
You had a mother.
In terms of the biological function.
I don't know that we can have a whole lot of honor for the biological function.
The question is, were you mothered?
Did she mother you?
Did she love you?
Did she take delight in your company?
Did she smile when you came into the room?
Did she teach you about the world and life and women?
And conflict resolution and friendships and dating.
Were you parented?
You had parents in terms of there was a sperm and an egg and a gestation and a birth, but were you parented?
Right?
So this is sort of the question that happens for people who are adopted.
So people who are adopted, they have a birth mother and They have the mother who raised them, right?
So let's say that the birth mother gave up the child right after birth, right?
So who is your mother?
The mother who birthed you and gave you away, or for whatever reason, right?
We can come up with some sympathetic reasons so we don't paint her in some negative way.
But who is your mother?
Let's say that you ended up with a really great foster mom and she loved you and took care of you and taught you and instructed you and all of that and gave you a really great foundation to sort of move forward in life.
Thank you.
Who's your mother?
What's your name?
Who's your daddy?
Who's your mother?
Is your mother the woman who gave birth to you, or is your mother the woman who mothered you?
So, when it comes to mother, it's important to separate the birth from the love, protection, and moral instruction.
Right?
So, if you say, The Ten Commandments say, honor thy mother and thy father.
Okay, so does that refer to a birth mother or a sperm donor, so to speak?
I don't think so.
I think it means honor those who mothered you and fathered you.
Honor those who parented you, not just those who went through the biological process of insemination and gestation and birth.
All right.
Somebody says, "Best way to deal with Mother's Day loneliness when you defood five months ago and don't want to talk to a cruel mother and father.
I've had them attempt to contact me quite a bit recently.
No apology.
Dismanipulation in hopes of regaining control." I'm sorry about that.
It's a very difficult situation and my heart goes out to you.
It's really, really tough.
You know, if you think that there's anything that can be rescued in the relationship or any possibility of a way of moving forward, then I would.
I mean, if they're contacting you and you think that there's some possibility of something working in the future, I'm a big fan of family therapy, right?
So you can contact a family therapist.
You can maybe share what's been going on with your parents, get the family therapist advice.
If the family therapist is willing and your parents are willing, you could all sit down together with the family therapist and try and work something else out.
But in general, if you've had a really difficult and messed up relationship with your parents, which I would put largely on them, of course, right?
Then trying to...
Re-engage and make it work in the absence of a sort of third party.
I mean, let's say that you're 30. I don't know how old you are, right?
But let's say you're 30 and, you know, things of this messed up with your parents.
The likelihood that, let's say, your mother and your father and you, and maybe you've got some siblings.
We'll just talk about the three of you.
So the likelihood that after 30 years, the things of this messed up, and again, I put it almost all on the parents.
The idea that you can solve it after 30 years of breaking it, so three people have broken it over 30 years, the idea that you can solve it is not likely.
I mean, to put it as nicely as possible, it's just not likely.
So, in general, getting a credentialed expert outsider to review the relationship and try and provide some feedback and context, I think that's really, really important.
Yeah, so mother and father have a very powerful, I mean, there's a reason why, you know, some dysfunctional workplaces say, well, we're family, we're family, right?
And priests would call themselves father and so on, right?
And God the Father and so on.
So the words mother and father have great power in our sort of minds, hearts, and souls.
And I would...
You have to work this out for yourself, but my strong suggestion would be to put the definition of mother and father most strongly on those who genuinely parented you, who gave you moral instruction and virtue and wisdom.
Well, let's see here.
Why do women always want to go somewhere and do something, but men are happy to just stay in the house?
In general, is it like this?
Interesting.
Hmm.
Hmm.
So, this is very much a gross generalization.
There's tons of exceptions, so don't come at me with exceptions.
I fully accept that they are.
So, in general, when women are younger, they want to be out, And about and getting attention, right?
For obvious biological, romantic, and reproductive reasons, right?
So women don't want to stay at home when they're young and single.
In general, though, women will not want to go out as much once they have kids, right?
Because it's a lot of work to go out.
It can be risky.
And so on, right?
So women are drawn to going out, getting attention, being noticed, being admired and desired, right?
I mean, of course, right?
I mean, if you have something of great value that you want to, quote, sell, you don't just leave it in your basement and hope that somebody comes by, goes down to your basement and wants to buy it, right?
I mean, I knew a guy.
Who wanted to date, but his mom kept making him meals, and he kept going over to his mom's place, right?
And it was like, hey man, I don't know where the women are at, but I know where they're not.
They're not at your mom's place eating hamburger helper.
So women are drawn for, again, social media has made this a little crazy, but women are drawn to going out into the world and being admired.
Desired, pursued, because the more men they get to choose from, the better quality men they can generally choose.
Now, if you are...
And remember, this was supposed to be...
Sorry, this was supposed to be a very short-term phase, right?
So let's say a woman would be marriable.
Let's just go by the age of 18. She's marriable.
And she's supposed to...
Be married by 19 or the latest 20. So this is a short-term phase.
It's supposed to be six months of going out there and gaining male attention and all that, right?
That's how it's supposed to work for women, evolutionarily, biologically, and so on.
Okay.
So it's supposed to be a very short-term phase.
And then she's supposed to choose a man.
And then she gets engaged, she gets married, and pretty much on the honeymoon you're getting pregnant in the absence of birth control, which was the case for most of our evolution.
And so she's on the dating market at 18, she's married by 19 or 20, and she has kids by 20 or 21. So the go out and dress up and put your makeup on and be on display.
Like, I saw this video the other day.
It was, you know, 80s girls getting ready for a night out, and it was like the hairspray, the hairdryer, the press-on nails, the curlers, the, like, just the makeup, the mascara, the, like, crazy false eyelashes, that kind of stuff, and the lipstick and the rouge.
Like, it's just, it's a huge deal, right?
Putting yourself out on display and, you know, trying to get the highest quality.
Father fear children that you can.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's why we're all here.
This is no criticism at all.
But it's a very short phase.
It's a very short phase.
Now, this modern world, that phase is just, it just goes on and on.
It just goes longer and longer.
It just keeps going on and on.
So women, you know, in their 30s and even 40s and sometimes even older, Or posting these thirst traps and trying to provoke male romantic attention or sexual attention or lust or something like that.
It just goes on and on.
So if you're in a relationship, let's say you're married, and your wife always wants to put a bunch of makeup on and go places and be seen and all of that, maybe there's a certain level of commitment.
Or maybe she hasn't in particular made her decision about having kids.
Because once you make your decision about having kids, then you get pregnant, and you have kids, and then you're kind of tired, and your kids are taking up your life, and so you're probably not as keen to go out and do things, if that makes sense.
All right.
And women generally run the social life as a whole.
Oh, the book Intellectuals is on audiobook?
Okay.
The New Deal in Old Rome?
Yeah, that's a good book, too.
The Progressive Era by Rothblatt is one of my favorite history books.
Ah, yes.
That man sure had an elegant pen.
For sure.
Have you ever read any Jack London?
I have not.
All right.
Sorry, I'm just reading through here to get the questions.
That's a good point.
I think of my parents by their names, not calling them mother and father because they weren't that.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I really am.
I really am.
All right.
Lady says, I recently had the talk with my mom and she apologized and took responsibility for what happened in my childhood and asks me daily if there's anything I want to discuss about it.
We've had an ongoing discussion for a few months.
I was not expecting her to be open to me, but it's the first time in my life we have actually been close previously as I was close after her.
That is wonderful to hear.
Wonderful, you know, for what it's worth, please pass along my congratulations to your mother for her...
humility and wisdom and maturity and all kinds of stuff.
Thank you.
All right.
Somebody says, I think guys just don't feel like wasting money sometimes and women feel the need to strengthen social bonds.
Yeah, I think that's a reasonable thing.
Did you learn that in acting class as well, Father Molyneux?
I don't mean that as sarcastically either.
I remember them teaching us about different words to use to exercise your jaw's full capacity.
I mean, I certainly did take a whole bunch of acting classes.
But my point is that people who haven't taken acting classes can engage in role plays and really play someone else and so on.
It's really wild.
Somebody says, I know the old joke about the person wanting to date who never leaves their home.
Okay.
You're choosing between parcel delivery or food delivery drivers as potential spouses.
Limited options that way.
Perhaps not the most effective strategy.
Yes.
You know, there is a very strong tendency, particularly among people who are shy or introverted, there is a very strong tendency to Work to avoid rejection.
And that's very tough.
If you work to avoid rejection, then you kind of end up with nothing.
So there's this thing in life which is, well, I don't want to get rejected.
So let's say a guy, right?
I don't want to get rejected, so I'm not going to talk to women.
Okay.
What is fearful about being rejected is that you end up alone, but if you don't talk to women, you end up alone.
The cure to insecurity is to recognize that what you're afraid of will inevitably result from you avoiding that fear.
This is one of the best ways to deal with fear.
You know, like a fear of the dentist.
Well, the dentist might cause me pain.
Okay, well, what happens if you don't go to the dentist in general?
You're going to end up with a lot of tooth pain, right?
Whatever you might need to get done.
So, when it comes to fear, what is the end result of me...
Following my fear, indulging my fear, letting the fear win, right?
Say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to talk to girls because they're going to reject me.
I'm going to end up, I'm going to be alone.
It's like, well, you're not talking to girls.
If being alone is your biggest fear, not talking to girls guarantees you'll be alone.
In general, I mean, unless some bizarrely, like, in general, right?
Unless some weird coincidence happens, right?
So, if you look at, okay, I don't want to talk to girls because they might reject me and I'll feel bad, okay?
But that can have a lot to do with vanity as well.
And vanity is, you know, it's a core human problem because we all know our own inner thoughts.
In general, we all know our own values and we are Lead actors in our own lives and so on.
Whereas to someone else, like you say you go up and talk to a woman on the street, you're just some guy who's going up to talk to some woman on the street, right?
She doesn't have the history.
She doesn't know all your...
You're not the lead actor in her life.
You're just a bit player.
Maybe you want to promote yourself to lead actor, be your husband or whatever, but you're just a bit player.
So that's tough, right?
So sometimes...
You know, going to talk to someone else, like going to talk to a woman, you have to relegate yourself to bit player status.
And there's a certain amount of humility.
You know, when I was originally doing this show back in 2005, 2006, I was...
I was sending off my emails.
I was posting on message boards.
I was trying to sort of raise awareness of what it is that I was doing.
And I knew.
I knew that, I mean, hey man, this is super, super important for me.
It's my show.
It's philosophy that's so important to me.
But I'm just a semi-spam post on somebody else's message board, right?
Being able to see yourself as other people see you is an act of profound humility.
Because you're just not that important to them.
I mean, most people.
Especially people you just meet.
You're just not important to them.
Right?
So sometimes the vanity is I refuse to show up in someone else's life as a potentially annoying bit player.
Face of the crowd.
Extra.
Right?
Because I sit in my own thoughts and I...
I have my own history, and I believe this and that and the other about myself, and I know my intentions, so you're very vivid to yourself, but you're just a bit player to people you meet.
So a lot of insecurity, I don't want to talk to girls, comes from an unwillingness to put yourself in the position of a potentially annoying bit player.
The same thing happens in business, right?
There are a lot of people in business who hate cold calling.
I don't even know if people do this anymore because AI can do it a thousand times a second.
So there are a lot of people in the business world that can't stand cold calling because when you cold call, you're just a potentially annoying bit player in somebody else's day.
They've just had a whole bunch of people who called them and they're just mad and upset and unhappy and you're just annoying them and they're going to kind of rip you a new one and all of that, right?
It's like a real thing, right?
That's a real thing.
So people hate it because, you know, I mean, certainly with myself, you know, if I didn't do much cold calling, I did some.
I did some cold calling, but...
One of the reasons I didn't do a lot of cold calling, and this is another reason why actors and writers have agents, is that you're too close to it.
It's your baby.
It's your book.
It's your software product, in my case.
And so you're too close to it, and you can't be objective about it, and the rejection is too difficult, which is why generally you'll hire salespeople.
It's not their product.
They're just out there.
Cold calling and trying to sell it, if that makes sense.
So a lot of times, people will not approach others out of vanity.
It's not a fear of rejection.
It's a fear of unimportance.
Which is, A real thing, right?
I'm important to me.
I'm important to my family.
I'm important to my friends.
I have, you know, some importance to you guys.
And thank you so much, freedomain.com slash donate.
If you'd like to help out, I really would appreciate it.
But to most people, certainly back in the day when I was starting out, I was just some guy trying to get you to listen to an mp3.
And that was like 80% of my day was just promoting the show because I was a director of marketing.
I know all of that kind of stuff, right?
All right.
All right.
Yeah, so to ask a woman out, to pursue a job, to try and sell a product.
Is to put yourself in a state of potentially annoying unimportance.
And to have the ego strength to handle that is important.
Otherwise, you have this sort of fragile vanity, and you just don't want to be unimportant.
And of course, the reality is, for most people, if you don't get married, if you don't have kids, if you don't have a real strong social network because you're afraid of rejection, I don't want to feel unimportant.
Well, you end up unimportant, right?
Don't vanish, right?
Especially in your 50s, man.
You end up unimportant.
I was talking about this the other day, well, quite a while ago.
When I sort of got, yeah, I think I was like, I don't know, 56 or 57, I vanished.
I could feel it.
I could feel it.
And people talk about this sort of as you age, right?
And you just, you vanish.
And, you know, obviously, what do I care?
I've got a loving wife and family and friendships and all of that.
So you just despond.
And, you know, old women in particular will talk about this, you know, just trying to get people's attention, clerks' attention, shopkeepers' attention, and so on.
You just vanish.
All right.
Don't vanish.
If you're afraid of approaching people because you don't want to feel unimportant, I guarantee you, you're going to end up feeling unimportant.
That's right.
Quite sad.
All right.
Let's see here.
Talking to girls is fun.
Even cold rejections are a lesson.
I think it took me...
To a whole new level of humility, being able to go up to a girl on the street and risk being rejected.
This has been a life-changing thing for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing, too, is that people who are afraid of rejection also forget that they're rejecting others, right?
If you're just staying home and not talking to people and so on.
You know, if you're a person who, let's say, you don't want to talk to women or you're frightened to talk to women, you want to talk to women, you're frightened to talk to women.
Well, there are women out there who want you to talk to them, but you reject them.
Right?
So there is a certain amount of real solipsistic selfishness in, but I'm just, I'm so afraid of being rejected.
So then there's some girl who gives you a smile and you panic and whatever.
Don't talk to her.
But she experiences that as a rejection.
Right?
You're rejecting her.
I was hanging with a sales guy a few days ago, says someone, and he was telling me how some of these business guys making millions find it way easier to make a million bucks than to go up and approach a woman.
It's that unwillingness to be a bit player in the outside world and shatter them being in their own vanity-absorbed bubble.
Fear of unimportance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I don't want to be unimportant to people, so I'm going to spend my life alone.
Which ends up, and I'm telling you, in your 50s.
Thank you, man.
In your 50s, oof, man.
Oof.
You will be unimportant.
And, of course, I think it's 50s for men.
And I think that for men, the 50s thing is when women look at you and think you might not make it through to, like, let's say that they have a baby with you.
Let's say you're 57, right?
So you're 57 as a man, right?
And let's say you've got to get your kids to the age of 18, so 57 plus 18 puts you at 75, 75 years old, right?
Well, that's not great, right?
So I think for women, men's sexual market value crashes in the mid to late 50s because the odds are not small that they're not going to make it to the kids.
Adulthood, or if their kids are out there trying to be adults and get out into the world, that you're just aging out and getting sick, and that's going to interfere with their kids' dating prospects, right?
And so your 50s, middle-late 50s is when it happens for men.
For women, of course, the women of a certain age used to be the phrase, right?
So women in the past...
We talk about it in terms of 40-plus, right?
Which is, in general, the infertility window, right?
So men get maybe another 17 years, but women sort of 40-plus.
Like, I'm sure you've seen these photos or these memes that are on social media, which is women saying, you know, like, I'm over 40, you know, I have a nice house, I cook, I clean.
Am I really that bad?
And it's a woman sort of in tears, and of course it's heavily filtered, and she looks about 27, but not understanding.
Sex, romance, lust, pair bonding, that's all for kids.
And it has all evolved to serve children, to serve what is best and healthiest for children.
Mmm.
Bye.
Thank you.
And so, if a woman wants some guy to wife her up, and she wants a high-quality guy to wife her up, and she's 40 +, well, it's for kids.
His instincts are going to go elsewhere.
You know, if some guy wants to be some sugar daddy and he's in his late 50s, a woman might use him for money, but she's probably, I mean, there are obviously exceptions, but she's probably not going to, Have children with him because her biological urge or her biological instincts are sort of saying, you know, come on, this guy, I mean, he could get sick anytime.
He could have health issues.
He will probably have health issues, certainly in his 60s and 70s.
I think it was Scott Adams, like almost nobody escapes health issues at that age, right?
And he had his vocal issues for like two years, I think.
You are going to be less important to all newcomers as you age.
Now, maybe, of course, if you're very wealthy, you can have people care about you because of your money, but that's not going to be particularly satisfying.
And that's not the same as, obviously, genuine affection and love, right?
So, do it now.
Whatever you're afraid of now, Gets worse later.
So, I mean, for a woman, let's say for a man, it's a little easier from a man's perspective for me to sort of follow this.
So for a man, you say, okay, well, I don't want to, I'm a young guy, I don't want to talk to women because I'm going to feel rejected and unimportant if they say no.
And the fact that the woman is saying no also might be a reflection of your vanity.
If you've become...
Corn-addled, so to speak, right?
And you just think a woman has to have a perfect body with a perfect face.
What's that Phil Collins song?
Her dog's talking to me, but she's out of reach.
So, if you think that the woman has to be, you know, sort of gorgeous and flawless and perfect and bubble butt and whatever, right?
Well, That probably is some vanity, right?
That probably is some vanity.
One of the reasons that you feel anxious about approaching a woman is your standards are unrealistically high and you're going to get toasted.
So maybe it is your standards that need to change, right?
All of these things are possible, possible things, right?
All right.
All right.
People ripping you a new one is saving you from the pain of having a terrible customer.
You have to fire later.
Well, it may be the case, but a cold calling in general is kind of intrusive.
You know, the car's extended warranty stuff, you know.
You know, you're trying to talk to someone, the phone rings, you answer it, and you've got to, you know, if you're kind of polite, like I certainly am, like a lot of people are, you can't just, you don't necessarily just want to hang up on someone, so you kind of got to talk about it.
It's just a little bit intrusive.
And it generally tends to happen when people have had a lot of those in a row.
Oh, she posts 47, no makeup.
Yeah, definitely look young.
But eggs don't lie, right?
And you look great.
Honestly, you look great.
But eggs don't lie.
47, you look great.
But, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I mean, I think I look pretty good for, what is it, I'll be 59 this year.
So I look pretty good.
Doesn't make me, I mean, the fact that my skin is relatively not too old looking doesn't change.
It's not like if you have younger looking skin, you become immortal.
Thank you.
Not me.
Targe.
Oh, that's not you.
Okay.
All right.
I don't know who Targe is, so I don't know why you're posting pictures of somebody else saying 47, no makeup, but maybe I don't quite understand.
Hey, it could be a youthful meme thing, which is not my...
Tarja, married 23 years, 12-year-old daughter.
Okay, I still don't know what that means.
I still don't know what that means, sorry.
Alright.
I can't dance.
I can't sing.
All right.
I have, of course, questions from the other platform.
Let me just have a look here.
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
Sorry, these other ones are not coming through.
I see a few thousand new subscribers.
You're welcome.
Fair warning, they are mostly based and well-read, not fanboys.
Utilize them respectfully.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
What's the origin of Mother's Day?
Is it the gateway drug to things like Black History Month and LGBT Pride Month or whatever?
It always seems like less is propaganda to me.
I don't know the origins of Mother's Day.
I don't remember that.
I don't know that.
Let's look it up, right?
Let's look it up.
The origin of Mother's Day can be traced to ancient celebrations of mothers and motherhood, particularly in ancient Greece and Rome, where festivals were held in honor of mother goddesses like Rhea and Cybele.
The modern concept of Mother's Day is closely linked to the early Christian festival known as Mothering Sunday, which celebrated mothers and maternal figures in the United States.
The establishment of a National Mother's Day is attributed to figures like Anne Reeves, Jarvis' central daughter Anna M. Jarvis, who campaigned for the holiday in the early 20th century.
So, it's like most things.
It sounds like it started...
The origins, significance, and history of Mother's Day in the U.S. are deeply entwined with the nation's history and social movements following the American Civil War.
Okay, well, you can look it up.
It's like ancient festival stuff that gets co-opted by state power.
That's usually the way these things kind of work.
All right.
All right.
What if the pain is immorality?
Would it not be better to stay away from it rather than acquiescing?
Pain or fear?
Immorality.
Oh, so you don't want to talk to a woman because talking to women is immoral?
I don't think that is necessarily...
I don't think that there's anything causal as far as that goes.
Now, it could be...
I was just pointing out girls and women can be human and not scary.
Yeah, but you posted a bit of a scary picture, right?
side tongue and fangs.
I don't think that girls and women can be human and not scary.
Yeah, I think that's the case.
I approached this girl who looked 20 from a bit of a distance, but then I...
When I spoke to her, I realized she was like 45. Makeup had me tripping, bruh.
Yeah.
Yeah, still no makeup for the eggs.
Uh, what are bitty coins at?
I don't know, but I will.
145k.
So, that seems like it's up quite a bit.
Is that right?
Let's go a month.
A month ago, yeah, 114.
Yeah, so it's gone up 30k.
It's pretty wild when you think about this, right?
So Thomas Farah on X wrote, it took Bitcoin 10 years to go from 0 to 20k per coin.
It just added 20k in a month.
I assume that's US, right?
Gradually, then suddenly.
And according to Bitcoin News on X, Oregon, Oregon has passed a law officially recognizing Bitcoin as collateral.
Oregon has officially signed Senate Bill 167, SB 167, into law, making digital assets, including Bitcoin, legal collateral in financial transactions.
That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
I think this is somewhat true.
But, you know, taxes and tax avoidance, not tax evasion.
Tax evasion is illegal.
Tax avoidance, as far as I understand it, is legal.
You know, just minimize your taxes through legal means.
Again, I'm no expert, and for heaven's sakes, don't take any advice from me about any of this stuff.
But I think this is kind of true.
So, a millionaire makes $20 million, hires an artist for $25,000.
The artist draws a single line.
The millionaire has an appraiser slash friend value it.
The appraiser says it's worth $20 million.
The millionaire donates it to a museum, gets a $20 million tax write-off, pays no tax that year.
Me at the museum, it's just a line?
Hipster, you're just uncultured.
So I think there's some truth in this as a whole.
Grok says, the ex-post critiques a tax loophole where a millionaire buys a simple.
Artwork for $250 inflates its value to $20 million through an appraiser, donates it to a museum for a $20 million tax write-off and pays no taxes that year, highlighting a legal but ethically questionable practice often used by the wealthy to reduce tax liability.
The posts also reflect broader art market controversies like the 2019 sale of Maurizio Catalan's duct-tape banana for $6.2 million in 2024, illustrating how inflated art valuation Yeah, there's truth in that too.
So a lot of the modern art stuff has to do with this trying to minimize taxes.
It really doesn't have anything to do with what people objectively find a value, right?
And then, of course, when you see a bunch of this stuff, In the art galleries, then people end up saying, well, I mean, it's in these art galleries.
It has to be Emperor's New Clothes, right?
I mean, it has to be that there's value in it, even though I don't particularly see the value in it.
But all these art galleries, unless it's all just tax stuff, right?
Pete Rizzo, the Bitcoin historian on X, says, New.
River Financial says, More Americans now own...
Bitcoin than gold.
So gold, 36.7 million.
Bitcoin, more Americans are invested in Bitcoin than gold.
49.6 million.
Now that seems high.
Let me just double check this.
That seems very high.
Thank you.
Yeah, gold's total value held by Americans remains significantly higher.
Yeah, for sure.
Bitcoin petitions are often small, averaging a few hundred dollars per industry data.
Okay, well, if it's through ETFs and stuff like that, I can see that.
But I don't think almost 50 million Americans actually own Bitcoin directly.
Alright, let's see here.
This is from Joe Burnett, Triple I Capital on X. Everyone needs Bitcoin.
Almost nobody has Bitcoin.
And about 94% of all Bitcoin has already been mined.
Isn't that wild?
I wouldn't have guessed it was that high, but almost about 95, sorry, about 94% of all Bitcoin has already been mined.
Isn't that wild?
It looks like a couple of hundred, is it a couple of hundred, maybe 50, white South African farmers are trying to get, coming in as refugees, and it's pretty wild.
All right.
Carl B. Menger wrote yesterday, only 4% of Americans see Bitcoin as the best long-term investment.
The other 96% still believe in real estate and gold.
Mass awakening hasn't even begun, he says.
We're early, very early.
Yes, the best long-term investment?
I mean, it certainly has been pretty good so far.
Returns since the US election.
Bitcoin is up 49%.
The S&P 500 down 2%.
I mean, it went down and recovered, right?
the S&P, is that right?
So, historical data from CoinMarketCap shows Bitcoin often reacts to US elections.
After Trump's 2016 win, it surged 2,221% in a year, reflecting its role as a safe haven asset during perceived instability, a pattern possibly repeating now.
A CEPR study notes Trump's re-election typically boosts equity markets, a 7-10% abnormal return in politically proximate sectors, but the current S&P...
500 dip indicates broader economic skepticism potentially driving investors to Bitcoin as a hedge against traditional systems.
Well, I mean, Trump has certainly taught Americans a lot about tariffs.
And that's kind of cool because it goes back against this general narrative that we have some kind of free market.
It's capitalism and so on, right?
Former finance professor, Tad Smith.
He said, after 25 years teaching finance, I realized at 58, if the money printer grows 8% to 10% annually and the S&P 500 returns are about 9%, it's just treading water.
True wealth comes from outpacing the printer.
That's the Bitcoin journey.
the illusion of wealth, right?
So, according to the New York Fed, the following university majors are showing significantly worse employment prospects than philosophy.
So, if you take philosophy, I think philosophy is the second highest IQ demand after physics.
So, the following majors are showing significantly worse employment prospects than philosophy.
One, computer science.
Two, business management, chemistry, computer engineering, information systems, public policy and law, physics and economics.
So that's interesting.
That's interesting.
You can see the next one.
All right.
I think I'm going back through my bookmarks.
SEC will approve tokenization on May 12th.
Real-world assets are coming on-chain.
That is very interesting.
Thank you.
So tokenization could unlock trillions by digitizing traditional assets, a trend supported by Chainalysis podcast.
So this actually goes back, I think, to what I did in my original 2014, the Truth About Bitcoin presentation.
Facebook to enable crypto payments for their 3 billion users.
Bitcoin Lightning is next.
I'm suspicious of everything these days.
It really amazes me just how much people can lie or just reproduce things, just repeat things that aren't true.
Yeah, because they had Libra.
It was a cryptocurrency project, but they got hit with regulatory hurdles and was discontinued.
So it says Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, is reportedly in discussions with cryptocurrency firms to integrate stablecoins into its platforms, aiming to manage payouts for its 3 billion users, potentially revolutionizing digital payments by leveraging the stability and low transaction costs of stablecoins.
That could be interesting.
It'd be very cool if they went with Bitcoin Lightning.
It would really be quite a use case scenario, because I know some people are still somewhat skeptical of Bitcoin Lightning, but...
All right.
Cloudflare purportedly has 100 lava lamps on a wall that are used to help create random encryption keys.
That's pretty wild.
Dr. John Campbell on YouTube is, I think, a fairly credible guy to follow.
In my view, I can't judge, obviously, the science, but...
I like this joke, telling the pregnant lady I need her seat because I just did leg day.
That's wild.
All right, let me get back to your questions and comments.
All right.
Yeah, and...
No, I'll go back to that.
The Ethereum pump was even more drastic.
Yeah, but Ethereum has been pretty rough, right?
Have you read much Napoleon Hill?
I just read chapter 10 of Think and Grow Rich, as per a recommendation from another book, about the importance of having productive and goal-oriented people around you in life.
I've not read any Napoleon Hill, sorry.
What business book would you say is your fave?
Also, what sales book?
I read Joe Girard's How to Sell Anything to Anyone, which I thought was great.
Yeah, I mean, I read Strategic Inflection Points, the guy who was the head of Intel, when they had that calculation issue.
I read his book I thought was pretty good.
Jack Welsh, was he GE, right?
I've read a biography.
I read his business book, which I thought was very good.
I used to read the Harvard Business Review in my late teens and early 20s, because I was in the library anyway.
I'd just go sort of pull it down.
I thought that was really good.
It was really a bunch of influences.
I mean, I'll do a whole show.
Let me just make a note of this.
I'll do a whole show on sort of business ideas that influenced me over the years.
Show.
That influenced me.
me.
All right.
All right.
More Americans own Bitcoin than gold?
Again, the value is much higher of the gold, and I think some of it's a couple of hundred bucks, and a lot of it I think would be second or third hand through ETFs.
Steph, in your new book, do you plan to address the difficulties of renegotiating the implicit rules of a relationship?
If so, do you plan to mirror the low success rate based on this being a fairly new property of social relationships?
A little bit like Rachel and Arliss's unspoken rules, which Rachel breaks.
Or will you try a different approach of exploring this?
Yeah, I mean, I certainly, that's quite perceptive.
I certainly do have the plan to have, how do people try and rewrite the rules in a relationship, right?
That's a very, very good point.
So yes.
Yes.
Let's see here.
I work in software, says someone.
I would say electrical slash mechanical engineering or maths.
Okay, practical question.
If Bitcoin is serious long-term money of the future, to what date will future time travelers want to go back to corner of the market?
There's no time travel.
Of course, I know you're joking.
Of course, time travel.
I mean, if you were to go back a year, if you had the ability to go back a year, you'd just be floating in space.
Because a year ago, The earth wasn't where you are now, right?
Just floating in nowhere.
Real nowhere man.
All right.
I would appreciate, if you would find this helpful and useful, I would appreciate tips at freedomain.com slash donate or, of course, right here in the apps.
freedomain.com slash donate or right here in the apps.
Thank you, David.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate it very much.
Thank you, Dan.
What percentage of boomers have Bitcoin?
I don't know.
I think that they would probably not own it directly, but they might own it indirectly, like through some sort of investment fund or ETF or something like that.
Doom, doodle, doom, doom.
All right.
Let's see.
What else?
Stake and Shake are accepting Bitcoin payments at all locations starting May the 16th.
Five days.
Making the cryptocurrency available to our more than 100 million customers.
The movement is just beginning.
Okay, is that right?
Steak Toshi.
100 million customers for Steak and Shake?
No.
No.
I don't believe.
I don't believe.
I don't believe.
All right, well, I'll go with what they say.
All right.
Can't time travel.
Quantum entanglement says hold my beer.
No, you can't time travel.
I mean, let's say that even in some way you could travel through time, you would also have to instantaneously travel through space and land exactly on the Earth's surface a year ago, right?
Because remember, the Earth is just spiraling like a big corkscrew pattern with the sun at the center.
It's just spiraling through the galaxy, right?
So if you were able to go back to yesterday, You'd just be floating in space, right?
So you'd have to instantaneously travel through time and space, and you can't travel through space.
So even if you were to time travel, you'd just end up floating in an empty space void, right?
Unless you went back, I don't know, a millisecond.
In which case, I mean, the world would still be halfway up your calves, wouldn't it?
Again, I'm doing the math in my head as a philosophy guy.
What was it?
Time Cop.
Time Cop was a pretty funny movie.
I remember the review of Jean-Claude Van Damme with an achy-breaky hairdo, because he did have kind of a mullet thing, right?
Yeah, quantum is not another word for magic, just so you know.
Quantum is not just another word for magic.
Anything can happen, because quantum is like, nope, that's not how quantum works.
And of course, quantum, all quantum weirdness and irregularities cancel out long before you get to the level of sense data.
Oh, pardon me.
All right, let's see if you have any of the last questions, comments.
How do people use the existence of material reality to somehow use it as evidence for the immaterial?
Well, because they want to remain undisciplined in their minds, and therefore they have to be surrounded by magic so they don't have to have any form of strictness with themselves.
Everybody who's looking to break physical rules in the universe is looking to break moral rules in their heart.
All right.
And that's why People who are very much into relativism when it comes to material reality are very much into moral relativism, which is to say that my vanity and hedonism and preferences should vastly or infinitely outstrip moral rules as a whole.
Alright, let's see here.
freedomain.com slash donate if you're listening to this later.
Would you say you're a materialist or do objectivists not use that label?
I'm not an objectivist, although I accept objectivist metaphysics and epistemology, but when it comes to morals and politics, no.
Light slit.
Yeah, I understand the light slit and the gold thunk.
I get all of that for sure, but it does no bearing on Sense data processing, and it has no bearing on morality, and it has no bearing on logic.
I wouldn't say I'm a materialist.
I'm definitely an empiricist, in that reason comes from the predictable behavior of matter and energy as put in through the evidence of the senses.
By the way, did you know that your brain doesn't know that your eyeballs exist?
And if your brain did know your eyeballs existed, it would destroy them with the antibody system.
They have to be totally sealed off.
No eyes here!
Don't attack!
Don't attack!
You're welcome for all the work that I do.
I appreciate your support.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Oh, I'm sure Macron had a bag of sugar.
Alright.
Let me just check here for your last questions.
All right.
Sorry, I missed a bunch of questions here.
Okay, practical question.
If Bitcoin is serious long-term money of the future...
Oh, sorry, that was the time-traveler one.
I saw some Jan X person online saying the Immaculate Conception is proof of time travel.
I'm sure that's his big moral issue.
Ever read Wake Up All You Zombies Out There by Robert Heinlein?
I've seen more convoluted logic.
I was not a big fan of Robert.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I tried reading that.
The one that Grok came from.
I can't remember that one, but it felt too inhuman to me.
I never really got the Robert Heinlein thing.
No diss on Robert Heinlein.
I like art that hits me a little bit more in the feels.
If I want logic, then I'll read Aristotle.
If I want art, it has to hit me in the feels.
And Robert Heinlein was just also self-consciously cool and neat and front and all that kind of stuff.
Anyway.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate everyone's time today.
Thank you so much for dropping by.
Freedomain.com to help out the show.
Maybe I'll do a...
Oh, jeez, you know, I completely forgot to do the donor thing.
I'm so sorry.
But I'll do a donor one, maybe tomorrow or Tuesday.
My apologies.
I completely slipped my mind.
That's because James is not here to remind me today.
So, sorry about that.
But we will do a donor one before Wednesday.
And maybe on the donor one, I'll read some bits of my new novel and get your guys' feedback and thoughts about how it's working.
So I really do appreciate that.
Thank you for your time, my friends.
Lots of love from up here.
Talk to you soon.
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