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June 30, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:19

The Philosophy of the Death Penalty! Twitter/X Space

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	And yeah, we are.
	We are fine.
	We are fine.
	Let us do the Ripple Hands beginning and get ourselves a little slurpy slurp.
	A tankard, a Stein.
	What is all of that kind of stuff going on?
	All right.
	I think everything shockingly appears to be working.
	I'm a surprise.
	I'm as surprised as you are.
	Well, good evening and welcome to your Friday Night Live.
	This is X slash Twitter argumentation space, specifically reserved for those who think I'm talking out of a flapping set of seagull wings in my infinite incorrectness.
	And if you disagree with me, you go to the front of the line.
	If I'm wrong, please, please do a brother a solid a favor, help me out, and tell me and tell the world for all time.
	This is philosophy going to be studied for a long time in my half a millennia plan to free the planet through peaceful parenting and reason and evidence and a little bit of shiteposting.
	If you want to talk, if you want to argue, if you don't, that's fine too.
	We can just talk in non-argumentative ways.
	But in particular, if you disagree with me and you think that I am wrong, need to be corrected, I am thrilled to be corrected, of course, the last thing that I want to do is be wrong.
	That is the gig.
	The gig is be courageous and then hopefully also be right.
	It's a good combo.
	Courageous and right is a good combo.
	Loud and right is a good combo.
	Loud and right, which is most people is a bad combo.
	So if you want to request to speak, just request to speak, we can chew it out.
	And again, it's not like you have to disagree.
	We can talk about whatever's on your mind.
	It is a Friday Night Live, after all, which is your conversation, not particularly mine.
	But I will say this.
	I will say this.
	I posted something on X. Was it yesterday?
	I was a little late on the old X platform, so I may have gotten my time zones a little blurred, but I did ask for a sort of social experiment from people.
	Let me just see if I can get the text of it, which was, I said to people, listen, go and talk to the women in your life and ask those women, what are the top five things that men are looking for in relationships.
	Now, I did sort of request for people to say, don't be snarky, you know, because it's always like, sandwich and sex, man, blowjob and a hot meal.
	And it's always like, what are we, pets, animals?
	It's ridiculous, right?
	And so people did talk to their women they knew and women also chimed in.
	And I will tell you, it was a, not that it matters, it doesn't matter.
	I'm just telling you what it was, a tiny bit disappointing to me, because as a moral philosopher, I've always argued that we can only love virtue.
	That's it.
	That's all we got.
	Virtue and nothing else.
	Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	So I was kind of hoping that people might throw the word virtue or morality or ethics or integrity in that, but it was basically about peace in the home, sex, companionship, support, respect, but nothing about not one.
	I didn't see one.
	Maybe I missed it.
	But if I did, it sure as hell wasn't common.
	So a little, one little post about virtue and nothing, sorry, no posts about virtue.
	And it all was other kinds of stuff.
	So I'm just telling you, the one thing you want to look for in a romantic relationship, the one thing you want to look for, and the one thing you want to provide in order to sustain it, the strength across the friendships and business and so on is virtue.
	So, all right, let us move on to our good friend Cooper.
	I say this like a used car salesman.
	My good friend, don't you want to see me put you in a convertible today?
	Cooper, you need to unmute.
	What's on your mind, friend?
	I don't know.
	I just want to say I've been listening to you since about 2014.
	I have my air conditioner on.
	Is that too loud and annoying?
	No, it's fine.
	Okay, great.
	Yeah, I've been listening to you since about 2014, back when I was in college.
	And listening to your lectures, that was one of the driving forces that actually made me drop out of college.
	And now I'm running my own hardware company.
	So, you know, thank you for that.
	It's been a formative lesson in how to think about things.
	So appreciate it.
	I don't know.
	I'm glad you're back on X. I think it's good for people to be able to hear you and see you kind of trolling people, which, I mean, I think, you know, you're just asking questions, but it does feel quite a bit like trolling sometimes.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I appreciate the questions you've been asking even just in the past day or so about family life and the marital duties of man and woman.
	And I don't have a whole lot more to add.
	Just I'm happy to be here and I want to share that.
	I appreciate your back.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	I have a little comment and then if you can let me pepper you with a couple of questions, I'd appreciate it.
	So my little comment is, and I've always sort of had this deviation from the norm.
	I can't think of any particular question that I have found it's just so appalling and offensive and my God, and shocked and triggered.
	And it's like, look, these are just questions and observations and challenges.
	I have never particularly shared with what seems like the majority of people the knee-jerk ability to just get offended, upset, enraged, and triggered by somebody literally just asking questions or making comments.
	And so for me, I don't have minefields in my mind.
	I don't have, oh my God, I can't talk about this, or that's really appalling, or that's the worst thing in the world, or I'm triggered, or I'm upset.
	I don't know, I probably should know, but I don't know exactly why I just have free-roaming curiosity and other people get triggered.
	And the majority of people, not you necessarily, of course, right?
	But so you say it's kind of trolling, and it's like, well, you know, maybe, maybe.
	I mean, whatever you want to say, but they're sort of honest questions designed to elicit real responses.
	And of course, it is kind of the philosopher's gig to step boldly in where angels fear to tread and to ask questions out of genuine curiosity and a desire for happiness of the happiness of people and love and all kinds of good stuff.
	So for me, I'm just like, yep, these are things that have crossed my mind.
	These are things that I've noticed.
	You know, I was talking about how it's tough on men, it's tough on husbands when their wife, you know, the boss calls at like eight o'clock on a Friday night and says, I need you to do three hours of work.
	And his wife is like, okay, yes, absolutely.
	I'm on it, sir.
	I'll let you know.
	She doesn't give a fuss, doesn't give, right?
	But the man puts one foot wrong and it's like, and it's like, oh my gosh, it makes the romantic partner of the woman, the boyfriend or the husband, usually the husband.
	It just makes the husband feel like he's a slave.
	Like the real boss in the relationship is the male boss of his wife.
	And the husband feels like secondary and like a slave.
	And that would kind of be the relationship in a way, right?
	Which is that whoever you say, you know, they say jump and you say, how high, they're the ones who are kind of in charge.
	The person you're most polite to and most deferential to is the person who's kind of in charge.
	And if you are, you know, yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir, to your boss, and then you turn around and, you know, get really angry at your husband because he dared to stack the dishwasher with less than 150% efficiency.
	It just, it's one thing to be a little bit hen-packed.
	It's another thing to be a little bit hen-packed and watch your wife or your girlfriend completely defer to her boss, especially if you're paying more of the bills as a man.
	So, I mean, I think these are observations.
	I think these are interesting.
	Are they always correct?
	I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, just observations.
	It seems to me to make sense, but people get really upset.
	And the sort of, it's been a while since I've been around some of the sort of rage tsunami fest of thwarted humanity that characterizes people getting triggered.
	I guess I think the only thing that I can think of, and maybe this sounds a bit self-praising, maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong.
	I just have, I have a pretty good conscience.
	I've always tried to do the right thing.
	I mean, I would say I succeed pretty well.
	Obviously, not perfect.
	I've always tried to do the right thing.
	I've always tried to do the best I can with the information that I have.
	And I've always been eager to seek out new information.
	I've never had a particular problem admitting when I'm wrong because the purpose is to be right, not to be ego-based.
	So I have a pretty good conscience.
	I've made pretty good decisions over the course of my life.
	I'm happy with the way, you know, I'm pushing 60, so this is a time of evaluation, or at least it should be.
	And for a lot of people, you'd be nearing the end of your productive life.
	Economically speaking, I don't think I am, but it's a time for sort of reflection.
	This afternoon, I was lying on the couch.
	I did a bunch of shorts today.
	I can just interrupt for a moment.
	Yes, sir.
	I think we might be getting an echo.
	I'm not sure if it's just me.
	Anyone else in the chat getting an echo from Stefan right now?
	Thank you.
	It might be just me.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I was just lying on the couch today, and I was listening to an album by Mike Batt called Tarot Sweet, which I used to listen to as a teenager, and just it all came flooding back like over 40 years ago, the thoughts and the feelings.
	I even remember down to the when I was living in my apartment after I kicked out my mom when I was 15.
	I had before that, spray-painted spaceships and sharks on my wall, like outline.
	I just remembered all of that stuff.
	I used to live or I used to sleep underneath a train set, like a model train set that was above me, a sort of six by four that I built with the Papiamache and some friends of mine and all of that.
	It all just comes flooding back.
	And, you know, when you evaluate your life, you say good or bad decisions, right or wrong things you've done.
	And I think for the most part, I'm pretty satisfied with the decisions that I've made.
	And I'm very satisfied with the good I've done in the world.
	So maybe that's one of the reasons why I don't particularly mind whatever questions pop into my mind.
	So I appreciate that thought.
	And it's good to be back on X. So tell me a little bit more about, so what were you taking in college and what happened that you dropped out and how did you start your business and all that kind of good stuff, man?
	Lord knows people hear me talking enough.
	So go for it.
	Yeah, sure.
	I'd be happy to.
	So I was going to Drexel University in Philadelphia for mechanical engineering and I stayed there for about two years.
	But during that time, I had been really exploring a lot of your lectures and I was working at the time as well.
	And most of my classes in those first two years were not related to mechanical engineering.
	They were more of like a maybe like a social molding series of classes.
	There were English classes and like social studies, things that were prerequisites that didn't make sense to me fundamentally for an engineering degree.
	I bet you they make sense for propaganda, though, but anyway, go on.
	No, yeah, absolutely.
	And it was, there were, I mean, you could imagine there were extremely strict social viewpoints that you had to maintain in order to get good grades in these classes.
	And it wasn't explicit.
	It was obviously implicit that they wanted you to have a certain perspective on the papers that you wrote and the material that you produced and how you answered your questions.
	And that specifically really, really bothered me.
	And I ended up seeing a kind of a prank by Sam Hyde at Wigger here on X. And he's a relatively popular comedian.
	You may or may not have heard of him.
	Is he the guy that they keep saying is responsible for every disaster in the world?
	Is that the guy?
	Okay, cool.
	I do.
	I do.
	I admire the degree to which he rolls with that near-infinite intergalactic trollery.
	I think that's very, very impressive.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	But yeah, so he had actually pranked Trexel University, and that was another one of the things that had sort of led me to leave the school.
	A lot of his content outside of doing comedy and you know, obviously the stuff that you said too, it was more about just seeking what actually makes sense in the world.
	And I viewed that as very important.
	I became very disillusioned with what I was doing.
	And I just stopped attending classes.
	Oh, it looks like my kids just got home.
	I might have to leave shortly.
	But I stopped attending classes so hard that they thought I had harmed myself.
	And I attended a school for aviation maintenance, so being a mechanic on airplanes.
	And through a series of extremely fortunate coincidences, I ended up getting hired at a 3D printing company in Michigan.
	And that didn't work out.
	No one was left on payroll at the end of my tenure there.
	And I started a company making desktop wire electrical discharge machines in Michigan.
	We did a Kickstarter, fulfilled that.
	And then we moved to Colorado.
	And, you know, the rest is history.
	We're just kind of moving along with that.
	And you're married.
	I have a kid.
	And congratulations on all of that.
	It is better to be in business than in school, all other things being equal, right?
	I mean, it is better to be out there doing things in the world.
	You'll gain far more practical experience working out there in the world than sitting there being lectured about white privilege.
	So I appreciate that.
	It's the series of failures in that that teach you.
	You know, you have a thousand failures in a row, and that's what actually drives you to a successful position.
	Yeah, no, that is underappreciated, that there is no failure, but the failure to learn.
	That is the only thing that's really driven me because Lord knows I've made some spectacular cackups over the course of my, quote, career, but I think that the only, well, there's two failures.
	One, not taking responsibility and as a result, failing to learn from it.
	Failure can be a springboard if you're willing to dig deep and learn the ugly lessons about yourself and your habits and other people and so on.
	So, well, congratulations.
	I think that's completely wonderful and thrilling.
	And I'm glad to see somebody because, you know, the engineering pipeline heads often straight to either government work or the military-industrial complex.
	So I'm glad you're not designing tinker toys to blow up largely innocent people on the other side of the world.
	That's not a bad, not a bad thing at all.
	So I appreciate that.
	Yeah, I appreciate it, Stefan.
	And again, you know, it's been fun listening to you.
	Glad you're back here.
	And I'll let you get on to talk to more interesting people.
	So thanks.
	Well, I wouldn't put it that way.
	All right.
	Will May.
	That's almost like a free will thing there.
	Will May, you are on, my friend.
	What's on your mind?
	Oh, not much.
	I was like DMing you about the latest crypto project that I was like was proposing for Freedom Main.
	Besides that, I did have something else on my mind, but I'm like, just trying to think about like from like yesterday, that's all.
	I'm not really sure what to say.
	If you request to speak and then don't have your thoughts together, shall I just move on to someone else?
	Can you still keep me a speaker, though?
	Like, I'll just raise my hand, I guess.
	All right.
	I appreciate that.
	All right.
	We are back in the land of bull-bearing Polish syllables.
	Woshiak.
	What's on your mind?
	You are around.
	And yet.
	Yes, yes, I'm here.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay.
	Technology is.
	I'm not sure it's a technology.
	Oh, there's a little pause somebody was saying when you request to speak.
	So yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, so yeah, thanks for having me.
	I have a bit of a controversial question.
	It's a bit of my personal prejudice, I guess.
	But would you say that a woman being on prescription psychiatric medication is a red flag?
	Would I say that a woman being on psychiatric medication is a red flag?
	In what way would sorry.
	In what way would that not be a red flag?
	Well, to me, after some experiences I've had, let's say, in dating worlds, I believe this to be like the alternate red flag.
	And, you know, if you think about this, you know, she's like, she's seeking help and she's working on herself.
	So I would think, well, that's...
	What makes you think she's seeking help just because she's on psych meds?
	No, no, I'm just playing the devil's advocate a little bit here.
	Okay.
	Maybe not the devil, maybe my advocate, because that's what I was thinking.
	So you thought, look, she's taking responsibility for her mental health.
	She's seeking help.
	She's getting medicines, quote, medicines.
	So you felt that it wasn't as much of a red flag, but you found out it kind of was, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's like every single time.
	It's like Thank you.
	Yeah, that was quick.
	I know.
	I can share some stories, I guess.
	I mean, I don't want to reveal anyone's secret information here.
	But you had negative experiences with people who were on these meds.
	Now, of course, this is all just my opinion.
	I'm not a psychiatrist.
	I'm not a doctor.
	I have no medical expertise.
	Don't take any advice from me with regards to medicines or health care or nutrition or foot care or hair care in particular.
	But in my view, a lot of the stuff is worse than a sugar pill in terms of its efficacy.
	And of course, there has been, you know, because they have this whole theory of the chemical imbalance in the brain.
	It's like, okay, well, then you should be able to measure this chemical imbalance in the brain.
	And lo and behold, they can't, right?
	So, what are they doing?
	They're just throwing stuff.
	They're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
	And I had, of course, a really terrifying conversation with Robert Whitaker about his book, Mad in America.
	I think we talked twice.
	And he had a great thesis, which is like, okay, so just a very, sort of, very brief history.
	And would you mind muting?
	Because you've got a massive amount of background noise there.
	Just while I, yeah, yeah, while I go over this, yeah, you got dogs and I don't know, sounds like you're in a steampunk collapsing battleship.
	But so sort of very briefly, psychiatry has always had a trouble with credibility, right?
	All the way back to Freud, who was basically a cocaine dealer and a denier of childhood sexual abuse to the massive catastrophe of the West as a whole.
	So there's always been a problem.
	So in the 60s, there was a reporter who decided to test whether psychiatrists or psychiatry were sort of, was a sort of valid or objective occupation.
	So he went to, I think he went to a psychiatrist and he said, I hear the word boom and thud in my mind.
	I hear the word boom and thud.
	And they put him in an institution and, you know, they did all of this stuff.
	And after he said, I hear the words boom and thud, he was a mentally healthy guy.
	He didn't say anything else crazy.
	He acted perfectly sane.
	They wouldn't let him out.
	They tried to drug him.
	They wouldn't let him out.
	And it took a long time.
	Even though he was perfectly sane by contemporary standards, they wouldn't let him out.
	And so he wrote about all of this after he finally got out.
	And I mean, the psychiatric profession went a little crazy, so to speak.
	And so then one of the psychiatrists said, oh, you come in here and I'll like send a bunch of people into my facility.
	I'll find you out right away.
	I'll know whether you're faking it or not.
	And so he waited a couple of weeks and then he said, this person, this person and this person were totally faking it.
	They're not crazy.
	They're just sent in here to discredit.
	And it turns out that the reporter or the newspaper or the magazine or whatever it was didn't send anyone.
	Didn't send anyone in.
	So they got kind of jumpy and they this is one of the reasons why they started expanding the definitions of mental health.
	And it's all language-based.
	You can sort of hear these arguments of, well, this should be included and this should be included.
	And here are the symptoms.
	And there's no tests.
	There's no objectivity.
	It's just a description based on language.
	And I'm not saying none of it is valid.
	Of course, what do I know in particular?
	But they're interesting metaphors or descriptions of behavior, but it's not really scientific.
	It's observational.
	It's observational.
	And so, which again doesn't mean that it's not at all helpful, but it's not a science as far as I can tell.
	And again, this is just obviously my amateur idiot opinion.
	So they wanted to start a medical model.
	And so this is where some of this chemical imbalance stuff came from, but they've never been able to find any chemical imbalance.
	And antidepressants, there's some studies which say, according to my obviously, again, amateur understanding, there's some studies that say that it's less efficacious than dancing.
	And the other thing, too, is that a lot of depression resolves in a certain amount of time.
	And it just happens to coincidence, to coincide with when these medications are supposed to work.
	And in Robert Whitaker's book, he makes the excellent point, and I'm paraphrasing, so don't blame him for my paraphrase.
	But he basically said, look, when we got insulin, deaths from diabetes went down.
	When we got antibiotics, deaths from infections went down.
	And we've had these, quote, medicines for decades.
	Has mental health gone down?
	And he says, no, it's gone up.
	So how can we have a cure for something which makes the problem more prevalent?
	And that is a very important question.
	The book is absolutely chilling.
	I highly, highly recommend it.
	It's called Mad in America by Robert Whitaker.
	And so...
	See you next time.
	No, no, go ahead.
	So I actually come from Poland and, you know, Poland was under communist regime for a long time.
	So Stalin had this famous saying that find me a person and I'll find a paragraph, like a law, to put him in jail.
	But in practice, when they couldn't find something on like some political activist, they would diagnose him with asymptomatic schizophrenia and put him into mental acidity, right?
	Well, and it's common.
	Yeah, it's common in all forms of totalitarianism, but seems to be especially focused on communism because communism, you see, is the perfect system.
	Therefore, if you have a problem with communism, you must be crazy and have horse pills shoved up your ass, a horse tranquilizer.
	So, yeah, it is a weapon of control, psychiatry in a lot of totalitarian countries.
	It is a weapon of control, and it is used to subjugate and to defang people who otherwise might speak out against the regime.
	So, look, I've certainly, I've done years of therapy, which have been great for me.
	I did three hours a week and then another six to eight hours of journaling for like 18 months.
	And it was fantastic for me.
	I'm so absolutely thrilled that I met my wife after I'd gone through therapy.
	I think it was a very good, although inadvertent plan.
	And so I think therapy is talk therapy is great.
	I've interviewed lots of experts.
	You can find these at fdrpodcast.com.
	I've interviewed lots of experts about how beneficial therapy is to people.
	And it is one of the best things that you can do if you get a good therapist.
	And I've got a whole show called How to Find a Great Therapist, in my opinion, of course.
	So I think talk therapy can be really good with a great therapist.
	I've never met somebody who's on these psychotropics who seems to be getting better.
	This is my being a personal, anecdotal, and all of that.
	And there does seem to be a sort of pattern there as a whole.
	So, you know, my concern is that if people think it's a, if it's like, as some psychiatrists say, these pills are like, they're like insulin for diabetes, right?
	And so if people say, well, I have, you know, bipolar, I have NPD, I borderline, or like, well, whatever it is that they're, you know, my concern is that the label just gets branded into their soul rather than,
	I guess, the Adlerian approach, which is more like, or the, the Nathaniel Brandon approach, which is you have thoughts in your head that are not true and you need to challenge them empirically and rationally and try to uproot the false thoughts as opposed to napalming yourself with a bunch of sketchy pills.
	So I think it's great that people want to get better, but I personally, my personal, again, personal subjective, non-expert, non-professional opinion is that talk therapy is much more efficacious.
	And if you are on these pills, you kind of define yourself as, well, I'm not a good or bad person if I just have genetic diabetes.
	And I'm not a good or bad person if I have this chemical imbalance or I don't have right or wrongness.
	And there's nothing you can really do about it.
	You can't think your way out of having diabetes.
	And if you have this chemical imbalance, which again, they can never seem to find, then you can't really think your way out of that either.
	And can you think yourself into a better state of mind?
	Well, yeah, that's the whole point of philosophy.
	So that's sort of my thoughts.
	But go ahead.
	If I could throw in just a small personal anecdote about sort of stuff.
	Actually, my dad was struggling to get off this stuff for like seven years.
	And the fun part about it is that he actually got it prescribed first by a family physician.
	So he just went for like a cough or something, told the guy that, yeah, I'm feeling kind of down sometimes.
	He's coming from not so good background.
	His dad was an alcoholic.
	And, you know, he was, I mean, he's not a man.
	Like he has a wife, he has me, my brother.
	So he managed to get a little straightened.
	But yeah, he's had those episodes where he wouldn't be, like, he would be depressed and stuff.
	Basically, from my observations, as you said, it's like not an expert and all that, but I would say that he was actually worse.
	He was on it.
	And in the end, also personal anecdote, not medical advice and all that.
	That's what helped, first of all, get him off of it and also make him feel better.
	Because that, after my suggestion, the family just cut off sugar almost completely.
	Sorry, they did what?
	My entire family cut off sugar by my advice.
	Oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
	A lot of stuff improved.
	we all lost weight and all the humanities to get off this medication and all that.
	Just highly recommend the sugar parts, not the Yeah, I interviewed Dr. Robert Lustig many years ago about sugar and Jack Posebick, actually.
	Oddly enough, we ended up talking about sugar.
	So anyway, I appreciate your comments.
	Yeah, I've never dated a woman on, at least to my knowledge, on psychotropics.
	And I personally wouldn't.
	Though, again, that's just my particular personal opinion.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	All right.
	Frederick.
	Hopefully not of Hollywood or maybe.
	Turn your webcam on.
	What's in your mind?
	What's in your mind?
	Frederick.
	Ready, Freddy?
	Yes, sir.
	Hello.
	I uh, what do you think about testosterone replacement therapy and drugs in general?
	Is there a philosophical question in that?
	Uh, well, modifying one's body and look for red flags in women.
	And, you know, so drug addicts I really into, but I was also thinking that you're balding, so I'm wondering.
	What is the, sorry, what does TRC have to do with balding?
	I'm just not sure if I don't know.
	So I can explain this.
	Like, a male pattern baldness is caused by androgens, especially dihydrolyzed testosterone.
	So, and how it produces certain enzymes that might affect your own scalp.
	And so he's wondering if you are on TRT and that's what caused some like hair loss for you.
	Me?
	Good lord, no.
	I've been balding since I was in my early 20s.
	I wasn't implying.
	I'm just wondering if you were, because you're the target audience of it and you've seen much of that.
	What are your thoughts on it?
	So it's the idea that if I took testosterone, I would regrow my hair?
	That seems counterintuitive.
	And so lower testosterone means balding?
	Not really, it's your balding.
	It's not really, it's your balding.
	Yeah, because I mean, women, females have lower testosterone by 17-fold, as far as I remember, and they don't bald.
	So I'm not sure.
	I thought that it was somewhat related to an excess of testosterone, but what do I know, right?
	Okay, so hit me with your philosophical question.
	Just body modifications in general, like drugs and red flags with women with relate to body modifications.
	Yeah, I'm needing.
	I mean, I just talked about red flags with women, so you're going to have to be a little bit more specific.
	What do you mean, like ear piercings or like, what are you talking about?
	Nose jobs?
	What do you mean?
	Say they have like a nicotine habit or they've got tattoos, piercings.
	Okay, but hang on, bro, bro.
	You're all over the map here.
	Tattoos and piercings.
	Oh, so we're not talking about internal stuff.
	We're talking about sort of any body modifications.
	Is that right?
	Yes, but including bad habits like nicotine or other drugs.
	Okay, so we're talking about internal, external body modifications and any and all bad habits.
	So what's your philosophical question?
	I'm not sure.
	I kind of got lost in the beads here.
	Okay, I just, I'm not sure.
	Yeah, I'm not really sure what you're asking because I try not to use generic questions as a way to sort of jump on a particular talking point that I kind of prefer.
	So I'll tell you what, I'll go to someone else.
	If you come up with another sort of more specific question, I'd be happy to chat.
	All right.
	Anglo.
	Anglo-Britain.
	You are live on Freedom A. And yeah, I got a question.
	I saw today in a post, it was a video of you speaking.
	And you said that you're not a white nationalist because and people refer to you that simply because of your frequent quoting over the years of race disparities in science.
	So I want to ask you, you know, because I saw you for a while and then you disappeared for a long time and then you came back.
	Right.
	So you weren't one of the people that I kept up with, you know, understanding the opinions of.
	So I'm curious what you think the solution is, right?
	Because obviously, you know, in periods of time, like in just before the Industrial Revolution in England, you had a higher birth rates in more wealthier families.
	And then the poorer families were just people that were the wealthy families two generations ago.
	So you had this like positive eugenic effect, right?
	So what do you believe the solution is if, like, what's your solution?
	Like, you'd have to have an opinion on this.
	Solution to what?
	You've talked about eugenics and nationalism.
	The decline in Gen X, the decline.
	Well, whatever the props are, I'll sort of give you a bit of a backdrop.
	So one of the reasons why the white nationalism stuff comes up is that I went to Poland 2017, 2018.
	Sorry for you can, and you can see the documentary.
	It's at freedomain.com slash documentaries.
	Now, of course, I'd traveled around and given speeches and faced bomb threats, death threats, being hunted through the streets, violence, people trying to tip over buses of people who just wanted to come and hear from me in terms of free speech.
	And so I went to Poland and I was able to walk around with no fear.
	I actually had a sort of public gathering where I pulled drinks for people and they peppered me with philosophical questions and there was no problems, no issues.
	I remember having a great debate with a ginger about Islam at that pub and lots of great.
	So I was like, well, that's interesting.
	So why is it that I'm able to do that in Poland?
	And of course, Poland is very white and white males in particular are by far the greatest advocates of free speech absolutism.
	So I thought, well, geez, maybe that's something to do with it.
	But the interesting thing is that then when I went to Hong Kong to do a documentary, which I did in 2019, called Hong Kong, a fight for freedom, Hong Kong Fight for Freedom, and I was also able to have public meetings and meetups with no fear, no concerns, no bomb threats, no death threats.
	Now, of course, Hong Kong is not majority white.
	It's barely white.
	And so I was not sure of the why.
	And it's an interesting question.
	I haven't really sort of puzzled it out as a whole.
	So I think that's got something to do with it.
	With regards to eugenics, of course, any government program of breed or don't breed is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	So I'm very much against any government program that would either promote or inhibit people having children.
	The answer to issues like eugenics or dysgenics is human freedom.
	It is stopping the practice of using the political might of the state to take money from one group and give it to another group, to take money from men, say, and give it to women, to take money from whoever, right?
	So once we have true freedom, in other words, we have a society that is dedicated to the non-initiation of force or fraud, then we don't have any possibility of a program like eugenics that is sort of let the chips fall where they may.
	I'm for unfettered, unconstrained, uncoerced human breeding, because it does seem to be the case that in particular, maybe the smarter human beings don't seem to breed too well in captivity.
	They're like the great white sharks of the mammal kingdom, like great white sharks.
	The reason why you never go to an aquarium and see a great white shark is that they don't do well in captivity.
	It doesn't even really matter how big the tank is.
	They just won't flourish or survive and they just don't generally make it.
	Unlike, of course, dolphins or killer whales or nurse sharks or other sharks that you can see.
	Even hammerheads will do okay in captivity.
	So as far as the solution goes, the solution is a society that respects the non-aggression principle and respects property rights.
	How do we get there?
	Again, I know it's counterintuitive.
	I just posted the first, the prologue and most of the first chapter of my book, Peaceful Parenting, peacefulparenting.com.
	Once we start raising children without violence, they won't associate control and virtue with being coerced.
	So if children are raised aggressively and even timeouts where you grab a kid and jam him down on the stairs, that's very aggressive.
	If you can't do it at work, you shouldn't do it at home, right?
	So once we start raising children peacefully and rationally, then they will be able to negotiate with each other and with others.
	They won't be traumatized.
	They won't have kind of Stockholm syndrome bonded with aggressive or sometimes even violent spanking as a form of violence, right?
	Spanking violent people.
	And once we start raising children to think that morality, power, control, and order requires the initiation of the use of force from people infinitely more powerful than you are, then they will no longer believe that this is necessary in society as a whole and we can begin moving towards a truly free society.
	For more on this, I guess, three books I would recommend.
	They all just happen to be mine, but that's just a complete coincidence.
	And number one is Everyday Anarchy.
	They're all free.
	Everyday Anarchy, Practical Anarchy, and my novel called The Future, which is a great, great story about a guy who's put to sleep for 500 years because he's dying, and he wakes up in a free society and sort of goes from there.
	I won't sort of give you any spoilers, but it's a great way to explore how a free society would work in actual practice.
	Does that help with the question?
	It does.
	So I'm starting to kind of pick up what your moral compass is based off of.
	And, you know, correct me if I'm wrong and maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but you care more about liberty than you do about the preservation Of the best individuals.
	You're saying if the preservation of the best individuals would come at the cost of the liberties of all others, then it is not a moral virtue.
	Is that what you're saying?
	I'm just.
	Okay, so I'll break it down for you more explicitly.
	And listen, I really appreciate the question.
	It's a great question, and I'm glad to, I'm really, really happy to address it.
	So there is no such thing as the, quote, preservation of the best individuals.
	And I'll tell you what I mean by that.
	What there is is giving a certain group of people the power to choose who flourishes and who is destroyed, who lives and who dies, who gets to breed and who doesn't.
	Now, I don't believe, this is a Lord of the Rings Ring of Power question.
	I don't believe there's any human being alive who is not going to be horribly corrupted by that power.
	I don't trust anyone with that power.
	Not only is that power immoral, because it is the initiation of the use of force to cause or prevent breeding, but there's no human being who is ever going to be able to handle that power.
	Whenever you say, well, I want X or Y or Z to happen because, boy, it's going to be really great and it's an emergency and we really need it.
	And without it, there's going to be disaster.
	Then what you're doing is you're going to create a power structure that almost inevitably and relatively quickly is going to be populated by your enemies.
	Everyone thinks that they are, not you necessarily, but everyone thinks, oh, I'll create this agency, this government of eugenics, and we're going to promote this and we're going to deny that.
	And it's like, you think that's just going to work the way you want it to work?
	No.
	You're going to give people that power.
	People are going to abuse that power and do the opposite of what you want.
	So, I mean, I'll give you a very brief example.
	One of the reasons why we have government education is because of the flood of non-Protestants into America in the 19th century, because America was founded as a Protestant country, as you know.
	And then the Irish and the Italians all came pouring in and they weren't Protestant.
	And so the Protestants kind of freaked out and said, man, we got to have a government school because all of these schools are teaching Catholicism and we don't agree with it and we don't like it.
	And Martin Luther and the 100 years religious war, we fought against it.
	We fled from oppression.
	So they wanted the government to institute government schools in order to preserve the original values that America was founded on.
	How's that going?
	Right?
	So now it's become populated by a lot of socialists and communists, the very anti-American people as a whole that are using the educational system to dismantle any sort of pride or history that is noble and of value in America.
	So it's not, there's no machine, there's no machine that does what you want it to do in terms of coercion.
	It is an entirely human operation.
	And whatever you ask the government or some sort of political power to do, you're not going to be in control of it.
	I'm not going to be in control of it.
	But bad people will very quickly become in control of it.
	And bad, very bad things will come.
	We can see this happening over in Europe with regards to the welfare state.
	So just very bad things will happen.
	So there is no, I mean, it's a devilish temptation, right?
	Which is to say, okay, well, we'll break the moral rule, but you're going to get this great, wonderful thing out of it.
	You know, like with the welfare state, well, yeah, we're going to break the moral rule.
	We're going to use the power of the state to transfer money from these people to these people.
	And we're going to transfer money from the future to the present through unfunded liabilities, through national debts, and through money printing.
	We're going to steal from the unborn.
	But don't worry, we're going to do these things that break principle, but, but I tell you, man, we're going to eliminate poverty.
	Now, isn't that what, don't you want to eliminate poverty?
	And lo and behold, poverty is not eliminated.
	In fact, I mean, at the end of the Second World War, and this is even more true for the black community than the white community in America, the end of the Second World War, America was dangerously close to running out of poverty.
	Not kidding about this.
	The poverty rate in America declined 1% every year after the Second World War.
	And of course, when you have very few poor people around and relatively more wealthy people, there's this general feeling of like, you know, you see the homeless guy camped in front of the big giant office building.
	You say, well, we just take a little bit of money from all these people in the office building, give it to this homeless guy, and we won't have the homeless guy anymore.
	And everything's going to be going to be great.
	And that's a big break principle.
	We'll steal and lie and cheat and print and counterfeit and borrow against the unborn, selling them into international slavery to foreign banksters.
	We'll do all of that, but we'll eliminate poverty.
	And don't you want to do that?
	Well, of course, you end up with a giant power mechanism of transferring trillions and trillions, now tens of trillions of dollars.
	The poor get corrupted.
	Poverty doesn't get eliminated.
	And the family disintegrates.
	You end up with multi-generations of people on poverty.
	And you get single mothers who seem quite eager to send out their thuggish sons a lot of times to preserve the welfare state and to preserve the money flowing in.
	And you end up with an absolute complete catastrophe.
	So yeah, the devil will always tell you, but break principle and all, and good things.
	It's just a little principle.
	It's just a little income tax when it first came in was like 2% on the richest 5%.
	A little tiny, it's just temporary, man.
	It's just for the First World War.
	It's just temporary.
	And you break principle.
	And it just, everything gets worse from there.
	So the devil is always saying to you, well, you can get this great benefit.
	You just have to break a little bit of principle and wonderful things will happen.
	And it's like, nope, it never works out.
	It never works out.
	And it's always, always a complete disaster.
	So I hope that helps.
	And thank you very much for the question.
	All right.
	We will move on to a gym.
	I'd love to have a membership.
	A gim?
	A gim?
	A gym?
	What's on your mind?
	He said, taking a civilized sip of coffee.
	Ah, decaf.
	Because I'm over 50 and it's past 7 o'clock.
	Going once, going twice.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, I'll go with my question I had earlier.
	So when it comes to, like, children and, like, like, this is one area where I'd say I didn't necessarily read your entire, like, argument or thesis or books on, like, not being as, like, aggressive with children.
	Like, I don't have any kids, though.
	I myself don't really have as much of a perspective as, like, from a parent.
	However, I would say, like, two things that would or actually a few different things that would have greatly, I'd say, improve my own life as a child would be, like, I'd say, like, if I myself had, like, more freedom to, like, go outside as a kid, sure, like, my own social skills would be better and I wouldn't be as autistic.
	But besides that, I would say, would it be just as important for, like, let's suppose libertarian parenting that your children learn how to, like, let's say, use guns, like, to defend those rights?
	Your children?
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So you've packed a lot into what you're saying and I've got a bunch of questions, so just bear with me for a sec.
	Are you saying that, you said, be less autistic?
	Are you saying that you perceive that your self-described autism is the result of not playing outside?
	Like, not going outside enough as a kid, like, just making friends and also just being around, like, like, I have, like, a big brother who is, like, very controlling as well.
	You know, like, no pun intended, but, like, I mean, kinda, yeah.
	And so, like, this person was, like, a low-functioning autistic.
	I'd say, like, if I didn't have this person in my life and I went outside more, yeah, I probably would be more normal.
	Sorry, you said your brother is a low-functioning autistic?
	Uh, yeah.
	Like, my oldest brother is.
	Okay.
	And so, by that, do you mean that he's unable to sort of wash and dress himself or go to the bathroom, or what do you mean by low-functioning autistic?
	No, no, no.
	It's like, he's, like, a gay retard.
	It's, like, very aggressive, so it's, like, I couldn't really have, like, friends, like, Rwando, so.
	Huh.
	You know, it's, like, okay, well, I'm obviously very, very very sorry for that, but the second thing is that you talked about, what, giving your children guns to defend their rights?
	Uh, I mean, like, learning how do you, like, defend those rights, like, at an early age, I would say, it's, like, I'd say that's an important thing, as well as child labor, like, making sure, like, yes, like, you're, so, this is kind of counterintuitive, I guess, like, I don't know if that's the right word, because I'm not good with linguistics, but, yeah, like, making sure, like, the children, like, learn to, like, take care of them until I was at, like, a young age, rather than, like, relying on tendies.
	Well, yeah, I think certainly children need to have more independence, and children certainly should be free if they want, and if their parents agree to contribute more economically.
	I've said it a million times, I got my first job at the age of 10 painting plaques for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, which was piecework, and I was, like, up all night and doing my Dickensian labor, but I was thrilled to do it because I got to go out and buy one 24th model Spitfire and put it together and paint it and all of that, so it was, it was great for me, and I've been working pretty much solidly ever since.
	I did take a year and a half off to write two novels back in the day, but other than that, which I guess was work too, but I've been working pretty continually, so, of course, you know, I'm sure that there were lots of gun clubs for children in high school in the 1950s, 1960s in America, and it's all
	virtually perfectly safe, there were no school shootings and so on, so this idea that guns just sort of float around and magically go off, you know, like how they always report these things, a car drove into a bunch of people, it's like, no, no, it's not the car, it's the person behind the wheel, so the idea that guns just sort of take on a life of their own and begin sort of shooting
	randomly, it's like, yeah, I mean, in America, certainly, based upon the Second Amendment, I mean, gun ownership is still relatively common here in Canada, but, you know, as a frontier town, gun ownership is fine, and, of course, we all know that nobody's really for gun control, as I've said before, people aren't for gun control, they just want to set, because you're going to need guns to take away people's guns, they're just for the concentration of guns and weaponry in the hands of a small
	elite, permanently addicted to power lust, which is really not a good combo at all, so, yeah, I certainly think, I think that we infantilize children for far too long, and we keep them in far too much, I grew up roaming the
	neighborhood, and again, I know it was a higher trust society, but child abductions are actually down over the last couple of decades, at least that's the last data that I read, so, but we have, of course, an absence of fathers in the household, and when female concerns and worries and sometimes neurosis is not balanced by
	men, and, you know, they'll learn, you know, she can't, he can't fall off the bike, and it's like, he'll fall off the bike, he'll be fine, he'll be fine, so women want to keep children close and safe, which I understand, especially when they're babies and toddlers, it's essential, but men are just like, eh, he'll be fine, you know, so, you know, he'll get some strawberry knees from falling off the bike or whatever, but he'll learn from that, right, I'm sure you've seen that video of the kid who's playing with the electrical socket, it's a comedy,
	right, and the mom's like, no, and the father's like, no, no, let him learn, right, I'm not saying that's recommended, but there is that different energy, so we've got these bubble-wrapped kids who never really face much rejection, everyone gets a trophy, and they don't get subjected to the playground rules of
	boys, which is if you do something that sucks, you are told, you suck, you suck, and you don't get picked for the team until last, right, so you want to move your way up into the hierarchy, but any child who feels sad and rejected, it
	makes women's maternal hearts spill over with pathological altruism, and people can't feel sad, and people can't be in danger, and people can't be allowed to fail, and everybody's got to get a trophy and a participation prize, and then they get out into the real world, and you're measured not by your intention and not by your sadness and not by your love and lust and preferences, you're measured by your productivity, that's it, how good are you at producing stuff that
	costs less than I'm paying you to make it, right, so at least some people do, most women of course end up working for the government
	they get to have this semi-childhood their whole lives so yeah so that's my uh general thoughts i'm certainly happy to hear yours oh besides that like i pretty much do agree with you there another thing i would say is i don't know if it was like the same topic or different oh yeah like i was gonna pop up on like anglo-britons um like point that he was making which was he was saying something about preserving the best people.
	And I just wanted to say, like, you generally don't get the best out of the best people when they're not free to really express and create what those ideas really capitalize with them.
	Or even out of lower people as well.
	So the thing is, too, I mean, best is to some degree a subjective criteria.
	The best people, so I'm a big one for let everyone decide who the best is.
	And they do that generally with their wallets, right?
	I mean, in the free market, right?
	So who's the best singer?
	I don't know.
	I mean, who gets paid the most for being a singer?
	I mean, that would economically make them the most valued singer.
	What does best mean?
	I mean, there's some singers who have angelic purity to their voice, but I don't like any of the songs they sing.
	I mean, go listen to Louis Capaldi absolutely butcher the, oh, gosh, what was the song?
	When the party's over.
	That's just horrendous by Billie Eilish.
	I mean, literally, it says, quiet money coming home.
	Bro is bellowing like a slightly gored female moose.
	And so, you know, great, great singer, great, but just absolutely wrong.
	But I'm sure some people like it.
	Billie Eilish recently did a live cover of Creep by Radiohead.
	And, well, not my particular cup of tea, but, you know, whatever, right?
	I think her songs are basically demonic, and that's not even subtle.
	So who's the best?
	I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	Another thing, I'm not going to say who sings the best today, but modern pop music is an abomination.
	It sucks so badly.
	I'm like, start doing ISIS because I hate this stuff so bad.
	Please don't join ISIS because you dislike pop music.
	I wasn't sure I was going to say that sentence tonight, but please don't join ISIS because you dislike pop music.
	So music has lost any factor of surprise.
	And I like it when I don't know exactly, you know, breathy singer, anti-male, rap bit in the middle, and breathy outro.
	That's all that's going on with music these days.
	Yeah, it's absolutely appalling.
	You can't tell the songs apart on the radio.
	The singers all kind of sound the same.
	Moments of last time you heard something as innovative as Bohemian Rhapsody or, I don't know, scenes from an Italian restaurant or Song of Seven or, gosh, I mean, you could, any, a lot of the super trams are the fool's overture, like stuff that's just interesting and creative and different.
	And you just don't, you don't see it, man.
	And that's because intelligent people like variety and progress and less intelligent people like repetition and familiarity.
	So, yeah, it is.
	What is it from the movie Rio?
	It's like, oh, the songs all sound the same.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Cha-cha-cha.
	So I would say that it is, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty appalling.
	And I basically am just falling back into the abyss of music that I liked when I was younger.
	So I just go look for live versions.
	I'm a music archaeologist, as I write about in my book, The God of Atheists.
	I just go back and look for live versions of songs I loved in my youth.
	And that's really the best that I can do as far as getting to new music because it absolutely blows.
	It blows massive intergalactic whale chunks and it's appalling.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	And I wanted to touch up on was the whole point of like yesterday's argument where like I would say marriage in general about it, it's not really like I'd say an effect of it is yes, people do tend to raise children better than like single parent households most of the time.
	However, it's like people they get married usually before they have children, not before it.
	And considering that there's still so much of a financial cost to the guy who like essentially like you're retiring like this is like most of the time like they're retiring their wife from the thing.
	Like I mean like from their careers.
	Oh, so hang on.
	So what you're saying is that the woman stays home to raise the children?
	That's not as common as it should be, but go ahead.
	All right.
	So it's like, yeah, I'm the same dude like yesterday who was telling you like marriage is just a long-term prostitution contract.
	Oh, same guy.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So I would say like it's much closer to that than like really anything else.
	Okay.
	So my arguments didn't mean anything to you.
	Neither are you addressing them.
	No, no, no, it didn't.
	No, it didn't.
	No, it didn't.
	It didn't.
	It didn't.
	It didn't because you didn't change your perspective.
	Neither did you rebut my arguments, which means I'm talking to a television set or an NPC.
	For the most part, when it comes down to that, it's like, this is how I would see it because, like, that's what practically makes sense in terms of.
	No, I get it.
	I'm just, I understand.
	I don't want you, hang on, hang on.
	I honestly do not want you poisoning the minds of my listeners with this appalling anti-natalist and anti-marriage nonsense.
	So I appreciate, hang on, still, still talking.
	All right.
	Well, I appreciate you dropping by and I don't want it.
	And listen, you're certainly free to disagree with me.
	Of course, anybody is, and I could be wrong about anything.
	But I really find it annoying, and just be honest, right?
	Doesn't mean I'm right.
	I'm just saying I'm honest about my annoyance that when I have a debate with someone and then they come back the next day saying the same thing without addressing the arguments that I made.
	I just know that they're not interested in listening and I'm not really interested in talking with people who aren't interested in listening.
	All right.
	Lahina.
	Lahina.
	Lahaina?
	Let me vamp for a moment here.
	Bust the moves.
	Yes, sir.
	I have a question.
	So I saw you tweet earlier that you shouldn't get into a relationship with someone and get over like past relationships.
	And I'm kind of like.
	Nope, nope, nope, nope.
	Come on.
	What did I say?
	Stop.
	Well, why are you Asking me about something, you don't even know what I said.
	Aren't you supposed to be a little bit specific if you're going to call me up and grill me on something, which I'm fine with, but shouldn't you know what the hell I said?
	Isn't that sort of a basic requirement?
	Yeah, I kind of forgot, but I remember the basis of it.
	No, you don't.
	No, no, hang on.
	What did I just say?
	You can't just go on as if I didn't say anything.
	That's rude.
	I told you that you mischaracterized my tweet.
	So what's the polite thing to do on your part?
	Or to ask me.
	Okay, what was the tweet about that?
	There we go.
	Thank you.
	So just going on as if, like I say, oh, you got it wrong.
	You're like, well, let me just go on.
	It's like, no, that's not how a reasonable conversation works.
	So what I said was, at least I think the tweet that you're referring to, was do not date people who constantly complain about their past decisions.
	Is that the one?
	Okay, do you understand?
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Do you understand how that's different from what you said?
	Okay, so I appreciate that.
	And with that being said, what I tweeted was, just to remind people, what I tweeted was, do not date people who constantly complain about their past decisions.
	And so with that in mind, go ahead.
	Okay.
	Well, I kind of fall into that line where I see my past mistakes and I kind of like regret it.
	And so I kind of live in that regret.
	And it's kind of hard to move on to the future when I'm still stuck in the past.
	And I definitely want to help you with that, but I'm a little confused because it seems to me that complaining is different from regret.
	So if you order some soup and it comes cold and you complain and you say, the soup is cold.
	Can you heat it up or get me a warm soup?
	You're complaining about it or some Karen who's complaining about whatever she bought.
	That seems to me somewhat different from regret.
	Yeah.
	Well, what if I do have like regret?
	What would be like some ways to like move on forward?
	Okay, so you don't have to get into specifics and of course don't feel that you have to talk about anything you're not comfortable talking about.
	Can you give me an example of something that you regret?
	Past relationship, 100%.
	It's like something that's like daily for me at the current moment.
	How long was the relationship and when did it end?
	It was about three years.
	It ended around 2024.
	So it's been about like a year now.
	Okay.
	And you sound like a relatively young man?
	I'm sorry, you cut out for a moment.
	What did you say?
	You sound like a relatively young man.
	Young, youngish?
	Are you in your early mid-twenties?
	I'm not sure if you can hear me or not.
	Maybe you've got bad reception.
	Testing, one, two, three.
	Can you hear me at all?
	No, sounds like he maybe drove into a dead spot or something like that, or maybe his ex caught up with him.
	So with regards to regrets, regrets diminish when you learn the lesson.
	So what is the purpose of regrets?
	So when you have an emotion, anger, is it fear, anxiety, whatever, in this case, the regret, which is more of a thought than an emotion, but the emotion would be sadness based upon bad decisions in the past.
	So the first thing to ask, I think, in general, is why do I have this feeling at all?
	Or why do human beings have this feeling at all?
	That's the big question.
	Why have we evolved with the feeling or the emotional experience called regret?
	It must serve some purpose because that which serves no evolutionary purpose generally doesn't last.
	I mean, we still have, I guess, an appendix, which I think has some benefit, or we have that little monkey nubbin between our ass cheeks and so on.
	At least I do.
	So in general, and by the way, I forgot to mention this.
	If you're finding these conversations helpful, freedomain.com slash donate.
	I'd really appreciate that.
	You can support the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	So why do we have an emotion called regret?
	So let me give you an example.
	Think of being a hunter.
	And hunting is a real challenge.
	I've done some hunting.
	Hunting is a real challenge because you want to get, let's say you're not just having your ass planted in a duck blind, but you are going to hunt a particular creature.
	Let's just say deer.
	You're going to go into, well, I guess a deer blind, right?
	So let's say you're going to go hunt a deer.
	So you have to get close enough that you're likely to hit the deer, but not so close that the deer senses you and runs away.
	Right.
	So if you say, oh, I don't think I can get any closer and you shoot your bow and arrow and you miss and then the deer runs away, you're like, I should have gotten closer.
	There's regret because could have done better.
	If you're like, ooh, I think I'm going to get a little closer, a little tiny bit closer.
	Come on, come on, I get this.
	I get this.
	I got this.
	And then you get so close that the deer smells you or senses you and is gone, right?
	So then you regret, I shouldn't have gotten too close.
	So regret is try something different.
	I mean, if you get to the perfect spot, oh, I mean, I'm close enough, I can hit it.
	I'm not so close the deer is going to smell me or sense me.
	So I do my bow and arrow, take down the deer, and we eat well tonight, brothers and sisters, right?
	So you don't need to change anything because it worked.
	You don't have regret.
	Regret is try something different.
	So if you had a bad relationship that ended in 2024, that went on for three years.
	And if you were a young man, which was why I was asking, it's your first big connection, your first big romance?
	And if it all went tits up, if it all went flame out, if it augered in, as my old business partner used to say, then the reason you have regrets is you need to circle back and figure out what you need to do different.
	So when it came to studying for tests, we've all had this reality in school.
	You study for a test.
	Well, you don't want to study for the test for three months straight for like a math test or a spelling test, right?
	That's overkill, right?
	But at the same time, you also don't want to study for five minutes or just do that thing where you try to sleep with the book under your pillow and it wafts into your brain overnight, right?
	That won't work.
	So if you study for too long, you're not having any fun.
	You're not getting outside.
	You're not studying for other things and you're putting too much into that.
	So other things suffer in your life.
	So you feel regret.
	Oh, all I did was study for that stupid test for three months.
	I didn't go anywhere.
	I didn't have any friends over.
	I didn't play.
	All right.
	So you regret that.
	Oh, I spent the whole summer, blah, blah, blah, inside.
	So you regret that.
	And the regret says, do something different next time.
	Do something different next time.
	That's what regret is saying.
	Go outside.
	You don't need to study that hard.
	On the other hand, if it's a really important test, you don't really study that much, and you blow it.
	I don't know if you can even fail tests anymore, but back in my day, you could.
	So if you blow it and you fail, and there's significant negative consequences to that, then you're going to feel regret.
	Oh, man, I shouldn't have gone and played baseball and played Madden football and gone and built that rope swing under the railway bridge.
	I shouldn't have done it.
	I should have studied.
	Oh, man.
	Why did I talk about controversial things and get deplatformed?
	Actually, I don't.
	I don't care about that.
	I don't mind that.
	It was all worth it.
	So.
	You say I should have studied more.
	Or you say I should have studied less because you have regrets.
	So with regards to this girlfriend, there's only two possibilities, man.
	If the relationship you heavily invested in it, it blew up, it went bad, it went south, there's only two possibilities.
	Number one, you picked the wrong woman, and it was never going to work.
	You picked the wrong woman, and it was never going to work.
	So what is regret telling you?
	Find out why you picked the wrong woman and don't do it again.
	Don't do it again.
	Pink Floyd style, right?
	Don't do it again.
	Yeah, messed up.
	Figure out why so that you don't do it again.
	So regret is saying do something different.
	So number one, you picked the wrong girl.
	She was nuts.
	She was crazy, destable, whatever, right?
	And it wasn't going to work.
	It's nothing you could do.
	That's number one.
	Number two, she could have been the right girl, but you did something wrong.
	Maybe you were too selfish.
	Maybe you didn't care what she wanted in bed.
	Maybe you were playing too many video games.
	Maybe you didn't pay her any attention.
	Maybe you were depressed and boring and understimulating to be around and you didn't deal with your depression or something.
	I don't know what.
	Maybe you have a bad temper and you yelled at her and you didn't say, oh crap, I better not do that.
	I got to go get anger management, some therapy, whatever it is, right?
	So maybe she was a girl with real potential, but something you did messed it up.
	Because regret is telling you, don't do it again.
	But in order to not do it again, you need to figure out why you did it in the first place.
	I mean, if the deer runs away because you get too close and you think, oh, it's because I was thinking of a particular sea shanty.
	Then you just, oh, I get closer, but I won't think of a particular sea shanty.
	Well, the deer didn't run away because you were thinking of a particular sea shanty.
	There once was the ship that sailed to sea in the name of the ship possibly Obi.
	It's not why if you sing it, maybe, but not if you just think it, right?
	So you've got the wrong cause and effect, right?
	So regrets will continue until you get the right cause and effect.
	And then you have a chance to not repeat the mistake.
	If you just don't figure out why you did it, you're just going to repeat the mistake, right?
	So if you have regret, it means circle back, figure out what you did wrong, and do something different.
	So regret is a very healthy and helpful emotion.
	Without it, we're really lost at sea.
	All right, righty, righty, righty.
	Austin.
	Austin.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	Take a moment to unmute.
	You mean me, Agim, or somebody else?
	Sorry, Austin, hang on.
	Anglo has been waiting for a bit, but he didn't answer last time.
	So what's on your mind?
	Question?
	You mean Anglo?
	Anglo, sorry.
	Yes, so I'm sorry, I had to go back to it, but you have me stuck.
	I'm curious if this is what you're saying, or maybe I'm just saying this.
	Sorry, we'll be talking before?
	Sorry, we'll be talking before?
	Yes, I asked the question about preserving good, and then you brought up the argument of, you know, you wouldn't trust anyone with that power just to let people breed.
	Yes, okay.
	So if you have another question, and then I'll move on to Arsene.
	So by that logic, is approaching a civilization with where we follow the law of non-aggression, is that the ultimate good?
	And if the ultimate good is that, is the fastest way not to basically revert the world back into like the 1940s where calm-minded Anglos had a grip and, you know, were considering anything on the table?
	Or what's the fastest way to get to that?
	And if the fastest way to get to that requires aggression, do you still use aggression to seize the fastest way to a civilization with non-aggression.
	No, because power always corrupts.
	You don't seize aggression.
	And are you trying to say that we return to the glory days of the Anglo-society in the 1940s?
	Did I hear that right?
	That was used as an example, yes.
	The 1940s?
	Man, the Anglosphere was being disassembled from the spinal fluid outward in the Second World War.
	What are you talking about?
	Well, I mean more of some in the blood, right?
	So like if you're talking about the number of white people who are diaspora beyond Europe, they're mostly Anglos.
	Yeah, okay.
	So no, no, the simple answer is no.
	I resist the urge to do evil for the sake of achieving good.
	It does not work.
	It never has worked.
	And that's how history has always been.
	History has always been, oh, is this what you want the most?
	Do evil and we'll give it to you.
	And then you do the evil and you don't get it.
	So I do not think that is the right approach, but I certainly do appreciate the question.
	And we have Kat Nihon.
	Kat Nihon, do I have that right?
	Sorry, I think I may have removed the wrong person.
	But anyway, so go ahead.
	Kat Nihon, what's on your mind?
	And sorry to the person I removed.
	Just we'll get you back in.
	Thank you so much for letting me be a speaker tonight.
	I've been listening to you for like 15 something years.
	It's amazing that finally able to speak with you.
	Well, I'll start with thank you very much.
	I'll start with thank you very much for your attention over the course of the last 15 years.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	And thank you, thank you, thank you.
	So go ahead.
	So I'm not sure.
	So I just jumped in just a few minutes ago because I saw that you were doing a space.
	So I'm like, I'm going to join in and hopefully get a chance to speak with you.
	It's really cool that I'm finally able to do that.
	So it seems like we're talking about the non-aggression principle.
	So I have a question.
	So one of the things I'm dealing with in my current life is that I'm working for an employer that's feeling under one half of my pay.
	And I only recently learned that and I got an employment lawyer.
	Using the non-aggression principle, you know, not using aggression to get what you want.
	As a former, you know, employer, you know, IT guy who ran businesses, you know, what's the best approach or most respectful approach for someone who's being seated in business?
	How best do they represent their own interests without violating the non-aggression principle?
	So I, no, that's a great, that's a great question.
	I hugely appreciate it.
	And thank you for asking it.
	So without getting into specifics, please, how did your employer steal half of, was it a bonus that you were supposed to get that you didn't get or some sort of commission that you didn't get paid?
	I assume it wasn't.
	They just paid you only half your salary.
	It's a combination.
	There were a lot of very questionable accounting practices occurring right after I got hired.
	And they shut down part of the website that let us check our hours, our pay and compensation.
	So we're supposed to get bonuses, production bonuses, hours per diems for travel, different things like that.
	And as me and other employees at the company that I work for have looked into things because the company accidentally gave us access to their accounting system, we realized that they have been cheating us, you know, about ripping us off, not paying us about one third to one half of the money that they're supposed to be paying us.
	And we've been seeing that in some cases, some of the guys that I work with have been working for the company for about five or six years, and they've just been underpaying us.
	And sorry, for how long were you being underpaid?
	What?
	How did you not know that?
	Here's the thing.
	So like I was making pretty good money.
	The thing is they weren't showing us how we were getting paid.
	So, you know.
	No, but you were, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	I assume you had some sort of contract or some sort of, at least, I hope written sort of understanding of your pay structure.
	So how did they underpay you by 50% for like 18 months?
	So this is where the accounting comes into play.
	So when we're actually checking the accounting system that they gave us access to, we're all seeing that, oh, we weren't getting per DMs.
	They weren't getting us.
	No, no, but don't you know?
	Hang on.
	Don't you know that you're getting paid per DMs?
	And I'm not blaming you.
	I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of like how this goes on for a year and a half.
	I was just kind of ignoring a lot of it because.
	Okay, so you didn't check?
	I couldn't.
	Like we had used a website that would document our pay, and then they stopped using the company that did this because they didn't want to spend the $2 million a year.
	Okay.
	Okay, listen, bro, bro, bro, listen, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Okay, you understand that from the, I don't know if you, if you notice this, but from the outside, it's a little incomprehensible.
	Can you understand that?
	No, no, no, no, I absolutely understand.
	I completely understand.
	But it's so, so I do contract work and we're supposed to be paid on production and hours and per DMs and other such things.
	And when, as we've looked into it, me and the other employees, our pay stops are not matching up with.
	No, but wouldn't you know that at some point over the last 18 months?
	Wouldn't you know that?
	Yes, I did, but I just kept dealing with it because I'm like, It's not as bad as crap that I've been dealing with for the prior six years.
	And I know that I could always sue them and get back.
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	So you did know about it at some point over the past 18 months, and it took you a while to act or whatever, right?
	Which is, you know, I understand.
	I'm not blaming you.
	I'm certainly not saying that you did anything wrong.
	I'm just trying to understand how this happens.
	If you know how you're supposed to get paid, I mean, don't you double check what people do with you economically?
	Most part I do, but I just kind of put my nose to the grindstone because I'm working like 14 plus hours a day and I was just keep putting it off, putting it off.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So I just want to understand that.
	And, you know, I'm just saying to people, the more complicated your pay structure, the more you need to double check.
	Don't be too busy to double check other people's work when it comes to paying you.
	That's really, really important.
	So sorry to be nagging and all of that.
	So with regards to how it works in a free society, so in a free society, you have something called a contract rating.
	This is all theoretical, but this is how I'm guaranteed it'll work.
	So a contract rating is how good is this organization at fulfilling its contracts?
	And it's sort of like in eBay or the Amazon sort of sellers program, the seller is rated, right?
	How good are they at delivering their goods?
	Do they arrive undamaged?
	Are they in good condition in terms of like they're not used?
	Do they ship what it is that you want?
	And if you want to process a return, do they process it?
	So you get these ratings.
	So if you've got a company that routinely somehow magically gets away with underpaying people as a whole for by 50% over 18 months, then there would be a complaint made and you have somebody who represents you in the business world.
	They have somebody who represents them and those people get together and hash it out in the same way that we kind of have like your lawyers and their lawyers are going to sort of hash it out.
	But this would be a much more efficient system.
	Now, if it turns out that the company that hired you is underpaying you, they would take a massive blow to their contract rating.
	In other words, it would be public information that these people had ripped off employees for X amount of dollars over 18 months or whatever, and it only stopped because the employees put a stop to it.
	And what that would do, and then you would get the money back.
	Like your guys would go to the company and say, listen, you lost.
	We've proven it.
	Give us the money.
	We're going to give it to our employees and also the money for our time to research it and maybe even some punitive damages so you don't do it again.
	Then, of course, the question is, well, what if they just don't pay?
	Right?
	Okay, well, if they don't pay, then the company that represents you will pay you because that's the deal you would sign with them, that if the other person doesn't pay.
	Now, if the other company doesn't pay, then they get ostracized.
	Now, ostracized means nobody's allowed to do business with them.
	Nobody's allowed to rent to them.
	Nobody's even allowed to sell them food.
	They can't drive on anyone's roads.
	They can't, you know, have any financial dealings with anyone until they make it right.
	Economic ostracism is the most powerful way to organize a society.
	It's voluntary.
	It's kept to a minimum.
	It's as objective as you can make it.
	It's fair.
	And participation economically in the society you live in is not a human right.
	Nobody has to do business with you.
	And so they will make it right.
	They will find a way to make it right.
	Otherwise, they can't participate economically in the society and they're going to just have to leave.
	But either way, you get paid.
	And so that's how it would work in a free society.
	And I hope that makes sense.
	Appreciate the answer.
	So it's interesting some of the things you said.
	So the company, as me and the other employees have been looking it up, they had four years ago lost a $2 million class action lawsuit.
	Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, I mean, I've interviewed like a thousand people over the course of my business career and privately or semi-privately in this podcasting world.
	I've like interviewed a thousand people.
	I've like hired a hundred people.
	Don't you check references when you're going to work someplace?
	Don't you look them up?
	I did, but well, anyway, so hang on.
	You looked them up and you knew that they were kind of skeevy based upon the fact that they lost this lawsuit for underpaying people.
	You looked them up.
	They were kind of skeevy from what you looked up.
	And then it turns out that they ripped you off.
	Although you looked them up and you felt that they were skeevy, you didn't check your paycheck.
	So I'm not criticized.
	I'm not, hey, hey, bro, bro, I'm not criticizing you at all.
	This is a public conversation, which means I want other people, and I'm sure you want other people to learn from your mistakes.
	I want other people to learn from my mistakes.
	You want other people to learn from your mistakes.
	So I'm not, I'm sure you had your reasons.
	And I'm not trying to nag you and make you feel bad or blame you.
	I'm just saying that to the audience who's listening to this over the next thousand years, the audience who's listening to this, look up companies you're going to do business with.
	Look up the manager of the person who's going to be running your business.
	Look up their credit rating.
	Look up their legal history.
	And if you need to take the job, because as you say, you need a job and I sympathize with that.
	I've worked with some fairly skeevy people at times over the years, not, of course, recently or over the last couple of decades, but I took some jobs with some sketchy people.
	But then I was really careful to make sure I looked over everything that they did.
	So if you're going to work for a place, especially if they're not big, right, then look them up, double and triple check, look for former employees.
	If you look up now, you can go to places like LinkedIn.
	You can put in this place and you can talk to former employees and you can say, hey, why did you quit?
	Or can you just give me five minutes on the phone?
	Or I really would appreciate it.
	And unless they signed an NDA, they're probably going to talk with you.
	So, you know, spend an hour to vet.
	Now, if you just desperately need the job and it's the only place that'll hire you, I get that and I really sympathize with that.
	But then check because they've already announced, in a sense, from what you're telling me, that they're kind of skeevy to begin with.
	Does that make sense?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	So I know, you know, you're not just speaking for me.
	You're speaking to the audience.
	And listen, I wish you the very best at getting the money back.
	I really do.
	And I hope that you get justice out of this.
	And I really dislike people who rip off employees.
	Obviously, I've got a whole novel about this.
	All right.
	Well, thanks.
	Let's bring Austin back in.
	I think I'm doing this relatively decently.
	Maybe, maybe not.
	Austin, if you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
	I think I saw you on my feed today.
	do I have that right?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yes.
	Hey, I'm fairly ignorant with your work.
	I just started following you.
	You're a brain tickler.
	It's really cool to hear your thoughts.
	I've been following you for a minute now since I followed you.
	And it's like, I have a question about deism and the founding fathers and why they believed that philosophy.
	Sorry, are you asking me to sort of read the minds of the founding fathers and know why they believed it?
	Or are you asking for sort of general philosophical or historical ideas?
	It's a philosophical idea of why they believed it at the time and why it died off.
	It's not even a thing anymore.
	I mean, atheism is what, I mean, I guess you're an atheist, right?
	So I was curious why you're not a deist.
	No, I'm not a deist.
	And just for those of you who don't know, and I'm scarcely an expert in deism, so obviously do your own research.
	But deism, to my understanding, is the idea that God created the universe, infused it with energy, like wound up the clock, and then stepped back and let it all run.
	Does not intervene, doesn't answer prayers, but he is an explanation as to the origins and source of the energy and mechanics of the universe.
	But it's like buying a watch from a watchmaker.
	You get the watch, but you don't call up the watchmaker and say, hey, what time is it?
	Hey, can you change the time?
	Hey, can you reverse time?
	You just, you know, you get your watch is running and the universe is running, but God or the creator doesn't intervene or interfere.
	He just wound it all up and got it started.
	Is that roughly in accordance with your view of it?
	I like it because it seems to be a bit egoless in a lot of ways.
	Sorry, a big what?
	Sorry, a bit what?
	I didn't catch that word.
	Oh, it seems to be a bit like there seems to be a, like, you know, I see the dogma of Christianity and all, you know, Abrahamic religions.
	And I just see an arrogance in thinking you know what you know.
	But it's like with deism, it seems like there's an egolessness to it.
	Oh, I see what you mean.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I'm going to just riff on this.
	I have no idea, right?
	Just telling you straight up front.
	I had no idea why the founding fathers, and not all of them, of course, but why some of them were deists.
	But I'll tell you why I think it was the case historically and philosophically.
	And then you can tell me if I'm, you know, full of carp entrails.
	So in general, men of action, men of decisiveness, want to do things in the world that move shit around, change people's minds, move the tree bits from the forest to make a cabin, throw out a foreign occupier.
	They want to do stuff that changes things in the world.
	And there is always the thoughts and prayers problem.
	Now, the thoughts and prayers problems is, I really, really want the British to be gone from North America because they tax our tea and they force us to quarter their troops.
	And we hate the idea of a king, and we want to flee all of this crap.
	And they have this horrible economy based upon historical murder, aristocracy, land ownership.
	So whatever.
	Like they had their complaints.
	And you can, of course, read all of these complaints about the British.
	So they say, well, I want the British out, baby.
	Gone and gone, done and dusted.
	Now, men of action want to make that happen.
	Men of faith are drawn to the copium of thoughts and prayers.
	I am going to get down on my knees and I'm going to pray for the British to be taken away, for the king to realize the error of his ways and stop having the British quartered.
	And so being an outright atheist back in the day was pretty hazardous.
	Deism was to some degree accepted because at least it allowed for the existence of God, but God was not anyone you could appeal to to get anything done.
	Now, of course, the American Revolution was post-the Baconian scientific revolution, which was sort of 16th century and onwards.
	And the scientific revolution specifically denied the possibility of miracles.
	The behavior of matter and energy and their interactions are universal, absolute, and constant.
	And so they began to sort of push back at the interventionist aspect of God's movement in the universe, that God can make Jesus walk on water or bring him back to life or turn water into wine or drive demons into pigs and run them off a cliff.
	Like all of the things that are talked about in the Bible as proof positive of Jesus' divinity are God with his finger on the scales of the movement and interactions of matter and energy.
	He's coming in there and he's counting the cards.
	He's got his thumb on the scale.
	He is responding to appeals and he is initiating changes in the world that are not based upon matter and energy, but based upon his will and what is best for mankind and the desires that mankind has.
	So if the Founding Fathers as they did lived, since the Founding Fathers as they did, lived after the scientific Revolution.
	And it's really impossible for us to understand.
	I mean, the internet and AI is a little bit in the vicinity, but it's really impossible for us to understand just what an incredibly massive change the scientific revolution was in the mind of man.
	I mean, the Earth was ripped from the center of the universe and set in orbit around the sun.
	They still didn't quite get that the sun went around the galaxy, the Milky Way, but that which felt fixed was now in motion.
	That which was the center of the universe was no longer the center of the universe.
	The stars did not rotate around the universe, but the Earth spun, and the tides weren't the movement of any gods.
	It was the pull of the moon's gravity.
	Like, it just was incredibly bewildering for people.
	And, you know, some people would say, of course, that in the Bible it says the Earth is fixed and does not move.
	And it turns out that the Earth is rotating and spinning around the Sun, which, of course, as we know now, is also spinning around the galaxy.
	The galaxy is doing its own hot to trot throw across the universe.
	So we are incredible motion.
	And anytime you think about that, just how fast you're moving relative to any sort of fixed point, it's completely dizzying.
	You know, we are like a million miles away from where this show started.
	We are traveling at such an electrical speed.
	It's mind-blowing.
	So when the scientific revolution came along and explained so much, it was still pre-medical, right?
	So it didn't explain the medicine.
	Of course, it's pre-quantum.
	And at that point, it's, yeah, I mean, Newton is around that time, right?
	So everything was explained.
	Everything was explained that people were seeing by science, but that those explanations required the absolute properties and interactions of matter and energy.
	I mean, if you look at Galileo, I think it was, who basically took a bowling ball, and it wasn't a feather because that'd be too much, a bowling ball and an orange to the top of the leaning tower of pizza and dropped it down.
	And everyone was like, oh, why would you even do that experiment?
	The bowling ball is going to fall faster.
	And nope, the bowling ball and the orange fell at the same rate.
	So people were like, that which we thought was certain is not true.
	And of course, this is the battle on X and social media, right?
	You think something's certain and it's not true.
	Now, stuff that I'm posting, right?
	I've been doing this for 40 years.
	It doesn't mean I'm right about everything, but I'm pretty good.
	I have my weaknesses, but I have accumulated.
	I mean, I've interviewed, I don't know, probably 500 experts in various fields and I've read thousands of books in preparation for those interviews, as well as I have a graduate degree in history and the history of philosophy.
	And like I, I just, I've read, I've done a whole history of philosophy series.
	Like I'm pretty good at this.
	Doesn't mean I'm infallible, but it means that if you want to beat me at chess, you might want to practice for a while because I'm pretty good at this.
	So when people run up against things they're certain about that turn out to be wrong, as you say, there's an ego component to it, which is we want to get rid of the data to preserve our sense of being right.
	And so the scientific revolution just smashed into the medieval mind of man.
	And remember, the medieval mind of man was so enslaved to Greek philosophy that they simply referred to Aristotle as the philosopher.
	He was just considered to be the absolute expert on just about everything.
	And of course, a lot of what Aristotle thought about, although he was an empiricist in the realm of science, was just wrong.
	It was just wrong.
	He was obviously a complete genius in history, but it just was wrong because his perspective was limited and he didn't have access to modern instruments and so on.
	Because of course, remember, all of this stuff happened alongside grinding lenses and telescopes and spectacles, which allowed the aged to continue their work in a way that was not nearly as easy before.
	So the foundation of the American mindset prior to the revolution was God ain't doing nothing.
	God can't, science has told us that God can't do things because the behavior in matter and energy is absolute.
	Now, if God ain't going to do things, then prayer ain't going to work.
	So if you want something done, you dust off your britches, you fire up your horse and your musket, and you go and make it happen.
	Praying to God won't do anything because science does not allow for miracles.
	And there was a phrase, the age of miracles is over.
	And what that meant was people's belief in miracles was over.
	Now, people still didn't know where the universe came from.
	And that, of course, remains a question.
	The Big Bang is just a theory.
	So where does the universe come from?
	People need to have some answer to that as a whole, because they need their morals, or they need at least their sense of where things came from.
	So they came up with the watchmaker.
	Well, the universe came from a God, but then he wound it all up.
	He gave us the energy.
	And then he just famous, he buggered off.
	He despawned.
	And he's still out there, maybe, but he's not interested in doing it.
	It is an abandoned garden, right?
	The things are going to grow or not grow depending on what we weed, but God ain't coming back to chase away the crows and deposit the worms and the manure.
	So the founding fathers were decisive men of action, and the decisiveness of their action came from the understanding that science had barred thoughts and prayers as an effective means of achieving change in the world, and it was going to be up to each individual to make things happen.
	And I think that's one of the reasons they were so energetic relative to the British who, because of the king, still more believed in the divine Christian interventionist view of the world.
	I hope that's not too long or confusing an answer.
	Does that make some kind of sense to you?
	Yes, that was perfect.
	Way you sound, it sounds like it is a fuel that the founding fathers had, maybe a fuel of some sort that they believed they felt they had to have a different point of view to make what they no, I think, sorry to interrupt.
	I think a different point of view is too abstract.
	There is a time in every man's life in particular, this happens to women as well, where you realize That if something's going to happen, either you do it or it doesn't fucking happen at all.
	Right, when it came to philosophy, man, I wanted the world to be interested in philosophy.
	It wasn't happening.
	I wanted the philosophy of childhood to be foremost in the minds of moralists.
	It was not happening.
	And the thoughts and prayers, since I'm an atheist, weren't going to cut it.
	So at some point, you have to say to yourself, particularly if you're a man of action, you have to say to yourself, if not me, then who?
	Who's going to do it?
	Who's going to do it?
	And if nobody's doing it, you got to get off your ass, dust your britches, and make it happen.
	Thoughts and prayers aren't going to be enough.
	Oh, I hope and pray that people give up on spanking in violent, coercive ways.
	And I hope that the society becomes free.
	And I hope that people get interested in philosophy.
	I pray and I hope it's like, thoughts and prayers don't cut it.
	You have to act or it doesn't happen.
	And it really, it's always bothered me even when I was a kid, like thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.
	It's like, how about you go up and bring some, we pray for the poor.
	It's like, why don't you bring them some food and give them a job?
	No, no, no, we're praying for the poor.
	That's our effect.
	Although I'm not saying Christians don't bring food and give jobs, but if you cut off fantasy action, all that is left is action or inaction, right?
	If you think someone is coming to save you, let's say you're in a desert island, and you can kind of see, it's a long way over this, maybe sharks in the waters.
	You can just see a lion on the horizon that's the mainland, and you get stuck on some desert island.
	If you think people are coming to save you, you don't risk the shark-infested waters.
	But once you get, like maybe you wait for time or whatever, and you finally accept that people aren't coming, then you can act, right?
	So once you get that, nothing is going to happen, particularly in your life as an adult, because when we're kids, people make all these decisions for us and we just kind of on this conveyor belt of other people's needs and preferences, whether we care or not, like school and church and other things, family gatherings, you don't want to go, but you go, whatever, right?
	So at some point in every man's life in particular, you get to this crossroads where you say, what I want, what I care about is not happening.
	So either I give up that I want it or I do it myself.
	Thoughts and prayers aren't going to cut it.
	And so I think that's where they were.
	They no longer believed that there was a big guy in the sky that they could appeal to to get what they wanted, which was a sovereign nation.
	And if you're a deist, then prayer won't do anything.
	You might as well pray to a pelican.
	And if prayer isn't going to do it and you desperately want it, then you got to do it yourself.
	And I think that's the mindset that they were working with.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Let's talk.
	So thank you, man.
	I appreciate it.
	All right.
	So, Kat, I'm so sorry.
	I think I brought you in and out like an Abyssinian yo-yo.
	So, Kat Nihon, if you have something I can help you with, I'm eager to try.
	So, my spaces is kind of acting up.
	I got you, brother.
	So, I just wanted to turn my mic back on in case I, you know, wanted to jump into another, you know.
	Oh, sorry.
	I thought we hadn't.
	Sorry.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	We haven't.
	Have we talked before tonight or not?
	Okay, good.
	I wasn't sure.
	Sorry.
	Because I'm listening on this sort of tinny speaker so I can record properly.
	You all sound a bit the same.
	But go ahead.
	What's your question?
	So we just spoke, you know, the situation.
	Oh, so sorry.
	Sorry.
	I wanted to jump back in.
	I can't do that.
	I'm so sorry.
	I can't do that because my apologies.
	Oh, I shouldn't get my handprint in there just because we've got a bunch of other people who want to talk.
	Scott!
	Scott, are you on?
	Yes, no.
	Going once, going twice.
	Yes, hello.
	Did we talk before as well?
	No, we haven't.
	Okay.
	Am I. Yeah, you're live.
	Go ahead.
	I'm free to ask a question right now.
	All right.
	I'm sorry?
	That's the point.
	That's the purpose.
	That's why you requested to ask a question.
	That's why I put you on the air.
	Go ahead.
	Because there are so many different things that are being discussed.
	But a big thing that has been on my mind lately that is a little bit difficult to freeze into a clean question.
	Well, you've had a little bit of time to think about it, so I'm sure you've been able to do it properly.
	Yeah.
	Oh, my goodness.
	I didn't think I'd be this.
	I'll confess that I've also listened to you for over a decade, and now I'm like incredibly nervous.
	Listen, don't worry.
	Honestly, don't worry about it.
	Nobody knows who you are, so that's totally fine.
	Is there a question to do with thoughts, feelings, history, criticism?
	What is driving you to want to chat tonight?
	And I'm very happy to chat, and I really appreciate your interest in the show for so long.
	Yeah.
	So it's more of a historical question and a question of identity.
	It's been a very prevailing thought in the discourse lately.
	All these questions around the identity of what we call an American.
	And I think I find myself in a strange and unique position that I've kind of had a problem with my entire life because I happen to be what you would call Black American, African American, whatever hyphen we're going to add to that.
	And there are so many different opinions within what you would call the black community itself, the traditional American ethnicity, like Anglo-Saxon American.
	I guess my question is, do you have, is there a place for place for black Americans?
	I really hate using that term, for black people that in some sort of identity of some kind for America to fit in the mold of an American.
	I don't know if that's the best way to ask that question.
	It's a way to ask the question, but it's a very.
	No, no, it's listen, brother.
	It's not a strange topic at all.
	And I really do appreciate you bringing it up.
	Of course, you know, when I was growing up, and I'm not sure how old you are, but there was this idea of a race-blind society.
	And, you know, we were checking along in that direction to some degree.
	You could say there was some real progress towards that kind of stuff.
	And, you know, whether it had a lot to do with the Wall Street protests, you know, the Occupy Wall Street protests, which were actually being quite successful in challenging this sort of financial tyranny that the West is half enslaved under, you know, the central banking and the government cartels of finance and debt and money printing.
	And so the oligarchs just dropped a whole bunch of identity politics into the Occupy Wall Street movement and just splintered and fragmented it.
	So as you know, I'm real keen on peaceful parenting, which, you know, in the black community around the world and in America, you know, kids are treated kind of rough.
	They're raised kind of harsh in a lot of ways.
	So I'm obviously big advocate for that in all communities and with a special focus on the black community.
	So I'm a big fan of the non-aggression principle.
	I'm a big fan of equality before the law.
	And that's what I think needs to happen.
	Unfortunately, the government has so much power that identity politics pays off, right?
	So if black communities get together or Hispanic communities get together, not so much the whites, of course, but then they can sort of pressure and have their grievances and get money and get special considerations and so on.
	And I think that just is kind of like a soft civil war where people, everyone's trying to grab the power of the state to get benefits for their own community, often at the expense of others or sort of the unborn.
	I personally think we'd get along a whole lot better without the power of the state constantly being something that we all fight over, whether individually or through corporations or through classes or through races or through sexes, men versus women.
	There's just this massive power right at the center of society that has the ability to transfer trillions of dollars from one group or individual to another.
	That just drives people kind of crazy.
	You know, it's kind of like if you have a truck full of $100 bills, like full of millions of hundreds of dollar bills or thousands of hundred dollar bills, and it overturns in some neighborhood, the wind catches it and all the money blows around through the neighborhood and so on.
	I mean, people go a little crazy, right?
	Because they're just like, I got to grab this money and I got to get this.
	So I think that we're driven kind of mad by all of this power that the government has to control and redistribute wealth.
	And that power causes people to band together.
	And sometimes they band together.
	I said, you know, men versus women, or usually women versus men.
	It can happen through race, through ethnicity.
	It can happen through a class and so on.
	Like the wealthy collude together and the poor also collude together.
	The wealthy get their military industrial complex.
	The poor get their welfare state and so on.
	And I genuinely believe, and I don't think it's utopian, I genuinely believe that if we did not have the redistributive power at the state right at the center, that if we didn't have this constant money flying out of this overturned truck, I think we'd all get along a whole lot better because we wouldn't sit there and say, oh, gosh, well, if I don't band together, then you guys are going to band together and you're going to get your way and it's going to be at my expense.
	And it just makes us fight in ways that are just horrible.
	So is there a role and a place for black Americans in America?
	A role and place for every race and ethnicity in every aspect of a free society.
	And I think that everyone would, in the long run, be a whole lot happier if we weren't constantly tempted by this sort of ring of power of controlling the state apparatus for redistribution.
	And I think we'd be absolutely surprised, if not downright shocked, at how well we were able to get along together and how well we would be able to appreciate each other's fairly unique contributions, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	It's not really an angle that I've thought of the issue from.
	And I guess a lot of the discussion when it comes to the black community, well, any number of communities, really, but the black community especially is how much welfare has kind of dulled the spirit of black Americans.
	And smashed the family, right?
	I mean, blacks used to be married at an 80% rate.
	Now it's 75% illegitimacy.
	But sorry, I don't want to start telling you about the black community.
	Go on.
	It's weird for me to discuss it because I wasn't raised in a I wasn't raised around other black people.
	Like here in the Central Valley of California, it's very I'm kind of doctor myself there, but no one cares.
	It's a big spot.
	It's very diverse in especially like the 2000s.
	It's not really any one group.
	So I wasn't really exposed to the black community full wholesale until about my teenage years.
	And I was expected to take part in something that I really thought was exporting degenerate behavior.
	Sorry, what do you mean by that?
	I'm specifically talking about I could talk about rap culture in general, but nothing really like when I talk about it, it's like I don't have I could hardly name specific examples about of things because I just don't listen to music.
	It just puts it's it's bad to me.
	But I can gather the perception of what that culture is exporting.
	It's like what if that makes sense.
	I'm sure I could elaborate on that if I was more clear-headed on it.
	But it's it's crime, stuff like that, worshiping, like you were talking about, the strange worshiping of money.
	Well, and usually, usually illegitimate money, right?
	I mean, usually the rap culture is, you know, the bitches and hoes stuff.
	And the rap culture is, you know, criminal gangs are the best and flashing your illegitimate money with your guns.
	And like, it is, I mean, it is.
	It's designed to program people to be frightened of blacks.
	And it's completely unfair.
	But it is, of course, what people see coming, sort of pouring across.
	And then they see certain aspects of the black community cheering that stuff on.
	And they're like, well, hang on.
	We don't exactly cheer on our criminals.
	So, you know, and I think it is just a division metric.
	And of course, it is, I think, a kind of allure for a lot of young black people to say, yeah, you should, you know, this is the cool stuff, you know, studying and getting a job and, you know, like the three things you need to do to get out of poverty, right?
	You finish high school, don't have a kid out of wedlock and haven't hold a job for a year.
	That's it.
	If you do that, like 97% of people who do those three things and it's not like massive, they can get out of the poverty.
	They can get to at least the lower middle class, right?
	And so that stuff is not promoted, you know, in the hip-hop culture in particular.
	And again, the last thing I want to do is loftily instruct you about the processes and mechanics of the black community, but at least that's sort of what I see, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	I guess when you talk about it from that perspective, I can be a little bit more specific about where I personally fit in this.
	I feel there's a term for Democrats that are migrating their way over to becoming Republican.
	I think several people like Tim Poole used this term for a time being politically homeless.
	Oh, Candace Owens.
	So is this similar to Candace Owens talking about Blexit or is that something else?
	No, I'm not talking about a specific political.
	I'm framing it from a similar height where I don't fit into that at all.
	In fact, I hate it with a passion.
	Wait, wait, wait, what do you hate?
	Sorry.
	And I interrupted you, so that's on me.
	But what is it that you hate?
	I hate the behavior that it inspires.
	I hate the type of disrespect.
	This all fits into behavior.
	It's not teaching anyone to grow into a good and productive person, which I hope that's what I'm aspiring to do every day.
	But I know that looks are very much, I'm a piano teacher, so I know that a lot of the business is the first impression.
	What will they see when they see, what will they think when they see a black person, a black male offering piano lessons?
	And they might not think it, and I don't blame them either, but that these perceptions will fuel their decision.
	I don't blame them.
	And that's why I hate the culture, if that makes sense.
	Well, and it does, you know, there is a certain amount, I think, in modern culture where, you know, realistic, deep and human portrayals of black communities are kind of absent because you either get this like cartoon criminal caricature in the rap community, or if you sort of go over to the Netflix side, like all blacks are noble and perfect and wise.
	And I know there's a bunch of black actresses who are like, why do I have to keep, why can't I play a villain?
	I can't ever, you know, play a villain.
	I always have to play this like noble, non-suffering, teary-eyed, whatever.
	So I just, you know, I think the black experience in America in particular, you know, needs a sort of honest and direct portrayal somewhere in between this crazy rap stuff and the, you know, white guilt idealized, perfect, whatever, whatever.
	Right.
	So, and I think that's missing.
	And I really do hope that that is something that can be generated because we, you know, we got across this gulf of miscommunication or I think propagandizing that is, I think, separating communities.
	Yeah.
	The part of what I'm using as a good motivator is that I personally, I personally need to rise to the occasion.
	Locally, it's not something that I would aspire to be some, I don't know, influencer, absolutely not.
	But locally, rise to the occasion of being someone that other black show up.
	I really hate limiting, limiting it to that, but hopefully anybody would look to me and see me as a good role model, but particularly those people that are more inclined to be, especially black children.
	My black students are always the, they're so frequently illiterate, so frequently foul-mouthed, because they don't have a father in the home.
	And if they have a father in the home, it's like, what is it?
	Then you have to dice roll on the quality of their education, their parenting.
	So rise to the occasion of being a role model.
	And hopefully that'll provide some answers to this conundrum.
	I don't know.
	No, listen, I mean, this is something that I think all of us who, you know, every reasonably big-hearted person has a stake in the quality of relationships in the world and the promotion of virtue in the world.
	And, you know, if people are saying to me, they've said to me for 40 years since I've been in a philosophy of, oh, you know, a lot of people don't listen to you and a lot of people react against you and they say terrible things about you.
	It's like, well, that's kind of the gig.
	You know, it's the gig of being a moral philosopher in particular.
	But it's this, it's a cheesy analogy, but it does hit you in the feels if you get it right, which is, you know, you're walking down the beach and there's a bunch of fish stuck in these little tide pools and they're drying out, right?
	The beach goes on for like 100 miles, right?
	And, you know, you get the fish out of the little tide pools and you put them in the ocean, right?
	And you say, well, come on, you can't get even a tiny fraction of a percentage.
	You can't do the whole hundred miles.
	You can't even do one mile.
	You can't.
	And it's like, that's true.
	That is absolutely true.
	It means nothing to the fish I can't get, but it means everything, everything to the fish I can get.
	And you never know who you're going to influence.
	Like, let's say you, I mean, obviously, I'm sure you're a great piano teacher.
	I wish I had your skills.
	I wish I'd stuck with the piano, but I ended up making my living with a different kind of keyboard.
	But you don't know anyone, any kid that you influence, let's say a black kid or whatever, right?
	Any kid that you influence, you don't know.
	He could be the most talented guy.
	He could be somebody who's going to make a billion dollars.
	He could be somebody with an incredible oratorical gift and who could really turn things around.
	You just never know.
	And even if you never come across somebody that extraordinary, every person you save, it's everything for that person.
	You say, well, on the grand scope of things, it's like, but we don't live on the grand scope of things.
	We live with every individual that we encounter.
	And if we can influence them for the better, I think it's about as good a thing as we can do in our life.
	So I'm sure that you'll do great things in your community and through that, in the world as a whole.
	There's plenty more that I could ask, but it's just this talk is even more, even though marginally, because it's an endless internal conversation, has especially the pre-framing it from the perspective of money.
	It's kind of, it's helped.
	I appreciate that.
	Great to know you, man.
	You're welcome back anytime.
	And thank you for the chat.
	All right.
	Let us move to the last caller.
	Thank you for everyone for your patience.
	I'm sorry we didn't get to everyone, but we will be back on Sunday, Chatty Sunday.
	I think we have, who did I get?
	Who did I snag with my random stab of chitty chat?
	I think we got Lucille.
	Lucille, wasn't that the name of a guitar?
	Somebody's guitar was called Lucille.
	Do I have that right?
	I can, my friend.
	What's on your mind?
	Hi.
	I just have a question.
	How do you feel about the death penalty for heinous criminals, like seriously heinous criminals?
	How do I feel?
	Child murderers.
	Like, I mean, you've got this whole non-aggression thing happening, which I'm loving and just learning about.
	But like, what do we do with people that are so dangerous?
	Do we lock them up in a cage forever?
	Wouldn't it be nicer, kinder really, just to send them on their way?
	I don't know.
	What do you think?
	See, it's funny because you started off in a bit of a female framing, which is nothing negative.
	It's just kind of funny to me.
	I live with two wonderful females, so there's nothing negative, but you started with what do you feel about this?
	And now you're asking me, what do I think about it?
	Which is an interesting sort of drift from a bit more of the feminine to a bit more of the masculine.
	So, okay, let me ask you this.
	Let's make it a conversation because I don't want to just ramble.
	So, let me ask you this.
	Where do you think, let's say, a mass murderer, where do you think he comes from?
	Why do you think somebody becomes a mass murderer?
	I have absolutely no idea.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Do you think it's genetic?
	Like you're just born bad?
	I don't know.
	I think possibly the propensity could be there.
	It could even be frontal lobe damage.
	Okay, go on.
	Well, those are my two theories of possible genetic component.
	I don't know.
	I had three sons.
	They were all raised the same way.
	Two of them became severe substance abusers.
	One didn't.
	I don't know.
	Was their father around?
	Oh, yes.
	And what was he like?
	The most wonderful father ever, except for he was a CEO and he worked very hard to become one.
	And then he was gone a lot.
	So he didn't spend the time with his sons that would have been better and more ideal.
	That was just the way it was.
	I mean, yeah, I hear you, man.
	And I really sympathize because, you know, parenting is all about pay me now or pay me later.
	So he's like, well, I had a really successful career and I made a lot of money and now I'm unhappy and have to spend a lot of money on rehab.
	So it just kind of flows around.
	And does, I mean, does he look back and say, if only, if only?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think he thinks about it a whole lot.
	If he does, he doesn't share it.
	He doesn't think about his parenting and what happened with his sons?
	I think he thinks, I think he has an extreme amount of guilt.
	Maura, hang on.
	Are you still married?
	Oh, yeah.
	We've been married 45 years.
	So why wouldn't you know this?
	We don't talk about it.
	When we talk about that, it is so stressful and so painful that we just don't talk about it.
	Okay.
	I mean, I don't want to give you any advice about your marriage as a whole.
	I mean, you've certainly been married a lot longer than I have, but it probably would be good for your family to have these discussions.
	You know, if you can get to a good family therapist, they can facilitate this kind of stuff.
	But it probably, you know, this elephant in the room that's not talked about is usually not great for the kids as a whole or maybe even for the parents.
	So.
	Okay.
	So in general, criminality comes from child abuse.
	And I'm not, of course, talking about your kids because they were victims of substance abuse.
	So I get all of that.
	But in general, criminals come from child abuse and violence, of course, sexual abuse, neglect, and so on.
	Now, this is not to say, of course, that all children react to abuse and neglect in the same ways because, and I've got this in a whole presentation called The Bomb in the Brain, which you should definitely check out.
	You can get it at FDRpodcast.com.
	In a particular cohort of young boys who had a particular gene that was associated with criminality, 100% of those boys who were beaten became criminals.
	And if they weren't beaten, they didn't become criminals.
	So there's a genetic predisposition, but usually it's like the nature and nurture argument.
	It's usually it's like saying, which contributes more to the size of a football field, the length or the breadth?
	It's like, well, they both do, right?
	So, and this is, and we don't know, right?
	We don't know as parents, we don't know what genetic susceptibilities our kids might have, which is why we treat them as well as we can.
	Some people smoke their whole lives and don't die of lung cancer.
	Other people smoke very little and die of lung cancer.
	So we don't know these things ahead of time, which is why it's good to avoid smoking.
	So the reason I'm saying all of this is that philosophy is about prevention, not cure.
	The analogy that I always use is it is like nutrition rather than the emergency room, right?
	So if you're having a heart attack, you don't call your nutritionist and say, how should I change my diet?
	The nutritionist would say, bro, you're having a heart attack.
	Call 911, get to an ambulance, get to a hospital.
	So philosophy is about the prevention of evil.
	And generally, the police are around the quote cure or the management of evil.
	So with regards to murderers, again, it could be somebody who has a brain tumor.
	It could be somebody who got frontal lobe damage and so on.
	But even that probably wouldn't release homicidal impulses without some prior trauma.
	And of course, if you talk to people who are criminals and you ask them about their childhoods, and I've had many of these conversations over the course of the last 20 years of doing these sort of call-in shows that I do where people call in and talk about whatever they want, and where people have committed criminal actions in every case, it's not scientific, but it's not irrelevant.
	In every case, they had experienced massive amounts of child abuse and neglect.
	So with regards to philosophy, it's about the prevention of criminality, which means peaceful parenting, better parenting, attentive parenting, moral parenting, and reasoning with children rather than using violence to control them.
	Because if they do happen to have some of those genes or they just make bad choices or both, then you're going to end up with a criminal.
	And again, I'm not saying that there are criminals who are genetic.
	I don't believe that at all.
	But I think there's definitely data that suggests that there's some susceptibility to violent upbringing being more likely to produce criminal actions.
	So having said that, the goal is to prevent criminals from coming into being rather than cure them afterwards or limit their impact on society.
	My concern, of course, is giving people the power of life and death over others is fraught with peril.
	In other words, you have to have a government or a justice system or a court system that's big and powerful enough to kill people.
	And I'm not sure that people can handle that power very well.
	There is an argument, of course, currently that one of the reasons why conservatives are more into the death penalty is that the liberals will just work to get the criminals out of jail.
	You should kill them so that they don't end up being released because of some crazy lawsuit from a bunch of leftists.
	So I have no issue with violence in self-defense.
	In fact, I think it's a good thing to do.
	You know, if somebody breaks into your house, then you can use up to lethal force to protect yourself.
	And if somebody is, you know, coming at you with a knife, you can shoot them.
	And I have absolutely zero moral issue with that.
	In fact, I kind of have a moral issue with somebody who didn't protect themselves at all or their family in particular.
	So as far as the death penalty, so to speak, in immediate situations of self-defense, I have no problem with that.
	In fact, I think it's a good and healthy thing to be able to use force in self-defense.
	When it comes to society as a whole, my ideal society, there are agencies to protect children, and I go into this in great detail in my book called The Future, which you can get at freedomain.com slash books.
	It's free.
	So you'd have very strong and empowered social organizations there to protect children and make sure that they weren't being abused and neglected.
	I mean, it's as simple as a brain scan.
	You can give a brain scan to kids and you'll know whether they're being abused or neglected because it'll show up in the brain scan.
	But we don't do that because we don't have anybody who profits from the protection of children or who's given the power to protect children in a proactive way.
	That's what I want out of society.
	Right now, you know, giving a fairly corrupt and compromised government structure the power of life and death is not ideal to me, but I have no objection to murderers being killed in self-defense.
	And my other goal would be to work as hard as possible to prevent criminals from coming into being.
	Does that sort of make sense as a whole?
	I hope that wasn't too much of a dodge, but that's sort of to me it's a false dichotomy.
	And Not that I'm saying you're suggesting it, but should the government have the power to kill egregious criminals, I would rather we just didn't have those guys around to begin with.
	Does that help?
	It does.
	I still don't know what's crueler having someone locked in a cage forever.
	But on the other hand, I do believe society has a duty when we know that let's take a predator pedophile, for example, that's been caught numerous times and released.
	No, it's awful.
	I just can't understand it.
	Yeah, most pedophiles have dozens, or I go into this in my book, Peaceful Parenting at peacefulparenting.com.
	Also free.
	Please, please, please read it.
	I go into this in the book.
	Most pedophiles have dozens to hundreds of victims.
	No society should even remotely allow that.
	Pedophilia cannot be fixed.
	There's not a fix for it.
	And so, yeah, definitely segregation from society in those situations seems to be the only way to keep children safe.
	And a society that allows somebody to prey on dozens or hundreds of children over the course of his unholy career is so beyond the pale as far as protecting children that it's hard to defend any of it.
	100% agree.
	Thank you.
	I'm going to turn my mic off now and continue listening.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate that.
	All right.
	Steve, one more.
	That was relatively brief.
	He said, just like my boxers.
	Sorry about that.
	Nina, what's on your mind?
	Hi, Stefan.
	Thanks for letting me on.
	I'm a really big fan of yours.
	And I've been listening to you since like, I don't know, 2018 or 2019.
	So thank you.
	Appreciate it.
	Yeah, of course.
	So I have a quick question.
	I know you're really big on the dental parenting.
	I'm actually pregnant myself.
	Congratulations.
	Have a lovely.
	Thank you.
	I just have, I don't know, I'm 24 years old.
	And I feel like, I don't know if it's the dental parenting you talk about, but kind of that passive parenting maybe is very common.
	People like, don't hit their kids.
	But I feel like there's a line where these kids run amok.
	And we kind of see now with young adults in society that have no boundaries and no respect for their parents or even other people.
	So how do you, like, as someone who's going to be, I know boys are harder than girls.
	It's probably more tempting to be a little more aggressive to a son versus a daughter.
	Like I was a really like calm child.
	So I know boys can be a lot more like crazy and violent.
	So how do you kind of prevent that entitlement and, I don't know, disrespect from children like doing dental parenting versus like, I don't know, letting them run amok.
	Right.
	Well, obviously, first of all, congratulations again about the pregnancy.
	How far along are you?
	I am 18, almost 19 weeks.
	Ah, you are in for a treat.
	Oh my gosh.
	Oh my gosh.
	I think that's thrilling and fantastic.
	Are you married?
	Yes, I am.
	Okay.
	Do you respect, I'm sure you do respect your husband and the father of your child to be?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Okay.
	Has he ever used screaming, yelling, violence, or hitting you in order to have you respect him?
	Interesting.
	Have you, have you, I'm sure he respects you too.
	Have you ever used violence, intimidation, threats, or aggression to have him respect you?
	Okay, so what do you respect about each other?
	I'm not saying you don't respect each other, but tell me what are the mechanisms by which you do respect each other?
	I think it's just the traits that we have.
	I think we both have traits we admire in each other, like, I don't know, just responsibility and just day-to-day behaviors that are positive, common sense, you know, problem-solving skills, ambition, those kind of things.
	Good.
	Good.
	So the best way to engender respect in children is to be someone they want to be.
	Right?
	I mean, if you want to abs, you go to the guy with abs because he's already got them and you want the abs.
	So if you are someone your children want to be, you know, when I was doing my speaking tours and so on back in the day, you know, I mean, my daughter saw me stand up to various ambushes in the media and stand up to people who were violent and aggressive and go out and talk to people who were protesting and angry and threatening and just go talk to them.
	And so I think she saw a reasonable amount of courage and integrity and morality.
	She, of course, knew that when I went to Hong Kong to join in the anti-communist protests, that I got tear gassed and continued to do my broadcast and my recording and so on.
	And so I think she's seen me with a fair amount of martial courage, a fair amount of moral courage, and so on.
	And I don't think that's peculiar to girls.
	A boy wants to be like his big tough dad.
	And so the way that you get children to respect you is you inspire them.
	You give them the behaviors that they want to emulate.
	And if somebody who's got like great abs, right, let's say you want abs, sorry to be so shallow, but whatever, right?
	So let's say somebody's got great abs and you want their abs, you're going to listen to them.
	You're going to respect because they've already achieved it, right?
	So if you want your kids to respect you, then act in a way that they're going to want to emulate, that they admire.
	And they will follow your lead like ducklings after, well, whatever they run into right after they're born.
	And of course, it's a lot tougher to act in a noble, brave, and moral way to inspire your children than it is to jam them down on a step and say, one minute for every year of your life, or yell at them or hit them or threaten them or something like that.
	So boys are drawn towards strength and girls are drawn towards strength.
	It's of a slightly different kind.
	So, and I know this because, I mean, I obviously wasn't their parent, but I worked in a daycare for many years in a pretty rough section of town where there were a lot of boys and We had a lot of great conversations and all of that.
	And if you act in a way that your children admire, they will copy you almost slavishly.
	It's a beautiful thing.
	You don't need any aggression, but you do have the challenge of actually having to be a good person.
	So my daughter has seen me, if a parent is mistreating a child, I go up and I talk to that person.
	You know, once or twice, we've been out for dinner and someone in the restaurant has a problem with me and I'll, hey, come sit down.
	Let's talk about it.
	And so on.
	So I think she's seen me.
	And of course, she knows that I have never said something that I know to be false and I've never backed down despite massive pressure from something I know to be true.
	Am I perfect?
	Well, of course not, but you know, pretty good, pretty good as a whole.
	So if you act in a way that your children want to emulate, you automatically have.
	They'll listen to you.
	They'll follow your lead.
	If you give them feedback, they will accept it.
	In the same way that if the guy says, do this or that or the other to get abs and he's already got abs, you're just going to listen.
	Some fat guy tells you to, you're probably not, right?
	So to work on yourself, as far as moral excellence goes, is by far the best and of course the most peaceful and inspiring way to get your children to behave the best, if that makes sense.
	Totally.
	Well, that's a really good answer.
	I do appreciate that.
	And it's definitely the goal.
	So thanks so much, Stefan.
	I appreciate that.
	And not that you have to, but if you remember, you probably won't, but that's totally fine.
	It's hostho-st at freedomain.com.
	I do accept baby pictures.
	I will keep them.
	I will keep them completely private.
	Obviously, I will delete them right after I get them.
	But I do love to see listeners' babies.
	So just if you, if you remember, if you don't, that's totally fine.
	I'll just hunt you down.
	I'm just kidding.
	But all right.
	Well, thanks, Samil.
	I appreciate that.
	And all right, we'll do one more.
	You guys got great questions tonight.
	I really do appreciate it.
	Rob in the hood.
	Rob in the hood.
	What you got?
	You need to unmute if you don't mind.
	I would appreciate that, he said, sounding vaguely like the chef in Ratatouille.
	Of course, it's been a lengthy show, so he may have despawned.
	Going once, going twice.
	All right.
	Well, I think...
	All right.
	Blue Eyes Wise.
	You may be the last caller on this year of our thought, 27th of June, 2025.
	Blue Eyes Wise.
	Nothing but blue eyes.
	Can I see?
	What you got?
	Anybody?
	Yes, no.
	Yes, no.
	All right.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Go ahead.
	Hey, it's great to see you on X. It's really weird for me because I'm probably the only person that found you and your philosophy in the last five years when you're out and says, see, I is crazy and seeing you crazy stadiums is weird because I'm using jazz clubs.
	Yeah.
	I spent some pretty great together at the, on the COVID.
	And I just, obviously you said, and you always say, let me know how it goes, but I never really got around to send him an email.
	So I thought I'd just tell you, like here and now, after my career, I met my wife three days later and we're expecting our first job in August.
	So I just want to say thank you for the encouragement and the advice and everything, because you gave me great help.
	And thank you.
	And, you know, it's a testament to everyone about your philosophy.
	I think that's absolutely wonderful.
	I congratulate you and your wife.
	I'm sure you heard the last point about baby pictures, but it's fine if you remember.
	I would appreciate that.
	And how long have you been married now?
	Ah, three days after the call.
	Well, I can't guarantee that for everyone.
	But of course, if you do want to, if you do want to call,
	private calls freedomain.com slash call I just fill out the form and we'll work something out well I really do appreciate the update and it's great to hear from you live and of course thank you for finding me when I was yeeted into the far reaches of the outer rim and the wilderness of human thought and I just can't tell you how thrilled I am that you got married and you're going to be a father and I hope that there's more to come and and please keep me posted yeah yeah yeah host
	of free domain host of free domain works beautifully all right is there anything else that you wanted to mention tonight i had a question
	earlier it was only the second call that was when i requested it was about the serotonin level but we're about seven or eight now that's that's fine if you want to do it yeah because i've moved to mental health and i've moved to mental health a year and a half now and i recently watched one of your old videos it was called why uh there's no such thing with mental illness there was something like suffering a
	real mental suffering is yeah and actually what you said in that video is just like spot on about how could you mention right and so like children well i can foster are like 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness and so i talked with these patients and mental health patients and and like you know some schizophrenics and every schizophrenic i've spoken to has the voice they've heard in their head it's from an abuser it's from like a you
	know like from a past relationship or you know parents or someone and yet these people are diagnosed with and i i sort of like this you know they're first when you've got this serotonin problem or this brain disorder when really everybody literally without a doubt they've really had really bad tremor a lot of them suddenly i've had a lot of them like
	ex-army vets who like have like PTSD and but I bet quite hungry about the subject because my my my wife was she was in an abusive and coercive relationship not long before we met and she was put on antidepressants and the doctor said to her like there's literally a 10-minute conversation and they didn't ask her about her environment,
	a lovely delightful lengthy deep powerful chat i really do appreciate it have yourself an absolutely glorious well rest of the night such as it is saturday sunday we will talk at 11 a.m we will do a show the 12 to 1 will be for subscribers only you can join the subscriptions for free just try it out for a month it's fantastic benefits and bonuses there you can go to fdrurl.com slash locals that's fdrurl.com slash locals if you want to throw some some

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