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Oct. 13, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
59:50
What Can We Really Learn? Twitter/X Space
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So if you have questions, comments, issues, and challenges, uh Drago.
We've chatted for a little bit before, so I'm gonna see if anybody else has stuff they vish to vish to talk about.
And I will vampurr a moment or two.
Uh what have I got saved?
For interesting stuff later.
My wife and I have been together 15 years.
We have a 14-year-old, not biologically mine, and a 12-year-old, which is mine.
That math is trumbling to me.
Guy says, I got a vasectomy five years ago.
Oh, that got the all clear that I was sterile.
We've been having unprotected sex ever since.
Recently we were having a discussion, and she asked, what would you do if I told you I was pregnant?
I said I would ask for a paternity test.
And she was shocked and she says she was hurt that I wouldn't trust her.
I explained that I'm sterile, and if I go and get checked and I'm still sterile that I 100% would want a paternity test.
She says she would give me one, but after that, would want a divorce.
Am I crazy here?
Or if I get checked and I'm sterile, is it not reasonable to get a paternity test?
Sorry to be doing a Stevie Wanda here, but the phone's in the way of my screen, so I gotta read around it.
All right.
I think these are two people that I've talked to before, and I'm not saying I don't want to talk again, but I want to give some little elbow room to new people.
you Yeah.
I don't know if you've been together for 15 years, you have a 14-year-old not biologically mine.
Uh did you uh marry her while she was pregnant?
With some other guy's kid.
I just don't know.
I just don't know.
Now, uh James, if you could also type any questions you get in from X as a whole, I would appreciate that.
Quite shockingly, the Church of England.
Ah the good old C of E decided this week to cover the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti.
No, no, no.
People called Romana say go towards the house.
No, it's not a Monty Python sketch.
They covered the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti in order to represent the voices of marginalized communities.
Did they do any of that for the half century of industrial rape inflicted upon little British girls?
Nope.
Where was the church in the industrial scale Rotherham style mass rape that was going on since the 1970s in England?
Wild.
The very reverend David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury said, There is a wall of earth which is magnified by the graffiti style, which is disruptive.
It is unfiltered and not sanitized.
This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and zoners, and allows us to receive the gifts of young people with much to say.
They're just scrolling I hate graffiti.
I I I hate graffiti with a burning biblical old testament flamethrower passion.
It's shitty minds scrawling shit on buildings that they can't possibly build themselves.
And here they are, scrolling it, this filth.
On the oldest cathedral in England.
It's absolutely amazing.
Did you know that life insurance executives in America reported a 40% spike in deaths among the healthiest Americans in late 2021?
40%.
Spike in deaths among the healthiest Americans.
Huh.
What could it possibly mean?
What could it possibly be?
Absolutely.
Shocking beyond words.
All right.
Let's go with our callers.
Agartha.
Voice is on your mind, my friend.
Don't forget to unmute.
Oh, uh, thank you, Stefan.
Uh, what's on my mind?
Oh, quite a few different things.
Um I wanted to like uh apologize for making a fool of myself uh last time I was on here.
But um also I just Sorry, what happened last time?
Oh uh yeah, honestly, like this happens quite a few times whenever I'm on your show.
But um I think it's just because you're so smart in comparison, so um sorry, when were you last on the show?
Oh, I've recognized your voice, I just can't recall.
Yeah, I think like yesterday.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I got it.
Yes.
So go ahead.
Uh oh yeah, so um uh one of my whole one of my points I wanted to get across was uh the appeal to authority argument that you made um last time in terms of how come a police officer could use uh force when detaining someone as compared to let's say a gangbanger.
And I just figured like, all right, well, we share like uh I'd say a lot of the ideologically same views, so uh it wasn't something I was necessarily expecting.
Um that being said, when it comes to like let's say my own body, and like let's say my own choices, so from like um a utilitarian standpoint, or let's say a consequentialist standpoint,
I would say it does make sense that other people can use force or like let's say do blank with my own body, but from like let's suppose from like let's say a libertarian perspective.
Um I need to gather your thoughts and get to a question, please.
Uh-oh.
You're you're you're scattered here.
So a good thing to do is especially if you're gonna speak in public, write it down ahead of time.
So you're not trying to sort of figure it out on the fly because that's not working.
Oh my bad.
All right, so let's see.
Um what are your thoughts on suicide rights?
Well, uh people have the right to kill themselves.
You have the right to destroy your own property.
I mean, nobody's gonna go to jail if I take my phone and smash it against the wall.
If I take your phone and smash it against the wall, that's a different matter.
But my own phone, I could destroy my own property.
Your life is your own property.
So you have the right to destroy yourself.
Now, with regards to is it good or bad to uh kill yourself?
Well, I mean, I can certainly think of situations, and I'm obviously happy to be corrected on this.
Um I I can think of situations where I could understand why someone would kill themselves.
So an obvious one is if you are in some sort of terminal illness, you're bleeding money like a stuck pig, you're in constant pain, it's just gonna get worse, there's no cure, and you might want to punch out early, so to speak, right?
I can understand I can understand that.
And that that's of course the sort of philosophy behind the MAID medically assisted induced death in Canada, which unfortunately is targeting younger and younger people with healthier and healthier organs.
Pure phalang uh coincidence, I'm sure.
But I can understand that.
I have nothing but bottomless contempt for people who kill themselves when they have a family, when they have children.
And I've talked to a number of people over the last 20 years of doing this show where they have come home and found, you know, that the dad sucked a shotgun in the study or or hung themselves in their room, even.
Uh I have absolutely bottomless Catholic contempt, never bury them hallowed ground.
I think it is one of the ugliest things that you can do if you want to kill yourself to do it in a way that is clearly suicide when you have a family, you have a wife, you have kids, because you are traumatizing them forever, and I would have uh unending contempt for someone like that.
So uh those are sort of my basic thoughts, if that makes sense.
Uh yeah, yeah.
So like uh another point was gonna be, you know, I find the like this whole topic and including consent to be like a kind of an interesting topic because like well, like we wouldn't want the government going in and like subsidizing like uh a maid,
but um like let's suppose someone like uh Mr. Rosenbaum sees a kid on with an AR-15 and says, shoot me N-word, would that be consent to then shoot them, or would he have to then run up to a written house to then um get um off?
Let me ask you something.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Let me ask you something.
Terms of consent.
Hang on.
Let me ask you something.
And I mean this in all seriousness, and I'm genuinely curious about that.
What do you think is the biggest moral issue in your life?
Your life, your personal life, the one you're living.
Biggest moral issue.
Um that that's uh insanely um personal.
I uh I think philosophy is personal.
Philosophy is how you act in your life, right?
Okay, let me let me ask you another question.
If you don't want to answer that, that's fine.
I mean, I think that philosophy is practical, and I think philosophy is supposed to help us in our lives, but let me ask you another question.
Is Mr. Rosenbaum screaming, shoot me inward at some guy?
Anything you've ever seen or experienced.
Seen or experienced, uh fuck, you know what I I'm gonna be real with you.
I kind of went full retard some time ago, and um like last year, uh a cop did like point a gun at me.
This was like at like a traffic thing.
And um I remember what I do, I said shoot me, but then he lowered his gun to like my legs, and I was like, uh fuck this.
Then put my hands behind my back, because well um if I it's aimed at my chest or head at that point, you know what?
Uh uh a whole bunch of bad stuff happened.
So And why do you think you asked a cop to shoot you?
Why?
And I appreciate the honesty, I really do.
That's like super personal.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So like it was in a my life was just in a downward spiral.
Um you're the guy who's 5'10 and 250, right?
Yeah, like back then I was like 220-ish.
Okay, that's not I'm just talking, I'm just identifying you from yesterday.
Okay.
And again, you could do broad strokes and nobody even knows your name, right?
So you can do broad strokes.
What was going on in your life that it was spiraling down so much?
Uh I think uh uh oh yeah, like quite a few different things.
Um well, two different things specifically, I would say.
Uh I said some really dumb stuff to like this one.
Uh all right, so no, one of the things happened was kind of had an issue over a financial dispute some time ago.
This bastard defrauded me like 59 Solana.
Oh, you mean the crypto?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Crypto.
So some bastard like defrauded me like 59 Solana, and um so I was just having a lot of drama with this dude in terms of like What is the value of that?
I don't the crypto's.
Last time I checked, it was like over 10 grand.
Okay.
That's like most of like honestly, like my own like savings I had.
So there was that and uh my uh And sorry, how uh how did he you don't tell me his name, of course, right?
Because this is all unproven, at least objectively, but how did he uh how did he scam you?
How?
Um so I I asked the dude to like hodl for me in exchange for cash for every $10 that goes up.
Uh by the time you do sell, you're allowed to have 200 of it.
However, whatever you do, like don't sell until it reaches blank price.
So I I tried to like negotiate, all right, just pay me back some debt or some other bills, like uh I tried to like work something out, but it's like um because like Are you uh sorry, and are you in your twenties or thirties?
Twenties.
You're in your twenties.
And besides that, um honestly only other thing happened was like um my soulmate didn't want to like talk to me ever again, so that sucked.
Uh your girlfriend do you mean?
Uh I won't say my girlfriend.
Or your wife?
I'm not sure I'm sure which.
It's probably not.
It's probably complicated from the inside, but maybe not from the outside.
It's uh honestly, like this is the topic's very personal, so there was a girl that you really liked, and she didn't want to talk to you.
Um I mean, like I save her as my emergency contact, but uh and why was there something that happened in particular that she didn't want to talk to you?
Or did she move away, or was there something that you don't know that happened?
Um I'll be rotating.
Like sometimes like I get told this by like certain women that like I'm too emotionally intense sometimes, so uh what do they mean by emotionally intense?
Um they don't say emotionally intense, they just say too intense.
So, but what do they mean by intense, do you think?
By intense.
Um sometimes it's like I kinda say the least, existentially um find too much uh meaning in uh I I guess at the slightest things, and because of that, uh I get like um I don't know.
I guess I seem too unstable about it.
And would you say that when you were growing up, you had a strong or a weak pair bond with your parents?
Strong but chaotic in a way.
Uh what do you mean by chaotic?
Uh um I was quick question.
Um, would it be possible for me to talk to you from my other account on uh X?
Uh well, yeah, we can give it a try.
Uh I will move to someone else.
And again, I appreciate your honesty, and then this is where philosophy is, not in these necessarily these chaotic abstractions.
I don't feel like my PFP necessarily um represents um my best um philosophical um uh oh what's the word?
Oh it's okay.
Listen, you can call me uh back, just um I'll give you like my other username if that's works.
Um You mean you'll say it to me now and then call me back with that username?
Um uh yeah, but I think you uh blocked it though.
Oh, okay.
I'm not gonna be able to do that um at the moment.
So we'll have to schedule that for another time.
Uh listen, I just uh I'm not trying to, you know, peel people's heart scabs back or anything like that.
But I am a very big one for solving real problems.
And listen, there's nothing wrong with theoreticals and trolley problems and uh hanging from a light bulb and and life raft and emergency and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with those.
They're sort of amiable theoretical things.
But where philosophy really matters is in helping you make better decisions in your actual practical life.
So I try to bring philosophy to bear on the problems that people are actually facing.
And try and figure out how particularly self-knowledge, right?
Know thyself was the first commandment of Socrates.
Because if you don't know yourself, then you're just run by your history.
You're looking like a marionette, a tap uh Gipeto style.
Just run around by your history.
So I do try to I and I'll entertain some abstractions.
We we did that yesterday with this fellow.
But I think that a lot of times people come up with philosophical abstractions.
I'm not saying this guy's doing it, or at least not consciously, but people come up with philosophical philosophical abstractions in order to discredit the value and power of philosophy.
And the value and power of philosophy is fixing your life that you're actually living in a way that really helps improve the quality of your life, the quality of your love, the quality of your money-making, the quality of your virtue, the quality of your connection with people.
That's what philosophy is for, not for abstract lifeboat scenarios that you're never going to encounter.
I view it's like nutrition.
Nutrition is the discipline of figuring out what is best for you to eat to be healthy.
It is not, well, if I was on a desert island and I only had conch shells and not any salt, and I was slightly allergic to conch like that's not what nutri nutrition is.
Okay, you got you got food choices to make every day.
Every day.
We decide what to eat.
So what did I eat today?
I had a piece of toast.
I had a banana.
I had some salmon and some salad.
And I think that's it.
Yeah, I didn't eat too much.
Oh no, my daughter made some, and we're talking about this in the show yesterday.
She made some um date squares.
And I had one of those.
Love date squares.
So that's the stuff I'm eating.
Not, well, you know, if you were trapped on Survivor Island, and it's like, but I'm not.
This is the stuff that I'm actually putting in front of me and in my body every day.
How would you exercise if you were an Olympic level skier?
Well, I'm not an Olympic level skier.
So how should I exercise in the life that I have?
Not in the theoretical life that I could have somewhere else in some of the galaxies, some of the universe, some other life.
I'm very much about what can be done now with the resources you have philosophically to make your life better.
This comes to some degree out of my practical life as an entrepreneur.
So as an entrepreneur, when I was in the software field, I specifically did not say things like, okay.
So imagine we had an anti-gravity device, and people would be like, What?
We don't have an anti-gravity.
No, but imagine we did.
Where would we sell it?
What would the marketing plan be?
And it's like, bro, what do we actually have that we could sell?
No.
What could we have in another life or another universe?
All right.
JC.
You are on the air.
Not on the E R R, but on the AIR.
What is on your mind?
Mes amis.
Mon frère.
Going once, going twice.
Do I hear something?
Yes, yes, go ahead.
Hey, it's JC.
Um, I uh I was I saying Mrs. Weatherman on your show.
Oh, yeah, how are you doing, man?
I'm doing amazing.
And uh thank you for that.
I did get a connection out of it to produce some music.
So that's uh that was serendipitous.
That's great to hear.
I also wanted to mention that my daughter really likes your song.
That's amazing.
It's uh it's it's an interesting one, and I am looking to get it produced.
Um, anyways, I'm on that journey, and I I sorry, I just wanted to mention I liked your song too, but I couldn't tell my daughter.
Do you know why?
Uh, because if daddy likes it, then you know, if you're a teenager searching for your own identity, God forbid you like anything from the 80s.
Not that you're from the 80s.
But anyway, so uh I'm glad that it's working out, and um, what's on your mind?
Yeah, so um uh other than music, I actually have another passion and career path that I took after Hollywood.
So after I lost my ability to be on TV and commercials and all that because of whatever was happening, I dove pretty deeply into the world of uh emotional intelligence transformation, and I started doing some programs out in Los Angeles that dive into uh EQ, emotional intelligence, uh how we show up in the world, and uh I started working for the company, long story short.
Uh, I started my own coaching programs about seven years ago.
And uh the program is called Rise Sync.
It's based on every day doing a 10-minute or 50-minute call with a coach or with a group.
And it's early in the morning.
So, like my first risers right now, it's like four, 4.50 in the morning.
Ugh.
Yeah, exactly.
a lot of farmers looking for advice.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, but uh no, it's it's it's for entrepreneurs, business owners, people who have that, Kobe Bryant, Elon Musk.
I'm I do whatever it takes to make something happen in my life.
And so I've been running these programs now for uh seven years now, and I even built my own software and it's it's a gamification of life.
And there are instances where I I wonder to myself, does this really work?
Does this really fundamentally help people in a way that uh sustains them in a way that it impacts them?
Or am I am I a snake you know, uh uh snake oil salesman person?
I like it there's a part of me that second guess is like, does this does this shit actually work?
Am I really doing something of benefit, or are people paying for something that is a crutch or something that um just me, you know, maybe they become dependent upon and becomes wishful thinking, and and as I'm getting more people doing the programs now, it I I I believe in what I'm doing, and I know that it does impact people's lives, but um in terms of longevity and are people still practicing after the program a year you know, a year from now.
Um is there any chance in your opinion that this is all bullshit and I'm I'm doing a disservice to people?
Well I mean, I I ask myself that question every day.
So it's a good it's a good question to ask.
So uh let me ask you a couple of qualifying questions.
Uh-huh.
Are you tall?
No.
What's your height?
Five seven.
All right.
Are you good looking?
I would think so.
Okay.
Good head of hair.
Uh yes.
Okay.
Uh good sense of humor.
Uh I don't know, Seth, Stefan, what do you think?
Well, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, uh we haven't had a joke off or anything like that, but do you find it relatively I mean a lot of people who are public speakers find it relatively easy to make people laugh, right?
So Tom Woods.
It's joke around.
Well, because of the rigor of the program, it's I do find humor.
Like I I do lean on, you know, almost like uh in the military, they sing songs and they make fun of things.
Like there is a sense of, you know, let's let's let's have a good laugh as we're doing this because you're you're doing challenging things.
Are you slender?
I am yeah, I'm athletic.
So you're a good looking guy with great hair who's athletic, right?
How much do you think that has paved your way forward in life?
Hmm.
It's uh it definitely has its advantages.
I do believe looks have great advantages.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I I I I I think about that sometimes.
Um how much of it?
Um, I d the the thing is a lot of the coaching that I do, I'm off camera.
So I'm I just have a conversation.
No, no, no.
Sorry to interrupt.
I'm talking about before.
Right.
So um, you know, there's I'm not putting you in the same category, but there's this uh this um a way of thinking called the secret.
I'm sure you've you've heard of it, right?
So the secret is, and I'm obviously paraphrasing significantly here, but the secret is just want things from the universe and eventually they'll manifest.
And I can't help but notice that all the people who I've ever seen who are into the secret are very good looking.
Okay.
Now wanting things from the universe, let's say you're a sexy woman, right?
You're a uh a young, attractive sexy woman.
How hard it is is it do you think to have good things happen to you in life?
Maybe a lot easier than somebody who's not good looking.
Right.
Right.
So an advantage for sure.
Right.
So when you were in your early mid-teens and you started to get interested in girls, what sort of response did you get?
Um good responses.
You know, I had girlfriends and I was able to sweet talk my way into a kiss or two here and there um as a kid, you know, or maybe like later on, 17, 18.
Okay.
So of the girls that you approached, how many said ew slash no?
Uh I don't have a stat sheet, but I don't know, maybe uh ew s no?
I don't think they said ew.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay, at least 20%.
No ewes, but how about no?
Uh okay, let's say 40%, maybe less.
I don't know.
I I don't know.
I mean, I didn't.
Don't give me this false modesty.
If you're a charming guy, uh-huh.
Good looking, great hair.
If the girl's single, and you're a smooth talker, uh-huh.
And you're good looking, uh-huh.
How many say no?
Again, assuming they're single and available or whatever it is, right?
Um I'm not sure, but I I guess I didn't attempt kissing a girl if I didn't think I was gonna get a kiss.
Okay.
What about just going up and talking to a girl?
What percentage of people oh sorry, what percentage of women either gave you cocktail eyes or stink eye or resting bitch face, right?
So cocktail eyes are if you're talking to someone at a party and they're just looking around, distracted, looking for someone better to talk to, somebody more important, somebody better looking, somebody better for their career or something, and it's kind of distracting to try and talk to someone.
Not that I've ever experienced it, but I hear it to think.
So a cocktail eyes, um, stink eye is just like, what are you talking to me for, loser?
And resting bitch face is just that cold ice queen thing that happens.
So when you would go up and talk to a girl or a woman, what percentage of negative response did you get?
I I'm not sure, but I I don't think it was I didn't get a lot of stink eyes.
I didn't get a lot of uh that kind of I mean, maybe the girl wasn't into me or didn't wasn't attracted to she wouldn't be rude or negative, right?
Most of the time, no.
Okay.
I will tell you about an interesting experiment that I did when I was in theater school.
I was going to discos from the age of like 16 onwards, loved going to discos, had a great time, and learned how to moonwalk and do all kinds of funky dances and all that kind of stuff, and chatted with girls and and had a really a fun time as a teenager that way.
Anyway, uh, because I was I was actually scouted for modeling back in the day, and I was a pretty good looking young fellow.
And so I got a lot of positive response from uh girls.
So what I tried with a friend of mine was we got really thick glasses, and we gave ourselves really bad hairdo's uh-huh, and we didn't dress very well.
And tried exactly what we had done before, but without our good looks and social signals of success, so to speak.
Same thing, same person, just a different appearance.
And what do you think happened?
Different response.
You think?
Uh-huh.
It really was.
It really was.
Now, of course, there's things you can do about your appearance, but there's things you can't do about your appearance.
Now, let's say that you had had the misfortune of being raised with parents who fed you badly and kept you at home because of social anxieties or whatever it is, right?
And you then happened to be, say, 30 or 40 pounds overweight as a teenager.
What do you think would have happened to your confidence, your sense of self, your life as a whole.
Probably not very good.
Well, I'm asking you what you would think.
Oh, well, would I think um the world's a scary place?
I am I'm a gargoyle look looking kind of fella.
I should probably should not go out uh to try to meet women.
If I was in that situation, yeah, I probably would be uh not too excited to go out and meet people, or maybe I would if I'm it's the first time, but I probably that's probably wouldn't be my view of the world.
You know, this is gonna shock some people, but there was a guy in high school who went bold, started going bold even before I did.
And it was pretty tortuous for him.
And it really did a number on his self-confidence.
You know those guys, like they you they always have to have a hat.
And not just because it's easier than putting a logo on the screen, but they always have to have a hat.
And you know, or guys who've got something like they've got crooked teeth, so like Freddie Mercury had these, you know, he had four extra teeth, so he had this giant overbite, and he would put his hand in front of his mouth when he was um younger to so people couldn't see his teeth, and he would always have to vet every photograph to make sure his teeth didn't protrude.
I mean, sorry, he was very self-conscious about the teeth.
And I couldn't get them fixed because he was concerned about it affecting his voice, just like he couldn't.
He got these nodes nodules, sorry, nodules in mid-1970s, and he didn't want to get them fixed because there's a big negative things that happened from there.
So it wasn't his fault.
It's just the way uh way things were.
So there are lots of people who would like to have a podcast, but they have you know, can you rent pleasant and nasal voices?
And there's not much they can do, man.
And people just aren't gonna listen.
I, you know, I'm relatively fortunate.
I didn't earn my voice.
I'm just born with it.
I have this vague fruity accent that makes me sound smarter.
I have a relatively pleasant timber.
Uh I happened to go to theater school and take a lot of voice training, so I can use my voice in ways that other people aren't used to, and so on.
So I have a reasonably decent instrument when it comes to broadcasting, but I didn't earn that.
Uh it's just the voice that I was uh born with.
You know, my my brother has a high flutey type of voice, and I just have a more bass and uh uh resonant type of voice.
So that's the way that is, right?
I happen to be fairly I'm taller than the average man, uh just a shade under uh six feet.
I happen to have blue eyes when I was younger, I had straw blonde hair and a good jawline.
I mean, I didn't earn these things, they're just born.
So uh listen, I'm not, of course, saying that you don't deserve any of your success, but I'm always curious about the degree to which part of the ease that you sell in the world, the always the big question is how reproducible is what you have in the world.
So if there's some, you know, 36, 24, 36 blonde bombshell, and she says, well, you just have to be haughty and guys will flock to you.
And she says this to the, you know, five foot two, 250-pound, greasy haired whatever, right, girl.
How much of the life of the bombshell is transferable to the woman who is short or frumpy or ugly or squint-eyed or bad teeth or bad skin or whatever it is, right?
Things that it's not a huge amount that you can do about some of these things.
So how transferable is it?
And I'm honestly, I could talk about that question all night.
I'm actually kind of obsessed with how transferable things are.
You know, like if you look at somebody like um, what is it, good old banana hands, um uh Anthony.
Oh, it'll come to me.
He was in that movie with Jack Black.
Tony Robbins.
There we go.
Tony Robbins.
Thank you, brain.
See, I didn't even earn that.
My brain just decided to kick it up for reasons of its own.
So Anthony Robbins is like, isn't he over seven feet tall?
Like he's got a kind of gigantism.
Uh-huh.
And he's got, you know, great hair and this giant jaw and you know, this massive frame, and, you know, and so he is just physically ridiculously imposing and, you know, he's he's like a man god striding down from Olympus to stroll among the mere mortals, right?
And he does these seminars.
And, you know, I mean, good for him.
I I think I've watched one called I Am Not Your Guru, and, you know, other than the fact I I can't stand him when people's voices are half broken.
But, you know, he he does uh this this thing, and he's transferring his confidence.
However, if you're a really good-looking seven-foot-tall guy with perfect hair, I think it's a little easier to be confident in the same way that if you're a shapely woman with a beautiful face, it's a little easier to be confident.
And the question is, and I don't know the answer to that.
The question is, how transferable is it?
Now, if it's something like math skills, you'd say, well, that's more transferable because it's not based on looks.
Ah, yes, but there are parts of the brain that need to be Better wired in order for people to get math.
You know, I started writing my first short story when I was six years old, and I've written, I don't know, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of stuff, and I enjoy the process.
I'm just in the middle of reading the audiobook of my new novel Dissolution, which is available for subscribers at freedomain.com/slash donate.
But when I first started writing, I enjoyed it.
I've been really good at it.
And when I first started debating, I was really good at it.
So how much is taught?
I don't know.
Can you teach someone perfect pitch?
No, people just seem to have it.
You know, there are people who when they s you hear a singer, they're like, oh, that's a little off.
And other people are like, sounds fine to me, you know.
You can you teach that stuff?
So I don't know.
I think wisdom is transferable.
I think morals are transferable.
I'm not sure about other stuff.
I mean, I uh when I was at theater school, uh, everybody was about as good at the end as they were at the beginning.
I'm not really sure what happened to all that time that we spent uh in movement classes and dance classes and sword fighting classes and elocution classes and and and um uh improv classes and it was fun.
It was fun, but I don't know.
I mean, have you seen people massively change their skill sets in a relatively short period of time?
Now, of course, with your coaching business, I'm sure you have.
But how much of your ease and confidence and smooth sailing in life is transferable to others?
I don't know the answer to that, but it's an interesting question.
For sure.
And and if I can add something to so I've actually trained other people on with me and under me to to run the system.
It's I mean, it's meat and potatoes.
It's every day, you know, when people start the program, they declare uh a 90-day goal for their health and fitness, a 90-day goal for career and finances, passion purpose, recreation, recharge, relationships, community, and we identify what we call uh our top three, which we call a GTO guarantee target outrages.
And so people go on this this 90-day journey of every day declaring these things.
And so there's no magic to it other than showing up every day and being someone of of a courage of honesty, like all these things that I believe philosophy has given in my life is has given me at least a framework to go, hey, you can show up every day and make something happen.
There's no fucking magic to this at all, other than you putting in to work every single day.
And and over time, uh, you know, things do happen.
Maybe you know, I took a shot on jumping on your podcast last time because I was like, it's time to get online again.
It's time to get on X again.
And next thing you know, I'm performing a song for you, and that created an opportunity somewhere.
So uh, you know, this is a I I believe this is an honest program in that it's about every day building habits.
No one's changing drastically, no one's changing their personality.
But I believe people can transform and evolve to that next version of themselves.
And, you know, there's just always that question of is this is this really is this real?
And am I really giving people fundamental tools that they can take with them after the program's over?
Well, I mean, do you do you do follow-ups?
Do you know, drop past people a year after the program and and see how they're doing?
Yeah.
And a lot of people come back.
I mean, a lot I have I've had a woman who literally did the program for two years straight.
That's why I had to tell her you gotta take a break and live your life and and see how you are without the, you know, how you swim on your own without the training wheels.
So there are instances like that.
And uh and people do come back and high high-level professionals with uh attorneys and people in business, and I do some consulting for companies, and they come back and they do it because they're like, I just I'm sharper this way.
It's like having a personal trainer or a golf caddy.
Like if you play with a golf caddy, you're gonna have a significant advantage, but I'm not hitting the ball for you.
Uh and I'm never there to solve anybody's problem.
Okay, so what are the uh principles that you bring to bear on people's is it procrastination or these sorts of things?
They want things in life, but they're not really taking steps to achieve them.
Uh yeah, identifying the goals.
Like we we call them destinations.
So we we did we we first journal out a vision for our life.
So what's like a one to five year vision?
And then we work backwards and go, okay, what's a 90-day destination?
So vision being like your North Star, your true north, what are you working towards?
And then destination, what can you accomplish for real in the next 90 days?
And we track it.
So it's not hocus focus, like, oh, I'm gonna make a million dollars.
It's like that's not realistic for most people.
But what's something that we can track that you can work towards?
And it's it's I mean, the it's pretty thorough.
That It's a morning journal, a nighttime journal.
You gotta post photos of your progress.
If you say you did something, you gotta put it in the group chat.
Like there must be some.
Okay, so can you give me, I mean, it could be like lose 10 pounds, and I'm I don't want to minimize what you're saying or or reduce it.
But what would be some typical goals that people would be pursuing?
Yeah, uh losing 30.
I literally just had a call with a woman.
She wants to lose 30 pounds in a 90 days.
I challenged her to 40.
She's, you know, about 300 pounds, so I know that she could work the 40 pounds.
Okay.
And you know, I try to be realistic with them.
If, you know, okay, let's let's set this goal.
And as as time goes on, you'll you'll discover is this really in alignment?
Is this something that really works?
And and then, you know, people find out along the way.
Sometimes people find out this is actually this is actually it's not what I wanted.
I actually wanted to do something else.
And people have those epiphanies over the course of the journey.
Um, but it's, you know, you start identifying a goal, and then it's about creating positive feedback loops.
So every day, you know, we acknowledge the wins.
We talk about our celebrations from the day before.
What are you what are you learning from yesterday?
So, you know, what the question I always use is what would you strengthen or do differently?
I never ask what you did wrong or are you fucking up?
And so people become self-cleaning ovens.
People that start to build this mindset of, okay, I can objectively clinically and objectively look at what I did and my actions.
And is this is this getting me to where I want to go.
Okay.
So if somebody wants to lose uh 40 pounds in how long?
What was the time frame?
Three months?
90 days.
Okay, three months.
Okay, so give or take.
Okay, so they want to lose 40 pounds, so they'll say they'll create a list of what it is that they want to do to lose those 40 pounds, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
And then you just sorry, I don't mean to minimize it, but you encourage them to pursue that and you ask them to check every day whether they're achieving their goals.
They'll jump on a call with me.
I'll pull it up on the screen.
I'll literally share my screen with me, and you can see other people's declarations.
So it's like a group uh environment.
So you can see other people's declarations.
You can see what people declared the day before, and if they accomplished it.
And it gives them a score.
It gives them it gives you like a score one out of ten on on different areas of life and were you on time, did you complete your journals?
So there's there's a science to it for sure.
And then uh, but you gotta you, you know, you you over time you gotta prove that you're doing the work or you gotta give us some sort of evidence that you did do the workout or you did do the nutrition.
And so people do that Monday through Friday, five days a week for 90 days, things start to happen.
Sure.
I mean, you've got commitments and you've got people hounding you for your commitments.
Okay.
And then what?
So people um, because you know, like 97% of people who lose weight gain it back, and a significant proportion of those gain back more than they've lost.
So people can lose weight, even well, a lot of people can lose weight.
The challenge is to keep it off, right?
I mean, I dropped like 30 pounds like 15 years ago.
And you you just you can't go back.
Like you just have to never go back.
I can't remember the last time I ate a candy bar.
Like it's it's honestly it's been probably 10, 12 years.
So you just you just can't go back.
No chips, no chocolate, no cookies, no dip, no nothing, right?
And uh I really very rarely have dessert.
So when it comes to permanent life changes, what happens after they leave the feedback loop, the accountability from an outside eye.
Aaron Powell Yeah.
And and uh I know you're using fitness as an example, but this applies to a lot of career and finance goals too.
Um, you know, people do people I don't think they revert back all the way because they know what to do now.
They know how to how to how to how to keep it going.
Um so I don't know, it it's it's hard to say because uh I don't follow, I don't track whatever what everybody does a year afterwards.
I will say I feel I do feel like some people do revert back.
That is that is pop that is something that I have noticed.
But generally speaking, people seem better off.
Like they know what to do.
Yeah, I mean, I remember many years ago someone encouraged me to try the landmark forum, which comes out of the Werner Hartz.
Yeah, that comes out of the Verna Air Hart.
Yeah, and I did a three-day one and I did a five-day one and a couple of um I actually got into some really interesting philosophical debates as you could imagine.
Uh-huh with the um the seminar leader.
Yeah.
And I did a couple of uh maintenance ones.
And again, I thought it was interesting.
It turned out to be a little hazardous for me.
I almost sort of get into the details, but it encouraged me uh to to be decisive and positive in an area that could have been extremely negative, but I I guess not their fault.
I'm just sort of pointing out that that you don't often have a lot of uh deep information about people when you give them these kinds of encouragements, and it can lead them down a negative path.
But again, that's nothing negative on them.
That was just the circumstance.
And of course, I knew a bunch of people who had did that kind of stuff.
And would I say that it had any kind of long-lasting or permanent effects?
I would say that I didn't see that.
I will say, I mean, I will say, and I won't get, I don't know if their stuff is proprietary, so I won't get into the details.
But there were a number of exercises that were actually pretty pretty good, pretty, pretty great and worthwhile.
And I have no regrets at having done that stuff, but it is it fills, I think for people, and I mean this in a very positive way, it fills a void of interest and encouragement.
You know, most people sail through life.
Other people aren't that interested in what they do, particularly if they didn't get it as children from their parents or teachers or whatever, right?
But most people sail through life and they kind of have these secret worlds that they're really into.
It could be Warhammer games, it could be uh painting figurines, it could be uh train spotting, it could be collecting butterflies.
I mean, they have these these or trains, like model trains and stuff, or I don't know, Polish cinema.
Like could they have these sort of things that they're really interested in that nobody else really seems to care about, and they don't really get much feedback.
Like when I see somebody who's overweight, I don't see an individual.
I see an entire system.
I see an entire family structure, I see an entire friend structure.
Uh I see someone that doesn't have someone in their life, or more than one person in their life who cares enough to say this is bad, you gotta lose weight.
And, you know, I'm here for you, and I, you know, I'll I'll do anything I can to help, but I really care about you, I really love you, and I just don't want to see you get sick.
I don't want to see you in pain, I don't want to see you with bad joints, I don't want to see you with uh heart disease, like or or smokers, like people who smoke, right?
They've got a whole bunch of people around them who aren't saying to them, I care about you enough to sit down and say, okay, like what's going on with the smoking and and you've got to change, and right.
So when I see dysfunction, I don't see individuals, I see systems.
I see entire groups of people.
In fact, I see generally groups of people like a moat around that person changing.
They will not let people through.
And so I think if you come in with uh encouragement and uh accountability and feedback and goals, I think that's great.
I think the challenge is though, when you change your life, it messes up your entire social circle.
When I said when when podcasting came along and and blogging came along and I was like, I'm going for it.
I am 150%.
This is like a once, not a once in a lifetime.
This is a once-in-the-lifetime of philosophy.
This is once in a 3,000-year, this is the time.
I gotta get the truth out there before they realize and shut the doors, right?
Which sort of happened when Trump got in around 2016, and then for me, you know, the hammer really came down in 2020.
But I had, you know, tender, 14 glorious years which had never existed before in philosophy where I could speak unfiltered to the planet and listen to people about the power and beauty of philosophy.
So I was like, I'm going for it.
And uh the people that I knew in my life at the time, I don't want to get into details, but they were like, oh, that's interesting.
Oh, yeah, I mean, if you like it, I I mean, I guess, why not, right?
You're you're quitting.
Yeah, it's fine, yeah, good.
Or they um, or they say, uh, what, you're you got a really good job.
Like, what are you quitting?
You're making a four-like what are you, what are you quitting?
Like I took this, I don't know, 80%, 75%, 80% pay cut to start doing what I'm doing.
And I was like, I need to become bigger than I've ever conceived of in terms of personality, in terms Of clarity, in terms of belief in what I'm capable of doing, I need to become bigger than I've ever conceived of being.
And when you make that leap and you say, I'm not going to have the vanity of putting a lid on my potential.
And it's not about me, right?
This show is not about me.
It's not about looking clever.
It's not about being right.
I hate being right because it's usually dour predictions.
But it is about getting as much philosophy into the world as humanly possible because it's never been possible before to this degree.
So sort of long story short, when I said, okay, I have to bestride the world like a colossus.
I'm not naturally, I want to say a megalumaniacal person or something like that, but I'm not naturally a sort of big world-striding personality.
You know, I am not like astride the world like like some giant and and you know, there are some people who like that who just have that giant hagrid personality or something like that.
I'm not that big, you know, expansive, and I, you know, it really work to be comfortable because I'm British, right?
So work to be comfortable with having a big presence in the world.
And that was a conscious removal of limits, you know, like in Star Wars, they go, remove the restraining bolt of RTK, remove the restraining bolt.
Vesuvius, right?
And uh nobody came along.
Nobody from my old life, before and after public philosophy, there's no one.
There's not even a hint of someone.
There's not even someone who checks in once a year or once every five years.
They're gone.
And and I think that's the challenge.
So there were systems around me that were keeping me small.
And I was part of those systems, so I'm not blaming other people, fundamentally it's down to me, right?
But when I said I'm not gonna be small, I'm gonna be as big as the technology and my abilities will let me be.
I will assume no restraint and I will back down from nothing.
And I will go and chew the scenery if I have to, I'll sing, I'll dance, I'll whatever.
Like I will do what I'll joke, I'll do whatever's necessary to get maximum philosophy out of the world because philosophy's been kept at bay by institutions and especially academia for literally thousands and thousands of years.
So the point is that I I lost everyone.
Everyone, everyone was gone.
Nobody wanted to come along for that ride.
I think there's still a show or two that I did with a friend of mine back then, but yeah, he did he couldn't, he couldn't or wouldn't or didn't doesn't really matter.
Wouldn't gonna come along.
And then when you're when you're saying I'm gonna be big in the world and other people don't view you that way, you can't sustain both perspectives.
It's like trying to do math with someone yelling random numbers into your ear.
You just you can't do it.
If you're gonna unre if you're gonna uncork your potential and other people around you are putting a tight lid on it, uh, well, you think you're all that, or you think you're so much smarter, or you think you can do this, or you think you can do that, and it's just like, I can't.
I can't, I can't fucking do it with people yelling doubt in my ear.
I can't do it.
And I won't do it with people yelling doubt in my ear, because you know, it's like being a high wire act and people just shooting blow darts at you.
You just you can't do it.
And so I and sorry for the long speech, but but I guess the challenge is you guys come in and you kind of substitute a limiting social circle that keeps people down.
Most social circles are designed to keep people down.
And you come in and you uncock that and you give a counter, I guess my concern would be they go back out into the world.
And then they are surrounded by the small-minded and the petty, the persons from poorlock, the, you know, the guy who introduced who interrupted uh the Kublai Khan poem from Coleridge and he could never get it back.
Uh I I think that's my concern about when they go back to the lives that were defined by the people who kept them small or weak or fat or lazy or stupid or like because people they feel very uncomfortable when other people rise.
They feel they take it personally, they they will try to try and claw you down.
It's a crabs in the bucket thing.
So what happens?
There's the end of the speech.
Thank you for your patience.
What happens when people go back to the small-minded people around them and don't have your kind of robust encouragement and accountability there?
Yeah.
Well, it's funny because uh the name of the program is called Rise.
So there's that saying the biggest treason a crap can commit is jumping for the rim of the bucket.
Right.
So no, I I I I really think you and I do actually need to jump into a coaching call here soon.
I'm I'm keeping uh a riser at bay because I really wanted to have this conversation.
Um But yeah, I do live in that question of am I doing something that is worthwhile?
Am I doing something that actually impacts people's lives?
And I'm just uh I'm just a voice in people's ears at the end of the day and asking them questions.
And then they they create their own solutions.
And a lot of times they do need to recreate their environment.
They do need to eject from the paradigm shift that they're in if they really want to go to that next level.
So I I appreciate you uh sharing that with me.
Well, thank you very much.
And uh it's great to uh chat with you again and yeah, go do your coaching thing.
And uh, you know, uh and listen, it's not like I have all the answers, but I do remember um in the first book that I wrote as a public philosopher.
It was called On Truth, the Tyranny of Illusion.
And in it I say that uh philosophy will change everything about your life.
And it's kind of like waking up in a city realizing that you're surrounded by zombies, but you know, or you have the feeling that somewhere across the desert is a relatively small town, a relatively small town, but it's full of actual people.
And you gotta leave the familiar cross the desert.
And listen, people get lost in the desert, people die in the desert, people don't make it through the desert.
Sometimes nobody even knows what happens to them in the desert.
But if you get to the other town, the town of actual people, the town of those who are alive, it's well worth the journey.
But philosophy takes the blinkers off your mind or your life.
Philosophy takes those blinkers off, and you get to see what the world actually is.
And then, and then I think you have that choice whether you want to make that journey across a brutal desert.
And find out if the journey is worthwhile for you.
I believe that it is.
I think that it is.
I would say that I know that it is.
But it is not easy at all.
All right.
Uh well, the fella's back, but uh he wanted to do some different account thing, so I'm not really sure what to do about that.
Uh we can do a shorter show.
I I don't want to take him on if he doesn't want to talk about the stuff that I think is important.
So maybe what I'll do, you know what I'll do.
Let me just try this.
Let me let me let me try this.
So this was the first book I wrote this in what, 2006, 2007, something like that.
And let me see.
Find it.
No.
Maybe it wasn't in this book.
Maybe it was somewhere else.
Yeah, can't find it.
But uh you should check the book out on Truth, the Tura and Evolution.
It's available for free at freedom.com/slash books and uh also the handbook of human ownership, a manual for new tax farmers, is also something that you should check out.
Also a very good book.
So all right.
Well, I will stop here and I thank everyone so much.
I did a oh boy, did I do a scorcher of a show today.
Just I did did a solo show.
Because I asked on X. I asked why has Christianity failed to protect and preserve the West.
Because it has.
And I've been thinking about this all day.
And I did a 50-minute scorcher of a presentation about why I think Christianity has failed to preserve and protect the West.
It's one of the very few times I've done a show and felt acutely uncomfortable.
You know, I don't I don't feel much discomfort with challenging ideas.
In fact, I view them as things that I'm in hot pursuit of is sort of challenging and uh uh uneasy levels of truth ideas.
But this one.
Oof.
I was like it feels wrong.
It feels so wrong, but I can't argue with the logic of it.
So anyway, I'm gonna put this out to donors um over the weekend, James.
But just out to donors.
And I'd love to get your feedback and thoughts on it.
I don't know if it's gonna make it to the general population, because it is a I can't honestly, I cannot remember the last time, except maybe doing, I don't know, crime stats in 2014, like over 10 years ago.
But I cannot remember the last time where I felt this uneasy about a line of reasoning.
So I'm going to put that out to donors this weekend.
And if you are a donor, you'll uh get it.
You know what?
Anyone who donates this weekend, uh, you can I'll send you a copy of it.
Um but yeah, as far as general population goes, I uh I feel uneasy and I haven't feel felt uneasy about an argument in Donkey's years, but uh, maybe I'm wired wrong, and maybe it's fine, or maybe it is as scorching as I think.
But I will put that out this weekend for donors, and if you donate at freedomain.com slash donate, I'll send you a copy as well.
And I really do thank you guys so so much.
I really love and appreciate these conversations, and I look forward to our next one Sunday morning eleven.
No, no, no show.
Sorry, no show this uh Sunday, but uh we will get back.
We'll do an extra show next week to make up for it.
So mm.
Free domain.com slash donate.
Thank you everyone so much.
Have yourself a glorious, wonderful, delightful, and beautiful evening.
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