Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - How to Deal with Picky Eaters! Twitter/X Space

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Nov. 6, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:32:57

How to Deal with Picky Eaters! Twitter/X Space

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	All right, we are back.
	Third time.
	Lucky.
	I feel we've got it.
	I feel it's going to happen.
	I feel right about the whole darn thing.
	So hope you're doing well.
	Sorry about the hiccupy start.
	Had a couple of tech issues, but no sweat, no worry.
	You know, you don't look at what's missing in life.
	You look at what's present.
	And what's present is our ability to have this oh-so scrumptious conversations about philosophy as a whole.
	And so I'm thrilled to be chatting with you guys tonight.
	I was talking a little bit, and the audio wasn't coming through.
	Zorhan Mamdani from Uganda, a guy who did African studies with a failed rapper, then immediately launched himself into government.
	You know, people without jobs, voting for people without real jobs to take money from people with real jobs to give to those without jobs.
	It's kind of a cycle.
	And I mean, why did he get elected?
	This Muslim hard-left guy calls the Communist Manifesto.
	Well, because it's the immigrants, right?
	The new New Yorkers, the new New Yorkers, not the old New Yorkers, but the new New Yorkers voted him in.
	Young women voted him in.
	Why?
	Because he's got a toothy used car salesman grin and some fairly nice hair.
	And that's about it.
	That's about it.
	I remember many years ago being on a plane.
	I was on a business trip and I was on a plane with somebody talking about Canadian politics.
	And he said, yeah, I remember voting for Pierre Elliott Trudeau because I thought his wife was hot, man.
	And that's why doing politics is just kind of dull because all it is now is a cultural, racial, religious, and ethnic headcount.
	That's all it is.
	This is what the head of Singapore was sort of talking about.
	It's just a racial headcount.
	It's tribalism, in-group preferences, the age of ideas, idealism, debates, facts, reason, arguments, evidence, all deep in the rearview.
	To re-emerge when?
	Well, we don't know.
	We'll try and keep the flame alight.
	We'll be the monks in the Age of Darkness and do our best.
	So, of course, I'm absolutely thrilled to hear what you guys have to talk about, whatever topic is on your mind, how philosophy can help you the best.
	I did, and I'll get to you.
	I see you.
	Oh, Carmelo.
	I did finish my book today.
	And, of course, it's been finished for a while, but there are 24 chapters in the book.
	And I finished the audiobook.
	And, man, it just tore me into, man.
	You know, I have a lot of affection for characters.
	Most writers do have affection for characters.
	And I know this sounds perhaps a little precious, overcreative, and so on.
	But with regards to my characters, I really, really, really want them to make the right choices.
	But you do have to have integrity to the characters that you're writing.
	And sometimes they just plain don't.
	So I finished the book.
	It's a real, it's a very experimental work.
	I've never written anything quite like it before, even close.
	It is the deepest characterization that I've ever worked with.
	And I feel as close to these characters as I have to just about anybody.
	And if you are a subscriber, which you can, of course, subscribe at freedom.com slash donate.
	You get the entire 24-part audiobook.
	And I guarantee you, it's some great stuff.
	And I also guarantee you, it's like nothing you've ever read before.
	And maybe like nothing you'll ever read or listen to again.
	All right.
	Thank you for your patience.
	Let's get to the brainy X of the outfit.
	Oh, Carmelo.
	Oh, don't you cry for me.
	I'm going to Botswana with the banjo on my knee.
	If you want to unmute, let's see if this tech will be.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, sir. Go ahead.
	Good night.
	Thanks for having me again.
	It's a pleasure to be here.
	And I'm glad that you finished your book, man.
	I can't wait to read it.
	Good.
	Yeah.
	What's on your mind?
	I would like to discuss.
	It's more or less about the Mandani election, but it's more about what's happening in the right in America.
	This accusation recently, accusations of anti-Semitism, lynching Tucker Carlson and some other figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey that are clearly America first diverging from the major line of MAGA.
	What is your thoughts about it?
	How do you see these divisions and have they prejudiced the elections in New York?
	I'm sorry, have they, you're asking how they affect the elections in New York?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, as I sort of saying, I think it's really just demographics that drives the elections in New York.
	It's people who've recently come to America.
	And the default position of people is socialism.
	That is the default position of people because that's the family.
	The family is from each according to their ability to each according to their need.
	And so the default position, if you look at a tribe, like a tribe of, you know, 30, 50, 70, maybe 100 people max, how does the tribe work?
	Well, the women are constantly pregnant and raising children.
	So the men have to go out and get resources and fight off enemies and hunt and build and all of this kind of wild stuff.
	And so from each according to their ability is the men, unburdened by, you know, periods, pregnancies, you know, vagina tearing births, not like a lot of episodomies in the ancient world, and constantly breastfeeding, raising children and caring for the sick and caring for the elderly.
	So there's this giant catapult of resources that comes from male testosterone, height, size, strength, muscularity, and so on.
	And it goes to the women and the children, from each according to their ability to each according to their need.
	And that's how we evolve.
	That is our default position.
	And in a tribe, it works pretty well.
	I mean, if it didn't work well, we wouldn't have become the alpha species of the planet.
	So the default position of humanity is child abuse and socialism.
	The child abuse, The Origins of War, Child Abuse was an audiobook I read many years ago.
	You can find it for free at freedomain.com slash books from the late, great Lloyd DeMas and his psychohistory group.
	So child abuse is the default position and socialism is the default position.
	So when you bring a lot of people in from non-Western cultures, and it's not like all Western cultures are capitalist, but it's a little bit more so as a whole, small government and free markets and so on, because free markets are non-intuitive and free markets require the deferral of gratification and a lot of patience.
	And so when you bring a lot of people in, they come with the childhood trauma from child abuse and neglect, and they come with socialism because that's the default position of humanity, because socialism is simply tribal familial, quote, economics combined with the power of the state.
	So yeah, the question of anti-Semitism, you know, of course, there are people who hate Jews reflexively, and that's bigoted and that's wrong.
	You know, the question of is always all criticism of Jews or Judaism.
	I mean, you don't want to criticize individual Jews.
	You want to criticize the ideas, the arguments, the philosophy.
	It's like getting mad at Marx rather than criticizing Marxism.
	And I mean, I think there are legitimate things to criticize and praise in just about every belief system known to man.
	So as far as how it affected New York, I don't think it affects New York in particular.
	New York has just been skewing left for a long time.
	And New York is one of these furnace places where, you know, bad socialist ideas are constantly tried and they go into a couple of decades of hell and then they kind of react and sort of flee back to something a little bit more sane.
	It is a progressive place, or at least it has been for quite some time.
	So, yeah, I wouldn't say the charges of anti-Semitism and so on.
	So, of course, for a lot of the Christians, the existence of Israel is biblically necessary.
	It's prophecy, it's foretold, and they consider.
	You could see, of course, Ted Cruz was talking about how devoted he is to Israel.
	And that comes, I mean, obviously, he has an affection for the Jews and a love of the Jews and of Judaism.
	And also, that is part of his Christianity.
	And so, when there are a bunch of people on the right who are making decisions based upon theology, as a philosopher, I look at that like that's not a good basis for it.
	That's not a good basis for it.
	So, on the left, of course, the left tends to sympathize with the underdog, which means that they're more pro-Palestinian.
	The right sympathizes with Israel to a large degree because of religious beliefs, and none of it is really penetrable by a philosophical analysis.
	And I would invite people, I did a presentation, oh, gosh, 11 or so years ago, I think it was, The Truth About Israel and Palestine.
	And I hope that you will check that out.
	But no, I don't think it affected things in New York, particularly today.
	I was thinking about the argument that AIPEC is a form of violation of sovereignty.
	That is the same argument that Tucker Carlson used to speak.
	Is this for you a violation of sovereignty?
	This happens a lot in my country, as an example.
	The spring lobbies acting, but they act in the light here.
	They don't think, they don't excuse their actions.
	What do you think about it?
	Well, I mean, it's not specific to APAC.
	It would just be when the government has the power to create trillions of dollars out of thin air, rampant corruption is going to take place.
	It's going to take place at every level of society.
	It's going to take a place among the rich and the poor in particular.
	They're the vice that's squeezing the middle class out of existence.
	And I mean, the free market is the only economic system that produces a middle class, and the middle class is a great ballast and stability to society.
	So is it like, well, if APAC was this or was registered, registered as a foreign agent, and I know that there's theories about JFK shooting having to do with that and so on.
	But to me, the job of the philosopher is not to look at a particular branch of the tree, but to look at the roots of the tree.
	And the roots of the tree are child abuse, collectivism, terrible government schools, and so on, and the power to create and shovel around trillions of dollars.
	And then when people say, ah, but this particular branch is bad and this other branch is less bad, it's like, that's not really the job of the philosopher.
	The job of the philosopher is to look at the root of immorality and of corruption and not to assign a particular weight to some manifestation thereof, but to look at the source and the cause of it.
	And the source and the cause of it, as I said before, is violations of the non-aggression principle at the family level and people's acceptance of irrational dogmas and making decisions based upon often ranked superstition.
	So that is really the gig and the job.
	All right.
	Let us move on to James.
	That's about as dramatic an entry as I can make to James.
	If you wanted to unmute him, happy to hear your thoughts, questions, comments.
	James going once, join twice.
	All right.
	It looks like we are without James.
	Let us go to Jason instead.
	And Jason, if you wanted to unmute, I'm happy to hear what's on your mind.
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	All right, cool.
	Oh, it's Jason, by the way.
	I'm just letting that.
	All good.
	Yeah, so I'm a 20-year-old guy, and my question's about women.
	Oh, I'm so sorry.
	I think I just removed the wrong person.
	The interface switched for just a moment.
	So sorry.
	Jason, if you could just invite back in, then my apologies.
	I was just trying to remove someone and then the interface switched a little bit.
	So if you just want to come back in, I'll just give you a second in case.
	Jason, okay.
	Yeah, we're back.
	Sorry about that, brother.
	If you wanted to continue on, you had a question about women.
	So where do you think I should go to meet women?
	Because I'm looking for an intelligent one who shares Christian values.
	And it's difficult for me.
	It's either, look, there's one of three possibilities with intelligence in women.
	Either they don't possess it, I can't spot it, or they don't show it.
	So they obviously do possess it in the same amount that men do.
	I've studied IQ enough to know that, right?
	But it depends where you are or the IQ scale, though.
	Yeah, right.
	If you're higher up, then it's a bit less because they have a narrower bell curve compared to men.
	But yeah, so would you say it's manifested in a different way?
	You know, should I be maybe looking for a different type of intelligence in women?
	What are some signs for that?
	Well, that's a big question.
	Let me just ask you in general, what is it that you are looking for in a wife?
	I mean, you mentioned Christianity, Christian values.
	I get that.
	What else?
	Well, I would prefer somebody who would want to stay home in homeschool, somebody who wants to have a lot of kids.
	Let's see, someone who I can, someone who I don't have to intellectually hold back around.
	You know, I feel like that happens a lot.
	And I've been on quite a few dates and it's difficult when I want to have a good conversation, but it's like, I got to kind of limit myself on the things that we can talk about.
	What sort of interest is that you're going to be able to find yourself limiting yourself on?
	Oh, well, philosophy.
	Philosophy for sure.
	Or economics or politics.
	And it's very possible.
	It's just a difference in interest.
	And so I guess that would be the focus of my question.
	Well, but hang on.
	A difference of interest should not be a barrier in a relationship because you should be interested in what your wife is interested in and she should be interested in what you're interested in as a whole.
	Right.
	So, a difference of interest is not insurmountable.
	Now, that doesn't mean you'll always have the same level of interest about what she's interested in.
	Of course, there's going to be differences that way.
	But when it comes to interests, the fact that there's a difference of interest is a plus and a positive.
	It's a good thing.
	And so help me understand what you mean by the difference of interest thing if it's potentially a negative.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So I don't want to be looking for this person that doesn't exist is basically what I'm trying to say.
	So it's a plan.
	Yes.
	In reality.
	That's a good plan.
	Yeah.
	So I don't want to have this false conceptualization in my head that I'm going to find this person that, you know, checks all the boxes when in reality, I might have the wrong boxes that aren't even out there.
	Right.
	And so I know that from the psychological literature that men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people.
	And I just don't know how rigid of a barrier that is because I frankly have not met, I've met maybe one girl ever who is fun to talk to.
	And the majority of these women, maybe 120.
	So I haven't been looking for too long.
	I haven't been around for too long.
	What about your mother?
	What about aunts, grandmother?
	Yes, but in a different way, if that makes sense.
	It really doesn't.
	So if you say you've met one woman who's fun to talk to, and I say, what about mother, grandmother, aunts?
	And you say, yes, but in a different way, then that's clearly not one woman, right?
	So it is a little confusing, but I'm certainly happy to be schooled on clarity.
	Okay, yeah, that's fair enough.
	You know, when I say someone that's enjoyable for me to talk to, I mean, I can discuss my interests with, and I could not discuss my interests with those people.
	And so, you know, I don't know, like, Shoey, I'd be looking in book clubs and church, you know, like what exactly is the relationship supposed to be between a husband and backup, back up.
	Okay.
	Is your mother interesting to talk to?
	And I'm sorry if she's not.
	This is not prejudicial.
	I'm just curious.
	Okay.
	No, not terribly so, no.
	Okay.
	And what is the limitation that you experience with regards to your own mother?
	Probably novel ideas.
	We'll put it that way.
	Okay.
	So give me an example.
	Well, for example, I wouldn't talk, I wouldn't discuss economics with her.
	You know, I wouldn't discuss how government intervention might lead to recessions or something like that.
	And why not?
	Because she lacks the interest in those things and might have a difficult time grasping the concepts.
	Is she not particularly smart?
	I wouldn't say she's below average, but she's probably around average intelligence.
	Yeah.
	Okay. All right.
	So when you want to become a father, you said you want to have a lot of kids, right?
	Yes, sir.
	Okay.
	So let's say that your kid becomes very interested.
	Give me a subject that someone might be interested in that you're not particularly interested.
	I don't know, bass fishing or, I mean, whatever, right?
	Your kid gets interested.
	Making cheese.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry?
	Making cheese.
	That does not exist.
	Okay.
	So your kid gets really into making cheese, right?
	Yeah.
	And they try to explain to you the curds and the bacteria and the, I don't know, whatever voodoo happens that produces those lovely blocks of ice expanding dairy.
	So your kid gets really into making cheese.
	Would you discourage your child from talking to you about cheese making?
	No, not at all.
	And in fact, I'd probably become interested in it as well.
	Right.
	My daughter has a number of interests that I do not share.
	She's very into baking.
	She's very into baking.
	And so we will bake together.
	She will teach me stuff.
	I don't care about baking, but I care that she cares about baking.
	You know, I prefer playing tennis.
	My wife prefers pickleball because she's got kind of short legs, so it's a little easier for her to traverse the court.
	So we go play pickleball.
	It's fine.
	Because I want to have fun with my wife.
	I don't particularly care what the size the court is.
	Okay.
	We are on it, right?
	So it seems like it's more about the flexibility of your partner than it is about their whatever interest they had when you initially met them.
	God, no.
	That's not what I'm sorry.
	Gosh, no, that's not what I'm saying at all.
	But I mean, so if your child in the future comes in and wants to talk to you about some stunning new Yarlsberg that they have what they're working to create in terms of cheese, and they're really excited about it, how would you react?
	Well, I would be very happy for them, and I'd say I wanted to see it.
	I'd ask them questions about it, be interested in it.
	Right.
	You care because your child cares.
	Yes.
	Do you see where I'm going with this?
	I thought I didn't.
	Okay.
	Why doesn't your mother care about what you care about?
	She does care about what I care about.
	And why is it tough to talk to her about what you're enthusiastic about?
	Let me put it this way.
	She cares about what I have to say about it, but she would never initiate a conversation of these things.
	Okay, so why do you think that she would never initiate conversation?
	Does she never read the news or read anything about current events and say, hey, I thought this might be right up your alley and what do you think about it?
	And like, when you're a parent, you're always on the lookout for things that might be interesting to your kids, right?
	So I regularly send my daughter stuff that I think will be of interest to her or make her laugh or something like that, right?
	And so why would she not initiate conversation if she knows it's something that's really interesting to you?
	That's a good question.
	Well, I don't know.
	I bet you do.
	Or you bet you do know because you've known the woman for 20 years, right?
	So you must have some idea.
	Okay, that's fair enough.
	Let's see.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I honestly don't know.
	Probably because she's just there's a certain overlap of interests that we do have, you know, very slight or however slight it may be.
	And it's at the conjunction of those two things that would be the thing she picks to talk about.
	So your mother and you have very little overlap in interests.
	So are there things that your mother is interested in that you don't want to talk about or you don't bring up as a topic?
	Yeah, sure.
	I mean, she likes to watch serial killer documentaries.
	And, you know, I'm not terribly into that.
	Okay.
	And do you know why she's interested in serial killer documentaries?
	I don't know.
	A lot of women are.
	But I think it's because they think girls kind of like to be scared by that stuff a little bit.
	Yeah.
	It's a bit of a dark topic.
	Yeah, it is peculiar.
	No, it's not peculiar.
	It's not peculiar.
	I mean, you know, this old, it's kind of an old meme where this woman's like, I've had, you know, five coffees and watched a murder, a serial killer documentary.
	I can't imagine why I have any anxiety, right?
	Yeah, right, yeah, exactly.
	So women like true crime because it's sexually exciting.
	Yeah.
	Because there's the thrill, the danger, right?
	The 50 shades of gray and so on, right?
	Sorry to talk about your brother in this fashion, but yeah, so your mother is interested in the serial killer stuff.
	And do you talk to her about it?
	Or do you find it weird or gross or bad?
	Or do you have a judgment about it or something like that?
	I'm fairly indifferent about it.
	You know, occasionally we have conversations about, you know, a good old Ted, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer here and there.
	And do you know why she's interested in these things?
	I mean, from her perspective.
	Honestly, I couldn't give you a very exact reason.
	I mean, the only reason I could give you is she's just interested in that.
	The same way some people are just interested in birdwatching.
	But this is a bit more specific and a bit more focused.
	And, okay, so the reason I'm talking about this kind of stuff is if you have as a template in your relationship with your mother, that women just, if they're not interested, they're not interested, they don't talk about it, they don't ask about it, they don't really show any attention to you, they don't initiate it themselves, then my question is: if this is the template that comes from your mother, is it a good or bad or right or wrong template?
	Okay, so you're saying perhaps the data that I've trained my neural net on is a little bit skewed, or I mean, everyone's would be because of their parents or because of their mother.
	Well, we all base stuff on our parents, right?
	That's natural, it's inevitable, and there's, I mean, pluses and minuses to that as a whole, right?
	So we train ourselves on our parents.
	So you're saying, how can I, I've only found one woman who's interested because your enthusiasm was not enough for your mother to be interested.
	Okay.
	Okay. So she should be interested because you're interested.
	Right.
	And honestly, it's a bit rude from my perspective.
	It's a bit rude to be a parent and, you know, either yawn or disengage or roll your eyes or have cocktail eyes, you know, looking around the room or whatever or into to indicate that you don't want to talk about what your child is enthusiastic about.
	Okay, I see where you're going with this.
	Yeah, and it's not quite like that.
	If I went up to her and started saying these things, she would respond and she would engage.
	But because it's not exactly her specialty, it wouldn't be a enjoyable conversation.
	You know what I mean?
	It'd be more like, okay, but why?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Yeah.
	But why wouldn't it be an enjoyable conversation?
	If you care about it, isn't that interesting to her?
	Because you care about it and she wants to understand you and appreciate your mind's preferences and thoughts.
	Well, not necessarily because conversations are you're going back with your interlocutor.
	You're going back and forth and back and forth.
	It'd be like a, you know, it's like a boxing match fun to watch if it's a back and forth.
	Not if it's just one guy destroying the other or two people barely engaging with each other at all.
	So it wouldn't be a very in-depth conversation or a very interesting conversation.
	It absolutely would be.
	When my daughter was younger, she got into a particular video game.
	Not my style of game at all.
	Doesn't really matter, right?
	But she was very enthusiastic about it.
	She was very interested back then in what's called, I'm sure you know, lore, right?
	The backstory of the video game and so on, right?
	Yep.
	And so I asked a thousand questions.
	We played the game quite a bit.
	I tried to sort of really fathom and understand what she found interesting and so on, right?
	Because she's my daughter and I want to know what's interesting to her.
	I want to know what matters to her.
	And now I could recite for two hours the lore of this video game and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
	Okay.
	Which game was it?
	There have been a few.
	There have been a few.
	And it's not particularly important which ones they were or weren't.
	But what I'm saying is that because it was interesting to her, it was I was interested in her interest in it.
	Right.
	Because if your template is we both have to be interested in it in order for the conversation to work, then you're going to look for a particularly complex jigsaw puzzle to put together, right?
	Okay. Whereas if you say, if someone cares about me, then they care about what I care about.
	All right.
	I see what you're saying.
	That's the sort of reframing that I would, because otherwise you're looking for some just wild combination of things, right?
	Yeah, right.
	A statistically improbable combination of things, of course.
	Right.
	Whereas if it's like, okay, so if I'm interested in something, then people who care about me will be interested in it.
	Okay.
	So that's the framework that I should be using.
	That's the lens I should be viewing these things through.
	Right.
	Because if you say, well, women, if they're not already interested in something that I'm interested in, if they're not already interested in it, then it's not going to happen.
	But if someone cares about you, they care about what you're interested in automatically.
	Okay. This is useful information.
	Thank you very much.
	Do I, or do you, care about decor?
	Not consciously, no.
	Well, I mean, do you sit there and try and puzzle about which lamp is going to look really great on that end table?
	No, no, not at all.
	No.
	Men, we're just like, we would strap a flashlight to a stick if we could, right?
	I mean, when I met my wife, I was living in a rental apartment.
	I had some pretty grungy carpets that came with the apartment.
	I had a broken foot on from when I was an undergraduate that I'd carted around from place to place.
	And I had, you know, a bunch of different plates that I picked up at garage sales.
	You know, like I didn't have any decor, if that makes sense.
	You know, guys, you know, you put the giant TV on the box it came in and you put a mattress in front of it and you're good, right?
	Right.
	Men like tools, women like flowers.
	Yes.
	Right.
	So when my wife says we need to do X, Y, or Z with the house, do I care?
	I don't.
	But I care that she cares.
	And to be fair, she does create a beautiful place, right?
	So it's the kind of thing that when I think back about how I used to live, like every now and then I used to live on a street called Duplex in Toronto.
	And we sort of have a running gag from time to time.
	If somebody goes into a really dark, dingy, cobwebby, scary place, I'm like, duplex, right?
	Because I sort of remember the old apartment that this is the place I woke up with a pigeon on my chest once because I left the window open.
	And that'd be an omen of some kind.
	Yeah, I think so.
	I think so.
	So my wife cares about these things and I care about these things.
	I mean, apparently things need to be repainted from time to time.
	I really didn't know.
	Apparently, all women enter into a house, buy a house or get into a house, and then immediately go at aesthetic war with everything in the kitchen.
	And if I ever want a nice half-hour rent from my wife, I will talk about what would you change in the kitchen if you could have unlimited budget.
	And then it's like, she's away to the races, right?
	And it's a passionate diatribe, the likes of which I can scarcely hope to match in my exhortations of the greatest virtues known to man.
	And she really cares about it.
	Really matters to her.
	And I think that's beautiful.
	It's incomprehensible to me, but because I love her, I love what she cares about.
	And if she said, we need to go to the, I don't know, the decor place, whatever it would be, then we go to the decor place.
	And I will do my best to follow, and I will do my best to have an opinion, and so on.
	And to be fair, she's not one of these women who's like, Well, which lamp do you think is better?
	Oh, the one on the left.
	No, it's the one on the right.
	Like, she's not like that.
	So we kind of roll with it back and forth.
	In the same way, she doesn't know why I might need another microphone, right?
	She might say, Well, hang on, you have like eight microphones.
	I'm like, Yes, but this is blah, blah, blah.
	Right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, yeah, so, but she's interested, you know, if I tell her why, she'll follow, I'll diagram it out and so on.
	And I mean, I still fundamentally, like most husbands, I have failed completely in my mission to get her to understand, to get her to understand the difference between Wi-Fi and cellular data.
	I cannot, I cannot get that across to either of the two females in my life.
	Yeah, they will, they will constantly say, I went out and about.
	I think they're doing it to just tweak me now, like Rit the Ball, and they say, I can't get any Wi-Fi.
	I'm like, not Wi-Fi.
	It's not functioning the same to them.
	That's funny.
	That is funny, though.
	But, you know, if I diagram it out, it might go in one ear and out of the other, but they're sort of polite and listen and so on.
	So there are, you know, when you have kids, they have social dynamics and it matters a lot to them.
	And because it matters a lot to them, it matters a lot to you.
	So, yeah, if someone cares about you, it's not topic-related.
	It's you really care about you.
	Yep, along with all the interests.
	Okay.
	So yeah, along with all the interests.
	They care about they love you.
	They care about you.
	They're interested in you as a person.
	They admire you as a person.
	And then you don't slice and dice the person up into, well, this part I find interesting.
	This part I find less interesting.
	This part I don't find interesting at all.
	It's like, no, it's the whole package, right?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	So perhaps I should change my approach to looking for the immutable aspects, such as intelligence and looks and having those as primary.
	And after that, the interests and such, that'll change, or at least that will become interested in the same things that you're interested in and vice versa.
	Okay, that's a lovely, abstract, non-actionable plan.
	I'm a practical business guy.
	So I'm going to give you a more practical plan because I have no idea how to implement that, but it also could be because I'm 40 years separated from you and age almost.
	So give me, bear with me for a second or two and I'll tell you what I think needs to happen or is going to best happen.
	I'll write it down.
	So what you do is when you meet a woman, you are very enthusiastic about what you care about.
	She will find that enthusiasm interesting because, you know, there's a lot of guys who play it cool.
	I mean, women do it too, but a lot of guys who like play it cool, right?
	I mean, and they get terrible advice from dating coaches and all this nagging and be distant and don't reply too quickly and say, that's all nonsense.
	So show your enthusiasm.
	Why?
	Because you want an enthusiastic woman.
	You want her to be enthusiastic for you.
	You want her to be enthusiastic for virtue, for piety, for in bed.
	Like you just want her to be enthusiastic as a whole.
	So how do you find an enthusiastic person?
	You're enthusiastic.
	You're excited.
	You're, oh, I just, I've written this great idea about this, that, the other, and let me sort of explain it to you.
	And if you've got to use salt and pepper shakers and so on, that's fine, right?
	But so a lot of people respond to enthusiasm with resentment because enthusiasm is like a really positive life force.
	And if people are sort of bowed down, crushed, and depressed, they view that as an enemy.
	So it will safely drive those people out of your life, which is a very good thing.
	It is as important to get people out of your life as it is to get people into your life because the two things are very, very related.
	The other thing, of course, is that for a lot of people, if they grew up as sort of negative or depressed or dysfunctional parents, enthusiasm was viewed by the parents as a big negative, as a big problem, as something that they would attack or roll their eyes at or humiliate someone about or anything like that, right?
	So, in order to have a happy person in your life, you want to set foot in the world with enthusiasm.
	And then, if somebody responds positively to your enthusiasm, that is a great thing.
	That is a great thing because that means they like enthusiasm.
	They have a, you know, a positive relationship to enthusiasm, because love, of course, is just a kind of enthusiasm.
	That's all it is.
	It's like the ultimate enthusiasm is called love.
	So, you want to test people's ability to appreciate and enjoy enthusiasm by meeting them and being enthusiastic.
	And if the woman responds positively to enthusiasm, oh, that's so cool.
	And here's something, and then you say, Well, what are you?
	What's the last thing that excited you or got you interested or positively motivated?
	And then she can talk about that.
	You know, just enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm, right?
	I mean, when I met my wife the first time, or when we had a conversation, I just had got my first book published, so I was very enthusiastic about that.
	And she was enjoying her career practicing psychology.
	So she told me about that.
	And, you know, it was just a very good, a great cross-pollination of enthusiasm.
	And she is still like, she's a jump up and down enthusiastic kind of person.
	Like she is, she's like a concentrated laser supernova of enthusiasm.
	And it's good to recharge.
	And I, you know, I, so, so, so, if you are enthusiastic with people, don't hold back.
	Don't guard yourself.
	Don't downplay things, right?
	If you, I mean, it sounds like you can hear it in your voice, right?
	You love ideas, philosophy, economics.
	So I'm sure there's some politics in there.
	So you're enthusiastic about it.
	So when you meet a woman, be enthusiastic about whatever it is that you're into and see how she responds.
	And of course, if she responds positively, it means that she has grown up in a family.
	Usually it's the case.
	You've grown up in a family where enthusiasm is respected and appraised and encouraged and so on.
	And that's all, that's very good because that's the kind of family you want to have your kids around because kids are crazy enthusiastic.
	Like they're wildly enthusiastic.
	And there's usually a battle between if the parents have, it's called dysthymia.
	It's sort of a low-grade depression.
	If the parents are dysthymic or outright depressed, then the enthusiasm of the kids is annoying.
	It grates upon them, right?
	They too much noise.
	Quiet down.
	It's like with my daughter, I'm always like, I think we can be louder.
	So go and be enthusiastic.
	Enthusiasm is the great gravity whale that brings the joys to you and repels the depressed and the negative and the hostile.
	Just be enthusiastic.
	And then if somebody responds to your enthusiasm, it doesn't matter whether they care about what you're enthusiastic about.
	They care about you and it matters to them that it matters to you and that you don't need the jigsaw puzzle fit, if that makes sense.
	Okay, very good enough.
	Thank you very much.
	I have two quick thoughts and I'll get out of here.
	Yeah.
	So number one is I like that because I think that if you're more, if you act as a more accurate representation of who you truly are, that ensures that the person you're talking to is liking you and not liking this person that you're trying to project yourself to be.
	Because then they'll like the false version of you that you're just trying to be.
	And you could keep that up for like three months, give or take, right?
	Yeah, you can fake it for about three months.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And the number two is, yeah, I do think that I can tend to hide my interests because it is difficult.
	And it is genuinely sometimes hurtful when you start enthusiastically explaining something to someone that you're interested in and then they just don't care.
	And that can be quite sad.
	So I think that is.
	But, and of course, if this, I'm not saying this does come from your mom, but if it did or from your dad, then that is tough.
	And it also can come from siblings and other relatives.
	But it is sad.
	And going forward in life, it's just a great filtering mechanism.
	Like, I do not understand, my friend, for the life of me.
	I do not understand.
	And I would go to my grave not understanding this.
	I absolutely guarantee.
	I do not understand why people play their cards close to their chest, why they hoard their feelings, why they play distant.
	They play hard to get.
	They play dissociated.
	They play.
	They underplay their emotions.
	I mean, what are you hoarding for?
	It all rots in your hand.
	It's like with Into the Wild, this guy who's lost in Alaska, I think it is.
	And he gets the meat, but he can't store it because the flies come and lay their eggs in it and animals come and chew on it and it sucks a rot.
	Maggots come.
	It's like you can't keep it.
	You've got no fridge, no freezer.
	And your emotions, your passions, your enthusiasms, what do you, you know, I can understand if you want to leave a lot of money to your kids, then you live kind of lean and you hoard the money and hopefully buy some Bitcoin or something like that.
	So expo is the money.
	Yeah, but then but then you can then you can hand the money to your kids.
	But emotions don't work that way.
	They rot in your hand.
	You don't get to store them up and leave this great treasure of your passions and feelings for your children later on.
	Every emotion you suppress just is like an artery dying around your heart.
	Every emotion you suppress, and I'm not saying this is you.
	I'm just, this is a general thing.
	Like, yeah, be enthusiastic.
	What are you saving it for?
	What are you waiting for?
	It doesn't store.
	It doesn't grow at all.
	It just dies within.
	What you do not express turns rotten and rancid in your chest.
	And the idea that people kind of play it cool, client play it distant.
	I mean, if you're down, if you're sad, if you're feeling depressed, man, just dig in, get those feelings out, figure it out, and move on.
	But I've just known a lot of people over the course of my life.
	And of course, because I'm getting older, I've seen a lot more of this arc.
	And they just hang on to their feelings.
	They're distant.
	They're cold.
	They're suppressed.
	They're just like, for what?
	You're going to go to the grave either way.
	And there's nothing that's stored up.
	It's all going to get disassembled by worms soon enough.
	And there's no store in heaven.
	There's no store in the grave.
	There's no store in the afterlife.
	All that people will remember is a cold-hearted person who squirts their feelings out of petty resentment and selfishness.
	To share enthusiasm is a great gift to the world.
	I love when I'm around enthusiastic people.
	And to share enthusiasm is a great gift to the world.
	And yes, people will resent it because when you share enthusiasm, you're reminding them that the people who are suppressed and depressed, you're reminding them that this could be your life.
	This could be your life.
	And they simply hold on to these feelings.
	They rot and die in their hands.
	And they consider themselves the king of emptiness at the end.
	And I think at the very end, it is revealed that all of this suppression was for less than nothing.
	It just made life dead and dismal.
	And I think it's a real shame.
	Sorry, you said you had two thoughts.
	I think I completely both of them.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Being enthusiastic so that they know who you truly are.
	And then how sometimes being not enthusiastic is because I don't want to get hurt.
	But no, that thing you said there at the end, very good.
	Close to home.
	Thanks.
	Don't let say, and I understand, look, you're a young man, so I say this with all due sensitivity to your youth, which is a wonderful thing, but it's very easy when you're young to take things personally.
	Very easy.
	So if somebody, if you're enthusiastic about something and someone doesn't care, like I remember one of the first novels I wrote, the very first novel I wrote, I never finished it, was when I was 11 called By the Light of an Alien Sun.
	The second novel I wrote, which I think is lost at the moment, was called The Jealous War.
	And I actually based one of the characters in it on a friend of mine.
	And I gave the book to my friend.
	He went up to Alaska.
	Of all things, we're sort of back in a pattern here, but he went up to Alaska to work for the summer.
	And you all know he's not that busy up in Alaska because he's like in a tent in the wilderness.
	And I gave him the book to read, and he never read it.
	Literally based a character on.
	He was stuck and just never read it, right?
	And I remember when I first started doing this show, I was like frenzied, frenzied with excitement that I could talk to the world about philosophy, not just in the moment, but for all time.
	You know, like even if you have a big radio show from the distant past, it's mostly gone.
	I mean, now it's been sort of resurrected by some people, but a lot of this stuff is just gone, was never recorded and is never republished.
	And so maybe you were talking to a lot of people, but it's ephemeral.
	It just kind of comes and goes.
	So the idea that I could carve these great conversations into the DNA of the planet for all time, I was just wild with excitement about podcasting.
	And I have remained as wild with excitement about podcasting low these 20 plus years.
	And my friends at the time didn't get it.
	They weren't particularly enthusiastic.
	They didn't really listen to what it is that I was doing.
	And no, thank you.
	You can't be more enthusiastic than the least enthusiastic person in your life.
	And so you have to choose your companions very carefully because the vampires of not being interested, oh, that's kind of boring.
	Or, you know, just talk about yourself, man.
	It's like, you know, yeah, whatever.
	You know, this is sort of the dead, slow sludge that grinds down and pours over and acidifies and disassembles people's throbbing, beating, red-blooded hearts of passion.
	It's gruesome.
	It's gruesome.
	And so, yet, there will be people who reject you.
	Fantastic.
	Again, I know as a young man, it's like all the women where the relationships didn't work out led me to my wife.
	All of the jobs that I had problems with and quit.
	I was once or twice fired, but mostly I quit.
	All of those jobs led me to the greatest occupation in the known universe.
	Nobody will ever have a better job.
	I know it's kind of tough.
	Please donate.
	Freedomaine.com slash donate.
	Well, yes, I mean, I got to eat, but nobody will ever have a better job than me, in my view.
	Obviously, it's better for other people, other jobs are better.
	But to be the first public philosopher having these kinds of conversations in the world, well, it'll never happen again.
	Everybody comes after me, has me as the example.
	It'll never happen again.
	I will never, ever, the world will never, ever, no will ever, ever experience what I've experienced over the last 20 years as a public philosopher.
	And again, it's the audience, it's the technology for the most part.
	There's me, of course, in the mix as well.
	But I'm mad enthusiastic.
	You know, I finished recording my audio book this morning and then I'm like, oh, man, eight hours till my show?
	That sucks.
	And I was looking forward to the show, looking forward to the conversation.
	It is, of course, a great honor and a privilege to do all of that.
	And the people who were sort of negative or indifferent or even hostile to what it is that I were doing, I mean, their lives.
	What's happened with their lives?
	I mean, they've just done kind of useless nonsense stuff.
	I occasionally will check up.
	Of course, I'm not going to go into any identifying details, but I do occasionally check up on people from my past.
	And, you know, one guy who had a lot of potential was he posted something about how he was just biking around with his little backpack and doing not much of much.
	And this is pretty sad in your late 50s to not have done something great with your life.
	And this is certainly somebody who could have.
	So, yeah, if people are kind of down on your enthusiasms, all they're doing is that they lock themselves in a dungeon.
	You could just walk through the door.
	You know, they're simply because what they do to you is what they do to themselves.
	Yeah, people's response to your enthusiasm has nothing to do with you.
	Nothing to do with you.
	It's a production.
	I see what you're saying.
	Yeah.
	They're saying, oh, shoot, man.
	This guy, if he's enthusiastic, he's going to raise my dormant enthusiasm, which has been punished and broken and beaten down by school, or could even be bad churches and bad parents.
	It's all been broken down.
	And what happens is if they see your enthusiasm, their own enthusiasm starts banging its teacup on the bars of the prison and starts hollering out, calling out for help.
	God, there's someone out there who's enthusiastic.
	Help me.
	For God's sakes, help me.
	Get me out.
	And then the jailers are like, shut up.
	Shut up.
	Sit in the back.
	Put that kid tin cup down or there's no food for you for a week.
	Help me.
	Shut up.
	That's all that's happening in their heads.
	Yeah.
	It's got nothing to do with you.
	That you have that analogy, especially because there's a group of psychology or there's a school of psychology that looks at the mind like this, where you have kind of like the guardians of your inner child.
	And it's like those guardians would be trying to keep someone from being enthusiastic because they don't want that inner child to be hurt.
	And so when they see that in somebody else, then they say that.
	Yeah, that means that they're treating the whole world as an abusive parent or a bad teacher.
	And that means the bad guys win.
	Right.
	You can't let the bad guys win in life as a whole.
	I mean, I was punished a lot for enthusiasm when I was a kid.
	I mean, I was beaten, caned, yelled at, humiliated, mocked, teased.
	I was, yeah, of course.
	And that's a shame, you know, but enthusiasm is sunlight to a vampire of this sort of dysthemic or sort of depressed or bitter or the self-abdicated or the people who squelch their own ambitious ambitions.
	And I mean, but you don't let the bad guys win, right?
	I mean, okay, I had no choice as a kid to get punished for my enthusiasms.
	That's fine.
	It's a shame, but that's that sucks.
	But I'm not going to then let them win and let them dominate and dictate my relationship to my enthusiasm for the rest of my life.
	That would be terrible.
	And it would suck.
	And I've always been trying to encourage other people in their enthusiasms.
	I did a call a couple of days ago with a guy who was trapped in sort of the hellscape of woke theater culture.
	And, you know, we had a lot of fun coming up with a fun set of play ideas that could really make fun of the woke stuff and be really creative.
	And that's so, I mean, really enthusiastic.
	You know, when people are like, hey, man, I sing.
	I'm like, hey, man, play your song.
	Let's hear your thing.
	I mean, I'm keen on that kind of stuff.
	I'm very, I love to cultivate enthusiasm.
	I love to be enthusiastic.
	All of that stuff is really, really important.
	And so when people are squelching on your enthusiasm, it's got nothing to do with you.
	Now, as a young man, and this is perfectly natural, and I was the same way.
	So this is annoying older dude stuff.
	But as a young man, you take things personally, which makes sense, but it's not true.
	It's not true.
	If you're enthusiastic about something and people roll their eyes or they don't care or whatever, it's like.
	It's just themselves that they're dealing with.
	It's got nothing to do with you.
	They're not judging you.
	All that's happening is a prisoner within them is sensing an external ally and they've got to drive you off.
	That's a good thing to keep in mind.
	Yeah.
	And that is an interesting jump that you mentioned there where somebody has initially, their view of objective reality is the reality they grew up in under their parents.
	And so breaking out of that and viewing reality and discovering the truth for yourself instead of just living in the same framework that you were brought up in under your parents, that's kind of an interesting stage of development right there.
	That probably happens around the early 20s.
	Well, and that's why I was saying to you about your mom, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	So if your thing is, well, mom's not particularly interested, so we can't really talk about it.
	So I have to find a woman who's interested in the same stuff as opposed to just interested in you and is, I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen a topic that you don't care about, but is presented by somebody who's so enthusiastic about it that you just get swept along.
	Yeah.
	Right. I don't know.
	And yeah, it is the enthusiasm that matters and the excitement that matters.
	And it would be interesting, you know, if you have a conversation with your mom and just really enthusiastic about stuff, it'd be interesting.
	Have this, have this, you know, you can try this as an experiment because I'm an empiricist, right?
	So never think about, I mean, don't care about my theories.
	Just take him, take him out for a spin.
	So go with your mom and be really enthusiastic about something that you are really enthusiastic about and see what her response is like.
	Does she squelch it?
	Does she shut it down?
	You know, maybe she's also into the murder documentaries because she's killed some of her own enthusiasm.
	And she needs to keep frightening her own enthusiasm with repeated external dangers or something like that.
	Like a Jungian reaction or something there.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that'd be interesting.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	See how your family responds to your enthusiasm.
	And I think that will help you understand the barriers that you might be facing when trying to get other people to be enthusiastic or to match you in enthusiasm, if that makes sense.
	Okay.
	Yeah. That does make a lot of sense.
	I appreciate your time a lot.
	Thanks, man.
	I appreciate it.
	Great chat.
	All right.
	Go be enthusiastic.
	All right.
	James, did you come back?
	James going once, going twice.
	Hello, hello, hello.
	Hello.
	Hello. All right.
	Queen voice.
	Yes, no.
	Things are changing.
	I see icons moving.
	But James is, I think, having tech issues.
	All right.
	That's no worries.
	Rusty, Rusty.
	I hear clicks.
	Hello.
	Rusty.
	Yes.
	Hello. Yeah.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Good to talk to you.
	I do have a question for you.
	I was thinking a lot about the founding fathers here in the United States and, you know, especially Thomas Jefferson and their kind of vision for the country, right?
	You know, Jefferson thought that an agrarian country with independent yayum and farmers would kind of be the ideal.
	And that he kind of sorry.
	Just sorry.
	No, no problem.
	No problem.
	Go ahead.
	I never actually heard the word pronounced.
	But anyway, yeah, that these independent farmers would kind of be the ideal citizen.
	I mean, you know, do you agree with that more or less?
	Do you think that's a decent assessment?
	Could you give a bit more background about that?
	Well, yeah.
	So, I mean, you look at, I think also the other thing I forgot to mention, you know, Thomas Jefferson distrusted big city politics and he thought that inevitably they became corrupt political machines, which, you know, I think is certainly the case.
	You know, you look at places like New York City, you know, throughout its history, it's had a lot of political machines like Tammany Hall being a classic example.
	And so, yeah, it seems to me that like when you get large industrial countries, the politics become more corrupt.
	I think that was kind of the thought.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And from your perspective, what went wrong with the American experiment?
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, well, I'll say this, and it seems like there are too many large cities that control everything.
	You know, you look at, you know, I'm in Pennsylvania and, you know, Pennsylvania is a pretty rural place except for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
	And, you know, they just totally dominate the state.
	You know, so it seems like there's a lot of centralized power.
	And why do you think that Jefferson had this idea that you kind of had to work with the land to be good as being in the republic?
	Yeah, well, I think that people that are self-sufficient and independent, they seem to live healthier lives.
	You know, I think they're more grounded and based in reality.
	I think there is, I think there is something a little like, I don't know, dehumanizing or alienating is the right word about like modern industrial work.
	And I think it kind of definitely does distort like the social structure in some ways.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, I've said this before, but it's been a while, so I'll keep it brief.
	But I don't trust people who've never worked with their hands.
	I just don't.
	Sure.
	And the reason for that is they're too prone to manipulation.
	See, when you're dealing with bare factual material reality, you can't manipulate it.
	You know, I had to, when I was gold panning, I had to drill down to the bedrock and get the drill to scoop up the, because gold is heavy, so it settles right on the bedrock.
	So if you're looking for gold, it's going to be on the bedrock, which could be 20, 30, 40 feet down.
	So I had to hump all of these drills around these giant bits and set it up and drill down and then pan it down and all that kind of stuff.
	And you can't manipulate any of that.
	You know, you can't whine to the earth in the way that, you know, if you miss a test, you can whine to the teacher for a rewrite.
	Right.
	And you can't show a little leg and get a free drink out in the wilderness, right?
	You have to.
	So you have to deal with bare prosaic material reality.
	Now, it wasn't like I loved manual labor.
	I was fine with it, but it wasn't like I loved manual labor when I was younger.
	But man alive, was it good for philosophy?
	And this is why a lot of great philosophers come out of manual labor, come out of particularly the military.
	I mean, think of Socrates sort of famously, a famous soldier and so on.
	And the people who don't work with their hands, who don't train themselves on prosaic, bare material, practical reality, tend to be full of the most ungodly bullshit known to man because they could just make stuff up because their words have kind of magic power.
	I mean, you know, you think of the words that have been supercharged with negativity these days, right?
	Racist.
	And, you know, we can sort of go through all of these terms.
	You know, people are completely paranoid about Nazis, even though there are tens of thousands of outright Marxists in Western universities.
	And so you look at these words and it's a way to threaten people.
	It's a way to undermine people.
	I mean, somebody, you know, when I was sort of at the peak of my reach and sort of quote fame in sort of 2015 to 2020, then people could have just out-debated me.
	They could have proven me wrong and they could have reduced my clout by proving me wrong, but that would have taken a lot of study and would have taken a lot of ability.
	And I would have fought like hell, as I did in debates, right?
	I still remember, was it Vosh I think I was debating with?
	And he said that the workers should own the means of production.
	And I asked him if he hired people to work on his shows.
	And he said, yes.
	And I said, well, have you given them access to your studio so they can make their own shows?
	He's like, no.
	I'm like, so you don't believe that the workers should own the means of production because your studio is the means of production and you don't actually do it.
	You just pay them as laborers and don't give them access to ownership of the means of production, right?
	You should give them your studio, right?
	So anyway, so that was a good argument because I like it when you don't have to go outside the argument for the for the facts.
	So they could have done that, but they didn't, right?
	So what people did, as you know, or maybe, no, maybe you don't, but what they did was they just attached these supercharged negative labels to me and then just got me deplatformed that way, right?
	So that is like fabricating a crime against a boxer rather than getting in the ring.
	And it's not very honorable fighting.
	But the people who just rely on language for their power and control in the world are extremely corrupt and dangerous as a whole.
	Now, these show up in the original Conan.
	Thalsa Doom.
	I don't know why I remember that, but I do.
	James Lille Jones played this wizard, right?
	And Conan has to have these giant muscles and he becomes a gladiator and learns how to fight and he spends years developing his muscles and his fighting techniques.
	And Thalsa Doom is running a cult and he just gestures for a woman to step off a cliff and she steps off a cliff and dies.
	And he says, well, that's real power.
	And so wizards are people who use their words to alter reality, right?
	Summon food, right?
	Or turn water into wine or to cast a fireball or whole person or charm person or whatever it is.
	So the people who they have spells.
	And this is common through almost all of human society, all of human history, witch doctors and wizards and warlocks and witches and so on.
	These are people who manipulate reality through language rather than through their hands.
	And so obviously, I don't know exactly what Jefferson was thinking, but I assume it had something to do with the fact that when you start or when you end up with a class of people who can make their money through manipulation, through sophistry, through lying, through bullshit, the traditional enemy of Socrates was the sophists, people who claimed to know things and charged to prove things that they did not in fact know and could not in fact prove.
	And so when you end up with a giant class of people who make their money propaganda, bullshit, lies, and so on, then you lose touch with reality.
	And you become a sort of, there's a whole class of people who think that words are real.
	And they react with verbal abuse and insults whenever their worldview is threatened.
	And of course, you know, you can see them on social media all the time.
	They certainly show up regularly, you know, dozens of times a day, if not more, on my channel.
	Like I'll post something that's factual and they'll be like, you bigot, you racist, you what?
	It's like, okay, this, it's just a, it's just a word.
	Like it doesn't, it doesn't mean anything.
	You know, like you insult.
	Oh, I remember this guy.
	I think someone posted this today.
	Oh, I remember this guy.
	This is the incel who obsessed about Taylor Swift's eggs.
	You know, it's like, I was pointing out a fact about female fertility and so on.
	And, but, you know, they just, they just get angry and upset, and then they just use their words rather than any sort of material good.
	And they get resources.
	So, so, guilt is one, right?
	So, poor people who've made bad decisions can pretend to be victims and appeal to the guilt of rich people and then get resources that way, right?
	So, a farmer who's got a bit of extra food, somebody can, you know, pretend to be a victim and hopefully guilt the farmer into giving them some food, which is a whole lot easier than actually going out and growing your food.
	And of course, there are people who are victims and whose charity we should provide them charity and so on.
	But it's way too easy these days to pretend to be a victim and then get a government program to give you resources.
	And so it's like, I can't feed my kids, right?
	All the snap stuff that's going on in America right now.
	It's like, I can't feed my kids.
	And it's like, well, you know, don't breed them if you can't feed them.
	That's not, I mean, the system can't sustain itself.
	So you should probably make better decisions in the long run.
	And so when you get people who can complain their way into getting resources rather than having to work for them directly, you lose touch with reality.
	And a sort of practical and empirical system like a constitutional republic or a Bill of Rights Republic is very tough to sustain when people lose touch with reality.
	Sorry, I hope that wasn't too long an answer, but that's sort of my thoughts on it.
	No, that was good.
	I hadn't thought of it in that way.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I mean, the amount of work that I had to put in to get some gold was insane.
	But, you know, women can get gold from men just by whining and complaining sometimes, right?
	For sure.
	So it's a whole lot easier to whine and complain.
	Well, Susie got a gold ring.
	Why don't I have a gold ring?
	Whatever it is, right?
	Than to do the horrendous work that I had to do to get gold.
	And when you can get a lot of resources by complaining, your system is not long to sustain because you get more people whining and complaining and playing the victim than you do actually producing things.
	And it's a tsunami that overcomes the productive.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, no, it definitely does.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	Well, like I was saying earlier about like industrialization, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
	I mean, you know, it does seem to me that like the early America, you know, being far more agrarian kind of before the Industrial Revolution kind of hit here, you know, it had a totally different feel to it.
	And, you know, the society functioned a lot different in a different way because I think these massive cities didn't exist yet.
	I think there is a lot of truth to the cities being, you know, corrupting influence.
	And, you know, I don't know.
	It does seem to be, there does seem to be a tension between, you know, being an industrialized country, but also trying to, how do I say it?
	Like in Germany, there is no one major city that dominates the whole country, you know, like Paris does, France or New York does America, right?
	They have a more distributed system, you know.
	So I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but I don't know if it'd be possible to kind of have an industrial country, but, you know, kind of structure it such that you don't have one city that just totally dominates.
	Yeah, I mean, that generally has to do with the political tax base.
	So, of course, when you have the country, you have far fewer voters and taxpayers per square mile than, say, downtown Manhattan.
	So, in a statist system where politicians are hungry for votes, they focus on the cities because you can get a thousand people to come to your rally in the city pretty easily, but it's pretty tough to get people to drive half an hour an hour or more to come to your rally in the country.
	People in the country tend to be more skeptical of political promises, or at least they used to be until the government started funding all of this farm stuff.
	So I think it's not so much a function of the cities, it's a function of statism.
	And people in the cities can use the state to get resources in a way that they can't really in the country.
	So in the country, if you're hungry, you can go and knock on the farmer's door, like in the past, and you say to the farmer, I'm hungry.
	I have no food.
	And what does the farmer say?
	What does the farmer say?
	Tough luck.
	That's great.
	Who knocks on?
	Okay, I don't know.
	Have you ever worked on a farm?
	No, never.
	Okay.
	I mean, from what you know, was work on a farm ever done.
	No, I'm sure it's endless.
	No, it's never done.
	So if someone knocks on the farmer's door and says, I want food, what does the farmer say?
	I'm busy.
	No.
	He says, hey, man, I'd love to feed you.
	You're able-bodied enough to come up to my door.
	So I'll tell you what, I'll give you a big meal.
	Just do some work for me.
	Okay.
	Right?
	In the same way, now, Christian charities used to work this way too.
	They'd have some single mom who had a kid with the wrong guy and the guy ran off or whatever.
	And she'd go to the charity.
	And they'd say, okay, we'll help you out, but no more kids.
	You can't have any more kids.
	This is the Catholic charities that used to do this.
	Well, any number of Christian charities would work to help out the single mothers because they didn't want the single mothers falling down into the usual historical pit of single motherhood, which was prostitution, right?
	So they would maybe offer to take the kid in while she got herself sorted out, maybe got a husband or something like that.
	But they very much would say, no more kids.
	And if the woman had more kids, then they would cut her off.
	Okay.
	And so a charity required some discipline.
	So if you go to the farmer and say, I'm really hungry, well, he's not going to ask you to work before he gives you food because you probably don't have a lot of energy if you're really hungry.
	But he's going to say, hey, I'd love to help.
	You know, go milk.
	You know, I'll give you some food, but go milk some cows, go pick up some chicken eggs, go, you know, fix the fence on the back 40, whatever.
	You know, at the end of the sort of farm work that needs to be done.
	And that's what people would do.
	But that's what you have to do in the country because you've got to go up and ask face to face.
	In the city, though, you can run to the politician.
	And then the politician can go and get all the resources to hand it out to you.
	And then rather than diminishing people's dysfunction, the politician enhances that dysfunction.
	Sure.
	So in the country, if you need food, you go to the farmer, you say, Can you give me some food?
	He says, Yes.
	Can you give me some work?
	And you give them some work.
	If you're a decent worker, he might keep you on.
	Or he might recommend to a friend of his that if he, even if he doesn't need someone, he probably knows someone who needs someone.
	So he will recommend you to someone else and all of this kind of good stuff, right?
	So in the country and in private charities, you have to change your behavior for the better.
	And the purpose is to get you off the assistance, right?
	So in the city and in politics, the purpose is to buy your votes and to keep you permanently dependent so your votes can be guaranteed, right?
	So it's a complete opposite motivation.
	And I would imagine that Jefferson was probably thinking about something like that as well.
	Because I talked about this on the Peter Schiff show many years ago, Speenham Land, S-P-E-E-N-H-A-M-L-A-N-D.
	You can do a search for data at FDRpodcast.com.
	This was, I think, in the 17th century, 16th century.
	This was a form of the welfare state that was put into a town or a county called Speedham Land in England, where they took from the productive and they gave to the unproductive.
	They took from those who had excess resources and they gave to those who were poor.
	And of course, all the people who were competent left and it went into a multi-century recession because nobody would.
	And I use actually some of this for my novel Just Boar.
	You can get the novel Just Poor, which is a great book at freedomain.com slash books.
	It's free and you should really check it out.
	Lovely language and great characters.
	And so they had already seen these experiments.
	Of course, anybody who'd read about the Roman Empire knew exactly what bread and circus is, panum et circum.
	The bread and circuses thing was that you just take from the productive, you give to the unproductive, and then your society collapses and so on because it dissolves the family and breeds hedonism and licentiousness.
	Licentiousness, sorry.
	So they would, of course, as very classically trained scholars.
	And having heard about the disaster of Speedhamland and the disasters of the Roman Empire and so on, they would have said, yeah, cities are very corrupt because you've concentrated the tax base to the point where it's efficient to tax them and pay for a dependent class that you can rely on voting, whereas you can't, I mean, it's pretty easy to collect taxes in the city.
	You send a bunch of taxpayers out to the country.
	You know, a lot of them aren't going to come back.
	It's pretty hard to collect taxes in the country back in the day.
	So I think that he thought that that would be, it wouldn't create an underclass and it would be more resistant to escalating taxation, if that makes sense.
	No, it does.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	And we are going to perhaps try.
	Oh, am I going to get caught into James one more time?
	Jimmy, Jambo, James.
	There we go.
	Here.
	There you go.
	Woohoo.
	I'm going to go off topic.
	Gentle parenting and picky eaters.
	How did you deal with that when you were raising your daughter?
	I have two boys, three and six.
	Sorry, you said gentle parenting and what?
	Picky eaters, like the ever-going struggle to feed them and not eat the food that we cook them.
	Did you have to deal with that?
	Or do you have any tips or tips?
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I mean, for sure.
	So tell me what's going on with your sons.
	Give me the age and what's going on with their food.
	Three and six.
	The six-year-old, my oldest is finally starting to eat like meat again.
	It's funny.
	Like they ate everything, then they hit like two and a half and then they could say no for two and they could say no and then they just what have you.
	So now it's just, you know, they'll eat everything with sugar in it.
	I eat fruit, bread.
	They'll eat lots of dairy products, which is great.
	But it's always the fight.
	So it's like, do you just cook the stuff you know they'll eat and then introduce foods that they probably won't eat, but at least give me the opportunity.
	If they say no, so be it.
	Or you just go old school 90s parents.
	You're not allowed to leave the table to eat your food.
	No, you don't do that.
	Yeah, you don't do that for sure.
	So is the preferences that they have with regards to food, would you say they are nutritionally dangerous or relatively sad?
	I'd say like in the middle.
	Like I'm sure you can't just eat fruit, bread, and dairy products.
	You know what I mean?
	My oldest is finally starting to eat some red meat, mostly just steak.
	We'll like casually sneak in like eggs and sneak in other proteins in their food without them noticing.
	But I would say my kids eat pretty good.
	Like we're not like there's no like out of the box covered in plastic crap here.
	We're pretty good on that.
	Okay, so what is the specific problem that you are trying to solve if they're eating relatively well?
	Well, I guess I guess that's it.
	Are we just expecting too much out of them?
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Like, if I make a certain type of dinner and they're just like, no, it's yucky.
	I don't want to eat it.
	Instead of making them the usual stuff they eat plus what I make, like, is it wrong of me to think, no, they should eat what we make?
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah, yeah, okay.
	I got it.
	Now, when they say something is yucky, do you believe them?
	Yes and no.
	Mostly.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, you views yes and no, right?
	It's important.
	Children can be lying, deceptive on men of preferences.
	So, you know, God, God love them for it.
	It's worth a try, right?
	So is it like, oh, I can't eat this, or it's just like, I would rather have mac and cheese?
	There's been like a meltdown before, and then we're just like, hey, it's gone too much.
	So we don't like put them anymore.
	But I think it is, no, I'd rather just have mac and cheese.
	Okay.
	So you've got a six-year-old, right?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	So I will give the speech that I would give to the six-year-old or have given to the six-year-old, and then you can tell me what your six-year-old would tell me in return, right?
	Okay.
	So I would say, hey, buddy, it's family problem time.
	We have a family problem.
	And I'd love to get your thoughts.
	Love to get your ideas.
	Now, what would you most like to eat every night if you could?
	Do you want me to answer that?
	I do.
	If I was my oldest, it'd be like, you know, the things he likes, probably like peanut butter and sandwiches or like ice cream, yogurt, cheese, apples, oranges, bananas, stuff like that.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And I said, so that's fantastic stuff.
	Myself, I'm a sugar junkie.
	I would eat chocolate, cheesecake, ice cream, you know, maybe some peanut butter, but it would have to have a lot of sugar in it because I, as I said, like, I'm a sugar junkie.
	And that's what I would like to eat for dinner.
	And you don't want to change your answer at all.
	Like, you're going to go with, oh, it's fruit.
	It's so good for you.
	Right.
	So you're not going to be able to do it.
	My kid would answer your way.
	I'm just, yeah.
	No.
	Would what?
	My child would probably answer the way you answered it.
	But no, I get it.
	So he's because he might have given you like the correct answer.
	And then it's like, but I myself would, you know, my daughter came home the other day.
	She was System Friends for Halloween with some coffee crisps.
	And I'm not even that big a fan of coffee crisp, but I was like, oh, sugar.
	It's my kryptonite, right?
	So I'd be like, well, that's what, that's what I want to eat.
	I would, I would just want to eat that like all day.
	But I can't.
	And do you know why?
	No way.
	So your kid wouldn't know why.
	I think he would say no why.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, so when we were living in the wild, right?
	I mean, have you ever noticed that fruit and candy are both brightly colored?
	Yes.
	And so the reason why fruit is brightly colored and why we're attracted to sweet, brightly colored things is that fruit has stuff that we totally need to live.
	Like if you don't have the right kinds of fruit, like your teeth can fall out and it's just really, it's pretty gross, right?
	So we kind of like things that are brightly colored and sweet and nature gave us that so we'd pursue fruit and so on, right?
	So but fruit was usually kind of red.
	And so that's why we kind of had to hunt it out or plant it or something like that.
	Now, You don't cook, right, kid?
	You don't, you don't actually get up on the stool and you don't, you don't cook stuff, right?
	He helps out, but yeah, obviously not.
	Yeah, right.
	Now, when you see mommy or daddy cooking, how long does it take to make a meal for four?
	Okay, um, a long time, a long time, right?
	A long time.
	I mean, longer than even one of daddy's stories, and that's a long time.
	That may be more personal to my household, but uh, whatever it is that makes sense, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, like half a movie at least, right?
	If a movie's two hours, it's like an hour to make the meal, and then there's all the cleanup, right?
	Now, do you think it takes more time or less time to make four different meals or one meal with four different plates?
	More time, four different meals, right?
	In fact, it takes a lot longer.
	Like, instead of it being an hour, it's two hours easy, right?
	So, are you just, I don't mean to cut you through, you're just trying to like boil down very simple logic?
	Because my six-year-old would follow this, I feel like.
	Yeah, yeah, but I'm trying to do it at the six-year-old level, right?
	Okay, okay, so then I would say, so if we all have different meals, we get an hour less playtime a night.
	Oh, I like that, okay, because true, right?
	Yeah, now I myself, I would rather play with you guys than stand over a hot stove.
	Is that like I assume that you would rather have an hour extra of playtime with daddy and mommy than look at our butts standing in front of the stove, right?
	Oh, yeah, okay.
	So, here's the challenge, my friend.
	We all like different things, so we have to figure out if is there a way so we can get this extra hour of playtime a night.
	And listen, I tell you, I'm not gonna, if I save, if I save an hour cooking, I'm not gonna spend it on the phone.
	Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play, right?
	I want to play.
	I want to have more fun time for us together.
	But to do that, we got to figure out what we're going to eat.
	Now, we can't just eat what I want, right?
	Listen, I got to tell you, kid, that was my first solution because I'm bigger and I'm taller and I'm stronger and I've got a louder voice.
	So, I was just going to be like, my way, you will eat what I want, even if it's monkey elbows, right?
	I mean, there's a Chinese food place not too far down the street, so anyway, so right next to the veterinary, too.
	No, anyways, yeah, right next to the cashier.
	Um, so, so, my, my first plan was that we eat what I want.
	And what do you think of that plan?
	No, yeah, no, I'm just picturing, yeah, I get you, yeah, yeah, no, no, come on, it's an extra hour of playtime, and all you have to do is eat everything that I want, including dolphin noses, yeah, so he's gonna say no, right?
	Yeah, okay.
	Now, what if we eat only what your brother wants and you have to eat everything he wants forever?
	What do you think of that?
	See, I could see my, like, I could see my oldest agreeing with that, but yeah, no, I get you, yeah, he's not, he's not, you know, because he says he's not gonna want his brother getting his way the whole time.
	Come on, you gotta, all right, so it's like, okay, okay, okay.
	Now, do you like what mom eats all the time?
	Uh, no.
	No, okay.
	So, so the next thing was not me with my monkey elbows, not your brother, and not mom with her like, oh, I'm gonna have some couscous or something like that, right?
	Right.
	So is it fair if one person gets their way the whole time?
	No. No.
	Okay, so what do we do?
	We work together.
	Yeah, yeah, kid.
	Don't give me the standard answer.
	That's just some Dr. Seuss nonsense.
	And I appreciate the effort.
	We make it fair.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	Give me a real answer or something, something that's working.
	I'm trying to put myself in a six-year-old.
	I would be like, we eat what I want.
	Like, I don't know.
	No, no, because like we can't just eat what you want any more than we could just like we are you already said we can't just eat what I want or your brother wants or mom wants we have to so what do we do I'm stumped you got me well we you ready for a big word here let's do it we negotiate oh okay and
	that's now the first thing we do with negotiation is bump bum bum take turns oh I know it's the worst it's the worst it is the worst we gotta take turns but it does actually kind of work right so you know if if you guys have a sky spinner or something like that what do you do you you take turns right one person throws it the next person throws it or whatever it is you got a frisbee one person throws it and the next person throws it so
	we should I think it's fair or tell me what you think if we think about or try and work with just like taking turns talking like meal plan turns like tonight we have X tomorrow we have Y well you know and I would pull out a big sheet of paper right oh I got you yeah okay and I would say okay so dad gets dolphin noses and monkey elbows and maybe seagull butts right that's and I would write that out and
	maybe drew a little do you want to do the pictures or should I do the pictures because you know we got to make sure that it's vivid right George is a good drawer but anyway okay so that that would be Monday that would be Monday eyeball salad you know any number of things right and then let's say you get the next you get the next day what would you make or what would you want to eat you like is it my turn again
	sorry i'm trying this way so so listen kid right what it's at monday we get we get elephant ear uh tortillas and and and tuesday it's your choice what do you have oh i got you uh yeah okay probably throw pancakes at me or something but yeah okay that's you know we we can start we can start with that
	hey i like pancakes let's start with that okay and then you get the little brother involved you got to obviously take it down a notch in terms of the language and then and then uh you say uh mom wait should she be last do you think she'd be okay with that no she did she get first no she'd be first okay well you know no we can flip for it or rock paper scissors Scissors, man.
	We could, we could figure because we want to make it fair, right?
	Yeah.
	So then you start coming up with a rotational meal plan, right?
	Now, if the kids are involved in the decision and they understand why it tends to work.
	Okay.
	And you're also teaching them how to solve problems without aggression, but rather with negotiation, right?
	No, I like that.
	Like you're basically reasoning with them and you're doing it in a way that makes them fun and involved.
	Right.
	And then you have to have, okay, so you've got the meal plan worked out, right?
	And I'm sure you can come up with something, maybe give them a bit of indulgence for the first couple of weeks and then, you know, maybe try and align it a little bit more or whatever, right?
	And then say, I say, okay, what happens?
	What's going to happen if we change our minds?
	Like, what if I put out some lovely monkey butts and you guys, for some completely crazy reason, don't want to eat them, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, what do we do, right?
	Yeah, I can't.
	I don't know.
	No, because you, because when you come up with a, um, when you come up with a plan, you also have to come up with what do we do when we disagree.
	Oh, I guess that's safe.
	Okay, back up.
	Yeah, like, I guarantee you, like, we got a plan here, and that's great.
	But I guarantee you, it's probably going to be mom.
	It really is probably going to be mom.
	Because, you know, if mom's not there, throw her under the bus always.
	But, you know, mom's going to sit down and she's going to be like, oh, I don't want any more pancakes.
	I want my patchouli salad.
	I want my five-bean burrito or something like that, right?
	All right.
	Now, what do we do?
	So I guess that's when we got to get them to come to the compromise.
	Well, you have to have a way of resolving disputes.
	I personally, I'm a big fan of suggesting this to my daughter, arm wrestling.
	Okay. Because I'm the strongest.
	And what would your kids say if you suggest arm wrestling?
	My oldest would probably like, he'd do it, try to fight me for it.
	He would.
	He would.
	Hopefully you'd win.
	Or you could say, I think in any dispute, the tallest member of the family should win.
	Oh, then he'd be like, no, because obviously I would win.
	But yeah, I got you.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So, so, and then ask him, like, what should we do?
	I mean, there's going to be disagreements, right?
	Of course.
	I mean, we all have, we're all strong-minded people.
	We're going to, what should I, I don't know what should we do?
	And get them to come up with what you should do.
	So you, okay, you could like on the theme of keeping them involved, making them part of the decision.
	Right.
	And again, it differs for, it differs for each family and so on.
	But because you don't want the kids to think that an agreement is just magic and it just lasts is like physics.
	Agreements, people change their minds, right?
	And they're like, you know, I know I agree, but I don't want this, right?
	Well, what should we do?
	And you want to do that beforehand, not during.
	Like, you know, whenever you have a contract in business, they, you know, they say, if there's a disagreement, it will be resolved in this court or you've got to go to non-binding arbitration or whatever.
	I got something.
	Oh, awesome.
	Hey, Stefan, I got to.
	Yeah, no, no, no problem.
	No problem.
	I'll finish up and really appreciate the question, right?
	No, appreciate you.
	Take care.
	No, no, thanks, man.
	Yeah.
	So when you're dealing with kids or anyone, really, you have to say, okay, well, what happens if we disagree?
	If we disagree, how are we going to work it out?
	And you want to teach them to negotiate rules and also to negotiate what happens if someone wants to change the rules or if someone disagrees with an outcome.
	Otherwise, you're setting up these rules and then somebody's going to disagree or want to break the rules or change the rules or something like that.
	And you have to have a way of right.
	And you can make it seriously fun, right?
	So you can get an Auga button.
	So an Auga button, you can sort of get them.
	It makes it right.
	And that's like the disagreement button, right?
	So if we have a disagreement, we have to push the Auga button.
	And then you have to, you want to work out how to resolve disagreements in your family before those disagreements come up, because that's like trying to bolt the planes on the wing while you're taking off for the airport, right?
	So you really want to negotiate with your kids what happens when there's significant disagreements before those disagreements arise.
	And I don't, again, I don't know what it, what it could necessarily be, but you know, maybe, you know, we can't disagree every time because then there's no point having rules.
	But maybe if somebody really doesn't feel like daddy's food on Monday, let's say Monday is daddy's food, if somebody really doesn't feel like it, then once every two weeks, they can just have a bowl of cereal.
	Once every two weeks, you have a get out of the monkey butt bowl getaway card or something like that.
	So get the kids to understand what the challenge is, give them a reward, which of course is, hey, man, if we don't have to cook for four different meals, we get much more playtime and we actually save a lot of money too.
	And so, you know, maybe we can go to an arcade once every two weeks with all the money we've saved or something like that.
	So there's a reason why there's a problem.
	There's a benefit to solving the problem.
	You're appealing to sort of general fairness.
	And then you have to establish what's going to happen if there's a disagreement later on.
	And if you get all of that stuff sorted out in general, I mean, I mean, this is sort of my approach that we've taken in my family.
	And honestly, we have very few disagreements.
	And when we do have disagreements, we tend to resolve them pretty positively and quickly.
	And, you know, I hope I have some credibility here because my daughter's almost 17.
	So it's been a chunk of time.
	And it has worked out really, really well.
	So.
	All right.
	Well, I will stop here.
	And I do thank you everyone so much.
	Sorry for the slightly late start tonight.
	If you do want to listen to my new book, which again, obviously I would highly recommend.
	I'm very enthusiastic about this book.
	It's called Dissolution, Disolution.
	And you can get the feed, which makes it very easy to listen to the audiobook.
	You can get the feed by going to FDRurl.com slash locals and signing up for a local subscription.
	You can go to subscribestrattle.com slash free domain, or you can sign up for a subscription right here on X.
	So lots of love.
	We will talk to you guys Friday night.
	And I really appreciate your time today.
	Have yourself a beautiful evening, my friends.
	Lots of love.
	I'll talk to you since.

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