Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The Truth About Sports!

Jan. 15, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:26

The Truth About Sports!

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	Good evening, everybody.
	7.02 p.m., 14th of January, 2026.
	Ooh, one month till Valentine's Day.
	Hope you're having a lovely day.
	We are going to do the truth about sports.
	Now, I've done some of this work before in the past.
	Truth about the NFL and football.
	And not that I'm trying to make it all about me, but we might as well keep it interesting.
	No, so I love sports.
	I play sports.
	Gosh, what have I played?
	To varying degrees of competency.
	I was seventh best in Ontario in swimming way back in the day.
	I've done water polo.
	I've done cross-country running, sprinting, long jump, tennis, pickleball, soccer, cricket, although it's been a long time.
	A little bit of rugby, not Australian rules, because there were in fact rules.
	And went up baseball, played a lot of baseball, and never really done football.
	Tried out for the team, couldn't really follow the rules.
	I didn't really know what the rules were.
	Never found it too interesting.
	Too much standing around.
	Rock climbing, both with and without harnesses.
	Ping pong, barely a sport.
	Badminton, diving, not Jason Statham style, but yeah, I've never done really basketball.
	I liked volleyball, but I've never played.
	Oh, no, I played semi-pro, not semi-pro.
	I played in a league volleyball.
	I've won a couple of round robins in racket sports.
	Oh, squash.
	Love squash.
	Of course, I do weightlifting and cardio these days and all that.
	So, you know, I'm sure I've missed one or two.
	I'm okay.
	I'm pretty good at sports.
	I'm not great.
	I'm not terrible.
	Pretty good reflexes, but no staggering talent.
	Skiing, snowshoeing, cross-country and downhill skiing.
	So yeah, I like to move.
	I like to exercise.
	Big fan of sports.
	But oh my God, can I not stand watching sports?
	Maybe this is trauma from the first football game that I went to.
	One of my mother's boyfriends was trying to get in good and took me to a footer game, a football game, soccer, as it's also known.
	And I really, I'm not a total stimulus junkie, but my God, I wanted to chew my own arm off and beat myself to sleep with it because it was so boring.
	Was it two hours?
	Not one score, and then some kickoff at the end.
	Don't care.
	I've never been a sports watcher guy.
	I think I've watched maybe three sports games my entire life.
	And it's dumb.
	It's dumb.
	So yeah, I just know at the stadium.
	No, no, no.
	I'm curing all of this for you people.
	All of it is going away.
	You're going to have nothing left but free time after this presentation.
	So let's get to some facts.
	And I'm sorry, some of this is going to be covered up.
	I don't know how to move this wee thing here.
	I don't think there's a way to do it.
	Yeah, I don't think there's a way to do it.
	But that's all right.
	That's all right, Mama.
	Anyway you choose.
	All right.
	Well, what if I make that less wide?
	It's a little hard to read, right?
	Okay.
	Well, we'll make it.
	We'll make it wide.
	All right.
	So here's the important thing.
	Let's just run through some numbers here.
	This is important.
	This is going to change your relationship to this nonsense and get you doing something productive and purposeful in your life.
	So you know, bread and circuses.
	Why is it the government spends so much time, effort, energy, and money promoting sports?
	Because sports, watching sports makes you stupid.
	Watching sports is bread and circuses.
	It's welfare and stupid sports stuff.
	It's random allegiance.
	Of course, sports is training for war, which we don't really do anymore, except through fifth generation warfare, information and demographics.
	But we don't really do war anymore.
	So it's kind of pointless.
	And as a little kid, I must sound overly precocious, if not downright punchable.
	But yeah, as a little kid, I remember I was being, it was before I went to boarding school.
	So I must have been about five because I went to boarding school at six.
	And there was some kid who was like, West Ham, Crystal Palace sucks, because I was in the Crystal Palace League domain or whatever it was, right?
	It's like third or fourth division.
	And he was like, your team sucks.
	My team's great.
	And I'm like, but if I lived where you were and you lived where I was, we'd have the opposite.
	Like, it doesn't mean anything.
	I don't probably didn't phrase it quite like that, but I very vividly remember that conversation.
	You're just from there.
	I'm from here.
	Who cares?
	It's just accidental.
	You're just cheering on the color of your jerseys.
	And then, of course, at least when I was a kid, the people on the soccer team fakedly looked like me.
	Now it's all people from Kenya and the Indies.
	The West Indies.
	Anyway, so let's start.
	Let's start getting into some facts here.
	Facty facts.
	Percentage of the population considering themselves sports fans.
	US 47%.
	28% avid, 19% casual, and so on, right?
	Canada, 45 to 50% sports fans.
	UK, 50 to 60% sports fans.
	Western Europe, 45 to 55% sports fans.
	I'm sure it's even higher in South America and so on, right?
	So in the U.S., in the U.S., approximately 66% of the population age 13 or more identifies as sports fans.
	Sports is kind of satanic, so it actually should be 66.6%.
	This is about 186 million people and about four brains between them.
	Oh, hockey is fun to watch, probably the best, really violent lol.
	Well, this could also be punchable, and I'd agree with you.
	But when I was in the business world, we were partnered up with a company that was doing sports stuff.
	And we used to get these amazing tickets to go and see hockey games right like right by the goalie, right by the ice.
	And I remember, oh, penalty for icing.
	I'm like, it's ice hockey.
	It's all ice.
	What are we talking about?
	Anyway, so 16% Gen Z, 14 to 29, 30% millennials, 24% Gen X, and 30% boomers.
	Younger generations drive growth and engagement.
	Gen Z and millennials showing higher interest in women's sports.
	Social media consumption, blah, blah, blah.
	So I'm not going to go into this in more detail.
	66%.
	Hey, look at that.
	It's the same kind of number.
	And it would be interesting to break this down by race.
	You know, there's a sort of old joke in Canada.
	Are you a hockey Canadian or a basketball Canadian, right?
	That's sort of the old joke.
	CFL, Canadian Football League, NHL, National Hockey League, and so on, right?
	In the UK, 64% of the population are avid sports fans.
	James, if you could check this by race and let me know, I'd appreciate that because I wouldn't imagine that.
	I mean, avid sports fans, it's not like the people coming in from Bangladesh are very keen on British soccer, although I guess they'd be more cricket, critic, cricket-based people.
	Anyway, I'll get into that more detail.
	Western Europe, 80 to 92% additional content engagement among fans.
	Average time spent watching sports games per year.
	Oh, it's depressing.
	It's depressing.
	United States, 208 to 276 hours.
	Let's cheer the giant waste of time, space, effort, intellectual energy.
	And yay, to the ball being thrown down the field and the belly spilling over the belt because we're going to get to the calorie consumption and cortisol and snacks and all of that.
	Surveys indicate, survey says, avid fans watch about 120 games per year.
	NFL and games can be three hours long.
	But trust me, they can feel like the kind of thing that you need to half-sell your soul to to get out of purgatory.
	That's a Martin Luther joke.
	Anyway, so Comcast households average 23 hours a month, 276 a year.
	General fans, four hours a week, 208, right?
	So four to five hours a week.
	Now, oh, yeah, well, screen time, video game.
	I'll get all of that.
	Well, we'll get to that.
	We'll get to that.
	UK, three and a half hours a week on live sports.
	Football.
	Up to 21 hours a week during season, but averages are lower.
	That's a part-time job.
	Western Europe, similar to the UK.
	Younger fans prefer highlights up to five to six hours a week in peaks.
	Average money spent watching.
	Now, this is not opportunity costs of useless stuff, sorry, of useful stuff you could be doing rather than going, oh, which way is the ball going?
	The ball is going left.
	The ball is going right.
	This is good.
	This is bad.
	Ben says, if you donate to Steph during this presentation, some of the donation will be taxed and some of the tax will go to the destruction of a new sports stadium.
	Yes, you'll notice that the government is not spending money on giant philosophy schools, but sports ball!
	Which way is the orb going?
	Up, down, sideways, back.
	Who caught?
	Who dropped?
	Who hit?
	Who threw?
	Who caught?
	Who dropped?
	Who hit?
	Who threw?
	Boingy, boingy, boingy.
	Nothing but that.
	You watch the orb bouncing around and the brain leaves your body.
	So this is including costs for tickets, subscriptions and streaming and merchandise or paraphernalia.
	Apparel collectibles data is based on 2025 surveys.
	Figures are in US dollars for consistency, soon to be Bitcoin.
	United States, $1,600 US per year.
	What's that?
	About 4 million Canadian these days?
	Tenth of a Bitcoin.
	Anyway.
	So that's a lot.
	Hardcore fans, up to 4,785 millennials, a little over $2,000 a year.
	You idiots.
	I'm now squeaking with helium-based outrage.
	Canada, $1,200.
	$384 on media subs, $4,294, including Travel Merch, $1,000 to $1,500.
	Entertainment spending up 10% in 2025.
	What is considered a fan in this case?
	Watch a couple of times a week.
	How many hours claim to have a team?
	Bro, it's self-identified fans.
	I broke it down at the beginning.
	If you showed up late, don't ask for a repeat.
	UK, £1,500 a year.
	Sorry, $1,500 a year.
	Western Europe, £2,300 a year.
	So what's the opportunity costs over the course of your year?
	And now the time has come.
	All right.
	The average annual spending was if it was instead invested at 8% annual return compounded annually, assuming end-of-year investments, the future value after 50 years, you start at 15 or start at 20 and you end up at 65 or 70.
	So if you took the money you hand over to billionaire owners and millionaire athletes, you could have, if you spend $1,600 a year, but you invested that money instead, you'd have $918,032 in the United States.
	Monthly rent in San Francisco, or in Canada, $1,200 would yield $688,524, right?
	So the average American is spending almost a million dollars in opportunity costs on sports ball.
	All go back, all go forth, all go up, all go down.
	I always love it.
	There was an acting teacher who was teaching us Shakespeare iambic, and you'd beat the chair with a towel to get the iambic.
	And he was talking about Henry V, where he's talking about a tennis game.
	And he says, do you mock this?
	Do you mock that?
	Do you mock this?
	Do you mock that?
	And he's like, mock is the sound of a tennis ball being hit.
	And that's how brilliant Shakespeare is.
	And it's like, I don't know if it's true, but if it is, hats off to the hairs off guy.
	All right.
	In the UK, $1,500 a year invested would be $860,000 and change and coming in at the top at over $1.1 million, $2,300 in Western Europe invested, right?
	Now, if you're a hardcore fan and you spend $4,785 a year on sports ball, but you invest it instead, you'd get over $2.7 million.
	That's what you're not giving to your kids.
	That's what you're not giving your kids.
	Average ticket price, what do we got?
	NFL CFL, US, 297.
	Canadian, this is US dollars, 85 to 150.
	Basketball, yes, you too can sit next to a very sweaty Jack Nicholson.
	You can't handle the ball.
	These jokes will just keep coming.
	They may in fact get worse.
	I'm no longer ashamed of this at all.
	Snatches of song and bad stand-up.
	That's all we've devolved to.
	All right, basketball, 165 in Canada with the Raptors in Toronto, $100 to $200.
	Basketball, Major League Baseball, $79 in Canada, $33 for the Blue Jays, aka the dolphins that get the British immigrants beaten up.
	You fruity English bastard.
	Ice hockey, $146 in Canada, $85 to $200.
	Soccer, $105 in the US, $30 to $50 in Canada, 30 to 80 euros.
	In the UK, 37 to 91.
	So $40 to $80,200 or whatever.
	Rugby, who cares?
	All right.
	Let's go to the average BMI of the sports fans.
	See, here's what you need to understand.
	Sports is about transferring fat from the athletes to the audience.
	They get healthy, you get fat.
	They get fit, you get flabby.
	They get a lower BMI, you get a higher BMI.
	It's a giant curse wherein fat and clear arteries are removed.
	Sorry, fat and clogged arteries are removed from the sports people and then beamed into the arteries and loudasses of the watchers.
	BMI, it's limited, right?
	General population averages are 27 to 28 overweight.
	Studies show fans often have a higher BMI than non-fans due to sedentary viewing and unhealthy habits, high-fat snacks, alcohol, and of course, the cortisol.
	So non-fans in America, 25.1, BMI fans, 27.4.
	Collegiate fans, 27.7.
	Canada seems to be kind of similar.
	And it varies to some degree in Western Europe.
	Why would the BMI be higher?
	Well, let's look at the average calories consumed while watching a game.
	Estimates for calorie intake during a typical sports game, NFL, soccer, or basketball vary.
	Regular game, high-profile event like the Super Bowl.
	Regular games.
	Fans typically consume 1,000 to 2,000 calories from snacks and drinks during the event.
	Itself, three to four hours, 500 to 1,000 from food and 500 to 1,000 from beverages.
	This would be beer, wine, other forms of alcohol, and sugary carbonated beverages, also known as the teethbusters.
	Super Bowl, like big games, intake can spike to 3,000 to 8,000 calories or more for the day, with 1,200 to 2,000 from snacks alone during the game.
	One 2024 estimate paked Super Bowl Sunday at up to 8,000 total calories.
	Older studies report 11,000 or more.
	Snacks and food, 700 to 1,500, mostly from high-fat carbs, pizza, wings, chips.
	Alcohol, 400 to 1,000.
	2 to 5 beers at 150 to 200 calories apiece.
	Soda and soft drinks, 3 to 600, 20 to 4 cans at 150 calories each.
	1,000 to 2,000, 60 to 70% from fats, carbs.
	Alcohol adds empty calories.
	There you go.
	Sports fans favor easy-to-eat, shareable, high-calorie items that pair with TV viewing.
	Not a face full of salad, but instead chicken wings, often buffalo-fried, pizza, nachos, chips and dip, cueso, salsa, french, onion, hot dogs, burgers, tacos, pretzels, and popcorn.
	I liked how they put the one not gut buster right at the end.
	Beer.
	Drinks, beer, most popular, especially hot seltzer or light beer, regular soda, energy drinks, sometimes mixed cocktails.
	Water is less common during games.
	They are often consumed in large portions at home parties or stadiums.
	What is the impact of the time spent watching other people in tight pants move from left to right and right to left?
	Watching games is highly sedentary, three to four hours or more of minimal movement, burning only 80 to 100 calories per hour versus 300 to 400 walking.
	This contributes to weight gain and obesity.
	Excess calories from snacking and drinking aren't offset by activity.
	Cardiovascular risks, increase the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and stirk.
	Sedentary behavior linked to 20 to 30% higher C V D risk.
	Cardiovascular disease.
	Metabolic issues.
	Higher odds of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and weaker bones slash muscles.
	That's right.
	You're not just sitting into a couch, you're turning into one.
	Poor mental health, depression, and reduced healthy aging.
	Long-term, TV sports viewing, five plus hours per day, raises movement disorder risk by 65%.
	What is the impact of the stress experienced while watching games?
	If you've ever been around people who are like, think it!
	Bite, bite!
	Nothing but net!
	Hit the ball!
	Catch it!
	Damn it!
	Right.
	And the red face, Cheeto dust puffing out from every orifice, including those they're not directly feeding veins, right?
	Veins pulsing, the cling on foreheads, you name it.
	That's not good.
	So intense games trigger physiological stress, just as I'm doing now.
	Raising heart rate and cortisol, the stress hormone effects include cortisol spikes, spike that cortisol, and go down like a sack of potatoes, especially during losses or close games.
	Fans of losing teams show higher cortisol.
	Emotional eating.
	As mentioned earlier, stress leads to overconsumption of junk food or alcohol as comfort.
	Cardiovascular strain, temporary blood pressure, heart rate increases, chronic fandom may elevate long-term heart risks.
	Mental health.
	Wins boost mood.
	Losses increase anxiety, depression.
	Older adults watching sports show mixed benefits, social well-being, but potential stress.
	But of course, if you are spending a lot of your time and effort and energy with people going at a TV, not exactly quality time with people.
	Now, this is wild.
	This is something I've heard of.
	This numbers blew my mind.
	Blew my absolute mind, like Bonnie Blue on a sailboat.
	So, fantasy leagues, participation includes season-long and daily fantasy sports.
	Numbers are for adults 18 or more in the past 12 months.
	United States.
	You've got 53 million people doing fantasy sports, which is like sports, but even less real.
	You're watching something that doesn't even exist.
	You're watching something that exists only in your mind.
	It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but without the strategy and problem-solving skills.
	All right.
	Or, well, maybe there is, whatever.
	I've never played it.
	So 16% of the population, 53 million players, up from prior years.
	In Canada, 4.2 million.
	That's about 11% of the population.
	United Kingdom, 17% of the population.
	Western Europe, 8 to 10%.
	Yeah, we're going to get to the betting as well.
	So average time spent on fantasy sports leagues, researching, managing teams, drafting, and related activities.
	Oh, no, I remember.
	I remember one time when I was in the business world, somebody was like, hey, do you want to join our fantasy sports league?
	And I'm like, do I get to wear a tutu?
	Because that's my first, you know, anything where I can get to wear a tutu.
	I'm keen.
	And I got that you're new to the colony's thousand-yard stare.
	I said, well, what is a fantasy sports league?
	Well, it's a pretend sports league.
	I'm like, well, what does that mean?
	Do you roll dice?
	Like, what do you anyway?
	And yeah, I didn't join it.
	I would rather watch paint dry than have imaginary men run around in my head.
	Still have no idea what fantasy sports is.
	I thought it was bikini volleyball.
	I thought maybe it was Victoria's Secrets model football in a vat of pigs grease.
	I wasn't sure exactly because, I mean, I don't know.
	I'm a married man, but I hear that some men might consider that a fantasy, a fantasy sports leagues.
	I really want to see your tutu.
	Well, you're going to have to join www.cott.onlystefans.com.
	Not a real thing.
	But yes, so fantasy sports leagues.
	Is that the Hawaiian Tropics girls in scuba gear?
	Tightly lashed and laced?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	So averages vary by engagement level.
	So again, we've got more details here.
	United States, average time, hours per week, between 8 and 20.
	15 to 20 hours a week for engaged users, research and management doesn't even exist.
	I'm going to throw a party, and all of my Dungeons and Dragons characters are invited.
	Ew, Argov, you are so hot in that armor.
	Oh, Cassandra, the leather outfit and the spandex pants are just to die for.
	Is it generally fat people who are involved in fantasy sports?
	My fantasy is I can do sports other than the subway lift.
	Sorry, that looks a little rude.
	If someone tells me, please tell me, just type it in.
	Give me one paragraph.
	You create your team from real players, and your team performance depends on how those players do during the season.
	Somebody says, oh, so today, nice to see you.
	I'm an ex-sports freak.
	It's part of my embarrassing past that we have to amnesia about.
	How my husband found me attractive is beyond me.
	I mean, fantasy sports and all.
	Well, but if you were in the aforementioned scuba spandex gear, and of course, you show that you can hold your breath for a long time, that can be quite attractive for men.
	I'm not sure why.
	But I believe it is.
	So, in Canada, 10 to 18 hours a week.
	So, two up and two down.
	15 to 20 hours a week for, I guess, more dedicated people.
	United Kingdom, 5 to 15 hours a week.
	It's a part-time job.
	Oh, God, better off edging.
	Western Europe, 7 to 15 hours a week.
	All right.
	Average money spent on fantasy sports leagues.
	Why are you spending money on things that don't exist?
	Sorry.
	A little Foreman Spittle here.
	I can't believe these sports fans get so worked up about stuff.
	It's crazy.
	Average money spent on fantasy sports leagues.
	Spending includes entry fees, draft parties, subscriptions, in-app purchases, and related costs.
	All right.
	So how much are bros spending per year?
	In America, $100 to $400.
	Nothing crazy.
	Nothing crazy.
	$653 for a median draft party.
	In Canada, $80 to $300.
	United Kingdom, zero to 120.
	US and Europe, 20 to 100.
	So, it's the time.
	It's the time.
	Oh, James hit it perfectly.
	It is a team you create with real players, and depending on their real stats, is how you do in your fantasy team.
	So absolutely retarded.
	Yeah, because I'm like, I want Superman, Captain Marvel, and John Locke.
	And they wouldn't let me.
	They wouldn't let me.
	I said, what about Tutankhamun and Babe Roof and Genghis Khan?
	Apparently not.
	That's not allowed.
	But it's fantasy.
	I want a red dragon, a beholder.
	Oh, that's too nerdy.
	No, no, let's not pretend.
	There's nothing too nerdy for me.
	There's nothing too nerdy for me.
	Let's be real.
	Unlike these fantasy sports teams.
	All right.
	Wait, where the hell did I put that?
	Oh my, there we go.
	All right.
	Steph, take this seriously.
	That's right.
	I want the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs, an earthquake, and three tsunamis.
	That's how I want to win.
	No!
	No.
	Yeah, I did.
	Oh, yeah, I never actually left.
	All right.
	So sports gambling, participation rates, blah, blah, blah.
	Caveats, caveats, caveats.
	So 61 million people in the United States get involved in sports gambling.
	And 21% plays a sports bet, 57% any gambling, and 25% involved in sports betting, it's a variety of sources.
	Canada, so that's almost one out of five.
	Almost one out of five people.
	Of course, you're going to exclude recent immigrants.
	You're going to exclude people who can't see or hear aka critics of philosophy, my philosophy in particular, and children and very old people.
	So people in their prime, and I assume it's a bit of a sausage fest.
	Sports betting has got to be danglies and back scratches.
	There's a guy on Instagram who always imitates his father.
	He ties a pillow around his waist and just goes around the house going, kind of sounds are we making in the bathroom?
	Apparently, it's bowel possession and you're trying to get it out.
	All right.
	So the United Kingdom, more than one in five people, 21% of the population.
	Western Europe, 11 to 12% of the population.
	That's a lot.
	Average time spent on sports gambling per year.
	Well, that's hours per year, 52 to 104.
	So that's a week and a half, four weeks, two and a half work weeks, little over a week, two and a half weeks, about four months in government hours.
	Canada is very similar, 52 to 104 hours, and nothing available for the UK and Western Europe.
	So if you put odds on that, you've just made money, but not for me.
	Average money spent on sports gambling.
	Well, here we go.
	Average spending US dollars per year in America, 3,284.
	You absolute retards.
	What an embarrassing, catastrophic, pathetic, ridiculous, stupid, and embarrassing number.
	The median is 750.
	Canada, 725 US dollars per year.
	United Kingdom, 641.
	Western Europe, 500.
	So this is an outlier like shootings, right?
	Okay, so that's also dumb.
	And of course, if you were to put that, James, if you can put that in our other chat.
	What if you invested?
	Like average spending US dollars per year.
	Now, I'm not quite sure that I get the 3284 versus the 750, which is much in line elsewhere.
	So let's see what the notes are here.
	NerdWallet, 2025 survey, past 12 months gambling spent by sports betters.
	All right.
	So there's a real outlier there, this 3284.
	And yeah, hit me with a why if you, sorry, you know what a why is.
	Hit me with a why, why, though?
	If you've done any sports betting.
	I remember when I was in high school, there was a guy floating around doing sports betting, and it's like, well, you know, if this team wins all these games in a row, you can get $1,000 for only $2.
	I'm like, so, so it's impossible, right?
	Cast a society.
	Proportion.
	Proportion.
	What's worse, spending money on sports gambling or on jerseys as an adult?
	Well, sports gambling is really, but gambling is really bad as a whole.
	I can't gamble because I like it too much.
	I don't gamble.
	If we ever go to a casino, my wife has a ball and I hide in the corner.
	But no, it's buying the jerseys is way better because sports gambling, you lose and then you want to make it back and you get this cycle and then you lose your kneecaps and all that kind of stuff.
	All right.
	United States, proportion of stadiums receiving government funds.
	So in America, almost three quarters.
	Canada, similar to the U.S.
	And the United Kingdom is lower at 10 to 20%.
	And Western Europe is very low.
	Open leagues reducing team marketing.
	Power.
	Gambling is boring, takes no skill, et cetera.
	It's just lame.
	Well, it depends.
	I mean, if it's like pull the slots, yeah.
	I mean, but poker, I can tell you.
	A friend of mine, I've never really learned poker, but was it poker up front, liquor in the rear?
	Is that?
	Anyway, so I've never really, but you can, there's skill involved in some gambling for sure.
	All right.
	Amount of government funding received.
	United States.
	From 1970 to 2020, $30 to $43 billion.
	Includes 4.3 billion federal tax-exempt bonds.
	2000 to 2020, 19 billion since 2000.
	Canada, 3 to 5 billion dollars.
	And of course, Canada's population is about a tenth of America's.
	So it's similar, I think.
	United Kingdom, 900 million pounds to a billion pounds for infrastructure, an additional pound or billion or more for elite programs.
	Wembley Stadium, home of a fairly good green concert back in the day.
	It's the only reason I know about the Hippondrome.
	Actually, I know a whole bunch of locations in England just because of live queen albums.
	Western Europe, 67.6 billion euros.
	So that's a lot.
	The net worth of sports franchises, and you can look at this if you want, and pause.
	Crime around sporting events relative to normal levels.
	It increases during and after events, game days, and playoffs.
	The focus is on violent crimes, property crimes, and domestic violence.
	Also known as me not getting the dessert I want.
	I can't tell you.
	I can't tell you.
	5 to 20% spikes in violent crime.
	Plus 4% to 10% property and violent plus 10% domestic violence.
	Upset losses.
	Higher near stadiums, up to two miles.
	Playoffs plus 7% disorder.
	So, yeah.
	Your team loses, take it out on your wife or your children.
	United Kingdom, plus 26 to 30, 8% domestic violence when England loses, plus 10 to 20% overall.
	Yeah, angry drunk men.
	Western Europe, plus 5 to 15% violent and property crimes.
	Soccer riots, lower baseline than US, UK.
	Oh, yeah, of course, you know, if you ever go to continental Europe and you're like, the British soccer fans are coming, it's like everyone takes to the sewers.
	Oh, no, that's where they come from.
	I have not had a tiny amount of coffee today.
	Just wanted to let you know.
	So my heart is working in the kind of overtime normally reserved for frightened hummingbirds or people whose sports team has just lost.
	All right, see how timing it will tying it all together.
	Impact on, oh, impacts on cities and neighborhoods during sporting events.
	Yeah, tourism, tourism, and jobs, but often net neutral, overstated.
	Pride and cohesion, but high crime and displacement.
	Congestion, pollution, some green legacies.
	So impact on academics.
	So sports culture in U.S. high schools and colleges encompasses participation in organized athletics, fandom, and the institutional emphasis on sports programs.
	It's negative and positive effects on education and so on.
	So, positive impacts.
	High school athletes often show higher GPAs, attendance rates, graduation rates, and lower dropout rates compared to non-athletes.
	Now, I kind of want to separate high school sports from, to some degree, college, to a much larger degree, pro-sports.
	And I say this, I mean, I was on, again, I was on the cross-country team, I was on the swim team, I was on the water polo team, I was on the tennis team.
	But we didn't pay extra.
	It was sort of built in or baked in.
	I think it was a couple of bucks extra here and there.
	But I think sports is great.
	I can almost always tell people who've been particularly in team sports.
	Solo sports is a bit of a different matter, but team sports is a different situation.
	You can usually tell the social skills, leadership skills, and participation skills that people get in sports is really, really interesting.
	So athletes had higher attendance by 21 days a year, higher graduation rates, and test scores.
	Now, because you can't imagine, I know this is a bit cause and effect, but you can't really imagine somebody who's quarterbacking the football team becoming a school shooter, to take an example, or getting involved in crime.
	You get a lot of social skills from sports.
	Again, I'm a big fan, but the sport, a lot of the sports that I did was just pickup stuff, right?
	Every Sunday, every Saturday, we would get together to play baseball.
	Every Sunday, we would get together to play soccer.
	And you get a lot of social skills out of that.
	Particularly, I think you get more social skills from pickup games than you do from more, because there's no coach.
	You all got to coach each other.
	And you have to take into account and work around people's various skills, right?
	So, you know, the thing that happens in soccer, where the guy who's bad is never covered, because they don't bother expending the other team doesn't bother expending someone who's bad.
	So the entire time, when you're playing soccer, they're like, I'm open, I'm open.
	And the guy who's really good has got two guys on him guarding him.
	And then the guy who's bad gets really mad because you don't pass the ball to him.
	You got to figure out how to negotiate all the stuff or explain it or try and get him to without a set.
	Like it's anarchic because there's no central authority like there is in school, but a coach and whoever the teacher is doing it, whatever, right?
	So the pickup games in particular, I think, are really good for social skills as a whole.
	So participation correlates with better math achievement and college expectations.
	Now, is this cause or effect?
	I don't know.
	We can't unravel it here.
	Do the smarter kids are they better at sports?
	Because, you know, there's this sort of cliché of the brainiac who's physically weak.
	Not super common.
	It happens for sure.
	But generally, people who are smart have faster reflexes and good hand-eye coordination.
	The nerds, the intellectually smart but physically weak, they come from single mother households, right?
	They generally, it's or, you know, father-absent households, because what are what do dads do with their son who go out and play ball and catch and throw and all this kind of stuff?
	You teach your kids sports.
	I've taken my daughter to play just about everything.
	So it's not that the brain eats the body, like the more muscles in your brain, the worse your body is.
	That's not really how it works.
	What works is that high IQ means faster processing, means faster reflexes, and generally high IQ means better athletic skill.
	Tons of exceptions.
	But if you come from a single mother household, then that's not really the case because single moms don't teach their kids sports as a whole.
	And of course, if you come from a poor family, sports are expensive.
	I mean, the hockey kids in my junior high and high school were spending crazy amounts of money.
	You know, $5,000, $10,000 sometimes a year, depending on, you know, there's travel and fees and equipment, especially when they're growing and so on.
	And I remember working with a guy whose son was a goalie, and they went all over Canada.
	They even flew to Europe to play.
	I mean, I could never in a million years have afforded any of that kind of stuff, which is why I kind of moved to pickup games for a lot of sanguines and couldn't afford all the equipment.
	I kind of went to pickup games or things that were very cheap, which actually I think gave me better social skills in the long run.
	So pickup games where everybody's got to figure out how to enforce, how to enforce the rules.
	You don't have an umpire when you have pickup games.
	So what's a foul?
	What's not a foul?
	Did he slide in?
	Did he hit the base?
	Who touched who first?
	Did you hit him with the, did you touch him if you're tagging someone, if somebody is trying to steal a base in baseball?
	So you have to figure out all these rules for yourself.
	Gives you a lot of really, and enforce all the rules yourself gives you a lot of negotiation and social skills, right?
	Sports foster time management, self-discipline, resilience, teamwork, and leadership, enhancing college readiness and social skills.
	About 40% of Americans played organized sports in high school or college, with most reporting positive effects on health, obviously, and confidence.
	They build social capital through peer networks and adult interactions, reducing depression and boosting self-esteem.
	Athletics, of course, boosts school identity, enrollment, and community pride.
	In colleges, success, fluti effect increases applications.
	Georgetown basketball surge plus 45%.
	Northwestern football plus 21%.
	Now, there are challenges as well.
	And this is more around the organized, highly competitive sports.
	Overscheduling leads to burnout, lower academic focus, and injuries, supporting the overscheduling hypothesis.
	Urban youth may see GPA declines during middle to high school transitions if sports dominate.
	In college revenue, sports such as football show lower graduation rates.
	Football graduation success rate, 82%, but federal rates are lower.
	Jock culture glorifies athletes, creating discord and undervaluing academics.
	And this is a little bit the Asian thing, right?
	The mathletes are the Asians.
	The Asians generally being smaller and slighter and more slender are not trying out for the football team as a whole.
	And so there is, particularly when you have multiracial schools, right?
	So of course, it is the blacks often in the fast-fire muscles in the basketball and whites in football, and particularly with quarterbacks.
	The majority of quarterbacks are white, even though it's not exactly the same elsewhere for various reasons we've talked about before.
	Resources shift to sports budgets tend to favor athletics, potentially harming educational quality.
	Racial gaps persist.
	Black athletes graduate 11.6% below white peers in bowls, but I don't know if that's normalized for IQ, of course, right?
	Now, of course, in particularly American college.
	Oh, we're going to get to the injuries.
	Yeah, and I appreciate that.
	And that's a very big deal.
	Sports are great, but the injury risk, particularly in highly competitive sports, is very, very high.
	Special admits, which are lower standards for athletes, lead to poorer outcomes.
	30% of Power Five special admits in universities don't graduate.
	Name, image, likeness, and transfers disrupt cohesion, potentially prioritizing athletics over academics.
	Money spent on school academic programs.
	U.S. education spending focuses on academics, but disparities exist versus sports.
	Total K-12 spending is $795 billion as of 2023, with sports at about 1% to 3% or 15 to 20 billion annually, including events and facilities.
	College academic spending, $600 billion total athletics, and 15 billion, 5% to 11% of Division I public schools.
	So what have we got here?
	Proportion of students involved in sports programs, high school, 50 to 57%, and about 3% in college.
	So 7% of high school athletes continue to college.
	Boys, 3.6%, girls, 4.5%.
	So obviously, very, very low.
	So I'm going to skip that.
	So yeah, there are definitely benefits of sports culture on youth, but I would argue you get even better benefits from pickup games than you get from more organized games.
	And I did, for a while, I was an assistant coach at a boys' soccer team, and it was fun.
	It was fun.
	All right.
	Youth sports injuries have surged with over 3.5 million U.S. children under 14 treated annually, up 17% in 2024.
	Overuse accounts for 54%, driven by early specialization and intense schedule.
	So overuse is when you pull something because you've been working it too hard rather than some impact thing.
	Common issues include sprains and strains, 49%, concussions, and ACL tears.
	That's brutal.
	Up 26% in teens.
	ACL, I mean, that's that thick tendon right behind your heel.
	Those are brutal.
	Those are brutal.
	If you've ever been around a ski hill, you see people with those or recovering from those in the chalet.
	Months, months.
	And that's even when you're young.
	You get these kinds of injuries when you get older.
	It's like, hey, hey, you know what?
	It's cool.
	You know, it's really neat.
	I loved that time in my life when my body knew how to repair itself rather than that.
	Oh, ACL is the knee?
	I'm sorry.
	Oh, yeah, right.
	Sorry.
	I'm thinking of the Achilles tendon.
	Yeah, ACL is in the knee.
	Ooh, you know, so, and thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Thanks, James.
	You're right.
	I'm thinking of the Achilles tendon.
	But yeah, ACL, it's the tendons that bind the kneecap and all of that.
	Oh, man.
	See, we're still kind of half evolved from being on all fours.
	So our knees have yet to quite reach the kind of perfection that you'd want to get as, you know, the upright, right?
	And so, yeah, knee problems can be really brutal.
	Knee problems can be really, really brutal.
	And knee problems can be lifelong.
	I knew a guy some years ago.
	He was in his 70s and he played volleyball in his 20s.
	And he took a couple of really bad whacks to the knee and he kind of had knee issues, kind of had knee issues, and then it just kind of gave out and it was all gone.
	Like all of the cartilage was gone.
	It was like bone grating on grown.
	He had to have a whole knee replacement.
	In fact, two, and they didn't quite put it in the right way.
	It was like a bit of an angle.
	And it was just a wild thing.
	So it can be, you know, 30, 40 or 50 years.
	I know another woman, she had a horse that stepped on her when she was like 15 or 16, had stepped on her foot, and she was still dealing with it in her 60s.
	This stuff, and I'm not trying to scare her because, you know, I mean, you got to move, you got to exercise, and there's going to be risks.
	Somebody says you don't ever really fully recover from an ACL tear.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So football and wrestling show the highest rates, 35.9 and 26.4 per thousand exposures.
	Long-term effects include chronic pain, reduced mobility, and mental health issues like depression from repeated head impacts.
	Right.
	So head impacts and concussions, over three quarters of a million ER visits in 2025.
	Football, you got 15 times more, obviously, concussions in tackle football versus flag or touch football.
	ACL tears up 26% in teens.
	Girls eight times more likely in soccer or volleyball.
	Yeah, the lunging and dipping sports, right?
	Lower extremity, over half a million ER diagnoses, ankle 39%, knee 29%, decreasing trend, but still high.
	Boxing is the worst.
	Maybe I'll get my son to learn an instrument and join a band instead.
	Listen, I'm not trying to scare people.
	Obviously, I'm not trying to scare people.
	And by people, I mean others.
	Mothers, let mothers, two things.
	One, don't let your children grow up to be cowboys.
	Two, please let them play some sports.
	You know, you've got to learn your physical limitations.
	And if you don't learn how to manage risk, you cannot survive in life.
	And one of the things that is best to teach you how to handle cost-benefit analysis, how to handle risk is sports.
	Unrealistic expectations of professional careers.
	Some people think they could become podcasters.
	It's madness.
	So parental and cultural pressures create false hopes.
	17% of U.S. parents believe their child will go pro, but only 2% receive scholarships and less than 1% reach professional levels.
	This leads to overinvestment, 1,000 plus annually per child, early specialization, average 1.63 sports down from 2 plus, and burnout.
	Youth face anxiety from win-it-all costs mindset with perfectionism linked to depression and quitting.
	So this is a friend of mine when I was first in Canada, I was like 12 or 13, a friend of mine was in hockey, and his mother was like this, honestly, like a brontosaurus, asthmatic bronchial bellower from the stands, like from up there to go!
	You know, just like red face.
	And it's like, well, he's getting exercise and you're just courting a dance with the ancestors.
	And of course, if you, and obviously, a completely extreme example is the Menendez Boys, Lyle and whatever, Kyle, I think, some other.
	So the Menendez boys were heavily pressured to be elite tennis players.
	And it's, yeah, it was just nuts.
	It was absolutely nuts.
	Bullying affects one in three youth athletes, often verbal, name-calling and taunts, physical, hitting or hazing, or relational, exclusion and gossip.
	It erodes confidence, causes anxiety, depression, and leads to quitting.
	Coaches' negative behavior is exacerbated with 48% of high schoolers hazed.
	Warning signs include sudden disinterest or damaged equipment.
	The good thing with just sort of pickup sports is basically people are there to have fun.
	It's nice to win.
	Everybody's kind of welcome.
	At least that's the way we played.
	I mean, it was a guy, we played with a guy who just had no coordination at all.
	But, you know, it was nice to have him out.
	He was a nice guy.
	I remember he couldn't catch the ball to save his life.
	I remember one time the ball just landed on the top of his head when he was still wearing a baseball cap, as most of us did.
	And, you know, the divot up here just went straight into his skull.
	And it was, he had a little divot for a while there.
	So we had a wide variety of skill levels that were obviously people.
	My brother was fantastic at soccer, just amazing.
	And he could dribble like a newborn.
	And I was good in goalie.
	I was, I'm a really good hitter.
	I had a problem, of course, in not that it matters for me, but let me unburden myself, please.
	So being left-handed, I didn't have a left-handed glove.
	Nobody had a left-handed glove because apparently that was just gay.
	So I had to catch, rip off my glove, throw.
	So it just slowed it all down because nobody had a left-handed glove for me and I couldn't afford a glove at all.
	Right.
	So the problem is that when you're high, when it's high skill and high stakes and you want to get to the pros and so on, anyone who's bad has to be bullied to quit.
	I'm a lefty.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	Both my wife and I are lefties.
	My daughter betrayed both of us that way.
	But, you know, she can use scissors and the desks are built for her.
	So that's nice.
	But so you have to get the kids who are bad to quit.
	And either the coach does it or they get haste their way out of there, right?
	Scandals in child predation.
	Sexual abuse is systemic, affecting 2% to 8% of minor athletes.
	3.8% of elite athletes abused as minors mostly by coaches.
	Larry Nasser, if you've ever seen that documentary, absolutely appalling.
	Had 500 or more victims, USA swimming 590 more, and Boy Scouts, numerous lawsuits, right?
	So there was a whole, I can't remember who started it, but it was a whole, you have to have gay men as Boy Scout leaders.
	And this, of course, caused a lot of molestation issues.
	And then there was a lot of lawsuits.
	And then, I mean, it was just a way of destroying Christian value transmission in the West.
	So 2 to 8% is a lot.
	And obviously, it's higher than that, obviously, because there's a lot of stuff that goes unreported.
	So obviously it's higher than that.
	But that's not great at all.
	It's terrible.
	I mean, I would imagine in many areas, it's at least one in 10.
	One in 10.
	I am the one in 10, the number out of the East.
	All right, no other negative impacts, burnout and mental health strain, overscheduling, stress, anxiety, depression.
	Girls show higher rates.
	Overwhelmed, which is a very real thing.
	Commercialization turns play into pressure, with 82% quitting by age 13.
	High costs, $1,000 to $4,000 a year, exclude lower-income youth, prioritizing wins over fun and development.
	Gender disparities, girls face higher injury risks and body image pressures, boys more physical bullying.
	So the notion of jock kids, you know, high school or college athletes being idolized, protected, or facing minimal consequences for serious misconduct is a common trope in movies and TV shows, often rooted in stereotypes like jerk jock of a privileged athlete antagonist scene films such as The Breakfast Club, Revenge of the Nerds, or Mean Girls.
	That is coming from a particular group whose name escapes me right now.
	While those portrayals can exaggerate the dynamics for dramatic effect, depicting jocks as universally aggressive bullies with unchecked power, there is substantial real-world evidence that athlete privilege does exist, particularly in educational settings where sports programs hold significant cultural or economic value.
	This can lead to leniency and disciplinary actions, reduced legal consequences, or outright protection from accountability for crimes or misconduct.
	So in Hollywood's influence, the bully jock archetype often stems from 1980s films like Revenge of the Nerds.
	And this, of course, comes from the 70s divorce culture and kids being raised by single mothers, not getting the sports exposure they need and thus having resentment to the more physically able people as a whole.
	Jocks versus nerds, fun narrative devias.
	This is persisted in media portraying athletes as arrogant, entitled, and immune to rules, undeserved passing grades, evading school discipline, and so on.
	In reality, discussions on platforms like Reddit, Foundational Truth of the Universe, suggests this dynamic is wildly overstated.
	Not every athlete is a bully, of course.
	Clique's artist, richly divided, is shown on screen.
	Stereotypes may also reflect creators' biases.
	You never want to go to a writer who doesn't have a lot of self-knowledge and philosophy.
	You don't want to go to a writer for any truth about the world because screenwriters are more likely to have been nerds than athletes, leading to villainous portrayals, right?
	That the nerds want to downgrade the reputation of the jocks so that the nerds, it's just intersexual competition, right?
	In the same way that ugly girls tell pretty girls to cut their hair short.
	Not all media depictions are negative.
	They love bajoc, kind-hearted athletes in 13 Reasons Why, and the Breakfast Club shows jocks as multifaceted and blah, blah, blah.
	So there is evidence of real-world athlete privilege and protection, particularly in college.
	So athletes in high-profile school sports like football, basketball, or lacrosse frequently receive preferential treatment.
	So leniency in school discipline.
	In a 2011 case at Logan High School in Utah, three starting football players were cited for misdemeanor theft, stealing electronics from lockers, but were allowed to play in a key game shortly after, despite the school's zero tolerance policy.
	Well, I think that's just part of everyone's education now, isn't it?
	An ESPM investigation of 10 major U.S. college programs found male basketball and football players avoided charges or prosecution 56% of the time when named as suspects, twice the rate of non-athlete peers.
	Factors include access to lawyers, public backlash favoring athletes, and institutional protection.
	In New York, in Syracuse, New York in 2025, 11 high school lacrosse players faced misdemeanor, unlawful imprisonment charges for hazing, locking teammates in a van and assaulting them.
	They turned themselves in under a DA deal to avoid felony kidnapping charges with sensitivity to their ages and athletes' data cited.
	Now, again, I know hazing is kind of goofy.
	I know hazing can actually be kind of bad.
	I was asked to join a fraternity.
	I was living in a frat house in my university days.
	I was asked to join the fraternity, which is very nice.
	It's not really obviously my thing in particular.
	No hate, no hostility, but it just wasn't my thing.
	And I heard a little bit about the hazing rituals later, which I will not repeat here for fear of everybody fainting, including me.
	In 2025 in North Texas, Marcus High School football players involved in off-campus hazing, shooting at teammate, shooting a teammate with a pellet gun and using racial slurs received appropriate disciplinary consequences, but details were vague.
	You know, obviously it's rude.
	Obviously, it can go too far, but hazing is just, it's a dude thing.
	And as you get more and more women who don't understand dude things, it's going to be like, oh, it's just the worst thing ever.
	And it's like, it's just, it's a dude thing.
	Obviously, it can go too far.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	Right.
	The Brock Turner case, 2016.
	Stanford swimmer received a six-month sentence serving three for sexual assault, with his athletic achievements factored into leniency arguments.
	Critics noted this is part of a pattern where college athletes get lighter sentences.
	In Japan, 2012, a high school basketball player's suicide after coach abuse highlighted a culture of impunity with few consequences for perpetrators in youth sports.
	U.S. pro athletes, often former high school slash college stars, also evade full accountability.
	A Harvard study found NFL or NBA players rarely face formal charges for domestic violence or sexual assault.
	The charges are dropped or they're diverted into counseling.
	And of course, that has to do with Reudrage.
	Perhaps it also has to do with concussions leading to heightened levels of aggression and a lowering of the inhibition mechanisms of the brain.
	Sports fluenza, a mindset where athletes feel immune due to past leniency, fuels this.
	Schools may prioritize sports revenue or prestige leading to cover-ups.
	And of course, there are real consequences.
	And there are real false accusations, of course, right?
	The Duke LaCrosse case.
	Substance abuse.
	Sorry, let me just have another sip of coffee while I opain about substance.
	Oh my God, I'm out of coffee.
	I'm fine.
	Back off, Ancestors.
	I've got a presentation to finish.
	Substance abuse among professional athletes often involves performance-enhancing drugs or PEDs like anabolic steroids, stimulants, EPO, ethropoetin, and human growth hormone or HGH, as well as recreational substance such as opioids, cocaine, and alcohol.
	I assume also, if you've got to work, if you've got to do the sports while having a sore ankle or sore knee or sore back or sore neck, then you may in fact use opioids to get through that as well.
	Well, some athletes use these to cope with pressure injuries or performance demands.
	The consequences are multifaceted.
	It affects health, careers, and the integrity of sports.
	I mean, the cat and mouse game with doping is pretty wild.
	Like this, what's it?
	Blood boosting.
	You take, I think the Russians perfected this back in the day, that you take like a liter of blood out of someone over time and then you just pump it right into them right before the game.
	It's not a substance because it's your own blood, but it's kind of like a cheat, right?
	So performance-enhancing drugs can cause irreversible damage, including cardiovascular issues like heart attacks and strokes, liver and kidney damage, hormonal imbalances causing infertility, gynecomastia in men, and increased cancer risk.
	For instance, anabolic steroids can lead to acne, hair loss, and aggressive behavior.
	Reid rage.
	Well, at least I don't have acne.
	While blood doping thickens blood, usually erasing clot and stroke risks.
	That's blood doping.
	Opioids, often misused for pain management, contribute to addiction and overdose.
	52% of professional football players use opioids.
	Recreational drugs like down eye now, down cocaine exacerbate heart problems and can be fatal.
	Mental health effects.
	Substance abuse correlates with anxiety, depression, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts.
	Athletes may use drugs to self-medicate untreated mental illnesses or stress from competition, leading to a cycle of dependency.
	Neuromodulation therapies are being explored due to high recidivism rates in traditional treatments.
	Chronic use results in early retirement due to diminished abilities, withdrawal symptoms, and conditions like chronic pain or neurological damage from repeated head impacts exacerbated by stimulants.
	Well, but to be fair, but to be fair, sometimes I do get a little crick after a long podcast and my butt gets numb.
	So listen, as far as those taking a lot of trauma out there on the football field, man, we're like this.
	I'm with you, brothers and sisters.
	It's tough, man.
	I can even feel it a little bit just now.
	So yeah, we're all taking massive damage for the cause of human entertainment.
	We're all on the same boat, man.
	All right.
	Career and social impacts.
	Professional repercussions, violations, of course, lead to suspensions, bans, loss of titles, and fines.
	God, who's that bicyclist?
	Hung out with the actor.
	The doping guy.
	Oh, it'll come to me.
	Oh, the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
	Yeah, quite right.
	That was brutal as well.
	Ryan Leaf's opioid addiction ended careers prematurely.
	Legal troubles, including burglary charges, loss of sponsorships and income is common, damaging future prospects.
	I can't believe I forget this name.
	The biking guy, you know, Lance Armstrong.
	I was just about to get it, Jabez.
	There was lonely.
	Okay, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	But yeah, I remember being out at Libertopia many years ago.
	I was an MC and I gave speeches there.
	And I remember a guy was like, oh, Lance Armstrong is totally guilty.
	And I'd been lied about so much in the media that I assumed at that point everything the media said was a lie, including the words and and the and most of their punctuation.
	But it turns out that it was unfair, right?
	So yeah, doping erodes trust in sports and so on.
	And up to 89% of athletes exceed hazardous alcohol levels with stimulants and opioids more common for performance or pain.
	So alcohol is deeply entwined with sports.
	Fandom.
	Oh my gosh, it's just horrendous.
	That's another reason why I don't watch sports is I find drunk people unbelievably boring.
	They just, they go down to pure lizard brain NPC stuff.
	Crazy.
	Crazy.
	So alcohol is deeply intertwined with sports fandom, seen as enhancing social bonding and excitement.
	I will never ever ever go and hang out at any social event where everyone's drinking or drinking as an expectation.
	I just won't do it.
	And I haven't done it.
	Like, honestly, it's not a late, late 50s thing.
	I haven't done it for decades.
	Probably I was in my early to mid-20s the last time that I went to social events where you had to drink or drinking was some kind of expectation or that was kind of, hey man, what's the matter?
	You want to drink?
	Have a drink.
	Come on, relax.
	Get stupid.
	Are you finding that your cognitive functioning is functioning?
	We can fix that by drowning it like a baby in a bathwater with alcohol.
	Of course, binge drinking causes hangovers, memory loss, alcohol poisoning, and STDs, oddly, indirectly.
	Long-term issues like liver disease, cardiovascular problems, and addiction.
	Sports fans report heavier episodes with interference in daily life from alcohol use.
	Correlation with gambling exacerbates this, leading to more frequent heavy drinking.
	Alcohol amplifies emotions, increasing anxiety, depression, and relationship problems.
	Fans experience more alcohol-related interference over time, linked to frequent engagement.
	And pregnancy, yeah, quite right.
	Quite right.
	Thank you, Kay.
	Violence behavior.
	Heavy drinking boosts aggression, as we talked about this.
	Domestic abuse up 26 to 38% after losses.
	And if you've ever talked to women whose husbands are violent and real sports nuts, they're like, I hate football season and I hate the game because if the team loses, I lose.
	Maybe a tooth, maybe an eye.
	Game day drinking increases healthcare utilization, although some studies show no rise within stadium sales, arrests and burdens on services, clubs with poor alcohol management serving intoxicated patrons, happy hours see doubles risky consumption rates.
	And of course, they drink and drive.
	45% of fans drink on game days, often exceeding hazardous levels, 89% in team sports.
	So that's bad as a whole.
	Young athletes face, especially if you've got the 17% of parents who are like, you're going all the way, you're going to the show, kid.
	Young athletes face immense pressure to excel, often leading to substance use for performance enhancement, pain relief or stress, coping.
	So yeah, for sure.
	Increase cardio strength, bone strength, and so on.
	57% of youth athletes admit performance-enhancing drug use and higher binge drinking rates.
	Early PED use causes stunted growth, hormonal changes, and injuries.
	ACL tears up 26% in teens, right?
	So for your body to be safe, everything has to work together.
	Just because you have performance-enhancing drugs, that will make your muscles stronger, but it doesn't make all of your tendons equally strong.
	So then you can do things that your muscles can handle, but your tendons cut, right?
	So you get your ACL tears up to 27% in teens from the PED use.
	Then you go to opioids for pain leads to addiction.
	Contact sports increase prescription stimulant misuse by 50%.
	Mental health effects.
	Pressure causes anxiety.
	64% of youth athletes, depression, 63%, and substance use as coping.
	Alcohol, 60%, other 49%.
	Athletics-related anxiety predicts cannabis use and risky behaviors.
	Perfectionism and identity issues worsen burnout.
	Social and behavioral impacts.
	77% of student athletes feel pro-athletes doping pressures.
	Doping pressures them, right?
	Because you see your heroes doping.
	You feel like you have to dope.
	And maybe you do.
	Motivations include success demands, injuries, or peer influence.
	Come on, man.
	Do this line of steroids.
	Substance patterns.
	Athletes use more alcohol and smokeless tobacco, but fewer, of course, cigarettes and cannabis than non-athletes.
	Biden drinking is higher due to work-hard, play-hard mentality linked to risky behaviors like unsafe sex or driving.
	Long-term consequences.
	Early use leads to academic issues, reduced life skills, and higher adult addiction risk.
	Parent coach expectations amplify anxiety, lowering competence perceptions.
	So that's it.
	That's it.
	That's it.
	Let's stop sharing.
	Well, do we have to stop sharing?
	Yeah, I guess we kind of do.
	Let's just go back to our regular old solo here.
	So it's bad, man.
	Sports great.
	Sports involving centralized, often coercive parental figures and coaches.
	Well, it's central planning versus the free market.
	So anyway, let's get to your comments and questions.
	I'm happy to hear from you all.
	And thank you for, thank you to James for a lot of that research.
	And I really do appreciate that.
	So let's get to your questions and or comments.
	Sorry, there's been a lot.
	There's been a lot.
	ACL is the knee.
	Yeah, thanks, James.
	I know that.
	I find it's really important to be mindlessly hostile to people who are helping you.
	Really does help in terms of team cohesion and so on, right?
	Yes, Scott Adams did die yesterday.
	I did a show last night, which is available for donors on what it means.
	I think what it means.
	What it means.
	All right.
	So Robert says, glad to be here.
	So glad to see you back.
	Thank you very much.
	Allison says, Robert, were you not aware that Stephan never actually left?
	Yeah, one side.
	OnesideOver.com.
	One SideOver.
	Playing sports, though, is awesome.
	My best memories are playing sports.
	You learn how to lose, how to have self-discipline, teamwork, etc.
	Love sports.
	Sports are great.
	I absolutely, a beach volleyball.
	One of my greatest memories from my 20s is taking two weeks to go through the Dominican Republic, sit on the beach, read Jung, read Nietzsche, and play like four hours of beach volleyball a day.
	All right.
	When you're on the same team, even your arch nemesis becomes an ally and maybe eventually a friend.
	Sports is like a social lubricant in that way.
	Yeah, I think well-oiled female volleyball players are quite a lubricant.
	I may have misstated that.
	I can't tell anymore.
	Anyway, all right, let's see here.
	Sports betting is stupid.
	Yes, I'm betting as a whole.
	It's just, you know, the thirst for the unearned and so on, right?
	All right.
	Boom, Robert says, Stephanie is a real gem.
	Now that we lost Scott Adams, there's hardly anyone left worth listening to for me.
	I hate to be picking up his leftovers, but if I can help, I'm happy too.
	And I looked up, you know, because I'd heard these rumors that Scott Adams, instead of sort of taking traditional treatments, that he went for like ivermectin and other things, that maybe he delayed it.
	In the same way, what was it that, oh, Apple guy, right?
	Steve Jobs, when he had, what was it, liver cancer or something?
	He thought maybe he could cure with fruit or something like that.
	And it's like, I don't know.
	When I was facing that illness, the number of people who ended up giving, apricot seeds, you'll be fine.
	I'm like, ooh, that's kind of dicey.
	Boy, you've got to be really, really confident if you're going to recommend things to people medically.
	Can you imagine if you recommend things to people who have cancer and they don't work and you're getting people killed?
	I don't know how people live with themselves that way.
	Somebody says, I remember being a Montreal, Montreal Canadien fan when they won the Cup in 93.
	The fans trashed the city.
	Oh, yeah.
	So I don't know what happened lately, but the last time that the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup was in 1966.
	And I remember greeting people in Toronto sometimes.
	Hey, you're from trial.
	The last time that your hockey team won the Stanley Cup, I was just being born.
	Somebody says, I was in Ukraine for the Euro Cup in 2012, and people were literally killing each other over soccer teams.
	was wild yeah um let's see here And the kneeling and the political.
	Yeah, so this sort of popped up because people are mad.
	And I see you, Doc Nimbus.
	We'll take you, Colin, in a sec.
	This sort of came up for me because people were also mad at the NFL.
	Like, so everything you get is going to be politicized because politics is just so lucrative, right?
	Everything that you love is going to be politicized and so on, right?
	Kay says, I've had multiple concussions from sports.
	Yes, but not so many that you don't remember.
	So that's good.
	Broke a finger, too, broke my nose four times.
	Four times?
	Was it weakened from cocaine?
	No, I know it wasn't.
	As your wink emoji.
	You really do learn your physical limits in sports.
	Well, perhaps you do.
	I will say that I never learned any physical limits in sports because I found that I have on my inner groin a rewind button and I kept touching myself there and everything reversed itself and suddenly I was off the team.
	Strange but true.
	I could do that story all day.
	I've chosen not to because free will.
	All right.
	I'd argue that soccer is worse than boxing for danger.
	Maybe.
	Soccer is a lot of fun to play, but generally not as fun to watch.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, I was torn between watching the ball go back and forth and just watching the grass grow, which was a bit more exciting.
	Wrestling is a great base as well.
	Most fights end up on the ground and some fight, some fights six feet below.
	Ben, I'd argue that overinvestment in sports has more to do with limited interest or skill of the parent than resources.
	I think I don't really play golf.
	I've tried it a couple of times in the business world.
	I would go out and play golf sometimes.
	You're jumping into your shot.
	I don't know what that means, but it feels like I should be twerking.
	And also, they don't allow twerking out there.
	It's very strange.
	Bullying persists because it effectively regulates status before empathy matures.
	Sadism applies to a minority and mainly amplifies it.
	Yeah, says, it's true my old friends would always tell me I look better with short hair.
	I believe them too.
	L-O-L.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I was a fairly tasty little man scrumpet when I was younger, and my friends were not pleased.
	We're not pleased because I'd go talk to the girls, right?
	And not share.
	All right.
	I was hazed.
	The girls antiqued me, says a woman.
	Basically, when I was sleeping, they threw a handful of flour into my face.
	Brutal.
	Antiqued you?
	Does that make you dusty?
	I feel like maybe I'm having a stroke.
	That doesn't seem like much English that makes sense to me.
	The idea that 20% of parents think their kids will go pro is an interesting look into parents' personal insecurities and wanting status through their children's perceived societal success.
	Yeah, you ever know those parents.
	You ever know those parents?
	They're like, you know, you get the Christmas cards of everything that their kids are doing and all of the amazing things and they're number one in here and there.
	And I'm just like, the reason I assert that a base of fencing is the best artist that develops fine distance timing and footwork intelligence without causing blunt trauma and joint injury.
	But wait, guys, can someone explain?
	I was subbed to Stephan yesterday.
	I noticed I am not.
	No, that channel is gone, I think.
	That wasn't me.
	But professional football players are just destroyed after their careers.
	Yeah, so a lot of this and if, James, if you can give me like sort of the average length of time, that would be great.
	But my understanding is that even if you get into the pros, you're only there for a couple of years, usually before some injury or some problem or lack of performance causes you to get dropped.
	That's no good, man.
	And you haven't made enough money and maybe you're injured and you don't have maybe other skills or a great education or something like that.
	Doping has been happening since the original Roman games.
	Naked, greased men throwing a discus in slow motion.
	I'll be posing for the thumbnail later.
	All right.
	Hazing is such a lame, weak tradition, in my opinion.
	I was told to do something in regards to hazing.
	I refused.
	The others accepted.
	I think I gained respect and the other guys had to deal with it.
	I mean, I talked about this in Australia with regards to the Aborigines, although that was pretty brutal.
	It just throws bears at guys, right?
	But no, hazing is a natural test of physical courage and your willingness to subdue yourself to the general good, which is necessary for war and for hunting.
	It's just not that necessary, of course.
	Anymore.
	Literally can ruin your entire life with an injury early in life like that.
	That's true.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	Yeah, a friend of mine who was very tall played basketball, hurt his knee, and ended up, when I was very young, ended up heavily addicted to painkillers because Owen Benjamin hate Scott Adams so much?
	I don't get it.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, one website over.com.
	That's true.
	Somebody says, hey, Steph, big fan of yours.
	Your message about non-aggression principle against children has tremendously helped my family.
	It's amazing to see you back on YouTube.
	Well, thank you very much.
	Thank you very much.
	I am a producer for a Gen Z podcast.
	We have over 3 million followers on YouTube.
	Hey, would you like to have none?
	I'm just kidding.
	Would love to possibly have you and share your wisdom to an entire new generation.
	I would love to chat.
	Just shoot me support at freedomain.com.
	Yep, absolutely.
	James has given me Steve Jobs.
	Come on, man.
	It only took me 20 seconds.
	All right.
	No, I appreciate that.
	James, thank you.
	James is like, he's wobbling.
	Let's prop him up.
	Let's prop him up.
	Were you to recommend some places to visit as a family in Canada?
	What comes to mind?
	The Rockies, BC, Regina, Rhymes with Fun is also a great place to visit.
	Quebec City, especially during the winter festivals, is fantastic.
	And if you like a fishing ocean life and so on, Newfoundland is beautiful as well.
	I'm always surprised how much friends drive their kids around for sports.
	It's almost constant.
	Oh, yeah.
	Crazy.
	Crazy.
	NFL is two and a half years.
	That's their average, right?
	Yeah, crazy.
	Average careers, NFL, 3.3 years.
	NBA, 4.5 to 4.8 years.
	NHL, 5 to 5.5 years.
	Major League Baseball, 5.6 years.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	All right.
	Let us.
	Would you like to have that?
	All right.
	So we have somebody on.
	Oh, Lord, this tiny interface.
	It's not, come on, man.
	Like, work on an iPad.
	Do it's a solid.
	All right.
	Dark Nimbus.
	That is rather sinister.
	I think I feel a ghostly tentacle on my leg.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, we've chatted before.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, so regarding the whole sports thing, I don't know if anybody can resonate with this experience during childhood, but my boomer uncles tried like aggressively to indoctrinate me in the sports culture.
	They're purchasing sports cards, bringing me to sports games, all kinds of stuff.
	There was always this big Super Bowl thing that the family would get together and I would witness this great pretending act where most people would like pretend to sort of resonate with the rest of the group.
	And I would just watch a bunch of adults get drunk and act like buffoons.
	And I was never quite interested in this.
	Of course, my uncles were quite disappointed that I really didn't care about any of this stuff.
	And they seem to associate this with being American and being masculine and being a man and whatnot.
	And I've come to the conclusion now that I'm older that the system needs men to channel their masculine rage towards something other than the system itself.
	Because if they did, then there would be a problem.
	And I think that that is one of the reasons why it exists.
	I also witnessed the social hierarchy that takes place in high school, college from the jocks to the other people and the dynamics.
	And I had a lot of violence occur between me and the jocks.
	One kid I hit over the head with a chair and I got kicked out of school.
	Wait, hang on.
	You said you had to be violent, right?
	You said you had a lot of violence occur.
	It sounds like you were the violent one, brother.
	Oh, well, you had to be because they were allowed to go around the school and commit violence without any kind of recourse or action if you reported them.
	So people had no choice but to take superior violent measures against them.
	So what were the jobs?
	But if you did, it got you kicked out.
	Go ahead.
	What were the jocks doing?
	You said they were just roaming around violent?
	Oh, yeah.
	They were just kicking the shit out of people, stealing their money.
	It doesn't matter who you told or who you reported it to, unless you reacted to their violence with superior violence, they would never stop.
	And then you would get kicked out of school because they were part of this untouchable in-group that could never get suspended or kicked out of school.
	And they just went around and did whatever they wanted.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	This was like whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, everyone just all the jocks doing their thing.
	Because I can't imagine that the, you know, the Asian golf team was around there ripping off everyone's lunch money.
	No, it was, it was primarily white kids.
	I mean, I was I was in a white high school in Florida growing up.
	Florida.
	Yeah.
	Florida, yep.
	Right.
	Okay.
	I, you know, the kids that I knew in high school who were into sports were not bullies.
	The bullies, who did the bullies, the bullies tended to come from the poor, the bad side of the tracks.
	The bullies tended to come from the poor families that were really dysfunctional.
	And in particular, the bigger the son and the smaller the mother, the more likelihood there was of bullying.
	But it certainly didn't come from the sports people.
	But again, it's a different culture, different country and all of that.
	And they sort of done this study where if you increase people's testosterone, both males and females end up more cooperative, better negotiators and working for win-win situations.
	Whereas if you lower people's testosterone, they tend to get more vindictive and bitchy and more win-lose in negotiations.
	And it's actually kind of funny because when they did a double-blind experiment where they added more testosterone to half the women, but didn't tell, and told some of the women who didn't get testosterone that they were given extra testosterone.
	And the women who thought they got extra testosterone but didn't were more aggressive and win-lose in their negotiations.
	But the women who were told they didn't get extra testosterone but did became more proactively win-win and better negotiators and actually more empathetic.
	So I just thought that was kind of a kind of interesting correlation.
	But I guess in Florida, it was a different situation.
	Yeah, in Florida, it was all the kids who were in the gifted classes in high school and the jocks who were going around just breaking all the rules and roughing kids up without consequences because they were the superior class that had immunity.
	And then there were a lot of kids.
	I went to a school after that that kids got went to who got kicked out of.
	And most of the kids got kicked out of there, got kicked out because they beat the shit out of a jock or, you know, fucked him up or some shit and they got kicked out.
	Okay.
	And were you yourself aggressive?
	Like, was it self-defense that was?
	Yeah, yeah.
	There was one kid that sold my bicycle.
	I was poor and I had like a $400 red line BMX bicycle.
	So I snapped his leg in half with a brick.
	Another kid surrounded me with a bunch of other kids and sucker punched me.
	So I stalked him and I beat the shit of him with a monkey wrench when there was no one around.
	Okay.
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	Yeah.
	You don't sound like you're the good guy here.
	Well, you got to put a stop to these kids somehow.
	I mean, it was a long time before that occurred.
	You know, there was a long time of telling the school and letting them know what was happening and them doing nothing.
	And, you know, until I finally hit some kid over the head with a chair in the middle of a class and then I got kicked out.
	Hang on.
	You broke a kid's leg and then you did what with a monkey wrench?
	I beat him up with a monkey wrench because you could have killed him?
	No, I didn't do it in a way that was going to kill him.
	It might have.
	What if he'd, you can't control that kind of violence?
	Well, I mean, you know, it gets to a point where you're going to school every day and like you and your friends are getting jumped by a massive amount of people and there's nothing you could do about it.
	I mean, it really was that bad.
	I am not sure I quite think you're on the up and up.
	I'm not saying you're lying, but there's something about this that doesn't quite make sense.
	So you hit a kid over the head with a chair and you got expelled.
	That was out of college, right?
	No, no, this was high school.
	We were like 14.
	Oh, okay.
	So you're 14.
	And you said you snapped a guy's leg in two?
	Yeah, with a cinder block because he stole my $400 bicycle, and that's all I had to get to school.
	So you smashed his leg with a cinder block.
	Yeah, to stop him from driving away with my bike.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't believe you.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I mean, because you're like, I'm totally justified.
	I'm totally justified in smashing a kid's leg with a cinder block because he took my bike.
	Yeah, I mean, that bicycle was the only way for me to get to school.
	My parents couldn't afford a new one.
	So yeah, it was definitely justified.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	How is it justified?
	Help me understand.
	Because it was the only transportation I had to get to school.
	You're lying.
	I'm not lying.
	You are lying.
	You can get a secondhand bike for 40 bucks.
	Of course, you could have got to school some other way.
	I'm not saying it's right that they stole your bike, but this idea that you had no other way to get to school than a $400 bike is bullshit.
	I don't know why I have to justify snapping that kid's leg.
	I mean, he stole my bicycle, you know?
	Well, hey, are you married?
	No, I don't want to be married.
	I like staying free and doing whatever I want and sleeping with a bunch of women.
	I think other than the women who you're quite dangerous towards, I would highly recommend not getting married.
	And I would highly recommend not spending time around children.
	I think this is all just made up nonsense.
	And I think it's all and also, listen, look, I mean, don't steal people's bikes.
	I get all of that.
	But you don't smash a kid's leg with a cinder block, producing perhaps lifelong injuries if he steals your bike.
	Like, obviously don't do that.
	Don't smash people with monkey wrenches because I think this is mostly just nonsense, right?
	I mean, don't do any of this stuff.
	There are other alternatives.
	And the other thing, too, is that like, it's perfectly fine to just walk away and not have it on your conscience that you destroyed some kid's body, perhaps for the rest of his life because of some bike.
	And it is just, you know, I like being free and sleeping with lots of women.
	I mean, it's entertaining nonsense.
	So I'll mention that.
	Oh, did he?
	He called in before with eight wives or something like that.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Maybe.
	Oh, God, what was his name?
	Oh, Dark Nimbus.
	Okay.
	Because I have a list.
	I have a little list here.
	Is he on my list?
	He is added to my list.
	Okay.
	Dark Nimbus.
	Yeah, I mean, this is all just a bunch of deluded nonsense.
	All right.
	Any other questions, comments, issues?
	Next caller is a guy from Florida who got his bike stolen by a guy with a cinder block.
	Next caller is a guy who can't walk because he got hit with a cinder block.
	Next guy is the guy who's still wearing a chair as a hat and all of that, right?
	Yeah, I just the jocks could do anything and they could beat anyone up.
	And it's all, I mean, I assume that this is somebody who's just may need to tweak the meds just to just a smidge, but I assume that's all just.
	Oh, the guy with eight women and only sons.
	Is that the guy?
	And the next caller is eight baby mamas.
	At least it draws a kind of well.
	I don't know that it's kind of funny.
	Live by the cinder block, die by the cinder block.
	And a monkey ridge.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, it's a very odd, odd liar, but you know, I guess some people like their little moment of fame.
	All right.
	We've got, oh, you know what?
	Let me just check my naughty list here.
	I don't think Linux Kohler is on it.
	Let me just check my naughty list here.
	Yeah, we're good.
	Kale, as in California.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	Hey, always great to chat with you.
	How are you?
	I'm good.
	How are you doing?
	Great.
	Yeah, I think we spoke a couple of weeks or a month ago about sports-related topics.
	So I always have a lot to say about this topic.
	So I appreciate you bringing it up.
	In terms of films, I know you're going down the 80s film tropes of jocks.
	What about you seen that film Lucas?
	I've heard of it.
	No, I'm never, I find sports films as a whole really, really boring.
	But is it a sports film?
	Do I have that right?
	Well, it's kind of a coming-of-age high school film by Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen.
	I think it came out in 1987.
	Oh, is that the one with the horrible allegations?
	Oh, God.
	Yeah.
	I mean, oh, God, I hope that ain't true.
	Anyway, okay, so yeah.
	Well, what's your thought about that?
	Well, I think it also has a good depiction of sports culture, you know, in terms of the protagonist wants to woo the girl.
	I believe Terry Green was the lead girl in that film.
	And he tries out for the football team as a nerd.
	And of course, it doesn't fare well.
	I'm not trying to give spoilers.
	I think it's a film worth watching.
	But he also encounters, obviously, the aggressive jocks and the intelligent and level-headed jocks.
	One being Charlie Sheen's character.
	He's pretty level-headed and intelligent, compassionate.
	And then, of course, you see the meatheads who probably, you know, very Neanderthal-like in their depiction.
	So I think it kind of gives you a taste of both worlds.
	Because in my experience, I played sports in high school and a little bit in college.
	And I also taught in school.
	So I kind of have some experience with athletes, student athletes.
	And to me, it was very, it was very 50-50.
	I would see bright, intelligent kids with good demeanors who were looked out for others and were intelligent.
	And then I also saw very sadistic and kind of hooligan behavior and just aggressive and violent.
	And so I saw it on both sides.
	And I think the film itself kind of does that same depiction as well.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And there's a funny thing about, I think it was starting in the 80s movies, although I don't know the My Bodyguard and so on.
	But there was a thing that happened, and I think it comes from sort of a blank slate argument.
	And maybe you've noticed this pattern as well.
	And it kind of comes from a Ferris Beauty's Day Off and so on.
	And this idea that people can't have it all.
	So the rich kids are assholes and the poor kids are great.
	And the jocks are mean.
	And the people who are bad at sports are smart and nice.
	So it's this game of whack-a-mole where you can't have it all.
	Does that make sense?
	Like you, for every advantage, there has to be a deficiency because there's this, you know, a lot of screenwriters and writers and socialists are kind of younger siblings, right?
	And, you know, it's really, it's really kind of unbearable to people that there are some people who just do have it all.
	Right?
	That there are some people who are smart and good looking and athletic and nice and virtuous and blah and blah and blah.
	And they're wealthy.
	And like, there are some people, I knew one or two of them when I was in high school, but it is almost unbearable for some people to look at others and say, like, if they look at the really pretty girl, well, she's got to be a bitch.
	And they look at the really handsome guy, well, he's got to be gay.
	Or he's got to be mean.
	Or like, or he's got to be shallow, right?
	The dumb jock.
	He's a jock, but he's got to be dumb.
	Like, so there's this thing that happens in art, which is everything has to level out.
	Like, oh, he's got more of this, got to have less of this.
	And it's all got to be, and boop, it's all going to be like horizontal.
	Everything's got a flat line.
	And it's a weird kind of people can't be different.
	And it's the same thing in The Simpsons, right?
	Like Mr. Burns, he's very wealthy, but he's a creepy, evil capitalist, Marxist stereotype and so on, right?
	And he's got no family and nobody loves him and so on, right?
	So this really started to come in in the late 70s and the 80s, I guess, as the communists did their slow march through the institutions.
	But it's all got to balance out.
	And you can't just have people, everybody's got to have their redeeming qualities.
	And everything balances out.
	It's like in Dungeons and Dragons.
	You've got like strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, and charisma, right?
	They see the 3 to 18, 3d6, right?
	And it's like, if you dial up one, you've got to dial down the other.
	You can't have people who just have 18 across the board.
	I mean, you could, I suppose, if you happen to roll really, really well.
	But this dial up one, dial down the other has been a constant.
	And so what you do is, and I understand this.
	So if you're poor and you see kids who are, you know, wealthy, comfortable, successful, socially good, good at sports.
	And I remember there were some rich kids in my high school.
	They showed up like their 16th birthday.
	They come in in like red sports cars.
	And, you know, I had a paper root because I needed food, right?
	So there's this resentment and this envy and sometimes this hatred.
	And it's like, they can't have it all.
	So whatever they've got, I've got it in my mind, take away something to equal it out.
	And this has been a real pathology.
	And it is not something that people can process at all.
	Yeah, no, that's interesting.
	As a teacher, in my brief stint, most of the students that I connected with the strongest were the athletes.
	They were able to communicate well.
	They were able to take criticism well.
	And from my experience, I'm drawing on one in particular student.
	Like you said, kind of had it all.
	Wealthy parents, a two-parent household, tall, good-looking, very successful.
	And he turned out to be a really, really bright young man.
	And, you know, when he would try to stand up for kids that he felt that were inferior, I think that they were already programmed to think that he was a prick.
	So they would just already have that pre-resentment already wired into their brain.
	So they were already just, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy sense.
	He couldn't escape that stereotypical, this guy must be an asshole jock because, you know, they were already, he was already combating pre-existing programming from these other kids, whether they were lower socioeconomic status or where they were goths or losers.
	I mean, I even saw it firsthand.
	You know, you'd have to pair them up and they would already be extremely resentful to these kids.
	So they were already, well, what's the point?
	I might as well just ignore them or not stand up for them in that kind of sense.
	So Anyways, I'm going off on a tangent, but I just wanted to say that, yeah, I appreciate the pushback on portraying jocks as pricks and assholes and kind of meatheaded because I certainly wasn't my experience.
	And when I was an athlete, I guess when I first got my Leatherman jacket and felt like I was a big shot in high school, sure, it goes to your head and you definitely feel like you're in a different status above everybody else.
	But I certainly didn't go around waving that and gave me permission to be a prick.
	That was never my intention at all.
	But again, I've also seen them that way.
	I've seen some pretty, pretty sadistic things.
	So like I said earlier, it was real 50-50 for me.
	I don't know what everybody else has to say about it, but I still think that that archetype of the asshole jock is still a valid point to point out.
	I just don't know.
	I agree, though, that it's over, it's over, it's overuse.
	It's over depicted for sure.
	Yeah.
	And if there are generally more attractive men around, you have a challenge.
	So if there are, you know, the tall, good-looking, wealthy, good in athletics, and these things do tend to cluster.
	So people who are wealthy tend to be good looking.
	Because if the father is wealthy, he tends to choose, be able to choose a more physically attractive and smarter wife because looks and IQ are somewhat correlated, right?
	So there are people who just kind of have it all, right?
	They've got connections, they've got wealth, they've got money, sorry, they've got, I mean, money to spend on their kids, and their kids are good in athletics.
	And because the households generally tend to be fairly well organized and peaceful, the kids can study well, they generally do better in tests and so on.
	So if you are low on the totem pole, if you are, what is it, a spiteful mutant, it's sometimes called by the jolly heretic.
	But if you are low on the totem pole, what can you do?
	Well, I mean, what you should do is you should start working out and you should start grooming and you should make sure your teeth are clean and you've got your deodorant and you figure out a way to get your skin to work it work for you and so on.
	And these things you can do without much.
	I remember when I first started getting into weightlifting when I was sort of 15 or 16, I honestly just, I picked up there with these crazy barbells and they had sand, plastic, big sort of heavy plastic rims or rings with sand in them.
	And that's what I would lift and they cost like nothing.
	And I had to duct tape them up from time to time because they started losing sand.
	I didn't need a gym membership.
	I didn't need any of that.
	And there was no gym at the school that I recall back at the time because this is before weights sort of became a thing.
	And you can start to do all of that stuff.
	You can get a nice haircut.
	It doesn't cost a huge amount more to get a nice haircut as opposed to no haircut.
	And you can stop leaning into being a loser.
	Because if you're kind of a loser, like as you say, sort of the underworld golf culture or the emo culture or whatever it is, if you're kind of on the loser side and you lean into it, then you get stuck there and you have no choice but to attempt to undermine the reputation of those who are more attractive and have better opportunities.
	And so what do you do?
	You all sit around and, oh, they're so shallow.
	They're such idiots.
	They're the polo shirt wearing yuppy, nerdy, you know, oh beamers, you know, like you just trash them as shallow and materialistic and middle class and petty bourgeoisie and like all of this Marxist contempt, hatred stuff that's really kind of gross.
	And I'm not saying you have to go and be those people, but stop leaning into being a loser and work to maximize your advantage, which you can do.
	I mean, for God's sakes, you can do push-ups with nothing.
	You can do push-ups, you can do sit-ups, you can do arm dips on the edge of the couch.
	You like to start to bulk up and build up, you can do lots of things to make yourself more attractive and more appealing.
	You can learn some jokes.
	You can practice how to tell good stories.
	Like when I was in my early teens and really trying to get out there socially, I would practice how to tell stories.
	And I would listen to people who were good storytellers and try and figure out how they did it and how they paced it and so on.
	And you can dig into your stories and you can put in accents and you can really commit to being a good storyteller or telling good jokes or whatever it is.
	But going into this bitterness, going into this, like I remember a friend of mine, we were on the bus and these attractive women were running, girls were running down the street at Young and Eglinton.
	They were late for something or whatever, running down the street.
	And he was like so bitter about it.
	He was like, oh yeah, you got to run to your brain surgery appointment.
	You got to go run to your iambic pentameter poetry class.
	And he was just so bitter about the attractive women.
	And why?
	Because they weren't going to give him the time of day.
	So there's just this bitterness.
	So it's a cliche thing.
	But rather than trying to pull other people down, find a way to lift yourself up.
	But if you try to lift yourself up, right?
	If you're in some skinny fat emo culture and you stop wearing the stupid makeup and you start working out and so on, what are they?
	They're going to tear you down, man.
	Oh, you're just turning into one of those retarded jocks.
	Oh, it's so pathetic.
	You know, you probably don't even like Echo and the Bunny Men anymore or King Kurd or any of this stuff.
	And it's like, oh, I guess you're just into D Squared, Duran Duran now.
	And they'll really will try and tear you down.
	And then you got to cross that.
	You got to cross that desert, man, from like loser town to functional village or from loser village to functional town or something like that.
	And that is, yeah, the loser.
	Hey, man, I'm just above that.
	Oh, you probably think dancing in the streets was originally done by Van Halen, right?
	And they know the obscure bands and they know, you know, that this is just a cover, right?
	It's just a cover, right?
	All I needed was the love you gave.
	Yeah, that wasn't the flying pickets originally.
	That was, yes, man.
	So, yeah, just they know all of the obscure stuff and they go to all the weird bands and they have the weird subculture and they're just seething with hatred.
	And so a lot of times when the jocks are putting down the losers, it's because they get that the losers just hate them.
	You know, if you ever, you know, you walk down the street and just people just look, I mean, I've had this experience, particularly in New Zealand and in Australia.
	And when I was there on the speaking tour with Lauren Southern, you just, hatred, right?
	Just venom, right?
	And it's a big thing.
	It's a big thing.
	So yeah, I just really, really recommend just look normal and work out and get a nice haircut, get some decent clothes.
	And you don't have to spend a lot of money.
	I used to go down to this Hasidic bazaar where you'd buy clothing by the pound.
	I hate to say it, man.
	The Smiths, man.
	And I would go down and you'd buy clothing by the pound and you had to spend eight hours there to get two or three good outfits, but you could.
	And it costs nothing.
	It's time.
	When you're a loser, you have often more time than money, but you can invest that time into looking.
	Yeah, you probably don't even like Joy Division anymore.
	Love will tear us apart again, right?
	Was it Paul Young did a cover of that?
	Do I have that right?
	Was that a fever dream or something like that?
	But yeah.
	And so this loser mentality where you hate those who are doing better than you or more popular than you and you feel like you're and listen, so the successful people, you got to accept that you were just lucky and you shouldn't take it as a personal achievement that you come from a good family.
	You happen to be tall and good looking.
	Hey, man, good for you.
	No problem with that.
	I think that's fantastic.
	But you are kind of lucky.
	And the problem is, though, if you want to circle back and pick people up, right?
	You know, like the Marines, don't leave the wounded behind.
	But what if the wounded people are trying to shoot you?
	Right.
	What if you want to go back and help the people who've been left behind, but they're so full of hatred to you that you can't help them?
	I mean, it's a very, very tough situation.
	So sorry, that was a bit of a ramble.
	Is there anything else you wanted to mention at the end of my river of language?
	No, no, not at all.
	I don't mind you rambling.
	It's excellent.
	No, I was just going to say, you know, from talking about the losers' perspective and all that, you know, I think they I did see some athletes who were in a lower socioeconomic status who were just thriving off of pure talent.
	And there's a lot of pushback I saw because, you know, in today's age, you have to go through AAU now.
	You have to start your children off extremely early.
	They have to build rapport with the community, the coaches, keeping, keep tabs with each other from middle school on to high school, et cetera.
	So if you're not started off early, you really miss the boat.
	And what I saw in particular with, let's call this person a loser who was just thriving off of pure talent and is a completely lower socioeconomic status.
	And he's out there just kicking ass.
	And he's clearly light years ahead of the other players just on pure talent alone.
	But he gets held back because the community rejects him because he's not part, he hasn't done his dues.
	And you can see sometimes they rise above this just on talent alone because they just have to.
	Like, well, we have to bring him in because he's that good.
	But oftentimes the community will just sabotage this person because if he gets in, then one of their children inevitably miss out.
	So it's just, you just have to be extremely, extremely talented.
	And I've seen it on both ends where the talent eventually wins out, which I hope it does in a meritocracy.
	But then I've also seen where the talent was good enough, but also just they succumb to the community itself.
	And it's just, it's pretty bizarre to see that.
	Yeah.
	I mean, so the competent, like the sort of wealthier bourgeoisie families, from what I've seen, they're kind of divided.
	So if there's a young talent that comes up, if it can make their kids look better and let their kids get ahead through excellence, right?
	If there's some really great soccer player that helps their kids, but the parents of the kid near the bottom of the roster are afraid that kid's going to get dropped.
	But all the other parents tend to be relatively happy, unless it's real solo sport, right?
	If it is real solo sport, like swimming, not relay swimming, but just swimming or tennis, if you're not playing doubles, it's a solo sport.
	And so, yeah, there definitely can be that.
	And just from my experience, like, I just wasn't going to stay at the bottom.
	Like, no matter what, I was just not going to stay at the bottom.
	Like, I was born at the bottom or real close to it.
	And I was just like, I am not staying down here.
	Down here is hell.
	I'm going to, if I have to, you know, climb with my freaking molars on bare quartz-like sparking rock, I am getting the fuck up from out under this shit.
	I am born at the bottom.
	I'm born in the dungeons.
	I'm born in hell, bottom layers.
	I am going to tunnel the fuck up.
	I am not staying down here.
	I am going to get up because if I stay down here, I'd rather be dead.
	It is not even like an option.
	It is not even like a choice.
	It's just fucking survival.
	I will not want to live down here.
	I'm not going to live with these shitty people.
	I'm not going to want to live in these shitty little apartments.
	I'm not going to want to take the fucking bus for the rest of my life.
	I am not going to stay down here.
	I will do anything short of crime to get out.
	And the people who stood in my way, sorry, man, totally expendable.
	Totally expendable.
	Totally expendable.
	I would climb on people's faces to get out of there, man.
	I could not.
	I felt like the fates were just holding my face in the bottom of the shit-infested, rat-infested Ganges River.
	You know, like just shit and fecal matter and awful and blood and guts and eyeballs just face down.
	And, you know, if you've ever been really held down, I don't know if you've ever like when we were kids, you know, people, kids would wrestle with each other and they'd try and make you say uncle.
	And I was like, I'm not doing that.
	Fuck that.
	I would, like some kid, I remember, it wasn't even, it wasn't bullying or anything like that.
	We were just wrestling and he pushed my face into the mud and I just had this rage and just threw him the fuck off me.
	I didn't hurt him or anything, but I was just like, I'm getting up.
	I don't care who's in my way.
	I don't care what's in my way.
	I don't care what I have to do.
	You know, and it wasn't always the most honorable path.
	I'll be straight up with you.
	I mean, I never did anything criminal.
	I mean, I did a bit of shoplifting in my early teens, whatever, nothing major.
	But I was like, I am not, this is whatever's happening in my life, I'm not staying down here.
	Because down here, not even a little bit, down here is death.
	Down here is like having my head in a toilet and people flushing with new shit every day.
	I am not staying down here because if I stay down here, I'm going to die in the same way that if somebody's holding your head in the mud and you can't breathe, you're going to die.
	And you do whatever it takes to get that person off your back and get the fuck up.
	And I don't know.
	Some people do stay down there.
	I know, and some of the people I know from when I was younger, they got out of there materially, but they didn't get out of there mentally.
	In other words, they maybe made some more money than their parents did, but they didn't get out of those terrible relationships.
	They've had their divorces.
	They've had their addictions.
	So they still stayed in the shit.
	It was just richer shit.
	Yeah, like OJ.
	Yeah, yeah.
	If your head's in the toilet and it's a golden toilet, it's still a fucking toilet, right?
	So to me, it wasn't just getting out of there financially.
	It was just, I'm not, I'm not going to spend my life in this bottom layer of shitty people and a shitty circumstances and a shitty environment.
	I am not going to do that.
	Now, the funny thing is, though, I got out of that, but I still have a bit of an uneasy relationship with sort of peers because they grew up.
	I really don't know.
	You know, I know that they're out there and I'm sure that there's some people who are listening to this, but I'll tell you this.
	I don't know anyone else who started slow and did as well.
	I mean, in terms of like happily married and, you know, I made some money in the business world and so on and made a little bit of money before the giant deplatforming, freedomain.com slash donate.
	If you'd like to help out, I'd be thrilled.
	But that is, was an unrelenting force to just get the fuck out.
	I didn't care if they were rock, you know, I will scrabble my way through that stuff.
	Kay says, consistently in my life, I'm just constantly leveling up.
	I just can't settle and people will call you ungrateful or entitled or delusional.
	And it's like, okay, bye.
	Oh, yeah.
	So I'm sure this happened to people who've burrowed their way up.
	And it's like, oh, you think you're so much better than us?
	I'm like, fuck yeah.
	Jesus, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning if I thought I was like you people.
	I wouldn't bother taking another breath if I thought I couldn't escape the fetid swamp of your brain farts.
	Oh, you think you're so much better than us?
	Yes.
	I think an amoeba and a squid and a vampire combined are better than you guys.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	I think I'm better than you.
	And I'm right.
	As long as I hold fast to that faith.
	So there you go.
	All right.
	Anything else that people wanted to mention before the end of the night?
	I really do appreciate you guys dropping by tonight.
	I'm glad that the show seems to have been interesting and helpful to people.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah, fun topic, Stefan.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	And a great great, and speaking of sports, best of luck in Atlantic City.
	We're all looking much forward to that main event you'll be debating.
	So thanks again for taking my call.
	I appreciate that.
	And yes, Atlantic City, March 28th and 27th, I think we're doing a meet and greet.
	So I would love, love to meet you all in the flesh.
	I promise, you know what?
	March, March is shower month.
	Actually, that's a good coincidence.
	I mean, obviously near the beginning, I might be a bit gamey near the end.
	March is shower month.
	And so if you're going to meet me in the flesh, I really, really, really recommend March.
	Yeah, that's a good deal.
	Any other month, it's a better meet and greet from a fair distance, depending on which way the wind is blowing and so on.
	But yeah, if you're going to meet me in the flesh, March.
	I don't think the tickets are out just yet.
	Is it safe for kids?
	So go to World War Debate, WordWar Debate.
	Wordwardebate.com.
	WordWardDebate.com and check it out.
	Just sign up for them and you can follow them on X for updates and so on.
	But Word War Debate, they'll have stuff out there.
	But I'm telling you now that it's going to be a great weekend.
	And, you know, you can go backstage, right?
	I mean, I'm going to hang out the weekend.
	I'm going to meet people and chat with people.
	I am relentlessly available at public events to the point where you're going to need some pepper spray, maybe a taser.
	Left nipple.
	If you're going to hit me with a taser, left nipple is the way to go because I'm a lefty.
	So I want to show my son live debates.
	I certainly won't be swearing during the debate.
	And so I can promise you at least that I'll be safe to chat with.
	But it would be great to meet there.
	James is going to come there as well.
	James is going to be my bodyguard and make sure James is going to help guide the tasers to the left nipple.
	That's his goal.
	And he can complain to HR all he wants.
	I will pass along the message to the HR manager.
	All right.
	Have a great evening, everyone.
	Thank you.
	Million and a half, freedomain.com slash donate.
	Don't forget shop.freedomain.com.
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	Android and iOS.
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	Lots of love.

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