Jan. 26, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:07:13
X/Twitter Questions Answered Jan 2026!
Devan Molyneux dissects X/Twitter’s 2026 gender debates, arguing women’s post-birth emotional burden unfairly shifts childbearing responsibility while men’s competitive instincts clash with nurturing priorities like redistributing care. He critiques media manipulation—e.g., Crystal Gale’s 1945 song I Pity the Poor Immigrant—exploiting women’s innate empathy, linking leftist ideology to evolutionary familial cooperation. Rejecting Greek philosophical dominance and moral relativism, he frames "why" as free will, not material cause, and ties UPB theory to absurdities like pineapple-on-pizza. The episode blends evolutionary psychology, media critique, and parenting advice into a provocative challenge of modern gender narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
So on January 19th, 2026, I asked my good friends on X for philosophical questions.
You all provided I will now respond.
All right, so let's go.
Philosophy, conjecture, only asymmetric info in a relationship is how much she wants to be a mom.
Other info, financial, medical character can be researched.
Only unknown is her post-birth rewired brain mom.
Therefore, burden is 100% on her to persuade the guy to have kids.
Conjecture, of course, means a hypothesis and so on.
And of course, you do want to know whether your partner wants to have children.
And people can lie about this, of course, but that's why you're not supposed to date forever, right?
You're supposed to date for a couple of months.
You're supposed to be engaged for a couple of months.
And ideally, you should get married within the year.
This endless dating is bookmarking and wasting fertility years for the sake of sexual access or financial access.
So that's not great.
So yeah, you should have it all sorted within a year.
This endless delay stuff is kind of propagandized.
It's just to lower the birth rate thing.
And I say this, having made that mistake of dating for years, got engaged to the wrong woman at one point and then bailed, thank heavens, for both her and me.
And when I met my wife, we got engaged in a couple of months.
We got married within the year, pretty much as soon as we could.
We even got married in the middle of winter so that we could do it sooner.
We didn't wait for summer.
And then we started trying to have kids right away.
So yeah, it's supposed to go that way.
So yes, does she want to be a mother?
Yeah.
I mean, otherwise you're kind of hijacking the entire process, right?
So what is the purpose of like, why do we have a sex drive?
Why do we have pair bonding?
Not for the sake of her own happiness, not for the sake of her own loins, but for the sake of having children.
That's why we have these things.
That's why they exist.
So you should use it to have kids.
But I don't think it's 100% on the woman to persuade the guy to have kids.
I mean, why wouldn't men want to be fathers either?
Meaning a father is a blast.
It's one of the greatest things in the world.
So why should she have to convince him to have children?
Now, she might convince him that she wants to have children, but he should want to have kids as well.
All right.
Is the meaning of life just life itself?
So I've done entire shows on this.
You can go to FDRpodcasts.com to search for meaning, and you can sort by show number to get the most recent ones.
What is the philosophy of regularly confessing to a priest?
Well, confessions of wrongdoing have positive and negative functions as a whole.
So they can be used to ease your conscience and repave your way back to connection with the rest of humanity, or they can be used as blackmail and control over you.
We hold your secrets.
If you ever betray the organization, we will reveal your terrible secrets and all that kind of stuff.
So if you've done wrong, then one of the prices, one of the major prices of doing wrong is disconnection from humanity, right?
Because if you've done some, I mean, not little things, right?
You've done some significant wrong, then you have to put on a fake front.
You have to pretend to be what you aren't.
It's camouflage, right?
I mean, a chameleon can change its colors and still be a chameleon, but a human being cannot repetitively lie and remain close to other human beings.
A typical example would be if you are having an affair, right?
You have an affair, you have to lie to your wife all the time.
You have to lie to your husband all the time.
You have to lie to everyone all the time.
If you have some secret addiction, you gamble in the middle of the night or something like that, then you have to lie about the finances.
You have to lie about what you're doing.
So, when you have a secret that distances you from other people, and so one of the purposes of confessing to a priest, I guess, or could be a therapist, although at least therapist, well, no, because neither can say anything, right?
But one of the purposes of confessing to a thief is at least there's someone who knows the truth.
And then, of course, the priest will generally instruct you to tell your wife, to tell your husband, whatever it is that's going on, and find a way to work it out.
Now, this is one of the reasons why liars are dangerous.
People who are comfortable with lying or good at it, which is usually the same thing, because whatever we practice, we get better at, is that someone who is a liar has in advance given themselves permission to do wrong.
Because if you have a policy of telling the truth, then you don't really have much option to do wrong.
So, if you have a policy saying, well, if I do something wrong, I'm going to have to tell the people around me, well, how many people would do wrong if they had to tell the people around them?
How many people would shoplift if they had to go and tell the store owner they shoplifted or go to the police?
How many people would cheat if, right before cheating, they phoned their spouse and said, Oh, by the way, I'm about to cheat.
I wanted to be honest, blah, blah, blah.
So, liars are untrustworthy, not just because they lie, but because their commitment to lying means that they have a whole array of things that they could do only because they're willing to lie.
So, that's why it's important not to be around liars.
Now, if you confess to the priest, at least someone knows at least you've broken that ice wall, right?
Lies are like this giant ice wall around your heart that separate you from humanity and occlude your connection to others.
It's a profoundly isolating experience to lie on a regular basis.
And this is why people get weird who lie, because they no longer have the feedback from other people.
And we are kind of solipsistic or narcissistic in our pursuit of truth.
We have, I mean, one of the reasons we have confirmation bias is that as social animals, we rely on other people to help us achieve the truth.
And when you lie to people, you separate yourself from their helpful feedback, and things just get worse and worse.
But of course, again, the blackmail thing is pretty clear.
All right, more interesting than Stefan Molyneux said, Have you weighed in on the carrot discussion?
A two-year-old dropped a carrot.
Dad wouldn't do anything nice for him until he picked it up.
I'm thinking dad needed to be more explanatory because it became a power contest, which would be fine if explained in sympathetic, bemused tone.
Yes, I did a show on this and just wanted to reiterate that for what it's worth.
I like Jeremy Kaufman, and I think he's a very courageous and good guy in many ways.
I think it was a mistake in this kind of parenting, which I tried to give good feedback on.
So, again, free demand.com.
Sorry, freedom.com/slash podcasts or FDRpodcast.com.
Just do a search for carrot.
Very briefly, the son needs to rebel against the father in order to gain access to higher quality females when he gets older.
Mind Effect of Brain00:03:36
And a father who really squelches the son's rebellion is lowering his future dating market value.
So, that was my argument.
All right.
Somebody asks, can religious belief survive the recent obsolescence of metaphysical dualism?
Listen, bro, I love the question.
I think it's a great question.
But you got to communicate, in my opinion, and I'm a pretty good communicator.
You got to communicate in a slightly less abstract and pompous manner because most people won't know what you're talking about.
And again, I know you're asking me, but then I have to translate it into the general population.
If you ask a question on the natural assumption that I'm talking to the intelligent layperson or the intelligent general population, then asking this question, they won't know what it means.
And so I have to now translate your question into general speak.
And remember, of course, something that struck me many, many years ago.
I've mentioned this before, of course.
But Socrates never used the word epistemology.
Socrates spoke in the common language of the people, the common tongue in Dungeons and Dragons.
So can religious beliefs survive the recent obsolescence of metaphysical dualism?
What this means is metaphysical dualism, metaphysics is to do with the nature of reality, right?
So just a brief reminder, metaphysics, nature of reality, epistemology, nature of knowledge, and so on.
Those are the sort of two major divisions.
Metaphysical dualism, so there's dualism and there's monism.
So dualism is what's called the mind-body dichotomy, which is another $20 word for saying that the soul is immaterial and the body is material.
So metaphysical dualism is that it is in the nature of humanity to have a spirit that is eternal and immaterial and a body that is material and mortal.
Ghost in the machine, soul imprisoned in the flesh.
So we have the flesh and we have our consciousness.
Our consciousness, our spirit, our soul is immaterial and survives our death, whereas our body will decay and rot and be eaten by worms.
And so monism is the idea that consciousness is an effect of the brain.
It is not in any, it's not any other existing entity.
Like it's not, consciousness doesn't fly out of our body and leave.
And we have an immaterial essence like a soul.
Monism is that the mind is an effect of the brain in the same way that sound waves are the effect of a radio.
And when you turn the radio off, you turn your MP3 player off, the voices don't leave and go somewhere else.
Just the electricity, which is generating them and producing them, has ceased.
So can religious beliefs survive the recent obsolescence of medical-physical dualism?
And science is making very great advances.
Like we can see the brain activity.
We can see personality manifested in light and dark areas of the brain.
We can see the effects of free will and so on.
So we are seeing much more clearly that the mind is an effect of the brain.
And we can see that if people have brain damage, that their personality changes.
And we can see that everything is an effect of the brain.
Everything that we say is us.
Eternal Minds00:04:06
Now, again, and I made this more vivid in a show recently, but we do partake in eternity.
We are mortal, but we partake in eternity.
And this is how math should be taught, in my opinion.
But when we say that two and two make four, we have participated in something that has been true forever, will remain true forever.
and we have hooked our brains in to something that existed before us and will exist after us.
So the idea that, particularly with written language, the idea that our soul lives on forever, well, in the not-too-distant future, I will be, well, I think what will happen is my body will be rotting in the ground and my brain will be studied, and they will find enormously large language centrist, I believe, and I...
But I will be gone.
I will be gone.
But I'm dead and buried.
I'm gone.
I have joined the choir invisible.
If you hadn't nailed him to the perch, he'd be pushing up the daisies.
Well, but here you can hear me speak.
Maria Callis, long gone.
We can still hear the thrill of her soprano.
So you can hear me speak.
I am long dead, yet my thoughts live on in this format.
That means a lot to me, by the way.
And I'm eternally grateful for the modern technology that has allowed me to not take all of my wild and productive thoughts to the grave with me.
I wrote an entire novel about the terror of a brilliant person sinking into the quicksand of history, leaving no mark really on her society until she does a final self-destructive mark.
But I live on.
I can speak in your ears as if I were in the room with you.
And that's cool enough while I'm still alive.
It's even cooler when I'm dead.
And the cooler it is when I'm long dead.
And of course, the technology means that I'm not some tinny formal voice like you listen to T.S. Eliot reading the wasteland.
Oh, the wasteland by T.S. Eliot, right?
Headpieces filled with straw, alas.
This is the way that the world ends.
It's kind of formal, and I'm trying to speak in a sort of relaxed conversational tone.
I'm not trying to.
I generally do speak in a relaxed conversational tone.
So it's like I'm in the room, right?
I'm in your ears.
Long dead, my vocal cords have turned to dust.
My brain has been sliced and diced and studied.
And I am gone, gone, gone, but I'm still tickling the hairs on your inner ear right close to your brain.
So I do get to live on.
And this happened, of course, in terms of writing.
Unfortunately, we don't have any of Aristotle's writing.
We only have his student notes reconstructed and so on.
But we have, of course, Plato's writing, and Plato's mind is not tickling our ears in terms of the written form, but it tickles our eyeballs, changes the electrical impulses going to our brain as we read particular words.
In the future, all of my work will be automatically transcribed on the fly, babblefish style, and I will be able to speak in any language, in any timber.
You can change me to a Norwegian woman if you want, and it will be perfectly transcribed in terms of intonation and approach.
So I do get to live forever.
I do get to live forever through the minds of others, through you listening to me, 50,000, 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now.
You can hear me padding around this little room talking to you about the truth.
I am not dead, as long as there are people listening.
All right.
Negative Utilitarianism Race00:15:10
Turbo Chad, would four testicles be a game changer in the manosphere?
How long until we achieve our destiny of having four testicles?
Man, if I could get mine down from eight, that would be fantastic.
Then I could sit cross-legged a bit more easily.
Right now, it's like having a bag of marble strapped to my inner thighs.
All right, somebody else writes, is negative utilitarianism a philosophical equivalent of feminization and what is happening socially?
Follow on, is it ultimately potentially more harmful?
Hmm.
Again, I would write, I would argue that you, my friend, it's kind of an empathy test.
So when you talk about abstract topics, you need to be very careful.
I think, I would argue, you need to be very careful that you are not pulling a status card.
So pulling a status card is using abstract, somewhat subjective, complicated terms without defining or explaining them.
And this puts people in a bind.
And be aware of this.
It's a very, very important thing in life.
This is an empathy thing.
So if you're discussing philosophical topics with people and you use terms like negative utilitarianism, basically negative utilitarianism.
So traditional utilitarianism is about maximizing happiness.
Negative utilitarianism, and this comes out of Karl Popper and others, is about minimizing suffering, that the purpose of a good society is to minimize suffering, not to maximize happiness.
So negative utilitarianism is not a term that most people would understand.
So when you are talking to a general audience, you really do have to ask yourself, what is it like to be on the other side of my communication?
Am I clear?
Am I comprehensible?
Because you don't want to put other people in the awkward position of asking you what the living hell you're talking about.
Because when you use jargon without explaining it, it does put other people in a very awkward situation, which is they have to ask you what you're talking about.
Now, if I'm using some common term, I say, oh, that's a very lovely oak tree.
And somebody says, I don't, what are you talking about?
I don't know what you're talking about.
I would assume that they don't speak English and, right, I've made a sort of mistake or whatever, maybe I didn't know.
But that would be sort of a common term.
So that would not be something that I would feel bad about, that I had, you know, because I'm not using complicated language, right?
But if you use complicated language, then when you say it to people, they're in the awkward position of having to ask, what does that mean?
What do you mean by negative utilitarianism, right?
They may not know what utilitarianism means, and they probably wouldn't know what negative utilitarianism refers to.
So if you use complicated language to people, then you are pulling a status game on them.
I mean, unless you're dealing with people who already know these terms, like some other academic or somebody who does this for a living or something like that.
So what happens is when you use complicated language to a general audience, they have to ask you what you mean and why do they have to ask you what you mean?
Now, I understand you're not asking this question of a general audience.
You're asking it of me.
But it would be easier for me if you would define what you mean, right?
Because there is no objective definition of negative utilitarianism, right?
It's not like two and two make four or an oak tree or a dolphin or something like that.
Because when you say, well, the purpose of life is to minimize unhappiness, that is relatively subjective.
So I don't know what you mean, economic unhappiness, emotional unhappiness, career unhappiness, love unhappiness.
So when you're using complicated and relatively subjective terms without defining them, you're putting the other person in an awkward position because they have to ask you what you mean.
And then what do you do?
Do you say, oh, well, gee, I thought you knew what that meant.
You know what I mean?
Like there's a kind of superiority in there.
It's very, very important, in my, I mean, truly humble opinion.
You know, you've heard me say a million times on this show, I struggle with this too.
I'm far from perfect, blah, blah, blah.
We're all in the same boat.
We're all in the same war trenches in the battle for truth.
Because I want to, it's a fan of an awkward way to put it.
I want to raise people up.
You know, I don't mean it that way, like I'm hauling people up from a frozen river, but I want us to be on an equal playing field.
I don't want to be any kind of superior dude or anything like that, because we do all struggle with these things.
And I don't want people to come out of any contact with me feeling smaller.
I mean, unless they're a total douchebag, in which case, fair is fair.
But I don't want people to emerge from any contact with me feeling lesser or dumber or awkward or untutored or unschooled or unaware or anything like that.
So I have to adjust what it is that I'm saying.
Like if I'm talking to someone in a call-in show and clearly English is not their native tongue, I have to adjust what it is that I'm doing so that it makes sense to them, right?
And I'm sorry for the long explanation, but it's just a big empathy thing.
If you use complicated terms with someone who doesn't know what those complicated terms mean, it's a bit of a dick move.
Because what are they supposed to say?
They either have to play along, in which case there's no point to the conversation, or they have to say, I don't know what that means.
And what they experience, I'll tell you this straight up, what they experience is a diminishment.
Because you're talking to them as if everybody knows what something like negative utilitarianism, right, means.
Or, you know, to talk to the earlier guy, the recent obsolescence of metaphysical dualism.
Are you trying to sound clever?
Are you trying to be superior?
Are you trying to make them feel awkward?
Did you have a bad teacher who did this to you?
Because if they don't know, like if you use these terms on the assumption that everybody knows them and someone doesn't know them, which most like 99% of the population would not be able to give you a definition of the obsolescence of metaphysical dualism or negative utilitarianism, and is it a philosophical equivalent of feminization and what is happening societally?
Follow on, is it ultimately potentially more harmful?
That is extremely vague, pretty subjective, and using technical language, which I have to translate, you're putting the burden of translating on me.
And if you ask the average person, right?
You ask the average person what that means and they wouldn't be able to tell you.
So now you're putting them in a position where they think, well, it's like the Emperor's New Clothes.
They think, but does everyone know these terms?
And is this a common term that I just don't know?
I've just completely missed for some reason.
So this is not, I'm not trying to be a nag, of course, right?
But I am saying that you will get more happiness in life when people have a positive interaction with you.
And if you give them technical terms that they feel bad for not knowing, because the only reason you wouldn't explain technical terms or any language that you use, the only reason that you wouldn't explain these things is that they would be common knowledge, right?
And if you don't know that they're not common knowledge, then you lack empathy for others.
If you're doing it to look clever, then people have a negative experience of interacting with you.
And then you can only really hang out with masochists.
All right, so let's get to the question.
Is negative utilitarianism a philosophical equivalent feminization of what is happening societally?
Follow one, is it ultimately potentially more harmful?
Then what?
Then non-utilitarianism, then positive utilitarianism, than something else?
I don't know.
So you have to really, when you communicate, and I'm sorry to be such a nag, but I really want you guys to be great communicators because it really matters because you care about philosophy.
And I hope you'll take the coaching on how to communicate well.
I mean, I've taken very complicated philosophical concepts and translated them to tens of millions of people in a way that is positive for them, which is why people keep coming back to the show.
So I am definitely an expert on communicating philosophy.
And so I hope you'll take the coaching that you need to at least ask people if they know what these terms mean and assume that they don't, right?
Or you can say negative utilitarianism.
And by that I mean blah, blah, blah, right?
Because even though I understand the definition of negative utilitarianism, those two words do not encapsulate the entire philosophy in an objective manner.
So the avoidance of suffering.
Yes, so originally, of course, the original American experiment, life, liberty, it was supposed to be, of course, life, liberty, and property, but that would have implicitly rejected slavery, which is why it was taken out, and became life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness.
So if you think of a race and everybody is told the race is happening ahead of time, the running race, they can train as much or as little as they want.
They can work as much or as little as they want to prepare for the race, mentally, stretching, whatever, right?
Strengthening their legs, their lungs, their heart.
And it's a 100-yard dash, 100-meter dash.
Everyone starts a flat field and you just bang, off you go.
And whoever crosses the finished lines first is the winner.
And of course, people who are in the race are in the race to win it.
So they have the pursuit of happiness.
They can pursue winning the race.
They can have that as a goal.
And they can achieve it.
But not everyone.
It's not a great analogy for the free market because in the free market, it's win-win.
This is win-lose.
But the pursuit of happiness is everyone can run the race.
And whoever is the fastest wins, wins the race.
So the person who wins the race makes everybody who doesn't win the race less happy.
So if Bob is ahead and Tom is right behind him, if Bob stumbles and trips and Tom wins the race, then Bob loses, though he was going to win.
And Bob, sorry, and Tom wins, though he was going to lose.
So Tom is very happy that Bob stumbled and fell.
Yay, trip.
So everybody who doesn't win is unhappy.
Now, if you say that the race is there not to allow someone to be happy to win, but the race is there to make sure nobody is unhappy that they lose, then you have a big problem.
A big problem.
Now, if you have a win-lose paradigm, then positive and negative utilitarianism come kind of meet in the back.
They come full circle like left and right tyrannies, right?
They come full circle and they meet in the back.
Because if you say, well, we've got 10 people in the race and we want to maximize their happiness.
We want to maximize the happiness of everyone.
All 10 people in the race need to have maximum happiness.
Well, one person wins the race.
That gives them plus 10 happiness.
Everybody else loses the race.
That gives them, let's say, minus five happiness.
So you have plus 10 happiness for the guy who wins the race.
You've got nine people with minus five.
says minus 45, so you end up with minus 35 happiness.
So having a win-lose race causes unhappiness in society as a whole.
You have more people unhappy, maybe not to quite the degree that the winner is happy, but you have more people unhappy than are happy.
So you can't ever have a race with only one winner.
So how do you have it so that people in the race are the least unhappy?
Well, frankly, the only thing you can do is disband the race.
There's no way.
There's no way to minimize unhappiness and still have the race.
Because if you say, okay, well, there aren't going to be any winners or losers.
Everybody can run, walk, nap, walk backwards, walk on their hands.
It doesn't matter.
Then because it doesn't matter who wins, nobody's going to bother showing up to the race because there's no prize, there's no victory, there's nothing.
So you have to get rid of the race.
You have to get rid of competition if you are a utilitarian who wants to maximize happiness or a negative utilitarian who wants to minimize unhappiness.
Because how on earth are you going to minimize unhappiness while still having a race where by definition there can only be one winner and nine losers?
That's competition.
And even though capitalism is win-win, right?
So when I was in the business world, capitalism is win-win, but it's not win-win for everyone.
So when I was in the business world, we would do these things.
They were called RFPs.
We would respond to RFPs.
RFPs means request for proposal.
So you would put a lot of time, effort, and energy into crafting a lengthy document saying how your solution was going to be the best and here's how much it was going to cost and here's how long it was going to take.
And we would often be in competition with five or ten other companies, some of them like Microsoft and IBM, quite large.
So this is one of the reasons I had to really work on my charisma, charisma.
So while it's win-win for the company that chooses the one company out of the five or ten who submits an RFP, every other company has spent the RFPs took a while, right?
They could take up to a week to put together.
Now, the contracts could be a million dollars or more.
So if you won, you were happy.
But the company who wants the RFPs and the company who wins that process, they're both happy.
But the four to nine or more other companies who spent a week of significant professional time and spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars putting together these RFPs, I remember doing one that took a month.
And that was probably $20,000 to $30,000 worth of professional time.
Minimizing Unhappiness00:05:43
And if you lose, then you're very unhappy.
So even though capitalism is win-win, it's only win-win for the two parties who conclude the contract for everybody else who's bidding on the contract.
They lose.
So if you have a company and 10 RFP submitters, then you have 11 entities.
Two of them will be happy.
Nine of them will be unhappy.
How do you minimize the unhappiness?
They can't all do the work.
They can't all get paid.
So how do you minimize the unhappiness?
Well, I guess you could say everyone gets paid whether they win the contract or not.
Well, then people really won't put much effort into the RFPs because they're going to get paid anyway.
It's not competitive.
So it won't be accurate.
It won't be detailed.
It won't be.
And then you won't have any decision by which to make a better decision.
How do you make sure nobody loses the running race?
Well, the only thing you can do is I guess you could micromanage the running race so that everyone crosses the race at the exact same time.
And therefore, everybody gets, what, first prize?
But that's micromanaging, right?
Because people, the race also becomes much more expensive, right?
Let's say you get $1,000 for winning the race.
Everyone has to win the race at the same time.
The race now doesn't cost $1,000.
It costs $10,000.
It's too expensive.
Everyone gets their money.
What if somebody's sick?
It's not their fault.
So then you have to give them a prize, even though they never showed up.
It's not their fault they got sick.
They're unhappy, right?
So then people won't even, there won't be a race.
People won't even show up for the race.
I mean, I remember a friend of mine telling me about his son who was in a running race.
And there was one girl who was away on vacation, and she got a ribbon.
Didn't even show up that day.
So it is definitely feminine.
To minimize unhappiness is fine within the family when you have a bunch of kids because things have got to be equal and so on, right?
But it's just, yeah, I mean, I think you're right.
It's bad in society as a whole.
But yeah, utilitarianism can't work.
All you can have is objective universal standards, rationally explained, implemented by free market dispute resolution organizations, but you can't minimize unhappiness.
And it's not people's, it's not society's job to minimize your unhappiness.
All right.
Of course, the other minimizing unhappiness is also something that does come out of the female mindset as a whole, and it requires micromanaging and tyranny, which makes and the guy who could win the running race is really unhappy.
All right.
What is the biological reason why wives try to talk softly to their husbands when they're in another room or otherwise can't hear them?
There's no way it's a coincidence which nearly every husband on the planet has nearly every husband on the planet experiencing it.
Women try to talk softly to their husbands.
I don't know.
Why do teenagers mumble?
And then when you ask, sorry, what?
They say, nothing.
It's a mystery.
Why do wives try to talk softly to their husbands who are in another room or otherwise can't hear them?
Well, women, I think, if I remember rightly, I could be wrong about this, but I think women tend to retain better hearing as a whole over the course of their lives.
So maybe they could hear themselves and they're not really getting that the husband might not be quite as sharp-eared as in the past.
But I think my general idea would be something like this.
And it obviously could be complete nonsense, but this is sort of my first thought, if this helps.
So women, I mean, this is a beautiful thing about women.
I love this about women.
Women, particularly wives, are constantly thinking about the happiness of everyone else in a way that we semi-autistic, gearhead, mechanical-brained males can't comprehend.
And my wife openly says this.
She wakes up in the morning and she's like, okay, you know, how's everyone's happiness?
What can I do to make people happier and content?
And she's just lovely that way.
And I think that's female nature as a whole.
And again, if it's not corrupted by politics, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.
When it gets corrupted by politics, it becomes terrifying and civilizational ending in some ways.
So I think this is one of the reasons why women will get mad if they have to ask you stuff because they are constantly thinking.
And, you know, ladies, correct me if I'm wrong, of course, right?
But this is what I've talked.
In the sort of high-quality wives that I've met and talked to about these kinds of things that, oh, yeah, everyone's constantly on my mind.
Everyone's happiness is, well, I would call it an obsession, but it's not.
It's just the female brain.
Everyone's happiness is really important, which is why when women, you know, there's this old sort of joke about how women you're flicking through the channels when people used to do that kind of thing.
You're flicking through the channels and she comes across a video or an image or a film of a woman crying, she has to stop, right?
Because if an unhappy person is kind of a torment for a woman, and again, with regards to babies and toddlers and kids, it's an absolutely beautiful thing.
And this is one of the reasons why they're able to multitask and run households so well.
And because remember, women are designed to raise, you know, five to ten children and keep them all alive and keep them relatively happy.
And she just has to think about other people's happiness and needs all the time.
We men, maybe it's the four testicles.
Spear Throwing and Survival00:04:07
I don't know.
But we men, we don't.
We don't do that.
And it's not that women are warm and men are cold, that women care about others and men don't care about each other's, right?
There was a woman who wanted her day off, a day off on her birthday.
She was talking to Caleb Hammer, the Banshee-voiced shrieker at other people's misjudged finances.
And he's like, well, why would you get a day off for your birthday?
You're an adult, right?
And she's like, well, I guess it's because I care about people, right?
So that's her thought.
So she cares about people.
So people should get the day off on their birthday.
And he can't run a business if everyone's taking their time off for their birthday.
And so men have to not care if other people are unhappy.
We have to not care if other people are unhappy.
Because women are in cooperation and redistribution.
And men are in meritocratic, raw meritocratic competition.
As I sort of mentioned before, the best, you know, dead-eyed dick, the best guy at throwing the spear, he gets the spear.
Because if they throw the spear and miss, then people don't eat and people might die.
So men are in a raw meritocracy.
And a lot of sports has to be a raw meritocracy so that men know who the best fighters are, who the best warriors are, who the best hunters are.
So if men say, well, you know, bug-eyed Bob over there hasn't thrown a spear in a while.
He feels sad about it.
Let's give him the spear.
Then he throws and misses, scares the deer away, and everybody starves.
So men can't afford.
So if bug-eyed Bob can't throw a spear, he doesn't get a spear.
In fact, he doesn't even really get invited on the hunting party.
And he's sad about that.
But men can't afford to worry about people being sad about stuff because we have to win the wars and we have to feed the people.
We have to feed the families.
So we can't get overly fussed about people being unhappy, right?
So there's, I learned this from WKRP in Cincinnati, which was a very funny show about being on the radio.
So I was on the radio in university and I watched this show about a radio station, which was very funny and very clever.
And one of the shows, there was a newscaster called Les Nessman.
It's time for more music and Les Nessman.
So Les Nessman was a sort of nebbish, nerdy guy, chai-chai Rodriguez.
And there was one, it was always indoor studio stuff.
And then there was one show where they were out on a baseball field.
And it was a sort of very vivid and memorable show.
Every character had their details, including the lazy union guy.
Les Nessman was forced to play the violin as a little boy rather than throw and catch baseballs because he was the son of a single mother, no father.
And so then he accidentally caught a ball and apparently this was the greatest thing ever.
Now that's a feminine approach because I'm sure you've just met people who are just physically uncoordinated.
I don't know how it survived four million years of evolution, but you know, they throw balls like some semi-spastic hand-cranked swastika and they just don't throw, they can't catch, they can't hit.
It's physically awkward.
And Les Nessman would be one of those guys.
And so the fact that he accidentally catches a ball and is cheered and this heals everything.
And it's like, well, if bug-eyed Bob badly throws a spear, but it accidentally lands in the neck of the deer and everybody gets to eat, doesn't mean that he gets the ball.
He doesn't get the spear or the ball next time.
And of course, it's a peculiar thing, which is, well, if you just give me a chance, I can be really good.
Producing Pornography's Challenges00:05:46
And that's not how men work.
We have to work with proven wins and losses.
We can't deal with speculation, right?
Hey, remember that time three years ago when I threw the spear and it did hit the deer?
It's like, yeah, but you can't repeat it.
I mean, you could blindfold me, put a golf ball in front of me, I might get a hole in one, but I sure as hell couldn't repeat it.
So the reason I'm saying all of this, believe it or not, there is a reason.
Thank you for your patience, is that because women are constantly thinking about everyone else, again, beautiful thing, lovely thing, in the same way that men's mechanical monomania is also a beautiful and wonderful thing.
We are an amazing team, produce the best brain on the planet and best brain in the universe that we know of.
So the reason why women speak softly when their men is running drills in the garage is because the husband is ever present in the wife's mind in a way that men can't really process.
You know, people drift in and out of our minds as a whole.
You know, we're focused on tasks and people kind of drift in and out of our minds while we're doing stuff.
You know, I mean, you think of the guy in war, he's got a picture of his girl in his pocket or whatever, right?
So she's, but he's not thinking of her when he's under fire.
He's not thinking of her when he's running through barbed wire or across no man's land or something.
So women come in and out of men's minds.
Children come in and out of men's minds while we're focusing on tasks.
But I remember a woman, she wrote about being a mother, and she said, I can't ever stop thinking about my family.
It's like a dimmer switch goes halfway down.
I can dim it a little bit, but even when I'm watching an action movie or a horror movie, I'm still thinking about my family.
What do people need?
What are they looking for?
What needs to be done?
What appointment needs to be made?
Constant.
And again, beautiful.
And this mismatch between men and women, and it's not a mismatch in terms of what's productive, but if women think that men need to be like them, then women would constantly be thinking, well, why haven't you thought of this?
Or how could you possibly forget this?
Or, you know, so-and-so does need that.
And what is the name of our kid's pediatrician and his assistant and the woman at the reception?
Men don't know because we are raw meritocracy task-oriented.
And women are constantly thinking about everyone else.
Beautiful thing.
So because the man's mind is constantly present in the woman's mind, she talks to him as if he's there because he's always there.
Right?
I mean, lurking.
What do you need now?
And so because women are constantly thinking about other people's needs, when people don't think about the woman's needs, if a man doesn't think about the woman's needs, she gets offended.
Like, well, what?
I mean, if you cared about me, you would be thinking continually about my needs.
But that would be asking for the man's brain to be a woman's brain, which would make her kind of a lesbian.
Although lesbians don't seem to think that much about other women's needs either, because they're just to have about the most violent relationships in all of the human ecosystem.
So just as a man, understand that women are delightfully incomprehensible.
Same thing for women.
Men are delightfully incomprehensible.
She's talking to you as if you're in the room because you're constantly on her mind.
And she thinks you're right there because you are constantly right there.
So hopefully that helps explain that.
What is the meaning of life?
Again, I've answered this a bunch of times.
Perfectly valid for you to ask.
It's not like you would know all of the shows I've done.
But go to fdrpodcast.com, search for meaning, and sort by the most recent.
In light of Ashley Sinclair AI scandal, how can a framework for ethical porn be attained?
Ethical porn be attained, isn't it?
So, of course, the production of pornography often requires some significant levels of abuse.
The production of pornography generally relies on a prior history of childhood sexual abuse and so on.
So I suppose, because, you know, one of the things that women say in defense of their own pornography consumption, which generally seems to have semi-human beasts, was it glory, glory whole milk farm or some horrendous thing where a woman is trying to pay off her student debts by milking semen from a minotaur.
Milk cow minotaur farm.
Something like that.
I'm afraid I have too much PTSD from reading reviews of the book to remember it, but Shoe and Head did a very, as she does really great shows on this kind of stuff.
But, you know, the werewolves and the billionaire vampires and things like that.
So women, when they are trying to defend their own trash pornography consumption, which is highly dangerous, toxic, they say, well, but people aren't harmed.
And I mean, yeah, that's certainly true.
You don't, no, no minotaurs were harmed in the writing of this book.
And if I suppose you could create pornography through AI, then people would not be harmed and so on.
And the Ashley Sinclair AI scandal, isn't she suing Elon Musk because Grok can produce images of people in bikinis?
And she herself has produced many images of herself in a bikini using Grok and praises Grok for its creation of, I think she put it as a great, that gives women a great rack, right?
Nice boobs.
So it is an odd thing.
And I don't think it has anything to do with any abstract ethical concerns.
It has to do with vengeance.
All right.
Women's Maternal Instincts00:08:22
Is Frankenstein's monster also called Frankenstein due to his newfound family lineage?
I don't know.
I don't really have any opinion on that.
You recently spoke to a caller about giving children a sibling for companionship.
How do those of us who only had one kid due to consequences of past mistakes or just bad luck make sure a kid thrives despite?
I think you face similar challenges.
I'm 46.
My wife is 44.
My son is two.
Wow.
Congratulations on getting one past the goalie.
Right under the wire.
That's you grabbing a child like Indiana Jones grabs his hat from a falling door.
So good for you.
So the essential thing, the essential thing, if you have an only child, is for one parent to be staggeringly immature.
Staggeringly immature.
To the point where you start off slightly older than the sibling when the sibling is two, the pretend sibling your kid is two.
And then by the time they're about 10, they've vastly outgrown you.
I think we all know who that is in my family.
That's right.
My wife.
No, it's me.
I cannot tell a lie.
Or at least I vote this time.
So you have to sort of get down on your knees and play with the child as if you're a child.
That gives them more of a peer experience.
Of course, if you have friends with kids, you want to have your friends play, kids play with your kid as much as possible.
If you are religious, there are tons of youth groups and all that kind of good, juicy stuff.
But it's a very big question.
And you have to make sure, of course, so you'll be older and then your kid's going to be all alone, right?
Because you're old-ass parents, as am I. I'm going to be 60 this year.
My daughter is 17.
She's going to be 18 this year, right?
So I guess I was your wife's age when my daughter came along.
And you're going to have to really work to make sure she has good peers and hopefully can date and get into a good relationship because when you and your wife get old, she's going to have a lot.
I mean, if it's a daughter, oftentimes daughters have an urge to take care of elderly parents, which is really tough.
And it's one of the things that's a real drag.
I mean, there's pluses and minuses.
Like this plus is about being an older parent as you probably have more resources and time.
But the downside is that, you know, you've got to really work to stay as healthy as possible.
It's one of the reasons I exercise and try to keep myself at a healthy weight and get my blood work done and checkups.
And I just don't want to put my daughter through the burden of taking care of me when I get old, at least for as long as possible, and all of that.
So, and of course, it'll probably fall on my wife.
She'll probably outlive me statistically.
Plus, she's shorter.
So, yeah, look after your health and try and get her as many companions as possible and play with her at her level and try to give her good skills that way.
And have a great template with regards to your wife, right?
So love your wife and have your wife love you back so that your daughter has a good template for a marriage that she wants.
All right.
Why does it look like the average IQ tends to adhere to ideology thinking?
I thought about that from my experience and from data showing that women tend more to leftism.
Women IQ are vastly recorded towards the average.
Well, women innately care about what is thrust in front of them, so to speak.
And remember, of course, a lot of women over the past would inherit children, not their own.
So you could be a stepmom.
Of course, your sister could die and you end up with her kids.
She might die during childbirth or of sort of various illnesses, which were rampant.
And so women, women who only had a biological impulse to mother their own children, well, that would be bad for the family lineage, right?
Because, of course, your sister's children are still biologically related to you.
So you need to care about more than just your own biological children.
So women tend to mother whatever is put in front of them.
And again, you can see these videos all over social media and they're beautiful videos, really, which is, you know, a girl of 11 or 12 is given a puppy and bursts into tears and just loves that puppy with all her heart and all of that because women will mother whatever is put in front of them.
And with the rise of modern media, you know, African bloated bellied children and so on who are starving to death are put in front of women and that, was it Sally Struthers who ran that stuff in the 70s or 80s?
And so when hungry children are put in front of women, their mothering impulse kicks in because that's how we're programmed.
So you just need to put sad people in front of women and women's mothering instincts will kick in and they will get enormously fierce in the protection, right, to the point where women are risking their lives trying to protect sad people, often sad criminals and sad, in fact, pedophiles, from being deported.
Even though Honando, the same guy who deported twice as many people under Obama and mainstream media went for ride-alongs and he got the significant presidential presidential medal of freedom or something like that, he got, was very much praised.
But that was under Obama, now it's under Trump, and Trump's only deporting half the numbers, and now he's evil Hitler trademark, blah, blah, blah.
So if you can hack women's biological caring systems to care for ex, right?
And again, that would be her sister's kid.
It could be a cousin's child or something like that.
And then she will, you know, take care of whoever's put in her household.
Again, a beautiful thing if it's in a free society.
But it's very easy to hack women's omni-caring sense, right?
Men don't have that, right?
Men don't.
Men don't have that as much.
So again, strengths in different areas.
So it's very, very easy to hack women's omni-caring to the point where they view criminals as their children and the police as predators, right?
So women famously lift up cars to get their kids who are trapped under.
I don't know if it's an urban myth, but it's sort of women are very ferocious.
Like, you know, that sort of mama bear, mama grizzly bear energy.
Like, I'll do anything to protect my kids.
And so you can hack into women's biological systems and endlessly portray.
I was thinking of this the other day.
There was an album, an album, in 45.
A long-haired country singer named Crystal Gale did a lovely version of, I'll get the song in a sec.
It'll come to me.
But on the flips, Amazing Grace, there we go.
Amazing Grace.
She had a lovely version of Amazing Grace.
And on the other side, I never listened to the other side, was a song called I Pity the Poor Immigrant.
This was a, I assume, I'm not saying she was a Marxist, but I assume that this was just sort of Marxist songwriters or whatever.
I pity the poor immigrant.
And pity the poor immigrant.
This is a way of hacking into women's caring systems to have them care for their enemies and attack their protectors, right?
It's just a reversal.
You can program women to view, I mean, honestly, anyone.
It's an amazing, right?
Because the net was never designed to be outside of a tribe.
So if you can convince women that the poor immigrants who are just here huddled caring for their families, they want to tear the families apart and they're just looking for a better life.
And they're sad and hunted.
And oh, the tears and the sobbing and the anguish.
And then you hook into women's omni-caring biological mechanisms and then they are poor, helpless children being chased by dangerous predators.
And the women will then defend the poor, helpless children against the dangerous predators.
And it's a very cruel hack to turn love into corruption.
Why Boys Test Limits00:05:18
But of course, it's not like the powers that be have any compunction about that.
All right.
Sean, come on, we all know it's seen.
If, isn't that concerning, if the Christian Satan exists, is it a manifestation of God or a result of the trauma and outrage of the billions of souls that suffer in hell?
Is it a manifestation of God or a result of the trauma and outrage of the billions of souls that suffer in hell?
I don't really understand that question.
So if you could rephrase and resubmit, I would appreciate that.
Tom writes, how does a free society cope with people who can't think rationally?
Well, I mean, the capacity to process concepts is required for any kind of contract, right?
A social contract.
In order to be subject to morality, you have to understand morality.
And so people who can't think rationally would not be able to function in a free society.
They couldn't function in any kind of society.
And so when people get pregnant, they would have insurance against the possibility that their child had some biological form of schizophrenia and was not able to act rationally.
And then they would take care.
Society would take care of.
The DROs would take care of that, right?
So you pay a certain amount of money in insurance.
Lots of people would do that.
And then the few people who develop biological issues with their brain, not as a result of child abuse, which would be caught, and be caught early.
Of course, any deviation from rationality would be caught early through brain scans and interviews and would be solved or fixed.
But let's say it was some biological degradation that was occurring, some tumor or something or something that was happening to the brain that had nothing to do with child abuse, then that person would be institutionalized and it would be paid for through the insurance.
If, for whatever reason, people didn't have insurance, there would be charities to take care of that.
All right.
Somebody writes, and again, I love these questions.
I really, really do appreciate them.
I don't care for philosophers.
You ask them, hey, you know any chicks who like a fun time?
And they never know anything that matters.
What is the point of all this philosophy then?
Well, so one of the reasons that philosophers don't talk about chicks who like a fun time is because chicks are, well, they're biologically programmed to follow the largest person they meet when they get out of the egg.
And so for them, fun is just trailing after you, and they would love to climb on you and so on.
So because it's biologically programmed for chicks to do that, there's really not much that philosophy would have to say about that.
What is your epistemological stance?
Are we born with innate knowledge or is knowledge gained solely from experience?
We are certainly born with innate instincts, for sure.
I mean, I'm sure every boy remembers that magical day when the girls turned from sort of vaguely alien, somewhat fascinating creatures that were sort of negative in sports to the sole object of your attention from morning till night.
So when the hormones kick in and the lust kicks in and the sexual drive kicks in, that's just a part of puberty.
And so that conditions just about everything you do as a teenager.
And a young man, also a middle-aged man and an old man, that's all we do is try to please women.
Beautiful.
So we certainly have innate instincts.
We have a fight or flight mechanism.
We, of course, are born with hunger.
We are born with a sense of balance.
We are born with discomfort from physical injury and illness and so on.
So we have a lot that guides us towards safety.
As boys in particular, it happens with some girls, but with boys in particular, boys will constantly want to test their limits because we need to be physically competent in order to be good providers.
So boys will constantly, you know, jump off high things and boys will set up ramps.
My brother and I tried to make a parachute out of newspapers and so on.
And we used to climb the outside of our apartment building just to get into the room with a TV when our mother was out on her date.
It was really quite dangerous in hindsight.
And when we got locked out, I would beg the superintendent and I would climb pretty high up on a ladder to get in through the window.
And so, yeah, boys will constantly be testing their limits.
I used to, very foolishly, and don't please don't do this.
I used to cross giant bridges at night with trains coming.
It was exciting and remarkably retarded or dumb.
So, boys are constantly testing their limits with, so that's our drive.
And yet, pain, when you test your limits too far, is quite vivid, and so on.
So, we have a lot of guiding mechanisms hormonally from our pain mechanisms, from that which gives us pleasure, the joy, yeah, the joy of mastering a new skill is really, really cool.
As soon as a boy learns how to ride a bike, what does he do?
Well, he tries to ride it without hands.
No hands.
Why Wishes Fall Short00:07:19
So, all right.
And let's see here.
Somebody writes, Of course, you remember the oh, sorry, and we're also drawn to rationality and consistency because we can't manipulate physical objects which are required for survival and flourishing without at least accepting the rationality of and consistency of matter and energy.
All right.
Somebody says, Of course, you remember the universally preferred concepts from a couple of years ago.
I universally prefer you talking about the higher things.
So, what is your reasoning for engaging the low-frequency of X users?
Secondly, are you free to be the true you in public?
Well, see, here's the funny thing, right?
So, when people say what they want, I usually don't listen.
I usually don't listen.
So, this person says, I prefer you talking about the higher things.
Well, I am available for calls.
And I've repeatedly said that UPB is one of my favorite subjects to talk about: universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, freedomain.com slash books.
So, if people say, Well, I want you to talk about UPB, let's say, right?
Well, you can book a call, it's free, and you can say, I want to talk about UPB.
And then you can come up with some questions.
I mean, I don't care.
You can even use AI to come up with some questions.
That's totally fine too.
And we can talk about what you want to talk about or what you consider important.
It will cost you nothing.
And it will elevate the conversation according to your preferences.
And that's fine.
But if people don't want to book a call, and listen, I'll tell you guys straight up.
It's not a huge secret.
If there's, like I have scheduled times where I accept calls, if you can't make any of those times or something's really urgent, you can always contact me, support at freedoman.com, and ask for a call outside of regular hours, and I will do my best to accommodate.
So this person says, Steph, I want you to talk about a topic that I prefer, and it's very easy to achieve that.
All you have to do is book a time with me.
We will do that call and it will go out to the world.
But if somebody can't be bothered to book a time to bring some questions to the table, then it's an I want, I want, I want, which is actually kind of feminine.
It is more feminine to put your wishes out into the universe.
And it is more masculine to say, well, if I want something, I should achieve it.
If I want something, I should work to achieve it.
I should find a way to manifest it for real, right?
A woman can say, gee, I'm hungry, and the man will go and get her some food.
Whereas a man who's hungry has to go and get some food, right?
So if a man is saying, Steph, I want you to talk about X, Y, and Z, and that man, I assume you're a man, has not booked a session, or, you know, I do call in shows, right?
Wednesday night, 7 p.m., sometimes go on for hours.
Friday night, 7 p.m.
Sundays for donors, 11 a.m., or 10 a.m., sorry, 10 a.m.
So I do all these call-in shows, and I generally get to all the callers, so you could call in and talk about what you want, and you could elevate the conversation in the way that serves your preferences.
Typing out a wish rather than manifesting it in actual practical action is to me, I don't quite understand it.
A bit like me saying, I really wish that there was a great philosophy show, and emailing people, wouldn't it be great if there's a great philosophy show, blah, blah, blah.
All right.
When does open-mindedness need to lead to moral relativism?
Well, it's fine to be open-minded, but not so open-minded.
Your brain falls out.
So to be open-minded is like, I will entertain all propositions, but they still have to be rational and empirical, right?
So a scientist, a good scientist, will say, sure, come up with a conjecture, come up with a hypothesis.
I'll have a look at it.
But if I notice that it's self-contradictory or doesn't accord with, doesn't accord with the practical evidence of the world, like if somebody says, I think that fire is both fire and ice and is both hot and cold to the touch simultaneously, nobody's going to test that because it's like, well, that's just self-contradictory and doesn't accord to reason and evidence.
So open-mindedness is great in terms of, yeah, bring me your thoughts and ideas.
It leads to moral relativism when everything is entertained with no objective standard.
What's your philosophy on smacking someone in the face with a chair if they enter your church to disrupt services?
Oh, gosh, yeah, that's the Don Lemon thing, right?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I mean, I don't know that you should smack someone in the face with a chair because it's not like they're risking your life and limb, but I think you should definitely call law enforcement and have them arrested for trespassing for sure.
Other than the fact that you are aware at this moment, is there anything you can say is certain?
Yes, you can watch my introduction to philosophy series, a 17-part series you can get FDARAPodcast.com about things that are certain.
I'm certain that you exist.
I'm certain that I exist.
I'm certain that objective reality exists.
I'm certain that my senses have the capacity to process the truth.
I'm certain that the truth requires rational consistency and empirical evidence and so on.
All right.
Where do you stand on pineapple on a pizza?
I built, actually, I built the entire UPB theory on the deep evil of pineapple on a pizza.
All right.
The Greeks solved philosophy thousands of years ago.
There's nothing worthwhile to say about it.
Simply read the Stoics.
No, the Greeks did not solve philosophy.
If the Greeks had solved philosophy years ago, they would still, that culture would still be around.
So, no, they did not.
All right.
Theology answers what, but not how or why, and is thus incomplete.
Science answers how, but not what or why, and thus is incomplete.
Well, I mean, but why is to do with free will, not matter.
Why did a man kill his wife?
You need to, motive means an opportunity, right?
You need to have some kind of motive.
So the why is for human choices.
The why is not for the existence of matter because matter is not a free will entity.
So looking for causality is to do with human consciousness.
Why did you do that, right?
Which we all have had from time to time in relationships.
So the why is for human consciousness and free will and choices.
It is not for why.
But why does carbon exist, right?
It just does.
So it's not a free will thing.
All right.
Well, I really appreciate everyone's questions and comments.
Thank you so, so much.
I hope this is helpful to you.
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