MY BIRTHDAY GIFT TO YOU!

Stefan Molyneux

WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIVE BIRTHDAY STREAM 24 September 2025  Philosopher Stefan Molyneux celebrates his 59th birthday while reflecting on my journey, infused with humor from his daughter's senior discount reminders. He shares insights on aging, love, and life, and unveils two premium series: a 12-hour exploration of the French Revolution and the evolution of philosophical thought.  Stefan discusses the overlooked role of parenting in philosophy and advocates for tackling taboo topics to foster societal progress. He invites listeners to actively engage in philosophical discourse, emphasizing the importance of translating ideas into practice. This celebration reaffirms our shared pursuit of wisdom and meaningful dialogue on life's ethical foundations.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Welcome, welcome to your Wednesday night live. We're going a little bit earlier because I'm

00:05going out after an absolutely lovely day out and about with my wife. I hope you guys are having a

00:10wonderful day. It is, of course, of course, the 24th of September, 2025. And I am now in my in

00:25what my wife refers to as my 60th year. Now, to be fair, ever since about the age of 55, boy,

00:34there's really nothing like having a teenager around to boost your old self-esteem because

00:40it really has been easily four years, although maybe a little longer, since my daughter has

00:48been pointing out to me all of the places that will give me a seniors discount. It is

00:54delightful, it's charming, and I've never felt younger. She's very funny. She's very funny.

01:06Who's going to get the last laugh when I'm decrepit? Anyway, so I hope you're doing well. I hope you're

01:11having a lovely week. And I, of course, am thrilled, just thrilled to hear from you on this lovely day.

01:22And, oh, yeah, yeah, so I was going to give you a present, because I suppose I just have birthdays

01:27entirely backwards. I mean, of course, if you'd like to give me a present, a little, a little taste

01:31to allow me to wet my beak in your digital glory, you can go to freedomain.com slash donate,

01:38freedomain.com slash donate, and we can get ourselves going that way. But I really am going to,

01:50oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot to push one of the button goes here, go buttons here. So yes,

01:54Friday Night Live. Sorry, Wednesday Night Live, 24 September 2025. It's my birthday. And I'm going

02:00to give you all something nice here, which is, I think it's nice. I have two premium shows,

02:06a series of premium shows. And it's very, very great stuff. There is a 12-hour History of the French

02:18Revolution, which, of course, if you've liked my truth abouts, they're really, really great. It's

02:26fantastic stuff. And a very novel thesis that I've not seen anywhere else. So I'm going to give you

02:31some links here just for my birthday. And if you're listening to this, you can go to rss.com

02:38slash podcasts slash French Revolution. You get my whole series on the French Revolution. And the other

02:44thing that I've done that I'm very proud of, and to me, some of my, I mean, most of my work is

02:50glorious to me, but this is even more glorious than most. And that is rss.com slash podcasts

02:56slash history philosophy. That's rss.com slash podcasts slash history philosophy, not history

03:04philosophy. Anyway, it should be history philosophers, but this was just, I think that one was taken. So

03:09anyway, you can go and you can just take those feeds. You can put them into any feed catcher.

03:14And it's my birthday gift to you. Normally, of course, it's only available for donors, but

03:20why not? Why not? You guys are just incredibly great in your interest, in your support, in your

03:30disagreements, in your vociferous opposition. Oh, look at that. I just locked into X and it gave me

03:37balloonies. Balloonies. All right. So I'm going to just post this here as well. Yeah. Locals is

03:45chucking as well. My gift to you. My gift to you. It's not just more singing. To you. There you go.

03:57And it'll be up and then it'll be gone. But yeah, this is my way of saying thank you for, I mean,

04:04what is wild, man, is coming up on 20 years, 20, next month, next month. I think it would be 20 years

04:10since I first penned my public essay, The State, The Society, An Examination of Alternatives,

04:16which the very kind and occasionally jowly Lou Rockwell was generous enough to put on. Thank you,

04:23Troy. I appreciate the tip was generous, generous enough to post. And I think, I think I went dark on

04:30his site for a while during times of great controversy, but he's stuck in there. And I think

04:34you can still find me on Lou Rockwell. And I started the podcast, I started the podcast just

04:39reading my articles. I was interested in podcasting. It's actually funny because in the 90s, I wrote a

04:46novel called The God of Atheists about a thinker who becomes famous with a webcam and a microphone.

04:54And this, of course, was long before YouTube, long before podcasting, really long before any of

04:58this kind of stuff. But I wrote, it wasn't, it wasn't super hard to figure out which way the wind

05:03was blowing from a communication standpoint, and that it wouldn't actually be that long

05:07before you could broadcast. And I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I was a DJ

05:12and I had a twice weekly show in university. So I had some sort of experience. I still have a tape

05:19somewhere of my show or a couple of shows that I did as a DJ in my early 20s in university. And

05:29mostly it was talk. Mostly it was songs. And occasionally I would do dance nights and spin

05:36the platters that matters. And it was a lot of fun. And I've always really enjoyed radio. And I mean,

05:43a show I liked was WKRP in Cincinnati, which was a radio show. I've always liked sort of radio,

05:47like broadcasting, never wanted to be a broadcaster. Never, never, never. I knew I had the voice for

05:53it. I knew I had the relative wit and charisma for it. But it was never something that I was like,

05:58oh, I think I'll go and be a DJ at a radio station or something like that. And maybe this is because

06:04sort of this is a complete ramble fest. But when I was a kid, I've always loved music. And if I were

06:15starting all over again, I mean, it's sort of more important for me to do philosophy. But if I was

06:21starting all over again, I would do songs I love, music I love. I have very broad musical tastes. I

06:29like the chicks. Now, very broad musical tastes. And no, I know a fair amount about music. And I've

06:33always loved music. And when I was a kid, I would wake up and a song that I loved would be on the radio.

06:39So I hated the DJs, man. I hated them. I hated them. Because they kept, I think these were for

06:46legal reasons, because people would just sit there with the tape recorder to hit the record

06:51when you had a song that came on that you loved. And I did that sometimes when I worked in the

06:55business world, like I was a temp in university, in HR departments and other places. I sit there,

07:00bring a little ghetto blaster in and I would hit record and songs that I liked.

07:03And that's one of the reasons for that is that I had, I had a record player that was so bad.

07:11It was so bad. It had plastic speakers. I got it from ShopRite or consumers distributing one of

07:17these places where you line up and you, you fill out the little pieces of paper and you get, it was

07:23very cheap to buy stuff that way. There was no showroom, you just warehouse and you'd fill out these

07:28things. And I would, I had this record player that was so bad that it would, the needle would

07:37scrape along the top of the record unless you put a lot of plasticine. And I ended up having

07:43some, some plasticine. It was about the size of a hamster. I had some plasticine sitting on top of

07:48this needle, which allowed it to play the songs. Although it was a little bit like an Apple Cora,

07:53it would go through albums fairly quickly because it was too much grind down. My friends would never bring

07:57their albums over. They'd bring me a tape. They'd bring me tapes until my crappy tape deck also had

08:02a bad habit of eating tapes, which, you know, you pull out. It's like, ah, the strings of my heart are

08:07serrated. But I had this record player. It was so bad. You couldn't close the lid if it wasn't a 45. I got

08:13it for like 20 bucks at a, um, at one of these places. And so I had this hamster size ball of

08:19plasticine on top of my needle, put the needle on the record with the plasticine hamster on the needle

08:25on the record. And unfortunately what it would do is it would, it would slow the songs down

08:30because there was too much pressure and the motor was bad. And it was, I just remember,

08:34hey, a new song. Y M C A. It's fun to stay at the, or, or Pink Floyd could be even slower.

08:46Now there's a look in your eye. Like, like holes in the sky.

08:59Sure. Anyway, it was, um, it was not good. I, I, uh, when I, when I would actually hear,

09:05I don't know if you've ever had like a, I had an old Walkman that, that was slow too. And when you

09:09hear the regular song, it's like, wow, this is really fast. It's a lot faster, a lot faster than I

09:13remember. I had no fast songs. I had no fast songs at all. And, uh, I could make one of the

09:18few record players that could make Ella Fitzgerald sound like Sam Cooke. Ooh, there's some fairly

09:23obscure references, but anyway, it was not obscure back in the day. Anyway, these DJs in the morning,

09:31I didn't forget that thread of the story. They, they talk over my favorite songs and it drove me

09:35nuts. Cause you'd say, you'd be sitting there waiting for the stop talking, stop talking, stop

09:40talking. I still remember having, uh, I love you always forever. I remember having that song

09:45recorded and there was a 99.9 DJ who was like four out of five dentists recommend 99.9. And then

09:54there was a sound of a guy screaming and a drilling and said, we're still working on the fifth. It's

09:57like, actually, it's kind of funny. Rob Christie back to the day. Whatever happened to that guy?

10:01Anyway, don't let me ramble on. I'm going to ramble on. There's just no way. I'm not drunk.

10:06I'm not drunk. I'm just high on not being dead. You ever, you ever get that feeling? Like you say,

10:13I'm just, I'm just kind of high and it's on not being dead. Now it's nice. I had a, uh, I had, uh,

10:22a, uh, fatal illness or potentially fatal illness like 13 or 14 years ago, skated past that. All it

10:28left me with was a little bit of tinnitus in my left ear, not the end of the world. And, uh, so every

10:33day north of the big deep six is a beautiful day. It's a wonderful day. It has led me to be

10:40somewhat stress-free ever since you dodge enough bullets and, uh, you know, a bird shits on your

10:45shoe and what do you care? You don't care. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. So, uh, it has helped me

10:50in terms of philosophy. It has helped me in terms of risk. Nothing seems particularly risky when you

10:59stared down the big sea and walked away with your life intact. And, uh, I just thank you. Of course,

11:08everyone here who has made this conversation what it is. And I really, really do appreciate it.

11:14All the people who disagree with me, I don't mind. Not only do I not mind, I appreciate it because

11:20Lord knows, Lord above knows that I have no monopoly on truth or accuracy or being right on just about

11:28anything. I put forward, I think, I think a lot before I post and then I put forward arguments.

11:33Maybe it's a little unfair. Like if I'm thinking 12 moves, it moves ahead on a chessboard, but I

11:38think a lot, I post, and then I'm certainly willing to be corrected, but, um, I will never,

11:44ever, ever surrender an argument unless I'm disproven. I certainly will change my mind if

11:49disproven. In fact, the reason that I'm broadcasting on X is in part, in large part, in fact, almost

11:54exclusively because my daughter gave me a better argument for coming on X than staying

11:58off X. And, uh, she was, she was right. And so, you know, it's my birthday. I could take

12:05the day off friends, family, but I wanted to take a little bit of time because I just really

12:11want to, you know, humbly and gratefully and deeply express my sincere and awestruck appreciation

12:22for what we all bring to the realm of virtue, morality, philosophy, conversation, truth,

12:30reason, evidence, and goodness, and goodness. This is the greatest conversation in the history

12:37of philosophy. And I know that that sounds vain. Um, I, I've always said I'm actually the least

12:43important part of this conversation. If people could just forget about me and focus on the

12:47arguments, I would be infinitely happier, but it's the, it's the greatest conversation

12:51in the history of philosophy because of the technology and because of you guys, you make

12:58me better. You take me down a peg, you humble me, you instruct me, you provoke me, you go to

13:05me, you, you inspire me. And this being a conversation is the, so many philosophers, my precious, they

13:16sit in their rooms and hunched over like they're turning into a question mark, you know, birth,

13:21why though death? And so many philosophers, uh, stay in their ivory tower, don't engage with the

13:27general population, don't have the love of wisdom to engage with people, to land some blows, to have

13:38some blows landed on them to engage, to encourage, to inspire, then to be schooled and beaten down from

13:45time to time, all of which is wonderful and beautiful. And I remember, I think it was in

13:51the 1960s, I remember reading, sorry, I wasn't reading it. I was born in 66, so I wasn't reading

13:58it, but I remember reading about, you know, in the big height and crisis of the leftist violence,

14:03which lay dormant for a while, right? Leftist violence in the 60s was there to gain entrance to

14:09the march through to the institutions. Now that's largely complete, they can be violent again.

14:13But I remember reading that the American Philosophical Association met in the midst of Vietnam, of, uh,

14:24the welfare state, of the crisis of violence, the destruction of the family. They met together and

14:31they had a big long seminar about how real a noun could be.

14:42And when I read that, I felt like a visceral hairball of contempt, honestly, just coursing through

14:51my body and my mind. And I thought, because this is, I read this, I mean, I got into philosophy in my

14:56mid-teens, right? So it's 40, today, 44 years or so. I hope to make it to, let's say, conservatively,

15:07let's go for 80 years. That would be nice. I could, I could live to 95. I think that would be reasonable.

15:14And Lord knows my mother is, uh, an undead smoker of, uh, and consumer of instant coffee that manages to

15:21stay north of the deep sex, uh, like a ghoul. But so maybe, maybe, maybe, but I remember thinking

15:30when I got into philosophy that if I ever got a chance to speak to the world, and this is,

15:38I could see 20 years, right? So, uh, I was, um, I mean, I was in my late thirties when I started

15:47cooking this stuff. No, no, yes, sorry. I can do the math. I really feel like it was in my late

15:54thirties when I started doing this stuff. And I remember just as a teenager thinking, well, academia

16:01is not going to, academia is not the way to go because that's what they're talking about. And they'll

16:07people have a visceral, I get this, right? And it's not me, not me as a person, but people have

16:14really strong visceral reactions to my essence, my aura, very strong reactions. And

16:23that's great because my wife, of course, has a very strong positive reaction, as does my daughter

16:29and friends and so on, and the people who support what it is that I do. People have very visceral

16:35reactions. I am not a person that people tend to be neutral about. And again, it's not me as a

16:42person. I'm actually a very nice person. Uh, I really literally love to help old ladies across

16:46the street. I give to charity. I'm very friendly. I always, always, always, unless something really

16:52extraordinary is going on, I have a mission that everyone I meet, even as briefly as possible,

16:57everyone I meet has a more positive interaction or a better day because of interacting with me.

17:02That's maybe whether it's a joke or a tip or, or a friendliness or something, maybe even a hug.

17:07If people are startled, I'll do that. But I've always sort of had that goal. So I'm actually a

17:12very nice person, a very positive person and a very friendly person. But when it comes to

17:18the arguments and ideas that I put forward, people have very strong reactions to them, which shows you

17:25the power of philosophy and I sort of an equal opportunity offender. So when I first got on X,

17:31I hope you guys find this interesting. It's sort of my sort of a view from, from inside the brain.

17:38But when I got on X, I really annoyed the atheist. Now I'm in the process of annoying the Christians.

17:45In between, I've annoyed a whole bunch of, of other people.

17:49Um, I mean, I think one of the reasons I ran into trouble in the past was criticizing other groups,

17:55which I think we're all aware of. So it is, uh, it is, it is a wild ride. And my sort of feeling

18:03is this about this and maybe this approach or this way of thinking about things will be helpful to you,

18:11because Lord knows you may not be as public a figure as I am. Maybe you're more so than I am,

18:15but this is like, there are already enough people out there in the world, not telling the truth.

18:22That's my sort of basic, basic philosophy. Like we've tried as a society,

18:28holding back the truth, watering down the truth, bypassing the truth, stepping around the truth,

18:33trying to smuggle the truth in. We've tried all that. And having tried all that,

18:39this is where we've ended up, which as a society is not ideal. It's not ideal.

18:46So we've never tried fully reforming parenting according to moral principles.

18:55And I talk about this in my history of philosophers series, which again, I really,

18:59really hope you'll check out. It starts with the pre-Socratics, goes to Buddhists,

19:02and it's really, really good stuff. But we've tried reasoning with adults. We've tried reforming

19:09the state, but we've tried reforming the economy. We've tried lots of different things.

19:14And we've not tried reforming parenting, because one of the things that I looked for over the course

19:20of studying the history of philosophers, which I did long before I did this series, I did this in my

19:2520s when I was doing my graduate work. And none of them talk about parenting.

19:34That literally is the furnace in which the human mind is created, shaped, fashioned,

19:42and filled. I'm going to say programmed, filled. And I don't understand why philosophers never

19:54talked about parenting. It's almost completely absent from philosophers as a whole. I mean,

20:01Locke touches on it briefly. Of course, Rousseau touches on it. And there is some discussion of

20:07childhood in Plato's Republic. But as far as the ethics and virtue of parenting,

20:15nothing. Almost, even Ayn Rand, almost never talked about it at all.

20:24I mean, you've got Peter Keating's mother, who was an example of a

20:28bitter clinger, a devouring vagina dentata single mother, but philosophers never talked about parenting.

20:35And for me, I would not want to get into philosophy and do all the stuff that didn't work before.

20:51I would rather, well, maybe not go back to working as a dishwasher, but something like that. I would

20:57rather have a paper route or be a waiter than go into philosophy and do all the stuff that didn't

21:03work before. And I remember thinking about this very clearly, before I sort of launched myself

21:06into the public eye, that I thought, okay, like, am I going to write a more influential novel than

21:15Atlas Shrugged? I mean, let's just say it's pretty unlikely. I mean, I like my novels, but that's not

21:20my particular bent. I'm actually on, I finished it. My new novel is 24 chapters, and I've read up to

21:27chapter six as audiobooks. Again, it's for donors. But I'm like, well, I'm not, I'm not going to write

21:34a more influential novel than Atlas Shrugged, or The Fountainhead, or We the Living is a bit more

21:39obscure. And so I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that. Am I going to write a better treatise

21:45on economics than something by Ludwig von Mises, or Hayek, or Milton Friedman, or

21:56gosh, Murray Rothbard? I mean, no, no. That stuff has been done and done fantastically,

22:04and it doesn't work. It's great. Love the arguments, love the ideas, love the perspectives,

22:10love the approach, love the data, love it. But I'm not going to do a more elegant mathematical

22:17and praxeological takedown of central planning than von Mises' on socialism, say. It's just not

22:23going to happen. Of course, Atlas Shrugged at one point was voted the second most influential book

22:31by some readers after the Bible. I am, I suppose, teeny tiny bit ambitious, teeny tiny bit ambitious.

22:44But I would say that if I had as the goal to write the most influential book outside the Bible,

22:51pulling the head of Atlas Shrugged philosophy by the tonnage. So I knew I had to do something

23:02different, which is why, and I did check this out the other day, because I was curious kind of when

23:09James and I checked it out. I think it was like within the first dozen or two dozen shows,

23:15I started talking about the family roots of our addiction to violence, the family roots of our

23:20addiction to oligarchical political tyrannies, the state, right, and all of that. It was right

23:2820 years ago, man, right back at the beginning.

23:32Because I absolutely knew that for me to retain any enthusiasm, and for me not to get as depressed

23:42as the ever-living hellscape of a futile and empty life, I had to do something that hadn't been done

23:50before. And all the stuff that hasn't been done before is blindingly obvious in hindsight,

23:57and completely invisible beforehand. Oh, of course we should do X, Y, and Z. How could we have not

24:04done X, Y, and Z?

24:09You know, as they say, talent hits a target that no one else could hit. Genius hits a target that no one

24:13else can see. Of course we should take the non-aggression principle and apply it to parenting.

24:20Of course, how we view power, control, coercion, and authority is shaped by early childhood experiences

24:30with parents, daycare teachers, teachers, and of course I had the good fortune to

24:35work in daycare for a couple of years as a teenager. I saw this, like this, the shaping of minds,

24:42even before, long before I became a father, I saw that directly.

24:50And, you know, one of the curses of having great potential is, oh man, if you miss,

24:57if you miss and you have great potential, oh, that's ugly. There's a, one of the last movies

25:04I ever saw with my mother was called Shadowlands with Deborah Winger, who seemed to have an entire

25:08career of dying of cancer, and Anthony Hopkins playing C.S. Lewis. And C.S. Lewis says an academic

25:15is sitting with a bunch of other academics, and he looks at one sort of nihilistic darkhead fellow

25:20and says, uh, do you ever get this feeling of just such a waste? He's like, of course, of course.

25:27If you have great potential, you have to succeed wildly or fall forever. There's no, there's no

25:34middle ground. You either fulfill your potential or you are cursed by failing to fulfill your potential.

25:40Because everyone wants, hey, I wish I had all this talent. And it's like, but it's a, I mean,

25:45it's a crushing burden and a responsibility because if you don't use your talent and this,

25:51and with Aristotle here, Eudomania, that there's no better way to use your abilities than in the

25:58pursuit and promotion of virtue. You know, I've obviously been fascinated by the life of Freddie

26:05Mercury because, I mean, Freddie Mercury, one of the most successful singer-songwriter performers

26:10in human history, let alone sort of the present time. I mean, even he didn't want to be Freddie

26:16Mercury because he kept pursuing hedonistic homosexual lifestyle until he died of it.

26:25He was not promoting virtue, uh, to, to put it mildly. And it's so funny because people say,

26:31ah, you know, we didn't reveal that he was gay until the day before he died of AIDS. Bro, on his album,

26:36Mr. Bad Guy, he's talking about a problem he's having with a lover. And he says,

26:39we've got to talk it out man to man, make each other understand. It's like,

26:44man to man, a little bit of a clue. Also the name of the band.

26:51So even if you're fantastically talented in that way,

26:58if you're not promoting and pursuing virtue, it doesn't tend to work very well. And so if I have

27:03my talents, either I was going to use my talents for good or for evil. There was no question. I

27:06couldn't just do nothing with them. And I mean, it's like inheriting, I don't know,

27:12five million dollars and just having a pile of cash in your living room that you step around and

27:16never touch. That would be just kind of weird, right? It would be a sign of being crazy.

27:22So I had to do something with it. And I thought that something was going to be in the art world.

27:27Then I thought maybe in academia. And then, uh, in the business world, uh, I had a fair degree of

27:32success as an entrepreneur. And then when it came to podcasting, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's it.

27:41And I remember that conversation with my wife. I want to do this full time. I want to do this full

27:46time. It's crazy. I don't even know if I can make really any money at it, but I want to do this full

27:53time. God love or she just give me a big smile and hug. Of course you should.

28:03So,

28:07but I knew that if I was going to use my talents in the promotion of virtue, I couldn't do what

28:14had been done before because philosophy has a 3000 plus year history. I mean, it's just the written

28:20stuff. Obviously it goes further back than that, but in terms of the written stuff, philosophy has a

28:243000 plus year history. And if you just look at the 20th century, the century of near universal

28:34slaughter, quarter of a billion people murdered by their own governments outside of war, of course,

28:39tens more millions of people murdered in wars, 40 to 50 million, the second world war, 10 million

28:44in the first world war. You know, that's a 300 million

28:47high pile of corpses. After 3000 years of trying to promote virtue, that's what we end up with.

28:55Right. Right.

28:56Right.

28:57The Holocaust, world war one concentration camps, gulags, the mass slaughter in Cambodia,

29:07the hellscape of North Korea, Cuba,

29:10fiat currency, declining educational standards, increased destruction of the family,

29:14increased deferred violence called national debts and unfunded liabilities.

29:22That's what we got after 3000 years of trying to make, make the world a better place. The body count was never high.

29:28So whatever I was going to do, it had to, had to, had to, had to be something that hadn't been done before.

29:46And of course, having gone to therapy myself for, I did three hours a week. I did 10 to 12 hours of journaling.

29:54It was my job, part-time job for close to two years. I knew that the childhood was the key.

30:04I also knew that for reasons that, again, we'll never know. We'll never, because they're all dead,

30:09but we'll never know why philosophers bypass the most obvious forge origin and furnace of the human mind,

30:19where morals are inculcated, taught and impressed upon the mind, like a hot signet ring on wax.

30:31We don't know why philosophers refused to talk about the ethics, virtues and vices of

30:36childhood and parenting. Don't know why. I don't know why. And again, we'll, we'll never know why, because

30:42they are sleeping with the fishes and cannot be interrogated. But we know they didn't. We know

30:51they didn't. So for me, it was like, okay, well, if I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to go out

30:58there and talk about topics, I have to talk about topics that have not been talked about before.

31:07I have to talk because to talk about topics that have been talked about before,

31:13when everything that came before led to the hellscape of the 20th century that utterly destroyed

31:18my family and destroyed Europe. Now, Europeans, unfortunately, I've been thinking about this a

31:24lot lately. You know, I listened to these true crime podcasts from time to time. And I was listening

31:28to one about a woman who was raped and killed in a, um, a hostel or a sort of local motel. I think it

31:35was in Thailand and her family, you know, hired private investigators, flew over and

31:43bugged the police. And this went on for 20 years. I think the statute of limitations eventually ran

31:47out even for murder. And they kept pursuing it. They kept the website up. They bugged people. They

31:52paid huge amounts of money. They flew down and confronted the police regularly to put more effort

31:57and energy into the investigation and so on. And it's like, you know, I mean, my family of origin

32:02didn't even call me when I was deadly sick, right? There's no bonds left. I, the bonds all seem to

32:08have been shredded and destroyed. There's no bond to history. There's no bond to cultural pride.

32:14There's no bond to each other, uh, which is, I think it was just slaughtered in the first and

32:20second world war. And then the coup de grace of the hyper left takeover of education. There's no bond.

32:26There's no bond. There's no bonds. You can't rely on that.

32:33So, I had to talk about that which had not been talked about before.

32:40And you look at the most taboo topics and you say, okay, they're taboo for a reason. Why don't

32:45philosophers talk about childhood? And again, there may have been philosophers who talked about

32:51childhood. Maybe they were just killed and all of their works were burned. Although you'd think

32:55there'd be some echo of them somewhere. Although I got deplatformed pretty hard and pretty well. And

33:01even in the digital age, I despawned like a fire hose washing down a nuclear shadow in Hiroshima.

33:14Actually, I don't think a fire hose could wash that down because it's the absence of

33:18radiation. Well, the analogy seemed cool until I picked it apart in my brain and

33:24well, then it fell apart. So,

33:30one of the other insights that I had was that all the philosophers that we know of

33:34and are taught about are the philosophers who don't fundamentally disturb

33:39political power.

33:42Because any philosopher who actually did disturb political power would not be praised or taught.

33:47the only philosophers that remain

33:53on the curriculum are those who do not disturb

33:56political power or use a hierarchical power because the fundamental

34:02original sin of hierarchical power is aggressive and

34:05violent parents, which is almost all parents throughout human history.

34:11And certainly

34:14around the world, almost all, even in the West, 50 to 75 percent,

34:19our parents still hit their children outside of certain Scandinavian countries and other places where

34:24it's illegal, but then they toss their kids over to government schools, which is arguably

34:30worse.

34:36So,

34:39I really did have to

34:41do what hadn't been done before. Otherwise, honestly, there's no point doing it.

34:46If you are, and this again, back to the

34:51back to the bands that I like, every band that you

34:54like, there aren't any famous, really famous cover bands, right?

34:56And this is what Freddie Mercury was saying to

35:02Queen in the early days. It's like, well, we just have to write our own material. You can't get

35:05anywhere if you're not writing your own material. Now, fortunately, they had to have four top 10.

35:09They ended up with four top 10 hit makers in the band, which is quite unusual.

35:13But, you know, Freddie wrote Seven Seas of Rye, and that was their first hit. And he wrote

35:22Killer Queen, which was a huge hit. And, you know, he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, of course,

35:27a crazy little thing called Love. But, you know, John Deacon did You're My Best Friend, and he did

35:36Another One Bites the Dust, and Brian May did some pretty good early songs. And he did Ham

35:41It a Fall, and he did We Will Rock You. And Roger Taylor did some good early songs. He, of course,

35:48is famous for Radio Gaga, which the kid was just making fun of the radio, and he got the inspiration

35:54for that. So you've got to write your own material. And, you know, my particular concern was that most

36:00people who get into philosophy end up being cover bands. Well, Schopenhauer said this about this,

36:04but Dan Kahn said this about the other. I actually have an unreleased podcast. It should be coming out.

36:09And relatively soon, wherein I'm getting the view from inside academia, I talked to a grad student

36:16in philosophy about what it's like on the inside. And it seems like, well, let's just do a jazz

36:25reworking of Play the Game, also a great song by Freddie, as opposed to Write Your Own Material.

36:31And I have too much creativity within me, whether you agree or not, it's definitely there. Whether

36:40you agree with the output or not, it's definitely there. I have too much creativity in me to be a

36:44cover band. And so I had to have my own material, which means I had to, you know, and this is a skill,

36:52and I really strongly suggest this in business, right? Because you're always looking for opportunities

36:56and so on, right? And in philosophy, I had to say, what's the biggest topic that people can do the

37:05most about that is the least discussed? But this is a, I learned this in the business world, right?

37:11This is a way of analyzing problems and coming up with solutions, right? In a market, you say,

37:15what's the biggest market that is underserved that people can afford? What's the biggest market that's

37:24underserved that people can afford? Now, if you can't find that market, you have to create a great

37:29product and make the market. Like nobody knew they needed beanie babies before they were beanie babies,

37:33or Rubik's Cube, or you have to make your own market. So for me, in the realm of philosophy,

37:38it's like, okay, what's the biggest topic that philosophers have not touched on

37:42that people can do something about? And that leads to me to, and again, I, I, it's incomprehensible

37:52to me that philosophers haven't done this before, but maybe it's just the business training. I don't

37:56know. Maybe it's the practicality. Maybe it's working with my hands for many years as a manual laborer.

38:01I don't know, right? But it's one of these things that's like, well, why haven't, why haven't you

38:05talked about the ethics of childhood? Why haven't you tried, instead of to convince crazy adults,

38:10why haven't you tried to raise rational children? It seems that would be a plus, wouldn't it? Rather

38:15than waiting until people are broken and then trying to ER them back their weight and take

38:19people with their legs broken in nine places and try and turn them into marathon runners,

38:22how about you just don't have people with their legs broken to begin with? Instead of trying to

38:26patch up everyone with your flashing flying syllables of scalpel-like reason, how about you

38:31just don't have people mutilated in the first place? Instead of being in the art restoration,

38:35how about you just have great art to begin with? Instead of stitching people up,

38:39how about you don't cut them to begin with? Instead of trying to reassemble Ming vases,

38:43how about you just have Ming vases that aren't broken in the first place? Wouldn't that be better?

38:47Because the fixing people stuff hasn't worked at all. Hasn't worked at all.

38:54They make people, I said this at a Night for Freedom in like 2018, something like that.

39:01And it's like, they're making people crazy way faster than we can make them sane.

39:07I remember watching, MASH was a show that was on when I was a kid and I remember there was an episode

39:12where one of the old surgeons, there's some new sticky bomb glue that attaches itself to human

39:19flesh and melts it. And it's like they keep finding ways to destroy people faster than we can find ways to fix people.

39:28And that's true, really, our philosophy. So how about,

39:34how about we raise people unbroken rather than have a permanent ER of people kicking and fighting

39:39the doctor, thinking that the pill that cures them is actually a poison that will kill them?

39:45How about that? How about, how about? This is a possibility. All right.

39:51I really, really, yeah, white phosphorus, that was it, right? Yeah.

39:58I really, really do want to thank you and show my deep appreciation for those. And, and, you know,

40:06I know this sounds odd, but even to those who've just, you know, lied and slandered and like just

40:10said the most terrible things about me, that is part of how I guide myself as well, right?

40:16So think of a bat with its echo location, what it's doing is waiting for the stuff to bounce back

40:22and that's how it guides. So where the opposition to the sound is, that is how you guide yourself.

40:27And where the opposition to what I'm doing is, is where I guide myself. So why did I start talking

40:32about IQ? Because you can't. And if the people who were in charge of the world, driving it off a

40:41cliff says, whatever you do, you can't push that pedal. You know, it's a brake, you know, it's going

40:46to slow or stop, or perhaps even maybe there's a reverse in there somewhere as well. All right.

40:52Freedomain.com slash donate. If you'd like to help out with my birthday wishes.

41:01Yes. And a lot of, and a lot of people,

41:03a lot of people have found me because of the haters.

41:11All right. You can go to FDRURL.com slash gift, FDRURL.com slash gift. And that's my birthday

41:18present to you. All right. Uh, and it is a Socratic argument that nothing truly bad can happen to a

41:28good man. Thank you, Tom, for the birthday wishes. All right. Should we take a caller? And I'm not

41:34going to do a long show tonight because I've got a lot of stuff going on this evening, but I did want

41:37to come in and say hi and explain myself. All right. Dr. Murdoch. Where are you? Are you coming

41:49back? Where are you? Oh, he's gone. All right. All right. Uh, just waiting in case anybody else has a

41:57question they want to ask again, freedomain.com slash donate. If you'd like to help out the show,

42:01I really would appreciate it in my 60th year. All right. Going once, going twice. There were some

42:08people, but they have been so staggered by the value of my monologue that they have decided not

42:15to follow Queen at Live Aid. All right. Well, listen, guys, thank you. Thank you so much. Have

42:20yourself a beautiful, wonderful, delicious, and delightful evening. And I really appreciate you

42:24guys. We will talk Friday night at 7 PM. And remember it's a donor only and subscriber only show

42:30Sundays at 11 AM. And, uh, I've definitely got some spice that I want to talk about on Sunday. So

42:36thanks everyone so much. Have a beautiful evening, my friends. Take care. Bye.

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