 Tonight is called an evening with Tom Woods. They've done this before. It started when they blocked out an hour for me and they kept asking, this is years ago, they kept asking me, what's the title of your talk? And I just kept stalling and stalling and stalling and just as a placeholder they just put an evening with Tom Woods and that has just stuck. And you don't know what you're going to get every year that they do this. It's been different each time. One time I came up and talked a little bit about my background and how I got into this. Another year I talked about what I called the anti-Rothbard cult because there is a cult dedicated to being anti-Rothbard. And but membership requirements are that you have never published anything of significance. It'd be a complete loser. So I talked about that. So I've done a bunch of different things. This year is completely different from anything else. And what I have here next to me is a piece of paper and a pen. And as I go through the items we're going to talk about tonight, I'm going to check each one off. Now Clay, we're not going to title this an evening with Tom Woods because then all the YouTube people aren't going to be able to distinguish them. And for the collectors, they're going to want to know which is which. So I'll come up with a title this time, I promise. But here I just want to, I want to do something similar to what I did at Pork Fest this year. None of you were at Pork Fest, were you? Any of you there? Okay. Were you at Pork Fest? Are you kidding me? Okay, yeah, that was, that was a good, yeah, you got me. Okay, well, do some of you know what Pork Fest is? Yes? Okay, it has nothing to do with pork. It's short for Pork Epine Freedom Festival. It's put on in New Hampshire by the Free State Project and this year they had me as the, I guess, the keynote speaker. And that was just great. It was just wonderful people who were thrilled to have me there, fit right in. You know, there's some oddballs at any libertarian gathering, but increasingly I'm the oddball as I get older. So what I did at that thing was at this point, let's say I'm deep into middle age and we'll just leave it at that, okay? And, you know, over the course of these years, the old man has picked up a few lessons from life. These are some of them are lessons I've learned from libertarianism and being involved in this movement. And others are lessons I've learned, well, more or less at random, stumbling through various episodes of my life. And I want to share a few of them with you because I'm not a motivational speaker. Sometimes I talk on topics like the gold standard or something and by the end you feel like, yeah, we need sound money or something, but I'm not the motivational speaker of the sort that, you know, you're special and you can do anything you put your mind to and whatever, because we all know that's not true, right? I mean, right? That actually one of the few episodes of Family Guy I've seen, what's the Peter? He's got all these children in the room and they've all been told that they're all special and he makes clear that they're not. He said, you're special, you're not special, you're not special, you're not special. I just love that. I don't specialize in that type of speech at all. But there have been times, though, as I've been growing up where somebody who has given that sort of talk has occasionally had one good point. It's all fluff, most of it's fluff, those types of talks, there's one good point. So I've kind of drawn out all the good points of, you know, 58 hours worth of meaningless nothingness to get this much time worth of valuable advice that you can walk away with, okay? So I'm going to start off with a piece of advice that's very important for libertarians in particular. And that is this. Don't ruin people's joy for no good reason. For example, every year, in normal years, we have the Super Bowl. Now a lot of Americans watch the Super Bowl. I used to follow football very closely. I don't anymore. But typically I'll watch the Super Bowl just because why the heck not, right? A lot of people watch it. Why the heck not? I'm going to be a normal American for one day out of the year. I'm going to watch the Super Bowl. And oh my gosh, I look at my social media feed and it's people saying, it's libertarians saying, yeah, you stupid sheep. That's just what the powers that be want for you to have your bread and circuses and whatever. And we're, you know, don't do that. Okay. So basically what you're saying is, as long as the state exists, nobody's allowed to enjoy anything. Oh, that sounds like a philosophy I'd like to sign up for. Don't do that. Okay. So likewise, you should have a hobby. Like I have hobbies. Like I enjoy playing chess. And I know that every minute I'm spending playing chess is a minute that I'm not fighting against the state. I know that I'm going to have to take that guilt to my grave. But live a happy life for heaven's sake. And for crying out loud, don't tell people there's something wrong with them because they have innocent pleasures in their lives. Now, if it's country music, then yes, you should lecture them because that is not a pleasure. I don't want to seem like a moral relativist here. There are some things where you really have to take a stand. All right. That's the first thing. So now I have a Mises Institute pen. I'm going to cross that one off. Don't ruin people's joy. And I even jot it down to myself. For example, Super Bowl. All right. Next one. This is honestly the best advice that I got from any of these speakers, windbag speakers. And it's simply this. And it's going to be valuable advice for all you folks in here who have brains that don't turn off. And you know what I mean. They're always going. They're always going. You're always thinking about things. There's spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. And you're with friends. And there's still 20% of your brain that's going, yeah, but wouldn't entrepreneurs anticipate that the Fed was doing this? Like, why do they still fall for this? And you just can't stop. You go to sleep and you're still thinking like this. You know, it's your mom's birthday and your brain is still, okay? Or if you're like me, you're at an event and it's a wonderful banquet. And during the banquet, you're thinking, oh, my apartment is such a mess. I cannot wait until I get that clean, but I know I'm never going to get to it. Okay. We've all done that. Right? You're at a wonderful thing and you're thinking about that crummy apartment. So the advice I got was do what you're doing while you're doing it. That's it. Okay. So the apartment is not getting any cleaner because you're thinking about it at that banquet. All you're doing is for no reason taking pleasure away from yourself. Now, you don't have to reproach yourself if you never manage to get to a fully Zen state in every situation you're in. You know, okay, you do have an active mind and it may wander. But I'm telling you, that thing is your enemy at times like that. You got to enjoy these fleeting things because before you know it, you know, you're the old man up here, given people advice. So and do what you're doing while you're doing it. Now, I'm going to take a radical leap here in this presentation in order to make sure everybody stays with me. I am going to now do what any public speaking course would tell you not to do, which is to front load the talk with the best part. Okay, usually you make them wait. So that just when, you know, you give a good talk and people think, boy, this talk couldn't get any better. And then at the end, you just clock them over the head and they say, wow, geez, this guy was good. I'm going to do the opposite of that. I'm going to tell you the best thing I have right now. But it's so good that you'll say, all right, even if the rest of it is only 60% as good as this, I'm staying. All right, that's how good this part is. And I can't even take credit for this story. This is not something I invented. It's something that happened to me. And the lesson that you're going to draw from this particular part of the talk is be able to laugh at yourself. It is very easy to become to be very defensive about yourself and always to need to appear to be in charge and in command of situations. But it's okay to be able to say I did something stupid and laugh at that. So I'm going to tell you a story that a few of you may know, but it just needs to be told once and for all. The story has become somewhat legendary. People aren't sure if it's really true. Bits and pieces of it can be found on YouTube here and there when people have managed to sneak recording devices into otherwise no recording device events where I have a handful of occasions told the story. But it has to do, I'm just going to let you all know in advance, it has to do with urination. By show of hands, is there anybody in the room who knows this story? Okay, a couple of you. These are my hardcore fans right here. They somehow managed to hear this story. All right, this is my favorite story my entire life. This is from 1993. So you are all like negative 12 or whatever it was. And I was in college undergrad. And for some reason that has long since escaped me, my parents, maybe it was that they were getting a new health insurance policy, something like that that required me to provide a urine sample. And the way they were going to do it was the company was actually going to come to my dorm room. So the day that they were scheduled to do this, they leave a message on my answering machine while I was asleep saying that it was snowing too hard. They would have to reschedule with me. My roommate woke up, got that message, realized there was a group of people coming to take a urine sample from me who couldn't come. But I didn't know that they couldn't come. So he thought, what, there's got to be some, there's something here. I don't know what it is yet. It's formless right now. But there's something here. So he came up with a plan. He had a mutual friend of ours call our room. He answers the phone, my roommate, and pretends that he's talking to the health insurance people, figuring that I'm probably hearing half this conversation. And I hear him talking to them. And I'm barely awake. And I say, what was that all about? He says, well, that was the health insurance people. They say that the snow is too strong for them to come out. However, they have a friend who works at the savings bank down the end of the street. If you could bring your urine sample to him, he would be glad to bring it along to the company. Now, you see, I'm teaching you all a lesson here and being able to tell you this story, broadcasting to the world here. Now you would think, I mean, how low of an IQ would you have to have? To say this seems like a sensible situation. I'm going to go do this. So I said, what, are you kidding me? What? I said, he said, and you got to hurry up and get there. The guy's only going to be there until noon. You got to get there. So I go in the bathroom and I've got like, you know, obviously a non-sterile cup, just a Dixie cup. And he's shouting into the bathroom, you have to write your social security number on it. So at this point, I've got no dignity whatsoever. I got a cup of urine. I was kind of clever. I put a piece of paper with an elastic band over the top. And I put my work boots on ready to trudge out into the snow and he's kind of laughing. And I thought, this doesn't seem suspicious. It is kind of a funny situation. And off I go carrying this cup of urine with indeed my social security number on it down the street to the Bay Bank, which is an old bank chain. And I walk in there and I go right up to the customer service people with this cup. And I say, I've been told to ask for Jeff. So I ask for Jeff and they say, you must be Tom. I say yes. And they hand me a note. And the note says, dear Tom, ha, ha, ha, go back to sleep. Your friends. So and so. So I realized, okay, I bet this whole thing was a setup. Like I finally, okay. So by the time I get back to the dining room where they're all having lunch, my friends have all been briefed on what I've just done. And they can't even look at me. They're all laughing so hard. Okay. So I would tell people this story because I thought it's a good exercise in humility. You know, I was at an elite school. Like there was absolutely no reason for me to have done this. And I just went around, you know, because I thought it's going to make me a better person to be able to say, I did something silly. But however, you would think, all right, look, and it kind of reminds me of a long, long, long ago in the early days of David Letterman. He did this skit where he went to an inventors convention. And he interviews a guy who has invented a machine to detect if somebody has been buried alive. And Letterman, you know, is deadpan through the whole interview. And he's speaking through a trance through an interpreter to talk to this guy. And he says, no, listen, does I mean, does this, does this happen a lot? I mean, like, you know, why would you really need this invention? And the interpreter says, well, he has told me to tell you that he has been buried alive three times. And Letterman says, again, deadpan Letterman says, now listen, I can understand being buried alive once, you know, sure, or even twice, you know, somebody, you know, you look the other way, accidentally close the lid, but, but three times. I mean, how does he account for that? So that reminds me of this situation, not that this happened three times, but once bringing your urine to a foreign location, you would think would be a lesson enough, right, not to repeat this. But it did happen a second time the next year. So the next year, it was, it was much more complicated because my friends decided that it would take a lot more cleverness to get the second time, you know, so, so they said, they found out later, they said, we made this into, we had like war room sessions, we made this into like a fifth course. And here's how they did it. My roommate and I, back before I could make money that easily, I was in, I was in college after all, we would earn a little extra money by participating in psychology, psychology department experiments, you know, because like some grad student would be doing a memory experiment, they'd pay you like eight bucks for coming in and doing it. So we would do this regularly. So one day we're doing it and he finishes first, my roommate, he finishes first, and he says, I don't have a pen. So when you're done, you know, sign us up for more of these before you leave. Okay. So I finish, I go down to the ground floor and on the bulletin board are all the ways to sign up for more experiments. And one of them said, earned $15 for participating in an endocrinological experiment where you fill out a 10 minute questionnaire and you provide a urine sample. Now obviously the words that should have jumped out of me there were urine sample. However, the words that did jump out at me were $15. I could use $15. So I went back and talked to my roommate, Paul, who by the way is like, you know, he went on to teach at Stanford. I mean, this is, I don't know. He has a very successful career, let's say. But yet this is probably one of the highlights of his whole stinking life is what he just was about, what he's about to do to me here. I go back to him and say, there's this $15 thing, but I didn't want to sign us up if you were uncomfortable about the urine sample. And he says, no, no, no, it's fine. Yeah, go ahead. Well, obviously he put that there. There is no experiment. He put that there for me to find. Well, they kept it up, by the way. They kept it on the bulletin board. They forgot to take it down till later. By the time they took that, which is there entirely for my benefit, there is no such experiment. Half the campus had signed up for this thing. I mean, they're writing in the margins, sideways, like what, these kids do anything for $15. All right. So we get this phone call a couple of days. So he set this whole thing up. A couple of days later, we get this phone call from the experimenter. And she says, I was just calling to set up a time for you to come in and we want to make sure you get your vial for the sample. They had, one of our friends worked in a bio lab. And so got sterile vials that, you know, they're right out of a lab. So they put them on a display and they labeled them psychology experiment vials and they put them in the psychology department where no professor touched them because every professor figured it was some other professor's thing. No, it's just for woods. That is the only reason this display of vials is here. So that when I go to pick them up, I'll say, wow, that must be legit, which is very close to my exact words at the time. I'm sorry to tell you. So now it's the day. It's the day for me to go in, bring my sample and answer the questions on the questionnaire. I go in there. There's this experimenter, very professional with a clip board. Gives me the questionnaire and says, do you have your sample? So I produce it, put it on the table. And she's sitting in the corner reading a book. And I sign the release form that you sign for all these things. And now it's time to answer the question. So I mean, again, it seems like every detail's been covered here, except the obvious one, you're bringing urine to another location. That's the thing that the old noodle should have perceived. So I start feeling, so it's all multiple choice, like how do you feel today and I circle and answer indifferent and the question like, do you smoke, questions like that. Then it gets to look at the vial on the table. Now, how do you feel? And so I circle disgusted. So then the subsequent questions asked me to pick up the vial and swirl the contents and then record my feelings about this. Then it was unscrew the top and sniff the contents. Now, I couldn't be more delighted to inform you that I did not do that. I thought to myself, what is going on? But then I thought, but every eye has been dotted, every T has been crossed. This has got to be legit. And then the next instruction was imbibe the contents of the vial. Did not do that either. At that point I said, you got to be blankety blanking me here. And then I looked at the very last, so that question about, after I've imbibed the contents, how do I feel? And all the multiple choice answers are all nicknames that I've had over the course of my life. And I thought, what the hell is going on here? And then the very last question had only one response. What feeling do you have now, deja vu? You, so the moral of that story is, if something like that happens to you, just let the whole world laugh with you, okay? Because it is way, it would be a shame to sit on that story, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that have been a shame for me not to tell you that? And now I can't tell you how much better I feel with that off my chest. Okay. You're probably too young to remember former Senator and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. But one reason I was glad he did not win was that his Chief of Staff played a small role in that joke. So I feel like this is a kind of karma indirectly toward that SOB. All right, now let's carry on. There are other things I have to tell you that do not involve urine. And another one is, you know the expression, anything worth doing is worth doing well? Shut up. I mean, yes, I get that. But what most people honestly need to hear is that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. By which I mean, some people wait too darn long to do things because they feel like everything's going to be perfect. Like that was true of me with my podcast. I should have started that years ago, but I was nervous. Or do I know what I'm doing or whatever? Is everything going to be perfect? And so instead of starting it, not perfect, but at least starting it, I just waited and waited and waited. And there are a lot of times when you think, well, now's not the perfect time in my life to start X, Y or Z. But the thing is, if you keep letting that hold you back, what you find over time is that perfect time never arrives. And instead, you've just wasted year after year after year. So bear that in mind. You may not be able to prepare everything so that it's all perfect. But anything worth doing is worth doing at least badly, because sometimes that's better than not doing it at all. All right. I've got, I'm going to cross a couple more off the old list here. All right. Some of them, now I got one that's going to, might bring a tear to your eye. And I want to, you know, I'm taking you on an emotional journey with me tonight. Okay. Well, we're going to hold off on that one for the time being. And I'm going to tell you something that you probably have not done, especially at your age. You young whippersnappers have probably not done this, but neither have the oldsters. And this is one of the rare pieces of advice from Michael Malus. You should actually follow. And it has to do with appreciating your friends. Because my gosh, a good friend in this world is so rare and such an amazing gift. Somebody you can genuinely confide in and who will help you and who will accompany you on your, on the journey of life. This is a rare, rare and extraordinary thing. And very, very infrequently, do we tell our friends that we appreciate them? And that I am glad to be friends with you. It has enriched my life to be your friend. So Michael Malus, I am glad to be your friend. My life has been enriched being your friend. See how easy that is to do? Now, you should all do that with your friend when you get home. All right, you have that talk. You assure your friend you haven't been drinking. You just start talking. This brings happiness into the world. And it solidifies important relationships. That's one thing. Other thing to remember is how to offer a good apology. Now, this is an important skill because if you offer a good apology, you are the 1%, okay? You may never be the 1% in income. But if you can offer a good apology, you are the 1% among mankind. Because the fact is most people do not apologize, period. They don't even give you a crappy apology. You get no apology at all. If you do get an apology, it takes the horrible, unspeakable form of, well, I'm sorry if, no, no, no, no. The word if should not be in your apology or it's a BS apology. I'm sorry if you were hurt by what I said. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry if, no, no, no, no, no. If you want to offer an apology, I'm sorry that. I'm sorry that I did this thing. And if you're afraid that the recipient of the apology is going to, it's not going to be gracious, well, you've at least done the right thing. And you'll be surprised because so few people apologize when you offer a heartfelt one, you'll be surprised at how readily it's received. And I've done this a number of times in my life to people I have genuinely wronged, including a couple people in this movement that I've wronged and I've apologized to and I thought they're never going to accept my apology and they have. So it's never, I'm sorry if. Now, on the other hand, as somebody receiving an apology, if somebody gives you and I'm sorry if apology and their heart seems to be in the right place and they genuinely want to make amends, then you shouldn't be a stickler about, well, your apology didn't match the woods apology formula. So I'm not quite sure I'm taking you back. Don't do that. Be a gracious recipient of apologizers and a super abundantly generous giver of apologies. Okay. Oh, looking down here, I forgot to mention, speaking of laughing at oneself, of all the meals we're going to have the night of the evening with Tom Woods, we have the messiest meal of the week by far because we're supposed to make tacos, you know, in the soft taco show. And you know, I just, I can't control myself. I overdo it by putting all this food. So I bought more or less made like a burrito, except an open face burrito that I was nevertheless trying to eat with my hands. So I ended up getting food all over this shirt. But one of my friends, I want you to know who you are, suggested just slide the name tag right on over. You have no idea the horrors behind this thing right here. Okay. So you're thinking, I like drunk woods. He gives much better presentations than the regular sober woods. Okay. How about another thing? This is a personal one. And that is, imagine yourself being radically vulnerable with at least one of your friends. Just try to imagine that. Where you've got one friend who knows everything, knows the whole story. Every secret thing there is knows everything. And therefore, when something goes wrong is in a position to give good advice, because that person knows you inside and out. Now I growing up did not observe a lot of friendships like this. The friendships that I observed, like for example, in my neighborhood among my neighbors and stuff were very superficial. These were friendships where people would play cards together. And that was more or less what I thought friends were people who just have a good time together with that's about it. So as my life went on, I did have friends who occasionally would come to me with their problems. And I was not a bad problem solver, but I would never go to them with my problems. Because for some reason I felt like it was a sign of weakness to show them that I had a problem. I don't have problems. I solve other people's problems. But what kind of friend is that? You know, that you get to see the good things, but you don't really find out what the struggles are. And that's not real. That's not a real friendship. And so I finally got to the point where I felt it was it's kind of like, I forget who gave this example recently. It's kind of like athletes who are obviously on steroids, but they're pushing some athletic program on you. And you do it and you don't get the results they do, but they deny that they're using steroids. It's just your fault for not working hard enough. That's just wrong to do to people, right? To give that false impression. Well, likewise, you know, what good is it doing me to give this the impression that unlike the rest of the human race, nothing ever goes wrong for me. So guess who wound up being on the receiving end of everything about old woods here? It's that bastard Michael Malus, okay? That guy knows every deep dark secret about about the old man here. I couldn't resist. I love that expression. And so there would be there were times over the past couple of years where boy, I went through a really rough period. Now right now I'm in the happiest period of my whole life times 100 without a doubt by far the happiest. But it wasn't so a couple of years ago is really, really difficult. But the beautiful thing was I had this guy in my corner who's a good advice giver and who saw me through some difficult times like almost flew down to my house from New York to take care of me because things were that bad. And I've also helped him through things. And if I had just kept everybody at arm's length, not only would I not have been helped, but I wouldn't have experienced one of the great rewarding things about life, which is the what you get from being willing to be open with your friends. So I'm glad that I have that guy because even though publicly sometimes he's got this troll persona and he jokes a lot. He's the best friend you could imagine. He's deeply loyal. If anybody if anybody in his presence were to say woods is a bad guy, he would not let them get away with that. Boy would they regret saying that, okay. But also he's just right there with you all the time. I've not encountered another person like him and I'm glad I've got him. And I'm glad for the Tom Wood Show because otherwise I never would have met this idiot. And I say idiot because I was about to tell a story. I shouldn't tell. Sorry. I will say that when we when we first met it was because he had his book on had a book on North Korea. Malus wrote a book. It was the unauthorized autobiography of Kim Jong-il called Dear Reader. And it's a brilliant idea because he speaks in the North Korean leader's voice. It's brilliant. And I had him on my show and I didn't know who he was and he didn't know me either. Like we were both somehow in the movement. We all had all the same friends. We had never heard of each other. And I remember asking him before he went on, is your last name really pronounced Malus? How could you have the last name Malus? And he said, well what else would it be? I said, well I thought maybe it was Italian. Maybe it was pronounced Maliche. I don't know. Anyway, I don't know what I would do without that guy. All right. And by the way, one thing you can do for enjoyment. If you've never watched the live in-person debate, Michael and I did on Alexander Hamilton. Just go to YouTube and type in Woods Malus Hamilton. And you're in for an evening of entertainment. It was not the Soho Forum but the one that proceeded at New York City. It was a monthly debating series in New York City. Back in 2015, we ended up bringing out the biggest crowd they had ever had in this debate. What a dorky debate over whether Alexander Hamilton was a good guy or not. Now I agree with Michael on almost everything. So the funny thing is the one thing we disagree about is Alexander Hamilton of all possible things. So in the months leading up to that, we were trash talking each other on Twitter so badly. It was ridiculous. And so at one point, Michael played, now you have to be able to take edgy humor here, but I'm half Armenian. And there was a symphony orchestra that was playing a tribute to Armenians on the day commemorating the Armenian genocide. And Michael tweets that out and tags me, obviously indicating this is what's going to happen to me in the debate. You have a friend like that. That's just going to go on your whole life. What can you say? It's going to go on your whole life. All right. Now another thing to do, you're not going to go wrong imitating Murray Rothbard. Now if you read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, he has this 13-point plan of how to become a better person. And you know, a lot of them are just sort of maxims, you know, the first bunch of them. And then you get to the very last one. And you get to this point, each additional one you think, well, this is going to be a little more difficult, but I could probably do that. And then the next one, and then the next one. And then the last one is imitate Jesus and Socrates. Okay. All right. Well, likewise, imitate Rothbard might seem like, oh, what do you mean? Write eight gazillion books and five, you know, quintillion articles? I mean, what do you mean by that? Well, I don't necessarily mean be that engine of productivity. But I do mean that he had qualities that ought to be imitated by everybody. And one of those qualities that I have in mind is he would learn from anybody. And you can tell that in a number of ways. One of them is in the course of his career. You can see he collaborated with people at different points of view. So he collaborated on editing a series of essays on World War One, and particularly on the economy during World War One and cronyism and collectivism during World War One. He collaborated with people on the new left. He collaborated with people on the right. He just anybody he found interesting, he thought had something interesting to say, or Lou tells the story of being over at, I guess, Murray's play, maybe it was in Las Vegas, I can't remember if it was Las Vegas or New York, but one of his residences, and he had a stack of scholarly papers on his table. And that was because there had been an academic conference at the nearby university. And he went and took a copy of everybody's paper and studied them all to see if there are any nuggets of knowledge and wisdom in any of them. And that was how he was. So he would be willing to say, boy, this guy who's not very good on such and such is really great on this. And I'll learn from him on this. You can see this in the Rothbard collection of books, many of which are, you know, you can see many of these books on the shelves in different parts of the Institute were Rothbard's books. And you can see that he has underlined them and he's made notations about them. And you can see that very often within the same book, he will admire one thing, and he will put a big X through another or he'll put no with three exclamation marks or whatever. I mean, I remember there's one book where they're describing some awful thing that the state did and Rothbard has underlined it and written the word bastards with exclamation mark, you know, like this guy, I mean, this guy lived, you know, he lived every minute of his life, but he was willing to learn from almost anyone. And so I would take that lesson and couple that with not demonizing people because that is an extremely counter cultural thing to do is not immediately demonize somebody who disagrees with you. Now it's true, this has become more challenging to do in our day because a lot of times people who disagree with us are in fact demons. So it's hard not to demonize them. But at the same time, you don't have to be like people on Twitter, and you don't have to be like people on, let's say, one particular wing of the ideological divide in the country who really do demonize opponents. Do you disagree with me? That means you must be or you disagree with me. That means you must hate the or if, well, it doesn't mean I must do any of those things. Why don't you shut up and listen to what I have to say about my positions on things. But the inclination is to is to say about people in this room, all kinds of horrible things without knowing anything about you, because they're different from you. And in general, it's best for us not to treat other people that way, especially because most of the strangers we come across, you know, if they disagree with us, it's not necessarily because they hate human freedom, not necessarily. Some of them probably do. But some of them honestly, what are they supposed to think? After 12 years of indoctrination, what are they supposed to think? If not, well, society needs to be run this way. So sometimes we need to use ridicule and sarcasm. But other times we use beautiful Harry brownishness. Harry Brown is a great example because this was a guy who was hard core libertarian, hard core, absolute libertarian plumb line. And yet, and he would not, he would not compromise on anything. But he had a way of talking to people that captivated them. He knew his audience. Maybe he would be a little more animated if he knew it was a libertarian audience. But if he's talking to the general public, he knows how to talk to them in ways that draw them in, that doesn't demonize them, but draws them in. And he could make our position sound like the most simple common sense to the point where only later when they were walking through the parking lot, would they say, wait a minute, what did that guy just talk me into? You know, he was incredible in that way. And that's somebody we should admire and look up to and try to imitate. He's one of the people, that guy alone helped to bring Michael Bolden, who went on to found the 10th Amendment Center, brought Michael Bolden, who was a commie. And he listened to Harry Brown, brought him over to our side, thinking of all the good he's done. And he also brought Scott Horton, the foreign policy expert, over to our side as well. So, you know, if that was all he did in his whole life, that'd be pretty darn accomplished life. So learn from us, anybody, don't demonize your opponents. Life is not all about politics. How about that? I mean, some of your friends, it's like before they can go to or do anything, they have to investigate what is the ideological preconception of the owner of this particular place. Because the owner, apparently the owner of Jimmy John sandwiches voted for Mitt Romney. And this made some people unhappy. Now look, I am sure this guy thought he was being really cheeky to vote for Mitt Romney. Like, I'm way out there, man. I voted for Mitt Romney. Now look, if I said to myself, I'm not eating at any place where they voted for Romney or, you know, whatever, I would never, I'd starve to death, you know? So I just, I'm just, I'm not going to live my life that way, you know, where I'm going to, I'm going to give every single person I want to interact with a questionnaire. That's just politics poisoning normal human relations. It is a poison. And I'm just going to try to have my economic life be an area of peace. I have enough, I have enough jerks gunning for me in the political sphere and ideological sphere. I have enough, you know, there's a part of me that just wants to have a peaceful life. And I'm going to do that when I go buy something to drink or when I go to an establishment. So we are not making life all about politics. So it's, we're not going to interrogate people when we meet them. We're not going to ask, where do you stand on X, Y, or Z? Because that's what fanatics do. And we're not fanatics. Okay. Here's one that is kind of sad, but kind of good also. And then I'll conclude with one really important one for you guys. This one maybe some of you know if you have been a long time listener of the Tom Wood show. But some of you, some of you hadn't been born yet when the Tom Wood show started, probably. So I'm not sure you've listened to all of them. But that's, you know, that's something to aspire to in your life. As long as I'm giving you life advice, being able to say you've listened to all the Tom Wood show episodes is not going to hurt you. That's all I'm saying. May not be the best helpful thing, but it's not going to hurt. All right. So here's the thing. And this has to do with holding grudges. It's so easy to do this. It is so easy to stay angry, especially when you're in the right. Because I don't know about you, but I get this incredibly satisfied feeling when I know I'm in the right, you know, and that jerk over there, we're not speaking to each other. It doesn't matter to me because I'm right and that SOB is wrong. You know, and there's something, it's like when you honk your horn in the car when you know you're right. Like that person cut me off. I am objectively right. And if anybody in the car wants to object to me honking in this case, they'll say, I got to give you that one. Like you are clearly in the right. It's the same kind of intense satisfaction. However, it eats your soul away. It is a horrible thing to do. You got to figure out a way to just let that go. Okay. And one way to do that has to do with is I'm going to reveal in my little story here from my own life. And this is something where, you know how I said earlier, be prepared to laugh at yourself. Well, in this case, I'm willing to show myself in an extremely unfavorable light here. As I look back on this with not particularly a sense of pride. Let's put it that way. I have a funny feeling. I'm not the only person who found junior high school a little awkward and difficult. Is that safe to say that a lot of us felt that way? Those years were horrible. Those were terrible, terrible. I mean, it's one thing to be in the prison itself, but my fellow inmates were not the most pleasant people in the world. And although this may come as a surprise to you, I was kind of like the nerdy kid in school. Yeah, I know. I know. I take that laughter as shock and surprise. And let's just say the nerdy kid, at least in my school, I can't speak for yours, but in my school, the nerdy kid was not always welcomed with open arms. And that was certainly the case in my school, not welcomed with open arms. Because it came out that I was interested in politics. And now, I will say, the one thing I should have been ridiculed for was in 1984, I was 12, and I watched the entire Democratic and Republican conventions on television that summer. Because I just want to know, I thought that was how you know what's going on in the world, and I wanted to know. They didn't make fun of me for that because I don't think they even understood what that was. But dog got it, I should have been made fun of for that. That wasn't it. Anyway, it was just, it was a miserable, horrible time. And people, a lot of people were very, very nasty to me. So then high school comes along, and by my sophomore year, things are actually going pretty well. I actually have a pretty good decent bunch of friends. And I kind of developed a sense of humor as a way of disarming people. And so what people started to conclude was, all right, look, there's no getting around woods as a nerd. I mean, that's, you know, come on, duh, right? He's the captain of the math team. I mean, they don't make those in any other flavor, right? But he's so funny, you know? So we can look the other way on the nerdy stuff, you know, because he's a funny guy. So high school was actually quite pleasant. I didn't even want to leave. I didn't want to go off on a new adventure because this was comfortable and I was happy and I liked everybody and it worked out fine. However, the way those SOBs treated me in junior high couldn't let that go. That for some reason, that just kept eating away at me, how unjust that was. And of course it was unjust. Objectively, I was right and they were wrong because there's no excuse for bullying me and making my life miserable all the time, which they did. But a normal person lets that go. I couldn't. That just kept staying in the back of my mind so that even through my 20s, it never really, so every time I'd have an accomplishment, I would feel like I was sticking it to them. This is not healthy, obviously. Well, the first time I had a really good-selling book was the politically incorrect guide to American history. The one extravagance I allowed myself was I bought a fancy car. And I felt like by buying that car, I was really showing them who the successful one was. But of course they had gone on with their lives and weren't even thinking about me, so maybe they were in some important ways more successful because they weren't bound down by these demons from so many years earlier. Well, the way I finally put this to rest was I made the conscious determination to do so. I went to my high school reunion. I've gone to every reunion. I've had a blast. I drink too much at every single one of them and it's awesome. And this last one was in 2015. I don't even know if we're going to have one this year because Massachusetts might be, the whole thing might be a giant prison by the time it's time for our reunion if it isn't already. And I made the determination that at that reunion I was going to go in there and not talk to my old friends. I'll see them the rest of the week. I was going to go seek out the people who had made my life miserable and just talk to them like people. And I found out that one of them, his daughter, had had cancer. And for a year it was just heartbreaking misery. And I thought, well, there's something because I have five daughters. There's something where we have a connection. And I went up to him and said, I heard about what happened to your daughter and that's just terrible. Nobody should have to endure that. And we started talking. And by the end of it, he's consoling me. Like, it wasn't that bad. You know, she's okay now or whatever. And so at the end we ended up going out for drinks. And then with other people, I went and we just talked. And so many of them were saying, hey, we hear you're doing really well. We're really proud of you. I thought, how the hell am I supposed to hate you people if you're proud of how I'm doing? This is not going to work. So by the time I left there that night, I never gave it another thought. Not even slightly, not in passing, not whatever. Because I just said, I just can't do this. I don't know why I'm so juvenile that I can't move past this. And it just, it was a poison in my life for so long because I took such satisfaction in being righteously correct instead of just understanding these are insecure kids who they're just as screwed up in junior high as you are. And they don't know what the hell they're doing. And just, just let it go. Leave them alone. So I finally did that. Last thing is libertarians who are too, too little ambitious about what they want to accomplish in their lives. And what I mean by that is there are qualities that you can have as a human being that do not violate the non-aggression principle but are still stinky qualities for a person to have. Like for example, you could be late all the time. You're not violating the non-aggression principle. But that's still an irritating quality. And sometimes I deal with libertarians and I'll say, well, you know, somebody shouldn't have done such and such. And they'll say, that doesn't violate the nap. Is that your entire ambition for your life? At the end of your life, you're going to say, well, looking over these 80 years, never punched anybody. But that's it. You have nothing more you want to say for yourself. So it's not enough to live your life, not initiating physical force against other people. That's the bare minimum requirement for being a person. Think about all these other things you might want, you know, how to be a, you know, when the circumstances call for it, a gentleman, how to be courteous, how to have all these other good things that, when taken together, yield you a happy life. So these are the, collectively, the pieces of advice I would give to you as young folks. And I hope you won't think it was too weird of me to share parts of my life, but since I had nothing else to say, all I had left were the embarrassing stories. So thank you very much.