 40 here so unlike you young blokes when I do my pull-ups I can really only do them every other day right I try to do them every day and I'm just way too tired I mean I might not even be able to come all the way up with with one but I heard when you do the pull-ups it's good for your shoulders my shoulders are really weak I want to do pull-ups or weights or anything or push-ups I sense that I'm just doing it all with my arms rather than my shoulders so someone told me the other day that if I work on the pull-ups that will strengthen the shoulders while the chin-ups that will strengthen the biceps so really trying to do more pull-ups and today was a pull-up day and so there's my favorite tree branch that I like to do my pull-ups on but it was surrounded by stuff like someone was moving in or out of an apartment building and I thought you know please gotta let there be a little room for my my pull-ups but even more challenging is that there was three teenage girls sitting on this stuff like right right before my my branch my favorite branch to do pull-ups so I would not be dissuaded right I got out there you know jumped on the branch and started doing pull-ups and these sheilas I would not be they were laughing they were laughing at me I'm struggling to do three pull-ups and they're laughing at me and at the same time I'm trying to carry on a conversation with a friend and you know I do by my three pull-ups walk away for a minute and they're just cackling and laughing and when I turn around to come back to the the tree branch they have moved over to another tree and they're trying to do pull-ups themselves but they can't do any like so they're like trying to boost each other up to be have to do a pull-up but they're all cackling and laughing and having a good old time and I'm just like back to you know grim old duty you know do another three but the last one is only 80% true you know trying to carry on a conversation and they're probably wondering like who's this creepy old dude you know trying to like show off by doing pull-ups in front of us but no they they became fully absorbed with their own project of trying to do pull-ups and they were just giggling and laughing and boosting each other up the tree but it's kind of touches on like a wee bit of an issue for me so I remember once I went to an engagement party and I saw that these young women at this engagement party when they would spot each other across the route they would squeal and they'd run towards each other and they'd like leap into each other's arms and I the next day I went to therapy and I talked about you know how stupid these young women were squealing and whooping and falling into each other's arms and my therapist said well probably you wish that you could squeal and whoop you wish that someone would squeal for joy to see you you wish that you could be you know included in their reindeer games but Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer it doesn't get to be included in the you know all sorts of normal forms of human connection are just a foreign language to me I think it's from growing up in foster care like you know seeing these three girls just like giggling and laughing and having a great time together and I'm having kind of this grim solo experience just me and the bloody tree branch and it just reflects I got this tiny wee bit of an issue with with loneliness and I don't think it's unfamiliar problem for bachelors and I've just been pierced by this CS Lewis quote that I read a few days ago the price for freedom is loneliness happiness comes from being tied like ouch. So I spent five of the last 18 months you know walking around Australia most of that time in Sydney perhaps the most beautiful city in the world now typically spend all day walking 10, 12, 15 up to 20 miles around the gorgeous Sydney Harbour but 95, 98% of my walks were on my own and so who could I share them with all the other painful truth is I was sharing them with you like I'd make videos to feel less lonely as I was wandering around Sydney I mean how many you know 57 year old dudes get to go to Sydney and just walk around all day so yeah I have this this surfer to freedom I could take off right now you know go to Sydney I've got enough savings to live comfortably for a year in in Sydney but the price of that tremendous amount of freedom that I have is is loneliness and the solution to loneliness is not you know feeling it with other people and connection so much is reconfiguring my my inner architecture right you know loneliness was a reaction that I learned from my early years and until I have those corrective emotional experiences reconfigure my in a life my soul I can be around a whole bunch of people I can be right in the middle of things and still still feel lonely so the there's been quick solutions that I've found for loneliness and that's borrowed functioning from other people like getting a girlfriend getting an obsession you notice how I'm always hopping from obsession to obsession because when I get an intellectual obsession or a religious obsession a you know recovery obsession diet and exercise obsession whatever I get obsession it just kind of holds my my loneliness at bay for a while or when I bring new people into my life or have a relationship or I'm adopted into semi adopted into a family or develop a new circle of friends or develop a new community or go join a cult or apprentice myself to some you know great guru like it you know a virtual guru like Dennis Prager or you know a real life guru like a rabbi that kind of keeps the loneliness at bay for a while but it keeps coming back until I reconfigure the inner architecture of my soul and the most effective way that I found to do that is to develop self respect from living a life that is akin to a symphony so where the various parts of my life are not at war with each other but rather that they're building on each other so when I was writing on the pornography industry and also trying to make my way in Orthodox Judaism right those are two facets of my life that were very much at war with each other and thank God I don't have that anymore. I've reconfigured my live streaming so that it is you know more at ease with what I might encounter in the wider world when I go to synagogue when I go to Starbucks when I walk down the street when I meet people in public places and they happen to see my live stream or hear my podcast that's not going to be at war with my well being so that means that I don't discuss edgy topics nearly as much as I did that if I do touch on things that are edgy I try to phrase things in a much more socially acceptable manner so I've turned down my show lost a lot of viewers because it's not as exciting it's not as cutting edge it's not as you know as edgy and deviant and you know off the beaten path as it used to be to try to keep my show more in line with what's you know for my overall you know social well being so trying to build self respect throughout my life so that from the way I conduct myself with earning money the way I conduct myself with with clients the way I conduct myself at synagogue in my 12 step programs socially with friends when I'm just alone me and my computer on my blog on my live stream I just want everything preferably working together or at least if they aren't working together and I would prefer that they're not at war with each other that they're not kind of cancelling each other out because I find when my life is working and I respect what I'm doing then the loneliness doesn't get to me the loneliness kind of gets to me when the self hatred gets to me and the self hatred gets to me when I make bad decisions if I eat too much if I'm you know socially inept if I'm self aggrandizing if I'm pushing myself into conversations where I'm not wanted if I'm you know misreading the room if I'm not taking other people into consideration if I'm you know falling out of touch with reality and then getting humiliated so I what if what if I was spending my time like playing a video game so I was like number one in the world at a particular video game and that made me feel happy and perhaps it filled a hole in my soul and reduce the intensity of the loneliness is that you know a maladaptive delusion so my thinking is your delusions are maladaptive delusions if they directly lead to humiliation from you know that delusion so if you're really good at video games and that does not lead to humiliation in real life then I don't think it's a maladaptive delusion if you're really good at tennis or Shakespeare or playing marbles or performing the commandments of orthodox Judaism or your lay leader in your church or whatever it is your leader in your your business softball league right whatever you're doing that's providing you with you know meaning and solace and makes you feel expert and great right if it's not accompanied by frequent bouts of absolute humiliation then you're probably doing something right right you probably probably fallen on something that's adaptive but I don't know about you but I've spent so much of my life just trying to get rid of myself just trying to run away from who I am so early on I wanted to be a Christian missionary because I kind of wanted to run away from just being a loser at school who occasionally peed himself and then I tried to run away from myself I had these delusions and I grew out to be a great general or a great political leader and then yeah the the late starts are hurting 40s ratings on the east coast that's true and and then I tried to run away from I said oh I just become a great journalist I'll become a TV sportscaster I'll become the next water Cronkite maybe I'll return to Australia become a political leader maybe I'll become the editor of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles maybe I'll become the editor of the Los Angeles Times maybe I'll become the mayor of Los Angeles maybe I'll become a US senator from California maybe I'll start a you know a non-profit to you know help people who struggle with the same things that that that I struggle with so I get you know all these great plans that I you know get excited about them and it kind of diminishes the loneliness and the the sense of you know failure of frustration with my life for a while but then all these these fixations they they always disappear and I'm left back on my own resources and so if I'm living a life that's basically a symphony which is what I feel right now so I feel amazing right now I didn't didn't wake up until about 512 a.m. this morning so it's only the second time in about six weeks that I managed to wake up after 5 a.m. so normally I'm way awake and going at 3 a.m. but overall I feel like my life's a symphony I'm up at 3 a.m. I'm reading I'm doing my exercises I'm meditating prayer working on working on preparing for this show writing blog posts earning good money during the day I get to you know hang out with you know the beautiful people in Beverly Hills come back you know maybe do a quick show here get on my exercise bike with some weights and maybe socialize all right overall pretty pretty good life what I need to do is like that symphony thing like I want those various components of my life from what I'm eating what I'm drinking how I'm earning my money you know my prayer life my meditation life my you know political life my activist side my social media side all right my writing side my scholarly side my religious side my community side my recovery side I just need them preferably working together at least not at war with each other so at various times in my life I have had that sense of mastery and symphony that I feel like I have right now but then one thing will go wrong yes this this live stream is a bittersweet symphony so I don't know if you felt have your time to live felt like everything's working like you're in flow man you in that flow state by that guy with that unpronounceable name and you're just flowing and then one thing goes wrong and you completely lose the flow state you you might lose your job you might lose your girlfriend you might break your leg or your arm you have you know a sudden fiscal crisis or a sudden health crisis you develop you know overwhelming dental pain or you get a job and so you're you're you know previously embarked on this tremendous program of self-improvement you are exercising you're eating right you're reading books you're growing spiritually morally physically intellectually but then you go and get a done job and now you're tired at the end of the day and you just don't have the time or the inclination to work out to read books to do all the self-improvement that you're doing before and so that that life that was a symphony right it's not just a bittersweet symphony it's just not a symphony at all now you just work and then to kind of fill the hole in your soul you might use pornography you might drink a lot you might you know eat to excess you might spend a lot you might take up gambling right and so we have a life that's a symphony and then one thing goes wrong and we're just completely knocked you know out of that symphony so we need some some path that enables us to you know get back on our feet and you know get this symphony going again you know restart Mr. Forty's Opus right so I always dreamed about being a great classical music conductor or composer but somehow I ended up here but this is Mr. Forty's Opus and I'm conducting the the you know the beautiful beautiful lyrics coming from glib medley and the the wonderful melodies coming from esoteric and the the the thrill of doing a live stream with seven live viewers on youtube right now whoa four live viewers my god over on rumble I hope this doesn't go to my head and change me one on live viewer on facebook zero live viewers on twitter and one live viewer right now on odyssey all right we're going out live on all these platforms but at least with you know 15 live viewers all together I can I can have a little intimation of being that conductor I remember once I was just jokingly you know imitating a conductor in front of this woman who was a real musician like a real classical music musician and she started playing her instrument you know in alignment with my conducting directions that was like incredible rush I didn't realize that these these gestures that the conductors make have have real meaning and that real serious musicians follow them and then perform in accordance like what a high is that like all the I had a slight acquaintance with Herbert Bloemstad the the maestro of the San Francisco Symphony he was a big admirer of my father and so it seems like all the big symphony conductors they live a long time can you imagine like how happiness inducing that would be to just stand up there and have your little baton and you know wave your arms around and you know have have an entire orchestra of high IQ you know highly trained classical musicians follow you my god that that'd be amazing anyway uh I'm a much bigger fan of developing some kind of flexible symphony approach to life than goals right because goals are great in moderation but I'm not as big a fan of goals as many people are because I notice goals tend to narrow my focus right so I tend to have fewer options and I just kind of constrict when I have overwhelming overpowering goals in my life also for me goals tempt me towards shortcuts and this might be just me another thing that goals do is that they give me excuse to avoid you know other painful more difficult more challenging more necessary things that I need to work on that I don't really want to look at because I'm just so focused on my goals and my goal might be to develop my live stream or to make more friends or to contribute more to my religious community or to the recovery community or to write a book uh I have all these different goals but they narrow my focus and so like if you're watching this you're probably you know an insecure person like myself uh someone for whom human connection is a significant part of the time you know a foreign language and you know somewhat disconnected from the normal normal stream of life and so if you're like me and you seize passionately and enthusiastically upon a goal I want to be for so many years in my life it was really really important to me to be Dennis Prager's number one disciple I I wanted to I wanted to be a servant the leader of the band right that's like that's where I got a great deal of my meaning from about I don't know 1988 until about 1997 like I was like an only child you know alone and wild I was just a theologian son then my hands were meant for different work and my heart was known to none right I left my home and I went my alone and solitary way and Dennis Prager he gave to me a gift I know I can never repay I mean Prager's a quiet man of music denied a simple fate he tried to be a soldier once but his music wouldn't wait he earned his love through discipline a thundering velvet hand his gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand but now the leader of the band is 75 and his eyes are growing told but his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul my life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band my brothers lives were different for they heard another call one went to Chicago and the other to St. Paul and I'm in Colorado and I'm in not in some hotel living out this life I chose and come to know so well Dennis I thank you for the music and your stories of the road I thank you for the freedom and it came my time to go I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough Dennis and I think I said I love you near enough well leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old but his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul my life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band so I have various times of my life I just want to you know devote myself to a cause just lose myself in a cause just like the you know I'm Dennis Prager's number one customer I'm Dennis Prager's number one fan or you know some other you know slim hook I just you know just absurdly attached to you know devote all my resources to to try to you know bring purpose and meaning and in some sense of normality to my life and it just makes the loneliness and the ache and the pain and the dysfunction you know go away and I can kind of you know get rid of my unwanted self and just you know embrace that you know hey I'm just a a follower of the the leader of the band but that doesn't last for long right that that doesn't work out so I've had the opportunity to rescue people at times be absolutely intoxicating you know this this woman who was living off her sister's couch and you know sleeping in her office at the Los Angeles press club and you know I got to you know bring her home and take her out and she was just devoted to me and I kind of got to feel like I was rescuing her but that intoxicating effect of rescuing people you know becoming a captain saver hoe it doesn't doesn't last long doesn't really get it done so I'm kind of introspective right now because I just got in my my monthly amazon subscribe and save delivery so I got about 600 dollars worth of goods but I'm starting to realize that no matter how much creamy chocolate soylent I buy it's never enough to fill that hole in my soul like even with the strawberry flavors there are just so many amazing flavors of soylent and it's just so good for you it's got the 36 grams of carbs but 20 grams of protein and 24 grams of fat just like a really well balanced meal right here but there's not enough soylent in the world to fill the hole in my soul there I mean I can keep following gurus and dividing myself to gurus and cults but in the end I'm always going to come back to myself and so I've not found great benefit from absurdly pursuing after goals moderate goals right goals in moderation yeah that's great I graduated from alexander technique training school right that was that was a goal I did it I feel good about it that helped my life but my experience is goals just narrow my focus they distract me from the things I really need to be working on I cut corners in pursuit of goals so I prefer the bittersweet symphony I'm trying to create a life where I respect the various segments of my life from taking that cold shower at 3 a.m. to doing my exercises listening to those podcasts to doing the meditation doing the positional release exercises to writing some blog posts to you know digging up old shows from the past that are not online and uploading them one of the one of the most important books I ever read was Victor Frankel man's search for meaning and he makes the point that meaning is not a question that we ask life but but the meaning of life is a question that life is continually asking us Victor Frankel's man's search for meaning is one of the most important books of our time but the problem is most americans don't even seem to know that it exists well I read it yes I wanted to be Julie I wanted to be Dennis Prager's protege I wanted to be his number one fan but I mean not just with Dennis Prager I've just hopelessly devoted me to myself to you know all sorts of gurus and teachers I'm just a fanboy at heart recently it is a fascinating read with so many gents of wisdom and today I'm going to tell you the three biggest takeaways that I have I'm Julie Hartman and this is timeless excellent whoa whoa hey is this music gonna get me in trouble I feel like it's gonna get me in trouble with YouTube I mean I don't have the special protective qualities that Salem Broadcasting does wasn't always this way in my life I actually didn't like to read for most of my life but when I graduated from college about a year ago I decided to enter the second stage of education where I reread all of the important books that I once thought were boring well one of those books was Victor Frankel's man's search for meaning I'll put a little asterisk next to this though because I actually wasn't assigned this book and I sort of on the periphery knew about it I didn't know that Victor Frankel was a Holocaust survivor I just thought it was a dude who was writing a book about meaning but I decided to pick it up and read it recently super fast read it took me two days it's about 180 pages big font very palatable and easily understandable and let me tell you I think this book changed my life you can read this book in 90 minutes maybe two hours Victor Frankel is a name that all of us in America should know about and just anecdotally over the past two weeks I've been going around in my life and asking some people who uh I know across all different age spectrums if they are aware of this book and of Victor Frankel and many of them say like an earlier Julie Hartman that they have no idea who he is so I like Julie she's not very effective speaking one-on-one to the camera all right she's much more effective talking to someone else like like me all right I'm I'm much more at home much more intimate much you know more effective talking to someone rather than talking just me one-on-one to the camera so she's still you know quite awkward talking one-on-one so you'll notice with her her views her views are about the same as mine when she just talks one-on-one to the camera now the blokes behind if books could kill these are two very skilled communicators very two very intelligent people and they provide a good roadmap for doing a great podcast right these blokes are on the left yeah I don't agree with them on many issues but they are prepared they're energetic they they edit what they do you know they only release you know quality shows and if you're looking for someone to emulate on how to produce a high quality podcast this is if books could kill here they're talking about the famous book nudge so the whole thing of their podcast is that they analyze airport bestsellers and how they destroy your mind fine what are essentially psychological principles right this is the kind of thing that was in psych textbooks when I was majoring in that in college as economics principles right as something that takes on the same kind of legitimacy as like you know GDP figures or like the much more quantitative work that economists are traditionally doing so Dave gall has mostly looked into this loss aversion thing he says in one of his papers he says there's no general cognitive bias that leads people to avoid losses more vigorously than to pursue gains price increases do not impact consumer behavior more than price decreases messages that frame and appeal in terms of a loss are no more persuasive than messages that frame and appeal in terms of a gain it is true that big financial losses can be more impactful than big financial gains but this is not a cognitive bias that requires a loss aversion explanation if losing ten thousand dollars means giving up the roof over your head whereas gaining ten thousand dollars means going on an extra vacation it is perfectly rational to be more concerned with the loss than the game right otherwise there are other situations where losses are more consequential than gains but these require specific explanations not blanket statements about a loss aversion bias this is why pop science sucks kind of right the appeal of pop science is this like general sense that you are now one of the smart ones with the secret knowledge and it's like no of course not right like you have to think about that for a second of course you're not you're just some guy who's reading a book right it's just a way in which these types of books are just ego padding for like the formerly gifted children what they would all told me with like all of these concepts right which are just psych concepts are just they apply in some cases and do not apply in other cases like everything fucking else it's like sometimes loss aversion is an interesting rubric to use to understand human behavior sometimes it's not and it's not always clear in advance yeah whether it's going to be useful but it's the it's the aesthetic of counter intuitiveness that people find so appealing in this shit this is a very good point because what this book is like pretending to be doing is like we're pushing back against the overconfident predictions of the fucking economists who think that we're all rational actors right but actually we can make overconfident predictions about people behaving irrationally right right reproducing the central error they're just reproducing it in like follow our rules not their rule yeah that's a really good point i think that the hmm i have a half-formed thought about this you could just say mic you're right and very handsome correct all right yeah just why don't you record me saying that in various tones and then we can just i'll just have a soundboard yeah it'll be like a little jong soundboard give it enough time you won't need a podcast that's what i'm working towards god damn it part two of the book is like a middle third of the book is all about social influence so one of the main ways that we are predictably irrational okay so this is a problem that i noticed a lot of non-jews have more than Jews but it is a serious problem a lot of non-jews particularly those influenced by Christianity put a great premium on a misunderstanding of humility so i noticed a lot of non-jews particularly from Christian backgrounds it's really important to them that they don't have any sense that they are better than average in any area and that's not humility humility simply means accepting reality so i may be in the top five percent with regard to verbal fluency or verbal IQ or writing ability okay it is not unhumble of me to accept that you know that's that's a strong possibility at the same time i'm probably in the bottom you know 10 percent on all sorts of other parts of life so you're not unhumble recognizing that you have certain gifts like if you're a painter you should be spending your time painting if you're a driller you know spend your time drilling if you're an amazing business administrator you know spend your time administrating if you're you're a profound probing reader you know spend your time reading like recognize what you do best so don't run away from taking an IQ test that don't run away from your gifts you know don't be afraid of reality and recognizing that you are better in some things and worse than normal in other things like we all have special gifts right different people have have different gifts and it's this crazy self-destructive impulse i notice among some people influenced by christianity that they don't want to face up to their gifts and they don't want to face up to that they are above average in intelligence that they are above average in their you know ability to do mathematics that they are above average in their work capabilities right it's not it's not humble and you're not doing the world or yourself any favors to run away from reality run away from who you are and to recognize different people of different gifts and you have different gifts than other people and just because say you might be in the top one percent in some parts of life you know it doesn't mean overall you're just a superior person you can then look down on other people and treat them like trash but i think a mature person who wants to live in reality recognizes hey in this area i'm in the top 10 approximately in this area i'm in the top one percent in this area i'm in the top 20 percent in this area i'm well below average in this area i'm well below average i really struggle in this area i feel like you know 90 of the people i know are far superior to me in in this area so like if you've got you've got a gift you know pursue it uh don't don't flee from recognition of reality and when you're doing you know you're starting to pursue your gifts right there's going to be humiliation that comes along as you in unexpected circumstances so if you're living in delusion you're going to get humiliated but i'm talking about a delusion that directly leads to your humiliation so if you get out there and try new things you're also going to get humiliated i don't spend a lot of time in bars or sports bars and if i go to a sports bar go to a bar if i go dancing these are things that are very unfamiliar to me and so i'm going to have a lot of humiliation but that's the humiliation from getting some some growth in pushing myself to do things that i'm not used to doing that's not the same as humiliation because i'm completely out of touch with reality that you know i think that my podcast or my show or my writing ability or my reading ability or my intelligence is just you know so much greater than other people you know then if your if your delusion directly leads to humiliation you know that you're you know out of touch with reality and the humiliation was salutary you know wakes you up to something that's going on on the other hand if you start doing things that are new and unexpected uh like dancing all right dancing is really awkward for me because i grew up in something adventist where dancing is a sin and so i only you know started to get into dancing just a teeny weeny bit after about age 16 but i had such strong imprinting from my childhood that dancing is a sin it takes a lot for me to kind of overcome that imprinting and i'm you know very likely to make a complete fool of myself so too with singing right i've had so many people tell me that you know i'm a terrible singer particularly people close to me family members that that's just like imprinted in my soul in my sake in reality you know my ability to sing is probably average right i i don't have to be squeamish and and shy and you know retiring and dread you know any any you know opportunity that comes along to sing so i think it's it's just sad when people flee from recognizing or investigating where their true gifts lie right don't be afraid of being extraordinary don't be afraid of you know finding out that you're extraordinary in some things and then pursuing your extraordinary abilities to to the max that's how you can best serve other people best you know best serve your potential best serve god instead of you know trying to flee from reality like reality is only reality 100 of the time reality always wins if the reality is you're excellent in something you know get out there and be excellent in it is we're subject to all kinds of conformity bias are you familiar with the study where it was like a bunch of people in a room and there's an optical illusion where like one line is very obviously longer than the other line and you're in a room with like six other people and they're like they're at the same length they're the same length have i listened to the audible version of tom wall's bonfire of the vanities i have listened to an audio version think black black burn box or black something black stone box so if that's the same as the audible version i'm not sure often there there are multiple i think there are like three different versions of george elliott's middle marsh on audible so i'm not sure so i heard the black stone version which was recorded simultaneously with with the tom wolf box coming out what was it 1987 or so but maybe it's worth buying i find it comforting listening to tom wolf box just letting them play all night right my mind's a dangerous neighborhood i don't want to enter alone so i just leave audible box running on night the last two weeks i've just been listening to the book reclaiming history vincent bulliosi's demolition of various conspiracy theories about the john f canady assassination so i've just been leaving that playing all night prior to that i've mainly been listening to box on world war two let them play all night and then by the time it gets to you you're like uh they're the same length even though you know that's not true i'm not familiar with the study but i would absolutely pretend to think they were the same length so i understand it so to illustrate this point this this goes through a couple chapters but the three main examples that he uses first is a grad student there's a grad student in the same department as richard failer and he needs to finish his phd and he knows he needs to finish his phd he's not a full professor until he finishes his phd but he just can't get the gumption to do it and he's missing out on like retirement matching benefits which is worth something like ten thousand dollars a year really big monetary incentive for him to finish the phd and yet he can do it but then richard failer comes up with this innovative idea he says why don't you write me a bunch of checks and post dates up so like march first april first may first and if you don't give me a chapter of your phd every month i will cash the checks you will be paying and so within the six months this grad student is able to finish his phd yeah because he has a reverse job the whole reason they joined they went to grad school was to avoid having a job and yet he's been tricked into sort of having one we then get a genuinely pretty interesting example of a tax compliance experiment in minnesota which i'm going to send to you okay in the context of tax compliance a real world experiment conducted by officials in minnesota produced big changes in behavior groups of taxpayers were given four kinds of information some were told that their taxes went to various good works including education police protection okay let's tell you that one in words others with information about the risk of pun let's see if i can get elliot blatt onto the show i'm using restream i've never never used restream before but elliot can you hear me bro yeah i can hear you can you hear me yes beautiful bro what's going down oh you know just to grind here i have to shut off the other uh you have to shut off the other one one second good to hear from our old friend elliot blatt yes sir yeah a long time no talk man one long time uh yeah i was i was picking up on your uh physical fitness thing when i was in the car and um it's just weird getting older and feeling that you just you're never gonna like get your uke back but you just kind of want to stem the top you know you want to stem the outgoing tide and uh like i couldn't imagine doing a pull-up yeah so i mean but we're trying them in front of three teenage girls who are like giggling at you yeah and that's weird like i also recently had that experience of being mocked adolescent girls and then they all went off and tried to imitate me but none of them they were like boosting each other up to try to accomplish a pull-up yeah but i almost got in a fight with like three like 18 year old girls youth youth uh uh these were um these were european ancestry excellent wow why did you why did you start fighting bro well it's kind of a amusing story like uh i'm you know i'm out on the tanning deck you know this roof of this beach house you know and it's usually a very sedate high iq sort of gathering place you know and but today these three girls had somehow learned about it they googled and found this little very out of the way beach and they made the way down there and then they started playing the radio at like a very not the radio they were they were playing their phone or whatever at a pretty high volume you know and um they were playing rap you know just not exactly my favorite genre of music you know you might you might have yes and like of course you know my blood is just slowly slowly started to boil you know and but i didn't like take the initiative and tell him to turn it down but there was this um so two of the girls were situated together and there was a third that was there there was a there was a friend of theirs that was situated away from them so one of them yells over to the other do you want me to turn this down and i said i just saw an opening and i saw my opportunity i said yes i think we'd all appreciate that and my uh you know my my uh my tone of voice sort of did suggest a bit of an alliance you know but she wasn't talking to me she's like i wasn't talking to you you know and i said well you know it would be really respectful to everyone here if you would just keep your music at a at a moderate level you know and then you know she's like you know shut up and blah blah you know there's all kinds of you know screaming nonsense um and then um if the whole thing kept she kept they kept wanting to escalate the the argument you know take it further than it needed to be you know rather than just simply turning it down they wanted to sort of teach me a lesson they were just berating me now bear in mind all of them were wearing these thongs right you know this this straight now these girls don't wear simply bathing suits but they just showed these little thin these wephir thin little um bathing suits you know just they're effectively neat how attractive were they they were they were solid they were solid seven up seven in a box you know wow like seven seven and a half inch you know okay but they were they were barely legal yeah it was a very morally compromising situation so i'm like oh god uh and then they're like i keep trying to like just tone the whole thing down you know speaking civil tones i didn't want i felt like i'm twice their age plus you know i'm like three times their age quite possibly and i'm like there's no dignified way out of the situation right now when you've got three adolescent girls screaming at you there's no way that you look good so um so they're screaming at me and screaming at them and you know i don't scream at them i'm just saying just this could all end right now you don't we don't need to do this argument so far so this is going on for what seemed like an eternity but it was probably only like five minutes maximum and then um this woman so part of the high IQ group that was sort of on the other side of the building sort of started to pick up on what's going on and this woman who i think is a school teacher uh came over to sort of diffuse the situation right like i'm now i feel like a child you know yeah this she's like what's going on here can i just talk to both of you individually you know so she separates us into groups and we're talking and then so they talk to the girls first and then i she comes to me and i'm playing along and i'm like i just wanted some quiet you know she i asked me to turn it down etc etc and then i'm i'm not going to be brow beaten by these retards so i used them i called them retards but now but literally to this woman you would have thought that i had just like taken out a a handgun at that point the t-shirt the older woman was mortified by the fact that i used this term she's like physically just started backing away from me you know like it's so hard to describe you know but then i said then she stopped talking to me and blah blah and then the whole thing just finally kind of fizzled out you know but um it's just so weird this is why i don't like to deal with people look i don't know how to manage like basic human relations you know so you're not gonna become a big brother to some teenage girls no no no no no and so i ended up calling one of them torquey booty which i thought was pretty pretty good improvisation did you get uh fine numbers no bro and uh when did they go to school i you know i think they were the sound like you know some sort of local san francisco high school imagine they talked about their i would imagine so they were talking about their jobs at cheese cake factory and stuff you know they weren't they weren't that right but were they religious i don't know i don't know and what do you think their IQs were um i would say 90 oh wow so they weren't a hundred material right yeah and and how close physically did you come to them uh about about five or six feet okay kept a very very respectful distance you know and uh and you went you went rubbing yourself no no no i said what would luke do and i said don't do that yeah yeah and were they eastern european is that what you said no no no they were like i mean you know full european so yeah european america i think that's kind of some sort yeah i mean i don't know they were white what can i say you know but they all had all this you know bleached hair and all this shit you know it's all and all the makeup and sheds it's just just complicated visual stimuli that they're putting forward but anyway so i don't know we got on this particular topic um oh yes being mocked by a young girl so it was very humiliated you know um it's like getting in a fight with a homeless person like did they did they call you any names oh they called me a uh you know a fucking white man excuse my language and all that they sort of kind of have all the woke vocabulary they call you a pedo no they didn't cross that with the terminal um so anyway so if you had to do it all over again how would you have handled it now that you you've had the you know time to climb the mountain of wisdom you know what i would have done i would have just i would have actually just screamed at them to turn it down and let's let the chips forward because i don't think i think my trying to reason with them actually i was interpreted as weakness i should have taken command right you mean you should have just like seized them and shaken them yeah yeah just all three of them gather them up just gather them up and shaking them yeah all at once slap them yeah so um so you're out there waiting friends waiting friends influencing people yep yeah but let's talk about so anyway this physical um exercise kit you're on and i'm on i'm trying to get on and my my my exercise regimes are always um always thwarted by something you know um laziness it's not laziness it's like physical pain now it's like you know i told you i was uh i i was i went out to try and walk 10 miles it set a goal of walking 10 miles and you know i have this loop it's about a mile and a quarter so i was going to do so many laps of this loop uh to hopefully get to 10 miles and i got to six miles and my feet were just screaming in pain like pain like i never understood foot pain until this it was like uh it's just that dull driving pain you get you know i don't know if you get that so yeah was it was a plantar fasciitis you know what particular foot pain it was i think that what it was it was sort of like uh it was mainly around the ball in the front part of my foot do you feel it first thing in the morning when you get out and walk to the bathroom no okay it's only after excessive uh okay after a considerable period of exercise and and i gave you like 10 10 solutions did you what did you what did you end up doing further well okay so i identified a pair of shoes i want to buy um but there are 165 dollars and i'm like i i've never paid i've never paid more than 70 for pair of shoes and that was you can't put a price on comfort and self-care bro i know but i have this aesthetic uh temperament puritan puritan wouldn't yeah a jew would not think this way no yeah that's yeah so i'm trying to get over it i'm like i'm worth it right yeah 165 and that's even before shipping and tax and everything you know like for a pair of shoes it just i don't know i'm sort of stuck like 10 years ago i see all these pricing i remember i could go out to lunch for like eight dollars i could have like a full $8 and now you know i'm lucky to get out of there for under 20 bucks it's ridiculous so yeah i'm a tight one at the end of the day i'm a tight one but i am going to pull the trigger i gotta raise by the way so thank you bro thank you my work's being appreciated so i feel like i could treat myself so i am going to pull the trigger on the shoes but then you research all the shoes and there's so many different shoes out there then you get lost in this once you've committed to spending that amount of money on a pair of shoes you don't want to make a mistake you want to get the best you know so all this comparison shopping stuff like that which what about a station stationary bike so that so it takes that enormous load off your feet i mean how much do you weigh i don't even want to i can't admit it bro it's too painful 240 240 no not that bad bro come on 230 no no no no no no look when i was in high school i was like 130 pounds i was on the cycling team i was fit right so like i used to stress if i got to 132 pounds i felt fat in high school you know uh but now i'm far far heavier than that bro and it's it hurts me are you six so but hold on so the point is if i start this exercise regime it would just be sort of like i would be gritting it out i'd be yeah i would i would just be grinding you know it would just be uh another discipline you know yeah and i don't know if that's like a healthy psychology to have no that's why i'm not a big fan of goals what's much better is to have a bit of sweet symphony going on yeah you know whether the different parts of your life work together so goals just narrow your focus like you have the goal of walking 10 miles but you're doing perhaps tremendous damage to your feet and so by by emphasizing the goal of walking 10 miles you're you may very well have been doing yourself far more harm than good and so too like people who have the goal of lifting a certain amount of weight they might cheat in how they do it and do damage to themselves so i'm not a big fan of goals like mild to moderate goals yeah but i'm not a big fan of putting a premium on goals because of the very situation that you described so i think you you join me and it's much better trying to build a life that's a symphony where everything's just working together if you can't walk then you do you know other physical activity and you you want a life where all the different components kind of work together like a symphony yeah for sure and yeah this is why i'm such a big advocate for little country life and farming and things where exercise is just naturally part of your day rather than this weird sort of block of time that you carve out and devote yourself to i mean that's an integrated life you know where there's hard work but it's not like nine to five hard work you know it's just periods short ish two three hour blocks of hard work and then it's sort of balanced out by other types of work or other types of activities that are physical i think that's like the natural way to live that are sort of nine to five death-bound life you can make a beautiful symphony out of your nine to five death-bound life bro well i i thought about the stationary bike but i'm on the third floor and i think that that peddling that just the rumbling of the no there's no rumble there's no no bro there's there's no rumble there's no nobody else hears it feels that it's uh and i only spent like 150 dollars on the stationary bike so it's not like it's some expensive piece of machinery no one else feels that no one else is affected by it when i get on my stationary bike you know what i'll reconsider that i bought a regular bike i've got a great mountain bike at a yard sale um but i i just never seem to actually get on it and and also it's more dangerous you know our our age you fall off from poor godfreed was hospitalized and you know laid up for weeks so how many people do we know who had biking accidents and been laid up for weeks if not killed by it so it's you know it's increasingly dangerous when you get to our age and older particularly in the in the city yeah speaking of that you know i i worked this company and my one of my many managers is avid mountain biker and he was also ethnically Chinese and his um english wasn't particularly good to start with and then he fell off his mountain bike and just knocked like four of his front teeth out you know yeah and then when he would talk he would just sound completely retarded he was completely unintelligible so um i know a guy who's really his life your last year's career wait wait wait like yeah yeah so i know this guy whose life was martial arts he got punched in the throat and he can only speak in a whisper for the rest of his life was it worth it bro yeah that's what i think yeah exactly and then i got another story about the shortcomings of goals there was this one bloke he wanted to devote his life to having a family and raising kids and then he caught one of my shows where i pointed out the parents really don't make that much of a difference in their killed kids outcomes that there's no parenting style that's statistically shown to make a difference like he had all these ideas and how he wanted to raise his kids and how they were just going to be you know transformational you know so he went and read a whole bunch of academic studies and you know realized that i was basically correct that the the nurture assumption is basically faulty that we're largely the the product of our genes plus our peer group so that was like his you know number one goal and dream you know disappeared upon examination so a lot of people develop you know goals that they want to pursue to an absurd degree but upon you know any sort of critical examination the goal just falls apart yeah yeah i i knew a guy who he joined like a a religious cult i guess it would be and he just seemed to lose all of his goals and i said well what are you going to do and he's like well wherever god puts me you know he had just completely let off the whole notion of goals and so forth and i found that terrifying when he said that i really i like goals goals like goals give me a certain zest you know they make life there's in parents when i had no goals and i felt completely adrift and i don't like that feeling yeah what about the downside of goals in that it narrows your focus and attempts you to cheat to achieve your goals to just short change yourself in other areas yeah yeah have you experienced that um i don't think so i mean i had goals right but i also have a sense of authenticity like why get something and have it be authentic in authentic i think that i don't i would hate the imposter feeling you know and it seems like cheating or taking a shortcut would always leave you this stale residue of an imposter feeling it's a big it's a big term up here you know the imposter syndrome you hear hear that yeah a lot of women talk about it right right and it's like a really big it's like women in tech especially yeah and they talk about it and they have you know workshops on it and the truth is is that they just don't like tech but tech is where the prestige is and so they go there because they want the prestige and they can't admit that to themselves so there's this massive cognitive dissonance so anyway no i i don't feel like uh shortcuts that was something like i really it's a lesson i learned really early and i really took to heart which is that there are no shortcuts right you have to if you want to do something you have to build the foundation and put it up you know brick by brick and if you skimp on any of the uh foundational pieces you're just going to pay for it later it's all going to come crashing down so where do you get the power to lead a life that's a symphony so that you're eating right you're not overeating you're not over drinking you're not over consuming youtube you're you're exercising appropriately in consonance with what's in your body's best interest you're getting appropriate amounts of social interaction you are working productively where do you get the power to create a life that's a symphony bro uh well i don't really have that i have a general direction like i like to go in but um my best played plans are often torn it's under so um but i'll tell you what i do how i figure things i figured everything from sleep so how did i sleep last night and the answer is well beautiful uh poorly last night uh because i messed up my meals and i stopped at like this roadside mexican restaurant it just completely just malformed my digestion so it was a long night bro and it's like anytime i can if i'm not taken off my routine i can function very well but see who's my routine is disrupted uh it takes me like three days to recover so my power i guess would come from my routine and what do you do how often do you feel lonely i don't feel lonely but i am a loner i feel bad that i don't feel lonely but when i'm with people i can't wait to yeah i can't wait to be by myself so if i were to tell you overnight scenes dinner and wine saturday girls i was never in love never had the time in my hustle and hurry world laughing myself to sleep waking up lonely i needed someone to hold me such a crazy old town it can drag you down till you run out of dreams so you party or night to the music and lights but you don't know what happiness means i was dancing in the dark with strangers no love around me when suddenly you found me oh girl you're every woman in the world to me that doesn't mean anything to you that doesn't resonate with you look talking to myself and feeling old sometimes i'd like to quit neither nothing ever seems to fit yeah hanging around nothing to do but frown yeah rainy days and mondays always bring me down well said bro well said i've been watching a lot of caron carpenter appreciation videos this is a whole youtube genre yeah she's amazing like i always feel like she's singing directly to me yeah bro yeah bro she died young too it's a tragic story how many of you watch of these appreciation videos yeah at least a dozen at least a dozen by sam what have you learned i learned well and a lot of uh she just had a natural talent like there is that thing there is such thing as she seemed to have a very