 Hey mate, 40 here, let's go to Tucker Carlson. I'm going to talk to Carlson. Sight Joe Biden's publicist just announced with a straight face, he plans to run again in 2024. We'll address that at some length tomorrow, but first, another crisis in the news. So after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you began to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It's not complicated. In fact, it's such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren't already doing that. Who does want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby, everybody else cares about children. So a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws. And why wouldn't they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shotter standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose. You want crazy people to have guns? Of course you don't. Who would? So naturally, you're for red flag laws. And in fact, we may soon get red flag logs across the country. So what would that mean if we do? Well, two things you should know. First, red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it's the key to everything that is good about America. In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property, simply because they don't like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it. For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It's called a grand jury. And this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we've done things in America for more than 200 years. And it's exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People moved this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this. For red flag laws, the government doesn't have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that's required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now that complaint doesn't come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn't like your politics. It doesn't matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family. Now how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can't happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called caniglia versus strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He'd never been convicted of a crime and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway. He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare 9-0 decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don't like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don't need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don't care. How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He's done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. It's an emergency. We don't have time for due process. So you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And in the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation. So the White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here's the amazing part. At least 10 Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House. And that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What's their reasoning? Well, here's one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas. You have colleagues in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal. I'm not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a 10-foot pole because they're concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that's the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms. So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term sensible. Now, that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. It's sensible gun safety regulation. So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi's language, and he's doing it on purpose. And then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with him is, quote, concerned about the politics of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics. In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical. Now, if you're not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Tom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, always on board for any bad idea, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. It's particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can't have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring, so they're beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. So what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws? Well, we can take Florida's experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a, quote, significant danger based on, quote, any relevant evidence. Huh, that's it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is, if you can seize people's guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can't you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can't you take their homes? Why can't you empty their bank accounts? Ooh, sound paranoid, Alex Jones stuff, that just happened in Canada. So what stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books, Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients who are able to hire lawyers have, quote, vastly higher odds of getting their firearms back from the government, of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking a, quote, better safe than sorry approach to avoid political blowback, and the police are taking advantage of that. So quote records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens to present them with, quote, stipulations. If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that's a pretty tempting offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is, and it remains. And again, we don't need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it's unconstitutional. And it is for several reasons. It's a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition of the Fourth Amendment, but it's also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assemblymember Joe N. Simon co-sponsored the state's red flag law, quote, basically it's all over the place, Simon admitted. You have places where you have one file to other places where it's 38 file. So how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So if you don't like someone, if you don't like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody's home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that that will happen, look at this. This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell, quote, please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1578 that America needs red flag laws. Eric Swalwell wrote that. Now, what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag laws that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here's the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for a red flag law. Watch. If you come to tell me that you're going to indoctrinate my kids in particular policy and that I can't pull my kid out of the school and send my kids to a school I want to send them to, that I can't go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country early. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me. And now people on, oh, this is how could you say stuff like that? How could you be so extreme? It's not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government. These re-writes pre-exist government. Well, actually our founding documents make that point, which he is merely repeating. But on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swallow says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro's house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swallow, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat, and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swallow actually care about. And you know that when you look at the laws that they're pushing and that Republicans are backing. If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders. And it's not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that's not happening. And that's why those criminals openly support the Soros-back prosecutor, George Gascogne. Watch. I told you last time that he won't arrest Ben Shapiro and try to guess what I did before. They reelect somebody else besides Gascogne and bring back that little **** that life without parole on the death penalty. We can get the manslaughter to **** manslaughter. Only carry six, nine, and 12. Yeah. So that's just one tape. We could play you video, as we often do, of what's happening in our city. So what you're looking at is anarchy tyranny. So people who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want. In jail for 10 minutes, you're out. Go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen. Mass killing is on an ongoing basis for decades, and no one will say a word. But if you're disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small. None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who are siding with Nancy Pelosi support. None of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws. Gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking. A whistleblower in Gascon's office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon's habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So why haven't the cops red flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone gonna red flag Hunter Biden who lied on a federal drug form? Was it drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren't designed to punish the politically loyal. And that's why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about. Watch. Move, go, move, go! Hey, I'm sorry, get in the car and go open the slide! So, hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who's okay with that or what's happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore, Gary, Indiana, or Detroit, just pick a city. Every day of the week, fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet. By the way, in New Orleans, the Sorosback DA there, Jason Williams, isn't worried about what you just saw. Last year his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. They just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases. Another Sorosback DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner's office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015 that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome. And of course the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarmed you. So what are they ignoring? Well, let's see. Last year in Philadelphia, we saw a record set for homicides. Already this year more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia which is not a huge city and it's getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not. On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So if you're actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities, and for the record we are, because unlike Lindsey Graham, we actually hate violence, you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes. But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don't need to guess because they're telling us. Watch with the Attorney General of the United States and just to restate, this guy actually is the Attorney General. He's more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today. In the FBI's view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the white race. That's just a total lie actually. And we have numbers to prove it, but you know it's a lie. There's no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It's ridiculous. It's an obvious untruth that anyone living in a major city knows that. So why do they keep telling you that? Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That's not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful. And if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro, and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn't like. Red flag laws are not what they seem. And very few Republicans are willing to say that out loud. Eric Schmidt is one of them. He's the Attorney General of the state of Missouri and we're happy to have him join us tonight. Mr. Attorney General, thank you so much for coming on. I think you can see you're steeped in this, but for people who are not, the idea that you would just stop a mass shooting before it starts is it seems appealing and rational. Okay, good day, May 40 here. So I may have made a few mistakes in my time. And I think the biggest thing that I've been wrong about in the past year is pooing the threat of inflation. So many of my viewers have been talking about the threat of inflation for months and months and months. And many conservative people I know have been talking about the threat of inflation for over a year. So much of my peer group has been talking about the threat of inflation. And I have to admit, I didn't take it seriously. And I was wrong. And I'm sorry, I was wrong. And so our friends have been asking me, oh, 40, how are you hedging against inflation? And I'd say I'm hedging against inflation by doing mitzvahs, by studying Toyota, by investing in my family and my community. That's how I am hedging against inflation. But yesterday I realized I was wrong. It was time to take a dramatic step forward. So this is how I am hedging against inflation. I sent $10,000 into a US government eye bond. So it currently yields 9.62%. This rate is reset every six months but it's always above inflation. So there's a $10,000 limit on how much you can invest in this type of bond. And there are penalties if you cash them in before five years. But that's how I'm hedging against inflation. And I was wrong and you were right, right? Those of you who are saying inflation, inflation, inflation, you can't stimulate this much without inflation. You can't keep giving away money to people without inflation. You can't keep zero interest rates without inflation, right? You kind of have these massive government handouts without inflation. And I thought, ah, not a big deal. And I'm afraid that my mistake came from my radical lovin' in inclusion outlook. I mean, I've kind of had a disco outlook on stimulus and low interest rates that the past year or so. I mean, what's that guy who sings keep it coming love? I mean, that's kind of been my Casey in the sunshine band. I mean, that was my economic model for the past few years. Like, you know, keep the stimulus come and love, keep it come and don't stop now, don't stop it now, don't stop it now, don't stop, keep it come and love, keep it come and love, don't stop it now, don't stop it now, don't stop it now, don't stop it, don't let your well run dry, don't stop it now, don't give me no reasons why, don't stop it now, don't build me up just to let me drop, don't stop it now, don't turn me on just to turn me off, don't stop it now, keep it come and love, keep it come and love, don't stop it now, don't stop it now, don't stop it now, don't stop it, don't tell me there ain't no more, don't stop it now, don't turn me down, just close your door, don't stop it now, ooh, ooh, keep it come and love, yeah. So I think my mind was warped by all the casing, the sunshine band that I was listening to. And I also have to blame my mistaken thinking on the Balamy brothers. I was just kind of in a let your love flow mindset, right? There's a reason for the sun shining sky. And there's a reason why I'm feeling so high must be the season when that love light shines all around us. So let that feeling grab you deep inside and send you reeling where your love can't hide and then go stealing through the moonlight nights with your lover. Just let your love flow like a mountain stream and let your love grow with the smallest of dreams and let your love flow and you'll know what I mean. It's the season. Let your love fly like a bird on a wing and let your money supply bind you to all living things and let your love shine and you'll know what I mean. That's the reason, right? I thought stimulus, right? There's a reason for the warm, sweet nights and there's a reason for the candle lights must be the season when the money supply shines all around us. So let that wonder of stimulus and easy money take you into space. Let it lay you under its loving embrace. Just feel the thunder as it warms your face. You can't hold back. So just let your money supply flow like a mountain stream. Let your money supply grow with the smallest of dreams. Let your money supply show and you'll know what I mean. It is the season. So I was wrong and I'm sorry. And there's a great article. You'll be glad to know there's a very good article about all of this in the Wall Street Journal because apparently almost all the elites were wrong too. So in June of 2021, if you'd asked economists what's gonna be the inflation rate at the end of 2022, they predicted about 2.8%. So I'm in very good company. I'm here in the middle with you. Well, except you were right and I was wrong. How the Fed and the Biden administration got inflation wrong. Officials applied an old playbook to a new crisis we fought the last war by Nick Timmeraus and John Hilsenrath. June 13th, 2022, 4.15 p.m. Eastern time. In recent weeks, top officials in the Biden administration and federal reserve have publicly conceded that they made mistakes in their handling of inflation. Behind their errors was a misreading of the economy. Advisors to President Biden and Fed officials worried the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions would bring similar consequences to the 2007-09 financial crisis, weak demand, slow growth, long periods of high unemployment and too low inflation. So they applied the last playbook to the new crisis. The Fed redeployed low interest rate policies that it believed had been effective and generally benign and promised not to pull back prematurely. Elected officials concluded they had relied too heavily on the Fed previously and decided to spend more aggressively this time, starting with President Donald Trump and capped off with President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus. Moreover, many Democrats saw their control of the White House and Congress as a rare opportunity to shift Washington's priorities away from tax cuts favored by Republicans and toward expansive new social programs. But the pandemic economy turned out to be fundamentally different. While the financial crisis primarily dented demand by businesses and consumers, the pandemic undercut supply resulting in persistent shortages of raw materials, container ships, workers, computer chips and more. Unemployment fell and inflation rebounded more quickly than policymakers expected, yet they stuck with the old playbook. Adex exacerbated the supply and demand mismatches and helped drive inflation up reaching 8.6% in May, it's highest in 40 years. After the 2007-09 financial crisis, total spending by consumers, business and government unadjusted for inflation remained stuck below the per-crisis trend for years. By contrast, in the first quarter of 2022, it had shot to 5% above its pre-pandemic trend or... Yeah, so if you were right about inflation, what exactly did you do about it? I mean, I've got... One friend is always crowing about how he's right on everything financial, but he doesn't have any money. What did you do if you were so prescient about seeing this inflation boom come? What exactly did you do? How are you hedging against inflation? So it's very easy to talk a big game, but did you actually make some concrete moves? Did you shift funds around? How are you hedging against inflation right now? And then there's this widespread belief, oh, they knew inflation was coming and they just lied. Well, what's your evidence? Private economists surveyed in June of 2021 did not believe that inflation was coming. So where's your evidence that they were lying? And what incentives were they operating under that would inspire them to lie? They had no reason to lie. Their reputations are on the line. The more accurate they are, the better their reputation. So there's this mindset, oh, the elites just always gaslighting us. They're always lying to us. They're always trying to screw us over. And this is a cope, right? Your own life sucks. And so you don't wanna face the very painful reality that you haven't lived up to your potential, that you've made a lot of bad decisions, right? That you can't get along with people, that you're unhappy, right? That you're not effective at life. And so you wanna blame all your troubles on some perfidious elite who are always gaslighting and lying and deceiving, all right? I mean, these conspiracy theories are for losers, right? Winners don't buy into these conspiracy theories. This is what people use to cope with their failures in life. Now, we live in a world of tremendous freedom and with freedom comes responsibility that you feel bad when other people make better choices than you do. And so what's also part of all free societies is tremendous amounts of envy. So you look around and you see all your peers are vastly outshining you, that most people you know with your level of intelligence are doing much better in life than you are, that other people have marriages and families and mortgages and professional and community success, education success, and you don't have any of that. And so you wanna just attribute it to the perfidious elites who are just lying and gaslighting, but somehow other people with your level of intelligence have succeeded and you haven't and that's very painful. So one way to get out of that is to take the perspective, oh, it's just so confusing. I'm just so confused about what's going on. And so normally when people say they're confused, they're saying that they're confused because a state of confusion is easier for them to handle than facing the cold, brutal reality that they made a bad decisions. They've made a lot of mistakes that they've led their life frequently in the wrong direction. And so it's a lot easier to cope with, oh, I'm just so confused or these perfidious elites, they're just lying to us and they're gaslighting us. I think overall our elites have done a better and average job with regard to COVID and with regard to COVID stimulus. And Donald Trump would have been reelected in 2020 if he'd gone for one more stimulus in the summer of 2020, which the Democrats were offering him, but he chose against it and as a result he lost. So I would give the Biden administration about 10% of the blame for inflation and I would give the Federal Reserve about 10% of the blame for inflation. And then 80% of the blame for inflation would be factors beyond the decisions of the Biden administration and beyond the decisions of the Federal Reserve. It's primarily a result of changing demographics. We're going to have more and more people retiring, fewer and fewer people entering the workforce, real wages are going to go up, supply chains have become much more difficult and complicated, so goods are scarcer. The various components for a supply chain are more difficult to get and as a result you inevitably get inflation because when you look all around the world everyone's having an inflation problem, right? It's gonna end the year at 7.2% in Germany, 8.8% in Britain, 6% in Canada and about 6.8% in the US. So it's nothing in particular that the American government has done because this is a similar problem all around the first world. It's primarily a supply chain problem and changing demographics. So we've got a shrinking workforce which leads to higher wages which also has an inflationary effect. It seems to me. Roughly $1 trillion annualized, boosted by a tidal wave of federal stimulus. Jason Furman, a Democrat who was chairman of President Barack Obama's council, economic advisors from 2013 to 2017, said the latest effort tackled the wrong crisis. We fought the last war, he said. It was a complicated situation with little precedent, Randall Quarles, a Republican and the Fed's vice chair for supervision from 2017 until the end of last year, said last month, people make mistakes. Private forecasters and nonpartisan congressional scorekeepers similarly failed to anticipate the magnitude and duration of higher inflation. There was also bad luck. New COVID variants, rushes and... All right, so if people who aren't in government, people in the private sector are getting inflation wrong, if government elites all around the world were getting inflation are wrong, then I don't think this problem is primarily our own governing elite. They certainly made mistakes, but I was surprised because I thought we were headed for a deflationary spiral. Remember when oil prices moved negative in the early months of COVID, right? Commodity prices plunged. I thought we were in much greater danger of some kind of deflationary great depression rather than what we're in. And the deflationary great depression would be much more damaging to us than what we've got right now. So why do we have this dramatic increase in the number of people who identify as transgender? So we hear every single day that kids who become transgender transition because they're reverting to what they really are. They were, quote, born that way. But the numbers don't support that conclusion at all. A new report from UCLA, which analyzed CDC surveys, shows that the number of young people who identified as transgender doubled in the past several years. Now, what's interesting is that blue states, liberal states on average, had far more children identifying as transgender. For example, 3% of young people in New York call themselves trans. That compares to 0.6% in Wyoming. So what is causing this? Well, one of the only reasons we're having this conversation in the first place is because a woman called Abigail Shryer was brave enough to raise this issue and write an amazing book called Irreversible Damage to Transgender Craze. We've had her many times. We're always honored to have her back. Abigail, great to see you. So what is... Great to see you, Tucker. These numbers are kind of astounding, but they don't suggest a natural cause, a born that way cause. They suggest a social influence cause to me anyway. Absolutely. If this were organic, we would expect to see it evenly distributed across the population. We would see it without respect to viewpoint or politics of the locality. And we would see women in their 60s and 70s suddenly discovering and admitting their transgender status, right? You would see women in their 70s saying, now that the stigma is gone, I can announce I'm transgender. We're not seeing that at all. We're seeing that among the same population that falls for every social contagion and is subjected to the most pure influence, that's teenage girls. And this week, even the New York Times had to acknowledge it. So your perspective on this makes you particularly dangerous to people pushing this because they can't kind of dismiss you as a hater. You're clearly motivated by your concern for the young people who are being caught up in this. What's the response when you reasonably and rationally lay this out to people on the other side? Well, obviously I've gotten quite a bit of hate, but it doesn't, nobody, any help to lie about this and the media has participated in nonstop whitewashing of this issue as if all that happens to children as long as they have good parents who love them, you just sprinkle magic pixie dust and they go from girl to boy. In fact, what you're setting them up for is a lifetime of infertility, sexual dysfunction and surgery after surgery, many of which fail. And the last thing I'm going to do is lie to the American public about that. Amen. So we just did a documentary on this, as you know, because you are part of it. It's called Transgressive. And in the episode that we're putting together right now, we spoke to someone who went through the process of transition as a child and then decided to de-transition. Her name was Helena Kirschner. It's a pretty amazing story. Here's part of our interview with her. I decided to call myself a demi-girl, which is one of the 40 million genders. And that basically means that I'm mostly a girl but I'm a little bit not a girl, which is just like, what does that even mean? And then after that I went to demi-boy and then after that I went to gender fluid. And after that I eventually went to trans-boy. But all this took like two or three years of just going through this repetitive cycle of changing this identity and changing it again. And it was just never enough. So I've been reading a lot of Leah Greenfield and she wrote this amazing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago saying that what's behind our epidemic of mental illness, including the mental illness driving these horrific shooters, such as the one in Uvaldi or the one in Buffalo, is fractured identity. So the more freedom you have, more challenging it is to build an identity that you can feel good about. And so if you don't feel good about your life and you don't feel good about your identity, then you are strongly incentivized to disassociate from your identity, to disassociate from your life, to disassociate from reality. And to plug into a world of fantasy and delusion and confusion because reality is so intense and so intensely negative, right? That the status of your own life compared to people of similar talents is just so dispiriting that you check out. I remember I had sex with this porn star Kendra Jade and afterwards she said, you know how people think that porn stars are all sexually abused as kids? Well, they're right, when I have sex, I disassociate from my body. I'm like up on the ceiling kind of looking down at what's happening to me. And so if you go through a lot of trauma, the reality of your pain and the reality of your suffering is so great that you probably don't wanna hang there. You probably don't wanna hang out in your pain, in your confusion, in feelings incredibly lost and bleeding inside. And so you may retreat into world of fantasy. That's what I did. I've largely retreated into world of fantasy where I was some amazing, brave, mythic creature who was gonna save the West. Or you may retreat into some other delusions. So how do we handle negative emotions, right? This is a great Mirror of Intimacy webinar with Alex Cutahakas. About where we put our intention. All right, so starting with our quote for today from Maria-Louise Van Frans. She writes, when we are able to see our own greed, jealousy, spite, hatred, and so on, then these can be turned to a positive account. Because- Right, I kinda make it a foundation of this show and most of the show that I do is try to begin, try to sustain a realistic understanding of my own proclivities towards being cruel, towards being nasty, towards being thieving and exploitive and inconsiderate and dishonest. I recognize my own moral fragility and come from a place of reality, right? That all my problems are not primarily outside of myself, that most of my problems come from inside of myself and that I'm not some pristine child that the world is being bad to, but I'm a very mixed human being, just like most people that I'm dealing with and we're all reacting in a combination of our genetics with our early imprinting and dealing with the incentives that we face. In such destructive emotions is stored much life. And I think that's a really key phrase. In such destructive emotions is stored much life. And when we have this energy at our disposal, it can be turned to positive ends. So think about all the energy that takes to be negative, to be angry, to be greedy, jealous, spiteful, to hate someone. It's an enormous amount of energy. Right, so think about all the energy in the alt right, right? All that negative energy when the alt right had a little bit of success that quickly dissolved into pouring far more hatred against each other as opposed to against the left. Why? Because the people who composed the alt right were dominantly people who lacked a strong identity and therefore were wracked by envy, wracked by disassociative states and just wildly lashing out at the people they knew best. Gee, that is being essentially turned against ourselves. And when we can use that to the end of positive thinking or positive actions in our lives, then we can really have a more robust full life. In all of the qualities that we treasure in life, like happiness, success, freedom, what we would call the positive qualities, beauty, love, they could never exist without polar opposites. So you can't have joy without sadness or you can't know them as more accurate. You can't literally feel the difference about them in your own body unless you are knowing both ends of the spectrum. And to define a trait, we really have to differentiate it, just like we separate, we from champ, curds and ways, you really have to be able to feel the distinction between the two. And it's not so much about eradicating them, but the only true antidote for grief, the only real experience of getting through grief is grief itself, that's the only portal for it. You can't circumvent it. Yeah, I noticed people wanna circumvent their negative feelings, their grief, their sadness, their frustration, their anger, right? They wanna check out with drugs or alcohol or just find some technique that will make the symptoms go away. That's not the path to true healing. Says this very wise woman. I love this woman, Alex Kanahakis. Can't really frog it. You can't ignore it. You have to go right through it. And this is true with all of these, quote, negative emotions that... And Cliff Medley, absolute master of the chat. Cliff Medley says, Paul Kendra Jade, mere post-coital cigarette talk gets turned into 40 fodder. If you're really hating somebody right now, and there's nothing that feels as sort of pervertedly good as hating someone that we feel has wronged us or that we resent. And we can spend an awful lot of emotional energy and time and years really engaged with that person, even though they don't know it by way of our hatred or our anger. So I know that I've been sustained for much of my life by resentment and hatred of people who did not accord me the respect and reverential treatment that I thought I was due. And so I remember when I learned about the different temperaments of US presidents. There was a famous book on presidential character and it talked about the active negative. And these were people who primarily motivated by a desire to show other people how amazing they are. And these people tend to make the worst presidents as opposed to an active positive personality is someone who just assumes other people likes him and who just basically likes other people. These tend to be more positive presidents like Ronald Reagan or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So James Barber wrote this book, Presidential Character. And I immediately recognized myself as an active negative, someone who's primarily motivated by showing other people. And my political science professor Larry White said, well, you remind me a bit when I was taking a class in abnormal psychology with every bit of abnormal psychology that we were studying we all thought that we had that. So he recognized, yeah, I probably had some of the active negative didn't have to necessarily pervade my life. And when you think about freeing up that energy and it's visceral energy you can feel the tightness in your chest or in your gut or it can literally make us feel sick. The freeing of that allows us to move towards finding out what our potential is, where our wisdom is. So the courage to go into these deeply negative feelings and affective states is where the freedom from them lies. And because India's been in the news so much today I was thinking about this and this is a line in the entry today in your intimacy that the lotus flower truly does emerge from the muck it emerges from this mess. I would show you a photo because I had one on my desktop but this incredibly really exquisitely unique flower could not be what it is if it weren't mucking around in a pond water that's got nothing but sort of mud and slime down below. So I think it's important that's a beautiful image actually to conjure to think about these polarities but despite the interdependence of good and bad or how we, who the truly interpret negative traits as inferior to positive ones we still want to cut them off. We wanna bifurcate them. We wanna separate them. As long as we impose a hierarchical judgment on these qualities we'll experience these same splits in our own life. So we'll be obsessed with rich versus poor or men versus women or this versus that instead of just recognizing that these are polarities with equal and opposite values that all possess gifts for us in our lives. So someone writes, I'm often sad I've lived 40 years with the depressed sex addicts we're separated now but I often think we confuse sadness and negativity and I think that's true. I think when we are deeply sad we can start to have negative thoughts about our sadness instead of embracing the sadness just like we can confuse sadness or depression when really these are distinctly different states. And so honoring the sadness but not making a story about it is one of the challenges of an awakened life to dive into the feeling of sadness to notice that I just wanna cry all the time or I feel blue or I'm unhappy with my circumstance and to let yourself feel what that feels like in your body and to know it deeply to let it bring you to you. She's gonna be talking about emotional valence and I wasn't really sure what that was so I had to look it up on Wikipedia. So valence or hedonic tone is the affective quality. So affective refers to the underlying experience of feeling or motion or mood. So the affective quality referring to the intrinsic attractiveness or goodness the positive valence or averseness or badness negative valence of an event an object or a situation. So emotions popularly referred to as negative such as anger and fear have a negative valence joy has a positive valence. Same with a situation. So ambivalence is a conflict between positive and negative valence. So that's just a little psych background needs. So you can see what's there. What is at the pit? What is at the bottom? What is the actual foundation of the sadness? And I think you will find if you go there yourself Catherine you will notice that there's a reclamation of yourself in that sadness and really culling the depths of it. And it becomes a portal in a window to our liberation. Maybe the sadness is that you've given up so much of your life living with someone who you saw many, many years ago was not really ever going to change and that you yourself sold yourself down the river that you did this to yourself. So you'll see this often with people who go through an unexpected breakup, right? And it's just so confusing to them. They came out of nowhere. They don't know why this happened or people would get fired. And they're just like, oh, I just have no idea why I got fired. This is just so confusing. This just came out of left field. It really knocked me for sex. And I've certainly been in that attitude like, oh, why did she break up with me? Why would she do these certain things? How could I have gotten fired? Just so confusing. And that's because I was just without really carefully thinking it through I was opting for the state of confusion because the state of reality would have been too painful. The state of reality, I would have seen seven different reasons why I was getting fired or seven different reasons why she was breaking up with me. But that was too painful for me to handle the reality. And so having a little pity party is probably adaptive for a little while. So someone's going through a tough time. Like if you lose your marriage like a 10 year marriage or a 20 year marriage, all right? Having a month or two months of a pity party would probably be appropriate. If you lose a six month relationship having like a week of a pity party probably be appropriate. But if you're still moaning and moaning and lethargic and still having a pity party six months a year later then obviously that's a maladaptive response. Yourself. Now, of course, I don't know your situation at all but oftentimes we look at our external circumstances and we think these are negative situations but we've actually been a party to the creation of them. And just like we've created negativity we can pull ourselves out of that and create a new narrative, have a new perspective. And Declan Medley says, if Dennis Prager is subjected Luke to regular batterings it might have kept him from a porn career. Have a new and joyous life. Someone says it's using the terms negative or positive useful when describing emotions. Well, I think not. I think that is a little bit simplistic. It's also judgmental. And I think that's how we seem to value them but these emotions have a valence to them. And I think that's where the- So valence refers to a fact is the underlying mood. And one of the benefits I've found from Medaphanyl is it kind of blunts the negative emotions. So on Medaphanyl I walk around happy 95% of the time without Medaphanyl probably walk around happy 60 to 70% of the time. Value of negative and positive come into play. But the valence of joy states is an excitatory state in the body. They're actually high dopamine states in variations or two degrees. So we know joy, we know excitation, we know surprise. And that valence is a high valence. So we tend to label that positive. Whereas shame, pain, loss, sadness has a lower valence to it. In fact, there's sort of a collapse state into the body. We can feel our bodies sort of curling over into a cease shape instead of sitting up with our chest open and embodying the joy state. And these negatively valence states have us thinking as these emotions as negative. But truly they are not either or they're just state changes. And when we can make friends with our state changes we become much more integrated internally. Yeah, so I think we all want to spend as little time in our negative emotions and be beer self-loathing as possible. But not necessarily to our benefit to run from them is more from Tucker. There is a lot of hopelessness for a long time, a lot of regret. The feeling of regret was intense. Amazing story. So Abigail, you've interviewed an awful lot of kids who've gotten caught up in this and then tried to leave it. Does that bear resemblance to kids you've spoken to? Absolutely. I was able to profile Helena for my book. And one of the stories that haunted me most that she told is how easily she was able to obtain testosterone on a first visit to a clinic. And this is a young woman. She's a brilliant young woman. And she's written now in granular detail about how no adult who held themselves out as an expert put up any safeguards. They just rushed her through this transition, which she now regrets. And the number of young people who regret their medical transitions is exploding in this country. When I first wrote my book, there were 7,000 members of the online group, the subreddit, devoted to detransitioners, people who regretted their transition and went back. That number is now up 400% from when I wrote my book. So young people are coming out, they're regretting this, and they were given no safeguards by the adults who were supposed to know better. There are more votes than Barack Obama, who was the second coming of Christ, as you remember, 12 million more votes. How'd that happen exactly? Well, today at the latest January 6th hearing, Liz Cheney of Wyoming explained, shut up. Say a word about mail-in balloting and your immoral watch. The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden voters had voted by mail because President Trump ignored the advice of his campaign experts and told his supporters only to vote in person. Former President Trump's plan to overturn the election relied on a sustained effort to deceive millions of Americans. But he betrayed the trust of American people. He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country. And as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy. An attack on American people by trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy. Trump is bad. Thanks, Mom. New message from the Democratic Party. But what's the answer? Reassure us that the last election was on the level. No, this show trial is not reassuring anyone. This whole effort, of course, is an attempt to punish anybody who challenges the reigning orthodoxy. Ryan Kelly learned that the hard way. Ryan Kelly is running for governor in Michigan, which one poll had him leading the Republicans running for governor in Michigan. He was just arrested last week because he was at the Capitol protests on January 6th. We've been wanting to talk to him tonight, we can. Miss Kelly, thanks so much for coming on in May of 2022. Economists are now saying it's gonna go higher. Some are predicting the inflation will exceed 9% very soon. At the same time, the stock market and the bond markets are tanking simultaneously that rarely happens. Interest rates up, way up. What do we do about all this? How do you make it better? Brian Rideau is his senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He joins us tonight. Brian, thanks so much for coming on. How would you, rather than just blaming Putin, what would you do to make this better? I can give you nine things we can do on inflation right now. Cut government spending. Encourage oil and gas exploration. End the student loan payment moratorium. Repeal tariffs. Repeal bi-America prevailing provisions. Repeal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rules. Repeal new ethanol rules. The president has put into place. Repeal new environmental restrictions on infrastructure that raises costs and suspend the Jones Act and open up shipping on ports. That's nine things Congress and the president can do right now. They're doing none of them. Can you think, let's just pick one. I think it was number six. Ethanol. Can you think of anything that will make food prices go higher than burning more corn in people's cars? Like what would be the justification for doing this? It's insane. It's a giveaway to put it in gasoline. It's supposed to be better for the environment. But what the Biden administration did is said instead of having 10% ethanol, you can now have 15% ethanol, which is a big giveaway to corn producers. Anything you buy that has corn in it will now be more expensive when you go to the grocery store. So if you have a food and fuel crisis and you raise the ethanol mandate, which has not helped the environment in point of fact, you're like doing this on purpose. Yeah, it's really a complete terrible policy and there's been a big push to weaken this for years. But what we're seeing with the president is virtually all of these solutions would anger either unions, manufacturers, farmers, progressive spenders or clean energy. And the president is not willing to cross any of his constituent groups. So instead we just get empty rhetoric on inflation like Putin's price hike. Yeah, I don't think Putin is signing executive orders designed to raise prices in America. It's insane. I appreciate Brian your perspective. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Really, really do appreciate it. Now you tune in for the catchy titles, but you stay for the guru of the day. Back to Alex Karahakis. And we can cultivate self-compassion from that place also by just noticing, oh, I'm sad or I'm happy or I'm neutral without some accompanying story about it being good or bad or positive or negative. Integrating our own quote negativities, keeping in mind that to acknowledge them is not the same as indulging them is a key to this proposition. So there is the sort of saying in 12 step communities about having a pity party for oneself. And sometimes that feels really good that I'm gonna feel sorry for myself and I'm being a victim. And I'm just kind of kind of let myself sit here for an evening or something like that. But it's no place to stop or live because there are accompanying stories to that. And when you get into a place of being a victim or living in victimhood, that is really getting stuck in the mire. And there's no place good to go from that. It's actually an unsafe place to sit because your life will get sucked into that negativity. Someone writes, deception throws me into confusion. And then you say your adult children says I'm negative that I see what's wrong versus what's right. I want to change this. So good for you. Deception of others and it's really our own self-deception. It's not the deception of others at some point. You say it throws you into confusion but confusion is not really a feeling. Confusion is a way. This is such a great point. I mean, this is gold. This is absolute gold. To avoid feeling. It's a dissociative state that can be mild, moderate or severe. Yeah, deception is not confused. It's not a feeling, all right? It's a dissociative state which means it's usually maladaptive to varying degrees. But in any case, it's a way to not be in reality. I go into confusion. I don't have to confront what's in front of me and what's really true. And I mean, I see this all the time with other people, all right? It's a lot easier for me to see this with other people, right? They would rather be confused than deal with reality. So pretty much any time you're dealing with someone who's confused and they're complaining about being confused, I don't understand why my family wants nothing to do with me. I don't understand why my husband left me. I don't understand why I got fired. I don't understand why I can't keep my friends. I don't understand why I've got no money in the bank. I don't understand why my career is not going anywhere. I don't understand why my education isn't going anywhere, right? Almost all the time that you hear people complaining to you about their confusion, they're complaining and being in a confused state because it's less painful than dealing with the harsh reality of life, which usually will include that they've made some really bad decisions and that they have some compulsions that are leading them astray. Living in this place of negativity is a way to really cultivate death and dying. And John O'Donohue says that death meets us in and through different guises in the areas of our life. When this is such gold, right? Death is constantly meeting us through various guises, just what the Torah says. I put before you this day a choice between life and death, right? We're constantly faced with decisions between life and death, but we don't want to face up to that reality. So we just say, oh, it's so confusing and we disassociate from the challenges that are right before us. One of the reasons that I like doing this show is that I can't disassociate when I'm doing the show. I have to be 100% present because at any moment I can say something that could ruin my life. And we're vulnerable, frail, hurting or negative. And one of the faces of death is negativity. So think of that. One of the faces of death is negativity because we're not living a full, wholehearted, robust life. We're busy mucking around in the muck, not seeing the lotus flower that we are. And Glyb Medley says if you're stuck in a situation like this, call your rabbi. And yeah, for maybe one out of 10 Jews, that's probably the best thing to do. But for a large number of Jews, they'd be better off calling their therapist or calling a friend or calling a mentor or calling a sponsor, right? There are a lot of sources of wisdom. So be very careful about whether you're examining this life and seeing that the glass is half empty or half full. As I was driving here this morning, I thought about that saying that today is the first day of the rest of our lives. And what powerful statement that is because... Right, you just wanna throw that statement away. It's like you've heard it a million times. But if you approach that statement in a new way, as though you're hearing it from the first time, give me a very powerful insight. So all sorts of banal statements, banal ideas can explode in your life if you choose to open yourself up to hearing them in a new way. Because life changes in increments, in these imperceptible increments that we don't see until four or five years have gone on. And this came to me recently because a good friend of mine at her 75th birthday and we celebrated a little outdoor celebration with four of us on Saturday night. And I was looking at photographs of her and myself and it's like, wow, where did the time go? How did that happen? And you can see from one year to the next, three years, four years in photographs of yourself what a dramatic shift that can be when you look at yourself. And so think that these changes are happening incrementally right here and right now. And any minute of the day that you squander by being a victim or telling yourself a story about how miserable your life is or how unsuccessful. The other thing I noticed with other people is that they have a story, right? They have a story where they can't get a new job. They have a story where they can't move to a new city. They have a story where they can't give up a particularly destructive habit. They have a story where they've fallen out with their family, with their friends, with their community, right? That's what I noticed all around me and I'm sure I do the same thing, right? You wanna talk to someone about some destructive pattern in their life. You wanna talk to someone about something that's making it increasingly costly to hang out with them. You want to talk to someone about a compulsion they've got that's killing them and posing a danger to other people and people will always have a story. Always have a story. Well, you are, how you didn't make it in this world is a way that you are looking into the face of death instead of really living your life in gratitude for what you do have and what is. Someone writes, I'm invited to stay out of judgment and invite curiosity when dealing with my emotions and feelings. And that is a beautiful invitation and a courageous one to say, I don't need to judge this. I'm just having that experience. It's like, if you saw a small child fall and skin their knee and start crying, would you judge that child? Or would you say, oh my, that just happened. So that's one of the big shifts in my life over the past 10 years, a lot less judgment and a lot more desire to understand. So I was profoundly influenced by my daily Alexander Technique teacher training. So as I was beginning my teacher training, I was on three different psychiatric medications. I was on low doses of lithium and clonidine and clonopam and I was able to give them all up. So prior to that, I had a lot of bipolar tendencies. I would feel like there were no consequences to whatever I was doing. So that's the danger sign when you're manic, right? If you ever get into that state where you feel like there are no consequences for what you're doing, then in a dangerous area of the otherwise very fun feeling of manic energy. And I remember I'd be at Torah classes and I'd be pouring the women next to me. And then I'd come out of that and realize, hey, I'm a little out of control. This isn't really in my best interest. And then I would go from that manic energy down to crashing lows where I'd feel like nothing I do will make any difference. I'm just stuck to be a screw up. You know, I'm just stuck to be a loser. And so I live most of my life prior to about 13 years ago kind of alternating between these two states. One, when nothing I do or say is gonna blow back and have any negative consequences. I'm immune because I'm so special. To the flip side of that, nothing I say or do will have any consequences because I'm absolutely hopeless. Neither are productive, useful ways to approach life. And that child has the right to feel that hurt in those feelings and get up and dust itself off and go on about its business. And it's like that for us too, that if we can cultivate self-compassion for ourselves, then we don't have to devolve into these stories of negative. Right, I used to think this was like the gayest thing ever. But again, it was like 18 months into my Alexander Technique teacher training. And one Friday I said something that I'd never said before. I told someone in my training class, I'm gonna go home this weekend. I'm going to be gentle with myself. So I was never gentle with myself prior to that. I was contemptuous of myself. I was hard on myself. I was tough on myself. I was dismissive of myself. I was cruel to myself. I had to get to about age 42 before I learned to integrate something that my therapist had been talking to me about 15 years earlier. And I'd never was able to take it in when she talked to me about being a good friend to myself. Activity that chew up and eat up our lives. And let's see, someone writes, it's easy to get judgmental about carrying negative attitudes doubling down on negativity just magnifies the problem of facing negative states and embracing them. Any shortcuts you can suggest about carrying out this process would be welcome. Well, again, it's about noticing where these judgmental attitudes come from and how pervasive they are. So I find five, 10 minutes of meditation helps me. So I often get tired in the morning because I start off with a very ambitious agenda. I do all sorts of things that I don't really want to do first thing in the morning. I take that cold shower, I go for a walk. I do these challenging exercises. I get on the phone with sponsors. I get on a 12 step phone meeting or 10 one in person. So I'm doing all these challenging things that I don't really want to do. And I often get tired. And if I take five to 10 minutes to just meditate, it brings me into a much happier space. Really one of the most powerful eradicators of negative thoughts is meditation. When we start to cultivate a mindfulness practice, we start to notice everything around us, whether it's a sound or a dog barking or our own negative thoughts or our thoughts about restlessness or we're not doing this right. And that process of mindfulness of watching our thoughts, our breath or a mantra meditation practice also has it starting to cultivate a certain part of our brain that actually literally gets thickened over time. It's like exercising a muscle. And so when we're in our waking space and we notice something negative or we have a thought or a judgment about ourselves or someone else, we're able to notice it. Like, oh, there's that thought or that's not very helpful to think that or why am I beating myself up over this? It's just something that happened. It's just phenomenon occurring. So I'm not someone who talks a lot about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, but for me, particularly over the last year, like five to 10 minutes in the morning is often quite useful. Here's a story that just grabbed my attention. There's this kid riding around, firing a water gun at unsuspecting people at one group he fires upon, beats him to death. So you really don't wanna go around needlessly infuriating other people, particularly if they're not people who know you, right? You really don't wanna do that to strangers. And it's also how I spent much of my life. I remember when I first met my classmates, when I moved to California from Australia in 1977, I was at the Pacific Union College pool. I was introduced to my future classmates. How did I respond just by splashing them? They're just splash, splash, splash water and they hated me. And I remember when I was getting into Judaism and moving towards my conversion, the thing that would make me so happy would be to say shocking things to my one to be fellow Jews. I just love to say skeeting things. So yeah, not a good idea to go around firing a water gun at unsuspecting people, but think about all the ways that I've gone through my life doing the equivalent of firing a water gun at unsuspecting people. Saying skeeting things at unsuspecting people in my second grade report card that teacher said, Luke is always very willing to share his opinion with the class, but he needs to learn to be more considerate of the slower thinker. So I remember I had a lot of great political science classes with Professor Larry White. And I was shocked in the first one that he ended up giving me a B. And I thought I was about the best student in the class and I may well have been, but he gave me a B because I was so obnoxious in the things that I would say in class until he like finally blew up at me in class. And I just shut down didn't say anything for the rest of the semester, but he got me back in the grading gate, gave me a B. And then I took more classes with him and we had a reproach more. And I went off to UCLA and read him a letter and he wrote me back. He said, you've got a good mind. You're very verbally sharp, but you have to be careful the things you say because other people will want to hurt you. And he was absolutely right. And just looking at this story, this poor kid going around firing a water guard and unsuspecting people. And then one group, you know, beats him to death. Just, oh, just absolutely horrifying. So, oh, just a 17 year old kid outside LeBron James founded Ohio High School in early June. He was beat to death. So not a good idea to be gratuitously offending people. All right, what's going on with Robert Wright and Mickey Kowals here? I've discovered the key to my behavior is drugs. Suda fed? Suda fed. I go out, I'm depressed, I'm all like no fun. And I take a Suda fed and for like six hours, I'm okay. Is that true? Yeah. How often do you take Suda fed? Once a day. So you have six happy hours a day, that's not bad. 12, it's a 12 hour pill, it works for 10 hours. But you're only happy for six or what? No, no, I was approximating. Wait, you're happy for 10 hours a day? That's most of your waking life, that's great. But if I forget to take the pill, but if I forget to take the pill, then I'm like, I miss half the day. Isn't being despondent and depressed kind of a reminder that you should take the pill? Eventually, when I'm so despondent, I can't figure out the reason I'm despondent because I haven't taken the pill. I'm shocked that it keeps working. See, I think I'm somebody who, you know, what's the term, not acclimates, but you know what I mean? Yeah. The drugs and for some people, they keep on working. Like I have gotten to the point with coffee that my mother used to see. So yeah, Suda fed has many of the components of an offer of methamphetamine. So it does give you more energy and kind of a happier outlook on life. So she was at where like she drinks it and doesn't really notice, it's sad. Yeah, I rarely drink coffee. So that when I do, it's a wonderful experience. So yeah, it's kind of sad to become numb to the joys of coffee because you have it every day. Football coach, everything. But I didn't think it was a good movie. And maybe the problem is that I knew the territory too well. I don't know, but I didn't think it was, it wasn't my kind of satire. Did you see Days in Confuse? No, there was a similar movie about jocks on a baseball team that he made later that I thought was pretty good. I hope I'm not confused. I'll check and make sure he made Days. I don't wanna. And then he made that incredibly boring filled boyhood that everybody thought was so sensitive. That wasn't bad. Look, it was such an interesting. So he's talking about Richard Linklater here. Experiment in movie making. The idea of spending so long on the movie that you can have the same guy play the character as he goes through what? Like 10 years of maturity or something? I gave you my theory of that. Which is what? He has so much, so many years invested in this film that he can't take any radical plot twists that he might come to regret. So he's gotta play it safe and stay in the main channel. And as a result, it's a boring movie where nothing happens. Wait, what was the first part? What's the reason he can't take risks? He has so much invested in this. He's got like 20 years of effort invested. He's not gonna blow it by having the guy turn gay or get killed or beat some, you know, go to jail or do something weird or do something that he might regret. He has to play it completely safe while this kid who's his actor is growing up. So he doesn't blow it. It's not like he'd be throwing away a month's work. He's throwing away 15 years of work. So he's extra, extra cautious and extra, extra cautious in screenwriting needs to extra, extra boring plot development. So even though the kid is great, the kid turns out to be a very appealing actor. Who knew? Nothing happens. He breaks up with a girl and finds a new girl. Very, very exciting. Have you ever seen Waking Life? No. You know why, Mickey? You know why you haven't seen it? Because I'm a uncultured mega deplorable. Because you haven't done psychedelics. Oh, really? That's what it is? Total, total trip flick, man. Come on. Do it. Everybody around me is doing psychedelics. What can I say? Well, Mickey, join them. You only hold on. Join them. Are they not your friends? Do they not like you? No, they prostitize. They try to get me to take this crap. Well, for God's sake, Mickey, you're desperate for social contact. Do whatever they say. If they're into self-harm, do that. Do whatever it takes. We got to help you. I prefer the Eric Zemur strategy, Bob. Do you know who Zemur is? Do I know who Zemur is? Is he a different Zemur or the guy you mentioned every week? The same guy. Right. Do I know who he is? Are you kidding me? The French populist candidate for president of France, who's I think going to come in number two and maybe make the run-off and then get clobbered by Macron. There's a sex scandal, Bob. Oh, involving you? These accused of groping women. In France, is it a scam? Can you really get away with kicking somebody out of the race for groping women? That's how bad things have gotten. There's even me too in France, Mickey. Yes, that's how far civilization has fallen. France, where like a common technique for picking people up, seducing women in clubs, is this move called the snake, Bob. You know what the snake is? No, could you please demonstrate? I'm not gonna demonstrate the snake, but you can imagine what the snake is. You can demonstrate what I'm imagining it to be. Okay? No, talk to that either. Let's just say that the snake is a bold move that... I'm starting to do it. Lake Ladder would never do in the movie Boyhead that involves taking a huge risk and laying it out all on the line in one gesture. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it does. If it doesn't work, do you feel embarrassed if it doesn't work? That's a good question. What is the snake after mass look like? That's actually more interesting than when it's successful. But anyway, so I would think France would be the last place for me to, but you're saying there is such a phenomenon. I'm just speculating, given the fact that you just told us it's a more... I didn't say it's a trouble. I just said there was a schedule that they're trying to get him, but they may not succeed. There's more is an interesting case because I had previously questioned whether populists have to be authoritarian or autocrats. And when I thought about it on the break, another example is Modi in India, who is a populist and he's ethically based populist and he is an autocrat. And he's about to win, by the way. He's basically... Oh, is he gonna win? I had heard he might not. No, they're the by-election results. You know, it's a rolling election. They go district by district and he won some districts that he wasn't supposed to win. That's a shame. There was clearly a key indicator that he's gonna win. So he's gonna win. But I guess if you wanna do an actual ethnic repression of a large segment of your population, you have to be an autocrat. So if you're in India and you wanna like make it entirely Hindu supremacists and not put down and marginalize the Muslim community, you have to be an autocrat. But that's not the whole of populism in America. That's not necessary at all. All we wanna do is build a wall. Didn't Fried Zakaria write a book called A Liberal Democracy, whose point was that democracies too can be horrible? Right. Presumably in the sense of ethnic repression, among other things? Right, but he didn't say that populism, which is basically resentment of rule by elites among the vast masses of voters have to be authoritarian. You think it would be the opposite. So the question is, does the Moore have to be, he's sort of the middle case. Does the Moore have to be authoritarian? There are, I mean, when he makes pronouncements, like I'm gonna, I just think, I think banning headscarves is authoritarian. So I'm an easy kick, you know, I think they may already have crossed that line, but how authoritarian, I think it's an open question, how authoritarian he has to be. And I don't think he knows. I noticed earlier in this conversation, Robert Gates, not Robert Gates, but the other bloke here with Mickey, suspect that Mickey's answer to everything will be that's the gaze. So Mickey, one of the things that most controversial about him is that he wrote a New Republic essay defending the one heterosexual bar in West Hollywood that had no F-A-G-S sign up until recently. I was dating a left-wing bisexual Jewish woman who was very appalled of what would never, Barney's beanie would never set foot into Barney's beanie. So Mickey's a lot like Michael Grace with Luke. You know that these people are homosexuals. I don't know if you've seen, there's a movie I just watched on Netflix, The Awakening of Marty and Marty Walkenbroek. It's a Swiss movie and his dominating orthodox Jewish mother has a big talkus, big behind and just keeps setting him up with women who also dominating and have big behinds and Marty wants to wake up and smell the coffee and have a different kind of life. So here he is, leaving the Shabbat table and he's bringing flowers to his sheikhs-a-girlfriend. Now I understand, the flowers, everything makes sense. My son is a feigler. My son is a feigler. I give out. I give out. My shah. My shah. My shah! My shah! So orthodox Jews don't tend to be terribly woke. Yeah, I'm sorry that you had to endure that very painful scene. Just imagine a mother getting upset that the son loves cock, loves it every, every which way. And she's upset at this possibility. I mean, how enlightened is that? Like, yeah, your son is getting plowed by, you know, 56 dudes on a Sunday and you're upset. You think that's a bad thing. So got a tip for you, a public health announcement. If you want to reduce your odds of catching monkey pox, don't participate in any gay orgies. But if you do participate in a gay orgy, pay careful attention if there are any lesions on the penis that you're interacting with, right? Lesions on a penis really try to stay away from that. So I've been reading all these news articles where their primary approach to monkey pox is how do we inform people about the truth, that the best chances of getting monkey pox is by participating in gay orgies without stigmatizing the gay community. So I think I did this right. I walked down the middle line there. So I informed you how to reduce your odds of getting monkey pox without stigmatizing the gay community. That's himself. France, of course, has a high tolerance for central authority. Yeah, and it has a history. Doesn't it have kind of been forcing a secular identity almost? Or am I making that up? I'm not making that up, nevermind. So this is Robert Wright, not Robert Gates. Robert Wright with Mickey Mouse. You're thinking of tricky. He does now because they have banned the hijab, I think. Yeah. I got my mother's headdresses confused. Turkey, they banned the wearing of the fez, which wasn't particularly Muslim. It was just... Ugly. Just a bad look. Yeah, Atteter banned that. What was the, was that a Thurker bad guy? Oh, depends on what you mean. I mean, he wanted to modernize Turkey. He apparently hated religion, which he didn't say publicly, but apparently that was the case. You know, now... Wasn't there an Armenian genocide on his watch? Was that during, that was during his reign? I don't know, I don't know. So Mickey Kows worked on an autobiographical novel. It was about a guy who was obsessed with two things, sex and welfare reform. Unfortunately, this novel never got published. Every time that they have an international man of the century, there's this huge right-in-vote for Atteter. And LaPonious makes a great point, just because monkey parks originated in a bathhouse does not mean that we are not all at equal risk. Great point. Hey, do you know what the snake move is? Where you just lay it all on the line in France? I hear that's the... That's the thing to do in a club when you're meeting a woman. Obviously, yeah, let's be following. Yeah, I should know more. Anyway, I'm sure we'll hear from our commenters. No doubt. So anyway, I've had second thoughts about the autocracy thing, but I think that I still think it's in America, it is... Yeah, not all populists are autocrats. In certain circumstances, in certain situations, populism will be a good fit for autocracy, meaning dictatorship. Purely an accident of Trump that the populist movement is autocratic. No, I agree that I mean, historically, there doesn't seem to be a necessary link. No. I get the Huey Long and Father Koffler, and there are precursors, but still... Let me just... How should we entertain people? Would somebody please... Okay, here we go. This is what he says, and I just want to emphasize, he's saying this to somebody he doesn't know, okay? So it's a DM, but for all he knows, the guy's going to screenshot it and embarrass him. Okay, this is Michael McFall. Our former ambassador to Russia, and someone wrote something negative about him on Twitter, and this is how Michael McFall reacts. Which I'm having. So he says, Michael McFall, this guy was in him back... So he follows the guy so that he can DM him, and then he DMs him, our former ambassador to Moscow, to Russia. Acid, okay, he says, I have a job for life at the best university in the world. I live in a giant house in Paradise. I make close to a million dollars a year. I have adoring fans on TV, and a half a million followers on Twitter, 99% who also admire me. I'm doing just fine without a damn visa from Russia. And I am not afraid to tweet under my own name. I feel sorry for people like you who aren't brave enough to do so. Now, look, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world, but if you don't have the sense not to DM, not to some rando you don't know, should you have been ambassador to Russia? He's always raising that question about himself. Should he have been ambassador to Russia? How does he make a million dollars a year? It's not the main question raised by this. Of course it is, of course it is. Well, no, oh, it's obvious how he does it. You don't get a million dollars just by going on Bill Maher. That doesn't do it for you. Well, I'm sure MSNBC must pay him a consulting thing. Your fucking friend, Lawrence O'Donnell, has him on all the time. Right. And he's one of the guys who said, no, let's don't negotiate with Putin. And now of course he's celebrated because the thing guaranteed to happen if he didn't try to seriously negotiate, an invasion happened. So let's turn to him for some fucking guidance. Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't pay either. He must be consulting fees and book sales. No, but I think you made my highest speaking fees. Is that what you're trying to change the subject? Yes. Okay, we want a fascinating, no, no, no, no, no. The fact involves an exotic Swedish millionaire. Who cares? You've already lost with my grandmother. Did you admit you lost with my grandmother? Which grandmother? What are you talking about? My grandmother wrote the robe. What robe? The adaptation of the robe, the movie, the robe. You know, Mickey, at my age, your memory isn't what it used to be. Right, you're going in a canyon. There's a, I talked about how people in LA when they want to get off the phone, they say, I'm going into a canyon now. That's what I was doing last week. One of the readers sent me the clip from Larry Sanders where his agent goes into a canyon and he's sitting there with Rip Torn and the agent says, sorry, I'm going into a canyon. And Gary Shanley says, what canyon is there on Melrose Avenue? And Rip Torn says, bullshit canyon. Anyway, so you're in bullshit canyon. Okay. By the way- I mean, just because it involves, you know- By the way, that bullshit canyon is so good, it should really be the name for our show. No, that's not as good as a pair. Bullshit canyon. The other show. 2011- Don't worry, Mickey. Don't bleep that. Don't worry. The Ministry of Snark. No, 2011 text professing her love when she was 18 and he was 41. 18, 41. I believe that is a 23-year-old- So talking about this Jessica Cisneras woman. Branding Republican. The 28-year-old AOC back candidate is facing a runoff against centrist Democrat Representative Henry Quayer had a long-term affair with her former high school teacher. The Daily Mail can exclusively reveal. Jessica Cisneras was in a sexual relationship with educator turned lawyer John Bolly, now 51 and called him Babe. Ooh. That's pretty hot. In a 2011 text- No, don't worry, Mickey. Don't bleep that. Don't worry. The Ministry of Snark. No, 2011 text professing her love when she was 18 and he was 41. 18, 41. I believe that is a 23-year-old, 23-year-old age difference, Bob. That's nothing in Cow's World, believe it or not. So any past experiences you'd like to share with us, Mickey? Anyway. Or just past fantasies. You don't know, do you? Anyway, this just does not rise to the level of- So this is Jessica Cisneras back by AAC running for Congress in Texas. The scandal that toppled that Republican congressman that we talked about last week because neither party was married when this affair happened. Well, if the candidate were the 41-year-old man instead of the 18-year-old girl, it would be problematic, I think. Even if he wasn't married, you think? Yeah. What about Larry King? A teacher? Was he a teacher in Texas? He wasn't her teacher, he was an ex-teacher. And I worry about the double standard here because if he wasn't married and she wasn't married and either just an age difference, that's enough to get him? No, I think it also- But if he is married and you're the other woman, I don't think that's enough to knock out the other woman. I think it's the married person who gets the bulk of the appropriate, no? Okay, there was a tribute to historian Jerry Z. Mueller and he talks here about the time he changed his mind. Robert George, who's a brilliant Catholic conservative intellectual at Princeton. And Robbie was an opponent of gay marriage. This was back in the 90s. A colleague of his had recently, whose last name is escaping me, his first name is Steve, had recently written the book in favor of gay marriage. And Robbie George gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute in which he analyzed and criticized the argument of this book about gay marriage. And after listening to Robbie's argument, it seemed to me that the real crux of it had to do with the premise that every sexual act had to be open to the possibility of procreation, which is a good Catholic doctrine, but not one that I shared. And I figured that if someone as smart as Robbie couldn't come up with better arguments against gay marriage, I should be for it. And so, since after that, I was. And I told this story often when I taught, as I say, John Stuart Mill in intellectual history courses as an example to the students because I wanted them to see the way this process actually works, that you try to confront the best. If you have an inclination one way or another, you try to confront yourself with the best arguments against it. Okay, Jerry Z. Mueller talking about how it changed his mind. Now averaging $5.10 a gallon. Look at your screen. A gas station in Northern California. I'm glad I don't live there. Coastal town now selling a gallon of gasoline for a whopping $9.63 for regular. By the way, if you want premium, that's gonna cost you $9.94. Now that is the cost of the Biden climate alarmist cult agenda and the cost of Biden artificially reducing the world's supply of oil, the lifeblood of the world's economy. Also breaking tonight out in Napa, authorities there finally released the booking photo of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, after he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence over the Memorial Day weekend. Here with us now is the author of Everything Reminds Me something, Adam Carolla. $9 and how much a gallon out there? How much are you paying at your local station? Over $7 a gallon. And I've actually spoken to a lot of folks who live in Southern California who say they can't even fill up their tank anymore. And it's not because they can't afford it. It's because the gas pump cuts them off at $100. So they get to $100, their tank isn't full yet and the gas cuts them. Wait a minute, we might be old enough and we shouldn't admit this, but we probably are. I remember the gas lines when I was a kid. I remember the odd days and the even days. And I was very thankful that my father was friends with the owner of a gas station and he happened to take very good care of my father at the time. But with that said, they even had limits on how much you could buy at that point. You think we're headed there? I don't know, but it was funny when you think about Biden, Biden gives all these crappy home-spun stories like when gas would go up, that was a kitchen table issue. When he was sitting around the kitchen table with his dad, gas was 27 cents a gallon. Do you really think they had a confab on the price of gas going from 27 cents a gallon to 29 cents a gallon in 1954? I don't think so. All right, now only because you are who you are, I can ask this question and probably get a really good answer. Explain to me if we're gonna import oil from Iran or Venezuela or OPEC or Saudi Arabia and we have all the natural resources that we'd ever want in this country. Tell me what the... So I never caught into Love Line, but it was widely discussed among the more intelligent members of the porn industry. A member of Veronica Hart, the porn star turned director would often talk about Love Line. So I think it was a show that was syndicated out of Los Angeles where Adam Corolla was on it along with that doctor. Who's the doctor that he'd do the show with? And it had quite the cult following. Differences to Mother Earth or the impact on Mother Earth which is what New Green Deal Climate Alarmism is all about. What differences it make where you drill the oil from if we're gonna import it and be dependent or be independent and create high-paying jobs for Americans here. You know, doesn't it still have the same impact on the earth? Yeah, well, it's the narcissism of politicians and Californians. Yeah, so Adam Corolla would do it with Dr. Drew Pinsky. So who did I talk to? Oh yeah, Kevin Blatt, he was often talking to Dr. Drew. Oh, and Mary Carey who ran for governor of the Ponson, Mary Carey was also doing a lot of things with Dr. Drew, nothing unprofessional. Nothing professional either. Nothing professional or unprofessional, just like Dr. Drew strikes me as a pretty good guy. And celebrities in Los Angeles, they act like Malibu will impact the entire globe. So we have to switch to electric cars and gas needs to be out of price for just about anybody, but as long as they're doing whatever they're doing in China and in India and a lot of other nations that are developing, then we're not gonna put a dent in this issue, but we act because we're narcissists, especially all this crap comes out of Hollywood. They think they can control the universe from a eight square mile patch of West Los Angeles. All right, let's talk about Nancy Pelosi's husband. They released the mugshot. I don't know why, maybe I'm just a softy at heart. I don't like to take on people when they have personal problems. However, in this day and age of Uber and Uber Black and all the car services you'd ever want, if you're gonna drink, why don't you just hire one of those people to drive you home that night and go get your car the next day? I feel the same way. I feel sorry for Paul Pelosi. If I was married to Nancy Pelosi, I'd probably be drinking pretty hard myself. And also, you can't go to a party with Nancy Pelosi. She can't be your designated driver because she can't hold the wheel. Her hands are constantly flailing in the air. So it'd be impossible to have her do that. I just like the fact that he's driving a brand new Porsche. All right, and he got hit by a Jeep, apparently. So what you're basically saying is, if you were his attorney, you would say, Your Honor, he's married to Nancy Pelosi. He's living a very stressful life. You gotta give him a break here. Is that your argument? Yes, and every time she speaks, her hands fly off the wheel and start throwing punches in the air. So it's impossible to have her drive. And also, it is ironic that I think today she was doing drag racing, right? A different kind of drag racing, but he was doing a little drag racing himself. All right, I have no idea what you just said. I really don't, but I'll pick up on it later. You, Nancy Pelosi, is gonna be featured on the show, Drag Race. Okay, and drag racing is a form of automotive racing, yes. By the way, I heard you're a big car guy like Jay Leno. Is that true? Yes, I love myself some cars, and that's why obviously for the big car guys, eight bucks a gallon in California is pretty devastating. Okay, I used to run a barn. I used to fix my own cars, did my own tune-ups and brakes, Bondo, I'd paint my own cars. Okay, thanks, Sean. Thanks, Adam. Appreciate you coming on the show. All right, let me pull myself together here. Oh yeah, so the awakening of Matty, right? About this orthodox kid, the awakening of Matty Wolkenbrook. It was Switzerland's entry into the Oscars for best foreign film in 2018. And I resonated with the movie because at the end of it, like, he's lost everything. He's pressured to marry a nice orthodox Jewish woman. He's thrown for a loop when he falls for a shekso whose mother will never approve of. So he loses everything at the end of the movie. And he goes to see this dying woman who wants to read his fortune. And she has him like pull out some cards. And she says, I already know my future. Like, don't talk rubbish. You know, pull out a card. Now take that. Let's find out what's going on with you, Matty. So she's on her last legs and gives him the cards. And what's coming to an end here besides me? So what do you mean? The coffin, the one we saw in your last visit. Something's coming to an end. What was it, Matty? What was coming to an end in your life? And he says, everything. Everything basically came to an end. He's pretty distraught. So this dying woman is laughing and says, very good, very good. Matty's like, why? Why is that good? Now you have room, she says. Now you have room. Room for what? Room for everything. So there have been many times when I've lost friends, lost community. Felt like I've lost everything in my life. Girlfriend broke up with me. I lost a job. Was in widespread distrust. I felt like I'd lost everything. And what I didn't realize was that I was opening up space in my life for everything, for new friends to come in, for new community, for new professional and personal opportunities. So I've experienced this heartbreak, where I felt like I'd lost absolutely everything. And what I didn't see at those times of heartbreak is that, yeah, I'd lost everything, but I just opened up so much space for new and better things to come into my life. It doesn't even have a value of good or bad if I broke that thing. It's like, oh, well, it's a glass. There's another one, not a big offense in life. So being vigilant about where we put our attention is key to starting to slowly notice the ways in which we see the glass half empty instead of half full. The other thing I would highly recommend is making a daily gratitude list before you go to bed at night, at least five things you're grateful for every single day, no matter what. And then you'll start to see a perceptual change in the lens through which you are looking at life. Someone's asking about explaining the relationship between developmental trauma and mild intensity seeking and difficulty with moderation. Those are actually very different things. I mean, developmental trauma implies trauma in the formative years of, say, three years through teenage years. And that trauma can have us becoming dissociated. All of us are mildly to moderately dissociated on any given day, so make no mistake about that. Our brains are quite automatic. We don't think about what we're doing, we just do it. And that is a function of the operational system that makes for efficiency. We don't have to think about every single thing we do. So mild to moderate association is not usually a problem, but impulsivity is different. When you have problems with moderation, you have a problem of impulsivity. And when impulsivity turns to compulsivity, that's when you get addiction. So that would also be helped with meditation, learning to practice and what. Yeah, so I've had, it feels like every emotional addiction under the sun, but they weren't always operating for more in every situation. So there are all sorts of situations that would lead me from impulsivity to compulsivity and then back to impulsivity. Primarily it came down to the quality of the people that I was hanging out with and how much time I was spending with them. When I was spending more time with good people that my impulsivity would be rained down. When I was feeling neglected, alone, therefore desperate, then all these impulses would become compulsive and my life would start trending down. Watch your impulse towards having that thing or buying that thing or doing that thing. Right, I just remember being with good people and my need to show off, my need to be the center of attention, my need for drama, my need for excitement would be steadily diminished. Like I know people who devote much of their lives to just helping other people, right? They will spend 20, 30, 40 hours a week helping other people in a healthy way, like not in a codependent way, not in an enabling way, but in a healthy way, in combination with other people doing good things and it just takes my breath away. But when you're basically a happy person, you naturally wanna help other people, right? Selfish people walk around with gaping psychic wounds. And so when you have a gaping wound, it's verges on the impossible to think about helping other people. But once you start to staunch those wounds, then turning towards other people and helping them becomes natural. When I was around good people like that, then I just remember how I would calm down and I had less need for more intense and often destructive forms of excitement. And starting to just notice it. First of all, like, oh, I'm doing that. And then over time, beginning to intervene on it by saying, I'm actually going to wait and see do I really wanna eat that or can I wait an hour? Do I really need to buy that thing or can I wait till tomorrow? And if it's still nagging at me or I've talked to somebody about it and I really, really need it, then I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'm just gonna take a pass. And these are ways where we have to intervene on these mechanisms in ourselves. Let's see, someone says, I need to confront negativity in my own life because it's being honest. And Glenn Medley says the dilator that means the expander of hate keeps the gaping wound open. Well, it may well do that, but in my experience, what it primarily does is it distracts me from the gaping wound. And so when I'm in pain, when my life isn't working, when I'm encountering failure after failure, when I'm becoming more and more distant from who I wanna be, when I'm falling out with the people who are important to me, when I'm unable to sustain relations, when I'm unable to earn money, when I'm unable to build my savings, then the pain is too intense and I have to find a distraction. So that's my life history, whether it be through pornography, that was a favorite distraction. TV in general, TV sports in particular, attempts at self-aggrandizement, shocking people saying offensive things. Those have been the primary ways that I've tried to distract myself from my failures to connect normally with other people. About the negative things I've done. How do I balance negativity with confronting things that are unpleasant and my association feel negative? How do I know when I'm being honest and I'm needlessly expending energy on negativity? Well, if you've done something that has you out of your integrity, where you've cheated or lied about something or stole some money or done something like that. Right, so I don't find it a downer to have an awareness of my frailties, have an awareness of self-destructive paths that I've gone down in my life to have an awareness of my mistakes, my needless cruelty to other people. That's not a downer to me. It's just a matter of being in reality. It's not all I've done. I've done wonderful things as well. And so I don't, like I'm obviously not down. Down is down. When you pull down, you collapse in on yourself. You come down. Obviously from my body language, I'm not down. Being in reality doesn't have to be a downer. So recognizing one's vulnerability, recognizing one's humanity, recognizing one's frailty, it doesn't have to be a downer. And it's appropriate to feel, quote, negative feelings, which would be something like shame or guilt or bad about yourself or having done that. And to acknowledge that I did that and I wish I had. And yeah, we should be more like Josh Randall. When he was struggling with the pain of a breakup, he distracted himself by becoming a Shakespeare scholar. I mean, there's a really positive use of the need for distraction. And so I'm going to apologize to the person or persons that I have offended against. And I'm going to suffer the consequences of that. I'm going to take the hit and it may be that they're angry or they don't wanna see me again or I have to pay somebody back. But I'm going to really stand up and take the consequences for what I've done because that's the only way to eradicate the shame of it. And then from there to practice the business of forgiving yourself for your humanity. You made a mistake, you did something wrong. So over the past few years in work situations and social situations when people would point out something I'd done wrong, I'd tell the client or tell the boss, oh, I've already forgiven myself for that mistake. And they would often say, ah, I think you may have forgiven yourself too easily. And there's some saying in Jewish life, the greatest sardic is one who's able to forgive himself. So another favorite saying I use is, I'm just not there spiritually yet. So you wanna give me a certain moral standard that I'm not quite living up to. I'll let you know, well, I'm just not quite there spiritually yet. But I've already forgiven myself for that. That's it, bye-bye.