The Iced Coffee Hour - Matt Walsh on Toxic Masculinity, Cancel Culture, and Becoming The Top 0.1%

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Hero Bread: Right now, Hero Bread is offering our audience 10% off their first order! Just go to https://hero.co/iced and use our code "iced" Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich Streamyard: Start creating high-quality content easily with https://clickurl.ca/ICH-StreamYard NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Thanks to  @MattWalsh  for coming on to speak with us! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:28 - Exploring the Concept of "What is a Woman?" 12:19 - How Matt Walsh Got His Start in Media 22:08 - The Impact of Technology in Today's Society: Pros and Cons 29:40 - Should ‘Violent Videos’ Be Allowed on Social Media? 32:05 - Matt Walsh's Insights on Effective Parenting 42:18 - Matt Walsh's Surprising Take on Online Dating 44:54 - Recognizing When You've Found "The One" 53:00 - Matt Walsh on Gender Roles in a Marriage 56:12 - Matt's Wake-Up Call for Unhappy Men 58:29 - Matt Walsh's Unfiltered Advice for Struggling Parents 1:02:52 - Do You NEED to Have Kids to be Fulfilled? 1:05:07 - Matt’s Role in the Movie ‘Lady Ballers’ 1:06:58 - Why Matt Thinks Aliens Exist 1:10:47 - Graham asks Matt "What is the Left doing right?" 1:15:05 - Supermarket Etiquette: Is It Wrong Not to Return a Cart? 1:19:15 - Matt’s Kid Threw a Rock at a Car?! 1:20:33 - Closing Remarks For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anxieties at an all-time high. Kids are depressed and anxious and nobody knows why. There's a crisis, an epidemic of depression. Men are designed to provide and care for our families. If you don't do that, you're always going to be working against that crane. Their position is so fundamentally confused and absurd that when that's your starting point, you can't possibly say anything true. Did Elon ever reach out to you?

Everything about you as a person is decided in that moment. Matt Walsh, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. obviously now your talent at The Daily Wire, but I didn't realize you used to be a professional dancer. Dude, you're really good at dancing. I was actually really surprised. I found this video of you. Here, check that out.

This is on Twitter. Am I playing it? Yeah, just right and click play. I can't believe this got out. Yeah. You see my moves there. They're really good. Yeah, you have great hips, hip gyration.

The footwork is incredible on it. Yeah. You know, I put a lot of hours. This is just me in my bedroom by myself dancing and looking in a mirror. So that guy does look. You know, the thing is people are always telling me, oh, this guy looks exactly like you. And I look at him. It's like, he just has a beard.

It's like, everyone that has a beard looks like me. Oh, it's not just the beard. It's the beard. It's the beard. It's the beard. Flannel. I mean, there's a lot of similarities. The strut, the swag.

Yeah, the hip gyrations especially. Should maybe do genetics testing and see if maybe you guys related some of them. Maybe I am related to every guy with a beard and flannel. So to start this off, one quick question. It's a simple question, okay? Yeah. What is a woman? That is still on the journey.

No, my journey's over. So it's an adult human female I finally have learned, is what a woman is. And what is a female? Well, a female is, there's a few different ways you could define female, but I prefer to say that a female is that member of the human species who by her nature can become. pregnant. And you have to specify by her nature because, of course, if you say, well, females, the person who can get pregnant, of course, then you can get the whole, well, what if you have someone who's infertile or whatever? That doesn't, you know, we know that by your nature, a female could get pregnant, but that doesn't mean that every single female can because there's disease,

there's genetic, deformity, that sort of thing that can get in the way. I was surprised how many views, what does a woman got on Twitter? And I was sitting there refreshing and watching the view just go up and up and up. And I think it hit 100 million views in how many hours after posting this? It was like the weekend or it was like 40 hours? I think it was a couple of days. Maybe we got to 100 million.

And then I think we made it up to 180 million, I want to say. And then you guys took it off, right? Yeah, originally we were going to put it up, I think, the original plan was for 24 hours. And then the response was so huge that we decided why would we take it down? We just kept it up. And we got up to around 180 million views.

And then Elon Musk retweeted it. didn't he pinned it was a he pinned it right he pinned it which we did not we had no idea he was going to do that obviously we were very grateful um but there was a whole you know there was a whole controversy before that with twitter initially trying to shut our screening of the film down before elon musk came because the thing is you know Elon came into twitter at x i guess i'll never call it x i always call it twitter but he came in and he started cleaning out house but of course you know the company is still for for a long time it was a fundamentally left-wing company. So I think there's this kind of push and pull. And when we first announced our plan to

put the movie on Twitter, you know, there were people at Twitter who tried to step in and sabotage it until Elon Musk. How do you know that? How do you know that people within Twitter were trying to shut it down? What were they doing specifically? Well, because there was a whole, I mean, there was a whole thing behind the scenes. We, we had this whole plan set up to officially premiere the film on Twitter. and it was going to have its own special page, which you can do on Twitter now, and that would give it like priority in news feeds and stuff and make it accessible to more people.

We had the whole plan set up. Everything was good to go. And then at the last minute, we were informed that the decision was made by some people at Twitter that the film is hate speech. And so we'd still be allowed to have it on the platform, but it'd be impossible to share.

It would be very difficult for people to see it. So basically, like, you can have it. Shadow banned, basically. Right, exactly. Yeah. So we don't know who at Twitter made that decision and what exactly was going on behind the scenes. We don't know. But we know that once Elon personally got involved, you know, all that went away.

Did Elon ever reach out to you? I've communicated with them a little bit, a little bit behind them. Not like phone calls or anything, but just messaging. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. How does that feel just on a personal level talking to Elon Musk? I guess what do they call it, imposter syndrome, where you, you know, you sort of feel like you're in a position and you don't just. deserve to be there and you're trying to figure out yourself.

So it's a little bit of that. I feel a little bit of the imposter syndrome when I'm talking to someone like Elon Musk. Like, why is this guy talking to me? What does he talk to you about? Not much. I mean, it's just like, it's just a little bit messaging back and forth. I think around the what is a woman thing and then, and then a little bit here and there since then, but not, not much at all.

That's crazy. I was surprised just how detailed that documentary was and how long it must have taken you to film it because as a creator myself, I know how much work goes into that behind the scenes and the amount of time and dedication that you must have spent on that, as with your entire team. How long was that from start to finish? Probably about a year, I want to say. A little bit less than a year.

And yeah, it's tough to make a movie like that because it's not like a scripted feature where you can, and obviously there's a lot of challenges there with a movie like that, but it's not like you have a script and you have actors in this kind of movie. We knew what we wanted, who we wanted to talk to, the issue we wanted to explore, but you really have no idea what's going to happen

when you get on the ground and you're in the room, with some of these people. Or, you know, my favorite sequence in that film is when we went to Africa. And that's the sort of thing where we had the idea. We thought it'd be really interesting to go to Africa and talk to a traditional tribe about these issues and just kind of get their, like, far outsider perspective. But we obviously had no idea what they would actually say or how that would go. And what were there, what was their response to the whole, like, question of transgenderism

and what is a woman? They were flummoxed. I mean, they weren't, well, they were actually, Originally they were flummoxed by the question, what is a woman, not because they don't know the answer, but because it's such an obvious answer that they figured we must be asking something else. Like at first, I think when I first asked, what is a woman, and we're going through a translator, which is also interesting. We wanted to see how that worked, too.

Like, how do these questions filter through a translator into their language? And there were some issues with that originally, which we anticipated. But when we first asked it, they gave some kind of answer about, the duties and responsibilities of men versus women because they figured that's what I was asking because in their minds it's like there's no way he's actually asking literally what is a woman because nobody, everyone knows that.

And so I'd ask a few more times before they understood that, oh no, this guy is actually confused about that question specifically. And when they were talking about roles and what were some of those things that they said there in terms of what a man's role was, what a woman's role was, was there anything to you that was surprising?

That wasn't surprising at all. It was, you know, they had, an idea about the roles of men and women that they share with almost every society that's ever existed on earth aside from ours. And in their notion of things, you know, the man provides for the family. The woman has children and stays home with the children, takes care of the house. The man goes out and provides for the family. And for them, that's, you know, hunting, that's livestock. You know, it's not like they're not going to a nine to five job. Outside of the modern Western world, you talk to almost anybody. And they're going to give an answer.

like that. Now, they understand that if a man doesn't go out and provide for his family, like he's still a man, literally speaking, but he hasn't fulfilled his responsibility as a man. And when you were talking to people on the other side of the token, which you did a lot throughout this, what is a woman documentary, was there anything that they said that you thought was like a valid argument or maybe that surprised you? Because you obviously went in with certain expectations of what they would say. Did you hear anything where you're kind of like, oh, that kind of makes a little bit of sense. I understand that. No. Never. Honestly, there wasn't...

There was no, like, a-ha moment. It was just... Certainly not an aha moment. I'm trying to think if anyone said, on that side of it, if there was anyone who said anything that I even thought was vaguely interesting or legitimate,

and the answer is no. Because their position is so fundamentally confused and absurd that when that's your starting point, you can't possibly say anything true. Like, when your starting point is that men can have babies, and that's the universe you're living,

it's a universe so divorced from reality that whatever you whatever comes from that root is going to also be untrue. And so what I, what we encounter that side was just a whole like mess of confusion basically. So who holds these beliefs? Because I was at the University of California, Santa Barbara, so like a public school in California. And a lot of people I found obviously like mostly liberal students in college, but I didn't see many people with that level of like extremism that like men can like have babies and stuff like that. I think, yeah, that's always, that's a fascinating question too about how many of the people that pretend to believe this actually believe it.

You know, when we were making the film, we kind of, there's sort of two groups of people we talked to, and one were the experts, you know, the doctors and professors and that sort of thing. Dr. Kumar, can biological men become pregnant and give birth? So men can have pregnancies, especially trans men? And then we also just talk to normal people on the street. What we found is that the normal people on the street oftentimes were repeating kind of a version of what we heard from the experts.

But if you dug a little bit deeper, it became obvious to me that they don't really believe what they're saying. And, you know, this was also a couple years ago when we were making the movie. I think that even now that might be different. I think now if I went out and we did it again and when I talked to normal people on the street about this issue, I think we'd have more people willing to say, oh, all that is nonsense. You know, if I were to ask like, what if a man identifies as a woman? Should it be allowed to go into a women's restroom? When we were filming this two years ago,

we found very few normal folks on the street who were willing to say, well, no, obviously the man can't go in the women's restroom. But they also hadn't fully bought into the idea that he should. They were just kind of like, they were just uncomfortable talking about it because they knew that it was a taboo. And I've often wondered if we were to go back

and do that same man on the street sort of thing now, would we find many more people who are willing to say, well, no, of course he can. In great poll. to do for just like a standard video of yours to just go out and do it. And I think we would. I mean, I think that the polls and surveys on this issue kind of bear that out. However, before we go into that, it's the new year.

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Again, that's hero.co slash iced with the link down below in the description, 10% off. And now with that said, let's get to the podcast. So how did you get started with The Daily Wire? Obviously, now you have a massive platform where like millions of people listen to you. Obviously, the documentary was viewed by hundreds of millions of people. What led to this position that you're in right now? I know you did a video reacting to your first ever podcast, which was it was a real. We'll start somewhere.

Our first podcast was not good. We'll throw up some B-roll over right here. I'll throw up some B-roll of your first podcast. I'm sorry. But were you in a lot? a building at least. Were you in some kind of structure? We were in a studio. No. Your mic didn't work. Mine did. So I converted a bedroom in the house to a set and that's what it was. And then we used our dining room table for the next year. And then now we still, we went back to the

converted bedroom. Well, humble beginning still, but at least you were in a bill, you were in some sort of stable structure that stays in one place. I started in media, I suppose, when I was 20 years old, I'm 37 now, so this was 17 years ago. Initially, I was in radio, and I left home at the age of 20, and I went to this small market rock radio station in Delaware. It was like Market 300 something or other. And that was the only in to media that I could find at the time. So I worked initially overnights, just like introducing rock songs.

and that's what I did. I was there for about at that station for five years, and then I got into kind of conservative talk radio for a few years. This is also when the radio industry was also collapsing, you know, at the same time. So I kind of got in at like the tail end. I think satellite radio is beginning to take it. Yeah, satellite radio was starting to come on. When I first started in radio, of course, the Internet existed,

but social media, you know, was not what it is today. Myspace. Yeah, this is back in the MySpace space. days. I don't even think YouTube existed yet. But anyway, I eventually got out of radio and I was just a blogger for a while. I had my own blog. But it blew up. Like quickly too. Yeah, it actually did surprisingly quickly. I started, I think I started the blog in like early of 2012. Good time for a blog. Yeah. That was in the heyday. The other thing is that back then and then it kind of blew up in that summer. I had a couple like viral posts that I wrote. What were the viral posts? The first,

The first one that went really viral, okay, the first one that went really viral was actually very early. It was in the first few weeks when I started the blog, and it was a, uh, uh, my wife and sister-law forced me to go see Les Miserab, the musical. Yeah. And I wrote a review of Les Miserab and how much I hated it. And, uh, for some reason, it went, for me, by my standards at the time, it went really viral. I think I had like 500,000 views on that, on that blog post. Yeah.

And, um, and then it kind of, you know, it dipped back down. and I didn't capture any of that reader show. I didn't really know how to. So I had all these people reading this one thing. Were those people just coming from Google? Because I'd imagine your blog ranked in SEO. And if people are typing in that, your blog is probably coming up. And that's how I'm finding and sharing it.

That one ended up on some, like, message boards for musical fans or fans of musicals or something. So you got a lot of hate. Yeah, a lot of that. But there are also people that were commiserating. And that said, I also hate this film, you know, this play slash film. Why is it so highly contended? Why did you dislike it so much? Well, I think I didn't.

I'm not a musical. guy, first of all. And I didn't understand when I went to go see it that they sing through the entire movie. It's like the entire thing is sung. So I thought it was one of those musicals where you have normal scenes and then they break out in song randomly, which is annoying enough. But this one, they sang the entire thing. And I was just, and my wife didn't warn me about that. And you've got like Russell Crow singing. You need a trigger warning. Yeah, I needed a trigger warning. I didn't get one. So I was shocked and appalled. But what made you go home and write about this. And what did your wife think about you writing about this? Did she like it? She's like my husband.

Yeah, she thought it was hilarious. I think I was kind of venting about it. And so my, my lamentations of misery just caught on for some reason. But the problem is that I got all these viewers, these readers. I didn't know how to capture them because they were there for a movie review. And I thought, should I just write movie reviews now? Is that what people want? But I don't want to, you know, I'm not much of a movie critic. So they all kind of went away. And then it was several months later. that I started to catch on, you know, more consistently. And how would you catch on in what way? How did you find your niche? I started writing about, I think the first one that really went viral that I was able to sort of capture was it was a Miley Cyrus performing the VMAs this really like gratuitous, objectionable performance back in 2013, I think it was. Was it with Robin Thick, I think?

Oh, was that the one where she was like grinding. No, no, she was grinding up behind him. He bent over and I think she got behind him. I think it was one of those, right? Yeah, you remember this in great detail. Yeah. He still watches it all the time. I can say it.

No, I'm kidding. It was something like that. And so it was a big kind of like cultural controversy at the time. Or he grinded on her. It was the one of that. I don't remember. Someone grinded on the other. I think there was grinding going on all over the stage with lots of different people.

So, but I kind of wrote about that from the perspective of sort of parent. And so that's the thing for a while. I was kind of, when I started writing about, things relating to parenting and family and kids and how do you protect your kids in this fallen world of ours in this degenerate culture. That's what seemed to resonate with people, which is good because that's what I actually care about.

And so, yeah, I did that. I did that for a few years. I ended up working at The Blaze for about three years just as a writer. And then I think it was in 2018 that I got the job at the Daily Wire. Was the blog making money? It was, yeah.

It was, by my standards, it was pretty incredible. It was like a lot of money by my city. Because I, you know, if I didn't remember, I was in local radio. Of course. How much were you making in local radio? My first gig in local radio, I remember specifically it was $17,000 a year. How do you survive off that? Barely.

Like $17,000 a year is, well, it did quickly, so it was $17,000 a year. I quickly got a raise to $19,000 because I found out, because they hired some other guy a few weeks later, and he was bragging about making $19,000 a year. And then I'm like, why are we not making the same position? Yeah. It's the exact same position. And so they said, all right, you got us.

And so they gave me the raise to 19,000. But even 19,000 is like very hard to survive on. So it was a lot of, and that's what I made pretty much until I got married. I mean, it was a year into marriage I was still making about that. And so it was a lot of, you know, gas station hot dogs for dinner, five dollar foot longs. What was the blog? doing financially. The first real check I got from the blog was like

$4,000. That's fantastic. For a month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And was that just the it was the ads that you had on the side of the blog? Yeah. I remember that very well because that was more that was a double, like double my salary. New it three times. Yeah. So it was the most money I'd actually seen at one time, $4,000.

And it was possible to do that at the time because, you know, you could the way I built that up was through Facebook and social media. And back then, you could build up a readership on something like Facebook, which is pretty much what I exclusively used at the time. And if you had 8,000 followers on Facebook, they would all see, you could access all of them. And so if you had 8,000 followers, it means that 8,000 people were actually getting access

to, you were popping up in their news feeds and everything. But then quickly, all that started to change. And, you know, now it's like you could have a Facebook following of 2 million people, but only whatever. 0.5% of them will even see you post. But guys, before we go into that, are you ready to make 2024 your year of success? If you've been dreaming of starting your own business, there's no better time than right now to turn that dream into a reality with her sponsor Shopify. Shopify is the global e-commerce platform that's already helped transform millions of businesses worldwide.

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Because you think that there's a lot of careers out there. Why pick something that pays 17 to 19 grand a year? I'd always wanted to be in media. And for reasons that are even hard to explain, like, why would anybody want to do this? I don't know exactly what people, but I did. And I tried normal jobs. From probably about the age of 16 to 20,

I had, I don't know, 17 or 18 different jobs. What was the weirdest? Nothing really weird. It was just a lot of like delivering pizzas, which I actually enjoyed pizza delivery was great. There was a lot of freedom in that. Who did you work for? Domino's pizza.

Domino's. I like Domino's. Of every job outside of what I do now, that was my favorite job. And this is before GPS. You actually had to learn. I did MapQuest. This is before MapQuest. Before MapQuest.

So we actually had a at Domino's, we had a big map in the store. And when you got the order, you had to go on the map and look and remember. Are you serious? Shocking to the kids today. But yeah. But then eventually you actually learn. learn where you live and you learn how to get around. This might sound stupid.

What happens if you get lost? Do you have a cell phone that you could call someone and just say like, hey, I'm lost about these two streets? Where do I go? Well, if you know, if you at least vaguely know the area, like you actually understand where you live, then you have certain, even if you get a little bit lost, you know where you can go back to to get back.

The problem is now that we're so dependent on GPS that we never learned. Like I've lived here in Nashville. I've lived in Nashville for two years. And I still, I'm ashamed to say, hardly know how to get around because I always use the GPS. Is that a bad thing? To not know how to get around? Right.

Yeah. You're relying on GPS. I say it's a bad thing. Really? For me, it's I'm able to put on the GPS and mentally I could be somewhere else, not having to pay attention to directions, but I could think in my mind of different ideas or different. Instead of like, what street is this, I'm going to pass it?

It takes away my mental energy on navigating when I could rely on something like GPS. Yeah, but I think that's a bad thing because that's exactly the problem. You're not really inhabiting what you're, doing. You're not, you're not, you're not inhabiting the current moment. Your thought is always somewhere else. In the future. Or, or anywhere. Or you're looking at your phone and doing something else. You know, you're on Twitter or something while you're driving. Not that I would ever do that. I think it's good to actually like, okay, I'm driving. This is what I'm doing. I'm going from here to there. You're, you are aware of the present moment. You're inhabiting it and going from point A to point B. We don't

do that anymore. I know it's a common. But self-driving is going to take that away eventually, where you're just going to be in a thing, plug in the address, you could sit back and do whatever. Do what? Do whatever you want to. You could work. You could listen to podcasts. But we're slowly taking, yeah. We're taking away all of the things that for people to do so that increasing there's like nothing left to actually do anymore. And so we're making life more convenient. Oh, you don't have to do that anymore. Well, once there's nothing left, once we get to the point where we don't have to do anything, then then life is pointless. Well, then I think people go on to higher and better things. Is that what you see in society right now? People going on to

higher and better things? I'd say overall, if we look at this year versus 40 years ago, I'd say overall, yes. I think in terms of efficiency and productivity, we're able to do a lot more. Do a lot more what? I would say with technology, advancements in society, I think there's a lot of progression that we've seen. Well, maybe technologically, but do you see progression? Do you think people are better? Do you think people are happier? I have no idea. I'm happier this year than I was 10 years ago. You might be, but I think that the trends would show that most people, we hear it all the time, that anxiety is at an all time high. Kids are depressed and anxious and nobody knows why. There's a crisis, an epidemic of depression.

So it seems to me like people are, so, yeah, we got all these technological advancements, but I don't think that it's making people happier. It's not making our lives better. And ultimately, everything that we do should be making our lives better if it's not. then it's a bad thing. Sure. And also, and it makes us vulnerable. So, which to me is a secondary concern, but the fact that none of us know how to get around our own neighborhoods, well, if that technology ever goes away,

you know, if internet goes down, power grid gets attacked, whatever. Like, we're stuck. We don't know what to do. I mean, I was driving to work, I don't know why I'm admitting this, I was driving to work a few weeks ago, and I couldn't get the GPS to work for some reason.

and I just stuck I'd like had a mini I kind of panicked a little bit because because I'm not sure if I exactly know how to get where I'm going but the panic was more I can't call someone and admit that I'm lost on my way to work so

that's emasculated to the extreme so I figured out I figured it up how did you figure it out I had to tap into my subconscious because I'm only ever like subconsciously aware of where I'm driving because I have the GPS So I had a lot of mental effort, but I did figure it out. But it's pathetic.

Like, how can I be a grown man? It doesn't even know how to exactly how to get to my own job. Because I always had the GPS on. So the Domino's gave you good training of navigation and reliance. I tapped into that Domino's experience. So you think that there's merit to being aware and living consciously and present rather than potentially your brain solving other issues in the future. or thinking about past events and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. And I also think that it's very generous to assume that we're all up in our heads solving problems. I don't think that's what happens. I think we're just kind of killing time. I mean, it's a cliched sort of thing to complain about, but we've all, like, you know, I was somewhere recently, maybe the dentist or something, and we're waiting in line, and you look around in a waiting room, for example, and you look around to, like, everybody,

is just looking at their phone. And it used to be that in that situation, maybe you have a magazine or something. Most people are, you're just like sitting there. You're in the waiting room. This is what you're doing. And you are doing that.

But we don't know how to like be somewhere now. We have to always. You know, so funny, I see this picture floating around the internet all the time and it shows a group and they're all on their phone. And then it shows a picture of the 1920s, but everyone was just reading the newspaper. And it shows that,

human nature still hasn't changed, that people are still paying attention to one thing in front of them, whether that be the newspaper or in this time it's the phone, where you could get the newspaper, you know, digitally or you could be on social media, but it's the same sort of thing where people are in their own world. Yeah, but I think that with each advancement, it becomes more absorbing and more, it dominates your time even more. I mean, the newspaper at least is a finite thing, and you can read the whole newspaper, and then that's it. You're done with the newspaper. but the phone is made to be infinite, infinite scrolling. It never stops and you never look away from it.

So, yeah, people might have been distracted by newspapers, but nobody 100 years ago was walking around reading the newspaper 10 hours a day. And now, you know, the average time spent on the phone, I think for Gen Z, something like 10 hours a day, 10, 12 hours a day. How do you spend your time on the phone? Well, it's hard for me because this is what I do for a living. So I have to, you know, I have a daily podcast. So I have to always be looking for content.

You know, that's like my life is trying to find content. And anytime something happens in the world, you know, it's not just a thing happening. It's like, oh, this is content. What's my angle? What am I going to say about it? So that's mostly what I'm doing on the internet is like feeding. I got to feed the content mill. This is what we do for a living.

But outside of that, I'm doing what a lot of other people doing, which is like, I'll catch myself. just last night I caught myself it's almost like 45 minutes had evaporated and I just spent that 45 minutes just like I don't even know what I was doing I can't even tell you what I looked at it was just like scrolling scrolling what app was it was Twitter Twitter Twitter's dangerous

I find Twitter extra dangerous because it's just like fear mongering and negativity and just really pissy people there's a lot of that and recently I've noticed a lot more just these video like really violent oh the gore videos yeah I mean has that hit your algorithm? Oh, yeah.

It's so weird. Jack is telling me about this. I brought this up to him. Like yesterday, I was like, dude, I'm like getting scarred. Even Instagram reels, because Instagram used to be very sensitive to that stuff. But you can go and there's not even any warning or anything.

It's like you just swipe and then it's just like some war video. You don't get any of that? Nothing. He curates his algorithm. Oh, yeah, I do. I purposely say if I'm not interested in something very early on, I say I'm not interested. Click it.

Mine is so curated to just what I want to see, which is Reef Aquarium's watches, pretty much. Oh, you're into aquariums? Yeah. Oh, I'll talk about that. All right. Um, I'm a big aquarium guy. Well, I'm not a big, I want to be a big aquarium guy. Um, yeah, I have that same, uh, that same issue. And, uh, it is, it is very like, if you say that it's scarring or traumatic, people will call you sensitive. No, it's not scar, but I, I don't think it's healthy. No, it is actually. It would be to me if I saw to, to, to just be going about your day and then, oh, there's someone dying. Like, there's someone being shot to death, right?

And that's sandwiched in between a cat video and somebody complaining about Trump or something. It's like, so the fact that you're witnessing it, and then also the context of it being just content that you scroll past is, it's very unnatural and unhuman. I do think that there's merit in knowing and being aware of, like, the evils that exist. Like, for example, with this whole recent thing and Ben putting on this very graphic content. on his daily podcast. Like I can see the angle that he's trying to show to people, just contemplate your own mortality, know that evil exists, and do your best to fight it.

So I think it's important to, like, be aware of it. But as far as, like, seeing it and being exposed to it on a daily basis, I don't think is necessarily healthy. Yeah, it depends on the context. That's why I said the context is important. So, yeah, I think there can be a time for something like that. But most of these videos that you see on Twitter or whatever, they're not raising awareness about some evil thing that happened.

It's just, it's to gawk at. And that's entirely different from, you need to be aware of this evil that exists out there. I want to know about your own ideals and principles. A question I love asking people to understand who they are is what principles and ideals did you have at one point in your life? And maybe one of them specifically had a 180 flip. Maybe you thought this thing about raising kids. You thought this principle about who you are, how other people works, the way reality is, and it just flipped 180. Or has that never really happened to you, which also is a valid answer?

I can't say that any fundamental principle has flipped. So I've always been, I was raised in a conservative Catholic family, and that's what I am today. So for the most part, the fundamental principles have remained the same. But my views on various issues have certainly changed. And some of this is just growing up, I think. Back in my early 20s, I was a much more libertarian. In fact, there was a time when I would have identified as libertarian.

I don't anymore. There's individual issues like capital punishment. I used to be against capital punishment. Now I'm very much for it. And you mentioned parenting. I mean, there's all kinds of, I don't think it's any principle of parenting that's changed, but. It's gradually evolved. Or when you start doing it, like you have your ideas about, before you have kids,

you have all kinds of ideas about how you think it will go or how you think that you, you know, how you think it should go. And then once you're in it, it could be entirely different. I've also, before I had kids, and I would see these parents who in my mind are too lenient and they just want to be friends with their kids. And I never understood that. Like, how can you be this way with your kid? You know, like lay down the law, right?

You're not a friend. I used to say that before I had kids. Like, you're not supposed to be a kid's friend. you're the parent and now that I have kids first of all yeah I think it's a bad you shouldn't be too lenient

you need to have you need to discipline your child make sure if the child's discipline but I do understand why parents can err in that direction because I couldn't have understood this before I had kids but now I understand

like punishing your kid is hard I don't like doing it I really don't like doing it I don't like coming home from work and one of the kids did something bad and I have to deal with it and I really don't like it not because I don't want to be

bothered, but just because it's like an unpleasant thing. I don't want to have an unpleasant interaction with my kid. So I understand that in a way that I didn't before I had kids. And I also have changed my view about being friends with your kid. I've realized that you absolutely should be your child's friend. You shouldn't be just their friend, but what is a friend? A friend is someone who has a close bond with you, someone who understands you, someone you can confide in, someone you like being around.

So definitely as a parent, not only should you be your child's friend, but you should try to be their best friend, which simply means they like being around you and they will tell you things and they will confide in you and they trust you. It's just you're their friend, but you're not their peer, I think, is the distinction

that I missed before I had kids. It's not their equal. How do you determine what's an appropriate punishment? Let's just say one of your children acts up. how do you make sure you don't go too far or too soft on an issue? First of all, I'm not overly dogmatic on some of these things. Some people are very dogmatic about punishments. They say never spank or don't do timeouts or, you know,

I think there could be a place for all different kinds of punishments. But the main thing is that most people say, which is true, which is that you don't, you shouldn't be angry while you are administering. Whatever the punishment is, you shouldn't be angry while you're administering it. Now, in reality day to day, you're going to get ticked off at your kids. It's going to happen. Like it happens to everybody. You always want to, if I had this situation with my six, how he just turned seven,

my seven year old son this morning where he did something very out of line. And I was very, and his, and, you know, my wife sent him to me. And I was initially pretty ticked off when I heard about it. But I told him, okay, you need to stand there in the corner until I'm ready to talk to you. And then I, you know, I, you know, I, left the room so I could calm down a second so I could actually approach this like an adult and then I went and I talked to him and I administered the I gave him what the consequences were going to be for the action but when you go in and you're just like pissed off then then you're then

you're then you're just taking your anger out on your kid um and that's not parenting you know that's just that's just you venting so it's leading by example right and you're also so many of problems you have with kids is that they're not able to control their emotions and they're not able to react rationally and you know to to frustration that's like 95% of the problems you have the kids is based around that but if you are demonstrating a similar inability to control your emotions a similar inability to react the right way to frustration then you know how can you expect anything better from them you can't expect your kid to be a better person you are. And you can't expect them to demonstrate a capacity that you yourself do not have.

Do you give them access to the internet? No. At all. Not at all. Well, they don't have phones. They don't have any kind of unfettered internet access at all. You know, we will, I'll put on a YouTube video. You know, I'll watch my son, my 10-year-old son likes to watch YouTube videos of people in the woods like building shelters. Sure. And which I also enjoy. So we'll sit and we'll watch that. So, you know, he's accessed the internet in that sense. But no, there's never a time when I'd be okay with them just sitting off in a corner somewhere accessing the internet. At what age do you think that is acceptable? I don't think there's ever a time when they're actually kids when I would be okay with them having unfettered internet.

that access just because I know where that leads you know I know I know what happens um eventually though they do you know I also don't want to be in a position where they turn 18 and they've never they don't know anything about tech they have no uh they have no familiarity with it we don't want to put them in that position either because then you're also worried about them finally getting the phone and just going nuts like because it you know so I think eventually you have to slowly kind of introduce that stuff in a very controlled setting, which is what we will do. What are you most concerned about if they have access to the internet? Of course, one of the primary concerns is the pornography and the gratuitous,

objectionable content that's all over the place, like what we just talked about, even stuff like that you can go on Twitter and just see someone get shot in the head as you're scrolling past. So there's that, there's the sexual content. And, you know, there's the fact that, according to some studies, the average age of first pornography exposure for kids is like eight now. I mean, it's crazy. And I don't think we have any concept of just how deeply that is affecting and changing, like, whole generations of human beings. Their first introduction to human sexuality as a concept is internet pornography.

It's just, I think we're whistling past the graveyard a little bit. on what that means for the human race to eventually, you know, be a civilization where everybody's in that boat. That was everyone's first introduction. So I'm very worried about that for my kids. That's probably the main thing. But also just I want them to have a childhood. I want them to be able to entertain themselves

and use their imagination and go and do the things that I did when I was a kid. Anyone who's an older millennial and older than that, we love talking about our childhoods of you know when I was a kid I ran out barefoot and in the woods and my parents said be back for dinner but that's what we did but do you think you could do that today because I hear a lot of people saying well yeah it was safer 40 years ago and kids could go and do that and they come back on

when the street lights go you know come on yeah could you recreate that today I think a version of it depends on where you live yeah if I lived in an unsafe neighborhood or the city I certainly wouldn't do that but if you live like in a neighborhood that I lived in when I grew up I just lived in a normal middle class neighborhood and that's the kind of childhood we had. We left in the morning and we came back at night. And if the neighborhood is safe, there's no reason why you can't do that.

At a certain age, you wouldn't send your five-year-old out like that, but at a certain age, I think you can. And even if you're not comfortable with that, you still, you know, I don't send my kids out totally out of my sight for hours at a time. but they're still out in the yard playing. They play games. They like to color and draw, and that's how they spend their time. And I want them to have that. But before we get into that, guys,

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It's completely free with the link down below in the description. Again, it's absolutely free to start creating high-quality content today. with the link down below in the description. Enjoy, thank you so much, and now let's get back to the podcast. And what about managing your relationship? How did you meet your wife? So I met my wife on E-Harmony, actually.

Yeah. She doesn't like me admitting that publicly. What year was this? 2009. Okay. Yeah. What attracted you to do you were against dating apps, right? No, I'm not.

I'm not at all. I'm not against, well, first of all, back then, a dating site is probably different from what a dating app is now. And these were dating sites that were designed for like, okay, I'm interested in someone. I want to meet someone who's a more serious person and looking for an actual relationship.

And Harmony had that reputation of being more like marriage focus. Like you're there to find somebody versus I think Tinder is like, I'll find somebody tonight. Right. And I don't think Tinder existed back then, I'm pretty sure. Dating apps in general, I don't think, you know, those were still in the future at the time. So I think, yeah, if you're on one of these hookup apps where this is what people use it for to hook up,

then yeah, you're not going to have success probably finding someone who's serious about having a relationship. But it is true that just even, I know from my own experience, that towards the beginning of the 2010s, it already started to feel like if you want to actually meet someone, how else do you do it? A lot of the normal communal spaces don't exist anymore, or it's not what it used to be. So how many dates did you go on with other people before you went on that first date with your now wife? My memory is that she was the first one I met on the site. I don't know, we talked on the phone for several weeks and then before we went on our first date. And I proposed to her six months later.

What drew you to her profile initially? Do you remember what the first message was? I take it you messaged her first. No way to get in trouble. I don't remember all these details as well as I should. I think, yeah, that's probably correct. I don't remember what the exact first messages were. I wish I did.

But what was it about her profile that you saw? Was it, was it a picture first? Was it something she wrote that you really liked? Or was it just like, here's our best recommendation. This is who we think that you might get along. Well, I mean, she's beautiful. So that, in reality, that's going to be the first thing you notice. So that is the first thing I noticed.

But it also was clear to me that she's just a serious person. No, I say serious. I don't mean like she can't laugh. She's also very, you know, joyful. But just she's looking for, she's not an overgrown child. Like she's an adult. But you can't, I don't think you can tell a lot based on our profile anyway. You have to actually talk to someone.

And then we went on our first date. And, you know, I kind of knew two hours into the conversation that I wanted to marry her. Two hours into the conversation? Yeah. Was there something specific that she said that you were just like, yep. We related on our fundamental values kind of aligned. And I thought she was just, she had a very warm affectionate personality, beautiful woman.

I could talk to her about, you know, we talked about interesting things. It wasn't, yeah, we had the small talk, like it to get past that. But we were talking about whatever, politics and religion and all these things they tell you you're not supposed to talk about on the first date. We talked about all that stuff.

and so it's like yeah of course I want to marry her what else am I going to wait for some this is it this is what you want right which is what I'm always like preaching to young men that I'm not saying that I didn't propose to her on the spot I waited six months but you have to know what you're looking for and then once you found that person it's like okay you found them you win you won that part of the game

but how did you know what you were looking for did you date prior to then and you're like, I don't like this, I don't like this. And then when you met your wife, you're like, this is, this fits what I don't. I dated. I mean, I met her when I was 24. So, of course, I dated before that. And I didn't have any experience that was like, oh man, that's the worst thing ever. I mean, ever was plenty of nice people. It just didn't, we didn't, really what it was is, is that our fundamental like principles and values aligning. I didn't, I never quite had that to the extent that I did with, with, with my, really. wife. And you know, they say the whole thing about opposites attract and I think that's true.

And my wife is like very much the opposite of me in a lot of ways. But that's all personality-wise. And that's fine. That's good. I think you want that. But your values, like the things you want in life, the things that motivate you, you know, I think those have to line up. And if they don't, maybe you can make it work, but that's a huge hurdle you got to get over early in the relationship. And it's never going to go away if you don't have that fundamental alignment the way that we did. It just seems like if that is arguably the most important decision that you're going to make in your entire life is who you're spending the rest of your life with, don't you think that a longer period of time getting to know them, also making sure that you have all of these stats and

data points of what you really do like and what you don't like, even years of experiencing that, plenty of options, plenty of choices than picking the winning contender would be the, I don't know, like let's say data-driven, most effective decision. No, because I don't think it is a data-driven. This is why I don't like when people use the word partner to talk about their spouses, because it sounds like a business. That's what you say about your business associate, your partner. And I don't say that about my wife.

She's not my business partner. This wasn't a business merger. These are two human beings who have come together in what I believe to be a sacred sacrament. your souls are becoming intertwined in a real true and mystical way, I think, in the sacrament of marriage. And so it's just something that is, it's so far beyond a business merger. I don't like to think of it that way. And it's also, this is why I don't think people say, well, you've got to move in together and so you can figure out all the different quirks the person has.

Why? Like, yes, they're going to have quirks. They're going to do stuff that annoys you. You know, you're going to have pet peeves. it's like, yes, so you don't need to move in to find that out about somebody. I can tell you right now, you'll have all that. And if you're going to allow that to be a deal breaker, well, then you'll just be alone forever. You'll never marry anybody.

What matters is the fundamental alignment. Like, do your values align? Are you attracted to each other? That, of course, really matters. And if you have both of those things, that's what you need. And the other thing is that once you get married, it's not like, it doesn't matter how long you date, once the marriage happens, it's sort of like you're starting at square one anyway. You still have to have your first day of marriage, no matter what. So you could be dating someone

for 10 years or 10 minutes. Like once you get married, now you're married and now a new phase of the relationship has started. And you have to walk into that first phase no matter what, about how much experience you have. I also think that part of it is this idea people have that, you know, you're looking for your soulmate, you're looking for the one. You know, I hate that phrase of, oh, she's the one. People ask me that sometimes.

How did you know she was the one? Well, she wasn't the one. I mean, it's not like there's one person out there of the eight billion people. There's just one out there who was designed specially for you, and it's written in the stars, and you have to find that one person. That's not the way it works. You don't find the one person.

You find a person who you line up with in this way. And then they become the one when you say, I do, when you get married. You know, so you get married not because this person is the one. They become the one when you marry them. And that's what makes the marriage vows so powerful is that you are choosing each other. This is not destiny aligning. This was not written in the stars. You are two people who were like lost out in the cosmos

and you have chosen each other and created something new together. If your wife does not look good in a dress, do you tell her? Yes. Yeah, I'll be honest about that. I think she looks good in almost everything. But, yeah, I've never found that to be. I don't know.

People see that as a hard question, I think you got to be honest with your, with your spouse. And she'll tell me, like, if I look ridiculous wearing something, she will... But you won't be offended. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I think there's a difference in reactions between women and men when they, you know... Yeah, I mean, you want to be, like, obviously, you want to be gentle about it. You know, because, you look like a hideous...

You look like a hideous hag in that thing. Get out of it. But if you're asked, and yeah, I mean, okay... What if you're not asked? If I'm not asked... But you see something, you're like, hey, that does not look good. Do you say something more... It would have to be, like, a...

You'd have to be wearing something that is embarrassing for me to offer up my opinion. But I don't think I've ever seen her wear or something like that. But if she asks me and she's like, hey, what do you think of this? I don't really like it. She doesn't get offended by that. Maybe she's as unique as a woman in that way, but she doesn't typically get offended by that. The way that you explain everything makes it seem like it's all just so simple. You're very matter of fact, you know, nonchalant about these really.

I would say like broad and, but also like dense questions, you know? Have you always kind of felt like you had, I don't know, like things were simple to you? Or do you think life is very complicated? I think a lot of these questions are simpler than we make them out to be. I think there's a difference between simple, like something can be simple and yet difficult, but doesn't make it complicated. So I think a lot, so something, for example, like finding the right person. person to marry. I think it's simple. What you have to do is a simple thing. It doesn't make it easy. It could be difficult. Losing weight. People want to make it very complicated. It's not complicated. It's actually very, very simple. Just eat less and exercise more. It's extremely simple. That's all the needs to be said about it. But it's not easy. So I think we conflate these these things. We think that we have we have trouble distinguishing between simple and hard and and and, and

complicated. Like, these are all different categories. Now, we were talking to Michael about gender roles in a marriage. Do you feel like a man could be happy in a marriage assuming a traditionally female role? Let's say a stay-at-home husband or a husband who, you know, does the housework, cooks, and the wife goes out and she makes the money? First of all, I wouldn't even say that cooking, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even categorize cooking as part of the, as like a feminine duty necessarily. but generally speaking, like that total role reversal that you're talking about, I'm not going to say, look, I'm sure there are people out there that have done that and will attest that they are happy, and I'm sure they exist.

I'm not denying that those people exist, but I do think that they're going to be an exception to the rule. And the general rule is that a man will most likely not be happy unless he is fulfilling his basic duty as a man, the duty that, like we talked to the beginning, that almost all human civilizations have recognized, which is that you need to provide for your family. And I think that what happens is that if a man is not doing that,

if he's the stay-at-home husband, the wife is out being the breadwinner, it might be fine for a time, but the man's going to start to feel useless. He's going to start to feel emasculated. and the woman is going to struggle to respect her husband because she's going to start to see him that way too. She's going to start to see to herself, like, what do I need you for?

I'm doing everything. And whether they admit that out loud and they'll say it's a different question, but I think that is what ends up happening. And once, when the man doesn't respect himself or struggles to, and then the woman doesn't respect the man, now your marriage is on life support.

Now you are. That's, that could be a terminal. case. It's a, that's a very, very dangerous place to be. And that's why the man, you know, the respect for the man in a marriage has to be, it's a very important thing that has to be nourished and cherished. Yeah. It also seems like a bit of a hot button issue if the wife or the woman makes more money than the man. And it seems like a lot of men are either insecure about that or a lot of women say, I prefer the man make more money. Yeah. And I think that is how most people feel. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions. I'm sure that someone will happily will say in the

comments, oh, my wife is the CEO of whatever, and we're happy. And I'm not going to deny that there are individual cases like that. But you are kind of working against the grain of human wiring. Like we are wired a certain way. So men are, we are designed. We are designed. to provide and care for our families. And because we're designed that way, that's what we want to do. We want to do what we are designed to do. That's happiness.

Is doing what you're meant to do is happiness. And I think if you don't do that, you're always going to be working against that crane. So for the average viewer that's 18 to 35 years old, most likely a man, if they find themselves waking up, they're unhappy on a day-to-day basis or they feel unfulfilled,

what recommendations would you give to them to feel better? Don't think stop thinking about your feelings so much. You know, I think that's part of the problem. What people, you know, we live in a culture that's very focused on feelings. And so we're always thinking about how we feel and how we feel about how we feel. And it becomes this kind of like infinite regress where we're just stuck in our own minds, like looking back into ourselves. And then we get into this kind of rhythm where we think, well, I can't do anything else.

I can't go out into the world and be successful and productive unless I get my, I got to get myself right, right? You hear people, people say this stuff all the time. I got to get myself right. I got to work on myself. And then once I got that figured out,

then I can go out and do all these things. I don't think that happiness works that way. I think that happiness is a byproduct of doing what you're supposed to do in life. And so it's more, it's not an end to itself exactly. So I think it's, the happiest moments I've had in my life

is when I'm just doing something else and then I stop and I look and I go oh I'm really happy right now okay and then I get back to what I'm doing it's like you kind of notice it but you don't dwell in it you don't try to sit there and like bask oh so happy

you just get back to what you're doing and you are happy and you're doing this and it's great you don't even think about happiness but if you try to sit there on the couch and conjure happiness like a genie out of a lamp. Yeah.

It will never happen. And if it does, it'll be so fleeting. But what if you reflect and you say, I am really unhappy doing this one thing? When do you take that into account? Yeah, well, that's why happiness and action are intertwined. And so it could be possible that you're doing, there's plenty of things you can do that will cause you to be unhappy.

And now your unhappiness, that could be a sign to you, that you should pursue something else. or it could be that you're unhappy doing this thing and the issue is not that you need to stop doing it, it's that you need to look at it differently. You'll hear from some parents sometimes. It will say, I'm just miserably happy. I'm miserably unhappy being a parent.

Every once in a while, it's like every month there's another article written by some cat lady in the New York Times, the Washington Post, talking about how terrible it is to be a mother, that sort of thing. Now, in that case, obviously, or I hope it's obvious, that the answer is not to stop being a parent. You can't stop being a parent anyway. You always be a parent.

So if you're unhappy as a parent, then it's almost certainly that you're just looking at it the wrong way. You're focusing on the wrong things. It does seem like, because I do read a lot of Reddit, and I see these posts, and it asks how many parents had kids that regret having kids. And there seems to be, and I don't know if this is just a selection bias

of just reading the people that post, but it does seem to be that there are a lot people out there who have kids who just don't want to be a parent, don't like being a parent, and if they could take it back, they would. They love their kids, but in hindsight, they, you know, wouldn't have had the children. How common do you think that actually is? I hope it's not very common. It does happen. I think it's probably more common today than it used to be. I do think there's a selection bias on Reddit, you know, a certain type of person there. Uh-oh, what does it say about me?

I mean, look, especially a certain type of person that would post on Reddit about their personal, about their personal lives, regardless. So there's selection bias. I also don't think it's true. I will say that if you feel that way about being a parent, you don't love your kid, so they can say that. It's funny, they always throw that in there. I hate being a parent.

I don't want to be around this little brat. I wish he didn't exist. Oh, but I love him. It's like, what does love me? What does hate mean? if that's love. No, you don't love your kid, actually. And that's exactly the problem, actually.

Is that love is a giving of the self. It's a self-sacrificing. Loving is Thomas Aquinas said that love to love is to will the good of the other, which just basically means you want what's best for someone and you want to help them get what's best for them in life. That's the job of a parent. That's the whole job right there. And there's real job.

joy in that. But I think these parents that are miserable, they've never, they've never even like attempted to do that job. Because they, they've never stopped thinking about themselves for long enough to think about their child. So they're just focused on the wrong truth. They're focused on themselves. And as a parent, there's all these little moments. And no one does it perfectly. I don't, certainly. But there's all these little moments that happen. And there's a real, there's a, there's a fork in the road kind of psychological thing here where, okay, I can choose to look at this situation this way and be really unhappy about it and annoyed, or I could choose to look at it this way and I could find great joy. And as a parent, you have these little moments

all the time throughout the day. So like, um, uh, there are a recent example for me, waking up in the morning. It's like a Saturday morning. And I think my wife had to go out for something. And so I was, it was just me and I have six kids, the six kids. And they're all like rambunctious and they need things and, you know, everything. And we've got to do breakfast. And it's like this whole thing. And it's Saturday morning, long week at work. You know, and so for a moment there, I was, I was like miserable. I'm miserable and pissed off because it's Saturday morning and everybody needs me. And my wife's not there because she had to go out.

I got all these kids coming after me. And I'm just pissed off and miserable because, you know, I just wish that I could lay in bed and not be bothered. Because I had chosen to look at the situation that way. But then I stopped myself and I said, well, wait. you know, okay, I could choose to whine about this and look at it that way, or I could choose to see it as, wow, this is incredible. I have this house full of life and love and these beautiful young kids

or full of energy and think about all the things that we can do today and have fun. And I can see it that way. And it doesn't always work this way, but in that moment, I was able to just like, okay, I'm going to choose to see it that way. And then I was happy. And I think for a lot of parents, they get into the habit of always seeing it in the way that's going to bring them unhappiness. Always focus on the things that will make them unhappy.

And then they can't get, they just get stuck in that pattern. Do you think people need to have kids to be fulfilled? I think you have to be a parent to be fulfilled, but that doesn't always take on the traditional kind of biological sense. So I think every man has a paternal calling. Every woman has a maternal calling. For most of us, that's going to be the traditional, like, have kids. be a mother or father.

Not everybody, though. And there are people who are called to a different form of fatherhood, a different form of motherhood. It might be charity. It might be mission work. It might be the religious life. It might be something like that, you know. And you're not apparent in the, and of course there's adoption as well, obviously. But you're still, you're still taking on this maternal or paternal role of caring for someone else.

So no matter what, you cannot find. find happiness without living a life where you are, you know, in service to someone else and caring for other people. And the problem is that people try to find happiness in service of themselves only and in my career and my own financial advancement and all that. And you're not going to find true fulfillment that way. That's for sure. Do you think some people are just too selfish, though, to have children, that maybe they're better off just not having kids? I certainly think there are a lot of very selfish people. And if you are very selfish, that you'll be a terrible parent.

But I don't want to let them off the hook. I say, well, they're selfish. Because it's a choice to be that way. They don't have to be that way. It's not like they, it's not a birth defect. So yes, I mean, there are selfish people who in that state should not have kids. But my answer to them is not, don't have kids. It's stop being a selfish bastard and then have kids.

That would be my answer to them. That's interesting. It reminds me of what Hormosey was saying about patience. but with selfishness in mind, you are a selfless person if you are naturally a selfish person, but you just choose to be selfless. Like you are who you act as. You are your actions, your behavior, not necessarily maybe what your brain is thinking at a given moment. So they act patient, even though you're super impatient, you're patient person.

Fake until you make it. Yeah. I think it's one of the great wisdoms. I agree. Yeah. So we have just a couple more topics to hit on. I know we're kind of getting close on time. But you, you didn't, well, I don't know if you starred, but you were in the movie Lady Ballers.

I saw you in the trailer. You, by the way, make a gorgeous woman. Well, thank you. But that is also, see, that's the claim based on that one little clip in the trailer, is I must be playing a trans. In fact, there's been media reports that I'm playing a trans woman or a, I've also heard that I'm playing a gay man. Actually, the character, surprisingly, straight, heterosexual. male.

Just I got the wig and I've got the whatever it is the what is like the robe the Buddhist like yoga robe I don't know Toga?

No. Kind of yeah but like an Asian version anyway I didn't absorb this character very well apparently so that's the good

basically it's the character is the most liberal character in the whole film is who they decided they wanted me to play someone who's designed to be the exact opposite

of me in every possible respect. But did they ask you if you wanted to be maybe like a woman or something like that? Because I feel like that would be kind of funny considering the nature of what is a woman. Did you like veto that? Yeah, there wasn't much conversation. I mean, there are, you know, in the film, it's part of the joke of the film is that there are all kinds of characters who are, you know, identifying as women in order to play in women's sports. That role was never really floated to me because probably mainly because it would involve playing sports. So they figured I'm probably not fit for that. So this is what they gave me. You know, I didn't even, I read the script of the

film. I didn't know what character they want me to play. They wouldn't tell me until after I read it. And then, and then I was informed that, you know, that one guy, like the most obnoxious guy that you probably hate them. That's you. I heard, by the way, I don't know if you saw, but the, the recent alien existence, you know, object that was found. I think it was in Mexico, discovered by the Mexican government. It basically proves alien existence? What were your thoughts about that just on existence in general? It looks pretty real to me. Yeah, I'm, uh, you know,

my audience knows I'm fully bought in on the alien stuff. Maybe, maybe to an extent where it's become, it may, it maybe has become too much a part of my brand that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, you know, I don't know if I want to be known primarily as the alien guy, but, um, but I am, uh, uh, you know, the Mexican thing, you could argue, it's like They had actual alien specimens that they put on display. Some people have argued that they looked clearly like little dolls or something. Paper mache. Paper mesh.

It makes no sense. I don't know if that particular thing was legitimate or not, but I am quite firm in my belief that, number one, aliens, that being rational beings elsewhere, they don't live on Earth, they certainly exist in the universe. And I think there's a pretty good indication that they've been to Earth. What they've done here, how many times they've visited. I don't know.

But there's enough going on that I think that becomes a rational theory in my mind. Why is it rational to believe that life exists outside of our planet? To me, the number one reason is simply the size of the universe. It's how big the universe is and how many planets we know are in it. And we know that there are trillions and trillions of planets in the universe in the known universe, hundreds, you know, 100 billion galaxies in the known universe, 100 million stars or so in each galaxy, you know, which leads to trillions of planets.

So I think that it's just sort of absurd to, like, we don't know one way or another, right? We don't know. But if you had to guess, just intuitively. Right. If you had to guess, is their life on other planets, or are we literally the only planet out of trillions that has life on it? I think it's ridiculous to guess that we're the only ones.

The analogy that I use, if you're lost at sea and you wash up on some island somewhere, and you don't know anything about the island, but it's very, very big, you know, and you look, and all you can see is the beach and you look around, you don't see any life. But this is all you've seen, it's just the beach, this little portion of the beach. Would it be rational to assume, based on looking at what you can see of the beach, that the whole island is empty except for you? no I mean you would assume there's probably something living here based on how big it is

you know and I think that I would say something similar about the universe we can't even conceptualize how large a trillion is you know no you can't like a trillion people forget how much bigger that is than a billion a million or even just like one it's just ridiculous counting seconds I think between a billion and a trillion or even a million to a billion is just absurd

put the numbers right here you guys can see it Yeah, yeah, when you get to counting to a billion, how many, like, decades that takes versus a million is wild. And the size, I mean, just think about the closest star to us is like four light years away. And that's our, that's our next door neighbor. That's like, in galactic terms, that's like as close as you and I are. And that's four light years away, which is like, yeah, which is 20 some trillion miles. with current technology, it would take like thousands of years to get there. And that's the closest start.

And in just our galaxy. And then when you think about hundreds of millions of galaxies, it's just, it's absurd. I want to ask, what is something that you think the left is doing right? And what is something the right is doing that you disagree with? Well, in the first part, so what's the left doing right? I think on their fundamental views, they're wrong about everything, but strategically, they've obviously, look, I mean, they've obviously won the culture. And we talk about the culture war, which I believe is a real thing. But the war is, it's not like two equal armies meeting on the battlefield in a pitch battle.

This is guerrilla, you know, on the right, this is a sort of cultural guerrilla. warfare that we're engaged in because we are a conquered country culturally. How do you think they did that? Well, through the institutions, you know, they took over very slowly, but surely, but surely, all of the major institutions in this country that run everything. So they took over academia and the media and corporate America, the government, the bureaucracy, you know. But why were they able to do that when the right wasn't able to?

What was it about those ideologies that made them so pervasive? I think there's a lot that goes into it. One is that, you know, academia for a very long time is always kind of skewed left as school system. So that was kind of a good starting point for them because if you can take over, if you can capture academia, well, now you are in charge of shaping the minds of each new crop of America. that comes through. Until recently, anyway, they've been very effective, even when you look at Hollywood, they've been very effective at spreading their ideas through entertainment in ways where you don't really notice, where you don't notice it. So they've been very good at spreading

their ideas in ways that the person who is ingesting those ideas hardly notices. Now, recently they've gotten very bad at that. So now they're very on the nose with the woke Hollywood films and everything. And they're suffering because of it. That's why Disney. Disney this whole year has not had a billion-dollar film when in 2019 they had like six of them because they're so on the nose that hitting you over the head with the wokeness. People notice it now,

and they're like, I don't want to go to the movies and be lectured too. But you go back to the 90s. I mean, even people long for the old days of Disney back in the 90s when they were putting out stuff like Pocahontas. Well, those movies were also, I'm not going to say they were woke to the extent that modern did.

Disney is, but they were very left-leaning. Pocahontas, for example, is like, the bad guys are the white Europeans. The Native Americans are talking to trees and singing and, you know, this perfect group of people that were dominated by the white Europeans. Like, it's a very left-leaning version of history, but generally speaking, they were much more subtle about it.

And I think that that was more effective for them. Yeah. And then what is something the right is doing wrong or that you disagree with? In recent history, strategically, the right has done almost everything wrong. Maybe one of the big ones I would point to is just this issue of like how do we use things like entertainment to spread our ideas. And up until recently, and obviously the Daily Wire, we're trying to offer some kind of corrective on this. But historically, you know, you had Hollywood, you had the music industry, and then you had the conservative version of all that stuff,

and it's just on the nose, hitting you over the head. We made a Christian movie about Christian values. You can come and watch it. Well, it's like, unless you already agree, no one's going to watch it because they realize that this is a whole movie where the movie itself, the story is secondary to the message. And so if you don't care about the message or don't agree with it, you're not going to watch it. And I think the right's getting a little bit better in that regard, but only ever so slowly.

Let's say you're out of Kroger, okay, just picking something up, you're moving back to your car and you see me. And I'm walking up to my car with my cart, and I put the groceries in the back of my car, and I get in the car and I drive off. And I don't return the cart to the cart return. What do you do? Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news.

Choose news, not noise. CBC News. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment of us. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center.

Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. If I pull out a gun and I open fire on you as you drive away. way. Nice. I'm not quite at that point yet. Look, I would, there's nothing I can do because you've already, you've made your choice. But I will judge you silently, in my opinion of you as a person will have forever been decided. You know, what's interesting is I do think, although that's kind of like a minor offense,

I do think that that's indicative of some deeply rooted character flaws. Oh, I totally do, but it's kind of like being, it's like going out to a restaurant and being mean to a waiter. You know what I mean? Like that, sure, the offense is just a casual thing and the waiter's going to forget about it an hour later

and you're not going to think about it, whatever. But it's indicative. It's like if you find yourself in that situation, you're being mean to someone, rude to someone for no reason other than maybe like a power dynamic. It's like, okay, reconsider maybe who you are as a person because I'm sure that that's, you know, it's being mean.

being exercised in other aspects of your life as well that maybe aren't so obvious. I think it depends on where you leave the cart. No. Return to the cart return. The car return. Sometimes the cart returns really far away. But it doesn't matter. What if a gust of wind hits?

What if it puts a car is why it's a car? That's why you have to put the wheels over the little parking curb. That's crazy. How far can the parking? I've been in many grocery store parking lots in my life. They're not. How far are we talking? I park next to the return to make it actually easy.

You don't have to travel across the Sahara deser. I don't know. I'm trying to play devil's advocate here. I've just tried to say there's a difference between leaving it behind a car, just like in the wind versus like... There's no difference. No difference. You put...

That's where the cards go. And you manage to obtain the cart in the first place. Like, you managed to figure that out. You were able to walk somewhere and get the cart, push it all the way around the store. It's also an eyesore. And then as soon as you get out, all of a sudden it's like, I can't go another step.

I can't do it. What annoys me are parents We try to use that as an excuse Well, go all these kids with me I can't What am I supposed to do? What do you mean?

What do you do? You take the kids with you To the car carol Or you leave them in the car It's like you can Get the kids to return it That was like what my job was Or you can

You can leave the kid in the car And walk 20 feet away Like he's not going to get kidnapped What do you think is going to happen In those 20 feet? So no I agree that it's a small thing, but because it's small, it says a lot. It's, it's kind of like, you know, if you

open your door and you hit someone's car in the parking lot next to you and scratch their door panel, something like that, everything about you as a person is decided in that moment. If you don't leave a note, if you don't leave a note, if you just leave and if you drive away, say, I'll let them do. Well, that's, that's like, even though it's small, it tells me everything I could ever need to know about it. I don't think that's a small issue. Yeah, that's a big issue. I would say because that's like directly one-to-one affecting someone else, whereas, you know, you put it over a curb and it would take a lot for that to actually negatively impact someone's life. We had a buddy. This was actually just recent. He parked and the lady parked right next to him

and our kid was in the back seat and just kicked the door open. And so he walked around because they were in the car as this happened and said, your kid just dented the thing. And they'd no, that was already there. And then they lined it up perfectly to show that like the paint on this is the same as this. No, that was it. We didn't do that. It just like offended at the fact that the kid did it. Oh, and it was on camera, by the way. So what happened? What was the result?

He, I think, just got some cash. Because they didn't want to go through insurance. He didn't want to go through insurance. It's very expensive. It's unfortunate as a, you know, if your kid does that, you got to take response. But it's your kid. You got to take it. I was walking on the street a few years ago with my son. And, and he just he randomly picked up a rock

just that he saw on the and as if he was like skiving rocks on a stream he just threw it and it happened to hit a car that was parked and I'm like what are you but of course he's like four years old he's like I don't know I don't know why I did that

and so I had to and it left to scratch it's like man I had to wait there for someone because they'd run into like a takeout place so I just waited waited there for them to come out and I had to you know how'd you resolve that uh i think i yeah i think i gave him some money or something i said like whatever they want to do i was like however you want to resolve this you want to send my kid

to prison that's fine like whatever you want to do we we are we are in your debt now i think you should make your kid go and explain his thought process to that person say i threw the rock yeah i made i made him apologize okay but and i was already asking him like why did you do that what did you think explain to me the thought process of picking up the rock and throwing it what did you think was going to happen. But four-year-old are... But he could be scarred and never want to throw rocks ever again. Yeah. Well, no, he's, he's, he's, that, what, that didn't happen to him. He's still throwing rocks. A lot of cars, though. Not a cars. Okay. Um, are there any other pet peeves? I feel like you lamenting about things is just so, for me, it's just so exciting. It's just so fun.

Well, I don't, I don't think they're pet peeves, though, because I think that these are, pet peeves are like things that you, because of your own personal quirks find annoying, but that are not objectively wrong, to me that's a pet peeve. But the things that I'm talking about are objectively wrong. So I don't have any pet peeves. You don't have any pet peeves? No, because if I'm complaining about it, it's because it's wrong and you shouldn't do it.

So it's not a pet peeves. So your pet peeves are based on reality? It's based on just a moral intuition. It's objective morality. Yeah, I will not admit that any of them are actually pet peeves. Because if I admit that, then I'm admitting that it's just a subjective piece. I admit that I'm just a whiny bastard. which I know that there are plenty of people who say that, probably, but I won't admit it, I refuse to admit it.

Got it. Okay, well, as we wrap up, we have one last ask of you, which is, could you do word association for just a couple words for us? Oh, okay. So first thing that comes to mind when I say Matt Walsh. We're holding back. You're really curating this.

Yeah, because you want me to just like say the first word. Yes, first word. That's... Say it again? Matt Walsh. Me. Michael Knowles. Person.

I'm going to make this as boring. Oh, no. Okay. Give us like a little, like association. So it has to associate in some capacity. No, because I can't open up the psychological door. Okay. I can't do it.

Okay. I got to protect myself. Ben Shapiro. A wonderful employer. Brett Cooper. A lovely person. Jeremy Boring. Great boss.

All right. Biden. Son of a bitch. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Matt, for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you to the daily wire.

Thank you, the entire production team. Once again, you guys are amazing. And with that said, you guys. Until next time.