The Matt Walsh Show - Matt Walsh's 10 Tips for Life

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Matt Walsh gives 10 life tips that are sure to change your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is all I'm saying, because the holidays can be stressful. But what I would recommend, if you're a man and you're stressed around the holidays, get married. So if you're right now, three weeks from Christmas, and you're a single guy, you're stressed about the holidays, just run out and get married real quick. And that'll take care of it. It is really stress-free to be a man during the holidays. I can't recommend it enough. I love it. And then the great thing is, here's what makes it fun, is that when everyone's opening their gifts on Christmas,

I get to find out what I gave them. You know, so it's always a nice surprise. I also find out what I bought for myself. And it just makes the whole experience great. And it's really, it's really wonderful. Cannot recommend marriage enough for many reasons. That's just one of them. It's not the only reason, but that's one of them.

So, you know, they say honesty is the best policy, but sometimes in marriage, you know, I do tend to doubt that a little bit. I have to be honest with you. I'll be honest about that. Sometimes I doubt a little bit. I sometimes doubt the value of honesty in marriage. And I'll just explain why. Like, for example, yesterday, I got home from traveling. I was traveling over the weekend.

I was in Austin. And for a pro-life event, actually, because they do have those in Austin, it turns out. And it was a great event. Anyway, I came home. A few hours, I thought everything was fine. A few, and everything looked normal and the same to me when I got home as it did when I left, because I left a day before.

and a few hours after I got home, my wife said to me, she said, as we're sitting on the couch, hey, so you didn't say anything about my hair. And I said, and this is where the honesty kicked in. This is where I was going to be honest. And I said, what about your hair? And she said, I dyed it. And I said, oh. And she said, you know, it's brown now. It was blonde before. And then I said, it was blonde before? and then I realized I should stop saying things in that moment. But here's my point. I was honest for the whole conversation.

I was completely honest. Now, do you really want to tell me that was the best policy? I don't think it was. And then actually, in my defense, I actually went, because I never know when to drop it. So a little bit later on, I went back to try to prove my point. I pulled up her profile picture from Twitter, which is from before she allegedly dyed her hair.

And I showed it to her, and I said, no, your hair was brown before. It looks the same. I was trying to mansplain her own hair color to her. I was bringing facts and evidence and destroying her with it. But it didn't matter. She said I was colorblind. I don't know. Maybe I am.

I am at this moment calling for a complete and total shutdown of tipping until we figure out what the hell is going on, to paraphrase Donald Trump. Now, to be clear, I don't consider myself to be a cheap person. Growing up, my dad would always tip 20 to 25% as a baseline starting point at restaurants. I have inherited this custom and will also generally. tip 20 to 25%, sometimes more actually, partly as an act of generosity and partly as an apology because I have four young kids and as a consequence, we leave our tables looking like a pack of wild dogs has just been dining there, except the dogs at least would eat all their

chicken nuggets, which is more than I can say for my daughter. But in any case, the point is, I have always tipped well, I think. And I've tipped the pizza delivery guy well also. And the cab or the Uber driver. And of course, if I'm staying at a fancy hotel, then I know I'm supposed to tip basically everyone who happens to glance at me. At fancy hotels, employees will invent weird and unnecessary things to do for you just so they can get a tip. Somebody will like come to your room at 8.30 in the morning and spoon feed you granola and clip your toenails. You're supposed to tip them $5. And I've always gone along with that. I have prided myself as a tipper. But recently, I have reached my limits because the problem is that now everybody expects a tip. Whereas before you

were only supposed to give a tip in certain limited and specialized circumstances, now every person who rings up a purchase at a cash register or pours you a cup of coffee wants to be tipped for their trouble. The solicitation for tips can come in only these mildly invasive ways, like there's a tip jar left out on the counter or sometimes in slightly more obnoxious forms, like when you're handed a receipt or told to confirm your purchase on an iPad. That's a big one now. They flip the iPad around and you're supposed to click through, how much gratuity do you want to leave. But sometimes, and I've had this experience more than once, especially recently, the person ringing up the purchase will actually ask you outright whether you would like to add a

gratuity, like asking you verbally, applying social pressure and attempting to make you look like a jerk to the other customers in line if you say no. Now, fortunately, in my case, I'm used to being a jerk in public, so I have no problem responding with, no, I don't want to add a gratuity. or the more passive-aggressive. No, but thanks for asking. Many kinder and gentler people than myself, however, are guilted into tipping a dollar or more on a coffee

that's already twice as expensive as it should be. The situation is entirely untenable. The average cost of living in America has increased by upwards of 65% in the last two years because of excessive tipping. Don't fact-check me on that figure. It's emotionally correct, if not factually correct. So I have to put tipping on probation.

banning it across the board temporarily until sanity can be restored to the proceedings. And here's some sanity. Just because you work in customer service doesn't mean you automatically deserve a tip. You are getting paid a wage after all. Customers are already paying for the good or service you're providing. Here's the way I look at it. Tipping should only come into play if three conditions are met. Number one, it's a low-paying service job.

Two, it's a service that I could not or would not want to perform myself. And three, my experience as a customer can be greatly enhanced by your excellent performance or greatly diminished by your poor performance. So those are the three conditions. This is why we should and always have tipped waiters. Waiter has a low-paying job. And the fact that the customer is at a sit-down restaurant means they don't want to cook and serve themselves. and the quality of the customer's experience at the restaurant is highly dependent on the quality of the waiter's service.

A bad waiter means a bad time. A good waiter means a good time. Barbers and pizza delivery guys also meet all three conditions. But what about a cashier ringing up my items at a grocery store? Often they ask for a tip now too. But they shouldn't receive one because, yes, condition one, low-paying job is met, but conditions two and three are not. I would gladly use the self-checkout if it's an option. So it's not a service I couldn't or wouldn't do my and though there are people who somehow find ways to be very bad at running cash registers, there really isn't any way to be excellent at it. So my experience as a customer will be about the same with an excellent cashier as it is with a mediocre one. The barista pouring my coffee also should not be tipped because she fails to meet all three conditions. Again, condition one is

met, okay, low paying job, but I could without much trouble pour my own coffee if given the option. In fact, at some places, they'll just hand you the empty cup and have you fill it yourself, yet even then they want a tip. The simple act of picking up an empty cup and doing this, like just that, this is it. This is what earns you a tip now. Here you go. That'll be three extra dollars. Like, you get a financial bonus for doing that. This system with the three conditions I've outlined also explains why we don't tip, say, airline pilots.

in their case, conditions two and three are met. I can't fly the plane myself, and my experience as a customer would be quite unpleasant if the pilot isn't good at his job, but condition one is not met. Airline pilots are paid handsomely, and for good reason. Now, the only category that throws my system for a loop are the endangered species known as bathroom attendance. It used to be a lot more common than they are today, but you still find them sometimes standing by the sinks at like a bar or a restaurant handing out towels and mints, I've always tipped them, even though I could quite easily grab my own towel, and I'm really not interested in mince that have been saturating in the fumes of strange farts all day. But I tip mainly out of pity, because they have to stand there in the

bathroom, experiencing the sounds and smells of human waste plopping ominously into toilets, or near toilets at any rate. An exception was made for bathroom attendance, but now everybody wants the bathroom attendant exception. Now everybody expects a tip. Even random people online will post their Venmo or GoFundMe, soliciting funds for no reason after having provided you absolutely no service of any kind whatsoever. They just say, hey, by the way, if you want to give me some money, here it is.

It's not even tipping anymore. This is panhandling. And we have to pull back from it while we still can. Before it gets so out of hand that you'll be bankrupted just by running errands for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. Given recent SCOTUS wins, it feels like the pendulum may be swinging back to a time when the nuclear family was situated at the center of American life where real conversation, learning and growth began at home with your family gathered around the table. And President Ronald Reagan's farewell address, he said, all great change in America begins around the dinner table. So you've got to bring your family to the dinner table with Good Ranchers.

Good Ranchers cares deeply about providing families with high-quality meat at a reasonable price. their mission is to bring people to the table, making those shared moments with your loved ones, easy, accessible, and most importantly, delicious. Good Ranchers ships 100% American meat, born, raised, and harvested in the U.S. right to your door. Plus, when you subscribe, your price is locked in for the life of your subscription,

no inflation when it comes to Good Ranchers. Good Ranchers not only supports American agriculture, they're also big fans of the Daily Wire and big supporters. They sponsor all of our shows, so you've got to check them out. Use my code, Matt, for $30 off, plus free shipping on your order. take advantage of this offer, invest in time shared with your family. You're going to buy meat anyway, so you might as well buy great meat from folks who support all that we do here.

Go to good ranchers.com slash Matt to start bringing people back to the table and eating seriously delicious food also. If you already bought from Good Ranchers, well, show me what you're making. Post a photo of your meal. I'd love to see it and tag me and my friends of Good Ranchers so they can see it too. I was just on a plane. I mentioned yesterday we were traveling over the weekend, and I was on a plane. fully packed flight.

So I guess we're forgetting about the coronavirus thing now. Of course, you have to be socially distanced to get on the plane, as we know, but then you get on the plane and you're just packed in like sardines. And there's someone sitting next to me in the middle seat. And so here's the kind of person that you ban, I think. And if I'm setting the rules for an airline, this is what I'm doing. When you're sitting in the middle seat, a lot of times there's controversy over who gets the armrests? Well, I'll tell you right now.

And I'm surprised that many people don't realize this. When you're in the middle seat, you get no armrests. You have no right to any space at all. You are an imposition on the people around you. And when you're sitting down in the middle seat and you have to kind of do that awkward thing where you say, oh, can I sit there? Is anybody sitting there? And you feel like both the person in the aisle and the window seat is looking at you and judging you and hating you for being there.

That's right. They are. And they do hate you for being there. So all you're allowed to do in the middle seat, this is all you can do. You sit still, do not move, do not speak, do not eat, don't put your tray table down, don't get on your laptop, don't even read, because that involves moving your elbows. This is all you do the entire time, just like this. Do not move. I don't care if it's six hours. Anyone who doesn't follow that rule should be banned. So that's the first thing I would do. Middle seat, yeah, middle seat, you are basically less of a person.

You have no constitutional rights, no rights of any kind, because you're sitting in the middle seat. Quick little fitness tip for you, a little bit fitness inspiration. I like to inspire you. I don't know if you knew this on the show. I consider myself a motivational, inspirational speaker in many ways. So yesterday I was coming home from the gym, stopped at the gym on the way home from work. And, you know, I'd be going to the gym pretty regularly, feeling good about that. But the problem is that my diet isn't great.

I eat crap all the time. Just a lot of junk food. That's the truth. and they say you can't outrun a bad diet. You know, you can't work out enough to compensate for the bad diet. You're always going to be like a net. It's always going to be a net negative in the end. So on my way home, I was thinking about this and realizing if I only had a good diet,

I'd be doing well. If it was just for the diet part. And I resolved in that moment, I had this like moment in the car driving home. And I resolved, they said, I'm going to start eating healthy from this moment on. It's going to happen. Not eating junk food. I'm not going to, whatever you're going to cut. back on carbs, all that stuff. And I was resolved to do it. I felt I just was, I felt so motivated.

And then I walked in my home and the first thing my wife said to me was, hey, we made brownies. And so I ate half the pan immediately. And that's when I realized I had a second epiphany. And I realized as I was eating my third brownie, I realized, you know, you can't outrun a bad diet. that's true but you can go for the tie and uh you know that's bad that i think that's good enough right just kind of maintaining where you're at that's what i'm going for you know i just have to say i almost this is something i almost talked about for the daily cancellation but then something else came along that annoyed me more and so i'm doing that instead but uh this is this is a something that's plagued me for for my whole life and it happened to me again this morning when i was coming in i was at

at the stopping the gas station. You know, the only thing worse than someone who doesn't hold the door for you when you're walking into a building right behind them is when somebody holds the door for you when you're too far away. And I had, I was at the gas station. I was practically just getting out of my cars like 25 paces away. And this guy looks back, sees that I'm heading towards the door and holds it for me. And I tried to give him the wave and say, no, it's fine. Go ahead. Just keep going. And he gives me the way. Oh, I'll stand here. And so now it's just that awkward walk where I have to do that sort of half jog walk

to get to the door faster than I otherwise would have. All for the sake of me not having to just do this and open it myself. I'm perfectly capable of doing that. You can just keep going. So that is a lot worse. And here's the mistake people make, and this is just the tip I'm going to give you.

Walking inside a building, it's a very complicated procedure. But here's what you want to do. Because if you're walking into the building and then you look back, you do the check to make sure there's no one coming in behind. you. If you catch eye contact with someone coming in behind you, now you feel like you have to hold it for them, right? And even if they're 20 paces away. So make sure when you look back, your eyes are looking down. So you'll catch just their feet. And then you can make a judgment of how many paces. If it's more than 10 paces, you just keep going, let them open the door for themselves.

That's it. Okay. And at the end of the day, if they have to open the door for themselves, it's not a big deal. Always err on the side of being too rude than too polite. That's my tip. That's my etiquette tip. You know, you really got to trust your instincts. And so when you hear, you know, I always hear these claims from people when they're pushing, like, vegan or soy-based substitutes for real food. Or now they're pushing bugs. And they're saying, oh, you know, have a bug burger made of grasshoppers and crickens. It tastes just like the real thing.

And I never try that stuff, but I always know. I'm just like, there's no way it tastes the same. It just doesn't. And so yes, this past weekend, I tested the theory. I was at my in-law's house, and my sister-in-law is big into vegan ice cream. I don't think she hasn't gone full vegan herself, but some of the stuff. So she has this vegan ice cream. It was like mint chocolate chip.

And it looked pretty real. And she was telling me, like, no, it tastes just that you would never know the difference. It's delicious. And so I tried some of it. It was my first taste of a vegan substitute. and I said I took one spoonful and it was horrifying. Don't listen to anyone who tries to push a vegan ice cream on you. It tastes, you know what?

It tasted like melted chalk doused in peptobismal and splendor. It was really unsettling, actually. That's the word. I was trying to figure out there's something. Yeah, it's horrible. It's bad. It's also kind of creepy. It's weirdly inorganic and inedible.

It tasted. dyspeptic and dystopian even. It's like a ration they might serve in a prison cell on Mars in the year 2075. It was really, I didn't like it in other words. Stick with the real stuff. We need to have a very important conversation about hallway etiquette. Now that I'm working here in the office, I expect that this is an issue that will arise frequently as it does in any workplace. So I'm issuing a preemptive cancellation of everyone who violates the rules of hallway etiquette, etiquette. Everyone here at the daily understands that if they are canceled by me or violate one of my rules, they must immediately resign. This I'm pretty sure is written in the employee handbook. At least it's written in mine

because I added it in Cran. Now, as everyone knows, passing by another human being in a hallway is a daunting challenge. The problem is that as you both approach each other, you must time your greeting for exactly the right moment or else immense awkwardness ensues. If you're still 20 paces apart and you say hello at that point, then you have to walk the remaining steps having already issued your greeting. You can't very well greet each other and then have 15 seconds of a silence as you complete your walk past one another. It would be akin to, you know, making brief small talk on an elevator and then saying bye to the person when you both still have 10 floors left to climb. So you say, all right, well, good talking to you. See you later. Then you're both just standing there for another 30

seconds. We're talking nuclear levels of awkwardness. What this means that is that if you fire your greeting round too early in the walk past somebody in the hallway when you're both still, say, 15 seconds apart, you must then have precisely 15 seconds of small talk to fill the gap. But if the small talk goes on too long, or if one of you said something that requires a longer answer, now you'll end up stopping and having a stop in chat, which is exactly what you both want to avoid. That's what's at stake here. If you get it wrong, you may be stuck having, God forbid, a full-on conversation. Nobody wants that. The key then is to wait to acknowledge the other person, until you are exactly four paces apart.

In order to achieve this, you must make sure to avoid eye contact until precisely the moment when you hit the four-paced threshold. You could accomplish this by looking down at your phone, looking up at the ceiling, staring straight ahead, noticing a smudge on your shoe.

I have a tendency of noticing a lint on my sleeve whenever I'm in a hallway with someone, I'll brush at the lint until we hit four paces. And then I look up and I say, oh, hey, how are you? To which they can respond, great, how are you? And I can say, great, great. then I go back to the lint for about half a beat to sell the ruse. Boom, four paces have been completed.

And I have succeeded in passing by the person without having a meaningful or extended interaction, which again is the whole objective. Now, on occasion, you may run into someone who throws this plan for a loop because when you say, hey, how are you? They actually have the audacity to answer the question honestly, actually telling you how they are, as if you wanted to know, thereby sucking you into a vortex of conversation that may take minutes to extricate yourself from. Not much you can do about psychopaths like this except to avoid them at all costs.

One additional tip. If you really want to avoid talking to people in hallways or making eye contact, one thing you could try doing is walking backwards through the hallway. This will have the added benefit of not only avoiding eye contact and conversation in hallways, but probably in general too because your coworkers will think you're a weird freak. Of course, this can backfire if the other person is also walking backwards. So you might try somersaulting through the hallways. that's something the other person has to jump over you, but again, it avoids conversation with coworkers,

especially after you get fired. One other wrinkle to explore here briefly, what happens when you're out, say, at the grocery store and you pass by an acquaintance in like the condiment aisle? Well, you follow the four-paced rules as discussed, simple enough. But many of us have been in the crisis situation where you pass by the same person again in the pasta aisle. You can't use the, hey, how are you, line? Because it's already been asked and answered.

Now you have to make a brief joke about the fact that you already saw them, maybe something like long time, no see, or something similar. If you pass by them a third time, you could probably get away with a, hey, stop stalking me. But there cannot be a fourth time under no circumstance. Can you allow yourself to pass the person a fourth time? If you end up in the same aisle as them a fourth time, you have no choice but to drop your groceries, run in the other direction, change your name, move to Mexico.

these are the rules of passing people in hallways or aisles. It's very complicated, but they must be strictly observed. All right, you know, I get accused of being antisocial, mostly because I am antisocial. But one of the reasons why I get this acquisition is I'm not big into small talk. I'm not a big small talk. It's not that I don't like talk. I talk for a living.

I just don't, I'm not into small. This idea that like anytime you're around someone, you have to fill that space by making noise with your mouth. It doesn't matter what you're saying because that's what small talk is. And it annoys me to no end. And I experienced over the weekend maybe the worst example of this in my life. We were out from where they were at a lake and I was walking to the car to get something. And I noticed that my shoes were untied.

So I stopped to tie my shoes. And there was this guy walking by. and we're the only ones in the area for a moment. And so he's one of these small talkers. And he feels like, okay, in his mind, I guess he's thinking, I'm going to be passing by this other guy, and we're going to be in the same vicinity for five seconds. And so I have to say something to him.

And so this guy, what he says is he passing by. He says, ah, tying your shoes, huh? He actually said that. And I look up as, I said, yep, tie my shoes. And then he just kept walking. why do people what why do people do that why why do you feel you obviously had nothing to say to me at all that's perfectly fine just say nothing keep walking tying your shoes huh is that supposed to spark a conversation and then i feel like the antisocial one because i don't know how to respond to that

i'm not sure what i'm supposed to say is that supposed to be the beginning of a of a conversation i don't know. They say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And I don't really agree with that because if I followed that rule, this show wouldn't exist. But I think it's more like if you don't have anything to say, period, then don't say anything. I don't care if it's nice or not. Only speak when you have something to say. And then we'd do away with small talk entirely. So the actress Monique recently got herself in hot water because of comments she made about the way, according to her, some black women dress and present themselves in public. She was inspired to offer this criticism after noticing lots of slovenly attire at the airport. She spoke about the

issue for several minutes and then did a follow-up video further explaining it. But here's some of the original Instagram posts. And as we begin to walk through the airport, I saw so many, actually too many to count and too many for me to tap. But I saw so many of our young sisters in head bonnets, scarves, slippers, pajamas, blankets wrapped around them, and this is how they're showing up to the airport. And I've been seeing it, not just at the airport, I've been seeing it at the store, at the mall. I've been seeing sisters showing up with these bonnets and headscarves and these slippers. And the question that I'm having to you, my sweet babies, when did we lose pride in representing ourselves?

Now, after watching that, I'm beginning to think I need to start softening some of my more controversial takes by calling the audience sweet babies. Seems to work for Monique. Something tells me it wouldn't work as well for me. As for the point she's making, she's right, and this isn't just about black women. This is a problem that extends equally across all sexes, all of them, all 95 sexes, all races. In fact, it's maybe the one thing that still unites us as Americans is our one source of unity that we dress like hobos in public, especially at airports.

Airports now look like refugee camps with people sprawed out all over the place, laying across seats on the floor, wrapping themselves an old newspaper, using a half-eaten bag of chips as a pillow. Everyone's wearing pajamas. They have their shoes off, exposing their gnarled, fungus-crusted toes to the world. It's unseemly disgusting, and it's made all the worst by the fact

that all of us have paid weight. too much money for the privilege of being tossed in with this gang of foul-smelling circus freaks. Now, you see this sort of thing everywhere, as Monique rightly points out, at the store, walking down the street, everywhere. I saw a guy the other day at the grocery store wearing fuzzy bear slippers, as in slippers that looked like teddy bears as he walked around the frozen food aisle. This man was older than me, by the way. His attire was an unholy mix of infantilizing and bedraggled, childish and disheveled. Now, for comparison, go back and look at old photos taken of any random busy pedestrian area in, say, 1935. All the men are dressed in hats and suits, all the women are

wearing dresses. Everybody looks like they just came out of church all the time. Now, take that same street and get a snapshot from yesterday in the year 2021, and everyone's adorned like a bunch of nine-year-olds at a slumber party. In fact, get a snapshot of them walking. out of church, what few still attend, and they probably still look like nine-year-olds at a slumber party. I saw a guy at church recently in a Batman t-shirt and shorts. If that's what he considers dressing up, I'd hate to see what he wears to the airport, probably naked with just a bathrobe and socks with no shoes, which at least would make it easier when he goes through security, admittedly. Of course, many people, including Monique,

have pointed all this out before. It's well known and understood that people go out in public looking like half-melted slugs. We've become a nation of pajama-clad oafs. That much is known. But what's interesting is to compare this to the way that people present themselves online. Most Americans feel comfortable walking around in a three-dimensional public space

with uncombed hair, unbrushed teeth, sweatpants they just pulled out of a dumpster. But most of those same people wouldn't be caught dead on Instagram looking like that. This could be an interesting experiment, if a bit stalkerish, but it would be fascinating to see a person walking out of Target looking like they were just in there sleeping on the bathroom floor for the past nine hours, and then find that same person on Instagram and see the sort of image they put out into the world. It is guaranteed to be quite a bit different. Now, in fairness, it is easier, requires less effort to present yourself as well-kempt and attractive online. Because you only have to worry about what you look like for the half a second it takes to snap a picture, and then you can alter it in post if you're not.

you need to. One must expend more energy for a longer period of time to look suitable in the real world. You have to do things like, you know, shower, iron your shirt, put on pants. It's not much effort, but it's some effort and some is more than a lot of people are willing to give. But I think there's more to it. Aside from the effort, it seems that these days we simply don't value in-person interaction the way that we value our interactions with avatars online. I mean, the classic example, of this that everyone points to all the time. And the most depressing also is the infamous site of a family at a restaurant sitting around a table silently while they all interact with strangers through their phones. I think the poor dress in public is part and parcel with this. It speaks to our

inability to recognize the value of other humans and of human-to-human interchange, unless it's mediated by a digital device. It's common to hear someone defend their embarrassing attire and disgusting appearance. And this is what some of the people were saying to Monique, saying that, well, you know, I don't care what anyone thinks. It's none of their business.

Except that you do care what other people think. You care tremendously. It's just that you only seek approval of strangers in cyberspace. See, it's not a matter of not caring about people's opinions. It's a matter of which people's opinions they choose to care about.

And for so many, they choose the internet strangers rather than humans that they encounter face to face in flesh and blood. And I think that's the wrong choice. It's not just the wrong choice. It's deeply disordered and dehumanizing and demeaning to everybody involved. So please everyone, stop walking around in public looking like hideous, unbathed ogres, my sweet babies.