Playing to Win - 087 - Orion Taraban @psychacks Growing YouTube, Relationships, Red Pill @whatever

00:00:00.480 All right, guys. So welcome to another Plane to Win podcast episode. My guest today is

00:00:06.100 Orion Taraban. He is the creator of the YouTube channel Psych Hacks. I've been following his

00:00:12.200 channel for a few months now on the recommendation of a few guys in my community which have found

00:00:16.640 your content very useful. So welcome and thank you for joining me today.

00:00:20.960 Thank you for having me, Rich. It's great to be here.

00:00:23.000 So, I mean, we exchanged a couple of emails to sort of set this up and I was surprised

00:00:28.780 to hear that you had followed my channel since it was mostly about cars is what you said

00:00:32.680 and you said it was interesting to watch my own red pill journey over the years. What

00:00:39.220 have you seen from your perspective? I'm always interested when a doctor, you know, pays attention

00:00:43.640 to what I do and, you know- This is not a professional diagnosis.

00:00:46.760 No, I'm not looking for one either. Yeah. Well, yeah, I've been following entrepreneurs

00:00:51.540 and cars for a very long time back when it was mostly about cars and money. I don't know

00:00:57.460 much about your personal life, but I guess I could kind of put some of the pieces together

00:01:00.640 by following that over the years. And I think that you went through a divorce and I think

00:01:05.060 that opened your eyes to some of the realities of the, let's say, family court system, some

00:01:10.200 of the realities of single parenthood and dealing with the custody of children, dealing with the

00:01:19.000 distribution of your assets and kind of building back up. I think you probably found the red

00:01:24.700 pill around the same time that I did. And I saw that really begin to infiltrate more and

00:01:32.080 more into your content. And I could see, and I do this too, in my own channel, I could see

00:01:36.020 you kind of working things out in your videos. And I think like most guys, or maybe even all

00:01:42.240 guys, you went through a period that was more characterized as like the red pill rage.

00:01:46.740 And I think you had to get that out of your system and go through that because I think when

00:01:50.680 the scales are pulled from your eyes, it can be painful. But what I have noticed is in the last

00:01:56.620 few years, I think that you have a much more integrated, more balanced approach to the

00:02:01.060 intersexual dynamics. And I think you're really like coming into your own in that sense. Like it

00:02:07.360 feels really much more integrated. Yeah. Like there's always that shock, I suppose, for guys when

00:02:14.460 they stumble upon content like this, because it is revealing, it is exposing, it is sometimes painful,

00:02:22.180 it is sometimes obvious to us, and we don't want to accept it. And I mean, I've more or less pulled

00:02:29.840 away as much as possible from the manosphere, you know, aka the manoswamp, as I like to call it now,

00:02:35.620 and a lot of indulging or overindulging in which what seems a lot of guys can and seem to do. And I

00:02:43.580 noticed you put a video out on your channel about the red pill sort of offering a little bit of

00:02:48.240 guidance and somewhat of a warning about it. Can you talk about that a little bit?

00:02:52.620 Sure. The way I framed that in that video is that the red pill is almost like a spiritual journey,

00:02:57.560 because like a spiritual journey, you probably won't end up the same person at the end of it

00:03:01.800 than you started. And so in that video, I talk about two different like spiritual aphorisms that I

00:03:07.460 think are very appropriate to the red pill. And one of them has to do with enlightenment. And there's this

00:03:12.500 old joke about enlightenment that basically says, you want enlightenment, better not start.

00:03:18.640 Having started, better finish. So I think kind of the vibe there is, this is a really big ask.

00:03:27.040 It's hard to walk the path towards enlightenment. And it probably means that you'll have to lose

00:03:32.080 everything about the way your life used to be. So it's an extraordinary sacrifice. And if you walk

00:03:42.400 a little bit along and you start to renounce your wealth and you start to renounce the world and you

00:03:46.760 start to renounce relationships and you stop there, well, that's the worst of both worlds because

00:03:52.380 you didn't actually pass through that renunciation process into the joy of enlightenment.

00:03:57.420 enlightenment, you might as well have just stayed with all of your toys and women and

00:04:01.240 your comfortable little life. So if you're going to start this process, you kind of have to see it

00:04:06.580 through. And the metaphor that I extended to the red pill is that a lot of people take the red pill.

00:04:13.560 Guys take the red pill usually when they have a heartbreak or some sort of rupture to their

00:04:17.860 relationship. And they learn some things and it makes them really upset. And that's, in my opinion,

00:04:25.160 when they stop halfway towards enlightenment. And I talk about how some guys, it sounds like the

00:04:30.480 red pill is caught in their throat. Like they've swallowed it, but they haven't really digested it

00:04:35.380 yet. And it's sort of like, they're like sputtering in rage sometimes. And I know what that feels like.

00:04:44.780 It's not a good place to stay. I've been angry enough in my life. I don't really enjoy experiencing

00:04:51.640 that emotion. So I do what I can to learn my lessons, integrate and move forward.

00:04:57.960 I see four distinct categories of like sources of information to sort of remedy and help guys sort

00:05:04.820 of square away their mindset when it comes to dealing with relationships and women. And that's

00:05:09.580 a big part of everybody's life. Like, you know, you can pretend that it's not, you can, you can unplug

00:05:13.320 from it. You can go make cow, you know, for a bit, you know, sort of thing. But I don't think that

00:05:17.280 any honest man can look at it and say, yeah, it's, it's just no longer going to be a part of my life.

00:05:22.800 It's, it's, it's always going to be a part of your life, whether you choose to engage in it or

00:05:26.000 not. But I see watching human, human behavior as one aspect of it. I see the red pill, um, AKA,

00:05:32.780 you know, the sources that come from the Mano swamp as, um, you know, a potential source of good

00:05:37.600 information. I see evolutionary psychology as a good potential source of the information. I also see

00:05:42.480 psychology as a good source of the information. And I think if you take, um, from all of those

00:05:47.940 areas and you sort of blend it up into something that works for you, you put it in a blender,

00:05:51.820 you blend it up and you turn it into a shake sort of thing. And you sort of, you know, take that,

00:05:55.260 that's where you can sort of find the freedom that you need to move forward in life and operate in a

00:06:00.340 frame or a mindset or a mind frame that lets you put yourself first. What do you think about that

00:06:06.100 concept? Is that something that you've looked at? Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. I think that

00:06:10.820 people should keep an open mind, especially if they're having a problem, because if you're

00:06:16.180 suffering from something for several weeks, several months, or even several years,

00:06:20.580 if you could have solved it on your own, you would have solved it by now. So the solution is going to

00:06:25.560 be located in a place you haven't looked yet, like by definition. So if you have been stuck,

00:06:31.020 it really behooves you to keep an open mind, but to never trust anything unilaterally,

00:06:37.340 take everything with a grain of salt, test it out in the crucible of your own life. If it works,

00:06:41.980 keep it. If it doesn't work, throw it out. This isn't about like creating a cult. It's not about

00:06:50.160 creating a following. It's about trying to help folks. And the proof is in the pudding. So if,

00:06:56.080 if you listen to something, whether it's you, me, or somebody else, and it works because you've given it

00:07:01.720 the old college, try keep it and make it yours. Because a lot of this stuff that we talk about,

00:07:08.360 we do it in our own way, but it's not entirely original either. So it's our own spin. It's our

00:07:14.320 own integrated knowledge mixed with our own personal experience that some people find

00:07:20.360 interesting or digestible, and then they can take it and make it their own. That's how it evolves.

00:07:24.780 Yeah. There's not a ton of new ideas out there these days. Congratulations on the success of your

00:07:29.320 channel, by the way. You started it in 2021, uh, nine million views to date, 111,000 subs, 551

00:07:36.160 videos. What was it that motivated you to create the channel? Sure. So I've been in private practice

00:07:41.960 in psychology for the last seven years. It's what I wanted to do. Uh, as soon as I got my license,

00:07:47.440 I hung out my shingle. I didn't want to work for anybody. And I, when I entered into the market,

00:07:53.640 I began to specialize in men's mental health. I'm here in Northern California. At the time I was

00:07:57.680 living in San Francisco. I think that there might be two other therapists in this metro area that

00:08:05.360 specialize in men's mental health and probably in the order of tens of thousands of therapists who

00:08:10.360 specialize in female mental health. 85% of therapists these days are women. That was reflected in my own

00:08:17.340 graduate program. Uh, I think 85 to 90% of my colleagues were women. There is an underrepresentation

00:08:25.720 in men in the field of psychology and mental health, most in more generally. And they also

00:08:33.100 don't use mental health services as often as women. Now that could be because women, according 1.00

00:08:39.220 to the research, tend to be more neurotic than men, but it could also be that men masks some of their

00:08:46.000 issues and they, they learn how to be a bit more stoic. And it could also be that therapy doesn't

00:08:51.080 really in the traditional way. It doesn't make a lot of sense for men. I made a video about this,

00:08:57.260 why men don't go to therapy. And the model of therapy that the popular imagination has is that

00:09:03.840 you go to this professional, you pay them a couple hundred bucks an hour. They dress in a suit. They

00:09:08.860 have the little notepad. You tell them their problems. They say, Hmm, I see. How does that make

00:09:13.080 you feel? Uh-huh. Okay. I understand you. And then you come back next week. And most guys are like,

00:09:18.760 how the fuck is that going to help me with my problem? And I think that's a very fair point. 0.96

00:09:25.440 The talking cure was invented by Freud, but Freud actually got the idea from one of his female 0.97

00:09:33.220 patients. Freud almost exclusively worked with women because he was a Jewish doctor in Austria.

00:09:39.260 And because of the antisemitism at that time, men would not go to see him. So for him to have a

00:09:44.500 business, he had to work with the folks that nobody else wanted to work with, namely Jews, 1.00

00:09:48.660 other Jews and women. And he had all these ideas about what was going to work until one day,

00:09:55.320 one of his female patients basically said, Hey, just shut up and listen. And Freud was like, 1.00

00:10:00.740 okay, we'll see if this works. And the woman just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked 1.00

00:10:05.760 and talked and talked and talked and talked. And eventually she felt better. And Freud was like,

00:10:10.060 this is amazing. It's the talking cure. And that's what psychotherapy has been modeled on.

00:10:15.440 And I think that is actually something that's useful more for women. Men, for better or for

00:10:21.280 worse, we're more active problem solvers. We don't want to just, we don't see the point of just talking

00:10:26.460 about a problem. It's like that age old, uh, you know, conflict between men and women. The woman 1.00

00:10:32.080 starts talking about her problem. The guy starts to solve it. She says, you're not listening. He says,

00:10:36.040 of course I am. That's how I came up with the solution. I just want you to listen. Well,

00:10:39.360 how the hell is that going to help anything? It's, it's like that, but the whole profession

00:10:44.420 has kind of bought into the idea of just listen. And if you develop enough empathy and insight,

00:10:50.720 that will kind of solve the problem on its own, just being heard, just being validated.

00:10:55.080 And there's a place for that, even for men. But I think for men, that's not what we,

00:10:59.820 what we go for when we have issues. We want solutions. We want to fix the problem and move

00:11:05.580 on with our lives. So that was kind of the model that I put out there. And it, it had a lot of,

00:11:12.080 um, success. Like I had a huge wait list within like a year because men were getting a kind of

00:11:19.500 therapy in the Bay area that they probably couldn't find anywhere else. It was very solution focused.

00:11:25.020 It was very short term. It was challenging. I don't just sit there quietly. It's more of a dialogue.

00:11:31.340 Um, people really resonated with it. And I was very happy with that for quite some time,

00:11:39.160 but then I got to the point where I thought, well, you know, it's great to be able to help maybe

00:11:44.040 20, 40 people a month. I mean, that's really no small thing. If you can actually make a difference

00:11:48.820 in 20 people's lives, but I felt like if what I was doing with these guys were helpful to them,

00:11:56.460 it might be helpful to even more people. So I kind of wanted a larger platform to be able to

00:12:01.800 disseminate some of these ideas to see if they, they might actually help cause some, some solutions

00:12:08.260 on a, on a larger scale. And that's what motivated me. You mentioned that you were following my channel

00:12:14.320 when it was mostly about cars. Are you a car guy? I became a car guy. So I, I don't have the

00:12:20.200 McLaren, but I do have a Z four that I love. It's a, my first sports car. It's a 2015. It looks like

00:12:27.920 the Batmobile. It's got a hard top convertible. It's my first, uh, V six engine. And it's just so

00:12:34.040 much fun to drive, especially right now. I live in Napa Valley. BMW Z four. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

00:12:40.940 yeah, it's a great car. I I'm actually a fan of the M roadster, which is the generation that 1.00

00:12:45.360 preceded that one, which had the E 46 M three motor in it, which was a, which is a gem. But,

00:12:50.900 uh, yeah, I was just curious about that. I forgot to ask you earlier on when you mentioned that you'd

00:12:53.920 followed the channel since it was about cars. Um, are there any other like YouTube channels that you

00:12:59.720 followed? Cause a lot of the sound bites, a lot of the videos that I've watched that you've put out,

00:13:02.520 it's like, Oh, that sounds familiar. That sounds familiar. And, you know, I sort of go through them

00:13:07.580 and it's like, this guy's really good at stating these, these facts without potentially

00:13:15.040 alienating or, uh, separating the sexes, which I think is one of the problems that I've probably

00:13:20.740 had in the past. You know, you mentioned, you know, kind of early on, you get a little bit of

00:13:24.160 that red pill rage sort of thing. Um, is there content that you found useful out there that

00:13:29.040 you've sort of taken from and applied your own experiences to? Uh, yeah, sure. I will mention that

00:13:35.580 that is one of the explicit goals of my channel is to produce content. That's close to the truth

00:13:40.880 about relationships and intersexual dynamics that neither enrages men nor alienates women.

00:13:45.740 And that's, uh, that's a hard line to walk. And I know that if I were to fall on one side of the

00:13:52.120 other, it would actually probably make the channel much more popular and, um, lucrative. And so there's

00:13:58.920 that poll, but I don't see how that is in line with my ultimate mission for the channel. Because like

00:14:04.080 you said earlier, women aren't going anywhere, men aren't going anywhere. On some level, we do have to 0.93

00:14:09.320 learn how to get along and to have satisfying relationships with each other. And I think

00:14:12.800 that's for the best for everybody. I don't think that, uh, you know, when men suffer, women generally 0.93

00:14:18.200 aren't thriving and vice versa. So let's find a way to find both end solutions. We can all get good

00:14:23.880 in today's modern age. So in terms of channels, uh, I would say that I'm very careful not to just,

00:14:32.140 I do want to keep my content as original as possible. So I am careful about what I digest

00:14:37.180 because I don't want to like just regurgitate somebody else's ideas. Uh, one, uh, one channel

00:14:45.400 that I really like is Alexander Grace. Do you know him? Yeah. He's based in Australia. He is in his

00:14:53.700 early thirties. He is partnered. I don't think he's married, but he's partnered. He has a child now and

00:14:58.560 he has some clickbaity thumbnails, but his talks are generally based on some sort of research. So

00:15:06.000 he has an empirical basis and then he unpacks it through a red pill lens. So I think that he's

00:15:10.600 fairly balanced and, um, non-inflammatory. I invited him. He'll be on the podcast. I hope next month.

00:15:18.280 Interesting. Hmm. Um, what do you think guys get wrong the most when it comes to

00:15:24.220 their reaction to this new information? Um, it's been said that it's like giving children dynamite

00:15:31.660 to play with. Oh, really? Okay. Um, I've had a few different reactions from guys. The most common

00:15:38.860 reaction that I've had from my male friends that I tried to share this information to was just total,

00:15:44.220 uh, stonewalling. They, they dipped their toe in and they were like, Oh, no, that's, 0.95

00:15:50.580 uh, that's that misogynistic, uh, uh, stuff. I don't want anything to do with this. Um, and there

00:16:00.120 was just a lack of willingness to engage with the material. I find that to be much more common.

00:16:07.400 I think that people have to kind of come to it on their own. And I think those men that are

00:16:14.360 resistant to the ideas, they haven't for better or for worse, they haven't suffered.

00:16:20.580 Uh, in their relationships as much as some other guys.

00:16:23.920 Yeah. It always seems like trauma is a catalyst, isn't it? Um, your, um, channel viewers, what's

00:16:30.000 the demographic? Is it, is it mostly men? Is it a split between men and women for you?

00:16:33.940 About a year ago, it was mostly women. And now with the popularity of, uh, the intersexual 0.97

00:16:41.200 dynamic videos, it's become 85% men, but the channel actually does a whole bunch of different

00:16:47.860 topics. We talk about success. We talk about grief. We talk about anger. We talk about regulating

00:16:54.060 emotions, how to overcome panic attacks, all this stuff, but it's the stuff about men and

00:16:57.900 women that generally gets all the views. Yeah, definitely. Um, that said, I don't want to 1.00

00:17:03.200 just be audience captured because I think that would be boring too. So I, I'm going to keep

00:17:06.700 throwing out the stuff that I think is useful and interesting to alleviate human suffering.

00:17:10.140 Yeah. Have you found YouTube? I'm curious about your experience. Cause I mean, you're relatively

00:17:14.560 new to it and, and it's an interesting platform. It's, it's generally the way that I see it

00:17:21.160 is a discovery engine. So you talk about stuff, uh, I mean, you can either entertain or you

00:17:26.520 can educate people. Um, guys like Mr. Beast are obviously more on the entertainment side

00:17:31.380 of the scale. And then you've got like the educational component of, of stuff where you may

00:17:34.860 talk about topics and conversations, pieces that are important to people to sort of understand

00:17:39.540 to digest and work through and, you know, square away. Um, how have you found YouTube? Like

00:17:44.660 what's your experience been with it? I'm a big YouTube fan. So when I thought about having a

00:17:49.440 platform for my ideas, I naturally gravitated towards YouTube because I've been on YouTube

00:17:53.340 for, I don't know, 10 plus years. It was my only real social media platform. I issue most of those

00:18:00.660 other things. I, I publish my shorts, but I do it through like this proxy. So I don't actually

00:18:05.480 have to engage with the social media platforms directly. So I don't have to get high on my

00:18:09.840 own supply. Um, so when I wanted to have a platform, I, I naturally gravitated towards

00:18:15.580 YouTube. Um, it was very challenging. Uh, I set out with the commitment that I would devote

00:18:24.380 three years to the project. Uh, and after three years, if I didn't have the kind of response

00:18:30.460 or success I was looking for, I would reevaluate, but I wouldn't reevaluate until three years.

00:18:33.880 And I did that based on some of my preliminary research about how difficult it was to get

00:18:38.680 things started. And it is because, uh, you know, you, you can pour out your heart and

00:18:44.880 soul or out there on the internet. And it's just like screaming into the void for about

00:18:51.200 a year. It was grinding out regular content with two views, three likes, and it's very hard

00:18:58.520 to keep going because it's expensive, both mostly in terms of the time and energy.

00:19:03.620 And it's difficult to keep going without any kind of support or feedback, but that's part,

00:19:08.220 that's where discipline kicks in. And, um, if I hadn't like set in advance the timeline

00:19:13.660 that I was operating under, I just sort of like surrendered to the fact that I would do

00:19:17.000 this without any kind of feedback or support or validation or reward for three years.

00:19:21.220 And because I did that, it was, I think, easier to get through the desert.

00:19:25.740 And then what generally happens is nothing happens. And then everything happens all at

00:19:29.440 once. And one, my first video went viral and that was exciting. And I thought it was off

00:19:35.420 to the races and then it went down for you, which was the one that got your attention,

00:19:39.300 like, huh, maybe I'm onto something here.

00:19:41.000 The first one that got that went viral was a very short one called the gift of your absence,

00:19:46.880 which is about how if you're, for whatever reason, feeling disrespected or unappreciated

00:19:51.860 in your relationship, sometimes you have to give people the gift of your absence because sometimes

00:19:55.260 people don't really value what they had until it's gone. So if a person's unappreciative,

00:20:03.300 disrespectful, they're consistently violating your boundaries, step away, like stop trying to get

00:20:07.900 them to see your value. If they have whatever reason, they're not incentivized to do so. So step

00:20:13.180 away and force them to come to you, force them to miss you. It's the gift because

00:20:16.880 it allows them to remember, oh, I remember why I actually liked this person. I remember why I

00:20:21.900 wanted to have a relationship with this person in the first place. And maybe that will motivate

00:20:25.940 them to come back and have a more equitable relationship. And that one was very popular

00:20:30.420 with the women. Interesting. Yeah. Like to hear you say that you had a three-year strategy, 0.99

00:20:39.640 a three-year commitment to producing content on YouTube is unusual because I see most people give up

00:20:46.660 within months, sometimes even weeks, you know, they'll do a bunch of videos, 10, 15. It's like,

00:20:52.520 oh, I got crickets for 15 videos. So I'm not going to continue on this path. And they just give up.

00:20:57.720 And I think the reality is, you know, you don't understand this, but like every overnight success

00:21:03.280 that you guys see, you know, when you go to YouTube channel, that's got a hundred thousand,

00:21:06.520 a million subs or, you know, whatever happens to be, there was a grind and that grind could have

00:21:09.840 been months. It could have been a couple of years before anything happened. And, you know,

00:21:13.940 to continue to, to, to record content, edit it, figure out how to do thumbnails and cover them

00:21:20.540 and put in the right tags. And you're constantly watching videos on how to do this. And, you know,

00:21:24.740 to see that the fruits of your labor result in 21 views and 19 of them, are you hitting refresh

00:21:31.440 probably? And maybe the extra one is your mom watching the video. Um, it can get frustrating.

00:21:37.280 So to hear you say three years, you know, that's, that's fairly significant. That's,

00:21:41.620 that's, uh, that's commitment. Um, where does this commitment that you have to this project come

00:21:47.840 from? Like, where did you learn this? I'm a fairly disciplined guy. Uh, I've put myself

00:21:53.820 intentionally into very difficult situations to force myself to grow and to evolve. And I've done that

00:22:00.260 in a number of different ways throughout my life. And I think that's just partly how I'm constructed,

00:22:06.480 how I'm wired. I'm the kind of guy who, you know, if my life was a beer commercial, I was just on the

00:22:12.260 beach with the women and the boom box drinking the Coronas. I could do that for like a couple of days 0.98

00:22:17.860 before I'd want to shoot my face off. I like the type two fun. I like to grow. I like to push myself.

00:22:23.240 I like to challenge myself and overcome and achieve. And that's in the process of becoming in the process

00:22:28.260 of achieving that I feel the most alive. It's really not about the achievement. The achievement is

00:22:33.880 just the pretext for the process and you have to love the process. And, uh, for better or for worse,

00:22:40.000 I do. Now, another, another trap that people tend to fall in that I didn't want to fall into this

00:22:45.240 project is they do some research and they think, okay, in order to make this work, I need a $3,000

00:22:51.220 camera and I need to, uh, to buy this fancy microphone and I need to have a graphic designer

00:22:58.080 and they throw all this money in it before they've even made their first episode. And I think that's

00:23:03.820 a terrible idea because as you just mentioned, they're probably not going to get any kind of

00:23:08.280 attention or success. And so not only do they generally give up because of this, but they've

00:23:13.940 also, you know, invested thousands of dollars that they're probably not going to recoup.

00:23:18.540 I think having come out the other side of it, that what the algorithm on YouTube is doing is

00:23:24.480 just an appropriate, because for me, it was like 80 or 90 episodes in before that first episode went

00:23:31.820 viral. And that I want to make sure that I heard you correctly. Did you say that what YouTube is

00:23:35.060 doing is just in appropriate, just and appropriate, just and appropriate, at least in terms of like

00:23:41.660 not promoting new content. I mean, we can talk about the algorithm in other respects. That's not as

00:23:46.220 just or appropriate, but in this case, I think it really works. My first episode that went viral

00:23:51.380 was like the, between the 80th and the 90th that allowed me to do, to get the suck off. And I still 0.69

00:23:58.040 have those episodes on. I think I'm always going to leave them up there so that people can kind of,

00:24:01.900 if they're interested, they're probably not, but if they're interested, they could watch the

00:24:04.320 trajectory of the channel. The first hundred things that you do, aren't going to be anywhere close

00:24:10.340 to the quality. I didn't know what I was doing. And rather than like learn and buy a bunch of

00:24:16.040 fancy equipment to make up for that, I just got, I just jumped in and I learned by doing,

00:24:20.700 and I learned by making mistakes. And eventually some of the suck melted away. And when they're

00:24:25.900 started to, you know, it's like building a business, Rich, once the revenue started coming

00:24:29.940 in, then you can reinvest it into the organization. So then I got a nice fancy microphone and I got a

00:24:35.560 fancy ring light and things like, and I can hire somebody to do the thumbnails. And so the channel

00:24:41.580 can grow sustainably. What are your long-term plans for the channel?

00:24:46.820 Hmm. Well, I'm starting to appear more on podcasts like this, and I'm inviting more and more people

00:24:52.340 onto my channel. Uh, I like where it's going. What I'm actually working on now is a book. That's

00:25:00.820 more of my goal. I just finished my first chapter this past weekend. I have the whole thing outlined.

00:25:07.800 It just requires the time and the discipline to sit down and write it. And I think it will dovetail

00:25:11.820 with a lot of the topics that are popular on the channel. And it will give people a deeper, more,

00:25:18.240 uh, in-depth look at some of what I'm talking about. So I'm pretty excited about that.

00:25:24.280 Yeah. That's pretty much what I do with my book. I just, I, I went through the popular content and

00:25:28.360 started writing chapters on it and went deeper down the rabbit holes and sort of shared other ideas

00:25:33.600 and concepts around them. And it seems to work. It seems to do well. It's a good way to reach

00:25:37.720 people. Um, I often get guys asking me about, you know, well, how do I write a book? Should I write

00:25:42.560 a book? And I have this idea for book and it's like, well, do you have an audience first that

00:25:45.760 would be interested in buying it? Because otherwise you're probably going to write something that

00:25:49.500 you'll upload to Amazon that will feel cool in the moment, but it's not going to move the bar.

00:25:54.860 It's not going to be picked up by a lot of people. So I think it's important to have

00:25:57.880 people that are already paying attention to you with your already free stuff. And a book's a nice

00:26:02.120 way to summarize it all so that, so that you've got something that can sit on a shelf and you can

00:26:05.640 reference, you can go to, and you can give away as a gift and stuff like that. Um, you know,

00:26:09.640 they're great from that respect. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll definitely pick that up and

00:26:14.020 you know, check it out when you publish it. Yeah. I think that's well said. Uh, it already has

00:26:18.280 proof of concept if it's based on the popular content. I don't want it to be just a recapitulation

00:26:23.420 of things that I've said for free. That would be boring for people. Um, and what you said is

00:26:28.500 true. A lot of people will write, but without the audience it languishes. But what I think is the

00:26:34.220 more common problem is because they don't have an audience, they never actually finish. It's very,

00:26:39.880 very hard and kind of isolating and almost like solipsistic to write a book. You're in this constant

00:26:46.040 dialogue with yourself. If you're not writing it for somebody else, if you're not writing it because

00:26:50.140 there is an audience that's demanding it, if, if you're not writing it because you've been like

00:26:56.340 hired to do so by a business partner, it's like, it's very hard to know who you're talking to

00:27:01.280 and it can become very weird because you just sort of get lost in yourself. So I think books should

00:27:07.560 have a purpose and they should have a specific audience. Kurt Vonnegut said he wrote every book

00:27:11.080 for his sister. And he said that one of the best things a writer can do is to pick a specific person

00:27:16.520 that they're writing towards. Yes. Yes. Great point. Um,

00:27:20.240 with respects to the content that comes from, um, like red pill sort of creators, whether it's books,

00:27:28.500 blogs, or videos, is there, is there anything, or are there things that you disagree with? Are the

00:27:33.740 things that you think that they get wrong that are potentially damaging that they should revisit?

00:27:38.560 No, I think that the main danger is it's like a half truth. It's like a little knowledge is a

00:27:44.800 dangerous thing. A lot of the red pill guys are, they're, are telling a version of the truth and 0.94

00:27:51.760 they have facts to back it up. But I think the tone and the goal there is just to fan the flames

00:27:57.720 of male anger. So I think it's really about the intention and the tone versus the, the facts or the

00:28:04.040 content. A lot of that content is, and here's the other thing. It's like,

00:28:09.460 you can tell people even really difficult truths, really painful things if you do it with the right

00:28:18.800 tone. But what I have found, and maybe it's a, maybe it's a persona that they're putting on

00:28:24.920 because I haven't met a lot of these guys personally. I don't know, but there's this

00:28:28.720 almost like over aggressive machismo to a lot of the red pill content creators that I think is

00:28:35.180 kind of an act. And I think is people just, especially women, they just hear the tone 0.99

00:28:40.740 and they're not willing to listen anymore. And I don't really see the point of that,

00:28:45.680 especially if a lot of red pill commentators are talking about how women are this and women are that. 1.00

00:28:51.080 Well, yeah, women aren't perfect. Neither are guys. And if you actually want women to listen,

00:28:55.620 you got to talk in a way that they're going to be willing to hear. Otherwise they're just going to

00:28:58.840 shut, they're just going to shut down. And you're going to get preaching to your own little echo

00:29:03.520 chamber of howling, angry men. Do you think that women listen to this stuff? 1.00

00:29:09.800 I think if you talk to them in the right way, they might. I don't think that they're on your

00:29:14.060 channel. I think they, they used to be, used to start your videos with my brothers and sisters.

00:29:18.720 You haven't done that in a while. Yeah. I noticed that, um, most of my views came from men. So I

00:29:24.120 dropped the, uh, brothers and sisters sort of thing. And, um, the other thing I noticed too,

00:29:29.360 is that when women watch the content, they either, I mean, they usually do it from a place of, 0.79

00:29:38.120 um, you know, they say that men peak in their mid to late thirties on the sexual marketplace and

00:29:45.860 women peak in their early twenties. Um, I don't generally have 23 year old women watching my 1.00

00:29:52.500 content or calling in my shows. Um, when they do, they tend to be late thirties, early forties,

00:29:58.600 maybe even fifties, you know, sort of thing. And they're trying to square away their past and

00:30:02.360 find maybe, maybe there's a part where they're looking for some answers, but they're also trying

00:30:08.220 to find a connection with a strong, virtuous melee, I think, cause they're tired of dealing

00:30:12.660 with soft, weaker men sort of thing. And, you know, I guess the point of all that is, is it seems

00:30:18.860 like women only want to hear this message. Like they'll listen to it, but I don't think they hear 1.00

00:30:23.240 it until they're, I mean, I hate to use the term pastor expiry date, but until they're older, like

00:30:30.280 until they're, they're no longer in their prime. Cause I think at their prime, it doesn't matter

00:30:34.400 to them. You know, if you're 23 year old and even if you're average looking, you're still hot,

00:30:38.840 um, you know, guys will give you lots of attention. All you have to do is have an Instagram,

00:30:42.320 you know, with some generous, you know, photography with the right angle and lighting and

00:30:46.100 YouTube will also be popular. And it's something that men don't have the opportunity to benefit 0.76

00:30:51.280 from, especially in their twenties. Like nobody really pays attention to a 23 year old guy.

00:30:55.260 If he's posting an Instagram shot, but if a gal does it, it's, you know, there's a lot of 0.87

00:30:59.680 attention put on that. So it seems like they don't hear it until they get older. What's your take on

00:31:05.560 that? I think there's some truth to that. Just like some guys don't come to it or really hear it

00:31:10.360 until they've suffered some sort of rejection or setback. Maybe it takes the equivalent of that

00:31:16.700 for women to be able to open up to the idea that maybe some of the beliefs under which they are 1.00

00:31:21.200 operating are not ultimately going to get them what they want. I think that's fair. I think men do the 0.98

00:31:25.880 same thing, but it comes from a different angle and you're absolutely right. It's very, very difficult

00:31:30.160 to be a young man. Like a 20 year old man is basically useless. Like men don't want him because 0.99

00:31:36.220 he has no skills or experience. How is he going to benefit the team? Women don't want him because 1.00

00:31:40.660 he's got nothing to give them unless he's, you know, six foot three and he's really cute. Yeah.

00:31:45.540 So it's very, very difficult to be a young man. People will step over you on the street. You're

00:31:50.760 functionally invisible and you get to earn your visibility by creating something of value, by

00:31:55.460 becoming a person of value. And that's how you become visible to your fellow man. And that's how you

00:32:00.680 become visible to women as a potential sexual mate. Now, but what I'm talking about, let me,

00:32:06.660 let me talk just a little bit more here, Rich, about this idea. So I think it has a lot to do

00:32:10.960 with tone and how you approach the idea. So let's take the example of hypergamy. So you can approach

00:32:15.640 hypergamy from a couple of different angles. There are guys in some red pill comment, some red pill

00:32:22.440 content creators, they frame hypergamy as a women are just gold diggers. All they care about is a man's 1.00

00:32:28.040 resources. And, uh, they're just out to get what they can from you. And if you have no money,

00:32:34.060 you got no honey. And there's a little truth to that. Right. But you can also look at it from

00:32:39.640 another angle, which is, Hey ladies, I get it. You're just trying to get the best possible option 0.74

00:32:43.360 that you can have. And like men also want to get the best possible option that they can have.

00:32:49.980 And the way that women can conceptualize what is the best possible option for them also through the

00:32:57.140 lens of their own biology, which has to do with the fact that, you know, they're generally smaller,

00:33:01.380 they're weaker, they're especially vulnerable during childbirth. It makes sense that they would

00:33:05.200 want a devoted man of some resources to take care of her and her children. So like, yeah,

00:33:12.960 she wants the best that she can get. Don't you dude, don't you want the best that you can get?

00:33:17.840 And it's like, Oh, okay. That kind of makes a little, little bit of sense.

00:33:20.880 Hmm. Like, I think you can, you can talk about hypergamy in a way that doesn't make women feel

00:33:26.480 like they're just materialistic gold diggers and make men either furious or hopeless over the

00:33:31.940 prospect of ever attracting a high quality woman. Yeah. There seems to be a, I don't know,

00:33:38.040 large or generous might be the word to describe it, but there's certainly a cohort of, of men that are

00:33:44.220 angry. I mean, you were talking about anger before. Um, and it's not something that I

00:33:50.800 had anticipated when I started uploading videos. I mean, you know, and all transparency and

00:33:55.460 honestly, I, you know, the plan was mash up top, top gear with Ted talks and interview friends and

00:34:00.460 their cool cars. But then I ran out of friends with cool cars pretty fast. And people started

00:34:03.820 asking me other things. And the video that went viral for me, that, that really took off that I

00:34:08.080 got a hundred thousand views in a week when I would normally only get a thousand views in a week was

00:34:11.300 one where somebody said in the comments, uh, rich do a video on the kind of women not to date. And I

00:34:15.880 thought, Oh, that's interesting. Cause I have some experience there. So maybe I'll talk about that.

00:34:19.520 And that sort of blew up and that kind of like led me down the rabbit hole, but I didn't realize that

00:34:23.760 there were so many, like there was so much anger towards women over, um, facts about how they

00:34:30.100 operate. Right. I mean, if you set aside red pill, manosphere, like all this stuff, and you just read

00:34:35.800 Evo psych, it literally says the same thing without the, I guess the pomp and circumstance that some of

00:34:42.560 these, you know, guys sort of, you know, throw out there when they're, when they're pitching their

00:34:46.760 stuff. Um, what's your experience been with the anger? Like, what have you seen? You know,

00:34:51.780 do you see it in the comments? Do people ever talk to you about it? Do you get feedback? I mean,

00:34:55.120 you don't do live shows, so you don't generally get like that commentary showing up in the live chat,

00:34:59.340 but what do you see with that normally? Yeah, I, it shows up in the comments. Uh, I get a lot of

00:35:05.680 feedback. People reach out to me directly via email. A lot of my videos now have thousands and

00:35:11.280 thousands of comments. I don't read them all. It's become overwhelming and they really do span

00:35:16.840 the spectrum. Some of them are extremely positive and grateful. And, uh, it feels like some of the

00:35:22.880 videos are really helping folks out there and making a difference in their lives. But to your point,

00:35:27.840 there's definitely, uh, a subset of commentators who are still in the red pill rage. They're very,

00:35:36.080 very angry. And on a couple of videos, I saw even some black pill guys. And that was my first 0.56

00:35:42.120 experience with that. And that was hard to read, to be honest. It was like, what did you see when

00:35:49.240 you saw that? Uh, just to, just to really like, um, aggressive hopelessness that the world was going

00:35:58.280 to, I mean, it was all going to end soon anyway, because, uh, you know, there's absolutely 0.90

00:36:03.860 women are just evil. You have to stay away from them as much as possible and the world is going 1.00

00:36:09.720 to end. I mean, it, it seems catastrophic and it's a worldview, which is just, uh, I don't share

00:36:17.880 that. I don't see that. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I, I put a chapter in my book, um, talking about

00:36:24.220 MGTOW and the black pill and that, that, that vortex that sort of, you know, goes down that rabbit

00:36:28.780 hole. And, um, I thought if there was anything in my book that would have got pushed back, it would

00:36:33.400 have been that chapter. And it really wasn't, um, it seemed to be more to receive, which I was

00:36:38.060 surprised, but like, I really feel for a lot of these guys now it's, it's, it's tough to see

00:36:44.600 the pain that they experience and the struggles that they have. And from my perspective, and I have

00:36:51.440 difficulty understanding this and I still have, you know, to this day, because I'm a first born,

00:36:55.560 I'm a go-getter, I'm an entrepreneur. I've like, I've just figured out life's problems. I don't let

00:37:00.660 them weigh me down. And I find it difficult to read, you know, comments or feedback from people

00:37:07.700 where they're legit angry at themselves. They have resentment, they have guilt. They're angry at the

00:37:13.640 world. They're angry at you. Um, you know, for having these conversations or even offering solutions

00:37:18.980 to people about the difficulties that, um, you have to contend with. I mean, if you're going to operate

00:37:25.160 in the world and you know, you're going to deal with people, you're going to run into women. And if you 1.00

00:37:28.020 want to be intimate with women, if you want to have relationships with women, you have to sort 1.00

00:37:30.620 of understand how they operate. So it's providing solutions seems to, in some cases, upset or enrage

00:37:37.080 them more like saying, you know, be a better version of yourself, lose some weight. Um, if you're

00:37:42.620 insignificant, be significant. If you're, um, not that competent in life skills, become competent,

00:37:48.420 become strong and virtuous, learn combat skills, like relatively basic things that I think are great

00:37:54.380 grandparents or grandparents might've even had conversations with, you know, our families in

00:37:58.900 the past, but today it's, it's, it's not received warmly. What do you think that's about?

00:38:04.400 Well, there's something comfortable to hopelessness.

00:38:06.320 And what's the solution to it as well too, please.

00:38:08.920 The solution to hopelessness, uh,

00:38:11.700 that's a tough one. Hope is a rollercoaster. I worked for a couple of years in a, as a health

00:38:21.040 psychologist. I was working with cancer patients, terminally ill cancer patients and their caregivers.

00:38:25.240 And so I got to see the rollercoaster of hope up close and personal in many, many people's lives

00:38:31.040 year after year. And it's exhausting. And when you're at this degree of health, you know, the

00:38:40.680 smallest glimmer that things are improving and people are through the, they're to the moon and then

00:38:45.660 the results come back and they're not as good as they expected. And now they're crestfallen. And

00:38:51.220 that's a very difficult thing to keep up. And I think at some point in the process towards the

00:38:57.900 terminal ending of that disease, everyone gives up hope. Some people are kicking and screaming to the

00:39:05.820 very last moment, but most people decide to give up hope and they kind of like go through the process

00:39:10.820 of accepting. And then they can move forward with some degree of peace and equanimity, but it's never

00:39:16.080 for somebody else to say when you should give up hope. That's a very personal thing. And only you can

00:39:23.520 decide when it's appropriate. That said, this is in the context of a terminal cancer disease, that there's

00:39:30.080 no legitimate hope that it will end in the resurgence of health and life. That's very different than

00:39:37.600 what I imagine are guys in their twenties who still have a great deal of life ahead of them

00:39:43.560 and who could turn their franchise around. Some guys are late bloomers. I really didn't get my act

00:39:50.820 together. I think until my late twenties, but until then I was an actor and I was partying. I was living

00:39:56.640 in a hedonistic bohemian lifestyle, having a lot of, you know, short-term relationships. I was involved in

00:40:03.080 drugs. I just like, wasn't really going anywhere with my life. And it took a while for me to kind of

00:40:10.600 get my ass into shape on some level. And I think that that period is extending. Like there is an extended 0.98

00:40:20.060 adolescence for a lot of people these days. But if you're still in your twenties, if you're still in your

00:40:24.440 thirties, there's time for you. I mean, God willing, you still have like 50, 60 years ahead of you. If it takes

00:40:29.380 five years, if it takes 10 years to build the life that you can love, then why not get started? And if

00:40:36.540 it's never going to be easier than it is today, no time like the present. But I think that hopelessness

00:40:43.560 is, it's comforting because it's like, I can't bear the pain that comes from another frustrated hope.

00:40:51.120 So I'm just going to, I'm just going to lay down. I'm just, I'm not going to get up. You can count me

00:40:55.480 down. And I think that is fair. Sometimes people get hit, the wind gets knocked out of them. They

00:41:02.560 have to take a knee. And if they're not ready to get up yet, they're not ready to get up yet.

00:41:07.540 Ultimately though, the cure for hopelessness is a life worth living. And a lot of these guys are

00:41:15.440 feeling, I imagine, hopeless in not fantastic situations. And if their life were more fulfilling,

00:41:22.960 if it were full of connection and wealth and achievement and fun and success and all the good

00:41:30.120 things in life, I don't think that they would be lying down for it. There's a, there's a sense in

00:41:36.640 psychology to have this term called efficacy. It's the, especially self-efficacy. It's different from

00:41:41.700 like self-esteem. It's the belief that I can do the thing. And a lot of these hopeless guys, they don't

00:41:47.920 have that self-efficacy. They don't think that they can do it. Sometimes though, we're not really,

00:41:54.080 we don't know what we can do until we have to do it. Like even suicidally depressed people, 0.77

00:41:59.920 rich will run out of a burning building, which doesn't make sense if you think about it. So

00:42:04.220 necessity is really the, the most powerful motivator on the planet. And for some people,

00:42:10.920 it has to get worse before it gets better because the misery of that situation becomes unsustainable.

00:42:18.080 It becomes too acutely painful. And that acute pain actually motivates movement in some direction.

00:42:24.060 And because it's so bad, it's generally a more positive direction just as a regression towards

00:42:28.460 the mean. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, when you start prescribing solutions to hopelessness,

00:42:36.080 it seems to be met for the most part with a lot of resistance and anger. You know, like how dare you

00:42:44.420 recommend that I do these things for, and sometimes the answer is, you know, for the benefit of women,

00:42:49.540 you know, sort of thing. And it's, it's bizarre because I, because it seems like I'm, I'm a broken

00:42:56.040 record sometimes when I'm saying like, you do these things for yourself. Like the, the women that may

00:43:01.840 come as a result of it are a by-product of you benefiting, you know, to a better life, to wealth,

00:43:10.440 to a healthier body, to more competency, to, um, more access and options in your life. And it's not

00:43:16.860 for women. It's just women happen to, may happen to be a by-product of you doing the work on yourself 1.00

00:43:22.840 and improving yourself. Um, I think it's a frustration point. I talked about that in a recent

00:43:29.680 episode, what men don't understand about female selection. And it's that if all of these things

00:43:35.320 that women generally select for under hypergamy, higher status, wealth, fitness, they only indirectly 0.91

00:43:41.820 benefit women. They directly benefit men because if you were that guy, you're strong, you're wealthy,

00:43:48.140 you're successful. How, how is that not a good thing? It can only indirectly benefit a woman if you 1.00

00:43:53.800 agree to share that with her. But hypergamy is, it's actually the, the carrot for men to become

00:44:00.120 in many respects, the best possible version of themselves. Um, what else was I going to say? Oh,

00:44:06.700 I also had this video that the, this is something I learned as a therapist to never want something for

00:44:13.420 someone else more than they want it for themselves. So if you're dealing with a hopeless person and you

00:44:19.000 start offering them solutions, you're going to meet with resistance because in that moment, you want

00:44:24.120 this person to improve more than he does. Yeah. It's a whole, you know, before you try to cure

00:44:29.800 somebody, make sure they're willing to give up what made them sick to begin with. Right.

00:44:33.120 That's a big one too. Generally it's, you can improve more quickly by giving up the one or two

00:44:38.780 things that you and your heart of hearts know that you're doing to sabotage your process than to

00:44:43.200 start 10 new good habits. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, I saw an episode that you, well, not an episode,

00:44:50.280 but I saw that, um, whatever podcast that you did, I wanted to ask you about that on the show as well.

00:44:55.860 Um, cause we exchanged some brief, um, you know, comments on that too by email, but, um, I've seen

00:45:02.520 this trend now where podcasts and I did this video. I know that you watched the whole thing cause you

00:45:06.220 saw the shout out that I did in there, but you know, I've seen this trend just for people that are

00:45:09.780 watching that aren't familiar with that concept that we're, there's a lot of podcasts now that

00:45:13.780 sort of just come up and it's tables sit down and it seems to rely on putting a bunch of people at a

00:45:21.240 table. When they put women at the table, it doesn't seem like they're picking the best from, you know, 0.96

00:45:27.000 the available inventory of women that are out there on the sexual marketplace. And it's let's make 0.74

00:45:31.620 bimbos look dumb. I guess it's probably the best way to summarize it. You sat down at one of these 1.00

00:45:36.720 podcasts at this table and I only watched the clips. I didn't watch the full podcast from

00:45:41.760 beginning to end, but there was a few times I could tell when you were sitting there and it's

00:45:44.540 like the professional in the room looks a little bit uncomfortable with some of these questions and

00:45:49.400 the way, you know, the conversation was going, what's your thought as a professional when, you know,

00:45:55.220 now that you've sat in one of those tables and you've seen some of these, obviously

00:45:58.220 these podcasts, like what's your feelings on that? I'm curious.

00:46:03.640 Well, I'm happy to have done the experience. It was a strange one for me. I have to admit,

00:46:08.380 I told this to Brian, the host of whatever that I hadn't seen an episode of whatever before when

00:46:13.460 he reached out and I did some very cursory research and I looked at a couple of episodes,

00:46:18.900 some clips, I watched maybe five minutes. And what I saw in these clips was there's like four or five

00:46:24.000 guys on one side of the table, four or five women on the other. And they're actually having a

00:46:28.280 discussion about relationships and intersexual dynamics. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting

00:46:32.800 because, you know, the men are actually saying these things to the women's face and the women

00:46:38.080 get a chance to respond to them. And I thought that that was an interesting dynamic rather than just

00:46:42.240 guys just sort of spouting off into their echo chambers. It's actually a dialogue. And I thought,

00:46:47.420 okay, I could sign up for that. And so I decided to go down to do the podcast. Now on the episode

00:46:54.280 that you did, I didn't watch the whole thing. I just sort of skimmed around and I'm not surprised

00:46:58.200 that you didn't watch the whole whatever podcast. I was surprised that it went on for five hours.

00:47:02.500 It was an endurance challenge for me. I can't believe that there might've been people who sat

00:47:09.580 through the whole thing. It was hard for me sometimes.

00:47:12.140 It's common and it draws a lot of eyeballs, which is somewhat surprising. It's like the whole,

00:47:16.200 like the car crash. People always look at the car crash when they're driving on the highway

00:47:19.600 and it almost seems like this is what we're watching for five hours.

00:47:23.940 Sure. And in your episode on that podcast, you mentioned Jerry Springer a bunch of times.

00:47:28.880 Yeah. Now Brian received me very well. When I went down to Santa Barbara to be on the podcast,

00:47:34.240 we had a phone conversation before I went on and he called the podcast, the Jerry Springer show of

00:47:41.000 YouTube. So I think Brian is, I don't know him very well. I just met him that one time, but I think

00:47:47.520 he's self-aware about what he's doing. Yeah. I think that he is intentionally choosing women who 0.99

00:47:53.220 their optics look unusual because that's going to be provocative or interesting. He's definitely in

00:47:58.440 entertainment and I don't think that he has any illusions about what he's doing as far as I can

00:48:05.000 tell. Yeah. I mean, the optics of the whole thing was, you know, there's a Asian girl sitting in the

00:48:10.380 back corner with a spiky hat, petting a little black baby. And there's a woman dressed up as a cat,

00:48:16.820 you know, opposing the table. And everyone talks about the girl with the baby, but she was behind me.

00:48:21.680 So I couldn't see what she was doing the whole time, but that's, it was, it was distracting because

00:48:25.900 I'm watching the professional talk and sort of, you know, explain concepts. And I see this girl

00:48:30.500 over your shoulder, making bizarre faces, almost talking to herself, but stroking a black baby doll 0.97

00:48:37.240 sort of thing with a little spiky hat. And I thought to myself, wow. Um, Brian referred to her as the 0.98

00:48:43.400 mascot. So I assume that she's there because it's, it's like a baseball game. It's five hours long

00:48:49.680 and there's going to be a lot of downtime. And so she's there to kind of keep the audience engaged. 0.92

00:48:55.160 That's my understanding. So the Jerry Springer of YouTube, at least they understand what they're

00:49:00.620 doing. Okay. That podcast started a year ago and it has over 4 million subscribers,

00:49:06.080 which is incredible. Well, I mean, in fairness, the channel, when you look at it from the older videos,

00:49:10.860 it was mostly a prank channel. So they would use the telephoto lens with a wired up, you know,

00:49:16.280 wireless mic and they would prank people, you know, to distance and record it. And sure.

00:49:19.960 I guess he told me that too. And yeah, he's, he's, it's all founded in entertainment. And I

00:49:26.060 don't think that he thinks that he's doing anything but that. Do you think there's any

00:49:30.160 use in the content that's being created for guys? Cause it would seem to be mostly guys. I mean,

00:49:37.760 judging by the live chats that they're dealing with, um, is there any benefit to men watching five

00:49:43.960 hours of the back and forth between men and women orchestrated in a, I mean, it's not as bad as 0.76

00:49:50.140 Jerry Springer where, you know, security has to come running out and separating people from fights,

00:49:54.400 but people do get thrown off the show. They get removed. Uh, they get put in a checkmate. There's

00:50:00.720 always, you know, click baby type of thumbnails where like, you know, she was triggered or something

00:50:05.000 like that. And there's an arrow pointed to somebody with a strange face. How does, how do you

00:50:10.260 recommend guys navigate that? So they get benefit from it, I guess is, you know, the way that I'm

00:50:14.380 trying to phrase this question and make it useful, or is it even possible to do that?

00:50:21.240 I've thought about this a little bit because you got podcasts like whatever, and you got fresh and

00:50:25.120 fit and they're, they're both very, very popular and they both play with red pill intersexual dynamics 0.69

00:50:32.800 and they're, they have extremely high viewership. And so I thought, well, what, what is really going

00:50:38.180 on here? And the best I could come up with among other things is it, it's kind of a, a male fantasy

00:50:45.280 because when you turn into these shows, you can generally expect that the men, if they're not

00:50:51.420 going to win, they're going to be made to look really good. And oftentimes, sometimes they have

00:50:58.260 these ridiculous looking folks on these podcasts, but they also have really traditionally attractive 0.91

00:51:04.480 women too. You got smoke shows in tight cocktail dresses. And the fantasy is that you have these men 0.98

00:51:12.760 who are telling them that they're wrong, who are telling them that they're, they're actually not

00:51:18.020 getting what they want. It's like they're, they're, they're beating them in a dialogue about relationships.

00:51:24.580 And I think that's like very vicariously satisfying to a lot of male viewers who might not even have the

00:51:31.700 courage to approach one of these women in everyday life. If they were to see them, they can tune in

00:51:38.220 and listen to guys, put these really attractive women in their place. And I think that's part of

00:51:43.900 the, the male fantasy that supports the, their viewership. I would agree with that. So is it,

00:51:50.180 is it bimbos being made to look dumb? Is that what they are? Well, again, it's complicated. I was, 1.00

00:51:56.320 after that recording, I did chat briefly with a couple of the women who are on that episode and

00:52:03.920 they also didn't seem to be like, just like Brian seemed to know what he was doing, that he was kind

00:52:12.580 of a Jerry Springer show. The women kind of knew what they were doing and they talked about their 1.00

00:52:19.080 social media, like their podcast personas. And they were playing up parts of themselves so that they

00:52:26.020 could potentially be invited to more podcasts. I don't know what they get out of it. Maybe they

00:52:31.520 get free tickets or hotel rooms. I'm not sure, but I mean, I think it's exposure for their social

00:52:36.000 media and their only fans. If they have one, it could very well be. And I think that those women 1.00

00:52:40.680 are, they see it as a business opportunity. So I, I'm not quite sure to what extent they,

00:52:47.340 a lot of those women are, let's say, authentically presenting themselves. I think it could be a persona. 0.99

00:52:54.480 Do you think it's an accurate representation of the female demographic that's out there today?

00:52:59.800 On like women in the sexual marketplace or on OnlyFans? 0.99

00:53:03.600 No, like on these podcasts, like, do you think these women that are showing up on these podcasts 1.00

00:53:07.180 are an accurate representation of the general female population out there? 1.00

00:53:11.000 No, I don't. But sometimes they, it's like science sometimes studies really extreme habitats because

00:53:22.120 it's under these conditions that we can see more universal truths about life. Like if life can thrive

00:53:30.580 here in these environments, then maybe we can learn something that's universally true. And so maybe one of

00:53:38.340 the, the, the didactic takeaways of these podcasts is these women are extreme examples and we can see 0.98

00:53:47.400 in these extreme examples, some principles that may be, that may be present to a lesser degree

00:53:55.120 universally among women or even among people, but it's easier to see in these extreme examples.

00:54:01.220 Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, it's a fascinating, um, dynamic that's only arisen the last couple of

00:54:08.460 years. Uh, like I think Howard Stern is probably the closest thing that you might relate it to.

00:54:13.420 Like he might be the OG or even Tom Likas. Are you familiar with Tom Likas?

00:54:18.180 No, but I met Howard Stern a few times and he, yeah, he's a nice guy. When I was an actor,

00:54:23.640 I actually was doing a show with his daughter. She was my love interest. So I made out with Howard

00:54:28.200 Stern's daughter on stage, um, every night and he was a great dad. He would come to, he came to the

00:54:33.380 show multiple times and it was not only strange to meet the celebrity, but also that I was hooking

00:54:40.000 up with his daughter. I'll, uh, I'll share a story with you after we come off air. Remind me when we

00:54:46.100 end the show, cause I can't talk about it live, but, um, yeah, it's, it's like, you know, the whole

00:54:51.760 Howard Stern, Tom, like, like Tom Likas was probably one of the first guys that were because

00:54:58.440 he ran a radio show, right? So there's no video of it, but there's mostly like loads and loads of

00:55:02.860 audio recordings out there. So if you search on YouTube for Tom Likas, you'll see a lot of these

00:55:08.260 playbacks where it's like, he's dealing with people calling in and they're asking questions

00:55:11.720 about dating. A lot of the stuff that, you know, you and I even have covered today or in the past few

00:55:18.000 years, uh, you know, something that's been talked about for, and I'm sure it's been, you know, it was

00:55:21.100 talked about in the 50s, 60s and 70s by other people. I just don't know who, but like the sit

00:55:25.820 down podcast sort of, uh, thing that has just happened is it's bizarre in the sense where it's

00:55:31.880 like, I see the car crash. I'm watching it unfold in slow motion, literally over five hours. If you

00:55:37.860 watch the whole thing and then you're right. I think a lot of the people that are watching,

00:55:41.440 especially the guys, it's like this, like vindication, like this validation, like the aha,

00:55:45.400 aha, gotcha, you know, sort of thing. And I think that's what draws them in. And I don't know,

00:55:50.340 like, I'm still struggling, I guess, at this point, you know, as we're talking about it to

00:55:55.060 at least offer some kind of benefit solution, uh, use case for guys aside from that, like

00:56:04.780 vindication, like, you know, gotcha, betcha, you know, sort of thing, which seems to be the angle.

00:56:10.320 I'm just wondering if it even exists. I don't know. I mean, it could just be pure

00:56:14.740 entertainment. I mean, not everything has to be, have a nutritional value as it were. People binge

00:56:19.940 all kinds of reality shows on TV that I don't know if they really help people become better

00:56:24.940 versions of themselves. Yeah. I guess I always look for the nutritional value. That's maybe

00:56:29.680 that's just my perspective of things. I mean, Brian did try to bring some things. He talked

00:56:33.320 about the divorce rates and the way that men kind of get shafted in the court system, the fresh and fit

00:56:39.340 guys. They have good points. So maybe if men haven't really heard about the red pill before,

00:56:45.860 this could be a way that they get exposed to some of these ideas. I'm not sure.

00:56:50.040 Good. All right. Um, so let's move on for that. So let me ask you a question about marriage then.

00:56:54.540 So you're a single guy or do you have a girlfriend? Like what's your status right now?

00:56:57.900 I'm seeing somebody, but I'm unmarried.

00:56:59.800 Awesome. So would you ever get married knowing what you know about family law and about the dynamics

00:57:06.640 between men and women in the modern world today? I wouldn't say never, but I would be very cautious 1.00

00:57:12.040 around getting married, uh, for a number of reasons. I've seen divorce up close. I'm the child of divorce.

00:57:18.640 Uh, my father was the child of divorce. My parents' divorce took three years. It was extremely painful.

00:57:25.840 How old were you when they went through it?

00:57:27.700 I was 15. Okay.

00:57:29.360 And in large part, because of that divorce, my dad spent his fifties and part of his sixties in a

00:57:36.580 one room studio apartment. And that's how he had to live. And this is a man who my mother worked maybe

00:57:43.340 a year or two in her life who cared and took and provided for me and my sister and my mother. And,

00:57:48.960 and this was his reward at the end of the day. So, uh, I see how divorce can destroy men's lives

00:57:58.020 here in California. I've worked with a number of guys navigate their divorces. It takes

00:58:02.580 at least a year and a half. You, you pay for the, the woman's lawyer. There's no incentive that this 0.52

00:58:09.300 is going to be an easy, quick process. Um, it's, and there's a lot of incentives. My point is

00:58:20.020 I'm not really sure what guys get out of marriage, like the actual legal contract.

00:58:26.520 You can have a long-term committed relationship without marriage. You can have children without 0.97

00:58:34.200 marriage. Like the arguments, you know, it used to, that used to not really be the case,

00:58:41.020 but that's maybe one of the benefits of the modern age is that we can kind of deconstruct

00:58:46.000 marriage and we can, we can take the things that we want and leave the rest.

00:58:51.320 I have this, uh, this idea that like, well, I think marriage is primarily for the security

00:59:00.500 of a woman. And I think that made more sense when women couldn't or wouldn't make their 0.97

00:59:08.160 own money. And now in the modern day, a lot of women are doing extraordinarily well. Women 1.00

00:59:13.240 under 30 who are childless are generally out earning men in that same demographic. The idea

00:59:18.140 that, um, that women need the security of that relationship is I think a little bit outdated.

00:59:27.820 I think it has to do with their diminishing sexual marketplace value and their need for,

00:59:32.540 let's say, companionate love, which might be greater in women than it is for men.

00:59:36.980 I like Patrice O'Neill's take on it, which is that men generally, they want women to be,

00:59:44.360 they men want to be alone, but not by themselves. So they kind of, they want their own space and

00:59:49.020 they want the women kind of around. And to me that works out great. So I live by myself. I am, 0.99

00:59:57.400 I've had long-term committed relationships and my girlfriends have, they, they know my positions

01:00:03.380 on marriage. So if they're going to stick it around, it's because potentially there's enough

01:00:09.480 value left over for them to, uh, to do so. And I think for a lot of women, if the relationship is 1.00

01:00:17.160 strong, they're willing to forego the, the legal contract. I think that's one of the first things

01:00:23.160 they're willing to dispense with. Yeah. I mean, I've said this quite a few times privately on consults

01:00:29.360 and with guys in my group and we have discussions about this sort of thing. And surprisingly women

01:00:35.240 will abandon their demands and parts of their sexual strategy and adopt yours if they see you

01:00:41.700 as a high enough value guy. Sure. Um, that being said, marriage can be avoided. Um, you can still

01:00:49.020 have relationships with women. Like, you know, for myself, I'm in a non-cohabitating LTR. I've been

01:00:53.580 with my gal for years. She's awesome. Um, we live in two separate houses. Sometimes, you know,

01:00:57.440 we live together on short, short stints for a vacation or whatever. But then there comes a

01:01:02.520 question for guys also, because let's be honest. I mean, the reason why we're walking this earth is

01:01:06.940 a scatter seed in the past on our DNA. It's like, okay, now how do you have children? So I guess

01:01:11.800 the next question for you, sir, is do you want to have kids? And if you did, what is your strategy

01:01:18.860 for doing that to minimize the risks? Well, I go back and forth. So I'm, I'm at the place where

01:01:25.820 I feel like I will only move forward if it's an enthusiastic yes on my end. And I'm not there

01:01:32.880 yet because I've seen among my, I'm the only unmarried childless friend that I have in my

01:01:40.300 friend group. And so I've seen what happens to men once they get married and really when they have

01:01:44.580 kids and I don't see them that much anymore. They spend half of their waking lives earning money

01:01:51.980 in the other half of their lives, taking care of the kids and the wife and just being domesticated.

01:01:58.540 A lot of these men love it. And if that works for them, fantastic. They love their little family

01:02:06.880 lives and that's what they've dreamt about since they were young men and they got it. Great. I hope

01:02:13.320 it works out for them. What I've also seen though, is that the amount of sacrifice required in terms of

01:02:19.680 time, energy and money to have, uh, one woman and to have a family is considerable. And I think about 0.80

01:02:28.700 like, I'm working on a book. Would I be able to write a book if I had a kid? Um, would I be able to

01:02:35.180 travel the world if I wanted to have a kid? I think it's possible, but it's, it's much, much harder

01:02:40.720 and you need a lot of money to do it. And also a flexible, open-minded, committed woman who's willing 1.00

01:02:46.860 to kind of roll with it and occupy that place in your frame. I've seen a couple of, um, clips or

01:02:55.320 videos where you talk about the idea of red flags. Um, there's a chapter in my book on 20 red flags.

01:03:02.640 I'm actually editing it now to add a 21st to it. But, um, it seems to me anyway, that it's a clear

01:03:09.340 and concise strategy for vetting women over a long-term basis by just watching their behavior,

01:03:15.600 spending time with them and seeing really what they're made of, see how they respond to stress

01:03:21.000 in the relationship. Um, I know that you've, uh, been in touch and interviewed with, uh, Sean Smith,

01:03:27.860 former colleague of mine that we did, uh, before the train wreck series on and the author of the

01:03:32.560 tactical guide to women, which is a great book that I recommend. And he often talks about vetting and,

01:03:37.140 you know, being attentive and watching the behavior sort of thing. Do you have your own list of red

01:03:41.140 flags or the things that you look for? Like what sort of tolerances do you have for stuff like that?

01:03:45.100 I'm curious. Sure. I think understanding red flags is, is really important. I think my own list has,

01:03:51.840 like many of the things that I've learned, been learned the hard way. It's been learned through

01:03:56.440 pain and I've learned what doesn't work, um, by doing postmortems on my past relationships.

01:04:04.180 I think it's accepting if you get involved with a personality disordered woman, and there is a 0.95

01:04:10.260 considerable number of them out there. They're not most women, but they're a sizable minority. 1.00

01:04:13.980 Uh, we'll talk about those women in a, in a minute. Most normal, normal women with red flags, 1.00

01:04:22.080 I think most guys can see them, but they march ahead anyway. So being able to identify them

01:04:28.600 is probably not even half the battle rich, in my opinion. I think a lot of guys know that this

01:04:33.940 doesn't feel right. I think they see what they see, but they're not thinking with the right head.

01:04:38.640 And I think it's very, very difficult. I remember what it was like being a young man. I think it's

01:04:43.060 very, very difficult when you're dominated by that urge and those hormones to say, especially if you

01:04:49.520 don't have a great deal of optionality, which a lot of young men don't. Yeah, this doesn't look

01:04:53.780 completely kosher, but I don't know. She's, she's really good, nice on the eyes. And I, she makes me

01:05:00.500 feel really good in the bedroom. It's going to be hard for a lot of guys to walk away from that

01:05:05.120 situation just because they see something that's a signal for a possible future catastrophe.

01:05:10.540 It's like the pleasure now is greater than the possibility of a future disaster. It's not that

01:05:16.260 they don't see the red flags. It's that they don't listen to them because they're listening to a more

01:05:21.320 powerful urge. So that said, there's another subclass, which are the personality disordered women. 1.00

01:05:27.400 And that's actually, I think more important for men to learn about because until you have, let's say

01:05:34.980 that the, I need to watch my words here, the exquisite misfortune of being involved with a woman with a 0.94

01:05:44.280 personality disorder, you might not understand how nutty people can be. Like some of the things that can

01:05:51.540 happen, you might think only happen in soap operas or happen on movies. Like that's like, truth is

01:05:57.340 stranger than fiction, my friends. It's like the things that, that a personality disordered person

01:06:02.800 can do are absolutely outside the bounds of anything. A normal human being would be able to

01:06:08.900 conceptualize for a relationship. And a lot of guys are not prepared for that because they've never

01:06:14.020 seen something like this before. They don't know how to deal with it. And they don't really even know

01:06:20.480 that it exists because it's not like these women or these people, they walk around with,

01:06:24.140 with signs that say, you know, I have BPD or I have NPD. It's, it's, they look like normal

01:06:31.980 functioning adults. They have jobs. Sometimes they're very attractive. It's sometimes they can

01:06:37.340 be on excellent behavior. They're very charming and intelligent. And then behind the scenes,

01:06:41.300 they can act totally different and it leaves you, it's chaos. And it leaves your, it takes a while to

01:06:46.580 figure out what's going on if you don't know that these things exist.

01:06:48.920 Yeah. I find that with guys, they, these types of women are obvious, are often defined or distilled 1.00

01:06:57.180 with some, some sort of soundbite. Like she just seems to get me right. Like it's just this girl

01:07:04.060 that all of a sudden does everything right. Just seems to get him and tick off all the boxes. And

01:07:10.240 I've had this conversation with more than one friend now. And some of these guys are, are guys that

01:07:15.120 know my work intimately well. They're part of my group. We've hung out, we've had in-depth

01:07:19.440 conversations, broken bread, done all kinds of stuff together for weeks, months, and years and

01:07:24.640 stuff like that. And they sometimes confuse crazy for love, you know, and sometimes it's difficult to

01:07:31.960 distinguish crazy from love. And even when you point it out to them and you spell it out and they know

01:07:37.860 who you are and they know your shit real well, they still marched back into the slaughterhouse. 1.00

01:07:42.180 Absolutely. It's astonishing how often that actually happens. 1.00

01:07:46.700 Well, how often as a man, do you ever feel like you, most men are never going to feel like they are

01:07:55.860 a God in the eyes of a woman. Like they're the best thing that's ever walked the earth. 0.97

01:08:01.720 They're never going to feel passionately, overwhelmingly desired by her. I mean, these are,

01:08:07.940 these are not normal experiences for the vast majority of people. And it's incredibly intoxicating.

01:08:14.760 It can feel very strange, but it's like on some level, I find that men who have unhealed wounds,

01:08:23.200 emotional wounds from their past are most easily prey to that kind of love bombing because it speaks

01:08:29.320 to a part of them that, that has always told them that they weren't enough, that they weren't good

01:08:34.680 enough. And here's this beautiful woman in front of them saying, you're the most amazing creature

01:08:38.680 that's ever walked the earth. And a part of them really wants to believe it because that would heal

01:08:43.320 this, this wounding that, that he's carried around maybe for decades that says that he's not enough.

01:08:49.200 And so I think they, they do, they are willing to walk into the slaughterhouse. It's like that,

01:08:56.220 that, that power, uh, that, that women can exercise over men through their love is it's considerable.

01:09:07.200 It is considerable, isn't it? Yeah. That's, that's deep. Um, I wanted to pull something up here

01:09:12.540 because I know you're, uh, short on time, so we've only got about 90 minutes, but there is a video

01:09:19.560 that I had, uh, come across on your channel and I, and I'd shared it in my group for discussion. So I

01:09:27.460 wanted to, uh, chop that up with you. Just give me a second. I'm going to open up my laptop here.

01:09:32.480 Here it is. Um, so I don't know if you remember this one, but the title of it is how to have

01:09:38.620 effortless relationships with women. Sure. I was proud of that one. I liked that one. 1.00

01:09:42.760 Yeah, it was a good video. It was, it was eight minutes long and you know, you sort of distilled

01:09:46.880 it like just be her best option, you know, essentially. And you, and you framed it back

01:09:50.760 to another one where you were talking about how, um, women treat men like men treat jobs,

01:09:56.280 I think was the way that it broke down. That's my kind of interpretation of hypergamy in a

01:10:01.000 non-inflammatory perspective. Yeah. Um, now I kind of pushed back on it a little bit and I wanted to,

01:10:07.860 uh, discuss it with you because, um, it relies on women understanding that there are no other 1.00

01:10:17.540 better jobs essentially. And I think the argument that you made in the video was that, you know,

01:10:22.800 they've worked other jobs. They know this is the best that they can get. So why would they leave?

01:10:26.680 Because they've seen what's out there. The problem with that though, is that that would rely on a woman 1.00

01:10:31.880 that's had a lot of experience with guys, which generally aren't ideal for long-term relationships or

01:10:37.180 for them to be sticky to you. But because women's solipsism, do you agree that women are solipsistic 0.97

01:10:43.460 or is that something that you'd find, you know, contentious?

01:10:47.080 I think if you just say women like default are solipsistic, that's, that seems like an 1.00

01:10:52.660 overgeneralization. I think they, they have tendencies towards solipsism. We can say that.

01:10:56.420 Okay. So tendencies towards solipsism. So I think the argument was made that even if you had a

01:11:02.040 crack team of scientists, engineers, psychologists make the absolute perfect job for, for a woman, 1.00

01:11:07.120 that there's no way that she'll ever be a hundred percent content as you would purport in the video,

01:11:14.040 because they'll still find something to complain about or take issue with or express contempt with

01:11:18.880 to their boss, either covertly or overtly at some point in time. What's your thought about contempt

01:11:26.060 when it comes to relationships? Well, contempt is, is awful. I mean, John Gottman said it was one of

01:11:32.860 the four horsemen of the end of a relationship. When one partner is experiencing contempt for the

01:11:39.680 other, it's, it's the indication of a really unhealthy power dynamic because the other person

01:11:45.660 is, is looking down in judgment on the other. And so this person believes that he or she is much

01:11:51.680 higher than their partner and that they are justified in, um, in criticizing them from their

01:11:58.700 own frame of reference, which is the opposite of the kind of acceptance that generally makes for

01:12:05.020 healthy, loving, long-term relationships. It's like, you don't have to love everything about your

01:12:09.860 partner. You don't have to like everything, but you do kind of have to accept them for who they are.

01:12:14.440 That's part of the fun of a relationship is that you're not me. You're different from me. And that's

01:12:20.280 good. It's like Viva La Difference, I think. So contempt is bad. Can I respond to what you said

01:12:25.340 about? So I think you have a point. I think in, in my talks, I talk about, I use the word perceived

01:12:35.040 best option and that's an important word in this case. So it's like you, a man could, we could say

01:12:41.540 objectively be a particular woman's best option, but she could not perceive him to be that because of

01:12:48.700 maybe her, uh, previous relationships or comparisons on social media. And that lack of

01:12:56.200 perception is going to make that relationship effortful for sure. So it's not completely about

01:13:04.100 just being the best possible version of yourself and a woman's best possible option. You also have

01:13:09.800 to be her, her most, her best perceived option. Some of that you have control over and some of that you

01:13:14.940 don't. The part that you do have control over is that you have control over, um, presenting yourself

01:13:21.020 in an attractive way and maintaining the frame of the relationship so that there is space. So there

01:13:25.460 is mystery. So there is playfulness. So there is attraction. Those are things that you can do to

01:13:30.180 keep a woman engaged. Part of why, um, you know, to, to use the job metaphor, sometimes women do get 1.00

01:13:40.080 really great jobs, but after they've been there for a while, they get a little too comfortable

01:13:45.260 and the things that they used to be really keen about when they first took on the role. Now they're

01:13:51.660 annoying. This happens in all positions. I mean, when are people more enthusiastic about their jobs

01:13:58.000 when they just start or like five years down the road? Yeah. And so I think that falls to the manager

01:14:02.840 to continually like make sure that this person is engaged, is growing, is moving, has new projects

01:14:12.140 to work on to make sure that the job, while the, like the structure of it remains constant, there's,

01:14:18.800 there's always novelty and transformation and growth within that constraint. And that's something

01:14:23.940 that a good manager can provide for his employees. And I think that sometimes men, they think,

01:14:31.300 oh, I got the woman or I married her. I'm done with that. And unfortunately you never

01:14:37.760 get to stop working to provide that frame, to maintain that frame. So that's how I would respond

01:14:45.020 to, um, yeah, I agree with that. That's, you know, it's great that you, um, you know, kind of broke that

01:14:49.520 down because, um, I've said that often too, like, as a guy, you really can't relax, you know, you can't

01:14:54.160 retire. You just can't put your feet up and eat Cheetos and watch sports all the time. Like you,

01:14:58.120 she still has to continue to see you as her best options. She, she still needs you to chase 0.83

01:15:03.620 excellence and be on a purpose. The difficulty that a lot of guys have, especially the angry ones is

01:15:08.780 they're like, well, she can just get fat and do nothing and family law will take care of her sort 1.00

01:15:12.220 of thing. And it's like, well, there's some truth to that as well too. So, um, maybe, maybe some

01:15:18.880 thorough vetting, you know, might solve that. Um, a little bit of dread, um, you know, setting your life

01:15:25.080 up in such a way where she doesn't have, uh, comfort all the time. I think a little bit of

01:15:32.320 discomfort is good in a relationship. What do you think about that? Absolutely. Total security is the

01:15:38.400 enemy of growth, productivity, and, um, development. I mean, think of what are the jobs that have total

01:15:45.440 security like Pope Supreme court justice? I mean, it's like how, and, and president of Russia King.

01:15:54.680 Yeah. So, and it's like when you, and where, what are the positions that historically have been

01:16:00.720 associated with the most corruption and, uh, abuse of power? It's usually positions that have complete

01:16:08.380 security. Like they, they cannot be removed while they're still alive. And I think that's really

01:16:14.720 dangerous. I think that all relationships and positions should be some, some degree of

01:16:20.780 conditionality there. Uh, I think having some insecurity is a spice as well. It keeps the desire

01:16:29.620 alive. A lot of, I'm talking to a lot of guys these days, Rich, maybe you are too. They're really

01:16:36.020 happy with their women. Some of them are in long-term relationships. Some of them are married,

01:16:39.720 but they're not having sex. And for desire to remain alive, you need a lot of things. Everything

01:16:47.200 that's kind of good for the, the secure companion at love is almost like poison for the libido and a

01:16:55.320 healthy sex life. Healthy desire requires space. It requires mystery. I have to leave in order to like

01:17:03.620 miss you so that I can want to see you again and then come back and join with you.

01:17:07.780 Correct. Another thing to consider is sex is a really complicated act. It's not just about

01:17:12.180 pleasure and making babies. And one of the things that it does is that it facilitates emotional bonding

01:17:18.600 through usually the chemical oxytocin, which is released after orgasm. And this is why couples go

01:17:25.600 hot and heavy in the beginning of their courtship is because they actually don't have a claim to the

01:17:29.760 other person. They have no idea if they're ever going to see that person again. And if they like

01:17:34.180 that person and they want to see them again, this is one way that they can increase the likelihood

01:17:39.420 that this person will return. And so there's a lot of sex in the beginning of a relationship in order

01:17:44.580 to create that emotional bond to feel like I can now trust that this person is going to return.

01:17:50.700 The problem with that is that once the frame has been established, this is who we are,

01:17:56.100 maybe you're living together. There's no risk that the person is going anywhere.

01:18:00.920 Well, that entire function of sex is now irrelevant. And so you've just knocked one of the legs of that

01:18:07.540 table off. And so there's just one less reason to have sex than there was the idea that women need 1.00

01:18:15.600 to understand that they're replaceable without overtly stating it, you know, being an asshole about 1.00

01:18:20.700 it. Do you think that's an important concept? One of my earliest videos is everyone 0.97

01:18:24.580 is unique and everyone is replaceable. I think that's the full truth is that no one is quite

01:18:29.620 like you, Rich. No one's quite like me, but there'll be other podcasters after you and me,

01:18:34.820 you know what I'm saying? So we have our own unique thing, but we are replaceable. And that's true for

01:18:40.080 everybody in every position in every relationship on the planet. And kind of thank God, because that's

01:18:45.260 what allows our institutions and our cultures to survive and move forward through time.

01:18:48.860 So I think that it's important for people to know that they're in a privileged position

01:18:59.780 to be in a relationship with me. And one of the ways that that can be accomplished covertly and

01:19:07.000 without being a douche about it is to be visibly competent. Visible competence in men is like posting

01:19:17.620 thirst traps on Instagram to women because comp that kind of visible competence in men is highly, 0.75

01:19:24.640 highly attractive to other women. And if you just have other women around who are responding to that

01:19:29.780 visible competence, you could not be, you can be totally above board and committed in your

01:19:33.900 relationship, but you just have like, you need that your woman to see that other women are looking 1.00

01:19:38.620 at you that way. It doesn't even have to be women. Men actually work to, you know, if other men are

01:19:43.580 responding positively, praising you, uh, worshiping you, you know, sort of thing to worship goes a

01:19:49.240 little too far, but yeah, I think you can get it from men, but it's better if a woman sees another 1.00

01:19:54.040 woman looking at you with those googly eyes. And I think that's part of why women have Instagram 1.00

01:20:01.640 accounts is it's the validation. And I think what it does is it says, I have optionality and it makes

01:20:10.460 them feel comfortable in the, um, and powerful in that relationship. Now women generally don't date 1.00

01:20:17.520 their fans. That's part of the issue with that. Like on the, whatever podcast, there was one of the

01:20:24.420 women that I was talking to. I looked at her Instagram profile later. She has over 800,000 followers

01:20:30.580 on Instagram. And she was the one who was complaining about how she couldn't find a good guy to, to get 0.84

01:20:36.340 married to. And I'm thinking among those 800,000 men, there has to be at least a few hundred guys

01:20:43.560 who meet all of your criteria about what you're looking for. And you have direct access to these

01:20:48.340 men. So what's the problem? Well, I don't think that a woman really wants to get with one of her 1.00

01:20:54.580 fans. Well, if you treat her like a celebrity, then she's going to treat you like a fan, right?

01:20:58.160 This is why you have to be careful with the amount of contact and praise and you know,

01:21:02.980 like everything you throw at her, isn't it? Sure. Um, it seems like one of the most popular guys

01:21:08.740 today, uh, for young men is Andrew Tate. Um, what do you think of his message in the way that

01:21:16.620 men are responding to him today? I don't know much about Andrew Tate. There's a lot of controversy

01:21:21.500 around him, obviously. I mean, if you just Google his name, I think it's legally required to put the

01:21:25.640 word misogynist in front of it. I have watched a few of his clips. I even watched maybe five or 10

01:21:31.680 minutes of your talk with him when he was on this podcast. And if I just based on what I heard from,

01:21:39.620 from that interview, I, I agreed with what a lot of what he had to say. A lot of, I think you asked

01:21:44.480 him a question about how could like what the men need to do to be happy. I think that was the gist of

01:21:50.420 it. And his response, I think was something along the lines of, I don't think that's a good operating

01:21:54.240 principle for men to chase happiness. Happiness is sort of the, the, uh, the epiphenomenon,

01:22:00.820 not my language, not his, that arises out of a life well-lived of chasing excellence and becoming

01:22:06.960 the best version of yourself. It's hard to argue with that. I mean, it's, he's a complicated person

01:22:11.540 because I guess he's bound up in some, uh, uh, I don't know, some, some complicated legal situation

01:22:20.440 right now. Yeah, sure. Some kind of entanglement, I suppose, with the Romanian authorities.

01:22:24.320 And like I was saying earlier, he, he definitely has an aggressive tone. I don't, I've never met

01:22:30.200 the guy, so I don't know to what extent that is authentic and to what extent that's part of his

01:22:34.640 public persona. It's very, it's very hard. I imagine to be famous on that level without adopting

01:22:43.280 some degree of a persona as like a barrier between you and all of the feedback that you're probably

01:22:51.120 constantly getting all of the time. It would be very, I think that's why, you know, like Elton

01:22:56.100 John, that's not his real name. It's like when, when you become world famous, it's sometimes easier

01:23:01.260 to do that if you can step into a persona. Again, I don't know to what extent that's true for Andrew,

01:23:06.180 but his tone is aggressive. And I think a lot of people listen to the tone and respond from that.

01:23:12.560 Uh, he also got really big, really fast. And so I guess he's been putting out content for a long

01:23:17.240 time and people could go in and maybe isolate the parts that were more inflammatory and they could

01:23:22.840 disagree with and promote those over others. I'm not sure. But I do, I do think that, uh, Jordan

01:23:29.200 Peterson was asked this question about Andrew Tate recently and his response was pretty good. His

01:23:33.920 response was something like he equated Andrew to like a, uh, like a gangster rapper. And maybe that

01:23:43.060 is that kind of like aggressiveness is preferable to cringing defeat, which is another option that

01:23:52.900 stares a lot of young men in the face. And Jordan had some sympathy for that.

01:23:57.920 That must've been a difficult question for him because he knows his daughter spent four or five

01:24:01.620 days with him in Romania when they were in Russia. I didn't know that. Yeah. Um, yeah, there's a few

01:24:08.380 things, uh, that I'm aware of out there that, uh, we won't talk about any further. The, uh, super

01:24:14.920 chats I'll get to in a moment. Um, do you have any book recommendations for guys? You know, given that

01:24:21.180 most of my viewers tend to be men, do you have any solid book recommendations? You know, if you could

01:24:25.080 pick a top three or a top five, I really liked the tactical guide to women. I'm glad that you

01:24:29.940 mentioned that I've recommended that to a number of guys. I think it's a pretty solid way to approach

01:24:35.420 dating responsibly. And Sean's also, uh, he's in the process of finishing up another book that

01:24:42.900 should be out. Yeah. So I'm excited about that. Most of what I read is philosophy and psychology

01:24:52.220 and political theory and things like that. Um, so I'm more about, uh, you know, I like to read the

01:25:00.220 Tao Te Ching. I like to read, um, Kierkegaard. I like to read the kind of high brow stuff. I don't

01:25:08.640 real, I don't read a lot of, uh, red pill content for better or for worse. Interesting. Um, all right,

01:25:14.260 let me grab these super chats here and then we'll sort of wind it down. Uh, eat, sleep, repeat says,

01:25:19.120 uh, Hey, Rich, I'm a software developer. How can I restart an elf business? It seems my only option

01:25:23.720 are to freelance or to have employees as an agency. Um, that's a detailed response, my friend. Um,

01:25:31.900 sit tight for a business topic, uh, podcast and pose that question to me then. Cause it's,

01:25:38.740 cause it's a deeper rabbit hole and it's not particularly relevant to Orion's wheelhouse.

01:25:43.220 Uh, open the chat. I don't do that. Uh, inspired one, both your channels have helped me immensely.

01:25:47.900 I was on my red pill journey. Your channel topics have validated my changes and opened my eyes as to why

01:25:52.980 appreciate you both. Uh, thank you, sir. Thank you. Uh, my truth. Uh, speaking of unhealed wounds,

01:25:59.220 any overlap of that imposter of that with imposter syndrome, any crazy, simple suggestions to move

01:26:06.100 in an immediate and eventual long-term direction. Both of you are great, helpful channels. Thanks.

01:26:11.100 Do you have any recommendations there with imposter syndrome? Sure. I work with that with guys all the

01:26:15.820 time, especially young guys. And one thing I've found is that one way to overcome it is to appreciate

01:26:20.980 the paradox at the heart of imposter syndrome. Because on the one hand, you think that you are

01:26:26.880 worthless, that you can't do the job, that you're faking it. And it's only a matter of time before

01:26:32.780 people discover your incompetence. But at the same time, you think that you're so clever and competent

01:26:38.120 that you've actually fooled everyone into thinking that you could do the job. That doesn't make sense.

01:26:43.540 So I think if you can sit with that paradox and say, how on the one hand can I think I'm so

01:26:47.440 incompetent at doing my job, but I can actually convincingly fool everyone around me into

01:26:53.880 thinking I'm doing a good enough job. If you sit with that for a long enough time, a lot of the

01:26:58.480 cognitive structures begin to collapse. Ultimately, the cure for imposter syndrome is authentic

01:27:03.300 confidence, which is the consistent felt experience of success, which means you got to do the thing.

01:27:08.140 Otherwise, you're fooling yourself. You got to do the thing enough times that you can trust yourself,

01:27:12.440 that all things being equal, you can do the thing. And then you got to take it in. Because a lot of guys,

01:27:16.460 they do the first two things, and let's say they become perfectionists, and all they do is focus

01:27:20.120 on the 1% they still haven't done right. And so they're kind of drowning in the midst of their

01:27:24.740 achievement. So you have to look back every once in a while and see how far you've come and allow

01:27:29.320 that to emotionally affect you, to kind of update your browser. And then you'll be able to say,

01:27:35.040 basically, all things being equal, I can do it. I'll either find a way or I'll make a way.

01:27:38.900 It's not like, it's not an omniscient, omnipotent, narcissistic perspective. It's like, yeah,

01:27:45.560 I can do it. And if I, if I trouble, I'll find another way around. Like, I'll make it work.

01:27:53.300 Amazing. Guys, Orion Taraban, he has a YouTube channel called Psych Hacks. It's tagged in the

01:27:59.280 title of the video. I encourage you to subscribe to it. I'm a subscriber and I watch his videos. I think

01:28:03.760 they're great. They're great for stoking conversation too, amongst your friends and

01:28:08.940 colleagues. You know, it's got lots of distilled ideas that are well presented and balanced, I

01:28:16.420 think. And I appreciate your content, man. I appreciate coming on the show today. Thank you

01:28:20.680 very much. This was great, Rich. I really enjoy talking with you. Is there anything you want to

01:28:25.520 shout out before you go? Any like, like social media, email list, anything you want people to take

01:28:30.420 look at? No, the YouTube channel is generally where I've, where I have the most success and it's a

01:28:35.100 great entry into what I do. So check me out on Psych Hacks. Cool. Thanks.

Playing to Win - July 13, 2023

087 - Orion Taraban @psychacks Growing YouTube, Relationships, Red Pill @whatever

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