Ep. 1254 - The Left Admits Defeat In Their Latest Hit Piece Against Me
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
180.11969
Summary
A left-wing media outlet published a lengthy hit piece on me, accusing me of single-handedly destroying the trans agenda in Tennessee. Also, a prominent medical organization is now redefining the word infertile to include gay couples. Schools in Florida have started to ban cell phones, which raises the question, why aren t cell phones already banned in every school in the country? And a list has gone viral which supposedly details all the places that women don t want to be taken on a first date. I ll give the definitive answer on what this list gets wrong and what it gets right, all of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a left-wing media that published a lengthy hit piece on me,
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accusing me of single-handedly destroying the trans agenda in Tennessee. I'm undeserving of
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such high praise, but I'll take it. Also, a prominent medical organization is now redefining
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the word infertility to include gay couples. Schools in Florida have started to ban cell
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phones, which raises the question, why aren't cell phones already banned in every school in
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the country? And a list has gone viral, which supposedly details all the places that women
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don't want to be taken on a first date. I will give the definitive answer on what this list
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gets wrong and what it gets right, all of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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You know, it used to be that if you wanted someone to publish an over-the-top,
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flattering portrayal of your life's work, you had to pay for it. Unless it's your obituary,
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you had one choice, which was to hire an ad agency to create some marketing materials
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or get a publicist to send some emails or something like that. I'm not sure exactly how
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the process works. But anyway, none of that is true anymore, because now if you're looking for
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unfettered, fawning adulation on the cheap, there is another option. You can always wait for a
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left-wing digital media outlet to write a hit piece about you. Now, years ago, when the slightest
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hint of nonconformity got people fired, these hit pieces were maybe a little bit more effective.
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Now they read more like press releases from the person being targeted. This has been true for a
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while, but yesterday, the trend officially hit what I think is its apex at something called HuffPost,
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formerly known as the Huffington Post. Without charging me a dime, believe it or not,
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HuffPost has just published probably the most complimentary profile anyone has ever written
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about me. Now, that's not a high bar to get over, granted, given that there has never been
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an intentionally complimentary profile written about me by anyone. But still, this one is pretty
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great. That was not their intent, as far as I can tell. They obviously spent a lot of time on this
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thing. They interviewed a bunch of people to put together this lengthy diatribe in an apparent attempt
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to make me seem mean and bad and scary. But in the end, they produce an article that essentially
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accuses me of single-handedly shutting down, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care in Tennessee
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while chasing trans activists out of the state altogether. So they were trying to embarrass me,
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but in the process, they made me out to be some sort of superhero. Now, to be clear,
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I will admit that I don't deserve nearly as much credit as they give me, but I appreciate the thought.
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And, of course, it's the thought that counts. And it's worth talking about this article in some
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detail because it reveals something significant, which is that the left is losing on this issue,
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and they know it. Even the writers at HuffPost and the few people who still read HuffPost
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understand this very well. This is probably the best confirmation on this point that we've seen yet,
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and I'll show you why. The piece I'm talking about is entitled,
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This state tried to pass anti-trans laws for years. Then a right-wing media star got involved.
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The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh has set his sights on banning gender-affirming care for trans youth,
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and an attack on Vanderbilt's transgender health clinic shows he's succeeding.
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Well, all I have to say to that is damn right and amen. Now, the writer of this profile is a former
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BuzzFeed reporter who goes by the name Lil Kalish and uses they-them pronouns. So you know you're in for
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something good here. You also know, of course, that Lil Kalish, they-them, is going into this
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investigation with all of the conclusions already drawn. There's not even a pretense of objectivity,
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and that's journalism for you. Lil Kalish begins the article by describing an interview with Riley,
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who's supposedly a healthcare worker at Vanderbilt and who also uses they-them pronouns,
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apparently. The article makes clear that Riley is a pseudonym. So right away, we have a hit piece
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written by an author with a fake name, talking to somebody with a fake name, and both of them
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are using third-person pronouns to describe themselves. Already, the credibility is just
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off the charts. Now, according to Riley, one day in September, the idyllic serenity of the
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Vanderbilt gender clinic was shattered when I posted my investigation into Vanderbilt on Twitter.
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whispered about the social media post by right-wing blogger Matt Walsh, which had gone viral the day
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before, for claiming that doctors at Vanderbilt's transgender health clinic castrate and sterilize
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children. Now, I do need to pause for a second to note one of the many ironies of this piece,
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which is that it accuses me of spreading disinformation while constantly getting basic
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facts wrong. So throughout the piece, I'm called a right-wing blogger, even though I haven't blogged in
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roughly 10 years, which is a small detail, admittedly, but it stands out in a piece that's
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supposed to be accusing me of spreading misinformation. Our friend, Lil Kalish, dedicated a
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5,000-word hit piece to me, but apparently never even bothered to Google me beforehand,
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which you would think would be like the first step. But to Lil Kalish's credit, the article does offer
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a somewhat accurate portrayal of what I wrote on social media last year. Here's the HuffPost
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summary, quote, Walsh posted a video of one Vanderbilt doctor, Dr. Shane Taylor, who founded
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the clinic in 2018, discussing how gender-affirming surgeries, like double mastectomies and general
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surgeries, could bring in a lot of money for the medical center. And indeed, that's exactly what I
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posted, because it's true. The article goes on to correctly characterize some of my other tweets,
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quote, in another video, Walsh posted a different doctor cautions that employees who don't want to
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treat transgender patients on the grounds of religious objections probably shouldn't work
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at Vanderbilt. At the end of the thread, Walsh wrote that the clinic's peer support group,
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Trans Buddy Program, was in fact a gang of trans activists acting as surveillance in order to force
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compliance. Now, what's the problem with any of this, you might ask? Eventually, Lil Kalish gets
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around to making something of a point, quote, puberty blockers, which stop the body from making sex
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hormones, help slow unwanted secondary sex characteristics. They do not, as Walsh suggested,
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sterilize or castrate children, though the medication could pose some risk to fertility
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if they are administered too early in puberty. Now, this is what's called a self-refuting sentence.
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Lil Kalish begins by saying it's wrong to suggest that puberty blockers castrate kids,
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and then proceeds to admit that these drugs castrate kids. You should know that the definition
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of chemical castration, according to the Webster Dictionary, is the use of a drug to block the
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production of sex hormones. That's what chemical castration is. So HuffPost is claiming that puberty
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blockers don't castrate. They only block the production of sex hormones, which is to say that they don't
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block the production of sex hormones. They only block the production of sex hormones. Just as you
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might argue that, you know, the object over there isn't a square, it's only a geometric shape with
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four equal straight sides and four right angles. If it feels like you're having a stroke while you
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listen to this line of logic, well, that makes two of us. As for sterility, the data have been clear on
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this for a long time. Here's a direct quote from the peer-reviewed Journal of Translational
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Andrology and Neurology from back in 2019. And it says, quote, transgender individuals who undergo
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gender-affirming medical or surgical therapies are at risk for infertility. Suppression of puberty
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in a pediatric transgender patient can cause the maturation of germ cells and thus affect fertility
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potential. Now, by the way, not that facts matter here at all, of course, but in my tweet thread,
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I wasn't just talking about puberty blockers. And you'll notice that most of the time when
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you're having this debate about so-called gender-affirming care, quote-unquote, with a
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leftist, all they want to do is talk about puberty blockers. That's the only thing they want to talk
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about. And they don't really want to talk about puberty blockers either because they won't admit
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what puberty blockers are, and they are chemical castration by definition. But they certainly don't
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want to go on to talk about cross-sex hormones. And in that tweet thread, I was mainly talking
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about cross-sex hormones, which have a well-documented sterilizing effect on children.
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Vanderbilt admitted to giving those to children as young as 13. Let's just go back and listen to
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that clip again just to refresh our memories. Here it is.
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We can provide gender-affirming hormones on an individual who is on a pubertal blocker,
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depending on whatever kind of blocker they've chosen or we have discussed with them,
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or they can present to us at a later stage of puberty, and then we provide the gender-affirming
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hormones. Previously, the Endocrine Society recommended to start these at age 16, but we
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all know that would be delayed puberty, right? 16-year-olds don't start puberty. So more recently,
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they did update that to say as early as 14 for compelling reasons. So we have some individuals
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who have started gender-affirming hormones at 13 or 14 to be more like their peers. Again,
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fertility preservation and consent are very important to discuss prior to any initiation of
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these. Okay, now, so there it is. That's just, it's not me claiming this. This is them talking
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about what they provide, and they're talking about gender-affirming hormones, cross-sex hormones
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for kids as young as 13. That's what they say. Now, to be clear, the drugs they're talking about don't
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simply reduce fertility. In many cases, they eliminate it entirely and permanently. It is
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simply an indisputable fact that cross-sex hormones, which Vanderbilt did give to gender-confused
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children and which are given to gender-confused children all over the country, can and very often
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do sterilize. That's not my theory or my assumption. It is a fact. That's why many hospitals engaging in
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this so-called gender-affirming care tell patients to store their eggs and sperm. UCSF, for example,
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advises that its gender doctors will, quote, oversee services for people with testicles,
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including sperm storage and specialized techniques to produce and retrieve sperm in those with a
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history of hormone use. So HuffPost caught me saying something true, which they're pretending is
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false. But let's just move on because it gets even worse. Lil Kalish also talks, takes issue rather
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with my reporting that Vanderbilt was performing double mastectomies on minors. Quote,
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Vanderbilt performed fewer than a dozen top surgeries or double mastectomies each year for
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transmasculine patients in their late teens, according to Riley. Such surgeries require
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patients to undergo months of therapy beforehand, and a study published this summer showed that top
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surgery patients had little to no regret decades after the operation. Both Riley and a Vanderbilt
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executive, C. Wright Pinson, said the hospital never performed genital procedures on minors.
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Okay. There are at least three significant problems with this paragraph. Actually, four problems.
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The first is that this whole article is based on some person named Riley, and that's not even some
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anonymous person with a fake name and fake pronouns is the source of all this. And there's just supposed
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to be what they say is the gospel truth. Don't question it. Now, you might ask, like, why should
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we care what this Riley person says? Why do we trust them? But beyond that, the first issue is that it uses
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the term late teens, which is obviously ambiguous. A 19-year-old adult woman is in her late teens.
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Someone who's 17 years old could also be considered in their late teens. A 16-year-old might qualify as
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late teens if by late teens you just mean somebody on the back half of their teenage years. And they're
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relying on this ambiguity because, in fact, Vanderbilt did perform double mastectomies on patients under the
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age of 18. And that's what we're talking about here. They've admitted that. This is why they suspended so-called
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gender-affirming surgeries for patients under the age of 18 after my reporting. It's kind of hard to suspend
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something you weren't doing in the first place. But they were, which is why they suspended it. Another problem with
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that paragraph is that it implies Vanderbilt did not act unethically because they only performed fewer than a dozen
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top surgeries each year on teenagers. So, you know, they only mutilated a few kids. What's the big deal?
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Imagine being one of the young girls who no longer has her breasts because of these charlatans and then
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reading that paragraph. Well, it was only a few dozen of you. What's the big deal? Enraging doesn't begin to
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describe it. In fact, if you're a person with a brain and a soul, you will hear that they mutilated a dozen
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kids a year and be shocked by how high that number is. A dozen a year? A dozen girls a year had their
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body parts removed for no valid medical reason? I mean, that is shocking and horrifying. It's shocking
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and horrifying if they did it to one kid. But even by their own estimation, which we can assume is
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generous on, you know, to them, which we can assume is a conservative estimate, even by their own
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estimation, a dozen a year? To those of us with a conscience, that is absolutely atrocious.
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And you notice how they've moved the goalposts, right? They went from saying, we don't mutilate
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kids at all. Don't be ridiculous. To now they say, we only mutilate kids every once in a while. Don't
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overreact. Well, that's a very different argument, isn't it? The third issue here is the study that they
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cite. They claim that a study published this summer showed that top surgery patients had little to no
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regret decades after the operation. Now, if you have common sense, you'll already find that this
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claim is highly dubious, given that almost all surgeries have regret rates at least over zero.
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Okay, that's just, that's human nature. There's good, no matter what the surgery is, you're going to
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find people who regret doing it. Even if it's a good surgery, even if it's a life-saving surgery,
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you're probably going to be able to find at least some people who regret it, because that's just
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humanity. That's how people work. The idea that nobody ever regrets a cosmetic double mastectomy
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is ludicrous on its face. You already know that it's not true, because it doesn't make any sense.
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And that's why I did what HuffPost hopes you won't do, and I clicked the link that they provide.
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And it took me to a report that I've actually already debunked on this show that begins with this,
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question, what is the rate of regret and satisfaction with the decision after two years
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or more following gender-affirming mastectomies? Okay, so they're not following tracking results
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from decades after the surgery, at least not in every case. Two years suffices, apparently. So
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HuffPost says, well, it's decades later. And then the actual study says two years or more. That's not
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decades, last I checked. And then I looked at the response rate, quote, a total of 235 patients were
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deemed eligible for the study and 139 respondents. Right there, you have a useless study. If nearly
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half of the patients don't respond, in a study like this, now there might be other studies where
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a response rate, you know, around half is fine. But in a study like this, it really invalidates the
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study, because you have to ask, well, why didn't they respond? Maybe because they're depressed,
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unhappy, maybe they're dead. I mean, who knows? And in that case, you really have no business citing
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the very small number of people who responded, fewer than 140 in this case, as evidence of anything.
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We see this kind of statistical manipulation constantly in this field. This is yet another
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instance of it. We should also note that the median age at the time of surgery for those who did respond
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was 27. Okay, so this was not a study that focused on minors who had top surgery. In other words,
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it's a totally irrelevant study because it's not even attempting to measure the thing that we're
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actually talking about. Finally, a number of respondents actually did report high levels of
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dissatisfaction, but their answers were thrown out because the researchers judged the answers to be
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contradictory or confusing. That's interesting, isn't it? Every single answer that happened to say
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that they do regret it also just so happened to be confusing. And so the researchers said, well,
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that's confusing. Well, that doesn't count. This is just a brief list of the problems with this
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absolutely ridiculous and scientifically illegitimate study, which HuffPost is citing
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uncritically and without acknowledging any of its myriad limitations. Now, I could go on here,
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but the result of the piece is an extended attack. The rest of the piece, I should say,
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becomes an extended attack on Vanderbilt, believe it or not, for daring to comply
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with the Tennessee attorney general's investigation into this barbarism. They also suggest that it's
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improper for Tennessee officials to act on my concerns, even though this is precisely how
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democracy is supposed to work. Citizens bring an issue to the attention of their government and the
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government responds. That's like how it's supposed to work. The upshot is that this writer
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repeatedly insists that I misinformed the public about Vanderbilt's trans program and about gender
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affirming care generally, but quote unquote gender affirming care. But there's no explanation as to
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what part I was wrong about or how exactly I was wrong. What little this writer does say is clearly
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wrong or misleading. And this is what passes for a fact check. This is how a hit piece works in the
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year 2023. Now, as gratifying as it was for me to read this, there's a bigger point to be made here.
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Um, ultimately the article is really a lamentation over a battle that the left knows it is losing.
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The child gender transition racket has suffered one defeat after another in state legislatures.
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And then, and then, and now the courts have followed. And most importantly, it has lost
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completely on a cultural level. And just as a microcosm, let's look at the comments on this
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HuffPost hippies. The most popular comments on this extremely left-wing website all support my
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point of view. As of right now, the top comment on the article reads, quote, why is this being made
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into a left-right issue by the media? It's not. I'm liberal. Everyone I know is liberal. No one I know
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supports trans treatments for children. The next highest rated comment reads, they keep telling us
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that no surgical procedures are being done on minors, yet here it seems to be occurring.
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Right below that is this comment. I just can't understand how any adult would be okay with this
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in their children. And on and on. The public sees gender-affirming butchery for what it is,
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and once they've seen it, the genie can't go back in the bottle. The voices of sanity are winning.
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They're winning with laws against child castration, which are being passed all over the country.
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They're winning in the courts, especially after the ruling from the Sixth Circuit just a few weeks ago,
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upholding the ban on quote-unquote gender-affirming butchery in Tennessee. And now with this
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desperate, overwritten, and incoherent hit piece, the left has admitted their defeat as clearly as
00:20:08.040
they possibly can. Now let's get to our five headlines.
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We begin with this headline from the National Review. It says,
00:21:02.740
a major medical group issues more inclusive infertility definition. Now, first of all, several weeks ago on the
00:21:10.620
show, we talked about a case in the UK where it was, I believe, a lesbian couple that was fighting,
00:21:16.300
successfully fighting to be counted as infertile under the official medical definition so they
00:21:22.040
could get tax-funded fertility treatment. And you may now be thinking that this is a bit odd given
00:21:27.720
that the lesbian couples are by their nature infertile, sterile, because two women cannot get
00:21:34.080
pregnant. And you're right. It is odd, to put it mildly. And now something similar is happening here in
00:21:39.060
the United States. Predictably, reading now it says, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine
00:21:44.300
Practice Committee issued a more inclusive definition of infertility to accommodate same-sex
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couples and promote equitable access to infertility treatment and care. The organization said in a news
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announcement on October 15th, this new and inclusive definition is driven by the clinical needs of
00:22:00.700
patients who come from different places and with different treatment needs. According to the ASRM,
00:22:05.820
infertility is a disease, condition, or status that can be characterized by, quote, the inability to
00:22:10.800
achieve a successful pregnancy based on a patient's medical, sexual, and reproductive history, age,
00:22:15.580
physical findings, diagnostic testing, or any combination of those factors. The ASRM further
00:22:21.620
defines infertility as the need for medical intervention, including, but not limited to,
00:22:25.900
the use of donor gametes or donor embryos in order to achieve a successful pregnancy either as an
00:22:29.880
individual or with a partner. Nothing in this definition shall be used to deny or delay treatment to any
00:22:34.540
individual regardless of relationship status or sexual orientation. This revised definition reflects
00:22:41.120
that all persons regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity deserve equal
00:22:45.360
access to reproductive medicine, according to the ASRM CEO, Jared Robbins. This inclusive definition
00:22:52.340
helps ensure that anyone seeking to build a family has equitable access to infertility treatment and care.
00:22:58.580
Now, first of all, anytime you hear the word or the term inclusive definition, you know that something
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is wrong because definitions, by definition, are not meant to be inclusive. They're meant to be
00:23:11.580
exclusive. A definition should exclude all of the things that it isn't. And so the definition of an apple
00:23:20.240
should definitely exclude everything that is not an apple. And if it doesn't, if you have a definition
00:23:29.080
of apple that would include a bunch of things that aren't apples, well, now you no longer have a
00:23:33.720
definition of apple. So definitions are supposed to be exclusive. And of course, this isn't just about
00:23:41.040
classifying gay couples as medically infertile, which is bad enough. It's also going to be used,
00:23:44.980
we can assume for trans people. You know, we can assume right off the bat that now a man who identifies
00:23:50.000
as a woman can be classified as an infertile woman because he can't conceive a child, even though he's
00:23:58.120
not supposed to be able to conceive a child because he's a man. So that's the idea. Now, is this all
00:24:03.900
semantics? Okay, does it really matter? Well, yes to the second question, no to the first. This is not
00:24:10.120
semantics at all. There is obviously a difference, a major difference, a definitional difference
00:24:15.840
between a heterosexual couple struggling to conceive and a lesbian or gay couple that can't
00:24:23.260
conceive, or a man in a dress who can't conceive. The difference is that only that first combination,
00:24:31.320
the man and woman, heterosexual couple, should be able to conceive. Okay, in the case of the first
00:24:38.120
couple, assuming that the woman is of childbearing age, if they can't conceive, then we know that
00:24:44.480
something is wrong. There is some kind of defect, disease, condition on either the man or woman's part
00:24:51.280
or both. Nature has gone wrong. Okay, if a man and woman can't conceive, nature has gone wrong.
00:24:59.300
Something is not right here. And so that's where it makes, if you can get some kind of treatment,
00:25:05.100
if you can take a medicine that will correct what has gone wrong. But if a woman and a woman can't
00:25:12.260
conceive, well, in that case, nature is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Nature is functioning as
00:25:18.260
it is meant to. So what should happen when a woman and a woman, when a lesbian couple goes to the
00:25:22.780
doctors and says, doc, we can't conceive, then the doctor should look at them and say, yep, everything's
00:25:29.520
functioning exactly as it should. See you later. End of conversation. There is no disease. There is
00:25:37.480
no condition. The reason why the woman-woman couple can't conceive has to do with the fundamental nature
00:25:43.220
of that coupling. It is a fundamentally sterile coupling. It is an inherently infertile relationship.
00:25:52.300
The man-woman coupling is fundamentally, by its nature, fruitful. The woman-woman couple is
00:25:58.780
fundamentally, by its nature, sterile. Only the man-woman couple is made to be life-giving. Only
00:26:05.200
the man-woman couple is meant to be life-giving. Only the man-woman couple can ever really be
00:26:09.840
life-giving. And if you are in a same-sex coupling of some kind and you find that fact to be upsetting or
00:26:20.840
disappointing or depressing, well, I don't know what to tell you. It's just a fact. It doesn't really matter
00:26:29.420
how you feel about it. Fact is a fact. There is only one kind of relationship in existence that can be
00:26:37.940
life-giving, that is fundamentally, inherently, by its nature, life-giving, and that is the man-woman
00:26:42.440
relationship. No other arrangement can be that or is meant to be that or will ever be that. Period.
00:26:52.000
But that's what this is all about. That's why they want to change the definition of infertility so as
00:26:55.820
to take that special, absolutely pivotal distinction away from heterosexual couples.
00:27:02.340
And it also makes gay couples into victims. Yet again, their infertility is now not simply a
00:27:07.580
natural product of their fundamentally infertile, sterile arrangement. Instead, they are suffering from
00:27:15.040
infertility, which perhaps is true in a certain way. I mean, the same way that we might say that I am
00:27:22.580
suffering from my lack of wings or my inability to breathe underwater. I wish I could fly. I wish I could
00:27:31.240
breathe underwater. That would be kind of cool. But my inability to do those things is not a sign of any
00:27:36.400
kind of illness, nor should I receive medical treatment to help me do those things. I'm not
00:27:42.720
supposed to be able to do those things just as a gay couple is not supposed to be able to conceive
00:27:47.280
and can't and never will. And the real reason or the most important reason, you know, the reason why
00:27:57.160
they are didn't want that why they want to deny this point is that word supposed supposed like gay
00:28:05.520
couples can't conceive because they're not supposed to be able to. That's not how it's set up. That's
00:28:14.280
not how they're made. That's not how that relation. That's not how that's not how nature is. That's not
00:28:18.420
how human beings are made. And that's just it's an undeniable fact. And what follows from that fact
00:28:29.600
is that gay couples should not have kids should not should not adopt kids should not do surrogacy
00:28:35.840
and all of that. And the reason why they should not is because children are supposed to have a mom
00:28:42.520
and a dad. And we know that. Okay, so the fact that only a man and a woman can conceive a child.
00:28:50.960
So that's a fact. And it follows from that fact that every child in existence has a mother and a
00:28:59.260
father. And it follows from that that every child in existence is supposed to have a mother and a
00:29:04.720
father. That's how it's supposed to work. That is what is natural. That is what children need.
00:29:15.460
And this all follows from the fundamental sterility of the gay relationship as compared to the
00:29:21.900
fundamental life-giving fertility of the heterosexual relationship. And that's why they want to deny it.
00:29:29.060
It is all about this war that is being waged on the natural order of things. That's what it's always
00:29:38.480
about. All right. Here's an interesting story from the New York Times. One afternoon in late
00:29:46.560
September, hundreds of students at Timber Creek High School in Orlando poured into the campus's
00:29:50.860
sprawling central courtyard to hang out and eat lunch. For members of an extremely online generation,
00:29:56.200
their activities were decidedly analog. Dozens sat in small groups, animatedly talking with one
00:30:02.100
another. Others played pickleball or on makeshift lunchtime courts. There was not a cell phone in
00:30:06.780
sight. And that was no accident. In May, Florida passed a law requiring public school districts to
00:30:11.760
impose rules barring student cell phone use during the class time. This fall, Orange County Public
00:30:17.000
Schools, which includes Timber Creek High, went even further barring students from using cell phones
00:30:21.320
during the entire day. In interviews, a dozen Orange County parents and students all said
00:30:27.060
they supported the no phone rules during class, but they objected to their district's stricter day-long
00:30:33.840
ban. Parents said their children should be able to contact them directly during free periods while
00:30:38.540
students described the all-day ban as unfair and infantilizing. Sofia Ferrara, a 12th grader at
00:30:45.700
Timber Creek, who needs to use mobile devices during free periods to take online college classes, says
00:30:51.180
they expect us to take responsibility for their own choices, for our own choices, but then they are
00:30:55.320
taking away the ability for us to make a choice and to learn responsibility. And then there were other
00:31:00.740
protests and so on. Continues, says other students said schools seem more prison-like without their
00:31:06.960
phones. To call their parents, they noted, students must now go to the front office and ask permission to
00:31:11.820
use the phone. Surveillance has also intensified to enforce the ban. Lyle Lake, a Timber Creek security
00:31:17.580
officer, now patrols lunch period on a golf cart, nabbing students violating the ban and driving them to
00:31:23.360
the front office, where they must place their phones in a locked cabinet for the rest of the day. Orange
00:31:28.280
County students described the ban as regressive, noting that they could no longer use their phones to check
00:31:32.780
their class schedules during school, take photos of their projects in our class, find their friends at lunch, or
00:31:37.540
even add the phone numbers of their new classmates to their contact list. Catalina, an eighth grader at
00:31:43.640
a local middle school, said, imagine that the device you use on a daily basis to communicate with other
00:31:48.320
people is completely gone. It feels completely isolating. Okay. The only thing, well, I'm not going
00:31:57.240
to say it's surprising, but the only thing notable about something like this is that this is not already
00:32:01.380
the policy in every school in the country. It is insane, in fact, that a school completely banning
00:32:11.340
cell phones in school entirely, that this is such a notable exception that it gets an entire New York
00:32:20.160
Times article about it. That's how notable it is, which I guess shows how naive I am, because I got to
00:32:27.160
say I am actually surprised by that. I sort of, as you know, my kids don't go to public school.
00:32:33.660
I guess I figured that most schools already had a policy that you can't have phones in school at
00:32:40.000
all. And then, you know, most kids, a lot of kids ignore it. That's what I figured. I figured that the
00:32:44.860
kids that are on the phone at school, and I know that many are, but I figured they were breaking the
00:32:51.300
rules in doing that. Come to find out that apparently it's extremely rare for a school to say you cannot
00:32:59.760
have phones here at all during school hours, which is, again, it's just crazy. And it creates an
00:33:11.940
impossible situation. Is it any surprise that we have so many kids who are graduating without having
00:33:19.140
learned anything? You know, we played the video several days ago of the teacher, I think it was a
00:33:24.580
seventh grade teacher, talking about how kids are so far behind, they're delayed. You know, he's got kids
00:33:30.860
in his class who are on a third grade reading level. And many different factors are blamed on that. People
00:33:38.080
talk about the lockdowns, the COVID lockdowns. That had something to do with it. And there are many factors
00:33:45.060
that go into it. But this right here is like the main factor, okay? If you want to know why there
00:33:53.860
are so many kids who are not learning at school, it's because they all have phones and they're on
00:33:58.500
their phones the whole time. They are totally distracted the entire time while they're at school
00:34:05.300
through their, for many of them, their entire experience in grade school. And it's just,
00:34:13.000
it's not possible to teach them. You know that I can be plenty critical of public school teachers
00:34:18.980
and for good reason, but I also sympathize with them for, for, uh, for many reasons as well. And
00:34:25.440
this, and here is one, like, what are you supposed to do as a public school teacher? If the school has
00:34:31.940
not banned phones, you're competing. How can you can't compete now? You're competing constantly for the
00:34:39.900
kids. It's hard back in the dark old days when cell phones didn't exist, at least smartphones didn't
00:34:45.800
exist. And, uh, which is most of my time in public school, that was the case. And back then it was,
00:34:51.240
it was hard enough for the teachers to get the kids' attention because there are many other things
00:34:54.780
you can be distracted by, but at least everybody was present in the room with you. Like everyone's
00:35:00.720
sitting in the room physically and yeah, they're, they might be distracted because they're writing
00:35:04.580
notes and passing notes along, or they're goofing off with their friends or something,
00:35:07.880
but everything is like all the distractions at least are located in the room with you.
00:35:15.260
And now these teachers are competing with the whole world outside because these kids are,
00:35:20.600
have their eyes glued, uh, on this, to this portal that takes them out into the, uh, into the digital
00:35:29.260
world. And so the teachers are competing with like the entire universe to get the kids' attention.
00:35:35.160
And it's impossible. It is impossible. This is what it comes to. It's not overstating the case.
00:35:43.540
Unless we ban cell phones in every school for the entire school day, kids are not going to learn.
00:35:54.720
We're just going to see a total collapse of the educational progress of kids entirely.
00:36:01.360
This does not work. And we're seeing this is, this is the great experiment that is being run right now
00:36:09.820
because really Gen Z just now getting out of high school age, they're really the first generation
00:36:16.060
that had cell phones through their entire childhood. And let's take a look at them and see how it's
00:36:22.840
working out. Is it working out? Are we happy with the progress? Do we feel like they graduated high
00:36:30.240
school and they're intelligent, well-rounded, knowledgeable people in the way that we want
00:36:33.600
them to be? By and large, does anyone feel that way? No, it's a total disaster. And unless we take what
00:36:43.820
I guess seems like drastic measures, um, unless we do that, there's just, there's no hope for these
00:36:52.040
kids. Of course you have to ban it. And the fact that you've got kids and I don't, I don't blame any
00:36:58.020
of the kids in this, uh, in their interviewed in the article. I don't blame them for being completely
00:37:04.580
attached to their phones. It's how they were raised. But when you have an eighth grader saying,
00:37:09.520
uh, that it's totally isolating, let me think about that for a second. She feels completely isolated if
00:37:16.380
she doesn't have her phone with her, even though she's in a classroom, she's in a school with like
00:37:23.920
hundreds of other kids. She's in a physical environment surrounded by people, including her
00:37:30.460
peers. And yet she feels isolated if she doesn't have her phone with her. Now, again, that's not to
00:37:36.580
criticize her. That's to criticize the parents who allowed her to develop that kind of dependency
00:37:43.200
on the phone. That without it, it's like her, it's like a, it's a, you know, it's like a limb,
00:37:50.020
you know, it's a part of them and you take it away. They don't know what to do. It feels like prison
00:37:54.540
to not have their phone for a few hours, which is all the more evidence that they need to not have
00:37:59.680
their phone for a few hours. In fact, they shouldn't have their phones at all.
00:38:01.700
And I just can't believe some of these parents that also object to taking the phones away.
00:38:08.440
Well, how am I going to get in touch with my kid? What they're at? Why? What do you need to call
00:38:14.660
them five times a day? In fact, you can get in touch with them. You can call. What do you think
00:38:20.100
happened for, for the entire history of school up until the last few years? What do you think parents
00:38:25.680
did? Okay. I went to school. We didn't have phones. Most of the time, my parents didn't
00:38:32.920
need to get in touch with me during this. It's a very rare thing that your parent actually needs
00:38:37.200
to get in touch with you during the school day. But if they needed to, they could call the front
00:38:41.580
office. That happens sometimes. They could drive to the school where I am. I mean, there are ways to
00:38:46.080
do it. It's not that hard. And if you really feel, parents, that your kids need, they need to have a
00:38:54.100
phone on them so that you can get in touch with them at any moment because they can't walk outside
00:38:59.560
of your, out of your sight for a second without you being able to immediately speak to them. If you
00:39:05.300
really feel that way, well, then you can get your kid a, a, a dumb phone. You can get your kid a flip
00:39:11.580
phone that, uh, you know, and you can set it up so that they can only call three numbers and they can
00:39:18.880
only text three numbers and it's you and, and dad and whoever, and a sibling. And that you could do
00:39:23.900
that. Those kinds of phones exist. They're pretty cheap. There's no reason. And that, that solves that
00:39:30.900
problem completely. And yet most of these parents aren't doing that. They give their kids smartphones with
00:39:38.240
full internet access. They send them to school with those phones and then they claim that they're
00:39:44.160
only doing it so that, well, I need to be able to get, in case my kid gets kidnapped, I need to be
00:39:47.580
able to call them. Well, we know that's not the reason, because as I said, there's a solution to
00:39:53.020
that. You can get them a kind of phone that doesn't have internet access, can't, can't call and text,
00:39:56.740
but it can at least call and text you. And that's it. You can do that. Every parent, unless you're an
00:40:01.460
idiot, you know that you can do that. You choose not to. You have chosen to give your kid this
00:40:07.280
massive distraction. You have chosen to make sure that your kid goes to school and is distracted
00:40:16.080
every second of every day. It's insane. It is crazy. And I know you've heard me say it a million
00:40:25.720
times, but I do just have to remind you, you know, if you think that it's impossible for a kid to
00:40:31.160
function without a phone, I'm here to tell you it's not. My kids do. None of my kids have phones.
00:40:39.240
We are a very, as I do this for a living, I work in media. Okay. I'm, I, we have to be very plugged
00:40:45.040
in and aware of what's going on in the world. It's not like we're living off in the woods in the,
00:40:49.220
you know, it's not like we're living a 17th century lifestyle as much as I maybe would enjoy
00:40:53.000
that if we were, but we're not. And yet we managed to have kids that don't have a smartphones. It is
00:41:00.120
possible to do. It's very possible. All right. Finally, the Atlantic has a report on a topic that
00:41:07.380
we have, I think we've discussed briefly here and there, but never in any depth.
00:41:11.400
And the headline is self-checkout is a failed experiment. Reading now says when self-checkout
00:41:18.220
kiosks began to pop up in American grocery stores, the sales pitch to shoppers was impressive.
00:41:23.320
Scan your stuff, plunk it in a bag and you're done. Long checkout lines would disappear.
00:41:27.220
Weights would dwindle. Small talk with cashiers would be a thing of the past. Need help? Store
00:41:31.260
associates freed from the drudgery of scanning barcodes would be close at hand to answer your
00:41:35.160
questions. You know how this process actually goes by now though. You still have to wait in line.
00:41:39.180
The checkout kiosk would bleat and flash when you fail to set a purchase down in the right spot.
00:41:43.820
Scanning those items is sometimes a crapshoot. Wave a barcode too vigorously in front of an
00:41:47.620
uncooperative machine and suddenly you've scanned it two or three times. Then you need to locate the
00:41:51.820
unusually lone employee charged with supervising all of the finicky kiosks who will radiate
00:41:58.240
exasperation at you while scanning her ID badge and tapping the kiosk touchscreen from pure muscle
00:42:03.240
memory. If you want to buy something that even might carry some kind of arbitrary purchase
00:42:07.040
restriction, well, maybe don't do that. All is not rosy in the world of self-checkout and some
00:42:12.640
companies seem to realize it. Okay. And then it goes on to explain how the great self-checkout
00:42:19.000
experiment of the last few years is failing and companies are turning back from it. So
00:42:24.060
and that brings up the question of the self-checkout and is it a net positive or a net negative? And
00:42:32.780
there are kind of two schools of thought on the self-checkout question. And one school of thought
00:42:37.580
says, listen, I'm not an employee at this Kroger. I don't have a name tag and a uniform. Nobody's
00:42:43.940
paying me $11 an hour to operate one of these machines. You can't expect me to do this job.
00:42:49.640
I want a cashier to handle this just like they did in the old days. Self-checkout is demeaning,
00:42:55.460
you could argue. It's also unpaid labor. Why should I have to do that? And I understand that argument.
00:43:01.440
In fact, I worked the cash register at a grocery store for myself for like two weeks when I was
00:43:09.380
14 years old. And quickly they decided to kick me out to the parking lot to put shopping carts away
00:43:15.140
when they realized I was not the kind of person they wanted to have interacting with customers
00:43:18.440
that closely on a day-to-day basis. But I remember that brief experience with the cash register. And
00:43:24.440
there's a part of me that every time I'm in self-checkout, I say like, what the hell? Why am I back to doing
00:43:29.280
this again? So that I get. But on the other hand, the other school of thought says, hey,
00:43:33.220
self-checkout is, it's a godsend. It's quicker. It's easier. I don't have to interact with anybody.
00:43:38.240
I don't have to talk to anyone. I can pay for my stuff and I can go. And I understand that argument
00:43:43.620
too. So, and this is what it's, this is why it's such an interesting dilemma because for me,
00:43:49.840
it kind of pits my laziness against my anti-socialness. And those two things are in conflict.
00:43:57.480
And usually those two things work together, lazy and anti-social, you know, that can guide you in
00:44:02.140
one direction or another, not always the best direction, but it will guide you. And this,
00:44:05.280
in this case, it's, they're pulling against each other. And it's very interesting. Ultimately though,
00:44:10.340
I think anti-social should win by all rights and self-checkout is still preferable. The problem
00:44:18.340
though, as always, and this is the case with most things in life, the problem is everybody else
00:44:24.900
in the grocery store. I do like self-checkout because it's fast and easy and convenient,
00:44:30.560
but these days everyone uses self-checkout also. So you end up waiting in line behind a row of people
00:44:37.540
who all have like a hundred items in their cart. And they, for some reason, take a minute per item
00:44:43.780
to scan it, another 15 minutes to put it in a bag. Uh, you got people, I was waiting in line behind
00:44:49.000
somebody the other day that was like, they were putting each item in its own bag. And I'm not much
00:44:54.440
of an environmentalist by the way, but even I am sitting there like, this is a lot of plastic that
00:44:58.260
we're wasting here. This is not good. I mean, even I was starting to feel bad for the sea turtles or
00:45:01.840
whatever. And, uh, you end up waiting there while this whole line of people buys enough food to feed
00:45:08.380
a stadium. And they're all totally perplexed by the machine. So everyone uses the machine now,
00:45:13.140
but everyone is, is most people anyway are still perplexed by it. They don't know how to use it.
00:45:16.560
And, um, and then, and then, you know, it takes 45 minutes and they get to like the green pepper
00:45:22.880
and they have to actually, you know, now there's like a produce, you have to type it in. And then
00:45:27.680
this is very, very confusing for people when they end up with the produce and the green pepper,
00:45:32.280
they don't know what to do with it. And that takes, and that takes them an hour to figure out.
00:45:35.740
So the whole self checkout thing, I think starts to fall apart because of the general stupidity
00:45:40.160
and incompetence of everyone who is not me. And so here's what I propose then. Here's what,
00:45:45.540
so this is finally my solution. Um, I think if we had a special self checkout lane at every store,
00:45:54.780
like a pre-check system for self checkout, for those who have proved that they can scan,
00:46:02.600
let's say 20 items, if you can scan and pay for 20 items in less than three minutes,
00:46:08.960
then you get to go to a special lane and that's going to be the fastest lane of all.
00:46:14.820
That's my solution. Maybe you get a, um, how do you know who gets in that lane? Maybe you get a
00:46:19.960
special badge that says that maybe you get a name tag, maybe you get a uniform. I mean,
00:46:26.800
really you're just an employee now. So I guess we're back to that, but that's my solution.
00:46:30.560
I don't know. Doing my best. Let's get to, uh, was Walsh wrong?
00:46:39.060
Okay. A few comments here. These are oldies, but goodies. Well, they're new comments, but, uh,
00:46:43.680
but old at the same time. Uh, Merman says, Matt, trans people have existed since the beginning of
00:46:48.520
time and they'll exist until the end of time. Nothing you say or do will change that. You have
00:46:52.540
zero power over genetics. As much as you hate God's design, it's not going to change it. Uh,
00:46:58.340
Lucy says, please tell us how trans people existing is in any way a threat to you and,
00:47:03.220
or your family. Surely they must be harming you in some way for you to hate them so much.
00:47:07.280
Or do you pretend to hate trans people because you make your living as a professional bigot?
00:47:12.300
Marcy said kind of the same idea says no, no trans person has ever harmed you. Um,
00:47:18.160
your obsession is concerning. Okay. Uh, let's respond very briefly to all those. Uh, first of all,
00:47:23.560
well, has any trans, no trans person has ever harmed me. Uh, true in a, in a direct sense.
00:47:29.820
Now, plenty of them have threatened to, plenty of them have threatened to kill me and my entire
00:47:33.600
family. In fact, uh, none of them have ever followed through on it, but, uh, certainly there's
00:47:37.700
been a threat, uh, not for lack of wanting at least, and maybe even lack of trying. I don't know,
00:47:41.940
but, um, you know, I always think this argument is, is interesting because it's, if we were
00:47:49.580
to take it literally, it's really an argument for selfishness. So what, so really you're accusing
00:47:55.160
me of not being selfish. You're saying, well, if you're not personally harmed by this, then why
00:47:59.800
do you care? I mean, would we apply that to anything else? Like what, what have I said that
00:48:04.360
about you passed by a homeless guy on the street? And I say, let's, the fact that he's, uh, fact that
00:48:11.520
he's homeless and starving, it doesn't, that doesn't hurt you. Like, why do you care about his plight?
00:48:15.300
Doesn't hurt. It doesn't affect you. So normally, normally we recognize that even if you're not
00:48:21.260
personally affected by something, um, it, it is, it's good to care about it. Like only caring about
00:48:27.720
things that personally affect you. Usually we recognize that as being selfish. Usually we
00:48:32.660
recognize that as a, as a character flaw. Okay. When you only care about things that directly affect
00:48:38.220
you. Um, and in this case, uh, yes, most of the direct harm that is done by the trans agenda,
00:48:46.840
and there is a lot of it, like children who are being mutilated and butchered just to begin with,
00:48:52.660
most of that harm is not happening to me directly, but I still care because I don't know what to tell
00:48:58.740
you. I care about what happens to other people. I care about what happens to, to, uh, to innocent
00:49:04.300
kids especially. And also, um, as I'm always having to remind people, I, I do in fact, it is in fact
00:49:13.680
true that this is a society that we live in and, uh, I live in it too. And so any harm to the culture
00:49:19.880
and to society does ultimately affect me as well. And, uh, and finally trans people have, uh, always
00:49:26.920
existed and will always exist to the end of time. That of course we know is, uh, is not true. Well,
00:49:32.340
what, what will happen in the future? I guess we can't exactly predict that.
00:49:37.240
Will, will there be a trans identified people, you know, a hundred years from now that I'm not
00:49:44.420
exactly sure, but did they exist 200 years ago? Well, the answer to that is no, although I'm still
00:49:52.060
waiting. You know, I've, I've put out this challenge a million times and anyone is free to
00:49:59.000
prove me wrong. All you have to do is provide, and there should be, you know, if, if, if quote unquote
00:50:05.880
trans people have existed in numbers, uh, similar to, uh, to what they exist today, trans identified
00:50:12.880
people, if they, if they existed in history in the same numbers, then there should be a lot of
00:50:17.840
historical documentation of their existence going back centuries. And so just give me that example.
00:50:25.200
Find me the, find me one trans identified person in like the six, let's just say the 1600s.
00:50:31.740
Just pull one historical era, one century at random. And so I'll give you the whole century of
00:50:38.820
the 1600s anywhere in the world. And this was certainly a time, this is part of, this is part
00:50:44.160
of documented history, very much so. And so can you find me an example of one trans identified person
00:50:50.020
in the 1600s? And just to clarify, that is not a cross-dressing person. That is a person of one
00:50:57.240
sex who claimed to actually be the opposite sex. Just find me that. And then you can really prove me
00:51:05.020
wrong. Uh, but you won't because I'm not. Faith Moore, Andrew Clavin's talented daughter, has written a
00:51:11.700
new rendition of the age old Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol, except this time Carol is spelled
00:51:16.780
with a K. It's a modern twist on the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, but with a female protagonist
00:51:21.460
in a world where boss babes are champion at the expense of family. Faith is making the case that
00:51:26.400
having what matters is far better than having it all. A Christmas Carol, now available to pre-order,
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order yours on Amazon or wherever you get your books today. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:51:36.320
If you spend too much time on social media, then you're probably aware of the list that has been
00:51:47.040
circulating for over a week now. The list of legend, the mythical list of unknown origins.
00:51:51.760
Nobody's certain where this list came from or who exactly was polled in order to compile it, or if
00:51:56.020
it represents anything but the opinion of some random Twitter user. It's most likely that last
00:52:00.560
option. But even so, the list has, as they say, sparked a debate and given rise to a plethora of,
00:52:06.320
of hot takes. It's also been the subject of many news articles and news reports like this one.
00:52:12.180
Watch. Unacceptable places to take a woman on a first date going viral on the social media platform
00:52:18.280
X, formerly known, of course, as Twitter. Yeah, it's leaving men stumped on where else they should
00:52:23.820
take the woman. The first six places are popular restaurant franchise chains like Applebee's,
00:52:30.340
Chili's. I want my baby back. Olive Garden and the Cheesecake Factory. Okay, first of all,
00:52:34.980
Olive Garden. Yeah. All you can eat breadsticks, salad soup. I mean, that's a value, Megan.
00:52:40.840
By the way, producer Fawaz, who made this list? Is this just going viral? Is it like on Reddit or
00:52:45.660
something? Women weighed in. Okay, so women weighed in. Okay, so includes, you know, Cheesecake Factory,
00:52:50.780
all those. Any fast food chain. Okay, Buffalo Wild Wings. A big no. That's a good time if there's a good
00:52:55.700
game on. Other places mentioned include movies, the gym, a bar for drinks, coffee or ice cream dates
00:53:03.980
and sporting events. Pretty much these women listed everything there is to do. Clubs and hookah
00:53:09.340
lounges also made the list. It got many men up in arms. Okay, so that's the story. Someone somewhere
00:53:15.520
pulled some women somewhere and came up with a list that these women say they do not want to be taken
00:53:21.380
on for a first date. And that list is topped by the Cheesecake Factory. It also includes Applebee's,
00:53:25.640
Chili's, Chipotle, Olive Garden, the movies, Buffalo Wild Wings, Red Lobster, Waffle House, fast food,
00:53:29.940
the gym, bowling, buffets, nightclubs, hookah bar, sporting events, coffee shops. Basically,
00:53:34.960
you should not take a woman to any known location on earth on a first date. That's what was decided by
00:53:41.140
whoever decided it. And we'll move past the fact that this list is meaningless so that we can
00:53:45.160
participate in this conversation. Or I should say not participate in it, but deliver the definitive
00:53:49.580
answer to it so that everyone can officially move on. And let's begin with what the list gets right,
00:53:56.800
because it does get some things right. And I think we should acknowledge that. And it's important for
00:53:59.680
young men especially to know this, you know, in the dating scene, and they're planning a first date.
00:54:05.740
There are a few items on that list that you should probably, that's true. You don't want to take your
00:54:10.300
date to one of those places. So it's true that fast food places are probably a little too far on the
00:54:16.680
casual side for a first date. They're also, at this point, incredibly depressing dining experiences.
00:54:23.340
Like I actually went, and this is true, I went inside a Wendy's somewhat recently because the
00:54:29.040
drive-thru was too long. And this was the first time I've even seen one car in a Wendy's drive-thru
00:54:34.180
in at least 25 years. But there was more than one. There was like three. And I said, this is crazy.
00:54:39.260
And so I went inside. And as soon as I walked in the building, I just, I lost my appetite and then
00:54:44.200
my will to live. Dreary, dirty, depressing. The employees scowling at you. Like they're shocked
00:54:50.060
that you came in also. Like you don't know why you're walking into a Wendy's. They don't know
00:54:53.880
why you're here. And they don't want you there. People are sitting by themselves at tables and
00:54:58.440
corners, like unlit corners, eating stale fries and weeping quietly to themselves. It was horrendous.
00:55:06.180
Now I still ordered my food and ate all of it, but I wasn't happy about it. And the point is that
00:55:11.380
you don't want to bring a date into that kind of environment until you know that your relationship
00:55:15.720
is strong enough to stare into the bowels of total hopelessness and despair and survive. And you don't
00:55:22.560
want to do that on a first date. A similar issue with Waffle House, which isn't a great first date
00:55:28.340
location unless you're sure that your date loves both waffles and bare knuckle street fights. And if
00:55:34.960
she does, then it's basically dinner and a show. The whole thing costs less than 25 bucks. That's a good
00:55:39.220
deal. I'm also going to rule out Chipotle for a first date because first impressions are extremely
00:55:43.360
important. And you don't want her first impression of you or yours of her to include explosive
00:55:49.500
diarrhea. And speaking of first impressions, I'll agree that buffets actually may be problematic
00:55:55.980
on a first date only because it's too early in the relationship for her to witness you
00:56:02.200
just like crush six full plates at Golden Corral. Um, my, my wife did, I remember this distinctly.
00:56:10.620
My wife did not see me get to work on a buffet until at least like a few months into our relationship.
00:56:16.220
And, uh, and I just, and I, and I annihilated that buffet and she, she was gobsmacked. But by that
00:56:22.760
point she already knew that I was a gluttonous slob. So I was kind of, you know, I was in a safe space.
00:56:26.760
I was safe to let loose. Most of the rest of the places on that list though, don't deserve to be on the
00:56:31.200
list at all. They make excellent choices for first dates, coffee shops, and ice cream places. These
00:56:35.960
are classic options. Bowling is always fun. Bowling is the kind of thing that everyone has an absolute
00:56:43.060
blast doing once every three years. And the great thing about bowling or something like mini golf as
00:56:48.160
well is that it gives you a fun activity to do, but still enables you to talk to each other while
00:56:53.700
helping to smooth over any otherwise awkward pauses in conversation. It also allows the man to show off
00:56:59.680
his skills a little bit. And I know you think that I'm joking about that. Well, why does a woman care
00:57:03.120
if you're good at bowling? But it's just being good at something is attractive to even bowling.
00:57:08.720
Now, the only caveat is that, and this is kind of, this is kind of tricky with bowling. You don't want
00:57:14.400
to be too good at bowling. So the sweet spot is to bowl somewhere around a 160, 170 on the, on the upper
00:57:22.800
range of it. You don't want to get over the 200 mark because you want to look like you're naturally
00:57:28.340
talented at things, but you don't want to look like you're so good at bowling because you actually
00:57:32.720
take it seriously and go bowling once a week. As for chain restaurants, there should be no hesitation
00:57:38.580
there at all. Yet for some reason, chain restaurants have been catching strays all over the place
00:57:43.700
recently. So just two weeks ago, there was a viral video of a woman refusing to get out of the car on a
00:57:49.100
first date because she was so offended that the man had taken her to the Cheesecake Factory. Watch.
00:58:05.160
He got me at the Cheesecake Factory, y'all. I ain't gonna just go.
00:58:08.980
Yes. Uh, would you want me to open the door for you?
00:58:27.360
Yeah. Yeah. This is the Cheesecake Factory. This is the Cheesecake Factory, y'all.
00:58:36.300
What's the problem with that? This is a chain restaurant. Who takes someone that looks like this
00:58:42.940
to a chain restaurant? Uh, now, first of all, the Cheesecake Factory is perfectly respectable. It's
00:58:50.240
also expensive for a chain restaurant. Two entrees, an appetizer, and a couple of drinks will easily set
00:58:55.200
you back 80 or 90 bucks before tip. And that is a sizable financial investment in a date with someone
00:59:00.420
you hardly know. You know, the Cheesecake Factory, I kind of look at it as the economy plus of chain
00:59:05.740
restaurants. I'm not saying it's first class, but it's not a middle seat and coach either.
00:59:10.620
I spent all of my childhood and a good portion of my adult life thinking of the Cheesecake Factory
00:59:14.960
as a nice, fancy type place. It's the type of place you go if you want to splurge a bit.
00:59:20.900
The first time I ever went to the Cheesecake Factory, I never even went when I was a kid,
00:59:24.080
because when I was a kid, the Cheesecake Factory was way outside of where we were ever going to go
00:59:29.080
if we were going out to eat as a family. And that was like, if I had suggested that,
00:59:33.320
my parents would have laughed at me. Like, Cheesecake Factory? What do you think, we're
00:59:36.940
millionaires? So the first time I ever went, I was an adult, and I wore khakis to the Cheesecake
00:59:43.580
Factory because I thought this is a fancy place. Now, the second time I wore jeans because I realized
00:59:47.840
it's not worth all that, but still, the point is that no woman should be turning up her nose at a
00:59:53.300
place like that. I know it's trendy to hate on chain restaurants these days, but these are affordable
00:59:57.680
and accessible establishments. And if, as a woman, you expect a man to take you somewhere less
01:00:02.740
accessible and less affordable when he doesn't even know you yet, that tells me that your priorities
01:00:07.800
are wildly out of balance. It tells me that your priority is to have your ego fed, which means that
01:00:12.540
you are not the kind of woman a man should be taking out in the first place. As I've said before,
01:00:17.160
if you expect a man to pay for you on a first date and, you know, treat you on a first date,
01:00:22.140
that's fine. I pay for my wife on our first date, even though when we met way back then,
01:00:28.080
she was actually making more money than me, but I paid on the first date because I believe in
01:00:33.900
chivalry and I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy. But those expectations on your part as the woman
01:00:39.620
come with expectations of their own. So if you want the man to abide by traditional codes of chivalry,
01:00:46.620
then you must abide by traditional codes of womanhood. You must be a sweet, feminine,
01:00:52.360
conservative woman. You certainly must not describe yourself as a feminist.
01:00:56.540
You cannot dip your toe in gender roles only when you think you'll get a free meal out of it. That
01:01:00.980
makes you a hypocrite and a panhandler. If you want to be an old-fashioned lady, when the check comes,
01:01:07.400
you better be an old-fashioned lady the rest of the time. But even if you are playing your part,
01:01:12.900
you cannot demand that a man spend top dollar on you before he even knows you. It's not reasonable to
01:01:18.040
expect a man to invest a day's pay or more into a restaurant tab for the sake of a woman who,
01:01:23.400
for all he knows, because he doesn't know you yet, could be low quality and low character.
01:01:29.000
And ironically, a woman who expects that kind of money to be spent on her by some man she doesn't
01:01:33.220
know has only revealed herself to be exactly the kind of woman who is undeserving of it.
01:01:37.540
Now, I will admit that I did not exactly practice what I preach in this regard. For the first date
01:01:43.840
with my wife back centuries ago, I spent multiple days' pay on tickets to a fancy dinner theater.
01:01:54.080
Now, but she didn't know how much the tickets cost or how little I could afford them and would have
01:01:58.180
furiously objected had she known. But here's the other thing. It was also a risky strategy on my part,
01:02:04.280
because it's another reason why I wouldn't recommend it normally, even though it worked
01:02:08.580
out great for me. But I could not come close to maintaining at that level for the rest of our
01:02:15.860
dating relationship. Like that was the best date we would ever go on until we got married, because
01:02:20.840
that I couldn't possibly afford to do that more than once. And from then on, it was Applebee's and
01:02:26.720
Applebee's was about as high class as it got. And she was fine with that. She's still fine with
01:02:31.160
Applebee's. So I ended up with the best of both worlds, which is what you want. A woman who knows
01:02:35.080
how to carry herself in a five-star fine dining establishment, but who's perfectly happy and at
01:02:40.460
home in an Applebee's. And in fact, these days, if there's any Applebee's slander happening in our
01:02:45.440
house, it's usually coming from me, I'm ashamed to admit. In any case, the point is that a first date
01:02:51.240
is about beginning the process of getting to know each other or figuring each other out. You don't need
01:02:55.840
to spend a lot of money to do that. A bowling alley is a great place to start that process or
01:03:00.340
a Chili's. If the night gets really wild, maybe you do both. There are enough hurdles that stand
01:03:05.800
in your way as a single person in the modern dating scene. There's no reason to add more
01:03:09.840
and unnecessary obstacles by being snobby and high maintenance. And that is why the women responsible
01:03:17.960
for this list, if those women even exist, are today canceled. That'll do it for the show today.
01:03:26.020
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.