The Matt Walsh Show - November 01, 2023


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

Word Count

11,437

Sentence Count

704

Misogynist Sentences

28

Hate Speech Sentences

39


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

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, a left-wing media that published a lengthy hit piece on me,
00:00:04.020 accusing me of single-handedly destroying the trans agenda in Tennessee. I'm undeserving of
00:00:08.480 such high praise, but I'll take it. Also, a prominent medical organization is now redefining
00:00:12.760 the word infertility to include gay couples. Schools in Florida have started to ban cell
00:00:17.260 phones, which raises the question, why aren't cell phones already banned in every school in
00:00:21.280 the country? And a list has gone viral, which supposedly details all the places that women
00:00:25.180 don't want to be taken on a first date. I will give the definitive answer on what this list
00:00:29.520 gets wrong and what it gets right, all of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
00:00:33.020 Well, if you didn't already know, Pure Talk is planning to alleviate $10 million in
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00:01:56.380 You know, it used to be that if you wanted someone to publish an over-the-top,
00:02:00.400 flattering portrayal of your life's work, you had to pay for it. Unless it's your obituary,
00:02:04.660 you had one choice, which was to hire an ad agency to create some marketing materials
00:02:08.680 or get a publicist to send some emails or something like that. I'm not sure exactly how
00:02:13.000 the process works. But anyway, none of that is true anymore, because now if you're looking for
00:02:17.020 unfettered, fawning adulation on the cheap, there is another option. You can always wait for a
00:02:23.140 left-wing digital media outlet to write a hit piece about you. Now, years ago, when the slightest
00:02:27.440 hint of nonconformity got people fired, these hit pieces were maybe a little bit more effective.
00:02:33.200 Now they read more like press releases from the person being targeted. This has been true for a
00:02:38.620 while, but yesterday, the trend officially hit what I think is its apex at something called HuffPost,
00:02:44.440 formerly known as the Huffington Post. Without charging me a dime, believe it or not,
00:02:48.860 HuffPost has just published probably the most complimentary profile anyone has ever written
00:02:54.380 about me. Now, that's not a high bar to get over, granted, given that there has never been
00:02:59.440 an intentionally complimentary profile written about me by anyone. But still, this one is pretty
00:03:05.120 great. That was not their intent, as far as I can tell. They obviously spent a lot of time on this
00:03:09.740 thing. They interviewed a bunch of people to put together this lengthy diatribe in an apparent attempt
00:03:15.060 to make me seem mean and bad and scary. But in the end, they produce an article that essentially
00:03:20.600 accuses me of single-handedly shutting down, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care in Tennessee
00:03:25.720 while chasing trans activists out of the state altogether. So they were trying to embarrass me,
00:03:30.980 but in the process, they made me out to be some sort of superhero. Now, to be clear,
00:03:36.740 I will admit that I don't deserve nearly as much credit as they give me, but I appreciate the thought.
00:03:43.580 And, of course, it's the thought that counts. And it's worth talking about this article in some
00:03:48.060 detail because it reveals something significant, which is that the left is losing on this issue,
00:03:54.100 and they know it. Even the writers at HuffPost and the few people who still read HuffPost
00:03:58.920 understand this very well. This is probably the best confirmation on this point that we've seen yet,
00:04:04.660 and I'll show you why. The piece I'm talking about is entitled,
00:04:07.360 This state tried to pass anti-trans laws for years. Then a right-wing media star got involved.
00:04:15.080 The sub-headline reads,
00:04:16.340 The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh has set his sights on banning gender-affirming care for trans youth,
00:04:20.500 and an attack on Vanderbilt's transgender health clinic shows he's succeeding.
00:04:25.100 Well, all I have to say to that is damn right and amen. Now, the writer of this profile is a former
00:04:30.640 BuzzFeed reporter who goes by the name Lil Kalish and uses they-them pronouns. So you know you're in for
00:04:36.760 something good here. You also know, of course, that Lil Kalish, they-them, is going into this
00:04:42.960 investigation with all of the conclusions already drawn. There's not even a pretense of objectivity,
00:04:50.380 and that's journalism for you. Lil Kalish begins the article by describing an interview with Riley,
00:04:56.320 who's supposedly a healthcare worker at Vanderbilt and who also uses they-them pronouns,
00:05:01.240 apparently. The article makes clear that Riley is a pseudonym. So right away, we have a hit piece
00:05:06.220 written by an author with a fake name, talking to somebody with a fake name, and both of them
00:05:12.360 are using third-person pronouns to describe themselves. Already, the credibility is just
00:05:18.440 off the charts. Now, according to Riley, one day in September, the idyllic serenity of the
00:05:23.840 Vanderbilt gender clinic was shattered when I posted my investigation into Vanderbilt on Twitter.
00:05:29.740 As Riley put it, people at the clinic, quote,
00:05:32.260 whispered about the social media post by right-wing blogger Matt Walsh, which had gone viral the day
00:05:37.300 before, for claiming that doctors at Vanderbilt's transgender health clinic castrate and sterilize
00:05:42.180 children. Now, I do need to pause for a second to note one of the many ironies of this piece,
00:05:48.040 which is that it accuses me of spreading disinformation while constantly getting basic
00:05:52.960 facts wrong. So throughout the piece, I'm called a right-wing blogger, even though I haven't blogged in
00:05:58.520 roughly 10 years, which is a small detail, admittedly, but it stands out in a piece that's
00:06:03.680 supposed to be accusing me of spreading misinformation. Our friend, Lil Kalish, dedicated a
00:06:09.900 5,000-word hit piece to me, but apparently never even bothered to Google me beforehand,
00:06:16.000 which you would think would be like the first step. But to Lil Kalish's credit, the article does offer
00:06:21.920 a somewhat accurate portrayal of what I wrote on social media last year. Here's the HuffPost
00:06:28.440 summary, quote, Walsh posted a video of one Vanderbilt doctor, Dr. Shane Taylor, who founded
00:06:33.360 the clinic in 2018, discussing how gender-affirming surgeries, like double mastectomies and general
00:06:37.800 surgeries, could bring in a lot of money for the medical center. And indeed, that's exactly what I
00:06:42.780 posted, because it's true. The article goes on to correctly characterize some of my other tweets,
00:06:47.540 quote, in another video, Walsh posted a different doctor cautions that employees who don't want to
00:06:52.260 treat transgender patients on the grounds of religious objections probably shouldn't work
00:06:55.960 at Vanderbilt. At the end of the thread, Walsh wrote that the clinic's peer support group,
00:06:59.960 Trans Buddy Program, was in fact a gang of trans activists acting as surveillance in order to force
00:07:05.560 compliance. Now, what's the problem with any of this, you might ask? Eventually, Lil Kalish gets
00:07:11.480 around to making something of a point, quote, puberty blockers, which stop the body from making sex
00:07:16.520 hormones, help slow unwanted secondary sex characteristics. They do not, as Walsh suggested,
00:07:22.580 sterilize or castrate children, though the medication could pose some risk to fertility
00:07:26.820 if they are administered too early in puberty. Now, this is what's called a self-refuting sentence.
00:07:34.020 Lil Kalish begins by saying it's wrong to suggest that puberty blockers castrate kids,
00:07:39.880 and then proceeds to admit that these drugs castrate kids. You should know that the definition
00:07:47.620 of chemical castration, according to the Webster Dictionary, is the use of a drug to block the
00:07:53.060 production of sex hormones. That's what chemical castration is. So HuffPost is claiming that puberty
00:08:01.420 blockers don't castrate. They only block the production of sex hormones, which is to say that they don't
00:08:07.880 block the production of sex hormones. They only block the production of sex hormones. Just as you
00:08:13.060 might argue that, you know, the object over there isn't a square, it's only a geometric shape with
00:08:17.880 four equal straight sides and four right angles. If it feels like you're having a stroke while you
00:08:22.240 listen to this line of logic, well, that makes two of us. As for sterility, the data have been clear on
00:08:28.120 this for a long time. Here's a direct quote from the peer-reviewed Journal of Translational
00:08:32.860 Andrology and Neurology from back in 2019. And it says, quote, transgender individuals who undergo
00:08:38.240 gender-affirming medical or surgical therapies are at risk for infertility. Suppression of puberty
00:08:42.620 in a pediatric transgender patient can cause the maturation of germ cells and thus affect fertility
00:08:48.520 potential. Now, by the way, not that facts matter here at all, of course, but in my tweet thread,
00:08:55.760 I wasn't just talking about puberty blockers. And you'll notice that most of the time when
00:09:03.400 you're having this debate about so-called gender-affirming care, quote-unquote, with a
00:09:07.940 leftist, all they want to do is talk about puberty blockers. That's the only thing they want to talk
00:09:12.180 about. And they don't really want to talk about puberty blockers either because they won't admit
00:09:15.220 what puberty blockers are, and they are chemical castration by definition. But they certainly don't
00:09:22.920 want to go on to talk about cross-sex hormones. And in that tweet thread, I was mainly talking
00:09:28.400 about cross-sex hormones, which have a well-documented sterilizing effect on children.
00:09:35.040 Vanderbilt admitted to giving those to children as young as 13. Let's just go back and listen to
00:09:40.500 that clip again just to refresh our memories. Here it is.
00:09:43.180 We can provide gender-affirming hormones on an individual who is on a pubertal blocker,
00:09:47.740 depending on whatever kind of blocker they've chosen or we have discussed with them,
00:09:51.800 or they can present to us at a later stage of puberty, and then we provide the gender-affirming
00:09:56.560 hormones. Previously, the Endocrine Society recommended to start these at age 16, but we
00:10:01.360 all know that would be delayed puberty, right? 16-year-olds don't start puberty. So more recently,
00:10:07.080 they did update that to say as early as 14 for compelling reasons. So we have some individuals
00:10:11.940 who have started gender-affirming hormones at 13 or 14 to be more like their peers. Again,
00:10:16.960 fertility preservation and consent are very important to discuss prior to any initiation of
00:10:22.120 these. Okay, now, so there it is. That's just, it's not me claiming this. This is them talking
00:10:28.440 about what they provide, and they're talking about gender-affirming hormones, cross-sex hormones
00:10:33.620 for kids as young as 13. That's what they say. Now, to be clear, the drugs they're talking about don't
00:10:39.760 simply reduce fertility. In many cases, they eliminate it entirely and permanently. It is
00:10:45.940 simply an indisputable fact that cross-sex hormones, which Vanderbilt did give to gender-confused
00:10:50.620 children and which are given to gender-confused children all over the country, can and very often
00:10:55.540 do sterilize. That's not my theory or my assumption. It is a fact. That's why many hospitals engaging in
00:11:02.180 this so-called gender-affirming care tell patients to store their eggs and sperm. UCSF, for example,
00:11:08.460 advises that its gender doctors will, quote, oversee services for people with testicles,
00:11:12.640 including sperm storage and specialized techniques to produce and retrieve sperm in those with a
00:11:17.120 history of hormone use. So HuffPost caught me saying something true, which they're pretending is
00:11:23.000 false. But let's just move on because it gets even worse. Lil Kalish also talks, takes issue rather
00:11:28.840 with my reporting that Vanderbilt was performing double mastectomies on minors. Quote,
00:11:34.240 Vanderbilt performed fewer than a dozen top surgeries or double mastectomies each year for
00:11:38.080 transmasculine patients in their late teens, according to Riley. Such surgeries require
00:11:42.400 patients to undergo months of therapy beforehand, and a study published this summer showed that top
00:11:47.120 surgery patients had little to no regret decades after the operation. Both Riley and a Vanderbilt
00:11:52.500 executive, C. Wright Pinson, said the hospital never performed genital procedures on minors.
00:11:58.080 Okay. There are at least three significant problems with this paragraph. Actually, four problems.
00:12:02.960 The first is that this whole article is based on some person named Riley, and that's not even some
00:12:08.240 anonymous person with a fake name and fake pronouns is the source of all this. And there's just supposed
00:12:14.300 to be what they say is the gospel truth. Don't question it. Now, you might ask, like, why should
00:12:19.100 we care what this Riley person says? Why do we trust them? But beyond that, the first issue is that it uses
00:12:25.840 the term late teens, which is obviously ambiguous. A 19-year-old adult woman is in her late teens.
00:12:33.140 Someone who's 17 years old could also be considered in their late teens. A 16-year-old might qualify as
00:12:38.760 late teens if by late teens you just mean somebody on the back half of their teenage years. And they're
00:12:44.720 relying on this ambiguity because, in fact, Vanderbilt did perform double mastectomies on patients under the
00:12:50.660 age of 18. And that's what we're talking about here. They've admitted that. This is why they suspended so-called
00:12:58.720 gender-affirming surgeries for patients under the age of 18 after my reporting. It's kind of hard to suspend
00:13:03.640 something you weren't doing in the first place. But they were, which is why they suspended it. Another problem with
00:13:11.400 that paragraph is that it implies Vanderbilt did not act unethically because they only performed fewer than a dozen
00:13:18.300 top surgeries each year on teenagers. So, you know, they only mutilated a few kids. What's the big deal?
00:13:26.920 Imagine being one of the young girls who no longer has her breasts because of these charlatans and then
00:13:32.560 reading that paragraph. Well, it was only a few dozen of you. What's the big deal? Enraging doesn't begin to
00:13:38.320 describe it. In fact, if you're a person with a brain and a soul, you will hear that they mutilated a dozen
00:13:45.320 kids a year and be shocked by how high that number is. A dozen a year? A dozen girls a year had their
00:13:53.160 body parts removed for no valid medical reason? I mean, that is shocking and horrifying. It's shocking
00:13:59.240 and horrifying if they did it to one kid. But even by their own estimation, which we can assume is
00:14:05.220 generous on, you know, to them, which we can assume is a conservative estimate, even by their own
00:14:11.340 estimation, a dozen a year? To those of us with a conscience, that is absolutely atrocious.
00:14:21.160 And you notice how they've moved the goalposts, right? They went from saying, we don't mutilate
00:14:25.500 kids at all. Don't be ridiculous. To now they say, we only mutilate kids every once in a while. Don't
00:14:31.200 overreact. Well, that's a very different argument, isn't it? The third issue here is the study that they
00:14:38.460 cite. They claim that a study published this summer showed that top surgery patients had little to no
00:14:42.220 regret decades after the operation. Now, if you have common sense, you'll already find that this
00:14:50.220 claim is highly dubious, given that almost all surgeries have regret rates at least over zero.
00:14:58.040 Okay, that's just, that's human nature. There's good, no matter what the surgery is, you're going to
00:15:01.840 find people who regret doing it. Even if it's a good surgery, even if it's a life-saving surgery,
00:15:06.760 you're probably going to be able to find at least some people who regret it, because that's just
00:15:10.760 humanity. That's how people work. The idea that nobody ever regrets a cosmetic double mastectomy
00:15:16.640 is ludicrous on its face. You already know that it's not true, because it doesn't make any sense.
00:15:25.560 And that's why I did what HuffPost hopes you won't do, and I clicked the link that they provide.
00:15:32.040 And it took me to a report that I've actually already debunked on this show that begins with this,
00:15:36.700 question, what is the rate of regret and satisfaction with the decision after two years
00:15:42.280 or more following gender-affirming mastectomies? Okay, so they're not following tracking results
00:15:48.900 from decades after the surgery, at least not in every case. Two years suffices, apparently. So
00:15:54.600 HuffPost says, well, it's decades later. And then the actual study says two years or more. That's not
00:16:00.280 decades, last I checked. And then I looked at the response rate, quote, a total of 235 patients were
00:16:05.940 deemed eligible for the study and 139 respondents. Right there, you have a useless study. If nearly
00:16:11.400 half of the patients don't respond, in a study like this, now there might be other studies where
00:16:17.820 a response rate, you know, around half is fine. But in a study like this, it really invalidates the
00:16:24.640 study, because you have to ask, well, why didn't they respond? Maybe because they're depressed,
00:16:29.920 unhappy, maybe they're dead. I mean, who knows? And in that case, you really have no business citing
00:16:36.060 the very small number of people who responded, fewer than 140 in this case, as evidence of anything.
00:16:41.980 We see this kind of statistical manipulation constantly in this field. This is yet another
00:16:45.440 instance of it. We should also note that the median age at the time of surgery for those who did respond
00:16:51.400 was 27. Okay, so this was not a study that focused on minors who had top surgery. In other words,
00:16:59.020 it's a totally irrelevant study because it's not even attempting to measure the thing that we're
00:17:03.820 actually talking about. Finally, a number of respondents actually did report high levels of
00:17:10.740 dissatisfaction, but their answers were thrown out because the researchers judged the answers to be
00:17:15.480 contradictory or confusing. That's interesting, isn't it? Every single answer that happened to say
00:17:21.200 that they do regret it also just so happened to be confusing. And so the researchers said, well,
00:17:25.680 that's confusing. Well, that doesn't count. This is just a brief list of the problems with this
00:17:31.860 absolutely ridiculous and scientifically illegitimate study, which HuffPost is citing
00:17:35.760 uncritically and without acknowledging any of its myriad limitations. Now, I could go on here,
00:17:42.000 but the result of the piece is an extended attack. The rest of the piece, I should say,
00:17:46.480 becomes an extended attack on Vanderbilt, believe it or not, for daring to comply
00:17:50.200 with the Tennessee attorney general's investigation into this barbarism. They also suggest that it's
00:17:54.940 improper for Tennessee officials to act on my concerns, even though this is precisely how
00:17:59.620 democracy is supposed to work. Citizens bring an issue to the attention of their government and the
00:18:04.540 government responds. That's like how it's supposed to work. The upshot is that this writer
00:18:10.100 repeatedly insists that I misinformed the public about Vanderbilt's trans program and about gender
00:18:14.420 affirming care generally, but quote unquote gender affirming care. But there's no explanation as to
00:18:20.200 what part I was wrong about or how exactly I was wrong. What little this writer does say is clearly
00:18:25.580 wrong or misleading. And this is what passes for a fact check. This is how a hit piece works in the
00:18:30.740 year 2023. Now, as gratifying as it was for me to read this, there's a bigger point to be made here.
00:18:36.980 Um, ultimately the article is really a lamentation over a battle that the left knows it is losing.
00:18:44.920 The child gender transition racket has suffered one defeat after another in state legislatures.
00:18:50.500 And then, and then, and now the courts have followed. And most importantly, it has lost
00:18:55.360 completely on a cultural level. And just as a microcosm, let's look at the comments on this
00:19:01.520 HuffPost hippies. The most popular comments on this extremely left-wing website all support my
00:19:08.240 point of view. As of right now, the top comment on the article reads, quote, why is this being made
00:19:13.460 into a left-right issue by the media? It's not. I'm liberal. Everyone I know is liberal. No one I know
00:19:18.500 supports trans treatments for children. The next highest rated comment reads, they keep telling us
00:19:23.840 that no surgical procedures are being done on minors, yet here it seems to be occurring.
00:19:27.300 Right below that is this comment. I just can't understand how any adult would be okay with this
00:19:32.980 in their children. And on and on. The public sees gender-affirming butchery for what it is,
00:19:39.720 and once they've seen it, the genie can't go back in the bottle. The voices of sanity are winning.
00:19:47.180 They're winning with laws against child castration, which are being passed all over the country.
00:19:51.240 They're winning in the courts, especially after the ruling from the Sixth Circuit just a few weeks ago,
00:19:54.980 upholding the ban on quote-unquote gender-affirming butchery in Tennessee. And now with this
00:19:59.680 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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00:20:59.520 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
00:21:49.740 couples and promote equitable access to infertility treatment and care. The organization said in a news
00:21:55.400 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
00:23:05.020 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,
00:51:32.000 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.
00:57:56.980 Let me just get the door for you. Okay.
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?
00:58:24.860 Okay. Are you, you're recording me?
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.