Tim FerrissNaval Ravikant and Aaron Stupple — How to Raise a Sovereign Child
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,103 words- 0:00 – 1:36
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- ASAaron Stupple
Humans are unique, that they are interested in stuff. And it's actually a deep philosophical question of what is an interest? How does a person know that something is interesting? And that is the magic. Like, you know, Elon wants to preserve consciousness as this light flickering in, in the universe. I wanna preserve interests. Like a kid that's interested in something, that is absolutely precious, and I wanna cultivate that. I wanna pour fuel on that fire and, and anything to preserve that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so that's where the adversary comes in. Call it what you want, I don't wanna step on that or squash that. I want my kid to see me as a gateway to interests, as someone who just, like, can make things more interesting.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Anything that I'm interested, they add to it. So if I'm interested in video games, great. My daughter's interested in YouTube, and now she's, you know, filming and trying to make YouTube videos, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
... then she's gotta figure out how the camera works, and then... Like, all this stuff is there, and so I wanna get her like, "Okay, let me get you a camera. Let me get you something to set it up. Which dolls are you using? How can I help? I'll hold the camera," right? "Let's do a storyboard. Do you know what a storyboard is?" Like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASAaron Stupple
... that's what I mean. I think taking children seriously could be, how do you preserve and augment your kid's interest, and how are you always an, an enabler and a supporter and a guide, and never someone who's just pouring cold water? Because, you know, that's not right. [upbeat music]
- 1:36 – 7:16
Who is Aaron, and what makes him qualified to dispense parenting advice?
- TFTim Ferriss
Brother Naval. Brother Aaron. Nice to see you both. And Naval, would you like to kick us off?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Grab the reins?
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Go to town? [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, so Aaron Stupple here, who I actually met... I think we met online, right?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
We met online on various channels, Twitter, AirChat, and just talking about various things. He came out of the critical rationalism crowd, which is a group of thinkers that surround David Deutsch and his philosophy. And Aaron struck me as someone at first who I was like, "This man is insane." [laughs] But I realized in a good way. He's a very ground up, very principled thinker. And what I really liked about talking to Aaron, who, you know, came out kind of as out of nowhere, is that he will take these philosophically sound positions that are very controversial, and then he will just defend them indefatigably without tiring. He'll just keep going.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
He'll keep repeating himself if we need to. He'll explain it from 10 different angles. But he is very tied into the idea of using creativity to find answers to problems and to not using coercion. And so he would end up in these r- rabbit holes where I would find myself having to... You know, usually when I meet someone like that, I usually side with them, I learn from them, and I kind of, kind of, you know, try to help preach that to the rest of the world. Here, it was a little bit the opposite. I found myself on the defensive. I found him too radical, too hard to take seriously. But as time went on, I actually realized he was right about a lot of things. It gave me that very uncomfortable feeling. And so, you know, Aaron actually wrote a book called The Sovereign Child. He's been espousing a theory around taking children seriously, which is an older philosophy, but he's, I would say, the best expositor of that philosophy. But he also had really great takes on everything from is AI gonna end the world, to what do you do if you walk into an emergency room, because he's a doctor, to how to run a classroom, 'cause I think he's also been a public school teacher. So I just found him very compelling person to talk to, and I'm still honestly trying to digest a lot of what he has to say. And I think some of it has seeped into my life and my family life, and some of it still hasn't. So I'm here to challenge him and interrogate him, and to reveal him-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
... to the rest of the world. I will say that this may end up being one of your most controversial episodes-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
... for, for two reasons. I think one is it really attacks at a core level the entire system we have around how we view children and raise children. So it's really a, a, you know, a big F you [laughs] to the entire system. Everything from schooling to parenting, child raising, to how do you take care of the most precious thing in your life. And second, it's a bunch of dudes. It's a bunch of men standing around talking about this. [laughs] I don't see the wives or the women. So, you know, you could just call this the bro parenting episode, [laughs] right? This is a, a bunch of dads and potential dads talking about, you know, what is the best way to raise sovereign children.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So let me just start off by maybe asking Aaron, give us a very quick background on yourself.
- TFTim Ferriss
And also mention how many kids you have, just so we underscore-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... some, some bona fides.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Zero. He actually has zero children.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Zero children. It's all theoretical.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
I've got five kids, ages seven to one. And thanks so much for those kind words, Naval. I really appreciate that, and it's been so much fun talking with you and your cohort on AirChat and Twitter and elsewhere. I started off as a public school teacher coming out of college and got, you know, spent five years doing that, and was really kind of deep into human nature and the experience of young people, and formed some pretty strong ideas about, yeah, human nature and children. And, and then converted that into medical school, and I've been a physician, practicing physician now for the past 10 years, internal medicine. And along the way, I got into one of our, our mutual heroes, David Deutsch, and his, his take on Karl Popper's philosophy. And within that, David Deutsch and his colleague, Sarah Fitz-Claridge, they both developed this theory on children and childhood called Taking Children Seriously. And I stumbled upon this right of, with the birth of our first child, and I thought, "Boy, this is pretty radical and pretty interesting." And after, you know, reading more about it and learning more about it, like, I was kind of faced with, you know, do I, do I apply this to my own kid? 'Cause it's very different from the typical kind of conventional view on parenting and what I'd already been very comfortable with coming out of teaching. And, and I did. And the short story is that I did. My wife and I, she is very open-minded and was open to these ideas, and we found ourselves just doing this 100%, basically. And so we've got five kids now. We've been doing this for seven years, and it's remarkable. I've been into philosophy as an amateur for, you know, since college, but this is the first time that was a really strong application of these ideas to my life, and I can't think of a more transformative, you know, day-to-day impactful, practical, applicable set of ideas than this set of ideas as applied to
- 7:16 – 11:34
Taking Children Seriously (TCS) and The Sovereign Child philosophies.
- ASAaron Stupple
children.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I will say, I've incorporated maybe, you know, call it 30 to 50% of what you're saying. I was already directionally inclined, but I've managed to incorporate some of it, and my wife and I are open to more of the rest, although it's, it's pretty radical. So let's get into it.
- ASAaron Stupple
Great.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So just as an example, the philosophy that you're talking about, the Taking Children Seriously philosophy, which you lay out in The Sovereign Child, the book, you basically say the kids have no sleep schedules. You don't control what they eat. They have unrestricted screen time. I'm not even sure I have unrestricted screen time. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
But your kids have unrestricted screen time. You don't force them to go to school. You don't make them do chores. You don't have rules like, "Don't hit each other." You don't... You try not to mediate sibling conflict. You don't force them to share things. They're not forced to say thank you or obliged to say thank you or even badgered to say thank you. There's no real punishment. There's no timeouts or withholding of things. There's no making them spend time with the grandparents or the extended family. You don't force them to brush their teeth. You don't make them sit at the dinner table. That's optional. So what are we talking about here? Do you have children, or do you have roommates? [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Feral animals.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Feral animals, exactly. So what is this all about? Where did this come from?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, the typical way of looking at parenting is the question of where, what do you allow and what do you disallow? And almost every view on parenting is a discussion of, well, we allow this, but we don't allow that, and these are the methods that we use to enforce these limitations, and these are the justifications that we have for enforcing these limitations. And what I do, my wife and I do, is we just step away from that question altogether and instead view problems as they arise and try to find solutions to those problems rather than appealing to rules. The way we interact with our friends and our family, you know, the adults in our lives, we don't, like, apply rules to people. If we're not crazy about, you know, what we're having for dinner, we don't say, "Okay, this is the rule for dinnertime." We instead try to come up with something that works for everybody. And so you could just start with sleep. You could start with brushing teeth or eating food. The idea is to let kids choose what is interesting or appealing to them and then deal with problems as they arise.
- NRNaval Ravikant
You know, couldn't every parent say, "Well, I try to do that," you know? "I try to convince them that broccoli is good and salmon is good and they should eat their broccoli and salmon, then they get dessert. And so I try to convince them to do that. But they don't know any better. And I always try, I always try to negotiate with them. But after a while, you sort of give up because you realize they're just gonna eat chocolate until they explode. And so I have to cut that off and say, 'No. No more ice cream, and you're gonna eat your salmon and your broccoli, and then you can have your ice cream.'" And then there's a little bit of fighting and whining, and then eventually they just get used to it. So what's wrong with that? I try too. I try to negotiate with them.
- ASAaron Stupple
So the thing that's wrong with it is that every time you force your child to do something, you inevitably set yourself up as an adversary to your kid. So if you're trying to get them to eat broccoli, you are introducing a difficulty in their life around food. And, you know, food is something that is, you know, crucial to a person's engagement with the world, a young person. And you want them to learn about broccoli for broccoli's sake. If broccoli is good for you, you want them to understand broccoli for its own properties. If chocolate is bad for you, right, if chocolate makes you feel bad, then you want them to understand that as mediated by themselves, not because you're introducing yourself into that thing. So you don't want them to avoid chocolate because they're afraid of Dad. You don't want them to eat broccoli because Dad makes you eat broccoli at the dinner table and you can't get up... You can't go up and, you know, do what you want to do because you've got to appeal to, you've got to appease Dad. You know, if broccoli is really important, then it's really important that broccoli is not confused. If eating well is really important, then it's really important that eating is not confused by what your parents' expectations
- 11:34 – 16:55
The David Deutsch influence on these tenets.
- ASAaron Stupple
are.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let me just zoom out for a minute. So if we look at, say, David Deutsch and his collaborator on Taking Children Seriously, and for people who want more on David Deutsch, we might have some mentions and sidebars, but Naval and I did an episode with David. Why did they land on the tenets that they did-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... for taking children seriously? And can we know that their approach is right?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
In other words, like, is there any way to even know that this is a good approach to parenting?
- ASAaron Stupple
That's perfect. It's about knowing, right? And there's different theories about how do we know when we know something.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? We call this epistemology, the theory of knowledge. And, and Deutsch's perspective on this is that humans are uniquely knowledge creators, and the thing about children that's similar to adults is that they're both knowledge creators in the same way. And the role of the parent is to facilitate the child as a burgeoning knowledge creator and not to foil that process. And things that foil that process of knowledge creation and discovery are authorities that arbitrarily thwart you when you're trying to learn about something. And so, that, that's how they hit on this originally. Sarah Fitz-Claridge was just very interested in non-coercion and raising children with zero coercion. She just had that in her mind as a parent, and she couldn't find... She, she kind of searched around for schools of parenting that, that had zero coercion, that had no enforcement of rules. And the, the person that she aligned with was David Deutsch, who brought this epistemological perspective. And his whole argument is that the problem with coercion is that it blocks knowledge growth, and your duty as a parent is to facilitate and foster knowledge growth, and that's the, that's the entire, I would say, one way of describing the entire premise.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And I think underneath, deep down, we all kind of know that there's this contradiction between, okay, we teach kids, you know, go to school, obey the rules, do what we say. You don't know yet. You're not ready. You're not ready. You're not ready. And then all of a sudden they go to college, and there's a complete flip. Like, now you're free. Now you get to learn how to operate in the real world. You gotta think for yourself. Why can't you think for yourself, right? And this whole time you've domesticated them as almost like animals so that they can function in normal society. You train them to eat. You train them to go to the bathroom. You train them to go to sleep. You train them to listen to the teacher. And then all of a sudden they're supposed to be independent thinkers and creators and knowledge generators. And I think all of us have a story of how some very important parts of our life are all about undoing all the things we were taught and discovering for ourselves. And it could be learning how to learn instead of being forced to learn, learning what to learn instead of the set of subjects we were given in school. It could be finally figuring out proper diet and nutrition, which turns out to be the opposite of what we were taught. You know, the FDA pyramid is still up- food pyramid is still upside down. It starts with grains and, you know, get your, get your bread and g- get your rice, and then it kinda goes down from there, and meat is at the bottom. So a lot of it is about undoing what we learned. And a lot of us also have the stories. I personally have a story. When I first went to college, I ate the worst food you could imagine. I just ate complete garbage.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I played a ton of games. It's mostly what I did. Spent most of my time in the computer lab playing video games. And I was just so, you know, enamored with the freedom. Not that my mother was all that restrictive in the first place, but I just didn't have this abundance of food and screen time that I suddenly did in school. And I think even as an adult, we're all still dealing with social media addiction. We're all still dealing with eating more sugar than we want to. We're all still dealing with trying to figure out the proper diet. We're all still trying to be disciplined enough to exercise. We're all still, you know, trying not to doom scroll all the time. So there's a learning process. And so the question is, when do you start that learning process, you know? And so I th- I think we have this distinction that kids below a certain age, they're like somewhere between... This is gonna be controversial, but somewhere between animals and slaves and ignoramuses [laughs] , right? They're like animals that you need to teach them basic things so it sticks. Like you teach a dog, you teach the kid what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, when to go to the bathroom. And then they're a little bit of a slave because we can order them around. We're physically larger than them. Even if we're not physically overpowering them, every missive is backed up with a threat of, "Or what else? Well, I'll take it away from you," right? It's like with the government. The government says, "I'm gonna write you a ticket for jaywalking." What they really mean is, "I'll put you in jail if you, if you jaywalk." Because everything is backed up at the end of the day with the ability to throw you in jail. The same way everything you say as a parent is backed up with the ability of force, and without that it wouldn't exist. And then finally, we just assume the kids are not capable of learning certain things fast enough. They have to brush their teeth. They have to not eat ice cream because it might cause irreparable damage by the time they're old enough. But I think all of these are valid concerns and, and they're worth tackling, right? And, you know, we can go more into them, but I got a whole list of controversial things to go through with you. [laughs]
- 16:55 – 21:29
Supporting evidence and long-term case studies.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. So I'm gonna be the guy on the sidecar chiming in. Do we have any more than one case study of people who have applied this to children for more than seven years, like 20 years, 25 years? Just because I don't personally know anyone who has parented their children this way.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And so I'm wondering if we have like a sample set of kids who have been raised over-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... 15, 20 plus years using these methods and how they turned out.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I'm not familiar of a-- with a set. I know some folks, but I don't wanna out them individually. But I'll even attack the premise of the question.
- TFTim Ferriss
We don't have to name names.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Well, I'd say this is relevant that, you know, wh- when we think about kids and what is a good way to parent, we think in empirical terms and in terms of outcomes and research and scientific tests and sociology and things like that. But there's a huge problem when you're trying to answer a, what is essentially a moral question, trying to answer it scientifically and from a research base or an outcomes based basis. So a comparison would be feminism, right? The arguments for women's liberation were not outcomes based arguments. And there were people who were saying that, "You know what? If we allow women to control their own lives, then they're going to be worse off. They're going to be depressed. They're going to be... You know, all sorts of terrible things are going to happen." And you can, you can imagine
- ASAaron Stupple
The people who were arguing against feminism in terms of outcomes could create all sorts of arguments about, you know, what those outcomes would be or... And women arguing in favor or people ar- for arguing in favor of feminism, in favor of women's liberation would say, "I don't, I don't care what the outcomes are. I wanna control my own life. You know, I'm a full status person, and I am morally deserving to make choices and decisions about my life." And the same goes for all, you know, minority issues and, you know, human liberation movements, is that they're moral arguments, they're not scientific arguments.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah. In fact, if you ask most people, like, "Hey, you know, when you were young, do you wish your parents had controlled you more or less?" I think most people's complaint would be that my parents were too controlling, [chuckles] right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, are we dealing with some survivorship bias where you're asking very smart people who have done well-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Sure
- TFTim Ferriss
... what they would prefer, then maybe. You're not asking people in jail the same question.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Now, I want to explore the moral side of things, but I'm going to just state my maybe placeholder objection that if we frame it as a moral argument-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... then we take certain lines of questioning off the table. I will just say my interest in asking that question is, what does it refer to? One of you guys is gonna know. The Lindy effect?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Just like the durability of things over time.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
I just haven't seen much of this, so I'm curious about it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Actually, there, there is some Lindy evidence. There's some Lindy evidence. Firstly-
- TFTim Ferriss
All right
- NRNaval Ravikant
... keep in mind that historically, children hit puberty, you know, age of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and they were adults at that point. They were out conquering nations and having children, and it's only recently that we moved it up to 18, and a lot of its struggle-
- TFTim Ferriss
For sure
- NRNaval Ravikant
... of teenagehood is trying to control an adult as if they're a child. And so you can already see that it happens at a certain age. Then secondly, it's not an all or nothing thing, and Aaron lays this out in his book, which is basically about where can you start, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So for example, I'll say with my children, my children are closer to somewhere between homeschooled and unschooled, and they wake up when they want, and they sleep relatively when they want, and they do have a lot more permissiveness around eating and screen time. The amount of screen time they spend is horrific. I think one of my kids was showing me the other day, he did eight hours of screen time that day.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- 21:29 – 25:52
Ways Naval and Aaron have incorporated these philosophies into their own parenting.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let me turn around the question on you, Naval-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... just for a second.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
'Cause you mentioned early on thir- you're 30 to 50% incorporated.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So what did you incorporate first?
- NRNaval Ravikant
I basically retreated heavily back, okay? And what I retreated on was, first, I'm not very authoritarian with the kids. I, I never have been. So if they're around me and they wanna eat junk food, I just hand them the junk food, and then I'll leave the room. So [chuckles] I'm not that responsible. Not-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] That's mom's problem.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, exactly.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
So mom and other caretakers might be more restrictive, but I tend not to be, especially around food, especially when I know what a bad job I personally do with food. I'm also not that restrictive with screen time. Basically just, you know, after 6:00 p.m. they get unlimited screen time, and I don't force them to go to school. They're a combination of homeschooled and unschooled. Where I would say I am restrictive is I probably interfere a lot if they're like fighting, if they're hitting at each other. I'm kinda pushy about like, "Let's go, let's go. Let's hurry up, you know, we're late. Get in the car," that kinda thing.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
I... Definitely the one place where I have a big bugaboo, I think they can get over eating badly as kids. Young bodies are very resilient, and it takes a lifetime to figure out how to eat well. And I think they can get over even socialization and emotional hangups and interpersonal conflict. All that stuff has to be handled on its own, and they have to figure it out. The two places where I probably interfere a lot is, one is I insist on math and reading. Like you gotta do your math, and you gotta do your reading. If you do your math and reading, then you're a free individual. Until then, you're a little slave, [laughs] and you don't get to do what you want. [laughs] Right? So I, I'm pretty tough there. And the other one is if one of them is hitting the other, then, you know, that's to me is a boundary that you don't cross, and I tend to get emotional. I tend to interfere. So-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... those are probably the two places where I'm most restrictive. But I would say that, you know, our kids are closer to wild animals than, [chuckles] you know, properly raised children. But I will, I will say, I think most kids these days that I run into, most of their friends who are kind of, quote-unquote, "normally raised," I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade places. Our family has a lot more freedom. We get along great with our kids. They're very intelligent. They're very independent. They're very capable. And they seem to be as well or better adjusted than any of their peers. Not to put their peers down, but I have noticed that all of their peers tend to have a way of getting attention from adults and violating the rules, and that could be anything from, "I'm having an allergic reaction," to, "I threw up," to, "I'm having a meltdown," to whatever, and these are all attention-seeking behavior to make, to control adults who are normally not controllable, and our kids seem to have a lot less of that. Maybe it's just anecdotal.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, I would say the same thing. Our kids are not wild. In fact, they do what we ask them to do. They're very responsive. Like when my wife asks them to do something, they're not thinking, they don't have like a knee-jerk defensiveness, and they're not trying to game us as adversaries or gatekeepers. It's a very authentic interaction. And they're very polite. They say please and thank you to each other. They, you know, they bang up against each other so frequently without us trying to intervene that they understand each other's boundaries. They're very conscientious. You know, obviously it's a small sample size and, you know, there's plenty of other reasons why that might be the case, but I would say, you know, a lot of people object to removing rules and, you know, say that, you know, that it's impossible. You know, a kid will absolutely fall apart, and a few examples of kids not falling apart I think does demonstrate that it's possible. It's possible that, that removing rules can result in a very orderly, structured, and yeah, I would say polite kind of rule-following way of being.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I often say, you know, that I would rather that my kids be disobedient and free and uneducated than that they're educated and obedient, [chuckles] right? 'Cause you can always educate yourself, and most of us who know anything have educa- have become self-learners over time, and learning is always moving target.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
But that independent thinking, that independent streak you can't get back. Everyone I know who is successful in life has a strong independent streak. No exceptions.
- 25:52 – 31:25
How rules work while parenting for freedom-maximizing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Question, Aaron. You said rule following, but this is also a freedom-maximizing parenting philosophy. You also mentioned that if your wife asks for something, the kids will often, for lack of a better terms, comply.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
So is the teaching then coming from modeling rather than rules? That's why they say please and thank you. It's not a request, it's something that you are demonstrating and therefore they're following, or are you explaining the importance of those things and therefore they-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... end up adopting those behaviors? How is that?
- ASAaron Stupple
We explain when we can, but with little kids, explaining in words rarely works. And so I, I think a, a helpful distinction is, you know, that it's, it's not that all rules are bad, right? The rules of chess, the rules of baseball are great. What's great about rules is when you can opt out of them, and adults can opt out of almost any set of rules. Rules that adults can't opt out of are called laws, and laws are very different from rules.
- TFTim Ferriss
You can opt out of those too. They're just severe consequences. [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. Right. Well, you can even stay home, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- ASAaron Stupple
Like a man's house is his castle. Like you can, you can avoid the laws of the road, the rules of the road, and just not, not drive a car. You can ride a bike and walk and... But a kid cannot, a typical kid cannot escape, cannot opt out of the rule of brushing their teeth, for example, right? When teeth brushing time comes around, mom or dad will hunt them down, find them, and make them brush their teeth. And so that's not really a rule in the same sense of the rules of chess, where if you wanna say, "You know, let's play with different pieces. Let's change the, the way the pieces move," right? You can, you can adopt those rules or say, "I don't wanna play chess. [laughs] I wanna go do something else." So rules are great and actually a major m- a huge fan of rules. In fact, I'm such a fan of rules that I don't wanna contaminate rules with this kind of fake or phony set of rules, which are really, they're not even laws, right? They are arbitrary, autocratic impositions on a child's life.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so forcing a kid to brush their teeth, I think is a disaster. People usually think that, you know, you have to force rules on kids, right? It's a necessary evil. You just have to. Nobody wants to be a hard ass, but, you know, when push comes to shove, they just have to brush their teeth because kids don't know about cavities. A three-year-old doesn't understand the concept. And for their own good, right? They would be upset with me later in life if they have cavities and they said, "Dad, [laughs] you didn't make me brush my teeth and now I've got awful teeth." They would be rightfully justifiably upset with me. And so what do you do in that circumstance? The, the typical thinking is that, well, it's a necessary evil. You just have to make them brush their teeth. But the truth is, and this getting to the epistemology, is that a kid that's not brushing their teeth, really that's a problem. And the question is, are there ways to solve this problem that don't involve me forcing myself on them, forcing the rule on them? And, you know, with any problem, there's, there's multiple solutions, and brushing teeth is a great example. You know, what my wife and I do is we try to explore and understand what is the nature of this problem. And so maybe the kid isn't brushing their teeth 'cause they don't like the taste of the toothpaste, or they don't like the feel of the toothbrush, or my wife and I will brush our teeth and blow our breath in each other's face and kind of swoon at how, you know, how good our breath smells afterward, and then they, they wanna do that. They wanna have good smelling breath. They wanna play the breath smelling game. We'll take them to the store and we go to the toothpaste aisle and let them pick out, you know, the Paw Patrol toothpaste and the unicorn toothpaste.
- TFTim Ferriss
Man, I need to go shopping with you. That sound great. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Right? [laughs] And then that becomes a whole fun thing. Like, "Hey, let's go to the store and you're gonna be in charge, and let's go to the toothpaste aisle, and, and you pick out all your stuff." And, and today is amazing, right? There's like different flavors of mouthwash. There's everything. So, you know, uh, you explore the space of these solutions and you, you never know when you can find one.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Can I give you my, my own anecdotes on this that are funny?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, go for it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So with my older son, I actually managed to explain to him the germ theory of disease.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
We watched YouTube videos on little germs eating things, and I convinced him the germ's gonna eat his teeth if he doesn't brush them, so he brushes them.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
My daughter, she's really young, she just sees me flossing all the time. She loves playing with floss. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's that simple. So each one has their own mechanism how to figure it out. My middle son, you know, he likes the, uh, I think it's a Spider-Man toothbrush. So it's like a very particular toothbrush he likes, so he plays with that. So there's a different solution for each one. But it takes time. It takes creativity. It takes problem solving, and you can't get exactly what you want when you want it.
- ASAaron Stupple
Well, it also takes another thing, is for them to be open to you, Naval, right? If you are a rule enforcer- They wanna, you know, keep like, "Oh, shit, it's toothbrushing time," right?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
Last thing I wanna do is deal with Dad-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- ASAaron Stupple
... at toothbrushing time. Whereas if you're never that enforcer, then-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right
- 31:25 – 37:38
Why building knowledge beats coercion.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Those are the tough ones.
- TFTim Ferriss
Can I actually... I'm gonna go meso zoom in.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
We're gonna get to those, but I wanna-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... just mention, so Aaron, this is my first time having this conversation with either of you about this approach to parenting, and what I like about it is that there's an examination of the problem, right? We're not jumping to solutions, because often the problem is the way we're looking at the problem in the first place.
- ASAaron Stupple
Totally.
- TFTim Ferriss
But I imagine for a lot of people listening, they're like, "Okay, so you have a bespoke, [laughs] like, Savile Row tailored solution to every kid. That sounds-"
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
"... fucking exhausting when if the kid's refusing to wear gloves and it's freezing outside, just put on your fucking gloves, because I tell you to put them on."
- ASAaron Stupple
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'm also, I guess, as a segue from that, coming back to this creativity over coercion, and when I think of creativity, I actually think of the power of constraints, not a complete lack of constraints.
- ASAaron Stupple
Totally.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's my personal experience and the experience of a lot of people I interview. So how do you, how do you reconcile these things or think about any of those?
- ASAaron Stupple
All right. Let me do the gloves first and then the constraints second.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
So yes, it's a lot of work. Kid wants to go outside and doesn't wanna wear their mittens, right? And, and you're gonna be dealing with a kid melting down because their hands are cold, and, you know, totally irrational seeming three-year-old screaming, but also won't put the mittens on even when their hands are cold. Um, and that's a nightmare, and I'm not, I'm not pretending that that's not a, a nightmare. But the investment up front pays off in the long run because once a kid understands what mittens are for and has no confusion about mittens are because Mom makes me put the mittens on, right? Mittens are 'cause ha- cold hands sucks, and I'll wear my mittens. Once a kid understands that, the mitten problem is solved, and you never have to lecture them about getting ready and what they wear, and it's that over and over and over again. You know, the first times through it is more work, there's no question about it. Exploring the problem, trying to understand. My daughter brushes her teeth like boom. My son, too. Pretty much the three older kids brush their teeth just on their own. Once a problem gets solved to the kid's own understanding, it's solved for the rest of their life.
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's also now part of an explanatory framework that you can build upon.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yes.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Rules don't connect to each other. The only way rules connect to each other is Dad or Mom say so. Whereas knowledge-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... it's a, it's a framework of understanding, so once you understand you're brushing your teeth because of germs, then you also understand why you should shower and why you should use soap and why you should change your underwear and all those things.
- ASAaron Stupple
Why you take medicine, why you cover your mouth when you cough.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah. Exactly.
- ASAaron Stupple
Exactly. It all builds.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right. They all go together, and so the sooner you can teach your kids that knowledge, the better. But there's an age, I would argue with Aaron, like there's a certain age at which it just doesn't register. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
No. No, because the other part of it is that you are the guide, right? Dad is someone who helps me, right? Dad is never someone who busts my balls. Dad is never an adversary. Dad is always a guide and a participant in this knowledge accumulation process, and he helps give me the knowledge that helps me solve my problems and avoid, you know, getting sick or avoid getting a sunburn or bug bites or whatever it is. It not only builds on itself, the knowledge itself, but the relationship with your parents gets stronger, and that's why I'm saying w- you know, when we ask our kids to do something, they, they trust us. They, you know, they know that we have their best interests at heart, not simply because we tell them, but because they, they see it and experience it. So you have a trusted guide who you kind of understand that we're all in this project together of, like, figuring out life and avoiding suffering and pursuing interests and pursuing joy and developing passions.
- NRNaval Ravikant
There was an old book called The Scientist in the Crib. The title is so good that I think the book is very popular, 'cause everyone wants to view their child as a little scientist.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- 37:38 – 40:33
Non-negotiables.
- NRNaval Ravikant
own time.
- TFTim Ferriss
So Aaron, are there any non-negotiables like Naval's that he mentioned perhaps, these fundamental building blocks that you have reserved outside the scope of The Sovereign Child?
- NRNaval Ravikant
And by the way, there's physical equivalents, too. So, so I think the three that people fall down on, if I may... Well, okay, there's actually a lot, but there's-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
... brain plasticity around learning. There's habits. You know, habits are a big thing. There's social cues around not hitting people or getting into fights and knowing how to socialize. There's body plasticity. You know, I ate poorly when I was a kid, so therefore those bad habits follow me forever and my body remembers all the damage that I did to it. You know, my... There's something about, like, the number of fat cells. You know, it never goes down. The size can go down. I don't know how true that is. So there's kind of all these things that are viewed as irreversible, and it gets all the way to the most extreme of the kid runs in the street and gets hit by a car because you were too permissive as a parent.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right? So there's a litany of fears. But I think there is a specific thing around these things that you have to learn when you're young because you can't change when you're older, or you can't learn them when you're older.
- TFTim Ferriss
So a, a bunch of points to this. First, let's say that's true. Right? There's these non-negotiable things. It still raises the question of how. How do you get your kids to learn these things?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? If math is essential, you could put a gun to your kid's head and say, "You're learning math."
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs] Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And so we could recognize that that would be a bad idea.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah. Wait, I gotta, I gotta try... No, never mind. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Oh, I never thought of that.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Creative problem-solving. Here it is. [laughs] Bro problem-solving.
- TFTim Ferriss
Jordan Peterson has a, a popular thing where he's saying that you, you know, you don't let your kid behave in a way that makes you not like them, and like, boy, that really sounds important, but, you know, how do you make the kid do that? And that is the problem, is that there is no way to make a kid turn out in any particular way. Every method of making a kid do something brings in a whole host of costs, right? Every time you're bringing in coercion, you're not making a kid necessarily do something. What you're doing is you are raising the costs of them doing something else. Right? If you want them to learn math, you have to raise the costs of them playing video games or playing baseball or doing whatever else it is. And so is there a way for them to learn math that doesn't involve you raising the costs of them doing something else, right? And, and the answer is yes. There's infinite number of ways to solve any problem. There's ways of making math fun. There's ways of just making it fun, making games, and, you know, you can go through all the different apps, and you hear about all this kind of stuff, right?
- NRNaval Ravikant
In that sense, this philosophy, by the way, is very active parenting. So to the people who think this might just be neglect, it's the opposite. I would say it requires way more time investment, way more creativity, way more upfront.
- TFTim Ferriss
In one way, yeah. Managing kids with a lot of rules is a ton of work. This is a lot of work, but also when it works, it opens up a huge amount of free
- 40:33 – 45:00
Is this method of parenting only accessible to the educated elite?
- TFTim Ferriss
time. That does seem like, and feel free to refute this, but a parenting approach that is perhaps limited to the educated elite with enough time to operate from first principles and approach things this way, which is not to negate the value of it because I think that there are probably bits and pieces that people can apply.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So there are versions of this that have been done in schools, by the way.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
There's a very famous book called Summerhill about a school in the UK, I forget when. Maybe it's still around, but it got famous a long time ago. But it was very permissive schooling, where the kids ran the school. They decided if they wanted to go to class or not. The teachers were just at the same peer level as the kids and were resources for the kids. Now, these were slightly older kids, you know, but not that much older. They were... I think there were kids in Summerhill who were, like, six, seven, eight years old, and it was very, very permissive. It's almost the school equivalent of Taking Children Seriously or Sovereign Child kind of philosophies. So it has been done in even a caregiver context.
- TFTim Ferriss
What happened?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Supposedly incredibly successful.
- TFTim Ferriss
Piggy didn't get killed with, with a big rock off the cliff?
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm just, I'm just kidding. [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's for the same reason that, like, you know, anything that goes against the institution doesn't get absorbed by the institutions, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, sure, sure.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Anything that is status lowering for the people in power tends not to get adopted by people in power. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
That's, like, a common thing. But look, yeah, nothing can work for everybody. I think there are some general principles out of here that are worth thinking through and challenging.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Like I said, I've gone through Aaron's arguments in his book, and I have adopted some of them, and my wife and I were talking about how we're gonna try some more of them. You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
'Cause if it works, it's actually better for everybody. I am now much more keenly aware of some things. You know? It's like some things you learn about, and then you become more keenly aware of things as a result. So I'm much more keenly aware how almost every conflict with a child is about a negotiation. They're negotiating for something because you have a rule, and then you're playing little king or dictator arbitrarily renegotiating the rule on the fly. And then they go off and to the other parent and they try to renegotiate the rule if they don't like your result or they try to figure out how to work around it. And when you start noticing that and you realize how much of your life- ... is in negotiating rules and creating rules and routing around rules, and having interactions around that, you start developing a distaste for it, right? It's like, i- if you didn't used to brush your teeth and floss like twice or three times a day, when you get used to that feeling of clean teeth, then you'll notice when there's a film on your teeth. But until you get to that point, you don't notice there's a film on your teeth, right? So, uh, or like, if you're aware of your monkey mind, right, you meditate, then you start noticing like, "Oh, my thoughts are running away." But before you started meditating, you never noticed when your thoughts were running away. That's just normal. So now when you're aware of how much of this is about creating rules for them to follow, rules that by the way, you would never inflict on anybody else, ever, out of love, out of hate, out of anything. And that's a good litmus test that Aaron lays out, which is like, if you wouldn't do it to your spouse, if you wouldn't speak that way to your spouse, don't speak that way to your child. So you, you become more aware, and as you become more aware, you will automatically make changes, is my point. Like, you automatically say, "You know what? I don't wanna be negotiating a rule with you. Here's the thing. Here's the reason I'm telling you to do it. Take it or leave it, man, but here's the reason."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Like, let, let, let's just make sure you understand my reasoning.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And if you don't agree, fine, do what you want. But I do find there's certain-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... contexts and ages that that works better at.
- TFTim Ferriss
So the reason I wanted to have this conversation also is because, I've said this before, I think it was from the documentary Objectified, which is about industrial design, and it was maybe smart design, could've been frog design, but they said the, the designing for the extremes informs the mean, but not vice versa, right? So I like that you, Aaron, are effectively an edge case, right? Who's implemented this to the nth degree, and the hope of having you on the show, especially with Naval, is that people can take even one or two things. For instance, if they just take, don't speak to your child in a way you wouldn't speak to your spouse, like that is a valuable principle that could take a million different forms, right? Or like, if you're solving lots of similar problems, maybe there's a meta problem you can solve once, right?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like the bacteria theory of disease or so- or the germ theory of disease
- 45:00 – 49:04
Handling sibling conflict.
- TFTim Ferriss
f- for instance. I assume you're probably in touch with other people in the, not just the critical rationalism community, but in the sovereign child and Taking Children Seriously communities.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
What are some of the common wins, meaning things that work better than folks may have expected, and then things that are particularly challenging for folks that you see, not necessarily across the board, but as a pattern?
- ASAaron Stupple
The hardest thing is sibling conflict. I think that's the, that's the hardest thing because I can't let my, you know, my six-year-old beat up my four-year-old.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right? And there's a wide range of aggression between, you know, a harsh word and, you know, physically pounding someone's face in.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
You can block the, the physical blows, but there's still a lot of harshness going back and forth that's very unpleasant. It's very disruptive to everybody else, and just kind of sit back and say, "Well, you know, I don't wanna coerce anybody," is not a good option. You know, when I'm in- interacting one-on-one with my kids, I can think up solutions and creative solutions and stuff. When my two kids are interacting with each other, neither of them have the background knowledge to be able to solve their problems often. And so it's very hard to not insert myself into that and confuse that issue, but also prevent them from spiraling out of control.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so some things that I do to deal with that is I'll physically block... You know, when they're trying to fight, I'll just get in the way and block the blows and kinda let the yelling happen, but prevent any kind of physical injury. And another big tip is to always give a kid a place to opt out, and this kind of goes across the board. You know, k- if any, any of our kids want to get away from things, they can go to their room and close the door and just be alone. And, you know, this is a s- almost a sacred right for adults, but kids routinely have zero privacy. And giving them the option of privacy gives them the option to opt out of almost anything and really just avoid a ton of coercion, a- avoid the relationship damage that comes from just ha- being forced to be face to face with somebody that you are struggling with. So I think that would be the biggest challenge.
- NRNaval Ravikant
You had some good points on this in, in your book where one was like, make sure that the kids have clear ownership. They're not forced-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... to share things. Just like you don't force adults to like really share new things, you don't force the kids either. They can trade, they can negotiate, but they have clear ownership. And I actually just used this today. Two items arrived at the house today. It was a set of-
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
... Uno cards and a Pokémon box, and I gave one to each boy and I assigned ownership and I said, "You can trade and you can negotiate, but there's clear ownership." Otherwise-
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm-hmm
- NRNaval Ravikant
... if they're sharing, it's an infinite tug of war.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
When kids are fighting, they're really negotiating boundaries with each other, and you as a parent always show up late, and then you wanna get involved in the middle of an adjudication.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
And a good rule of thumb is like, well, would you do that with two adults? If your brother and your sister were fighting, would you show up in the middle and start adjudicating? You know? No. If they started hitting each other, you'd probably stop them, right? So kind of the similar rules apply. You don't-- If they're hitting each other, you get in the way and you're like, "Hey, hey, hey, hey."
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Like, "I don't feel good about this." But on the other hand, if they're having an argument, you let them have the argument.
- ASAaron Stupple
You wouldn't assert yourself.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah. If it's really loud and disruptive, you might say, "Hey, I'm in the house and you two are being very disruptive. [laughs] I'm gonna go elsewhere or you go elsewhere, but just keep it down. Settle your dispute, but keep it down." So I think the framework of- Trying to treat them like adults whenever possible. And just, it's better to think of them as adults who don't have the full range of knowledge. And, you know, maybe they're still developing their powers of reasoning because they don't have the full infrastructure logic built up.
- 49:04 – 53:32
How do freedom-maximized kids adapt to an adulthood of endless societal rules?
- NRNaval Ravikant
But-
- TFTim Ferriss
Naval, let me ask you this. I think a, a decent amount, and I, you know, I've spoken to friends of mine with kids who are now, I've seen them go through high school, college, et cetera. And in some of these families, they, and even the kids themselves dislike consolation prizes, right? Like everyone competes-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... everyone wins.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's not a reflection of real life when ultimately people get out into the wild. So learning to compete and all of the friction and maybe disappointment that entails is important. And I suppose I'm wondering if you're training your kids to question everything and come to their own conclusions perhaps, maybe, and sure, understand the root kind of reasoning around things. But do you expect your kids to be fully entrepreneurs, and that's that? Like they kind of create their own utopia as the founder of a company? Because otherwise, like Aaron, I would imagine, at a hospital there are plenty of rules, right? And so how do you teach someone to live in a world without rules in the household, maybe I'm mischaracterizing that, you could tell me, and then enter a world where there are lots of rules?
- NRNaval Ravikant
You know how much of a rule breaker I am and how antisocial I am.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So I'm fully fine-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... with my kids not having friends, not getting along, not being liked, not fitting in. I think that's a superpower. [laughs] It's a bonus.
- TFTim Ferriss
Aaron, we'll come to you. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
So perfect, right? I think rules of courtesy are a great example, right? Like being able to interact with people courteously, with, you know, conscientiously, being polite. And there's kind of two approaches to that. You can force your kids to be polite all the time.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- ASAaron Stupple
In which case they never really understand why, right? They don't understand graciousness and gratitude. They don't understand the subtleties of those things, and so they're kind of ham-fisted when they're out in the world. Whereas if, if the focus is on the reasons for being polite, right? If you never force them to be polite and instead introduce them to the, the concepts, you know. Like we use please and thank you all the time with our kids. We ask them to do things, we never force them and we never command them to do things. And so conscientiousness, you know, the, my wife and I talk with each other in the same way that we talk with our kids in terms of conscientiousness, and they understand, a- again, not on an explicit level, but i- in an intuitive way, what these words are for and how they work, just like they learn all the other words in the language. And so when they go out into the world, you know, everybody thinks their kids are great, but my kids are, I think they're quite conscientious. They say please and thank you. They'll say things to their grandparents, their extended family, the neighborhood friends. They actually interact with them, I would say, more adult or more mature than you would expect. They're the opposite of feral. They're never trying to manipulate people. They're never playing mind games. They're never defensive. They're instead just much more authentic. And, and I think that's what it's... The thing is that the, it's always the reasons that matter the most. And when you're forcing your kids to do certain things, you're saying e- essentially that the reason doesn't matter. This is so important that I don't care what you think about it, you're doing it. You are, you are depriving them of the opportunity to learn the reason, and in place of that opportunity to learn the reason, you are inserting your own, you know, authority as the reason. But, you know, when they go out into the world, you're not there. So now what's the reason for being conscientious and polite?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
So all the other rules about the world, right? And this gets to your point about constraints. This is really a deep, and I think fascinating idea, is that knowledge is actually a constraint. You know, the discovery of DNA constrained the ideas around how biological organisms reproduce. It's not about the humors, it's not about the vital force, it's this one molecule. And so that is an enormous step forward, and scientists stopped looking for other things because they had the knowledge of DNA. And then once you learn DNA and you learn cellular structures and cellular organelles, all of these things further constrain, you know, how life works. It works by cells, and oh wow, it's not just, you know, it's these little structures within cells. Or physics, for example, right? Newton discovers the laws of motion, right? Those are constraints on how the world works. And then Einstein fine-tunes them. And so as knowledge progresses, the constraints get tighter and tighter and tighter, and knowledge really rules out a lot
- 53:32 – 55:21
When kids present counter-accountability.
- ASAaron Stupple
of things.
- NRNaval Ravikant
The human mind does not just take explanations. If that were the case, then I could just sit on the other end of ChatGPT and get everything I needed, and I'd be brilliant. No. We have to recreate in our minds. We have to fit it into our existing network of theories. We have to falsify it for ourselves. We have to test it. We have to see how it fits into our other theories and explanations, and carry it with some degree of certainty or some tentative pseudo probability of whether it's true or not. And so it, it's this discovery scientific process all the time. So when my kids are unhappy, for example, I, you know, I try to like help them out, but I'm like, "Hey, why are you making yourself unhappy?" It's like a hint. Like maybe, maybe there's not a- anything in the environment that's making you unhappy. Maybe that's your reaction. Or if they ask me something, I'll be like, "Well, let's guess. Why, why do we think that might be the case? What's a guess? Oh, okay, well, why might that not be true?" And a lot of times they deflect me 'cause there's Dad playing condescending scientist, which I know I shouldn't be [laughs] right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Like it's patronizing. I wouldn't talk to my spouse that way, so I'm already violating TCS. But you know, I'm trying to do this knowledge creation thing and, you know, it's actually really fun. So for a parent, one of the most gratifying things is when you get to connect with your child and discover something together. And my kids are already contradicting me. They'll say, "Well, you promised to do that yesterday, and you didn't do it today, so you broke your promise, Dad." [laughs] Right? Or they'll say, "Hey, you know, you said this, but I think that's wrong. It's actually this." And that is very gratifying to a parent. Like, from anybody else, your ego would actually get hurt if they said you're wrong. When your child says you're wrong and they're correct, your ego actually gets a boost. You feel better.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
That's the weird thing about having children. That's the genes in charge rather than the body. Feels great. So when this approach works, it is incredibly gratifying.
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, man.
- 55:21 – 58:23
One tool does not fix all.
- TFTim Ferriss
I guess what I'm struggling with is that maximizing freedom is necessary to teach your children from first principles. It strikes me as absolutist in a way, I guess.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, because I, I know scientists and writers who, who will do what you're describing, Naval, but they're not gonna have a Willy Wonka sweets delight smorgasbord at children grasping level in the house, right?
- NRNaval Ravikant
But they'll each have different sets of rules for themselves.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
You do this. You interview all these over-performers.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Tools of Titans, you compile all their habits.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Have you found any commonalities? Is there a single morning routine you would give everybody?
- TFTim Ferriss
No, no, no, no.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
There isn't a single way to do it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Is there even a single creativity routine you would give everybody?
- TFTim Ferriss
No.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Would you say, "Okay, you journal for an hour, you meditate for half an hour, you do your cold plunge, you block off a four-hour block of time. That's how you get things done"?
- TFTim Ferriss
I wouldn't.
- NRNaval Ravikant
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
However, for people who have not reached escape velocity, I would say there are some very common effective starting points. If you're cultivating the Petri dish from stage zero, then I would say yeah, there are some conditions that tend to produce better outcomes.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right. So why not approach it with your kids the same way you approach it with your audience? Why not say, "Here's a set of techniques that seem to work. Here's what works for me. I'm trying this. What, which one do you wanna try?"
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right? But the reality is that kids also have very different motivations. They're in discovery mode. They're in play mode. They're not in productivity mode.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
A lot of our routines that work well for us that we have built for ourselves, they're not appropriate for the child because the child just wants completely different things. Most of the time, the child just wants to play and discover and live in the moment.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And in that sense, they're here to teach us as, as much or more than we are to teach them.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
If, if you spend your whole parenting time teaching your child, you missed it.
- 58:23 – 1:03:01
Putting mistakes to good use.
- TFTim Ferriss
calendar."
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs] Yeah, exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. So Aaron, I appreciate you putting up with all the, the cross-examining.
- ASAaron Stupple
No, it's great.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's because I'm interested.
- ASAaron Stupple
No, please.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I appreciate that you are experimenting with all this stuff.
- ASAaron Stupple
That's why I'm here.
- TFTim Ferriss
I want to do a thought experiment, which is let's flash forward 10 or 15 years. Your kids are much older, and you look back and you say, "I think if I were to do it again, maybe I would do A, B, or C differently." Like, if you had to pick some subset of what you're doing as part of this parenting approach, if something were to not turn out as well as perhaps the conventional, let's just call it, approach, what might those things be?
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, gosh. [laughs] I mean, my kids spend an enormous amount of time on YouTube, and so I guess I would look at the things that are the biggest outliers compared to typical kids, and the biggest outliers are YouTube. Sleep isn't even an outlier. I think they sleep probably the same as other kids. The other big outlier is how much sugary junk food snacks they eat, and the last one is some of their social dynamic is, is very different. Those would be the things I would guess would be the things that didn't turn out well. I wanna honor the sense of your question and really explore this a bit. You know, what would I, what would I want to have done differently? I guess I would wanna have been more conventional, you know. But it wouldn't even be setting the limits because I really, I really, really am happy with the trusting, open relationship I have with my kids.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so I don't think that's worth the price. I wouldn't burn the capital of the trust I have with my kids for almost any outcome. It would have to be pretty dire for me to, for me to say it'd be worth sacrificing some amount of trust with my kids.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
A quick example is sunscreen. You know, when my daughter was three, she didn't wanna put the sunscreen on, and it's like a really sunny day and, you know, we're gonna be outside in the sun all day. And the thought crossed my mind that I just have to force this issue because I can't allow her to damage her skin or, you know, develop a skin condition later on. But I, you know, took a pause and figured out a way for her to wear the sunscreen non-coercively. Actually, I explained... She was putting s- bug spray on at the time, and I asked her why she was applying the bug spray, and she said, "Well, I don't wanna get bug bites." And I said, "Oh." Well, I said, "Do you know what the sunscreen is for?" And I said, "It's to avoid getting burns." And she took the sunscreen out of my hand and applied it herself. And the thought was that even if she didn't do that-
- TFTim Ferriss
I would rather her get a sunburn that day and preserve the trust, this trusting relationship that gives me an opportunity tomorrow to explain to her or connect with her in a way of why the sunscreen is worth it. In other words, I think there's an amount of capital that you want to treasure and preserve as much as possible, and that's one way of looking at it. The other thing of looking back and having regrets is that there are different ways to solve it, I would say. You know, the, let's say, the eating thing, right? I guess one thing I, I wish I would do now is spend more time... I ha- I hate cooking. I cannot stand it. [laughs] But I wish I spent more time learning how to cook and learning how to prepare foods that are not junk foods, and exploring with my kids more of the range of available foods out there, and finding something that is, you know, fits more the norms of healthy food. Although I have my criticisms of what that means. But there are other things, and some of my kids are, have a very narrow range of, of, of what they eat.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So that's how I would approach these regrets, is that I wish I spent some more time exploring the space of potential solutions.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Not saying, "Boy, I should have just laid down the law in that area." I, I really do reject that because I just do not wanna insert myself as an adversary. It's not just my relationship, but it's the confusion that it causes about the issue, right? If eating is important, then I don't wanna confuse them about food. If socialization is important, then I don't wanna confuse them about how to deal with others.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You know, if what you pay attention to is important in terms of screens and whatnot, I don't wanna make, you know, a kid's attention about my expectations or something else.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Another way to think about it is for most people who are listening to this, their kids are going to school.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
And in school, they're in a rule-bound authoritarian environment.
- 1:03:01 – 1:11:12
Homeschooling, unschooling, and socialization challenges.
- TFTim Ferriss
So are none of your kids going to school?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Correct. I wouldn't say our kids are homeschooled. They're closer to unschooled.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay, define what that means for folks.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So homeschooled is, you know, when you're actively working them through a curriculum, and you're making them sit through classes at home, and you maybe have a little pod or a group. And we've tried variations of that and, you know, we have some tutoring, some drop-in classes, and I do a lot of math teaching. But by a lot, I mean, like, 15 minutes three times a week. [laughs] You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Wow, impressing them all.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Fucking up your schedule. [laughs] Well, it's not a schedule, it's just arbitrary. But I would say that, you know, they're, they're actually doing pretty well on the things that I care about, which is basic literacy, basic numeracy. Not perfect. I wish they were better, but there's a lot of screen time involved, a lot of YouTube involved. But yeah, they don't go to school. A- and by the way, the stats on homeschool are amazing. Like, people who actively actually homeschool, their kids are one to two years ahead of even private school. You know, private school kids are ahead of public school. But the wild stats are unschooled. They're kids who are literally never go to school, are never educated at home. And there are cases of when these kids kind of show up, and they're usually only one year behind public schooling. I think that's an indictment of public schooling.
- TFTim Ferriss
Now, is that an indictment of public schooling, or is that an endorsement of really, really, really overachieving parents who happen to be able to choose unschooling?
- NRNaval Ravikant
So there's always confounding factors, but the interesting thing is these kids who are unschooled, when they decide they want to go to college for whatever reason-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... it takes them one year to catch up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So instead of the whole K through 12, it takes them one year to catch up. That's insane, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
You can skip all of K12 and catch up in one year. And if you go back to how much you remember from K12 what was important, it can be compressed down a lot. There's a lot of wasted time.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Anyway, my original point was that your kids are already being subjected to an authoritarian environment most of the time, most of the day, right? Most of the days of the week, most of the time. So if you loosen up a little bit at home, you can practice and, and take a little bit of pressure off, and you shouldn't have to worry that your kids are, you know, they're, they're running around too rule-free. And I'm not blaming the school system because it's the nature of crowd control. And you used to be a public school teacher, Aaron. You gotta crowd control 15, 30 unruly kids, and they're just running around. You have to go lowest common denominator. You have to issue rules. It's like a stewardess trying to control a plane flight, you know, that's been going on too long, or a plane that's been stuck on the runway. They tell you to put on your seatbelt, not 'cause you're in danger. It's because they're, they're doing crowd control.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
So a lot of school is just crowd control.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. So questions for you, Aaron. I'm gonna come back to the junk food. But since we're talking about school and the lack of school, let's just say structured external school. Look, I talk to sort of overachievers for a living.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
A lot of them do homeschooling or unschooling. Not saying your kids, but some of their kids are arrogant, precocious assholes-
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... and very unsocialized.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you spot check that your kids are gonna be able to function in society? And just to preemptively catch this, Naval, that does not mean rule following-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right
- TFTim Ferriss
... sheep who just obey.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I hear a- arrogant, precocious asshole, and I view that as a compliment. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Your ears prick up.
- 1:11:12 – 1:15:51
Building resilience.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Aaron, how do you think about recognizing that the school bus getting your head smashed into the [laughs] seat is different from-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... most of, hopefully, adult life? How do you think about building resilience in your kids so that they can deal with hostiles, they can deal with mob mentality, they can deal, because they will have to, presumably, unless they're in some tower with their private tutors as, like, the heir apparent to the throne or something. So how do you think about building resilience? And, and specifically, I mean, like, social human resilience, interpersonal resilience.
- ASAaron Stupple
This is one of the main critiques, and I think this is one of perhaps the main benefit of this approach, is that resilience comes from passion. It comes from an interest, right? When someone is just absolutely obsessed with some problem, they have the fortitude, right? The stick-to-it-iveness. Nothing, nothing approaches the stick-to-it-iveness of somebody who is just hellbent on achieving something, building something, creating something. And without that understanding and interest and passion, then, then resilience is just about appeasing others, right? It's about checking boxes. So if you're in school and you're trying to, you know, do well in science, you're trying to do in- well in science to get a grade, it's completely different from trying to understand science so that you can make your robot work or you can make your Starlink satellites fly.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Sure. Agreed.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so if you're talking about resilience with other people, I think probably the most important thing is self-assuredness, and nothing damages, I would guess, nothing damages self-confidence and self-assurance than giving kids a reason to doubt themselves. And that is one of the four pernicious harms of rules, is that a kid learns, you know, lollipops, you know, I'm tempted by lollipops. My inner nature wants lollipops. Something about me is bad because I want this forbidden thing. I wanna use YouTube and, and that's bad, right? It's, it's eight hours. It's too much. You know, kids that wanna use YouTube for more than an hour are, are bad. They're addicted. They're, you know, these vulnerable, fragile people that can't be trusted around iPads and video games, and they can't be trusted around chocolate bars, and they can't be trusted around all of these things that they just want more and more and more and more of. And so it tells a kid that their inner nature, their wants and desires are dangerous, and that they need someone policing that, right? And when you're a kid, you need your parent to police it, right? You need your parent to take the ice cream away, otherwise you're just gonna eat ice cream all day long. You need your parent to take your tablet away. And ultimately, the conventional view is that the policing from the parent shifts over to being policing of yourself. You're self-conscious, you're self-aware, you're doubting yourself all the time, and now you are, I think, fragile when you step out into the wider world because you are worried about your appearance, you're worried about what other people are thinking about you. Whereas if you instead are confident in yourself, you're not afraid of your inner nature, you're not afraid that you're gonna get yourself in trouble, you don't think that your own interests are frivolous and disposable. You don't think that you're distracted, right? You know, oh my gosh, I'm gonna spend all day on, on Twitter. I'm prone to being addicted to X. If you don't see yourself as that, then you have a much more authentic engagement with things, and you're not worried about what other people think, and you're not trying to, you're not trying to present some alternate persona to other people. I think that's how so many of us get into trouble, is that we live our lives via a persona with others.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And I think rules give kids a reason to present a false persona to their parents, right? Like every kid movie, every great kid movie is like the kids are, you know, doing their thing and the parents are saying, "Uh," and the kids are kind of appeasing the parents like, "Oh, no, no, we're doing our homework. We're doing this." And then really like as soon as they turn their back, we're gonna go and off and do the fun thing, right? And it's a given that kids lead these dual lives and they present a false persona to their parents. That's like an accepted thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
But I think it's a disaster for their own self-confidence. I think it's a disaster-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASAaron Stupple
... for the parents because kids are entering into this kind of dark contraband world where they're keeping their parents in the dark, and that's when they're interested in sex and drugs and all this dangerous stuff. And that in fact, you know, rules drive kids to hide things from their parents, hide things from themselves, and make them, again, I would say vulnerable and, and self-conscious.
- TFTim Ferriss
I agree with that last statement.
- 1:15:51 – 1:21:16
Coping with food and drink cravings.
- TFTim Ferriss
I want to come back to junk food as promised, just [laughs] because I'm imagining putting myself in my like five-year-old shoes and I'm just like, man, I used to go to the, the penny candy store and walk in-
- ASAaron Stupple
Right
- TFTim Ferriss
... and it was just this cornucopia of delights. But if Naval's description is accurate that there's plenty of junk food and it's-
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... deliberately engineered to be easy access for the kids, I wanna understand the reasoning behind this. Is this because-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... the underlying belief is that if you do the opposite, you are training kids to have an unhealthy relationship with food?
- ASAaron Stupple
Absolutely.
- TFTim Ferriss
I guess what is the rationale behind it? And what is the evidence for that rationale?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, the rationale is, number one, I'm a gatekeeper, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
I don't wanna be a gatekeeper. There's harms of being a gatekeeper and all the false persona and all that kind of stuff. I don't want my kids trying to get around me, sneak food. I don't wanna be the obstacle. That'd be just number one.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Number two, I mean, I don't eat lollipops. I have like a lollipop occasionally, and I'll have one. And the reason why is 'cause your tongue gets raw. It starts to taste gross after a while, and I don't eat a whole bag of lollipops because a whole bag of lollipops is not a pleasant experience. And so I want my kids to learn that same exact thing. This is a couple years ago, but it's really funny. I had a bag of lollipops for whatever reason, and I was handing them out one at a time, and then I just, you know, the kids, I know like it's dumb that they have to ask me for a lollipop, so I just dumped them all on the floor. There's a pile of lollipops. And the three-year-old was pulling off the wrapper and licking them and putting in a... I got a bowl for her 'cause I don't want lolli- sticky lollipop all over the floor, so I got her a bowl. She was just trying each flavor and she had like 20 licked lollipops in a bowl, and then she got bored of it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
And then she went off and I kept the bowl. I just left it there, and it was there for days. What she had done was discover what I already know, what I discovered is that lollipops are gross after a while.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
One thing we do for fun is we go to the gas station and they pick out candy. It's like let's go get a treat at the gas station and it's, it's a fun trip and out we go and it gets us out in the world and there's fun interesting things that happen like paying and here's my credit card and how do you swipe the credit card and how much does this cost and like real knowledge starts to happen. But they'll buy like a bag of Swedish Fish.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
I'm like, great. We could be spending money on a museum or something. We're gonna spend money on Swedish Fish today, right? In the scheme of things, it's, it's not all that expensive. And they'll have a whole bag and they'll start eating them right in the car, and by the time they get home, every single time they've eaten like five Swedish Fish and then the bag just sits there and I leave the bag there. It's not like I hide it now. I'll just leave it out in the open and it'll get just get neglected-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASAaron Stupple
... for days and eventually I throw it out because it's just gets stale and, and gross.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's say at the gas station your kid is like, "I want a 5-hour Energy," and then the other one's like, "I want a Corona." Like what do you do?
- ASAaron Stupple
So great. Well, the Corona's easy 'cause it tastes gross so I let them, I'd let them try the Corona. Totally.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. All right.
- ASAaron Stupple
The 5-hour Energy is a problem. So my kid likes Diet Coke. They haven't, they haven't had an interest in 5-hour Energy. If it was early in the day, I'd totally let them drink the 5-hour Energy but if it's at, if it's late at night, I might let them try it. I would definitely let them try it and see how much they drank.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And I would be very interested in what they like about the 5-hour Energy. In other words, maybe they, they would like the color of the bottle 'cause they don't know what it is. So the question would be what interests you about this? How can I better understand the
- TFTim Ferriss
What has attracted you? So if my kid wanted a Corona, I'd be very interested in how the hell they got interested in a Corona, right?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- 1:21:16 – 1:27:07
Avoiding the terminology of confirmation bias.
- TFTim Ferriss
So Aaron, let me ask you, and this is open to you as well, Naval, but I'll ask Aaron first. So I'm very sensitive to language. I think language is really powerful, right? The labels we use-
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... I think in both ways we're aware of, and in many ways we're perhaps not explicitly aware of, can influence our beliefs and how we basically shape this reality we experience, right? So the coercion versus non-coercion, like it's a very strong delineation-
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... in the favor of non-coercion, right? Just by setting-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... that up as sort of a mutually exclusive binary choice. The question I had is about this adversary term or adversarial-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... relationship, which if, it sounds like if I framed it in a slightly different way, used a different label, if we were to make it less negative sounding, could be coaching, right? And so I think about, you know, I did a lot of sports. I think it was formative to who I am, and my coaches were certainly directive, right? And they would insist on certain things that allowed me to, I think, realize I was capable m- of more than I thought I was.
- ASAaron Stupple
Totally.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I view that as a huge net positive for me. So how do you think about the terminology used in Taking Children Seriously or The Sovereign Child, so you d- don't fall prey to framing things so strongly that you're kind of, you have a confirmation bias for what you want to embrace as a philosophy or ideology? Does that make sense as a question?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I feel like some of the words are so strong. No one's gonna say, "I want an adversarial relationship with my kids."
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, no, 100%. Well, I think the coaching example, you were able to opt out, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Like, any team you're on, you can quit unless your parents are making you do it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep, that's a good point. Yeah, very true.
- ASAaron Stupple
And what's crucial in that is that you saw the value in that sport, right? And you saw it from your own perspective. You understood it. It was based on your own interest and your own passion, and then you can be encouraged to, to develop that passion and to pursue excellence, right? And then when y- as you're pursuing excellence, you're exposed to constraints, right? If you wanna play on the soccer team, you gotta be able to run a mile like this. You gotta be able to do this. You gotta be able to do that. You gotta do the, the drills, put in the time, right? All that stuff is excellent, and the driver, right? And this is the thing, the key. The key to that is the interest in that, that you found that fun.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And as long as that is the, the motivating force, everything about that I think is absolutely wonderful, and, and that's the thing you wanna cultivate in your kids, is the interest and the passion. And so one way of getting away from the coercion is Naval's advice. Say, try not to use the coercion thing because that gets into this kind of moralizing view.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
Just think about, like, what makes something interesting? Humans are unique, that they are interested in stuff, and it's actually a deep philosophical question of what is an interest? How does a person know that something is interesting? And that is the magic. Like, y- you know, Elon wants to preserve consciousness as this light flickering in, in the universe. I wanna preserve interests. Like, a kid that's interested in something, that is absolutely precious, and I wanna cultivate that. I wanna pour f- fuel on that fire and, and anything to preserve that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And so that's where the adversary comes in. Call it what you want. I don't wanna step on that or squash that. I want my kid to see me as a gateway to interests, as someone who just, like, can make things more interesting.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Anything that I'm interested, they add to it. So if I'm interested in video games, great. My daughter's interested in YouTube, and now she's, you know, filming and trying to make YouTube videos, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
... then she's gotta figure out how the camera works, and then... Like, all this stuff is there, and so I wanna get her, like, "Okay, let me get you a camera. Let me get you something to set it up. Which dolls are you using? How can I help? I'll hold the camera," right? "Let's do a storyboard. Do you know what a storyboard is?" Like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASAaron Stupple
... that's what I mean. I think Taking Children Seriously could be How do you preserve and augment your kids' interest, and how are you always an, an enabler and a supporter and a guide, and never someone who's just pouring cold water? Because, you know, that's not right.
- 1:27:07 – 1:30:45
Sports.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. How do you, Aaron... I mean, you have five kids, so maybe there's something in that number that lends itself to what I'm gonna ask, but physical education, sports, teamwork-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... right? I mean, across ages, that might be kinda tough.
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
There's no right answer here. I mean, I have my own orientation towards this stuff, but what are your thoughts on all that?
- ASAaron Stupple
I think sports are fetishized among kids, and I think lots of kids are stunted by spending lots of time playing sports according to adult rules and adult supervision, and are not allowed to... the free time to explore their own interests, and they get stuck in these status games where being successful in school means you're captain of the soccer team or something, and then you go to college and you never play soccer again, or you play pickup soccer at most, and you spend hours and hours and hours of your formative time playing by adult rules in this kind of strange, arbitrary status game. I think s- [laughs] my kids are quite physically capable, and I worry like, "Oh God, I hope they don't [laughs] get into..." I mean, I was into sports when I was a kid, too, I think. I mean, I love baseball. I cherish it, but I want them to play these things only because they enjoy them, and again, you know, their own interest, and I don't want them to get caught up in status games.
- TFTim Ferriss
Why is sports automatically about status games? What do you mean by that?
- ASAaron Stupple
It's not automatically, but in school, there's a certain idea that, you know, it's valuable if you can, you know, score a lot of points on the basketball court, and you're getting a lot of adult approval.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, you're getting peer approval, too, and self-worth perhaps.
- ASAaron Stupple
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? It's, I mean, it could be a pursuit of excellence also.
- ASAaron Stupple
Absolutely. Like, if you love basketball for basketball's sake and you really enjoy it, great. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Again, playing baseball is some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. I don't regret a, a moment of it, but I do regret other sports that I've played just because that's what you do after school, and that's what's gonna impress the girls, and that's what's gonna impress the adults, and I wanna get in the newspaper, and I need these extracurriculars to get into college. Like, that, that is an extraordinary lost opportunity that, boy, I wish YouTube was around back then and I could have gotten into so many other obsessions that Naval's talking about. These were forestalled by these, these activities that are condoned by adults because that's what the society does. Not to say the activities are bad-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASAaron Stupple
... but they are bad if a kid does something that they're not passionate about. It's just eating up their time.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Just a low-grade commitment to something is just killing hours of an extraordinarily creative mind spent, you know, doing drills on a soccer team that they're not really too thrilled with.
- NRNaval Ravikant
One of the common thing you find in the biographies of, like, the super high-end overachiever types is that they just had tons of free time when they were kids. You know? They, like, Newton used to famously sit by the side of the creek and, like, whittle on wood and make little water wheels, right? Or Osho would just sit by the river for like nine years. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
His grandma would just let him wander off by himself, you know?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And, and when I think back to my own childhood, like, the time that I got to just spend reading and not having anyone bothering me and reading whatever I felt like, you know, from a library, was incredible. And so it's that-
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm-hmm
- NRNaval Ravikant
... huge swaths of free time to, like, pursue your own curiosity. And, you know, like, if my kids are really into sports, go play sports.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
But I'm not pressuring them or pushing them or valuing it. We did set up, like, them going to a sports field and having, like, a soccer coach and being part of a little soccer group, and they hated it. They don't like it.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
But they love the playground next door. They love going to the playground, just playing in the playground, so
- 1:30:45 – 1:33:50
Organically cultivating interests.
- NRNaval Ravikant
let them do that.
- TFTim Ferriss
So the question I have for you, Aaron, I mean, it applies to Naval, too, but it strikes me, I could be off here, but for me at least, to find something I'm passionate about, which is typically some combination of intrinsic interest, whatever that is constituted of, and some capability, right? It's usually some combination of those things.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
As a kid, I had to try a lot of stuff. My mom was very good at exposing me to a lot of stuff and encouraging me to explore things that I was inclined towards. Marine biology, and I never ended up becoming a marine biologist, but I don't regret any of that exploration. So I guess what I'm wondering is, like, you're Kids are self-directed in the sense that they have a lot of time on YouTube and so on. You don't wanna force something on them. How do you think about, if you do, exposing them though to a buffet of options that they have the opportunity to kinda gravitate towards something or be repelled by it?
- ASAaron Stupple
I mean, yeah, that's what's so great about unschooling is that their, their day is not sucked up listening to somebody drone on about social studies. You know, you have eight hours, seven hours that are free for exploration, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Poor social studies teachers in my audience. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. Boy, I mean, social studies was boring, man.
- TFTim Ferriss
Just getting thrown under the bus. Yeah, but it's okay. It's all right. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
We started ice skating this week. It was finally cold enough for a long enough stretch of days, and there's a little skating rink. And then I bought some PVC pipe to make little things that they can hold themselves up so they can learn to skate. And then we, you know, cut them up, and we're using a ruler and, you know, they're actually using real math, real numbers for, you know, the different lengths. And then there's the glue, the PVC pipe. And then, you know, it's like, wow, you know, we can actually build different structures out of this stuff. We can build climbing structures. You know, for m- kids that are as young as mine, exposing them to a lot of things. I think th- th- it's an important point that you're making, is that I think as a parent you're kind of a curator of cool stuff. And so there's a world in between forcing them to do things and letting them do whatever they want. There's a whole range in the middle of saying, "Star Wars is cool. Skiing is cool. Skating is cool. Cooking is cool," though I don't think it is.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
You know, all the stuff they see on... You know, making films, making videos. I mean, just on and on and on and on. The, the life is full of all these interesting things. I'll show you the, the music that I like, the movies that I like, the shows that I like, the humor that I like. And again, if there is not this false persona, I think kids are more open to, you know, what you have to tell them about. You know, Dad isn't some sort of like, ugh, gotta watch out for this guy. It's more an interest in what he has to talk about and share. I think conventionally we outsource this to school and say school's gonna expose them to the interesting stuff, and the disaster there is that school shuts down your interests. School says, "Nope, your interests are frivolous. You gotta learn math. You gotta learn social studies. Then you have to do this after school activity. Then you have to do your homework. Then you have to go to sleep early and then wake up and do it all again." And so you're just shutting down all this opportunity for spontaneous serendipitous things to come
- 1:33:50 – 1:43:05
The pros and cons of traditional schooling.
- ASAaron Stupple
up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let me just take a counter position there for a second.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I was in a really shitty school on Long Island.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs] Sorry.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. To their credit, a few teachers were like, "You need to get out of here." And around 15 I transferred to a very, very difficult, very good private school in New Hampshire. I, up to that point, had really disliked studying languages, which meant-
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... Spanish. That was the option. Maybe there was a little bit of French, but I did Spanish. Couldn't speak it at all. When I got to St. Paul's, I had to take a language.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But they had a very wide menu to select from. I ended up choosing Japanese, and that ended up completely changing the trajectory of my life. So that compulsion-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... to choose from a menu actually helped me, and I could give you more examples of that. So I just wanna be careful not to paint all schooling as this prison-like land of conformity that forces people to do entirely things that are-
- ASAaron Stupple
No
- TFTim Ferriss
... suffocating.
- ASAaron Stupple
No. Schools are well-intentioned, and they will get some things right. In fact, many things right. But the question is, at what cost, and what else could you be doing with that time?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
And I have found that with my kids, I can teach them more math, you know, get them one to two years beyond where they would be in school with, like, a minimal amount of homeschooling and hanging out. Like minimal, absolutely minimal.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
And you know, I can move the kids at their own speed. I really care about if they're understanding the issue or not. I can do it with Legos with one kid, I can do it with pen and paper with another, and just do it in a very natural way that suits each of them, and I learn in the process too. So obviously it requires the luxury of some amount of time. But I would say when school gets things right, you're taking a one size fits all model, and you're just hoping that it kind of landed in the right way. My languages story is the exact opposite.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
I was forced to learn Spanish. I was forced to learn French. I hated both. I forgot both instantly. And to the extent that I learned anything there, I forgot English. I got worse at English. So it wasn't worth it. [laughs] And you know I'm pretty good at English, right? That's sort of my specialty.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Crafting words. And now I actually do wanna learn Japanese, but I think we're entering the AI age where translation is gonna get so good so fast that it's almost gonna be obsoleted. And so I could have, you know, 20% Japanese speaking in two years or my little AI lapel pin that somebody's gonna ship at some point is gonna nail it within the next year or two anyway. So our kids are not gonna have to learn handwriting. Our kids don't have to learn how to drive. They probably don't need to learn how to translate languages unless they get a kick out of the culture or they wanna read-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. Mm
- ASAaron Stupple
... Rumi or Borges in the original. They have... A lot of those tasks are taken away from them, and it takes schools 20 years to catch up. School is teaching something that's much older.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
And in certain domains, not to beat on the social science and the humanities-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
... but they're teaching a very narrow slice of what's out there, and it's a very opinionated slice. And-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- 1:43:05 – 1:53:09
Parental disagreements and avoiding hypocrisy.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Question.
- TFTim Ferriss
This is a compelling argument, and I have a follow-up question, which is for you, Aaron, first, where do you and your spouse have disagreements, or maybe that's too strong a word, discussions around any aspect of taking children seriously or The Sovereign Child?
- ASAaron Stupple
We have tons of discussions on how we're gonna solve this problem.
- TFTim Ferriss
Maybe discussions isn't strong enough a word.
- ASAaron Stupple
Disagreements.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Like disagreements, friction, growth opportunities.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs] I mean, there's things that we used to have that we don't anymore.
- TFTim Ferriss
What are those?
- ASAaron Stupple
Well, just like this needs to be a rule. Like we have to have a rule about this. There's a middle ground. It's not like it's all or nothing, right? There's a huge middle ground to relaxing rules. And one, one easy thing people can do right now is just say that Instead of enforcing a rule, we think about it for 60 seconds. Like, just spend 60 seconds and think, "Is there some solution to this that gets around this problem?" Like, there's no drawing on the walls, right? Like, can we just think for 60 seconds, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Before you tell the kid, "No drawing on the walls," 60 seconds is long enough to solve so many problems, it's unbelievable. Like, you know, you start thinking like, "Oh, maybe we could just put paper all over the walls. Let's do that."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
"Yeah, we'll put paper on the walls, and there, now draw on the paper on the wall," right? So that was one big thing that my wife and I made progress with, was realizing that we just, just pause when the mind goes to enforce a rule, just pause and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- ASAaron Stupple
... think, "Is there some way around this?" It's gotten to the point now where we don't even, we don't even go toward the rule. Just the reflex is like, "Ah, damn it, kid wants to do this and that's gonna really cause a mess. Can we do it like this? Can we do it like that?" I guess that's one answer to your question.
- TFTim Ferriss
Are there things where you wanna take the hands off the wheel, and your wife is like, "I would prefer some variation that is not exactly hands off the wheel"?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. I'm more prone to saying hands off the wheel. She's a little bit more conservative than me. But the other thing is that she and I are also problem-solving.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Our daughter got a hoverboard, and it's making marks on the floor. The temptation is, "No hoverboard in the house." And it's like, well, why don't you want the hoverboard in the house? You're kind of afraid they're gonna fall and hurt themselves. They're gonna smash into the furniture. They're gonna make marks on the floor, right? You start going through this, and it's like, okay, well, what if we move the furniture out of the dining room and I'll clean up the floor, [chuckles] right? Or we'll show our daughter how to clean up the floor.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASAaron Stupple
Instead of it being like, "No hoverboard in the house," it's let's just try to understand what we don't like about this. And, you know, my wife and I use this, you know, apart from the kids, right? Like, I wanna play music. She doesn't like Radiohead. I really like listening to Radiohead. You guys are like, "No Radiohead in the house." It's how can I listen to the music I want, you listen to the music you want, have quiet when we want quiet. It's just not about enforcing rules. It's about, how do we all make our lives better? Like, I'm my wife's partner in making her life better. She's a partner in making my life better. We partner with our kids to make their lives better. Like, you know, everybody trying to find out from their perspective what's not working and how to make it better.
- TFTim Ferriss
So what happened with the Radiohead? Is everybody walking around with headsets?
- ASAaron Stupple
That's a problem, actually. I haven't really solved [laughs] that one.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
It's, it's nice to have it on the speakers, and that one's a sticking point.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Got it. Got it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And I do think one of my rules will be no hoverboards in the house. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah. All right. Naval, what about you, just in terms of parenting style?
- NRNaval Ravikant
We have a no control philosophy in the house with each other, my wife and I. We've had that for a long time. She can't even schedule me. I can't schedule her. We don't commit each other. We don't, you know, have big expectations. She can't make me go to, like, her parents' birthday. I can't, like, make her go to a business dinner. We're really non-controlling people to begin with of each other, so it's pretty easy to align on not controlling the kids. But that also means that if she wants to control the kids, she can.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- 1:53:09 – 1:56:33
Four categories of harm that come from rules.
- NRNaval Ravikant
of hypocrisy.
- TFTim Ferriss
What core concepts have we not covered? Whether it's Taking Children Seriously, The Sovereign Child, or just generally a non-coercive freedom-maximizing parenting approach that we have not covered. Common objections that you'd like to address, concerns. Anything come to mind? I mean, we've covered a lot of ground, but I don't know the terrain well enough to know what we've missed.
- ASAaron Stupple
I would say there's four categories of harm that come from rules that I think are helpful to make them explicit, and then we've talked about a bunch of them, but one is the parent-child adversarial gatekeeping relationship. That's, you know, every time rules are enforced, that gets brought in. The other one you mentioned is the child's damage to their relationship with themselves, their self-policing, self-awareness, and lack of self-confidence because their desires are getting them in trouble and need to be minded and policed. The third one is confusion about the issue at hand, right? Rules are not the reason, right? The reason why we're polite is because of the norms of politeness and courtesy, or the reasons why, you know, you wear mittens outside are because your hands are cold, not because you'll get in trouble. So when you're in- introducing rules, you're introducing a confusion about the issue at hand, right? The reason why you brush your teeth is cavities and, and how your breath smells, not whatever consequences your parents... Those would be confusions. And then the fourth category is a confusion in general about how to explore the world, that with rules it means that, you know, whenever a question comes up in the future, the answer is to find the relevant authority and do what they say, not that you yourself are an empowered person who can figure it out yourself and understand things. Instead, you, you defer that. You kind of sit back and do what you're told, and it leads to, I think, a, a more conformist life and kind of a narrower life. So I think those four harms, it's not that they can't happen, it's that they happen every single time. Like when Naval's saying, you know, if we make a rule that, you know, none of us are on our devices, right, well then Naval has to be the enforcer of that. Naval has to be the surveillor. He has to be constantly surveilling. He has to be judging, right? And even when everybody's in compliance and everybody's happy, when Naval walks into the room, people's minds think, "Oh, well, Dad's here, and now I have to be careful about whether I'm using an iPad or not," right? Just Naval's mere presence causes those four harms when he is, or me or anybody, right? When anybody is enforcing rules, you're perpetuating those harms, and those harms are not unavoidable. They're not necessary evils. They are, in every circumstance Avoidable, and I think that is not easy to do. It's always a kind of specific situation-dependent, context-dependent thing. It's a certain problem that's going on, but there are always solutions that avoid those four harms. And when you avoid those four harms, it's relationship building, it's trust building, it's knowledge growing, it's more fun, it's confidence growing, and all those things. So I, I feel like there's this bifurcation, and it's possible to let go of the harms of rule enforcement. That's one thing, and the other thing is your, your point on constraints, unless you want to say something.
- 1:56:33 – 2:01:26
The benefits of optional constraints.
- TFTim Ferriss
No, go for it.
- ASAaron Stupple
Your point on constraints is that constraints are great when you can opt out of them, right? And it's the fact that... I don't know, I like board games, and Settlers of Catan, I love that game. And what happened was the creator of that game, some German guy-
- TFTim Ferriss
Klaus Teuber
- ASAaron Stupple
You got it. So he would play with the family, and they would get bored and, and leave. And so then he was like, "All right, I gotta modify it," right? And he kept on coming back. If his family was not allowed to leave, and they had to sit there and play, he would never learn how to design that game to make it so goddamn fun, right? It was the fact that the family could opt out. He was creating a set of constraints, and those constraints got very, very good because the participants could opt out. Those are the constraints that you want, those that you can opt out of. So when you talk about creativity, right, artists will do things like constrain the canvas in some s- certain way, or say, "I can only use this one color," or, "I'm only gonna use one type of brush," right? That is great because the artist isn't stuck with that for the rest of their life. If that was a constraint that they couldn't opt out of, that would be limiting. But to try out different constraints and be free to opt out of them at all times enables people to gravitate toward better and better constraints, enables people to modify constraints. And on a very deep level, that is what knowledge is. Knowledge growth is finding better and better constraints. The more you understand the limitations of the world, the better you're able to operate within it. For example, you know, Amazon is delivering, you know, some drone service, right? They need to understand all the traffic. Or the self-driving cars, right? To make full self-driving, you have to understand all of the limitations extraordinarily well, all the traffic lights, all the roads, all the closures, all the different cars, how cars work, pedestrians. And once you're able to understand those constraints fully, then you can build a self-driving car system, and now your freedom explodes. So the better you can understand the constraints, the more power you have. Once the Wright brothers learned the constraints of the laws of aerodynamics, then they can build an airplane, and now you have the freedom to fly in addition to drive and walk, right? So once you learn the germ theory of disease, now you can develop antibiotics, and now you can develop, you know, sterilization techniques. And so constraints are things that you want to know about, and in the world of human affairs, you want to be able to opt out of them to be able to make them better.
- TFTim Ferriss
Naval, you mentioned that you find yourself nodding your head more than shaking your head. What do you most shake your head about? What do you most disagree with Aaron?
- NRNaval Ravikant
To me, it's just the math and reading thing, and even there, I'm questioning myself, to be honest.
- ASAaron Stupple
[chuckles]
- NRNaval Ravikant
We just talked about how much math I actually know and how I learned it, and I have two close friends. One of them didn't speak English until he was much older and, and never got into reading books, and the other one who just never was into books until he was older. And both of them seem to have gotten obsessed, cracked open the 20, 30 books that really matter and ignored all the thousands they read that didn't, and they seem just as smart and just as knowledgeable. [chuckles] They've caught up really fast. So I'm sort of questioning how much those things really matter. You know, one other point I would sort of make is that I think a lot of the arguments around why kids shouldn't have unfettered screen time or should be socializing are based around them living in a kid world. And the reality is you can think of either kids as animals that have to be domesticated so they can learn how to operate in the society that we grew up in, or you can think about them as little creative learners who are trying to learn how to operate in the world that's going to exist. And the world that's going to exist is gonna be full of screens. So I give up. Like, you gotta use screens. There are gonna be screens everywhere. It's like the kids in school right now who are being told, "You cannot use AI for your essays. You can't use AI in school." Well, it's the most-
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
... powerful tool ever made by humanity probably, you know? It's like the top of that apex right now. So of course you wanna be able to use it. Everyone's gonna be using it. I was allowed to use calculators. Didn't make me worse at math. It just let me focus on aspects of math other than figuring out how to multiply and divide extremely large numbers. So I fooled around with my son on prime numbers, and we were, like, realizing together some fundamental things about prime numbers that luckily I wasn't wasting time making him memorize, you know, all the state capitals.
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
You sort of have to let kids explore the world as it exists today, not live in a fake world. Not the fake rules of high school and high school sports, not the fake world of, like, fourth graders only intermingle with fourth graders, not the fake world of some external authority telling you what to eat and when to go to the bathroom and when to sit down and when to wake up and when to go to sleep. So they're trying to learn how to navigate the real world, and so I'm getting more to the point of view that I just have to
- 2:01:26 – 2:02:54
Body Electric.
- NRNaval Ravikant
help them do that.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm gonna put in one public service announcement. So on the screen side of things, putting aside sociobehavioral questions and so on, I would encourage people to check out, there's a TED Radio Hour miniseries, it's a podcast, uh, one of which in a series called The Body Electric focuses on sort of maladaptive changes in the optic system from kids being exposed to extended hours. At least that's, that's what they identify as the causal factor. ... screen time. So they showcase a school, I wanna say it's in Cupertino or Sunnyvale in northern California, specifically aimed at sort of reversing or addressing some of these changes in young kids, and they've sort of tracked these changes with a bunch of epidemiological data and so on. So anyway, just to, to put it out there, like, there may be some very obvious sort of visual changes that can be attributed to, like, structural adaptations or mal-adaptations with a lot of screen time. So people can check out that episode if they want, but that's putting aside all the other stuff. [screen whooshes] Hi, guys. Tim here. Just a quick reminder, very important, stick around after the end of our three-person conversation to listen to an exclusive bonus segment, close to an hour that Naval and Aaron recorded with extra practical tips as well as incremental day-to-day experiments that you can test and apply. It's super tactical, so you won't want to miss it.
- 2:02:54 – 2:09:19
Things you should know before visiting the emergency room.
- TFTim Ferriss
Enjoy. [screen whooshes] What else should we cover, guys? Anything else that, uh, we should get into?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Aaron, I remember you had a thread on AirChat. What was it? It was, like, things to do when you get to the ER, things you gotta know about the ER. What was the thread? Do you remember?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. I work in a hospital, and a lot of what I do is I meet patients in the emergency room who are too sick to go home. And there's a big transition that happens in the emergency room to having to stay overnight in the hospital, perhaps for, you know, a couple nights, and there's just a lot of things that go on, and I find myself, you know, even in residency, I was like, "Boy, it'd be nice to have, like, a public service announcement for some basic things about, you know, what happens when you come to the hospital or the emergency room that people just generally tend not to know." And so that was, yeah, that's what I talked about, some kind of basic how to survive the emergency room and the hospital tips.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So let's talk about that. You've worked as a hospitalist transitioning people from the emergency room into a longer stay in the hospital. What are tips to survive that transition? If you get to the hospital, what do you need to know? I mean, obviously, it's a morbid topic. We don't all talk about it, but you wanna be ready. If you or someone you know goes to the ER, what should you do?
- ASAaron Stupple
The first thing is, before going to the emergency room, bringing an accurate medication list. That's probably the most common thing, especially older people, and a lot of people listening to this podcast will be kind of shepherding their older parents in this kind of environment. And it's often assumed that the hospital has, you know, the accurate medication list in the computer system, but almost always the list that they have doesn't match the actual meds that the person's swallowing on a daily basis. And so it's probably the most relevant, most important piece of information that the patient or the patient's family knows better than anybody else. And so to make sure that list accompanies the patient to the emergency room, you just can't emphasize enough how important that is. And you want more than one copy because what, what happens is the family, if they have the list, they'll dutifully give it to the nurse or the doctor or whomever, and the emergency room doctor looks at it, and they make their kind of assessment, and then that gets lost. And then if the person is staying in the hospital for a couple nights, the, the hospital doctor doesn't have access to that list, and they're, and they're kind of guessing. So that would be the one thing I would say. The simplest thing is to have more than one copy of the medication list and make sure that goes with the patient to the emergency room. The other easy one is that a lot of times patients will just go to different hospitals. What you wanna do is have a relationship with one hospital because they have all your information. And so all else being equal, unless something terrible's happening and there's an emergency and you just don't have time to get to your hospital of choice, really go to the hospital that knows you. That's, I would just say, enormously helpful because there's a, a thought out there, understandable, that all the, you know, information systems can communicate, but they really can't.
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs] No.
- ASAaron Stupple
Very common. Yeah. No, they don't.
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, sometimes patients and families are caught off guard by that. I'd say those are the two easy ones.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah.
- ASAaron Stupple
And then if you find yourself in the emergency room, you know, hopefully whatever problem you're there can be fixed and you can go home. But if you're not fortunate enough to go home, this transition happens that people are not aware of, again, understandably, is that, you know, there's, there's doctors that only work in the emergency room, and then there's doctors that only work in the hospital. And so if the patient's too sick to go home, they have to stay, then the hospitalist, which is me, comes down to the emergency room and starts the whole process over of meeting the patient, asking them why they're there, how they've been doing, et cetera. And this kind of second history and interview is often made without the supporting family available. In other words, you know, a listener to the podcast brings their elderly parent to the emergency room. The decision is made to keep them in the hospital, and then the child goes home, the son or daughter goes home, and then the hospitalist comes down, and now the hospitalist is having a conversation with the patient, and they've already told their story several times, and there's this fatigue that sets in. And so that hospitalist often doesn't get the full story in the same way that the emergency room doctor gets it. The emergency room doctor gets the worried son, the worried daughter. The patient gets all the information, and then when the hospitalist comes through the second time through, it's much less information available. So I'd say if your loved one is staying in the hospital, you wanna be present for that second interview with the hospitalist. You don't have to necessarily even be in the, in the emergency room, but, like, have your phone ready, keep it on, keep it charged, and, you know, be available to answer that round of questions a second time.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, I think anyone who's had to take someone into the hospital realizes just how frantic the whole thing is and how much communication gets lost and how often you have to repeat yourself, and then even, like- My brother, who has some experience in the medical field also, he would always point out to me, like, you know, they come in and, like, the person who's giving you the medicines also has maybe a disconnect from the doctor or the hospitalist or the ER and what was already given and what the person's allergic to and, you know, what the dosage is and all of that. So you can really help them with the information flow is what it boils down to, right? You have to, like, write everything down, keep lists, and keep presenting it to them and matching it up against what they know because th- the whole thing is chaos. It's controlled chaos, kind of a miracle that it even works.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, controlled chaos is exactly it. And there's so much information, it's hard to say, like, "Oh, do this and don't do that." So the thing that matters, I would say the, the simple message that really stands out is this medication list. [laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Hmm. Okay.
- ASAaron Stupple
That is, like, 50% of it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
I'm gonna go assemble one after this. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, took a note for my parents-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Exactly
- TFTim Ferriss
... just to have that, especially if they're fraying at the edges or just getting older in years. And Aaron, you had a very good Twitter thread, or maybe it was just a long initial tweet on dementia that I thought was very compelling that we'll link to in the show notes as well.
- 2:09:19 – 2:13:36
A hierarchy of knowledge and lessons learned from this conversation.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right, guys. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. Any closing comments, questions, complaints, otherwise, that you guys would like to mention before we wind to a close?
- NRNaval Ravikant
There's a hierarchy of knowledge here, so we gotta acknowledge our forebears. All of this comes down from Deutsch's philosophy, so Beginning of Infinity, Fabric of Reality, great books. Although they don't explicitly talk about children. Then there's Taking Children Seriously, which I think has a website, FAQ. There's a rich history there. And then Aaron has a book, The Sovereign Child, that he wrote that is like, you know... I'm not gonna plug it, but I, I think there's a free copy coming out, like, maybe next week or something. It's even gonna be free-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- NRNaval Ravikant
... available online, so it's not like a big money-making endeavor. You can just download the PDF and read it, or it's like a buck on Kindle or something. This is not a money grab. You can just go get the book and figure it out for yourself. The book is very detailed. I would say there's a lot more that's out there, including very specific cases of, "Well, what do I do when this happens? Well, how do you solve that problem? What's your counter to this objection?" So it's kind of all there. I wish the kids could listen to this.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right? Because I think they might resonate a little bit better because parents come from a different angle. Educators come from their own angle. I wish the wives would be on here at some point. Maybe we do a [laughs] a women's episode if there's interest. But it's worth trying. It's worth trying these relaxation of rules one by one. It's not relaxation. It's moving from rules to discussions and problem-solving. It's moving from rules to discovery, learning, and problem-solving, and trying to solve problems up front in such a way that then it can sustain itself. I'm definitely gonna be making changes based not just on the book, but also on this conversation.
- TFTim Ferriss
Anything from this conversation that stuck out for you, Naval?
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, I mean, I just need to let go a little bit more, basically. I need to go turn off the screen time controls on my younger son's iPad. I need to probably start relaxing some of the food rules and some of the screen time rules. The math one's gonna be tough. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
I'll have to introspect on that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Aaron, so the book is The Sovereign Child, subtitle How a Forgotten Philosophy Can Liberate Kids and Their Parents. Where can people find you online if they wanna learn more or just keep up to date on your [laughs] your various pronouncements, discussions, ruminations?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. I'm on X, astupple on X, and really enjoy that, and plan on doing some spaces and AMAs. That's really my main location. The book has a, has a website. And as Naval is saying, there's gonna be rolling out some various alternative ways to read it and, like a, a web reader and different ways to organize the content. And, you know, that's the main sources.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Great. Yeah, as, as a disclaimer, I pushed Aaron to write the book.
- ASAaron Stupple
Mm-hmm.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And I'm a donor to the organization that funded the final copy, but I don't make any money off of it. It's not a, not a money-making exercise. And books don't make money, as we all know. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] All right, guys. Well, thank you for the time. And to everybody listening, we'll link to everything in the show notes, as per usual, tim.blog/podcast. I'm sure if you search Stupple, there will be the one and only. So [laughs] that'll pull up this episode, and you'll be able to find everything and more I'm sure we'll add to the show notes as things go along. And, uh, thanks to both of you guys, Aaron and Naval, for the time. And suppose until next time, folks who are tuning in, be a little bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. Try relaxing some rules. Maybe it's with your kids. Maybe it's with yourself. Naval, go eat some Ho Hos. We should have a tequila party.
- NRNaval Ravikant
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
And [laughs] tequila party with no math requirement. [laughs] And until next time, everybody, thanks for tuning in. And now the bonus segment from Aaron and Naval with extra tactical, practical day-by-day experiments that you can apply. Please enjoy.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Thank you for joining again, Aaron. So let's talk a little bit more practically and down to earth about the Taking Children Seriously philosophy and the Sovereign Child philosophy.
- 2:13:36 – 2:16:05
Tactics for addressing sibling (and spousal) conflict.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So let's get tactical for a moment. Let's say we're taking children semi-seriously [laughs] when we're starting out.
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Let's go through what I would consider my big four, which are eating, sleeping, screen time, and learning. Actually, there's probably a fifth, which is sibling conflict. So maybe you can remind me, and we can go through all five of those. But what is a simple, tactical, easy thing you could start with on each of these? So let's start with, uh, sibling conflict. What is an easy, simple, tactical change that you could try to make that takes children more seriously on sibling conflict and would be a good first step to just see is this working or not?
- ASAaron Stupple
I think an easy thing would be to create an easy way for kids to opt out. Often when kids are having conflict, one of them wants to leave the situation, and a lot of times parents require kids to kind of reconcile and have this forced, you know, apology and be there for the whole thing, whereas instead you would allow the kid to go to their room. I know some parents who don't have a separate room for their kids or don't have a separate space.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So create a separate space for a cooling off where they can exit any conflict if they want to. You also had another strategy in your book, which I liked, which was just clear ownership. Even if you can't afford to duplicate or triplicate, or in your case, quintuplicate everything, you can still s- make it clear that this belongs to that child and that belongs to the other child, and this idea of sharing or required sharing isn't necessarily there because we don't require adults to share with each other. They do it voluntarily or they negotiate it, and you could possibly introduce the same thing with kids. So that's a simple one, a s-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah. Another simple one for sibling conflict would be not to reprimand the aggressor in the moment, just to wait until things cool down and just kind of make it a policy that in the moment we're gonna let tempers simmer down and then talk about things when a kid is more able to be thoughtful about it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, and this would be true with spousal relationships as well. You get in a fight-
- ASAaron Stupple
Right
- NRNaval Ravikant
... with your spouse, you don't immediately start accusing or reprimanding them. You sort of just try to cool the tension down first, and then 24 hours later you can have a real conversation.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right. Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Al- although in the kids' case, by then the emotion has passed and they don't really care as much anymore. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Okay. So that's great, a set of good, simple tactics on sibling conflict, and not saying to introduce all of these at once, but you could start with one and see how it goes. Let's take
- 2:16:05 – 2:19:10
Tactics to foster learning.
- NRNaval Ravikant
another one. How do you think about learning? The child doesn't wanna learn, and that could take different forms. One could be they don't wanna go to school, they don't wanna do their homework, they don't wanna study their math. Is there a simple tactic we could try to get through this challenge?
- ASAaron Stupple
I think one thing is to just think about the time involved, and this really goes for everything. I think one simple way to gradually shift away from rules is just to build in a little bit of time between when a problem is noticed and when you start enforcing some sort of change. And so with learning, right, like, when does a kid need to learn to read? Let's say reading is, you know, absolutely essential. Can't let a kid not learn to read. Can't let a kid not learn math. But when do they need to learn math? When do they need to learn to read? I think you realize right there, there is an enormous amount of time. And so once you just have some time to think about it, it takes the pressure off, and that time also enables fun things to arise that also bring about reading and writing. For example, my daughter is having a birthday, and one thing we decided was, we decided she... You know, we presented this idea to her, she loved it, that she's in charge of her birthday. And being in charge of her birthday is doing the invitations, and doing the invitations requires writing. So she made all the invitations, and it was really quite fantastic, right? 'Cause there's a lot more to it than just even writing. There's dates, the calendars, writing the address on the envelope. Suddenly streets, zip codes, states, towns, like all of that, you know, a lot of civics, a lot of writing, a lot of reading all is happening in a very authentic, genuine way built on or structured around her interests. She recognizes the need to be able to read and write in this context. Another thing is video games. A lot of these video games, the character is talking with the other character, and the words are appearing in little thought bubbles, and you really can't navigate the video games, some of these video games, without reading. And I think you have that just over and over and over. Things that are absolutely essential for kids to learn are very useful and very prevalent, and you really can't do much in the world without bumping into these things.
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's a good point, 'cause a, a lot of times you'll help your kids with these things. They're struggling with their computer or their iPad, and you fast-forward the whole problem for them. But then you force them to sit down and slowly, methodically try to learn almost the same skill set, but in a very regimented, artificial way. And so it-
- ASAaron Stupple
Right
- NRNaval Ravikant
... it's always better done in context, which of course requires a lot of parental involvement, a lot of parental time. So what do you think about that? I mean, does TCS take a lot of parental time, which a lot of parents just don't have?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yes and no. The simple answer there is that enforcing rules takes a ton of time, and not just time, but anxiety and stress. You know, managing somebody else-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yes, stressful time.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- 2:19:10 – 2:22:11
The best baby (and adult) sitter.
- NRNaval Ravikant
The iPad is the best babysitter ever designed. [laughs] If you're not too concerned about the second-order effects or if you don't v- necessarily view them as negative, if you just view them as they are what they are, then it is the best babysitter ever designed. It's the best adult sitter ever designed. [laughs] We're always on our phones scrolling, and we're constantly criticizing the doom scrolling on the phone, but then we continue doing it ourselves.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
So our words don't actually match our actions.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, I could talk about that one. I think the unique thing about the iPad is that it is the most customized device, right? Like, if you go back in time, right, if you buy a car, you're gonna get the same Honda Civic that everybody else gets. If you buy a Walkman even, right, you get the same Sony Walkman that everybody else gets, maybe a few different modifications. But with an iPad, you can modify this thing endlessly for a very wide variety of activities, and it's so easy to reduce the iPad down to piece of glass with light behind it.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Right. It's a portal into the internet. It's a portal into all the media that exists.
- ASAaron Stupple
And it's a springboard to interests, right? It is a platform for discovering and creating and kindling interests, and from those you can attach- Reading, writing, math. There's cooking shows, like kids cooking shows. My, um, my youngest daughter is really into cooking
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, this is not part of TCS philosophy, but... Or this is not the full TCS philosophy, but I think as a parent, you could do partial things. You could say, "Here's an iPad, it's curated. [laughs] I picked what's on there-
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... but within that set, you can just, you know, use it, or you can use it within these hours, right? But within those hours, it's relatively unstructured."
- ASAaron Stupple
Absolutely.
- NRNaval Ravikant
And not browbeat kids over playing chess versus playing video games. I actually grew up really disliking chess and backgammon and Go and all of the standard smart-kid games, and I just loved brainless video games [laughs] and lots and lots of them.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
But over time, my taste got more and more sophisticated, and so i- if someone had forced me to play chess, I think that would've been a pretty miserable childhood. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
That's another just big general point that I think is lost. The, there's a difference between describing the kind of ideal end state, right? Kind of the goal of this, like, freedom maximization state. And that's a different question from how do I get from the state we're in now to that goal ideal state? And a sudden change is a bad idea. And so I'm not a- advocating suddenly just ripping off all the rules and, you know, shifting to a, a free-for-all. Instead, the recommendation or the thought is that you want incremental changes. How can you make small modifications, small and reversible modifications, that lead in a direction to a state of more freedom and lead in a direction to less rules? That is the goal of parenting, right? Like, eventually, a kid goes off to college and is in a state of very few rules.
- 2:22:11 – 2:22:24
Tactics for forming good sleep habits.
- ASAaron Stupple
Do you want th- that to be a sudden shift? Do you want rules to suddenly be withdrawn? Isn't it ideal to withdraw those rules, to wean off those rules earlier and earlier in life gradually?
- 2:22:24 – 2:27:37
Parenting into the teen years.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Well, actually, one, one of the things we're already seeing in response to your book, people talking about it on Twitter, for example, is they will say, "Well, my kids are teenagers. It's too late." And so there's an abdication there. It's like, "Once they're teenagers, there's no rules anymore. They're just kind of doing whatever they want. I try to enforce certain rules just by owning the house that they happen to live in, but even there, it's frustrating." So by the time they're 10, 11, 12, your rules are all gone anyway, so, or being ignored for the most part. So are you gonna tear that Band-Aid off or let them tear it off? Or are you going to gradually relax the rules in anticipation of what is to come?
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah, and I think it's a safe thing, right? If we're worried about this being risky, it is a safe thing to be thinking about how do I gradually relax my rules so that my kid can be independent? I'll make an analogy. In medicine, right, a lot of times somebody's very sick and they're on a lot of oxygen and, or they're in the intensive care unit and they're on the breathing machine. And what they've learned is that you have to give patients the opportunity to breathe on their own and see if they don't need the machine. And so there are dedicated trials every morning for everybody who's on a breathing machine, is to try them on minimal settings and see how they can do. And you're, you don't want to have a person on maximum life support any longer than they need it, and the only way to tell is to pull it back a little bit. And so I think of, of Taking Children Seriously as you're constantly pulling back the support just a little bit to see if they can make it on their own. That's always the goal is how do I gradually, safely wean off the support? It's not a recommendation to withdraw all the support suddenly and see if the person can sink or swim. That's not the idea. I would recommend against that.
- NRNaval Ravikant
How would you relax sleeping? What is the first rule you would remove around sleeping?
- ASAaron Stupple
So sleeping, how would you do this gradually, right? I think one thing is you kind of recognize that the bedtimes are arbitrary, right? There is no manual that says 6:30, 7:30, 8:30. It's usually a 30, right? Maybe it's 7:00, 8:00, right? Why isn't it 8:15? Why isn't it 7:15? 7:18, right? So-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Sundown to sunrise. [laughs]
- ASAaron Stupple
Sundown to sunrise, right? You... So-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Less arbitrary
- ASAaron Stupple
... why not just say, "You know what? Why don't we relax this by half an hour?" You know, if the kid's bedtime is 7:30, let's try 8:00 and see what happens. You could tell the kid, "Look, we're just gonna do 8:00 for a week and see what happens." And just honestly just pay attention and did the sky fall or was it kind of okay? And then if it wasn't okay, the beauty is, is that it's not gonna be okay for some people. Then that raises the question, this is the epistemology. It raises the question, why wasn't okay? And now you're investigating what is wrong when my kid doesn't get enough sleep, and then how do we fix that?
- NRNaval Ravikant
I also think a lot of this ties into adult sleep habits.
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh.
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's strange that they're being forced to go to sleep when you're awake for the next four hours.
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
The reality is, in my house, if we turn all the lights down, if the adults go to sleep, the kids will scurry to sleep. They don't wanna be awake by themselves. It's scary-
- ASAaron Stupple
They're bored
- NRNaval Ravikant
... at their age. They're bored and it's scary.
- ASAaron Stupple
Oh, scary too, yeah.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, exactly. And then in the morning they'll sleep in. They're young, they'll sleep longer. But as an adult, if you really want them to go to sleep early, just go to sleep early yourself, but that's easier said than done.
- ASAaron Stupple
Well, it's another thing you could try, right? You could try saying, "You know what? I'm just gonna go to sleep and see what happens. Let's turn the lights off and go to sleep and see what happens." So yeah, like basically mini experiments like that, and then also on the waking up side, what time do they need to wake up? Is there any way I can build in some extra time in the morning? And often you're stuck because you gotta go to work, but there's breakfast. Can breakfast be made the night before? Can I figure out a way to minimize my kids' routine so they can wake up an extra 15 minutes, an extra half hour? And then your kid is probably gonna notice that you are working hard to try to get them more sleep. What an interesting message that sends, like, "Hey, I, I really want you to be able to sleep in in the morning, and, uh, damn, you gotta get up for school, but it takes a half hour to get breakfast and to get changed and everything." Let's pick out your clothes tonight. What, you wanna do that? Or I can pick them out for you
- NRNaval Ravikant
And to be fair, I think every parent views themselves almost in service to their child at some point, you know, and they're always trying to help the children. And they try these things early on, and then it gets frustrating, and life gets busy, and they just eventually start establishing rules. And society sort of makes it easy for you to establish the rules. They give you a set of rules in books. They tell you, like, "Oh yeah, my kids are doing nap time at this time," so you kind of go along with the Joneses. And then school, of course, and work, and schedules establish rules. So a lot of this actually also means you as an adult unburdening yourself from rules, and this goes to larger points about try to live a less scheduled life. If you have the choice and the luxury, try to pick jobs where you can control your time much better, and then that allows you to not have to control your kids' time as much. If you wanna maximize your kids' freedom, and therefore their ability to learn and solve problems, you have to maximize your own freedom as well. That's the journey for everybody.
- 2:27:37 – 2:32:08
Tactics for encouraging good eating habits.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Let's go to, uh, eating.
- ASAaron Stupple
Right.
- NRNaval Ravikant
That's a tough one. In your book, you sort of embrace this fully. You were just like, "Yeah, they, they have access to everything. They just eat whatever they want, whenever they want. They might live on a diet of Oreos and-
- ASAaron Stupple
Right
- NRNaval Ravikant
... chocolate bars for a little while until they figure it out." I'm not-
- ASAaron Stupple
Right
- NRNaval Ravikant
... willing to go there. I don't think most people are. So where do we start?
- ASAaron Stupple
A great way to start is always the kids' interest, and it'll be interesting to know what kind of foods they are interested in, what forbidden foods. Are they interested in chocolate? And, you know, you could explore, are there foods with chocolate that don't make you uncomfortable, right? Instead of Oreos, are there, you know... I don't know. I can't think. [chuckles]
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, dark chocolate.
- ASAaron Stupple
Hot cocoa.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, no, dark chocolate.
- ASAaron Stupple
Dark chocolate.
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah. Chocolate made with honey. There is definitely a hierarchy of chocolate, and, you know-
- ASAaron Stupple
Okay. Yeah. So if you think there's a hierarchy of chocolate, you could explore the hierarchy. Another thing is, you know, exploring yourself. Like, what are you worried about with these particular foods? You know, a lot of times with the chocolate and the sweets, it's that the kid will get hyper, and there's an open question about whether that is true or not, and you could just let the kids eat the sweets and see if they are, in fact, more hyper.
- NRNaval Ravikant
It is definitely the common belief. I personally have not seen it. I haven't seen a correlation between sugar and hyperactivity, especially past a very young age. Maybe early, early, early on, but I think as soon as they're sort of choosing their foods, I don't notice a hyperactivity around food. I think it's more around just calories and nu- nutrients, and less around something magic with sugar. But, you know, everyone's different. I don't get runner's high either [chuckles] so...
- ASAaron Stupple
[laughs]
- NRNaval Ravikant
It's a variable thing.
- ASAaron Stupple
Um-
- NRNaval Ravikant
Yeah, I mean, I, I think-
- ASAaron Stupple
Yeah
- NRNaval Ravikant
... people already do have loosening of rules, right? There's usually, like, something like, "Oh, okay, after you eat your meal, you can have your dessert." And then within dessert, it's not like you've laid out exactly how many ounces and how many calories and so on. But anything that gives a child more choice, more freedom, maybe choices of desserts. Maybe even saying, "Okay, you can eat your dessert now, but then you have to eat your food later, and if you don't, the next time you don't have that freedom." I know this is a little bit [chuckles] antithetical. It's sort of like better conditions in the prison, if you will, [laughs] right?
Episode duration: 3:02:59
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