#465 – Dale Saran

Sevan Matossian (00:01):

Bam or live.

Dale Saran (00:04):

Kaon

Sevan Matossian (00:04):

Just like that. What are you playing behind you, Dale? Uh, uh, that, is that a music stand?

Dale Saran (00:11):

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (00:13):

Piano, guitar,

Dale Saran (00:15):

Uh, piano, I think. Yeah. B two and three part inventions. I’m not there yet. I’m not there yet.

Sevan Matossian (00:22):

God, you’re a bold man.

Dale Saran (00:24):

<laugh>

Sevan Matossian (00:25):

God, you’re a bold man. I was looking at this. Um, are, are you following this title? I thing at all.

Dale Saran (00:32):

A little bit. Yep.

Sevan Matossian (00:35):

I was looking at the definition of the word bigot.

Dale Saran (00:39):

Oh, did you see my picture?

Sevan Matossian (00:41):

No, I, the, the, I cannot, I cannot believe the bigotry coming from the left. Isn’t that their favorite word? How are they doing this to women? They’re letting you know. All you have to do is say you’re a dude and you can compete in any woman’s college sport.

Dale Saran (00:55):

We’re it’s funny. We’re having this. I had a conversation yesterday, so my, my mom, my sister and my niece are in town and I was talking to my, uh, my daughter, Rachel. I dunno if you, my youngest

Sevan Matossian (01:04):

One of course. I remember Dale. You have, you have four daughters, right?

Dale Saran (01:07):

Yeah. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (01:08):

Okay.

Dale Saran (01:09):

So my youngest one is working for me on this lawsuit as a paralegal.

Sevan Matossian (01:12):

Oh, cool.

Dale Saran (01:13):

Yeah. So she did a year law school and she’s yeah, I’m not sure it’s for me. And so she said, she thought she, you know, might wanna be a paralegal. So she’s, uh, we were talking yet the lawsuit and some other things and the title IX thing came up and, uh, it was funny because she was like, I had to remind her about I’m sure you remember. But when I was at cross at the, uh, Chloe Johnson lawsuit,

Sevan Matossian (01:34):

Right, right, right.

Dale Saran (01:36):

With the, you know, which was, and she goes, she said it was kind of a funny line. She goes, how come you were involved in all these hot button issues? Like five years before it ever <laugh>.

Sevan Matossian (01:45):

Right. Right. I

Dale Saran (01:45):

Said before, long before Joe Rogan, you know, came out and it was cool to, or I said long before Dave Chappelle was running his mouth, I was, I was in court over the Chloe Johnson lawsuit, you know, competing in the prostate games.

Sevan Matossian (01:59):

And yeah, I,

Dale Saran (02:00):

I’m not, it’s nothing against Chloe or, or any of, you know, anyone who’s. I could a friend, I, a person I was in the Marine Corps with, I don’t know what to say without getting myself in trouble. But when I knew him, he was a guy mm-hmm <affirmative> and, um, and then later I found out, you know, I got like a friend request on Facebook and it was the same last name of this guy. It was kind of unusual name and, but it had a woman’s name in front. And so I had to, you know, I was like, who’s this? I thought maybe is this, I’ll just say his name was Bob, his name wasn’t Bob. But I’ll just say, I was like, oh, is that, you know, Bob’s wife or something, you know? And I click on it and I’m like, holy shit. It looks like Bob in a wig, you know?

Dale Saran (02:41):

And, uh, and so he had, you know, transitioned and, and gone, uh, male to female. And of course I, you know, whatever he wants to do with his life, you know, I don’t, whatever he wants to be or whatever dress up, I don’t care. And, um, but it was a kind of a weird thing cuz then you, you find yourself, like I was having this of struggle with the whole long before people were talking about my preferred pronouns and all that. I was in the, I was in that kind of internal, like, what do you do with this? You know, how do you, how do you manage it? You know? Cause it’s like, I, I remember, uh, when do you remember, uh, you’d follow UFC when Tamika Brent got uh, oh, the Fallon Fox, Tamika Brents when she got her face caved in by, by Fallon Fox

Sevan Matossian (03:22):

That happened in the UFC.

Dale Saran (03:25):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (03:25):

Yeah. Why did Dana allow that

Dale Saran (03:28):

It, you know, I don’t know if you’ll remember it, when that all went down, there was this moment of, of

Sevan Matossian (03:34):

What year was that? Because recently I started looking into that

Dale Saran (03:37):

15 or 16

Sevan Matossian (03:39):

Ish. Okay. Okay. That may have been right around when I started getting into the UFC.

Dale Saran (03:43):

Yeah. I think it was my recollection is it was right around that time because I, when I was getting, I got kind of dragged a little bit for coming out and saying, Hey, look, it’s nothing personal, but there’s a huge advantage. Uh, in, in athletic competition, if you’ve gotten the chance to go through puberty as a male, it’s just, it’s unquestionable undeniable. And I was called every name in the book for pointing out what I always took to be a basic fact of biology, you know, in, in, uh, at least in warm blooded mammals, you know, the, the male is almost always, um, bigger than the female. You know, there’s a few oddball, uh, things here and there, but generally speaking, you know, you,

Sevan Matossian (04:24):

The praying man is the black widow,

Dale Saran (04:25):

Right. <laugh>, it’s a couple of, and those are

Sevan Matossian (04:28):

Dude doesn’t end up so good. Right.

Dale Saran (04:31):

But, um, it’s a crazy thing. Then I got four daughters and, and I try to explain to people, you know, like you get called names for suggesting that, you know, like I’m a bad guy, cuz I’m a dude saying it, but you know, here, I’m trying to defend my daughters or at least, you know, preserve for them. Like I, I mean, God forbid my daughters did jujitsu and then you’re gonna have somebody who’s a dude, you know, says, I feel like a woman now I I’m gonna, you know, get on the mat and start pounding the tar outta my daughters. That’s not, that’s not gonna be acceptable.

Sevan Matossian (05:02):

So, so here’s the definition of a bigot, a person who’s Obst or unreasonably attached to a belief or opinion or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people that people would be women. So let’s say let’s, let’s, we’re, we’re gonna make the preposition in this, in this conversation that women are, are real thing. <laugh> the way this podcast is real based on their, uh, reproductive organs. Are, are you cool with that? Dale? Mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. So, and taking us towards a person or people on the basis of their membership. So they’re members to this group and, and, and I think membership is, is a broad use of the word because they have vaginas and ovaries and um, fallopian tubes and all that stuff.

Dale Saran (05:46):

Right.

Sevan Matossian (05:47):

And so, because they’re, and, and then, uh, equally on the other side, there’s another group and they’re called men and this title IX thing was supposed to make it. So when you go to college, they both of these groups, which encompasses everyone, um, based on their, their genitalia and their reproductive organs, they have a place to play sports. Yep. Now they’re gonna let the ones with penises and testicles go play with the women.

Dale Saran (06:14):

Hey,

Sevan Matossian (06:14):

And I’m, I’m tripping. It seems like the, the, the classic definition of, uh, of bigotry. They’re just fucking destroying this other membership.

Dale Saran (06:23):

Yep.

Sevan Matossian (06:24):

I’m I’m just, how is anyone, how is anyone who knows a woman? I mean, I guess if you’re, if you just hate women as a whole I’m tripping. I can’t even, like, I can’t empathize with that at all. I, I, I don’t even know what they’re doing.

Dale Saran (06:40):

It’s uh, Hey, it’s, you know, I, I don’t know that there’s they, and it’s a model that the group, I mean, it’s, it’s weird, but

Sevan Matossian (06:48):

What do you mean by that? You think I’m like, maybe it’s just no one there’s like 10 people and I’m just blowing it. It’s just like media hype. Oh

Dale Saran (06:54):

No, no. It’s bigger than that. I mean, obviously, you know, you see the, the blow back culturally. I mean, people are losing their, you know, losing their livelihoods and you look at what happens to anybody who stands up against this, but it’s the, you know, you take anything, um, far enough, like here’s a great example of it in California, you know, in your, in your Homeland and where I live for a while. I love California, but man, that place is gone. Whew. Um, but, uh, the California prisons are allowing male prisoners who decide that they identify as women to go to be put into women’s prisons. And wouldn’t, you know, there’s been cases of rape and, you know, they’re using their male organ, um, to engage in force sex with actual women in, in the California prison system. And you can’t get anybody to, there’s some lawsuits kicking around just starting up right now. I mean, there have been women raped in female prisons by male prisoners who say, identify as female, and then they come over and go, I mean, it’s, I mean the whole thing’s kind of farcical at some point, you know?

Sevan Matossian (08:01):

Wow. So, so California forces, transgender belief system on female prisoners house with biological males. So, yep. So due who claim to be women were then put in the women’s, uh, section and then they raped the women. Yep. Hey dude, that isn’t that what red riding hood is

Dale Saran (08:22):

Red riding hood,

Sevan Matossian (08:23):

The story he dresses up as the grandmother.

Dale Saran (08:28):

I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have got that pulled, but I guess, I mean,

Sevan Matossian (08:32):

<laugh>, it’s a real life, red riding hood. They dress, you dress up as grandmother and then you go inside and eat the kid.

Dale Saran (08:38):

Yeah. It’s um, it’s going on? And I saw, I knew about the lawsuit and I seen what

Sevan Matossian (08:43):

The

Dale Saran (08:43):

Fuck. Yeah. It’s crazy, man. You get to a certain point. You’re like, wow, I can’t believe I, you know, you look around like for me and it, I mean, we’re about the same age. So, you know, it’s hard to imagine how we got from, you know, to, to this point from say, you know, for those of us who grow up, like I was, you know, a teenager in the eighties. And so it’s hard to be like, think of, you know, the country just as a whole in the culture from say 1988 to where we are now. But I guess, you know, that’s 30 years, but man, that seems like, it seems like we’re a long way from, you know,

Sevan Matossian (09:19):

What, what, what do you think I have this way of understanding, um, the mechanism and the human brain that’s causing so much confusion, um, uh, that there’s a conflation of thought and reality. And, and, and part of the thing is, is that the hu I, I put a huge, huge amount of the blame on the people on the right, because of their refuse of the, um, to, to fight for definitions of words. So for instance, gender and sex, they’re being conflated everywhere, but gender is something that’s in your imagination and sex is something that exists in the outside world. And when you conflate the two, then you and I can’t have a conversation anymore.

Dale Saran (09:55):

Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, it’s interesting. You’d say it’s on a, uh, you know, you, you blame the right for the definition, but I

Sevan Matossian (10:03):

Also, because they refuse to stand by it, they, they still, they use, they, they use the word gender and sex interchangeably. Yeah. And when you do that, you’re playing their game.

Dale Saran (10:11):

Yeah. Well, that’s, it’s always been, you know, cultural, I’ll call it cultural Marxism. What I think we’re witnessing and what’s going on is the Marxism has always been about, um, uh, control of language. And so there’s always been a, a war for control of language, but language is an evolving thing, you know, I mean, languages change and word usage change, and, you know, uh, that’s all inevitable. And I think in that sense, the, the, the right, uh, team red, whatever they’re always kind of behind because they’re, they’re always in, in a sense they’re always conservative. So they’re trying to conserve language as it was, or, you know, hold things as they were. But they’ve always lost that because the us has, has always been such an evolving culture. You can always have new slang, new words. You know, people are always, the kids are always, you know, changing the way, the language and the way we speak,

Sevan Matossian (11:08):

But you could have a mental faculty, Dale that requires you. You could teach the, uh, an idea that all human beings and you, and I, I think agree on this that we have before we start talking, we have to agree on the definition of words. Yeah. So before I tell you, I’m gonna meet you Wednesday at 10, am you and I have to agree on some on, on what, what Wednesday, Wednesday as in 10:00 AM is

Dale Saran (11:30):

<laugh> right.

Sevan Matossian (11:30):

You can’t tell the judge in a court, Hey, um, I, my Wednesday and Thursday are backwards. You’re wrong. And, and what’s amazing is Wednesday and Thursday are arbitrary, but man and woman isn’t

Dale Saran (11:42):

Right, right.

Sevan Matossian (11:44):

Well, how come we can agree on Monday and Wednesday and Thursday when it’s just made up bullshit, but we can’t agree on something that’s not made up bullshit. I, I, Hey, I, I feel like I’m, I feel like I’m in a Looney bin trap with loo.

Dale Saran (11:57):

Yeah. Yeah. It is man. We’re, I’ve said people are like, what’s going on? You ask me about what’s going on in the world. Like what you’re witnessing as mental illness being played out on a large scale. You know, the people who run the country are mentally ill too. I mean, largely you’re, you’re watching it play out in, in large, you know, in, in, uh, large part on a societal level, we’ve got, you know, the, the inmates are running the asylum. It’s kind of things that you can say things now that used to be considered. I it’s a great example. This is a great example of it. Um, you know, I always, uh, I said, I wonder when they’re gonna come for, do you remember the show mash? Do you remember the show

Sevan Matossian (12:32):

Mash? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Dale Saran (12:33):

Yep. Hugely popular and

Sevan Matossian (12:35):

Hugely popular.

Dale Saran (12:36):

And my, I

Sevan Matossian (12:37):

Didn’t like it. I didn’t like it, but, but it was hugely popular. And everyone said that, uh, I remember seeing that smart, smart kids, like mash and dumb kids like this other show, like goer pile and I like goer pile. I

Dale Saran (12:47):

Was the dumb <laugh> well, my parents were big mash fans, you know? Yeah. And so, um, and it’s set in the Korean war and what’s great about it. Is there, is this at least relevant to this topic? Is there was a main one character. This main character was played by Jamie far was the actor near big honk. And SNAs, I dunno if you remember Jamie far,

Sevan Matossian (13:04):

I do. I know exactly where you’re going with this. I like it.

Dale Saran (13:07):

Yeah. So the whole bit in that show was that Jamie far is trying to get outta the army cuz he doesn’t wanna be in the war. And so he dresses as a woman the whole time and it was considered, it was considered like a, I mean it was one of the great running gags of that whole, of that whole show is he’s constantly in women’s clothing. Like he’ll show up in a like, there he is. Yeah. There’s a good one of him. Right. And like in these, and he’s such a, it’s a great visual gag too, cuz he is, I don’t know what nationality is, but he’s got that big schnoz and hairy arms and all that, you know? And he’s, I mean, it’s a pretty good chest hair and then he’ll be in there. And he, he was trying to get, what’s called a section eight, which is in the army, the section eight is the, the part of the army code

Sevan Matossian (13:47):

Lebanese, Lebanese American.

Dale Saran (13:49):

I thought he might be Armenian, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but uh, yeah, so I mean it’s a great, it was a great bit and it worked for the whole show and it turns out, everybody knows he’s just bullshitting that. He’s not that he’s not a woman obviously. And he doesn’t even really believe it that it’s just a bit to try and get himself outta the army, but it’s, you know, the whole basis for it was that he was gonna prove that he was crazy by pretending, you know, by claiming that he was a, a woman. And I always wondered, and Alan Aldes was, you know, known. He did a lot of writing for the show, particularly after the original, I think couple seasons and he’s a big left. And I always thought it was funny like when nobody’s called out Alan Alda and you know, how problematic mashes and are, are they gonna get rid of that? But I mean the whole, the whole premise of that bit, it was like the longest running bit on that show was that he was trying to convince the army. He was nuts by dressing up as a woman and they all knew he was bullshitting. So they just let him do it. And it, I mean, it was a wonderful kind of plot device, you know, but I mean, that’s gone, like you couldn’t put that on TV today. You know, that’s done it’s over,

Sevan Matossian (14:51):

It premiered in 1972. That was the year I was born and ended February 20th, 1983. It had 11 year run. Yeah. The final episode had 125 million.

Dale Saran (15:02):

Yeah. I remember the final episode was like a big people were like, couldn’t believe it was over. I mean, it was, it had a great run. I mean, up until that point, I don’t think there was anything, you know, maybe Seinfeld’s done better than that now and a few others, but at the time maybe cheers. But at the time it was, I mean, it was an American, you know?

Sevan Matossian (15:18):

Yes. Well we had like three channels back then.

Dale Saran (15:22):

Right?

Sevan Matossian (15:23):

ABC, NBC and CBS.

Dale Saran (15:25):

Right. You could watch the, each week you could watch episode on like whatever it was Monday or Tuesday nights, I forget. But the reruns used to run on UHF. So I used to watch them late at night or I’d catch them after I watched the hockey game or something on channel 38

Sevan Matossian (15:38):

UHF was the dial that you kind of had to like spin around to find the station. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dale Saran (15:43):

Tweak it in, hold up the, get the tin foil and hold onto the thing and like, okay there’s am I getting a picture? You know, you could

Sevan Matossian (15:51):

For, for people who don’t know, it used to actually really work to just hit your TV. Yes. You hit the TV and the station would come in.

Dale Saran (15:57):

Yeah. That was a legitimate technique. Yeah, for sure.

Sevan Matossian (16:00):

Mash is last

Dale Saran (16:01):

For kids. It worked for kids too. At least my old man seemed to think it did.

Sevan Matossian (16:05):

<laugh> right.

Dale Saran (16:05):

Wrap ’em on the head. And they started working better.

Sevan Matossian (16:09):

Mash has lasted three times longer than the Korean war. It depicted.

Dale Saran (16:13):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (16:13):

The series.

Dale Saran (16:14):

Yeah, it was great. But you know, it’s um, we were having this conversation. There’s some, there’s some interesting things. I think the, the biggest flaws that people I’ll tell you what’s going on is that the reason the right or anybody seems unable to, to stop the onslaught is we don’t very few people have what I’ll call, uh, clarity. And I call it moral clarity, but it’s not really moral clarity. It’s not maybe the right term, but people are afraid. I mean, God forbid, somebody calls you a bigot, you know, or somebody calls you a racist calls, you some name and now you’re now you’re, you know, people are just, uh, fearful. And the other thing is the education system, ill prepares people for, for the rhetorical battles that we all have to wage, you know, in adulthood, I think it does a, a piss poor job of preparing people to be able to defend their own positions and their own beliefs. You know, we’re, we’re not a people who spend enough time asking ourselves hard questions about what we believe and why, and what’s the basis, you know? No, one’s, that’s just gone from, from the entirety of the, the education process. It’s unfortunate.

Sevan Matossian (17:19):

Was it ever there?

Dale Saran (17:21):

Um, it was probably, I would say, you know, uh, you know, how I am about education, but there was a time when there was an education, uh, called the Trivium. That was really the, the middle ages was something called the Trivium and it was grammar. And I’m trying to think of what the third leg of the Trivium was, but it, it was the idea that a liberal arts education, you, we weren’t trying to teach you, um, what to believe so much is or what to think so much as how to think.

Sevan Matossian (17:49):

Right, right, right,

Dale Saran (17:50):

Right. And so that you were equipped, no matter the context that you found yourself in, you had all the tools necessary, but then the information age and, and the seventies, and you remember this, you know, we were about the same age. And I remember when education really shifted, it was like, everybody’s gonna need to go to college and everybody’s gonna need to learn computers. And, and it became less about learning how to think than it was. We’re gonna teach you a body of knowledge. Of course. I now think about that and I laugh, cuz it seems so foolish, but how could you ever think that teaching a kid in middle school, some substantive thing, like he’s not gonna graduate from high school for another four years by, by that time, whatever substantive knowledge you taught them in the sixth grade is gonna be useless. It’s already gonna be, it’s already gonna be too late. It, it it’s six years past, you know,

Sevan Matossian (18:35):

There’s um, there’s two, two words that everyone should know, uh, in, in, and look into a little bit, uh, epistemology the theory of knowledge, especially, especially with regards to its methods, validity and scope of epistemology is the investigation of what distinguish distinguishes, justified beliefs from opinions. It is a, um, if you don’t know about epistemology, this is gonna be so harsh. Don’t know about epistemology. You probably should never again, <laugh>, I’ll never express your opinion ever fucking again. <laugh> I, I mean, it’s almost because you have to know, you have to know how this works. You have to understand the mechanisms of the brain. And, and, and it’s like, I ask people, you have a tattoo. I ask, oh, I’m gonna, you’re gonna love the story. And then ontology is the other one. You have to know these two words. Yeah. You have to read a little bit about these things. Yeah, for sure. I told you the branch of metaphysics, dealing with the nature of being a set of concepts and categories in subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relationship between them. You have to know relationship. You have to understand context and relationships cuz without that, there is no world.

Dale Saran (19:37):

Yeah. Hey, you’ll love this. Right. What do I have sitting on my shelf? Do you remember when, when Greg went through this phase where he had all these

Sevan Matossian (19:43):

Yeah, yeah. Oh yes. Medicine. Yes. Oh, tell me, um, share, share with people what those books are. These are great books.

Dale Saran (19:54):

Yeah. Um, so there was a, a series of books to put up about like the Oxford press and it’s called a very short introduction and it’s across this, this thank you, Chris. Corino yes. Grammar rhetoric. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t remember what I was forgetting there. I’ve got it on my shelf there. Um, but this very short introduction series were put out by the Oxford press. And it’s I, I forget how many there were total, but it was a few hundred and Greg bought every one of ’em cuz he read one or two and then he had the whole series and then he got me into it. So I got a bunch of them, but they’re these little books from the Oxford press that are like a short, you know, this one right here on metaphysics is only, it’s not even a hundred pages. And most of them run about that.

Dale Saran (20:34):

A hundred pages, 115 pages. And they’re these short, nicely, um, oh, not overly nice, but nice little books. And they give you like a whirlwind tour of all subjects. And like I, you know, I have metaphysics, there’s another one, a very short introduction law, you know, what is law? What’s you know, what does it mean? Philosophy? I got one, you know, philosophy of law. And so a very short, one of, one of my favorites is a very short introduction on knowledge. And of course it’s one of the thicker ones, but it’s, you know, how do we know what we know? How do you, how do you claim to know something? You know? And those are, those are deep questions. I think that’s, I might say the, the big problem, my biggest problem in education and maybe society broadly is nobody’s asking the, the big questions anymore. Like everything’s small, we’ve gone small in every way, you know,

Sevan Matossian (21:27):

Can you gimme an example? Can you gimme an example? Oh, before you gimme an example of that, you gotta see what someone wrote up here. There’s a great, uh, someone says something about Russell Berg, listen to this. Did Russ burger have moral clarity before he was fired? Why does it have to be before? Why can’t it be before, during and after he was fired? Why does it have to be before before? No, but I get you. I get, I get what you’re doing. Jason. You’re good, dude.

Dale Saran (21:49):

Hey, I listen. Yeah. He has moral clarity. Sure. I mean, yeah. Russel Berger might be one of the, and also by the way, a great, we went through the, uh, Russ Berger and I went through the, uh, what was that public speaking course. We all took together the big deal.

Sevan Matossian (22:03):

Oh yeah.

Dale Saran (22:06):

Russ. And I took that course together, competed against each other in that. And uh, Russ, Berger’s a great ration. He Russ Berger’s a, a Trivium guy. He would, he would absolutely. He would agree with me a hundred percent. You know,

Sevan Matossian (22:19):

It’s the greatest public speaking course.

Dale Saran (22:23):

Re Buckley re Buckley.

Sevan Matossian (22:26):

Yes. Re

Dale Saran (22:27):

Yep. Wow.

Sevan Matossian (22:28):

Yes. Wow.

Dale Saran (22:30):

Buckley. Yep.

Sevan Matossian (22:31):

Of course.

Dale Saran (22:33):

Wow. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (22:34):

That’s like, I forgot you guys that you guys did that the grand Delmar, right?

Dale Saran (22:38):

Yep. Yep. Me Ross. I forget who else was in that? There, there were, oh, uh, our other, my deputy at the time, uh, Marshall did that a whole bunch

Sevan Matossian (22:45):

Of us. Did Marty say?

Dale Saran (22:47):

Yeah, I think so. Yep.

Sevan Matossian (22:49):

Yeah. Do you remember? Um, I’ll I’ll never forget. Russ’s talk was on, um, uh, basic on basically raising children and being too nice to children and what you do to children.

Dale Saran (23:00):

Yeah. Yep. Al’s were childhood obesity. I don’t even remember what mine was

Sevan Matossian (23:07):

Marshall’s was or Marty’s was

Dale Saran (23:09):

I think Marshalls was cuz <laugh> Craig said that’s when he had that epiphany that nobody actually gives a shit about childhood obesity.

Sevan Matossian (23:16):

<laugh> I remember that. I

Dale Saran (23:17):

Remember remember that he came away from that. He was like, you don’t, nobody cares about this. He realized for the first time he was like, look, if you have kids who are obese, it’s a problem. But if you don’t, it’s not your problem. You don’t, you’re not worried about it. You know, it’s always somebody else’s problem. Not yours.

Sevan Matossian (23:33):

I was, uh, I be every day I post something on Instagram that causes a, a fight because of my strong opinions on kids. And, and I’ve, I’m, I’m preparing this thing at the end of the day. If you died, would you want me to have your kids? Or would you want the person you’re defending? That’s what I’m gonna start saying to people.

Dale Saran (23:55):

Oh, <laugh> yeah.

Sevan Matossian (23:57):

Like, cause, cause at my house they’re gonna play in the yard. They’re gonna be free to think who they, how they want dress, how they want. They’re gonna be free to do whatever they want, but there’s gonna be discipline structure and boundaries and I’m gonna love them. And no one’s gonna hurt your kids in my watch. Yeah. Nobody.

Dale Saran (24:12):

Yep. Yep. I’m

Sevan Matossian (24:13):

Gonna die trying to protect your kids from the fucking bear that lives in the fucking trench. Yeah. At all costs. Yeah. So who do you want watching your kids and your kids. Aren’t gonna fucking be on computers in my house and they’re not gonna be eating fucking Twizzlers and I’m gonna love them and I’m gonna tuck them in every fucking night and tell them how much I love them.

Dale Saran (24:30):

Yeah. It’s make myself proud. It’s a, um, it’s funny to, to your point about the, uh, about language, you know, that’s the other part of it is the kids will have an understanding. Their, their understanding will be grounded in a reality, you know, not, not just in their own theories about the world and their own head, the term you’re talking about, by the way you, when you started this, you were looking the term I love and this is it’s something we are all, uh, I think it’s wired into us to make this mistake is reification is the term you’re looking for?

Sevan Matossian (25:00):

What is it?

Dale Saran (25:01):

Reification.

Sevan Matossian (25:02):

Reification.

Dale Saran (25:03):

Yeah. R E I F I C a T I O N reification. Reification is the, I’ll tell you the best story I have about reification was when I was at infantry

Sevan Matossian (25:14):

School. Can I, can I read, I’m gonna read the definition here before you go. Okay. Let me read the definition. Uh, reification, the act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, relations system quality as if it were a concrete object, defining home as if it were just a roof over one’s head instead of the center of a web of relationships leads in turn to the reification of homelessness. Okay.

Dale Saran (25:38):

So reification, the best, the best explanation I had, uh, ever heard from reification was when I was at, uh, basic infantry school. So all Marine officers, once I got commissioned, you go through this 20, 26 week basic infantry course. And so the guy we had for, um, uh, map reading and, and uh, land navigation, took us out, we’re out in the woods and he holds up the map and he goes reification. He said, does anybody know what that is? The word meant? But I couldn’t, I didn’t really know where he was going. And somebody, this is like quiet, you know, 200 lieutenants all sitting around and were like, man, where’s he going? And he goes it’s

Sevan Matossian (26:17):

Oh, what about, oh, you’re breaking up. You gotta start over. You’re breaking up so bad, Dale. I think something’s wrong with your internet. That’s okay.

Dale Saran (26:23):

All right. I, I look good. Um, yeah, you look,

Sevan Matossian (26:26):

Yeah. You ho he held up the mat and he said, reification,

Dale Saran (26:29):

He, he held up a map and he said, reification is confusing. This the map. And then he stomped on the ground. He said for this, and he’s like, don’t ever do that. And so it was this funny thing because I, I looked it, I was so fascinated. I love new words. I’m a word nerd, you know, professed word nerd. And so I had to look into reification. I realized it’s wired into all of us. We, we have models about the world. We, we develop these mental pictures of how the world works. And then what we do is we project that map of the would tell us, looking so

Sevan Matossian (27:06):

Bad

Dale Saran (27:08):

With reification. You know, you, you get an idea in your head about you see things on the map and then you’re navigating. And then you get to a point where you think like, oh, there should be a road intersection here. Now you’re standing here and you have all these clues and it, the ground doesn’t look like what your map looks like. And so what you’ll do is you’ll choose the map over the ground. The map is not the brain Teddy Williams though. Yeah. The map’s not the dirt, man. The map is not the dirt, but, and that’s a con that’s a, a good concrete example, but it <laugh>, I like giving seven on a new vocabulary. Worrie

Sevan Matossian (27:41):

Hey, I I’m gonna tell you I’m tickled. I am so excited. I almost wanna just end the podcast and run out into the world and the real world and use my new word. It is, that is dope,

Dale Saran (27:51):

But we all do it. We all do it. You, you develop mental models of how the world works. And the difference between people

Sevan Matossian (27:56):

Money is a classic one. How money works. People think money is real.

Dale Saran (28:00):

Right. Right. Exactly. Fiat currency is a good example. And by the way, this comes back to, this is how people get hoodwinked. And, and I love this notion because, um, you know, I’m in the middle of this vaccine litigation. And the great thing about it is I, I, whenever I see examples of it, like really good examples, I, I love seeing paradigms, um, get kind of used against people. And I, I give you, I can think of some great examples, but please,

Sevan Matossian (28:25):

Please. I just wanna say something really quick. Um, Dale, I, I met Dale because Daniel Dale was the general counsel of CrossFit. What is general counsel of CrossFit? That means you’re the big, you’re the, at the top, you, you run the media. Uh, the, I like I ran the media department, you run the legal department. So he had this, uh, not only does he, he had a bunch of lawyers internally working with them, but you’re in control of the whole legal plan of CrossFit. What does that mean? That means, um, if someone sues us, if they give it by a dog, this means keeping, um, uh, women out of the men’s side. This means making sure the trademark in Mexico is good. Yeah. It it’s, it’s massive. It’s, it’s fucking, it’s it’s nuts. And then, um, before that, he was in the military, um, and I know him as a helicopter pilot, he also worked in some of, with some of the three letter agencies. And then, I mean, hi, his, his story is massive. He’s a practitioner of, uh, jujitsu and other, uh, nutty fucking manly, crazy shit. The, the night thing. <laugh>. And then, and then, and then of course he’s, he’s a lawyer and he’s been involved in some of the most fascinating, um, cases, whether they be murder, um, vaccine, um, et cetera, um, while being in the Marine Corps. Okay. Sorry.

Dale Saran (29:34):

That’s all right. Thank you. That, that pretty much covers it. Yeah. In fact, David, I want,

Sevan Matossian (29:38):

And he has four daughters and he’s a dad, which hugely important. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, Dan. Yeah. So you were gonna give examples of, um,

Dale Saran (29:45):

So you were talking about like, how is it, you know, on the issue of men and women and what a woman is, but I, I get another issue, similar kind of thing, where people hijack language. And so I’m, I’m a huge language nerd. You know, I got, I started out as an engineering major in college. My first two years, I was.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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