382. Oliver Anthony with Jordan Peterson: Art, Commerce, and the Religious

[0] Hello, everyone watching and listening.

[1] Today, I'm speaking with musician Chris Lunsford, better known by his stage name, Oliver Anthony.

[2] We discussed the balance between vision and efficiency in artistic and commercial endeavors.

[3] Why Chris's hit song, Rich Men North of Richmond, has resonated so broadly and so quickly.

[4] The way honest expression through music can combat demoralization, how politics have become confused with the sacred, and what we can do to restore each to their proper order, looking very much forward to it.

[5] So, Mr. Anthony, your stage name, your stage persona is Oliver.

[6] Your name is Chris.

[7] I'm going to call you Chris.

[8] Perfect.

[9] You're going to call me Jordan.

[10] And so here's something you might not know about me, and I don't care, you know, maybe you want to know it, maybe not.

[11] I've been collecting country and western music for about 30 years, something like that.

[12] I had a roommate from Southern Alberta in college, in Montreal.

[13] I wasn't really a country and western fan at that point.

[14] He really liked Hank Williams, and I started listening to Hank Williams, and I thought, oh, my God, man, this is great.

[15] and when I moved to Boston I started collecting old vinyl records of course I had records when I was a kid but in the 90s in Boston you could pick up vinyl for like three for a buck you know it was dirt cheap so I used to go into the record stores and pick up any old weird looking album usually from the 50s 40s through the 60s and I built a big collection of country and Western music and then I made a couple of CDs I called Western Blues and was giving those out for Christmas present and I actually have a Spotify, I have a Spotify playlist that's 29 hours long now with 600 songs on it that I've collected for 40 years.

[16] My wife and I listened to it a lot in the car.

[17] It's real good, driving music, you know, and I'm going to just lift some of the characters that I listen to.

[18] You're familiar with all these guys, but a lot of people watching and listening won't be, and they should be.

[19] There's Hank Williams, of course.

[20] Bill Monroe and his Kentucky boys.

[21] Colter Wall's a new guy from Saskatchewan.

[22] Oh, yeah.

[23] He's a great young, yeah, he's great.

[24] My son played one of his songs to open my lectures for 11 shows this year.

[25] That was really fun.

[26] Johnny Horton, Tex Ritter, Hank Snow, Flat and Scruggs, the Carter family, Jimmy Rogers, the Stanley brothers, Roy Akoff, Hatberry Ramblers, Gypsy Kings, Leon Rens.

[27] Edbone, etc. Tammy and I, my wife, we've just watched the Ken Burns Country Music a documentary, which is absolutely great.

[28] It's just brilliant.

[29] Eight two -hour episodes, and I've done a couple of shows at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

[30] So that was fun.

[31] There's a great bar there called Roberts Western World that I go to when I go down to Nashville and they have a band there called Kelly's Heroes.

[32] They did some music for me at the Grand Old Opry, played a vicious rendition of the American National Anthem on electric guitar.

[33] And they do a great version of Ghost Writers in the Sky, great blues guitar version of Ghost Writers in the Sky.

[34] So anyways, I thought I'd tell you that just so you know that I'm not a Johnny Come Lately to the kind of music that you can play in.

[35] And so...

[36] Yeah, that's very, very in like with my listening.

[37] So I love a lot of the older music and older blues, like Delta Blues and that type of thing, but yeah, that's, I wouldn't have guessed that about you, so that's good to know.

[38] Yeah, it's, yeah, well, about, about a quarter of this Spotify playlist is Delta Blues, too, because there's a great overlap, right, between the, that Delta Blues tradition and the kind of music that you're interested in, and it's a, you said that too, I saw that really portrayed well, for example.

[39] I don't know if you've seen the new Elvis movie, a relatively new Elvis movie, which I thought was great, but it does a lovely job of laying out the relationship between that black blues tradition and Western country and tradition.

[40] You know, it's not a connection that people often make, but there's a real sync there in terms of musical genre, nice interplay between the different musical forms, so cool to see.

[41] And, of course, we're all the beneficiaries of that, you know, the American musical tradition.

[42] Something you may look at adding to your playlist or looking up that I think you'd find interesting is, I don't know who the group is in the video, but if you go on YouTube, it's called Carpathian folk music.

[43] It's usually the first video to pull up under Carpathian folk music, and it's maybe, I want to say, it's about 45 minutes long, and it goes.

[44] Oh, okay.

[45] And it plays out almost like a symphony.

[46] Like, it starts in sort of one element, and then it has its ups and downs, and I've listened to that.

[47] thing 200 times, you know, it's like sitting out in the woods listening to that.

[48] It takes you on a ride almost the way like Beethoven would, but it reminds me kind of almost a lot of the older country and blues.

[49] It's a very weird, it's a very weird element, but it's got a lot of the sort of bluegrass elements to it, fiddle and upright bass and stuff like that.

[50] You ought to check it out the Carpathian folk music.

[51] I think you'd like that.

[52] I will 100 % check that out.

[53] Yeah, you know, of the things that's really quite a mystery about music, and I can't quite figure it out, is, you know, I like classical music.

[54] I listen to a lot of music in the car, and classical music's hard to listen to in a car because it's got such an immense dynamic range.

[55] But, you know, classical music is obviously extremely sophisticated and complex and brilliant and, you know, reaches up into the stratosphere of genius.

[56] But there's dead simple music that manages exactly the same thing.

[57] I mean, Johnny Cash is a great example of that, because, Well, in the Ken Burns documentary, you'll find out when Johnny Cash first started, I mean, his musicians could barely play at all.

[58] You know, they knew like three chords.

[59] Of course, the sex pistols were like that, too.

[60] And weirdly enough, and I don't get this exactly, is that there's a, one of the hallmarks of musical genius is authenticity and genuineness, right?

[61] So you can take a really simple melody, and you can do something stunningly brilliant with it.

[62] Hank Williams is great at that.

[63] it gives it a depth that's timeless, right?

[64] It doesn't age, well, which is what timeless means, of course, but it has to be something like that, genuineness, and it must be something like that that sparked the imagination of people around your song, right?

[65] Because, and I was listening to it, I listened to it a couple of times this morning, just to re -familiarize myself with it before we talked, and you have a genuineness of voice that has obviously struck a chord.

[66] And so, well, I'm curious about that.

[67] First of all, I'm really curious about how you're doing because you've been like the center of a media firestorm here in the last couple of weeks, and that must be shocking to you.

[68] What's that being like?

[69] And why do you think your song, what is it about your song that you think you did right that contributed to its going viral?

[70] Hmm.

[71] So I have taken.

[72] time to try to understand that myself.

[73] You know, the song, the song skyrocketed in a way that it, you know, there's been accusations that it was, that it was propped up, you know, almost that I'm an industry plant because it, it was like, we posted the song on, on, we recorded it on a, on a Saturday.

[74] I think he uploaded it on Tuesday.

[75] And by Thursday, man, we were, we were on a roller coaster ride.

[76] Like, it was already apparent that things were going, we're heading in a direction that nothing else on his channel had done previously, Radio WV.

[77] And yeah, I mean, I guess I answered the first part of your question, how I'm doing.

[78] I'm surprisingly very calm.

[79] Like, I have, I've been entertained the last couple weeks.

[80] I've been given sort of an unfair advantage of how the internet works and how how narratives are spread in certain directions to you know people form opinions about things like for example me playing the super bowl you know i've gotten um i've gotten a lot of comments and messages saying that i'm a sellout that i've decided to sing at the super bowl but that was just an internet meme that someone created on facebook uh like for example the one the one that popped up yesterday was that um oliver anthony stuck at burning man And people were sending me stuff telling me how terrible it was that I'm at this like, you know, Burning Man's this satanic ritual place and you shouldn't be there.

[81] And like, but, you know, I uploaded a video of me hanging out with my goats in the woods.

[82] Like, yeah, man, Burning Man, it really, you know, it's terrible being stuck at Burning Man. But so I don't know, I try not to take myself so seriously and I've tried not to take this situation so seriously.

[83] It's just, it's, I'm blessed for the opportunity to be here.

[84] I mean, even just being able to have a conversation with you is surreal.

[85] Meeting Joe Rogan was surreal.

[86] Just the artists that I've looked up to like Jamie Johnson and Shooter Jennings and it's just so weird that they're a phone call away now.

[87] So, I'm doing well.

[88] Like I, you know, as I'm sure you know, like my, the last couple years haven't been so great for me anyway as far as my own, my, own perception on life.

[89] And so this is exciting to have a new opportunity to dive into.

[90] It's what I've been, it's really what I've been wanting to do for a long time.

[91] I've just been so terrified of the idea of doing it.

[92] But here, here I am.

[93] Like, there's no, there's no going back now, I guess.

[94] Yeah.

[95] Well, that's actually something I wanted to talk to you about, because I was reading when I was doing some background research on you, and this is relevant to the issue of selling out that you brought up.

[96] So, you know, I've worked with a lot of artists, and I've worked with a lot of wannabe artists, too, you know, or at least had contact with them.

[97] And one of the things I've really noticed is that many of the people I've met who are extremely artistically talented shoot themselves in the foot on the commercial side of things.

[98] And they do that in three ways.

[99] The first is four ways.

[100] The first is they're actually terrified of commercial success.

[101] And that's actually understandable, because along with commercial success comes a transformation in lifestyle and in social positioning.

[102] And it's easy to be leery of that and there's some utility in that, especially if you're a private person, you know.

[103] And then there's ideological issues that come up too.

[104] So the issue of selling out is a really relevant one.

[105] You know, lots of artists will refuse to have anything to do with the complex.

[106] commercial end of their enterprise, because they're afraid that that will interfere with the flourishing of their artistic spirit.

[107] And that's foolish.

[108] And it's foolish for a bunch of reasons.

[109] Like, first of all, why create unless people have access to what you create?

[110] I mean, maybe you enjoy it yourself, and that would be perfectly the case, for example, with music.

[111] But, you know, if you're a performer, in principle, you want people to, well, hear what you have to perform.

[112] And partly so they can enjoy it, partly so you can get feedback so you can get better.

[113] And so you actually want to bring it your work to the attention of as many people as possible.

[114] The people who bitch and moan about selling out most loudly are almost always people who've had no opportunity to sell out.

[115] Like no one's ever offered them the chance to be commercially successful.

[116] And so what they do is they elevate their moral stance falsely by claiming that they're the sort of people that would never fall prey to any capitalist temptations when the truth is they're not talented enough or interesting enough for anyone to ever offer them that possibility.

[117] And then the other thing that creative people do that's a really big problem is they don't construe the marketing end, the communication end, as another creative challenge.

[118] You know, so if you're a creative person, you actually overlap with people who have entrepreneurial interests temperamentally.

[119] But one of the things you can, can do if you're creative and this stops you from selling out is to understand that the venture of marketing yourself and presenting yourself and developing a professional persona and also learning how to buffer yourself against the negative consequences of that is also a creative challenge.

[120] You know, because you might ask, any creative person might ask, well, if I was going to handle the problem of being successful creatively, how would I do that?

[121] And then it becomes another creative problem instead of like an antithesis between, let's say, the selling out capitalism that would warp your, you know, your creative spirit and the creative spirit itself.

[122] So I'm wondering in your situation, I read today that you had an $8 million contract offer that you turned down.

[123] I'm wondering if that's true.

[124] If it's true, why you did it, what your alternative plans are.

[125] And if you have, like, a real devout vision for what it would be like to keep doing what you're doing, but also be successful, that's a lot of questions.

[126] Oh, that's okay.

[127] I knew what I was getting into when I came on the program.

[128] I understand.

[129] Yeah, I, uh, music is, music is important to me individually.

[130] Like, these songs that I wrote, I wrote for me. And inadvertently, it has, helped a lot of other people like not just Richmond north of Richmond but I've got to get sober like that's one that I just recorded on my Android phone and if you look through the comments and emails I've gotten I had a I had a gentleman the other day at Moyock we did a we played at a farm market and he told me that his his brother had committed suicide he had been he had been struggling with drugs for years this is like a big, rough guy, like a guy that looked like he could kill me with two fingers.

[131] And we hugged each other and as he cried and told me this.

[132] Like, that's what's important to me is like, people are just so desperate to restore some element of humanity back in our life that we've somehow lost.

[133] So I don't want to, I don't want to make this into some enterprise where, everything's about beating the algorithm and being at the top of the charts and and posting in social media at just the right time to capture the most audience.

[134] Like that, there's plenty of people who are out playing that game and they're good at it.

[135] And I'd like for them to continue to do that.

[136] I want to, I just want to feel like I have the freedom to do whatever I find it is necessary in that moment of time to impact people the way I have.

[137] have so far with the music that I've produced.

[138] I have something like 21 ,000 emails right now in my Gmail.

[139] I've got 2 ,500 unread messages on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, like, and they're not just people telling me good music, dude, keep it up.

[140] No, it's like, it's paragraphs of, of stories of like people having to work two jobs because they lost their business during COVID and their kid committed suicide.

[141] And, like, I mean, it's just wretched stuff that it is the full transparent narrative of what a lot of us already see on the surface level of what's happened the last few years.

[142] And, yeah, so, like, I don't know what I want my music to turn into.

[143] It may manifest itself into some form of a, of like, a nonprofit or a ministry more than just me going out.

[144] Like, I don't want to just go yell all my songs in a stadium, you know, every weekend for the rest of my life.

[145] Like, I want this to turn into something that's more meaningful than that, if that makes any sense.

[146] Well, there's a bunch of things you said there.

[147] I mean, when I started to blow up and started working in a much more broad public manner, one of the things that was really hard on me was the kind of, emails that you're describing.

[148] I'm not complaining about this.

[149] I'm just pointing it out.

[150] Like, I'd done a lot of clinical work, and I'd seen a fair bit of misery in my clinical practice.

[151] I mean, that's really, that's an understatement.

[152] But, you know, it was limited at most to a couple of dozen people.

[153] And then all of a sudden I was doing lectures for thousands of people and meeting thousands of people.

[154] And also, and then hearing the kind of stories that you're hearing from hundreds or thousands of people.

[155] people.

[156] And you know, you talked about dehumanization and desperation.

[157] And it's really quite overwhelming to start to see that in that heartfelt sense you described.

[158] You know, that big guy was giving you a hug and breaking into tears.

[159] I mean, you meet a couple of hundred people like that in a week who do the same thing.

[160] And it's, I found that extremely, extremely difficult.

[161] Because I didn't really understand how widespread that demoralization and desperation was.

[162] And to see, that on large scale was really heart -stopping.

[163] That's dangerous.

[164] And to add to the point, it exists within the music industry.

[165] Like, they say never meet your heroes, but I've gotten to meet quite a few of my heroes the last couple weeks, and they have ridden the roller coaster of signing a big deal and playing shows and being in that, and being in those contracts and in that algorithm.

[166] And they are I can't speak for everyone I'm sure there's people that love to go out and tour and do it but like a lot of my heroes in music that I've talked to are not happy doing what they do like they're not happy having to go out and and so they've told me let me tell you what our experience yeah yeah well so my wife and I have been touring now for four years and I'll tell you how we've managed it if you're interested First of all, it's a real privilege, right, to be able to go out there and speak in front of thousands of people.

[167] And it's been a real adventure to go all over the world.

[168] Now, we have allied ourselves with top -rate people, and that's unbelievably helpful.

[169] So I've got a personal staff that handles security and logistics, and they take care of all the travel details, flights, hotels, getting me to the venue, and I to the venue.

[170] That's 100 % off my plate.

[171] And we had a rule that we learned well touring, which was that if you have anyone with you that causes any trouble at all, that they don't immediately fix.

[172] So if they're, if they're troubled, they have to leave.

[173] You have to have people along who are like 100 % zero trouble because it's a lot of work to move from city to city every day and to be there for thousands of people.

[174] And you can't have unnecessary trouble.

[175] And then you have to figure out how to time it so that it doesn't wear you to a frazzle.

[176] You know, you can die from an overdose of great opportunities as you're definitely going to find out and maybe already have.

[177] And so you have to figure out for yourself how you can take enough time so that you have that opportunity to do your creative work and not to exhaust yourself.

[178] And, you know, that takes a certain amount of testing to see where that balance is.

[179] I travel with my wife.

[180] That really helps.

[181] We often travel with some friends or some family.

[182] The same rules apply.

[183] We won't travel with people that cause any trouble.

[184] But it's nice to have people along because that keeps you, well, you get to know them better.

[185] It's a good adventure for them and that keeps you together.

[186] I mean, it's possible to do this in a way that's like hyper -enjoyable and so that you get an opportunity to play for many people.

[187] But, you know, it's a demanding enterprise and you have to 100 % make sure that you're surrounded by people who take what can be taken off your plate and that you can seriously trust.

[188] And then it can be, well, it can be an insane adventure.

[189] Yeah.

[190] I'm excited for the opportunity to travel, yeah.

[191] Like, we've had, it's, as you're aware, just the initial song broke in so many countries.

[192] Like, I've gotten an outreach, It was a shame that I couldn't travel abroad yet.

[193] I don't have a passport.

[194] But like, I just got a message last night from a girl in Rome saying that, you know, she and her boyfriend have been riding around all night listening to my music in Ireland and Scotland.

[195] Like, I do intend to travel.

[196] I just want to do it in a way that is more meaningful than just showing up in an amphitheater and shouting some lyrics at people and then everybody gets drunk and goes home.

[197] Like, I'm sure there's a way I can conceptualize this to have more impact, because that's the importance of the song to begin with is the impact that had.

[198] It somehow broke beyond the political front that has almost encapsulated every part of our society today, not just in the North America, but really globally.

[199] Like, the message resonated with people in all types of, different cultures and countries.

[200] It's like this is something, this is, this phenomenon of politics sort of almost parasitically capturing the way we think about everything.

[201] That's a global thing.

[202] That's not just a North American thing at this point.

[203] It's happening very quick.

[204] Okay, yeah, okay.

[205] So two things on that.

[206] Well, okay, first of all, one of the things that's happened, I think, is that the sacred has collapsed into the profane.

[207] And so the political has now become sacred.

[208] You have to have a space for things that are sacred so they stay out of the political and everything has become too touchy to talk about because everything political has become religious and that's really not a good thing.

[209] It's part of the reason that we need a, that a religious foundation isn't optional.

[210] I know you talked about that a little bit with Rogan.

[211] Now the other thing that's interesting, you know, you said you don't want to go just to a stadium and shout out lyrics and let everybody get drunk and go home.

[212] And, you know, one of the things I've also seen, that's unfortunate, is that many of the artists I've talked to, and these were often people who had stellar, like, international careers, they're afraid, and I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case with you, but I'd like to talk about it with you.

[213] They're afraid that their mere art isn't good enough, given the importance, let's say, of all the political and maybe religious upheaval there is in the world.

[214] But, you know, I actually don't think that's true.

[215] I don't think, like, I've gone to a lot of concerts, and I've watched.

[216] the kind of quasi -religious nature of a great concert.

[217] And I actually don't think there's anything more important than an artist can do than in your situation, for example, is to give the best damn concert you possibly can.

[218] And I can see you're torn between that to some degree, you know, because you say, well, you know, you don't want to go and shout out a bunch of lyrics so that people can get drunk and go home.

[219] But then that what you've done has spoken to many people very deeply all around the world and that what you've done was a genuine expression of what you really believe to be true.

[220] And I would say that if you go to a concert and what you do is you really sing what you believe to be true, there actually is no better service that you can possibly do to people no matter what it is that you're doing.

[221] Like, I don't think there is anything except for what's truly religious.

[222] I don't think there is anything that supersedes genuine art, not in terms of potency and truth.

[223] And I think you're seeing that because of what happened in relationship to your soul.

[224] And I think that's also partly because of that other point you made, which is, and the same with the song about sobriety is you're actually writing your songs.

[225] I think Hank Williams did this and Johnny Cash, too, unbelievably effectively, the genuine songwriters.

[226] They're not writing to max out the algorithm and they're not, they don't have contempt for the audience.

[227] That's not what I mean.

[228] But they're not doing it, they're not doing it for their own fame.

[229] They're doing it to express something approximating the truth in the way that they see fit with with you, that's obviously going to be musical.

[230] So one of the things I would say is don't be thinking there's any higher purpose you can serve than the genuous, genuineness that you bring to your art, man. Good musicians are, I think people die without good music.

[231] You know, it's so important.

[232] We have no idea how important it is.

[233] It's how key it is to humans.

[234] It's obvious to me that music is, I mean, every culture that we know of, whether they're I mean music is something that manifests itself in any society and the more that people suffer the more they lean on music some of the best music's been written in the worst of times so I definitely agree like it's there's an element of healing to it and one thing that I've noticed about the music industry just in my now that I'm in the business you know one of the things I've noticed is that we prioritize, as with a lot of things in art now, like it's, we prioritize through the system of the music industry, we prioritize what can make the most money and not necessarily what can resonate with the most people or what's the most genuine and authentic.

[235] And so, like, in country music, now, I love 90s country music as a kid.

[236] I remember riding with my parents and my grandpa and listening to, you know, the Allen Jackson's and George Straits and Bubba shot the jukebox and like those are just fun like just good songs but somewhere country music and i think music in general has really lost a connection with people because it's become it's become too commercialized and not not enough about and so that's kind of like yeah so i did i've turned down a lot of offers uh the latest one i saw was a hundred million that's certainly not the case but yeah i have had millions of dollars thrown at me and i've had everything thrown at me the last couple weeks and um but i guess the i guess the reason why i want to stay on my own path is that uh i'd like to inspire other musicians to do the same thing you know like the the story of kind of how all this came about is just i mean most of the music's from my android phone that i you know just recorded put it on youtube i ripped the wave file uploaded it there's a service called distro kid you can use you pay like a nominal fee annually they don't take any of the money and it automatically puts it on all the platforms for you, Spotify, Pandora, Apple, YouTube music.

[237] I would like to see more people do what it is I did.

[238] I'd like, if anything, I'd like it to inspire other artists to not worry about going through a record label or worry about trying to find a big booking agency, but just focus more on creating whatever it is you feel compelled to create and get it out there and not worry about everything else because obviously that's what we're so desperate.

[239] I mean, like even just the phenomenon with podcasts in the last five years, like the fact that people can sit here and listen to us talk for an hour and a half so intently.

[240] And like, that's been me. I listen to podcast all day long.

[241] People are just at this point desperate for authenticity and desperate to connect with other human beings on the level that we haven't been able to connect on very well in the last 10 years because of technology and politics and government and just sort of this weird separation that's been put between us.

[242] And COVID certainly accelerated that to a whole new light.

[243] It's a very weird world we live in in today.

[244] And so, yeah, that's kind of my thought process, I guess, to answer it, to kind of wrap up that on me and my future, it's more about trying to create a new way of thinking with music.

[245] And really, it's an old way of thinking, but it's just bringing it into our time, you know?

[246] Hmm.

[247] Okay, so that's very interesting, you know, so it's definitely the case that the plethora of publishing platforms now allows artists like yourself, like Joe Rogan, let's say, to circumvent the intermediaries in a way that has never before been possible, right?

[248] And Rogan's a good example of that, because all Rogan did for his podcast, all, and this is what CNN objected to, was he just invited people to his discussion that he wanted to talk to, and he talked to them and he listened and he tried to learn.

[249] And at the time that Joe started his podcast, he didn't really need either the fame or the money because he was already famous and he had the money.

[250] And Rogan isn't someone who's primarily oriented in that direction anyways.

[251] We can talk about him a little bit in more detail later, too, because you were just on his podcast.

[252] And he took that advantage of going directly to the consumer, let's say, and circumventing the intermediaries.

[253] And he hasn't wavered from that at all, although he's also partnered with Spotify, right?

[254] And then I started putting my lectures on YouTube in 2013 because I was curious about it, and I've taken advantage of the same opportunities that you've described, and it's been great.

[255] I would say, however, and this maybe has, maybe this is relevant to personalizing things, rather than thinking about them in the abstract.

[256] Now, in the last year, I partnered with the Daily Wire Plus people, eh?

[257] And we really thought about that for like nine months before we decided to do it.

[258] It was a real intense negotiation.

[259] faith negotiations on both sides, but it was a very intense negotiation.

[260] And it was kind of dicey, eh, because on our side, we thought, well, do we want to partner with anyone at all?

[261] And if we do, do we want to partner with these reprehensible, you know, right wing wing nuts, Ben Shapiro and his lot?

[262] And then we also thought, am I going to ruin my podcast by allying it with something that's somewhat more corporate in its orientation?

[263] And that's a real danger, you know.

[264] And we've, we did have a bit of negotiation around that when we first started our deal, too, because there were ways that the more corporate guys there started talking about content providing that risk turning the podcast into something that was sort of legacy media polished.

[265] Now, on the upside, they've radically improved my ability to do podcasts.

[266] They set up studios for me all around the world.

[267] I'm in Florence right now.

[268] The DW people set up a studio.

[269] for me here so I can do this, they've increased the quality of the podcast, and they've left me the hell alone completely.

[270] If I want to do something and I suggested to them, they almost invariably say yes.

[271] They're a lot of fun to work with.

[272] They're very entrepreneurial.

[273] They're not corporate.

[274] They don't think of content production.

[275] They don't talk down to the audience.

[276] That's been great.

[277] And they've got rid of problems for me rather than introducing corporate problems.

[278] And I would say the same thing with Live Nation.

[279] You know, I had my doubts about Live Nation because of their stranglehold, let's say, on ticketing.

[280] But they're a lot better than some of the corrupt production people we've got involved with in countries that aren't as well developed because we've hit some fraudsters.

[281] And so the reason I'm telling you all this is fairly straightforward, you know.

[282] On the one hand, you have the advantage of going direct to consumer in the way that you've described, and that gives artists a tremendous amount of freedom.

[283] But if you're very, very careful and judicious in who you're partnering with, you can find people who will open up new avenues of opportunity for you without interfering with whatever it is that you value and what you have to bring.

[284] And you have to, the devil's in the details, man, because it boils down to the character of the person, the specific person or persons that you're dealing with.

[285] I also have a tour manager, John, who's an absolutely amazing manager.

[286] He used to be a comedian, like a traveling comedian.

[287] He was on the road all the time, so he's on the road for like 20 years, and he's been superb.

[288] So you can find people to work with who will expand your commercial reach without putting you through the grinder and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

[289] but it requires a lot of discernment and care.

[290] Yeah, well, discernment is an important concept with all of this, yeah, because every decision, every word you speak and every decision you make can very quickly change the course of everything.

[291] Like, in this world, it is interesting.

[292] Yeah, you bet.

[293] Yeah, and I guess the beauty, too, with Joe Rogan and with you and with others is that you conceptualized and created sort of, your masterpiece and then decided to bring in something to help supplement that and reinforce it.

[294] And so that's, so maybe that is something I could, you know, it's like you didn't, you didn't approach the Daily Wire of like, hey, let's start a podcast.

[295] And like, you already sort of created, you sort of created the format and they just respectfully added to it.

[296] And so maybe that's a good way to go about doing it even with mine.

[297] Yeah.

[298] Like, well, one of the things, one of the ways you can tell if you can do that.

[299] So in your situation, you're in a fortunate situation at the moment because at this moment because you can say no people are coming to you instead of you going to them as you just pointed out and so you you have you have the fortunate opportunity to set the terms at the beginning and to think through what those are and you already told me to some degree is like you don't want to subordinate your music to profit.

[300] You don't want to become a generic act, and you don't want the corporate world interfering with your ability to speak directly to people.

[301] You know, those are principles that are actually worth writing down, you know, like if you, and I often recommend this to people in general.

[302] Imagine, and you could do this, it's a very useful thing to do.

[303] Imagine that you could be exactly where you wanted to be in five years, like you've got these stellar opportunities in front of you.

[304] So then you've got to allow yourself to imagine like you're a kid who's pretending or daydreaming and thinking, okay, man, I can be wherever I want five years.

[305] I'm a musician.

[306] I've already got an audience.

[307] I've got an audience of people who want to hear me. I've got a lot of commercial options.

[308] And then I have a private life that I enjoy.

[309] Okay, how could I bring all of those together in the optimal way?

[310] What would that look like?

[311] And that's got to be, that's, you know, there's a line in the gospels that says that you should ask and you'll receive, you should knock and the door will open, and you should seek and you'll find.

[312] And that's actually an injunction to a kind of meditative prayer.

[313] And the idea fundamentally, and this works like a charm, is what the hell do you want?

[314] Just imagine that fortune could conceivably smile on you in the way that it has in the last couple of weeks, and you could set up your future so that it was literally your dream, what would that look like?

[315] Like you obviously like performing.

[316] I mean, if you, we could do that a little bit right now.

[317] If you imagine you could have a year where you had exactly the right balance between performing and having a private life.

[318] Like, what size audiences do you like playing for?

[319] Yeah, that's kind of the challenge.

[320] I love the intimacy of smaller.

[321] I mean, we did, the farm market, we had about 12 ,000 show up.

[322] And like, and even with that, Despite everyone telling me I was a fool for doing it, I stayed and did like a meet and greet after for about four and a half hours, but it gave me enough time that I was able to, I'd like it to stay at a level.

[323] I'd like to have opportunities to be able to meet people.

[324] So 10 or 12 ,000 people.

[325] I mean, we've got, we've got a few coming up that size.

[326] you know you go back to your point about trying to sort of paint a picture a mental picture of five years ahead I know you had talked about that at some point in a lecture and that's actually I give you some credit for me sitting in the chair I'm in now because I have done that from your recommendation I did yourself authoring program and all maybe two or three years ago and uh you know the thing that that the thing that really spoke to me the most though was um your story about your friend chris because i'm chris oh yeah and i and i was really oh man and i was you know you talked about your friend chris being an aspiring musician and getting high all the time and like and i and i if i recall correctly chris had had was a from what i could interpret like with my own experience maybe he was even experiencing some like cannabis -induced psychosis and all.

[327] I remember the story.

[328] I think it was Chris that was in the other room.

[329] And like, yeah, that, yeah, I realized like maybe I'm Chris, you know.

[330] Yeah, well, there's part of the reason I wrote about my friend.

[331] He eventually committed suicide at about the age of 40.

[332] He phoned me one night.

[333] He had got a bunch of his short stories published in a small, book in an anthology from Northern Alberta.

[334] And he's actually a pretty good short story writer.

[335] He was a good photographer, too.

[336] It was quite a brilliant man, this friend of mine, and he did smoke too much pot, and it wasn't good for him.

[337] And maybe there was something else going on there, too, but he became very bitter and resentful.

[338] And partly because, you know, he regarded his own ambition as evil.

[339] He was one of these demoralized young men, an early version of it, very a sensitive person and easily made guilty.

[340] And the constant harping about, you know, the evil patriarchy and the terrible consequence of male ambition just absolutely did him in, you know, and it played into his own unwillingness to accept responsibility in a kind of pathological way.

[341] It was very sad.

[342] Like, I knew him for years.

[343] And he lived with me in Montreal when he was older in his 30s, my wife and I for a while.

[344] And we kind of, we tried to get help and get his life back on track and did to some degree, but then he left and went back to Alberta.

[345] Anyways, he committed suicide the day after he had phoned me and told me about having this publication.

[346] He went out in a truck and hooked a tube to the exhaust in his truck and smoked cigarettes up in the mountains and, you know, just let himself go.

[347] And it was quite the bloody catastrophe, but it was one of those situations where, yeah, his life was too aimless and he he didn't take his own potential with enough seriousness.

[348] He regarded his ambitious, his ambition is evil.

[349] He kind of became a nihilistic Buddhist in the worst possible sense.

[350] And, you know, in Drift, it was really a real waste of talent.

[351] And so it's a hell of a thing to hear you say, you know, that you saw some him and you, but it's very, very common.

[352] You know, and it is a lot better to develop a vision.

[353] You talked about this self -authoring program.

[354] It's, you need a vision, man. And so, now you said, you talked to 12 ,000, you sang to 12 ,000 people, and that was good, but you like the personal contact with the meet and greet.

[355] So my team sets up meet and greets after my event at every event.

[356] And so that's a premium ticket.

[357] And, you know, you can, you can, what would you say, satirize that as excess capitalist exploitation.

[358] But you have to parse people in some manner when a lot of people want to see you.

[359] and it's also the case, you know, that people want to enter into a reciprocal agreement.

[360] And so if they're really happy with you and what you're doing, they also want to contribute.

[361] And that's part of reasonable trade.

[362] Now, I love the meet and greets, you know.

[363] I only meet people for about 15 seconds probably.

[364] And I've, but I've learned to put them at ease very quickly and to get a bit of a interaction.

[365] You know, one of the things I've learned, for example, is that when people approach you and put out their hand to shake your hand, And that's going to happen to you on the street all the time now, obviously, is that you can match your tempo to theirs, like a dance.

[366] You move towards them about as quickly as they move towards you.

[367] And I always ask people what their name is, because even if they're nervous, most people can remember their name.

[368] And once they tell you that, that sort of puts them at ease.

[369] And I really like the meet and greets, you know, because it also helps you remember who you're, that it differentiates the audience back into individuals.

[370] and you should always be communicating with individuals.

[371] You know, as soon as you start talking to the crowd, as something Kierkegaard pointed out, as soon as you start talking to the crowd, you're immediately lying.

[372] You have to be talking to the individuals in the crowd.

[373] And so I think you can have your cake and eat it on the touring front.

[374] You know, you can sing to large audiences, but you can keep that intimacy if you structure it properly.

[375] And then you also don't get on your high horse too badly because, you know, people are always coming up to you and telling you, well, like the story that you just told about the guy who came up to you, you know, with his brother who was in such trouble.

[376] And hearing those sorts of stories from people and seeing them open themselves up like that, it knocks the ego out of you.

[377] That's a really important thing to have happened to you when you're touring too, because when you're the center of that much attention, you know, you can get puffed up.

[378] That's so dangerous, man. It's so dangerous to have that happen.

[379] Yeah, I don't never want to sit in a position to where I feel like I'm better than anyone that I'm singing to.

[380] Yeah, I don't like that ego that you see come with people that are in celebrity status.

[381] Like, it's a tragedy because it ultimately, it ends up, the person changes into whatever, into something completely different than what people fell in love with them for in the first place, you know?

[382] Yeah, like, I, I don't see myself any different than anyone else that I'm, that I'm, like, and that's what's been so weird about this whole thing anyway is, like, when I am approached.

[383] And of course, maybe I need to shave my beard and cut my hair and wear a hat and then I can go out in the public for a couple days.

[384] But I kind of stand out in the crowd anyway, my height and red hair and all.

[385] And so, yeah, but it's, it hasn't been a, at least not yet, it hasn't been a bother.

[386] It's been, it's been nice to know that, it's been nice to know that it has made a positive impact on people.

[387] Like, um, I don't know.

[388] I just, I've just felt so hopeless for the future for such a long time that like seeing people, just seeing people feel something that I haven't seen in a long time means a lot.

[389] It means a lot more to me than anything else than the money or whatever, you know.

[390] What made you, you said that for a long time you had felt hopeless about the future, and you alluded to this song that you wrote too about sobriety.

[391] And also about identifying to some degree, let's say, with my friend Chris, what do you think it was that tempted you to feel hopeless about the future?

[392] And how have you dealt with that to the degree that you have?

[393] And how have you dealt with that successfully?

[394] The hopelessness, I think, comes from seeing us all, like, we've just, we find fault in each other.

[395] instead of finding common ground in each other anymore.

[396] Like, to your point about Chris and, like, with, you know, and that's one of the verses in the popular song is that it references young men committing suicide at this ridiculous rate they are today.

[397] Because, yeah, we've, and I don't know why it is.

[398] I think it's almost been, again, through social media and sort of the parasitic way, that it alters our thinking like by just we read everyday things that just change the change our perception of each other but we've gotten to a point where we almost it's easier for us to try to find differences and faults in each other instead of similarities which we we all hold much more common ground than we do difference you know i mean we're all we're all very biologically similar and we we all have to acquire some amount of money and we most of us have ambitions of raising a family or at least have developing friendships, like, you know, I'd say 90 % of the people that at least exists in North America are very similar in almost every way.

[399] But it's like we've somehow found the nitpick arbitrary differences that we hold and we exploit those and blow those up.

[400] And so, yeah, it feels hopeless because we are more divided today than we've ever been.

[401] Like, everything's politicized.

[402] Everything is about one.

[403] one party or one person trying to hold some moral high ground over the other just for the sake of being able to point your finger down at them, you know?

[404] And it's like, what the hell are we doing?

[405] Like, we've got a, we have just an incredible opportunity to live in the place that we do.

[406] The fact that you and I can use free speech and free thought, because speech and thought are one and the same.

[407] Like, if people aren't able to have open, honest conversations with each other, they aren't able to conceptualize new ideas that takes us into a better place than whatever place that we were in previously.

[408] Like, that's just, that's human existence 101.

[409] And so, so to see that being threatened and to see us all sort of being put into these categories in these political buckets, you know, it's like, even just our own, even the personalities of people have been weaponized against each other.

[410] You know, you made a good point.

[411] It's been a couple years ago maybe where you were talking about, and I'd never looked at people this way prior, but you were talking about how just in people's own persona and their personality and the way they think, people can be more conservative or liberal.

[412] Like entrepreneurial, imaginative people are typically more liberal.

[413] And, you know, like in a business, you've got, the CEO is typically going to have a more conservative perspective.

[414] And the guy coming up with a new idea is the entrepreneurial guy, he's going to be more liberal.

[415] And it's like, it seems like they've, whoever this day is, the man behind the curtain, if you will, I don't know if that's just, I don't know who, I don't know how to explain that side of it, but it seems like things have become very much like taking the imaginative, creative person and weaponizing him against the more traditionalist grounded person.

[416] Instead of them using their strengths together to sort of build a brighter future, it's about taking each other and seeing how far, like how far we can take this thing.

[417] But ultimately, my hopelessness comes from, like, what is this country or what is this world going to look like in 20 or 30 years?

[418] Like, what world are my kids going to live in?

[419] Is it going to be, are they going to be allowed to say what they think?

[420] Are they going to even be able to walk down the sidewalk?

[421] I mean, like, you know better than most about just the atrocities that went on 100 years ago, 150 years ago.

[422] Like, we're so close to falling back into that.

[423] That's really where my hopelessness comes from.

[424] But I do believe things can be turned around for the better in a short period of time.

[425] It's just people have to sort of retrain the way they think about each other.

[426] And ultimately, the way they think about themselves, you know.

[427] God, I've only been on Twitter two weeks and realized Twitter's not a good place to be.

[428] Like, people seem to spend a lot more time finding fault and others on Twitter than the next time they should be spending with their families or spending working on a hobby or a side business or, you know, You know, like a lot of our time is wrapped up in so much in social media, and it's become very toxic, you know.

[429] Okay, so a couple of things there.

[430] So in terms of keeping your feet on the ground when you've become a celebrity, become the center of attention, you know, there's a tremendous emphasis in the Judeo -Christian tradition of attending to your own sins, right, of taking the log out of your own eye instead of worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye.

[431] And certainly, you know, you said you regard yourself as just another person among people, you know.

[432] And one of the things that's very necessary to do if you are in a celebrity position is to spend a fair bit of time meditating on your own inadequacies, like not in an involuntary and self -denigrating way, the way that it would be associated with depression, let's say, but in a open -eyed and humble, analytic way so that you remember that you still, that you have things to improve, right, and that that's your problem and your responsibility.

[433] It's actually a relief to do that.

[434] And so that's like a meditative or religious practice.

[435] And then you talked about the relationship between the creative entrepreneurial type and the conservative managerial type.

[436] And that's partly what I was alluding to, let's say, when I was talking about the partnerships that I've established with people like CAA and Live Nation and, and the Daily Wire folks, those relationships have been made personal, you know, rather than organizational.

[437] And so although they are, the people I'm working with are members of large organizations, the relationships themselves are personal, and they're based on trust.

[438] And because of that, I've been able to benefit from the managerial capabilities of the people that I've been working with.

[439] And I learned that actually from the man I was apprenticed to as a graduate student at McGill, Robert Peel, who's still a business associate of mine.

[440] Robert Bob was a very good, he was a very good administrator and manager as well as a very good entrepreneurial scientist.

[441] And he was very good at managing his lab and keeping track of the necessary corporate and administrative elements that made the entire process move forward.

[442] And that's harder for creative people because those are sort of petty details.

[443] But you can learn how to value that.

[444] And it is like the creative person learning to value the conservative, you know?

[445] It's the same thing.

[446] The person who could put things in place incrementally and move things forward efficiently, but perhaps lacks vision.

[447] It's easy for the visionary to be contemptuous of that, but it's a big mistake.

[448] Just like it's a mistake for the conservative type to denigrate the visionary type, right?

[449] Because now and then new ideas need to come along.

[450] But by personalizing that, you can attain that kind of harmonizing, harmonious production that you described.

[451] And personalizing, it also helps remove some of that temptation to denigrate the side that isn't, you know, temperamentally aligned with you.

[452] So if you're careful, you can have your cake and eat it too.

[453] You talked about the self -authoring .com program.

[454] You said you had developed a couple of years ago, three years ago or so you developed something of a vision for yourself.

[455] And so do you remember what the details of?

[456] of that vision were and why you decided to do it?

[457] Yeah, so I'd used a couple of years, I'd use the self -authoring, and I also used the personality trait for my wife and I before we got married.

[458] Oh, understand myself.

[459] Understand myself, yeah.

[460] Okay.

[461] So we've used both of those, like, so we could figure out how we had just moved in together, and we had maybe been dating a couple years prior to that, and we were getting ready to get married.

[462] And, yeah, it was like trying to figure out how we could, you know, like any couple when you, when you're living together, things are much different than when you're not living together and you really learn how you have to sort of work around each other at home.

[463] And so, yeah, we use that.

[464] But, yeah, self -authoring was more of just trying to figure out where my direction was because I had, I'd moved, I dropped out of high school.

[465] I moved to Western North Carolina, sort of in this pursuit of adventure, I guess.

[466] And then I'd had the head injury and I had to move back.

[467] And so everything that I had sort of plant, like my vision of what I thought my 20s going into my 30s would look like completely flipped upside down.

[468] And I had landed the sales job still kind of in the industrial construction industry and it was paying the bills.

[469] And I got to talk to people every day.

[470] And so I was like, well, I'm pretty cool with this, but this really isn't what I want to do with my life.

[471] And so yeah, I did the self -authoring program and realized that like, I really needed to make some big changes in my 20s, and part of that was selling our house.

[472] We bought some acreage and, you know, moved into a, and this was, this really almost cost me in my marriage, but I was like, hey, honey, we're selling the house, and we're buying some land a mile off the road that's full of ticks and mosquitoes and snakes, and we're going to live in a camper for a couple years until we can try to afford a mortgage.

[473] But that was the beginning of kind of the vision of all this.

[474] I really wanted to be, it's funny, I was having this conversation with my mom earlier, but she said, you know, I remember you saying the other day that, like, you really said that you, by the time you were 35, you wanted to have freedom of finance and be able to do, not necessarily retire, but be able to do whatever it is you wanted to do, which was, for me, like, we want to get into rejection.

[475] agriculture and I'm very interested in like forest raised poultry and like I'd love being in nature like that's just where I seem to thrive.

[476] So yeah, it was sort of changing my direction away from like I don't need a big mortgage.

[477] I don't need a car payment.

[478] So I sold, I had a nicer truck I sold and I bought this old suburban for $2 ,000 and started driving it.

[479] And so we got rid of our car payments.

[480] We got out of our debt.

[481] You know, all we have is just the land payment.

[482] So it's about like taking my finances way down to where my bills are low.

[483] I don't need to make as much money and I can try to have some freedom to pursue.

[484] Like, that's really what I got out of it, I'd say, yeah.

[485] So it really helped.

[486] Well, that's a radical change.

[487] It's very easy to get caught sort of in that monotonous every day.

[488] And then it's easy when all your friends are buying new stuff and, you know, they're sending you credit card offers in the mailbox every day.

[489] And it's like it's very easy to get wrapped up in sort of this world where you have to work.

[490] You have to work some terrible, you know, seven to five that you don't like and able to try to like live some life you don't really even want to live.

[491] So it is very important.

[492] Like I, yeah, I found a lot of benefit out of that.

[493] Like I think, I think in an ideal world, you could just sit down with a notepad and do exactly the same thing.

[494] But the nice thing about self -authoring is that it sort of lays out the steps for you to where, to where you can just answer those questions in a way and be able to reflect back a lot easier for somebody like a Joe Schmo like me that's not in psychology.

[495] It just speeds up the process tremendously of trying to figure out whatever it is.

[496] You get caught up in the day -to -day of life, and five years, ten years later, you've lost whatever it was you were 10 years ago.

[497] It's very easy to just stay in the present moment and not take the time to reflect into the past and the future and a way to align yourself with whatever it is you really want to be.

[498] And I think that's where anxiety and depression and like divorce and anger and all these things like these terrible things manifest themselves into like a house to a family household and the mother and the father fight and they get divorced and the kids are like things fall apart because there isn't a there people don't take the time to to just figure out like where is this train really headed you know so it is i'd highly recommend people do that that's the famous line the people perish where there is no vision the people perish and that's literally the case because there's a bunch of reasons for that is if you have no vision, you have no well -developed aim, and if you have no aim, you have no direction, and that means you're lost, and if you're lost, you're anxious.

[499] And so then you're involved by anxiety.

[500] And then if you have no aim, you have no hope, because hope is always experienced in relationship to an aim, and if you're in a marriage or other collective, and you have no collective aim, then you're in conflict because nothing unites you.

[501] And then, you know, when my colleagues and I were developing the self -authoring program, one of the things that really struck me to the core, and them too, was the fact that, you know, you said that for a Joe Schmo like you, the self -authoring program was useful because it broke things down.

[502] It's like, well, everybody needs that.

[503] You know, it took me 10 years of clinical work and training graduates and undergraduates to understand how to break down a vision of the future into it.

[504] its constituent steps, and that's partly because we are stunningly bad at that in our culture.

[505] You know, and I did some research into the history of the education system to find out why that was, because I thought, how the hell can we have an education system where I can have top -rate students who've been through 15 years of school, who've never been sat down once and told, write a vision for your character and your life?

[506] And I found out that the education system itself, which was based on the Prussian military model, was designed, designed consciously by people who regarded themselves as fascists, this was in the late 1800s, who wanted to produce obedient workers who couldn't think for themselves.

[507] So, hey, man, guess what?

[508] 150 years later, that's exactly what we've got.

[509] And it is a stunning fact that people aren't encouraged.

[510] Well, first of all, they're not encouraged at all, but second, specifically, they're not encouraged to take that time to dream and to say to themselves, look, okay, buddy, here's the deal.

[511] You can assume that the world wouldn't object too dramatically if your life wasn't an absolute bloody catastrophe 100 % of the time, and you could take a little time to develop a vision about what you wanted.

[512] Now, you said, you know, you discovered some things that were actually somewhat difficult to pursue.

[513] You know, you had to give up your house.

[514] You had to give up your car, you had to move into the woods.

[515] You sound like an introverted person to me. Do you remember your score on the understand myself?

[516] Do you remember where you are for introversion or extroversion?

[517] I believe that it actually showed I was more, more extroverted.

[518] Which, yeah, I can see the introverted side.

[519] But at the same time, like, I love, again, it's like I found a lot of, as much as I hate, like, when I was in my sales, I hated sales budgets and numbers and I hated talking to my boss about, oh, we've got to grow this account this and much.

[520] Like to me, all that was just horseshit.

[521] I just like to go out every day on job sites and like just meet people from all around the country and talk to them.

[522] And it just the money came in because I connected with those people and they said, well, we'll buy stuff from me because we like talking to you.

[523] And that's kind of, but yes, I don't know.

[524] Yeah, yeah.

[525] Well, that's the right way to sell is to make relationships.

[526] Well, I'm wondering, Like, are you, are you, do you like crowds and groups, or do you like meeting people one -on -one?

[527] And are you interested in people or do you like socializing?

[528] I think I'm very, I'm interested in people.

[529] I think, I think my draw to, my draw to want to be more excluded from society is because of some of the pitfalls we talked about earlier.

[530] Like I, to me, I see.

[531] Yeah, I find it depressing sometimes to be, especially here in Virginia.

[532] Virginia, like, because, so like, and this is, this is a phenomenon that happens everywhere, but especially on the East Coast in, like, semi -rural Virginia, everything looks exactly the same now.

[533] It's a Starbucks and a Target and a multifamily project and, like, note all the town, whatever sort of uniqueness and diversity each town had is sort of gone.

[534] Everything has just sort of become this, like, retail dystopian nightmare, you know?

[535] And I see a lot of farms being bought up and converted into neighborhoods and subdivisions and because farms can't make the money that if they're not through a commercial contract.

[536] And so, yeah, it's just depressing to see the way the landscapes change over a period of time.

[537] And so I think that's really what motivated me to go.

[538] And, you know, even like we're here in Richmond filming today.

[539] And Richmond is a gorgeous city, and it has such a deep history.

[540] But, yeah, like, it's not what it was.

[541] And you see a lot of homelessness, and you just, it's evident when you're out in public that things aren't the way they should be, you know?

[542] How did you negotiate with your wife?

[543] You said you had to go live in a camper with the ticks and the mosquitoes, you know?

[544] Yeah, well, you said you developed this vision.

[545] But then, you know, obviously, when you were implementing it, there were things you had to give up.

[546] sacrifice.

[547] And you said, you know, and you could certainly understand why that might cause some consternation into marriage.

[548] How did you negotiate that work through it?

[549] I guess I focused very much on painting a picture to her of what life would be like in five or 10 years and not what it would be like for the first five years.

[550] You know, like we both have a vision of, she's a, she's in veterinary medicine where we both love animals.

[551] And so we've had this sort of dream, and part of this is another, like, part of what I am excited about being able to do, again, outside of the music is like, take some of the money that I'll make from the streaming, and we want to start some form of a nonprofit or a, some sort of positive benefit toward, I have this, not to go off track, I'll answer your, but yeah, I have this sort of vision.

[552] And even back then, this is what we dreamed to do.

[553] And we started a 5013C, 501C, 5 .0C rescue with a friend of ours for dogs and cats back then.

[554] But it was sort of this idea of if we were able to acquire this property, we'd be able to, in the next five or 10 or 20 years, be able to do what we really wanted to with it.

[555] And if we didn't do that, and if we stayed where we were, we would be more comfortable and things would be better in the short run.

[556] But really, we would be looking back in 30 years, really regretting that we hadn't done it.

[557] And that's sort of that's sort of the way I pushed it to her.

[558] And she was able to...

[559] Okay.

[560] Okay.

[561] You know, and it's funny.

[562] I can find a parallel in that, like, now that we're sitting here talking, I can find, I've been watching your Exodus series, and I can find a parallel in that and your story and you're sort of, you do a great job of, and it's part of what's inspired me to get back into Scripture the way I have, because you've done a great job of finding the practicality in scripture and presenting it in a way that it's very easily under because so much of the Bible is interpretation and trying to understand the deeper meaning in things.

[563] And so yeah, I think like it's just it's important for people to, and this has been said many times in many ways, but it's important for people to whatever it is that really tugs at their heartstrings, whatever that sort of, and you know, maybe it's lost through the education system.

[564] But like as a child, we all have these dreams of whatever it is we want to do.

[565] And life seems so limitless and there's so much potential and it's like you've got to find a way to just to face that fear and pursue it no matter what yeah i mean the worst thing you could do is i have a song called hell on earth that i just kind of threw together uh it's it's an android recording but it it it remit it sort of reminisces this idea of like you're a lot of people die and go to hell before they ever hit the ground is one of the lines in the song but it's like people get stuck in this sort of monotonous work.

[566] Let me drive to work down the interstate and get pissed off and flick everybody off when they cut into my lane and go work this stupid job that I don't like so I can come home to the stupid house that I don't like and pay, so I can pay all these stupid bills that I don't want to pay.

[567] And it's like deep down inside of them, there is some sort of ambition or pursuit that maybe they've even forgotten about, but the subconscious has such a weird way of holding on the things that sometimes even our cognitive memory can't recognize, you know?

[568] So, for me, it was like just, I didn't want to die not taking that chance.

[569] You know, you only get, time is very precious.

[570] Like, it seems like we live for a long period of time, but really 80 or 90 years in the grand scheme of the world's existence is just a blip on the map.

[571] And so, like, we do have to take, I mean, you don't know if you'll even live to see tomorrow.

[572] So, yeah, you do have to pursue whatever it is that you feel compelled to do in that moment when the time's there, yeah.

[573] All right, so you got about 10 cool things there.

[574] So you mentioned Exodus.

[575] So one of the things that happens in Exodus is that Moses is being a shepherd, right?

[576] He's off with his Midianite father -in -law, Jethro, and he's married one of Jethro's daughters, and he's away from Egypt.

[577] He's just minded his own business.

[578] And that's when he's wandering down the pathway by Mount Horeb, which is the center of the world, it's Jacob's Ladder, it's the place where Jack would plant his beanstalk that stretches to heaven.

[579] It's reused that symbol consistently in the Bible.

[580] Anyways, that's when he notices something off to the side that glimmers and glitters, and that's the burning bush.

[581] And he could continue just walking down the path, let's say, as a relatively satisfied shepherd or maybe dissatisfied shepherd, but he decides to go investigate this thing that attracts his attention, right?

[582] And that's the key aspect of the story.

[583] He does, decides to go investigate what attracts his attention.

[584] And as he gets closer to it, he understands that he's on sacred ground.

[585] And when he continues his pursuit, God himself speaks to him, right?

[586] And that's when Moses becomes a leader.

[587] And that's the story, that's the story of life.

[588] As you know, you said people are all tangled up in the nine to five, and they're not paying any attention to anything but immediate practicalities, even though they're dissatisfied with them.

[589] And they're ignoring what's calling to them.

[590] All right.

[591] So Moses doesn't do that.

[592] And then he develops a vision, you know, and that's the vision of the promised land.

[593] And everyone needs a vision of the promised land, because as we already said, that protects them from anxiety and gives them hope.

[594] And then you talked about what you did with your wife.

[595] Now, when little kids play house, and this is particularly interesting to me, because I used to play house with my wife when I was like eight.

[596] You know, and this is how kids play house.

[597] Like if you're a boy and you're playing house, with a girl to play house properly, this is the rules.

[598] You have to come up with a vision that you offer the girl, or she has to do the same to you.

[599] They have to say, well, look, here's the house.

[600] You can maybe sketch it out on the ground, or we'll pretend that this playground structure is the house, and there's the door, and there's the rooms, and you be the mom and all be the dad, and here's what we're going to play out happening.

[601] And the girl has to say, yes, I'm on board with that, and then you enter the same fictional landscape.

[602] you said, and you noticed, you have to do the same thing with your wife.

[603] It's exactly the same damn thing, is that once you develop a vision for yourself, let's say, in your imagination, that's what calls for you to you.

[604] It's based on what you really want.

[605] You have to develop that vision.

[606] Then you have to say to her, look, here's what I see five years down the road.

[607] And is there a manner in which what you see and what you envision, and that was, say, your wife's concern for animals and so on, the joint interest you had in that, is there some way that you have a vision of five years down the road that we could bring together that we would both be thrilled to play out that we could commit to, right?

[608] And so that visionary practice has to extend within the marriage, and then you get to play house, and then you get to play, and that's a hell of a lot better than beating each other up and, you know, using force and compulsion.

[609] Well, those are the options, right?

[610] As far as I can tell, it's slavery, tyranny, or negotiation.

[611] And if you negotiate in a visionary way, then you get to play.

[612] And if you get to play, well, then you're not in that hell on earth that you described, right?

[613] You're as close to the opposite as you can get.

[614] So you obviously manage that successfully.

[615] And so, well, I presume, and what does your wife, what does your wife think about the way this vision is unfolding?

[616] Yeah, well, it's, um, it's in the present moment she's a she's very excited like um neither one of us had any idea that any of this would happen the way it did with the music but as far as the yeah we're excited we're excited to it's the last few the last few weeks have been so difficult to interpret anything because she's you know she's pregnant now with my what'll be my first son i've got i've got two daughters and so this will be my my first boy so like we The last couple of weeks have been spent more about trying to figure out what we're going to name the little rascal than anything else.

[617] But, yeah, like, our vision, I think, for the next 20 or 30 years is very similar in what we want to do.

[618] It's, you know, we want to make sure that our children are brought up in a way that they get to experience nature and get to get to sort of have some of the imaginative and, like you said, even just some of the playful nature that children have.

[619] We don't want them to, we want to do what we can to try to protect them from being so institutionalized at an early age into sort of the system that you describe and the way modern education works.

[620] And we want them to be able to pursue whatever, you know, like we're very excited about the opportunities with our children and with our family.

[621] And yeah, we want to, we have this vision of, I don't know exactly how it will work out.

[622] There's a model very similar that Robert Kennedy Jr. describes called a Healing Center, but I think we want to incorporate animals into it as well to where it's, but we want to use our property.

[623] Maybe we even try to purchase another piece of property just through this nonprofit, but I have this vision of sort of creating a model that can be replicated that involves regenerative agriculture, people that are suffering with PTSD and people that have just getting out of rehab.

[624] have.

[625] And there's studies that show that working that, well, hard work in general helps anxiety and depression, but then being out in nature doing it.

[626] Like, I think there's a, there's a place over in Italy that does this, that's, that takes kids and that end that have depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and all, and sort of works them on this vineyard for a period of time.

[627] And it's got a very high success rate.

[628] And so, yeah, we have a vision of trying to take whatever has been produced from this and we want to sort of light a fire maybe that will hopefully light other fires and this can become something a lot bigger than just what she and I want to do, you know, with our world.

[629] But yeah, it's about trying to sort of, we both are very like -minded in that and sort of that bigger vision.

[630] It did take some time.

[631] Like it's, you know, it's difficult, it's very difficult for anyone in today's society, including me. I mean, I'm just as, I'm just like anybody else, but it's hard to, sometimes it's hard to, how would I say it?

[632] It's hard to take away the immediate gratification of whatever world you're living in now and those comforts and being able to somehow put those to the side for something that doesn't even exist.

[633] Like, it's a terrifying thing to make that leap.

[634] But I'd say, I'd say at this point, there's no going back.

[635] Well, look, look, it is a leap.

[636] of faith.

[637] And you have to, you have to have, first of all, you have to have faith to do anything because you can't do anything unless you have faith in it.

[638] And so maybe you have faith in your 9 -5 routine and you think that's the best that there is.

[639] And that's faith too, because like you said, you might be run over by a bus tomorrow and who the hell knows what's going to happen.

[640] You're going to put your faith somewhere.

[641] So then the question is, where should you put your faith?

[642] And one answer to that is security or hypothetical security, but that seems to me to be a stupid answer, because there is no security.

[643] So then if there's no security, then where do you put your faith?

[644] And then I would say, well, you put your faith in what beckons?

[645] You know, and music beckons to people, and beauty beckons to people in art and justice and truth, like these eternal verities, the path of heroism beckons.

[646] These things call, right?

[647] And that's the burning bush.

[648] And you have to put your faith in something because you're ignorant and you don't know everything, so you have to take a leap.

[649] And, you know, it sounds to, to me that one of the things that you and your wife figured out is that you should take a leap into the unknown to the spot that beckons, right?

[650] And those are those things that called to you.

[651] You said unconsciously that won't go away, that won't stop bugging you like Jiminy Cricket, you know, your conscience calling you to.

[652] That's what you're supposed to put faith in.

[653] And that's part of the classic representation of God in the Judeo -Christian tradition.

[654] Like, God is the voice of conscience.

[655] That's what the prophet Elijah establishes.

[656] He's not out in nature.

[657] He's not in the thunder.

[658] He's not in the earthquake.

[659] He's not Gaia.

[660] He's not even the cosmos.

[661] God is what beckons to you from conscience and what calls to you.

[662] And you ignore that at your peril.

[663] And your song, you said, hell on earth is like hell on earth is where you go if you don't pay attention to what your conscience tells you and to what beckons.

[664] And that's the truth.

[665] And it's also the case, you know, if you get tangled up into that routine, you hate, that industrial routine, predictable industrial, generic routine, and you're pissed off going to work and you're giving everyone the finger and you're resentful and bitter.

[666] Like, you're one step away from wanting to turn everything into hell just to get revenge for your miserable life.

[667] That's the story of Kane, by the way, because it's Kane's descendants, right?

[668] Kane gets bitter and it's Kane's descendants that first make weapons of war, you know, and the aftermath of Kane's descendants, well, the things that happen after the story of Kane and Abel, right, the fratricide and then the degeneration into murderousness is the flood that wipes everything out, and also the Tower of Babel, which is this terrible technological construction that you were referring to, this terrible generica, you know, mindless generica that's spread everywhere, that posits a mere technological solution, a technocratic solution to every problem.

[669] Those are two various forms of hell.

[670] And this is very real, you know.

[671] And, well, it's real enough to base your life on.

[672] I believe that's what we're experiencing today.

[673] Like, I think that what you said is exactly what's happened today.

[674] And when I look at Republicans and Democrats in 2023, that's what I see is I see people who are bitter and angry and disgusted with a system that isn't serving anyone correctly, but instead of us being in the same way that in a business, someone with a more conservative mindset and someone with a more liberal mindset could use entrepreneurial and like traditional and organizational skills to build a strong business, which is what we should be doing in our political climate and in our country, we're using our bitterness as a weapon against each other, you know?

[675] It's, it's, it's It's been interesting.

[676] I think obviously a lot of people understand what it is I'm trying to say or what my message is within the song, but it has been interesting seeing both sides also attack me, misinterpreting that I'm identifying with the other.

[677] You know, I've had, well, like, for example, I've had, even just recently, I've had some conservatives give me grief for making the comment that were stronger, or something to the, if this was in the middle of a concert, and it was, I think I said, strength through diversity, which really resonates on exactly what that point is that we need to have people that think differently use those strengths to work together in a way that makes us all stronger.

[678] But I think people are so used to hearing that as a sort of a left -wing rhetoric that they immediately identified it as that.

[679] And then on the flip side, I've had the left very much attacking me as being sort of this right -wing, far -right -wing, whatever, you know, and you've experience this yourself.

[680] But at some point, we've got to figure out a way to, we've got to figure out a way to, for us as a, just us as a society, maybe find a way to leap out of that.

[681] Like, what we're, what we're facing in today's world is much bigger than, than that, that's, that is important.

[682] It's important that we have politics and that we have a system in which we decide how different ideas are implemented into government, but it can't rule us either.

[683] Like, we've allowed it to not sit here at the wayside, but we've allowed it to almost encapsulate all of us.

[684] Like, it's become sort of the ceiling under which we live under.

[685] And, you know, I've had people say that I'm a fence sitter and that I need to have some sort of call to action.

[686] And I guess, like, if there's anything that I would respond to that with, given the opportunity we have now, it's like, I think we need to take a step back.

[687] and re -envision what we want the next 20 or 30 years to look like.

[688] And there's an important verse that came to mind.

[689] This was in Matthew 22, starts in 34, but it's where the Pharisees are questioning Jesus on, like, because even throughout the Bible, there are contradictions, obviously, and people have different forms of opinion in different ways.

[690] Things are worded even throughout the Bible.

[691] but he says, a Pharisee asked Jesus, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

[692] And Jesus replied, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

[693] This is the first and greatest commandment.

[694] And the second is, love your neighbor as yourself.

[695] And, like, as simple as that is, if we could just find a way to make those two commandments, even outside of religious boundaries, just if we could just, if we could learn to make that our priority and then base our differences below that, you know, like God is here, our love for each other here, and then below that is try to find a way to integrate our differences in a way that everyone can live a better life.

[696] Like, it would resolve a lot of the conflicts that have become like way over -complicated, you know?

[697] Okay, so I think you're, I think you pointed to, in some ways, I don't know if you could call that the most crucial, the most crucial of lines in the biblical corpus, but it's damn close because what's happening in that story, as you no doubt know, is that the Pharisees, the scribes, the lawyers, they're, they're kind of the political class, right?

[698] They're the privileged class, and what they're trying to do is they're trying to trap Christ into making a heretical statement so they can kill them, essentially, or at least throw them in prison.

[699] That's the plan.

[700] So they've set up traps, which is exactly what that question is.

[701] And he does this incredible sleight of hand, which is a mark of staggering brilliance, instead of taking the Ten Commandments, which are the law, right, Moses' established law, and saying, well, this one's, what they want them to do is say, well, it's number four that's most important, because then they can say, well, you don't think number one through three or five through ten is important, and so it's off to prison with you, buddy.

[702] And so they think they've trapped him because they put him in a place where there's nothing he can say that won't get him in trouble.

[703] And what he does is conduct a little revolution ethically right then and there and say, well, if you arrange those ten commandments and you abstracted out the gist, the essence, it would be twofold.

[704] And one of the essences is that you should put the thing that should be at the top, at the top.

[705] And that's God, and that's the Logos, and that's the truthful speech that when uttered changes possibility into the order that is good.

[706] That's what the logos is.

[707] That has to be at the top.

[708] It's the same as putting freedom of speech and religion at the top.

[709] It's the same idea.

[710] And that love of God then becomes the expression of the fact that human beings, are made in the image of God, that has to be at the top.

[711] And then allied with that, Christ says, so that's the vertical dimension.

[712] It's like the vertical dimension of Mount Sinai.

[713] That's the vertical dimension.

[714] You look up, you aim up.

[715] And then the horizontal dimension, the collective dimension, is you have to understand that everyone else is a reflection of the same divine value that characterizes you.

[716] You have to treat everyone.

[717] And I've been trying to work through that technically.

[718] And it's like, I don't think there is any difference between treating yourself properly and treating other people properly.

[719] And part of the reason for that is purely practical.

[720] It's like, think about it this way.

[721] You are very badly outnumbered.

[722] There's one of you and eight billion other people.

[723] And so if you mistreat other people, if you put yourself first, that is going to come to haunt you, man, in a way you can't possibly imagine.

[724] Whereas if by contrast, you treat other people as if there is value as you, in every interaction you have, people are going to be so thrilled to have you around that they're going to be extending you the same luxury constantly.

[725] And so perversely, by stopping focusing on your own narrow self -interests, and by inviting other people into the game, everyone will have more and so will you.

[726] And I actually think that's technically true, partly because, you know, you said earlier in our conversation that people have this difficulty when they have to sacrifice the present for the future, right?

[727] And the thing is, is when you start to think about the future, what you're doing is saying, well, the 50 -year -old me, you know, the me that's 10 years down the road, is just as important as the me that's here right now.

[728] And so is the 60 -year -old me. And so you have to construe yourself as a community that iterates across time, and then you have to take that whole community into account.

[729] And if you do that, it's the same as taking other people into account.

[730] And it's the proper moral orientation.

[731] And it's not proper for arbitrary reasons.

[732] It's proper because if everyone did that, the world would become peaceful and abundant, and we could live in something approximating harmony.

[733] And many of the problems that beset us would merely as a consequence of the better governance that would emerge, many of the problems that would, that are plaguing us would vanish.

[734] You know, we've been working on this enterprise in London called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, trying to develop a vision for the future.

[735] Let me tell you one thing about it and you ask you what you think about it.

[736] So we've been trying to figure out how you tell the real leaders, you know, let's say someone comes to you and says, I've got a vision for the, the future.

[737] And you might say, well, those are kind of a dime a dozen.

[738] How the hell do I know that you're not just another manipulator or, you know, in it for your own narrow purposes?

[739] How do I know I can trust you?

[740] And so I've been trying to work through that.

[741] So here's some possibilities.

[742] You tell me what you think about this.

[743] So I would say if the person who's developing the vision is trying to impose their vision on you by force, then they're not good leaders.

[744] And if they're trying to terrify you into adopting their vision, so they use fear, then they're not good leaders.

[745] They're good leaders if they offer you a vision, like you offered your wife, which is, here's a possible game, what do you think of it, and would you like to voluntarily play?

[746] If someone can do that, then they're a leader you can trust, at least, you know, assuming they're playing a straight game.

[747] And so the rule is, if the person is using power and compulsion or fear, then their vision is unreliable.

[748] And so I think that's even true.

[749] If there is a crisis, you don't get to terrify people.

[750] They have to invite them.

[751] So what do you think about that?

[752] What's your first response to that?

[753] Yeah, I think that I'd say that it's obvious that at the core of anyone's motive is really either, yeah, it's either love or hate.

[754] It's either that it's something that's obviously benefiting people, that people are excited to promote themselves.

[755] But then there are a lot of things you see implemented that are, they can be very well disguised, but at their core, they are fear -based, you know, like either in a sense of intimidation or in a sense of maybe false sense of urgency, like you've got, and I've experienced that myself now just with my career opportunity.

[756] like, you've got to do this now.

[757] And it's perceived in a way that's supposed to be helping me, but it really is a, it's driven on, it's driven off the human emotion of fear.

[758] And so I think that's, that's the way to ultimately understand if something is, like in your case, if something is, is genuine and authentic or not as, is what, yeah, what human emotion is it being driven off of?

[759] Is it being driven off of, off of love and ambition, or is it being driven more off of hate and fear?

[760] I mean, that's really the core of everything in the world, right?

[761] But, yeah, I'd say that's, and trying to dissect that is a whole other animal, but ultimately everything, it's all driven off of basic emotion, I'd say, at its, at its core, you know.

[762] Well, and you said false sense of urgency.

[763] You know, I actually think this even applies in a true sense of, urgency, you know, because the climate people, for example, might say, oh, my God, there's an apocalyptic catastrophe pending.

[764] It's real, and it's so urgent that here the following measures must be taken.

[765] Okay.

[766] So we could take that argument.

[767] We could say, well, look, even if it is a true emergency, let's give you that, which isn't something I'm generally willing to do, by the way, but in any case, well, for the sake of argument, we'll say, okay, there is an actual emergency here.

[768] I would still say, if your response to that emergency is that you're now willing to wield fear as the cudgel of power, then you're too little a man for the job.

[769] Is that if the crisis is terrified you into becoming a tyrant, then you're facing a dragon that you can't defeat.

[770] And so you're not the right guy.

[771] I think even when there is a crisis, you should lead people with faith and hope and not with power and fear.

[772] And that's a way of distinguishing the real true leaders, let's say, from the false prophets, so to speak.

[773] Absolutely.

[774] That's how it looks to me. Yeah.

[775] I agree.

[776] Hey, so I wanted to ask you about Rogan just out of curiosity.

[777] You went on his show.

[778] I've been there three or four times.

[779] I've got to know Joe a little bit.

[780] What was that like for you?

[781] And what do you think of Rogan?

[782] Yeah, I love.

[783] Rogan's really cool.

[784] He's just, and not, like I said, I've met so many of my heroes, I guess you'd say.

[785] They're all just very down -the -earth people, which is refreshing to see that, you know, you hear horror stories about certain people presenting a sort of characterization to the world of being one thing, but then behind closed doors, there's this sort of, like, monstrous, egotistical creature that is unapproachable and not really human -like.

[786] And so, yeah, it's nice that every, but yeah, I love Rogan.

[787] He's a, I was impressed at his, the way he does, the way he conducts his business, it's very streamlined and it's, yeah, yeah, he has a small staff.

[788] He's very straight to the point with everything.

[789] It's like, it's, it's nice to see.

[790] And I think that's what's brought him the success he's had is that he hasn't, he hasn't turned it into sort of this, he could make it a lot bigger and, and quote unquote, better than it is.

[791] but he keeps it very just simple and real.

[792] And so, yeah, I enjoyed meeting him.

[793] We had a great time when we were, that was my first time off the East Coast.

[794] So we were in Austin, obviously, and we did the Joe Rogan podcast.

[795] And then that night, I connected with Tom Segura, who's another great, like I can't say enough nice things about Tom.

[796] He invited us to the mothership to what we thought was going to be just to hang out and meet everybody.

[797] And we only flew one guitar at Austin.

[798] I was scared to fly my, I was scared to fly my resonant.

[799] or guitar there.

[800] I just figured somebody would steal it or it would get crushed or something.

[801] And so we only flew my guitarist guitar.

[802] And so we had one.

[803] We get to the mothership, and Tom's like, man, you really ought to get up and play a few songs at the end of my set.

[804] And I wasn't going to say no. So Ron White was there.

[805] And Ron White takes my guitarist in his car, flies across town, like not even necessarily figuratively speaking, but they get to his house and back in a short period of time.

[806] And five minutes before we go up.

[807] And so we went up and just had a blast.

[808] It was just an incredible weekend.

[809] It was Monday and Tuesday.

[810] It was just incredible time we had there.

[811] It's one of those stories.

[812] Well, that's insanely fun.

[813] Yeah, yeah.

[814] It was one of those times.

[815] So, yeah, everyone we met, including Rogan, just good down -to -earth people.

[816] Yeah, every time I go to see Rogan.

[817] And this is really the truth.

[818] It's like I breathe a sigh of relief when I get into his studio because, first of all, he's insanely funny.

[819] And that's always such a relief.

[820] But also, I know perfectly well that I'm going to talk to someone for three hours and I'm not going to have to be, have my snake eye open, you know, looking for serpents because Rogan is just exactly who he is.

[821] And like he'll push back and he has his opinions and he's a hard -headed bastard and all of that.

[822] but he's not like a, he's not a Pharisee, you know, he's not laying traps for you to step into so he can look good at your expense.

[823] He doesn't do that.

[824] And it's such a bloody relief to talk to him.

[825] And I'm sure that's a huge part of the reason that he is so successful is that people can trust him.

[826] And, you know, as far as I can tell, that trust is warranted because every single situation I've seen Joe in and I've seen him in a lot of situations and some pretty intense ones and challenging ones, he doesn't get edgy, he isn't egotistical, he doesn't defend himself, he's just, like, calm and together, and probably his fighting background has helped him with that, too, you know?

[827] I'd say so, yeah.

[828] It's hard to intimidate Rogan, yeah, yeah, so two thumbs up for Joe, man, that's what I think.

[829] That was part of my thought process going through this.

[830] Like, I questioned whether I should even do a podcast at all, because I'm not, I'm not a public speaker, but, you know, or at least I guess I'm not really even a musician.

[831] I mean, our first, you know, our first paid gig was the, was the farm market, the big farm market with 12 ,000 people.

[832] So it's kind of like maybe I am a public, I don't know what I am at this point, but I remember.

[833] Right, right.

[834] Well, you have to find out.

[835] Within those first couple days of everything blowing up and, like, we were getting flooded with requests for interviews and podcast.

[836] And I remember telling my buddy, and I was joking.

[837] Like, I had no idea it would turn into this, but I said, I want to do Joe Rogan for my introductory.

[838] and I want to do Jordan Peterson to try to unpack all of this and then I'm going to call it good and let that be that.

[839] And so, like, here we are.

[840] I mean, it's, yeah, it's crazy.

[841] It's still surreal that you and I are talking.

[842] Like, it's so funny.

[843] I'll tell you, since we're talking about my wife, and I mentioned this on Joe Rogan that I drove her crazy listening to camping with Steve YouTube videos at night before we went to bed.

[844] And so I got to meet camping with Steve.

[845] He and I have connected and talked, and he's just awesome.

[846] But she doesn't know your name, but she would get driven crazy because any time I'm in the house, like cooking dinner or doing anything, I've got philosopher man on.

[847] And so she'd say, oh, you're listening to Philosopher Man again.

[848] But I'd listen to your stuff for hours every night.

[849] And so it's just, again, it's just crazy that we're sitting here having this conversation.

[850] But I told her, I told her I was going on the Jordan Peterson podcast.

[851] And she said, Jordan Peters.

[852] I said, you know, philosopher man. You have to apologize to her for me. Yeah, yeah.

[853] Oh, yeah, well, that's pretty pretty.

[854] It's pretty funny all right.

[855] Yeah, well, you know, that's so interesting.

[856] Well, it's so interesting, too, for me to see that, you know, that you developed this crazy vision a few years ago and now all these surreal things are happening to you.

[857] And I actually think that's how the world works, man. I think the world has a real dreamlike quality to it, you know, which is why we dream to try to figure it out and that your dreams call to you.

[858] I mean, that's what the psychoanalyst's taught.

[859] I certainly learned that from Freud.

[860] and more even from Carl Jung, you know, that your dreams, you can dream the future.

[861] In fact, that's how the future comes about.

[862] You're, it's either, you either dream the future or you let it turn into a nightmare.

[863] Like, those are the options.

[864] And so you dream the future by asking yourself what you want, assuming that you're trying to take care of yourself.

[865] And you do that in a way that brings other people on board.

[866] You know, with this ARC enterprise in the UK, we're trying to develop a vision that when people here, they think, geez, you know, I'd make some sacrifices to be part of that.

[867] I'd put some work into that.

[868] They're not trying to hit me over the head with a cudgel, and they're not trying to fright me. They're trying to invite me to the table, right?

[869] They're inviting me to the discussion.

[870] And that's really what we're praying, both metaphorically and literally to do, is to say, look, man, if we got our act together, if we were all visionaries and we told the truth and we cooperated properly, there's no, we could make the desert bloom, right?

[871] There's no limit to the problems we could solve.

[872] We don't have to run around like Chicken Little claiming that the sky is falling and, you know, put all these limitations on ourselves and doom the third world to penury and starvation and assume that there's too many people on the planet.

[873] We could just shoulder our damn burdens and walk uphill properly and fix the place.

[874] And we can do that.

[875] And if we don't, well, we'll get what's coming to us.

[876] And we've had that happen a couple of times in the 20th century, and that wasn't so pretty.

[877] And so hopefully we'll be smart enough.

[878] God, I hope we're smart enough not to do that again.

[879] Yeah, I mean, there's verses in Ecclesiastes that talk about repetition throughout time.

[880] But there's always that same driving force and that element that created the Soviet Union and created so many nightmares before it.

[881] and after it like that still is just as much present today as it was then and it's like if we don't yeah it's like we you have to be proactive at keeping that that that that balance that harmony there because like the political climate in the world we live in now is benefiting a handful of people and it seems like that handful of people is doing everything they can to keep the system in that sort of disorder but if if Yeah, somehow if people could, and you're right, and it's like, you talk about the power of imagination, you know, but it really is the truth.

[882] It's like if people could just figure out in their own space how to make things better and just even have a vision of things being better and we, and just a certain amount of people did that.

[883] Like, that's all it takes.

[884] And then a lot of the, a lot of the problems that we talk about, like even in politics and all, but almost would almost resolve themselves just inherently from.

[885] Yeah.

[886] From that.

[887] From people taking responsibility.

[888] Well, that's right.

[889] Well, there's another scene in Exodus where that's actually laid out.

[890] It becomes part of the principle of subsidiarity, which is a core element of Catholic social doctrine and a fundamental element of genuine conservatism, which is that if you build a hierarchy of responsibility, so individual, marital, familial, community, state, all of those levels, and every single level takes its responsibility, there's no reason to have a king, and there's no desert, right?

[891] And the rule is something like this, is every bit of responsibility that you refuse to take on your own behalf, on behalf of your family, let's say, or your community, that responsibility will be taken up by tyrants and used against you.

[892] And I think, well, how could it be any different, different, right?

[893] Because if you leave you, something necessary, just lying there on the table.

[894] It's just an invitation for a thief to steal it, like obviously.

[895] So yeah, you make a vision for your own life and you take responsibility because if you don't, someone else will steal.

[896] Someone else will steal your destiny.

[897] Someone else will steal your soul.

[898] And it might be a handful of people or it might be the dread spirit that's driving their greed, and that's something whose hands you do not want to fall into.

[899] You know, you'll end up on the road to hell, you know, or contemplating or committing suicide or torturing people, and that's probably, that's probably not the vision you want to pursue.

[900] That's for sure.

[901] Yeah, because it's very contagious.

[902] All right, sir.

[903] Yeah, it's very, that energy is very contagious.

[904] Yeah, like if, I mean, just think about if, if, I mean, just going back to our, going our conversation about commuting on the interstate but yeah just somebody cut somebody else off and that it's almost like they hold on to that and then they event whether they do it consciously or passive aggressively at some point maybe it's to their boss or their kids or their co -worker but then they kind of pass it off on somebody else and it creates this it's everything's very much more it's very connected in a way that we don't really see on the surface levels you know yeah yeah that's for sure yeah I had a vision of that here recently you know So people think, well, I'm just one person in a mass of $8 billion, you know, what can I do?

[905] But imagine this, imagine a globe, okay, with points on it, and then all those points are networked together, you know?

[906] Okay, so now imagine you're one of those points on that globe.

[907] Now, when you zoom into it from a distance, that point will be the one that's closest to you, you know?

[908] So it looks like it's the top of a kind of a rounded, kind of like a rounded pyramid.

[909] that's a way of thinking about it.

[910] So you're at a, you're at the center of a web of a thousand people because you're going to know a thousand people well in your life, at least.

[911] You're going to have an influence on them.

[912] And then those thousand are surrounded by a thousand each.

[913] And so that's a million people, one person away from you.

[914] And it's a billion people, two people away from you.

[915] And that's where you are.

[916] You're in the center of the world in that way.

[917] You, a thousand people, a million people and then a billion people.

[918] You're at that center and everything you do echoes.

[919] And the world's set up like that.

[920] So we're each a center where everything we do echoes.

[921] And that's a terrifying thing to realize, right?

[922] Because that means whatever happens is on you.

[923] I was reading this Dostoevsky quote the other day in writing about he said, he has a father there, Zossama, who is the spiritual guide of this, I think it's Aloha, who's a monaousia, who's a mona novitiate in the brothers Karamazov, which is a great book.

[924] And Zossama tells Alyosha, you are responsible not only for everything you do, but for everything everyone else does.

[925] And you think, Jesus, that's a completely absurd proposition.

[926] But then you think, you know, well, you think about it this way, man, if you were a really, if you were the worst person you could be, and that's something to think about.

[927] If you were the worst person you could be, you could produce a lot of hell and misery.

[928] God only knows how much.

[929] A lot of people would be way worse than they are because of you.

[930] And maybe, you know, infinitely worse.

[931] But if you were the best person you could be, a lot of people who are bad wouldn't be nearly as bad as they are.

[932] And so when you see all this misery around you and all these miserable people, you've got to ask yourself, you know, how much of that is a consequence of the things that you've left undone?

[933] Or the things you've did.

[934] And man, if you have any sense and you really think about that, that'll terrify you right to the bottom.

[935] of your soul.

[936] And that's a good thing.

[937] It's a terrible thing, you know, but it's a necessary thing.

[938] And that's why I just, the more, I haven't, the more I've thought through sort of, even just what it is, you said now, it's, there has to be something pure and honest and righteous at the top of our focus collectively in order to maintain that.

[939] But that's, I mean, so yeah, that's really the, that's the importance of that's the importance of having of idolizing God at the top of that structure is that's the only way I see that purity and that honesty being maintained collectively among a group of people but yeah that's a great way that's a great analogy with the spider well I like that yeah yeah well it's a very good vision and I think what you close with there is correct as far as I can tell like that's the insistently repeated message of the biblical corpus and all the works of wisdom that's surrounded is that you have to put what's appropriately ultimate at the top.

[940] And that is something like the sum of all that's good, right?

[941] The sum of bonham.

[942] That's a definition of God.

[943] It's truth and beauty and justice and mercy all united into a single character.

[944] That's a way of thinking of character you're supposed to embody and put at the top, which is the same as celebrator worship.

[945] Yeah, I think that's right.

[946] Look, we should stop, I guess.

[947] It's 107 minutes into this 90 -minute podcast, and it was really fun talking to you.

[948] It's really good to meet you, and I would say, man, congratulations on your success.

[949] Congratulations on developing your vision.

[950] Congratulations to you and your wife for having enough sense to knock your heads together and come to something approximating a consensual solution, and to getting over your resentment and, you know, to having your dreams come true.

[951] And isn't that a weird thing that that can actually happen?

[952] Yeah.

[953] That's for sure.

[954] Yeah.

[955] I'm excited to see what happens in the future.

[956] And likewise with you, congratulations on even your recent success.

[957] And I'm excited to see.

[958] I know that you're in the midst of a lot of different battles.

[959] And so I wish you the best with all of my keeping my prayers.

[960] And hopefully we'll be able to keep in contact moving forward.

[961] Like I said, I definitely enjoy having this conversation with you.

[962] Yeah.

[963] Well, there's something exciting about having an.

[964] adventure that's crazy enough so you literally don't know what's going to happen next.

[965] I mean, that's a good way to keep you on your toes and not resentful.

[966] It's like, what, weird thing could possibly happen now?

[967] That's a real adventure, man. Yeah, no kidding.

[968] All right, so for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue talking to Oliver Anthony on the YouTube, on the Daily Wire Plus side of this platform or this interview.

[969] We're going to talk a little bit more about autobiographical issues, which is what I generally do there.

[970] Thank you to the film crew here in Florence for making this possible today and for Daily Wire Plus for facilitating it.

[971] And thank you very much for talking to me today.

[972] And good luck keeping your head straight through this crazy sallying forth that you're embarking upon.

[973] Bye -bye, everybody.

[974] Thank you.

[975] I don't know.