#2027 - Oliver Anthony

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, checking out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Do you ever find yourself with the desire to welcome the crocs in your life?

[4] Yeah, I've got some genuine real tree crocs for when I'm out in the stand, you know?

[5] I know guys who use those as camp shoes.

[6] They like to walk around camping them because you're wearing heavy boots in the mountains.

[7] Yeah, well, they're nice to, yeah, they're nice to kind of keep with you as a spare.

[8] You know, you soak your boots or you're just trying to go out of the house real quick, yeah.

[9] Brian Simpson now has crocs and stage crocs.

[10] So before Brian Simpson goes on stage, he takes off his walk around crocs and he puts on his pristine stage crocs.

[11] It's hilarious.

[12] It's so funny.

[13] He used to do it with sneakers.

[14] He used to walk around with crocs and then he would wear sneakers on stage.

[15] And then he went from crocs to stage crocs.

[16] Yeah, well, maybe I'll look into it.

[17] I need to get some new boots.

[18] My boots are like, these are the ones I always wear.

[19] And we were walking through the airport yesterday.

[20] They're like literally one of the souls is falling off.

[21] I'm like, I got to figure out something.

[22] You got to get them resold, man. They're authentic.

[23] Yeah, these are my genuine.

[24] You earned them.

[25] You know.

[26] People pay for those.

[27] I thought about it.

[28] I was joking with my buddy the other day.

[29] I went and changed my oil at his house before we drove to North Carolina and left the empty jug of the dirty oil sitting in his garage.

[30] And I was like, I'll get it, whatever.

[31] He said, no, man. He said, I'm selling that on eBay.

[32] That's Oliver Anthony's authentic used motor oil out of his truck.

[33] He'd probably get 20 bucks for that.

[34] Yeah, there's a lot of people that definitely would buy that.

[35] But what I mean, people buy used clothes because they want to wear clothes that look like, you know, they have character.

[36] You know, like it drives me crazy.

[37] When I buy people, when I see people with pants that just...

[38] or shredded all over the place, like your knees are exposed.

[39] Yeah, well, see, the pro tip I have for that is just go to Goodwill.

[40] You can get real used clothes.

[41] For real used clothes.

[42] But that's extra, like, hipster authentic if you go to a real used clothes store.

[43] What do they call those vintage?

[44] Yeah, like that vintage.

[45] The vintage look, yeah.

[46] Oh, yeah.

[47] If you could buy some holy t -shirts and some dirty hippie ward to a Rolling Stones concert in the 1970s.

[48] You can get that now?

[49] That's worth a lot of money.

[50] Yeah.

[51] You know, if, like, he died of a heroin overdose and he kept the fucking t -shirt at his mom's house.

[52] She's had to sell it.

[53] That's worth a lot of money.

[54] I've tried to hold on the things that I think I could sell down the road.

[55] Like, I've still got the, I've got the strings that I recorded Richmond, North of Richmond on my guitar.

[56] I was going to, I almost threw him away.

[57] I was like, oh, hold on a second.

[58] You could definitely sell those.

[59] Yeah, you could definitely sell those.

[60] But that would be like an honest sale.

[61] People can't say, oh, he's a sellout.

[62] Yeah, yeah, I'm just selling junk I have.

[63] Actually, I'm considering selling my truck.

[64] Just if any, I don't know.

[65] I think we talked about this before, but if somebody, it's worthless to me. It's got 325 ,000 miles on it in a salvage title.

[66] And I still daily drive it, but I thought, man, if I could sell this and somebody pay 50 grand for it or whatever and send it towards a charity, like it would be pretty slick to do.

[67] It has a salvage title?

[68] It does, yeah.

[69] What happened by it when it was already hooked?

[70] No, well, now, it's a 2007 suburban.

[71] I paid a couple grand for it years ago.

[72] And then just here recently, I had to have it towed.

[73] It broke down in the rollback driver.

[74] I guess I don't know if he was under the influence or something or what, but he unhooked all the chains off and then tilted the bed back.

[75] So the whole truck rolled right off the back of the rollback.

[76] Oh, no. And it totaled the truck out.

[77] It bent a bunch of stuff under the drive shaft and the front of the frame and all.

[78] And, of course, I'm sitting there trying to figure out what to do with my truck.

[79] And here comes all the police.

[80] And they're like, oh, is that really you?

[81] Let's get it.

[82] So here I am.

[83] I'm on the phone with my insurance company.

[84] And then all these guys are coming up trying to take selfies with me and stuff.

[85] That's hilarious.

[86] I guess this is the world I live in now.

[87] But, uh.

[88] So can the truck be fixed?

[89] It's drivable.

[90] Yeah, I'm driving.

[91] It just rides kind of like a covered wagon now.

[92] So it's, at some point I'm going to have to upgrade.

[93] Is the frame bent?

[94] Is the suspension bent?

[95] Yeah, the drive shaft in the backs of bent, I think is what's causing it to shake.

[96] Oh, so you got a wobbling your drive shafts?

[97] Yeah, I mean, it went Duke's a Hazard style off the back of the truck.

[98] That drive...

[99] As an adult, that show drives me nuts.

[100] Watching those cars land.

[101] Like, what are you doing those cars?

[102] Well, hey, this one can do it.

[103] So...

[104] Yeah, sort of.

[105] Maybe I'll donate it to Whistling Diesel and just let him kill it.

[106] I don't know.

[107] It would be pretty slick, but...

[108] Well, you could do that.

[109] Or if someone is listening to this and they want to do something cool, and they've got the cheddar, buy it from you, and then send it to Roadster Shop and have them put, like, a badass suspension...

[110] and you know make it a real sleeper they can do shit like that that because you have to get all that replaced anyway why not replace it with like better shit it'd be cool for somebody to have it it would have a cool story behind it you know this company called roaster shop they've been on my podcast before one of the things they do is they do like a sleeper series i think they call it the legend series um i don't i'm i'm actually not sure what they call it But what they do is they'll take an old car.

[111] So the outside looks like shit.

[112] The outside is patina and rust and all that stuff.

[113] And then it just completely redo everything underneath it with like a crazy engine, insane brakes, insane handling and suspension.

[114] But it still looks like a 72 GMC pickup chunk.

[115] But underneath it, it's just a monster.

[116] It's got all the moderate amenities.

[117] Because new cars are so much more efficient.

[118] Like, you don't realize when you...

[119] So they do stuff like this.

[120] That's not it.

[121] But they have different kinds of builds.

[122] No, so these are all just like the different ones that they did.

[123] Survivor Series, that's what it is.

[124] The Survivor Series, that's what it is, like they leave the outside.

[125] It's interesting to me that older vehicles had so much more character.

[126] Like, I don't know if it's just that it's...

[127] People are doing drugs, bro.

[128] That's what it is.

[129] We nailed it with them.

[130] We sat down with them and they introduced me to all these people that were the designers back in GM in the day.

[131] This guy was a freak.

[132] He was wearing like crazy red suits and this crazy guy was probably definitely on acid.

[133] And these are the people that created these insane shapes.

[134] And then when the sweeping psychedelics drug act of 1970 came along, they made everything to schedule one drug.

[135] Yeah.

[136] And that is when cars went downhill.

[137] It is when cars went downhill.

[138] It is when cars went down.

[139] It was early 70s.

[140] Yes.

[141] You can get a 71 barracuda and it's still sick.

[142] But you get into like 72, 73.

[143] Those cars look like shit.

[144] 75, they're garbage.

[145] 79.

[146] They're done.

[147] Everyone's on Coke.

[148] Everyone thinks everything they do is amazing.

[149] It's just you get the movie show girls.

[150] Everything lost its art and it became focused more on algorithms of what's going to sell and what's more efficient and what's easier, what's better to produce.

[151] Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on.

[152] They were going on past success.

[153] So if you go to like the 1980, some of the worst movies that were ever made, like the cocaine years, those, I really strongly feel like those people were going on reputations of sales.

[154] And, you know, the studio would put a lot of money behind someone who had a great reputation.

[155] And this guy's fucking partying and doing lines and writing crazy shit in these scripts.

[156] And some of them are good.

[157] And some of them are so good.

[158] But they're all kind of clunky.

[159] They're all kind of disconnected that like a true masterpiece of a movie isn't, you know, like taxi driver.

[160] Like you go back and watch taxi driver.

[161] That's a masterpiece of a movie.

[162] It's so connected.

[163] You're connected to all the action.

[164] It's like you're on the edge of your seat.

[165] It's wild.

[166] The acting's insane.

[167] Even Jody Foster as a kid is insane in it.

[168] It's so good.

[169] But cocaine movies in the 80s?

[170] They just, they were nuts, man. They didn't go on algorithms.

[171] I think they just went on what they thought people wanted.

[172] They probably took polls, but who the fuck's answering polls?

[173] Polls are the worst way to get information because you're only getting information from people dumb enough to answer polls.

[174] Like, that's such a small group of people.

[175] How many people answer polls when they call you up?

[176] How many people have fucking people with a life have time for a poll?

[177] Do you think Jordan Peterson's ever answered a poll?

[178] Yeah, like I always get those calls and immediately hang up.

[179] Yeah, you just shut the fuck up.

[180] I'm sorry, I have to do this to you, but bye.

[181] No, don't hang up.

[182] Some of them beg.

[183] Please.

[184] They can't get anybody to do it.

[185] Yeah, it's fascinating to see throughout history times when people were able to really connect with other humans, like on that, like whether it's the movie or film or cars or whatever.

[186] It's like maybe it was the psychedelics or whatever.

[187] I don't know, but there was a huge disconnect.

[188] It seemed like...

[189] after the 70s with all that things kind of went off and it's interesting even now like I see a lot of the new a lot of the new movies coming out they're all just sort of remakes of they're just like a they're like a reconceptualization of something that's happened 15 years ago there's not a lot of like new stuff out there for people to connect with it's Yeah, Matt Damon did this conversation about why it's so much more difficult to make movies now.

[190] There's no DVD sales anymore.

[191] And it was very interesting.

[192] And it kind of makes sense.

[193] I think it's just, it's really hard to finance those fucking things.

[194] And you want a guaranteed success.

[195] What's a guaranteed success?

[196] You need a superhero.

[197] People like superheroes, you know?

[198] And if you're superheroes trans, even better.

[199] You can figure out a way to make it every ethnicity inside the group of superheroes that are there.

[200] Perfect.

[201] Now we're good.

[202] Yeah.

[203] Now we need CGI.

[204] We need aliens, explosions.

[205] Yeah, I think CGI is a blessing and a curse because, like...

[206] I don't know, some of the best film, it doesn't necessarily have the best stunts or the, you know, like, you can tell where some of it's fabricated, but that's okay because the whole, you know the whole thing's the fabrication going into it.

[207] It's just about like being able to believe the story within it.

[208] That's what's important, you know?

[209] Even like, I'm not a huge movie guy, and I guess I'm, it's difficult for me to sit three hours and watch something straight.

[210] My mind's already long gone within the first 30 minutes doing something else, but Star Wars was really partial to me growing up.

[211] And I don't think they'll ever touch the original series, even though, yeah, like, you can tell some of it, like, even with some of, like, the renovations they've done on the newer versions of it, like, to make, adding CGI into the old films, it's like just the story of the originals to me meant a lot more than the older than the newer stuff just because of the.

[212] You don't believe it looking at it with your eyes as much, but you believe it more with your mind, like listening to what it has to tell you, you know?

[213] I think that Star Wars is like generational wealth.

[214] Like the original guy who started the company was a bad motherfucker.

[215] That guy was out there grinding and he was selling soap out of the back of a wagon in 1890.

[216] But the folks who inherited the company three, four, and five generations in, They're kind of flat.

[217] There's not, it's different.

[218] You know, when I watch Star Wars now, it's like a bunch of stuff happening.

[219] It's still fun.

[220] They're still good.

[221] I enjoy them.

[222] Yeah.

[223] But Star Wars won in the context of whatever year it was.

[224] What was it?

[225] 77 or something like that.

[226] Hey, there you go.

[227] Just take a pop.

[228] What do you think it is?

[229] What was first Star Wars, if you had a guess?

[230] Yeah, probably late 70s, I'd say.

[231] Yeah, I want to say like 70s.

[232] In my unprofessional opinion.

[233] Am I right, 77?

[234] Yay!

[235] Look at that time, was fucking groundbreaking.

[236] It was amazing.

[237] Rick Baker did the special effects.

[238] That was when I was a serious special effects nerd.

[239] Like I wanted to do, when I was a little kid, I wanted to do special effects for the movies.

[240] That's how I became a giant fan of Rick Baker.

[241] That's why we have that American Werewolf in London in the lobby.

[242] Oh, okay.

[243] Gotcha.

[244] Yeah, yeah.

[245] This guy named Pat McGee.

[246] It's funny because that's our second one, we have another one that's in the pool hall.

[247] And the reason why is that Pat McGee, who is this amazing special effects guy, he was also on the podcast back in the day.

[248] He made an American werewolf in London that you could buy online.

[249] And I'm like, that would be the sickest thing for the studio ever.

[250] And then Rick Baker came and was a guest, and Rick Baker said the proportions are off.

[251] Like the wolf, the arms weren't as long.

[252] It was like shorter was like this and that.

[253] So Pat McGee listened and he was like, shit, I got to make a better one.

[254] And so he made an even better one.

[255] And the new one is all hair.

[256] There's no synthetic hair.

[257] So it's all like, I think it's yak hair that they use.

[258] So it's like individual hairs are put in all over this wolf.

[259] And it looks fucking amazing.

[260] It does look.

[261] Yeah, that's the first thing that catches your eye walking in here, I'd say out of everything.

[262] Yeah, that thing's sick.

[263] You're not going to find one of those many other places.

[264] That was my 100 % my favorite horror movie.

[265] I love that movie because it's funny.

[266] It's terrifying.

[267] It has to do with the werewolf theme to me is so amazing that you take some person who's like a good person.

[268] They're a friendly, nice guy and you're like, hey man, you have to lock yourself in a cage.

[269] You're going to become a monster.

[270] It's like, what the fuck are you saying it doesn't make any sense and no one they never want to believe and you know it's gonna happen and in that one that was the first time in one of those movies where you got to see like the advancements of special effects like what year was american world from london let's guess that i want to say 82 i'm gonna say 82 84 81 81 um a show stuck with 82 back back then when you know you had special effects it was like kind of like they didn't move that good like they couldn't get their faces to move that good but he had figured out a way to get your hands to grow like And he had to figure out a way to get things in his cheeks or his cheeks were bubbling.

[271] Yeah.

[272] And it's awesome.

[273] And it's all real.

[274] None of it is CGI.

[275] And there's something about that uncanny valley when you're watching a CGI transformation.

[276] Your brain knows it's bullshit.

[277] For whatever reason, you're better off having it look fake but be a real thing like John Carpenter's the thing.

[278] You're better off with that than you are with CGI.

[279] For whatever reason.

[280] Yeah, I mean, I think we just have seen...

[281] There it is.

[282] There it is.

[283] This is a behind the scenes footage I was going to show you.

[284] Oh, wow.

[285] That's pretty cool.

[286] Because it still moves in a interesting way.

[287] Yeah, it's...

[288] But that's a physical thing moving.

[289] It's not a CGI that does look exactly like the wolf in the lobby, doesn't it?

[290] But back then, they couldn't even get the thing to close its mouth.

[291] Look how sick that is.

[292] That's awesome.

[293] Imagine if you're in a subway and you see that fucking thing turning your corner.

[294] Oh, my God.

[295] That seed was amazing, where the poor guy was stuck in the subway, and he was running from it, and then you see it at the bottom of the escalator stairs.

[296] That's like, just those quick glimpses of a thing like that.

[297] It's so much more terrifying than some long, CGI -eyed -up monster -killing someone's scene.

[298] Like, the American World from London was just a masterpiece.

[299] Landis just...

[300] Nailed it.

[301] It was the perfect horror movie.

[302] And it was funny.

[303] It's like there's funny moments in it.

[304] Yeah, that's cool when you can add, you can get humor in there too.

[305] Yeah, that kind of reminds him my dog when I don't give him table scraps.

[306] You know, he's got that terrible face like that.

[307] That thing was amazing.

[308] Yeah.

[309] But it's just the difference between digital and real.

[310] And you're going to have to deal with that soon.

[311] Because I guarantee you there's going to be some people that are making some CGI.

[312] They're already out there.

[313] Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

[314] What is that?

[315] I'm sure there are.

[316] Yeah, I haven't kept up with a lot just because, you know, I'm doing...

[317] So anything social media related right now or anything, any internet presence I have right now is coming from me off the phone just like before everything blew up.

[318] So I haven't invested the time to like look at everything circulating, but I've seen people like friends and family have sent me stuff.

[319] And some of it's pretty funny, but, you know, they've got all these different AI remixes of the song with different voices and overlay different faces and all.

[320] And it's it's funny to see where it's going to go, you know.

[321] That is funny.

[322] Yeah, you're going to have to deal with that.

[323] My daughter sent me some advertisement.

[324] She goes, did you do this advertisement?

[325] I'm like, nope.

[326] Nope, that's not really my voice.

[327] Yeah, like the day after things blew up, one of the towing companies had had an ad on Facebook that had, it wasn't really me, but it was a red beard and like the side profile of sunglasses looking out the window.

[328] I'm like, okay.

[329] How dare you?

[330] I guess I've made it anyway.

[331] That's when I realized like people are already ripping things off.

[332] And what's crazy is like every shirt that I've worn anywhere in public.

[333] So there's a there's a organization that I've, I'm not like officially related to or in any way have done anything with, but it's a friend of a friend in the neighborhood.

[334] It's called Nets with Vets and they take out.

[335] veterans with PTSD and let him go deep sea fishing and so he asked me last minute just to wear his shirt at one of the concerts and do you know now there's like 1500 listings online for counterfeit nets with vets shirts and so the organization reached out like hey are you like making shirts ripping us off it's like it's not me so it's a weird it's a weird thing but i've i've already experienced a lot of that stuff not so much on the ai side but just i don't know the internet's just such a rowdy place you know oh it's so rowdy The world's a rowdy place.

[336] It is, and maybe people bring their best and their worst on the internet.

[337] Like, I've always tried to stay off social media as much as possible, but I've learned very quickly that, like, Twitter and Facebook and stuff like you.

[338] You see comments and feedback from people, both overwhelmingly positive that maybe you wouldn't get in a personal conversation, but also like overwhelmingly negative too, you know?

[339] Yeah.

[340] People just use that as a vent that just, they just take whatever seething hatred they have inside of them.

[341] They're like, oh, I'm getting that guy with it, you know?

[342] If you had a song just about love that resonated like that, it would be almost impossible to hate you.

[343] But you have a song where you're talking about how people are fed up with shit.

[344] And it obviously resonated.

[345] I mean, I've seen songs go viral.

[346] But that's pretty banana, son.

[347] Your shit went to the moon right away.

[348] And, God, I'm not sure who sent it to me. I have to find out who sent it to me. because it's one of those things where like once one person sent it to me then it was like dozens of people were sent it yeah it um it's funny because originally that song wasn't in my it wasn't really even in my top five like it's not normally the type of song i've written songs with similar messages but as far as that sort of like i guess anthem format is what people are calling it's like an anthem like that's not something i would normally write but uh But it's an unlikely anthem.

[349] Yeah.

[350] Insane times.

[351] It would be an unlikely anthem.

[352] Yeah, I had no idea that that song would react the way it did.

[353] Well, you're a smart guy, and it's representative of how a lot of people feel.

[354] And it's also...

[355] There's some about the way certain people sing.

[356] And I don't know what it is because I can't sing.

[357] But there's a tone, there's an authentic sound.

[358] And I know when they're faking it.

[359] And it's not that they're not faking it in a beautiful way.

[360] Like there's a lot of people, the faking it's probably a bad term.

[361] But they're sounding perfect and they're singing a song.

[362] There's something missing.

[363] I don't know what it is.

[364] Yeah.

[365] But some people, like Janice Joplin's like one of my greatest examples.

[366] There's a, take a little piece of my heart.

[367] There's authenticity in that voice.

[368] that god damn man if that doesn't bring you to your knees play that play that we need to hear that we got time this fucking song this is one of those songs that every time i hear it it just takes me in my mind to what it must have been like to be alive in 1968 or whenever it was that this came out And this hippie chick who's 27 years old.

[369] Yeah.

[370] Has a voice from the heaven.

[371] God damn, son.

[372] Listen to that.

[373] Oof, give us some volume.

[374] Yeah, it's timeless, too.

[375] Like...

[376] Come on.

[377] Come on.

[378] Come on.

[379] Come on.

[380] Take another little piece.

[381] She was a magical person.

[382] Yeah.

[383] Magical person.

[384] It's a magical person.

[385] Yeah, but she's really singing with everything in her.

[386] Everything.

[387] There's...

[388] Yeah, it's a...

[389] I think...

[390] At least in my case, I think the one thing that's helped me to is that my singing isn't the best, but I've never had any, like, vocal lessons or anything.

[391] So the way I sing is just the way I sing.

[392] And so, like, I think even the same way with her and other people, it's like, it's maybe rough around the edges.

[393] It could be a little pitchy or it's, you know, you're not using the right part of your face when you project and whatever.

[394] And so, like, on paper, things aren't quite right.

[395] But to the, I guess, to another human, it's like, it sounds like, it sounds right, because it's, it is, it is what it is, you know?

[396] It's authentic.

[397] Yeah.

[398] Yeah.

[399] Yeah, I don't think there's any right way to do anything.

[400] I mean, there's, like, you see it in everything.

[401] There's a person who violates the rules, and they're the best at it.

[402] And then the rules almost morph into whatever that is.

[403] Like, it's funny, like, with music, yeah, music has...

[404] country in particular, but music in general has gotten way too wrapped up in like this algorithm of how many beats per minute it needs to have and how many verses and how they need to be layered.

[405] And it's like they've almost created this sort of like industry standard like OSHA rulebook of how music needs to be performed.

[406] And so like you can only do that so many thousands of times before people are like, okay, what else is there, you know?

[407] Well, people like that too.

[408] That's the thing.

[409] There's a lot of damn people.

[410] There's a lot of people.

[411] The problem I think a lot of people is they want you to like what they like.

[412] And if you don't like what they like, well, you like sucks.

[413] It's it's funny like that, man. We're so tribal.

[414] We are we are tribal with our cell phones.

[415] You know, we're an Android or PC.

[416] You know, Android people have to stick together.

[417] It's like we're so weird.

[418] We're so weird, but we're like that with our musical taste.

[419] We're like that with our cultural sensitivities or our cultural sensibilities, rather, like the way we feel about life and how life should be.

[420] We want everybody to kind of think along the ways that we think.

[421] It's very strange.

[422] And when a person like yourself gets labeled a right wing, left wing fanatic, like right out of the gate.

[423] Both in like a week and a half.

[424] And yeah, at least I know I'm doing something right.

[425] Like to me. Yeah, they're looking for your Biden campaign contributions now.

[426] They're going through your fucking taxes.

[427] The whole thing is so bonkers, man. Like can't they just accept that you made a great song and people enjoy it?

[428] Yeah.

[429] Why does it have, you know, why do people have to attack?

[430] Well, I think it's just for whatever reason I've been, there's, I'm the subject matter the last couple weeks.

[431] And I, and, you know, in everyone's defense, I probably haven't, I've waited for this opportunity, I guess, to really have a real conversation with somebody about whatever it is I am.

[432] So people are just trying to find, who's this Oliver Anthony guy and what is he and where does he work and who did he vote for and what's his family like and yada because they want to sort of build this image of whatever it is that the person behind the song represents for better or for worse the people who agree with it want to You know, I don't know.

[433] It's really funny to watch on my end because obviously I know what's true and what's not.

[434] And so like just even what I've skimmed through of people sending me like singing at the Super Bowl, like how many people have formed an opinion about whether or not I should be paid to sing at the Super Bowl?

[435] Like I'm not singing at the Super Bowl.

[436] That's just somebody made up.

[437] But, you know, there's been hundreds of hours of people's time wasted probably talking about.

[438] All these little, like, things that don't even exist.

[439] It's just somebody made him up and put them on the internet.

[440] So I'm just letting them ride.

[441] I think it's great.

[442] It's wild.

[443] I just think it's great, like, that at least the last couple weeks, I've been able to entertain everyone and get everyone's mind off, like, all the other horrible stuff that's going on in the world right now.

[444] At least everybody can have a good laugh, you know, so.

[445] Well, I mean, it's a subject of discussion.

[446] So, like, everybody is getting involved.

[447] And then somehow another became cultural.

[448] And then there was Dwight from the office.

[449] Oh, yeah.

[450] If he chimed in that if he was going to write a cultural anthem, what did he say?

[451] Something like you wouldn't write about overweight people on welfare.

[452] He would write about billionaires in their taxes.

[453] Yeah.

[454] There is nothing funnier.

[455] than millionaires, talking shit about billionaires.

[456] There is nothing funnier about millionaires pretending these billionaires are out of touch.

[457] Oh, yeah.

[458] And then, you know, take Dwight from the office down to West Virginia, you know, take them through those coal mining countries, take them through those places in Appalachia, where people have extreme poverty and pills have ravished those areas.

[459] Take them through there.

[460] And it's everywhere.

[461] Yeah, the sad thing is it's everywhere now.

[462] It's not...

[463] You know, it's funny.

[464] People write off the get -go, I guess because it was Radio WV that posted the original video.

[465] But, like, I've never once advertised myself as being necessarily from the mountains.

[466] My grandfather grew up in western part of Virginia in the mountains.

[467] But I'm from Farmville, which is technically Piedmont.

[468] But even in...

[469] Throughout rural Virginia, that poverty is a big issue and drugs are a big issue.

[470] And I mean, it's not just even in the rural areas.

[471] And you go into downtown Richmond or any downtown, anywhere, anywhere.

[472] It's like, it's almost like, yeah, these problems exist everywhere now that are.

[473] And I think, I mean, obviously they are because that's why the song resonated the way it did.

[474] You know, even in other countries.

[475] In other countries, yeah.

[476] Well, people are tired of being fucked with.

[477] And it seems like people in power always fucking with people.

[478] And it's just, I think it's a natural inclination that human beings have.

[479] And I think the founding fathers of this country recognize that when they set up our government.

[480] They set up our government to protect it against tyranny.

[481] And they did it by having all these different branches of government.

[482] And they're all coordinated.

[483] And there's a lot of fucking, a lot of stuff that keeps people from just running it the way they want to run it like a king.

[484] Well, I mean, I'm certainly no, I'm no professional historian, but my understanding is that the federal government was never intended to be the size that it is today.

[485] Like, it's just, we're very top -heavy in the way we're structured.

[486] You know, our federal government is enormous and out of control and almost impossible to manage.

[487] But then, like, on our community level and in our state government, things are, especially local government, things are just...

[488] very neglected and weak and disconnected.

[489] And so, like, that's why you see a lot of the problems, like, we shouldn't have to rely on the federal government to fix things out in the street in small town America.

[490] Like, the communities and the local government should be the ones fixing that.

[491] And that's the way I see things.

[492] Like, even before the...

[493] Even before our current form of government, I remember reading about, like, Articles of Confederation, and that was just an even smaller version of federal government, but it needed to have a little more structure than that.

[494] But even from day one, it seems like the federal government's never supposed to be the size that it's gotten to.

[495] Like, that's really...

[496] That's a good argument if the country didn't get to the size that it got.

[497] The problem is you can't have like 30 people running 300 billion people.

[498] But I think you could have more issues.

[499] So like I just, I don't, I think it's almost impossible.

[500] It's almost impossible for states to be able to have the control to make the right decisions for the people in their areas when the federal government limits them in so many different ways.

[501] I don't know anything about this, so I'm going to be talking out of my ass, but I would imagine they're probably low on funding too.

[502] There's probably a lot of issues, especially in places that are poor because they rely on taxes from those people.

[503] It's all very complicated, but the idea of taxing the rich being the way to fix all this.

[504] No, you're just going to give more money than the government, and they're not really good at doing stuff.

[505] You know, I mean, would it be nice if rich people donated to fixing streets and schools and stuff like that?

[506] Yeah, for sure.

[507] Yeah, it would be.

[508] Good call.

[509] Also, fat people shouldn't be buying fucking fudge rounds with food stamps.

[510] Also, that's not good.

[511] Yeah, and that's a funny...

[512] But also...

[513] That's a conversation that sort of got blown multiple ways.

[514] And really, I like to let a song be left up to the interpretation of the listener.

[515] But even with that, it's like, yeah, I would love to write a song about, like, I always thought it was funny to, like, when GM got bailed out of the recession after they made all these terrible decisions.

[516] Like, I never understood why we...

[517] I've never understood corporate welfare either to much of an extent.

[518] So I do understand the people making that argument.

[519] Well, the corporate welfare argument is you're going to lose a shitload of jobs.

[520] You can preserve those jobs, give those people a loan.

[521] They build back up, then they repay the loan.

[522] That's what they did, though.

[523] Yeah.

[524] So there's actually some benefit to that.

[525] So it keeps American jobs, and it also keeps one of the most iconic American car manufacturers in business.

[526] That's good for everybody.

[527] Yeah.

[528] I think.

[529] It's a good conversation to have.

[530] It is.

[531] Like what gets bailed out and what doesn't and why.

[532] Yeah.

[533] Yeah, but ultimately, yeah, I do see a lot of people that aren't taken care of.

[534] Yeah.

[535] And so you know the most used business that didn't get taken care of during the crash?

[536] The porn business.

[537] The porn business got wrecked.

[538] But they got wrecked because they used to rely on DVD sales.

[539] And then internet pirating came along and they lost everything.

[540] And meanwhile, these politicians are probably whacking off every day to them.

[541] That's a big industry even today.

[542] Oh, for sure.

[543] For sure.

[544] Well, hey, for whatever they lost during the recession, they made it back during COVID because that's my understanding.

[545] Everyone was doing that then.

[546] I don't know how that works.

[547] Like, who's getting paid?

[548] I don't know how that works.

[549] I'm sure there's a lot of money in that business.

[550] There's obviously a lot of eyeballs in that business.

[551] I believe it's one third of internet traffic worldwide or something bonkers like that.

[552] Isn't it something like that?

[553] It should be more.

[554] Let's find out what it is.

[555] What's the percentage of...

[556] And everybody's like, I don't know where it's coming from.

[557] It's not me. I've never even seen one of these films.

[558] That stuff's terrible for people.

[559] I...

[560] It's terrible for some people.

[561] I gave that up...

[562] I think it's like Adderall.

[563] Some people can handle it.

[564] That's one thing.

[565] That is one thing I had to give up.

[566] Yeah, because it's, I don't know, it does disconnect you from reality in many ways.

[567] And I think a lot of the weird perversion we see coming out sort of like now at this point you read about, I mean, I even reference some of it in the song, of course, but you read about like a lot of the weird things that people are doing that maybe wouldn't have been accepted 100 years ago.

[568] I think...

[569] people go down these rabbit holes with porn and they start off it's uh they start off with the video with the milkman and by the end of it's like where did i end i don't know people have to keep it's almost like a drug people have to keep chasing that thrill and it takes them down very destructive rabbit holes you know if you will so it definitely can for some people i have no issue with anybody watching it but i do hate the i hate to read about some of the things that it does to people it affects you know ruins marriages and that kind of thing it's like i don't know but i think a lot of things ruin people I think they also should be legal.

[570] Sure, yeah.

[571] Alcohol ruins people.

[572] I like the fact that bars are legal.

[573] Shit, I own a bar.

[574] Alcohol is legal.

[575] I like it.

[576] It's not good for everybody, though.

[577] Some people drink alcohol and they lose their fucking mind, and it's not good for them, whether it's genetically or whatever it is.

[578] They can't have a drink.

[579] I like a drink.

[580] You know, and I support your right to do whatever you want.

[581] Like, you know, I think if cocaine was legal, the same amount of people would probably do it, and it would be real.

[582] You'd get pure cocaine.

[583] It'd probably better.

[584] We'd probably have better music.

[585] If you're getting this fentanyl mixed shit and you're out of your fucking head, you're dying of overdoses.

[586] Yeah, well, that's the problem.

[587] Like, yeah, I mean, gosh, yeah, look at when the government banned something.

[588] It only makes it worse.

[589] So that's certainly not the answer.

[590] Yeah.

[591] I'm not interested in Adderall.

[592] I'm interested in trying it once.

[593] But I'm not interested in doing Adderall.

[594] I am interested.

[595] I'm a lion.

[596] I'm interested because everybody loves it, but I'm scared of it.

[597] The porn stats, you're right about 30%, but this is the only one I find to be odd.

[598] In 2020, 16 .5 years was the average age of first exposure to porn in the United States.

[599] 16 and a half, that's like you're a sophomore junior in high school.

[600] That's because 90 -year -old people are still alive and they do it based on them.

[601] I first saw my girly movie when I was 20.

[602] Frank had a reel -to -reel camera in the basement.

[603] We all got there.

[604] We had raincoats on.

[605] That's what it is.

[606] It's like when you factor in infant mortality to the average age that people died during the Roman era.

[607] That's what it is.

[608] So you expected to be lower than 16 and a half?

[609] Yeah, teenagers.

[610] Yeah, it should be.

[611] You give a kid a phone.

[612] Now, um, instantly they, I know that was one thing that was interesting to me in Virginia.

[613] They just recently changed the law where I think you have to enter your driver's license to watch porn now.

[614] Hilarious.

[615] Now they know exactly who's watching porn.

[616] They want to.

[617] Well, that's good if you're watching some freak shit, you know, if you're into, you know.

[618] It's like, I don't know, you don't want to give the government the ability to spy on you.

[619] Yeah.

[620] You just don't.

[621] And you don't want to give, because the government is just humans.

[622] We like to think of the government as being some all -powerful, all -moral, all -ethical entity that controls us in a perfect and very robust and well -considered way.

[623] But that's not real.

[624] Yeah.

[625] The reality is it's shit.

[626] human beings like you and like me and like Jamie people people that get to dictate what other people can and can't do and that's where shit gets weird yeah and a lot of people I think go into government with good intentions but it's like anything else once you I think you get in the mix it's like things change and you have to you have to go with the flow and sort of agree to agree on things that maybe you don't your heart doesn't necessarily agree with and so that's why you see politicians constantly changing narratives depending on like the political climate and so yeah it's kind of created this big disconnect between people like you and i and people like you and i that are in government because they're not they're not necessarily saying what they feel or what they think they're like let me keep my stripes just like everybody else's so i don't stand out you know like yes there's a lot of that There's a lot of...

[627] There's too much money tied up in politics.

[628] Too much bribe and extortion and slap on the back deals and stuff that should never be allowed to happen.

[629] Like, yeah, that's what's really created a lot of dishonesty within it.

[630] There's a bunch of decisions that got made a long time ago that really fucked us.

[631] And one of them was when they let drug companies advertise on television.

[632] There's only two countries in the world that allow that.

[633] Really?

[634] The United States and New Zealand.

[635] Yeah, and I think it was 97.

[636] Was it 97 when they allowed that?

[637] Yeah, well, it's funny because, yeah, you watch the commercial and then at the end, it's like...

[638] Side effects, man. It's the best thing in the world to get to that last 20 seconds.

[639] You're like, oh, I don't know about that.

[640] I know you're at a cookout.

[641] Everything looks great.

[642] Next thing you're an asshole is spraying blood and you're suicidal.

[643] Yeah.

[644] Like, what?

[645] Yeah.

[646] Yeah, like, I mean...

[647] And they say it all so fast.

[648] This is how...

[649] Yeah, blah, blah, blah, you know?

[650] Yeah, big pharma, I guess, right.

[651] Suicide ideation.

[652] Rectal bleeding.

[653] Yeah, well, I mean, that's...

[654] Like, fortunately, at this point in my life, I haven't been on many medications, but I went on a run with SSRIs, and I can tell you for me, it's like it's...

[655] The last 20 seconds applied more than the first two minutes of the commercial.

[656] Like, I didn't find any benefit in that.

[657] And it's...

[658] Yeah, it's...

[659] I don't know.

[660] I...

[661] I think there's alternatives to pharmacy medicine in a lot of cases, like maybe even if it's just habits, you know, like it's okay to prescribe a medication to keep somebody on course.

[662] They're like, you know, for example, like I've got a relative of mine.

[663] I won't call him out, but he won't change the way he eats at all.

[664] But he'll take whatever medications every day to keep his, you know, keep the diabetes away and keep his blood sugar, blood pressure low and all that.

[665] But it's like...

[666] There should be more integration of like, hey, maybe this is like a plan of what you should do to go along with this medicine.

[667] Ideally, eventually, it's like they don't want you to really get off the medicine, though.

[668] If anything, they want you to keep taking it, right?

[669] So, like, yeah, it's weird.

[670] It is weird that it's almost advertised like it's a soda or a car or something, you know?

[671] Well, it's weird that, you know, people are so, we're so kind of like dependent on other people to take care of us that we would rather go somewhere and get some medication than fix our life, then fix your lifestyle choices.

[672] And that's, and we've been programmed to sort of think that there's solutions for you out there.

[673] Go get those solutions.

[674] That's not a solution like internally you need to reconsider like what you're doing to your actual physical body.

[675] Like what are you doing to your physical body?

[676] Yeah.

[677] Like are you giving your physical body the exercise that it deserves to be robust and healthy?

[678] If you're not, you should.

[679] Are you eating food that's nutritious?

[680] If you're not, you should.

[681] Yeah.

[682] Well, and how do you do that in today's time anyway if you don't have a lot of money?

[683] Well, you can exercise for sure.

[684] Oh, exercise, certainly, yeah.

[685] There's a way to eat nutritious food on a budget, but you have to be diligent.

[686] And the problem is fast food.

[687] And food deserts, but if you have a supermarket, if there's a supermarket where you live, then you can get food.

[688] And if their supermarket has food, you can get healthy food.

[689] And it's not that much more expensive.

[690] Even people that go on a carnivore diet on a budget, and they go to Costco and get a big tube of ground beef, and they freeze a lot of it, and they cook a bunch of it, like, in portions.

[691] Yeah.

[692] You know, eggs aren't expensive.

[693] And that's a lot better than the crap from the store, but even it's not.

[694] Like, I mean, you read about...

[695] I mean, just in the part of the country I'm at, we've got really close family of ours that farms, the father and the son have both died from cancer from what they've been, you know, from the commercial agriculture they've been in spraying and all, like, and all that stuff ends up in the food.

[696] And you get, I've read about microplastics in the food.

[697] Like, you know, you're going by a tub of ground beef, like how much plastic was in the food that they, of all the bags of crap that they threw in there to feed the animals.

[698] But it's just, it is.

[699] Really, I think the only way to in this time in the area we're in, unless you're going to go buy really expensive food out of like some fancy, smancy grocery store that I can't spell the name of.

[700] It's like you're really better off going to somebody local and buying it direct, like buying it almost straight from the farmer.

[701] Well, certainly if you have an organic farm near you.

[702] Yeah, definitely.

[703] But yeah, pesticides and herbicides are a real deal.

[704] Atrazine, you know, Alex Jones famously said, they're turning the frogs gay.

[705] But they are.

[706] They're making them hermaphrodites.

[707] They're making them switch sexes.

[708] I mean, atrazine is a very potent endocrine disruptor, and it's a fertilizer.

[709] You know, or is it a pesticide?

[710] Pesticide.

[711] One of those.

[712] I think it's a pesticide.

[713] Something needs to be done about it.

[714] But there's...

[715] You know, there's a lot of that shit that they spray on food.

[716] Something like 90 plus percent of people tested have glyphosate in their blood.

[717] Yeah.

[718] That's wild.

[719] I mean, that is an herbicide that they spray on stuff.

[720] Yeah.

[721] So to me, it's like I, yeah, you can definitely eat healthy.

[722] But even then, like a lot of the food today isn't very healthy just because, inherently just because of the way it's grown.

[723] Yeah.

[724] Well, there's a lot that is.

[725] There's still a lot that is.

[726] You can certainly eat healthy.

[727] Yeah.

[728] It's not easy, but neither is being sick.

[729] Being sick's not easy either, man. Yeah.

[730] Just an amount of money you're going to lose by having a body that's defeating you.

[731] Every turn, you're always tired.

[732] You have no inspiration.

[733] You have no motivation.

[734] You have no motivation.

[735] You can't get shit done.

[736] You know, it's one of the reasons why I can get a lot of shit done.

[737] Being healthy makes a giant difference.

[738] You have so much more energy than regular people.

[739] who are just like sitting around all day because you don't demand anything of your body.

[740] If you don't demand anything of your body, it's like, good.

[741] We'll just fucking atrophy into a sack of bones and meat.

[742] Yeah, being complacent is like the worst thing for you.

[743] Physically testing yourself is good and then mentally testing yourself and spending your time working towards some sort of purpose.

[744] Like I think that's really what was...

[745] That's really what was killing me the last few years was just, and I see this in friends and family and people I know, but even just from a mental standpoint, not spinning your day, working towards whatever purpose it is that you feel like you really need to accomplish deep down inside.

[746] I think that will really kill you over a period of time.

[747] Like, you know, you go work your nine to five or whatever you come home and then you just start swiping, start wasting the rest of your evening.

[748] Like that's your time to be productive working towards whatever passion project or hobby Sure, as long as you don't enjoy your 9 to 5.

[749] Some people actually enjoy their 9 to 5 and they want to go play video games.

[750] I'm trying to shame them, folks.

[751] Maybe you should talk to your wife every now and again, but if you want to play Diablo 4 at 3 o 'clock in the morning, I support your right to do it.

[752] Yeah, and I don't even mean so much video games, but just like that mindless scrolling that I've found myself being into too.

[753] Bro, I've seen more people get hit by cars over the last like five months on Instagram.

[754] More people get shot.

[755] More people get mauled by animals.

[756] Instagram's wild.

[757] It is wild.

[758] The shit they're allowed to show you.

[759] Yeah.

[760] And like one of them was like, it's okay.

[761] He's fine.

[762] Like, that was like in the, like, there was a big, like, letter, you know, a big print over the video of this guy get hit by a truck.

[763] Like, that guy is not fine.

[764] There's not a, I'm not a medical expert.

[765] But when you get hit by a truck and launched into the windshield of an oncoming car, I guarantee you, you're not fine.

[766] No, I get it.

[767] Look, I've been that guy that sat, I've wasted at least an hour sometimes in a row watching like Russian dash cam videos of like these logging trucks flying off the road and stuff.

[768] Like, I don't know.

[769] There's something like that it just gets your brain excited, you know?

[770] I don't know.

[771] Yeah, it's not good for you.

[772] It's very addictive.

[773] It's not good for you to see that many people die and that many people get bit by crocodiles.

[774] I've seen more people get there by crocodiles.

[775] I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my algorithm.

[776] Yeah.

[777] But I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles or the last six months than having a long -ass time.

[778] But yeah, it's mostly a waste of time.

[779] But it's also fun.

[780] There's a lot of funny videos on there.

[781] It's just a matter of being disciplined.

[782] You just got to know when you're scrolling too much.

[783] And the way I avoid that is by doing stuff.

[784] So there's a lot of stuff I do, you know, whether it's archery or playing pool.

[785] There's a lot of stuff that I do where I don't, there's no time, you don't, you're not spending any time on that.

[786] And so there's a complete different focus.

[787] Like when I'm shooting a bow, when I'm shooting at a target and I'm just practicing, my mind is empty.

[788] All I'm thinking about is the shot process.

[789] All I'm thinking about is whether or not the arrow broke clean.

[790] Did I move my shoulder?

[791] Why did that one go three inches left?

[792] Like, what happened there?

[793] Was it my elbows?

[794] My elbow up high?

[795] How was my follow -through?

[796] Okay, let's think about it and let's do it again.

[797] So that's like a mind -cleansing thing.

[798] Yoga class is like that.

[799] If you can get to find a good, hot yoga class, man, when you're fucking...

[800] standing there holding on to one foot and one foot is extended and you're hobbling around on one like bitch you ain't thinking about jack shit but what that does a good job of connecting you to your body too which is something maybe we're not very good at either it's very good for people yoga is like my one of if i had one thing to recommend someone who's never done any exercise before please try yoga don't hurt yourself go slow because a lot of people do hurt themselves yeah i can't imagine me trying to do that One of my friends as a doctor said that yoga is like one of the main people that...

[801] It's yoga and jiu -jitsu, he said.

[802] People that come in to see him for treatment.

[803] But jih Tjitsu makes sense.

[804] It's literally a sport of trying to break bodies.

[805] But yoga, you would think it would be the opposite, if anything.

[806] Yeah, I've pulled muscles in yoga.

[807] Yeah, you're doing hard stuff.

[808] But hot yoga, I think, is a little better for that because it really does warm your body up, like, almost instantly.

[809] And then, like, if you do the Bikram series, I know that guy was a creep, but if you do the series, it's not even, I don't believe he didn't even invented that series of poses.

[810] I think he just popularized it.

[811] And they're all like standard yoga poses.

[812] But that series is designed very well to get you really warmed up.

[813] So by the time you get into more complicated and challenging movements, your body's pretty warmed up.

[814] It's a good system.

[815] It's fucking hard, man. A 90 -minute hot yoga class at 105 degrees is a motherfucker.

[816] That sounds great for the...

[817] Sounds like a great walk away from that, the feeling you'd get.

[818] Oh, you feel so relaxed.

[819] That is one thing I'm looking forward to now is, like, you know, continuing to focus on mental health and that area, but also, like, I'm excited to get into better shape physically.

[820] And just, like, the only thing I've done in the last six months at all is running.

[821] We were planning on...

[822] We were planning on trying to schedule a run in September that I think was like 10 miles or something.

[823] So it was a friend of mine that I've been running with, you know, two or three days a week.

[824] And even that, just whatever's on your mind when you start, it's gone by the time you leave.

[825] You know, it's something good about like getting everything connected again.

[826] But music is big for me on that too.

[827] You know, that's...

[828] just getting your playing an instrument and singing like you're just everything's that everything's all all one again you know it's very easy especially and maybe because of social media and because of the way technology I don't know what it is it caught I'm certainly no Dr. Phil but it's like the world we live in the day your mind is very easily disconnected from like your body physically like it's you can get lost just worrying and thinking and doing and you know it's it's good to have something like that I guess just have groundings the word or whatever, I don't know, but it's good to have something like that to like get you back in the reality again.

[829] Yeah, my belief is that all human beings need something creative.

[830] Whether that's something creative is a game that you play, that you get to like invent moves or think about things and strategies or whether that game or whether that creativity expresses itself in music or in illustrate drawing, painting, something.

[831] I think people really get a great satisfaction out of making things.

[832] and of creating things sure and everyone's good at something that's what's crazy i'd say almost everyone's good at something i know some people i well maybe they haven't figured out what it is but you know like you'd be um that's one thing i've enjoyed over the years with like what i've done in the past is meeting all these different people even if it's like i you'd be surprised at how how unique people are and what they're able to do and what like I don't know, everyone seems like they have that one thing.

[833] Maybe even if it's something that they had as a kid that they lost along the way.

[834] But like people are really good at shit.

[835] Sometimes you underestimate people and people don't spend the time they need to develop the craft it is they have.

[836] It's also sometimes people don't find a thing early on in their life.

[837] where they get into it.

[838] You know, so if they don't have a thing ever, it's very difficult for them to gravitate towards a something.

[839] But that's why, that's like martial arts classes are great for that.

[840] Because all of a sudden you're learning this new thing and it's exciting.

[841] Like, oh my God, it's Monday night.

[842] We're going to go to Jiu -Taloo class.

[843] You got your little white belt on, you're tying it, you're like, oh, you're freaking out.

[844] But afterwards, you feel like, wow, I really did something.

[845] I really challenged my fears.

[846] I really took, like, a class, and I'm learning some stuff, and I'm doing it with other people that are learning, and I'm making new friends.

[847] Like, there's something really cool about that.

[848] And that's also a thing that people need that they don't have is, like, a real community.

[849] You know, like feeling of community.

[850] You know, like one of the nice things about comedians is that we all work together.

[851] So this is like this feeling, this is a real feeling of community.

[852] We go on the road together.

[853] We travel to different countries together.

[854] Like all the guys that I go on the road with, we're friends.

[855] Like we hang.

[856] We laugh.

[857] We're just, we're having drinks and having dinners, places.

[858] And just everywhere you go, you're with family.

[859] It's beautiful.

[860] It's beautiful in that way.

[861] If you don't have that, man, if you don't have a thing that you're really, like, where you're really, like, connected to like -minded people, it sucks.

[862] It's not fun.

[863] You know, if, like, maybe the friends that you have are all fucked up and they're going in the wrong direction, try to pull you with them.

[864] Right.

[865] Maybe your job sucks.

[866] That happens.

[867] Like, you have to be careful who you're keeping your social circle because you'll end up just like them, you know?

[868] Well, you have to be careful of energy vampires.

[869] There's people that are energy vampires.

[870] And they'll steal from you.

[871] They really will.

[872] They'll steal from you.

[873] They don't want to do the work, but they want you to do the work for them.

[874] Like they want you to be involved in everything that they're doing, even though they're not making any changes.

[875] And they want to drag you in.

[876] And they want it to be the focus of all the attention.

[877] And you really find out after a while that if you were around positive people, then all of a sudden you're uplifted and you have all this energy.

[878] Yeah, and it's funny how that works.

[879] Yeah, it's interesting, all that stuff kind of goes on behind the scenes and you don't really think about it.

[880] Yeah, one thing that really benefited me Like even in my early 20s on, a lot of my friends seem to be older.

[881] One of my best friends, he's in his, he's probably, I'm 31, he's probably in his mid -40s.

[882] And then everyone above them is like, my best drinking buddy for years, he's like 65, 66.

[883] I love hanging out with older people, though, because they're just, they're a lot wiser.

[884] Some of them.

[885] Well, you have to care.

[886] I mean, you have to choose.

[887] Yeah.

[888] This of old dummy.

[889] Well, I'm a dummy too, so it's okay if I'm hanging out with dummies.

[890] But yeah, I like hanging out with older people.

[891] Like they just, and it reconnects you back to like, I don't know, they've just experienced so much more than you ever could in that extra 20 years or whatever, 10 years.

[892] It's like those are the kind of people you want to surround yourself with are people that are going to.

[893] that are more experienced than you, more wise, people that you can aim toward being.

[894] Certainly not people that are immature or on a bad streak or even like now, like I'm cutting out the drinking.

[895] Like I said, I haven't gotten high.

[896] And I guess almost two months now, a month and a half or two months.

[897] That was your problem.

[898] Was the weed?

[899] Yeah.

[900] It was a, well, the problem for me was I knew that I needed to do this.

[901] Like I knew I needed to.

[902] I procrastinated with music a long time.

[903] I mean, I'm 31.

[904] I've been playing guitar and singing on and off since I was a kid.

[905] My grandma was in a band years ago.

[906] And so, like, I remember as a little kid, what got me interested in all of it was, you know, Duke's a Hazard when I was a kid.

[907] I was like five.

[908] And I used to sit with my grandma and we'd sit and watch Duke's A Hazard and watch Whalen Jennings pick that guitar.

[909] Of course, I had no idea who Whalen Jennings was, but...

[910] That just, like, I just fell in love with that.

[911] And so grew up listening to, like, that 70s country.

[912] And she loved all the old stuff, like the 50s and 60s.

[913] And even in the 70s, even, you know, Janice and all that.

[914] And so, like, she really introduced me a lot into music when I was a little kid.

[915] And so, like, I just kind of held onto it, but never...

[916] never pursued it the way I should.

[917] And then I'd play at a bonfire party or I'd play it, whatever.

[918] It's a friend's house.

[919] And everybody's like, man, you got to do something with this.

[920] You don't want to waste this talent you've got and whatever.

[921] And that would almost make me feel even shittier because I'm like, oh, man, I suck.

[922] Like I'm such a piece of crap for not doing something with this.

[923] So, yeah, like, when I was outside of work, it's like I would just, I would just, I drink, I'd get just absolutely stone, and I would just sit around and try to think about anything but what it was that I really needed to be doing, which was like...

[924] And so it was kind of, like, funny, but that's ended up what kind of sparked me into, like, writing all these songs and doing all this stuff, because it's like I...

[925] I don't know, just like with you, probably with what you do, Jiu -Jitsu or whatever, it's like for me, songwriting is, it gets my head, like you said, getting your head clear, you know, because that's all you can, and I, songwriting is interesting for different people, but now that I've been in the, I guess I've been in the industry for two weeks and I've talked to like...

[926] Now that you've been in the industry and conquered it.

[927] Now that I'm an industry expert, it's like some of the other musicians I've talked to, like the people I've looked up to over the years, they experience this too.

[928] But certain people, when you songwrite, it's a very, it's dramatic.

[929] Do you write all your own songs?

[930] Yeah.

[931] But it's...

[932] Have you been accused of not writing your own songs?

[933] Very early on, yeah, because since my state, I guess it's not even my stage name, it's Oliver Anthony music.

[934] And so it's supposed to represent music from, you know, Oliver Anthony music is my grandfather.

[935] And so he grew up in the 30s in the mountains and used to tell all these wild stories about how life was back then.

[936] But the music's just sort of a characterization of like that period in time and those people, you know, and that's...

[937] So yeah, when...

[938] So your real name is not Oliver?

[939] Yeah, Christopher Anthony Lunsford is my real legal name.

[940] And so that's what's on like, like if you look up the songwriting...

[941] Why did you decide to sing as Oliver Anthony?

[942] Just in...

[943] Well, like I said, I have it.

[944] I just had the YouTube channel listed as Oliver Anthony music.

[945] Um...

[946] Just because, like, that's sort of the demeanor or the, like I said, the character I was, like, that older Virginia style music.

[947] Like, if you look, if you go on YouTube and you look up that type of music from back then, like, there's old recordings of people.

[948] Like, that's what I just love that type of stuff.

[949] Do you think you're going to keep that name?

[950] Yeah, I mean, a lot of people still call me Chris.

[951] And I've posted on social media, call me whatever.

[952] I mean, I've been called a lot worse than either of those things.

[953] But yeah, it'll stay Oliver Anthony music indefinitely.

[954] Yeah.

[955] It's a special name.

[956] And it's a special name to me, not only because it was my grandfather's name, but it's sort of like, to me, it reminds me of how much, how different things were back then.

[957] But he was born Oliver Anthony, but everybody called him Antony growing up.

[958] And so, like, he always thought his name was Anthony Oliver.

[959] and uh last name ingle and so like it wasn't until he was in his 60s and going to retire he realized that his name didn't match his birth certificate so he had to actually change his legal name when he was in the 60s but it's because back then he thought his name was Anthony Oliver yeah and so his whole life but his parents named him so it's just like but all the paperwork back then was so scattered up because a lot of people were illiterate and of course documents weren't tracked as well as they are now, you know?

[960] And so it's like, there's people in the family that have a different spelling and it's the same last name, but the few letters are different and stuff.

[961] But it's just kind of cool.

[962] Like, but he just, he just thought that was crazy.

[963] He had to change his name and he was 65 so he could draw his retirement and all because of Social Security and everything was under a totally different name, but.

[964] That's crazy.

[965] It's just special to me. He was, he's like the only other one in the family like me. Most of our family's like average height, six feet and under, but he and I were both, you know, six, six, red -headed, left -handed.

[966] Like, I just, I don't know, in a lot of ways, I just, I thought it was special to kind of respect him.

[967] He passed away in 2019, and that's kind of when I...

[968] I guess that's when I first kind of adapted the name for the music.

[969] I didn't really get serious with anything until probably...

[970] Two weeks ago?

[971] Yeah, until a couple weeks ago.

[972] Probably until...

[973] I think I uploaded the first original.

[974] Like, when I decided I was in it to win it and I really wanted to make this thing happen.

[975] It was probably about it, yeah, probably May of last year when I uploaded, Ain't Got a Dollar.

[976] Or it might have been Rich Man's Goal was the first one I uploaded on YouTube.

[977] But that's when I decided like, all right, I'm doing this thing.

[978] But, yeah.

[979] So you were just smoking too much weed, drinking too much, and just procrastinating.

[980] Yeah, yeah.

[981] Yeah, and so that, and, you know, like, anxiety is definitely something that's underestimated.

[982] You know, I used to laugh about, not laugh about, but I used to just not really understand when people talked about mental health and anxiety, because everyone gets stressed out over stuff, and so you think of anxiety as being just like this normal phenomenon everyone deals with, but.

[983] your mind can really put you in a dark place to where that thing, it just like, it just holds on to you like a, you know, and it just makes it very difficult for you to do anything.

[984] And so, yeah, I spent at least two years in my life almost constantly just having what felt like just a knot right here, just wrenching at me. Well, that's especially true for people that are pursuing a non -traditional life.

[985] you know, that doesn't have any guarantees.

[986] It's a wild life to try to be an entertainer, like to just to choose to try to make it in this wild world of people that are singing and making songs and you want people to pay attention to you.

[987] Like, do you know how many fucking people are singing?

[988] How many people can sing?

[989] A lot.

[990] A lot.

[991] A lot.

[992] A lot.

[993] A lot.

[994] A lot of people are recording things.

[995] And now with YouTube and the like, how many people are putting stuff up on the internet for other people to enjoy?

[996] It's a lot.

[997] The idea that you're going to stand out.

[998] So you're filled with anxiety just because of that.

[999] Because this future's uncertain.

[1000] Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it, a lot of the anxiety came from me just feeling like I was running out of time.

[1001] Like I knew that, I knew that I had an ability to pursue this and kind of take this adventure on.

[1002] And I just had kept, like I said, for 10 years or more, I'd just, I'd pick the thing up for a few months and then I'd put it down.

[1003] And just always doubting myself, you know?

[1004] Yeah.

[1005] Well, I think it's, I mean, the universe in some weird way, always sort of finds, like for people that becomes very successful, especially like yourself, it's almost like that's the best way to do it.

[1006] Like I've never met anybody where I was like, your way to do it is the wrong way to do it.

[1007] Like everybody that I meet that becomes successful, especially like overnight people, it's like, oh, I see all these fat, well, that's why you're good.

[1008] That's why you're good.

[1009] You're good because you had a real life, like a real tortured, regular life, like regular people.

[1010] If you're in the fucking Mickey Mouse Club when you're 14 and then I'll say you're famous to me, I mean, I love Miley Cyrus to death and she's fucking insanely talented.

[1011] And I heard her new album is her best ever.

[1012] Everybody's raving about it.

[1013] But I feel...

[1014] bad for people that become famous when they're young.

[1015] I just feel like that's a heavy burden for you to have to carry, and you didn't ask for it.

[1016] You can't ask for it.

[1017] You don't know what it is.

[1018] It's like, you know, it's like getting a face tattoo when you're five.

[1019] Like, I want to get a heart tattooed in my forehead.

[1020] Let everybody know I'm full of love.

[1021] Like, okay, Billy, let's take you the tattoo park.

[1022] Like, I want to be famous so everybody knows me. Okay, Billy, let's get you in front of TV.

[1023] Yeah, and it's tough because, yeah, because then...

[1024] Everyone's perception of everything's different anyway based off the way they were brought up.

[1025] Like, you know, the way you and I look at something, we both look at something a certain way.

[1026] And it's our way of looking at it.

[1027] And to us, that's reality.

[1028] But everyone's perception is just different, just inherently.

[1029] Just based off the way we were raised and maybe even our genetics and the way our...

[1030] Things we've experienced are the way our parents taught us things.

[1031] And so, like, yeah, it's, it's, it is tough if you get thrown into that at such an early age, because this is just such a, I feel bad for anybody that gets thrown into all this anyway.

[1032] Like, the things I've seen and heard and witnessed and.

[1033] Just in a couple of weeks.

[1034] You need to do this and you got to do that.

[1035] Yeah, but that's just people pull out your strengths.

[1036] This almost crazy sense of urgency, everyone's sort of thrown on me to do something with this.

[1037] And it's like, I don't, um, yeah at the end of the day i've got to i've got to remember who i was you know a month ago and i've got to make sure that i you know and it's okay to evolve from that and change and like i don't i don't want to always be stuck being that guy but i don't want to like leave him behind either you know i don't want to listen man just be yourself you're going to be fine this is like this conversation that we had over the phone i said fuck all those urgent people you have talent You have talent.

[1038] You don't need anything else but talent.

[1039] Talent and authenticity.

[1040] You got both of those things.

[1041] This urgency thing.

[1042] What the fuck are they talking about?

[1043] You literally had the number one song like instantly.

[1044] You can't do that again.

[1045] How the fuck do you know?

[1046] You don't know jack shit.

[1047] These people are crazy.

[1048] They don't understand what's going on and they don't understand what it's like to be famous.

[1049] You are in a weird spot right now.

[1050] What you need to do right now is just keep being you.

[1051] And don't let anybody control you and don't let anybody wrap.

[1052] And certainly don't let anybody put you on some crazy publicity campaign to try to capitalize on this great moment and immediately get some large record machine behind you and mass produced.

[1053] Yeah, because that really goes against the whole message that I wanted to get out in the first place.

[1054] And so, yeah, what would it benefit me to sign a big deal or have some, like, I don't know, as busy as things get, I don't know that I'd ever let anybody even manage my social media and stuff.

[1055] Like, that's just something that I'd like to have the hand on.

[1056] And then if, you know.

[1057] I do mine.

[1058] I do all mine.

[1059] Yeah.

[1060] I don't want anybody do my shit.

[1061] That's ridiculous.

[1062] Like, just with your, like we talked about earlier, your show in general, the reason people watch it isn't, you know, you could add more people in and have more, uh, have more special effects and lights and what, you know, figuratively speaking, like you could make, you could make this into something bigger than what it already is, but it would just, it would just take away.

[1063] Like, sometimes the more you add, the more you take away.

[1064] It's the, it's the fact that you have conversations with people that you're genuinely interested in.

[1065] Like, we don't have enough real conversation any way in the world.

[1066] Like, We have very little.

[1067] I had never had a Twitter account, and I made one a couple weeks ago to start uploading everyone.

[1068] Oh, you got to get on X and upload all the stuff.

[1069] And within like a week, I'm like, okay, I get it.

[1070] I'm tapping out.

[1071] Yeah, I don't read any of my stuff on Twitter.

[1072] I do post occasionally.

[1073] You know, what I do like to do is repost things that I think are interesting.

[1074] I do like that.

[1075] Yeah, well, thanks.

[1076] Yeah.

[1077] I appreciate it.

[1078] Well, that's what Instagram I put that up on.

[1079] Okay, yeah.

[1080] Yeah, but yeah, a lot of people liked it.

[1081] I think on my account alone, it had more than, let me say, I'll tell you how many views it had.

[1082] I want to say it's somewhere around 11 million views.

[1083] I was explaining to someone the other day.

[1084] I was like, do you know how insane that is?

[1085] Yeah.

[1086] Like, you could put something up that this guy just made 12 .8 million views.

[1087] Wow.

[1088] That's bonkers, dude.

[1089] That's bonkers.

[1090] That's a lot of fucking human beings.

[1091] That's a lot of human beings.

[1092] Yeah, so I've had to ask myself why that happened the way it did.

[1093] And look, I'm not, I've said this a hundred times already, but like I'm certainly no preach, like people have made comments about like, oh, well, why does he, he reads scripture or whatever and talks about God, but then he does other things like, like I do have some foul language and I do sing some songs that I've written about whatever, you know, getting high and hanging out in the woods, but like, it's just what I am.

[1094] Like, I'm not here to say that I'm anybody better than anybody else by any means.

[1095] Well, didn't God invent the woods and weed?

[1096] Yeah, well, there you go.

[1097] I don't believe anybody that tells that God doesn't want you to have weed.

[1098] I do want to use, if there's anything I would like to capitalize on with my opportunity, it's just like, because for me, just being in the position that I've been in the last two years and just the trash I've had in my head is, I tell you, like, I don't care who you, and look, I haven't been in a church in 10 years, and I'm not saying I'd ever go back into one again.

[1099] I don't know about all that, but, uh, There's a lot of things in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that make sense and are timeless to today.

[1100] Like if people just could find – if people could just have enough open -mindedness to just read a little bit of Proverbs and just see what it has to say, I think, like, it would make the world a better place.

[1101] There's a lot of truth in those words.

[1102] They don't just talk about – it's – It's real life advice that I work toward every day applying in my own life.

[1103] So was there like a moment with you?

[1104] Because I've read the legend story, but I wanted to ask you this live in person.

[1105] Was there a moment when you had like a literal come to Jesus moment where you realized you were at rock bottom?

[1106] Yeah, I mean...

[1107] What was going on?

[1108] Yeah, I was at a point where I was having...

[1109] Man, I don't even think I'd call it panic attacks.

[1110] It was just like...

[1111] I was so...

[1112] Everything was just so screwed up.

[1113] I was getting, like...

[1114] I was getting chest pains and shooting pains all down into my...

[1115] Like, I was having, like, almost cardiovascular symptoms that are just...

[1116] I guess now I realize there's stress and anxiety related, but I thought, I really thought I was gonna die.

[1117] Holy shit.

[1118] This is why you're drinking a lot?

[1119] I was, well, I think maybe the weed was even causing some of that.

[1120] Like I was slamming down, you know, we can grow it in Virginia now, so I grew, you know, a lot of, I grew a lot of pounds of weed last year.

[1121] And so like, I've got, and I don't even know what I'm gonna do with it all now, but I sell that on eBay.

[1122] I've got, yeah.

[1123] Sell it in your truck.

[1124] You can buy a suburban.

[1125] I'll save it.

[1126] Yeah, I'll save it for hard times.

[1127] If you come to Virginia, the back of the suburban, where it's legal, the back of the suburb will be packed with as much weed that is legal to sell you.

[1128] But yeah, I had grown some crazy stuff and was smoking it and Oliver Anthony weed brand.

[1129] We're in.

[1130] Let's go.

[1131] Let's go.

[1132] Hold Cogan's got his own weed brand.

[1133] Why don't you?

[1134] We'll talk about all that, the growing, because I am intrigued with the growing.

[1135] But yeah, to your point, it was like I almost disconnected from reality.

[1136] I don't want to say I was having like...

[1137] I was never psychotic or having like...

[1138] You're freaking out.

[1139] I was very disassociated from, like, my reality.

[1140] Like, I can remember just being around really close friends having dinner one night.

[1141] You know, like, you know, you get warm and fuzzy feelings being around people you care about.

[1142] And everything was just ice cold.

[1143] Like, I just tried.

[1144] It was almost like I just tried to feel something other than what I was feeling.

[1145] And what were you thinking during these times?

[1146] I was thinking that...

[1147] Like, what was the state of your life?

[1148] I was thinking like that I was gonna...

[1149] I was thinking like...

[1150] See, I don't know, suicide's a weird thing because...

[1151] And I can't speak for everybody, but for me, like, it wasn't that I ever wanted to kill myself.

[1152] Like, I knew I wanted to keep trying to fight and get out of whatever it is I was in, but it was almost like, at some point I thought I was going to do it almost as a fight or flight response.

[1153] Like...

[1154] that i couldn't escape whatever it is that i was in and like that was my own that was going to eventually be my only way out and so as sad and as whatever like i hate even talking about this but i feel like i should talk about it i mean where else to talk about it but on joe rogan but it's like that was one of the things that compelled me to throw a lot of these videos up just off my phone you know like it's funny when i had when i had those songs and maybe i still do i haven't looked at the charts in a week or whatever but i had stuff on itunes that was like in the top two or three spots other songs those were just recorded off my android phone uploaded on youtube i ripped the wave file off the youtube video and then just uploaded through distro kid and so like people were buying like the number two song on itunes at one point i think it was ain't got a dollar and that's what i that's just the audio from the youtube video and But I wanted to get all those, I had a lot of these songs sitting around.

[1155] So it's from a microphone from the phone, standard microphone?

[1156] From my front camera on my Android phone, yeah.

[1157] It sounds pretty good.

[1158] I wanted to get all that up, though, because I didn't, I really didn't know, like, I didn't know if I was going to be around to do it.

[1159] Can you pause that for a second?

[1160] Let's listen to that.

[1161] I want to hear that if you don't get freaked out and uncomfortable, listen to your own voice.

[1162] That's okay, no. Okay, good.

[1163] No, I like it.

[1164] Let's listen, because I want to hear what that sounds like.

[1165] This would be the, yeah, the ink got a dollar of the original version is a good example.

[1166] Recording off of Android phones might be the new thing.

[1167] You can tell it's very mono.

[1168] The new authentic.

[1169] Recording off of Android phones.

[1170] Well, I ain't got them dollar.

[1171] I don't need to die.

[1172] I got a little spot in the country where I spend all of my time.

[1173] When the sun goes down on this city -bitty town, we can light up the bowl and pass it around.

[1174] I ain't got a dollar, but I don't need a dime.

[1175] Listen, man, you don't got to listen to nobody.

[1176] Tell them all to eat shit.

[1177] Shut the fuck up.

[1178] You could do whatever you want, man. You just keep doing that.

[1179] You just keep doing that and do concerts.

[1180] That's what got me uploading the songs originally.

[1181] I was like, I'll just go ahead and get something out there.

[1182] And then...

[1183] I mean, man, I was taking aspirin every day thinking like I was going to have a heart attack.

[1184] It was just, I was having like all this crap.

[1185] So what was the, when you were recording these things and releasing them, what was the hope?

[1186] The hope was the people that would enjoy them, the hope of the people.

[1187] Yeah, I was just trying to leave, I was just trying to leave them out for the world in case like.

[1188] In case you died?

[1189] Yeah, in case I, I guess in case either I died from a heart attack or like.

[1190] Do you know how huge these songs would be if you died?

[1191] I think that's like the most horrible rumor about Jimmy Hendrix is that his manager, it was like a gangster, had him killed.

[1192] His manager had him killed because he owned more of a legacy artist.

[1193] He was going to leave and he owned the music while Jimmy was alive.

[1194] And if Jimmy died, he would get the music.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] And they killed him.

[1197] Yeah, maybe I thought like, I figured like that was the only thing I had that was worth anything.

[1198] And so, like, if I was going to be a shitty enough person to, like, leave, you know, leave a kid behind and, like, whatever, my family and whatever else, it's like, at least there'd be something there for them to be able to capitalize on and make...

[1199] Were you...

[1200] Was your bad feelings come from...

[1201] Did they come from a lack of hope for your future?

[1202] Did you have, like, a sense of what would make you happy?

[1203] What you were missing in your life?

[1204] No, like it's...

[1205] Was it just overwhelming?

[1206] The mind is...

[1207] Well, and for like, I guess I'm a creative person, I guess he'd say.

[1208] And so like, for creative people in general, life is very imaginative anyway.

[1209] So like, again, it's like you and I could go to the same restaurant, sit down, order the same meal, have the same waitress, identical everything, right, in a parallel time.

[1210] And you and I would walk out of that restaurant noticing different things.

[1211] experiencing it completely different.

[1212] Like, the mind perceives things individually, right?

[1213] And so, like, when you get into a bad headspace like that, your perception of what would otherwise be good things can become very bad.

[1214] And I don't know the best way to explain it, because I'm not well -versed on psychology or anything like that.

[1215] But that's the best way I can explain it is, like...

[1216] You don't understand sometimes what people are going through.

[1217] Even from the outside end, you know, you look at people who are not living life right, and you're like, I just wish he'd just get his shit together.

[1218] I don't understand why he's doing that.

[1219] And it's like, because maybe in his head what he's looking at is totally different than what you're looking at.

[1220] And it's, the mind's very complicated, you know, and we...

[1221] My understanding is even now with all the studies we've done and the technology we have, like we understand the mind very little, but there's so much that goes into it.

[1222] And like so much of our thoughts come from our gut biome and all.

[1223] Like there's just, there's millions of living things within us that I think influence the way we think and what we do.

[1224] And it's...

[1225] You know, it's a very complicated thing.

[1226] So, yeah, it's easy for people to get to get off track.

[1227] And, you know, it's hard to get back on the track when you get off.

[1228] Like, it really took, that's why I say, like, I was really just, even though it was on paper, things were great, right?

[1229] Like, I was married.

[1230] Things were, like, I have a great marriage.

[1231] I had a good job.

[1232] Like, I worked my ass off, but I made good money.

[1233] What were you doing for work?

[1234] So the last six years I've been in industrial sales.

[1235] So I've worked outside sales for...

[1236] Because I was in the industry, like working factory work when I was younger, had a bad accident, couldn't go back to that job.

[1237] And then during that recovery period, I went to work.

[1238] I don't, can I say, I don't know if I can say the place or not.

[1239] You don't have to say the place.

[1240] Okay.

[1241] What was the accident?

[1242] I fell and hit my head.

[1243] Oh, Jesus.

[1244] Yeah, I had internal, I had like an internal fracture.

[1245] I remember riding in the ambulance on the, I'd had seizures and all and passed out at the, I was, it's weird because I can remember laying there and remember the, ambulance in the EMT people coming in and everybody around me talking to me but like I I could hear them but I was just kind of in a dream and I do remember waking up in the ambulance on the ride I had like I had I remember I had blood coming out of my ear and maybe out of my out of my mouth or my noses but I remember I had blood on my I went and reached and I had blood on my face I was clean shaving then but And I asked the guy in the back with me in the ambulance, I'm like, man, I was like, is everything, am I going to be alright or what?

[1246] And he's like, buddy, we're doing the best we can.

[1247] And I'm like, oh, shit.

[1248] Oh, shit.

[1249] And that messed me up pretty bad.

[1250] I was in the hospital.

[1251] I was in the hospital for two or three days.

[1252] But even, like, for the next year after that, my memory was trash.

[1253] I had really bad balance issues.

[1254] Like, it was difficult for me. It just kind of jacked everything up.

[1255] I had a lot of inflammation and stuff in my brain.

[1256] But that kind of...

[1257] And I question whether or not that had a lot to do with my mental health issues.

[1258] Like I've talked, I've met a lot of people just even at the, I've done, I've done four shows so far.

[1259] And they've all been like intimate settings.

[1260] And so like I've taken hours after each one to talk to everybody, to give everybody a chance to talk.

[1261] And.

[1262] I've talked to another guy who had a bad hit injury and has dealt with something really similar to me. But I almost wonder if that didn't affect that that kind of knocked a few screws loose upstairs with like everything else that's went on.

[1263] But I tell you, like, the thing.

[1264] So you got depressed after that?

[1265] Yeah, for sure, yeah.

[1266] Before then, I was totally fine.

[1267] 100 % they're connected.

[1268] Yeah.

[1269] Yeah, 100%.

[1270] I mean, it might not be the only factor that led you down that road, but 100%.

[1271] That's a major symptom of fighters.

[1272] When fighters get knocked out, when football players get knocked out, depression, major symptom.

[1273] Major symptom.

[1274] That's one of the real dangers of head trauma.

[1275] There's a lot of people who have had severe head trauma that go to take their own lives afterwards.

[1276] Yeah, and looking back, I think that could be a big part of it because I look back into my 20s and a lot of it was very dark.

[1277] And that's after that?

[1278] For sure, yeah.

[1279] I guarantee you they're connected.

[1280] I guarantee you.

[1281] And I guarantee you like if you got your system, like if you had really good health care, they could find some issues with your endocrine system.

[1282] A lot of times with people that have really bad head injuries, their pituitary gland gets damaged.

[1283] And your body's not producing hormones correctly anymore.

[1284] And you're just all fucked up.

[1285] Your cortisol levels are all fucked up.

[1286] Yeah.

[1287] Because I would say that was the thing.

[1288] It was almost like my brain was stuck in like this fight or flight type of thing.

[1289] And maybe that's what the writing helped because the writing helped like it helped emphasize that more creative part of my brain to get me out of that headspace.

[1290] I loved my job I did because I was still in the field.

[1291] So I was still on job sites and industrial plants and hospitals.

[1292] And so like I've, I guess the reason that I've, the reason I feel like other than just really divine influence, again, based off of just the experience I've had the last 60 days with my faith and stuff, which is just.

[1293] And I'd love to touch on that some, too.

[1294] But I've had so many conversations with people the last six or seven years because it was my job to go almost kind of like how you talk to people in here every day.

[1295] I was going around and talking to Joe Schmo and Billy on job sites all day and every walk of life, not just blue collar.

[1296] And so, like, those are some just very authentic conversations you have with people because you're just a guy and they're just a guy and you're just talking.

[1297] And so...

[1298] You can still have those.

[1299] The same...

[1300] You can still have those.

[1301] You can get famous.

[1302] The same message kept coming across, which is really what I guess I resonated in this song, but just people are just so tired.

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] So, yeah, I think being in that position sort of gave me this unfair advantage to look into the world, maybe...

[1305] on the inside and um i don't think it's unfair at all i think it's probably i mean if you wanted to believe in fate you know i don't believe in fate but i should if anybody should i should i should believe in fate i've had a pretty lucky life yeah you have yeah i don't necessarily think it's real though but i also think if you believe it's real i think there's a lot of things that if you believe it's A lot of what's going on with human beings is the way the mind perceived things.

[1306] And it's kind of the software you're running.

[1307] That's why we seek out people who are inspirational.

[1308] Like if you watch a David Goggins video, you will go work out.

[1309] You will go work out.

[1310] It will get you off your couch.

[1311] If you, I guarantee you.

[1312] When we were running, that's, we were joking.

[1313] We were saying David Goggins quotes, all you're running about carrying the boats and all that.

[1314] Who's going to carry the boats?

[1315] David's the fucking man. And there's another guy, Jocko Willink.

[1316] I love him too, yeah.

[1317] He has a video.

[1318] Find Jocko good.

[1319] Find that video.

[1320] There's a video that I 100 % legitimately play in my mind when I'm tired.

[1321] I say good.

[1322] I say it to myself.

[1323] Like I was in the cold plunge the other day and I was being a bitch at like two minutes and 30 seconds.

[1324] And I was like, good.

[1325] Listen to this video.

[1326] Have you ever heard this?

[1327] It's amazing.

[1328] I don't think I have.

[1329] direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me. He would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on.

[1330] And he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing.

[1331] And I'd look at him and I'd say, good.

[1332] And finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some problem.

[1333] And he said, I already know what you're going to say.

[1334] And I said, well, what am I going to say?

[1335] He said, you're going to say good.

[1336] He said, that's what you always say.

[1337] When something is wrong and going bad, you always just look at me and say, good.

[1338] And I said, well, yeah.

[1339] When things are going bad, there's going to be some good that's going to come from it.

[1340] Didn't get the new high -speed gear we wanted.

[1341] Good.

[1342] Didn't get promoted.

[1343] Good.

[1344] More time to get better.

[1345] Oh, mission got canceled?

[1346] Good.

[1347] We can focus on another one.

[1348] Didn't get funded.

[1349] Didn't get the job you wanted.

[1350] Got injured.

[1351] Spray my ankle.

[1352] Got tapped out?

[1353] Good.

[1354] Got beat?

[1355] Good.

[1356] Learned.

[1357] Unexpected problems?

[1358] Good.

[1359] Good.

[1360] We have the opportunity to figure out a solution.

[1361] That's it.

[1362] When things are going bad, Don't get all bummed out.

[1363] Don't get startled.

[1364] Don't get frustrated.

[1365] If you can say the word good, guess what?

[1366] It means you're still alive.

[1367] It means you're still breathing.

[1368] And if you're still breathing, well, then hell, you still got some fight left in you.

[1369] So get up, dust off.

[1370] reload, recalibrate, re -engage, and go out on the attack.

[1371] That's what's up.

[1372] Yeah, I love that.

[1373] Yeah.

[1374] That's software you can run in your mind.

[1375] You can run that.

[1376] You can run that.

[1377] You just need to listen to it and then apply it.

[1378] That's real.

[1379] Now, if you don't know that software, and if you know that there's a human being like jaco out there in the world, that's a real person that really does think like that, that you don't think it's possible.

[1380] But it is.

[1381] So you have to be seen it.

[1382] So you see it, now you know, run that software.

[1383] Run that software.

[1384] I don't know how much of people's depression.

[1385] I mean, I think depression has a mosaic of problems that's associated with it.

[1386] And a mosaic of causes, like a large pattern.

[1387] There's a lot of stuff going on that causes people to be depressed.

[1388] Some of it in your case may very well have been from a physical injury.

[1389] And I think that's a big factor.

[1390] I never considered that until now.

[1391] I think it's 100 % connected.

[1392] 100 % because it's totally in the literature.

[1393] You know, my good friend, Dr. Mark Gordon, he does a lot of work with traumatic brain injury patients.

[1394] And he runs this wounded warriors.

[1395] It's called...

[1396] What is it called?

[1397] What is his, the thing that he works with with those guys?

[1398] Warrior Angels.

[1399] And it's helping people with traumatic brain injuries.

[1400] And he's helped countless soldiers, fighters, football players, all these people.

[1401] And it's real similar with a lot of them.

[1402] Yeah, and they have no hope.

[1403] And exactly.

[1404] And that's, and I guess that's the thing that I've learned from this, again, from 18 -year -old Chris that thought a lot of that was just made up and, people giving excuses like to what I've understand now about is again it feels those that that place that your mind can take you it feels just as real as anything else like even if you tell yourself like you can tell yourself a hundred times that oh yeah well you still got a job you still have everything's fine it's like if I don't know it's your perception of reality becomes very distorted when you're in that place and it's Again, for me, I think a lot of it came down that I just knew I wasn't fulfilling whatever purpose it was I was here to fulfill.

[1405] You probably didn't have any energy because you had a head injury.

[1406] It's probably a major factor in it.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] Major factor.

[1409] It's another major factor in people with head injuries, they drink a lot because their dopamine is really low.

[1410] You know, like it fucks up everything, man. And there's people that have traumatic brain injuries that are subcocussive trauma from playing soccer.

[1411] People play soccer and heading the ball.

[1412] It doesn't even hurt.

[1413] But you throttle your brain in the cage over and over and over again, and eventually you have TBI.

[1414] That's real.

[1415] You have real like CTE symptoms for soccer players.

[1416] I mean, it's crazy, but the head is just not designed to get hit.

[1417] Yeah.

[1418] And I've experienced it with so many fighters, so many guys that I know that got knocked out.

[1419] And then after the knockout, they're, like, severely depressed, both because they lost.

[1420] It goes like, even if you lose by a decision, you get depressed.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] It's a terrible feeling to lose in front of the whole world.

[1423] Well, sure, yeah.

[1424] I mean, just inherent loss in a lot of animals does that.

[1425] You know, and that's a whole other conversation.

[1426] But one thing I did find from Jordan Peterson talking about the lobsters, it makes me think about the fighters.

[1427] But it's like you lose that dopamine and that drive.

[1428] All those chemicals are very tightly regulated to your performance and your play sort of within the world.

[1429] What did you say about the lobsters again?

[1430] Um, so if a, yeah, if two lobsters fight the defeated lobster, he loses his drive and dopamine, he's like, there's some ridiculous, um, chance that he won't win another fight.

[1431] Like, he basically just becomes a bum lobster once he loses, but they can give, they can give them the same medications that they give humans to combat that, like, whatever antidepress, or whatever.

[1432] And then they're at their, and then they're at their fight, you know, they give SSRIs to, um, Like, I've got some close friends in veterinary medicine.

[1433] They have cats and dogs that take SS.

[1434] Oh, God.

[1435] Freaked out cats and dogs.

[1436] But I can tell you my experience with SSRIs were not pleasant.

[1437] Like, all it did was just make me very numb.

[1438] Just like the can't, like, and I'm not.

[1439] I'm certainly, like, again, I'm not giving anybody advice on anything, but just in my personal experience, especially for a guy, when you're on SSRIs, it does a lot of things bad to you.

[1440] For one, like, if you're in a relationship, I, like, I hear this on both sides with men and women, but, like, good luck good luck like making love with your with your lover like good luck having sex because that's out the window it messes with that it messes with your um with your thought with your thought patterns and it takes away like it was very difficult for me to write music when i was on it and so i that was a short -lived life but um The best thing that I found that helped me, other than just jumping into this and making this music happen, like, along the way was actually, I found a lot of benefits out of CBD, like even smoking CBD flour.

[1441] And so, like, that, surprisingly, like, I never really got benefits from the oil, but I'd say if anybody is in a position, like, listening to this right now where you're having, like, daily panic attacks and you're just, like...

[1442] you're just there you know like if you're listening and you'll know what I'm talking about but you're at that like breaking point like I was I found smoking CBD joints like not ingesting it where it would go through my system go through my liver and all but smoking it just like he would smoke traditional cannabis flour knocked a lot of it right out interesting Now, it's not going to fix it.

[1443] There's an underlying issue that you got to figure out an address, but it'll at least give you some, like, it gave me some very good relief from that.

[1444] That's amazing.

[1445] That's really good to hear for people because it doesn't get you high either.

[1446] Right, it doesn't get you high.

[1447] Yeah.

[1448] But it reduces inflammation.

[1449] Yeah.

[1450] Have you tried adjusting your diet?

[1451] Well, I'm good now.

[1452] That's what's so funny.

[1453] Like, since this has all happened, haven't had a...

[1454] Like, I'm telling you, again...

[1455] Because you're on top of the world.

[1456] Well, yeah, but even before it, like, it...

[1457] I have to be careful with what I say, because I don't...

[1458] Like, my shit stinks.

[1459] Like, I'm nobody special, and I'm not here to preach to anybody, but I'm telling you, like, giving things to God, for me alleviated 99 % of what, like...

[1460] I had a, like, I don't know how to describe it, but when you experience, and I mean, you've done things that I haven't, like with DMT and all, and that stuff's very intriguing to me. And so I'm open -minded to all that as well.

[1461] Like, I'm not, but, yeah, like, I had, when this, when I kind of had this breakdown moment and decided that I was going to let whatever ego I had go and just at this point, it's like, I knew I didn't have much left in for me anyway.

[1462] And I wanted, I wanted to serve whatever purpose it was that I was here to serve.

[1463] It's like, You get this just overwhelming feeling in you.

[1464] I was just crying like a baby, just this very like warm feeling throughout me. And that really hasn't gone away since.

[1465] Like I'm not the guy that can play in front of 12 ,000 people on guitar.

[1466] I would be like, I mean, I had never played a paid gig.

[1467] When we played the show at the farm market where Jamie Johnson showed up, that was my first paid gig.

[1468] Like I'm not a guy to go out and play live shows, but I can tell you I was so like I was just so at peace being up there Like it just felt like that's where I was supposed to be and that and with all this it has been like there's no way that Chris from six months ago could handle what's gone on the last two weeks, but I feel just so empowered from all of it and I don't know, I'm telling you, like, again, I'm not, I'm not anybody special, and I'm certainly not here to preach anybody, but just from coming from somebody who was just really, just in a really just fucked up place, like, and I use that word, like, with discretion, but in this case, it describes, like, where I was, like, that guy found a lot of peace like from this book and from looking at things in a different way yeah from looking at things through the eyes well yeah and i think for me it was like i had been in you know i'd been in church growing up and i had been i'd been exposed to all that but i'd found a lot of um a lot of theatrics and a lot of politics in church and in religion when i was younger and so it just immediately turned me off to it so if you can take us to like what was like the day you picked it up what what was the feeling that you had like what caused you to act what what was it like when you did it yeah i mean i'd been reading it here and there off and on and i had for like off and on for a long time like because i again i was introduced to it as a kid but it was really just like um I remember I went to the ER for everything that was going on.

[1469] I mean, I thought I was seriously going to die.

[1470] Like I was having shooting pains up under my jaw, down in my wrist and my leg, like just cardiovascular 101 symptoms.

[1471] Of course, I'm 31.

[1472] I had been like, I could run four miles without stopping, no problems.

[1473] Like, I knew my heart was strong, but I just freaking out.

[1474] Yeah, but I went and did that, and, uh, I remember being in the truck after that, just like, and I just, yeah, I just had a breakdown moment.

[1475] I was just, just, just crying and, um, was just just, just felt hopeless, like, like, like, almost the way a child feels hopeless when they, you know, like, you can't find your parent or something, like a, like a four -year -old that can't find his parents or something.

[1476] I was just like, just didn't have anything left in me. And, um, I don't know.

[1477] I just, uh, I just decided, like, right then and there, I was like, I know I can't do this anymore.

[1478] And, but I know, I know that I can, I know there's things that I need to do.

[1479] And I just, I was just told God, I was like, just let me do it.

[1480] Like, and I'll give all this shit up.

[1481] I'll give up the weed and I'll quit getting drunk and I'll quit, um, I'll quit being so angry about things.

[1482] And I'll just.

[1483] Like, I'll just call it good.

[1484] Whatever I've done up from up until I was 30 or whatever, 31, like, we'll just call that good and I'll start over again.

[1485] And I'll make him the focus and not me. And I just tried to let my ego and everything that I was, just let that go and just focus on.

[1486] Because obviously, like...

[1487] It's not just me. I've seen it with even other people I know, and I see it with celebrities and everything, but I don't know.

[1488] I just feel like we're in such a weird place right now in the world.

[1489] I feel like God's working through inadvertently through certain people to get his point across.

[1490] So take me to what you did.

[1491] Do you start reading the Bible?

[1492] Like, what did you do?

[1493] I just changed my perspective.

[1494] You change...

[1495] I quit worrying about me and I started worrying about what it is that I'm supposed to do.

[1496] You know, like it talks in the Bible about being a servant and, you know, giving up, I guess, my desire and my will and whatever it is that I want to do.

[1497] Like, I don't know the best way to describe it, but it's about...

[1498] It's about trying to use what I have as a tool versus doing what I can in the moment to give myself whatever satisfaction that it is I'm trying to get, you know.

[1499] It's about trying to let go of your ego, I guess, in a way.

[1500] And I mean, people pursue that mentality without faith.

[1501] I mean, it's the idea of there being something bigger than you.

[1502] But I think inherently all human beings idolize something.

[1503] Like it talks in the Bible about false idols.

[1504] We all have false idols, like whether it's our phone or it's a celebrity or it's...

[1505] something we do or it's our addiction to food or drugs or whatever but like it's very difficult for a human to be the biggest thing on their hierarchy there's always something above us right because we're always in pursuit of something bigger than whatever it is in that moment and I think for me it was just about taking everything else all the distractions and all the other things in my life away and just ensuring that at least and look i'm we're all we're all we're all we all sin and we all do stupid things like we're all just people nobody's special or righteous people sometimes act like they're special and righteous but we're all just the same thing like um But it's just about trying to make that my idol.

[1506] Make God and the concept of what it is that he once done on this earth my idol versus anything else.

[1507] You know, like we all serve some master, whether we realize it or not.

[1508] So why not let it be the master that is above all?

[1509] And so when you made this transformation in your mind, did you then start reading scripture like regularly?

[1510] Like, what did you start doing?

[1511] Yeah, well, it was different.

[1512] Well, what's what really, I guess it's like now I don't read it.

[1513] I don't read it because I feel like I should read it.

[1514] To be a better person, it's like now I try to read it for the guidance within it.

[1515] And I'm still in the infancy stages of a lot of this.

[1516] Like I've read...

[1517] A lot of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes and Luke, and there's other good books, but just trying to, I don't know, like trying to restructure, I guess, on a granular level, like, I guess the neural pathways in my brain that have certain habits and certain ways of thought.

[1518] Like, I've tried to retrain that to, you know, like there's things it says, like, and I'll be very brief with this, I promise, but, like, one thing, ironically, it's Proverbs 420, which I thought you would like.

[1519] So if there's anything better.

[1520] Perfect.

[1521] Read it.

[1522] Preach.

[1523] My son, pay attention to what I say.

[1524] Turn your ear to my words.

[1525] Do not let them out of your sight.

[1526] Keep them within your heart.

[1527] For they are life to those who find them in health the one's whole body.

[1528] Above all else, guard your heart.

[1529] For everything you do flows from it.

[1530] Keep your mouth free from perversity.

[1531] Keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

[1532] Let your eyes look straight ahead.

[1533] Fix your gaze directly before you.

[1534] Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

[1535] Do not turn to the right or the left.

[1536] Keep your foot from evil.

[1537] That's pretty fucking profound.

[1538] But the whole book of Proverbs is like that.

[1539] Like, it's not preachy.

[1540] It's not what you think.

[1541] Like, it's good guidance.

[1542] It's like good guidance that you would want a father to give to his son, you know?

[1543] What do you think it comes from?

[1544] Like, if you had to guess, where do you think the Bible comes from?

[1545] Like, it was an oral tradition for, who knows how many years, for they ever wrote it down?

[1546] Yeah.

[1547] What do you think these stories come from?

[1548] Well, I believe that people come across in different points of time, and I think they are giving messages that need to be delivered.

[1549] And I'm not in any way trying to parallel me to anyone in any of these books by any means, but I do think that...

[1550] Throughout history, like even beyond from what's been written in this Bible, there's been important people that came along and said important, or maybe not even important people.

[1551] Sometimes it's the lowly of the low that come along and just say things that need to be said.

[1552] And if I could...

[1553] To me, it's like there's no question that this is an intelligent planet we live on in an intelligent solar system.

[1554] Everything is just much more immense than any human on Earth would admit.

[1555] Like even people in science, so much of science is based on theory.

[1556] Like it's this very elegantly written way of thinking, but ultimately if you take it down to it's like on a granular level, it's very, it's all in many ways based on theory.

[1557] And so...

[1558] I think the Earth is far more intelligent than we realize in the systems that we live in.

[1559] Like, I just don't think somebody just pulled all that out of thin air.

[1560] I do think that in May, maybe it's...

[1561] I've been waiting for my time to bring up the aliens because I...

[1562] But anyway, but no, but in all seriousness, it's like, for me, I just...

[1563] I believe that...

[1564] If you read through it, it's so much of it is so timeless.

[1565] And so much of it, if you read about the rich and the poor and the wicked and the way, just the inherent human behavior that existed at the time when these books were written back then, it's so parallel to what goes on today.

[1566] Like to the point that you wouldn't, if you just read it out of context and didn't know it was scripture, a lot of it sounds like something somebody wrote two hours ago and posted on a, on a vlog or whatever.

[1567] It's like it's...

[1568] To me, there is no other book like it.

[1569] Have you paid any attention to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about the restarting of humanity?

[1570] Mm -hmm.

[1571] It's a really fascinating field of inquiry and discussion because it's now starting over time to be backed up by more science.

[1572] Because there was always this curiosity, like when did the human race first invent civilization?

[1573] And the current theory is that it was about 6 ,000 years ago.

[1574] It was Mesopotamia, Sumer, these areas, which is where we found, the first written language, like first mathematics, cuneiform language.

[1575] But what they believe is that's a restarting of civilization.

[1576] And that very likely civilization existed at a very, very high level somewhere around 11 ,800 years ago.

[1577] and that what caused the end of the Ice Age also caused just a mass destruction all throughout the universe, or all throughout the Earth rather, of particles from space slamming into the Earth.

[1578] That the Earth goes through these comet storms periodically, and it happens, I think it's every June and every November.

[1579] And when they go through these...

[1580] clouds of comets, occasionally we get hit by big ones.

[1581] And there's a lot of evidence for this.

[1582] And what they believe is that when you're looking at like the ancient Egyptian structures, when you're looking at some structures in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East, you're looking at things that are older than 12 ,000 years old.

[1583] Yeah, well, and I agree with that.

[1584] I think that it's obvious that technology existed that we don't know anything about today.

[1585] Just the construction of the pyramids alone leaned you to that.

[1586] Like somehow or another, they were able to do that.

[1587] And they were able to do that with immense sophistication and insane capabilities, the ability to move stone from hundreds of miles that weighs Tons.

[1588] Massive stones cut perfectly, stacked on top of each other, 2 ,300 ,000 of them that are perfectly due north, southeast, and west.

[1589] Yeah, that's the craziest thing is that they could understand that at that scale.

[1590] The technology was almost...

[1591] We don't understand what they were doing.

[1592] It's alien.

[1593] And not alien like human beings, not like non -human beings.

[1594] I think there were human beings that made it.

[1595] But I think to us, they went in a direction with their technology that's very different than we did.

[1596] We went in this weird direction of internal combustion engines and silicone chips and all these different things.

[1597] I think it's very likely that they had comparable, if not better, technology, but it moved in a completely different direction, whether it was using sound or vibration or some other completely undiscovered technology that we have yet to invent that was wiped out when civilization was knocked into barbarism.

[1598] And I think that's one of the reasons why you go back in early history, people were so fucking savage.

[1599] Because I think that the people that survived that 11 ,800 years ago event I think whatever was left was like fucking walking dead.

[1600] And I think people lived a horrible life for a long time.

[1601] I think it was thousands of years of this until we emerged from that and finally started reinventing agriculture and cities and all these different things again.

[1602] So I think the 6 ,000 year ago, Mark, I think...

[1603] if I had to guess, I would imagine that is the first example of a rebuild of civilization that took thousands of years to emerge from horrific slaughter.

[1604] It wouldn't surprise me if all that doesn't happen again.

[1605] It could easily happen again if we get hit again.

[1606] That was one of the initial things that really intrigued me reading.

[1607] And I think it's, it talks about in Ecclesiastes, but that everything that's happened under the sun has already happened before and will happen again.

[1608] that generations that are yet to come will be forgotten about those that come after them.

[1609] Like it's, I think just in the same way that we have, that we have a summer and a fall and a winter and a spring.

[1610] It's like, I think human society, just because of our human nature and like our pursuit for, whatever it is that we want to like our we just love to create and develop and like so we'll we shoot all the way up to the top and then some tragedy comes along whether it's whether it's self -inflicted or from from comets or whatever and then there we go right back down to the bottom we start over again And yeah, like there is a lot of weird things like they've discovered a lot in South America recently because of the new technology like the civilizations that existed down there that we had no idea.

[1611] But like Graham Hancock's.

[1612] Who knows what's went on, even just on this ground in years past that we'll never know about.

[1613] Oh, yeah, for sure.

[1614] Well, we know quite a bit about Texas, which is a fascinating story, and it's of its own.

[1615] But, you know, what's really fascinating about Texas is they were dominating, like these nomadic tribes were dominating this land for hundreds of years where people couldn't even settle down.

[1616] There's an amazing book called Empire of the Summer Moon that's all about Texas and the Comanches and the Texas Rangers.

[1617] Crazy stories, just crazy.

[1618] But I think what the Bible is saying rings true, and that if people, you know, they just understood the history of the past from when they wrote the Bible, they had to have known massive catastrophes.

[1619] They believe that's what the story of the flood is from.

[1620] The flood from Noah's Ark and even from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is even older.

[1621] It's like they have these similar kind of stories, and they think that these similar kind of stories relate to the immense flooding that occurred after impact.

[1622] They think that after impact, well, they know that at one point in time, the United States, half of it was covered with at least like a mile of ice.

[1623] Some places it was more than a mile, which is just insane to think.

[1624] To think now.

[1625] Standing here and looking straight up for a mile, cover in ice.

[1626] Yeah.

[1627] I mean, how can you even wrap your head around that?

[1628] It's so difficult to even imagine.

[1629] And what's even, yeah, it's crazy to think about it existing then, but also that.

[1630] Like, that's, I guess, when I talk about the intelligence of, like, whatever system it is we live in, the fact that the Earth is able to self -correct itself over a period of time.

[1631] It's like no matter...

[1632] And even today when we see cycles and things happening, it's like, I don't know that...

[1633] I'm sure that we could destroy the Earth with some of the technology we have now.

[1634] Like, I fear that we don't...

[1635] that this sort of proxy war that we've involved ourselves and doesn't escalate into something bigger because...

[1636] We could really, we could wipe society out indefinitely.

[1637] We were talking about this yesterday with Peter Berg.

[1638] He's a director, actor, he's a guy who did Lone Survivor, made that movie, made that painkiller show that's on Netflix.

[1639] And he did a tour of one of those battleships, and he saw the missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

[1640] He's like, what the fuck?

[1641] Like one of these ships could literally wipe out the whole earth.

[1642] It's so bonkers.

[1643] It's so bonkers that these things exist.

[1644] And that there's thousands of them.

[1645] Thousands of them ready to go.

[1646] Thousands of them.

[1647] Ready to just flatten the planet.

[1648] That probably has happened before.

[1649] And if I had to look at things with the most optimistic perspective.

[1650] My most beautiful optimistic perspective is that's what the aliens are here for.

[1651] That's the beautiful one, is that life exists everywhere in the universe and that it's a very complicated process of evolving from territorial apes to becoming these intergalactic travelers that have no ego and don't display irrational behavior and work for whatever purpose.

[1652] Because that's where it gets weird.

[1653] It's like if you don't have emotions, You don't have jealousy and envy and love and lust and all the things to fight against and all the things to fight for.

[1654] If you don't have those things, like what is purpose?

[1655] What is our purpose as humans?

[1656] It's very terrifying for us.

[1657] It's one of the reasons why we're most scared about technological innovation.

[1658] Where it comes?

[1659] That's Terminator.

[1660] You know, that's everything.

[1661] All these things that we create that wind up killing us and that we are somehow or another purposeless if we don't have all these things that we cling to, like love and...

[1662] fear and anxiety and jealousy and and you know and all the stuff that we want we want to be praised and loved and all these different things that that motivate people to succeed and do things in life without that what are we that's a big question but with it how dangerous are we we do use it in so many different beautiful ways like your music or like you know like a great book or like there's ways that people use this that are that are beautiful But it's ultimately the reason why life is so scary.

[1663] It's ultimately why during the period of mass communication, during the period of exchange of information worldwide, which has occurred from the start of the 20th century to where we are in the 21st century, we've never had a time where we could communicate with mass amounts of people better.

[1664] But it's still, we're at the verge of nuclear catastrophe.

[1665] We're still in this very terrifying place where one group of people for some reason or another opposes.

[1666] I don't know anyone in Russia.

[1667] I don't know anyone in China.

[1668] The idea that somehow or another, China is my enemy or Russia is my enemy, like how?

[1669] How did that happen?

[1670] Yeah, well, the people there aren't.

[1671] Exactly.

[1672] Yeah.

[1673] There are establishments an enemy of our establishment, right?

[1674] The idea that what the human mind is capable of in creating great art and great music is also capable of dominating massive groups of people through tyranny.

[1675] We have to be very careful because that same thing that makes us this emotional being that wants all these weird feelings.

[1676] That's the same thing that leads us down the road to tyranny.

[1677] And I bet that exists everywhere in the universe.

[1678] And I bet the aliens if they're coming down here.

[1679] They want to be very careful with this species while it's going through this transition because I bet this shit is very touch and go.

[1680] And I bet every now and then some fucking Putin -type character goes, oh, yeah, yeah, NATO, fuck you.

[1681] I have cancer.

[1682] Fuck you.

[1683] Yeah, well, that's all so complicated because, yeah, like...

[1684] Scary.

[1685] All that starts with someone's imagination.

[1686] Like, all these, it all starts.

[1687] And that's, on the other end of that, though, to your point, it's like, that's what I find so important about freedom of speech and the ability for people to have good, honest conversations because you can imagine...

[1688] The mind is just as capable of creating good as it is evil.

[1689] I think right now maybe we're creating a little more evil than we are good.

[1690] Oh, I don't think so.

[1691] I think things can turn around just as quickly as they've turned bad as far as on a global scale.

[1692] I don't think we're creating more evil than we are good.

[1693] I think if you look at the statistics of history, human history, we're moving in a right direction.

[1694] Even though there's a lot of struggle, it's not like a perfect curve.

[1695] It goes up and down.

[1696] But over time, if you look at just violent crime and horrible things that people do to each other, it's down.

[1697] almost everywhere in the world where it was a hundred years ago and i think it's moving in that general direction i just think it's it's messy human beings are we've we've we fuck up a lot to get better and we have to things have to like like i was having a conversation with a friend about uh...

[1698] Nordstrom's closing in san francisco they get robbed so much they're just like we have to close up it's so kent francisco so crazy it's so fucking crazy and and The person I was talking to was like, good.

[1699] They'll have to reassess now.

[1700] They have to realize their policies are crazy.

[1701] And they're going to have to put someone in here that fixes it.

[1702] And I'm like, yeah, or it becomes like a third world city.

[1703] Like some crazy, like violent crime -ridden city that's controlled by gangs.

[1704] Like that could happen too.

[1705] What do you feel like, see, to me, I perceive that as being a symptom.

[1706] Like, what's the, what do you think the problem is?

[1707] Like, I mean, I know the easy answer is it's the people that run the government in California that have, that have, like, made it into this atrocity that it is that it wasn't maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

[1708] But, like, there's also a big problem, too, with, like, homelessness and drugs and, like, Well, cynical me wants to think that there's a conspiracy.

[1709] Cynical me wants to think that if you create more problems, more crime, more confusing, then people will give in to more control by the government to somehow or another mitigate those problems that exist everywhere.

[1710] There has to be a solution.

[1711] This is the only solution is that you have to have a digital ID.

[1712] You take it everywhere you go.

[1713] Everyone has a cell phone, so everyone has a digital ID.

[1714] That way we'll catch everyone when they're doing all these crimes.

[1715] That's scary because they're not just going to use it for that.

[1716] And then they're going to make up crimes.

[1717] They're going to decide that you saying things that they don't like that may even be true, like malinformation.

[1718] Like that's a crime.

[1719] And then they'll shut down your social media.

[1720] Look, we saw that during the Twitter files investigation from when Twitter first was purchased by Elon Musk and he let these journalists go over all the emails.

[1721] They're like, holy shit, the FBI's telling people to delete tweets.

[1722] Like, this is nuts.

[1723] Again, it goes back to freedom.

[1724] Yeah, I can see that there's there is a power at B that wants to limit free speech.

[1725] Sure.

[1726] People that have money that are making money off of suppressing information.

[1727] And free speech is such a precious thing.

[1728] Like that's something that if we have anything, if we have something precious, a resource that needs to be protected more than anything right now, it's freedom of speech.

[1729] It's a very important thing for this country.

[1730] And, you know, I've said it many, many times, but it's the reason why this country has created so much culture.

[1731] The reason why there's so much...

[1732] Sure.

[1733] And you've seen that, you've seen that, like, spread out throughout the world.

[1734] Like, to your point, like, 100 years ago, a lot of the...

[1735] Even though a lot of these countries, they're dealing with...

[1736] they've got radical politicians that are locking them down and taking away their rights and like yeah all that's happened within the last 10 or 15 years maybe but in general like the whatever craziness that we established here like arguably the first country i guess you'd say in modern history that had some form of democracy and some form of involvement of citizens deciding what it is they want to what the world they want to live in like that's spread out like you see Most all countries have some sort of – you don't see a lot of kings and dictators running countries anymore.

[1737] They have an election cycle now, whether or not it's all credible or not, I don't know.

[1738] But the idea that, like, sovereign people can live in a land and decide what it is that they want for themselves is something that, like, has not existed – It has not existed for a very long period of time in the world, and it is precious that we hold to it.

[1739] And I guess going back to my point earlier about the federal government and state and local level, it's like, I just think.

[1740] there needs to be more strength within local communities as far as people making decisions and uniting with one another.

[1741] And, you know, I've had, I've had a lot of people.

[1742] I'm the, I'm, when an ugly ginger's walking around, like, everybody's like, oh, is it that guy?

[1743] And so I've had a lot of people stop me on the street and then parking decks and at the airport and.

[1744] at the hardware store and like you know how many times I've had now I've at least a dozen times now I've had people telling me that they're talking to people they haven't talked to in five or six years that they got pissed over politics about and just this message that's coming out has given them a like I know a guy um and my own personal life he hasn't talked to his brother in six years because they disagreed over Trump and Biden and and even prior to that like they just left and right and which one was the Biden guy The guy I hang out with is – because obviously I live out in the country.

[1745] I own guns.

[1746] You know, like I am – the people in my neck of the woods are not – despite what they may say on – yeah, despite what they may say on a news organization somewhere, like a lot of the people I hang out with in the area of the country I live in is stereotypically red, right?

[1747] Because a lot of people will vote no matter what other – influences there are a lot of people will vote conservative just because of their second amendment rights, which is very much under attack in Virginia.

[1748] You know, like you remember when you're out the sanctuary cities and all the counties that decided, well, even if the federal government bans this, we're not going to enforce it type of a thing, which is crazy to see like in our time.

[1749] But yeah, so he voted – he was a big Trump guy, and he watched his certain news organization.

[1750] And then the other guy was for Biden, and he watched his news organization.

[1751] And so they just basically picked up whatever narratives they got from each other's news, and they would just – You know, they let that destroy literally a friendship.

[1752] Yeah, they were brothers, you know, biological brothers.

[1753] And so.

[1754] So dumb.

[1755] That's not good for us as a country.

[1756] Well, it's not a wise thing to just apply to your life as a human being.

[1757] You can have people in your life that have disagreements with you.

[1758] I have people in my life that disagree with me on so many things.

[1759] Absolutely on politics.

[1760] Absolutely.

[1761] You know, especially like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

[1762] You know, there's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot.

[1763] Like, listen, I would like to try it that way.

[1764] Let's try some guy who doesn't want war at all.

[1765] Let's try some guy who wants to take a certain percentage off speculation trades in the Wall Street, where they're doing these and they're running a tiny fraction of a penny for each one of them.

[1766] And he's saying it would generate an insane amount of money that could be applied to education, that could be applied to health care, you could give people free health care, you could give people free education.

[1767] Well, why wouldn't we do that?

[1768] If you got some guy who doesn't want to divert money to these fucking forever wars and instead wants to apply it to communities, I was like, let's give that a chance.

[1769] Maybe it won't work.

[1770] I don't know jack shit about politics, but I sincerely believe the guy.

[1771] And I'm like, that to me is at least an option for change.

[1772] And that guy had been the same guy his whole life.

[1773] He had been always pushing for that his whole life.

[1774] He's kind of gotten tired in his later years, but that's just understandable.

[1775] He's kind of like...

[1776] supported yeah so you you believing in someone shouldn't yeah it shouldn't suspend your friendships or relationships with other people like yeah but it's just you're hanging out with dummies People should have, like, I have many friends that are Trump supporters.

[1777] I have many friends that wholesale believe in the Democratic Party no matter what.

[1778] It's a million times better, no matter what anybody says.

[1779] And no matter what anybody says about the Biden family, the Trump families, a million times first.

[1780] I've seen a lot of people change that now, though, in recent years.

[1781] Like, even people who were hardcore conservatives and hardcore Democrats, like, I don't think whatever, whatever a Republican, a Democrat was represented at some point in time is anymore.

[1782] Like, both sides have.

[1783] I mean, like I said, I love freedom of speech and I love the Second Amendment, but...

[1784] There's a lot of things that I see that I don't, like, I mean, you've got to think I'm 31, so I was in fourth grade at 9 -11, so we've been, we were an endless war from 9 -11 on.

[1785] And, you know, even when we shouldn't have been, like, so both sides have, like, just picked up on things and ran with it, but they use certain emotional triggers to, like, keep their fan base happy, you know?

[1786] Like, like, oh, they're going to take your guns, and the other side, they've got all their emotional triggers and there are things that they're trying to feed their audience with.

[1787] But I guess, like, at the end of the day, it doesn't it doesn't help either side to pick like no in my opinion no one's no one no one no one can go into that position in politics in the white house or anything else for that matter at this point because of how just inefficient and how large the federal government is i don't think anybody can go into those positions and overnight save everything they can certainly make big influences i mean you saw when trump was in office the economy was rocking But then other things that he did, you know, like there's like warp speed and all that.

[1788] Like that, there was a lot of controversy around all of that.

[1789] And so.

[1790] Well, he would have to be a vaccine scientist to even understand what they were doing.

[1791] And imagine being him, well, and this is not to defend Donald Trump, but imagine being him and being in control of all of it.

[1792] You're in control of the economy.

[1793] You're in control of foreign relations.

[1794] You're in control of the biggest military of the world has ever known.

[1795] You're in the public eye.

[1796] You're tweeting about your ex -girlfriend being horse -faced.

[1797] Yeah, I don't think one person can do it.

[1798] There's so much shit going on in that guy's life.

[1799] Do you think that he had the time to investigate the efficacy of the COVID vaccines that were this novel MRNA technology that never been applied to hundreds of millions of people?

[1800] And then you had to trust the CDC and Fauci and all those people.

[1801] Like, how could he know?

[1802] How could anybody know?

[1803] And that's a good example why I don't think that one, I don't think we can, we can or should rely on one person to save all, save us on all those issues.

[1804] It's something we've got to work out on a personal level.

[1805] Well, it's insane.

[1806] It was invented back when people lived in tribes.

[1807] So you had a tribe of 50 people, you want that old guy.

[1808] He's got a lot of scars in his face.

[1809] He knows how to run shit.

[1810] He knows what to do wrong.

[1811] He knows what to do right.

[1812] He survived.

[1813] All of his brothers died.

[1814] You know, like, those guys are the guys you want teaching younger people.

[1815] It's like you were talking about with older folks.

[1816] That was the whole idea of a tribal leader.

[1817] Like, this was the greatest warrior.

[1818] This is the smartest chief.

[1819] This is the person who's like, they can lead us and they want nothing but good for us because they love us because they know us.

[1820] Biden doesn't know you.

[1821] He don't know you.

[1822] None of them care.

[1823] He don't know.

[1824] He just wants to get up there and say his speech the right way, and then they give him ice cream.

[1825] And then he sits down.

[1826] Like, do you see that woman who's the White House press secretary?

[1827] No, I don't know if this is true, so we should find out if it's true.

[1828] Did she or did she not accidentally delete a Biden tweet from her account?

[1829] So it was a tweet as president.

[1830] When I ran for president, this and that.

[1831] Oh, and she accidentally posted it on her own.

[1832] She accidentally posted it on the wrong.

[1833] I want to find out if that's true, though, because that could be Russian disinformation, because that's true too.

[1834] Here's one of the reasons why free speech is so important in this country, given the parameters of social media, is because we know that foreign interests are interfering with our discourse.

[1835] We know it.

[1836] It's proven that there's troll farms.

[1837] They have in Macedonia.

[1838] I'm sure they have them in China.

[1839] They have troll farms where people create accounts and then they argue with people about stuff.

[1840] And they'll post links to fake stories and they'll post fake information.

[1841] They may even post fucking AI voice swap shit.

[1842] But what they're doing is trying to get people arguing about stuff, trying to get people to diminish their faith in democracy, trying to get people at each other's throats from the right and the left.

[1843] It's manipulated.

[1844] And think about who that benefits.

[1845] Investing in America means investing in all of America.

[1846] When I ran for president, I made a promise that I would leave no part of the country behind.

[1847] So she did do it.

[1848] She really did tweet it from her account.

[1849] Is that real?

[1850] Oh my God.

[1851] Oh my God.

[1852] She really did do it.

[1853] Oh, my God.

[1854] That's so crazy.

[1855] So, of course, when you read his tweets, it sounds like her.

[1856] Like, she's got a very politician way of doing it.

[1857] She's like an AM radio DJ, an AM radio DJ version of what a press secretary is, like a politician.

[1858] Because, you know, AM, I'll ride.

[1859] Here we are on the drive.

[1860] I'm Mike and I'm with the Rock.

[1861] you know or whatever the fucking sidekick and maybe that's what attracted people to trump and maybe what attracts people to like um see it like thank god i haven't especially now at least i've got a good excuse not to keep up with politics anymore because i've got a few other more important things on my plate but i think that's what attracts people to like that rough raw authentic type of speech like it's not clean cut and it's not professional but it's At least, like you said, even with Bernie, which, who knows, I don't know anything about Bernie, but.

[1862] He's not polished.

[1863] But at least what he's saying is, like, at least you feel like he actually, like, at least he actually believes it.

[1864] Because, you know, you can look at politicians over a 15 -year span and, like, they'll quote something from, like, oh, good God, think anybody, any politician from the 90s is going to have a lot different opinions on emotional triggers that we talk about today.

[1865] Bro.

[1866] Politicians from the 90s, from the Democratic Party sound like Nazis.

[1867] Totally different.

[1868] Yeah.

[1869] They sound like Nazis.

[1870] What does that tell you?

[1871] When Biden passed the crime bill in 94, there's this famous speech that he gives about locking people up so that his wife is safe and so that they're safe and that I'm safe.

[1872] And it's just, it sounds like right ring like a proud boy speech.

[1873] fucking crazy it sounds like patriot speech no but you worry about malicious say i don't i don't i know very little about any of this but my understanding is even i know for sure with hillary clinton but i think even with obama originally their stance was very much against gay marriage and then it flipped around She didn't support gay marriage till 2013.

[1874] Yeah.

[1875] So, like, how can those...

[1876] Pass them cigars.

[1877] You're going to bust out your first cigar ever on the podcast.

[1878] Yeah, so this is exciting.

[1879] So, like I said, a fan gave me these at a show.

[1880] But yeah, so that's the thing.

[1881] I just hope to see...

[1882] The fan gave you these?

[1883] How do we know they're not laced with pets?

[1884] I'm going to let you try it first.

[1885] Oh, they're sealed.

[1886] It definitely has to be real if it's sealed in plastic.

[1887] And it says it's from Cuba.

[1888] So it must be from Cuba.

[1889] I should have brought the note with him to give the guy a shout out.

[1890] That's my fault.

[1891] But he's a cool guy.

[1892] He's, uh...

[1893] Well, hey, cool guy.

[1894] Thanks for the cigars.

[1895] I hope you're not poisoned to me, bro.

[1896] We're going to find out shortly here.

[1897] These are supposedly the real ones from Cuba.

[1898] But you know how hard that is to get?

[1899] Is it?

[1900] Yeah, there's a lot of fake ones.

[1901] It's one of those things where for whatever reason...

[1902] How do you tell the difference?

[1903] I don't know.

[1904] I'm not a cigar aficionado.

[1905] I like cigars.

[1906] I can't even open a box.

[1907] I suck.

[1908] I'm not a...

[1909] I like them, but I don't know jack shit about them.

[1910] Like my friend Bobby Kelly, he knows a lot about cigars.

[1911] He could tell you all that shit and he can answer all these questions.

[1912] But I know the good ones.

[1913] This tastes good.

[1914] And they feel good.

[1915] Like there's something about, you piece of shit.

[1916] Sorry we should have done this.

[1917] It's okay.

[1918] I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[1919] I'm just trying to slice open this little cover with my sweaty hands.

[1920] Come on, bitch.

[1921] God damn it.

[1922] This is hilarious.

[1923] Maybe he set us up.

[1924] Yeah, maybe he did.

[1925] Maybe it's a bomb.

[1926] Maybe it is.

[1927] He said he's giving us a bomb.

[1928] Maybe it's a sign.

[1929] Yeah, maybe it's a sign that we...

[1930] I'm trying to preserve the looks of this box.

[1931] I'm out the window.

[1932] Oh, I'm not worried about that.

[1933] Yeah, but everybody likes boxes.

[1934] In the cigar world, people like, they like the whole thing behind it.

[1935] They're like cutting the cigar and smelling it, and they're like knowing that it came from some glass in his hands.

[1936] And it's just hilarious.

[1937] They like the experience of it?

[1938] Yeah, I don't know why I can't get into this box.

[1939] This is brutal.

[1940] It appears that this is a fake box.

[1941] We'll have to plan that out better next time.

[1942] Yeah, man, for real.

[1943] Let me just give this to Jamie.

[1944] He'll figure it out.

[1945] I think I see the seal in a different spot.

[1946] Do you?

[1947] I think the top flips up.

[1948] Oh, you're right.

[1949] God damn it.

[1950] That's hilarious.

[1951] That's how dumb I am.

[1952] How do I not know this?

[1953] It's up here.

[1954] So these bitches and then you cut it along this way.

[1955] I thought there's a line in it and I thought that that line was the seal.

[1956] This will be like a perfect YouTube short of us trying to get the box open.

[1957] No, it'll take too long.

[1958] It's not short anymore.

[1959] It's not short.

[1960] This is one too long.

[1961] This is pathetic.

[1962] Come on, bitch.

[1963] Maybe they are.

[1964] Maybe they've been packaged away for 50 years.

[1965] No, these can't be that old.

[1966] There you go.

[1967] Look at that.

[1968] Awesome.

[1969] I split the box.

[1970] This bitch does not want to open.

[1971] Is it the wrong side?

[1972] I don't know.

[1973] It isn't anymore.

[1974] Now it's the right side.

[1975] There we go.

[1976] Oh, look.

[1977] There you go.

[1978] It's the wrong side.

[1979] Jesus Christ.

[1980] Beautiful, awesome.

[1981] All right, smell that.

[1982] That's what you gotta do.

[1983] You gotta smell them.

[1984] This is what they do.

[1985] They take them, they put them by their nose.

[1986] It smells good.

[1987] Look at that.

[1988] Now we're gonna have to find out if these are fake.

[1989] How do you know?

[1990] Bill Burr says you just know.

[1991] You know, you know, I got some real ones.

[1992] Yeah, you fucking know.

[1993] Are you supposed to leave this on or slide this off?

[1994] That's personal preference.

[1995] What do you believe them on?

[1996] Let's slide them off.

[1997] They seem a little ostentatious, a little ridiculous.

[1998] For a regular guy like yourself?

[1999] Yeah, for Joe Schmole like me. Now, real cigar people, you're going to have to do that by yourself because you've got to kind of suck on it while you're doing that.

[2000] Real cigar people will tell you what you're really supposed to do.

[2001] Before you even suck on it, is roll the flames around the end, so you should probably do it correctly because I didn't.

[2002] They'll get mad.

[2003] Yeah, you do that.

[2004] You get it a little cooked.

[2005] Kind of get it a little burned up.

[2006] Get it a little cooked.

[2007] There you go.

[2008] Now, put it in your mouth and light it and suck on it at the same time.

[2009] And then you get a nice, nice bowl.

[2010] Yeah, I feel like I need to get some bullhorns through the hood of my truck now.

[2011] Bro, these might be legit.

[2012] Can I see that?

[2013] Here we go.

[2014] These are good.

[2015] You think they're good?

[2016] I mean, they seem good to me, but I wouldn't know the difference.

[2017] Yeah, like I said, I'm not an expert.

[2018] I don't even know how to open a box.

[2019] But...

[2020] They're good in that they're smooth.

[2021] They're very smooth.

[2022] Mm -hmm.

[2023] So if it really is from Cuba, there's only like, it's a very small area where they grow these Cuban cigars.

[2024] What is it called?

[2025] Abalto Viejo Abalta or something like that.

[2026] What is the area of Cuba?

[2027] But it's a very, like, surprisingly small area where they grow the best cigars.

[2028] And it's just something about the soil that makes, and the climate and everything's perfect.

[2029] But they grow really good cigars in Nicaragua.

[2030] They grow really good cigars in the Dominican Republic.

[2031] It's kind of now it's like...

[2032] You know.

[2033] It's funny because I, I've never really been interested in the cigars.

[2034] But you know who one of my favorite guys on YouTube is Dry Creek Wrangler School?

[2035] I don't if you've watched that guy.

[2036] Yeah, I have watched him.

[2037] I love watching him.

[2038] And he's kind of gotten me interested in trying him out.

[2039] This is, well, now you're trying them.

[2040] How do you say that?

[2041] Vuelta, Vuelta abajo.

[2042] That's the area.

[2043] So that one area just has palm -ass soil.

[2044] And they figured out a long time ago, they grow the dopest cigars there.

[2045] Do you know that when the embargo happened with Cuba, JFK ordered a shit ton of cigars before the embargo?

[2046] What a dirty bird.

[2047] He knew.

[2048] What a dirty bird.

[2049] Even the one guy that we love the most, that was his insider trading.

[2050] That dirty bird.

[2051] He went out and got like, how many boxes did he get?

[2052] 1 ,200 cigars.

[2053] 1 ,200 cigars.

[2054] 1 ,200.

[2055] I know that there was like an auction at one point in time for his humidor.

[2056] I think it actually still had some of the cigars.

[2057] See if you could find that.

[2058] Maybe I'm imagining that.

[2059] Humidor auction pops up.

[2060] JFK Humidor option?

[2061] 2017, no one on sale.

[2062] That's right.

[2063] $575 ,000.

[2064] Dude.

[2065] Imagine what a baller you have to be to be sitting there with like your Tiger Dick tea, you know, smoking rhino horn.

[2066] Like, whatever, whatever, what other things do you have, like a thousand -year -old bottle of wine and J .F. Casey?

[2067] If I hold on in my boots long enough, maybe that's what they'll sell for.

[2068] No, you have to keep them, man. You have to just get them resold.

[2069] Come on, man. You already broke in the best part.

[2070] If you can get a good pair of boots and, like, break them in.

[2071] My favorite boots are made by this company, Origin.

[2072] This is this company that Jocko is a part of.

[2073] And they make everything American -made.

[2074] The factories in Maine, everything.

[2075] The leather, the cloth, the threads, everything.

[2076] And they make handmade boots, handmade jeans, Jiu -Jitsu gear, hunting gear.

[2077] It's fucking awesome.

[2078] It's all under, like, Jocco's leadership and Pete, the other guy who runs it.

[2079] I'm excited.

[2080] I hope to meet Jocko one day.

[2081] He's another YouTube guy.

[2082] I love to do that.

[2083] I love to go do a hunt or something like that.

[2084] That'd be pretty cool.

[2085] Do you hunt?

[2086] Have you hunted before?

[2087] Yeah, well, my, that's what a lot of guys in the comments were saying on the Richmond North of Richmond video.

[2088] They're like, I don't think that tree stand is going to be.

[2089] We're very good this year with all that screaming and shouting y 'all were doing that on my land.

[2090] And I let people come in and hunt it.

[2091] I'm not a, I don't run dogs or anything, but that's real popular in Virginia.

[2092] So we'll do our thing at like early season.

[2093] And then we let the, we let the club come in and run dogs at the end of the year.

[2094] You know, that's very controversial in Virginia.

[2095] There's like.

[2096] You want to talk about Coke and Pepsi politics.

[2097] Like, that's definitely part of it.

[2098] You got people are very opposed to running dogs, and you've got some guys that just, it's like such a long tradition, you know, those two clash together.

[2099] But as far as, like, any of the big game, like the stuff we were checking out and I'd love to, I'd love to experience that once.

[2100] That'd be crazy.

[2101] So do you use dogs to catch deer?

[2102] Or what do you?

[2103] They run the deer.

[2104] They run the deer.

[2105] Yeah, so they, they, um, They use them just to get the deer moving, which, again, I don't know enough about it one way or the other.

[2106] But Virginia's got a really healthy deer population, all things considered.

[2107] I just think people think it's cruel.

[2108] You know, people think it's cruel when they do that with mountain lines too.

[2109] But I was trying to explain to something, listen to somebody, if you don't do that, you don't get mountain lines.

[2110] Like, you're not going to find them.

[2111] They know you are coming long before you have any idea they're there and they're gone.

[2112] and they're smart see i don't know if i'd want to kill a mountain line i think i just want to like see this is one thing people give me hell about but like we've got um on my property we've got coyotes and bear and bobcat and we get them on camera a lot like there's a huge bear we kept getting um june and july i was like man i don't i don't think i'd want to shoot him i think i'd want to just just admire him and let him go i don't know like i'm just funny about that like uh Well, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to shoot an animal.

[2113] You know, and if you don't want to shoot a bear, look, I've eaten bear, I've hunted bear.

[2114] Bear tastes good.

[2115] You can eat bear, but it's not my favorite thing to eat.

[2116] It's not, but it is also an animal that has to be managed.

[2117] The thing about biological management, this is the uncomfortable truth of it, you have to have a balance.

[2118] There's wildlife biologists, they observe populations, and they want to enact some sort of a balance of predator and prey.

[2119] And when you have an overabundance of predators in areas that are, like when you have hunting that's off limits, you create a really dangerous imbalance.

[2120] And they did that in all places in New Jersey.

[2121] The governor of New Jersey ran on this platform of stopping the bear hunt in New Jersey because a lot of people in New Jersey, they live in urban environments like Newark and, you know, like Hackensack and like that's where the population is.

[2122] And they're like, we don't want you vote.

[2123] I mean, voting to kill bears.

[2124] Why would you kill bears?

[2125] What they don't understand is like rural New Jersey.

[2126] has the highest bear per capita in the country.

[2127] There's more black bears in New Jersey than any other state.

[2128] Which is so nuts per capita.

[2129] I wonder why that is.

[2130] Because they're fucking everywhere there, and there's not a lot of hunting.

[2131] You know, so they had a bear season, and this governor came in and stopped it.

[2132] It was part of the things that he ran on.

[2133] And then when he got into office, he realized after a while, like, oh, my God, we have to kill these bears because, like, human bear interactions are growing up.

[2134] A kid at Rutgers got killed by a fucking bear.

[2135] Like, he was out in the woods near the campus, and he got fucking slaughtered.

[2136] See, I always wonder if I'm going to get...

[2137] I think the bobcats psyched me out more than anything.

[2138] I always...

[2139] The bear I'm okay with, like, I feel like they'll leave me well enough alone, but...

[2140] Until they don't.

[2141] I remember even when I first bought the place, like, right after I closed on it.

[2142] Because I'd had...

[2143] My house before that, I had a house with five acres and, like, had the little homestead thing going, and we had, like, you know, some basic stuff, horses and chickens.

[2144] That's cool.

[2145] But I knew I wanted more land and with everything...

[2146] The way everything is, like...

[2147] they're not making any more of it you know so i said i'll go ahead and um and that that caused a that caused a lot of controversy uh with my better half an eye because she thought i was crazy that i was selling our like our comfortable house we're living in to go buy land and stick a freaking camper on it until we can afford to build something but man it's i remember my first weekend it was memorial day weekend of 2019 was like the first time i slept out there And I'd heard, I knew what a coyot was, but I'd never heard a bobcat at night.

[2148] And it was me and the dogs, and we were tent camping out there, and it was like two in the morning.

[2149] It was a bobcat, like, doing that noise, you know, the noise they make.

[2150] What is the noise like?

[2151] Sounds like a, like a demented baby crying.

[2152] I don't know.

[2153] It'd be cool to hear if people haven't heard it.

[2154] But it was, and the dogs, so anyway, we ended up leaving the middle of night because my dogs wouldn't stop barking, but the bobcats are the only thing out there really freaks me out, like one of them jumping on you.

[2155] I don't think they attack people, though.

[2156] Let me hear this shit.

[2157] Whoa.

[2158] It sounds a lot wilder than that.

[2159] Maybe they'll get going.

[2160] They live up to 12 years in the wild.

[2161] Yeah, that.

[2162] Jesus Christ.

[2163] Whoa.

[2164] I saw Lynx once in Canada.

[2165] It's fucking cool.

[2166] It's just weird to see some wild cat up in Alberta in the woods.

[2167] I was like, whoa, that thing is fucking cool.

[2168] They have, like, cool paws.

[2169] Like, to get around the snow.

[2170] Yeah.

[2171] It's just wild that there's a cat up there.

[2172] You know, when you think about cats, at least I do, I always think about, like, warm environments, like tropical cats.

[2173] Yeah.

[2174] You know?

[2175] I'm really, I'm excited to...

[2176] What is this one?

[2177] Bobcat attacks Coyote.

[2178] Oh, Jesus.

[2179] I stopped it before I saw it, ran away.

[2180] I thought you got him.

[2181] Whoa, try to get him.

[2182] Wow, Bobcats try to kill coyotes.

[2183] He's just hiding in the fucking grass.

[2184] Look at them.

[2185] He's just trying to kill anything he can.

[2186] Imagine having instincts like that.

[2187] Everything that comes close to you, you want to eat.

[2188] That's a cat.

[2189] That's one thing I am excited with the opportunity I've been given with all this is I do want to travel more and get out into nature in different places.

[2190] This is my first time on the – I've never left the East Coast.

[2191] Oh, really?

[2192] This is my first time in Texas, but this is my – Holy shit.

[2193] This is my first time any farther west than...

[2194] I think the farthest west have ever been is Tennessee, so I'd love to go...

[2195] And I don't know what will happen with me next year.

[2196] Like, everybody wants to pull me in ten different directions, but I'm just...

[2197] I've always just been drawn to nature and being connected to it, and so, like, I'm sure we'll do some big shows and we'll do some things next year, but my heart is just pulling me. I'm just excited to go experience, like...

[2198] Like, the first time I go to Wyoming and stuff, like, I'm just, that's going to be it for me. Like, just getting to see that experience.

[2199] I've never, I've seen it on the internet, but.

[2200] It's pretty stunning.

[2201] Like, and up in, I've watched all these videos in Canada.

[2202] My, my, one of my favorite YouTubers is camping with Steve.

[2203] And it drives my wife crazy when I, like, anytime we want to watch something at night, it's always, I always want to watch camping with Steve, but he's a guy up in Canada.

[2204] And he goes and does all these obscure, like, different types of camps, different places.

[2205] But just some of the area he explores up there in Canada, it's just awesome.

[2206] It's just like, I've got to try it out for myself.

[2207] Wilderness like that, when you're looking at mountains and stuff like that, it's some kind of medicine for the human mind.

[2208] it's something about the awe -inspiring beauty of it and just the vastness of it it's like it like sets you at ease in some strange way it also is very lonely it's weird that it's like because you realize like oh i'm not important at all so when you're out there in the woods you're like i'm Yeah, well, you realize, like, yeah, and maybe that's part of what I was trying to convey earlier in my words, too, but it's like you realize that, yeah, there's whatever problems and issues you've in your mind have sort of perceived to be top ranking, like they really are irrelevant, you know?

[2209] They really are irrelevant.

[2210] And the bigger scheme of things, like, it's a beautiful thing when you can, because you really find peace in that.

[2211] But, yeah, there's something about being out in nature.

[2212] I don't know, like I've read all these things about...

[2213] You know, there's this whole kind of hippie spiritual side to being out in nature, but there really is something just very peaceful about it.

[2214] And I found that even on my property, being able to just be out there in the woods just help me tremendously with everything.

[2215] You know, I've been reading about like these different...

[2216] these different like healing centers and camps and things that they're using to try to um it's for people like that are get just getting out of rehab centers or PTSD or whatever but like they they have a lot some of these nonprofit organizations where they take people out into that environment and there's it's they found a lot of benefit in it for people but um i'm looking forward to getting the experience just different parts of the country and even outside of the country like it's I think if I get anything out of this, like, there's anything I'm really excited about.

[2217] It's just getting to camp different places.

[2218] That's cool, man. That's a beautiful thing to look forward to.

[2219] That's smart.

[2220] You get your head on right.

[2221] This is going to be fun for you, dude.

[2222] You're going to have a good time.

[2223] Yeah.

[2224] You're going to have a good time.

[2225] You're already making the right decisions.

[2226] I'm having a good time now, so...

[2227] This is cool.

[2228] It's crazy overwhelming, I'm sure.

[2229] I mean, I can't imagine when it's like to be you.

[2230] I got a nice slow trickle of fame.

[2231] You could just, like I got like a snake venom.

[2232] Like you get a little bit more all the time, tolerate a little bit more.

[2233] You get to a point you can still be yourself.

[2234] That's where it gets weird.

[2235] You're just going to get a lot of people pulling at you.

[2236] But you don't have to listen.

[2237] There's been a lot of good people come out of the woodwork, like big names, you know?

[2238] That's got to be cool.

[2239] People that have given me, like, very good.

[2240] I don't want to say his name on here and disrupt his privacy, but there's one guy in particular that, like, well, everybody's seeing me meet him at one point, if that gives you a hint at all.

[2241] But he's just a really good dude.

[2242] I didn't see you meet anybody.

[2243] Yeah, one of the shows, you know.

[2244] A show?

[2245] Yeah.

[2246] At one of the shows?

[2247] Yeah.

[2248] And one of your shows?

[2249] He, uh...

[2250] You're talking about Jamie Johnson?

[2251] No, yeah, I can't say any names, but he's been a...

[2252] Yeah, he's just a...

[2253] He's everything you think he is, but he's just been a big help.

[2254] That's awesome.

[2255] Like almost kind of a...

[2256] I don't know if you'd want to say a father figure in the industry, but like there's been some very good -hearted people.

[2257] Like, just with, despite all the craziness and all the people that have come out, like, just clawing at me like that movie.

[2258] We were talking about the beginning, you know, like, there's been a lot of that.

[2259] There's also been a lot of just really down -to -earth people that have, that just have the interest of me trying to, trying to preserve whatever it is I've created here and turn it into something.

[2260] to keep to help me keep me on the train tracks you know it's just a while it has been a while a couple weeks but like I said it's been a lot of fun you're handling it really well you are and you're handling the controversy and the criticism and the hit pieces you're handled it I love it like yeah just hey look let them talk just they don't even realize they're working for you they're just making you more popular Well, the thing is, is like, yeah, I see a lot of the negative stuff online.

[2261] But, man, if you read through my emails and my social media messages and the people I've talked to on the street, like, there's no question that the majority of people perceive it in the way that I hope that it was, that it would be perceived.

[2262] Yeah, no question.

[2263] No question.

[2264] You don't have to think about that.

[2265] No matter what you do, you can't make everybody happy.

[2266] No matter what you do, no matter who.

[2267] who it is, there's always gonna be people that don't like it.

[2268] It's in everything, in music, and comedy and literature and films.

[2269] There's always gonna be people that don't like things you like.

[2270] It's always gonna be people, and that's okay.

[2271] That's okay.

[2272] Just don't have to read it.

[2273] The thing is about your things that people are going to write about you now.

[2274] Like you don't want to like inject that negativity into your mind.

[2275] So just don't read it.

[2276] You don't have to read it.

[2277] Like it's so they don't like you said this.

[2278] So they think you said of that should have done this instead of that.

[2279] Oh yeah.

[2280] Shut up.

[2281] Yeah, it's funny though.

[2282] Like I. But they're allowed to do that too.

[2283] That's their job.

[2284] Yeah.

[2285] And that's what I've said even with people at certain organizations that I strongly disagree with that have reached out trying to do interviews or even some of the people that have come out with the hit pieces and all.

[2286] I'm like, look, I respect what you're trying to do.

[2287] Same way with the people in the music industry that have approached me. It's like, I don't necessarily want to work with your organization, but I respect you for what you're doing.

[2288] Yeah.

[2289] I mean, they're just trying to earn an income just like anybody else, you know.

[2290] And they're stuck in a system.

[2291] Everybody's got a boss, you know.

[2292] Yeah.

[2293] If you're doing a show on CNN, you're in a system.

[2294] That's what you're doing.

[2295] You know, you work for a system.

[2296] There's no way around that.

[2297] You are a part of a gigantic corporation that is a very specific kind of news that it does, and you're told how you're supposed to do this, and you're hired accordingly, and you know what your job is.

[2298] It's not you representing you.

[2299] And I think what your music, one of the reasons why it represented or why it resonated rather with people, is because it represents them.

[2300] It represents humans, like a real human being.

[2301] This isn't just some bullshit hit written by AI.

[2302] Right.

[2303] It's a real human.

[2304] Well, I don't know.

[2305] I read on the internet that it was a...

[2306] You probably could, but I don't think you'd put the fudge rounds in there.

[2307] You know, that doesn't seem like AI would be that creative.

[2308] It made those things rhyme.

[2309] It's funny that that was one that was the most controversial.

[2310] I really thought when I, because it's funny, like to just, I guess if I, just to tell the story about the song and how it was written, it was like, I had the first, again, this, that song to me, we weren't even, I didn't even want to record that song when Draven from Radio WV came down.

[2311] He had hit me up on a Thursday about coming to do the recording.

[2312] And I'd watched a lot of Radio WV like Logan Hallstead and a few of Nolan Taylor.

[2313] Like those guys are just, they're some of my recent favorites.

[2314] And they were all sort of debuted on his channel.

[2315] And so I've been watching him for years.

[2316] A guy gave, a guy on TikTok got me in contact with him.

[2317] And so he called me on a Thursday.

[2318] He wanted to come that Saturday and record.

[2319] And I only had the first half of Richmond, North of Richmond even written.

[2320] It was on my, it was on my TikTok.

[2321] I was sitting in my bathroom, like just half -heartedly singing through the word.

[2322] I didn't even know if I was going to, just, when stuff comes in my head a lot of times, I would just post part of it online, just like.

[2323] to get it out there, you know, very casually.

[2324] And everybody in the comments was like, oh, you got to finish this one, whatever.

[2325] And then Draven was insistent that we needed to do that song.

[2326] Because I didn't, my top song in my head was Ain't Got a Dollar.

[2327] Ain't Got a Dollar and I want to go home or like two of my favorites.

[2328] So I just threw the rest of the song together.

[2329] I finished it at the day.

[2330] We recorded it at around 6 .30 on a Saturday.

[2331] And I had had the song finished at like 3 o 'clock on a Saturday.

[2332] So it was very thrown together.

[2333] Had no idea that was going to be the one.

[2334] Wow.

[2335] And Alex, I was a little reluctant to even record it because I was like, I'm not really an anthem song kind of guy.

[2336] A lot of my other songs are different than that.

[2337] So, I mean, I'm glad he had the insight to tell me to do it.

[2338] But yeah, it's just kind of funny the way it was thrown together.

[2339] But really, I thought when we uploaded the song, I thought the controversy and it was going to be more around the first line and the second verse than anything.

[2340] about minors on an island somewhere like i thought that was going to be well that one people got upset about too what's interesting is left people on the left got upset about that one like why is you talking about why wouldn't you be talking about it that's a real thing that's a real thing that's horrible like why wouldn't why would that be a thing that's controversial to sing about and how why would it be like something that left -wing people would be upset about like what What happened?

[2341] I hope that people will, I hope, and I've seen it happen.

[2342] Like, a lot of people like, I want to go home.

[2343] I've seen that one's got like some million views on it and whatever, and that's awesome.

[2344] But yeah, Richmond, North of Richmond isn't really even my favorite pick.

[2345] Like my favorite, and I'll get a better version uploaded of it at some point.

[2346] Right now it's just off my phone.

[2347] But, like, I'd say my favorite song that talks about, like, class and politics in the world and, like, the way I perceive it is probably doggone it.

[2348] Like, Dog on it's probably my favorite out of any of them.

[2349] So I'm excited to, like, get those songs released in a more professional format the way Richmond North of Richmond is.

[2350] And I've got notebooks just full of stuff written down.

[2351] So I've got a lot of ideas of new songs that I want to work on.

[2352] So I'm really excited to get...

[2353] And I hope that, like, it's good that we did this interview and that we got to get on here and talk.

[2354] But I'm not, I don't want to talk a whole lot anymore, I don't think.

[2355] You don't have to.

[2356] I'm not a talker.

[2357] I'm a writer.

[2358] And so I hope moving forward that I'll just be able to communicate with people just through music and not worry so much about doing interviews and stuff like that.

[2359] Well, I think you made an excellent account of yourself.

[2360] and people are gonna understand what you really are.

[2361] And it's a cool story.

[2362] It's fun.

[2363] I think more people are gonna be behind you now than even before.

[2364] They'll get a sense of this is a magical thing for you.

[2365] And it's beautiful.

[2366] And if it can happen to you, if you can pursue a dream and do this, Other people can do things that are very similar.

[2367] Exactly.

[2368] I mean, if there is a message to get out of all of this, it's just that you don't need anybody to do what it is you want to do.

[2369] Like, I'm just a guy that wrote some songs.

[2370] I recorded them on my phone.

[2371] I uploaded them through Distro Kid, and like, here I am.

[2372] um it doesn't matter what your pursuit is like you don't need some big industry fancy schmanchy whatever to back you up to do it you just want you just got to go do it you know and i think there's so many people that are like and i know people like that that are very good at things but they say oh i'm not good and like The fear holds a lot of people back from being successful.

[2373] You know, your fear of failure will keep you from being successful all day long.

[2374] So I hope that if anything resonates out of this, it's that, that people just do what you want to do and don't worry about if people are going to like it or not.

[2375] They probably are, you know.

[2376] And if they don't, make something better.

[2377] If they don't, yeah, who cares if they don't?

[2378] Yeah, who cares if they don't?

[2379] Yeah.

[2380] Well, hey, brother, thank you very much for coming in here.

[2381] Congratulations on everything.

[2382] Enjoy the ride.

[2383] You're going to be fine.

[2384] Yeah, it's fun.

[2385] We'll do it again in a couple years.

[2386] Yeah, that sounds good.

[2387] All right.

[2388] All right, cool.

[2389] Sounds good, brother.

[2390] Good luck to you.

[2391] Yeah.

[2392] Bye, everybody.