The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2027 - Oliver Anthony

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:13.000 Do you ever find yourself with the desire to welcome the Crocs into your life? 1.00

00:00:18.000 Yeah, I've got some genuine Realtree Crocs from when I'm out in the stand, you know?

00:00:25.000 I know guys who use those as camp shoes.

00:00:27.000 They like to walk around camping them because you're wearing heavy boots in the mountains.

00:00:30.000 Yeah, they're nice to kind of keep with you as a spare.

00:00:34.000 You know, if you soak your boots or you're just trying to go in and out of the house real quick.

00:00:38.000 Brian Simpson now has Crocs and stage Crocs.

00:00:43.000 So before Brian Simpson goes on stage, he takes off his walk-around Crocs and he puts on his pristine stage Crocs.

00:00:53.000 It's hilarious.

00:00:55.000 It's so funny.

00:00:56.000 He used to do it with sneakers.

00:00:57.000 He used to walk around with Crocs and then he would wear sneakers on stage.

00:00:59.000 And then he went from Crocs to stage Crocs.

00:01:02.000 Yeah, maybe I'll look into it.

00:01:03.000 I need to get some new boots.

00:01:04.000 My boots are like, these are the ones I always wear.

00:01:09.000 We were walking through the airport yesterday and they're like literally, one of the soles is falling off.

00:01:13.000 I'm like, I gotta figure out something.

00:01:14.000 You gotta get them resold, man.

00:01:16.000 They're authentic.

00:01:17.000 Yeah, these are my genuine.

00:01:19.000 You earned them.

00:01:20.000 People pay for those.

00:01:22.000 I thought about it.

00:01:23.000 I was joking with my buddy the other day.

00:01:24.000 I went and changed my oil at his house before we drove to North Carolina.

00:01:28.000 And I left the empty jug of the dirty oil sitting in his garage.

00:01:32.000 And I was like, I'll get it.

00:01:34.000 Whatever.

00:01:34.000 He said, no, man.

00:01:34.000 He said, I'm selling that on eBay.

00:01:36.000 That's Oliver Anthony's authentic used motor oil out of his truck.

00:01:40.000 You'd probably get 20 bucks for that.

00:01:41.000 Yeah, there's a lot of people that definitely would buy that.

00:01:45.000 But what I mean, people buy used clothes because they want to wear clothes that look like, you know, they have character.

00:01:52.000 You know, like it drives me crazy.

00:01:54.000 When I see people with pants that are just...

00:01:57.000 Or shredded all over the place.

00:01:59.000 Like your knees are exposed.

00:02:00.000 Yeah, well see the pro tip I have for that is just go to Goodwill.

00:02:02.000 You can get real used clothes.

00:02:04.000 For real used clothes.

00:02:05.000 But that's extra like hipster authentic if you go to a real used clothes store.

00:02:12.000 What do they call those?

00:02:13.000 Vintage?

00:02:13.000 Yeah, like that vintage look.

00:02:15.000 Oh yeah, if you could buy some holey t-shirt that some dirty hippie wore to a Rolling Stones concert in the 1970s, you can get that now?

00:02:22.000 That's worth a lot of money. 0.98

00:02:24.000 You know, if he died of a heroin overdose and he kept the fucking t-shirt at his mom's house and she said to sell it, that's worth a lot of money. 0.99

00:02:33.000 I've tried to hold on to things that I think I could sell down the road. 0.99

00:02:35.000 Look, I've still got the strings that I recorded Richmond North of Richmond on my guitar.

00:02:40.000 I almost threw them away.

00:02:42.000 I was like, oh, hold on a second.

00:02:43.000 You could definitely sell those.

00:02:44.000 In hard times, yeah, I may have to.

00:02:45.000 Yeah, you could definitely sell those.

00:02:46.000 But that would be like an honest sale.

00:02:49.000 People can't say, oh, he's a sellout.

00:02:51.000 Yeah, I'm just selling junk I have.

00:02:53.000 Actually, I'm considering selling my truck.

00:02:57.000 I don't know, I think we talked about this once before, but it's worthless to me.

00:03:02.000 It's got 325,000 miles on it and a salvage title, 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, it would be pretty slick to do.

00:03:14.000 It has a salvage title?

00:03:16.000 It does, yeah.

00:03:17.000 What happened?

00:03:17.000 Did you buy it when it was already wrecked?

00:03:20.000 It's a 2007 Suburban.

00:03:23.000 I paid a couple grand for it years ago.

00:03:27.000 Just here recently, I had to have it towed.

00:03:29.000 It broke down.

00:03:29.000 The rollback driver, I don't know if he was under the influence or something, but he unhooked all the chains off and then tilted the bed back.

00:03:37.000 Oh no.

00:03:37.000 So the whole truck rolled right off the back of the rollback.

00:03:40.000 Oh no.

00:03:41.000 And it totaled the truck out.

00:03:42.000 It bent a bunch of stuff under the drive shaft and the front of the frame and all.

00:03:45.000 And of course, I'm sitting there trying to figure out what to do with my truck and here comes all the police and they're like, oh, is that really you?

00:03:50.000 Let's get it.

00:03:51.000 So here I am.

00:03:52.000 I'm on the phone with my insurance company and then all these guys are coming up trying to take selfies with me and stuff.

00:03:57.000 That's hilarious.

00:03:58.000 I guess this is the world I live in now.

00:04:01.000 So, can the truck be fixed?

00:04:03.000 It's drivable.

00:04:04.000 Yeah, I'm driving it.

00:04:05.000 It rides kind of like a covered wagon now.

00:04:07.000 So, at some point, I'm going to have to upgrade.

00:04:11.000 Is the frame bent?

00:04:12.000 Is the suspension bent?

00:04:13.000 Yeah, the drive shaft in the back's bent, I think, is what's causing it to shake.

00:04:16.000 Oh, so you've got a wobble in your drive shaft?

00:04:18.000 Yeah, I mean, it went Dukes of Hazzard style off the back of the truck.

00:04:24.000 As an adult, that show drives me nuts, watching those cars land.

00:04:27.000 Like, what are you doing to those cars?

00:04:29.000 Well, hey, this one can do it.

00:04:31.000 Yeah, sort of. 1.00

00:04:32.000 Maybe I'll donate it to Whistlin' Diesel and just let him kill it. 0.99

00:04:34.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:04:35.000 It'd be pretty slick.

00:04:36.000 Well, you could do that.

00:04:37.000 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...

00:04:49.000 And, you know, make it a real sleeper. 0.93

00:04:52.000 They can do shit like that. 0.97

00:04:54.000 Because you have to get all that replaced anyway. 1.00

00:04:56.000 Why not replace it with, like, better shit? 0.99

00:04:58.000 It'd be cool for somebody to have it. 0.99

00:05:00.000 It would have a cool story behind it, you know?

00:05:02.000 This company called Roadster Shop, they've been on my podcast before.

00:05:04.000 One of the things they do is they do, like, a sleeper series.

00:05:08.000 I think they call it the Legend Series.

00:05:11.000 I'm actually not sure what they call it.

00:05:13.000 But what they do is they'll take an old car. 0.99

00:05:15.000 So the outside looks like shit. 0.99

00:05:17.000 The outside is patina and rust and all that stuff. 0.94

00:05:19.000 And then they'll just completely redo everything underneath it with like a crazy engine, insane brakes, insane handling and suspension.

00:05:28.000 But it still looks like a 72 GMC pickup truck.

00:05:33.000 But underneath it, it's just a monster.

00:05:35.000 It's got all the monitored amenities, because new cars are so much more efficient.

00:05:40.000 You don't realize when you...

00:05:42.000 So they do stuff like this, but they have different kinds of builds.

00:05:49.000 No, so these are all just like the different ones that they did.

00:05:53.000 Survivor Series, that's what it is.

00:05:56.000 I think the Survivor Series, that's what it is.

00:05:59.000 Like, they leave the outside.

00:06:00.000 It's interesting to me that older vehicles had so much more character.

00:06:03.000 Like, I don't know if it's just that it's...

00:06:05.000 It's people who are doing drugs, bro.

00:06:07.000 That's what it is.

00:06:09.000 We nailed it with them.

00:06:10.000 We sat down with them and they introduced me to all these people that were the designers back in GM in the day.

00:06:16.000 This guy was a freak.

00:06:17.000 He was wearing like crazy red suits. 0.85

00:06:19.000 The guy was probably definitely on acid.

00:06:22.000 And these are the people that created these insane shapes.

00:06:24.000 And then when the sweeping psychedelics drug act of 1970 came along, they made everything a schedule one drug.

00:06:31.000 Yeah.

00:06:31.000 And that is when cars went downhill.

00:06:32.000 It is when cars went downhill.

00:06:34.000 It was early 70s.

00:06:34.000 Yes.

00:06:35.000 You can get a 71 Barracuda and it's still sick.

00:06:38.000 But you get into like 72, 73. Those cars look like shit. 1.00

00:06:43.000 75, they're garbage. 1.00

00:06:45.000 79, they're done. 0.99

00:06:46.000 Everyone's on coke.

00:06:47.000 Everyone thinks everything they do is amazing.

00:06:50.000 You get the movie Showgirls.

00:06:52.000 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 better to produce.

00:07:00.000 Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on.

00:07:03.000 They were going on past success. 0.97

00:07:05.000 So if you go to the 1980s, some of the worst movies that were ever made, like the cocaine years, I really strongly feel like those people were going on reputations of sales, and the studio would put a lot of money behind someone who had a great reputation, and this guy's fucking partying and doing lines and writing crazy shit in these scripts, 0.85

00:07:25.000 and some of them are good and some of them aren't so good, but they're all kind of clunky. 0.78

00:07:29.000 They're all kind of disconnected.

00:07:31.000 That like a true masterpiece of a movie isn't.

00:07:35.000 You know, like Taxi Driver.

00:07:36.000 Like you go back and watch Taxi Driver.

00:07:38.000 That's a masterpiece of a movie.

00:07:40.000 It's so connected.

00:07:42.000 You're connected to all the action.

00:07:43.000 It's like you're on the edge of your seat.

00:07:45.000 It's wild.

00:07:47.000 The acting's insane.

00:07:49.000 Even Jodie Foster as a kid is insane in it.

00:07:52.000 It's so good.

00:07:53.000 But cocaine movies in the 80s?

00:07:57.000 They were nuts, man.

00:07:59.000 They didn't go on algorithms. 0.99

00:08:01.000 I think they just went on what they thought people wanted. 0.99

00:08:06.000 They probably took polls, but who the fuck's answering polls? 0.99

00:08:09.000 Polls are the worst way to get information because you're only getting information from people dumb enough to answer polls. 0.99

00:08:14.000 That's such a small group of people. 0.93

00:08:17.000 How many people answer polls when they call you up? 0.99

00:08:20.000 How many fucking people would the life have time for a poll? 0.98

00:08:23.000 You know, do you think Jordan Peterson has ever answered a poll? 0.99

00:08:26.000 Yeah, like, um, I always get those calls and immediately hang up. 1.00

00:08:30.000 Yeah, just shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:08:31.000 I'm sorry I have to do this to you, but bye. 1.00

00:08:34.000 No, don't hang up!

00:08:35.000 Some of them will beg.

00:08:37.000 Please!

00:08:37.000 They can't get anybody to do it.

00:08:39.000 Yeah, it's fascinating to see throughout history times when people were able to really connect with other humans, whether it's through movie or film or cars or whatever.

00:08:47.000 Maybe it was the psychedelics or whatever, I don't know, but there was a huge disconnect, it seemed like.

00:08:53.000 After the 70s with all that, things kind of went off.

00:08:56.000 And it's interesting even now, like I see a lot of the new movies coming out, they're all just sort of remakes of...

00:09:00.000 They're like a reconceptualization of something that's happened 15 years ago.

00:09:05.000 There's not a lot of new stuff out there for people to connect with.

00:09:08.000 It's...

00:09:09.000 Yeah, Matt Damon did this conversation about why it's so much more difficult to make movies now, there's no DVD sales anymore, and it was very interesting, and it kind of makes sense. 0.65

00:09:17.000 I think it's just, it's really hard to finance those fucking things, and you want a guaranteed success.

00:09:22.000 What's a guaranteed success? 0.98

00:09:23.000 You need a superhero.

00:09:24.000 People like superheroes, you know?

00:09:27.000 And if your superhero's trans, even better. 0.98

00:09:30.000 You can figure out a way to make it.

00:09:32.000 Every ethnicity inside the group of superheroes that are there, perfect.

00:09:36.000 Now we're good.

00:09:37.000 Now we need CGI, we need aliens, explosions. 0.63

00:09:40.000 Yeah, I think CGI is a blessing and a curse because, like...

00:09:44.000 I don't know, some of the best film, it doesn't necessarily have the best stunts.

00:09:50.000 You can tell where some of it's fabricated, but that's okay because you know the whole thing's a fabrication going into it.

00:09:56.000 It's just about being able to believe the story within it.

00:09:59.000 That's what's important.

00:10:01.000 I'm not a huge movie guy, and I guess it's difficult for me to sit three hours and watch something straight.

00:10:07.000 My mind's already long gone within the first 30 minutes doing something else, but Star Wars was really partial to me growing up.

00:10:13.000 And I don't think they'll ever touch the original series, even though, yeah, you can tell some of it, even with some of the renovations they've done on the newer versions of it, adding CGI into the old films, it's like just the story of the originals to me meant a lot more than the newer stuff just because of the...

00:10:32.000 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?

00:10:39.000 I think that Star Wars is like generational wealth. 0.99

00:10:44.000 Like, the original guy who started the company was a bad motherfucker. 0.98

00:10:48.000 That guy was out there grinding, and he was selling soap out of the back of a wagon in 1890. But the folks who inherited the company three, four, and five generations in... 0.99

00:11:02.000 They're kind of flat.

00:11:05.000 It's different.

00:11:06.000 When I watch Star Wars now, it's like a bunch of stuff happening.

00:11:09.000 It's still fun.

00:11:10.000 They're still good.

00:11:10.000 I enjoy them.

00:11:11.000 But Star Wars won in the context of whatever year it was.

00:11:15.000 What was it?

00:11:15.000 77 or something like that?

00:11:17.000 Hey, there you go.

00:11:18.000 Let's take a pop.

00:11:19.000 What do you think it is?

00:11:20.000 What was first Star Wars, if you had a guess?

00:11:22.000 Yeah, probably late 70s, I'd say.

00:11:24.000 Yeah, I want to say like 77. In my unprofessional opinion.

00:11:26.000 Am I right?

00:11:26.000 77?

00:11:27.000 Yay! 0.99

00:11:27.000 Look at that. 0.99

00:11:28.000 That movie, at that time, was fucking groundbreaking. 0.98

00:11:33.000 It was amazing. 0.98

00:11:35.000 Rick Baker did the special effects.

00:11:37.000 That was when I was a serious special effects nerd.

00:11:40.000 When I was a little kid, I wanted to do special effects for the movies.

00:11:43.000 That's how I became a giant fan of Rick Baker.

00:11:45.000 That's why we have that American Werewolf in London in the lobby.

00:11:48.000 Oh, okay.

00:11:48.000 Gotcha.

00:11:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:49.000 This guy named Pat McGee.

00:11:51.000 It's funny because that's our second one.

00:11:52.000 We have another one that's in the pool hall.

00:11:54.000 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.

00:12:02.000 He made an American Werewolf in London that you could buy online.

00:12:06.000 And I'm like, that would be the sickest thing for the studio ever.

00:12:09.000 And then Rick Baker came and was a guest and Rick Baker said, the proportions are off.

00:12:15.000 Like the wolf, the arms weren't as long.

00:12:17.000 It was like shorter, it was like this and that. 0.98

00:12:19.000 So Pat McGee listened and he was like, shit, I gotta make a better one. 0.98

00:12:22.000 And so he made an even better one. 0.99

00:12:24.000 And the new one is all hair.

00:12:26.000 There's no synthetic hair.

00:12:28.000 So it's all like, I think it's yak hair that they use. 1.00

00:12:31.000 So it's like individual hairs are put in all over this wolf. 0.96

00:12:35.000 And it looks fucking amazing. 0.97

00:12:36.000 It does look... 0.97

00:12:37.000 Yeah, that's the first thing that catches your eye walking in here, I'd say, out of everything.

00:12:40.000 Yeah, that thing's sick. 0.99

00:12:42.000 You're not going to find one of those many other places.

00:12:44.000 That was 100% my favorite horror movie.

00:12:48.000 I love that movie because it's funny.

00:12:50.000 It's terrifying.

00:12:52.000 It has to do with the werewolf theme to me is so amazing that you take some person who's like a good person.

00:12:58.000 They're a friendly, nice guy.

00:13:00.000 And you're like, hey, man, you have to lock yourself in a cage. 0.91

00:13:03.000 You're going to become a monster. 1.00

00:13:04.000 It's like, what the fuck? 1.00

00:13:05.000 What the fuck are you saying? 1.00

00:13:06.000 It doesn't make any sense! 0.99

00:13:07.000 And they never want to believe, and you know it's going to happen.

00:13:10.000 And in that one, that was the first time in one of those movies where you got to see the advancements of special effects.

00:13:18.000 Like, what year was American Werewolf in London?

00:13:19.000 Let's guess that.

00:13:20.000 I want to say 82?

00:13:24.000 I'm going to say 82, 84?

00:13:28.000 81. 81. I should have stuck with 82. Back then, when you had special effects, it was kind of like they didn't move that good.

00:13:39.000 They couldn't get their faces to move that good.

00:13:41.000 But he had figured out a way to get your hands to grow.

00:13:44.000 Like...

00:13:47.000 And he had to figure out a way to get things in his cheeks where his cheeks were bubbling.

00:13:51.000 Yeah, it's awesome.

00:13:52.000 And it's all real.

00:13:53.000 None of it is CGI. And there's something about that uncanny valley when you're watching a CGI transformation.

00:14:01.000 Your brain knows it's bullshit. 0.99

00:14:03.000 For whatever reason, you're better off having it look fake but be a real thing like John Carpenter's The Thing. 1.00

00:14:10.000 You're better off with that than you are with CGI. For whatever reason, CGI just...

00:14:16.000 Yeah, I mean, I think we just have seen...

00:14:17.000 There it is.

00:14:18.000 There it is.

00:14:19.000 This is behind-the-scenes footage I always wanted to show you.

00:14:21.000 Oh, wow.

00:14:22.000 I thought it was pretty cool because it still moves in a very interesting way.

00:14:25.000 Yeah, but that's a physical thing moving.

00:14:28.000 It's not a CGI. That does look exactly like the wolf in the lobby, doesn't it?

00:14:33.000 But back then, they couldn't even get the thing to close its mouth.

00:14:36.000 Look how sick that is.

00:14:37.000 That's awesome. 1.00

00:14:38.000 Imagine if you're in a subway and you see that fucking thing turning a corner. 0.96

00:14:42.000 My god that scene 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. 0.95

00:14:51.000 That's that's like Just those quick glimpses of a thing like that is so much more terrifying than some long CGI'd up monster killing someone scene like the American werewolf in London was just a masterpiece Landis just Nailed it.

00:15:09.000 It was the perfect horror movie.

00:15:11.000 And it was funny.

00:15:12.000 There's funny moments in it.

00:15:13.000 Yeah, that's cool when you can get humor in there, too.

00:15:16.000 Yeah, that kind of reminds me of my dog when I don't give him table scraps.

00:15:20.000 He's got that terrible face like that.

00:15:24.000 That thing was amazing.

00:15:25.000 Yeah.

00:15:26.000 But it's just the difference between digital and real.

00:15:29.000 And you're going to have to deal with that soon.

00:15:31.000 Because I guarantee you there's going to be some people that are making some CGI, AI. Oh, there already are.

00:15:35.000 Are they out there?

00:15:36.000 Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

00:15:37.000 I'm sure there are.

00:15:38.000 Yeah, I haven't kept up with a lot just because, you know, I'm doing...

00:15:43.000 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 so I haven't invested the time to like look at everything circulating but I've people like friends and family have sent me stuff 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 and it's it's funny to see where it's gonna go you know that is funny Yeah,

00:16:10.000 you're going to have to deal with that.

00:16:11.000 My daughter sent me some advertisement.

00:16:13.000 She goes, did you do this advertisement?

00:16:15.000 I'm like, nope.

00:16:16.000 Nope, that's not really my voice.

00:16:17.000 I mean, it is my voice.

00:16:19.000 The day after things blew up, one of the towing companies had an ad on Facebook that had...

00:16:23.000 It wasn't really me, but it was a red beard and the side profile of sunglasses looking out the window.

00:16:29.000 I'm like, okay.

00:16:30.000 How dare you?

00:16:30.000 I guess I've made it anyway.

00:16:31.000 That's when I realized people are already ripping things off.

00:16:34.000 And what's crazy is every shirt that I've worn anywhere in public, there's an organization that I'm not officially related to or in any way have done anything with, but it's a friend of a friend in the neighborhood.

00:16:48.000 It's called Nets with Vets, and they take out... 0.98

00:16:50.000 Veterans with PTSD and let them go deep-sea fishing.

00:16:53.000 So he asked me last minute just to wear his shirt at one of the concerts.

00:16:57.000 And do you know now there's like 1,500 listings online for counterfeit Nets with Vets shirts?

00:17:02.000 And so the organization reached out like, hey, are you like making shirts, ripping us off?

00:17:07.000 It's like, it's not me.

00:17:09.000 So it's a weird thing.

00:17:11.000 I've already experienced a lot of that stuff.

00:17:13.000 Not so much on the AI side, but just, I don't know, the internet's just such a rowdy place, you know?

00:17:18.000 Oh, it's so rowdy.

00:17:19.000 The world's a rowdy place.

00:17:21.000 It is, and maybe people bring their best and their worst on the internet.

00:17:28.000 I've always tried to stay off social media as much as possible, but I've learned very quickly that Twitter and Facebook and stuff like you...

00:17:36.000 You see comments and feedback from people both overwhelmingly positive that maybe you wouldn't get in a personal conversation, but also overwhelmingly negative, too.

00:17:46.000 People just use that as a vent.

00:17:47.000 They just take whatever seething hatred they have inside of them.

00:17:51.000 They're like, oh, I'm getting that guy with it.

00:17:53.000 If you had a song just about love that resonated like that, it would be almost impossible to hate you. 0.99

00:18:01.000 But you have a song where you're talking about how people are fed up with shit. 0.99

00:18:05.000 And it obviously resonated. 0.99

00:18:08.000 I mean, I've seen songs go viral.

00:18:11.000 But that's pretty bananas, son. 1.00

00:18:13.000 Your shit went to the moon right away. 1.00

00:18:17.000 God, I'm not sure who sent it to me. 1.00

00:18:19.000 I'll have to find out who sent it to me.

00:18:22.000 Because it's one of those things where once one person sent it to me, then it was like dozens of people were sending it to me.

00:18:29.000 It's funny because originally that song wasn't really even in my top five.

00:18:35.000 It's not normally the type of song.

00:18:37.000 I've written songs with similar messages, but as far as that sort of, I guess, anthem format is what people are calling it.

00:18:43.000 It's like an anthem.

00:18:44.000 That's not something I would normally write.

00:18:46.000 Yeah.

00:18:47.000 But it's an unlikely anthem.

00:18:49.000 Yeah.

00:18:50.000 Insane times.

00:18:51.000 It would be an unlikely anthem.

00:18:53.000 Yeah, I had no idea that that song would react the way it did.

00:18:55.000 Well, you're a smart guy and it's representative of how a lot of people feel.

00:19:00.000 And it's also, there's something about the way certain people sing.

00:19:04.000 And I don't know what it is because I can't sing.

00:19:06.000 But there's a tone, there's an authentic sound.

00:19:10.000 And I know when they're faking it.

00:19:12.000 And it's not that they're not faking it in a beautiful way.

00:19:15.000 Like there's a lot of people, the faking is probably a bad term.

00:19:18.000 But they're sounding perfect and they're singing a song.

00:19:21.000 There's something missing.

00:19:23.000 I don't know what it is, but some people, like Janis Joplin's one of my greatest examples. 0.97

00:19:29.000 Take a little piece of my heart, there's an authenticity in that voice God damn, man, if that doesn't bring you to your knees, play that. 0.96

00:19:40.000 Play that. 0.99

00:19:40.000 We need to hear that. 0.99

00:19:41.000 We got time. 1.00

00:19:43.000 This fucking song. 1.00

00:19:46.000 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. 1.00

00:20:01.000 And this hippie chick, who's 27 years old, has a voice from the heaven. 1.00

00:20:17.000 God damn, son. 1.00

00:20:19.000 Listen to that. 1.00

00:20:23.000 Give me some volume.

00:20:36.000 Yeah, it's timeless, too.

00:20:44.000 She was a magical person.

00:20:53.000 Magical person.

00:20:54.000 It's a magical person.

00:20:55.000 Yeah, she's really singing with everything in her.

00:20:57.000 Everything.

00:20:59.000 Yeah, I think...

00:21:01.000 At least in my case, I think the one thing that's helped me, too, is that my singing isn't the best, but I've never had any vocal lessons or anything, so the way I sing is just the way I sing.

00:21:11.000 And so I think even the same way with her and other people, it's maybe rough around the edges, it could be a little pitchy, or you're not using the right part of your face when you project and whatever.

00:21:20.000 And so on paper, things aren't quite right, but I guess to another human, it sounds right, because it is what it is, you know?

00:21:29.000 It's authentic.

00:21:30.000 Yeah.

00:21:30.000 Yeah, I don't think there's any right way to do anything.

00:21:33.000 I mean, there's...

00:21:34.000 Like, you see it in everything.

00:21:38.000 There's a person who violates the rules, and they're the best at it.

00:21:42.000 And then the rules almost morph into whatever that is.

00:21:46.000 It's funny, like, with music.

00:21:48.000 Yeah, music has...

00:21:50.000 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 and it's like they've almost created this sort of like industry standard Like OSHA rule book of how music needs to be performed And so like you can only do that so many thousands of times before people are like,

00:22:09.000 okay, what else is there?

00:22:11.000 You know, well people like that too.

00:22:13.000 That's the thing. 0.99

00:22:13.000 There's a lot of damn people There's a lot of people. 0.99

00:22:16.000 The problem I think with a lot of people is they want you to like what they like. 1.00

00:22:22.000 And if you don't like what they like, what you like sucks. 0.80

00:22:25.000 It's funny like that, man. 0.80

00:22:28.000 We're so tribal.

00:22:30.000 We are tribal with our cell phones.

00:22:33.000 You know, we're an Android or PC. Android people have to stick together.

00:22:38.000 It's like, we're so weird.

00:22:40.000 We're so weird.

00:22:41.000 But we're like that with our musical tastes.

00:22:43.000 We're like that with our...

00:22:46.000 Cultural sensitivities or cultural sensibilities rather, like the way we feel about life and how life should be.

00:22:53.000 We want everybody to kind of think along the ways that we think.

00:22:56.000 It's very strange.

00:22:57.000 And when a person like yourself gets labeled a right-wing, left-wing fanatic, like right out of the gate.

00:23:03.000 Both in like a week and a half, and yeah, at least I know I'm doing something right.

00:23:07.000 Like, to me...

00:23:08.000 Yeah, they're looking for your Biden campaign contributions now. 1.00

00:23:12.000 They're going through your fucking taxes. 1.00

00:23:14.000 The whole thing is so bonkers, man. 1.00

00:23:16.000 Like, can't they just accept that you made a great song and people enjoy it?

00:23:19.000 Yeah.

00:23:19.000 Why do people have to attack it?

00:23:22.000 Well, I think it's just for whatever reason, I've been...

00:23:24.000 I'm the subject matter the last couple weeks, and in everyone's defense, I probably haven't...

00:23:31.000 I've waited for this opportunity, I guess, to really have a real conversation with somebody about whatever it is I am.

00:23:37.000 So people are just trying to find, who's this Oliver Anthony guy?

00:23:41.000 And what is he?

00:23:42.000 And where does he work?

00:23:43.000 And who did he vote for?

00:23:44.000 And what's his family like?

00:23:46.000 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.

00:23:53.000 The people who agree with it want to...

00:23:55.000 I don't know.

00:23:56.000 It's really funny to watch on my end, because obviously I know what's true and what's not, and so just even what I've skimmed through of people sending me, like singing at the Super Bowl, how many people have formed an opinion about whether or not I should be paid to sing at the Super Bowl.

00:24:11.000 I'm not singing at the Super Bowl.

00:24:13.000 That's just something somebody made up.

00:24:15.000 But there's been hundreds of hours of people's time wasted probably talking about I think it's great.

00:24:32.000 It's wild.

00:24:38.000 At least everybody can have a good laugh, you know, so.

00:24:41.000 Well, I mean, it's a subject of discussion.

00:24:44.000 So, like, everybody is getting involved.

00:24:46.000 And somehow or another it became cultural.

00:24:49.000 And then there was Dwight from The Office.

00:24:51.000 Oh, yeah.

00:24:52.000 He chimed in that if he was going to write a cultural anthem, what did he say?

00:24:56.000 Something like he wouldn't write about overweight people on welfare.

00:25:00.000 He would write about billionaires and their taxes.

00:25:03.000 Yeah.

00:25:04.000 There is nothing funnier.

00:25:05.000 Then millionaires? 1.00

00:25:06.000 Talking shit about billionaires. 1.00

00:25:08.000 There is nothing funnier about millionaires pretending these billionaires are out of touch. 1.00

00:25:14.000 Oh, yeah.

00:25:15.000 And then, you know, take Dwight from the office down to West Virginia.

00:25:20.000 You know, take him through those coal mining countries. 0.99

00:25:23.000 Take him through those places in Appalachia where people have extreme poverty and pills have ravished those areas.

00:25:31.000 Take him through there.

00:25:32.000 And it's everywhere.

00:25:32.000 Yeah, the sad thing is it's everywhere now.

00:25:35.000 You know, it's funny.

00:25:36.000 People, right off the get-go, I guess because it was Radio WV that posted the original video, but I've never once advertised myself as being necessarily from the mountains.

00:25:45.000 My grandfather grew up in the western part of Virginia in the mountains, but I'm from Farmville, which is technically Piedmont.

00:25:51.000 But even in...

00:25:52.000 Throughout rural Virginia, that poverty is a big issue and drugs are a big issue.

00:25:56.000 I mean, it's not just even in the rural areas.

00:25:58.000 You go into downtown Richmond or any downtown, anywhere for that matter, it's almost like, yeah, these problems exist everywhere now.

00:26:05.000 And I think, I mean, obviously they are because that's why the song resonated the way it did.

00:26:09.000 They exist in other countries.

00:26:11.000 In other countries, yeah. 1.00

00:26:13.000 Well, people are tired of being fucked with. 0.99

00:26:15.000 And it seems like people in power are always fucking with people. 0.99

00:26:18.000 And I think it's a natural inclination that human beings have and I think the Founding Fathers of this country recognized that when they set up our government. 0.95

00:26:25.000 They set up our government to protect it against tyranny.

00:26:28.000 And they did it by having all these different branches of government and they're all coordinated 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.

00:26:39.000 I mean, I'm certainly no professional historian, but my understanding is that the federal government was never intended to be the size that it is today.

00:26:50.000 We're very top-heavy in the way we're structured.

00:26:53.000 Our federal government is enormous and out of control and almost impossible to manage.

00:26:57.000 But then on our community level and in our state government, especially local government, things are just...

00:27:06.000 Very neglected and weak and disconnected.

00:27:08.000 And so, like, that's why you see a lot of the problems.

00:27:10.000 Like, we shouldn't have to rely on the federal government to fix things out in the street in small-town America.

00:27:16.000 Like, the communities and the local government should be the ones fixing that.

00:27:19.000 And that's the way I see things.

00:27:21.000 Like, even before the...

00:27:23.000 I think that's really...

00:27:38.000 That's a good argument if the country didn't get to the size that it got.

00:27:43.000 The problem is you can't have, like, 30 people running 300 billion people.

00:27:48.000 But I think you could have more issues.

00:27:50.000 So, like, I just...

00:27:51.000 I think it's almost impossible...

00:27:55.000 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. 0.99

00:28:05.000 I don't know anything about this, so I'm going to be talking out of my ass. 0.95

00:28:07.000 But I would imagine they're probably low on funding, too. 0.98

00:28:10.000 There's probably a lot of issues, especially in places that are poor, because they rely on taxes from those people.

00:28:16.000 It's all very complicated, but the idea of taxing the rich being the way to fix all this.

00:28:21.000 No, you're just going to give more money than the government.

00:28:22.000 And they're not really good at doing stuff.

00:28:24.000 You know, I mean, would it be nice if rich people donated to fixing streets and schools and stuff like that?

00:28:30.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:28:31.000 Yeah, it would be.

00:28:32.000 Good call. 1.00

00:28:34.000 Also, fat people shouldn't be buying fucking fudge rounds with food stamps. 1.00

00:28:40.000 Also, that's not good. 1.00

00:28:41.000 Yeah, and that's a funny...

00:28:43.000 But also...

00:28:44.000 That's a conversation that sort of got blown multiple ways.

00:28:47.000 And really, I like to let a song be left up to the interpretation of the listener.

00:28:52.000 But even with that, it's like, yeah, I would love to write a song about...

00:28:55.000 I always thought it was funny when GM got bailed out of the recession after they made all these terrible decisions.

00:29:01.000 I never understood why we...

00:29:03.000 I've never understood corporate welfare either to much of an extent, so I do understand the people making that argument.

00:29:08.000 Well, the corporate welfare argument is you're going to lose a shitload of jobs.

00:29:12.000 You can preserve those jobs, give those people a loan, they build back up, then they repay the loan.

00:29:16.000 That's what they did, though.

00:29:17.000 Yeah.

00:29:17.000 So there's actually some benefit to that.

00:29:19.000 It keeps American jobs, and it also keeps one of the most iconic American car manufacturers in business.

00:29:26.000 It's good for everybody.

00:29:27.000 Yeah.

00:29:28.000 I think.

00:29:28.000 It's a good conversation to have.

00:29:31.000 It is.

00:29:31.000 Like what gets bailed out and what doesn't and why.

00:29:34.000 Yeah, but ultimately, yeah, I do see a lot of people that aren't taken care of.

00:29:39.000 Yeah.

00:29:40.000 You know the most used business that didn't get taken care of during the crash?

00:29:45.000 Who?

00:29:46.000 The porn business.

00:29:47.000 The porn business got wrecked.

00:29:50.000 They got wrecked, because they used to rely on DVD sales, and then internet pirating came along, and they lost everything.

00:29:58.000 And meanwhile, these politicians are probably whacking off every day to them.

00:30:02.000 That's a big industry even today.

00:30:04.000 For sure!

00:30:05.000 Well, hey, for whatever they lost during the recession, they made it back during COVID, because that's my understanding everyone was doing that then.

00:30:11.000 I don't know how that works.

00:30:13.000 Like, who's getting paid?

00:30:14.000 I don't know how that works.

00:30:15.000 I'm sure there's a lot of money in that business.

00:30:17.000 There's obviously a lot of eyeballs in that business. 1.00

00:30:20.000 I believe it's one-third of internet traffic worldwide or something bonkers like that.

00:30:24.000 Yeah.

00:30:25.000 Isn't it something like that?

00:30:27.000 It should be more.

00:30:28.000 Let's find out what it is.

00:30:29.000 What's the percentage of points?

00:30:30.000 And everybody's like, I don't know where it's coming from.

00:30:33.000 It's not me.

00:30:34.000 I've never even seen one of these films.

00:30:36.000 That stuff's terrible for people.

00:30:39.000 It's terrible for some people.

00:30:41.000 I gave that up.

00:30:42.000 I think it's like Adderall.

00:30:43.000 Some people can handle it.

00:30:45.000 That is one thing I had to give up.

00:30:48.000 Yeah, because it's, I don't know, it does disconnect you from reality in many ways.

00:30:53.000 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 a lot of the weird things that people are doing that maybe wouldn't have been accepted a hundred years ago.

00:31:07.000 I think...

00:31:08.000 People go down these rabbit holes with porn, and they start off with the video with the milkman, and by the end of it, it's like, where did I end?

00:31:16.000 I don't know.

00:31:16.000 It's almost like a drug.

00:31:18.000 People have to keep chasing that thrill, and it takes them down very destructive rabbit holes, if you will.

00:31:23.000 It definitely can for some people.

00:31:25.000 I have no issue with anybody watching it, but I hate to read about some of the things that it does to people.

00:31:31.000 It ruins marriages and that kind of thing. 1.00

00:31:33.000 I don't know.

00:31:34.000 I think a lot of things ruin people.

00:31:37.000 I think they also should be legal.

00:31:39.000 Sure, yeah.

00:31:40.000 Alcohol ruins people.

00:31:42.000 I like the fact that bars are legal. 1.00

00:31:44.000 Shit, I own a bar. 1.00

00:31:46.000 Alcohol is legal. 1.00

00:31:47.000 I like it.

00:31:48.000 It's not good for everybody, though. 0.97

00:31:50.000 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. 0.97

00:31:56.000 They can't have a drink. 1.00

00:31:58.000 I like a drink.

00:31:59.000 You know, and I support your right to do whatever you want.

00:32:02.000 Like, you know, I think if cocaine was legal, the same amount of people would probably do it, and it would be real.

00:32:11.000 You'd get pure cocaine.

00:32:13.000 It'd probably be better.

00:32:14.000 We'd probably have better music. 1.00

00:32:17.000 If you're getting this fentanyl mixed shit, and you're out of your fucking head, you're dying of overdoses. 1.00

00:32:21.000 Yeah, well, that's the problem. 1.00

00:32:22.000 Like, yeah, I mean, gosh, yeah, look at when the government bans something.

00:32:25.000 It only makes it worse.

00:32:26.000 So that's certainly not the answer.

00:32:27.000 I'm not interested in Adderall.

00:32:29.000 I'm interested in trying it once.

00:32:30.000 But I'm not interested in doing Adderall.

00:32:32.000 I am interested.

00:32:33.000 I'm lying.

00:32:35.000 I'm interested because everybody loves it.

00:32:37.000 But I'm scared of it.

00:32:38.000 The porn stats, you're right about 30%, but this is the only one I find to be odd.

00:32:43.000 In 2020, 16.5 years was the average age of first exposure to porn in the United States.

00:32:49.000 16 and a half?

00:32:50.000 That's like you're a sophomore, junior in high school.

00:32:52.000 That's because 90-year-old people are still alive, and they do it based on them.

00:32:56.000 I first saw my girly movie when I was 20. Frank had a reel-to-reel camera in the basement.

00:33:03.000 We all got there.

00:33:04.000 We had raincoats on.

00:33:10.000 That's what it is.

00:33:11.000 It's like when you factor in infant mortality to the average age that people died during the Roman era.

00:33:17.000 That's what it is.

00:33:18.000 So you expect it to be lower than 16 and a half?

00:33:20.000 Yeah, it should be.

00:33:22.000 You give a kid a phone.

00:33:24.000 Now, um...

00:33:25.000 Instantly they...

00:33:25.000 I know that was one thing that was interesting to me in Virginia.

00:33:28.000 They just recently changed a law where I think you have to enter your driver's license to watch porn now.

00:33:32.000 Hilarious.

00:33:33.000 Now they know exactly who's watching porn. 1.00

00:33:35.000 Well, that's good if you're watching some freak shit, you know? 0.99

00:33:38.000 If you're into, you know... 0.99

00:33:41.000 It's like, I don't know.

00:33:43.000 You don't want to give the government the ability to spy on you.

00:33:46.000 You just don't.

00:33:47.000 And you don't want to give...

00:33:49.000 Because the government is just humans.

00:33:50.000 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.

00:34:02.000 But that's not real.

00:34:03.000 The reality is it's Human beings like you and like me and like Jamie.

00:34:08.000 People.

00:34:09.000 People that get to dictate what other people can and can't do. 0.99

00:34:12.000 And that's where shit gets weird. 0.98

00:34:14.000 Yeah, and a lot of people, I think, go into government with good intentions, but it's like anything else. 0.99

00:34:18.000 I think you get in the mix.

00:34:19.000 It's like things change and you have to go with the flow and sort of agree on things that maybe your heart doesn't necessarily agree with.

00:34:28.000 And so that's why you see politicians Yes,

00:34:49.000 there's a lot of that.

00:34:50.000 There's too much money tied up in politics.

00:34:53.000 Too much bribe and extortion and slap on the back deals and stuff that should never be allowed to happen.

00:35:02.000 Yeah, that's what's really created a lot of dishonesty within it. 0.97

00:35:05.000 There's a bunch of decisions that got made a long time ago that really fucked us. 0.79

00:35:09.000 And one of them was when they let drug companies advertise on television.

00:35:14.000 There's only two countries in the world that allow that.

00:35:17.000 Really?

00:35:17.000 The United States and New Zealand.

00:35:19.000 Yeah, and I think it was 97. Was it 97 when they allowed that?

00:35:22.000 Yeah, well, it's funny, because, yeah, you watch the commercial, and then at the end, it's like...

00:35:26.000 Side effects, man.

00:35:26.000 It's the best thing in the world.

00:35:28.000 You get to that last 20 seconds, you're like, oh, I don't know about that. 1.00

00:35:31.000 I know, you're at a cookout, everything looks great, next thing in your asshole is fucking spraying blood, and you're suicidal. 1.00

00:35:38.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:35:39.000 Like, what?

00:35:39.000 What?

00:35:40.000 Yeah, like, I mean...

00:35:40.000 And they say it all so fast.

00:35:42.000 This is how...

00:35:42.000 You know?

00:35:44.000 Yeah, big pharma, I guess, right.

00:35:45.000 Suicidal thoughts.

00:35:46.000 Suicidal ideation.

00:35:48.000 Rectal bleeding.

00:35:50.000 Yeah, well, I mean, that's...

00:35:51.000 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 from me, it's like it's...

00:35:59.000 The last 20 seconds applied more than the first two minutes of the commercial.

00:36:03.000 Like, I didn't find any benefit in that.

00:36:05.000 And it's...

00:36:06.000 Yeah, it's...

00:36:07.000 I don't know.

00:36:07.000 I... I think there's alternatives to pharmacy medicine in a lot of cases.

00:36:14.000 Maybe even if it's just habits.

00:36:15.000 It's okay to prescribe a medication to keep somebody on course.

00:36:20.000 For example, I've got a relative of mine.

00:36:23.000 I won't call him out, but he won't change the way he eats at all.

00:36:26.000 But he'll take whatever medications every day to keep the diabetes away and keep his blood pressure low and all that.

00:36:35.000 I think?

00:36:52.000 Well, it's weird that people are so dependent on other people to take care of us that we would rather go somewhere and get some medication than fix our life, than fix your lifestyle choices.

00:37:09.000 And that's, and we've been programmed to sort of think that there's solutions for you out there.

00:37:14.000 Go get those solutions.

00:37:16.000 That's not a solution, like, internally you need to reconsider, like, what you're doing to your actual physical body.

00:37:21.000 Like, what are you doing to your physical body?

00:37:23.000 Like, are you giving your physical body the exercise that it deserves to be robust and healthy?

00:37:27.000 If you're not, you should.

00:37:28.000 Are you eating food that's nutritious?

00:37:30.000 If you're not, you should.

00:37:32.000 Well, and how do you do that in today's time anyway if you don't have a lot of money?

00:37:37.000 Well, you can exercise for sure.

00:37:38.000 Nutritious food.

00:37:39.000 Exercise, certainly.

00:37:40.000 There's a way to eat nutritious food on a budget, but you have to be diligent.

00:37:45.000 And the problem is fast food.

00:37:47.000 And food deserts.

00:37:48.000 But if you have a supermarket, if there's a supermarket where you live, then you can get food.

00:37:52.000 And if the supermarket has food, you can get healthy food.

00:37:54.000 And it's not that much more expensive.

00:37:56.000 Even people that go on a carnivore diet.

00:37:57.000 I know people that go on a carnivore diet on a budget, and they go to Costco and get a big tube of ground beef.

00:38:04.000 And they freeze a lot of it, and they cook a bunch of it in portions.

00:38:08.000 I know, and that's a lot better than the crap from the store, but even it's not...

00:38:12.000 I mean, you read about... 0.71

00:38:15.000 I mean, just in the part of the country I'm at, we've got a really close family of ours that farms.

00:38:21.000 The father and the son have both died from cancer from the commercial agriculture they've been in spraying.

00:38:26.000 And all that stuff ends up in the food.

00:38:29.000 I've read about microplastics in the food.

00:38:31.000 You go and buy a tub of ground beef, how much plastic was in the food of all the bags of crap that they threw in there to feed the animals.

00:38:40.000 It is...

00:38:41.000 Really, I think the only way in this time in the area we're in, unless you're going to go buy really expensive food out of some fancy-smanshy grocery store that I can't spell the name of, it's like you're really better off going to somebody local and buying it direct, like buying it almost straight from the farmer.

00:38:56.000 Well, certainly if you have an organic farm near you.

00:38:59.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:39:01.000 But yeah, pesticides and herbicides are a real deal. 0.92

00:39:03.000 Atrazine, you know, Alex Jones famously said, they're turning the frogs gay. 0.91

00:39:08.000 But they are. 0.97

00:39:09.000 They're making them hermaphrodites. 0.52

00:39:11.000 They're making them switch sexes. 1.00

00:39:14.000 Atrazine is a very potent endocrine disruptor, and it's a fertilizer.

00:39:20.000 Is it a pesticide?

00:39:22.000 Pesticide.

00:39:22.000 One of those.

00:39:23.000 I think it's a pesticide.

00:39:24.000 Something needs to be done about it. 1.00

00:39:26.000 But there There's a lot of that shit that they spray on food. 0.99

00:39:29.000 Something like 90 plus percent of people tested have glyphosate in their blood. 0.99

00:39:35.000 Yeah.

00:39:36.000 That's wild.

00:39:37.000 I mean, that is an herbicide that they spray on stuff.

00:39:41.000 Yeah, so to me, it's like, yeah, you can definitely eat healthy, but even then, a lot of the food today isn't very healthy, inherently just because of the way it's grown.

00:39:52.000 Yeah.

00:39:52.000 Well, there's a lot that is.

00:39:54.000 There's still a lot that is.

00:39:55.000 You can certainly eat healthy.

00:39:57.000 It's not easy, but neither is being sick.

00:40:00.000 Being sick is not easy either, man.

00:40:02.000 Just the amount of money you're going to lose by having a body that's defeating you every turn.

00:40:09.000 You're always tired.

00:40:10.000 You have no inspiration.

00:40:11.000 You have no motivation. 0.99

00:40:12.000 You can't get shit done. 1.00

00:40:14.000 It's one of the reasons why I can get a lot of shit done. 0.99

00:40:16.000 Being healthy makes a giant difference. 0.96

00:40:19.000 You have so much more energy than regular people.

00:40:22.000 Who are just like sitting around all day because you don't demand anything of your body.

00:40:25.000 If you don't demand anything of your body, it's like good. 1.00

00:40:27.000 We'll just fucking atrophy into a sack of bones and meat. 1.00

00:40:31.000 Yeah, being complacent is like the worst thing for you. 0.99

00:40:36.000 Physically testing yourself is good and then mentally testing yourself and spending your time working towards some sort of purpose.

00:40:43.000 Like I think that's really what was...

00:40:46.000 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 spending your day working towards whatever purpose it is that you feel like you really need to accomplish deep down inside, I think that will really kill you over a period of time.

00:41:03.000 Like, you know, you go work your 9 to 5 or whatever, you come home, and then you just Start swiping, start wasting the rest of your evening.

00:41:10.000 That's your time to be productive, working towards whatever passion project or hobby.

00:41:14.000 Sure, as long as you don't enjoy your 9 to 5. Some people actually enjoy their 9 to 5, and they want to go play video games.

00:41:20.000 I'm not trying to shame them folks.

00:41:22.000 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.

00:41:28.000 Yeah, and I don't even mean so much video games, but just that mindless scrolling that I've found myself being into, too.

00:41:36.000 Bro, I've seen more people get hit by cars over the last five months on Instagram.

00:41:41.000 More people get shot, more people get mauled by animals.

00:41:45.000 Instagram's wild. 1.00

00:41:46.000 It is wild, the shit they're allowed to show you. 1.00

00:41:49.000 And one of them was like, it's okay, he's fine. 1.00

00:41:53.000 Like, there was a big letter, you know, a big print over the video of this guy getting hit by a truck.

00:41:59.000 Like, that guy is not fine.

00:42:03.000 I'm not a medical expert, but when you get hit by a truck and launched into the windshield of an oncoming car, I guarantee you, you're not fine.

00:42:10.000 No, I get it.

00:42:11.000 Look, I've been that guy that sat...

00:42:12.000 I've wasted at least an hour sometimes in a row watching Russian dashcam videos of these logging trucks flying off the road and stuff.

00:42:19.000 I don't know.

00:42:21.000 There's something that just gets your brain excited.

00:42:24.000 I don't know.

00:42:24.000 It's very addictive.

00:42:26.000 It's not good for you to see that many people die and that many people get bit by crocodiles.

00:42:30.000 I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles. 0.98

00:42:32.000 I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my algorithm. 0.98

00:42:34.000 But I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles over the last six months than having a long-ass time. 0.96

00:42:39.000 But yeah, it's mostly a waste of time.

00:42:41.000 But it's also fun.

00:42:42.000 There's a lot of funny videos on there.

00:42:44.000 It's just a matter of being disciplined.

00:42:45.000 You just got to know when you're scrolling too much.

00:42:47.000 And the way I avoid that is by doing stuff.

00:42:51.000 So there's a lot of stuff I do, you know, whether it's archery or playing pool.

00:42:54.000 There's a lot of stuff that I do where I don't, there's no time, you're not spending any time on that.

00:42:58.000 And so there's a complete different focus.

00:43:01.000 Like when I'm shooting a bow, when I'm shooting at a target and I'm just practicing, my mind is empty.

00:43:07.000 All I'm thinking about is the shot process.

00:43:10.000 All I'm thinking about is whether or not the arrow broke clean.

00:43:13.000 Did I move my shoulder a little?

00:43:15.000 Why did that one go three inches left?

00:43:17.000 Like, what happened there?

00:43:18.000 Was it my elbow?

00:43:21.000 Was my elbow up high?

00:43:22.000 How was my follow-through?

00:43:23.000 Okay, let's think about it and let's do it again.

00:43:25.000 So that's like a mind-cleansing thing.

00:43:28.000 Yoga classes like that.

00:43:29.000 If you can find a good, hot yoga class... 1.00

00:43:31.000 Man, when you're fucking... 1.00

00:43:33.000 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 you're doing. 0.99

00:43:40.000 Well, that does a good job of connecting you to your body too, which is something maybe we're not very good at either. 0.98

00:43:45.000 It's very good for people.

00:43:46.000 Yoga is like one of, if I had one thing to recommend someone who's never done any exercise before, please try yoga.

00:43:53.000 Don't hurt yourself.

00:43:54.000 Go slow because a lot of people do hurt themselves.

00:43:56.000 Yeah, I can't imagine me trying to do that.

00:43:58.000 One of my friends who's a doctor said that yoga is like one of the main people that...

00:44:03.000 It's yoga and jiu-jitsu, he said.

00:44:05.000 People that come in to see him for treatment.

00:44:07.000 But jiu-jitsu makes sense.

00:44:08.000 It's literally a sport of trying to break bodies. 0.91

00:44:10.000 But yeah, yoga you would think it would be the opposite, if anything.

00:44:13.000 Yeah, I've pulled muscles in yoga.

00:44:14.000 Yeah, you're doing hard stuff.

00:44:16.000 But hot yoga, I think, is a little better for that because it really does warm your body up almost instantly.

00:44:21.000 If you do the Bikram series, I know that guy was a creep, but if you do the series, I don't believe he even invented that series of poses. 0.98

00:44:28.000 I think he just popularized it.

00:44:31.000 And they're all like standard yoga poses, but that series is designed very well to get you really warmed up.

00:44:36.000 So by the time you get into more complicated and challenging movements, your body's pretty warmed up.

00:44:42.000 It's a good system. 0.98

00:44:44.000 It's fucking hard, man. 1.00

00:44:45.000 A 90-minute hot yoga class at 105 degrees is a motherfucker. 1.00

00:44:49.000 That sounds great. 0.99

00:44:49.000 Sounds like a great walk away from that, the feeling you get. 0.99

00:44:53.000 Oh, you feel so relaxed now.

00:44:54.000 That is one thing I'm looking forward to now is continuing to focus on mental health and that area, but also I'm excited to get into better shape physically.

00:45:05.000 The only thing I've done in the last six months at all is running.

00:45:10.000 We were planning on...

00:45:12.000 We were planning on trying to schedule a run in September that I think was like 10 miles or something.

00:45:16.000 So it was a friend of mine that I've been running with two or three days a week.

00:45:22.000 Whatever's on your mind when you start, it's gone by the time you leave.

00:45:25.000 It's something good about getting everything connected again.

00:45:28.000 But music is big for me on that too.

00:45:32.000 Just getting your...

00:45:33.000 Playing an instrument and singing like you're just...

00:45:35.000 Everything's all one again.

00:45:38.000 It's very easy, especially...

00:45:40.000 And maybe because of social media and because of the way technology...

00:45:42.000 I don't know what it is that...

00:45:43.000 I'm certainly no Dr. Phil, but it's like the world we live in today, your mind is very easily disconnected from your body physically.

00:45:50.000 You can get lost just worrying and thinking and doing.

00:45:55.000 It's good to have something like that, I guess, to...

00:45:57.000 Grounding is the word or whatever.

00:45:59.000 I don't know.

00:45:59.000 But it's good to have something like that to get you back into reality again.

00:46:03.000 Yeah.

00:46:03.000 My belief is that all human beings need something creative.

00:46:07.000 Whether that's something creative as a game that you play that you get to invent moves or think about things and strategies or whether that game or whether that creativity expresses itself in music or in drawing, painting, something.

00:46:21.000 I think people really get a great satisfaction out of making things and of creating things.

00:46:27.000 Sure, and everyone's good at something.

00:46:28.000 That's what's crazy.

00:46:29.000 I'd say almost everyone's good at something.

00:46:31.000 I know some people.

00:46:32.000 Well, maybe they haven't figured out what it is, but you know.

00:46:36.000 That's one thing I've enjoyed over the years with what I've done in the past is meeting all these different people.

00:46:42.000 You'd be surprised at how unique people are and what they're able to do.

00:46:47.000 I don't know.

00:46:48.000 Everyone seems like they have that one thing.

00:46:50.000 Maybe even if it's something that they had as a kid that they lost along the way. 1.00

00:46:53.000 But people are really good at shit. 1.00

00:46:56.000 Sometimes you underestimate people. 1.00

00:46:57.000 And people don't spend the time they need to develop the craft it is they have.

00:47:00.000 It's also sometimes people don't find a thing early on in their life.

00:47:05.000 Where they get into it.

00:47:07.000 So if they don't have a thing ever, it's very difficult for them to gravitate towards a something.

00:47:13.000 But that's why martial arts classes are great for that. 0.52

00:47:16.000 Because all of a sudden you're learning this new thing and it's exciting.

00:47:19.000 Like, oh my god, it's Monday night.

00:47:20.000 We're going to go to jiu-jitsu class.

00:47:22.000 You got your little white belt on, you're tying it, and you're freaking out.

00:47:25.000 But afterwards, you feel like, wow, I really did something.

00:47:28.000 I really challenged my fears.

00:47:29.000 I really took 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.

00:47:35.000 There's something really cool about that.

00:47:37.000 And that's also a thing that people need that they don't have, is a real community.

00:47:42.000 You know, like, feeling of community.

00:47:44.000 You know, like, one of the nice things about comedians is that we all work together.

00:47:48.000 So this is like this real feeling of community.

00:47:51.000 We go on the road together.

00:47:52.000 We travel to different countries together.

00:47:54.000 Like, all the guys that I go on the road with, we're friends.

00:47:56.000 Like, we hang.

00:47:57.000 We laugh.

00:47:58.000 We're just having drinks and having dinners places.

00:48:01.000 And just everywhere you go, you're with family.

00:48:03.000 It's beautiful.

00:48:04.000 It's beautiful in that way. 0.97

00:48:05.000 If you don't have that, man, if you don't have a thing where you're really connected to like-minded people, it sucks.

00:48:12.000 It's not fun. 0.99

00:48:14.000 Maybe the friends that you have are all fucked up and they're going in the wrong direction and try to pull you with them. 1.00

00:48:20.000 Maybe your job sucks. 1.00

00:48:21.000 That happens. 0.99

00:48:22.000 You have to be careful who you keep in your social circle because you'll end up just like them.

00:48:26.000 Well, you have to be careful of energy vampires.

00:48:29.000 There's people that are energy vampires, and they'll steal from you. 0.99

00:48:32.000 They really will.

00:48:33.000 They'll steal from you.

00:48:34.000 They don't want to do the work, but they want you to do the work for them.

00:48:38.000 Like, they want you to be involved in everything that they're doing, even though they're not making any changes.

00:48:44.000 And they want to drag you in, and they want it to be the focus of all the attention.

00:48:49.000 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.

00:48:56.000 Yeah, and it's funny how that works.

00:48:57.000 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:48:58.000 All that stuff kind of goes on behind the scenes and you don't really think about it.

00:49:02.000 One thing that really benefited me...

00:49:05.000 Even in my early 20s on, a lot of my friends seem to be older.

00:49:09.000 One of my best friends, I'm 31, he's probably in his mid-40s.

00:49:15.000 And then everyone above them is like, my best drinking buddy for years, he's like 65, 66. I love hanging out with older people though because they're a lot wiser.

00:49:25.000 Some of them. 0.98

00:49:26.000 Well, I'm a dummy too, so it's okay if I'm hanging out with dummies. 0.92

00:49:33.000 But yeah, I like hanging out with older people. 0.95

00:49:37.000 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.

00:49:44.000 It's like, those are the kind of people you want to surround yourself with are people that are going to...

00:49:48.000 That are more experienced than you, more wise.

00:49:52.000 People that you can aim toward being.

00:49:54.000 Certainly not people that are immature or on a bad streak.

00:49:58.000 Even now, I'm cutting out the drinking.

00:50:01.000 Like I said, I haven't gotten high in almost two months now.

00:50:05.000 A month and a half or two months.

00:50:06.000 That was your problem, huh?

00:50:07.000 Was the weed?

00:50:08.000 Yeah.

00:50:11.000 The problem for me was I knew that I needed to do this.

00:50:16.000 I knew I needed to I procrastinated with music a long time.

00:50:21.000 I mean, I'm 31. I've been playing guitar and singing on and off since I was a kid.

00:50:25.000 My grandma was in a band years ago.

00:50:28.000 I remember as a little kid, what got me interested in all of it was Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid.

00:50:34.000 I was like five.

00:50:35.000 I used to sit with my grandma and we'd sit and watch Dukes of Hazzard and watch Waylon Jennings pick that guitar.

00:50:39.000 Of course, I had no idea who Waylon Jennings was.

00:50:42.000 I just fell in love with that.

00:50:44.000 I grew up listening to that 70s country.

00:50:47.000 She loved all the old stuff like the 50s and 60s.

00:50:50.000 Even in the 70s.

00:50:51.000 Even Janice and all that. 1.00

00:50:53.000 She really introduced me a lot into music when I was a little kid.

00:50:56.000 I just kind of held on to it.

00:50:58.000 I never pursued it the way I should.

00:51:00.000 And then I'd play at a bonfire party or I'd play at whatever.

00:51:03.000 It's a friend's house.

00:51:04.000 And everybody's like, man, you got to do something with this.

00:51:06.000 You don't want to waste this talent you've got and whatever. 0.99

00:51:10.000 And that would almost make me feel even shittier because I'm like, oh, man, I suck. 0.99

00:51:13.000 I'm such a piece of crap for not doing something with this. 0.99

00:51:16.000 So yeah, when I was outside of work, I'd drink, I'd get just absolutely stoned, 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... 0.94

00:51:28.000 And so it's 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 don't know, just like with you probably with what you do, jujitsu or whatever, it's like for me, songwriting is, it gets my head, like you said, getting your head clear,

00:51:44.000 you know, because that's all you can, and songwriting is interesting for different people, but now that I've been in the, I guess now that I've been in the industry for two weeks and I've talked to like, Now that you've been in the industry, you've conquered it.

00:51:55.000 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.

00:52:02.000 But certain people, when you songwrite, it's dramatic.

00:52:07.000 Do you write all your own songs?

00:52:09.000 Yeah.

00:52:10.000 Have you been accused of not writing your own songs?

00:52:13.000 Very early on, yeah, because since my state, I guess it's not even my stage name, it's Oliver Anthony Music, and so it's supposed to represent music from, you know, Oliver Anthony Music is my grandfather, 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,

00:52:29.000 but the music's just sort of a characterization of, like, that period in time and those people, you know, and that's...

00:52:35.000 So yeah, when...

00:52:36.000 So your real name is not Oliver?

00:52:37.000 Yeah, Christopher Anthony Lunsford is my real legal name.

00:52:41.000 And so that's what's on, like, if you look up the songwriting...

00:52:43.000 Why did you decide to sing as Oliver Anthony?

00:52:45.000 Just in...

00:52:46.000 Well, like I said, I just had the YouTube channel listed as Oliver Anthony Music.

00:52:52.000 Um...

00:52:53.000 Just because, like, that's sort of the demeanor or the, like I said, the character I was, like, that older Virginia-style music.

00:53:01.000 Like, if you go on YouTube and you look up that type of music from back then, like, those old recordings of people, like, that's what I, I just love that type of stuff.

00:53:11.000 Do you think you're gonna keep that name?

00:53:13.000 Yeah, I mean, a lot of people still call me Chris.

00:53:15.000 And I've posted on social media, call me whatever.

00:53:17.000 I mean, I've been called a lot worse than either of those things.

00:53:19.000 But, yeah, it'll stay Oliver Anthony music indefinitely.

00:53:22.000 Yeah.

00:53:23.000 It's a special name, 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 different things were back then.

00:53:32.000 But he was born Oliver Anthony, but everybody called him Antony growing up.

00:53:37.000 And so, like, he always thought his name was Anthony Oliver.

00:53:41.000 And, uh, last name Engel.

00:53:43.000 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.

00:53:50.000 So he had to actually change his legal name when he was in his 60s.

00:53:53.000 But it's because back then...

00:53:53.000 He thought his name was Anthony Oliver?

00:53:55.000 Yeah.

00:53:55.000 His whole life?

00:53:56.000 But his legal name was...

00:53:57.000 And so it's...

00:53:58.000 Yeah, and his parents named him.

00:54:00.000 So it's just like...

00:54:00.000 But all the paperwork back then was so scattered up because a lot of people were illiterate.

00:54:05.000 And, of course, documents weren't...

00:54:17.000 That's crazy.

00:54:25.000 That's crazy.

00:54:26.000 It's just special to me.

00:54:28.000 He's like the only other one in the family like me.

00:54:30.000 Most of our family's average height, six feet and under, but he and I were both 6'6", redheaded, left-handed.

00:54:37.000 I don't know.

00:54:38.000 In a lot of ways, I just thought it was special to kind of respect him.

00:54:41.000 He passed away in 2019, and that's kind of when I... I guess that's when I first kind of adapted the name for the music.

00:54:47.000 I didn't really get serious with anything until probably...

00:54:50.000 Two weeks ago?

00:54:51.000 Yeah, until a couple weeks ago.

00:54:53.000 I think I uploaded the first original.

00:54:56.000 When I decided I was in it to win it and I really wanted to make this thing happen...

00:55:01.000 It was probably May of last year when I uploaded Ain't Got A Dollar.

00:55:05.000 Or it might have been Rich Man's Goal was the first one I uploaded on YouTube.

00:55:08.000 But that's when I decided, like, alright, I'm doing this thing.

00:55:11.000 So you were just smoking too much weed, drinking too much, and just procrastinating.

00:55:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:17.000 Yeah, and so that, and, you know, like, anxiety is definitely something that's underestimated.

00:55:23.000 You know, I used to laugh about, or 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...

00:55:36.000 Your mind can really put you in a dark place to where that thing just holds on to you.

00:55:42.000 It just makes it very difficult for you to do anything.

00:55:45.000 So yeah, I spent at least two years of my life almost constantly just having what felt like just a knot right here, just wrenching at me.

00:55:52.000 Well, that's especially true for people that are pursuing a non-traditional life that doesn't have any guarantees.

00:56:00.000 It's a wild life to try to be an entertainer.

00:56:03.000 Just to...

00:56:05.000 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 Like you know how many fucking people are singing how many people can sing how many people are Recording things and now with YouTube and the like how many people are putting stuff up on the internet for other people to enjoy It's a lot well idea that you're gonna stand out So that you're filled with anxiety just because of that because you're this future is uncertain Yeah,

00:56:32.000 I think for me, a lot of the anxiety came from me just feeling like I was running out of time.

00:56:37.000 Like I knew that I had an ability to pursue this and kind of take this adventure on.

00:56:44.000 And I just had kept, like I said, for 10 years or more, I'd pick the thing up for a few months and then I'd put it down.

00:56:49.000 And just always doubting myself, you know?

00:56:51.000 Yeah.

00:56:52.000 Well, I think it's...

00:56:54.000 I mean, the universe, in some weird way...

00:56:59.000 Always sort of finds Like for people that becomes very successful Especially like yourself.

00:57:08.000 It's almost like that's the best way to do it Like I've never met anybody where I was like your way to do it isn't the wrong way to do it like I everybody that I meet that becomes successful especially like overnight people it's like oh I see all these fat.

00:57:23.000 Well, that's why you're good That's very good.

00:57:26.000 You're good because you had a real life, like a real tortured regular life, like regular people. 0.98

00:57:31.000 If you're in the fucking Mickey Mouse Club when you're 14, and then all of a sudden you're famous. 0.98

00:57:37.000 I mean, I love Miley Cyrus to death, and she's fucking insanely talented. 0.99

00:57:41.000 And I heard her new album is her best ever. 0.95

00:57:43.000 Everybody's raving about it.

00:57:45.000 But I feel...

00:57:47.000 Bad for people that become famous when they're young.

00:57:50.000 I just feel like that's a heavy burden for you to have to carry, and you didn't ask for it.

00:57:55.000 You can't ask for it.

00:57:56.000 You don't know what it is.

00:57:59.000 It's like getting a face tattoo when you're five.

00:58:01.000 It's like, I want to get a heart tattooed on my forehead.

00:58:03.000 Let everybody know I'm full of love.

00:58:05.000 Like, okay, Billy, let's take you to the tattoo park.

00:58:08.000 Like, I want to be famous so everybody knows me.

00:58:10.000 Okay, Billy, let's get you in front of TV. Yeah, and it's tough, because then...

00:58:16.000 Everyone's perception of everything is different anyway based off the way they were brought up.

00:58:20.000 Like, you know, the way you and I look at something, we both look at something a certain way, and it's our way of looking at it, and to us that's reality, but everyone's perception is just different, just inherently, just based off the way we were raised and maybe even our genetics and the way our...

00:58:34.000 Things we've experienced are the way our parents taught us things.

00:58:37.000 And so, like, yeah, it's...

00:58:39.000 It is tough if you get thrown into that at such an early age.

00:58:43.000 Because this is just such a...

00:58:44.000 I feel bad for anybody that gets thrown into all this anyway.

00:58:47.000 Like, the things I've seen and heard and witnessed and...

00:58:49.000 Just in a couple of weeks.

00:58:50.000 You need to do this and you've got to do that.

00:58:52.000 Yeah, but that's just people pulling out your strings. 0.90

00:58:55.000 This almost crazy sense of urgency everyone's sort of thrown on me to do something with this.

00:58:58.000 And it's like, I don't...

00:59:01.000 Yeah, at the end of the day, I've got to remember who I was a month ago, and I've got to make sure that I... And it's okay to evolve from that and change.

00:59:10.000 I don't want to always be stuck being that guy, but I don't want to leave him behind either.

00:59:15.000 Listen, man, just be yourself.

00:59:18.000 You're going to be fine.

00:59:19.000 This is like this conversation that we had over the phone. 1.00

00:59:21.000 I said, fuck all those urgent people. 1.00

00:59:23.000 You have talent. 1.00

00:59:24.000 You have talent.

00:59:26.000 You don't need anything else but talent.

00:59:28.000 Talent and authenticity.

00:59:29.000 You got both of those things.

00:59:30.000 This urgency thing? 0.99

00:59:31.000 What the fuck are they talking about? 0.93

00:59:33.000 You've literally had the number one song like instantly. 0.99

00:59:37.000 You can't do that again? 0.99

00:59:38.000 How the fuck do you know? 1.00

00:59:39.000 You don't know jack shit. 1.00

00:59:41.000 These people are crazy. 1.00

00:59:42.000 They don't understand what's going on and they don't understand what it's like to be famous. 0.96

00:59:46.000 You are in a weird spot right now.

00:59:48.000 What you need to do right now is just keep being you.

00:59:51.000 And don't let anybody control you and don't let anybody wrap.

00:59:55.000 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 produce.

01:00:07.000 Yeah, because that really goes against the whole message that I wanted to get out in the first place.

01:00:11.000 And so, yeah, what would it benefit me to sign a big deal or have some...

01:00:14.000 Like, I don't know.

01:00:15.000 As busy as things get, I don't know that I'd ever let anybody even manage my social media and stuff.

01:00:20.000 Like, that's just something that I'd like to have the hand on.

01:00:24.000 I do mine.

01:00:26.000 I do all mine.

01:00:26.000 Yeah.

01:00:27.000 I don't want anybody doing my shit. 1.00

01:00:28.000 That's ridiculous. 0.99

01:00:28.000 Well, I think, 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 special effects and lights and, you know, figuratively speaking, you could make this into something bigger than what it already is, 0.99

01:00:43.000 but it would just take away.

01:00:45.000 Like, sometimes the more you add, the more you take away.

01:00:47.000 It's the fact that you have conversations with people that you're genuinely interested in.

01:00:51.000 Like, we don't have enough real conversation in any way in the world.

01:00:55.000 Like, We have very little.

01:00:56.000 I had never had a Twitter account.

01:00:58.000 I made one a couple weeks ago to start uploading.

01:01:01.000 Oh, you've got to get on X and upload all the stuff.

01:01:03.000 And within like a week, I'm like, okay, I get it.

01:01:07.000 I'm tapping out.

01:01:09.000 Yeah, I don't read any of my stuff on Twitter.

01:01:11.000 I do post occasionally.

01:01:13.000 What I do like to do is repost things that I think are interesting.

01:01:16.000 I do like that.

01:01:17.000 Yeah, well, thanks.

01:01:19.000 I appreciate it.

01:01:21.000 Well, that's what Instagram I put that up on.

01:01:23.000 Okay, yeah.

01:01:24.000 Yeah, but yeah, a lot of people liked it.

01:01:27.000 I think on my account alone, it had more than...

01:01:30.000 I'll tell you how many views it had.

01:01:33.000 I want to say it's somewhere around 11 million views.

01:01:36.000 I was explaining it to someone the other day.

01:01:38.000 I was like, do you know how insane that is?

01:01:40.000 Yeah.

01:01:41.000 You could put something up that this guy just made 12.8 million views.

01:01:45.000 Wow.

01:01:45.000 That's bonkers, dude.

01:01:47.000 That's bonkers. 1.00

01:01:48.000 That's a lot of fucking human beings. 1.00

01:01:50.000 That's a lot of human beings. 0.99

01:01:52.000 Yeah, so I've had to ask myself why that happened the way it did, and...

01:01:57.000 And look, I've said this a hundred times already, but I'm certainly no preacher.

01:02:03.000 People have made comments about, oh, well, why does he read scripture or whatever and talks about God, but then he does other things.

01:02:10.000 I do have some foul language, and I do sing some songs that I've written about whatever, getting high and hanging out in the woods.

01:02:18.000 It's just what I am.

01:02:19.000 Like, I'm not here to say that I'm anybody better than anybody else by any means.

01:02:23.000 Well, didn't God invent the woods and weed?

01:02:26.000 Yeah, well, there you go.

01:02:27.000 I don't believe anybody that tells you that God doesn't want you to have weed.

01:02:29.000 I do want to use...

01:02:31.000 If there's anything I'd like to capitalize on with my opportunity, it's just like...

01:02:35.000 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...

01:02:44.000 I tell you, I don't care who...

01:02:45.000 Look, I haven't been in a church in 10 years, and I'm not saying I'd ever go back into one again.

01:02:50.000 I don't know about all that, but there's a lot of things in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that make sense and are timeless to today.

01:02:59.000 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 it would make the world a better place.

01:03:08.000 There's a lot of truth in those words.

01:03:10.000 They don't just talk about...

01:03:13.000 It's it's real life advice that that that I that I work toward every day applying in my own life So was there like a moment with you because I've read the legend story but I wanted to ask you this in live in person Was there a moment when you had like a literal come to Jesus moment where you were at rock bottom?

01:03:32.000 Yeah, I mean what was going on?

01:03:35.000 Yeah, I was at a point where I was having I Man, I don't even think I'd call it panic attacks.

01:03:42.000 It was just like...

01:03:43.000 I was so...

01:03:44.000 Everything was just so screwed up.

01:03:47.000 I was getting like...

01:03:48.000 I was getting chest pains and shooting pains all down into my...

01:03:52.000 Like I was having like almost cardiovascular symptoms that are just...

01:03:55.000 I guess now I realize there's stress and anxiety related, but I really thought I was going to die. 0.99

01:04:00.000 Holy shit. 0.99

01:04:01.000 This is why you're drinking a lot or smoking weed a lot? 1.00

01:04:05.000 Yeah, well, I think maybe the weed was even causing some of that.

01:04:07.000 I was slamming down, you know, we can grow it in Virginia now, so I grew a lot of pounds of weed last year.

01:04:16.000 And I don't even know what I'm going to do with it all now.

01:04:19.000 You can sell that on eBay.

01:04:22.000 Sell it in your truck.

01:04:24.000 You can buy a Suburban.

01:04:25.000 Yeah, I'll save it for hard times.

01:04:27.000 If you come to Virginia, the back of the Suburban, where it's legal, the back of the Suburban will be packed with as much weed that is legal to sell you.

01:04:35.000 But yeah, I had grown some crazy stuff and was smoking it.

01:04:38.000 Oliver Anthony weed brand.

01:04:39.000 We're in.

01:04:40.000 Let's go.

01:04:42.000 Hulk Hogan's got his own weed brand.

01:04:43.000 Why don't you?

01:04:46.000 We'll talk about all that, the growing, because I am intrigued with the growing.

01:04:49.000 But yeah, to your point, it was like I just almost disconnected from reality.

01:04:54.000 I don't want to say I was having like...

01:04:57.000 I was never psychotic or having like...

01:05:00.000 You're freaking out.

01:05:01.000 I was very disassociated from my reality.

01:05:04.000 I can remember just being around really close friends having dinner one night.

01:05:09.000 You know you get warm and fuzzy feelings being around people you care about.

01:05:13.000 And everything was just ice cold.

01:05:15.000 It was almost like I just tried to feel something other than what I was feeling.

01:05:19.000 What were you thinking during these times?

01:05:22.000 I was thinking that...

01:05:24.000 Like, what was the state of your life?

01:05:26.000 I was thinking, like, that I was gonna...

01:05:28.000 I was thinking, like...

01:05:29.000 See, I don't know.

01:05:30.000 Suicide's a weird thing because...

01:05:32.000 And I can't speak for everybody, but for me, like...

01:05:34.000 It wasn't that I ever wanted to kill myself.

01:05:38.000 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...

01:05:43.000 At some point, I thought I was gonna do it almost as a fight-or-flight response.

01:05:47.000 Like...

01:05:48.000 That I couldn't escape whatever it is that I was in and like that was my own that was gonna eventually be my only way out and so It's sad and it's whatever it 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,

01:06:11.000 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.

01:06:18.000 Those were just recorded off my Android phone, uploaded on YouTube.

01:06:22.000 I ripped the WAV file off the YouTube video and then just uploaded it through DistroKid.

01:06:26.000 And so 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 just the audio from the YouTube video.

01:06:34.000 But I wanted to get all those.

01:06:36.000 I had a lot of these songs sitting around.

01:06:37.000 So it's from a microphone from the phone?

01:06:39.000 Standard microphone?

01:06:40.000 From my front camera on my Android phone.

01:06:42.000 Wow.

01:06:42.000 It sounds pretty good.

01:06:44.000 I wanted to get all that up, though, because I really didn't know if I was going to be around to do it.

01:06:52.000 Can you pause that for a second?

01:06:53.000 Let's listen to that.

01:06:54.000 I want to hear that.

01:06:55.000 If you don't get freaked out and uncomfortable, listen to your own voice.

01:06:58.000 That's okay.

01:06:58.000 No, I like it.

01:07:00.000 Let's listen, because I want to hear what that sounds like.

01:07:02.000 This would be the, yeah, the Ink Got A Dollar, the original version is a good example.

01:07:14.000 Recording off of Android phones might be the new thing.

01:07:18.000 You can tell it's very mono.

01:07:20.000 The new authentic.

01:07:21.000 Recording off of Android phones.

01:07:27.000 I ain't got a dollar and I don't need a dime.

01:07:35.000 I got a little spot in the country where I spend all of my time.

01:07:43.000 When the sun goes down on this itty bitty town, we can light up the bowl and pass it around.

01:07:53.000 I ain't Listen, man, you don't gotta listen to nobody. 1.00

01:08:05.000 Tell them all to eat shit. 1.00

01:08:07.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:08:08.000 You can do whatever you want, man. 1.00

01:08:10.000 You just keep doing that.

01:08:11.000 You just keep doing that and do concerts.

01:08:13.000 That's what got me uploading the songs originally.

01:08:15.000 I was like, I'll just go ahead and get something out there and then...

01:08:19.000 I mean, man, I was taking aspirin every day thinking like I was going to have a heart attack. 0.99

01:08:23.000 I was having all this crap. 0.78

01:08:25.000 So when you were recording these things and releasing them, what was the hope? 0.95

01:08:29.000 The hope was that people would enjoy them?

01:08:31.000 Yeah, I was just trying to leave them out for the world in case like...

01:08:35.000 In case you died?

01:08:37.000 Yeah, I guess in case either I died from a heart attack or like...

01:08:40.000 Do you know how huge these songs would be if you died?

01:08:43.000 I think that's like the most horrible rumor about Jimi Hendrix is that his manager was like a gangster had him killed.

01:08:51.000 His manager had him killed because he was going to leave and he owned the music while Jimi was alive and if Jimi died he would get the music and they killed him.

01:09:02.000 Yeah, maybe I thought, like, I figured, like, that was the only thing I had that was worth anything.

01:09:07.000 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 that.

01:09:21.000 Were you...

01:09:21.000 Was your bad feelings come from...

01:09:24.000 Did they come from a lack of hope for your future?

01:09:27.000 Did you have, like, a sense of what would make you happy?

01:09:31.000 What you were missing in your life?

01:09:33.000 No, like, it's...

01:09:34.000 Was it just overwhelming?

01:09:35.000 The mind is...

01:09:37.000 I guess I'm a creative person, I guess you'd say.

01:09:40.000 For creative people in general, life is very imaginative anyway.

01:09:46.000 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 in a parallel time.

01:09:55.000 You and I would walk out of that restaurant noticing different things.

01:10:01.000 Sure.

01:10:21.000 You don't understand sometimes what people are going through, even from the outside in. 0.99

01:10:25.000 You look at people who are not living life right, and you're like, I just wish he'd just get his shit together. 0.98

01:10:29.000 I don't understand why he's doing that. 0.98

01:10:31.000 And it's like, because maybe in his head, what he's looking at is totally different than what you're looking at.

01:10:35.000 The mind's very complicated, you know?

01:10:39.000 My understanding is even now with all the studies we've done and the technology we have, we understand the mind very little, but there's so much that goes into it and so much of our thoughts come from our gut biome and all.

01:10:50.000 There's millions of living things within us that I think influence the way we think and what we do.

01:10:57.000 It's a very complicated thing.

01:10:59.000 So yeah, it's easy for people to get off track.

01:11:04.000 It's hard to get back on the track when you get off.

01:11:08.000 That's why I say I was really just...

01:11:11.000 On paper, things were great, right?

01:11:15.000 I was married.

01:11:16.000 I have a great marriage.

01:11:18.000 I had a good job.

01:11:19.000 I worked my ass off, but I made good money.

01:11:22.000 What were you doing for work?

01:11:24.000 So the last six years I've been in industrial sales.

01:11:27.000 So I've worked outside sales for Because I was in the industry, like, working factory work when I was younger.

01:11:34.000 Had a bad accident.

01:11:36.000 Couldn't go back to that job.

01:11:37.000 And then during that recovery period, I went to work.

01:11:40.000 I don't know if I can say the place or not.

01:11:42.000 You don't have to say the place.

01:11:43.000 Okay.

01:11:43.000 What was the accident?

01:11:45.000 I fell and hit my head.

01:11:46.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:11:48.000 Yeah, I had internal...

01:11:49.000 I had, like, an internal fracture.

01:11:51.000 I remember riding in the ambulance on the...

01:11:53.000 I'd had seizures and all and passed out at the...

01:11:55.000 I was...

01:11:55.000 It's weird, because I can remember laying there and remember the...

01:11:58.000 Yeah.

01:12:19.000 And I asked the guy in the back with me in the ambulance, I'm like, man, I was like, am I going to be alright or what?

01:12:24.000 And he's like, buddy, we're doing the best we can! 0.99

01:12:27.000 And I'm like, oh shit! 0.99

01:12:29.000 And that messed me up pretty bad. 0.99

01:12:31.000 I was in the hospital for two or three days, but even for the next year after that, my memory was trashed.

01:12:38.000 I had really bad balance issues.

01:12:40.000 It was difficult for me.

01:12:41.000 It just kind of jacked everything up.

01:12:43.000 I had a lot of inflammation and stuff in my brain, but that kind of...

01:12:48.000 And I question whether or not that had a lot to do with my mental health issues.

01:12:52.000 I've met a lot of people.

01:12:54.000 I've done four shows so far, and they've all been intimate settings.

01:12:58.000 And so I've taken hours after each one to give everybody a chance to talk.

01:13:03.000 And I've talked to another guy who had a bad head injury and has dealt with something really similar to me.

01:13:09.000 But I almost wonder if that didn't affect...

01:13:12.000 That kind of knocked a few screws loose upstairs with everything else that's went on.

01:13:17.000 So you got depressed after that?

01:13:20.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:13:21.000 Before then, I was totally fine.

01:13:23.000 100% they're connected.

01:13:25.000 Yeah.

01:13:26.000 100%.

01:13:27.000 I mean, it might not be the only factor that led you down that road, but 100%.

01:13:31.000 That's a major symptom of fighters.

01:13:33.000 When fighters get knocked out, when football players get knocked out, depression, major symptom.

01:13:38.000 Major symptom.

01:13:39.000 That's one of the real dangers of head trauma.

01:13:41.000 There's a lot of people who have had severe head trauma that go to take their own lives afterwards.

01:13:47.000 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.

01:13:53.000 And that's after that?

01:13:55.000 For sure, yeah.

01:13:56.000 I guarantee you they're connected.

01:13:57.000 I guarantee you.

01:13:58.000 And I guarantee you, like, if you got your system, like, if you had really good health care...

01:14:04.000 They could find some issues with your endocrine system. 0.99

01:14:07.000 A lot of times with people that have really bad head injuries, their pituitary gland gets damaged, and your body's not producing hormones correctly anymore, and you're just all fucked up. 0.99

01:14:16.000 Your cortisol levels are all fucked up. 0.98

01:14:18.000 Yeah, because I would say that was the thing. 0.99

01:14:20.000 It was almost like my brain was stuck in this fight-or-flight type of thing.

01:14:23.000 And maybe that's what the writing helped, because the writing helped emphasize that more creative part of my brain to get me out of that headspace.

01:14:32.000 I loved my job I did because I was still in the field so I was still on job sites and industrial plants and hospitals me 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 And I'd love to touch on that some too,

01:14:53.000 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.

01:15:02.000 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.

01:15:10.000 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.

01:15:17.000 You can still have those.

01:15:18.000 The same message kept coming across, which is really what I guess I resonated in this song, but people are just so tired.

01:15:27.000 I think being in that position sort of gave me this unfair advantage to look into the world maybe On the inside.

01:15:39.000 I don't think it's unfair at all.

01:15:41.000 I think it's probably...

01:15:42.000 I mean, if you wanted to believe in fate...

01:15:44.000 You know, I don't believe in fate, but I should.

01:15:47.000 If anybody should, I should believe in fate.

01:15:49.000 I've had a pretty lucky life.

01:15:52.000 Yeah, you have.

01:15:52.000 I don't necessarily think it's real, though.

01:15:55.000 But I also think if you believe it's real...

01:15:58.000 I think there's a lot of things that if you believe...

01:16:01.000 It's...

01:16:02.000 A lot of what's going on with human beings is the way the mind perceives things.

01:16:06.000 And it's kind of the software you're running.

01:16:09.000 That's why we seek out people who are inspirational.

01:16:11.000 Like if you watch a David Goggins video, you will go work out.

01:16:16.000 You will go work out.

01:16:17.000 It will get you off your couch.

01:16:19.000 I guarantee you.

01:16:21.000 When we were running, we were saying David Goggins quotes while you're running about carrying the boats and all that.

01:16:28.000 Who's gonna carry the boats? 1.00

01:16:29.000 David's the fucking man. 0.99

01:16:31.000 And there's another guy, Jocko Willink. 1.00

01:16:33.000 I love him too.

01:16:34.000 Jocko has a video.

01:16:37.000 Find Jocko Good.

01:16:38.000 Find that video.

01:16:39.000 There's a video that I 100% legitimately play in my mind when I'm tired.

01:16:45.000 I say good.

01:16:46.000 I say it to myself. 0.96

01:16:47.000 I was in the cold plunge the other day, and I was being a bitch at like 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and I was like, good. 0.97

01:16:53.000 Listen to this video.

01:16:54.000 Have you ever heard this?

01:16:54.000 It's amazing.

01:16:55.000 I don't think I have.

01:16:56.000 Direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me.

01:16:58.000 He would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on.

01:17:04.000 And he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing.

01:17:07.000 And I'd look at him and I'd say, good.

01:17:10.000 And finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having, some problem.

01:17:15.000 And he said, I already know what you're going to say.

01:17:19.000 And I said, well, what am I going to say?

01:17:20.000 He said, you're going to say good.

01:17:24.000 He said, that's what you always say.

01:17:25.000 When something is wrong and going bad, you always just look at me and say, good.

01:17:32.000 And I said, well, yeah.

01:17:34.000 When things are going bad, there's going to be some good that's going to come from it.

01:17:42.000 Didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted?

01:17:45.000 Good.

01:17:46.000 Didn't get promoted?

01:17:48.000 Good.

01:17:49.000 More time to get better.

01:17:52.000 Oh, mission got canceled?

01:17:53.000 Good.

01:17:54.000 We can focus on another one.

01:17:55.000 Didn't get funded.

01:17:56.000 Didn't get the job you wanted.

01:17:59.000 Got injured.

01:18:00.000 Sprained my ankle.

01:18:02.000 Got tapped out?

01:18:02.000 Good.

01:18:04.000 Got beat?

01:18:05.000 Good.

01:18:06.000 We learned.

01:18:09.000 Unexpected problems?

01:18:11.000 Good.

01:18:12.000 We have the opportunity to figure out a solution.

01:18:17.000 That's it.

01:18:18.000 When things are going bad, Don't get all bummed out, don't get startled, don't get frustrated.

01:18:29.000 If you can say the word good, guess what?

01:18:35.000 It means you're still alive.

01:18:37.000 It means you're still breathing.

01:18:39.000 And if you're still breathing, well then hell, you still got some fight left in you.

01:18:47.000 So get up, dust off, Reload, recalibrate, re-engage, and go out on the attack.

01:19:04.000 That's what's up.

01:19:05.000 Yeah, I love that.

01:19:06.000 Yeah.

01:19:07.000 That's software you can run in your mind.

01:19:11.000 You can run that.

01:19:12.000 You just need to listen to it and then apply it.

01:19:16.000 That's real.

01:19:17.000 Now, if you don't know that software, and if you know that there's a human being like Jocko out there in the world that's a real person that really does think like that, then you don't think it's possible.

01:19:27.000 But it is.

01:19:28.000 So you have to be seeing it.

01:19:29.000 So you see it, and now you know.

01:19:31.000 Run that software.

01:19:33.000 Run that software.

01:19:33.000 I don't know how much of people's depression.

01:19:36.000 I mean, I think depression has a mosaic of problems that's associated with it and a mosaic of causes, like a large pattern.

01:19:47.000 There's a lot of stuff going on that causes people to be depressed.

01:19:49.000 Some of it, in your case, may very well have been from a physical injury.

01:19:53.000 And I think that's a big factor.

01:19:55.000 I had never considered that until now.

01:19:57.000 I think it's 100% connected.

01:20:00.000 100%.

01:20:00.000 Because it's totally in the literature.

01:20:03.000 You know, my good friend, Dr. Mark Gordon, he does a lot of work with traumatic brain injury patients.

01:20:08.000 And he runs this Wounded Warriors, it's called...

01:20:16.000 What is it called?

01:20:17.000 What is the thing that he works with those guys?

01:20:21.000 Warrior Angels.

01:20:22.000 And it's helping people with traumatic brain injuries.

01:20:25.000 And he's helped countless soldiers, fighters, football players, all these people.

01:20:29.000 And it's real similar with a lot of them.

01:20:32.000 They have no hope.

01:20:33.000 Exactly, 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 have given excuses to what I understand now about it.

01:20:48.000 Again, it feels...

01:20:52.000 That place that your mind can take you, it feels just as real as anything else.

01:20:57.000 Like, even if you tell yourself...

01:20:59.000 Like, you can tell yourself a hundred times that, oh, yeah, well, you still got a job.

01:21:04.000 You still have...

01:21:04.000 Everything's fine.

01:21:05.000 It's like, if...

01:21:06.000 I don't know, it's...

01:21:08.000 Your perception of reality becomes very distorted when you're in that place.

01:21:12.000 And it's...

01:21:14.000 Again, for me, I think a lot of it came down to I just knew I wasn't fulfilling whatever purpose it was I was here to fulfill.

01:21:20.000 You probably didn't have any energy because you had a head injury.

01:21:24.000 It's probably a major factor in it.

01:21:27.000 Major factor.

01:21:28.000 It's another major factor in people with head injuries.

01:21:30.000 They drink a lot because their dopamine is really low.

01:21:33.000 It fucks up everything, man.

01:21:35.000 And there's people that have traumatic brain injuries that are subconcussive trauma from playing soccer.

01:21:43.000 People play soccer and heading the ball.

01:21:45.000 It doesn't even hurt.

01:21:45.000 But you throttle your brain in the cage over and over and over again and eventually you have TBI. That's real.

01:21:52.000 You have real CTE symptoms for soccer players.

01:21:58.000 It's crazy, but the head is just not designed to get hit.

01:22:02.000 And I've experienced it with so many fighters, so many guys that I know that got knocked out, and then after the knockout, they're severely depressed, both because they lost.

01:22:12.000 Even if you lose by a decision, you get depressed.

01:22:14.000 It's a terrible feeling to lose in front of the whole world.

01:22:17.000 Well sure, inherent loss in a lot of animals does that.

01:22:22.000 That's a whole other conversation, but one thing I did find from Jordan Peterson talking about the lobsters, it makes me think about the fighters, but it's like you lose that dopamine and that drive.

01:22:30.000 All those chemicals are very tightly regulated to your performance and your place sort of within the world.

01:22:36.000 What did he say about the lobsters again?

01:22:38.000 So, yeah, if two lobsters fight the defeated lobster, he loses his drive and dopamine.

01:22:43.000 He's like, there's some ridiculous chance that he won't win another fight. 0.68

01:22:48.000 Like, he basically just becomes a bum lobster once he loses.

01:22:52.000 But they can give them the same medications that they give humans to combat that, like, whatever antidepressant or whatever.

01:22:59.000 So they're giving SSRIs to lobsters.

01:23:01.000 Then they're out there fighting.

01:23:02.000 You know, they give SSRIs to...

01:23:05.000 I've got some close friends in veterinary medicine.

01:23:07.000 They have cats and dogs that take SSRIs.

01:23:10.000 Oh, God.

01:23:11.000 Freaked out cats and dogs.

01:23:12.000 But I can tell you my experience with SSRIs were not pleasant.

01:23:15.000 All it did was just make me very numb.

01:23:18.000 And I'm not...

01:23:20.000 I'm certainly, again, I'm not giving anybody advice on anything, but just in my personal experience, especially for a guy, when you're on SSRIs, he does a lot of things bad to you.

01:23:29.000 For one, if you're in a relationship, I hear this on both sides with men and women, but Good luck making love with your lover.

01:23:40.000 Good luck having sex, because that's out the window. 0.60

01:23:42.000 It messes with that. 0.87

01:23:43.000 It messes with your thought patterns.

01:23:47.000 It was very difficult for me to write music when I was on it.

01:23:50.000 That was a short-lived life.

01:23:54.000 The best thing that I found that helped me other than just then 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 flower 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 You're just there.

01:24:23.000 If you're listening, you'll know what I'm talking about, but you're at that breaking point like I was.

01:24:28.000 I found smoking CBD joints, not ingesting it where it would go through my system, go through my liver and all, but smoking it just like you would smoke traditional cannabis flower, knocked a lot of it right out.

01:24:39.000 Interesting.

01:24:40.000 No, it's not going to fix it.

01:24:41.000 There's an underlying issue that you've got to figure out and address, but it gave me some very good relief from that.

01:24:47.000 That's amazing.

01:24:48.000 That's really good to hear from people because it doesn't get you high either.

01:24:52.000 Right, it doesn't get you high.

01:24:53.000 It reduces inflammation.

01:24:56.000 Have you tried adjusting your diet?

01:24:58.000 Well, I'm good now.

01:24:59.000 That's what's so funny.

01:25:01.000 Like, since this has all happened, I haven't had a...

01:25:03.000 Like, I'm telling you, again...

01:25:05.000 Because you're on top of the world.

01:25:06.000 Well, yeah, but even before, like...

01:25:09.000 I have to be careful with what I say, because I don't... 1.00

01:25:13.000 Like, my shit stinks. 0.99

01:25:15.000 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... 0.99

01:25:26.000 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, like, I'm not, but, yeah, like, I had, when this,

01:25:42.000 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, and I wanted to serve whatever purpose it was that I was here to serve, it's like, You get this just overwhelming feeling in you.

01:25:59.000 I'm just crying like a baby, just this very warm feeling throughout me.

01:26:04.000 That really hasn't gone away since.

01:26:09.000 I'm not the guy that can play in front of 12,000 people on guitar.

01:26:13.000 I would be like...

01:26:14.000 I mean, I had never played a paid gig.

01:26:16.000 When we played the show at the farm market where Jamie Johnson showed up, that was my first paid gig.

01:26:22.000 I'm not a guy to go out and play live shows, but I can tell you I was so at peace being up there.

01:26:29.000 It just felt like that's where I was supposed to be.

01:26:31.000 And with all of this, it has been.

01:26:33.000 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.

01:26:42.000 I don't know.

01:26:43.000 I'm telling you, like, again, I'm not anybody special, and I'm certainly not here to preach to anybody, but just from coming from somebody who was just in a really just fucked up place, and I use that word with discretion, but in this case, it describes where I was.

01:27:00.000 That guy found a lot of peace, like, from this book.

01:27:04.000 From looking at things in a different way.

01:27:06.000 Yeah.

01:27:07.000 From looking at things through the eyes of Scripture.

01:27:09.000 Well, yeah, and I think for me, it was like I had been in church growing up, and I had been exposed to all that, but...

01:27:17.000 I'd found 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.

01:27:25.000 So if you can, take us to what was the day you picked it up?

01:27:30.000 What was the feeling that you had?

01:27:33.000 What caused you to act?

01:27:34.000 What was it like when you did it?

01:27:37.000 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...

01:27:51.000 I remember I went to the ER for everything that was going on.

01:27:55.000 I mean, I thought I was seriously going to die.

01:27:57.000 Like, I was having shooting pains up under my jaw, down in my wrist, in my leg.

01:28:03.000 Like, just cardiovascular 101 symptoms.

01:28:07.000 Of course, I'm 31. I had been, like, I could run four miles without stopping, no problem.

01:28:12.000 So, like, I knew my heart was strong.

01:28:14.000 You were just freaking out.

01:28:15.000 Yeah, but I went and did that, and I remember being in the truck after that, just like...

01:28:20.000 And I just, yeah, I just had a breakdown moment.

01:28:23.000 I was just crying and was just...

01:28:26.000 I just felt hopeless, like almost the way a child feels hopeless when they, you know, like you can't find your parent or something, like a four-year-old that can't find his parents or something.

01:28:37.000 I was just like, just didn't have anything left in me.

01:28:43.000 I don't know, I just...

01:28:45.000 I just decided, like, right then and there, I was like, I know I can't do this anymore, but I know that I can...

01:28:51.000 I know there's things that I need to do, and I just told God, I was like, just let me do it. 0.98

01:28:58.000 And I'll give all this shit up. 0.98

01:28:59.000 I'll give up the weed, and I'll quit getting drunk, and I'll quit being so angry about things, and I'll just... 0.98

01:29:06.000 Like I'll just call it good whatever I've done up from from up until I was 30 or whatever 31 like I will just call that good and I'll start over again and I'll make him the focus and not me and I just tried to Tried to let my let my ego and everything that I was Just let that go and just focus on because because obviously like It's not just me.

01:29:31.000 I've seen it with even other people I know and I see it with celebrities and everything but I don't know I just feel like we're in such a weird place right now in the world that I feel like God's working through inadvertently through certain people to get to get his point across.

01:29:48.000 So take me to what what you did.

01:29:51.000 Did you start reading the Bible?

01:29:53.000 Like what did you do?

01:29:54.000 I just changed my perspective I quit worrying about me, and I started worrying about what it is that I'm supposed to do.

01:30:04.000 It talks in the Bible about being a servant and giving up, I guess, my desire and my will and whatever it is that I want to do.

01:30:16.000 I don't know the best way to describe it, but it's about 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?

01:30:31.000 It's about trying to let go of your ego, I guess, in a way.

01:30:36.000 I mean, people pursue that mentality without faith.

01:30:42.000 I mean, it's the idea of there being something bigger than you.

01:30:44.000 But I think inherently all human beings idolize something.

01:30:48.000 Like, it talks in the Bible about false idols.

01:30:51.000 We all have false idols.

01:30:52.000 Like, whether it's our phone or it's a celebrity or it's... 0.91

01:30:56.000 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 all sin and we all do stupid things. 0.74

01:31:23.000 We're all just people.

01:31:24.000 Nobody's special or righteous.

01:31:26.000 People sometimes act like they're special and righteous, but we're all just the same thing.

01:31:31.000 But it's just about trying to make that my idol.

01:31:34.000 Make God and the concept of what it is that He wants done on this earth my idol versus anything else.

01:31:42.000 We all serve some master, whether we realize it or not, so why not let it be the master that is above all?

01:31:49.000 So when you made this transformation in your mind, did you then start reading Scripture regularly?

01:31:56.000 What did you start doing that was different?

01:31:58.000 I guess it's like now I don't read it because I feel like I should read it.

01:32:04.000 To be a better person, it's like now I try to read it for the guidance within it.

01:32:08.000 And I'm still in the infancy stages of a lot of this.

01:32:10.000 I've read a lot of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and Luke.

01:32:15.000 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, like, I've tried to retrain that to, you know,

01:32:31.000 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 4.20, which I thought you would like.

01:32:41.000 Ha, ha, ha.

01:32:41.000 So if there's anything better.

01:32:43.000 Perfect.

01:32:44.000 Read it.

01:32:45.000 Preach.

01:33:01.000 Keep your mouth free from perversity.

01:33:03.000 Keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

01:33:06.000 Let your eyes look straight ahead.

01:33:08.000 Fix your gaze directly before you.

01:33:10.000 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

01:33:15.000 Do not turn to the right or the left.

01:33:17.000 Keep your foot from evil. 0.99

01:33:20.000 That's pretty fucking profound. 0.96

01:33:22.000 But the whole book of Proverbs is like that. 0.97

01:33:24.000 It's not preachy.

01:33:25.000 It's not what you think.

01:33:29.000 It's good guidance.

01:33:31.000 It's like good guidance that you would want a father to give to his son.

01:33:34.000 What do you think it comes from?

01:33:36.000 If you had to guess, where do you think the Bible comes from?

01:33:42.000 It was an oral tradition for who knows how many years before they ever wrote it down.

01:33:48.000 What do you think these stories come from?

01:33:55.000 Well, I believe that people come across in different points of time, and I think they are given messages that need to be delivered.

01:34:03.000 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...

01:34:10.000 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.

01:34:18.000 Sometimes it's the lowly of the low that come along and just say things that need to be said.

01:34:23.000 And if I could— To me, it's like there's no question that this is an intelligent planet we live on, in an intelligent solar system.

01:34:32.000 Everything is just much more immense than any human on Earth would admit.

01:34:37.000 Like, even people in science, so much of science is based on theory.

01:34:40.000 Like, it's this very elegantly written way of thinking, but ultimately, if you take it down to its, like, on a granular level, it's very, it's all, in many ways, based on theory, and so...

01:34:52.000 I think the earth is far more intelligent than we realize in the systems that we live in.

01:34:56.000 Like, I just don't think somebody just pulled all that out of thin air.

01:34:58.000 I do think that in May, maybe it's...

01:35:01.000 I've been waiting for my time to bring up the aliens, because I... But anyway, but no, but in all seriousness, it's like, for me, I just, I believe that...

01:35:10.000 If you read through it, so much of it is so timeless.

01:35:14.000 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.

01:35:26.000 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 vlog or whatever.

01:35:36.000 It's like, it's...

01:35:38.000 To me, there is no other book like it.

01:35:42.000 Have you paid any attention to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about the restarting of humanity?

01:35:50.000 It's a really fascinating field of inquiry and discussion because it's now starting over time to be backed up by more science because there was always this curiosity like when did the human race first invent civilization?

01:36:08.000 And the current theory is that it was about 6,000 years ago.

01:36:12.000 It's Mesopotamia, Sumer, and these areas, which is where we found the first written language, like first mathematics, cuneiform language.

01:36:22.000 But what they believe is that's a restarting of civilization and that very likely civilization existed at a very, very high level somewhere around 11,800 years ago.

01:36:33.000 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 that the earth goes through these comet storms Periodically and it happens.

01:36:54.000 I think it's every June and every November and when they go through these Clouds of comets, occasionally we get hit by big ones.

01:37:02.000 And there's a lot of evidence for this.

01:37:04.000 And what they believe is that when you're looking at 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.

01:37:18.000 Yeah, and I agree with that.

01:37:20.000 I think that it's obvious that technology existed that we don't know anything about today.

01:37:25.000 Just the construction of the pyramids alone leaned you to that.

01:37:29.000 Like, somehow or another, they were able to do that.

01:37:31.000 And they were able to do that with immense sophistication and insane capabilities.

01:37:36.000 The ability to move stone from hundreds of miles that weighs Tons!

01:37:41.000 Massive stones cut perfectly, stacked on top of each other.

01:37:45.000 2,300,000 of them that are perfectly due north, south, east, and west.

01:37:50.000 Yeah, that's the craziest thing is that they could understand that at that scale.

01:37:55.000 The technology was almost...

01:37:58.000 We don't understand what they were doing.

01:38:01.000 It's alien.

01:38:02.000 And not alien like non-human beings.

01:38:05.000 I think there were human beings that made it.

01:38:07.000 But I think to us, they went in a direction with their technology that's very different than we did.

01:38:13.000 We went in this weird direction of internal combustion engines and silicone chips and all these different things.

01:38:19.000 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. 0.97

01:38:36.000 And I think that's one of the reasons why you go back in early history, people were so fucking savage. 0.81

01:38:40.000 Because I think that the people that survived that 11,800 years ago event I think whatever was left was like fucking Walking Dead. 0.97

01:38:49.000 And I think people lived a horrible life for a long time.

01:38:54.000 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.

01:39:03.000 So I think the 6,000 year ago mark, I think...

01:39:08.000 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.

01:39:18.000 It wouldn't surprise me if all that doesn't happen again.

01:39:21.000 It could easily happen again if we get hit again.

01:39:23.000 That was one of the initial things that really intrigued me reading.

01:39:26.000 I think it talks about it in Ecclesiastes, but that everything that's happened under the sun has already happened before and will happen again.

01:39:34.000 That generations that are yet to come will be forgotten about those that come after them.

01:39:39.000 I think just in the same way that we have a summer and a fall and a winter and a spring, it's like I think human society, just because of our human nature and our pursuit for...

01:39:52.000 Whatever it is that we just love to create and develop.

01:39:57.000 So we shoot all the way up to the top and then some tragedy comes along, whether it's self-inflicted or from comets or whatever, and then there we go right back down to the bottom.

01:40:08.000 We start over again.

01:40:10.000 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.

01:40:18.000 Graham Hancock's talked about that too.

01:40:20.000 Who knows what's went on even just on this ground in years past that we'll never know about.

01:40:25.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

01:40:26.000 Well, we know quite a bit about Texas, which is a fascinating story and it's of its own.

01:40:31.000 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.

01:40:42.000 There's an amazing book called Empire of the Summer Moon that's all about Texas and the Comanches and the Texas Rangers.

01:40:50.000 Crazy stories.

01:40:51.000 Just crazy.

01:40:52.000 But I think what the Bible is saying rings true.

01:40:56.000 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.

01:41:04.000 They believe that's what the story of the flood is from.

01:41:07.000 The flood from Noah's Ark and even from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is even older.

01:41:13.000 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.

01:41:21.000 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.

01:41:29.000 Some places it was more than a mile, which is just insane to think.

01:41:33.000 To think now, yeah.

01:41:34.000 Standing here and looking straight up for a mile, covering ice.

01:41:38.000 Yeah.

01:41:38.000 I mean, how can you even wrap your head around that?

01:41:41.000 It's so difficult to even imagine.

01:41:43.000 And what's even, yeah, it's crazy to think about it existing then, but also that...

01:41:47.000 I guess when I talk about the intelligence of whatever system it is we live in, the fact that the Earth is able to self-correct itself over a period of time.

01:41:57.000 And even today when we see cycles and things happening, I'm sure that we could destroy the Earth with some of the technology we have now.

01:42:06.000 I fear that this sort of proxy war that we've involved ourselves in doesn't escalate into something bigger because...

01:42:15.000 We could wipe society out indefinitely.

01:42:18.000 We were talking about this yesterday with Peter Berg.

01:42:21.000 He's a director, actor.

01:42:24.000 He's a guy who did Lone Survivor, made that movie, made that painkiller show that's on Netflix.

01:42:29.000 And he did a tour of one of those battleships, and he saw the missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. 0.99

01:42:35.000 He's like, what the fuck? 0.99

01:42:37.000 One of these ships could literally wipe out the whole Earth. 1.00

01:42:40.000 It's so bonkers.

01:42:41.000 It's so bonkers that these things exist.

01:42:43.000 And that there's thousands of them.

01:42:46.000 Thousands of them ready to go.

01:42:49.000 Thousands of them ready to just flatten the planet.

01:42:52.000 That probably has happened before.

01:42:54.000 And if I had to look at things with the most optimistic perspective...

01:43:02.000 My most beautiful optimistic perspective is that's what the aliens are here for.

01:43:08.000 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.

01:43:27.000 Because that's where it gets weird.

01:43:28.000 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.

01:43:36.000 If you don't have those things, like what is purpose?

01:43:38.000 What is our purpose as humans?

01:43:40.000 It's very terrifying for us.

01:43:42.000 It's one of the reasons why we're most scared about technological innovation.

01:43:45.000 Where it comes?

01:43:46.000 That's Terminator.

01:43:47.000 You know, that's everything.

01:43:48.000 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.

01:43:57.000 Fear and anxiety and jealousy and all the stuff that we want.

01:44:02.000 We want to be praised and loved and all these different things that motivate people to succeed and do things in life.

01:44:11.000 Without that, what are we?

01:44:12.000 That's a big question.

01:44:14.000 But with it, how dangerous are we?

01:44:16.000 We do use it in so many different beautiful ways like your music or like a great book.

01:44:24.000 There's ways that people use this that are beautiful.

01:44:28.000 But it's ultimately the reason why life is so scary.

01:44:31.000 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.

01:44:49.000 But it's still, we're at the verge of nuclear catastrophe.

01:44:53.000 We're still in this very terrifying place where one group of people for some reason or another opposes.

01:45:01.000 Like, I don't know anyone in Russia.

01:45:03.000 I don't know anyone in China.

01:45:05.000 The idea that somehow or another China is my enemy or Russia is my enemy, like, how?

01:45:11.000 How did that happen?

01:45:12.000 Yeah, well, the people there aren't.

01:45:14.000 Exactly.

01:45:15.000 Their establishment's an enemy of our establishment, right?

01:45:18.000 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.

01:45:27.000 We have to be very careful because that same thing that makes us this emotional being that wants all these weird feelings, that's the same thing that leads us down the road to tyranny.

01:45:39.000 And I bet that exists everywhere in the universe.

01:45:42.000 And I bet the aliens, if they're coming down here, They want to be very careful with the species while it's going through this transition. 0.99

01:45:48.000 Because I bet this shit is very touch and go. 1.00

01:45:51.000 And I bet every now and then, some fucking Putin-type character goes, oh yeah? 1.00

01:45:55.000 Yeah, NATO? Fuck you! 1.00

01:45:57.000 I have cancer! 1.00

01:45:58.000 Fuck you! 1.00

01:46:01.000 That's all so complicated, because... 1.00

01:46:05.000 Scary.

01:46:06.000 All that starts with someone's imagination.

01:46:11.000 On the other end of that, though, to your point, 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...

01:46:22.000 The mind is just as capable of creating good as it is evil.

01:46:26.000 I think right now maybe we're creating a little more evil than we are good.

01:46:30.000 Oh, I don't think so.

01:46:32.000 I think things can turn around just as quickly as they've turned bad as far as on a global scale.

01:46:39.000 I don't think we're creating more evil than we are good.

01:46:41.000 I think if you look at the statistics of history, human history, we're moving in the right direction.

01:46:45.000 Even though there's a lot of struggle, it's not like a perfect curve.

01:46:49.000 It goes up and down.

01:46:50.000 But over time, if you look at just violent crime and horrible things that people do to each other, it's down.

01:46:57.000 Almost everywhere in the world where it was a hundred years ago.

01:47:00.000 And I think it's moving in that general direction.

01:47:03.000 I just think it's messy. 0.98

01:47:04.000 Human beings, we fuck up a lot to get better. 0.79

01:47:09.000 I was having a conversation with a friend about Nordstrom's closing in San Francisco. 0.97

01:47:16.000 They get robbed so much, they're just like, we have to close up.

01:47:18.000 San Francisco is so crazy. 0.99

01:47:20.000 It's so fucking crazy. 0.99

01:47:24.000 The person I was talking to was like, good. 0.98

01:47:26.000 They'll have to reassess now.

01:47:28.000 They have to realize their policies are crazy and they're going to have to put someone in here that fixes it.

01:47:32.000 And I'm like, yeah, or it becomes like a third world city.

01:47:36.000 Like some crazy, like violent, crime-ridden city that's controlled by gangs.

01:47:42.000 Like that could happen too.

01:47:44.000 See, to me, I perceive that as being a symptom.

01:47:49.000 What do you think the problem is?

01:47:51.000 I mean, I know the easy answer is it's the people that run the government in California that have made it into this atrocity that it is that it wasn't maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

01:48:02.000 But there's also a big problem, too, with homelessness and drugs.

01:48:07.000 Well, cynical me wants to think that there's a conspiracy.

01:48:10.000 Cynical me wants to think that if you create more problems, more crime, more confusion, then people will give in to more control by the government to somehow or another mitigate those problems that exist everywhere.

01:48:25.000 There has to be a solution.

01:48:26.000 This is the only solution.

01:48:28.000 You have to have a digital ID. You take it everywhere you go.

01:48:31.000 Everyone has a cell phone, so everyone has a digital ID. That way we'll catch everyone when they're doing all these crimes.

01:48:36.000 That's scary.

01:48:37.000 Because they're not just going to use it for that.

01:48:39.000 And then they're going to make up crimes.

01:48:41.000 They're going to decide that you saying things that they don't like that may even be true, like malinformation.

01:48:46.000 Like, that's a crime.

01:48:47.000 And then they'll shut down your social media.

01:48:49.000 Yeah.

01:48:50.000 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.

01:49:01.000 They're like, holy shit, the FBI is telling people to delete tweets. 0.97

01:49:04.000 This is nuts. 0.99

01:49:05.000 Again, it goes back to freedom.

01:49:07.000 Yeah, I can see that there is a power at be that wants to limit free speech.

01:49:12.000 Sure.

01:49:12.000 People that have money, that are making money off of suppressing information.

01:49:17.000 And free speech is such a precious thing.

01:49:19.000 If we have something precious, a resource that needs to be protected more than anything right now, it's freedom of speech.

01:49:28.000 It's a very important thing for this country.

01:49:29.000 And, you know, I've said it many, many times, but it's the reason why this country has created so much culture.

01:49:35.000 Sure.

01:49:36.000 And you've seen that spread out throughout the world.

01:49:40.000 Like, to your point, like a hundred years ago, even though a lot of these countries, they're dealing with...

01:49:44.000 I think?

01:50:13.000 Yeah.

01:50:32.000 I just think...

01:50:42.000 There needs to be more strength within local communities as far as people making decisions and uniting with one another.

01:50:50.000 When an ugly ginger's walking around, everybody's like, oh, is it that guy? 1.00

01:50:55.000 And so I've had a lot of people stop me on the street and in parking decks and at the airport. 0.82

01:51:00.000 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 tell 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 like I know a guy in 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?

01:51:29.000 The guy I hang out with is...

01:51:31.000 Because, obviously, I live out in the country.

01:51:34.000 I own guns.

01:51:36.000 The people in my neck of the woods are not...

01:51:41.000 Despite what they may say on a news organization somewhere, a lot of the people I hang out with in the area of the country I live in is stereotypically red, right?

01:51:53.000 Because a lot of people will vote, no matter what other...

01:51:56.000 Influences there are.

01:51:57.000 A lot of people will vote conservative just because of their Second Amendment rights, which is very much under attack in Virginia.

01:52:03.000 You know, like you remember when you're at 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.

01:52:13.000 But yeah, so he voted.

01:52:15.000 He was a big Trump guy, and he watched his certain news organization, and the other guy was for Biden, and he watched his news organization.

01:52:23.000 And so they just basically picked up whatever narratives they got from each other's news, and they would just...

01:52:28.000 You know, they let that destroy literally a...

01:52:31.000 A friendship.

01:52:33.000 Yeah, they were brothers, you know, biological brothers.

01:52:35.000 And so... 1.00

01:52:36.000 So dumb. 1.00

01:52:37.000 That's not good for us as a country. 1.00

01:52:41.000 Well, it's not a wise thing to just apply to your life as a human being.

01:52:46.000 You can have people in your life that have disagreements with you.

01:52:51.000 I have people in my life that disagree with me on so many things.

01:52:55.000 Absolutely on politics.

01:52:58.000 Absolutely.

01:52:58.000 You know, especially like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

01:53:02.000 You know, there's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot. 1.00

01:53:05.000 Like, listen, I would like to try it that way. 1.00

01:53:09.000 Let's try some guy who doesn't want war at all.

01:53:11.000 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.

01:53:22.000 And he's saying it would generate an insane amount of money that could be applied to education, that could be applied to healthcare, you could give people free healthcare, you could give people free education.

01:53:31.000 Well, why wouldn't we do that?

01:53:33.000 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. 0.79

01:53:43.000 Maybe it won't work. 0.98

01:53:44.000 I don't know jack shit about politics, but I sincerely believe the guy. 0.80

01:53:47.000 And I'm like, that to me is at least an option for change. 0.85

01:53:51.000 And that guy had been the same guy his whole life.

01:53:54.000 He had been always pushing for that his whole life.

01:53:57.000 He's kind of gotten tired in his later years, but that's just understandable.

01:54:01.000 He's kind of like...

01:54:02.000 Yeah, so you believing in someone shouldn't suspend your friendships or relationships with other people. 0.65

01:54:10.000 Yeah, but it's just you're hanging out with dummies.

01:54:14.000 People should have, like, I have many friends that are Trump supporters.

01:54:18.000 I have many friends that wholesale believe in the Democratic Party no matter what.

01:54:23.000 It's a million times better no matter what anybody says.

01:54:25.000 And no matter what anybody says about the Biden family, the Trump family, I've seen a lot of people change that now, though, in recent years.

01:54:31.000 Like, even people who were hardcore conservatives and hardcore Democrats, like, I don't think whatever a Republican, a Democrat, was represented at some point in time is anymore.

01:54:41.000 Like, both sides have...

01:54:45.000 I mean, like I said, I love freedom of speech and I love the Second Amendment, but...

01:54:52.000 There's a lot of things that I see that I don't, like, I mean, you gotta think, I'm 31, so I was in fourth grade at 9-11, so we've been, we were in endless war from 9-11 on, and, you know, even when we shouldn't have been, like, so both sides have,

01:55:07.000 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?

01:55:14.000 Like, oh, they're gonna 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, but I guess, like, at the end of the day, It doesn't help either side.

01:55:26.000 In my opinion, 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.

01:55:38.000 I don't think anybody can go into those positions.

01:55:40.000 Overnight save everything.

01:55:42.000 They can certainly make big influences.

01:55:43.000 I mean, you saw when Trump was in office, the economy was rocking.

01:55:46.000 But then other things he did, you know, like warp speed and all that, there was a lot of controversy around all of that.

01:55:54.000 Well, he would have to be a vaccine scientist to even understand what they were doing.

01:55:59.000 And imagine being him, and this is not to defend Donald Trump, but imagine being him and being in control of all of it.

01:56:09.000 You're in control of the economy.

01:56:11.000 You're in control of foreign relations.

01:56:13.000 You're in control of the biggest military the world has ever known.

01:56:17.000 You're in the public eye.

01:56:18.000 You're tweeting about your ex-girlfriend being horse-faced.

01:56:22.000 Yeah, I don't think one person can do it. 1.00

01:56:25.000 There's so much shit going on in that guy's life. 0.93

01:56:27.000 Do you think that he had the time to investigate the efficacy of the COVID vaccines that were this novel mRNA technology that had never been applied to hundreds of millions of people? 0.99

01:56:37.000 And you had to trust the CDC and Fauci and all those people.

01:56:41.000 How could he know?

01:56:42.000 How could anybody know?

01:56:43.000 And that's a good example of why I don't think we can or should rely on one person to save us on all those issues.

01:56:50.000 It's something we've got to work out on a personal level.

01:56:53.000 Well, it's insane.

01:56:54.000 It was invented back when people lived in tribes.

01:56:58.000 So you had a tribe of 50 people?

01:57:00.000 You want that old guy.

01:57:00.000 He's got a lot of scars on his face.

01:57:02.000 He knows how to run shit. 1.00

01:57:03.000 He knows what to do wrong. 1.00

01:57:04.000 He knows what to do right.

01:57:05.000 He survived.

01:57:06.000 All of his brothers died.

01:57:08.000 You know, like those guys are the guys you want teaching younger people.

01:57:11.000 It's like you were talking about with older folks.

01:57:12.000 That was the whole idea of a tribal leader.

01:57:14.000 Like this is the greatest warrior.

01:57:15.000 This is the smartest chief.

01:57:17.000 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.

01:57:22.000 But I don't know you.

01:57:24.000 He don't know you.

01:57:25.000 None of them care.

01:57:27.000 He just wants to get up there and say his speech the right way, and then they give him ice cream, and then he sits down.

01:57:33.000 Do you see that woman who's the White House press secretary?

01:57:36.000 I don't know if this is true, so we should find out if it's true.

01:57:39.000 Did she or did she not accidentally delete a Biden tweet from her account?

01:57:45.000 So it was a tweet, when I ran for president, this and that...

01:57:48.000 Oh, and she accidentally posted it on her own.

01:57:50.000 She accidentally posted it on the wrong...

01:57:52.000 I want to find out if that's true, though, because that could be Russian disinformation, because that's true, too.

01:57:56.000 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.

01:58:07.000 We know it.

01:58:09.000 It's proven that there's troll farms they have in Macedonia. 0.86

01:58:12.000 I'm sure they have them in China.

01:58:14.000 They have troll farms where people create accounts and then they argue with people about stuff.

01:58:19.000 And they'll post links to fake stories and they'll post fake information. 1.00

01:58:23.000 They may even post fucking AI voice swap shit. 0.98

01:58:27.000 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. 0.99

01:58:37.000 It's manipulated.

01:58:38.000 It's real.

01:58:38.000 And think about who that benefits.

01:58:41.000 Investing in America means investing in all of America.

01:58:44.000 When I ran for president, I made a promise that I would leave no part of the country behind.

01:58:48.000 So she did do it!

01:58:49.000 She really did tweet it from her account.

01:58:51.000 Is that real?

01:58:53.000 Oh my god!

01:58:54.000 Oh my god!

01:58:56.000 She really did do it!

01:58:58.000 Oh my god.

01:58:59.000 That's so crazy.

01:59:00.000 So, of course, when you read his tweets, it sounds like her.

01:59:04.000 She's got a very politician way of doing it. 1.00

01:59:08.000 She's like an AM radio DJ. An AM radio DJ version of what a press secretary is. 1.00

01:59:16.000 Like a politician.

01:59:18.000 Because, you know, AM, all right, here we are on the drive.

01:59:21.000 I'm Mike, and I'm with The Rock. 0.99

01:59:23.000 You know, or whatever, the fucking sidekick. 0.95

01:59:25.000 And maybe that's what attracted people to Trump, and maybe what attracts people to like, um, see, 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, 0.97

01:59:41.000 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...

01:59:49.000 He's not polished.

01:59:51.000 But at least what he's saying is, like, at least you feel like he actually...

01:59:53.000 Like, at least he actually believes it.

01:59:55.000 He believes it.

01:59:56.000 Because, you know, you can look at politicians over a 15-year span, and, like, they'll quote something from, like, oh, good God, I think anybody, any politician from the 90s is going to have a lot different opinions on emotional triggers that we talk about today.

02:00:09.000 Bro.

02:00:09.000 Politicians from the 90s, from the Democratic Party, sound like Nazis.

02:00:14.000 They sound like Nazis.

02:00:16.000 What does that tell you?

02:00:17.000 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.

02:00:29.000 And it sounds like right-wing, like, Proud Boy speech. 0.99

02:00:35.000 Fucking crazy! 0.99

02:00:36.000 It sounds like a patriot speech. 1.00

02:00:39.000 Would you worry about militia saying?

02:00:41.000 I know very little about any of this, but my understanding is even...

02:00:44.000 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...

02:00:53.000 She didn't support gay marriage till 2013. Yeah. 0.60

02:00:57.000 2013. So, like, how can those...

02:01:00.000 Bro, pass them cigars.

02:01:01.000 You're going to bust out your first cigar ever on the podcast.

02:01:02.000 Yeah, so this is exciting.

02:01:04.000 So, like I said, a fan gave me these at a show.

02:01:06.000 But, yeah, so that's the thing.

02:01:08.000 I just hope to see...

02:01:09.000 A fan gave you these?

02:01:10.000 How do we know they're not lace with plastic?

02:01:11.000 I'm gonna let you try it first. 0.99

02:01:14.000 God damn it. 0.99

02:01:15.000 Oh, they're sealed. 0.99

02:01:16.000 It definitely has to be real if it's sealed in plastic.

02:01:19.000 And it says it's from Cuba.

02:01:21.000 So it must be from Cuba.

02:01:22.000 I should have brought the note with him to give the guy a shout out.

02:01:25.000 That's my fault.

02:01:25.000 But he's a cool guy.

02:01:27.000 Well, hey, cool guy.

02:01:28.000 Thanks for the cigars.

02:01:29.000 I hope you're not poisoning me, bro.

02:01:31.000 We're gonna find out shortly here.

02:01:33.000 These are supposedly the real ones from Cuba.

02:01:35.000 But you know how hard that is to get?

02:01:37.000 Is it?

02:01:38.000 Yeah, there's a lot of fake ones.

02:01:40.000 It's one of those things where, for whatever reason...

02:01:42.000 How do you tell the difference?

02:01:43.000 I don't know.

02:01:44.000 I'm not a cigar aficionado.

02:01:46.000 I like cigars.

02:01:47.000 I can't even open a box. 0.99

02:01:48.000 I suck. 0.99

02:01:49.000 I'm not a... 1.00

02:01:51.000 I like them, but I don't know jack shit about them. 0.87

02:01:53.000 Like my friend Bobby Kelly, he knows a lot about cigars. 0.99

02:01:56.000 He can tell you all that shit, and he can answer all these questions. 0.99

02:02:00.000 But I know the good ones. 1.00

02:02:01.000 They just taste good.

02:02:02.000 And they feel good. 1.00

02:02:03.000 Like there's something about, you piece of shit. 1.00

02:02:06.000 Sorry we should have done this. 1.00

02:02:08.000 It's okay.

02:02:08.000 I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

02:02:11.000 I'm just trying to slice open this little cover with my sweaty hands. 1.00

02:02:18.000 Come on, bitch. 1.00

02:02:19.000 God damn it. 1.00

02:02:22.000 This is hilarious. 0.99

02:02:23.000 Maybe he set us up.

02:02:25.000 Yeah, maybe he did.

02:02:26.000 Maybe it's a bomb.

02:02:27.000 Maybe it is.

02:02:28.000 He's given us a bomb.

02:02:29.000 Maybe it's a sign.

02:02:31.000 Yeah, maybe it's a sign that we...

02:02:33.000 I'm trying to preserve the looks of this box.

02:02:36.000 I'm out the window.

02:02:37.000 Oh, I'm not worried about that.

02:02:38.000 Yeah, but everybody likes boxes.

02:02:40.000 In the cigar world, people like, they like the whole thing behind it.

02:02:45.000 They like cutting the cigar and smelling it, and they like knowing that it came from someone's hands.

02:02:51.000 And it's just hilarious.

02:02:53.000 They like the experience of it?

02:02:55.000 Yeah, I don't know why I can't get into this box.

02:02:58.000 This is brutal.

02:03:01.000 It appears that this is a fake box.

02:03:03.000 We'll have to plan that out better next time.

02:03:07.000 Yeah, man.

02:03:08.000 For real.

02:03:09.000 Let me give this to Jamie.

02:03:11.000 He'll figure it out.

02:03:12.000 I think I see the seal in a different spot.

02:03:13.000 Do you?

02:03:14.000 I think the top flips up.

02:03:17.000 Oh, you're right. 0.99

02:03:19.000 God damn it. 0.99

02:03:20.000 That's hilarious. 1.00

02:03:22.000 That's how dumb I am. 0.99

02:03:23.000 How do I not know this? 0.97

02:03:26.000 It's up here. 0.99

02:03:28.000 So these bitches need to cut it along this way. 1.00

02:03:31.000 I thought there's a line in it, and I thought that that line was the seal. 0.98

02:03:39.000 This will be like a perfect YouTube short of us trying to get the box open.

02:03:42.000 No, it'll take too long.

02:03:44.000 It's not short anymore.

02:03:45.000 It's not short.

02:03:46.000 This is way too long. 0.99

02:03:47.000 This is pathetic. 1.00

02:03:49.000 Come on, bitch. 1.00

02:03:51.000 Maybe they've been packaged away for 50 years. 1.00

02:03:54.000 No, these can't be that old.

02:03:56.000 There you go.

02:03:57.000 Look at that.

02:03:58.000 Awesome.

02:03:58.000 Bro, I split the box.

02:04:00.000 This bitch does not want to open. 1.00

02:04:02.000 Is that the wrong side? 1.00

02:04:03.000 I don't know.

02:04:04.000 It isn't anymore.

02:04:05.000 Now it's the right side.

02:04:07.000 There we go.

02:04:08.000 Oh, look.

02:04:08.000 There you go.

02:04:09.000 It's the wrong side.

02:04:11.000 Jesus Christ.

02:04:15.000 Beautiful.

02:04:16.000 Awesome.

02:04:16.000 Alright, smell that.

02:04:18.000 That's what you gotta do.

02:04:19.000 You gotta smell them.

02:04:20.000 This is what they do.

02:04:21.000 They take them, they put them by their nose.

02:04:23.000 That smells good.

02:04:24.000 Look at that.

02:04:25.000 Now we're gonna have to find out if these are fake.

02:04:28.000 How do you know?

02:04:30.000 Um...

02:04:30.000 Bill Burr says you just know.

02:04:33.000 You know, I got some real ones. 0.99

02:04:35.000 Yeah, you fucking know. 0.95

02:04:37.000 Are you supposed to leave this on or slide this off? 0.98

02:04:40.000 That's personal preference.

02:04:42.000 A lot of people leave them on.

02:04:43.000 Let's slide them off.

02:04:44.000 They seem a little ostentatious. 0.94

02:04:46.000 A little ridiculous. 0.99

02:04:47.000 For a regular guy like yourself? 0.98

02:04:49.000 Yeah, for Joe Schmel like me.

02:04:51.000 Here we go. 0.97

02:04:57.000 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. 0.98

02:05:03.000 Real cigar people will tell you what you're really supposed to do before you even suck on it. 0.97

02:05:07.000 That's fancy.

02:05:08.000 Is roll the flames around the end.

02:05:10.000 So you should probably do it correctly because I didn't.

02:05:13.000 They'll get mad.

02:05:13.000 Yeah, you do that.

02:05:14.000 You get it a little cooked.

02:05:15.000 Kind of get it a little burned up.

02:05:16.000 Get it a little cooked.

02:05:17.000 There you go. 0.99

02:05:17.000 Now, put it in your mouth and light it and suck on it at the same time. 0.99

02:05:21.000 And then you get a nice, nice bowl. 0.98

02:05:28.000 Yeah, I feel like I need to get some bull horns for the hood of my truck now. 0.74

02:05:31.000 Bro, these might be legit.

02:05:35.000 Can I see that?

02:05:38.000 Here we go.

02:05:46.000 These are good.

02:05:47.000 You think they're good?

02:05:49.000 I mean, they seem good to me, but I wouldn't know the difference.

02:05:52.000 Yeah, like I said, I'm not an expert.

02:05:54.000 I don't even know how to open a box.

02:05:56.000 But, um...

02:05:58.000 They're good in that they're smooth.

02:06:00.000 They're very smooth.

02:06:02.000 So if it really is from Cuba.

02:06:04.000 There's only like, it's a very small area where they grow these Cuban cigars.

02:06:09.000 What is it called?

02:06:11.000 Abalto Viejo Abalta or something like that?

02:06:16.000 What is the area of Cuba?

02:06:17.000 But it's a very, like, surprisingly small area where they grow the best cigars.

02:06:23.000 And it's just something about the soil that makes, and the climate and everything's perfect.

02:06:28.000 But they grow really good cigars in Nicaragua.

02:06:31.000 They grow really good cigars in the Dominican Republic.

02:06:34.000 It's kind of now, it's like...

02:06:37.000 It's funny because I've never really been interested in the cigars, but you know who?

02:06:42.000 One of my favorite guys on YouTube is Dry Creek Wrangler School.

02:06:47.000 I don't know if you've watched that guy.

02:06:48.000 Yeah, I have watched that guy.

02:06:48.000 I love watching him, and he's kind of gotten me interested in trying him out.

02:06:52.000 Well, now you're trying him.

02:06:55.000 Vuelta?

02:06:56.000 How do you say that?

02:06:58.000 Vuelta?

02:06:59.000 Vuelta Abajo.

02:07:00.000 That's the area. 0.98

02:07:02.000 So that one area just has bomb ass soil. 0.98

02:07:05.000 And they figured out a long time ago they grow the dopest cigars there. 0.97

02:07:09.000 Do you know that when the embargo happened with Cuba, JFK ordered a shit ton of cigars before the embargo? 1.00

02:07:16.000 What a dirty bird. 1.00

02:07:18.000 He knew. 1.00

02:07:18.000 What a dirty bird. 1.00

02:07:19.000 Even the one guy that we love the most, that was his insider trading. 1.00

02:07:23.000 That dirty bird. 1.00

02:07:24.000 He went out and got like, how many boxes did he get? 0.99

02:07:27.000 1,200 cigars.

02:07:28.000 1,200 cigars.

02:07:31.000 1,200.

02:07:32.000 I know that there was like an auction at one point in time for his humidor.

02:07:36.000 I think it actually still had some of his cigars.

02:07:39.000 See if you can find that.

02:07:40.000 Maybe I'm imagining that.

02:07:44.000 Humidor auction pops up.

02:07:46.000 JFK Humidor option?

02:07:47.000 2017 that went on sale.

02:07:49.000 That's right.

02:07:51.000 $575,000.

02:07:53.000 Dude. 0.97

02:07:54.000 Imagine what a baller you have to be to be sitting there with your tiger dick tea, smoking rhino horn. 0.99

02:08:05.000 What other things do you have, like a thousand-year-old bottle of wine?

02:08:09.000 If I hold onto my boots long enough, maybe that's what they'll sell for a hundred years from now.

02:08:14.000 No, you have to keep them, man.

02:08:16.000 You have to just get them resold.

02:08:17.000 Come on, man.

02:08:20.000 You already broke in the best part.

02:08:21.000 If you can get a good pair of boots and break them in.

02:08:26.000 My favorite boots are made by this company, Origin.

02:08:29.000 This is a company that Jocko is a part of.

02:08:31.000 And they make everything American-made.

02:08:35.000 The factories in Maine, everything.

02:08:37.000 The leather, the cloth, the threads, everything.

02:08:40.000 And they make handmade boots, handmade jeans, jiu-jitsu gear, hunting gear. 0.96

02:08:46.000 It's fucking awesome. 0.57

02:08:47.000 It's all under Jocko's leadership and Pete, the other guy who runs it. 0.96

02:08:52.000 I'm excited.

02:08:53.000 I hope to meet Jocko one day.

02:08:54.000 He's another YouTube guy.

02:08:56.000 I'd love to do that.

02:08:57.000 I'd love to go do a hunt or something like that.

02:09:00.000 That'd be pretty cool.

02:09:01.000 Have you hunted before?

02:09:03.000 Yeah, well, that's what a lot of guys in the comments were saying on the Richmond North of Richmond video.

02:09:09.000 They're like, I don't think that tree stand is going to be We're very good this year with all that screaming and shouting y'all were doing it out there.

02:09:15.000 Yeah, I hunt on my land and I let people come in and hunt it. 0.61

02:09:18.000 I don't run dogs or anything, but that's real popular in Virginia, so we'll do our thing at early season and then we let the club come in and run dogs at the end of the year.

02:09:28.000 You know, that's very controversial in Virginia.

02:09:30.000 There's like...

02:09:31.000 You want to talk about Coke and Pepsi politics, that's definitely part of it.

02:09:35.000 People are very opposed to running dogs, and you've got some guys that it's such a long tradition.

02:09:40.000 Those two clash together.

02:09:43.000 But as far as any of the big game, like the stuff we were checking out, I'd love to experience that once.

02:09:50.000 That'd be crazy.

02:09:50.000 So do you use dogs to catch deer?

02:09:53.000 They run the deer.

02:09:54.000 They run the deer.

02:09:59.000 They use them just to get the deer moving, which, again, I don't know enough about it one way or the other.

02:10:05.000 But Virginia's got a really healthy deer population, all things considered.

02:10:09.000 I just think people think it's cruel.

02:10:12.000 People think it's cruel when they do that with mountain lions, too.

02:10:15.000 But I was trying to explain to something, listen to somebody, if you don't do that, you don't get mountain lions.

02:10:21.000 You're not going to find them.

02:10:23.000 They know you are coming long before you have any idea they're there and they're gone.

02:10:29.000 And they're smart.

02:10:30.000 See, I don't know if I'd want to kill a mountain lion.

02:10:32.000 I think I just want to, like...

02:10:33.000 See, this is one thing people give me hell about, but, like, we've got...

02:10:36.000 On my property, we've got coyotes and bear and bobcat, and we get them on camera a lot.

02:10:42.000 Like, there's a huge bear we kept getting June and July.

02:10:47.000 I was like, man, I don't think I'd want to shoot him.

02:10:50.000 I think I'd want to just admire him and let him go.

02:10:53.000 I don't know.

02:10:54.000 Like, I'm just funny about that.

02:10:55.000 Like...

02:10:56.000 Well, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to shoot an animal, you know, and if you don't want to shoot a bear.

02:11:03.000 Look, I've eaten bear.

02:11:04.000 I've hunted bear.

02:11:05.000 Bear tastes good.

02:11:06.000 You can eat bear, but it's not my favorite thing to eat.

02:11:09.000 It's not, but it is also an animal that has to be managed.

02:11:13.000 The thing about biological management, this is the uncomfortable truth of it, you have to have a balance.

02:11:19.000 There's wildlife biologists, they observe populations, and they want to enact some sort of a balance of predator and prey.

02:11:27.000 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.

02:11:35.000 And they did that in all places in New Jersey.

02:11:39.000 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 and like we don't want you vote I mean voting to kill bears why would you kill bears what they don't understand is like rural New Jersey has the highest bear per capita in the country.

02:12:06.000 There's more black bears in New Jersey than any other state.

02:12:12.000 Which is so nuts, per capita.

02:12:13.000 I wonder why that is. 0.98

02:12:14.000 Because they're fucking everywhere there, and there's not a lot of hunting. 0.98

02:12:18.000 So they had a bear season, and this governor came in and stopped it. 0.99

02:12:25.000 It was part of the things that he ran on.

02:12:27.000 And then when he got into office, he realized after a while, like, oh my god, we have to kill these bears, because human-bear interactions are growing up. 1.00

02:12:34.000 A kid at Rutgers got killed by a fucking bear. 1.00

02:12:37.000 He was out in the woods near the campus, and he got fucking slaughtered. 1.00

02:12:42.000 See, I always wonder if I'm going to get... 0.99

02:12:43.000 I think the bobcats psych me out more than anything.

02:12:45.000 I always...

02:12:46.000 The bear, I'm okay with.

02:12:47.000 Like, I feel like they'll leave me well enough alone, but...

02:12:50.000 Until they don't.

02:12:51.000 I remember even when I first bought the place, like, right after I closed on it, because I'd had...

02:12:56.000 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 and...

02:13:06.000 Well, that's cool.

02:13:07.000 But I knew I wanted more land, and with the way everything is, like...

02:13:11.000 They're not making any more of it.

02:13:13.000 So I said, I'll go ahead.

02:13:15.000 And that caused a lot of controversy with my better half and I because she thought I was crazy that I was selling our comfortable house we're living in to go buy a land and stick a freaking camper on it until we can afford to build something. 0.98

02:13:29.000 But man, I remember my first weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend of 2019. It was like the first time I slept out there.

02:13:38.000 I knew what a coyote was, but I'd never heard a bobcat at night.

02:13:41.000 It was me and the dogs, and we were tent camping out there, and it was like 2 in the morning.

02:13:45.000 It was a bobcat right on us, doing the noise they make.

02:13:49.000 What is the noise like?

02:13:50.000 Sounds like a demented baby crying.

02:13:53.000 I don't know.

02:13:53.000 It'd be cool to hear if people haven't heard it.

02:13:57.000 We ended up leaving in the middle of the night because my dogs wouldn't stop barking.

02:14:01.000 The bobcats are the only thing out there that really freaks me out, like one of them jumping on you.

02:14:05.000 I don't think they attack people, though. 1.00

02:14:08.000 Let me hear this shit. 1.00

02:14:14.000 Whoa. 1.00

02:14:19.000 It sounds a lot wilder than that.

02:14:21.000 Let me get it going.

02:14:24.000 They live up to 12 years in the wild.

02:14:28.000 Yeah, that.

02:14:29.000 Jesus Christ.

02:14:35.000 Whoa.

02:14:37.000 I saw lynx once in Canada. 0.99

02:14:39.000 It's fucking cool. 0.99

02:14:41.000 It's just weird to see some wild cat up in Alberta in the woods. 0.99

02:14:46.000 I was like, whoa, that thing is fucking cool. 0.93

02:14:48.000 They have cool paws to get around the snow. 0.99

02:14:52.000 It's just wild that there's a cat up there.

02:14:55.000 When you think about cats, at least I do, I always think about warm environments, like tropical cats.

02:15:01.000 I'm excited to...

02:15:04.000 What is this one?

02:15:05.000 Bobcat attacks coyote?

02:15:06.000 Oh, jeez.

02:15:07.000 I stopped it before I saw it.

02:15:09.000 It ran away.

02:15:09.000 I thought you got him.

02:15:10.000 Whoa, try to get him. 0.92

02:15:12.000 Wow, bobcats try to kill coyotes. 1.00

02:15:14.000 He's just hiding in the fucking grass. 1.00

02:15:16.000 Look at him. 1.00

02:15:25.000 He's just trying to kill anything he can.

02:15:28.000 Imagine having instincts like that.

02:15:29.000 Everything that comes close to you, you want to eat?

02:15:32.000 That's a cat.

02:15:33.000 You know?

02:15:35.000 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 and different places.

02:15:42.000 This is my first time on the...

02:15:43.000 I've never left the East Coast.

02:15:45.000 Oh, really?

02:15:45.000 This is my first time in Texas, but this is my...

02:15:47.000 Holy shit! 0.99

02:15:48.000 This is my first time any farther west than... 0.99

02:15:50.000 I think the farthest west I've ever been is Tennessee, so I'd love to go.

02:15:54.000 And I don't know what'll happen with me next year.

02:15:58.000 Everybody wants to pull me in 10 different directions, but I've always just been drawn to nature and being connected to it.

02:16:06.000 I'm sure we'll do some big shows and we'll do some things next year, but my heart is just pulling me.

02:16:11.000 I'm just excited to go experience...

02:16:15.000 The first time I go to Wyoming and stuff, that's going to be it for me.

02:16:19.000 Just getting to see that experience.

02:16:22.000 I've seen it on the internet.

02:16:24.000 It's pretty stunning.

02:16:26.000 I've watched all these videos in Canada.

02:16:28.000 One of my favorite YouTubers is Camping with Steve.

02:16:32.000 It drives my wife crazy. 1.00

02:16:34.000 Anytime we want to watch something at night, I always want to watch camping with Steve, but he's a guy up in Canada, and he goes and does all these obscure different types of camps, different places, but just some of the area he explores up there in Canada is just awesome.

02:16:48.000 I've got to try it out for myself.

02:16:50.000 Wilderness like that, when you're looking at mountains and stuff like that, it's some kind of medicine for the human mind.

02:16:56.000 It's something about the awe-inspiring beauty of it and just the vastness of it.

02:17:01.000 It sets you at ease in some strange way.

02:17:04.000 It also is very lonely.

02:17:07.000 It's weird because you realize, oh, I'm not important at all.

02:17:12.000 When you're out there in the woods, you're like, Yeah, well, you realize, like...

02:17:17.000 Yeah, and maybe that's part of what I was trying to convey earlier in my words, too.

02:17:20.000 But it's like you realize that, yeah, there's...

02:17:22.000 Whatever problems and issues you've...

02:17:24.000 In your mind have sort of perceived to be top-ranking, like, they really are irrelevant, you know?

02:17:30.000 Yeah, they really are irrelevant.

02:17:30.000 In the bigger scheme of things, like...

02:17:32.000 It's a beautiful thing when you can...

02:17:35.000 Because you find...

02:17:35.000 You really find peace in that.

02:17:37.000 But...

02:17:38.000 Yeah, there's something about being out in nature.

02:17:39.000 I don't know.

02:17:40.000 Like, I've read all these things about...

02:17:43.000 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.

02:17:48.000 And I found that even on my property, being able to just be out there in the woods just helped me tremendously with everything.

02:17:55.000 You know, I've been reading about these different...

02:17:57.000 These different healing centers and camps and things that they're using for people that are just getting out of rehab centers or PTSD or whatever.

02:18:07.000 They have some of these non-profit organizations where they take people out into that environment.

02:18:13.000 They found a lot of benefit in it for people.

02:18:17.000 I'm looking forward to getting the experience in different parts of the country.

02:18:21.000 Even outside of the country.

02:18:23.000 I think if I get anything out of this, if there's anything I'm really excited about, it's just getting to camp different places.

02:18:29.000 That's cool, man.

02:18:30.000 That's a beautiful thing to look forward to.

02:18:32.000 That's smart.

02:18:33.000 You've got your head on right.

02:18:34.000 This is going to be fun for you, dude.

02:18:36.000 You're going to have a good time.

02:18:37.000 Yeah.

02:18:37.000 You're going to have a good job.

02:18:38.000 You're already making the right decisions.

02:18:39.000 I'm having a good time now, so this is cool.

02:18:42.000 It's crazy overwhelming, I'm sure.

02:18:43.000 I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to be you.

02:18:45.000 I got a nice slow trickle of fame.

02:18:47.000 Yeah.

02:18:48.000 I got like snake venom.

02:18:51.000 You get a little bit more all the time, tolerate a little bit more, and you get to a point you can still be yourself.

02:18:56.000 That's where it gets weird.

02:18:57.000 You're just going to get a lot of people pulling at you.

02:18:59.000 But you don't have to listen.

02:19:01.000 There's been a lot of good people come out of the woodwork, like big names.

02:19:07.000 That's got to be cool.

02:19:08.000 People that have given me very good...

02:19:10.000 I don't want to say his name on here and disrupt his privacy, but there's one guy in particular that...

02:19:16.000 Well, everybody's seen me meet him at one point, if that gives you a hint at all, but he's just a really good dude.

02:19:23.000 I didn't see you meet anybody.

02:19:25.000 Yeah, one of the shows, you know?

02:19:27.000 A show?

02:19:28.000 Yeah.

02:19:29.000 At one of the shows?

02:19:29.000 Is that what you're saying?

02:19:30.000 At one of your shows?

02:19:31.000 You talking about Jamie Johnson?

02:19:33.000 No, yeah, I can't say any names, but he's been a...

02:19:35.000 Yeah, he's just a...

02:19:37.000 He's everything you think he is, but he's just been a big help.

02:19:41.000 That's awesome.

02:19:42.000 Like, almost kind of a...

02:19:43.000 I don't know if you'd want to say a father figure in the industry, but there's been some very good-hearted people.

02:19:48.000 Mentor.

02:19:49.000 Despite all the craziness and all the people that have come out just clawing at me like that movie we were talking about at the beginning, there's been a lot of that.

02:19:57.000 There's also been a lot of just really down-to-earth people that just have the interest of me trying to preserve whatever it is I've created here and turn it into something To help me, keep me on the train tracks.

02:20:11.000 You know, it's just a while.

02:20:12.000 It has been a while, a couple weeks, but like I said, it's been a lot of fun.

02:20:15.000 You're handling it really well.

02:20:17.000 You are.

02:20:17.000 And you're handling the controversy and the criticism and the hit pieces.

02:20:21.000 You're handling it all.

02:20:22.000 I love it.

02:20:22.000 Yeah, just leave it alone.

02:20:24.000 Let them talk.

02:20:25.000 They don't even realize they're working for you.

02:20:27.000 They're just making you more popular.

02:20:29.000 Well, the thing is, yeah, I see a lot of the negative stuff online, but man, if you read through my emails and my social media messages and the people I've talked to on the street, there's no question that the majority of people perceive it in the way that I hoped that it would be perceived.

02:20:44.000 Yeah, no question.

02:20:45.000 No question.

02:20:46.000 You don't have to think about that.

02:20:47.000 No matter what you do, you can't make everybody happy.

02:20:49.000 No matter what you do, no matter who...

02:20:51.000 There's always going to be people that don't like it.

02:20:53.000 It's in everything.

02:20:54.000 In music, in comedy, in literature, in films.

02:20:58.000 There's always going to be people that don't like things you like.

02:21:00.000 There's always going to be people, and that's okay.

02:21:03.000 That's okay.

02:21:03.000 Just don't have to read it.

02:21:04.000 Like, the thing is about your...

02:21:06.000 things that people are gonna write about you now, like, you don't want to, like, inject that negativity into your mind.

02:21:13.000 So just don't read it.

02:21:14.000 You don't have to read it.

02:21:15.000 Like, it's...

02:21:16.000 So they don't, like, you said this, or they think you said of that, should have done this instead of that.

02:21:21.000 Oh, yeah, no. 0.99

02:21:22.000 Shut up. 0.99

02:21:23.000 Yeah, it's funny, though. 0.99

02:21:24.000 Like, I... But they're allowed to do that, too.

02:21:26.000 That's their job.

02:21:27.000 That's their job, yeah.

02:21:28.000 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.

02:21:37.000 I'm like, look, I respect what you're trying to do.

02:21:39.000 Same way with the people in the music industry that have approached me.

02:21:41.000 It's like, I don't necessarily want to work with your organization, but I respect you for what you're doing.

02:21:45.000 I mean, they're just trying to earn an income just like anybody else, you know?

02:21:48.000 And they're stuck in a system.

02:21:50.000 Everybody's got a boss.

02:21:51.000 If you're doing a show on CNN, you're in a system.

02:21:56.000 That's what you're doing.

02:21:56.000 You work for a system.

02:21:58.000 There's no way around that.

02:21:59.000 You are part of a gigantic corporation that has 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.

02:22:11.000 It's not it's not you representing you and I think what your music one of the reasons why I represented or what why resonated rather with people is because it represents them It represents humans like a real human being this isn't just some bullshit hit written by AI right is a real human why don't I read on the internet that it was a You probably could but I don't think you'd put the fudge rounds in there Yeah,

02:22:36.000 that doesn't seem like a I would be that creative It made those things rhyme It's a it's funny that that was one that was the most controversial.

02:22:44.000 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 was I didn't even want to record that song when Draven from Radio WV came down he had hit me up on a Thursday about coming to do the recording And,

02:23:02.000 um, I'd watched a lot of Radio WV, like, um, Logan Halstead and a few of the, Nolan Taylor, like, those guys are just, they're some of my recent favorites, and they were all sort of debuted on his channel, and so I've been watching them for years, and, um...

02:23:18.000 A guy on TikTok got me in contact with him, and so he called me on a Thursday.

02:23:24.000 He wanted to come that Saturday and record, and I only had the first half of Richmond North of Richmond even written.

02:23:30.000 It was on my TikTok.

02:23:32.000 I was sitting in my bathroom, like, just half-heartedly singing through the...

02:23:35.000 I didn't even know if I was going to...

02:23:36.000 When stuff comes in my head, a lot of times I would just post part of it online, just like...

02:23:41.000 To get it out there, you know, very casually.

02:23:43.000 And everybody in the comments was like, oh, you gotta finish this one, whatever.

02:23:46.000 And then Draven was insistent that we needed to do that song because I didn't...

02:23:50.000 My top song in my head was Ain't Got A Dollar.

02:23:53.000 Ain't Got A Dollar and I Want To Go Home are like two of my favorites.

02:23:56.000 So I just threw the rest of the song together.

02:23:59.000 I finished it the day...

02:24:01.000 We recorded it around 6.30 on a Saturday and I had had the song finished at like 3 o'clock on a Saturday.

02:24:06.000 So it was very thrown together.

02:24:08.000 Had no idea that was going to be the one...

02:24:12.000 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.

02:24:17.000 A lot of my other songs are different than that.

02:24:19.000 So, I mean, I'm glad he had the insight to tell me to do it.

02:24:23.000 But, yeah, it's just kind of funny the way it was thrown together.

02:24:26.000 But really, I thought when we uploaded the song, I thought the controversy in it was going to be more around the first line and the second verse than anything.

02:24:35.000 About miners on an island somewhere, like I thought that was gonna be...

02:24:38.000 Well that one people got upset about too.

02:24:40.000 I thought that was the one.

02:24:41.000 What's interesting is, people on the left got upset about that one.

02:24:44.000 Like why is he talking about miners on an island?

02:24:46.000 Why wouldn't you be talking about it?

02:24:48.000 That's a real thing.

02:24:50.000 That's horrible.

02:24:51.000 Like why would that be a thing that's controversial to sing about?

02:24:55.000 And why would it be like something that left-wing people would be upset about?

02:24:58.000 Like what?

02:24:59.000 What happened?

02:25:00.000 I've seen it happen.

02:25:04.000 A lot of people like I Want to Go Home.

02:25:06.000 I've seen that one's got some million views on it and that's awesome.

02:25:11.000 Richmond, North of Richmond isn't really even my favorite pick.

02:25:15.000 I'll get a better version uploaded of it at some point.

02:25:17.000 Right now it's just off my phone.

02:25:19.000 I'd say my favorite song that talks about class and politics and the world and the way I perceive it is probably Dog on It.

02:25:28.000 Dog on it's probably my favorite out of any of them.

02:25:31.000 So I'm excited to get those songs released in a more professional format the way Richmond or the Richmond is.

02:25:37.000 I've got notebooks just full of stuff written down.

02:25:40.000 So I've got a lot of ideas of new songs that I want to work on.

02:25:43.000 So I'm really excited to get...

02:25:46.000 It's good that we did this interview and that we got to get on here and talk, but I don't want to talk a whole lot anymore, I don't think.

02:25:53.000 You don't have to.

02:25:54.000 I'm not a talker.

02:25:54.000 I'm a writer, 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.

02:26:03.000 Well, I think you made an excellent account of yourself.

02:26:06.000 People are going to understand who you really are, and it's a cool story.

02:26:11.000 It's fun.

02:26:11.000 I think more people are going to be behind you now than even before.

02:26:14.000 They'll get a sense of this is a magical thing for you, and it's beautiful.

02:26:19.000 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.

02:26:26.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:26:26.000 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.

02:26:32.000 Like, I'm just a guy that wrote some songs.

02:26:35.000 I recorded them on my phone.

02:26:37.000 I uploaded them through DistroKid, and like, here I am.

02:26:39.000 And Yeah.

02:26:59.000 The fear holds a lot of people back from being successful.

02:27:02.000 Your fear of failure will keep you from being successful all day long.

02:27:07.000 So I hope that if anything resonates out of this, it's that.

02:27:11.000 Just do what you want to do and don't worry about if people are going to like it or not.

02:27:14.000 They probably are.

02:27:16.000 And if they don't, make something better.

02:27:19.000 Go back and try again.

02:27:21.000 Yeah, who cares if they don't?

02:27:22.000 Well, hey, brother, thank you very much for coming in here.

02:27:25.000 Congratulations on everything.

02:27:26.000 Enjoy the ride.

02:27:27.000 You're going to be fine.

02:27:28.000 Yeah, no, it's fun.

02:27:29.000 We'll do it again in a couple years.

02:27:31.000 Yeah, that sounds good.

02:27:32.000 All right.

02:27:33.000 Sounds good, brother.

02:27:33.000 Good luck to you.

02:27:35.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 30, 2023

Joe Rogan Experience #2027 - Oliver Anthony

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript