On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Joe talks about his love for Crocs and how he could make money with them. He also talks about the time he almost got run over by a car and almost died. And then he talks about how he thinks about selling some of the junk he has lying around in his garage and what he could do with it. Finally, he talks a little bit about a recent car accident he had that almost killed him. If you like the show, be sure to give it a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It helps spread the word. Thanks for listening and share it with a friend or become a patron. Cheers, Joe and the rest of the crew at the Joe Rogans Experience. See you soon! -Jon Sorrentino and the Crew at the J.R. Crew Music: "Old Town Road" by The Smiths - "Sonic & Friends" by Fountains of Wayne Parrothead - "Goodbye Outer Space" by Puff & Steph - "Ain't That a Goodie" by Burt Reynolds - "Outer Space" - "Feat. of the Bowery Boys" by The Bowerys - "I'm Too Effing Highlighted" by the Fook Show - "The Realest Thing I've Ever Seen" by John Rocha, "I Don't Know" by Ian Dorsch - "Too Effing" by Sully & The Crew - "No More Than That" - , "I Can't Stop" by D'Savage (feat. by the Crew, and & "I'll Tell You What I'm Gonna Do It" by Mr. John Rigsby - "You Can't Do It," by The Crew, "It's Too Good" by Jake & The Goodie, "No One Has It" - "We're Too Good By Me," "I've Got It," "The Goodie & I'm Too Goodie's "By Mr. & I'll Tell Me" - by The Fucking Goodie - "By The Crew (featuring the Goodie and I'm Not Good By You'll Do It By The Badie's ( ) - "And I'll Have It," , "We'll See You, I'll Hear You, Too Bad By Me" & "I Have A Goodie,"
00:02:24.000You 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.
00:02:33.000I've tried to hold on to things that I think I could sell down the road.
00:02:35.000Look, I've still got the strings that I recorded Richmond North of Richmond on my guitar.
00:02:53.000Actually, I'm considering selling my truck.
00:02:57.000I don't know, I think we talked about this once before, but it's worthless to me.
00:03:02.000It'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.
00:03:29.000The 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.
00:03:42.000It bent a bunch of stuff under the drive shaft and the front of the frame and all.
00:03:45.000And 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?
00:04:37.000Or 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...
00:04:49.000And, you know, make it a real sleeper.
00:06:52.000Everything 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.
00:07:00.000Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on.
00:07:05.000So 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,
00:07:25.000and some of them are good and some of them aren't so good, but they're all kind of clunky.
00:08:39.000Yeah, 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.
00:08:47.000Maybe it was the psychedelics or whatever, I don't know, but there was a huge disconnect, it seemed like.
00:08:53.000After the 70s with all that, things kind of went off.
00:08:56.000And it's interesting even now, like I see a lot of the new movies coming out, they're all just sort of remakes of...
00:09:00.000They're like a reconceptualization of something that's happened 15 years ago.
00:09:05.000There's not a lot of new stuff out there for people to connect with.
00:09:09.000Yeah, 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.
00:09:17.000I think it's just, it's really hard to finance those fucking things, and you want a guaranteed success.
00:10:01.000I'm not a huge movie guy, and I guess it's difficult for me to sit three hours and watch something straight.
00:10:07.000My mind's already long gone within the first 30 minutes doing something else, but Star Wars was really partial to me growing up.
00:10:13.000And 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...
00:10:32.000You 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?
00:10:39.000I think that Star Wars is like generational wealth.
00:10:44.000Like, the original guy who started the company was a bad motherfucker.
00:10:48.000That 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...
00:14:38.000Imagine if you're in a subway and you see that fucking thing turning a corner.
00:14:42.000My 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.
00:14:51.000That'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.
00:15:38.000Yeah, I haven't kept up with a lot just because, you know, I'm doing...
00:15:43.000So 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,
00:16:10.000you're going to have to deal with that.
00:16:11.000My daughter sent me some advertisement.
00:16:13.000She goes, did you do this advertisement?
00:16:31.000That's when I realized people are already ripping things off.
00:16:34.000And 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.
00:16:48.000It's called Nets with Vets, and they take out...
00:16:50.000Veterans with PTSD and let them go deep-sea fishing.
00:16:53.000So he asked me last minute just to wear his shirt at one of the concerts.
00:16:57.000And do you know now there's like 1,500 listings online for counterfeit Nets with Vets shirts?
00:17:02.000And so the organization reached out like, hey, are you like making shirts, ripping us off?
00:17:21.000It is, and maybe people bring their best and their worst on the internet.
00:17:28.000I'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...
00:17:36.000You see comments and feedback from people both overwhelmingly positive that maybe you wouldn't get in a personal conversation, but also overwhelmingly negative, too.
00:19:46.000This 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.
00:20:01.000And this hippie chick, who's 27 years old, has a voice from the heaven.
00:21:01.000At 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.
00:21:11.000And 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.
00:21:20.000And 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?
00:21:50.000Country 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,
00:23:56.000It'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.
00:25:36.000People, 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.
00:25:45.000My grandfather grew up in the western part of Virginia in the mountains, but I'm from Farmville, which is technically Piedmont.
00:26:13.000Well, people are tired of being fucked with.
00:26:15.000And it seems like people in power are always fucking with people.
00:26:18.000And 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.
00:26:25.000They set up our government to protect it against tyranny.
00:26:28.000And 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.
00:26:39.000I 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.
00:26:50.000We're very top-heavy in the way we're structured.
00:26:53.000Our federal government is enormous and out of control and almost impossible to manage.
00:26:57.000But then on our community level and in our state government, especially local government, things are just...
00:27:06.000Very neglected and weak and disconnected.
00:27:08.000And so, like, that's why you see a lot of the problems.
00:27:10.000Like, we shouldn't have to rely on the federal government to fix things out in the street in small-town America.
00:27:16.000Like, the communities and the local government should be the ones fixing that.
00:27:55.000It'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.
00:28:05.000I don't know anything about this, so I'm going to be talking out of my ass.
00:28:07.000But I would imagine they're probably low on funding, too.
00:28:10.000There's probably a lot of issues, especially in places that are poor, because they rely on taxes from those people.
00:28:16.000It's all very complicated, but the idea of taxing the rich being the way to fix all this.
00:28:21.000No, you're just going to give more money than the government.
00:28:22.000And they're not really good at doing stuff.
00:28:24.000You know, I mean, would it be nice if rich people donated to fixing streets and schools and stuff like that?
00:30:05.000Well, hey, for whatever they lost during the recession, they made it back during COVID, because that's my understanding everyone was doing that then.
00:30:48.000Yeah, because it's, I don't know, it does disconnect you from reality in many ways.
00:30:53.000And 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.
00:31:08.000People 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?
00:33:49.000Because the government is just humans.
00:33:50.000We 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.
00:35:51.000Like, 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...
00:35:59.000The last 20 seconds applied more than the first two minutes of the commercial.
00:36:03.000Like, I didn't find any benefit in that.
00:36:52.000Well, 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.
00:37:09.000And that's, and we've been programmed to sort of think that there's solutions for you out there.
00:38:15.000I mean, just in the part of the country I'm at, we've got a really close family of ours that farms.
00:38:21.000The father and the son have both died from cancer from the commercial agriculture they've been in spraying.
00:38:26.000And all that stuff ends up in the food.
00:38:29.000I've read about microplastics in the food.
00:38:31.000You 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.
00:38:41.000Really, 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.
00:38:56.000Well, certainly if you have an organic farm near you.
00:39:37.000I mean, that is an herbicide that they spray on stuff.
00:39:41.000Yeah, 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.
00:40:14.000It's one of the reasons why I can get a lot of shit done.
00:40:16.000Being healthy makes a giant difference.
00:40:19.000You have so much more energy than regular people.
00:40:22.000Who are just like sitting around all day because you don't demand anything of your body.
00:40:25.000If you don't demand anything of your body, it's like good.
00:40:27.000We'll just fucking atrophy into a sack of bones and meat.
00:40:31.000Yeah, being complacent is like the worst thing for you.
00:40:36.000Physically testing yourself is good and then mentally testing yourself and spending your time working towards some sort of purpose.
00:40:43.000Like I think that's really what was...
00:40:46.000That'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.
00:41:03.000Like, 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.
00:41:10.000That's your time to be productive, working towards whatever passion project or hobby.
00:41:14.000Sure, 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.
00:41:22.000Maybe 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.
00:41:28.000Yeah, and I don't even mean so much video games, but just that mindless scrolling that I've found myself being into, too.
00:41:36.000Bro, I've seen more people get hit by cars over the last five months on Instagram.
00:41:41.000More people get shot, more people get mauled by animals.
00:42:03.000I'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.
00:43:33.000Standing 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.
00:43:40.000Well, that does a good job of connecting you to your body too, which is something maybe we're not very good at either.
00:44:54.000That 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.
00:45:05.000The only thing I've done in the last six months at all is running.
00:46:03.000My belief is that all human beings need something creative.
00:46:07.000Whether 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.
00:46:21.000I think people really get a great satisfaction out of making things and of creating things.
00:46:27.000Sure, and everyone's good at something.
00:48:34.000They don't want to do the work, but they want you to do the work for them.
00:48:38.000Like, they want you to be involved in everything that they're doing, even though they're not making any changes.
00:48:44.000And they want to drag you in, and they want it to be the focus of all the attention.
00:48:49.000And 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.
00:49:05.000Even in my early 20s on, a lot of my friends seem to be older.
00:49:09.000One of my best friends, I'm 31, he's probably in his mid-40s.
00:49:15.000And 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.
00:49:26.000Well, I'm a dummy too, so it's okay if I'm hanging out with dummies.
00:49:33.000But yeah, I like hanging out with older people.
00:49:37.000It 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.
00:49:44.000It's like, those are the kind of people you want to surround yourself with are people that are going to...
00:49:48.000That are more experienced than you, more wise.
00:51:04.000And everybody's like, man, you got to do something with this.
00:51:06.000You don't want to waste this talent you've got and whatever.
00:51:10.000And that would almost make me feel even shittier because I'm like, oh, man, I suck.
00:51:13.000I'm such a piece of crap for not doing something with this.
00:51:16.000So 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...
00:51:28.000And 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,
00:51:44.000you 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.
00:51:55.000Now 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.
00:52:02.000But certain people, when you songwrite, it's dramatic.
00:52:10.000Have you been accused of not writing your own songs?
00:52:13.000Very 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,
00:52:29.000but the music's just sort of a characterization of, like, that period in time and those people, you know, and that's...
00:52:53.000Just because, like, that's sort of the demeanor or the, like I said, the character I was, like, that older Virginia-style music.
00:53:01.000Like, 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.
00:53:11.000Do you think you're gonna keep that name?
00:53:13.000Yeah, I mean, a lot of people still call me Chris.
00:53:15.000And I've posted on social media, call me whatever.
00:53:17.000I mean, I've been called a lot worse than either of those things.
00:53:19.000But, yeah, it'll stay Oliver Anthony music indefinitely.
00:53:23.000It'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.
00:53:32.000But he was born Oliver Anthony, but everybody called him Antony growing up.
00:53:37.000And so, like, he always thought his name was Anthony Oliver.
00:55:17.000Yeah, and so that, and, you know, like, anxiety is definitely something that's underestimated.
00:55:23.000You 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...
00:55:36.000Your mind can really put you in a dark place to where that thing just holds on to you.
00:55:42.000It just makes it very difficult for you to do anything.
00:55:45.000So 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.
00:55:52.000Well, that's especially true for people that are pursuing a non-traditional life that doesn't have any guarantees.
00:56:00.000It's a wild life to try to be an entertainer.
00:56:05.000Choose 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,
00:56:32.000I think for me, a lot of the anxiety came from me just feeling like I was running out of time.
00:56:37.000Like I knew that I had an ability to pursue this and kind of take this adventure on.
00:56:44.000And 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.
00:56:49.000And just always doubting myself, you know?
00:56:54.000I mean, the universe, in some weird way...
00:56:59.000Always sort of finds Like for people that becomes very successful Especially like yourself.
00:57:08.000It'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.
00:57:23.000Well, that's why you're good That's very good.
00:57:26.000You're good because you had a real life, like a real tortured regular life, like regular people.
00:57:31.000If you're in the fucking Mickey Mouse Club when you're 14, and then all of a sudden you're famous.
00:57:37.000I mean, I love Miley Cyrus to death, and she's fucking insanely talented.
00:57:41.000And I heard her new album is her best ever.
00:58:05.000Like, okay, Billy, let's take you to the tattoo park.
00:58:08.000Like, I want to be famous so everybody knows me.
00:58:10.000Okay, Billy, let's get you in front of TV. Yeah, and it's tough, because then...
00:58:16.000Everyone's perception of everything is different anyway based off the way they were brought up.
00:58:20.000Like, 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...
00:58:34.000Things we've experienced are the way our parents taught us things.
00:59:01.000Yeah, 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.
00:59:10.000I don't want to always be stuck being that guy, but I don't want to leave him behind either.
00:59:48.000What you need to do right now is just keep being you.
00:59:51.000And don't let anybody control you and don't let anybody wrap.
00:59:55.000And 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.
01:00:07.000Yeah, because that really goes against the whole message that I wanted to get out in the first place.
01:00:11.000And so, yeah, what would it benefit me to sign a big deal or have some...
01:00:28.000Well, 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,
01:02:45.000Look, I haven't been in a church in 10 years, and I'm not saying I'd ever go back into one again.
01:02:50.000I 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.
01:02:59.000If 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.
01:03:08.000There's a lot of truth in those words.
01:03:13.000It'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?
01:04:27.000If 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.
01:04:35.000But yeah, I had grown some crazy stuff and was smoking it.
01:05:48.000That 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,
01:06:11.000and 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.
01:06:18.000Those were just recorded off my Android phone, uploaded on YouTube.
01:06:22.000I ripped the WAV file off the YouTube video and then just uploaded it through DistroKid.
01:06:26.000And 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.
01:08:37.000Yeah, I guess in case either I died from a heart attack or like...
01:08:40.000Do you know how huge these songs would be if you died?
01:08:43.000I think that's like the most horrible rumor about Jimi Hendrix is that his manager was like a gangster had him killed.
01:08:51.000His 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.
01:09:02.000Yeah, maybe I thought, like, I figured, like, that was the only thing I had that was worth anything.
01:09:07.000And 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.
01:09:37.000I guess I'm a creative person, I guess you'd say.
01:09:40.000For creative people in general, life is very imaginative anyway.
01:09:46.000Again, 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.
01:09:55.000You and I would walk out of that restaurant noticing different things.
01:10:31.000And it's like, because maybe in his head, what he's looking at is totally different than what you're looking at.
01:10:35.000The mind's very complicated, you know?
01:10:39.000My 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.
01:10:50.000There's millions of living things within us that I think influence the way we think and what we do.
01:13:58.000And I guarantee you, like, if you got your system, like, if you had really good health care...
01:14:04.000They could find some issues with your endocrine system.
01:14:07.000A 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.
01:14:16.000Your cortisol levels are all fucked up.
01:14:18.000Yeah, because I would say that was the thing.
01:14:20.000It was almost like my brain was stuck in this fight-or-flight type of thing.
01:14:23.000And 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.
01:14:32.000I 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,
01:14:53.000but 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.
01:15:02.000I was going around and talking to Joe Schmo and Billy on job sites all day and every walk of life, not just blue collar.
01:15:10.000Those 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.
01:19:17.000Now, 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.
01:20:33.000Exactly, 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.
01:21:45.000But you throttle your brain in the cage over and over and over again and eventually you have TBI. That's real.
01:21:52.000You have real CTE symptoms for soccer players.
01:21:58.000It's crazy, but the head is just not designed to get hit.
01:22:02.000And 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.
01:22:12.000Even if you lose by a decision, you get depressed.
01:22:14.000It's a terrible feeling to lose in front of the whole world.
01:22:17.000Well sure, inherent loss in a lot of animals does that.
01:22:22.000That'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.
01:22:30.000All those chemicals are very tightly regulated to your performance and your place sort of within the world.
01:22:36.000What did he say about the lobsters again?
01:22:38.000So, yeah, if two lobsters fight the defeated lobster, he loses his drive and dopamine.
01:22:43.000He's like, there's some ridiculous chance that he won't win another fight.
01:22:48.000Like, he basically just becomes a bum lobster once he loses.
01:22:52.000But they can give them the same medications that they give humans to combat that, like, whatever antidepressant or whatever.
01:23:20.000I'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.
01:23:29.000For 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.
01:23:40.000Good luck having sex, because that's out the window.
01:23:54.000The 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.
01:24:23.000If you're listening, you'll know what I'm talking about, but you're at that breaking point like I was.
01:24:28.000I 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.
01:25:15.000Like, 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...
01:25:26.000I 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,
01:25:42.000when 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.
01:25:59.000I'm just crying like a baby, just this very warm feeling throughout me.
01:26:43.000I'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.
01:27:00.000That guy found a lot of peace, like, from this book.
01:27:04.000From looking at things in a different way.
01:27:07.000From looking at things through the eyes of Scripture.
01:27:09.000Well, 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...
01:27:17.000I'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.
01:27:25.000So if you can, take us to what was the day you picked it up?
01:27:37.000Yeah, 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...
01:27:51.000I remember I went to the ER for everything that was going on.
01:27:55.000I mean, I thought I was seriously going to die.
01:27:57.000Like, I was having shooting pains up under my jaw, down in my wrist, in my leg.
01:28:03.000Like, just cardiovascular 101 symptoms.
01:28:07.000Of course, I'm 31. I had been, like, I could run four miles without stopping, no problem.
01:28:26.000I 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.
01:28:37.000I was just like, just didn't have anything left in me.
01:28:59.000I'll give up the weed, and I'll quit getting drunk, and I'll quit being so angry about things, and I'll just...
01:29:06.000Like 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.
01:29:31.000I'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.
01:29:54.000I just changed my perspective I quit worrying about me, and I started worrying about what it is that I'm supposed to do.
01:30:04.000It 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.
01:30:16.000I 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?
01:30:31.000It's about trying to let go of your ego, I guess, in a way.
01:30:36.000I mean, people pursue that mentality without faith.
01:30:42.000I mean, it's the idea of there being something bigger than you.
01:30:44.000But I think inherently all human beings idolize something.
01:30:48.000Like, it talks in the Bible about false idols.
01:30:52.000Like, whether it's our phone or it's a celebrity or it's...
01:30:56.000Something 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.
01:31:26.000People sometimes act like they're special and righteous, but we're all just the same thing.
01:31:31.000But it's just about trying to make that my idol.
01:31:34.000Make God and the concept of what it is that He wants done on this earth my idol versus anything else.
01:31:42.000We all serve some master, whether we realize it or not, so why not let it be the master that is above all?
01:31:49.000So when you made this transformation in your mind, did you then start reading Scripture regularly?
01:31:56.000What did you start doing that was different?
01:31:58.000I guess it's like now I don't read it because I feel like I should read it.
01:32:04.000To be a better person, it's like now I try to read it for the guidance within it.
01:32:08.000And I'm still in the infancy stages of a lot of this.
01:32:10.000I've read a lot of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and Luke.
01:32:15.000There'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,
01:32:31.000like, 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.
01:33:36.000If you had to guess, where do you think the Bible comes from?
01:33:42.000It was an oral tradition for who knows how many years before they ever wrote it down.
01:33:48.000What do you think these stories come from?
01:33:55.000Well, I believe that people come across in different points of time, and I think they are given messages that need to be delivered.
01:34:03.000And 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...
01:34:10.000Throughout 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.
01:34:18.000Sometimes it's the lowly of the low that come along and just say things that need to be said.
01:34:23.000And 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.
01:34:32.000Everything is just much more immense than any human on Earth would admit.
01:34:37.000Like, even people in science, so much of science is based on theory.
01:34:40.000Like, 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...
01:34:52.000I think the earth is far more intelligent than we realize in the systems that we live in.
01:34:56.000Like, I just don't think somebody just pulled all that out of thin air.
01:35:01.000I'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...
01:35:10.000If you read through it, so much of it is so timeless.
01:35:14.000And 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.
01:35:26.000Like, 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.
01:35:38.000To me, there is no other book like it.
01:35:42.000Have you paid any attention to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about the restarting of humanity?
01:35:50.000It'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?
01:36:08.000And the current theory is that it was about 6,000 years ago.
01:36:12.000It's Mesopotamia, Sumer, and these areas, which is where we found the first written language, like first mathematics, cuneiform language.
01:36:22.000But 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.
01:36:33.000And 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.
01:36:54.000I think it's every June and every November and when they go through these Clouds of comets, occasionally we get hit by big ones.
01:37:02.000And there's a lot of evidence for this.
01:37:04.000And 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.
01:38:05.000I think there were human beings that made it.
01:38:07.000But I think to us, they went in a direction with their technology that's very different than we did.
01:38:13.000We went in this weird direction of internal combustion engines and silicone chips and all these different things.
01:38:19.000I 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.
01:38:36.000And I think that's one of the reasons why you go back in early history, people were so fucking savage.
01:38:40.000Because I think that the people that survived that 11,800 years ago event I think whatever was left was like fucking Walking Dead.
01:38:49.000And I think people lived a horrible life for a long time.
01:38:54.000I 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.
01:39:03.000So I think the 6,000 year ago mark, I think...
01:39:08.000If 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.
01:39:18.000It wouldn't surprise me if all that doesn't happen again.
01:39:21.000It could easily happen again if we get hit again.
01:39:23.000That was one of the initial things that really intrigued me reading.
01:39:26.000I think it talks about it in Ecclesiastes, but that everything that's happened under the sun has already happened before and will happen again.
01:39:34.000That generations that are yet to come will be forgotten about those that come after them.
01:39:39.000I 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...
01:39:52.000Whatever it is that we just love to create and develop.
01:39:57.000So 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.
01:40:10.000Yeah, 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.
01:40:18.000Graham Hancock's talked about that too.
01:40:20.000Who knows what's went on even just on this ground in years past that we'll never know about.
01:40:26.000Well, we know quite a bit about Texas, which is a fascinating story and it's of its own.
01:40:31.000But, 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.
01:40:42.000There's an amazing book called Empire of the Summer Moon that's all about Texas and the Comanches and the Texas Rangers.
01:40:52.000But I think what the Bible is saying rings true.
01:40:56.000And 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.
01:41:04.000They believe that's what the story of the flood is from.
01:41:07.000The flood from Noah's Ark and even from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is even older.
01:41:13.000It'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.
01:41:21.000They 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.
01:41:29.000Some places it was more than a mile, which is just insane to think.
01:41:43.000And what's even, yeah, it's crazy to think about it existing then, but also that...
01:41:47.000I 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.
01:41:57.000And 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.
01:42:06.000I fear that this sort of proxy war that we've involved ourselves in doesn't escalate into something bigger because...
01:42:15.000We could wipe society out indefinitely.
01:42:18.000We were talking about this yesterday with Peter Berg.
01:42:54.000And if I had to look at things with the most optimistic perspective...
01:43:02.000My most beautiful optimistic perspective is that's what the aliens are here for.
01:43:08.000That'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.
01:43:28.000It'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.
01:43:36.000If you don't have those things, like what is purpose?
01:43:48.000All 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.
01:43:57.000Fear and anxiety and jealousy and all the stuff that we want.
01:44:02.000We want to be praised and loved and all these different things that motivate people to succeed and do things in life.
01:44:16.000We do use it in so many different beautiful ways like your music or like a great book.
01:44:24.000There's ways that people use this that are beautiful.
01:44:28.000But it's ultimately the reason why life is so scary.
01:44:31.000It'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.
01:44:49.000But it's still, we're at the verge of nuclear catastrophe.
01:44:53.000We're still in this very terrifying place where one group of people for some reason or another opposes.
01:45:15.000Their establishment's an enemy of our establishment, right?
01:45:18.000The 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.
01:45:27.000We 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.
01:45:39.000And I bet that exists everywhere in the universe.
01:45:42.000And 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.
01:45:48.000Because I bet this shit is very touch and go.
01:45:51.000And I bet every now and then, some fucking Putin-type character goes, oh yeah?
01:46:06.000All that starts with someone's imagination.
01:46:11.000On 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...
01:46:22.000The mind is just as capable of creating good as it is evil.
01:46:26.000I think right now maybe we're creating a little more evil than we are good.
01:47:51.000I 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.
01:48:02.000But there's also a big problem, too, with homelessness and drugs.
01:48:07.000Well, cynical me wants to think that there's a conspiracy.
01:48:10.000Cynical 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.
01:48:50.000Look, 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.
01:49:01.000They're like, holy shit, the FBI is telling people to delete tweets.
01:50:42.000There needs to be more strength within local communities as far as people making decisions and uniting with one another.
01:50:50.000When an ugly ginger's walking around, everybody's like, oh, is it that guy?
01:50:55.000And so I've had a lot of people stop me on the street and in parking decks and at the airport.
01:51:00.000At 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?
01:51:36.000The people in my neck of the woods are not...
01:51:41.000Despite 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?
01:51:53.000Because a lot of people will vote, no matter what other...
01:51:57.000A lot of people will vote conservative just because of their Second Amendment rights, which is very much under attack in Virginia.
01:52:03.000You 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.
01:52:15.000He 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.
01:52:23.000And so they just basically picked up whatever narratives they got from each other's news, and they would just...
01:52:28.000You know, they let that destroy literally a...
01:52:58.000You know, especially like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter.
01:53:02.000You know, there's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot.
01:53:05.000Like, listen, I would like to try it that way.
01:53:09.000Let's try some guy who doesn't want war at all.
01:53:11.000Let'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.
01:53:22.000And 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.
01:53:33.000If 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.
01:54:02.000Yeah, so you believing in someone shouldn't suspend your friendships or relationships with other people.
01:54:10.000Yeah, but it's just you're hanging out with dummies.
01:54:14.000People should have, like, I have many friends that are Trump supporters.
01:54:18.000I have many friends that wholesale believe in the Democratic Party no matter what.
01:54:23.000It's a million times better no matter what anybody says.
01:54:25.000And 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.
01:54:31.000Like, 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.
01:54:45.000I mean, like I said, I love freedom of speech and I love the Second Amendment, but...
01:54:52.000There'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,
01:55:07.000like, just picked up on things and ran with it, but they use certain emotional triggers to, like, keep their fan base happy, you know?
01:55:14.000Like, 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.
01:55:26.000In 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.
01:55:38.000I don't think anybody can go into those positions.
01:56:18.000You're tweeting about your ex-girlfriend being horse-faced.
01:56:22.000Yeah, I don't think one person can do it.
01:56:25.000There's so much shit going on in that guy's life.
01:56:27.000Do 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?
01:56:37.000And you had to trust the CDC and Fauci and all those people.
01:57:27.000He 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.
01:57:33.000Do you see that woman who's the White House press secretary?
01:57:36.000I don't know if this is true, so we should find out if it's true.
01:57:39.000Did she or did she not accidentally delete a Biden tweet from her account?
01:57:45.000So it was a tweet, when I ran for president, this and that...
01:57:48.000Oh, and she accidentally posted it on her own.
01:57:50.000She accidentally posted it on the wrong...
01:57:52.000I want to find out if that's true, though, because that could be Russian disinformation, because that's true, too.
01:57:56.000Here'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.
01:58:14.000They have troll farms where people create accounts and then they argue with people about stuff.
01:58:19.000And they'll post links to fake stories and they'll post fake information.
01:58:23.000They may even post fucking AI voice swap shit.
01:58:27.000But 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.
01:59:23.000You know, or whatever, the fucking sidekick.
01:59:25.000And 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,
01:59:41.000raw, 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...
01:59:56.000Because, 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.
02:00:17.000When 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.
02:00:29.000And it sounds like right-wing, like, Proud Boy speech.
02:00:41.000I know very little about any of this, but my understanding is even...
02:00:44.000I 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...
02:00:53.000She didn't support gay marriage till 2013. Yeah.
02:09:03.000Yeah, well, that's what a lot of guys in the comments were saying on the Richmond North of Richmond video.
02:09:09.000They'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.
02:09:15.000Yeah, I hunt on my land and I let people come in and hunt it.
02:09:18.000I 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.
02:09:28.000You know, that's very controversial in Virginia.
02:11:06.000You can eat bear, but it's not my favorite thing to eat.
02:11:09.000It's not, but it is also an animal that has to be managed.
02:11:13.000The thing about biological management, this is the uncomfortable truth of it, you have to have a balance.
02:11:19.000There's wildlife biologists, they observe populations, and they want to enact some sort of a balance of predator and prey.
02:11:27.000And 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.
02:11:35.000And they did that in all places in New Jersey.
02:11:39.000The 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.
02:12:06.000There's more black bears in New Jersey than any other state.
02:12:14.000Because they're fucking everywhere there, and there's not a lot of hunting.
02:12:18.000So they had a bear season, and this governor came in and stopped it.
02:12:25.000It was part of the things that he ran on.
02:12:27.000And 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.
02:12:34.000A kid at Rutgers got killed by a fucking bear.
02:12:37.000He was out in the woods near the campus, and he got fucking slaughtered.
02:12:42.000See, I always wonder if I'm going to get...
02:12:43.000I think the bobcats psych me out more than anything.
02:12:51.000I remember even when I first bought the place, like, right after I closed on it, because I'd had...
02:12:56.000My 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...
02:13:15.000And 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.
02:13:29.000But man, I remember my first weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend of 2019. It was like the first time I slept out there.
02:13:38.000I knew what a coyote was, but I'd never heard a bobcat at night.
02:13:41.000It was me and the dogs, and we were tent camping out there, and it was like 2 in the morning.
02:13:45.000It was a bobcat right on us, doing the noise they make.
02:15:35.000That'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.
02:16:34.000Anytime 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.
02:17:40.000Like, I've read all these things about...
02:17:43.000You 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.
02:17:48.000And I found that even on my property, being able to just be out there in the woods just helped me tremendously with everything.
02:17:55.000You know, I've been reading about these different...
02:17:57.000These 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.
02:18:07.000They have some of these non-profit organizations where they take people out into that environment.
02:18:13.000They found a lot of benefit in it for people.
02:18:17.000I'm looking forward to getting the experience in different parts of the country.
02:19:49.000Despite 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.
02:19:57.000There'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.
02:20:29.000Well, 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.
02:21:28.000And 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.
02:21:37.000I'm like, look, I respect what you're trying to do.
02:21:39.000Same way with the people in the music industry that have approached me.
02:21:41.000It's like, I don't necessarily want to work with your organization, but I respect you for what you're doing.
02:21:45.000I mean, they're just trying to earn an income just like anybody else, you know?
02:21:59.000You 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.
02:22:11.000It'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,
02:22:36.000that 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.
02:22:44.000I 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,
02:23:02.000um, 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...
02:23:18.000A guy on TikTok got me in contact with him, and so he called me on a Thursday.
02:23:24.000He wanted to come that Saturday and record, and I only had the first half of Richmond North of Richmond even written.
02:24:08.000Had no idea that was going to be the one...
02:24:12.000And Alex, I was a little reluctant to even record it because I was like, I'm not really an anthem song kind of guy.
02:24:17.000A lot of my other songs are different than that.
02:24:19.000So, I mean, I'm glad he had the insight to tell me to do it.
02:24:23.000But, yeah, it's just kind of funny the way it was thrown together.
02:24:26.000But 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.
02:24:35.000About miners on an island somewhere, like I thought that was gonna be...
02:24:38.000Well that one people got upset about too.
02:25:54.000I'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.
02:26:03.000Well, I think you made an excellent account of yourself.
02:26:06.000People are going to understand who you really are, and it's a cool story.