The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:00:30.000 Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I'm speaking with musician Chris Lunsford,

00:00:37.620 better known by his stage name, Oliver Anthony. We discuss the balance between vision and efficiency

00:00:44.800 in artistic and commercial endeavors. Why Chris's hit song, Rich Men North of Richmond,

00:00:51.520 has resonated so broadly and so quickly. The way honest expression through music

00:00:57.220 can combat demoralization, how politics have become confused with the sacred,

00:01:04.400 and what we can do to restore each to their proper order. Looking very much forward to it.

00:01:12.620 So Mr. Anthony, your stage name, your stage persona is Oliver. Your name is Chris. I'm going to call

00:01:19.820 you Chris. You're going to call me Jordan. So here's something you might not know about me,

00:01:24.800 and I don't care, you know. Maybe you want to know it, maybe not. I've been collecting country

00:01:30.520 and western music for about 30 years, something like that. I had a roommate from southern Alberta

00:01:37.600 in college in Montreal. I wasn't really a country and western fan at that point. He really liked Hank

00:01:45.300 Williams, and I started listening to Hank Williams, and I thought, oh my god, man, this is great. And when I

00:01:51.240 moved to Boston, I started collecting old vinyl records. Of course, I listened, I had records when

00:01:56.160 I was a kid. Yeah. But in the 90s in Boston, you could pick up vinyl for like three for a buck. You

00:02:02.740 know, it was dirt cheap. So I used to go into the record stores and pick up any old weird-looking

00:02:07.760 album, usually from the 50s, 40s through the 60s. And I built a big collection of country and western

00:02:14.360 music. And then I made a couple of CDs I called Western Blues and was giving those out for Christmas

00:02:19.400 presents. And I actually have a Spotify, I have a Spotify playlist that's 29 hours long

00:02:26.940 now with 600 songs on it that I've collected for 40 years. My wife and I listen to it a lot

00:02:32.560 in the car. It's real good driving music, you know. And I'm going to just list some of the

00:02:37.880 characters that I listen to. You're familiar with all these guys, but a lot of people watching

00:02:43.220 and listening won't be, and they should be. There's Hank Williams, of course. Bill Monroe

00:02:47.500 and his Kentucky Boys. Colter Wall's a new guy from Saskatchewan. Oh, yeah. He's a great

00:02:52.820 young, yeah, he's great. My son played one of his songs to open my lectures for 11 shows

00:03:00.000 this year. That was really fun. Johnny Horton, Tex Ritter, Hank Snow, Flatt and Scruggs, the

00:03:07.180 Carter Family, Jimmy Rogers, the Stanley Brothers, Roy Acuff, Hatberry Ramblers, Gypsy Kings,

00:03:16.220 Leon Redbone, etc. Tammy and I, my wife, we've just watched the Ken Burns Country Music

00:03:22.140 documentary, which is absolutely great. It's just brilliant. Eight two-hour episodes. And

00:03:28.360 I've done a couple of shows at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. So that was fun. There's a great

00:03:34.320 bar there called Robert's Western World that I go to when I go down to Nashville. And they have a band

00:03:40.160 there called Kelly's Heroes. They did some music for me at the Grand Ole Opry, played a vicious

00:03:47.040 rendition of the American National Anthem on electric guitar. And they do a great, they do a great version

00:03:56.140 of Ghost Riders in the Sky, great blues guitar version of Ghost Riders in the Sky. So anyways,

00:04:02.140 I thought I'd tell you that just so you know that I'm not a Johnny-come-lately to the kind

00:04:08.160 of music that you've been playing. Yeah, that's very in like with my listening. So I love a lot

00:04:16.740 of the older music and older blues, like Delta Blues and that type of thing. But yeah, I wouldn't

00:04:22.640 have guessed that about you. So that's good to know. Yeah, well, about a quarter of this Spotify

00:04:30.380 playlist is Delta Blues too, because there's a great overlap, right, between that Delta Blues

00:04:36.040 tradition and the kind of music that you're interested in. And you said that too, I saw

00:04:41.740 that really portrayed well, for example. I don't know if you've seen the new Elvis movie,

00:04:46.020 a relatively new Elvis movie, which I thought was great, but it does a lovely job of laying out the

00:04:50.800 relationship between that black blues tradition and Western country tradition. You know, it's not a

00:04:58.060 connection that people often make, but there's a real sync there in terms of musical genre,

00:05:03.860 nice interplay between the different musical forms. So cool to see. And of course, we're all

00:05:09.040 the beneficiaries of that, you know, great new American musical tradition.

00:05:13.300 So something you may look at adding to your playlist or looking up that I think you'd find

00:05:17.320 interesting is, I don't know who the group is in the video, but if you go on YouTube, it's called

00:05:22.780 Carpathian folk music. And it's usually the first video to pull up under Carpathian folk music. And

00:05:28.420 it's maybe, I want to say it's about 45 minutes long and it goes, and it, it, it plays out almost

00:05:35.500 like a symphony. Like it starts, it starts in sort of one element and then it, it has its ups and downs.

00:05:41.880 And, um, I've listened to that thing 200 times, you know, it's like, uh, sitting out in the woods,

00:05:50.280 listening to that. It's it, it, it takes you on a ride almost the way like Beethoven would, but it's,

00:05:55.400 it reminds me kind of almost a lot of the older country and blues. It's, it's a very weird,

00:06:00.280 it's a very weird element, but it's got a lot of the sort of bluegrass elements to it, fiddle and,

00:06:04.720 uh, upright bass and stuff like that. You ought to check it out. The Carpathian folk music.

00:06:08.560 I will, I will 100, I will 100% check that out. Yeah. You know, one of the things that's really

00:06:14.660 quite a mystery about music and I can't quite figure it out is, you know, I like classical

00:06:19.540 music. I listened to a lot of music in the car and classical music is hard to listen to in a car

00:06:23.740 because it's got such an immense dynamic range, but no classical music is obviously extremely

00:06:29.700 sophisticated and complex and brilliant and, and, and, you know, reaches up into the stratosphere of

00:06:35.440 genius, but there's dead simple music that manages exactly the same thing. I mean, Johnny Cash is a

00:06:42.480 great example of that because, well, in the Ken Burns documentary, you find out when Johnny Cash first

00:06:47.680 started, I mean, his musicians could barely play at all. You know, they knew like three chords.

00:06:52.260 Of course, the Sex Pistols were like that too. And weirdly enough, and I don't get this exactly,

00:06:57.100 is that there's, there's a, one of the hallmarks of musical genius is authenticity and genuineness,

00:07:05.560 right? So you can take a really simple melody and you can do something stunningly brilliant with it.

00:07:11.800 Hank Williams is great at that. And it gives it a depth that's timeless, right? It, it doesn't,

00:07:17.020 it doesn't age, well, which is what timeless means, of course, but I, and I, it has to be something

00:07:23.180 like that genuineness. And it must be something like that, that sparked the imagination of people

00:07:29.080 around your song, right? Because when I was listening to it, I listened to it a couple of

00:07:33.160 times this morning, just to re-familiarize myself with it before we talked. And you have a genuineness

00:07:39.940 of voice that has obviously struck a chord. And so, while I'm curious about that is, first of all,

00:07:49.240 I'm really curious about how you're doing because you've been like the center of a media firestorm

00:07:55.760 here in the last couple of weeks, and that must be shocking to you. What's that been like? And why

00:08:00.220 do you think your song, what is it about your song that you think you did right that, that

00:08:05.540 contributed to its going viral? Hmm. So I, I have taken time to try to, to understand that myself.

00:08:13.060 Um, you know, the song, the song skyrocketed in a way that it, it, I, you know, there's been

00:08:20.760 accusations that it was, that it was propped up, you know, almost that I'm an industry plant

00:08:25.480 because it, it was like, we posted the song on, on, um, we recorded it on a, on a Saturday.

00:08:32.340 I think he uploaded it on Tuesday. And by Thursday, man, we were, we were on a rollercoaster ride.

00:08:38.500 Like it was already apparent that things were going, we're heading in a direction that nothing

00:08:43.800 else on his channel had done previously, radio WV. Um, and yeah, I mean, I guess to answer the

00:08:51.060 first part of your question, how I'm doing, I'm surprisingly very calm. Like, um, I have,

00:08:57.680 I've been entertained the last couple of weeks. I've been given sort of an unfair advantage of how

00:09:04.480 the internet works and how, how narratives are spread in certain directions to, uh, you know,

00:09:11.100 people form opinions about things like, for example, me playing the Superbowl, you know, I've

00:09:15.800 gotten, um, I've gotten a lot of comments and messages saying that I'm a sellout that I've

00:09:21.160 decided to sing at the Superbowl, but that was just an internet meme that someone created on Facebook.

00:09:26.640 Uh, like for example, the one, the one that popped up yesterday was that, um, Oliver Anthony

00:09:32.040 stuck at burning man and people were sending me stuff telling me how terrible it was that

00:09:37.900 I'm at this, like, oh, you know, burning man's this satanic ritual place and you shouldn't be

00:09:43.100 there. And like, but the, but as you know, I uploaded a video of me hanging out with my

00:09:47.960 goats in the woods. Like, yeah, man, burning man, it really, it's a red, you know, it's terrible

00:09:53.200 being stuck at burning man. But, um, so I don't know. I, I, I try not to take myself so seriously

00:09:58.960 and I've tried not to take this situation so seriously. It's just, um, it's, I I'm blessed

00:10:04.440 for the opportunity to be here. I mean, even just being able to have a conversation with

00:10:08.100 you is surreal. Uh, meeting Joe Rogan was surreal. Just, um, the artists that I've looked up

00:10:13.920 to like Jamie Johnson and Shooter Jennings, and it's just so weird that they're a phone

00:10:19.180 call away now. Uh, so, um, I'm, I'm doing well. Like I, I, you know, as I'm sure, you

00:10:25.740 know, like my, the last couple of years haven't been so great for me anyway, as far as my own,

00:10:30.500 um, my own perception on life. And so this is exciting to have a new opportunity to,

00:10:35.620 to dive into it's what I've been, it's really, really what I've been wanting to do for a long

00:10:40.800 time. I've just been so terrified of the idea of doing it, but here, here I am like, there's

00:10:45.260 no, there's no going back now, I guess. So. Yeah. Well, that's actually something I wanted

00:10:50.560 to talk to you about because I was reading when I was doing some background research on

00:10:54.800 you. I, and this is relevant to the issue of selling out that you brought up. So, you

00:11:00.020 know, I've worked with a lot of artists and I've worked with a lot of wannabe artists

00:11:04.700 too, you know, or at least had contact with them. And one of the things I've really noticed

00:11:09.380 is that many of the people I've met who are extremely artistically talented,

00:11:14.560 shoot themselves in the foot on the commercial side of things. And they do that in three ways.

00:11:22.060 The first is four ways. The first is they're actually terrified of commercial success. And

00:11:28.280 that's actually understandable because along with commercial success comes a transformation in,

00:11:35.080 in lifestyle and in social positioning. And it's easy to be leery of that. And there's some utility

00:11:42.460 in that, especially if you're a private person, you know, and, but then there's ideological issues

00:11:48.660 that come up too. So it's the issue of selling out is a really relevant one. You know, lots of artists

00:11:55.220 will refuse to have anything to do with the commercial end of their enterprise because they're afraid that

00:12:01.280 that will interfere with the flourishing of their artistic spirit. And that's foolish.

00:12:08.840 foolish. And it's foolish for a bunch of reasons. Like, first of all, why create unless people have

00:12:15.420 access to what you create? I mean, maybe you enjoy it yourself and that would be perfectly the case,

00:12:20.340 for example, with music. But, you know, if you're a performer, in principle, you want people to,

00:12:25.460 well, hear what you have to perform and partly so they can enjoy it, partly so you can get feedback,

00:12:30.540 so you can get better. And so you actually want to bring it, your work to the attention of as many

00:12:35.540 people as possible. The people who bitch and moan about selling out most loudly are almost always

00:12:41.700 people who've had no opportunity to sell out. Like, no one's ever offered them the chance to be

00:12:47.260 commercially successful. And so what they do is they elevate their moral stance falsely by claiming

00:12:55.460 that they're the sort of people that would never fall prey to any capitalist temptations, when the truth

00:13:01.340 is they're not talented enough or interesting enough for anyone to ever offer them that possibility.

00:13:07.220 And then the other thing that creative people do that's a really big problem is they don't

00:13:13.340 construe the marketing end, the communication end, as another creative challenge. You know,

00:13:19.340 so if you're a creative person, you actually overlap with people who have entrepreneurial interests

00:13:23.960 temperamentally. But one of the things you can do if you're creative, and this stops you from

00:13:29.020 selling out is to understand that the venture of marketing yourself and presenting yourself and

00:13:34.460 developing a professional persona, and also learning how to buffer yourself against the negative

00:13:40.820 consequences of that is also a creative challenge. You know, because you might ask, any creative person

00:13:47.340 might ask, well, if I was going to handle the problem of being successful creatively, how would I do that?

00:13:56.000 And then it becomes another creative problem instead of like an antithesis between, let's say,

00:14:02.760 the selling out capitalism that would warp your, you know, your creative spirit and the creative

00:14:09.760 spirit itself. So I'm wondering, in your situation, I read today that you had an $8 million contract

00:14:15.740 offer that you turned down. I'm wondering if that's true, if it's true why you did it, what your

00:14:22.180 alternative plans are, and if you have like a real developed vision for what it would be like to keep

00:14:27.960 doing what you're doing, but also be successful. That's a lot of questions.

00:14:33.040 Oh, that's okay. I knew what I was getting into when I came on the program. Yeah, I understand. Yeah,

00:14:39.360 music is important to me individually. Like these songs that I wrote, I wrote for me. And

00:14:50.860 inadvertently, it has helped a lot of other people, like not just Richmond, North of Richmond, but

00:14:57.160 I've got to get sober. Like that's one that I just recorded on my Android phone. And if you look

00:15:02.380 through the comments and emails I've gotten, I had a gentleman the other day at Moyoc, we played at a

00:15:08.600 farm market. And he told me that his, um, his brother had committed suicide. He had been, he had

00:15:18.480 been struggling with drugs for years. Um, this is like a big, rough guy, like a guy that looked like

00:15:25.500 he could kill me with two fingers. And, uh, we hugged each other and he, as he cried and told me this,

00:15:32.480 like, that's, that's what's important to me is like, people are just so desperate to restore some

00:15:41.300 element of humanity back in our life that we've somehow lost. Um, so I don't want to, I, I, I don't

00:15:50.760 want to make this into some enterprise where everything's about beating the algorithm and

00:15:56.360 being at the top of the charts and, and, and posting in social media at just the right time

00:16:02.460 to capture the most audience. Like that, that there's plenty of people who are out playing

00:16:06.800 that game and they're good at it. And I'd like for them to continue to do that. I, I want to,

00:16:12.320 I just want to feel like I have the freedom to do whatever I find it is necessary. And,

00:16:19.780 and that moment of time to, to impact people the way I have so far with the music that I've produced.

00:16:25.280 Um, I have something like 21,000 emails right now in my Gmail. I've got two, I've got 2,500 unread

00:16:33.220 messages on Tik TOK, Instagram, Facebook, like, and they're not just people telling me good music,

00:16:38.480 dude, keep it up. No, it's like, it's paragraphs of, of stories of like people having to work two jobs

00:16:47.100 because they lost their business during COVID and their kid committed suicide. And like, I mean,

00:16:52.740 it's just wretched stuff that it's, it is the, it is the full transparent narrative of what a lot of

00:17:00.400 us already see on the surface level of what's happened the last few years. And yeah. So like,

00:17:05.420 I don't know what I want my music to turn into. I, it may, it may manifest itself into some,

00:17:11.020 into some form of a, um, of like a nonprofit or a ministry more than, than just me going out.

00:17:18.240 Like, I don't want to, I don't want to just go yell all my songs in a stadium at, you know,

00:17:24.540 every weekend for the rest of my life. Like I want this to, to turn into something that's more

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00:19:10.880 Well, there was a bunch of things you said there. I mean, when I started to blow up and

00:19:17.320 started working in a much more broad public manner, one of the things that was really hard on me

00:19:24.480 was the kind of emails that you're describing. I'm not complaining about this. I'm just pointing it

00:19:31.540 out. Like, I'd done a lot of clinical work, and I'd seen a fair bit of misery in my clinical

00:19:36.600 practice. I mean, that's really, that's an understatement. But, you know, it was limited

00:19:41.780 at most to a couple of dozen people. And then all of a sudden, I was doing lectures for thousands of

00:19:48.540 people and meeting thousands of people and also, and then hearing the kind of stories that you're

00:19:53.800 hearing from hundreds or thousands of people. And, you know, you talked about dehumanization

00:20:01.860 and desperation. And it's really quite overwhelming to start to see that in that heartfelt sense you

00:20:09.460 described, you know, that big guy was giving you a hug and breaking into tears. I mean, you meet a

00:20:14.280 couple of hundred people like that in a week who do the same thing. And it's, it, I found that

00:20:18.620 extremely, extremely difficult because I didn't really understand how widespread that demoralization

00:20:24.940 and desperation was. And to see that on a large scale was really heart-stopping. So that's dangerous.

00:20:31.420 And to add to the point, it exists within the music industry. Like, they say never meet your heroes,

00:20:39.680 but I've gotten to meet quite a few of, a few of my heroes the last couple of weeks. And they have

00:20:46.100 ridden the roller coaster of signing a big deal and playing shows and being in that and being in

00:20:53.220 those contracts and in that algorithm. And they are, I can't speak for everyone. I'm sure there's

00:20:59.140 people that love to go out and tour and do it. But like a lot of my heroes in music that I've talked

00:21:04.180 to are not happy doing what they do. Like they're not happy having to go out. And so, so they've told

00:21:11.860 me, let me tell you what our experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so my wife and I have been touring

00:21:18.180 now for four years and I'll, I'll tell you how we've managed it. If you're interested, first of all,

00:21:26.020 it's a real privilege, right. To be able to go out there and, and speak in front of thousands of

00:21:31.140 people. And it's been a real adventure to go all over the world. Now we have allied ourselves with

00:21:38.820 top rate people and that's unbelievably helpful. So I've got a personal staff that handles security

00:21:46.100 and logistics and they take care of all the travel details, flights, hotels, getting me to the venue,

00:21:53.620 TAM United to the venue. That's 100% off my plate. And we had a rule that we learned well touring,

00:22:01.220 which was that if you have anyone with you that causes any trouble at all, that they don't

00:22:06.820 immediately fix. So if they're, if they're troubled, they have to leave. You have to have people along

00:22:12.820 who are like 100% zero trouble because it's a lot of work to move from city to city every day and to be

00:22:20.180 there for thousands of people and you can't have unnecessary trouble. And then you have to figure

00:22:25.700 out how to time it so that it doesn't wear you to a frazzle. You know, you can die from an overdose

00:22:32.020 of great opportunities as you're definitely going to find out and maybe already have. And so you have

00:22:37.220 to figure out for yourself how you can take enough time so that you have that opportunity to do your

00:22:44.260 creative work and not to exhaust yourself. And you know, that takes a certain amount of testing to see

00:22:49.780 where that balance is. I travel with my wife. That really helps. We often travel with some

00:22:55.620 friends or some family. The same rules apply. We won't travel with people that cause any trouble, but

00:23:01.220 it's nice to have people along because that keeps you, well, you get to know them better. It's a good

00:23:06.180 adventure for them and that keeps you together. I mean, it's possible to do this in a way that's like

00:23:12.260 hyper enjoyable and so that you get an opportunity to play for many people. But, you know, it's a

00:23:18.900 demanding enterprise and you have to 100% make sure that you're surrounded by people who take what

00:23:26.820 can be taken off your plate and that you can seriously trust. And then it can be, well, it can

00:23:32.980 be an insane adventure. Yeah. I'm excited for the opportunity to travel. Yeah. Like we've had,

00:23:39.060 um, it's as you, as you're aware of this, like just the initial song broke in so many countries,

00:23:47.380 like, um, I've gotten an outreach and it was a shame that I couldn't, um, that I couldn't travel

00:23:54.100 abroad yet. I don't have a passport, but like, I just got a message last night from a girl in Rome

00:23:59.940 saying that, you know, she and her boyfriend had been riding around all night, listening to my music and,

00:24:04.660 um, Ireland and Scotland. Like I'm, I'm, I do intend to travel. I just want to do it in a way

00:24:10.500 that is more meaningful than just showing up in an amphitheater and shouting some lyrics at people.

00:24:16.340 And then everybody gets drunk and goes home. Like I, I'm, I'm sure there's a way I can conceptualize

00:24:23.700 this to have more impact because that's, that's the importance of the song to begin with is the impact

00:24:29.860 that had the, it's somehow broke. It's somehow broke beyond the political, the political front

00:24:36.740 that has like almost encapsulated every part of our society today, not just in the North America,

00:24:42.580 but really globally. Like the message resonated with people in all types of different cultures

00:24:49.140 and countries. It's like, this is something, this is this phenomenon of politics, sort of

00:24:53.460 almost parasitically capturing the way we think about everything. That's a global thing. That's

00:25:00.100 not just a North American thing at this point. And it's happening very quick.

00:25:03.380 Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, so two things on that. Well, okay. First of all, one of the things that's happened,

00:25:09.460 I think is that the sacred has collapsed into the profane. And so the political has now become sacred.

00:25:18.900 You have to have a space for things that are sacred. So they stay out of the political and,

00:25:23.940 and everything has become too touchy to talk about because everything political has become religious.

00:25:29.060 And that's really not a good thing. It's part of the reason that we need a, that a religious foundation

00:25:34.020 isn't, isn't optional. I know you talked about that a little bit with Rogan. Yeah. Now, the other thing

00:25:40.020 that's interesting, you know, you said you don't want to go just to a stadium and shout out lyrics and let

00:25:44.620 everybody get drunk and go home. And, you know, one of the things I've also seen that's unfortunate

00:25:49.980 is that many of the artists I've talked to, and these were often people who had stellar, like,

00:25:54.780 international careers, they're afraid. And I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case with you,

00:26:00.300 but I'd like to talk about it with you. They're afraid that their mirror art isn't good enough,

00:26:05.420 given the importance, let's say, of all the political and, and maybe religious upheaval there is

00:26:11.740 in the world. But, you know, I don't, I actually don't think that's true. I don't think, like,

00:26:16.300 I've gone to a lot of concerts and I've watched the kind of quasi-religious nature of a great concert.

00:26:22.140 And I actually don't think there's anything more important than an artist can do

00:26:26.220 than for in your situation, for example, is to give the best damn concert you possibly can,

00:26:31.660 you know, and, and I can see you're torn between that to some degree, you know, because you say,

00:26:35.740 well, you know, you don't want to go and shout out a bunch of lyrics so that people can get drunk and go home.

00:26:40.300 But then that what you've done has spoken to many people very deeply all around the world,

00:26:45.900 and that what you've done was a genuine expression of what you really believe to be true.

00:26:50.300 And I would say that if you go to a concert and what you do is you really sing what you believe

00:26:57.180 to be true, there actually is no better service that you can possibly do to people,

00:27:02.300 no matter what it is that you're doing. Like, I don't think there is anything,

00:27:06.060 except for what's truly religious. I don't think there is anything that supersedes genuine art,

00:27:11.100 not in terms of potency and truth. And I think you're seeing that because of what happened in

00:27:17.100 relationship to your song. And I think that's also partly because of that other point you made,

00:27:21.740 which is, and the same with the song about sobriety is you're actually writing your songs. I think Hank

00:27:27.260 Williams did this and Johnny Cash too, unbelievably effectively, the genuine songwriters.

00:27:32.620 They're not writing to max out the algorithm and they don't have contempt for the audience,

00:27:37.660 that's not what I mean. But they're not doing it for their own fame. They're doing it to express

00:27:44.460 something approximating the truth in the way that they see fit. With you, that's obviously going to

00:27:49.980 be musical. So, one of the things I would say is don't be thinking there's any higher purpose you

00:27:55.340 can serve than the genuineness that you bring to your art, man. Good musicians are, I think people

00:28:02.380 die without good music. You know, it's so important. We have no idea how important it is.

00:28:07.740 It's how key it is to humans. It's obvious to me that music is, I mean, every culture that we know of,

00:28:17.100 whether they're, I mean, music is something that manifests itself in any society. And the more

00:28:25.900 that people suffer, the more they lean on music, you know. Some of the best music's been written in

00:28:31.900 the worst of times. So, I definitely agree, like, there's an element of healing to it. And one thing

00:28:38.220 that I've noticed about the music industry, just in my, now that I'm in the business, you know,

00:28:45.260 one of the things I've noticed is that we prioritize, as with a lot of things in art now,

00:28:51.740 like it's, we prioritize through the system of the music industry, we prioritize

00:28:57.660 what can make the most money and not necessarily what can resonate with the most people or what's

00:29:01.820 the most genuine and authentic. And so, like, in country music, now, I love 90s country music as

00:29:08.940 a kid. I remember riding with my parents and my grandpa and listening to, you know,

00:29:12.940 the Alan Jacksons and George Straits and Bubba Shot the Jukebox. And like, those are just fun, like,

00:29:18.700 just good songs. But somewhere country music, and I think music in general, has really lost a

00:29:23.900 connection with people because it's become, it's become too commercialized and not, not enough about.

00:29:29.500 And so that's kind of like, yeah, so I did, I've turned down a lot of offers. The latest one I saw

00:29:36.380 was a hundred million. That's certainly not the case. But yeah, I have had millions of dollars

00:29:40.700 thrown at me and I've had everything thrown at me the last couple of weeks. And, but I guess the,

00:29:48.060 I guess the reason why I want to stay on my own path is that I'd like to inspire other musicians to do

00:29:55.500 the same thing. You know, like the, the story of kind of how all this came about is just,

00:30:01.740 I mean, most of the music's from my Android phone that I've, you know, just recorded, put it on

00:30:06.140 YouTube. I ripped the wave file, uploaded it. There's a service called DistroKid you can use,

00:30:10.300 you pay like a nominal fee annually. They don't take any of the money and it automatically puts it

00:30:16.060 on all the platforms for you, Spotify, Pandora, Apple, YouTube music. Like I would like to see

00:30:23.580 more people do what it is I did. Like I'd like, if anything that I'd like it to inspire other artists

00:30:30.460 to, to not worry about going through a record label or worry about trying to find a big booking agency,

00:30:37.900 but just focus more on, on creating whatever it is you feel compelled to create and get it out there

00:30:44.140 and not, not worry about everything else. Cause obviously that's what we're so desperate. I mean,

00:30:48.060 like even just the phenomenon with podcasts in the last five years, like the fact that people can sit

00:30:53.020 here and listen to us talk for an hour and a half so intently. And like, that's been me. I listened to

00:30:57.420 podcasts all day long. People are just at this point, desperate for authenticity and desperate to

00:31:03.580 connect with other human beings on a level that we haven't been able to connect on very well in the

00:31:07.660 last 10 years because of technology and politics and government and just sort of this weird separation

00:31:13.900 that's been put between us and COVID certainly accelerated that to a, to a whole new light.

00:31:19.980 Like it's been, it's a very weird world we live in today. And so, yeah, that's kind of my thought

00:31:25.660 process, I guess, to answer it, to kind of wrap up that on, on me and my future. It's, it's more about

00:31:33.260 trying to create a new way of thinking with music and really it's an old way of thinking,

00:31:37.100 but it's just bringing it into, into our, into our time, you know?

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00:32:48.940 Okay, so that's very interesting. It's definitely the case that the plethora of publishing platforms now

00:33:04.700 allows artists like yourself, like Joe Rogan, let's say, to circumvent the intermediaries

00:33:13.420 in a way that has never before been possible, right? And Rogan's a good example of that because

00:33:21.180 all Rogan did for his podcast, all, and this is what CNN objected to, was he just invited people

00:33:28.460 to his discussion that he wanted to talk to, and he talked to them, and he listened, and he tried to

00:33:34.540 learn. And at the time that Joe started his podcast, he didn't really need either the fame or the money

00:33:41.200 because he was already famous and he had the money. And Rogan isn't someone who's primarily

00:33:46.580 oriented in that direction anyways. We can talk about him a little bit in more detail later too,

00:33:52.280 because you were just on his podcast. And he took that advantage of going directly to the consumer,

00:33:57.720 let's say, and circumventing the intermediaries. And he hasn't wavered from that at all,

00:34:03.140 although he's also partnered with Spotify, right? And then I started putting my lectures on YouTube

00:34:09.280 in 2013 because I was curious about it, and I've taken advantage of the same opportunities that

00:34:15.280 you've described, and it's been great. I would say, however, and this maybe has, maybe this is

00:34:23.040 relevant to personalizing things rather than thinking about them in the abstract. Now, in the

00:34:29.000 last year, I partnered with the Daily Wire Plus people, and we really thought about that for like

00:34:34.780 nine months before we decided to do it. It was a real intense negotiation, good faith negotiation on

00:34:43.340 both sides, but it was a very intense negotiation. And it was kind of dicey, eh? Because on our side,

00:34:49.920 we thought, well, do we want to partner with anyone at all? And if we do, do we want to partner with

00:34:54.440 these reprehensible, you know, right-wing wingnuts, Ben Shapiro and his lot? And then we also thought,

00:35:00.400 am I going to ruin my podcast by allying it with something that's somewhat more corporate in its

00:35:08.400 orientation? And that's a real danger, you know? And we did have a bit of negotiation around that when

00:35:16.860 we first started our deal, too, because there were ways that the more corporate guys there started

00:35:24.380 talking about content providing that risked turning the podcast into something that was sort of legacy

00:35:30.120 media polished. Now, on the upside, they've radically improved my ability to do podcasts.

00:35:36.960 They set up studios for me all around the world. I'm in Florence right now. The DW people set up a

00:35:42.000 studio for me here so I can do this. They've increased the quality of the podcast, and they've

00:35:47.160 left me the hell alone completely. If I want to do something and I suggest it to them, they almost

00:35:52.900 invariably say yes. They're a lot of fun to work with. They're very entrepreneurial. They're not

00:35:58.800 corporate. They don't think of content production. They don't talk down to the audience. That's been

00:36:03.300 great. And they've got rid of problems for me rather than introducing corporate problems. And I would say

00:36:10.040 the same thing with Live Nation. You know, I had my doubts about Live Nation because of their stranglehold,

00:36:15.640 let's say, on ticketing. But they're a lot better than some of the corrupt production people we've got

00:36:23.200 involved with in countries that aren't as well developed because we've hit some fraudsters. And

00:36:28.140 so the reason I'm telling you all this is fairly straightforward, you know. On the one hand, you

00:36:33.120 have the advantage of going direct to consumer in the way that you've described, and that gives artists

00:36:37.860 a tremendous amount of freedom. But if you're very, very careful and judicious in who you're partnering

00:36:43.520 with, you can find people who will open up new avenues of opportunity for you without interfering

00:36:51.720 with whatever it is that you value and what you have to bring. And you have to, the devil's in the

00:36:58.180 details, man, because it boils down to the character of the person, the specific person or persons that

00:37:04.500 you're dealing with. I also have a tour manager, John, who's an absolutely amazing manager. He

00:37:13.440 used to be a comedian, like a traveling comedian. He was on the road all the time. So he's on the

00:37:18.800 road for like 20 years. And he's been superb. So you can find people to work with who will expand

00:37:25.460 your commercial reach without putting you through the grinder and killing the goose that lays the

00:37:32.540 golden eggs. But it requires a lot of discernment and care. Yeah, well, discernment is an important

00:37:40.880 concept with all of this. Yeah. Because every decision, every word you speak and every decision

00:37:45.580 you make can very quickly change the course of everything. Like in this world, it is interesting.

00:37:52.880 Yeah, you bet.

00:37:54.820 Yeah. And I guess the beauty too with Joe Rogan and with you and with others is that you

00:37:59.800 conceptualized and created sort of your masterpiece and then decided to bring in something to help

00:38:06.840 supplement that and reinforce it. And so that's, um, so maybe that is something I could, you know,

00:38:11.900 it's like, you didn't, you didn't approach the daily wire of like, Hey, let's start a podcast.

00:38:16.200 And then like, you already sort of created, you sort of created the format and they just

00:38:20.980 respectfully added to it. And so maybe that's a good way to go about doing it even with mine.

00:38:26.460 Yeah. Like, well, one of the things, one of the ways you can tell if you can do that.

00:38:31.240 So in your situation, A, you're in a fortunate situation at the moment because at the, at this

00:38:38.280 moment, because you can say, no, people are coming to you instead of you going to them,

00:38:44.040 as you just pointed out. And so you, you have, you have the fortunate opportunity to set the terms

00:38:54.660 at the beginning and to think through what those are. And you already told me to some degree is like,

00:39:00.000 you don't want to subordinate your music to profit. You don't want to become a generic act

00:39:08.060 and you don't want the corporate world interfering with your ability to speak directly to people.

00:39:14.920 You know, those are principles that are actually worth writing down, you know, like if you, and,

00:39:19.740 and I often recommend this to people in general is imagine, and you could do this. It's a very useful

00:39:24.700 thing to do. Imagine that you could be exactly where you wanted to be in five years. Like you've

00:39:30.280 got these stellar opportunities in front of you. So then you got to allow yourself to imagine like

00:39:35.520 you're a kid who's pretending or daydreaming and thinking, okay, man, I, I can be wherever I want

00:39:40.360 five years. I'm a musician. I've already got an audience. I've got an audience of people who want

00:39:45.220 to hear me. I've got a lot of commercial options. And then I have a private life that I enjoy.

00:39:50.280 Okay. How could I bring all of those together in the optimal way? What would that look like? And

00:39:55.700 that's got to be, that's, you know, there's this line in the gospels that says that you should ask

00:40:00.700 and you'll receive, you should knock and the door will open and you should seek and you'll find.

00:40:06.560 And that's actually an injunction to a kind of meditative prayer. And the idea fundamentally,

00:40:12.340 and this works like a charm is what the hell do you want? Just imagine that fortune could

00:40:18.140 conceivably smile on you in the way that it has in the last couple of weeks. And you could set up

00:40:23.460 your future so that it was literally your dream. What would that look like? Like you obviously like

00:40:31.900 performing. I mean, if you, we could do that a little bit right now. If you imagine you could

00:40:36.420 have a year where you had exactly the right balance between performing and having a private life,

00:40:43.120 like what size audiences do you like playing for? Um, yeah, that's kind of the challenge. I love

00:40:52.000 the intimacy of a smaller, I mean, we did the farm market. We had about 12,000 show up and I, and

00:40:58.620 like, and even with that, despite everyone telling me I was a fool for doing it, I stayed and did

00:41:05.000 like a meet and greet after for about four and a half hours, but it gave me enough time that I was able

00:41:10.620 to, I'd like it to stay at a level. I'd like to have opportunities to be able to meet people.

00:41:17.820 Um, so 10 or 12,000 people. I mean, we've got, we've got a few coming up that size. Um,

00:41:26.180 you know, you go back to your point about trying to sort of paint a picture, a mental picture of

00:41:33.000 five years ahead. I know you had talked about that at some point in a lecture and that's actually,

00:41:37.320 I, I give you some credit for me sitting in the chair I'm in now, because I have done that

00:41:44.220 from your recommendation. I, I did your self authoring program and all, um, maybe two or three

00:41:49.680 years ago. And, uh, you know, the thing that that, the thing that really spoke to me the most though,

00:41:57.760 was, um, your story about your friend, Chris, because I'm Chris. Oh yeah. And I, and I was really,

00:42:06.240 oh man. And I was, you know, you talked about your friend, Chris being, uh, an aspiring musician and

00:42:12.120 getting high all the time. And like, and I, and I, if I recall correctly, Chris had,

00:42:18.380 had was, uh, from what I could interpret, like with my own experience, maybe he was even

00:42:23.640 experiencing some like cannabis induced psychosis and all. I remember the story. I think it was Chris

00:42:28.580 that was, that was in the other room and like, yeah, that, um,

00:42:34.720 yeah, I realized like, maybe I'm, maybe I'm Chris, you know? So, uh. Yeah. Well, there's part of the

00:42:43.080 reason I wrote about my friend. He eventually committed suicide at, at, at, at about the age of

00:42:47.840 40. After he phoned me one night, he had got a bunch of his short stories published in a small

00:42:54.500 book in an anthology from Northern Alberta. And he's actually a pretty good short story writer.

00:42:59.880 He was a good photographer too. He was quite a brilliant man, this friend of mine, and he did

00:43:05.260 smoke too much pot and it wasn't good for him. And maybe there was something else going on there too,

00:43:09.860 but he became very bitter and resentful and it, and partly because, you know, he regarded his own

00:43:14.900 ambition as evil. He was one of these demoralized young men, an early version of it, very,

00:43:20.740 a sensitive person and easily made guilty. And the constant harping about, you know, the evil

00:43:26.700 patriarchy and the terrible consequence of male ambition just absolutely did him in, you know? And

00:43:32.740 it played into his own willing, unwillingness to accept responsibility in a kind of pathological way.

00:43:39.020 It was very sad. Like I knew him for years and he lived with me in Montreal when he was older

00:43:43.820 in his thirties, my wife and I for a while. And we kind of, we tried to get help and get his life

00:43:49.560 back on track and did to some degree, but then he left and went back to Alberta. Anyways, he

00:43:54.400 committed suicide the day after he had phoned me and told me about having this publication. He went

00:44:00.460 out in a truck and hooked a tube to the exhaust and in his truck and smoked cigarettes up in the

00:44:09.580 mountains and, you know, just let himself go. And it was quite the bloody catastrophe, but it was one

00:44:14.640 of those situations where, yeah, his life was too aimless and he didn't take his own

00:44:20.360 potential with enough seriousness. He regarded his ambition as evil. He kind of became a nihilistic

00:44:28.800 Buddhist in the worst possible sense. And, you know, in drift, it was really a real waste of talent.

00:44:35.260 And so it's a hell of a thing to hear you say, you know, that you saw some him in you, but it's very,

00:44:39.980 very common, you know, and it is a lot better to develop a vision. You talked about this self

00:44:45.400 authoring program. It's, you need a vision, man. And so now you said, you talked to 12, you sang to

00:44:52.120 12,000 people and that was good, but you liked the personal contact with the meet and greet. So

00:44:57.060 my team sets up meet and greets after my event at every event. And so that's a premium ticket. And,

00:45:04.500 you know, you can, you can, what would you say, satirize that as excess capitalist exploitation,

00:45:11.360 but you have to parse people in some manner when a lot of people want to see you. And it's also the

00:45:18.520 case, you know, that people want to enter into a reciprocal agreement. And so if they're really happy

00:45:23.420 with you and what you're doing, they also want to contribute. And that's part of reasonable trade.

00:45:28.780 Now I love the meet and greets. You know, I only meet people for about 15 seconds probably. And

00:45:34.140 I've, but I've learned to put them at ease very quickly and to get a bit of a interaction. You

00:45:40.360 know, one of the things I've learned, for example, is that when people approach you and put out their

00:45:45.340 hand to shake your hand, and that's going to happen to you on the street all the time now,

00:45:49.240 obviously, is that you can match your tempo to theirs like a dance. You move towards them about as

00:45:54.620 quickly as they move towards you. And I always ask people what their name is, because even if they're

00:45:59.300 nervous, most people can remember their name. And once they tell you that, once they tell you that,

00:46:06.180 that sort of puts them at ease. And I really like the meet and greets, you know, because it also helps

00:46:10.420 you remember who you're, that it differentiates the audience back into individuals. And you should

00:46:16.740 always be communicating with individuals. You know, as soon as you start talking to the crowd,

00:46:21.160 as something Kierkegaard pointed out, as soon as you start talking to the crowd,

00:46:24.880 you're immediately lying. You have to be talking to the individuals in the crowd.

00:46:29.820 And so I think you can have your cake and eat it on the touring front. You know, you can,

00:46:33.560 you can sing to large audiences, but you can keep that intimacy if you structure it properly.

00:46:39.260 And then you also don't get on your high horse too badly, because, you know, people are always

00:46:43.540 coming up to you and telling you, well, like the story that you just told about the guy who came up to

00:46:48.260 you, you know, with his, with his brother who was in such trouble. And hearing those sorts of

00:46:53.180 stories from people and seeing them open themselves up like that, it knocks the ego out

00:46:57.500 of you. That's a really important thing to have happen to you when you're touring too,

00:47:01.000 because when you're the center of that much attention, you know, you can get puffed up.

00:47:05.760 That's so dangerous, man. It's so dangerous to have that happen.

00:47:09.000 Yeah. I don't ever, I don't ever want to sit in a position to where I feel like

00:47:12.920 I'm better than anyone that I'm singing to. Yeah. I don't like that ego that you see come with

00:47:18.440 people that are in celebrity status. Like it's, um, it's a tragedy because it ultimately it ends

00:47:26.320 up, the person changes into whatever, into something completely different than what people

00:47:30.820 fell in love with them for in the first place. You know? Yeah. Like I, I don't see myself any

00:47:36.740 different than anyone else that I'm, that I'm like, and that's, what's been so weird about this

00:47:41.500 whole thing anyway, is like when I am approached and of course it may, like, maybe I need to shave my

00:47:46.640 beard and cut my hair and wear a hat and then I can go out in the public for a couple of days, but

00:47:50.440 I kind of stand out in a crowd anyway, my height and red hair and all. And so, yeah, but it's,

00:47:57.680 it hasn't been a, at least not yet, it hasn't been a bother. It's been, um, it's been nice to know that

00:48:05.520 it's been nice to know that it has made a positive impact on people. Like, um,

00:48:11.020 I don't know. I just, uh, I've just felt so hopeless for the future for such a long time that

00:48:17.880 like seeing people, just seeing people feel something that I haven't seen in a long time

00:48:24.260 means a lot. It means a lot more to me than, than anything else, than the money or whatever,

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00:49:25.700 What made you, you said that for a long time you had felt hopeless about the future and you alluded

00:49:31.020 to this song that you wrote too about sobriety. What, and also about identifying to some degree,

00:49:37.440 let's say with my friend Chris, what do you think, what do you think it was that tempted you to feel

00:49:43.780 hopeless about the future and how have you dealt with that to the degree that you have and how have

00:49:50.100 you dealt with that successfully?

00:49:51.100 The hopelessness, I think, comes from seeing us all, like, we've just, we find fault in each other

00:50:04.020 instead of finding common ground in each other anymore. Like, to your point about Chris and, like,

00:50:11.040 with, you know, and I, and that's one of the verses in the, in the popular song is that it references young

00:50:19.220 men committing suicide at this ridiculous rate they are today because, yeah, we've, and I don't know

00:50:27.180 why it is. I think it's, I think it's almost been, again, through social media and sort of the parasitic

00:50:33.820 way that it alters our thinking. Like, by just, we read everyday things that just change the, change

00:50:40.560 our perception of each other. But we've gotten to a point where we almost, it's easier for us to try

00:50:45.420 to find differences and faults in each other instead of similarities, which we, we all hold

00:50:50.180 much more common ground than we do difference. You know, I mean, we're all, we're all very

00:50:54.180 biologically similar and we, we all have to acquire some amount of money. We, most of us have ambitions

00:51:00.480 of raising a family or at least have developing friendships. Like, you know, I'd say 90% of the

00:51:08.480 people that at least exist in North America are, are very similar in almost every way. But it's like,

00:51:14.200 we've somehow found the nitpick arbitrary differences that we hold and we exploit those

00:51:20.540 and blow those up. And so, yeah, it feels hopeless because we are more divided today than we've ever

00:51:25.940 been. Like, everything's politicized. Everything is about one, one, one party or one person trying

00:51:34.360 to hold some moral high ground over the other just for the sake of, of being able to point your finger

00:51:39.700 down at them, you know? Um, and it's like, what the hell are we doing? Like, we've got a,

00:51:46.160 we have just an incredible opportunity to live in the place that we do. The fact that you and I can,

00:51:51.220 can use free speech and free thought because speech and thought are one in the same. Like if,

00:51:57.700 if people aren't able to have open, honest conversations with each other, they aren't able

00:52:01.380 to conceptualize new ideas that takes us into a better place than whatever place that we were in

00:52:07.200 previously. Like that's just, that's human existence one-on-one. And so, so to see that

00:52:12.320 being threatened and to see us all sort of being put into these categories and these political

00:52:17.440 buckets, you know, um, it's like even, even just our own, even the personalities of people have been

00:52:26.040 weaponized against each other. You know, you made a good point. It's been a couple of years ago,

00:52:30.580 maybe where you were talking about, and I'd never looked at people this way prior,

00:52:33.900 but you were talking about how just in people's own persona and their personality and the way they

00:52:37.980 think people can be more conservative or liberal, like entrepreneurial, imaginative people are

00:52:44.080 typically more liberal. And, you know, like in a business you've got, the CEO is typically going

00:52:49.080 to have a more conservative perspective. And the, the guy coming up with a new idea is the

00:52:54.000 entrepreneurial guy. He's going to be more liberal. And it's like, it seems like they've,

00:52:58.900 whoever this day is the man behind the curtain, if you will. I don't know if that's just,

00:53:02.700 I don't know who, I don't know how to explain that side of it, but it seems like things have

00:53:08.500 become very much like taking the imaginative creative person and weaponizing him against

00:53:13.880 the more traditionalist grounded person instead of them using their strengths together to sort

00:53:18.220 of build a brighter future. It's about taking each other and seeing how far, like how far we can

00:53:24.080 take this thing. But ultimately my hopelessness comes from, from like, what is this country or what

00:53:29.860 is this world going to look like in 20 or 30 years? Like what world are my kids going to live

00:53:34.380 in? Is it going to be, are they going to be allowed to say what they think? Are they going to

00:53:39.620 even be able to walk down the sidewalk? I mean, like, you know, better than most about just the

00:53:44.060 atrocities that went on a hundred years ago, 150 years ago, like we're so close to falling back into

00:53:50.560 that. That's really where my hopelessness comes from. But I, I do believe things can be turned

00:53:55.760 around for the better in a short period of time. It's just, people have to sort of retrain the way

00:54:00.140 they think about each other and ultimately the way they think about themselves, you know?

00:54:05.520 God, I've only been on, I've been on Twitter two weeks and realized Twitter is not a good place to

00:54:11.300 be. Like people seem to spend a lot more time finding fault in others on Twitter than the next time

00:54:17.720 they should be spending with their families or spending, working on a hobby or a, or a side business,

00:54:23.000 or, you know, like a lot of our time is wrapped up in so much in social media and, and, and it's

00:54:29.440 become very toxic, you know? Okay. So, so a couple of things there. So in terms of keeping your feet on

00:54:38.920 the ground, when you're, when you've become a celebrity, become the center of attention, you know,

00:54:44.320 there's, there's a tremendous emphasis in the Judeo-Christian tradition of attending to your own

00:54:49.600 sins, right? Of taking the log out of your own eye instead of worrying about the speck in your

00:54:54.400 neighbor's eye. And certainly, you know, you said you regard yourself as, as another, just another

00:55:00.380 person among people, you know? And one of the things that's very necessary to do if you are in a

00:55:06.460 celebrity position is to spend a fair bit of time meditating on your own inadequacies, like not in an

00:55:14.100 involuntary and self-denigrating way, the way that it would be associated with depression, let's say,

00:55:19.320 but in a, in a open-eyed and humble analytic way, so that you remember that you still, that you have

00:55:28.180 things to improve, right? And that that's your problem and your responsibility. It's actually a

00:55:32.240 relief to do that. And so that's like a meditative or religious practice. And then you talked about

00:55:38.880 the relationship between the creative entrepreneurial type and the conservative managerial type. And

00:55:45.440 that's partly what I was alluding to, let's say, when I was talking about the partnerships that I've

00:55:50.440 established with people like CAA and Live Nation and, and the Daily Wire folks. Those relationships

00:55:57.900 have been made personal, you know, rather than organizational. And so, although they are, the people

00:56:04.300 I'm working with are members of large organizations, the relationships themselves are personal and

00:56:10.520 they're based on trust. And because of that, I've been able to benefit from the managerial capabilities

00:56:16.060 of the people that I've been working with. And I learned that actually from the man I was apprenticed

00:56:22.200 to as a graduate student at McGill, Robert Peel, who's still a business associate of mine. Robert

00:56:29.540 Bob was a very good, he was a very good administrator as, and manager as well as a very

00:56:35.340 good entrepreneurial scientist. And he was very good at managing his lab and keeping track of the

00:56:41.380 necessary corporate and administrative elements that made the entire process move forward. And it's,

00:56:47.140 that's harder for creative people because those are sort of petty details, but you can learn how to

00:56:52.760 value that. And it is like the creative person learning to value the conservative, you know, it's the same

00:56:58.120 thing. The person who could put things in place incrementally and move forward, move things forward

00:57:03.100 efficiently, but perhaps lacks vision. It's easy for the visionary to be contemptuous of that, but it's a

00:57:09.040 big mistake. Just like it's a mistake for the conservative type to denigrate the visionary type,

00:57:15.140 right? Because now and then new ideas need to come along. But by personalizing that, you can,

00:57:20.600 you can attain that kind of harmony, harmonious production that you described. And personalizing it also

00:57:26.620 helps remove some of that temptation to denigrate the side that isn't, you know, temperamentally

00:57:35.260 aligned with you. So if you're careful, you can have your cake and eat it too. You talked about

00:57:41.200 the selfauthoring.com program. You said you had developed a couple of years ago, three years ago

00:57:47.300 or so, you developed something of a vision for yourself. And so do you remember what the details of

00:57:52.600 that vision were and why you decided to do it? Yeah. So I'd used a couple of years. I'd used the

00:58:01.300 self-authoring and I also used the personality trait for my wife and I before we got married.

00:58:07.140 And, um, Oh, that understand myself, understand myself. Okay. So we've used both of those,

00:58:13.460 like, so we could figure out how we had just moved in together. And, um, we had maybe been dating a couple

00:58:20.260 years prior to that and we were getting ready to get married. And, um, yeah, it was like trying to

00:58:25.520 figure out how we could, you know, like any couple, when you, when you're living together, things are

00:58:29.900 much different than when you're not living together and you really learn how you have to sort of work

00:58:34.580 around each other at home. And so, yeah, we use that, but yeah, self-authoring was more of just

00:58:38.940 trying to figure out where my direction was because I had, um, I'd, I'd moved, I dropped out of high

00:58:45.940 school. I moved to Western North Carolina, um, sort of in this pursuit of adventure, I guess.

00:58:51.620 And, um, and then I'd had the head injury and I had to move back. And so everything that I had sort

00:58:57.700 of planned, like my vision of what I thought my twenties going into my thirties would look like

00:59:02.700 completely flipped upside down. And I had, I had landed the sales job still kind of in the industrial

00:59:08.360 construction industry and it was paying the bills and I got to talk to people every day. And so I was

00:59:13.180 like, well, I'm pretty cool with this, but this really isn't what I want to do with my life. And,

00:59:17.240 um, so yeah, I did the self-authoring program and realized that like, um, I really needed to make

00:59:23.700 some big changes in my twenties. And part of that was selling our house. We bought some acreage and,

00:59:30.220 uh, you know, moved into a, my, and this was, this really almost cost me my marriage, but I was like,

00:59:37.500 Hey honey, we're selling the house and we're, we're buying some land a mile off the road. That's,

00:59:42.480 uh, full of ticks and mosquitoes and snakes. And we're going to live in a camper for a couple of

00:59:47.440 years until we can try to afford a mortgage. And, um, but that was, that was the beginning

00:59:52.600 of kind of the vision of all this that I, I really, I wanted to be, it's funny. I was having

00:59:58.600 this conversation with my mom earlier, but she, she said, you know, I remember you saying the other

01:00:03.160 day that like, you really said that you, by the time you were 35, you wanted to have freedom of

01:00:10.020 finance and be able to do not necessarily retire, but be able to do whatever it is you wanted to

01:00:14.440 do, which was for me, like we want to get into regenerative agriculture. And, um, I'm very

01:00:20.040 interested in like forest raised, um, poultry and like, I'd love being in nature. Like that's just

01:00:26.860 where I seem to thrive. So yeah, it was sort of changing my direction away from like, I don't need

01:00:32.620 a big mortgage. I don't need a car payment. Um, so I sold, I had a nicer truck I sold and I bought

01:00:38.980 this old suburban for $2,000 and started driving it. And so we got rid of our car payments. We got,

01:00:44.760 got out of our debt. Um, you know, all we have is just the land payment. So it's about like taking

01:00:49.920 my finances way down to where my bills are low. I don't need to make as much money and I can try to

01:00:55.500 have some freedom to pursue. Like, that's really what I got out of it. I'd say. Yeah. So it really

01:01:01.000 helped. Well, that's a radical change. It's very easy to get caught sort of in that monotonous

01:01:05.480 every day. And then it's easy when all your friends are buying new stuff and, you know,

01:01:10.460 they're sending you credit card offers in the mailbox every day. And it's like, it's very easy

01:01:14.620 to get wrapped up in sort of this world where you have to work, you have to work some terrible,

01:01:20.520 you know, seven to five that you don't like and able to try to like live some life you don't really

01:01:25.480 even want to live. So it is very important. Like I, um, yeah, I found a lot of benefit out of that.

01:01:30.940 Like, I think, I think in an ideal world, you could just sit down with a notepad and do exactly

01:01:35.600 the same thing. But the nice thing about self-authoring is that it sort of lays out the

01:01:39.040 steps for you to where, to where you can just answer those questions in a way and be able to

01:01:43.740 reflect back a lot easier for somebody like, like a Joe Schmo like me, that's not in psychology.

01:01:48.320 It's a, it just speeds up the process tremendously of trying to figure out whatever it is. You know,

01:01:53.780 it's very, you get caught up in the day to day of life and, and then five years, 10 years later,

01:01:58.080 you've lost whatever it was you were 10 years ago. It's very easy to just stay in the present

01:02:02.880 moment and not take the time to reflect into the past and the future in a way to align yourself

01:02:07.120 with whatever it is you really want to be. And that's, and I think that's where anxiety and

01:02:11.080 depression and like divorce and anger and all these things, like these terrible things manifest

01:02:17.080 themselves into like a house to a family household and the mother and the father fight and they get

01:02:21.880 divorced and the kids are like, things fall apart because there isn't a, there, people don't take the time to

01:02:27.160 to just figure out like, where is this train really headed? You know? So it is, I'd highly recommend

01:02:33.220 people do that. That's the famous line, the people perish, where there is no vision, the people perish.

01:02:40.820 And that's literally the case because there's a bunch of reasons for that is if you have no vision,

01:02:46.780 you have no well-developed aim. And if you have no aim, you have no direction. And that means you're

01:02:51.920 lost. And if you're lost, you're anxious. And so then you're enveloped by anxiety. And then

01:02:57.100 if you have no aim, you have no hope because hope is always experienced in relationship to an aim.

01:03:03.600 And if, if you're in a marriage or other collective and you have no collective aim, then you're in

01:03:08.920 conflict because nothing unites you. And then, you know, when, when my colleagues and I were developing

01:03:14.740 the self-authoring program, one of the things that really struck me to the core and them too,

01:03:20.360 was the fact that, you know, you said that for a Joe Schmo like you, the self-authoring program was

01:03:25.480 useful because it broke things down. It's like, well, everybody needs that. You know, it took me

01:03:29.780 10 years of clinical work and training graduates and undergraduates to understand how to break down

01:03:38.820 a vision of the future into its constituent steps. And that's partly because we are stunningly bad at

01:03:46.140 that in our culture. You know, and I did some research into the history of the education system

01:03:51.400 to find out why that was, because I thought, how the hell can we have an education system where

01:03:56.020 I can have top rate students who've been through 15 years of school, who've never been sat down once

01:04:02.740 and told, write a vision for your character and your life. And I found out that the education system

01:04:09.280 itself, which was based on the Prussian military model, was designed, designed consciously by people

01:04:17.780 who regarded themselves as fascists, this was in the late 1800s, who wanted to produce obedient workers

01:04:24.780 who couldn't think for themselves. So, hey man, guess what? 150 years later, that's exactly what

01:04:31.920 we've got. And it is a stunning fact that people aren't encouraged. Well, first of all,

01:04:38.040 they're not encouraged at all. But second, specifically, they're not encouraged to take

01:04:41.580 that time to dream and to say to themselves, look, okay, buddy, here's the deal. You can assume that

01:04:49.560 the world wouldn't object too dramatically if your life wasn't an absolute bloody catastrophe 100%

01:04:56.280 of the time. And you could take a little time to develop a vision about what you wanted. Now,

01:05:01.420 you said, you know, you discovered some things that were actually somewhat difficult to pursue.

01:05:05.780 You know, you had to give up your house. You had to give up your car. You had to move into the woods.

01:05:12.940 You sound like an introverted person to me. Do you remember your score on the understand myselfs?

01:05:18.540 Do you remember where you are for introversion or extroversion?

01:05:21.060 I believe that it actually showed I was more extroverted, which, yeah, I can see the introverted

01:05:29.720 side. But at the same time, like, I love, again, it's like, I found a lot of, as much as I hate,

01:05:37.640 like, when I was in my sales job, I hated sales budgets and numbers. And I hated talking to my boss

01:05:43.480 about, oh, we've got to grow this account this much. Like, to me, all that was just horseshit.

01:05:47.760 I just like to go out every day on job sites and, like, just meet people from all around the country

01:05:52.400 and talk to them. And it just, the money came in because I connected with those people. And they

01:05:57.420 said, well, we'll buy stuff from you because we like talking to you. And that's kind of, but yeah,

01:06:00.740 so I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the right way to sell is to make relationships. Well,

01:06:04.980 I'm wondering, like, are you, are you, do you like crowds and groups or do you like meeting people

01:06:11.160 one-on-one and are you interested in people or do you like socializing? I think I'm, I'm very,

01:06:16.780 I'm interested in people. Um, I think, I think my draw to, my draw to want to be more excluded from

01:06:26.080 society is because of some of the pitfalls we talked about earlier. Like I, to me, it's, yeah,

01:06:32.220 I find it depressing sometimes to be, especially here in Virginia, like, um, because so like,

01:06:39.780 and this is, this is a phenomenon that happens everywhere, but especially on the East coast and

01:06:43.720 like semi-rural Virginia, everything looks exactly the same. Now it's, it's a Starbucks and a target

01:06:50.860 and a multifamily project and like no, all the tap, whatever, whatever sort of uniqueness and

01:06:59.260 diversity each town had is sort of gone. Everything is just sort of become this like retail dystopian

01:07:06.200 nightmare, you know? Uh, and I see a lot of farm, a lot of farms being bought up and converted into

01:07:11.560 neighborhoods and subdivisions and because farms can't make the money that if they're not through

01:07:17.480 a commercial contract. And so, yeah, just like, it's just depressing to see the way the landscapes

01:07:22.020 changed over a period of time. And so I think that's really what, that's what motivated me to go.

01:07:27.620 Um, and you know, even like, like we're here in Richmond filming today and Richmond is a gorgeous city and

01:07:33.060 it has such a deep history. Um, but yeah, like it's not what it was. And, and you start to,

01:07:40.300 you see a lot of homelessness and, um, you, you just, it's evident when you're out in public that

01:07:46.240 things aren't the way they should be, you know? How did you negotiate with your wife? You said you

01:07:51.100 had to go live in a camper with the ticks and the mosquitoes, you know? So while you, you said you

01:07:56.300 developed this vision, but then, you know, obviously when you were implementing it, there were things you

01:08:00.440 had to give up and sacrifice. And, and you said, you know, and you could certainly understand why

01:08:05.140 that might cause some consternation in the marriage. How did you negotiate that and work through it?

01:08:11.720 Um, I guess I, I, I focused very much on painting a picture to her of what life would be like

01:08:19.480 in five or 10 years and not what it would be like for the, for the first five years, you know? Like

01:08:25.980 we both have a vision of, um, she's a, she's in veterinary medicine where we both love animals.

01:08:31.140 And so, um, we've had this sort of dream and part of this, and this is another, like part of what I

01:08:36.780 am excited about being able to do again, outside of the music is like, take some of the money that

01:08:41.740 I'll make from the streaming. And, uh, we want to start some form of a nonprofit or a, um,

01:08:49.260 some, some sort of positive benefit toward we, I have this, I'm not to go off track. I answer your,

01:08:55.260 but yeah, I have this sort of vision. And even back then, this is what we dreamed of doing.

01:08:58.220 We started a 501 three C 501 C rescue with a, with a friend of ours for dogs and cats back then.

01:09:05.000 But, um, it was sort of this idea of if we were able to get acquire this property,

01:09:09.120 we'd be able to in the next five or 10 or 20 years, be able to do what we really wanted to with

01:09:15.540 it. And if we didn't do that, and if we stayed where we were, we would be more comfortable and things

01:09:20.540 would be better in the, in the short run, but really we would be looking back in 30 years,

01:09:25.460 really regretting that we hadn't done it. And that's sort of the, that's sort of the way I

01:09:28.880 pushed it to her. And she was able to, okay. Okay. You know, and it's really cool. You know,

01:09:34.620 I can find a parallel in, in that, like now that we're sitting here talking, I can find,

01:09:38.880 I've been watching your Exodus series and I can find a parallel in that and your story and your

01:09:43.540 sort of, um, you do, you do a great job of, and it's part of what's inspired me to get back into

01:09:49.900 scripture the way I have, because you've done a great job of finding the practicality in scripture

01:09:55.620 and presenting it in a way that it's very easily under, because so much of the Bible is

01:10:01.480 interpretation and trying to understand the deeper meaning and things. And so, yeah, I can,

01:10:05.840 I think like, it's just, it's important for people to, and this has been said many times in many ways,

01:10:11.120 but it's important for people to whatever it is that really tugs at their heartstrings,

01:10:15.720 whatever that sort of, and, you know, maybe it's lost through the education system, but like as a

01:10:20.240 child, we also, we all have these dreams of whatever it is we want to do. And life seems so limitless and

01:10:25.520 there's so much potential. And it's like, you've got to find a way to just, to face that fear and

01:10:31.160 pursue it no matter what. Yeah. I mean, the worst thing you could do is I have a song called hell on

01:10:36.900 earth that I just kind of threw together. It's, it's an Android recording, but it, it, it sort of

01:10:43.300 reminisces this idea of like, you're, a lot of people die and go to hell before they ever hit the

01:10:50.300 ground is one of the lines in the song, but it's like people get stuck in this sort of monotonous

01:10:54.820 work. Let me drive to work down the interstate and get pissed off and flick everybody off when they

01:11:00.020 cut into my lane and go work this stupid job that I don't like. So I can come home to the stupid

01:11:05.020 house that I don't like and pay, so I, so I can pay all these stupid bills that I don't want to

01:11:09.260 pay. And it's like deep down inside of them, there is some sort of ambition or pursuit that they've,

01:11:15.540 that maybe they've even forgotten about, but the subconscious has such a weird way of holding

01:11:20.220 on to things that sometimes even our cognitive memory can't recognize, you know? So for me,

01:11:26.680 it was like, just, I didn't want to die not taking that chance. You know, you only get,

01:11:32.700 time is very precious. Like, it seems like we live for a long period of time, but really 80 or 90

01:11:39.260 years in the grand scheme of the world's existence is just a blip on the map. And so like, we do have

01:11:43.760 to take, I mean, you don't know if you'll even live to see tomorrow. So yeah, you do have to

01:11:47.600 pursue whatever it is that you feel compelled to do in that moment when, when the time's there. Yeah.

01:11:53.540 All right. So you got about 10 cool things there. So you mentioned Exodus. So one of the things that

01:11:58.840 happens in Exodus is that Moses is being a shepherd, right? He's off with his Midianite father-in-law,

01:12:05.500 Jethro, and he's married one of Jethro's daughters and he's away from Egypt. He's just minding his own

01:12:11.760 business. And that's when he's wandering down the pathway by Mount Horeb, which is the center of the

01:12:18.140 world. It's Jacob's ladder. It's the place where Jack would plant his beanstalk that stretches to

01:12:24.000 heaven. It's reused that symbol consistently in the Bible. Anyways, that's when he notices

01:12:28.600 something off to the side that glimmers and glitters, and that's the burning bush.

01:12:34.120 And he could continue just walking down the path, let's say, as a relatively satisfied shepherd,

01:12:39.920 or maybe dissatisfied shepherd, but he decides to go investigate this thing that attracts his

01:12:44.360 attention, right? And that's the key aspect of the story. He decides to go investigate what

01:12:50.340 attracts his attention. And as he gets closer to it, he understands that he's on sacred ground.

01:12:56.420 And when he continues his pursuit, God himself speaks to him, right? And that's when Moses becomes

01:13:01.680 a leader. And that's the story. That's the story of life is, you know, you said people are all tangled

01:13:07.680 up in the nine to five, and they're not paying any attention to anything but immediate practicalities,

01:13:14.200 even though they're dissatisfied with them and they're ignoring what's calling to them.

01:13:18.100 All right, so Moses doesn't do that. And then he develops a vision, you know, and that's the

01:13:22.800 vision of the promised land. And everyone needs a vision of the promised land because, as we already

01:13:27.960 said, that protects them from anxiety and gives them hope. And then you talked about what you did

01:13:34.880 with your wife. Now, when little kids play house, and this is particularly interesting to me because

01:13:40.160 I used to play house with my wife when I was like eight, you know, and this is how kids play house.

01:13:45.200 If you're a boy and you're playing house with a girl, to play house properly, this is the rules.

01:13:51.100 You have to come up with a vision that you offer the girl, or she has to do the same to you.

01:13:55.820 They have to say, well, look, here's the house. You can maybe sketch it out on the ground,

01:14:00.120 or we'll pretend that this, you know, playground structure is the house. And there's the door,

01:14:04.740 and there's the rooms, and you be the mom, and I'll be the dad. And here's what we're going to

01:14:09.540 play out happening. And the girl has to say, yes, I'm on board with that. And then you enter the

01:14:15.200 same fictional landscape. And you said, and you noticed, you have to do the same thing with your

01:14:20.620 wife. It's exactly the same damn thing, is that once you develop a vision for yourself, let's say,

01:14:25.460 in your imagination, that's what calls for you, to you. It's based on what you really want.

01:14:30.720 You have to develop that vision. Then you have to say to her, look,

01:14:33.780 here's what I see five years down the road. And is there a manner in which what you see and what

01:14:42.420 you envision, and that was, say, your wife's concern for animals and so on, the joint interest

01:14:47.860 you had in that, is there some way that you have a vision of five years down the road that we could

01:14:52.520 bring together that we would both be thrilled to play out, that we could commit to, right? And so that

01:14:59.300 visionary practice has to extend within the marriage. And then you get to play house, and then you get

01:15:04.560 to play, and that's a hell of a lot better than beating each other up and, you know, using force

01:15:09.240 and compulsion. Well, those are the options, right? As far as I can tell, it's slavery, tyranny, or

01:15:16.440 negotiation. And if you negotiate in a visionary way, then you get to play. And if you get to play,

01:15:22.500 well, then you're not in that hell on earth that you described, right? You're as close to the

01:15:27.060 opposite as you can get. So you obviously managed that successfully. And so, well, I presume. And

01:15:33.900 what does your wife think about the way this vision is unfolding?

01:15:41.320 Yeah, well, it's, in the present moment, she's very excited. Like, neither one of us had any idea

01:15:53.820 that any of this would happen the way it did with the music. But as far as the, yeah, we're excited.

01:15:58.140 We're excited to...

01:16:00.660 It's...

01:16:03.660 The last few weeks have been so difficult to interpret anything, because she's, you know, she's pregnant now

01:16:09.200 with what'll be my first son. I've got two daughters. And so this will be my first boy.

01:16:15.200 So, like, we...

01:16:16.660 The last couple weeks have been spent more about trying to figure out what we're going to name the

01:16:20.400 Little Rascal than anything else. But yeah, like, it's... We... Our vision, I think, for the next 20

01:16:26.020 or 30 years is very similar in what we want to do. It's... You know, we want to make sure that our

01:16:31.520 children are brought up in a way that they get to experience nature and get to... Get to sort of have

01:16:37.820 some of the imaginative and... And like you said, even just some of the playful nature that children

01:16:44.560 have. We don't want them to... We want to do what we can to try to protect them from being so

01:16:50.040 institutionalized at an early age and to sort of the system that you describe and the way modern

01:16:55.100 education works. And we want them to be able to pursue whatever... You know, like, we're very excited

01:17:00.520 about the opportunities with our children and with our family. And yeah, we want to... We have this vision

01:17:06.840 of... I don't know exactly how it'll work out. There's a... There's a model very similar that Robert

01:17:14.720 Kennedy Jr. describes called a healing center. But I think we want to incorporate animals into it as

01:17:19.960 well to where it's... But it's... We want to use our property. Maybe we even try to purchase another piece

01:17:25.340 of property just through this nonprofit. But I have this vision of sort of creating a model that can be

01:17:30.680 replicated that involves regenerative agriculture, people that are suffering with PTSD and mental...

01:17:38.040 And people that are just getting out of rehab. And there's... There is studies that show that

01:17:43.280 working... Well, hard work in general helps anxiety and depression, but then being out in nature doing

01:17:49.540 it... Like, I think there's a place over in Italy that does this, that takes kids in that have

01:17:56.680 depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and all. And sort of works them on this vineyard for a period

01:18:01.600 of time. And it's got a very high success rate. And so, yeah, we have a vision of trying to take

01:18:06.640 whatever has been produced from this. And we want to sort of light a fire maybe that will hopefully

01:18:13.960 light other fires. And this can become something a lot bigger than just what she and I want to do,

01:18:18.880 you know, with our world. But yeah, it's about trying to sort of... We both are very like-minded in that

01:18:24.880 and sort of that bigger vision. And it did take some time. Like, it's... You know, it's difficult.

01:18:30.060 It's very difficult for anyone in today's society, including me. I mean, I'm just as... I'm just like

01:18:34.640 anybody else. But it's hard to... Sometimes it's hard to... How would I say it? It's hard to

01:18:43.160 take away the immediate gratification of whatever world you're living in now and those comforts and

01:18:48.920 being able to somehow put those to the side for something that doesn't even exist. Like, it's a...

01:18:53.800 It's a terrifying thing to make that leap. But I'd say at this point, there's no going back.

01:19:01.580 Well, look, it is a leap of faith. And you have to have... First of all, you have to have faith to

01:19:09.180 do anything because you can't do anything unless you have faith in it. And so, maybe you have faith

01:19:14.060 in your nine-to-five routine and you think that's the best that there is. And that's faith too,

01:19:18.900 because like you said, you might be run over by a bus tomorrow and who the hell knows what's going

01:19:22.660 to happen. You're going to put your faith somewhere. So, then the question is, where should

01:19:28.440 you put your faith? And one answer to that is security or hypothetical security. But that seems

01:19:34.420 to me to be a stupid answer because there is no security. So, then if there's no security,

01:19:39.900 then where do you put your faith? And then I would say, well, you put your faith in what beckons.

01:19:44.600 You know, and music beckons to people and beauty beckons to people and art and justice and truth,

01:19:49.940 like these eternal verities, the path of heroism beckons. These things call, right? And that's

01:19:55.840 the burning bush. And you have to put your faith in something because you're ignorant and you don't

01:20:00.560 know everything. So, you have to take a leap. And, you know, it sounds to me that one of the things

01:20:05.540 that you and your wife figured out is that you should take a leap into the unknown to the spot that

01:20:11.500 beckons, right? And those are those things that call to you, you said unconsciously, that won't go

01:20:16.200 away, that won't stop bugging you like Jiminy Cricket, you know, your conscience calling you to.

01:20:22.040 That's what you're supposed to put faith in. And that's part of the classic representation of God

01:20:27.340 in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Like, God is the voice of conscience. That's what the prophet Elijah

01:20:32.820 establishes. He's not out in nature. He's not in the thunder. He's not in the earthquake,

01:20:38.380 right? He's not Gaia. He's not even the cosmos. God is what beckons to you from conscience and what

01:20:44.140 calls to you. And you ignore that at your peril. And your song, you said, hell on earth is like,

01:20:50.440 hell on earth is where you go if you don't pay attention to what your conscience tells you and

01:20:55.400 to what beckons. And that's the truth. And it's also the case, you know, if you get tangled up into

01:21:02.140 that routine you hate, that industrial routine, predictable industrial generic routine, and you're

01:21:09.120 pissed off going to work and you're giving everyone the finger and you're resentful and bitter,

01:21:13.140 like you're one step away from wanting to turn everything into hell just to get revenge for

01:21:18.740 your miserable life. That's the story of Cain, by the way, because it's Cain's descendants, right?

01:21:24.860 Cain gets bitter and it's Cain's descendants that first make weapons of war, you know? And the

01:21:31.500 aftermath of Cain's descendants, well, the thing that happens after the things that happen after the story

01:21:37.360 of Cain and Abel, right? The fratricide and then the degeneration into murderousness is the flood

01:21:44.260 that wipes everything out. And also the Tower of Babel, which is this terrible technological

01:21:49.020 construction that you were referring to, this terrible generica, you know, mindless generica that's

01:21:55.080 spread everywhere that posits a mere technological solution, a technocratic solution to every problem.

01:22:01.780 Those are two various forms of hell. And this, this is very real, you know, and while it's real

01:22:07.640 enough to base your life on. I believe that's what we're experiencing today. Like, I think that

01:22:12.900 what you said is exactly what's happened today. And, um, when I look at Republicans and Democrats

01:22:20.040 in 2023, that's what I see is I see people who are bitter and angry and disgusted with a system that

01:22:27.680 isn't serving anyone correctly, but instead of us being a, in the same way that in a business,

01:22:34.060 someone with a, with a more, um, a more conservative mindset and someone with a more liberal mindset

01:22:40.640 could use entrepreneurial and like traditional and organizational skills to build a strong business,

01:22:45.740 which is what we should be doing in our political climate and in our country. We were using our

01:22:50.780 bitterness as a weapon against each other, you know, um, it's, it's, it's been interesting.

01:22:59.420 I think obviously a lot of people understand what, what it is I'm trying to say or what my message is

01:23:05.960 within the song, but it has been interesting seeing both sides also attack me misinterpreting

01:23:11.940 that I'm identifying with the other, you know, I've had, uh, well, like for example, I've had,

01:23:16.420 even just recently, I've had some conservatives give me grief for making the comment that,

01:23:21.680 that we're stronger or something to the, if I, this was in the middle of a concert and it was,

01:23:26.700 I think I said strength through diversity, which really resonates on exactly what,

01:23:32.120 what that point is that we need to have people that think differently,

01:23:35.720 use those strengths to work together in a way that makes us all stronger. But I think

01:23:40.320 people are so used to hearing that as a sort of a left-wing rhetoric that they

01:23:45.060 immediately identified it as that. And then on the, on the flip side, I've had the left very

01:23:51.480 much attacking me as being sort of this right-wing, far right-wing, whatever, you know, and you've

01:23:56.420 experienced this yourself, but at some point we've got to figure out a way to, we've got to figure out

01:24:02.980 a way to, to, for us as a, just us as a society, maybe find a way to, to leap out of that. Like what

01:24:11.560 we're, what we're facing in today's world is much bigger than, than that, that that's, that is

01:24:17.060 important. It's important that we have politics and that we have a system in which we decide how

01:24:21.960 different ideas are implemented into government, but it can't rule us either. Like we've allowed

01:24:27.460 it to not sit here at the wayside, but we've allowed it to almost encapsulate all of us. Like

01:24:32.440 it's, it's become sort of the ceiling and under which we live under. And, um, you know, I've had

01:24:39.020 people say that I'm a fence sitter and that I, I need to have some sort of call to action.

01:24:45.700 And I guess like, if there's anything that I would respond to that with, um, given the opportunity we

01:24:51.240 have now, it's like, I think we need to take a step back and, um, re-envision what we want the next 20

01:25:00.780 or 30 years to look like. And there's an important verse that came to mind. Um, this was in, this is in

01:25:08.520 Matthew, uh, 22 starts in 34, but it's, it's where the Pharisees are questioning Jesus on

01:25:14.940 like, because even throughout the Bible, there are contradictions obviously. And, and people have

01:25:20.500 different forms of opinion and different ways things are worded even throughout the Bible. But

01:25:24.520 he says, um, a Pharisee asked Jesus teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus

01:25:32.280 replied, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.

01:25:37.060 This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is love your neighbor as yourself.

01:25:43.460 And like, as simple as that is, if we could just find a way to make those two commandments,

01:25:50.340 even outside of religious boundaries, just if we could just, if we could learn to make that our

01:25:58.100 priority and then base our differences beyond below that, you know, like God is here, our love for each

01:26:06.180 other here. And then below that is try to find a way to integrate our differences in a way that

01:26:10.480 everyone can, can live a better life. Like it would, it would resolve a lot of the conflicts that

01:26:17.620 have become like way over complicated, you know?

01:26:21.120 Okay. So I think you're, I think you, you pointed to, in some ways, I don't know if you could call that

01:26:28.120 the most crucial, the most crucial of lines in the biblical corpus, but it's damn close because

01:26:34.340 what's happening in that story, as you no doubt know, is that the Pharisees, the scribes, the lawyers,

01:26:40.440 they're, they're kind of the political class, right? They're the privileged class. And what they're

01:26:45.620 trying to do is they're trying to trap Christ into making a heretical statement so they can kill

01:26:52.780 them essentially, or at least throw them in prison. That's the plan. So they've set up traps, which is

01:26:57.960 exactly what that question is. And he does this incredible sleight of hand, which is a mark of

01:27:03.980 staggering brilliance, instead of taking the 10 commandments, which are the law, right? The Moses

01:27:09.840 established law and saying, well, this one's, what they want them to do is say, well, it's number four

01:27:14.780 that's most important because then they can say, well, you don't think number one through three or five

01:27:19.780 through 10 is important. And so it's off to prison with you, buddy. And so they think they've trapped

01:27:25.820 him because they put him in a place where there's nothing he can say that won't get him in trouble.

01:27:30.140 And what he does is conduct a little revolution ethically right then and there and say, well,

01:27:35.080 if you arrange those 10 commandments and you abstracted out the gist, the essence, it would be twofold.

01:27:42.120 And one of the essences is that you should put the thing that should be at the top at the top.

01:27:48.740 And that's God. And that's the logos. And that's the truthful speech that when uttered

01:27:54.660 changes possibility into the order that is good. That's what the logos is. That has to be at the top.

01:28:01.000 It's the same as putting freedom of speech and religion at the top. It's the same idea.

01:28:06.520 And that love of God then becomes the expression of the fact that human beings are made in the image

01:28:13.060 of God. That has to be at the top. And then allied with that, Christ says, so that's the vertical

01:28:18.280 dimension. It's like the vertical dimension of Mount Sinai. That's the vertical dimension. You look up,

01:28:22.960 you aim up. And then the horizontal dimension, the collective dimension is you have to understand

01:28:27.780 that everyone else is a reflection of the same divine value that characterizes you.

01:28:34.520 You have to treat everyone else. And I've been trying to work through that technically. And it's

01:28:38.960 like, I don't think there is any difference between treating yourself properly and treating other

01:28:46.460 people properly. And part of the reason for that is purely practical. It's like, think about it this

01:28:52.020 way. You are very badly outnumbered. There's one of you and 8 billion other people. And so if you

01:29:00.160 mistreat other people, if you put yourself first, that is going to come to haunt you, man, in a way

01:29:06.380 you can't possibly imagine. Whereas if, by contrast, you treat other people as if they're as valuable as

01:29:12.540 you in every interaction you have, people are going to be so thrilled to have you around that they're

01:29:17.520 going to be extending you the same luxury constantly. And so perversely, by stopping

01:29:25.020 focusing on your own narrow self-interests and by inviting other people into the game,

01:29:34.220 everyone will have more and so will you. And I actually think that's technically true, partly

01:29:40.340 because, you know, you said earlier in our conversation that people have this difficulty

01:29:45.820 when they have to sacrifice the present for the future, right? And the thing is, is when you start

01:29:52.740 to think about the future, what you're doing is saying, well, the 50-year-old me, you know, the me

01:29:59.980 that's 10 years down the road is just as important as the me that's here right now. And so is the 60-year-old

01:30:06.940 me. And so you have to construe yourself as a community that iterates across time. And then you have to take

01:30:14.000 that whole community into account. And if you do that, it's the same as taking other people into account.

01:30:19.400 And it's the proper moral orientation. And it's not proper for arbitrary reasons. It's proper

01:30:24.940 because if everyone did that, the world would become peaceful and abundant. And we could live

01:30:32.740 in something approximating harmony. And many of the problems that beset us would, merely as a

01:30:39.700 consequence of the better governance that would emerge, many of the problems that are plaguing us

01:30:44.680 would vanish. You know, we've been working on this enterprise in London called the Alliance for Responsible

01:30:49.960 Citizenship, trying to develop a vision for the future. Let me tell you one thing about it and ask you

01:30:55.800 what you think about it. So we've been trying to figure out how you tell the real leaders, you know, let's say

01:31:02.500 someone comes to you and says, I've got a vision for the future. And you might say, well, those are kind of a dime a

01:31:08.160 dozen. How the hell do I know that you're not just another manipulator or, you know, in it for your own

01:31:13.920 narrow purposes? How do I know I can trust you? And so I've been trying to work through that.

01:31:19.280 So here's some possibilities. You tell me what you think about this. So I would say if the person

01:31:25.760 who's developing the vision is trying to impose their vision on you by force, then they're not good

01:31:31.780 leaders. And if they're trying to terrify you into adopting their vision, so they use fear, then they're

01:31:37.780 not good leaders. They're good leaders if they offer you a vision like you offered your wife, which is

01:31:43.060 here's a possible game. What do you think of it? And would you like to voluntarily play? If someone can

01:31:50.840 do that, then they're a leader you can trust, at least, you know, assuming they're playing a straight

01:31:54.880 game. And so the rule is if the person is using power and compulsion or fear, then their vision

01:32:01.740 is unreliable. And so I think that's even true. If there is a crisis, you don't get to terrify

01:32:07.500 people. They have to invite them. So what do you think about that? What's your first response

01:32:13.820 to that? Yeah, I think that I'd say that it's obvious that at the core of anyone's motive is

01:32:26.620 really either. Yeah, it's either love or hate. It's it's either that it's something that that's

01:32:33.880 obviously benefiting people that people are excited to. To promote themselves. But then there are a lot

01:32:40.860 of things you see implemented that are at they can be very well disguised, but at their core, they are

01:32:47.580 fear based, you know, like, either in a sense of intimidation, or in a sense of maybe false sense

01:32:54.940 of urgency, like, you've got, and I've experienced that myself now, just with my career opportunities,

01:33:00.720 like, you've got to do this now. And it's perceived in a way that's supposed to be helping me, but it

01:33:07.080 really is a fear. It's a it's driven on, it's driven off the human emotion of fear. And so I think

01:33:12.880 that's, that's the way to, to ultimately understand if some if something is, like, in your case, if

01:33:20.340 something is, is genuine and authentic, is what, yeah, what human emotion is it being driven off of?

01:33:28.680 Is it being driven off of, off of love and ambition? Or is it being driven more off of, of, of hate and

01:33:35.200 fear? I mean, that's really the core of everything in the world, right? But yeah, I'd say that's,

01:33:40.260 yeah, try and trying to decide to dissect that is a whole nother animal. But, but ultimately,

01:33:44.520 it is, it's all driven off of basic, everything's driven off of very basic emotion, I'd say at its,

01:33:50.140 at its core, you know. Well, and you said false sense of urgency, you know, I actually think this even

01:33:57.280 applies in a true sense of urgency, you know, because the climate people, for example, might say,

01:34:03.660 oh my God, there's an apocalyptic catastrophe pending, it's real, and it's so urgent that here

01:34:10.820 are the following measures must be taken. Okay, so we could take that argument, we could say, well,

01:34:17.120 look, even if it is a true emergency, let's give you that, which isn't something I'm generally willing

01:34:23.500 to do, by the way. But in any case, well, for the sake of argument, we'll say, okay, there is an actual

01:34:27.700 emergency here. I would still say, if your response to that emergency is that you're now

01:34:34.860 willing to wield fear as the cudgel of power, then you're too little a man for the job.

01:34:43.020 Is that if the crisis has terrified you into becoming a tyrant, then you're facing a dragon

01:34:49.740 that you can't defeat. And so you're not the right guy. I think even when there is a crisis,

01:34:55.780 you should lead people with faith and hope and not with power and fear. And that's a way of

01:35:02.060 distinguishing the real, the real true leaders, let's say, from the false prophets, so to speak.

01:35:07.540 Absolutely.

01:35:07.900 That's how it looks to me.

01:35:09.300 Yeah, I agree. Yeah, absolutely.

01:35:10.980 So I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you about Rogan, just out of curiosity. You went

01:35:16.240 on his show. I've been there three or four times. I've got to know Joe a little bit. What

01:35:19.780 was that like for you? And what do you think of Rogan?

01:35:23.620 Yeah, I love, Rogan's really cool. He's just, and not, like I said, I've met so many of my

01:35:28.840 heroes, I guess you'd say. They're all just very down to earth people, like, which is refreshing

01:35:35.200 to see that, you know, you hear horror stories about certain people presenting a sort of

01:35:40.560 characterization to the world of being one thing, but then behind closed doors, there's

01:35:44.580 this sort of, like, monstrous, egotistical creature that is unapproachable and not really

01:35:50.920 human-like. And so, yeah, it's nice that, but yeah, I love Rogan. He's, I was impressed

01:35:57.620 at his, the way he does, the way he conducts his business. It's very streamlined and it's,

01:36:05.400 yeah, he has a small staff. He's very straight to the point with everything. It's like,

01:36:10.560 it's, it's nice to see. And I think that's what's brought him the success he's had is

01:36:14.440 that he hasn't, he hasn't turned it into sort of this, um, he, he could make it a lot bigger

01:36:20.480 and, and quote unquote, better than it is, but he keeps it very just simple and real.

01:36:24.900 And so, yeah, I enjoyed meeting him. We had a great time when we were, that was my first

01:36:29.260 time off the East coast. So we were in Austin, obviously. And, uh, we did the Joe Rogan podcast.

01:36:34.860 And then that night, um, I connected with Tom Segura, who's another great, like, I can't say

01:36:39.780 enough nice things about Tom. Um, he invited us to the mothership to what we thought was going to be

01:36:45.180 just to hang out and meet everybody. And we only flew one guitar at Austin. I was scared to fly my,

01:36:50.160 um, I was scared to fly my resonator guitar there. I just figured somebody would steal it or it would

01:36:55.320 get crushed or something. And so we only flew my guitarist guitar. And so we had one, uh, we get to the

01:37:01.600 mothership and, um, Tom's like, man, you really ought to get up and play a few songs at the end

01:37:06.120 of my set. Uh, I wasn't going to say no. So, um, so Ron White was there and, uh, Ron White takes my

01:37:16.420 guitarist in his car, flies across town, like not even necessarily figuratively speaking, but they,

01:37:23.100 they get to his house and back in a short period of time and, uh, five minutes before we go up.

01:37:29.120 And so we went up and, um, just had a blast. It was just an incredible weekend or it wasn't even

01:37:34.560 on, it was a Monday and Tuesday. It was just incredible time we had there. I, uh, it's one

01:37:39.840 of those. Well, that's insanely fun. Yeah. Yeah. It was one of those times. So yeah, everyone we met,

01:37:44.320 including Rogan, just good, good down to earth people. Um, yeah. Every time I go to see Rogan

01:37:52.320 and this is really the truth, it's like, I breathe a sigh of relief when I get into his studio,

01:37:56.860 because first of all, he's insanely funny and that's always such a relief. But also I know

01:38:02.620 perfectly well that I'm going to talk to someone for three hours and I'm not going to have to be,

01:38:08.360 have my snake eye open, you know, looking for serpents because Rogan is just exactly who he is.

01:38:15.300 And like, he'll push back and he has his opinions and he's a hardheaded bastard and all of that, but

01:38:20.860 he's not like a, he's not a Pharisee, you know, he's not laying traps for you to step into so he

01:38:27.000 can look good at your expense. He doesn't do that. And it's such a bloody relief to talk to him. And

01:38:32.100 I'm sure that's, that's a huge part of the reason that he is so successful is that people can trust

01:38:37.820 him. And, you know, as far as I can tell, that trust is warranted because every single situation

01:38:42.600 I've seen Joe in, and I've seen him in a lot of situations and some pretty intense ones

01:38:46.620 and challenging ones, he doesn't get edgy. He isn't egotistical. He doesn't defend himself.

01:38:52.940 He's just like calm and together. And probably his fighting background has helped him with that

01:38:58.680 too, you know, because it's hard to intimidate Rogan. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And that was part of

01:39:04.140 my thought process going through this. Like I questioned whether I should even do a podcast at

01:39:10.800 all, because I'm not, I'm not a public speaker, but, um, you know, or at least I guess I'm not

01:39:16.720 really even a musician. I mean, our first, you know, our first paid gig was the, was the farm

01:39:21.420 market, the big, the big farm market with 12,000 people. So it's kind of like, maybe I am a public,

01:39:26.040 I don't know what I am at this point, but, uh, I remember right. Right. Well, you have to find out

01:39:30.740 within those first couple of days of everything blowing up. And like, we were getting flooded with

01:39:36.000 requests for interviews and podcasts. And I remember telling my buddy and I was, I was

01:39:40.540 joking at, like, I had no idea it would turn into this, but I said, I want to do Joe Rogan for my

01:39:44.920 introductory. And I want to do Jordan Peterson, like to try to unpack all of this. And then I'm

01:39:49.780 going to call it good and let that be that. And so like, here we are. I mean, it's, uh,

01:39:54.840 it's yeah, it's crazy. It's still surreal that you and I are talking like, it's so funny. I'll tell

01:39:58.940 you, talk since we're talking about my wife's, um, um, and I mentioned this on Joe Rogan that I drove

01:40:04.260 her crazy listening to camping with Steve YouTube videos at night before we went to bed. And so I got to meet

01:40:10.000 camping with Steve. He and I have connected and talked and he's just awesome. But, uh, she doesn't

01:40:15.320 know your name, but she would get driven crazy. Cause anytime I'm in the house, like cooking dinner

01:40:19.740 or doing anything, I've got philosopher man on. And that's so she'd say, Oh, you're listening to

01:40:24.920 philosopher man again, but I'd listen to your stuff for hours every night. And so it's just, again,

01:40:29.220 it's just crazy that we're sitting here having this conversation. But I told her, I told her I was

01:40:32.820 going on the Jordan Peterson podcast and she said, Jordan Peterson. I said, you know, philosopher man.

01:40:37.080 You have to apologize to her for me. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that's pretty, pretty. It's pretty

01:40:45.500 funny. All right. Yeah. Well, you know, that's, yeah, well, that's so interesting. Well, it's so

01:40:50.020 interesting too, for me to see that, you know, that you developed this crazy vision a few years

01:40:54.880 ago and now all these surreal things are happening to you. And I actually think that's how the world

01:40:59.160 works, man. I think the world has a real dreamlike quality to it, you know, which is why we dream to try

01:41:04.960 to figure it out and that your dreams call to you. I mean, that's what the psychoanalysts taught.

01:41:10.520 I certainly learned that from Freud and more even from Carl Jung, you know, that your dreams,

01:41:15.360 you're, you can dream the future. In fact, that's how the future comes about. You're, it's either,

01:41:22.080 you either dream the future or you let it turn into a nightmare. Like those are the options.

01:41:27.240 And so you dream the future by asking yourself what you want, assuming that you're trying to take care

01:41:33.560 of yourself. And you do that in a way that brings other people on board. You know, with this ARC

01:41:38.160 enterprise in the UK, we're trying to develop a vision that, that when people hear, they think,

01:41:44.000 geez, you know, I, I'd, I'd make some sacrifices to be part of that. I'd put some work into that.

01:41:50.100 They're not trying to hit me over the head with a cudgel and they're not trying to frighten me.

01:41:53.920 They're trying to invite me to the table, right? They're inviting me to the discussion. And that's

01:41:57.520 really what we're praying and both metaphorically and literally to do is to say, look, man, if we got

01:42:04.020 our act together, if we were all visionaries and we told the truth and we cooperated properly,

01:42:09.440 there's no, we could make the desert bloom, right? There's, there's no limit to the problems we could

01:42:13.880 solve. We don't have to run around like chicken little claiming that the sky is falling and, you

01:42:19.260 know, put all these limitations on ourself and doom the third world to penury and starvation and assume

01:42:25.760 that there's too many people on the planet. We could just shoulder our damn burdens and walk

01:42:30.600 uphill properly and fix the place. And we can do that. And, and if we don't, well, we'll get what's

01:42:37.040 coming to us. And we've had that happen a couple of times in the 20th century and that wasn't so

01:42:41.600 pretty. And so hopefully we'll be smart enough. God, I hope we're smart enough not to do that again.

01:42:48.100 Yeah. I mean that it's, there's, there's verses in Ecclesiastes that talk about repetition.

01:42:55.740 Throughout time, but there's always that same, that same driving force and that element that

01:43:02.240 created the Soviet union and created so many nightmares before it and after it, like that

01:43:09.440 still is just as much present today as it was then. And it's like, if we don't, yeah, it's like

01:43:14.960 we, you have to be proactive at, at keeping that, that, that, that balance, that harmony there.

01:43:22.980 Cause like the political climate in the world we live in now is benefiting a handful of people.

01:43:29.260 And it seems like that handful of people is doing everything they can to keep the system in that

01:43:35.220 sort of disorder. But if, if, yeah, if somehow, if people could, and you're right. And it's like,

01:43:40.200 you talk about imagine the power of the power of imagination, you know, but it really is the

01:43:44.820 truth. It's like, if people could just figure out in their own space, how to make things better and

01:43:50.740 how, and just even have a vision of things being better. And we, and just a certain amount of people

01:43:54.660 did that. Like that's all it takes. And then a lot of the, a lot of the, this problems that we

01:44:01.800 talk about, like even in politics and all, but almost would almost resolve themselves just

01:44:06.560 inherently from, from that. Yeah. From people taking responsibility. Well, that's right. Well,

01:44:12.700 the, the, there's another scene in Exodus where that's actually laid out. Um, it becomes part of

01:44:21.420 the principle of subsidiarity, which is a core element of Catholic social doctrine and a fundamental

01:44:27.220 element of genuine conservatism, which is that if you build a hierarchy of responsibility,

01:44:32.960 responsibility, so individual, marital, familial, community, state, all of those levels, and every

01:44:40.720 single level takes its responsibility, there's no reason to have a king and there's no desert,

01:44:48.020 right? But, and the rule is something like this, is every bit of responsibility that you refuse to take

01:44:54.320 on your own behalf, on behalf of your family, let's say, or your community, that responsibility will be

01:45:01.540 taken up by tyrants and used against you. And I think, well, how could it be any different,

01:45:06.100 different, right? Because if you leave something necessary, just lying there on the table,

01:45:13.200 that's just an invitation for a thief to steal it. Like, obviously. So yeah, you, you take,

01:45:20.640 you make a vision for your own life and you take responsibility because if you don't,

01:45:26.120 someone else will steal. Someone else will steal your destiny. Someone else will steal your soul.

01:45:31.780 You know, or, and it might be a handful of people, or it might be the dread spirit that's driving their

01:45:36.620 greed. And that's something whose hands you do not want to fall into. You know, you'll end up

01:45:42.300 on the road to hell, you know, or contemplating or committing suicide or torturing people. And

01:45:49.220 that's probably, that's probably not the vision you want to pursue. That's for sure.

01:45:55.580 Hmm. Yeah. Cause it's very contagious. All right, sir. Yeah. It's very, that energy is very

01:46:00.760 contagious. Yeah. Like if, I mean, just think about if you, if, I mean, just going back to our,

01:46:06.260 going, our conversation about commuting on the interstate, but yeah, just somebody,

01:46:10.300 somebody else off and that it's almost like they hold onto that. And then they event, whether they do

01:46:14.540 it consciously or passive aggressively at some point, maybe it's to their boss or their kids or their

01:46:19.340 coworker, but then they kind of pass it off on somebody else. And it creates this,

01:46:22.420 it's everything's very much more, it's very connected in a way that we don't really see

01:46:26.700 on the surface levels, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. I had a vision of that

01:46:32.880 here recently, you know, so people think, well, I'm just one person in a mass of 8 billion,

01:46:40.400 you know, what can I do? But imagine this, imagine a globe. Okay. With points on it. And then all those

01:46:46.900 points are networked together, you know? Okay. So now imagine you're one of those points

01:46:51.520 on that globe. Now, when you zoom into it from a distance, that point will be the

01:46:56.640 one that's closest to you, you know? So it looks like it's the top of a kind of a rounded,

01:47:01.800 kind of like a rounded pyramid. That's a way of thinking about it. So you're at a, you're at the

01:47:07.020 center of a web of a thousand people, because you're going to know a thousand people well in

01:47:10.920 your life, at least. You're going to have an influence on them. And then those thousand are

01:47:14.880 surrounded by a thousand each. And so that's a million people, one person away from you. And it's a

01:47:20.500 billion people, two people away from you. And that's where you are. You're in the center of

01:47:25.580 the world in that way. You, a thousand people, a million people, and then a billion people.

01:47:30.840 You're at that center. And everything you do echoes. And the world's set up like that. So

01:47:37.000 we're each a center where everything we do echoes. And that's a terrifying thing to realize,

01:47:42.480 right? Because that means whatever happens is on you. I was reading this Dostoevsky quote the

01:47:47.380 other day and writing about it. He said, he has a father there, Zosima, who is the spiritual

01:47:52.500 guide of this, I think it's Alyosha, who's a monastic novitiate in the Brothers Karamazov,

01:48:01.020 which is a great book. And Zosima tells Alyosha, you are responsible not only for everything you do,

01:48:09.260 but for everything everyone else does. And you think, Jesus, that's a completely absurd proposition.

01:48:14.780 But then you think, you know, well, you think about it this way, man. If you were a really,

01:48:19.900 if you were the worst person you could be, and that's something to think about, if you were the

01:48:25.320 worst person you could be, you could produce a lot of hell and misery. God only knows how much.

01:48:31.000 A lot of people would be way worse than they are because of you. And maybe, you know, infinitely worse.

01:48:37.280 But if you were the best person you could be, a lot of people who are bad wouldn't be nearly as

01:48:41.880 bad as they are. And so, when you see all this misery around you, and all these miserable people,

01:48:47.080 you got to ask yourself, you know, how much of that is a consequence of the things that you've

01:48:51.100 left undone? Or the things you've did? And man, if you have any sense, and you really think about

01:48:56.540 that, that'll terrify you right to the bottom of your soul. And that's a good thing. It's a terrible

01:49:01.520 thing. You know, but it's a necessary thing.

01:49:04.220 And that's why I just, the more I haven't, the more I've thought through sort of even just what

01:49:14.120 it is you said now, it's, there has to be something pure and honest and righteous at the top of our

01:49:20.780 focus collectively in order to maintain that. But that's, I mean, so yeah, that's really the,

01:49:27.340 that's, that's the importance of, that's the importance of having, of idolizing God at the

01:49:33.000 top of that structure is, that's the only way I see that purity and that honesty being maintained

01:49:38.920 collectively among a group of people. But yeah, that's a great way. That's a great analogy with

01:49:43.820 the spiderweb. I like that.

01:49:46.140 Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a very good vision. Well, and I think, I think what you close with there is

01:49:50.540 correct. As far as I can tell, like, that's the insistently repeated message of the biblical

01:49:56.160 corpus and all the works of wisdom that surround it is that you have to put what's appropriately

01:50:03.080 ultimate at the top. And that is something like the sum of all that's good, right? The sum of bottom,

01:50:09.200 it's, that's a definition of God. It's truth and beauty and justice and mercy all united into a single

01:50:15.000 character. That's a way of thinking of character you're supposed to embody and put at the top,

01:50:21.280 which is the same as celebrator worship. Yeah, I think that's right. Look, we should stop,

01:50:25.760 I guess. It's 107 minutes into this 90-minute podcast. And it was really fun talking to you.

01:50:34.200 It's really good to meet you. And I would say, man, congratulations on your success.

01:50:38.480 Congratulations on developing your vision. Congratulations to you and your wife for

01:50:43.620 having enough sense to knock your heads together and come to something approximating a consensual

01:50:48.380 solution and to getting over your resentment and, you know, to having your dreams come true. And

01:50:55.740 isn't that a weird thing that that can actually happen? Yeah. That's for sure.

01:51:00.080 Yeah. I'm excited to see what happens in the future. Yeah. And likewise with you, congratulations on even

01:51:05.460 your recent success. And I'm excited to see, I know that you're, you're in the midst of a lot of

01:51:10.820 different battles. And so I wish you the best with all of my, keeping my prayers and I hopefully will

01:51:15.180 be able to keep in contact moving forward. I, like I said, I definitely enjoyed having this conversation

01:51:20.640 with you. Yeah. Well, there's something exciting about having an adventure that's crazy enough. So

01:51:26.980 you literally don't know what's going to happen next. I mean, that's, that's a good way to keep you

01:51:31.940 on your toes and not resentful. It's like, what weird thing could possibly happen now? That's a real

01:51:37.500 adventure, man. Yeah. No kidding. All right. So for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to

01:51:43.520 continue talking to Oliver Anthony on my, on the YouTube, on the Daily Wire Plus side of this

01:51:51.760 platform or this interview. We're going to talk a little bit more about autobiographical issues,

01:51:56.940 which is what I generally do there. Thank you to the film crew here in Florence for making this

01:52:01.360 possible today and for Daily Wire Plus for facilitating it. And thank you very much for talking to me today.

01:52:07.060 And good luck keeping your head straight through this crazy, this crazy sallying forth that you're

01:52:14.780 embarking upon. Bye-bye everybody. Thank you.

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

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