Author Tucker Max left behind a wild life of partying to settle down on a Texas homestead with his wife and kids.
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Words per Minute
187.64098
Summary
Tucker Max grew up in a small town in Ohio, went to Duke Law School, and got a job in Silicon Valley. But then he got fired. And that s when he became a homesteader. Tucker talks about what it s like to go to law school, how he got laid off, and what he did to get back on track. And why he decided to go back to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, to raise a family with his wife and three kids. Tucker Max is the author of the best-selling book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and he s also the host of the popular podcast Tucker Max: A Homesteader . He also hosts a podcast called The Tucker Show, where he talks about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain ugly of life in law school and what it was like being a kid growing up in the late 80s and early 90s in the suburbs of Dayton. You can find all that and more at tucker.co/thetruckscreekonapropriate on the website of The Tucker Carlson Podcast, where every story is an honest story, and not one of them has been massaged or influenced or influenced by a corporate gatekeeper. You ve made all of it, and we ve made a lot of it. at Tucker Carlson, founder of Tucker Carlson Productions, where you can find a ton of exclusive content on the Tucker Carlson podcasts. We ve made it all here. and we hope you'll check that out. . . . well, if you re a fan of Tucker Max's book, I hope they serve beer in hell. by Tucker Max s book, I hope you do too. at t Tucker Max at and you ll serve them all of them in hell by Tucker s book . and I hope that they serve them in hell in hell, if you like it is a good one. Thanks to Tucker Max for being a good friend of Tucker's, and I really hope they do it well. , and I'm not only that they make it well, but that they do their job well, and that they don t need to do it like that. in a way that s a little bit better than they can do it right, and they can help you do it better than you do that thank you, Tucker Max, thank you.
Transcript
00:00:00.260
Growth is essential for every entrepreneur. At BDC, we get that. And the businesses we support grow at double the average rate. Accelerating the pace, we're on it. BDC, financing, advising, know-how.
00:00:13.980
Welcome to the Tucker Carlson podcast, where every story is an honest story and not one of them has been massaged or influenced or censored by a corporate gatekeeper.
00:00:35.620
We've made a lot of these. You can find all of it and a lot of exclusive content at TuckerCarlson.com. We hope you'll check that out. Here's today's episode.
00:00:44.200
About 20 years ago, a recent law school graduate called Tucker Max started posting his experiences, the details of his dating life, on the internet. He became a sensation. He wrote a bunch of bestselling books, sold millions of copies, the most famous of which was called I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
00:01:03.460
Not everyone likes Tucker Max. A lot of people hated Tucker Max, but nobody could deny that he was smart. He was a beautiful prose stylist, not something you normally find in people writing about hooking up with ladies and getting loaded.
00:01:16.080
But he was. And then he retired around 2012. He stopped writing about that stuff and receded from public view.
00:01:23.180
And then a few years ago, he reemerged as a very different person, as someone whose entire life was devoted to his own family, at a level most people can't relate to.
00:01:33.100
He became a homesteader. What an interesting progression. We thought it'd be worth spending some time hearing how that happened and what it's like to truly prepare for the bad times on behalf of your family.
00:01:45.700
Tucker Max joins us in studio now. Tucker Max, thank you so much.
00:01:50.520
So, I just have to add, mostly I want to hear about what you're doing now, but I just have to ask, how did you wind up? You went to University of Chicago undergrad?
00:02:01.940
It's earned its reputation. And then you went to Duke Law School, which is a douche factory, obviously.
00:02:09.260
But then you wrote these accounts of your life, which sounded like you were in a fraternity at Alabama.
00:02:15.840
Um, well, it's the benefit of going to the least fun undergrad, uh, is I didn't have any of my experiences in college when I was too young to appreciate how fun they were.
00:02:26.200
And I kind of started having them in law school when, you know, cause I got to law school, I graduated in three years from Chicago.
00:02:32.320
And the cool part about Chicago is I got to law school and I basically already learned the, you know, the hard parts of law school.
00:02:39.320
So I was like, well, this is easy. I don't need to go to class. Like, I know all of this.
00:02:43.140
I know how to think all this stuff. Law school is supposed to teach. You already learned.
00:02:46.940
And then I had, all my friends were dudes who went to state schools.
00:02:49.920
They were the smart kids at state schools, like Kansas or Pitt or UVA.
00:02:53.820
And so it was like, and they knew how to party. And I'm like, oh, I didn't have anyone like you guys with me in undergrad. Let's go do this more.
00:03:00.420
And then of course we were by UNC, which was all girls.
00:03:03.560
It's not literally an all girls school, but it might as well be.
00:03:08.880
Well, the dudes are just like the fop, the iconic stereotype of the foppish Southern frat boy types.
00:03:16.280
And so for me, it was like hunting at a petting zoo. It was so easy.
00:03:20.720
And we'd go over there and be beautiful girls and these douchebag idiot guys.
00:03:28.440
And then, um, we all left law school, went to different cities and I went to Florida and I hated it.
00:03:38.360
No, I got fired from, uh, a big law firm called Fenwick and West in Silicon Valley.
00:03:43.640
I got fired about three weeks into being a summer associate, actually not even a full-time employee.
00:04:03.840
The, the, the thing I did that, that caused them to fire me.
00:04:09.320
They did what I would have done if I would have been a partner there.
00:04:12.420
One of the senior female partners propositioned me, you know, like, uh, wanted to hook up with me.
00:04:19.900
Not that that meant anything to me at the time.
00:04:25.180
I don't know, but I'm not going to say all the rest.
00:04:27.980
I'll, I'll, I'll handle the generalization here.
00:04:32.180
And for some reason, I turned her down and then told everyone about it, which is like,
00:04:38.220
if I had slept with her, I'd have been bulletproof.
00:04:41.140
And if I just shut up, no one would have cared.
00:04:43.320
But, um, I kind of did the worst of all worlds.
00:04:45.920
And so, uh, you know, I was, uh, I was a liability.
00:04:50.140
You can't have someone acting like that in a law firm.
00:04:52.900
Turn down a partner's advance and then tell others about it.
00:04:55.980
I mean, that's, I mean, the bar association could get involved at that point.
00:05:04.200
There's a way to play this game and you're doing it totally wrong.
00:05:10.920
So even that wouldn't have blacklisted me from the legal profession, but I wrote two
00:05:15.120
days before she propositioned me or before they fired me, uh, I had gotten drunk at a
00:05:21.240
firm event and caused kind of a scene, although it was kind of funny.
00:05:24.400
And so I wrote an email about it that was pretty funny.
00:05:29.300
Uh, we had like a charity auction and, um, uh, I got up and I took the mic from like
00:05:35.180
the auctioneer and I was yelling at this girl cause she was bidding against me and the
00:05:43.660
And like, it was like kind of like a funny, like, uh, it was like, you know, like the funny
00:05:49.560
Like I really didn't go too far, but I went right up to that.
00:05:52.720
As a summer associate, the line is lower for you.
00:05:55.180
Like they, they, even the managing partner thought it was hilarious.
00:05:58.400
And so, uh, and I wrote an email about that, not about the female partner sent that to
00:06:14.840
And so they sent that to all their friends and then it like went out from there.
00:06:19.200
And so that like everyone in the legal profession got that email that summer.
00:06:22.820
Like I was the, you know, the, you know, there's always legends about, I was one of the
00:06:29.320
And was your plan at that point to spend your life in big law?
00:06:35.860
The God's honest truth is I was the worst kind of like, okay.
00:06:40.140
So I was deciding out of undergrad, whether to go to iBanking management, consulting, or
00:06:50.500
No, I, I was seeking status without merit, which is what everyone in those professions
00:06:57.120
And that's just that, and I, you could not have convinced me that it was not a viable,
00:07:03.220
or valuable path for my soul to go make a bunch of money for bullshit, which is what
00:07:12.700
I bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker.
00:07:14.980
And, um, so I was going after that, but I think there was obviously a part of me, like
00:07:25.280
There was a part of me, you know, like, like some people, you know, like you'll be mass
00:07:35.280
I love to make myself out to be a hero, but the true story is I didn't have the courage
00:07:40.200
to realize that it was a horrible soulless path that I didn't want to go to.
00:07:43.700
So I acted out until they fired me and kicked me out of the profession.
00:07:47.420
So when that email went throughout the tiny and very inward looking legal world, what kind
00:07:56.860
Um, they almost didn't let me back, come back from my senior year or my third year at Duke.
00:08:07.560
Like I, if I had wanted to stay in the legal profession, I would have had to be like a public
00:08:33.740
The only reason she let me come back and finish my third year.
00:08:40.840
Well, the, um, the, the, the, the head of the, yeah.
00:08:45.400
Uh, I forget what her, uh, her, her exact title was, but the, the only reason she let
00:08:50.840
me back was because I promised not to walk at graduation.
00:08:57.280
And so it was like, like basically if I wasn't there, which I didn't care about going to
00:09:02.940
anyway, cause I knew I wasn't going to get a job in a legal profession.
00:09:08.420
One is cause I didn't want to quit and not have my degree.
00:09:12.100
Which probably honestly would have been the best thing for me, but I was one of those where
00:09:16.200
I like, no, I want to actually have the, I don't want to say I went to Duke law school.
00:09:21.420
But then also, um, I had such, it was like my party years.
00:09:26.080
Like everyone else's party years are an undergrad.
00:09:33.880
Since you invented this genre of fraternity literature.
00:09:36.360
The New York Times said I invented fratire and I wasn't in a frat and I didn't write satire.
00:09:40.520
It's memoir I wrote, but that's the New York Times, right?
00:09:45.820
They're going to get literally everything wrong.
00:09:48.480
So what did you decide to do with your life at this point?
00:09:52.560
Yeah, it was, um, it was not a good situation for me because where I was, was I had enough
00:09:59.740
courage to get drunk and ruin a future I didn't want, but not enough courage to recognize that
00:10:11.940
And so, um, kind of the, like, I was still kind of looking for the easy path, right?
00:10:16.960
Like law, uh, uh, law, you know, and, and, uh, iBanking and management consulting.
00:10:22.740
Even though you're working a hundred something hour weeks, they really are the easy path.
00:10:29.280
Um, and so the next coward path for me was the family business.
00:10:35.440
And, um, uh, I kind of, I, I never really wanted to go into restaurants with the family
00:10:40.320
business, but now I'm like, well, uh, this is, you know, the two things I've trained for,
00:10:45.880
I, I, I wasn't good at, so I'm not allowed to anymore.
00:10:50.940
And then, um, I got fired from the family business in like six months.
00:11:03.020
Now I was good because it's restaurant business, right?
00:11:06.580
And, and, and if you're smart and outgoing, the restaurant business is designed for people
00:11:10.060
who are, who don't fit anywhere else, but are kind of smart and capable.
00:11:16.100
The problem was, um, I assumed that my dad wanted to run a good business.
00:11:22.760
I didn't realize the business existed for my dad's ego.
00:11:26.400
And so I got in and realized, oh, there's all kinds of people here who suck, who are stealing
00:11:30.500
from him, who, uh, we, there's all these things we could be doing better.
00:11:37.860
They're charging twice as much as this company.
00:11:41.080
Uh, it turns out that company's giving my dad kickbacks.
00:11:44.260
And then these people who are incompetent stealing from him, you know, uh, feed my dad's
00:11:49.040
ego in a way that he values way more than what they're stealing.
00:11:52.400
And so I essentially, but like a fool, just like I, I, you know, didn't sleep with a partner
00:11:57.280
and told everyone I went in, recognize these people were clowns and was like, oh, well,
00:12:04.120
So clearly the fact that I'm right is more than enough.
00:12:07.860
I, like, I told them that they sucked and that I was going to get them fired.
00:12:11.640
And, you know, they were smart enough and knew my dad well enough.
00:12:15.020
They rallied kind of the troops and got enough evidence against me that, that, uh, my dad
00:12:23.660
So now you're a graduate of two of the most prestigious schools in the country, but you're
00:12:37.360
Uh, and I was basically like, you know, uh, bartending, you know, work like the kind
00:12:43.600
of jobs that losers in their twenties get, that was me.
00:12:46.800
Like I was a loser in my twenties, early twenties.
00:12:49.640
And then I was at the same time, I was writing emails to my friends from law school about all,
00:12:53.980
you know, living in South Florida, which, uh, is a soulless, horrible place.
00:12:59.860
So there was no social niche for me in South Florida.
00:13:03.040
Cause if you do Coke and you go to clubs, right.
00:13:06.840
And if you're like 70 and, you know, play golf in the Boca country club, then it's great,
00:13:13.040
And so I hated my life, but you know, I get drunk and hook up with girls anyway and get
00:13:18.040
in these horrible situations and write emails about it and send them to my friends.
00:13:20.640
And one of my friends, uh, a guy, a great, you actually might even, do you know Sean Trendy
00:13:27.820
So Sean went to law school with me and is a good friend of mine.
00:13:32.020
And he actually called me up and he was getting the emails and he's like, dude, listen, you're
00:13:38.600
You're not good at business clearly, but these emails are the funniest things I've ever read.
00:13:43.660
And I was like, what the, like, what kind of bitch shit is this?
00:13:50.980
And he's like, well, dude, look at, look at the evidence.
00:13:55.180
And so, um, what a wise piece of advice that it was Sean that gave it to me.
00:14:05.280
And so, or I took that path because of Sean, I was already writing.
00:14:08.680
I just wasn't envisioning that as a profession for me or doing that.
00:14:12.820
And so, um, I, uh, I ended up putting my stuff on the first,
00:14:17.920
actually, no, I took like the five emails that my friends saw were the funniest.
00:14:21.560
I sent them to every publisher and every book agent in New York.
00:14:25.540
Cause at the time publishing was still on New York.
00:14:27.520
And there was actually literally, this was 2000, 2000, 2001, 2002.
00:14:31.400
There's a physical book of, um, like all the agents addresses and all like their query stuff.
00:14:39.260
I probably sent a thousand query letters, maybe five, between 500, a thousand.
00:14:44.340
I've got zero positive, literally zero positive response, you know, like 90% nothing.
00:14:49.240
And then probably got like 50 form letter rejections.
00:14:52.720
And I even got, like, I still have a couple of them, uh, like some, a couple personalized
00:14:57.220
rejections where like the editor was like, this is the worst thing I've ever read.
00:15:03.280
Like you have no place in publishing, but at the same time I was sending my emails, like
00:15:10.100
all the emails I'd forwarded to my friends would get, like, they would forward those.
00:15:14.320
Like not just the ones that got me fired, but the funny ones after.
00:15:17.680
And I was getting my emails forwarded back to me.
00:15:22.780
So I was getting my own emails forwarded back to me from people in other social circles
00:15:30.320
And I'm like, all right, so clearly I'm good at this.
00:15:38.060
I mean, it is arrogant to think this, but all these people in publishing are wrong.
00:15:44.920
Like pretty much everyone in publishing is there because they're a failed, a failed
00:15:49.180
It's not literally everyone, but almost, I didn't know that at the time, but I was
00:16:06.520
And it's like a, I got featured on like college humor and a few other, like those humor blogs
00:16:14.280
And MTV came and did a documentary about people who were dating on the, because back
00:16:18.460
when like dating on the internet was weird and creepy and all.
00:16:20.740
And so, um, they did a documentary about me and that blew up.
00:16:25.140
And then all the publishing companies came back and they were like, yeah, we want to
00:16:30.360
And then that became, I hope they serve beer in hell.
00:16:32.580
Hillsdale College offers many great free online courses, including a recent one on Marxism,
00:16:44.500
Today, Marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less dangerous.
00:16:48.860
Names like critical race theory, gender theory, and decolonization.
00:16:53.020
No matter the names, this online course shows it's the same Marxism that works to destroy
00:16:57.700
private property, and that will lead to famines, show trials, and gulags.
00:17:02.840
Start learning online for free at Tucker4Hillsdale.com.
00:17:15.320
The credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough.
00:17:22.660
Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act, would help end the grip Visa and the U.S.
00:17:29.860
Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee,
00:17:34.520
and they've been raising it without even telling you.
00:17:37.400
This hurts consumers and every small business owner.
00:17:40.860
In fact, American families are paying $1,100 in hidden swipe fees each year.
00:17:46.260
The fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the world, double candidates,
00:17:54.180
That's why I've taken action, but I need your help to help get this passed.
00:17:59.100
I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition Act.
00:18:07.760
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
00:18:21.140
One, I kind of gave away for free, so it didn't happen.
00:18:25.840
All three were, you know, New York Times bestsellers.
00:18:27.760
I think I've sold about four and a half-ish million of those books.
00:18:34.400
I mean, especially because my audience were essentially people who don't read.
00:18:39.620
I can't tell you how many dudes in my life, it's been tens of thousands, have told me I've
00:18:44.460
never finished a book, read a book, or bought a book other than yours.
00:18:54.880
Because my, my books were my stories about doing all the dumb stuff guys, and a lot of
00:19:01.260
Drinking, hooking up, partying, all that stuff.
00:19:04.460
And then by the time, you know, I wrote, I started writing at 27.
00:19:10.420
By the time I got to about 33, 34, I was like pretty tired of it.
00:19:14.960
You know, like, drinking and partying and, you know, going out five nights a week is super
00:19:28.020
And the cost of that lifestyle was really, not just the physical cost, but the emotional
00:19:35.120
And honestly, man, like, like everyone who goes through, some people go through that phase
00:19:41.020
I was more towards the decade side of it, but it was, I was feeling stuck, man.
00:19:46.640
Like, you can't move on at life if you have to be this person that is doing a thing at
00:19:54.500
And that's, oh, dude, it was so depressing because all my fans would come to me, you know,
00:19:59.240
I do public events all the time, speeches, whatever.
00:20:02.240
And they were all really upset if I wasn't the Tucker Max they envisioned in their head.
00:20:07.980
And at the time, I would get really mad at them.
00:20:14.380
Like, they liked me because of my stories and because of a certain attitude I had and
00:20:20.620
a certain way I was in a certain part of my life.
00:20:23.060
And some of them realized, oh, that's just part of his life.
00:20:25.340
Mick Jagger has to sing Satisfaction at every show.
00:20:29.360
And I wasn't going to sing Satisfaction the rest of my life.
00:20:32.380
Like, eventually, as I matured a little, I'm like, look, what am I doing getting mad at
00:20:39.100
Like, they, even the dumb, immature ones, like the smart, mature ones got it.
00:20:47.640
Most people, like, they would come up and, you know, they have this multi-year relationship
00:20:55.120
And it's all about a projection in their mind of who I am based only on the books.
00:21:00.960
And that was, it got really tiring after a while.
00:21:05.400
And then instead of trying to fight it and getting mad at them, I'm like, all right, well,
00:21:11.160
And so I wrote, the last in the series was Assholes Finish First.
00:21:14.840
And I put it like a retirement at the end where I'm like, I'm not going to write this
00:21:25.200
Although most people who know me, know me from that stuff.
00:21:28.720
And so even that, bro, for years afterwards, like, I would be at Whole Foods and a kid,
00:21:35.180
like, a younger kid or something would come up to me and be like, oh, it's your Tucker
00:21:38.580
And I'm like, why aren't you, you know, drunk, screaming curses at people laying under a
00:21:49.740
Even now, to this day, a lot of people, their impression of me, even after they meet me,
00:22:01.680
I mean, so you've, like, laid bare your personal life.
00:22:05.220
And you've sold four and a half million copies of books about hooking up with various women.
00:22:10.700
I told the truth about things most people don't ever tell the truth about.
00:22:13.680
So, like, what did that teach you about what you wanted in a wife?
00:22:22.760
Well, it definitely showed me very much what I don't want.
00:22:28.120
I mean, I was with a lot of women in that period.
00:22:34.620
And then women who were at that stage, you know, the same stage as me, came to me.
00:22:45.800
The big thing, man, was I realized I needed a woman who was very smart, who was very sweet
00:22:54.140
But most importantly, I need a woman who really had her own thing in life, who really thought
00:23:04.500
Because three or four years before I started, I retired, I would have been really happy
00:23:10.380
with the hottest girl there was, who was pretty sweet and basically a trophy wife.
00:23:20.280
And then by the time I got to be about 32, 33, 34, I realized, oh, thank God I didn't get
00:23:30.200
I would have been divorced within five, six years.
00:23:35.620
And then I started to understand what a partner actually would look like for me at that point.
00:23:42.760
I think I had to go through whatever, hundreds or thousands of women to realize how lonely
00:23:48.240
I was and how lonely that life is after a while.
00:23:51.860
You know, it's the metaphor I always use is imagine that like, because dudes don't get
00:23:57.960
Most women understand what I mean when I talk about this, because most guys have to go their
00:24:05.760
It doesn't matter how good looking you are, how smart or how rich you are.
00:24:13.160
You have to be good in some way, at least connecting with a woman.
00:24:17.340
But once you get famous, all that's out the window.
00:24:20.960
Like you don't have to really do anything but other than be famous.
00:24:23.920
And there's a million examples of this, of dudes who have no business being with any
00:24:27.360
women who are famous, who get all kinds of women.
00:24:31.980
And you can't understand what that's like as a dude because you've spent your whole life
00:24:36.860
like imagine living on like a desert island and you're scraping out an existence and you
00:24:43.240
And then all of a sudden you get picked up off of that desert island and you get moved
00:24:49.720
And you're going to gorge yourself for a while or the best Vegas buffet you can ever
00:24:57.940
In fact, you're going to gorge yourself until you throw up a few times and then you're going
00:25:04.360
I would like because women are always a scarcity for you as a dude.
00:25:07.760
It doesn't matter how rich you are or how good looking you are, how smart you are.
00:25:11.900
There's still a scarcity until you become famous and then they're in abundance.
00:25:15.580
But for women, penis is an abundance from the time that they probably pre-puberty for a
00:25:30.040
And then I kind of had to revel in that abundance for a while and wallow in it until it became,
00:25:42.020
And you've got to really, okay, I don't want everything.
00:25:44.560
There are, here's the things I, here's what's healthy.
00:25:50.580
So in a lot of ways, the best, it's funny, people will say, like your intro is really
00:25:56.000
Like it seems like 180 degree turnaround in my, from where I sit, having lived it, I couldn't
00:26:01.420
have gotten to be a dedicated father and husband and homesteader if I hadn't gone through
00:26:07.040
that phase of unbridled abundance and hedonism.
00:26:13.240
It's just interesting that you had all the women you wanted, but you just wanted one
00:26:20.380
If my wife was cool with two or three, I might be all right with that too.
00:26:23.380
Like, but, but no, no, it was, um, lots and lots of different women was not an effective
00:26:34.560
I thought it worked, but it doesn't work long time.
00:26:39.320
But Tucker, you could not have convinced me of that with any words when I was 29.
00:26:44.420
Well, I would have, there's no, it's an age thing.
00:26:50.460
Um, but how did you get, okay, so now you are not just a husband and a father, but that's
00:27:00.100
But what motivated your desire to make that your life?
00:27:06.000
Like, and what is homesteading and why do you do it?
00:27:08.400
So I, I didn't come up with this goal ahead of time and then do it.
00:27:16.300
So, so after I retired from writing, uh, you know, the stories of drinking and hooking
00:27:21.940
Um, what ended up happening is I was still a really well-known author and a lot of people
00:27:27.940
So I started a company called scribe that, um, we, you know, David Goggins, I'm sure we
00:27:33.220
did his books and Tiffany Haddish and some other people like that.
00:27:36.820
And we, we did about from the time I started until when I left, which was a 2022, uh, like
00:27:44.400
And so we were kind of the premier, like independent ghostwriting publishing firm.
00:27:50.700
And, uh, uh, uh, we built a great company, 500 employees, me and my co-founder Zach.
00:27:56.380
Um, uh, uh, built a great company and, um, it was rewarding.
00:28:01.800
And I kind of went through the, the entrepreneurial phase of life before I thought I was entrepreneurial,
00:28:06.360
but I was an artist and that being an artist and running a business with employees are totally
00:28:16.960
So, so it was, there was a lot rewarding with it and, and, uh, started the business.
00:28:22.040
I met my wife first, then started the business.
00:28:25.040
And, um, as the business grew and developed, and I saw a very clear path to a lot of money,
00:28:35.640
But at the same time, you know, my relationship, my wife and my kids, and as my kids got older,
00:28:40.820
um, even though my kids are still pretty young, I was like, and then I was in a lot of, uh,
00:28:46.040
social groups and masterminds with pretty advanced and successful entrepreneurs who had way bigger
00:28:51.340
companies than me and who were older and had older kids.
00:28:54.540
And I saw kind of how miserable they were in a lot of ways and, and like how much time
00:28:59.420
they spent on their business, how little they spent with their families.
00:29:02.080
And then I would like meet their kids and be like, Hmm, something's off there.
00:29:06.640
Some of them have great balance and some didn't.
00:29:08.640
And, and I just kind of realized, man, that as much as I did, I like business and I like
00:29:16.660
And I definitely didn't love it more than my wife or my kids.
00:29:19.800
And I realized like, what, I don't know when I came to this realization, but I came to the
00:29:26.600
realization that, um, the only thing that matters in my life is the relationships with
00:29:30.640
the people I love and the things I do that matter to them.
00:29:34.020
And yeah, I mean, like having a company to make money is that that's important.
00:29:38.160
But above a certain level, like, what am I doing?
00:29:45.560
Um, or I've seen my children's father from them, which is me.
00:29:53.080
Like that 200 million or a billion dollars is not worth that.
00:29:59.940
But most people have this realization to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to spend
00:30:05.400
But you decided to buy a homestead in Texas and grow your own food, raise your own food.
00:30:23.460
I mean, you weren't working in politics, right?
00:30:26.140
I wrote a piece on this on my, on my blog about how I kind of, I thought I was awake to
00:30:30.960
Cause you know, I'd, I'd work in the entertainment business.
00:30:32.760
You have to, you understand media entertainment.
00:30:34.860
And if you work in that business, you see behind the curtain and how messed up everything
00:30:39.780
And, and I saw, I mean, I saw evil Hollywood was long before the me too stuff.
00:30:44.300
And I knew like everyone in Hollywood knew the wine scene was a rapist.
00:30:48.060
And like, I knew, I thought I understood, but then 2020 happened and the lockdowns happened
00:30:54.820
And I was like, oh, it's way worse than I even thought.
00:30:57.440
Like I, I saw a little bit behind the curtain, but I didn't really.
00:31:06.480
Did you think any of this was just like, what did you.
00:31:12.000
Uh, so when I was watching the videos of people dying in the street in China, like early March
00:31:21.260
of 2020, there was a window of about, for being honest, about six weeks.
00:31:35.880
And so the, uh, I was, uh, you can actually look at my Twitter timeline.
00:31:40.020
There's a, uh, when, uh, South by was canceled in 2020, I was for that.
00:31:45.060
I was like, oh yeah, that was like March 15th of 2020.
00:31:53.400
And by May, I'm like, oh, well, this is a fraud.
00:31:57.400
And then the riot started and it was like, I mean, the iconic photo of the, you know,
00:32:03.540
the, the, the, uh, the CNN with the Chiron, you know, mostly peaceful protest and
00:32:09.280
I was like, come on, like, I'm not, uh, uh, but if you're, I mean, if you, if you're
00:32:14.740
rioting for racial justice, you're not going to spread a deadly virus, right?
00:32:19.720
And well, the, my favorite were the people who was like, well, racial justice is
00:32:22.880
deadlier than, or racial injustice is deadlier than COVID.
00:32:26.040
I'm like, your racism is scarier than just stop.
00:32:34.900
And so then my, my wife and I had always talked about getting on land.
00:32:48.200
Well, see, I mean, I went to the, you know, all the big schools.
00:32:58.040
And in fact, I, I mean, I had a company that was 70% women and all creative.
00:33:02.840
So you think we would have been infected early.
00:33:06.100
I kept it out of scribe for as long as I was there.
00:33:10.380
It's really, it's actually, if you want a, a really easy trick to keep woke people away
00:33:16.080
from your organization, there's a very simple way to do it.
00:33:18.900
You just emphasize, make your primary value responsibility and your second accountability.
00:33:32.680
It's that the, the woke mind virus is about placing your response, placing blame for your
00:33:40.720
So if everything is about first about responsibility and accountability, those people will not come
00:33:47.180
And so I was able to kind of shelter my world from that.
00:33:53.680
I was able to shelter my world from them pretty well.
00:33:57.000
And so once I saw all this, I just, at the time, we're talking about summer 2020.
00:34:03.080
I'm like, okay, the woke mind virus is clearly infected media.
00:34:08.700
I didn't realize how corrupt, how truly catastrophically corrupt government was until January 6th of 2021.
00:34:17.500
That was when, that was, because, you know, my wife and I decided to buy land the summer of 2020.
00:34:23.540
And we bought our house in Tennessee that I showed you, that we talked about, right?
00:34:26.480
And so, because at the time, I, like, I didn't really understand.
00:34:30.120
I didn't think America was at the state it was yet.
00:34:32.740
And, you know, the way I looked at preparation and emergency stuff was a bug out place, right?
00:34:37.940
And so we bought a beautiful house in the mountains, isolated, because that's where my level of consciousness and understanding was.
00:34:52.520
And in real time, I, I, you just watched the feeds and I saw, I mean, because it wasn't hidden.
00:35:00.600
And most of these people were just drunken buffoons.
00:35:03.320
And it was, like, obvious that this was nonsense, that this was in no way, shape, or form anything approaching an insurrection.
00:35:13.240
And then you would turn on cable news, and in real time, you'd see them form this narrative that's not just wrong, but literally, totally contrary to what's going on.
00:35:23.780
And I can see, I don't know why that moment, but at that moment, I realized that the Republic had fallen.
00:35:32.200
It had fallen probably decades, maybe a century before.
00:35:36.000
But I did not truly internalize it until that moment.
00:35:40.960
When you watch them tell you what you were seeing wasn't real.
00:35:50.600
But just because they're wrong doesn't mean the opposite's true.
00:35:54.040
So you have to kind of look in the direction that they're wrong.
00:35:57.480
And in this case, the narrative that they were pushing was very clearly the narrative you push if you want to, if you want to create a fascist, communist, whatever.
00:36:16.560
You know, like, it's pretty common for, you'll deny reality until all of a sudden the last piece of evidence clicks in.
00:36:23.840
And then all the other facts, like, oh shit, I should, I could have seen this a long time ago.
00:36:31.480
I mean, you can make a good argument that the republic fell in America.
00:36:37.540
You can make an argument it fell during the Whiskey Rebellion.
00:36:41.260
You can make an argument several times in the 18th century, definitely during the Civil War.
00:36:52.880
I don't know when the American Republic fell, but it became very clear, undeniably clear to me on January 6th, 2021, that we were not just an empire, but we were the late stages of empire.
00:37:05.980
Like, I'd essentially missed the, understanding the American empire was an empire.
00:37:14.320
And then once I got that, then I'm like, oh, now everything makes sense.
00:37:21.140
Like, I'm very, like all dudes, very interested in the Roman history and Mongolian history.
00:37:26.780
And if you study the, both the transition from republic to empire in Rome and the transition from Genghis Khan to his sons, because they were never a republic.
00:37:36.840
But under Genghis Khan, it was, the Mongolian empire was what we would consider a free place in a lot of ways for these Mongolians.
00:37:45.060
And the transition from that to his sons and grandsons.
00:37:57.140
And then once I got that, that was when my wife and I got serious about like, okay, we need to actually get ready for what's coming.
00:38:05.680
Because it's going to be, I don't know what's coming, but the baseline of what's coming is going to be chaos.
00:38:11.940
And we're going to see a lot more of what we saw, you know, broken supply chains, riots, whatever, right?
00:38:23.300
And so I kind of dove deep into the sort of prepper world.
00:38:33.380
Like, but there are groups of people who I think are pretty sophisticated.
00:38:38.820
How long did it take for you to realize that you're bug out place in the North Carolina mountains?
00:38:49.080
Because, okay, when empire collapses, the thing that matters most is community.
00:39:00.100
How well are you, can your group band together and endure the tumultuous chaos until some new state, steady state arises?
00:39:11.140
And having a cabin in the woods is the opposite of community, right?
00:39:17.900
That was the old school American thought of prepping is really based on nuclear war and hiding a bunker.
00:39:28.180
But if you go study end of empire and you study people who've lived through intense chaos, they all say the same thing, right?
00:39:35.300
Like, there's a lot of, when the Roman Empire, not the Republic, when the Empire fell, there were lots of places that did great.
00:39:43.400
Because, you know, some warlord or the local Roman general would just say, okay, like, we're going to make this town my empire.
00:39:54.900
And the legions are going to marry local girls.
00:40:05.200
Lots of parts of Gaul thrive for thousands of years.
00:40:11.280
Because they had local rule, all the sorts of things that work.
00:40:17.200
But for a lot of people, in the aftermath of that, did really well.
00:40:25.920
Same with, in a lot of ways, the British Empire.
00:40:31.120
But the point is, my cabin in the woods had no community.
00:40:36.660
And so, my wife and I, like, how do we, where can we go to find community?
00:40:42.340
And it starts by, not a cabin in the woods, but by growing, raising your own food.
00:40:48.900
Taking responsibility for water, power, and food.
00:40:51.800
But in the context of where a lot of other people are doing the same.
00:40:55.800
And so, we knew we wanted to stay in Texas for a few reasons.
00:41:03.360
There's a lot of, like, kind of towns in Texas that are doing things like this.
00:41:10.060
And it's the one that we like the best for a couple different reasons.
00:41:29.240
So, what's the difference between a ranch and a homestead?
00:41:32.400
Well, generally speaking, a ranch is where you just, like, sort of raise livestock.
00:41:36.960
But what we bought was, because I didn't know, right?
00:41:42.060
I bought a place that this older guy, this boomer, had kind of carved out of nothing.
00:41:58.420
Because the way he dealt with the land was very 20th century kind of mentality.
00:42:14.320
It can work sort of for a while in certain circumstances.
00:42:17.620
But if you want to actually have a living, thriving ecosystem, I kind of went deep in
00:42:23.420
the permaculture and regenerative agriculture worlds.
00:42:26.460
And I realized that those people had figured it out.
00:42:28.780
And so, what we had to do was stop all chemicals.
00:42:31.260
I had to fire all the people he had that were working there, the landscapers or whatever.
00:42:37.960
It was, he had St. Augustine grass, which requires, like, 130 inches of rain a year.
00:42:44.700
You're not getting 130 inches of rain in Texas.
00:42:46.540
Somebody who's irrigating, but nonetheless, it's like, what are we doing?
00:42:49.720
This doesn't make sense with our land and where we are.
00:42:53.320
And so, the last two years, I've spent essentially turning it into living soil and regenerating
00:43:00.320
the land and doing management practices that make sense for Dripping Springs, Texas for 30
00:43:07.660
And, you know, like, and now we have, like, it's not where it's going to be in three,
00:43:25.720
And so, we're totally independent water, totally independent meat, totally independent.
00:43:32.440
We're hooked on the grid because why would we be independent before we have to be?
00:43:35.480
But we have a system where we can endure a lot of chaos and be totally fine.
00:43:41.440
And we're surrounded by people in our community who are, for the most part, in the same position
00:43:47.860
They have similar values, similar approach to the world.
00:43:54.120
We started a Waldorf school literally three minutes from around.
00:43:57.420
So, for viewers who are not familiar with Waldorf, what is that?
00:43:59.480
So, there's lots of different educational philosophies.
00:44:06.720
Waldorf is a philosophy that started in Germany like 150 years ago.
00:44:11.460
And I think it is by far, of the educational philosophies, it's by far the best.
00:44:16.220
It is the one that kind of feeds the emotional side.
00:44:23.820
Where it kind of tries to help the whole child.
00:44:26.860
Of the educational styles, I think it's the best.
00:44:30.280
That being said, I'm still not sure if organized schooling is right for kids or not.
00:44:35.460
Because right now, we have one kid I'm homeschooling because he doesn't have enough kids in his
00:44:43.980
Waldorf's the best by far if you're going to go to a school.
00:44:47.020
I'm on the fence about which is better or worse.
00:44:49.080
So, all of your children are out of the public schools?
00:44:56.420
I'm never going to send them to public schools.
00:44:58.880
And that raises a philosophical, and I want to put this to the President of the United
00:45:02.400
States with a message that I think is relevant to you, which is that those are not your kids,
00:45:09.780
Rebecca put a teacher's creed into words when she said, there's no such thing as someone
00:45:24.860
It's like when people say, you know, I'm coming to take your guns.
00:45:35.840
Now, I will say, let's give it a very judicious interpretation.
00:45:43.200
If what he means, and I don't think this is what he means, but if what he means is, I don't
00:45:47.640
own my children like they're chattel or slaves, that they are independent beings and my job
00:45:55.800
In no way, shape, or form do I think my kids should live their lives based on what I want.
00:46:03.240
And I see my job is to help them become full people and find the lives they want.
00:46:10.000
I think what he means is the very typical bureaucratic, really, it's a really a communist
00:46:15.880
Marxist idea that children are the property of the state.
00:46:20.180
That the citizens are the property of the state.
00:46:30.640
Like, there's just no chance that's going to exist in my world.
00:46:37.600
So, I always thought, I mean, of course, I vehemently agree with you, but the number of
00:46:42.660
parents who presumably love their kids more than their own lives, most parents do, I think,
00:46:47.680
who are willing to let, not just Alzheimer's patients posing as president, but any representative
00:46:58.460
Basically, like, kiddie porn shit with their kids.
00:47:08.260
Because, like, clearly, I would never in a million years allow anything like that.
00:47:12.900
I think most people can only give their kids what they got.
00:47:17.140
And most people were raised by people who went to public schools.
00:47:24.740
Public schools are designed to create obedient employees.
00:47:31.680
Like, that's the most charitable sort of interpretation.
00:47:40.900
This isn't like a conspiracy theory or a metaphor.
00:47:43.600
Like, there's a guy, John Taylor Gatto, who wrote a couple great books about this.
00:47:51.420
Horace Mann, all those people who invented the American public educational system, their
00:47:56.440
stated goal is to create subservient employees who know how to be good citizens.
00:48:03.160
And, like, that's just, I didn't have children for that reason, to serve some other man or
00:48:14.220
And so, if someone was raised by people who went to public school who were just employees
00:48:26.500
I can imagine it'd be really hard for that person to understand, well, this is where I
00:48:37.280
I can understand how a lot of people would get to that spot.
00:48:41.920
Now, the good news is all this nonsense lunacy with trans and other crap in schools, sexualizing
00:48:49.760
little children, is a lot of people starting to wake up and realize what, I mean, I knew
00:48:53.920
this, I had never had any plan to send my kids to public school.
00:48:57.900
Like, that was never, I went to public schools mostly, and I realized how nonsense they were
00:49:05.360
My parents weren't very good, but they weirdly, they gave me a gift.
00:49:14.480
And, but, but their bad parenting gave me a gift.
00:49:22.840
People laugh, but I'm telling you, man, so many people.
00:49:26.060
That was the, that was the upside of my bad childhood.
00:49:30.740
Because so many people's parents or caregivers mixed love with abuse.
00:49:35.780
And so, so many people see those two things together.
00:49:39.020
My parents didn't really pretend they cared much.
00:49:45.820
And also, they didn't really show up much for me.
00:49:48.640
And so, I realized at a young age that the adults weren't coming.
00:49:51.820
And the adults were, for the most part, didn't know what the hell they were doing.
00:49:54.940
They didn't ever pretend they were experts or knew what they were doing or had the right
00:50:01.260
And so, it's like, they were so bad that in a way that they were good, they set me up
00:50:09.240
I just love your attitude about your childhood.
00:50:12.660
Well, I got there after a lot of emotional work.
00:50:15.100
A lot of therapy, a lot of psychedelic medicine, a lot of work.
00:50:26.660
If it gets you out of shame or other sort of essentially anti-life emotions, anger is
00:50:37.340
Is your wife totally on board with these attitudes?
00:50:41.280
My wife, I would not be married to her if she wasn't, if we didn't share these values.
00:50:45.620
We were very aligned in a lot of stuff when we met.
00:50:48.800
And she's done a lot of her own emotional therapeutic work as well.
00:50:52.000
And we both have grown so much together over the last 10 years in parallel ways.
00:50:59.060
But I've seen people who split in the last three or four years because their values just
00:51:06.040
Like, the split was already there, but this kind of forced it.
00:51:09.700
So you've organized your life around surviving what you think is coming and protecting your
00:51:24.540
The range of outcomes, I think, are extremely wide.
00:51:27.320
But you're working to mitigate against those eventualities or those possibilities.
00:51:32.900
Like, if an asteroid hits, you know, Florida, nothing I'm doing is probably going to make
00:51:45.980
And my, you know, having a flock of sheep's not going to stop that.
00:51:49.760
But holding aside really, truly catastrophic, you know, Noah's Ark type situations, I think
00:52:01.900
the range of possibilities are basically, if we're seeing collapse of empire, American
00:52:09.480
Not necessarily the collapse of the American state, but the collapse of the American empire.
00:52:13.980
I think the last, my whole life, basically, the American consumerist experience has been
00:52:22.740
based on essentially free or low cost goods in everything.
00:52:29.240
Whether it's food or housing or everything was really cheap or really easy to get.
00:52:37.100
And I think if just that period is ending and nothing else, then we're in for a major shock.
00:52:49.720
Now, on top of that, unfortunately and sadly, excuse me, I think World War III, whatever you
00:52:56.980
Um, I, I think the U.S., without going too deep in this rabbit hole, the U.S. debt has
00:53:08.260
Um, I mean, it's all, when empires rack up too much debt, the only thing left for them
00:53:16.080
And then that doesn't save it, that, that goes down.
00:53:20.980
There was a point where the U.S. debt was totally saved, definitely during the Clinton
00:53:25.060
administration and maybe even as recently as the Obama administration, if the Fed had
00:53:29.680
refinanced all of that or a huge amount of national debt when the interest was essentially
00:53:37.060
And so that plus the massive stimulus bill, stimulus bills, uh, what they were was graphed.
00:53:45.520
Uh, but, uh, that plus the, the response to COVID that they were past the point in overtime.
00:53:52.580
And so what happens when government, uh, defaults war, uh, and then a lot of other consequences
00:54:04.020
Cause I think there's a lot of ways it could play out.
00:54:06.420
I just want to ensure regardless of what happens up to a certain point that me and my family
00:54:15.560
Cause I don't think it's going to last forever.
00:54:21.920
I actually think America is really well set up to come out the other end of that in a really
00:54:28.780
It's, it's just going to be painful to get there, you know?
00:54:31.840
So here's one potential mid to short-term outcome, which is that we continue pushing
00:54:40.980
Which apparently doesn't yet have nuclear weapons.
00:54:45.140
The whole coalition arrayed against Iran has them.
00:54:48.780
Well, maybe they just unplug the United States.
00:54:52.120
Maybe a cyber attack or EMP attack takes out our digital life.
00:54:58.620
So that would, you know, I can't even, I don't like to think about what that would look like,
00:55:02.720
but where would that leave you on your homestead?
00:55:07.880
Are you living a life that could withstand that?
00:55:11.040
I'm not a, I'm not a huge believer in how you have to be off grid and you got to be living
00:55:21.240
If you think about it, like they don't mind their own ore and they don't smelt it.
00:55:30.100
Like, believe me, I've like been, man, these dudes had some stuff figured out.
00:55:41.800
And I'm not a believer in, oh, if you're not doing everything hand, it doesn't work.
00:55:46.860
I don't, I don't want to make my life hard for no reason.
00:55:51.420
I just want to make sure that there is a lot of coming political and social, there's a
00:56:03.540
And I want to make sure that I'm in the best place possible to survive that.
00:56:08.620
I'm not trying to, to go, you know, be the Unabomber and live only off the land and only
00:56:13.860
have things that, you know, like ancient men had like that's, if you want to do that,
00:56:21.100
But you're not making your own bombs like you did.
00:56:31.260
I want to continue using those as much as possible.
00:56:35.000
But I also, if I had to say the big shift I've made in my mindset, man, is that I was
00:56:41.640
like when I was in college, you don't go work for Goldman Sachs or go to law school unless
00:56:49.520
I think that one of the major psychological shifts I've made is I've gotten out of the
00:56:54.860
consumerist mindset to more of a, like a shepherd mindset, right?
00:57:02.000
And, and I think it's one of the travesties that.
00:57:06.660
What, when you say consumerist mindset, what do you mean?
00:57:08.480
Consumerist mindset means I live to consume resources and status and like my, what are
00:57:30.300
It's, it's an externally, uh, uh, created identity, right?
00:57:35.180
That consumer, because what do you even know what to consume, right?
00:57:38.400
It's what your screen, what your media tells you is important and what you should be consuming.
00:57:45.620
Where, you know, what matters, what car is cool or not, what clothes are cool or not.
00:57:54.280
So I was deeply enmeshed and immersed in that growing up.
00:57:57.340
But the more, one of the great travesties I think of the last 30 years is that the conservation
00:58:03.420
movement and the environmental movement weren't one in the same.
00:58:09.380
And I think though, now you're starting to see the permaculturists and the regenerative
00:58:14.600
agriculture and the hunters and the conservationists really come together.
00:58:21.220
And I, I, I am a big believer, like, I mean, like your studio, right?
00:58:25.900
Like I really want to live in harmony with not just my family and my community, but my,
00:58:33.860
my, the environment around me, the soil around me, the grass, nature.
00:58:38.200
And everyone says that, but like not many people actually do that.
00:58:42.200
They live a very, a life that is divorced from the actual soil around them and the trees
00:58:49.760
And the last two years, I, if you'd asked me two years ago, if I live in harmony with
00:58:54.040
nature, I'd be like, yeah, I like to think I do.
00:58:56.780
And I had no idea what it even meant to live in harmony with nature and having a homestead.
00:59:02.340
And what's so awesome about having a homestead is that it has forced me to live in reality.
00:59:09.140
You can, you can have your phone and consumerist mindsets.
00:59:14.640
Everything is abstract, but when you live, whether having a homestead or a ranch or farm
00:59:20.200
or hunting, you have to actually pay attention to reality or nothing works.
00:59:27.540
And it has grounded me in a way that I thought I was grounded, but I wasn't.
00:59:32.040
And that's a huge reason why I wanted to get on land.
00:59:35.360
My wife and I wanted to get on land is because we craved that in our lives.
00:59:38.940
As we did emotional work and dealt with our issues, we felt the divorce from the world
00:59:44.240
and wanted to get more integrated into the natural world, but then also wanted to raise
00:59:49.860
our kids that way so that they never had to be divorced from that and had to find their
00:59:56.460
Like I, the whole point of public school is to separate the child from the family and
01:00:02.240
orient them in bureaucratic, corporatist, consumerist society.
01:00:08.800
And I mean, like, I'm kind of torn because like, I like electricity and I like cool stuff
01:00:14.480
and I'm not like, you know, I'm not shooting with a bow and arrow.
01:00:17.140
I'm not hunting with a bow and arrow, but at the same time, I don't want, I don't want
01:00:21.920
all of the negative nonsense that comes with that.
01:00:25.240
I want my children to grow up on land with their hands in dirt, understanding first self-knowledge
01:00:33.680
And that is the opposite of what you learn in public.
01:00:35.700
Everything public school is coming from experts, obey, do what you're told.
01:00:42.400
The way our children grow up, first and foremost, your body, your rules.
01:00:46.720
First, second, like literally every, their body, their rules.
01:00:51.820
That's like my kid at any point can basically stop anything going on saying, my body, my
01:01:01.740
Then I'm like, okay, all right, we got to figure.
01:01:03.780
And so basic things like that, man, I just, I wasn't thinking about until two, three, four,
01:01:09.420
five years ago, but having kids and getting on land, I, I, I didn't realize how poisoned
01:01:15.800
and how toxic almost everything in our culture is.
01:01:19.220
Not just American, the world, like the way humans relate to each other.
01:01:37.120
All right, so virtually everything you find in a grocery store is at best unhealthy, at
01:01:48.600
Like my favorite example, most people in America now for cooking use seed oils, canola oil.
01:01:56.840
Canola oil is, was literally invented as a, a lubricant for machines.
01:02:03.260
I mean, it was used, I forget the exact history of it, but it is machine lubricant.
01:02:16.120
A huge reason that we wanted a homestead and to raise our own meat and our own vegetables
01:02:21.300
is because it's really hard to get healthy food anywhere.
01:02:24.820
Even at farmer's markets, sometimes it's hard to get it.
01:02:27.480
But like, go find something in a grocery store that doesn't have a seed oil in it.
01:02:37.520
Unless you're taking a head of lettuce or something like that.
01:02:41.980
If it's in a package, something like, I forget, 70 plus percent of stuff in packages in Whole Foods
01:02:53.120
And do you feel the difference having gotten off it?
01:02:59.600
It's just two days ago, some friends of mine were looking at one of my book covers and the
01:03:04.080
dude was like, did you look like you, what are you, a vampire?
01:03:10.260
But unlike most people in our society, I have been healthy for the last 20 years.
01:03:16.180
And most people, like you look at, I can't, I'm 48.
01:03:19.660
Most 48-year-olds are, 48-year-old men are a minimum of 30 pounds overweight, can barely
01:03:42.180
I just paid, I'm like, okay, I'm going to try and only eat meat for my homestead.
01:03:48.540
And like, I, you know, I'm metabolically, if you look at all the markers, like my genetic
01:03:55.040
I don't, I don't do anything that special, man.
01:03:57.000
I'm not like out, you know, working out six hours a day or any nonsense like that.
01:04:02.620
And healthy means like, I know where all my meat comes from.
01:04:05.720
Dude, all the lamb and chicken I eat, born on my ranch, raised on my ranch, killed on
01:04:11.620
my ranch, processed on my ranch, butchered on my ranch, eaten on my ranch.
01:04:19.860
What goes in it is grass and water or bugs if it's chickens.
01:04:36.920
So, at 20, I think at a certain point in your life, if you, if you are educated and you believe
01:04:47.760
If you're not atheist at some point early on in your life, because you can, I don't believe
01:04:53.940
Yeah, I know St. Augustine, whatever, I'm with you.
01:04:59.120
I don't buy, I just don't think you get to God from reason.
01:05:02.520
And so, I was atheist my whole life because God never made sense, if you think logically.
01:05:12.620
But, you know, Episcopal Church is like a social club.
01:05:17.540
You know, like, I literally thought we went to church to eat donuts and socialize.
01:05:22.180
I didn't know anyone believed that because it was preposterous to me.
01:05:33.280
So, you know, it's funny, I had never done, I drank a lot, never done any drugs in my life,
01:05:39.080
ever, until I found, part of my therapeutic protocols, I did psychedelic medicine, right?
01:05:45.520
Like, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, but like, with a guide and not recreationally.
01:05:56.120
Like, and it was, the experience for me was not, like, talking to God.
01:06:00.920
It was, I felt the oneness of all things, and I felt the connection to all things, and
01:06:07.140
I felt, I understood, like, I knew Jesus' and Buddha's teachings academically, but then
01:06:14.820
I was like, it was one very specific experience.
01:06:18.780
And I remember thinking, oh, fuck, the kingdom of heaven is within.
01:06:24.420
But, like, and, you know, if you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him, like, oh, now I know
01:06:31.640
And he's the type of Mormon that, like, you know, you meet some Christians, and they just
01:06:35.440
have that energy and glow, and you're like, if all Christians were like this, like the
01:06:39.120
world would be, I don't know what you're into, but I want to know more.
01:06:43.360
And I called him two days after my thing, and I'm like, Ben, you, when you say you have
01:06:50.160
a relationship with God, you mean that literally.
01:06:53.780
He goes, bro, I've been trying to tell you this for a decade.
01:07:00.260
I thought you just read the words and got fooled by them.
01:07:03.560
What you have is the actual spiritual connection.
01:07:10.660
I understood, I didn't understand spirituality or belief in God until I had the experience.
01:07:15.940
And for me, I had to get there on psychedelics.
01:07:21.960
But now I think I can, I have enough of a connection to source, to God, whatever you
01:07:28.340
I'm very, very much a God guy, but not in the way most God guys are.
01:07:34.560
Like, I think religious dogma, some people need it and they like it and that's cool.
01:07:41.100
And I think if you actually look at the teachings of Christ and definitely the teachings of
01:07:46.060
That the dogma is not the thing and is in fact in the way.
01:07:49.860
Although Buddha will say, he says that, but he's like, you know, I'll give you the eight
01:08:07.220
Because that's like a different way of seeing the world.
01:08:13.620
Because once you realize, not realize intellectually, once you feel the one, and some people can
01:08:19.980
get there like at church and some people get there with yoga.
01:08:26.920
Once I felt the oneness of all things, all of the frivolities and the nonsense and the
01:08:36.000
And then for me, it was like, oh, of course, being connected to land matters.
01:08:46.540
I'm not different than this land or this chicken or this sheep.
01:08:55.100
And if you want to call the system God, I'm on board.
01:08:57.460
And if that's true, then my entire approach before, that's what's toxic.
01:09:04.120
Seeing myself as separate from this system, as different than the system.
01:09:10.840
Do you think, I don't know, maybe I'm imagining it, but it does seem like the people in charge
01:09:15.480
do a lot to discourage these kinds of thoughts, these conversations, people coming together
01:09:24.000
Everything I just said is absolutely, completely, catastrophically counter to all things government
01:09:37.240
I don't think it's an accident that the reigning governmental power at the time killed Jesus.
01:09:42.100
I don't think it's an accident that anyone who preaches anything like this comes crossways
01:09:50.240
of power because most organized power tells you, however they frame the message, the message
01:10:02.040
And the message from Jesus and from God, let's just stick with Christianity, is you don't need
01:10:12.100
I knew I'd never met you before today, and I have a ton of daughters, and I did when
01:10:20.560
you were writing your books, and whatever, I wasn't living that kind of life, but I could
01:10:26.200
tell you were a deep person, even reading I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
01:10:36.200
Tucker Max, thank you for spending all this time.
01:10:40.000
Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Podcast.
01:10:43.660
If you liked it, be sure to hit subscribe and leave a review.
01:10:47.100
And remember, we only release some of our interviews as podcasts.
01:10:50.280
The only place you can get all of it, including past episodes, is tuckercarlson.com, and we