The Tucker Carlson Show - Author Tucker Max left behind a wild life of partying to settle down on a Texas homestead with his wife and kids.

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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.

00:01:48.480 Thanks for having me, Tucker.

00:01:48.980 It was great to meet you.

00:01:49.940 Yes, you too.

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?

00:01:58.500 Famously the least fun school in America.

00:02:01.060 It's earned its reputation.

00:02:01.940 It's earned its reputation. And then you went to Duke Law School, which is a douche factory, obviously.

00:02:07.840 No, it is. I can't argue.

00:02:09.260 But then you wrote these accounts of your life, which sounded like you were in a fraternity at Alabama.

00:02:14.520 Yeah.

00:02:14.840 Like, how did this happen?

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. 1.00

00:03:03.560 It's not literally an all girls school, but it might as well be.

00:03:05.940 No, it is like 65% girls. 0.98

00:03:07.860 No dudes at UNC?

00:03:08.880 Well, the dudes are just like the fop, the iconic stereotype of the foppish Southern frat boy types.

00:03:15.900 Yeah.

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. 1.00

00:03:24.700 And it was like, oh, this is great. 1.00

00:03:27.020 And so we had a great time.

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.

00:03:36.060 Like this is to work in a firm.

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.

00:03:48.720 And so I was essentially blacklisted.

00:03:50.760 How'd you get fired?

00:03:51.040 Oh, uh, it's impossible to get fired.

00:03:54.520 And I did it.

00:03:55.080 I did it in three weeks.

00:03:56.200 Basically, I was an unguided missile, man.

00:03:59.320 I was drunk at all the firm events.

00:04:01.800 I did all that stuff.

00:04:02.500 That actually wasn't the problem.

00:04:03.840 The, the, the thing I did that, that caused them to fire me.

00:04:06.940 And honestly, I'm not even mad at them.

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. 1.00

00:04:18.700 She was married.

00:04:19.900 Not that that meant anything to me at the time.

00:04:22.560 Um, or to female lawyers, by the way. 1.00

00:04:24.440 Well, not to her.

00:04:25.180 I don't know, but I'm not going to say all the rest.

00:04:26.740 You're not going to generalize?

00:04:27.340 Let me do.

00:04:27.980 I'll, I'll, I'll handle the generalization here.

00:04:30.080 To her, it didn't obviously mean anything.

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. 0.92

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.

00:04:52.880 Yeah, you can't.

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.

00:04:59.240 That is a violation of ethics.

00:05:00.800 And it's intelligence.

00:05:01.960 Like, what's wrong with you? 1.00

00:05:03.160 Why are you so dumb? 1.00

00:05:04.200 There's a way to play this game and you're doing it totally wrong. 1.00

00:05:07.060 And I was.

00:05:07.960 And so, um, I, then I, okay.

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.

00:05:27.040 I sent it to my friends.

00:05:28.060 What was the scene?

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 1.00

00:05:39.400 price was high.

00:05:39.980 I'm like, stop bidding.

00:05:40.860 I can't afford this.

00:05:41.780 And I need this to stay at the firm.

00:05:43.660 And like, it was like kind of like a funny, like, uh, it was like, you know, like the funny

00:05:48.060 drunken person at a corporate event.

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.

00:05:54.700 Right.

00:05:54.780 Exactly.

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

00:06:03.340 my friends, uh, like on a Tuesday.

00:06:05.760 And then like on Wednesday I was fired.

00:06:08.660 They didn't wait till Friday on a Wednesday.

00:06:11.980 Right. 1.00

00:06:12.300 And so of course my friends are assholes. 1.00

00:06:14.840 And so they sent that to all their friends and then it like went out from there. 0.99

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

00:06:27.540 legends that ended up turning it in.

00:06:29.320 And was your plan at that point to spend your life in big law?

00:06:32.280 Yeah, it was.

00:06:33.540 Uh, it really was.

00:06:34.840 I hate to say it.

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

00:06:46.400 law.

00:06:46.820 Like, and I was that type of dude.

00:06:48.520 I had that.

00:06:49.220 Seeking soul death.

00:06:50.500 No, I, I was seeking status without merit, which is what everyone in those professions

00:06:56.180 is doing.

00:06:56.600 Right.

00:06:57.120 And that's just that, and I, you could not have convinced me that it was not a viable, 0.97

00:07:03.220 or valuable path for my soul to go make a bunch of money for bullshit, which is what 0.98

00:07:09.680 you do in those professions. 0.99

00:07:11.060 And, um, and I bought it.

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

00:07:19.840 the, whatever you want to call it.

00:07:21.300 The drunk at the work event part.

00:07:23.140 Who clearly did not want that.

00:07:25.280 There was a part of me, you know, like, like some people, you know, like you'll be mass

00:07:28.940 murderers who want to get caught.

00:07:30.420 Of course. 0.98

00:07:31.140 Well, I was, I wanted to get kicked. 0.95

00:07:33.640 I didn't have the truth.

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

00:07:54.660 of response did you get?

00:07:56.860 Um, they almost didn't let me back, come back from my senior year or my third year at Duke.

00:08:02.200 No.

00:08:02.740 Yeah.

00:08:03.080 Like the, the, the, it got back to Duke.

00:08:05.920 Oh, it got everyone.

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

00:08:12.080 defender.

00:08:12.560 Like there was no, I'm serious.

00:08:14.700 No, no one was going to.

00:08:16.960 Not that low.

00:08:17.960 A divorce attorney.

00:08:19.200 Maybe Jack.

00:08:19.900 I might've been able to be a Jack officer.

00:08:21.700 That would have been it.

00:08:22.820 Wend up like David French.

00:08:25.060 Hilarious.

00:08:25.800 Um, sorry.

00:08:27.580 That's so, I love legal jokes.

00:08:29.960 Um, so Duke was mad.

00:08:31.840 So at this point do you realize like.

00:08:33.740 The only reason she let me come back and finish my third year.

00:08:38.080 I'm not really sure.

00:08:39.400 Speaking of she generally.

00:08:40.300 No, no, no.

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 1.00

00:08:50.840 me back was because I promised not to walk at graduation.

00:08:54.520 Like I was going to graduate.

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.

00:09:05.740 I just wanted to finish for two reasons.

00:09:08.420 One is cause I didn't want to quit and not have my degree.

00:09:11.420 Right.

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.

00:09:19.340 I want to, I have the JD, which I do.

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.

00:09:28.160 Mine were in law school.

00:09:28.880 Had you been in a fraternity in college?

00:09:30.400 No, no.

00:09:32.020 It's pretty funny.

00:09:33.000 Yeah.

00:09:33.520 I know.

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?

00:09:43.220 Like they're going to.

00:09:43.860 They know about genres anyway.

00:09:45.820 They're going to get literally everything wrong.

00:09:47.420 Of course they are.

00:09:48.060 Yeah.

00:09:48.480 So what did you decide to do with your life at this point?

00:09:51.120 I mean, you're, you're kind of out of options.

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

00:10:05.580 that's what I was doing.

00:10:06.640 So I was in like this tough situation.

00:10:08.900 My dad owned, uh, some restaurants in Florida.

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. 0.54

00:10:26.320 They are the soulless, easy coward path. 0.74

00:10:28.900 Yes. 0.97

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.

00:10:49.420 So I, I kind of went that path.

00:10:50.940 And then, um, I got fired from the family business in like six months.

00:10:55.380 It took me six months instead of three weeks.

00:10:57.000 How'd you get fired from the family business?

00:10:59.280 Oh, that's a long story.

00:11:00.720 Basically, um, I was good at this.

00:11:03.020 Now I was good because it's restaurant business, right?

00:11:05.080 And I'm smart and outgoing.

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.

00:11:13.300 And so, uh, I was good at it.

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. 0.99

00:11:26.400 And so I got in and realized, oh, there's all kinds of people here who suck, who are stealing 0.95

00:11:30.500 from him, who, uh, we, there's all these things we could be doing better. 0.97

00:11:34.700 I mean, really basic stuff.

00:11:35.920 Like, why are we ordering from this company?

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. 0.98

00:11:52.400 And so I essentially, but like a fool, just like I, I, you know, didn't sleep with a partner 0.99

00:11:57.280 and told everyone I went in, recognize these people were clowns and was like, oh, well, 0.98

00:12:02.480 this is my dad and my name's on the door. 0.88

00:12:04.120 So clearly the fact that I'm right is more than enough. 0.97

00:12:07.860 I, like, I told them that they sucked and that I was going to get them fired. 0.96

00:12:11.640 And, you know, they were smart enough and knew my dad well enough. 0.97

00:12:15.020 They rallied kind of the troops and got enough evidence against me that, that, uh, my dad

00:12:19.980 picked them over me and I got fired.

00:12:22.980 Amazing.

00:12:23.660 So now you're a graduate of two of the most prestigious schools in the country, but you're

00:12:27.380 unemployed.

00:12:28.100 You've washed out of.

00:12:29.240 And unemployable.

00:12:30.700 So what do you do?

00:12:32.340 Man, I was not in a good spot.

00:12:34.600 Um, it was, it was a hard time for me.

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. 0.62

00:12:46.800 Like I was a loser in my twenties, early twenties. 0.66

00:12:49.640 And then I was at the same time, I was writing emails to my friends from law school about all, 0.91

00:12:53.980 you know, living in South Florida, which, uh, is a soulless, horrible place.

00:12:57.400 Cause I don't do drugs and I'm not old.

00:12:59.860 So there was no social niche for me in South Florida.

00:13:02.800 Right.

00:13:03.040 Cause if you do Coke and you go to clubs, right.

00:13:05.960 South Florida is great.

00:13:06.840 And if you're like 70 and, you know, play golf in the Boca country club, then it's great,

00:13:11.480 but there's nothing else.

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

00:13:25.920 at real clear politics?

00:13:27.420 Okay.

00:13:27.820 So Sean went to law school with me and is a good friend of mine.

00:13:31.120 He's a great dude.

00:13:32.020 And he actually called me up and he was getting the emails and he's like, dude, listen, you're

00:13:37.580 not good at law.

00:13:38.600 You're not good at business clearly, but these emails are the funniest things I've ever read.

00:13:42.360 You need to go be a writer. 1.00

00:13:43.660 And I was like, what the, like, what kind of bitch shit is this? 1.00

00:13:46.940 What are you talking about, Sean? 1.00

00:13:48.200 This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. 1.00

00:13:50.980 And he's like, well, dude, look at, look at the evidence. 1.00

00:13:54.540 Right.

00:13:55.180 And so, um, what a wise piece of advice that it was Sean that gave it to me.

00:14:00.180 I I'm a writer because of Sean Trendy truly.

00:14:03.320 Like, yes, it is a hundred percent true.

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.

00:14:37.300 Cause you're old enough to remember this.

00:14:38.600 Yeah.

00:14:38.820 Very well.

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.

00:14:48.700 Right.

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.

00:15:00.820 You should never write even an email again.

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.

00:15:20.140 Remember early in internet email chains?

00:15:22.120 Yeah.

00:15:22.440 Okay.

00:15:22.780 So I was getting my own emails forwarded back to me from people in other social circles

00:15:26.660 who didn't know I had written them.

00:15:28.380 Be like, dude, you should read this.

00:15:29.560 This is so funny.

00:15:30.320 And I'm like, all right, so clearly I'm good at this.

00:15:32.440 Like Sean was right.

00:15:33.780 These are funny to people who aren't friends.

00:15:36.900 I'm like, all right.

00:15:38.060 I mean, it is arrogant to think this, but all these people in publishing are wrong.

00:15:41.440 Now, now I've, now I know publishing.

00:15:43.200 I'm like, of course they're all wrong. 1.00

00:15:44.280 They're all idiots. 1.00

00:15:44.920 Like pretty much everyone in publishing is there because they're a failed, a failed 1.00

00:15:48.600 writer.

00:15:49.180 It's not literally everyone, but almost, I didn't know that at the time, but I was

00:15:53.480 like, all right, well, I'm not good.

00:15:54.860 They're not going to publish me.

00:15:56.500 But then the internet was a thing at the time.

00:15:58.780 This is 2002.

00:15:59.560 And so I had to learn to program HTML.

00:16:02.520 I put up a site on GeoCities.

00:16:04.520 If you remember GeoCities.

00:16:06.520 And it's like a, I got featured on like college humor and a few other, like those humor blogs

00:16:11.520 that were really, really early.

00:16:12.900 And it blew up.

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

00:16:29.200 do your, write your books.

00:16:30.360 And then that became, I hope they serve beer in hell.

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00:17:08.320 That's Tucker, F-O-R, Hillsdale.com.

00:17:13.600 Tucker says it best.

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00:17:59.100 I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition Act.

00:18:05.880 Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition.

00:18:07.760 Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

00:18:09.840 www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com

00:18:13.000 How many books did you write?

00:18:17.500 How many did you sell?

00:18:18.560 I wrote four fratire books.

00:18:21.140 One, I kind of gave away for free, so it didn't happen.

00:18:23.980 But three, like, were published.

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.

00:18:32.140 Yeah.

00:18:32.540 That's incredible.

00:18:33.340 It was a lot.

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.

00:18:49.820 I believe that.

00:18:50.760 Like, tens of thousands.

00:18:51.820 So when, why'd you, why'd you stop?

00:18:53.840 And when did you stop? 0.57

00:18:54.880 Because my, my books were my stories about doing all the dumb stuff guys, and a lot of 0.72

00:18:59.820 women also do in their 20s. 0.87

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

00:19:20.140 fun when you're at a certain stage in life.

00:19:22.400 And I was way past that stage of life.

00:19:24.700 And it was becoming tedious and tiresome.

00:19:28.020 And the cost of that lifestyle was really, not just the physical cost, but the emotional

00:19:32.680 cost was catching up to me.

00:19:35.120 And honestly, man, like, like everyone who goes through, some people go through that phase

00:19:39.460 for a week and some do it for a decade.

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

00:19:52.700 a certain phase, right?

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. 1.00

00:20:10.420 Like, fuck you, I'm a whole person. 1.00

00:20:12.100 And I, but that was my own immaturity. 1.00

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.

00:20:28.220 Right.

00:20:28.880 Yeah.

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

00:20:38.180 them? 0.99

00:20:39.100 Like, they, even the dumb, immature ones, like the smart, mature ones got it. 1.00

00:20:43.660 They read the books out. 1.00

00:20:44.340 They were funny.

00:20:44.920 Didn't expect me to be.

00:20:46.080 But that was 20%, right?

00:20:47.640 Most people, like, they would come up and, you know, they have this multi-year relationship

00:20:52.000 with me that has nothing to do with me, right?

00:20:53.960 It's totally unilateral.

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,

00:21:09.500 I just need to move on with my life.

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

00:21:18.440 stuff, talk about it anymore.

00:21:21.080 Like, I've done with this part of my life.

00:21:23.360 And then that kind of did set me free.

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

00:21:38.100 Max.

00:21:38.580 And I'm like, why aren't you, you know, drunk, screaming curses at people laying under a

00:21:43.720 table?

00:21:43.980 And I'm like, it's 11 a.m. on a Thursday.

00:21:46.960 Like, what is wrong with you, dude?

00:21:49.740 Even now, to this day, a lot of people, their impression of me, even after they meet me,

00:21:57.840 is still...

00:21:58.700 How did you find a wife?

00:22:00.060 Based on that.

00:22:01.680 I mean, so you've, like, laid bare your personal life.

00:22:04.480 Yeah.

00:22:04.940 Yeah.

00:22:05.220 And you've sold four and a half million copies of books about hooking up with various women.

00:22:10.460 Right.

00:22:10.700 I told the truth about things most people don't ever tell the truth about.

00:22:13.020 For sure.

00:22:13.440 Yes.

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.

00:22:25.840 Yeah.

00:22:26.860 Because a lot of the...

00:22:28.120 I mean, I was with a lot of women in that period.

00:22:30.980 I was single.

00:22:31.880 I was into women. 1.00

00:22:33.380 I wrote about it.

00:22:34.620 And then women who were at that stage, you know, the same stage as me, came to me.

00:22:38.860 And so there were a lot.

00:22:40.040 And I realized, man, there's so much.

00:22:45.800 The big thing, man, was I realized I needed a woman who was very smart, who was very sweet

00:22:53.320 and empathic.

00:22:54.140 But most importantly, I need a woman who really had her own thing in life, who really thought 0.99

00:23:00.960 for herself, who really was her own person.

00:23:04.360 Right?

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. 1.00

00:23:17.060 Yeah.

00:23:17.260 Right?

00:23:17.800 I would have been totally cool with that.

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

00:23:26.060 married.

00:23:26.820 I would have been so miserable with that. 0.97

00:23:29.260 I would have hated that.

00:23:30.200 I would have been divorced within five, six years.

00:23:32.440 I realized I needed a partner.

00:23:35.620 And then I started to understand what a partner actually would look like for me at that point.

00:23:40.480 That's the crazy thing, man.

00:23:42.760 I think I had to go through whatever, hundreds or thousands of women to realize how lonely 0.98

00:23:48.240 I was and how lonely that life is after a while.

00:23:51.760 Yeah.

00:23:51.860 You know, it's the metaphor I always use is imagine that like, because dudes don't get

00:23:56.140 this, man.

00:23:56.560 They don't understand.

00:23:57.400 Women do. 1.00

00:23:57.960 Most women understand what I mean when I talk about this, because most guys have to go their

00:24:04.940 whole life.

00:24:05.760 It doesn't matter how good looking you are, how smart or how rich you are.

00:24:09.100 You have to work for women. 1.00

00:24:10.520 You have to have game.

00:24:11.400 You have to talk to them.

00:24:13.160 You have to be good in some way, at least connecting with a woman. 0.54

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. 1.00

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

00:24:41.280 have food but never enough.

00:24:43.240 And then all of a sudden you get picked up off of that desert island and you get moved

00:24:46.820 into a Chinese buffet.

00:24:48.120 And you live at the Chinese buffet.

00:24:49.720 And you're going to gorge yourself for a while or the best Vegas buffet you can ever

00:24:54.360 Yeah, Golden Corral forever.

00:24:55.780 Right.

00:24:56.100 You're going to gorge yourself for a while.

00:24:57.940 In fact, you're going to gorge yourself until you throw up a few times and then you're going

00:25:00.900 to keep gorging yourself.

00:25:02.340 And that was what my life was like.

00:25:04.360 I would like because women are always a scarcity for you as a dude. 1.00

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. 0.98

00:25:15.580 But for women, penis is an abundance from the time that they probably pre-puberty for a 1.00

00:25:22.400 lot of them, right? 0.99

00:25:23.060 Like there's always dudes around, you know?

00:25:25.380 Like and so women can kind of understand that. 1.00

00:25:27.620 It was, I didn't understand that at all.

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,

00:25:37.440 like all abundance, becomes sickening.

00:25:39.680 And you have to kind of.

00:25:40.560 Like all abundance.

00:25:41.420 That's right.

00:25:41.740 Right.

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.

00:25:48.100 Here's what I want.

00:25:49.140 Let me figure out what that is.

00:25:50.580 So in a lot of ways, the best, it's funny, people will say, like your intro is really

00:25:55.700 good.

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.

00:26:12.520 I needed that.

00:26:13.240 It's just interesting that you had all the women you wanted, but you just wanted one 1.00

00:26:17.540 in the end.

00:26:18.180 Eventually, yes.

00:26:19.540 Don't get me wrong.

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 1.00

00:26:30.800 way to fill the hole of loneliness.

00:26:32.800 Yes, that's right.

00:26:33.780 For a while.

00:26:34.560 I thought it worked, but it doesn't work long time.

00:26:36.560 No, it doesn't work.

00:26:37.440 Yeah.

00:26:37.540 I mean, abundance doesn't work.

00:26:39.320 But Tucker, you could not have convinced me of that with any words when I was 29.

00:26:44.140 Right.

00:26:44.420 Well, I would have, there's no, it's an age thing.

00:26:47.140 No, it's totally right.

00:26:48.300 I've, I've arrived at the same conclusion.

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

00:26:55.900 basically your job.

00:26:57.100 Yeah.

00:26:57.500 I sold my company and it's all I do now.

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.

00:27:13.060 I, I discovered this path as I walked it.

00:27:16.000 Right.

00:27:16.300 So, so after I retired from writing, uh, you know, the stories of drinking and hooking

00:27:20.400 up, I retired from frat tire.

00:27:21.940 Um, what ended up happening is I was still a really well-known author and a lot of people

00:27:26.380 came to me to help them write their books.

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

00:27:43.420 2000 books.

00:27:44.400 And so we were kind of the premier, like independent ghostwriting publishing firm.

00:27:49.440 Right.

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

00:28:10.160 different things.

00:28:10.660 Oh, I found out.

00:28:11.940 Yeah.

00:28:12.100 Totally different things.

00:28:13.220 Yes.

00:28:13.820 And I did not understand that.

00:28:14.980 I only do one of those things, not the other.

00:28:16.660 Yeah.

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,

00:28:33.060 big valuations, expansion, all this stuff.

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.

00:29:05.900 Not all of them.

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

00:29:12.740 entrepreneurship, I, um, I didn't love it.

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?

00:29:40.820 I'm just stealing from my children.

00:29:42.800 I'm stealing my father from their children.

00:29:45.560 Um, or I've seen my children's father from them, which is me.

00:29:49.440 And, um, I decided I wasn't going to do that.

00:29:53.080 Like that 200 million or a billion dollars is not worth that.

00:29:57.320 20 million isn't even worth it.

00:29:58.980 It's not worth it.

00:29:59.940 But most people have this realization to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to spend

00:30:03.420 a year and sail to New Zealand.

00:30:05.220 Right.

00:30:05.400 But you decided to buy a homestead in Texas and grow your own food, raise your own food.

00:30:12.680 Yeah.

00:30:12.880 Why?

00:30:13.960 Well, um, there were a couple of reasons.

00:30:16.400 So, uh, you were around 2020 and 2021.

00:30:19.540 Yes.

00:30:20.160 So I don't have to describe all that, but, um.

00:30:22.440 Well, how did it affect you?

00:30:23.460 I mean, you weren't working in politics, right?

00:30:25.080 Yeah, no, no, no, no.

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

00:30:30.320 how the world worked.

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

00:30:39.140 is.

00:30:39.780 And, and I saw, I mean, I saw evil Hollywood was long before the me too stuff. 0.97

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

00:30:54.060 and all this.

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.

00:31:00.020 That was a public health emergency.

00:31:02.160 Of course it was.

00:31:03.420 Right.

00:31:03.840 Of course.

00:31:04.440 And, and.

00:31:04.820 Did you think that for a moment?

00:31:06.480 Did you think any of this was just like, what did you.

00:31:08.620 Yeah.

00:31:08.840 So, uh.

00:31:09.720 You grew up in this country.

00:31:10.760 Like, tell us what you thought.

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.

00:31:25.820 I was probably fooled three to six weeks.

00:31:28.080 Yeah, me too.

00:31:28.720 Right.

00:31:29.000 This scary, this might be legit.

00:31:30.680 This might be an actual epidemic, a pandemic.

00:31:33.940 This might be like whatever.

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.

00:31:47.340 I was totally for that.

00:31:48.580 But then by mid April, I'm like, hold on.

00:31:51.160 Like nothing about this seems right.

00:31:53.400 And by May, I'm like, oh, well, this is a fraud.

00:31:55.560 Like, this is clearly 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

00:32:08.400 there's fire in the background.

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?

00:32:18.580 Obviously, of course.

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.

00:32:28.460 Right.

00:32:28.920 And that's when I was like, okay, okay. 1.00

00:32:30.400 So this is, this is utter, total bullshit. 0.99

00:32:34.900 And so then my, my wife and I had always talked about getting on land. 0.99

00:32:38.500 We'd always wanted to.

00:32:39.400 Hold on.

00:32:39.740 Let me ask you to pause.

00:32:40.640 What did you conclude from that?

00:32:41.920 So it was, obviously, this was fraudulent.

00:32:44.520 This was a total fraud.

00:32:45.620 But like, why?

00:32:48.200 Well, see, I mean, I went to the, you know, all the big schools.

00:32:52.800 Like I knew, I, woke wasn't a shock to me.

00:32:56.140 I saw that coming for years.

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.

00:33:05.160 No, I saw it coming.

00:33:06.100 I kept it out of scribe for as long as I was there.

00:33:08.860 I was able to keep it out.

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.

00:33:26.200 And those people will go elsewhere.

00:33:28.180 Because they're incompetent.

00:33:29.600 Not necessarily.

00:33:30.800 Some of them are smart and capable.

00:33:32.680 It's that the, the woke mind virus is about placing your response, placing blame for your

00:33:39.220 life on other people.

00:33:40.720 So if everything is about first about responsibility and accountability, those people will not come

00:33:46.220 to your organization.

00:33:47.180 And so I was able to kind of shelter my world from that.

00:33:50.780 No, it works.

00:33:51.500 It works beautifully.

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. 0.99

00:34:07.100 And these people are fools. 0.98

00:34:08.700 I didn't realize how corrupt, how truly catastrophically corrupt government was until January 6th of 2021. 0.99

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.

00:34:46.000 Then January 21st happened.

00:34:48.200 And in real time...

00:34:48.920 January 6th.

00:34:49.640 Sorry, January 6th.

00:34:50.640 January 6th of 2021.

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.

00:34:58.720 The Capitol Police were letting people in. 0.95

00:35:00.600 And most of these people were just drunken buffoons. 0.62

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. 0.93

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.

00:35:30.960 I don't think it fell at that moment.

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.

00:35:45.020 And it was something totally else.

00:35:47.080 Like, not, media is always wrong.

00:35:50.600 But just because they're wrong doesn't mean the opposite's true.

00:35:53.740 Right?

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.

00:36:10.580 Some form of totalitarianism.

00:36:12.240 A police state.

00:36:12.620 And I don't, all the evidence was there.

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. 0.83

00:36:23.840 And then all the other facts, like, oh shit, I should, I could have seen this a long time ago. 0.94

00:36:28.740 And I waited. 0.99

00:36:29.860 It was like that for me.

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.

00:36:40.760 Yeah.

00:36:40.960 Right?

00:36:41.260 You can make an argument several times in the 18th century, definitely during the Civil War.

00:36:45.820 Lots of times in the 20th century.

00:36:47.660 Yeah, like when they murdered the president.

00:36:49.740 Yeah.

00:36:50.500 Lots of times.

00:36:52.400 JFK.

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.

00:37:11.580 And I was like, oh man.

00:37:14.320 And then once I got that, then I'm like, oh, now everything makes sense.

00:37:18.100 This is empire collapse.

00:37:19.420 And I understand empire collapse pretty well.

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.

00:37:50.100 Less free.

00:37:50.800 Very different.

00:37:52.920 Yeah.

00:37:53.240 Yeah.

00:37:53.620 It was empire collapse.

00:37:54.780 And I'm like, this is exactly what's going on.

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?

00:38:19.040 Like, that's kind of the best case scenario.

00:38:20.820 It was just more of what we saw in 2020.

00:38:23.300 And so I kind of dove deep into the sort of prepper world.

00:38:29.260 Most of it's nonsense. 0.99

00:38:31.000 Most of it are clowns. 1.00

00:38:32.200 I don't know what they're talking about. 0.98

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?

00:38:42.700 January 1st, 2021.

00:38:45.220 Is that right?

00:38:46.100 So that's not adequate.

00:38:47.620 Explain why that's not adequate.

00:38:49.080 Because, okay, when empire collapses, the thing that matters most is community.

00:38:54.920 Who are you around?

00:38:57.280 What skills do they have?

00:38:58.880 What skills do you have?

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.

00:39:25.300 And like, it's just nonsense.

00:39:26.320 It's not really thought out.

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. 0.54

00:39:57.940 And this is our area.

00:39:59.100 And those became, I mean, you can name them.

00:40:01.460 And no visigoths allowed.

00:40:03.600 No chaos.

00:40:05.200 Lots of parts of Gaul thrive for thousands of years.

00:40:08.800 Hundreds, if not thousands of years after.

00:40:11.280 Because they had local rule, all the sorts of things that work.

00:40:15.400 Now, the Roman Empire fell.

00:40:17.200 But for a lot of people, in the aftermath of that, did really well.

00:40:22.960 If they had great community, right?

00:40:24.940 Same with Mongolia.

00:40:25.920 Same with, in a lot of ways, the British Empire.

00:40:28.540 The British Empire was a little different.

00:40:29.680 It was a more modern 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?

00:40:41.120 How do we build a 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.

00:40:59.240 And we ended up picking Dripping Springs.

00:41:03.360 There's a lot of, like, kind of towns in Texas that are doing things like this.

00:41:09.020 Dripping's not the only one.

00:41:10.060 And it's the one that we like the best for a couple different reasons.

00:41:13.600 So, we bought a homestead.

00:41:15.960 Actually, we bought a place.

00:41:17.160 A beautiful ranch was not a homestead.

00:41:18.900 We've had to convert it to a homestead.

00:41:20.860 But whatever.

00:41:21.480 And then we started a school.

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?

00:41:40.400 I didn't really understand land.

00:41:42.060 I bought a place that this older guy, this boomer, had kind of carved out of nothing.

00:41:48.280 And it was beautiful.

00:41:49.780 Beautiful oak trees and rolling pasture.

00:41:52.980 But it was dead.

00:41:54.440 Like, I mean, literally dead.

00:41:56.060 The soil was dead.

00:41:57.540 Everything was dead.

00:41:58.420 Because the way he dealt with the land was very 20th century kind of mentality.

00:42:03.420 It was pesticides kill the bugs. 0.57

00:42:06.960 Herbicides kill the weeds.

00:42:08.840 Fertilizer raises the grass.

00:42:11.220 Like, that doesn't really work well.

00:42:13.680 It works.

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.

00:42:36.280 You know, everything was irrigated.

00:42:37.960 It was, he had St. Augustine grass, which requires, like, 130 inches of rain a year.

00:42:42.480 In Texas, right?

00:42:43.980 Like, so.

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

00:43:05.960 inches of rain a year.

00:43:07.660 And, you know, like, and now we have, like, it's not where it's going to be in three,

00:43:12.320 four, five years, but it's good, man.

00:43:13.980 We've got a big flock of sheep, bees.

00:43:17.660 We have meat chickens, egg chickens.

00:43:20.560 You know, like, we have, you know, garden.

00:43:23.980 We're starting to put in all kinds of stuff.

00:43:25.720 And so, we're totally independent water, totally independent meat, totally independent.

00:43:30.760 We can be totally independent power.

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

00:43:47.020 or very similar.

00:43:47.860 They have similar values, similar approach to the world.

00:43:52.960 You know, that's why we started.

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.

00:44:02.980 Acton, Montessori, public school.

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.

00:44:21.680 It's like a renaissance style, right?

00:44:23.820 Where it kind of tries to help the whole child.

00:44:25.860 Help create 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

00:44:38.920 class for the Waldorf.

00:44:40.820 Like, there just aren't kids.

00:44:41.940 He doesn't have a class there.

00:44:42.800 But the other two are Waldorf.

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?

00:44:51.980 Oh, never went into public schools.

00:44:54.000 My man, I don't hate my kids.

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,

00:45:08.060 actually.

00:45:08.780 Here he is.

00:45:09.780 Rebecca put a teacher's creed into words when she said, there's no such thing as someone 0.94

00:45:14.720 else's child.

00:45:16.580 No such thing as someone else's child.

00:45:19.360 Our nation's children are all our children.

00:45:21.860 So, your kids are really his kids.

00:45:23.660 He owns your kids.

00:45:24.860 It's like when people say, you know, I'm coming to take your guns.

00:45:28.160 It's like, well, stack up.

00:45:29.460 Stack up and come get them.

00:45:30.820 Same with kids.

00:45:31.680 No, those are my kids.

00:45:33.000 And those children are mine and my wife's.

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

00:45:52.260 is to steward them.

00:45:53.520 Totally agree.

00:45:54.560 Totally on board.

00:45:55.500 Yes.

00:45:55.800 In no way, shape, or form do I think my kids should live their lives based on what I want.

00:46:00.900 They should live it on what they want.

00:46:02.560 Totally on board.

00:46:03.240 And I see my job is to help them become full people and find the lives they want.

00:46:08.320 I don't think that's what he means.

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.

00:46:22.940 That is...

00:46:23.440 And you disagree with that.

00:46:26.860 Disagreement's not strong enough.

00:46:28.180 It's not.

00:46:28.900 It's not a strong enough term.

00:46:30.260 Yeah.

00:46:30.640 Like, there's just no chance that's going to exist in my world.

00:46:35.760 Yeah.

00:46:36.700 Just not.

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

00:46:53.180 of the state just kind of come in.

00:46:54.640 Do whatever they want to their kids. 0.98

00:46:56.900 Sexualize their kids. 1.00

00:46:58.460 Basically, like, kiddie porn shit with their kids. 1.00

00:47:00.580 And they allow it. 1.00

00:47:02.480 Why?

00:47:05.200 Man, it's a good question.

00:47:06.560 I don't know.

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.

00:47:21.640 And they went to public schools.

00:47:23.880 And they were raised.

00:47:24.740 Public schools are designed to create obedient employees.

00:47:31.280 Yes.

00:47:31.680 Like, that's the most charitable sort of interpretation.

00:47:36.360 It maintains the surf class.

00:47:37.820 That's the point.

00:47:38.220 It does.

00:47:38.760 That is.

00:47:39.340 And I'm not saying this.

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.

00:47:49.560 The literal stated goal.

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

00:48:10.720 woman or some faceless bureaucratic entity. 0.96

00:48:13.320 No.

00:48:14.220 And so, if someone was raised by people who went to public school who were just employees

00:48:20.340 and that's who they are, it's hard.

00:48:24.020 I mean this, like, not judgmentally.

00:48:26.500 I can imagine it'd be really hard for that person to understand, well, this is where I

00:48:30.720 went.

00:48:31.040 This was good enough for me.

00:48:32.940 They're supposed to be experts.

00:48:34.280 Why wouldn't they know better, you know?

00:48:37.280 I can understand how a lot of people would get to that spot. 0.99

00:48:41.920 Now, the good news is all this nonsense lunacy with trans and other crap in schools, sexualizing 1.00

00:48:49.760 little children, is a lot of people starting to wake up and realize what, I mean, I knew 0.99

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

00:49:04.300 when I was there.

00:49:05.360 My parents weren't very good, but they weirdly, they gave me a gift.

00:49:09.520 They weren't, they were not good parents.

00:49:10.980 They, they weren't bad people.

00:49:12.760 They were just bad parents.

00:49:14.480 And, but, but their bad parenting gave me a gift.

00:49:16.960 They didn't pretend that they cared.

00:49:20.120 Like, they didn't mix a lot of, seriously.

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.

00:49:28.400 No, it was.

00:49:28.980 My parents didn't pretend they cared.

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.

00:49:42.200 And so, like, I never mixed love and abuse.

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.

00:49:51.480 Yeah.

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

00:50:00.380 answers.

00:50:01.000 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

00:50:05.640 to see the reality.

00:50:07.560 Yeah.

00:50:08.060 I mean, it's true.

00:50:09.240 I just love your attitude about your childhood.

00:50:10.800 That's a wonderful attitude to have.

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.

00:50:18.600 I wasn't always like that.

00:50:20.260 I was angry for a while.

00:50:21.780 It's pointless to be mad about the past.

00:50:23.440 Anger can serve a purpose for a period.

00:50:26.660 If it gets you out of shame or other sort of essentially anti-life emotions, anger is

00:50:32.660 a powerful, motivating emotion.

00:50:34.200 But if you stay stuck there, it's not good.

00:50:36.680 I was stuck there for a while.

00:50:37.340 Is your wife totally on board with these attitudes?

00:50:40.360 100%.

00:50:40.720 Oh, yeah.

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

00:51:05.060 went different.

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

00:51:15.940 family.

00:51:16.500 What's here now?

00:51:18.360 So what do you think?

00:51:19.080 And then what might come?

00:51:20.540 What do you think might come?

00:51:22.120 Like, what does that look like?

00:51:23.180 I have no idea, right?

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.

00:51:31.600 You can't prevent everything, right?

00:51:32.900 Like, if an asteroid hits, you know, Florida, nothing I'm doing is probably going to make

00:51:39.360 any difference, right?

00:51:40.300 Like, it's 95% of people are going to die.

00:51:43.180 It's going to be horrible.

00:51:44.060 It's going to be Armageddon.

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

00:52:08.280 empire, which I think we are.

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.

00:52:45.000 Culturally, a major shock.

00:52:47.000 Maybe a lot of the rest of the world isn't.

00:52:48.820 We are.

00:52:49.720 Now, on top of that, unfortunately and sadly, excuse me, I think World War III, whatever you

00:52:55.800 want to call it, is inevitable.

00:52:56.980 Um, I, I think the U.S., without going too deep in this rabbit hole, the U.S. debt has

00:53:04.360 gotten to the point where a war is necessary.

00:53:08.260 Um, I mean, it's all, when empires rack up too much debt, the only thing left for them

00:53:14.200 to do to save it usually is war.

00:53:16.080 And then that doesn't save it, that, that goes down.

00:53:18.560 Accelerates its decline.

00:53:20.040 Right, exactly.

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

00:53:34.540 zero, we'd be in a very different situation.

00:53:36.520 But they didn't.

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

00:54:00.680 from that.

00:54:01.240 So, um, I don't know the details.

00:54:03.360 No one does.

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

00:54:13.420 and my community can endure that.

00:54:15.560 Cause I don't think it's going to last forever.

00:54:18.540 Disasters and emergencies don't last forever.

00:54:20.640 There's another side.

00:54:21.920 I actually think America is really well set up to come out the other end of that in a really

00:54:27.620 positive place.

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

00:54:39.040 for war with Iran.

00:54:40.280 Yes.

00:54:40.980 Which apparently doesn't yet have nuclear weapons.

00:54:43.220 Yeah.

00:54:43.720 We do.

00:54:44.180 Israel does. 0.92

00:54:45.140 The whole coalition arrayed against Iran has them.

00:54:47.520 They don't.

00:54:47.940 So how do they respond?

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.

00:54:58.020 Totally possible.

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

00:55:14.960 like the Amish.

00:55:17.600 First off, off grid doesn't exist.

00:55:19.780 Even the Amish aren't off grid.

00:55:21.240 If you think about it, like they don't mind their own ore and they don't smelt it.

00:55:26.820 Right.

00:55:27.140 So not, you know, disparaging the Amish.

00:55:30.100 Like, believe me, I've like been, man, these dudes had some stuff figured out.

00:55:32.880 I didn't realize.

00:55:33.340 You're pro-Amish for the record.

00:55:35.140 Maybe.

00:55:35.880 Pro certain things about Amish. 0.99

00:55:38.720 But no, I don't think off grid exists.

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.

00:55:50.700 That's nonsense.

00:55:51.420 I just want to make sure that there is a lot of coming political and social, there's a

00:55:57.640 lot of political and social people now.

00:55:59.840 It's already happening.

00:56:01.400 And I think it's going to get worse.

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 0.99

00:56:13.860 have things that, you know, like ancient men had like that's, if you want to do that,

00:56:18.800 cool.

00:56:19.360 I, I, I like electricity.

00:56:21.100 But you're not making your own bombs like you did.

00:56:22.920 Dude, I, I like electricity.

00:56:24.740 I like air conditioning.

00:56:25.480 I live in Texas.

00:56:26.300 I really like air conditioning.

00:56:27.760 It's pretty crucial for us.

00:56:29.260 I like modern conveniences.

00:56:31.260 I want to continue using those as much as possible.

00:56:33.920 And that makes sense.

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

00:56:46.960 you are deep in the consumerist mindset.

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.

00:57:04.980 Can you just flesh it out a little bit?

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

00:57:18.720 basically our, most of our parents were.

00:57:20.740 I, I, I want the house in the suburbs.

00:57:23.340 You know, I'm going to have these vacations.

00:57:25.400 I'm going to go to these places.

00:57:27.160 I'm going to have this rank in my society.

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.

00:57:44.000 Where's your status come from?

00:57:45.620 Where, you know, what matters, what car is cool or not, what clothes are cool or not.

00:57:49.180 That's a consumerist mindset, right?

00:57:52.580 I, of course I was, I'm American.

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.

00:58:07.160 They were kind of enemies for a long time.

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.

00:58:18.980 and realize we're all on the same side, right?

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

00:58:47.740 around them and the animals around them.

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.

00:58:55.620 I didn't at all.

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.

00:59:13.100 You can live in abstraction, right?

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.

00:59:26.120 Nothing.

00:59:27.080 Right.

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

00:59:54.860 way back to it, right?

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

01:00:32.100 above all things.

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.

01:00:40.940 Here's how life works.

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

01:00:57.160 rules, I don't want to go.

01:00:58.520 I don't want to do that.

01:00:59.600 And if it's not unsafe, right?

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.

01:01:23.760 It was just, ugh.

01:01:31.420 Give me an example.

01:01:32.540 When you say poisonous, what do you mean?

01:01:35.160 Food.

01:01:35.820 You want to talk about food?

01:01:36.940 Yeah.

01:01:37.120 All right, so virtually everything you find in a grocery store is at best unhealthy, at

01:01:46.040 worst, literal poison.

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.

01:02:10.900 It is so toxic and horrible for the body.

01:02:13.820 And it's in everything now.

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.

01:02:32.560 It's almost impossible.

01:02:33.980 Even at Whole Foods.

01:02:35.600 Unless you're on the outer rim, right?

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

01:02:50.240 has seed oils in it.

01:02:51.320 And it's poison.

01:02:52.240 It's absolute poison.

01:02:53.120 And do you feel the difference having gotten off it?

01:02:56.160 I mean, I'm 48 years old.

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?

01:03:07.400 Like, you look like you have an age.

01:03:08.660 I'm like, no, I've aged.

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 0.95

01:03:26.700 do push-ups or pull-ups, are close to death.

01:03:31.920 Like, metabolically, are pre-diabetes, right?

01:03:35.960 Are horribly unhealthy.

01:03:37.920 I don't even think I'm in that great of shape.

01:03:39.760 I just don't eat the poisonous stuff.

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

01:03:53.580 age is like in the 20s.

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.

01:04:01.180 I just eat healthy.

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.

01:04:17.820 It's as God intended.

01:04:19.860 What goes in it is grass and water or bugs if it's chickens.

01:04:26.880 That's it.

01:04:27.880 You mentioned God offhandedly.

01:04:31.360 Has your view of the eternal changed?

01:04:34.480 Radically.

01:04:34.840 Radically.

01:04:35.400 Really?

01:04:35.880 Radically.

01:04:36.420 How?

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

01:04:43.540 in God, this is going to be controversial.

01:04:45.860 I don't mean it bad. 1.00

01:04:46.640 I think you're stupid. 1.00

01:04:47.760 If you're not atheist at some point early on in your life, because you can, I don't believe 1.00

01:04:52.000 you can reason your way to God.

01:04:53.720 No.

01:04:53.940 Yeah, I know St. Augustine, whatever, I'm with you.

01:04:56.640 And, you know, Thomas More, okay, fine.

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.

01:05:08.460 Is that how you grew up?

01:05:09.720 I grew up actually in the Episcopal Church.

01:05:11.420 Like, I was an acolyte in the Episcopal.

01:05:12.620 But, you know, Episcopal Church is like a social club.

01:05:14.860 It's not, you don't.

01:05:15.600 Yes, I'm very familiar with it, yes.

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.

01:05:25.320 If you look at it reasonably and rationally.

01:05:28.300 And then, it was about four years ago.

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.

01:05:51.620 I don't know how you do that stuff.

01:05:52.660 People who take LSD and go to concerts.

01:05:54.220 I took LSD and cried and found God.

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.

01:06:17.200 It was LSD. 0.99

01:06:18.780 And I remember thinking, oh, fuck, the kingdom of heaven is within. 0.99

01:06:22.400 Now I know what Jesus was talking about. 1.00

01:06:24.420 But, like, and, you know, if you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him, like, oh, now I know 1.00

01:06:28.980 what Buddha was talking about. 0.97

01:06:29.720 And I have a really good friend who's Mormon.

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 1.00

01:06:39.120 world would be, I don't know what you're into, but I want to know more.

01:06:41.460 Yeah.

01:06:41.960 He's one of those guys.

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.

01:06:52.220 Like, it's an experience for you.

01:06:53.780 He goes, bro, I've been trying to tell you this for a decade. 1.00

01:06:56.540 And I'm like, I thought you were stupid. 1.00

01:06:58.660 I thought you were fooled. 1.00

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.

01:07:06.620 He's like, yeah.

01:07:07.960 And I did not understand religion.

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.

01:07:18.220 I don't really feel like I do now.

01:07:20.500 Psychedelics were important to open me up.

01:07:21.960 But now I think I can, I have enough of a connection to source, to God, whatever you

01:07:26.720 want to call it.

01:07:28.340 I'm very, very much a God guy, but not in the way most God guys are.

01:07:33.520 Like, not a religious way.

01:07:34.560 Like, I think religious dogma, some people need it and they like it and that's cool.

01:07:38.680 I don't need dogma.

01:07:39.740 I think dogma gets in the way.

01:07:41.100 And I think if you actually look at the teachings of Christ and definitely the teachings of

01:07:44.480 Buddha, they say the same thing.

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

01:07:54.160 fold path and all that to help you.

01:07:56.120 But then you shed it when it's time.

01:07:58.540 Is your wife in the same place you are?

01:08:01.160 I think pretty much, yeah.

01:08:02.060 How's it changed your life?

01:08:06.080 That's like a...

01:08:07.220 Because that's like a different way of seeing the world.

01:08:09.240 In every single way.

01:08:10.440 I got past consumerism because of this.

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.

01:08:22.720 I'm not saying my way is better or worse.

01:08:25.800 It's just the way.

01:08:26.920 Once I felt the oneness of all things, all of the frivolities and the nonsense and the

01:08:33.600 lies of the modern narrative fell away.

01:08:36.000 And then for me, it was like, oh, of course, being connected to land matters.

01:08:43.800 We're all energy.

01:08:45.060 We're all part of the same system.

01:08:46.540 I'm not different than this land or this chicken or this sheep.

01:08:50.040 Yeah, I'm a human and it's a chicken, right?

01:08:51.520 But we're all parts of the same system.

01:08:53.620 We're all parts of God.

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.

01:09:09.140 No, that's just not true.

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

01:09:20.720 to have these conversations.

01:09:21.700 They're very against religious faith.

01:09:24.000 Everything I just said is absolutely, completely, catastrophically counter to all things government

01:09:34.180 in all ways, shapes, and forms.

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

01:09:57.800 from organized power is you need me.

01:10:00.380 You need me.

01:10:01.460 That's right.

01:10:02.040 And the message from Jesus and from God, let's just stick with Christianity, is you don't need 1.00

01:10:07.500 them.

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.

01:10:33.820 Not to brag, I turned out to be right.

01:10:36.200 Tucker Max, thank you for spending all this time.

01:10:37.980 Yeah, thank you for having me, man.

01:10:39.380 I appreciate it.

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

01:10:55.520 hope you will.

The Tucker Carlson Show - May 03, 2024

Author Tucker Max left behind a wild life of partying to settle down on a Texas homestead with his wife and kids.

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