#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain

Oliver Anthony is singer-songwriter who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with many of his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep469-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/oliver-anthony-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Oliver’s X: https://x.com/AintGottaDollar Oliver’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/oliver_anthony_music_ Oliver’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/@oliveranthonymusic Oliver’s TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@oliveranthonymusic Oliver’s Website: https://oliveranthonymusic.com/ Oliver’s FaceBook: https://facebook.com/OliverAnthonyMusicOfficial/ Oliver’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/oliveranthonymusic SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: MasterClass: Online classes from world-class experts. Go to https://masterclass.com/lexpod https://lexfridman.com/s/masterclass-ep469-sc Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/shopify-ep469-sc Oracle: Cloud infrastructure. Go to https://oracle.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/oracle-ep469-sc Tax Network USA: Full-service tax firm. Go to https://tnusa.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/tax_network_usa-ep469-sc LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/lmnt-ep469-sc OUTLINE: (00:00) – Introduction (09:00) – Open mics (13:03) – Mainstream country music (22:10) – Fame (28:06) – Music vs politics (36:56) – Rich Men North of Richmond (47:06) – Popularity, money, and integrity (1:01:54) – Blue-collar people (1:13:57) – Depression (1:38:50) – Nature (2:01:26) – Three-legged cat (2:09:57) – I Want to Go Home (live performance) (2:13:36) – Guitar backstory (2:17:58) – Playing live this year PODCAST LINKS: – Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr – Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 – RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ – Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 – Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit, Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life.

• 0:22Lex Fridman?

  His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. Oliver Anthony was his grandfather's name. And so Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times, as Chris says. He's happy to be called either one, by the way. I've gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation. He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden.

• 0:59Lex Fridman?

  And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got MasterClass for learning, Shopify for selling stuff, Oracle for computing, Tax Network USA for taxes, and Element for electrolytes. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsor and instead, just take this quiet moment to talk about things I'm reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross like heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don't do ads in the middle. So they're all bunched up here in one place.

• 1:44Lex Fridman?

  You can skip if you like, but if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. All right, on to the ethereal realm of sponsor land. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by MasterClass, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. You know, I know so little about filmmaking. The Scorsese MasterClass was instructive. Scorsese himself, his approach, his deliberate, passionate, almost bipolar approach to filmmaking into editing.

• 2:27Lex Fridman?

  It's inspiring to watch madness manifest into genius. I think about the hand-drawn storyboards for Taxi Driver. I haven't seen them, heard about them. And that, I think, is the birthplace of great films, is the storyboards, right? Really, it's the vision in the mind of somebody like Scorsese that then is projected onto the storyboard. So the storyboard is just a slice, but that's the first time they take shape in a visual, physical reality. I should do that more. I should think in the space, in the realm of storyboards, especially when I try to do sort of vlog, documentary filmmaking type of stuff. Really inspiring. Anyway, get unlimited access to every MasterClass

• 3:12Lex Fridman?

  and get an additional 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lexpod. That's masterclass.com/lexpod. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great-looking online store. I got a chance to talk to DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails for many, many, many hours. What a wonderful human being. Genius, but also fun and aggressive in his opinions. And holding those opinions, not in a personal kind of way, but in an almost backyard football kind of way. Just seeing who wins with a particular idea, just...

• 3:54Lex Fridman?

  For the explicit purpose of learning something from the interaction, from the tension between the ideas from the debate. Such a fun person to talk to. Anyway, I mention it because I think about 10,000 or 100,000 times, I give a shout out to Shopify because Shopify is really an exemplary execution of a system used by a very large number of people that is built on Ruby on Rails. That conversation, by the way, is just an homage to programming period. And you could think of Shopify as an homage to Ruby on Rails, which DHH really explains well why it's such a beautiful programming language. Anyway, a lot of love for Shopify to go around.

• 4:39Lex Fridman?

  Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/lex, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by Oracle, a company providing fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about the weather. In a way, that's the most generic of topics, but talked about in the least generic of ways. And the discussion centered around how much computational power would be required to simulate the weather sufficiently to be able to predict it. And I've gotten a chance to talk to a few people who chase storms.

• 5:22Lex Fridman?

  They're storm chasers, and they actually have to do this kind of weather prediction. Obviously, with simulation, you have to always choose a level of abstraction. You can't get down to the sort of quantum mechanical simulation. Or if you do, you're going to need a large computer, probably as large or larger than the size of the universe, if you want to perfectly simulate a thing. But sometimes a laptop with an ISG will do. Anyway, cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, I believe that stands for. Offer is for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify at oracle.com/lex. That's oracle.com/lex.

• 6:04Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also brought to you by Tax Network USA, a full-service tax firm focused on solving tax problems for individuals and small businesses. I think this is the right place to mention Oliver Anthony's Chris's song, "Rich Men, North of Richmond." Boy, does the tax law really fuck over the blue collar worker, the everyday man. The more complexity there is, the more loopholes there are for people with many lawyers and accountants and expert explorers of the loopholes, finders of the loopholes. It's nuanced, of course, pros and cons, but really, at the end of the day, I think a simpler tax law is better. I don't know.

• 6:50Lex Fridman?

  That song hit me hard, hit a lot of people hard, and a lot of Chris's songs do. Sometimes it feels hopeless, but I would say more than probably any country on earth, the United States really puts a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But we live in the system we live in, so here we are. That's why you need these guys. Talk with one of their strategists for free today. Call 1-800-958-1000, or go to tnusa.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero-sugar delicious electrolyte mix.

• 7:33Lex Fridman?

  Whenever I think about thirst, whenever I think about water, whenever I think about electrolytes, I think about my time in the Amazon jungle.

• 7:45Lex Fridman?

  I recorded a bunch of different videos from that time, and I need to put together a little, like, mini-documentary of that time to celebrate, really, the jungle and to celebrate the human being of Paul Rosley. This earth, this civilization creates some special humans, and he's one. But anyway, I remember thinking about elements, like a cold,

• 8:12Lex Fridman?

  a drink of water with some elements in it. I remember thinking about that when going through the jungle, deeply dehydrated.

• 8:20Lex Fridman?

  It's the little things in life. Anyway, get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it to drink element.com slash Lex. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Christopher Lunsford, or as many of you know him as Oliver Anthony.

• 9:00Lex Fridman?

  So I was texting you last night, sitting at an open mic, listening to a guy perform Great Balls of Fire. Like I told you, he was giving everything he got for like five people in the audience, plus me.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Well, you were there. I'd been, I'd have been doing it too. If you were out there, like, oh, that's like streaming.

• 9:16Lex Fridman?

  No, man, he was this big dude on a keyboard, just everything sweaty, long hair. You could tell like he was there in his own little world. I love the courage of that, of just giving it everything. I don't think he wants to be famous. I don't think he wants anything in life, except to be there and to play like his heart out. That's why I love open mics. Like, some people still aspire to be famous when they play open mics. But some people, maybe they've given up, or maybe they never wanted to be famous. They're just there for the pure artistry of it. So, and you said you started out playing open mics. What, at Shady Bars? What was that like?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, real quick before I forget too. A great example of a, of a guy who had that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well is this mandolin player named Johnny Stats in West Virginia. To me, he's one of the best and he's won all these awards and stuff. And he still works for UPS full time. And like, he could go out and tour with, play mandolin for anybody he wanted to, but he, but man, when you meet Johnny, like, you can tell he's just got this, um, this joy in him that I don't think he would have if he. But as far as me with the open mics.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just, it was, a lot of them were really, a lot of them were embarrassing. There was a couple, I remember there was times where I'd go up and try to do, I'd do like one song. I get like halfway through the next song and I'd be so nervous by that point. I didn't, I couldn't remember any of the words. And there's a couple of times I, I remember there was one time in particular that I just, I just walked off halfway through the song, put my guitar in the case and just, I just left. I didn't even like, couldn't even stay in there, just total, you know, just total freak out.

• 10:55Lex Fridman?

  Just embarrassment?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And I never drank in bars either. Like I'm not a, I wasn't really a social drinker. So I was just there to try to do the mic. So it was, it was kind of, I was a little out of place anyway. I feel kind of out of place in a bar to start with, so.

• 11:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's back when you could smoke in bars. There's a whole vibe to it. People smoking, drinking. And yeah, definitely, you know, bombing in a place like that when the audience is like,

• 11:19Lex Fridman?

  there's like five people and they're bored.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was one like that. It was in Matoka. It wasn't that far from where I lived. The place is gone now, but uh, it was about as big as the room we're in here, if that, you know, like, the, the ceiling tiles were yellow from where everybody had smoked in it since the beginning of time. But like, yeah, that was my little spot, those little type of spots.

• 11:39Lex Fridman?

  You did covers? What'd you play? What was your go-to?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Back then it was like, uh, I don't know, fishing in the dark, nitty gritty band or like, um,

• 11:49Speaker 02

  any of those old Hank, like Hank Jr. Songs, like any of those bar type, um, David Allen Co., like you never call me by my name, any of that kind of stuff. And I haven't even played any of those in forever now, but that was, any of those ones where you get people singing along and stuff, that's what I'd always try to do, you know?

• 12:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that song you performed, Take Me Home, uh, Country Road, and how's that go? West Virginia?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:10Lex Fridman?

  It's a good song.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  John Denver was just, uh, one of those guys that it's, who knows where he would have went long-term if he wouldn't have passed, but.

• 12:18Lex Fridman?

  You know, it's a fun song that I love, I shouldn't, but I love is, uh, What is it like? Thank God I'm a country boy.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  I think that's what I liked about John Denver was he was a little bit like he let himself be a little bit corny in the spirit of like having fun with it. Like, um, great example, there's this old, older guy that not a lot of people have heard of named Roy Clark, but, um, my farm's like a mile down the road from Roy Clark's old farm, but he, he used to be on Hee Haw. I don't know if you've ever heard of that old show from like the sixties or whatever, but crazy dude, he could pick any instrument up. Like there's videos on YouTube of him, but he would just sit there and just pick anything up and just rip it to death. But he would always just be real silly about it. He never had, he never took it to, never took himself too seriously, you know?

• 13:03Lex Fridman?

  Some people go to the fun place. Some people go to the dark place.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:06Lex Fridman?

  It's a, you know, country can do both. You, you, you more often go to the dark place to, to the, to the pain.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out that they'll be probably not kind, I mean, I don't know what they'll be. I don't know. What is country anymore anyway? I don't know that many people who listen to the type of music that I grew up listening to, probably listen to country radio anymore anyway. Like I think there's, there's quite a lot of people who don't, who have sort of disowned that space, you know? In commercialized country, you only really get what sells, which in a lot of what sells isn't necessarily what matters.

• 13:44Lex Fridman?

  Well, you had that whole experience where they take what you recorded and polish it, quote unquote, try to make it perfect. And so doing destroy the soul of the thing. And so probably that happens with these big artists. They're so famous. It's like a machine. And so what the machine does is it over polishes things. And so the raw, like power of the person, the uniqueness of the person, the soul of the person is gone. If you do that.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think professionalism and like.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Applying the tactic, the tactics of corporate America to anything that is

• 14:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  baseline artistic is not going to end well.

• 14:23Lex Fridman?

  They're all individually brilliant, but together this corporate speak comes out.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:29Lex Fridman?

  Just the soul of the people dissipates, it disappears. Why are you all pretending that like life is not terrible and beautiful and like you're both scared shitless and excited and this guy's going through a divorce, this person just fell in love, like you're forgetting the intensity of life. And with this corporate like nine to five, like, hi, John, it's great to see you today. Oh, you too, you as well, you as well. But when I look at it, I'm like, why am I whining? I feel like a Bukowski type character because like they're all really nice.

• 15:12Lex Fridman?

  They're all good people, but like something is gone when you have this corporate machine.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Well, they're, they're there to fill a role contractually. And if they, I think if they bring too many of their human elements into that, then they jeopardize losing their sense of security. And it's all just out of fear. It's out of fear of losing your job. I mean, it's the reason why all the songs say Oliver Anthony and not Christopher Lunsford on them, you know? Like it's fear of, it's so difficult to, especially now it seems, and I mean, who knows? I didn't, I was never around in the forties or fifties to work a job. I'm sure they were probably pretty miserable back then, but you know, they talk about now like how difficult it is. Like the, the impossibility of having a single family household or anything else. But like, when you find a decent paying job that you can do without it just torturing you every day, that's, that's a pretty important thing now, you know?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Like, and so it, it's pretty easy to just, it's pretty easy to kind of turn yourself into a robot for eight or 10 hours a day. Out of fear of, it's like, you don't want to be yourself too much because maybe part of yourself isn't something that's accepted in this like dystopian nightmare that you go to work at every day. And so you've just got to do your best to just not step on any toes or do anything that, that makes you stand out too much, you know? And now it's like. Now, like when you scroll through some of these videos of people like the big, even when I was still like, when I was still working my lame job, it was like, there was this whole big thing of people talking about quiet quitting or something like that, where they were just gonna go to work, but not really do anything, but.

• 16:44Lex Fridman?

  That hurts me so much. That hurts me when you just stop, when you're there, but you're not really there. That makes me so sad.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So then they wonder, these companies just slowly kind of fall apart and disintegrate because they're so worried about structure and you know, like, I mean, God, man, even in, even in America today, our culture has become, because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under, like food, agriculture, healthcare, like social media, it's all in corporate structures. And it's almost like a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society, I think are like, it's just because of, it's almost like H, corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything, you know? It's like, um, I think that's kind of what you're touching on though. It's like,

• 17:31Speaker 02

  it's, it's hard to be, it's hard to be a human and be a good little corporate employee at the same time. Um, and as our whole society moves more into like, becoming a, like basically one big corporation, it's like, you don't want to piss the HR lady off, so it's a lot easier for me to just beep boop. We're all sort of just turning, we're all turning into robots, you know?

• 17:51Lex Fridman?

  And that's, I've talked to great engineers about this, Jim Keller is a legendary engineer, Elon, Elon Musk is another example, that you need that, I don't know what's a nice term for it, but you need the asshole. Because you, you want to get to the ground truth of things, to the first principle of things, like how do we simplify? How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get shit done? And that has no place for this kind of polite speak. And then, you know, other great team members swoop in and like, repair the damage that the tornado has done.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Do you think that's, because I'm not, I'm not super well versed about all this, so I'm probably dumb to even mention it, but, this guy who's been helping me with doing a documentary, uh, he's been following me around since the very first show at the, August of 23. He, his background was doing, um, promotional videos for Boeing, like for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever. And so he was, we touched, we touched base a little bit on Boeing and of course they're having a lot of problems now it sounds like. And he was comparing that with SpaceX. Or with, you know, like that, that I, I think it's that exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of dehumanization within companies. I think that's what ultimately causes maybe, I don't know if there's a connection there or not, but it seems like Boeing is a very,

• 19:13Speaker 02

  would be more of that. They don't have that tornado. They're very like H, like he was telling me even just with his protocols and some of the people he worked with, like everything's just very, you know, lightly touch everything. No one, you don't, don't touch anything too hard.

• 19:25Lex Fridman?

  So it's not just HR. It's also, it's just this managerial class. Where it's like, Bob from this department has to schedule a meeting with John from this department and Debbie. Like they have to have a meeting two and a half weeks from now. And then there's paperwork and that, that bureaucracy that's created in the managerial class. Just slows everything down. And one of the things that slowing everything down does. Is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing the shit like the people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff. It's again, so drenching to like be excited, show up. And now you hit this wall of paperwork.

• 20:09Lex Fridman?

  Like you can't, you have to wait for John and Debbie and I forgot the third guy's name that I imagined in my head. To have a meeting. It just, and then you kind of. Slow down and you disappear in terms of that fire, that passion that's required to create big things.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause they don't believe, there's a lack of leadership. And if they don't believe in. If they don't believe in that leadership, then why the hell would they be motivated? I mean, I remember, um. A while back, watching Jaco Willink talk about a, um, talk about that when he was in leadership, when he was leading his guys. I think he mentions it in his book is probably where I remember seeing it. Um, one of his books and he talks about like, how important it was for the people under him and rank to believe in what he was, the actions he was giving them, even if he necessarily didn't agree with him himself. It was like there, it's really hard to take orders and go and like to, to have human spirit and especially in something that's innovative and not, if you, if you're working for a company where you just

• 21:13Speaker 02

  think everybody's dumb. I mean, I can certainly relate with that. I mean, God, that's all, and at my old job, that's all we did was we spent half our day just talking about how dumb we thought everybody was that was above us. You know, it's like, it's easy to fall into that in the corporate world. And so, yeah, the morale gets terrible and, and, and everyone suffers as a result of it, you know, like the, the people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction suffer and the people at the bottom. It's like, it's not good for anybody. I had thought now that I'm doing this, that I could escape away from that. But that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and that, um, that inefficiency, like I still battle it every day.

• 21:53Lex Fridman?

  That's why it takes, it takes unique characters to lead the way. Such unique characters are very much needed in the music industry to revolutionize everything. Cut through the bureaucracy, the bullshit that ultimately is, is just a machine that steals money and doesn't get any, anything done really. Uh, we'll talk about it. By the way, all the love in the world to Jaco. He's great. I've been going through lots of ups and downs in life, lots of low points for myself over the past, uh, shit, three years really, but, um, uh, recently especially, and he always texts in this, in this very high testosterone way of like, of like, you're good, bro. Just

• 22:35Lex Fridman?

  checking in. I mean, he's a good man. He's a good man. He's obviously an inspiration to millions of people, but also just, um, is a good human being himself. So.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Maybe one, one thing that we felt similarly, I'm just, I, I would imagine you way more than me is just feeling like, like, wow, I have the ability to influence or the ability to. To to to either bring truth or to improve people's lives or or you know, every word that you say sometimes matters so much. And you're just like, man, I'm an idiot. Like, I don't.

• 23:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Like, I don't know, you know, like, I would have never guessed. I mean, we were kind of talking about that before about like, I would have never guessed that it would have turned that this would have turned into all this. But it is a it is a it is a weight that you bear, whether you really even acknowledge it or not, you know, like.

• 23:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I think is like, you know, the the songs you've created, they speak to the human condition, to the struggle of everyday working people in a society that has the elites that tried to take advantage of those working people. And you're just speaking through your music, those truths of how life is. And then that has a huge impact on a lot of people. That's really positive. But then you also get attacked and misrepresented and lied about from different angles. And just the turmoil, the intense chaos of that, it disorients,

• 24:07Lex Fridman?

  it disorients me, like, to be attacked by very large number of people, to be lied about, to be just the it because I love people, I just have I have a general optimism about humanity, it just disorients me. Like, it gives me this feeling like, I generally, just like you said, think of myself as kind of an idiot, not really knowing what I'm doing. And when a lot of people tell you that you're correct, you don't know what you're doing, you start to like, want to hide. You want to hide from the world, hide from yourself. And then there's also just the the chemistry of the brain. It's like, you shake up the

• 24:50Lex Fridman?

  brain a little bit, it starts getting it starts getting weird. And so you can get how many fronts, you can get real lonely, when getting attacked, when you're kind of fucking things up. In many ways, can get lonely. Yeah, so it's been, so you get a text from Jocko, like, you good? Yeah, yeah, and I may have good friends, Andrew Huberman's been great, Rogan's been great.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you, Lex, however many years ago, was in a different place in society than Lex is now. And so it's like every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different, even if you aren't any different. Friends that you had from before, maybe, or even just new people you meet, your interactions with them are going to be a lot different than if this wasn't a thing. And so it's like, that can be tricky, too, when you've spent your whole life, you know, from the time you're three years old and you're starting to play with other kids and like developmentally learning like how to share and how to interact. And you're on the, you're playing, you know, you're playing on the playground with kids and learning how to like, set rules and boundaries and how to like, basically fit in a society.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  And like, so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever point in time when, when success happens. And then it's like, all that shifts pretty dramatically, all, you know, in a relatively short period of time. And so like, how do you, how do you think, like, managing your previous, like, previous friendships? Or you're like, you know, has that been tricky for you? Or like?

• 26:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's been, it's been tough. You know, I value deep, close, long-term friendships. And, yeah, but I mean, I have amazing friends, but they certainly do treat me a little different. They bust my balls noticeably less.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you need, you need that sometimes.

• 26:38Lex Fridman?

  I need, not sometimes, all the time. First of all, it's how dudes show love, is making fun of each other, at least my friends.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:48Lex Fridman?

  Like, you know, when you watch, man, I'm gonna get in trouble. But when you watch like, women interact, they're often like, really positive towards each other. Like, oh, you look great, this, that, and the other. When you watch dudes interact, like, close friends, they're just like, I mean, busting each other's balls. Oh, stop making fun of each other.

• 27:10Lex Fridman?

  And so, yes, that has been a little bit harder. I try, I try to break those walls, like, but.

• 27:19Lex Fridman?

  That's why with the famous friends, it's a little bit easier because they can still like Rogan roasts me nonstop. It's a and it just feels good. I just sit there and get made fun of and it's great.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:30Lex Fridman?

  It's great.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And I still do it all the time. I just it's just a different experience now, but I I'm like a Goodwill junkie like um. Most like most of even my clothes were from Goodwill, but like I have this. I have this like addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill, like the eight dollar paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with like a Bob Ross.

• 27:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Video and it didn't work out quite right. Like I love like I buy every one of those. I'll go in there and buy like ten of and so just even, you know, anytime you got into public now, it's just like, you know, it's gonna be a little different than it was. You know, I don't know if that makes sense or not, but.

• 28:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I, you know, I'm trying to deal with it, but all of it, when you talk to world leaders. When you step into politics a little bit and you apparently stepped into politics, even though you never meant to, you're not a political person.

• 28:15Lex Fridman?

  That that world is like, what the fuck? It's very intense, especially at an intense moment in history and in an extremely divided country. So.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, like saying that I'm not in politics, people like, well, of course you're in politics and I don't know whether I am or not, but just.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I do think a lot of people in politics, like as far as. The people who sit on the internet all day and argue about stuff on X or on whatever, you know, Facebook and all like, I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons. They observe that there's. A lot of things wrong in the world that they'd like to see different. It's just. How do you get those people out of a? How do you get those people out of this four by four square? And like really like they're they're entrapped in a in a same kind of box that the people at Boeing might be with that struck, you know, it's too. It's the tornado metaphor. I mean, it's a but it applies in politics too, like there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need to figure, we need to just like lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  What's really pissing everybody off? What's really affecting our quality of life? A lot of times we're arguing over the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems, if that makes any sense. I mean, that if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning and like it, but it's all the same.

• 29:36Lex Fridman?

  Water and fire and ice. Metaphor and there would definitely be a connection to the Bible and then we will receive a three hour lecture and it will be profound.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  It's all true.

• 29:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's all true.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  It is all, it's all a hundred percent accurate. Yeah, that's the crazy thing, but it all ties into that same thing like you. Yeah, in politics now, it's almost like there's a rulebook that you have to follow. And if you, you can't agree with this unless you also agree with that, you know, it's like, and maybe it's like the places, the way that we receive information about what's going on in the political landscape is always so biased and it's like the, well, it's, it's contingent upon this algorithm, this like algorithmic system that we live under where we're fed. It's like we're almost fed certain subcata, and it's, and it's easy to fall into that because you don't like hearing things you disagree with. And so it's a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at whatever page, post things that you know, you're going to consistently agree with every day and

• 30:30Speaker 02

  that's not going to challenge the way you think in any little way, you know, or, or like expand your thinking at all. It's, it's easy to just, it's kind of like a, it's a cult like type of thing. It's like, you know, here's, this is what we all agree with. And if you don't, then go on get it, you know, like, but it, it doesn't, it, we're far too complicated for it to really work that way.

• 30:52Lex Fridman?

  Well, this actually relates to one of my favorite things in your conversation with Jordan, where you're just, where, where you're just shooting the shit about like, uh, playing live music and he goes to Kierkegaard.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:04Lex Fridman?

  She's like soaring Kierkegaard, the philosopher.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:08Lex Fridman?

  I love Jordan so much.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 31:10Lex Fridman?

  He just goes to Carl Jung and Nietzsche. And there, this idea from Kierkegaard that the crowd is untruth. So when you, there's elements to the crowd that loses the humanity and the honesty of a, an individual that makes up the crowd. Cause the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some kind of narrative. It's like a. It's like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative and the narrative holds control over that crowd as opposed to the individual humans who are thinking for themselves and being honest with their own thoughts and realities and so on. And so that he was saying

• 31:54Lex Fridman?

  that as a reason from a communication perspective, to speak to individuals in the crowd, not to the crowd. So from the performer perspective, the moment you speak to the crowd, you're speaking to the lie that is the crowd, according to Soren Kirkegaard. It's pretty hardcore. Kirkegaard is pretty hardcore. Jordan's pretty hardcore.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  But that is true. I mean, but specifically in my case, I mean, really, it applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music. You know, talking about Richmond, I wasn't necessarily even excited that Richmond did as well as it did. It was like, in a way, it was almost like alarming that it did so well, you know? And so those crowds that show up, like, maybe they do like my music, but I also think they're there for something. There is something bigger about it. I mean, I, I wish I would have done a better job of having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in 24 Man.

• 32:53Lex Fridman?

  You mean the size, the intensity?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  The intensity. Like, it was revolutionary, almost.

• 32:59Lex Fridman?

  Song of revolution. Yeah, I think a redemption song from Bob Marley. Like, that song, it just connected with people. There's something there.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Well, and so many people identified different elements. Like I said, it goes back to when we were kind of talking when we first got here, but it was, it was crazy how it was almost like at the beginning with, along with the scrutiny and some of the other things, it was a lot of different people, like, almost fighting over me or fighting over it, like, because it resonated with different, it resonated with people who voted differently than each other, which is, which is probably a pretty terrifying thing if you're, if you're in the business of keeping people divided and angry at each other. So it was, you know, it was a-

• 33:41Speaker 02

  It was one of the first, one of the only times that I can think where there was that, that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn't. I mean, like, I mean, I think about nine 11 when I was a kid. I was in fourth grade, but God, man, people were just like, people just put everything aside there for a little while. And it was kind of, it was kind of like, there's bigger problems that just aren't in our face. And if, man, if they're in your face for, just for a second or two, you realize like,

• 34:11Speaker 02

  it's, it's hard, it's hard in your mind to create a, a graph that's got like all these, but you know, we argue about a lot of these problems, but if you were to really look at them like, if you really just stand back and look at all the problems we spend time focusing about on the internet versus all the things that are affecting us, like that really, and probably at our core even piss us off. It's, it's got to be very disproportionate. And like, the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all, like, no matter what it is that we're upset about, or what we think needs to be different in the world, or our opinions of things, or how we're raised, or what our parents taught us. It's like, I think we all feel a little bit out of control in this new society. We all feel like we're probably, we probably all feel like we're falling into this kind of like corporate power structure

• 34:54Speaker 02

  where none of us, where we all, we all are just robots. We're all just, we're not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost, you know?

• 35:03Lex Fridman?

  And there was enough people feeling that. I mean, people on the left feeling like the people in power are fucking over the working class. People on the right feeling the exact same with different words assigned to it. The deep state, you know, fucking over middle America.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:21Lex Fridman?

  Whatever the narratives are. And they're just, when enough of that is happening, again, with the corporate polite speak, there's something about politeness that's really dangerous. I feel like there was a lot of politeness in the Soviet Union.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, great example.

• 35:38Lex Fridman?

  Underneath that, it's like Chernobyl, uh, which is this nuclear power plant that melted down. Um, I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility and paperwork to function. And then atrocities can happen underneath that. So everybody, people in power with a smile on their face can just do horrific things.

• 36:06Lex Fridman?

  And then give propaganda that, look, you know, it's rainbows and sunshine and and unicorns. Yeah. So people that are rude, I mean, I'm starting to awaken to this a little bit like you need a little like Tom Way says, uh, I like my town with a little drop of poison. You need some like, some poison, some some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, some like, intensity to shake up a system because when it uh sort of converges towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen and hidden away.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  And what's probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical, whereas it it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society. If we were healthy and functional.

• 36:56Lex Fridman?

  What was the process of writing that song? I mean, it really spoke to the pain of and anger of millions of people. So there's magic there. Was that, well, how many, how many edits? How many like lines did you write? Were there any lines that you were like tormented by haunted by come back? Should I do it this way or this way or that?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Do you, do you have a, I don't know, do you, can you pull TikTok up on this? So if you go to my page, so if you go down.

• 37:25Lex Fridman?

  There's some chickens.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Go, yeah, go down pre Richmond. You can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up.

• 37:32Lex Fridman?

  This is so cool to see the evolution.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  There it is. Okay. So that's, that's, if you play that, that's.

• 37:38Lex Fridman?

  I have too many unfinished songs?

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, play that, click that and play it.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Seven twenty four.

• 37:47Lex Fridman?

  Oh, wow. Wow.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  And if you read through this, it's so funny. Everybody's like, you're about to blow up.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  That's all I had. So I had, I had just that.

• 38:11Lex Fridman?

  You should probably finish this one. Might be real popular. That's a post from a few days later.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  That was in, that was in July.

• 38:20Lex Fridman?

  Fuck. That's so inspiring, man.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  So that's what I had.

• 38:23Lex Fridman?

  That's so inspiring. That's what like a couple of weeks before you posted the final verse.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Well, that's all I had. Yeah, that's all I had written at that point. Like that in my mind, that's what that's the inspiration for the song was that little bit. And I wrote that just because I was on job sites all day and, you know, going into like, all these just terrible places to work, like dealing with different contractors and stuff. You were talking about wanting to go and talk to blue collar people and all. It's like, that's what I did for work, basically for eight years was build long-term relationships with people in blue collar. I was in the industrial space, so I would talk. Sometimes I'd talk to 20 different people a day, you know? When you sit in a job site trailer and talk to, and talk to a group of dudes like, and you're not there with some news camera, you're just there as like a random dude. Like you hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of,

• 39:14Speaker 02

  of the structure of what builds, what builds this country and keeps it going. And I think that's probably what it was. It was just a, it was how I felt, but also how I guess a lot of other, like, you know, it was just, I don't know. It just seemed like the truth. So.

• 39:29Lex Fridman?

  So you jot it down even to the details, like in a notebook? Like those words?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  No, it's always just on my phone. I would just keep recording the, I would just keep, you know, like, so, if you were to go back to TikTok, like and look at any of those original videos.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  So like the songs that ended up charting, let's say, like the ones that were on there that charted with Richmond, like this, I've got to get sober. So literally.

• 39:58Lex Fridman?

  Good song, yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  So literally what I did was this video I took at my property. This is my carport where my camper was and.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I took this video, I went to some sketchy virus ridden MP3 to wave filed or MP4 to wave file transfer thing. I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on TikTok and then put that on DistroKid and that's the, that was the song. But basically like this would, this would have been the first time I played I've got to get sober all the way through. Like I would just keep writing it and working on it, writing it and record myself and maybe I would record myself 30 times over the period of like two months. You know what I mean?

• 40:33Lex Fridman?

  Oh, but it's, when you say writing, you mean in your head, not actually typed out or written anywhere?

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Right. It was just video. It was mostly just video.

• 40:41Lex Fridman?

  Over and over, just videos.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Just trying to figure out how to make it. Yeah. But that's what all these, all these are, like the audio file from all these videos is what's, is what ended up on Spotify and all that. You know what I mean?

• 40:53Lex Fridman?

  This is, it's cool to see these videos before you blew up. So this is a good song. You're playing, I guess. So what, what is this at the end?

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, these were all.

• 41:05Lex Fridman?

  Don't sell your soul, brother. This is the best music I've heard in a long time. That's a comment before you blew up.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I had about 10,000 followers or something.

• 41:19Lex Fridman?

  What a fucking song. That's a good one.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  And you gotta think like this was, like that was my,

• 41:29Speaker 02

  that was when I quit drink, you know what I mean? Like so that.

• 41:42Lex Fridman?

  So that's coming from, from, from your heart right there.

• 41:47Lex Fridman?

  Just imagine the,

• 41:50Lex Fridman?

  the thousands of people you helped with that.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  It's so crazy how those cicadas and stuff come in like.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  I just felt like it was a god. I don't know how.

• 42:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Like that's just off my phone. All that stuff's just there, you know?

• 42:58Lex Fridman?

  That's a genius of song. That's genius, brother. That's genius.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  It's just crazy to think about.

• 43:05Lex Fridman?

  And what's this one right before? What is this? Oh.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's like the private.

• 43:15Lex Fridman?

  And this is a nice recording. Got it.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this video got uploaded and then Draven from Radio WV would have gotten ahold of me in between this and that. He watched this and was like, dude, you got, he said, we gotta record that one. And that like, so I didn't have it all. I just had whatever was in that video is all I had written. It was, I think it was just the chorus in the first verse. Draven saw that video.

• 43:40Lex Fridman?

  And said, we gotta do this one.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Reach out to me to record. And he's like, yeah, he's like, no, we gotta do that one. And I was like, dude, that's all I got.

• 43:47Lex Fridman?

  Tell me about that guy. Draven.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  He probably is like, you know, he's probably like my best friend now. We, we hit it off with this and we're like, we're like brothers now, I guess, but.

• 43:57Lex Fridman?

  Can you talk about like what he's doing for country, for music in general, for country music, for discovering talent for like?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:04Lex Fridman?

  I mean, he's clearly sees something in people.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's just this, he's a little bit younger than I am and he's, he wrote music and played and he's got some of his, if you look up Draven Rife, he's gonna kill me for even saying this, but he's got some pretty, dude, he can, if he was like a pop singer, he would be like, he can write the most catchy stuff ever.

• 44:25Lex Fridman?

  Let's go.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yes. Click on like, I don't know, like.

• 44:28Lex Fridman?

  Bye bye. All right.

• 44:31Lex Fridman?

  That's him?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:40Lex Fridman?

  Where's this from? Five years ago.

• 45:02Lex Fridman?

  You know, he could probably do, if he does like, he could, he could probably be real famous. Well, he's got a certain look.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  That dude will sit there and he'll just like, we'll just be sitting there at like two in the morning and he'll just all of a sudden do this little thing and he's got like the most amazing first part of this like song or, we just started to co-write together like in the last few months. So I'm really excited for that, but if you go to his, this is really funny too. I'm sorry Draven. I love you, man. So go to videos and go to oldest first. This is what's so awesome about Draven. He was originally working for this lady who was trying to develop different types of hair care products. But he thought the market was too saturated, so he was going to get into beard oil. So he created Radio WV as like a fake plug page for his burly boy beard brand he was working with. So like click, like if you look at, um, yeah, like that very first video. Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  It's like, it's got all his beard products. If you look, there's, there's multiple ones like that. So he started it just to do this beard thing with, and then like, I don't know. He just kind of felt called to like, keep going with it and it, and it just sort of naturally progressed.

• 46:10Lex Fridman?

  That too is inspiring. Like you start out one way and then you discover something real special. I mean, he's got a, he's got an eye for how to bring out. I don't know what it is, like the, both the audio side and the video side, how to bring out the best in.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  He says he just wants it to sound like the way he likes hearing it, which kind of makes sense, you know? Like it's kind of in the same way talking about, when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you, you needed three lights. You're like, well, I think it would work with the, that he's just kind of like, well, it'll just work like this and.

• 46:40Lex Fridman?

  And do it in a way where he likes it. Yeah. Just do it for yourself.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  He does it because he loves it and that, and you can see, it shows, you know?

• 46:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You can see it in there. And there's some good talent. Like you were showing me this new lady, Gabriel.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. She's got it, but not a lot of people would, uh, record her doing that song. But he's like, I don't know. It just was different. I just thought people ought to hear it. But he's, man, it was a blessing that he came along when he did. It was like, um. It really changed both of our lives.

• 47:06Lex Fridman?

  We gotta talk about that. So you posted the, the song Richmond, North of Richmond on August 8th, 2023.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  I remember I was at work that day when it went up. Yeah.

• 47:16Lex Fridman?

  So it blew the fuck up, straight to number one on the charts, tens of millions of views and listens.

• 47:24Lex Fridman?

  And a few days later, on August 17th, you made a post that I thought was pretty gangster. It was beautiful and gangster. So one, one of the things you said is, it's been difficult as I browse through the 50,000 plus messages and emails I've received in the last week. The stories that have been shared paint a brutally honest picture. Suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on. And then you went on to write, people in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off eight million dollar offers. I don't want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don't want to play stadium shows. I don't want to be in the spotlight.

• 48:09Lex Fridman?

  I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they've been sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit, just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place. So huge props for that, for walking away from lucrative multimillion dollar record deals. And I'm sure the money that was just coming your way, huge props, you know? Moments happen where, you know, the world tests you and integrity

• 48:54Lex Fridman?

  is what you do in those moments. So huge props for that. What was your philosophy? What was your thinking behind that?

• 49:01Speaker 02

  It was all those messages I got. I mean, you can see it in the comment sections of a lot of the videos after everything happened, but people just like felt this spark like, like, wow, like, maybe we actually have a chance to, like, maybe we actually do have some kind of power, you know? Like those people put that song there, nobody else, and like, gave me the opportunity to make, even without signing anything, I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom and

• 49:27Speaker 02

  like, I just,

• 49:29Speaker 02

  I just felt like.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  I felt like if I was gonna do anything like that, that I'd be, I'd be betraying, like I would be taking those people and, and almost betraying them somehow, you know? Like, uh, like they, I hate the big machine, just like everybody else. And I, the last thing I'd wanna do is be, is ever supported or be a part of it. Like, I wanna watch it crash and burn, you know, like.

• 49:56Lex Fridman?

  See, this is the really important thing is whether it was betrayal or not, we'll never know. But you felt that it was, and to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money when you felt that way. That's fucking epic.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  It was also, you gotta think, a couple of months before this, like, of course, I had, you know, I had a wife and kids that I loved and like, I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn't have a whole lot to lose, like, like, none of this was even really real, like, I didn't care about that. Like, I didn't care to lose this just as quick as I got it. Like, this didn't, this was, this didn't mean anything to me. It just meant something to me that like, that I could do something for, like, you know, you,

• 50:42Speaker 02

  it's like, even if I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else's, like, that meant a hell of a lot more to me than any, that's what I didn't wanna lose. I didn't wanna lose those people's trust or like feel, you know what I mean?

• 50:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  And so I've just tried to make every decision around like, as best as I can, like, what I think the right thing is to do. And who knows what the hell the right thing is to do, but I just try to follow, you know, we all have that little voice in us like that. We all have some, what, and, and I think sometimes we mask, it's hard for us to listen to that little voice, whether, whether it's like, you know, whether it's our gluttony or our lust or our, or our. You know, we we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol, or we scroll on YouTube for four hours and a night and instead of because we don't want to listen to our conscience. But there is this like very intelligent discerning thing inside of us that's able

• 51:39Speaker 02

  to tell us what's right and wrong. And it's a it's a spiritual thing, I guess. And I just try to I just try to listen to that when I can. I don't know. I just still feel like I haven't done enough.

• 51:50Lex Fridman?

  I think you I think you did a lot. I think you did a lot. I think you're an inspiration. You've helped a huge number of people and you're also an inspiration to the other side of it, which is the artists and just to humans to have integrity. I don't think people realize how much of a test of integrity fame, money, you know, power also is, you know, Rogan and I talk about this quite a bit. We get to see, I mean, Joe especially, but I haven't I've had a bit of the same. You get to see people become famous and you

• 52:30Lex Fridman?

  get to see how they deal with that. And it's not easy. A lot of people will sell themselves a bit, sell the soul a bit, give away a bit of their integrity of the spirit that made them who they are. You get caught up in the wave of it, you know? And so to to keep holding on to that, that's a powerful thing. That's a really.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's all I got, though, you know?

• 52:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  When you lose that, what the hell are you like? And you see it like you see these celebrity people that just like fall off the they fall off this, you know, they go off the deep end. It's like you gotta have, you have to have something in your life to to keep you centered and to keep you, you know, your whole perception of reality and like you're just existence and reality is all contingent upon this sort of like this center that you exist in. And you have to, if you don't have that, then you're just flying through space through, I mean, we're all just riding on this rock that's going who knows how fast.

• 53:27Lex Fridman?

  You said something, I think to Jaco, that I really liked. Everything that has purpose behind it comes with risk. So there in that moment, I mean, you're taking a hell of a risk.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  I was terrified. I talked about this a little bit with him too, but I was terrified to even put the song out like, I knew I was going to be the subject of scrutiny and judgment and I knew people were gonna like, you know, I kind of knew all that was gonna happen. I was like, going back to that, talking about crowds, like, to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense of unity, like, a lot of times when I end the shows, I'll always,

• 54:08Speaker 02

  I'll always end with this statement that just says, you know, no matter what, like, no matter how you feel when you go online, you know, everyone feels so small and insignificant and, and powerless, but I just say, no matter how they make you feel online, or when you turn on the TV, or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, like when you just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like you're, there's always, there will always be more of us than them and, and all that, and but like, to see that, like, just to see the light in people's eyes when you say that, but the truth is like, and it's like, who is us and who is them? And it's like,

• 54:48Speaker 02

  us just represents humanity and like, and, and all the things we talked about so far, like just,

• 54:56Speaker 02

  you know, the fire and the chaos and, but also the, like, the love and just, just life. Life is just such a crazy, complicated, beautiful, disastrous thing. And then them is like, it is, it's the power structure. It's the, it's that same terrible side of us that created things like the Soviet Union and, and, and is ultimately what's created this monster, this like monster that we all live under today, which now is not just, doesn't just exist within the confines of the Soviet Union, but seems to almost be a global epidemic.

• 55:26Lex Fridman?

  And then that song became the rebel call against that, against the power structures that creates that.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like, how much fire am I willing to play with? Cause I know at some point I am going to get burned from it. I just pray a lot that God, I don't have a lot of self-worth in myself anyway. So I don't really care what they say or do to me, or I don't care. Like, I don't even care if I die, whatever. Just don't let, just, just protect the people I love is all. That's all I ask of God. I have this dream of just creating this parallel system that sits beside all of these stupid systems that we live under, that are all sort of engulfed in this, this thing that we talked about at the beginning, this. This type of structure, you know, we're none of us, we're all just robots. And it's like, if we hate, you know, if we hate the way music is and all these artists are complaining

• 56:17Speaker 02

  about the way the venues are monopolized and the ticket sales are monopolized, and let's just go find other places to play music because there's so many people hungry for music in places that don't ever get it. And if you look at it, there's so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes, like, like just in food, it's the word they use for bait for more or less starvation. It's a more polite, it's called food insecurity. But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia, in the rural areas, how much food insecurity there is, and how many empty vacant farms there are. It's like, this is an obvious problem that we should be on Twitter talking about nonstop. Like, this is like, everyone has to eat, you know? It don't matter what you vote for, or what,

• 56:57Speaker 02

  like, what you look like, or any of that crap. You can, you know, like, so, like, let's just, like, why, why are we living in a country where we had, why are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don't know any better? And then the other half of us don't have, like, how does, it's just, it's lack of leadership that's caused dysfunction. And so if we're tired of that, then, then let's just fix it. Like, we don't need anybody's permission. Like, that's the whole beauty, like, that's the whole beauty of what America is, is like, we don't, we don't need some greasy haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong. Let's just go do it. And if they don't like it, fuck them, you know?

• 57:36Lex Fridman?

  In all domains of life, from, from food to the music industry, honestly, to education, also to government itself, all of it. And that, you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit that makes America great of just constantly trying to revitalize itself. When the bullshit piles up a little too high, there's that revolutionary spirit that says, like, we need to fix this shit.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  And, and that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny. Like, we forget the story of the people who really created this country. Like, it's funny, I One of the statements I made at the very beginning, they got taken way out of context, but I wasn't in a position to like even begin to have a conversation about is I made this comment early on at one of the shows about about how about how our diversity is a strength. But that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means. But it's like, think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country, like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking. So many different people came together to even create this place now. And like, we've just forgotten about all that. They didn't all come here

• 58:53Speaker 02

  because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle, essentially. They had no structure, like no infrastructure, no medicine, no, like, they didn't come here for like some glorified camping trip. It's because they were tired of like generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their, you know, it's not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn't want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday. It's because they weren't allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn't and they were just tired of it. That's what we're losing now. It's like, we've forgotten that we're those people, like the same structures that have plagued this country are they're multinational corporations and they're and it's just the

• 59:38Speaker 02

  ideology behind them and their and their structure is what the problem is.

• 59:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's multinational corporations. It's nation states that are deeply corrupt and are authoritarian and ultimately abuse power. And yes, create elements of tyranny. And from that, the the human spirit rises. Like I said, with with songs like the ones you write, or at the founding in this country, you know, that's why all this diverse outcasts come together and write something as crazy as all men are created equal. What a gangster line.

• 1:00:22Lex Fridman?

  I guess not an easy thing to take a lot of that stuff for granted now. But that's not an easy thing to come up with. That's a really gutsy thing to to see to see the value in all people equally. And of course, they also were suffering from delusion. You know, they didn't see black people as equal. They didn't see women as equal. But even that first leap of like, all men are created equal. That's like a gigantic fuck you to the past.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Taking that leap forward really took a lot in an age and a time when when it probably sounded and it's not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter like they. They like, think about how much, just think about the insanity. Like, I can't even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that. Like, even from the Revolutionary War until now to try to preserve that idea. You know, so like so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made and just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity.

• 1:01:24Lex Fridman?

  Even the 20th century is good. Two world wars. And, you know, especially in the Second World War, the United States played a very crucial role. And there was a lot of ideological, like battle of ideas going on at that time.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Lex Fridman?

  Of the role of war and peace, of the role of the United States as the as the center place for the ideal of human freedom and human rights.

• 1:01:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, we continue to innovate, so. I'd love to get back to talking to blue collar people you mentioned. Those are some of my favorite people. So it was actually really cool to find out that for many years of your life, basically the way you made a living is talking to blue collar people and getting their story. So I'm traveling across the world for a bit. But of course, the world I I love the most and I'm most curious about is the different subcultures and towns of the United States. So I I took a road trip across the US in my early twenties for for several months. And that was like a transformative experience for me and and that's something.

• 1:02:36Lex Fridman?

  One of the luxuries I have is to have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want now. And so I want to take a road trip across the United States for several months. And one of the things I wanted to do is to just to talk to, to people in, in small towns, in middle America. I don't know what words to put on it, but to talk to the very people that you talked about, that, that, uh, you know, construction workers, plumbers, waitresses, oil rig workers, just people that do something

• 1:03:15Lex Fridman?

  real, people that are real, that don't make much money, that struggle, but have a, as you talked about, have like a richness to them. That's not often revealed, that's not often talked about. So maybe can you speak to that, to your, to your time with blue collar folk?

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  When I got all those messages at the, we were talking about early on, earlier in this, like so many of them. And even now, it's even since I, even like in the last couple of days, I've gotten some where they start with, hey, I'm a nobody. But like, that's how a lot of those start, you know? Like the nobodies of the world, if you want to call them like that's, it's, it's frustrating that, that the people who literally have, have, have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in, those people have the least amount of representation.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  They're ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists, but the, some of the most dim-witted, irrelevant, terrible people are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they're all over television and they're all over the internet and we act like they're, like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty. And then all these people who do jobs that.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Most of us will be too tariff either either wouldn't have the even the ability to do we'd be like like how many people are going to go underwater and weld but if we didn't have underwater welders like one of my best friends whose name is also Jaco funny enough the dude worked 70 80 hours every week he's on the Chesapeake Bay tunnel job now but the dude's gotten up on gotten on heights that I couldn't get on he's went he's went underground places I wouldn't go and nobody will ever like nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or like the kind of lives they lived in and they're the they're like the the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  all those people like you talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion North Carolina and it was this commercial air conditioning factory which is I think closed now but they didn't pay very well and so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me and so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who are mostly in their 50s and 60s but you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole nother world of people like and just the stories and the just those people are far more interesting than than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about they're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world and so it would be really cool I mean that's the whole reason that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years because those people like that is America to me you know how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh and even in Virginia if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours Southwest you're in a whole nother planet like the people the accents the culture and so I feel driven in the same way like I would love to I would love to find a way to to try to bridge that cultural gap to make those people relevant and to make because they are like some of the most and like and it's funny because we emulate a lot of those people like you know modern country

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  music is a bunch of people emulating those people you know

• 1:06:51Lex Fridman?

  and there's also like a I love people that have a skill and become masters of that skill also so that element is also there even if it's like Insanely difficult work like being a miner, like there's skill to that. There are stories there. There's like what it takes to do that. So, I mean, some of my favorite humans are engineers and all they do is solve really hard problems. They develop, I mean, it's a pain in the ass job.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:19Lex Fridman?

  Anything in the factories is extremely difficult, but you learn so much about what it takes to solve intricate, like nuanced problems in the physical world. Coal mining, oil rigs, like you mentioned welding, that's a fascinating line of work.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  And, and those are trades that are in many cases dying because we don't, because they aren't popular in culture anymore. For everything from agricultural to plumbing and electrical, it's like, those are all areas. I think if you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it, it would, like you could change the, you could change the entire landscape in America of how, of how it's perceived and like, and make it cool, you know?

• 1:08:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So thank you, what you're doing on that front. I, I want to say I wrote it down. Please, if you know people that will be willing to talk, reach out to me. A good way to do that is lexfridman.com/contact.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about, and I thought was getting done and it wasn't, that I, I've got to go back and try to figure out is doing prison shows and, uh, doing rehab shows and all that, but I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to immerse myself in just the, the mental state that those people are in and like, it's not talked about a whole lot, but.

• 1:08:42Lex Fridman?

  Also people who get out, ex-convicts, I mean, that, that's a hard life. That's just a hard life to try to reintegrate back into society.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble. Like there was a lady that worked on the assembly line, Messiah me named Denise. And, uh, her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it. She only had to go on probation. He was still in prison. But man, like Denise was a very sweet lady and like, aside from the meth manufacturing, like she was like, great, you know, like, and just such a character, like in such a good way. And so it's like, yeah, just.

• 1:09:22Lex Fridman?

  Denise, lexfridman.com/contact.

• 1:09:26Lex Fridman?

  Let's talk. I mean, yeah, you know, like both, both sort of the plumbers and the coal miners and Denise with the, the old meth habits. I mean, they're walking the line of like, you know, surviving is hard.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Lex Fridman?

  So you have to do a real hard job. And then you also have to live life, which is in general hard. You know, divorce, kids, people die, you lose like the medical issues and that, that can destroy you completely. All of a sudden something happens, you can't afford it. Then the, the insurance system destroys people, all of that. So you have to somehow navigate life while working your ass off in a real hard job. And those people, they have stories. That's a real pain. And from that pain, from that anger, that's where, uh, Richmond, north of Richmond, that

• 1:10:24Lex Fridman?

  was that, that you could just feel their pain come through with that song and with your other work. So that, like, there is a landscape of suffering.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't have to be that, we don't all have to be that decentralized either. Like if all, if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is, like just innately in suffering and then, and then, yeah, like there's a guy, there's a guy in West Virginia that I talked to that he's got a piece of property beside him on that he was interested in selling. But the reason he's, he's got this dream of opening a, uh, like putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb. He works at Lowe's full time, but he's, his son's got this, his son's like 19 and it's got this heart surgery he's got to have. And so he's trying to sell the place for that. And just like, just that guy and all, and all you'd ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe's, like pulling lumber or whatever.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  But he's got this very insanely complex life he's trying to manage. He doesn't want to lose a son, like he's just going to sell everything. And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like, when people really fell off track and they didn't have a support system and they were like on this tiny boat out in the ocean, they figured out some kind of way to rally. In my mind, that's like the dream of all this. If I, if I die and there's any like legacy left or anything done, it's like. Finding a way to take all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them. It's rebuilding the community, but in a real way, not in like this fairy tale bullshit. Everybody's gonna love each other and we're all just gonna be one big happy family. Like, everybody's still gonna get mad and hate each other in certain ways. And that's good. Like, we need those tornadoes.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Like you said, we need people pissed off and angry and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong. Like, people should be able to speak their mind and we shouldn't all just kiss each other's ass and we shouldn't all just pretend to be overly polite and say, "Hey, Debbie, you have a good weekend?" Like you said, like, we need all this controversy and this turmoil and like, we need the hell of what that side that the internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life and it needs to be in a way where we're all like, we all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don't want to starve and we want to have decent health and we want to be able to like, provide a decent life for our kids, or at least we just don't, you know, we just want to live a decent life.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Like, um, I think somehow that fixes like, that fixes what you describe, like the people who fall into despair and are isolated in. It's a terrifying world to live in. It's that principle, again, this is, I need a phone a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things, but like, he explains, there's this principle in the Bible about, about those who, about, the more you have, the more you'll receive and the less you have, the less you'll, the less you'll receive, kind of a thing. And it's a, it's just a universal law in society where it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it's almost like the more, like, the less resources you have available and the less, the less friends you have and it's like, you just, the further you go, snowballs

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  into where it's like, people just hit rock bottom and then, and then what? It's like, when you get out of prison, what are you, what are you supposed to do? Or when you're a veteran with mental health, like, what are you supposed to do? Like, in my mind, that's what the church is supposed to be there for is like, but obviously it doesn't fill that role anymore.

• 1:13:42Lex Fridman?

  To some people, at least religion does a little bit. It gives, uh... It's at least a foundation of community, a foundation of hope for people when they're really struggling.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Lex Fridman?

  You got thousands of messages, like you talked about from people, you gotten to talk to thousands of people about their pain. Through your work, through your music, you've been an inspiration to those people to find a way out of the pain. Can you tell the full story of your own lowest point?

• 1:14:17Lex Fridman?

  Before, before all of this, before the, before the music, before you blew up.

• 1:14:25Lex Fridman?

  Can you take me through the story of the depression, the drinking? And just the roughest times in your life?

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  It's, sometimes it's not even, you know, it's funny, but it's almost not even where you're at in life. It's where you perceive yourself at in life and what your, what your goals are moving forward. And I think like, you know, I was, I dropped out of high school at seventeen, basically ran away from home. I just, I couldn't, I have always had this authority problem. And so I just didn't want to listen to my parents. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to go move into the mountains. I was running away from responsibility, I guess, is what I was doing, you know? And so got this girl pregnant, had my first kid when I was eighteen or just about to turn nineteen. And like I said, I'm working in the air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons. And so from there, everything was just reactionary.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  I never really had a plan. I would jump from job to job, just like most everybody else. I don't know, I just, I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself and I knew that I wasn't doing. I just knew I wasn't doing, I wasn't filling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be. And so the, the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that, that I'm not a shitty person, I've just let myself fall. You know, it's like, it's so hard to accept when you've had that fall, that it's just easier to just. Just to get drunk and, you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along. But you don't really care if you live or die. You don't, you don't really care about much anything like your whole.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. Life is just so beautiful when you're a child. You're so imaginative and exploratory and you're learning all these things and you just, you just can't wait to be an adult because you're just going to go out and do all these incredible. You know, and then. You face the reality of it. Yeah. And the pressure and the fear of failure. Like I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove, is what drove me and. But yeah, you just, and you, you think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and you like, you don't even have a real self-awareness of like what you're doing or how destructive you've become, but you always have that, that discernment in you that like, that conscious, you know, that little voice in your, in your spirit that is letting you know you're messing up, you know?

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  I was almost like, and I was wrestling with myself, you know? And so, I don't know. I just got to a point where it's just like,

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  yeah, just in, just a very,

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  just a very overwhelming sense of numbness, like, like it don't, like nothing really, nothing that mattered before really matters anymore. Like, I guess that's, that's probably to me, the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless. And you can't find, you really can't find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything. You know, like,

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  like I think especially with men that commit suicide, it's a, it's a prolonged period of that. It's not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves. It's like, you self-reflect negatively about yourself and your life and you don't do the things that you're supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time. And it's like, pretty soon you've built this whole mountain of, of, of,

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  of mismanaged, neglected.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along. And then the, and then on the other side of it, it's like, well, I could just die. Like, that seems a lot, like, it's almost like, for, I think, from a man's perspective, maybe. The friends that I've had that I've lost, it seems like, a lot of times, you think, you'd never see it coming, you know? Like, I don't know, maybe that's a general thing with, it seems like a lot of times, men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much, but. I think it's like you just dig yourself into a point to where, it's like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven't faced, that you don't know how to face, and you haven't been able to do so for a long time.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  But there's this really easy detour, and it's just, you know? Putting your big toe on the trigger. And it's like, which one of those are, I don't know, like, they're both seen, but at that point, your, your perception of reality is so distorted, that like, you don't, all the things that, that would normally compel you to, to move along, like your, like, love and joy, and like, your, your, you know, your drive to, to be that, none of that really, it's not there for you to even contemplate, if that makes sense. It's, it's like, that part's, it is almost like, at least for a little while, invisible. And all you see is fear and responsibility, and just this, like I said, I just, I just

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  envision it like a mountain that you don't, you don't really know if you're even able to climb. And then the other option is just, so I, I think that's probably where, that's probably where a lot of people go, and that's probably where I was, was just, like, you know?

• 1:19:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, there is the, it's not just responsibilities, it's the immensity of it, the mountain. And I think you're accurately describing how it happens, which is gradually.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Lex Fridman?

  Seeing yourself in a negative light over time, slowly suffocates you. And then, the burden of the responsibility that piles up.

• 1:20:04Lex Fridman?

  And unfortunately.

• 1:20:07Lex Fridman?

  Of course, one of the ways out is to pull the trigger. And the other way out is the Jordan Peterson, back to Jordan, sort of one gradual step at a time, like make your bed.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:20Lex Fridman?

  It's like, start climbing out, like the responsibilities before you want at a time, every single day, just climbing out and have faith that it will work out.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff, like a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings, but like, you know, an apostle would be in prison, like basically being tortured and facing death, but like, just overjoyed in writing about talking about, it's all about your perspective of things. Like I said, like, that's why I never could understand why, you know, like celebrities or professional, I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain type scenario, where you have a guy that's just immensely talented, just will always be loved by plenty of people, like, I never could understand why that guy.

• 1:21:14Lex Fridman?

  There's a ocean of quiet suffering in a, in a lot of, and I think it is disproportionately in men, in a lot of men, and they hide it well.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  That's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate and all too, and why it is so important to talk to those people and.

• 1:21:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's, you know, you could see it in the eyes and there, there, there is,

• 1:21:38Lex Fridman?

  there is a lot of pain there.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Without like trying to get, without like trying to open up too many doors, I think that's probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really, just a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions, you know, like, I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how. It's a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule, but not themselves. You know, you love your dog and your dog like is just this great little thing and you just, you don't see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself. So it's much more likely for people to make sure their dog

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  has their medication every day. But like, there's this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don't even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do. And, and then that also like over time, you know, like if you quit taking care of yourself and you're not in good health and you're, and you're, you're not in a good routine, you're not doing, you're not like a ser- a long series of doing enough of those things like you do, it's easy for you to just think that your self-worth is zero. Cause if you're not even willing to like, if you're not even willing to like have basic hygiene and, and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself. It's like, why, how, like how on earth are you going to go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better? If you can't, you don't even care enough to do that. It's just

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  like, eh, but it is, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a long tragic road to get to that point, I think. At least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person. That's what, at least in my situation, that's what I think helped put, you know, more than anything. Like I said, that's certainly where the motivation to quit the, once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot. Cause I was able to, even though it was a pain, it was difficult. I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were, and you know, you gotta think, like I said, I, we watched the, I mean, it was like with, of course, in my case, it was a little unfair of an example because within a month, all this stuff had happened like after I quit. But, you know,

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around and it, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody like come to life again after being in one of those. You're able to like, sort of like, escape this shell of, of all those terrible things. And even if you are still in a bad position and you're still, you got thirty grand worth of credit card debt and you're working some shit job and your car doesn't start half the time and like, you know, your girlfriend left you for some other dude and like, don't matter what it is, like, if at least that little glimmer of hope that, like, that faith that there is a chance it's something greater, like, that can, that'll push people, you can put, you can push, you can push them out on the side with that, you know? Like, you can do anything with that.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  And I think it's also good, I think it is important to have a good support structure. Like, when you get to that point, I don't think you should, I don't think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves. And there's plenty of other people out there that are in the same position. And I think that's, again, I think that's why it's so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication, because, like, we don't real, we don't, all we see of each other online is the good stuff.

• 1:24:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Very rarely are people posting on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even? It's like, all you see is the best of people, but I don't think we realize that we're all going through a lot of the same things anyway, you know? The low points and stuff.

• 1:25:12Lex Fridman?

  And guess what happens when you either lose your job or can't quite figure out a good job and you're not making that much money or you're basically broke and you have a girlfriend that's not happy about you being broke, she's gonna leave you. If it's a wife that could face divorce and like, the breakups and divorce can break a lot of people, even when they're doing well.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Lex Fridman?

  And now when they're not doing well, that's a rough one. And that basically, your support system for a lot of people is the relationship, is the, is the wife and the, and so like, that's taking the support system from underneath you and...

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  I've had good friends of mine, I've seen get in destructive relationships and like, they'll start to date a girl and then like, within a year, they're just like a shell of what they were, because sometimes, I do think it's, I do think you have to be careful with like, your self-validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it's you giving yourself that and not somebody else, because I do think too, it's like, yeah, like, you're... You know, how are you supposed to? If you can't even, if you can't even keep a woman around to love you, right? Like, how are you supposed to love yourself? It's easy to think about that. Like, I've seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff, too. That's, it's, it's tough, you know?

• 1:26:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, ultimately, I think, maybe dark to say, but there is, there is a base layer at which we're, we're alone in this world.

• 1:26:36Lex Fridman?

  Like, you need to be strong by yourself, first and foremost. Because sometimes there'll be times in life where everybody leaves you.

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:46Lex Fridman?

  The wife leaves you, the job leaves you. And for some people, might even people you thought are friends will backstab you. And even then, you have to have the strength to find your footing again. Like, that, that ultimately comes from you, right?

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I've been through, just, I can't, I'd be a fool to deny it. But like, I do think there is God there, that's always there. If you're, but you certainly can self-isolate yourself, too, even from that.

• 1:27:15Lex Fridman?

  If you can find faith in yourself, I've seen it do wonderful things for human beings. You and God, faith in something bigger than you. Yeah, that can give strength to a lot of people. But allowing yourself to derive strength solely from other people can be a dangerous thing.

• 1:27:38Lex Fridman?

  Because people are complicated and they can betray, they can,

• 1:27:44Lex Fridman?

  just like they can fill your life with love, they could also destroy you. That's also the beautiful thing about life.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:27:51Lex Fridman?

  You make yourself vulnerable to other people, you form deep relationships. That means they can also destroy you. So, that's life.

• 1:28:03Lex Fridman?

  That's what makes this whole thing, that's what, and then you write really great heartbreak songs.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Lex Fridman?

  You know, people, you know, there's something valuable about people fucking you over and, and hardship and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Even the best of us have terrible parts of us. Like, we are all flawed inherently because we're human, and so.

• 1:28:27Speaker 02

  There'll never be a, there'll never be another Garden of Eden on earth like figuratively, where, where we all just live harmoniously and everything's great and happy and wonderful. But it is, it's those basic principles that you talk about, like love and our, and those relationships and those connections that we have, they, they make it all, because to think about, I mean, like in a lot of cases, it's like, what even, that's the position you get in when you get to, when you get so depressed and you get so low. It's like, what's the point in even doing all this? Like, it is, it is just, for anyone, it's just so crazy, overly complicated and exhausting to live, isn't it? Like, even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we can just have food delivered right to our door if we want and all this kind of crap. It's like, people

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  are still like, more depressed now than they've ever been. And like, all the mental anxiety and all the mental health stuff is just, probably just as prevalent as it's ever been. It's, it's, people talk about money not making you happy. And, you know, it's like easy when you're, it's easy when you're broke to think, man, if I had some money, I, and of course, financial freedom is what you're really looking for, not like an abundance of wealth. But, the things that we talk about that make life worth living aren't things that you can buy. They are things that you obtain through relationships and love and, and life. And so, it's a, it is just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about. But,

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  it's like, uh, that human component of us is what, is what we, is what's so important to our, to our long-term existence, like our, our ability to, to have connection with each other. And, the joy we find in that, the purpose we find in that is, it's not, it's not anything that's replaceable by, with anything, you know?

• 1:30:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I've seen that with, uh, just seeing the effects of war on the people. And, basically, war strips away everything. You lose your home, you, you lose everything.

• 1:30:25Lex Fridman?

  And you get to see what's actually really important. And that's the other people in your life, friends, family. It's almost cliche to say, but it's uh,

• 1:30:38Lex Fridman?

  it's the people you love in your life that make up

• 1:30:42Lex Fridman?

  the essence of what makes life worth living. It's not the homes, the material possessions, the even the job and whatever else. It's the the humans. So. Yeah, yeah, it's important to remember. A lot of us, especially in the United States, under a capitalist system are chasing money.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Lex Fridman?

  It's important like to remember what you're doing it all for. I gotta talk to you about your um, your writing process. You've written just a bunch of really incredible songs. You say you're not good at, you're not a good musician, which is hilarious.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Dude, I have no, so I have like zero self-confidence about any of it. I mean, just about anything, but I ju- when I say that, I'm not being funny like I'm like.

• 1:31:27Lex Fridman?

  You get nervous when you like get on stage?

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I can think about shows coming up and my hands will sweat thinking about them.

• 1:31:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you told me that you like haven't really played the songs for like a couple of months. Like old songs.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Since September, yeah.

• 1:31:45Lex Fridman?

  Since September.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  Well, dude, like, think about how like,

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  you know, I can't, I'm not going to just sit around and play. I've got to get sober for fun like and like, you know.

• 1:31:56Lex Fridman?

  So you feel, you feel the songs when you play them?

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, man, that's rough. That's, that's rough.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  A lot of musicians talk about that kind of thing there, right? Like about this, I don't know, I've heard about that with people like about hating to play songs. Cause uh, that side of it, but.

• 1:32:16Lex Fridman?

  Well, you have um, I've become close friends with Dan Reynolds, who's the lead singer for Imagine Dragons.

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Lex Fridman?

  And he says every time he performs a song, I mean, he has songs that have depression in them and all that kind of stuff. And he says like, the only real way to do it is to feel it. You, you have to, you can't just fake it. You have to like be in it. You have to like really feel the song as if you're singing it, as if you're writing it. For the first time. So as a performer that that he says that that's his duty he has to to the to the audience, but then that takes a toll. It's not easy to do that, especially with the songs you write.

• 1:32:57Lex Fridman?

  I mean, there's a lot of darkness there in your songs.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I do have some, I do have some whiter hearted ones too that I that I'll, you know, I mean, I've, the thing is, it's like I've only put out. I I'm a little funny about like really like.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  God, I don't know how many songs I have written that I will probably never do anything with. Like, I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just like, they're just not, I just don't know why I don't want to put them out, but just.

• 1:33:24Lex Fridman?

  What does it look like? What do you have like a notebook with ideas? Or do you mean you have like literal videos of half baked songs?

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got my old phone, like even just that old phone that I recorded all the stuff for TikTok and all on. It's got loads of like little, just like the way that Richmond one was where it was like in the bathroom facing this. And I had like that, you know, that's all that. Even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my phone probably a couple of months before it. That's why I said I have too many unfinished songs. It's exactly what I meant. I've got all these little snippets of things like a little blip here or there, but the writing process is, well, it's a lot different than I thought most people write. Cause like in the

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  there's a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff and they'll have, or you know, these co writes where they'll have people sit down. And they like sit on the couch and smoke a joint and they're like, all right, let's write this song. And they just like, start plugging away and they, to me, that's like, I can't do that. I have to just. It's like almost the, it's like a lot of times the songs come when I'm not prepared for them.

• 1:34:29Lex Fridman?

  You like to be alone?

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Well, alone in my head, I could be out and I could be anywhere in it. You know, some of them I'll just be in the shower and they'll just like, and I'm like scrambling because the thing is, is like. Hmm. It's a certain part of your brain, I guess, that creates that stuff or picks it up or does whatever, but they come just, they come and they go just as quick as they come. It's like when you wake up, it's it's exactly like when you wake up, you've had this crazy vivid dream in your head. And you wake up and it's all right there. And then you stop thinking about it for like half a second and then it all goes away and you'll never remember it again. You know, like you can't remember your dreams like that. It's exactly like that. It's like it'll be there. It's like perfect. Like it's all right. It's like it's it's almost like given to you, like just perfect, like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever. And then

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  you get into this flow state to where you just like, it's all there in front of you and you just figure it all out. And it's like you've it's like somehow you've like unlocked this little part of your brain that you don't even really know how to get to, but you just get to it and it's all there and you figure it out. But man, if you don't get it, it's gone. Like you'll never, you'll never get it again. Like you'll never even be able to replicate that song ever again. It's like it'll just go away. And typically it's like, it's only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I'll get, or it'll be like the chorus line I'll get. And then I'll build the rest of the song around that, if that makes sense, I guess. Well, the words or the music or the melody, like what what pops into your head? The emotion, I guess, the words. Sometimes it's a phrase like, um,

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  like one thing I will do is like, especially out in the country, people say the craziest, people say the craziest things. And so sometimes I'll like jot down a little bit of some, like I will sometimes on my phone, take a little note. If somebody says something real crazy that I've never heard before, and then maybe one day it'll just pop in my head like, oh, you know, I don't know. It's very random though. Like I don't sit and just try to write songs. That's why I haven't put out like, that's why I haven't just been dumping out, even though I have been writing a lot of songs, I haven't just been like dumping out all this crazy music. I don't want to force it. I don't want to do truck beer girl songs or like, you know, I don't want to force song. I don't want to like. Do you have any truck beer girl songs? Cause that that would be an interesting. Yeah, I've got this silly one about this guy in West Virginia that, um,

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  he's like the most. He's the most laid back because I always get in my head and go over analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things and he's like buddy, you just gotta take a drag off this thing and he'll, you know, he was the one, he'd always like, like peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something and like just try to cheer. And he just didn't take life so seriously. So I've written this song about, it's called Dr. Dan and it's about, you know, he's a doctor, but he's not like a convent, he's not like a conventional doctor. That's a silly one that I'll put out. So I do have some silly ones like that. Um, I have a couple of funny ones that I'll, that I'll never, ever, ever probably play to the public, but I did, I played him at the mothership, um, only because nobody has their phones in there.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  But, uh, when I after, right after we did Rogan, I had, I got a chance, I got, somehow I got connected with Tom Segura right after Rogan. And we went over to the mothership and I got to meet him and I love Adam Agat, you know, he, he was on the thing with Norm MacDonald is how I got introduced to him. That show Norm MacDonald had, but he's just, he's an awesome dude. And so we, we ended up at the mothership. Uh, I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast and, um, Tom's like, well, they've never had, they've never had live music in here. He's like, you could be the first one. And I was like, whatever. And so, uh, we only had one guitar and I had my guitarist Joey with me. So Ron White was there. It was Tom Segura and then Ron White that night.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  And Ron took Joey in his car, drove him across town to his, uh, to his house and grabbed another guitar and came back. And we got up there and we did like two really silly songs and then Richmond in between, um, in between Tom set and Ron set. And I was like, again, that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, what, like what? Yeah. What is this? Like, what is this crazy reality I'm in? But I do have some funny, I used to, cause a lot of, when I wasn't playing the open mics, you know, the, well, like, you know, Brian that you met, a lot of my guitar playing was spent at places like his house and we were all heavy drinkers and we were just sitting around at a party playing or whatever, you know?

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  And so I definitely liked the silly stuff too, but I was really in my head when we were talking about being low and what I would suggest people to do if they're in that point. But if I was just to like, not to flip this, but just, it just popped in my head, but probably what I would tell anybody to do if they're like suicidal and thinking about, like if they're to that point is just to go find some, go find somewhere outside, like in nature and go. Yeah. That's what, you know, that's. I kind of missed this step when we were talking about things, but like selling my house and buying that property and putting a camper on it and trying to go into this whole off-grid thing really like, I don't know, it does a lot of good for you being reconnected to nature because we are a part of it, but.

• 1:39:27Lex Fridman?

  Oh yeah, that's, I've been to the jung- I went to the jungle for that reason. Yeah, being out of nature in every way is just, is beautiful. I saw you got some, maybe, maybe that's what I need to do is get some goats. I saw.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  I got two I can give you.

• 1:39:41Lex Fridman?

  Get, I have more questions. Why are you giving them so easily? Are there issues I need to know about?

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  Well, they're goats. Yeah.

• 1:39:48Lex Fridman?

  There's no, there's no free lunch, man. I, what, how many, you got goats, you got, you got all kinds of animals? What's the, so what's the story of you out in the woods? What are you doing out there?

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  Uh, no comment. I'm just kidding. Just trying to escape this dystopian nightmare that we're all living under. Like, just, it was just a form of escapism, I guess. But you know, my, well, yeah, I think in such a short period of time, my grandfather grew up like, you know, they were in a survivalist state, like trying to make enough money to pay the tax on their land, growing tobacco. And then here I am, like in this digital world two generations later. And I'm just like, something's not, you know, I just felt, just felt called to try to figure out, figure all that out and how to get back into that. There's just a, there's such a purity to, man, if you raise an animal and kill it and eat it, like, and I'm not talking about like, like Ted Nugent style, but just like, you know,

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  raising meat birds and pigs and stuff and being, having the ability to put those in the freezer and cook them for dinner. Like, they taste so much better, but it's just, it feel, it's just, I don't know how to describe it, but it just brings me joy. Um, being able to grow stuff and even just flowers and everything else, just watching stuff that's alive like that is just such a, you know, my, what we're doing now is I've bought this permaculture farm that hadn't been operational in like six or seven years. And, um, they did a lot of herbs. They had a big orchard, blueberries, you know? But um, my dream there is to create this space that um, it's like the optimal place for humans to go to fix their mind. So like, like what's the animals and the food that I can have

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  there and the trees that I can plant and the certain types of wildlife that I can bring in and attract, like the noises and the sounds and the smells that are optimal for a human to be in in order to like, fix whatever it is, you know, like um, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Kennedy Jr. Early on with all this and um, you know, he actually came out to my property and all we talk and we're still, I think the idea is that we're gonna launch this kind of like healing center thing out there. Um, once he get, once they get through all the mess that like they got their hands full a little bit right now with things, but whether I go that route or not, it's like, that's my goal is to basically create a place that people can go and like, and fix their mind and find the optimal thing. You know, we've got laying birds and meat birds. So we have, we

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  get our eggs and meat and then um, we've done pigs and sheep and goats. And then I'm gonna start with cat, I'm gonna get cattle in the spring. Um, so we'll start doing like wagyu and Angus and playing around with, and I want to get some funny stuff too, like um, I just, large animals have a lot of, you know, there's all these like, large animal therapies out there for mental health, like with vets and stuff. It's just something, it's something really relaxing and rewarding about being in that space.

• 1:42:39Lex Fridman?

  What do you uh, what do you find out there in nature that you can't find anywhere else? Can't find in the, in the uh, quote civilized world?

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  Well, everything in civilization seems so like, everything we've talked about, it seems so like,

• 1:42:57Speaker 02

  there's such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just like, and all, and all these like terrible parts of life that seem like so unstructured and just so uncertain.

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  But in nature, everything is certain. Everything has a system like even on the microbial level of soil, there's this like intricate system and you know soil soils fixes it like the bacteria fixes the soil and like and you can grow certain types of plants to restore certain types of nutrients and then that can grow certain types of trees and then that can bring in certain types of birds and it's like this whole big nature is this this whole big beautiful system, you know, like earth is just such an intricate, complex system that is structured and although there is chaos, there's literal tornadoes, you know, like the metaphor we were using earlier, like there are literal tornadoes in nature and other things, but there's, there's a peace about observing the structure there.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  And to me, like, it just helps, it helps remind and restore my faith that there is something bigger than me that like, yeah, and there's a spiritual side to it that I don't know that I can really correctly articulate, but man, sitting out in the woods with some creek flowing by you and just sitting in stillness, like where you, you don't hear anything, there's no traffic from a road, there's no, you know, you're just, you're just there in stillness and just watching, watching the earth do its things, just.

• 1:44:21Lex Fridman?

  I've gotten a chance to spend a day and a night alone in, deep in the Amazon jungle.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  Hmm, that's like my dream, man.

• 1:44:30Lex Fridman?

  You basically take the woods and in the creek and the quiet, let's put that like a three on a scale of one to 10, the Amazon jungle is like an 11 because you're not just listening to the creek, you're listening to like a lot of different species of animal having sex or, or trying to kill each other. And you're just like birds, monkeys, just everything and the, the, the floor full of insects.

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Lex Fridman?

  Bigger kinds of ants murdering smaller kinds of ants. It's an orchestra of, of insects, but there, it's quiet in a sense that there's no machinery. The, the really dark thing about the Amazon rainforest that sometimes depending on where you are, you'll sometimes hear in the distance, the sound of a chainsaw. You'll hear like,

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20Lex Fridman?

  It just, and it pierces

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:23Lex Fridman?

  the day because like, there's just no machinery anywhere around, but once you hear it's in, you know. It is like this undeniable symbol of what human civilization does to nature.

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  It pains me seeing woods getting knocked down and residential residential subdivisions taking their place. Like this, like the monkey part of my brain wants to just go burn it all down. Like it's just like not good. Like, I don't know. I just instinctually observe it as being not good. And I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I'm with you. Like I, um, that was, like I said, that's why I felt so compelled. I mean, we had, I had this little house that I had maybe a little bit of equity in and I, it was in 2019 and the housing market was up. And I was like, I sold our little house and got that I was able to find 92 acres for like 1100 an acre. And so I still had to finance it, but it was at least like within my, barely within my.

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  And so that's what we did. We had a, you know, I was paying 600 a month on the land and I bought a little camper for, for $750 off this hunt club in Waverly, Virginia. And drug it up there and that's, that's what we had. And like,

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  went and bought a little, I got a little Kubota tractor for 0% financing and was like cutting, like this property was a mile off the road. So I had to cut, basically like recut in old logging road and stuff. And you want to talk about putting a strain on your marriage? That'll do it, buddy. Is selling your, selling your modest little rancher and doing that. But man, I was, that's when I really started to live and I think probably my, that was like the beginning point of the restoration of, of, of me, you know? And I feel bad that a lot of people just don't even know what that's like to be on a farm or be out in nature. And I can't imagine just living in a suburb or a city your whole life and never getting to experience that. You know, it's good that we have all this technology is great and like the, the science and the innovation is important.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  And even the fact that you can go on YouTube and look how, look up how to do almost anything is important. It's just that.

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  There isn't a clear definitive line between what's beneficial and educational and what's predatory and harmful. And so it's like, it happens to me all the time, but I could go on YouTube and look up how to change the brake shoes on my truck or something. And if I click on a short of somebody doing it, I automatically, like I automatically go to the next video and I may be three or four videos deep before I catch, I'm watching like, you know, some lady throw a pie at somebody and then pretty soon I'm like, wait, I'm changing my brake. That's the only issue.

• 1:47:58Lex Fridman?

  And then you're just doom scrolling and it,

• 1:48:02Lex Fridman?

  it does something to your mind. It just completely takes the humanity away.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:06Lex Fridman?

  It's, it's, it's really horrible. Like that dopamine thing does something to my mind that I hate, which really is the opposite of nature. Like the feeling I remember being out in nature and not just a hike. A hike is good, but like for prolonged periods of time, several days away from the internet, away from all that. What is that? I don't know what that is, but I don't like what X Twitter are doing. I don't like what Instagram is doing, whatever that is. I don't think that's good for the soul.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's emulating things that we need to be healthy humans, but it's just like feeding it visually and audibly to us, but it's not giving us the, it's giving us the instant gratification of it, but it's not giving us the long-term pleasure fulfillment of it. Like I said, like, and the beauty is we're in this weird period in time, like it's a breath of time that we're in, where, where we are able to conceptualize and observe what life was like in that transition point that's got us up till now. And we also have the, because in order for all this to, to continue to evolve, like in, like even with AI, like it needs us more than we need it right now still for a very short period of time, but

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  we have access to nearly all the information that the world has theoretically, but we also still have the perception and the, the memory of what life was like before. And so this is like a very short window of time, like a breath of time where I think.

• 1:49:40Speaker 02

  We can find a way to like incorporate this into normal life, but I think like if that breath leaves us like, I don't know. I think it's irreversible. You know, I believe that I truly believe it is irreversible. And I think like, and that's just going to be the end of us. And it, and it could take two or three more generations to get to that point. But like I, I think like, why don't we find people that are way smarter than me and, and look at all the things that trend on social media, like the videos that everybody watches. Like, I don't know what it is. If it's wood splitting and plumbing and blacksmithing and doing something with like, let's find all the things that people are attracted to online that they obviously are like interested in and just figure out a way to have them in real life for people to immerse themselves in.

• 1:50:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. I mean, it's a transitionary state and I, one of the responsibilities I take very seriously, because I agree with you, is I tried to pierce the bubble that is San Francisco, that is the Silicon Valley, that is the people that build these technologies. They, they often live a bit in a bubble.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:40Lex Fridman?

  That said, the people that criticize tech folks also live in a bubble.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Lex Fridman?

  And to sort of, first of all, piercing bubbles in general is, is good for people to get along, to understand each other. Because people that say all technology is evil, unfortunately, technology, even if that's true, which I don't think it is, you, it's coming. It's going to be built. And so you have to figure out how to do it in a way that preserves our humanity, that, that doesn't drag us into this black hole of like, just maximizing engagement, maximizing this dopamine thing where, where instead of reading Dostoevsky, which I should be doing, I'm looking at some girl doing, shaking her ass on Instagram and then feeling horrible about myself five minutes later.

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Lex Fridman?

  That at scale is what seems to be happening. And so like reminding ourselves that this is not the way to steer human civilization to progress, to flourishing.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  The problem is, is I think we're wasting a lot of our, our bandwidth, like a lot of the, like, we only have so many minutes in the day to even use our brains and our brains can only do but so much in a day anyway. And when we're wasting any of it on just that, it's like the, it's like, I, I see it in my unprofessional opinion as.

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  The world is becoming just a little more in the last decade or two as the world becomes a little more dreary and dark and more problems happen and city streets become more littered and jobs are like all these kinds of problems that we that we all argue about all the time as they become more prevalent. It's like the internet and and just the visuals of the internet become so much more immersive and video games are so much more everything's so much better. Everything's improving at lightning speed in technology and it's degrading in society and in the real world. And somehow there's got to be a way to find a balance there. But right now it seems like as technology becomes more immersive and addictive and and interactive, you know, like the way these algorithms like feed us exactly what we want. And there's so

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  much psychology and just so much research that goes into making them as addictive as possible. It's like the real world kind of sucks. Like, you know, cities that were beautiful and thriving are now falling apart like and and and have all kinds of problems that are being unaddressed and lack of leader. It's like, there's got to be some kind of way. But it's and so it's easy for us to feel more and more inclined to escape into the digital realm because the digital realm is becoming more fun while real life is becoming less fun. And there's got to be some kind of way to balance between the two. I'm with you. I'm not against technology at all. I think evil most certainly existed long before there were computers like and and in even more treacherous ways. Like now we have the ability to do. We're like I said,

• 1:53:23Speaker 02

  we're in a very, we're in a very temporary state right now in 2025 where we have access, where the general public has access to basically all the information there is and artificial intelligence and just immense and the ability that like a guy can just set a bunch of cameras up and start doing podcasts and have just the like even just the fact that this that your platform could be created is like immensely powerful. It never probably never existed in world history up until now. But we also still have the problem is is if we just keep going without being careful about about losing the real world aspect of it is that like.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  At some point, we're just gonna get so lost and so immersed in this space. We're not even gonna know what we're, we're not even gonna know what we're missing out on. You know, all there's gonna be is girls on Instagram, like all there's gonna be is that.

• 1:54:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I've been trying to figure it all out. I just did a super long podcast with, uh, Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, who created Fortnite and created Unreal Engine, a lot of interesting video games, like revolutionary video games. So I don't know if you know, but Fortnite is this gigantic video game where people go into, uh, into an online world and they shoot stuff. It's fun. It's, it's not like Call of Duty intense militaristic, like raw, real kind of shooting. It's more fun shooting at each other. But, you know, at first I was skeptical, like, is that a good way to have, to hang out with friends? But then I got to do it with people that I'm actually friends with in physical reality.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:53Lex Fridman?

  And you get to hear each other's voice and you just talk and talk shit about each other together. This, it's basically a phone call, honestly, with some visuals. You're not, it's not about the visuals, it's about the phone call. And it just makes it a little more convenient to connect regularly.

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:10Lex Fridman?

  But I think you do need to remember that all of that only works if you're consistently returning to physical reality. You know, uh, in this case, like taking the quote unquote, uh, guy trip, not the Brokeback Mountain style, but just friends, you know, just friends, a trip out in nature together, like, like dudes on a hunting trip or, or just fishing or just hanging out in physical reality together. It's really a thought, like, we should not forget the importance of that.

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  You talked earlier about loneliness. I think that got brought up at some point, but I do think that's like a big, that's a problem that's caused a lot of our symptoms is that we are all like very lonely, even though we are all, we all seem to be so well-connected digitally, we are all so lonely. Yeah, I think, I mean, Modern Warfare 2 was a big thing. I was, I was supposed to have been in class of 2010, so you can think like when I was in, whatever grade, eighth grade or whatever, Call of Duty was like the thing, you know, I, I've certainly, like, trust me, I'm not saying that I, I'm right in this space of digital immersion with anybody else. Like I've, I've, I've been there and seen it and done, you know, like, but I, I've wasted, who knows how many hundreds of hours on Modern Warfare 2 and like.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  I really built some great friendships from it, you know, I like I there's, there's a place for all that stuff. It's just like, we had like, there is just this, we have this innate responsibility to like, to, again, it just goes back to this, goes back to talking about our founding fathers and the way this country was created and the importance and the like, the importance of, of what it did for the world. Um, you know, and my, my understanding is that it was the first, it was the first time ever that people got together and agreed that, like you said, every man was equal. Because they were created in the image of God, they had uninaliable rights that no government could take away from them. And that's really important. Like we, there won't be Fortnite if we don't worry about that.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  And they, and honestly, like just the collapsing in our structure with the mental health with our youth and the suicide rates with our blue collar workers and all these kinds of things we've touched and talked about, like the, those are all just things, we just need more time together in real life to fix those problems. Those are just things, like I said, I, I make the joke, but like, like, there's never been one argument that I've, there's never been one dispute with my wife that I've been able to figure out how to fix through a text message or like, it takes, it takes being in person with people and, and like having human connection to fix any problem and to heal anything, you know? And so it's difficult. It's like, I don't, it's not anybody's fault that we're like that. We're not even able to really get to know each other and understand each other through the internet.

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Like we almost have to be together in person to even just get each other's point of view and perspectives on things and, you know?

• 1:57:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, fuck the division that the internet creates, honestly, like the left and the right is, is, it's been, it's been, it's been kind of a nightmare for me just to watch, because I see the very simple reality that we're in it together and that there's a lot more commonality between people. It seems cliche to say, but it's like now than used to be said. More than ever, because when you look on X, it feels like everybody's divided, but we're not.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Well, and people are always going to think differently, too, like just in our structure and the way we, you know, again, it's like that. It goes back to that Jordan Peterson lecture about, I think in Maps of Meaning where he talks about people who think more conservatively or more liberally about things like, it's been applied to politics, but it is more, it's based more in psychology than anything. Like, some people are going to have, some people are going to think more inside the box and some people are going to think more outside the box. But we have to have both in order to have a healthy society like.

• 1:58:49Lex Fridman?

  Oh, and also the thing that bothers me, your song Richmond, North of Richmond, a lot of people, a pretty even split, people on the left and the right in terms of friends of mine. And sadly, they've drifted to towards the extremes a bit. Those on the left definitely have developed a case of Trump derangement syndrome. Those on the right seem to think that every person on the left is a kind of radical leftist.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Lex Fridman?

  It's like hilarious to listen to people talk. It's like everybody's lost their mind, it feels like. But also on top of that, people on the right see Trump as a savior, as this figure who is, who could do no wrong, who's going to restore freedom in America and all, you know, continue, you can do a full list of really positive things. And to me, he's yet another rich man, North of Richmond. Biden, Trump, it's all the same thing. Now, some might be able to do more good than others, but ultimately they're in positions of power and power corrupts. And those in those positions

• 2:00:02Lex Fridman?

  often forget about the everyday person, the working class. And they leave them behind, ultimately serve the people that are close to them and sometimes serve themselves to maintain power, to grow their power. I think the good thing you can say about them is they, and I could say that about both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Is that they really love their family? As I could say that one of the things that I love about both people is that they genuinely love their family. And like, it was always heartwarming to me to see how much Joe Biden loves his family.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:43Lex Fridman?

  Like, and honestly, like, just do anything for his family, and this, the same is true for Trump. And that just reminds you that they're human beings. And yeah, all that to say is like, we need to see the humanity in each of us.

• 2:00:57Lex Fridman?

  And to some degree, always distrust the people in power.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  The power that people have only exists because we allow it, whether willingly or just through our own negligence. But I think that's the important thing is like,

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  like I said, there's always more of us than there will be of them. There's always more, there's always more nobodies than there ever will be people at the top. We just have to figure out what to do with that and how to. And I think this is, like I said, a short window of time to, where we can still figure that out, you know?

• 2:01:26Lex Fridman?

  I gotta ask you about something before I forget. I think I saw on Instagram, you talked about a three-legged cat. Is that a real thing? What's the story behind the three-legged cat? The reason I want to ask you that, first of all, I want to hear this story. And second of all, I want to read to you one of my favorite Bukowski poems afterwards. I bought another cat. All right, what's the story?

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  I had this cat lady neighbor, who's a real sweet lady, but

• 2:01:53Speaker 02

  older lady, lives in a trail, single Y trailer, has probably got, I don't know, 30 or 40 cats that she feeds at her house.

• 2:02:01Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 2:02:02Speaker 02

  It was a rainy Saturday morning. It was pouring down rain. It was gonna be like, it was like eight o'clock in the morning on Saturday. It was gonna be a great day. I was gonna, and then I hear this lady yelling, there's this cat stuck in my car. And she's all freaking out and don't know what to do. And like I said, my wife's a veterinary technician or whatever. So she's got a little bit more sense about animals than any of us. But we go over there and the lady's tried to start her car. And there's this kitten that was up under the hood. And she started the car and the cat, basically it, it basically almost ripped its whole front leg off already. There was just a little bit still attached, like some tendon or whatever. But the, the leg was like wrapped up under the water pump, like the pulley, the water pump.

• 2:02:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  Knocked the bell off. There was no way to get, there was no way to save this leg on this guy. It was like, and, but the cat was like pinned upside down and so. We ended up grabbing a, we asked a lady if she had like a knife in the house. So she gave us this like terrible looking knife, but it's all that we had, you know, I was like, we were trying to get this done. So yeah, my wife was the one that did it, but we like got the rest of the stuff cut and got the cat out and I'm, and I don't know, I just like,

• 2:03:11Speaker 02

  to spend like, have her, I was like over a grand we spent giving, like getting this cat's likes, getting it properly sutured or whatever to where the cat could have a healthy recovery and all. But I'm one of those type of people, like I'm not gonna, I couldn't just let this little, I'm not gonna go, they were gonna just go put the cat down or whatever, the lady, you know? So yeah, it's my, I named her Hop. So that's my little cat and it hops around and, but it was one of those things where, uh,

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  yeah, I don't know. I, great example with animals. I guess it's the same way with people. I just always see the best and I just couldn't.

• 2:03:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. I mean, that's one of the most amazing things about humans. It's, it's irrational. To spend that much money on this cat, right? Because there's so many other cats that are suffering and dying and so on. But that's what makes humans really special. We see that the, the, the, the, the person or the creature suffering in front of us and we're, we're willing to move mountains to save that person. Like it's irrational. Maybe it doesn't make sense because the allocation of money and effort might not be correct, whatever. Uh, we just don't give a shit.

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  The reason that we're willing to do it for a cat, like I said, it's just like the thing with the dogs about giving the dogs your medication, but not yourself. So we see all the flaws and all the problems and the, all the disagreements and all the anger we have with each other. Just like you said, your friends on the right and the left and stuff. And like we could show that kind of compassion and we do, I mean, humanity does from time to time, show that kind of compassion, but we could show that kind of like just undeserved, just, just love, you know, to each other too, like in.

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  Love is like, it's funny, you know, you talked about how both of those presidents, you could say they at least loved their family, but love is like, I think everyone's capable of love. It's probably the most powerful thing there is, even beyond hate, I think is, you know, like, but it is crazy with animals. It's so, it comes out of us so easily with animals because they, to us, they're in, there's these innocent little lives. We don't have anything against them, you know? Like, they don't have, they don't, they don't, they don't talk, they don't have political views, they don't, they're just little creatures, but the reality is, is we're all just, we're all just creatures like that, you know?

• 2:05:29Lex Fridman?

  We do that with human children.

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:32Lex Fridman?

  But we don't do it enough with adults who are also kinds of children. They're still, we're still like, we're still fucking lost in this world. Uh, so I gotta, I gotta, I gotta read you this. It's got to be one of my favorite poems. It's called "The History of One Tough Motherfucker" by Charles Bukowski. And people should go look at videos, there's videos of Bukowski doing interviews with a cat by his side, and that's the cat he's talking about. All right. It goes like this. "He came to the door one night, wet, thin, beaten and terrorized. A white, cross-eyed, tailless cat. I took him in and fed him, and

• 2:06:12Lex Fridman?

  he stayed. Grew to trust me, until a friend drove up the driveway and ran him over. I took what was left to a vet who said, 'Not much chance. Give him these pills, his backbone is crushed,' but it was crushed before and somehow mended. If he lives, he'll never walk. Look at these x-rays. He's been shot. Look here, the pellets are still there. Also, he once had a tail. Somebody cut it off." I took the cat back. It was a hot summer, one of the hottest in decades. I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills. He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't touch the water. I dipped my finger into it and wet his mouth and I talked to him. I didn't go anywhere.

• 2:06:58Lex Fridman?

  I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to him and gently touched him. And he looked back at me with those pale blue crossed eyes. And as the days went by, he made his first move, dragging himself forward by his front legs. The rear ones wouldn't work. He made it to the litter box, crawled over and in. It was like the trumpet of possible victory blowing in that bathroom and into the city. I related to that cat. I had it bad, not that bad, but bad enough. One morning, he got up, stood up, fell back down and just looked at me. "You can make it," I said to him. He kept trying, getting up, falling down.

• 2:07:42Lex Fridman?

  Finally, he walked a few steps. He was like a drunk. The rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested, then got up. You know the rest. Now he's better than ever. Cross-eyed, almost toothless, but the grace is back. And that look in his eyes never left. And now, sometimes I'm interviewed. They want to hear about life and literature. And I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed, shot, run over, detailed cat. And I say, "Look, look at this." But they don't understand. They say something like, "You say you've been influenced by Celine." No. I hold the cat up.

• 2:08:27Lex Fridman?

  Influenced by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this. I shake the cat, hold him up in the smoky and drunken light. He's relaxed. He knows. It's then that the interviews end.

• 2:08:43Lex Fridman?

  Although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures later and there I am. And there's the cat and we are photographed together. He too knows it's bullshit, but that somehow it all helps. So when you posted about the the three legged cat, there you go. And I I think of your music and your life story in the same way. It's just been through some shit, just like Bukowski. Neither of you two have been through what that cat's been through. But, you know, that's kind of life. That's what it's all about. Uh, I was wondering if you could play a couple of songs.

• 2:09:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:09:23Lex Fridman?

  Okay, cool. Do you want to take a break or no?

• 2:09:26Speaker 02

  Um, no, I'm good. Am I, we might have to take a break just just to really get this figured out, but.

• 2:09:34Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 2:09:37Lex Fridman?

  Where's where is the guitar? Like where? No, like positionally?

• 2:09:40Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I think this will be fine.

• 2:09:45Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so ghetto.

• 2:09:50Lex Fridman?

  Call Draven and be like, who?

• 2:09:57Speaker 02

  Well, if you, I guess I'll do, um, if I was going to do anything on here from the older songs that that was related, both to everything we've talked about, it'd probably be I Want to Go Home.

• 2:10:07Lex Fridman?

  Sounds good.

• 2:10:25Speaker 03

  If it weren't for my old dogs and the good Lord, they'd have me strung up in the sideboard. Cause every day living in this new world is one too many days to me. Son, we're on the brink of the next world war. And I don't think nobody's praying no more. And I ain't saying I know it for sure. I'm just down on my knees begging the Lord, take me home. I wanna go home.

• 2:11:09Speaker 03

  I don't know which road to go, it's been so long. I just know I didn't used to wake up feeling this way. Cussing myself every damn day. People have really gone and lost their way. They all just do what the TV say. I wanna go home.

• 2:11:52Speaker 03

  Four generations farming the ground. Grandson sells it to a man out of town. And two weeks later, the trees go down. Only got concrete growing around. And I wanna go home. I wanna go home.

• 2:12:18Speaker 03

  I don't know which road to go, it's been so long. I just know I didn't used to wake up feeling this way. Cussing myself every damn day. There's always some kind of bill to pay. People just doing what the rich men say. I wanna go home.

• 2:13:28Speaker 02

  That's probably one of the first, I don't know, it's not the first song I wrote, but one of them.

• 2:13:32Lex Fridman?

  What a song, man. What a song. What a song. What's the story to that guitar?

• 2:13:38Speaker 02

  Well, the guy who made this like saved my butt because everything blew up and I was playing that little Gretsch resonator that's in all the original videos and my, my wife had got me that off of Amazon, I think, or something for like three or 400 bucks. It's like a, just an entry level, like import little Gretsch. And the pickup never would work right in it. So this string would, wouldn't work when you plug it in. So here we are, everything happens all at once and we're trying to do these shows and like, you know, I think the biggest one I did, so basically what I ended up having to do was go, I bought one of these suction cup rigs that sticks right here and the mic goes down under here to pick that string up.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  And I played like, we played like a, I think the biggest show I did with it was like 10,000 people, but it was enough to where I couldn't be doing a $300 guitar with a, with a rigged up thing on it anymore. It just wasn't gonna work. So this guy reached out and um, Gretsch wouldn't help me with my Gret, like, you know, there's no way to really get ahold of them because they're such a big company. At the, I, I finally did get ahold of Diane Gretsch and she's like really nice. And so it's nothing personal against Gretsch. It's just at the time I couldn't get ahold of them. I figured I would have been able to because like everywhere sold out of those, that Gretsch model when the song blew up, you know, like it was a real pop, but I couldn't get ahold of them. So this guy, Beard Guitar, Paul Beard in Maryland, he reached out, fixed my Gretsch and then um, gave me one of these and made it with the,

• 2:15:02Speaker 02

  but it's all handmade and all, it's like.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can like whack somebody over the head with it pretty good. Yeah, it's nice and heavy. But yeah, he makes them all by hand. Little family owned place and. I know nothing about resonated guitars. Is that like?

• 2:15:22Speaker 02

  Do you play regular acoustic? Yeah, it's just basically a regular acoustic. It's just a full step down is the only difference. I've just got it tuned all the way down. Is that it? Cause there's also like the. This whole vibe to it. Oh, yeah. Well, the body's different. So you can see it's got like a. It's got like a solid, you know, instead of it being a hollow body like an acoustic, it's got that. It almost looks like a hubcap, that black. And they call the court. That's all the same. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's just the same. Yeah, I, I wouldn't be smart enough to play anything special. Like it's just a regular old guitar. I don't know. There's a different vibe to it. Yeah, well, I like that. Cooler. Well, the old. I'm real. I'm real fond of like the older music like, um.

• 2:16:01Speaker 02

  So like where all my family's from. So my dad was adopted. So I don't have any fan, like Lunsford's not really even a real last name to me. They're all just. It was just my grandparents that adopted my dad. So. All of my family's Ingle is like I N G L E. That's like my real, that's on my mom's side of my family and, um. They're all from this place about 20 miles from where like the Carter family was from. So all that old Virginia. Like kind of bluegrass folk music and stuff. And so I. I was just always attracted to that. And so. That's, I, I like the, I like the resonator a full step down because it, to me, it kind of gives it that old sound like, um.

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  You know, a lot of the instruments back then had like bad dull strings and they were older and they were out of tune a little bit and stuff. And I just. I listened to a lot of that type of music. So I like, I like the strings being a little out of tune and dull and not everything and just that. Yeah, that's why I was so attracted to it. Plus like. Some of the old blues players like, you know. Playing the Dobro and stuff, but. That was my, that's why I wanted to get the resonator was just because of that old, I mean, that's even why like. You know, I had to use my grandpa's name as an alias, but that Oliver Anthony music is really supposed to represent like old music from like. 1930s Virginia or something like, you know, like it's kind of got that. Type of. Feel to it, or at least in its core, you know?

• 2:17:23Lex Fridman?

  It feels like from another time, but it also feels timeless.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  It's also that my music catalog is so limited, like of what I listen to, that a lot of what's in my head, like as you think about when you're writing songs and like coming up with chord progressions and stuff, you whether you realize it or not, it's all being influenced off of other songs. So when you only have a lot of older music and like some, a little bit of metal and stuff in there, it's like, there's not really a whole lot. It's like, you know, it's kind of going to sound that way, I guess, just in anyway, because that's what's in your head already, but.

• 2:17:54Lex Fridman?

  So you're gonna go out there a little bit this year.

• 2:17:59Lex Fridman?

  Wow. What are, what are some things you're looking forward to? You're gonna travel a bit? You're gonna play a bit?

• 2:18:05Speaker 02

  The idea is, is to go to a town, like, let's just use Iowa as an example. Instead of, instead of the big city in Iowa playing at the venue where everybody books, let's find a farm field 45 minutes outside of that big city. Figure out the ingress, egress, the security, find a good promoter that can like, a show organizer, basically that has experience to where it's still, it's still professional and it's done correctly. But establish like a new venue space that can't be, that can't be put under contract by a monopoly that any artist can go play. Like without, like, if, if all these musicians are sick of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, then let's just,

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  let's just start playing in fields and on main streets and set these venues up and establish them correctly and professionally to where they exist as their own space. And then, and then imagine the economic impact that would provide to a town that otherwise would never have, like, and imagine what it, you, you want to talk about trying to give blue collar people like some hope or give them some relatability or do anything for them. Like bring a big band to their town that they would otherwise have to drive an hour and a half somewhere to see. And couldn't even afford the tickets to start with. Like my tour last year, pretty much every show we did that was mine had a $25 ticket option. And everybody scoffed at that. And I just, I was basically like made fun of for that by people in the professional space, even people I was working with. They just thought it was so stupid.

• 2:19:26Speaker 02

  But you know what? There were people at my shows that came up and the kids were wearing hand me down clothes. And like you could tell they didn't have any money and they and they said it meant a lot to them that they could come and that there was a $25 option and so. And I'll continue to do these shows like this to where any band that wants to come play the show, all their expenses are covered. Um, and I'm sure there's some kind of tax write off component to them for them, but basically they can come in. Do the show, help bring in a crowd. Like I'm taking the risk, setting the venue up and establishing it. The venue will be owned or managed by either the town or the farm or whatever, but it's it's. It'll be in a nonprofit and then that that space will always exist for people to rent.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  And the idea is just like, man, imagine if I did, if I could do 20 of these a year, even if that's even if that's all I can get done. Like that's 20 places that will always have music and will always have a center where people can go. Like and build this sense of community. We talked about like, it's almost like a sanctuary, if you want to call it that, but it's like, it's just a space that can't be perverted by. By corporate America and just a place where people can go and like do all these things that we want to do. Um. What are you excited for this year? Obviously you're going to travel overseas and you got, it sounds like you got some, some other cool stuff you're going to do.

• 2:20:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I'm gonna see, uh, I'm gonna see some world leaders, hopefully not end up in prison anywhere. Part, part of that, honestly, I'm excited, you know, like India to see. The same humans, but in very different parts of the world. I'm not a travel guy, but I love seeing humans that there's like a lot of us humans all over the place and they're very different and they have funny accents and just funny way of being, you know? So I'm excited to take it all in because I fundamentally love people.

• 2:21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, like I, I, uh. I would definitely say if you're ever up, if you're ever over towards Virginia or West Virginia, either one there like. Yeah, it'd be cool to spend a couple of days out in the woods or a day out in the woods and do. I I haven't really, I was, I'm really new to the whole psilocybin thing, but I have tried a few smaller doses of it, actually to help with being up on stage and all and um. It's an interesting thing, but.

• 2:21:39Lex Fridman?

  It's great.

• 2:21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, the dog, definitely the dogs and the woods part, I got you on that.

• 2:21:45Lex Fridman?

  Oh, I would love to join in. I mean, I've I've I've taken mushrooms a few times. And listen, I usually just love everything anyway, but with mushrooms, you just love it a little bit more, like especially out of nature. When I'm look out in nature, I'm just in awe of how incredibly beautiful it is. And just like a stare at a tree. For hours and then you take mushrooms and like that tree. Starts like having some more dynamism to it. So it's just a little boost, but like.

• 2:22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I get into this crazy, like I said, it's only been a handful of times because I've.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's one of those things where it's I'm, it's still a little unfamiliar to me, but. Like, like talking about trees and psilocybin, you know, you think about, you start to look in those trees and you think like. And their relative perspective of time, you know, because they're constantly moving around and growing and doing all these things. And you think about like in their perspective. Maybe we're just, we're just moving way faster than their perception and they're they're moving at just a normal speed. I don't, it's just that you get into all these crazy trains of thought when you sit out in the woods on that stuff, but.

• 2:22:51Lex Fridman?

  A hundred percent, man. I mean, like, maybe that's the history of uh life. I mean, humans will have some chance of destroying ninety five, ninety nine percent of the population with nuclear weapons. And the trees will remain and they will reconstruct the environment of Earth and help the the few humans that remain to survive. And it'll be the fucking trees that we'd be grateful for their actual deep. Ancient uh wisdom. So maybe they're the intelligent ones, maybe we're the idiots.

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  When you're out in nature like that and just reading, but just looking and studying the way all those systems work with soil and trees and animals and how it all just integrates in together so perfectly. It does give you some sense of peace that maybe there is some, there is some system at place that's out of our hands that can just help us with our fault, our faults and our repercussions. And again, like for me, just um.

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think just being out there, especially now that now looking at it through the lens of of God of their, you know, of God, it helps. There's I've found no greater peace than just being out in the woods and and praying or just just trying to focus my mind on. On that like I but yeah, I would love for you to come out there sometime and.

• 2:24:04Lex Fridman?

  I'm 100% well, that is it. Um, see like feeling peaceful out. In Virginia in the woods is easy. Try doing it in the Amazon jungle and a giant.

• 2:24:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I'd love dude, I.

• 2:24:17Lex Fridman?

  And just bites you.

• 2:24:18Speaker 02

  Dude, I would do anything to go to the.

• 2:24:19Lex Fridman?

  And all of the pieces is gone. You're like, motherfucker, what do you do? What is and then it like a second one joins in. Kills the first one and bites you again. And then you're like, okay, nature is not all.

• 2:24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not.

• 2:24:33Lex Fridman?

  I mean, there is, uh, there is harmony to it, but it part of the harmony is the violence.

• 2:24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:40Lex Fridman?

  It's just the reality with it's, um. Sex and violence.

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  Like, I guess that's the thing about it, though, is like it has all the same components of humanity, just almost, you know? Like almost to a comical level.

• 2:24:53Lex Fridman?

  I mean, the real comedy is the monkeys up in the trees. They're it's like it's like little humans and they're arguing, screaming at each other, throwing stuff, getting into fights. It's like. It's like reality TV, but like. More pure, more real, more distilled down to his fundamentals. Like we are, we are that. You know?

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:15Lex Fridman?

  We we put on clothes these days and. Have fancy words that we say to each other and look all sexy on Instagram, but we're the same. Monkeys, apes.

• 2:25:26Speaker 02

  It's like the old lobsters, you know? But it really is true, like. Like, uh, we all, we all. Yeah, we're all on that some kind of same operating system in a way.

• 2:25:39Lex Fridman?

  Brother, this was a huge honor. I can't, I don't have the words to describe how incredible this was. And I think it was just fun. It was really fun talking to you.

• 2:25:50Speaker 02

  Total honor to be able to come on here for me as well. And especially just to get to meet you in real life and see like, you know, you are what I, you are what I expected you to be, like in a good way. Like, you know, you just don't ever like, yeah, you're just, you're a good dude. So I appreciate what you're doing.

• 2:26:07Lex Fridman?

  I gotta show you the sex dungeon downstairs.

• 2:26:09Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 2:26:10Lex Fridman?

  Where I, where I keep sex slaves. It's very different. No. Yeah, man. All right. Time to wake up. Let's go back to.

• 2:26:19Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Anthony. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from George Orwell. Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.