#1086 Ed Latimore On Don't Get Outworked By A Crackhead

Ed Latimore is a former heavyweight boxer, best-selling author, and chess enthusiast. In this conversation, we discuss the crackhead work theory, Ed's recovery from alcohol addiction, why the world has gone so crazy, critical thinking, and narrative violations in recent years. ======================= This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the best option for easy, optimal nutrition out there. You take one scoop of AG1 and you’re absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole-food sourced superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to help you start your day right. This blend of ingredients supports your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system, your energy, recovery, focus, and aging. Go to athleticgreens.com/POMP to give AG1 a try today. ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ================== Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with certainty and earn passively at scale across variable market conditions, in an environment backed by multibillion-dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish Treasury. Visit bullish.com/pomp today to learn more. Note: Bullish is licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. Virtual assets and related products are high risk. Consult your investment advisor and trade responsibly. Bullish is available in select locations only and not to U. S persons. Visit bullish.com/legal for important information and risk warnings. ==================== The bridge between iGaming, online sports betting, and emerging technology, such as Blockchain, NFTs, fintech, GameFi, metaverse, and AI, is loud and clear. The largest global summit of this kind is heading to Malta from November 15 to 17. Over a thousand exhibitors and 25,000 industry leaders will be there, including top executives from Draft Kings, Bet365, Socios, crypto exchanges, betting software providers, operators, gaming affiliates, and more. Log on to AIBC. WORLD and SiGMA. WORLD to see all our upcoming global summits! See you in Malta, November 15 to 17 for the leading global event in Gaming & Emerging Tech! THIS IS SiGMA! ======================= Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= If you’re trying to grow and preserve your crypto-wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem. Alto IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard earned money. So, ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto CryptoIRA to invest in crypto tax-free. Just go to https://altoira.com/pomp

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ed Latimore is a former heavyweight boxer. He's a bestselling author and a chess enthusiast. In this conversation, we talk about the crackhead work ethic, his life story, his break from alcohol addiction, and why Ed seems to think that the world has gone so crazy. I really, really enjoyed this conversation with Ed. He is one of the last remaining independent thinkers that I can find on the internet. And we talked about a number of topics, both in the current day and over history. I hope that you enjoyed this episode with Ed as much as I did. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  what your thoughts are after you listen. Let's get into this episode with Ed Latimore. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Build your front end, back end, and product logic in one place with Base44. Describe how it should work with a managed database, authentication, and hosting already included. Then go deeper. Define access levels or connect an external API using plain language to build and iterate. Spend less time assembling infrastructure and more time getting your product live. Go to base44.com.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  You could try to find the perfect coffee to water ratio. Or you could press a button. With Keurig, each K cup pod is precision measured for a perfectly delicious cup. No effort, no grind, no math required. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Very excited about this. I thought the first place we could start is a crackhead work ethic. And I'm gonna tell you a story before you explain why you talk about this so much. But I have a brother, I got four brothers, but one of them used to joke all the time and say, "Crackhead wakes up and they're gonna eat today. Don't let them outwork you." And I came across one of your tweets like two, three, four years ago, whenever it was. And I was like, "Holy shit, did he know my brother?" And I've seen you talking about this, and then I've seen you talk about it over and over and over again. So what exactly is crackhead work ethic?

• 3:14Speaker 05

  So, you know, people, first off, people wonder where like that comes from or why I talk about that so much. And you gotta like, understand where I grew up. Like, I'm a, I'm a project of public housing. And if you don't know anything about public housing, you know, there's the at-risk youth, urban elements, gang violence, a lot of drugs, that kind of thing, right? So, you know, crackheads are like, this is part of growing up, man. We used to get babysat by a crackhead. Like, I've seen people smoking shit and, and doing other drugs and, and... I remember one time as a youngster, I didn't, I didn't understand why, why my mom was arguing with the woman that babysat us.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Because I was like, oh, I just squirted some water on the couch. Why is this a big deal? I was like three or four. Well, it turns out it was a syringe full of heroin. That's what it was. It wasn't water. I didn't know that. And like, and my mom's like, why you have this around the kid? And the crackhead's like, wow, who's gonna pay for this? It's all freaked out. So.

• 4:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That was the debate is who's gonna pay for it?

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Right. It was silly. Like, I remember asking my mom about this, uh, probably a few years ago and just like reminiscing and all. And that was the, the issue, you know, she was mad, the, the addict was mad because, you know, that's drugs and who's gonna pay for it? My mom was like, why is this stuff out to where a kid can't even get to it or whatever? So, so you, you see this stuff and you have to cope with it. And I always say, you know, you can laugh a little or cry a lot, right? So I, I choose to make humor out of my life. And in that humor, uh, one of the things that's just funny to me, man, are, are crackheads. And then I think, I think, I think they're like vampires, man. Like, if you look at them, you're like, there's a joke, like, you can't kill them or you can't catch them.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  Um, and they're, they're super strong. I mean, the reality is like, whether they're strong or fast or whatever, a lot of it is driven by the need to acquire this very addictive substance. And that's where that work ethic comes from. I mean, sure, we could bottle that without the, without the, the need to get addicted to something, that'd be awesome. Right? But, but, you know, we, we can't. So instead I joke about it and, and in those jokes, I'm trying to, I'm imparting some wisdom. Because look, if you, if you've ever seen someone get clean, a lot of times, uh, what, what happens is you don't just break an addiction. Instead you replace it or dilute it with other things.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  And a lot of times, you know, these, these guys will pick up something positive and will just run with it. Because they're no longer, they're, they're getting their fix from something that has a, that has a positive externality, you know, associated with it, as opposed to getting their fix, you know, from, from an addictive destructive substance. So that work ethic, that gets channeled into a lot of other things. And that's where the crackhead work ethic comes from.

• 6:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I have this theory about people and this I think aligns very well with it, which is there's high volatility and low volatility people. And I've talked to a bunch of times on the, on the show about as an investor, when you're investing in founders, you want high volatility people. Either they're going to build a multi-billion dollar company or it's going to be a big hole in the ground, but you want it to go big, right? Guys like Adam Newman, people like, why does he keep getting money? Well, it's because he's going big. You just don't know which direction, right? But like, it's going to be big. And so that's in investing, but in the regular world, you know, outside of investing, there's high volatility and low volatility people. And what you're describing is basically high volatility people where there's an obsession, like almost personality trait where yes, the drug, there is a chemical component to it where they get addicted to it and they

• 6:59Anthony Pompliano?

  become obsessive and all this. But if they replace it with something else that then becomes an obsession, whether it's a drug or not, that's a high volatility person. They can swing drastically and then go like 100 miles an hour towards that thing. And it's almost like the person themselves is they're pointing in the right direction. It's a positive. Point in the wrong direction is can be catastrophic.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  And then the two things come to mind when you say that, right? So first, I never described it as high volatility and low volatility. The phrasing I always use, but it's not in the context of, of an addictive personality, just kind of how you grew up and what you, you, you know, experienced as a youngster. I call it a, a ceiling, the ceiling on the floor concept, right? When you grow up in a, a safe environment, when you grow up nurtured with, with, without really wanting for anything, I'm not saying you're spoiled, just not destitute. Your, your mentality is to, to maintain that and to kind of meet the expectations of

• 8:02Speaker 05

  the status quo you grew up in. So your, your floor is higher. Like, like you're not, it's really hard for you to fall off. You got a support system around you. You, you more or less understand how to work and do things and be a constructive, productive, contributing member to whatever group you're part of. Your floor is higher. But your ceiling is lower. You're not, you're not gonna take risks. You're not gonna fly off and do something crazy. Because those, those moves are highly volatile. You know, to start a business, right? You know, you could succeed and be great. You could also fail and end up going on the welfare line. And if you've never been in that position, that is like devastating.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  We don't deal well with loss at all. So you're like, I'm going to avoid the loss. But better than avoiding the loss, you know, you avoid the gain, the potential gain as well. Right? And then the other thing I thought about when you were saying that is, you know, I, I know some people who, who did hard drugs and didn't get hooked. You know, I know a guy that smoked crack like two or three times and he was like, you know, that's just not for me. Now, no one would look at that end of one experiment and go, told you it was a scam, crack's not addictive. Like, no one would react that way. But what that tells me, there are a lot of different ways to interpret that based on what we know now. And, you know, how, how your environment and who you are shapes whether you're going to get addicted

• 9:31Speaker 05

  to certain things or not. But one of the other interpretations is like, you know, what if, there are people who, for whatever reason, they don't, they don't take to things like that. And, and drugs just happen to be an easy example to, to look at and measure. Because we can measure the, the, the negative output, or not negative output, negative outcomes. You know, okay, well, you're, you're in prison and we can ask you where you're in drugs. You can have the crown, we can see the drugs behind it. You know, you, you get into the system in one way or the other and we can see the effect of drugs. But what we don't see are the people who have that same trait, never pick up something negative, but never excel in something positive either. You know, they're, they're the people who it's like, who the, the balanced lifestyle folks, right?

• 10:16Speaker 05

  There's, there's that whole thing like, oh, you know, you want a little balance. And balance is cool, and balance is great, and there's a lot of benefit to it. But one of the things you don't get typically when you have balance is you don't get exceptionality. You, you get, you know, there, there are two ways to be, to have a, to have a B average, right? Which is to be And all subjects are to have like two A's and a bunch of D's, you know? And and it's still not gonna quite work out, but but you tend to not be exceptional in any one or two areas that it's gonna gain you recognition or or a disproportionately or asymmetrically higher uh income.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Then if you do the right balance thing and you don't uh right is, I don't like saying right. If you take the balance safe approach to life.

• 11:01Anthony Pompliano?

  One of these beliefs, I think, that's changed a little bit in business is it used to be go find the well rounded person. Go find the person who went to certain school, got the degrees, got, you know, this skill set, they were in this club, they did this extracurricular activity, they worked at this job for five years, you know, whatever. Now I see a lot more people talking about no hire for the exceptional skill. So exactly what you're talking about, don't hire the the B student across the board, hire for the person who is amazing at sales and they're horrible at finance, right? Cause guess what? When they join the team, they are not gonna be running the finance team. They're gonna be running the sales team and you need someone who's excellent at sales and and so go hire for that.

• 11:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But what it makes me think a lot about is like in your life, most people are actually aspiring to be the well rounded person. And it always cracks me up like I'll talk to a friend, I'm like, you know, what have you been doing? And they'll tell me some like crazy uh hobby they picked up or something, why are you doing that like it basically because I think I should. I'm like, do you enjoy doing it? They're like, no, it's hard, it sucks. I'm like, so are you doing it because it's hard and it sucks like, okay, you know, I I see that path of of thinking. But usually is no, because I think that I uh I should be doing this and it provides some social signal or I want to fit into a certain group or or whatever. And I was like, man, what a life that would suck to like live just doing shit because you think other people expect you to do it.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  And and what you're describing. You're describing a lot of people and, and probably even more than I, I tend to cluster because to me, I see it as a normal distribution. I see a lot of traits and, and even if that's not like exact, and it almost certainly isn't, it's useful and we can make some useful predictions. If I tell you that, you know, the, the, the average person is, is, you know, balanced and most people fall within one, one, well, two standard deviations. I've got on either side, you know, they're either going to be kinda good at many things and are kinda bad at many

• 13:05Speaker 05

  things. Uh, that leaves this rare individual that is, that gets it. Whether, and, and, and whether they get it intentionally or accidentally stumbled into it and had some good experiences and some payback and kept, but it, uh, it doesn't matter, but they get it. The, the rewards are just, they're so disproportionately, uh, higher that they don't scale linearly. I wouldn't even say truly exponentially. If you are, if you are really good, that's like, like, like boxing, for example. Uh, if you're really, if you're, if you're a good enough boxer to get into the top 10, you're going to make a lot more money than a club fighter, but not nearly as much money

• 13:48Speaker 05

  as the guy who is fighting for the title. By definition, one or two. Okay. But to get to one or two, you gotta give up a lot. Even to get in the top 10, you gotta give up a lot. I wrote an article about this when I was, you know, people always ask me what, why did I stop with the record I had? And, and it's a, it's a complicated answer, or at least multifaceted answer, which is why I wrote the essay. But one of the things I touched on was that for me to get to the top 10 with my ability where I started my size, that's a huge opportunity cost. Is it worth it? Right? And now I'm making it, I'm now I'm making the decision because I

• 14:29Speaker 05

  happen to have, um, other skills that have a, a payoff and, and I made the trade off. I think it was an appropriate, smart one to focus on building my, my writing career, my website and everything I do on the internet in place of that. But a lot of people don't have that trade off. So you look at. You look at the fighters, I would choose fighters because that's the example, but I think it scales in any competitive domain or domain where there is a, I guess, zero sum is probably a better way to look at it. And the people who make it to the top are so much further ahead of everyone else in the middle, but to get there, you have to be obsessed. Like, like those, like, anyone you see playing professional sports on TV, those are not well-rounded individuals.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Like, it's actually kind of a joke here in America that we make these guys go to college first, at least in, in the NFL. The NFL, I think, is the only sport where there's not a direct from high school to pro pipeline. I know there's one in basketball, I know there's one in baseball, and I'm pretty sure there's one in hockey, but not, not in the NFL. But, but it's, it's a joke that we're like, you gotta go through the NCAA and go to college because, because who are we kidding here? You're not making these guys, very rarely where you get the guy that's like, like, uh...

• 15:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Myron Rolle, remember him?

• 15:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Myron Rolle was like a Rhodes Scholar, he was in like pre-med, and he's also a star on the football field.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  I'm trying to remember the guy's name, he played for the Ravens, uh, Johnny, he, I follow him on, on Twitter, I think we follow each other, but he's got his degree in math, you know? I remember Courtney Brown, who played for, uh, for the Browns, he was an engineering, he had an engineering major at Penn State, but these guys are like, rare, rare. I mean, like, we...

• 16:10Anthony Pompliano?

  We can name them because they're so rare.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  I don't even, right, exactly. We don't even follow football that, that much, at least I don't, I follow, eh, well enough to know that, like, when, when someone outstanding like that shows up, because that's not normal. What is normal is being so obsessed that you get to that level and you don't do anything else. I don't like, like, no one cares if these guys can even really read. I mean, I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, I'm just pointing out that sometimes you gotta give up, but we consider...

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  If you could read the defense, that might be more important to the NFL team.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Then, then, you know, read Love and Peace, uh, War and Peace, you know, that's what we're, we're looking for.

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  All right?

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon Musk, when he was on SNL, he's, I think he said it best, he's like, "I'm trying to get to Mars, did you think I was gonna be normal?"

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, no. And then I remember seeing all these articles, uh... A while ago, my father, actually, he pointed out, I think it was like, there's an article written, it was like Jeff Bezos does the dishes at home and like drops the kids off at work. I was like bullshit, bullshit, right? And I get that people want to present like a certain viewpoint, right? But it's like, it's also different between what it took to get to a certain point and then what you do once you're kind of at the peak, right? But, but it's just, it's hard work, right? And goes back to kind of this like crackhead work ethic idea of like, if you want to be great at something, you have to fucking work hard.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  If you want to be the greatest crack addict that's ever lit up a pipe in the hood, you're not, you're not getting a job, you know, you know, I've met functional addicts. Like, no, you're gonna, you're gonna be out there every day, you're hitting the scrapyard or something, right? Now, I don't, I don't want anyone to hear this and go, this, this motherfucker is, is promoting drug. Like, no, that's not the point.

• 17:55Anthony Pompliano?

  No, you're commenting though on something that is very real, which also a lot of people in society don't see every day.

• 18:02Speaker 05

  Right, never, then they don't, there's a whole, I think about this a lot. And I'll just tell you a random story to illustrate this before I go into the detail. I remember one day in my old neighborhood before I moved, it wasn't a, where I lived as an adult, it wasn't a bad neighborhood, it was just in the, it was just in the city. And, and I know enough about the, the drug game and, and how it works. I know enough to know that you're not storing a massive amount of product. And not everyone that's in the business is going to live in the area where the stuff is sold. In fact, you know, why would they, okay?

• 18:42Speaker 05

  And I was like midnight or something and I was up and I just heard, it was like a rain of bullets for like five minutes, they pulled up on this house and just, just eliminated it. Drove off, doesn't make the news. And I'm like, are we gonna hear anything about this? Nope.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  And, and I said to myself, I know enough about the area I'm in. Probably, probably something related to, uh, to drug trade. Like, cause the, you know, the, the way that was done, that's not, you know, or maybe you were in, but unlikely where I live. All right. So, so why did I tell that story? I tell the story to say that most people are like, living in the world and they don't realize there are levels beneath and above them. And if you don't see anything else, other than what you know, you assume that's all there is. And that, that's a, that's a, that sounds obvious, but we don't think about the implication of that. I can talk all day about everything I've seen.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  And, and I think this is one of the, the reasons people enjoy some of the, the writing I put out on this topic. Because it's a world they're never going to touch. And that's not a bad thing. I tell them like, you don't want your kids to see this stuff, man. It like, because for everyone of me, survivor's bias is real. It matter for me, everyone of me, you know, it is, there's a thousand or, or probably a lot more, you know, in, in jail, whatever. So I, I can see this and comment on it and then deliver it up. And it's, I, I would imagine it's in reverse when you talk to people, I call it, I call it like, uh, visiting the matrix. When you, when you step down into, to deal with people who have no idea how, how one can make a living the way you make your living.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  They look at you like you got superpowers, man. From, from, from a lifestyle perspective, you're dodging bullets. Okay? And then you step on leave and go back with other people who have interacted and, you know, who you know from the matrix. And there is a level and they can't imagine your level any more than they can imagine my level. Most people are, are, are sandwiched right in the middle. And it, it, back to what we were saying at the beginning. They don't ever go below that floor, so they don't know what's in the basement. But they ain't ever gonna leave the house. Forget going to the attic, they never leaving. They're stuck there.

• 21:07Anthony Pompliano?

  When I was in college, I got pulled out to go to Iraq. I came back and there's two stories that always immediately jumped to mind about this idea of a kind of understanding the people who are ahead of you and the people who want to be in your position. Right? Because that's really what it ends up being is everyone's looking up is just, there's very few people who look up and there's nobody else up, right? And it's like, there's like five people in the world. But the first was when I came back, I was a white dude with a shaved head who all a bunch of these dudes on the football team knew was he went to Iraq. There was like four or five kids that maybe six months after I'd been back, I said something to one of them and he has looked like he saw like a ghost. I'm like, what's up? And he goes,

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  bro, I was never gonna talk to you. He's like, you got a shaved head, you went to war? Like, fuck that.

• 21:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like this idea of I had an experience in life that they couldn't, you know, even comprehend. By the way, this same kid went to a school, I think it was in Ohio or something. I remember him telling me like, dude, we had clear backpacks and walked through metal detectors and like all this. And I was like, that wasn't my high school. Right? So like, okay, like we both have these experiences in life that we probably could learn from each other, but just we, it's hard to understand without actually going through it. And the second thing was, got paid some money while I was away in the military. And I came back and I was a young kid, no wife, no girlfriend, no kids, no responsibilities outside of like survive in this college environment, which is basically a cakewalk compared to where I

• 22:39Anthony Pompliano?

  just was. And so somebody who I admired had told me about foreign currency trading. Oh, that shit sounds like a get rich. Get rich real quick. So I started doing this and I remember I was sitting in class and I'll never forget it. I was in a Chinese economics class and I was sitting in the back, I had my laptop up and I could see everyone else. Everyone was taking notes, doing all, you know, what they're supposed to be doing. And I'm like, not trading, but I'm like looking at the charts and everything. A kid on the football team sitting next to me and uh, I remember he kept like kind of looking over and being like, what the fuck is this guy? This guy's just as dumb as me, right? Like, what's he doing with this? And so when he left, he said, yo, pump, let me ask you a question. Like, what was

• 23:19Anthony Pompliano?

  that? Oh, it's foreign currency stuff. And he goes like, how does it work? And I told him like, super high level, right? Like there's these things, they move. And if you pick the right bet, essentially, you can make some money. And he's like, ah, he's like, you just made some money? I said, yeah, so far. And he's like, how much? A thousand dollars. He literally looked at me and he goes, bro, that's better than drugs. And it's not illegal. He said, and it's not illegal. And so, you know, we started talking, whatever. He came from Washington DC area, not the best area in the world or whatever, but like to get rich quick, that was his experience was people would go into drugs or just do things that weren't go get a nine to five job or whatever. And so it is funny because like, those are like very kind of closed environment. You're on a college campus, you know,

• 24:04Anthony Pompliano?

  it's like weird things that people don't interact with on a day to day basis. But if you chaperate that out, just the United States versus other, you know, societies in the world, that alone, we don't think about how fortunate we are to be in a country where, look, you can go say some crazy shit on the street and you're not going to get abducted and killed.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, you know, if you go to the extreme example, like there are societies in the world where a woman cannot walk outside without her face covered.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that's a pretty big fucking difference than what we have here in the United States.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  And, and we never.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  Being aware of it is one thing, right? I, I, I think one of the best things about the internet and social media, there's a lot of negative and people, it's very easy to point out the negative, but I think one of the best things about it is that it really does allow you to interact with, albeit sometimes in a um rather explosive manner, other cultures. But if you're willing to learn, you get to see a lot about the world that you had no concept about. And you get like a firsthand, real time experience and conversation and perspective from people on the ground there. Twenty year, even tw- twenty years ago, that wasn't really a thing, uh, but now it is, okay? But to go in, to go and live it, to experience even, even not to that extreme,

• 25:26Speaker 05

  but to just talk to people who are not American, who, who live every day not caring or knowing about the stuff you consider to be important, that you consider really important, people have told you are important. Like, for example, like, like our politics and politics, everyone makes a big deal, goes, oh, you know, it's about governing the United States and you live here and you have to care about this and you need to be frowned up and this makes a big difference in our, and, and because I spend, I wouldn't say like a lot, but certainly, certainly more than the average person, uh, time out of the country. I'm just like, you know, there's a lot of other stuff going on.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  This is, this is just one thing, you know, there's a whole group of people who don't, who, they don't even get a chance to vote in our land because they're not, they're not citizens. And I just, I think about that a lot, that a lot of people have their, their world. And their world is important and in their world, they can decide whether they want to interact. While the worlds are doubled down on, on staying in, in the world that they have and the world that they know and what makes them most comfortable. And I think most people choose the comfort option, of course, uh, but, but one way or the other, sooner or later, you, you get, you get introduced to something different and whether you're prepared for it or not is a totally different story.

• 26:46Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the funniest things to me in the world is that the United States taxes illegal immigrants.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  They tax crime too, isn't that crazy?

• 26:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on, let's rewind here for a second. So we're worried about all this stuff, right? But the United States basically was built on the idea of no taxation without representation. And we got people who get taxed, but they don't have a say.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  You know, it blows my mind. And then that same vein is, you know, when I was considering getting my, well, not considering, I'm still going to do it. I'm just not going to do it the way I had anticipated because I just know more now. All right. When I was going to grab my, my citizenship in, in Portugal. And I was just looking to learn about all the things and our tax grant. I was like, you're telling me that if I ever stop being an American, I still gotta pay taxes? Cause I was an American once. That blew my, I was like, why would I, I was like, why would I ever get rid of my citizenship? They're like that. I get rid of that. That's the worst of all worlds.

• 27:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. They, um, uh, so some people have kind of gotten to this now, but, uh, uh, you know that if you were to renounce your citizenship, uh, you get taxed that day on all your assets, right? As if you died. So basically, you know, call 50% give or take. But you know why they do that? There's a guy who was actually a co-founder of Facebook, who he renounced his citizenship. He, I think moved to Singapore, uh, had a couple of billion dollars worth of Facebook stock. And at the time, there was no rule.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  So if you renounce, you, you're good, right? If you're a citizen, no matter where you live in the world, wherever your residency is, you, you, you pay Uncle Sam. But if you renounce, then, then you're good. Now you don't have the citizenship, right? And so it comes down to question like, how important or how valuable is it? But if you've got billions of dollars.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  And you take on Singapore, which is like one of the, one of the passports and citizenships that, that is more, um, that gives you more access.

• 28:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  Than an American.

• 28:40Anthony Pompliano?

  So after this guy did this, they were like, hey, hold on a second here. We're not going to let this fly. So they, they implemented this rule. And so it's always funny because you could look at a lot of, uh, tax law and it's because someone somewhere figured out some loophole or did something. And then they're like, okay, let's close that. Let's change this.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  And they decided it was too much. Yeah. And then so now we gotta pay.

• 28:59Anthony Pompliano?

  If he had done it with a hundred million, no one would have cared. We did a couple of billion and they're like, let's close that one up.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  This is wild. Yeah.

• 29:06Anthony Pompliano?

  The other taxing that's pretty interesting is, I don't know if you've heard of these opportunity zones. So opportunity zone is basically, under Trump, they came up with a map, essentially. And they went into cities and they said, this is a, not necessarily a bad area, but just an area that has received less investment. And so taxes can serve as a carrot or a stick. So let's go ahead and put an incentive in place. If you take capital and you invest it in the pre-selected areas, and you hold it for 10 years, right? There's a lot of nuance, but basically if you hold the investment for 10 years, you don't pay taxes. So if you make a long-term investment in areas that we're telling you need investment, then we will give you favorable tax treatment. One of the guys who helped push that through

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  is Sean Parker, from Facebook and ours, right? And so you start realizing, it's like, well, how did that law get in place? Because some guys who are rich were like, yo, we got a great idea, right? Let's go and pitch it and do all this stuff. And so when you start to realize that a lot of laws and regulations and legislation and all stuff is like, there's usually it traces back to one individual, was like, I think something should change. And people either get on board or they don't. But like, that's how the rules get made.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. One of my favorite quotes, man, is from The Wire. And he, the detective goes, you know, if you follow, you follow drugs, you're gonna get drug addicts and drug dealers. But if you follow the money, you don't know where the fuck you're gonna end up.

• 30:35Anthony Pompliano?

  It's true.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  And I think about that, that is, what is The Wire? It's 11 years old at this point. And I think about that. What a poignant observation about everything in, in our world, not just the low level, yeah, politics in particular, too.

• 30:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It, it makes you think hard.

• 30:59Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I take AG1 by Athletic Greens literally every day. I gave it a try a couple of years ago, and now I like it so much that I even became an investor in the business. It is the single best option for easy optimal nutrition out there. Every time you take one scoop of AG1, you're absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole-food sourced superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens. Athletic Greens will give you one free year of supply for immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/pomp to give AG1 a try today. Athleticgreens.com/pomp. I take AG1 every day, so you should go try it today. This episode is brought to you by Unstoppable Domains. They've partnered with blockchain.com

• 31:44Anthony Pompliano?

  to create NFT domain names ending in .blockchain. It's the perfect ending to show that you're a believer in a decentralized future. The blockchain.com community can join a short waitlist to get one for free at blockchain.com/waitlist/blockchaindomain. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium unstoppable domains, including fee-free lifelong ownership. If you don't have a blockchain.com wallet, no worries, there's new free domains available to everyone. Either join the waitlist for a free blockchain.com domain, or visit unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today, starting as low as $5. Unstoppabledomains.com. One of the things that's interesting about you is you've said that you've had four lives,

• 32:27Anthony Pompliano?

  and I think a lot of people don't think of their lives kind of in almost chapters, right? But I think we're unique in that there's like, almost like adolescence, right? Then there's this element of, if you serve in the military in any capacity, there's like, kind of a time box around that time. Yeah, it's weird. It's very, very weird, right? And people who have been in the military, I think, can understand that. People who haven't, they'll be like, "What do you mean? Like, you know, whatever." Nah, it's just like, that's a time in your life. And then there's these other chapters. Your four chapters, I think, couldn't be more different, it feels like, right? And you've really kind of transitioned between this. Do you ever think that you're all for

• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  those people? Or do you just think of it as, "I used to be this person, and now I'm like a new person"?

• 33:16Speaker 05

  I am, if, if I'm going to like, look at a transition point, a, a real differentiation between each life and whatever life comes up, I think it all comes down to what my priorities were and what my weaknesses were at the time. So, you know, kind of what, what's driving me and what is holding me back. And sometimes they're the same thing, you know, like, like in my mid twenties, my priority was, was pretty much, you know, drinking and chasing girls. Imagine how that holds you back from making progress. I look back at it now in my, my, my late thirties and I go, wow, of course, it's obvious. And then I'm like, well,

• 33:59Speaker 05

  why am I having these issues in my life? Well, cause that was my priority, but it was also my obstacle. But, but I think it, it's very easy for me to separate that out because there's just, there's these clear blocks. I mean, because of the people I was around and the things I was doing and, and the feedback I was receiving and what I knew and all that. They, they look like different worlds and they have different experiences in each world. But I am, I'm a product of everything that I've gone through and learned from the lucky breaks and the tough breaks. I'm a product of all of it. You don't get to leave any of that, you know, behind. And thank goodness, because if you don't, if you don't learn

• 34:40Speaker 05

  from your mistake, you're gonna repeat them. The thing about getting older is that, is that, uh, what was the best way I, I've put this? If you, if you take care of a problem early, you get a discount on it. If you take care of it, when it shows up, you're gonna pay MSRP, you're paying sticker price. But if you delay it, you're gonna pay a tax and a, you know, tax and a penalty on it. And it might exceed your capacity to. And, and like, and I came up with that when I was thinking about the drinking thing. Start drinking.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  Um, I, I saw this crazy, I can say, I say relatively late, like 18 is relatively late. But, but yeah, that, that's when I started, but it was out of hand and it was causing me to make just awful, terrible decisions. Right out of the gate, you just drank a lot. Right out the gate, you know, and there's no half step in here. We were just talking about that. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Right, you know, and, and, and fortunately, you know, I've never been able to be a moderate guy. I, you know, I actually had, a lot of people don't know this. I've been sober now, it'll be nine years this December. A lot of people don't know, I had another period of sobriety from

• 36:00Speaker 05

  a year and a half, I think. I can't, I can't even remember. I, I, no, it was longer than a year and a half. It was like from 20 to 23, I didn't drink. Uh, because I don't, I don't know the middle. There's no, no middle here. Why would I? Uh, like it cracks me up, man. I can watch my girl, she'll, she'll open a bottle of wine, cause she wants wine. She'll open a bottle of wine, pour a glass and drink half that glass and forget it was there. And that bottle then will sit there for like three, four months before she even goes back to it. And I'm like, what's wrong with you? We used to go through two, three at night when it was time to drink a bottle of wine. Not us together, because she has been a great influence. But, uh, in general, us as in the, the drinking community, two, three, uh, night.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  So there's, there's no middle there. But, but when I look at that, that time in my life, that is a, it's an example of a life that if I didn't get in front of that problem, I was going to pay a big tax on it and got close. Because you know, there, there's, when you get in front of your problems and you, you express real remorse and you express the desire to change and you stick with that change, people forgive a lot, probably more than they should, right?

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Because, because you, you really are making an effort and you made the effort and it shows you seriously. I'm sure nobody would take me, took me seriously when I, when it was a month in, a year and a lot more people like, hmm, five years and I was like, okay, this, this dude is real. It's not just an act or whatever. But imagine if I, I, you know, you say that and you go back and do it again and every time it's like, oh man, I'm done drinking. I'm done being an asshole and you go back and you do it again. Like, no, it means nothing. It, you know, it, it means nothing. I always, I always say, if, if, if I had to go behind bars and stop drinking, imagine that, then, then no one cares if I stop. Then it's, then it's, you know, society made me stop and, and I've done some damage likely. You just stopped cold turkey? I stopped, okay. Weaned yourself off?

• 38:05Speaker 05

  Um, uh, it's funny, man.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  I, I went through these, these phases. So, so in two thousand and twelve, September two thousand and twelve, I, I was, I had moved back to Pittsburgh where I'm, I'm from where I live now. I was out in Los Angeles for like two years because of, because of something related to boxing. So moved back. And I would do these on and off things, man. Like, like I tried to go, I was like, I'm gonna go one week without drinking and see how it is and go thirty days without drinking, see how it is and get back on and go hard and go the other way. Right? Uh, and then finally, uh, when I came back from, from my basic, I did my basic and then I did my, um, A I T.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  My A I T was, was twenty-two weeks out in Fort Lee, Virginia. Basic was in Fort Leonard Wood, did that together. Uh, we, they let out, I think I got back like December eighteenth, something like that. Uh, then went out and drank crazy, made a fool and got somewhere and I didn't remember getting there. I did, but I just knew I drove and I was like, yo, this is, this is mad. And I got a bunch of stuff in the line. I like cared about myself, more as weird as that goes. And, and then I was able to finally like stop. But I made like a public, not a public declaration, but I texted. Uh, my five closest friends. And I was like, I'm just letting you guys know, I think I got a real issue.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm gonna stop. I understand if you guys don't wanna kick it anymore. Cause I think a lot of people who stopped drinking are worried about that. And rightfully so, because if, if they're not good friends, like I've lost friends. I mean, they didn't like cut me out and be like, we can't be friends. But they, they stopped hanging out with me or two or three years in when they were saw I was serious and my life was making progress and moves and, you know, we shifted away.

• 39:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Misery likes company.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  Oh, is it, that, that, not just misery, that's only part of it. But, but more than, more than misery, people like feeling like a position, they're in a position of superiority. That people do not like when the status changes and it changes because you moved it, not because they moved. They're, they're not very happy about that. Like, like people can cope with them falling off and you, you know, staying there. But when they stay still or think they're doing well and then you make a change and you, you leapfrog them, it's a, it's a different game entirely. But we, we made those, or we, I made those changes and then it was able to stick. And I was busy. I had things that I was, you know, most of my fighting career. I was, I was back in school. Uh, what else is going on?

• 40:40Speaker 05

  I was writing for the website. I was trying to be a decent boyfriend. I was doing, doing well. And it's worked cause she's still here, you know?

• 40:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  Um, 10 years later and, and something else.

• 40:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And when, when you said that you were gonna stop, so, uh, the reason I'm so interested in this is, uh, in January of 2021, January 1st, uh, the night before I got hammered, uh, a- a- as I think most people do on New Year's. Um, and all through 2020, like I, I've never been a, a huge drinker. But I like going out, I like partying, doing all this stuff, especially, you know, in my twenties and stuff. And, uh, for whatever reason during the pandemic, uh, I joked that like, I kept the liquor store in business down the street in New York City, right? And, and I was just getting wine, but I would go and I'll pour a fat, you know, glass of wine. I could not do what your girlfriend was doing, right? In terms of drink a little bit and then just whatever. Cause I was just go, just drinking. But it wasn't like, uh, uh, I was addicted. It was almost out of like a boredom, right?

• 41:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause there was nothing to do. You're sitting inside, five o'clock, bam, all right, let's get a, get a glass of wine. And so I was just like, man. Not maybe as coherent as you would be in like, hey, I have a problem as much as it was like January, dry January. I've never done that before. That sounds cool. Let's see how I feel if I just don't drink. And I'd started to take health a little bit more seriously, sleep more, you know, do all these different things during the pandemic, whatever, because I had time to kind of think about like,

• 42:01Anthony Pompliano?

  and after 30 days, I actually felt pot committed.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I was on a streak, hot streak. I can't drink on day 32, right? Because I get 32, 33, whatever. And I haven't drank since. And so it's been, you know, almost a year and nine months or whatever. But I don't have the same, I think, sense of like accomplishment, maybe as you do in the sense of you were like, I have a problem. I gotta correct it. And what I think about a lot is like, fortunately, I think most people probably are more in my seat than in yours where they drink, but they don't think that they have a problem. They don't think it's like too much. It's more so just like, maybe I should drink less, right? And it's less of like a black and white. Like in some ways of the black and white of like, I have a problem. Let me stop.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  It's a lot easier to navigate.

• 42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It's easier, right?

• 42:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, that gradient, man, I just don't do well with it. And that's in anything in my life. I mean, I'm sitting here right now. I had my coffee this morning that I made in the room. Then the coffee that they brought me and then I went, I got to the studio a little early and I said, let me walk down and get a coffee at McDonald's. I got a coffee here. The difference is after three coffees, I'm not slurring my speech and being, making an ass myself. So we can, we can do that. But that, that middle ground, you know, um,

• 43:22Speaker 05

  I think, so first of all, on alcohol, I'm not like anti, you know, alcohol, you're leading a prohibition charge, anything like that, you know, if you want to drink, you want to drink. With that said, I always remind people. There is no health benefit to alcohol, right? It is in the purest sense of the word of poison. It's one we've, we handle, you know, better than sonad, but like it's still not. Like your body's gonna be okay without it. Either even, even our sweets, you know, you, one could argue you need carbohydrates. Well, not, well, we're not arguing, you know, you, you do, but you know, and then sugar's just a carbohydrate. And I bring that up to say, you know, some people go, you don't need sweets either.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  I'm like, okay, you don't need sweets, but the things that sweets are made out of, you do need is, is where I go with that. Not the case with alcohol. So, so it's, it's this, this ground, but it's not gonna like, you know, a wine, glass wine. Here or there is not gonna kill you. Though there's a great movie, that's just, I know, one of my favorite movies, one of the best ones I've seen, um, called Shot Caller. And Shot Caller is about this, this, this guy, he's a, I think he's like some type of insurance or trader or something like that. But like a white collar dude. And he goes out with his wife and their friend, and he has like a few glasses of wine and gets into a car accident. And ends up doing a, cause the guy, I think, I can't remember if the guy died or whatever, but he ends up doing like a year and a half in jail.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  But they, they sent him to like for real no shit prison. I think it was like, it was like Chino or San Quentin or something like that. And while he's inside, he clicks up with, with the white gang and they ask him to do something and he ends up, he ends up in a, killing somebody there in a fight. And he get, he gets seven years, so he goes from one year to seven. And it's about his transformation from this guy who is just a regular, like dude, who has a job and a family and all that. Insurance salesman. To become a like, a shot caller in prison. And, and what I took away from that movie though, when I watched it is, I mean, it's a great movie. Um, the, the lead actor is the guy who plays Jamie Lannister, I can never remember his name.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  But one of the, the things I, I, I took away from it was like, yo, imagine going out. Totally, it's not like he was drunk and got into the accident. It was just, it, he just happened to have a BAC when he, he did. And that's how your life goes down the shitter is you had a few glasses of wine, completely not, not impaired whatsoever, but. Things just, it's a coin flip. I think about this, this idea to coin flip a lot.

• 45:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, humans are adaptable too, right? You, you could take a human and put them in the insurance business and they have some path and, and depending on their personality, the environment, like all these different things, they adapt. And I, I think of it as like, uh, they're playing a role in the movie, right? In the movie of life of like, you ever like meet somebody and you're like, bro, you could have done seven other different things and you're here and you got the suit and tie on, but like you do not want to be wearing that suit and tie right now.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  I got a good friend. One day, he was actually my best friend growing up when we were kids in the, cause I lived in two projects. Uh, I lived in, anybody who's from Pittsburgh, they'll recognize these names, but I'm, you know, give them because they're important. From, from birth to eight years old, I lived in the Hill District projects up in Addison Terrace. Then we moved to Northview Heights and that's where I lived until I was 18 and those are both projects. Well, my friend when I was a kid was this kid, uh, very similar, like, you know, the, the world's strange, man. We, we were good friends. His birthday was a week before mine. I don't know if you're into astrology or anything like that, but no, we, we, we were really good friends. And then we split off, we, we kind of stayed in touch and then I didn't hear from him for years.

• 47:09Speaker 05

  And then social media made it easy to get in touch and he, uh, I reached out to him and we, we connected and started talking and life was good. And, but the first time we met up, we met up at a bar and he was kind out of it. And then I didn't hear from him again for like two years. And then we, we linked up again and he was like, oh, I want to apologize for how I was the last time we met. I was, uh, he, I think he was like detox or something because he was just about to go to jail because he managed to become, uh, one of the most.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Well, a powerful, one of the most powerful drug dealers in the city. By sheer luck and some sloppy police work when they, when they busted him. They busted him, they were waiting to catch him with all the drugs in the house, everything to put him away. And, and I think they jumped the gun or something. This, the story he told me, and they, when they made the raid, he was out doing the re-up and was able to, to discard the product. So when they, they, they pinched him, he didn't have a bunch of, a bunch of weight on him. And, and when he was telling me, cause one day he just sat down like, and I recorded it, it was a cool conversation. He was telling me everything, how he moved from like weed to heroin, how he started in high school selling and everything, and how it all worked.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  And I'm listening to this and I'm, and I'm watching him now, cause he's still got the same personality and talents and gifts. And I'm just like, man, you could have been anything. But where you ended up and, and what was around you, you took your acumen and your skills for leading people and, and you became the plug. And I was like, wow, that's crazy to be just listening because now he's, now he's doing, it's funny, man, how this, this stuff works. It works, now he's doing a substance abuse recovery work, helping people get off the stuff. And he's also got his music on the side, he works and everything. And I, I think it's really cool when you mention that, that there, there are people who can do anything.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  And I, I think about my friend in the same group, because if we had stayed together and I had moved and I'm coming up with him, I mean, I have, I naturally, for whatever reason, we all come out a little different. I naturally have a little more regard for the law, a little more fear of its consequences. But I could have ended up right next to him. And we, we could have been running and ruling things together, but I don't, I don't know. I would never know because I, I went down a slightly different path and that little divergence made a big difference.

• 49:43Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it also makes me think of, um, Jay-Z's got a new verse on DJ Khaled's album, God Did. And in it, he basically is talking about the fact that he used to sell drugs. And now he's like, now they got weed in the stores. He's like, how crazy is that? Right? Like just 20, 30 years ago, you could get locked up. You could go to jail. Your entire life could be derailed.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  For something that now you go.

• 50:10Anthony Pompliano?

  You go to the grocery store.

• 50:11Speaker 05

  Like the Apple store now, man, you go.

• 50:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Wild, right? And then you look at the hypocrisy of, you know, all this talk around Brittany Griner being locked up in Russia. And now there's a lot of complexity, sensitivities, geopolitical chess. I mean, there's a lot going into it. But then at the end of the day, what we're talking about is a substance that she's locked up for there. And we've seen multiple people come out and say, wait a minute, we got people locked up for similar shit here in the United States. Right? And so like, is it hypocritical? Is it, no, it's the geopolitical sensitivity that's playing into it? Like you start thinking about it, it's like, wait a minute, we got people in cages for plants.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, one of the things, you know, and, and I keep meaning to like do a deep dive on this because I have an intuition based on what I've experienced growing up that informs this opinion, but I haven't done a deep dive into the numbers. So I always like to, to preface that so people don't think I'm, I'm just talking out my ass and I don't know what I'm talking about. I am, but it's based on my experience and if the numbers contradict me, then the numbers are right. A lot of those people in jail for, for weed, they're not in jail, just some weed. One of the things that happens when you, when you sell an illegal substance is you don't, you don't have the protection of the law.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  So you have to compete. Differently and a lot of those competition methods, well, those are problematic, especially when we start talking about big weight. Always just or or anything that is hard, you know, like what they consider hard drugs. And when you when you pretty much like, you know, the coke and its derivatives to crack, right? So that's like a different thing. People go, you know, we can debate the the difference between the laws on coke and crack. But that's a different argument because no one is going, okay, coke's legal. We should be releasing the crack dealers. Talking about the weed, I don't, you know, unless you if you're moving big weight, yeah, you know, then we we start looking at your your case and go, should you be out?

• 52:16Speaker 05

  You you should be not a not even a doubt. Should we we removing stuff off people's records? Absolutely. That is a big problem, but I don't think there there are people who are doing big, big sentences like football numbers in jail. I don't think there there are people doing anything like that because

• 52:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Just for

• 52:35Speaker 05

  Just for weed. Uh, and and just and even just moving, I don't, I don't remember what the um, the the amount difference is for distribution versus uh, you know, consumption or something like that, but I I know that, you know, I don't even think, even in even in the early two thousands where I would be like mostly aware of it and it wasn't just like a thing in the background noise in my life as I was when a kid. I don't think anyone was really, I mean, you had to get caught with a with a lot of stuff, but with a with a nuptial, they were like, where do you you're not smoking this all on your own. You know, pretty much. And that was that was the big deal.

• 53:15Anthony Pompliano?

  The one that always cracks me up is when they arrest somebody and they're like, he had a lot of money on him. I'm like, okay, how much is a lot?

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 53:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And then he has $700 and I'm like, I know a lot of people that got $700 in their pocket when they're walking around.

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 53:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I also know a lot of people who don't have $700 in their pocket, but like, you know, whatever the the amount is. But then there's the people who are like, well, we called him. He had $75,000 in cash in ones.

• 53:40Speaker 05

  At some point, it's like, well, what are you doing with that?

• 53:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So I I think the other piece that that's fascinating about this is um, there's a book and I mentioned a couple of times now uh, on the show because uh, is less about what's in the book as much as how the book came together, but it's written by Robert Greene, the guy who wrote Forty Shades of Power, Human Nature.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And Fifty Cent.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Fifty Shades of Power. I got that.

• 54:03Anthony Pompliano?

  You got that? All right. So first thing is it looks like the Bible.

• 54:07Anthony Pompliano?

  They got it all. They got the gold pages. They got the whole thing, right? But what's fascinating about that book is Robert Greene is writing the way that he's always written in a very eloquent, articulate, kind of theoretical sense. And then he juxtaposes it to 50 Cent's life. And what you realize is like 50 Cent and his lived experience is very similar to what Robert Greene is talking about. They just use completely different language and they had never had any clue that the two of them existed until Robert wrote a book and 50 Cent reached out to him and all the stuff. But it's like, man, that tells you a lot about society right there.

• 54:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Human nature is, is the same. You know, I was just, I was just, I made a tweet about this and someone commented something interesting that I agree and he, the tweet was about, you know, I don't think that people need to get their ass kicked for disrespecting people, but I, but I do think you need to be aware that there's a penalty for disrespect. And usually to deter, you know, that, that penalty is enough to deter people from acting like assholes. Okay. And, and that's like the whole idea, you know, Mike Tyson has said like, you know, people have gotten way too comfortable with disrespecting people from behind social media because no one thinks they're going to get punched in the face.

• 55:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and look, I'm not, I'm not a pro violence guy. In fact, I'm probably, probably the most peaceful fighter you ever gonna meet, but. People who know how to conduct violence are pretty much pacifist until it's time to. Because I know how bad it can get and how quickly, right? What that says, somebody says something real interesting and I was like, yeah, that makes sense. And he goes, you know, he goes, a lot of, a lot of the societies were civilized because men got together and were like, okay.

• 56:00Speaker 05

  If we make these mistakes, we're going to kill each other and that's not good for anybody. So let's come up with a set of rules and to make it real clear and a set of conduct, expectations for conduct. So it's very clear when someone's being disrespectful and what they expect for that confrontation. Right? Which was pretty much eliminated. This is why I hate passive aggression. I mean, I really think it's a weak thing to do. Because what passive aggression tries to do, it tries to get the benefit of a conflict without, without the, without paying the price for it. You know, it tries to, they try to make, you know, get a jab man or get something, you know, snarky or whatever.

• 56:45Speaker 05

  And but, but you do it in such a way to where it's not obvious that you're doing it or tried to. So when somebody freaks out, you, you maintain plausible deniability. Well, you know, in a, in a,

• 56:58Speaker 05

  depending on your perspective, more primitive or more advanced society, you wouldn't be able to do that. You have to speak clearly and make your point. Otherwise you just get ignored or you don't have one. And if you make a point and it is in disagreement with someone else's, you gotta express that in a certain way. Otherwise you're inviting trouble. There's certain things you just don't do, those invite trouble, you know? So I, I think about that, that a lot. The wording changes because, because we all use a different language and a different vernacular. You know, our lexicon is filled with different words and things like that. To describe the same thing that we're observing and we're all observing human nature, we just come up with different words for it.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  So, you know, Robert Greene, his education and his writing and 50 Cent with his limited experience, they both have seen the same thing and have different words to describe it, but it overlays perfectly. And then, and then because it's from two different perspectives, you create, it's not one plus one equals two. It's like one plus one equals seven. Yeah. And you can even deeper and wider perspective on these things.

• 58:05Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Bullish. They've reinvented the digital asset exchange. They give you access to DeFi features like automated market making and liquidity pools in a regulated environment. It's a whole new way to generate alpha. Bullish's total trading volumes have exceeded $25 billion just in the seven months since it launched. And their industry-leading order depth means you can trade confidently when you want, at scale, with better pricing and lower risk, all within a regulated market environment. Good reason to be bullish. Learn more at bullish.com/pomp and follow at Bullish on Twitter today. This episode is brought to you by Sigma. The bridge between iGaming, online sports betting, and emerging technologies such as blockchain, NFTs, fintech, gamefi, metaverse, and AI is loud and clear.

• 58:49Anthony Pompliano?

  The largest global summit of its kind is heading to Malta from November 15th through the 17th. Over 1,000 exhibitors and 25,000 industry leaders will be there, including top executives from DraftKings, Bet365, crypto exchanges, betting software providers, operators, gaming affiliates, and more. Log on to aiabc.world and sigma.world to see our upcoming global summits. See you in Malta, November 15th to 17th, for the leading global event in gaming and emerging tech. This is Sigma. Go to sigma.world today. That book specifically talks about fear. And one of the things that I've seen you say, which just cracked me up and I was like, damn, that is so true, is you said something to the effect of, there's somebody out there

• 59:32Anthony Pompliano?

  with half your IQ who's accomplishing 10x what you are because they're not smart enough to doubt themselves? Which is just like, yes. Like, talk a little bit more about why did you think that was so, such an important point?

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Because you get a lot of people who, everything is planning, planning, planning, planning, planning, planning, planning, planning, planning. But the execution, because the execution is where you get to find out, is it a good idea? No, that's where you face rejection. I'm working with a kid right now. Uh, he has been training, fighting, he's been in the gym, going to, going like a real man boxing for four years. How many fights you think this guy got?

• 1:00:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Zero.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  No fights. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, like, do you, do you wanna fight? Or do you wanna just say you trained to fight? If, if it's, if it's the, you know, the latter, cool, it's cool. What, what are we talking for? But you want to fight, so go fight. Now you go sub novice and every time we talk, you know, it's, he's got, he's got a reason why he hasn't done it yet. And I'm like, no, just take the fight. Just do it. And when you notice that a lot of people live like that because execution is scary. Every, every idea is a good idea in your head. And there are some people who are not able to deal with the idea that perhaps it's not the best idea.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Perhaps reality is going to go, you know, let's go back to the drawing board with this one. It's terrifying. Represent, like, it represents so much of what we're afraid of, wasted time, rejection, embarrassment. But the people who get far, they're the ones that embrace that. In fact, you know, one of my favorite sayings is, look, when you're living true to yourself, you, you look forward to being rejected because that is, that's the most efficient way to cut out the fluff. When someone like, like, when you know it is not a good idea, when you know it's not gonna work, when you know. And then you know that because the, the market says, yo, this is some bullshit.

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  You can go back with it. But if you take it personally, you'll never do it. And that's the problem. People take it personally.

• 1:01:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You ever heard, you ever heard the story Elon Musk, uh, when they started Boring Company?

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:01:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So he's asked SpaceX and, uh, At some point, putting tunnels becomes a topic of discussion. And my theory is that they're practicing for Mars because they believe that we're gonna have to be underground for some period of time. And so if you want to be get good at doing tunnels on Mars, you probably should start on Earth. But other people say it's because of traffic or whatever the reasoning is. But they're talking about it. And he basically says to a room of engineers or whatever, he says, all right, figure out, you know, could we dig a tunnel? And so they talked for a few minutes or whatever. I suppose if somebody says to him, all right, I think we could figure this out. And he goes, when can we get started?

• 1:02:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And they say, it takes us about two weeks. And it's on Friday. And he says, how about you go out in the parking lot right now and see how far you get by Sunday? And they literally, within two hours, they were out in the parking lot digging a hole in the ground to see how big of a hole they could dig. And it's like, two weeks to most people would be like, damn, we're moving. And he was like, right this fucking second, go outside in the parking lot. Don't worry about permits. Don't worry about getting equipment. Just go outside with whatever we got and see how far we could dig by Sunday.

• 1:03:14Speaker 05

  And that, look, this is something I struggle with too. That's speed of implementation. Because, because look, the sooner you do it, the sooner you get it. And look, it might be a great idea by itself. You don't need to add anything else. You might discover something you didn't even, you, we can come over. I always used to think about this in, when they're, when they're doing quality testing for video games, like how they, they figure out all the ways this can go wrong. I always wondered that. What if they have a bunch of beta testers? They're like, they know, they know how it should work, right? Based on their design and what they think.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  And even even with their simulations, but until you get real people and they're testing and going, they have no idea. And that's why there that testing period, they discover and fix things. It's the same way with anything that goes on in your head. You you get to it. You you just get it out there and go quick. And and look, I I am not the biggest offender anymore. I'm getting better. But that that planning phase is to to say overrated is incorrect because you you need something, but you need a lot less, especially when especially when the cost for failure is so low. You know, it's not like it's not like heart surgery. Like this is a pretty big penalty. If you, you know, you go in there, you get a bunch of people and you're going to figure this out.

• 1:04:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's get the butter knife and we'll just see what happens.

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  But but when it comes to something like like starting a company or writing or not even something like that, you know, just start a website. You want to write, start a website, right? Just get it out there because the cost of you making a mistake is so low, but what you learn, the experience you get is so high, that there really isn't a better way. What are you going to do? Go study writing for four years and what's your degree? Oh, now I'm qualified. Right now, it doesn't work that way. Real world, I I think that's one of the biggest changes in the real world now is that we have moved from your your credentials mattering to you watching people

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  who know a lot less in the same field that you study, making real big moves. I mean, it would, it would absolutely, I don't I don't even know how one gets here, but I would, I would just be sitting there kind of kind of hot if I'm watching, if I studied marketing for four years at a at a college, paid like a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and I come out and there's this nineteen year old kid just figured out, all I got to do is make some catchy videos on TikTok and put a link in the description. Hold up.

• 1:06:02Anthony Pompliano?

  If you think about it, that is right now, I think a lot of uh, street versus the boardroom. Like my, my entire, not my entire worldview, but a lot of my worldview is informed by those two things. Which is the, there's the street approach, there's the street mentality, there's the street, you know, like all these different components to life, and then there's the boardroom. And what does the boardroom do? They plan. What does the street do? Action, right? Boardroom, they sit there and they say, okay, well, you need the credentials, you need this. The street says, hey, you got the product or do you not?

• 1:06:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:06:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, it's like, it's like a very different view of the world, but that, but marketing is a great example. I actually think today, the person who is able to, I don't know, take a Twitter account or TikTok account or whatever, and then say to a company, hey, in three months, I went from nothing to 50,000 followers. Here's the engagement, all this stuff. And another person shows up and says, I went to Harvard for marketing. I bet you the company picks the uh, the person.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  At least the company should.

• 1:06:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least they should.

• 1:06:59Speaker 05

  Like, like my website, you know, the Google has been Google. And what that means is that w- once the technology really became viable to implement mass, like, like we've always, we've always had, to my understanding, uh, GPT-3 or something to that effect, uh, pretty much the predictive kind of, this is what, they did really right. And the ability to read and kind of figure out what words mean quickly. And, and that's like a, a combination of a huge database and processing power.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  And then I guess on the, on the last, then you need um, some conduit like, like fast internet, right? Okay, so you see this with, with Google Translate. And that's what Google Translate does and how it gets better and how it kind of figures out the difference between regions. And, and, and that's why like you can, you can type something in today. And get one translation and in six months, get a better one because it is in a sense, learning and this and I bring this up to say that is the basis, as I understand it, for a lot of the updates Google has made to the algorithm for its searches, you know, they go in there and tweak what they wanted to emphasize and downgrade like, for example,

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  it made a big adjustment back in 2019 or 2018 where, you know, we were talking about health stuff, but you didn't have the credentials behind it. Like it was a dot edu or a dot gov or, or some like WebMD or something like that, you know, you were downwriting because they're like, yo, these people, you know, have credibility. You're just this site. Let's figure it out. No matter how well it's written. Why I bring all this up? These changes wiped out a lot. There were a lot of people that enjoy, you know, had their websites and blogs. People were complaining that these changes, you know, disrupted everything because it wasn't just like, that's just the field I used, medicine, but you know, the like finance, it took hits

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  too, all these. Well, I'm, I'm not going to give up because that's my site. We took a hit, man. We did. I was cruising along, about to crack 20,000 followers for visitors per month, organic, and then we just got, we got dinged. And I was like, all right, what are we going to do? Well, I'm going to learn SEO. I'm going to learn the street way though, which is pretty much what I did, man, because everything in my mind, I'm actually like putting it together now so I can teach somebody directly and then from there I'll probably produce a product. But, but I learned a lot about how SEO works because I had a vested interest in having my site, my site work. And now, now last I check, you know, this is over three years almost now, but been figuring out, taking different things, learning, seeing

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  what works with dozen and figuring out tools. Well, now it's 60,000 visitors per month organic. And that is because I didn't give up and it continues to bump and bump and go up. But it's all from, it's all from that street approach. In fact, I didn't take any classes.

• 1:10:10Speaker 05

  Until like even someone's course, I didn't, I didn't do anything probably until the last three months when I was well on my way up, but I was like, oh, let's, let's learn and see if there's anything I don't know because I've been, I've been figuring out a lot here. Let's see who, you know, who else knows what. And I think that's really the best approach, even learning, learning works this way. I think great too, because, because uh, every time I come to Miami, I'm reminded of, sometimes I feel good about my Spanish and other times I'm just like, okay, right? Uh, but, but the way, you know, I discovered a method on, on YouTube and I was like, wow, this guy is brilliant. He put together this thing where he may, where he took himself to

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  fluent in French and Spanish in 45 days, right? Now, now he did it devoted eight hours per day, which I don't, you know, have, but you look at it and you can pull a lot from it. And one of the things I took from it, this was so cool. And one of the things you do, you sit and you tell a story very personal to you. All you do is you just need to have the ability in the language to construct a sentence. And when you don't know the word you want to use for the story, you write that down, you put in the translator, you pop it in an onky deck so you can read, re uh, review it, review it. And then you come back and you just keep trying to tell the same story, tell the same story, tell the same story until it fills, then you can go through the whole story. And, and

• 1:11:35Speaker 05

  a funny thing happens with this very simple bump into the wall method as opposed to studying different things. Uh, one, you've got a working vocabulary that is personal to you because you're telling a story. Like, like, like the first story I put together was like, like the first date with, with me and my wife now. And I'm like, oh, now I know these words. I, I thought I, I knew when I didn't know. But, but now I have it because it's very personal to me and then the tense of speaking and all that. But I picked it up from bumping into the wall. Okay. That's, that's so much better than how we typically go about. Teaching language, which is go and learn some grammar. And here are a bunch of sentences that mean nothing to you.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  So why would you remember them like, like, you know, even do, I love Duolingo. Duolingo was based in Pittsburgh. I better love Duolingo, right? Even Duolingo like, because it's just an interface and it's good for some things. They, no method can do this. Where you have, where you put together a vocabulary and an approach that's, that's viable to you. That has, that has meaning to you. And when you do that, combined with just trying to bump into the wall, trying to talk to people and use these words. Then you really, and then you start to feel confident and then you, then you can go, okay, let me look at a book. Because I'm like, man, I have no idea how to, how to use the, the imperfect for this verb. And let me go look this up now. But you, you get a feeling that you, you need something like what you do for there.

• 1:13:05Speaker 05

  Uh, but if it's for a new situation and you're not going to find it. So bumping into the wall, street method, however you want to call it. I call it bumping into the wall, but I think I'm going to start calling it the street method. Uh, it is a lot better.

• 1:13:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I've always thought of these people as Googlers. Now that term was co-opted by the company Google. That's what they call their employees or Googlers, but put that aside for a second. They got the pinwheel.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  Didn't know that. I'm going to have to remember that because.

• 1:13:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they call themselves Googlers. Uh, and they got the, uh, you, you ever seen, uh, I forget what the, uh, uh, what the comedy, uh, movie is. But, uh, they got the pinwheel hat, you know, like the multicolored hat. And he's got the little thing that spins in the top. That's, that's real. They give those to the Googlers on campus. But, uh, uh, I always think of Googler as you ever like hang out with somebody? And, uh, they, they just constantly on their phone or their computer, but it's everything you talk about. They don't know something, they immediately just go and they look it up. I love those people.

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  It's so much, we have.

• 1:13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Like the world's knowledge at your fingertips.

• 1:13:59Speaker 05

  I, I love this, man, because. I'm always in awe of technology like I never stopped being in awe of what I'm in. I mean, we were in Juneau and I just was watching the planes coming. I was like, man, we figured out how to put a metal tube that weighs tons into the air full of people. And stuff like that makes me feel in awe like whenever I read about old cities. And I'm like, man, we have sanitation and plumbing like you can like go to the bathroom and it's not going to end up on the street. Like, that's cool. One of the things that just amazes me is that we have this handheld handheld, not this big old room, a handheld device.

• 1:14:38Speaker 05

  And in that handheld device, you are simultaneously connected to every other human on the planet who has one. And we, and they all have one because you need them now. And the whole sum of human knowledge is at your disposal. All you have to do is develop the skills to ask the right questions. And Google has a commercial incentive to make sure they figure out how to best pair your, your question with the best answer. And if they did, you know, if you really wanted to dig deep, you'd be just going to dark web or figuring things out, things like that. But there's so many resources and so many ways, like, like, there's no reason to not know anything. It's crazy. Like, every time someone goes, I'm not sure, oh, let me just look it up.

• 1:15:20Speaker 05

  And there are very few situations where it's inappropriate to pull my phone out and look it up. So there's no, there's no reason ever like doubt facts. And then, you know, and then from there and people go, oh, that makes the conversation drop. Like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't have conversations to discuss and swap facts. We have conversations to, to connect and, and see perspectives and, and understand one another. It puts the focus back on the conversation, why you have it if you don't have to debate a fact. And it also adds clarity.

• 1:15:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Sports is the place where you see this. People start debating each other and they're pulling all stats, right? And they're just, whatever. The other thing around technology, I'm reading a book right now called The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which is absolutely the worst book if you want to be entertained, but it's 700 pages of super dense information all about the economy and all this stuff. And somebody recommended it to me and I've enjoyed it so far. But the reason why I enjoy it is the lessons are pretty simple. Like his argument is basically economists think that economies grow forever as long as no one touches them. I disagree. Like that's basically, he wrote 700 pages on it, right? But the book is littered with all these super interesting facts.

• 1:16:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of them is in like 1908, the Ford Model T comes out. It was $950. By 1923, 15 years later, they'd gotten the cost down 70% to like $269. Well, they used a manufacturing method where there was a line of people who were manufacturing the product and you just did the doors, right? And like, okay, well, that's how we manufacture everything today. There was literally somebody who pioneered that, implemented it, and now that is how manufacturing is done. Then they talk in the book, I think it's like 1870 or so, which we think of like the 1800s, 150 years ago, right? All homes were completely disconnected from the world.

• 1:17:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You had an outhouse, you had water that you had to go get, like you had to be self-sufficient. By 1940, which again, sounds like kind of a crazy thing, but it was only 70 years. Pretty much all homes in any urban area had water, gas, electricity, like they were hooked up now, right? Or what they call networked. And so you think, man, 70 years. When someone was born, it was self-sufficient, completely unconnected world. Before they died, everything was completely different. And so you're like, okay, like that's a lot of change. But then he makes an argument where he says, the speed of transportation has not changed since 1950. When we went from the stagecoach to automobiles.

• 1:18:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Automobiles, not like all summer, all going 200 miles an hour, right? Like, they pretty much have been going the same speed, you know, since the 50s.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:18:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Planes, the Boeing 707 is the example he uses, like 1953 or whatever, uh, goes about the same speed. It's not like we're making these, you know, 10x improvements over what is now 70 years in the speed of transportation. And so his point is basically like, there's very compacted time where there's immense innovation, uh, inventions, progress, like all these changes. And we go like really long periods of time and nothing happens. And so for you and I, we think about like, Google's like a fucking crazy thing, right?

• 1:18:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And it is around information and technology, you know, like this information technology world. But if we actually sat here and we're like, what are the major innovations that we've seen in like the physical world over the last, you know, 50 years? Sure, Tesla with the electric car, like, we can come up with a couple.

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  A few, yeah.

• 1:19:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Self, the smartphone versus a dumb phone, like, you know, shit like that, right? Okay, I got it. But not like the invention of fucking electricity.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  Right. The, in fact, I think the last thing like the invention of electricity would be like, that's the thing with the internet, right?

• 1:19:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And even that is still like a digital thing.

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Now it helps, right? And this is where it gets kind of a nuanced conversation because the internet obviously drastically, uh, kind of created innovation in all these industries and all this stuff. But like, it is interesting to think about how many inventions happened in a certain period of time. And then if you think today, like, it's not like you and I wake up every day and we're like, damn, somebody created, you know?

• 1:19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, we get super excited over like, pretty small stuff now. And so it leads to this conversation around like, yeah, everything is digital where all the innovation's happening.

• 1:20:02Speaker 05

  Are you, are you bumping to, to the, this is a new problem and it's one that like, when you, you talk about it, it's like, of course, but then until you, you run into it, you're like, wow, this is really a thing.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  There are no, there are no physical mediums anymore that people distribute like, like, like pretty much the age of physical medium for, for distributing entertainment is over, at least in terms, because we went from in my, in our lifetime, VHS, DVD, and then they were like, yo, we can hook you with the illegal copies of your download and download and download and Bluetooth or Blu-ray, not Bluetooth, Blu-ray, and then full circle because now everything's digital. So now everything is hidden behind like, and now that's much easier to secure. Like, good luck, Trevor, trying to download stuff. Now, I mean, sure you

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  can, but you really gotta be about that life. It's not like hopping on LimeWire or BitTorrent, you know, where anyone could do it.

• 1:21:05Anthony Pompliano?

  LimeWire was a fucking lottery. You'd get in the file, you'd get in the virus. You didn't know.

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  Exactly. You didn't know what you was given. But now, you know, blew my mind. I, I was thinking about, because we, we went to a, um, just to watch a local band perform. And afterwards, they were selling merch, selling copies at their work, and they had CDs. And I was like, where the hell am I gonna play this? Like, I never thought about that before. It was like, oh, do you have the tape? Then we've been around long enough to go, oh, do they have the tape version? I don't have a CD player yet. To, oh, I'll get the CD, but you have the MP3. Now it's like, there's only really one way to get this. Don't, don't give me a CD. What am I gonna do with this? Like, I can't, my, my MacBook doesn't have one. My whole, no, none of my.

• 1:21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  You gotta get an extra piece of hardware to have to play.

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, because they're like, why would we have that? That, that's old.

• 1:21:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  You know?

• 1:21:57Anthony Pompliano?

  The, the other, uh, the other piece I think a lot about, um, I, I'm assuming based on our conversation that, uh, you read a decent amount. Uh, do you read physical books? You got Kindle? You do audiobooks? How do you consume?

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  So, okay, so it, it depends on what I'm reading. I will not read fiction on, on my, um, Kindle or my phone.

• 1:22:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:22:17Speaker 05

  But nonfiction I do because it's just easier to take notes and then transfer those notes out. And then, and then on top of that, I love this little thing you do on your Kindle where you highlight a section and you can write what you're thinking and type that in. And that really helps me absorb the information and really helps me learn it. But I won't read fiction that way. I think fiction is. Fiction is a special thing. And, and if we, if we consume it that way, I think we've robbed this specialness of it, which is, which is one, it's not a note taking medium. It's not even the thing you, I mean, maybe, maybe you like see a quote you really like, but then you just go remember, write it down. But because I'm reading it in a physical book, then I know it is this thing I can take with me and immerse myself into.

• 1:23:01Speaker 05

  But when I read on my Kindle, I'm automatically thinking, all right, there's probably going to be some information I'm going to like take down. So I'm not, not reading it with the, with the undiluted focus that I should, that I, you know, approach my fiction with.

• 1:23:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't read fiction, so I can't speak to that.

• 1:23:17Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:23:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, he, he, he, here's, uh, going back to our conversation around, uh, uh, I read a lot. But I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not. And for fiction, whatever reason, I just, it, it's like a lack of interest, which is probably makes me less well-rounded. But that's just what, that is what it is, right? But the reason why I bring this up, uh, three, four months ago, uh, up until then, I pretty much read everything, either some sort of Kindle type device or whatever, or audiobooks. I did a lot of audiobooks. I sat down, I tried to read a physical book. My head hurt. I couldn't concentrate.

• 1:23:53Speaker 05

  No kidding.

• 1:23:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And it like pissed me off. I was like, what do you mean? I can't sit and just read a book. I literally could not read the book. My, my head started hurting, my eyes were hurting, like all of a sudden, my eyes hurt sometimes, just like the fluorescent lights or whatever, right? But like, I was like, this is bullshit. Like, I was like mad at myself, right? So for the last like three, four months, I only will read the physical books now. I've like forced myself to be able to read the physical books now. And, uh, so over the weekend, um, I was on a flight and I listened to audiobook. First time I listened in, I felt like I was on crack. I was like, oh shit, this is two X P. Like I was blowing through this book, right? But then what it goes back to is like, I don't know retention wise, like maybe I get like 90% retention out of the physical book.

• 1:24:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe it's like 75% out of audio. So it's like, it's pretty similar, but definitely a little less on, on audio. But the physical book, it, it made me think, I was like, all this technology, all this information at our fingertips, all these things. Like the physical book made my head hurt.

• 1:24:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And all we hear about is how the computers are gonna make our heads and our eyes hurt. It blew my mind.

• 1:25:02Speaker 05

  So there's some, there's some, some interesting. I guess, you know, we call maybe weak, maybe strong, whatever, right? But we, we talk about.

• 1:25:15Speaker 05

  There's this rise in ADHD diagnosis. And it's like, and it doesn't really make sense. When you look at it, it goes, okay, we've known about this thing forever. And all of a sudden, uh, skyrocketing, um, skyrocketing amounts of diagnoses. And, and I only know about this in context to a speech I gave about how, how boys are treated. Like, kind of like defective girls in, in the school system. And one of the, the points I raised and well, how I found that data was that this raise in ADHD, boys are represented four to five times more, uh, than girls. But, but you know, it's a rising tide on all, all fronts. And I think about this a lot in terms of screens.

• 1:26:01Speaker 05

  Because.

• 1:26:04Speaker 05

  Although we're, we're looking at this thing and, and, and the ideal world, you know, we're just focusing on pulling it in. I think by nature with, with screens do, you know, with the notable exception, you know, being if you read your Kindle that way. Well, no screen, even with the Kindle, but you can swipe your screens. Allow you to change the speed. They allow you to be distracted typically, however you want to be. They, they change how you bring in the information. And if you're still bringing in the information, I mean, something has to fundamentally change about how you're processing it.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  And when you go back to a book without those things, I think my guess would be that it's, it's, it's like, uh, it's like the opposite of training with weights on. And then you go take the weights off. Well, you go on faster. I'm like, yeah, it's great because you're in control of it. But if you remove all these stressors, uh, then you can't. In fact, here's a great analogy, and I just thought about this. There's this great book called The Epidemic of Absence, nonfiction, if you want to check it out. The basic, the basic thesis of the Epidemic of Absence is that, uh, our immune systems.

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  Evolved in a hostile environment, full of pathogens, full of disease, full of filth, whatever, right? And now that that we don't have that, we live in a clean society, you see, that's why you see this rise of allergies, because the the immune system is like, yo, I need to, I need to give me something, right? That looks, that's a protein. It looks kind of like the other proteins and viruses and bacteria. I'll attack it. And so you get your allergies to, you know, shellfish and eggs and milk, etc., right? And that's the other end, and then like the author goes and like infects himself with a tick worm and attempts on his allergies to his hay fever and stuff like that. But um, I think about that a lot, especially in in this context, which is, we have this,

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  our immune system didn't take a break. It didn't change. Our environment changed and it was like, I'm going to attack something else. And that thing is typically helpful to you, but it looks close enough like what I'm used to dealing with. Let me go do something. Let's take that that that analogy and we'll and we'll use it for for reading. You get used to pulling in your information just right there in front of your face. You devote all your mental activity to it, because that's what you'd have to do to read. I don't mean like, I think reading one musical is probably a relatively new thing, but but

• 1:28:41Speaker 05

  I can see how it's it's possible without interfering too much. But I know like I have trouble reading, especially uh, music with with words in it. I couldn't do it.

• 1:28:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I looked this up recently, because I thought to myself, as I was trying to figure out the book, I said, I wonder if it's better or worse. And as you just alluded to, with words, scientifically it's shown it distracts your brain, it it screws up your ability to read. But even music without words, they say it's like classical music. Because of distraction.

• 1:29:13Speaker 05

  It gives me trouble. So also like you, you have this method of pulling in information.

• 1:29:19Speaker 05

  Total focus and then you bring in a new method that by its very nature of design comes with a new, you're not turning pages, you're able to kind of skim not as much as on in front of you at the same time as there would be with a book.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  You have all these new things that aren't necessarily improvements in the sense of they make you a better or more efficient reader, maybe faster, but not necessarily more efficient because your brain's like, well, I'm gonna give you, I gotta do something, give me something. And there's only so many words I can pull in here. All right, we're gonna mess with your eyesight, you know, or we're gonna, we're gonna make you, every time you see something, you'll look it up immediately and get pulled out. We know how long it takes for you to get your, your focus back when it's broken on something. And so you may not even be able to focus as long as you used to be able to, because your focus is now used to being broken, broken, broken up. Whenever you get a push notification or

• 1:30:24Speaker 05

  something like that, or you want to look something up, or you want to highlight something, that's very unnatural to to highlight while you're reading. We're used to just pulling in information. But this is all just my, my, I never put these two things together before, but in this conversation, putting these ideas together, that, that, that's my guess. That's what I, that is, they are, at the very least, that's an interesting explanation and it's an easily testable one. What happens when you go back to reading without I enjoy it more too. And you're able to, you're able to focus a lot more, I'd imagine.

• 1:31:03Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto, decentralized finance, and web three investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the U.S. under the D E F T Fs. Stock ticker and on the Canadian Neo Exchange under D E F I. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at valour.com. That's V A L O U R dot com. This episode is brought to you by Alto IRA. They can help you invest in Bitcoin and crypto in a tax advantaged way.

• 1:31:48Anthony Pompliano?

  That helps you preserve your hard earned money. Alto's crypto IRA lets you invest in Bitcoin and over 200 other different coins and tokens, and it has all the same tax advantages of your traditional IRA. There's no setup or account fees and it's all you need to do. Invest in crypto tax free. Let me repeat that again. You can invest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies tax free. So are you ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto crypto IRA to invest in Bitcoin and crypto tax free. Go to altoira.com/pomp. That's A L T O I R A dot com slash pomp. Start investing today.

• 1:32:27Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the science research kind of paths that I find fascinating is there's a lot of work. Stoics, there's Ryan Holiday's written books, like all stuff around just like focus, stillness, like all this type of stuff can lead to more idea generation or whatever. So if you basically sit for 30 minutes, well, a lot of people get ideas in the shower, right? Cause they're not doing anything else. Their mind kind of wanders. They think of something, whatever. But there's also a bunch of research around walking. And so the walking becomes really interesting because you could take a person and they aren't moving. That is the least, you know, kind of beneficial thing. And then the other extreme is that they're literally walking outside.

• 1:33:10Anthony Pompliano?

  But there's this middle ground. What about walking on like a treadmill, right? Or like, oh, you got these standing walking desks, whatever. It's actually shown that part of the value of walking to the brain is one, there's a physical component. But two is actually the movement forward. And so the research unlocks saying like, no, if you're gonna walk, like, get your ass outside and walk, not mimic, almost like a lab rat, you know, walking on the trail. Now, it's better than sitting or you're just standing there. But the benefit to actually walking and moving through the environment, your brain does something different than just walking on like a treadmill stationary. It's fascinating.

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  Not only that, and this is, this is a rare case. I can't remember the name of the author and not the book. I can't even see the cover of the book in my head. Weird, but Barbara Oakley is the, the author and she writes about learning. It might be that the science of learning, something to that effect. I'm not sure, but Barbara Oakley is the, is the author. And she talks about you, the diffuse mind state versus the focus. And when we're focused, we're like trying, we're, we're like, the analogy she gave was, was the focus is, is you, you're looking at each individual dot and trying to navigate around it and figuring out, and diffuse is where you step back and you see this whole pattern. And you see the whole layout. You may not be thinking about how to get through it, but you're just absorbing it.

• 1:34:34Speaker 05

  Your brain's kind of working on, on the, the process to get through it in the background. One of the things that walking does, showering does, doing anything else but working on the immediate problem does, is that it lets, it lets you kind of step back and it's always there. It's in the back of your mind, otherwise it's not important. But then when you're not thinking about it, that's when you make these connections that you couldn't see. Kind of like, you know, the, the whole forest for the trees analogy. When you're looking at the individual trees, because you're trying to get out the forest, you don't realize the path, the, the most optimal path to follow unless you know it. But if you step back and you're, or step up in this case, or raise up and you're able to look down and see, oh, the path is really clear. But now you're out the forest, how are you going to communicate it down?

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  And hopefully you carry it, but it's, but it's only. It's only in that diffuse mode that we make a lot of the, these connections that we're able to see how things work and play together. Like, I mean, I wasn't even thinking about the epidermal absence and I make this connection to reading. And those are two, two fields that don't really, why would they ever match? But, you know, because I was thinking and talking about this and this is in the background. And that's like an analogy, kind of like a mental model that I, that I use a lot that I find a lot of people don't have, which is that, you know, the, the idea that a thing has a purpose. And when you remove that purpose, the thing doesn't change. It just figures out another way to, to do what it thinks it's supposed to do. These connections get made.

• 1:36:05Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, um, tool versus environment a lot of times, right? And, uh, um, I, I always think of it in the most extreme situations. So I just jumped to the extreme. So like you take a gun and all the gun debate and all the stuff that goes on in America today, right? It's like, look, there's a lot of different tools, but they can be used for good or bad. And that doesn't mean necessarily that we shouldn't address the use of the tool or that certain people should have access or not have access or whatever. Like, there's all this nuance. You and I aren't going to solve this, whatever. But it always shocks me as to the level of, uh, uh, elementary analysis.

• 1:36:41Speaker 05

  I was, I was gonna say binary thinking.

• 1:36:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Just, just like, like, yo, this is a tool. Like, can we all at least, at least agree on that part, which is a important, almost building block to have a discussion around what should the rules be? And there's like a whole group of people who's just like, no, it's not a tool.

• 1:36:57Speaker 05

  Exactly. And it's, it's really hard here because, you know, something when you, when you learn this stat, something they tell you, you just kind of take for face value. They tell you that intelligence is normally distributed. And you just take that for face value because most people are never going to have the, the opportunity to verify that at all, to put it to the test. And then you go on social media and you have a large following, a lot, a lot of interactions and you realize, holy shit, this is, not only is this true, it might actually be exaggerated.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  And one of the difficulties humans have, and I have no idea what like, or if there's even an IQ level or something like that, or cutoff point, is, is to consider contrary thoughts without being attached to, or, well, the ability to detach their personality from the thought, their ego. Because I think that's what inhibits a lot of constructive discussion is people, if I, if I'm pro second amendment, and I make, you know, guns are part of my identity, right?

• 1:38:14Speaker 05

  That's who I am. I can't entertain any discussion. It might reduce my access to them, or anyone else's access to them. I can't do it. If I see that as part of my personality, and I'm not open to, to any way to actually make, make the world a better place by perhaps making, you know, perhaps by being more pro gun, you know, as weird as that sounds, people go, okay, I'm gonna have to give ground. Well, what if you don't have to give ground? What if the ground you think you're given actually makes your position stronger? You know, I'm, I have this talk all the time with people about guns. Guns is just a great way.

• 1:38:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the most extreme case, right?

• 1:38:58Speaker 05

  Well, not only is it the most extreme, it's really an easily discussed one, because we have so many examples and, and so many, not just examples of when things go wrong or, or right. Interestingly enough, though, for things to go right, they have to be wrong, but that's a different discussion. But we also have a lot of different debates we've seen and have them pop up. But, but if you, if you entertain the idea, for example, this, I was, man, funny how relevant these things happen. I was just having a discussion. I said, look, I'm as pro gun as, as, as anyone, you know, can be. But I think if you're gonna have a gun, you need to train with that thing. Have you ever like, like, have you really ever gotten this? My instructor tells me this all the time.

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  Most people don't go to the range and they need to go to the range. Because when I bring up, everyone goes, oh, they, they psyched you, your boy. I think it was down in Texas, maybe, or Illinois, where he shot the guy who was going to do a shooting in the mall.

• 1:39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, and I think Indiana.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  And I go, look, you gotta understand, I don't know where that guy got his training or where he trained, but that is a trained dude.

• 1:40:05Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like forty yards, he hit him like eight out of ten shots.

• 1:40:07Speaker 05

  Right, like, at fourteen, fifteen yards. The average person is not gonna even hit the target, let alone, uh, center mass. It's not happening. So, so all I proposed, I said, look, everybody who has a gun, they should, they should have to keep, they should have to put in training hours. I really believe that. This shouldn't be walking around with something that can end a life with, with just that, with just pulling a trigger and you don't, and you don't have to train with it. And the blowback, I got on this idea. And they're like, I don't think people should have to train. I don't think people, you know, if they, if they wanna have a gun, it's our goddamn right. I'm like, I'm not telling you to give up your guns. What I'm saying is you, you'll actually be a better gun owner. Like, you, you realize that?

• 1:40:50Speaker 05

  And, and it, and it didn't, they, they couldn't give any ground on everyone should have guns.

• 1:40:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I always like to ask people who seem to be, uh, kinda, uh, dug in on a topic. You know, so let's take a, a very pro-gun person. I would ask them, is there ever an instance where you think somebody should not own a gun?

• 1:41:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, just like, just, again, by the way, uh, they'll be like, no. I'm like, alright, so, uh, if somebody has killed multiple people before, has a documented mental illness, like, you know, like, just go to the extreme, right? Like, do you think that person have a gun? If they say yes, I'm done talking to you.

• 1:41:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you go to the other end though, right? You say that, the anti-gun people, is there ever a situation where you think somebody should be allowed to own a gun?

• 1:41:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And if they're like, no, my, okay, well, what happens if somebody is breaking into your house with your child? You know, all these different things, right? And, and if they still say, no, I don't think I should be able to defend themselves? It's okay, I'm done talking to you too.

• 1:41:45Speaker 05

  That's actually, you know, that's a great, great tactic. That's probably gonna save me a lot. Because my, my, my weakness on the, I'm, I'm one of the, I would like to think anyhow. I'm one of the more patient, respectful people on the internet. That that's changed a little bit, but but only because. One of the cool things about about knowing you have a kid in a way is you start thinking about what's important. And I'm like, your stupid opinion isn't important to me. I have no interest in changing it.

• 1:42:14Speaker 05

  That's relatively recent, but I'm sure it'll it'll go. I'll go back to my baseline. But I I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. And I and I think overall, that's a that's a good strategy because it allows me to at least have a conversation and see where they're at. From a tactical perspective, like I have a good strategy, but that's a sound tactic to ask to start. Okay, do you think there's ever an instance where you would change your stance? Okay, well, and then you give some like, nope. Well, then we can save ourselves some time. But if we can find that, if we can find some ground, well, I it it I mean, I guess that's common ground. If we're like, if we're we're gonna debate about guns and we can both find that common ground.

• 1:42:58Speaker 05

  There is there's a situation where you should not have one. Okay, now we can talk, but if you're not even, you know.

• 1:43:05Anthony Pompliano?

  It's basically it's my way to filter. I I just want to know I'm talking to a person who can have a rational conversation.

• 1:43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good way to go.

• 1:43:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, I have no interest in talking to irrational people where it's become a religion, right? Or it's become like.

• 1:43:18Speaker 05

  Because you never want to get through to that.

• 1:43:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't talk to people and try to convince them to give up their religion.

• 1:43:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you do that, amazing, I feel if that makes you happy, that's great. I'm guessing the success record of that is pretty low, right? And so if you then just say to yourself, like, cool, I just want to talk to people who can see a little bit of nuance. That's okay. We don't agree, but at least I it's like a good faith conversation where I know that, like, all right. You you you see a piece of the conversation that the most extreme in your camp don't see. And that then makes it at least worth the time to start a conversation.

• 1:43:56Speaker 05

  You know, always, man, a little bodies conversations are great because, once again, a another insight that just came to me that I never really made on my own. So I so I think that's that's. A defining characteristic of of someone who would be considered extremist, at least to me, because I'm always really fascinated with the idea of, one, what makes a person extreme? And and two, do do people who are on their side but not as extreme see them as extreme or not? Those are two really interesting questions to me.

• 1:44:33Speaker 05

  And that that idea that, okay, you can, can you see a situation where your perspective is incorrect? Or at the very least, your perspective is inadequate, whether there needs to be a modification? If you can't see that, then yeah, I think that would qualify as someone who's extreme. But but if you if you can see how it'll change and be my, you know, then it's it's different. And I think I think that's a really good, if I apply that filter to to a variety of social issues, not, you know, that we've we face everything from from race to to religion,

• 1:45:16Speaker 05

  you know, to to abortion or guns, you apply that filter to to it, you can pretty much suss out relatively quickly who the the extremists are and who are the people who can have reasonable conversations.

• 1:45:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that if you take this exact same framework, and during the debates on the political side, every candidate should have to answer, what is one thing that your candidate believes that you agree with?

• 1:45:44Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:45:45Anthony Pompliano?

  That goes against your own party? And if you say nothing, you're disqualified.

• 1:45:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, like, to to some degree, that, just that alone, like, what is something that the other person believes that you tend to believe more than what the standing, you know, kind of line in the sand of the party is?

• 1:46:08Speaker 05

  But, you know, politics, at least in this country, they they've done a really It's almost, it would be impressive if it wasn't so destructive. They've made it so, so you know, there's the, we'll just say left and right. There are the ideas on the left and the ideas on the right. All right. And the odds of you, you know, if you believe one idea on the left, the odds you believe in the other ideas are pretty high. Whether that's accurate or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that I can typically with some accuracy and consistency. If I know how you feel on one thing, I know how you feel on a bunch of other things. Okay. They've weaponized this because now you can't, if you're.

• 1:46:51Speaker 05

  Let's say you're a left leaning on, on the abortion issue, right? But you're a pro gun. Mm hmm. Pick one. You can't be both, even though those things are not related. Uh, you, you're either going to be a, you, you gotta decide, are you gonna go on everything for the left or everything on the right? But they're not going to let you mix and match. And the people who do that, they, they almost. And like an insult almost, like censure, censure. Cause, cause you know, no one wants to be called a libertarian anymore because now they're trying to make that like. Oh, it's just a way to be a right winger. That's what they, they say because they don't, they don't want that neutrality, you know? Even, even street gangs recognize neutrality, man, but not.

• 1:47:34Anthony Pompliano?

  The thing that I do believe is a very powerful force in politics right now, which no one is.

• 1:47:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Acknowledging or talking about. Is the weaponization of extremism. Where there's pulling to the extremes, which I think people recognize that. And they say, okay, ex candidate or ex politician, they are on the extreme of that party. Right? So we recognize that. But what people aren't yet talking about is the labeling of extremism. So the right winger thing is like a perfect example where it doesn't matter what you actually believe. Right? Like, uh, I've heard Joe Rogan talk about the fact that they were like, oh, this right-leaning Republican, he's like, I voted for fucking Democrats my entire life.

• 1:48:24Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:48:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And I don't know, maybe it's a nostalgia or whatever, but 20 years ago, if somebody came out and said, I am a Democrat, I vote for Democrats, I whatever, then like people were like, that's a Democrat. That didn't happen. Now, it's all about the label. The label's actually almost more important than the thought. And now, in reverse, it works the same way. The right will label certain people and say, that's socialist, that's a, you know, whatever the terminology that kind of proves the point. And so, if you kind of, again, just take a step back, and you look at kind of the whole playing field, what you realize is, it's not about the truth.

• 1:48:59Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 1:49:00Anthony Pompliano?

  It has nothing to do with the truth. This is all a propaganda war that is being fought by two different factions. And if it wasn't in the United States, if we looked at it, and this was Iraq, for example, you know what the storyline would be in the United States? The two warring factions led by, you know, like, the language would be so different, and we would all sit there in the United States, and we'd be like, that's crazy, and move on with our day. Because it's our politics.

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  We know one, no one sees it. You know, one of the, one of the observations I made, you know, that, look, here's the, here's the problem, would be in a, call it a, I would like to consider myself a free thinker. Now, I will also say, at the same time, a lot of people who consider themselves free thinkers happen, all think the same, and don't you think that's funny? But,

• 1:49:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Cancel.

• 1:49:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, but one of the things about, about being black, is you're expected to think and toe a certain line, and I think that's, that's one of the most destructive things that, that can happen, is people look at me.

• 1:50:07Speaker 05

  And when I say people, I mean, I mean, a general group of politically motivated people who see me being black as a, as a, um, a card to play. They get them on our side, speak platform, whatever, okay. But when I, when I question things that, that I go, well, that's not racist, right? You know, and you're trying to get them to pin down a definition of racism and then they can't do that. I think one of the dangers here, and I get to say it because I'm, or at least I used to, now, now I'm an Uncle Tom and a Coon when I bring it up, but I, I can say, that's not racist.

• 1:50:52Speaker 05

  Like, you might not like how it feels, but let's not throw it and call it racist. And here's the thing, when you call everything, uh, that's a slight against you when you, when you try and put a racial spin on it, then what happens is actual racism is con that gets to slip in because you don't even recognize it anymore. Like, there's this great video, um, about the voter ID laws, where God goes and asks a bunch of, a bunch of people on Berkeley's campus, what they think about voter ID laws. And everyone's like, oh, you know, they, they disproportionately affect minorities because they have less money and they, they can't figure out the internet and they can't go

• 1:51:36Speaker 05

  and learn, go get to the DMV and so we, we need these. And I'm saying, hey, listen, I'm like, do you hear, like, you don't, you don't hear, like, that's the real racism to assume that because, and then he goes by contrast and goes into Harlem and adds someone to black, we're like, yeah, I know where the DMV is. Like, everybody's got the ID, you can't even get. You can't buy alcohol without it. Everything. So, so I thought that was like, when I saw that, I was like, wow. Because we're not, because we're not allowed to.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  Question, are they trying to make it so you, you know, you, you can't question things or pin down definitions and that's a totally different conversation. The manipulation of our language and really trying to make it ambiguous so that it can fit whatever purpose we needed to fit. All right, let's call, let's call it racism when we introduce, you know, when, when we oppose something called the voter RD law, but it's not racist when you go over the reasons which all center around degrading, either at least, you know, pointing out our lack of function, that's why we need it. We obviously can't get to the DMV. Then we have a problem. And so that is, that is one of the other problems with politics today is, is the manipulation of these labels. And I think words are powerful, man.

• 1:52:53Speaker 05

  I, I think that's why I'm drawn to them because I understand how powerful they are. And if you watch it, the, the manipulation of these things is incredible.

• 1:53:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see the Black Lives Matter donation slash lawsuit?

• 1:53:09Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:53:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So I don't, I don't know a ton about this. I saw a headline, I think I read two paragraphs. I want to be careful that I don't fuck up any of the facts, frankly.

• 1:53:17Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:53:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But there was one specific sentence in this, in this statement that my head was in a blender. I, I couldn't understand kind of how this all, all plays out. So I would love to hear kind of you riff on a little bit. There's two, I guess factions, right? That, that have kind of come out of the situation. There was a bunch of money that was donated. One of the co-founders being accused of taking or using $10 million, it's basically a personal slush fund.

• 1:53:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47Anthony Pompliano?

  That's my words, not theirs, but that was just the general kind of accusation.

• 1:53:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That individual appears to almost be saying like, oh, uh, the other group is using the white man's system to oppress me.

• 1:54:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when I saw like, it just like on that alone, it was just one of these situations where I was just like, holy shit, we're headed into a world like, I don't even worry about like today, it's like 10 years from now. It, it almost gets to the point where like, it will be impossible to navigate the world without offending someone.

• 1:54:21Speaker 05

  Yep. And then, and whether that's by design or not, that's a different conversation, but.

• 1:54:29Anthony Pompliano?

  When you, when you, when you decide that words don't,

• 1:54:36Anthony Pompliano?

  when you strip away the, the meaning of a word, right? Are you modified slightly? But there's a consistency, we, we understand that. That's, that's what a dialect kind of is. They, you know, you use these words a certain way and we all agree with that, what they mean. The problem is, uh, when you are allowed to change them whenever the situation suits you and then no one calls you out or, or checks you on it. Like, like oppress. Who's oppressing you? You have 10 million dollars, man. Like, that's like, it's crazy that one can go, can say that with a straight face because you know, hopefully, hopefully, you know, the, the powers that be take care of this problem.

• 1:55:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But let's navigate the mindset to get you to the point where you think that's, that's an okay difference. Like, like, and probably genuinely believe it. I don't, I don't think it's a cop out. That's another important piece of, of a lot of things, not, not just race related, just like across society. I do always ask myself, um, given the facts that are publicly known, do, does it appear that this person actually believes what they're saying? Yeah. And I actually do think in most cases, people do believe what they're saying, which almost makes it crazier. Oh, yeah. Right? Cause you're like, oh no, that person really believes that they're wrong. They're like completely wrong. But they do believe what they're saying. You can correct ignorance or at the very least you can remedy it, you know, by, by putting the correct information in front.

• 1:56:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but insanity, uh, you like, you almost by definition, you can't really do anything about that. So, so when a person says that they really think they're being oppressed, that they really think they suffered at the hands of something, you know, they're, they're, how do you prove to them that they haven't? How do you get them to go, no, it's not quite that way. Yeah, you can't do it. So, you know what? Man, the, the whole BLM thing, um,

• 1:56:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I used to think it was just somebody's really bad marketing. And that's what I called it BLM. Because, because if I'm going to attack it, like, let's, let's say I'm, I'm an opponent and I, I'm going to attack him. I'm gonna go, well, well, they're, they're, you know, Sharrak was on fire this weekend. Or, you know, and there was a lot of black lobs, you know, do those not matter? But they only matter when they're taken out the hands of what you believe is someone who you can, you know, profit from and rile people up. I used to think that was just bad marketing. And now I'm, I am almost 100% convinced it's intentional. You, you call it this good name and that, and in that sense, it's brilliant marketing. You, you call it this name.

• 1:57:19Anthony Pompliano?

  It's very easy to get behind very simple black lives matter. Let's just get out there, they, they matter. And then the fine print that no one sees, no reason, they matter when the police officers shot them as white. When the crime that happened against them was, it was perceived to be by another, well, by, by white men. And we're not going to worry about any of the interpersonal violence or interracial violence and things like that. Uh, because that's not important and we can't profit from that. Right? That, that, that's like, I mean, that, that's how the fine print has to read based on their actions. And I tried to have this discussion with somebody, uh, who's very pro, uh, call him pro black lives matter. And I was like, well, you know, we just had this crazy shooting and we're gonna see them show up here. But I know it's for the police. I'm like, well, why are they called that?

• 1:58:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You know? And then, and that is the power of words. You gotta, you, you get people who logically will, will, you can, you can get them to follow it. Like, okay, they're not showing up when there are other crimes. Well, when, when there, when there are violence, when there's violence in black communities at the hands of other black people. Uh, and we can, we can get them to logically take that step. But then when I get them to go, so we can agree that it's not that black lives matter. It's that when there's a situation where you can spin, oh, I won't even say spin. That's my words. But they only matter when the people who are taking them are not black.

• 1:58:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And you can like see the breakdown because the, either they admit that and I'm right. Or it's in denial and the concept is wrong. Like in general, just.

• 1:58:56Speaker 05

  Not right. Well, they can't give in. So they just go back and now we're talking more about people who can't.

• 1:59:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, um, the other situation, uh, and I, I always get so nervous that I, I misspeak on, uh, on the exact details. So this is a, a general recollection of it, but the kid who his mom like drove him across, uh, state lines. He had a gun. He was at one of the protests. Uh, he shot and killed two people. Uh, I think it was the K- K- Kennesaw.

• 1:59:24Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Rittenhouse.

• 1:59:26Speaker 05

  Rittenhouse, Kyle Rittenhouse. Yeah.

• 1:59:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So I remember when like the trial happened, I believe he shot two white people.

• 1:59:33Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

• 1:59:36Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:59:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And people on Twitter were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. That's not what we were told.

• 1:59:40Speaker 05

  And this is something, because I followed this like probably as closely as you'll ever get me following mainstream news. It doesn't affect me. Um, because I was curious because I didn't know things and, and I wanted to see like, what's the, what's the deal? Is, are we going to see? Okay. But here's the thing, I'm not, uh, one way, we, we gotta make sure justice is, uh, is distributed well and then be aware of that because.

• 2:00:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's important for people who do wrong things to be punished.

• 2:00:11Speaker 05

  Right. Because if he, if he was out there just randomly shooting black people, right? That's a big deal if they let him off any, but, but, but it's also a big deal if he's like, not, we gotta figure out what it is. And so when you go, when you go and learn the details of the case and, and the background of him, you know, this is a guy who like, had been talking about black labs, mad at himself, white kid, you know, on the, as I remember, he was either donating or contributing or cleaning up. But the, but he did shoot, you know, white guys. And so that's a, it's a great spin because we, you know, well, what did, what did, what did Mark Twain say, man? A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets his shoes on. And that was before the internet.

• 2:00:59Speaker 05

  So now you got people going up into the trial really believed that and I didn't dig too deeply into it, but then when I found out, I was like, okay, let me follow this little one closely because there's a lot to learn here. And then you still, you stay the whole state lines thing, you know, I believe that was his, there was his grandmother or father's neighborhood. It wasn't like he was just randomly on a bus and was like, I'm gonna go hunting. Like, nah.

• 2:01:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I, that was the one time where I, it seems like similar to you and they're like, I don't really pay that much attention to like the national news about a lot of this stuff. And frankly, the most interest that I have in, you know, kind of what I'd consider more local or regional things that blow up to the national level is like, oh, there's a police chase. Like, is that cool video? Which like, you know, the good or bad, whatever that's human nature, like there, there's some crazy thing that ends up being entertainment, unfortunately for, for some portion of the population. But this one, uh, I don't know if it was because it was being pushed so hard by the national media or whatever, but like, I felt like I kind of popped my head up and I was like, oh, that's not exactly what I, what my assumptions were, what I had thought I, were the facts or whatever. And then it was kind of one of these things where like, I couldn't wait to like, pull

• 2:02:12Anthony Pompliano?

  my head back down and just like, oh, that's not, I don't want to be paying attention. I'm not happy when I'm reading that stuff every day in terms of like the national news.

• 2:02:19Speaker 05

  It really messed with you.

• 2:02:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it was just one of these situations where I remember saying to myself, like, for me, somebody who's on the internet a lot, uh, and like, I don't know, like generally aware maybe of like the national news stories. I don't pay a lot of attention to them, but like I see what's trending on Twitter, you know, all this stuff. If I was that surprised, I didn't even want to go wide. What was Fox News saying and MSNBC? Cause again, it's just like the mainstream Twitter conversation, you could see the shock and like the, the outrage is probably too extreme of a word, but just like people being like, whoa, there's more here that maybe we don't understand. That you could imagine the extremes of the mainstream media just pulling every detail, spinning it, doing all this stuff. And you're

• 2:03:06Anthony Pompliano?

  just like, I just like, we're all gonna die one day. I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out.

• 2:03:12Speaker 05

  That's how I feel, you know? People always ask me.

• 2:03:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, not all, they don't always ask me, but, but it comes up a lot because I have been, I'm fairly vocal about it, about my disinterest in politics and current events. And I know that seems weird because we, we've just spent the last, you know, 20 or 30 minutes discussing these things. But it's only because you, you, you can't really, like, it's very hard to be on the internet to the level we are and not be at least aware of things. And some things you will, you will dig deeper into because they, they, they're just,

• 2:03:52Anthony Pompliano?

  for whatever reason, whether it's because the, the details seem interesting or, or they just won't go away. That's really the, the big one. They just won't go away. But, but for the most part, I, I try to maintain, I call it willful, willful ignorance and active disinterest. And, and a lot of the, the stuff that is on the, the politics and, and, um, current media. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I figure like this, but let's, let's forget the stoic stance. I really believe in that, which I'm gonna die one day, but rather enjoy it. If, if something's a real big deal, like real big deal and it's gonna affect my life, I'm gonna find out.

• 2:04:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, like, let's say I didn't know anything about real ID and I just went on my way. I'm gonna find out, uh, that my ID is wrong and I might have to do something about that. Even if, but because I travel, I'm gonna hear about it anyway, you know? And I think about the number of things that have happened in, in politics that, that bug me or that affect me, not bug me, that affect me. And I'm like, I can't think of much. And when, and when they do, I was, thank goodness, I've structured my life in such a way. If something really bothers me, like, it's a really big deal, I'm just gonna leave the country. Or I'll move to another state, you know, like, like I, um,

• 2:05:14Speaker 05

  And a lot of people did that.

• 2:05:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Over the last two years.

• 2:05:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:05:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Move states.

• 2:05:17Speaker 05

  Not move states and move country. And I just seen an article is trending about how how Mexico people are complaining in Mexico City. How there's too many white people in Mexico City and like go back to America and they're like, go back. And and it's funny, you know, I'm seeing that from Mexico, you know, I'm always Portuguese. We're here, the record numbers of Americans in Portugal now. And I mean, I'm still a small percentage, but a lot of people leaving. But but that's where my stance is. I have I I create this agency around my life. So that I don't have to worry about that stuff. And I think outside of people who who make a living.

• 2:05:57Speaker 05

  But by by knowing knowing the game like like my brother in law, he's a wealth planner and he makes a lot of his decisions on where to put money at. Based on what what he believes the economy will do. And he comes to those conclusions from years of experience and watching the news. Yeah, he probably should watch it. I don't do any of that, so I don't pay attention to it, you know. And if it's a big deal, I'm gonna find out. My life is gonna get a real hard reminder quickly, but.

• 2:06:28Anthony Pompliano?

  There's one other thing that started to happen that I noticed and and it always scares me when I notice I got a new reaction to things I see. But it hit home this morning, actually. I was on Twitter. And I saw a account which, you know, in the gray area, so you know, somebody got to double check. See what's getting posted. But they retweeted an account that I've never seen before. And it was a video and it said, I thought Ukraine was being invaded or something to that effect. And it was allegedly a video of a party in Kiev. Of a bunch of what looked like 20 something year olds partying their faces off drinking.

• 2:07:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No different than if on Friday night you went out in Miami and somebody took a video, right? And and it looked like people playing beer pong, kind of like a college party, right? And there was like two or three levels and like maybe 50, 100 people there. Not what we would expect, right? Because on the same day, the same morning I see that. The president of Ukraine is ringing the stock market bell and and basically pitching on CNBC, the investment in Ukraine. And I just thought to myself, my first reaction was not good or bad. It was, is this video real?

• 2:07:43Speaker 05

  And.

• 2:07:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, I think people really look Ukrainian. Oh, like, you know, you start thinking to yourself like, oh, like, what time could this video been posted? Like, you, all of a sudden, you're like, now we're in this weird world on the internet of like, I don't even know if that video is really.

• 2:07:57Speaker 05

  And so you can't even put the energy. Right. Yeah. I just, you know, yeah, I'm, I'm trying. I'm, I'm slightly at a loss for words only because I have this, this exact reaction to everything.

• 2:08:10Speaker 05

  You ever seen The Matrix? And, and the first time Neo meets Morpheus? Or not, not the first time, but it's, it's, it's early in the meetings. He goes, you have the look of a man who accepts everything he sees because he's expecting to wake up. Funnily enough, that's not too far from the truth, right? And I'm like, huh, that's how I feel about a lot of the stuff I see because you can't, you, you, you don't know, you don't know anymore. And then, and because so much come out where the, the angle was changed and leaving out something vital or it's outright fabricated. Or, or it's an old photo used to represent something new.

• 2:08:52Speaker 05

  You just gotta look at everything with a grain of salt and go, okay, look, if I want, like, if you, you know how they say if you want to find something to be angry about, if you want to be angry, you'll find something to be angry about. It's a perfect example. You don't know if any half this stuff is real, half this stuff that comes out is fake. I like, yo, uh, it's so crazy. I, I'm aware of all the news and all the numbers around inflation and, and even I have to go sometimes I'm at the grocery store. I'm looking at the price and go, is it really that bad? Like, because I'm looking at the meat, my, and then the price and I know what I paid because, you know, and I'm just like, is it really that bad? Or is it really happening? And then I think about 1984 and I think that's a book everyone should read. It's fiction. So.

• 2:09:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I have read 1984.

• 2:09:37Speaker 05

  But, but that, when, when they explained that. They're not really at war and they break down the way things really, really work. Because we just, you know, we tell everyone they are, but, but, and everyone proceeds if it is, it is like that. Because when, when things are that way, you don't have to innovate, you don't have to create, you know, it's on, people think you're at war, they just listen and follow. And it gives, it gives everyone the power to create. Oh, and everyone, a part of the government to enact laws. And we don't have to worry about innovation or educating our citizens. I think about that a lot. Sometimes like that, like you, you could, in fact, if, if you don't want to read, anyone listening, if you don't want to like read 1984, just get to that part where I can't remember the character's name, but he's explaining how

• 2:10:21Speaker 05

  everything really works. When he gets, oh, I think he finds a book or something that explains how, how the war and all that is manufactured. And you start, and then you start looking around, you go, okay, this is a little too close to home. Uh, I'm going to step back because it's really designed. I think this, I believe this in my heart of hearts. Because, because it makes sense following the money, this makes sense. Forget the conspiracy angle, it makes sense. That you being enraged is good for the networks' pocket. Because the networks work on a CPM model, as far, as far as I understand this, especially on the internet, where you don't even got to buy anything. You just got to keep reading. You just got to be on the site. And so they get paid, you go on, and you're

• 2:11:04Speaker 05

  going to go because you're angry and you got to find out more information. And so they figured it out. Let's just put the most negative, extreme, polarist stance or something, almost to the point of it not being accurate. Like when you read what the article's about versus what the headline says. But it's okay, because they got you to click through and read. So there's more money. Everyone goes, I'm happy when you're angry and polarized.

• 2:11:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you remember during 2020, CNN had the, I called it the death scoreboard?

• 2:11:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Remember they had that on there?

• 2:11:32Speaker 05

  They literally had a scoreboard. They just kept at the bottom of the screen.

• 2:11:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I remember.

• 2:11:37Speaker 05

  It was, it was on the bottom, on the right.

• 2:11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  It was on the big panel.

• 2:11:39Speaker 05

  It showed how many people were.

• 2:11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And the reason why I know is, at the time I was living in New York, and in the building, there was a TV in the elevator. And they never had anything else on, like, oh, we, I requested like a hundred times. I was like, yo, can you please get that? Because it was depressing.

• 2:11:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:11:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It was like, man, like this is like, not what I want to do when I get in the elevator is look at this thing. And it was there every day, every day, every day. And I remember being like, holy shit. Like.

• 2:12:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That is in terms of getting people enraged and holding attention, doing all this stuff. That single thing, that's the most innovative thing they've ever done.

• 2:12:16Speaker 05

  You couldn't, you couldn't ask for a better piece of, I guess, piece of reporting than this negative scoreboard. On a, on a very related note.

• 2:12:29Speaker 05

  If you ever see Anchorman two, not, they're, they're, they're both funny movies. But Anchorman two is, is really underappreciated because it's a brilliant piece of social commentary on how the news spins things to keep you engaged. And when I first seen it at this point, man, it might be, I don't know, I feel like it was, it was definitely over 10 years ago, probably like 15 at this point, Anchorman two. I remember I thought that when I seen it. This is before I got like really into social media and seen anything. And I was like, wow, they really, they really summed it up. If you can make people, the, the, the, the basic premise is news by itself is boring and doesn't keep people engaged.

• 2:13:11Speaker 05

  And so we don't lose, we, we don't make money and we're going to be off the network. So let's figure out how to make money. Oh, this is the kind of stuff we gotta cover. Let's cover that and that saves the network. When you, when you, when you see that, you go, wow, this is nuts. And you know, it's funny. And so that's probably why people missed the main, I did a main point, but that's what I took away from it all those years. And I see it in place now. I see how it's working now. And yeah, that scoreboard, great idea. You know, that was a great idea. Going back to the race conversation. Let's not report on the shootings when the perpetrators, why, or when the perpetrator, when the victim is white or the police officers are black. We don't want to report on those.

• 2:13:54Speaker 05

  Those are, that's not good news. All right. You know, it is good news. What a, what a white guy shoots a black dude. Like, like that video, that, that story about them cops beating the crap out of, I mean, well, there's so many. I don't even know which one, right? It just, I mean, it makes news. It pops up because it's, it's a violent video. The way he goes away.

• 2:14:18Anthony Pompliano?

  The, uh, the internet, I actually think has a much better memory now than that's true. Right? Because they will, uh, they'll pop this stuff up and, um, also I think a lot of people on the internet now have moved from a, um, fact to entertainment. So I see a lot of videos on the internet. And if you're like new to the internet, whatever that would mean, like you'd be trying to figure out, is that really where it's from or whatever I saw? I don't know if you saw the, uh, uh, it's allegedly a Russian dash cam video where, uh, there's like two cars driving at night. One kind of pulls in front of the other driver hops out in the middle of the highway. He's like banging on the driver, uh, door and then four people get out and they're in like full blown Halloween costumes.

• 2:15:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And they beat them up, right? And they jump back in and they, and they take off and it's like, oh, this is the most amazing dash cam, whatever.

• 2:15:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And I saw it recently was circulating, circulating again and, uh, people are retweeting it. And now I just said, I was, I don't give a fuck where that is. Like, that's just funny. Yeah. Like, like strip away all the like, uh, uh, um, kind of chaotic, uh, like, um, sensitivities that everyone's trying to get everyone enraged or whatever. And it's like, by the way, the video is probably fake. It's probably staged. Like if you look at it through the lens of like, that's a YouTube stunt. All of a sudden now people are like, yo, look at this funny as video.

• 2:15:36Speaker 05

  And people, man, they really coordinating these YouTube stunts. I, I only know that because I just shared this video. Absolutely hilarious, but, but it, it blurs the line. Well, you're from New York, you've seen the way these, these, these homeless people just kind of set up shop on a car and they just stroll back and forth. So the, the sort of video is of a, of a homeless guy walking through a, a subway. Got no shirt on, no shoes. So, so pretty much everyone's just kind of ignoring them. Like you would in New York when you see it. Nothing new. And then he stops, looks at a woman with her food and then just grabs it and then just runs off. Now, now no one knows it's a stunt, but the guy who's recording and the guy who is running off with the food. But that's why it looks so real.

• 2:16:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, he faked it?

• 2:16:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, well, did he, did he fake it?

• 2:16:27Speaker 05

  Well, what's, what's a fake? Well, that, that would mean that everyone was in on it.

• 2:16:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:31Speaker 05

  I don't think, I think the only person that was in on it was the guy filming it and the guy who was, but so, so is he really, you know, I notice he's being an asshole when filming it. Is it better to look at it? But, but what does that do to our perception? Like the way I shared, I was just being funny like, oh man, these homeless people aren't just sitting around waiting for you to toss them change. They're taking it out, right?

• 2:16:52Speaker 05

  If I'm looking at that video, I'm thinking, oh man, that is crazy that a guy would do that. He must, it must be real. Never mind the fact that like someone just happened to be filming some, but, but it is kind of funny and weird. I've done that, take pictures of crazy shit I see or videos. And the guy just happens to run off and with the food. But it blurs this line where everyone around you doesn't know it's a joke. You know, it's a joke in the, and, but the only part of it that makes it a joke is that he's not actually a homeless dude. And it, it's set up for entertainment. It's kind of like, um, it's like Candid Camera, remember that? Like, like same idea.

• 2:17:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I always think you couldn't do some of these things that, that they used to get away with. You couldn't do them today.

• 2:17:35Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely not.

• 2:17:37Anthony Pompliano?

  There's some, there's some, there's some of those like prank shows and stuff that they could absolutely get away. Cause they wouldn't get punched in the face or whatever. Like, like society's kind of gotten softer and people would just be offended or, or whatever. And then there's some of those shows like, uh, uh, punked or whatever. Like now I think people would just go to blows.

• 2:17:51Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, this is bad. You know, like there's a whole, in fact, there's a whole video series somebody sent me. Or, uh, I guess it's in New York, but it, but he's behind bulletproof glass, which is important here. It says Chicago, New York. It's one of those big, big cities and the guy's coming and he goes and pays for his stuff. It's a dude behind the counter, it's a dude paying and the dude goes, all right, thanks daddy. You have a good night. And he's like, yo, what you call me? He was like, I just called you daddy, man. What's up? He was like, like, what you mean? That's where you can call us just like dudes like that. Like, no, don't call me that, don't play that way. And he just keeps, and he goes, all right, cool. All right, nice one, sugar lips. And he's like, and he's just like, and he's like, but, but, but because the guy can't get behind the camera. He's

• 2:18:36Speaker 05

  Okay, but but you're right, like if if he could, you know, because some of the dudes were like, oh, you lucky you back behind that glass like.

• 2:18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You seen where they do the NBA players? They go they go up to the NBA players and like the most recent one, uh, they had, um, what's the kid that was in Philadelphia and he got traded to the Brooklyn, Ben Simmons? And I think it was Ben Simmons and they went up to him and they're like, what's that? Russell, uh, Russell Westbrook? And they like go up to the players and they pretend that they don't know who they are or like they think they're somebody else. And of course, you're NBA, I mean, get the fuck out of here, right? And so they chased the dude out of a store because he, because they realized immediately he was, it's like now become a thing where it's like, oh, you're trying to disrespect me.

• 2:19:15Speaker 05

  Now it's like, get out, yeah, it's just.

• 2:19:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And now you got security, they get all this. The, uh, the, the, the other thing, uh, that I think a lot about is, uh, sometimes something happens in life and you don't know if it's like, uh, if they're trying to not punk you, but like you see stuff happen and you're just like, oh, is that, is that real? And you start kind of looking around and in today's society, you're kind of just like, is, is there a camera somewhere? Is there something happening or, or, or whatever? And, uh, I don't think that that's necessarily the best thing, you know, over the long run. Uh, if everyone is always just thinking about, you know, like, how do you capture footage? Like if life became, uh, basically a TV set, that don't seem like a, a good path to go down.

• 2:19:58Speaker 05

  You know, I'm in the creator space on, on, I guess, the internet, Twitter, social media, YouTube. And one of the things I've observed, and I, I comment on it pretty regularly, much to the dismay of many of my fellow creators, but I go, look, man, uh, I'm, I'm thirty seven and I was putting together my life because of my age, I was putting together my life as if, why didn't give me no cameras around, you know, I didn't, I didn't start boxing so I can make videos of it, for example. I certainly didn't go back to school so I could talk about it on the internet and study physics. Like, no, that's like, it's like hard things you do to form my life that like, look,

• 2:20:41Speaker 05

  let's be real here, I could probably with what I understand about internet, make money now, I could probably never do anything worthwhile again and just, just make a living for the rest of my life on the derivatives and lessons from, from that, but I never, never do that because I don't think that way. You see though, especially with the guys under thirty, because it's a different generation. And that that sounds weird, but under thirty, what would that make you? You'd be more than ninety three?

• 2:21:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, so so so yeah, ninety two afterwards, something you you're gonna come up and at the very least in your high school days, that's when social media is gonna start popping up. By the time you reach your twenties, your early twenties, you're like, why would I ever go do something hard and challenging and push myself? Uh, I'm going to instead, I'm gonna try this internet thing, I'm trying to make this money thing. So you got a whole generation of guys who have figured out how to make money online. Talking about and doing a lot of the same things that everyone else was, because they all sound the same. Uh, slightly different flavor, but all talking about the same thing, because there there are certain topics that is more engaging. Uh, but if you don't have a a life to go behind, like I can talk about.

• 2:21:54Speaker 05

  And a platitude when I say it, because you can look me up, I you know, I I went through it, right? It's real life, but if but if I can't, you know, if you you like some kid from a middle class suburb family, you start talking about, you know, discipline habits and then, you know, pulling yourself up and fixing it later, it it comes off.

• 2:22:11Speaker 05

  You can get away with it in one platform and another or whatever, but but the whole idea, the whole point is that. You you only, you really gain perspective and life experience and then real. These things start to mean something when you have to use them. You know, it's like, like, why would a kid join, join the army now? You know, that's another discussion, right? But but why would he, you know, go go enlist in the armed services or take up a combat sport or or? Thinking of things I've done, armed service, take up a combat sport, go do, to learn a very difficult. Uh, subject, pick up a language, R two, right, learn an instrument. There are all these things that, but they take time and they're hard and.

• 2:22:55Speaker 05

  And the failure is there and you're not gonna face it. And and on top of that, it's not good instant screen time, it's not a good investment, right? It's it's not, you know. You can't capture it. Everyone wants to be be the man, you know, like I, I, I, cause I know a lot of guys personally and I see some of the things they post and I'm like, man, I know what you're really doing and making that's, that's kinda, it's a little misleading. I'm not going to say, you know, cause it ain't my thing. You're not, you're not really selling money. So I make it, but, but I'm looking at it. That's really misleading.

• 2:23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause they're, they're positioning themselves that they make more than they actually do.

• 2:23:30Speaker 05

  Well, cause yeah, cause you, you can, you know, one of the cool things is what I like about travel and it's like this about anything, but travels is the first thing that comes to mind is that if you don't know, you assume it is a very expensive thing to do is, you know, but once you know, you go, it's not really, you know, is what it is, but, but it's, it's a good selling point.

• 2:23:55Anthony Pompliano?

  If you're good at the internet, you could find how to get a lot of places in the world.

• 2:23:57Speaker 05

  Man, if you're good at the internet, you can get a Lambo for two. Have you heard about these guys? They're renting the Lambos to make it look like a life. You, you can, you can really make your life look a certain way. But when I, when I sit down in front of you and I talk and I realize you don't have any type of skill, you don't have any type of experience, you don't know or do anything. Talked to a lot of marketer guys, no content, like no, what the, I'm, I'm really big on the relationships in your life. I think, I'm not saying you gotta have a bunch, but I think one of the telltale signs is somebody who is, who has

• 2:24:36Speaker 05

  gone through a life is they have, they have long-term friends. I don't like, I'm not interested in the guy who really took that advice to heart. Get, you know, get rid of your old friends when you level up like, no, cause there should be some people in your life that they bring something more to the table than, or, or other than, you know, like advice and ideas on how to hustle, you know, I get like good, solid relationships, a lot of these things, right? Or all these things to make a life. We have, we have really become, and I'm not even gonna say we, man, cause I'm not in that, that generation. I am very much a damn near an elder millennial at this point.

• 2:25:15Speaker 05

  We have, or it has become really cool to have the sizzle without the steak. If that, you know, to put it in real easy terms, really easy, let's look the part. We don't really want to be the part, but I don't think they're trying to do that. They don't even know what the part is to be.

• 2:25:34Anthony Pompliano?

  This is in business, specifically in the tech industry and like the startup world. I used to call it a blog post founder versus a real founder. And what I mean by that is like, you could be a founder who went and read a bunch of blog posts. And you learned all the things that you're supposed to say. And so to the untrained eye, you could trick a lot of people. You could raise some money, you could do this, this, whatever. But to the trained eye, it takes like two questions and it's just bad, you know, and you could break it down. Now, the benefit, and this is like kind of a larger story of all of society. Part of the positive of that story is that information that used to be behind closed doors into like good old boys network, all this stuff.

• 2:26:18Anthony Pompliano?

  It's now available on the internet because there's somebody who reads it, who's a real entrepreneur, right? And will go and implement it. And now they know how to work with their board or they know how to put together a fundraising deck. Or there's a database of investors to reach out to or, you know, whatever. But with positives comes negatives and there's a lot of people who now can kind of fake it better. Because they read the blog post and they think they know what they're supposed to say, whatever. That's business and usually it's in an environment where they're asking somebody for money.

• 2:26:43Speaker 05

  It's the same idea.

• 2:26:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. Is like, okay, cool. Now take it to the successful people. And one of the things I tell all the young kids who I see doing some of this stuff, I always tell them, I say, man, you ever seen a picture Elon Musk on his, on his jet?

• 2:26:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:27:00Anthony Pompliano?

  No, and by the way, the picture you saw of him on a yacht, that's somebody else's yacht. And he didn't want the picture taken.

• 2:27:08Speaker 05

  One of the things that I really pride myself on, man, is, is, you know, when you see, cause I, cause I use IG like everyone else, but I used to promote my writing really like heavily. But one, but I do like to show that I'm a real person and I exist. So I put pictures of my life and stuff, but it's always like, uh, you know, it's me with, with some friends or my girl or with, with the, you know, it's the last picture posted. I was standing in the water, making a silly pose on the beach, man. Like just showing like, but, because I think after a certain point, like when you, you, you learn the, the negatives that come with a lot of that.

• 2:27:48Speaker 05

  Uh, in fact, I, I would say like, like I'm, I'm really big on posting stuff that show me living life. And actually living life, you know, uh, we were in Budapest for one of, this is one of the coolest things about the internet. I'm sure you're like, you get this, right? So, so we were in, uh, we were in Budapest for a week and then took a river cruise down. The Danube, uh, we stopped in Bratislava, Vienna, Litz and one of the, Munich. Right? And, and when we were in Budapest, she was there though, because of what my wife does. She's involved in travel and scheduling stuff and, and helping people take these amazing trips, places. And so she was there for our river, our river cruise conference. So I, I was like, I'm gonna go.

• 2:28:31Speaker 05

  Uh, but that week she was busy. So what I did, I just let people know I was in, and every day there was somebody else to hang out and show me stuff. And so I got like real tours and real, just a different view and, and experience. And I took pictures with everybody because I wanted to, to show like, this is what was really rich of our life. Being able to like touch down and have real conversations with people. People I talked to now still, I'm not in Budapest. And so that's really trained in a gym and worked out. That was hard because I'm not training like a fighter anymore. But it was, but, but that's the value. And that was like one of my favorite pictures to post is all these people that I got to meet and run into.

• 2:29:09Speaker 05

  You don't, you don't see me, you know, sitting in a picture of me in my first class, something like that, or, or with the Lambos or posing with my, with my, my jewelry and my watches. No, it's the people. But, but if, but if I don't show, but here's the, that's what they think. If I don't show that stuff, people aren't gonna buy from me or deal with me. And I get it. There's like this whole immense project, but why would you wanna? I wonder what the motivation is to do it, I guess.

• 2:29:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It brings it back to a street versus boardroom.

• 2:29:39Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:29:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there's, there's people who their entire life, they're trying to project the boardroom. And then when they get there, I think a lot of people realize like, nah, man, you'll, you'll always want to try to get back to the street mentality, to the, uh, uh, this approach of, um, uh, those people are trapped.

• 2:30:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:30:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I think about a lot. I'll tell you, I'll tell you another great filter I have. My wife had talked about a lot. I don't think this will have any identifying information. I don't know the person's name, so that helps. We were in Austin, Texas, two years ago. It kind of ended 2020. And, um, we, uh, went out to eat and, uh, we were somewhere, I don't know, Sixth Street or whatever. It kind of where if you were a tourist, this is where you would go, but, uh, uh, it was kind of a nicer place. And, uh, guy walked in, um, and, you know, I have a, a problem where I pretty much only just wear T-shirts.

• 2:30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So every once in a while you catch me maybe in like a, a, a black collar shirt. That's a, that's a big dress up for me. But, uh, I was sitting there and, you know, just regular clothes or whatever. My wife's same thing. And this guy walks in and he had a, uh, like a button down, like a dress shirt, right? Some jeans and nice shoes. And he was like, ah, you know, cool. Goes over and there's like an outdoor patio and this guy's a regular. He knows every staff person, like all this stuff and people are showing up and he's pointing, he's doing this, he's ordering drinks. He's, and he's got the whole thing going. And for whatever reason, I just turned to my wife and I said, I'll bet you a hundred dollars that dude's a medical device salesman.

• 2:31:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And she was like, what do you mean? And I said, he's got just enough money where he could ball in the local bar.

• 2:31:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But he ain't got a yacht, a jet, a Ferrari, like whatever, right? And by the way, I always go back to like, if he's happy, amazing, congratulations, you fucking crushed life. But I always ask myself, like, did he one day say, I'mma go and I'mma become successful, whatever the job actually was, right? And I want to have enough money to go to the local bar and like basically, you know, ball out.

• 2:31:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:31:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably not, right? And so like, it was less about this one individual as much as it was just like, there's a whole lifestyle that I think people go and they do. And they're almost like fooling themselves a little bit. But it does go back to the fact of like, if they're truly happy, you gotta just high five them, celebrate and like, hey, you killed life. I think the reason why people always point out these situations is because a lot of people aren't actually happy.

• 2:32:06Speaker 05

  And, and not only, I think happiness is, is hard to, because there'll be, there'll be moments where you're good and moments where you're not, whatever, right? But, but ultimately,

• 2:32:20Speaker 05

  I, I think, I don't know, I don't know why I don't like the word happiness to describe it. But, but I do wonder if fulfilled, that's the word I want.

• 2:32:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great word.

• 2:32:32Speaker 05

  Fulfill, kind of purposeful, because, because I got a good friend and he described it like this, you know, there's a lot of, because there's a lot of guys that figured out how to make money. And they figured it out by, by positioning themselves as opposed to generating value. And just really getting in the, getting in the right place for the money changes hands and you, you know, cut it, take a cut, however that looks, whether it be an affiliate cut or a founder's fee or somebody, whatever, right? You just get in the right place, right? Plum, or moving somebody else's product. And we associate money with,

• 2:33:11Speaker 05

  we associate money with value, but personal value, so it gets mixed up. They think have this and that. And you, there's a lot of skeezy people, money, and there's a lot of cool people who are broke and it's not, it's not, this goes back to what I was saying about, you know, why would you drop your friends, right? Now, you drop somebody, it's a problem for various reasons, but if you cut out hanging out with somebody, it's because they're happy doing something. It might not be a financially lucrative move, but they're, they're content. They're fulfilled, they're still your solid homie, you guys still have, are able to connect and, and they're a good person, right? But if it ain't about that, that image, that money that you can project, what are you doing?

• 2:33:55Speaker 05

  Nah, and that's where we're, oh, we got a weird relationship with money in this, in this society. We, you know, because I think, I think a lot about the stat seventy five thousand and above to be happy. They say you make seventy five thousand dollars and any more than that doesn't add to happiness. I think, you know, I think, I think, you know, we, we add inflation to that. It's probably somewhere around ninety, but like, the, the point is there's, there's a small, there's a place you reach where everything after that is condo, right? Is it, doesn't make you feel more fulfilled? And so you start going, okay, well, well, how do I get there? That's what makes a difference.

• 2:34:36Speaker 05

  And a lot of people just want the money. They don't consider that it's path dependent. You look, because you can go selling dope. Okay, you don't want to be, you don't want to do something illegal. You could probably do, do eighteen to twenty hour shifts every other day.

• 2:34:54Speaker 05

  Doing day work, combine that with some, some Uber, you get that money there, right?

• 2:34:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You want to know one of the number one jobs in America make a hundred K?

• 2:35:02Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 2:35:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Driving truck for Walmart.

• 2:35:04Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:35:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, starting pay, hundred K.

• 2:35:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:35:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? If, I forget the stat, maybe VP at Walmart, million bucks a year. You ain't even got, no one's got to know your name. You don't even got to have a LinkedIn profile. A million bucks a year, then you run some division or whatever. Now, again, like, it takes time to get there. You got to be smart. You got to know what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like you just wake up one day and go apply and bam, you're twenty two years old, you're the VP at Walmart. But a hundred K as a truck driver?

• 2:35:33Speaker 05

  And then look, exactly. I actually made that suggestion to a buddy of mine who was trying to make the money. I was like, look, man, if it's just about money, just go be a truck driver. Like, now, if you want to like, if there are other things that are important, yeah, but when you make it about money, then you, you miss out on, I just think so much.

• 2:35:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I see a lot of truck drivers posting on Instagram saying six figures by twenty six.

• 2:35:59Speaker 05

  But you got your truck drivers. I know a guy in the uh, a boilermaker. And he's doing, he's doing like 50s, 55 thousand, 50, 50, uh, 50 to 55 dollars an hour. Depending on the job, which works out to be about a hundred K a year, a little, a little less. But like, there are so many ways to, to get to this, this land of, of plenty. And then, you know, you get there and you go, all right, well, do I like how I got there? Is, is it all cracked up to me? What do I need? You know, lifestyle creep is a real effort, right? All of this, you go, you, you, you figure out what matters to you. And that's what I think this all comes back to is that people have let,

• 2:36:46Speaker 05

  people have let, let social media, let other people determine what's important to them. So they think I have to make this life on this screen captured, remove almost all authenticity, create a somewhat fraudulent image. Fraud might be too strong for misleading is probably better. Someone misleading image to keep the money train going. And it's not that much money because well, I don't have much to show for my life outside of this. Like if you removed it, I think about this, this, this imagination or like if there was a, say tomorrow, the park grid shut down and we gotta start over from scratch.

• 2:37:28Speaker 05

  What am I gonna do? Well, I'm, I'm probably either gonna work on something mechanical or turn into a soldier. That's gonna be one of them. Be out there forging, hunting, figuring things out and, and defending the new, the new settlement. With, with skill, but, but to have that skill, you know, you, you gotta go do things and, and figure these things out. It's kind of, I'm, I'm kinda rambling, but I'm, but I'm.

• 2:37:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah, it's a, it's a mentality.

• 2:37:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:37:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and I think that's probably the biggest thing of, uh, a lot of the people who maybe seem a little lost or, or they're, they're trying to project an image of, uh, somewhere where they're not yet. I mean, that they can't get there or whatever. Uh, but, but I do think a lot about, could you take that person, drop them off somewhere? How long does it take to come back?

• 2:38:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like I, in fact, you know, it's funny, man, was just having this conversation, conversation with the wife. I was like, yo.

• 2:38:18Speaker 05

  You know, I'm, I'm really happy with the, the life I've built and the connections and everything like that. Cause everyone was talking about it's not about who you know. I mean, it's not about what you know, the, the older I get and the more I learn. It really seems to be about, you know, who you know, at least that helps a lot more than what you know. But I was like, you know, uh, I think about this, like if I was wiped out tomorrow, how long would it take to recover? I still have all my knowledge and all my skills and I'm really happy that, that, you know, I'm not gonna like immediately bounce back, but it shouldn't take more than a year given what I know and how I know how to interact with people and reach out with the internet or not and the skill I have.

• 2:39:01Speaker 05

  I, I think that's a, that's a worthwhile kind of metric to standard. Like if you were wiped out, like all your social media, everything was gone, right? You just, I was just regular with Ed Latimore and I showed up. All I have are my skills and my knowledge. I don't even have the cool boxing record I put together. I got, you know, uh, how would I come back? Okay. Well, I know enough of how to do one thing, a few things and what would make it.

• 2:39:28Anthony Pompliano?

  That, that to me is, uh, true for very many people in the sense of, uh, uh, if they had to start over from scratch, they probably would end up being further along over the long run because they get.

• 2:39:39Speaker 05

  Well, I don't have to bump into as many walls, that's for sure. A lot of walls, man.

• 2:39:45Anthony Pompliano?

  That's the game.

• 2:39:45Speaker 05

  Just, just figure it out over and over, over time. You know, one of my favorite jobs I had, in fact, it was my favorite one. I did it longer than I had to. I was a tutor for high school. High school is physics and mathematics. I took on some English kid ones and I was like, never again. I, I just, I mean, and I like reading, but I don't like the way that school makes you read and what you have to know and what the work is. But I can teach you how to gain the right answer, your thought process through, through physics, chemistry and math. And, and I think about that a lot because, not only granted, because the people with that skillset,

• 2:40:24Speaker 05

  there's not a, it's not a big overlap between who has enough time to teach it and who knows enough. Most people with that skillset have jobs, using them. And so I was able to charge a, charge a premium, but, but the impact that happens is that I still have. Um, many, many of the kids I worked with when they're, they, they're not adults now. They're low in their 20, 21 is, uh, they still reach out. I just had coffee with the other one today. And, and you know, she was telling me about, you know, our dad was like, you know, ask him about X, Y, Z and stuff like that. And, uh, because, cause it was, it was working in the world, man. It was a physical, uh, it was, uh, to be there and, but connect with humans.

• 2:41:08Speaker 05

  That means a lot to me. It was my favorite. Second favorite job, most entertaining one after that though, uh, definitely would have been when I worked at the homeless shelter. You get a lot of stories, man.

• 2:41:22Speaker 05

  Well, but, but you know, that's neither here nor there, you know, you just, you just figure these things out and, and have a good time. I, I think there's, um, this should almost be a component where you gotta do some, some, uh, some physical work before you can talk about, talk about doing stuff online.

• 2:41:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. That is, uh, that's very true. Where, uh, where can we send people if they want to buy the books or, or read any of your writing or get more of these ideas? Cause a lot of people will hear this and they'll say, Hey, wait a minute. This guy's got some stuff figured out. He's still pretty open about figuring out more things in his life. Uh, and he's been able to become self-sufficient on the internet, which a lot of folks I think are trying to figure out. So where can we send them to, to learn more from?

• 2:41:59Speaker 05

  So I, I am Ed Latimore everywhere on the internet. Ed Lattimore.com is my website. Ed Latimore is my Twitter. Ed Latimore is my Instagram. Ed Latimore is my Facebook and LinkedIn. So, yeah.

• 2:42:12Anthony Pompliano?

  There's no more Ed Latimore? You're the only one?

• 2:42:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, it's funny, man. I thought, I, I usually say when people ask that, I go, look, if somebody's born after named Ed Latimore, I feel bad for them. I'm not going to name my son that, man, because Ed, because if he ever wants to go on the internet, he's going to have to, to beat the SEO machine I've built behind the name.

• 2:42:32Speaker 05

  Ed Latimore. So yeah, that's how you find me, man. I'm everywhere under that name.

• 2:42:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, edlatimore.com and then Ed Latimore on all the social media sites.

• 2:42:40Speaker 05

  On the social medias, yeah.

• 2:42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I really enjoyed today.

• 2:42:43Speaker 05

  Hey, man, I enjoyed it too. It was a great, great conversation. Very, I made some insights that I did not necessarily connect before. Now I gotta dig deeper. Like this is what I do. Like when I have an idea and it's a flash and you know, I let it be a flash for a minute. And if I keep thinking about it, I'm like, okay, I have to like, sit down. That's why I write. One of the reasons why I write, because it makes me smarter. Because if I, I describe like right now that this thought, the link between the immune system and reading, right? It's not really connected at all, but, but now it's a thought and I'm thinking about all the ways it connects. And they're like little spinning magnet poles.

• 2:43:26Speaker 05

  And what I'll do when I write is like running a magnet over a piece of steel and they all point in the same direction. And now that piece of steel has force like it's a magnet and can move things itself. And that's how I look at my thoughts when I, when I write is that I'm putting them all in a, the same direction.

• 2:43:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Writing is for clear thinking. Clear thinking makes you a better writer.

• 2:43:47Speaker 05

  One of my, one of my favorite sayings, you know, I don't, I don't write because I'm smart, I'm smart because I write.

• 2:43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That's very, very true. That's a great place to end, my friend. I appreciate it very much and I hope everyone enjoyed this.

• 2:43:58Speaker 05

  Hey, thank you.

• 2:44:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.