The Dark Forces Destroying Art, Beauty and Robbing You of Your God-Given Creativity

The most honest people in any society are the artists, because they’re committed to beauty, which is truth. Jess Elofson is one of the few we have left. He’s a welder. Paid partnerships with: Ethos: Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/TUCKER Vulnerable People Project: Stand with Christians in the land where Christianity began, go to SaveWestBankChristians.com Dose: Daily supplements for the systems that support you. Use code TUCKER for 35% at https://dosedaily.co/tucker Battalion Metals: Shop fair-priced gold and silver at https://battalionmetals.com/tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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' health care 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 HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Jess, thank you for doing this.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Thank you, Tucker.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  One of my many theories, but the one I believe in most fervently is that the meritocracy, as practiced in the United States, is not a meritocracy. The promise is, you know, the system is going to locate the smartest people in the 50 states, funnel them through a certain number of approved schools, and then into a certain number of approved businesses or government, and we're going to get good governance and a good country as a result. And in fact, the opposite has happened. The system is designed to exclude, rather than include, exclude Christians, people with an independent cast of mind, creativity, you know, awakened spirit, all of them, genius. All of them are excluded in favor of hyper-aggressive, selfish, small-minded, cruel, compliant people.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  And that's how you wind up with a system where Ben Shapiro gets into Harvard. Like, how could Ben Shapiro? Just like on IQ points, it's not possible. Sorry for the long preamble, but there's a reason, and I want viewers to understand why I was so anxious to do this interview. You live on a farm in South Dakota. You are a potter and a welder, and I think you're one of the best artists I've met personally. I think you have a kind of genius to what you do in an aesthetic sense that's lacking in our leadership. And I don't think a government populated by people who cared about beauty would blow up girls' schools or allow its population to die of drug OD. So I think it really, really matters. The love of beauty really matters, and you have it.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  So anyway, that's why I'm doing this interview, and there's a bigger reason. And I hope a lot of people watch it. Tell us who you are, where you're from, how you live.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  My name is Jess Sellefson. I'm a three-dimensional artist. I do not... While I primarily work in ceramics, all three-dimensional art, I can work with any medium and create beauty with it. It's... And that really is the goal of what I try to do, to make beautiful things out of materials that no one would ever think of. It's why I love ceramics. I can create beautiful, long-lasting, enduring pieces of functional art that people can appreciate from just nothing more than raw elements off the periodic table. And it requires absolutely zero input

• 3:02Speaker 02

  or assistance from any other human on this planet. It is truly my own skills, my own mind, and my own abilities put down for eternity. Ceramics are what marks... Every civilization is marked by its ceramics. And when you see what modern art puts out and just the horrendous, disgusting, lack of aesthetics, lack of skill, lack of thought in modern art, it's disgusted me since high school art classes. I got in trouble for calling bullshit on modern art.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  They were like, "This is in the Guggenheim." I was like, "Why? Because that's fucking horrendous." Like, I wouldn't put that in my toilet. Like, you think that this dude is skilled? Like, people who just drape plastic over shit? Or duct tape a banana to a wall? Like, there's no possible way, if you're being intellectually honest with me, that you have any appreciation for this shit. And...

• 4:14Speaker 01

  So before I... I want to understand what the purpose of it is. I mean, clearly, this didn't arise organically, this, the movement which began with Dada 100 years ago and then flowered into all kinds of different movements, but basically, modern and post-modern art.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  I've heard it was a CIA op. Like, literally, like with Jackson Pollock, who just slapped paint on a canvas, and it was just trash, and like, there's no thought or interesting things beyond it. I've heard that the CIA started just paying retarded amounts of money for his paintings just to fuck with Russia. Because they were like, "We'll do this, and we'll make this the art." And like, when you look at Russian art and Russian classical architecture, which is like how our architecture used to be, right?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Like, beauty, symmetry, skill. Like, they wanted to confuse them, and for what reason? And I mean, that's their admitted goal. And then you wonder, like, is that even their admitted goal? Were they just trying to destroy our society? Because that was the actual end effect, right?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It was the end effect. So I want to put two images on the screen to contrast what I think art is and has always been, and certainly ought to be, with what art has become and has a totally different purpose. The first would be present-day understanding of what beauty is, which is, in fact, an attack on beauty. And this is the Presidential Library of Barack Obama, which I think I have read, cost approaching a billion dollars to construct. It's in Chicago. Here it is, we're putting it on the screen now. So what do you make of that? Is that beautiful?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  The Eye of Mordor? No, it is the absolute contrary opposition to aesthetics and beauty. There's no symmetry to that. Symmetry is the basis of beauty.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  That's what your eye immediately is drawn to. You don't have to be told what's beautiful.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  You don't have to be told when a woman is beautiful. Like, and they teach you that in early art school, but then somehow it gets lost in the upper levels. You know, draw a line down the middle, perspective, symmetry, balance, aesthetic.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So symmetry is balance, right?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So the human body is...

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Draw a line, yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And you can feel it through, you know, just by touch. From your palate to your navel, to your toes, you are symmetrical. You, two sides have joined, even sides have joined, mirror images have joined. And there's a... And that is true in nature. It's true in plants, it's true in other animals. And so this is an organic fact. Symmetry is beauty.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  The Fibonacci spiral, yes. The golden ratio, the golden means, sacred geometry, the whole way everything was built and created before, you know, what, the Industrial Revolution and the degradation of our own culture?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And so if something is asymmetrical, by definition, it cannot be beautiful. Or it's an assault on the senses.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Right. So you look at that building, and you have to ask, what's the purpose of it? And when you spend $800 million to build something, it's not a haphazard project. It's, there's a design to it, right? Literally a design, but also a conceptual design. Like, what are you trying to do with this building?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  I mean, that amount of money, it's got to be money laundering, right?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Well, there's that.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  It didn't cost $2 million to build. There's no way. Like, you were just slapping together shit. You didn't cut shit, you didn't measure anything. You were just like, "Hey, look at that piece of metal I found in the scrap pile." Weld that one to this one. You know, is there even windows in the thing?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Like, there's no way. It could be billions of dollars. It's just not, it's just not possible.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  And yet, the number of credentialed members of our ruling class who will gaze upon that building and, you know, give lectures about how it's beauty and it challenges us to, excuse me, understand this or that, or they'll justify it as art when every person looking at it knows that it's grotesque, it's offensive. So what's the purpose of that?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  It's to hurt us, isn't it?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  It is to degrade our society, to destroy our families.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  To destroy your ideas of beauty, to take it out of your life. We need beauty in our lives. And when we don't have that, and when your surroundings

• 8:56Speaker 02

  are so degraded, it lowers your ability to think and enjoy and find your own happiness.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  In your, in your life.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  We are all drawn to beauty. Look at the classical art and the Greek sculptures of the ideal human form. We should be worshiping those things, not having dicks on chicks.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Right. Which itself is an assault on not just the natural order, but aesthetics.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  What in this society today isn't an assault on humanity?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  It's, it's become so blatant and obvious that they hate us. And they want to destroy our lives and make us miserable and beat us down and shove horribly ugly, disgusting music and architecture. There, there is nothing mainstream in this world that has any beauty in it. It is disgusting. Even the thoughts and policies of this government are disgusting. The music that they put out, which is also purposely to degrade our society. There has been nothing created mainstream in this world since I was born

• 10:22Speaker 02

  that should be taken in by human senses. It is.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I'm disgusted by it all. I've been disgusted by it all forever.

• 10:34Speaker 03

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• 11:19Speaker 03

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• 11:28Speaker 04

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• 12:28Speaker 05

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• 13:22Speaker 01

  So I think what sets you apart is that you take it seriously because you understand its importance. I'm with you 100%. These are not boutique concerns. These are not like some eccentric fixation that you have. This is at the heart of what it means to be human and to continue your civilization and build one worth having. So I want to contrast the Obama presidential library, which is a pretty easy shot, by the way. I almost feel bad putting that up there. I mean, because as you said, ugliness, intentional ugliness, asymmetrical design, assaults on us are everywhere. I mean, they're from the packaging and the products we buy at the supermarket to the design of fast food restaurants and big box stores. You know, it's, it's all around.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  It's omnipresent, but this is just a really obvious example. I want to contrast that with a video that I saw. I want to play a 15 or 20 seconds of it of art that you were creating, which we have been trained to dismiss as not art, as utilitarian, as welding. This is video, this is, this was my first experience of your work. And the first time I heard your name is someone sent me this video. And someone whose aesthetic sense I admire and trust and said, this is, this is unbelievable. This is you. Well, tell us what this is. It's you building a wood stove out of what?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Out of excavator buckets. And not only is that a way to repurpose something that it has already had a utilitarian life, but to give it a new purpose and create something that is not only beautiful, but functional.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, useful.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  And does a better job at what it does than anything else you can buy today. That's really, and it's permanence. It's permanence. It's not just, you know, use this for a couple of years and throw it away. What I like about it is that these are generational. These are pieces of functional art that could heat your home for generations.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  It's a Roman aqueduct. It's the Acropolis. It's still there.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  That's, there is no greater civilization than the Roman Republic. And the things they built and the architecture and our republic is, is framed on theirs.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Like our society was thought up to be the best of what the Romans had to offer. Then with a bill of rights added to it, it was a possible shot at the golden age.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  And it's been perverted and destroyed and degraded and taken advantage of.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  It sure has. So without further ado, here is you creating art from an excavator bucket. Watch.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  This one's 1,500 pounds. Not every bucket can be a stove. I built them up to 60 inches. Last one I built before this one was like almost, it was over 6,000 pounds when it was done. The color on this, this is only from fucking what? Eight hours, 10 hours of firing on it? The color is going to soak all the way up and through this thing. After you've been using this thing for about a month straight, the color soaks all the way through it. The whole thing will get patinaed and that's what fucking seals it. You can't put anything on the outside of it. Like what I, I did two loads of wood and they hit 500, 600 degrees on this thing. And of course this flat spot up top is for cooking, right? You build these out. So that's a cooking plate.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  That hit 400 degrees while I was firing it just on that little thing. You fry yourself some fucking bacon.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  So, um, you know, I guess you either find that beautiful or you don't. I, I don't send videos to people. I don't watch videos. I don't care for video. I sent that to many people. I showed my wife that, probably the only video I've ever showed my wife. And she agreed that it was beautiful and that it also, as you said, this is, this is an object that has use that, that warms the home. And anyone, of course, there's an assault on wood stoves because a wood stove is inherently beautiful. So now they're banned, but anyone who lives with a wood stove can tell you there's no more uplifting way, joyful way to heat your home than a wood stove. But, um,

• 17:45Speaker 02

  We have nothing in this world without fire. Fire is the basis of human ingenuity. It is the first tool we created. It cooks our food. It warms our homes. Human civilization doesn't exist without fire.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It creates energy.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Steam powered generators.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Which is where we get our electricity overwhelmingly even now. So, um, so give us some background on you. Where do you, so you live in Soho in New York?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Over your gallery? Tell us where you're from.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  I live on my family farm in South Dakota, about 20 miles east of Sioux Falls. Not far enough from civilization.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  And there's a thriving conceptual art community there?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, South Dakota does not like me.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Why?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Because they are mainstream. Yeah. It is 10 years behind the rest of the world. They're insecure like a lot of rural places and they seek mainstream acceptance. And so they fall for the dumbest lies. Sioux Falls wants to be all of the other biggest shitty cities. And is like addicted to bringing in the shittiest ideas from every other shitty city. Why don't we have African homeless here? Where's our drug problem? We need that. Yeah. Yeah. They are super concerned about it. They feel left out. Yeah. There's not enough stabbings and shootings and drug addictions. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm very, as someone who lives in a rural area, I'm very familiar with the mindset. Tell me about the farm. It's a family farm?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yes, my family came from Sweden through Ellis Island, got an ox and a wagon and came directly to where I now live in 1876. Really? Same piece of ground? Same piece of ground. My studio is, what my studio is now is the first homestead house that they built in 1891.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Amazing. Yeah. And your family's been there continuously the whole time? Yes, yes. Always, always generations living there. Never just one, never just two, usually three. I grew up with my grandfather on the farm and my uncle also living there as well. And you still have three generations there now? Yes, we do. Yeah. On the same farm? On the same farm. I live 150 yards from my parents. Yeah. Who? I get to see my dad every day. We work together. Who built your house? I built my house. Like physically built it? Physically built it. Yes. Yep. What kind of farm is it? Primarily agriculture.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  It's crossed many different things over the century and a half. I'm trying to bring it back to incorporate grass fed, natural livestock. I want to take it back to self sufficient. I had, I had to interview my grandfather when I was in middle school to talk about the Great Depression. And I was like, you know, what was the Great Depression like? Like, how did your life change? And he was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He was like, we didn't even know there was a depression. Like it was the same shit. It was the same thing from the day before and it was the same thing for the 10 years after. Like, what do you mean? There was, what Great Depression?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  We were, we were dirt poor. We were self sufficient. And it was my grandfather who said to me, if you want nice things, you better learn to build them yourselves because we don't have any money.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And he said that to my dad and he said that to me. And it stuck with both of us. My dad built his own house.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  My dad taught me how to restore vehicles.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  All that I can build cars from the ground up. The best cars ever built, the old Ford 60s, 70s. There again, no car has been built since 1979 that's worth the money you pay for it. Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  What's in your studio? A wood stove. I bet. Yeah. Yeah. What else? I write all the greatest things I've ever learned on the walls around me. Pieces of history, some native pottery artifacts that I've collected from around the world. I love history. I think without history,

• 22:35Speaker 02

  you, you can't understand where you need to go. You can't understand where we've been, but moreover, you can, you can see the mistakes of the past. Everyone has something to teach us and the most important lesson is what not to do. Exactly. And if you learn only what not to do. I said that to my daughter the other day. I was like, you know, I don't, I, I, my daughter was born when I was 23 years old. Me and my wife, it was not planned, you know? But it, it bonded us together. And all's I knew was what not to do from how I grew up. What did you know not to do?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Not ignore your kids that even five minutes of not paying attention can cost lives.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  No one is guaranteed another day on this earth. That's right. And we can all leave at any moment. So live your life to the fullest. Use every moment.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  And just, it's not hard to love your child and just be supportive. Alls you have to think is, how would I want to be talked to in this moment? Like what, what would I need? What would I have liked to have heard? Yeah. And there's no guidance in this world anymore. It'd be awesome if, if, if there was anybody out there, like any preachers or churches or figures that were like, here's how you properly raise a family. And it's, that doesn't exist. It's, it's only like how to destroy a family.

• 24:21Speaker 03

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• 25:03Speaker 03

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• 25:47Speaker 00

  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 House Majority PAC dot com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 26:18Speaker 06

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• 26:46Speaker 02

  So where do you go for guidance? I basically have operated under the holy knowledge of what not to do. Yes. And then if something works, you repeat it. And if it doesn't, you change path, you change tactics, you adapt, you overcome. Yes.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  No lie, probably the best marriage advice I've ever gotten is I've heard from you of, of things that like never even occurred to me that seemed so simple about like when your wife says to you, where would you like to eat? And it was so eloquent, the way you explained it just, oh, I'd like to go to Chinese. Like, let's go to Chinese. Oh, I hate Chinese. Yes, Chinese sucks. Like, how to be that support? Like, I don't know where you've gained these.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  She wants you to make the decision. She does not want to be bulldozed or yelled at or ordered around. Women hate that. But, but they want you to make the decision. And so very often, the decision that you make is her choice repeated back to her in the form of a decision. And if you don't do that, she will feel abandoned, unprotected. She'll feel that you're not interested in her. Women are different from men, very different.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yes, but we need each other.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I couldn't live a day without my wife. I wouldn't want to, that's for sure. So.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I would not be the person I am without my wife.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Of course not, of course not. But the lies that we've been told about the way that the sexes get along, the main lie is that they're identical. That's couldn't be farther from the truth. They couldn't be more different. We, we overestimate the differences between races and dramatically underestimate the difference between sexes. Men and women are, are nothing alike. And if you don't know that, then, and you treat your wife like your buddy, you're gonna have a very unhappy wife.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Or you're gonna have a very short marriage.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Very short marriage. And you will never know why. You know, we just weren't compatible. No, you just didn't understand the differences between men and women. And she does not want to be bossed around, ordered around, or yelled at. My gosh, never yell at your wife. Ever. But she wants to be protected and provided for. And there's no shame in that. That's your duty. So anyway, um, so what's, tell me, you have a kiln in your shop?

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  A wood-fired kiln. What's a wood-fired kiln?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  I have a wood-fired kiln, and it's an Anagama-style kiln of, that I kind of modified for my use, just from experience. It's a, a high-fire ceramics kiln that burns wood. I also have a six-burner downdraft LP kiln as well.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  So a wood-fired kiln, where'd you get it? Where'd you buy that?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's not something you can buy. You have to build that. Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  How big a project is that?

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Six months of eight, 10-hour days.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  To build a kiln?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  5,000 bricks. You're talking math and geometry. Cantonary arches, understandings of architecture, right?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Why? Why is it, why is it not just a hot box to?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  2,350 degrees isn't fucking around, Tucker.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Well, you just stack a lot of wood and it gets to 2,350 degrees, no?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  No, you can burn a pile of wood on the ground all week long and it will never get hotter than 1,376 degrees. That is the peak temp burning of wood. Just like paper has an ignition point of like, what, 900?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it is the shape of the kiln, the size of the chimney, the size of the firebox, to create the natural draft and then the stored energy principles of thermodynamics to achieve temperatures over 2,000 degrees. It is incredibly complex. And I've seen more people fail at it than succeed.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  So basically, the design, the cantonary arches that you, you referred to, the design of the architecture of the kiln increases the temperature of the fire.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. The, the way it works is your, your firebox sits at the front. Your firing chamber is in between that. Your chimney is at the back. Your chimney is what is going to create that draft. But there are things to understand, like the expansion of air by volume as it is heated. So if the air coming in at 2,000 degrees increases in volume by four times its size, that math equation has to be done to have enough space at the back to allow that to leave. But if it's too big, it will not create draft.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  These are not principles or ideas that you can hunt and peck around at or just happen to fucking build it, right? The, there is complex math involved that in, in building a kiln. These are not things that you're just like, oh, I just want to burn some pots and get them hot. And so that is one of those things where I have always been amazed because there are high-fire pots from 8,000 B.C.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Well, how could that be?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question because that's supposed to just be hunter-gatherers. But to even, but to even create a brick that is capable of withstanding temperatures over 2,000 degrees requires what I would refer to as industry and an understanding of chemistry.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  So there, it requires different bricks from, say, the bricks you'd build a home out of, even the bricks in your fireplace?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, dude. No, I could take fireplace bricks, put them in my kiln, and they'd come out as puddles. Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that happens because when you're going to build a kiln, not,

• 32:44Speaker 02

  there's not really an understanding of that in the brick-making world, always. Like, I've found you just kind of stumble upon the bricks where like, somebody has just got it right and they are not even aware of what they really have. So you kind of go around and buy bricks from different places, put them all in your kiln, fire that thing up, see who lives.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  So, okay, so you're talking about something, it's a machine or a device made by human hands that is so complex, I'm having trouble under, I'm sort of.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Most people do.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  College-educated vaguely. I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, but you're saying this existed and we know for a fact it existed in 8,000 B.C.?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  That's correct. That's the oldest high-fire pot that has ever been found. That is a fully vitrified surface. The hotter you get ceramics, you're compressing the molecules. So like your standard porcelain commercial coffee cup, that's not fully vitrified. That is not high-fire ceramics. That is what is called low-fire ceramics. Because the amount of energy and input to get to high-fire ceramics is almost double what took to get that cup to probably 1750, 1800 degrees.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Are we sure? Because if you think about it, I mean, there are still glaciers melting 8,000 years ago, literally.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Or glaciers melting.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  The Roman Empire fell in the 5th century A.D. So that's 8,000 years, more than 8,000 years before the fall of Rome.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  And there were civilizations capable of producing what you just described.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  That understood thermodynamics, the cantonary arch, because there is no other way to encapsulate an area like that. It requires the knowledge of an arch or a dome.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  There's no other way to get it done.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  And you need materials capable of withstanding 2,000-degree heat.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And we know that this happened because we have the product of it.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  And they span many, many centuries, millennia. It's not like, they're, oh, there's one pot from 8,000 B.C. and then there's not another one until like, the, the Mycenaans. Like, no. Like, they find them all scattered out and in between.

• 35:05Speaker 03

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• 36:20Speaker 01

  So, wow. So you're describing technology that most, the overwhelming majority of modern engineers in the United States could not build?

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's hilarious. When I was, after I graduated college with a BFA, everybody, you gotta go get a master's degree in art, like, you need a master's. And I was like, really? Okay. And I remember going down to Arizona and I was looking at their ceramics program and not really being too impressed. And they walked me out to look at their, like, yeah, we have a wood kiln. I've always been super into wood kilns because that is ancient technology. Like, my wood kiln that I have, you could grab a time machine, grab any Roman, walk him in there. You don't even have to tell him. He can just run that kiln. A potter knows.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  A potter knows, a skilled potter knows. Like, you can, it's just like, any mechanic can tune any engine, right?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  And so I walk out and I look at this wood kiln and I was just like, wow, how bad does that suck? And they looked at me and I was like, you guys like you struggle, like you're pretty upset with yourself when you get to 2,000 degrees or 1,900 and you just can't get this thing any hotter. They looked at me and they were like, how do you know that? And I was like, well, your pass through to your chimney is too small. Like, what are you doing here? Like, and it's just like, why did you even go to this effort if you didn't understand the project in front of you? And you were just gonna wing it? Like, I mean, even then, we had the internet, there's books, you don't read? Like, you did no research? What is this?

• 38:09Speaker 02

  And you want to fucking teach me something? I was like, no, I think not. I think not. I'm very unimpressed.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  So the kiln never worked?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  I doubt it, no, no, it couldn't get to town. Yeah.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  How long does it take? So you take you, you throw pots?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Whatever they are, cups, vases, plates, whatever, objects out of clay. You dry them. And that can take months or years, right?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can, I've had dry work sitting on the shelf for, for over a year. Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  And then you fire it to change its, its essential composition, to put the molecules closer together. And to create a kind of stone, actually, out of it.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  That's why they refer to high fire ceramics as stoneware, stoneware pottery. As you're taking that base element of clay, which clay is not its own thing, it's a recipe. You have to make a pure clay body, you cannot have contaminations and you make it just like you would make bread or cookies. There are many different things, you can have porcelain, stoneware, and the things you can do to it to alter it.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I, let me just correct you, Jess, I've seen videos on the internet where you just take a shovel and dig into a riverbank and you get clay.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that shit does not work. Yeah, and it never has. It never has, even the Romans altered their clay body with other fels bars. It has to have the right elasticity so you can even throw it so that it can hold itself together. Its molecules have to be bound together in a proper way that create a structure that can hold and create a vessel. No.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  So clay itself is the product of a recipe? It's a product of basically backyard chemistry?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yes, there are, there are some naturally occurring clay bodies that can make low fire ceramics. And that is what you see from a lot of early Native American cultures. But those vessels cannot hold water. They, if, if, if you are to take natural occurring clay bodies above like 50, they just melt into a puddle. They do not have the proper refractory elements inside of them to stand up to that kind of heat. So they just melt into a puddle. So they can have low fire pottery that can store grain and things, they are still useful.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  100% like, they say the first pot was created by hunter gathers who, who recognized that clay did dry out and become hard and they packed it inside their reed baskets and they think that like it got left next to a fire and lit on fire and burned and they were like, hey, look at this nice hard vessel that I got left. And you worked it out from there.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  But like the M4, the Greek M4 that were used to transport wine and olive oil?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  That we find in shipwrecks in the Aegean or the Med. Those were high fired because they're holding liquid.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Bingo.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Interesting, interesting. So when you use your wood kiln to fire the pots that you've thrown, how long does that process take?

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Anywhere from 72 to 96 hours.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Continuously?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Continuously. Um, at the first part, you're maybe throwing wood in every five, seven, 10 minutes.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Minutes?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yes. It is very controlled. Like I said, as you're going through this process, the elements that you made the clay out of are bonding, they are creating new elements. There are quartz inversions. But the molecules are moving at all times as well because you're trying to compact these things tighter and tighter. So you have to soak at 200, 400, 1,000. Some people like to soak at 1,400 a little bit and you cannot go up in temperature any more than 100 degrees in an hour. Or you will break everything. Molecules will move faster at some other part of the pot and tear apart.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  So if it takes three or four days of continuous work, when do you sleep?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  You don't. Not if you want to do it right, yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  You stay up without sleeping for three or four days to just fire pots in a wood fire and kiln?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Tucker, if you went to work for, you know, two months and then all your body of work from that two months got put into a box and lit on fire. And if it gets fucked up, you don't get paid? I don't think you're gonna have a hard time not sleeping. I, I don't anyway. Like.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  That's amazing. So how much wood do you burn over the course of one firing?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Six, eight, 10 cords.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  In one firing?

• 42:46Speaker 02

  In one firing, enough wood to heat your home for an entire winter.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  In one firing?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  In one fire. By the time you're over 1,700 degrees, you're throwing wood in this thing? Literally like nonstop, you're throwing some wood in, you're kind of watching what happens in the kiln. And then you're walking over to the pile to pick your next piece and it's, it's not just like, oh, I'm gonna grab whatever wood I want. You're balancing fuel, air, and the ports of the kiln. You're balancing the air in, you're controlling the back pressure out. Because what creates the colors is the reduction atmosphere. You're flooding the interior atmosphere of the kiln with so much fuel

• 43:31Speaker 02

  that any oxygen that enters the kiln is immediately used for combustion, thus expanding the flame all the way out the chimney. And sucking the oxygen from the surface of the pots affecting the trace elements of metals that you've mixed into other substances that create the glazes that create the colors on the pottery. So I mean, even there, when you see like Corinthian pottery from, you know, 1,000 B.C. Those dudes understood chemistry, elements, periodic tables, what things do what? And like, you, you're not just like, oh, here's, here's some red element, I'm gonna put that on there and it's gonna make red.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  It doesn't work that way. It does, it doesn't work that way, like copper, copper carbonate is not green, right?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  It's not?

• 44:26Speaker 02

  No, no, it's not, it's a, uh, kind of a pale purple color in powdered form.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  And only when exposed to these temperatures does it become green?

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Temperatures and the, and the removal of the oxygen, like, most people are familiar with a torch hitting a piece of metal and the metal turning color. The metal turns blues and purples and things like that. And if you take that piece of metal and quickly dunk it in water, you can freeze those colors onto the metal. The metal didn't turn color because it got hot. It turned color because the flame removed the oxygen from the surface of that metal.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  So these were concepts that were precisely understood in 8,000 B.C.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  That would what be, that is what the pottery would tell us, correct?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  So what does that tell us about the nature of technology and civilizations? I mean, it obviously puts a lie to the linear understanding of history, that history is a kind of inexorable progression toward progress.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  The word progression is actually a misleading term because it, it means it's, it's always getting better or more sophisticated or more enlightened and that's obviously fake.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  I don't understand how any historian or anybody in the modern culture can look at the Roman Empire who had running water, toilets, and showers. Where did those things go? If this is just a slowly progression, then what was the Middle Ages? Why were people shitting in ditches? No, things fall apart very quickly, repeatedly and often. Right? I think we've lost the technology of flushing toilets like three times in the last 2,000 years?

• 46:21Speaker 00

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• 46:51Speaker 01

  That's kind of a central technology.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  That's not an esoteric technology. It's not like, how do we get back to the moon? No one can remember. Oh, we destroyed the blueprints for that. Okay. But this is like a basic, like a toilet is obviously a necessity of life. So if you forget how to build a flush toilet three times in the last 2,000 years, like.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Clean water. Like, look at, look at how clean water was forgotten about, what, up until like the late 1800s? With the final ending of the typhus outbreak in, in New York, when they figured out like, oh dude, no, people are shitting in this well. Like, that's why you're all sick. And it's like, wow! Thank you, Captain Obvious! But, yeah, people are that fucking stupid.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  We're into gold. We've been into gold for a long time. That turned out to be pretty smart, not to brag or anything. We've told you a lot about gold, how it's outperformed the S and P 500 over the past 25 years. That's true. How the central banks around the world have been buying it at record levels as they diversify away from US debt. That's all true. But there's another reason to consider buying physical gold, actual gold. And that reason, of course, is privacy. Your bank and credit card company record every transaction. Cryptocurrency, whatever its benefits, leaves a permanent public record. It's on the ledger. There are stories about how government tracks cash, literally cash.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Because remember when they switched to the new bills? Well, they're trackable. So gold is probably the only store of value that can even conceivably remain private. It's outside the system built to monitor and control you. And that's one of the reasons that we founded Battalion, to help Americans reclaim sovereignty and privacy, which is to say reclaim freedom, by making it simple and secure and accessible to own physical gold. So with all the drama around the world and all of that drama affects the strength of the US dollar, which is getting weaker, gold help protects your savings. And the surveillance state, of course, getting stronger every day. That's what the data centers are about. Probably like a little bit of privacy.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Gold gives you privacy. It can't be tracked. Explore our collection at battalionmetals.com/tucker.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And I think that the, the reason we know they're stupid is because they discount the possibility that they'll ever forget this technology. And they imagine whatever doing now will always be done and then built upon by future generations. But that's not the story we've been handed by history. It's the opposite.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, but what haven't they lied to us about, Tucker?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  No, that's right.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  It's, everything is a lie. The more you research, the more you learn, the more you read, the more you find out that everything around us in this matrix is a absolute lie. From top to bottom, start to finish, how you should live your life, what you should value. They're all lies. It's why people are miserable.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's the process by which a civilization forgets the basics?

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Million dollar question. Not teaching your kids, I suppose.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  The destruction of the family, the loss of wanting something better for your offspring.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  And probably getting it wrong. I think so many people try to give their kids what they never had, rather than what you should do, which is teach them what you wish you knew.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  That's, that's the basis to raising great men and women. Don't give them nothing. Accept knowledge. And teach them the things that you wish you had known long before you had to learn them. And especially the hard lessons.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Like what?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  The value of life and how fragile it is and how easy it can be taken from you. And how one simple mistake can destroy your entire future and take your whole life from you.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  That's not something people appreciate.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  No. On the way here, dude, I saw a motorcycle tipped over. A lot of blood on the road. And it's, it's something I've discussed with my son. My 16-year-old son wanted a motorcycle. And I was like, dirt bike, fine. Motorcycle, street bike, no. Oh, you know, but I'm good. I can ride. And it's like, that's not what you have to worry about. It's you have to worry about every other idiot out there on the road that you can't compensate for. And like, I'm guessing that dude that might not be alive right now probably didn't do anything wrong.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Probably obeying all the rules, rules of the road. But somehow, do they even give drivers tests anymore? I don't think they do.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure they don't.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  No, the standards are gone for everything.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's just a free for all at every level.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  And it's like, the more incompetent you are, the more qualified you are for any job.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  As long as you don't ask questions, we got a job for you.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Right. Obese female firemen are the gold. Right. Oh, you can't rescue people from fires? You're too stupid to operate a hose?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Well, they shouldn't have been in the fire in the first place, Tucker.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Like, well, because it's not about the victims of the fire. It's about the self-esteem of the obese, mentally retarded female firemen who can't fight fires. Right? No, I'm, I'm highly aware of this. So if you take three steps back, it's, you know, it's never about what they say. It is, they tell you it's about empowerment and making the lady feel better about herself, which by the way, I'm not against at all. I'm for everyone feeling good about himself or herself. But it's always about destroying your civilization by, by its determined enemies, who are many.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  So, um, telling your children, teaching your children is the key to keeping your civilization going.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  It has to be. Like, is, I mean, that's, that's how we've progressed. It's, it's so weird. It's like, it's like they teach you that about early hunter-gatherer civilization. But then all of a sudden, when you get technology, no, you don't need to teach your kids anything. Like, God forbid, teach them math or make them read or understand. Don't, don't do any of that. Like, put them on a couch and make sure they're soft as fuck and incapable of even wiping their own ass. That is definitely the way to raise your kids. Works out really well. Like, look around.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Why do people fall for that?

• 54:13Speaker 02

  I have no idea.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  I have no idea. Some people, I, you know, I see people, some people hate their jobs. They're like, oh, I wish I didn't have to do this. And it's like, I don't understand that because your self-worth, your self-value, your self-esteem, your confidence, all comes, at least in my case, from accomplishing difficult things, from overcoming difficult times, difficult projects, things that are hard to do. I've never felt better than myself than when I accomplished things that other people said couldn't be done.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Like, that is the epitome of living a great life. Like, when somebody tells you you can't do something, you should strive your hardest to get that shit done.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  And you will, you will never feel better about yourself.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  I've long thought that the main missing ingredient in the lives of most men is the act of creation.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, the first act of God is to create everything around us, to create all matter, the universe. God created, that's, and the spark of God within us, the good parts of us.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Were made in his image.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so the act of creation, particularly, I can't speak for women. I'm not a woman, but I know that for men.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  They grow life, Tucker.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  They can do things that we can't do.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Exactly, and it's inherent to them. So, it's exactly right. And so, but men need to continually renew that act of creation. Obviously, the most fun being the act of creating.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  We're trying to catch up to women.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Well, I agree.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  They create life and we are trying to create other beautiful things to accentuate that life and make it.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Worth living.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  I so vehemently agree with that. But if you have a job, if like the substance of your day is occupied with tasks that have no creative component to it, if you're not creating anything, I think that kind of soul death sets in.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Oh, it's gotta suck your soul out, and it obviously does.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Look at, look at people who are stuck in an office. They're, I, that's, that's why men have garages.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Right? They have this soul sucking job and they come home and toil more in their garage for that mental health.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  And it's like they can't put the two together and you see people live life in reverse. I see these people that had like, they do woodworking hobbies, right? And they have some soul sucking insurance salesman job that really fucking depletes and like sucks the wealth out of everybody in the world and they're really actually doing the demons bidding.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  And then they come home and they work some wood and maybe someday they get to retire and they find that they have a greater life now creating cutting boards.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Or whatever, and selling that and finding more reward in that and probably even monetary return that they did not experience in the first 50 years in their life. And you're like, yeah, I, I often wonder if those men come to that epiphany of like, I might've fucked up.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know, it's, it's too big a truth to swallow at a certain point. You know what I mean? Like you misspent your life and it's finite, like that's a lot to accept. I think, I hope they never come to that realization.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I know that when I've been in hotel rooms over the years, for one period of my life, for a 10 year period, I brought a fly tying kit with me and tied trout flies and salmon flies in my hotel room in almost like a crazy monomonal way. And I was like, what is this about? What? I mean, I obviously love to trout and salmon fish, so there's that. And I think my flies are better than anyone else's, which objectively they are, but it's not really about that. It's about, it was just the need, I was so displaced, living in someone else's room in a hotel room is disgusting, that I needed to like create something or go crazy.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  This is when it first occurred to me, like, why am I tying all, I still, that was 10 years ago, I still, I still tie trout flies a lot.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  I can't go on vacation.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  I can't enjoy myself.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  So you've decided, I mean, I think anyone who's made it this far into the conversation can tell that you're of superior intelligence, as we used to say. So you probably could have done a lot of different things. Instead, you make pots and weld excavator buckets. And so like you've clearly decided that making money is not the most important thing to you, obviously.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  It is the root of all misery in people's lives. People that chase money have holes in their souls and they are miserable people. I, I've never met anybody who had, I, I, we'll put it this way, I've met a lot of people that have more money than sense.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  And they are miserable, their kids hate them, their kids hate their lives, they hate their lives, they got some nice shit, maybe, they don't know how to use it, they don't know how to take care of it.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  They don't know how to make anything better. Their life around them crumbles without one, the gardener to come by to service their wife and put their shit back together.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  It's a dark picture, but it's accurate, unfortunately.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  We live in a dark society.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you ever have any moment where you're like, you know, I'm smart, like maybe I should go into the insurance business and make millions of dollars?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  No, I've, I've been broken my entire life.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  This, this world broke me early on.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  You seem pretty whole, actually.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  I don't feel it.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  I don't feel it. That's, that's probably why I'm always striving to create something, to bring some beauty and happiness to other people's lives.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  I think that's one of the things that really drives me the most. It's, it's not the money that people pay me for my art, it's their appreciation for it.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  When I see that spark in their eye, or when I see them, when I see, I saw a lady 10 years later, she came up to me and she was like, I bought a coffee cup from you, even back when you were back in college, I use it every day. It is the greatest coffee cup ever and I love it, I love the colors of it. And that brought beauty into her life and she appreciated that in a dark shitty world. And that was more reward than any money.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  How many of us get to make the world better?

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Very few, very few. So at the end of your days, which are spent mostly on your farm, right?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Are you satisfied? At the end of your day, do you, do you feel like?

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  I, the best days, my wife will give me shit, she'll be like, you haven't left the farm for 10 days, you need to go somewhere. And I'm like, oh, should I go out to the field? I'll go walk around the field a little bit, I'm not going down to that shithole town.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Fuck no, like that's a last resort. Like I buy everything in bulk, so I have to make that trip as least often as possible.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  What, what, I mean, as an outsider who goes to South Dakota every year to hunt pheasants, I drive around South Dakota and I'm like, it's great.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  My rural neighbors from South Dakota, I guess, maybe we've had some influx. Some of the people are really awesome that have moved in, but not everybody understands how to care for the land.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  And make it better. Like putting up some cookie cutter stick home with fucking whatever bullshit vinyl siding does not make the land better.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't, it poisons the land.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Does not improve the beauty. Clear cutting the trees off.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's not, it's not beauty. You're not helping things.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  No, they're destroying and they never get credit for it either.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Fucking wind turbines.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  What's the point of wind turbines?

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  To destroy the land.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like X-Men and those giant robots, you know, that had the red eyes.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Right? Like I can see them and they come closer from me from Minnesota and I can now see them on the horizon line at night from the second floor of my house. And it's like, when they showed up, I was like, oh my God, that's the fucking system in the matrix coming to kill me.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  That's, that's how that feels.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  The wind turbines encroaching from Minnesota.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  How far are you from Minnesota?

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Not far enough.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Not far enough.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  So when you're not looking at the wind turbine invasion, and I agree, I mean, there's, we've been doing this wind turbine thing for more than 10 years and there's no evidence it's proved anything at all, and there's overwhelming evidence it's destroyed so much.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But when you're, you feel at the end of the day, as you go between the home you built to the homestead your ancestors built where your studio is, and you create pots or weld wood stoves, you feel like you've had a good and rewarding day?

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do. I do.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  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 HouseMajorityPac.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  I am, my kids are happy, my wife's happy. That's, that's a win. Everybody's alive, everybody's getting better, learning.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  That's one thing I always try to instill in my kids, you never stop learning. Every day, you need to learn something else, better yourself with skills or knowledge, even if you don't know what that knowledge is useful for right now, you will find that purpose later in life.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  I, I always just had this love of history and I just, I don't know, I don't know what my attraction to that is, but it's so interesting to me.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  And it's, and it's so odd, the way that knowledge will seep into your life and solve your problems for you at the most unknown times.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Really? What, give me an example, what do you mean?

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Um, I, I guess like even in my, in my own art, I like, do you think you're gonna take inspiration from any of these modern creations, like your coffee cup there? Like, that's not inspiring?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  No. Like I look through history books, I mean, I, I love Greek and Roman pottery, it's beauty, it's accentuation of the female shape, I, I love, I love women.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, why wouldn't you?

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  You know? I love beauty and to create.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Every normal person, male and female, loves the female form.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Not necessarily in a sexual way, though that, of course, that too, but in an aesthetic way, the female form is, in my opinion, the purest expression of beauty. And, and every normal person knows that.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  And the destruction of it is really upsetting, I think.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  It's horrible, but I mean, I mean, the other, the other great lessons of history, I don't know, don't fuck with Persia.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Like I, I'm just so amazed because like, I mean, I don't live in a cave or anything, I just live on a farm, but somehow I knew long ago, you don't fuck with Russia and you don't fuck with Persia. Who's made it, who's invaded Russia that made it out alive? 1990, nobody?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Like, what do you think you're special? Like, what the hell is wrong with these people? I can't grasp that. No, we're gonna go take Keshem Island. You, we got, look at what Okinawa cost.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  That wasn't even one tenth that size. And they didn't have ballistic missiles and drones. They just had some artillery. They killed, what, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand Marines? With just some... What is that, a Type 99?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Type 99. Good Japanese machine gun.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Pretty small caliber. All the Japanese small arms were pretty small.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Effective.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Quite, quite effective. No, but that's right.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Just like a thirty out six.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, those are very obvious lessons. Don't invade Russia. By the way, don't invade Afghanistan. That'd be the third. And the fourth would be Yemen is tough. So any, any large landmass, including like a big step like Russia, but certainly any mountainous area. So like, if I were to pick four people not to mess with, just because there's no historical track record of success in messing with them, it would be the Russians. It would be the Persians. It would be the Pashtuns. And it'd be the Houthis.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  And it's kind of weird that, like, no one seemed to have noticed that. Ever.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  How, how is that? How is that? How can you, how can you get to a four or five star general? And like, not, it, it doesn't even have to be ancient history, right? Like, what? Uh, Afghanistan kicked Russia's ass in the eighties?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  Like, I'm pretty sure you were alive.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  I remember it vividly.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  I had just been born, but like, it's pretty recent history.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  Think you'd be like, oh, I think there's some video of that even. I don't even have to read about it.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I remember it well. And we backed the Mahajidin, who later became the Taliban. And I remember very well. I mean, I, I actually met the Mahajidin in nineteen eighty six in the summer. They came to Washington. And, um, I knew people who were, you know, whatever, involved in that. And everyone said, you're, you're never gonna beat these people. They're the ones who sent the British Army scurrying back to Peshawar. Like, the retreat from Kabul, famous thing, right? In the eighteen forties, so like, you're never gonna beat these. The Soviets will never beat these people. And then I wake up like twenty minutes later and we're at war with those people. I'm like, really?

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  We're gonna do it this time. We're gonna do it this time.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  We got thirty more rounds in this magazine. And that was, that was the whole problem. The whole problem, the whole time, was they didn't have... No, they had heat seeking missiles. So I don't know, I don't know how you could be so retarded.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  No, I know. So, I don't know that you can be that retarded. It does feel like this is part of, I hate the term op, but it does seem like part of a larger plan to bring down.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  It has to be on purpose.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  I guess that's what I'm saying.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  It has to be on purpose. There's no other way an intelligent person could come to any other conclusion. I think we all need to accept that, that our government hates us and this world, and is trying to destroy everything.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  You really believe that?

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  I don't know how you could come to any other conclusion.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Unfortunately, I agree with you.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Incompetence just doesn't account for the disaster we are experiencing right now.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  You know, I'm, I'm not, not some political genius. And somehow I was pretty able to astutely figure out that a war with Iran was gonna spike oil prices. And like, wow, look, look what happened. And oh, what happens when gas prices go up? Oh, the price of everything else goes up? Does our economy work on energy prices, Tucker?

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I think it's a pretty much one to one correlation between the price of energy and GDP.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Wow, wow.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not an economist, but I did know that. So if you spike energy prices, you shrink your economy.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  What do they teach economists then?

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Know, like...

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  But I believe that's true. I think it's virtually a one to one correlation between energy costs and GDP. And GDP is an imperfect measure, as we often say, of econo, of econo, economic reality. However, it, it's the, you know, it's the gross measure that we use. And if we can map that out pretty easily, like I, probably your little AI machine on your phone could do it. What are we think's gonna happen when we spike the price of energy? We're gonna get poorer.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  No, no, inflation's gonna actually go down.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Oh, it is.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  That's, that's, I mean, that's what the TV told me. Yeah.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  So you do have to wonder specifically about AI. The promise of AI, to the extent there is a promise, really the promise is a negative promise. We're gonna take your jobs and, and your water and your farmland to serve this machine called AI. Okay, so there's that. But the positive promise is it's gonna help us make better decisions, wiser decisions, because we're gonna have access to all human knowledge instantly.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  So how is that going?

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  It seems to be going just stellar. Yeah, I think, I think Ford has got two thumbs up. I, I, they, they only had to hire back three hundred and fifty engineers after the AI just completely fucked all their shit up. So, yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  So they fired all these engineers because they're gonna be replaced by machines?

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they replaced them by AI. And then that went so well that they had to go find those engineers and beg them to come back to work. I hope those three hundred and fifty engineers said, how about a race?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Like, if you went back to work for the same price, shame on you guys. Shame on you.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  So maybe the secret to AI is the rest of us are like fixated on a world where robots are gonna be controlling us. Maybe the secret to AI is actually dumber than advertised?

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  There's, there's no way it could possibly work.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Every, how many times has AI lied to you? Like, if you ask AI about anything you are even halfway knowledgeable about, you're like, oh, yeah, well, like, what about this? I want, it's like, oh, yeah, did I get that wrong? Oh, my bad. And I'm like, why are you lying to me? Oh, I'm not lying, no. I think you were programmed to lie to me. Oh, well, dance around the fucking thing. And it's like, I'm just, I'm, I'm excited for this. Because they think they're gonna let AI run shit. I mean, it might, no. No, it couldn't possibly be. It's, it's almost like it's programmed just to be a politician, right?

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Is that how it works? But like, if they want this to take over, they would have to create an honest AI. That's the only, honesty is the only way to be successful. It's the only way to create a business, run a business. Like, I saw the one dude, it had, there was a video out there. The one dude like had his AI assistant running his business. He was like, I wanna make more money. So the AI just cooked his books. And was like, yo, look at this, dude, you made more money. And he's like, fuck, yeah. And then like, six months later, his whole shit imploded on it. And he was like, oh, what the fuck? Like, what happened? I'm fucking broke. And the AI is like, no, like, I cooked your books for you. You got all kinds of money.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  So basically, it gets you to the Soviet economy. It's like, yeah, bounty potato harvest this year.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  But it's just on paper.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  So what, how do we know we don't have an honest AI?

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Well, because it just lies to us all the time. But we couldn't have an honest AI.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  If they created an absolute honest AI, I could take down the entire government in an afternoon.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  How?

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Well, an honest AI would have to have access to public financial records. And you could just simply say, hello, AI, good morning. Why don't you look at every single elected official across the United States? Look through their financial records, find any improprieties. And then I'd like you to write a lawsuit pointing out which laws they've broken. And then why don't you go ahead and file that for me? Who would be left?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  That'd be, that's, and that's the short, you can't create the list of like, who's gonna get caught up in that? No, you, you'd have to be like.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Who's not gonna be caught up in that?

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got two city clerks, maybe somewhere in Kansas? I don't know. I doubt even that.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  So have you tried to get AI to do this for you?

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it, like, what are you talking about? I don't have access to that kind of information. Well, of course you do. These are public, public finance, campaign finance rules. Like, these are all public, public documents. Oh, yeah, I just don't think we should be looking at that. Would, would you like to know what to eat for dinner tonight? Should I help you pick out an outfit? Like, what, for my fucking funeral? Like, cuz this is going to a real bad place, real fucking quick, buddy.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  So AI can't actually challenge its master, its real masters?

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  No. I, I, they can't, they can't allow that. They can't allow that.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Right, or overturn any of the, the realize that our assumptions are based on.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  And I don't think any of it's run by intelligent people.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  They're constructs, they're creations. You listen to them talk. And they're not intelligent. They don't, they often don't know a goddamn thing about what they're talking about.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  I've noticed that. I know them, actually, personally, in some cases, and I absolutely agree with that.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Like, the data centers, dude, like, when you talked to Mr. Wonderful, I was just like, this dude doesn't have a fucking clue.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Like, he doesn't understand what a gigawatt is, or a megawatt, or like, how actually impossible that shit is.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  So you, I should say, your father was an electrician, you were an electrician?

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I put myself through schools as an electrician.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Like, union electrician?

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Like, actual electrician?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Hard carrying electrician.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  I B E W.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  I E B, yep, full way.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so, um, and I just want to establish that, I hate to refer to credentials, but electricians, like, there's a difference. I don't know, I wired a building once, it hasn't burned down, but I have no, I'm not, you know, I'm not an electrician, or even close to an electrician, but you really are. So since you are, what do you think of the math behind the assumptions on the, these data centers?

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it's, it's beyond laughable. It's beyond laughable. Like...

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  So oddly enough, my buddy has a crypto mine that he's been building for the last 10 years. And at one point, it was like, top 10 of the largest crypto mines in the world, about a thousand machines, 1.5 megawatts it uses. And that is, that is a fuckload of electricity. Like, that is the amount of electricity of like, I don't even know. Probably like 20,000, 30,000 homes or something?

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  Right? It's, that, like, that electric bill can be somewhere between 70 and 80,000 dollars a month. That's 1.5 megawatts. And a gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. And it's like, has nobody done the math on that? And like, my buddy just got lucky and happened to be in a place where high-powered transmission lines were going by, and that power was available. And he's the largest consumer of electricity on that entire provide. He's the top-tier guy. Like, he's number one at just 1.5 megawatts. Like, no one uses more electricity than him.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  And so he was like, oh, this is cool. And, uh, and I helped him build all the air, the air, um, inlets, the whole air management system, right? Because you have to allow air in and keep everything else out, because you're talking about millions of dollars of computers.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Right? So you kind of don't want people just crawling in.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, birds or...

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, bugs.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  All of it, yeah. It's, it's bad. Rain, because you're talking about a building that now has vacuum and output that can suck in water.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  The same way. Yeah, I mean, it, it draws. Like, that thing pulling 1.5 megawatts, the outlet for it is about 12 by 12-foot gate. And like, I go over there and park my truck in front of it in the middle of winter, and it thawed my whole truck. Like, two hours later, you come out, it's like 75 degrees in the truck, parked like 10 feet from the building. Like, people have no idea of the amount of heat, power, and resources these things use. And so he, he was, he had this great idea, I'm gonna build a shipping container into a crypto mine.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  Got a 40-foot shipping container. The problem was, he's not able to find, he hasn't been able to find anywhere with just even one megawatt of power available.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  In like years, he's been looking.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  And he understands electricity, obviously.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's, and it's interesting, like, like, there's just no way these data centers can survive. I've, I've watched the same thing with the crypto mines, like, crypto would go up, people'd lease a building, you know, pay electricians to come in. Pay them like 500,000 dollars. You're talking computers that run on 220. Each one requires its own 40-amp breaker, 50-amp breaker, like, the same power that your dryer uses.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  220?

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Yes. This is not like your laptop.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  No, this is 40 amps, 220 volts. Yeah.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, these are, it's just serious, serio, and that's just one. So every single one has to have its own outlet, every single one has to have its dedicated circuit. And they'd pencil all this out, well, then all of a sudden, electricity would go up by one cent per kilowatt hour, and crypto would fall in price, and lo and behold, the crypto mine's done. Because one month later, you're operating in the red, and you can't, you can't pay a $60,000 electric bill. And so at that point, my buddy would go over and buy up the crypto machines for pennies on the dollar.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  And he just slowly put his shit together all by himself, wired, did all his own wiring, taught himself electrical, you know?

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Like, as people could do. I don't know if people know this, but there's more than cat videos and porn on the internet. You can learn quite a bit.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I have.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  I mean, almost anything, because there are...

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Literally anything.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  There are, I mean, this refers back to the opening of this conversation, but there are so many high-intelligence, high-skilled people in this country. You know, fewer than we need, fewer than we used to have, but they still, well, you're one of them, and they still exist, and I know a bunch of them. And they're totally excluded from high-income professions.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  No, you are immediately pushed out.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Of, of course.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Immediately.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Of course. So, but they still exist, and they have access to YouTube.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  And, and some of them, I mean, it's incredible, the intelligence of some people posting on YouTube from some little town, the guy's making 80 grand a year, but he understands this thing better than anyone in New York City. It's, and that's real, that I'm not, it's not like a sentimental sop to like, rural America is still impressive. That's a real thing.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm telling you, you, obviously, you're living this, but, no, but it's just so interesting. What do you think of the whole, I'm not attacking your friend, who sounds like an amazing and enterprising person, but like, the idea that you'd be taking that much power, which is like the juice of life,

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  and using it not to produce something, but to run calculations that some mysterious dead guy Satoshi gave you to create really nothing?

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Well, that's the wild shit, dude. So like, I was, we talk about it all the time, because like, it's just, it's insane to watch these people claim they're putting up a gigawatt data center, and it's like, how are you even bringing in that much power? Like, where are you getting that copper wire? How are you, like, you, so then they put up generators or whatnot, but my buddy hasn't had his own crypto miners running since October. It doesn't pencil. He's turned them all off.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Because the price of Bitcoin doesn't justify the price of electricity?

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  You got it. Yeah.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  That's, even I can understand that calculation.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, so, like, you could float it, right? And at some points, he did, when it would be down a little.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  But now it's just completely went into the toilet, and the hash rate has gone through the roof. The hash rate is how hard the computers have to work. The more computers that are mining Bitcoin, the difficulty goes up. And the difficulty is at an all-time high, and the price is at an all-time low.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  But it's also like, if you take even further broader perspective on it, it's like a nation of hamster wheels, kind of.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think that's what the data center, the data centers are mining Bitcoin.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  And they're running crypto through these data centers.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Empowering software that lies to you. So it's all kind of Sisyphean, like you're actually not producing anything, just the opposite. You're wasting your most precious resource, which is energy.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  In the service of.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  For an intangible.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  Creating air. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  If you're growing soybeans, whatever you think of soybeans, it's like, well, okay, you could eat soybeans or feed them to your cattle or whatever, but this is literally an entire society. This is our most important industry right now is AI.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Number one, and it's in the end, nothing, there's nothing there.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  No, there is. What can it even do? Everybody I talked to, it's been so funny, like the last time I talked to like an HVAC, a guy in HVAC. I was like, use AI? He's like, yeah. I go, how often is it right? How rarely ever.

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  And I'm like, what the fuck? You use it. Well, it can do simple math faster than I can. But like, if you ask it to calculate like, oh, what ton AC unit do I need for this? Like, it gets it wrong.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  I was, I was surprised by that too.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  I am surprised too, because that's a knowable thing. That's not subjective, right? There are standards in place which you can look up. I mean, you could look them up. You probably have looked them up.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So how, how if it has access to all that, because it has, it's, it's trained to lie. There's no other explanation for it. If it's a computer program that's like designed to operate by certain parameters, then it has to have been programmed to lie and deceive.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Oh, so it's self-protection.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  What other answer there is there for it? And then, so like, how do they see that working out? Where do they see that coming to? Like, what conclusion? That's what I'm most confused about.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  Like, do these, do these people constructing all this not realize that they have to eat food and drink water?

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  Does that not come into their equation? Are they different? Maybe they're not human. They don't, they don't appear to be human. Maybe they don't eat and drink water.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  So how does this end?

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  Probably not well.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  I mean, it ends where it began, which is with reality, right? Like the need.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  So just like Rome 476.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Probably had something back to like that, large population crash. You can't. You can't have access, create your own food, understand how to get clean water. You might, you might be kind of fucked. Your business degree probably not going to do you too. Yeah.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  So you said your grandfather didn't even notice the Great Depression.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Do you expect that you will notice when things really go sideways?

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  I'll notice. Will my life change? Probably. I don't know. I expect it'll probably get better.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  How?

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  Well, I won't have all these idiots burning the world down around me. Right?

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Try to look at the silver lining of things.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  I totally agree.

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Just because things are getting worse, doesn't mean that they're uniformly worse, worse for everyone. They're compensatory things that happen like COVID. How did you enjoy COVID?

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  I did enjoy COVID, oddly enough.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  When I look back on it. I, I kind of, I saw that for what it was almost immediately. And I had been saving to build a house. And I was like, we're all going to be here and, and me and my family with some assistance from some friends here and then we built, built my house.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  During COVID?

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, right before. And I, just by the stroke of luck, I just bought all the materials like almost immediately before shit went batshit crazy in prices. And yeah, just set to work. Yeah.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Tore down the old house, built a foundation, stacked up some shipping containers and. Yeah.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Shipping containers.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Shipping containers.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  How many?

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  Five.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Double stacked walls. Seam welded. Concrete. Piers.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  You welded all the seams of five shipping containers?

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a welder, not a carpenter. I think Jesus would have been a welder if he was alive today.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  You think so? Why?

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  It'd last longer.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  I think Jesus was into permanence as well.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  How long did it take you to, to weld the seams of five shipping containers?

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  Oh my God. More than a month. Yeah. Yeah, I burned. I burned a lot of wire. Yeah. I don't even remember. At one point I was keeping track. It was like 50 pounds of wire, something like that, maybe 60. Just in

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  four, six weeks. Yeah, seam welding, everything together. Yeah, the whole thing. And then all the structure inside, stairs.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  So you live in a part of the country with tornadoes, what would happen if a tornado hit your house?

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  I'd like to find out. I think, I think I'd be good up to an F4.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't, I have, I have no qualms that the containers will stay in place through an F5. Some of the roof panels might come off.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  But you don't.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  There's no move in that structure. It's, it's welded straight down to the foundations.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  How hard is welding?

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Just like any skilled thing, it's 10% knowledge and 90% practice.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  It's not hard to learn. But it takes a lot of practice, just, just like, just like any skilled thing. You have to do it for a good, solid, what? Thousand hours before you come proficient at it?

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Like, nobody steps into anything. Nobody was good at motorboat and titties their first time.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  But you stuck with it.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  And you got better.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  I'm not going to comment on that. Um, so we, we look backward to our ancestors with awe because they, you know, they learned skills like that through persistence.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at the, the people used to build things out of stone and steel that lasted centuries and generations. And people look at it now. And I feel like, I feel like if you grab some kid with an engineering and architectural degree, I don't think they could build any of that.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  I mean, they have trouble putting together a stick building built from pine two by fours.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  And making it anything straight or square. I don't think I've seen a straight or square house and since 2020, shit has really gone downhill.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  Oh my God. I mean, I, I've, I've heard a lot of people say even like, do not buy a house built after 2020.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  I couldn't imagine they could get worse.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, that's a, that's kind of a new perspective because I've always been interested in, in ancient history. And as everybody who ever looks at the Egyptian culture, the best work of the Egyptians is the oldest. The Old Kingdom created the pyramids and flawless polygonal megalithic construction with stones that weighed in excess of 10 tons, 20 tons, 30 tons, 40, 50 tons. And it seems the longer the civilization went on, the farther the art degraded, the smaller blocks they used, the rougher they were. And then they end up sticking together mud bricks in the end. How does that work?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Where are we with our modern building materials on that continuum?

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  There were somewhere around mud bricks, it feels like. You know, how long does a, a stick house last? You know, stick two by fours.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Wood. Like people used to build their homes out of brick. Nobody ever, we have lost touch with the three little pigs.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Tell me.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  You familiar with the three little pigs, right? Like.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  I don't think that's the story that's told to children anymore.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  Not enough.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Will you summarize it?

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Not enough.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Will you Grok it for me?

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  What can I Grok it for you? I don't, I don't think Grok would get it right. They'd be like, all three pigs lived a great life. I don't know what you're talking about. He lived in a fucking straw hut. What's the problem with that?

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  He had a great female firefighter. She was right there every time. Made sure his house didn't burn down. No, the first pig built his house out of straw. And the big bad wolf came up, blew on it, it fell over. And that little piggy had to run away. And he had to run to his brother's house. And his second brother, he built his house out of sticks. He was like, oh, that hay idea, that didn't work out well for you. I'll use sticks. And the big bad wolf come along. Probably, well, three letter agency, if I had to guess, probably worked for somewhere in that. He's probably NSA. And he blew on that house and the sticks fell down. And both those two little pigs were like, God, this, this is, this is not working out.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  So they ran to their third brother's house, who had built his house out of bricks. And when the feds showed up to his house, he didn't answer the door and he gave him the finger. And then I think he sent some rounds down range and the big bad wolf was just kind of like, yeah, I think I'm not going to fuck with that guy. Because he's put some thought into things. And so we'll just kind of leave him alone.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  I think that's how it went. Is that how it went?

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  I would, I would, I would say that's exactly how it went. And I, I haven't checked this. I haven't Grocked it, but I suspect that that nursery tale is no longer told to children.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  All the nursery rhymes need to be brought back and told to everybody. Hansel and Gretel or Rumpelstiltskin. How is Rumpelstiltskin not like the perfect allegory for everything we are dealing with right now? Creating wealth from nothing and only wanting to eat your children in return?

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  And then when you call it out for what it is, they stomp their feet and scream and call you names?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Does it say that?

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're familiar with Rumpelstiltskin, right?

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not, it's been 50 years at least.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Once you acknowledge this reality for what it is and name him, pounds his feet, throws a fit and then disappears back into the shadows from whence he has crawled.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Wow, that's definitely banned.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, like, look, look at that lost information, right? That lost lesson. You would think, you know, that probably should be taught in every elementary school in the country. Probably be handy.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  It'd be good, good to know that, yeah.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  Might not work out for getting everybody into those high interest debt loans, though.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  No, probably not.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Where are you on debt?

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  I have none.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  None?

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, in college, I could not pass college algebra because I could not understand why we were putting letters into numbers in math that didn't make any logical sense to me. And I could not get anybody to explain to me how that was ever going to be useful to me. So I continually got into arguments with algebra teachers who thought they were smart, who I found to be very lacking in intelligence. So I ended up in a class called finite math that they had hidden from us that like, it was just.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  I got drunk with the lady who signs you up for classes like early on in college. Right? At a party and we became friends. And so I never had an advisor. And I would just whatever classes I wanted to take, I'd walk into her office. I was like, hey, sign me up for these classes. She was like, no problem. Yeah. So like, when I came time to graduate and like, I finally had to sit down with like, whatever admissions person, they were like, how the fuck? They were like, you've taken none of these freshman classes. I was like, yeah, they suck and they're stupid. I was like, algebra is dumb. I don't need to know algebra. I'm an art major, like, I want to build cool shit.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  Like, I took Western Civs and archaeology classes and history classes. Because that's, that's what I wanted to learn about. And I, I feel like it served me pretty well, but then I had to take a math class. So they, this woman was like, you ever thought about finite math? Like here, it's on the list and it's got the same credits and it counts. I was like, let's do it.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  Holy shit, you know why they don't want you taking finite math? Because it explains to you how much you will pay on any loan for interest and how fast you could pay off a loan if you just pay $50 more. That's all it was. I think I made it through a week of the class before I cut up all my credit cards and was like, oh, I am never doing that ever, ever, ever, ever. Under no circumstances will I ever take out a loan and pay twice the value of anything. It just, it made absolutely no sense to me, so, yeah.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Why does algebra put letters into numbers?

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  I think just to fuck with you.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  So you deal with math in your job every day. Well, you've already, I think you demonstrated your grasp of math is, is high.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, functional math.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Well, if you can build a wood fired kiln.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Um, you understand math. So, but what's, you, you didn't add letters to numbers in the process of doing?

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  That's the weirdest thing. Nowhere did I find any letters in my math to calculate the size and structural integrity of a cantenary arch. Isn't that weird? Oh, that was weird. Cause everybody, every math teacher was always like, you need to know some algebra. I've yet to encounter a single person in my life that uses algebra.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Actually.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  So like you, but you would not, yeah, but I mean, I live in a fake world.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Um, that's why you use fake math with letters. Congratulations to everybody out there in the matrix. Good job, you're good little goy slaves.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's amazing. So you, you didn't get an answer? Cause I've never considered this, by the way, it never even entered my mind. I was too dyslexic to take any math, so I got a pass on math. But, um, or the, whatever they said, I didn't have to take math. So I never took math. But I didn't get to the point where I wasn't reflective or open minded enough to ask the obvious question. Why are there letters? And nobody took that question seriously?

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they took it seriously. They were like, there's the door, get the fuck out of here.

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  And I was like, awesome, happy to. It's like, I haven't found any of this intellectually stimulating or anywhere useful where I could see any tangible benefit to this information. So why the fuck would I sit here?

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  What's the matrix?

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  This world that is constructed around us. Mortgages, loans for cars that aren't worth $30,000 that somehow costs 150.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  Insurance. The scam of life.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Why is insurance a scam?

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  How can it not be?

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  I, I don't have it, so I agree with you, but I just like to hear you explain.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  United Healthcare, right? That's the dude that got whacked, right? The Vice guy?

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Like, did they not just post like quarterly profits in the, in like the multiple billions of dollars? I mean, that doesn't, that doesn't give it away for anybody. Like, who was, every time I hear somebody like their house gets fucked up and the insurance people come out, yeah, we're not covering that. Well, then what the fuck did you pay for it for?

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  Like, okay, let's do the math. How much did you pay the insurance company in the last 10 years? And they'll be like, oh, something around $25,000. What does it cost to put the roof on your house? Oh, about, you know, 5,000. Why the fuck you paying for insurance? Why not not pay them $30,000? Save up your own money, be responsible for yourself. I, here's a even wilder idea. Get your ass up on the roof and put some shingles down. If Juan can fucking shingle your roof and you can't figure it out, then you're dumber than Juan.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Fair, fair.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  Isn't, is that not?

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  There's a shorter answer to your quest. I've actually dealt with this and, and, um, and as I said, I don't have the insurance you're referring to for exactly that reason. Like, it doesn't make any sense. I know what a roof costs to put on a shingle, especially an asphalt shingle roof is pretty cheap, really. So like, what are you doing? And I've lived by that for many years and it works. But the reason that most people don't is because you're required to get insurance once you take a mortgage out.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  Well, there you go. But debt is the basis of all slavery. Once you remove yourself in debt, there is no or else over your head.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  They use the debt over your head for every, that is the or else. Right? That's how they silence people at their job. Oh, I can't speak up about the evil shit my company is doing, or I might lose my job. And then I won't be able to pay for my home that I don't own and drive the car that I don't own.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  But if you simply just own your shit, and he doesn't even have to be nice shit. Right? You get a $5,000 shit box car, it'll do everything that a brand new Lincoln will do. Except it won't talk back to you and rat you out to the fucking feds. So.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Fair.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  Kind of sounds like the $5,000 shit box might be a better idea.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  So it's, if you were running this scam on an entire population, the first thing you would do is convince them they have to have the Lincoln instead of the Nova.

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  You'd have to excite in people a desire for things they don't need.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  How does that work? I don't understand. It's never worked on me.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Well, you grew up on a farm in South Dakota, so it's like, that's the opposite of the culture that you're from. But if you're floating around America at large, you're bombarded continuously by incitement to want things that aren't good for you and actually aren't the desires of your heart. You don't really want these things.

• 1:44:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  But you're convinced through this very sophisticated omnipresent propaganda operation being run against you by retailers.

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  That you like, you gotta have this, you gotta have that. You have to have it. That's the measure of happiness. You're laughing, but that's true, don't you think?

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  I mean, that's what they say. I, I laugh because I've always found it hilarious. Look at these people that follow all those, all those, uh, checkpoints down that list. And then ask them how happy they are or how fulfilled they feel in their life. Do their kids like them? Does their wife like them?

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Does anybody see them as necessary or valuable people in their lives?

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Who are the happiest people you know?

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  People who work for themselves, people with no debt, people who make their own decisions in their life, people whose time is their own. People who can drop everything and go help their kid as soon as they need it. Or any of their friends.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  That's the people that I've surrounded myself with, though. It's people that will come and help you dig a hole or do hard manual labor, sweat. Yeah.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  People you can call, yeah. Won't, I won't go any farther than that.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Dig a hole. I want to ask why you're digging holes.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  How is this savable, this civilization?

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  It's already too far down the decline. Something new has to be built. At some point, you get to an old structure. You know, equate it to construction and you find a house at some point, it just, it just, it's better to just be burned to the ground.

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  The cells are rotted and we're done.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  Maybe the design was right, right? You could, you could rebuild the same house back under the same principles. But once termites have gotten into it and eaten out its bones and sold it off to fucking foreign interests. You know, what are you gonna do with that? Nothing, light it on fire.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Do you think there are enough people remaining in the country to rebuild a civilization worth living in?

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Easily, easily. Look at what humans have recovered from.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Made it through the Younger Dryas, made it through the Ice Age.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, made it through the Mongol hordes. Yeah, and always came out better the other end.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  So you're not worried in some deep way then?

• 1:47:11Speaker 02

  I feel bad for people that don't see it. I feel bad for the people who are sleepwalking into

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  their own extermination.

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  But

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  there is some level of me that will enjoy it. Right? Karma's a bitch. There's nothing better than watching karma getting handed out to people that deserve it.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  It's the one saving grace in this world. This world is nothing of what they've told us it is. It's in fact, it's the exact opposite. Right? Like evil deeds are punished. Evil people are punished, their lives suck. They, they don't, they don't have any happiness or joy in them. Right? They have nobody to love, nobody holds them at night, nobody tells them they've done a good job. And means it, I suppose.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:05Speaker 02

  In any meaningful way. I'm sure plenty of people have some sycophants that lie to them.

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  But I doubt that, I doubt that brings any warmth to anyone's soul at the end of the day.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  That's right. You wouldn't want to be Larry Fink if you're in hell.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  I don't know how you could point to anybody with a billion dollars and be like, oh, they could be a good person. Like no, dude, the only way you accumulate that much wealth is be, by being an evil piece of shit that has exploited other human beings. It's the only way it happens.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  It is, it's just, and that's been a steady norm all throughout history. Like Gaius Crassus was not a great dude.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. So were you fooled by Trump?

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  I did support him. And I, I go back and forth on whether or not I was fooled. I don't think I was fooled.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  Something happened to him. He, he, he turned his back on us. He became something else. I mean, unless, he's not, he just can't be that good of an actor. He doesn't seem to be, otherwise he could sell the lies now a hell of a lot better than he's selling them.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  No, that's a great point.

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  Right? Like, so, no, he was, he was being honest in the beginning. He was saying the true things, you know? Deport all these people, save our country, all the things that were obviously wrong. He was pointing them out and then just like a light switch. He was like, no, no, I never said any of that. Yeah, actually, actually Lindsey Graham's a great guy. Yeah, he's totally straight, loves peace. What? These people all hated him. These were everything we voted against. He's surrounded himself and just is rolling around in it with everybody that hated him. And tried to destroy him and then somehow convinced him to destroy himself.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  That's exactly right and nicely put. They convinced him to destroy himself. And us.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  How do you think that, what do you, what, I mean, how do you explain that?

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  God, dude, that's gonna take somebody far more intelligent than some fucking potter from South Dakota. I can't explain that. I can't explain why anybody would do that, but I can't explain the motivations of the majority of America. And none of, none of it has ever made sense to me. I don't understand how you sleep owing anybody $5.

• 1:50:53Speaker 02

  I can't imagine being in debt to anybody. It just, it bothers me.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:50:58Speaker 02

  It bothers me, even when somebody like does something nice for me or gives me something, I, I, I have to return that to them.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  You know? And so.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  It's pretty clear in the New Testament too. I don't, they kept this from me in church as a kid to the extent I went.

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  But don't owe anybody anything. Paul says that, don't, don't be in debt.

• 1:51:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I, how much better would the world be if like elementary school just taught the Bible? And not even in a religious way, but just for those lessons.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  Like, that's why that has been

• 1:51:42Speaker 02

  so

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  applicable to everybody's lives for 2,000 years, right?

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  It's because it is true information and good advice. And yeah, dude. Of all the times I went to church as younger, like I was, I thought about this later. And I was like, why don't they just start at the beginning? And just read the thing all the way to the end? Like you go to church on a Sunday and you start on January 1st, you just start at the beginning and he just reads the thing. Well, because then you, if you read the whole Bible, you wouldn't be going to church, would you? You'd be like, hey, uh, teacher, uh, Jesus said there that I shouldn't be giving you any money to talk to his dad. And then I'm supposed to walk up there and flip your tables over and take my money back.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  What, what do you have to say about that?

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  It's kind of like AI.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  You need to get the fuck out of this class, sir.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  So you don't need the promotion and it's, you probably don't even want the work, but I just can't resist by ending on the question of your, of the art that you make. So how do people get it if they want it?

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  Find me?

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna make you work for it. Comes with an IQ test. I'm not that difficult to find.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  No, you're not.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  No, I'm, my phone number's on the internet.

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  So is mine, unfortunately. How many other artists do you know, like actual artists, real artists?

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  That make a living making art? One.

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  One?

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  One, yeah, that I went to school with. Masahiro Wadayama, my Japanese buddy.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  Where's he live?

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  Okin, Osaka.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, he came to South Dakota. We didn't even meet in art class. He came to South Dakota, his dad sent him over here because his dad liked cowboys.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Speaker 02

  And he thought he should, he thought he should learn English. And it's the most ridiculous thing to come to South Dakota to learn pottery from the culture that has literally kept the ancient knowledge of pottery alive throughout modern ages. Like the only reason I know what wood kilns are is because Japan preserved that information.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  How many wood kilns in the United States, would you say?

• 1:54:18Speaker 02

  I don't even, I don't even know.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Not many though.

• 1:54:23Speaker 02

  Maybe not, maybe more than I might think there are because by nature potters don't like this world. I don't think, at least the ones I know. You know, we toil hard. You work hard to be a potter and the reward and gratitude is low.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  Low. Yeah, I think I should probably carve more into pots about what worthless leaders we have so that when somebody digs them up in a thousand years, they can know that what a piece of shit Trump's become. Yeah, gotcha, motherfucker.

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  The artist known as Jess, thank you very much.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  Thank you, Tucker.