Ep 529 - Weed & Gambling (feat. Saagar Enjeti)
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We're live. Sagar, thank you, dude. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. I like your setup. Thank you, man. Thank you. Since I'm in politics, you know, I kind of think I vibe with the set more, I think.

I think it's a good look for you, too. Do you think you look good on it? Really? See, now I feel really self-conscious. I should have worn my suit. The only reason I didn't is because I'm going out after this. You know, I'm going to be out of the town. You don't want to be walking around Austin, Texas. Just sweating in a suit. I did it yesterday after Lex Friedman's podcast, and I was getting a lot of looks. Did you guys both wear suits? Yes, we both wore suits. That's right. That's kind of nice. But his is the black suit. His is different. He has like a uniform. He does. And I like to change it up. He's like an alien fighter. He dresses like Will Smith from Men in Black. Yes, exactly.

It's kind of, there's something nice about that. I've always wanted to do the Steve Jobs thing where I wear the same thing every day. You could do it. I think you could do it. I feel like I could. I know one guy who's been wearing all white for seven years and I might jack his swag. In comedy, do you think it is useful to have a uniform or no? Because I noticed that comedians have been getting very like fashion forward. Yeah. And sometimes I'll go to a set and I'm like, honestly, what he's wearing is kind of distracting me.

Yeah. I don't understand why. I mean, I have like a loose uniform. It's just jeans, usually these sneakers and I just switch a plain color t-shirt. That's fine. See that. That's not just, that's like a, that's comfortable. I could see that working, but sometimes I'll see these guys in like crazy ass Gucci stuff. I'm like, dude, I'm blinded by you right now. I can't even hear what you're saying. I,

I never understood that, too, because it's like, dude, you're supposed to be making people laugh. You tell me. It's your profession. I don't know what it is. I see people go way fashion forward on the stage, and I'm kind of like, dude, it's like a distraction. Totally. And nobody cares. I'm glad you agree. I totally agree. It's like, nobody cares. Your job here is to play the fool.

Like, you're trying to dress like a cool guy. It's like... I think it detracts. I'm with you, man. I think it detracts. If I ever wear anything that is remotely eye-catching, I'll think about it on stage the entire time. Really? I can't, yeah. They took me forever to... This is my aura ring. It's just for tracking my biometrics. Uh-huh. Took me forever. I would meet every person I met, I'd be like, I'm usually not a two-ring guy. You're the only aura ring person I know who's a guy. I know. Well, they track their periods. I know. That's why every woman I know is like, they're obsessed with period tracking. Yeah.

So how does it feel to be a guy wearing an Oura ring? What do you even get out of it? Me and Nick's ex from 311. I'm not the only guy. I got the 311 when I was at Oura. Real men wear whoop straps. Whoop straps are cool. But here's the thing. Sleeping with something on my wrist, I get it to track my sleep. My sleep is way up. Yeah, you can sleep with this. You can sleep with this. It's just too clunky on my hand. What do you mean it's too clunky on your hand? It's too clunky. I tried doing the Apple Watch sleep, and it's just I can't get with it. I'll tell you, when I got my wedding ring, it took me months to get used to this shirt. Yeah. It was just like.

even now I'm always like this yep I notice subconsciously I'm always twisting around I'm banging on shit I felt weird for the longest time and then now if I don't have it on I feel like a like a naked boy do you ever get terrified that you're gonna rip your finger off I think about that all

How are you going to rip your finger off? I don't know, like the trunk or something. Like something will catch just exactly the right way. Oh, you're going to come into it like that. Yeah. And your entire finger is going to be completely ripped off. Well, look, if you rip your ring finger off, then it's on. You can do whatever you want. Just be like, bro, my bad. What do you even tell your wife? Put the ring on the nub? Yeah, she's like, I lost my ring.

You just cheat on her all the time because you don't have a ring finger? I'm a bachelor. I don't have a ring finger. It's gone. Our vows are over. Yeah, if you lose that finger, you're a bachelor. That's good. I like that. You remember those rules in the 2000s? I love watching 2000s movies, or actually 1990s, like American Pie, when they're like, it's not cheating if you're not in the same zip code.

Oh, yeah. And rewatching it 25 years later, you're like, that makes no fucking sense. You're like, what are you talking about? Like, how was this conventional wisdom in 2001? That? The Hall Pass was a big one? Yes, the Hall Pass. There was a whole Friends episode. Like, what's your Hall Pass? But that's not real. It's totally fake. Yeah, you're butt-fucking a lady in a hotel room. Like, stop acting like it's a cute thing to do.

Yeah, I was literally just thinking about hall passes yesterday. I was like, they try to push that for a little bit. It was a huge 2000s trope as if all relationships functioned on if you're not in separate area codes, you're not married or you're engaged. Hall passes were apparently and allegedly a thing. What else was there? Work wife. Work wife. Work wife was a huge thing. That shit pisses me off. Yeah. I don't like that stuff at all. The entire work wife concept is fucking weird, you know? I mean, I understand how it...

but it's like, it's not your work wife. You're cheating on your wife. Exactly. You're having an emotional relationship. You are having an emotional affair. That's going to bleed over. Right. Yeah. Things were weird in the 90s. They were. And there was also in the 90s, it was like very in vogue. We talked about this before, but it was like very in vogue to like,

The concept of like having sex with underage women was just like, yo, bro, I'll hit you. That was a big, that's another big American pie thing too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, man, they don't age well, but they are still hilarious. Dude, they're so funny. They should remake it. They should do it again. Then we need, what was the last one? American wedding. Is that what it is? I lost track. American pie. I saw that. That was like a huge thing to see when I was younger. I kind of jumped off that and hangover. I didn't really follow the hangover as well. So good.

They stopped making comedy movies for the most part. Yeah, but the whole reason I'm here is because Shane is filming Tired. I know. Now it's the emergence. It's re-emerging. And that technically is a show. The great American comedy, there was like the Farrelly brothers, all these people. Yes.

You don't have like a comedy in the theaters. And the weirdest thing too is that the director, Todd Phillips, I mean, he made so many of those movies that I love. Old School, he made, what else did he make? He made Road Trip, I think, which is an incredible film. Road Trip's nice. Road Trip is so good. But now, and then he did The Hangover. He became filthy rich, but then he just made, he made the Joker movie and then he made Joker 2, which is adorable.

It's like a total disaster. Why did they do that? I don't know. I mean, the galaxy brain case, Tarantino had a really good quote. He's like, Joker is Todd Phillips saying, you know, the way he talks. He's like, Joker is Todd Phillips saying, fuck you, to the audience. And that's why it's brilliant. And I was like, I don't know, Tarantino. I think your galaxy brain and yourself and how this shitty movie is actually really good. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it's just bad. It's just empirically bad. I know. Even though to be like,

Yeah, because for me, I always think of like the mood. I guess if you're already, you have that track record, it's like people will still invest in you. Well, that thing is fucking money. And honestly, he's a super weird dude. One of my favorite books I read about Hollywood was Molly's Game. Actually, it also became a movie, which is a good movie. I think it's on Netflix. And it's about that girl who ran the high stakes poker game in Hollywood. But I ended up reading the book and I found out Tobey Maguire is a complete and total psycho.

So Toby, I had no idea. So Toby was part of the quote unquote pussy posse. So I knew that. But then I'm reading about these weird psychological mind games that he would play in the book. And he would at one point in a quote where he's like, poker is not,

about winning. Poker is about destroying people's souls. And he would string people along and bring them, get them into debt, and he was constantly charging this girl, the girl who ran the games, and he was fucking with her and her livelihood, and he would take the game. He's a multi-hundred millionaire or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. And he's charging her for using his automatic shuffling machine. Just weird power game shit. Like true Hollywood. He's like an evil nerd. Yeah, he's a psycho. What the fuck? Reading that book, I was like, dude, you are an actual psychopath. This Seabiscuit's the jockey. It's Spider-Man. That's all I know about this guy. I was like, oh, man.

Well, he's probably upset his parents died when he was younger. And he had to become a superhero. He got bit by a spider. He's got that. And then, yeah, the more I learned. And Todd Phillips is in the book, too. That's what made me think of it. He's nuts. So this is all like a biographer, basically, like digging into these people? No, she wrote the book. She was like my journey running the high stakes poker game. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. She was like the assistant to some rich Hollywood fuck. And he brought her to run the games. And then she got in with like Tobey Maguire. Apparently, Leo came. And Tobey got Leo to come. The pussy posse.

Yeah, but Leo also apparently didn't talk to anybody and just put his headphones on the entire time while he was playing poker. Dude, I've heard a headphone story about Leo. I was going to say, so that's what reminded me of the other Leo story. You know the song he listens to? No, what is it? Oh, dude, it's, fuck. Time to pretend. He listens to Time to Pretend.

While having sex with extremely young women. I mean, I don't get it. Time to pretend, dude. She's 27. It's time to pretend she's 27. No, younger. I'm saying she's 18. He's pretending. Oh, that's right. He's trying to pretend that she's 18.

He's trying to pretend she's 27, but she is 18. The whole thing is very strange. The Leo thing, I don't get it. I love Leo. He's such an incredible actor. He's got great instincts. He's actually a very, very smart guy. But yeah, his personal life, it's weird. I think we need to call a spade a spade. It is. And it's also one of those things where I think Bill Barr is like another avowed kind of like, yeah, I fucked 19 year olds and I'm 65. And he's like, he's older than that. I think he's like 67.

He might be pushing 70, actually. Really? Yeah. It's another one where it's like, yeah, it is weird. It is definitely weird, dude, because the mental difference is crazy. Yeah. I mean, we're talking like order, like statistical, like think about how many standard deviations away you are. It's like a vampire. It's like you're an immortal vampire at that point. You're 70 talking to an 18-year-old. To an 18-year-old girl. You're kind of babysitting her. Absolutely you are. There's no question of that.

And if it's like, dude, like you could be like, oh, I can make a, you know, I can make a geometric case for their breasts. It's like, all right, dude. Well, like, dude, just stop being such a pervert. Go jack off. You don't have to date an 18 year old. Just go jerk off. You don't have to like try to make it a lifestyle. I love this because this is a very just natural way of us, like, you know, bringing ourselves to being like, yeah, you know, there's actually really something about you should just get married, bro. Be normal.

Being normal is good. It's actually a good thing. People who aren't normal are fucking weirdos. And I mean, you know, you and I are in a unique position where you actually probably eventually get to meet some of these famous people that you see or you get to just hear little things that are not common in the public. And you're like, oh yeah, there's a real cost to this, isn't there? And I'm like, I'm not really sure even what

I'm like, I don't want to fuck with this. This is not the way that I choose to live my life, and I don't really want to be associated with that. Well, dude, there comes a point where you're either involved in this, like, you know, because, yeah, you're absolutely right, because you get to, like, you know, they're, like, the rarefied era of, like, Hollywood and all this stuff, and it does turn into, like, a diabolical power game. And it's like, we all have those instincts to participate in some level, but there are people who give their entire lives to, like...

You know, like looking at another guy's car or being like, he got what project? Fucking motherfucker. Yeah. Where's my 19 year old girlfriend? I need to fucking eat her pussy right now. Weird, consumerist, like idolatry of the self. Yes. It's like everything that I've learned, you know, in life is just like all of that is horrible and it's.

Yeah. There's a good political thing to this, too. If you stay in Washington, the thing is lots of people who are young come to Washington, 22, 23 years old, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, all of that. Most people burn out by 27. So I'm like in my mid-30s now. And so I'm in the cohort like we made it, like the people who actually got the job, stayed in the lifestyle and all that. But this is also, you know, there's this –

cringe show, but How I Met Your Mother. And there's a very important concept that Barney lays out in that show where he's like relationships, and I think life is like this, have off ramps like an exit where it's like relationships is like one year, three year, five year, 10 year, 25, something like that. And if you look statistically, he's not wrong. Yeah. In terms of like when divorces and breakups and all that stuff happen. But for like professional DC or...

honestly, any career where it requires you to give fucking everything to it. But then you start to see one of the most important pieces of advice I got was like, look at where you are and then look at the guy who's 10 years in that same path. And I was in the White House briefing room, for example, and I was looking around. I'm like, wait a second. I don't want to be any of you people.

I'm like, I need to get the fuck out of here. I'm like, if we're on this track, I'm like, this is a bad track. We got to get out. What was the White House briefing? Was that like when you sit and ask questions? Yeah, that's where, well, I didn't even get to sit. I had to stand like a bitch in the corner. Oh, excuse me. So you're like just yelling questions. It's horrible, man. Yeah, so actually I'm hopeful with the new administration that we can change some of this up. So the way it works is that the White House Correspondents Association is like a cartel.

And even though it's unofficial, they run everything. So all the briefing room seats are assigned by the White House Correspondents Association. I was working for the Daily Caller at the time, which is a conservative media outlet. And if you want a seat, you have to apply. And applying takes years to get a new seat. And so if you don't have a seat, then obviously you have to get there early. So I would get there hours early, ahead of time, just to be able to stand in the hallway, like on the side, and you're literally crammed in up against like

all these different people there's all this jockeying and there's like foreigners it's like the stock market kind of in a way literally it's like a movie right and then you just sit there and you kind of like poke your hand I was lucky because I'm tall so I actually get my hand above there was a short girl behind me and she was like can I get in

Can I get in front of you? I'm like, sorry, bitch. Yeah, I got here. I was here at 5 a.m. It's a doggy dog world. Like, get here earlier. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. That's what I'm talking about, though. I don't want to be that person. That actually sucks. Yeah. Or there was this girl who's like, hi, I'm shooting a documentary. I'm from England and all this. And I was just wondering if I could get my shot. I'm like, yeah, but if you get your shot, I'm not going to get my question. So it's like, and then my boss is going to chew my ass out. So it's just not going to happen. Oh,

Yeah, it's like, and you don't want to be in that mind space is more what I'm saying. So that's probably takes a toll. It does take a toll. Hollywood finance, politics, all these other things all function the same way in that if you want to be in the top point, 1% of your field, you have to give everything to it. And that's it. There's no other choice. Yeah. And you know, people should be real with that. So if you're listening and you're like thinking like, Oh, I really want to do something like that. Just be, just understand what it takes. Understand what it actually takes to get there. Dude.

Yeah, for sure. And it, dude, it's funny cause I'm, I'm viewing schools now for me and it's like kind of related. So I'm looking at schools for my daughter. She's going into kindergarten next year. So we're like looking at, and it's like, dude, schools now are, and I think it's good, but they're, when I've been seeing, it's like they're educating people to like do something for everybody to like bring something to the world rather than like, well, you know, we were in school. It's more like build yourself up so that you're a high value individual that you can just take resources for yourself and just, you know, like fuck off.

And it's like, yeah, but the problem is, is like they sold everyone that dream. But the reality is, is like most people aren't going to get those. Well, and it's not going to be on doctors. Most people don't want to do that. You don't want like for Indians on a lot of doctors. It's like, do you want to know how hellish medical school is?

Dude.

So by the time you're my age, you can finally get your first paycheck. Oh, but fuck you. Even though you get your first nice paycheck, 90% of that is going to be going to clearing off of your medical debt. And you've lived 10 years. You're probably now addicted to smoking, food, like some vice. There's no way. Again, you know this too. When you work really hard, like it takes it all from you. You're going to be addicted to energy drinks, nicotine, whatever. Like you need something. It's not possible to do it naturally.

It's true. I've, I've gone back and forth and it's like, I'm like, no, I don't need anything. And I had like a pretty harsh caffeine phase for myself. I'm like sensitive to it. I had to stop that cause I wasn't sleeping. But how do you, cause you travel a lot. Yeah. That's brutal. I recently, it sucks. I've recently introduced melatonin. I'm a very like natural type. I don't want to take anything, but I've, I've succumbed to just like interesting. Just kind of give you a warning about melatonin though. So Andrew Huberman says not to take melatonin.

take melatonin i know man i know it's not good because he's not right it was something about something he said like the the label on the bottle can be anywhere between like two percent and one hundred and a thousand percent of what's actually in there what yeah and he said something don't take my word for it but it was something along the lines of i've seen them give melatonin to rats and it shrivels their balls so he's like i think that it messes with testosterone enough said i'm done my opinion you should stay off i'm off it stay off the melatonin

I'm off it. It is a, I, as soon as I started taking it, I was like, I get why Michael Jackson had a guy with like an IV in his arm. I'm like, dude, that was a whole other level, man. That's like pro, what was it? Propofil? Propofil. It was Propofil. But you start to like, dude, it's like, you're just sitting there reading a book and all of a sudden the melatonin just starts to like weigh, you're like a stone statue and then you're just like, like, like,

Did you read about this Matthew Perry thing? Oh, it was so fucked up. So what actually happened to him? I mean, it's really sad. I read his book, actually, after he died. And Perry was, obviously, everybody knows he was a drug addict. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, his parents, it turns out his mom was like the press secretary for Justin Trudeau's dad. What? When he was a prime minister. Yeah, it was actually, and apparently he beat the shit out of Justin Trudeau when they were kids, which is wild. Matthew Perry beat up Justin Trudeau? Matthew Perry beat up Justin Trudeau.

That's kind of bossy. Yeah, it is cool. But so Perry, it turns out when he was like a really little baby and he was crying, his parents would give him like benzos, like benzodiazepine. What? Like really fuck. And he was like, yeah, when some of my parents funniest stories is about me as a baby, just sitting there like drooling out of my mouth.

when they were plugging me full of benzos because i was crying he was like colicky and so his theory of why he's so up and addicted to drugs was because at a very early age that he had benzos and he's talked about how the very first time he ever felt like anything was good in this world was when he was drunk at 14 years old and that was the rat race and then he becomes a hundred millionaire sent a millionaire whatever from friends and that's why you can see his weight wildly fluctuate on the show because he was either drunk or he was on pills or he's an oxy

But, dude, the thing is with Perry is he died of a ketamine overdose, I believe. And they – Los Angeles district attorney filed this case against a so-called, like, ketamine queen. And they have text messages in there of the doctor and the girl who was selling him all this illegal ketamine being like, how much can we take this rich asshole for?

charging him thousands of dollars per hit of ketamine, of which they're buying... It's not very chill, ketamine community. Deeply exploitative shit. Like, really bad. It was horrible. A lot of people are really into ketamine. I have a very kind of like...

weird thing because I knew a lot of like evil hippies who were like they got like addicted to that shit they used to call it hippie heroin what's it called? K-hole K-hole yeah well dude before it became mainstream it was known like people were like oh it's hippie heroin because they would like nod out what does it do? because I thought that it helps dissociative but there's the depression aspect there's like the therapeutic aspect and apparently he'd been having ketamine in a therapeutic setting but then I guess he got addicted

to that. And that's why he died in that hot tub, man. Because, dude, and it was like his assistant, his little drug assistant, they were working to procure him drugs and charge him thousands of dollars because they were ripping this guy off. That's not right. It's called cussing someone out. They're cussing him. You treat them cussing prices. Yeah. It's not a good thing to do. But yeah, I've heard people who swear by it. They're like, if you do like, because you can do...

Like, you know, they make little lozenges and stuff. So you can like lay there. My brother's all about it. He's like, you lay there. He's a big K guy. Big K guy. Big special K guy. He was really selling me on it. And it was like, you know, I'm like, and I get like if you're laying there, it's like a 30 minute ordeal. You come out of it. He's like, it is. It's good. It's like, you know, well, but then there's doctors like we'll prescribe you a little bit. Like you can just kind of have it to kind of like.

Because you can either, like, get into a K-hole or just kind of take the edge off. And I knew, like, these dudes that would just snort K constantly. But if you snort too much, then you'll just be sitting there like...

The other K that I see signs for everywhere, and I actually don't know what it is. Is it Kratom? Kratom, yeah. What is Kratom? It's like you see signs for this everywhere. CBD, we sell Kratom. I don't know a single person who's ever used Kratom. I don't know what Kratom is. I just know it exists, but it's everywhere. It's literally everywhere. It's every gas station in America. Gas stations sell like full on. They sell drugs. Or you can sell weed legally at gas stations now. Dude, they did it. It's the hemp farm bill allowed THCA. Uh-huh.

Which is weed, the active ingredients, THC. Is that the same as, was it spice or whatever? No, it's dude. So what's that then? Spice is a synthetic. So it's like if you take, you know, Delta 9, Tetrahydro, whatever it's called.

There's the exact molecule that's illegal. Spice is like, let's remove a couple of carbon molecules and like a hydrogen. And now it's like very similar, but it's legal because it's not technically the same stuff. It's like an analog or whatever you want to call it. Sure, sure, sure. So what Kratom is, well, with the THCA stuff, it's like weed picked off the plant is THCA because there's a carbon molecule. That's why if you have to make brownies, you have to heat the weed up to decarboxylate it.

And that's what, like, THC is illegal, but THC is legal. So now you can grow hemp, which is just weed, with THCA, which is just THC, and it's legal. And you can sell it at a gas station. It's completely schizophrenic. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. But, I mean, I think it's sick. You can mail it right to your house. Really? Oh, yeah. You can just get it mailed right to you. Are you a big weed guy? I was for the longest time. I can smell weed in here.

It wasn't me. Okay. It wasn't me. I know you hate it. It wasn't me. That was you, bro. You were blazing. Being soccer ripped the blunt, dude. I like that. Don't put misinformation out there, all right? Well,

The moment I came down here, my nostrils flared. I didn't want to say anything, but I did suspect you. I'm not going to lie. I immediately suspected you. I was a big weed guy since I was in high school through college. But you quit, right? So it's a success story. I cut it out, but here's the thing. It becomes too much, especially when you have kids. It's like, I just can't. I can't be high. Can you tell that to more people? Yeah. Some people claim, but for me personally, it's like having like a...

Like a weird panic attack at a playground. Yeah. Not serving your family. That sounds horrible. Oh, fuck, dude. I just got to be brave for my daughter right now. But everybody says it's chill. No, it's chill, dude. It's totally chill. Dude, the thing is the weed is so strong now. Yes, I know. Thank you. Please continue. Dude, I have literally, I was selling weed from 2008. Uh-huh.

up until whatever, pretty embarrassing recently, but the... Whatever. I don't even remember. I'm going to call 9-1-1. I'm going to call Philly PD. Maybe 2009. Is weed legal in Philly?

I knew a guy who got it's totally it's a medical. Okay. I knew a guy who got caught with coke in outside of the you know, whatever Delaware County and apparently they the Delaware County or like whatever township police called the Philadelphia PD and like we caught this guy with cocaine. We also think he's been buying weed from Philadelphia and do the Philly PD just went hung up on you. He was in the room. He was in trouble for I mean to be fair. They have like actual

problems. Yes. Murders. Yeah. And they were just like, he's like, dude, the Philly PD hung up on the township police. They're like, dude, we don't care about that. But it is, dude, with the dabs, it has become drugified. So I like watched weed develop for years, like very close to it. And it was like it became a thing that was like, dude, this is like, dude, like, you know, it was like everyone talks about this. Like in the 70s, it was like 7% THC. And you get like 14, 15. Wow. It's like 30. Some of them are like 28 to 30%.

It's too much. And they also, the percentage was that are sold to you. It's kind of like what I just said about melatonin. You have no idea whether that's correctly in there or not. So yeah, let's stay off the weed. Let me that also allow me a weed dye tribe. That's fine. I'll give you one. What my thing is now it's like, so now they're starting to regrow it and introduce like the, um,

Grow it so it's like only 7% with CBD. Okay. And that's very relaxing. It's not as psychoactive. It just really can make you... It's like the founding father weed. That's like the hemp George Washington smoke. Oh, is it? It's very chill. You're not like... You might get like, you know... Well, he was doing opium too, do you think?

Was he doing opium? Of course, they all were doing opium back then. That's how the painkillers happened. True, I guess. That's the forbidden part of the 1900s that nobody ever talks about. The shocking number of opium and cocaine addicts that were up until the 1920s.

incredible amount of society was addicted to morphine, opium, cocaine. You could get it readily across the counter. A lot of the doctors were going to prison because they were coke addicts and they were prescribing cocaine to different people. It's actually pretty wild. Yeah, I think you can get it in prison. You can get opium in prison in the 20s. I think you could order it on a commissary. Wow.

I think so. I read a book about an old burglar from the 1890s. It's probably not a bad way to spend time. You're already locked up. You can just gobble it up. Yeah, exactly. You can just gobble it up. I think it was like either the guards were selling it, but I remember the guy was saying in the book he just ordered some opium from the truck. Well, it wasn't illegal for a long time. I mean, it took a long time because there was a lot of the same problems we have now. Opium addicts at the time, it's like for a while they're on opium. They can't afford opium. You start robbing people to pay for your opium.

They were like, okay, we got to get rid of this. Yeah, this is a problem. Kratom now is a...

It's not technically an opiate. It's a plant. It's a natural plant, but it has... This is what they say about it. It's natural. It is natural. Yeah. Yeah, it's natural. What did you just talk about? Oh, the cross plays with this. Yes. 40% now. It's like, that's not fucking natural. Exactly. That's as natural as a red tomato in a grocery store. I totally agree. I think they've totally... They've ruined weed. Now, it's called type 2 cannabis. They're walking it back, and I think that... Because, dude, I couldn't... I would just freak out. I'm like, this sucks.

This isn't fun at all. Or I do think though, and this is like a, uh, it's, I do like saying this to people because people get very like bullish with weed. It'll be like, dude, fucking five milligram. I can take a 50 mil. It's like this cause you're a dumbass. You don't have anything going on in your brain. So you're just like, you've actually cooked so much of your IQ off that you no longer have the IQ to

I'm saying naturally they're a dumbass. People who can do 200 milligram edibles, it's like, yeah, because you're a fucking dumbass. You don't have anything going on in your mind. You're just sitting there like... You're like when a dog gets a brownie. You're just kind of like... Or you metabolize it differently. I don't know. The Kratom, they do snag people with the natural stuff, but it mimics opiates. People will use it to get off of...

You could be sick from... It's like methadone? Heroin. If it was a plant. But it also is different. Like, if you take a little bit, it's energizing. But if you take a lot, it's like you ate, like, four Percocets. I don't get it, man. Dude, and people get addicted to it, man. No, no, no. I do know that. That's why I brought it up. Because there is a lot of this weird stuff that... Like Kratom. Obviously, weed now with the mass legalization. And nobody ever talks about it. You know, if you look at the weed graph, like, over 20% of weed users...

are using it on a multi-daily basis. So that is like... Imagine if 20% of people who drank alcohol drank straight liquor all day, every day. That's not even close. What is the percentage of people who drink alcohol daily? Who are daily drinkers? I think it's like 7% to 8%. Actually, by the way, I'm not putting alcohol off the... For sure. It's really bad. People who are alcoholics, it ruins your life. It will kill you early. There's...

all this stuff. And actually, weed and alcohol, almost all vices actually have the same effect where between like seven, it's like the Pareto principle where 20% can be responsible for 80%. And so 20% of weed users consume almost all of the weed because they're using it every single day and it's extremely high THC and it's psychoactive. Anybody who knows anybody who's ever owned a liquor store, it's like the vast majority of your sales are going to the same alcohol.

alcoholics honestly it's really sad yeah and then gambling is the same way like a huge percentage of casino uh returnees like you know every people go to vegas and they have fun but like if you have ever spent time in a casino like the people that come every single day just like pissing their life it makes you really sad that's the saddest part like that is really sad it's so when you see especially the old people there and you're like damn your kids stop talking to you you've worked your whole life do you have sports gambling uh advertisers do you oh big time yeah oh do you okay i

You can talk whatever you want. Okay, all right. Well, then I'll say it. It's on federal free speech. You think I'm going to restrict speech at the podium? Sorry, DraftKings and FanDuel and all these other people. It's not those two. Okay, good. We've definitely had that before. I'll have you. Say whatever you want. Okay, all right. Yeah, I'm not worried about that. Well, I don't want to get you in trouble, but.

Can't get in any trouble. I have become totally convinced. Cars on the table, I actually like to go to the casino. I think casino gambling is really fun, but I think it's very important that I have to go to the casino to a physical location. The stats right now on sports gambling, it's just like weed, all vices. Disaster. If you look at the amount of money that is being sucked out,

of people's pockets it's horrible so in this in september in new jersey alone new jersey bettors lost 200 million dollars been gambling online in full online gambling they lost 400 million they were gambling on sports and a total of 900 million in a single month of september just if you include also casinos so you can see that almost half of the money that new jersey bettors lost by the way jersey's not that fucking big so we just talked about a billion dollars got sucked out

That's crazy.

is way higher because traditional gamblers in casinos, they'll bet the money line or they'll bet the spread. But these retards on sports gambling are buying and doing all these parlays that get algorithmically pushed. You have no fucking chance of winning your parlay. Sorry. Sorry. You're not going to win your parlay.

And don't ask me. Check the stats and look at the profits for where all these people are coming from. So, dude, mass sports gambling has been a fucking disaster. Like you've seen domestic violence has gone up in the places where it is. Bankruptcies are up. You're seeing a huge amount of credit card debt, 25 percent increase amongst the people where it is legal.

And actually, I just read an article about Brazil yesterday where basically it's a social transfer program where the government is cutting checks to working class people. Those people are gambling almost 40 percent of their paychecks away on a consistent basis. So it's like a mass wealth transfer that's happening right now. And yeah, I mean, sadly, because you can do it online, just imagine if you could take your phone out and there was a

app on your phone where you could drink alcohol do you know how popular that app would be yeah imagine yeah or see naked girls yeah oh yeah well that's uh we'll get to that next we're gonna come next this is gonna be the killjoy podcast no imagine if you could like suck marijuana from an app that was out of your phone and people will be addicted that gambling is honestly worse

Well, it's a double addiction because the phone's addictive. Yes, exactly. And then you put addiction on top of an addictive device. So you have algorithm, you have phones, and you have money that is now at stake. Every single state where this has happened has been an absolute nightmare. And all you have to do, the thing is that the gambling companies, legally, they have to disclose all of this. So all you have to do is go and read their profit and loss statements and look how much of this is coming from the parlay bets. It's the vast majority of their profits. And yet you...

you idiots keep signing up for it. And I get that it's fun, but it's not funny whenever your wife is like, hey baby, can we buy these berries for our child? And you're like, oh, I actually pissed it all away on a parlay last night. And you know, now you have guys who are, you know, you've seen this explosion and people are like, I'm gambling on women's softball or in Korea. And I'm like, bro, you have a problem. You

have a problem. That's always been, people are like, that's a degenerate behavior. Little League World Series, you're a degenerate. You are a de-gen, bro. And this is my case. I think gambling should be legal. I think, but it should only mean casinos. Because one of my favorite parts about going to the casino is you meet the characters, right? You go to the craps table and you see a guy who hasn't showered in three days and has got his colostomy bag on. And by the way, he will teach you how to roll the dice and so shout out to that man for

showing me ever showing me how to do it. But seeing him, I'm like, I don't ever want to be even sent in the same like universe of whatever this dude is. But you can't see that when you're on the couch. You don't understand. You're the sucker. Last thing on this that I found out from Nate Silver's book is that if you are any good at sports gambling, you're banned.

That's kind of fucked up. So if you win consistently on DraftKings or on FanDuel, they will cap your bet size to like $2. They're like, oh, you're allowed to bet $2.14. That's bullshit. Yes, but you know what? And then people are like, I'm actually really good at sports gambling. I'm like, oh, how you been on the app? They're like, three years. I'm like, you're not any good at sports gambling.

I'm like, what a bandrass. Yeah, that's everyone. No, I'm like breaking even basically. It's like, well, first of all, you need to win 52% of your bets just to beat the house because 2% is the vague that goes to the house. But then over that, it's like, look, you're not winning. If you're still gambling consistently on the apps, you have not won and you're the sucker.

That's just what I wanted to know. You know what they should do? An easy amendment to this that wouldn't be such a money suck is that when you lose your gambling money, it's held from you for six months. They get to make money on the interest, and then they send it back to you. See, that would be nice, but... Momentarily penalized. I just read in New York...

I mean, why would they do that? They would be like, fuck you, we're keeping all, how about we keep all of it and make interest off it? These guys are making the biggest killing in the planet. And like, the best part is all the states are doing it too because they want the money. But the thing is, look, they're going to pay for it because it's one of those where you're getting this fake tax revenue. But yeah, when you have to come and send cops to Johnny's house because he went fucking broke and he beat up his wife or his girlfriend or whatever, you're paying for that.

Yeah, he's blowing off some steam. Parley goes down. He's going to house one of those plastic bottles of whiskey from Costco. And we all know what happens next. It is weird that when jobs are scarce, people just end up beating up girls. If there's not good stuff going on, people are like, well, I guess I have to beat up a girl now. It happens across every culture. It's every culture. Actually, a lot of people got mad at me on the show because I was talking about it. It was during one of our immigration debates.

I think you talked about it a little bit, actually, on your show. And I was just like, look, and by the way, just full disclosure, I married into an Irish family from Philadelphia. Oh, there you go. So I have no discrimination against the Irish. But what I'm saying is back in the day, I think it was reasonable to be like, well, you know, all these people are coming over here and they ain't driving

a lot of whiskey. Yeah. So here's the, nobody knows this. The very first thing that women did whenever they voted was ban alcohol. That's why the temperance movement was entirely driven by women. Whoa. And the reason why is because they were getting the absolute shit kicked out of them by their drunk ass husbands who were drinking a liter of whiskey per day on average. Yeah. To deal with, you know, the industrial revolution. For sure, yeah. But it was also, let's be honest, it was part of their culture.

People don't forget that for some reason it's intrinsic. Alcohol, gambling, and beating the shit out of your wife, it's just a package deal. It's one big thing. You are signing up for that. You are 100%. Don't incentivize it. It's just impulses ruling the roost and then eventually the curtain closes and you're like, ah. Really what I think it is is just somebody for the first time is showing the reality of what you've done.

where you can rationalize your parlays away. You can rationalize all this. But the very first time, like I just said, we were like, hey, can we pave to go see, I don't know, like I want to go see my mom next week or whatever. Can I get a flight? And they're like, no, we literally don't have any money. Yeah. And or the ultimate being like, I told you the Chiefs weren't going to kick a football game. Shut the fuck up. You didn't know that. Well, it is funny. There is a huge, because, you know, my whole, I'm all like Irish Catholic doubt. And it's like, yeah.

Like seeing someone fall at a wedding, I'm like, it's like it's so normal. And like my wife would like cry. She's like, that's not right. I'm like, that's so sad. I'm like, dude. My in-laws and their family are not like that. People fall at weddings. It is what it is. I did see a really funny tweet. Like, you know, I left Dublin and I moved. I forget where they moved, like somewhere in South America or something. And they're like, and what I thought was we were all having a good time. It turns out we're just crippling alcohol.

Yeah, like family beach trips were just like adults hammered for seven days and I'd just be like, all right. Then the kids would get hammered. They would pass out. East Coast beach culture is weird. Oh, it's crazy, dude. I'll tell you this. It's crazy. I had no exposure to it because I grew up here. But yeah, I went to like, I think I went to Rehoboth, which is like the nice beach, right? But even then I'm like, man, these...

These are hammering Tito's at like 9 a.m. in the morning. Oh, yeah. There's some crazy shit going down. East Coast beach culture is like getting it's like quiet. That's not like as like cool like Margaritaville. It's just people just quietly quietly DJ. My uncle's. Yeah, my uncle's would be like they would all joke. They'd be like, oh, man, who's going to crack the first one? I don't give a shit. I'll do it. Just crack a Coors Light. Now they don't let you drink on the beaches like that. Really? Yeah, they're taking a lot of people doing it.

Well, in the Jersey Shore. Well, they're doing it in the Solo Cups. That's what I'm saying. And they'll still come around and police you. I grew up going to Sea Isle. And, dude, it was just beers, whatever. Really? Yeah.

Now it's like you have to have a cup, and they'll come around. If you have alcohol in your cup, they can just write you a fine because everyone's going to drink on the beach. Of course they are. See, and this is where my nanny state instincts – I'm like, all right, well, fuck off. People are also on the beach, and that's just a money grab for – we need rules, but really what it is is we just need a better culture around this stuff because nobody –

We just got to acknowledge the downsides, right? That's all I'm asking. Everybody's asking, like, sports gambling is the greatest thing ever. It's about freedom. You're going to get—and look at their ads, right? They're like, you're going to get rich. You'll join free $15. No, we'll give you $500 for five bucks. $500 deposit. I'm like, once again, bro, like, have you ever been to a casino? That shit doesn't get built based on winners. Like, 99% of the people who walk out of there are fucking losers. The odds that are you is almost 99%.

Well, I think the gambling companies would be happier doing this because they do do that little disclaimer like, by the way, guys, if you know, in case you have a problem. Yeah, but that's mostly bullshit. And a lot of it is because they're required by the state to put it in there. And then what the states do is they take part of these losses and they fund these gamblings. But it's like you are the receiver.

The rise in sports gambling addiction has created the need for these gambling addiction centers. So it's like, just don't have it in the first place. Well, the weirdest part about gambling addiction is that it's not even about winning or losing. I forget, I read some book. They like when they lose. That's the craziest part. They love it when they lose.

Or it's more like the flow state of just being like, it's not the winning or losing. It's just going from thing to thing and your brain's totally focused on something. Again, I get it. I like it. I love to play Baccarat. See, I don't like to gamble. I'm just filled with anxiety the whole time. I love games of chance. Poker is more actually, I think I could justify poker because it

I wouldn't even really call it gambling, although it is technically like kind of a game of chance. But there's a lot of strategy. Obviously, like the famous rounders quote, it's like the same 10 people may end up at the finals for a reason. It's not a game of fucking chance. Whereas if you go to blackjack competitions or Bach rock competitions, fucking you get lucky. Yeah, that's how it works.

I see the appeal of both, but there is something. This is where I'll flip the script, man. The magic of the cards. Like when the Baccarat thing... That's exactly what it is. You're like, nine, nine, nine. You're just sitting there. That moment, the anticipation...

And it's fun. And when you hit it, oh my God. It's so fun. Yeah, it's unbelievable. But I play like $15 tables in Charlestown, West Virginia, next to toothless Chinese women who are getting their Chinese ash on my stomach. Honestly, I'd rather be around them. I love them. Shout out to the... You always want to gamble with Chinese, if you're playing Baccarat, Chinese and Vietnamese. They know what's up.

That's a good idea. That's a good call. And the less teeth they have, the more good at the game they are. They've got patience. They have all these superstitions about dragons and colors. That's the thing, though, man. I was sitting there one time backstage at a comedy show, and they were playing dice in the green room. They had this little box.

And I was like, it is just people interacting with magic. People are attracted to gambling. It's just like a divine thing. Craps is also definitely the most fun game in the casino, although it is minus EV every single bet on the craps table. But when you play, the magic of it is it's a crowd's game. And I love craps gurus. Like I was talking about the diabetic guy, and he's like, yeah, he threw it over here, threw it over here. It's like the first time he throws to the right, he's going to roll seven, which means we all get fucked. So he's like, he about to roll that. Take your bet off. And I was like, all right, got it, got it. He was right.

Dude, my only time playing craps, a guy was like, just do what I do. And I was up $1,300 very quickly. Holy shit. Very quickly. $1,300? Very quickly. Whoa. You're playing higher stakes than I am, my man.

I was just drunk too. I was like, ugh. And then I got cocky. I was like, I know what's going on. As soon as I started doing my own bets, I was back down to 600. I just picked it up. I was like, thank you, sir. I just walked out. I was like, I'm fucking out. I mean, you left up. I will do that. I'm ruthless at a casino. If I win 100 bucks, I'm out. I'm like, get me the fuck out of here. I just won 100 bucks. It could be 200. To me, I'm like, I get so disgusted when I lose the

The feeling I get, I think about them just taking the time I spent into work and life, especially when I was just working a job where I was like, I could be like, oh, that was a day of my life. And I would just think of that just getting sucked into a vault, which is a huge chamber of money. To pay for free drinks for these fat alcoholics. It would kill me. Just sitting in the slot machine like...

No, it would fucking kill me. The worst part is I don't really gamble much anymore, but it was like when I first did it, I was in Vegas for my cousin's bachelor party, and he was like, you know, do this, do that. And I won the first four times I gambled. I won every time. What game was it? Blackjack. And I would just win. It's a very high variance game, though. That's the problem. You get fucked so easily. Dude, I'd win like $200. And I'd win $200, and I'd just get the fuck out. And I would spend all... My code was every dollar I won gambling, I'd spend it on everyone around me immediately. Oh.

And it worked. You got to spread the love. You got to get the juju. You need the luck. Just exactly. And then I tipped the dealers heavily. And then I was

was like i think i'm good at blackjack and i instantly lost like 700 so so fast dude oh yeah the fact that 15 minutes i was just oh yeah that's that's what they do because it's a high variance game and they know they can wipe you out way before you're gonna wipe them out so what they want to do is just deal all those hands per hour and uh already blackjack i think blackjack is a 5149 game i'm pretty sure even with perfect base were you playing basic strategy like perfect

No idea what the fuck I was doing. There was a guy. Yeah, there was no idea. And there'd be guys like, dude, you got a hit. And I'm like, no. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they get mad at you. Actually, yeah. They get furious. If you don't play basic strategy correctly, because if you fuck it up, you're going to fuck the whole shoe up for the entire table. And so they get very upset. They were very displeased with me. But I was like, bro, this is not my problem. We're not on a team. You're not sharing your money with me. Gamblers know this. This is gen pop shit. You're like, man, you got this gen pop shit.

I was like, dude, we're not on a fucking team. We're not splitting this money. This is my call. No, but it is a team because if you fuck the math up and he's going to hit it, he's going to get the wrong card because he's playing math and you're not. And so that's what's crazy. But Dana White has a theory. Yeah, Dana White is like, sometimes you got to go to war with the shoe and you got to, you got to, he's like, you got to turn basic strategy on the shoe. I was like, I don't really think that's how math works, but I mean, he's super rich. I don't care. Yeah. I heard he likes to gamble. Oh,

Oh, he's heavily. Me and my friends who like to go to the casino, we will hype ourselves up with Dana White clips. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, cause he has, uh, he has like a love of the game. Like he, he's like, he's like, you know, I'm rich as hell. I can get on the jet and I can go anywhere else. If my kids are gone, I'm going to the casino. Yeah. He's just like, that's what I, he's like, that's what I do. It's what I do. It's just scary. Once you're that rich, you have to play with big sums to excite yourself. He plays for millions. Like I think he, he said his dream is to play $1 million per hand on Baccarat.

A million dollars a hand. He said I think the highest he's gotten is like $300,000. To be fair, one of the reasons they probably won't let him, and that's one of the reasons I like Baccarat, is Baccarat is an actual 50-50 game. So the house edge is like .05%. So you actually have pretty, I mean you have good odds, but better than fucking Blackjack. For sure, yeah. Especially crap. Crap's a shit show. It's the most fun game in the casino, but every single one of the games, like I said, is minus EV. You're almost certainly going to lose money whenever you play.

especially in the long enough timeline. So if you do win, just get out of there. If you're up, if you have 100 and you won 200, get the fuck out. Like out immediately. Same with roulette. Do not play triple zero roulette. That is the biggest scam in the entire casino. Which triple zero? So on roulette, if you could just bet black

or red, the way that the house has its edge is in the old days they had a green zero. So after a while, the casino execs were like, what if we had two zeros? We're like, maybe these idiots in Vegas will, and you know, people are drunk and they're like, oh, there's only two zeros. I don't even think about the zeros. The math goes from like 49% or whatever to like the house edge goes from like one or 2% to like 7%.

And then after a while, they couldn't add three zeros. So they added like whatever the casino. No, they had a third one. So they go zero, then double zero. And then they have like the MGM logo on the wheel. So now the edge is like 11%. I thought you were saying they added one zero, one zero, and then a third, but it was a double zero. No, no. So there's a zero, then there's a double zero, and then there'll be so like MGM or Caesars or.

Just a blank space. You're just pissing your money away. Like people, you know, there's the meme. It's like if you win, you're like, put it all in black or whatever. Well, check the zeros because if there's triple zero, you're fucked. All right. Yeah. Not good odds. Dude, that's the, you know what I've done though with, with the poker or not poker. The last couple of times I've been in a casino environment for like standup or something. A lot of times they give you chips. Really?

So something I've had fun. Yeah, they'll be like, they'll give you like a couple. Just let me know the dates. I'll come with you. I'll give you like a hundred bucks. I'll give you like a hundred dollars. Oh, man. Yeah, you can break that down. We could turn that. Yeah, we could turn it into a 150. Yeah, yeah. We'll turn it into 150. Dude, what I started doing is when they give me chips, I put it on. I go to roulette or blackjack. I put it all on one hand. And if it wins, I give it to the dealer. So here you go. I love that. That's good. It's kind of. That's very nice. And if I lose, I go, hey, man, you know, whatever. It feels good. That does. Yeah. I mean, I mean, dude, you know, the people they have to deal with, like what a shitty job.

job my god i'm sure they make a lot of money some at least some of them but yeah probably the good ones but i can't

You're dealing with the absolute dregs of humanity. Especially at their worst, fucking up and being like, oh, it's ruined. I hate that, too, when people get mad at the dealers and they're like, it's your fault. I know. That guy sucks. I'm just like, dude, fuck you. But then you also don't really want to do anything because you're like, this guy's kind of crazy. So I'm not going to be a whole white knight. You put your hands on, maybe. But up until that, you're like, can we get security over here? Yeah, dude. It's a...

I've never got bit by the gambling bug, man. That's good. I tried to be a bookie for a while. Whoa. I tried, and it was just like... Yeah, but where were you getting your lines from? I don't know.

It was like my friend knew another book. It was like a sub bookie thing where I was like sending them kind of just bets. But it was my job to like collect them all, which is my friends. It was just my friends. And then what about when they don't pay? So here's what happened. They were like, I don't watch sports like that. So I didn't know what the fuck was going on. So they were just if they lost, they would call my and they like they would leave me voicemails all weekend being like, put another one. But they just kept doubling down, doubling down, doubling down.

And then eventually, like some of my friends owed me money. And I just got to the point where I was like, I'm not taking your money for this. And I just like told the guys like, I'm not doing this anymore. I just felt bad. Like if you like sell something to somebody. Yeah, that's like, yes, you gave me that. But to be like, yo, the Bears lost. You owe me $250. It just I was like, and you actually have to collect it, too. Yeah. And I was like, I don't want to do it. Yeah, exactly. That's the big thing, man. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, East Coast sports gambling culture has always been there. I don't.

know i mean i grew up here i don't remember thinking or hearing like other parents i guess i grew up in a bible bell area so i'm they wouldn't be doing it but i don't remember a lot of money changing hands on college football but now these days college football is actually even more worthy actions because apparently it's like there's the mismatches or whatever there's like underdogs and you know for somebody who hates gambling i know way too much about much about gambling i had a relationship

That and weed, too. You don't know a lot about weed. You don't know a lot about weed, though. I don't know a lot about the experience of weed. Have you ever smoked weed? I think I smoked weed when I was very drunk when I was in college once. Okay. And that's pretty much it. That makes sense. That's fair. Yeah. What'd you blaze? I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, it's weird. Dude, you're at a party. Blue dream. Somebody passes you whatever. It probably was fake. It was probably like not even marijuana. It was like somebody's grass that he had bought off of somebody else and got ripped off. Well, dude, the K2 is big in prison. That's like the stuff you're going to spice. I know. And that fucks people. I have friends that are like. People lose their minds. Yes. Is that right? Yes. I think these guys, you know, they'll do anything. Like speed balls and shit. And I have friends that are like.

Bro, the K2 is fucked up. Really? You're in jail. You're in the county jail. You just blaze K2 and have like an absolutely satanic experience. He's like, dude, it's for real. Like terrifying. I think I saw some videos about that. For some reason, my YouTube feed has been pushing me a lot of prison content. That's good. You can go down a serious rabbit hole.

It's awesome. Of Prison Tube. Shout out to Johnny Mitchell, by the way, The Connect. You should have him on your show, actually. What does he do? He's a comedian. He's like 6'7", but he does this show called The Connect where he interviews, when he went to jail as a weed dealer. And he interviews other people who were drug dealers and then also talks about their prison experience. So I actually did his show. He's an interesting, he actually likes politics. That's why we talked a little bit.

but some of his content is really good. Dude, it's the best. He interviews like, you know, like high level drug kingpins. Yeah. And he'll be like, tell me about the story, but then also like, what was it like to be in federal prison or whatever? Yeah. Uh, what a nightmare. I just finished a book about an LSD dealer who got caught in the early nineties. So he got sentenced for like 20 years. Well,

never even got caught with acid. It was just all, he was doing Western conspiracy. Yeah, exactly. Got a conspiracy charge 20 years. And it was during, he was in jail during the race, right? Like the crack laws. Sure. And he had a altercation with a Lieutenant, like one of the guards. And, uh, he was a white guy. And when the crack riots happened, it was,

It was more... It was just black inmates having riots or doing riots. And the lieutenant was like... He incited the riot. Really? Sent him to fucking Marion, which is like a super max. And he had to do, I think, like three years in Marion. Ooh.

He ended up only doing five years out of the 20 years. Well, I think everyone likes prison content because it's like, what would I do? Exactly. I thought about that too. I'm like, well, I'm not white, I'm not black, I'm not Hispanic. Everything's racial in prison. You'd be an other. That's what it's called. But how many others are there? Not a lot. The other Indians in prison are going to be like doctors for Medicare fraud. You know, they'll be like, hello, doc. You know what I mean? Like, what?

I think it's called others. I think your tech is like Inuit, Indian. Inuit? Yeah, it's like. Actually, they're probably pretty good, right? They can fight. Exactly. Pretty jacked. They're good with blades. Your numbers are not great. No, it's not good. So, yeah. I think it's like, dude, I got so deep into prison shit, but it's like, yeah. So then what would your strategy be? My strategy would be getting my parents to put money on my books, right? And then we pay the others for protection. That's the big thing you can do. My plan was always to pay the Muslim Brotherhood. Oh.

Oh, I like it. So you can pay the Muslim Brotherhood to protect. But then it's like, yeah, it is like racial. But I could fake it and I could just grow my beard and say that I was Muslim, right? Yeah, and you can get the Muslim diet too. Oh.

You'd have to answer a few questions. The halal food is better? Yeah. People do the kosher diet. That's a big thing. Really? If you can prove like you're Jewish and you're allowed to switch your religion every like six months or so to get a different diet. I swear to God. I read that Ramzi Youssef, who was the, he was the World Trade Center bomber, the 93 bomber. He apparently stayed in his cell for like 10 years straight whenever, because he refused to do a strip search because he said it violated his religion. But then a

Apparently he was like, okay, I'm now converted to Christianity. But apparently the warden and all of them don't believe him. So it's set up for, I don't really know what's going on, but I think he has started to, like, he's finally left his cell after 13 years. He's a Christian now. Well, he claims he's a Christian. Are they going to scope out his butthole? He's like, all right, I'm ready. Well, I think you have to do that thing with the squat and cough or whatever. He refused to do it. He's like, I won't do it. So he literally, man, he did not leave his cell.

his cell in supermax in uh adx florence or whatever for like 13 years like it was totally crazy and fine after 13 years he's like i think bro yeah i mean it's understandable it's like you spent 13 years you literally haven't you have never laughed you're like okay that's so impressive i would make 13 minutes and i'd be like you know what i'm gonna show this guy my ass i'll get it over with you know they say they sleep a lot that was the interesting thing yep that's a big you can train yourself to sleep 12 hours a day but it's like what do you do all day

Even when you're awake, that just sounds terrible. You work out, sleep a lot. In your cell. Yeah, just right. The guy in the book I read about the LSD dealer, Joel Blazer, he was saying he got schooled on masturbation techniques. Whoa. Just nothing, nothing hands-on. He said he never was a...

A punk, that was his term. A punk. But he was like going into it, how like you use a sock and you flip it inside out so you're hitting like more of the soft area. And then at the very end, he said you'd apply force to the under part of your head. And it's so funny, him writing, it's like my orgasms were intense and powerful. And it's like, damn. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, that's all he's got. Did you watch the show Escape at Dannemora? It's on Netflix. It's really good. It was created by Ben Stiller. And it's Benicio. It's Benicio and then the guy from There Will Be Blood, the guy who's the twins. Anyway, Paul Dano. That's his name, Paul Dano. And so those two are inmates who basically sweet talk this woman, this obese prison

worker and then they both start a relationship with her and they get her to smuggle in tools and then they literally tunnel out of the prison. It's a real life story. It happened in 2015. So I watched the show. It was fantastic, really good acting and then I went and read the real story. Dude, it was...

Like, it's a high... They're both in there for murder. Like, one guy literally murdered a police officer. The other guy, like, butchered and kidnapped an old man for money. These are, like, no-shit killers. Yeah. Locked up in this high-security prison in... I think it was in North New York. Like, you know, upstate New York? Like, the Adirondack? Yeah, up there. Yeah, it was in the Adirondacks. Yeah. And, yeah, so they were up there, and they were able to get her to smuggle in, like, hacksaw blades...

They cut their way out of their cells, were able to make their way through the pipes and everything, use a sledgehammer, hammer through multiple walls, and then cut a hole in a drain pipe or whatever, crawl through the pipe, come up out on the other side, crawl through a manhole. And they were on the run for like 23 days. One guy almost made it to Canada. They shot him like 10 miles from the Canadian border. Oh, man.

Yeah, one guy was killed. The other guy, sorry, spoiler alert. What year was this? 2015. What? Yeah, dude, it was like... They shot him at the... Well, I guess, yeah, if he's that high profile. Well, they were... A trooper was like, hey, who are you? And he just took off running. And the other guy apparently was a drunk, and they would find hunting cabins, and he would just be like, all right, and just grabbing whiskey. He was like a bear? He was like a bear? Yeah, he was like a bear. He was like a bear.

That's a good way of putting it. He's like, we need to pee. He was just walking around. Yeah, so the other guy left him. He was like, fuck this dude. He's like turned into a drunk. He's never going to make it. He's not going to make anything of himself. And so then he got killed, and then the other guy actually almost made it to Canada. Damn. Yeah. I know. The weird part of the show is it's structured really well. The first six episodes, you're really rooting for the prisoners. And then before you get to the last episode,

They do a flashback that shows what they did. And you're like, wait, fuck these guys. Like, this is terrible. Cause you don't know what they're in there for, you know, they're in prison, but then they're like, Oh, he literally murdered a cop. And then the other guy like kidnapped this man and tried to extort money from him and fucking like butchered him and cut him up into little pieces. You're like, his parlays didn't work. I'm like, we gotta get this guy out of here. Like, this is not good.

Yo guys, welcome to the advertisement portion of the podcast. I'm on my motherfucking Assassin's Creed shit right now. You guys can't even see me. I was doing this earlier to ensure audio quality because I'd fucked up the audio of the ads because I was recording through my laptop like a dumbass.

Now I kind of like the look now that I got my phone out. All right, guys, here, big thing, and I try to add some tranquil music to the ads because it's kind of jarring. You're just listening to a podcast. You give your brain over to the podcast, and out of nowhere, it's like, hey, listen up, we got an opening. It's like, fuck, man. Fuck, how about a heads up? So what we're doing, we're going to add a little gentle music and kind of get in the zone. You can chill. You can kind of use this time to kind of drift off, whatever you want to do, but we are going to do the advertisements, and I also, I got to say,

Here's my number one advertisement right now. I fucked up and I got, I'm doing shows. Hear me out here. I failed to promote my shows in the Irvine Improv, SoCal. I'm so fucking SoCal. I forgot to do the ads or make a flyer for the Irvine show. Eeps. My bad. It's next weekend. Thanksgiving weekend, Friday, November 29th, Saturday, November 30th. Two days, faux shows. Come out to motherfucking Irvine Improv.

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So Irvine Improv, Friday, November 29th, Saturday, November 30th. Let's go. Let's show these L.A. fucking pussies, dude, who's really fucking SoCal. They're not fucking SoCal. They're North Irvine. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Take a moment to say thank you to someone in your life, including your therapist, if that's someone you'd like to shout out. If you have multiple reads this month, perhaps highlight someone different each time. Well, let's see. Last week, I highlighted my mommy. I'm thankful for my mommy.

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Yeah, the prison culture shit is, like, fascinating, man. Absolutely. I've wanted... I, like, almost... I'm glad I've never went. You want to go. But I kind of was like, damn, I kind of wish, like, I... How much weight were you moving, then, when you were selling marijuana? Decent amount. Like... Like, pounds? Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. So you could have gone... You actually could have gone... I could have went to jail. In Philly, it was like, you could have five pounds, and you wouldn't really... You could, like, get locked up, but you wouldn't do, like, a sentence at a certain point, but...

That's what I've heard. But before, though, in the 2000s, it started getting more lax, more lax, more lax. By the end of it, nobody was going to jail for weed. Even the cops would find a half pound of weed on you and just take it and make the fuck out of here. How does it all work, though? So were you selling to other dealers? Because you had enough. Yeah, eventually. I would do both. The way it would work is you'd have to...

I remember I like saved all my money so hard and I eventually saved up $1,600 and I bought a half pound. And then I got to like actually make money off of it. And then eventually I started, you just get it fronted to you. You like find somebody that would front me like 30 pounds of weed. Yeah. That is the interesting thing I read from Johnny's podcast is like, there's a lot of consignment in the drug business. And then double consignment. I will get something fronted and double consign it to other people. And then you have to kind of like. What if he doesn't pay you? And then you got to pay the guy.

You tell them, hey, man, I'm falling on tough times. That's the thing. It's like you're never supposed to meet that person, like the top-level person, because they want to keep an air of like... Because they're going to tell the guy, like, you tell him I'm a fucking murderer. But I met the guy. Really? It wasn't... Were you ever physically threatened? Did you ever see weapons? I got robbed at gunpoint. Really? Oh, yeah. What was that like? What happened? It was surreal. It was like... So I got...

I got threatened with a club one time. That was embarrassing. I gave in to the club just outside. This guy was like, I want to fucking hit you with this. And I was like, all right. Like what kind of club? Like a handmade club? Like a wooden, just a fucking 1920s police officer baton, dude. He was like, but I was in West Philly trying to buy Percocets. Yeah, you did the right thing. Yeah, and there was like seven guys around me. And I was like, seriously, guys, where are my Percocets? And they were like, dude, we'll fucking bash your brains in. I was like, all right, you guys can keep the $200. You win. You win this round.

But yeah, it was that. And then I had a guy one time, he got robbed and blamed it on me. I think he just took my money, but he came out, like we were in an apartment. He was like, something's got to, he like cocked a gun and walked towards me. And I was like, oh shit. That time it was just like, everything just goes super slow. I remember it was being like very slow, terrified too. People were like, dude, if someone pulled a gun on me, I'd fight. It's like, I was frozen, totally frozen. Yeah, it's fight or flight. Exactly. Second time I- You got robbed twice. Well, that time I got like,

I had already I like paid this guy money to go get something and bring it to me and he's like I got robbed after you gave me the money and I was like bro it's fine I like yeah I was like it's all good man he's like nah man this is fucked up and he just fucking like cocked a gun like walked he was like did you do it I was like how the fuck did I what are you talking about oh like you did I set him up set him up right I was like why would I do that

Whatever. But that was the whole thing. And then the second time I was in an apartment and it was like someone had owed me a bunch of money and I was bringing them more stuff. So I had like the money they owed me and like about four pounds of weed. And he was going to give it to some other guy. And this just dude comes up in a ski mask with the kid who was like supposedly his customer. And the kid set it all up. But that one I was like, I remember everything slowed down again, but I was able to read their faces. And the kid I knew was very much afraid. And the other kid, I was like, he's pretending to be afraid. Yeah.

And then once the guy with the ski mask left with all the money and stuff, I was like, you did that. Did you beat him up? I started choking him. Good. Pretty badly. And then the kid I knew was like, I was like a blind rage. You have like a gun in your face. You're terrified. That's horrifying. I was just fucking just holding this kid's neck. Like, I know you fucking did that. And the kid's like, stop. And like, thank God. I was like, okay. Yeah. You know, but I don't think I wasn't violent like that, though. I was never. That was the only time. It was like almost all my money.

That's crazy, man. How did you get out of this? What got you out of it? This podcast. I wasn't on Percocets. I was selling them. I was never a vice-ridden man. Porn, obviously. You were a true leech on society. I was. Absolutely. You honestly should have gotten to prison. I'm not going to lie.

I think you owe three years of your life to this state. I think I should, actually. But now I do service through a high-paid podcast. That's true. Yeah, that's right. You're doing a service. But I do, I honestly, it's not like a sexy tale because, yeah, usually you have the redemptive arc of, like, I got caught. But I was always, I was pretty principled. Like, I remember, like, I was like, pills are evil. I didn't know anything about them. I'm like, oh, these are very addictive. Coke, I was like, this stuff's no good either.

But weed, there was a thing where it was like, this is good for people. Because I was smoking so much of it. I was like, weed is good for people. I was like, people need weed. It's good for you. I thought it was good for me. You know, I was obviously killing it in life. Fighting people for Percocets. People need me more like you. If you smoke weed, you can also end up in West Philadelphia with a club in your face. That's what marijuana will get you. That was for pills. Okay.

That was for pills. Weed was chill. I was high forever. I remember I tried to start a policy where with every customer, I would smoke a blunt with them, and I ended up smoking like nine blunts. How do you even function? I didn't. I wasn't functioning. So do you still smoke a lot? You said no. No. Now it's like very... I honestly try to...

There was a big impulsive element of it, but now I've been trying to do it where I've tried to do this for years where like I almost like incorporate it into a meditation practice. But then you get into it, you're like, well, why do I even need that if I meditate? You know, so that was kind of like, well, so now it's like special occasion. How much better do your sleep get?

So much better. That's the thing with weed. You can even say, well, I'm sleeping better, but your REM sleep is trashed. Yes, thank you. That's what I was about to bring up. It's totally true. There's a lot of people. There's a big psyop by the weed guys who are like, oh, you smoke a bowl right before bed, and it's like actually you're nuking your REM sleep. It's like people, you know when you get on an airplane, and people are like, just get a glass of wine just to go to bed. I'm like, actually, you're getting way shittier sleep. Yeah, it's like you're actually not sleeping at all. Dude, nobody wants to hear this. Semi-conscious, but.

Nobody wants to hear this. I tell people all the time. It's like... And the weed does fuck up your REM sleep. Yeah, it's empirical. You don't dream. You don't dream. And everyone knows when I stop smoking weed, I have crazy dreams. Like, that's because of your REM rebounding. Interesting. Same as alcohol. Oh, dude, it's... Yeah, it's like I...

I was completely like when I was younger. Also, I was making a living off it. I'm like, weed is awesome. This stuff rules. Everybody needs this stuff. Everyone needs to be selling this stuff under me. That's what happens with heroin, though. Heroin, if you're using heroin, you try to convince people to do heroin because you want to start selling it to them so then you don't have to pay. Really, it's very, that's kind of, yes, it's very, very evil. And you're like, you're like wanting to inject them too. Yeah, I remember someone explained that to me and I was like, someone offered me to sell heroin. I said, no, no.

I said, no, thank you, sir. Heroin's evil. The pills are evil, but no one knew what the fuck they were. Yeah. I came out of it. I got a... Is Percocet the same as Oxycodone? Oxycodone, yes. Percocet is Oxycodone mixed with Tylenol, basically. Okay. So Oxycodone and Oxycodone and Percocet are the same thing. Is it the same strength? Is that... No. What was the whole pill thing in the 2000s then? That was Oxycontin, right? Or Oxycontin. It was all of them. It was Percocet's... There's a bunch of them. It's...

Vicodin was hydro something. Hydrocodone. Hydrocodone, that's right. That's Vicodin. Vicodins were less desirable. If you had Vicodins, people were like, fine. But Percocets, people wanted them. And then the Oxys came out, which was just like 5 milligram Percocet, 10 milligram, whatever it was. Oxy would have been like 40. Yeah, it was like 80, right? It went up to 80. I read a book about it, and I remember I watched some documentary about the Sackler family. That shit is easy.

in terms of the cash programs and those pill mills and they had total knowledge. That's really what led to the heroin spike, all the black tar heroin and everything because these people had no idea what they were taking. It wasn't just the Sacklers. It was every doctor in the country. Dude, I would get a sore throat from my college campus than they do on Percocets and I'd be like,

No. Yeah. But when I was like 19 or 18 and I got my wisdom teeth out and my friend was like, bro, I will pay you. He's like, you'll get pills. I'll buy them off you. And I'm like, I'll give you $200. I'm like, what? For sure. Yes. I hate medicine. You can have my medicine. And dude, and it was like, I remember coming out of my wisdom teeth in a haze, but remembering like I asked them, I was like, what am I going to get? And they were like, okay.

we're just going to give you like ibuprofen. I was like, I'm a real baby with pain. Is there anything else I can have? They're like, yeah, we'll give you like, I think it was like Percocets or Hydrocodone. And they just gave me a full vial. And that was the whole thing that set the whole thing off because I made $200 off of it. And then once I went to college, I was like, I got to find more of those things. And my friend was like, yo, these things are awesome. So I didn't do them. Interesting. And then I watched, dude, I watched firsthand a whole, there was like this apartment complex. At a certain time, I was getting, I ended up finding like

I would get like 2,500 Viking in at a time. And I remember my friend would bring them into this apartment complex and they'd all get distributed throughout there. And dude, I watched this whole little ecosystem of people degenerate. That's when I was like, oh. I'm like 19, 20 at the time. And I was like, this is fucking bad. No, it's bad. Yeah, the pills, man. You should go to jail, dude. I'm such a piece of shit.

You just got to give back to society. I do, though. I do. I'm telling you. I'm all service now. I'm all service. All right. I'm wildly overpaid, but I'm a wildly overpaid servant. Dude, for real, though. The thing is, this is why I've been researching the world religions a lot. There's a really good book called The World's Religions by Houston Smith. And he goes into the connective tissue between Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, everything else, Islam, and Islam.

I do like growing up in a Christian like environment. It was, they don't sell it very well to young people. It's like, this sucks. I'm not, it's like, it's just a bunch of shit you got to take on face value. I started researching Hinduism when I was like,

It's a classic stoner move. Just be like so high. There's nothing more annoying than white guys. I know. Then George Harrison wannabes. In India, they literally laugh at you. They're like, yeah, we'll take your money. But I know. Yeah. But it is a beautiful religion. Yes, it's very. And it was like for me, that was it gave me a concept of God from researching it from that angle. And I was like, oh, that kind of makes sense. Good.

Yeah, that's great. But I like their relationship with pleasure from what I've read. It's not as forbidden. It's like, yeah, if you want pleasure, go get it until you're tired of it. Kind of. Well, it's hard to say, man, because even calling Hinduism a religion, obviously it is a religion, but it is intrinsic to the land of India.

And I'm really convinced of that. As in like the practice of Hinduism, like you don't go on Sunday. You just have temples everywhere. People stop on their way and off from work, like at the end of the day for special occasions, for little stuff, like you'll go and you'll ask a blessing. It's not in the Abrahamic faiths require like rigid practice. And this is much more like a part of daily life.

So the religion itself doesn't say yes or no or whatever about pleasure, hard work. It doesn't prescribe rules. But the Indian culture definitely also plays a huge part of it. So I'm not really convinced. That's why I think Buddhism is a religion. I think that actually is a religion. And that's one that can transpose into Western society or whatever. But Hinduism, you really got to be in India if you want to be a real Hindu, I think.

Yeah. Or at least practice it in the way that it's meant to be practiced. You can try, obviously, and everybody can do their own thing. But there's a huge amount of people who are Hindus who are atheists. They don't even believe in God. You're saying it's more of a cultural kind of practice. It's part of the Indian culture. When you're there, it just makes sense. That's how people practice their lives. Each village has its own deity. There's a certain type of blessing, or they call it a puja, which is a ceremony, which is the...

type of puja that you would do for this milestone in your life or whatever, whereas Abrahamic faiths is like on Sunday or on Friday, we pray. We pray five times a day and we do it at this time and the chant of the prayer and the meat that we eat is like this, where even amongst Hindus, like 40% of Hindus are vegetarian, but 60% are not. So there's no yes and no on life or on how to live. It's just...

It's just very much, yeah, part of the culture over 8,000, 9,000 years. Yeah, that is, it is such a funny stoner move though to be like, dude, I think I'm, you just do mushrooms. And yoga. It's like girls who are into yoga, it's like, shut up.

They're like, my shavasana. Yeah, that is tough. When you know four Sanskrit words and you're like, my suka. Yes. Or the om tattoos. You're just like, spare me. I will say, dude, I will say though, from just like a... Isn't that a Hindu deity? It kind of looks like it. What do you got going on over there? Yeah,

Yeah, that is. That's Sanskrit. That's Sanskrit down there. I can't read it. Oh, this? No, this is actually English. Dude, this was a shirt I designed to try to sell as merch, and it's a very low seller. Chocker. Yeah, dude, I do think, though, there's something religiously... Let's just say in the United States, it's like...

Christianity is, it's cool. It's getting a resurgence. I don't think so. Statistically, no. Yeah, I guess maybe that's just the internet memes. Yeah, I think you're thinking of Tradwife. I'm thinking of Tradwife. If you take a look at the stats, Christianity is never, I mean, not Christianity, religion. We have never lived in a more secular country. Yeah. Honestly, even coming back here is shocking. Like to Texas in the modern, I mean, I literally grew up here. This was a deep,

Bible Belt state. That's what I remember. And to watch it become like cosmopolitan is weird, honestly. Even when I go back to College Station, I mean, I don't know, I guess I just don't feel the same. I don't live there anymore. It's just kind of different. But it doesn't just feel the way that it did back then.

And in general, stats-wise, evangelism, Catholicism, all practicing religions and the rise of people who just call themselves spiritual or whatever has never been higher. And that's really – I mean the right-wing trad people are the ones who blame that for where we are. But honestly, kind of to make it political, I think that's why Trump is the first –

real secular president. Like everybody knows, like Trump is not. He loves the Bible. What are you talking about? He loves the Bible. Yeah, but it's like, yeah, he loves it so much that he sells, sells a copy. But you know, 30% of the people who voted for Trump are literally pro-choice, like over 30%. That's crazy, right? If you think about it in terms of the abortion election and all that. So the mass secularization of America has made being conservative, like just, the Texas I grew up in, George W. Bush was literally my governor. That type of, you know, conservatism, it's fucking gone.

Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. I think they're... To bring me back to my main point, I think the... I do think there's a lot of people who have left organized religion who are going towards kind of spiritualism, but everyone has a very... I think now it's like everyone has a very strained relationship. If people are trying to practice some form of God in their life... Mm-hmm.

I do feel like researching other religions helps people kind of like conceptualize it because you're like, yeah, I'm not going to do this, but you can read that and like, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Of course it does. And then even then, I mean, I could defend. What are your stances on that? What, religion? Yeah, religion, God, believing in God. I'm not religious at all.

I mean, I grew up around here, so I still have a very side-eye view of a lot of the Bible Belt stuff. But I think it's good for people. Now that I've been removed from it for quite a long time, look, it's like the South Park episode about Mormonism. We're like, look, this is some batshit crazy stuff. But the truth is, they're living a better life than you.

Maybe we're the crazy ones, right? They're the ones who believe in Planet Kolob or whatever, but they have nine children. They're really happy. They help each other. The Mormon church has no debt. They make sure that you get very cheap education at BYU. If you stay in the faith, they take care of you. They take care of each other. I grew up around a lot of Mormons. They're some of the happiest people I know. They have multiple children. They settled well. They seem like they're doing...

really well in life and they get to, you know, they have a big community aspect where you always have just dozens of people who share your values, who are around, who if you're out of town, somebody can come watch your pets or if you need help with your kids or whatever. So like they're the winners in life, man. Like that's what people need to take away. That's my question is like, that's what I've been trying to like read about and like think about a lot is like, what is the grounding force for like people's lives? And if it, you know, if it dissipates into like,

If there is no... That's, like, what religion has been forever. And now people are... The antidepressants, all that stuff. People are just now, like, you have to, like, back up the molecules in your brain because you're sad because your worldview is inherently kind of bleak. Very well said. And also, I mean, like, wokeism, quote-unquote, is a religion. Any sort of being anti-woke is also a religion. It is, yeah. Politics is a religion. For sure. So religion will find a way in its life whether you find religion or not. The thing is about it is...

What I would advocate for is that I think especially in big cities and like in elite circles, there's a real sneering at religion. But they don't look at it in the way that I just said where it's doing quite a lot of good for people who are in the faith and the community. So for me, I'm just like, look, do whatever you want to do. And actually having lived my entire adult life in mass secular America, we have a lot of problems.

problems, right? Like the gathering place of the secular American is the bar. It shouldn't be. That's weird, actually. Like waiting until you're in your mid-30s to even try to start having children. And then by that time, like, I don't know. I just think there's a lot of choices. They should be turning into Christ's blood. There's just choices that you make that make it all about you. And one of the things that are really important about religion is like, actually, no, it's not about you. It's about other people. And so by doing that and by choosing the secular elite

path. You are literally pursuing something that is just all about you. It's about the pursuit of your own pleasure, about your own money, about all of this, but it will strip away any of the great things in life that will genuinely make you happy. So, uh, if you're not religious, then you have to actually consciously seek that out. And I, you know, you probably, I tell you this, you have children now, right? Like it's probably harder to connect and find like groups of other parents. Whereas in the, if you grew up in Texas in the nineties and you went to church, it's

That's dusted, bro. You're done. Day one, it's sold. Someone will be at your house when your wife gives birth. They will have food waiting in your house. But if you don't have that type of community, that's really hard. The number of people... Actually, there's a really interesting American Family Studies study that shows that the number of friends, particularly among men, the number of male friends that people have has an all-time low. I think the record number is actually in the zero to one category of people who consider themselves like,

close friends. And so if you think about it, like in that community aspect, people are lonelier than ever. They're having difficulty really finding a mate. They're really having problems in terms of fostering close friendships. So they're doing what? Betting parlays on gambling. They just want to feel something. Stimulate the brain. They're stimulating the brain. Yeah, that is sad. That's my problem is like there needs to be some sort of cohesive organizing force. And most of them are negative where it's like, you know, again, it's like fucking, you know, Proud Boys, all that. You can like do it.

The things are... And it's not even like, you know...

A lot of it, I think, does come down to the media because it's like, you know, it's like you don't have to take your worldview or your life prescriptive path of the media. But it's like they are experts. They are this. And it is looked upon as like this is an authoritative source of information. Yeah. And it's just mean. Like everything you see is just like he's a fuck you. This guy is such a loser. Let me tell you about this guy. It's on both sides. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's bad for people mentally. Well, definitely. But I will give that some that's a big cope also because people blame the media. It's like, look, that's what you people want.

Like at a certain point, like it's true. I could be so much more successful, wealthy and famous if I just did that. I actually am actively giving up. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. No, I know. But that's a choice that I'm making. But the truth is, is that that is what most people want. Most people want to fulfill their base instincts. They want to have that, you know, that dopamine rush of saying, yeah. I mean, honestly, Shane's bit about the Fox News dad. I mean, I actually the first time I met him, I was like, you know, that really is like one of the

Probably one of the most important bits you've ever done because it's deeply true. It's in the vernacular now. People will say I have a fox. I have a fox. It is a deeply true like it's a bit it's a comedy bit, but that is like an archetype and something that really does exist like in American society. No, it is. It's true. And it's I would flip it and say, you there are also MSNBC moms out there.

who are just as bad on wine moms and all that. But it is a cancer on American society. But honestly, that's what they want. I was talking with Lex yesterday, and I brought up one of my favorite media quotes, and it's from a book called The Loudest Voice in the Room. It's a biography of Roger Ailes, who was the chairman of Fox News and the creator. And he said, people want to be informed. People don't want to be informed. They want to feel informed. And I think that is the most deeply true thing about media that I've ever read.

ever read. Yeah, that's true. I guess what I'm saying is it's just bad. It's bad because it's like you were saying, there's a financial incentive to be a major dickhead, which when I first saw reality TV, I was like, this is bad. This is creating a pathway. It's so good. It's bad for

If you were smoking weed back then, you would have been like, what the fuck, dude? This is so fucked up. I remember I was just high watching reality TV. This is modeling a type of behavior that also pays off genuinely, which taps into people's own biological drives.

And I was like, this is not good because that's what's being modeled. That's what you're pushed unconsciously to do. And like you were saying, like, dude, if you want it to like really double down, anyone, anyone's going to do it. Oh, hang couple American flags back here and be like, let me tell you something. Motherfucker. I get so annoyed. You're a grifter or whatever. I'm like, bitch, I'm like, I could make way more money.

I could grift. Yeah, if I wanted to grift, I would grift you, you bitch. Oh, yeah, yeah. If I just sat there and be like, look at these liberal tears that are flowing from their faces. I'm telling you, all the channels, you put an American flag behind you, you sell your merch hat, and it's just like... Especially for me, brown guy, be like, brown guy loves Trump. I know, I know, I know, dude. The problem is that I get bored, man.

I find those people so utterly boring that I have no interest in even talking to them. It's embarrassing. It is humiliating. You could make a lot of money. Oh, a shit ton of money. Especially if you're a black guy that's at the top of the market. If you're a black guy with a red hat, let me tell you something. You'll be famous overnight. MAGA Meemaws will be sending you five bucks a month and being like, have you seen this nice young man? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I do hope we can somehow move to something that animates people. Do you think people will ever be animated other than their base instincts by the masses? Or do you think there will be an actual... Gen pop? No. Gen pop will always be the same. Always be. Yeah, look. America, society, these rise of mass media has always looked exactly the same. People think it's worse now than it ever was. Total bullshit. If you go back and you look at the yellow journalism era, it was insane.

That's true. That's true.

And one of the ways that people would get interested and instigate politics is socialists and others would be like, we're starting a socialist newspaper because the news itself was a political vector. That's crazy. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Because I was totally bought into like, dude, it's never been this bad. No, absolutely not. It's bullshit.

So like the thing is, is that in the old days, the rise of yellow journalism, of the penny papers, people like William Randolph Hearst and others, and before him, like Joseph Gordon Bennett, it was all sensationalism, tabloid. That's where it all comes from. And that was overwhelmingly popular.

What happened is that the old days that we romanticize is actually a very unique time in American history where the vast majority of Americans were getting their news from the network TV. So in the 60s and the 70s, everybody romanticizes Walter Cronkite and all this stuff. Let me tell you something. The news was just as fake back then as it is today.

It's just that, thank God we have the internet to be like, no, no, no, no. It's fake and it's bullshit. Because so I book, it's a slog, but people should read it. It's called Personal History by Catherine Graham. She ran the Washington Post. She was the owner of it. And her father bought the paper. And then her son is the one who sold it to Jeff Bezos. But so she ran the paper for basically her entire life. Her husband ran it. Then he committed suicide. She took over and ran it for decades.

decades. And if you read that paper, actually, if you've ever watched the movie, The Post, it's directed by Steven Spielberg with Tom Hanks, and it's about the Pentagon Papers. Meryl Streep plays her in the movie. And it's really like when reading that book, you're like, you know, she's getting politicking with Jim Kennedy is at dinner and he's like giving them advice on how to write in the paper. And her husband, who was the owner of The Post, is friends with JFK. And he's skewing the coverage in a certain way. So everyone is

has this romantic nature about the 60s and Cronkite. It's like, no, they were just as partisan as people are today as Rachel Maddow and these people. But America didn't know. They had much more higher institutional trust. And cable news exploded that, obviously, after the network era. And then the rise of blogs and

everything, but people were really romanticized this, oh, the news was fair and balanced. It's like, no, it's not that the news is what got us into Vietnam. You know, it wasn't fair and balanced. These people were writing columns and justifying all this bullshit. They knew what was happening. They didn't report any of it. It was only in like, what, 1968. We finally tell everybody the truth. By that time, 500,000 Americans reported

are sitting in Vietnam. JFK, we used to go and hang out and all of his secretaries, McNamara and all these guys were hanging out in Georgetown, which is a very rich neighborhood at their fancy ass mansions, secretly telling them what they should write in their papers. Like, dude, it's, it's always been like as corrupt. People just didn't know it.

I feel like Trump did kind of crack the, he parted the veil to be like, yo, this is actually, a lot of this is bullshit. The roots of Trump are in, there's a famous clip, 2012, Newt Gingrich was the Republican debate, South Carolina debate. And the opening question, even I will admit it's a crazy question. They were like, Mr. Gingrich, you're, he like, I don't know the circumstances. He's on his third wife and he like divorces his wife. I think she was going through cancer or something like that. Oh, it was terrible. Cancer divorce.

No, it was bad. It was bad. And it was the second time that he'd done something like that. Anyway, that was the opening question. And Gingrich is like, let me tell you something. That was one of the most disgusting acts. And the mainstream media is a direct participant, something like that, in the Democratic Party. And the crap, the pop, as you would say, from the audience roars. Like you can hear it on the microphone. How?

Whoa. And all of that. And I watched that clip because all the ingredients for Trump were there the whole time. It's just like, you have to go and look for it. Like Michelle Bachman. He was the first one that tapped into that. Well, he was the first one who attacked his media on the stage and flipped the debate and made it about them. And it was a referendum. It was like, no, fuck you, actually. Yeah.

And you could see John King is kind of taken aback because he's never experienced this before. And now it's the norm in Republican politics. People expect it. At that time, it was crazy. It was shocking. But yeah, I mean, I watched that clip a lot because I'm like, that's it. That's where Donald Trump, 2015, the famous debate, you know, and Megyn Kelly's like, Mr. Trump, you've called women pigs. You know, he's like, only Rosie O'Donnell. And it was just, it's just, oh.

Everyone. Yeah, crushed. The crowd just roars, man. And it's like, that was it. Like, that's the moment that he won, in my opinion, in the 2015 primary. Broke politics forever. But the ingredients were there. They were all there. It's funny that he was like, that was like one of the first dominoes that toppled the mainstream media, and he was just trying to get a fourth wife. He was just trying to get something new. He was like, bro, nothing's going to stop me. Not the entire mainstream media. No, I think what it is in all of this is that the base has always

always hated the media. It's just that the politicians, they need the media. I mean, this is another like fakery out of all of this is that the idea that the Republicans hate the media, like nobody craves media attention more than Republicans. For sure. Specifically mainstream media. There are some good ones out there who actually understand that the news is bad and like don't want to give them access. But in reality, like as much as they say they hate it, like they want to be on CNN, bro. They like it. You know, they want to go on Fox. They want they don't. I don't know.

So speaking of the politician stuff, so Matt Gaetz, that's something I can't wrap my head around. He got appointed. That's his name. Attorney General. Attorney General. Yeah, he's nominated to be the Attorney General. And the big thing about him is that he might have trafficked kids. That's a weird one. The details are very strange. And to be fair, the DOJ did drop their case against him. Exactly. So they investigated it, and they leaked a lot of the details. So he was never convicted or even prosecuted.

Yeah. Of any of this. And there genuinely was some weird. I'd have to go back and look at the details, but somebody was trying to blackmail him for like twenty five million dollars. And that's how some of this stuff came out. But like empirically, he was definitely like hooking up with like very young girls and like hanging out with sketchy people and getting blackout drunk, like all while he was a congressman.

So the detail, as I understand it, 2021 to now, there's been a three-year investigation in the House Ethics Committee about Gates and his behavior that was instigated by an attorney who filed a complaint claiming to represent an underage girl who says that she slept with Matt Gates whenever she was underage. Now, obviously, though, she may claim that, but as I understand it, the feds did investigate

at least some of these claims. And of course they haven't brought charges. Sure. So the report itself was due to be released. Uh, I think tomorrow actually went from the day that we are taping and that report now will not be released because what happened is, is that Gates got nominated to be the attorney general. He resigned as a house of representatives. So the house ethics committee two days later of his nomination was supposed to release that, but they will no longer release the report because he's no longer a sitting member of Congress considering his resignation. So there's some background, uh,

That's kind of sketchy, yeah. Look, I mean, his behavior has also made it a little weird in terms of, first of all, just what he admitted to is wild. Okay.

Also, why would he be appointed, though? It almost seems like he'd have perhaps dirt on DJT. I don't know. You know what I mean? No, no. I don't think it's a dirt thing. Dude, Gates is just one of his biggest... He's one of his bros. Yeah. No, not bros. He's one of his biggest defenders on television. He's one of those people who, like, anything goes, like, he's all in. I mean, look, I get it. It seems tactical, I'm saying, to abandon Congress and have a higher job two days before potentially the shoe drops. Look, you could read that into that if you want.

But at the same time, why would Trump go along with that scheme then? Because for this, Trump would have to be like, okay, Matt, I'll bail you out. That's what I'm saying. That's hence the dirt. I don't know. I'm just wildly speculating. I'm trying to figure out why appoint somebody with such a sketchy record. Oh, I mean, I think that the

The case is simple. Gates is a true believer. That's what it is. He's been all in for Trump for eight years. He was his biggest defender on television. Trump loves him. He always goes on Fox and he's always, Matt Gates is always like, I'm all in for Trump. To be fair, Gates is an interesting guy. Like from my perspective, he is generally been anti-war. Like he's been sponsored a lot of stuff with progressive Democrats about trying to end forever wars and,

He's somebody who wanted to pardon Edward Snowden. He opposed the Julian Assange stuff. You'll like this. He's very pro-weed. He's one of the most pro-marijuana members of Congress. I don't care about weed anymore. I like mushrooms. Okay. Well, we're coming for that next.

But he had... Yeah, he's actually quite libertarian is the way to put it. He's pro-Bitcoin, you know? I see, I see. He's been a heterodox guy for a while. So I'm actually... I'm not that worried about... People hate Matt Gaetz because, you know, I mean, look, he's kind of an asshole, like, media-wise. For sure. He's got a reputation about town and he likes to come in and...

he blows, like, he, he likes to mouth off. Can we put it that way? Yeah, for sure. He's got a bad, like, the Republicans hate him because he's, he's the one who mounted that coup against Kevin McCarthy and got Kevin McCarthy kicked out. So, a lot of the establishment types hate him, but Trump loves him because he's loyal and, uh, he wants him to, like, root out a lot of the people who are in the Department of Justice who he would see as, like, you know, deep state or enemies or whatever. For sure. And,

I honestly think Gates would do that. But, I mean, it is crazy because AG is like a real... Dude, you're the chief law, like, legal officer of the United States. Like, you have to determine the legality of President's actions. You direct the Department of Justice and the FBI, like, what type of cases we're going to prosecute or not. Like, you make the call.

on some like really big decisions. Like you have to write the legal justification sometimes for what the president is doing, work with the White House Counsel's Office. I mean, it is a real no shit job. Like it's a real job. And yeah. I'm glad you said that because that was my next question. I had to go look it up. I had to go look it up because I was like, yo, does he even have a law?

degree, but he does. But I was like, I don't know if he's a lawyer. That's fucking wild. We're about to enter the Senate and the House are Republican now. They'll get two Supreme Court picks most likely. Yeah, Alito and Clarence Thomas. They'll probably resign. Although Sonia Sotomayor, one of the Democrats, she's 70, but she does have type 1 diabetes. And Democrats have tried to get her to resign because they're like, hey, you need to go so that Biden can appoint somebody. But she pulled an RBG and she's like, I'm not going anywhere.

Whoa. Yeah. Damn, because they wanted one. Yeah.

Yeah, because we're going to enter into it. What's up? Can you believe that she didn't? These people are such narcissists. Yeah, I can totally believe that she didn't. So believes in power and not even being part... I mean, look, I don't really care, but it's more from a liberal perspective. It's like, if you think this is fascism and the end of democracy, like, bitch, then resign. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, I know. You're literally type 1 diabetic, 7 years old, and you're obese. Like, what do you think is going to happen? Look at a fucking actuarial table. Dude, it is sad, though, if you think about, like...

Even like what happened to Biden. It's like being that old and being driven by kind of like the power drive until like your brain just falls apart. It's pretty fucking terrible. I mean, I say it's sad, but it's also like pathetic and deeply egomaniacal and narcissistic. And at the end of the day, you know, that's what it takes to be a politician. Like, that's the truth. He, by the way, has been the same his entire life. So I talked about this book yesterday with Friedman called What It Takes.

is written in 1988. It's about the 1988 presidential campaign. That's where Biden had that plagiarism scandal. He's been an egomaniacal narcissist, chip on his shoulder guy for his entire life. So, you know, what they say about when you get old is it just makes you more of what you already are.

already are. If you're already an arrogant fuck, you're just going to be more of an arrogant fuck when you're old. That's so sad, man. It's true. That's so sad. That was my overarching point with religion. I feel like as a society, we need a vehicle for self-transcendence so that you don't become a just...

80-year-old walking around demented, like trying to lead the country. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, that's like genuinely like self-idolatry. He's like, I am the one. I will stop Donald Trump. I'm the most important figure. Nothing is bigger than me. You know, it's pure narcissism. And he's chiefly responsible for both for being a terrible president, but also for the loss of the Democratic Party. It really, I mean, it's crazy. If I were them, I would be freaking out. I would...

I would be so furious. I mean, nobody has fucked their party more than Biden since George W. Bush and his handling of the Iraq war. Yeah, for sure. What do you think the future of the Democratic Party is going to look like? Because I thought the same thing. Like, dude, if they don't like...

I think they're going to need an outside account. They're going to need a Democrat. Yeah, that was my prediction. Not necessarily Democratic Trump, but if we're in an era. So, for example, like Obama, like rose from the ashes. Right. Because, you know, he was a no name senator. He gave it a great speech. No for big fucking deal. OK. Yeah. But then he came out of nowhere. He had anti-war credentials. And Harry Reid is actually the one who was like, you should run for president. He's like, you're not a good senator. He's like, you don't like it here. He's like, get out.

of here. Go run for president. He's the first person who put that in Obama's mind. But with the rest of them, like if we look in the past, Bill Clinton also came out of nowhere in 92. We had 12 years of Republican rule in 1980 to 1992. It was Reagan and it was Bush.

And Clinton, I mean, he was a no-name governor from Arkansas, but he created this thing, the Democratic Leadership Committee, which, like, basically moved the Democratic Party much more to the right and made it more of, like, a neoliberal thing. And that's how he was able to win, like, a major victory in 92. Yeah.

Somebody will come. I think that person needs to come from the ashes, though. I think anybody tainted by the stain of like wokeism from the 2010s and the Great Awakening onward on top of like the Biden and all the trans shit and all this. Plus, you know, just this whole last decade has been a nightmare.

It collapsed in on itself. And it collapsed in on itself. So anybody really tainted by that at the national political level, they're going to have a tough time, in my opinion. That's why, even though I think Gavin Newsom is very talented and I think that Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg and all these other people, I think that they like to believe that they could overcome it. And maybe, right? Trump could fuck everything up and he could be a nightmare.

in terms of his popularity, and it'd be easy to beat him. Anybody could. But if he doesn't, and if he governs even reasonably well, 40-50% approval rating, you're going to need somebody with real political entrepreneurship and skills to be able to rise out of that. Yeah, and the Republican side has kind of, I feel like, a deeper roster. They get people they can tap that are also like...

Like RFK, he can like talk. He's not like a total robot. Well, he's not a Republican, right? So he's whatever he is. Yeah, he's an independent. He's endorsed Trump. Yes. Although I don't think RFK will ever run again. I don't think he will. I don't think he will. But I'm saying they seem to have like a Tulsi Gabbard. Like they have like a deeper roster of people. Maybe that's just me because I'm biased, but it's like. Maybe. I don't know if anyone like you're saying like these like Newsom, Buttigieg is like, I really think they need a new person.

Absolutely. You need somebody who is totally untainted by the system. And that's what Obama was. That's what Bill Clinton was. I mean, the appetite for... Although, I will say, the thing is about the Democratic base is now it's rich white people. And the thing is about rich white people is they don't really give a shit about a lot of stuff. They just want to win. Like, I'm serious. They are just like, we want to win. They're like...

Oh, you need to say what? Okay, whatever. You know, like say it. Just win. So it is a little different this time because this time around, whatever narrative they're sold about what will beat Trump, that's who they're going to nominate. That's why they nominated Biden. They didn't care what he stood for. They were like, we need somebody. We need Trump out of here.

Yeah. That's what it's going to be like. Bring out the dancing black ladies. They threw everything. They were like, Beyonce, Cardi. So were you as shocked as I was that they got paid? I had no idea. I knew they got paid. I had no idea. I didn't know. I was so naive. I thought celebrities just did it because they supported them. If they didn't get paid, it means because they're at the Diddy parties. You better show my W-2. Yeah. It's just so weird to be like, we're going to have- A million dollars to Oprah? A million dollars. A million bucks, dude. She's a billionaire. What the fuck do you need a million dollars for?

What are we doing? I mean, it's a nice little treat. Yeah, sure. But don't you already support Kamala? Like, just do it, you know? And that's the thing is, I don't think they're getting paid to say something that they don't already believe. But if you already believe it, just do it for free. Why would you? I don't think they believe it. You can't. You can't. You can't. Like, there's no way. There's no like, you know, again, it's like Republicans. I'm not like a big Republican guy, but I really like zoom in on like the.

liberal Democrat, like the modern liberal Democrat type. It's like, I don't really see a coherent vision at all. It's, it's all, it's too bought in on the post-modernism, which is in itself is self-contradictory and goes nowhere. Definitely. So that's kind of what happened to them. They like, it was there. Like Trump was the rights energizer battery pack.

Theirs was like the postmodern racial power versus, you know, worldview. Yeah, it's very odd. And it just literally collapses in on itself and it contradicts itself. Like, you know, there's no hierarchies. It's like, well, who do you prefer, Trump or Biden? Well, there are hierarchies, all that bullshit. But it's like, if I were a Democrat leading the campaign, an outsider candidate, and I would come by and be like, if you're a Trump supporter, I still love you, man. That's all they have to do.

Yeah, I mean, they made the whole dictator fascist playbook that they ran this time. That was very stupid. You know, they did. So I don't know how they're going to do it, man. I really don't. I have confidence that they will figure it out just because people are too triumphalist. As in, I know I was talking about the 2008 Obama wins, right? They're like, we will never lose an election again. James Carville literally wrote a book called 40 More Years.

about how the Democrats will be in power forever. Demographics are destiny. It's over. It's a white party. And now Donald Trump has won two out of the last three presidential elections. The last one, he won the popular vote and he won Latino men. He basically completed a racial realignment of U.S. politics. It's insane. Imagine going back to 2008 and telling me that.

That was only 16 years ago, man. It wasn't that long ago. And Obama lost his juice. They trotted him out to be like, go yell at young black guys. Like, dude, it just is like, oh, man. You sneering. I have Obama derangement syndrome. Like, I hate Obama.

And like not for the reasons that like white boomers hate him. We're like, he's destroying this country. I was working construction when he got elected and it was a somber day for like, for the boomers. White. Yeah. Like boomer age, white guys, they'd come into work and be like, they were, they were just mad. He was a black guy. That was it. It was, they came in and they were going, it was so, it was kind of funny. Yeah.

But I do agree. I think there's something very sinister about wrapping yourself in that cultural identity. I call him the Instagram president. He's just this cultural elite. He's everything that he supposedly stood against. And the way that he governed, he came and he was supposed to end the Iraq war and the financial crisis he was supposed to solve. He fucked both of those up. We had a horrible economic depression for the entire period. If you want to look at the

wealth inequality, the explosion, the lack of wage growth that all happened under Obama. He got lucky that Mitt Romney ran against him. All the ingredients to be able to beat him were there. Romney just ran a terrible campaign. And then immigration in 2014, he over-interprets his mandate and he's like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm going to do whatever I

Yeah.

And that leads to the 2014, that 2014 executive order leads directly. One year later, Trump comes down the escalator and says, no, we're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. So there are direct consequences for these actions. And immigration is the number one reason, in my opinion, why Donald Trump was elected.

Like, there's no question. What do you think about the population collapse that's going to come when all the boomers go? I think it's fake. You don't think we're going to have to be just importing people? No. I mean, I think that's a very convenient explanation. I mean, look, at a certain point, too. If the numbers dip, how is it not real? No. What I'm saying is that the idea that, first of all, we're going to have population collapse and we're like, Japan is just, like, not true.

But there's, first of all, but the second is there's this presumption that the only way to do it is to import, like, basically, like, second-class citizens from South America. Did you ever read The Next Hundred Years by George Friedman? I have not read that book. I think I'm familiar with the thesis. That's his big thing. I mean, this is a very popular way that people justify, like,

mass migration. First of all, like, there's another way, which is you could try both economic and social incentives to change the picture. But the other thing is there's something, like, really sick about this idea that the only way to, like, the birth rate itself is the only thing that matters and not, like,

what the actual makeup of the United States is and all the secondary and the third, the secondary tertiary effects of what mass illegal immigration like does to the U.S. economy, to U.S. society. It makes a mockery of like U.S. law and like the entire way our immigration system works is just totally fucked up. Like people don't understand. Like,

Our immigration system is totally unique in the Western world. The entire rest of the Western world has basically merit-based immigration. We are the only country still left on family-based chain migration. So what that means is that, so I'm a U.S. citizen, right? And so, because I was born here, I was born here in Bryan, Texas, but the way it would have worked is my parents who immigrated here, their family members have a preference in the U.S. immigration system if they were able to sponsor someone to come to America.

It doesn't matter whether those family members are, are they college educated? Like, who are these people, right? Like, do you have a degree? Like, what's your job? Like, are you able to support yourself? That makes sense. If you migrate to Australia, they're like, they have a points-based immigration system. So they're like, college degree, cool. Oh, you speak English? Much higher up at the list. For sure. That's how it should work. It should be merit-based. It should be based upon, are you going to benefit America? Now, people get very squirrely about this because it is contrary to the way that what I talked about earlier, the 1800s mass immigration.

Yeah, that was my mom's dad. Oh, no, it was the 1900s. Right, but here's a good quote that I heard. We don't make immigration policy for our grandparents. We do it for our grandchildren. For sure. So in the 1800s, we had what? Industrial Revolution. We needed a shit ton of basically just like

bodies to sit there. Dumbasses. Yeah. Shovel. Oh, you can swing a shovel? Cool. You're fucking Slovenian? Who cares? Whatever. But that's not how the U.S. economy works. Yeah. The U.S. economy is a service-based economy. Our manufacturing jobs are high-tech manufacturing. Like, you need to be able to speak English to function in America. Yeah.

12 million people illegally entered this country in the last four years. The 27% of them don't have a high school diploma in Spanish, by the way, so they're barely literate in Spanish. 20-something percent of them have barely completed a high school education by Latin American standards or wherever they came from. And then only a small portion are actually college educated. So look, be real. Look at the stats. What is that going to cost the United States? Are they bad people? Absolutely.

Absolutely not. For sure. But it makes a mockery of this idea of, first of all, just order. Like in terms of being able to just come here no matter who you are, you just raise your hand, fake, say, I fear for my life. Yeah. You're an economic migrant, let's all be honest. And if you interview these people, they'll tell you the same. They're like, I came here for a job. I don't begrudge you, that's fine. But the point is that you can't allow that system to be in place where basically the cost of the bill of all this is going to come down to us. So we need to dramatically shift

to an actual merit-based immigration system. That's number one. But two, what we really need to do is also consider after that period of massive immigration, of European migration, we had social chaos in this country. We actually were becoming like

There was a whole war over this. Teddy Roosevelt gave a famous speech. There is no hype. We are done with hyphenated America. And hyphenated me like, you know, like I'm a Slovenian American. He was like, no, we're all Americans. We need to be done with hyphenation. And that led to a complete shutdown, basically, of U.S. immigration from the 1920s up until the Immigration Naturalization Act of 1965. That immigration moratorium actually allowed for assimilation where the term white became popular because it's like, as you know, if you read a book,

Ask white Protestants. Were Irish people white in 1920? Absolutely not. They're like, Lithuanian? You're Lithuanian. You're not white. That was bad, just so we're all aware. That was bad. And so the change in that, we need to go through that again. We need to completely change the way that we've... Our foreign-born population has never been as high than previous from the late 1900s, right around when we had the same immigration moratorium.

We're signing up for the same levels of problems where our heterogeneous population is just way too removed from each other. We don't have a common civic understanding or any of this. And the truth is, is that if you just keep importing one million people per year and then the vast majority of them are illegal, no disorderly process, like, dude, this just breaks the civic foundation of the country. Like, it's just not going to work.

And I say this to somebody whose parents came from India. Like, but that's my point is I'm here now. I'm a citizen. Like I have to care about my children, my grandchildren, what country are they going to grow up in? Yeah. And it's also, it's like, so it is kind of a bullshit thing to be like, well, since your parents came, you have to decide. It's like, I can change my fucking mind. Exactly. It's,

By the way, they left the third world so I could live in the first world and I can make up my own mind. It's amazing. Yeah. The best part of coming to America and to the West, anybody who is from like a Western or a non-Western country will know this. In the non-Western countries, you're kind of like told what to do. There's a path and there's, you know, there's a rigid class system and there's like, this is how we live our life. And like, that's the best part about coming here, man. You can do whatever you want.

There's no social mobility. You can say whatever you want. The social mobility here is better than anywhere else in the entire world. Dude, and that was the problem. I went to school for social work. I got my graduate degree in social work. And if you brought up social mobility, the teachers would be like, that's a myth. Yeah.

No, no, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. They're like, that's a myth. Does wealth give you privilege? Absolutely. But actually, I think I read that people who are born in the upper quintile, if you look at the across generations, after like three generations, their kids are usually back down. Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. Yeah, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. Three generations. Yeah, exactly.

It does have money. Extreme money has a degenerative effect. It's like, it's obviously it's a incredible, you know, bounty to be born a ton of money, but dude, it like kind of warps people. One of my favorite books is, uh, the fall of the house of Vanderbilt. And it's exactly about this. And it's basically, uh,

I think 100 years after Cornelius Vanderbilt died, his generations, not a single one of them was a millionaire, not one. And the first Vanderbilt after Cornelius Vanderbilt to make anything of himself was one of the only Vanderbilts not to be born with money. His name is Anderson Cooper.

He is the first Vanderbilt member of the Vanderbilt family to not be born with money. The first one who was broke, who made anything out of himself. What the fuck? Yes. Yeah, that's it. Anderson Cooper is the first successful Vanderbilt in like 200 years. Since Cornelius. Since Cornelius, the Commodore. Commodore. I've heard he's a Vanderbilt, but it's always like he's a CIA. Yeah, his mother was Gloria Vanderbilt. Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, and you read their stories, the money just destroyed them. It destroyed their family. All of them just became like degenerate dilettantes who became, you know, I mean, they were addicted to alcohol and drugs and they would blow it on these gigantic houses. And, you know, they got caught up in the British rat race and they all became dollar princess. I love the term dollar princess. A dollar princess is in the 1800s.

American industrialists were filthy rich. And the way to have social mobility is they were like, we need to get our daughters married to English lords. But the English lords were broke. And so they were like, oh, we'll marry your kids. So Winston Churchill's mother, she was a dollar princess, Jenny Churchill.

And they hit the Duke of Marlborough. I forget exactly what his name is. It was another Churchill. I think it was Randolph Churchill. He married one of Cornelius Vanderbilt's, I think he was a granddaughter, a great-granddaughter. Same thing. He bailed him out. So he literally could rebuild his house. And after they got married, he was like, by the way, I don't give a shit about you at all. He's like, I really don't care. He's like, I married you for your money. He's like, I'm just going to go do whatever I want to do. Like, I'm just going to go live my life. Yeah. Yeah.

That's crazy. No, it's horrible. It's horrible. Her life ended up, it was a nightmare, unfortunately, for her. Yeah. Well, it's also very rigid. I know if you have generational wealth, it's like you have to, you can get cut out of the will, then you're fucked. Yes, there's stuff like that. And then, you know, you have that house, the Biltmore down in North Carolina, the largest house literally ever built in the United States. It was built by a Vanderbilt. You know, you read about them, like this guy would have like seven marriages in the course of his life. Dude.

I did work in Arlen Specter's estate. He was dead. And it was, I think one of the- The Senator from Pennsylvania? Yes. Yeah. I painted his house. Really? Me and my friend helped paint his house. Jay Raskin, my JFK. Huh? Yeah.

About JFK? He was dead. I should have asked him, but that's why I think he got a nice little estate. Dude, it was just like his surviving family members and it was for real sad, man. We were in there using oil primer and the lady came in and was just like, this smells. We're like, yeah, it's fucking oil paint. She's like, well, I have a party coming in. We're like,

Okay. And dude, she started spraying, just walking around as if you were like an inanimate, she would just spray perfume in the room. And if you were standing there, she would just go like right in your face. My mom, my mom was a maid for the DuPonts and she said it was the same thing. She was a maid at the house of the guy who was like a, it became like a psycho killer wrestler guy. Wow. It was down there. And she said it was like, she was like, I remember being like, it was a very sad,

It was just like a sad vibe in the house. I mean, after a hundred years, yeah, basically destroy them all. And it is very sad because most of them that burden of, and it's not just them. I read another book about the, the Astor family. I mean, John Jacob Astor was like one of the first like real millionaires in the United States. He was a slumlord in Manhattan. He was like this Dutch slumlord. He was like, Hey,

Yeah. It's like, how many of you immigrants can I charge $20 today? Um, but, and then, and you know, and his family, like they become these Titans of society and all of that. And one of his, uh, what great grandson, I think died on Titanic. He was the one, he was the richest man on the Titanic and he died on Titanic. His 19 year old wife who had just impregnated, she got off, she had a baby, became the Titanic baby. Um, and,

Yeah, because he was literally in his mother's womb whenever she was saved off of the Titanic. But basically after him, and he was, by the way, ended up being like some degenerate playboy. You know, it didn't really live up to it. That is the funny thing. You can achieve. It is very funny, though, to be like you can achieve at the highest level just so your grandson can just like crash a boat while he's like coked up. Right. Yeah. I mean, one day. It happens all over. Just blow up on a river. The Rockefellers, you know, John D. Rock. He was kind of a psycho, actually.

actually. His son actually was relatively successful. He seemed like a good guy. His son's Nelson Rockefeller, the vice presidential nominee for the Republicans, governor of New York. But after that, things start to drift off. And now we're in the fifth and sixth generation. You're like, ooh, the Kennedy family, dude. The longer you go down the Kennedy family, you're like, is there anybody impressive in there? I saw JFK's grandson going around the DNC when I was there filming TikToks and stuff. And I was like, bro, what?

That's the kiss of death. Like fucking John F. Kennedy's grandson. I know. I want to shake him. I'm like, live up to your goddamn father. Your grandfather. That's got to be a crazy family to be a part of. Oh, yeah. I just want to be like, if your great-grandfather, the patriarch, could see you, he'd be sick. Like, looking around. Just fucking. Dancing. Yeah, he's like, taking selfies. Be like, hey, guys. Like, you suck.

Fuck, dude. Just Lady Gaga. Yeah, I was like, dude, this guy blows. He's a dandy. It is. It is absolute dandy behavior. It just does suck because it's like you want to do well, but it's like if you kind of like, you know, if you just try to go for the absolute top. Yeah. It does. Like without a vision of some sort, you just end up just kind of like. I think that anybody who comes into even like a modest amount of money, like you probably need to do some serious thinking.

You do. And you really need to be like, okay, like what is my life going to look like? Look. Children. This is why people need to sell a lot of weed when they're 20. Really? I did this. I had the hero's journey. I came into like, I would make like $4,000 a week and just be like. Holy shit.

Dude, I was killing it. Well, not... 4,000 times... I lost all of it. 4,000 times 52 is how much? That's $200-something thousand. That's a lot of money. As, like, a 25-year-old dude. And I got to, like... And that's all cat. You're not even paying taxes. I pay taxes. No. You get the ego inflation. And, like, I got the rug swept out from under me. So that was one of the best experiences of my life. To lose all... To get, like, the ego pump and then to have it just ripped away from you. Because otherwise, yeah, dude, if, like, if you catch that, like...

It gives you the thing, like, when things are going well, I have an understanding, like, yeah, they can definitely not go well very quickly. Oh, absolutely. Also, I would just say, I've met a lot of people who are, like, super wealthy, and all of them are pretty weird. Like, every person I know, every person I've ever met with $100 million more net worth, I'm like, dude, you're a

though. Well, you can't connect with anybody. You can't talk about it. If you even broach certain subjects, 80% of people are going to be like, must be fucking nice. And I was like, yeah, you know when you're in an airport? And he's like, oh, I haven't been in an airport in 20 years. And I was like,

whoa. I was like, oh, cause you fly private. I was like, I've never even been on a private plane. I was like, that's a crazy, that was, it was just so casual. He's like, I haven't been in an airport in 20 years. I know. I was like, whoa. Okay. What a life. Yeah. Like, what does that even look like? Yeah, dude. I was talking to somebody one time, excited about like flying first class. And he was like, dude, my kids have never not flown private. And I was like, oh, I didn't even think about that. I was like, fuck. Yeah. But that, that probably really fucks them up. I mean,

up and what are they going to do then whenever they have to fly economy either they'll be stoked oh here's the thing I remember I grew up in like a upper middle class suburb so like I moved to West Philly and I was in the hood and I was like

this is so cool and then like so maybe they'll just be on an airplane be like wow yeah but i mean you know sometimes you're uh what is it like c on southwest and you're like trying to go for the middle seat or whatever you're like my life sucks yeah true that's that's and i'm talking about plane and now i'm talking about you know this you're northeast guy mega bus like when you're taking like a midnight mega bus to new york city the cheapest one and you're like well i'll take a

and when I get there, like change in a bathroom and put a new shirt on. Megabus was nice. Megabus, we did the, there was a Chinatown bus. Oh, the Chinatown bus. I know what that was. Just a pregnant lady driving it. You're like, what the fuck? But dude, yeah, it's... Stomach's up against the steering wheel. Yeah, for real, dude. There was a real pregnant lady driving it before. People, drug addicts are like freaking out in the back. And someone's like, hey, can y'all keep it down back there? I'd be like, shut your goddamn mouth. Yeah, you...

That is true. It does kind of set the bar too high. And then it's like all you can ever do is be disappointed in life. Or...

You know, like, I did eventually become very disillusioned with Life in the Hood. I was like, this is sad. I was like, this is so... It's probably deeply sad. Dude, it's for real so sad. Yeah, because the systems are, like, designed to just keep everybody down. Dude. I mean, look, they have individual responsibility for sure, but, like, also the way the entire thing is designed, it's like, keep it contained. Nobody cares. Everyone just wants to pretend, like, it's over there. Dude, it's for real. Like, it's like...

I remember me, I bought a house in West Philly with my brother when I was like 21. It was like the house, dude, the house was $27,000. I lived in there. Yeah, it's pretty, it was pretty fucking awesome. Did you hang on to it? Did you sell it? We sold it and then it got knocked down to me. It was structurally, it had a tree growing through the basement. It was bad. But I remember like going into like my neighbor's house and they were like, it's funny because when you live there, like there are a lot of like,

I grew up with my parents watching Fox News. It's just the news being like, black guys are up to no good again. So you get this skewed picture. Then you meet the individuals and you're like, damn, these are some of the nicest people. Then obviously there's people doing monstrous behavior. But I remember the first time I walked into somebody's, my neighbor's house, it's visually jarring because it's like,

Everything's just fucked up. There's no symmetry. Everything's built fucked up. And it's like... I remember being... There's just bugs. And just being like, fuck, dude. It was just crazy. I know. But then it's like, that's why you have to do good. It's like the brutal reality behind all of the... Let's save everyone political messaging. It's like, dude...

Nobody, you have to bail yourself out at the end of the day. You just have to. It's sad. It's not fair. Yeah, I look at it two ways. As in, we have to, of course, design and move systems to create a quality of opportunity. But you also have to have a responsibility, given the circumstances. For example, I don't know, any money, anything.

anything that you're working with, I'll often be like, what a bullshit. For example, and you guys probably have this too. I, you know, Crystal and I co-own our shows. We're small business owners too. And we have to deal with all the small bit and all of the paperwork and all the fucking accounting and all the shit behind it is mind numbing. It's stupid. It makes no sense. It's genuinely not fair. Um,

Because these major corporations and all these other people get all of these crazy tax breaks. And we're sitting here trying to figure this stuff out. And it sucks all of our time. And it's super stressful. And I could just be like, oh, it's not fair. And it's actually not fair. The people who are small business owners, you get fucked. Like, that's the reality. But.

you just have to do it, right? So I'm like, okay, I'm just going to sit here. I'm going to spend 10 hours of my goddamn time learning the ins and outs of all of this to make sure I'm not getting ripped off on my account. Why don't you just pay an account? Oh, you double check the account. Dude, you got to double check.

double check man i mean you're i'm like you you know patreon and all this i want to be a good steward of other people's money like i don't need pissing people's money away it's not nice you can't do that to people that makes sense yeah i mean it's a serious responsibility when you're like hey pay me ten dollars a month like it's not a fucking joke yeah you're like actually you have to be i'm a steward of that money for real oh hold on like yeah if you want to give their money man that's yeah but no i agree i agree you got to give them something you got to do something you can't just piss it away your work

for them and you can't just you know it's also money it's like look i grew up indian so you know we're fun we money it means something you know you're taught from a very young age and i don't care how much money you have like a hundred dollars will always be a hundred dollars to me i know exactly what that buys i know what it means and what it does and like it's still it's funny because it's in where i'm from in garnet valley pennsylvania there had there's been like a massive influx of the indian population all everyone i know like people like landscaping companies they're like

bro, they're like just haggling on the fucking lawn. He's like, their lawns are this fucking high. They're like, I'm not paying. It's like my cousin's like, bro, they haggle me to fucking death. It's really funny. Yeah, fuck him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what he gets. Yeah. But, dude, it is... Yeah, it is. It's one of those things. I feel like India... It's like they were out of the race conversation for a long time. Of course we are. Yeah. We're the inconvenient minority. Yeah. Because Asians in general are completely invisibilized by U.S. racial discourse. Big time. I mean, look... You guys are killing it, dude. Yeah. We're the richest people in America. It's awesome. Yeah, I think it's cool. I mean, I'll say this. It's not really fair because...

Indians in America are like so-called like the twice selected elite. And so. Why do they say that? Because India is a billion people. Okay. But the caste system where Brahmins, which is the top caste. Oh, I know. Those people. Oh, yeah. So you do know. Brahmins, 40%. I think it's only like one or 2% of India. My math could be wrong. Yeah. But.

But, you know, 40%, so 1% or 2% of India, but 40% of Indian Americans are Brahmin. So that means 40% of the people here are part of the top 1% to 2% already of the Indian caste system. Yeah, because they're doctors, engineers, lawyers, people who are highly educated. So part of Brahmin culture, that's where I come from too, by the way.

Okay, come from Brahman. No, but I'm saying our family has generations of revering education, family. We don't drink alcohol. We're like, this is how we live our life. Our life is about family. It's about furthering the next generation. Individualism really as a concept is not part of that. And that's actually why I think it meshes really well with America is America will drag you to individualism.

America will drag you to a little bit of consumerism, a little bit of like you can be whoever you want to be. But the backstop that you have is like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not what we do. Like money, we don't spend it on stupid shit. When we have money, we spend it on books, on education. So my upbringing was like the budget is limitless for anything educational. The budget is like zero for anything stupid. Right.

fucking around. No offense, white people, but I have noticed you have proclivities for new cars and for nice sneakers. Check my ride, bro. And nice kitchens. And so I'll be like, so your kids got $25,000 in debt and you've got a new fucking kitchen? Interesting. In our culture, that shit does not fly. But that's why I would say Indians are very successful in America because it's like we're both obviously highly educated. That's number one. But two, I really think the culture is a huge aspect of

it is the way that you revere money. You think about family. There will there are no Indian parents out there who have the money, who are not paying for their child's college education. It's just it would never happen. And in white families, there's this weird hyper into like they got this like boomer mentality, but they've got to figure it out. Because back in my day, I'm like, well, have you looked at inflation? Like what the

What the fuck are you talking about? I know, I know. And they're like, well, they'll get it when I die. And I'm like, yeah, but it's actually way more useful to help your child out when you're 18, 19 to 25. Those are the foundational years of your life. So it's a mindset difference. That was the one. No, no, dude, I appreciate you saying that. That was the one thing my parents were actually really good about is like,

Don't go into debt if you ever avoided at all costs and also keep a low profile. Like don't, don't try to, my dad does spaz. He like, he'll get it. He has like phases where he has like 57 bicycles in his basement. I don't know what the fuck he's doing, but they were very bad. Now my parents weren't like educated really. They, you know, they went to high school and they got out and that was it. But they were very like, that was the one thing I think that's the thing I'm going to copy off of them. They like sent us to like an all boys Catholic high school, paid for our college. And it's like,

That's the one thing with my kids. I'm looking for schools for my daughter right now. I was telling my wife, a lot of people I know are like, public school is just as good. I don't think so.

I don't, I don't, I genuinely don't think so. It's like, I'm assuming you live in a nice area. It probably is. Yeah, it's pretty nice. A lot of Indians, a lot of Indians. I think you're probably fine then, man. Yeah, you should. I went to public school. Yeah. No, but now the public schools around me are, it's like, it's newly nice. So the public schools are, but it's like you compare it to a private school.

And it's like, I mean, you've done well for public school. I'll give you two cases. I'll give you the case for an against. My point is, sorry, before I cut you off, my point is if you can't afford it, you should spend money on your kid's education. Oh, definitely. That's all I was trying to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so in that case, it's interesting. But more what I meant in terms of that is sometimes people will be like, I don't know, like I knew a girl who wanted to take like a graduate test, like study for the GRE. And she was like, oh, my parents won't pay for my GRE test, you know, certificate.

thing but they have the money to pay for it but they're like you have to work to go for your gre test prep i'm like what like yeah who are your parents like that's so ruthless yeah in my head i'm like that doesn't even fly like yeah yeah you know but if i was like hey dad so if i was like dad i need five thousand dollars for a gre prep course and i was like 23 or whatever like absolutely but if i was like i need five thousand dollars to go hang out in santrope or it's like he's like

What? No way. No, that doesn't make sense. That's what I'm talking about. Well, in a lot of the suburbs that I'm from, I've learned that many of the families are just debt. It's just like the whole thing runs on a giant balloon of debt. And it's kind of terrifying. Americans are obsessed with debt. Americans are obsessed with consumerism. And my dad, when he was making good money, he was rolling around in a 1988 Mazda with no air conditioning and 150 degrees Texas with his windows rolled down.

and he refused to get it he eventually sold it for one thousand dollars after he put two hundred thousand miles on it so it's like that's where i come from um and uh it's like do you need a new raptor truck texas probably not um you know it's like these guys no offense but you know if you look at the average car payment texas is the highest average car payment in the nation because all of these idiots are rolling around in trucks you don't need a brand new truck trucks don't need $80,000 raptor it's

ridiculous like sorry you need a Toyota camera Camry or a Hyundai or like any of these other cars they're great cars they'll get you so I am actually a big proponent of Dave Ramsey for the vast majority of people I think Ramsey he's very what you were just saying I think his like common sense approach if 95% of people are

followed their life that way, they would be better off. He preaches like avoid debt, you know, don't use credit cards and all of this. I personally am a big credit card point fiend, but you know, I pay my balance and all this stuff. But here's the thing. I think what he gets at is what we were talking about with impulse control and all that. It's look, look at the stats. People can't control themselves. They're only paying the minimums. They're taking out 35, 40, 50% debt or whatever on their APR. He lock loans and all this. He's taught me about financial products. I didn't even know existed.

I'm like, wait, so people out there are taking two mortgages and then another mortgage on top of that one? How do you sleep at night, bro? Dude, it's insane. Oh my God. I actually cannot imagine. So for anybody out there who's listening, if you listen to Dave and you actually take

at the very least, take some of that advice to heart. You know the number one thing is budget, too. No matter how much money you make, you still need a budget. And the reason why is you just need to know where your money is going. And you need to be conscientious about every dollar that you spend. So like you were just saying, you and your wife need to sit down and make a choice. We're sending our kid to private school. That means this is our nut. We need X, Y, and Z amount per month. This is how it looks like. And we're saving, and this is what it looks like.

I'm still, I have an open mind right now. I'm like, I've looked at like four schools and it's like, I've noticed a huge difference. But it's like, if I see a public school that works, I would go. I don't, I don't not like one or the other, but I went to both so I can make the case. So I was very lucky. So I grew up in college station. I went to public school for the first 16 years of my life. My last year as a high school, my parents, we moved to Qatar and I got to go to a very fancy private school.

It was part of the deal. Like an international school. An international, the American School of Doha, right? So I went from a school where probably the median income of the parent was like, let's say like $40,000 to a school where the median income of the parent was probably like $300,000. Yeah, yeah. An elite school. It was an outrageously nice school. And we were flying for school trips. Everybody there, their parents worked for everybody.

Exxon and all of this. Dude, that was one of the schools we looked at. Like, we're going to send your fourth grader to France for a week. I was like, what the fuck? I was like, no. That's what my last years of high school were like. That's crazy, dude. And I will tell you, I definitely loved it. I loved it. But I would worry that if I had grown up in that environment, and anybody out there, if you've ever interacted with people who are in that bubble...

there's a lot of downside that man like that's when you were talking about the first class thing we went on a school trip once and one of the kids had never flown economy before and we were all flying economy together he was like 17 years old what the fuck he had never been in economy class he only ever phoned first and frankly he was a pampered little bitch you know it's like and i the people like that like there is there is something important i think about it too where you know about the people that i grew up with i didn't even love them that much i'll be honest with

you. But it was important. I got to interact with people from all across different walks of life. I think public education is very important. And I actually think at a young age, too, I think in high school, I could make a really good case if you have the money to go to private school. If you look at the stats, private schools send the vast majority of their kids to Ivy League and to other schools, especially if that's what you want for your child. But K through middle school, it's not really about

education. It's about socialization. And so for socialization purposes, I don't really want my children, just me personally, to be growing up in a bubble. And in that bubble, I've spent enough time now in elite circles that I can see how dangerous that it really can be to the mind and to how that person can eventually use that privilege in others. And first of all, they're over-interpreting their own success. Like this idea of like, they'll be like, oh, we're doing pretty good. I'm like,

You are not doing shit. I'm doing good. You're not doing good. You have not done anything. Yeah, dude, it is weird, man. That's kind of the thing I've been struggling with. I don't want to get them older and be like, what the fuck? You could have sent me to a nicer school. I don't want to be a dickhead. Yeah, but you can also just track each of your children. There are different types of schools. There's magnet schools. There's math schools. There's sports. There's drama. There's all these...

All the ones like you got to see. What I would do is I would be like, okay, first of all, again, K through eight is about, it's not about education. Actually, a lot of that education, my man, is on you. Exactly. If anything, you're trying to pay somebody else to teach your kids how to read better. That's about you. You got to do it. You need to step up in the house.

I'm fucking, what are you talking about? Did we spell her name the other day? But that's what I'm saying. You got to be keeping that shit up every day after school. Not even tutors. You need to be engaged. You need to be making sure that you're sitting there and making stuff, is this stuff done? Because that's where the parent really is the most important.

Of course, you know, middle school, high school, when we start talking about SATs, that's when I think education and the quality of teacher can really make an impact on them. But that's by the time they're starting to become like formed as a human being. Yeah. May have an idea of what they want to do. But those initial years, I think it's really just about learning how to like be a person in the world, about how to interact with others, following rule. Like what does it mean to live in a society and be in like this ordered world?

Yeah, yeah. Weird thing that we call... So that's the purpose of school, man. For sure. At the end of the day. That's why homeschool people are fucking weirdos. Can we all be honest? Have you ever met a normal one? They're freaks, all right? It's true, man. Like, it's true. I know people who are homeschooling right now that are going to be pissed at you, dude. I don't care. I mean, every... We met one homeschooled kid. Sometimes they do it in pods and they're okay. We met a homeschooled kid in my baseball team and, like, we drove him to tears. Yeah, you should. And he deserved it. I mean, like, to be honest. It was so weird.

He deserved it, dude. There is a huge aspect of the socialization, for sure. Yeah, it's important. For sure. But then it's like with the public schools, like, well, what are they getting socialized into? Then you look at all the other shit they had going on with like, you know, like when they're like, don't tell your parents if you want to trans, come to us and we'll send you to a doctor. That's fair. That was the shit that was free. You're living here in Texas, dude. What are you worried about? Dude, now all the schools, I'm in Austin. Yeah. So the schools are like, dude, they're pretty fucking, they go pretty hard with that shit.

And that's the stuff that I'm like, eh, but I don't know. What about the rest of the burbs around it? Round Rock, Fredericksburg, all those other places? It can't be there. I mean, I grew up around here, man. Those are some Bible Belt dudes. You've been going for a long time, dude. Yeah, that's true. This place changed. You left, bro. Yeah. That's true. I guess you're true. That's kind of, yeah, I don't know. I went to a wall. We can get out of here soon. How long have we been doing, Josh?

Damn, dude, we almost did a Rogan. I'll let you out of here in a second. Sweet. I was laughing. Today we toured a, because again, it's like I'm going to public schools. I'm just trying to find, that's the one thing I will try to give my kids the best in education. Well, you should. I mean, look, there's nothing wrong with doing private school. But I will say today, so I was thinking that. I went to a Waldorf school today. I don't know if you're familiar with Waldorf. I know I'm familiar with it.

it is. Dude, I've never seen anything like that in my life. And it was like almost, theoretically, I'm like, it's all the stuff I like and I saw the reality of it and I was like, no. It was just like almost creepy. I agree. There was a, at one point, there's one dude in the tour, no matter what the person said, he would go, oh, it's

At one point, they were like, we have climbing trees and we have trees we don't climb. Those are the climbing trees. And he goes, yes. And then we're in another room and they're like, for math, we have a tactile sensory aspect where we have these marbles and they're actually counting the marbles. And the guy literally over marbles goes, oh, yes.

yes. I was like, dude, would you shut the fuck up? That's so weird. There becomes a point of it where it is like, there are some millennial trends. It's like a fake favor. Like we did the entire Odyssey school play in fourth grade. It's like,

Yeah. All right, dude. There's some millennial trends. I need to look more into them, not 100%. I think they do well. I think it has like... Go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I was going to say gentle parenting is the one that I've become familiar with. Yes. This millennial trend of being like, they don't say the word no, right? Yes. Everything is about redirection. And the Indian in me is like, how can you possibly turn out like a well-formed adult? Like actually a huge...

I would say a majority of adulthood is learning how to deal with the consequences of the word no. That's what adulthood is. It's like, oh, you want a job? Fuck you. No. There's a giant no. You want more money? Fuck you. No. There's a giant no hovering over your entire life. Yeah. It's really like, you're like, oh, you want to go on a date? It's like, what are 99% of these women going to tell you? No. Absolutely. I know. You're a loser, actually. I know.

Yeah, I go back. So it's like I grew up in the rigorous old school, like if you get in trouble, you get hit, all that stuff. I do think that's not a good idea to do. Probably. I think it's genuinely... It's like, you know, I don't think it's the end of the world, especially if you're not getting drunk and coming in for no reason. If there's a rhyme and reason to it, it's not the worst thing. But I do think the punishing physically...

Makes you as a kid like, I'm not going to tell my parents anything. That's right. Because I don't want to get smacked in the head. No, but they need consequences of a crime. They do need consequences. Right? Yes. Like, you need to take away the things that they like. Yes. Or be like, you're in silent treatment or stuff like that. I do. I think consequences are really important. Because, man, when you get shielded from it, and honestly, even I remember that first time when you're 22 years old and you graduate from college and you're actually out on your own, and you really are like, oh, my God. This is bad.

this sucks. Like, you're like, you're like, so now you make a bad decision and you're sitting there, you know, and you're like, holy, and this is on me and I'm by myself right now. Nobody's going to bail you out right now. I'm telling you the worst, the worst possible is when you're making bad decisions and it's paying off because eventually it all hits you and you go, oh, and it comes for everybody, dude. And you go, oh man,

man the older you get you go there's no way I gotta live my way through this now and it's like dude thank you so much for coming I can talk to you forever I really enjoyed it this was actually pretty fun dude thank you man appreciate you thank you