Ask Dr. Drew - ZUBY: Rapper & Podcaster Says Being Coherent “Should Be A Minimum Requirement Of Any World Leader” – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 326

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Zuby is a rapper, author, and host of the “Real Talk with Zuby” podcast. Zuby was born in England and raised in Saudi Arabia, where he attended an international school. While studying Computer Science at Oxford University, he started rapping and within months self-released his first album Commercial Underground. He has performed over 100 gigs in 10 different countries, including the UK, USA, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Germany, The Netherlands, and Czech Republic. Follow Zuby at https://x.com/ZubyMusic and learn more at https://teamzuby.com/ 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • COZY EARTH - Susan and Drew love Cozy Earth's sheets & clothing made with super-soft viscose from bamboo! Use code DREW for a huge discount at https://drdrew.com/cozy • PROVIA - Dreading premature hair thinning or hair loss? Provia uses a safe, natural ingredient (Procapil) to effectively target the three main causes of premature hair thinning and hair loss. Susan loves it! Get an extra discount at https://proviahair.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're so pleased today to welcome Zuby to the program. You know him as a podcaster, of course, also a musician. He says being coherent, quote, should be a minimum requirement of any world leader. Pretty high standard there, Zuby, I don't know. We'll get into it with him. His podcast is Real Talk with Zuby. He was born in England, raised in Saudi Arabia.

He attended, I believe, Oxford University. Yep. And he started singing and rapping. And his first album was successful. He has appeared in over 100 gigs, 10 different countries. You can follow him, ZubyMusic.com, Z-U-B-Y. Also, IamZuby.com. No, Team Zuby, I beg your pardon. And Twitter is just at Zobie music zuby

we'll be right back with zoobie our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre the psychopath started this he was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography ptsd love addiction fentanyl and heroin ridiculous i'm a doctor for. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real.

We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. Valentine's Day is around the corner, so it is time to look your absolute best. My friends at GenuCell are celebrating Valentine's Day with a special gift just for you. From now until Valentine's Day, get a limited time gift of Beauty Box free

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You can save up to 35% off Cozy Earth right now. But hurry, this offer will not last. Go to CozyEarth.com, enter my promo code Drew at checkout for up to 35% off on your first order. That is CozyEarth.com, promo code Drew, C-O-Z-Y-E-A-R-T-H, CozyEarth.com, code D-R-E-W. So as I said, Zuby is a podcaster. It's Real Talk with Zuby, also author. The book is Zuby's guide to fitness for

everyone strong advice it is called also a children's book at brave the candy calamity and he's also a speaker and a coach again follow him Zuby music.com team Zuby.com Zuby music on x and instagram uh and I think that's just most of this, pretty much all of it. Please welcome Zuby. Hey, Dr. Drew, how's it going? It's great. How are you, sir? Are you in this country, or are you still traveling the world? I am currently in Florida, Miami to be specific. So yeah, I'm here for now. I'll be popping off to somewhere else after this and then somewhere else next week. So always on the move. It's interesting how different Florida is. I don't know if you ever run out to the People's Republic of California, but it is striking how different these two states are.

It's almost like you are in a different country, at least from where I'm sitting. Yeah, I was actually in california last week i was there for about 10 days i went to the bay area and then also to los angeles i did a bunch of interviews for my podcast which are going to be coming out over the next few months and featured on a few different people's podcasts as well so yeah i uh i hit the the rainstorms out there the weather didn't get good until i was about to leave. I actually had a good time in California. I know a lot of good people out there. A couple things. You got to see the press

engaging in their panic forum while you were there witnessing that, guess what? There was water falling from the sky. It was raining. That was the total story, and yet the press had to pump it out as though California was floating into the Pacific Ocean. It was insanity the way they went at it.

But I hope people understand. Let's talk about that straight off the top. I hope people understand how distorted the press is. I saw Mario Nawal. Is that how you pronounce his name? Nawfal. Nawfal. Nawal.

He's the Nawal. I know. That's my brain doing that. Don't get old, everybody. And he, you know, he's the guy that does all the Twitter spaces and gets the extraordinary people in on those spaces. And I guess somebody took off after him in the press. And he was saying something that I've been saying for years, but I went viral with it recently. I said, God help you if they do a story on you, then you will find how much distortion, how far from the truth they get.

Yeah, for sure. We've seen that a lot. Man, I guess it's been like that for decades, but it seems that it's been particularly bad over the past 10 years in particular. And I think there are a lot of potential reasons for that. But at the same time, we're seeing a massive rise in social media, in independent media, lots of independent voices, independent podcasts. The whole situation is improving. I think we're past the peak of the worst of it. I've said many times that we're past the peak woke.

And I think we're also at an interesting new paradigm of media i i completely agree with you on that though i i worry about the peak the woke word is gets sort of overused i'm not sure what has been happening in the world today but i know what you mean when you say that but i don't know if you heard what happened in france today they passed a law that will make it punishable by tens of thousands of dollars and years in prison for daring to say anything negative about mRNA vaccine technologies. Oh, wow. No, I haven't seen that. That's in France? Yep. No, I haven't seen that. Now, apparently, their version of the Supreme Court is going to look at it.

But if it gets through that, this will be one of the most egregious restrictions on scientific discourse and free speech I can imagine. I had the feeling France was coming out of this. I thought the youth there particularly were becoming sort of interested in liberty and interested in their own history and interested in their own culture. I saw that kind of happening. And then this. And so my fear is, back to your point about the media paradigm improving, that there is going to be these swings back that are going to be so aggressive and dangerous. This is one of them.

Yeah, well, I know that the French people love a good protest. The French people are rather revolutionary, and I don't think they'd take something like that just laying down. Nobody knows how to throw a good protest like the French people do. So I would be actually rather surprised if this one gets through without very heavy pushback, assuming that people are even aware that it's going on. Yeah. Well, the social media is pushing it out pretty good, but we learned last time we visited Paris that the protests are Friday and Saturday night, so you'll have to wait till Saturday this week to see if they come out. That's a sort

of typical French thing. It's like, yeah, we come out by the tens of thousands, Friday and Saturday. So what are you trying to accomplish with your podcast? we come out by the tens of thousands, Friday and Saturday, so long. So what are you trying to accomplish with your podcast? Wow. Um, Drew, the goal of my podcast is the same through line through everything I do, whether it's my music, my social media, my public speaking, my writing, it's all the same thing, man. When I was 18 years old,

I decided that I wanted to use my voice to positively influence, inspire and motivate millions of people around the world. And I've been on a mission at this point for half of my life to do that. It started out with music. I went full time with my music in 2011. And then in 2019, I started my podcast same year I wrote and released my first book, Strong Advice, and really started to grow and build up more momentum on social media. So over the course of time, I've added new elements to my arsenal. It started out with just music, but now it's music, writing, podcasting, speaking, other things. And yeah,

like I said, the goal is simply to help make people better, help to, there's so much negativity in media, we've already just touched on it. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about news media, you could be talking about my genre of music, hip hop and rap music, or popular music in general, you could be talking about the TV shows people are watching, all the stuff that people are consuming, so much of it pushes people in a negative direction. It preys upon fear. It preys upon greed. It preys upon animosity, envy, lots of the negative emotions, multiple of the seven deadly sins. And so through my music and everything else I do, I've always just wanted to try to push people in a better direction mentally, physically, spiritually, in terms of their careers, in terms of their relationships, in terms of their relationship with themselves, let alone with other people. That's simply how I try to use my voice. I want people to think better. I'm careful in saying that I don't necessarily want to tell people what to think, but I do want to tell people to think. I think that we have a lot of cognitive laziness that's

been plaguing our societies for many years at this point. I think with the rise of social media and the internet, there's a lot of positive and good that's come with that. But I also think that it's causing a lot of lazy thinking. It's causing a lot of tribalism. It's fanning the flames of just a lot of idiocracy. And I do my best to be a positive light and voice in all of that, whether this is madness over politics or it's the culture war or it's the craziness we went through during the whole era, which I finally refer to as the scamdemic era. All of it.

My goal is simply to point people towards the truth and encourage people to think if we reach different conclusions, that's totally fine. But I think it's different if you reach a conclusion based off of your own independent thoughts and conversation based off if you reach a conclusion simply because the TV told you to, or someone on social media told you to, or you thought that your political tribe or whatever else it may be, will think that you're a good and righteous person if you simply adopt the hive mind. That's not something that I promote. So from a lot of different angles, I'd say that's the through line between all of the different things that I do in my career.

So there's something interesting. I hope you'll sort of give me a, permit me to sort of reflect that I'm used to when an 18-year-old says, I want to change the world. I'm used to those people growing up to be pretty narcissistic. And that is not you. It is not you. You're very humble. But I think those people that declare they're going to change the world and stuff, it's like Greta Thunberg and stuff. And I don't think that really is actually your intent. Your intent was just to do good, right? I mean, and hopefully that then changes the world. It's a different thing. I'm going to fix this yeah well i think ultimately that is how you genuinely do change the world i don't think you you know there there is a time and place for activism and perhaps even for protest and for yelling and shouting and righteous indignation but i think that the way you really change the world is you start with yourself and you make you you create the best version of yourself you strive to reach your own potential. That has downstream impacts on everyone who is around you immediately, your own family,

your close friends, acquaintances. And you can go on social media and online and other platforms. And you can use that ability and that talent stack that you've built up to guide other people and to help them solve their problems. I can't solve other people's problems for them. But I can certainly in various ways, give them some advice, give them some motivation, give them some inspiration. And I think that that's how we do it. I think we make the world better by building better people and by encouraging people to be the best version of themselves. Not something that's easy to do every single day or every single hour. I think the biggest battle we all face is the one against our own minds. But I also think that, you know, get your own house in order before life sorted and you can't take care of that, then I think that's where you do get that narcissism, where it's quite audacious to have someone who has their entire life falling apart and they haven't been able to sort out any of the main areas.

But then they want to go out there and lecture everybody else, sort of overthrow and overhaul and dismantle the entire system, despite the fact they can't even keep their own bedroom clean. Right. It becomes a projection. And you've had this interesting upbringing, right? You grew up, did you grow up most of your childhood in Saudi Arabia? And then you were in Great Britain, I think, and then back to schooling in Britain. How has that shaped your sort of outlook? Yeah, sure. So it's been a bit of a mix. So I was born in the UK, family background originally from Nigeria, moved to Saudi Arabia as a baby, went to school there

from kindergarten to fifth grade. At the age of 11, I went to a boarding school in England, and between 11 and 20, it's back and forth between the two countries multiple times a year. In terms of how it's shaped my perspective, man, I think it's just given me a very global worldview and the ability to see and appreciate things from more angles than the average person is able to. At this point, I've been to 43 different countries. Some of the many times I've done events in several of those. And over the course of time, I've spoken to, I mean, I've met and spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. I don't mean online. I mean, if you're at the internet, then it's going to be millions of people. But in real life, I've personally met and had conversations with hundreds of thousands of people of all sorts,

every stripe. And so from that, I think it's helped me to build my empathy and just to be able to look at all sorts of issues from different angles, not just from a British perspective or an American perspective or even a Western perspective. But I mean, I grew up in the Middle East. I spent 20 years living in Saudi Arabia. Of course, my family background is originally from Nigeria, from West Africa. So you just gain those different perspectives. And I think it also gives me a permanent sense of gratitude as well, not just to have that upbringing, but because I know I've seen enough of the world to see the range. you take a country like the USA or the UK, it's very trendy in some circles to just talk about how terrible these countries are and how everything is messed up and how they're the worst places to be, whatever it might be. You know, oh, they're run by fascists and racists and homophobes and

transphobes and all these kinds of things. And when people say these things, to me, it's a dead giveaway that they haven't been anywhere. The dead giveaway that they don't know much about the world. They haven't experienced other countries and other cultures. And they have this ingratitude because they don't know what most of the world is actually like. There is a good reason why millions of people are trying legally or illegally to enter the USA and the UK. At the same time, when you travel, you also learn that our countries are not perfect. They have a lot of flaws. There's many things that the USA is the best country at, and there's some things that the USA is one of the worst countries at. And it's hard to fully appreciate that if you've never been anywhere else and if you haven't left it before. So

I think the perspective is the, is the greatest thing. And I, it's why I'm so keen on recommending particularly the young people that they do travel, go see your own country and also go see a few other countries as well. I think it's impossible to see more of the world and become more ignorant. That's not what happens.

It reduces ignorance. It reduces naivete, and it increases empathy, and it also increases gratitude. And gratitude is something we could certainly do more with in our society and culture. For sure. So I'm looking at a tweet that you put out in October of 21, and you may not remember, it was about misinformation and disinformation being harmful. And then you say, not always, but sometimes. On the flip side, lies that bolster the approved narrative are rarely labeled as misinformation or harmful. And I would argue that in the two years since that tweet,

most of the misinformation that was non-narrative supportive turned out to be correct. And a lot of the narrative turned out to be misinformation. And then this whole notion of platforming people. How dare you platform somebody? What do we do with those ideas? I'll tell you what,

I'm going to be pretty blunt here. I think one of the problems that we are facing in the West and have been particularly for the last decade is we are taking stupid people and stupid ideas too seriously. I think there are ideas that people are espousing and repeating and yelling, which are completely absurd. Whether this is, can a woman have a penis? Can men get pregnant and menstruate? Like, this is a conversation that's been going on for over a decade at this point

about just basic biological reality. And instead of laughing at the people with the dumbest opinions, instead, we put them in positions of power and then let them set policy that affects all of the rest of us. We saw this a lot during the whole pandemic era as well. And so, look, everyone has a right to an opinion, and we should have the battle of ideas, and everyone should be allowed to speak.

I'm very much of a free speech advocate. But not all opinions are of equal value, especially when they're not backed up by any type of facts or reality or reasoning. And this is why censorship gets pushed, because people who have good ideas do not need censorship. If I have an idea, and I've thought it through, and I'm able to articulate it and back it up and explain my opinion, I have no fear of other people who may question it or challenge it or have a different perspective. However, if I'm putting out an idea which I know to be false or which I know that I can't really back,

then now it is my imperative to try to, if I'm a tyrant, to try to censor and ban other people from speaking. So I think something really interesting happened, for example, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, which is now known as X. And this is that there was a massive backlash, particularly on the left side of the political aisle, not because they feared that they would be banned or censored, but because they were afraid that the people they wanted banned and censored and the opinions they wanted banned and censored would now be able to be out there in the world and people would be able to see and hear them i think that that's particularly interesting i mean if you look at history that people are trying to do the censoring and the banning and restriction of free speech are

typically are typically not the good guys so this is what i think i think that the the terms misinformation and disinformation are propagandistic terms in themselves they are typically used to just casually dismiss and shut people down shut down ideas and shut down people uh they never quite explain why it's misinformation or why it's disinformation they just say oh this person is spreading disinformation um but they won't actually deal with the arguments that they are putting forward and we've seen this a lot over the past years but as i said it is a weapon that seems to be losing its power and i definitely look forward to seeing how it all plays out over the

next few decades i have a great book recommendation for you. It's called cynical theories, cynical theories. I recommend it most highly because it, it talks about James Lindsay and Helen Pluckers, right? Correct. Uh, and it,

it, there it is. And it talks about how post-structuralism and the lack of, you were, you were saying these are silly ideas, but you got to understand in a world where truth doesn't exist and everything's a human construct, you can do whatever you want. Everything's a good idea.

As long as you can defend it with a theory. And that is what you're asking for is for a restoration of pragmatism and a foundation in reality. And the fact that there needs to be a consensus that our little noggin this little instrument we've got is should be used to ascend to some contemplation of the truth which you will never fully know but we can approximate it yeah and look people are welcome to have whatever goofy theories and ideas that they want as long as they i just would ask that they stop polluting the rest of us with them um that they stop infecting the schools stop and

stop indoctrinating children stop infecting the universities people are free to believe whatever they want i have no problem with someone believing that the sky is yellow and that water is pink. But if you try to get me to state that the sky is yellow and the water is pink, then we're going to have a problem. And if you try to ban everyone who is saying that, you know, the sky is blue and water is clear and the ocean appears blue, if you're going around trying to censor and ban those people, then that's when we have a problem. People are allowed to, like I said, people can believe whatever they want. But when you try to force those beliefs on people, particularly, even more egregiously, beliefs that are not true and which are demonstrably false, then that's the entire issue. it's what's being done with those ideas and how they are being pushed through various systems as if they are you know dogmatic truths

it's sort of a weird way to gain political powers by if i can get somebody to believe you know that you know that red is green and green is red, then imagine the control I have over those people. What else might I get them to believe? Yeah, absolutely, man. This is why I found the whole this pandemic era so concerning because if you can make people believe absurdities, then you can get them to commit atrocities. And that has played out many times in human history.

There were a lot of echoes of that if you understand the psychological mechanisms, the tribalism that was at play. And there was a lot to, there was and still is a lot to learn from that period. And I don't think that collectively, we have reflected well on it. I think that for various reasons, people want to sort of just move on and pretend that none of it happened and people didn't do what they did and people didn't say what they say uh let's just all move on and be kumbaya but um look i believe that that that two and a half year period fundamentally and permanently changed the state of humanity i don't think that that genie is going back in the bottle. I think that on so many

levels, mentally, spiritually, in terms of the trust within society, in terms of trust between neighbors, trust in institutions, all of these things, I think, are now permanently changed. Regardless of what position people took throughout that period, and regardless of what they believed or what they did or didn't do i believe that everyone has fundamentally changed to a degree um you said you said you mentioned some psychological mechanisms at play in terms of how this happened what were you referring to i'm referring to us versus them mentality I am referring to how when people are frightened and confused, a large percentage of people default to authoritarianism. They don't just expect it, but they don't just accept it, but they demand it when people are sufficiently frightened. And that's something that's very scary i'm talking about uh dehumanization

and demonization of people based off of whatever the characteristic may be in this case it was uh you know vaccine status you know whether someone took a shot or they didn't take a shot let's change how laws apply to them i mean look let's look in some countries they went as far as building camps let's think about that they went as far as building camps for people who did not want to take the shot i mean you want to talk about heading down a dark road i mean do i do i need to explain that there are nations where i mean people got how many millions of people lost their jobs how many millions of people were unable to see their loved ones who died during that two plus year time period. You had places where I mean, I went to Australia in late 2022 after they've removed their restrictions and people were traumatized out there in Victoria.

You know, the state that the city of Melbourne is in. I mean, they had over 500 days of hard lockdowns. I think after China, they had the longest lockdowns in the entire world. And this is a real lockdown. People were not allowed out of their house for more than one hour per day. People were not allowed to go more than three or five kilometers away from where they live. They actually had police checkpoints set up. They had drones. They had riot police out there. There were countries where you were not allowed to pump gas, put fuel in your vehicle without showing proof of vaccination. There's places where they wouldn't let you board a plane, board a train, go to work,

earn a salary. I mean, how many restaurants across the USA, how many restaurants in California alone, how many small businesses got permanently shut down over that time period. I mean, it's weird how people, there's this sort of collective amnesia that, Oh, none of that really happened. And it was just,

I don't know that the science changed or whatever. And it's just like, no, the science, the science didn't change. Um, there were many of us who were calling this stuff out from early 2020, who were asking questions and who were pointing out the holes in the narrative. And, you know, we got called grandma killers and anti-vaxxers and horrible people and, you know, all other sorts of epithets. And very few people have been like, okay, you know, maybe some of those people who are questioning the narrative, maybe they had a point. Maybe they weren't just crazy conspiracy theorists who wanted my grandma to die you know um maybe we've learned something from this but i think i think at this

point it's just pride and ego i think the pride and ego just simply won't allow many people to say yeah you know what maybe maybe i made a mistake or maybe we got something wrong we we have one political leader in canada the uh she's, I don't know what her exact position is. She works, she's in Alberta, Canada. And she said, we got it wrong and I apologize. And I thought, I immediately want to speak to this woman. I want to push her out and see if other people can follow in her footsteps.

I have to take a little break, Zuby. We'll be right back quickly. Again, you can follow Zuby at Zuby Music on Instagram and X, zoobiemusic.com and teamzoobie.com for merchandise and we'll be back right after this are you one of the millions of american women and men dealing with premature hair thinning and hair loss or maybe you're scared about inheriting that thinning look because it runs in your family start 2024 with a real solution that delivers results without the harsh side effects or unwanted chemicals and no need for prescription. Provia

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slash TWC for 10% off the medical emergency kit. Zuby joins us, the podcast again again we want to get you involved with it uh it is called real talk with zuby just uh i imagine it's available uh everywhere right everywhere you listen to podcasts yep all the usual places youtube spotify apple podcasts wherever you'd like to listen so i used a term before we went out to break talent stack i'm used to hearing those that those two words together coming from scott adams are you uh are you a disciple of sorts of his or is that something you have come to on your own yeah i wouldn't say a disciple i'm a fan and i know him he's been on my podcast before and we've got another interview,

which is going to be coming out in either end of this month or in March, actually. Now he's gotten a little, I disagree with his opinions about marriage and you seem a little closer to him than me, but I'd say between me and him. So let me mention a tweet you put out about marriage. Because I sort of feel like,

I'll just turn over my cards first. And I really feel like, oh, this is a video. Darn. Big prediction for the century is going to be a huge increase in migration. That's your migration thing. I clicked on the wrong x post but i imagine your feelings on marriage are the same um but but my thing is these are the has throughout

human history and i mean since we were cavemen the fundamental unit has been fundamentally you know two people raising a child uh and certainly if you've ever raised a child, you realize it is not something you want to do on your own. And whether, you know, how we characterize those two people is a, I'm completely open to that. But the idea that we sort of cast asunder this basic unit that it seems to be

the foundation has seemed to have been the foundation of every society we have built. I worry about that. What do you say? I'm ultra pro marriage. I don't know why anyone would think otherwise. Oh, maybe I misread. Everyone in my family, apart from my, my, my parents have been married for almost 50 years. Um, and they have a beautiful marriage. All of my siblings are married. I'm up next. I'm one of five. I'm the youngest one, so I'll be the next one. And I absolutely will get married, and I look forward to it.

But I don't think everyone should get married. Okay, I think that's really what I was getting wrong here. And you said you used to think that that was bad that marriage rates are dropping but now i think it's good because some people have no business getting married we shouldn't be forcing them into it is that what you mean by that exactly um i think that the there are a lot i mean it's sort of said in the tweet i don't think that i think most people should get married if i look around the world I think that most people are built and wired for marriage. And if they can do it properly, that's the best thing for them. But I also think there are people who really shouldn't.

And I think that those people also drive up the very high divorce statistics, which we have in our countries, which puts other people off it. Because when people see a raw divorce statistic that is, let's say between 40 and 50%, that is scary. As an unmarried person, that is a scary, that's a terrifying number. Because it makes it look as if it's just a coin toss. But a lot of what's going on there is there are, you know is there are people who get married serially, two, three, four, five, sometimes six marriages. And those are all included in the statistics. I personally view marriage as a... I'm a Christian. I view it through a religious lens. And I think that in the West, sadly, I think that it has been very heavily diluted. And I think that one of the reasons why people view the institution with some skepticism now is, well, a lot of people are coming from, sadly, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if half of the people in my generation in the USA are coming from some type of broken family. And when someone has been through that, I'm very blessed that I haven't been. the USA are coming from some type of broken family. And, um, when someone has been through that, I'm very blessed that I haven't been, but even if I look, look, if we want to sum it, sum up where we are, if I even tell people that my parents have been married for almost 50 years,

yeah, they're always like, Oh my gosh, you're so lucky. That's so rare. That's so surprising. That's amazing. People almost expect it to fail.

And that means that we need to take the type of marriage my parents have. I imagine if you went back just a few decades ago, it wasn't something that was rare and surprising and anomalous. It was just like, Hey, that was the norm. You know you know if i if i look at the numbers i mean 100 years ago or so i believe the divorce rate was under five percent it's still under five it was forbidden for forbidden by the church you go a little further back and then the then the laws were reflective of that for in many countries yeah and it's been it's been overly liberalized to the point where many people treat it just like extended dating. So the point in those type of tweets and perhaps some of my views and opinions that other people that some people might misunderstand is this is me. I'm so pro marriage that I lament the I lament these numbers.

I lament these these statistics. And I think that there are changes that need to be made. I think that there are legal changes that need to be made and social and cultural shifts that need to be made in order to promote the institution. Because I totally agree with you that the family unit is the best form of governance that exists. And it is the fundamental unit of a society. I really see the divorce thing accelerating my theory is as a result of our governor ronald reagan at the time creating no fault divorce in this state and that got then adopted by all the other states and that really accelerated the the ease with which people went at. The other thing is in terms of the

declining marriage rate, I saw it coming on. I was talking to young people for decades as this came on. And it was so clear to me what the source of their unwillingness to get married was, that they had been so hurt by their own family of origin dysfunction and rupture that they didn't want to dare attempt and to put somebody else through that or to possibly be the source of that kind of misery. They just couldn't bear it. So it literally was the failure of really marriages in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that really set this up. It was so, and no one talks about it. People were harmed by it.

Look, when you talk about adverse childhood experiences, the so-called ACE score that determines, that contributes to mental illness and physical illness, divorce is one of the ACE experiences. Divorce is in there. Split marriage is in there. And so we have to get very realistic about the profound impact it has and then help people kind of regain their

confidence and their ability to have a long-term relationship that has process. All you need is what's called process, which is commitment. You commit to it and then you work on it when things get tough. That's what you do. That's how you get through it you don't leave yeah um and that's the problem i agree with you i personally believe that no-fault divorce laws have been an absolute travesty for all the countries that have adopted them because it like i said i think it dilutes the entire institution. It creates perverse incentives and it makes people less committal. We live in a very non-committal age. Susan, he put a picture of us up here. I love it.

I love it. Shout out to you. I massively respect that. We look young in those pictures, but we were, I guess. Yeah. So there you go. I was five years old at that. I was five years old at that time, but, but it's beautiful. That's what it's, that's what it's supposed to be.

That is what it's. I don't know. I didn't know being 37 years old was a flex, but, um, I'll take it. Um, but yeah, no, I, I think that, that, that that's wonderful. Um, And the thing is, I think, again, having a global together, all of the children are raised under that umbrella. Around the entire globe, I think it's something of like 7%. Only 7% of children worldwide, I think, are raised by a single parent. I think in the USA, that number is approaching 30%. So the USA is more than four times higher than the global average when it comes to single parenthood. And that's not good. That has a lot of downstream problems. I understand that I don't expect the world to be perfect and I don't expect people to be perfect,

but that doesn't mean that we should not have standards that we aim for and we strive for. It's difficult to stay in shape. It's difficult to eat a healthy diet. It's difficult to exercise regularly, get enough sleep. That doesn't mean that those standards just go away and that we should all just succumb and become obese and lazy and just eat junk. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it.

And I think that the most things that are difficult to do, I mean, there aren't that many things in the world uh beyond you know basic basic basic things that we need for most fundamental survival most things there aren't many things that are worth doing which are easy um most things that are going to yeah most things that are going to get you success or achievement or status or money or whatever, they're difficult. They're difficult. Yeah. It's interesting. If you remember the guys from the All In podcast, David Sachs and those guys, one day they were talking about work-life balance and young people's obsession with that.

And all three said, look, if you're going to be successful, you're going to work your ass off. You're going to have sacrifices or you're not going to have success. It's one or the other. I mean, you may get lucky and fumble into something, but that tends not to happen. Extremely hard work seems to be a necessary ingredient to even modest success.

Yeah. So again, I think the reason why a lot of people are sad in our time the reason why i think that there's a lot of reasons why mental health is declining but i think one of the big ones is simply the gap between people's expectations and their perceived realities and this might not be a popular thing to say but i think a lot of people need to reduce their expectations. I think that when you look around most of the world, and when you look through people's human history, I think that people's expectations were more grounded. And as a result, even though they

objectively lived more difficult lives, they were happier and felt more meaning, purpose, and fulfillment than a lot of people, especially young people, do now because their expectations are through the roof. And then they're experiencing their reality, and there's this massive gap, which is causing them to feel anxious or depressed or feel like something is not going right in their life. Whereas the reality is just that perhaps their expectations are not realistic. So if someone wants to achieve huge levels of success, for example, I don't know, they want wealth or they want fame or they want to be a star athlete or create a huge YouTube channel or whatever it is. There's nothing wrong with aspiring to that. I love ambition. I'm a very ambitious person. But you then need to be willing to put in the work. The expectation can't be, oh, I'm going to have the

biggest podcast in the world, or I'm going to have my own radio show or TV show, and I'm going to be a superstar basketball player. But I don't want to go to training. I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to make thousands of pieces of content. I don't want to promote myself every day. I have no problem with people who are just like, you know what? I'm not hyper ambitious. I'm cool just having enough to live and enjoying my life and enjoying my family and being able to. Cool. That's awesome.

Right? Those people are not complainers. Those people are not complainers. It's just like, okay, cool. Like that's totally fine. Not everyone needs to be wanting to be the next Elon Musk or be the next Mark Zucker cool. That's totally fine. Not everyone needs to be wanting to be the next Elon Musk or be the next Mark Zuckerberg. That's totally fine.

You don't need to aspire to be a billionaire. But if you do aspire to be a billionaire, then you've got to be willing to work like one. And not only that, the other thing I see people avoiding is you have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to be very uncomfortable and you have to do fearless,

self-objective evaluation. You have to look at your strengths and weaknesses and constantly update or find ways to buttress them with other people or whatever it might be, reading, education. You have to have that. And that to me seems like one of the things that's missing in this age of self-esteem. You know, why should I get better? Because Wubbzy said, hey, I'm me. I'm perfect. No one else is like you, so you're the best. It's like, that is not the way to raise capable people. If you think about

all the religious injunctions over the years, you're a sinner, you're bad, you're broken, you need God to restore you, and that seems to work better for people than telling them they're just the best period because they're you. Yeah, exactly. The world doesn't owe you much just because you exist and take up space and breathe oxygen. That's just the reality of it. And look, ultimately, I'm not too worried about these things because it's all self-correcting. The truth is, despite how much people try to push against it, most things in the world are something approaching a meritocracy.

We all start in different positions in different places, and we have different talents, abilities, and experiences and personalities. But over the course of an entire lifetime, you can see how things work out for people. So if there is that person who just wants to spend decades complaining and moaning and not doing anything to improve their station, then you're going to see that person a couple decades later, and they're going to be in the same place, if not a worse one. But then you see the people who do adopt certain mindsets and do take action, and they're consistent, and they work hard, and they keep on going even when things

get difficult. And then you see the position they're in in the future. And again, the proof is in the pudding. And one of those is much more aspirational than the others. So I think generally when people want to achieve success in something, it's wise to look at people who have done it or look at people who are doing it and learn from them. Follow their example, follow their lead, and that's what works. Yeah, somebody was, is that Bondo was saying they like what I said about the self-esteem movement. I have low self-esteem and now it's uncomfortable when you're an adolescent, but when you're an adult, it helps you check yourself, blame yourself. You don't blame out there for everything that happens. You

take on the responsibility and assume that yeah it's me so therefore i must have done something that i could do better and you just constantly constantly adjust to that do you have you know as we get more and more intrusion uh from government and it's all this centralized authority that seems to be going where you know one group seems to be putting all goodness in these centralized authorities and badness and it's you're bad if you seems to be putting all goodness in these centralized authorities and badness. And you're bad if you want to be autonomous and free. And by the same token, by the way, those groups that are doing the flip, which is only goodness exists in autonomy and freedom and any centralized authority is all bad. And the reality is somewhere in the middle.

But certainly since COVID, as you said, it's changed everything. And this intrusion was extraordinary and it seems to have continued into certain standards. Like I said, we just heard about the French limiting speech on a scientific endeavor for which there must be varied opinions. That's the scientific process.

But what is your sort of playbook for pushing back? What do we do going forward? You've mentioned a lot of things about assessing ourselves and being responsible and gratitude. And I heard a lot of different ideas, but is there sort of a, is it about just continuing to push for free speech and standing up and being courageous and interviewing people that maybe other people have tried to cancel as misinformation or disinformation? Do we have just a responsibility to keep pushing out with platforms just so people can continue to speak and give everything sunlight? Yeah, absolutely. I think you focus on your locus of control. I think we all have to admit and accept as much as we may not like it, but we cannot control most things in the world. Most

people can't even control themselves, let alone other people, let alone the government, let alone foreign governments, let alone whatever sits across or above those governments, which we're not even aware of. And it's very easy to go down a very deep rabbit hole where you spend all of your time and all of your mental energy and all of your consideration on things that you cannot control. This is why I think it's good to be interested in politics and to be politically active, but it's not good or healthy to make it your be all and end all, particularly on a federal or on a global level, because it's like, well, what is your power over that? Unless you're going to run for president or you're going to run for a governor or something like you can't affect that.

But what you can do is you can take control of your own mindset. You can take control of your physical body. You can exercise, get in shape, eat a good diet, encourage the people around you too. If you are a parent, you can do your best to raise good, excellent children and put that out into the world. And then they will go on and do good and excellent things. And it ripples outwards. We've all got different talents. We've all got different roles. We have different skill sets. My skill set is not the same as the next person. And so I think we just all have to get in where we fit in and do our best to be excellent people and to be excellent to ourselves and excellent to one another and to do our best to use our

God-given talents to uplift humanity, uplift our neighborhoods, uplift our communities. We know that the answer is they're not going to come from the government. The government is not going to come and all these bureaucrats and politicians, they're not going to fix our problems. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are not going to fix all of our problems, but we can. If each of us as individuals does our best to fulfill our potential and to live our lives in service to other people, then that's a pretty good formula because I believe that the people always ultimately have the power. There's a lot more of us than there are of them,

whoever them is. And so if we recognize that and we act accordingly and we do what we can within our locus of control and our spheres of influence, then I think if we do that collectively, then absolutely, we can have an impact to the two of us speaking here. We're just two guys, right? We're not particularly extraordinary or blessed with some superpower or something. But we are both able to reach millions of people and use our voices and use our minds and use our skills to nudge people

in a positive direction, encourage them to think, encourage them to be more optimistic, encourage them to challenge some of their beliefs and to question narratives, encourage them to just be good people in the world and to treat other people well. And look, if we can nudge millions of people, then other people can do the same. It might be dozens, it might be hundreds, it might be thousands and I think that's really how we do it yeah I think what I'm hearing you say

is something I completely agree with and I think you'll probably agree with my construct is you use the strengths you have be grateful for them and be creative in applying them in such a way that you do good that's it, pretty simple right? that's it and encourage other people to do the same hey now i'm going to ask a very mercenary question on my part uh for me uh which is i've i have met

so many extraordinary people from nigeria and west africa and i whenever i always think god i do not know a history of that region uh except for the Masamusa. Was that his name? Mansamusa, who was the richest man in the world from Mali, who, do you know the story? About,

it's Mansamusa? not in great detail, but I know the name. Well, what he did was, Masamusa, he had so many, Caleb,

you can look me up, look it up for me, make sure we're getting it right. But he had so much wealth when he was the head of an empire that he did a European tour and just handed out gold wherever he went. And he caused so much inflation wherever he traveled that he crashed the economies of every city he visited.

So he had to go back through and buy the gold back in order to stabilize the economies in these areas. It was, you know, first lesson in inflation people. They knew it in the 9th century. So you can't just hand out gold. It doesn't work. Yeah, don't hand out gold and cause inflation.

And so my question is, do you have any books of the history of the region that you recommend? I've been meaning to ask somebody for that. It's just an extraordinary region. And the interplay between that region and Europe is massively important

for the history of the world. And most of, you talk about white supremacy, that's Eurocentric white supremacy is that we don't know that history. We should know it as well as we know the history of Germany or France, seems to me. But I have never gotten any good resources for that. I'm glad you asked me this question because I don't have a good answer for it, which means that

I myself need to do more research. When you find a book that you think is good and i need something that you know i'm a beginner and so i need something that really you know it's narrative where i can follow it and make sense of it all and it's you know one of the things by the way when uh i've i've i asked this of my west african friends every once in a while and they will always say we don't talk about it we don't talk about the history and and i always think there's something now there's really something there now we got to talk about it i i'm guessing there was wars and things that that sort of were not so great uh but you know what civilization didn't have that right yeah also in um i know that certainly in some west african countries i don't know if this has changed now but i know know that for a long period, I know that they didn't teach history in the schools, just like they don't teach history

in some other countries around the world, or if they do, it's very restricted and limited. So, yeah, I never went to school myself in Nigeria, but from conversations I've had with people who did, it seems that certainly, again, I don't know what it's like right now. But I know there was definitely a time period, if it's still not continuing, where the teaching of history, at least in the school system, was very limited. But I'm sure there's some great books out there. I just don't know which ones they are. Yeah, let me know if you find something specific. And I'll look around myself.

If I find something, I'll send it to you. But there's never been a more important time to study your history than right now, I would argue. I mean, there probably have been. Mansa Musa, there he is, richest person in history. Mansa Musa. And Mali, he was a Mali king. $400 billion.

There you go. That's why, I didn't even think he could be estimated. He was, he had so much concentrated wealth. But the point being is, there probably have been other periods of history where history knowledge has been important, but I would argue that right now is about as important as any. It's getting complicated. We need humans.

History may not exactly repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. That's the statement. It certainly has a tendency to rhyme. So, Zuby, I've always wanted to spend time talking to you. I appreciate you spending a little time with me here today. I'll send everyone over to Zuby Music on X. Where else would you like people to go? What's coming up? Yeah, sure. So you can check out my, I've got a book out right now, which is called Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody. That's available at teamzuby.com. I've also got a book called The Candy Calamity.

That's an awesome children's book. A lot of fun. And that's available at candycalamity.com. Yep. And then I'm on all social media at Zuby Music. That's just Z-U-B-Y Music. You can find my podcast and all of my music on all digital platforms. Very easy to find.

If in doubt, just search my name, Zuby, Z-U-B-Y, and you will find me. Give me a little taste of what's coming up on the podcast. We can sort of kind of... Oh, yeah, sure. Well, okay. Well, I'm doing more in-person interviews this year. This is the first interview I'm doing where I'm revealing some of the guests, but I guess I put it up on Xnotes not so long ago.

I've got interviews coming up with Larry Elder, Scott Adams, Michael Schellenberger. Let me just give those three. There's many more to come, but over the next couple months, I've got some really big guests and some great conversations lined up.

I've met Schellenbergerberger how brilliant is that dude how smart is he you you you spent about 30 seconds with him you're like wow wow that is a use that brain for good sir it's it's it's a quite an instrument yeah for sure he's a good dude as well man he's a good dude he is a good dude he is a good dude all right well thank you hopefully we'll visit you someday in Florida because we do spend a little time down there and we enjoy visiting our friends in Florida because everybody's happy down there, especially in Southern Florida. So, hopefully, we'll see you down there. Thanks, Subhi.

No, it's okay, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Cheers. And let's put the schedule coming up here. We are going to be gone. We're actually traveling to Mexico tomorrow. Rob Henderson, when we come back, Dr. Willie Soon, Dr. Tess Laurie, and that will be a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

and Tess Laurie, I think, is at noon or one, something like that, and then when we come back, the following crazy lineup, Brett Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Kevin Bass with Kelly Victor, who's making her command return, and the one and only Adam Carolla

is he going to come in Susan? Carolla going to come into the studio? Yeah who knows? We'll see what we can get well we'll see. Follow it Ask Dr. Drew for updates on shows and what not and we appreciate you all being here anything Caleb from your standpoint? No that was great

this is a great week of shows and interviews. There's a bunch of great stuff here. Yeah, you can see what Emily has done, Emily Barsh. I mean, it's just been extraordinary, I guess. And it's not going to stop for the next, I don't know how long, frankly. I've been sending her

interesting ideas. She's been sending me ideas. And we're just like, oh my goodness, there's a lot of, I like that Alberta politician who apologized. I want to talk to her. I want to get her in here and just see what she's thinking. And there's a lot of i like that alberta politician who apologized i want to talk to her i want to let's get her in here and just see what she's thinking and there's a lot of people we need to come back around on so there's a lot to a lot of room to cover and not the least of which is that the world continues to change and have backlashes and we need to keep aware and addressing these things so we'll see what we can do we appreciate you all being here. I saw a lot of activity on the restream and the Rumble Rants today. I was watching you guys, a lot of Zuby

love there, and we appreciate that. And we will return on Wednesday. Is that correct? Wednesday will be with Rob Henderson. His new book is called Troubled. He's another great guest and you will enjoy that. So we'll see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based

on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.