Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 458: Matt Dwyer

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Matt Dwyer, friend, awesome person, and the guy who got Duncan into podcasting, re-joins the DTFH! You can listen to Matt's show, Conversations with Matt Dwyer, anywhere fine podcasts are streamed. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Amazon Music - Visit Amazon.com/Trussell and get your first 3 months of Amazon Music FREE! Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order. BetterHelp - Visit betterhealth.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling!

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And we've got a wonderful podcast for you today. Matt Dwyer is with us. Not from Matt. I don't know if I'd be podcasting. We're gonna jump right into this, but first, some quick business. Thank you, Amazon Music, for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Obviously, you have impeccable tastes when it comes to podcasts. You love them. The Amazon Music is the place to go

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I'm sorry. I've had COVID and I've been traveling. So I'm sorry. Our schedule got a little disrupted, but we are back. And I'd love all of you to join your family over at Patreon.com slash DTFH. Now, friends, it was many moons ago, and the before times, when I was living in Los Angeles

and my friend Matt Dwyer invited me to be on a thing called a podcast. I didn't know what it was. I just went downtown where I met him and Matt Bronger. And we just talked. I don't even remember what the podcast was about. We just talked for an hour or two. And it was fun.

It was a blast. And that was my first podcast. And it was after that that I told Natasha Legere, and she said, I really should. I just did this thing called a podcast. And then we started a podcast together. So Matt Dwyer is the reason I would say, or one of the reasons that the DTFH exists.

You should check out his podcast. It's called Conversations with Matt Dwyer. He's an awesome person, a longtime friend, and I love him. Now everybody, welcome to the DTFH Matt Dwyer. Matt, welcome to the DTFH. Do you know you're the first podcast I ever did? Really? As a guest?

You and Matt Bronger. Oh, when we did Matt's radio? Yep. That was the first podcast I ever did. And I think because that was so much fun, that's what started the ball rolling for me to become a podcaster. That's funny because I attribute you to, because when I did your podcast as a guest,

long ago, you were living, I think, in Atwater. And I was at a crossroads because I was like, what the fuck I'm doing with my life. And you were like, you should do a podcast. And it never... So I was always like, oh, Duncan Saris and I do podcasts. Weird.

That's like some kind of time travel paradox. Not really, but I thought I'd just say time travel paradox. By the way, if you all hear a fan in the background, Matt is in LA. There's a motherfucking heat wave. We're not gonna... He's leaving that thing on. Oh, I can turn it off.

Can you hear that? I can hear it, but I don't want you to get... No, I don't want you to turn it off. We can work with it. It's not that hot yet. Yeah, but still, just be comfortable. It's okay. People understand.

I mean, you're getting scorched out there, right? What's the temperature out there? It's... You know, it's weird because it's like... They keep saying it's gonna be like 100 and then it'll be just like 80 or 90. It's 80... No, that can't be right.

It says it's 66 right now. That's because... Well, that's because there's a heat scam. Yeah, the heat scam. Do you know about the heat scam? Yeah, they make it up. Yeah, they don't want... They, for some reason, they want people to think

like the West is heated up or there's a drought. I remember when... You know what I did the day before I left LA when everyone was talking about there being a drought and a heat wave? What'd you do? Tube down a river. It was like 70 degrees, really wonderful day.

Cool. So too much water in California, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just run our faucets just for kicks. It helps. Well, cool. Yeah, it helps. It keeps the air clean.

A lot of people don't know that if you run your faucet it runs out the carbon. Because the air blows against the faucet and it cleans the air. Yeah. A lot of people get these air filters and they're not... You're not getting clean air.

You're just basically... You're getting like a diseased person's breath blown through a diaper. That's all an air filter is. But you run that water. Yeah. What do you use to wash your hands? Exactly.

Diapers. So why wouldn't... Why wouldn't you use what God intended us to use to clean things, water? Yeah, and only water. No sponges, no soap, just water. All you need is water. All you need when...

I undergo many surgeries a week and any time I go in I'm like, please don't use any kind of alcohol or just water, like classic style. Just use water the natural way. Matt, the natural way. Everybody, Matt Dwyer, is an anti-vaxxing pediatrician.

I think the worst thing you can... I haven't vaccinated any of my kids. My wife went into... She had two C-sections. They just used water and they gave her just a half shot of bourbon before she... All you need. All you need.

Apple. Apple in the mouth, belt in the mouth. It's all you need. Oh, Matt. They need to feel the pain to understand the sins that they've caused men to commit. Matt Dwyer, everybody, anti-vaxxer misogynistic pediatrician.

He was at the... He was at that rally that they're now trying to call it insurrection. That wasn't an insurrection. Was it, Matt? No. What was it? What would you call it?

I think it was like a parade. It was like a celebration of our capital. It was really what I saw going on there. Yeah, the way it's supposed to be. Now, I don't want to get too political though, man. You know, you're one of my... Like, I've known you so long. And we have so many weird memories together.

But I was thinking, like, what are we going to talk about? But holy shit, man. How about the fact that you just did a show with John Lorre? Like, that's nuts. I'm still kind of mystified by it, to be quite honest. Like, it was one of those situations that just... Like, came together in the weirdest way, and I was just like... I don't know, it's weird.

Because like, since high school, John Lorre has been a figure that anybody in a creative like, world is just like, oh, this guy, he does everything, he paints, he's an artist, he's a musician. And so, when it came together, I was just like, I'm like working with a guy I've... Not idolized, that's the wrong. But admired greatly since I was a teenager. It was surreal. It came through a podcast, though.

Like, this was directly podcast related, right? Yeah, he followed me on Twitter some years ago. And then, one time, I'd like commented on some tweet of his, and then he wrote to me, and he was like, sorry, I took that down. And I was like, okay. I was like, I never write anybody when they delete a tweet. But thanks. And then, over the years, we just started like, messaging back and forth.

And finally, I asked him to do the podcast, and he was like... He was reluctant, and he would keep going back and forth. And he was like, yeah, I don't know. And then, one day, he just called me, and I put it up on my Patreon. And actually, I think after the episode that I did with him on the podcast, I put some of his voicemails at the very end, because it was just like, all right, well, I guess we won't do this. But he was calling from an unidentified...

Like, he wouldn't give me his number, because he had this crazy stalker years ago. So he's still paranoid about that, which I've been stalked. I get it. It's the worst. But I thought he was coming on to plug the TV show, because he sent me all these clips. And then, five minutes into the podcast, he's like, yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do with this. And I immediately was like, oh, I know what to do with this.

I'm friends with Adam McKay. So I waited after the interview. And I was like, hey, I can send this to Adam McKay if you're interested. And he was kind of not really certain who Adam was. Right. But Adam, like, I sent it to Adam and then put them in touch in like a month later. Like, I've never seen anything sell so quick, but it's Adam McKay. I could probably...

And John Lurie. And John Lurie, who's like, yeah, I mean, a legend. So to me, the story is so cool. And you all made a great show on HBO. The story is so cool, because it just shows that if you just keep doing the thing, like whatever it is, something like that will happen. But you could... I guess what I'm saying is, a year ago, you probably couldn't predict that that would

happen. But as you're thinking about the possible things you're going to be working on, I bet that wasn't on a list of things. Maybe it was. No. And I had no intention of being a part of it. I just... What John sent me was like raw footage of like what the show was going to be.

It wasn't even like a full episode. He sent me like 15 minutes. And I was like, I just wanted to facilitate. I was like, this is great. This should be out in the world. And he... I don't know if he has agents or anything anymore. He lives in an island in the Caribbean.

So he's just sort of off in his own world. And I just wanted to help. And when Adam was like, oh yeah, you'll get a producer credit and we'll pay you. I was like, fuck, that's way more than... And at the time, like Mike, wife and I had been struggling for like almost four... I left a secure job at CBS because I was ready to put a shotgun in my mouth because corporate, corporate, man. What was the light?

What was the job? You know what I did? I did for a year and eight months. I was a sensor. I did program standards and practices. What? I hated it. You had to sense you.

So you like somehow became like something knowing you, the antithesis. It's like, it's like someone working. It's someone from PETA. Get a good job at a slaughterhouse. Yeah. And it was, but it was like, I just had my first baby. And I don't know if you've experienced this, but like when I had my first kid, there was a bit of like an identity crisis.

Like I was, I was like, I don't know who I am. Like there's no like, what do you call it? Like a ceremony or anything to say goodbye. Like a morning, the old you. Because you know, I went from drunk fucking idiot who did nothing to suddenly being like, oh fuck, I got to be a dad, a dad. And I don't know what that means because I didn't really have one. It's like, and I literally had moments where I was like, so do I start like wearing cargo

shorts and flip flop? Like there was that, like there was that like sort of like, who am I now? So I took this job because I was like, well, this is what a responsible dad does instead of bartending and do shots all night. And I hated it. It was just such a surreal and I'd have to go to, and I know this is ego, but I'd have to go and work on sitcoms and like be like, you can't say that to my friends who I started comedy with.

It was like, like it was humiliating, man. And maybe, maybe that's bullshit because I was, but you know what, it also didn't pay that well. Like I thought it was like, okay, I'll have health insurance and I'll make, you know, but it's like, I was just as broke as I was when I was doing anything else in my life. So I was like, well, if I'm going to be broke. So one day I just quit. I was just like, fuck this, I can't take this.

Tell me about your first day of work there. They took me down to the prices right so I could learn. Really? Yeah. I would hear Drew, Drew, Carrie talk about you here and there. And I'd, because I'd sit like two chairs away from him when he was like on his breaks. And I, I was so ashamed of what I was doing. I didn't want to be like, oh yeah, Duncan's my, like strike up a conversation, which I

would have done in any other situation. I was just like, and he, he had done a show of mine, a fundraiser I did for a Black Panther like years ago to raise money for his, this orphanage, which is not the way to call it. Anyway, community center. Foster community center. But, and I never wanted to bring that up to him either. I was like, well, he clearly doesn't remember me, but I was so ashamed of this job, which is like the joke.

Like for years on television, they make fun of the censors like Saturday Night Live would they're made fun of in Woody Allen movies. We've got the last laugh on that one, Woody. But, but I mean, the thing is, it's not like you, like you've been given a list of, you know, you can't, these are the things you can't say. And your job is just to tell people, you can't say that. That's all you just call them up or something. You're looking at, how does it work?

You're watching some feed and you're like, ah, you, you can't say that. You can't say fisting the ass of a monkey on the crisis, right? There's also, there's also, well, Price is right is also because of game shows of the the game show scam in the fifties where people were cheating and making money. So there's that for that, we're there to be like legitimate and make sure they're not cheating or that the contestants are protected. But for like sitcoms and stuff, we would get multiple drafts of the scripts and we would read them and we'd have to like, you have to look out for like product, like name dropping

products because a lot of writers would, I've known writers who've done that, who they'd sneak in things on Saturday Night Live and then get like, you know, a year free of Baja Fresh. What? Yeah. Horatio Sands did that. He said Baja Fresh in a sketch and then they sent him all kinds of swag. Holy shit. That's amazing.

So there's like an underground network of writers connected to corporations and there's a sort of like, they just know, look, if you can work this in, this explains every Jay Leno monologue. I think sometimes the networks on board with that stuff and they'll do like with that. I don't think there's like a legitimate, like I don't think Horatio was like, oh, but I think there's like a thing like it's a known thing like, oh, maybe we'll get a gift for saying this. I don't think they could, but like Lenny Bruce would do that.

Lenny Bruce would have a bit where he's like, yeah, I roll cigarettes up in my sleeve and then he'd go on the Tonight Show and he'd say Marlboro's and he would have his agent contact Marlboro. So some people have done that. Yeah. I mean, there's, I've seen a lot of different montages of like various like late night hosts, you know, working in something that that they're selling, you know, my favorite way to actually listen to the late night hosts do their monologues beats headphones.

I'm a Sony headphone guy. That's what I'm wearing right now. Sony. That's great. Sony headphones are great. Yeah. And they have a Sony plus now where you can get all the movies, stream all the movies. I just, I don't know why I brought that up.

I just, I just really appreciate the films and television Sony has put out. You know, my favorite kind of Instagram commercial or headphones commercials on Instagram because there's no way to demonstrate how good the headphone is other than getting some actor to put the headphone on and go, oh my God. You know, like it's the funniest thing because it's just like these people react to the headphones like they're hearing the sound of like the Ark of the Covenant being open. Holy shit. Big thank you to feels for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH.

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That's F E A L S dot com slash Duncan. Become a member and get 50% off automatically taken off your first order with free shipping. It's feels.com slash Duncan. So you are a sensor and but you know what? I got to tell you this is to me like after I went through the period that you're talking about and I was not a fun period, which is a kind of like it's like it's definitely something it's like shedding a kind of skin. You're shedding this like version of yourself that didn't have anyone depending on them at all. You're you're including yourself.

Basically, you would you ought to be like if you're us some people some single people obviously are like like have a lot. A lot of people are supporting but for I know you and you know me like you let this part of yourself that was like innately selfish right only because selfish in the sense that what else? Who are you? Who do you have to serve? You know you're just serving yourself. You you're you're because that's who you're taking care of. You're in charge of just feeding you.

You're in charge of just paying your rent. You're in charge of all these things that are just solely related to you as an individual. Then you have a kid and it's like now it's all about we got to get health care. We got to get food for the kid. We got to get rent. I need a stable life. I can't die. I can no longer fantasize.

You know what I mean? Like I can't do the thing I was doing was like ah whatever. Maybe I'll overdose going to the next life who gives a fuck. You can't do that anymore. Now you have been for better or for worse. I think for better anchored to the earth and by your responsibility because you decided to bring a life in the planet. And from to me I think what that does is it kind of makes anything that you're doing. Holy or you know anything.

Yeah you're a sensor but you're not a sensor. You're a dad and the reason you're going to do that satanic job is because you got to support your kids. You know it's beautiful. Yeah. It's love based. You know it's I mean it's not like you're like Lockheed Martin making cluster bombs. Yeah but I was like. Yeah but it was pretty gross.

I mean and it was a growth and it was right around the time that the less moon vets sexual harassment stuff started breaking. So it was like interesting to see people like men at that company just worshiped him there. He's a great guy. No one. He's old school. No one does what he does. And I was like it seems like a piece of shit to me. Yeah.

But it was just and that culture was like you know I had bosses who hassled me and were dicks to me and like I went to HR once and HR is what I learned. Because I never worked a corporate job. They're just there to protect the company. So I wasn't protected. I just made my life worse. It's like. Right. They're like oh fuck we got a troublemaker when you go there.

It's not like they're there to like you know scold whoever was a dick to you. You had a you had a shitty boss there. Yeah I had a couple shitty bosses and I in their defense I was a shitty employee because I would leave for lunch often and just be like I'm going home. Yeah. Who's going to know. Yeah. Because I hated it. Like the last year I was there like I started in January.

So then like I used all my sick and personal days within like a few months because I hated it so much. And I was like at May or June and I had nothing. I couldn't call it sick anymore. So you're just locked in. I was like and then I just you know it's weird is Martin Schwartz memoir snapped me out of it because I was like I just felt like I wasn't doing anything creative. I felt I felt completely lost and I was making Kelly my wife miserable because I was just like had nothing like creative and it was making me crazy. And I think I strayed I know as being responsible to my family but I strayed away from who I was and who and I totally did not like not just sound cliche like I was not nourishing myself creatively or emotionally. Yeah.

And I was just numbing myself with booze really. Yeah. That Costco card that you get when you're dead also comes with really sweet cheap booze. Do you have a Costco card. No I know. And I'm not saying that because they're giving me money. Well it's a wonderful company and they are giving me they do send me lots of things. They send me a lot of one like get they send me 100 pound crates of apples.

You know I remember when I got my Costco card and I and when I got it these this was still in the like mid early. It seems like Costco there was a weird thing that happened with Costco or people were proud of their cart. You know what I mean. Like my my dad was kind of proud of his Costco card and like you know you go in and he would show his card like like he was showing like some high level security clearance to get into a government laboratory or something. But you know I was excited. You go into Costco you're excited as fuck because you have in your mind somehow you're going to save so much money. And then you leave Costco and you've paid like six hundred dollars for like all it like quarts of yogurt and a knife set and some leg. You know what I mean.

Like it's too much. I don't like going in there. It's just too it's too much. I can't deal with it and the lines are fucked up. But yeah Costco booze I never I never tried it. But booze I have tried and it definitely is not a great solution to having a shitty job. At least that's been my experience. No.

No I was. Costco tequila was pretty good and I could put down a big bottle of that. I was putting down a lot. You drink when I when we are friends you are drinking a lot like you are like I bought into the myth. I bought into the myth. Like I and it's funny because now that I had quit I've thought about a lot of like there's a lot of masculine toxic masculine masculinity attached to it. It's like men drink and you're like oh you're feeling angry. You have a drink.

You're feeling sad. You have a drink. It's like all this shit that was like crammed in my head about it. It's like really part of our culture and it's like it's not healthy like to step back and analyze it that way. It's not like mushrooms. If you take mushrooms you're like oh I'm going to go expand my mind and have a spiritual journey. It's like whiskey. What what like have you ever looked back at a moment in your life.

It's like man I should have had two more shots at that party. That would have really been. You never look back at a moment. I should have drank more. I should have drank more. No never. But you know I said the right thing with those 15 beers I had. I said all the right stuff.

I have noticed though that like now that like you know I've figured out a way to like moderate that part of myself where I can just have like a glass of wine or two then go to bed. You know what I mean. Like I have noticed that there is a quality to it that is the reason it's so celebrated the reason that it's like looked upon like religiously and mystically and stuff like that is because if you can like control the demon inside of you. And not like every single night get hammered just because you had one drink. Then there's something to it. You know there's there is something not nice to it. And but yeah if you can't do that. Then I can't.

Yeah. A lot of people. A lot of people can't. And and I mean Jesus Christ man having like I'm sorry. I talk about this too much for having like experienced true. I got addicted to ketamine for like a year. Oh God. Yes.

Oh my God. So addicted. So addicted. It was it was it was ridiculous. And when was this when this when was this. This this was like before our our children you know but the the the like right right around there you know I it was like when I just like it was so gross man and it wasn't doing anything for me. And it was like it wasn't even I wasn't even achieving the effect that I like about it. And so I was just addicted.

You know it was humiliating. It was just a confrontation with the reality of like that. Look it doesn't matter like it doesn't matter how cool how cool you think you are how spiritual think you are how strong you might think you are this or that. There is more than likely some substance out there that once you get wound up and it it it's not quite as easy to get out of it as you thought. And I don't think there's anything to be ashamed about it. I'm glad I experienced it. I'm glad I experienced it because it taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about like free will and it taught me a lot about like the incredible deception that that drugs and of all kind.

Like achieve in a person's life. It fucked it fucked with my ego. And I think that it distorted my ego. And I think that in a lot of ways probably affected my career and how I approached my career and being like I'm fucking great. That's just like yeah not good. No no humility at all. Special like and I just it's it's been to sift through who I was is kind of embarrassing. Wayne Kramer once he was like I was at his office and he was looking at pictures.

There was like pictures of him when he was in the MC5 and he's like I don't even know who that guy is anymore because it was just like a drug fueled lunatic. It's so cool to realize that you reincarnate multiple times in any given lifetime. And that's one of that's what I've loved about being a dad is it's taught me a lot about reincarnation and it's taught me a lot about like past lives which you know I love thinking about that stuff you know like. People get caught up in it thinking about God what was I in my last life. What was I before I was born it's like what the fuck were you 10 years ago. Do you remember 10 years ago what you were how much of that do you even remember. You know when you look back a decade ago you might have some foggy memory of it but it's foggy and warped and especially if you are like. Partying you probably don't remember much of it at all so it might as well be another incarnation.

And there was one before that and one before that and one before that it's just in between those various states of our life. There is just like what you said there isn't like a death experience in the normal sense you're not on a slab. You know what I mean and it usually happens kind of gradually it's for some people it happens suddenly some people have like sudden you know strokes or heart attacks or whatever. But sometimes it's just this slow thing and then suddenly you realize that's not me anymore. I'm looking at it I have on my wall here a picture of my brother and me when we were kids and it's like I see this little boy that I used to be but that's not me. You know that's that was a different life that was it is me in the sense that we have the same DNA but that was a different life. Yeah. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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I've been questioning a lot about how much of I think what mentally and spiritually ills us as humans is western thought. Does that sound weird? Say it again? The western thought and how ingrained puritanical thought is within us. There's this striving for perfection to be like Jesus or whatever. We have all this preconceived garbage in our head from the get-go that is ingrained in us culturally. Was that too vague? No.

When you start looking at the guilt complexes you have, it's so fun to imagine. The reason you have those guilt complexes is because they're tied into a literal cult that was in this country not that long ago. They came up with ethical systems, the morality systems that now are so burnt into us that probably epigenetically. Who knows? Probably somehow coded into the fucking proteins of our body or these ideas of like, well, this is the way, this is what's good and this is what's bad. And I think it's scary for people to start playing around with that idea of maybe what you think is bad isn't bad. Maybe what you think is good isn't necessarily good. Just because you think it, especially if you haven't examined it, especially if you haven't spent any amount of time looking at like, why do I think that thing that I did was bad?

And then you start examining it. I'm trying to think of some basic like, well, you know, for the longest time I used to beat myself up because I just felt like I wasn't there for my mom when she was dying as much as I could have been. And so I went through a nice few years of really, really playing an internal game with myself where I would just like dramatically just think that I'd failed my mother and her last days on earth. And it was a big drama and it was bleeding into my relationships and bleeding into my life. But now that I've gotten enough distance between then and now and I can look back at myself then, just like what we were saying earlier, I realized like that was a different, I was a different person then. I was half asleep most of the time. I was running away from myself. I was running away from responsibility.

I was running away from connection. I was terrified of death. I was, you know what I mean? There are all these things back then that, so when I look back and I think, fuck, the fact that you're able to do anything, the fact that you were able to like be there for her in the way you were, the fact that you were able to like, you know, handle it the way that you handled it is just fine. Like, you know, because that, you were, I guess it's a cliche thing to say, but most people are doing their best, even if that doesn't look like their best to others or even to themselves. Yeah. And death is a mother, like, I think I've been fortunate because I had death as a lot as a kid. Yeah, you did.

But I think, but it also fucked, fucked like everybody handles death the wrong, like if my mom dies and she's always like, he sort of guilt me because I have a couple of brothers I don't really get along with. It's like, well, you'll all have to talk at my funeral and I'm like, I might not go. Not as any disrespect for you, but I find that form of saying goodbye to somebody is antiquated and gross and it's, I'm there for other people, not really for my process. And it's like, I have to figure out what I want to do when, in those situations, which is another, I think, cultural and socialization thing that's pounded into us is like, how we approach death and how we deal with death. And I don't think Americans specifically have a healthy, any healthy thoughts about it or rituals. And which is, you know, we're a fucked up society. Well, we're, you know, we're sort of, we, we went through as a society, we like went through a huge shift. We became really time based.

We became industrialized. We became technological. And a lot of the ethics and morality that we have seem to be more connected to like work, like what like factory worker morality than even to religion, you know, like a lot of the way. Concept. Yeah. And people are fucking, you know, this is why when you're late, when someone's late, like me included. We have this inordinate response. It doesn't make sense how freaked out.

We're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Am I four minutes late? I'm so sorry. Oh my God, look, I'm 10 minutes late. Oh shit. And then you look at that, that reaction, you realize like, oh, like this is some kind of weird expression of what's the word, fealty, like some expression of like, let me, let me bow to you. Oh, great factory worker boss. Only it's my friend that I was late.

You know, I don't want to lose my job. I don't need the coal for the winter. So that's kind of burnt. That's hard baked into a lot of people. Punctuality is the most important thing. Never be late. Punctuality. But when you look at that from the perspective of pre-industrial revolution, that was not how people lived at all.

According to some anthropologists, I've read David Graber. Have you read him at all? No. He's fucking awesome. Look, in the back, like pre-industrial revolution, there was a time where clocks were kind of a novelty. You know what I mean? Like that idea of time was like weird to people. They were going more by daylight than by seconds, you know, but we've become so crucified into time right now that were, and we had to be that way because that's how you run a factory.

You know, that's how, if you're going to like mass produce shit, you don't just need machines. You need people acting like machines, right? Like to interact with the machines. They need to be like machines. They need to be there on time. If we don't have William on the fucking, that spot in the, in the assembly line, then the whole system gets thrown because we got to get someone else to come in to do his spot who hasn't been fully trained. That's going to fuck us up a little bit. And so don't be fucking late.

Don't be fucking late. Punch that clock. Don't be late. It's weird, but that got into us. Now we're like that. Now we're like that. Yeah. I've been following this non-binary activist on Instagram and they were saying this interesting thing about like how they thought who they were because of socialization.

And I was like, and like the journey that it took for this person to become open and free and accepting of their non-binary status. But that made me think about like just how in general it's like, how the fuck do I know who I am? Like I've been socialized in so many ways. Like I don't know how many layers of mental and spiritual materialism has been layered onto me that I don't like, I might not know who the fuck I am. I might think I know and I think most people may think they do. I'm like, maybe all of us are just wandering around like completely detached from reality, self-reality and external reality. You ever have that experience where you are in a shitty phase in your life? You wake up in the morning and you've got about 30 seconds where you're just purely experiencing life before whatever neurological machine starts.

Booting up the apps of despair. You know what I mean? Like you wake up and it's like, it's the most perfect day. You wake up and you're like, what a great day. This is, oh my fucking God. I got in a fight with my girlfriend and I threw a cup at the wall. You know what I mean? What's wrong with me?

I've got an anger problem. Something's fucking wrong with me. I'm drinking too much. Oh my God, I'm getting fucking old. Shit, I barely, oh, I got a shit. Why did I eat oysters? We ate 30 oysters last night. You know what I mean?

But like right before that kicks in, you wake up and you're like, oh man, these sheets feel good. This bed feels good. This is so nice. And then, now you become yourself. This is what I think we actually are. We're whatever is before the story. And the story is most certainly has parts of it that have been completely injected into us by our culture, by our parents. You know, that's a huge part of the story.

You know, how you dress, what kind of, you know, what clothes are okay to wear, clothes are not okay to wear. And yeah, it's very controversial because people want to believe that the story is real versus direct experience with reality, which is so bizarre. Do you see your kids picking up social, like I see my daughter, she's five, picking up things from TV shows. And like sometimes she'll say things like, I'm like, where the fuck do you get this? Yeah. And like stuff I don't like, but I'm like, what do I do? Like, I don't like it. And then I'm like, what is she layering on?

And like, how do I, like, I'm literally trying to figure out, like, how do I raise a decent human being, but also be conscious of what bullshit they're layering on themselves or I'm layering on them? It's like, do you get caught up in that trippy shit? Well, yeah. Like, I got to ask, I asked Ram Dass, one of my teachers, like, I said, I'm going to have a, you know, how can I be a great dad? How can I be a good dad? And he, he, man, he was so cool. He had a big smile and he's like, that's a role. That's a role.

That's, you know, that's, that's not you. Like, that's a role that you've given yourself and that, and here's where it gets really maybe controversial. Your son, that's a role for him too. You're applying that role. This is my son. I'm, I'm the dad. You're the son. And it's true on one level.

It's true. But on another level, from my perspective, we're, we're souls, not the roles that we take on. So the roles are there and they are real. And in the game of existence, obviously we need, we need them in place, but they shouldn't take precedent. They're there. For me, I just, I try to keep, I always try to drop back in to the, before the story. And the reason I do that is because if I, the more I do that, the more I am, the more I feel grounded and happy. And then in that place, I can be, I can do what the necessary.

I can play the role of father better. Cause otherwise I'm going to get, I'm going to get like reactive in the weirdest way because, you know, my father was very strict. We were scared of him. We were scared of his anger. And so that means that I might be too soft with forest. You know what I mean? I might be too soft with the kids because I don't want to be that kind of dad. I don't want to be a dad where like my kids are looking at my face to see if I'm about to like blow up or explode.

I want to be a stay, a stable dad. But that being said, if forest has decided to like slap his little brother in the face, you know what I mean? That's a time where you do have to make sure that like he understands this is not okay. You can't slap. And, and the, I don't know what did the little brother do? Are they gambling? Cause if it's gambling, yeah. They both got into that fucking infant casino website.

And I guess like Dune like ended up like forest is a very good, is very good at poker. Like he's, and I don't know where he gets that from cause I'm not a great gambler. So he made a lot of money. And I guess Dune like decided got into his account. That's forced, that's forced fault because his password was ABC, which is a lot of like, he thought it was amazing cause he's just learning alphabet. But it's like, like, anyway, the point is like Dune put the entire amount on like roulette and like, you know, completely lost all his money. So he slapped him. But it's like, you can't, it's not okay.

Matt, you can't slap. I don't care. I don't care if you lost. I don't care. If your children do your churl or your children do gambling now it's a epidemic across the country, man. Yeah, they're both gambling. Dave, I've caught them running like a craps game out of the garage several times. Oh my God.

Oh my God. And they're serving liquor. Yeah. They love it. Kids love to drink. Yeah. Tilly is like one, but she makes a great old fashioned. No.

Yeah. Forest is like a big Bloody Mary kid. But yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's just like you get back. You are, you come into their room in the morning and you know, you realize they haven't gone to sleep from the night before. You know what I mean? There's chips all over the crib. You're like, where'd you go? He won't say.

But the other night I looked out and saw like a little tiny helicopter flying away. So I think one of his friends has a helicopter or something. And he's flying a game. Do you ever find yourself learning? Like sometimes my daughter says profound things. I'm just like, what? Like my daughter became a role model for me for a while. Have you ever had like, cause she's so optimistic and enthusiastic about everything.

There was a period where I was like, I need more of that. Like I don't know what she's tapped into and I don't want to fuck that up for her. Yeah. Cause I feel like I was her in a lot of ways when I was a kid and you know, somebody fucked that stuff up for me. Story. That's a story. Just not cause that's what we're talking about. That's a story.

That thing you're saying, that's a story. That's one of your stories. And like getting familiar with those stories is really fun because the more you start realizing, oh yeah, that's just a story that you tell yourself that you got fucked up as a kid. I'm not saying, and by the way, not advocating, ignoring childhood trauma or any of that stuff. I'm just saying that it's really interesting to start like looking at the different stories you tell yourself. Like I tell the story of the angry father. I tell the story of the guilty son.

I tell the story of getting addicted to Academy. I tell the story of, you know what I mean? And all these stories make up sort of the map of my life. And it's so delightful to do exactly the thing that, you know, anytime you've been on enough acid, if you look at a map and you just realize like that's just a bunch of fucking lines. Somebody came up with somebody decided to name it that that's a landmass. That's not, you know what I mean? That's not California. That's not Texas.

That's not, you know, this is just any basic stone or take on things. But similarly, when you look at the, that map that you've created of your own life and just for a second, give yourself a break and just imagine it's totally wrong. It's not real. It's, it's not, that isn't the case at all. It's just some, you're just keeping it alive. Like the reason there's a Texas is because everybody in Texas agrees there's a fucking Texas. You know what I mean? If like that's why and everyone in the world just does this, oh yeah, Texas, it looks like that.

It's got that fucking boot, whatever. It's Texas. It's Texas. But like, it's not Texas. That's just something that a bunch of people named Texas after they colonize the place. And it's like, before that, it was called something else. Before that, it was called something else. Anyway, the point is, that's just a story about the fucked up thing.

And yes, I do learn from my kids to answer your question. Yeah, they're definitely role models sometimes. Have you found yourself or have you ever tried to change? Not change, not try to change. Like, I've been working the last couple of years to change the way I think about my story and the way I address things, because I think a lot of times I would address things in life because I was reacting from who I thought I was or who the story was, which was often negative and sort of self-deprecating and sort of put myself down a lot,

which is not healthy, but it was like the way I learned to navigate through things. Well, you know, I'm kind of a fucked up. And it's like, I'm like, I don't want to be that dude. Because even if you take that on as a character sometimes, which I think we also can be or I have been performative in my life, where I'm like, oh, I'll just put a little fucking joke here and there and be a little, and that's how I get the girl to like me. And it's like, it's not being real.

And I don't want to be that presentation or I didn't want to be that presentation anymore. Yeah. I think a lot of us do is it's also where you can't, we're trained not to present ourselves honestly, because what if we're not liked or this is what is liked on TV and film. And God knows, TV and film gets everything right. Well, yeah, I mean, fuck it does. It's like, that's definitely what I'm trying to model myself after most of the time is like,

you know, John Wayne. Yeah. There's a shit about like beauty. And I'm like, where the fuck is this coming from? Like these, you know, like it's how she's already at the age of five has the importance of image in her head. And I'm like, I don't know what like we monitor what she watches pretty. I'm like, where is this coming from? Do you have that with you?

Like I wonder what the flip of that is for boys. Well, he's, you know, he's a little younger, but we go on hikes up in the forest sometimes. And like, there's a, you know, the author, Annie Lamont. No, she said something really brilliant, which is if you want your kids to connect to God, teach them to love nature. I just think it's the most brilliant thing to say because, you know, regardless of what you want to call the sum total of all things. There is something so spectacular about when you go into a full for me when I go into a forest. It's just wild because it's like this game that we're all playing on this side of the forest immediately stops when you're in the forest.

Like there's no cars, traffic lights. There's no like, especially up here in the mountains, you're, you're a lot. You can find places where you're just alone. A whole new set of laws is happening. Natural law, the, you know, rivers flowing downhill and the way that like light shines through like green leaves and the sounds of a forest. And so like we're, we're walking up there or I'm driving up to this place we like to hike at. And I'm like, Forrest, this is God. This is God.

And so he's, he goes, wow, I want to touch God. I want to hold God. It was like, oh, that's the most beautiful wild. Yeah, it's wild. But what you did to me, maybe the reason it seems wild to us is because we aren't that level of wild. Like what's more wild than a kid? That's a primordial wild creature mentally, physically that the, the, the, like all those things were the story. They haven't built up the story to tell themselves yet.

And so raw, they're experiencing raw reality in the most beautiful way. And, you know, this is actually one of the ideas about like, you know, people who are enlightened is that that's, they're not, it's not like they're studying or something. It's just that because they've sort of figured out or managed to or however you want to put it, because they're not so much connected to their story anymore. And because they are connected to that, whatever that is, they just say the most perfect, beautiful things you've ever heard all the time. It just instantly pops out of them. It just that because that's what we are as I've been taught. That's just what humans are. Like underneath the story, it's everybody is like that.

Everyone is like not just like a child because children can have no self control and can be like incredibly temperamental and like sometimes like accidentally violent. But I mean, like fundamentally good. And underneath the story, that's the, that's what I think. Yeah, I it's interesting. Because I think of my daughter, I think of her as fundamentally good. And she says these sweet, poetic, wonderful things just without thinking often. Like once the sun and the moon both were out at the same time. And she's like, the moon stayed out because it fell in love with the sun.

It was just such a simple poetic thing. But I was like, wow, that's really like that's a great line. Yeah. And I said, no, it's not. Love doesn't exist. There's no love. Yeah. That's, you know, that's a big story of the day too.

All those things is like, yeah, I, I, I, yeah. To me, I, when I'm with, when I'm getting to hang out with the kids, I, the, uh, my meditation teacher's teacher. Chokin Chopin Rinpoche had kids and he said, the best thing you can do with your kids is be fully in the moment with them. So what I, what I, which is really intense, I'm sure you know, when you're hanging, playing with them to drop out of your game and into like the reality of what their reality is, including how big everything seems to them. You know, cause I think that's something people, parents forget about their kids is like that playroom that to you maybe doesn't seem quite as big, you know, to your kid is like a fucking basketball court, you know, depending on how old they are. You're a giant. You know what I mean? Compared to them.

So like sitting down, getting to their, getting down to their eye level and then going into the moment and realizing like, you know, you might not remember your summers or you might not remember your, what it was like to like be in the like experience of childhood completely. But if you drop into their level, you'll remember, remember, it's just incredible. It's like, it's, it's an every day is this like adventure. Every day is like this wild thing. So yeah, um, yeah, I think we're all, I mean, that's, I think that's what one of the get what beautiful things about parenting is you get reminded that that's you too. You're still like that. You know, you're, you're still like that, you know, you, you still shit your pants. I almost did last night.

I was a little stomach sick overnight. But yeah, it's, I get, I've been upset with myself lately because I can't sometimes I'm playing with my daughter and I can't fully give into it and I get bored and I get anxious. And it's just, but I feel guilt about it because I'm like, I'm 90% of the time right now. I'm her only playmate and I have to, she comes to me and it's like, do you want to play? And that's like, sometimes I'm like, you know, on my phone or she also does this thing where she's very dictatorial about she's like, okay, now you say this and you do this. And I'm like, well, and that gets kind of, it's hard to like play when you're being. Yeah. No, I'm also is fulfilling a fantasy of hers that she's seen or something or created.

So I have to accommodate, but sometimes it's challenging. Well, you got to like, look, forest is a little dictator man. When we get, we got a trampoline and I'll get on the trampoline. I'm 47 man. Like, and like he's like, daddy jump, daddy jump now. So I'll start jumping, we'll jump and jump and jump. And then I'm like, I got to sit down and he'll be like, daddy, but daddy jump, daddy jump. It's like, I'll just say, you know, that to me, it's like part of like playing is like, if you get to tell me to jump, if we get to pretend that we're chickens or whatever, then I can pretend my legs don't work anymore.

They stop working for us that then, you know, but yeah, this is what something that popped into my head. Uh, as I was having like a classic parent reaction, you know, I'm, we're forced as in a creek playing in a creek, throwing rocks in a creek. I'm sitting watching him throw rocks in the creek and I'm thinking, oh my God, oh, if I could only save you from the pain of the world and oh my God, time is moving by so quickly. How can I hold on to this sacred moment and, oh, one day you're going to grow up and you won't remember any of this. And, oh, and then I'm, all of a sudden I realized like Jesus Christ, if he, he's just playing with rocks. You know what I mean? He's like in the creek throwing rocks. He's like trying to make a dam.

He's like interested in like trying to pick up a big rock and drop it in the creek. Meanwhile, I'm having some kind of like, I don't know, the craziest existential nihilistic pendulum, pendulum between nihilism and like, well, but maybe we'll live forever in heaven back to nihilism. This kid just playing with fucking water. And so that's when I try to drop back in, just like get out of that level, drop back in and start like throwing rocks with him. Because like, if I can give him anything, it's just being with him and not seemingly being with him while I'm in some kind of modeling interior sort of confrontation with my own mortality. You know? Yeah. My daughter has experienced everything in life already in my head because I'm always like, oh my God, like there's so many things just like, but it's like, I want her, I think it stems from I want her to hold on to that.

An element of that innocence. And I don't know if that's even possible. Yeah. You know, but as long as possible, or that, or at least the curiosity, because man, if you lose your curiosity in life, and I did for a while, I got really stuck in my ways. That's one of the reasons I brought back the podcast because I was like, I literally, my brain was mushy. Like I couldn't function as like, I couldn't speak as well. Like I was just having a hard time socializing. And I just felt like I allowed my brain.

So I picked up a book of poetry and started reading it. And then actually, the book of poetry was like, when I found one of the authors in it, I was like, ended up being one of my first guests when I came back with the podcast. And like, ever since I did that, it's like really, it just ignited curiosity again. Yeah. And like, just you can't stop. Like that's why people fucking just, you know, those, when people grow old and they sit in front of the TV and just eat cocoa puffs. That's a direct reference to my grandmother. Cocoa puffs.

Really? Well, it was not my literal grandfather. It was the woman who raised my father, but she just, her mind went to fucking garbage, but she just sat in front of a TV and ate like, Yeah. Children's Theocereal. Yeah. I'm like, you can't fucking do that. You can't physically or mentally, you gotta keep agile.

Or not. I mean, you could decide just to, you know, to hang it up. That's true. I mean, maybe that her mushy thoughts were quite comforting in her own reality that she enjoyed. I mean, who the fuck knows? I mean, like, like the, I know what you mean, though. And to me, it's like, I think there's a fundamental question. Anyone who is deciding to have kids or has had kids, hopefully that you think ask yourself this before you have the kids, which is, is it worth it?

Is life worth it? Is it worth it here? Like, you know, is all the fucking sorrows and all the disappointments and all the heartbreak and all the anger and all the confusion and all of the, of the, of the sorrow. Is it worth it? Is, is the, is the ticket, is the price of admission? Is it worth the show? And I think it is. And, and also the other thing from my own, like, paradigm that brings me comfort when I'm thinking about my children is since the beginning of time, they were going to come into existence.

I think a lot of parents get, and I do this when I'm being neurotic, we get really caught up in the idea that it's all about us. We made this child, we will be the ones who determine whether this child like has a great life or a bad life. You know, we will be the one and that's so much weight to deal with. But if you like, let allow yourself just the thought experiment of playing around with like the sort of cosmology in which that we've incarnated infinite numbers of times into the material universe. And this is just one, one strobe light of reality that your children are experiencing and they came here because this is where they were, they're meant to be. And you had something to do with it, but not as much as you think. Any more than your parents had anything to do with you, or their parents had anything to do with them, or their parents had anything to do with them. This is more of a kind of explosion of sentience wrapped in matter and we're part of it.

But whenever I allow that, then suddenly now forest can have the autonomy of being a self determined being, at least not a being that's going to where all the weight of me thinking I've got to be the potter and my child is clay. And I must sculpt this being, you know, all that stuff. It's like, well, you're here and I'm here and I love you more than anything on the planet. I don't want you to get hurt. But, you know, do your thing, including lose your curiosity. You know, if that's, if that's lose your fucking curiosity, go ahead, see how long you can lose it for. You'll be happier. My daughter is already like, they're already who they are.

That's the crazy thing. It's like, I can do that stupid shit where I'm like, you're going to like this sports team or this is like you see parents. I've seen parents who their kids have the same haircut. Like it's guys who do this. It's always guys who have like they'll have the shaved head and then like Mohawk ponytail thing. Yep. And I'm just like, why would you do that to your kid? Like, why would you like, is that cute to make a mini you like that's that's wrong.

As the Bible says, you carry the sins of our father. I'm like, that's what you're doing. Yeah. You're cloning like, come on, you're not fucking doing making a clone here. What do you what's cool? What's cool? That that's I think what what is that what one of the big problems right now is that we're in a country that has been at war for 93% of its history. And we have a massive military and we have a huge amount of people who are no longer in the military and are attempting to lead normal lives and have families.

But in the same way you're like, I don't know how to be a dad. A lot of these people it's the same situation. Like, I don't know how to be a dad, but I do know how to be a soldier. I do know how to be conditioned. I know how the discipline that I was taught in the military made me stronger than I was before the military for better or for worse. And so I'm going to that's what I know how to do. So I'm going to use the Marines as a model for parenting. And then that's the next thing you know, you're shaving your kids head and you're making them say yes, sir, no, sir and do push ups when they fuck up.

That literally happens to lots of people. I still you know, my dad made me say yes, sir, no, sir to him, you know, and he did that because he was the closest he had to a stable discipline parent was the fucking US military was the was the Navy. And so that's all he knew he did his best, you know. And so that to me is when why you run into the that when you when you see that I would roll. I would bet a lot of money that that person is probably a vet and that that person is like, all right, I'm going to shave my kids heads, make them look like me. You'll be very strict with them in the way that the military was strict with me and that'll make a good person. And, you know, that there's so many different parenting styles out there. I wouldn't I wouldn't do that because I experienced it.

And I have a lot of friends who had like military parents. So like, I know the look. I know the look, you know. Yeah, my dad wasn't military, but he was very 19. It was like a fifties, like a lot of macho bullshit be tough, but he wasn't tough. I was thinking about this the other day. The advice my dad gave to me as a very young kid and I to this day still think this is all very fucked up. But one of the things he said was nice guys finish last, do unto others before they do unto you.

And he once gave right how fucked up is that he told you that he said that to me repeatedly as a kid. And he once even told me like, if I ever was going to steal something, don't nickel and diamond go for something big because you don't want to do jail time for like, you know, a small theft. Wow. And I was just like, I still think about that. And I'm like, what the fuck kind of shit was that to say to a kid? Like it was just like assimilating this tough guy attitude Chicago and his dad was like a legitimate like fucking badass. Like he was a mobster. He was an Irish mobster who killed people.

So it's like, at least he told me he loved me. But I'm like, that's I could could you imagine telling your kid like, well, if you're going to steal like be smart about it. No, I couldn't I couldn't imagine that. But don't don't steal is wrong. Like don't don't steal. But if you just like so fucked up to me, you know, I think that one of like one of the what what I want as a parent is I want my kids to come to a point in their life where they look back at something I did that was like. Or taught them that was confused. And they realize like, that was so weird and confused because they're free of it.

You know what you just said, it means that you have broken that whatever this particular generational avalanche of negativity, you've stopped it a little bit. You know, you can't stop it all the way. We're all going to like, it still will come through as no matter what, but a little bit that whatever the fuck that was, you've stopped. So now your kids are going to not be weighted down with horrible advice. And that means that you've created a potential, a potentially like a wave of positivity. Your kids potentially will or your grandkids will be a little less wounded or like heavy from the stuff that that we got. Because you got like what World War Two is not that far away, man. Like that massive not to people always forget about World War One.

But if you just think about the conflagration that is not that far back in the rear view mirror, not to mention the all the other little wars that have happened. The shit our parents our parents went through, man, was crazy. It was crazy and the shit their parents went through. We're talking like storming the fucking beach at Normandy and shit like watching like your friends get exploded by Nazi mortars. And then having to come back to the United States with full PTSD and not the having any of the sophisticated therapeutic methods that we have now. You know what I mean? Carlin's got that great bit about it like the names that the way we revised the name for it. They used to call it shell shocked.

You know, you can go online and look and see what see people who are shell shocked, you know, who had like such profound PTSD. They were like basically catatonic. And so those people come back from the war and if they didn't go to the war, they probably their kids did. So they buried their kids probably, you know what I mean? You regardless. And then your kids are getting, you know, killed in Vietnam. Your brother was blown up in Vietnam. The point is, so you suddenly it your exit that a fucking depression, man.

You know what I mean? So like all of that produced a toxic combination of booze, PTSD and like in poverty that that's what we're dealing with. Like that's the shit we've got in us from our parents a little bit and they had it way worse than us and their parents had it way worse. So that's what that's I think what we're dealing with. That's fucked up. Your dad said that to you. You know, I think of all the things might crazy shit. My dad said to me as a kid when I didn't know that probably that your dad's just a person, you know what I mean?

But you think you imagine your dad has some like supernatural grasp on truth more than anybody else. And so, yeah, you take you internalize that and then you end up like with this like little amount like little golem demon thing living inside of you. That's all the shitty advice your parents gave you. And that's what that's what fucks up your relationships and your life. We we like something my parents never did. It's like I fucked up and I've lost my temper twice with my daughter and I like caught myself immediately. But it's just like, you know, but I what we do is at least I sit her down and I apologize and I tell her like, look, hey, like which no one like no one ever apologized. If my dad would have just apologized for like smacking me in the head, like it would still suck.

But it's like I have like my mom would defend it. So I lived my whole life being like with that in my head of being hit, not apologized to not told that what was happened was wrong. Just told like, well, you know, he loves you. It's like that doesn't that doesn't heal it. Yeah. Yeah, you're supposed to love me motherfucker. You're my dad. Yeah.

That's a given. But what you're not supposed to do is hit me. Well, I mean that yeah, and not defending your dad at all because like it's like I was gambling. Well, you shouldn't gamble, Matt. Yeah. But you know, you like that that was like another thing. It still is some people beat their kids and they think they're doing the right thing. And that's I mean, like it's startling when you imagine all the unprocessed shit we're dealing with, man, like, you know, like this fucking pandemic.

I'm listening. I'm watching the news and they're saying, you know, things are looking better. Only 300 Americans are dying a day. Only 300 Americans are dying a day. Like a plane crash a day, something like that. That's a plane crash a day. And but even though we just came through this or we seem to be coming through it. A lot of people are just like, all right, let's just get back to it.

Let's keep let's keep moving here. We're gonna get back to everything's normal again. Here we go. Getting back to it. And they're not acknowledging like their own trauma, their own like how crazy this last year was. And I think that that is a very human thing to do. And that's been going on since humans were around. And so we have all this unprocessed trauma that gets expressed in like what we're seeing all over the place now, these mass shootings.

You know what I mean? It's like you're seeing all this like generational unprocessed war karma appearing in this kind of chaotic terrorism, just blowing out everywhere. Just because we haven't dealt with it man. I mean, I like how how did your relationship? How was your relationship during the pandemic? My relationship with Kelly got better. But also, but it's like, I know a lot of people whose relationship suffered and we have a number of friends who are getting divorced. But we, I feel like we grew closer together and we, you know, it made us on a whole as a family better.

Like, I think we all had some mental challenges because it's like we were at the time for the bulk of it. We lived in a shitty, smaller, much smaller place. And but also I have always been a bit reclusive and like I'm not a big social. So I think like I was like, yeah, I don't want anywhere to go. Thank you. Sorry, people got to die, but this is ideal. Well, your relationship got better and that's incredible. My relation, my marriage went through some real rough patches and now it's great.

And like we're in love and we're, but we went through some bullshit because of it. We were scared. We were freaked out. And we both had kids during it. Did we? Yes. Yeah. I'm pregnant and we moved and my dad had just died and all this stuff.

But what we both started doing when things were getting weird is just reminding each other like, wait a minute. Don't forget what we just did this last year. Like don't forget that my watch my with my dad passed away. We moved three times. One of them being across the country and we had kids and we didn't know in the beginning of this pandemic what it was. I think people are forgetting that. I think people are forgetting that when the shit first hit, nobody knew what it was. Like we didn't know if this was getting anything to eat.

Like, I mean, I was like, I was like, we're going to run out of food. Everything's going to go to shit. Like there was that panic that for real. That was real. The grocery stores were running out of food. The grocery stores were rationing milk. There was signs up everywhere all over LA. You know, like don't leave your house.

People were freaking the fuck out and this was happening all over the planet. And so when I am like with Aaron or when we started recognizing like, wait a minute, what the fuck are we going through right now? Like, of course we're weird right now. Of course we're a little rattled right now. Of course, like we're like inordinately paranoid about things we normally wouldn't be paranoid about. This was insane what just happened and has happened. So, you know, I just think like reminding yourself of that from time to time is really important. And for me to find compassion for my father and love him, even though he like, you know, he did his best.

I guess what I'm saying is like, because Jesus Christ, man, the shit he came out of the shit our grandparents came out of the shit that like this sum total of humanity is kind of like stumbling out of this like, you know, what was almost once nuclear Armageddon. You know, we almost fucking blew each other up with nuclear weapons. We still might a Holocaust. You know, all I'm saying is like humanity needs to like take a moment to recognize like it's not like we've been living in some kind of utopia for the last 1000 years. We've come out of a lot of bullshit. And I don't think we've integrated any of it. And it's manifested is this thing we call masculinity, or now they're calling it toxic masculinity, but it really it's not it's not even masculinity. It's fucking conditioning from being absorbed into the military industrial complex and brainwashed to kill people you don't know.

A lot of our parents were brainwashed to kill people in other countries, and they did. And that mentality still exists in some like my mom's husbands that way. He's like, they want our freedom like that type of shit. Yeah, man. Still lives in people's heads. Yes, of course it does. It's like, like we 93% of our history, our country has been at war. We have the largest military in the world.

And that is a military like all militaries that is trains people to be to kill and to be good at killing. I don't care what the fuck you want to call it. That's what a military is. It's like a thing that kills. They call it defense. But it's anyone who's been if your parents have been in the military. Well, they used to call it something. It wasn't called the Department of Defense.

It was called like something of war. I can't remember, but it was like it was not as like defense was just a nice way to pad it and make it seem softer. Like, well, we're defending ourselves. We're not killing people. Right. It's not war. Right, right, right. Well, yeah, we have to defend ourselves.

And, you know, this is and so now like, you know, people are walking in walking around with like AR 15s, you know, massacring people randomly. And everyone's like, what's going on? What could be going on here? Why is this happening? What's going on? Why would why are people doing this? It's like we have idolized soldiers. We have idolized a culture where it makes the solution to problems is to drop bombs on people.

We've made that make sense in our own minds. And like how the fuck is that not going to produce a kind of mass psychosis when like you have to be invited to just you have to just accept the fact like, oh, yeah, you know, we just did. We just fucking destroyed a country. You know, that just happened. We just destroyed Iraq. We just did that. Like we just flew over a city and like drop bombs all over it completely destabilized it. And the reason we did it was was a lie.

And now, you know, we're everyone's just in the United States is like, I guess, you know, it's become so common. Like you said that we've been in war. It's like we've been in war in Afghanistan for 20 years plus. And it's like no one thinks about like it's not a thing anymore. Just almost same as the shootings, mass shootings, people are like, Oh, yeah, right. Another thing happened in Tennessee. It's like, it's just matter of fact now. And it's like, this is not healthy.

No, and you were anyone who's been at war when you read like the people have been at war and write about it. The usually when they're writing about it, they're not like glorifying it. Usually they're writing about it and saying this is the most horrible mistake any human could ever make. Like when you're when you're smelling war, apparently, when you're smelling gasoline and shit and burning bodies. It's not like you're thinking like, wow, this is the best humanity could possibly do. You're seeing it as the most vile, horrific example of what human beings can do to themselves as an ultimate mistake or something like that. You know, this. So I just think like it doesn't matter if your parents didn't go to war, guaranteed, you know, people who went to war, guaranteed, you know, people.

And again, I'm not saying we don't need a military. I'm not saying people in the military are bad or wrong or evil or anything like that. But I think one thing we all have to agree on as a species is war is failure. War is the most abject failure that can happen anywhere for any reason. It's not the way to solve problems and it transcends all culture. It transcends all ethnicity. It transcends everything. It has to just be a universal truth.

You know what I mean? Like, for example, it is 100% of the time wrong 100% of the time wrong to fuck children. 100% of the time wrong. Anyone who wants to argue that with you call the police. Anyone who wants to like present to you some reason. Oh, well, you know, but from time to know 100% of the time wrong. And this is, I think, the only people who don't accept that are people who want to fuck kids. But somehow with war, when you say 100% of the time it's wrong to drop bombs on people to kill people to attack people.

100% of the time it's wrong. They'll be like, hold on a second. Hold on. We had to do it because, you know, it's like, no, you didn't. We didn't have to do it. There was another way. I don't know what I'm rambling about this for. All I'm saying is because we have somehow managed as a culture to make it make sense that we're in Afghanistan for all this time.

And even worse, when we Biden is pulling us out, people are like, wait, you can't leave now. We have to protect the people that we're in there. And it's like, oh, great. So let's just have an infinite war then. Anyway, the point is, I think like as a culture, we're just dealing with a lot of shit that is completely not integrated. One of them being a weird cultural acceptance of it being okay to blow people up that we don't know. The other one being that we just went through a massive breakdown of civilization. And it's like people are like, let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. It's time to start shopping again. Let's get moving, you know, and that's only going to make us crazier and crazier and crazier. Just like you said, your father apologized to you. I'm sorry for this rant, Matt. Your father apologized to you. It made you feel great.

No, he didn't. I apologize to him. I mean, you apologized to your kid. And that like, if your father had apologized to you, it would have made you feel good. Same with me. If at some point my dad had sat down and said, I have uncontrollable anger issues. I have, I'm struggling with alcoholism and PTSD. I'm sorry if I have not been a perfect father to you.

That would have meant a lot to me because there's the lucidity, the acknowledgement of that. But our culture needs to do that somehow. You know what I mean? Like our culture needs to find a way to like, you know, acknowledge like shit. We are as a species, like an alcoholic PTSD dad. And we have made a lot of mistakes. And it's, I don't know, it's, you know, it's amazing the amount of mistakes our country acknowledges that other countries make. Kamala Harris was like chastising some world leader for, and I'm like, have you fucking looked at our own laundry?

Like you have, I mean, you know what we've done, right? Like I interviewed this indigenous artist and up until 2001, there was boarding schools for indigenous people to beat. It's genocide. Whether they live, I mean, they did kill kids, but just beat the genocide or beat the culture out of them, their traditions. Two thousand, that's 20 years ago that this was still happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Still happening all over the world. Still happening. Still happening. I was thinking about, and I tweeted about it, get no action, not that it meant, but like when Christian churches go to third world countries and do mission work, that's white supremacy. They're spreading the word of a white Jesus. They're taking the, they're telling that culture that what your religion is wrong, we're here to save you from your culture that you've been dealing with for hundreds if not thousands of years. That's the spread of white supremacy. That's my take on it.

Here's, here's where the, the take becomes problematic. I think is it's like, what about all the people who when they came into contact with the Christian ethos and spirituality legitimately there felt wanted to be part of it and loved it? Did they make a mistake by being drawn in by the missionaries? Like, but a lot of them weren't just like, oh, this sounds good. Like a lot of them were manipulated and, and you know, like the Spanish inquisitions, a lot of them were killed and intimidated into it. Oh, I mean, the old school thing, like where, like, But still, there's missions that go and preach Jesus. It's like, why, why do you feel the need to preach so strongly?

Go to these people and tell them what they've believed is wrong. Part of the religion you've been instructed to. It's literally built into the religion. Yeah, it's terrible. Like, I find it very, but I think at the core of a lot of that is white supremacy. Like it's white Jesus who wasn't as not to snuggle shape. We know he wasn't white. Like, why do we, why is that a lot of black Christian missionaries, my friend?

A lot of black Christian missionaries. It's interesting because somebody explained there's a big difference between the white evangelical Christian and the way that it is in like, say the gospel tents in New Orleans or in Louisiana. There's a drastically different approaches to Christianity, which I found really fascinating. One is about freedom and salvation, freedom and relishing in the freedom of God, where evangelical Christianity is very much like what we talked about earlier, being very rigid and wrong and shame and guilt and like, you must redeem yourself. Well, yeah, one, one of like the, yeah, I know exactly like the one version of Christianity is just like at the very least is just feels as boring as boring could be. And it feels like when you're reading the Gospels, when you're reading about the Pentecost,

when you're reading about the raising of the dead, when you're reading about Jesus throwing demons out of the fucking that the guy in the graveyard and putting them into pigs. And then you go and you see some Christian ritual in a like a cathedral and it's boring as fuck. And you're like, what, how is, what, how did you get from throwing demons out of pigs or out of lepers into pigs and then the pigs running off cliffs to this sort of stale. They probably they were just bipolar. Actually, I've read things where that but Malcolm X took great issue with black people becoming Christians because it was the white man's religion that was being imposed on them when they were slaves. Well, to see that's where it gets really interesting isn't because it wasn't the white man's religion. That's the problem. It wasn't.

It was a it was a wild, I guess you could say it started off as a kind of cult. Like it was some kind of like in the way like you get Santeria or voodoo voodoo is this fusion between African religion and Christianity and then suddenly you get this wild like wild, wild religion. Similarly, you have Judaism, and then out of that you get this bizarre like thing called Christianity, which then spreads around the planet comes into contact with white people. And then via that contact with white people, it's, you know, it spreads virally all around the planet. But it's like, and I know I know what you mean, like I think that you can use anything to amplify white supremacy. You can use anything to like amplify whatever your shitty thing is, and especially some archaic, you know, series of texts that have been translated a zillion times and have a lot of interpretation, some of which allow for slavery, some of which allow for like the stoning. You know what I mean? None of which Jesus spoke about.

If you take the, if you take what Jesus's words only out of the New Testament, not what the fucking apostles did, it's like a whole different world. Jesus never said anything about gay people. About what? Gay people. Oh, no. He never said anything judgment. It's like really, there's a book called The Gospel According to Jesus that just analyzes his character, what his character was and what the contradictions are of everything else in the Bible. It's pretty, it's like once you know his character, it's like he didn't, none of this shit would he would go for.

No, no, I mean, that's what's so cool about. That's what I love about Christianity is that if you, if you, if you really start looking into it, you realize like that so many forms of it, just like what you're saying. There's no like, what's that John Prine song, your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore. Wow, what a great, that's great. No, because your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore. It's already overcrowded from your dirty little war. Jesus don't like killing no matter what the reasons for your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore. Wow, that's great.

Oh yeah, it's the best. Jesus don't like killing no matter what the reasons for. And that's that, you know, so to me, that's what I love about Christianity is it's like, not it's such a, it's like right in front of everybody, but it's such a secret mystery religion. Because unless you do your own work and start looking into it, you will think it's this or that you will, you know, it's easy and it is people power people will use anything to gain power and and obviously it's no hot take. They're going to use religion for that. And they're going to, you know, but that that's just part of the what happens where it when it when whenever there's anything powerful, you know, it's in like, I just I think maybe it's a little more insidious than even white supremacy. Maybe it's like some kind of theocracy or like some kind of like dehumanizing theocracy that I don't know. I don't know, you know, I don't know.

I don't know why I'm sticking up for like Christian missionaries. I haven't spent any amount of time thinking about it. I just something that came to mind recently with me because it is it's like just the fact that people, the bulk of people still believe Jesus is white and that's the image that is put out there. It's like, we all know it's not like we all know he was not white at all. No, not white, not white. And and yeah, he was Middle Eastern. I mean, come on. Yeah, it's just, but it's like that is.

He was Semitic. But but but like a lot of white people don't want to admit that. I think a lot of really, I think most Christian don't you think I mean, I someone just sent us a picture of white Jesus. I looked up white Jesus. I think in our circles of people, but I mean, you know, talk about the Trumpers and stuff, they're not they don't you think those people are like, yeah, Jesus was black. They hate. Well, I think they try not to think about it. I think any unless you're talking to someone who's like truly a total drooling dope, you it would be very hard for them to come up with a reason.

Somebody born in a refugee born in a Galilean would be white. Like it would be hard. You would have to like for that to work. I think you're right. They don't want to think about it. They just don't want to think about it. And and and so because of that, it's like it shows a kind of weakness potentially because, you know, obviously it's like, come on, let's get this right. You're talking about someone who's Semitic.

You know, I don't know exactly how complex did Jesus was. But for sure, if you start, you know, the white Jesus picture, which you can look up who that's based off of it was some kind of king. I believe it wasn't one of the Allman Brothers. I mean, that could but that kind of disconnect exists in my family. My mom is an evangelical Christian voted for Trump. Two of my brothers have married Mexican women, one who is like a citizen of Mexico or was. And my mom and aunt are very like, you know, like, oh, immigrant, you know, very Trump in that mentality of brown people coming into this country. But I'm like, you have it in your family, but there's this disconnect.

It's like, well, that's, you know, that's my daughter. I love her, but it's like, but then still have that vehement hate for or just fear would be a better word of it. It's wild. Fear what? Or that subtle racism of brown people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I know what you're saying. I mean, it does. It completely feeds into that. It completely feeds into that in some places like are like legitimately like some churches probably are legitimately racist. I have my, you know what's so weird? My encounters with most Christians, at least up here in the mountains has like, there's a church near where my studio is. And it's like a real, like I say, a real Christian church is someone who isn't like, I guess I could say I was a Christian, but it's like you go there.

And this is like, to me, this is what it looks like. It's the pews in the day are filled with people who don't have a home, people who are going through psychotic episodes, people who aren't being taken care of by society. That's where I got my fucking vaccine. And, you know, they're giving them vaccines there while all the political shit is going on in the world, while all the insanity is going on in the world. The real Christian churches are like, okay, whatever, we're just feeding people and we're giving them medical care, medical care, if we can, we're healing them, we're feeding them. And we're trying to do whatever we can to make sure that single moms have food for their kids. You know what I mean? That's been my experience with it.

And to the point where the whole, almost like the Jesus thing itself is like, it's something they talk about, but it manifests in this weird radius of healing around some of these churches. People are saying that's why communities are actually a little fucked up right now is like, that's going away. That used to be temples and churches used to be these little oasis in the midst of all the insanity, where no matter what your fucking color was, no matter what your, you know, psychic state was, no matter what you believed in, you could come there and get food. It's the same as true with like Sikh temples, you know, they're sick, I think is actually how you say it, but they will give food to you when you come, no matter what. Hari Krishna temple is the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, so I don't know, man.

Like, I know I know Christian people who are like my buddy Bruce is like, I would consider him like the real deal. And he like, he's like, you can't be Christian and not be like a leftist. He's like the two are hand in hand. He's like, all this conservative shit is not the, that's not the way it should be with Christianity, but somehow they've co-opted it. Oh, yeah. Have you ever read that book by Tolstoy? It's called, it's so fucking good. Hold on.

Tolstoy wrote this wonderful little essay on Christianity. Essentially, I'm not going to look at the premise of it was, you can't be a Christian and kill. You can't be a Christian and go to war. You can't be a Christian and be a soldier. You can't be a Christian and like, you know, it's really hardcore. And that is, and that is, you know, there is a, Jesus didn't get fucking nailed to the cross because he was like getting along with powerful people. You know what I mean? Like you don't end up being crucified because you don't pose a threat or something like that.

Like there's a reason they ended up like, you're going to have to hammer, you're going to have to get rid of this one. He's going around saying that, you know, he's going around saying that like we're supposed to treat everybody like ourselves and forgive everybody. And that we're supposed to like, you know, you know, turn the other fucking cheek. How do you turn, turn the other cheek into like Lockheed Martin? You know what I mean? How do you convert, turn the other cheek into, you know, from time to time, it's okay to drop cluster bombs on cities. Matt, I love you. Thank you for letting me ramble with you so much.

I had a blast. Me too. And I'll see you out there. Have a good podcast. Who are you interviewing? This guy, Ryan, something long in German. He's from a Canadian band called Mother Mother. They're fucking huge.

Conversations with Matt Dwyer folks. Listen to it. Thank you, Duncan Dressel. Where can people find you, Matt? It's on our pod. Or you can go to the Matt Dwyer.com. That has everything. Thank you, Matt.

I love you. Love you, buddy. Bye. That was Matt Dwyer, everybody. Listen to his podcast, Conversations with Matt Dwyer. Tremendous thank you to all of our sponsors. Remember, all those offer codes are at DuncanDressel.com. And what a glorious way for you to support this podcast by satiating your desires while simultaneously keeping me funded.

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