Julian Dorey Podcast - #51 - Niko Karolidis: THE HORRIFYING RISE OF NAZI GERMANY; THE SUPER LEAGUE; THE "EUREKA" STORY; THE PANDEMIC IN GREECE; COCKTAILS & TRENDS DEBATE

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Niko Karolidis is a restaurateur, businessman, and dual citizen of the United States and Greece. ****TIMESTAMPS*** 6:16 - The Pandemic in Greece; Shortages & Unemployment Problems post-Pandemic; The pipeline hack and meat company hack; Sandworm (book by Andy Greenberg) discussion; Selling Fear 44:27 - The failed “Super League” in Europe; Discussion on relegation in European soccer; Soccer fans are crazy 1:12:12 - Why sports are great; The need for die hard fans 1:16:18 - Niko discusses cocktails and how he built his bar (The Cage) around mixologists he imported from Greece; What makes a cocktail great and why we don’t appreciate good cocktails in America 1:28:11 - Niko & Julian debate the strength of global trends that start in America 1:34:44 - The Greek Culture; Niko explains Halkidiki; What the Greek people value in life and their view on what constitutes “success” 1:48:52 - Why people around the world still long to come to America; Julian talks about thee fine line between “improving what’s bad” and “tearing down what’s good”; Niko talks about the need to travel 1:57:24 - Living through war changes how you value life and freedom; Niko tells a story about his Grandma hiding Jews from the Nazis during World War II; Julian discusses his recent research on the horrifying rise of Nazi Germany and what enabled it; Niko explains the concept of the word “Eureka” and how it has Greek origins via the law of buoyancy; Julian draws modern day parallels to tactics Hitler used to gain power 2:25:20 - The struggles and core needs of our ancestors are ingrained within us; Niko explains some of his ancestors’ origins in the Pontus region of Turkey where Pontic Greeks settled after being enslaved by the Turks; Abundance and the need to share that’s built into Niko; Discussion on dialects 2:38:51 - Julian talks about Sicily and tells a story describing the mafia’s continued hold over it; The modern day power of the Italian-American Mafia; Niko discusses Brunch done right ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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behind haystacks, hiding a family of three. And the Nazis came to the house and said, are you hiding Jews? And my grandma no how old was she I I would be wrong if I answered you I'm not five no no no no she was like 15 20 something like that she was old enough to talk to the officers and they did a whole tour of the house and they didn't find them and my grandma tells me that story that like she saved, she literally saved the family, bro. Literally, like we never feel that like that's war. That's things they felt on the reg because the war was on their turf. What's cooking everybody?

This conversation I just had is with a superstar of the hospitality industry. A genuinely great guy and my lifelong best friend since we were four or five years old. I am joined in the bunker today by my buddy Nico Karolidis. I knew the hardest part of getting him in here would be actually convincing him to do this but once I did I knew he'd be a natural he was once we started talking about soccer I mean it was off to the races this guy loved this dude it's like like my brother basically so I wasn't gonna do this podcast without bringing him in here and I look forward to doing it again 100 you're basically getting two old friends bullshitting like we always do and it's funny because i'm like more nervous when it's him coming in because like i want it to be just perfect so hopefully i loosened

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That word-of-mouth thing, if we could start doing that every week that will continue to grow the audience this podcast will continue to grow and your boy here will be able to eat thanks to all of you i appreciate everything you do and once again thank you for listening to the show that said you know what it is i'm julian dory and this is TRENDERFIRE This is one of the great questions in our culture Where is the news? You're giving opinions and calling them facts You feel me? Everyone understands this but few seem to do it

If you don't like the status quo Start asking questions Start asking questions Start asking questions Start asking questions when i like tune in with all my cousins in greece man and i hear like what like what they're what they're going through they were in complete lockdown for nine months complete lockdown to be clear you're a dual greek citizen so you have a great understanding you haven't been over there like this year but you know i haven't been over there in two years okay but your whole

life you spent months out of the year all summers all the time with you know my family and my cousins and all but so what's it look like over there like when i check in with them just to see like what's going on in europe i mean europe greece and italy dude it's ridiculous they have Europe, I mean, Europe, Greece, and Italy. Dude, it's ridiculous. They have it so, they had it so much worse than us. That's why I'm like, you know, like, we live in the best country in the world, bro. Yep. And we handled, I mean, we're handling COVID because it's not done yet.

A lot better than a lot of other countries. So if I have to go into a restaurant and wear a mask and then sit down and have a beer and chill with my friends and take it off, I'm like, at least I get to do that. They were locked down for eight months, complete lockdown. You would have to text the government that you are leaving your house to walk your dog, to go to the grocery stores

and you'd have to get an approval an approved message wait a second on your on your phone they were texting a human being at the government you personally had to text a number a government number to leave your home and wait for an approval to leave your home and wait for an approval to leave your home. And then you were able to go. When you say leave your home, does that include literally walking outside? Yes, walking outside.

You had to text the government to walk outside. And get an approval. You had to wait for an approval. Did they say like yes? They said yes or no. I don't know what they said. I never did it. So they could say no. Oh, I need to said yes or no? I don't know what they said. I never did it.

So they could say no. Oh, I need to walk outside. No, you can't. I don't know, man. I don't know. That's fucking crazy. But you had, like, if you went and you didn't have an approval, they could stop you and say, okay, what's your reasoning for being out? And you'd show them.

You know, you'd be like, good, look, like I texted. I got an acceptance. I'm good. I'm good. I'm clear. Did you have any friends just sneak out and not do it? No. No. No, because the fines.

The fines were so bad. Who the fuck? Fines, bro. Fines. So they had cops out on the street. All the time. All the time. Right now. Right now in greece uh they stopped

the lockdown the complete lockdown and you're able to like go out to the bars there's an 11 o'clock curfew which is absurd for greece because you remember when we went how it was that people don't go out until 12 a.m dude can you tell people about the listen to this about the culture in greece and nightlife just describe that for people it's a lot later everything everything is later and everything is slower so um yeah the clubs would open around two or three and then they would close around like noon 11 noon so he's not kidding everything everything's later um but dude you right now you you can't stay at a bar for later than 11 o'clock and there's no music in the bars they they disallowed music so it's just silent it's silent all you hear is the shakers and everyone just got airpods in or dude no music no music at

the beach bars no music at the bars that's why like when i think of covet here i'm like wow like we got it great think about comparatively speaking to the majority of probably the majority of the countries and we have the resources we have the muscle we're in the best country in the world bro so when i talk about covet i'm like dude like you can't be bitching about covid here you can't be i think that it's like anything else just because you have it the best doesn't mean you don't want to improve things that are wrong with any type of system yeah like even with our government that's a very common one people talk about like i rip on the government all the time i think these two parties are ridiculous i think the whole thing

is a goddamn charade in dc i say that and then at the same time i also say that if i think our government's a piece of shit it is by far the best piece of shit in the world and you know what i mean it's not close doesn't mean i don't want to see a lot of things change and see it improve. So I think a lot of people here, first of all, that's an amazing perspective you have. And obviously it's a lot to do with your background and some of the things you have access to that other people don't. But also seeing how frustrating it is being in the restaurant business and things that you couldn't do to still have that perspective is amazing that said i don't think that changes the narrative for people around this country who maybe had a business for 30 40 years that got shut down and it's never going to open up again and they feel like they have nothing to live for i don't think that that narrative changes because greece had it worse you know what i mean so i

appreciate where you're coming from i just worry about some of the long-term damage this did to people and like look yeah i i get it like unprecedented situation we had to do some things i don't doubt that at all it's just the length that we went i mean frankly i never said anything until those second lockdowns came. Like November, December is when I started to go, oh, this is. They only did PA. They didn't lock down Jersey. PA, New York.

Yeah. PA, New York. So I guess Jersey was. Jersey didn't get shut down. Jersey got pretty, like Murphy got relatively looser. Yeah. Like as it went along compared compared to like new york and pa yeah began loose and then tightened up a little bit they they shut us down before the holidays and then they opened us up again after the holidays they shut us down for three weeks and then opened us up again jersey stayed open yeah it's it's

weird i mean i it was look it's weird but it is what it is people like to go right at corruption with stuff i'm sure there was elements of that in places no doubt about it but there's also to me it was like a lot of the guessing game was just stupidity the worst has yet to come for me in covid though wait what for the restaurant industry yeah for me the worst has yet to come for me in COVID though. Wait, what? For the restaurant industry, for me, the worst has yet to come, I believe. Why do you say that? Because there are tremendous staff limitations in factories where they're manufacturing and producing food. And a lot of the items that I order are not available.

Wait a second. That's interesting coming from you because you guys own a food distributorship on top of the whole business I mean you guys got the real vertical integration going hell of a business but yeah you still can't get food yeah there's a shortage so when you're ordering stuff a national shortage you're talking about ordering stuff like through through the distributorship yeah yeah how long has this been going on the shortage uh two or three months and what kinds of things like aren't you able to chicken wings chicken chicken wings we get them but um it's we're not making money off of it

because they're that expensive yeah and after the summer they're saying that there's going to be a national shortage of crab meat i'm trying to think like the parallel or correlation there there's staff limitations in factories and they can't produce enough and are you talking about factories within manufacturing this country yes manufacturing food at the farms um why do you think that is why do i think that is what we'll go there let's do it you know the answer to that what's the answer i don't know the answer i might know the answer but I don't know come on man is it the government it's the unemployment yeah that's what I was getting at that's why huge huge shout out love and thanks to all my employees that stuck with me we never

had to complete shut down they stuck with me. We never had to completely shut down. They stuck with me. They worked for us. That's amazing. They, you know, they could have said no, like I quit or I don't want to work anymore or I don't feel safe. But the support that I had, not just from the community, but from my workforce that stayed next to me

and worked with me through everything huge shout out thanks and love to that because i wouldn't i wouldn't have been able to run my business without the employees and the staff and the support so um that's awesome that that was i think the something that i will always always cherish and remember and be thankful for now are you running into any problems though now where you can't get enough people yeah right now right now just because everything's opening up again and the business is starting to get back to like normal normal with the dine-in opening up last week. The bar is open.

The bar is open. You can sit at the bar top now. Now I'm starting to really find myself being short in a lot of aspects. But I think it's going to get worse for big companies and big factories. And the mass production, it's really, really struggling with labor. I remember a friend of ours, I'm not going to say who, but he hit me up maybe three, four weeks into the pandemic last year when – so at the beginning, obviously, like everything, like they weren't being loose with the term essential business

unless it was literally like food or something like that. But then they allowed some other places to be operational maybe like four weeks in. And our friend hit me up and said we got a big problem because they thought they were going to die because they in a day when it shut down they lost their entire revenue for the next basically 12 months and they're like holy shit this company that was a multi-million dollar company now is suddenly like we can't pay our bills so they get back open and they're trying to salvage as much of that to cover their operating costs for the year and they need to bring their

people back but they couldn't pay their people enough because the government was paying them more and they're like what the fuck do we do he's like bro this is going to be a problem on everything and like look i obviously empathize with the fact that when you shut down people's ability to eat and the government was forcing it, then the government has got to pay them out. I get that. And maybe even early on like that, like four weeks in, I get it if we weren't readjusted because shit was still wild right then and we didn't know a lot but my understanding and i'm going to go above my pay grade here with some of this because i haven't crunched all the numbers inside now but my understanding is that a lot of those systems and benefits have remained very much the same and people are still getting that and you know here we are 15 16 months in

and now it's actually affecting things where people who already had jobs they hated and maybe lives they hated and had a lack of purpose or whatever it is you know they didn't feel good in their job they're making enough sitting at home and they've gotten so used to just scrolling on their phone and getting addicted to this thing that they hate but they love it you know what i mean that now they're like oh nah out we don't need to go work again and we're not at a point where we've already just been able to take the robots and put them in there to the jobs that are going to get automated away so overnight you can't just rip off that band-aid right so you're seeing that in food yeah seeing that in food and when did you say told me this, but when did it start again?

Like a couple months ago? Shortages? Well, price increases have been going up for the inventory. Everything's been increasing. Everything. But the shortages probably within the past two weeks. I worry about. We're ordering things and they're like, we don't have it i'm like all right well i

have to take it off my menu and what the heck i mean food is one of the most interesting ones because it's so fast you don't order food for like you know we're gonna store that for six months there's some things you can obviously but like there's a lot of shit you're like ordering it because you need it you know like people are eating and store that for six months. There's some things you can, obviously. But, like, there's a lot of shit. You're, like, ordering it because you need it. You know, like people are eating. And they're going to shit it out and come back and order it again. So when you get a supply chain interruption like that, dude, a shockwave of even, like, two or three. Like a shockwave.

Like two or three weeks can fuck over the whole year for the entire business. Yeah. can fuck over the whole year for the entire business. The other good thing we have in our advantage is we make a lot in-house. We make a lot of our own stuff. So, I mean, there's not going to be a shortage of butter or salt. We make our own soups. We make our own sauces. We make our own sauces we make our own desserts we we make a lot a lot of our appetizers are made by us so um what about the ingredients though that's the thing the ingredients are are a common like common necessity they're running out of

things like that come ready that you have to freeze and just you know drop in the fryer or something you know what i mean i do you're not gonna have a shortage of milk are we you can't have a shortage of it the price will go up but you can't have like of a common necessity like eggs milk but if there's not gonna say we have a shortage of that if there's not the people taking the prices that's what i'm saying though if there's not the people taking care of getting that to you i'm not just talking to the farmers it could happen it could happen but i think that's unrealistic extreme have you seen this pipeline hack and then i just saw the other one that came across there was the oil and then there was the something it just happened like three four days ago but I haven't looked at it yet I just thought of it it was like in the meat sector

something like that so there was some other hack on like I'll have to pull that up and check it but there was the hack on the pipeline yeah that then I don't know if you saw some of the videos online from that by the way. I didn't oh my god So you didn't see the lady filling up gas and plastic bags. No. Oh my god You haven't seen that video. No, I don't bro. I really don't tune into that much. I got a shit Yeah, you're busy. I got to show you this but when we had people were getting so worried about the goddamn gas that they were like The gas did go up though. Oh like, the gas did go up, though.

Oh, it did. It did go up. This lady starts filling bags, like literally shopping bags. She's at a gas pump. This is when I start to lose a little faith in humanity. But she's at a gas pump and she starts filling the shopping bag with gas. You can't make this shit up. Where is this?

Look at this. This is somewhere in America. Look, look. There's gas in that fucking bag. Look at it sloshing. Now she's tying it. Hold on. Hold on.

She's going to put it in her trunk now too. Oh, now she's... Oh, she's double bagging it. I forgot about that. She thought double bagging it was gonna do the trick. There's fucking gas. There's gas leaking all over the crowd. Where is this, bro? Bro, I don't know, but...

You sure this is... Oh, and you know what? That was the other thing. This is an old video, too. This isn't even from the gas shortage. This was not even during a time of desperation. This was December 2019. I forgot about that. But there were funny videos of people doing it during the shortage but she is literally filling her trunk with plastic bags of gasoline america man i don't know what to tell you but i mean we saw what that can do so i mean it

prices that's what I'm talking about. That's happening in oil. It's going to be happening in a lot of places. If it's happening in the oil business, it's happening in the food business, it's going to be happening everywhere, man.

These shortages, and I think this is just the beginning. That's what I meant when I said the hardest part right now I think is still yet to come. Yeah, this was, by the way, I just pulled this up while you were talking. This was the latest hack, and this is why it's interesting because you're bringing up food. Largest meat producer getting back online after cyber attack. So this is directly in me you were saying you were having problems with chicken obviously that happened before this did but it's from the ap i'll have the link probably on the site but the world's largest meat processing company has

resumed most production after a weekend cyber attack but experts say the vulnerabilities exposed by this attack and others are far from resolved. In a statement late Wednesday, the FBI attributed the attack on Brazil-based meat processor JBSSA to R-Evil, a Russian-speaking gang that has made some of the largest ransomware demands on record in recent months. The FBI said it will work to bring the group to justice and urge anyone who is the victim of a cyber attack to contact the Bureau immediately. The attack targeted servers supporting JBSSA operations in north america and australia backup servers weren't affected and the company said it was a not aware of any customer supplier or

employee data being compromised what did they it stopped production though or something. I don't know. I don't have time to look through the article right now. But it stopped. So this is like a perfect example of what I was talking about. Like say I was in the business of like a steakhouse. And a lot of my cuts were Brazilian steak. Like that would definitely aid to either a shortage or a tremendous price increase supplying the man man yeah man that's crazy I read the I read this book right at the beginning of the pandemic it was one like the first three weeks of the pandemic when the

market was crashing I was working with the clients all day. And then at night, I was building this. And then on the weekends, I'd find some free time, and I got through a few books. And one of the ones I read that I was like, it was a page turner. I went through it in like six hours, just boom, boom, boom. It was called Sandworm. You ever hear of that? It was by, what the hell is his name? Great tech reporter, Andy Greenberg. That's it.

So he's a great reporter who was with, I believe, Wired for a lot of years. I don't know if he's still there, but well-known tech reporter. He was a guy who had a lot of the Silk Road story back in the day. And it was all about these Russian government-sponsored hacking teams and what they've done and how they've been able to do it you know so everyone was talking about the election in 2016 that was one thing and there was a lot there but first of all it's not just always government sponsored just like you know they find some hackers and say yeah we'll help you out they literally bring them into the

government too yeah so there's a team in the gru which is like a russian like state police or something like that called the 77445 and there i believe they are code name like fancy bear i could be mixing up a couple of the ones but fancy bear was like a famous hacking group that was responsible for a lot of hacks i think around it was ransomware i lot of hacks, I think, around... It was ransomware. I don't want to say it was around, but there were... What it was around, but there was a lot of public stories on things that they had done. And the thing that scared the fuck out of me with that book

was how they described what they were testing out to be able to do. So as an example, you know, Russia's always picking on Ukraine. Always. You know, the whole Crimea thing. But they shut down, and a lot of Americans don't know this, they shut down the entire power system in Ukraine for like five days.

One time. Just hacked in. Because all this shit, everything we do now is backed by computer servers it's not separate from like the cloud right so they can do this and they get it like we've done it too like the NSA famously did it I mean it's been exposed now they did it to Iran which is kind of funny sorry but when Iran was producing nuclear weapons down below ground somewhere secret in Iran, Iran, I never remember how to say it,

but they would wait until they got to the final step. Like they would spend months building this fucking nuclear bomb, and then the final step would involve them hitting a button and testing like a transistor or something that tested whether I'm gonna get way above my pay grade but tested like whether the uranium was gonna be potent enough or whatever and every single time they would test it the NSA would be like all right now now's the time to blow it and they'd hit a button because it's connected to a computer system and they blow it up and all the guys would be like what the fuck like

freaking out every single time but the same way that we did that that's how like these russian teams and other foreign agents have been hacking into systems and so now you know fast forward over a year later after i'm reading this i'm seeing shit that could very well be that happen and now you know this meatpacking one they are attributing that to a russian hacking team and so like we look happen. And now, you know, this meatpacking one, they are attributing that to a Russian hacking team. And so, like, we look at this world now where you can be in a traditional business, like, you know, run in a restaurant or run in a bar or, you know, run in a basic. I mean, shit, dude, anything that requires any kind of parts, anything that requires any type of resource, which is pretty much anything and out of nowhere something halfway around the world up in space up in up in the cybersphere can totally pull the rug out from under you it's almost like covid is a symbol rather than the actual rule itself it's crazy to think about

it's nuts and some like the side effects feel like, haven't really hit yet. What do you mean side effects? Like, in the markets that we're talking about, like in manufacturing companies and stuff like that, like, COVID still hasn't hit that part yet. It affected our lives, our, like, daily, yeah, let's go out. Let's get a drink. You can't. So it shot that.

The first step was that. Things were closed. You couldn't really live the life that you were used to living. But now we're going to be seeing some really interesting things, I feel like. Not just price increases, but shortages in many different ways whether it's gas or food or like i feel i don't know and i feel like we're gonna get surprised it all comes back there's a surprise coming up that's just how i feel what do you mean hold on hold on i can't let you get off that dude i'm telling you i just say surprise i just surprise i feel like right now

everything's up and running. We're at 100% capacity. You can go out. You can get a drink. But like I don't know. I just have a feeling that like the shortages are starting to hit us. We've never had shortages before. It's like what the hell?

I mean we have, but I understand we're not like this. But not to this extent yeah like we've never had like in my life i have never seen like a shortage of food the way i'm seeing it a shortage of fuel the way i'm seeing it okay where it's unexpected like yeah okay the gas went up uh it's at 350 okay but like 14 gas stations out of 20 in North Carolina don't have gas. You're like, wait, what? They don't have gas? And they're lined up to get gas? It's like there's no gas?

It's like, what? Shortages and things like this? And I just feel like it's just the beginning. You know what I mean? I don't know. I could be wrong. I don't know. No, I think there's i mean i'm i was just i always just expect the worst because it's my it's how i'm wired to expect

like the worst and i'm just like okay you know if this is happening imagine what's gonna happen next what could happen next that's the thing you know what i mean that that's always like in the back of my mind of like owning and running my own restaurant i expect the worst so i see this stuff and i'm like okay if this can happen then fucking this could happen you know what i mean yeah i don't know does it make sense what i'm saying my train of thought goes there 100 naturally it goes there you know i think that's what we're doing on everything as a society now because this was so crazy this whole thing I mean

absurd do you remember calling me I'll never forget this you called me on Saturday March 14th I had started quarantining the day before and you were like yo what's up man I was like yo and you're like

so what's going on I'm like yo bro how are you and you were like, yo, what's up, man? I was like, yo. And you're like, so what's going on? I'm like, yo, bro, how are you? And you're like, I'm good. What's cooking? I'm like, are you okay? You were scared, man. Is the restaurant going to live? You're like, what are you talking about?

What do you mean there's a restaurant? Of course it's going to live. I'm like, Nico, I don't think you're going to open on monday what what i'll never forget that and then monday you were scared man dude i was spooked the fuck out you were scared man spooked because i was up there and i you're in oh my god man and i was with a doctor yeah on friday the 13th in the morning and he was the guy that and this guy was like a cool cat and he was like listen i kind of thought this was bullshit a couple weeks ago i don't now and he explained the whole thing and i was like oh fuck and then like i started

getting friends or people i knew who had it and had it bad like that day and i was like holy fuck it turned the world upside down and you know it's something that we have to deal with and our lives are going to change forever but in my short life bro kovid showed me how How dangerous fear could have and the impact fear could have on people. It's a bad thing, man. Fear is a bad thing. It's a great tool. It's not good.

It's a great tool, though. And I don't mean that like great. Like, oh, it's great. It's like a Bronx tale right now. How is it like a bronx tale right now if how's it like a bronx yeah when he's talking with sunny about the fear and all love oh yeah loved or feared i'd rather be fit yeah but dude it's it's powerful man fear covid made us fear each other yes like you were afraid to come to my house at the i mean at the very beginning in the beginning i mean i'm not you know respect i'm not i'm not like one of those people that kovid doesn't exist you know respect kovid gabriella my my girlfriend forever that i love

so much she's a doctor she's around this all the time she tells me the inside scoops of it i'm very understandable about covid and the impacts that it can have on somebody and it changes from person to person but like it's just that the fact that you were afraid to come to my house bro it's crazy it's nuts it's great at the very beginning on what i was getting and like when it was hitting home, like, you know, the guy who worked three feet to the left of me, wild story, but healthy guy, late 40s, in shape, like played on the softball team, worked out four days a week. He actually lived. And I say actually lived because he was in a coma on a respirator for 55 days. Yeah.

He was one of the first ones to go down right like bad and so i knew all this at the time i was like holy fuck and i was also i was running around new york city died a whole month leading up to it and i'm like oh my god did i give it to him am i like i was freaking out i didn't but you know it was you're right though it made us at the very beginning there was absolutely a reason for that because no one knew what the no one knew there was no data there's i mean dude we were putting people on respirators and god bless the doctors no one knew that was a horrible idea killed people you know no one tried to do that that's just what happened

we didn't realize oh that's not how you treat it you know that's one example out of a million we knew nothing so like the fear i get it your point though is huge because fear is not just this quote-unquote weapon that's used for like a week and then people go okay you can go back once it's used and individuals or entities in a society gain power off of it then they want more yeah then they want more and they want more and they want more and they want more and we saw that it's not like people love to go right at the government obviously i do too but it's not just that like look at who won here you know look at i i do look at amazon and say like they were fucking cleaning up you know and and then you know bezos owns the washington post and the washington post is putting out all these stories for months and months and a year

about how we need to lock down and i'm like well that that's a little bit of a conflict of interest you know because the more locked down we are the more packages that you're fucking sending from amazon to all these goddamn places and i don't care what you say that's how it looks you know that's and and we saw this type of thing we saw the clear winners and i i love that you bring and love is the wrong word but i i appreciate the fact that you bring that up because i have been thinking about fear and the power of marketing that fear holds within it a lot recently and i mean i guess what you're trying to say is that those attitudes we had like day one have just persisted and in your opinion you reached a point whenever that was i won't speak for you i'll let you speak but you know you reached a point somewhere along there where it's

like okay well what's going to be is going to be you know there's only so much i can control yeah exactly i mean i saw it at first hand with you know just being around people all the time and then my dining room's closed then i'm able to do takeout and delivery and even with takeout like people were afraid bro like we were doing curbside pickup and they're like okay we can leave like leave the food on the ground i'm like you want me to leave the food on the ground like you don't want to put it in your trunk like no leave it on the ground and like walk away i'm like all right it's like i'm holding like a gun or something but anyway it changed our life changed the world it is what it is yeah let's see how we come life goes on yeah life goes on things change nothing

lasts forever the ball keeps on rolling that's and and that's the thing i'm i am cautiously optimistic now and i really i really am because what i've seen the last month is a lot of great signs from people and obviously saw the mass mandate get lifted which was obviously very much needed considering the logic behind the fact that a lot of people were able to get vaccinated like i'm fully vaccinated now so if people like you and me had access to that at this point like look it's everywhere it's in cvs's it's in fucking train stations you can get it anywhere yeah like so if you didn't get it no problem like that's your decision that's not what i would do minutes you go that's it and so like we're at a point where the people who have gotten it or the people who haven't gotten it

it's not because they didn't have a chance to yeah and you know chances are they elected not to so they elected not to because i don't i don't want to talk about covid too much but it's just i don't know man it's what do you think about their push it COVID too much, but it's just... I don't know, man. What are you thinking about, though? It's too much, man. With the vaccine? Yeah. It's like, here, take the vaccine. I'll give you season tickets to a Sixers game. You're just like, wait,

why the heck? Why are you giving me season tickets to a Sixers game to take the vaccine when something's not right here? I don't know, man. I got a theory on this. I got a theory on this. I want to run it by you.

All right. I love that you brought this up. I think that the vaccine is the latest thing that the two parties want to use as a major divisive tactic to divide the quote-unquote 99% of society below the 1% and make them hate each other over something. My theory is that the way these entities, meaning Republicans and Democrats, stay in power is that they consistently convince, and it's not just my theory. There's a lot smarter people than me who have put this out there for a long time, and I'm just parroting it.

But they've consistently convinced people that their enemies are each other you know as the wealth gap opens up and everyone gets more and more pissed off at what they can and can't do in society and a lack of purpose all this shit oh no it's not the fault of the people who are fucking you over in power no no it's not their fault meaning it's not our fault it's the fault oh, that guy over there who has a different skin color or likes a different way of doing something on some political belief. Therefore, you two need to fight about that and hate each other. right so i'm fully vaccinated i had no hesitation in doing it makes me feel great i don't have to worry about a goddamn thing i wasn't that worried to be honest i'm a mid-20s male like it's not much for me to worry about but now i really don't have to worry and the science of the vaccine is fantastic this is one of the most successful vaccines ever made regardless of whatever happened behind the scenes as far as like who got to make it and whatever i don't fucking care like if people line their pockets with it more power to

them fuck them like if they get caught send them to jail i'm more worried about does it work or doesn't it and it works and then when you look at the science behind it and what people will convince themselves bro there is no microchip from bill Gates going into your veins, period. Yeah. But your point about the too much thing, they are marketing this to get people to not take it. What's the number one, not the number one, but one of the many rules of psychology?

If you want someone to do something, if you want someone to do something, the best way to get them not to do it is to fucking pull them aside and tell them to do it over and over again. They are convincing very smart people, might I add, from across the political spectrum. It's not just right-wingers. They are convincing very smart people i've gotten texts from the last people in the world i would assume it from to question things and be like no this is fucking crazy like there's something going on here and get scared because they're getting push button notifications from fucking instagram as to where they are right now and where they can get the nearest vaccine it's nuts it is nuts it is nuts it's a little too much but i'm not doubting the science behind it

i'm not doubting the doctors or anything yep it's it's i think they're doing it they're pushing hard because we've been like this for almost more than a year man yeah like i think it's time for everything to start moving, the economy to start getting back to normal, everything to start getting back to normal. And just get rid of the fear, get the vaccine. Let's get back to normal, basically. And a lot of people are skeptical

because, you know, this made us question a lot of, you know, the news and everything. Exactly. This whole year made us question a lot of the news and everything. Exactly. This whole year made us change our whole image of the news. And I feel like that's why there's a lot of pushback. Do you watch any news? No. I never have.

Never. Only soccer. Only soccer. They don't inject the news into that, do they? Only soccer. That's the realest thing for me well actually what went on can i have some more whiskey oh are you empty over there you're hiding behind the thing yes same price all right what actually explain that though what was going on with that league they made this is like a month ago league thing yeah that was explain this

i'm lost a hoox. That was a hoox. It lasted two days. But what was it? And it's over. It's over, right? You really want me to explain this to you? Yes, explain it. Alright. The beauty of soccer in Europe is that if you do well, you get

rewarded. And that's not the case in American sports. For example, if you're in last place in the NBA, you're still in the NBA. You don't go to the D League. In soccer, it's different in Europe. Relegated. Yeah, you get relegated. You do shit one year in the NBA, you're out of the NBA, you're in the D League.

And that allows the lower clubs, it gives them something to look forward to. It gives them a vision of a dream of being in the NBA for the smaller teams that are in the D-League. You know what I mean? And what they wanted to do was create their own league who, like the dominant teams in Europe, your Real Madrid's, your Barcelona's,

no, the biggest clubs in Europe wanted to create their own league and they would consistently play against each other all the time. So, I mean, it'd be great for spectators. It'd be good for business. It'd be great for TV. It'd generate a lot of money because you'd constantly be watching Manchester United, Real Madrid, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid versus Liverpool. Liverpool versus Barcelona. Liverpool versus United.

Would they be leaving their existing leagues? No, it'd be a separate league. Oh, so they're playing in like two leagues and they wanted to stop champions league and they wanted to have their own league of the best teams in europe consistently constantly playing against each other wait but how is that different because champions league you have to qualify yeah champ like balk for example balk my favorite soccer team in the whole wide world. Knew we were going to get that in here. They never entered Champions League, ever.

They've only played in Europa League, which is the league below. But if this Champions League thing that they tried to create that failed ended up going through and getting approved balk would never be able to play again in champions league ever because it'd be 12 teams constantly playing against each other and you couldn't get you couldn't have the opportunity for the small clubs and there was no system that booted team if they sucked for a while what do you mean so like when they were setting up this what was that oh cheers to you what was this hypothetical league so called super league okay they called it the super so once the 12 teams were in there there was no way that a new team could join and won't get your last in the super league you stay in the super league just like the

nba i think all right i think it's a little different than the NBA because in the NBA there's drafts and first round drafts second round drafts there's that system in the NBA the D-League teams or G-League teams as they're now called, they used to be D-League

they are not even remotely close to the worst NBA roster they couldn't beat the worst nba roster on like on a day where they all had cancer like it there no shot whereas in europe and there is i'm sorry to cut you off yeah i'm sorry to cut you off it's because of the system but how's that wrong like how's the nba wrong about that then i'm not saying they're wrong i'm not saying one system's wrong one system's right but i'm saying the d league teams are completely lousy and way worse than the nba teams because there's no there's no relegation there's no okay you're you're in the NBA. You get $15 million just for entering the NBA.

Or there's no advancement. So the smaller teams will always stay poor. Always. The D-League teams will always be lousy and always be poor. And the NBA teams will always be rich and always be great. That's what they try to do with soccer. And that takes away the beauty of the sport. That's the, for me, I mean, I watch, you know, we grew up watching all sports. We talk about sports all the time. That's the thing about

soccer that I, I really, really fell in love with is that there's always a hope for a poor team to get rich. And you see it. And you see it happening. Like in my short life of 27, being 27, 28 years old, I've seen clubs in England watching the Premier League because it's the best soccer in the world. That, you know, 10 years ago when we were chilling in high school, dude, they weren't even in the Premier League.

They weren't even in the first league. And now they're in the Premier League and they're winning the league. And they're rich like Leicester City. Leicester City, bro, was shit 15 years ago. They didn't have anything. And now everyone knows Leicester City, even here in the States, where they don't even watch soccer. When's the last time one of those types of teams won a Champions League altogether, though?

Won Champions League? Better question. When's the last time one of the 12 proposed teams in that new league didn't win the Champions League? The teams that they chose to be in this super league it was like real madrid always won champions league who was it real madrid real united juventus yep barcelona um what's the one in germany bayern yeah bayern won it bayern wanted to get in it dortmund wanted to get in it uh psg think of like the richest all the richest clubs bro all the it's like did they come up with this it was the worst though or was it obviously it got shut down in two days bro they talked about it in the hair salons and that was it had they been planning it though like for a while it was

planned yeah but but it got shut down real fast you want to know why it got shut down why did We talked about it in the hair salons, and that was it. Had they been planning it, though, for a while? It was planned, yeah. But it got shut down real fast. You want to know why it got shut down? Why'd it get shut down? Because Champions League said, okay, you want to join the Super League? You want to be in the Super League? You're not allowed to compete and play in the World Cup for your nation. You can't represent your country.

Wait, how can they say that? Because Champions League has some pool. What do you mean they have some pool? That's like a... Champions League, it's the ultimate trophy in soccer. It's bigger than the World Cup. I remember. You used to make me watch that.

It's bigger than the World Cup. So they're like, okay, you want to join this league that goes against the Champions League and not participate in Champions League? Okay, fine fine but you're going to be disallowed to compete for your nation you won't be able to play for france and bop it you won't be able to namar you won't be able to play for brazil you won't be allowed to play for the world cup so the players were like yeah they were like fuck this fuck it i'm out so know, it got stopped right away. But that's the beauty of soccer, man. That's the beauty. There's hope.

It gives small clubs like my club in Greece hope to be able to play one day against Barcelona. It can happen. That's pretty cool. Whereas a team in the D League, say you're a fanatic. I don't even know a team in the D League. No one's a fan ofLeague, say you're a fanatic. I don't even know a team in the D-League.

No one's a fan of them. But say you were. You're not because there's no shot you'd play against the Lakers. But if there was a shot you'd play against the Lakers, you may be a fan. The difference is, though, a Leicester City can happen because the games are different. Basketball and soccer are very different games. In Europe, it happens. In Europe and basketball, it happens.

But it's also so spread out. Dude, Barcelona could not be in the first division if they lose all the time. They get dropped. First of all, the— And then we wouldn't know who Paul Gasol was. The upper echelon of talent, like the highest echelon, obviously, is very good. Once you get below the highest echelon, the talent is very broad. Like, it's not... In the NBA, the 7th and 8th man on a decent, okay, playoff team, you know, first or second round round exit team is going to be a fucking monster

in european leagues period yeah they are yeah so there is a distribution like nba think of it like the talent level is up at and if you're listening and not watching i'm holding my hands up in like a pyramid above me it's up here at the top of the pyramid and then you kind of have like europe where overall the town is towards the middle of the pyramid so it's easier for things to come back to average right it's easier for like this team to suddenly like get it be struck by a bolt of lightning and figure it out and have a magical season or a magical run and i I'm not, I don't mean to overgeneralize, but like in the NBA, you don't, the NBA and the D-League,

look, nothing's impossible. That's not going to happen though. The rosters, the D-League rosters, European teams could, or G-League, they used to call it the D-League. I'm so used to the D-League.

But the G-League rosters, decent European teams could beat those teams. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. That's not going to happen. In a seven-game series in the NBA, not going to happen. And that's the other thing.

In soccer, they play a lot of one. If I'm understanding correctly, they don't play series in this. It's a one-gamer. It's just like football. Like football. The finals are one game. The finals are one game. The finals are one game. Yes.

But the knockout stages are two. One home, one away. And soccer, going back to soccer, the other beautiful thing about soccer. And it's goal differential? It's the only sport where a goal. Wait, question. Yeah, it's goal differential. And it's the only sport where that occurs.

Where a goal away counts more. Wait, what? An away goal in soccer counts more than a home goal. I told you this before. I did not know this. Yeah, bro. What? Yeah.

So if I score, what is it, like 1.25? If we play one game home and one game away, and both scores at the end of both games are tied whoever has more away goals wins does that make sense yes it may i'm it's i'm processed what if no one has more away goals then it's just what do you mean if no one has more away goals if they'll wait if they're the same, you're saying? Yeah. Then it goes over time, penalty kicks and stuff like that.

But it's the only sport, bro, where an away goal literally counts more. Yeah, that's kind of funny. For the goal difference, the aggregate. The aggregate. When the aggregates are tied, you look at the away goals. Whoever has more away goals advances. That's stupid. Why? That's really stupid. No, bro. has more away goals advances that's stupid why that's really stupid no bro that's the beauty that's stupid that's the beauty of support that's why the

soccer fans are fucking ballistic man it's because it literally counts it counts they can never do that in america dude it counts man so wait greece if greece has been shut down with kobe this year they haven't been burning down for soccer yeah they burn it down they still burn it down my team from greece yeah won the greek cup two weeks ago three weeks ago had they been playing in front of the stadiums yeah when they won though everyone went to the White Tower, the Lefkoe Pirgo. Everyone went. Thousands and thousands of people went. Flares everywhere. No masks.

Did they have to text the government? No. They just went. Listen, when 10,000 people go, they don't have enough cops to find them. Well, that's what I mean. Why didn't people just do that? It's because it wasn't worth it. But for soccer, it's worth it.

For soccer, it's worth it. Of course. Oh, my God. Of course. I wish people could go see that and, like, see that culture. I've seen it. You've seen it. Bro.

You've seen it. You've felt it. It's real. It's real, man. It's very real. And you know why it's real? To the extent that it is, it's because there's hope. There's hope for one day for Pauk, who has a $10 million budget, to play against Barcelona, who has a $450 million budget.

There's hope. That's cool. It's a possibility. It's a possibility. It's a possibility. So, net effect is it's a great thing that they shut down

the Super League. Excellent thing. Excellent thing for me and my club. Yeah. And for the game. And people were freaking but like,

even in England, like, with some of the great teams that were being left out. Like, what? Was Arsenal left out of that? Uh-huh.

Yeah. Like, they were, they were flipping out over there. Few in England. Few in England because a lot of the teams in England that are good right now came from the bottom. Yeah. They came from nothing.

Yeah. A lot. Arsenal, ninth place. Liverpool, sixth place. And then you have Leicester second. And you're like, who the fuck's Leicester? You know what? I mean, ten years ago, no one...

I mean, I follow soccer all the time. But that's the beauty of soccer, man. And then three, four years ago, you see the Sixers, man. They're losing games on purpose so that they can get a good draft pick. And you're like, what the fuck, man? Like, if you're a true Sixers fan, you're like bashing your head against... You're like, I don't care about the draft pick i want you to win a game no well for me no for me this is a true story this is you're not you're not gonna believe

this shit this is a true story when the sixers lost their 26th game in a row in the 2013-2014 season it was i believe like the beginning of march 2014 you were in america and i was in a hotel room with my girlfriend in tesla nikki watching it on greek tv saying like on the tv oh the rebels balls that like i didn't know what the fuck they were saying but i was like did they lose i'm like oh my god they lost my girlfriend's like what what do you mean like why are you happy i'm like they lost we're good, they lost. My girlfriend's like, what do you mean? Like, why are you happy? I'm like, they lost. We're good. They just set the record.

We're going to get a high draft pick. Oh, my God. Dude, I was excited about that because we were motivated to lose that year. Because, listen, you have to have talent to be able to contend. Period. It's not, look. I'm a sore loser, man. And I'm not going to root to lose.

Never. It's not. It's rooting to lose. I'm a sore loser, man. And I'm not going to root to lose. Never. It's not. It's rooting to lose. When you're watching, I will say this. And notice, I said I was watching the highlights. Whenever I watch the games, I can't do that. I can't root to lose. Period.

Like, you can't. Well, yeah. But that's the thing. That was the first season, I think think of my life where i would purposely skip watching games because i'm like i do know i remember dude you remember we beat like the heat the first game of that season yeah and we're like bro dude we thought we were going to the title we're like oh my god this is not a tank season michael carter williams this is second magic johnson i was running around blackout in the basement with fucking Spear and Dylan

screaming, we beat the heat! They won like three in a row and then they were horrible the whole year. And it was like, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be enjoying what we're enjoying right now. Yeah. That's true. It's true because of the system and because of the way it is.

But in Europe, it's not like the draft they have to go sign players and they have you're talking about like you used an example a few minutes ago where you're like real madrid it pays their players 450 million a year we pay whatever we pay them it's like you already that system's not equitable in that way so yes it is How's it actually? It just takes more time. Wait, how does that make sense? When Pauk, for example, who sucks, right? When they enter into a big tournament. So, you admit it?

Of course. Okay. Of course. Okay. Of course I admit it. We got that? We got that. Okay.

But I love them dearly and I support them to the fullest. And why I continue, even though they suck, is because there's hope. For example, if BALC wins first place in the Greek League, they win first place, they have a chance to enter Champions League. They have a chance. So they have to play like two or three teams in order to qualify. If they beat two or three of those teams just for entering into Champions League, or they always participate in Europa League because they never can get into Champions League, but just for entering into Champions League, you get money.

You get money. Wait, how much money do you get? You get it. Ballpark between 10 to 15 million. Euros. Euros euros just for entering into the tournament. And then if you win, you get 2 million. If you win a game, you get 2 million. If you get a tie, you get half a million. If you lose, you get nothing.

And you play, you play, you play. There's rounds of 32, right? There's four clubs. So they get a revenue share. There's four clubs in the round of 32. The top two teams, after playing against each other with points, a win is three points, a tie is one point, a loss is zero points. At the end, the top two advance. Oh, you're saying they're each in four team leagues.

So you have groups of four teams. Like the World Cup. Like the World Cup. And then guess what? When you advance into the round of 16 you get more you get another 10 million just for advancing now you play again you win you blah blah blah blah blah blah you you advance again into the lead eight another 15 million so you collect juice you collect you sign a big player you sign sign a well-known good player. He comes to your team. You win.

Boop. You keep on. That's how it happens. It takes a little bit more time than like the NBA where you sign a magician. Most people don't do that. And you sign a huge player. Most teams don't do that and you sign a huge player whereas in soccer the way you improve the way you create your talented team it's a little bit more in stages it's not so instant oh number one draft pick okay you get the stud from from duke number one draft

boom makes your team better it's not like that. It's more in stages. And that's how you create a team. And it's important. Soccer, it's 11 plays, it's not five. You know, you have a whole squad. So it does happen, but not at the speed as it does in the NBA. How many teams are in across the country so britain italy france germany portugal how many go to champions league no how many teams are in the top leagues in each of those respective

20s between 20 to 25 teams total total no no not in champions league i mean like in the leagues in the first of the leagues in each league yeah in each league yeah not 25 total across 20 right so it's like 20 so call it across the major countries call it 150 teams right yeah but be careful england for example england two leagues no no eng England is the Premier League, right? Yes. That's England's soccer league. It's the best soccer league in the world, right? Yeah.

The top four teams in England in the Premier League automatically go to Champions League. Automatically. They don't have to play qualifiers. Yeah. What I'm saying is. Automatically go. So how many teams are in the Premier League? 20?

20. Okay. Let's say 20. So that's Britain. Then you have Germany. You have Italy. Yeah. You have Greece.

Yeah. You have Spain. Yeah. All the ones I just listed. So put all the main countries together. A lot of the top teams from those countries don't go to Champions League. I'm not there yet. Oh, okay.

I'm not there yet. Okay. teams from those countries don't go to champions league i'm not there yet okay i'm not there yet okay the point is let's call it 150 200 teams like legit teams with a with a prayer yeah the prayer yeah across europe how many teams total go to champions league 32 right okay so it's the 32 where it's like eight leagues and four i think you said that 32 so each of these leagues think about the percentage like how many things have to go right for you to do that like you have one champions league every year if you live 100 years you live through 100 champions league you probably don't remember the first five or the last five so you live through 90 right there's 200 fucking teams in europe let's say that there's the 12 powerful ones and there's more than that i don't know why

they kept it to 12 because like teams like arsenal aren't getting in whatever let's say there's 30 powerful ones deep pockets big country or big cities, Paris, Rome, wherever, right? London, all these teams. They're always going to be there. More often than not, one of those teams is going to win the Champions League. So let's say out of every four years, I'm just doing a hypothetical. Out of every four years, three of them, one of those main 30, win the title. That leaves in, we'll go, instead of 90, we'll keep it to 100 years, like you remember all of them.

That leaves in your 100-year life, that leaves 25 years throughout there, that 170 teams are fighting to try to win the Champions League. So the chances of you seeing your little sisters of the poor team actually win it are next to nothing. They're very, very low. Exactly. So it's still not, to me, it's not equitable because like they don't have a, first of all, there's too many teams because it's a big continent. It's not a country. It's a continent, right? And you have all these densely populated areas, all this talent, incredible talent. But you don't have a draft. You have a lot of teams, and you have teams that have big pockets that more often than not are going to be able to use it to buy the best players.

It's, you know, in sports, it's the capitalist system that way. So, like, I still don't get, like, to me, we have it very good in the NBA. Yes. Where, guess what? It's only 30 teams. And I'm just using – there's other leagues too I could point to. MLB, good example, whatever. But NFL.

But there's only 30 teams and there's a set draft system. And you know what? You can have a team like in the NFL. You can have a team like the Chiefs come out of nowhere and draft Patrick Mahomes. Right. You know? That can't happen in Europe. Or it's very mahomes right you know that can't happen in europe or it's very hard to no it can't happen in europe but like just imagine just imagine the sixers play once a week say they only play on sunday right okay sixers only play

either saturday morning sunday, one game a week. And where am I trying to go with this? I don't know where. I was trying to go somewhere with this. Got it. So they only play once a week. And say there's a relegation thing, like in soccer. Meaning a team gets kicked out of a league and goes down to a lower level. Meaning you don't do well.

You don't do well. You get relegated. You go to the D-League or whatever it's called. Is it the D-League? I heard you correct yourself. It's the G-League. G-League, whatever. I don't know why they changed it.

Say you go to the G-League. You don't do well. And you only play once a week. Imagine what the support would be like in the Wells Fargo Center. It'd be a lot better. Oh, if you were out of the G League and up in the NBA. Of course, yeah.

And you only played once a week. Yeah, but like, so... You would never want the Sixers to lose, ever. Well, let's go to the NFL, because we do have that once a week. Sure. And there's no... But you stay in the NFL. That's what i'm saying well there are arena leagues and shit like that there's a there's another well the xfl came back but that i think i think the rock actually bought that so

it's coming back again but it's not you know what i mean it's not like the g league is the teams are owned entities of the nba teams you know which is the other thing all the nba teams all the nba teams own a team in the g league so it's not like they're getting you know what i mean yeah it's like tied to it but i i don't know where you were going with that like Like you said, when you came to Greece and you saw how it was with the soccer and with the graffiti and the fans and the amount of effect it had on the cultural day-to-day. It's because of all these things that I'm talking about. They only play once a week. If they lose, they get relegated. They're fighting to play against the big clubs.

They've never entered Champions League. The unknown. The hope and the power that hope has. That holy fucking shit. One day we might be able to get into champions league we never want them to lose we never want them to lose that's it win win win and let's support to the fullest because guess what an away goal counts more so when there's an away game my friends bro in greece they take boats They don't have money to pay for a train.

They don't have money to go on flights. They don't have the money. So they go on ferries for days. For days. Two-day ferries. To where? To go see Bauk play against an Italian club or to see Bauk play against a Turkish club or to see Bauk play, you know, a Scandinavian club.

They take ferries and trains for days to support their club. Because guess what? If we land or if we play a really good team from Spain or from Sweden, who isn't Barcelona, who say like Villarreal, who isn't like creme de la creme in Spain, and we're playing against Europa League and, you know, we playme de la creme in Spain. And we're playing against Europa League. And, you know, we play against them and we score an away goal. It's like, holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit.

We can tie home and win. Or they could score, you know, we score two goals away and they score one home. You know, we can advance off away goals. Bro, this is why I love sports, period. There is something about it. Like what you're pointing out right now makes my blood go. And I mean that in all the best ways because everyone can kind of forget

what's going on around them in life, what they're pissed off about, you know, what's bad. And, or even like the good things too like i mean everything the whole world kind of drowns out and and all the things that come with it for for just maybe three hours a week in soccer or something like that and you lose your fucking mind over something that a guy who sits 10 rows down who you've never met in your life has the same emotion to and feeling for that you do there's as far as i can tell there's nothing like that in the world you know some some people now i'll be like yo

politics is like that fuck that dude i'm talking about this is not where it's like you know two team fans can hate each other but at the end of the day they're all celebrating the same thing there's no celebration and When somebody loses in politics, they think the world's over, right? Not to say you don't think that in sports, but it's kind of like fleeting. It's still like, oh, this is what we do. This is what we come for. This is the vibe and the emotion we're all about. And I think that more than ever, there are just certain things we can't take for granted after COVID. And for me, like sports is one of those things. Because I couldn't watch it during COVID.

I really couldn't. I had when the Sixers were playing in the bubble. And you and I have been diehard fans. Sorry to cut you off. Did they win today? Actually, that's a great question. Because we started recording when they were playing. It was like in the third quarter.

So I haven't checked it. But I'll check that in a minute just to check. And we got to see about mb'd here and what that whole thing is but anyway there there is something crazy about the fact that you know a diehard fan like me or somebody like you last year i know they were kind of flaming out but when they had that bubble bro i had that i mean there's three screens here i had them up in the background on mute i couldn't't, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Like, not their fault. Not their fault. They're playing in a gym. They're playing in Riverwinds, basically. Right? That's what they're doing. And I'm like, I'm supposed to take this seriously? I was relieved.

I don't like watching them lose, but I was relieved after it was done. Because I'm like, all right, at least we didn't win a championship in this fucking whatever. And Brett Brown got fired. Side note. But like now you're starting to see like fans pile stadiums again. It's a beautiful thing. Fans are the beauty of the sport. Yes.

And in soccer, it is at an extreme elite level. If you haven't watched Green Street Hooligans, you must watch it. You and me watched that once. But we were like fucked up. And I have no rec... I just remember like Frodo Baggins was like pissed off the whole time.

Yes. Elijah Woods is in... What's that movie about though? Hooligans. That does nothing for me. What do you mean? It's about hooligans in England. Soc though hooligans that does nothing for me what do you mean it's about hooligans in england soccer hooligans okay it gives you an idea of like the cultural thing that i was talking about of how much an effect it can have on a society yeah i mean you look west ham bro west ham what's west ham Oh, yeah, yeah, the team.

The team in the movie. Bro. I don't remember the movie. They, that squad was absolute shit for like 30 years. They were shite. They were shite. And it had a great year, and it got into the Premier League, and it made, when you enter into the Premier League, you get money, like I said. They give you money.

And it got, like, two great players, bro. And now it's still in the Premier League. Since then. Since then. And they have chances. Oh, you're talking about in real life? In real life. Okay, got it.

In real life. What was the other one we always watched with the fucking kid who was, like... Who made the team... Oh, Gold. Yeah, that's it. That was so cheesy. That's a little bit more fictional. That was so cheesy. That's more fictional. But yeah, that was like... made the team goal yeah that's it that's a little bit more fictional

that was so cheesy that's more fictional but yeah that was like but that's the thing you could just pick up someone off the street anyway that's why dude at the cage at the cocktail bar i didn't know what to name the drinks i was like what am i gonna name the drinks what am i gonna name the drinks and i was like i gotta name them after terms. So I named all the drinks after soccer terms. And it has like its own theme. Every drink somehow is related to a soccer term. And I have paragraphs that no one reads. They just look at the pictures.

But I like writing the paragraphs. Because everyone's like, oh, my God, I want this. I'm like, all right, yeah. I read the paragraphs. The paragraphs. Paragraphs. Because everyone's like, oh my God, I want this. I'm like, all right, yeah. I read the paragraphs. The paragraphs. Like today, I'm changing the catalog. And today, I was working on introducing four new cocktails.

I'm taking all four. I'm adding four. And I was writing the paragraphs. Today, I was doing that. VAR Aviation. How do you decide what to take off the menu sales just purely the numbers on it dude i'm in business if it doesn't sell yeah it's gotta go but the reason i asked that i mean that's that's a really obvious answer the reason i asked that though is because like you make all these high-end cocktails so there's got to be people trying

everything just because there's you know what i mean yeah so it's got to be people trying everything just because there's – you know what I mean? Yeah, whoever sells the least. So it's harder to tell. Like can you know that something's a failure on that type of menu after like four months? It's been two years though. Oh, so you haven't changed anything. I haven't changed anything in two years on the catalog, but I've introduced a lot of creative cocktails that people consistently keep on ordering and that's how i get a feel got it that's how i get a feel i'm like oh my god like it's not on the menu it's creative cocktail that we did like last week they keep on ordering it i take that i'm gonna put it on the catalog now i take back that question because i was thinking like that was something you were doing regularly regularly and i'm like no how would you do like after 90 120 days how do you really you know what

i mean like that's harder when to look at numbers yeah but yeah so you named them all after soccer terms period so today i'm introducing i decided for four cocktails that we used as like creative cocktails to get feedback and that we're going to put on the catalog. So we have VAR Aviation. Aviation is a classic cocktail. It's like 140 years old. But I named it VAR Aviation. What's VAR? VAR. Virtual Assistant Referee. What the fuck is that?

And soccer. You've never heard of VAR? Is that like the film? Like the tape review? Dude, you know how in the NFL you can challenge and they go in the booth and they see? In soccer they're doing that that now at an elite level. Thank God. You can look at... You named a drink after a fictional referee, though? No.

And it happens. In reality, it happens. I know. Today it happens. Today it happens. VAR. You don't see drinks named like the... Here's the official review gin and tonic.

I don't know about that one. It's named like the, here's the official review gin and tonic. I don't know about that one. It's named after, it's like a challenge. Is anyone at your bar here in America? Yeah. America. Yes. Are they going to know what that is? Yes.

They're going to know what that is. No. No. They will ask. They will ask. And I will tell them. And it adds more hype to the theme, bro. You have to have a theme. Agreed. theme, bro. You have to have a theme.

Agreed. Dude, I think you have to have a theme. I'm hating on that name. Give me the next ones. Give me the next ones. So, yeah, VAR Aviation. This isn't even on the menu yet. This is like a sneak peek.

Oh, my God. Are we getting an exclusive in here? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Holy shit. So, yeah, VAR Aviation. You have, this one is for West Ham. For the Green Shoot Hooligans. Forever Blowing Bubbles.

What the fuck is that? Forever Blowing Bubbles is the main chant of West Ham United in England. Their chant. Yo, if your team chant is Forever Blowing Bubbles, you're never going to win a fucking game. Listen, man. I'm saying that right now. Listen, man. I'm saying that right now. Listen, man. I bought a fucking bubble gun

for this fucking cocktail. It is... It creates a bubble on the surface of the cocktail and it blows up. All right. Don't even go to the next two names. We need to talk about this.

I'm not messing around with my cocktails. You know I'm not. That's where we're going right now. I need to steer the conversation. I don't know if you've ever seen a bubble gun on a cocktail. I have never seen that. That sounds like a violation of the drink, but you'll probably make it look great.

It's not a violation. When you're talking about the cocktails that you concoct here like people are listening like okay cute you got some drinks what you did to set up this bar was straight out of the playbook that i've grown up around so i'm used to it but this is what you greeks what you guys, and it's fucking genius, and it's wild, though, when you think about it. You went and found two professional mixologists who travel around Greece. I don't know. They're probably like a long-lost cousin. They compete in Europe.

Everyone's a fucking cousin in Greece. But you found these people. You brought them over here for six months, and you didn't just have them train your staff as you opened up the restaurant or opened up the bar and get them used to it you also had to move in with you and set up a bar in your house around the clock i remember coming back like fucked up from the bar after like we would all come back to your place and there's like professionals in there at like three in the morning like sir would you like a whatever the fuck or whatever the fuck and i'm like i don't know like anything if it's got liquor i'm good and they're making they're like fucking torching it like my friend john ronnie's dad johnny drinks does shout out johnny drinks with the goddamn thing like on the where they put it on the wood

and then hold the glass over it and smoking the glass all that stuff they were doing the whole like where they where they throw the liquid up in the air and catch it somehow on the other side and i'm like what the fuck are we doing here and you're like bro i'm opening up a bar we're doing this right wild yeah i've always i've always been blown away in europe just from like living you know living in spain and traveling out throughout europe of how easy and effortless it was to have a good drink you'd go to like a corner cafe a corner bakery you ask for a margarita or a mojito and it's a fucking good drink yeah and then you come here and you go to like these huge metropolitan cities bro it's like four or five million people and it's only like a handful of like spots where you can get a good drink you like really have to look for it and when our newest restaurant

up in warrington uh it was a bertucci's that filed bankruptcy it closed it had a bar i was like dad like if if we're gonna have a bar like we gotta do it right we gotta do it like in greece and or in europe like when we travel you go anywhere in europe you were obsessive about it and yeah i'm like there's so many awesome beer gardens and wineries but to find like a good cocktail you have to search for it and i was like we gotta go with the cocktail theme and my dad was giving me a bunch of heat he's like i don't know like in america it's all beer and wine cocktails isn't a thing they won't appreciate it well i'm like dude no we're doing we're doing the cocktail thing and um i sponsored mixologists from europe

i brought them over they showed me the ropes they opened the bar they did the layout and a lot of the cocktails that are on the catalog right now are their homemade recipes that they've won competitions with in europe and now we sell cocktails then beer and wine combined every day. What makes a great cocktail? Like how do you, you know, because there's like the famous ones, like I can order an old-fashioned and stuff like that. But what makes like your old-fashioned different?

Or what makes an entirely new drink that no one's ever had that like actually makes it good? Because at the end of the day, not to be a cynic, you know I like anything that's wet that has alcohol in it but it's all alcohol right like it's just you're adding some things to it to mask the taste of the alcohol all right so when it comes to the the craft when it comes to the craft of making a drink you have to combine what the guest wants and the environment it's all about what's right at that specific time there isn't a a perfect drink like when when people ask like what's my, what's my favorite cocktail? It fucking depends.

It depends on what kind of mood I'm in. It depends on who I'm with. It depends on what time it is. You know what I mean? It depends on a lot of things. So there isn't a favorite cocktail. That's why it's like, I've always loved serving people.

It's always been like, you know, like my house parties, bro, when we were in high school. In my basement, I loved having parties. My parties, I think, were fucking awesome. Everyone loved coming to my house for parties. It was the Greek consulate. It's because I've always had a passion

for making somebody feel like they're having a great time and making them say, wow, this is fucking awesome. I've always had a passion. It fulfilled me. You know what I mean? It fills me up. It makes me feel good. So when it comes to what you asked me, what's the perfect cocktail?

What's the best cocktail? I guess more clearly. How do you make one from scratch that it's like yo this is decadent it depends bro it depends on your tastes not everyone's tastes are the same i can have a cocktail and it'd be fucking awesome for me and then you try and it's like sucks and spit it out and say give me my money back you've never given me one though that i don't like you know what i mean yeah not not everyone enjoys like i don't like spicy food if you cook up an amazing spicy meal i won't like it i don't like spicy so you give the options across it depends on the tastes it depends on the flavor that's why i always ask people i'm like what's your favorite alcohol

you know what i mean What do you enjoy drinking? I think you make a really good point, though. It depends. About the, I'll call it a problem, the problem with the lack of quality on cocktails in this country. It is true. You go, especially in New York, right? When I go to New Yorkork i expect great fucking drinks because i'm paying well now with inflation probably paying fucking 30 bucks a pop at this point but pre

pre-covid when i was in new york city all the time yeah i'm paying 20 bucks for a good drink but the thing is very often besides like great places like the Skylark, shout out to those people, they're fucking awesome there. But, you know, you have some places that do it right. But a lot of places, like very high end, everything costs a lot, and, you know, it's hard to get in there. They're giving you a fucking glass with liquid, too much ice, and one lime stuck on the top.

And I'm just like, what went wrong in our culture where the expectation is like speed and just the ambiance, but not the things that come with it, right? Versus the actual attention to detail and the appreciation for like the Anthony Bourdain like decadence to life. You know what I mean? You know what I'm trying to say there? Yeah. I know exactly what you're trying to say. I don't know why it's not like that.

I think I know why. Why? There's no trends. What do you mean? There's no fashion trends. There's no... What? Cocktails.

In the world of cocktails, it's a very trendy thing. For example, mezcal. Mezcal tequila wasn't in. Now it's in. So a lot of mixologists and a lot of cocktails are now with Mezcal, Mezcal spray. They spray things with Mezcal. They garnish things with Mezcal. They use only aged tequila. Before, they never used aged tequila before they never used aged

tequila now they use aged tequila it's more expensive what's the difference like what's the difference in the taste it's a little bit more potent the color's different because it gets the color from the barrel so it's not like uh it's not like that clear tequila it's more of like a brownish more of like a brownish color but in europe there's trends and cocktail making world it's it's very trendy it changes a lot you know what i mean yeah it's very up it's very trendy it moves fast there's new cocktails all the time just like in in fashion, bro. That's what I'm saying because we do have significant... We don't have a fashion trend in the States.

What? We don't. What do you mean? I remember going to Greece in the summers, bro. My cousins would make fun of me. They're like, why are you wearing a blue shirt? Blue was the color of fashion last year. Last summer.

It's different in different places. It's different in different places. But that exists. It's a different trend. Exactly. They have different trends than we do. Exactly. That doesn't mean we don't have trends.

We don't have fashion trends. No, no, no. That's what I'm talking about. We do. We have different trends. Like, they dress differently in Europe. They dress differently in Asia. They dress differently in Asia. They dress differently in South America.

Yeah, but you're not going to go somewhere here and then be like, dude, that was in style last year. You wear what you're comfortable wearing. I don't, I don't agree. I think in this country, we have significant, like over the top, like beyond what I think is acceptable, but you know, who the fuck cares what I think, trends that, you know, people like, there's a big thing where people are using fashion to seek like attention, you know, through like insecurities.urities it's not about does this look good they want you to they want to make you believe that it that it looks good because they posted a nice instagram about it and they did something different than you did it's like that old

non-conformist thing or whatever but i don't think like i always knew or had some idea i should say of like the trends in europe because you'd bring them back here. You'd be wearing fucking Armani this when we were 12 years old. I'm like, who the fuck is Armani? You had a different... I wasn't wearing Armani, man. I was wearing fisherman pants.

No, you weren't. You were wearing fucking Armani. Dude, I remember because then my mom's like, why don't you get Armani? I'm like, mom, I'm not trying to dress like I'm going to a fucking Greek dance. Like this is not what they, this is not, like it's acceptable for him to do it. If I walk in and do that, someone's punching me in the face. You know, like you had those trends that you bring over,

but it's not like everyone then did that. You didn't see all our boys like wearing that. You know what I mean? Like there were different things here. Whereas you look at how people dressed, even like, think about how people dressed when we were, like, young, young. Like, 2007. Like, young. Then think about how they dressed in, like, 2012.

Dude. Way different. Yeah, you're right. There are trends. It's just not, it doesn't have as much as an impact as it does over there. What do you mean? Like here when we were growing up, there was G-Unit. What did G-Unit have in their clothing?

They had sneakers. No, no, no. They had a brand. G-Unit had a... G-Unit? I'm going to pull it up. Keep talking. No, they had a brand. They had like a a brand. G-Unit had a... I'm going to pull it up. They had a clothing brand.

Everyone wanted to get the G-Unit brand of clothing. G-Unit brands. That's what it was called. Right there. I don't... Actually, I remember the sneakers

more than anything. Yeah, the sneakers. And you had, like, all these brands. And then Iverson had his brands. Yeah, what's your point? That these brands don't count because they were different than Europe? In Greece, if you weren't wearing G-Unit when G-Unit was in, they'd be like, what the fuck, bro?

Like, why aren't you wearing G-Unit? It's more... You know what I mean yeah there's more of a cultural pressure yeah having they're like why are you wearing g unit now like g unit was popular last year don't wear g unit now that's okay actually now i agree do you get what i'm saying yes i think you said it i won't say wrong but you said it like a little bit unclearly. Yeah. There is more of an ability in this country to say, fuck the trends and do what you want to do. Rather than have to get it like the cultural conformity. The image is very important over there.

Here it's not so important. They're like, fuck it, I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to do what makes me comfortable. But in Europe, the image is so important. I think I was on the phone with Gio Caradonis the other day. And I think that's what I'm just thinking about something you're saying. I think that's what he was trying to get across because he's doing a lot of business. Yeah.

The Saloniki. Image is important, man. Yeah. Image is important. Especially, it's even more important now with everything being like on Instagram and all these influencers and stuff. But going back to what you said about the cocktails. Yeah, yeah. That's where I think – that's what I think makes like the major difference is the effect and the impact of trends.

And you say that we don't have as much of that in this country for cocktails. Not as – it's not pressure. I agree with that. We don't pull our nails out for that. In Europe, they do. They're like, why are you wearing that? That's not in style now. What are you doing?

You're not allowed to sit at the bar. I mean, it's like that, bro. This is actually a really good way to have a conversation around that culture though like i know we're just talking about cocktails with that but one of the life-changing experiences i had like i studied in italy and lived in rome and so that did a lot for me but before i did that when i went over there with you finally for like three weeks and just lived in the culture in Greece and like this was I mean shit man the thing about the Saloniki and then Halkidiki especially is that there's no Americans there none period it's like and Halkidiki I mean tell people about Halkidiki like what that's

like I mean it's unbelievable we'll to it, but tell people what it is. Halkidiki is a peninsula that is off, basically like an hour away from the second largest city in Greece, which is called Thessaloniki. So the capital is Athens, which is all the way south of Greece. And Thessaloniki is all the way north.

And about like an hour drive, kind of like driving from like south jersey to ac or their borgata it's about 45 minutes to an hour there's a peninsula called which kind of looks like it looks like this literally looks like this if you're if you're listening right now he's holding his three fingers straight down. Yeah, and this Alniki is up here. And these three bodies of land are like a peninsula. And it's full of beach bars, full of clubs. The first foot is like the party island or like the party foot, which is where we went. Angels, pearls. Angels, all those awesome clubs that are epic.

And then the second one is a little bit more relaxed for families and whatnot. And then the third one is owned by the church, like the Vatican. You need a passport to go there. Women aren't allowed. It's very sacred, full of mosques, all owned by the church. We definitely didn't go there. We didn't go there. We didn't go there.

But the camping there is amazing, I've heard. But we didn't go there. We didn't go there. We didn't go there. But camping there is amazing, I've heard. But we didn't go there. We went to the party island because he didn't have much time. The thing... So that's Halkidiki. You told me to explain it. No, that was beautiful. That was a great setup here.

Because, first of all, Halkidiki, and there was not one American there the entire time. This is not... People in this country, they say... They love America, though. They say Mykonos and everything. And Mykonos, never been there, but I know it's incredible. there the entire time this is not like people in this country they they say they love america they say they say mykonos and everything and mykonos never been there but i know it's incredible like i've heard amazing things i know it is but like this is it's not not touristic bro this is it's where the locals go yes it's like our jersey shore exactly but it's not no this i love the jersey shore no disrespect to ocean city and sea isle and up in Belmar and all these great places.

It's where the locals go. Hockey the Key is low-key perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. It is breathtaking. And the drive. Like you talked – it's very similar. It's like living in New York City or in philly and driving to the shore north jersey or south jersey like an hour you know no traffic that kind of deal whatever which there's always traffic but that's like the drive from the salon nikki to hockey the key and i just

remember when we were doing that we were hungover as fuck and your dad was driving so we're like like all over the place but that drive was like the back hills and gladiator when he's like fucking walking through the wheat fields i'm like nico it's like fucking gladiator it's mountainous yeah this is mountainous and even the peninsula is mountainous so there's a lot of like a lot of hills ups and downs and turns but but the thing magical the reason i was bringing this up is the things i learned about the culture while i was there were life-changing for me because this was shit we were young we were not drinking age this is like 2013 i think not drinking age here yeah well here exactly exactly so we were good over there but

but this is like two years maybe after the g Greek economy went like through the fucking floor after the global financial crisis. And then there was the hyperinflation problem that cost like 20 euros for a coffee. And the country was and still is very largely poor. There's a lot of people in tough times there. And what struck me is that you wouldn't have known it now if you went to athens you'd know it right like there there's places where there's constant demonstrations and stuff but you go to other big places that saw nikki and then especially you go to something like huckadicky people have such a different priority system there and it's so much more native to the land and that is

a big compliment when i say that in the sense that all people wanted was enough money to be able to sleep somewhere that had a roof to be able to buy some decent, fresh, beautiful, decadent foods, to be able to have their afternoon coffee, which we'll talk about Greek coffee. It's a religious experience. No offense to Italy. Italy invented coffee. They did a great job. There's nothing like the Greek coffee experience.

Greeks perfected it. And then they want to have enough money, finally, to be able to go out and feel like they're living a very big time life at the clubs at night where everything is more affordable by the way than it is here to do that. And the clubs are better than here. I'm not kidding about that. They're fucking insane. And I'm like, damn. You know where it really hit me actually?

Remember that beach we would jump off the cliff yeah what's that called where we went cliff jumping yeah like me k-pop you everybody what's that called that was at the camping yeah what's that site called um paluri yes that's it the camping that's it that's it so we're at this place and it's like this you know as you were explaining hakidiki it's this long peninsula so it's like this mountainous island but it's not an island like sticking out into the water but it's i mean it's that first finger is what like 25 miles long something like that 24 yeah yeah it's long and so you know the middle is trees and then the outsides is the beach and this camp is located

where there's a quiet like peninsula within the peninsula that comes in and the water is you know you hold your hand down and you can see it like it's clear as day and then there's a cliff where you jump but we're at this place there's a beach bar where there's always a party fucking six o'clock and everyone gets lit there's parties parties exactly parties and people serve you at your chair and you know it's like a rock beach which is kind of weird but you get used to it then it's sand right and yet i look behind it and i'm like damn where are all these people staying and I look behind it, and I'm like, damn, where are all these people staying? And I look behind it, and I shit you not, there is a trailer park behind it. And it's not a trailer park like we know it is.

There's a stigma to trailer park here in America. It's not like that there. But that's my point. There's facilities. That's my point, though. There's RVs. There's showers. There's bathrooms. These rvs but these showers there's bathrooms these things are well there's many markets yeah the trailer the trailer parks have that here too i'm saying

these trailers were like a third of the size of what the average trailer is here they were way like that's what i mean so there's not the stigma socially but that's still like the and and i asked you i'm i i'll never forget that i was like yo do these people just like live here and you're like no a lot of them are from the solaniki they live in very small houses there but they get enough money together that they can take a trailer and park it here yeah the summer and to your point there's no stigma around it and it's just yo, this is enough right here. We got the beach bar.

We have the most beautiful little place. You have your mini market. Right. You have your grill. Yep. You buy your produce. You cook your food. They go fishing a lot in the mornings.

They catch their fish. They cook their fish. Yep. You know what I mean? There's something to be said for that. We catch octopus there. That's what I do with all my buddies. We catch octopus.

That's where I fell in love with octopus. We fucking. It's fucking that. We catch octopus there. That's what I do with all my buddies. We catch octopus. That's where I fell in love with octopus. We fucking. It's fucking good. We catch the octopus. We eat the octopus for lunch. That's how we do it. There's something really incredible about that though. You know, like there's this, I don't know.

I think in this world where we get so automated with things and we have such complexity and all these problems, it's like you think about the simple things and like the places where you just kind of feel at peace like people talk about going on vacation all the time you know what is a vacation it's a week or two where you forget things exist you're drunk half the time and you come back home to whatever your reality is that you don't like but like with this it's a lifestyle and even in the midst of an economic crisis it was yeah yeah these people were happy they really were yeah they're happy with little yeah they're happy with little it's the simple things though you know what i mean they're like i don't know how i can't do justice to it

they don't have the image that we have of success when someone says are you successful here your mind automatically goes to if he's successful he has a big house he has a nice car

more materialistic things, I would say. Whereas you could be successful and live. I mean, what success? You could live a very happy life, a very healthy and happy life without a big house and without a Ferrari and without a lot of real estate and a lot of passive income flowing in, you could be successful. Such an interesting word. You know what I mean? Success, it changes. What does success mean? Here's a question. do you base success off of how many things you have and how rich you are because i have a lot of possessions i'm successful it's like no for some people it's not like that

you know what i mean here's a good question though right on that like i just said a couple seconds ago these people were happy like really and i am very happy and like laughter and love bro exactly they're gonna live forever because of that and yet why did so many of them when i because i stick out like a sore thumb obviously like i'm not greek it's because you're wearing a hat why did what malaka you you were wearing a fucking magic johnson jersey everywhere we went you were trying to stick out too but but no hat and glasses you were you were no you were wearing you were wearing a hat and glass i had long hair at the time no but yeah no you were wearing a hat and glasses i got fucking picture i got i'll pull up pictures doubtful it's not doubtful that's what you were doing you're

wearing a hat and glasses and basketball shorts i told you fucking three quarters i told you. Fucking three quarters. I told you. Bathing suit, three quarters. Women's section. What do you mean three quarters? The fucking here, briefs. Oh, yeah. The bathing suits. You know what? That was...

And you were wet as snow, malaka. So, first of all, first of all, that was before... Because I had tan lines. I was a caddy. So, I had bad tan. Remember, I was like black from here down almost. And you didn't talk about your upper body. Yeah. Your fucking remember i was like i was like black from here down almost and you didn't talk about your upper body yeah your fucking upper body was like well my arms yeah exactly

i'm like bro am i gonna get you into the beach bar that was before short shorts were in style that was when like in the nba for example which every person at the bar is like yo trailblazers like lakers like all this stuff i wanted that johnson shorts bro that's when they were wearing their fucking pants down to here magic johnson shorts yeah well that that's see i don't go there that's still that's that's some ridiculous shit talking about trends but but still a lot of these people when they would come up to me, they still all wanted to come to America. Yes. Why is that? Because America, it's, dude, it still is the, it's a dream, bro, to come here.

If you work hard, you can get whatever you want. You get what it it but now it comes back to what you were just saying about success you get whatever you want because you have success because you get money you equate it with that right and i yo i think that's that's that's what you think of here yes i think that's it it's fair people define it that way it's 100 fair very fair very but like if the definition is different there why did they want to change the definition to come here because maybe some people want to bet something bigger something better not everyone is content with just that yeah you know what i mean yeah i don't doubt america isn't for everybody yeah you know what i mean it's not for everybody but the people that want more in life that want something greater than the image that we talked about in Greece, come here.

Because no matter what, without a degree, without a lot, you can get it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just, it never ceases to blow my mind how powerful that is. What? Like the allure of the American dream, even to this day. American dream, exactly. Even to this day.

Like with all the shit we have going on here. I'm not just talking about like part of the dream. Like you said, it's the best shit. Yes. It's the best shit, man. There's shit everywhere right now. It's the best shit. Yeah, when I had adam in here

who's in africa with the peace corps can you have another drink get it over here when i had adam in here who you know who was in the peace corps in africa for two years he talked about that he's you know he lived in guinea things were people were happy about the simplest things he said not far off what i was just saying right happy about the simplest things he said not far off what i was just saying you should be happy about the simplest right but they still all wanted to come they still all like and he'd be like yeah you see like trump's president and everything though you sure about that and they're like man he'll be gone we want to come and dude it was real you know what i mean and there's something about that that makes me then like obviously i'm critical of

things and i'll do that like part of what i do is talking with people about issues and what the fuck is going on out there but i do want to always take the opportunity to remind people that like yeah we can romanticize and talk about some of the great things that we appreciate like in places like hockey the key and some things we see there that we wish we had here you know to always improve a system but that's what it's for we want to improve what we have it's not about like the focus to me is so much on why everything sucks and if I play a role in doing that sometimes because of how the issues we happen to talk about on here and how negative some of them are I apologize we're not that's not what it is you said it earlier it's the greatest country in the world i will die on that hill all day i

think it is but like like you like anyone else we or you know you as well with me like we want to see things that are improved so when i find things that are curious i'm going to be like all right that's kind of cool let's let's talk about that you know so i don't know it's i think i need another drink too but america to me is in a very, very interesting place because we are at a critical point in how we decide how insular we're going to be versus how focused on the rest of the world for the right reasons we're going to be. And I'll qualify that.

When you look at republics over time, they fail because, and it's always some different reasons but they start turning within and fighting each other and that takes the eye off you know the upstart right you talked about the teams in the champions league that can rise up and or in the different leagues in europe they can rise up and catch someone out of nowhere. They can catch somebody out of nowhere because people get – it's a human tendency. We get complacent, right? And I look at where we are right now and I see a lot of that complacency.

Like I don't want to yell at people who are pointing out things that are wrong, right? Like when people are pointing out – one of the ones we talk about a lot on here is like a lot of the race issues and like race issues with cops and stuff. I think people should point that out. I think we should improve those things. You know, sometimes I worry like I've been a little bit hard on cops on this show. But like, look, we want to make sure that the good cops have a chance to shine and you don't just hear about the goddamn bad cops because people are protecting them. I think that's fine to point that out. Where I draw the line is when people start trying to say things like, yo, capitalism is death and the American system is a total failure and everything here is bullshit. Fuck the patriarchy and we're going to have gonna have a new world order and and it's

still socialism and like all these ideas and shit where it's like wait so you want to strip away all the things that may certainly have flaws in them like capitalism that system absolutely has flaws you want to strip away all those things because of the flaws and not pay attention to the fact that you're stripping them away and replacing them with things that have not just flaws fatal tendencies compared to what exists it is very very important that we take note of places around the world like whether it be greece or africa or some of the places we talked about where people who don't live here and at least see the basics of the system and the potential from the outside actually understand based on their own experience how fucking critically important that is yeah i agree that's why i encourage people to travel traveling traveling Cheers, by the way. Cheers, bro. Salud. Salud. Gen da.

Traveling is probably the best thing that somebody can do. Of course, you know, if they have the time and, you know, they aren't too, of course, your priorities come first. your family, your job, your this. But if you have the luxury to go on a two-week vacation, go outside the country. Travel, man. Travel somewhere. Travel and put yourself in a different culture, in a different environment. See what it's like there's nothing there's nothing like traveling and putting yourself in a completely different environment than you're accustomed to you learn so many things so many

things whether it's cuisine whether it's the way they the way they party the way they go out the way they talk with each other you'll see them having fun with nothing and it'll make you scratch your head you're like dude look how happy they are man and we it's been proven that the more you laugh the happier you are the longer you live and look they have nothing and they're gonna and they're living for 120 years in the fucking okinawa chan japan eating rice and living on the hills with nothing nobody by themselves and it's in okinawa bro away from everything else and they have the highest life expectancy with zero with zip they live 115 years old oh i've heard about that yeah so like that's why dude it's so important to travel. It's so important. And outside of the States.

It's so important. I think that I also took some of that for granted myself. Like not the traveling, which I ended up getting to do. Like I didn't do that when I was a kid very much at all. I didn't really do that until right before college with my grandparents to a bunch of places after I graduated high school but then spending time with you in Europe living over there too and you did Italy that's huge bro that you did that

that's awesome that you did that that's the best thing I ingrained myself in the culture there that's the best thing I did not spend time with the locals you know with the locals oh yeah well no no i mean like they were with the locals yes they were all like the american bars and whatever i never went there you know like that's not what we did and you learn a lot i got an appreciation

for that but i took it for granted because there was a lot of that growing up i just didn't i didn't stop to notice it and and i mean that because like i spent a lot of time around you you know and your house was the greek i said this earlier with some kind of joke but literally it was the greek consulate right like there were no laws of america there it was no no we're good that's spiro's house nobody fucks with that place right and not there was nothing bad going on there but my point is like you know it was this it was forget how it looked and how it felt when you go in you felt like you were walking into a european goddamn palace the second house you had like when you were older but like it was this environment of just people who had come here and i mean hundreds of people coming through that house

because all great it is stereotypes true all greeks fucking know each other they're coming through that house and they're all first generation americans and almost all of them are very very very successful and yet they're all dual citizens they still spend a lot of time in the year in greece maybe three four months something like that they kind of work their way back and forth they don't forget their roots and yet we hold our roots we really do hold our roots we do

and that's the culture that's my point it's a beautiful thing bro it's a beautiful thing to hold your roots you look up to it and it's something that you it brings you pride it brings you pride and it brings you joy to say you know like i came from from here and my and my grandma who taught me everything i know about my culture came from there with that and it's like dude the way my grandma came and was raised and what she had to go through makes covid look like a fucking joke bro yeah seriously man seriously

i'm not saying covid is an awful thing it really changed the world in many different ways but so does war bro yes and my grandma lived through wars wars your grandma was a great lady wars a great lady and my grandma that passed my electra and also my my my grandma that passed, my yaya Electra, and also my grandma who's still alive right now, like my dad's mom, bro. She went through wars, bro. I do think about that. It's crazy, man. Just think about any generation, though, any older generation. Here in the States, bro, we lived through wars, but we never saw it.

No. It was always there. You know what I mean? We never saw and felt a war. Like my grandma, my dad's mom felt, saw wars. Not a war, wars, two wars around her you know what i mean like they got they got kicked out of modern day turkey they lived around the black sea they got kicked out they had to fucking go migrate to greece with nothing many people died by traveling on ships with nothing. No food.

They went to Greece. They said, you're not Greek. You're from Turkey. We're not accepting you. They didn't know how to speak. They didn't know how to read. They only know how to speak Turkish. Dude, poor.

Hunger. I mean, we lived through wars. But we never felt a war because it wasn't on our turf it wasn't ever on our turf it was always over there like they did, they felt the wars

you know what I mean, that bomb they felt it we didn't you know what I mean, but imagine if you were there you would have felt that you know what's crazy but imagine if you were there you would have felt that you know what's crazy about that it's nuts that's 1946. yeah that's 75 years ago those were the testings right yeah exactly that was i might get the pronunciation of this very wrong but it was like bektari something yeah out in the Pacific nuclear bomb and if you're listening we're looking at one of the pictures in my studio here it was

a test where after World War II right at the end the United States I think bought I hope they at least bought it and didn't just take it but I think they bought a few islands in the specific to use to wipe them off the face of the earth to test bombs and obviously successful tests there and i look at that a lot and it's not just that like i think about the concept of time with this stuff a lot because like your grandma my grandparents they're old relative to us but like in the context of world history how old are they not old at all right like i was born nine 80 90 years old i was born 50 years after they freed

dachau and and auschwitz and and birkenau and yeah and all the you know what i mean like how fucking crazy yes very recent yes my grandma was hiding jews in greece at her house no yes whoa yes in greece hiding them in her in in the basement i'm at is the village yes is the word for village in greek you never told me this yeah we have a house at the jorio and we have a house in the city at my house in the jorio which is about 50 minutes away from the city and like farmland it's like how moloka hill was 30 years ago where there's nothing else it was just all cornfields right now it's ridiculous i didn't even recognize how i came here there's new else it was just all cornfields right now it's ridiculous i didn't even recognize

how i came here there's new stuff everywhere but um my grandma was hiding jews in the basement behind haystacks hiding a family of three and the nazis came to the house and said are you hiding jews and my grandma said no how old was she i i i would be wrong if i answered you i'm not five no no no no she was like 15 20 something like that she was old enough to talk to the officers and they did a whole tour of the house and they didn't find them and my grandma tells me that story that like she saved, she literally saved the family, bro. Literally, like we never feel that like that's war. That's things they felt on the reg because the war was on their turf.

We never had a war on our turf, bro. Never. No. Never. But if we did, that's the shit that we would have encountered. World War was always away. All of them were away. Even the latest one with the Twin Towers.

Everything's away. Nothing's here. And that's why that was so shocking. It's something very good that we do yeah i mean i war i don't want to talk about war and wish it upon anything it's the worst thing in the world but it's it's it gives you a perspective of how important it is to live a war where did your grandmother live in greece when that happened northern borderish about an an hour and a half away from thessaloniki north north yep by the mountains i have been i i like going down

different rabbit holes throughout the year and finding new things to get curious about reading books on stuff that you know just i try to find things that blow my mind that i can't concept and then try to make the best sense of them and so for the last two or three weeks i have been in whatever free time i have which isn't that much but late at night i have been obsessively studying the rise to World War II and the rise of Nazi Germany. And in that, I've also gone deep on the Holocaust. Again, I've done that several times. That concept will never, ever not stun me as to what that is. And I encourage everybody to do that.

I'm not saying you got to do it every year. But go through and look at the shit that happened, read about it, watch documentaries. I don't give a fuck what you do. But remember, that was 75 years ago when that happened. It wasn't too long ago at all.

And these types of stories that occurred where people were forced to do that. It's, dude, do you know how fast, here's the other? Dude, do you know how fast... Here's the other thing, too. Do you know how fast that came together? Like, how fast Hitler...

Not just like Hitler became Hitler. Hitler was, you know, maybe... He was top five scumbags to ever walk the face of this earth. And by the size of... An amazing leader, though. He led a lot of people and you'll get shit for saying that

but I understand I'm not saying it's a great leader he can be a bad he's a very bad leader you don't gotta put that on no no no I'm gonna explain right now billions of people followed him

and he was talking shit that is one of the things but he's a leader he could talk yes that is one of the things a leader that is one of the talk yes that is one of the things i'm studying i understand i understand exactly what you mean probably not saying it right but no i i know what you mean it's not when covering me up yeah amazing isn't the best word but it is the word to describe it because that's how he pulled this off he pulled this off in a span of basically you know he was pissed off after world war ii and then started this movement in 21 tried a government takeover which is like crazy to watch like how he that whole beer hall rebellion thing check that out wild what they tried to do.

Like, it blows my mind that people could be like, yo, if we take the police force, we could take the country. Like, nuts. That's what he tried to do, got arrested, only spent a couple years in jail. But from then when he got out of jail, you said it, six years. I'll even expand it though, six years, 1927 to 1933. That's how long it took for the Nazis to get significant power and for him to become a chancellor. The rhetoric that got us to World War II and got the psychotic shit like with the Holocaust and everything, that wasn't ready in 1933.

He led through 1939 and got them ready to that. And I study this because you talk about, yo, we haven't to that yeah and i studied this because you talk about yo we haven't experienced that here and whatever things can change very quickly just because we haven't experienced it here does not mean that it can't happen and people and i don't want it to happen people would be like yo we need a war toughen our fucking country up that is not how't want it to happen. People will be like, yo, we need a war to toughen our fucking country up. That is not how I want it. That is the fucking worst thing ever. You don't want to wish war for anything. It's the worst thing ever.

It's the worst thing that can happen. But people rest on their laurels and they get very complacent that, oh, it can't happen to us. Go look at Germany, man. because you said it he was a leader in the sense that he was very talented at fucking speaking and knowing how to capture people's attention and psych things up and one of the most stunning things about what i've been studying my eureka moment is that i have seen i'm so happy you said eureka moment why because that's greek is it really you're joking fucking happy you said Eureka moment. Why? Because that's Greek. Is it really? You're joking. Fucking everything.

You said pasta's Greek. Fuck you, my life. You said rice is Greek. You don't know this. I don't know this. The Eureka moment. Is that like from the fucking Trojans? Archimedes. Archimedes.

Archimedes. Archimedes developed the law of buoyancy. He created the law of buoyancy. Is that like floating in ships? Yeah, floating. That's why all the ships, all the container ships are Greek ships. Sheep fleets are all Greek. Wait, what?

The Greek boats, the boats that bring containers over from overseas, over the pond, are Greek boats. The majority of them are. What? Yes, yes. You didn't. Because Eureka happened fucking 10,000 years ago. Listen to me. They're Greek boats.

Listen to me. Eureka moment came from Archimedes. Archimedes. Who developed the law of buoyancy. He was sitting on a tub. This is a fact. He was sitting on a tub and he was drinking wine and he was thinking to himself

how he can create a very very big boat very big heavy boat float because one of the Egyptian pharaohs back in the day said okay you're a philosopher you're a mathematician i want you to make this big ass boat and i want you to make it travel with all this stuff on it and he's thinking he's thinking how can i make something so

big float and travel so he's sitting on the he's sitting on the edge of his bathtub, and he's drinking red wine. And he falls back. He falls backwards because he's so drunk. And then he had a eureka moment. And he ran onto the streets of Greece, of Athens, and he started screaming, Tovrika, tovrika. Tovrika in ancient Greek means I found it. Eureka, I found it. Tovrika tovrika tovrika in ancient greek means i found it yorika i found it tovrika tovrika modern you tovrika in modern greek means i found it and in ancient greek yorika is i found

it and he figured out that if he weighed the water that was displaced from the tub, it should equal or be less or more. I don't know about the math, but that's where he got the fact that the water displaced, if you measure it, should be equal or more or less than the weight of the object. That's how buoyancy, that's how the law of buoyancy was created from archimedes and that's how the eureka moment that you just said eureka came into play my like it's fucking greek eureka this greek history moment has been brought to you by pat select pizza warrington washington township go there anyway yeah i can't ever miss you know that no i didn't know that that's of course it's i asked you know what i make pizzas and i actually believe i actually believe that one because other

times you'll just be like yo that's greek and then i'll be like why you're like just because it is that one just a pizza bar man you had a full story so we'll fact check that afterwards but it sounded pretty convincing to me it's the fact dov it's the fact. Dovrica was Eureka. Eureka in ancient Greek means I found it, which in modern day Greek, it's Dovrica. Now, was Eureka Latin or was it Greek? This makes a difference. It's the same thing.

That's not the same thing. It's the same thing. You cannot say that. It's the same thing. Because that includes Italy. It includes France. It includes fucking... Everything Italy got, they got from Greeks. Greeks were before Greek civilization.

Nope. Bullshit. Bullshit. I'm calling bullshit on you. The Greek civilization was before the Italian civilization. Come on. Malaka, what do you mean? Come on, it's a fact.

The Greeks came first and then the italians still still what there wasn't it was small enough that there were cultural norms that and it's not just those two like the roman empire and the spartacus empire whatever it was called latin but i'm saying like it all derived from the different empires in that time. Right? The language. Yes, it derived. It changed. Yeah, but I'm telling you, bro. That's how it is. Like, if you...

Dude, you can find this... Stay close to the mic. You can find this on YouTube. You can find this on YouTube. I'm telling you. If you Google, like, the Law of Buoyancy Eureka Moment, I guarantee you I can find it.

The Law of Buoyancy Eureka Moment. I guarantee you I can find it The law of buoyancy eureka moment I guarantee you I can find it I gotta spell buoyancy Go to videos Go to videos If it's YouTube we can't watch it Malaka it's the first one I know but we can't watch it because it's on YouTube

So we're taking somebody's content Can we pause Malaka you have to watch this I gotta piss real quick So let's pause we're gonna watch it because it's on youtube so we're taking somebody's content can we pause let's actually watch this i gotta piss real quick so let's pause we're gonna watch it if people want to check this out google law of buoyancy eureka moment and it's the first go to videos and it's called the real story behind our himidis you said it right eureka eureka armand de angora so you'll check that out and then we'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. Alright, we're back.

Okay. Eureka happened in Greece. I'll agree with that. But the one guy was from Syracuse. He was an Italian. He was from Syracuse in, uh... in- in Sicily. So, I don't know who that was, but someone was.

That's kinda fucking nuts, though. Oh, now you got no time to talk shit. Now you're just looking at me. Malaka, the Greeks invented everything. You were just screaming at me. They didn't invent everything. This is where you start generalizing and act like they invented every single thing that ever happened. It's not true.

When it comes to science and when it comes to math and science and art, they did a lot. invented a lot they did a lot i agree with nothing what do you mean with nothing with nothing what do you mean with nothing with nothing they didn't have um they didn't have the the stuff that we have here now that's every civilization it's not just greeks it's every civilization didn't equipment. It's not just Greeks. It's every civilization didn't have those things. Yeah, well then, why didn't they come up with it? But they,

other civilizations did come up with shit back then. They missed the train. You haven't heard of Galileo, have you? They missed the train, my friend. They didn't miss the, Galileo didn't miss the train.

The church almost killed him for what he did. He came up with the whole solar system. The Greeks knew about the atmosphere, about the planets, the way they're rotating around the sun all this stuff about astronomy bro well are you kidding me yep they knew some of that shit but galileo finished the deal he got it right that's what matters no he didn't get it right he perfect perfected it. But the Greeks came first.

The Greeks came first. You have to give credit to where it's due. On certain things. Not on everything. You can't say that. That's a total generalization. Why? Because they didn't. Why did they?

They got the Eureka thing right. Let's continue off. Astronomy. Greeks came first. Next. What else? Math. Greeks came first.

There's a lot of math out there. They didn't come first on everything. Was Fibonacci Greek? Malaka, these people you're talking about perfected it, okay? They perfected it. But who created it? It's like what happened it's like a ai would have never been ai without isaiah without magic without mj alan iverson yeah he had to hit he had to have gotten some inspiration from something before him.

He was watching films from people before him, and that's what developed the amazing magical AI. But you have to give credit to where it's due from the founders, from the OGs. I will still give credit. The OGs to the Greeks. You act like they got everything. They probably didn't get everything. Everything. They did not get everything.

Oh my goodness. This is an unwinnable battle. Even pizza. Even pizza. Oh God, here we go. Even pizza. Here we go. The Greeks did not invent pizza.

Yes, they did. They did not invent sauce. They invented white pizza and then the Italians took it and they perfected it and they put sauce on it. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.

White pizza was first invented in Greece. Pizza. Pizza. I'm not even going to fact check that. I'm not even going to do that. My bad, guy. If you want to take another 50-minute intermission to see that you're wrong, go ahead. We just did like the first intermission in the history of this goddamn podcast.

I'm telling you, bro. To watch your video that also gave me... Yeah. I'm okay i'm greek all right that's how i'm gonna be clearly let's continue back to the original point though my eureka moment your eureka moment my is that how i say it eureka no but was it D'Vrica now? Now it's D'Vrica. D'Vrica. I found it. My D'Vrica moment. Your D'Vrica moment. In studying the rise of the worst sociopath in modern history, or just maybe in history in general, was that, and I want to be very careful how this is said before I say it,

because people take things out of context on everything and one of the things i hate about referring to hitler is that anyone now who dislikes something regardless of political party calls someone else in the other political party or of another belief hitler we got to stop that that is they've killed the word and the word should hold meaning because that should never fucking happen again. But as humans, we've proved to be absolutely, I can't say the word I want to say right now, but we've been very stupid over the course of history forgetting things and then history repeats itself. And so what scared me the most about watching Hitler is I saw very strong themes from both the republican and democrat parties in our country right now so i'll pick off the republicans and this is why i hedged this out

front because i don't want people taking me out of context here but as a you called him like a leader in that way you're a hundred percent right he unfortunately was he could be a leader in a bad way he was a leader in a bad yes exactly but the way that he captured attention making people think it was good his style minus the fact that he was not funny he was not known to be funny at all like he didn't have a sense of humor he was just a he was a very to the commonwealth yes he was a vitriolic orator there are a lot of trump vibes in what he did and how outlandish he was with opinions that weren't backed by evidence and it scared me because i saw so much of the same like trump came in in i mean he started to talk in 2012 2013 right and then came in in 2015 2016 the global recession happened in

0809 in 1919 when germany signed or 1920 one of them when they sent after world war one was over and they signed the treaty of versailles and then their currency was worth nothing and they'd owed all these other countries a ton of money and all their people were poor and burning deutschmarks for fire hitler started talking a few years after that and then he got arrested with the beer hall thing because it was too early right and then in 1927 he started to go for power after six seven years scary scary how similar that is now the reason i say i'm careful with that is because as much as trump did fucking crazy things and said crazy things and whatever, the guy was not Hitler by any sense of the imagination.

That is a ridiculous assertion to make. That's another hill I will die on. You can think he was a total asshole. I'll agree with you. You can think that he wasn't a good president at this point. I'll definitely agree with you on that. You can think a lot. Some people can think like he had bad intentions.

Fine. If you want to think that, fine. He's not Hitler. But the way that he captured attention, the desperation that he captured it out of, he captured it from people, the descendants of the Tea Party movement, people who were lost, left behind. Very, very similar. Then when I look at the psychophants around Hitler, right? i can make some comparisons to trump's inner circle and the people around him but the way that like the guys like joseph goebbels and goring who was like in he was a whole bunch of different jobs but he was in charge of like

the air force and prussia and goebbels was the propaganda guy like they literally called him the propaganda minister which is insane owned. Owned all the media. And then Himmler, who was maybe the most evil. I mean, they were all evil, but he might have been the most evil of all of them. He's the guy who like came up with the Holocaust scenario. Like it was his plan. He was the head of the SS. These guys all wanted to please Hitler so much.

But the way that they led society was with complete fear. You brought this up with something else earlier, but they led it by telling everyone the worst things that could happen and then actually trying to show that they already were. And the main culprit of everything they did is they scapegoated the Jewish people and said, like, oh, it's their fault we lost World War I. Never mind the fact a lot of German Jews fought for goddamn Germany in World War I. They conveniently forgot that and made this ridiculous assertion. And they led people to the well. And I almost don't forget where we were.

Oh, I know what it was. We were talking about how fast this can happen that i won't even count like the early years when he got arrested and tried the beer hall rebellion 1927 to 1939 is 12 years in 12 years when they on september 1st 1939 when they invaded poland and opened up all the ghettos and rounded up all the jews and started doing it across europe and starting the i mean the concentration camps have been open before that but actually started the process now that is 12 years where they went from Germans who were living happily with their with their Jewish fellow citizens right to now turning a

blind eye and not caring that they were being sent off to wherever the fuck most likely never to be seen again. Not caring that things like Kristallnacht were happening. Not caring that for even, not forget, but put that aside for a second. Hitler was trying to take over. He was invading all these countries that had done nothing wrong. Trying to like take it over. And people got so caught up in this that then no one, like his circle was so strong and the circle around that was so strong that no one would stand up to it and war came home.

And so when you brought up the original point of like your grandma hid Jews in Greece, that's where this, this was a world war. That's where things stretched. Of course. Your grandma has an appreciation for how desperate and horrible and evil things can get. Dude. War. When it comes to war, it's... My grandma tells me stories of war.

And we can't relate. We don't know what it's like to be hungry, bro. To be starving. To be hungry and not. To be starving. To be hungry and not have anything to eat. We don't know that feeling. I don't know what it's like, bro. You know what I mean?

When I'm hungry, I eat. What the hell? If I'm starving, I'll eat cereal. I'll eat a bagel. I'll eat something. Imagine not having anything to eat. Nothing. And you're hungry for days. And any of you can die at any minute because you pissed off the wrong person you're hungry your friends can be

rounded up and sent to camps and that's where you begin doing things that you wouldn't ever want to do man ever hunger that's why my grandma till this this day, my grandma, my dad's mom, when she cooks, she cooks for 40 people. She doesn't know how to cook for me and my little brother and my dad and my mom for four people. She doesn't know how to. She cooks for like 30 plus people all the time. All the time. She can't. She can't cook for one person. She doesn't know how to. And it puts things into perspective for you. It really does.

And it's because of history. We're talking about history. Yeah. And that's why I think I have such a passion for food and I have such a passion for the feeling of welcoming somebody and hospitality. I think for me personally, it goes beyond a restaurant. It's like, it's like it's it's my my roots it's what i what i lived how i was raised do you believe in that yeah the concept of i don't know the name for it my friend grant wiley talks about this a lot

but where you can feel even like ancestors you never knew you can feel things from where you originally emanated from or like experience it yes yes bro i i danced in um in the pondian dance group which is like a greek ethnic dance group for eight years and um my my uh my ancestors my grandma's parents came from a a dialect called bondian which were the greeks that i told you the greeks were enslaved for 350 years by the turks when was that that i'm very bad at history very bad at history but we're talking about history but um i'll keep going 1910 1910 1920s yeah keep going early early 1900s um the greeks were enslaved by the Turks for 300 plus years and they developed this dialect

called the Bondian dialect and it was like it was a language that we created between Greek and Turkish I don't know if my am I right bro with the history? yeah you are

when is the Bondian? I'm looking at it roughly I didn't google that because I didn't know if – am I right, bro, with the history? Yeah, you are. When is the Pondian? I'm looking at it roughly. I didn't Google that because I didn't know how to spell it. But it was the Ottoman Empire. Ottomans, yes. Right. So it was probably just based on the years I'm looking at quickly. It was probably between –

20s, 30s? No, no. You're talking about a 350-year period, right? They were enslaved for 300 years. That's what I'm talking about. So that was like from the 15th century into the 18th century kind of deal. And then they left. Yes. After the enslavery, they left and they went to Greece.

My grandma, she went to Greece. And her parents and my grandma didn't know how to speak Greek because they spoke Pondian, which was a dialect. So they considered us as foreigners and they wanted to kick us out of Greece. They were like, you're not Greek. You don't speak Greek. You speak Turkish. Go back. Pondian.

You're Pondian. You're not Greek. So the Greeks from modern day Turkey didn't really know where to go. They're like, all right, we're in Turkey. They say we're Greeks, go to Greece. And then when we go to Greece, they say, go to Turkey. You're not Greek. You're a foreigner.

Where do we go? Yeah. So that's why I have such a passion and pride for where I come from. And for seven years, I danced in the Greek ethnic dance group, Pondian Dance Group. Is that dialect still around? It's a dialect that's still around. And the dances were designed and choreographed. They're war dances.

They're dances that were performed before war, before battle, or after battle of victory. So the uniforms are gold and black with bullet straps across, like fake bullet straps across from here and here, and headbands that cover their head cover their hair and it it incorporates a lot of the core the choreography involves a lot of stomping to intimidate the opponent and um a lot of like like like loud gestures of like loud movements and loud screams and a lot of stomping to scare the opponent so that's where like the history comes away comes from and like bondian is still like in in my blood and it's still like who i am today even though like i listen to bondian music and i i don't understand it's completely different than greek yeah it's like a completely different dialect i only understand like some

words but like at my wedding i'm definitely gonna dance bondian and it's something that really like it grounds me and it it really like it represents me you know what i mean because my my grandma came from there yeah and my grandma my grandma raised me you know what i mean and like when someone comes into my restaurant when someone comes into my house i treat them like that like oh my god like you came into my house i have to care for you i have to feed you are? Are you thirsty? That's why we like in high school, bro, like I always had an abundance of food. Always. Always. Even though people were hungry, I had an abundance of food because I had the luxury to be able to provide that for somebody.

So like even though like I would tell my parents, I would tell my grandma, I'm like having my friends from high school over, I'm having a party. But like they already ate. like we don't need food they're like no you have the you have the privilege to feed someone give them food they'll take it they'll take it home they'll eat the next day you they have that kind of philosophy you know what i mean and in this day and age, we really don't. Like you order a big steak, you don't eat it. You don't take it to go. You don't. But I'm wired to, you know, I'll eat it the next day or I'll give it to someone else. Taking it for granted. Yeah, taking it for granted. That's why I think like I have such a passion for not just like serving people and welcoming people and the hospitality when it comes to the restaurants.

But it's even like the privilege to be able to feed somebody good food, fresh food. I understand what you're saying. And give an abundance of food like a lot of restaurants bro they overcharge pasta we give a pound of pasta what's pasta what does pasta cost us nothing it's pasta 20 cents we we give a pound of pasta to our guests because it's pasta. Like it doesn't cost us anything. Why not give them an abundance of it? At a point like we do it where it like devalues our quality. But like it's our homemade sauce. It's our like it's our recipe.

We make it in our commissary. It's not like a sauce that you can buy from walmart we give away pasta for free no but we give a pound of pasta whereas the competition doesn't give a pound of pasta they may give like a 0.8 0.7 but we're like what the fuck it's pasta let them eat you know what i mean like it doesn't cost us anything our pasta for a pound is better than the norm but we give an abundance of it yeah but it kind of messes with your mind it's like oh my god they can give us so much it must be it must not be that good but you get you go to like a high end restaurant and they give you like a plate this big and they give you pasta this small and you're like, oh my god, it's probably amazing pasta.

Is it? It's perception. The power of perception is so tricky. It plays with your mind. Perception is a funny thing. Perception is a very funny thing.

Coming back to my roots like we give very good food very fresh food and if it doesn't cost us much we're going to give as much as we can but because we do give as much as we can

it messes up with the mess up the chair it messes up with the mess up the chair it messes up with their perception it messes up with their perception the leap I'm making there listening to you that I like and correct me if I'm wrong here

but there's like a different way that the same priorities from the roots manifest themselves even if you can't explain it but like when you're talking about giving an abundance of shit to people you know to like serve them you know and that's also your business or whatever but that's how you yeah that's how you are in in real life too like at your house and whatever yeah it comes from it from a totally different place but from

the same like type of lineage relationship to the fact that back in the day you know when shit was hitting the fan and you had food you shared it with everyone exactly and that's how we survived that's beautiful we shared it yeah the the bondian uh dialect and philosophy and culture wouldn't be here today if they didn't know how to share their meals if If they say, okay, you know what? I'm satisfied. I ate. I'm good. I'm not starving anymore. Here's some for you. You eat now. And that's how we survived. Not we like me, but like that's how my ancestors survived. And that's how I was kind of like raised by my grandma. Like even till this day, dude, my grandma only asks me two questions. What did you eat? When did you eat?

She doesn't ask me anything else. It's what did you eat and when did you eat it? That's it. She only cares about my appetite. It's nothing else she cares about. It's because she lived through starvation through through day through the wars of being hungry man we've never felt that yeah because of that yeah we never felt it we don't know what it's like so it's when someone comes into my restaurant and when someone orders a cocktail at my bar

i'm like oh my god like dude they're like at my bar, I'm like, oh, my God. Like, dude, they're like at my house. Like I have to make them say ooh and ah and jump. Like a good drink and good food isn't enough anymore. It's about entertaining them right now. So I'm like I step up my level. It's not about that anymore. Like anyone has good food now.

Anyone can give you a good cocktail it's about like making some whoa like entertainment i'm in the entertainment business at this moment that's the way i look at it god there's so much there so much there unpack i don't know where to go with it i i like how do you pronounce that again the the dialect the turkish greeks pondian pondian pondian and where do they live now along along the current current turkey along the black sea in greece no no in turkey oh they still live in turkey there are still a lot of bondians in that region it's called the pondo it's still called the pondo pondo it's along the black sea in modern day turkey they speak by the greek border though yes pondo i just pondos pondos p-o-n-d-o-s pondos turkey and pondos turkey yeah these people do

they pondos region yeah do they peak do they speak turkish too or no they speak pondian which is like so how do they like are they their own government like what's the no it's a dialect it's a dialect like milan speaks a little bit different than rome they have their own dialect it's kind of like that it's like a cross between greek and turkish so this actually reminds me because this is one i'm very personally familiar with like and you bring up italy italy the entire country there's like 25 different dialects. Exactly. And some of them –

Like you could say something in Rome and it may not make sense in Milan. Now – They're like, what the fuck are you saying? In Milan and Rome though, as an example, it's more like – it's closer to an American talking with a British person, right? There's a lot of overlap, right? Or you can say an American, or you can say someone from New York talking with someone from Texas. And that might not be wrong, but there tends- Or Alabama.

Yeah, and actually- You could say that. For that example, it might be right, because those are two metropolises. I don't remember. There's completely different dialects. Different words, Different slang. But like, yo, you go to Sicily, different language. Yeah.

Different language. Exactly. If people have watched The Godfather, which if you haven't, it's the greatest movie of all time. So do yourself a favor and turn this off and watch that. Okay, I see it. Yeah, we have, that's Pondos right there. Pondos region on the Black Sea. Got it.

I'll put that in the corner of the screen right here so people can see it but okay so if you if you look at sicily though and what they are i i spent a lot of time out there when i was over there i was over there for two stretches and that island has been proverbially conquered it's not different in the sense that the way the Pondos region formed is that they were conquered and they had to survive as slaves. And then they found this new dialect and then they got stuck. They burnt it. They were forced to leave. Right. They were burnt.

But then they didn't have a home anymore because they came to Greece and they're like, what the hell are you? Yeah, they were savages. In Sicily, they were repeatedly over thousands of years conquered conquered and so the language changed again and again and again and what's interesting is one thing that sicily unfortunately has is that to this day even though they haven't been conquered now in i don't know like 90 years, maybe 150 years. It's been a while. That the subsequent generations have been fucked because the lineage in that region of Italy trusts nothing. And I don't blame them, right?

Because their great-great-great-grandfathers passed it on down. Like, you trust nothing because we got conquered over and over again and so what the mafia takes over that's why you have this is i mean look there's the calabrian mafia there's the neapolitan mafia like these are very very powerful sects on the mainland of italy but the original mafia is from sicily and that's the most famous place it was it runs the entire island does it still to this oh my god dude i will never forget walking through the streets i think it was catania which is on the east coast of sicily i got lost like where we were going i was with my girlfriend at the time this is back like uh seven years ago we got lost at like 1 a.m in the morning in sicily which is not like the

greatest look and we're like okay hotel is definitely within two miles but like we were very confused where we were at and we couldn't get service i'm like all right let's figure this out and i found a guy who was like drinking a peroni on the street and i'm like all right let's roll the dice here let's see what he's about nice guy and he said oh come on like very good Italian guy and so we start walking and he's bringing us he's going to bring us to a place that's within like a mile of the hotel where there's a cab that's straight shot right down and as we're

walking along I start talking with the guy and I could talk I don't remember how the fuck to do I don't even remember how to talk Italian but I could talk a little bit of Sicilian I don't know why I had just been there I heard some things but i could talk a little bit of sicilian like i don't know why i just been there i heard some things and like there was a little bit of it that i could talk and this guy could speak a lot of main dialect too so he was kind of laughing because he could go back to

main dialect i guess he had spent some time in rome but i ascertained he was from sicily and whatever and the line he said i'll never forget he said said, I love it here, but I can't wait until I get to leave. And I was like, what? How does that make sense? And he goes, I love it here, but I can't wait until I get to leave. And again, I look at him, and I said, why do you want to leave? And I swear to God, straight out of a goddamn movie. Stops in the middle of the road, like turns to me full on, very calm, like not angry or whatever.

And he goes and holds his arm over and points at a wall. And I look over at the wall and there's a bunch of graffiti all over the wall. And in the middle, there's a big word that says mafia. He said, mafia. And I'm like, really? really still and he goes still they run everything and that's the like you talk about wars and whatever and that's one thing but like when places when lands are proverbially in positions where they are constantly in turmoil maybe the wars aren't still happening. Maybe they have the breaks from that, but society never resets. I mean, look at the Middle East. We went into Iraq, right? We took

out Saddam Hussein. What did that do? Because society was completely at a terrible position and so many desperate people, so many factions, like a vacuum, fighting for power at the end that you can't just put that genie back in a bottle. We think in America, like, oh, yeah, you just fucking create a government. People will fucking pay their taxes. No, that's not how it works. People will find a way to lead whatever the opportunity is that says they can lead. And the mafia is so goddamn powerful over there that we don't like to talk about it. But frankly, thank God they existed during World ii because that's how we took europe i mean we went through

sicily and i forget what the operation was called northern i forget i forget what it was called but we took sicily with the help of the goddamn mafia and then started to take europe which you know that's a devil's bargain but i'll take that one over again, obviously. No doubt. Like, I think that was fine. Going back to the soccer conversation. Yeah. It's still owned by the mafia. Oh, in Italy.

In Italy. Oh, fuck yeah. And that's how they're so, so good, man. Yeah. They have so much money. Yeah. You know where they get the money. They have great players, man.

Yeah. That's where they get the money, man. They do, man. But, like, Napoli, Juventus, like, these players, man. Yeah. That's where they get the money, man. They do, man. But like Napoli, Juventus, like these teams, bro. They don't do well in Champions League, but they always have great players. And they always finish top of the table. Always. It's crazy that that shit runs.

Always. Always. Not just what you're saying, but even sports. Yeah. It's everything. It's sports. It's society. Exactly.

It's everything. It's everything. It's just crazy. I'm thinking about this stuff more and more. I mean, here it's pretty much dead. In New York, they wiped out the mafia, bro. It's finished. Pretty much.

It is very, very... So... Once back in... back like in all right all right i'm late 80s early 90s they did goddy they wiped him out listen dude it's i'm gonna push on this a little bit you're not totally wrong it's not 100 gone but for the most part once they did that number on john god, it was over. They wiped out the mafia in New York. A guy who I've known through my grandpa for like, I don't know, the last 15 years, Jules Bonavolanta. He was one of the head FBI agents in FBI in the New York. He was in other offices, but in the New York offices specifically in the late 70s all through the 80s and into the early 90s working

with louis free rudy giuliani back when he was not crazy like all these guys and they took down the five families and they consummated with them taking down goddy and so i remember talking with jules maybe like a decade ago and he was explaining yes they've been cut off at the knees compared to what they were and he's right and he talked about how the r been cut off at the knees compared to what they were and he's right and he talked about how the russian mob is now the big problem because those guys are fucking crazy and it's it's even in today's society like it's an issue their hooligans are crazy however soccer hooligans that's a false equivalency but okay however the thing about the Italian Mafia though is that when I lived up there and moved there I didn't know any of those guys right like I was I went to places that they

frequented sometimes everyone did right like I didn't know personally any of them I was at places where some of those guys were sometimes like randomly stumbled upon them yes and the thing that shocked me because i knew a lot of people who had been directly affected by it is how much it does still exist it's stunned over there no here bro bro i can't tell these stories on air i never would i have i'll tell you all fair sorry to the people i i can't tell these stories on air. I never would. I'll tell you off air. Sorry to the people. I can't. Not at the. Not at the level it did.

Not even close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not even close. But the way it's painted is that you would think it was like this fledgling, you know, they rock and rip off a poker game here and there and that's it organization. It's not. They very much like, especially if you have an Italian last name in North north jersey they're leeches man they will find the way they don't give a fuck who you are they will find the way into your business that's like that shocked me but some of the things that firsthand accounts

i got from that i mean can't deny it yeah you can't deny it. Yeah. You can't deny it. But what do you got going on now with the restaurant? I know we're going to get out of here soon because you're fully open. You got brunch going now? Brunch? We introduced brunch? We're going to introduce it in Township really soon. Really?

Yep. You're going to do that BYOB? Yep. That could get fun. It's an amazing product, man. It's like a city brunch. It's not like your diner brunch. It's a very trendy brunch menu. And it's amazing, man.

It's like, okay, yeah, we have French toast,'s it's the best fucking french toast you'll ever have the best french toast the best french toast you will ever have did the greeks invent french french toast probably they invented french toast nutella almonds bananas it's whipped cream spread it's very trendy it's not like your normal, like, diner brunch. It's a very trendy brunch menu. Your croque madames, your beignets, your avocado toast with burrata. It's very like a New York City brunch. Did you design the menu?

No, not me or chefs. I don't do anything. You do the cocktails. I just make sure everyone comes and leaves with a smile, man chefs i don't do anything you do the cocktails i just make sure everyone comes and leaves with a smile man i don't do anything else that's the most beautiful thing that's it man how's drake doing excellent he's doing well shout out to drake super job shout out to drizzy and that's his next project the brunch and that's township's new oh drake will kill brunch i'm sure he was born for brunch i'm sure he will no doubt about it i'm sure dude i had to get you on here i couldn't i couldn't do

this without you this was fun good you warmed up this was good you did i hope i did a good job i don't know how i did you did well i guess everyone's gonna tell us with reviews and comments and stuff but i hope i did a good job and I hope people enjoyed it and I'm happy I got to chill with you and see your new revamping of everything and have a drink with you bro and kick it with you cause we go way back man

we're getting there man we really do we're getting there we're getting older and we could you imagine like something like this like when we were like 5 like doing you know what I mean life was so simple shooting fucking hoops

fighting over Madden who was going to play with the Rams and Marshall Falk now we're sitting here recording a goddamn podcast what a world look at you, you're fucking killing it too look at us man look at you you're fucking killing it too look at us man look at us look at us not bad hey

thanks for doing it brother thanks for having me cheers i think i got your cadence down on mic now your cadence is different on mic i noticed like i think because you're getting used to it so like there were some times today where i thought you were done like you kind of backed up and looked at me and i'm like, oh, I got to talk now. And then you'd be like, but then. You're talking about this? Yeah, yeah. So next time I'm ready.

I don't know, man. But this was fun. When it comes about just like topics that, I'm a very emotional person. That's how I am. I'm very emotional. I'm very competitive and I'm uh I'm very competitive and I'm very emotional

and that's like my uh my gift and my curse sometimes cause when I have like a passion for something bro I give it all I give it everything I got like the cocktail world now I've developed a passion for cocktails and I fucking

go all out bro I spend $30,000 a year on ice on fucking ice you get the balls the cubes from an ice factory in New York City the crystal clear ones bro they melt in like 40 minutes

I think that's what those things are you and I have in common I'm very emotional. Emotional and competitive. And competitive. If I lose in FIFA, I'm breaking the remote. Bro. The remote is shattered.

I think we've broken a few remotes over each other's heads. Yeah. Anyway. All right, dude. Well, great stuff. We will definitely do this again. You're warmed up now. I enjoyed this.

I enjoyed the topics. Next time, I want to be able to just let you rip. I know sometimes you were holding back today and pointing at me like you talk. It's because of the whiskey. You're great. You're fucking born to do this. So I want you ripping next time completely. But this was a great preview. Thanks for having me, bro. Alright, dude.

We'll do it again soon. Love you, bro. Love you too. Everybody else, give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.