Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - The SMALLEST Country in the World You've NEVER Heard of | Eric Czuleger • 163

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, I need your help with three quick things, and if you're watching me on Spotify video right now, you can see this timer to my right, it is going to be fast. Number one, if you are not already following the show, please hit that follow button on Spotify or whatever audio platform you're on. Number two, if you're on Spotify right now, on our show's homepage in the description, you will see a link to our Spotify podcast clips channel. That's right, we are posting clips from this podcast every single day on there. There is a whole library. So go over there and follow. And finally, number three, if you are on Spotify or Apple, please leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. Now let's get to the episode. You're looking at somebody who thinks that you're going to kill them. And it's like, I just want to get off of this mountain. And it's also like the whole, the whole, did you want to kill him? No, no, no.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Never quite like in, cause it would have been defense. Like in that moment, you're thinking this guy has a knife. I don't, if I got a free shot to like pound his head right into the sand and he dies, Hey, I live. No, never thought that. The thing that snapped me out of it was seeing his eyes and seeing, seeing his face covered in my blood. Like that was horrifying.

Starting point is 00:01:04 How long did it take for you to realize it was your blood and not his? Well, I saw it because I was on top of him, so I saw it leaking out of my head. You're not a plant, are you? Huh? You're not a plant, right? A plant for what? Like a plant for, like, an agency or something.

Starting point is 00:01:24 I don't have to, like, kill you in the back. back i'd be cool it'd be so much cooler if i was man i would love to be a plant it would be very cool if you were a plant but it wouldn't be cool for me because then i'd be i'd be accused of putting a plant on this show yeah the internet comments don't like that very much i'd assume that you've probably been accused of that before haven't you dude we all get accused of it i always joke with people i'm like well we're all technically useful idiots because like you don't know every person that's coming in here you don't know their motives you gotta do your best you know i mean look i don't think that the the cia is uh doing a whole initiative where they make people produce independently produced books uh in order to uh uh to infiltrate the podcasting ecosystem but hey, hey, if they want to do that, I'm free.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Sounds like a little projecting right there. I don't know. Seems like a great idea. I'm reading right into it right now. It'd be super cool if somebody paid me to do that. Or bought my book. You are not here. Travel through countries that don't exist.

Starting point is 00:02:19 Definitely not made by the CIA. Dude, well, either way, CIA or not, I gotta say, man, you are living one interesting life thanks danny jones called me before you even got in there like before you even recorded he's like dude you got to check out this eric guy and you got to have him in and then his podcast with you was great i had a chance to listen to some of that this morning but you know what what made you want to just start traveling to all these countries and not just traveling to these places but like getting ingrained into the culture to the point that

Starting point is 00:02:52 you're like the man friday around there yeah right yeah well i mean i think part of it is uh uh you know i'm a writer so i wanted to be as useful of a writer as possible. Yeah, You Are Not Here travels through countries that don't exist. This is my first piece of nonfiction. You know, before that, I wrote theater. I wrote screenplays, a couple of books of nonfiction, or pardon me, of fiction. And I was a Peace corps volunteer at the time and i was like you know i can probably be a bit more useful with the writing that i do you know you

Starting point is 00:03:33 only have one life to live and you only have a certain amount of skills that you're born with uh and fortunately i've always had a proclivity to read and to write. And I was like, well, I'm pretty good at this point, after two and a half years of living in a northern Albanian village, at being really uncomfortable for long periods of time. And I'm also pretty good at making connections outside of my own culture and i also think that upon coming back to the united states i was just noticing there's a lot of there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of paranoia of the other as soon as you get back you know people are but i i think in a certain way we we worship fear a little bit in the United States because we have this sort of pioneer culture. It's like you do it yourself

Starting point is 00:04:29 and take all the benefits of whatever you accomplish but also suffer all of the detriments of what you accomplish. And when you're abroad and the world isn't like that, everything seems antagonistic to people in the United States. And I wanted to bring stories back that were fascinating or funny or interesting that shows that the world isn't just, you know, constant warfare or antagonism towards people who we, you know, know and love.

Starting point is 00:05:03 That people are a lot more like us than we all give each other credit for. Is it strange when you come back here? Yeah, every single time. And how long have you been gone, like full-time-ish? About almost a decade. Wow. Yeah, I did two years pretty solidly back in the States.

Starting point is 00:05:27 So I came back from Peace Corps, and then I started actually working in special education. So I was working as a special ed teacher for kids with autism for about two and a half years. And that was cool. It was really interesting work. Um, and I think super helpful for this kind of work because it's like, you have to learn how to be really patient. You have to learn how to, uh, communicate in different ways. And you also have to like learn how to, um, uh, how to, how to make contact with, with somebody who's communicating in a different way than you're used to communicating. And so, I realized at a certain point, you know, I was making money, but that wasn't

Starting point is 00:06:11 going to be my path, right? I still wanted to be a writer that was useful for the world in whatever way I could influence it. And I was like, well, I want to go and be an international journalist because I'm curious about these things. I have no compunction buying a plane ticket and going to a place where I don't understand and asking really dumb questions until I can put a sentence together about that. And then sharing that with people back home because I think more often than not, like, we're afraid to ask really dumb questions. But I feel very comfortable asking dumb questions and hopefully eventually understanding a little bit more about the area that I'm in.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Well, it's actually great to hear that because I even find myself – sometimes you can run the tape and you'll hear it on this podcast where I'm like, dumb question. And maybe once in a while it actually is. But I try to avoid saying that as much as I can. I probably don't do a good enough job because in reality, when you think about it, it's like that's the whole basis of the world is asking questions to get further and further down the line to get more what? To get more information information which is knowledge and i've been talking on on a recent podcast with somebody about you know one of the many things that the great carl sagan said but one of the ones that really struck me was when he talked about how something quote something terrible has happened between kindergarten and maybe it was like 12th grade or college

Starting point is 00:07:45 in this country because he said when you look at kids when they're young and they're six to five six years old they ask you what is the sky what is the moon what are the stars why did the why did the plants breathe you know why or why are they alive like these basic questions that in society we may judge is like part of that, oh, what a dumb fucking question. Who are you? When in reality, oh my god, this is exactly what we should be wondering about. This is the imagination. And then by the time they get to the end of high school, they're like, oh, I don't want to ask that.

Starting point is 00:08:16 So something has happened. Maybe – like I can't speak for our world as much. I talk to a lot of people around the world through this show, but I don't live in these places, right? You could know this better than me, but at least in this country, something's happened where people are afraid to really actually get inquisitive on something because they think they're going to be viewed as not smart. Well, and also they might be viewed as, as incentives, insensitive, right? And I think that that's that's hugely problematic right i was um i was in a cab uh with some friends and um the the driver i i thought was pakistani um because he was playing

Starting point is 00:08:53 this pakistani song that i thought was was was cool um and i was like oh it's that song um and i asked him where he's from and we were chatting for a bit and, and, uh, my friends were like mortified. They're like, well, you can't ask somebody like where they're from. Cause that implies that they're, and it's like, no, you can. And, and then, you know, so we had this, we had this, this whole conversation, me and that guy. And he was like, well, you know, I, I come over to this country for, uh, for a couple of months.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And what I do is I, I buy a new Tesla every time I come back here and then I bring it back to where I'm from. And then I sell it on the secondary market. So like, I'm only here driving Uber for, you know, a couple of months. And then I,

Starting point is 00:09:34 I bring a Tesla home and like, I have like a Tesla dealership there. And I was like, so not only is it like, it was that man not offended, but he was probably the richest person in that car. And it's like, if you don't risk asking a dumb question, you never get to connect beyond somebody else's

Starting point is 00:09:56 cultural frame of reference, right? It's like, one of my favorite dumb questions is, what's a song everybody from this culture knows right there's like some uh in when i was in uh northern iraq the uh the kurdish part uh iraqi kurdistan we're gonna talk about that yeah yeah and so i was i was there for like four months i think and uh i noticed there's this one song that was playing every morning. And it was on like all the buses. And it was it was in stores. And it was in the school that I was teaching in. And I asked my Iraqi buddy, I was like, Who's this artist? He's

Starting point is 00:10:37 like, Oh, that's Fay Ruz. So like, she's the she's this Lebanese artist. and she's revered in a lot of the Levantine Arabic cultures. But we only listen to her in the morning. I'm like, why do you only listen in the morning? He's like, I don't know, it's just morning music. So now, it's like, if you can connect just for one brief moment and be like, yeah, oh, you're from Lebanon, that that Fayrouz, right? It's like suddenly you've made somebody from a totally different background from you understand that you're curious and you're open and you're willing to understand their point of view just because you know a damn song. And people tend to fall all over themselves to share their

Starting point is 00:11:23 background or their story or their family or their culture with you if you even try to meet them halfway. But I think that oftentimes because of our culture in the U.S., people are reticent to reach out and to try and ask these questions for fear of being offensive to them, for fear of making them feel like the other. Yeah, the offensive angle is the thing that I feel like we've just kind of lost the plot on. Yeah. Because what we're doing in this country, it feels like, and that's why I'm so curious, like, exactly how they view it in all these different countries around the world. I've heard some things, but you would know, I'm sure,

Starting point is 00:12:04 a lot of different countries and what their attitudes are towards like the state of what they hear coming out of America these days. But people assume the worst intentions at all times in America now. Now, I could point to places around the world that are dangerous where that is quite literally a part of the fabric, from a political standpoint or a communication standpoint but from a safety standpoint right because maybe it's a war-torn country things like that you got to be very paranoid of everyone around you so that's relatable but in like a peacetime place like this right we have people so at each other's throats from behind a keyboard very often where they are just assuming that because someone says something one way, that must mean that they think this, and therefore they're that person that doesn't agree with whatever my worldview is left or right. To me, that has happened fairly quickly. And I think the most obvious point here is that it's probably a phenomenon that's simply just been quickly exposed since social media came out. And here we are, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:12 effectively 16 years after Facebook, where, you know, this ship has left the fucking port. Yeah, it feels like the temperature has rises on that every single time I come home. But what you're what you're talking about is, you know, people assuming malice, right? There's a great, I think it's called Hanlon's Razor. Hanlon's Razor is like, you know, it's like of the great razors, Occam, you know, big shout out to Occam. But Hanlon's Razor is something along the lines of, I attribute not to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance. Yes.

Starting point is 00:13:47 Right? And people will say, oh, you've spent poor way of treating another group of human beings that have agency that are, you know, deeply intelligent, deeply thoughtful, politically understanding human beings. And also, most people, especially people in the Middle East are so good at understanding that human beings are not their governments, right? Of all the people in the Middle East, are so good at understanding that human beings are not their governments, right? Of all the people in the world, they're the best at understanding this. And so, when I come back to the States, there is this constant feeling of people probing to say, well, what team are you on?

Starting point is 00:14:42 And then hoping that you're on my team. And I think that that's, yeah, it's an emergent property of maybe the last five, 10 years. I mean, then again, I don't know. I haven't been back in the States for a long time. Trump changed the temperature, I think. Like when I'm looking at this phenomenon 2015 that's when that kind of started it feels like i could be wrong but that's just the temperature i've gotten well and this is this is something that i i think is is something that's

Starting point is 00:15:17 so hard to put the brakes on right which is you have one you know, somebody has a deeply, you know, a deeply arrived at opinion, or maybe one that they can't really even explain to you. But whatever. If you have that opinion, or you express that opinion, in the States anyway, it seems that you have this sort of de facto understanding that they now have this whole raft of other opinions it's like well you're you're more conservative well here are all the things that i know about you when it's like you know that's that's probably not the case there's it would be insane if any person believed and agreed 100% with any politician. That would be insane, and it would also be, I mean, creepy. A lie is what it would be. It's not even possible.

Starting point is 00:16:16 Yeah. It's not possible to agree with someone on all of, you know how many things are political? Jesus Christ. Yeah. And so, if you can't criticize or or steel man your own your own position um or steel man the position of of somebody else then then how much of of what you think uh do you actually believe or do you just believe it because it feels good or because it's an interesting story i mean the there's this phenomena, too, of, like, conspiracy theories which have really just, like, exploded in the United States. And I love them.

Starting point is 00:16:51 Like, they're awesome. They're so cool. Like, they're so fun. But you have to check with yourself, like, is this story just, like, do I like it because it's really fun um like like yeah are interdimensional aliens coming and and eating babies so they can stay young forever and and or did did they teach us how to mine gold so that the planet nibiru could once again flow freely through the i yes yes they did yeah i'm saying it officially yes that is is my stance. Like, that rules as a story. How cool.

Starting point is 00:17:29 But, like, one of the things I say in the book is that, you know, countries are stories. And like a story, it is powerful, but you don't have to believe all of it. There are some parts of it you can believe into the damn marrow of your bones, and some parts of it that you can say are abject hogwash. And you have to investigate constantly what you actually believe within the context of that story. You know, we're all born between invisible borders that have an incredible story, almost like a spell cast over that land, right? I don't think that everybody believes 100% of that story, but it is important to know exactly where you diverge from what your national story is

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Starting point is 00:19:21 to get 20% off your favorite new underwear today. You know, I mean, there's so many abstractions that can easily lead us down a road which leads to very bad places. I mean, abstractions can also lead to very good places, too. But it's like, as an American, we're sort of sold this brand of, like, freedom, right? And it's like, yeah, yes, I absolutely want freedom. Cool, who controls the abstraction of freedom? Well, freedom means that we have to invade Iraq. Wait, hold on a second. No, you wanted freedom.

Starting point is 00:19:55 You wanted freedom. So now we're going to roll tanks into Iraq. How did we get from here to there? Like that's how consent is generated. And so the sort of classical definition of making a country, right? It's the art of generating consent amongst the governed. The art of generating consent amongst the governed. Right?

Starting point is 00:20:20 That's dark. Yeah, depending on how you do it. Because there's different ways to do it, right? So a really quick way to do it is to put a gun to somebody's head. Real quick. But that is a pretty – putting a gun to somebody's head is a very brittle way of creating and running a government. Because what you're saying is this is the language that I'm going to speak to my population with and this is the language that can be spoken to me, right? So if you are a violent dictatorship, well, then violence is probably how you're going to reach your end.

Starting point is 00:20:56 So it becomes brittle. The idea of democracy is that if you have considered buy-in from the individuals that are governed by your country, they will say, well, you know, I am some part of this. I put my two cents into making this system happen. And therefore, why would I go and wreck it? You know, because if I'm wrecking the system, I'm also saying that that my choices were bad. And so that's why democracy is a more robust system than, let's say, a violent dictatorship. At least that is the theory. Whether or not that is absolutely working in the world right now, I don't know. Financially, militarily, even philosophically for a lot of the world,

Starting point is 00:21:50 some of the most powerful countries are not democracies. Yes. So we're in the constant conversation of history, and we always will be. Like, I was living in a place called Erbil, which is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. And also to, like, I didn't have any money to fund this book, so I just had to get jobs everywhere that I was. What kinds of things did you do? Oh, man, I was, so I,

Starting point is 00:22:14 the way I got out of the United States was I just Googled jobs in Iraqi Kurdistan. Dude, two weeks later, I was a third grade teacher in Iraqi Kurdqi kurdistan yeah dude third and fourth did you speak any kurdish or no no i don't speak any what the fuck were you doing with them uh there's an english language international school um oh that works and so yeah i they got me out there so fast i was like i mean literally sent the application in three weeks later i have an apartment in erbil um now my dad easy yeah i mean this was in 2017 um you know i had a background

Starting point is 00:22:54 in teaching i had a background in special ed um but this is also in in 2017 so this this was coming up on the kurish referendum on independence. So they were trying to vote themselves free of the Republic of Iraq at this time. And then meanwhile, the Islamic State was on its back heels. So they were still – there was still conflict in – yeah, this was 2017. Anyway, there was still conflict in Mosul. They weren't fully withdrawn at this point. So, like, the Islamic State was 45 minutes away from Erbil.

Starting point is 00:23:30 Oh, that's nice. Yeah, yeah. And, like, you'd meet, you know, there's wonderful bars where it's just like, there's just a bunch of shady people there. And you're like, why are you here? And it's like, I work for an NGO. Sure you do. Granted, I'm one of those people. like like you know i'm like see andy bustamante in there i didn't notice him no um you know because like

Starting point is 00:23:53 i'll be i'll be like yeah i'm a third grade teacher and then you know well actually people mostly thought that i wasn't either third grade teacher um keep talking. I'm just going to fix that camera. Sure, sure. Keep going. So, you know, I was talking at a bar one night with some security contractors. They're English security contractors and, you know, they were working in Mosul. And I was like, you know, what do you guys do every day and the one was diffusing bombs uh that were left behind by the islamic state and the other one was uh he was an overwatch sniper as far as i know and i was i i asked him you know how do you where do you live and he's like oh same building as you and i'm like oh um so do you just like commute to mosul every day and he was like yeah yeah like we carpool like so you you carpool in to mosul every day diffuse bombs for like eight

Starting point is 00:24:58 hours or whatever and then you come back here and that's why you're at this bar right now and they're like yeah that's that's about it that's that's our day-to-day um world bro yeah i mean so this may be one of the reasons why it was it was really easy to get a job uh as a as a teacher out there yeah i'm gonna put a video in the corner of the screen by the way just for people to get an idea of what they were going to this is from vice but it's behind you on the screen right there right now oh yeah this is a drone of mozul and this is actually probably around yeah this is like 2020 yeah so this is where they were going every day i used this at the beginning of the intro with episode 117 with ryan tate because he was in this whole area and everything but yeah i mean this is just this is... Well, it's an interesting area, too, to be writing about it, but not to be I was sick of writing about how the world was tearing itself apart.

Starting point is 00:26:12 And I was really astounded that the world can actually come together in new ways. Like, it is kind of inspiring in spite of the chaos that comes from it. It is kind of inspiring when millions of people just decide to self-determine. And they are like, we're going to draw a line on a map collectively. And that's a superhuman story because we all live between these lines and maps. Yes. They were all drawn at one point. I did my Peace Corps service in northern Albania near near kosovo which is also in the book do you care if you take

Starting point is 00:26:50 the small decor and detour and just explain how you got into the peace corps oh yeah that was yeah i just want to have that context for sure um so uh yeah the way i got into the peace corps was i just sent in a really long application. But what made you want to do that? Oh, yeah. I was like, there's no, like, obstacle course. Like, you have to hug seven people of different cultures and stop an argument between two people speaking a different language. But did you always want to do something like that? Like, just go help people and travel like that way?

Starting point is 00:27:26 Or what made you like wake up and say, I'm going to join this? Oh, man. So I think that there are definitely the Peace Corps volunteers who have pretty strong impressions about, well, I'm, I'm off to make the world a better place. I knew what I was capable of. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm gonna solve world peace by by teaching English in a small Albanian village. But a lot of it was was based off of this idea that that I idea that I wanted new ideas to write about. I wanted a new perspective to write about. And I also checked a lot of boxes that I just thought were neat.

Starting point is 00:28:11 Like I wanted to live abroad for an extended period of time that was uncomfortable. I wanted to learn another language and just have a different perspective. I think that a lot of, and I say it in the book, a lot of the writing that I've done and a lot of my sort of intellectual DNA is from being a fairly anxious and terrified person, right? You have all the makings of someone recruited by the CIA, bro. Love to travel, join the Peace Corps. I know, right? Just to get a few people from there, not everyone. They keep, like want to like forward my linkedin or something that'd be sick it's very low but like you're you're anxious you're curious about other cultures well i get a wild card you're smart as fuck look i mean saying the way that i feel about about like uh fear and anxiety, though, in the context of this kind of thing, is I get frustrated with being afraid of something for an extended period of time. We both, I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing that we both were maybe teenagers during 9-11. No, I was a lot younger. You were a lot younger?

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Starting point is 00:30:27 the fear that was all pervasive for many years in the united states it was like it was like the other the the uh you know it was terrorism it was yes it was uh uh you know uh would buy into a good deal of this fear and anxiety but at a certain point i'm like this if you learn as much as you possibly can about something you can't be afraid of it either you'll realize that it isn't something to worry about, or you'll fall in love with it a little bit. And so, the rest of- Or you'll fall in love with it a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the more you learn about any culture, no matter how antagonistic to you that culture is, you're going to find something that really speaks to you about that. Yes. Okay. Or some idea, you know, you'll find something that you can take on board.

Starting point is 00:31:29 And I feel like in my early life, the outside world, outside of, you know, Southern California, was this really, really frightening place. And I was frustrated with that. And I was like, well, the best way to expose myself to the outside world is to, you know, take a leap into the deep end and be like, now I live in a developing country, well, in a developing part of a developing country, outside of my native language, and I'm here for two and a half years and you know i mean i always i i'm like look if i ever become afraid of vegetables i'm becoming a farmer like this is because i'm just i'm annoyed by by being being afraid of things

Starting point is 00:32:20 that that do not require my fear. And so, yeah, Peace Corps checked all of those boxes for me and seemed like I'd get a lot of cool bar stories. Also, I was a theater major, so I really couldn't do anything. You were a theater major. Yeah. God, your life has gone a whole different direction, man. I run into my theater friends every once in a while. I just saw them here in New York. Like, what the fuck happened you eric no i know yeah that's that's

Starting point is 00:32:48 usually the conversation um it's like uh i mean it didn't didn't really work out in acting so i became a i became a travel writer um i just thought like you know it but it does it dovetails really nicely because the acting training is all about like, you know, be as uncomfortable as possible. You know, it's not comfortable to be on stage in front of people. And it's also like, you know, learn how to fail, but stay on your feet. And in any multicultural interaction, especially if you're, you know, I was a teacher in a small village, like, and it's like, hey, get up in front of 40 teenagers and speak in their language and try and teach them English. Good luck. Yeah, do that eight hours a day.

Starting point is 00:33:39 And it's like, okay, well, this is the hardest performance I've ever given. I've always kind of thought that the world, and I don't want to make the world like, I want to make it fake or something like that. That's not my intention in saying this. But you had said a little bit ago about the concept of like why people wear certain things. And it says something about them to signal to other people. You know, we dress up for Halloween once a year in America if you celebrate and everything. But every day you do dress up. There's a reason you wore that today and there's a reason I wore this. Even if I didn't put a lot of thought in it or you didn't put a lot of thought in it.

Starting point is 00:34:18 I live out of a backpack and this is the cleanest shirt I have. Well, there's still a behavior that happens there where you're like at some point you bought that yeah you got that and you said i could see myself wearing that it's a costume right when when you are when so point being like i've always thought when you're out in the world when we talk about like acting and like the art of it or whatever in a lot of ways even if we are being ourselves we are all acting in some way every day at all times. Even like when I just met you in the car today, right? I never met you before. We've talked on the phone.

Starting point is 00:34:53 But like the first few minutes, I'm not thinking about it, but I'm getting a feel for who you are. So there's certain things I'm doing with my tone. There's certain ways, questions I'm asking you you know this is that is that is a part of getting information is kind of i don't want to say i don't want to make this sound bad but like putting on the smallest fronts with people because they're not in your head yeah do you think that's a that you know perhaps your background and actually studying how that happens being an actor like doing what you do now you're kind of putting all that technically to work? Constantly, yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:26 I mean – In a non-fake way. No, I mean, I think it saved my life a couple of times. I mean, really, genuinely. I think that a good portion of it, too, is – a good portion of, like, acting training is understanding how to listen to other people really, really deeply. And that's not just in the words they say, but their behavior, right? So I think when you, like when I go to the places that I go,

Starting point is 00:35:58 you have a split second to look at somebody in the eyes and say, well, is this person who's offering me a ride genuinely, like, a good person who's gonna, you know, help me out with getting from point A to point B? Or are we gonna have a potentially violent and dangerous situation? And you have to read those vibes really quickly. You have to read that behavior almost immediately. And, you know, I've had really great success in trusting the right people. And every once in a while, I've had some really dangerous moments not trusting the right people. But I think that understanding human behavior by replicating it in an honest way like an actor, it was absolutely the most valuable skill that I could have had. Also, memory is great because, you know, it's like you memorize a lot of words, and that's helpful with learning languages and stuff.

Starting point is 00:36:59 What was a time where you had a really close call? Oh, man. Yeah, I actually, I don't've i've mentioned this publicly before ever but it's in it's the last um last chapter of this book um uh it's the afterword of this book uh i i was in south africa and i got attacked um a guy hit me with a knife across the head here holy shit yeah um it was i mean wait like slashed you yeah yeah yeah uh there's there's some news uh news stories about it so if you google my name you'll see some pretty bombastic headlines about about the whole thing um yeah so i um i mean this was it also has everything to do with, with why this book exists now. What do you see?

Starting point is 00:37:46 Yeah. American Survives Signal Hill Knife Attack Ends Up Helping Crying Assailant. I did not put, I, yeah. You goddamn Pope, you. I know, right? I'm putting those Peace Corps. You tell the story. I don't want to read this.

Starting point is 00:38:00 You tell the story. It's not, I don't think it's written very well. Yeah. I mean, really putting those Peace Corps skills to work. this you tell the story it's not i don't think it's written very well um uh yeah i mean really putting those peace corps skills to work uh somebody starts weeping i was just like please don't start any wars i'm like i'm special operations peace corps like they only they only send me in when things are getting uh a little bit tense. I'm the last option before the military comes rolling in. What's your agent number?

Starting point is 00:38:28 3008? Yeah, well, I can't really disclose that. But back at Peace Corps headquarters, I'm kind of a legend. Langley? Almost got me. Almost got me. But anyway, what happened with this so um so yeah i i mean uh this book i uh i got fairly close to uh to you know having having cool publishing deal we're working on a documentary

Starting point is 00:38:55 series too and it was it was going great guns and we're we're getting towards the pulling the trigger on on basically all of those things and then COVID happened and publishers were like, oh, nobody wants to travel and then the documentary series people were like, well, we can't film this because of COVID. And then it just kind of fell off and I was like, God, you know, this book was

Starting point is 00:39:18 not only was it a really traumatic year to go through, so I spent, you know, it was five unrecognized nations, Iraqi, Kurdistan, Kosovo, Transnistria, Libra land, and Somaliland. And, yeah, I mean, there are some close calls that are in the book as well. And so it's like I almost died to, like, make this thing, and, like, nobody wants it.

Starting point is 00:39:40 And then I was sort of unable to write for about two years. I mean, I was making money working, doing creative stuff for a blockchain company. And that was fine. But there was this problem that I had lost my ability to write creatively because this book just never made it out. And so I was trying to do all of these things to kickstart my process again and to basically be a writer again. And part of that, like part of that journey, I was like, okay, I'm going to go to Vipassana meditation sitting. Have you ever heard of Vipassana? Oh, it's crazy.

Starting point is 00:40:21 It's cool. And I'd always wanted to do it, but it's, so it's an 11 day meditation, um, uh, uh, sitting. So you meditate for 10 hours and 45 minutes a day. Uh, you can't read, you can't write, you can't, you can't do anything but meditate. Um, and, uh, and yeah, so start, started meditating, started meditating and worked my way up to doing that. And I was like, maybe concentration is my problem. Because, you know, everybody's concentration is not so great nowadays, because we have, you know, phones and whatnot. So maybe concentration is why I'm not able to write anymore. And also just general, you know, meditation is good for your brain.

Starting point is 00:41:06 So, like, again, you know, dove into the deep end as hard as I could. I was like, I'm not only, I'm not gonna, like, start meditating. I'm gonna meditate the hardest ever. I'm gonna be the best at meditation. Quickest to reach enlightenment ever. More Buddha than Buddha.

Starting point is 00:41:30 So, I did that and and the only place that was it was open at the time because the world was kind of coming open again was south africa and i was like cool i'm gonna go south africa and meditate my balls off uh until i can write again uh that i wrote that in my journal exactly uh and then you know i came out of that and i was like okay yeah i this helped a little bit i can start moving forward a little bit on this it's not you know i'm not clicking along the way i used to because it'd been like three years two years of just not being able to even look at this piece um and then uh my time in south africa was coming to a close i was hiking along and and this book had kind of gotten to the point where i was like fuck it i'm just not gonna do it maybe i'll write something

Starting point is 00:42:17 else in the future and it's like 95 done like it was almost like to the end and i was just like fuck it like and it's just too hard it's too scary it's too whatever i'm i'm like i'm not gonna put it out myself because like honestly publishers didn't give a shit uh documentary crews didn't give a shit so like why why would anybody actually give a shit about this um and then i was attacked so how does that happen so i was um i was hiking along um in a place called table mountain near near a place called the noon gun so i'll stick that google map in the corner of the screen yeah and hiking in south africa is actually quite dangerous like it is it's no joke there is There is like a lot of bears. No,

Starting point is 00:43:06 uh, no, they got a lot of people who want your shit. Uh, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of bad, a lot of individuals out there who, who you could have a,

Starting point is 00:43:14 a disagreement with about who should own your things. Um, in my case, I felt like I should hang on to my stuff. And this guy. He disagreed. He made a compelling point. Does he approach you with the knife out?

Starting point is 00:43:32 No. So what happened was, and I should say, you know, for once, I should also say that Cape Town is a wonderful place. South Africa is an incredible place. I would go back in a heartbeat. You know, violence can happen anywhere but um uh there are sort of well-trafficked hiking trails that that you can go on on your own on your own if if there are quite a few people around um and it's like daytime and stuff like that and then there are ones that you probably should always like be with a group or whatever and i was warned

Starting point is 00:44:02 about this um but the one that i was going on was was fairly well trafficked you know people were on their own and and so i um uh spent most of the day just sort of working my way through that trail i was having just like a a really quiet and you know totally harmless afternoon like i was like listening to a podcast podcast about like mycology and and uh like hiking along and you know what mycology oh growing growing mushrooms um oh shout out to the micro wizards podcast i love that podcast what's that guy's name who goes on rogan with the funny hat yeah paul stamets that guy's great yeah super cool yeah um so i was like hiking along, and it's just a gorgeous day.

Starting point is 00:44:47 And I hit a neighborhood on the other end of it. And I was like, well, I don't want to go in a neighborhood. I was enjoying my hike. So I turned back around. Bad decision. Really bad decision. Because I didn't realize somebody had been watching me while I was going up. And there was this tree that had sort of been downed in some respect.

Starting point is 00:45:09 And I noticed that there were personal effects there. You know, maybe a homeless person was living under it, but, like, you know, didn't bother me. I just went around it. And so I was making my way back towards that tree and I kind of ducked under it. And then on the other side of it was this guy and he had, you know, still we're coming out of COVID. South Africa had just gone into some kind of new lockdown thing. So he had a mask on. He had his hat pulled really low. And he asked me, and again, this is kind of like the sort of vibe that is really clear, especially when you've done some acting training, like where you just know something feels wrong.

Starting point is 00:45:55 And he asked me if I was alone. And immediately I knew it was real. This wasn't a good situation. And so I was like, no, my friends are up there. And at this point, I just felt him get a lot closer. And I sort of pulled him into me because I was like, if he's going to hit me, I want him. Oh, shit, that's smart. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:23 Like a good spy. Good for you. Good training. he's gonna hit me like i i oh that's smart yeah so like a good spy yeah right training i was uh i was uh i was doing uh doing some martial arts classes in south africa while i was there shout out to mad fit jim and cape town you guys saved my life um so uh i pulled him in but at the same time i just remember seeing this sort of like flash of metal and then i felt like this clunk right on the top of my head and honestly just it literally felt like somebody hitting you pretty hard with a stick um and then i time gets funny here um i don't remember exactly what happened next but i do remember my brain sort of catching up with my body because i remember

Starting point is 00:47:05 hearing myself like just screaming bloody murder and i was like wait a second that's me and then my brain was sort of back in my body and i'm just yelling fuck as i'm like running down this mountain um he's chasing after you well i didn't know that he was at that point. But I, you know, it's just like the time sort of turns to absolute taffy. And you feel as if you're going too fast and too slow all at the same time. And there are houses in the distance. So maybe 100 meters away, I can see a residential neighborhood. And so I'm like, if I can just get to that residential neighborhood and make enough noise maybe they can even hear me now so I'm just

Starting point is 00:47:48 screaming my head off and I've been told by locals that if you make enough noise sometimes like a mugger will just like leave you alone um and then my foot caught something and then I went down and since it's a foothill of a mountain

Starting point is 00:48:03 it's an incline so I start rolling and son of a bitch that's not good it's so bad it was like it's like you if you ever had like one of those horrible nightmares and then you wake up from it and you're just like so relieved that it was a nightmare it was like i i felt like i was just about to wake up at any second but then i had to keep reminding myself like no this is this is a real thing that's actually happening right now and so I uh I rolled my way down um but also like if if you've ever heard of uh of yard sailing when you're skiing no you're not a skier it's such it's such a great term because it's like to yard sale is where you just like throw your shit everywhere because like you fell down so it's

Starting point is 00:48:45 like it's like you're it's like a yard sale yeah so i yard sailed so like not only did like i had like a metal flask on me and i had a decent sized you know water bottle and like a swiss army knife and stuff like that like in the pockets of my backpack is that backpack um but my glasses flew off too. So how bad are your eyes? So bad. So very bad. Um, gotta get you some contact. Well, yeah, I know now I do. Um, and I was even making a decision about whether or not I should wear contacts that

Starting point is 00:49:15 day. Um, and I clearly should have. So anyway, I went down, I'm laying there, you know, kind of like a upturned turtle. Uh, and I look back and I'm like, God, I hope he's just like he ran away after this whole thing. And then he's like doing the Michael Myers run. And I was like, he's literally – and I've had a lot of close calls before, some far too close. There's a couple of close calls that are in this book when book and when i'm in in uh somaliland but nothing nothing this bad and when i'm in a situation like that my brain is just trying to think of all the different decisions that i can make

Starting point is 00:49:57 that will help me at least get to relative safety yes but this one, I was like, I'm blind. Stabbed? I didn't know I was bleeding at this point. And yeah, that was frightening. I just thought he hit me with something. I didn't realize that it was a knife. And so I look up and he's coming at me with a knife. And I had two very distinct thoughts at this point. I was like, well, one, I'm so ashamed

Starting point is 00:50:29 that, you know, my family is going to hear about me after sort of tempting fate all of these years in these different places. My family is going to find out that I got stabbed to death on this mountain in South africa and i'm gonna be so far from home and and i'm absolutely ashamed that i i saddled them with this shamed yeah like that that i was so foolish to to continue to attempt fate like so in this moment of massive adrenaline going through your body yeah fear of death you're thinking about the shame for your family about

Starting point is 00:51:05 my family yeah for going for a hike yeah no i'm thinking about the the the shame that that that i put myself in this situation and it wasn't the but you went for a hike i mean you shouldn't be that hard on yourself you went for a hike it's not like is it does it sound like the safest area no we all go to some areas that maybe aren't the safest. It's life. No, you're right. And these were the thoughts that were occurring to me in the moment. And the other one that kind of came through and just bulldozed that was,

Starting point is 00:51:39 it's like you kind of think about all your regrets at one moment. And I've been really fortunate to meet some amazing people and have some really cool experiences in life. But I just had this one enormous regret, and that's just that I didn't finish this book. It was so absolutely clear as day that that was my biggest regret in life that that i was gonna die with this book 95 done and so anyway the guy he came around and i stood up i had my backpack sort of clutched to me um and he wanted my uh uh he you know he wanted all my my money and my phone and stuff. And at this point, I previously had already had my credit cards stolen in South Africa because of another thing. But I was just dumb and gave them to a con man basically. Not Matt Cox, I hope. You say again?

Starting point is 00:52:39 Not Matt Cox. Didn't recognize him. All right. That's good. You always got to wonder if he went back to that. I mean, he's a tan guy, but I don't think he'd blend in in Cape Town. You know what I mean? All right, go ahead.

Starting point is 00:52:52 So I was like, I'm trying to figure out a way because if he takes my phone, I have no way to pay for anything. I have no way to even get back into my apartment. And I'm also blind and I just need my glasses. Like if he can just give me my glasses, then I can get out of there. He can have the phone. And I'm like, but like,

Starting point is 00:53:11 there's no way that I'm going to be able to like get off of this mountain with him back there and me blind. So, uh, he's holding the knife up to me and I'm like, look, just, if you just give me my glasses, I'll glasses, I'll give you whatever you want.

Starting point is 00:53:30 How old was this guy? Oh, I couldn't tell. 20s. Oh, you can't see. I forgot. Yeah. And he had a mask on. Maybe 20s.

Starting point is 00:53:41 But he's kind of standing under me on the incline. And he's got this knife up and then weirdly he's like okay I'll help you find your glasses and I was like okay and he like drops the knife a little bit when he says that and I was like it's like are you an intern

Starting point is 00:54:00 like listen keep it up am I like mugging one am i the first mugging that you've ever done and so he like dropped the knife a little bit and then i was like oh my glasses are right there and then he looked down and he dropped the knife like even more and i just football kicked him right in the head bitch yeah and then in the head yes like face or like side of the head face yep damn and then i i got on top of him and and you know we were wrestling for the knife for a bit um oh shit so he had the knife in his hand yeah and you're

Starting point is 00:54:37 wrestling for yep yep now that's the scariest thing you've said so far well it's always gotta do is that no this to me is the scarier part because so i'm on top of him and we're uh we're wrestling for the knife i'm kind of trying to to beat the knife out of his hand mind you i have taken like you know all together maybe two months of bjj and some like gym boxing classes that's about it that's that's enough to you know i was also on dance team in high school so you were doing so well you had to say that i was on i was on competitive dance squad and you know what your footwork though is going to be excellent fantastic yeah and your hand eye is going to be pretty good from that i disarmed him with a tour jeté um with a what that's a it's a dance term is that like a

Starting point is 00:55:21 french ass term or some french dance term yeah so anyway i was fighting this gentleman um and uh and yeah so i'm on top of him and i'm just sort of pushing putting pressure on his throat but then i look down at him because like now i'm close enough to see what's going on and i realized that his his face is actually covered in blood and then i realized that it's not his blood it's mine oh wait that took an unexpected twist yeah i'm leaking from my head fast because i'm by the way i'm looking at your head while you're saying this i'm like damn he must have just grazed you but it's up in your hair goes in my hair yeah got it um and. And also, look, the amount of time that I've spent thinking, like, if the knife was just a little bit sharper, if it was – if he had a little bit more leverage, if he had – I mean – and you can think about that until you're insane. You must have looked like such a savage. I'm just picturing this guy, like, wrestling with this dude who has now taken him down, who he started to try to ass assail who's got blood dripping from him and has hit it's like mel gibson in the in the

Starting point is 00:56:29 patriot i've never seen somebody look at me like that and it was it was really frightening because it's like you you you you're looking at somebody who who thinks that you're gonna kill them and it's like i just want to get off of this mountain and it's also like the whole the whole like just being in that violent confrontation is kind of fucking goofy did you want to kill him no no no never quite like in because it would have been defense like in that moment you're thinking this guy has a knife i don't if i got a free shot to like pound his head right into the sand and he dies hey i live no never thought that no because the the knife was gone like i as soon as like I started beating his hand his the the knife was out of the picture Oh, so at this point when you're on top of him and he's seeing your face. Yeah, the knife's already gone

Starting point is 00:57:12 Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and you still like in I'm thinking of all the juices flowing through you right now You didn't have like that I need to neutralize the situation if he dies he does the thing that snapped me out of it was seeing his eyes and seeing Seeing his face covered in my blood like that was horrifying how long did it take for you to realize it was your blood not his well i started because i was on top of him so i saw it leaking out of my head yeah and so yeah it um like that that complete like now i'm i'm in my body i know what's going on here and like immediately i'm thinking like how bad is this i can't look at myself like how am i like i know that they always say that head wounds bleed a lot which they certainly do um but i don't know how bad i'm hurt

Starting point is 00:58:00 and i'm just thinking like i've got to get off of this mountain as quickly as possible and so at a certain point i'm just like are we done we're done right and then he starts crying um and he's like i gotta give you know i've got to give the these people something and i'm like i don't i gotta go like i'm bleeding from the head, man. I don't know what to tell you. Gotta give what people something? I'm guessing he had bosses or something. I don't know. But I ended up giving him my rain jacket,

Starting point is 00:58:31 which I needed a week later. I totally needed that jacket. And I liked that jacket, too. I gave him the rain jacket and a pack of cigarettes. How long did it take for you to go to calm and chill? Like, you're on him, you decide, okay, he doesn't have a knife, it's neutralized. Like, was it just like, hey, man. Oh, no, I was not calm and chill at all.

Starting point is 00:58:55 I started crying, too. I was like, what are we doing here? What? What? We could just stop this. I'm in the Peace Corps we could stop this at any point and just not fight one another

Starting point is 00:59:10 I was having a very pleasant afternoon listening to a mycology podcast um yeah no like I at no point was I like you know no like it would be so awesome if I was like fucking Jean-Claude Van Damme and and, you know, just kick an ass.

Starting point is 00:59:29 I was just like, what's happening? This doesn't need to happen. Are you still holding him? Are you holding his arms? I'm holding. I'm holding his hand on your neck. Yeah, I have my forearm on his neck and have his. Where are his legs?

Starting point is 00:59:42 Behind you? Behind me. Are you full on top of him? He's down the mountain. I'm full on. I've straddled his chest. Your knees are on legs? Behind you? Behind me. You're right full on top of him? He's down the mountain. I'm full on. I've straddled his chest. Your knees are on his chest? No, either side.

Starting point is 00:59:50 Either side of his chest. And my forearm is on him. Cowgirl. Yeah. Gotcha. Exactly. Orthodox cowgirl. Not the reverse variety.

Starting point is 01:00:00 Real quick, to all my Discord people out there, the Julian Dory Discord is officially live. I put the link down in the description below. So go hit that. Join the community and say what's up. There's all kinds of features in there, and I look forward to hearing from you guys.

Starting point is 01:00:13 Let's get it popping. Yeah, so I was – his hand was hurt, and he seemed out of it, and he was covered in my blood. I was covered in his blood. Everybody's crying. I was like, gotta go and so i just kind of you know hightailed it down to the nearest neighborhood which wasn't that wait a minute so you come off him now you're not straddling him anymore did he just lay there yeah he didn't move he was not did you like back up watching him i was like i i yeah no like i kind of had like a hand on him still but like yeah no he was he was not did you like back up watching him i was like i i yeah no like i kind of had like a hand on him still but like yeah no he was he was done all right so hold on you get up like this

Starting point is 01:00:51 kind of like hand on him like kneeling a little bit and then you get my backpack yeah like that yep and like you're just backing up i'm like i'm just like like i'm worried that he's gonna follow me his hands all fucked up How far away is your backpack? Oh, it's arm's reach. Arm's reach. Yeah, because I had it on me right before I kicked him. So you pick up the backpack. And then I just kind of...

Starting point is 01:01:14 Still looking at him. He's still laying there. Is he looking at you? Is he looking... No, I don't remember. I just turned and ran, basically. And then you ran. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:21 Did you think he was following you? No, because I turned and looked back. Yeah, and he did not seem well. And you said it was like 100 yards away the town not very far at all yeah i mean i i like i could see people in the windows so what'd you do when you get that when you got there like did you go just find someone right so it's a little help me because you're bleeding yeah it's a little uh little like um uh highway uh that goes through the neighborhood. And I saw a dude that was out there washing his car. And South Africa and South Africans, like, are rightfully, you know, a bit suspicious

Starting point is 01:01:59 of people just, like, coming up to their houses. And granted, at this point, I'm covered in blood, too. So I'm... You probably too so you probably looked like a I have a picture I can show you later are you serious and high strung upset or are you back at this point once you get

Starting point is 01:02:18 your breath and you're down there you're kind of back to your nice affable personality like hey no kind of like manic crazy still manic crazy yeah totally because it happened like i mean i could see when i was talking to the dude who was washing his car i could still see the dude who attacked me up on the mountain and he's like oh when did this happen i'm like dude two minutes ago that's the guy he's right there and and also you could see yeah i could still see him well i mean i knew where he was i didn't have my glasses on still was he still laying there i don't know i didn't have my glasses on i knew he was up there though um but yeah so i so the guy

Starting point is 01:02:50 was like look you can't come into my house um but i'll let you i'll give you some like uh paper towels to like you know clean off with and i was like that's that's fine where's the police station do they even have those around here oh my god it was so terrible too because like so like he he gives me this wad of paper to put on my head and and so I'm you know sent on my way with this wad of paper and a general impression of where the police station is um and I walk down the hill and then I run into these like two English, like really old English dudes who like have a bunch of hiking gear. And I'm like, are you guys going hiking up there right now? And they're like, yeah.

Starting point is 01:03:36 Don't go. Maybe you shouldn't. Yeah. And they're like, oh, my my god what's happened weird story i've just been you should you should have totally yeah never mind so like the the english guy this old ass english guy was like um you know we'll take you to the police station um so i get in his car and and you know it's still it's still kind of coveted times and so he's like i'm sorry i don't have a mask and i'm like i don't that's the least of my

Starting point is 01:04:10 worries man i really don't care i'm i'm bleeding from my head right now and so it's super super good for you looking out for that but i'm really not bothered this story has everything in it man and so we get the police station and um you know they have weird regulations so that they can only have like one or two people in there at once and so like i'm waiting outside uh and i'm like you know still bleeding with like these paper towels on my head and i go in eventually and there's like uh another couple in there. And I like kind of walk up and I figure they're gonna like notice that I'm, you know, not there to, you know, pay a parking ticket. Because of the blood and everything. I've never walked into a room where I, you know, was sort of clearly injured.

Starting point is 01:05:09 Right. And also at this point, like, I think maybe it was a function of the adrenaline or whatever. Exactly. It might have been the adrenaline wearing off, but immediately I felt so thirsty. Like thirstier than I've ever felt in my life. Like my mouth was so dry. And I mean, it's not like, you know, walking around like at a California and I had a Nalgene. Granted, it was back on the mountain at this point.

Starting point is 01:05:38 But like I was just super, super thirsty. So I was like, OK, well, I need to like get like make a police report and maybe they'll and they'll probably like. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way.

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Starting point is 01:06:30 Give me a bottle of water or something. So, like, I go up, and I'm like, hey, can I make a police report? Because I got attacked. And then they're like, um, no, you got to go to the hospital first. I'm like, yeah, but the hospitals have, like, these really long lines because of COVID. And, like, can I just make a police report like it doesn't seem like it's like I don't think I need like any hardcore medical care right now but like I'd just like to make a police report and go home and they're like nope gotta go to the hospital

Starting point is 01:06:56 first I'm like okay um uh can I have a bottle of water and they they're like, no, sorry, you can't. The bathroom's closed because of COVID. Come on. And I was like, how is this happening? And the lady next to me, who was there paying a parking ticket, was like, hey, we'll take you to, like, you know, the South African version of a Wawa and get you a bottle of water. She, like, you know, the South African version of a Wawa and get you a bottle of water.

Starting point is 01:07:27 She, like, took me by the hand because I was so blind without my damn glasses. And, you know, we got a bottle of water and she's like, you want to ride home? I say yes and they drop me off back at home. And I, at this point, was sort of in these weird waves of, like, manic laughter and, you know, adrenaline-fueled rambling. Like, I was calling my friends and being like, holy shit, you'll never guess what happened. And I, like, got out of my clothes and then I realized that they were just, like, doused in blood. And not only were they, like, covered in blood, but they like, there were, there were cuts across my back too.

Starting point is 01:08:08 Oh shit. Yeah. Cause you were rolling. Yeah. And so, and then like, you know, other,

Starting point is 01:08:13 um, you know, other places that I didn't, I didn't feel like I got hit at, at all. It's the afterword is this, this whole bit. Um,

Starting point is 01:08:21 uh, granted, I just told a more detailed version of it. Um, I left out the old Englishman. Oh, shit. Yeah, this is like the afterwards like three pages. We really got the inside story here. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:08:34 These are the full details. And so then I strangely went afterwards, like the next couple of days, I felt like it was a weird behavior to do, but, like, I even noticed it was weird in the time, but, like, I just kind of left my bloody clothes just, like, hanging out there in, like, the apartment that I was renting. Like, sort of in the, like, laid out in the shape of, like, you know, me. Why? Still don't know i think it was i felt like i was kind of sometimes a little bit fascinated by them sometimes um fascinated by them yeah i mean like i was trying to sort of like csi what where each of the the bruises came from or maybe sort of convince myself that like

Starting point is 01:09:29 i had just been through that thing for some reason i was like pacing around these clothes like they were like they were furniture in the room sounds like a like a very normal natural from a high octane life-changing life-threatening event like pts type symptom yeah it was it and and then i i felt this insane drop the next three days after that like i i basically just laid on the couch in the place that i was i was living and i felt like i watched the sun come up and go down for three days without moving and and i just kept thinking about that that one thing that was so clear on that mountain when the guy was coming towards me with the knife and it's just like that this book wasn't finished and that like that's why that's why it got done like i had to i had to put in the i had to put away the idea that it was going to be this big publisher hit that it was going to be a documentary that was going to be a documentary, that it was going to be all of these things, and then just remember that this is a uniquely important story

Starting point is 01:10:46 that I went and spent a year of my life researching for a reason, that there is important things to say here, and that it really didn't matter if I put it out independently or not, that I wasn't going to the grave without writing this full book. Well, I'm glad you did, man. Me too. I'm glad. I hate that this was like the final thing to have to make it happen,

Starting point is 01:11:17 but glad you survived. Yeah. I mean, that's how I feel about a lot of the stuff that happens in this book too because it's like, you know, I think you owe it. If you do stuff like this, like, if you, I think you have a responsibility to your community, to the world at large that if you spend time on the fringes or if you do things that carry with it a mortal danger, you need to bring back some of that experience and you need to share that with others. Because if you don't, you're just an adrenaline junkie. You know, if you don't, you're just a war tourist.

Starting point is 01:12:07 And you're not, again, you're not... War tourist, wow. Yeah, there's a war tourist in this book. Met her in Iraqi Kurdistan. She got a job as a third grade teacher just to be near the war. Just no plan to communicate anything about it, just to be there. She was... i'll never understand

Starting point is 01:12:27 what what her deal was i call her i call her claire in the book um but okay what's her real name i don't you can keep it between you and me yeah just you and me um uh no so like the first day that i met her the we were talking about uh you know we're in a session about like positive reinforcement for like the kids it's like you know what's culturally good like our high fives okay that kind of thing um and then she's just like in front of everybody's just like well these kids have seen their their families murdered by the islamic state and our principal is like no not no these kids probably haven't. You know, they're, it's a lot of international kids. She was disappointed. Yeah. She just kept,

Starting point is 01:13:10 she kept mumbling about terrorism under her breath, like next to me so that I could hear. What a weirdo. And then, you know, she called, she comes up to me in, in line at the cafeteria and she's like, where do you live live i'm like the same building you do we took the same bus this morning like and she's she goes well okay you're on the sixth floor though that's a problem um i'm having a meeting with some special forces guys so that we can exfiltrate if shit hits the fan and i'm like lady, lady, I haven't been here. I got here like 12 hours ago and I am not even unpacked. And you're like, we're going to exfiltrate you.

Starting point is 01:13:50 You should have called her Karen so it could be War Karen. Dude, at one point, this is no shit. She, there's fighting about to start in Kirkuk, right? So what happens is the- Kirkuk. Kirkuk, right? So what happens is the- Kirkuk. Kirkuk is the, so Iraqi Kurdistan kind of goes along the north,

Starting point is 01:14:12 it'd be the northeastern edge of what we know as the borders of federal Iraq. So it touches Iran, it touches Turkey, and then federal Iraq or the Republic of Iraq takes over. I'll put a screenshot map in the corner. It goes to Syria. So within this bowl is the area of Kirkuk. And Kirkuk is a majority, is like this major oil-producing region.

Starting point is 01:14:40 Historically, it was Kurdish. Saddam Hussein enacted a policy of Arabization on the area. So he essentially wanted people that were loyal to him to live on this land that was oil producing and quite wealthy. In 2017, Kirk Cook wanted to join with the Kurdish regional government, the KRG or Iraqi Kurdistan, to gain independence from the Republic of Iraq themselves. However, Republic of Iraq was not going to let that happen uh the vote went through and i think they voted themselves away and independent from uh the republic of iraq with 92 percent saying yes to leave um and iraq basically said no you didn't so they shut down the airspace of uh the kurdish region and they rolled tanks into Kirkuk to secure the,

Starting point is 01:15:47 the region from, you know, believing that it was a part of the, the Iraqi Kurdish region. And there was a brief fight between the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Republic of Iraq, their troops. So Claire was like, I'm gonna go

Starting point is 01:16:07 there. And she was so... What year is this? This is 2017. So she... And mind you, we're all third grade teachers. You know, we're sitting in a teacher's lounge grading handwriting books

Starting point is 01:16:24 and spelling papers. She wants war! That's all she wants! And teacher's lounge, grading handwriting books and spelling papers. She wants war. That's all she wants. And she's like, just out of nowhere one day, she's like, I went to Kirk Cook over the weekend. And we're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And she was like, so what I did was. And it's like, nobody wants this story and it's not it's like unfortunately it's not necessarily just that like yeah you probably shouldn't go to an active war zone for no reason

Starting point is 01:16:52 but it was like dude we're gonna have to teach your classes when you get kidnapped or killed like sold into slavery we don't we don't need more classes i'm already teaching eight hours a day um and she's like i dressed in a full hijab and i'm like that's not even like it's it's not even exactly the the style of dress that everybody's like in and also you're like six one she's a tall lady um and then she was like but i was thinking about dressing like a man just to like blend in and i'm like what and i was like oh my god i i want um god bless her so yeah like she's dead or alive i think she's back in the united states

Starting point is 01:17:46 well that's that's good i hope so i hope so that's good for a party she and i she and i definitely butted heads quite a few times um because it's like yeah i i but back to the the point that i was trying to make it's like if you if you spend time in these places like you you owe it to to people to bring back some of that experience and to in whatever way suits you uh so that you're not just an adrenaline junkie so that you're not just a war tourist like because that's just you know like that's the that's the height of privilege like you're you're so privileged and you're so bored that like you're gonna go to a war zone to get your kicks like that's the that's so like that's so selfish because you're not only putting yourself in danger but you're putting other people in danger

Starting point is 01:18:34 right um how much time how long were you in that area it was like four months. But what ended up happening was, I think it was like, yeah, three or four months. I left in, would have been late December, late December of 2017. And I know this specifically because, so I had a girlfriend who was in Bulgaria at the time. She was a Fulbright scholar in Bulgaria. Now, I was trying to leave the country. I wanted to leave the country to go see her for Christmas and New Year's. And Iraq had shut down the airspace. So I couldn't fly out of the Kurdish region at this point. But I could take a bus to the first border town on the other side of Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey,

Starting point is 01:19:25 and then just fly from there. So that was my plan. Crossed out of the country that way, got a Turkish visa, because you can get it on arrival, flew to, I guess it was Istanbul, and then to see her in Bulgaria. Hung out for a couple of days, had Christmas. Then we were like, well, let's go meet my friend in Istanbul and, you know, hang out for New Year's. So we were planning on doing New Year's

Starting point is 01:19:49 in Istanbul. Istanbul seems like such a cool city. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's a city that connects Europe and Asia, right? It's so cool. I love that city. It's one of the most beautiful places. And it also has, it's like like it's not beautiful in the same way that like vienna is beautiful where it's it's like you're walking through a museum it's beautiful because it's like got this soaring architecture but it's also super deeply human like you you feel it feels lived and it feels like human beings are are having their lives and making their stories in this city and have for thousands of years. It's so cool.

Starting point is 01:20:26 So we decided to go to Istanbul. And there's a train that goes from Sofia to Istanbul. It's an overnight train. And we get a sleeper car, woken up at 3 o'clock in the morning for the border check for the passport thing. And really cold on the border because for the passport thing. And really cold on the border because it's late December

Starting point is 01:20:49 and guys are checking our passports. We both have Turkish visas because we had been through there. And border guards are like, okay, well, where do you live? My girlfriend at the time said Bulgaria. And then a guy asked me where i lived and it's three o'clock in the morning i don't like and i say three syllables that like

Starting point is 01:21:12 changed my life entirely i live in kurdistan kurdistan and then the turkish border guards are like where do you live and i was like oh no, because the Turks are not cool with any sort of independence movement from Kurdistan. Yeah, because that's not a recognition. So I said the name of a country that doesn't exist. And mind you, at this point, the book is supposed to just be about what it's like to be in this country that didn't exist previously and now exists for better or worse granted it didn't like the the referendum didn't lead to an independent kurdish state but that was what this book was about and so the uh the turkish authorities the Turkish authorities say, okay, well, you're coming with us. And we both go to get interrogated in separate rooms.

Starting point is 01:22:10 Oh, no. And I'm having a really interesting interrogation with my, you know, Turkish border patrol officer. Because, like, he's,'s like both good cop and bad cop at the same time so it's like really confusing cop so we'll be kind of buddy buddy and I think that like he's gonna be like oh this is all just like some crazy mix up don't worry about it and you know of course

Starting point is 01:22:36 you guys have a great time in Istanbul and then you know I'd sit back and like cross my leg and he like swap me in the legs and be like sit up straight and I was like holy shit like cross my leg and he'd like swap me in the legs and be like, sit up straight. And I was like, holy shit, like what's happening? And so, of course, I mean, as you well know, like my fact pattern looks a little strange. Like I've got, I have Kurdish work papers. I have an American passport.

Starting point is 01:23:00 And I have an ID as a third grade teacher. And I'm also going to grad school at the time. And I went to Oxford, so I have my Oxford ID. And so those are my personal effects. And he's like, make these all make sense together. And I'm like, my thesis project is writing a book about unrecognized nations. That's why I'm here. I'm teaching third grade.

Starting point is 01:23:21 And he's like, so you're a spy. You crossed over the border from, you know, the area that's sort of filled with the Kurdish workers party. Why would you cross over that border? I'm like, I can't because I can't, you know, the airspace is shut down. I can't fly out of Iraqi Kurdistan. And then he takes out my camera. And I had just been at a rally for Kurdish independence. Oh, no. And I did not take that memory card out,

Starting point is 01:23:50 and I had probably 400 photos of just nothing but hyper Kurdish nationalism. And so he's just flipping through all of them, and I'm like, am so in prison fucked right now for whatever reason and thank god he didn't he decided that that they were just going to boot us out and so they we were you were already leaving yeah well we were gonna go to to istanbul but at this point we weren't um yeah so uh you know they they give us some paperwork that says you're banned from turkey um so you can't go back to turkey and that meant i couldn't go back to iraqi kurdistan either because the airspace was shut so now i'm just on the

Starting point is 01:24:37 border of uh you know turkey and bulgaria it's three o'clock in the morning. They're like, walk to the next town, which is a town called Sviligrad. And I'm like, what the fuck are we going to do? And fortunately, there was a cab that was coming through the border for one of the hotels at one time. And he saw that we were in dire straits. And he was like, yeah, get in. We'll take you to Sviligrad. But you couldn't get back at all then? I would have.

Starting point is 01:25:06 To Kurdistan? Nope. I had to say goodbye to everything there. You never went back? Nope. Lost my job, lost my apartment, lost all my clothes, lost... I only had money in my boot. You couldn't get anything mailed back?

Starting point is 01:25:18 No. No. It was all done. Listen to me, Mr. American here. Thick and I can just FedEx everything Christ yeah absolutely no nobody and also nobody from the school is gonna be like man yeah rough rough time Eric had let's let's FedEx him as uh his his clothes where'd you keep your money in my boot I usually keep it in my boot so yeah all right so you had that with you yeah I I walked

Starting point is 01:25:43 out well because I knew that there was a possibility that you kept cash in your boot yes they paid me in cash and in erbil how much cash did you have in american u.s delores maybe two three grand something like that that's not a lot no i know i know and it's certainly not enough to fund the rest of my travel so anyway i was trying to like re-figure out what what i was going to do with my life at this point. Because like, oh, well, shit, there goes my book. My book is gone. And I was like, okay, well, there are other unrecognized nations, right? Or there are nations that are struggling for full recognition.

Starting point is 01:26:21 So why don't I just go to those? And so I was like, well, the thing that kicked this off in the first place was when I went to Kosovo for the fifth year anniversary back when I was in the Peace Corps. And I was like, wow, this country five years ago was founded. So why don't I just go back to Kosovo and write about that? It was what, 2013 you were there? Yeah, so it was 2012, 2013? They were what, beginning of 2008 they were founded? 1912 was the founding of Albania and then 2008 was the...

Starting point is 01:26:56 Kosovo. 2008, 2009. So I went back to Kosovo and it was, as luck would have it, that was their 10-year anniversary. And so I was like, well, that's a good moment to write about. to Kosovo and it was it as as luck would have it that was their 10-year anniversary and so it's like well that's a that's a good moment to write about um so I and the question for Kosovo became okay you have marginal independence um and or you have independence and you have you're attempting to gain full recognition what's it like to build a country 10 years on after you've gotten a country?

Starting point is 01:27:25 And so I knew that there was this like culture magazine in the area and I just knocked on their door. Culture magazine? Yeah, it's like it's called Kosovo 2.0. It's a fantastic magazine. So it's printed in Serbian and English and ship the Albanian language. And so I just knocked on their door and I was like, hey, do you need a writer? I can speak Albanian decently, so do you need anybody to do anything?

Starting point is 01:27:52 And they're like, there's your desk. We can't pay you, but there's your desk. And so I started writing for them a little bit and working with them. And while I was there, I was interviewing locals about what the experience during the war was was but mostly their experience after the war and how to – what it was like to actually build a nation from the ground up. You said at this point it's 2018, right? This is 10 years on? Yes, 2018. Yeah, it would have been. Because yeah, New Year's was when we were going to Istanbul, 2017, 2018. And then I was also like, well, I also have to get the Serbian point of view in this,

Starting point is 01:28:28 and I have to interview people, because there are seven stars on the Kosovo flag, and each star is for one of the represented people groups in Kosovo. So it's not just an Albanian Kosovo story. And that's the thing that was really important for me to suss out. I want to stop you for one sec because I want to organize this a little bit for people. So for one thing, I'm going to keep this in mind. We're going to come back to Kurdistan and Iraq because I have a lot of questions around that. You obviously saw, as you already hinted at, a lot of the Kurdish nationalism and you know in a century in the

Starting point is 01:29:06 20th century where we saw so many things change in countries and and different cultures eventually get their quote-unquote borders and have their story you know whether it be the Balkan nations each getting their own through a lot of different wars, Israel forming in the Holy Land, all these different things. There are groups, still a few groups of like somewhat large peoples around the world who don't have a land. The Kurds are huge. I forget the exact number they are. 35 million to 40 million. 35 million people. Think about that. 35 million people of an ethnic background, a tribe, who do not have a country.

Starting point is 01:29:44 In an uninterrupted geographic band too in a what it's it's uninterrupted like the uh there is a wide swath of region that is largely occupied in like syria iraq that yeah syria iraq iran you know it's occupied it's so bizarre because these borders and i've talked about that i i should say lived in by because occupied has has like militaristic connotations. But yeah, like they live there, right? Yeah, I had Joby Warwick in here for episode 134, who's a brilliant writer with the Washington Post for many, many years. He's won a couple Pulitzers as well.

Starting point is 01:30:16 And he wrote among his books, one of the ones that won a Pulitzer was the book Black Flags, Rise of ISIS. The most fascinating terrorist figure I think I've ever come across. We're familiar with bin Laden. Bin Laden and Zawahiri, his number two guy, they were of a completely different type. These were people who were professionals. Bin Laden was an engineer. His number two was a medical physician,

Starting point is 01:30:40 so they're educated, sophisticated people. They have sort of a strategic vision of this terrorist organization they're trying to create. So Cowley was none of that. He was just a street tough. Yeah. Oh, I've been wanting to read that. I haven't read it. Oh, it's incredible, dude.

Starting point is 01:30:55 I actually have a guy who – I need to be careful how I say this. A person I know, he has a friend, who works in – he's not at one of the agencies, but he works in intel-related activities. Got it. Yep. Who has recently been heavily focused in the Middle East, and he said it's not a requirement or anything, but almost everyone who goes there for the first time like when they're coming in they read that book yeah because it's that good wow i really need to read it so anyway joeby's joeby's incredible but you know i was talking about that with him on the podcast where you look at these borders in the middle east and i can put just a map a screenshot of the map in the corner and it says syria it says iraq iran kind of has their thing set up but like you look at all these different countries and it's like technically that's where

Starting point is 01:31:49 the line is but like just because fucking bashar al-assad sits in damascus and apparently controls where these lines are doesn't mean he actually does because like a whole bunch of that country like he has no control over it. Like do they even pay taxes? We don't know how it works. Well, you know how – like I mean one of my favorite like – it's snarky but somewhat accurate is like never trust a country with straight borders. Right? Because – What do you mean by straight?

Starting point is 01:32:17 Well, because they were likely colonial borders if they're like a straight line and they don't go down a natural geographic boundary. Wow. So the borders in the Middle East were drawn post-World War I. Specifically, the ones that we're talking about here were drawn by the Sykes-Pic Picot, I think, are them, are the names. And basically, they were, it was France and the United Kingdom divvying up who got what after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. So they did that in the only way that you really would do it back in the day, and you took a damn ruler and got to a map, and you just drew a line. No cultural understanding whatsoever.

Starting point is 01:33:13 None whatsoever. That, I think, would be inaccurate to say. There was – I mean, there were certainly – like, they wanted the land for a reason, so they had people who were in these regions yeah but in drawing those maps there's no cultural understanding whatsoever they were they were certainly motivated by the interests of the united kingdom and by the by france not by making sure that everybody had their land they view the way i've read it yeah i. I'm not them, obviously. But the way I've read it in the history is that they viewed it as, for argument's sake here, like a monoculture. Like, oh, that's the Middle East.

Starting point is 01:33:52 Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Well, and interestingly enough, at this exact same time, there was a previous treaty to the Treaty of Luson, which finally ended and solidified the borders that we know in the Middle East and the former Ottoman Empire, there was a previous treaty which had Kurdish land in it, like set aside for the self-determination of Kurdish people. I guess we're coming back to Kosovo, by the way. This went backwards, but let's

Starting point is 01:34:19 stay with it. Yeah, I mean, look, it goes back to the Ottoman Empire. It all does. But that was the Treaty of Severus. And it was eventually, they eventually moved away from the Treaty of Severus, which had an apportionment. S-E-V-R-E-S. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it, but yeah, Treaty of Severus. Okay. And so that had a Kurdish region for self-determination set aside. Ataturk kept fighting on the western flank, from what I remember,

Starting point is 01:34:52 and he basically forced the western powers to make a different deal that had the borders of Turkey what they are today. But that also didn't stop other Kurdish states from rising. So the Kingdom of Kurdistan was around from 1922 to 1924. There was, oh, there's another one. Did they have borders? Yeah, they had borders and they had marginal support from the United Kingdom too. Even there was one that was around for less than a year.

Starting point is 01:35:26 It was the Mahabat Republic and that's in northwestern Iran. And that was supported by the Soviet Union. So it's not unusual that at this point in 2017, this region was trying to self-determine the world's, you know, they were trying to self-determine a Kurdish region. It's not unusual. In fact, it's, you know, it's the rule. It's rather not the exception. This has been tried many times before, but because the arrival of a new country doesn't benefit the allied, you know, the dominant military and economic powers in the world, then it's sort of refused.

Starting point is 01:36:08 And it leaves these individuals who want self-determination in the world and who want to write their story on the land that they live on, it leaves them, according to the rest of the world, not there. So wait, how did they, according to the rest of the world, not there. So wait, how did they, what was the second one? There was the Kingdom of Kurdistan from 1920 to 1924, you said? There was one more, I can't remember it right now. And how did that end? Was it bloodshed?

Starting point is 01:36:35 Or was it, it's so fascinating. I believe the Turks basically just moved on it and were like, no, this isn't a thing. This is our land now. And what was the second one called? Actually, I can read it right here. the Turks basically just moved on it, and we're like, no, this isn't a thing. This is our land now. Yeah. And what was the second one called? Actually, I can read it right here. Got the whole book in front of you. I do, yeah.

Starting point is 01:36:53 Okay. Saladin the Great. I always have him on my cell phone background. Treaty of Luson. Okay. Okay. Kingdom of Kurdistan. in background um treaty of luson okay um okay kingdom of kurd so uh 1922 kingdom kurdistan fought for sovereignty in northern iraq for two years before it snuffed out by british mandated iraqi leadership then there was the republic of ararat um which actually has a flag that that was um it has flag that looks a lot like the flag of the KRG. And that was in 1927, which was supported by the United Kingdom.

Starting point is 01:37:33 And then the Republic of Mahabad in northwestern Iran, yeah, lasted for less than a year. So there have been attempts to do this. And I think the thing that was really exciting for me about going to live in Iraqi Kurdistan is like, well, wow, not only would it be possible to live in a country that – as it was founded, but it's the first time that like a Kurdish state was arriving in the world um why are they not how do they not have borders at this point they have a government they have militaries right they have all these people they exist within as you said the same continuous land area yeah what's to stop them from just like setting up a soldier on each side and saying fuck you iraq fuck you syria i mean it wouldn't be hard to say that to syria but like this is this is officially well look this is i mean this is this is this goes back to to statecraft right um remember it's generating consent amongst the

Starting point is 01:38:38 governed uh this is 35 million people that we're talking about, and they are not a monoculture. There are different Kurdish languages within Kurdish. And they don't all agree on how they should move forward. Yeah, and that's governance, right? So, did you meet a lot of Kurdish people who are perfectly okay calling themselves an Iraqi? I wouldn't – I can't – I wouldn't be able to say that uh that specifically um i what i what i would who i i did meet were uh people who uh because there is a there there's conflict even in the krg right so the peshmerga of uh out of sulaymaniyah kurds yeah also kurds but they have conflict with the the kurds in in

Starting point is 01:39:28 erbil right they fought a civil war amongst one another what is it over it's over i believe that was over uh the idea of whether or not uh the the krg should push forward towards like actual independence or it should just stay as an autonomous republic within federal iraq that doesn't make see that makes no sense to me like and i know this is just some idiot american talking out loud i i understand that i just can't i can't process this well i think what's what you can't process it the fact that there are we're a republic there's one side saying we're already a republic so we're just going to stay that way and the other side saying yeah but we're a republic

Starting point is 01:40:09 let's just draw a line on a map though and make sure other people agree to it i don't understand like i i think here here's the way to to i think that that is my way into thinking about this right right if you have a tentative peace but you have a peace and you have a stable region is it worth it to have a violent revolution and to fight a war is it worth it because when you draw a line on a map, at least for the most part, there's one country in this that doesn't have to fight a war, and that's a pretty goofy place. But I'll tell you about that in a second. But when you draw a line on a map, the thing that you have to sign on for, first and foremost, is we're going to spill a lot of blood, and we're going to spill a lot of treasure. So on the other side of it is it

Starting point is 01:41:05 worth it to say that you're an independent country but right now do iraq or syria get anything from a financial perspective any benefit whether that be using being able to utilize the resources being paid tax whatever from the kurdish occupied areas yeah oh yeah certainly yeah okay see that's the misconception right because the way you read this when you read books that are describing this area they sound autonomous they sound like they got a bill in the mail from Iraq they'd be like yeah fuck you no they but they work together I mean they are autonomous but they also are like they they do work together there are you know there are Kurds who are in the Iraqi parliament. So it's an autonomous region in – I wouldn't say in the same way, but there are places in the world that have regions that are operating autonomously that still have a relationship to a centralized government. And, of course, Syria is a totally different animal than the government system of the KRG versus the Republic of Iraq. I can't remember what the acronym they have there is, but it's the autonomous area of northeastern Syria, I think it's called.

Starting point is 01:42:21 And there are Kurds living there, but it's also – there's a great amount of diversity there too. So – and there's a diversity of governmental systems there. There's a diversity of languages. You not only have Kurds, but you have Assyrians. You have Yazidi. You have Arabs. just because people are from the same ethnic people group doesn't mean that they view their their future the same i just can't fathom the idea because obviously that's how large groups of people work you have different people of different political opinions i can't fathom the

Starting point is 01:42:59 idea of not wanting to have your own republican part of that is the bias of the fact that i live in a country where that is what people did eventually they're like yo fuck the brits but in fairness to buttress your argument here there were plenty of people who said no we're a loyalist we're not gonna we're not gonna fight britain this is fine yeah but i just don't like the loyalists descended instantly like or very recently from britain right like they half of them came here like that generation right so they're still like they know britain these people are their own people and they've been that way for generations and generations and generations and generations so they may all many of them not all of them but many of them may ascribe to like sunni

Starting point is 01:43:45 islam which is a common religion with some of the islamic sects there but i don't understand how they would ever feel like yeah you know what we're a part of syria that's fine i like you understand why i can't process that mentality and and part of it too is is the idea that we all have different identities at different times. And the point at which it becomes critical to your identity to fight, to engage in violence in order to, or to engage in years and years of diplomacy to draw a line on a map because your one identity dictates that. You know, that's a matter of the leaders of your country. That's a matter of the appetite for violence, for warfare that they have. I mean, I was being driven in a cab by a guy after there

Starting point is 01:44:41 was some fighting in Kirkcirk cook and we were just talking he mentioned that he was fighting over over like the past weekend and i'm like you're you're driving a cab now and he's like i know but like i'm driving a cab like i gotta make money but i'm still a peshmerga and it's like so you're not getting paid enough to like take care of your family you're still driving a cab right now so it's almost like you're you're being paid in a kind of patriotism you're being paid in in the future tense of your country and and i don't think that's that dissimilar from from people hyper-nationalist hyper-nationalistic people in in you in other countries that aren't actively engaged in warfare.

Starting point is 01:45:30 Sometimes the people who are the most feverishly nationalistic are the people for whom the country has done the least, right? Can you explain that? Yeah, well, I mean, mean think about it i might be thinking about that wrong but there you if you've ever seen oh go ahead all right yeah that just hit it took a minute go ahead yeah well it's like it's like people who are are a part of a country and and're in poverty, they're actively in poverty, but goddammit, they believe in their country. Yes. And maybe they believe in their country the absolute most. They just feel like the country doesn't work for them anymore, so they want to take it back.

Starting point is 01:46:19 That's probably a good part of it, but it's that identity because your own personal identity plugs in to the story of your nation. And as your identity plugs into it, no matter how small you are, you become greater. You become a part of the story because, goddammit, I landed on the moon. I wasn't even alive when the moon landing happened, but I landed on the moon because goddammit, I'm American, you know? You get to enjoy all of the benefits of what your country has accomplished, but blind nationalism comes in where you don't identify with any of the darkness that your country has done, right?

Starting point is 01:47:08 What are you talking about right now, by the way? No, no, no. What are you talking about? Oh, specifically in America? No. No, no, no. What is the underlying – it's going to be obvious when I say it because it's your own term here, but you're talking about people following stories. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Starting point is 01:47:23 That's all it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. talking about people following stories yeah that's exactly right that's all it is yeah yeah yeah it's it and and again it's like the if i have one mesh the message that i want to get across it's like you don't have to believe all of it but that doesn't mean that it's not important that it's so important it's critical this is countries are they're critical illusions that become the invisible architecture of our world. They are a place for our individual identity to become a part of something greater, to become a part of the conversation of the globe, as well as to be a part of the history of the world. That's a powerful thing. Yes.

Starting point is 01:48:03 And it's an incredible thing but we can't be hypnotized into believing that that story is absolutely 100 perfect like if you're if you're actually serious about loving your country it's the same thing as like being absolutely serious about loving a human being, right? You have to be critical when it's important. You know, if you're with somebody and then they develop a drinking problem or, you know, they're engaging in activities that are a disaster for them, you're going to tell them. And so if you're serious about loving your country, I think that it demands your criticism, and it demands you to look at it in a clear way.

Starting point is 01:48:52 And that doesn't mean that you can't be so proud of everything that has been collectively achieved by your forebears. I think that that's an incredible part of it. again you know these countries allow us to interoperate with people we have no reason to trust right people we do not know and yet we work together because we vaguely believe the same story that's remarkable we believe in the same type of sandbox right that's all it is we're playing by the same rules yeah it's it's a i think about this from the perspective of the fact that you look at groups of people who form around political ideologies as their religion per se in this country now and one of the as we see like the extreme divide continuing to grow and grow and grow because the loudest people who get the most attention are the extremes because they get the most comments, which drives the algorithm because people are either rabidly agreeing or rabidly disagreeing, right?

Starting point is 01:49:53 And you look at these – there seems to be this thing where I had mentioned earlier the idea that people – maybe it was off camera, but people believe – we kind of have people now who believe nothing or people who believe everything. And the answer is neither. And you've been pointing that out beautifully throughout this whole conversation. But you also have people who are purporting to love all the benefits they get from living here, even if they don't say it, while also pretending that everything that we've ever done is bad yeah right and beautiful way of saying that is such a horrible way to look at it in the same breath as being able to properly teach something like slavery and and the black eye on our history that that is like all nations even the great have black eyes, you should be able to say that the

Starting point is 01:50:45 Constitution and the idea of how this nation was formed and many of the things that they got right was absolutely incredible. You know, human beings are very, very flawed. And we, in my lifetime, we always will be. And I think, I'm not sure there's a scenario that we can see in any type of scope of reality in any type of near future where it wouldn't be that way but you know you part of what makes life so interesting is the fact that we do have the struggle with those flaws and we rise above them eventually and maybe unfortunately there's a lot of pain on the way there i mean you and i both like like looking at world war one and world war two from a historical

Starting point is 01:51:25 perspective they're the most important events to happen especially world war two in the last thousand years in the world right they were terrible right the things that happened were unfathomable people were genocided at at rates that you can't even imagine in the middle of that war on top of all the i forget what percentage of of the world died in that thing. So much so that I think it actually changed the climate. Yes. It's fucking unfathomable. And yet the things that ended up coming from that have shaped the world as we know it in a lot of good ways today. Sure.

Starting point is 01:51:58 Like it's a good thing that Nazi Germany was stopped. Agreed. It sucks how it had to happen. It sucks that it happened in the first place. Right. But it's a very good thing that we went in there and stopped it. You know, and so sometimes I feel like people can't hold two thoughts at the same time. And, you know, maybe that's more, maybe that's, or excuse me, less of just an American problem

Starting point is 01:52:23 that I think it is. Maybe even in places that aren't maybe as focused on who's bitching on social media because they have more important things to worry about like some of the places we're talking about right now maybe there is as you're describing some of those monoculture battles that happen where it's like no it's all this way or no it's all that way and people can't even agree on shit to be able to draw their own lines for a border right yeah well and and you know one of the things that that i don't know i think actually my best friend dave once said this like this is a great great thing he said he was like the thing about about achieving your dreams is it's not really hard it's just really hard

Starting point is 01:53:00 you know you get it it's just really hard to do and i i i take this to the point of like uh the wicked problems in the world so there's there's actually this term it's called wicked problem and i think it comes from programming um but the idea of a wicked problem is it's a problem where you can see the output of it but you don't know what the input is that is causing the problem. So in the world of programming, from my understanding anyway, or large systems, you've got all these feedback loops that are going at once, and somehow they're causing this issue that happens.

Starting point is 01:53:40 You can consider homelessness a wicked problem, right? Because everybody wants to say there's one cause of it. It's like, it's just the prison system. It's just mental health. It's just addiction. Well, it's not one. It's all of them. It's a wicked problem. There are all of these feedback loops that are going into solving the problem. So if solving the problem was easy, it would have been solved. And so I think per your point about the people who enjoy all the benefits of the United States, while also being the loudest voices and criticizing it, I think that there's a misapprehension of how hard it is to solve these problems, how hard it is to create a nation,

Starting point is 01:54:28 how hard it is to create universal justice. These are remarkably difficult things that our system is imperfectly moving towards on a constant basis. And the contribution that I see sometimes is what I would term feeling bad in the right direction. You know, like, oh, I feel horrible about this social ill. Cool. What does that do? I get it. You feel really bad about this. I see what you're saying. But, like, what did that do? I get it. You feel really bad about this.

Starting point is 01:55:06 I see what you're saying. But like, what is, what did you do? What are you going to do about it? Did that help anything? Yeah. Like,

Starting point is 01:55:12 it might just be that that's a really hard problem to solve. And we can't turn back the clock. But people also want to be on a team when they do that, no? Yeah,

Starting point is 01:55:22 it's signaling, certainly. But I think that it's so important to, like, to be empathetic towards people who are identifying, you know, all of these problems. And of course, you want to do something. But, you know, I saw this in Peace Corps and in interactions with aid aid workers where it's like if people try to shoulder all of the burdens of the world they'll be crushed underneath it if they if they make the uh there's a there's a line from a wonderful poem and i'm gonna butcher it but it's so good uh it's called a briefer of the

Starting point is 01:56:02 defense by jack gilbert but the line is something along the lines or something along yeah so the good. It's called A Briefer of the Defense by Jack Gilbert. But the line is something along the lines, or something along yeah, so the line goes, I think you know, to make to make tragedy the only measure of your attention is to quite literally praise the devil.

Starting point is 01:56:24 I might have gotten that line wrong, but that's the meaning behind it. of your attention is to quite literally praise the devil. I might have gotten that line wrong, but that's the meaning behind it. If you make only the darkness of the world the full measure of your attention, you are praising the devil. Because you put all the focus on it. Exactly. You don't put any focus on good. But we're also wired that way way which is part of the problem you know human beings came out of the evolution of running from the fucking bear and getting to

Starting point is 01:56:49 the cave for you know to survive to fight another day you know there was threats everywhere that's in our biologic we're no different than animals in that way we may have just you know gotten to this point where now we can build these weird things from wood and throw some windows in it so you could see outside it and you know go to bed at night and and use an iphone to set your alarm to wake up in the morning and heart rate at night yeah and like worry how how it's going to be really hot tomorrow right but the evolution of negativity is still in there absolutely human beings are wired to be negative we are wired for the first thought to be negative because it's not because we're negative nancy it's because

Starting point is 01:57:25 there's something that to different varying degrees from the degree of oh i'm not i didn't drink enough water today to oh shit my buddy got hit by a car and died today there's different varying degrees of things that relate back somehow to our inherent survival we're trying to fight off death and so when we see things that are wrong in the world, we see death. And in many cases, it actually is. It may not be on our doorstep, but we want to, we feel a need to have to share that. You feel a need to have to call someone when you hear something bad and tell them about it. You know? This relates exactly, exactly to what you're talking about with Kurdistan and exactly to the self-determination

Starting point is 01:58:06 of nations. How? Because it has everything to do with your individual identity. When you feel that your identity is being threatened, you feel like your life is being threatened, right? The best way, I say in the book a couple of times, one of the best ways that you can have a civil war, if you're a dictator, is to stop people from speaking their own language. It happened in Kosovo. It happened in Iraqi Kurdistan. Like literally?

Starting point is 01:58:37 Like literally make their language illegal. Right? How did that happen in Kurdistan? So institutions were not allowed to have have kurdish language institutions schools um hospitals same in kosovo they did the same thing they said no more speaking albanian in in your schools and hospitals and so the albanian population decided to homeschool everybody right you start chipping away at somebody's identity and they become very very dangerous it scares me to think about that because i see i see the two respective political parties

Starting point is 01:59:15 in this country doing that and they they and this is this is the process that i was talking about earlier is that this is the idea of schismogenesis. Yes. Please explain this because I have tried to explain this and never realized there was a term for it. This is beautiful. Yeah, and shout out to David Graeber for this. I think it was David Graeber. Anyway, schismogenesis is the idea of defining yourself or your culture based upon what you are not and usually you're basing that off of

Starting point is 01:59:49 another culture that is in your sphere right so two cultures will say um well i know what i am but i also know what i'm not and i'm not them? So, and it goes, it propels itself in polarizing directions because as there is mounting disgust with the opposition, there's also mounting galvanization with the other population. So, they can say, well, you know, those people on the right, man, they keep moving further right, and I'm just going to move further left because I just want to show how not them I am. And this is schismogenesis. So schism, you know, meaning like a break between. So the great schism was a point in religious history, and then genesis to be born, schismogenesis. Yeah, that is uh powerful term it's what it comes all the way

Starting point is 02:00:47 back to though is the idea that you see like i took the leap i guess a little bit with it where you see another person like relating this to our culture now where you were talking about earlier how people are constantly probing to try to see where you stand just based on one thing right right and you attack people without looking at their intention or their nuance yeah and you keep calling them something like if you're on the right you call them a a liberal wiener or whatever if you're on the left you call them a trumper yeah or something like that and you keep sticking your finger in their face over and over again. And eventually what happens? Psychologically, the law of physics starts to apply. Human beings give in and every action gets an equal but opposite reaction

Starting point is 02:01:32 and they become what you've been calling them. It's this self-fulfilling prophecy where then the person who's doing the calling gets to say they're right, but they made the world a worse place by making someone else the opposite of them because they're already bad, but now this person sucks too. This is a great term that you love too

Starting point is 02:01:48 is uh is the max tag marks term of moloch right oh like explain this yeah so moloch um at least i i think i i hope i'm not not butchering his his concept because i think it's a beautiful concept. But the idea of Moloch is when you follow naturally perverse incentives, or you follow natural incentives, and then you have this perverse outcome, right? You can say, so I don't know, a banker wants to drive profits for whoever, and he wants to change regulations in order to do so, and those regulations might have helped the little guy somehow. Well, potentially that leads to him making a worse city for himself to live in. Nobody, like, he's followed his incentives but those

Starting point is 02:02:46 incentives are perverse in nature right um let me give a better example of that i think it's another good example of of uh uh of this this idea of moloch the the emergence of an anti-human perverse incentive yes right this This is how, yeah. It's almost something that, like, hates humanity. But since everybody is following their natural incentives, it's this emergent property, right? So everybody wants their version of peace and freedom. But to do that, it is leading them to other or to create a boogeyman on the other side

Starting point is 02:03:29 of the political spectrum from them and so in trying to create this better system which everybody feels represented everybody feels um uh equitable in they're actually creating a system that's unlivable for everybody. It's an offshoot of a different idea. It's destabilizing. I make this word up, but it's like this offshoot of like utopitarianism. Yeah. Right? So we've been fascinated in history with different powerful people, so to speak, who have tried

Starting point is 02:04:04 to like research into controlling minds and stuff like that and now and now we're at this crossing point where people are starting uh the average person starting to understand this ai thing is real and like oh my god what does this mean what could it be in reality even if even if the algorithms that have been built aren't officially like the full-blown AIs that we're now looking at bringing in like the 2010 Facebook algorithm or something, the sparking of the flame of the threat is actually the fact that the the road for it has been the internet the road for these algorithms to drive their cars on is the internet and what happens is people are brainwashed using the lowest common denomination of their flaws right so we've talked about them today people want to be on teams people want to therefore signal to their teams that i'm a part of you people want to have an

Starting point is 02:05:12 enemy especially in peace times humans are wired to need an enemy you need a war that's why maybe the military industrial complex thinks that way we had Bustamante has been on this show. I'll play it again right now and said – and literally said that. We need an enemy. Like you created an enemy where we didn't need to have one. And so now you're saying that. So do you understand why people would judge that when they hear that? Yeah, so what I'm saying is not exactly what you're saying. What I'm saying is we will, the world, when the

Starting point is 02:05:45 world doesn't have an enemy, it gets lost. When human beings don't have something to rally against, they start finding things to rally against. So they just, they subdivide and they subdivide again and they start, they argue about whatever. They argue everything from buy local to, you know, you're a bad person if you hang this sign and you don't hang that sign or whatever it might be. They find reasons to subdivide. The only way that we all ditch all these subdivisions is when we unify behind one large enemy. Well, I mean, look, this is this is exactly the Moloch that we're talking about. Like, yes, defense industry wants to make profit so that we're safe.

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Starting point is 02:06:48 Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Maybe those wars make us unsafe. Well, that's great for business but they already they're changing the they're changing people i think evolutionarily like the that's what i mean with the ai already here the ai is already controlling people because the law of large numbers and across populations

Starting point is 02:07:20 people are going to behave to a larger extent in this way or that way or this way or that way and we've already adapted to that to the point that where you're already seeing it play out and simulated on on a grand scale one of the first podcasts we ever did in here was with my friend alex horowitz who at the time was the chief of staff for eight sleep which is like you know the best sleep product in the world the earliest affiliate sponsor of the show which was really cool i've always wanted to sleep on one of those it it's it's a is it pretty good i sleep on it every night that rules it's phenomenal and with all the little health problems i've had and stuff like i can't imagine not having that over the past few years i've slept in some fucked up beds oh that's what i'm saying this is this is a real

Starting point is 02:08:03 messed up beds man this is a first world problem Slept in some real messed up beds, man. This is a first world problem so when you're back here in the first world I want you to enjoy a good eight sleep. I will, I will. But it would be funny

Starting point is 02:08:11 if you took like the portable like eight sleep cover into like some war torn fucking country like you guys have a cut I could put this on? Queen size?

Starting point is 02:08:19 I feel like I feel like that would be something I wouldn't admit to in print. But he when I had Horo in here he's such a smart fucking guy. We did a podcast that had some hot takes and some cold takes. There were certainly some cold ones in there.

Starting point is 02:08:35 But some of the explanations he had from being inside the belly of the beast in tech and understanding how this stuff works about how they can simulate behaviors ring in my ear all the time. He's like they know, like they being anyone who has access to this stuff. It's not like even this elite group. It's just people who are in like tech and build these tools. They can process what people are going to do before they do it by using these tools to figure out how they respond to basic little behaviors yeah to the point that we and you know this should be kind of common sense now but the way he explained it was so beautiful to the point that they can figure out how things are going to go you know you've had intelligence over the years

Starting point is 02:09:19 try to map things out and control them from behind the scenes and sometimes that gets caught or whatever across the world now they it's just as simple as they log in and they can they can see what people are going to do because they know we are still these predictable animals even if there's little nuances to how we do things we're still going to take certain actions based on certain impulses every time and when they can control what those impulses are whether that be as something as simple as trying to figure out how you're going to buy something yep to you know how you're going to think about something it gets scary out here well this is i think they call that um uh like a in silico analysis have you ever heard of that i don't

Starting point is 02:10:00 think so in silico i think it's called in silico um it's the it's the concept of um uh making a model of is it is it a thing yeah i have it behind you you can read it right here sweet right there yeah so yeah you're you're performing you're you're modeling behavior uh in in large sets of of human beings in Silico, in Silicon. And so you're creating, you're giving this computer the notion of an individual and seeing what behaviors that individual will take. You know what's really crazy is, have you seen the NVIDIA, what is it, like NVIDIA demo where they have, like it's like a NVIDIA demo, where they have, like, it's like a video game.

Starting point is 02:10:47 The character comes into a bar, and he starts talking to the bartender, and the bartender doesn't have any scripted dialogue, but, like, talks, because they have an AI large language model that is, like, and the large language model has been fed this character's backstory. So you can talk to the character about absolutely anything but they'll always like talk about their own backstory and then learn more about you and it like does it on the fly like what the fuck oh my god yeah yeah

Starting point is 02:11:17 point being it's just getting it's getting scary the tools are the tools i mean it goes back to generating consent right the tools to generate consent will become much more – are becoming much more powerful. And how identities will find one another and merge with one another to create other person groups will be very interesting. Good word there merge right so like there's this this idea of um at least in um the sovereign individual this is a a book that sort of formed a bit of the the early silicon valley dna uh and it predicts a death of the nation state uh because the nation state will be unable according to this author be unable to fulfill the needs of what the nation state ideally does.

Starting point is 02:12:08 For people out there, can you define exactly what you're referring to when you say nation state? So a country as we would know them currently. Borders, central government. The general – the generally – like granted in my book, like I try to figure out what a country really is. But I think the geopolitical definition of it is an area of land contained within borders which has a government, right? It's a fairly broad idea. But yeah, that's what we mean by nation states. And nation states have certain things that they usually provide to their populace, right? They oftentimes provide defense. They provide sometimes healthcare if you live in a different country than the United States, but they provide infrastructure. They provide rules for the road for doing commerce and social interactions. And then oftentimes, as an emergent property, or sometimes as a property that is astroturfed onto the place, they provide a galvanizing story

Starting point is 02:13:17 for the individuals. So what happens when financial power and even the power of violence and even cultural power is dissolved away from that land, right? Think about how businesses in the United States export labor out to, you know, Malaysia or to China, wherever. Now, they're an American business, but maybe most of their employees or most of their outsourced labor is happening outside of our borders because money doesn't care about borders. And so now divide away money from a nation. Can you?

Starting point is 02:14:01 Then divide away violent force away from a nation. Here's a question. Maybe I'm fucked fucked up but i've said this on podcast and i hope i'm right if a government doesn't have some level of control over money they can't exist it becomes very difficult becomes very very difficult um i think you'd i'd have to uh to understand exactly what you mean by control over money, right? I mean – sorry, I'm just checking the production here. Make sure we're good. I mean that – can I use it in an example just to make it easier? Yeah, of course.

Starting point is 02:14:39 Yeah, yeah. Governments aren't incentivized for something like Bitcoin to work. Oh, this is perfect. Hold on. Let's talk about this. Go with it. aren't incentivized for something like bitcoin to work ah oh this is perfect hold on let's let's talk about this go with it okay so um let me let me gather this up uh by uh by taking it back to iraq for a second oh it's iraqi kurdistan good because i was gonna bring back there okay fantastic so um while i was in iraqi kurdistan i was um you know i was hanging out in erbil and also just um

Starting point is 02:15:02 you know i'm on a damn shoestring budget. I've got a couple hundred dollars and I'm trying to live for a year in unrecognized nations. Like you do. And so I went to the, like, local hangout for, like, the fancy journalists. And I decided I would go fishing for journalists so that I could maybe tag along with them, work with their fixers and translators and just, you know, learn. Their fixers?

Starting point is 02:15:31 Yeah, yeah. Just their fixers, which is like a translator and a person who like helps you get interviews, stuff like that. Got it. Because these rallies were coming up and I, you know, I didn't have a translator.

Starting point is 02:15:44 I have no access. I'm a third grade teacher so these are the ones that were the pictures on your on your camera that the guy was looking at this is from the Masoud Barzani rally so anyway I just went to this hotel and

Starting point is 02:15:58 you know was having a coffee and just listening for somebody to speak English and then I was like, well, I'm gonna go make friends with them because I want their their access to these rallies. And so I was just sitting there, you know, with my earbuds and but like, not, you know, actually listening to anything, waited till a couple of journalists spoke English, and then, you know, insinuated myself into their conversation. And really nice guys,

Starting point is 02:16:22 shout out to Royal and Marcel. They're Dutch. So we chatted for a bit and I told him what my project was. And Marcel was like, hey, you know, if you're interested in countries that aren't like fully recognized, you should check out Liberland. And I was like, what's Liberland? And he's like, well, it's the world's first libertarian microstate that's funded off of cryptocurrencies. And it's on an empty island between croatia and serbia and i was like that doesn't that doesn't get me any closer to understanding what liberland is man i don't what and he's like well look do you do you just want the contact information for the president of liberland because i have that and I was like yeah of course I want yes yeah dude I want the president's phone number oh my god and so while I was uh while I was on my stateless journey

Starting point is 02:17:13 I um just kind of whenever I had free time and because it just was kind of funny yeah yeah I have the map behind yeah I I would just like message the president of liberland like like i just slide in his his dms and be like hey i'm working on a book about you know this stuff and you know i would be in kurdistan this this whole time so uh my nazi and he like never really responded to me but then i started i mean one of my buddies uh he just thought it was so hilarious that i had this. And so he'd always ask me like, hey, have you messaged Leverland again? And you said it's an island?

Starting point is 02:17:51 Yeah, it's an island in the Danube. Oh, in the river. In the river, yeah. Son of a bitch. So like you can like see like the two shores very easily. Yeah. Like right there. Exactly.

Starting point is 02:18:01 How big is this island? Seven square kilometers. It's about as big as the Vatican. Well, that works. I mean, yeah, right? So anyway, I was just bothering the president of Liberland, and I finished up in Kosovo, and then I went to a place called Transnistria, which is this place between Ukraine and Moldova. Really strange little unrecognized autonomous zone um they consider

Starting point is 02:18:26 themselves their own country but they're only recognized by other unrecognized countries um and it's a strange place um but anyway as i was writing there i was interviewing people there and eventually i get an email back from liberland and liberland's like hey uh if you want to meet us you can come to our third year anniversary I'm like where is it and they're like it's in it's in Novi Sad Serbia uh and I was like okay so in another country yeah I'm like so when do I have to get there and they're like you got to get there in three days so i'm just like i'm in eastern moldova next to ukraine um like what year is this it is 2018 okay um and so can i stop you i have a question yeah are they they're not recognized we know that but like do they pay taxes well hold on so because this is gonna get weirder and uh so i found out about the liberlandians from

Starting point is 02:19:29 you know just like going to going to meet them and i didn't really even know what meeting them meant there was very there wasn't a ton of information marcel had made a documentary about them um and i was just told through these like like, random cryptic messages, like, yeah, just go up to this, this harbor in northern Serbia, and you can maybe find us there on, on the boats. And so I just, like, you know, I'm following the instructions of some stranger who doesn't want to identify themselves for some reason and uh i get up to apatine harbor in serbia and i'm like well i'm looking for a boat so i guess it's on the water so i walk towards the harbor and then i see the see the flag of libra land just flying over this houseboat and i go up and there's a guy on the boat this shirtless dude is on the boat and he's hanging out with presumably his girlfriend and i was like hey and he like looks over and he's like are you a liberlandian and i was like no and he's like well let's change that and come aboard i'm like okay so

Starting point is 02:20:39 i go up and i meet this guy and um i'm like what is happening here he's like oh well we're cleaning up the boat for the third year anniversary because uh we're gonna we're gonna go see the island and i was like oh cool dude is like like this big old crypto anarchist guy i'd never heard a bitcoin at this point where was he originally from the netherlands um and he was like, I realized one day that the euro was funded from death. And I couldn't be a part of that system anymore. And I was like, what? How does that work? And then he's like, well, you know, he sort of runs me through the general, like, crypto-anarchist, you know, shaking your hand at the Federal Reserve thing.

Starting point is 02:21:24 I did a couple podcasts with my boy, Matt Kaminashu, who's so smart, but he talks like that. He's like, what is the U.S. dollar back by? Yeah. The U.S. military. Dipped in blood. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:21:36 But mind you, I was having this conversation with a shirtless Dutch guy, shout out to Yoshi, and on the top of this houseboat with the Liberland flag flying in back of me i'm like what the fuck is happening and so uh and he's like yeah well i'm unbanked like i got arrested by the croatian police and they took me to croatian jail i could have gotten out any time um but i wouldn't pay them in their money i would only pay them in bitcoin and i was like

Starting point is 02:22:02 you gotta hand it to the dude is like dedicated to his thing. And he's like, well, okay, just go. And I'm like, look, I'm trying to meet the president. And he's like, cool. Go to the conference, the cryptocurrency conference in Novi Sad tomorrow. And I'll see what I can do. And I'm like, okay, great. Thanks, shirtless guy.

Starting point is 02:22:23 And I was like, real like real quick like how'd you how'd you make all your bitcoin he's like oh i was a rent boy in the netherlands and i was like what is that and he's like i suck dick for bitcoin and i was like oh like in the red light district or some shit i guess is that even the right country it is this is in the netherlands but i was like i i was like what year and he's like 2013. I was like, you must have a lot of Bitcoin. He's like, I do. And I'm like, cool. You're unzipping your pants.

Starting point is 02:22:53 Cool, man. And then I got on my bus back to Novi Sad. And then I was like, I guess I'll meet him at the cryptocurrency conference the next day. So go to the cryptocurrency conference. And then I meet the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is this really genteel, upper-class Englishman, and he's working with the Queen of England, and I'm like, what the – how are you – He's working with the Queen of England and he's the Secretary of State? Yes, yes, yes. All of those things.

Starting point is 02:23:25 How's that? I asked him that and he's like, well, we all have different identities, don't we? And I was like, but what are we doing here? He's like, we're making a country. I'm like – What does the Queen think of this? I don't think he asked her. I didn't – I should have asked that.

Starting point is 02:23:39 There's a lot of questions that I should have asked along this entire journey that I just – I was like – You have a million things coming at you and it's impossible to ask all of them so anyway we talked for a long time and honestly he was he's a brilliant dude talking about self-determination and about about like what liberland is the idea of creating this not only like you know a state that was created because it was, this island was declared no man's land at the fall of Yugoslavia. So since it was declared no man's land,

Starting point is 02:24:13 the president, Vyjlika, he could come in and be like, yo, this is my country now. I got a flag. Now we got to, like, I've declared. Now I got to get recognition. And the idea more broadly is like creating this libertarian free economic zone that exists in Europe, but is not necessarily a part of Europe.

Starting point is 02:24:33 That's actually not that weird. Like Lichtenstein is the statelet that, like the Isle of Jersey has these, these different economic rules. Yeah. The Isle of jersey in jersey where the fuck is that it's off of the coast of england um really yeah that's why you're new jersey we're not the only jerk old jersey old jersey is this island i thought it was but i thought old jersey

Starting point is 02:24:55 was actually in the fucking country no it's an island it's an island yeah it's an island they got like that explains so much weird economic things that like – I mean there's even a place called the Isle of – I think it's the Isle of Kish, which is a free economic zone outside of Iran. What does that even mean, a free economic zone? It's kind of like – No oil? I'm sure there's an actual definition for it, but I think it's like a place where you can do business in the gray area of international regulations. Son of a bitch. All right.

Starting point is 02:25:28 I'll put Jersey, the map of Jersey in the corner. It is an island. Yeah. I know. Oh, wait a second. Is that? That's not right. That's by France.

Starting point is 02:25:38 Yeah. No, it is. And they even speak a language that's like part English. But the English own this? How did that happen? Fucking wars. This is like if you can imagine like part English. But the English own this? How did that happen? Fucking wars. This is like, if you can imagine someone like...

Starting point is 02:25:49 It's going to be a bad visual to put on it. It's literally wrapped by France. Word, yeah. Where's Normandy? I don't know. Regular countries aren't my thing. I don't know if you've gathered that, dude. Anyway, continue continue i'm sorry

Starting point is 02:26:05 i'm just no no and and you're but you're right though because the the language of jersey is actually has like like it's it's partially french and it's partially like old english and shit yeah i have a buddy from what did it say jay luke tway hello i don't know i gotta call my buddy owen he would know because he's from there um weird man so the world is so cool dude it's so dope that's the thing that's what i want to i want to share with people that's why you you write travel books because it's cool it's a bunch of weird people doing a bunch of weird shit um and so these liberlanders you know uh the secretary of state is like well are you gonna come on the boats tomorrow maybe you can meet the president there and i was like what what boats and he's like well we're gonna go out and see the island we actually can't to come on the boats tomorrow? Maybe you can meet the president there. And I was like, what boats?

Starting point is 02:26:45 And he's like, well, we're going to go out and see the island. We actually can't step foot on the island because the Croatian police, we're in a legal battle with Croatia right now. What does that look like? The legal battle was over. Croatia was anti-Liberland. Serbia was nominally supportive of libra land who owned

Starting point is 02:27:07 it before they went there it was declared no man's land by the treaty that ended yugoslavia so this seven kilometer island is just no one well now well these dudes pulled up depending on who flagged libra land depending on who you ask and they didn't just oh because people don't have jurisdiction yep so the crazy thing was the president of liberland ends up getting himself arrested by the croatian police the croatian and the the not not when i was there but previously um and croatia says hey you can't enter our country from another country legally speaking though that gave them a defensible claim to say you just said it's another country. Legally speaking, though, that gave them a defensible claim to say, you just said it's another country. You just recognized us.

Starting point is 02:27:51 And then by trying to stop people from going onto the island, they gave Liberland a de facto border force. So that's why Liberland could take... Wait, back up. What do you mean they gave them a de facto border force?

Starting point is 02:28:06 Well, their borders are protected. By who? The Croatian police that are trying to stop people from coming onto the Liberland Island. But it's the Croatian police protecting it. Mm-hmm. It's not the Liberland police. Right. Now they have...

Starting point is 02:28:21 I think they just... I think this just happened in Liberland. I try to keep abreast of Liberland news. I think they have an official border crossing with Croatia. Granted, this was five years ago that I was there. This was 2008. Anyway, so they're like, yeah, we're going to go on the boats. We're going to take all these crypto nerds, go down the Danube for a couple of hours, on these like boats and granted they're not all yachts

Starting point is 02:28:46 they're like a bunch of different like boats all kind of cobbled together so like some people were just like on dinghies and some people were on little house boats and I got on the biggest boat because I figured that's where the president was going to be naturally and so

Starting point is 02:29:02 I'm like great I'm on the boat we're going down the Danube uh everybody's just like partying and listening to like top 40 hits off of like some boombox and we're all drinking official liberland wine which is called tierra nullis now do they are the grapes like stepped on in liberland i don't think so i have no idea where they came into class it's fucking josh and just stuck a label on it. Yeah, right. It came in a plastic bottle. Oh, Franzia.

Starting point is 02:29:29 They're real cheap. Christ. Slap in the bag of Liberland wine. That's what I should have called that chapter. God damn it. So, and it's just this wild scene because it's like all these crypto anarchists like partying on like a little flotilla of boats while the Croatian police are like tracking us as we go up the Danube River between Serbia and Croatia. And I'm just like, man, I'm so glad that I just bothered the president of Libra land for like six months because it got me on these boats.

Starting point is 02:30:01 But I got to meet the president of Libra land. How many people did you say was on this boat? Probably about on the boat that I was on this boat? Probably about, uh, on the boat that I was on, maybe about 20, 15, but I think the entire conference had about 80 people at it. And how big's the boat again? It's a houseboat. It was like, um,

Starting point is 02:30:16 two stories. You can probably find it. Look up the Liberty Boat. The Liberty Boat? Yeah, Liberty Boat, Liberland. The Liberty Boat, Liberland. The Liberty Boat, Liberland. If I can get it, I will put it on the screen. I'm sure you'll find it. On the screen.

Starting point is 02:30:31 Is that it? That's it. Son of a bitch. All right, we'll put this on the corner of the screen. If you look up, I don't know if you can, but if you look up my Instagram, you'll see all this shit. I don't know if I'm logged in on the computer. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:30:44 What's the wait is there a closer up is that it right there too or no that's a different that one i think is their new boat i was on i think i was on that one i was on that one that's funny this was like a fucking pontoon boat with like two stories no i know right so i'm getting on the boat and i'm like just looking for the president of liberland and i can't find him and i'm like i saw him go on there's no way he could have gone anywhere else it's a boat it's a boat he can't leave just leave a boat because it's a boat right and he's and then i'm looking over the the railing and i'm just trying to figure out where the president is and then i hear people cheering from him back and then i look over and president of liberland

Starting point is 02:31:25 is just tearing along with daniel but on damn jet ski fucking just cruising alongside the croatian police between the cryptocurrency junkie boats this is so bizarre i know i know your life is a movie it's fucking weird man um and i was like i I was like, I have to find some way on this jet ski. I got to get it. This has to happen. I agree with Danny. Seth Rogen has to play you. God damn it.

Starting point is 02:31:55 Damn it. So the guy's cruising on the jet ski. It's truck month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 Sierra 1500 pro graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months with an available 5.3 liter V8 engine, 20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off-road suspension with available two inch factory installed lift kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13,200 pounds. You'll be ready for anything this truck month. Truck month is on now.

Starting point is 02:32:27 Ask your GMC dealer for details. It won't take long to tell you neutrals ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So what should we talk about no sugar added neutral refreshingly simple between the police and the boat um And I'm like, I mean, basically, I'm just like abandoning all self-respect. And I'm just like hanging off the side of the boat, like waving my arms to be like, hey, it's me, the guy from emails. And then I hear this dude.

Starting point is 02:33:20 He's like, you want to get on the jet ski? And I turn around and he's like, oh, I'm Tom. I'm like, cool. What do you do? He's like, you want to get on the jet ski and i turn around and he's like oh i'm tom i'm like cool what do you do he's like i'm the foreign secretary and i was like nice okay cool man any anybody could introduce me to like a horse could be like i'm i'm the the secretary of war and i'm like yep everything is everything i don't know what's happening i'm on a cryptocurrency boat surrounded by croatian police and a president of a country is And I'm like, yep, everything is everything. I don't know what's happening. I'm on a cryptocurrency boat surrounded by Croatian police, and a president of a country is mowing around on a jet ski in the middle of the Danube. Real quick, just a question about the actual island.

Starting point is 02:33:55 Do they have homes on this island? I'll get there. They live in town. I'll get there. So they did, but they were bulldozed by the Croatians eventually, or originally. Now they're building again. They weren't like tents, they were real homes? I think Yoshi was living in a tent for a short period of time.

Starting point is 02:34:11 Makes sense. Yeah. So Tom is like, hey, you want to get on the boat? And I was like, yeah. And he had heard about my project. I guess my email assault had circulated amongst the brass. And so he waves Vitt down and Vitt like comes along and he's like on the jet ski and he's super blasé. Because he's just, that's just, that's just him.

Starting point is 02:34:40 So like, I don't like, I think this is a remarkable moment in my life. But he's just like, you know, on a jet ski and the would be like, okay, yeah, you can get on if you want, and, like, hand Tom my keys and passport and stuff. I'm like, thanks, Tom. He, like, lowers me down onto the jet ski behind the president, and, like, we haven't been introduced to one another. Well, you're introduced now. The first way I meet a head of state is just by holding him. And I don't have a life vest or anything on. This is an anarchist boat party. So I'm just holding him like a spider monkey.

Starting point is 02:35:26 And he's like, hold on. I'm like,'m like okay i will and then he just blasts off and we're just like going on a jet ski imagine if you fell off oh my god at this point i was ready to die for this this book um and so i i'm just dumbstruck because it's like Croatian police lights and Katy Perry songs and blockchain conversations and Tiara Nullis and Tom and Yoshi and all these like, what the fuck is happening? Why I'm on the back of the jet ski holding a head of state. And I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm missing out on my like only chance to ask him a question and i have so many because it's like you've i've just been through three different countries all of which fought violent conflicts to draw a line on a map and the way that liberland is doing it is through a cryptocurrency conference and they have free t-shirts like what is happening and so i like how long are you on this with them briefly i know that the ride is going to come to an end soon so i have to i have

Starting point is 02:36:31 to you know i have to make my move and and ask him my question so i like i kind of choke up on him you know start with the neck i like get my my head over a little fore head over his shoulder. That's the right move. And I was like, hey, I'm Eric. And he's like, I know who you are. You're the email guy. I was like, yes. Yes, I am.

Starting point is 02:37:02 And then I was like, look, I can't remember the exact wording that I had that question in. But it's like, I've just been living in unrecognized countries for all this time and people have to fight and die for them and fight these bloody revolutions and then even end on, you know, in this, this sort of shadow realm of partial recognition and it's heartbreaking, but it's also inspiring and dah, dah, dah. I'm like, what, was it worth it it was it worth it to start your own country and then he like kind of stops the the jet ski in the middle of like the crypto nerds and the croatian police and he's just like everybody should start their own country and he just like fucking guns it and then just hits a sick 180 huge wall of water and then he just deposits me back on the boat and i was like

Starting point is 02:37:51 that's either the most brilliant thing that i've ever heard or it's just complete nonsense either way i was like i support vich at league of a president and then i was like my criteria for a potential leader is so low that all you have to do for my vote is a jet ski ride not kill people though too right that too but it's like i'm a child i'm the problem you just dangle the right thing in front of my eyes and i'm like yeah i'll vote for you this sounds great you seem neat um and then shit got weirder right so i get off the get off the jet ski you know kind of move myself up with the help of tom and and then tom is like um so like where's the where's the next stop on your on your stateless country tour and i was like i'm gonna go to somaliland um northern the

Starting point is 02:39:00 autonomous area in northern somalia and he's like cool we have an embassy there how many people are in somaliland uh a couple million i can't remember all right that's that's a lot but i can't remember off the off the top of my head we have an embassy there oh my god and i was like cool and he's like you want to stay at it i was like yeah tom yeah yeah i want to stay at the liberland embassy and yes of course i do you think i said all these emails for nothing and so i i go back i'm hanging out uh with my girlfriend in bulgaria for a while and i'm like my god, you'll never guess what, like, I'm gonna go stay with the Libra landers in Somaliland, which is great, because I was like, I have $0. At this point, I had $300 in the world, like my boot money had

Starting point is 02:39:55 long ran out, I am just going to northern Somalia, and hoping that that is enough money to live for like six weeks right and so i don't hear anything from liberland at this point and i'm freaking the fuck out because i have a ticket to go to hargeisa hargeisa hargeisa is the capital of somaliland um good to know yeah yeah really interesting city um uh previously or sometimes known as the Dresden of Africa due to the bombing campaigns during the fall of Said Barre's regime. So I, you know, like, I can't do anything else. Like, I just start sending text messages and emailing, being like, hey, it's me, Eric.

Starting point is 02:40:51 Remember me from the jet ski uh what am i going oh i need to know how to get to the embassy you just tell me an address or whatever they use in because like i just gotta make plans if i'm going there in like two or three days and then I get a call from the president he's like send me your number and I was like okay and I get a call from him and and he's like hey and I'm like hello mr president I guess and he's like yeah so uh we had a problem and I was like okay oh that's not good I know and I'm like, okay. Oh, that's not good. I know, and I'm like, what's the problem? And he's like, well, we lost our ambassador to Somaliland, and I was like, oh, fuck. Did he die?

Starting point is 02:41:31 Again, this is questions I should have asked but never did. And I was like, I was thinking about myself. I was like, that means I can't stay at the embassy if you don't have an ambassador. And then he's like, yeah um look i i can't talk long but i don't know if this would mess up your book or whatever but like would you want to do that are you you're not even a citizen you're a guy you met on a jet ski and he wants you to go represent his i mean it's this little island country but he wants you to go represent his i mean it's this little island country but he wants you to go represent you in an official capacity in another faraway land that isn't even recognized

Starting point is 02:42:09 and again sir i say to you are you in the cia if i was that would be the most bat shit completely nonsensical operation for zero purpose. Listen, I've heard some crazier ones. You never know. A little crypto anarchy? I mean, look. A little embezzelito? You never know.

Starting point is 02:42:36 I mean, that is probably... We didn't make any money while I was in Somaliland, if I can put it that way. Listen, here's what we're gonna do good you're gonna stop right there for a second this is this is going great we have way too much on the bone and you live in fucking albania so i can't just bring you in here like next week or something so we're gonna stop we're gonna do another episode okay i'm gonna drive you up to new york tonight i'm sent i'm not sending you on a fucking bus oh no i think i can take the train no well i'm taking you back

Starting point is 02:43:09 it's no problem how far away is new york from here i can do if i'm driving 95 minutes or so so sure yeah yeah i got you okay so we're gonna do this right so we're gonna do another episode i think i'll release it on youtube i'll figure this all out later maybe it'll be patreon i'll definitely put some content on patreon ahead of time and some exclusive content there. But we got to talk all about Somaliland. We got to talk about the Balkans, which is fucking so fascinating. It's like the center of the earth in a lot of ways, center of conflict. We got to talk about all your time in Kosovo, learning about the formation of the country and the genocide that occurred there.

Starting point is 02:43:44 And it wasn't just in Kosovo. There were other genocides, Bosnian, stuff like that. We got to talk about European nationalism. There's a lot on the bones. So this is going to be the end of this episode. And we will see you guys for the next episode. We'll be right back. You and me, I guess. Sick. All right, guys, we did end up talking about all that stuff I just mentioned there and more. This next episode is absolutely loaded. So hit that subscribe button, hit that bell button so you find out when it's coming out. And I'm going to be putting it out two days after I release this episode. So if it's more than two

Starting point is 02:44:13 days on the date stamp right there, the link is already in the description below. Let's get it. That said, give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - The SMALLEST Country in the World You've NEVER Heard of | Eric Czuleger • 163

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Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - The SMALLEST Country in the World You've NEVER Heard of | Eric Czuleger • 163

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