Shaun Newman Podcast - #1084 - Drew Weatherhead

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Drew Weatherhead is a Canadian bestselling author, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, and content creator known for blending philosophical inquiry with storytelling. He has published two non-fiction books—Consciousness Reality & Purpose and Layers of Truth—that explore deep questions about human existence, truth, and perception from subjective viewpoints. His debut fiction work, Fractures in Love, launches the epic Fractures fantasy series, following a young enslaved girl who discovers hidden powers in a richly imagined world; with his new book Fractures in Peace set to debut July 17th. Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Drew’s Book: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0H56ZK19P?dplnkId=6bce6aac-3430-4e12-8801-f12c3510475c Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Well, I tell you what, we're burning. How's that? Get the tongue working, shot holding Mackinac. We're burning the midnight oil. It is now five days until we take off on the trip.

Me and Drew sat down, well, in the evening, so that's why it's burning the oil, kind of late in the evening. Regardless, it was great to run into them. You're going to hear it all here. Very short, like, let's get to some episode sponsors, shall we? When it comes to precious metals, all right, look to Alberta's own Silver Gold Bull. Got their start in Rocky Mountain House. Now they are worldwide. I mean, it's just everywhere I go.

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made sure I had nothing to worry about. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, Substack, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. Make sure to share with a friend if you're enjoying the show. All right? Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a Canadian

bestselling author, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt. Yeah, I'm talking about Drew Weatherhead. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Numa podcast, folks. Sitting with Drew Weatherhead. How can you tell that Sean has a little bit been running around lately? It isn't just the hair. It's the fact I didn't click record on the cameras. I take a phone call in the middle of it. I'll put a little God's timing there because I'm like, if I just kept rolling, I wouldn't have noticed it. But as soon as I'm on the phone, I'm like, wait, something is off. Anyways, how's Drew doing? Good. I'm starting to wonder if you're wearing the hat because you've been pulling the hair out.

Well, I tell you what, things, here's, here's, I had a whole bunch of things that were stressing me out. And then it was my next door neighbor in this office. It's like, well, you know the answer, Sean. And I was like, uh, and she's like, I got the answer. And I'm like, well, I'm interested in what the answer is. And she's like, you just got to leave it up to God. Those are things you can't control. And I'm like, it's a very good point. Why didn't I think of that? So, uh, yeah, Yeah, like two weeks ago, I was pretty stressed. But, you know, as this release is five days away from leaving for a year. And, I mean, all the stresses that come before taking your family away, I don't need to explain them to you.

You know it better than I'm going to say most or almost all. Done it a few times. Been doing it for five years nonstop. Yeah. And, of course, I pointed to your hair. I'm going to point it again. He comes in. I got folks, you can see me.

I got a backwards hat today. I'm wearing a backwards hat for an interview and quite some time. Maybe a mash up here and there. But you got to do. Hey, you come in looking sharp today. I got to do it once, man. You've always outmogged me each show with a better hairdo, so now I got you.

Before you hit the road, no, you lost this one. Now, okay, I want to rewind this, okay? You bought a house in Japan, but you've got to walk people through this story so that they fully understand. and if you don't know Drew's story he's been on the podcast man it's got to be

half a dozen maybe half a dozen something like that four five six I remember when you were doing your podcast daily people were listening to both daily and I remember the audience talking about what you were up to and where you were at and all the different things

but you know your journey is led in very interesting ways right and now what I'm watching on Instagram it's like you're in a a house in you're in a I'm like, that is a true thing to do. I didn't realize I'd become a verb. But yeah, it's a lot of movement in my life, so I guess that makes sense.

Hey, before we get going, I, whenever somebody comes on the Sean Newman podcast, I like to give them a coin. This is for you. This is from Japan. They would call it Goen, which means five yen, and it is a lucky coin. It's a lucky coin? They aren't very common. You get them sometimes in your change, but when people get them, they are reticent to use them to spend them because they consider them good luck. And you'll notice a little hole in the middle there.

A lot of people will put them on like a necklace or a keychain or something and just carry it around. Some people leave them in their wallet because it's supposed to be like good business luck. But never spend it. They say always keep it or give it away or something to somebody that you like. You want to know, I'll put it in the coin collection beside the coin Martin Armstrong gave me. Okay. because he gave me an old Roman coin. Actually, he's giving me two old Roman coins now.

And I'm like, I didn't even, it's not like they're worth $10,000 or anything crazy. No, that's literally worth $0.5. Yeah, but I mean, it's the thought, right? So, thank you, sir. And there you go. That is very much appreciated. You won't appreciate like the silver gold bowl ones you have, but hopefully it will remind you of our friendship when you're on the road.

Well, I tell you what, when I have some issues, along the road, you're going to be in the list of people. What did you do here? Yeah, yeah, I've got a few stories. So about Japan. Yeah, it was something that I couldn't even tell you right now still. I couldn't tell you why we bought a house in Japan. I could tell you like the financial reasons why they're very cheap right now

and there's a whole bunch of interesting reasons why that is. But there's no reason why I needed to or really should have to be honest. But it just everything was, we were talking about, before the show too. Sometimes things just line up in a way that's like, I just can't ignore this anymore. Apparently, this is what's happening next because it feels like you're almost reading your own story instead of living it. And it's like, I guess in this chapter, Drew moves to Japan. And so we ended up buying what's called an Akiah, which means abandoned home. And that's a whole adventure of itself. Think of when you're a grandfather and your grandkids

is it true you but yes yes it is you're going to be one of the most interesting men on the block i hope so yeah you can be that meme right the most interesting man in the world you should at least aspire to it right but yeah we have we right now own outright not rents not sleese we own a house in toyama japan which is on the sea of japan side two blocks from the ocean and we bought it for 6500 american it's like less than people pay for an at tv we have a five bedroom house two blocks from the ocean in Japan. And again, that sounds like, well, this is just the greatest deal on earth. How could you not take it? And I get that because I did it. But you're not buying a new house and you're not buying necessarily a functional house. What you're buying is an abandoned

house that has almost no history that you get to know before you buy it. That's kind of part of the deal. It's sight unseen unless you go there and walk it. And some people do that. And I see why you might want to. They will pay for the return ticket to the other side of the earth to go walk something to see just how bad it is before they put some money down on it, even if it's less than 10K for a house. Because once we got there, we did buy it, sight unseen. And once we got there, I started recognizing, okay, it is in good condition as far as these abandoned houses go. I was actually, I got away with some stuff. Like the electricity worked right away. I talked to some other Akiah owners and they're like, what do you mean your electricity worked? That. That's a lot. I was actually,

That never happens. It was like, no, it did. It worked. I flicked the fuse box on and everything lit up. They're like, that's crazy. Usually you got to pay a couple thousand dollars, get an electrician in there, snoop out what's going on, the language barrier, a whole thing, and it takes some time. But no, that one worked.

For us, we had a lot of water issues that I didn't realize until we started to get going. And I've got, like you were saying, that Instagram page, it kind of chronicles some of that if you want to check it out. If you're not following it, uh... Yeah, it's called Weather Abroad, so you can check out me on that Instagram page. I don't have to you. updated as much right now because we're not in Japan, but it's honestly because I'm being lazy. I've got so much video backlog that I could be uploading. I've just got a bunch of other things I'm working on right now that I'm sure we'll talk about. But to get back to the point, yeah,

we had been living in Japan for three months this year and we plan on living up to six months a year, three months in the fall and three months in the spring. How wild is that? It's incredibly wild. And it's like most people, they would love to go to Japan. And I get it. It's amazing. could talk your ear off for 10 hours about just all the cool things about Japan. But that's the tourist version of Japan. You only get that for like one to two weeks. You have a great time. You spend all your yen. You go to Disneyland. You come home and you tell people. You get a lucky coin. You know, you're feeling pretty good. You stick it in your wallet. You tell people the right way to say, adigato, and then you feel like you've done something. When you have to live in Japan,

now you need to worry about when is the garbage day? What garbage do I put out? What do I have to do with the garbage. Where do I put it? How do I talk to people to find this out? If something goes wrong in my house, who do I call? How do I call? I can't just pick up a phone and say, hello. They won't know what I said. Most people in Japan, especially in the area that we're at, if you're not in Tokyo, most people don't speak English, which shouldn't be a surprise, you're in Japan, right? So, like, if you can't speak Japanese or at the very least understand a little bit of it, you're hooped. You cannot use the cell phone there. So did you understand much Japanese before we're going? I studied for a year and a half.

At this point, I've been practicing for about two years and I'm still not conversational. I can say some things. I can get by on like a first interaction level. Like if somebody says something, I kind of know what they're saying and I can reply and then I'm lost. Second interaction is like they can go anywhere in the world and my vocabulary is this big. I know about 3,000 words in Japanese, which is not nothing, but you better hope every topic that comes up has one. or some of those 3,000 words, otherwise you're just lost. And then there's the grammar, there's the cultural distinction.

Are you using the feminine or the masculine version of it? And it's like there's so many convoluting factors to screw up. What's been like, okay, let's go on the good side for a second. So you go across Japan. Before you go to Japan, like you mentioned you've been studying Japan, Japanese, sorry, Japan, for a year and a half trying to like, I assume get ready for it. Exactly. You were asking me, you know, when did the idea for the trip start?

I'm like, well, actually, it was a couple of years ago when we actually firmly started, like, working towards it. Sounds like Japan is similar for you, correct? Yeah, before we actually pulled the trigger on the house that we bought, I had been looking into that market for a year before that. And I didn't start looking into that market until I was already interested in Japan as an idea for six months before that. So, like, my daughter actually started us down this path

because she's a huge anime fan. She's a giant artist, so she's always drawing, and she's watching shows that are in Japanese, and she started learning Japanese so that she could understand the shows better. She speaks better Japanese than anybody in our house, which is kind of funny because she's so shy that she won't actually try it in person,

but she'll like, tell me, Dad, he said this. Like, she knows, right? But she was, like, bringing in that side of the culture into our house. And so I was like, well, if you're learning Japanese, I can try to learn Japanese. I'll pull up Duolingo, sure, let's start a streak. Let's see what I can do. And it started off as just like,

well, she's doing it, I'll do it kind of thing. And then it's like, oh man, the cultural creep starts happening. You start liking Japan. It's like, well, what's going on over there? And you start seeing these posts online of all these places that are so cheap. Why are they so cheap? I could buy that right now. I'm not a rich man, which is hilarious because everyone thinks you're rich over there because you bought a house.

Funny story. Total side topic. Sidebar here. One of the last days I'm in Japan, I have to go out to go get some groceries and to do that. We didn't have a car because I forgot to get my international license. Huge blob on my side. I should have done that. I missed it.

So we had to use public transit. Good news is their train system is immaculate. It gets you everywhere you want for pretty cheap. So there's a train station that's about five to seven minute walk from our door. It's right there. And in that time, I'm walking across the crosswalk for the last road I have to cross before the train station. And a guy, random stranger, drives up to stop at the light that I just initiated to walk across. He has to stop at the red.

And he rolls down his window and he says, oh, oh, assume him a cent, Sue me of a cent. Excuse me, excuse me. Like, hi, hi. And he starts giving a little bit of broken English. I'm like, oh, you speak English. Ego desia. Or deska. And he's like, oh, gosh, scoshi, a little bit, little bit.

And I'm like, okay, so I don't know you. I don't know why you're talking to me or why you want to talk to me. I just assume that I did something wrong. I assume that I caught across some sort of cultural boundary, which happens all the time. And you try your best, but you learn through mistakes there. I'm like, he's going to tell me that I shouldn't this, that, or the other, and I'll say thank you, and then we'll leave. But no, he says, Shottomate, it was just, just one moment. And he pulls his car around the side and he gets out.

I'm like, oh, now I'm screwed. What did I do that this guy, this random stranger pulls around the side and he's going to come talk to me face to face in person? And he walks, he crosses the street and he starts talking to me. And we're sort of trading some Japanese in English. He's trying to speak in English and I'm trying to reply in Japanese out of politeness. And he's like, oh, Jouz, Nihonko Jozu, your Japanese is good. I'm like, it's okay, it's okay, Zen Zen. And it takes like five minutes before I realize he's just interested in why the hell I'm here.

A white guy is in the neighborhood. And so he pulls over on the side of the road from whatever he's doing, parks his car and walks over to find out why I'm here. And I tell him that I bought a house. It's over there in Shosei, and he says, so you rent a house. Like no no no I bought a house. Oh you you you live like no no only for a few months. Oh you lease a house And he's thinking that I'm getting like there's a language problem. I'm like no bought kaimas I bought a house and he goes oh rich guy I'm like no no no no said not not rich but they don't they don't even understand like just how cheap these houses are because they don't like to buy old houses it's like a cultural thing there they'd rather buy new it's almost embarrassing to buy old it says that you're you're poor kind of thing

So a lot of these houses don't need to stay empty, but they just do because there's like cultural reasons why they don't want to buy them. So a bunch of us foreigners, us Guyjin, are coming in and buying them up because it's like, man, you could buy these in like a farmer's dozen and still have change left over. So it's a whole thing that long story short, like it's it plopped us down on the other side of the earth for three months in the last year. Well, and moving forward six months every year. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's just the thing.

I guess there's like 70 something countries in the world that have an agreement with Japan that they can stay. If you just have your passport, you can stay in their country for up to six months a year, 180 days, but only 90 at a time. So you've got to stay for maximum 90, then you've got to leave the country and then come back and you can do your other three months and then you have to leave. That's just the visitor visa there. There's a bunch of other visas, but that's the easy one. It's the one that we're going to do because I don't particularly want to live there full time at this point because I've got kids. and they've got grandparents in Canada that they want to see, and they're not coming to Japan.

So if we moved to Japan, they'd never see their grandparents. So for that reason, primarily, we'll still do like the round-the-world trip. So on the flip side, I don't think it's the negative, but would have been some of the things you didn't think about and then it started happening like, oh. You mentioned like going into an abandon.

How is you're like, well, hopefully the lights turn on? And then you have plumbing issues and you've got water and you're like, okay, well, I didn't see that. I assume there's not only one of those. Oh, I mean, it's everything. It's everything that you can think of because for the first, well, I was telling you this funny story on the truck ride earlier about the way they heat their house. I didn't even understand how they heated their house in general because I come from Canada. In Canada, the houses are insulated, obviously, and have central heating, obviously.

You've got a water heater or somewhere that goes to vents that are in every room, and every room heats when you turn the thermostat up. And so I assume that's how every house works, because we live in the year 2026. Well, not in Japan. As it turns out, turning the gas on on the house does nothing for your heat. All that does is turns on your gas oven, and they turn on your water heater, which is run off a kerosene tank in the backyard that has to be filled up. up like however long it takes you to run as many showers and dishes before you run out of kerosene and then you need to get more kerosene brought in and like a mobile truck will come and fill it so that you continue to have heat on your water but the house heat there's only two ways that

they heat it unless you have a really modern house so none of these akiyas will be new enough which is like in the 90s on everything like our house is from the 60s um it's cool it's got like traditional japanese architecture and i love it but it didn't have insulation in the walls so that not the heat doesn't stay the cold stays it feels like a refrigerator when it's cold outside and the only two ways you can heat your house is one i had to have the gas guy showing you this because i didn't know and he thought i was a retard for not knowing this but they have air conditioners over there and i'm like okay i know that there's an air conditioner i don't want to cool the house how do i heat the house i'm trying to explain to him and he speaks a little bit of english few words and i feel like i'm getting

the verbiage wrong i'm like no i'm asking how to heat the house i figured there's a thermostat you're the guy. He's like, no, no, no, here, Coco, Coco this. What, what is that? And he says, AirCon. I'm like, oh, it's an air conditioner. I'm not, I'm getting the language wrong. I'm not asking how to cool the house. I'm asking how to heat the house. And he takes a remote control and shows me the button, Cocoa this one here. He presses the button and these louvers drop down from the air conditioner and hot air starts pumping out. I'm like, are you kidding me? Is this how you heat the house? Not just the room, the house. Hi, hi, yeah, so does. That's how you heat the house. I'm like, looking around, there's two of these things. I've got a five-bedroom house, and both of

them are on the lower level. So the upper-level rooms, they just don't get heat. They're like, yeah, I guess. Like, wow. So how, so we were kind of like hunkered down our whole family of six between two rooms for the month of March, because it was still like highs of 12 degrees. and rainy most days and it would drop to like two degrees at night. So it was cold. It was like refrigerator cold in most of the rooms. And besides that, the second way to heat the house, which we didn't have is other people will have these kerosene heaters that again run on kerosene. So we have to fill it like a gas tank every now and again. It's like a mobile radiator. You'll move around to the room that you're occupying, turn it on and sit down. And when you leave

that room, you'll move to the other room where you're going to occupy. And I was like, this is the craziest thing that we're living again in the year 2026. And I have to like, figure out how to magiver heat into this house, and it's not even the coldest month of the year. Is there a way to just have gas heat, or is that just not a thing? Without a full renovation on the house? I don't think so.

And honestly, renovations over there are an absolute nightmare because the bureaucracy is insane. You can't do renovation on your house without having the appropriate inspection done, without having the appropriate workman done. Like if you do it yourself, it invalidates all of your insurance, It's really particular.

I've had people describe Japanese bureaucracy. Like you live in U.S. modern first world country with 1970s Russia bureaucracy. Everything is fax machine and triplicate. And you need to go through four different departments before you can get an answer. But whether you can do the thing or not, and usually you can't. When you left Canada, right, you go back to when you guys sold the house, everything, grabbed a truck in the trailer and we're like we're going right and if people go back to listen to that conversation you'll hear you know like we'd never owned one before we just that's where we're

can to pushed us to now you've been like all over the world right and now you've found a spot where you bought a house you were going to be there for six months you know not at a time three months and three months but for a calendar year six months in Japan what do you think of Canada coming back to it because I assume one like me when I played hockey in Finland once I got back to any English speaking country it's just nice it was just an ease of like I can just conversate and people can understand what I'm trying to say and there's no language barrier and there's no frustration and there's no like trying to make sure that you know you're talking about the norms or the cultural you know aspects of it like North America is pretty similar across the board whether you're in

the states or Canada there'd be slight differences but overall most of that's similar But like, I don't know, like coming back to Canada as you've been away for, you know, over the course of four years, you know, what, two of those years have pretty much been out of country. Yeah. What do you think of Canada coming back in? Well, I'm going to, it would be a different answer basically every year you ask me because it's a different experience every time, especially as COVID was kind of releasing a little bit year. Yeah, yeah. But I can speak to this recent one because it's obviously recency bias. It's fresh in my head.

but I'll break it down into two different aspects, because we didn't come back from Japan into Canada. We came back from Japan to Florida, where we had parked our units before we flew to Japan. We took, like, one of the longest possible routes to Japan. I do not suggest taking a cross-continental flight from Florida to Seattle before going from Seattle to Tokyo. It was very long, but anyways, we ended up back in Orlando, and that was our first sort of decompression moment coming out of the fully Japanese environment. And you're right, it feels like you're doing life on easy mode again. Because it took me a sec, it took me like a couple days. Besides the jet leg, which absolutely is underrated.

Nobody explained just how bad jet leg is. It's brutal. But besides that, I went to Walmart, which was close to our campsite to get some groceries to fill up the trailer. And one of the things that happened while our unit was stored as a wasp nest was built behind one of our side view mirrors. They had gotten behind there and they're these nasty, little paper wasp that are like really painful, I guess, if you get stung by them. And there's like

five or six living back there. But like you can't open the driver's side door without pissing them off because you're moving their hive, right? So I'm like, man, I got the first chance I got to go get some wasprey to get rid of this stuff. And so I go to Walmart and I'm walking around and I'm looking in the camping section like mosquito spray, uh, ants, right? Well, that's where, where's the was spray? It's not here. Maybe it's in like sporting goods. Ah, man, I'm just going to have to ask somebody. I'm going to be wandering forever. And so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I see a guy that's down the way. It's just like your typical American good old boy, big belly.

He's got the blue vest on. I know he works there. I'm like, all right, this is clearly the most American person I could walk up to. And I still couldn't stop my brain before I realized I did it, walking towards him. I'm like, how do I say wasp spray? And I got halfway to him before I realized, oh, he speaks English. Oh, thank God.

This will be so easy. You know, just very briefly when I played hockey in Finland and I played in Rahe And the only guy who could speak English was the goaltender I was telling you this And so any drill Anything the coach was saying in the dressing room He'd look over at him

And he'd look over at him And he'd say pass the puck Or whatever, right? And you're like, All right It was kind of a fun experience because, you know, when you did something wrong, you gave the puck up that came and scored, and he'd be losing his mind, you know,

I'd lean over my defense partner, and he's mad at me? Oh, no, you play very good. Very good. I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure he's mad at me, but I can't understand a word he's saying, so it doesn't really affect the same way when you can fully understand and appreciate what you're trying to say.

But, like, it was probably, no, I guarantee it was lonely. It was a lonely place to be. It was fun, but, like, lonely, because you can't just walk over to the neighbor like you're saying. crack up a conversation. You know, you get annoyed because it's like, wow, are we going to have a conversation?

We're just going to talk about the weather and the oilers and some service level stuff. But when you're away from all that, you probably crave just, man, it'd just be nice to talk about the weather and just be able to shoot the shit, pardon the French, of like, let's just talk about some common things so we could just have a conversation. Yeah, yeah, it really opens the floodgates at that point because you've been like holding back for so long because just out of necessity, you kind of become a hermit. It's a cultural hermit. You don't, like, you get out, and you try to meet people,

and you try to do your best with what you can do. You know, gamboremas, like, try my best as much as I possibly can, but you can only go so far. But to answer your second part of the question, so we got back to Florida, we decided to stay about five days to sort of allow the jet leg to settle before we hit the road because we had to drive, like, three weeks back to Alberta. Now, we didn't have to drive for three weeks,

but we wanted to stop in Texas. to meet our friends. I was telling you about our Canadian friends that we've become friends with down there. And it was a good idea because that jet leg really kicked our asses quite a bit on the return trip too. But once we finally got through the weeks of eight-hour trips across the country to get back up to Canada, it's impossible, I think, to express without having been there, how disappointing it is to come back to Canada. And I say that with all due respect to every Canadian patriot out there that loves their country still. At this point, we hate Canada. And it's not the people.

We love the people. The only reason we would come back is for the people. But we've been burned for so long for so many different ways. It seems like everything that we believe Canada is against. And in a way that you have to actually worry about your well-being, whether it's financial or personal or family or whatever. And it just feels like we're coming back into the gulag. Things haven't gotten better here. The pandemic has died down, but they've not gotten better. You've still got the same government under a different clown. And it feels like we're taking a risk every time we come back here, which is not

what I would like to tell you. I'd love to say I'm happy to see Sean and I'm happy to be back here, which I am for that. But leading up to crossing the border at Coots, it's a sinking feeling. And you're like, man, I miss America already, and I watch old glory disappear in the background in the last town before we hit the border and everything is a countdown to talking to the border garden, telling them our stories we can get back in the country. We don't want to be in, to be honest. Well, I appreciate your honesty. One of the things about interviewing people that have gone out in the experienced world is you give an outside perspective on, you know, like, you just kind of become numb to like. You were saying, oh, yeah, there's another bill that just went through, and I'm like, I know, another one. I know. At this point, I'm like, you forget. There's so many you forget. In fact, I tell my friends still, like, sorry, dude, I'm back in Canada. I can't see that reel you sent me. And they laugh at me. Everywhere else in the world can see that real. Canada can't. Because we've forgotten still here. There was a bill passed in, what, 2023, where it's, you know, for your safety citizen, we're not going to let you see what we call fake news, which means all news that doesn't come through us.

the paid for government-funded media. I mean, if that was any other country, if that was Russia, you would say, oh, that's totalitarian. But here, it's just normal. It's so normal. Canadians forget it happens. There's just like, oh, I can't see this in my country.

Sorry. How much has leaving the country opened your eyes or given you, I don't know. I just think perspective is probably the right word. I mean, every year in the U.S. US is a change of perspective from that degree. But I've gotten used to that because we've done it for so often. Now I understand the differences.

Pretty minutely I understand the differences now between Americans and Canadians. I can pick them out of a crowd. It's so obvious now. And I know what to expect for that reason. Japan was a totally different thing. So this is another thing that's impossible to explain unless you've been there. And when I say that, it's not because I'm not going to try. It's just you have to understand that it's 10 times what I'm saying when you're there.

Is it just feels normal, which is the weirdest thing to say in a backwards to you culture in a land, literally the other side of the world, in a culture you can't speak or understand or really do much in, it feels more normal there as a person. And the best way I can describe it. And it's not just me. This is everybody I talk to that's like this, no matter what side of the political spectrum they're from either. I find this interesting. I follow all sorts of influencers online that go to Japan.

And they're like, it just, it feels like the 90s. It feels like what your nostalgia remembers from little town, Alberta, everywhere there. People are just people. And nobody talks about politics. It's not even an interesting topic because there's nothing really interesting going on in that avenue. It's like, how's work? How's the weather? How's the kids?

You know, that's, what are you doing on the weekend? It's all just really normal stuff. Nobody, it's almost. like I almost think that they're like hiding how how concerned they must be because you must be because it's so concerning what's going on in the world but they're just like to a degree they do because it's it's uncouth to talk about that stuff in a certain sense but I got to know enough people long enough that I know that I was like their mass came down and it's just like they don't understand it's almost foreign to them that you would be

concerned about world politics that's just like something that you might watch on the news if you care. But it's so normal there. It's almost like, did the simulation change? Am I in the Truman Show? Isn't the world burning? I don't get it. That's how different it is there. So why do you think they're so different from us then? I mean, I could put on my tinfoil hat and tell you. I think that we're highly propagandized to. I think that the internet has convinced us. Do you need a tinfoil hat for that? You know, this one's fitting very loose. I didn't have to crimp this one. Some rays might still get in. No, I mean, we're so highly over-propagandized, too, that it's, again, it's normalized here that you know the people you can talk to, the people

you can't, the people you can't have with certain people, that wouldn't make sense in Japan. Not, not at, like, with the discussions that we're talking about. If you bring up Trump over there, they'll be like, oh, yeah, he's the president of the United States. Literally no division. behind that whatsoever. It's just an obscure fact they don't care about. In fact, liking him is kind of like you what, do you like the prime minister of, what, Mexico? Like, what a weird thing to like or dislike? It's just, it's a nonsensical issue. Over here, not only is it like the main deciding factor of whether you're going to get along with somebody or not, but it could determine. Oh, you're one of those. Yeah. The fact you brought up tinfoil hat, you're one of those. It literally could

determine if you go to jail for some things. Like, and I'm not being facetious. You go to the UK right now and try to post whatever the hell you want. See how long that lasts before you get a knock on the door. And again, if I was to say this was Russia, it would make sense. But no, this is the first world, the Western first world that we're talking about. And it's become normalized. Oh, you shouldn't be posting that.

You have nothing to worry about if you're posting things you should be posting, citizen, you know, comrade is kind of how it feels. Yeah, we live in a totally different world here, and everybody siloed into these chambers for so long that it's become normalized that you only believe what you believe in the group that you believe it in and you keep it in there because if you go to somebody else's group, they're the wrong thinkers that you're not going to talk to about the truth because they don't believe it anyways. And it's literally the same impression of you from their camp to ours. And it's just you can't talk to people in this environment. And it's known. It's known in a way that's visceral

that you don't have to explain to people around here. Like you're just nodding. Of course it is. That's how it's been for years here. Well, I mean, it's not like that there is what I'm saying. Yeah, which would probably be a surreal feeling because I think I can speak for the audience. I'll certainly speak for myself. If you're in a room, somebody says something favorable to Trump, just favorable. It doesn't even, you're like, oh, you start looking around at eyes to see how they react. Yeah, you're like, I caught that. I mean, in COVID, it was if you brought up, I don't know, would it would have been like a name would it have been I'm trying to think back to those times you know if you'd brought up oh yeah just listen to a podcast uh on drogan immediately you're like I know you're

talking you've been siloed yeah interesting what do you've been listening to and on the flip side you you know you could just walk in and everybody's got their mask out you're like well yep best walk this way because I know what's going on here right like I mean you think about how quickly you can scan a group of people here in Canada and be like like, I'm probably not going to be welcome in this group. Or I'm going to have some tough conversations where I have to bite my tongue. And then you get surprised by somebody and you're like, who are you? And what are you been doing?

Because like, that is real here in Canada. Yeah. And that's something that is, it literally doesn't make sense in Japan. Like over there, you would learn somebody by their name, what job they go to, what their hobbies are. nothing about politics even makes sense as like a character trait or like another way I put it is I shouldn't be able to know one thing about you and be able to guess five major things after that. Over here, that's the default. That's the default. If you say, yay, Trump, I know five things about you.

If you say boo Trump, I know five things about you that you're going to agree with, whether it's abortion, whether it's immigrants, whether it's all of the hot topic things. You know that you're going to be all the way along this line here or all the way along this line there. And it's not like that in countries that I feel like have not had that deep, abiding, zeitgeist-level propaganda for as long as we have. You know, you go back to 2019 when I first started and I was doing sports. I feel like what you're talking about in Japan, that's base code I was doing. You know, obviously focused on careers, folks and everything. But like, we weren't talking politics.

We weren't talking. It would be the most boring part of the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. How do we get it back to hockey? I actually don't even know how I could put it. put my, when you say it's like, no matter how hard I try and explain it, I get what you're saying, because I'm like, I don't know if I can fully understand. Like, I get what you're saying,

but I'm like, when was the last time any of us had a conversation with somebody new and didn't jump to five things on either way? Because you, you're like, yeah, if they go this way, you kind of know where they land on all those issues. And if they go the other way, you know exactly where they land. And 100% of the time you're right. Yes. Like there's almost no outliers. And in your mind then, you go, it's kind of like what Evely was just saying, right? It's like, that's propaganda. Full stop. That's what that is.

And I mean, we live on our phone. Do the Japanese live on their phones? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Social media that type thing? It's very different. Like, it's cat videos, you mean? So their culture is very different to begin with.

Like, they still love, the Japanese game show thing is still huge. Tons of people love variety shows and game shows, and there's tons of animals. and there's like characters and celebrities you've never heard of and J-pop and it's like it's just a different culture with a fully different ecosystem for what is popular and politics doesn't even rank in the top 100 like it really doesn't like people were impressed that I knew who the the new prime minister or was it present prime minister I believe of Japan is Sanai Takaiichi and they were impressed that I knew you you're a foreigner and you know who our prime minister is I'm like yeah it's kind of a big deal in the news they're like I'm impressed. Most people I know don't follow Japanese news. I'm like, you're Japanese. Why do I know more about Japanese news? And the reason why I know about her is because she's right-leaning and friends with Trump. And of course, that makes the news, right? Because people want to know, are you for or against? And that's the dividing line in the West as far as we're concerned. Another way to put it, though, politics aside is it really is. So you know how they say like politics is downstream of culture? But it goes opposite to. Like it's a cyclical thing after.

a while. I feel like if politics is downstream of culture long enough, it will start re-populating what the culture believes to the point that it changes the culture based on the politics. And a way of understanding what I mean by that is just walking around. Okay, so if you go to Red Deer right now and you take your kids and say, I'm going to go into this store, go down to the car, it's 10 blocks away. You know where it is. Are you insane downtown Red Deer? You're going to let your kids walk 10 blocks away without a parent. You're nuts. You're an irresponsible parent.

In Japan, people can let their kids run wild without worrying about where they are, without worrying about when they're coming back, and without worrying about people grabbing them up in a van and disappearing for forever. Now, I'm not saying that stuff doesn't exist, especially in the big cities. I'm sure it's more prevalent. Where we're at, not only is that obviously possible, but my own daughter who's she just turned 15 she was 14 over there and she stopped me one day after walking to the vending machine which was like six blocks away on her own she was so proud of herself

I was like yeah you can walk to the vending machine here take some yen and go grab a drink and come back she's like are you sure I'm like yeah it's fine and she came back so proud of herself that she had done it all by herself she's like daddy I feel safe here I'm like yeah it is safe here you don't just feel it it literally is and then like we took a bus right after that. And she told me, I, it's painful to say it

that my 14 year old daughter, who's not plugged into any of this shit, she, without being urged, said, you know, dad, I feel like I,

I don't have anxiety here. Like, everywhere else we go, I feel like tense. I feel like I can breathe here. I'm like, why is that not normal? I don't know if I got anything to say to that

I mean I'm not trying to paint it as a utopia it's definitely not but the distinction is just so stark yeah yeah yeah that's what you're doing is you're painting what is different about it I don't hear utopia I don't even know what you know it feels like what you remember your childhood as

is what I think that's why I call it the 90s well what would I so we in prep for leaving We just finished moving everything out of the house. So we're back living with my parents for the last week, right? The Newman tornado has gone into the Newman house. I'm sure my parents are loving it, but I'm sure when we finally pull off, they'll be like a breath of fresh air because the house is a little ruckus. Last night we pulled out our kids' bike, bikes,

and let them ride from the old farm yard to my parents' house. That's like a football field. But they've got to go on the main road, which is a gravel road. and there's nobody on it. And they're like, you serious? I'm like, yeah, you can, yeah, you can ride. And they were so over the moon at that little bit of, I guess, freedom. They didn't come in for like 40 minutes and they were just riding their bikes.

And I'm like, oh, that's super cool. And to have the windows open last night because it wasn't raining for the like one hour all last three days where it didn't downpour. And my mom's going, oh, I should probably get them in because the mosquitoes would be thick out there and I'm like, eh, they'll come in when they're ready. And all you can hear is just kid laughter as they're riding around. I'm like, isn't that what it's supposed to be?

I feel like that's what it's supposed to be. That's what it was like for us, right? I think so. You remember those days. Well, I mean, when we talk about living on the farm back as a kid, we used to ride our bikes all over. That's the only way you could get places.

So a mile ride to get to a friend's house was just kind of what you did. There wasn't any question of, is it, well, maybe there was. There was probably a little bit of stay on the side of the road. when vehicles are coming or something like that. Yeah, basic safety. Basic safety.

It was not like that disappeared, but certainly you weren't worried about some of the things that have been going on in Canada these days. Like, it's gotten out of hand. And I was, you know, like, both sides should be able to agree on that. You know, like... Well, they do, actually. I was talking to my dad, who's very much the opposite of everything,

I believe, more or less, besides the fact that he's Christian, he's very strong Christian, but politically completely opposite. absolutely opposite. So we kind of have this agreement that we don't really talk about those things when we're around because it just, we know that it's, we agree to disagree and anything more than that is going to get hot.

And so for the sake of our relationship, well, he's still on planet Earth. He's turning 70 this year, you know, so I'm like, parents are the same age. Well, there you go. And I'm like, I don't know if, what, do you have 10 summers left? Yeah, hopefully 20. Great. I hope 20. Yeah.

Their health is starting. to deteriorate and you would expect this at their age. So I'm like, what is the point trying to fight over things we don't agree on when we still are blood and we love each other and we shouldn't be that? So we've kind of found that middle ground. But it's interesting to me, he lives in BC by choice. He could live in Alberta, but he chose BC partly because of politics, but partly because, you know, I grew up there.

He raised me there for 10 years and he loves the environment there. He loves the mountains. And who doesn't? It's beautiful. Honestly, the politics is the worst part of BC. Otherwise, it is absolutely gorgeous. If the gas wasn't astronomical and the NDP to ruin everything. Once again, the politics.

Yeah, exactly. But the last two times we've met, I met him again, like a few weeks ago when we first got back from Japan, actually. He was coming through to meet family because most of his family lives in Alberta. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to stop by. I'm like, great, that'll be awesome. And we're talking. And it's last time I started to notice it, but this time it was right. in my face. He's like, Drew, I don't like Canada anymore. And now he was an expat for seven years

in Ecuador. He decided to retire down in Ecuador with my mom. And they were going to spend the rest their lives there. They loved it. They were learning the language and the culture. I mean, they had to do COVID there, which sucked because not only do you have that cultural divide, but now you're literally locked down. And they're elderly and they're liberal-minded and they believe all the things and they're worried that they're going to die every time somebody breathes on them and the whole thing. So they had a really rough time down in Ecuador. But on top of that, the drug trade started getting really bad in the last couple of years because it's right. It's a corridor to Columbia. And so there's just murders in the news every day in their area. So we're like, we're moving back to

Canada. Like I think it's just too unsafe to live here. Going for groceries is dangerous. And so they sold their place that they had bought and they come back to BC. And, you know, he was over the moon, the time before this, the year before, because everything's new to him. It's not Ecuador. It's people that he recognizes in areas that he likes. Everything's a little expensive and a little worried about that. You know, you're starting to hear it as he's sort of trying to, you know, sugarcoat things. But this year, it was like, he literally said, Drew, I don't like Canada anymore. I don't like the people here. They're rude. They are selfish. I feel like if it weren't for church, I would have nobody that I can talk to.

And he's like everything is incredibly expensive. It's getting worse. They're on their pension that they can barely make rent. They found a place that's the best they can get. And they found a place that's actually all right, the place before this literally had rats running on the street outside. And it takes, you know, without getting into specific numbers, over half of their pension every month,

just to put a roof over their head. And then they have to worry about travel. and food and anything on top of that. It's basically like they're living in First World poverty to be able to live in BC on a pension. Well, I don't think I can, just an everyday average person. Nobody with a political, you know,

trying to get into office or, I don't know, get elected again or whatever it is. It's everyday people. It's getting more expensive. You know, when made first rolled out, most people probably would have said I guess it makes sense if you're at the end of your life

you know like they've all heard the stories of you know and I've heard the stories too somebody being in always outlier cases there's always outliers but you get to 2026 and we're talking about mentally ill being able to take their life or mature minors no Canadian is like oh that makes sense

not one they're just there just isn't nobody thinks that's a good idea and yet that's where it's got to you've got the land stuff going out of your bc resident you're sitting there going what is going on you've got you know like does any of us have any ill will to first nations i don't i don't think so but i'm seeing what's happening with my own eyes with the land acknowledgments everywhere the fact that they're going to have ownership or part ownership of everything we have to get their approval to move

a pipeline all the things on it and so well it's not they don't have veto power it's like really they complained once about 300 and 2 000 people and i'll Berta signing a petition, not to leave, to have a vote to leave. They complained, it's gone, right? Oh, we're going to appeal it. Okay, you're going to appeal it? I mean, like, people with their own eyes are looking at this going, like, this doesn't, you gave us the out to at least have our say.

We had it. And now it's turned into this, whatever this is going on right now, right? It has become, I don't know. I was watching this from Japan. I remember texting you being like, so we're doing a referent. for a referendum, huh? Is that what we're doing? This is ridiculous. Off of people not being consulted. Right? That's what it comes down to. But if his Lucca's, but when it's Lucas' question, they didn't seem to put a stink up about that.

No, they were very excited to take his question over the separatist question. Yeah. Which was very well thought out, by the way. I thought it was a very well-worded. They used lawyers to make sure it was very well-worded and to give this convoluting. looted one now that basically like cites that well in the future then if we pass this then we can talk about doing something that's binding but for now it's like we're hoping that like you really don't want this to happen hey and like you're you're giving every possible roadblock to make this just the hardest thing to do basic democracy well I mean they so then I keep going down the road of all the things you got the land in BC and if you're BC you're just going

holy man what's going on you got you know like once again the two 115 graves. I mean, just like that nothing's ever been done about that. I mean, the immigration, you can just, they can tell you whatever they want to tell you, try and paint you as whatever. It's like, you can't tell my eyes to lie to me. Like, it just, it's everywhere. Like, me and twos cover a lot of weird things.

You're like, man, this is going to become a trend, isn't it? And the amount of truck drivers, and this happened. Oh, your bit with Sing for the Cheers cracks me up every time. How are there so many sings every week? Well, not only in the trucking industry, in the gangs, in like the, now it's the extortion cases, right? Yeah, that just happened. That was a huge thing in BC, and we're like, okay, and then you had the gang wars or whatever we're calling it in Montreal. And you're like, okay, it's Montreal.

Then you had the truck drivers in Toronto. Now we have the extortion cases in Calgary. You're like, folks, this is everywhere. Like, I mean, it's just happening across the board. And when you come back to your father, I don't think, no matter what, you vote on that you're immune to that. There's going to be the certain far, far side of it that are. It doesn't matter how bad it gets.

They're never going to change their thought process. But maybe what you're talking about is more and more Canadian starting to realize something is really, really off. I would have hoped that was COVID. And I would have hoped that was the last election, right? Like I keep hoping. I don't know. That's why I find talking to different people, especially a man who came from Alberta,

left Alberta and comes back periodically. your insight. It's so fascinating. Honestly, I feel I hate saying it to be honest, because I want Alberta to be awesome. And for the most part it is, but it's still part of Canada. And it's probably the most separatist thing I could say.

But like, I just have no love for Canada anymore. And I grew up loving Canada. You know what I mean? Like it took some serious, some serious fuckery to take the Canadian out of me. but it's gone. And what I see taking its place right now,

I don't want a part of. I don't really know what to do with that. It's not like I have a great solution for you, but it just is what it is right now. And I mean, I wish I could say this was only Canada too. That would be much easier, but honestly,

it's the West in general. And it's never been more obvious than watching it from the East. Is this is the West. The same thing is happening in Australia. Worse is happening in the UK, in Germany, in France. Europe is one of the worst places you could be right now as a westerner.

And by that, I mean culturally, a Western person. You're being absolutely invaded daily by, I don't know how many people, whether it's legally or illegally. Like, they have boatloads of people showing up illegally on top of the legal ones that they're bringing in, and none of them are really being vetted from what I can see anyways. I mean, how many people do we need pinned down on the street of Scotland being actively decapitated before we all can agree. How many, it was 250,000 girls between 1960 and now in the UK not enough to agree that there's probably a problem with rape gangs coming from Pakistan primarily? Is that not enough? Do we need a million still? Does it have to be your daughter? How many of your daughters?

Because it can be all of them, because it just keeps happening. We've got, I see videos every week of people just being literally walked up to in the street over there and putting a knife in someone's neck. They didn't even say hello or see them coming. Like, talk. about not safe to be around and that is not English culture that's not British culture that's not Irish culture where is it coming from like and and how long do we get to sit here and just watch this elephant in the room crash into everything and say this is fine everything's fine because we were talking about this before and I wrote a substack about this recently titled catharsis the forbidden release and I

write about this in my books to both explicitly in my philosophical books but also like implicitly in my fictional books recently, this, the outpouring of a controlled emotion is a very dangerous thing. I hear James Lindsay talking about this too. He had a very good take on catharsis. I'm like, that's exactly what I've been writing about for years, is you cannot gaslight people for so long that it disappears. All it does is amplify underneath the surface. And right now, I wrote, I see the West right now as a pot and I'm watching the lid on the top dancing because froth is starting to come out the sides and you can't tell me that things are not ready to explode. Everywhere I look in the West, whether again it's Australia, whether it's Europe, whether it's America, whether it's Canada, anywhere that you can say is the West that has the same problems right now. And they're not getting better.

And it feels like the proper reaction is what's going on in Ireland right now. I actually, I have, this is almost, again, embarrassing to admit, but when I watch the Irish lighting their own city on fire, I say, fuck yeah. That's the first thing I feel in my, behind my ribs, in my chest. I'm like, fuck yeah. Finally, somebody's doing something. Why aren't other people doing something? Meanwhile, the logical side of my brain is like, don't do that. You're lighting your own places on fire.

They're going to roll the military in. They're going to lay down new laws. It's going to this is that. But viscerally, that's where cathars. lives is in the emotions and the emotions are right and they're ripe and I feel like they're being fed right now whether it is on purpose or whether it is an extra affect of what's going on for other reasons but it's being fed right now and it almost feels to me like not only is it being fed but there are provocateurs right now that want it to explode that want to see the lid on that pot hit the roof

and how that benefits them afterwards I guess we would find out but I feel like I told told you, you remember in George Floyd, there was riots down in, I mean, every major city, but I remember specific ones that were happening in L.A., where there was video recordings that would show up on Facebook and Instagram, like, what the hell is this? And there would be, in an active riot zone where places are being smashed and vandalized and people aren't supposed to be walking around, a pallet of bricks just dropped on the side of the sidewalk. Well, that's weird. Why is there a palette of bricks? There's no bricks on the sidewalk. This isn't a repair job.

There's no bricks on these buildings. What are the bricks there for? The same thing happened during the convoy in Ottawa. What a strange thing to happen during a peaceful protest. Just a pallet of bricks. I don't know. Do you want them? Would you do something with them?

Can you please do something with them? Do something with you should do something with them. They're there. They're provoking. They're pushing towards that. And there's, I think both things are happening at once right now across the West in general. I'm watching Ireland, leading to Scotland,

leading to the UK and Wales. I think they're all going to start snowballing. down this we should do something path and i feel like a lot of this is a pile of bricks i think that there's there's shadowy figures somewhere in some room for some reason that are like it would benefit us for this i told you about the movie you haven't seen yet but you probably will after this and i bet you most people watching and listening have seen it called citizen vigilante that just came out right now was shot in croatia and it follows this exactly i mean it couldn't be a more aft name it's literally a citizen, an American citizen in this case, who decides to do something about all of the crime

and specifically the immigrant issues that are happening over in Europe. And he goes out with weapons and starts killing people. And it's like this, you couldn't make a more cathartic video for the time that we're in right now. And part of that, I feel like, well, it makes perfect sense because, again, culture, right? It's the leading edge of what's going on. It's what you would expect, but at the same time, if I were to want to get that pot to explode, what a movie to push. And I see people like Elon Musk putting it out there saying, you know, Europe is lost. And he puts this video of like basically a snuff film about killing migrants. And you can make all the arguments for and against it, but it's there. And to me, that smells like a, like a palette of

bricks. And I don't know who's doing what, but it's, I feel like we're on a precipice right now. And I mean, I've been saying that for years for different reasons, but I defy somebody to show me how this isn't going to reach a boiling point in the near future. I mean, again, it is presently in Ireland right now. And it has been for weeks, and they haven't quelled it yet as far as I'm aware. And I keep seeing videos pop up too. It's not like, well, we just need to get the Irish riots under control and then we can go back to normality. Meanwhile, everyday people are still getting stabbed, like all the time in all. sorts of places and more attempted decapitations like this is not a normal thing and that's

what this is about so like I don't know what do you think I can't see a way that this doesn't lead to like something that nobody wants well if I go back to the freedom convoy if you know how do you get a boiling pot to stop boiling right you take it off the heat or you lower the heat you get you know there's lots of different ways to do that But at the same time, not really. It's like one or two options, right? To turn the heat off, take it off, but you just, you got to cool it down. And in political sense, cultural sense, how do you do that?

You speak to the issues. And when you don't speak to the issues, they continue to grow. And so here in Canada, Albertans had their say with Jason Kennedy. And I think that removed the issues for a time, right? Significantly. Because, okay, we've seen change. And then we got Daniel Smith. I think that is, well, safe to say.

She won the UCP leader nomination. And then she went. That was the people's choice. I think most people felt great about that. She won the general election after too. Right. But here we go. And, you know, and then, you know, immigration still kept going on.

You still got all the underlying things that are just sitting there. Now, Daniel Smith on the last one thinks we're knocking out of the park, right? We're trying to do these things. We're trying to get rid of it. They've got an MOU. They've got all these, you know. But as you're hearing that, you know, like on the flip side, when you point to other countries and you're speaking directly to Ireland,

you're like until somebody gets their head almost decapitated. And then you watch how quickly all that anger boils up. So, you know, like what do we want out of politicians? Just speak to the issues and address them. We have problems. Every country has a problem. Get in and start addressing. them like let's you know like carny with Trump I still can't figure out the whole

dynamic there but like you know Kuzma July 1st and they're saying they they just after Doug Ford's ad they just stopped talking to the Canadians on it well that's a pretty big deal right like that's our number one trade partner we can talk about trading with India and China and all these places that's nonsense at the end of the day the Americans is who we got to get our relationship corrected with, right? That's the number one place to put all your energy in, because that is going to affect us on July 1st or second or in six months way faster than any trade deal with India is ever going to do, right?

You've got all these loopholes in our immigration system. They need to be tied up. And then you have to, in Canada, you have to go, I'm not against immigration. I hear it all the time. I'm not saying I'm against immigration. Well, everybody knows you're not against immigration. It's a straw man.

Right. people say that we need to fix the problems and what do we want and what takes the the heat away from the pot fix the problems address the problems talk to talk about the problems right the media is going to do what the media does and they're going to try and shade you in a certain way but like the truth of the matter is more and more Canadians are getting uncomfortable with their own country because they're seeing it all over the place we're in the month of june as you know it's pride month of drew where's your where's your colorful shirt you know i don't even want to watch the videos coming out of the pride parade in Toronto and stuff.

Like I'm like, that's, in my opinion, so four years ago, like, yeah, I'm not saying it isn't there. It's definitely there, right? But we have to, you know, you got to take care of your community. You got to dress it there because otherwise it just continues to persist. And I see more and more Albertans, Westerners, Canadians trying to do that. What we need is the prime minister to do that. We need leadership to do that.

And what would it take for Mark Carney to do that? he's not going to do that. He's for all those things. Like as much or more than Trudeau was. He just has a better, more politically correct face on it. What would it take for Kearney to do that? My immediate answer that comes to my mind? Billions of dollars.

If there was money to be made for him, the elbows come down. The elbows probably come down. Yeah. Isn't that, he's probably a simple man. It's money. Yeah. There was a podcast that you ran.

recently with with Mr. Armstrong there Martin Martin and he said something that was it was so obvious like you know it with without having to know it in words but when he said it's like yeah of course and you said the world's not run by countries the world's run by corporations like that makes perfect sense like what is a lobbyist you know like what what are NGOs like this is stuff that moves governments so we're not talking about governments we're talking about the corporations that move the governments. And so when you think of it like geopolitics in the perspective of how is this corporately beneficial or detrimental, then you'll understand what the government is doing. And the problem is you don't get to see what corporation is doing, what, for whom. And again, to your point,

yeah, it would take billions of dollars, but that's not even being facetious. That's what's moving him right now. Is billions of dollars. Yes. Yes. Clearly. Yeah. They see a way of making a lot of money, and that's why they're moving the way they're moving. Which makes sense as a corporat. It's just incredibly immoral and distrustful as a politician, but what does that matter? Now, we're an hour in. I haven't even asked you about your new book. So let's, let's, we've been, we've been on, we've been on the Canada train. Now I'm going to try and lighten the mood, folks. Good luck. It's a dystopian. You know what? I think I said this to you the last time you're in,

on your first book, fractures in love, that it just resonates with my brain. And I've been wondering about it for a long time that was a year ago and now I think it makes perfect sense when you can't get to an audience with like actual hard-hitting facts because that's what we've been doing you know like I just sit and think of how many conversations I've had in this chair where I'm just like this is bad this is bad everything's bad and then you have jeffley evilly on and he he just won his court case you know he got the fine thrown out and you saw the preparation and how they did it and you're like wow that's brilliant and so for me a little non-fiction or sorry, fiction work, I mean,

switching it around, fiction work. It's just like nice for my brain. Like when I read, I want to stick up fractures a lot for a second. I felt like I was really... I want to know what you think about it because I haven't heard a whole lot of your thoughts about it. Oh.

As an author, this is like food for my soul. I want to hear all about it. So ask me all your questions. Well, so like, A, it's super cool to know a guy who can write that. I mean, just like knowing our first conversations to where you are at now is kind of like one of the cool things

I could have never, ever possibly imagine when I started doing the podcast because you don't think of, I don't think of interviewing, you know, back then, Wayne Grexky 15 times and getting to actually know him and see what he, you know, and watching him evolve. I thought if I could get Wayne Grexkey on once,

that'd be amazing, right? So when we first have our interview, I don't, I know for a fact, I didn't see us having more. And then it becoming an annual thing where both of us have gone off and done extremely different things and then come back

and kind of compare notes and then go off in the world and come back and compare notes. And that's what this has become. It's become an annual thing where at the end of spring, let's say, you roll into town,

we sit down and we have a conversation. And so I guess my overall thought, first and foremost is, it's just like crazy to think that you pulled off writing one of those. Where I'm reading it and I'm like,

this is actually keeping my attention. You know, like in the best possible sense. It's not like, like where I'm forced to, I better pick this up. I was like actually enjoying it. I'll be honest. I wished it was a headstrong young boy in the first book because that's what I, you know, I feel like we need men. And instead it follows a girl. And that's on purpose, by the way. These are dicomatic books, which means that they're the opposite side of the same coin. So I was telling you at

lunch that a lot of this, if you understand Jungian philosophy or if you follow Jordan Peterson's work with chaos and order or the archetypal feminine and the archetypal masculine. Those archetypes are rife within both of these books. And the first book, Fractures in Love is based off the archetypal feminine. So the protagonist had to be feminine. And the god that they serve is the archetypal feminine personified, where it is pure passion, pure fury, right? And the whole thing is very what those teachers would say is the archetypal feminine, whereas fractures in peace, the sequel, is all archetypal masculine, which is order, control, power, and you're going to have a male protagonist have to deal with the excesses of those things. And you get a copy sitting there, so I'm like,

I do. Here you go. I'll give it to you officially. Enjoy. This is one of only two copies on planet earth right now. You know how cool that is for me sitting here? Like once again, so it's like, you know, you get to know somebody. And like the fact you've, I don't know. It's just, it's super cool, you know? And that comes, I look forward to it.

I'm going to have a little time to read, I think. Yeah, yeah. Text me while you're on the road with your thoughts. Yeah, yeah. So then going back to it. There are multiple points in the book where I'm like,

I did not see that coming, right? And I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who didn't pick up the paperback or the hardcover. I would suggest the hard cover. I like the hard cover. It's super. The audiobook is free right now

if you have Spotify. If you have Spotify, if I wanted to ask you about this. So I finished, I read just over half the book and then, I don't know, if it was just time or coaching or whatever, reading became extremely difficult. You sent me the Spotify link.

I'm like, oh, this is sweet. You just read it or listen to it. And I want to know when you started taking voice acting lessons because I'm like, like, is that something, because I, you know, I assume that's something you never, ever thought you were going to do. No. And then you're like,

over like a whole bunch of things I thought the production was very good well done thank you yeah it took over 200 hours of dedicated work for that it was extremely difficult and to answer your question I'm not a voice actor but I had to be one so I just learned on the fly honestly like if I were going to give new listeners a bit of advice hang in there for the first 10 chapters I was learning how to do it it gets much better after that not that the story is bad in the first 10 chapters it's just my acting of it could have been better in my opinion But by the end, man, even when I re-listen to it, I'm like, whew, that hits hard.

That was a painful scene to listen to. If they search it on Spotify, just fractures in love will come up, yeah. Yeah, so that's super cool because you can go listen to it. Which I thought was, I wasn't sure if I wanted to listen to you, read it to me. I was kind of like, I don't know. Like I said, you got into it. I'm like, when did Drew do this? Like, I was expecting just a monitor.

I don't know what I was expecting. I had an idea of like. Well, there's authors that are just not good readers. I've listened to some where I'm like, I'm going to read the book. Right, and then you've listened to some audio books where you don't want to turn it off. Like you're like, it was just, so I'm, I would say after the first one, it left me with a bunch of questions. Not the questions that you were asking me. Because I, once again, I don't know.

Do I spoil the ending? Do I not spoil the ending? No, don't spoil the ending because. So my question is who is the character you don't get to see and you're telling me when I start going into this book, I'm going to find out all about them. Because I was like, what the heck is this? Like, why is there no more to it? And then I'm like, I'm like, maybe I missed it because, you know, you were listening to an audio book.

I'm like, maybe, but I'm like, no, I don't think there was a chapter. Well, if you read or listen through the first book, it does show you if you're paying attention that that character appears in the first chapter. He is the peaceman that allows the kids up on the roof. That's their first interaction. And you'll find out in the first chapter of this book that he's talking to his family about that incident. And so it confirms that he was the best.

piece, man, that they interacted with in the very first chapter. Now I've got to go back and read the first chapter. I'm telling you, man, that the level of complexity I built into this thing was so difficult, but it is like so rewarding. It's like it's like aspiring to build a Swiss watch having never done it before. Like what a stupid thing to try to do for your first project. But it's not your first project. You wrote books before this first fiction project. Sure. Nonfiction, yeah. Oh, no, yeah, yeah. This is the first fiction. That's That's right, that's right. But I guess what shocked me, and I go back to it, when I first started reading it,

I was like, I can't believe I know a guy who I actually knew before this, right? You weren't doing, you didn't walk in. Yeah, I'm not Frank Peretti. You didn't walk in my room and be an author, and this is what I'm going to do. Like, I watched your growth into this. That's what's the most shocking about it for me. I thought the story is great. I, once again, I'm like, man, I'm curious about book.

I think you're going to like book two even more because it gets very political. but not in a con well it is it's convoluted to the story but it makes sense like I put a lot of work into making it makes sense continuity wise but it's just it's like watching your favorite soap opera and like ooh that guy did that well how does it's for example I didn't even realize until I rewatch it because I rewatched a lot of series that I wanted to be inspired by for these books before the writing process begins and one of the ones that I rewatched from start to finish for fractures and peace was Game of Thrones. I was like, he had such a good way.

No, I mean, HBO aspects aside, there's a lot of gratuity that didn't need to be in, in my opinion. But the storyline, when I watched it back, because I remember watching it as it was coming out episodically week to week on HBO, and it's a very different experience when you can just binge watch it from beginning to end because you can see the whole story as one,

and it's much easier to understand what the author was doing. And when I watched it back, I was like, this isn't an action story. This isn't a story about dragons. This is a political story about kings. And when you understand, like, the Searcy character, the way that she navigates not being assassinated by literally everyone trying to assassinate her over and over,

and you're getting mad at a certain point because you want her to die, but she's just so good at avoiding him. All of this is interpersonal politics. And that's how really powerful governmental structures survive and exist. It has to be like cut throat at the pen, you know. And there's a lot of that in there that are rules and obligations that have to be navigated in a way that make it very tricky and leave like wide open booby traps and minefields to have to navigate through regular situations. I assume when I read this, sorry, when I read your first book, COVID. Yeah. Dune? Honestly, I'm not a big Dune guy.

I've watched the movies. I haven't even read the books. Really? No. Oh, I had, I felt like Dune probably played a role. Game of Thrones. I'd thrown that in lower in my list and there was a third one, but now I'm spacing on it. Well, the one that did inspire it actually was attack on Titan, which is the anime that I was telling you about.

Yeah, which I still haven't watched. Dude, I don't know if you've got time on the road or not, but it's... Kid friendly? No. No. Depends on your kids, man. I let my older two watch it reluctantly, but they had watched a couple other anime that were similar in genre, so I'm like, okay, they can take the gore. It's pretty gory in some areas. It's besides that,

there's nothing really untoward besides the gore. But it's basically like a monster thing. It's, it's like, anyways, I won't spoil that, but I've watched it through from start to finish four different times, and I want to watch it a fifth, because it's so good. It is, and I stand by this. it's still the best story of our generation, in my opinion. And all of Japan knows that I've got a hoodie that has one of the logos on it that I walk around. And so the heroes, their military corps called the scout regimen, they salute by putting a hand like this, a hand behind, boom, like this. And they go, Shinzo or Sasagayo, which is, I dedicate my heart.

It's showing them putting a dagger through their heart for their country. And, yeah, I'll walk around in public in Japan, and people will be like, oh, Shinsul, it's like, boom, and they'll be like, boom. And they're like, ah. So it's like, it's a cultural phenomenon over there. And around the world, it really is, here's the problem. If you're not into anime, it's a bad place to start because it'll set you on the top of Mount Rushmore. It doesn't get better than that, in my opinion.

Yeah, if I'm going to watch anime and no, I'm not going to watch a ton of anime, I go, why not go to Mount Rushmore? Do that one. Yes. You won't waste your time, I promise. And if you're confused at any point, know that it gets explained later. And you'll probably want to rewatch. it from the beginning now that you understand what was happening by the end.

And that's the way I wanted to build these books. You shouldn't know what's going on in book one until book four. And I want by the end of book four to come around to make it make sense. This is my whole thing. So what did you think book one? I'm like, I don't feel like I got the full story. So I'm like, I don't know. Like I'm impressed you could write it.

Now I just want the details, which I already know from our last conversation. I'm like, I've got to wait four books. Yeah. I know there's going to be a book a year, but I'm trying, man. I'm working on book three right now, and this one's coming out February 17th. February? Oh, sorry, not February. I'm sorry, July, July 17th.

Oh, so like right away? Right away, yes. And when people want to order it, Amazon? Yeah, there's a Kindle pre-order open right now. It's only 99 cents, and I do that to try to bring it up in the ratings before it dropped. Sure. So if you guys, even if you don't read Kindle, if you want to drop 99 cents, that really helps me hit the bestseller mark when it drops, and it's my only chance to.

If I don't hit it on the 17th, I won't. So if I get like 150 people, 200 people, I don't know how many people are listening, drop 99 cents each on this. It'll hit bestseller and I can thank you afterwards. But if you want the book itself, you'll have to buy it on the 17th. You can't pre-order on Amazon for the actual physical copies. That's sweet. So if people want to go buy it off Kindle, search out fractures in peace.

Correct. Yeah, I'll send you a link. You can throw it in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, please do. beg from the bottom of my heart for people to just donate 99 cents. Even if you don't read Kindle and don't have a Kindle, you won't miss the 99 cents and it really helps Drew try to hit that high level of authorship. Yeah, well, and it be, you know, like on your journey, I'm like, man, you know, cool it be.

You know, I listen. I always find it fascinating. So in my journey in faith, I found out that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien used to be friends, right? And I was like, what? It was kind of like almost made me pause, you know? Yeah, that's like DC meets Marvel, you know? Right. It's like so epic. And then I had to sit there and kind of stew on that.

I'd love nothing more in the future than for Drew to be this like world renowned author who got his meager starts, his small starts talking on us. Not that you got your starts here, but, you know, our conversations. I was reading your post on Substack. I reposted it. So if you're following substack, you should go read it. Because I'm like, man, it's kind of what I hope book two is, if you would. Because I didn't realize, you know, I have my life, you have your life, right?

And then we walk into a conversation and I see it from my end and you see it from your end. And to read your thoughts on it, I was like, wow, that's like super well written, A, but B, like it kind of adds to what I remember, you know, of how you came in. you're like, what the hell went on? I'm like, I don't know, man. And the fact that I didn't give you the answer the first time around and you get pushing on it, I'm like, yeah, I kind of forgot I did that.

But in fairness, it's been, you know, just my own story. It's taken a long time to kind of unwind what a guy saw and dealt with and continues to deal with, you know? And it's not like all that stuff just went away. Yeah, I was looking at the analytics of that substack post and it shows how many people clicked on whatever links on that post. and the number one clicked on link is that picture behind you right there. People want to see that picture and blow it up and look at it because it's so, like, how profound is that?

Well, I mean, I've told you this story. I know you've got your own feelings because it's you. Yeah, but I told you the first time when I got it, right? Did I tell you the story? Tell me. Okay, so I get the photo like two weeks after the convoy ended, and that brought into the fact that I'm like, oh my God, that day was real. That day was real. All that stuff's real.

I'm a whole man. So it took me probably, man, I can't remember. Was it a year to finally go in and get it professionally framed? And then when I finally got it and I'm sitting in the garage, my wife comes home and I show it to her. She's like, wow, that's a beautiful photo. And then she goes, who's the guy in it? I'm like, she had no idea because I'd never shown anyone. I was just kind of like put it in the vault of Sean having to deal with something before he could actually talk about it and show anything.

and yeah like I mean it means a lot to me and it's cool that people want to see what it actually is the story behind it is just I don't know it's out of body experience almost right it's kind of like one of those things when you're talking about Japan like I can tell you but it's like 10 times then

that's what the picture is for me and I lived it and I still there's times I'm like man I can't believe that's real you know it's a good reminder of it's sitting there every time I walk in here. I'm like, that was one of those. You know, I, like, I interviewed the photographer once. Oh, you did?

I never released it. Okay. I did it for myself. So it's buried in a vault somewhere. Have you listened to it back? You know, I haven't listened to it. I listened to it back after I recorded it, so probably in the first month. But I haven't listened to it since then.

It was a tough interview because I wanted him to tell me who I was back then. Like, I just wanted to hear it. Just tell me. I can handle it. I've grown up or matured or whatever the word is. I just want to hear. And he confirmed everything I thought about that day, that I just wasn't myself.

And he was worried about me. And he said, fall out. He's like, I wasn't sure if you're going to hurt anyone or if you're going to hurt yourself. You just weren't. The guy had met two days prior or three days prior.

And I was concerned for him. So I just followed you. And then, you know, this photo comes out of that. Like, it's just, it's, you know, when we were talking, You were saying, I don't know why I went to Japan, but it just seemed like that's where I'm being drawn to, and I don't, can't fully understand it. And I was telling you, like, of all the things going on in the world right now,

Alberta having a referendum and Sean going the opposite way of that makes about zero sense. It'd be like the Emmett and I was trying not to win the Stanley Cup. I mean, although at times right now, folks, I wonder. And yet, like, things just continue, every domino just continues to fall. Every stress I had just, you know, oh, if this doesn't have, There it went. Oh, okay. Well, oh, and there it went.

You know, like, I think back to him talking to me. Like, it confirmed everything that I was completely local. And yet out of it comes that photo. And without that photo, I would have never believed that any of that happened, right? And the reason he and me know each other is in the first day of being there, people were stressed about Antifa. And I'm a journalist, podcaster. I want to go meet someone from Antifa. I just want to interview.

Because I'm like, I have this idea of what Antifa is. And I'm like, I'm just going to go search it out. So everybody said, well, they're Antifa. So I go up and talk to them and they wouldn't be Antifa. And there's this guy standing at the front of our door of the hotel, full Bella clava. I'm like, that's Antifa. I'm like, really? I just walked up, started talking me.

He's like, pulled his mask down. He goes, no, I'm just fucking cold, man. And I'm like, fair enough. What are you doing? He's like, I'm a photographer. Oh, cool. Nice meet you sat down and had a 15-minute conversation and carried on my my merry way and continue to say hi to him whenever I bumped into him.

But I mean, yeah, if he hadn't have done that, would have never known the day was real. Because I thought I dreamt part of Ottawa full stop. Yeah. Because to confront that it was actually real, I had to confront a lot, if that makes sense. Yeah, and here's where, like, I don't know who writes the script for this simulation,

if God's in the backroom doing this, or if it just comes to him on the fly. But somehow, through the insanity of that that eventually very painfully led to your own conversion to Christianity, it helped me in the long run, which I put into that substack. Which is wild to me. That, like, I can't even take any credit for that whatsoever. It was not something I wanted to happen at that point.

And I had been, I felt like I was over. I was done with my faith in my early, well, mid-30s, I'd say by 35 for sure. Between 33 and 35, I'd given up. And I was a Christian my whole life before that. And I found myself in a job that I despised, that I was kind of stuck in financially. And I was draining on me physically and mentally. I was listening to a lot of atheists like Sam Harris and everything he was saying was making sense.

And like, I've been fooled my whole life. There is no God. And this is all just for naught. Nileism, nihilism, nihilism. And I just accepted that that's what life was at that point. And then COVID happens right after that, right after that. And that's how I had to start to navigate. And it wasn't until I was like, I cannot believe this is our country.

I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe this is my people. I can't believe this is my town, my government, the whole thing. Everything is nuts. Everything's upside down. And I had nothing to more to. I was just sort of being cast around in the waves of all this insanity. And it wasn't until you asked me that very pointed question that I don't think you meant as pointed.

It was more for your own sake, if I understand right, because you were wrestling with it at that point. I was wrestling with it and I was nervous to ask it. Yeah, I bet you were. Because you don't ask that question in polite company. And if you don't know that they're already saved in Canada, at least, you expect most people are atheist or agnostic or whatever. Well, and you were in your post, you didn't know if I was atheist or agnostic. I would have said I was atheist, but once I learned the two words, I went, oh, I was agnostic. Yeah, agnostic, I think is probably most people.

It's probably a lot like the political spectrum. I bet you most people think they're atheist. And then if they just spend five minutes, they go, oh, no, I'm agnostic. Full stop. There's just no way to prove it. Yep. Don't care kind of thing. It might be, I don't know.

I got to go to work tomorrow. I don't think about this stuff. I don't have time for this. I don't know the theologian, who cares? Yeah. You know, change the channel kind of thing, which is most people. But yeah, it's totally serendipitously and circuitously led me back around to the faith of my youth in a way that I think was probably one of the only ways it could have was through hardship. It wasn't going to be by people convincing me because I'd heard all of the stories.

I'd read the scriptures back and forth. I'd lived through every sermon that you can think of three times. And it was dry at that point. There was no life left in it. you know, the spring of life was not in that in that time of my life. And it wasn't until you asked me, do you believe in God? Nobody had ever asked me in that way before. If they asked if I was a Christian, I would have said no at that point, because I wasn't,

at least in my mind, I was not. And that's a whole different thing is can you unbecome a Christian? I don't know, theoretically. Some people might disagree, but I felt like I wasn't. And I, my lips said the word before my brain could stop it. And I said, yes. when you said, do you believe in God? I said yes.

And I remember after that trying to like fumble through, why the hell did I just say that? I don't believe in God, but I just said yes. And then I had to like, my mouth had to catch up to my brain had to catch up to what. I'm like, well, because of this, wait, maybe I do believe in God. Maybe I've been deceiving myself on this.

And it screwed me up for a while. You're welcome. Yeah. in the best way. Like, I had to do my own internal digging and be like, why did I say that? I didn't say that on accident. I think that there's something deeper inside me that I'm not, I'm not recognizing, I'm not giving time to. So I'm like, look, I haven't gotten into the word in half a decade at that point. You know, maybe, maybe I should start looking at this with a fresh view. And it didn't take long. It was like, of course, you know, it was always there. It had never left.

It's a cool story from here because what I feel like I'm okay in saying this because you acknowledge it in the in the post about how you hadn't told your wife. Yeah, I was terrified about that for years because she's a very strong Christian. Her family are very strong Christians and I felt like that was and it probably is like one of the major cornerstones of our marriage is we're a Christian and for her to know especially during that time when I was like wrestling with it for years. for years I was wrestling with it. Like, I just don't believe it anymore, you know? And to admit that to her would probably feel like a betrayal. I'm like, I don't want to hurt her.

So I just can't let her know. And it just ate at me like acid all the time. I was paranoid and had anxiety in the back of my brain at all times that she's going to find out. Either I'm going to slip up or somebody's going to find out and tell her and it's going to blow up and our marriage is going to evaporate. I was that worried about it. And it turns out that it, I had my season in that valley. I found my way out, or I was led through the way out. And I got to tell her about it afterwards.

I was like, so here's a funny story. We were taking a walk around this campsite in Florida. And we tried to get out every morning to have a walk. It's a beautiful area. There's wild pigs running around. It's really fun. And I just decided like, you know what? I'm comfortable with saying that I am a Christian.

I'm still a Christian and I screwed up. And I wasn't for a time and I'm sorry. And how do you feel about that? And she was like, thanks for telling me. Next topic. You know? Well, I mean, what people don't probably realize is after we were done that podcast, you're like, I've got to go sit and stew on this.

because everything you just said you told me after that podcast, I was like, oh, I'm in my own head of why I asked it, right? Because, I mean, you know, it's set in motion. I don't know if that conversation, where it went in society, I have no idea. But it was probably two weeks to six months before you started seeing it on Sean Ryan. You saw Russell Brand, you see Joe Rogan and all. And I'm like, oh, they're getting the same things I am wrestling with. And I like to think I'm probably because I'm a smaller pocket,

I can just maneuver and it's not so much pressure, even though the pressure is probably the same between individuals. But you started to see that same topic be broached everywhere. I don't know if we had anything to do with that. But that one question, man. Because I think about that an awful lot. That sent me, I'd been wrestling with it. And it was the first time on the podcast I'd ever approached anyone with the question.

I felt confident in asking you. I wasn't sure your answer. I was actually quite terrified of what would come out of that of even approaching it because you're right everything you said about Canadian culture you don't ask that right are you a Christian? No, I'm a Christian or I am a Christian oh okay do you believe in God

and well in my own journey back then it was something I was wrestling with and I finally need to talk about it I just need let's talk about this can we just talk about it and if you go back and listen it's kind of an awkward Like it is two or three minutes We're like I'm like

Oh crap That's an awkward question Yeah I don't even remember What I said But I can tell you If you listen back Don't believe anything I'm saying

Because I'm making it up on the spot I'm spinning my wheels Because I was so Taken out of left field You want to know an odd I went back You want to know one of the ones I went back and listened to

And I don't recognize a person You remember When I was in Ottawa I disappeared And then I came back Into a solo episode I don't recognize that I mean, I recognize it.

I know it's me. And I understand what I was going through, but I'm listening to it. I'm like, you're not telling the truth there. You're not telling the truth there. You're not telling the truth there. And the grace I give myself is I didn't know how to explain it. I'm like, I don't even know what to say here.

I'm just like, but everything I'm talking about, I'm like, you're trying to dance around what actually went on because you actually don't know how to explain it. Like I listened to it. I'm like, I don't know if, I don't know if that gave any answers to what the heck happened to me. You know, like, it's just, oh, you know, I'm okay. I'm like, but you're not.

You're actually far from it at that point in time. Very much so. Isn't it crazy that we have like recorded records of these things? Yeah. Like what a time to live in where you can go back and listen to like this time capsule of yourself and knowing, you know, post hoc how it was compared to how it is now and see that thread of time being like, I see how things connect now, but it is impossible to have seen that while it was going on.

Yeah, well, I, someday, if my kids or maybe my grandkids want to understand who the heck I am and how I got to where I am, or anyone in society, for that matter, don't have to start at episode one. But I mean, by episode 80, I bet you onwards, you start to get a pretty good thread of where I'm going, and why I'm going there to fast forward on the light ship

to where we sit here now. I don't know, 1,000, 84 maybe, something like that. Like, you know, I was doing the math the other day. Yeah. 100 was a big milestone. A thousand was a big milestone. And my brain logically goes to 10,000.

I'm like... You're going in orders of magnitude. I'm like 84. Yeah. Like, I am a long, long way away from that. Decades here, man. Yeah, we'll be, I'll be 84. You'll be 87.

There we go. Okay. You know, we'll talk about it. life. We'll be sitting the whole time. I don't think we'll be standing at that point. I'll be wheeling ourselves in. Dude, if Jiu-Jitsu has its way with me, I won't have knees left. I don't know. It's, Kevin always brings, forgive me, Kevin, you're going to tell me the guy as soon as I say it. Master, and I can't think of his name, so just text me from Brazil comes in. He's 92, Kevin. Oh, this is bearing. Bering. Bering, yes. And he's still doing it. Yeah.

I mean, to a degree. He's 92. Yeah, exactly. You don't expect him to roll with like hungry, athletic competition level of 20-year-old blue belts. You know, he'd probably do fine, but he would be feeling it for the next year. You know, like he's going to be taken care. Honestly, past a certain age, it's just maintenance. You know, you want to do as best as you can, the most that you can, but not beyond that.

Because you'll just, your body doesn't get better with time. We'll put it that way. What's coming up in the next year? Because I assume unless our paths cross, and I don't know when we're doing this next, right? When you think about it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Probably when you're back next, when I'm back, you're back, which means like late summer next year. So when are you back?

Do you have a date? In Calgary, May 15th for the Cornerstone Forum? Right, but you're not back then, right? I'm not back then. Yeah. So I'll be in Japan at that point. We were saying, like, man, you're going to. have to like put me on stage or something to get me here from Japan. I don't think I can just

qualify a $1,200 return ticket. But if you are back, you said 2027 you'll be back because you're leaving was July. July 5th, we leave and then it's- July to July. Essentially. Essentially. Okay. I'll be, yeah, if all things are equal, which is a big assumption to make with my life, I'll be in, I'll be in Alberta at that time because we're doing summers in Canada. So what do you got planned for the next year? All right. Because I know for a fact we did not talk about Japan last time. Yeah.

So are you, you know, like? Well, I think we talked about it a little bit, but I hadn't bought anything. Or I was thinking about it. But it was one of those like irons in the fire kind of thing. And yeah, I've got, I've always got so many of those things going on. In fact. So what are you, what are you staring at going? These are kind of, you saw the vision board when you walked in.

Yes. Yes. Right? Like when I look at it, I'm like, Well, I'm not hitting 100%, but the big ones are happening. And staring at the vision board is definitely aligned making sure I stay on track. So I know what I'm trying to accomplish in the next year, whether or not it all goes according to plan. I mean, obviously, once you get rolling, it's hard to know what's going to happen day after day.

When you look at the next year, Japan twice? Yep. Yeah, we're going back in September for three months. We'll be back in the U.S. by December. at which point we'll winter down there and then fly back to Japan for the spring because we try to spend the, you know, easier weather. You're trying to avoid winter.

Yeah, avoid winter and summer. Summer there is abysmal apparently. Really, really, really humid and very hot. So people just hide in the AC basically. They're like avoid going outdoors at all costs. So you don't want to spend money to take your family into that. But to answer your question, so for the next year, I've got a number of projects, at least five major projects I'm working on almost every day right now.

One of which I'm not going to talk about because it's brand new and I don't want to jinx it. But before I say it, I'll repeat one of my favorite quotes lately, which is sort of self-deprecating. I came across the other day from Teddy Roosevelt that drives me every day to try to do all these improbable, highly aggressive things I want to do over the next while. is Roosevelt was quoted, I love this, saying, you should be embarrassed at the understanding that another man could take what you have right now and do better with it. So I want to be the best version of what I am to spite somebody who could do better with what I have,

because I don't have nothing. I've got a lot of things to work with, and I could do better. And I have to remind myself when I'm like, oh, man, I'm tired. I've been working all this stuff. It's like somebody else would keep working. you're going to stop now when you could get a little bit further today, which is further than you would be tomorrow when you start. So I try to keep that gear pushed, you know, for that reason. And right now I've got a major project I actually announced on your podcast last time that's finally coming to fruition,

which is the release to the world of this Jiu-Jitsu escape camp I'm doing in Japan that I'm going to be starting the first one in October of this year. That's what I'm doing when I'm going back there this time. I'm going to be taking 10 people that I'm going to tour around Japan through three major cities through Tokyo, through Toyama, and through Kobe, which are three awesome cities, the one I live in, so I kind of know what's going on around there. Tokyo, there's just so much to do. You could spend a thousand days there and not see it all. And then Kobe is really cool.

People only know it through like Kobe beef, right? They're very well known for their beef there, but it's actually like a smaller offshootshoot city from Kyoto and Osaka, which are more well-known and, tour it around, but I got to go hang out at this really cool happening Jiu-Jitsu gym that just opened up in Kobe that's run by one of the guys that owns the Jiu-Jitsu brand Scramble, which is huge in the UK and big in Japan. So he owns Scramble Japan, and he's an Aussie that speaks fluent English, but he also has lived in Japan for like, I think 11 years, he said, Billy,

and his Japanese is phenomenally. He teaches all his classes in Japanese, but if you need to explain, he'll tell you in English kind of thing. So I want to bring a bunch of people there, have some great Kobe beef, show them the sites, take them to the beach, take them to a mountain, take them to a shrine, take them to an onsen, bring them around, show them a sumo show, take them to the Samurai Museum, all of this stuff. I've got this itinerary that's just super audacious that's laid out for 10 days, I'm going to tour them around. And so that will open up in July. I've got the website

all built. I'm just finalizing the itinerary this week, and then hopefully in the next week or two, I can't tell you an exact date, but the website will go live. I'll start pushing in the first 10 people to get in. It'll be the ones that go. That's one project. Obviously, there's lots of stuff with my own life when it comes to traveling around I've got to deal with, but the next one is going to be a jiu-jitsu tournament that I do twice a year is also happening in October. So I'm going to be in Japan already in September. I'm going to fly back to Alberta for a weekend to run a jiu-jitsu tournament, to fly back to Japan to do a jihitsu camp two weeks later, touring people around for 10 days. I'm going to be spinning like a top for those two.

On top of that, next month, I've got a book being released that I'm putting everything into right now. On top of that, I'm writing the sequel to that sequel daily. And on top of that, I'm doing 30 days of substack. And on top of that, I've got another project that I'm not talking about right now, which is daily effort that I'm hoping by next year will actually be able to pay off. So it's a lot of things. But again, I know that I have the capability to do it. I have the drive to do it.

And I just, I feel like being ambitious shouldn't be the deciding factor of whether I do it or not. I think that's, you know, I would rather try it and fail than believe I can't and fail anyways. Well, best of luck in your head. I look forward to, I don't know if I told you this in our chat before and off, but I was like really excited for this. It's become a marker. You know, I, um, me too. I've been looking forward to this for three months. This has become a marker.

The Christmas episode with Tanner and a day has become a marker. and then the year in review with Ken Rutherford's become another marker. I just, I didn't plan it that way. They just kind of, man, yeah, we should do this again. I mean, that was a lot of fun, and it just makes sense. And you're a guy off doing things most don't do. And I wish the best for you because I hope, you know,

I wish or I hope people will go on Kindle first off and spend 99 cents and bump up fractures in peace. I think that'd be cool. and you know I just one day I hope to see you on like some talk show talking about fractures and peace oh yeah they're going to do an anime show on it now Americans won't get that but in Japan it's huge and I'll be like I know that guy that is another thing I'm actually pushing at right now just trying to get this thing into the the Japanese visual market of manga and anime and it's a very difficult path but I have started down that path myself trying to make contacts and I entered a I was telling you a one-shot

competition which is one of the ways to enter the market there with a very talented artist that I did, I wrote a short script for that she drew out and I feel like it has a good chance to win this contest, which would get the attention of that market, which then maybe I can shoehorn my own story in afterwards. A lot going on. But man, when you say, you look forward to seeing the next year, I look forward to watching and listening to you, because I don't have too many friends that do what I do, you know, and I find it so much more interesting to watch than to do because when you're doing it, all you're worried about is that the next thing, right? And then you almost like have to look at it retrospectively. You're like,

that was crazy. I can't believe I did that. But to be able to watch it third party, you can just sit back, kick back with some popcorn and be like, oh, this is cool. Look what Sean did this week. I'm looking forward to that. Well, I'm going to go. And it's going to be this week. Yeah. You got six days, fella. You can do it. Campa deucasai. People are like, where are you going to here? You're going there? I'm like, we're going to go spend a week in Manitoba. Nobody, sorry Manitoba Nobody goes and spends a week in Manitoba But I'm like, you know

Go into Winnipeg Flight 22B was Hawaii 22A was Winnipeg, all right Yeah, there's a I'm excited for it I'm actually, you know like The last The fun starts, okay

You've had the hard stuff up to this point Six days from now is when the fun starts Yeah, well, I've earned it I chuckled I told Drew this folks before he When before we walked in here I'm like it was like a year ago I was sitting there going

I don't know if I'm doing the corners don't ever again and you were sitting right where you're sitting you're like you're gonna do it again I'm like I don't know man I don't know oh pull me and then of course you know now we booked in this will be our third straight time in Calgary and I chuckle at the timing of this because I'm like I was stressed two weeks ago

I was stressed I was probably pulling my hair out and yet now you know with don't get me wrong there's still work to be done I'm like not that much work You won't get it all done. Don't stress about that. You'll get 90. 90%.

90%, maybe 95. Well, we'll shoot for 96. You'll figure out what you missed on the road. Either way, I appreciate you coming in and doing this, and look forward to seeing wherever you get to because it's been super cool watching on my end. Don't stop the videos from Japan. Yeah, I got to get back to that. Oh, man.

I've got a lot. If you haven't seen any of those folks, there's a few that just make you chuckle. You're just like, yeah, this is interesting. You have to laugh to get through it, man. It's a struggle. Drew, great seeing you. Thanks for hopping in the studio. Driving out again.

Yeah. All right. Well, don't spend all that yen in one spot. Well, I'm not going to spend it. It's going in the wallet. There you go.