Shaun Newman Podcast - #256 - Zuby

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Musician, author, podcaster & a man who's quickly becoming an influential voice with over a million followers on social media. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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and others. I'm talking about Zubi, so buckle up. Here we go. This is Zubi. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Mr. Zubi. So thank you, sir, for hopping on.

Happy to be here, Sean. How are you doing? Yeah, doing well. You know, I'm going to be honest. I probably like so many of your followers in the middle of Twitter, in the middle of COVID found you on Twitter as a guy who said a lot of the things I was thinking. And it came out of, you know, a guy from the UK who was a rapper traveling around. And I found that. well, unique. And it's been really enjoyable to sit and watch your brain process, a lot of the things that have gone on. But for a lot of people who maybe don't know Zubi in my area, would you mind giving a little bit of a background on yourself so we can kind of get a feel for who we're talking with here today?

Yeah, sure thing. So my name is Zubi. I'm an independent rapper, author, host of The Real Talk with Zubi podcast, public speaker and coach. I am originally from the UK with family background originally from Nigeria. I was born in England. I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I went to an American school up until fifth grade before going back to the UK for school. I've traveled to about almost 40 different countries, and I am known for a lot of different things, including all the aforementioned things that all started out with my music when I was in university, put out my first album way back in 2006 and built up my independent career ever since then. And then in 2019, I started to become well known for my sociopolitical and cultural commentary, had various posts

and videos go viral all around the world, which introduced me to a whole new audience. And so several years later, here we are now. I'm different things to different people. I'd be lying if I didn't say in my deep dive on you. I stumbled across your claim of fame way back when when you broke the women's deadlifting video and identified as a woman for a day. I thought that was clever. Obviously, you know, that's become a very big topic these days. But even back then, it was obviously a big topic. But one of the things, you know, like I said, I found you in the middle of COVID. I didn't know anything about you. you until then. You came across my Twitter feed by somebody and I was like, who is this guy? Now, fast forward. And where I want to begin with, Yzoubi is it was a tweet that you had out earlier this month. And I responded with something just like, you know, what was your struggle? And I got a few people thought I was trying to entice him to something. I just, I was really curious, right? Here's this guy I know little to nothing about. Everybody has their struggle.

Everybody has their moment. So if we can rewind the clock back. 2011, I believe this is when you take your, your, your jump into being a full time musician, a full time rapper. Was that, was that an easy decision? I mean, now in hindsight, it probably was. But if you could put yourself back in that position, doing something that's a little against the grain, so to speak, what were, what were going through your brain back then? Yeah, sure thing.

So it was easy yet difficult. It wasn't easy in that. I know my calling and I know what I'm here on this earth to achieve. And I knew I wasn't going to achieve that in the corporate world. So I knew I had to leave that world and I had to pursue something more independent and creative through my music and everything else that would come of that. But it was hard in that, you know, I had a good job. I had a good job. I was secure.

I was on a trajectory to make a lot of money and be comfortable and stay out of all the madness and conflict that I now find myself involved in from time to time, you know, mostly unintentionally, just as a nature, as a byproduct of all the things that I do and the way that I speak out and the things that I say. And it was also hard from a financial perspective. There are people out there who think that, you know, I've had people say that I got into music to make money. For anyone who believes that, I would like you to know that 2019 was the first year that I made more money doing what I do now than I used to in my old job way back in 2011. So I took an eight-year pay cut, went through a lot of hurdles, being an independent rapper.

or for anyone who wants to know, being an independent musician is not an easy and lucrative career path, very far from it. If you want to make money, then stay in your 9 to 5. Stay in your corporate world, if your goal is primarily to make money. I'll tell you that straight up. But people have all sorts of misconceptions about everything. It's something I deal with constantly. I think that's why you got that response when you simply asked, what was your struggle?

Because, as you said, you're new to it. So for people who have been following me for many years and who have seen some of that journey, and also, of course, tone is lost on the internet. So it can be hard to tell if someone's being genuine or being sarcastic. So I think that some people, you know, would have responded to that thinking like, what the heck? Like Zubi's been here. Like Zubi's been grinding. Zubi's done all this stuff because they know the story.

But for someone who doesn't, there are people who discover me recently and they think, oh, you know, this guy just showed up on Twitter. said one thing and now he's popular or oh he just showed up and walked into joe rogan studio and um now he's blown up off of that or he just did that people people like to downplay other success well the reason the reason i ask actually is a more personal reason uh a little over two weeks ago i quit my job and man and i certainly understand the uh the consistent paycheck and the thoughts it go through one's brain when you're walking away from that. Now, the difference between the two of us, they got three young kids and a wife and everything else. That doesn't make it, it puts different

thoughts in your head for sure. I highly doubt that made it any easier or harder. Just different problems arise when you're put in that situation. So I look back at when you're making that decision. And I find people, Twitter, I mean, you're a man, Zubi, who says things that a ton of people like, but it's going to draw some feedback from the other side. So I actually get exactly why people thought I was trying to dig at you. But in my mind, I look at it and I go, I really want to pick the brain of a guy who's doing what he wants to do, but took over a decade, essentially, to get to where he wanted to be. And I bet you still got mountain peaks you want to hit.

I highly don't. You aren't done yet. Yeah, for sure. And it's so interesting what you said there. First of all, you know, congrats and props on taking that plunge. because as you've already alluded to, it is not easy. And what's interesting about what you said is part of the reason why I did that is because, you know, at this stage, I would have been, how old was I when I left my corporate job?

I would have been about 24, 24. And I knew that in the future, I would have a spouse. I would have a family. I would have children, right? That's all stuff that's to come. And I knew making that decision with those responsibilities and with those dependents would be a lot harder than. So that's part of why at that relatively early stage, I said, you know what, I have to do this. I have to do this because now is the time.

It's never going to be impossible, right? You can always make changes, but I just need to be able to take care of myself. So whilst it was difficult, it was easier in that sense. sense. So it was very conscious and deliberate because I was able to kind of see ahead and be like, you know what, now is really the time to do this thing because it's, I don't know the right, I don't know the right word. There's less of those external pressures and dependencies. We always make conscious choices in this world. And something I think people don't talk about a lot, Sean is that everything is a tradeoff.

In this life, virtually everything is a tradeoff. And I think it's very rare for people to talk about the tradeoffs. We don't talk about tradeoffs in individual life. We don't talk about tradeoffs in family, in groups, in careers, and all of these things. Everything is a constant tradeoff. Even in the world of politics, the realm of politics, most things are tradeoffs, right? Politicians and people like to come out there and talk as if like, okay, we can just do this thing. and it's all going to be good. It's all going to be upside. There's not going to be any

ramifications down the line. Don't even think about that. I don't even talk about it. Don't question it. And it's like every single thing is a tradeoff. You open up one set of doors and opportunities and you have to close another one behind you. You said that you're a married man. So when you get married, you're closing off a whole section of the tree and possibilities, but you're also opening up this whole new one. Right. And this is with everything. Every single thing is a tradeoff. And I think that's such an interesting concept because I don't think we talk about it enough in our society. And I think if people could view things as tradeoffs, then it would actually be a lot healthier for discourse. And I think it would be a lot more real to say, okay, yeah,

that's closing off. So I mean, when I left my job, that was a tradeoff, right? That was a tradeoff. And it's like, okay, I'm doing something that's very safe and secure and is earning a good amount of money. which is set to earn me a lot more money and it's kind of guaranteed. Or I can take this other path and it's going to be rocky. There's not really a clear blueprint. I don't know exactly how it's going to work out. There's going to be a lot of strife. I'm not going to be as comfortable, certainly, for a long period of time.

But it opens up this whole new branch of possibilities. And even though I didn't know what that would look like back then, I'm seeing a lot of those seeds planted then happening now, and that's going to be the exact same thing that happens with you right now as we talk. We don't know exactly what's going to happen in the future and what new opportunities are going to be presented and so on, but you've now opened that door. So it's always an exciting period. Yeah, I think anytime you tell tradeoffs, I just so much of life is even when a door closes on you. you. It could be the right door to close and just open up the next door and you just got to pay

attention and see the next one come and then you step through. And for me, when I, when I listen to talk, you know, I got to go back to Joe Rogan probably, you know, I got a quote on my wall from Joe, whatever time you have attack like you're trying to save the world. And the difference between the two of us and even Joe at the time, he talked, was talking to one of his many guests he had. And he was talking about as a married man, he couldn't do what he did. And I laughed because at the time I was listening to it, I was a married man and had kids. And the woman asked him, well, why? She said, well, you got bills and responsibility. And I couldn't just pick up and do a comedy tour and that type of thing. And I certainly knew what he was talking about. But it really motivated me to be like, well,

I truly believe nothing is impossible. I think if you want to do something, you just got to get going. that type of drive everyone has. They just got to find out where they're motivated. And I've heard you talk about crossroads or intersections. You know, like there's times in life where you come to an intersection and it can be something where if you're good at something and you believe in it and you think you can maybe monetize it, make some money at it and go and the world wants it. I mean, that's a happy choice to make.

I just look at the crossroads, the intersection I came to. And I'm like, when I'm 70, I will not regret this, no matter what. Because I want to live life as an adventure. I think in the corporate world, like that I chuckled. Because I had a great job. Great job. Great guys I was working with. But at the end of the day, the little spark of life or what you want coming out of it wasn't there anymore. And so it's like, well, I mean, at some point, you got to make the choice of how are you going to live life? Comfortable? Right? Is that what the meaning of life is in? Is it comfort?

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. And one of my friends said something really interesting to me a few weeks back. He said he quoted it from someone else, but he was saying that in life, you choose your regrets. You don't choose, right? You don't choose whether or not you're going to have regrets, right? You're going to have regrets, no matter what, right?

when you're 70, when you're 80 years old, when you're on your death, that you're going to have regrets. And actually, you choose your regrets. So it's not always just what do I want to do or what do I feel like doing. It's also what will I regret the least, right? Will I be kicking myself? Can I live with this regret? Can I live with knowing I have this whole opportunity out there and possibility to explore this and really see what I'm capable of and how I can influence the world?

can I can I cope with the regret of not pursuing that and I think a lot of people don't think of it that way but when he said that that really resonated with me because that's how I felt and it was like man I can't be that guy who you know I'm 70 years old and I'm like oh you know what like I used to rap and I used to do this and that and I could have explored this but I you know I was so addicted to the comfort and the steady paycheck that I never I didn't even try. I didn't even explore it. And with me, I was like, you know what, I got to try. And not only do I have to try, I know I will succeed to some degree. How high that ceiling is, how far it's all going to go, that remains to be seen. It remains to be seen right now. I do not know, as we record

this, I do not know how big everything I'm building and creating is going to get. Where I am right now, if someone told me even five years ago, oh, this is where you're going to be, I'd be like, really? Like, are you sure? And it would have sounded like a huge success. And now that I'm in this position, I'm like, okay, cool, I'm warming up now. I want to do all of these other things. I don't know where that ceiling is. But as you alluded to, life is an adventure. Life is truly an adventure. And I think it's exciting. I think if more people viewed it as a continuous adventure and they're like the hero in their own story, then I think people would have more fun with it. You know, there's so much malaise going on. There's so much, you know, I've never in my life before have I've

seen so many people talking about being depressed and being anxious and life sucking and the world being a terrible place and all that. And I can understand it to a degree because the world is harsh and life is difficult. We're all going to die to begin with and everyone we know in love is going to die. That's not really, that doesn't sound positive on the surface. And, you know, we're going to deal with suffering. We're going to deal with death. We're going to deal with loss in all sorts of types of ways, but also we have the experience to, we have the opportunity to experience beauty, kindness, generosity, love, family, relationships, so many wonderful things. But it's this, it's this constant juxtaposition where in one way life is very beautiful and amazing and there's

so much opportunity. On a flip side, life is also very tragic and there's so much negativity and there's evil out there in the world. And both of them are true. You know, that's the reality. Both of them are true, but you can hone your mind to, at any given moment or overall, to focus more on one than the other. And people who I notice who are happy and successful and thriving,

they tend to lean more on the optimistic end and tend to focus more on the positive side. It doesn't mean you ignore the negative or act like it doesn't exist. But if you just go down this rabbit hole of negativity and sadness and focusing on all of the ills of the world and all the bad things that happened to you and all the bad things that happened to everyone else, you're not going to be happy

and you're also going to be paralyzed. You're going to be crippled because it just makes... Well, that's how people fall into denial. Look at history. You can just stare at all the horrendous things that happened. Oh, yeah. Or you can look at some of the great things that happened. Or you could do this other thing and balance it

and just look at how both play out. I mean, looking at the glass half full, is a talent, I think, all right? Like, especially over the past two years we've had. You mentioned more and more people talking about depression. I think that was one of the things that really astounded me with some of the people closest to me, including myself, that I would have never, ever, ever thought depression was that widespread

or could affect, like, healthy people with everything going right, I would say, in their lives. And yet the way here in Canada, at least, and I mean, you're a man who's traveled a lot. So you have a unique perspective in being across all the states, the UK, etc. Here in Canada, it's been, it's been an odd world. Like to walk outside, Zubi, and just be where your feet are. Like, it's a beautiful day, you know, even when it's minus 40. And I mean, we had a long winter here. It's still winter.

We're supposed to be getting snow today. But I mean, overall, if you walked out, your front door for the most part. It was pretty good. But after that, like no matter where you went, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, kids playing sports and mass. Like, we didn't, we didn't have our Florida. We didn't have our South Dakota.

We didn't have anything like that. We still don't recognize natural immunity. Like, we got all these crazy things, you know, and I hate to bring up the COVID stuff. That's not actually why I wanted to bring you on. But the depression part of it certainly got amplified over the past two years. The past two years, man, just put a shot in the arm and away it went. Of course it did, man. See, this is the thing that's crazy because from very early on, I was one of the,

I'd say, you know, in terms of following, I was one of the most prominent anti-lockdown, anti-mandate voices out there from very, very early because I foresaw all of these things you're talking about. Because what's happened is millions, hundreds of millions, if not big, millions of people over the course of the past two years have been spiritually separated from their humanity, right? People where, and this goes down every level, lockdowns, masks, social distancing, all of it. It's anti-human. It's anti-human, right? You're taking away for people to remain sane. People need, we're social animals, we're social beings. If you isolate someone,

Think about this, Sean. If you were, if someone committed a bad crime and they went to prison, right, they went to a maximum security prison and they're there with other people who have done really bad and dangerous things. If they want to punish that person even further, what do they do? Solitary confinement. Bingo, right? So it is known that isolating a person, isolating people, taking them away from their family, from their friends, from their usual outlets, from being able to go to places and do things and to do it for such a long period of time, it makes people literally go crazy. It makes people depressed.

It makes people fearful. It makes they literally train people, children and adults to fear each other, to fear your own family. Jordan Peterson talks about rats and how you get them addicted to cocaine. If they're social and they're in groups, they don't like cocaine. You stick them in solitary confinement. They take that up pretty quick, right? And you're like, I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to hear that and go, oh, we don't want that.

Well, I mean, that's what we did to our population. I mean, you mentioned, you said a line there, spiritually separated from your humanity. So I followed the trucker convoy out to Ottawa. And what I say about what I saw in Ottawa was I didn't realize that level of humanity existed. I just didn't like even in today's world right now, as I said, I could walk around my small town, small city, and know people and say hi and have these covers. But the level of humanity I saw in Ottawa was something I didn't realize existed on this planet anywhere. And I've, I've been through the states. I've been across Canada. I've been over in Europe, right? I've

been to enough places. I've never seen anything quite like this. What do you mean by that? Most of our interactions are pretty like surface, right? Like just like, hey, how's it going? Great. walk on. Lots of people don't even make eye contact on the street. Everybody believes there's this fear as a city gets bigger where you kind of, I don't know if I want to talk to people. I'm an outgoing guy. I grew up in a town while it's so small, you know, Saskatchewans known for its hamlets in these small towns, right? Like where it's just a farming community where you waived it everyone. And over time, that doesn't happen anymore. In Ottawa, people were hugging, crying, like, just like, I mean, that's the culmination of two years of absolute persecution and everything else, division in a country.

But people were just genuinely good people. There was, you know, on Parliament Hill, you had the first day there was a foot of snow, Zubi on the Parliament Hill side where the protest was going to take place. You kind of got the sense that it was put there, but what does it matter? And in the first day, somebody in a wheelchair couldn't get down it. So what happened? somebody got a shovel and pretty soon anytime it snowed the entire street was shoveled they had no garbage can so at the beginning people were you know piling garbage and trying to keep it organized

but the same time you know and when one of the guys i'm going to interview next week was led a group that went out there at 1 30 in the morning when you're not supposed to go out because it's that you know dangerous and clean parliament and what happened was is over and over and more garbage bags got put out then the entire streets were getting cleaned and then there was so much food they started feeding the homeless and then they started feeding just to anyone who came down there. I'm telling you, I've never seen that level of, I didn't realize that much goodwill could be existed. That's, it's amazing, man. And, you know, people, people hunger and crave it all the time, but especially when it is suppressed for such a long period, as you said. I mean, I'll be honest.

I think that what has happened, I think that what various governments have done around the world to people is a crime against humanity. I'm not mincing my words. I think that, they have committed an atrocity against humanity. I think that the way they have crushed the individual spirit crushed people's physical health, mental health, psychologically damaged people, damaged children, suppressed their education and their ability to learn how to communicate, taken people away from their friends, their family, led to people losing their jobs in various ways, all of that. To me, it was a huge assault on humanity. And I've never seen anything on this global level in the way that it did, all supposedly to protect people against a virus with a

99.9% plus survival rate in the majority of the population. And it was shocking how this message was just missed and or demonized over the past two years, right? There have been individuals who all throughout this were ringing this alarm bell saying, hey, these actions, these policies have severe consequences, has physical consequences, mental consequences, social consequences, economic consequences, like people, you know, you're also ignoring all of the other diseases and things that can harm people, right? Sure, COVID can be bad for certain people. And there are individuals who have died as a result of the disease, particularly people who are elderly and have multiple comorbidities. We've seen that same pattern all around the world.

But this is not the only thing in the world. There's more to the world than COVID, right? In any given year, about 60 million people die worldwide. Because some people will be listening to it. And they'll be like, oh, well, you know, five, six million people have died worldwide. Even if we take that number in the same time period, we've lost about 130 million people. What about them? Does that not matter?

Much of it was, some of it maybe was preventable. But it's not even talked about in the discussion. It's just COVID, COVID, COVID, fear, fear, masks, vaccines, more masks, more vaccines. Do this, do that. Stand here. Take this. Do this.

And it's just like, guys, humanity is so holistic. Health is so holistic throughout all this. Have any of these governments even talked about health? Have we talked about health? They closed down gyms. They closed down gyms. They closed down sports and everything. No talk about, no talk about reducing.

reducing obesity and people being overweight, no talk about supplementing vitamin D, no talk about all of the things that you can do to make your physical body stronger. And I think that this is a sort of manifestation of so many issues that we've been dealing with, particularly in the modern Western world. And it's been fascinating to watch. It's been heartbreaking in many ways. But at the same time, I have also seen, as you said, despite how polarizing and divisive it's been, it's also brought together so many millions of people who otherwise may not have ever

reached each other and interacted with each other and had this humanity both online and offline. So whilst it's been this catastrophe in one sense, for me, the silver line named the glass how full part is it's also introduced so many interesting and disparate people all around the world. You said you discovered me because of something I said. about the situation. And that's the case for many, many people. I've done meetups in many different cities over the past few months and had 100 plus people show up and everyone gets on great and everyone's got their stories. And also being able to, you know, when people feel like they're represented, you know, our politicians are on paper supposed to represent the people.

But we've learned, we've learned a few things there. Yeah, they've forgotten this over the period of time. And I think the people as well have forgotten it. And so I think when people see someone who is feeling and thinking the same thing they are and is able to articulate it, then it really resonates. It was really weird watching you tweet some things because I, you know, I do a podcast and I did it all through the pandemic. So I like literally would have thoughts, go on Twitter and the thought I was having, you'd be saying. And I'd be like, man, that's weird. Like I don't know like Jordan Peterson, finding Jordan Peterson and like, you know, I, you know, I, doing a deep dive, reading his books and, you know, like all his lecture series and stuff,

he has such knowledge that just, um, I didn't realize I was looking for some of that. And so you listen to him, you're like, oh, wow. But with you, it was like, you know, one of the ones that really sticks out is I was like, I remember saying to a friend. I'm like, it's weird. Like I have a, like a huge increase in women followers. Not because they're like, oh, uh, love Sean Newman, whatever. It's because I was willing to. to have an open discussion and talk about some things that really mattered. And as soon as I had that thought, I looked at on Twitter and you're talking about how you have this real increase and it's noticeable of women coming out, single moms, moms,

married moms, doesn't matter, just a ton of, and they're looking for a strong individual, I assume, to actually stand for something and be like, this doesn't make sense. And the longer this goes, because, I mean, I got young kids, the closer at God, I was like, it can't go there. Like to look at the stats. There's nothing to go there. And yet where to go? Went directly at him.

And that was one of the ones that I'm like, geez, I've never had this before where I'm watching what you're tweeting. And I see it all the time right now with you is. And I don't know what that is. I have no idea what that is. Just other than, I'm like, wow, he is thinking like, bang on what I'm thinking. You just have like your following is growing and grown and growing. You mentioned Joe Rogan.

I didn't even realize you've been, you know. I listened to when you went on Joe Rogan, obviously, but I didn't realize you've been on. That was the second time. And I don't know how I miss that. So, you know, I love when I have a guest coming on to, you know, listen and try and dig up some things. And I love to listen to your early stuff because I think, you know, that's when you're wrestling with things, so to speak. And you're not getting asked the same question over and over. And actually, it would be probably the first time you're asking asked several questions. And that's how I stumbled on the first time you're on Joe. And I'm like, how did I miss that? Like I even follow Joe. And I think your platform as it grows, like,

it's pretty cool to watch, too, I don't know what it is when you can channel or whatever it is thoughts of other people where you're just like, dang, that is exactly what I'm seeing and thinking. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm glad that it resonates with you and I'm glad it's resonated with other people. I think, you know, I think it's interesting. You mentioned Jordan Peterson and you mentioned Joe Rogan and so on. I think there's a couple things that certain people have in common, even if on a surface level, they may seem very different, right? If someone sees a, you know, we're to list the superficial characteristics of myself and list the superficial characteristics of Jordan Peterson, we'd seem like very, very different and disparate

individuals. Yet we've connected online. We haven't met in the real world yet, but we're supporters of each other's work and we interact online and so on. I think it's two things. I think it's a combination of two things. I think number one is the willingness and ability to think clearly and rationally and to potentially go against the herd. I think that's part of it. You can also, maybe it may it's three parts. I think that's number one. I think number two is being interested in the truth. Right. So I don't have an agenda. I know there's

people out there who think I have some nefarious agenda or, you know, whatever, but I don't have an agenda. I want to, you know, beyond motivating and inspiring people, I want to know what the truth is. I'm a truth seeker and a truth speaker. Now, you don't need to agree with every opinion I have or every thought that goes through my brain, but ultimately my agenda is trying to find out what's real, trying to understand the human condition, really understand what's going on, right? Like, what's really going on here? Right. And I think, you know, Jordan Peterson has that question. quality. Joe Rogan has that quality, et cetera. And then number three is the courage to speak, right? The courage to say it. There are people who think, you know, who think it and are,

you know, they're privately trying to work out. Number three is the toughest. Yeah, right. That's the toughest, right? So they feel something is weird. Something's not right. They have issues with certain things, they have certain beliefs, but due to a variety of factors, they are afraid to speak them publicly. So I think those three qualities, I think number one, it's rare to have all three in a person, let alone a person with a larger platform. But I think that more than ever, there's a real hunger for that. There's a real hunger. I think that's part of the rise of the popularity of podcasting and, you know, like, I mean, Jordan, people. Peterson does lecture tours. Like he can sell out thousands of people in places.

It's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. But I'll tell you what, I think if you went back to the year 2000, I don't think it would have been all that popular because there wasn't so much of a thirst for common sense and for courage and for clear thinking, right? I think maybe it would have been a small thing. It wouldn't have been, I don't, it wouldn't have been this, I don't know, this big thing like it is now. Do you find more people talking about spirituality and find in God, that type of thing? Have you seen on your travels? I do. And I've noticed that, I've got friends and associates of all stripes. And I have noticed that even my atheistic friends, people who have not believed in God for a long time, I've noticed that even with many of them,

some of them have directly become believers over the course of the past few years. But many others have at least become more open and certainly less hostile to the concept of God or religion or spirituality. However, they wish to label it. They can see, you know, I think especially in the sort of early to mid thousands and maybe before this, I think there was always this idea that certainly amongst many atheists, especially the anti-theist types, and some still believe this, that if you could remove God from society and remove the notion of anything they believe to be supernatural or superstitious and outside the realm of hard science, that it would lead to this purely rational, less bigoted, more open, more progressive society,

right? And that everyone would just be these clear thinkers and we'd live in the Jetsons and we'd have this kind of utopia. And I think, honestly, I think that idea has been disproved quite strongly. I think it's been disproved. I think that what happens is that there's a substitution that happens with many people. Now, this does not mean that every single atheist in the world latches onto another ideology or makes their politics, their religion, or so on. But a significant number do. Human beings are, I believe, fundamentally religious animals. If you believe purely in evolution, perhaps there's some evolutionary basis for that.

There certainly seems to be. Or if you believe in a creator, if you believe in God, then this is something that's quite obvious that human beings are going to worship something. We've had religion. Religion has always been there. It's taken different forms, different names, and so on. But I believe that human beings are at their core designed to worship something. We're certainly designed to seek meaning and seek purpose and seek community, seek morality,

a sense of right and wrong, know what is good, know what is bad, and so on. And so that has to be found somewhere. And I've noticed that we've seen the rise of what I call secular religions. And I think that COVID itself became one of these, right? I use the term branch comedians. I use it sort of tongue in chief, but it's like there are people who are. are zealots, they have a religious fervor for COVID protocols. And anyone who questions them, goes against them is a heretic, is a blasphemer, anyone who questions the, you know, the experts have

become the high priests, the science, you know, people to now talk about science like it's an institution. They use the term the science. Like I imagine a few hundred years ago, people used to say the church, you know, it's like a dogma. It's just this institution and the science says X. So you must do X. If you can't even question it, you can't challenge. And there's nothing less scientific than that. So it's been quite bewildering for me to watch and to see people even participating in these masking rituals and hand sanitization rituals and casting out people who don't want to take the jab and, you know, the tribalism.

And to me, it's like, wow, this is like a religious fundamentalist, not like a moderate religion. This is like a fundamentalist person who cannot allow anything to. exist or associate with anything that exists outside of their very narrow dogma. They don't even want to be associated with other people. They will cast, even if it's their friends, it's their family. They will cast them aside in order to stay, you know, keep their allegiance to their COVIDianism. And we saw this before.

We've seen it with various political issues over the past few years. You saw it with the whole Trump hysteria. You had the Brexit hysteria in the UK, which had some echoes. We've seen it with certain social movements. A lot of people now talk about woke culture and the rise of the woke form of progressivism, which has its own sense of morality. It's got its own purpose, its own meaning, its own concept of original sin, right? You're a straight white male.

So you carry this original sin. And, you know, you need to, you need to atone for it. Which is like, man. that one really bothers me. Like on just so many levels, right? Like just so many levels. Like some of the, that's because you're a sinner. You're a sinner. Yes, that's right. I'm a sinner. Yes. It doesn't matter if you haven't done anything. There are people who share those three immutable characteristics with you who have done bad things in the past. So therefore, you are supposed to self-flagellate. You're supposed to talk to me a certain way. I'm supposed

to view you a certain way. And this has now become their own weird version of a They honestly is more like a cult to me than a religion because to me religion is generally something positive. But this is this is where we are. We haven't even talked about the, you know, the elements of postmodernism and transgenderism and Marxism and all of these isms and schisms, which people go down these rabbit holes on. And it's funny because at the other end of the black box, it spits out a person who is, just as dogmatic, just as potentially aggressive, just as bigoted, just as unwilling to listen to or associate with anyone else as a really hardcore religious fundamentalist, someone who will not even hang out with someone who doesn't share their exact beliefs, who perhaps even thinks that violence is a reasonable way to impose their ideology on others, who is willing to use the force

of the state, the force of the government to force their beliefs on other people and force them to conform and behave in a certain ways. And it's interesting how it seems to come back around just in different costumes and with different names. Yeah. You know, I wrote down things get really bad, not because people are cruel or evil, but because people are often silent or cowardly in the face of something that's obviously wrong. And, you know, some of the things that are going on in today's world, it's just, you think it's not going to come to your front door. And COVID was one of them. You just thought, oh, if I just, you know, I'll even throw, I'll throw myself under the bus. In the first little bit, I was just like, oh, just hang out at home and, you know, whatever, right? And then I remember thinking, you know, like as they started arresting people, uh, in my province, because in the beginning, it was never in your country. And then it was in your country, but it wasn't your province. Then it was in your province. And then it was in your province. and pretty soon it's in your hometown and you're gone. Like eventually, you know, you go back to to honestly, like World War II, they came for this,

then they came for that, then they came, and they came for me and nobody else was there to protect me because they were all arrested, essentially, right? And I think that's a hard pill for people to swallow until you swallow it, right? Like once you realize if I just talk openly about some things, maybe it won't happen. Because one of the things that I'm seeing, you know, in Canada, specifically is like the censorship. I know what's happening in other places, but here in Canada,

it feels like really like just evident. And at times, nobody seems to care. And they don't seem to understand that if we do that, where that leads us to it. And they need a great place, right? Like you don't want to go down that road. Man,

so many things to say there. And, you know, you were talking about the early 2020 and your response to it. And that's fine. You know, that,

that's fine. And that was the majority of people's position. The thing that was the big red flag for me was the authoritarianism. Right. So I never said, even in March 2020, April 2020, I never said or ridiculed anyone for staying at home or for, you know, washing their hands constantly or social distancing or whatever. The huge red flag for me was the mandates, right? It's a big difference saying, you know, even putting out advice.

If governments have put out advice in Canada, in the UK, in Europe, whatever, saying, look, this is this situation. It's evolving. We recommend that you should do X, Y, and Z. You know, perhaps especially if you are elderly or more vulnerable, be cautious. This is what we recommend. It was the force. It was the stay-at-home orders. It was, like you said, people being arrested for going outside.

It was the mass mandates. It wasn't people wearing mass. For skating on a pond in the winter. Yeah. Yeah. It was the... They put sand on the ponds in Calgary so that kids couldn't go skating because they didn't want them out there.

And you're like, we have lost our bloody minds. We've lost our minds. Yeah. I didn't know that. I knew they put sand in the skate parks in the U.S. I know in the UK where I live, they removed them. Even in the outdoor gyms and the playgrounds, they removed the bars. Like they removed the monkey bars and the dip bars.

So you can even go outside and go to the gym. So that was the huge red flag for me because I'm like, look, we are supposed to live. And maybe I appreciate this more because I grew up in Saudi Arabia. But when I think of the UK, when I think of Canada, when I think of the USA, certainly, when I think of Australia, these are the places that are supposed to be the global bastions of freedom. This concept called liberty, this concept called democracy, which people like to pay homage to. and it just went out the window so quickly. And I was like, wait, guys, like, I'm there as, you know, waving this flag. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, guys, right?

Like, I understand you're scared or whatever, but this is a huge line that is being crossed. These are some very dangerous precedents that are being set. And I never bought, maybe because of my distrust of the government, I never bought the, oh, it's going to just be two weeks thing, 15 days to flatten the curve, two weeks to slow the spread. I was like, no way. If you let them shut things down like that, this is going to go. go on for a long time. And it was step by step, increment by increment, and it was allowed to happen. And alluding to your latter point there, where you were talking about people not really

caring, it seems. Obviously, this varies from place to place, which is why some places are totally normal. There's places that never even did all this stuff. And there's places that are still going on with the craziness. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But one thought I've been having recently is that we're often taught even as children about the importance of learning history. But I think that the way history is taught and the way people think about it needs to change. I think we learn about the what, but we don't really learn about the how. So if you're learning about, take big obvious example, you know, if you're learning about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and aspects of World War II, you learn what happened, right? You learn what happened and to some

degree how it happened. You don't learn a lot about the why, like on a deep level, on a psychological, on a psychological human level. Probably because, probably because they're trying to protect you, Zubi, right? In their brain will protect you from knowing how this happened, except they're actually hurting you in that way. Yeah, because, you know, I've said this many times before, which is that there are only two differences between us and our ancestors. Biologically, we're the same. 100%. We are the same.

In fact, we might even be inferior in certain ways in terms of our health. Diet and health, yeah. Yeah, we are the same. You know, our great, our great grandfathers, our great grandfathers, we're not, you know, genetically, biologically, we're not different to them. We're literally the same. The only two advantages we have as modern day people are we have more technology and better stuff, right? We have better tech and we have the ability to learn from the past. So because of all those

things that have happened in the past, both positive and negative pros and cons, we can look at that and we can study it and we can say, okay, this idea was tried. This is a bad idea and here's why, because this is how it plays out. And this is a good idea and here's why. And this is how it played out. And this is how it's led to some of the wonderful things we have today. But like I said, we don't go deep on the why. What was this? What was the psychology at play? Because if you recognize that, you realize that everything that's happened in the past,

and this is a scary, this is a very dark realization. And it's one of the darkest ones that really sort of punch me in the gut over the past couple of years, which is that everything that's happened in the past can happen again. Why? Because we're the same people. We have the same proclivities. We have the same susceptibility to group think. we have the same susceptibility to propaganda. We have the same nefarious elements, whether in the

media or in politics or within ourselves, that can turn us against each other that can make people violent, that can make people cowardly and not stand up for themselves when they can even see that something is going wrong. And I think once you're very conscious and cognizant of that, it's very ugly to recognize. And we none of us want to see it in ourselves. No one wants to imagine that they would have been, no one wants to imagine that they would have supported slavery, but most people would have. No one wants to imagine that they would have supported the Nazis or at least not gone against them, but most people would have, right?

Because of that fear and the desire to conform. And because people never really confront that, I think that when stuff does hit the fan, they don't have this ability to recognize that how they could be complicit in or how they might not be the good guy in the situation, right? Everyone wants to be the hero in their story. And they never think like, okay, if I'm silent here or if I'm even the aggressor or I'm the one trying to force this and force that, what are the implications of that? People don't really like to confront it. And I think that's a big reason why we've had this mess because you have to remember, I mean, take any historical atrocity.

The vast majority of people who were complicit in it, as you said before, they weren't, they weren't necessarily like, they weren't just evil people. It's easy to just think, oh, they were all just evil people, right? They're just evil people and they were bad, and that's why they did bad things. It's like, no, a lot of them were just scared and went with the herd. And also a lot of people who even did the evil in their mind, they thought they were doing good. And that's like the really dark part of it. Like they actually thought they were doing good.

They thought that there were some greater good, you know, could have come under different banners, ideology, safety, security, public health, science. And they said, well, this is for the greater good. So we need to, we need to crack some eggs to make this omelet. And those eggs happen to be human beings. You saw the same thing under communism. You certainly saw it under Nazism. We've seen it with various ethnic cleansing efforts or genocides that have happened where

people have this ideology. I mean, if you don't want to go back that far, you can go to 1994, the Rwandan genocide, which is something that's not spoken about so much in the Western world. This is a period where in the course of, I believe, about three months, a million people, a million people in Rwanda were killed, right, under the banner of ethno-supremacy and having the population so divided. A lot of them killed by their own countrymen, by their own neighbors. And it's like, that's the one that hurts the most is understanding your own countrymen could do it. You know? Yes.

Like Rwanda's like that one, you grow up beside a group of people and then just wipe off the face the planet. I mean, the same can be said about the Nazis. The same can be said about the French Revolution. The same can be said. You go back and back and back and back. You know, you bring up that this has been a part of us. All you got to do is, and I'm new to it again, you know, grew up, grew up in the Christian faith, but I started reading the Bible again because I'm like, man, you know, there's a book that has

been around a long time, great wisdom in it. And in there, it's in there too, right? Like, this isn't something we figured out how to escape, because every time you, well, anytime new children come into the world, have the same problem we all have. There's good and even. inside all of us. Yes. And to recognize that is a first step, but that doesn't get it, get rid of it. Like, that'd be, you'd be laughing if you thought, you know, like, just recognizing you have the proclivity to do something bad isn't stopping the bad from ever occurring.

Like, yeah, that's a lifetime of understanding that and then trying to, I don't know, I don't even know if the right word Zubi is control. I don't know if you're trying to control that or if you're just trying to understand you have the ability to go down that road. Yeah. And it's powerful. And like I said, I think most people don't do it because it's painful. It's harsh. You know, there's a, it's weird because sometimes I say that human beings are both the best and the worst thing on this planet. Right. I really think that's true. I absolutely. I love people. Like I so much of what I do. I wouldn't be able to do what I do if I didn't love people. Like I genuinely love other people. I'm very extroverted. I like being around people. I like hugs. I like handshakes. I like connecting with people and helping people, help them, you know, fulfill their potential. Help them with this. Help them with that. Just connect each other, socialize talk. I love human beings. Also, I just recognize how dark, right?

like how dark you don't even need to go in history you can look right now and see the horrible things people do each other people say to each other people murder people steal people cheat there are people you know there's war why do we have so many nukes why do our nations need to stockpile we have enough nukes to blow every single human being on this planet off why do we have them because the other person has them and then we need them because the other person has them and while whilst it makes sense. It's also, it's a shame, right? Like, we shouldn't, we shouldn't really need all that. Imagine we could take all those trillions and invest that into things that are, that are more positive. But unfortunately, because of that dark side of humanity, we now need all these things. We now need these huge judicial

systems. We now have the prison complex. We now have the military industrial complex. We now have all of this and all of that just because there is that dark side. So it's a, it's a fine balance. And I think another thing we haven't really talked about, but something that people really struggle with now is nuance, right? Understanding that not everything is just black and white and ones and zeros, you can simultaneously recognize that human beings are wonderful and you can really love humanity, but you can also recognize this dark aspect. And I think there are problems if you ignore either side, right? If you just embrace the darkness and you're just like, look, if you just embrace that human beings suck and we're cancer and a plague on the earth and there's too many of us the world is

overpopulated in fact like many of us should be killed off we shouldn't reproduce we should do this right it can lead to this dark anti-human nihilism which both for the individual and for the world in general I think is really dark and not good because if you don't fundamentally like human beings that can lead to really dark roads and then also it's important to you know But then also on the flip side, you can have someone who's just, I guess, so like naive and ignorant that they think, oh, everything is good and everyone is good and there's no bad and whatever. And it can make you a mark. Yeah, it can make you a mark because then, you know, there are people who may take advantage of that and who could end up hurting you or people around you. Or you could fall victim to your own evil because you don't even recognize it exists.

And you're so certain that everything you do is good and positive and correct that you don't even recognize yourself when you're doing something that could be malicious or which could hurt other people. So as with most things, it's a fine and delicate and nuanced balance. And that's much easier to discuss in a format such as this. But if you're just on Twitter raging all day or you're on Instagram or anything else, then it all gets lost in the mix. And it seems that human beings are just these ones and zeros on a screen. and it causes even more chaos and conflict. Yeah, well, I'm the second part, you know. That's one of the things that heard most about COVID is I truly believe in the best in everyone.

I love meeting people. I thought the government would never do what it's done. And now, even now, they won't reverse course because they're whatever. You know, we got our leader here doing what he does. And I was definitely the latter of that group. But I'm watching the time closely, Zubi. We got about five minutes left here. So we'll slide into the Crude Master Final Five.

Just a shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald. They've been supporters of the podcast since the very beginning. And I just want to talk about a little bit of some lighter topics because happier days maybe. I was, you got a children's book? It's coming out. It's called The Candy Calamity. It's a collaboration with myself in Brave Books. It should be out in July.

In July. It's being printed at the moment. Yeah. What, you know, I'm just curious, how does that come to be a children's book? Like, was that something you always wanted to do? Or how do you? No, actually, this, this company, Brave Books reached out to me. So they've written multiple children's books and released them. They work with different, different authors and influencers on them. And they reached out to me with an idea with a proposal. And it wasn't something that I was planning, that I've been planning, for a long time and I just thought, you know what? Yeah, let's do this. This is a cool idea. I like being able to have different formats of my messaging that can reach different people. It's why I do music. I do podcasting. I do public speaking. I do writing. And it's like, cool, let me, you know, let's do something that is apolitical and which just has a positive message.

So the book is actually about the importance of taking care of your health, the importance of eating right and exercise, but, you know, aimed at the sort of five years old to 10 years old range and it's fun, it's colorful, got really cool illustrations and everything. So that's how it came out. They reached out to me and I thought, you know what? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's make this happen.

Well, with a man with young kids, I'm looking forward to a Zubi Kid book. I think that's, you know, I think like Jocko and them having their. their kid's book. And we got, you know, I'm a hockey player. So there's tons of NHL guys who've come out with kids' books, too. And they always usually have a unique twist on it. So I thought that was something cool that people should know about. And the fact that it hasn't released yet, maybe something I'll keep my eye on and let people know about. Where else can, if people have just finally listened to this and they're like, oh man, didn't know who this guy was. Maybe they're not on Twitter. Maybe they don't listen to rap music. Zubi. Where can they find you?

and follow along with some of the stuff you do. You mentioned a podcast. The floor is yours. Yeah, sure thing. So if you want links to everything, if you go to zoobymusic.com, Zubymymusic.com, you can find links to everything, music, podcast, merchandise, and so on. And if you want to follow me on social media, go to at Zubi Music. That is Zubymy Music. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, minds.com, everything. So Zubi, Zubi Music.com and at Zubi Music. So you can follow me and all my stuff is very easy to find. Well, I appreciate you giving me some of your time, Zubi.

It's been a pleasure. Nice one, Sean. I appreciate it. Thanks again for tuning in today, guys. If you like the show, make sure to like, subscribe, leave a review, share. Just appreciate all your support. And if you're listening this far, of course, the shameless plug for the Patreon account in the show notes.

want to support financially, like I say, telling a flag kite, don't matter to me, but just for your awareness, there is a way to support the show, and I appreciate it all. Hopefully you enjoyed this week's, well, from Vance Crow to Daniel Smith, now Zubi. I hope you enjoyed the week. We got a full plate of guests next week. It's exciting times, lots of cool different guests coming up. So I hope you enjoyed and go enjoy the weekend, and we'll catch up to you, Monday.