Shaun Newman Podcast - #373 - Ed Latimore

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

He's an author, former professional heavyweight boxer, and competitive chess player. His writing focuses on self-improvement and a practical approach to stoic philosophy.  January 22nd SNP Presents: Rural Urban Divide featuring: Vance Crowe, QDM & Stephen Barbour.   Get your tickets here: snp.ticketleap.com/ruralurbandivide/ Sylvan Lake February 4th Tickets/More info here: https://intentionallivingwithmeg.com/sovereignty Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

I'm Rupa Subramania. This is Tom Korski. This is Ken Drysdale. This is Dr. Eric Payne. This is Dr. William Mackis. Hi, this is Shadow Davis from the Shadow at Night Live stream, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Wednesday, hump day. Hope everybody's week is cruising along. I tell you what, we're into week three of the new year, and we have been pumping out some content. If you missed earlier this week, on Monday we had Kristen Nagel first foremost and then I interviewed

and live streamed Premier Daniel Smith so if you missed that one go back that was earlier this week it's been you know we've been rattling out the podcast the goal for the year 208 208 episodes that is and well let's just say we're on

paste outpace that and I'm not I don't know if I was trying to do that I was just you know you come out of the gate's just a flying you're like taking 10 days off off. You're like, who let's get going. Anyways, so we've been, we've been cruising. I hope you've been enjoying. And today we got an interesting one.

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petroleum.com. He's a best-selling author, former professional heavyweight boxer and a competitive chess player. I'm talking about Ed Latimer. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Ed Latimore. You are listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Ed Latimer. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Hey, thanks for having me, man. I'm always grateful when somebody wants to listen to me talk. Well, actually, you know, it's funny. The first time I ever heard you, this is a long time. go now. I don't know how you probably remember this better than I do. It was on Farnham Street.

I follow his blog. Yeah, that was a while ago. And I've only listened, truthfully, Ed, he's probably had, I don't even know what he's at for podcast now, but I've listened to like three and you were the first one. And I was like, this is, this is interesting, right? Like, you got an interesting story. So to finally, you know, and I feel like that was probably three years ago, to finally. Oh, man, you know what's crazy? if because I remember were when everything what was happening in my life

that was I know what I gave him as a gift that was 2017 so that was six years ago how time flies yeah because in my mind it doesn't seem that long ago but then when I think about it

it yeah it was definitely it was April 2017 he flew down for the day and then flew back. Isn't that great? Did you ever think you'd have people fly to come see you and sit down and have an interview? You know, so this is no.

I mean, the short answer, no, man. I just, you know, we live in a really interesting age and world. And having done that, it just opened up doors. I mean, doors just continually open. Now, I know part of it is, is me and my story and me putting stuff out there. But the other part, you know, is like you go and you do a great job or you have a great conversation.

And someone takes a chance on you. They think you're an interesting person to talk to. And boom, they're talking to you. And before you know it, I mean, you know, since then I still think, I actually just put this together for, my book proposal. He is he's not the biggest podcast

I've been on now but he's in the top three. I think I've been on two did have have much higher. Not much higher but higher reach and

downloads. But that all starts with everything is just the building block to the next thing. Yeah, it's you know, it goes back to like it's you know, you think it's a race until you realize now it's just man it's just the journey you know you just

keep uh seeing what every day brings you yeah man it is fun i i have a good time with this kind of thing it's uh i'm lucky that's i never forget that i'm lucky because i could be doing any number of things and and i got to do this and this because of of the era, the era that we live in. This is easy to do. Well, this is easy. Becoming the person who gets to the point where people want to talk to you, that's not so easy. That's a lot of, it's a lot of stuff, man.

A lot of things that will probably get into them. Yeah, well, let's get into it. You know, Ed, it's funny. I went through three cycles with you. two cycles, I guess. The first time I heard you, I was like, I got to find this guy. I got to follow him on Twitter. And now that you're bringing it up, there's 2017, I didn't start the podcast until 2019. And then I started following you on, I want to say Twitter. And I got overran by not only yourself, but a whole swath of men I was falling. It just overloaded

man. So I just unfolded everybody. And I'm just like, I just, I got to do it. And so then and then what's happened since I started the podcast is now I get you know I get bounced around through different circles and slowly people come back into your your your your little sphere or your your you know your experience whatever it is and it's funny I was saying this to the wife she was asking who I was interviewing today of course I was mentioning you and the story and I said you know I haven't followed them and I don't know it's it's been a probably a year year and a half something like that and out of nowhere you popped up on my timeline and i read it and i honestly i should have wrote down what i read but it resonated with so much that i just clicked i just clicked i was like boom

i'm falling this guy again because that that that is good and from there uh you know um i i reached out thinking nothing would ever happen with it and of course you reach back out and and everything happens and now here we sit and i'm like ah this is this is just you know it's just the evolution of the journey if you will but for a lot of people, they probably have no idea who that is. So maybe we could start. I don't know where you want to start. Do you want to start in Pittsburgh? Do you want to, like, you tell me how far back you want to go, because I think you have a really interesting story. I think, you know, I come from a hockey background.

Obviously, your background in boxing, like the sports aspect of it is really interesting. But I'll let you fly and see where it goes. Sure. Like, so everyone, their introduction to me. is usually through the boxing aspect. Nowadays, it's actually heavily balanced through the writing, if not all writing. And so I have the website and doing the writing and stuff, but I've started fighting.

I started boxing at a late age at 22. And I did it because I needed to do something with my life. I was acting like a bit of a D-bag going around saying that the college was this worthess thing. And you should try to. I just got into the whole mindset success porn genre where it's like, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Napoleon Hill stuff, Wayne Dyer, all that. And so I'm like, oh, college is stupid, you know, you can become success with your own. And I would say this to like everybody who brought it up and we'd have these heated arguments and stuff like that. And one day, the woman, I was dating her mother as a college professor.

This person I argued. Imagine that, 22-year-old me. And she said, all right, you know, let's pretend you're right in college is worth this. You know, what have you done with your life in the past four years of then show up and eat my food? And then she threw me out. And it made me think, you know, she was right. I had not done anything. I had no sweat equity in anything in my life.

I was kind of living like I was waiting for the next big adventure to happen. In fact, believe it or not, one of the things I was doing, I had found these people along who sell these lottery tracking systems, and I was trying to win the lottery. So I would work my 725 on our job. at Starbucks and take my check and buy tickets that I had, you know, tracked the numbers where I was, like, the plan. And but that was a wake-up call. And I was like, you know, you're exactly right. But this time by Dodd today, nobody would know anything about me. There'd be nothing to say interesting.

I would just be gone. So I looked and figured out what I would do next and I ended up in the boxing ring and decided to go boxing because that's when YouTube was just getting big. and you could look at stuff on a line and some of that stuff was fighting. I was like, I can do that. Let me go try boxing. So that's how I ended up boxing. And that set off a chain reaction.

It's one of those things. At the beginning, it's a small deviation away from the norm and you don't really notice it. And then 10 years later, you know, you look at all the things you've accomplished and the people you've met and the way your mind's changed. And I credit boxing. with everything from helping me get sober to help me get a degree in physics.

These are all related to how I learned to think and approach problems and hold myself accountable from fighting. How did boxing get you sober? Well, the better you get at something, the more you enjoy it, there's that. but the more it demands of you because you start to see I think it's very hard for a person to enjoy something casually for very long that requires an investment of energy to improve at

I can casually watch the movies forever I'm not going to wake up and become a director I probably won't casually write short stories forever there's just energy there and I'll be like all right what's the next step to this I already like doing it where I go with it All right. And then that requires a new level of dedication and so other skills, things of that nature. Well, boxing was the same way. I started out as a casual amateur fighter and continue to get better, have some success.

And I'm like, I can get better. I know I can do more. I can see this. And I just keep iterating, have more success, iterating have more success. And finally, my success, because I'm more dedicated and work me harder, that demands more time. And it also demands me to do kind of an audit to look at what is slowing me down. Where is my problem? Where are my weakest points? I'm a big believer in the idea that you can only go as far as your biggest weakness. So let me start working on my weaknesses. And then the biggest one was my relationship with alcohol.

And, but like when I got sober, I remember thinking I had four things that helped me determine this was the correct decision to make. And I think people got to have something to care about before they make a change like this. I had just enlisted in the Army, finished basic training, AIT. I had re-enrolled in school, and I didn't want to mess that up. I had just met the woman who's now, the mother of my child, we'll get married at some point, I'm sure. But where I just met her, I was like, this is a really nice person.

I don't want to, like, expose her to nonsense. And my fighting where it was taken up. And so I give fighting a lot of credit for that because I wanted to be good at something. And I recognized that that was going to hurt me. Like there was no advantage to it. I would lose time. money, recovery.

I mean, that wouldn't be as effective. So I just said, you know, no, there's a lot of other reasons. I don't want to paint it as that's the only reason. There's a lot of other reasons I had to stop drinking. But you take every tool you can in the toolbox that we fix the problem. And that was one of the tools I had was my career. When you, but not to pry too deep. And you've probably shared it on podcasts, I assume, before.

but when you talk about that wasn't the only reason. There were more reasons on why you need to, you know, why you became sober. What were the other reasons then? Oh, you know, the typical ones, you act in a fool, man. You start putting a strain on relationships. That was big for me because I don't, I don't realize this yesterday. I mean, I always thought about it, but I didn't really, it had, I hadn't thought about it in a while, I guess. My sister was over when we were just talking about stuff, and we realized.

It's like, I don't have family in the sense that, like, I'm going to, like, it's one of the reasons why, once again, other reasons. But one of the reasons why I have not had any motivation to get married official on paper is like, who the hell would I invite? My friends, this is pretty much it. My mom and dad are dead. And I don't have any real connection with my family or my mom or dad's side. Like, I know who they are because I grew up and my mom would show, show. or something, but they're in various states of disarray, or we just don't talk. So I don't, I don't have a close relationship with my family, but I have in place of that some incredible

friends, people are met in high school, people I'm knowing at this point longer than I haven't known them. And so my alcohol was caused and stress in those relationships, and I don't want to lose those because then I'm really alone. I was broke, like broke and still managed to find money to drink because that's what addicts do. You know,

they talk about that crack kid mean. You ever see a crack kid wake up and go, how am I going to get money to get high? They figure it out. That's real, man. And that applies to every addiction. Like, and really looking back is kind of amazing because I think about

I was at the worst. And I was like, how did I afford to go drinking? Like, where was I getting alcohol from? Why, you figure these things out? It didn't help that I had social clout. People would buy me drinks and shit. So that didn't help. But yeah, the strain of relationships, my finance is my health.

And all, my health is a big one. I didn't want, I don't want to go to jail. I'm also a very conscientious person and I didn't want to ever risk you know, the few times it happened, I said that was awful and I wanted to never have to worry about that again. The relationship I have with Anna now.

I remember, you know, when you get used to dealing with the trash, you don't recognize when something's cool, you think it's cool and because it works and it's clean and it's not damaged. You think there's something wrong with it because you've been used to dealing with things that are wrong. But that kind of describes my dating life

until, you know, when I met Anna, there's this nice, cool, wholesome human. And I thought there was something wrong with her. I thought she didn't like me. She just wasn't crazy. That's what it was. And so, I mean, she's, you mean, it's crazy. She's, you know, still with a girl,

but she's a solid, sane, personal values. and somebody I wanted to have in my life. And I said, look, you didn't really messed up. I have in one way or the other, every relationship I had before. I said, let's eliminate booze. Because you got lucky, because that shouldn't have met her. We don't really cross paths in our life normally.

And I said, well, let me try this out. Because I know what the problem is, but every other relationship let me be calm and clear on it. So if she decides that she don't want to be with me, it's because she don't like me, not because I was drunk one night.

It says some crazy. You know what's great about this? I take a lot of fraud in this that she never seen me drunk. There was like one time and I don't even think I was drunk. I don't know. But like she didn't know because I was cool, but like in terms of going out drinking and I have a problem, none of that.

I hear other couples argue about and stuff like that. It's amazing. There's a whole time a lot of problems. I just never walked down and just can't even really relate to, to be honest. Like I know where they come and then I hear the story. And then the minute someone goes, we was drinking and we was out, I go, well, that. Yeah. You eliminate that, you eliminate a whole lot of problems.

When you say we wouldn't cross pass normally, what do you mean by that? I'm curious by that. Okay, so you got to understand where I'm running, the kind of, the way I'm moving at this point in my life. You know, the thing I was working at T-Mobile and boxing and going to bars, that's my life. I go to work, go to practice, go drink. Lather and repeat. She had just moved back to Pittsburgh and for a job she got at the university.

That I, interestingly enough, ended up graduating from when I went back to college at the university. She was the international director of admissions or the assistant director for international admissions. So all of the students from around the world. And she got that job because her entire life that is the theme, international, we'll call it international work projects life. She did Peace Corps for two years and two and a half years in Togo and Todd in France.

And there's actually a Portuguese citizen was born over there. And didn't come here until she was like 12. And was homeschooled, so completely away from a lot of nonsense and just ended up with this really, different life. And we met because of the internet. You know, back before it was cool, you know, OK Cuba, back before everybody was swiping left and right and shit. Now we didn't even swipe and left and right.

You know, we've been together so long. You know, I never had a Tinder, and it's not because I'm a better than Tinder. I was a dog, man, I was on Autumn apps. It just came out after. So that's what I mean when I say. that normally, you know, we don't, two people like us, what our paths, there's no reason for us to ever meet. We don't, we don't socialize in the same places. We don't know the same people. We don't do the same things. Now, interestingly enough, we have a lot of the same interests by the phone.

And that's one of my favorite parts about being with her, is that I don't have to be someone I'm not even remotely. Like, I can sit and watch Masterpiece Theater and chill out. But other than that, like we would not have ever met. But here we are. Yeah, I don't know. I, uh, it's just, uh, I say this a lot. It's, it's, it's, there's a lot of stories that are, that use similar phrasing to what you just did, uh, you know, like we put shouldn't have met or we were, you know,

different social circles or whatever it was. Or that day I did something that I shouldn't have done or I don't normally do and anyways. And you start to pick up on the trends and you're like, okay. So. You want to hear something crazy speaking that? I didn't even think about that part. You know, something you don't normally do. So when we went out, she don't normally, I mean, she's told me that it's not like, you know, been with her so long.

I, you know, 100% to have no reason to think she was lying. He's like, I don't, I wouldn't normally come out after dart for a date. And that's cool. But I wouldn't normally get to a date. and not drink. I was like trying out sobriety. I was like, oh, let me try it, you know, on and off.

And I'm sure because of that, I was on my best behavior and not a fool. So the day you're trying out sobriety is the day you meet, and I'll just insert a term, love your life. Yeah, yeah, because I was, I used to try to do these like one-week things,

whatever. When I was like, you know, which is what all addicts do, man, they try and just dropping this. like I'll make a deal with myself. I won't drink for two weeks and I can drink on a weekend or something. I was doing something like that, and it

just happened to work out great. I remember the case anybody ever asked, I don't know the exact day that I can find it because I wasn't sure if she'd be boring or not. So I chose a bar that was playing the Patriots Ravens game, and it was a Sunday night game. So I can always look that up in 2012. I just don't remember.

remember the day myself, but I can always look at when that game was. I think that's I think that's a pretty powerful story if you think about it. Because if you give up something that's

controlling your life, your best days could happen immediately. Like I mean, I hear that and I'm just like, that's a cool story yet, right? Like how happens to answer, or how you fall into it, but you made a choice. whether or not you were going to you know whether or not you were going to fall through

for the rest of time who knows but by making that choice all of a sudden something walks in your life that now that choice is you know I don't know I think that's I just think that's like if you're sitting there on the couch listen to that and you got a problem

it's like you don't understand what you can do to your life if you just decide no more no more of something that's really controlling I mean absolutely you know it's it's like so so so you know that principle I said you know chain is strong as the weakest link and you can only go as far as your biggest weakness those that those

to an important concept in other words whatever your your Achilles heel is your greatest weakness that's where all the stress will come in and it will break the rest of the structure the other part of that. The other useful model to think about here is you can't fill a bucket up if there's holes in it. Right. So before you start trying to fill it up, you got to patch some holes up. And those holes, your flaws, right? Whatever your weakness is. Because it won't matter how much you get in there. Even if you manage to fill it super quick, no fallout because there's still a hole. There's no foundation. It's another way to look at this too. Yeah, you build a house without a foundation. Good luck with that house. You know, when something really happens,

it's going to be good. Be good when it's when it's good, but when it ain't, it's not going to be that good. Yeah, well, the first, the first sign of trouble, you know, whether it's a little bit of rain, wind, etc. You know, to fall along with your analogy is,

is where you get exposed. And once you're exposed, I mean, I don't know, I come back to, uh, always, you know,

um, big Jordan Peterson fan and, and, and like, uh, like how he pushes on you to work on yourself before you, you work on anything else, you know,

and that can be as simple as cleaning your room, right? Yeah. You get how low that can go. Uh, through COVID, it up here in Canada, like, and probably down in the States. I mean, you'll know this better and I will, but the arguments, the ideas that festered went all the way down to the individual

self and then perpetuated out through the family, which then blew up into the communities, which just, you know, on and on and on and went. So, you know, if you go back to you looking for your weaknesses, that's an interesting thought, because that's an honest question. That's an honest an honest conversation you could have with yourself where you probably identify it right away. Like, I know this is a problem. You know, for me in drinking, and I've had my issues with it, we were watching, we had, I have three kids and married to a wonderful woman and got all these lovely things. But I remember we were watching This Is Us, you know, the popular television show.

and Jack is sitting there after a night of going out drinking and his wife, they have triplets, right? And his wife's sitting there and he's sitting and I can't remember the entire story. I just remember them sitting up front of one of the kids' bedroom doors. And she's just saying to him, you know, when you're with us, you're great. But you've got to be with us. And it almost brought tears to my eyes. Not that I was out every night. I wasn't.

But when it comes to having kids and being in a marriage and everything else, you know, that extracurricular activity can take you further and further away instead of being where you should be. And little things like that, exposing your weaknesses, you could probably be sitting wherever you're at and listen to this. You can just pause it for a second and just think about it. And you'll probably know. Like it's like, yeah, that's that's a weakness. Oh, man. Look, every look, look, I am 100% convinced.

Everyone knows where their problems are. but people are amazing at rationalization and justification. It's like nothing I've ever seen. The way we can put together an excuse or our workaround to explain why we're the way we are the way we are, while we have this problem, while we aren't making changes. And these are all within our, this is all for things like within our grass to do something about. because I'll tell you this, man. A lot of people live by the idea better than the devil you know than the devil you don't.

They will stay comfortable and in the same place, even if they know that place ain't that great, because the idea leaving it is even scarier. Because when you move into the unknown, it's like a video game. It's like those real-time strategy games where it's the, fog of war. You don't know what's there until you move into it. Then it shows on the map. A lot of people's lives are like that and they're afraid of what they can't see. They're afraid of taking a step into uncertainty. So they stay with this, this un, this just terribly not useful, not productive step of our place of familiarity,

even if that familiarity is bad habit. You know, like going back to sobriety, one of the things that I was worried about big time was how I would socialize it. What would my friends think? Because we all drink together, my close friends, the ones I was talking about that I've known long than I haven't. But I said, you know, I got to make this move because where I am now is not happy.

And if they really leave me and stop hanging out with me, they weren't going to be my friends because they were going to hold me back from becoming a better person. So when I got out of my first media in AA, I texted all my five people. I texted them. I was like, you know, just letting you know,

I went to A, man. I think I got a problem. And I get it if you guys don't want to kick it anymore. But I got to do this for me because otherwise I don't know what my life's going to end up. And they were all cool with it. But it was a real fear that I had. But I had to step up to that uncertainty.

And I think a lot of people would live being afraid to step them through that uncertainty. to. Sorry, what was the fear you had? The fear you had was that my friends, I wouldn't be able to socialize it. I wouldn't have a social life. My friends would abandon me. And that's a real fear. You talk to a lot of people who go to A8 or a lot of them are worried about how they're going to what are they going to do? That's the biggest, the biggest question. What am I going to do for fun? But that's how we integrate alcohol is in terms of society. People don't

even know how to, they can't imagine a social life without it. And so they're afraid to believing it. And even though that sounds silly to me now, that sounds silly to me now with somebody coming up on 10 years of sobriety. I know there's a great word out there. But if all you've known is what the cultures told you about drinking, the way drinking is portrayed in the media and then through the social circles in casual society, then yeah, you're going to think you're about to give up something big. It's funny, though, because in our society up here, you know, at 18 legal drinking age in Alberta, 19 in Saskatchewan right on the border of the two provinces, and certainly different parts of Canada have 18, different parts, 19, obviously in the States, it's 21.

You know, it's just, it's like a way of life, good times roll with, even if it's just a social beverage, not getting crazy down the consumption route, like how much you have. If you just have a, you know, I enjoy good scotch, just having us, Scotch, right? And saying that, what I've been finding lately is some of the best conversations I've had, Ed, have centered around tea. And it's funny how you just need something you can share with the person, like breaking bread, you know, to use a biblical term, right? Just breaking bread with somebody, that shared experience of sharing something is all you need. You know, and most of us think, I hear you're, you know, like, people are getting, oh, Ed's going to be no fun anymore. Ed won't be out,

but at the same time, a true friend wants what's best for you. Probably knows that you need to slow down or probably looks forward to, you know, like different things. And the fact that you could just sit and have a coffee or tea or, heck, just water. I mean, you know, people say you don't need anything, I'm like, I don't know. There's something cool about sharing something with somebody. Yeah. I'm not drinking coffee, kind of the same way I used to drink alcohol. The difference is after, you know, four coffees, I'm not, I'm not a danger to ourselves.

You're just climbing the walls. Yeah, I'm just climbing on the phone. But, yeah, that's one of the things that happened with me is all my conversations with all my friends. I meet people with coffee. We talk. We really get to know one another. What you realize is that the socialization that a lot of people do under the influence especially

is more of this filler from being lonely. I always say that a lot of people are one happy hour away from, one missed happy hour away from being lonely and realize how long they are. So it's like, okay, I need to be around someone because we're social creatures. We need to be around people. Alcohol provides us a great reason to be there, but it also at the same time, you know, there's usually an event, right?

Like a lot of people watching the game. Or you're not able to concentrate, pay attention. And then your mental capacity gets worse as the drink goes on, as does your ability to read and interpret body language, which is just a fascinatingly awful. side effect, right? But all of these things come together, but it's still better than being lonely.

What happens when you stop drinking is that you start, when you recognize you shouldn't be social, your interactions become so focused and so purposeful and so full of intent. Because it's

no longer, because it feels like most people go, here's it, I need an excuse to drink, let me get with friends. I feel like that's how it goes as opposed to like how people are like I do and it goes, I miss my friend let me find a place to talk to them that has a coffee so I'm not like

I have something that simple and share. It's a completely different focus. Yeah, that's really interesting. We were having, I was doing it, I can't remember I think it's power and force, power and first force. Oh yeah, force versus power versus force. Power versus force.

They talk about AA in there. And one of the things that, you know, I never really thought much of any thought into AA, you know, I just, I just haven't, you know, I, uh, but in reading it, they were talking about, uh, one of the original founders of it, um, going over and seeing Carl Jung, uh, and discussing how people get over, uh, being an alcoholic. And it was a huge conundrum back in the 50s. I didn't, unbeknownst to me, you know, unless you read the, the dang thing, you would, you know, I just would assume AA had been around for

a thousand years. And one of the things they talked about was a group of people coming together and that support. They talked about a spiritual, you know, the spiritual experience somewhere in there as well. But the group of people,

a shared camaraderie, um, was like it was almost overnight. People could stop drinking. What drove you first? you first to AA and then is that your experience?

So, what drove in AA was, I just was looking for a tool. I looked at it like this. It was a problem and I wanted to give myself every, every weapon at my disposal

to beat it. And AA was a tool for me. It really, it's just one of those things. is extra accountability, someone to chat with, things like that. All right? So that's what drove me there. And plus, you know, what else did I know?

That's what people will say, you know, you're an alcoholic, go to AA. You know, whether that's the best choice or not, it's really the only choice most people know about and I was no different. I didn't keep going. I only went to actually one meeting and then I didn't go for like four years because because I didn't feel like it treats a certain. So there are lots of reasons why people become alcoholics. I believe this, right?

And it deals with a certain type of person who becomes one. I really think that format works really well for that type of person. I was not exactly that kind. And it wasn't until I went back four years later. I was like, okay, we're all kind of the same alcoholic. But until you get to that level of abstraction, after experience, after talking to a lot of people, you don't realize. I mean, like, I went, I remember thinking like, yo, man, this person is losing custody of their kids. Like, this is crazy to me.

Like, I don't think this is a level of my mat. So that's how I felt. As far as people getting together and, you know, working on a problem of a personal nature, In general, I think there's a lot of value in concepts like accountability. And why AA doesn't directly make you accountable, like, they don't put a tracking braces on you or some shit. But thankfully, there are a set of steps you have to do. There's a sponsor you have to find.

I mean, like, you really have to, you buy into a process. because your process ain't working, you know? So I think that part can work well for some people. There's also, as most things, I mean, there's a danger of getting addicted to that too, but I don't think addiction in and of itself is bad. It's what you get addicted to. You know, you tell me you're addicted to playing chess. I'm not going to look at you like you shoot heroin every day.

Like, that's silly. Everything is, they're varying degrees. We find something to fixate on. And the idea is to not fixate on things where the cost exceeds the value that you receive. And you're talking about healthy addictions. Yeah, healthy, unhealthy. I mean, no, no. Sorry, yes, both.

But I'm right, yeah. To me, I'm a little addicted to podcasting. You know, when I first started in 2019, it was once a week. Then through COVID, it was twice a week and three times a week. Now, for the first two weeks of January of 2023, it's been five times a week. I just, I enjoy my brain's interaction with different people and exploring ideas and whatever else. And saying that, even that addiction, if I can use that term, to what I do, if it starts to take over your entire life,

then it can, in fact, become unhealthy, no different than your chest, you know, but to rate out and ply that chest is an unhealthy addiction is like, well, no, unless you cannot literally move around during the day without doing chess. Like, that's where it can take over one's life. It's a bit of balance, to be honest. Yeah, in other words, like, if I have to,

I wrote a piece a while ago and I was like, well, I don't know, I have a drink. problem. Well, here's a great way to tell, and this is for anything. Does the thing you think you are addicted to or have a problem with, does that interfere with other productive relationships or activities in your life? In other words, does the opportunity cost of it exceed the real value that you get? And if you answer that question, honestly, you'll figure out. out, you know, what is just something fun and what is something not so fun? What is something that I need to, like, change when I do, maybe go see some, you know, see somebody about it or things

like that. You, um, uh, you had wrote on your website, um, a limitation is only as powerful as the energy you give it. I'll give to it, I should say. And your dreams fall the same. law. I think that's a really good thought. I thought maybe we could talk about that for a moment or two and maybe you could just expand on it. I think too many people, I'll give you case and point. Where I'm sitting at today, if you're tuning into the podcast, I have a show coming up this Sunday, Sunday, January 22nd here in Lloydminster. We had 15 days until I had to give the venue a number of how many people are going to be there. Max you could have is $2.40. And certainly, I want to sell out just like anyone else. I'm a competitive guy. You know, I want a full house and want the vibe,

everything else. But I mean, 15 days is a little bit silly to think that you can do that on a Sunday in January. I mean, where I'm sitting at, today is not bad. I think it's like minus eight or something. But, you know, like, yeah. Is that fair height or Celsius? Celsius. So like you're probably, yeah, something like that. That's right. Somewhere. in that range. So like it's cold, but it's not that bad. But in saying that, it's still middle of January or everything else. And I had to have a conversation with myself where I literally went, okay, you can either tuck tail and run from this, this challenge, or we can get to work. And you can start believing that you're going to, you're going to get close, you know, so I set the

number is 175, you know. And as we sit here today, folks, I haven't looked at the numbers this morning, but it was 216, I think, is what we're up to, you know, closing in. on a cello. No kidding. But that's, but that, that, that your line, I highlighted. I'm like, that's, that right there is what I did. I literally went, you have to put energy into this. You have to forward. Nobody's going to do the work for you, you know? And so this, in saying that, if you want tickets to the show still, I'm like, you know, what is that? 24 away from a sellout. It's like, come on now, folks. Let's, let's, uh, let's push the ball down the court a bit more. But I thought, you know, like to me, that, that's where it spoke to me.

Immediately where I'm sitting today, I'm like, if you take the idea of putting energy into your limitations, you can get, you can get literally handcuffed by those suckers and never go anywhere. Yep. You can suck. Look, you can convince yourself of anything. And whether it's true or not, it's irrelevant. You've convinced yourself is true. And you'll behave as such.

Now, sometimes this will get you in the trouble, especially if it is a, objectively not true. Like if you cannot swim and you go in the deep end of the pool and you try to tell yourself you can swim and you've done nothing to make that reality seeming remotely likely, this is going to be a problem, right? So I want to preface that. But when we talk about the effort, much better, much more powerful keeping with that same example, is if you say I can swim. But you say that in the reference or in reference to lessons you're taking. It makes you better. You keep sticking with it. You've seen everyone else do it. You're like, why cannot? So you just keep pushing, keep trying to swim. That's how it works. All right? So we do it. We go the other way with that. We talk about everything that we want to do. It's like, it's like I thought about with math. I remember I had a fixed mindset. I didn't think, I told people I wasn't good at math. I'm never going to do anything with math. I'm not going to touch it. And so for a while, I really believed that. And then, you know, really almost by, by, that's not a happenstance. I'm a calculated person.

When I was looking at what I'm going to go back to school for to make college worth it, everything came up with math, I said, all right, well, it looks like I'm doing math. So, but I said, I'm going to be able to learn this because I had an experience from boxing that let me see whatever I put my mind to and decide I can do, I can do, because I wanted to fight well, and I fought well.

I learned how to fight. So I stopped buying into the idea that I wouldn't be able to. And started going, all right, this is what's got to be done to get this thing done. Let's go. Let's do it. And that works for everything. It's like we talk about physical training.

Yeah, you have genetic limits. but you're almost certainly not even close to them. And yet never will be close to them unless you push and you see what is really possible. What can you do? Isn't it crazy what you really can do when you push? Yeah. And man, you want to talk about a lesson.

I wish everyone got this lesson. Like so much, man, because it would really... We live in a society where people are scared to try because they're scared to fail. And that's kind of simple. So I want to be really precise here. I don't think they're scared to fail so much as they're scared of being embarrassed of investing time into something and not seeing an immediate payoff. That's instant gratification culture. of discovering that they actually might not be any good at something.

You know, that's the worst, man. People can convince themselves of all kinds of shit if they never have to test it against reality. You can be, you can think you're the best writer in the world. Well, let's go. Let's go. Let's see. Can you grow an audience what you're writing?

Oh, that's marketing. Well, maybe. But good. I've been in this long enough to know that, rarely if ever, and if it does, it is the exception that demonstrates the rule that good writing won't, you know, the really bad writing doesn't succeed on the market.

So if you're a good writer, let's go see it. If it was only about marketing, that was all it was, the viewership for the CNNs of the world would be higher. Oh, man. The viewership, right. The viewership for when, and I don't even know what the numbers were,

for Obama and, Bruce Springsteen show, but I mean, like, it just doesn't, maybe that speaks to somebody. It didn't do anything for me. And maybe people went and just absolutely gorge to that show. Or, you know, Megan Markle has her show. And I know, you know, the royal family has everything. But it's like, who has the biggest following in podcasting? Joe Rogan.

And I mean, certainly now he has marketing online, everything. But he, like, everybody should. He built that thing from the ground up. That's right. All content. on content and people like me and you or me and whoever sharing it. The first podcast I ever listened to it, and I don't know how many times I hear this story very similar to me,

was you should listen to this Joe Rogan podcast. I'm like, well, first I'm like, what the hell is a podcast, right? Can we break that down? Then you get showed it, and the next question was always Joe Rogan, the Fear Factor guy, and then you go listen to it. You're like, holy shit, this is something. that is in itself that's its own advertising

the content that he had you just pass that around and it spreads everywhere whereas you know if it was just marketing these places would have way better followings than Joe does and look at what Joe's built like I mean Joe they dear God

right it's really man but that's that's a I'm a goddamn I'm a millennial man and And I say that because, you know, whatever generation you're in for the first, for the start of your life, you're the youngest, hippest, newest generation until one comes behind you.

So these Gen Zers, man, they start saying this thing called coat. And now I find myself saying it because it kind of like sums it up, right? That is a coat when people will talk about it, you know, they go or it's, you know, the market. Oh, it's, it's, you know, if I had a God tell me, man, you only have so many followers because you're black. And I'm like, that's, that's the first I've ever, like, get that being black is an advantage in, in the writing space. But, but, you know, that's what it is. People come up with any reason, but their level of effort and take in their level of work and the beliefs and the things they do, the actions, the things they do, the actions,

the things they control. Because when you do that, that's that, like we were talking about earlier. That forces them to take that hard look. Well, certainly, certain things in life can be accelerated because of, well, color of skin,

gender, all these different things. But at the end of the day, wherever you sit, you put in a fuck ton of energy, you go after it, you get better at your, craft you continually improve, good things will follow. It doesn't matter what, uh, what any of that other stuff is because people naturally look for the best. They look for somebody who is intelligible

that can articulate thoughts. And I'm talking about podcasting. I'm talking about writing, right? Somebody somebody who writes a bestseller. I mean, how many times has like Disney or Marvel or whatever, these giant, giant things spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie to have a flop. Because it just isn't that good. And how many times has something come along that they spent $30,000 on?

I don't know why the Blair Witch Project comes to mind other than... It's a great example. It's a great example. You know, it's a great example that I just found out my big fact Greek wedding. How much was it?

I don't think they spent a million on it. We'll see in another one's Kevin Costner, Bullderm. That one was a dirt cheap film, right, where he's the catcher for the Durham. Oh, boy, that's, that's terrible me, folks. Anyways, baseball movie. And that was dirt cheap. And it became a cult classic, right? Like, there's all these things.

You don't, everybody thinks you need the $100 million. You don't. Because what all of us consumers want are all of us people searching it out is we want good. And good at times will be the, you know, the end game of Marvel. I mean, that, having all those superheroes. What a great movie, yeah. Coming together is what it is. But for, you know, for every one of those, there's a whole bunch that, you know, started out and their original idea and the simple idea and putting it out there goes and wins an Academy Award.

You get the point. Yeah. There's just, you know, at the end of the day, you know, meritocracy scares people, you know. That's why I think. there's this, and I don't know what it's like in Canada, but we have a different set for how your government works with your citizens. But here in the United States, there's this,

there's a big push for a newer generation that believes in communism and socialism. And yeah, some of those ideas are really, like, I think necessary to have a healthy society. In fact, I'll be the first, and I'm as pro-capitalist as a self-employed person can be, but I'll be the first to tell you, you know, like capitalism, you put that shit and everything,

you get some bad examples, proof it as our health care and our education system. With that said, making sure everyone is guaranteed the same outcome, that's just as bad but for a different reason and we've and you know the best part

is we've got a lot of like a lot of natural experiments in history to have documented what happens when you do this and of course the response is but that's not real socialism that's not real

communism like nah that's about as real as it gets the problem is that the system doesn't when you ignore the human right the theory of the system sure but the human that executes it. I always say humans have an incredible ability to corrupt anything we touch, like anything.

The difference with capitalism versus, you know, we'll say socialism or communism, is that when humans corrupt capitalism, it's more of a build-a-better-mouse trap deal. And you can only go so far, especially when you get laws in place, which is, you know, the United States, States is, that's a whole different conversation about why the United States is an incredibly unique

place in the history of the world. But a legal system that goes, oh, monopolies go away, that's kind of a big deal. Otherwise, some smart people, kind of like how they're doing now, you know, what they figure out to do with Amazon is going to be a different, is a different story entirely, but it is unprecedented in application and possibly in theory, so they got to figure out something. But, you know, I think I'm a big fan of knowing that my rewards and my effort will be met with some type of reward. And if it's not the reward I want, the ability to change and go pursue something else that will give me a greater reward, or to tweak my approach and learn from it so I can extract more

more outputs from my inputs. Not to completely switch subjects, but I kind of wanted to, I wanted to get your feel on, you know, I mentioned off the hop that I now follow you back on Twitter and I suggest other people do. Certainly, you've built quite a following there. You got over 200,000 people. I don't even know, personally, I don't know what to do with that number. It's no different than if it was. I have no reason.

And, you know, I don't even know what they're doing half the time. of there. You know, I'm actually, I'm actually going through right now. It is a year-long project. And if I do it right, you won't even notice unless you go like, look at some type of stat tracker. I'm going through removing everyone who has not sent out a tweet or liked my post in five years. And it's because, man, I unfortunately, I always tell people, you know, you got to be careful how you. you build your following. And, you know, a lot of that is just

watching, but I guess, you know, I'm looking, there were a lot of people who followed me from two camps just, like, fell off, man. A lot of people who ended up following me when Trump got elected because, and then, you know, they disappeared out of the platform.

And then a lot of people who followed me from, like, the masculinity advice, they wanted to, like, start their own like red pill masculine things. And I heard you got to follow. But what you quickly learn is that, one, I may say a thing that you agree with, but I'm probably say something you disagree with down the line. Like, you know, a lot of these motherfuckers don't like when I give my opinion on some of the police shootings that happened.

Because I just look and I go objectively, I'm like, yeah, you know, there's a problem. When unarmed guys that are getting gunned down, that's not cool. black or white, I don't, I don't even focus on it. I just focus on the fact that our police are killing people. And they think that makes me some type of crazy liberal. And I'm like, no, I'm just looking at the

situation, okay? On the flip side, you know, I'll never, I will absolutely never ever endorse just giving people shit. I'm not like a UBI dude or anything like that. I think that ignores human nature.

and so that makes me some type of crazy conservative, you know, did I actually believe in the concept of pull yourself up by your bootstraps because I lived it. And so you can't win. It just depends on who follows you, you know, but that's either here nor there, man. You were going so much with what you were saying. No, it's an interesting, because, you know,

I go back to when I first brought it up, you know, I try and, at a time I was trying to get it so that my my uh like my timeline was actually people that I followed and things I wanted to see and I found when I followed and I'm actually gonna pull it up here I actually haven't I don't know how many people I follow anymore I follow 33 right now that that is where it's at because I keep I keep going back through it and I've had to apologize people because sometimes I eliminate my friends not because uh I don't want to follow them I'm like I want my timeline to be things that help me. And that's what I use Twitter for. I use it for like news, current events and interesting people. It's how I find a ton of guests on the podcast. And when I

find those people, I follow, I reach out and you know, you carry on. And then people on Twitter do the same thing. And yet I try to like curate that. I try and go back through and just like, you know what, I don't agree with this guy or I haven't seen him in a while or or he's just blown my timeline up with a bunch of stuff that I don't care about and slowly, you know, and then it kind of gives me a sense of where I'm at. The thing that I've found interesting now that Elon's taken over is I'm starting to see the people I actually follow, which is interesting. I don't know. I was curious your thoughts on Elon taking over Twitter and if you've enjoyed the experience thus far or not. Okay. My thoughts are Elon taking over Twitter. I think that Elon is a brilliant man when it

comes to things involving not humans. I think you ever see, what is that movie, contact. And one of the things is like they bring in, of all people, what is McConae, a priest in that movie or something like that? Because they want a different perspectives. I would never, if you were like, who should we have to represent the engineers of humanity? Elon Musk, our scientists, our computer scientists, that's must.

Our negotiators, though, no, our communicators, absolutely not. Just anyone that has to deal with humans, I'm going someone with this. What Elon has done with Twitter, in my opinion. So first, the really good, because he's ruthless and efficient, just like a good scientist should be, he realistically, if he had did nothing else, just the changes he made in the back and probably would have put the company in the black.

Right? Because from what it sounds like, They had a lot of redundancy, and because of how many people were working there, a lot of stuff was going down that even like Jack Dorsey didn't know about when he was there. So I think that was a really smart play that. Where he really dropped the ball, and I'm not sure if he'll recover from this, is his thinking behind giving everybody to verify a tag. I don't care about the verified tag mine.

I aren't mine in the hard way, but that's a different story. Because there was no requisite for having other than you subscribe to the blue, you remove, well, you do a few things. One thing you do is people got to feel a certain way about what they do. And it's very simple. You don't buy, you get a badge, right? because you're important. But if everyone can just go get one, all right, that's not that big of a deal, though.

I don't think it was the best move, but it's not that big of a deal. The bigger deal is what people did with it when they got it. And now you've got to convince the advertisers that they're going to be safe from any type of brand embarrassment because that tag was the only thing that made a difference. You know, there was a, I mean, yeah, if you, like, sat and read the handle, but most people don't do that. They just look at a profile pick. They see the blue tag.

And boom. Well, now he's made it completely worth this. For the average person, sure, they get to feel like great. But where the life money of the company comes from, because Twitter doesn't sell anything from advertisers, he, that, and it might. opinion that was a fairly easy if you understand how people think I think that was a fairly easy problem to avoid at the very least maybe you don't know that will happen but but with with a bunch of fucking computer nerds all in a room who don't interact

with people whoever's advising them I'm sure no one thought to say this is a bad idea because you remove the ability for something to look distinct Maybe they don't know how it turns out what advertisers are going to wear out here because they're impersonating us and sending these awful messages. You saw the thing with the stock. I think it was Lockheed Martin. Someone said they were like going to stop making weapons and it looked like it came from Lockheed Martin. And then Nintendo, this was a funny one. It looked like it came from Nintendo underscore USA, which is not their Twitter handle, but it had the official badge.

and it had the Mario given a finger. So these little things, very, I think that here's the thing about Twitter. Here's the way Elon would look at it, in my opinion. Elon would look at this as a tool, and the humans don't matter. It's the efficiency of the tool. That leads him to do the house cleaning,

but it also leads him to that, And that mistake is big because that mistake ultimately may cost maybe not him Twitter Well, at best cost him Twitter at worst you know who knows what happens to Twitter when you can't pay them bills Right you know that's that's a big deal so that that's my thought about Elon Musk I think he should I know him buying it now now how do I feel about him buying it in general? I don't think he should be in charge of it, but I do like that there is balance in the force, so to speak, because a lot of things on the internet that have such mass reach,

mass appeal, popularity, they lean in a direction. And that direction when enough people think a certain way, it's not that they consciously collude to devise certain opinions. It just happens. In fact, there's a great example someone told me about who worked at AI. So what I'm going with this is how Elon is how Elon is allowing like, I ask more conservative voices to be heard and seen. Okay. So he may have something to do with that in the sense of like going in and manually reprogramming things. But check this out.

A buddy of mine who did some AI work was telling me about this experiment they ran where they tried to use machine learning to decide the outcome of court cases. And you know what happened? The algorithm got racist. Because it just looked at inputs and made a decision. All right. So it went, okay, black dude, did it, black dude, did it, black dude, did it. Now it starts to stack a probability algorithm to give a little more weight to it if a black person committed the crime.

And as all the Algo is doing, which is incredibly frightening to think about it, Just because all they do is just like think about our minds. And then they try and get involved with that. So maybe he's getting involved with that and changing that stuff. But since he's been around, people have seen it that they haven't really noticed a difference. Like there was the initial uptick and boost. Everyone was like, oh, my account's back.

I'm getting followers again. I'm not shadow band. But now everyone's complaining about the same shit. And I think people don't understand that the algorithm learns. And on top of that, people are not as good at writing or their takes aren't as hot as they think. Like if you say the same shit over and over again, eventually people just kind of go, well, I'm tired of it. And like we were saying just now about why you want to follow certain people.

I think the same thing happens with engagement. I see people complain about this on Instagram. But they talk about the same divisive topic over and over and over again. And eventually people just go, this is too. this is they they get sick of it well i agree with 85% of what you just said i agree with a lot of what you just said i will say that um when it came to certain subjects if you talked a certain way you were gone yeah and under elon that has all come back all those accounts come back that shadow banning has been i think removed uh okay yeah now that that's true the a lot of stuff about covid man like

which I am not, that's insidious. You know, Canada's got a different history of the United States. But I know, like, inspired because the U.S. inspires everything. But one of the things, you know, the forefathers did, they were brilliant this way. They really tried to think through and create a system that would be able to adapt and keep the people safe. I was just watching this series on Massape's Theater called Hotel Portofino that takes place in Italy right before World War II.

And there's the scene where the police show up and break up a meeting where everyone's talking about how to overthrow Mussolini before he takes too much power. And they beat this shit out of everybody. And I was just like, my first thought was that would never happen here because of freedom of assembly. Like, this is one of those things. So they thought through a lot.

One thing they couldn't possibly imagine, one, you know, the level of weaponry, refire power we have, which is where I get in arguments with two A people who are more hardcore to me, but also, man, the reach of the internet. Yeah, well, nobody could plan for that. They couldn't possibly imagine the biggest show in town wouldn't be the government, because the First Amendment protects you from the government. It says nothing about private. Who would imagine that the biggest communication channel would be a private entity that can reach the whole planet?

So, so I, I don't know what the solution is other than people like Elon Musk showing up and wrestling control back and creating a balance of the conversation. But yeah, no, I forgot about that part. A lot of those accounts did come back. Well, to me, it's, you said it, balance of the conversation. I feel like, and somewhere someone is saying that is not true or most people aren't ranchal, I. think most people, if you give them three people talking and you get to listen to all three people talking and one guy is like extreme freaking left and one guy is extreme freaking right and somebody's just in the middle of like pretty balanced. Most people are like gravitate to the balance.

Yes. And what Twitter did specifically is they took this side completely out of the equation. Heck, they started to take the middle out of the equation and they just focused on this is what we're going to talk about. I'm not saying extreme left. I'm just saying they just focused on one thing. This is what it is. And anytime you have that, well, in my books, Elon has, I tell you what, it's an interesting place to go every single day right now. And I can't say that about all social media, right? Yeah. And you're like, what is going on today? You know, like, it's just like, every day Elon's got something new going on in there, whether it's Twitter files, whether, you know what is it today here on um i think it's space x uh you know rocket uh rocket launching rockets

you know and like it's just it's something to uh really force your brain to go like well what is going on you know where we haven't that's what i feel like we've been that's the one thing that i think Elon has got absolutely right right now is he's found a what that's right That's right. And that's what bring people in. And that's what he's getting yelled at for. It's free speech and people are getting to see absurd. Well, yeah. And that is an absolute thing. You know, that should give you a, just a window into how these people think. And when I say these people, I mean, anyone who's an extremist. Because I gave myself a thought exercise one day that it started just as a retort to someone's argument. but I hadn't really thought it out.

And I just noticed that said, you know, if you can't even acknowledge that the other side could be extreme, you're an extremist yourself. And this girl was like, why can't imagine what left-wing extremism looks like? And I was like, okay, you're smart. So I'm going to assume you mean in the modern context, not like, you know, who immediately comes to mind. It was not like Musulini was like, considered right. Not just we're going to sit there left. A lot of people don't know that. But the more I thought about it,

I realized it's not a particular position that makes you extreme. It is how you deal with the opposing opinion that makes you extreme. It is, you know, do you entertain, debate? Do you just not listen? All fine ways, in my opinion. But when you start going out of your way

to silence them, now we're talking. in extreme. Silence, any type of libel or slander that is ad hominem against the people who say these things. Their credibility is diminished just as a person delivering an opinion. That's what's occurred. And so, like you said, when you start running after people in the middle, because to get in the middle, right, if such a place exists, what tends to happen is you have a nuanced

approach to things. You see both sides and you're able to articulate your thoughts on it. That's probably how you arrive in the middle. But if you notice when people attack such a stance, they focus on one point and the point, they don't, they can't give any credit to the other argument. Like if you can't say, someone said this to me. It was like, I always try to figure out where the exception is. is for you. And if I can't find any place where there's an exception, then by definition,

you're an extremist. It's like if we were talking about abortion and you go, abortions are completely wrong. Whether you think that or not, not the point, but somebody made for attacking this, the following few moments. But if I go, well, what if the mother's life is in danger? Never. You should do it. Okay. What if it's the product, of incest, rape. Oh, just give my... So the more I go, if I can't find a place

if you're ever like this, because very few things are always a bad idea. All right? Very few things. And if I can't get you to at least find one place where you, where there might be an exception, I know you're not thinking about it reasonably. I know you're reacting,

and that is almost certainly an indication. of being an extremist. Well, you've given me things to ponder. I'm watching, now I'm watching the clock, and I hate doing that. You know, I hate watching the clock. Right when it gets deep and good. I'm watching a clock two and I hear a baby crying.

Wives good, man. We didn't even talk about it, but, you know, this has been a really fun time, man. It's my first kid and it is just a lot of learning. Parenthood is, is, parenthood is the best. It doesn't mean there aren't days where you're like, what the hell am I doing?

I got three, six, five, three. Let me tell you, we built a bunk bed last night, the wife and I, and that tested everyone. That tested the marriage. That tested the kids. That tested everyone. And yet you get to come in here and sit.

And I tell you what, fatherhood, well, we could have an hour of conversation on that, Ed, and I'd certainly love to do that another time when I have you for some time, because that's a deep conversation. That's something that really forces you to take a look at your life and see what you want to impose on your kids, not impose, things you want to try and instill on your kids and things you want to try and foster in the future for your kids. That's exciting. How old?

Maybe two months and, oh, so fresh, fresh. Yeah, brand new. Brand new. You know, can't fall asleep by myself, brand new. Well, congratulations, man. That's exciting. Those are happy days and enjoy it while they can't talk back to you. That's what everyone tells me.

You know, there's different stages. There's people that are further along that have teenagers saying, enjoy the stage I'm at. And I'm going to tell you to enjoy it. It never ends. Someday we'll all be grandparents and we'll tell our kids to enjoy those days. you know, it never ends that way. Here's your final question before I let you out of here.

It's brought to you by Crude Master Transport, showed to Heath and Tracy McDonald. It's he's words, he said, if you're going to stand behind a cause, stand behind it, absolutely. What's one thing, Ed stands behind?

Oh, man, one thing I stand behind, don't abuse power. Oh, I'm such a big stickler on that. I've got an innate sense of responsibility and awareness. You know, don't take advantage of people not in the game,

which is a corollary of don't abuse power. When I say not in the game, you know, if, you know what snitching is? Yeah, certainly. But you're only snitching if you did crime with the person. If you just, you know, took all the cops and you wasn't in it, you're just a concern citizen. You're a civilian, as they say, right?

And so that's the kind of thing. You know, if we're in a game together, If we're doing something, you know, it's free game. You know what you was getting into. If I, you know, double-cross or do something crazy like that. But we can't hurt people not in the game. Kind of keep the innocence of life. And from that, you don't abuse power because of abuse.

There's one thing I've seen, destroy every organization, relationship, or person's life, or what is someone. abusing their position and in doing so not enriching the other so it's not even like, you know, everybody's getting hooked up that I stand 100% behind. That, that's, yeah.

Well, I really appreciate you coming on, giving me some time this morning, being patient, I was saying to the listeners, I had Premier Daniel Smith on right before him, and it was tight, and I was five minutes late. Ed was gracious with his time and allowing me to do that. So I appreciate you coming on and doing this today. And as I tell everyone,

because I truthfully, you have no idea. Somewhere down the road are paths cross again. Maybe that's soon, maybe that's, you know, a year down the line, who knows. Either way, I look forward to it, and I appreciate you hopping on this morning and, you know, and indulging me in the conversation. Hey, man, not a problem.

Thank you for having me. It means a lot. Like I said, whenever someone wants to talk, let me talk, I'm game. Thank you.