TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #300: Doomer optimism with Tucker Max
Episode Date: January 28, 2022Join Marty as he sits down with Tucker Max to discuss doomer optimism and Bitcoin. Follow Tucker on Twitter Find out more about Tucker at TuckerMax.com Shoutout to our sponsors: Cash App Unchained Cap...ital Braiins HodlHodl Bitcoin 2022 - use the code TFTC for 10% off
Transcript
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what is up freaks it's your boy marty bent here to introduce this incredible episode
of tales from the crypt i sat down with tucker backs
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You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
We're good. He's taking off his fanny pack. We've got Tucker Max in the studio.
Yeah.
Fanny pack is, it is actually a fanny pack.
It's true.
You know what a fanny pack in Texas always means though?
100% of the time.
Yeah, a knife.
No, the knife is in my pocket.
That was when I first got to Texas.
How long have you lived in Texas?
Since October.
I'm from Philadelphia.
I moved down from New York.
Oh, dude.
So you're brand new.
I escaped New York.
Okay.
So do you know what a fanny pack means in Texas?
No, I'm still.
Do you want me to show you?
Yes, please.
I would say
at least 90% of the time
when you see a dude with a fanny pack
he's got
holy shit
I'm not just carrying
this thing's heavy
that's a pretty Gucci'd out
Sig 320 X carry
are we going to get kicked off YouTube for this I hope
probably
that's the
I carry Israeli style though
so it's not actually chambered
which a lot of gun guys are like
Israelis do it, I can do it
you gotta be ready
you see a fanny pack in Texas
90% of the time
born and raised in Philadelphia
come from a very
gun adverse family
we're in downtown Austin now
downtown Austin used to be so safe
I would consider it a semi permissive environment
yeah i mean i just oh yeah for you from philly this is like nothing this is a kindergarten exactly
downtown philly is like a zombie apocalypse yes it's horrible yes now this is kindergarten for
you i haven't lived in philly and since i went to college i went to depaul i was telling you i went
to depaul we both had experiences at the ray where we got severely injured yep your appendix burst
and i tore my acl then i went to new york uh lived in williamsburg yep for a while covid
happen my wife and i had a son in a studio we're like we need to get the out of here yeah
so we went and lived down the shore for a couple did you do home birth actually no no we didn't
have he was born in february 2020 so right before they wouldn't let the fathers and the families in
so we got lucky uh yeah we lived down the shore in jersey for a couple years and it was like things
just kept getting crazier why would you what really why the shore in jersey definitely on
on an island
with like 2,000 people
there was nobody there
oh yeah
there are certain places
of it that are nice
I forget
I always forget
that's true
down by Cape May
southern tip
right
and yeah
so we weren't going
back to Philly
and shit hit the fan
things stayed crazy
and then
obviously the Bitcoin
scene's popping down here
I've got a lot of
reasons to be down here
from a business perspective
and I'm like
alright
I'm getting the fuck
in Texas
yeah
apparently
I have to admit
ignorance
like I'm not that well
versed in the bitcoin sort of social sphere and uh when you tweeted about me being on the show
i've got two or three friends obviously who are deep bitcoin uh people like that's their identity
is their bitcoiners right before human or father or husband they're bitcoiners and uh and literally
all three of them freaked out really like texted me like i'm sure brad's watching right now he's
like how did how did how did you contact him how'd you convince him to be on the show i'm like
I don't really know him
he reached out to me
I'm excited to be on
this seems cool
but I
like I was telling you
it's just surreal for me
I was reading
I hope they serve beer
in hell in high school
and
I was very influential
like
meeting you now
and I
loosely followed your
personal
or career arc
after
I hope they serve beer
in hell
and you started the company
where you help people
write books
and you're
which I just left
literally last month
really
mickable terms
good terms
oh yeah of course
totally
oh yeah as good as it gets yeah but it's like how because it's interesting having that perspective
from 2009 when i was reading that book to where you are now it seems like a lot has changed
i mean everything yeah four kids all with the same woman that i'm married to right um i live
in a ranch an hour outside of austin which is amazing with like animals and uh and we grow
things and uh uh i'm like um as about as happy as i could be uh like emotionally stable so yeah
dude i'm about as opposite as i could be from the i hope they serve beer and hell days and i don't
mean it like disparagingly like i was a horrible person i definitely did some horrible shit no
doubt but um i was a very different person then in a lot of ways i i could tell i could tell it's
going through the stories
in that book,
the donut shop story.
Again,
we were reminiscing
over you
having your pen experience
at the Ray.
Oh, yeah.
I remember that.
As a 17,
18 year old in high school,
I thought they were
the fucking most
incredible stories.
You know what?
That's so funny.
Well,
I wrote all those stories
for my friends, right?
And so like,
I wasn't a hero
to my friends.
We were all doing
the same shit, right?
I wasn't even the funniest
of my friends.
I was just the one
who wrote it down.
And so like,
my expectation when I wrote those was that people would think, yeah, they were funny,
but that was it, right? Oh, it's just another dude with a funny drunken story. I have funny
drunken stories too. And people my age basically had that reaction. What I totally did not expect
at all, which is stupid in hindsight, but I was stupid at the time. So it makes sense. I didn't
expect it was that there'd be a generation of people that like looked at it like amazing,
fantastical, unbelievable, aspirational shit. Like I didn't know people could do this.
Like, and of course high schoolers would think that because I would have thought that in high
school. Right. But I was, you know, 27 when I was writing that. And so like, it didn't occur to me
because I was done. It was 10 years ago and I'd forgotten it. And then a whole generation of dudes
were like, Oh my God, you're a God. And I'm like, I got drunk and I fucked a fat girl. I'm not a God.
I'm not, I'm barely even cool. Like I'm definitely not a God. And there were so many dudes that
deified me for a while. And at first I was like, oh yeah, this is awesome. I'm a God. And then of
course I realized I wasn't. But it actually got annoying because clearly this didn't happen with
you, but a lot of dudes would deify me, but do it in a way so that they, in a way almost to negate
themselves, right? Like he's, I'm going to put him on a pedestal. So I don't have to do the things
that I want to do. Cause if someone is, if someone doing cool stuff is so amazing that I can't be
them, then I don't have to worry about not being them. You know what I'm saying? It's almost like
they're very similar to haters, except it's like the, the, the photo negative of a hater,
right? A hater puts you down because they're jealous that you're had the courage to do the
they want to do, but don't someone who worships you elevate you on a pedestal. So they don't have
to in their mind, uh, uh, ask themselves the question, why am I not doing my version of that
at least? Right. And so like, uh, it took me a long time to realize that man. And, and, and
thankful a lot of guys obviously grew out of that and were like, Oh no, he's just a dude. He just
did. I can do the same shit. And that's awesome. But the ones who never outgrew that, like it was
sad in a lot of ways yeah it is sad but i think what really made that book particularly good is
you can fucking write and that's i think as somebody i write a daily newsletter yeah and
that's you realize how hard writing is when you start doing it yeah it's not easy but it is fun
it is rewarding it is it is once you practice and you get good and actually writing is easy
getting people to want to pay attention to your writing is what's difficult yeah yeah i find that
especially a daily newsletter
about Bitcoin
you have to really
oh yeah good luck with that
try to connect
well it's easier these days
yeah I guess there's a lot going on
the clown world makes it very easy
it's true
you just connect
oh I bet you got a lot
didn't Biden try and regulate
did I say something about that
or is it just more nonsense
we'll see
apparently he's going to come out
with an executive order
I bet it'll be great
it's going to be incredible
but it's
well the federal government
has such a track record
of being so smart
and ahead of the curve
in crypto
not only crypto everything right of course the covid response of course they can centrally plan
our economy very easily they're doing an incredible job it's well that's i mean that's why i reached
out to you right because i've read first piece i've read of yours in a while admittedly it was
the doomer optimism the first part of that series and again like bitcoiners and i think a line very
Dude, I had a flood of Bitcoiners reach out to me.
Really?
Like a flood.
Well, you already talked about two that I met in person.
It's so funny, man, because I've always been,
man, I actually was involved not super early in Bitcoin,
but quasi early.
I think James Altucher gets credit for being the first person
to sell a book with Bitcoin or something.
I helped him launch that book.
It was his idea to do Bitcoin.
And that was in 2013.
And so I bought some then.
I still have it.
and obviously I wish I bought more like everyone on earth, but, um, I was always like, oh yeah,
this is cool. Like, this seems awesome. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. And then like,
since then it's like, it's weathered every attack and you know what, and it's, and I always
understood the promise, right? Like I get it. I totally get it. It makes perfect sense. The only
question is, is it going to work? Right. And it looks like it is. And it's pretty cool, but I
I didn't get deep into the Bitcoin subculture, right?
Dude, it's a real, it's not even a sub, it's like a,
I don't want to use the word cult because that has a lot of negative connotations.
But it is definitely like, it's a movement is a better word.
That's exactly what I was just going to say.
It's a movement.
It's, I mean, again, somebody, I was 17 when I was a senior in high school.
I was 28, 20, 09.
So the great financial crisis was happening.
I just happened to be taking an economics elective class.
At that time, my professor was very attuned to what was going on.
He was like, gentlemen, I went to an all-guys school.
He was like, pay attention.
He read through TARP.
So at 17, I was radicalized.
Oh, wow.
I was like, this is all fucked.
I went to DePaul, studied economics, worked at a managed futures fund.
We traded currencies there.
And then, as an analyst, I had to write commentaries on why the fund was performing against market movements.
and that dealt with me following the Federal Reserve
and at the time, Janet Yellen.
And I vividly remember one.
So you got to see the grift up close.
Oh, very up close.
Keep going.
The grift for me, really, when I was like,
you know what, this is complete bullshit.
I was tangentially paying attention to Bitcoin.
What really pushed me over the edge
was the one Fed meeting.
The market started trading positively
because Janet Yellen was wearing a purple jacket.
and that imbued power and strength.
It is the color of royalty.
Yes, exactly.
It's a regal color.
You know why, right?
Do you know the story?
I don't recall off the top of my head,
but I do know it is associated with regalness.
It is.
Do you want me to tell you why?
Yes, please.
It's like just a super interesting historical anecdote.
All right.
So most colors are easy to essentially produce
out of natural materials.
Like there's a lot of ways to produce red, et cetera.
purple is very, very difficult. And the, for many, many centuries, eons, the only known way
to produce the color purple was essentially to smash up a bunch of a certain, I forget the name
of certain mollusks that basically only grew in the Lebanese Phoenician area, right? Modern day
Israel, Lebanon, right? And so it was called Tyrolean purple because the city of Tyre was
the main city that traded in it and uh and so it it was insanely expensive the phoenician trade uh
you know the phoenicians were right like they were like so so a lot of people say their trade empire
was built on purple basically right and so the only people who could afford it were royalty and
it like it was an honest signal of wealth because you you can't fake purple when you have to crush
up you know whatever it was 10 tons of mollusks to make enough purple for like a scarf or something
crazy like that and so that's how purple got associated with royalty yeah makes sense it is
a scarce hard to make a product uh what sets you apart from the plebs if you will exactly that is
exactly true i'm surprised like lavender didn't play into it at all you mean like the flower yeah
yeah uh uh from my understanding and i am not a like a biochemist or a color person you can't
really synthesize you can't pull um enough lavender to get an actual color that holds
off of it but again like i know just enough to tell a cool story about this and that's it
the reality of purple like if you asked me to actually make purple i'm like what do you want
for me it's perfect paint store and move forward to our modern day and markets are trading off of
that color because we have we had a fair fed chairwoman wearing it it's like oh strength
dollar's gonna get stronger that's that's and for me at that point i was like 22 21 22
working in the west loop i was like this is all fucked uh yes yeah let me let me let me dive into
bitcoin and then for me personally my personal journey where i am now i truly believe and why
i think you're recognizing it's a movement i would argue that many other states and speak
on behalf of many other bitcoiners not all bitcoiners but a lot of bitcoiners believe that
the core issue of our society right now
is that we fucked up the money.
We need to fix the money.
All the negative externalities.
It's like the joke,
Bitcoin fixes this, right?
Yeah, of course.
You need to fix the money.
The world cannot accurately price
markets anymore
because we have a bad measuring stick
in the dollar and other currencies
because they're essentially rubber
because they can be manipulated at will.
Of course.
Ex nihilo.
Yes, obviously.
Yeah.
Obviously, anyone willing to look,
yeah, of course.
yeah it's uh and so that's why i think some people call it a cult some people call it a
movement and it's because many bitcoiners believe very deeply that if we can fix the money we can
then begin to fix the world that's the bitcoin you can't fix a bullet wound with bitcoin but maybe
i don't know it's a pretty funny meme people shut up bitcoin fixes but maybe uh if you get
a sound money in the world and people are able to accumulate capital and save in the long term
they're less likely to get involved in physical conflict
that would result in a bullet in the first place.
It is a very plausible argument.
Yes.
So what is your perspective on Bitcoin?
The two gentlemen that you met with to talk about Citadel theory
told me that you're a bit skeptical of Bitcoin being able to survive a state attack.
Is that correct?
No, no, no, no.
Okay.
So overall, I love anything that helps humans exercise their sovereignty.
I'm on board with.
I think Bitcoin's fantastic.
I totally get the argument, everything. All of the logical arguments about Bitcoin,
I think honestly are right. I think at a minimum, they stand up to scrutiny.
And I honestly, like if I'm making a steel man attack on Bitcoin, I think that there's no doubt
it's a better currency and a better approach to money. I don't think there's any doubt, right?
What I brought up with them was the argument that I've, and again, I'm not an expert in the business, probably a great place for me to bring this up because I've never heard a Bitcoiner give a real effective answer to this, right?
Okay.
So let's say, let me just paint a basic scenario, right?
Like without getting crazy in the details.
Let's say the G20 gets together, right?
All world leaders, people, you know, Trudeau, Biden, all horrific sociopaths, basically all, um, you know, power hungry. Uh, uh, even if you don't call them evil, very power hungry, right? All running, uh, uh, the most powerful governments in the world all have root access into the strongest militaries in the world, right?
Let's say they all get to, let's say they actually figure this out.
If they haven't already, they figure out, oh man, these Bitcoin dorks are actually not
dorks.
They're right.
We're fucked, right?
If we let them win, then we lose power.
Cause that is, that is, if you follow the argument all the way through, um, the one
of the primary arguments for government and one of the primary ways they exercise power
is through money.
Of course, that's the converse of the argument you just made.
so why are sociopaths going to give up power they don't that's they're not going to that's
never how it's worked in history people take power back from sociopaths so let's say the g2 they get
together and they figure this out or their handlers do whatever and they're like okay we're
gonna come out and we're gonna not only are we gonna ban bitcoin we're gonna roll out a central
bank digital currency please don't pepper me with details about that because they're politicians
It's probably a stupid idea, but they have a quote replacement. Right. Now, of course, you can't ban Bitcoin. I understand you can't ban math. I understand that it's a network. I get that it will survive in some form or another. Right. I get I totally get it true. But what they also do, they're not stupid in all ways.
So all of their militaries and their police forces have a coordinated attack and they seize, you know, the offices of, let's say, the top, whatever, five, 10 exchanges.
Doesn't have to be that many, honestly.
The ones that are all, you know, registered and, you know, like doing business above board legally, they just go attack them all.
Right.
And take, like, arrest them, shut them all down.
At a minimum, the price of Bitcoin falls probably 80%, maybe 98%, right?
Possibly.
And so at that point, of course it doesn't, like, eradicate it from the earth, obviously.
And in fact, you can make a good argument that might be good for the long-term resilience of the Bitcoin network and blah, blah.
Cool, I get that.
But when the, when the men, when the men with guns show up to take your shit, what do you do? That's always been the problem with Bitcoin, right? Is that I'm not saying the benefit of it is it doesn't have, uh, a set of sociopaths running it.
But the detriment is it doesn't have anyone, I don't want to say protecting it, but enforcing it. So it's going to require at the level the world governments and markets work right now, it's either going to require for it to be adopted the way that a lot of people envision a fundamental wholesale shift of the entire way that commerce and exchange works, which might be on that a good thing.
That doesn't happen slowly or easily.
Or it's going to require sociopaths to voluntarily give up power, which they're not going to do.
No.
Right?
They're never going to give up power.
Right.
So the summary of the, not even a critique, the summary of the thing that I've never heard a great answer to is when the sociopaths with guns show up to take, to shut it down, what happens then?
because they don't actually have to shut down the math of Bitcoin.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, I mean, so I know what you're saying.
So they could shut down the exchanges.
They can shut down the exchanges.
They can scare the vast majority of people
who are using it into not using it, right?
They can put the whales, enough of the whales on a run, right?
They can't, of course, of course they can't make it go away.
We've seen what happens when powerful central governments try to ban it.
It doesn't work. I get it.
but what happens when a coordinate,
even the five most powerful countries in the world
or five of the top 20 decide we're going to do this?
I guess we'll see.
That's going to happen.
Right?
No, that's the thing I've always told.
Man, no, but most Bitcoiners at this point,
well, first of all,
the ones that don't get hyper defensive and angry will say,
oh, well, they give me reasons why that's not going to happen.
And I'm like, you might be right.
Maybe this time will be different.
And maybe this time the sociopaths will give up their power voluntarily.
When has that happened in history, though?
Never.
We got to fight for it.
Right.
And I'm not even saying that there needs to be a Bitcoin army because that's silly.
That doesn't even make sense in terms of like an actual physical army, right?
But the only way this works is if enough people, the steel man counter, and it's not even a counter.
The steel man argument against it, or the steel man counter is Bitcoin becomes so pervasive and so entrenched and so many powerful people are bought in that it essentially, it's like a meme that co-ops enough minds to move for it, right?
Yes.
I even get that counter argument, right?
Okay.
Okay.
I, the only issue with that right now is that there is still a meat on meat issue that,
that I don't know where the other meats coming from.
It's right here.
I'll fucking, if the fucking FBI or CIA came in here right now, I was like, give me all
your Bitcoin and tell them to shut the fuck up and get the hell out of here.
You're never getting my private keys and you're, you're never getting the private keys.
And, um, so hold on, but you've worked in finance. Yes. Okay. So did you, I have,
you know, when you do like fancy stuff in, in media or whatever, you get invited to,
like, I never got invited to Davos, but there's a lot of feeder organizations into Davos. Right.
And so I went to a couple of events of like the feeder, the low level, or, you know, the,
the B list ones where you have to move up to get to the A list,
the quote A list.
I don't know about you,
man,
but like those,
I went to U.S.
Chicago.
It started in Econ.
Didn't,
didn't major in it,
majoring in it for a couple of different reasons.
One of them is because I was like,
hold on.
A lot of this is bullshit.
This doesn't even make sense.
I know,
which it's like a lot of my professors would roll in their graves hearing me
say that,
but.
That's true.
Keynesian indoctrination is true.
But, well, no.
Freedmen, you have the freedmen school.
Chicago's the opposite school,
but still there's a lot of foundational stuff
that's nonsense, especially in macro.
And macro is literally just almost fundamental nonsense.
But, you know, I got recruited out of Chicago,
Goldman, you know, JP Morgan and all.
Like all the people I've ever met in finance,
and I'm not, it's not like I'm hanging out with Jamie Dimon,
but I'm hanging out with enough people that are high enough
like they're fucking evil sociopaths a bunch of them oh yeah like i'm sure you know about i do
dude dude those like a lot that's the other thing that like a lot of bitcoiners they're like they're
so they're earnest and they're optimistic in an awesome way but i also not all but i find some of
them like insanely naive to that yes to how evil and how awful a certain type of person in power
is and what there is like literally what one of the uh the dudes we were i was you were talking
about they were like no no they would never do this or that because if enough people were in
bitcoin and they tried to ban it it would crash world economy and i'm like it might but those
motherfuckers will do that they don't fucking care right you're like because i'm like you're
thinking from a logical rational standpoint about uh and valuing life they don't there is a certain
type of person in power that does not think in any way shape or form like that and will burn the
fucking world down if you let them yeah yeah yeah i'm not gonna deny that but again even so like
this is our only shot like if we we get we get the central bank digital currency or i don't know if
That's our only shot.
It is definitely one of the best shots that I've ever seen.
What else is there?
So in 2000, when did Bitcoin come out?
08? 07?
White Papers launched 08.
Okay, okay.
Network launched January 3rd, 2009.
I didn't need that technical answer, but thank you.
In 06, if someone had been preaching whatever thing was the answer before Bitcoin,
and in 06, they said, well, what other answer is there?
yeah that's a good point right so i'm not saying bitcoin is not the answer at all it might be
and uh and i totally am on board with the argument that it's one of the best answers
we've seen in recorded history yeah fuck yeah i'm on board totally um is it the only one
it's the only one maybe that we see right now i think it's the only scalable one obviously
you could try to that we see right now totally yes yeah but hold on have you heard about solana
no i'm not even shitting on salon i just like making uh uh uh shit coin uh jokes with
bitcoiners because they always get so funny look at i should have said i should have said
you heard a doggy coin that would be better uh yeah i mean this is this is all gonna they're
going to attack bitcoin they already are uh associate paths are coming well it's already
happened and bitcoin survived and thrived and it's awesome you had china one of the biggest uh
power like china's fucking stupid like if they really recognize the power of bitcoin oh yeah
no they should have adopted it no what they should i mean wait but their sociopaths would never do
that no but that and they kicked out all the they had all the miners and 60 percent of the network
right they could have could have confiscated that equipment at the border yeah used it themselves
and attack the network.
Yeah, right, exactly.
That's true.
I didn't even think about that.
Yes, they literally had the opportunity
to completely destroy Bitcoin.
To actually destroy it.
Yes.
Oh, that's funny.
You're right, they did.
And they didn't do it.
Yeah, because weren't 60% of miners
in China for a while?
Yes.
Right, because they had all that cheap electricity
and the dams and all that or something, right?
Yes, yes.
That's crazy.
And so all that hash rate came off the network last summer.
Difficulty fell.
Blocks came in slower,
but Satoshi's design worked
and the network recalibrated.
all that hash rate moved
dispersed throughout the planet
and got plugged in.
The system worked the way it was designed. Totally.
So that's one example.
And then two, you mentioned the dams and all that.
So that's where I think
the silver bullet is. There's a convergence
going on right now. The Bitcoin mining
industry and the energy sector
that is undeniably
beneficial to humanity.
Once you look at the ways
in which Bitcoin miners create
energy efficiencies throughout the whole
supply chain of energy from upstream oil and gas all the way down to the the utilities that are
providing electricity to grids dude i'm with you like that's all right but my again what happens
when the sociopaths with guns show up to blow up the dams no and i mean like it sounds crazy right
so except do you know like like do you know anything about the history of just the united
States military and intelligence
services and the horrible shit they've done
around the world.
On one hand, I'm a
flag-waving American. On the other hand,
I'm like, let's just be honest about some of the horrible
fucking shit this government has done.
You can have both.
It's a paradox, but you can
kind of hold both, right?
You have to hold both in your mind. You have to be aware of both.
Back to the China example,
that's essentially what happened. They essentially
bombed the dam without bombing.
That's what would have happened
if they bombed the dams,
the network would have reacted the same way.
Maybe price falls a little bit further and all that.
And so if the CIA shows up to all exchanges
and they arrest Brian Armstrong,
they arrest Jack Dorsey,
the Winklevite twins.
I know it doesn't kill the network.
Of course not.
I get it.
Totally.
But like,
again,
the only steel man argument,
honestly,
it sounds horrible.
The steelest steel man argument is probably,
in a sense,
We need to get enough powerful sociopaths that have root access to some strong militaries to be Bitcoiners, which in a sense is antithetical to Bitcoin, right?
Like those type of people don't become Bitcoiners for a reason because they want power over people.
And the whole point of Bitcoin is not that.
Agreed.
Right?
Let's zoom out from Bitcoin, though, and just dissect our modern times right now.
Like those sociopaths, people are losing faith in them by the day.
Totally.
Like what's going on?
100%.
Look at what's going on in Canada.
Look what's going on here.
I'm in Texas.
People flee to Florida, Texas.
People are fleeing with their feet to go live in free areas.
It seems like we're at a massive inflection point in human history where we are deciding
what is our future.
It's a convergence of many cycles.
Yes.
Totally.
You can talk 500-year cycles.
You can talk 80-year cycles.
You can talk 10-year cycles.
Debt cycles, empire cycles, totally.
Yes.
A hundred percent agree.
It's why I called the piece Doomer Optimism
or the movement's called Doomer Optimism
because it's like, it could go either way, dude.
Sociopaths, all they're doing is doubling down
and they're going to keep doubling down
because that is who and what they are, right?
My favorite, dude, just look, this is so amazing.
Look right now, this is such a good example of this.
it's so mind blowing Canada right now.
There's a huge convoy of like,
whatever it is,
50,000 truckers converging on the Capitol.
Farmers just joined them.
Right.
Okay.
Do you know how the,
like you can go on the CBC,
the Canadian broadcast channel.
Do you know how they're covering this?
This is Canada.
We're not talking about a banana Republic,
right?
We're not talking about like,
whatever.
I,
like,
it's funny to call something else a banana Republic.
Now listen to it.
Go look on the Canadian Broadcast Channel.
They're covering the convoy as truckers protesting against unsafe roads.
I swear to God, it's on the website.
Go look it up.
It's insane.
Try to pull it up if you can find a car.
This sounds like an insane conspiracy theory.
Go look it up right now.
Canadian Broadcast Channel is saying truckers are protesting unsafe roads.
Trudeau just got into contact with somebody with COVID.
He has to go into hiding for 10 days.
so that's
that's the CB
or CBC
yeah
Canadian broadcast channel
I think
so
but again
like what do we have here
what we're learning
right now
it's the same thing
but independent media
is
people
those are the only ones
that are actually getting
any truth out
well
and more and more people
are flocking to that
so again
information age
the ability
people are waking up
en masse
it's awesome
it's amazing
and awesome
Bitcoin is a huge part
of that
it's great yes totally so i i think what we need to do is embolden people out there who
are typically used to bending the knee to the sociopaths uh like hey look we have this
information we can prove that it's all bullshit like here's a solution to get away from this
bullshit and protect ourselves from this kleptocratic elite and get away from them
can we change minds convince minds then give people the confidence like all right
maybe we should not be listening to the cbc to cnn to all these yeah you know i mean i get that
right i get that argument um are we doomed for no for chaos no oh we're definitely chaos is
it's already here it's upon us right and it's i think i think it's the only question is how
much more chaos how big you know that's like that's it um uh you know i i don't know man
you get this question a lot right um i'm not entirely sure well first off like sociopaths
don't let you go right like you ever been in a toxic relationship or an abusive relationship
the abuser doesn't want they they don't just let you go and i'm not even talking about like a
serious extreme one i'm talking about just like like a friendship where someone's a user and it's
like you know keep calling hey let's do this like that's a form of not right and it gets worse and
worse and worse as the more enmeshed you get um and i'm not gonna tell you i have the answers
because i don't uh but uh i am not really sure that um
so i'll tell you who i look to for guidance one of the groups of people i look to for
Did you find it?
I think this might be the one.
It was up this morning.
No, no, no, no, no.
Protests are expected to cause disruption throughout Ottawa.
No, no, no, no.
It was on CBC.
You can find it, I promise.
The fact that it's not even the headline on CBC tells you something, though.
Like, this is the only thing going on in Canada.
And they're not even covering it.
And when they do, I'm telling you.
The Vancouver, it was about Vancouver truck drivers protesting icy roads.
so the people that I pay attention to, uh, are the ones for guidance. Some of them are the ones
who, who just spent a couple, many decades living under some of the worst sociopaths the world's
ever seen communist countries. Right. So who dealt with that? Well, so like, you know,
Vaclav Havel, those sorts of people. Right. And so he wrote a great book, not his most famous
called, I think it's called power to the people. And it's basically about how to exist and not
necessarily how to exist with them and how to deal with those sorts of people. And one of the main
things he talks about is building parallel structures, right? So, so much of what people
talk about is, Bitcoin's an awesome example of a parallel structure, right? So much of what people
talk about is fighting the bad guys, however they define the bad guys. Right. Um, I, I think
anything you fight, um, you make stronger. Right. And I mean that in a meta sense and almost in,
in every literal sense, fighting, actively fighting something is not the same as defending
yourself, right? Like defending yourself, holding boundaries is great. That's a different thing. Um,
the more I think people focus, if we focus on how awful and evil the mainstream media is,
let's say, uh, at how, how much they lie. That's right. You know, all that's going to do the,
but that now they've set the frame, right? And the frame is, are we telling the truth or not?
They've won whatever frame you're living in, whoever sets that frame is one. And so that's
one of the, the, I mean, I've been in media 20 years, man. It was one of the first things I
learned was, wait a minute. This doesn't see, not only I thought everyone kind of told the truth.
not only do they not tell the truth they're actively lying holy shit this is all bullshit
right like what you figured out in finance i figured out media and so the thing i've learned
though man is that the only way out if you fighting it is not a way out fighting it just
keep it's almost like you know the tar the the the the tar baby right you touch it and it pulls
you in more right so what i found instead the better situation identify it recognize it sure
build your own thing yep build your own thing a hundred percent you know and and now attracting
others to your thing right helping them uh uh build their own thing is you can either you build
your own thing to suck other people in and now you're just another one of them or helping people
build their own sovereignty and bitcoin is a hundred it is the thing for that right for money
but there's a lot more to it than just the money, not to put money as an important part. I mean,
exchange of energy, I get the whole, you know, the whole thing and it's awesome. But then like,
I think further, like, what about emotionally? What about where, where does my food come from?
Where does my water come from? Where does my energy come from? Physical, actual energy,
electricity where, um, you know, where do I live? Right. Um, uh, what am I built? It's why I bought
a ranch, right? It's not like, I'm not trying to escape. I'm trying to build my own thing for me
and my family and then a community around. Right. And then of course, uh, to me focusing on who you
are and what you want and what your work is and doing that is actually the way you win.
Now, I know part of that can sound pie in the sky. I don't mean, oh yeah, we can just ignore
the sociopaths and leave us alone. No, that's not going to work either. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's unfortunately not going to work. Right. So yeah, we got to recognize if someone else
or some group of people is coming to take our shit.
Like, yeah, and we're going to have to set boundaries
and we're going to have to protect ourselves
in the best way possible.
But at the same time, if that is your identity,
then you are now in their frame and you have lost.
Yes.
Bitcoiners are big on control of the frame.
In the mining industry,
so I'm in the Bitcoin mining industry myself,
and people are trying to set the frame
on the mining industry.
It uses too much energy.
Oh, which is such nonsense.
And so I hold up a mirror to them and go, no, no, no.
Bitcoin makes us more energy efficient.
And you are actually anti-human.
You want us to use less energy, which has never led to a better outcome for humanity.
Well, the fight over environmentalism happened about 40, 50 years ago.
And the anti-humans won.
They did win.
In mainstream environmentalism.
They did win.
The ones who were about stewardship and conservation and harmony lost.
The sociopaths went to the control side, to the anti-human side, and they won.
The monkey ranchers and all those people is horrible, man.
Because like, think about this.
Like, I own a ranch.
I'm a hunter.
I raise animals.
I am every single, and I actually grew up on my grandmother had a beef cattle ranch.
I've been doing this my whole life, um, in some form or another, uh, uh, since I was very young
and, um, man, I, I couldn't care more about like, like I understand where our food comes from.
I understand that garbage in is garbage out on a very, very core level with the literal, uh,
physical molecules of our existence. I get that. And like, there is, there should be no greater
ally of the environmental movement than the farmer and the rancher and and everyone involved in that
chain yet somehow they're seen as enemies because the sociopaths won on the they co-opted the
environmental movement and now what you're starting to see forget what global warming or not right
that actually doesn't matter what's coming is look how it's playing out humans shouldn't be doing
shit you shouldn't be having kids you should the old the core argument a lot of them make it is
you shouldn't be alive yeah there's too many people in this cult yes like uh that's another
great reason to focus on yourselves and build your own shit is because if you leave the death
cultists alone they eventually turn on themselves yes they will eat themselves they do if you don't
provide them a target almost always they eat themselves yeah and it's happening it's starting
to happen yeah we were seeing it with the clown world with the crazy woke culture yes if you're
not on the the extreme end of the spectrum oh yeah it keeps going further and further and further
right because it's a mental illness and they're going to keep going so the more you pull out of
it if you if you engage in a fight with them you've now given them an enemy and you can be
the bad guy if they don't have an enemy they turn on themselves because that's what they're looking
for they're projecting their shit outwards yeah you're explaining it's basic projection
on a basic psychological level
yeah we're seeing
you're basically saying go
Galt's culture
no no no no no no
no no no no
I liked Ayn Rand in high school too
right and then
and then I
hate to be dismissive I liked Ayn Rand in high school
and then I grew up
and I don't mean
I was talking about this last night
I used to put in a bundle
individualism, freedom, sovereignty
yeah those all cluster together
now
I put sovereignty
right next to community
and individualism
not bad but just as far
apart
freedom is probably in between
sovereignty, freedom, individualism
I actually, sovereignty to a lot
of people means
or feels like man on an island, off the grid,
that shit doesn't exist.
Humans are network beings.
Like if you think you're off the grid,
you're one fried coupler away from realizing,
oh fuck, I'm real dependent on China, right?
You know, like, and even, no, no, no,
I've got multiple redundant systems
and backups for backups for backups.
And it's like, where'd they all come from, right?
So what are your kids going to do?
Yeah, okay, right.
You're on.
So we are networked beings
and we know what happens when humans are raised
without other humans around.
They're like animals, right?
It's horrible, but it's happened.
So the idea that we exist without other people
is just horrific, toxic nonsense.
The question is not, can you be without other people?
The question is, who do you want to be
and who do you want around you?
What is your community, right?
Who, consciously choosing your community,
choosing who you want to be
and then your community, attracting those people
or joining that existing community or some combination.
That's how I see sovereignty is the ability for me to make myself the way I want to
and then be with the people who have aligned views that we all choose to be together, right?
I don't see sovereignty in community.
I think it's almost impossible to pull them apart, right?
um whereas like a lot of people see individual it's a really it's a very nefarious way to co-opt
freedom right so oh it's individual into this individual that it's like man but we all do
exist in a system man you know like i can think i exist independently but it's not true just not
now does that of course we can go down the whole philosophy rabbit hole with that right and where
is the line i get it yes right i'm not trying to go down that whole rabbit hole but to me right now
what i i realize oh i'm could not be more in on sovereignty and the right there with it is
community like who who am i going to be around who am i going to be and who am i going to be around
i mean part of the reason i moved to austin texas to be around people working on this mission to
to bring Bitcoin to fruition.
And on the elevator ride up,
it seems like you're trying to build,
at least you're building your safe haven
within what you hope to be a larger community
of like-minded individuals.
And you doing this out around dripping springs.
Yeah, I wouldn't call it a safe haven.
No?
No, I'll tell you why.
I don't believe there are any more safe places.
No, truly.
Has there ever been?
Probably not.
Well, I'll tell you, there was a period
uh we just came out of it in america i think for the for the last let's call it 1946 to 2016
let's just say roughly right and don't don't pick at my dates in that period if you were america
if you were an american in america you were probably as safe as any human has ever been
anywhere maybe a roman you can talk about a roman in rome during certain periods of the republic
you know or maybe even the empire uh there's a couple we can go to like if you were a mongol
during uh the late stages of gangas or the the stages of uber ogadai and i forget his son after
that ruled um uh like uh you were extremely safe um there have been there have been brief
shining pockets of true safety in places but they were all enforced by people yeah i don't believe
there are any more safe places. I believe there are only safe people. And so what I am trying to
do is become a safe person and attract other safe people. We are in a place and that place is
definitely going to be safer than most places. I'm not foolish enough to be like, Oh, my place is
totally safe. No, nothing's totally safe. It just doesn't exist. It's a dark view of the world.
No, I think it's just realistic, man. No, it's, it's not. I don't know how it's sort of like
there's i don't think there's any way for light to exist without dark i agree okay i don't think
there's any way for safety to exist without risk you know like risk in and of itself does not i
don't feel it is good or bad evil or what it just it kind of is what it is right um uh some risks
are acceptable some aren't and they vary per person you know i mean i know some people were
like you're only an hour away from a major blue city that's nowhere near far enough it's like
all right well if the refugees start pouring out then they're gonna hit me first you know or
whatever so like no like seriously they're on the continuum of preparation there'd be a way further
well i think i think it's hilarious people shit on us and again coming from philadelphia new york
chicago right people are like oh you're going to austin it's a shit lip city i come down here i'm
like compared to those three and this is this is those are texans that say that because it is a
shitless city to us now.
The Texans are like,
oh,
what are you doing in Austin?
Like,
have you ever lived in the Northeast?
Well,
you got to remember,
so I got here 13 years ago.
When I got to Austin,
it was quote a blue city.
It was,
it was such a great city because it had all the benefits of a blue city,
but was run by like a run,
like with a red ethic.
So it kind of had the benefits,
all the responsibility,
everything worked.
It was great.
But then you had,
you know,
culture and freedom and individuation. It was a perfect mix. Um, and it is tipped over in the
last, uh, really about six months before COVID and COVID only accelerated it. Um, uh, this specific
administration that came in are the worst kind of woke blue types. Like I'm old enough to remember
when the bad guys, and I'm talking about from a sovereign, uh, a human loving perspective,
the bad guys were on the right. Yeah. Dude, when I first started writing my books that you loved,
almost all of my critics were the, the, the, the sort of stereotypical fundamentalist
Christian shame-based, how dare you talk about sex publicly type. Those motherfuckers don't
even exist anymore. Like that energy has all shifted. They're all now on the left and it's
all the woke but it's the same energy it is the same fucking energy it is deeply internalized
shame that is projected outwards whether it's coming through christianity or coming through
critical race theory it operates the same yeah like it's fucking i am 46 and i've literally seen
the arrows go from one side to 180 degrees on the other but the same arrow coming from the same
basic type of person it's nuts man it's really weird it's funny that meme's been going around
One of the, the two cars driving past each other with different bumper stickers is like
in the seventies, liberal was like anti-vax, uh, down with the corporations, a big farm.
And this one's like, take your vax, like trust, trust the science.
It's like, what the hell happened?
What the hell happened to the hippies?
They completely turned into what they hate.
I know.
I know.
And now, and now the fucking ranchers are like, I ain't taking that death metal injection
and, and keep, keep your hands off of me.
and oh dude
now it's like
totally switched
it's weird
why is this happening
because some types of people
believe in sovereignty
in humans
and some people
have succumbed to shame
right
that is a simplistic
explanation
but I think
there's a lot of truth
it's simplistic
but there's a ton of truth
in it
and I think it reverts back
to something we were talking about earlier
which is like the anti-humans won
they've really driven
in academia they won
yes
that's what woke is
wokeism is a death cult
personified
it is
and it's such a sneaky death cult
It's so well-structured in terms of a medic cult.
I know so many people who are like, well, we're totally aligned, sovereignty.
And in summer of 2020, they could not have been marching harder in the woke Olympics, right?
Because I want to be a good person.
This is their thought process.
I want to be a good person.
And if I'm a good person, I'm saying these things and I'm believing these things.
It captured their minds.
I have a black square on my Instagram.
Right, exactly.
That one was the most infuriating.
It's easy to make fun of some soccer mom
who doesn't have any black friends
and lives in the suburbs.
I'm talking about people who actually do shit in their lives.
I'm talking about people who actually do care.
It fooled them too
at the beginning.
That's how powerful that memetic virus was.
And it's cascading into
a massive sunk cost fallacy
where a mass amount of people
do not want to admit to themselves that they were duped.
Dude, I mean, it's crazy now.
Masking has become a religion for some people, dude.
Truly.
Like not masking.
And it's funny.
Three years ago, the anti-vaxxers were the crazy religious people.
And now the vaccinate everything every week people are the lunatic.
Like it's switched sides now.
Well, I mean, and this is, I go back and forth.
I have a Marty Jones aspect.
People think I get as crazy as Alex Jones,
but like the pushing forward with the fourth booster,
taking in all the information that we have is leaving me to believe there's
some like nefarious intent behind it.
So many,
so many people,
I don't want to be there.
So many people,
it's hard not to believe that.
So many people that I know when I was like,
guys,
this is,
you know,
last year and late 2020,
I'm like,
this is a scam.
This is something's going on.
I'm not going to pretend I can tell you exactly what it is or who the players are.
Something is going on just because I know media.
I know media.
I know media so well.
I knew not in March, but I sent the article by, by May of 2020, I knew it was a scam,
right?
Something, something somewhere was a scam.
And then it just got worse and worse and worse this time around.
And everyone who knows media knew, just like all the people I know who really know public
or health and like all the medical stuff,
they're like, what the fuck?
None of this makes sense
from an actual medical perspective, right?
Vaccinating during a pandemic breakout.
So like, anyway, so a lot of people who like,
I had no idea how many people
not only didn't think for themselves,
literally just took the opinions
that were assigned to them from their TV.
I thought I knew that a lot of people did that.
Let's say if I thought 50% of people did that,
turns out it was like 90.
And I had no idea how many people literally just took their opinions from NPR, CNN, or Fox News, whatever.
It's not like it's only one side.
Like, and like, okay, that's what they say.
And then I'm like, we look at them like, you're not even human right now.
You don't think this.
You know, my favorite question I started asking people, and I can't tell you how many people I mentally broke with this or got them out of their bullshit.
but no, seriously, someone would be like, oh, well, blah, blah, blah, whatever we're talking
about. And I'm like, okay, so I get your point. Let me ask you a question. What evidence would
you have to see that would change your mind? Oh, dude. And then I would just stay on. No,
I'm not saying it's true. I'm not arguing this is going to happen. Pro-vax, it doesn't matter.
Anti-vax, I don't care. Tell me what evidence, because so I can understand your evidence better.
I always frame it as understanding your evidence, right?
So I guess, so tell me what evidence that if existed, right?
And I'm not saying it will, but if it did, that you would cause you to change your mind.
So like a true, like you ask a true evolutionary biologist this, they'll give you, oh, well,
if we found a verified rabbit skeleton and then triassic, you know, layer, we'd know
for sure evolution was wrong or whatever, right?
Like any real scientist can tell you immediately what would negate people.
you get them enough
and get through
the one or two things
they remember from Vox
or whatever
and they break
mentally
because they realize
that they haven't
unconsciously realized
they didn't reason
themselves into
any of these positions
they're just repeating
bullshit they heard
and now
the question is
are they going to
admit it to themselves
or not
and so they
are stuttering
they either get angry
or some of them
actually will figure it out
usually they'd figure it out
later and come back
right and be like fuck yeah and then they start to wake up even though they don't even know but
they start to wake up out of that yeah that that's i think that's the biggest hurdle we need to get
over as a as a society right now with this covid shit is get out of the sunk cost fallacy like and
man it's easy to say that i know i know i know that's like being skinny and being like hey fat
person just lose weight don't eat more like there's a whole uh you know i'll tell you if you
really want to help people get out of the sun if you again if you approach them fighting
you're you're going to embed them more in what they believe yes right that's why like uh and
it's not like i'm some genius who came up with this like it's not that hard if you understand
persuasion and memetics and the way brains work if you actually ask i ask people this question
from a place of sincerity and care and i always whatever they say i'm like yeah i know i i get
your point. I get it. There's a logic to it. It makes sense. I see why you believe it. I'm not
saying anything's going to contradict it, but just explain to me. So I understand the evidence,
the landscape of the evidence really well. What, what evidence would cause you to change your
belief? If it existed, just if play with me, right? Because they have to get themselves out
that position you cannot do it for them it just won't that is one of the major myths like anyone
who's in the broadest the therapy movement any any good therapist will tell you you cannot do
your patients work for you same thing all you can do is help them see it's up to them if they want
to look man yeah and and this is this is for a lot of things right now right now we're talking
covid specifically so for me when i figured out the monetary system was fucked up and the
financial system was fucked up i was like all right you're describing media you found out
media was fucked up but once you see something that you took for granted for your whole life
is fucked up wait you mean the dollar's not backed by anything wait it's backed by debt
wait what that's my favorite people like no the american dollar's not backed by anything like no
you're wrong that's where you're wrong it's backed by debt backed by future production
it's backed by the u.s government's ability to bring a gun to your house and take your shit if
you don't pay taxes debts yes and they're like what no no they don't like everyone in finance
knows it i swear seven out of ten people you ask on the street like man on the street questions
will tell you that's backed by gold still yeah that was true in 1968 1971 what the fuck happened
in 1971 richard nixon but it comes down to all like everything is fucked up the money's fucked
up the the response to the pandemics fucked up foods fucked up that's the other thing too
common sense reaction to this like hey maybe you should get healthy and instead of injecting
yourself with four four shots is never being healthy doesn't make money for sociopaths in
charge no okay are the sociopaths always going to win are we a peak sociopath right now what a
great question holy fuck hold on sociopaths always i'll tell you what like does the information age
allow us to highlight that is actually you might have been asking that like glibly but that's such
a deep deep question um the best answer i can give you is they're always gonna win unless
unless people stand up and say no the only way they don't win is if you decide you're going to
win right and winning and i actually redefine winning when sociopaths win because they get
you to play their game when you stop playing their game and you play your game whatever your
game is, right? That's when you're able to win. You can never win their game because they set it
up. And of course they're going to set it up so that the house wins. It's like going to Vegas
and expecting to beat the house. Some people do, but on net, the gamblers lose.
Casinos are still up and running. They've been profitable for many, many decades.
many billionaires printed off of, off of casinos. Right. So, uh, like, I mean, shit, dude,
I could have gone to work at Goldman Sachs and been super fucking rich and been one of those
horrible fucking sociopaths. And I probably would have been a high level sociopath, uh,
probably not one of the highest, but I'd have been one of the lackeys of one of the highest.
And no doubt, man, I could have gone that route. You could have too. You were in that funnel.
Yes. So was I. Well, that, that gets into an interesting thing. Like our,
the sociopaths rise to power because of the way the incentive structure of the systems that they
manipulate they created or or took over and co-opted yeah dude i was talking about this
yesterday and jordan peterson's in town right and so he's i know him uh and mckayla pretty well and
so i was we were talking about this and like man i love jordan to death he's such a great dude in
so many ways but it has been very painful the discussions i've been like dude you've when are
you going to realize that all these institutions that you came up with and that you loved, and that
may have been great for you, pretty much they're all infiltrated and corrupted and broken. And
finally he's like, yeah, I think you're right. I'm like, yeah, Jordan. Yeah, Jordan. I've been trying
to tell you this and meet a lot of other people for quite a while, dude. And it's hard for him
because you know, he's older. Right. And so he, and he was telling me like, you know, when he was
at McGill, it was like a great place to be a psych grad. So he had great professors. Again, not all
them taught well, but, but like the system worked for him there. And then he got to Harvard and he's
like, man, I had such great peers. And, and so it worked. And so it's like, if the system works for
you, of course you think the system works obviously. Right. And dude, it's so fun. I've
my CEO of my company, the guy who, um, took over for me and who's a total badass is the reason the
company is good, uh, is, uh, uh, half black, half white. And his dad was like, uh, like an actual,
like beat women sell their bodies pimp like a like a pimp and his mom uh was white one of his
dad's hoes like like seriously i know right um and so like he's he's seen it's like you have to
laugh or you cry because it's like horrific he's seen the true underside of america grew up on
welfare like the worst shit ever and pulled himself out man and um and it's he it's funny
he we're talking about this he goes he goes man he goes i'm not glad that all this shit's happening
He's like,
but it's fucking fun
to watch a lot of people
wake up and realize
what some of us have seen
for 50 years.
Yeah.
Which is,
shit's been fucked up
for a long time.
It just has not been
evenly distributed
at all
in any way,
shape,
or form.
And this is something
that really,
again,
my college,
my time in college
was really impactful
on the future trajectory
of my life.
I studied economics.
Also,
coming from the Northeast,
I played lacrosse
and I helped start
an intercity lacrosse program
in Chicago
on the west side.
So what you're saying
is you're really,
really fucking privileged.
yeah i mean to make the joke can't deny it but uh no i worked hard my parents worked my parents
in a coffee shop they're not like crazy um but i'm fucking with you yeah but yeah i mean again
i think a lot of the problems that persist throughout america particularly today stem
from the dissolution of the nuclear family and that started in inner cities right so take a step
back why do you think nuclear family why do you think that happened you said you're picking a
pretty arbitrary i don't disagree but you're picking an arbitrary starting it's not like
the nuclear family just decided to start disintegrating no i think there was a a
concerted effort to replace the father with the state you push parents into you push both parents
into the workforce and um you you create an incentive system where the father doesn't have
to be around right and love it or hate it parents are pretty fucking important each one has their
role um and father figure that's the thing i noticed they're teaching lacrosse to young
young boys are typically being raised by their their aunts or their grandmothers and you could
tell they were at this second third fourth grade had this void um me yeah my dad was gone really
from the time I was a year old.
Oh yeah.
I mean,
you're one of the few to make it,
make it out for yourself,
right?
Yeah.
But look at the road I took.
It was rough,
man.
I,
I,
I turned it into something that produced a lot of enjoyment and laughter for a
lot of people.
Um,
how do you know?
32,
30,
30.
Okay.
When's the last time I'm asking a curiosity,
not like a,
um, any other weird way. Um, when's the last time you read, I hope this would be or no.
Well, it was like my early twenties. Okay. All right. All right. So, um, you have one kid,
right? And another on the way. Yes. Okay. So you're a totally different dude now than when
you read the book, right? Oh yes. Okay. I just did this. I just went back and read,
I hope this would be on health for the first time since I was 32, I think, or 31
about your age now. Now you seem way more mature. Like I'm a, I married a woman 10 years younger
than I am. And we're about the same emotional maturity. Like I'm, I'm, I'm 46 and emotionally
what I feel like about a 36 to 38 in terms of emotional maturity. Smart. Yeah. I'm off the
fucking charts, but emotional maturity is I'm, I've always been very slow. I'm lagging. Definitely
lagging, right? Um, I just read the book again. Of course there are parts that are brilliantly
hilarious, whatever, you know, and I knew it was there when I wrote it, but it wasn't conscious
and I wasn't trying to put this in. Do you know the overwhelming feeling I got reading that book
now? And I bet you would see it if you read it now. I bet it would come through in a way you
didn't see it all when you were reading it first. What could have been if I wasn't doing this?
No, dude, I'm not ashamed at all of what happened, man.
I turned a lot of my pain into great art.
Like that's, I'm not ashamed in any way, shape or form.
There's definitely things I did that were wrong
that I definitely regret doing.
Actions, not the books at all.
Fuck no, I'm not ashamed.
I'm proud of that.
Yes.
The accomplishment of the books and all, fuck yes.
That's not what I'm talking about at all.
I wish there was somebody there to tell me
I was fucking up, no?
No.
What is it?
The overwhelming emotion I had reading it now was deep grief and sadness for that kid
because he was so fucking lost and he had no idea.
He had no fucking idea how fucked up and how lost he was.
And he was in so much pain and he was trying to deal with his pain through partying and
whatever, which was the only way he knew how.
And it wasn't dealing with any of his pain at all.
but uh i just i felt so sad for him not in a pity way just like it's like oh man like
all of the emotions i've had to deal with over the last 10 years right like in in my healing
process and my therapy process i can see them all in the books um and i had no fucking idea
when i was writing none but it was there yeah none well that talk about like deep
I mean your formative years like you need like so what do you think drove why do you have this
grief do you think that that person had an subconscious unconscious almost yearning for
you you you without knowing it you brought it up um so I I think I'm a classic 80s 90s kid
like uh uh it's easy to look at me like oh uh privilege or whatever man I'm the opposite of
privilege in a lot of ways, a lot of ways. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to get into
victim Olympics here, right? The opposite of that. But I like, I want to point, it's easy to look at
someone from the outside and say that, right? But until you know their struggle, and I think
everyone has a serious struggle. I'd be very careful, not that you use that word, but I use
that word, but I'd be very careful throwing anything like that around. I had an extremely
difficult childhood for the exact reason you talked about, totally broken home. Dad left at a
year, I think maybe I was a year and a half. Um, uh, both my parents were totally fucked up and
like, I mean, they're not horrible people, right? No one beat me. No one put anything on my butt.
There was no horrible sexual. No, I mean like that, that's all horrible abuse and that's real.
But the narrative for that abuse is pretty well established in our society. Thank God. Cause it
used to be no narrative for it. So that's a major improvement, but I'll tell you what's coming
behind that right now? Cause I'm kind of on the vanguard of this with psychedelic therapy and
with some other stuff. What's coming behind that is the real estate and everyone in psychology
knows this. And not many people are willing to talk about it because it's like, it's one of those
things where it's like, Oh fuck. Right. Like the housing crisis, like the people who saw it coming
like, Oh no. Right. Um, the worst, you can actually look at the studies. Um, uh, there's a
a famous study about this, the adverse childhood effects study, the ACE study, very famous. You
can take the ACE quiz and see your childhood trauma. Basically a one to 10 score. I scored a
10 out of 10, which is like kind of breathtaking. It shocked even me. ACE study and a bunch of
others. The trauma that actually has the most detrimental long-term health and life effects
on a child is relational trauma, neglect and abandonment. When they started the study,
the psychologists thought for sure physical and sexual abuse would show up the worst. And it was
bad, no doubt. But the worst shit was actually not, when you're teasing it out, the worst life
effects were correlated most strongly with relational trauma. And so like there's, I think
that is the poison that is moving through society right now, man. And I was suffering it. My mom,
both of my parents were boomers, iconic baby boomers. My parents met at one of George Young's
coke parties in Manhattan beach. I'm not, no, seriously, the movie blow like that dude, right?
You know, he talks about like he lived in Manhattan beach and the pan and flight attendant. My mom was
And my dad was a stockbroker in LA and they met at one of his parties, right?
Or it was either him or one of his cronies, who knows?
But it was that scene in LA, right?
And so they're iconic baby boomers, totally emotionally broken.
Like not evil people at all.
They did the best they could, but the best they could was a disaster.
They shouldn't have had a kid.
They didn't, my dad, I'll be straight about it, it's fine.
My dad didn't want, my mom got pregnant through birth control.
my dad didn't want her to have me. Uh, she decided she was going to, he left after I showed up. Um,
uh, like my mom was completely emotionally unequipped to have a child. She's still a child.
She had a pretty, uh, emotionally, verbally abusive mother. I know. Cause my grandmother
was like that horrible. So like, she basically just passed that shit down to me. I did the same
thing to me. Her mother did to her, except not quite as bad actually. So she was an improvement,
honestly but totally emotionally unavailable so as a young kid i had a my dad not around my mother
was a flight attendant for pan am she would leave me with babysitters for like two weeks at a time
and dude and she actually left me with decent people right which is like it's not like it's
like oh i was you know in some horrific satanic uh child pedo ring no none of that horrible shit
thank god uh it was like just i was a little kid i mean you have a little kid right what happens
when your little kid finds himself or herself alone for like 10 minutes freak out freak out
right we have to sneak out the door welcome to my whole childhood right and so you asked it's a
great question where's the grief come from dude i had such an incredibly lonely childhood on a deep
core emotional level and the only talk therapy for years never got me into that i intellectually
recognize it. I never felt any of that, right? All of that trauma was stored in my body. All
that emotion. I'm not talking metaphorically. If you don't understand how trauma stores in the
body, there's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kerk. He's like,
he's a BU researcher. He's one of the leading researchers in trauma. He's like, kind of like
the guy in trauma. Him and another guy, Peter Levine. Just go read that book. It explains the
whole thing. And so anyway, so I couldn't get to it until I did MDMA therapy. And that's what
cracked me open, man. Like the first time, like Molly, right? Like ecstasy. That's your pin tweet
right now. It is. I wrote a piece about the first two MDMA therapy sessions I did. Dude,
everything I have good in my life right now, I have good because I decided to go on a healing
journey. And because I did psychedelic therapy and the work around it, like a lot of people,
like, well, they'll meet me like, I want to have, would you have like, I just take MDMA.
Everything's great. I'm like, no, dude, this is not a magic pill. It's the opposite of a magic
pill. It is a Pandora's box. It opens up all the shit you're hiding from, and then you got to deal
with it. And so it's like, I always tell people, man, with the most sincerity I can do not do this
unless you are ready to go through hell, because whatever hell is inside of you that you have been
running from. And it doesn't matter if you had the tiniest little trauma and I had the worst ever,
it doesn't matter because yours trauma to yours is just as bad as mine is to mine. So there's
really no comparison, right? Whatever you have that you're hiding from, it's going,
it's going to bring it up. You got to be ready to confront it. You got to be ready. Don't,
if you walk down that, if you're not ready, cool. Just don't walk down the path. Yeah.
Like you just said, the degree of trauma may differ, but you will confront.
I guess I've, I had a very similar experience with mushrooms.
I took psilocybin and I've had quite a few mushroom therapy sessions since you're opening
up with, uh, it's your story.
I mean, it's like my, my father was around, my parents were around.
They're great, incredible parents.
And, um, again, like being 17, part of my anger going into the great financial crisis,
my dad was uh in the financial world too he's an asset manager like selling uh funds and stuff and
i just saw him time and time again we moved to south carolina in 2001 we get down there and you
have that mini recession after dot com boom it's laid off like six months after we go down uh we
moved down there and we get back up to the philly area in 2008 not too long after that uh it seemed
like a while at that point in time but now looking back like five six years isn't that long we had
the great financial crisis similar thing yeah beats the shit out of him again goes to college
and i just watched it beat the fuck out of him yeah and watching that happen to me to him for
me and then like we went through leaps and bounds we like we were well off and then we would had
hard times and one of those hard times we hit was when i was at college and i was like 1921 like
realizing oh shit like and they worked he worked his ass off to make sure like i didn't have to
take out loans and then now you gotta take out loans junior year i was like oh you gotta take
I'm like, oh, what the fuck?
And like, I took things for granted.
For me, what shrooms did is like realize,
like I didn't have any empathy for my parents
and realize what the struggle they went through.
They had me when I was, they were 21.
Oh, wow.
They got pregnant.
That's rough.
They both went to Temple University.
My mom had me shortly after they graduated.
And then they had my brother 11 months after me.
And so 21, 22, two kids.
They fucking worked their asses off through life.
And I never appreciated that.
So for me, my-
That's cool that you did, though, that you got connected with that.
Did you talk to them about it?
I've talked to my dad about it, and my mom, yes.
Yeah, no, my dad and I, I'll never forget, in Chicago,
when St. Batty's Day came out, and we were at the bar,
and I had that conversation.
I was like, fuck, man, I never realized how much you're kicking your own ass
to give us what you gave us.
That's super cool.
Yeah.
What's funny, man, a lot of people who have great parents
still have trauma and feel guilty it's like i can't if i have if i have some sort of childhood
trauma or issue it means i had bad parents no it doesn't co-founder conscribed with me this guy
zach oberon great dude amazing i met his parent his parents are like the kind of parents you
design in your dream and don't think exist right he still has issues it doesn't mean they're bad
right like your trauma is yours mine is mine and like it's all we can do is play the hand that
were dealt you know that's fucking awesome you did that though man yeah no i mean what how did
your dad react he cried um it was like you could tell like good cry yeah good cry like thank you
for recognizing it yeah you're thankful so he never said anything about this to you no no yeah
so he just like i come from an irish catholic family you're an irish catholic suppress suppress
oh yeah philly i should have i don't even know why i didn't think about this
it's a big suppression culture
that's true
Catholic
it's a shame based culture
yes
yeah
yeah
it's a
I swear man
if you have good parents
that's the thing
you can't recognize
for me at least
you don't recognize
that you're a little dickhead
when you're growing up
yeah
some people are
like I probably was
in a lot of ways
no doubt
it's
I
I have
the fourth is literally
on the way this week
so I've
I'm gonna call it four kids
my oldest is seven he's a boy and it's so funny you know like every parent does the what a parental
parental curse I hope you have a kid just like you when they get angry and I remember as even
as a kid thinking bitch I hope I do too because I'll do a better job than you did you're fucking
terrible I swear to god I said that to my mom she got angry and I'm not trying to say I'm a perfect
dad or even a great dad but I have definitely done a way better fucking job I don't think it's that
hard to actually be a good parent, you really just have to do one thing. And I'm not, so many
things around parenting can feel like a horrible struggle. Money. Yeah, of course, man. I'm not
trying to, the one thing though, you can, if you get right, you're going to be a good parent.
You just have to unconditionally love your child and then make sure they actually feel that. If
you do that man some of the healthiest people i know were raised in fucking squalor who had
parents who did that and they're like man i had the best childhood ever i didn't know how poor we
were yeah i had no idea that we were barely able to eat and that i actually should have had a
traumatic horrible childhood because of the poverty my parents loved me so much and i felt
so valued and treasured like and they're all like the happiest best people i know man yeah if you
just get that right and i'm not saying that's easy man because let's take my mom as an example
um if you don't love yourself how are you gonna love a kid like you can't give away what you
don't have you know so it's like i used to be really resentful towards her because of how bad
of a parent she was and she was objectively bad and then during one of my medicine sessions i
realized oh fuck she got it worse than i did from her mom how the fuck would she even know
yeah you can make the argument well fuck go heal your shit well she didn't and so it's like all
right well i mean i can be mad at her if i want or i can let that anger go i can be sad and have
compassion for her and then uh uh let go on with my life right now what's funny though she's still
alive and so everyone a lot of people assume oh but if i forgive her then i have to let her back
cause she hasn't changed at all. She's still a mess. Right. And I mean that with all compassion,
but it's just the truth. And like, no, I can hold boundaries. Like the people in my life are all
ones that I have, uh, uh, healthy interactions with. It's not possible for her to have a healthy
interaction with me now. So she's not in my life. Doesn't mean I've, I've dealt with all my emotions
around her. I have forgiven her truly for, um, for what I went through as a kid. And I understand,
I understand why I'm like,
but she's not in my life though,
man.
Like I don't,
I,
that's what you can have a healthy boundary,
but also like deal with shit,
you know?
Yes.
And that's like setting that boundary is important because on the other side
of that,
that person doesn't realize another going back to my dad,
giving great lessons is one of his best.
He's instilled in my brother,
sister,
and I,
as you're in control of your own happiness.
like nobody controls your happiness like you have to self-actualize your happiness how has your
relationship changed since you you kind of did that you had that conversation with him just him
i mean we have a great relationship we always have like we used to like work together yeah
it was it was it was good but now is it like way better or you guys or what we talk yeah we talk
every day um oh so you have that kind of relationship yeah like my dad and i were like
yeah my dad i'm very close to my parents so my brother and sister man that's awesome yeah
That's what I hope my kids
I mean we're like that now
Because they're little kids
But as they get older
Like that's what I hope
Like you know
Like dude
So many ideas in our society
Are so stupid
Like
Who came up with the idea
That oh you get 18
You have to leave
And I hope they fucking
Stay in my house
As long as they want
Like
And when they
You know
If they want to go
Travel the world
Something cool
Of course
I'm on board
If they want to just
Live in the house
For a bunch of
Years into their 20s
Or 30s
I'm in
They find a
You know
A wife or husband
because I have daughters.
Cool, great.
Build your house next to ours.
Like if you want.
I'd love that.
So right now we've got my sister living with me.
My brother moved to Austin as well.
And we're trying to convince our parents to come down.
We're like, get down here.
I would love to buy a ranch and do exactly what you just said.
I would live in a dumpster over Philly.
I would live in a dumpster in Camden over Philly.
No, I'm kidding.
it's
that's the thing
it pains me
that Philly's
in the state of this
Philly's the bastion
of
what this country
stands for
it's where
like the ideals
it used to be
it used to be
yes
yes
before any of us
were alive
and it's so crazy
how
it swung to the
complete opposite
dude if you buy a ranch
buy out in Dripping
telling you man
we're building a school there
like we got all kinds
like
we started our own school
two years ago
and now we got our own
land for it it's going like i'm telling you so let's get into it you're building a citadel out
there right no no no no the the city idea the town idea is not dripping dripping is uh it's
like i don't know much like 50 something acres it's not that much for texas that's nothing right
um uh and and but we we have a community out there people um there was already a really good
strong community there so it's not like i made dripping there's a great community out there
That's why I picked it, right?
But then since me and a couple other people I know
who are somewhat high profile have moved out there.
And so there's like another almost layer on top of that
or with that, it's becoming a really,
really good community of people out there
that are all pretty like-minded.
There's a lot of them are Bitcoiners.
There's one, I don't know if he wants me to put it out there,
but one guy, I don't know the Bitcoin space that well.
I'm pretty sure, I know he has a huge YouTube channel
and he has a huge following.
I think in Bitcoin is the primary thing
he just came out there
couple of others good friends of mine
it's good man
it's a good spot not the only spot but a good spot
well I think
you're proving that you can
become sovereign right like you can
get out of the malaise of
modernity
we're as sovereign as we can be right now in America
but you have
like it's getting to your blog post like you have
a view of where the world's going over the next
12 or 12 years, three to 12 years. And you're preparing, not prepping, you're preparing.
Well, it's different. Prepping is like just being a paranoid hoarder, right? Preparing is how do I
handle uncertainty and chaos coming, but still live a great life. And you know, like, and which
is basically just being sovereign in core areas, food, water, energy, things like that.
Yes. And Texas is a great place to do all that.
It is maybe the best place in the world right now.
Maybe.
I think so.
I agree.
I agree.
That's why I'm here.
But we'll see.
Fuck, man.
Let me check the time because I know you've,
no, we've got plenty of time.
I've got an hour.
I thought, I thought this is, this conversation is going great.
How, how are you?
Are you?
Sorry, my wife, because she's literally due this week.
I'm, what, with the interview?
Great.
It's fantastic.
Yeah.
No, I was like, how are you?
Is your wife, she's good?
Oh yeah, no, the baby's not coming.
Dude, trust me, I'd be moving.
Like, sorry guys, I'm out.
Gotta go have a baby.
Because we do home birth too.
So like, I gotta get home.
Can you help me convince my wife to do that?
All right, so I'm not messing with you.
Our midwife in Austin is the best.
Her name is Monica Stone.
She wrote a book on midwifery.
I actually helped.
She was so amazing.
our first, uh, uh, she did, my wife is an NP, right? She, she runs our medical practice called
a ultra personal healthcare. It's a primary care. Um, and so like, uh, she, you know,
when she got pregnant, she kind of handled everything and she's like, you know, we're
doing home birth. And I'm like, what, what, what kind of witchcraft nonsense is that? And she's
like, stop it. She's like, I'm like, yeah, it's your body and you know, medicine, but that just
seems crazy to me and she's like just watch this documentary and uh remember ricky lake yes okay
all right you're gonna daytime daytime talk show so she pulls up a documentary for me to watch like
honestly like i'm a little fucking child right pulls up but she's fucking smart she knows her
shit she pulls up a documentary watch and it's ricky lake and i'm like woman what i'm like you
want the front or the back you asked me to watch a ricky lake documentary and she's like shut up
and watch this. Turns out it's an amazing documentary. It's called The Business of Being
Born. Have your wife watch that. Ask her to watch it, right? And then reach out to me. I'll put you
in contact either with my wife or with Monica, who's the midwife in town. Dude, this woman is
like, she's like a mystic. I don't know how to explain it, but we've had three home births and
they're honestly the most amazing incredible experiences soul-changing transformative like
I can't if I talk any more about it you're gonna think I'm like a woo-woo kook dude like the most
woo-woo kook shit you can imagine just it's true it's after three I'm not I I I I'm stuttering
because I don't know how to even explain it it's so foreign but so amazing well having had one in
the hospital that experience alone even doing it seems horrible i actually have never done a
hospital birth clearly but but it yes it is weird the hospitals are terrible places oh dude it's
where you go to die everyone in medicine tells you stay in the hospital if you can it's there i
mean lights blinking dude it's anti-human it is it is the embodiment of technocratic sociopathy
elaborate on that please like it is because i i really hope people come away from this episode
with not only what we discussed uh before this but this as well like all that like i don't ever
forget when my son was born or we had a situation where my wife had to go to the hospital over the
summer and we were just waiting there and it's just when you're waiting in a hospital bed uh
and you're in cape may new jersey and there's just weeping and people talking and people crying and
you're going through your own thing and it's a miserable, miserable experience.
All right. So, um, I, I don't want to be the spokesman for why standard Western allopathic
medicine is bankrupt. I mean, like more morally philosophically bankrupt. I'm not the best
spokesman for that. There's a lot of better people who are ringing that bell and they're
right about it. But, um, look, just ask yourself, when was the last time you went to the doctor's
office and you felt better coming out in terms socially spiritually emotionally relationally
socially like no of course not man well you know why because most of them are horrible it's my wife
is a nurse practitioner which is like they're like the nurse the fancy nurse that can like
write prescriptions and stuff they're basically like a doctor um and she started her own medical
practice because of this, because like every, everyone hates the medical system. It's so
inhuman. It's so, it's so dehumanizing. And so her entire practice, it's monthly subscription.
You, you can text providers all day, every day, whatever you need on text, video,
no wait appointments. When you make a 10 o'clock appointment, you know what time your appointment
starts 10 o'clock who would have thought right they they actually listen to you they take an hour
you know if you need it talk to you well let's try this it's like imagine if someone uh they
think about the whole like your it's preventative care instead of like oh you're sick take a pill
it's like how do we stop you from getting sick again well that's that's what has turned me away
from modern medicine is the incentive structure i'm always when i haven't been in the doctor in a
while but since i lived in new york which is over two and a half years ago now at this point
my when i did have to go it was always like all right what are you trying to sell me what are
you trying to push right or you don't care yes but either i'm pushing this or i don't care yeah
it's like what is your insight like are you getting paid to tell me to take something
that just happened to be a dentist they're like oh yeah we're gonna use this cool machine to
clean your teeth. It's only $2,000. I'm like, what? No. Oh, but you need it. No, I don't need
to get out of here. Just fuck off. Yeah. That's the upselling. I got that. I got that. I know
upselling healthcare. Can you imagine? Yes. Because that's the entire medical system. I mean,
like you want the best argument about why medicine is horrible. Ask yourself, do you like the online
ad system. Okay. The U S medical system is basically run by the same types of people.
Yeah. There you go. It's it, how do we extract as much money as possible out of this person,
which, you know, from an ad system, I'm like, all right, you know, there's a logic to where
that can actually on net produce good. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's like, yeah,
if you get to know me and track, and then you're actually showing me relevant ads, I'm not saying
I believe it,
but there's at least a logic there in medicine.
It is just extractive.
You just,
in medicine,
you get a situation where the CEO of Pfizer sits on the board of,
of Reuters.
And then also a sponsor,
CNN brought to you by Pfizer.
And then they're like,
go take your idiot.
Do you have to be to not realize that's a major fucking problem,
regardless of what I'm as pro scientists,
it gets you.
Don't,
don't fall to like the pro site,
like that whole meme.
has fucked up society.
So you're saying
you don't believe
the science
with the trademark?
Well, that's like,
that's what people
have completely,
science is an ongoing discussion
and people have
completely bastardized it.
I know, I know.
Of course.
I'm ranting.
I'm ranting.
I'm not yelling at you.
Listen, if you're going to
blasphemize
St. Fauci in front of me,
we're going to have problems.
That motherfucker.
God.
So again,
I can't help
but bring it back to Bitcoin
because this is the fiat.
This is the...
Bitcoin solves this.
Well,
maybe actually i know actually seriously there's a direct line there you can totally make that
argument and it's a reasonable one yeah it's funny to say you know like uh hospitals are
dehumanizing bitcoin solves this but that's actually not a crazy argument well before we
even get to bitcoin solves this like what again it's a perverse incentive system that like you
cannot save money so you have to keep your your incentive is not to actually make somebody healthy
it's to keep having coming back to you to buy your wares the one thing i would say is that it
does not require Bitcoin for people to decide.
This is a sovereignty issue.
I'm a shit all over the American healthcare system,
but I'm also going to turn that fucking mirror on us.
If you accept it,
don't bitch about sociopaths exploiting you
if you fucking go in there and accept it.
Yeah.
If you give up your sovereignty,
you deserve everything you get, period.
And that's the hard truth.
so many people even people i deeply agree with bitch and bitch and moan and moan and these people
are awful i've been doing it in this podcast at the same time if you give your shit up to them
if you voluntarily consent then you got nothing to complain about shut the fuck up well now you're
getting to the meat of the subject so easy to do it though so easy to submit it's easy to submit
they make it very easy when i'm selling shit i want to make the sequence real smooth and easy
yes of course
they make it easy
why wouldn't they
yeah
well
why
can we convince
more people
to take the
see hold on
listen to what you just said
can we convince
no they have to
convince themselves
well no
I'll tell you what I do
you can do whatever you want man
I'll tell you what I do
and if you actually
look at my
oh man
you know that podcast
the first million
Sampar
and
Shani
it's like a big podcast
right
it's not in the
bitcoin space
so you haven't heard of it
but
it's what your,
your podcast is the Bitcoin.
Theirs is to like a young entrepreneur hustle,
you know,
the hustle.
Okay.
So it's the hustles main podcast.
Right.
And so I,
I know Sam decently well,
and he read the piece.
I didn't like send it to him.
He read it.
And they talked about the piece for 10 minutes on,
on the podcast.
And it was the greatest thing I've ever heard to explain persuasion.
Right.
Because Sam and Shani completely disagree.
like Sam's pretty leftist in a lot of ways. He doesn't think he is, but he really is. And, um,
uh, they like completely disagree with everything I said. And then Sam said something that was so
awesome. I, the thing I love about Sam is always willing to be honest about himself, right? Even
when he's totally fucked up and wrong, he's still honest about himself. So it's awesome. He goes,
man, I was so just in, uh, like I couldn't stop reading and this, the piece was so good. And I,
I like, I, I'm, I find myself half believing a lot of what he says, even though I disagree
with him, which tells you something's going on.
And he goes, I think it's just maybe because the writing is so charismatic.
It's just such a, and that's not, man, people are like, oh, Tucker's a great writer.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm actually not.
I'm going to tell you what I did in that piece.
And this is exactly.
You're a good writer.
I would.
Yeah, but that's not the, that's not the thing here.
Right.
All right.
So I'll tell you, and I say, I've seen a lot of Bitcoiners that are pretty good at this
truly as well i didn't try if you read the piece i don't try to convince anyone or anything
like if you notice i didn't here's what you should there was no no shame language here's
what i'm doing right getting my everything here's here's what i'm thinking here's why i think that
here's what i'm doing because of it here's what i might even be wrong and here's what i think about
that and that's it it was just what i'm doing and nothing else yeah that preface the way you
preface it like even if i'm wrong i will be better off for having done this is very powerful and like
and i'm trying to implement something in my life took got to texas now i've been back in the gym
like a madman since i moved down here trying to get like a physical shape you gotta fit on with
us husky texans yeah yeah yeah but then like waiting to get my license gonna get my gun
trying to procure beef we haven't talked about that the beef initiative i got cows on my farm
man yeah he and at some point license to carry there you go texas ltc that's uh that's my next
step but yeah no it's a it's again becoming sovereign bitcoin was obviously a first step
for me becoming financially sovereign yeah um which has provided me the opportunity to do a
lot of things that i otherwise wouldn't if i didn't get into bitcoin so i'm very thankful
for that but now it's hard you have a family you have responsibilities and i think the daunting
nature of taking sovereignty over your life is oh it's is too much for people to get over um
responsibility is a motherfucker because once you take responsibility you realize when shit's not
going you'll get to blame anyone else that is the other side of sovereignty i'm so glad you brought
that up that like it's easy to sit here and preach sovereignty sovereignty sovereignty
but when the rubber meets the road it means it's up to you and it means it doesn't mean no one can
help, right? You can have a community. I got a wife, man. I got friends, but you are responsible
and you don't get to blame other people. It's such an easy, seductive pit to fall into. I mean,
a huge part of my emotional work was getting rid of my victim mindset. I can't, I thought I knew
how, I thought I'd rooted that shit out of me. And then I started psychedelic medicine about
three and a half almost four years ago and uh dude i blamed so much shit on my parents
but that's what yeah okay my mom uh did leave me with babysitters my whole childhood that was
horrible i'm the one carrying it forward right now yeah she did she did it happened it sucked
why the fuck am i holding on to it it's not her responsibility now it's my it might not be my
fault, but it is my responsibility now. And I'm the one holding it now. And I'm the one carrying
it. And I'm the one, there's a great Buddhist saying, um, uh, uh, being anger is like, uh,
or being angry is like, uh, drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Right. I was doing
that. Like that's a victim mindset. That's a, I was about to say a bitch ass victim mindset,
but I'm trying to get out of the judgmental shame, uh, sort of mindset, which that is.
um uh yeah and like rooting all that out was so hard dude because then you got a face in yourself
man like they didn't and you want to talk about some of my grief i'll tell you another one
um i've had so many amazing opportunities in my life that i blew i blew right um all right if we
talking about uh since the thing people there was a movie made about i hope this or baron how
that movie should have been fucking amazing and it was set up to be amazing and i fucked it up
i remember being a flop i don't remember why there's a lot of reasons why right but if i gave
you all the details it'd be a long boring story be like oh dude get this dude off my podcast but
let me tell you like see even i'd be bored because i could be oh the director sucked he did
right
this problem
that problem
this person fucked me
this
I picked all those
motherfuckers
like I picked
that director
so let's say
he did suck
motherfucker
who picked him
did you do it
in haste
why
no
God's honest truth
man
he was a director
that did the best job
of massaging my ego
the right way
to get in
I'm not even
bad at him man
like he was just
doing what he was
trying to do
to get ahead
right
it's not
it's not
it's not his job
to do right by it'd be nice if you did but it's not his job to do right by me it's my job to do
right by me right so i can't like he may have sucked as a director but man i picked him period
it's taking person like taking responsibility for people want to abdicate blame right and
man i won't get into like i did all kinds of other just stupid and so but and that's i don't
that's not even the biggest thing, man. I could detail you 10 other things where I have totally
fucked up massive opportunities. I had that people were bringing to me, good people bringing to me
in love and I shit on them. Oh dude, man. And that is so hard to own. Right. And I'm not saying I
wrong someone that's hard that's really hard but there's like let's be like okay i you know like i
man i what were you just like yeah it's not interesting or what do you mean with one of
these opportunities we're presenting we're like i don't have time for this it's not interesting
i don't want to be doing this then in retrospect like oh maybe i should have done all right man
you know no no i can't tell you who someone pretty well known um was an early investor in uber
who's a good friend of mine and he basically offered to get me in and this is like when i
say early i mean this is back when people were making fun of ride sharing um like early early
i think it was seed might have been a but i think it was seed round um and so you know he's like
yeah man i'm probably getting for 25 or 50 and whatever that was you know whatever 150 200
million dollar decision i made and i i dismissed him not rudely because he's a friend uh but it
was just more like this is stupid he didn't know what he's doing i was very judgmental and very
dismissive of angel investing all the stuff he was doing at the time which was all about me and
my own security because i was trying to do something else and it had nothing to do with
him at all he's a great dude i still friends with him i love him um uh like it was i it was my own
ego bullshit just straight up it's what it was i started on the uber seed round that's uh
passed on the uber seed round there's a famous memes of the seed round and how much money was
made yeah passed on the uber seed round but you can't dwell on it can you no um and you know
here's the truth. It's probably a great thing. I didn't get in. I think at that point in my life,
I would have been, it would have taken my life in a, in a trajectory. If the movie had done well,
that might've been the worst thing that ever happened in my life because I would, I was a
fucked up kind of shitty person at that period. I was at the height of my really like shitty
shittiness. And, um, uh, that would have locked me in at that stage of my life. Like if that movie
had been a success, I never would have grown or changed in my life. That movie bombing was the
inciting event for me to go on the trajectory I'm on now. Like I wouldn't have my wife, kids.
I probably would have five or six kids by five or six different women. No, I'm serious. I'd be,
it'd be that situation. I truly, man, I got, I would, I know so many of these people too,
who got out to Hollywood, had one big success and never changed, never change. Right. I would
have been that dude i think what was that moment after the movie wasn't as successful as you'd hope
where you're like fuck maybe i'm not all that like how would you it wasn't one moment um
i'll tell you i'll tell you man i remember this so fucking clearly man it was september 27th 2009
and i remember the date because that's my birthday and that was the weekend that my movie came out
the movie made about my life that came out on my 33rd birthday.
And, um, we were in Phoenix, Arizona.
We just landed at the airport and I think it was,
I might be a day or two off here. It was either a Friday or Saturday.
And, um, uh, we landed and, uh, the producer, Sean McKittrick, um,
who's a nice guy. Um, he, uh, told me the numbers.
he emailed me the numbers with no comment. And I remember, uh, uh, that's either really good
or really bad. And I remember looking at the numbers. I didn't really quite understand how
to read. Cause he cut, it was the raw numbers. Like it wasn't like you see in the newspaper or,
uh, as you kids now say online, but, um, uh, uh, and so I was looking at it. I'm like, wait,
hold on these. At first I thought it was like, I thought we were having a $10 million opening
weekend. It turns out it was going to be like, I don't know, a hundred grand or something,
whatever. It was multiple zeros off. And so when I realized that, by the time I realized that I
got to the Aloft in Tempe, this was such a painful memory. Like, you know, like a painful,
hard memories. You remember every detail, dude, I can tell you to this day, I can draw the entire
lobby of the Aloft in the room from memory. And I'm talking, I stay in Alofts a lot. Right.
Um, and I remember getting up to the room and I remember I cried the hardest. I think I had cried
in my life since I was a young kid. And I honestly thought I was going to die. Like, uh, not
rationally, but it was, it was that level of emotion and that level of crying. I felt like I
was going to die. And it was the first time in my life where I ever understood why someone would
commit suicide. I wasn't suicidal, but I was in so much pain. I'm like, fuck. Now I know like
with someone who, someone who's, some of you will commit suicide. Like I just wanted the pain to
stop. Like now I get it. Now I'm in the amount of pain where I get it. Cause before I'm like,
I don't want to, I not even judgmental sense. I just had never had, I had that experience.
What was the particular pain where it was like, wow, people don't think.
So it's, it's, it's complex, right? But in a psychological sense, in a clinical sense, that moment was when my grandiosity, the grandiosity of my narcissism broke. Right? So that's what narcissists do is you use external validation to essentially to fill the hole in your soul. Right? I'm saying in the most simplistic way possible. And so up to that point, man, everything I'd done in my, my, my ascent to fame had worked. Right?
And so in my mind, I was a fucking genius. And you know, anyone who's famous, who intentionally
goes out to seek fame, excuse me, um, they're doing it probably almost, almost always because
they're trying to fill a hole. And usually it's a hole from mom and dad, right? You two don't love
me. I'm going to make the world love me and show you that was me, right? Or some dynamic like that,
but that's the most common. And so like a totally unconscious, of course, I knew none of this at
the time. And so, uh, you know, I worked, I got rich and I got famous and like girls were coming
to sleep with me who I didn't know. And all this crazy, amazing shit you can't imagine until it
happens. And then it's like amazing. You're like, this is the greatest thing ever. And then like,
it just keeps going, going, going. And, and all the fame and the money and the rise pushes all
the feelings, the I'm not
worthy, I'm not loves
feelings away.
You look anxious. You know what I'm talking about?
I can't stop thinking of BoJack Horseman for some
reason. I don't know if you've ever seen that.
Yeah, the cartoons.
You're the only person
who's ever taken this story and said
BoJack Horseman? That's never
happened before in 46 years
of my life.
It's true.
People try to fill this void.
And again,
kind of circling back to the core.
It's the most hilarious cultural reference.
It's the core.
But again, it's the core.
Because I think that is actually a powerful show
to get to the desperation and depression
that exists in a lot of the people
seeking fame specifically.
It's usually much deeper than depression.
It's much deeper.
Dude, it's funny.
I thought I was kind of a narcissistic asshole.
And then I got to LA and I'm like,
oh no, I have a soul.
These people are like,
I didn't know what a soulless narcissist was
until I got to LA and got in the entertainment business
I was like holy
fuck this is horrible
like I had no idea it could be
like this it's
so much worse than you can even imagine dude but
well actually no now people can
like all the Harvey Weinstein and Me Too stuff
I'm so happy that happened man
that was a no we didn't even take meetings
with Miramax I was back
when he had Miramax because everyone knew he was
a rapist and not just that
oh dude
everyone in Hollywood knew
like it's not
everyone knew
everyone knew
there was a screenwriter
who worked for me
who actually wrote a whole thing
about this on Facebook
he's like
if you came in the office
you knew
we all knew
they all fucked
everyone knew
this is not
but it was
I'm not a woman
right
he's not gonna rape me
but also
he fucked everybody on deals
so it's like
he's a literal rapist
and he's gonna screw you
on a deal
why are people
doing business with this dude
well again
getting back to sociopaths
winning
oh dude
And so our culture is fucked right now.
That's something that I can't stop focusing on is like our culture is somewhat demonic and devoid of any actual fulfillment for most people.
I would say that culture is.
Mine is not.
No, not yours.
Okay.
If you want to say the shared American culture, I'm with you.
Yes.
It's pervasive.
i i've started to really focus on intent and meaning behind words i used to be pretty sloppy
with the way i talked i'm pretty sloppy yeah i used to be very sloppy i'm less sloppy now i'm
not as precise as i'd like but some of the things i focus shame-based language have to must got to
should i i don't think any of those words exist in that do more optimism piece right and that was
the the point i was making there is like you want to help people do your work show them what you're
doing. And, uh, uh, that, that example can help be the example, not the commander, right? Um, uh,
leading by example, or those are always the best people. Why the way in looking at history,
Buddha, ultimately by example, Jesus, ultimately by example, uh, mother Teresa, uh, Rumi, uh, uh,
Krishna, all, uh, whatever pick, take your pick in any culture, ultimately by example, right?
none of them are sitting back telling people what to do right they're all lead by examples
i'm a big i didn't really quite understand this last couple years how much i used shame-based
language i was telling other people what to do and i realized this actually realization came
in a psychedelic medicine session every time i'm telling someone else what to do i'm talking to
myself without exception i'm guilty of this every fucking time and so i'm like well what if i stop
talking to other people and telling them what to do. And I just do it. And then I tell people
what I'm doing, right? Because I love examples too. You know, like Buddha has helped me, even
though dude's been dead for thousands of years, his example has been a huge help to me. Same with
Jesus, same with whoever, right? Anyone doing cool shit. Like, oh, look at what, but someone,
Tony Robbins doesn't help me because Tony Robbins just tells me what to do. And I know Tony's life
And it's fucked.
Like, I know Tony.
Like, I know his, dude, he's whatever.
I know he's helpful for a lot of people.
Cool.
At a certain level of consciousness.
If Tony can, Tony's really good at pulling people out of a certain level at getting to
what, but that energy, that type of person, right?
He's in the 60s, 70s.
Now that group is, that's all command based finger point.
Do this, do that.
I think the next wave, and this is what I'm, this is what I'm going to be.
but um and and who i'm being now and who i'm trying to become as much as possible is
none of this all this but not in like a narcissistic way more than a hey listen here's
what i'm doing this is why i'm doing it if it can help you cool great and i'd love to see what
you're doing if i can learn from you yeah i mean it's very inspiring too again i'm going back to
doomer optimism piece specifically like it's like oh fuck like the way again you say you're not using
shameful language it's like fuck maybe i should be focusing on becoming sovereign getting a ranch
getting some land and not depending on others and blaming others do you want to i do i do i think i
do at least but then this is the other thing till i'm 30 i've got a child another one on the way
pretty busy my career perspective is trying to prioritize that's the hard thing um for me
specifically what's hard prioritizing this hard yes for me why what's hard about it i should say
i feel like there's a lot of opportunity again i want to set my family up for greatness into
the future i have this podcast i work at a bc firm yeah on the board of a mining company and
it's like all right it's a lot of work yeah and then how do i prioritize family and securing
they're the first
family and securing
the families first
and then it's like
alright how much
do I take on after that
so obviously
I'm not going to tell you
what to do
right after I just
had that whole thing
but I will tell you
how I navigated
something similar
right
and this might help you
I'll tell you the question
I kept coming back to
is
what do I want
right
that's one of those weird
deceptively simple questions
right
and
And, oh, I want, blah, blah, blah.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
And my wife and I both did this together.
Really, and it took us months, honestly.
Like, I'm like, oh, yeah, was this an afternoon?
Oh, I was wrong.
It took us months to really, what do I want?
What do we really want?
Well, this.
Why do we want that?
What do you want?
And then why?
What do you want?
And not in a judgmental sense,
just understanding, like, what is it you're really at?
When you say you want a Ferrari, why do you want a Ferrari?
Is it because you want girls to fuck you?
Is it because you want to race it?
Is it because you lusted after one as a kid and it's going to signify that you've arrived?
Any of these reasons are fine.
Like, just understand why you want what you want to make sure you're actually getting what you want, right?
And so months and months and months of us really asking ourselves what we wanted, right?
Both as a family, a couple, a family, and then us individually in ourselves and our businesses.
And it took a while for us to at first understand what we want.
Then it's like, oh, okay.
Now, then prioritizing is super easy.
But I had the same problems prioritizing before I really was super clear with myself what I wanted and what was most important to me.
Yes.
now with that perspective i think i do know what i want i want what we actually are doing now here
in austin which i fucking love is sunday is getting the family together right having a fire pit
eating multiple meals together breakfast lunch dinner right enjoying each other just the whole
day of being a fat ass yeah that yeah that is judgmental right there but i'm more fucking with
Yeah, you gorge.
But like also just being around family.
Of course.
Having that connection.
And that's been one of my favorite things about moving.
Because I haven't lived in the same city
with my brother and sister in 12 years.
And the last three years.
Yeah, and they live at your house, right?
My sister does.
My brother has his own place.
Okay.
Well, that's cool.
And that's a great place.
And the cool thing with what you want
is it can change as much as you want.
Yeah.
Right?
Like my wife and I started doing this
about three, four years ago, pre-COVID.
And then COVID shifted everything for us.
Because pre-COVID, we had been talking about, oh, we want to get some land someday, someday.
Then COVID hit and it was like, even before all the chaos and mess, right?
Where I'm like, oh shit, we need to start getting ready for chaos.
It was more like, you know, everyone says they love their family, right?
And I do.
COVID made me realize I actually like them.
I actually like being around my kids and my wife.
Like I really like being around my wife.
Like I don't like being away from her.
and I was like, the fuck was I doing before? Like I was doing a bunch of stuff and not even
traveling that much. I didn't think I like compared to most people I wasn't, but like I'm
home now, you know, like I'm talking about, you know, mid 2020, I'm home all the time and it's
fucking great. Like, I love it. This is amazing. What was I doing before? And it really, we sat
down, what do we want? Fuck. Well, I don't know what we, we now we want to be on land, not just
as an abstract idea of land
and connecting to nature,
but because we can spend
all our time together
in a place we'd like
and, you know,
going for walks in this,
you know,
supposed to be a fancy suburb,
this shitty exurb,
like sucks.
I want to go for a walk in nature,
not in this crap subdivision.
Yes.
So it can change, dude.
Like, it's not like,
okay, I've said what I want.
You know,
you don't have to,
that's not your thing forever.
You iterate, you calibrate, yeah.
Exactly.
But it is hard to prioritize without knowing what you want.
Fucker, Max, you're filled with incredible wisdom.
Hard-earned.
You know the saying, like, idiots repeat their mistakes.
Smart people learn from their mistakes.
And genius learns from the mistakes of others.
I'm not genius.
I've made all these mistakes.
I'm not even sure I'm smart, but I've definitely made all of these mistakes.
Fuck.
I just, I mean, I'm having a lot of introspection right now.
And I'm thinking like, fuck it, my good father, my good husband.
He's there.
Good.
What do you mean by good?
That's shame based again.
Good.
Good.
On what measure?
Am I allowing my wife to be self-fulfilled?
I have our goals.
Allowing her?
So you're in charge?
No, not allowing.
She's a slave.
You own her, right?
Are you allowing her?
See, language, precise language.
No, but seriously, I used to do the same thing, man.
Think about that for a second.
Have we set up a life where we can both find our own fulfillment?
That's a totally different orientation, man.
And obviously, I'm sure you're not some patriarchal dick to your wife,
but think about that language for a second, man.
It's not a small thing, I don't think.
No, can't be sloppy, but that's something I got to be more precise.
Well, I mean, it's one of those things where like, um, I mean, I always known what NLP and all that stuff is. And like, I like, I know, but then once I realized, I was like, man, I use so much shame based language and so much judgment of myself. Right. Um, and then I'll tell you when it really hit me in the nuts, man, when my son was like four, he, uh, maybe three, he did something, he dropped a cup or something.
And he goes, oh, you're so stupid.
And I was like, oh, fuck.
He got that from me.
Like that's, that children don't do that to themselves.
He heard that from me and he,
cause God knows my wife, I've never called a kid stupid.
You'd have to kill me before I'm calling my kids stupid.
I would never, but he, he imitates me.
I mean, he's like, he's like a little version of me, right?
He loves like so much of what I do.
I can't tell you how much I've learned about myself
by watching it reflected in him.
And that had nothing has been a quicker impetus to change things that need to
change than that.
Like when I saw him,
Oh my God.
Like it was,
I felt like my heart fell out of my ass,
dude.
It was,
Whoa.
Because it's like,
that's the old,
I knew immediately where he got me hearing me talk to me.
Having shame.
Tucker,
why'd you do that?
That's so stupid.
Yeah.
Like that internal dialogue that I'll sometimes make external, right?
Very hard on myself, very judgmental on myself, right?
So I was like, oh my God, I'm not going to put that down.
I'm not going to pass that to him.
Language is important.
How do you put the intent in motion?
I'll tell you what I did.
That's all I can do.
First, I had to decide, okay, this was important.
I had to have that trigger event, seeing my son, you know, do it.
And then it was like, I sat him down, talked to him about it, whatever.
And then for me, I had to, it really just came, for me, it became a matter of two things.
Paying attention to what I was saying, as I was saying it, correcting it immediately.
Drop something, tuck yourself, no, I'm not.
I can have compassion for myself.
I just made a mistake.
It's fine.
Right. Notice it. Once I started noticing it, dude, it was actually breathtaking. Like all day, every day. Shame based. Mainly with myself. I was actually really good with it with my kids. Like I almost never say this stuff to my kids. Never. Because I'm sensitive to that. That's my grandmother and mother were very much like that. So I was very sensitive about not doing it to my kids.
oh it turns out i was doing it to myself i i took their orientation to me and replicated it in my
own head so i had to get very conscious of that number one and then number two the deeper work
honestly is man i had to go in and deal with all my shame grief sadness whatever and the more i can
feel that the more i can and let that go the more i'm able to recognize the less of that stuff
because the language is driven by an emotion, right?
It's not just coming out of nowhere.
It's not just language, that kind of stuff.
There's an emotion behind it, a feeling behind it.
And so, because that's how my mother and grandmother
talked to me a lot, right?
And so like that belief was embedded in a deep part of me.
And so it kind of had to chip away and get at the belief.
And it's still not gone.
Like if you listen to this podcast,
I promise you, you'll find some examples from me.
Yeah, it's a work in progress.
And so you've touched on it many times throughout psychedelic therapy has
really helped you come to a lot of these realizations.
It's been the most important thing I've done for myself in my life.
And it's funny people like,
aren't you married and don't you have kids?
I'm like,
yeah.
And I probably wouldn't be married right now.
And I'd be a terrible father had I not had that tool to really help me on my
therapeutic journey.
How profound do you think it can be for society in terms of having more
individuals heal themselves and obviously it's becoming more popular it's becoming more accepted
as big as you think bitcoin's gonna be uh i am that bullish on psychedelics okay well i mean
like i'm kind of joking but i'm not right like uh i don't comparison whatever the wave that
bitcoin is creating in finance i think uh psychedelics is creating the same size of wave
in not just psychology like everything like
this is it's hard to even explain right none of everything i'm about to say would seem
absolutely crazy to me five years ago. Uh, uh, but I feel like trauma is the ocean that everyone
in Western society swims in and doesn't realize it. Right. It is just like you, you would say,
you know, pre Bitcoin Fiat is the ocean everyone swims in financially and not realize it. Right.
Emotionally, socially, the same thing is true for trauma. What Bitcoin does to Fiat
psychedelics with proper integration work not by themselves uh does to trauma so let's dive into
that proper integration because i've indulged in in psychedelics many times throughout my life
right i love psychedelics i do think they have this ability to humble you yes because you realize
that you can't like the way we perceive the world sober or that tiny teeny little slice yes and it
really makes you realize the your size in this universe and what we're doing or whatever this
is right and it's a very humbling experience but yes how enhanced is it with proper guidance and
so there's two reasons to use psychedelics uh the the 60s narrative a lot of it was psychedelics
mind expansion and psychedelics are very that's what kind of what you're talking about psychedelics
are very, very effective and useful at that. I, um, the other reason to use psychedelics is therapy,
healing, right? Trauma, trauma work specifically. And, um, in my experience, uh, I have not really
used psychedelics much for pure mind expansion. You're going to get both, right? Like you kind
of, it's one of those baby with the bathwater things are going to come together. Um, I have
used psychedelic. I've never used them recreationally, truly. Like the first time I ever
did MDMA was MDMA therapy. Same with mushrooms, same with LSD. So people are like, what? I'm like,
go read the books again. No drugs. Like one time I had a pot brownie or something. That's not even
real psychedelic. But like, that's it. Never. And so like, for me, they have been an insanely
effective tool for getting to the talk therapy is extreme. I did years of talk therapy. It's
extremely important, but talk therapy is thinking, right? And thinking is important. It's like the
metaphor I always use is imagine you're, you're, you gotta go into Manhattan. A map of Manhattan
is extremely useful, right? But if you're like, Hey, sucker, I'm gonna go to Manhattan. And I'm
like okay here's your map like all right cool i'm like no that's it you just get the map like what
the fuck are you talking about i gotta also walk the island that's what emotions are right walking
the island and without for me without psychedelics i was able to basically investigate almost none of
my own emotional space i was totally disconnected from my body so like imagine like i had a map of
whole island and I was only hanging out in Battery Park City. And so like psychedelics
basically unlocked the whole island and I got to walk the whole island, right? And so therapy is
like the map. So I kind of knew where I was going and I was able to see, to make a ton of progress
because I already had a really good map. The problem comes that people go into psychedelics
with no map and no plan to make a map. And they're like, I'm just going to take a bunch of psychedelics.
It's like walking the island randomly, which is fine.
There's nothing wrong with it.
But if you walk the island randomly, then you don't come out with any plan.
You don't really know where you've been, which by itself is not bad.
But if you're using them to heal stuff, it's not going to get you healed.
You know, it's not going to do much.
It'll do some, but it's not going to do much.
Right.
And so, and also like, look, man, if you don't know how to deal with grief and you, first
time i took lsd therapeutically i've never taken recreation the first time i did lsd i took a tiny
amount i laid on that fucking sofa and heaving racking full body sobs for nine hours holy shit
i remember the time i just talked about in the aloft the movie came out and bombed it was like
that for nine hours. I didn't even think I was going to die. At that point, I thought I had died
multiple times. I mean, it was like, I had no idea. One, I had this much grief. I didn't know
there was this much grief in the world. It was, dude, I had so much. And so like, if I was trying
to, a lot of people take this stuff and I get a bad trip. If I wasn't ready for that, if I didn't
have a great guide, if I didn't have a therapeutic base on which to put that and understand that and
process that, that could have totally put me sideways and unmoored me. Totally. Like I get,
like, I honestly don't understand how people do this shit recreationally. Like I get why sometimes
someone takes LSD and goes to a concert and loses their mind because the reality is why that happens
a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times it's because they have a ton of trauma
and their family is totally gaslit them
and pretends it's not there
and it comes out on that shit, right?
Which is like, that's the point of psychedelics
when done right, is to get it up and out.
It's a catharsis.
Exactly right.
And so two, three weeks after that LSD session,
my dude, I was like light as a feather.
I felt so fucking amazing.
I had all this shit that I let go of
that I've been holding on for 40 something years.
And I just, I couldn't, I was like the happiest,
people who knew me for years were like, who the fuck are you? What are you like? What's going on?
Not in a bad way, but, but yeah, if you don't know how to navigate it and have someone there
helping you, I, luckily I got connected into a great guide network who are very skilled
practitioners. And, um, uh, and so like good people, they're helping me, man. I hesitate to
think like how, if I had taken this shit recreation, I think there's a reason I knew on some level.
you won't go down this path yet
like I wasn't ready
if I'd taken this shit in my 20s man
I can't
oh god
you interacted some demons
it would have been so dark man
yeah
no I mean I know a lot of people
who like do mushrooms in high school
like it was so dark
I'm never going back
I'm like yeah I know
yeah
I know
well when you're ready to face the demons though
and that's the lesson
is the demons aren't actually demons
it's all part of you
yes
it's all part of you
and once you embrace it all
then you become a whole person
and life gets pretty fucking amazing.
Allowing yourself to love yourself.
All parts of yourself,
not just the quote good parts.
Yes.
Accepting your flaws.
It's called,
it's what Jung calls the shadow.
It's a very,
it's classic psychological concept.
So much of psychedelics is seeing,
facing,
embracing the shadow.
That's not the only part,
but that's a huge part,
especially the healing part.
I mean,
if you want to understand trauma,
just understand the shadow.
It's not exactly the same thing,
but very very similar
the catholic suppression
oh dude totally
100%
all that fucking shame man
yeah
it's heavy stuff
it fucking
and so you're bullish
on this becoming
I mean I'm very
excited
for veterans
specifically
like using this therapy
to get over
PTSD
because you want to talk
about trauma
yeah
those dudes need it bad
and being thrown
into some shit
most of the studies
are with war veterans
and rape victims
and it's going to be
amazingly benefit already is amazingly beneficial for them that's actually not the wave i'm talking
about man i'm super excited for them it's gonna be people like you and i who are five ten years
behind us who don't even realize they have issues but are totally fucked up and don't know why
this i'm telling you man this is this is going to unlock so much and a lot of it is going to be
really hard and dark especially at the beginning man i've just been through like i'm not done with
my therapist, but I'm, I'm definitely through the beginning stages. Right. And, and dude,
no one could have been more ready than me. All this therapeutic background, super well-educated.
I got in with amazing guides. I had the best mentors. Everything was set up for me perfectly
to, to make this work. And I made it work and it was still hard as fuck. And it almost broke me.
I wanted to quit multiple times. Now I'm so glad, like I want to say I wasn't going to quit. I knew
I was going to keep going
but it was the hardest shit
I've ever done in my life
is facing my own stuff
this stuff is just a tool
to open that up man
it doesn't do the work
for you right
and those are actually
the people who get sideways
like oh I took MDMA
and all this horrible stuff
came up
and my life has all changed
and now I want to put
the genie back in the bottle
it's like
you gotta confront the shadow
normally when you're
going through shit
you're better off
to just keep going
sometimes you can
turn back around
I guess
but
where's that
it's going to lead you
right back to where you are
Well, but for some people, man, you know, there's even, it was a famous St. Augustine quote,
dear Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.
If you're not ready, you're not ready.
No judgment, man.
Like for, I meet a ton of people who know me well, seen the change.
Like, dude, it's amazing.
I want to do it.
And I'll tell them like, and they'll be like, I'm not ready.
I'm like, okay, cool.
It'll be here when you're ready.
There's no, do not rush.
I'm so glad I didn't rush into this.
If I'd done this in my twenties or thirties, I think it would have gone.
at a minimum, it would have been way harder on me. And I think it could have gone sideways.
And I'll tell you how it goes sideways. Another one, you can have bad trips or whatever. I mean,
let's, there's, there's some extreme, uh, psychological break issues that can happen,
but you can generally vet for those pretty easily. Where I see it go sideways now is a lot of people
get into what's called spiritual bypass. Um, where like they'll, I know people who've done
ayahuasca 60 times and their lives are still totally fucked up. Right. That's spiritual
bypass. It's where like they're chasing the peak experience and they think they're making progress
because they keep having these peak experiences, but they don't actually change anything in their
lives. Right. And so like, it doesn't make them bad people, but it's, you kind of get stuck. It's,
it's a different form of hedonism. Inaction? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not inaction. It's a
different form of hedonism like you i mean my early life kind of fit the joker hedonistic
archetype really well the spiritual archetype can get the hedonistic form of that is just chasing
chasing the high and never actually doing the work yeah i'm like i know a lot of people man
like they're like oh yeah they they play the spiritual card a bunch and i'm like listen man
they're like oh yeah come do it i'm like i'm not doing anything with you you guys are just
doing drugs with your friends which is cool no judgment i'm not just doing i'm not into that i
was just about to judge i was like i was gonna say like the hedonism is pretty pervasive and
somebody went through it myself obviously i'm partying every weekend in college and for
extended period after that but then for me personally i'll just say my experience it
just got boring standing in bars like why are we doing this every yeah what's going on here and it
got tedious for me it got tedious and unfulfilling really especially when it became my job it's like
Oh God, this is the worst.
Yeah, I imagine like an MTV real world person
and that's what their career becomes is just going.
They get stuck in there.
Showing and partying.
That almost happened to me.
Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, you know,
now you've fucking shook me.
I shamed you into not shaming yourself.
Yeah, you should.
Well, I'm not trying to have shameful language
for other people, but again, my experience was like,
all right, I don't want to be doing this bar stuff
every weekend.
Totally.
There's more out there.
Bitcoin helped me
like provide a
Bitcoin solves that
well provide an outlet
where I was like
I'd rather be
focusing my efforts
on educating people
about Bitcoin
I want to do something
productive and beneficial
yeah
there's nothing wrong
with going through those phases
totally
nothing wrong with
staying in the phases
for a long time
there's
everyone's path up the mountain
is their own man
it goes different
you know
fuck man
I could keep going
like this for
hours and hours
but
how long
yeah
we've been going for a while
haven't we
what time is it
2-16.
2-16.
Wait, we've been going for...
Oh, yeah.
You know what's funny?
You scheduled two hours for this.
I'm like, what were we talking about for two hours?
This fucking guy.
Yeah, it's been great.
We can keep going.
Totally can keep going.
Although I have to say, I think I have a one o'clock lunch.
I have a one o'clock call as well, unfortunately.
I do.
We got to do this again.
And it's...
If only you lived near me.
Well, I do have...
Dude, I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what we should do.
Why don't you come out?
You can bring your gear.
You can come out to the ranch.
I would love to.
I'd love to bring the boy, bring the wife.
Totally.
Bring your kids.
We got cows.
We got dogs.
We might have our sheep by then.
I have a gun range.
Dude, you can shoot my stuff.
I have a full, no bullshit gun range at my ranch.
And that's for the adults.
Kids, I got trampoline, ninja course, swings.
tree houses it's amazing i i'm gonna you want to get the tree house i can see you're like dude i
want to go be a kid there well i want to i want to take you up on it because i again you were
describing like you sit down with your wife and like what do you want and that's something my
wife and i like you said before covid your wife and i were like we want to go buy some land we've
been talking about that for like three years now so she she's going to deliver a baby in the next
five ten days give us about three weeks a month holy crap i thought you're gonna say three months
at least
I mean to host people
it's no problem
like within a month
this is our fourth kid
she's like an Irish
Catholic now
just
get them out
and keep working the field
or something
well and then
I hear
like baby number four
the kids start raising
each other a bit too
so you're about to
man that
if that happens
my
the youngest
will be
feral
I cannot imagine that
well Tucker Max
you are an inspiration
And I really, 17-year-old Marty is like, holy shit.
I can't believe.
Very cool.
Number one, you're talking to him.
And number two, it's in this context.
So thank you again for coming on.
Thanks for having me, man.
I'm happy to be here.
Thank you for being a fucking good example out there.
And shaking me up today.
You shook me up today.
I'm like thinking, I don't know if you saw like the blank stares I was getting.
I was like being introspective as you're talking.
I'm like, what the fuck am I doing?
Okay, so you're on board now.
You're buying doggy coin.
Yeah, Elon sold me.
Elon sold me.
I hear you're going to be able
to buy a Tesla for Bitcoin.
Just kidding.
Shit coin jokes to Bitcoiners.
Never get old.
Never.
Because there's always that moment
where like,
is this motherfucker serious?
If he tries to sell me a shit coin,
I'll fucking kill him.
Do you understand the stakes, Tucker?
Right.
Do you know how old proof a stake is?
Trust the third party.
well sir this was a pleasure
nice to meet you as well
peace and love freaks
