The One You Feed - Bonus Re-Release- Watsky

Episode Date: August 16, 2014

Watsky: In celebration of Watsky's new album and our 300,000 listen we decided to re-release our very first episode. It remains our most downloaded episode and one of my favorites. Enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi everybody, it's Eric from The One You Feed, and our first guest that we ever had, the first episode we ever released, was with Watsky. And in celebration of Watsky releasing a new album, and of us crossing the 300,000 download mark, we decided that we would re-release our first episode. So, those of you who've heard it before, it's worth listening to again, And those of you who have not heard it, it's one of my favorite ones. So enjoy and check out Watsky's new album. Thanks. I love life. I love living. I believe in good.

I believe in beauty. But I also think that it's important not to turn a blind eye to all the messed up things that are going on in our planet. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us, everyone. Our guest this week is George Watsky, who goes by the stage name Watsky. He's a rapper and poet from San Francisco, and we had a chance to talk to George as he's wrapping up his U.S. tour. His latest album is called Cardboard Castles, and you can find more details about him on our show notes at oneufeed.net slash Watsky. Thanks for joining us today, George. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on an old parable that goes something like there's an old Cherokee grandfather who is talking to his grandson and he's saying to him, you know, in life, we have

two wolves inside of us that are always fighting. One is good and kind and loving, and the other is bad, you know, greedy or hateful or self-pitying. And the grandson thinks for a second and he says, well, grandpa, which one wins? And he says, the one you feed. So our podcast is really about how people feed their good wolves. And that means very different things to very different people. So I guess the first question I'd have for you is sort of what comes to mind when you hear that parable and how do you think it relates to what you do personally and in your work? Yeah, I mean, it's very profound. It's awesome. I mean, the first thing that springs to mind is just that I'm not a perfect person, that I know that the capacity for evil exists inside me. I've

seen it rear its head, but I also believe that every human being is good too. And, you know, as an artist and as a person, we get to choose on a daily basis, what direction we want to take our lives and our art. And I've tried to do that with honesty. I've tried my best to do it with integrity every step of the way. I try to make the choices that I think I'm going to be able to live with and that my parents are going to be proud of me for. And I fail sometimes, but I'm very proud of the little empire and world that we've built with our fellow artists that we're on the road with, you know? So I think that relates to everyone, you know, everyone is fighting a constant struggle for trying to let the good parts of themselves emerge and nobody's perfect. Yeah. I, I, and that's, that's one of the things that resonates to me about your work is that that struggle is, is evident, but there's a clear, there's an acknowledgement of it as well as a, an attempt to sort of, an attempt that there's effort that has to go into sort of the, the positive. And there was, I was reading some, uh, something you had somewhere where you're talking about,

um, the, uh, the, the kill the hipster, uh, savior hood. And you're,

uh, you say in one of your comments somewhere that, you know, the most important part of that is to take a look in the mirror. And I thought that was really interesting. good. Starbucks where the skate rinks good. It's a fixture. It does no good. I know. Kill a hipster. Save your hood. Vote Congress. Right on. Yeah, I mean, that whole song

and I think that people, the problem with that is that that's a five and a half minute song where I get to the self-awareness portion of it about four and a half minutes into the song and some people with today's modern attention span don't stick around to see the message evolve. But a huge part of my work is not so much just diagnosing the wrong system, but taking those things that I see wrong and then turning the mirror on myself.

I mean, it's the same as Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2, the poem that I have. It's a trope that I use in a lot of my stuff, which is diagnose an ill in the world and then figure out how I'm implicated in that. Because I don't think that a message is as powerful if you remove yourself from responsibility. You know, like if you're talking about global warming being a problem with the world, how am I a participant in that? You know, that carries more weight than saying, hey, you guys who are screwing up our planet, why don't you get it together? You know, there's nothing more powerful than saying, I'm a part of this problem. We are all a part of this problem. Now let's look at it together. The other thing I was looking at of yours that I really liked was the letter to your 16 year old self. I think that's one of the most powerful things that you've done. And it's probably

resonates with me a lot because I have 15 year old boys. Right on. And so, you know, they're at that age where they're starting to make their decisions about, you know, what they're gonna do with their life. And as a parent, you sort of sit by semi helplessly at this age. I mean, you can, you have influence, you talk to them, but they're gonna, they're kind of at the age, they're going to do what they want to do. And I love the positivity that's in that letter to yourself, as well as the acknowledgement of how challenging it's going to be at certain times. Do you want to share a little bit about that? Sure. I mean, I just think that that era, like 15, 16, your freshman and sophomore year of high

school, at least for me, that's when I kind of found myself. And those things, those parts of my identity that came out in that time are things that are still with me today. You know, that's really when I feel like I became an adult in many ways. And like, the man that I am was kind of became concrete and not that I'm not changing, but that's when so much identity comes in. It's a message in a lot of my pieces, which is I don't have all the answers, that there's a balance between hopelessness and hope, that there's a balance between ugliness and beauty.

I mean, Letter to My 16-Year-Old Self, Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2, it's kind of all different variations on that theme of I believe in life. I love life. I love living. I believe in good. I believe in beauty. But I also think that it's important not to turn a blind eye to all the messed up things that are going on in our planet. And I don't have a message that's as appealing as, say, a religious leader who can say, here are all the answers. This is how you should live your life. The message that I have is a little bit less appealing than that in many ways. My message

is that I don't have the answers and that none of us have all the answers and that we're all kind of trying to puzzle through this. And I've actually, I had a girl email me through my manager a couple weeks ago saying, how could you do that to me with Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2? Like, you built me up to believe in hope and optimism. And then at the end, you said, well, but it's really kind of all meaningless at the end. And, um, you know, that is my, that's the core message of my work is that, is that life is worth living, even though it sucks sometimes. And that you just have to, you have to ride the roller coaster and just enjoy it for what it is. Another thing that, uh, my, my, uh, one of my boys said, if you're going to talk to Watsky, you've got to ask him a question. He said, what is it about his little cousin on the record?

You know, your little cousin's all over the record. And I said, I think it's because he's adorable and he loves his cousin. But he seemed to think there might be more to it than that. Yeah, it's funny. Actually, people assume we're related, but I am not related to that kid. His name is Norton. And I actually met him through casting him in a music video. I'm trying to remember the first thing I did with him was a promo for my

album when I just needed a little cute kid to say, hey, Watsky, why are you doing a bluegrass hip hop album? That sounds really weird. And that's all. I just shot a little promo video with him. But then I ended up talking to him on set and making this connection with really weird and uh and that's all i just shot a little promo video with him but then he i ended up talking to him on set and making this connection with this kid who in a lot of ways reminds me of myself when i was younger and norton and his mom have become like friends of mine and he lived in

la he's a very quirky kid who he's been getting bullied in school and stuff and so I've kind of become a mentor to him and went to his jujitsu ceremony graduation and like I went to go see The Hobbit with him and his mom and I went to see his play in North Hollywood I kind of have like a little big brother little brother relationship with him and uh when I was kind of coming up with Cardboard Castles and figuring out what glue was going to hold the album together. I thought, you know, so much of it is about coming of age and having realizations of things in the past. And I thought, how cool would it be to get a kid who I feel like articulates a lot of the things that I was going through when I was younger and actually have him provide the perspective from an honest place. There's like only one bully in my class. He just thinks he's all cool. He thinks he's smarter than me. He thinks

a lot of things. What's really cool about it is that there are unscripted moments of honesty from a 10-year-old, and at that time, an 8-year-old kid who was just kind of trying to, you know, he wasn't filtering his thoughts. He was just talking about growing up. And, you know, the thing that I'm constantly in search of his honesty moments unscripted moments that reflect something that we can all relate to and he was kind of that glue that held the album together he said so many things that were like to me I was like like the idea of feeling you're out the impending doom of turning 10 years old because he'll never be nine anymore and just

like you know how how much weight you put on everything when you're that age, because that's what you know. And so, um, that's the answer. He's not my cousin. He's just a random kid that I've created a connection with and who I'm trying to not have too close to connection with because like, if things go wrong in his life, he'll text me and I'll, and he'll, he'll ask me for advice and I'll be like, dude, don't text me. Like ask your parents. If I give you the wrong advice and then you go and get punched in the face in school, I don't want that on my hands. You've got to let your parents do that.

I'm trying to be a positive figure in his life without being too present. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to

reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, he's funny.

The things he says come unexpectedly. When you were just talking about the, you know, he was mortified about turning 10. And at the very end of that, you say something. You say 10 is a great year, something like that. And then you go on and say the thing that used to help you was your parents would make funny faces and tell you stories. And then you kind of go into the song. You want to share a little bit about that? Sure.

Yeah, I love my mom and dad. Hi, mom and dad, if you happen to be watching. It's possible my dad follows my online activity closer than I do, so he might be. My parents were really great parents to me. My dad is a psychotherapist and was also a poet. He's a writer, and he has a million degrees. He's one of the smartest guys I know. And my mom is an elementary school librarian now. And they both read to me a lot growing up, were very active. My dad showed up at all my baseball games, even if I was struck out three times and sat on the bench. And yeah, I think them reading to me was one of my favorite things about growing up that we did bedtime every night and reading time. And he would read me novels and

think that definitely like spiked my intellectual curiosity and never, you know, being smart in our household was not something that you should be ashamed of or embarrassed of. You know, it was just, there's a lot of curiosity and a love for language and a love for art. Did you go through any adolescent rebellion period towards your parents? You know, I went through periods of like angst and being a teenager and not wanting to hang out with my parents all the time and being embarrassed of them and the stuff that all kids do. But I was never like, I hate you guys.

I'm moving out of the house and running away. It was never that much. I always knew that they loved me and wanted the best for me. But every kid, most kids of that age, I feel like have a period where they don't want to be best friends with their parents anymore. So I had that, but now I'm 27 and I have a great relationship with my folks and I call them all the time and love seeing them. their parents. It's just part of what they have to do. And so to some degree, and some of it's better or worse, that's one of the things I, you know, there's a lot of things I like about what you're doing, but I love it when my sons and I can find something that we both genuinely enjoy and can share. And your music is one of those things. So that's really great because it does

get hard to connect sometimes. And it's nice to find those things that are genuine and real. Right on. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. That's awesome. And I think it's nice to find those things that are genuine and real right on yeah i appreciate that that's awesome and i think it's it's been really cool seeing the kind of people who show up to our shows and seeing that sometimes it's 15 or 16 year old kids and you know we and then we get clusters of people who are like in their mid-30s and mid-40s who relate to the poetry and love it too so we bring out a motley crew definitely to our events. And I think that's great because it means it's reaching a broad variety of people. Another question for you around, you know, there's a theme that runs through a lot of what you do is the concept of work.

Can you talk about kind of what work means to you and the value that that has? Yeah, well I'm self-employed. I am an independent artist which means that if I'm gonna go on tour and I'm gonna make an album it has to come from me. I'm not I've known breathing down my neck to say George you got to get up at 9 and do this and you know you got to be on the clock or else it's, you know, time is money. It comes from me because we're doing this as a labor of love. And I feel like especially for someone in my position who gets to be a professional artist and gets to perform and gets to follow his passion, you know, it's not that people who are in these luxury jobs should be able to be lazier than everyone else. I feel like if you're

going to have one of the jobs that's coveted by 99.9% of the population, you have a duty to actually treat it like a real job and work really hard because it's a hell of a lot more fun doing what I do than being a fry cook or shoveling in a mine somewhere, which is what most human beings have to dedicate their lives to or something of that variety. If it's a desk job, even you have to do something that you don't want to be able that you don't want to have to do from nine to five in order to, you know, pay rent and pay the bills. And for me, I'm in this extremely lucky position to get to do exactly what I want to do. And for me to be lazy and flippant about that opportunity would be a criminal travesty. Like, I believe so strongly that I am in a privileged position and that since I love what I do, I have a duty to try and do it the best I can and work really hard at it.

And, you know, that's pretty much as far as it goes. And it seems that you have, you know, clearly had this work ethic for a long time, and I'm always interested in people who are successful because there tends to be two things that sort of, at least that I notice, that are driving. One is just the love of what you're doing, the satisfaction of doing work that's good. And then the second is the desire to be successful at it. And I sort of have heard both coming through in your music. How do those two relate to each other? Well, I think that this is like the fundamental paradox of my life and of a lot of artists' lives is knowing that we don't matter, but wanting to matter a lot at the end of the day. And I think that the idea of trying

to be successful is, is my drug. You know, everyone has a poison. Some people it's alcohol, some people, you know, every, everyone has a balm that soothes them. And at the end of the day, the positive reinforcement that what I'm doing is good is what my poison is. It's what my drug is. And I've, you know, from a very young age, I've had this feeling, you know, I'm going to put my cards on the table. I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in the afterlife, at least from what I've gathered. And the lens that I have to view the world, that is not something that is a part of my life. And that fear of not existing and knowing that I love this life so much means that I've, from a very young age, felt like I have a very brief time on this planet to make my mark and to exist and to do something meaningful.

It's that constant struggle against wanting to matter. Since I was 15 or 16, I felt like the clock was ticking and I only have so long to kind of make an impression. And it can be a bad thing too because sometimes constant seeking out a validation is not healthy and you have to be able to exist and be happy without being validated all the time. So there's not really a simple answer to that question. You know, I'm struggling constantly against trying not to care too much about what people think about my stuff versus also taking a pride in it and being able to have self-satisfaction that what I'm putting

out into the world is good. So it's kind of a constant push and a pull between those two things. It's fairly timely in that today was the, I think it started today, maybe yesterday, the whole thing with Joe Rogan and his podcast and sort of, you know, a bizarre, uh, you know, sort of attack of, of slam poetry and, uh, and of yours in general. And I thought your response was really, really well done. How much does that sort of stuff, you know, it is a, somebody not validating you, not doing that. How much do the, do the haters get to you? Um, people, the to the haters get to you um people the the things that get to me most are the well thought out criticisms and joe rogan's didn't actually bother me that much because it was very clear from listening to the podcast that he just kind of had a producer pull out an example of a

white person doing slam poetry and that's what he wanted to go after so i actually thought that was an opportunity for me to use that random coincidence as a way to actually have a meaningful conversation about the merits of spoken word poetry. What does get under my skin is when I feel like somebody says something very insightful and well thought out that is that, you know, that unearths insecurities that I have, which happens occasionally, although I'd say 90% of the time on the internet someone just writes like, gay, lame, and that's a lot easier to deflect because it's not well thought out. But yeah, I think I'm pretty good at having a thick skin, and at this point comments pour in and pour in, and the overwhelming majority of them are so positive that I'm doing fine comparatively, but I can't say that I'm perfectly

immune to criticism. I think that the best thing is to wait a while. Like, if somebody says something negative and you're heated about it, just take a day. Take five hours, take ten hours, whatever you need until you're not so emotional about it, and then try and actually figure out if there was some merit to it. Because sometimes you need to listen to criticism or else you're just going to go blindly on a path of thinking that what you're doing is always golden. And sometimes you need to be able to say, you know what, that criticism is meritless and I don't need to listen to it. And there's a balancing act between taking in criticism and actually being able to internalize it when it's appropriate and being able to brush it off when what you're doing is right. And it's coming from somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.

So back to your letter to yourself as a 16-year-old, there's another part in here that I love where you talk about, you know, you don't remember people's names, you're at the center of attention for all the reasons, and spend roughly six hours a night on your side watching Boy Meets World reruns. Was that a phase in your life? I watched a lot of TV. I watched a lot of TV.

And the reason that I like to pick on specific examples that I think illuminate trends, and to me that speaks to an era and nostalgia for people who were in that era of growing up, but also just the idea of TV being medication, the way that technology is medication now. When I didn't want to think about stuff, I would just turn the tube on and I wouldn't have to think about it. So that was a way for me to distance myself from the things that I was afraid of and didn't

want to think about was just constantly distracting myself with stimuli. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, you say you're capable of outgrowing that bullshit. Right on, yeah. Yeah, and everyone is. Everyone is. everyone is do you still did you find for yourself that you hit a certain point where you started to uh work and make some progress and and it you got momentum that made it easier to keep doing

that stuff or is it just sort of a constant battle for you to stay productive and do the things that matter i had a real crisis a real existential crisis around the time when I was 17, where I felt like I'd had these fears of growing up and of mortality that were bubbling underneath the surface. And I was pushing them down with distractions. And they bubbled up to the surface in a way that I couldn't ignore anymore when I was a junior in high school. And I became depressed, not because I was sad about anything specific, but just because all these things that I was afraid of, they really hit me like a ton of bricks. And I was like, and they were very present for me. And so I went to therapy and I started talking to therapists and they were like,

well, these are just things that all humans have to deal with. And you're kind of making me depressed right now. So can't we talk about girls or something? And, you know, I wasn't getting the answers from anywhere. My parents were just like, oh, don't think about that. That's not for a long time. And none of those answers were satisfying to me. And the one thing that did actually kind of give me some relief was reading books by this guy named Tiknat Han, who's a Buddhist philosopher, and very simple, basic Buddhist messages of living in the present moment, and of realizing that if you're afraid of something, the only thing that you can do is face that fear head on, and actually allow yourself to be afraid. And actually, it's something that Louis C.K. talked about in his recent clip that went viral on Conan about just like allowing yourself to feel shitty things sometimes.

And if you feel fear and you feel anxiety, terror is a natural human thing. And if you allow yourself to feel it, then what's going to happen is your body is going to accept it. And then you're going to have this wave of actually positive emotions that come after that. And so when I was around 17, I had that kind of realization and I think trended Buddhist a little bit. And I think that helped me a lot. And since then, I've been a very hard worker my whole life since then. I think the last 10 years, I've just, if anything, worked too hard, I think that the battle for me is really trying to prioritize my personal life and love and family. And working on my career comes naturally to me, and it's making sure that I'm feeding the other things that is something that I need to do and remember to do all the time. You were talking about in Tiny Glowing Screens too, sort of

meaninglessness. And, you know, the universe is so huge, how could we possibly matter? There's 7,046,000,000 people on the planet, and most of us have the audacity to think we matter. Hey, you hear the one about the comedian who croaked? Someone stabbed him in the heart, just a little poke, but he keeled over because he went into battle wearing chain mail made of jokes. And then you went on to say that you found a way to find meaning sort of within that. Can you share a little bit about that? I think that humans have been thinking

about this forever. It's what almost every Shakespeare poem is about. It's how are you going to exist beyond your short existence. For me, the answer isn't trying to build up a legacy that's so huge and unavoidably awesome that people are going to be talking about you for centuries. It's finding meaning for yourself. it's finding joy one of the things that gets talked about a lot in these Buddhist texts is you can't just find joy and pleasure in the fireworks that life gives you which are weddings and babies being born and hooking up with the person

that you always wanted to be with and seeing the sunset those are explosive moments that life gives you but also being able to be excited about the feeling of washing your hands and of sipping on a cup of tea and just the breeze blowing on you, that you have to be able to marvel at the life that we have just for the sheer reason that it's amazing that we even get to be alive. the sheer reason that it's amazing that we even get to be alive and to be able to be in awe of life on a daily basis is really important. And I profoundly believe that, that like, this life is amazing. And it's for, you know, we, we don't, we get used to things. We get used to technologies that are given to us and we stop being amazed by them. But technology is amazing

and our bodies are amazing. And the birds flying through the air is amazing. And we don't take enough time to actually realize those things. And so that's what I work on the most, is trying to actually let myself be in awe of little things. And when you step back, there's a lot of cool stuff going on. It's great to hear you talking about Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh as you are framed in a Zen background. Where are you? National in Indianapolis or on tour. But yeah, I mean, these things that I'm talking about are things that are addressed in every major religion also. I don't mean to exclude it to Buddhism. It's things that you can find in Christianity. It's things that you can find in Judaism and Islam. And it's also things that you can find in atheist thinkers, too. These are not things that are exclusive to one faith or another.

They're just things that I think a lot of smart people have jointly realized over the years. Yeah, we've actually interviewed two Buddhist teachers so far for this, and we're interviewing a guy coming up who's really fascinating. He's, I don't know if you know who Viktor Frankl is. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It's very applicable to what we're talking about, because Viktor Frankl was in concentration camps. They killed his family, they killed his parents. And in there, he came to the realization that the last human freedom he had was his ability to sort of choose his attitude and to choose what it meant. And he formed a form of psychotherapy called logotherapy, which is all about making your own meaning.

There is no meaning in life that is universal. It is your own. You kind of have to make your own meaning. So this is interesting that this sort of, uh, tie ties into that. And I was actually thinking earlier, cause I think a lot about that too,

that sort of all the religions, they're all sort of saying the same thing, um, which is to, to give a hater a hug. Right. Yeah. Turn the other cheek.

The window dressing is, is different, but the core is the same. Yep. Why the hell not? So, that covers, is there anything you want to, you think is important to what we're discussing that uh we haven't covered that you want to say no not really i don't think we covered some really

interesting territory i mean i think my main thing that i would like to say is to that i don't think i have any of the answers to you know i don't want to seem like i'm coming off like i know exactly how anyone should live their life and I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this podcast who are from all walks of life different faith backgrounds and stuff and I used to perform at colleges and universities all over the country which meant that when I was in college I would be going to a lot of red states and perform and I'm from San Francisco so like that's from the other end of the spectrum and I was actually very challenged to communicate with people who grew up across the political aisle from me, who grew up in very religious households. And the

main thing that I came away with was feeling like we're divided so much as a culture. And there's so much opinion-based media that's going on right now. And it's being driven by putting wedges between people and creating these false flash points between different groups of people because that's what sells and that's what drives clicks up. But everyone is trying to do good. This world is not red or blue or black and white. And if you're Christian or if you're agnostic or atheist, we're all on the same team. That is, that's the last thing that I want to say, you know. Perfect. That's a great way to end it. Well, uh, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you've, uh, got a show to do in a little while. So, um, and thanks. Thank Nils for me also, please, for, uh, for helping us get this set up. Right on. No worries. Nice to talk to you guys.

All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The One You Feed. You can find out more about Watsky and his work in our show notes at oneyoufeed.net slash watsky.