Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #149: Nick Marx / Right and Libertarian Media / Comedians and Politics / Political vs Class Divides

Transcript

#149: Nick Marx / Right and Libertarian Media / Comedians and Politics / Political vs Class Divides · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come TOGETHER.
• 0:15
  We're live. Professor Nick Marks, welcome to
• 0:18
  the show. I'm so happy to have you here
• 0:19
  today. How are you?
• 0:23
  Of course, of course. I'm really excited to talk to
• 0:26
  you for a bunch of reasons. Number one, you seem like a
• 0:29
  really sweet and great dude bit from our previous phone calls
• 0:33
  and your willingness to work with me this morning on despite
• 0:36
  some technical issues. And I'm also really excited
• 0:39
  because I'm really interested in the area that you research and
• 0:42
  that you're largely researching, which is really been the rise of
• 0:46
  what I guess a lot of people would call and certainly make a
• 0:50
  strong argument for right wing entertainment, film, media,
• 0:56
  whatever you want to call it. But obviously seems to be on
• 1:00
  this enormous rise in the last bunch of years.
• 1:03
  And I'm, I'm really fascinated in the research that you've been
• 1:06
  doing and what you found. And I'd love to just talk to you
• 1:08
  and try to see if we can understand the zeitgeist in
• 1:10
  today's world a little bit. Mm hmm.
• 1:26
  Yeah. How'd you get?
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  I want to, I would love to know even just the open mindedness
• 1:31
  of, of being willing to hear that, you know, I know that, for
• 1:34
  example. And you know, I, I've been
• 1:38
  trying very hard to kind of put aside presuppositions that I've
• 1:42
  had or things that I've been taught my whole life and just
• 1:46
  assumed we're real. And then, you know, one thing at
• 1:49
  a time kind of started shattering a little bit.
• 1:51
  And you know, it took me a little bit of a little bit of
• 1:54
  breaking my perception for me to have the open mind to really
• 1:57
  start exploring other avenues of perspective.
• 2:01
  What, what? Let's see your open mindedness.
• 3:00
  Sure. Yeah,
• 4:29
  yeah. Sure, sure.
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  There's a lot there to unpack, especially because, and I'm, you
• 4:58
  know, the world changes so quickly today and it moves at
• 5:03
  such a rapid pace that it feels almost impossible to kind of
• 5:08
  keep track of everything. But one thing that I have
• 5:12
  noticed is that your original sentiment, you know, where the I
• 5:16
  guess the root of a lot of this comedy and a lot of this media
• 5:20
  came from being pretty anti war and sticking with pretty
• 5:24
  historical, historically liberal ideas is actually kind of where
• 5:29
  we are today. You know, when you look at the
• 5:31
  top bunch of podcasts, if you look at Theo Von and Rogan and
• 5:35
  Danny Jones and, and all these people, they're all pretty
• 5:39
  against the war right now. They've all been pretty
• 5:42
  outspokenly against the war, you know, the United States funding
• 5:46
  the war against Ukraine and, and, you know, and, and you've
• 5:49
  seen the slide towards them kind of, and this was this something
• 5:52
  that happened with enormous hesitancy.
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  You can see a real, real caution against, against funding Israel
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  and their and their wars. And and, and you know, and So
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  what, and so these people that have been to store, you know,
• 6:07
  that have been right for the last, let's say 10 years or so
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  since Trump came down that elevator in the in 2015 or 16 or
• 6:13
  whatever it was about 10 years later.
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  It almost feels like they kind of they, they, they flip back.
• 6:20
  It seems like their sensibilities still seems pretty
• 6:23
  consistent with those same sensibilities.
• 6:25
  Hey, everyone, real quick, if you're enjoying the show, click
• 6:28
  subscribe and rate the show. 5 stars helps a ton.
• 6:31
  Thanks so much. Abilities that got you involved
• 6:34
  all those years ago. Sure.
• 7:27
  Yeah. So you think so you're, you're,
• 8:29
  if I understand correctly, your statement is that or your, your,
• 8:33
  your, your observation rather would be that they tend to be
• 8:37
  right leaning with an occasional reality check where they say,
• 8:42
  hey, like, you know, we're not sure we're on this.
• 9:05
  Sure, sure. Sure.
• 9:29
  Right. OK, I totally, I totally totally
• 9:32
  understand that. I'm curious from the
• 9:35
  perspective, from your perspective, I suppose, what do
• 9:40
  you think is so attractive about, about these, you call
• 9:45
  them the manosphere, these podcasters because I mean, the,
• 9:49
  the range that they have, I guess the amount of viewership
• 9:52
  they have far exceeds what anyone would call, you know, the
• 9:55
  institutionalized media. And you know, and I and
• 10:00
  obviously I think it's pretty clear that that that for a lot
• 10:03
  of the youth, COVID really broke a lot of people's perceptions of
• 10:08
  institutions. And what would be, you know,
• 10:12
  considered, I guess late, you know, the as like the 2000 tens,
• 10:17
  2015 two thousand 20s, what was, was considered to be social
• 10:22
  norms kind of broke around COVID time and there was this
• 10:27
  explosion. What do you what do you think
• 10:30
  that it well, I I think it's because because of a lot of
• 10:34
  people feeling a lot down from COVID.
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  What do you think it was from your perception?
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  Sure. Sure.
• 12:49
  Right. So I, I've been following Rogan
• 12:55
  for a couple of years. I don't remember when I started.
• 12:58
  I certainly did not start when I was in, I graduated college.
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  I was in Binghamton University, upstate New York, around I, I
• 13:03
  graduated 2017. I don't think I ever really
• 13:06
  listened to Rogan until maybe 2022 or 2023.
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  And I found a lot of it to be very refreshing on a personal
• 13:18
  level for a number of reasons. Number one was I felt like the
• 13:28
  conversations didn't feel scripted.
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  You know, it really did feel authentic and really did feel
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  all the off the cuff. And that was something that for
• 13:37
  me, I thought we, I thought was really, really valuable that in
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  the face of, you know, and it happens to be that I am a pretty
• 13:45
  anti authoritarian kind of guy myself and pretty anti
• 13:47
  establishment. And that's kind of because I
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  never really fit into the establishment lines, you know,
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  I'm a different type of shape, I guess than the cookie cutter, I
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  suppose. And I've always kind of felt a
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  little rejected, a little bit like a misfit.
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  And so I found that this whole universe over here kind of
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  appealed and spoke to, hey, you know, I think there's a lot more
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  misfits out there than what people then then then are
• 14:09
  actually articulating themselves or are making themselves known.
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  And so that was kind of the route that I really, that was
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  that was the first initial branch that was really exciting
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  to me about it. One thing I would like to, I do
• 14:23
  want to push maybe back for a little bit on is that Rogan
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  until the very, very end of 2020 to the end of the election, did
• 14:33
  not ever publicly come out and say that he was endorsing Trump.
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  He was he was, you know, trashing on Kamala for sure and
• 14:41
  definitely was trashing on Biden for sure.
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  You know, there's no, I'm not going to pretend that he was
• 14:45
  impartial as far as that goes, but it didn't seem like he was
• 14:49
  fairly set on anyone. And it felt like the sentiment
• 14:52
  going around, or at least for me, until Tulsi Gabbard came
• 14:56
  over from the left side to to to this to to the right.
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  And Elon Musk, who historically had voted, I think left most of
• 15:02
  his life came over and RFK Junior until that until until it
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  felt like the there was a waking up of a new political system.
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  Whereas it wasn't as much left and right and more authoritarian
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  and establishment versus anti establishment and anti
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  authoritarian and kind of meaning to give these
• 15:24
  institutions a little bit more of a check than that.
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  Perhaps they've overreached in some cases that to me at least,
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  and tell a lot of the people that I've spoken to are the
• 15:35
  people that you know, that have a little bit more, I guess in
• 15:38
  common. As far as my background, my
• 15:40
  education, my, my, my social circles, we kind of have that in
• 15:44
  common. And I do feel like even till
• 15:47
  today, right now, part of the reason why I'm incredibly let
• 15:49
  down by Trump's second, you know, I, I didn't really follow
• 15:53
  politics really in his first presidency, but in his second
• 15:56
  one, I've been incredibly let down by all the by all the
• 15:59
  broken promises and by the fact that it felt like this was going
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  to be an enormously anti establishment, quote UN quote,
• 16:05
  drain the swamp type of his presidency.
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  And it's been just the opposite. But I but I would, I would
• 16:12
  hesitate to point my finger to the the media because you could
• 16:18
  see that they have been pushing back when the things that that
• 16:23
  swung them right had had actually never actually came to
• 16:27
  to to to. Fruition, OK.
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  Mm hmm, sure. Sure.
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  Yeah. Sure.
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  Yeah, sure. Jordan.
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  Peterson Yeah, that's when. It slides a little out of
• 18:42
  control, right? Yeah.
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  Can I ask maybe for some clarification what your
• 20:24
  resistance to that individual individuality in that sense is?
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  Sure, sure.
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  Yeah, you know, it does. And what's really interesting
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  about that, because I actually, you know, when you say it like
• 21:37
  that, it sounds, it sounds a lot more palatable to me for sure.
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  What, what I thought was interesting because
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  historically, from my understanding, and please
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  correct me if I don't, if I'm wrong again, I'm, I'm pretty,
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  I'm pretty, I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm still getting into this.
• 21:52
  So, you know, I, I don't want to speak with too much with it,
• 21:57
  with it, with it, with any kind of air of authority, but my
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  understanding is that the left had always been excellent at
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  historically kind of coming together like unionizing and the
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  examples that you give or, or making these kind of groups or
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  social events or demonstrations or protests or even college
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  campuses. You know, the one of my favorite
• 22:16
  movies on Netflix is the trial of the Chicago 7 and, and how
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  that, that that movie was just was so dynamic and so and so
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  awesome. And, and, and, and the premise
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  about, you know, in, in, in 68 or 69, where, where where the,
• 22:34
  where the a bunch of anti war protesters gathered in Chicago
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  by the you know, to, to, to to protest the Democratic Party, I
• 22:43
  believe, right. They're, they're protesting
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  Democratic convention, I believe.
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  So they were, they were protesting their own party very
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  similar to kind of how I guess you could see how the, how war
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  is kind of ripping the right apart at the moment.
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  But you know, and, and, and then the steps that government takes
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  where you know, and, and, and the question had what was, is
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  this the government's fault to the people's fault?
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  And the answer almost always is that it's the government's
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  fault. I feel like but.
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  Yes. Yeah, or the right.
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  No one knows what to do with healthcare now.
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  Sure. Totally, totally, totally.
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  I, I, yeah, I, I want to, I want to just make what make one
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  point. And then I want to ask you
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  another question real quick. But, you know, in response to
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  that, there was a really great, you know, and I've been
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  listening actually to Tim Dylan, who I disagree with in some
• 26:02
  places and then love in other places.
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  You know, and he's also one of these guys.
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  It's very hard to pin down as far as where he stands, but he
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  has he has. He had this awesome ramble rant
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  episode where he was talking about the fact that the, you
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  know, the life that we, the, the rules of the world that we were
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  told that growing up in America no longer feel like they really
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  apply to, I guess the generate, you know, the generation that
• 26:29
  was born in the 90s and, and on in the sense that, you know,
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  we're told, work hard, get a college degree.
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  You know, you'll get it. You'll get a introductory job,
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  you know, you'll get a first level job.
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  And then, you know, may not be a ton, but you know, you'll be OK.
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  And then after a couple of years, you'll save up, got a
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  down payment, get married, you know, do whatever you're going
• 26:47
  to do. And people are seeing that
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  there's no way that that could happen.
• 26:51
  You and I were talking off camera about how expensive
• 26:54
  Florida's gone, how expensive Seattle's gone or Washington,
• 26:57
  the state of Washington or the state of, of Colorado or a lot
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  of states in the country. And, and I feel like people are,
• 27:03
  are, you know, who have gone through and, and my own friends
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  in my own, my own world. I'm, I feel kind of lucky that I
• 27:10
  was always, I never really fit into this official box because I
• 27:13
  don't know what it would have happened if I had $150,000 of
• 27:16
  debt from going to an out of State College and going to grad
• 27:19
  school and be drowning in it. You know?
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  I mean, I, I, I think that I think that there, there is a
• 27:25
  massive vacuum where there's people's ideals and there's, you
• 27:29
  know, there's where you would hope and, or love the world to
• 27:32
  be. And then there is just people
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  that feel like they're just, hey, I, I would love to care
• 27:36
  about that, but I could barely afford food.
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  And I don't know if I'm getting laid off next week, you know,
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  and that, and that's a really, really serious concern.
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  Yeah. Sure, sure.
• 29:08
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
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  And I'm not going to. Yeah, this could go a lot of
• 29:42
  places. But I will say that even
• 29:43
  anecdotally for myself, the only way I'm 30 years old.
• 29:46
  I've been working since I was 21, and I currently have two
• 29:51
  jobs that pay me. And then I do the podcast.
• 29:53
  I teach high school English, I do sales in the family business
• 29:56
  where I sell medical equipment. And the only way I was able to
• 29:59
  afford a house was my blue collar high school teacher slash
• 30:03
  college professor in New Jersey grandfather dying and leaving me
• 30:07
  just enough to be able to put together a down payment.
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  But I've been working for 10 years to, you know, five years
• 30:13
  of my second job and I'm, you know, and I'm barely getting by
• 30:16
  and I'm not trying. And, you know, and it's not the
• 30:18
  question of hard work or not. It's a question of it's a
• 30:21
  question of, you know, what's what, what's considered viable
• 30:24
  and what are the expectations for society.
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  And the expectations are, hey, you know, maybe you don't need a
• 30:28
  home. Hey, guess what, you know, maybe
• 30:30
  maybe you know, putting dump payment down and owning your
• 30:33
  home for 100 years and passing it on to your kids is overrated.
• 30:36
  And I don't know if that's necessarily the answer that
• 30:38
  people are are, you know, want to hear for sure.
• 30:42
  I, I want to, I want to, if you don't mind, I want to just pivot
• 30:46
  a little bit to the individuality conversation right
• 30:48
  now, because I think that another sign of the left, you
• 30:56
  know, this was what was interesting that, you know, the
• 30:58
  Part 1 was the organizational structure, but Part 2 was really
• 31:01
  a very strong sense of individuality.
• 31:04
  I'm a, I'm a sixties 70s hippie fan junkie really.
• 31:09
  And you know, I love that whole counterculture world and it it
• 31:13
  it's really the world of what you would call defiance of the
• 31:17
  society around you makes you kind of want to feel like an
• 31:19
  individual, you know, And I think that part of what the
• 31:23
  uprising of this right right wing media that that we're
• 31:28
  describing the libertarian leaning media or the comedic
• 31:30
  media that we've been describing like, again, Trump, every clip
• 31:34
  that I've seen of Trump in the last couple of months, despite
• 31:36
  how serious the world seems, it kind of feels like he's making a
• 31:39
  joke out of a lot of what's going on.
• 31:40
  And you know, he's a showman.
• 32:07
  Totally, totally. And I think that for and and I
• 32:11
  think that for a lot of people we had and you know, perhaps you
• 32:15
  would disagree. I don't know what your
• 32:16
  perception is on this, but I would say from like the early
• 32:18
  2000 tens till maybe the end of Biden's presidency was the stage
• 32:25
  of of there. There was a lot of very powerful
• 32:29
  left-leaning institutions that I think like what you said at the
• 32:36
  beginning and you know, and, and we could discuss the extent of
• 32:39
  quote UN quote, free speech into, you know, to what extent
• 32:42
  that that is permissible or what, what falls under free
• 32:46
  speech or not. I think a lot of people did feel
• 32:48
  like they had the need to self censor.
• 32:50
  And a lot of people did feel like they could not say what
• 32:52
  they wanted to say for a long time out of fear of losing their
• 32:55
  job or fear of someone pulling up a, a tweet or a Facebook post
• 32:59
  from 10-15 years ago and then and then demanding that they get
• 33:02
  fired for, for, for such a thing.
• 33:04
  And so I think that a lot of people that were historic, that,
• 33:09
  that, that felt like, and again, to the, you know, that, that,
• 33:12
  that historically had the ability to express themselves,
• 33:15
  felt like they were being pushed down a little bit or compressed
• 33:19
  or suffocated. And that's kind of what led to,
• 33:22
  and, and I think that and like Trump's second campaign, say
• 33:24
  what you will, was incredible. The amount of the the he it went
• 33:30
  from, and again, I'll speak anecdotally from my own
• 33:33
  experience. If I met someone in the street
• 33:35
  in Miami and I was going on a road trip while I was doing
• 33:39
  whatever I was doing in my life and I was traveling quite a bit
• 33:41
  at that point in my life. And I would be afraid to bring
• 33:44
  up the name Trump in a conversation.
• 33:46
  Like whenever you talk about politics, like the name Donald
• 33:48
  Trump was like considered taboo, like he who must not be named.
• 33:51
  And and then something broke about that.
• 33:54
  Something really something shattered.
• 33:56
  And it almost felt like the society as a whole or American
• 33:59
  Society as a whole or a lot of it wanted to throw off this the
• 34:05
  this yoke of fear of speaking. I'm curious what your thoughts
• 34:10
  are on that and how. Because historically
• 34:13
  individuality was always associated with the left, but
• 34:16
  now it almost felt like the last 10-15 years they were trying to
• 34:19
  stifle other people from being self expressive.
• 34:32
  Sure. Cool,
• 35:37
  right? Yes.
• 36:12
  Sure. Right.
• 36:48
  Yeah, that's really and I and I think do you think that's
• 36:52
  changing? Do you think that you think
• 36:54
  that's going to do you think that the left has, you know,
• 36:58
  because again, and, and also, like you mentioned earlier,
• 37:01
  these terms, I feel like are becoming a little bit less and
• 37:05
  less relevant as far as like left and right and more, you
• 37:09
  know, was authoritarian or institutional.
• 37:12
  Or I mean, the way, the way that Rokahana calls it or Thomas
• 37:17
  Massie call it the Epstein class, as in like this top, top,
• 37:20
  top tier of, and I do want to talk a little bit about that.
• 37:23
  But the top, top, top tier of, of this, of the echelons of
• 37:26
  society don't seem to be playing by any rules.
• 37:29
  And I think, and they seem to be making all these decisions on
• 37:32
  the behalf of of a lot of people that don't want this.
• 37:36
  You know, I mean, the left didn't want it.
• 37:38
  They didn't vote for Trump. The right vote didn't want it.
• 37:40
  They voted for Trump because they didn't want a lot of what
• 37:42
  was going on. And it seems to be happening
• 37:46
  anyway. So it almost feels like there's
• 37:47
  a like a dissolving of general parties and more going to be
• 37:51
  some kind of reckoning of this ultra elite versus the populist
• 37:55
  everyday people. Sure.
• 38:45
  Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure.
• 39:56
  Do you think it's a good thing or do you think that's a neutral
• 39:59
  thing or do you think that's just cyclical?
• 40:12
  I see. Yeah, Yeah, I would love to talk
• 41:08
  to you now because I mean, I'm, I'm, I love the entertainment
• 41:11
  world and I've been following the entertainment world for a
• 41:14
  couple of years, for a bunch of years now.
• 41:16
  And you know, I love reading about these companies, about
• 41:18
  Disney and Paramount and Netflix and you know, the background
• 41:21
  into what goes into the decision making of how things work and
• 41:24
  the business aspects of things. And you have, oh man, I'm going
• 41:31
  to say these things even though I'm sure I'm going to get in
• 41:32
  trouble for them. I don't really care anymore.
• 41:34
  I, you know, Glenn Greenwald is a journalist.
• 41:38
  I'm sure you're familiar with who is it's funny.
• 41:44
  His reputation is as a left as a lefty.
• 41:49
  He has historically been very in general pro speech.
• 41:52
  He was famous for breaking the Snowden case and from meeting
• 41:55
  Snowden with, you know, when he, when he was, and you know, I
• 42:00
  don't even know if you want to get into Snowden or not, but you
• 42:02
  know, anyway, he, he, he, he said a lot of, he said he, he,
• 42:05
  he's pretty controversial, even though he is extremely eloquent
• 42:08
  and intelligent. And it does really, I think I
• 42:11
  think he's very fair. If I if you listen to him
• 42:13
  through it is very credible reporting and and he does a lot
• 42:17
  of talking about the influence of of Israel over American media
• 42:24
  in the sense that the Ellison family has been buying TikTok
• 42:27
  and buying CBS and now in about Paramount and is now in the
• 42:32
  midst of it looks like they're going to get the Warner Brothers
• 42:34
  company or the library. I know that they were fighting
• 42:37
  with Netflix about it. And I know.
• 42:39
  And one thing that this Trump 2.0 administration seems to have
• 42:45
  no limit to is how many favors they're willing to give out to
• 42:48
  friends of theirs. And you know, you wonder how you
• 42:50
  know what you wonder about, you know, Ellison's relationship to
• 42:52
  Trump as opposed to Netflix's relationship to him.
• 42:55
  And you know, why, why the why the Warner Brothers deal ended
• 42:58
  up the way it did. But what do you what do you kind
• 43:02
  of observe about the landscape? Because like you said, it is
• 43:04
  shifting, right? Do you are people noticing this?
• 43:08
  Is this, is this something that's in the zeitgeist or is
• 43:10
  this kind of happening quietly behind the scenes?
• 43:12
  You think OK.
• 43:58
  For most fun in Gopi for one year old Bharatiya Manoj
• 44:01
  Bajrangi bhaiyya Ki bhiwati. Yeah, it is.
• 45:32
  But I, I mean, and perhaps I mean, I, I think on the flip
• 45:36
  side of that, the potential hope is that so much technology has
• 45:39
  democratized the, you know, the people's ability.
• 45:42
  YouTube, there's a great podcast I listen to called the Town with
• 45:45
  a gentleman, Matthew Bellamy, who's an awesome reporter and
• 45:48
  lawyer. Yeah, I love that podcast.
• 45:50
  And, and, and he and he's awesome.
• 45:52
  And and, and they do they, they, they do great coverage.
• 45:57
  I am just losing my train of thought over here again, just
• 46:00
  thinking about that. I'm sorry, but shoot, what was
• 46:05
  that? What was that last point that we
• 46:06
  were discussing that? Oh, sorry, so democracy YouTube
• 46:09
  takes up such a massive portion of like Netflix can't keep up
• 46:13
  with YouTube. Disney can't keep up with
• 46:15
  YouTube. No one can keep up with YouTube.
• 46:17
  And YouTube is democratized information, you know, and like
• 46:21
  anyone kind of post whatever they want and become as big as
• 46:24
  they want and think about how big Mr. Beast is relative to a
• 46:27
  lot of whole corporations, the whole institutions, you know.
• 46:33
  And so I think that there, I think that there there's hope.
• 46:36
  I think that similar to the kind of sense that film was always a
• 46:40
  little, you know, movies were always a little stuck up about
• 46:42
  not doing television and television kind of, you know,
• 46:46
  swept in and they and they really took the landscape by
• 46:49
  storm. It looks like that this is even
• 46:51
  transitioning even more from formal studio settings to judge,
• 46:55
  Hey, you got a great iPhone. You have awesome technology.
• 46:58
  All you need is a couple of good apps and some AI and you're
• 47:00
  working together and you're making this incredible app and,
• 47:03
  and you could make a cultural and, you know, impact and you
• 47:05
  could have a, have a, have a say in what people, people perceive
• 47:09
  society. And I think that's really
• 47:11
  wonderful. And, you know, and I think that
• 47:15
  as time goes on, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll have
• 47:18
  people that are, be like, Hey, you know, the, the, the, the age
• 47:20
  group, the age of people that watch Fox or MSNBC or CNN is, I
• 47:25
  think on average above 65. It's not going to be too long
• 47:29
  before you have people that are streaming and doing the same
• 47:30
  thing. And then everyone, I, I had a
• 47:32
  babysitter. I have a three-year old.
• 47:34
  I, I had, I had a babysitter come for a couple hours and I
• 47:37
  walked back in the house and the TV was off and, and, and this
• 47:41
  girl was on her phone. I said, did you not watch
• 47:43
  anything when we were gone? And she's like, no, I never
• 47:45
  watch TVII watch everything on my phone, right?
• 47:47
  You know, and I was like, that is, it's crazy to me, you know,
• 47:51
  but that's the world we're heading to.
• 49:45
  Yeah, I, I, I, I hear you. I think that, I think that even
• 49:49
  if you were to do with it within, like, listen, I, you
• 49:52
  know, there's certain podcasts that are productions, you know,
• 49:54
  and I guess would you, would you make the argument, for example,
• 49:57
  that something like Diary of Aceo or, you know, any of these
• 50:01
  very produced shows that they listen, they're obviously A-Team
• 50:05
  and there's obviously, you know, a collective effort going on.
• 50:09
  What I the only thing that kind of is a little disconcerting for
• 50:14
  me, just the way that I'm, I'm processing this and it could be
• 50:17
  that you're not even meaning to say it like this, is that I, I
• 50:20
  feel like there's a danger to stifling individuality.
• 50:24
  And when you stifle individuality, people don't do
• 50:27
  well emotionally or in relationships or, or mental
• 50:30
  health as far as their mental health is concerned.
• 50:33
  And so like, I know for myself that, you know, I have AI have a
• 50:38
  balance between personal responsibility and community
• 50:42
  effort. You know, I'm part of a, you
• 50:43
  know, I mean, as an Orthodox Jew, there's a collective
• 50:46
  congregation that I'm part of and, you know, there's a
• 50:48
  community that I'm part of it. Everyone helps support
• 50:50
  everything. I mean, we bought the, you know,
• 50:52
  and, and everyone collectively pitched in and we bought a
• 50:54
  little house that everyone is kind of helping.
• 50:56
  One guy's a plumber and one guy's a contractor and one guy's
• 50:58
  a handyman. And everyone's kind of pitching
• 51:00
  in and, and bringing what they have to the table to make
• 51:03
  something really, really beautiful.
• 51:05
  And what the word I use is emergent, you know, where the
• 51:08
  sum of its whole, the sum of the total parts are way bigger than
• 51:11
  the individual components. Are you pushing more for that?
• 51:14
  Are you saying that there's something, you know, there's
• 51:17
  something that you think is scary about the actual process
• 51:20
  of being an individual and meritocracy like that?
• 51:39
  Yes. Hell yeah.
• 52:30
  Yeah. I got you.
• 52:54
  Sure. I really hope so.
• 53:19
  I, I think I tend to agree. I really do.
• 53:24
  I have to think about that a little bit more because on one
• 53:26
  hand, I, on one hand, what you're saying sounds and you
• 53:30
  know, like it really speaks to me and it really speaks to, you
• 53:32
  know, the sentiment that I've, that I feel like I would vouch
• 53:35
  for and that I would, I would articulate.
• 53:38
  On the other hand, I think that and I don't know what I think
• 53:45
  that and maybe this is just me, insecurity kind of causes
• 53:50
  motivation for me. You know, I'm not, I find that,
• 53:53
  you know, for example, there's one week, maybe a month or two
• 53:57
  ago where everything was just flowing, you know, and I do
• 54:01
  sales. So I'm relatively Commission
• 54:03
  based and you know, I have a small base and then whatever I
• 54:06
  close on, I make a percentage of.
• 54:08
  And there was one week where I had great podcasts lined up.
• 54:13
  Everything worked out and sales were going great and the house
• 54:15
  felt good. And my, you know, my family was
• 54:17
  getting along and everyone was happy with one another.
• 54:19
  And I was like, man, like, is this what it feels like to have,
• 54:23
  you know, to have it made? And then like a week later,
• 54:25
  everything kind of collapsed because I got comfortable to the
• 54:27
  point where I start where I didn't do any preventive
• 54:31
  maintenance. I didn't feel like I had that
• 54:32
  kind of fire under my butt to keep me to keep me going.
• 54:36
  Now I now fortunately, and I'm, I'm in a, I'm sure a different
• 54:42
  situation than most of the world.
• 54:44
  And in the sense that, you know, even if I am stressed out, like,
• 54:48
  you know, OK, like, you know, they really, I don't have food
• 54:51
  insecurity in the way that you're describing.
• 54:53
  I don't really have housing insecurity in the way that
• 54:55
  you're describing. And I think that we do really
• 54:57
  need that. And so, you know, I, I do, I
• 55:00
  definitely don't want to, to negate that, especially just
• 55:05
  based on my own anecdotal experience.
• 55:07
  On the other hand, I think a lot of people would say that, you
• 55:11
  know, humans do need motivation in general and humans do.
• 55:14
  And by the way, it could just be the script that we're, that
• 55:18
  we're given. For example, you know, I think
• 55:21
  that there's, you know, when someone says, are you
• 55:23
  successful, there's a million ways that that could manifest.
• 55:27
  But the reason with the interpretation that 90% of
• 55:29
  society would probably tell you or more is does that mean you
• 55:32
  have a lot of money? You know, and I certainly do not
• 55:34
  perceive success to be that way. So maybe it's just a change, a
• 55:38
  shift in the way that we look at things.
• 55:40
  And, and I actually do look forward to a post capital
• 55:45
  capitalistic society in this sense, with short term earnings
• 55:48
  driving everything. And being we had a place where
• 55:52
  we're technologically and financially and socially, or I
• 55:56
  guess even just those two technology and financially
• 55:59
  comfortable enough that we could turn the efforts of, you know,
• 56:04
  our goals and society to something more humanitarian like
• 56:08
  relationships or adventure or, you know, or, or something like
• 56:12
  that where you could say, Hey, are you successful?
• 56:14
  And successful means I got to the, I got to Mars, you know?
• 56:16
  And like, that'd be so much better than making $5,000,000,
• 56:19
  whatever it is. Yeah.
• 57:16
  Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more.
• 57:18
  And I look for, you know, and I mean, I think that we're really,
• 57:21
  and, you know, I guess from an economic perspective, I think
• 57:23
  we're rapidly approaching a point where either there's going
• 57:26
  to be an enormous collapse or I think that what a lot of people
• 57:31
  are counting on is the wealth and the abundance that AI,
• 57:34
  robotics and potentially nuclear energy will, will help provide
• 57:38
  that. We'll say, you know, even though
• 57:40
  we're in such an economic hole, the amount of wealth that's
• 57:43
  going to be created from this is so overwhelming that it wouldn't
• 57:46
  even matter. And you know, I, I, you know, if
• 57:49
  you were to ask me if you were like, hey, you're running the,
• 57:52
  the show and you know, here, here's the situation you're in.
• 57:55
  I'll be like, I don't know if I like, if I like that idea of
• 57:57
  like staking everything on like maybe AI being a hero, you know,
• 58:01
  but, but apparently that's the trajectory we're heading down
• 58:04
  one way or the other. So whether I like it or not, it
• 58:06
  thinks, I think that that's the world we're in.
• 58:22
  Can, can you, have you done any kind of work?
• 58:24
  Can you speak at all about any of these platforms like Rumble
• 58:27
  or like these alternatives to the typical mainstream platforms
• 58:33
  that people use to consume media?
• 58:35
  And you know what, like their trajectory of success because,
• 58:39
  you know, I feel the the need for, you know, the need that
• 58:45
  created a website like Rumble, for example, doesn't largely
• 58:51
  exist to the same extent. People aren't getting tossed off
• 58:54
  of social media the same way. And you know, there's a million
• 58:56
  different reasons why and I don't really care to get into
• 58:58
  them at the moment. But what do you think about
• 59:01
  those alternative platforms? And do you think that there's
• 59:03
  that there that there's room for them to survive?
• 59:05
  And what do you think about them in general?
• 1:00:20
  No problem. I guess.
• 1:00:22
  You know, I'm sorry. And I know that because we
• 1:00:24
  started late, I'm going to have to get off sooner than I wanted.
• 1:00:29
  Yeah, I wanted to actually ask. I I do.
• 1:00:31
  I always like to try to end things on a positive and
• 1:00:33
  constructive note. You know, even if you point out
• 1:00:36
  any kind of issues that we might have as a side of your world,
• 1:00:39
  what are you, what are you hopeful about in the future?
• 1:01:23
  Awesome. Yeah, I think so too, by the
• 1:01:25
  way. I, I, I think the youth is
• 1:01:27
  almost always the answer. It's why, it's why I take, I
• 1:01:30
  take my time to teach high school English.
• 1:01:32
  And, and I think that, I mean, you know, I, I hope that
• 1:01:36
  education really, really becomes a lot more valuable in this
• 1:01:40
  country and the notion of respect for teachers and
• 1:01:43
  educators and for people to kind of desire to see the value of
• 1:01:47
  the, of the youth in the future. Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  I really, I really, I, I think that that's going to make the
• 1:01:52
  difference when it, when it comes to America succeeding or
• 1:01:55
  not in the, in the, in the near and long future.
• 1:01:57
  But I am hopeful, like you, I, I agree.
• 1:01:59
  So, Nick, thank you so, so much for making the time coming on.
• 1:02:03
  I think that this was really a lot of fun.
• 1:02:05
  We clarified, I think a lot of really interesting points that,
• 1:02:08
  you know, people that are listening, whether they'll agree
• 1:02:10
  or disagree with. I think this was very fair.
• 1:02:12
  And I think this is really intentional and eloquent.
• 1:02:16
  So really, thank you so much for such an amazing conversation.
• 1:02:21
  Yeah, of course. Then we'll be in touch.
• 1:02:23
  Maybe we'll do this again sometime soon.
• 1:02:24
  All right, take care. Bye.