Latest / onefjef / The Strange Freedom of Living Elsewhere with Chris Ryan (Re-Release)

Transcript

The Strange Freedom of Living Elsewhere with Chris Ryan (Re-Release) · onefjef

• 0:00
  Hola, mis amigos y amigas.
• 0:04
  It's Jef.
• 0:05
  Hello.
• 0:06
  How are you doing?
• 0:07
  Are you doing well?
• 0:08
  Are you doing poorly?
• 0:09
  I hope you're doing very well.
• 0:10
  I hope you're thriving.
• 0:11
  As always, I use the word too often, but I think it's a great word, isn't it?
• 0:14
  Thrive, the T-H sound.
• 0:16
  It's a good one.
• 0:18
  It's Monday here in Mexico City.
• 0:20
  It's also Monday in United States of America and Canada and so forth and
• 0:24
  so on, but you under- you understand.
• 0:25
  I just want context for when I'm recording this.
• 0:28
  Monday at, uh, twelve twenty-five in the afternoon, August 3rd, perhaps.
• 0:35
  Si.
• 0:35
  Yo creo que si.
• 0:37
  This is the third re-released episode of onefjef, and I still haven't
• 0:44
  decided what I'm going to-- what episode I'm gonna re-release here.
• 0:47
  So it'll just be a surprise.
• 0:49
  So in…
• 0:49
  That's exciting for you and for me.
• 0:52
  It also gives me a, a good excuse not to talk about it in
• 0:55
  this, um, you know, prologue scenario, this introduction thing.
• 1:01
  So I, I won't have to do that because I don't know what it's gonna be.
• 1:05
  It'll be an episode that I've released with somebody or not.
• 1:09
  Maybe it'll just be me talking.
• 1:11
  I don't know.
• 1:12
  But it's gonna be good for sure because it's an episode of onefjef and as
• 1:15
  you all know by this point, every episode of onefjef is a wonderful
• 1:21
  episode of onefjef Except for one, but I'm not gonna tell you which one.
• 1:26
  They can't all be winners.
• 1:28
  Anyway, things in Mexico City are fine, if you're wondering.
• 1:32
  The weather's nice.
• 1:33
  It hasn't rained nearly as much as I was led to believe it would.
• 1:36
  Everybody said, "Oh, it rains so much in the summertime." And don't get me
• 1:39
  wrong, it's rained, but maybe this is a unusually light rainy season, but it
• 1:45
  has not rained every day by any means.
• 1:48
  Maybe it has, like, a tiny, tiny bit, but it's not been, like,
• 1:52
  schedule altering rain, right?
• 1:54
  And I'm kind of disappointed, to be honest, because I would-- I was
• 1:57
  kind of looking forward to schedule alter-altering rain, you know?
• 2:01
  And when it does rain, when there are these big storms that come through, I kind
• 2:05
  of enjoy it because, like, I can sit here in my apartment and look out the window
• 2:08
  and watch the rain pour down and it's very exciting, and lightning everywhere.
• 2:13
  Crazy electrical storms here when they happen.
• 2:17
  But I'm told that September, August are rainier months, although the
• 2:23
  metrics don't really support that.
• 2:25
  But we shall see.
• 2:28
  But it is fun here at my new apartment to be able to look out over the city and
• 2:32
  see the clouds developing into storms.
• 2:35
  It, like, satiates the little meteorologist in me.
• 2:39
  And it's interesting, I, I've yet to find a single app or website or anything
• 2:44
  that accurately has any seeming idea of what the weather's gonna be like here in
• 2:48
  Mexico City on any, any particular day.
• 2:51
  The temperatures are, you know, right-ish, but the rain forecast,
• 2:56
  it's like nobody has any idea.
• 2:58
  And I know there's still Doppler radar here, but not nearly as much.
• 3:02
  And I guess I didn't really appreciate how much more weather infrastructure there is
• 3:07
  in the United States and I guess Canada.
• 3:09
  I don't know, maybe.
• 3:12
  Or maybe I'm wrong about that, but I get the impression there's not nearly
• 3:14
  as much weather infrastructure here, and I don't know if infrastructure is
• 3:18
  the right word, but I'm going with it.
• 3:19
  I think it's also just a very difficult place, Mexico City, to forecast the
• 3:23
  weather because it's, you know, we're at seventy-two hundred feet, seventy-four
• 3:26
  hundred feet, and surrounded by mountains.
• 3:29
  So I think it's somewhat unpredictable, and I think that depending on where
• 3:34
  you are living, the forecast could be correct that day or could not
• 3:37
  be, because I think it's very-- It's like San Francisco in that sense.
• 3:41
  It's very hyper local.
• 3:43
  Like, it could be pouring rain, like, ten blocks away and be beautiful.
• 3:47
  Not beautiful, but cloudy right where I am.
• 3:50
  So
• 3:53
  But there have been a few nights where it's just been like, I think it was like
• 3:57
  four or five nights ago, it was just like raining all night, lightning, thunder.
• 4:04
  I loved it.
• 4:05
  I loved it
• 4:08
  So who knows?
• 4:09
  But the words rainy season, the descriptor rainy season does not
• 4:12
  feel accurate to me to describe the summer in Mexico City at this point.
• 4:18
  Like, yes, it does rain, but it doesn't feel like a rainy season per se because
• 4:24
  it doesn't rain until 5, 6, 7, 8 o'clock.
• 4:28
  And during the day, right now, it's beautiful blue sky, sunny.
• 4:32
  I mean, it's gorgeous out, 75 degrees, whatever.
• 4:36
  What, like 22, 23 Celsius, something like that?
• 4:40
  Yeah.
• 4:41
  And I'm indoors.
• 4:44
  And that's a paradox I've learned to live with, not a paradox.
• 4:47
  I think I overuse that word.
• 4:49
  It's a thing that I've had to get used to.
• 4:51
  And that is that I think I've mentioned this, but when I was living in Ohio,
• 4:56
  the weather in Ohio is very changing.
• 4:59
  One day it'll be cloudy.
• 5:00
  One day it'll be sunny.
• 5:01
  One day it'll be whatever, rainy, whatever it is, snowy.
• 5:04
  So when it's a sunny day, when it's a beautiful sunny day and you get up, you're
• 5:07
  like, well, I'm going to go out and do something because it's a beautiful day.
• 5:11
  But here, it's a beautiful sunny day almost every day when you wake up.
• 5:15
  So it's like you have to get over this weird guilt that you feel.
• 5:19
  Maybe it's just me from Ohio.
• 5:21
  But it's like, I feel like every time I'm inside when it's beautiful that I
• 5:24
  should be out there doing something, enjoying the wonderful weather.
• 5:27
  But it's every day.
• 5:28
  So I wonder how people like in LA feel about it because I feel like it's
• 5:33
  the similar weather situation in LA.
• 5:36
  I'll have to talk to some people from LA about this.
• 5:40
  I went to a Time Left dinner.
• 5:43
  Does anybody know what Time Left is?
• 5:45
  I'm sure some of you do.
• 5:45
  Time Left is this, uh, app that came out, I don't know, two, three,
• 5:48
  four years ago, and I did it in Columbus, Ohio, when I was there.
• 5:51
  It's basically like you sign up for the app and you, uh, they-- You sign up for
• 5:54
  a dinner and they basically just put you with like five other people, strangers.
• 5:58
  It's dinner with strangers.
• 5:59
  But you're like grouped together by, you know, profession or whatever, not
• 6:02
  the same to keep it interesting, right?
• 6:05
  And I did like, I don't know, two or three or four in Columbus, and they were fine.
• 6:09
  They were fine.
• 6:10
  It wasn't like mind-blowing.
• 6:12
  I didn't meet any like lifelong friends, but it was interesting.
• 6:16
  So then they have it here now, and my friend did it here and
• 6:19
  she was like, "Oh, it was great.
• 6:20
  We hung out all night." So I was like, "Oh, I should try that when I get
• 6:22
  back." So I signed up for one of the dinners and I went-- This was last week.
• 6:28
  And, uh, you know, you can put your language preference, so
• 6:31
  I just put Spanish and English because I kind of know Spanish.
• 6:33
  Not very well, but I kind of do.
• 6:36
  I ended up getting grouped for dinner with everybody, all, all Mexican people who
• 6:40
  just spoke Spanish, so it was difficult.
• 6:44
  I didn't really understand a lot.
• 6:45
  I didn't communicate a lot.
• 6:47
  I understood a little, and some of them spoke a little English, so they would try.
• 6:50
  But they were all very impressed that I'd only been learning Spanish for about
• 6:53
  six months, so that made me feel good.
• 6:55
  But it's exhausting.
• 6:56
  That's the thing that I always remember.
• 6:58
  Trying to understand a different language, it makes your brain work like three or
• 7:04
  four times as hard, and you don't realize it until you're like an hour or two in
• 7:07
  and you're like, "Oh, I'm just fucking exhausted. I'm just exhausted from
• 7:11
  listening and trying to communicate in a language that I don't speak very well."
• 7:15
  I'm sure it gets easier, but, um, but it was still a fun dinner, more or less.
• 7:20
  Más o menos.
• 7:22
  I'm doing it again, but I signed up for English speaking, which I'm hoping means
• 7:26
  that there will be some people who speak a little Spanish so that, you know, it'd
• 7:29
  be nice to have language exchange, right?
• 7:33
  Anyway, I guess that's about it of what's going on here.
• 7:36
  Um, I mean, I could go on, but then we get into a whole full episode, and I
• 7:39
  don't even know what-- I still gotta figure out what episode I'm gonna
• 7:41
  be playing after I talk right now.
• 7:45
  But don't worry.
• 7:46
  I'll, I'll do it.
• 7:47
  I'll get through this.
• 7:49
  Anyway, "What do you have to do now, Jef?" I have to go return an Amazon
• 7:54
  package, and it's a great story, so I'll tell it to you before I go here.
• 7:58
  You know, I, I enjoy a smoothie in the morning.
• 8:01
  I do enjoy a smoothie, and my last apartment here had a, um, blender.
• 8:07
  And there was a blender here too, but the blender, when I tried to use it the first
• 8:10
  time, it did not… It worked, but the blending container had a profound leak in
• 8:15
  it, so it made a mess all over the floor.
• 8:18
  So I thought, "Well, what am I going to do? I cannot make a smoothie
• 8:21
  without a blender of some sort." So I went onto amazon.mx, which
• 8:25
  is interestingly not amazon.com.
• 8:28
  I mean, it's not-- I don't know how it's affiliated with Amazon.
• 8:31
  Amazon, I-- It's a strange partnership with Amazon Mexico, but doesn't matter.
• 8:35
  And I found…
• 8:36
  It's different products for sure.
• 8:38
  And so I found a, like a smoothie blender, like a small one, and I was like,
• 8:42
  "Oh, it's only, you know, 250 pesos." That's like, whatever, 20, 30 bucks.
• 8:47
  No, that's actually… No, it's only like 12 or $15.
• 8:52
  Wow, it was cheap.
• 8:53
  Well, that explains everything, doesn't it?
• 8:55
  Because it's a piece of crap.
• 8:56
  I got this thing, and it is a piece of absolute garbage to a
• 9:00
  degree that's like it shouldn't even have been made as a product.
• 9:03
  It's just a waste But some of the reviews, they seem happy.
• 9:07
  But then how can you-- You don't trust reviews anymore.
• 9:09
  Who trusts reviews, even in Mexico?
• 9:11
  And here's the funny thing.
• 9:12
  I wrote a review about this pla- thing, you know, for Amazon to warn other
• 9:15
  people because there weren't a ton of reviews, which was my mistake for buying
• 9:18
  a product with not a lot of reviews.
• 9:20
  But I thought I should warn other potential, you know, purchasers
• 9:23
  of this piece of crap blender.
• 9:25
  And this has happened twice now.
• 9:27
  And I wrote a pretty solid review.
• 9:29
  I mean, it was not nice because it's a piece of crap blender, so I was honest.
• 9:33
  And a few days later, I get an email from amazon.mx that says,
• 9:36
  "W-- Your review was rejected because it was, I think, too mean."
• 9:39
  Like, they don't allow really mean reviews on Mexican Amazon.
• 9:44
  So I'm just not gonna bother writing reviews anymore, but I am gonna return
• 9:48
  this piece of crap blender today.
• 9:50
  So that's exciting for me, and it's exciting for you, and it's not exciting
• 9:55
  for the blender company because they're probably getting a lot of returns
• 9:58
  based on the quality of their product.
• 10:01
  I imagine a lot of people just don't return it because it's only, you know,
• 10:05
  two hundred and fifty pesos, and they're like, "Well, whatever. It's-- Like, I
• 10:09
  don't have time to walk to the place where I have to get it returned at." But I do
• 10:14
  have time, and I'm gonna get my ten two hundred and fifty pesos back, damn it.
• 10:18
  The end of that story.
• 10:19
  Did you enjoy it?
• 10:20
  I hope you really did.
• 10:22
  And, um, finally, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I mentioned that I
• 10:27
  did hire a lawyer to try to recover my deposit from my last apartment.
• 10:31
  Uh, that was about two weeks ago.
• 10:33
  He sent a strongly worded legal letter demanding, you know, a
• 10:36
  demand letter, I guess they call it.
• 10:39
  And, um, m- no response to that at all.
• 10:43
  And then I emailed the lawyer, I guess it was last Monday, and was like, "Hey, what,
• 10:50
  what do we do now if he's not responding?" And he's like, "Okay, I'll call him.
• 10:54
  I'll try calling him." So I don't know what's going on, but it's
• 10:57
  not looking good, my friends.
• 10:59
  It's not looking like I may not-- It's looking like I may not get my
• 11:01
  deposit back, which is okay, but it makes me angry when the bad people win.
• 11:09
  And I'm not saying that my former landlord is a bad person necessarily,
• 11:12
  but in this case he is, and I don't like to be screwed over like that.
• 11:19
  'cause I'm legally right here.
• 11:21
  But the question becomes how much money do I spend to recover 21,000 pesos?
• 11:28
  I don't know.
• 11:29
  It's a decision I have to make.
• 11:31
  But for now, I'm just gonna play this wonderful from the archive,
• 11:36
  from the vault episode of onefjef.
• 11:40
  It's a great episode.
• 11:41
  It's one of my favorites.
• 11:42
  It's got highs, it's got lows, it's got sidewayses, and all sorts
• 11:47
  of different directions that I think you're really gonna enjoy.
• 11:50
  No, nay, I know you're going to enjoy it.
• 11:53
  You will.
• 11:54
  You will enjoy it.
• 11:56
  And I'll be back in about two weeks with a brand new episode of onefjef.
• 12:00
  Until then, continue thriving, my friends.
• 12:03
  Be well.
• 12:04
  Be happy.
• 12:05
  Take a deep breath and let that shit go How did you find out that these doctors
• 12:11
  were, like, sexually, um, like, open?
• 12:16
  By having sex with them.
• 12:17
  Fair, fair enough.
• 12:19
  That is fair enough.
• 12:20
  At least some of them.
• 12:21
  Okay.
• 12:22
  Case study.
• 12:22
  This is episode 28 of onefjef.
• 12:26
  28 sits at a strange crossroads, a perfect number that ancient mathematicians
• 12:31
  treated with awe, and the capstone of a four-cycle run long seen as
• 12:35
  the threshold into real adulthood.
• 12:37
  It shows up in the body's lunar-leaning 28-day rhythms that shaped early
• 12:41
  timekeeping and folk magic, and in Kabbalah, it matches Koch potential,
• 12:46
  giving 28 the feel of a quiet engine number, one that completes a cycle and
• 12:51
  hands you the power to move forward.
• 12:54
  Hello, my friends.
• 12:55
  Jef Taylor here, back in my makeshift recording studio here in Columbus, Ohio.
• 13:01
  I did not have a guest for this week's episode either, but fortunately, I
• 13:07
  heard from Chris Ryan earlier today, and he said he's going to release
• 13:12
  the episode that I recorded with him
• 13:15
  for his podcast tomorrow.
• 13:17
  And I asked him if he could send me the audio so I could release it on my
• 13:20
  podcast as well, and he graciously agreed.
• 13:23
  So I'm going to release this conversation on my podcast tomorrow because it is
• 13:31
  more of a conversation than it is an interview, and, uh, I think it suits
• 13:36
  both of our podcasts in that sense.
• 13:39
  So in a sense, my guest today is Chris Ryan.
• 13:44
  Chris Ryan is an author and podcaster best known for Sex at Dawn, where
• 13:48
  he argues that early humans lived far more cooperatively and less
• 13:51
  monogamously than we assume today.
• 13:54
  He has a PhD in psychology, a taste for dismantling tidy modern narratives,
• 13:58
  and a podcast called Tangentially Speaking, where he follows his
• 14:02
  curiosity into conversations about culture, evolution, and how mismatched
• 14:06
  we often are with the world we built.
• 14:08
  I'm truly grateful to have had the opportunity to meet and
• 14:12
  be on Chris Ryan's podcast.
• 14:14
  I've been a fan for, uh, several years, and, uh, yeah,
• 14:18
  it just kinda randomly happened.
• 14:21
  Life is random sometimes.
• 14:24
  Patreon subscribers, thank you so much.
• 14:27
  I appreciate your continued support as always.
• 14:30
  I'll be posting some more exclusive content for you in
• 14:34
  the next week or two or three.
• 14:35
  If you yourself would like to support the podcast, help me buy some more
• 14:39
  Christmas gifts, help me get by in this holiday season without a job,
• 14:44
  please go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up for as little as $5 a month.
• 14:50
  $5 a month, that's nothing.
• 14:53
  But please don't use your iPhone to do it.
• 14:55
  Subscribe on the Patreon page because Apple takes 30% of all
• 15:01
  donations made through the Patreon app because Apple is greedy.
• 15:06
  Sorry, Apple, you are.
• 15:08
  I hope that doesn't hurt my algorithm.
• 15:10
  Help support the podcast, help support me, and get some exclusive content.
• 15:15
  Patreon.com/onefjef.
• 15:16
  Thank you very, very much.
• 15:19
  And now you can pause the podcast for a moment, go to your computer, and do that.
• 15:24
  Okay, thank you very much.
• 15:26
  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Chris as much as I enjoyed having it.
• 15:33
  Thank you for listening.
• 15:35
  Thank you for being here.
• 15:37
  Here is me and Chris Ryan sitting outside his house in Crestone, Colorado,
• 15:42
  overlooking the San Luis Valley
• 15:49
  All right, ladies and gentlemen.
• 15:51
  Uh, I'm sitting in the morning sun here in Crestone, Colorado, with one Jef Jef.
• 15:56
  onefjef.
• 15:56
  onefjef, not one Jef Jef.
• 15:59
  onefjef
• 16:02
  Jef.
• 16:02
  onefjef Taylor.
• 16:04
  Uh, and this'll be an interesting podcast because I don't remember exactly
• 16:09
  what it is that I found so interesting about you when we met for a beer.
• 16:14
  But I do remember thinking, "Oh, I should do a podcast with that guy. He's
• 16:17
  interesting." I did watch your film.
• 16:20
  Oh, which one?
• 16:20
  Uh, didn't you send me Coverage?
• 16:22
  Coverage.
• 16:22
  Oh, the 9/11 one, yeah.
• 16:23
  Right.
• 16:24
  Yeah.
• 16:24
  I remember the quote.
• 16:25
  I wrote down the quote too.
• 16:26
  I remember there's a… You were asking me what, what inspired me to make
• 16:29
  that, and there was a Burroughs quote.
• 16:32
  What was it?
• 16:33
  Um, "Sexual arousal results from the repetition and, and impact of
• 16:37
  image." It's kind of a… And that and the movie Crash by Cronenberg.
• 16:42
  You ever see that one?
• 16:44
  People who get sexually aroused by car crashes.
• 16:47
  I've never seen that.
• 16:48
  Uh, it's quite… People hate it, but I actually loved it.
• 16:50
  Um, but it's not a well-liked Cronenberg film by any means.
• 16:53
  W- wasn't there a film called Crash that won the Oscar?
• 16:56
  Yeah, not that one.
• 16:57
  I've seen that one.
• 16:58
  Yeah, that was a controversial one.
• 16:59
  That was controversial.
• 17:00
  Yeah.
• 17:00
  Yeah.
• 17:00
  But this one, uh, this one's controversial, but nobody saw
• 17:03
  it, so it can't be… I mean, they're like, you know, blood and
• 17:06
  semen mixing on the car seats.
• 17:08
  Right.
• 17:08
  The book's actually even better.
• 17:10
  Cronenberg's a little intense.
• 17:12
  He can be, sure.
• 17:13
  Yeah.
• 17:14
  Um, okay, but let's talk about that quote a little bit, 'cause
• 17:17
  I, I watched the film and I was…
• 17:19
  It, it's, it's very interesting.
• 17:21
  It's a-
• 17:23
  A couple… It opens with a, what seems to be erotic failure.
• 17:32
  Yeah.
• 17:33
  The guy can't get it up or can't come or something.
• 17:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:36
  And so there's this sort of like impasse and awkwardness and all that, and then
• 17:41
  9/11 happens, and he finds his mojo watching the Twin Towers come down,
• 17:48
  and then the, you know, drama ensues.
• 17:53
  But so Burroughs quote that, that eroticism or erotic charge comes
• 17:57
  from repeated viewing of an image.
• 18:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, repetition and, uh, repetition and impact of image.
• 18:03
  Yeah.
• 18:03
  But, but what image?
• 18:05
  Not just any old image.
• 18:07
  Right.
• 18:08
  Right?
• 18:08
  Right.
• 18:08
  I mean, an image of a naked woman, okay, uh, but… And also,
• 18:13
  okay, so two, two, two things.
• 18:15
  What kind of image, and also I would think that that would be less applicable
• 18:22
  to women than to men, given that women's sexuality is less visual than men's.
• 18:28
  Sure.
• 18:28
  I agree with that.
• 18:29
  I mean, I think it was that quote combined with the somewhat phallic
• 18:33
  nature of the World Trade Center- Yeah … and the fact that they were
• 18:35
  playing it, I mean, that week or two, I mean, it was all day, every day.
• 18:39
  They were playing that footage.
• 18:41
  America under attack.
• 18:41
  I mean, it was unbelievable.
• 18:41
  Yeah.
• 18:42
  Um, like literally, the whole week you couldn't watch anything, but, but
• 18:45
  the World- The fragmented statement appears to be referencing the widespread
• 18:47
  media coverage following the September 11th- … 2001 attacks on the World
• 18:51
  Trade Center, indicating that news related to the event- Fuck you.
• 18:54
  Shut the fuck up What happened?
• 18:57
  You gotta leave that in.
• 19:00
  That's weird AI just chimes in.
• 19:02
  That's weird.
• 19:03
  It, it kept recording while that happened.
• 19:06
  Well, I hope it got it.
• 19:08
  That was very strange.
• 19:10
  Ugh, okay.
• 19:11
  Well, if, if it's recorded- … I guess we'll leave it.
• 19:15
  Yeah, you gotta leave that one in.
• 19:16
  Uh.
• 19:18
  Fucking technology is jumping out.
• 19:21
  AI is, AI's invading your podcast.
• 19:23
  That's never happened before.
• 19:25
  Uh, yeah, I was in Spain when it happened, so I didn't, I wasn't subjected to that.
• 19:31
  Oh, well, good for you.
• 19:32
  But it's interesting to think that the collapse of the World
• 19:35
  Trade Center would be phallic.
• 19:37
  I would think that would cause more erectile dysfunction than- Well, it's
• 19:41
  than erectile.
• 19:42
  Yeah, I guess that's, I guess that's a valid… They could probably make it
• 19:44
  into some sort of an erectile dysfunction commercial if they really wanted to.
• 19:46
  Yeah.
• 19:47
  Do you remember, uh- Soon.
• 19:48
  Soon … when they first opened the, um, the World Trade Center, the new museum,
• 19:52
  the new tower- Yeah … and the museum in there, for the, the very beginning
• 19:55
  they sold a, like, a, a United States shaped cheese platter, and it had,
• 19:59
  like, the dots where the planes had hit.
• 20:03
  On a cheese platter?
• 20:04
  Yeah.
• 20:05
  Yeah, they got rid of it pretty quickly.
• 20:07
  I guess they're collector's items now.
• 20:10
  I don't know.
• 20:10
  It was very misguided.
• 20:11
  How could, how could you collect a cheese platter?
• 20:13
  That would- But I mean, just to use that 9/11 on a cheese platter, it
• 20:16
  seems like if you bring that out at a party it's not gonna lift the mood.
• 20:19
  It's gonna be like, "Oh, well, that's a…" Yeah.
• 20:21
  Yeah.
• 20:22
  Uh, did you like the movie?
• 20:23
  Yeah.
• 20:24
  Yeah.
• 20:24
  It, it, it was disturbing- Sure … certainly.
• 20:30
  My mom liked it, which made me happy.
• 20:32
  Oh, that's good.
• 20:33
  My dad, not so much.
• 20:35
  Yeah.
• 20:35
  What was your dad's complaint?
• 20:37
  He never really said… Like, he didn't really complain about it.
• 20:39
  I think he was just troubled by just the whole thing.
• 20:43
  My mom's quote was, that I'll always remember, she's like, "Honey, you nailed
• 20:46
  it. You nailed it." And I was like, "Oh, I'll take that, Mom. I'll take
• 20:51
  it." Uh- Well, what, uh… So what do you think, uh… To me it was, um, it
• 20:56
  kind of, um, spoke to the Freudian, you know, Eros and Thanatos, the, the death
• 21:04
  impulse and the erotic impulse- Sure
• 21:06
  being intertwined.
• 21:07
  Sure.
• 21:07
  Sure.
• 21:08
  Um, you know, and it made me think about when I worked in hospitals
• 21:13
  in Spain, I found, um, you know, in Spain a lot of doctors are, are women.
• 21:20
  Mm.
• 21:23
  I found in, I really enjoyed working in hospitals and, and hanging
• 21:26
  out with doctors because they seem to be uninhibited sexually.
• 21:33
  Really?
• 21:33
  And we talked about, like, "Why are you so uninhibited compared to the
• 21:37
  normal Spanish person?" And generally, their take was when you're around
• 21:43
  death, you lose sexual inhibition.
• 21:48
  Huh.
• 21:49
  That's interesting.
• 21:49
  Because there's something about sex that's very … It's about life, right?
• 21:55
  Right, right, right, right.
• 21:55
  Eros is life force.
• 21:56
  It's all there, yeah.
• 21:57
  And so when you're around
• 22:01
  death, there's an impulse to- Yeah … cultivate the life force.
• 22:02
  Huh.
• 22:03
  How did you find out that these doctors were, like, sexually, um, like, open?
• 22:09
  By having sex with them.
• 22:11
  Fair, fair enough.
• 22:12
  That is fair enough.
• 22:14
  At least some of them.
• 22:14
  Like a case study.
• 22:16
  The women.
• 22:17
  Um, yeah.
• 22:19
  No, I, I was doing research around, uh, I was doing a ph- a PhD research, uh,
• 22:27
  where I was specifically studying, um, the doctors who deal with a lot of death.
• 22:33
  So oncologists and emergent or, um, intensive care- Mm … physicians.
• 22:39
  And so I was interviewing them and, and then I was teaching
• 22:43
  English, so I would sp- I would, you know, focus my, uh, teaching.
• 22:48
  So I'd, I'd take students who were working in specializations
• 22:52
  that I found interesting.
• 22:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:54
  And so I met a lot of them, and we talked a lot and, uh, um…
• 22:59
  Yeah, it, it, it's interesting.
• 23:02
  And then I've spoken to other people who, you know, talk
• 23:04
  about war being very erotic.
• 23:07
  Right, I could s- Um, you know … I see that
• 23:08
  a- any kind of, anything where there's a lot of drama and, and, um,
• 23:14
  life or death stuff seems to reduce inhibition and increase libido.
• 23:21
  I shoulda had you come speak at one of the Q&As for the film.
• 23:24
  You could have- … explained it better than I did.
• 23:26
  Wow.
• 23:26
  Uh, it's funny that m- That's just my take on that whole-
• 23:28
  No, it's an interesting take.
• 23:29
  Um, I had a lot of interesting reactions to that film.
• 23:33
  Uh, the people that did walk out of the theater, um, people would write me.
• 23:36
  I got, like, emails.
• 23:37
  People would write me, and some people were, like, had, like… You know, once
• 23:41
  you finish a film, it's not yours anymore, so whatever I think it is, you know.
• 23:45
  Um, and some people's interpretation of it was really, uh, there were some very
• 23:50
  unique interpretations of, of the film.
• 23:53
  Um, but it didn't do terribly well on the festival circuit.
• 23:56
  We got into a lot of erotic film festival, like the Porn Film Festival
• 23:59
  in Berlin or something, which is very big- Hmm … uh, apparently.
• 24:02
  And, like, we were in the CineKink, and, uh, that's a touring, a traveling,
• 24:06
  uh, erotic, um… And, like, we played right after, like, this…
• 24:09
  I've never experienced this before in my life, but, like, you
• 24:11
  know, our block, I don't know.
• 24:12
  B- right before our movie, there was, like, we walk into the theater,
• 24:16
  and it's just a big, you know, full screen just, just fisting.
• 24:20
  Right.
• 24:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:21
  Which- Yeah, I don't think, I- I'm not surprised it didn't do well 'cause
• 24:24
  it's not a, it's not a porn film.
• 24:26
  It's not a ro- I mean, there is eroticism, but it's- It's not sexy … it's complex.
• 24:32
  Yeah.
• 24:32
  Yeah.
• 24:32
  Yeah.
• 24:33
  Yeah.
• 24:33
  Did, did you get accused of making light of 9/11?
• 24:36
  Yeah, and I could always, like… I mean, my argument there was,
• 24:39
  like, well, I mean, is it my… I'm just, I'm just pointing a finger.
• 24:42
  A lot of it was also about the mass media's, like, you know, um,
• 24:45
  you know, oversaturation of the…
• 24:47
  So a lot of my argument was, like, well, no, it's actually, what I was pointing
• 24:50
  a finger at is more the mass media.
• 24:52
  Is it me that, or is it the mass media that was playing it over and
• 24:54
  over and over and over and over?
• 24:55
  Right.
• 24:56
  Um- Yeah … but it wasn't a lot of that, actually.
• 24:58
  Yeah.
• 24:59
  Uh, but yeah, but it almost got into Sundance, so that was, um- It was good
• 25:05
  to find out that it almost got in.
• 25:07
  Yeah.
• 25:07
  Yeah.
• 25:09
  Yeah.
• 25:10
  Is that the only film you've made, or…?
• 25:12
  No, I've made, I mean, uh, a handful.
• 25:15
  Um, yeah, the one I made after that was, uh, that, that got into Sundance,
• 25:19
  and that was like, I'd gone through a horrible breakup, um, with the
• 25:24
  actress that was in Coverage actually.
• 25:26
  Oh.
• 25:27
  Um, and, uh, and the, the actor who was in Coverage went through a horrible
• 25:32
  breakup as well, so we got together and just decided we're gonna make some very
• 25:35
  quick and easy thing improvised, and, uh, had no real intent to make it anything.
• 25:39
  We were gonna make a feature, but we never finished it, so
• 25:41
  I just made it into a short.
• 25:43
  Spent, like, 500 bucks and, you know, edited it a lot, and then, yeah,
• 25:47
  submitted it to a bunch of festivals.
• 25:49
  One festival took it, then nobody else, and then Sundance took it.
• 25:52
  And, um- And what's it about?
• 25:54
  It's basically just a, a guy in his, like, mid to late 30s.
• 25:58
  It's a very, um… it's, like, more of a mood piece than a… But it's a guy
• 26:01
  in his mid-30s just kind of struggling to come to terms with the end of his
• 26:05
  relationship that he thought was going to go on, and trying to figure out what
• 26:09
  his life looks like post-relationship, and understands the nature of the, of the
• 26:13
  breakup and why and so forth and so on.
• 26:16
  And then he takes flight classes and flies a plane into a building?
• 26:19
  There you go.
• 26:19
  Yeah, that, that's Coverage Part Two.
• 26:21
  Yeah.
• 26:21
  Yeah.
• 26:21
  Right, right.
• 26:22
  Yeah.
• 26:22
  The sequel.
• 26:23
  Uh, yeah, that could be a prequel, actually, maybe.
• 26:25
  Yeah.
• 26:25
  Yeah.
• 26:25
  Right.
• 26:26
  'Cause, like, we had, we had a jokey idea to do a sequel.
• 26:30
  Um, yeah, we had all sorts of…
• 26:31
  That was a funny film to make, 'cause, like, the jokes that we would make,
• 26:34
  like disasterbating was the term we came up with for the- Disasterbating.
• 26:39
  Disasterbating, yeah.
• 26:40
  Yeah, yeah.
• 26:43
  Yeah.
• 26:43
  I mean, I wonder if there is an erotic component to- To what's going on.
• 26:51
  I, I mean, I know you worked in politics for a while, so I wanted to get some of
• 26:56
  your thoughts on the political scene.
• 27:00
  But, you know, as we're speaking, it's what, Tuesday?
• 27:03
  Mm, yeah, twenty-first, I think.
• 27:05
  Um, after the No Kings marches on Sunday- Uh-huh … which Trump responded
• 27:12
  to by releasing an AI film of himself bombing American cities and shit.
• 27:18
  Shit.
• 27:19
  Yeah, amazing times we live in.
• 27:20
  I mean, who… Honestly, at a certain point I feel like you just have to like
• 27:26
  I mean, it's, it's a sad laughter, but it's a laughter still.
• 27:29
  Like it's like, I mean, how far off the rails can this country go?
• 27:34
  Um, yeah.
• 27:37
  Yeah, I mean, I could, yeah.
• 27:39
  Um, yeah, it's scary.
• 27:42
  I don't know.
• 27:42
  I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 27:43
  I feel like there's so many things happening, you know, they say fl-
• 27:45
  they're flooding the zone, you know?
• 27:47
  So- With shit Right.
• 27:48
  Exactly.
• 27:49
  Yeah.
• 27:49
  Exactly.
• 27:50
  Um, and, and it really works.
• 27:52
  It works very effectively because the things that happened even three
• 27:54
  months ago, it's like I don't even remember a lot of those 'cause
• 27:56
  it's one thing after the other.
• 27:58
  Um, underneath it all though I think, I was talking to a friend of mine from
• 28:02
  the Lincoln Project, um, my podcast a couple, couple weeks ago, and she was
• 28:07
  basically saying that, um, you know, Trump is more like a cudgel, right?
• 28:12
  It's really easy for, for the Democrats to use Trump.
• 28:15
  Like the organization we worked, like Lincoln Project that we worked
• 28:17
  for who I'm a little bit leery of saying but, 'cause I signed an NDA,
• 28:20
  but if I don't say anything bad about them, I think we're in good shape.
• 28:23
  The argument was always democracy versus Trump, right?
• 28:28
  Mm. But like what even is democracy in America anymore?
• 28:31
  Like do we have a democracy?
• 28:32
  Like when's the last time we had a real democracy in America?
• 28:35
  Um, and it's like
• 28:39
  Trump is a very convenient figure to make the, the overall enemy,
• 28:45
  but really it's a systemic problem.
• 28:47
  It's a systemic collapse problem, and I think the Democrats are almost
• 28:50
  just as comfortable using Trump as a cudgel as, as the Republicans
• 28:54
  are to use him as their tool to get everything they've ever wanted.
• 28:58
  Um- But it's not everything they, they've ever wanted.
• 29:02
  The, the wants are new, right?
• 29:04
  What Republicans used to want was conservative.
• 29:07
  Yeah.
• 29:08
  And Trump's anything but conservative.
• 29:10
  I think some of them, sure.
• 29:11
  But I think there's a certain handful of them that have had, like, a long list
• 29:15
  of things, like, what is Project 2025 or whatever it is, um, have had a long list
• 29:20
  of things that they've wanted to get done, and they just needed, like, a, like, a
• 29:22
  clever buffoon to put in there as the figurehead, and then they can behind the
• 29:26
  scenes just kind of do whatever they want.
• 29:28
  Yeah.
• 29:28
  Um- Similar to the Reagan administration.
• 29:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:31
  Another- Yeah … sort of TV- Right … screen presence to attract attention
• 29:36
  while we do our things behind the scenes.
• 29:38
  Right.
• 29:38
  That's actually interesting.
• 29:39
  Um, I think this is, like, times 10.
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:42
  I mean, it's crazy that they had the same… Isn't it both Make,
• 29:44
  Make America Great Again was both of their slogans, wasn't it?
• 29:46
  It was Morning in America.
• 29:48
  Morning in America.
• 29:49
  Same, same thing.
• 29:50
  Same kind of a- I don't remember any baseball hats, but- Right.
• 29:52
  No … it was a lot of the same kind of racist rhetoric.
• 29:56
  I went to the Trump store in, uh, Branson, Missouri.
• 29:59
  I was on my road trip across the country, and I, I went to the,
• 30:03
  you know, I went to Branson.
• 30:03
  Because you ever been to Branson, Missouri?
• 30:05
  Never been.
• 30:05
  It's something to see.
• 30:06
  It's something to see.
• 30:07
  Um, yeah, it's like a combination of, like… It's like a combination
• 30:11
  of Las Vegas, Niagara Falls.
• 30:13
  Um, I mean, it's in the, it's in the, um, the Ozarks, so it's
• 30:17
  like, you know, it's pretty.
• 30:18
  But, you know, I think there's, like, 30 mini golf courses in the area.
• 30:21
  There's, like, a whole replica of the Titanic.
• 30:23
  It's a strange town.
• 30:24
  And every… Remember Yakov Smirnoff?
• 30:26
  Yeah.
• 30:26
  Yeah.
• 30:27
  I thought he was dead.
• 30:28
  I didn't even know he was alive.
• 30:28
  He's got a comedy club there called S- uh, Yakov's.
• 30:31
  I was gonna go see him, but, uh, he wasn't doing that night.
• 30:34
  Uh- Russia's not funny anymore.
• 30:36
  And what's he doing now?
• 30:37
  Yeah.
• 30:38
  That's the question.
• 30:38
  Like, you know, uh- Yeah … what is he doing, uh… Yeah.
• 30:40
  Anyway.
• 30:40
  Yakov Smirnoff.
• 30:42
  Wow.
• 30:42
  Yeah.
• 30:42
  And they have more, more theater seats than, uh, New
• 30:45
  York City in Branson, Missouri.
• 30:47
  And, and what… It's, like, Grand Ole Opry kinda shit?
• 30:49
  It's all… It's, like, wash… It's a lot of washed-up, um,
• 30:52
  I think, uh, old stars that…
• 30:54
  But yeah, I think it's, like, after you go on the Grand Ole
• 30:56
  Opry, maybe you go to Branson and just- Right … do, do a run there.
• 30:59
  Yeah.
• 31:00
  Like, like you're not, you're not up to Vegas.
• 31:02
  Yeah, something like that.
• 31:03
  And you're kinda like- Jef Foxworthy kind of- Well, your appeal is there.
• 31:07
  Like, it's, uh, it's a different appeal than Vegas.
• 31:09
  Like, it's a different… You know, it's the South, so, um- Mm-hmm.
• 31:11
  Yeah … you know, it's southern Missouri.
• 31:12
  Yeah.
• 31:12
  Anyway, there's a Trump store there.
• 31:14
  There's actually two.
• 31:15
  So I was like, "All right, I gotta…" You know, you only know how many
• 31:17
  times you get to go to a Trump store.
• 31:19
  And, uh, yeah, it was something else.
• 31:21
  I mean, it was crowded.
• 31:22
  There's an animatronic Trump outside, like, you know, waving at you, all
• 31:25
  sorts of… And all the hats, you know, Golf of America, blah, blah, blah.
• 31:29
  And then the one hat that I noticed- … 'cause they're all Trump slogans, you
• 31:32
  know, Make Amer- Spelled with an O, Golf of America … Golf of America.
• 31:34
  Baron for president.
• 31:35
  Um- Great
• 31:36
  and then one of them just, just one of them just said, "Titties." But it was in,
• 31:41
  like, you know, it had an American red, white, and blue, like- This is a shirt?
• 31:45
  No, it was just a hat.
• 31:45
  Oh, a hat?
• 31:46
  It just said titties.
• 31:47
  Yeah.
• 31:47
  Titties.
• 31:47
  Titties.
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:48
  Well, how can you argue with that?
• 31:49
  No.
• 31:50
  No.
• 31:50
  It was the only one that was unrelated to politics or Trump, which was interesting.
• 31:54
  Yeah.
• 31:54
  Almost bought it, but thought- … no, no.
• 31:57
  $40 for a titties hat.
• 31:58
  And where are you gonna wear it?
• 31:59
  When am I gonna wear that?
• 32:00
  Yeah.
• 32:00
  Yeah.
• 32:00
  Yeah, for Halloween maybe, but even then, yeah.
• 32:03
  When?
• 32:04
  What are you going as?
• 32:05
  Right.
• 32:05
  I mean- A Hooters manager?
• 32:07
  Like… I don't even know if a Hooters manager would wear…
• 32:10
  I mean, that's a little…
• 32:11
  Uh, some of them would, I would think.
• 32:13
  Uh, and then there's a Jesus store right down the street from the Trump
• 32:16
  store- Yeah … which I went to as well.
• 32:17
  A Jesus store.
• 32:18
  It's like Jesus merch, right?
• 32:19
  It's all Jesus merch.
• 32:21
  And it's, like, very similar to the Trump store.
• 32:23
  Um- Oh, man … very surprisingly similar to the Trump store actually.
• 32:26
  It's just a different character.
• 32:28
  So have you been paying attention to politics- Mm … your whole life
• 32:33
  or, I mean, you mentioned that you worked for the Lincoln Project.
• 32:36
  Yeah.
• 32:36
  We don't… W- we can talk about that or not, depending on your comfort level.
• 32:40
  But was- … was your work with them because of an interest in politics,
• 32:45
  or it was just a job and you're a video editor and there you go?
• 32:49
  Um, yeah, it really kind of randomly happened.
• 32:51
  I've certainly… Like, I've paid attention to politics for a good
• 32:54
  portion of my life on and off.
• 32:56
  I mean, a… You know, during Obama I didn't really 'cause you
• 32:58
  didn't really, I guess, have to as much because it was just, you
• 33:01
  know- Kind of normal … um- Yeah.
• 33:03
  Uh, but yeah, no, I got, I got…
• 33:05
  During COVID, it was 2020, I got laid off.
• 33:07
  I was working in, uh, uh, uh, marketing at Hollister, like the, the clothing.
• 33:12
  We're selling clothing, jeans to teenagers.
• 33:14
  Um- Right, Hollister, which is a tiny town in Cal- in California.
• 33:18
  Yeah, and they've had… Though they, they, it's not based on that.
• 33:21
  That's not at all what the clothing brand is based on.
• 33:23
  I think there were some sort of a lawsuit settlement or something- Um, yeah
• 33:25
  … that the thing- I remember reading something like that … yeah, yeah.
• 33:26
  Something, something.
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:27
  Well, Abercrombie & Fitch has had their own share of
• 33:29
  problems, and that's the parent.
• 33:30
  Okay.
• 33:30
  Yeah.
• 33:31
  Right.
• 33:31
  Um, but, uh, but yeah, I got laid off from there during that
• 33:34
  summer, and a buddy of mine…
• 33:36
  And this was when the Lincoln Project was just starting to get really big.
• 33:39
  And a buddy of mine from New York, like, called me and he's like, "Oh,
• 33:42
  I know a guy at the Lincoln Project. They're looking for somebody." And
• 33:44
  weirdly enough, I'd already been making, like- weird Trump mashups.
• 33:49
  You know, I made just weird videos for The Lincoln Project, like funny, weird,
• 33:53
  you know, satirical blah, blah, blah.
• 33:55
  Mm. And I'd already made some weird things, um, when… I, I
• 33:59
  don't really know why, but it felt, you know, uh, it felt fun.
• 34:04
  I don't know.
• 34:04
  Um, anyway, so I already had work to show them, and so yeah, I was only
• 34:08
  supposed to work there for three months, and, um, and it was crazy.
• 34:12
  I've never had so much, um, like, you know, as a video person, you
• 34:16
  don't, you know, it's about how many people see your thing, right?
• 34:19
  To a great degree.
• 34:20
  And like the first thing I made was like, goes up online, it's like a million
• 34:24
  people have watched it in five hours.
• 34:25
  Mm. And it was just like, "Whoa, dude." Um, so that was fun.
• 34:29
  And, uh Yeah, but no, never intended to get in, uh, to politics
• 34:35
  and don't plan to do that again.
• 34:37
  Um, four and a half years was enough.
• 34:40
  Why is that?
• 34:42
  It's a complicated, uh, question.
• 34:44
  But, um, A, I would say primarily because my job required me to, like, watch… Um,
• 34:51
  I've, I've seen more Trump speeches than probably most people- Mm. -on the planet.
• 34:54
  Right.
• 34:54
  Um, like I know his bits.
• 34:56
  I would watch him hone a routine, you know, this, you
• 34:59
  know, the toilets don't flush.
• 35:00
  He would, he would hone that and get laughs from that.
• 35:02
  He's a stand-up comic at heart when he does these rallies.
• 35:04
  Um, and in watching CPAC, you know, CPAC- Mm-hmm.
• 35:09
  -I'd have to watch the whole, the whole weekend would be
• 35:11
  blocked off to just watch it.
• 35:12
  Right.
• 35:12
  Yeah.
• 35:12
  That'll rot your brain.
• 35:13
  Right, right, right.
• 35:14
  Yeah.
• 35:14
  And so I know a lot, like, you know, I know, we're well familiar
• 35:17
  with who Charlie Kirk was.
• 35:18
  Like I know, knew all these people in the… And it just
• 35:21
  became, it became, yeah, it became hard to live in that darkness.
• 35:28
  Yeah.
• 35:28
  You know?
• 35:28
  Um, beyond that, like just not even just watching the right-wing content,
• 35:33
  it was more like just experiencing the, um, I feel like rot and
• 35:38
  grift that is politics in general, um, from the inside to a degree.
• 35:44
  Right.
• 35:44
  Was, um, yeah.
• 35:47
  So you did, in your experience, I, I know we, we have an NDA to- I'm walking on
• 35:52
  a fine line here … dance around here.
• 35:53
  Yeah, yeah.
• 35:53
  Um, but we're not, I'm not talking about the Lincoln Project specifically-
• 35:57
  Right … just your general insider's view- Sure, sure … of politics, uh,
• 36:03
  did not leave you inspired and hopeful.
• 36:05
  No.
• 36:06
  I mean, I… No.
• 36:09
  Um, I feel like, uh, a lot of politics is a, um, is a grift.
• 36:17
  Yeah.
• 36:17
  There's, there's a lot of people making a lot of money, um, off of
• 36:21
  politics and, um, and I think that's the heart of the problem with our
• 36:26
  political system in general is money.
• 36:28
  Yeah.
• 36:28
  Um, there's a, I think it was Mo- Missouri or Montana, I heard they're
• 36:34
  actually the state, um- Yeah, I heard that
• 36:36
  is trying, you've heard this, that they're trying to basically say, take,
• 36:39
  take, saying the corporations can't donate to… And that could hold up
• 36:42
  because the Supreme Court has a lot of precedent on states' rights, like, um-
• 36:45
  Right, and that, what, what was the, the, um, Supreme Court case that allowed
• 36:51
  co- that said money is free speech?
• 36:54
  And, um, Citizens United.
• 36:57
  Yeah.
• 36:57
  Yeah, that that's based on states- Uh, regulations of corporations.
• 37:04
  And so Montana's saying, "Well, then we can regulate that
• 37:07
  corporations are not allowed to spend money on politics." Mm-hmm.
• 37:10
  And apparently that's totally within the ju- Supreme Court judgment, so it doesn't
• 37:14
  even need to go back to the Supreme Court.
• 37:16
  Right.
• 37:17
  Although I'm sure they'll- That's interesting … I'm sure they'll
• 37:18
  find a way to make it, um- Yeah.
• 37:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 37:22
  'Cause, you know, my concern is, like, in order to get money out of politics, you
• 37:25
  gotta find a candidate who's, you know, you know, an anti-corporate candidate.
• 37:31
  But, you know, 95% of the time the candidate with the most money wins.
• 37:34
  Yeah.
• 37:34
  So how do you even get the money?
• 37:36
  You need to find some s- insanely wealthy, um, you know, progressive,
• 37:41
  um, to, to actually run, but I don't know any insanely wealthy progressives.
• 37:45
  Who's willing to risk his life- Right … because if he gets close to winning-
• 37:50
  Then the, then the… Yeah, yeah.
• 37:52
  Yeah.
• 37:52
  They'll- The, the powers that be will move in They're not gonna let…
• 37:55
  Yeah, they're not gonna let anything that would truly change the system-
• 38:00
  Right … uh, in, into power.
• 38:03
  You know that Frank Zappa line that, uh, politics is the entertainment division
• 38:09
  of the military industrial complex?
• 38:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:11
  Right, right, right, right, right.
• 38:12
  I think about that a lot.
• 38:13
  Right.
• 38:14
  Yeah.
• 38:14
  I, I mean, I don't know.
• 38:15
  It… As cynical and jaded as I am about American politics, it does
• 38:22
  feel like what's happening now is something qualitatively different.
• 38:27
  For sure.
• 38:28
  You know, Obama was blowing up wedding parties in Yemen, but he
• 38:32
  wasn't releasing videos of himself shitting on Chicago, you know?
• 38:36
  It's- Right, right, right.
• 38:37
  Yeah, I mean, it seems like- There, there's a contempt to…
• 38:40
  And, and also it seems to me that they've already decided there
• 38:44
  aren't gonna be more elections- Yeah … so they don't give a fuck.
• 38:46
  It seems very much like they're trying to make this a one-party country.
• 38:49
  Um, and whether they can do that or not, I don't know.
• 38:52
  Like, there is some buffoonery in that administration-
• 38:54
  um, fortunately.
• 38:55
  Yeah.
• 38:56
  Um- No, well, well, that's the thing.
• 38:58
  It's like, it's like there's a pilot flying the plane who h- who is blind,
• 39:03
  drunk, and has no idea how to fly a plane.
• 39:06
  But yet I think there's a few people in there that aren't blind, drunk, or
• 39:09
  anything like that, and those are the ones that are really put- pulling the levers.
• 39:12
  Like, what's that, Steven Miller?
• 39:13
  Yeah.
• 39:14
  That guy's a demon.
• 39:15
  Um- Yeah … and he's the person who's doing most of this immigration madness.
• 39:18
  But, um- Yeah.
• 39:20
  But yeah, it certainly seems, it certainly seems like, uh- And you try to think
• 39:25
  of times in history that have been similar to how bad this is, and like
• 39:30
  I, I'm not very good with the history.
• 39:32
  I don't know.
• 39:32
  Um, but like wouldn't like early '20s, something like that?
• 39:36
  I mean, there were bad periods in America.
• 39:39
  I just, my question I guess is, when I, when I think about it, is
• 39:41
  like how do we get out of this?
• 39:42
  Like people, how do we re- return to normal?
• 39:44
  What does that even mean?
• 39:45
  How does that happen?
• 39:46
  I don't even, I don't see the country being able to do that.
• 39:48
  I think that it'll return to something, but whatever it is isn't
• 39:53
  gonna be what this, what normal, what we define as normal, right?
• 39:56
  Yeah.
• 39:57
  So I don't know.
• 39:58
  Um, I don't know.
• 40:02
  Yeah, it feels like we need to hit rock bottom.
• 40:06
  You know, when I think about times of significant change, like Teddy Roosevelt,
• 40:12
  uh, going after the monopolies- Mm-hmm
• 40:15
  and the big, uh, you know, railroad companies- Right, right … and
• 40:17
  all that in the early 20th century, you know, the, the country was
• 40:23
  at the brink of revolution.
• 40:25
  And then you think about, uh, you know, the sort of regulations coming into
• 40:30
  effect in the 1920s after Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, uh, describing the
• 40:37
  meat packing plants and the rats- Mm-hmm
• 40:40
  and the feces and all the shit.
• 40:40
  And then, okay, we'll do some regulation.
• 40:43
  Right.
• 40:43
  You know, and then FDR with the, the New Deal.
• 40:47
  Or was it the New- The New Deal, yeah.
• 40:49
  Yeah.
• 40:49
  Um, oh yeah, Great Society was Lyndon Johnson.
• 40:53
  You know, it's, it's like, I think there needs to be, the country needs to be on
• 40:59
  the verge of revolution before they'll…
• 41:03
  And then they'll just give you enough to quiet you down, you know.
• 41:05
  Right.
• 41:06
  I mean, it's also- Maybe a g- a war of some sort.
• 41:11
  I mean, some sort of a, a, a catastrophic event to cause a reset.
• 41:15
  Um- Yeah, yeah.
• 41:16
  But unfortunately, we'd have to live through that catastrophic event
• 41:18
  in order for the reset to happen.
• 41:20
  Uh- Yeah
• 41:20
  or if Trump dies.
• 41:21
  I mean, he's never gonna die though.
• 41:22
  He's gonna live till then.
• 41:23
  Motherfucker's gonna live till he's like 100 probably.
• 41:25
  I think he's like Lassie.
• 41:26
  I think they've got like- … 10 Trumps in, in- Right … the green room waiting-
• 41:31
  Right … to take- You might be right.
• 41:32
  You might be right … you know?
• 41:33
  Or if, if after he dies, he has like a Weekend at Bernie's thing
• 41:35
  where they just keep coming.
• 41:36
  Yeah.
• 41:36
  Like, carrying him around.
• 41:38
  He's got so much makeup, you wouldn't notice.
• 41:41
  Uh, but who jumps in?
• 41:42
  I don't know.
• 41:42
  I hope… I mean, uh, that's what people say.
• 41:43
  It's like once he's gone, they don't really have anybody to
• 41:45
  jump in, but I don't, I don't know that I agree with that.
• 41:47
  I feel like… Well, but like you said, he's, he's got so much stage presence
• 41:53
  and, and a twisted kind of charisma.
• 41:57
  Uh, I don't, I don't see anyone else, uh, in the wings who can h- who
• 42:03
  can command that kind of attention.
• 42:04
  No.
• 42:05
  JD Vance is a weasely little fuck.
• 42:07
  He really is, yeah.
• 42:07
  Everyone knows it.
• 42:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 42:08
  He's, he doesn't inspire any- No, no … kind of fear or admiration.
• 42:14
  Yeah, I don't know.
• 42:15
  I don't know what the hell's happening, man.
• 42:17
  It's, that's why I live in the middle of nowhere.
• 42:19
  Yeah, it's a solid, it's a solid idea.
• 42:21
  Um, I kind of wanna get out of the country, but we'll see
• 42:23
  if I can make that happen.
• 42:24
  Well, weren't you living in Mexico City for a while or?
• 42:27
  I was like there for a month and a half or so- Oh … earlier this
• 42:30
  year- Right … after I lost the job.
• 42:31
  Um, yeah, I loved it.
• 42:32
  I'd never been to Mexico City.
• 42:34
  Had no idea what to expect, but boy, something going on down there.
• 42:38
  I really liked it.
• 42:38
  Yeah.
• 42:39
  Yeah.
• 42:39
  Yeah.
• 42:39
  It's a, it's a nice place.
• 42:41
  Beautiful place, wonderful people.
• 42:42
  Um, the warmth of like the, like, um, Latino culture really is like somewhat…
• 42:48
  Like as an American, it ta- at first it's like a little off-putting, and then you're
• 42:51
  like, "Oh, they really are that friendly."
• 42:52
  They're just… Um, I really like that.
• 42:55
  Yeah.
• 42:55
  Yeah.
• 42:56
  The vibes are better.
• 42:58
  Yeah.
• 42:58
  I've, I've spent a lot of time in Mexico.
• 43:01
  I like it a lot.
• 43:03
  It's hard… It's always hard for me to wrap my head around the evil Mexican
• 43:07
  assassins and, you know, the, the cartels and all that because my experience
• 43:13
  of Mexican people is, like- Yeah
• 43:15
  so kind and- Yeah … kinda simple- Mm-hmm … in a good way, you know.
• 43:21
  But I guess it's, that's similar to my experience of Africans as well, and
• 43:26
  they can… Man, if things go wrong in Africa- Right … shit gets really crazy.
• 43:32
  Right.
• 43:32
  Or even in America.
• 43:33
  I mean, I find most people I meet when I'm, you know, driving across the country,
• 43:36
  everybody's super friendly, you know?
• 43:37
  Mm. Um, but there's certainly a darkness.
• 43:41
  Yeah, I read something recently, I think it was on Substack.
• 43:44
  Somebody posted, "If you wanna hate America, watch the news. If you wanna love
• 43:50
  it, drive across the country." It's true.
• 43:53
  I drove across the country and I, and I met a lot of wonderful people actually.
• 43:58
  Yeah.
• 43:58
  I'd never done that before.
• 43:59
  It's a, it's a large country we have here.
• 44:02
  Really good.
• 44:03
  You've never driven across the country?
• 44:04
  No.
• 44:04
  I mean, when I was young, we, we drove with a family trip from like,
• 44:07
  you know, Ohio to Aspen, you know?
• 44:09
  But never like just, you know, all the way over to California and then down through.
• 44:13
  Um, yeah.
• 44:15
  And uh, you know, when I was unemployed, I'm still relatively unemployed, and
• 44:19
  I was like, "When else am I gonna have a chance to do this," you know?
• 44:21
  Mm. Um, and yeah, it was great.
• 44:23
  50 days.
• 44:24
  49 days.
• 44:25
  Oh, that's a… Okay, that wasn't an interstate highway drive.
• 44:29
  Yeah.
• 44:29
  That was a meandering drive.
• 44:30
  Yeah.
• 44:31
  And I wasn't moving the whole time.
• 44:32
  I was staying with some friends in like, um, uh, San Jose for a while.
• 44:35
  I stayed with my sister up in San, uh, San Francisco.
• 44:38
  Mm. And um…
• 44:39
  But yeah.
• 44:39
  And then went to, um, Bogota for a week.
• 44:43
  Um- But, uh, you been to Bogotá?
• 44:47
  Never.
• 44:48
  Traffic, traffic problems.
• 44:49
  Real bad traffic.
• 44:50
  I think it's, like, the worst traffic in, like, any major city in the, in the world.
• 44:54
  Mm. It's really pretty bad.
• 44:56
  Yeah.
• 44:56
  No, I always wanted to go to Colombia, but when I was doing a lot of traveling,
• 45:00
  uh, in the '80s, Colombia was- Yeah
• 45:04
  you know, off limits.
• 45:07
  People were getting kidnapped at the airport.
• 45:09
  Yeah.
• 45:09
  You know, you wouldn't even get to your hotel.
• 45:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:12
  Yeah, like Medellín, they say it's a beautiful city now, but that
• 45:15
  was, like, the, like, the car- the headquarters there back in the day.
• 45:17
  Yeah.
• 45:18
  Yeah.
• 45:19
  Yeah.
• 45:19
  Yeah, no, beautiful city.
• 45:21
  I, I almost went four or five years ago.
• 45:25
  Uh, I was planning a trip there, and I had a friend whose wife … I guess
• 45:31
  his wife's Venezuelan, but first, he knows people in, in Colombia.
• 45:36
  Anyway, he was like, "Hey, I have a friend who has an apartment
• 45:38
  in Medellín, and let me ask him, you know, if you can stay there.
• 45:42
  I'd
• 45:42
  He's not … I know he's in London now," whatever.
• 45:45
  And then he got back to me, he's like, "Yeah, there's … You can
• 45:48
  stay in his apartment," he said.
• 45:49
  "It's, it's free." Yeah.
• 45:51
  You know, "Nobody's there, and da, da, da. And the doorman will
• 45:54
  let you in and all that." And so I got that far into the trip.
• 45:58
  Anyway, we ended up not going.
• 46:00
  I forget, some family shit came up or something.
• 46:02
  But, um, later I learned that his friend was the ex-mayor of Medellín.
• 46:09
  So, like, what, what kind of apartment did I turn down?
• 46:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 46:13
  You must have turned down the most- Nice apartment.
• 46:15
  Right, right.
• 46:16
  Yeah.
• 46:16
  Well.
• 46:17
  Although also, do you wanna be staying in the ex-mayor's apartment?
• 46:20
  Like- Yeah … that's a- That's a complicated … What year was this?
• 46:23
  Five, six years ago.
• 46:24
  Oh, all right.
• 46:25
  Yeah.
• 46:25
  So it was, you know, not nearly as dangerous.
• 46:27
  I think maybe it was, like, early COVID.
• 46:29
  Maybe that's what came up.
• 46:30
  Oh, right.
• 46:30
  Like, it got- Right … you know … Yeah, 'cause we were
• 46:33
  pretty far into planning it.
• 46:34
  We were gonna go to Cuba first and then Colombia.
• 46:37
  Oh, I'd love to go to Cuba.
• 46:38
  Yeah, me too.
• 46:39
  I wanna go to North Korea.
• 46:41
  I do not.
• 46:42
  Yeah, I don't know what it is.
• 46:43
  I mean, I lived in Korea for, like South Korea, for a couple
• 46:46
  years when I was younger.
• 46:47
  And, uh, yeah, I'm just somehow f- I'm weirdly fascinated.
• 46:51
  Like, I've read a lot of books.
• 46:51
  I'm just weirdly fascinated with, you know, it's the most
• 46:54
  isolated country in the world.
• 46:55
  Yeah.
• 46:56
  And it, uh, something about it just is, uh, really interesting to me.
• 46:59
  Hmm.
• 46:59
  Um- Yeah, yeah.
• 47:02
  I mean, I watched all these videos.
• 47:03
  Like, I learned… Yeah.
• 47:04
  It's, it's, it's a history of that country.
• 47:07
  Boy, that's a, that's an interesting one.
• 47:10
  Yeah, you could, uh, talk with Dennis Rodman about it.
• 47:13
  Right, right.
• 47:14
  I remember that was a while back when- It is
• 47:15
  I became friends with, uh, Kim Jong's- Which kind of all was- … Kim Jong.
• 47:18
  I mean, what a world.
• 47:20
  I feel like the world's gone into a, a… Like, like someday people are gonna look
• 47:26
  back and say, "Oh, those poor people in the early 20th century, they had no idea
• 47:30
  what was happening." But now we understand that there are, like, realms of space
• 47:36
  that the, the Solar System is moving through space, and there are realms in
• 47:41
  which the laws of probability change.
• 47:44
  Right.
• 47:44
  I feel like we moved into a realm where things that used to be very
• 47:49
  unlikely have become much more likely.
• 47:52
  Right, right.
• 47:53
  I mean, there must be a way to test that with, you know, random
• 47:57
  number generators or some shit.
• 48:00
  But it, it just feels like, like there were… Suddenly there were,
• 48:04
  like, crazy… I forget which Super Bowl it was, but, like, one team
• 48:08
  was 28 points down in the fourth quarter and they came back and won.
• 48:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:12
  It was like, what?
• 48:13
  Right.
• 48:13
  That doesn't happen.
• 48:15
  You know?
• 48:15
  And then there was… I remember, I mean, this is, this is more
• 48:19
  science-based, but I remember there was a hurricane coming up the west
• 48:22
  coast of Mexico, and it was Category 5.
• 48:26
  And I d- I read somewhere and they said, "Well, the only reason it's
• 48:29
  Category 5 is it doesn't go up to 6."
• 48:33
  So it's Category 5 plus, you know?
• 48:38
  It's like the, the things that used to be a once in a thousand
• 48:42
  year storm, they're happening every- Well, yeah … 10 years now.
• 48:46
  Climate change, yeah.
• 48:46
  And of course that's science, but I feel like it's happening in other
• 48:49
  things too, just- The simulation got reprogrammed or something,
• 48:52
  or we got- Yeah, that kinda thing
• 48:53
  yeah, we got stuck in a different simulation of some sort.
• 48:55
  I don't think it's a simulation, but I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if
• 48:59
  there's some, some energetic component.
• 49:05
  Well, I know there are energetic components to reality that
• 49:08
  we can't perceive or measure.
• 49:11
  Um, so something yet to be discovered that's gonna explain
• 49:14
  why shit got so weird so quickly.
• 49:17
  Yeah, that'd be interesting if we actually had a, uh, a scientific paper
• 49:21
  that came out with, like, "This is why things got weird," and you know.
• 49:24
  And I think COVID, that was part of it.
• 49:28
  Was that cause or effect though?
• 49:31
  Uh, interesting.
• 49:33
  Well, and, and have there been other periods like that?
• 49:35
  Like- It seems like every t- 50 years or so there's like an, uh, somehow sort of
• 49:38
  a global upheaval that happens, like in the '60s and like, uh, the '20s, you know?
• 49:43
  It seems like- Yeah … there's, seems like there's a… But this one
• 49:46
  seems like it's more significant.
• 49:48
  But of course, everybody who's alive always thinks that their, you know,
• 49:52
  period of time is more- Right … bizarre and twisted than any other period.
• 49:55
  Yeah.
• 49:55
  And maybe that's true.
• 49:56
  Um- Yeah.
• 49:58
  Each, it's like a spiraling thing.
• 50:00
  Right.
• 50:00
  Each, it's cyclical, but also, uh, incremental.
• 50:03
  And, and I think the internet is a big part of why this one's so much- Yeah
• 50:07
  … or at least feels so much more, because when like, you know, you have media
• 50:11
  connecting the entire world and all the information at the, at your fingertips,
• 50:15
  and you can, you can find people who have the same crazy beliefs as you and connect
• 50:19
  on the internet, I think it really, uh…
• 50:21
  Yeah.
• 50:22
  Yeah, there's an accelerating effect there.
• 50:24
  Yeah, like that flat Earth thing.
• 50:25
  Big fan of that.
• 50:26
  Uh, that's one of my favorite, uh, things to come out of the
• 50:29
  last 10 years of, of medias.
• 50:30
  Flat Earth.
• 50:31
  The flat Earthers, yeah.
• 50:32
  Yeah.
• 50:32
  Is, is that recent, or has that always been around?
• 50:34
  No, that's been around for like…
• 50:34
  I mean, that started to blow up about five, uh… COVID,
• 50:39
  I think, did a little bit.
• 50:40
  But I think even before that, I think it was five or 10 years ago that started to
• 50:43
  become a, more of a talked about thing.
• 50:46
  You know what I mean?
• 50:47
  Um, and yeah, they believe, you know, we live on a flat disc,
• 50:50
  and like there's an ice wall.
• 50:52
  You know, that there's an ice wall around the edge of the Earth, so
• 50:54
  that's why- Yeah … you can't get to, so you don't fall off, I guess.
• 50:57
  And it's biblical.
• 50:58
  Some of the people are biblical.
• 50:59
  It's like a firmament.
• 51:01
  There's a great documentary about these people, and at the very end
• 51:03
  they do an experiment where they shoot a laser like across a giant lake to
• 51:06
  see, and the experiment proves that the Earth isn't flat, and they're
• 51:10
  like, and then the movie ends.
• 51:11
  And it's like, "Oops, all right." Yeah.
• 51:15
  Yeah.
• 51:16
  Well, it's not dissimilar to the people who, you know, predict, uh, the
• 51:21
  end times and then the date passes.
• 51:24
  Yeah, it was just supposed to happen.
• 51:25
  Yeah, the… What was it, the end times?
• 51:26
  What was it?
• 51:26
  The, uh, w- the one where pe- people, the rapture was supposed to
• 51:29
  happen like two or three weeks ago.
• 51:30
  Oh, really?
• 51:31
  See that like Saturday, two or three Saturdays ago.
• 51:33
  Yeah, there's a whole, the internet- Oh … was going crazy.
• 51:34
  Oh, I didn't hear about that.
• 51:35
  Yeah, you gotta get on the- I missed it.
• 51:37
  Yeah.
• 51:37
  Um, but yeah, it didn't, uh, didn't happen.
• 51:39
  But I did see somebody on the, uh, whatever, Instagram or something,
• 51:43
  had, had made inflatable balloons of people and put them above their house
• 51:46
  to make it look like there were people getting pulled up into the sky to, to
• 51:49
  fuck with the people who thought the rapture- You ever watch Six Feet Under?
• 51:52
  Yeah, I love that show.
• 51:53
  There was… Remember how each episode begins with a death?
• 51:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:57
  Uh, there was one where- Uh, okay, it opens, this woman's listening.
• 52:03
  She's driving somewhere, and she's got her car radio on,
• 52:06
  and it's some Christian thing.
• 52:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:08
  And it's talking about, you know, the Rapture, and are you gonna
• 52:10
  be saved, and blah, blah, blah.
• 52:12
  And then it cuts, and it's guys in a warehouse, and they've got all
• 52:19
  these inflated, uh, sex dolls that they're loading into a truck to
• 52:25
  take to a convention or something.
• 52:28
  Oh, right, and the truck, back of the truck opens up.
• 52:30
  And the dolls go up.
• 52:31
  And she sees them.
• 52:31
  And the woman sees them- Loses her mind … and thinks it's the Rapture,
• 52:34
  and she crashes her car and dies.
• 52:34
  Crashes her car.
• 52:36
  Yeah.
• 52:37
  That was a great show.
• 52:38
  That was a great show.
• 52:39
  The last episode, I thought that was… Some people said they didn't like it, but
• 52:42
  I thought the last, the way they ended it was about as perfect as you could end a
• 52:44
  show about what that was about, you know?
• 52:47
  Showing everybody getting older and- Yeah.
• 52:49
  Yeah.
• 52:50
  Spoiler alert.
• 52:51
  Yeah.
• 52:52
  Yeah, I th- I think the, probably the best three or four minutes of television
• 52:59
  that I've ever seen was in that show.
• 53:02
  It was, uh
• 53:05
  I'll, I'll, I'll include, if I remember, I'll include the, the video at the,
• 53:09
  in the show notes for this episode.
• 53:12
  It's when, um, Nate dies.
• 53:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:15
  And, uh, his brother, I forget his brother's name.
• 53:18
  I forget.
• 53:18
  The gay guy who later played Dexter.
• 53:20
  Yeah.
• 53:21
  He's in the hospital room with him, and there's a TV on, and
• 53:28
  y- what happens is Nate's lying there and, and he says he's got, you know,
• 53:32
  he's just had brain surgery, I think.
• 53:34
  Yeah.
• 53:34
  He had a stroke or something and, and, you know, his head's all
• 53:38
  bandaged and he's lying there, and he's watching this nature show, and
• 53:42
  the birds are diving into the water.
• 53:45
  And he says, "I'm so tired." And his brother says, "Well, just sleep.
• 53:49
  Every- I'll stay here.
• 53:50
  I'll be here when you wake up.
• 53:51
  Everything's cool." And, and then you see Nate's eyes close, and you go into
• 53:58
  his consciousness- Right … basically.
• 54:00
  It's kinda like he's, he's having a dream, and the dream, h- he, in
• 54:08
  the dream, he wakes up, but he's…
• 54:12
  And he's him, but he's, uh, he's not sick.
• 54:17
  It's a different life.
• 54:18
  Right.
• 54:19
  And there's a horn, a car honking, uh, is what wakes him up.
• 54:24
  This beep, beep- Mm … beep, beep.
• 54:27
  And he wakes up and, um, he goes downstairs, and it's his brother who
• 54:32
  in the, you know, real life, in the show, is this very trim, gay guy.
• 54:38
  Yeah.
• 54:38
  Always dressed with a suit and tie and all that.
• 54:40
  And, um, but in this life, he's like a kind of a hip surfer dude.
• 54:47
  He's like, "Yo, man, come on, we're going surfing.
• 54:50
  What are you doing?" He's like, "Oh, I was asleep," and like, and, "Get in the van,
• 54:54
  man." He jumps in the back of the van.
• 54:56
  And their dad is driving- Mm-hmm … who's dead.
• 54:59
  Right.
• 55:00
  Yeah.
• 55:00
  Who- whose death starts the show.
• 55:02
  Right.
• 55:03
  Right?
• 55:03
  Um, and they go, and I, I won't go through the whole thing, but it's, it's
• 55:07
  so hallucinatory and so fascinating.
• 55:12
  It captures the logic of the dream state better than anything I've ever seen.
• 55:17
  Yeah.
• 55:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 55:18
  I'll have to go back and watch that one.
• 55:19
  Oh, man, it's so good.
• 55:21
  Yeah.
• 55:21
  It's so moving.
• 55:22
  And, and, and the genius of it is that, you know, you're in Nate's consciousness,
• 55:30
  you're in Nate's dream- Mm-hmm
• 55:32
  but at some point, it shifts into his brother's consciousness.
• 55:39
  And so when it, at the end of it, it's his brother who wakes up, and
• 55:43
  you realize you're in his mind now.
• 55:46
  Huh.
• 55:46
  So there's like this mind meld.
• 55:48
  You, you pass from one consciousness to another- Right … in the
• 55:53
  dream that they're both having.
• 55:55
  Right.
• 55:56
  It, it's fucking crazy.
• 55:58
  It's inter- In Spanish- It was a great show … you don't say,
• 56:01
  "I had a, I dreamt of you." You say, "I dreamt with you." Huh.
• 56:07
  There's a lot of thing … I'm learning, trying to learn Spanish
• 56:09
  now, and there's a lot of things like that that are, like, interesting.
• 56:12
  I can't think of any offhand, but, like, the way that, you know, one culture
• 56:16
  says a sentence or the way that they express in a thought as opposed to
• 56:20
  the way America expresses a thought.
• 56:21
  It says so much about the way the culture actually- Yeah … you
• 56:23
  know, um- The way they think.
• 56:25
  Yeah.
• 56:25
  Well, Spanish, one really interesting thing is love.
• 56:29
  You can say love in different ways in Spanish.
• 56:32
  Right, right, right.
• 56:32
  There are different kinds of love.
• 56:34
  Right.
• 56:34
  Gusta, amor, right?
• 56:36
  Right.
• 56:36
  Right.
• 56:36
  Te amo o te quiero.
• 56:38
  Si.
• 56:39
  I want you.
• 56:40
  I love you.
• 56:41
  Like, you would never say … I, I mean, I don't think you would say
• 56:44
  to your mother te quiero, right?
• 56:46
  That, that's more of a- Right … desire-based love.
• 56:50
  Right.
• 56:50
  And we just- Whereas te amo is more spiritual love What would I say to
• 56:57
  my mother?
• 56:57
  Me gusta?
• 56:58
  I like my mother.
• 57:00
  Yeah.
• 57:01
  Yeah.
• 57:02
  A mi me gusta mi madre.
• 57:04
  Yeah.
• 57:04
  That's the, that's the phrase I know well 'cause of the Manu Chao song.
• 57:08
  It's like the- Oh, right.
• 57:09
  Yeah … the one, like, it's, I know lo- some of the, I know some of the
• 58:46
  They don't put the… Signs don't say.
• 58:48
  All the restaurants there, it just says, like the pig restaurants,
• 58:51
  you know, the pork restaurants, there's the picture of the pig.
• 58:53
  The cow restaurants, picture of the cow.
• 58:55
  There's no picture of a dog for the dog restaurant, but it says like,
• 58:58
  "Food for the good of the…" It's always about the male libido, a
• 59:02
  lot of these weird foods, you know?
• 59:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:03
  And they think that dog is good for like, you know, male libido.
• 59:07
  And my, I was, I was hard for like a week after I ate that dog.
• 59:10
  So, so it's true.
• 59:11
  It's true.
• 59:11
  It works.
• 59:13
  Yeah.
• 59:13
  Yeah, it's a strange thing in Asian cultures that, uh, the whole male
• 59:19
  virility seems to be a huge concern.
• 59:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:22
  You know, we're gonna eat ground-up tiger bones and bear paws and- It's
• 59:26
  always the weird things that are…
• 59:28
  It's always about- … snake.
• 59:29
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:29
  It's always about getting it up.
• 59:31
  It's like, is it… M- you know, maybe there's so much soy in the diet.
• 59:37
  There is a lot of soy.
• 59:38
  You know?
• 59:38
  But- And fermented food, yeah.
• 59:39
  Yeah.
• 59:40
  Well, fermented food's okay, but soy is an estrogenic compound.
• 59:44
  It has a lot of estrogen in it.
• 59:46
  So I, uh, too much soy can fuck with your testosterone.
• 59:52
  Oh, really?
• 59:52
  Yeah.
• 59:53
  Oh, how much soy is too much soy, I guess is the question, because I
• 59:55
  eat a lot of, I eat a lot of hummus.
• 59:57
  Is there soy in hummus?
• 59:59
  Like soybeans, yeah, isn't it?
• 1:00:00
  No, it's not.
• 1:00:01
  It's chickpeas.
• 1:00:01
  It's chickpeas.
• 1:00:01
  It's chickpeas.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah.
• 1:00:02
  Jesus Christ.
• 1:00:03
  Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Brains.
• 1:00:04
  No, you're okay.
• 1:00:05
  Brain, I'm all right.
• 1:00:05
  Yeah, I don't eat a lot of soybeans, so.
• 1:00:07
  I mean, edamame now and again, but… Yeah, soy, you know, to- tofu, tempeh.
• 1:00:12
  Oh, right.
• 1:00:13
  I'm not a big tofu- Soy sauce, obviously.
• 1:00:14
  Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  Right.
• 1:00:16
  Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  Um, what was I gonna say?
• 1:00:20
  Something about erections probably.
• 1:00:23
  No, no.
• 1:00:24
  No, nothing about erections.
• 1:00:26
  So, uh, so what's next for you?
• 1:00:28
  You, you're kinda like in a transitional period of your life?
• 1:00:33
  Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  I don't know.
• 1:00:34
  I'm trying, you know, I, I got laid off and, um, I decided to just lean into
• 1:00:39
  it and, uh- You're doing a podcast.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah, I started… I've been meaning to start this podcast for years and, uh,
• 1:00:45
  like 10 years ago, I had this thought of like, that I've met friend… I was
• 1:00:49
  living in New York at the time, and I, you know, had these friends that I met
• 1:00:51
  in New York, but I really knew nothing about their lives up until they met me.
• 1:00:55
  And so I actually did a bunch of recordings with, with my friends and was
• 1:00:58
  just like, "Let's sit down to do like just a recording interview." And it was
• 1:01:01
  super interesting, 'cause you get to know somebody, like their childhood and
• 1:01:03
  all that, and I thought, "Oh, there's something interesting here." And but
• 1:01:07
  didn't actually do it, and then my nephew, who's, uh, 15 now- 14, Dad.
• 1:01:13
  15. And, uh, he was visiting me this last spring and, you know, he's a teenager,
• 1:01:21
  so we weren't talking a whole lot.
• 1:01:22
  But then I was like, "Do you wanna record a podcast?" And as soon
• 1:01:25
  as he got those headphones on and the mic in front of him, he was
• 1:01:27
  opening up like he never had before.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  And I thought, "Oh, there's something, there's something here."
• 1:01:32
  And, uh, so yeah, I just tried to, started to, started to… I, I, you know, got
• 1:01:37
  some friends to do some interviews and then I got some other people that I just
• 1:01:40
  thought were interesting on the internet to come in, and then I did the travelogue
• 1:01:44
  as I was traveling across the country.
• 1:01:45
  I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the podcast is, but
• 1:01:48
  generally it's, like, uh, me trying to find connection after working
• 1:01:52
  alone for four and a half years.
• 1:01:54
  Mm. And also giving other people a chance to connect, but also
• 1:01:57
  exploring the idea of connection.
• 1:01:59
  I don't know.
• 1:02:00
  I'm still figuring it out, but people seem to like it.
• 1:02:02
  What's it called?
• 1:02:03
  1fjef.
• 1:02:04
  1fjef?
• 1:02:04
  Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Oh.
• 1:02:06
  I didn't know what to call it, and then somebody was like… You know,
• 1:02:08
  you… 'Cause I'm on the internet, my us- my, my handle's always 1fjef.
• 1:02:11
  Like, my website's 1fjef, all the- Right.
• 1:02:13
  And so they're like, "You should just call it 1fjef." So why do
• 1:02:16
  you have one F in your name?
• 1:02:17
  'Cause I took… 'Cause I was pretentious when I was in college-
• 1:02:20
  Oh … and I took the other F off.
• 1:02:21
  Really?
• 1:02:22
  Yeah.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah.
• 1:02:23
  Okay.
• 1:02:23
  And actually, I interviewed a guy on my last episode who's
• 1:02:26
  also named Jef Taylor with one F.
• 1:02:28
  Really?
• 1:02:28
  Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  There's actually a few of them.
• 1:02:30
  I'm friends on Facebook.
• 1:02:31
  Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  Oh.
• 1:02:31
  So anyway, I interviewed him just because it was, you know, it was funny.
• 1:02:33
  And, uh, he took his off for the same exact reason.
• 1:02:36
  He was in college and he was pretentious.
• 1:02:38
  He took the other F off.
• 1:02:39
  So, uh, yeah.
• 1:02:41
  Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  I mean, I don't know.
• 1:02:43
  That, that's… It seems ineffective as far as pretentious gestures go.
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, but I've saved a lot of time 'cause I don't have to write that second F. Yeah.
• 1:02:50
  Like, over the years that adds up.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah.
• 1:02:52
  So, um- Yeah.
• 1:02:53
  It'll, that'll add up.
• 1:02:54
  And it's pronounced the same.
• 1:02:55
  That's what I'm saying.
• 1:02:56
  It seems like if you wanna be pretentious, you need to force people
• 1:03:00
  to pronounce something differently.
• 1:03:02
  I mean, as a joke sometimes I'll be like- Like, it's not Jef … "No,
• 1:03:03
  it's actually Jef." You- You clip it.
• 1:03:05
  You gotta clip it a- It's Jef or something, you know?
• 1:03:07
  Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  No.
• 1:03:08
  I'm just gonna go… It's worked w- it's worked out well, 'cause this was
• 1:03:11
  like, when I first, when I did it, it was like '90s, mid-'90s, so… And the
• 1:03:14
  internet wasn't really a big thing then.
• 1:03:16
  But as it turns out, like, for my, uh, video editing stuff and
• 1:03:20
  all that, it's been very great.
• 1:03:21
  'Cause there's a ton of Jef Taylors.
• 1:03:22
  Right.
• 1:03:22
  But, you know, just one F, Jef Taylor, it's like I get the first result.
• 1:03:26
  There aren't that many.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  So is your email Jef with one F Taylor- @ … @gmail.com?
• 1:03:32
  Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  Really?
• 1:03:33
  You got, you got it?
• 1:03:34
  I got it.
• 1:03:34
  Wow.
• 1:03:35
  Yeah.
• 1:03:35
  I was, I was in there early.
• 1:03:37
  The other one Jef, onefjefs- Jef must be pissed off … yeah.
• 1:03:40
  I've had people offer me to buy the URL, onefjef.com, for like
• 1:03:43
  3,000 bucks and- Oh … mm-mm, nah.
• 1:03:46
  My- the number's gotta be higher than that.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Oh, you got the URL too?
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:49
  Oh, okay.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah.
• 1:03:52
  Wow.
• 1:03:53
  Yeah.
• 1:03:53
  Sometimes I get annoyed 'cause there'll be like a new platform comes out and I'll
• 1:03:56
  have to get like onefjef something else.
• 1:03:58
  I'll have to add like 73 'cause that's the year I was born or something stupid.
• 1:04:01
  Mm. And that frustrates me because I don't- You're accustomed to just-
• 1:04:04
  Yeah … being that guy … I wanted to be the only onefjef, but, uh,
• 1:04:07
  you know, you have to- It's a sense of entitlement- Yeah, a little bit
• 1:04:09
  that I'm detecting here, onefjef.
• 1:04:11
  Protecting my brand.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:13
  But it feels dark to say just protecting my brand, but- … this
• 1:04:16
  is the world we live in right now.
• 1:04:17
  Um, so.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:21
  So yeah.
• 1:04:21
  Um, but the podcast has been great 'cause like I'm not good at, you know,
• 1:04:25
  s- you know, you work alone and I'm not, I was not great about reaching
• 1:04:28
  out to people and like, you know, I, I live alone in my house and, um.
• 1:04:32
  And yeah, it was really isolating.
• 1:04:34
  And, uh, it's been really good to like… I mean, it feels good to sit down and talk
• 1:04:38
  to somebody for an hour or two and, um, kind of go deep with them and, you know,
• 1:04:42
  give them space to tell their story too.
• 1:04:43
  'Cause I feel like- Mm … a lot of people don't… How often
• 1:04:46
  do you sit down and like…
• 1:04:48
  Are you like forced to sit down and just talk to somebody?
• 1:04:50
  Like, we have to continue talking.
• 1:04:52
  If this conversation starts to die, we gotta keep it going, you know?
• 1:04:55
  Mm. Uh, and that's unlike any other kinda situation.
• 1:04:58
  You know?
• 1:04:58
  Like you're at a bar talking to a friend, the conversation kinda dies out,
• 1:05:00
  and you're like, "All right, well…"
• 1:05:02
  Um, and yeah, I kinda think that's where it gets into interesting places,
• 1:05:05
  you know, when you're continue, when you're like forced to keep going, that's
• 1:05:08
  when you start to get interesting.
• 1:05:11
  You ever hitchhike?
• 1:05:12
  No, no.
• 1:05:14
  Um- I, I think podcasting's a lot like, it reminds me a lot of hitchhiking
• 1:05:18
  because of what you're talking about.
• 1:05:20
  That there's like a, there's an aspect of it that's kind of contrived and forced- Mm
• 1:05:27
  … that, you know, here we are in this car and- Right … I want, I don't want you to
• 1:05:30
  kick me out- Right … 'cause it's raining out there- I need to be entertaining
• 1:05:33
  for you … and it's dark- Yeah … and I'm trying to get to, you know, wherever
• 1:05:35
  the hell I'm trying to get to, and yeah.
• 1:05:37
  So y- there, there's, I don't know.
• 1:05:41
  I mean, I guess it, it's, it's the kinda thing that for me started
• 1:05:44
  out, the hitchhiking, it starts out
• 1:05:48
  with some fake sincerity- Uh-huh … in the sense that, "Oh, hey, I'm gonna
• 1:05:54
  pretend I'm interested in you because you stopped and picked me up." And-
• 1:05:57
  Right, right … you know, even though you're not the kind of person I would
• 1:05:59
  ever really talk to in normal life.
• 1:06:02
  Right.
• 1:06:03
  But then after doing that for a while, I, I found that my sincerity
• 1:06:07
  wasn't fake, that I was actually really interested in these people.
• 1:06:11
  Mm. And the exposure to these, to people I would never have come across otherwise-
• 1:06:18
  Yeah … was actually really interesting.
• 1:06:21
  And you find places like of connection, right?
• 1:06:24
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:25
  Or, or just like- Yeah, I mean, I guess that, that's a good way
• 1:06:30
  to, to say it, is connection.
• 1:06:31
  But it's also appreciation for someone that's totally alien to me.
• 1:06:39
  Right.
• 1:06:39
  You know?
• 1:06:40
  Right.
• 1:06:40
  Um, you know, a lot of… I, I hitchhiked when I was very young.
• 1:06:44
  I was in college.
• 1:06:46
  I hitched a- across America a couple times, and from Montreal
• 1:06:49
  to New York, uh And from Seattle to LA, I guess That's ballsy.
• 1:06:57
  I mean, back then I guess it wasn't as … It seems more nefarious or dangerous now.
• 1:06:59
  It was pretty, it was, it was the end- Yeah, yeah … of hitchhiking.
• 1:07:03
  Right.
• 1:07:03
  It was the early '80s.
• 1:07:04
  Mm. So it was definitely, you know, we were into the, you know, w- well,
• 1:07:10
  well beyond the Zodiac Killer and Well, it was a little bit, yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Yeah … all that shit.
• 1:07:15
  Uh, I wouldn't do it now, uh, if I were young.
• 1:07:19
  I, I mean, I'd do it here, you know, where you know everybody, but.
• 1:07:23
  Right.
• 1:07:24
  Um, but yeah, the, the people that I met, I met some real interesting characters
• 1:07:30
  that I never would've met otherwise.
• 1:07:34
  You know, lonely, closeted gay guys.
• 1:07:38
  A lot of it's that.
• 1:07:40
  Um- And would they tell you?
• 1:07:41
  Like, if you're, you're, if you're going, would they s- would they tell
• 1:07:43
  you that they're gay at a certain point, or was it just- Uh, different-
• 1:07:47
  'Cause in the '80s it was a different- … situations … mm-hmm But a lot of it
• 1:07:50
  was, you know, I, I remember just this feeling of sadness of like, you know,
• 1:07:56
  a guy in his 50s or 60s, kinda like conservative Christian guys just out
• 1:08:05
  cruising around looking for like to have a connection with someone who doesn't
• 1:08:12
  know him, has no way of- Oh, right.
• 1:08:14
  Right … you know, the total anonymity.
• 1:08:16
  Right You know, and they'd, uh, generally they'd hint at it and, you know … So
• 1:08:23
  you have a girlfriend, you know.
• 1:08:24
  Oh, I see.
• 1:08:24
  So sometimes you were getting picked up because they thought you could … Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:27
  Like, the, the, they would, you know.
• 1:08:30
  Um, yeah, there was that, and a lot of it was, you know, uh,
• 1:08:35
  kinda Christian, like, charity.
• 1:08:38
  Right Like, you know- Right … I'll stop 'cause you need help, and also I'm gonna
• 1:08:41
  tell you about Christ- Yeah … and- Yeah … you're gonna see the light
• 1:08:45
  and all that, which was always an interesting thing to finesse, you know?
• 1:08:50
  Right.
• 1:08:51
  Right.
• 1:08:51
  Because you don't wanna- Right … tell them, like, "I'm a…" You don't
• 1:08:54
  wanna close, like- Yeah, yeah
• 1:08:55
  you want them to think there's a chance of a sale.
• 1:08:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:58
  You know?
• 1:08:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:59
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Until you get to your exit or whatever.
• 1:09:01
  At a certain point, yeah.
• 1:09:03
  Yeah.
• 1:09:03
  Yeah.
• 1:09:04
  I remember one, one guy, uh, it must've been, like, in Nevada or somewhere, like
• 1:09:09
  way out in the desert, like desolate, and he was laying the Christian thing
• 1:09:15
  on real heavy, and I don't remember what happened, if, if he was being
• 1:09:21
  aggressive with me or threatening or what, but I got kinda pissed off
• 1:09:27
  and was just like, "Okay," you know?
• 1:09:30
  Uh, enough of that.
• 1:09:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:31
  Like, the, the drugs.
• 1:09:32
  Drop me off here.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah.
• 1:09:33
  Yeah.
• 1:09:33
  And he's like, "Okay, yeah." And he pulled over and dropped me
• 1:09:36
  off, and then I realized that I was … Like, there was a prison there.
• 1:09:40
  And there were all these signs saying, "Do not pick up hitchhikers." Wah, wah, wah.
• 1:09:43
  And I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna walk 30 miles now."
• 1:09:46
  Yeah.
• 1:09:47
  Uh Yeah, great.
• 1:09:48
  Joke's on you.
• 1:09:49
  Yeah.
• 1:09:50
  It turns out Christ was the way.
• 1:09:53
  Yeah.
• 1:09:53
  I took the wrong way.
• 1:09:54
  Yeah, I dated a born-again Christian when I was in my 20s.
• 1:09:57
  Um, that was interesting.
• 1:09:59
  Wait, didn't you tell me something … Was that in Korea?
• 1:10:02
  No.
• 1:10:03
  You had … You dated someone in Korea that was- I mean, I was living in
• 1:10:06
  Korea when we were dating, but we da- started dating in Cleveland before that.
• 1:10:09
  Oh.
• 1:10:09
  Um, but yeah, she was born again.
• 1:10:11
  She, she went to, she moved to Israel, uh, to Jerusalem to go get
• 1:10:15
  her master's in religious studies.
• 1:10:16
  Oh.
• 1:10:17
  And, uh, I moved to South Korea to teach English.
• 1:10:19
  Right.
• 1:10:19
  And, um, and yeah, so she, at one point, we were talking about getting
• 1:10:23
  married, and she said she couldn't marry somebody who wasn't a Christian.
• 1:10:27
  And I really loved this woman, uh, so I was like, "Well, I should at least find
• 1:10:31
  out. Maybe I'll, I'll try. Let me give it a shot." So I read the entire Bible.
• 1:10:35
  Whole thing.
• 1:10:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:36
  Quite boring, frankly.
• 1:10:37
  Um- Yeah … and, uh, and thought about it and, you know, tried praying and stuff.
• 1:10:42
  And at the end of it, I didn't … It didn't take.
• 1:10:45
  Didn't take.
• 1:10:46
  Um, too many- … too many problems.
• 1:10:49
  Um, but turns out she ended up meeting a Jewish guy in- Right … in
• 1:10:51
  Israel, and falling in love with this Jewish guy, and then she moved to
• 1:10:54
  New York and converted to Judaism.
• 1:10:56
  So she's a Jew now.
• 1:10:58
  And what were you raised as?
• 1:11:00
  I was raised Catholic, and I guess I'm still a Catholic according to the rules.
• 1:11:03
  'Cause you, you got baptized.
• 1:11:05
  Uh, confirmed is the thing.
• 1:11:06
  You have to get- Oh, you were confirmed?
• 1:11:08
  You have to get confirmed, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:08
  Oh, I never got confirmed.
• 1:11:10
  Oh, well, you're not a Christian then.
• 1:11:11
  But I am circumcised, so- Yeah, I mean, I mean, they- … that's something
• 1:11:14
  … circumcised us all back then.
• 1:11:15
  Yeah.
• 1:11:15
  Let's just be clear, yeah.
• 1:11:16
  Yeah.
• 1:11:17
  Unfortunately.
• 1:11:18
  I mean, you should get some credit for that.
• 1:11:20
  Jesus.
• 1:11:20
  You would think so.
• 1:11:21
  Jesus.
• 1:11:22
  I mean, what kind of credit?
• 1:11:24
  You know, a few heaven credits.
• 1:11:26
  Yeah, maybe we'll get a more comfortable cloud up there.
• 1:11:28
  Yeah.
• 1:11:28
  You ever hear that Louis C.K. joke where he's like, "Wouldn't
• 1:11:30
  it be funny if you, like, go to heaven, and you're like, 'Really?
• 1:11:33
  It's, like, a guy with a beard and everything?'" Like, come on.
• 1:11:36
  Oh.
• 1:11:40
  Yeah.
• 1:11:40
  Louis C.K.'s not going to heaven.
• 1:11:43
  Um, yeah, I mean, those are all tricky ones, that whole, that whole cancel
• 1:11:48
  culture something that happened back then.
• 1:11:49
  It got a little out of control.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah.
• 1:11:51
  The wor- for me, the worst was the case of a psychiatrist at Columbia.
• 1:11:57
  He taught at Columbia University.
• 1:12:00
  He was, um, you know, on the board of all these hospitals,
• 1:12:05
  very prominent psychiatrist.
• 1:12:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:07
  And there was a photograph on Instagram of this model from,
• 1:12:12
  I think she's from Ethiopia.
• 1:12:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:15
  And she's known as, like, the Ebony Queen or something.
• 1:12:19
  Like, she's Black, Black, Black.
• 1:12:22
  Sure.
• 1:12:22
  Right?
• 1:12:22
  Totally Black.
• 1:12:24
  And that's kinda her claim to fame, that she's… Obviously, she's beautiful,
• 1:12:29
  but she's also extremely Black.
• 1:12:31
  Very dark skin, right.
• 1:12:32
  And there was a photograph, uh, that she posted or someone posted of her,
• 1:12:38
  I don't remember, um, like sitting at the edge of a bed with white sheets
• 1:12:43
  and white pillowcases and a white wall- Uh-huh … behind her, and so
• 1:12:46
  her, you know, the exposure- Yeah, yeah … of the photograph really
• 1:12:49
  accentuates her, the darkness of her skin.
• 1:12:52
  And people were commenting how beautiful it was and, you know, s- whatever,
• 1:12:58
  and this guy said, um, "Whether a freak of nature or not, she's
• 1:13:04
  certainly a beautiful woman." Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:08
  He got fired from all his positions.
• 1:13:10
  Huh.
• 1:13:10
  He was, you know, publicly humiliated.
• 1:13:13
  She claimed to be, you know, devastated by being- Of course
• 1:13:17
  called a freak.
• 1:13:18
  Of course.
• 1:13:19
  And- I mean, it's not the best wording, let's be clear, but, like, th- that's,
• 1:13:23
  that's an over, overresponse, yeah.
• 1:13:24
  Yeah.
• 1:13:24
  Well, LeBron James is a freak of nature.
• 1:13:28
  Mike Tyson's- Right … a freak of nature.
• 1:13:29
  Right, yeah.
• 1:13:30
  Uh, you know, uh, the guy who holds the world record for the
• 1:13:34
  100-meter dash is a freak of nature.
• 1:13:36
  Right.
• 1:13:36
  Of course.
• 1:13:36
  There's nothing inherently negative about saying someone's a freak of nature.
• 1:13:40
  It just means they're outside of the normal distribution of any given trait.
• 1:13:45
  Sure.
• 1:13:45
  I guess it's probably, in this case, it was probably because the
• 1:13:48
  trait was Blackness, you know?
• 1:13:49
  Right.
• 1:13:50
  Right.
• 1:13:50
  Which- Right … you know, nobody's preten- uh, there's nothing
• 1:13:53
  inherently negative about being Black.
• 1:13:55
  No, of course not.
• 1:13:56
  So- But that actually, you're right.
• 1:13:57
  I mean, that actually- So I don't see what his sin is.
• 1:13:59
  I don't see what his crime is.
• 1:14:01
  No.
• 1:14:01
  It, it, it's like I don't get it.
• 1:14:04
  It, it seems to me that the people who are offended are expressing racism, not him.
• 1:14:09
  Right.
• 1:14:10
  That's interesting.
• 1:14:11
  Right?
• 1:14:11
  I mean, I could certainly understand why that would blow up as an offensive thing,
• 1:14:15
  but if you actually dig into it, then…
• 1:14:18
  He wasn't expressing racism.
• 1:14:20
  He was simply saying, "She is one of the darkest skinned
• 1:14:24
  people I've ever seen." Mm-hmm.
• 1:14:27
  Therefore, she's outside of the normal distribution of that particular trait.
• 1:14:32
  But it's… There's nothing inherently negative about it, unless
• 1:14:36
  you think being Black is negative.
• 1:14:38
  Right.
• 1:14:39
  Right?
• 1:14:39
  Yeah, I get it.
• 1:14:39
  Yeah.
• 1:14:39
  If someone's seven feet tall, you say, "Well, wow, he's a freak of nature,"
• 1:14:44
  but you're not saying, you know, there's something inherently inferior about that.
• 1:14:49
  It's the freak word that I think… It's the freak is a weird word, 'cause
• 1:14:52
  it could be positive or negative in a way, you know what I mean?
• 1:14:54
  Sure.
• 1:14:55
  Um- Rick James, super freak.
• 1:14:57
  Right.
• 1:14:57
  Right.
• 1:14:58
  She's super freaky.
• 1:14:59
  And then it turns out he's got a woman chained up in his basement.
• 1:15:03
  That's right.
• 1:15:04
  He sure did.
• 1:15:05
  He went to prison for that.
• 1:15:06
  He sure, sure did.
• 1:15:07
  I don't know if she was a super freak or you're the super freak, Rick.
• 1:15:10
  Yeah.
• 1:15:11
  If you're Rick super freak, there's probably something going on.
• 1:15:13
  Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:14
  Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  Um- Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:15:16
  I, I, I mean, you know, just talking about cancel culture.
• 1:15:19
  That, that one was so unjust, and the Aziz Ansari one.
• 1:15:23
  Like, what was his sin?
• 1:15:25
  There's a lot of them.
• 1:15:25
  They kind of- It was ridiculous … got out of hand.
• 1:15:27
  Um, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:29
  Woody Allen, I just r- heard an interview with Woody Allen the other day.
• 1:15:32
  I listened to one.
• 1:15:33
  It was, he was on, like, the Bill Maher podcast, yeah.
• 1:15:35
  Oh, I didn't, I, I didn't see.
• 1:15:37
  I, I saw some clips of that, but I guess he's doing the rounds 'cause-
• 1:15:40
  He has a book … he has a novel out.
• 1:15:41
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:41
  The one I heard was with Barry Weiss on, uh- Hmm … Free Press.
• 1:15:45
  Right.
• 1:15:46
  Um, but it was interesting 'cause, you know, she asked him about all the…
• 1:15:50
  I guess Bill Maher probably did, too, but all the, you know, controversy about
• 1:15:55
  things he was accused of and all that.
• 1:15:57
  And it was really interesting because he was so He was so chill about it I
• 1:16:03
  know, the same thing on Bill Maher too.
• 1:16:04
  Yeah, he's like… Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  And it's, 'cause he's like this famously neurotic, you know, if you
• 1:16:09
  said neurotic American man, Woody Allen would probably be what comes- Yeah
• 1:16:14
  to most people's mind.
• 1:16:15
  Right.
• 1:16:16
  And yet here he is being, you know, vilified publicly, and he was basically
• 1:16:21
  like, "Eh, I know I didn't do it, and I don't really care." Yeah.
• 1:16:25
  That's basic- Yeah, Wood- that's what he, what he said.
• 1:16:26
  And I, I, and like I think Woody Allen's kind of… I mean, what,
• 1:16:29
  marrying your stepdaughter's a weird, it's a weird thing to do.
• 1:16:32
  Sure But, um, it's not- But not illegal No, not at all.
• 1:16:34
  And I don't think he did the, the other stuff, but- Yeah … um, but
• 1:16:38
  that's, nobody wants to hear that.
• 1:16:39
  They wanna hear that he's bad.
• 1:16:41
  Um- Yeah … which, you know.
• 1:16:43
  And the funny thing about the, the Bill Maher one was like at one point
• 1:16:46
  he said, uh, he was asking about Trump, and he was like, "Yeah."
• 1:16:51
  Woody Allen said something to the effect of like, "Yeah, I would like to
• 1:16:53
  work with Trump 'cause I would like to direct him." And he was kinda saying
• 1:16:55
  that, "I would wanna d- direct him and make him do better things." But
• 1:16:58
  of course the media's headline was, "Woody Allen says he wants to work
• 1:17:01
  with Woody A- or with, with Trump."
• 1:17:03
  Right.
• 1:17:03
  And it's like, come on.
• 1:17:05
  Come on.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah.
• 1:17:06
  The mainstream media is the problem Yeah.
• 1:17:10
  Yeah, you can't win with the media.
• 1:17:12
  Yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Although you've been on the other side of that, right?
• 1:17:14
  You've- Yeah, and I, th- so they're, they're, I think, a big part of the
• 1:17:17
  problem too, that 24-hour news cycle and the, uh, the nonstop punditry,
• 1:17:21
  and we have to, we have to be divided.
• 1:17:23
  We have to have… There's no middle ground.
• 1:17:25
  There's, you have to stay on either side of this because
• 1:17:26
  that's the way we like you to be.
• 1:17:28
  We want you to hate each other so much that you're not paying
• 1:17:31
  attention to the way we're continuing to fleece the country,
• 1:17:34
  um, and profit off of our offices.
• 1:17:37
  Uh, yeah.
• 1:17:39
  And the media's even complicit because then the corporate,
• 1:17:41
  you know, the corporate money.
• 1:17:42
  It's all- Of course, yeah … the political media complex and all that.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah.
• 1:17:44
  They make money from the drama.
• 1:17:47
  Yeah, and yeah.
• 1:17:49
  Trump's making a fortune off of this presidency.
• 1:17:51
  I mean, it's… Like, the number of things that he's done that, like,
• 1:17:54
  if Democrats even tried to do it, it would be like, "Are you kidding me?"
• 1:17:57
  Yeah.
• 1:17:58
  Like, yeah.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:00
  Yeah.
• 1:18:00
  I, I saw a quote from, uh, Hannah Ar- Ardent.
• 1:18:05
  Arendt, I think.
• 1:18:07
  Arendt.
• 1:18:07
  That's what I always thought.
• 1:18:07
  That's what I always thought it was, Hannah Arendt.
• 1:18:09
  It's D-T, isn't it?
• 1:18:10
  H, or… Anyway.
• 1:18:11
  She should've changed her name.
• 1:18:13
  Yeah, just to make it easier for people to say.
• 1:18:14
  Take, take that last T off.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  It, it's a name I've read thousands of times, but never really
• 1:18:20
  heard pronounced, I don't think.
• 1:18:22
  Uh, but she said something about how, you know, I guess she was
• 1:18:27
  talking about the rise of fascism.
• 1:18:29
  Mm. Um, but she said something about how, uh, the, the sort of embrace of cruelty
• 1:18:37
  and, and the like um, like adolescent delight in, um, flouting- Mm-hmm
• 1:18:46
  conventional norms and all that, um, was refreshing for people because
• 1:18:52
  it exposed the hypocrisy upon which the culture had been based.
• 1:18:57
  Mm. And, and I feel like that's really what's going on now, where
• 1:19:01
  it's- Mm-hmm … you know, what we're talking about with the sort
• 1:19:04
  of- The sort of polite country club corruption that's been going on- Uh-huh
• 1:19:10
  for decades and decades.
• 1:19:12
  Right.
• 1:19:12
  Right, let's take the mask off.
• 1:19:13
  And then, yeah, and someone comes along and says, "Well, no. Well, of course I
• 1:19:17
  don't pay taxes. I'm not stupid." Right.
• 1:19:19
  You know?
• 1:19:20
  Right.
• 1:19:21
  Why would I pay taxes?
• 1:19:22
  I'm a millionaire.
• 1:19:23
  I hire people to make sure I don't pay taxes.
• 1:19:25
  Like, that's… There's something refreshing about that.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah, and the only reason he could do that is 'cause he had his mo-
• 1:19:29
  he had all his own money, you know?
• 1:19:31
  Like, he's a rich guy.
• 1:19:32
  His dad's money.
• 1:19:33
  So, right, his dad's money.
• 1:19:34
  Yeah.
• 1:19:34
  But whatever.
• 1:19:35
  Um, yeah, so he could, he could say, "Fuck you" to everybody,
• 1:19:39
  um- Yeah … which he kinda did.
• 1:19:41
  Well, yeah.
• 1:19:41
  He's ac- I mean, that, to me, there's…
• 1:19:45
  As I despise Trump, but there are things about him that are refreshing.
• 1:19:50
  One of them is all these people who have fuck-you money who
• 1:19:54
  never say, "Fuck you." Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:56
  Including the people who aren't saying, "Fuck you" to Trump right now.
• 1:19:59
  Mm. Which is why he doesn't respect them.
• 1:20:00
  Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  It's like- Yeah … if Jef Bezos can't say, "Fuck you" to Trump, who can?
• 1:20:05
  You know?
• 1:20:06
  Or Musk- Yeah … or whatever.
• 1:20:07
  It's like, what, what is the purpose of all that money if it
• 1:20:10
  doesn't buy you the freedom from having to kiss somebody's ass?
• 1:20:14
  Well, you want more money.
• 1:20:15
  I think that's the thing.
• 1:20:16
  But why?
• 1:20:16
  I, I think- It doesn't… If, if this mo… It's like,
• 1:20:19
  it's like having more food.
• 1:20:21
  You can't eat more food.
• 1:20:23
  Right, but I think that, like, there's an emptiness in a lot of
• 1:20:26
  these people's souls, and a lot of people just in general, that they're
• 1:20:29
  trying to fill with something.
• 1:20:31
  And I think that, you know, the line always, you know,
• 1:20:32
  the bar keeps going up, right?
• 1:20:34
  So I think that once you start accumulating money, or even becoming
• 1:20:37
  successful in any field, you keep wanting to get higher and higher,
• 1:20:40
  and I think it becomes somewhat of an addiction, because if you're
• 1:20:42
  not your money, then who are you?
• 1:20:43
  Then I have to examine myself and try to, you know, realize, 'cause
• 1:20:46
  the happiness doesn't come, 'cause they're still not happy and they
• 1:20:48
  still have more and more money.
• 1:20:50
  You know what I'm saying?
• 1:20:52
  This is a good time for a commercial break.
• 1:20:54
  Uh, those of you who are not- I think I have to- … supporting the podcast
• 1:20:57
  at $5 a month or $50 a year are really missing out, 'cause I need that money.
• 1:21:02
  I need it so bad.
• 1:21:03
  Please, please send me your money.
• 1:21:07
  I need more Yeti cups.
• 1:21:10
  Wow, that's quite a commercial you just did there.
• 1:21:13
  I think you're gonna get quite a few more subscribers from that.
• 1:21:15
  You think so?
• 1:21:15
  Yeah.
• 1:21:16
  You think people are gonna sign up?
• 1:21:16
  You'll get them to do it.
• 1:21:17
  Yeah.
• 1:21:17
  I've got nine Yeti cups.
• 1:21:19
  I need 11.
• 1:21:21
  I need- Why do you, why do you need so many Yeti cups?
• 1:21:23
  'Cause I need to drink 11 cups of coffee at the same time.
• 1:21:27
  Oh.
• 1:21:27
  I might have 11, 11 people come by, who knows?
• 1:21:30
  Oh, so it's just in case.
• 1:21:31
  Just send me your money.
• 1:21:33
  Yeah.
• 1:21:33
  The … Don't … It doesn't matter what I'm gonna do with it.
• 1:21:35
  Yeah, my mom has a lot of plastic cups in her
• 1:21:37
  I'm like, she has, like, tons of these plastic cups.
• 1:21:39
  And I'm always like, "Why do you have … " She's like, "But if some … What if
• 1:21:42
  all these people come over?" Yeah.
• 1:21:43
  Like, so she has 100 cups ready, at the ready for the big party that's
• 1:21:47
  suddenly gonna happen at her house.
• 1:21:48
  I don't know.
• 1:21:49
  I, I'm not very, uh … I, I'm, I'm kind of anti-consumer in most things, but
• 1:21:54
  I do have a, a problem with Yeti cups.
• 1:21:56
  Huh, interesting.
• 1:21:57
  Anya has pointed it out.
• 1:21:58
  She's like, "You got another fucking Yeti cup?" I have one and I never use it.
• 1:22:02
  Why not?
• 1:22:03
  Because I use … I don't, I don't drink coffee out of those, number one.
• 1:22:05
  I drink out of a mug, right?
• 1:22:07
  Yeah.
• 1:22:07
  And I just carry my water bottle, which is a Hydro Flask brand, if we're gonna go.
• 1:22:11
  Oh, you're a Hydro Flask boy.
• 1:22:13
  I'm a Hydro Flask boy.
• 1:22:14
  Yeah.
• 1:22:14
  Yes.
• 1:22:15
  Yes.
• 1:22:15
  What is it?
• 1:22:16
  The VSCO girls, that's what they … You know, the VSCO girls would … And
• 1:22:19
  it was, like, a thing five years ago.
• 1:22:21
  And it's, like, a baggy sweatshirt and a Hydro Flask with stickers on it.
• 1:22:26
  Um, so yeah, I guess I'm a VSCO boy.
• 1:22:30
  In some way, yeah Maybe you're about to go VSCO trans on us.
• 1:22:34
  I don't think so.
• 1:22:38
  You got the stickers.
• 1:22:39
  I don't feel that in me, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:40
  You do have a lot of stickers.
• 1:22:41
  I don't think the stickers necessarily mean that I'm trans.
• 1:22:44
  So what's coming up in your, uh, on your podcast?
• 1:22:47
  Do you have- Um- Do you sort of plan guests, or you just meet 'em as you go?
• 1:22:51
  Uh, yeah, no, I plan 'em out.
• 1:22:54
  Like, I'm arranging a few interviews, but, like, this one I'm just recording,
• 1:22:57
  um… A lot of people say that they like to hear me just, like… 'Cause
• 1:23:00
  when I was on the road trip, I just kind of would be driving and rambling
• 1:23:02
  about wherever I was, and, you know.
• 1:23:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:04
  Um, and a lot of people say they really love that.
• 1:23:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:07
  So I'm trying to do more of those, uh, and, like, not make
• 1:23:10
  it just about… Have you ever heard the podcast of Rumble Strip?
• 1:23:14
  No.
• 1:23:14
  So it's a really great podcast out of, uh, Vermont.
• 1:23:16
  This woman does these, like, kind of, um, audio diary kind of things where
• 1:23:20
  she'll… I don't know how to describe.
• 1:23:22
  Some of them are just her thoughts, but some of them are interviews with
• 1:23:23
  people, and some of them are, like, talking about a place and talking to
• 1:23:26
  different people at that place, like this pond that they all went to, and
• 1:23:29
  it's really interesting storytelling.
• 1:23:30
  But, um, it kind of inspired me in a way to see what I could do and do
• 1:23:35
  different things and try to, you know, make it whatever it wants to be, but
• 1:23:38
  that makes it hard for people to under- Like, I need people to understand
• 1:23:41
  what they're gonna get into when they start listening to the thing.
• 1:23:43
  So at some point I need to, like, have some sort of a concept, but I don't know.
• 1:23:50
  I'm, s- only 20 episodes in, so.
• 1:23:52
  I don't know if you really need a concept There's all the information
• 1:23:57
  on the internet about podcasting.
• 1:23:58
  It really is too much for me because, you know, there's a lot of people that
• 1:24:01
  are like, "A big problem with your…" Y- y- you know, you need to have a
• 1:24:04
  very fairly specific… If you're just like, "Conversations with interesting
• 1:24:07
  people," people are like, "Oh, that's every fucking podcast, right?"
• 1:24:11
  Um, so n- yeah.
• 1:24:14
  It can't… It needs to be more than that.
• 1:24:15
  But then I looked at your description, and yours is very simple.
• 1:24:18
  Yours is just like, you know, one sentence and very straight and to the point.
• 1:24:21
  And kind of sarcastic, if I remember.
• 1:24:24
  It didn't feel sarcastic.
• 1:24:25
  I- isn't it like small batch, handcrafted?
• 1:24:30
  I'm sort of making fun of that whole- No, I don't think it is
• 1:24:33
  no?
• 1:24:33
  I think it's more sincere.
• 1:24:34
  Maybe you changed it without remembering.
• 1:24:35
  Oh.
• 1:24:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:36
  Yeah, could be.
• 1:24:36
  I'll look it up, but… Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  I, I mean, I don't know.
• 1:24:40
  I, I have seen that advice that, you know, you gotta be specific
• 1:24:43
  'cause you're trying to capture a, you know, people who are interested
• 1:24:47
  in chainsaw art, you know- Right
• 1:24:49
  or whatever.
• 1:24:49
  Right, right, right.
• 1:24:50
  Um, but I feel like there's another realm in which it's just people
• 1:24:56
  get used to you, and they just wanna- Yeah … hang out with you.
• 1:25:00
  Right, and I think that's kind of the line I'm trying to walk on.
• 1:25:02
  'Cause my mom wants me to just do me talking 'cause she
• 1:25:04
  was … I was on the road trip.
• 1:25:05
  She's like, she at first she w- she was the first person that r- responded to
• 1:25:09
  the podcast, and she was like, "Couldn't get through it. Maybe it's just my age."
• 1:25:14
  And I was really, it really upset me 'cause it was like the very first review.
• 1:25:16
  Oh.
• 1:25:16
  It's my mother.
• 1:25:17
  And she's the one who said you nailed it with the movie.
• 1:25:19
  Yeah, but then I actually thought about it, 'cause it really bothered me, and
• 1:25:22
  then I thought about it, and a couple days later, like I called her up, and
• 1:25:25
  I was like, "Mom," or I texted her or something, and I was like, "Mom, like,
• 1:25:28
  I know you didn't mean it, and I know you maybe don't entirely do podcasts
• 1:25:31
  or whatever, but like, it really kind of hurt my feelings when you…
• 1:25:33
  I put a lot of work into this," blah, blah, blah.
• 1:25:35
  And she was like, "I'm so sorry." And then she texted me like two days later.
• 1:25:38
  She's like, "Well, I listened to more podcasts, and now I understand what they
• 1:25:41
  are, and yours is very good, Daniel."
• 1:25:45
  Sounds like my mother.
• 1:25:46
  Um, yeah, and now she loves it.
• 1:25:47
  Now she's like, "Oh, I love your podcast.
• 1:25:49
  It's just like you're sitting and talking to me." And I'm like, "All right." Yeah.
• 1:25:51
  Yeah.
• 1:25:52
  Yeah, my mom listens to mine.
• 1:25:54
  Hi, Mom.
• 1:25:55
  And, uh- My mom will probably listen to this one time … and it's cool.
• 1:25:58
  Uh, and, and I'm really happy she's interested, and you know, it's nice that,
• 1:26:02
  you know, we stay in touch in that sense.
• 1:26:04
  Yeah, and I just feel connected to you.
• 1:26:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:06
  But there's sometimes w- you know, uh, because of my research and, and my life,
• 1:26:11
  sometimes the podcast, uh, is, you know, I'm talking to a sex worker- Yeah, yeah,
• 1:26:16
  yeah … or a porn star or, you know, whatever, and I'm kinda like, "God, I
• 1:26:20
  wish Mom weren't listening to this." Yeah, no, I feel the same way, and in some
• 1:26:24
  ways my podcast has been like sometimes a way for me to communicate things that
• 1:26:29
  I would never say directly to my mom.
• 1:26:30
  Not on purpose, but like, "Oh, should I leave that in?" Because, you know.
• 1:26:34
  Um, but yeah, uh, and one of the episodes that I got a little bit too deep about
• 1:26:39
  family stuff, she didn't like that one.
• 1:26:41
  Mm. But she didn't exactly say why, but she just didn't, she didn't like it.
• 1:26:44
  Yeah.
• 1:26:45
  But I knew why.
• 1:26:46
  Yeah.
• 1:26:46
  Yeah.
• 1:26:47
  Um, but you can't just make a podcast for your mom, though.
• 1:26:51
  Well, there's an idea.
• 1:26:52
  Right, podcast for my mom.
• 1:26:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:55
  This is for you, Mom.
• 1:26:56
  Every episode.
• 1:26:57
  Start a new one, yeah.
• 1:26:58
  But then- People, people can, like, listen in if they want.
• 1:27:01
  Right.
• 1:27:01
  But it's really for Mom.
• 1:27:02
  Right, right, right.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah.
• 1:27:04
  Memories of childhood and so forth.
• 1:27:05
  Are you gonna have your mom on as a guest?
• 1:27:07
  I would love to, but I don't think she wants to do that.
• 1:27:10
  Are you sure?
• 1:27:10
  Yeah.
• 1:27:11
  You should ask her.
• 1:27:11
  Well, I mean, I was gonna make… You should ask her, yeah.
• 1:27:13
  Um, I was making a, um… I was trying to record, like, and I did a few.
• 1:27:19
  I was thinking I wanted to record, like, a family, to keep family history and record
• 1:27:21
  interviews with family members just to talk about stories so that, you know.
• 1:27:24
  And, um, yeah, my mom, my mom didn't wanna do it.
• 1:27:28
  Hmm.
• 1:27:28
  Um, yeah.
• 1:27:30
  I think my sister would, would do my podcast.
• 1:27:33
  Um- A friend of mine just wrote a book.
• 1:27:35
  Uh, I think it's just out, like, this week or, or coming out soon, called, uh,
• 1:27:41
  I think it's called One Last Thing Before You Go: How to Interview Your Parents.
• 1:27:46
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:27:48
  Um, it's a really good book.
• 1:27:50
  Kyle Tierman wrote it.
• 1:27:51
  Um, I'm gonna have him on to talk about it.
• 1:27:55
  But yeah, it's very much about, you know, h- how, how do you, how do
• 1:28:00
  you get into these conversations?
• 1:28:02
  And, you know, there, there are techniques that he, he outlines,
• 1:28:05
  but then he intersperses it with his own conversations with his parents,
• 1:28:11
  who are very interesting people.
• 1:28:14
  Uh, you ever heard of a film- Oh, what the fuck's it called?
• 1:28:19
  Uh, it's a, it's like a conspiracy film.
• 1:28:23
  It's very well-known.
• 1:28:25
  Um, all about, like, the free energy thing and, um, all, all this kind of
• 1:28:33
  hocus pocus, uh, pseudoscience stuff.
• 1:28:37
  Uh- Citizen Kane?
• 1:28:39
  No?
• 1:28:40
  No.
• 1:28:41
  Fuck, I forget what it's called.
• 1:28:42
  It's been a while.
• 1:28:42
  Anyway, his, his mother and stepfather produced that.
• 1:28:46
  All right.
• 1:28:46
  And, uh, it's very controversial.
• 1:28:49
  So a lot of it's him respecting them as people, but- Also … feeling like-
• 1:28:55
  Yeah … he can't connect to them.
• 1:28:58
  You know, they're like essentially flat Earthers, right?
• 1:29:00
  Right, right.
• 1:29:00
  And it's like, well, how do you relate to someone you love- Bridge
• 1:29:05
  that gap, yeah … who believes things that are unbelievable to you?
• 1:29:08
  So- Yeah.
• 1:29:10
  Yeah, I have a friend in Columbus whose mom is, like, um, QAnon.
• 1:29:14
  Um, still, still.
• 1:29:16
  And, uh, yeah, she says they just don't, they just don't talk about it.
• 1:29:20
  Yeah.
• 1:29:20
  Um, but she doesn't… I mean, it's hard for QAnon people to not talk about it,
• 1:29:24
  so it's always kind of infiltrating the, uh, the, uh… Is he still doing that?
• 1:29:28
  The QAnon people, is that still happening?
• 1:29:30
  I don't even know.
• 1:29:31
  Like, is he still posting that whole thing?
• 1:29:33
  I don't know.
• 1:29:33
  Whatever happened to that?
• 1:29:33
  I, I've, it's- That was a weird- It's one of those things … thing.
• 1:29:36
  It's like Antifa.
• 1:29:37
  Like, is there any there there?
• 1:29:40
  Is there any- Yeah … is there anyone organizing these things?
• 1:29:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:29:43
  Or is it just- Right … like a spontaneous eruption of lunacy?
• 1:29:48
  Yeah.
• 1:29:48
  I don't know.
• 1:29:49
  The QAnon one, though, that was, that's a wacky one.
• 1:29:53
  That's a wacky one.
• 1:29:54
  Yeah.
• 1:29:55
  So- All right.
• 1:29:56
  Well, let's, uh, let's wrap this up.
• 1:29:58
  I got a construction project that's about to begin.
• 1:30:02
  Yeah, gotta finish the living room.
• 1:30:03
  My carpenter shows up here in a few minutes, so.
• 1:30:06
  How do you s- how do you… Does it drive you crazy all day, hearing the banging?
• 1:30:10
  Yeah.
• 1:30:12
  Get some noise-canceling headphones or something.
• 1:30:14
  Yeah.
• 1:30:14
  No, the thing is, I'm, I'm, like, on call too because, you know, either we're
• 1:30:19
  working together- Oh, right, right … or he'll be working on things, and he'll be
• 1:30:24
  like, "Hey, you want this done this way?"
• 1:30:26
  Or, you know, "What, what wood do you wanna use here?
• 1:30:29
  What's gonna…" So I'm always, like, answering questions and- Right,
• 1:30:33
  right, right … you know, "Hey, can you order some more of these screws?
• 1:30:36
  We're almost out of screws," and, "Okay." So you're like the assistant.
• 1:30:39
  Yeah.
• 1:30:40
  Right.
• 1:30:40
  I'm, I'm part boss, part lackey.
• 1:30:42
  Right.
• 1:30:43
  You know?
• 1:30:43
  You need the hammer?
• 1:30:44
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:45
  Right.
• 1:30:45
  I do spend time handing him tools if he's up on a ladder.
• 1:30:48
  Right.
• 1:30:48
  Today he's gonna be up on a ladder putting silicon around the window frames.
• 1:30:53
  Big fan.
• 1:30:53
  Uh- Silicon around the windows.
• 1:30:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:56
  So- Well, it's gonna look great.
• 1:30:57
  I mean, it already looks great, but yeah.
• 1:30:59
  Yeah.
• 1:30:59
  I can't wait to live in it.
• 1:31:01
  I'm really tired of, of this, uh- You know, 'cause I can't write, I
• 1:31:07
  can't read, I can't like- Why not?
• 1:31:09
  Well, because I'm on call.
• 1:31:10
  Oh, him.
• 1:31:10
  You know?
• 1:31:11
  Oh, you're noise assistant.
• 1:31:12
  And there's like- Right … constant interruption.
• 1:31:13
  Right, right, right.
• 1:31:14
  So it's, it's hard to, you know, do my thing.
• 1:31:18
  And how much longer does it take?
• 1:31:19
  Uh, I think another month maybe.
• 1:31:22
  Huh.
• 1:31:23
  Yeah.
• 1:31:24
  Well, that's not too bad.
• 1:31:25
  Yeah, we just have to put the floor down in the big room.
• 1:31:29
  Yeah.
• 1:31:29
  And, uh, do the walls in the other smaller room But yeah, we're pretty much done,
• 1:31:35
  and then it's just, uh, you know, spend a lot of money on shitty quality furniture.
• 1:31:40
  Right.
• 1:31:41
  Fill it up, right?
• 1:31:42
  Yeah.
• 1:31:42
  You gotta fill… Nest there.
• 1:31:43
  A little scrap.
• 1:31:43
  Gotta start to f- fill the nest.
• 1:31:45
  Yeah.
• 1:31:45
  Fill the nest.
• 1:31:46
  Yeah.
• 1:31:47
  One thing I'm looking forward to is I wanna buy, like, a nice stereo system.
• 1:31:53
  Uh-huh.
• 1:31:53
  Like, like what I had in high school, you know?
• 1:31:57
  Right.
• 1:31:57
  Speakers, receiver, amplifier.
• 1:32:00
  Like- Right … I wanna kinda get back into that, although I don't have
• 1:32:03
  any- Do you wanna do the vinyl thing?
• 1:32:04
  You gonna do the vinyl thing?
• 1:32:05
  No.
• 1:32:05
  I- I don't- Yeah, I don't recommend it.
• 1:32:06
  I'm trying to sell mine now, because I never listen to them.
• 1:32:09
  Really?
• 1:32:09
  I have, like, a bunch, and I got into it, and I was like,
• 1:32:11
  "Nah." When I first got them, I'd listen to them, but I just don't.
• 1:32:14
  And I realized I'm more of a singles guy than a whole album guy.
• 1:32:16
  Hmm.
• 1:32:17
  Like, I want the, the best thing of the thing.
• 1:32:19
  I don't want the whole- You have, like, a fear of commitment?
• 1:32:21
  Is that what it is?
• 1:32:21
  Uh, you think that's what it is?
• 1:32:22
  I don't know.
• 1:32:23
  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was thinking about, I was watching,
• 1:32:25
  like, I… The, the highlights, there was a football game, Denver versus the Giants,
• 1:32:29
  where they came back blah, blah, blah.
• 1:32:30
  And I didn't wa- I don't watch, like, whole games unless they're, like,
• 1:32:33
  in the playoffs, the team, you know?
• 1:32:35
  Um, but I just watch the highlights, and I thought, "Oh, that's something
• 1:32:38
  about me is that I like the highlights," even with that and with, like, music.
• 1:32:42
  Like, I like the singles.
• 1:32:43
  I'm trying to think.
• 1:32:44
  Maybe that's a fear of commitment, but I don't…
• 1:32:46
  Maybe it is.
• 1:32:47
  So what if they made, like, mini singles where it's just
• 1:32:51
  the best parts of the song?
• 1:32:53
  I mean, it really depends on how that was- … that was given to me.
• 1:32:55
  Because if it was, like, was it, it's five seconds or 10
• 1:32:57
  seconds, I feel like I wouldn't.
• 1:32:59
  Like, In the Air Tonight, it would just be- Just the drum part
• 1:33:01
  doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
• 1:33:02
  But that drum part doesn't exist without the rest of the song.
• 1:33:05
  Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  You know?
• 1:33:05
  But you know it.
• 1:33:06
  You know the rest of the song already.
• 1:33:08
  You do, but it's the vibe.
• 1:33:09
  So you could just- No, I feel like I want the whole song.
• 1:33:12
  I just want the best songs.
• 1:33:15
  Like, I like the singles.
• 1:33:16
  I'll listen to a whole album now and again, but generally speaking, with,
• 1:33:19
  um, I'm just shuffling all the singles.
• 1:33:21
  Yeah.
• 1:33:21
  Yeah.
• 1:33:21
  And I always wished that I could be an album person, 'cause I know people who
• 1:33:24
  just listen to whole albums all the time.
• 1:33:25
  Um- Is that an age thing?
• 1:33:27
  I don't know.
• 1:33:28
  'Cause, I mean, I'm older than you, and I, I, I came up, when
• 1:33:32
  I came up, albums mattered.
• 1:33:33
  Yeah, me too.
• 1:33:34
  Not all of them.
• 1:33:35
  Yeah.
• 1:33:35
  But there were al- like Dark Side of the Moon is an album.
• 1:33:37
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:33:38
  To listen to singles from that is kind of missing the point.
• 1:33:42
  Right.
• 1:33:42
  For sure.
• 1:33:42
  That's one I'll listen to beginning to end.
• 1:33:44
  But, and back in those days, it was like you'd buy, you know, I only
• 1:33:47
  had so much money, you'd buy a CD or whatever, and that's the thing you had
• 1:33:50
  to listen to over and over, because you didn't have Spotify or whatever.
• 1:33:53
  Right.
• 1:33:53
  Every song you ever could think, every song ever on your, at your
• 1:33:56
  fingertips- Right … at all times, which is a blessing and a curse, really.
• 1:33:59
  'Cause albums, people don't make albums anymore.
• 1:34:02
  There, there is not, like- Yeah, not a lot of people anymore.
• 1:34:04
  "Oh, this is going, this will be the third song on side B.
• 1:34:07
  That's where it fits in." Right.
• 1:34:08
  You know?
• 1:34:08
  Like, nobody thinks that way.
• 1:34:09
  Right.
• 1:34:10
  There's not a lot of, like, concept albums anymore.
• 1:34:11
  Yeah.
• 1:34:12
  There's no Pink Floyd The Wall being made.
• 1:34:14
  No.
• 1:34:14
  Yeah.
• 1:34:15
  Yeah.
• 1:34:17
  But yeah.
• 1:34:17
  Yeah, so you had to listen to the same thing over and over.
• 1:34:19
  So I guess I was an album guy back then, because I had to be.
• 1:34:23
  So no, I'm not gonna get into vinyl.
• 1:34:25
  No, don't.
• 1:34:26
  Uh- And if you do, you should let me know, 'cause I'll sell you mine.
• 1:34:30
  Yeah.
• 1:34:31
  No, I don't, I don't wanna.
• 1:34:32
  But I do want good speakers, and I want, uh, you know, I want, I want
• 1:34:37
  something that sounds really good.
• 1:34:40
  'Cause we got this new room.
• 1:34:42
  Yeah, I know.
• 1:34:42
  So, you know, let's, let's do it.
• 1:34:43
  And there's nobody really around, so you can play it loud.
• 1:34:45
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:34:46
  Yeah.
• 1:34:47
  Definitely no neighbors.
• 1:34:49
  Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  Well, that'll be exciting.
• 1:34:50
  And then it'll… You can hook it into your s- your, your, your video system too,
• 1:34:54
  and you can have like- Yeah, for movies.
• 1:34:55
  Yeah.
• 1:34:55
  Yeah.
• 1:34:56
  We're gonna have movie nights.
• 1:34:57
  Yeah?
• 1:34:58
  Invite a bunch of people over, make some popcorn.
• 1:34:59
  What's the first one you're gonna show?
• 1:35:01
  I don't know.
• 1:35:02
  I've got a list of, like, 50.
• 1:35:04
  Uh, one r- recent one that got on the list is Annie Hall.
• 1:35:08
  Oh.
• 1:35:08
  I'd like to see that again.
• 1:35:10
  God, man, I love that movie.
• 1:35:11
  Yeah.
• 1:35:12
  Woody Allen was a master filmmaker.
• 1:35:13
  Yeah.
• 1:35:14
  And Diane Keaton, you know, just, just died, so, um- Yeah … a lot
• 1:35:19
  of it, you know, it's cool because a lot of the films are films I wanna
• 1:35:23
  see again that Anya's never seen.
• 1:35:26
  Oh, right on.
• 1:35:26
  Yeah.
• 1:35:26
  So, 'cause she's- Yeah … 27 years younger than me, so i- you
• 1:35:31
  know, there's that component of it.
• 1:35:34
  Um, you know, the pleasure of introducing her to something-
• 1:35:37
  Mm-hmm … that I know is really good.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah.
• 1:35:38
  And, and then the pleasure of s- watching it again.
• 1:35:42
  I, I taught high school briefly in Spain, and- I don't remember w- what excuse I
• 1:35:50
  had, but I showed the class The Graduate.
• 1:35:54
  Oh my God, I love that movie.
• 1:35:54
  Um, you know, and it was like 20 minutes per class, and then
• 1:35:58
  we'd talk about that 20 minutes.
• 1:36:00
  And, and so we really just like took off a bite and then chewed
• 1:36:03
  it and, and I had seen it probably three or four times before then,
• 1:36:07
  but that was really interesting to show it to these kids and- For sure
• 1:36:11
  you know, talk about y- you know, what it, the commentary on the
• 1:36:14
  culture and the changing sexual mores and, you know, the whole thing
• 1:36:19
  about career, you know, plastics.
• 1:36:24
  Right.
• 1:36:24
  Right.
• 1:36:24
  Plastics.
• 1:36:24
  I did the same thing.
• 1:36:25
  I was… I taught a film class remotely in 2020, um, and I showed them The Graduate.
• 1:36:31
  This is 2020.
• 1:36:33
  And, uh, it was interesting that their, their take on it from, you know, their
• 1:36:37
  upbringing and so forth, was very much focused on that she is a, uh, she is a
• 1:36:42
  like toxic sexual assaulter in a way.
• 1:36:45
  Oh.
• 1:36:45
  Yeah.
• 1:36:46
  Yeah.
• 1:36:46
  Interesting.
• 1:36:46
  And I was like, "Oh, that's interesting," 'cause that's never even a thing-
• 1:36:49
  Right … that kind of crossed my mind.
• 1:36:50
  But, you know, from one angle, uh, I could see that.
• 1:36:53
  Yeah.
• 1:36:54
  Um, yeah.
• 1:36:56
  I just love Dustin Hoffman's performance in that is just chef's kiss.
• 1:37:00
  Yeah.
• 1:37:00
  Like that sound he makes.
• 1:37:03
  Hmm.
• 1:37:03
  Yeah.
• 1:37:04
  Yeah.
• 1:37:05
  Yeah.
• 1:37:05
  Uh- I mean, everything about that film is spectacular.
• 1:37:09
  And that he was in the line for unemployment, like he was broke as
• 1:37:12
  broke can be when he got that role.
• 1:37:13
  Um- Right.
• 1:37:14
  It was supposed to go to Robert Redford.
• 1:37:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:16
  Which it- It was actually written for Robert Redford.
• 1:37:19
  Yeah.
• 1:37:19
  Yeah.
• 1:37:19
  Yeah.
• 1:37:20
  Which would've been a whole different…
• 1:37:22
  and not, not right.
• 1:37:23
  It wouldn't have worked.
• 1:37:24
  Well, that's inter- I, I, I really enjoy thinking about that when I read about, you
• 1:37:29
  know- Who was gonna be- … this role had been offered to- Right … like one of my
• 1:37:33
  favorites is, uh, Silence of the Lambs.
• 1:37:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:38
  Uh, Anthony Hopkins was like third choice.
• 1:37:41
  Who was, who was?
• 1:37:42
  Jack Nicholson- Oh
• 1:37:44
  was offered that role.
• 1:37:45
  That's interesting.
• 1:37:45
  I think that's too on the nose.
• 1:37:47
  Yeah.
• 1:37:48
  Particularly after The Shining.
• 1:37:49
  I feel like that's just way too on the nose, 'cause like you could already be.
• 1:37:52
  Yeah.
• 1:37:52
  Jack Nicholson's already got creepy, but Anthony Hopkins didn't really
• 1:37:54
  have creepy to me before that.
• 1:37:56
  Yeah.
• 1:37:56
  You know what I mean?
• 1:37:58
  Yeah.
• 1:37:59
  Had he… Was, uh, Legends of the Fall before that?
• 1:38:03
  I don't know.
• 1:38:04
  I've never seen that one.
• 1:38:04
  Oh.
• 1:38:06
  Yeah.
• 1:38:06
  Yeah.
• 1:38:06
  Dog Day Afternoon, that's another one you should see.
• 1:38:08
  That's a- Al Pacino … amazing film.
• 1:38:09
  Yeah.
• 1:38:10
  Yeah.
• 1:38:10
  Yeah.
• 1:38:11
  The camera just moves and moves and moves in that movie.
• 1:38:14
  Uh- Who directed that?
• 1:38:15
  Um, Sidney Lumet.
• 1:38:17
  Oh, right.
• 1:38:17
  Yeah.
• 1:38:18
  He did that, and then Serpico was the next one, two in a row.
• 1:38:22
  Yeah.
• 1:38:23
  The '70s, man, there's some gr- the '70s was like the best period,
• 1:38:25
  I think, of American filmmaking.
• 1:38:26
  Yeah.
• 1:38:27
  Um- Yeah … 'cause ugly people started being actors, and they were amazing
• 1:38:30
  actors, so- Yeah … that opened- Elliot Gould really opened it up.
• 1:38:33
  Right, a lot, yeah.
• 1:38:34
  Yeah.
• 1:38:36
  But also there was this, this kind of energy, like, on sets.
• 1:38:41
  You could see the people were like, you know, when they finished filming
• 1:38:45
  for the day they were fucking and getting high and- Right … probably
• 1:38:48
  getting high before they were filming.
• 1:38:49
  Like MASH.
• 1:38:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:38:51
  Do you remember that movie?
• 1:38:52
  Mm-hmm, yeah.
• 1:38:53
  Um, yeah, there, there was just this kind of feeling of like there was a
• 1:38:58
  party going on, and they were making a movie while they were partying.
• 1:39:02
  Well, the studio system had kinda died, so like they were kind of
• 1:39:05
  like it was a free-for-all in a way.
• 1:39:06
  Mm. And people were like, like Easy Rider, like that- Yeah
• 1:39:08
  the story of that movie getting made was just getting a bunch of money tossed
• 1:39:10
  and, "Go, make your hippie movie." Yeah.
• 1:39:12
  And, uh, yeah, and they're like literally getting high in the movie.
• 1:39:17
  Speaking of Jack Nicholson.
• 1:39:18
  Yeah.
• 1:39:19
  What a great cameo that was.
• 1:39:20
  "Indians." Is that what he said?
• 1:39:21
  Yeah.
• 1:39:22
  "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Indians."
• 1:39:26
  Yeah.
• 1:39:26
  You ever seen, um- Five Easy Pieces?
• 1:39:30
  A long time ago, yeah.
• 1:39:32
  Yeah.
• 1:39:32
  That's an amazing film.
• 1:39:33
  Early Jack.
• 1:39:34
  He's still alive, I think.
• 1:39:36
  Yeah, barely.
• 1:39:37
  Doesn't go to the Oscars anymore.
• 1:39:40
  I think his- Or, or does he go to Lakers games?
• 1:39:42
  I don't know.
• 1:39:42
  Was his last thing The Departed?
• 1:39:44
  That was one of the last things I remember him being in- Mm-hmm
• 1:39:46
  was The Departed.
• 1:39:46
  Yeah.
• 1:39:47
  Yeah.
• 1:39:48
  That movie confused me, 'cause I kept getting the actors confused.
• 1:39:53
  Like, who is it?
• 1:39:54
  It's, uh… Like, the two Boston cops.
• 1:39:58
  Yeah, it was what's-his-name and what's-his-name.
• 1:40:00
  Yeah.
• 1:40:00
  Yeah.
• 1:40:00
  Those two.
• 1:40:01
  Those two guys, yeah.
• 1:40:02
  Uh, they look very similar, and I kept confusing, like, "Wait, is
• 1:40:05
  this the good one or the bad one?"
• 1:40:06
  And maybe that's the point.
• 1:40:07
  That's kinda the point, yeah.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Uh, but y- I, I found it a very frustrating movie to watch.
• 1:40:13
  I liked it.
• 1:40:13
  I think it's interesting that Scorsese's editor is, uh,
• 1:40:16
  Thelma Schoonmaker, is a woman.
• 1:40:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:18
  Um, I just think it's interesting that she's a- she's the editor of these
• 1:40:20
  very, a lot of them very masculine- Yeah
• 1:40:22
  um, yeah.
• 1:40:24
  But then they're all w- it used to be all women back in the day.
• 1:40:26
  It was women, they thought it was like sewing.
• 1:40:29
  They thought of ed- of editing as kinda being like a sewing thing, so women were
• 1:40:32
  all the editors back in the old film days.
• 1:40:33
  Huh.
• 1:40:34
  Yeah.
• 1:40:35
  Uh, that's interesting.
• 1:40:36
  That's interesting.
• 1:40:36
  I didn't know that.
• 1:40:37
  Yeah, isn't that weird?
• 1:40:39
  Yeah, I have a friend who's an editor, a pretty prominent TV editor.
• 1:40:43
  I guess he does film too.
• 1:40:45
  Um, but he did all the Curb Your Enthusiasms.
• 1:40:48
  Oh, no kidding.
• 1:40:49
  Yeah.
• 1:40:49
  Oh, that's fun.
• 1:40:50
  Yeah, he's, uh, Roger Nygard.
• 1:40:52
  He's, he's a funny guy and, and so his, his sense of humor helps
• 1:40:58
  him edit comedy- Yeah, yeah, yeah
• 1:40:59
  'cause he, like, gets the timing.
• 1:41:01
  Yeah.
• 1:41:01
  He understands the, you know, when to let the camera pause a little-
• 1:41:04
  Right … and, you know- Right … linger.
• 1:41:06
  That's all… Yeah.
• 1:41:07
  Yeah.
• 1:41:07
  Yeah, he's, he's a good guy.
• 1:41:08
  Yeah, I love improvised stuff like that.
• 1:41:10
  That's most of the stuff I've made has been, like, largely
• 1:41:12
  improvised, which I really like.
• 1:41:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:13
  There's a naturalism to it that I feel like you don't get.
• 1:41:16
  So have you seen the new, uh, Spinal Tap?
• 1:41:18
  Have not seen it yet, no.
• 1:41:19
  Looking forward to that.
• 1:41:21
  Yeah, it's got mixed, um, mixed reviews, but I'm, I'm certainly cur- I think
• 1:41:25
  it's only on streaming or something.
• 1:41:27
  It's on, like, Paramount+ or something.
• 1:41:28
  Yeah.
• 1:41:29
  Yeah.
• 1:41:29
  Yeah.
• 1:41:30
  Um, yeah, I'm curious.
• 1:41:31
  It's very short.
• 1:41:31
  It's, like, only 80 minutes long.
• 1:41:34
  I'm just amazed they, they did it.
• 1:41:36
  I know.
• 1:41:37
  I know.
• 1:41:37
  And they're still alive.
• 1:41:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:41:40
  Yeah.
• 1:41:41
  Yeah.
• 1:41:42
  All right, let's wrap it up.
• 1:41:43
  OnefJef, uh, check out the podcast.
• 1:41:46
  Yeah, onefjef.
• 1:41:47
  OnefJef.
• 1:41:47
  Um, and yeah, onefjef.com.
• 1:41:49
  If you need anybody to edit your videos or anything, you let me know- Yeah
• 1:41:53
  because, you know, I'm, uh, I'm good.
• 1:41:55
  I'm good.
• 1:41:56
  You're a vagabond, uh, currently out of work video editor.
• 1:42:01
  I've been traveling all year.
• 1:42:02
  It's been really great.
• 1:42:02
  Yeah.
• 1:42:03
  Yeah, really enjoying it.
• 1:42:04
  And you're based in Ohio, right?
• 1:42:05
  Yeah, for now.
• 1:42:06
  I'm trying to figure out an exit strategy.
• 1:42:08
  Yeah.
• 1:42:09
  But, um, but yeah, I'm trying to find remote work so I can kind of just do a
• 1:42:12
  digital nomad thing for a year or two.
• 1:42:14
  Um- I mean, is, is editing generally remote?
• 1:42:17
  Um, I mean, it wasn't… I, you know, m- after 2020, like I was with a
• 1:42:22
  Lincoln project, so that was all remote.
• 1:42:24
  But, um, I don't know what percentage of it.
• 1:42:27
  I just know it's a very difficult place to find a job right now.
• 1:42:30
  Um, and, uh, and yeah, but it's, there's no reason that…
• 1:42:34
  I guess there's, you know, you sometimes you would, like a feature
• 1:42:37
  film, you can't do that remotely.
• 1:42:38
  That'd be hard.
• 1:42:38
  But, like, a lot of the stuff I would be doing, like short
• 1:42:40
  form stuff for the internet or whatever- Right … uh, that's, I
• 1:42:43
  think that's easy to do remotely.
• 1:42:44
  Right.
• 1:42:45
  Um, I'm trying to get like more podcasting producing kind of jobs, which I could
• 1:42:48
  do remotely too, because- Right.
• 1:42:50
  Um, so who knows?
• 1:42:52
  But I'm happy that I've taken advantage of the fact that I've not been employed,
• 1:42:56
  because a lot of people would immediately start looking for another job, which-
• 1:43:00
  Yeah … seems to be misguided, right?
• 1:43:02
  Um- Yeah.
• 1:43:03
  No, take advantage of it.
• 1:43:04
  It's, unemployment is a great opportunity.
• 1:43:07
  To reset your brain and try to figure out where you are and who you are.
• 1:43:10
  Yeah, and, and just go places y- you know, you don't go if you're,
• 1:43:14
  you know, have a week of vacation.
• 1:43:16
  Yeah.
• 1:43:16
  You're not gonna fly to Bogota for a week and- Yeah.
• 1:43:19
  Yeah.
• 1:43:20
  Yeah.
• 1:43:20
  So yeah, um, we'll see, you know.
• 1:43:24
  Uh, trying to find a way to, you know, make money on my own terms, but
• 1:43:27
  that's a different thing, difficult thing to do in today's economy.
• 1:43:30
  But, uh, so we'll see.
• 1:43:33
  We'll see.
• 1:43:35
  But- Yeah … I'm grateful that I've been able to have this year, you know.
• 1:43:39
  Hopefully, I can continue it to more years of living an interesting
• 1:43:43
  life as opposed to being in my house all day editing political videos.
• 1:43:49
  Yeah.
• 1:43:50
  Yeah, that doesn't sound like a recipe for mental health.
• 1:43:54
  No.
• 1:43:55
  No.
• 1:43:56
  No, not so much.
• 1:43:57
  Not so much.
• 1:43:58
  All right.
• 1:43:59
  Thank you, onefjef.
• 1:44:00
  I gotta take a piss.
• 1:44:01
  Thanks, Chris Ryan.
• 1:44:02
  Appreciate you.
• 1:44:02
  Thanks for having me on.
• 1:44:03
  Don't mean to be abrupt.
• 1:44:04
  Yeah, no worries.
• 1:44:05
  Thanks for having me on.
• 1:44:05
  Uh, uh, hello to your mother.
• 1:44:07
  Yeah, hello to your mom as well.
• 1:44:08
  Yeah.
• 1:44:15
  And there you go.
• 1:44:17
  There is my conversation with Chris Ryan.
• 1:44:20
  I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:44:21
  Hi, Mom.
• 1:44:23
  Hi, Chris Ryan's mom.
• 1:44:25
  I hope that wasn't too difficult to listen to.
• 1:44:28
  If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to somebody else that you
• 1:44:31
  know and love or know and hate.
• 1:44:34
  Doesn't matter to me.
• 1:44:35
  Just send it to somebody.
• 1:44:37
  It's how these things spread.
• 1:44:39
  And if you're not subscribed to the podcast, please do go to whatever
• 1:44:43
  platform you're using, but ideally Apple Podcasts, and click that subscribe
• 1:44:47
  button, because that helps the algorithm understand how good this podcast is.
• 1:44:55
  You can follow the podcast on Instagram at onefjefpod.
• 1:45:00
  That's onefjefpod on Instagram.
• 1:45:03
  You can follow it on a lot of other social media platforms as
• 1:45:06
  well if you go to the show notes.
• 1:45:08
  I'm not gonna bore you with all of them, but most of them
• 1:45:11
  involve the phrase onefjefpod.
• 1:45:15
  If you have any questions, comments, concerns, confusion, bewilderment,
• 1:45:18
  anger, joy, elation, positive vibes, you can email me at onefjefpod@gmail.com.
• 1:45:29
  I will respond for sure and possibly read your email on the air.
• 1:45:34
  Once again, if you didn't do it during the introduction, please do go to
• 1:45:38
  patreon.com/onefjef and subscribe.
• 1:45:42
  You'll get all sorts of fun new content.
• 1:45:45
  You'll get updates on new episodes, and you'll get a warm, warm feeling
• 1:45:49
  in your heart this holiday season.
• 1:45:52
  Once again, I'm gonna close this episode with a short poem by the
• 1:45:55
  legendary Rumi, who was born in 1207.
• 1:46:02
  Did they call that 12-aught-7 back in the day or 1207?
• 1:46:06
  Whatever.
• 1:46:07
  It was a long time ago.
• 1:46:09
  "Do you think I know what I'm doing? That for one breath or half breath
• 1:46:13
  I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it's writing or the ball
• 1:46:19
  can guess where it's going next."
• 1:46:24
  Take care of yourselves, my friends.
• 1:46:26
  I'll see you next week
• 1:46:33
  Very good, Jefrey