Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #646: How Gen Z Can Avoid Millennial Mistakes with Zuby

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#646: How Gen Z Can Avoid Millennial Mistakes with Zuby · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

• 0:00
  You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
• 0:10
  If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
• 0:16
  So it's all acting like safe haven.
• 0:18
  I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
• 0:23
  currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
• 0:28
  I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
• 0:31
  If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
• 0:36
  Zuby, it's been too long. Welcome back to the show.
• 0:38
  Thanks, man. How are you doing?
• 0:40
  Doing well. Doing well. Like I was telling you, I don't know whether it's intended.
• 0:45
  I feel compelled recently, the last six months, to try to better understand Gen Z because I'm looking down.
• 0:53
  We were just talking about our children. I'm a father. I've got two.
• 0:58
  third on the way, you just had your first child. And I don't know, I'm looking at Gen Z,
• 1:05
  streamer culture, looking at the job market, looking at inflation. And I don't want to say
• 1:13
  I'm worried, but just sort of looking at the generation below me and being like, what is the
• 1:18
  future going to look like for you? And how are you going to succeed? Is this in this chaotic,
• 1:23
  crazy, quickly changing world. And you wrote a piece last week, uh, advice for Gen Z men,
• 1:31
  particularly. Um, so that's why I wanted to bring you on, I guess, but this piece particularly,
• 1:38
  what compelled you to write this and speak to Gen Z specifically? Yeah, that's a great question,
• 1:45
  man. I mean, throughout my entire career, I've always, my primary audience has always been
• 1:53
  young men. When I just started out as a rapper in the mid 2000s, most of the people who were
• 1:59
  buying my CDs and listening to my music, it was like teenage boys and young men, sort of like
• 2:05
  14 to 25, probably 80 to 90% of my audience was within that demographic. Now, as I've gotten older,
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  I'm 38 years old now. As I've gotten older, my audience has also gotten older with me for the
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  most part. But a lot of young people, young men and women follow me online, see what I post,
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  listen to my podcast, music, all the different stuff that I do. And when I think about generations,
• 2:32
  it's fascinating because generations always have their similarities and they have their
• 2:37
  differences, of course, because the world moves on, culture changes, politics changes,
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  The economy changes, what's happening nationally, internationally.
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  It's always changing.
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  Technology is evolving.
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  And I find something that happens between generations is they like to point the fingers of blame at each other.
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  Just like humanity always likes to point the finger, right?
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  You know, men want to blame women.
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  Women want to blame men.
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  Boomers want to blame millennials.
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  Millennials want to blame boomers.
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  You're like, you can always point the finger in different directions.
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  And sometimes there's grains of truth to it.
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  And sometimes there aren't.
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  But there's not really any point in talking about a generation without talking about the generations that came before them.
• 3:20
  So if older people, whether they're boomers or Gen X or they're millennials, if they're complaining about, you know, the young people these days, then it's like, well, who raised them?
• 3:32
  Who created the culture that they've grown up in?
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  Who were their parents?
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  Who was running the media?
• 3:39
  Who was in politics, right?
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  It's always people who are in the older generation.
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  So you can't really blame, like if you're looking at Gen Z, for example, they didn't exactly choose their economic situation, right?
• 3:52
  Like they didn't choose the culture that they're inheriting.
• 3:56
  They didn't choose the state of the world.
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  It's just like, okay, you're born into it, you're raised a certain way, and there's all these factors that influence it.
• 4:05
  And I think that now we're in this strange and unique position where we are able to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of people with our platforms via this crazy thing called the Internet and social media.
• 4:22
  Why not try our best to use that for good?
• 4:27
  You're a father.
• 4:28
  I'm a father now.
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  But even before I even before I became a father, I was an uncle times 10.
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  I've got, you know, 10 nieces and nephews out there.
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  I have lots of friends who have kids.
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  I'm connected to many people.
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  I have hundreds of thousands of young people who follow me online.
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  And I have always just tried to do my best, starting with my music and then everything
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  else that I do now to try to nudge people in a positive direction, to try to encourage
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  people, inspire them, motivate them, whether that's, you know, working harder, taking better
• 5:01
  care of their body, being a better critical thinker, exploring Bitcoin, going to the gym,
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  like whatever it is, anything that I can offer to people, because there's just so much negativity
• 5:16
  in the world, man. And that's not new. But I think what is new is with the aforementioned technology,
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  we're just bombarded by it all day long, right?
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  You can just open any app and it's just, it's endless.
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  Like they quite literally have the technology
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  called endless scroll, right?
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  You can sit there forever for an eternity.
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  You could just scroll and scroll and scroll.
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  And unless you highly curate your feed,
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  the majority of what you see is gonna be,
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  if not directly negative, it's gonna be sensational
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  or it's gonna be somewhat extreme or it's gonna be,
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  you know, cause that's just how it is.
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  normal doesn't tend to go viral and normal certainly doesn't tend to make the news.
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  So the way I look at it is just, look, I've got this platform. I've had this platform for a long
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  time and I've always tried to uplift and help people with it in different ways. And when I look
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  at Gen Z in particular, I think just because of the state of technology in particular,
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  Um, I feel like they have more opportunities than any previous generation in some ways.
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  Um, but they also have like a lot of rather unique threats and concerns, which perhaps
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  you're, I, you know, we're, I assume we're both millennials, like which, which we had
• 6:38
  to deal with to some degree.
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  But I think like Gen Z is when it's just gonna, it's all going to kind of hit them a lot harder.
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  And it's already affecting them in ways that maybe we were able to slightly dodge or only get a grazed by.
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  So the reason I wanted to write that article was just to condense the information that I've gathered in the 20 years of my adult life.
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  And, you know, maybe some of my life before that and just put something out there that can live on the Internet forever.
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  and a young person or even an old person.
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  It doesn't even have to be a young man,
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  but mostly a young man can stumble across it
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  or seek it out and just get some type of guidance
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  or orientation and some encouragement as well.
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  I think it's very important for people
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  to realize that there's hope.
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  I think it's really popular now to sort of be a doomer
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  and to try to black pill everyone
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  and just, you know, everything's terrible and it's the end and society, like that's always going to
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  get clicks. It's always going to get views. You can actually monetize that pretty well.
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  But if that is your mentality, number one, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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  And number two is it just doesn't tangibly help anyone. It might make them feel heard or seen,
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  right? It might be kind of cathartic to just, you know, we all know misery loves company and,
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  you know, just to complain and to want to tear it down or whatever, you know, that might make
• 8:08
  people feel good in the short term. But ultimately, it's a message of despair. It's telling people
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  that there's no hope. It's telling people that no matter what they do, the future is going to be
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  worse. And that's, you know, to me, that's not even just a negative message. That's like a,
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  if I can use a very strong term, that's like a demonic message.
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  like if it is yeah like if you're telling people that no matter no matter what you do
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  like it's just gonna suck and the future is gonna be terrible and it's bad i mean so many
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  millennials believe that message that they refuse to freaking reproduce like how dark can you go
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  i'm sure you've come across people who say things like oh you know like why would you want to why
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  would you want to bring a child into this world you know i'd never be like it's like what are you
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  what are you talking about? People were having babies during the Great Depression, World War I,
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  World War II, all sorts of horrible times throughout history. People were always having
• 9:05
  children. And suddenly in 2024, 2025, people are like, yeah, you know what? The world is so bad
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  that I don't even want to continue my genetic legacy. And that's, I mean, if you think of what
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  we're ultimately here for, that's like a really extreme conclusion to reach. So I don't want Gen Z
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  going down. I don't want them taking that path. So I wanted to put something out there just to
• 9:30
  encourage and help people. Yeah. Everybody should go follow Never Doom Pro on X. Never Doom.
• 9:37
  It's as you manifest these bad, if you're just completely doom scrolling, we were saying like
• 9:43
  the endless scroll, it's funny, like the nomenclature has evolved to the fact where we
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  have the term doom scrolling, which is you wake up and you just let the algo feed you the doom.
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  and that like you said it is demonic to a certain extent where you like your the way you perceive
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  yourself and what you think is how you see the world like you gotta inject good thoughts and
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  i i think it's particularly important to get this message out to gen z right now because as
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  millennials to your point i think we're at this really interesting inflection point
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  and in some ways our generation was the first out the door where we were taught growing up
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  go to school, get your degree, get a good job, you'll get a good salary, and have a good life.
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  And that completely did not come true for much of our generation. And I think Gen Z is at a point,
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  or we're at a point societally where Gen Z can sort of see what happened to us. And there's a
• 10:40
  fork in the road for them. They can either let the doom take over their life, be nihilistic,
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  and degenerate, hedonistic, whatever it may be,
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  or recognize that despite the fact that things may seem a bit chaotic economically,
• 10:56
  it's not as easy to get ahead.
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  There's a lot of social strife, geopolitical issues, whatever it may be.
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  It's like the two guys on the bus meeting,
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  the one looking at the mountain and the one looking at the sun.
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  It's two sides of a coin.
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  And you can decide to doom and immerse yourself in that negativity or recognize that there's incredible potential and opportunity moving forward.
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  For sure, man.
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  And jumping off the last point you said there, I think it's so important for people to realize that in Gen Z, they also have so many advantages.
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  This is the thing.
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  People want to focus on the negative.
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  And the negative is very real.
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  The economic circumstances are real.
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  like the housing real estate situation is real. The crazy inflation is real. Some of the conflicts
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  going on between young men and women and the way they're diverging like that is real. There's a lot
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  of stuff that is, you know, I could spend all day talking about talking about the problems. I could
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  probably write, write a book about it. But at the same time, the opportunities they have are
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  ridiculous. Like if I think of the Gen Z men, I actually know, and I obviously have like a biased
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  circle. But the ones I know are like, they are so far ahead of the game. Like it's crazy,
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  because they're just able to like connect with people. I mean, I've had people, multiple people
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  who have like passed through Dubai, where I live over the last year, say, you know, like I can
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  specifically think of like a guy who was 18, a guy who was like 21, another guy who was like in his
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  mid 20s. And they literally DM me and they're like, hey, Zuby, I'm in Dubai, like, I'd love to,
• 12:38
  you know, like meet up and like, if you're free, like, let's go for lunch. And I'm sitting there
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  and I'm like, and it's like, it was like that easy. You know what I mean? And now they're just
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  sitting there and connecting with me and they're connecting with like other people who they follow
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  online, who they like and they respect. And they're just telling me about all the stuff they're
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  doing. And I'm like, geez, like when I was, I wish I had that opportunity when I was 19. I wish I
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  could just like send a message to someone I look up to or I admire who's like a couple decades,
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  my senior and just just have coffee with them or just even just follow them online and listen to
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  their thoughts and consume the stuff they're putting out there, whether it's podcasts or
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  it's YouTube videos or it's writing or it's and it's just and it's just free or it's very cheap.
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  You know, we had a little bit of that as we got older, but we certainly didn't grow up
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  with so much information at our fingertips. So the question is really, what is the information
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  you're going to consume because you can go down one side, as you said, and you can, you can spend
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  forever on the problems, right? Like there's a lot of reason to be angry. There's a lot of reason to
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  be upset, to feel resentful, to feel like all of these doors have been closed on us. But there's
• 13:51
  also, there are also so many doors that are just, that are just open. I mean, we're both, we're both,
• 13:57
  we're both Bitcoiners, right? I mean, like, imagine being like a teenager, who's able to like,
• 14:06
  learn about this and like, have the opportunity, like, I'm like, gosh, man, I wish, I mean,
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  I'm glad we have the opportunity as millennials. But this is just such a gigantic, this thing
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  didn't even exist. Like 20 years ago, it didn't, it didn't exist at all. Right? It wasn't, it
• 14:21
  wasn't on the radar. It was, it was not a thing. So yes, it's true. Maybe you're not going to make
• 14:27
  money in real estate, like your, like your boomer grandparents or great grandparents in some cases
• 14:34
  did. But what about these whole new realms that are opening? What about the fact that you have
• 14:42
  people who are quite literally in their teens or in their early twenties, and they have followings
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  of like hundreds of thousands or even millions of people online, and they're able to like
• 14:51
  promote stuff to people, then they're able to get their ideas out there and they're able to do this
• 14:56
  and that. And it's all the same technology. It's just like, what are you choosing to do with it?
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  Everyone's got a smartphone. Everyone's got an internet connection. Everyone's got mobile data.
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  So what are you going to do? Are you going to choose to take this path or that path? And that's
• 15:11
  not just a question for the younger people. I mean, it's true of, it's true of people of all
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  ages. It's just like the tools and the access to knowledge has never been greater. It's never been
• 15:21
  greater. The access to people, it's never, ever in human history, been easier to connect with other
• 15:25
  people. It doesn't matter where they live. It doesn't matter the country. It doesn't matter
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  their age. It doesn't matter what sector they're in. And even if you're not able to make a personal
• 15:36
  connection, you can still follow them. You can still subscribe to them. You can still like
• 15:40
  get their thoughts on a daily, weekly basis. You know, we had books. Books have existed for a long
• 15:49
  time and books are great. But, um, you know, we, we, we didn't have these opportunities when we were
• 15:54
  teenagers. So yeah, I think, I think those, the people in Gen Z who are able to see
• 16:02
  and focus on the opportunity and think, Hmm, okay. Given what I do have at my disposal,
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  how can I become the best person and how can I best utilize this? I think they're going to
• 16:14
  succeed at an insane level, even beyond what the sort of best of millennials were able to achieve.
• 16:22
  But then I think on the flip side, there's a danger where that same technology and that same
• 16:29
  flood of information and that same access to everybody can completely mentally destroy
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  a lot of people of that generation. And I would like to get as many people into the former
• 16:44
  category as I can, rather than them succumbing to the, to the ladder. And I think as, you know,
• 16:52
  I think as of, of parents, as parents, that's going to be our job for our own children,
• 16:58
  but also we can, we can reach beyond our blood relations and we can also help many other people
• 17:05
  out there. So I think there's an ethical duty to at least try to. Sup freaks. This rep of TFTC was
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  So freaks, guess what? We launched a browser extension. It's called Opportunity Cost,
• 18:04
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• 18:07
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  sats go check it out at opportunitycost.app that's opportunitycost.app i want to touch on like many
• 18:44
  points there and tie it back to your piece to the 12 pieces of advice because like you said like the
• 18:51
  gen z gentleman in your life that you've met like incredible go-getters and i have a similar
• 18:56
  experience we're building uh we've built a browser extension that converts fiat prices to bitcoin
• 19:03
  called Opportunity Cost. And I've worked with a 19 year old kid to build this. And he was like
• 19:09
  homeschooled, never went to college. He's been a software developer for 10 years. And it's been
• 19:14
  incredibly fun for me as a 34 year old working with this 19 year old on this project and seeing
• 19:20
  how he's approaching it and like how he's succeeding as a Gen Z individual. And one of
• 19:28
  the points that you make in your piece is like be very conscious of who you surround yourself with And I think that one of the most important pieces of advice they could give the younger generations
• 19:40
  Because like all these technologies and whether it's Bitcoin, you see this kid's a Bitcoiner.
• 19:49
  He gets Bitcoin. He hasn't fallen down the crypto rabbit hole.
• 19:51
  He's not doing meme coins and all that.
• 19:53
  Like in all these areas, who you surround yourself with and what you focus on is incredibly important.
• 20:00
  and how you filter your information and find the people you should surround yourself with
• 20:05
  is incredibly important. So I want to touch on that, who you surround yourself with,
• 20:10
  and then give one piece of advice to any Gen Z out there who uses X. I don't know if TikTok can do
• 20:16
  it, but use filters, create list and use filters and make sure you're getting the best information.
• 20:21
  Yeah. You know, it's interesting you brought that point up, Marty, because do you know what the three
• 20:26
  most controversial things on that list were based on the on the feedback from the thousands of people
• 20:32
  that read it. I could have actually predicted this. One was the one you just said, you know,
• 20:37
  be careful of who you surround yourselves with. That one. I got some pushback on that one.
• 20:44
  One was, you know, follow God's laws. Of course, I knew I'd get pushback on that one.
• 20:49
  And the third one was the Bitcoin one. Those were the three that had the most that had the most
• 20:54
  pushback and disagreement, which is kind of, kind of fascinating. Um, so the idea that, um,
• 21:01
  you know, people are, some people took offense to the idea that you should not, uh, surround
• 21:08
  yourself with people who are engaging in destructive and reckless or just bad, bad behavior in general.
• 21:17
  Um, I, I find that kind of fascinating because it's one of those things that's so,
• 21:22
  it's, it's so, it's so obvious, but maybe it, I guess, I guess it hurts some people's feelings.
• 21:30
  Why would, yeah. Why do you think that is? Do you think that, cause there's this pull to the
• 21:34
  hedonistic degenerate that people succumb to and they don't want to admit that it's not good or.
• 21:39
  Yeah. You know, I think, um, modern Western society in particular, you know, our nations
• 21:44
  like UK, USA, certainly Canada. Um, I think the, I think people have,
• 21:50
  I think they've overcorrected in many ways over our lifetimes. And I think one of those is the
• 21:57
  idea that any form of judgment is like bad, that you're just never supposed to judge anyone or
• 22:06
  anything, right? You're always supposed to be compassionate and empathetic to the point of,
• 22:12
  you know, bending over backwards and twisting yourself into pretzels
• 22:16
  and not essentially not having standards. Right. So, I mean, you can see this, for example, in,
• 22:23
  I don't know, say, say, say a conversation about like physical health and like the situation going
• 22:27
  on with the obesity, right? Like you're not meant to just say things as they are. You're meant to be
• 22:35
  like, uh, you know, don't say that word. You have to use this word. You can't say this. You have to
• 22:40
  say that, like you have to like to the point where the truth is just muddled. And the idea that
• 22:45
  something like a health standard or like a physical standard should even exist is very
• 22:52
  offensive to people. Um, in the world of, you know, we, we've actually seen a little bit of
• 22:57
  this week cause it's been going viral, but like even the concept of like beauty standards,
• 23:01
  right. Particularly in the world of like women and modeling and stuff like the idea that
• 23:05
  there is like an attractive look, right. An attractive body type. It's like, no, no, no.
• 23:11
  You can be healthy at any size. You can be beautiful at any size. You can be this right.
• 23:16
  So like anything that has like a judgment or a standard that is not easy for every single person
• 23:24
  to meet, which by definition as a standard, you know, it can't be easy for everyone to meet.
• 23:30
  I think people get offended by that idea in itself. So I think it's like an over,
• 23:37
  it's like a massive over correction of compassion or empathy. Like, I agree that we shouldn't be
• 23:46
  like mean and cruel to people. I'm not suggesting insulting or attacking anyone, but if we're going
• 23:51
  to survive as a species and if we're going to thrive as a society, there have to be standards,
• 23:57
  right? Like you have to be able to objectively say like, it's better to do X than to do Y,
• 24:04
  Right. It's better to be it's better to have a hundred thousand net worth than be a hundred thousand in debt.
• 24:12
  Like it's better to, you know, you're married with two kids third on the way.
• 24:20
  Right. Like that is better than you having three baby mamas and three kids from three different women.
• 24:28
  Like that is better. Right. Like you have to be able to say this is better to be physically healthy than.
• 24:34
  not to be. Um, so yeah, I, I think that's kind of what's at the root of that. Cause it's,
• 24:41
  it's something that I've just observed particularly over the past decade, but I think going beyond
• 24:45
  that, um, it's where like a lot of the political correctness stuff also goes off the rails because
• 24:50
  everyone again is trying to kind of do this gymnastics and flex all around so much to,
• 24:58
  to, to not just kind of say something, say something as it is. Um, and I think we,
• 25:03
  I think society is, is, is seriously suffering as a result because it's difficult to
• 25:09
  have any honest conversations without somebody somewhere being offended. And if you're constantly
• 25:17
  worried about ever offending someone, then over time, you just become a liar. You either become
• 25:23
  a liar or a coward because you, you can't say anything because it's like, Oh, well,
• 25:27
  what if someone takes it that way? What if someone takes this the wrong way? Right. As you know,
• 25:30
  even just talking about Bitcoin, like you're going to offend someone, right? There's going to be
• 25:34
  someone out there who, I don't know, they, they're, they're, they're super into stocks or
• 25:40
  they're just a real estate junkie or they're a gold bug, or they think that, uh, crypto is a,
• 25:44
  Bitcoin is just crypto and crypto is all the scam. And what, like people are, people are going to
• 25:49
  have their opinions and, um, and that's fine. I'm just voicing my own opinions as well. People are
• 25:54
  free to disagree with me. But yeah, coming back to the core point, we all know, look, birds of a
• 26:00
  feather flock together. Many people say that, what's that phrase? You know, you're the average
• 26:04
  of the five people you spend the most time with. And there's a lot of truth to these type of things.
• 26:10
  Lo and behold, most successful people, however you're defining success,
• 26:14
  most successful people surround themselves with other successful people. And most,
• 26:19
  I'm going to just say losers. And when I say that, I don't mean someone who's hasn't yet
• 26:25
  achieved success. I'm talking more about their mentality. Um, or people who are just negative
• 26:30
  tend to hang out with people like that. Drug addicts tend to hang out with other drug addicts.
• 26:34
  Alcoholics tend to hang out with other alcoholics. Like that's just how human beings are. So if
• 26:40
  you're someone who does want to succeed and does want to excel and does want to stay out of trouble,
• 26:46
  yeah, I don't recommend, um, you know, hanging out with people who are not aligned with that at all.
• 26:53
  And people who can even get you in trouble or get you involved in bad habits or pull you into
• 26:59
  something which you don't want to be in. Cause even if you are a straight shooter,
• 27:03
  but you're hanging around with degenerates or you're hanging around with even criminals,
• 27:06
  uh, you know, you're going to get roped into something. You're going to get roped into
• 27:10
  something at some point. There's going to be some type of negative externality that, um,
• 27:14
  that hits you. So that was the reason for that single point. I think for young men in particular,
• 27:20
  they're quite liable for that to happen, especially if they don't have good parental
• 27:26
  guidance. I think teenage boys, young men, they're the most likely to kind of get caught up
• 27:31
  in some of these things, particularly criminal, or even as it pertains to vices, gambling, drugs,
• 27:38
  uh, alcoholism, these types of things. Um, young men in particular, I think are, are susceptible of
• 27:44
  that. So yeah, my, my simple advice to them is to be, to be cautious of that.
• 27:52
  No, it explicitly ties into another point you make piece of advice, which is don't make a big
• 27:57
  mistake. Avoid the big mistake. Yeah. Huge one. That's actually the, the, the one I normally
• 28:03
  sometimes, um, like if, if someone comes up to me in public, like a kid or a teenager or whatever,
• 28:10
  and, uh, I had, I've had actually had a many times where they said, like, if you could give,
• 28:14
  like, can you give me like one piece of advice or like one word of encouragement? That's actually
• 28:17
  normally the one I give them. Um, it's, it's, it's normally the one is, it's not like something
• 28:22
  to do per se. It's more like, just don't like, don't fall into one of these pitfalls
• 28:28
  that so many millions of men have fallen into. Because most mistakes are temporal. There aren't
• 28:38
  that many things in life where, oh, you know, you make this mistake and it's going to permanently
• 28:43
  make life more difficult for you. But there are some, you know, if you get, I don't know, if you
• 28:50
  commit a felony when you're 18 years old and now for the rest of your life until the day you die,
• 28:57
  you've got that criminal record. You've got that mark every time your name, every time you're
• 29:01
  searched for every time it comes up, you've got that on your name. It's going to make life. It's
• 29:05
  going to make life harder for you. Um, it doesn't mean you can't still become successful. It doesn't
• 29:10
  mean you can't succeed, but it's, it's, it's going to be harder if you hit the age of 30. And, um,
• 29:15
  you know, I, I, I know, I know people who have done this. I know, I know guys who are like 30
• 29:20
  years old and they have like, you know, two, three kids from two, two, three different women.
• 29:24
  and, um, it's complicated, right? It's, it's just really complicated for them. And it's always going
• 29:31
  to be like, it's going to be true a decade from now, two decades from now, three decades from now,
• 29:35
  they're still going to have that situation. And, um, again, it's doesn't mean like, oh, your,
• 29:41
  your life is over. It's just, it's just complicated. It's just complicated. Um,
• 29:46
  and these are things that you can, you can easily avoid. Um, if you hit 30 and you're,
• 29:53
  you've racked up 106 figures in debt. Can you come back from it? Yeah, of course.
• 30:00
  But your life is going to be more limited. You're going to struggle. You're not going to be able to
• 30:04
  do certain things. You might be able to otherwise. Certain doors are going to be closed to you. It's
• 30:11
  just, it's just hard. These are the situations where it's just like, look, if you can, to be
• 30:15
  honest, that, that third, that last one is probably, is probably like the better, it's probably a
• 30:21
  better situation than the other two in many ways. But, um, yeah, I just discourage guys from getting
• 30:30
  involved in that. Also, I think it's important to say it as well, because like the culture doesn't
• 30:35
  really tell you that. Um, sadly, I mean, maybe it depends a lot on where you grew up and who your
• 30:42
  parents are and what you're surrounded by, but there are certainly a lot of pockets of society,
• 30:47
  a lot of communities, a lot of cultures in the USA, in the UK, in our countries where,
• 30:54
  you know, people don't really get that lesson. In fact, sometimes they even get the opposite.
• 30:58
  Like they literally, literally will get the opposite lesson. They'll be around people who
• 31:02
  think it's like cool to commit crime or it's cool to go to prison or it's cool to, you know,
• 31:09
  have a bunch of kids from a bunch of different women or what. And it's just like, yeah, that's,
• 31:14
  that that's not healthy. It's not healthy messaging. And all you're doing is,
• 31:19
  you know, making life difficult for people making their lives more complicated than they need to be.
• 31:25
  Not only that, but just wasting your own life. Okay. I think that's one thing,
• 31:30
  especially when you have children, you and they begin to get older, and you'll realize this in
• 31:35
  years, but the time flies, there's nothing scarcer than time. We talk about Bitcoin,
• 31:39
  only ever be 21 million, extremely scarce, the only thing scarcer than Bitcoin.
• 31:44
  is your time and if you're wasting it by making these big mistakes which if you make one big
• 31:50
  mistake early in your life it's going to eat up your time in the future and like avoiding that
• 31:55
  big mistake whether it's debt multiple baby mamas an addiction crime like you're just you're taking
• 32:02
  away your future time from you which is extremely scarce huge opportunity cost yeah and it's funny
• 32:11
  because you have to sort of juxtapose,
• 32:15
  avoid the big mistake with make a bunch of small
• 32:20
  but good mistakes by testing things out.
• 32:22
  And I think that's another thing that I feel very fortunate of
• 32:26
  is I was not afraid to take risk in my early 20s.
• 32:30
  And I didn't figure out what I wanted to do
• 32:32
  or what my path was until my mid to late 20s
• 32:36
  where I got a good job at a hedge fund out of college
• 32:41
  was a very good trajectory, but I just could not stomach sitting in a cube crunching Excel
• 32:47
  all day. And I decided to quit on a whim and go learn about tech. And then for like five years,
• 32:51
  I meandered and sort of was aimless making a bunch of small mistakes, trying to figure out
• 32:55
  what I wanted to do. But I think it's also just as important, avoid the big mistake,
• 33:01
  but make a bunch of small mistakes and don't be afraid to take risk to find out what you want to do.
• 33:07
  You bring up such an interesting point there, Marty. It's almost like take risks, but be very judicious in what they are. Because all the negative things I mentioned, I mean, those are all like high risk. Those are all high risk behaviors, but they're not, they're not conducive to your success.
• 33:28
  So if you are someone who's got that natural risk-taking personality, which I think most young men in particular do, then yeah, just be wise about it.
• 33:39
  Like use that energy for the right things.
• 33:42
  In the same way, you should channel your aggression and channel your competitive nature into things that are productive rather than things that are destructive.
• 33:50
  That same energy that comes from the testosterone that's like surging, surging through your body.
• 33:57
  There are very destructive manifestations of it and there are incredibly productive ones.
• 34:03
  So instead of destroying, build.
• 34:08
  Yeah.
• 34:09
  And there's never been a better time to build, too.
• 34:11
  We've been talking about social media accessibility to individuals, DMs being open.
• 34:18
  And even if the DMs aren't open, just being able to receive the broadcast of their thoughts and learn from them in that way.
• 34:25
  Like the tools to actually build and be productive have never been more accessible, cheaper or powerful than they are today.
• 34:33
  and i think that's when we get into the overarching theme of your piece and why we're here talking
• 34:41
  today it's just like that's why i wanted to bring you on is really drive home to anybody in gen z
• 34:46
  listening like the opportunity is massive and it's a double-edged sword there's a ton of noise
• 34:52
  the signal to noise ratio has never been as off skew as it has been today but the signal is there
• 34:58
  stronger than ever. It's just swimming in a sea of noise that is bigger than has ever existed
• 35:04
  in human history. And it's learning how to filter and focus your energy on the good things to
• 35:10
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• 35:40
  Let's talk about live by God's law
• 35:42
  because he said it's controversial.
• 35:46
  And I completely agree with it too.
• 35:49
  And this is speaking from the Catholic perspective.
• 35:52
  I'm a cradle Catholic,
• 35:53
  born and raised with the Catholic school and Catholic high school and Catholic college,
• 35:58
  grew up going to church, got a bit jaded because of the, the Catholic priest diddling situation
• 36:04
  here in the United States and other parts of the world. I wouldn't say ever went like full
• 36:10
  atheism, but I definitely stopped going to church for a period of time there. But then
• 36:14
  got married, started having children. My wife and I started having these hard conversations,
• 36:20
  not hard conversations, but like honest, open conversations about how we want to raise our children when it comes to faith.
• 36:28
  And we really fell back to like the Ten Commandments just makes sense to us.
• 36:33
  Like we distilled it down to the Ten Commandments.
• 36:37
  Like if our boys and future children live by the Ten Commandments, like we should strive to live by the Ten Commandments.
• 36:45
  We think it's worthwhile to imbue that message to our children, too.
• 36:50
  I think this is very important and it's so simple, but for some reason it's controversial.
• 36:58
  Yeah.
• 36:58
  Well, I think, man, you know, I keep coming back to like this thing about the West and
• 37:05
  it's because the West is in such an odd position right now.
• 37:11
  It's true of pretty much every country in Western Europe, certainly the USA, the UK,
• 37:17
  Australia, New Zealand, Canada, they're in the very strange position where these countries are all, they're all traditionally Christian countries.
• 37:30
  And to this day, Christianity would be the, I guess, number one religion in them in terms of what people believe they, what people would say they're at least affiliated to.
• 37:46
  They have obviously like all their churches. If you look at most of the hospitals in these nations, lots of them are going to be named after, you know, St. This, St. That, even a lot of the colleges and universities and schools and even the legal systems and people's beliefs are so heavily influenced by Christian teachings.
• 38:05
  I know in the USA, for example, I mean, in the US in particular, I think over 60% of
• 38:11
  Americans to this day consider themselves Christian.
• 38:16
  But then you look at the culture and you look at the media and you look at certain things
• 38:21
  going on and you're like, ah, this isn't really sort of striking me as a majority Christian
• 38:27
  country.
• 38:27
  There seems to be a, what's the word, a paradox here where like things don't quite seem to be lining up and where the, look, the truth is that the dominant culture in our countries now is actually, I'd call it like secular progressivism is really the dominant culture.
• 38:52
  And the reason I know that that is true is because espousing a traditional Christian viewpoint um is considered more controversial and is more likely to upset people than espousing like a typical boilerplate like secular progressive view To see the most obvious example of this you could look at how the attitude towards
• 39:19
  so-called same-sex marriage has changed even over the last 20 years, right? So if you go back 20
• 39:25
  years ago, even the Democrats, right? The Democrats in the US were like, no, no, we don't support that.
• 39:32
  Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, they're like, no, marriage is between a man and a woman.
• 39:35
  All of human history, all of the existence of the U.S., all the existence of the entire world,
• 39:41
  everyone's understood marriage between a man and a woman. It's not even just explicitly
• 39:45
  a Christian thing, but certainly in the entire Christian world, that was the case.
• 39:51
  And it all changed like in what, the last 15 years. Whereas now, if I were to go on like,
• 39:58
  I don't know, um, on, if I were to go on TV and they asked me my views and I said, yeah, you know,
• 40:04
  marriage is just between a man and a woman, or they asked me if I support, you know, gay marriage
• 40:08
  or whatever. And I've said, no, like that would be, what would be controversial if, if, if I wanted
• 40:13
  to play it safe, I'd be like, oh yeah, that's fine. You know, love is love or whatever, you know,
• 40:16
  that'll get me the claps. That'll get me the applause. Um, and so you can actually, we, we,
• 40:21
  we have lived through the switch. I use that example. Cause I think it's like one of the most
• 40:26
  obvious ones. Um, being pro-life opposing the killing of children in the womb is more controversial
• 40:33
  than supporting it. Um, does that sound like a Christian country? I mean, like on the subject
• 40:42
  of demonic forces, like the, the pro-choice movement is one like literally murdering human
• 40:49
  life. Yeah, there we go. Right. But, but saying that is like, I know when I say that, like,
• 40:55
  oh my gosh, someone might hear that and be like, oh my gosh, this guy's like a far right,
• 40:59
  or he's like hardcore conservative, or he's like a, and I'm just like, this is not even,
• 41:04
  like this is not, the fact that that is even considered like a sort of really polarizing,
• 41:10
  a sort of extreme view. I mean, that kind of shows how far, how far it's gone. So coming,
• 41:15
  coming back to the, the point of the piece and based on what you just told me about like your own
• 41:21
  faith journey and life trajectory. I think it's a really common one for millennials.
• 41:26
  And maybe it's just because we're at that sort of, I don't know, I think, I think millennials,
• 41:33
  like we're, we're the last generation that sort of had the, we lived pretty much half of our lives
• 41:39
  without the internet, smartphones and social media, and the other half with, I think we've
• 41:44
  been through this disruption. And it's affected us in a lot of ways. And I think a lot of us,
• 41:50
  we're kind of encouraged on one hand to follow tradition and do what our parents and our ancestors
• 41:58
  did and to follow this path. But then the media and the culture and even the schools and the
• 42:04
  universities and so many people, it's like, no, just like, you know, totally pursue your own path.
• 42:08
  Like you're completely individual, like you're totally free, like, you know, throw off the
• 42:13
  shackles, do whatever makes you feel good. Do. And so I think a lot of us, a lot of people
• 42:20
  in our generation kind of started in one place, a little more like conservative, shall we say,
• 42:27
  for lack of a better term. And then in your teens and your young adulthood, as you naturally start
• 42:33
  to question things more, which is very natural, and you start to explore and experiment and so on,
• 42:39
  and you kind of go through one way. And then there's this funny thing that often happens where
• 42:44
  based on your own experiences and your own observations and observing other people and
• 42:51
  seeing how things are panning out for people as you get into your late 20s, your 30s, and you're
• 42:58
  seeing people who have taken all of these different paths. And for so many people, it kind of comes
• 43:05
  full circle where you're kind of back to like, oh, that's why that rule existed. Oh, that's what
• 43:11
  happens when you stray away from this. Oh, that's why my parents always said this. Oh, that's why
• 43:17
  in the book it says to, to, to do this and to not do this. Um, it's not just because they want to
• 43:25
  like, you know, be oppressive or clamp down on people's freedom or stop people having fun or
• 43:31
  whatever. It's because, you know, there's a, there, there's someone up there who, who understands
• 43:36
  the world better than we do. And all of these people who have come before us, they weren't
• 43:42
  necessarily like, you know, C.S. Lewis called it chronological snobbery, right? The idea that
• 43:48
  modern people always think that they're so much smarter and better than people who came before
• 43:53
  them. And we're really not. You know, sometimes I'll see like a post going viral on social media,
• 44:01
  and it will be like someone having a realization of something that people have like known for
• 44:05
  thousands of years. I don't know. Maybe it's someone who's been like super promiscuous and
• 44:10
  they've been sleeping around a whole bunch or whatever. And then they're like, you know what,
• 44:13
  like I've recently like been monogamous and like, I feel so much better. Like my mental health is
• 44:18
  better. You know, like those, those types of posts that you're just a bit like, oh boy,
• 44:23
  like human beings are so funny, but this is nothing new. I mean, even in the old Testament,
• 44:27
  there's the constant rebellion and people coming back and rebellion and people coming back.
• 44:32
  and you know you can live your life just by a few simple rules and it it it works
• 44:42
  one of the biggest conversations that's happening now and this is big on for Gen Z as well is um
• 44:48
  you know this whole conversation about like mental health and everyone's like why is mental health
• 44:54
  declining why are young people so anxious why are they so depressed why there's this and this
• 44:58
  And sure, there's multiple factors going on. But the one that people, again, want to dodge is like the spiritual component. People want to talk about food and they want to talk about smartphones and they want to talk about screens and they want to talk about the economy.
• 45:14
  And you can talk about all those things with no controversy. But, you know, if you say the G word, if you say God and you say, you know, people have abandoned God and they're trying to do it their own way, then, you know, people will kind of give you a little bit of a side eye. And that's so clearly one of the main factors that's happening.
• 45:34
  And something that's kind of funny about it is even when you look at for people who are obsessed with studies, even like there have been many secular studies from like non-religious organizations.
• 45:47
  and they still show that like religious people on average are happier, less likely to be depressed,
• 45:57
  more likely to have kids and be happy about it, more likely to be happy, like almost any indicator
• 46:03
  of a healthy human being. It's like, you know, those people who are still going to church and
• 46:10
  still getting married and still having kids and still kind of just living more traditionally,
• 46:16
  um the generally speaking they're they're better off by all these measures so
• 46:23
  and you know i think maybe one point here is i think something that's kind of fascinating and
• 46:30
  a little bit amusing about it is even if i even if i just think of people i know
• 46:35
  or people who i'm acquainted with which is a pretty large sample size even those who are
• 46:41
  not religious or even are explicitly atheist, the ones who tend to be like genuinely, uh, joyful
• 46:50
  and happy and thriving long-term, they still follow, they still follow God's laws. Like they,
• 46:57
  they tend to live quite, um, like their, their beliefs about the world are not, are not religious
• 47:04
  or Christian per se, but like the way they actually live and the things they actually do
• 47:08
  and their basic sort of moral tenets are very much aligned actually with the value system.
• 47:16
  So whether they've kind of taken it and they've removed the God part or, you know, they feel like
• 47:20
  they've somehow derived it another way, it still remains true. So regardless of like someone's
• 47:27
  individual theology, the behaviors themselves are very much in line with human thriving and
• 47:37
  well-being both on an individual and a collective level yeah on the subject of like mental health
• 47:45
  being a subject i saw a great tweet like why is mental health at an all-time high what is
• 47:49
  anxiousness at an all-time high and somebody's like it's it can be distilled into like people
• 47:54
  have this uh subconscious recognition that they're not living up to their true potential
• 47:59
  because they're doing these degenerate hedonistic lazy things and they're not not living up to their
• 48:06
  full potential and if you dig into the things that they're doing instead of living up to their
• 48:11
  potential whether it's hedonistic degenerate or lazy like you're you're sort of confront you're
• 48:18
  avoiding god's law by doing those things and so like a layer below that that explanation is like
• 48:25
  living to god's law like being a good person being productive treating your neighbor well
• 48:30
  raising a family and, and to your point about like people being viscerally reactive to people
• 48:39
  sort of pointing like, Hey, you're not living by God's law. This is why you're having these
• 48:42
  problems. And they sort of lash out. I don't want to get too esoteric, but that's like the demons
• 48:48
  lashing out. Like, no, like I want to keep doing this stuff. I don't want to, I don't want to
• 48:52
  recognize that it is because I'm not living within God's law that I'm having all these problems. And
• 48:57
  You sort of have like this demonic sort of reaction to it or the inner demons are like trying to pull you back towards the hedonistic stuff.
• 49:06
  I don't know if that's too heady, but that's sort of the way.
• 49:10
  Not for me.
• 49:11
  Not for me.
• 49:12
  Yeah.
• 49:13
  And I think, look, I think this is another area.
• 49:20
  The data is very like hazy on this one.
• 49:23
  I've seen it kind of go both directions, but it also looks like Gen Z are kind of waking up to this one as well.
• 49:29
  I've seen some points of data that seem to point out that Gen Z are starting to like go back to church more and are more interested actually in traditional Christianity and even other faiths.
• 49:43
  So, again, I think what Gen Z can do is they can just look up.
• 49:47
  They can look up in millennials, Gen X, boomers.
• 49:51
  boomers, and you've got billions of people who have taken all of these different paths.
• 49:58
  And it's always helpful to just look up and be like, okay, what do I want to emulate?
• 50:03
  Where do I want to be? You know, when I'm 30, when I'm 40, when I'm 50, when I'm 70, when I'm 80.
• 50:08
  Because oftentimes when we're in our 20s, or in our teens, we tend to only think about the first
• 50:15
  half of our lives. I think most people think about what their life is going to look like up until like
• 50:20
  40, maybe 50, not a lot of people think, okay, what's, what do I want my life to look like between
• 50:26
  50 and a hundred? Very few people think about that. Like we have this short-term bias. And
• 50:33
  again, if the decisions you make, it's kind of, it's kind of a scary thought, right? Like the
• 50:38
  decisions you make in your twenties and thirties in particular, but also your forties, like those
• 50:45
  are really going to set up what the second half of your life looks like. So no one has to, no,
• 50:51
  no one has to have children, right? Like I'm not, I'm not forcing anyone to have kids, but if you
• 50:56
  choose not to, um, then someone should really like really, really think about what that means.
• 51:03
  Cause you're not only choosing not to be a parent, you're also choosing never to be a grandparent,
• 51:08
  Right. You're choosing you're closing off a lot of potential avenues.
• 51:17
  So if I look at my parents, for example, my parents have been married almost 50 years.
• 51:22
  They have five kids, 11 grandkids now.
• 51:26
  My dad is approaching 80.
• 51:28
  My mom is 70.
• 51:29
  And if I look at like what keeps them going, what energizes them, what keeps them youthful, what brings a smile to their face, what they feel.
• 51:38
  what they feel are their biggest accomplishments and so on in their older years, it all comes down
• 51:47
  to family, like entirely. My dad has a great career. You know, he's a successful doctor for
• 51:53
  five decades. But it's just like, yeah, the family, obviously, and it keeps them young,
• 52:01
  it keeps them active, it keeps them youthful. So are there some people who have like really
• 52:06
  thought of this and they're like, you know what, I'm happy to be a 60, 70, 80 year old man or woman
• 52:11
  with like, you know, and not have family around me. Okay. You know, if that's really, if that's
• 52:18
  really what you choose, then fair enough. But I think, um, I just think in our very like sort of
• 52:23
  short term, short term thinking culture, uh, a lot of people have never even really thought of that.
• 52:29
  They haven't really thought, okay, even just the idea that by choosing not to be a parent,
• 52:33
  you're also choosing not to be a grandparent, right? Like you, you're just closing, you're
• 52:36
  closing that door of that potential human experience. Um, that's a pretty big deal.
• 52:42
  I don't think that's a, I don't think that's a decision you should make real, like lightly.
• 52:46
  Um, I think people should really, really think about that. And yeah, there's always going to be
• 52:51
  a minority. There's always going to be people who are exceptions who are like, okay, cool. Like this
• 52:55
  is the path that you want to take. But for the vast majority of people I'd wager like for 90%
• 53:01
  of people, um, you know, 90, 90 to 95% of people, it's probably not the, um, it's probably not the
• 53:09
  best long-term path for them. Um, very similarly, uh, I'm sure, you know, you see lots of conversations
• 53:16
  about dating and relationships and marriage and this and this and this. Um, and it's like,
• 53:23
  look, even as a man with your sort of like longer biological clock, shall we say, um,
• 53:28
  You know, do you want to be like 50, 60, 70, and you're still just like living the bachelor life? I mean, maybe you do, right? There's going to be a small percentage of guys out there who like, that's, you know, they're just, they're kind of wired that way.
• 53:46
  But in reality, like, again, if you look at elderly people, if you, you know, most of them, the ones who are happiest, the ones who feel most fulfilled, the ones who feel least lonely, you know, typically like they've, they've got someone, they've, they've, they've got people.
• 54:02
  So look, if something has been done for like thousands and thousands and thousands of years, it doesn't always mean it's a good idea, but normally there's a reason for it.
• 54:13
  Like if someone has if something's just existed and it's just persisted in humanity and it seems to have like help people, there's normally a good reason for it.
• 54:20
  So before like totally rejecting it or closing that door, I would encourage people to at least like really, really, really think, really, really think about it.
• 54:30
  Like, why does this exist?
• 54:33
  And maybe, maybe, maybe you're so exceptional that you can eschew multiple of these things and you'll still be fine and you'll thrive.
• 54:40
  but um statistically probably not so yeah i won't belabor the point
• 54:47
  well i'll belabor it for you because i was uh i was thinking like just last night uh and we're
• 54:55
  very fortunate we're at the jersey shore right now it's tradition and not only my family my
• 55:01
  wife's family come down here in the summer and it's typically multi-generational houses so we're
• 55:06
  living with her parents in a house right now last night me my wife and my mother-in-law are playing
• 55:11
  manjohn and my mother-in-law's in her mid-70s or getting to her mid-70s she would be offended if i
• 55:18
  said that but uh it was just like i was sitting there they were sitting across the table i was at
• 55:24
  the end of the table or playing just chatting and like i could see the joy that not only my mother
• 55:29
  in law had but my wife had that they were spending that quality time together and her grandkids were
• 55:33
  sleep downstairs and to your point about look up to millennials like there is a number of
• 55:40
  millennials reaching their mid to late 30s that are coming to this realization that they did not
• 55:44
  do this and they're having existential crises and it's something that as a gen z-er you should try
• 55:50
  to avoid at all costs there are people waking up realizing that they wasted their 20s their early
• 55:55
  30s and particularly women don't have the opportunity to sort of buy that back the
• 56:01
  The biological clock will not allow it.
• 56:03
  And it's amazing because what you just said right there is like one of those it's another one of those taboos.
• 56:11
  Like it's like you're not you're not supposed to say that.
• 56:13
  It's like it's not kind to not say that.
• 56:16
  Right. It's not good to mislead generations of young women to like be.
• 56:23
  I've heard people say things like, oh, you know, just like wait until like, you know, your late 30s or 40s.
• 56:28
  You know, the guys are like, I'm like, what kind of advice is that?
• 56:31
  Like, and they'll point again, they'll point to exceptions of like, oh, well, so-and-so had a baby when she was 45 years old.
• 56:37
  So-and-so celebrity had a baby at 47.
• 56:40
  And it's like, is this really the message you want to be telling like young women in their, in their twenties?
• 56:47
  Like you're, you're setting so many millions of people up for disappointment and, and heartbreak and heartache.
• 56:57
  And this, this is just the reality of it.
• 56:59
  I didn't make it this way.
• 57:01
  You didn't make it this way. Like we didn't program the biology of how things work.
• 57:06
  But I think it's important for people to realize like on this subject in particular,
• 57:10
  most things I'd say like, you know, life, life has different seasons, right? And there are
• 57:15
  certain things you can only do during certain windows of your life. So if you miss that window,
• 57:24
  then it's, it's gone. Um, lots of things are not like this. There are many things where like,
• 57:31
  you know, you can always do it, but, um, you know, I'd say this, even someone who like really wants
• 57:35
  to like, I don't know, travel the world and explore and do some like super active things.
• 57:42
  Like you, you're, there's going to come an age where like, you're not able to do it all.
• 57:47
  Say, I don't know, you want to go like snowboarding in the Alps. Um, you're probably not going to be
• 57:52
  able to, you probably don't want to save that till your sixties or your seventies. Okay. Like do that
• 57:57
  while you're youthful and you've got the energy and you're, you can physically do it. Um, do those
• 58:02
  things at this time when it comes to, you know, have having a family, um, you, you don't want to
• 58:08
  leave that for ever. If you're a woman and you're thinking, okay, I'll start thinking about this.
• 58:12
  Like when I'm 38 or when I'm 40, I mean, wake up call, if no one else is going to say it, I'll be
• 58:18
  like that. That's a really horrible, it's a really bad idea. Like it doesn't mean there's
• 58:23
  0% chance you'll succeed. I know people who have done that and they've managed to like kind of
• 58:27
  slide in, but, um, it's not a good strategy. Like it's not in the same way. Like, you know,
• 58:33
  some people win the lottery, but like, I don't think it's a good strategy to like not work and
• 58:39
  just keep buying lotto tickets and just keep on waiting for the chance Like you know you going to get that So yeah I I think that keeps coming up here Marty is like society we live in a culture that lies to people a lot
• 58:53
  that prefers comforting lies to truths that might be like a little bit uncomfortable,
• 58:58
  or which like might offend some people, or which not every single person perfectly fits into.
• 59:05
  There are always going to be exceptions. But if you think of what the purpose of a culture is,
• 59:09
  I've never like expressed this thought I'm kind of thinking like almost like part of what a culture
• 59:15
  is is to like create a template and a set of expectations and standards and perhaps guidelines
• 59:23
  for what most people should do right so it doesn't mean that like it's going to work for 100% of
• 59:32
  people or everything's going to be perfect or there's no exceptions but it's like okay like
• 59:37
  80, 90% of people, this is, if you, if you follow these steps, if you take this path,
• 59:43
  if you do these things, it's generally gonna work out. It's generally going to work out pretty well
• 59:49
  for you. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It's a, it's a very, very interesting conversation.
• 59:55
  Getting back to the 10 commandments and all that. It's like almost like
• 59:58
  these books were sort of consensus rules for society to, to proliferate and flourish.
• 1:00:04
  hopefully and like another thing like going back to the subject of like don't wait like there are
• 1:00:10
  these seasons of time uh where you should be doing things and talk about like starting a family
• 1:00:17
  like i think that's one thing that's counterintuitive too and i think society really
• 1:00:22
  pushes the message they push is like when you have kids your life's over
• 1:00:27
  but i've experienced i'm sure you're experiencing it right now there's no
• 1:00:30
  there's nothing more motivating in the world than having a child like people are like you have kids
• 1:00:35
  your life's over it's like no when i had my first son i locked in harder than i've ever locked in on
• 1:00:41
  anything in my life it was like you look at the kid and you're like i gotta go do something and
• 1:00:45
  it's incredibly motivating and i think most people are led to believe that oh your your life's over
• 1:00:51
  but i really want to stress the point like no not only is it not over but you're going to see that
• 1:00:56
  it motivates you and sends you to levels that you didn't even know you could unlock within yourself.
• 1:01:03
  Dude, you just brought a thought to my mind. I think that millennials could be the most
• 1:01:08
  propagandized generation. They really hit us with a lot, whether it was like the,
• 1:01:14
  I was seeing some clips on X the other day of like old episodes of Captain Planet.
• 1:01:20
  There's too many people on the planet. Dude, like even as a kid, I knew it was like,
• 1:01:25
  you know, environmentalism propaganda, but like watching some of it when you're older,
• 1:01:29
  you're just like, geez, like it's so, it's not even subtle. It's like, so on the nose.
• 1:01:35
  It's just like, so anti-human. Um, and I don't know, I, I think with across a lot of levels,
• 1:01:42
  like we just got, we got hit with a lot of propaganda through, through entertainment,
• 1:01:47
  entertainment, music, TV, shows, even like shows that, how would I put it? Even shows that I think
• 1:01:57
  like people would view as quite like innocuous or movies people would think were quite innocuous.
• 1:02:01
  And then you kind of watch them back a little bit older with a more critical eye. And you're like,
• 1:02:06
  man, like the messaging in this is like the messaging in this is not, is not good.
• 1:02:12
  And so I think an opportunity Gen Z has is, again, if their eyes are open and they're paying attention and they're switched on, they can dodge.
• 1:02:22
  They can dodge some of the propaganda, even the like, you know, you must go to university to have any chance of life or to be successful.
• 1:02:30
  It's not true.
• 1:02:32
  I think Gen Z are increasingly seeing like, OK, it's not true.
• 1:02:36
  And I think millennial parents even are like, OK, this isn't saying I'm not anti-university or anything like that.
• 1:02:43
  But the idea that like everyone has to go and like if you don't go, then, you know, you're you're not going to make it or what.
• 1:02:49
  Like it's no, like it's not true.
• 1:02:51
  Like it's it's a good it's a good thing to tell people if you want to get them, you know, if you want to fill the coffers of the universities and give them their billions.
• 1:03:01
  But it's just like, no, that's not that's not correct, man.
• 1:03:05
  we were hit with the freaking food pyramid, like all, all of the, we, we got hit with a lot of
• 1:03:12
  stuff, man. We got hit with a lot. I think Gen Z are going to be like a more, more awake to it,
• 1:03:16
  let alone all the political stuff. No, there's, I mean, food pyramid,
• 1:03:22
  everything was forced on us. And it is, and again, like to stress that point, once you like,
• 1:03:30
  once you have children you begin like reflecting on all this stuff like very you like zone in on
• 1:03:36
  like all right let me do a retrospective of my life and think about how i want my child's life
• 1:03:41
  to go moving forward and you have a lot of these realizations like holy crap most of this stuff
• 1:03:46
  maybe it's maybe it's not not completely true but there's a lot of like slop in it that that we were
• 1:03:54
  fed and led to believe and the Malthusians certainly, uh, certainly won the first half
• 1:04:00
  of the game of our lives, but I am making it a point to make sure they didn't win in
• 1:04:04
  the second half of our lives for our generation.
• 1:04:07
  And again, really want to stress that point to any Gen Zers listening to this, like look
• 1:04:12
  up to millennials, look forward, the generation above you.
• 1:04:15
  It is objective.
• 1:04:17
  There are people who succumb to that propaganda and sort of live their life.
• 1:04:24
  via the rules that the propaganda set up for them and they regret it massively.
• 1:04:29
  And you have the opportunity to skirt that right now.
• 1:04:32
  Yeah, that's right. You know, learn from others. Don't feel like you have to make all the same mistakes.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. And last point to touch on. I think it's another I think all 12 points are very important.
• 1:04:43
  But this one hit close to home for me, because I think in my early 20s, particularly, I didn't live by this tenant.
• 1:04:51
  But take yourself seriously is is very important to have confidence, to believe that you're competent and to exude that, to dress nice, to clean up, to be in shape.
• 1:05:04
  Very important.
• 1:05:06
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:05:06
  You know, right.
• 1:05:07
  Rightly or wrongly, humans actually are a very judgmental species.
• 1:05:13
  And we see patterns and we make assumptions and everybody has their biases, even if we try not to.
• 1:05:20
  And one of the most basic ones is, you know, human beings are pretty, we're very reciprocal and we make connections in our brains based on how people present themselves both physically and in terms of their behavior.
• 1:05:37
  Like if you think of it, okay, if someone's going for a job interview, why do you get a haircut and dress nice, right?
• 1:05:44
  If you're someone's going on a first date, like, why do you care about what you look?
• 1:05:47
  It's because you people say, you know, you want to make a good impression.
• 1:05:51
  And someone might be like, oh, well, you know, that's silly, that's superficial, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:05:56
  OK, like you can think that, but it's just true.
• 1:05:59
  And everybody does it, even the people who like want to pretend that they don't.
• 1:06:03
  Like we all we all do it to a degree.
• 1:06:06
  So it's just about showing up in the world.
• 1:06:08
  And, you know, in terms of your behavior, in terms of your body language, in terms of your presentation.
• 1:06:14
  you know, just take yourself a little bit seriously. Like it's not, and I think even
• 1:06:20
  now more than ever, it'll make you stand out because so many people just don't.
• 1:06:25
  Like so many people don't. I mean, go to an airport, like in any city in the US,
• 1:06:29
  you'll see people in there in their freaking pajamas and flip-flops and just like, just looking,
• 1:06:34
  looking messy. Like you see stuff from decades ago and like people just look better. People
• 1:06:39
  presented better. People took themselves more, more seriously. So if you do buck that trend,
• 1:06:44
  um, then it's, it's an easy way to, it's an easy way to stand out. And when I see someone who does
• 1:06:50
  that and who clearly respects themselves, you're more likely to, to respect them as well. Cause
• 1:06:55
  it's just like, okay, this person takes himself seriously. So, so will I, this doesn't mean don't
• 1:07:01
  have fun. This doesn't mean, um, don't enjoy your life. This doesn't mean you have to wear like a
• 1:07:06
  three piece suit everywhere. That's, that's not the point, but just, um, but yeah, just, just,
• 1:07:11
  just, just be serious about it. Like people have all these ideas of things they want to achieve
• 1:07:16
  and their goals and their aspirations, and they want to do this and they want to do that. And it's
• 1:07:19
  like, okay, like believe you're the person who can do this and present yourself like the type
• 1:07:25
  of person who could achieve this thing, whatever it is. If you're saying you, even, even like, um,
• 1:07:32
  young people who are like, Hey, I want to be a, I want to be a YouTuber.
• 1:07:37
  And look, there'll be some older people who like dismiss that. I'm like, no, okay. I don't dismiss
• 1:07:42
  that. But like, okay, take it seriously. Right? Like, look at the, look at the YouTubers that you
• 1:07:48
  admire and look up to. I assure you they are taking it like seriously. You might, you might
• 1:07:53
  not see it in the sort of immediate presentation, but if you, if you know what's going on in the
• 1:07:57
  background and you're looking at their teams and how they're handling their finances and setting up
• 1:08:01
  their scripts and their videos and like, boy, that's a whole operation. Like they take it very,
• 1:08:07
  very seriously. So if that's your aspiration, take it seriously. If you're saying, Hey, I want to be
• 1:08:11
  a, I don't know. I want to be an NBA basketball player. It's like, okay, bro. Like you'd better
• 1:08:17
  take that seriously. Like you're not going to reach that level just by like messing around and,
• 1:08:22
  you know, shooting some hoops here and there. Like you got to be in the gym daily. You got to be on
• 1:08:26
  the court. You got to be putting in, I don't know how many hours a day. I don't know how many dozens
• 1:08:30
  of hours a week, but like, you got to take it, you got to take it seriously. So that's, that,
• 1:08:35
  that's all that point is. And I'd also just add to it that it's important for young people to
• 1:08:40
  realize that these things compound. So look, if you're in your like thirties or even in your forties
• 1:08:46
  or fifties, and you don't feel like you've quote unquote made it yet, it's that's okay. It doesn't
• 1:08:51
  mean like your, your life is over or something, but if you make good decisions in your twenties,
• 1:08:55
  it makes your 30s easier. If you make good decisions in your 30s, it's going to make your
• 1:09:01
  40s easier and so on and so forth. So the earlier you do some of these things and the earlier you
• 1:09:06
  can like lock in certain habits, like something I'm so happy about is that I started going to the
• 1:09:11
  gym when I was 15. So like going to the gym for me is like, it requires the same level of motivation
• 1:09:16
  as showering and brushing my teeth. Some people are like, Oh, how do you stay motivated? I'm like,
• 1:09:20
  it's not even motivation. It's just like a, it's just a habit. Like I can't, it's just,
• 1:09:24
  it's just what I do. And can you build that habit in your 30s if you haven't already? Yeah,
• 1:09:30
  absolutely. But the earlier you do some of these things, the easier it is. We're both in the
• 1:09:34
  Bitcoin world. The earlier you, the earlier you learn about it and you start, you know,
• 1:09:41
  buying some sats, then the better off you'll be. Yeah, you can wait another five years. You can
• 1:09:46
  wait another 10 years. You can wait 15 years. It doesn't mean the door's totally closed. But
• 1:09:50
  if you wait that long, you'll be thinking, man, five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
• 1:09:55
  I wish I, uh, I wish I made these moves. So I encourage people make those moves now.
• 1:10:01
  Yeah. And consistency is key. Like you said, the gym, that's like one of the best things
• 1:10:07
  my father ever did for me. And my brother was get us a bench set when I was 13 and just put it in
• 1:10:12
  our basement and started lifting. That's another form of propaganda that's been thrown out. You
• 1:10:18
  can't have your kids start lifting too early it's like no okay start early start often but like yeah
• 1:10:24
  working out for me is it's like muscle memory it's like dude i'll tell you one of the biggest
• 1:10:29
  i'll tell you one of the biggest pieces of propaganda and it was pushed in it was so subtle
• 1:10:33
  but like the idea that um lifting weights or being like strong and muscular is somehow like
• 1:10:39
  inversely correlated with intelligence or even kindness for that matter right like how many shows
• 1:10:46
  or cartoons. Yeah. Like the job, the job is the bully. He's mean, he's dumb. Um, so, you know,
• 1:10:56
  you can be like skinny and physically weak and smart, or you can be, you can be physically strong
• 1:11:03
  and muscular, but then you're going to be like dumb or something. That's another like serious
• 1:11:08
  propaganda that we, that we got hit with. Um, I think for the, I think for girls, it's like,
• 1:11:13
  you know, if you're, if you're pretty or good looking, then, you know, you're a B-I-T-C-H.
• 1:11:17
  You're dumb blonde.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah.
• 1:11:20
  And then like, you know, if you, if you're, you know, nerdy and less attractive, then you're
• 1:11:24
  somehow smarter.
• 1:11:25
  I don't know, man.
• 1:11:26
  They, they, they hit us with a lot of psyops over the years, but it's quite fascinating
• 1:11:31
  to see them for what they are.
• 1:11:34
  And yeah, man, bro, I, I'm, I'm optimistic about Gen Z.
• 1:11:37
  I'm optimistic about Gen Z.
• 1:11:38
  The type of person who at least has the, what's the right word, curiosity or motivation to even look into and follow the type of stuff we're talking about.
• 1:11:52
  Just that alone, I'm optimistic for them.
• 1:11:54
  The people who are even kind of like seeking this stuff out, that in itself to me is massively, it makes me massively optimistic.
• 1:12:03
  because if you're even seeking out this kind of knowledge and these types of perspectives,
• 1:12:08
  then I think you're light years ahead of the game.
• 1:12:12
  Yeah, I completely agree.
• 1:12:14
  And I want to thank you for writing the piece.
• 1:12:16
  It's weird how God, the universe works because I've been like on this tip for like four months now
• 1:12:24
  because it really stemmed from looking at our YouTube and podcasting demographics
• 1:12:28
  and noticing that our core demographics, like millennials and Gen X.
• 1:12:35
  And I was like, what are the Zoomers?
• 1:12:36
  So we did a series on the weekly show that I do where we brought in a bunch of Zoomers
• 1:12:41
  to get the perspective on Bitcoin.
• 1:12:42
  And it really unlocked a perspective for me.
• 1:12:47
  But I don't want to seem like the paternalistic worrier,
• 1:12:52
  But I do think like there is sort of like a knowledge transfer to be had between millennials and Gen Z about like the mistakes they can avoid that we saw many people in our generation make.
• 1:13:04
  And I think your piece is an incredibly quick read, straight to the point and like a good sort of framework for anybody looking to sort of improve themselves and get off on the right foot to start with and then stem out from there.
• 1:13:21
  Yeah, thank you, Marty.
• 1:13:22
  I'll tell you, I'll say one more thing about this. And look, I think guys around our age, like we're the best people positioned to do this in some ways, because we're only one generation older, right? Like we're, we're 15 to, I don't know, 10 to 20 years older, right?
• 1:13:40
  We're not like so far removed that we grew up in like a totally different world or like everything was like so different or we can't even remember what it was like to be in our 20s or anything like that.
• 1:13:54
  Like, I think it can be hard for a 20 year old man to sort of take advice from a guy who's in his 50s, 60s, 70s sometimes because they're just like, you don't you don't get it.
• 1:14:03
  Like, you don't get it.
• 1:14:04
  Like, you're you're too, you know, when I was born, you are already like 45.
• 1:14:09
  like you don't get it like all the technological changes all the cultural changes I think with
• 1:14:14
  millennials like we mostly we heavily overlap with Generation Z so we can like relate to
• 1:14:22
  a lot of what they're talking about and we're not so much like visibly and emotionally older
• 1:14:29
  that they're just like oh yeah those are just like old guys talking about old guy stuff like
• 1:14:35
  they can look at us and be like oh yeah like yeah like I'll listen to that guy like he's not
• 1:14:39
  Like he gets me, you know, he gets me and he's not, uh, yeah.
• 1:14:44
  So, so I, so I think, um, should we, should we choose to accept it?
• 1:14:48
  I think, um, some of us millennials can make some pretty good headway here in terms of,
• 1:14:54
  uh, trying to not in a overly paternalistic way, like you said, but, you know, just trying
• 1:14:59
  to offer genuine help and guidance for the guys who are 10, 15, you know, 10, 15 years
• 1:15:08
  younger than us.
• 1:15:09
  Yeah, completely agree. And again, thank you for writing it. Thank you for coming on discussing it. We can't wait three years to do another podcast. I feel like we should do this within the next year because it's incredibly thought provoking conversation. And I love talking to you. So thank you for writing. Thank you for coming on. You're crushing it.
• 1:15:33
  Nice one, man. Thank you so much. And congrats on congrats on number three on the way. How much longer to go?
• 1:15:39
  uh, a little over a month. Oh, wow. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, amazing, man. Amazing. Yeah. It's,
• 1:15:47
  uh, it's imminent. We're in, we're in the nesting phase. So I love it, man. Well,
• 1:15:52
  God, God bless you and your family, man. I hope, uh, everything goes smoothly with that.
• 1:15:56
  Well, you as well. God bless you. Congrats on your first, uh, like I said,
• 1:16:02
  you're going to, you're going to quickly begin to realize how fast time moves because
• 1:16:06
  your children make it very, very obvious. And, uh,
• 1:16:10
  I see a man. My, my, my oldest niece just turned 19, man. So I feel it already.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah. Hey, anybody listening? That's the other thing. Another side.
• 1:16:22
  And we, we talked to you on a little bit, but like,
• 1:16:24
  don't succumb to the weight to have kids.
• 1:16:26
  You have that energy in your twenties and your early thirties. I like now that
• 1:16:31
  we're at our third, I'm like, God, I wish I started a little bit earlier,
• 1:16:33
  but we don't have to belabor it.
• 1:16:36
  It's Friday night where you are,
• 1:16:38
  Zuby.
• 1:16:38
  I hope you enjoy it with your family.
• 1:16:40
  And like I said,
• 1:16:41
  we should do this again at some point,
• 1:16:43
  not three years from now,
• 1:16:44
  but some point earlier than that.
• 1:16:46
  No doubt,
• 1:16:46
  Marty.
• 1:16:47
  Look forward to seeing you again in person sometime.
• 1:16:49
  Definitely.
• 1:16:50
  Peace and love,
• 1:16:50
  freaks.
• 1:16:52
  Freaks,
• 1:16:52
  thank you for listening to the show.
• 1:16:53
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• 1:16:54
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• 1:16:55
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• 1:16:57
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• 1:16:58
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• 1:17:00
  And also,
• 1:17:00
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• 1:17:01
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• 1:17:03
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• 1:17:09
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• 1:17:11
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• 1:17:13
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• 1:17:14
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• 1:17:17
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• 1:17:20
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• 1:17:31
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• 1:17:33
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• 1:17:39
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• 1:17:39
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• 1:17:54
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• 1:17:55
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• 1:18:00
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• 1:18:02
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• 1:18:03
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• 1:18:12
  Okay.