Don't Be a Numbass

In this episode, Dan and Sean navigate through numbness, nuance, and the uncomfortable edges of modern life. From tariffs and fentanyl policy to the messy mechanics of entrepreneurship, they discuss the complicated reality of staying engaged in a world that often feels overwhelming. Also on deck: what it really means to be an entrepreneur, thoughts on Prometheus Rising, unfair competition on Amazon, and a shoutout to 23andMe’s vanishing business model.

Oh, and if you see a quarter, pick it up.

Topics include:
– Volatility and numbness in 2025
– Dan’s new startup idea (inspired by Skype’s shutdown)
– Surviving tariffs, uncertainty, and unfair Amazon practices
– Fentanyl and the difference between drug policy and public safety
– Thoughts on Prometheus Rising and reality tunnels
– Survivorship bias, investing parlor games, and the danger of hindsight
– Trying not to get drafted

Books discussed:
– Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
– Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by John E. Mack
– The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
– References to ideas by Jim O’Shaughnessy and Ben Hunt

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
good morning, Dan.
Good morning, Sean.
How are you on this daylight savings time initiated day?
yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm a little, off Kilter here today, so we'll see how it goes.
I'm, you know, an hour, hour less sleep than usual and, not, I don't know.

(00:21):
Not that it's like early, but you know, it's still Sunday morning and just feel a littleout of whack.
That's all.
yeah,
Anyway, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what to talk about today.
Where are you with Prometheus Rising?
chapter 10 or 11, I'm about halfway through, I think.
It's, it's, I'm digging it.

(00:42):
I got to say,
Yeah, I think the first half is probably the more important half.
that's good to know.
I, it seems like the second half, like I just started the mind-washing chapter, I think iswhat he is titled.
I've been like how to reprogram your friends and that, so I'm just like at the start ofthat.
I'm interested to see what that one's about.

(01:08):
Well,
do you want to park that one or do you want to talk about any reflections that you've hadso far on that?
And it's a good question.
What are my reflections so far?
I need to go back through my quotes before I'm ready to talk about it.
Otherwise, I'm just gonna be pulling stuff out of air and it won't be any good.
So what do we talk about today, Dan?
How are things going with your building in cursor lately?

(01:30):
I had...
pretty good.
I have complete.
I have completely parked and not given up, but completely parked the iOS app.
It's too hard.
Like it for me.
I think what, what I would say is, you know, if I was
a beginner to an intermediate iOS developer, then I could probably go from building an appin six months or a year, I don't know how long it takes, to like a month or less.

(02:02):
Because AI would write so much of the code for you, and also probably assist you inbuilding features that you otherwise, not every developer can be a pro at every single
thing, right?
So if you need some sort of fancy,
time zone calculator built into your app, you're have to find some sort of framework topull in or build it.

(02:22):
building that feature could take a really long time.
Well, with AI, you could just be like, well, build me this and then I will know how toplug that into the rest of the code.
The taking that code and plugging it into the rest of the code is where I feel like I keepbreaking down with the iOS app, because I don't know enough.
So I've had to sort of just go, you know, I've had bits and pieces of it working.

(02:44):
I have individual pieces of it working.
I think I could take this code base and like probably if I had an extra X thousand dollarsto invest in the project, hand it off to someone and say like, stitch this together and
fix it for me.
but that's a long explanation to say I've, I've shelved the iOS app and, you know, whatthis won't air for three weeks.

(03:11):
I'll be done with this one.
Cause I'm.
This week, it hasn't taken that many hours.
when I got a push notification from the wall street journal that Microsoft was shuttingdown Skype, I started building, because Skype is still used by an absolute crap ton of
solopreneurs, digital nomads, et cetera, et cetera, who have, who are American or notAmerican and have interests in America.

(03:39):
Um, and they have to call the IRS or they have to call the state of Kentucky or they haveto call blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And if you're far away, that's really, really hard or really, really expensive.
Um, and so they all still use Skype because Skype can call landlines.
Whereas WhatsApp is like, does not do that.
Right.
Um, so I don't know, uh, Skype's revenue in 2022 was $180 million.

(04:05):
If I can get 1 % of that, I'd be pretty happy.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
for that.
Just a little web app where you can make calls to us numbers and I can spread out fromthere, right?
Like the same problem exists for other entrepreneurs out of Singapore, for example.
But like right now I'm just working on the USA and then I'll try to build out from there.

(04:27):
But I think I can have something launched this week.
Nice.
That's, that's very fast turnaround time on that.
Given that news just dropped this earlier this week, beginning of March here.
I was, I was wondering about that because I'm, we used to use Skype all the time at workand then it disappeared with, yeah, it was a big part of our, it was our, it was our

(04:49):
in-house, what we use for IM and calls in-house for a couple of years.
But then it moved over to Teams and I had just assumed that
You know, they've ported everybody over to teams and it was, you know, Skype was just atthis point, a brand and not really functionally actually a thing, but I, it's interesting
here that it actually generated 180 million in revenue, from that app.

(05:15):
Well, I mean, cause I'm sure a lot of that's been ported over to teams, right?
That's been poured over into their other, other service.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't even know how Skype is made.
I don't, I don't know.
I don't even know the revenue model.
I should have studied the business side of it a little bit more before deciding that thiswas like worth chasing, but
sure it's like sauce, right?

(05:36):
It's I mean, but maybe you could maybe that's also where you can come in and say, Hey,we're gonna do it by call rather than by a monthly fee or Yeah.
with me, you get 50 minutes.
so it'll be like a credit system and some phone calls I'll make a little bit more moneyand then others I might not make a ton of money but it's like all comes out in the wash

(05:59):
and I'll hopefully provide a good service to people around the world that need it.
And that's it.
interesting idea.
It'll be lumpy revenue.
Everyone wants this like smooth, predictable, sort of like subscription revenue.
This will be like some people buy a hundred credits and that lasts them a year.
You know, it's like, but I think it'll be, you know, it's not a ton of expenses and themoney comes in before it gets spent.

(06:23):
So that's good.
Right?
Like people have to buy the credits before they start using the credits.
And it starts charging my credit card a little bit.
Yeah.
Very little bit.
Well, don't know.
Yeah.
It depends on the audience size and what their purpose is and maybe what kind of deals Irun on a thousand credits or something, you know.
that's true.
That's true.

(06:44):
You might, what was I gonna say?
But it's a service where you actually want people to burn through it, not like a gift cardwhere you want people to buy it and never use it.
You actually want them to so you get the recurring other revenue.
want them to buy again.
Yeah.
I want them to run out and buy more.
Which is, you know, an interesting problem I read about recently.

(07:04):
think Levine wrote about it.
23 and me, you know, IPO'd a couple years ago via SPAC for three and a half billion orsomething.
And the CEO is trying to buy it back for like tens of millions of dollars, because it's,it's just burning through cash.
Yeah.
Where, know, you, somebody, he made a comment and they just clicked like, duh.

(07:27):
There's not a recurring revenue with it.
Right.
Once you've.
got that you don't you don't do it again and
The only reason you might do it again is let's say that like the tech you had yours donein 2012 and the tech has advanced considerably and so you buy it again.

(07:48):
Right?
Like, uh, because I don't know some sort of like prediction around disease, you know, it'slike some, you know, you just, yeah, that would be the only reason.
So how many times in your life are you going to do this?
Yeah, once.
mean, unless you get like dogs, I guess, because you don't need to get your kids testedbecause you already have your report, right?
So, you know.
That's an interesting, yeah.

(08:08):
I mean, I guess you would if there was like a history of some particular genetic diseasein your family and wanted to see if it had gotten passed on or something.
But yeah, why you...
testing can be done, I mean this is a choice for the parents to make, but a lot of it'sdone before the child is even born.
Exactly.
Natara.
And also I would think probably through services at a doctor's office, not at 23andMe.

(08:34):
Correct.
Although, yeah, we had to self-serve ours because the doctor wanted like $1,000 for thistest and the test only costs like $100.
So we just called the company directly and they're like, yeah, I think you can.
And then we made it work.
The price structure in healthcare, once again, just totally out of, out of whack, whereyou can just go and get the MRI yourself for, you know, a couple hundred bucks versus.

(08:58):
chaos monkey is like doing things to the world order that I'm not a fan of, but he couldbe doing it to healthcare and I'd be cheering him on.
It'll catch his interest sooner or later, right?
You gotta think, I don't.
you gotta, you know what, you know, the best, the best spy program or like the best pieceof like, incepted, s S B and Osh or something like that, would be trying to interrupt the

(09:28):
TV signal to the white house right now.
hahahahah
And then having a studio that looks just like CNBC or whatever he watches, like it's gotto be like CNBC and golf, right?
This is probably the only two things on that TV.
And, and then you're getting your message across that way.
What do think?
You want to do it?

(09:48):
I wonder what kind of treason that is.
Is that light treason or heavy treason?
Yeah, exactly.
might, yeah, that's a good point.
We might not want to publish that little thought.
I have a feeling that that would be an incredibly difficult undertaking for some reason.
I don't know why.

(10:11):
That's a good point though.
you could just get the right piece of information across his mind space at the right time,could...
That's why people pay millions of dollars to go have lunch with them or whatever, right?
Yes, totally.
So it's an expensive bit of mind space to get in front of, but if you can get it, I thinkyou often get something good out of it, or not necessarily good out of it, but you gain

(10:40):
out of it personally.
Yeah, exactly, which might screw hundreds of thousands of other people, but.
this is the grift.
There's lots of we talked about that last episode of the episode before.
Like there's more.
Is there more grift?
I'm not convinced there's more grift.
It is definitely way more visible.
And that's not me passing judgment.

(11:01):
That's just like I think that's the state of play.
pay to play is the state of play, right?
So yeah, that's that's about right.
Which is I'm getting more frustrated by the more frustrated by it by the week in someways, but also

(11:23):
I don't know.
They can't do anything about it.
It's not truly impacting me yet.
I'm worried about like, you know, our parents and like anybody getting social security ifthey'll get interruptions, but I'm afraid to actually, uh, got a benefit out of all this.
They somehow found that he was, he's a retired teacher.
Uh, and they have what's called TRS Texas, Texas retirement system.

(11:43):
And he was supposed to be getting social security as well.
And they had been shorting him.
And so yeah, he just got like eight grand, uh, yesterday, uh, in ketchup.
is what's not covered, right?
Like the alarmist is like, we're screwing some old people here because they were given toomuch money, but we don't, yeah.
It's interesting to hear that.

(12:03):
Is that from TRS or is that social security?
it was social security that paid him out.
So not the state of Texas.
Yeah, it was interesting.
I mean, I'm all for making things right.
Yeah, exactly.
Fix it.
If it's broken, fix it.
Just don't break it.
That's worry is that you're going to break it worse than you fix it.

(12:25):
That's the worry, but like at the same time, how many times have you gone into, especiallyat work and you have to like undo unravel or rebuild something that you had no involvement
in.
It's really scary, right?
And you inevitably blow it up.
Um, sometimes that's a conscious decision ahead of time.

(12:46):
Cause you're like, this is too much.
It's a rat's nest.
can't, I can't wrap my head around it and I don't want to, I want to rebuild from scratchessentially.
Or, uh, you try to get in there and try to be careful, but inevitably, you know, it's agame of operation and the buzzer goes and you're like, Oh man, God fix that.
There goes my weekend.
Um,
I don't know.
Progress is messy.
I think that's a default that anybody who's been involved in progress would know.

(13:12):
But a lot of us are too kind of stuck in, I don't know, keeping things the same, whichdoesn't seem to be what people, know, again, coming back, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying
to say I agree or disagree.
It's just a matter of like, what's the reality with making progress?
The reality is progress is messy.
And I think cleaning some of the stuff up is going to be

(13:33):
hurtful and messy to some people.
And I think I'm already on the receiving end of that.
Because right now I have stuff on water and I don't know if it's gonna cost me 100 grandor 140.
Which is not good for business.
yeah, you don't, you just don't know, you have no idea what it's gonna cost you when ithits the dock in what, two weeks?

(13:58):
Or however long, however much longer it's gonna be in transit for?
That's insane.
Mm.
Why I'm trying to think, because it's coming, you're coming from China at this point?
Okay, yeah.
No, no, I know.
just trying to think like which waivers he's initiated so far.

(14:20):
So yeah, you would have to be covered under what, the.
initial 10%, which has been going on from first term through Biden.
Cause I was just thinking about this this morning.
I was like, man, you I complained a lot, uh, out loud about, know, Oh, well we'vereelected, you you elect the person that isn't Trump.
And then he just leaves all the Trump policies there.
Like, well, fuck that guy too.

(14:42):
Like, um, and nor did it seem like they were, you know, there could have been stuff thatin the back room that never made the light of day.
I'm understanding of like that being a possibility, like fentanyl is a problem.
You had the 10 % tariffs that someone else did.
Now you had the opportunity to go to them and be like, Hey, you fix this fentanyl problem.
You get it under this number and we'll repeal the tariffs.

(15:04):
If it goes back above that number, we'll put the tariffs back on.
And
an opportunity that didn't happen.
Anyway.
a yeah, that's a that's an interesting point.
But is the fentanyl coming?
40, 45 or 75,000 Americans?
Like it's a lot of deaths per year on just fentanyl.
If it, if...
the war on drugs is always one that's just so hard to fight and win because it comes infrom you know it's passing through these places yeah and it's coming in like it's being

(15:36):
passed through places that is it really the originating there so are you penalizing youknow Canada for something that didn't actually originate there you know as an example or
Well, in that case, we should be punishing Mexico because most of it's coming throughMexico from my understanding.
But the precursor materials are mostly coming from China, from my understanding.

(15:58):
Hmm.
Okay.
So that's why you hit China is because of the precursor materials.
That makes sense.
But it's trick, you know, goes back to that tricky part was like some of those materialsare like necessary industrial materials that are like, you know, are necessary for many
businesses.
You know, it's like I'm sitting here complaining about not knowing what my cost is goingto be on my inventory.
Some other business is going to be like, well, now I have got like a six month wait onthis material that is integral to my business because fentanyl war, right?

(16:25):
And it's like, yeah, hard, hard problems.
They don't seem hard necessarily, but they are.
very complex to tackle.
Because if you stamp it out in one area, then people will supply it seems to move.
And maybe treating, I mean, we have not effectively handled a drug situation ever in thiscountry, I think.

(16:52):
So I don't know, know, seems to sometimes help in cases, but how do you, we need,
question though, because I think some of these drugs, some of the drugs that are streetdrugs, let's just pile them all into one category.
They are for some percent of the, I'm curious what the percent of the population, verydetrimental, very detrimental.

(17:17):
But then other, it's like just recreational.
And you end up with a population that ends up being more incarcerated because of rulesthat you've made around the drugs when in fact,
what percentage of people never actually caused a problem, right?
Versus the fentanyl, which is like just straight up dangerous.
There is no recreation.
just, getting filled.

(17:38):
It's used as filler to other street drugs.
And then, then it becomes easy to overdose because one, you didn't even know it was inthere to begin with as a user.
And then two, no one's telling you like, well there's like five micrograms in this pill offentanyl.
And then there's 10 micrograms.
I don't even.
All I know is that like an incredibly tiny amount of this stuff will kill you.

(18:01):
And therefore it doesn't feel the same to me as a war on drugs.
Cause it's not, I think you could squash fentanyl to zero and people would still go and dotheir thing and less people would die.
Mm-hmm.
Versus like trying to outlaw marijuana and be like well, that's just like prohibition andpeople are gonna get it no matter what

(18:26):
Yeah, it's interesting thinking about the contamination of other substances, I suppose.
Um, you know, cause I, when I think fentanyl, think people that are, gotten hooked onopioids and are using it as an opioid replacement or using it for not as an opioid
replacement, but using it as their, you know, their whatever of choice.
Um, but yeah, I guess when you have people that aren't expecting that, that also then issuper dangerous too.

(18:52):
Um, because they're not even, you know, knowing what they're getting.
Um,
Yeah, I don't know how, how you fix the issue to begin like, because to fix it, you kindof want to get to the root of why are people using it.
And I guess, you know, when they're not actually trying to use it, that's even harder.
Yeah, I mean, I can't be, I can't pretend to be so close to this issue that I know that Iknow enough, but I do know that it's getting laced into things a lot.

(19:23):
And that's where I think the biggest danger is coming from.
If you know, the opioids is another category feels really dangerous to me.
And so if your opioid problem is escalating to the point where you're willing to dofentanyl, least you like you're seeking it out.
Then, you know, I think you're on a journey to.
Yeah, nowhere.
Real fast.
Yeah.

(19:44):
Like whatever work the government's going to do isn't going to fix that problem.
No, no.
And yeah, and on some level, like there's a percentage of these problems that thegovernment, you know, nobody will probably ever be able to fix.
So
But the numbers are huge of people that are dying from ODs, right?

(20:05):
And it's up 30, 40 % in the last 10 years or something like that if I remember readingthat correctly in Reeve's book.
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway.
Anyway, anyway, yeah, so it's it's caused all this, you know, hub about, you know, on thesurface fentanyl is causing you a lot of heartburn.

(20:26):
One is not just fentanyl, obviously, but it's, it's the whole Yeah, it's causing you a lotof a lot of grief and your day to day right now having, you know, goods on the water that
you don't know what you're gonna have to pay for them.
So how are you handling that on the sales front?
Like, are you adjusting your prices regularly on Amazon?
Or how do you

(20:46):
You're going to have to though, if they get here and they cost more, right?
Yeah, 100%.
So I would say for, you know, if Trump announces a 10 % tariff, you should expect 5 %inflation on those goods, minimum, because it's not like we're sitting fat and happy with
huge margins.
Either, either

(21:07):
why not, why only five and why not 10?
Why is the full pass or not making it?
That would be my question.
hard.
we still have Chinese competitors who don't have to pay nearly the same kind of fees thatwe do.
They will technically pay the same tariffs.
Supposedly.
I would argue that they don't, they will skirt laws and skirt rules because they do nothave the risk of going to prison and the Chinese government will do no favors to the U S

(21:36):
government chasing these, these people down.
So they run only
They only run the risk of losing their inventory.
That's the only financial risk they run.
My financial risk is high.
My risk of going to prison is high, like the rest of it, if I were to skirt these laws.
So I will pay.
And then I will also pay US income taxes, another tax that the Chinese sellers don't pay.

(21:59):
So with these goods, I can only do so much.
So this tariff game with China is going to actually squash
an amount of American business.
Not just from a demand standpoint, like ruin families.
And yeah, and because you can't compete on price, the way it's worked.

(22:21):
it's handing Chinese businesses a favor.
So if Amazon was to deplatform those Chinese businesses, that would be like one possibleremedy or mitigating.
And from a populist government like this, I can see that being a thing.
I don't think it'll happen, but like I can see it being a thing.
I think the more appropriate thing, I think we've talked about it before, is just makethis foreign earned income from Chinese sellers.

(22:47):
So US sourced income, all taxable, charge a flat 30 % tax on it or something like that.
And that has leveled the playing field considerably.
Okay, that's probably easy.
Well, is that easier to actually do and execute than just de platforming?
I'm not an expert lawyer, but it seems like the laws are already on the books.
They're not being enforced.
Okay, so yeah, so if you're not, if you're unable to enforce it, then getting them off theplatform is probably the next best thing.

(23:16):
and say, do it.
Otherwise, I'm bringing a world of pain from the media upon you.
That would be an oval office move, think, these days.
Mm-hmm.
Well, that is what you need to get in front of Trump's mind today.
Yeah, yeah, there's one guy on Twitter who has gotten some attention from Mark Cuban andsomeone else that's sort of like, well, some, Mark Cuban is not in Trump's orbit, but

(23:44):
someone else in Trump's orbit.
So it's like, this is one of those issues where I think once you actually look at the dataand understand the mechanics of it all, it's a bipartisan issue.
It's very simple.
Like you've made money in the American market and you're not paying taxes like everyoneelse does.
And that's giving you an unfair advantage against our, our fellow Americans.
So it's bad for consumers, bad for American business, bad for American government.

(24:07):
Like it's just, you know, it's crazy.
And then if I were to like, want to spin up a legitimate business in Mexico and beginselling my product down there, there are so many hoops to jump through.
and registrations and there are almost none in the United States.
So, anybody can just like hop in and participate and then skirt on the taxes and, all theliability, right.

(24:31):
My product kills someone.
Doesn't really matter.
As long as I'm not American, it doesn't matter.
Because nothing's going to happen to me.
because it won't yeah, you can't enforce it and people and now people definitely don'twant to work with us.
but me, I have lots of liability, right?
Americans can come after me, they can sue me, the government can come after me.
There's lots of, this is why you behave with the utmost rule abiding and honor.

(24:58):
honorific behavior, right?
You're not gonna try to mess with others in shady ways because it'll eventually come inroost.
And also, it's a generally, you know, bad business practice, I'd say.
I 100 % agree.
Yeah, there are people who will always try to find whatever lever not thinking long term.

(25:20):
But these other people, I'm just saying like other people, we're inviting other peopleinto our market.
And that's not even a calculation.
They don't have to worry about long or short term necessarily, right?
That's true.
They're just in there to get in, get out.
until something blows up and then it's whack-a-mole because there are no consequences.
I'll just spin everything back up and work on it again tomorrow and do the same exacttactics and make another couple million dollars and then do it again, you know?

(25:45):
Yeah, exactly.
It's there's the it's part of your cost of doing business in a way.
It's just you have these intermittent delays when things get squashed.
And so
is why, you know, a lot of these Chinese sellers, they'll have 50 Amazon accounts underthem because it is a game of whack-a-mole.
As violations happen, Amazon goes after them and they just move everything over to adifferent account.

(26:08):
Easy peasy.
It's, it's, we've set, we've made a easy way to set up a business essentially that, allowsyou to have all of the businesses you ever need just under your purview.
for, that kind of purpose.
of the baggage.
So where are they registered?
Are those like Belize registered?

(26:30):
I bet like Belize or probably not Delaware.
Yeah, that's an excellent question.
think, I don't know the mechanics of it well enough.
I know some people who do, but I don't.
Cypress maybe, I don't know.
There's a lot of jurisdictions where you can shelter a business pretty easily.

(26:52):
done such a good job of cultivating the Chinese seller that I don't even know if you'd, Imean, you'd probably just need a Chinese entity.
I don't know that there would be any reason to register anywhere else.
That's a good point, that's good point.
That's a very good point actually.
Why wouldn't they, right?
And they probably have to register in China anyway for their own purposes and their owngovernment needs.

(27:13):
So yeah, so that's probably how it's going.
Yeah.
But I was thinking if you were as American wanted to do it, you could register in businessin the least and maybe pull something off.
Or if you were...
don't know.
Americans have the privilege of always paying federal income tax no matter where theylive.
I think that's the only citizenship like that on earth.

(27:35):
How do we pull that off?
I guess...
I don't think you do.
I think there are people who are above board and pay reluctantly and there are probablylots of people who don't pay.
No, but I mean, just like as a government, like how have we pulled that off?
Or as a country, how have we managed to keep that?
Isn't that tied to like us ruling the world and keeping the shipping lanes open and stufflike that, which we aren't doing anymore because the Huthies have successfully shut down

(28:02):
the Red Sea.
good point.
Bretton Woods is well past us, isn't it Dan?
Yeah.
I mean, it seems to be accelerating under the Oval Office currently.
I said I wouldn't talk about it.
you know, it's just, it's what's been on our brains.
outside of outside of some, some woo and, Robert Anton Wilson and, I also, I will say I,there was a chapter in that, the other book I'm reading abduction that I thought you might

(28:29):
get a kick out of chapter eight.
if you, each chapter is its own case study.
So you can kind of just listen to independent ones, like a podcast in a way.
but there's a little reincarnation and some very telepathy tapes related.
events, I'll say.
Yeah, it's really interesting to hear his breakdown of this person who basically, youknow, through regression, vividly described living multiple lives.

(28:58):
it was, and then you get a little bit of glimpse into why he thinks that is based upon hisinteractions with, you know, the whatever's abducting him, so to speak.
So and it's like, hmm, I don't know, really it's consciousness is in the zeitgeist andit's
It is, yeah.
And I'm seeing it more everywhere lately.
It's that everywhere I look, I see, you're right.

(29:22):
There's my quarter, isn't it?
Yeah.
For people not, initiated one of Robert Anton Wilson and Prometheus rising.
And I'm sure some of his other books, sort of one of his concept is reality tunnels andthat we all live in different reality tunnels and you can have multiple reality tunnels if
you start paying attention.
Right.
And, you know, Sean's reality tunnels, different from my reality tunnel and so on down theline.

(29:47):
However, he says, you know, you can basically hack your reality tunnels.
you can begin paying attention to them and start directing them really, I think is kind ofwhere it goes.
And he has many different techniques or practices that one can initiate in their life inorder to not so much take control, but pay more attention.

(30:15):
And one of his tests, as elementary as it may sound, is to, you know,
think about like picking up a quarter or like finding a quarter, right?
I might not have the finding a quarter.
So.
to vividly imagine the quarter and the scenery around it and you know the more vividly youimagine it, his premises, the better it works essentially.

(30:37):
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but yeah.
that was perfect because I think, I think down below that I say, I would add the word likebelieve you need to get it so vivid in your mind that you believe it to be true.
then let it work.
It's magic.
You will find a quarter and the quarter in this, you know, I think people will probablyget stuck on it being too literal.

(31:00):
but if you take it a little bit figuratively, then it really, it works.
But even literally, think when we first talked about this book, was like, don't you,hasn't this happened in your life when you're, I don't know, let's say you decide you want
a blue VW Golf and you do your research and you build one online, you're getting excited,maybe six months I'll trade my car in and get a VW Golf.

(31:25):
And in this time, you start noticing there's a lot of VW Golfs, blue ones in fact, right?
ones you hadn't noticed just living right around you.
Yeah, I think it's an interesting anyway.
So yeah, you start paying attention to this.

(31:48):
You start paying attention to things and it's funny what your subconscious will do.
We should maybe another week or two once I've finished that book go through and just talkabout the exercises at the end of each chapter.
I think that would be an interesting share for people that don't want to necessarily readthe whole book.
But I think some of the exercises are interesting and worth trying.
And honestly, we could probably modernize a couple of them.

(32:10):
think there's a few ones that are containing some outdated references at this point,because it was, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
Because I was like, well, if I think about that person, like I don't have an opinion.
Yes.
you know, because I just don't care what Tipper Gore was doing or whatever.
Well, there's one example and it's very, you know, it's like, I wish, you know, when JimO'Shaughnessy says, like, if you could accept everyone with one idea or whatever, or two

(32:35):
ideas, what would, what would they each be?
One of his Robert A.
Wilson's things was like, if you're a liberal, read the national review.
And if you're a conservative, read the whatever.
And I forget what that other example was, but I'm like, I think those need to be updatedtoo.
Um,
Yeah, exactly.
That's a good, that's a very good example of what I was seeing.

(32:57):
and that like, you need to step out of the place that you're always in, right?
Michael Easter wrote the book, like The Comfort Crisis, and I really love that book.
It's like, you gotta go into the discomfort.
You gotta find the places where you're getting too, you know, things are getting too easy.
This is a lot like that.
Some of these practices are, you know, woo spiritual out there, and then others are verypractical of like, just change.

(33:24):
get out of what your routine norm has been and see what it does to you, how you think.
Mm-hmm.
Again, so simple.
But like we're all busy leading our lives and it's hard to make time for this and also toput yourself in the discomfort.
It's hard to choose discomfort.
Yes, it is.
It is because it's discomfort, right?

(33:47):
Who wants that?
yeah, we're pretty well designed to not choose it.
Yeah, we're designed to we're designed to be as lazy as possible, I think in some way,like it's your program to find what you need and not not inherently.
Yeah, exactly.
Not inherently go go put the extra in because it's you don't, you know, it's not part ofyour core needs.

(34:11):
And biologically, I think we're
extra calories expended, risking getting kicked out by the tribe.
Cause now you're not like normal or something.
There's a big status game element to it, Of your position within society.
That's a good thought as well.
even you know position within society but even position amongst friends like think about Ithink one of the things that you know it's hard you have trying to think of a good example

(34:44):
like growing up I you know high school colleges or something like that wasn't a big insultof I don't know perhaps some celebrities but even you know amongst your own friend group
maybe someone was a sellout
Mm-hmm.
And I get that that term does apply and is negative.
And some people are accurately described by, but other times it's like, no, they grew,they chose a different path and they grew into being somebody or something else.

(35:14):
And that's a choice that they've made and pursued and off they go.
Because that hurts you or because you're jealous of it or whatever, you can throw insults,but it's not.
Yeah, so I'll use a word used by people that are left behind more often than not.
it's the tall poppy syndrome, right?
Yeah, so where was I going with this?

(35:37):
But yeah, like.
Where was I going?
Damn it.
You don't hear the word sellout used as much anymore.
don't.
No, you don't.
You really don't.
Yeah, I think we've probably, I feel like I've mentioned that before, but like you seepeople, artists, know, selling their work for commercials a lot more now than you ever
used to.
And people are by and large, a okay with it back in the sixties and seventies.

(36:00):
I feel like that would have been.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, because I think they also see that, Hey, this is maybe how I can.
help keep this in the world.
I want this in the world and I can participate by helping keep it in the world.
Well, also people then see it as a path that they themselves can follow someday.
Right.
So they're, they're, rooting for their success.

(36:24):
like, maybe I can do that.
Maybe I, you know, I dream of doing the same thing with my, whatever I create.
I mean, in effect, that's kind what we're doing here in a weird way.
not exactly, but sort of,
I totally agree.
was just thinking about like, um, how many, how small my world was growing up and what Iknew to be possible versus what is possible and like, different would my life have been?

(36:52):
Had had the light, my, the, landscape of my view been wider or wide widened by someone.
Right.
And I was just trying to like, I was reflecting the other day on, you know,
having become an entrepreneur, but like not necessarily totally feeling like I own thattitle yet and all these different emotions that are attached to that for me.

(37:16):
but realizing when I look back, I'm like, I've been doing this stuff since I was like 13.
some of it was really, I was reluctant and in other places where like I was doing a thingthat I hated, but I knew I wanted to do it this way because I liked the flexibility and
not being told what to do and how to do it.
coming up in my own ways.

(37:37):
Yeah, it's interesting to me to hear you say you don't feel like you own that title.
Like, what is it about it that you don't feel like you own?
I own companies, I purchased, I didn't create them.
So I eat what I kill, which I feel like that's, you if you do that, then I'll call you anentrepreneur, but for some reason I have hard time calling myself that.

(37:57):
I can understand that reluctance because when you think of, you know, the famousentrepreneurs, they've created something from scratch and built, you know, giant whatever
out of it, essentially.
but not, not inherently, but,
No, because there's some entrepreneurs who literally only bought companies and it's like,wow, look at the company that bought all the companies led by the guy, right?

(38:22):
I'm like, I'm that guy on a tiny scale.
whatever.
Yeah, I can understand that reluctance, but I think it's kind of unfair to you beingunfair to yourself, I'd say, but that's just my take on it.
Because I think of you as an entrepreneur, like if it for what it's worth, like I don't,that's, that's how I would describe you.
So, I don't know.

(38:44):
I guess maybe it's kind of like a classist thing amongst our entrepreneurs.
Like is there a, is there an entrepreneur hierarchy when you're at the entrepreneurmeeting and it's like, he just bought that company.
didn't build it.
you know, this is the new barish.
a zero to one guy.
Yeah.

(39:04):
Doesn't matter if they're successful.
It's just, you still have these very unsuccessful zero to one guys over there.
Just like, they're no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not making any money, but they're, they're purists at least.
yeah.
He doesn't say I'd rather.
Yeah.
You've been doing it for several years.

(39:25):
I think you, you've earned the title, but I, I could understand having that reluctanceinternally too.
If,
But that's why I'm also creating on the side too.
Like having a hard time owning that title for myself is just like, that's me being hung upon something, right?

(39:46):
But when I was writing down this sort of like bio for myself, I was just experimenting andwriting.
I think it actually helped like give me some clarity on, you know, I've been on this pathfor an extremely long time with some necessary diversions because of how I grew up, what

(40:08):
my field of view was then versus what it became versus working for someone who wasextremely demanding and made me better.
And also the great financial crisis and there being needs.
You know, these things end up just, for good or bad, forcing you in a certain direction.

(40:30):
And then you come out to be, you know, there's a blinking sign over me that says you arehere.
So you say you've been on this path for a long time.
like, is some of the early examples of, of being on the path?
I'm curious, like owning your own lawn mowing business or something of that nature.
mean, it's like cutting grass, classic Midwestern story of like kid cutting grass.

(40:53):
But, I think the classic story is like they cut two lawns next door or something, right?
Versus, you know, the 25 to 50 accounts that I had at one point or whatever.
And, and this was really like encouraged by my dad.
Like he made things happen for my brother and I to be able to do this.

(41:14):
And I wasn't very grateful for it at the time, but I'm grateful now.
Like so many things in life when you're in it, you're not grateful for it, but after sometime and separation and digestion, you're like, that was good for me, even though I hated
it.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there were other people with schedules and they were told where to bewhen, and I wasn't, which was good and bad at that age.

(41:40):
think.
Especially since I hated the actual work.
I really really despised it I have bad allergies and so I just felt like I was on three orfour prescriptions at that point just to keep my work from affecting my ability to be
alive It's just how I was like I Just felt I just felt like crap all day every day Exceptfor winter.

(42:04):
I loved winter because that was a reprieve from allergies Anyway, that's a whole whatever
But at that age when no one's telling you to do the thing, you have to find the internalstuff to go do the thing.
And that exists here today.
Same thing, right?

(42:25):
It'd be very easy to just say yes to a bunch of things that keep me from getting donewhat's necessary to get done.
But you have to find the willingness to sit down and just do the thing.
I don't know.
I'm rambling now, I feel like.
that makes good sense though.
I think a lot of people don't, who aren't, aren't entrepreneurs might be interested bythat.

(42:45):
Like to understand what that mindset really is kind of about in a way.
Cause it's sometimes it's most of time it's not a glamorous thing, right?
It's you just have to do the thing and get it done.
Yeah.
So it, it, while it has this aura of
me to do it, but the government is and like, or, know, just any number of other thingsthat have like, it has to get done.

(43:06):
Do you want to do it?
No, absolutely.
This is something I hate about my job, but there's no one else here to do it.
So here we go.
Yeah.
That's, it's also, I think a lot of people's work in general, having to do things theydon't necessarily love to do, but, but for an entrepreneur, yeah, you, hear a lot of
glorification and, it's got a certain aura I'll say, around it.

(43:34):
And sometimes that is a little, people think a little.
Um, more glamorously or it thinks a little more of an elite status and it often is in away like there's, there's a lot of just hard work and.
Unshort uncertain times.
you see and admire in someone you didn't see the prior decade of just push and grind andsaying no to things and missing family reunions and not participating in Christmas or any

(44:05):
number of other things that happen on one's entrepreneurial journey as they give things upin service of trying to get where they want to go.
And then you see them at 60 and you're like,
Dang, that life looks good.
They're making this money and they don't actually work anymore.
They just take some phone calls.
Yeah, yeah.
Good for them.
That's awesome.
But I bet that was a hard thing to get to.

(44:25):
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Not sell outs.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's, and you know, and you see the successful ones.
You don't see all the people that fell out of the path too.
You have, it's a, you have a, you know, a bias automatically created by the filtering thathappens of, of people failing and going to do something like that.

(44:53):
think so.
Uh, yeah, I think that, I think that's accurate survivorship bias.
like death virus.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that's, but you, see that also in like, in the stock market too, right?
Where people look and say, Oh, these companies have gone up, gone up, but like, don't, Idon't see all the companies that have fallen out that aren't there anymore that were at

(45:15):
one point in time.
Yes, totally.
I think a very disingenuous test that lots of like wealth managers do and I know someonewho just did this to people I know.
Partly because it is a fun game.
I would want to play this game.
If you asked me to play, I'd be like, ooh, fun.
They say pick one stock and only one stock.

(45:38):
You have 10 grand starting in 1973 or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
if you're talking to boomers and, and so it's like, you know, the husband and wife come inor whatever, and she picks a stock and he picks a stock, and then you do the calculation
and see who won.
You already have like perfect hindsight vision.
You don't have the numbers off the top of your head unless you've like, because youprobably have a day job, but you do know what stocks do exist today and don't exist today.

(46:05):
Yeah.
You're not gonna go out and buy Kodak, right?
So that is kind of a fun game.
It is a fun game, but I think it's disingenuous, but it like pits the husband and wifeagainst each other almost against each other.
Cause like, well, I was, I don't know.
Like I just didn't like the spirit of it.

(46:26):
and maybe that says more about what happened.
Well, I don't know.
I'm not saying I like it in the context in which it was presented to use.
I like that as just a concept of like, it's a fun thing to do with your friends.
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
be your selling wealth strategies game.
think.

(46:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also like, if my information, what if my brain is better at picking the Nvidia for afive-year hold than it is to pick Procter and Gamble for 50 years?
Yeah, or.
because if I could do the Nvidia game five times, you know, 10 times over.

(47:09):
And 40 % of the time I'm wrong.
I bet I still beat the 50 year hold on Procter & Gamble.
I would, ooh, that's an interesting, yeah.
Because you're not going to get like, I'm trying to bias towards the you're right.
51 % of the time, right?
All you have to do is be right.

(47:29):
51 % of the time in your head of the market.
But if you do that on smaller rocket ships.
Yeah, if you catch if you catch them through their through their rocketing period andyou're good at catching Nvidia 10 years ago, then yes.
It depends upon what you get on that ship like you have to be honest with yourselves likedid you really get on that ship 10 years ago?

(47:49):
Or are you saying I knew that was a good idea and like I should have done you know, no,you had to have gotten on the ship right so it's it's a difficult.
Yeah, it's a difficult.
It's a, it's a, it's a difficult thing to do in actuality, which is why I think, you know,people index by and large.
Yeah.

(48:10):
Um, and it depends how bad you get beat on those other, you know, 49 % of the time too.
Like do you zero out or do you just take a 30 % haircut?
It depends how bad, how wrong you are when you're not wrong, when you're not right.
Um,
Well, yeah, because I think embedded in my model is like, you're basically allocating,well, you can't allocate a hundred percent every time.

(48:34):
Otherwise then you, you will go bust somewhere on that path.
So, optimizing your exposure.
This is an interesting, this would be an interesting little game.
Mm-hmm.
So what would the parameters, what would the boundary conditions look like for this if wewanted to do this and actually test it?

(48:56):
You can only be in one stock at a time.
Cause I, I think embedded in the like buy one stock for 50 years thing is sort of.
I don't know, is that fair?
You can only be, or is that making it too hard on the opposite case?
Like all the one, the one case just has to pick one stock and they're done.
I think you got to do the same.
Yeah.
I think it's gonna be one stock at a time.

(49:18):
Right.
And, and seeing, man, but then again, if you're a hundred percent allocated in that onestock, you're gonna, you're gonna lose it somewhere along that strip.
It's like, maybe it's a five stock allocation, max, because then it's still, we're stilltalking highly, highly concentrated.
You could be, you could own one, you could own three, only up to five at a particulartime.

(49:40):
I mean, go and yeah, going back and doing it in the past is also it's you can't backtestit.
It's like, oh yeah, of course these are the ones I would have picked.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, of course I'm sure we can, I'm sure we could go, you could go cherry pickthrough history and say, well, if you only own these three stocks this year and these
three stocks this year and these three stocks this year, here's, know, you would have donegreat.
Of course, because you've seen the past performance.

(50:01):
You have.
meta stock has been gone like up and down so many times.
I bet you could just play that one stock if you just got your timing right.
If you just bought the bottom every single time.
That's a good point.
was, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of happy seeing the recent dip that's been going on.
Cause it's like, okay, we might be on the road to, on the road to some opportunities.

(50:26):
below the 200 day moving average in the NASDAQ now.
Yep, they passed there this week.
Moving into...
a really bad sign or it's time to start buying.
And herein lies the uncertainty.
Yeah.
Yeah.
but it feels like we're getting closer to the point where I want to take some stuff backoff the sidelines at some point.

(50:52):
I mean, it's not, I'm not there yet, but I'm, know, it's, it's okay.
Nature is healing a little bit and just a matter of, well, is it healing or is it gettingtorched because of the chaos monkey?
And cause it could, it could continue to create all year, right?
There's, there's no, there's nothing that says it has to turn around, but.
I think, here's here.
Okay.

(51:12):
So like, there's a couple of different places where under this administration.
I think there are possibly smart things happening.
But sometimes I think that this is just me trying to be optimistic and I am like,
Whatever, let's just leave it there.
Like it's just to like, I get super pessimistic about all of this and F this guy andwhatever.

(51:37):
And then other times I'm like, is it for D chess?
So I'm all over, I'm all over.
So here's where I'm thinking.
They.
put the wrench in the spokes of the wheel.
The chaos monkey is here and goes hard as hard as possible to bring the 10 year treasurydown to a more manageable level, both from a government debt standpoint and a, Hey, um,

(52:06):
Powell, you got to lower rates now because like unemployment spiked or whatever,something, something, just a little bit.
then just enough juice goes back into the economy.
where the zeitgeist and the narrative inside the craniums of Americans starts to talklike, Hey, things are moving again.

(52:27):
And a not, and if not in an inflationary way, which with the tariffs is hard for me toimagine that this is possible.
But anyway, I'm playing with ideas.
That's what I'm trying to do here.
No, I think that's I think that's where I am as well because I don't feel like they'll letit down that they have a choice.

(52:47):
And that's that's also maybe a little bit of a fatal flaw in my logic here is thinking,they have some ultimate lever they can pull that will switch things around.
If it's in a spiral, maybe they don't.
But it doesn't feel like Trump would want his you know, first year here back in office.
to be marked by a 30 % drawdown all year.
I don't, but again, no, yeah, he'll listen to the market.

(53:12):
So at some point when you get a drawdown like this, it's like, okay, maybe now's the righttime.
That's where, and I'm just trying to figure out when that is to go in a little harder.
cause I mentioned before, I'm little more, more, a little more defensive the last month.
So, yeah, thanks.

(53:32):
It was, I've, I've been.
sleeping easily.
I'll say that.
Yeah, I've been sleeping easily.
So woohoo!
You
Me too, I don't own anything anymore.
Yeah, the different kind of sleeping easy, but yes.

(53:53):
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, we've been saying this, you know, for a couple months, he likes to play thesegames and,
He wants to be the narrative, he wants to be in control of the narrative, right?
And so that he can in part just take credit for it.
I think the ego is extremely real and people make fun of him for the ego, but it's like,step back and like, here's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to step back and not make fun of

(54:20):
the guy and all the people, trying to be less judgmental and trying to see what is, right?
and where are these motivations that I think are so often predictable and in there, youcan make some money along the way.
although I just listened to there's Dicenda to you, this conversation between GrantWilliams and Ben Hunt.

(54:46):
it's a very good conversation.
And one of the things that, yeah, one of the things Ben Hunt brought up was just like, oneof the things he is really,
finds distasteful about all of this is the, I got mine, Jack.
That's his phrase.
Well, I got mine, Jack.
And every time I say, well, you might be able to make a little money if you just payattention.
And I'm like, there it is.

(55:07):
There's exactly what Ben Hunt is talking about.
And it makes me a little disgusted with myself, but what are you gonna do?
yeah.
But if you know how to make yours, then you should make it right.
I agree because then, you know, the only way I'm, how am I going to put any sort of effectin this world?

(55:29):
It's like, do things.
But yeah, but if I just cover my corner and, and complain and go bankrupt, then I didn'tmake any effect on the world.
No, that's, that's very true.
You have to survive to fight another day to actually be able to continue the struggle.

(55:51):
if.
Ben's already made all his money, right?
So, yeah.
I'm not judging, I'm not trying to put down his message.
Yeah, 100%.
He's doing what I would hope I would do if I were in his shoes.
Speaking truth to and not worrying about, not having to worry about his pocketbook or anysort of ramifications or whatever, yeah.

(56:16):
Yeah.
When you still need your paycheck every couple of weeks or you're needed to sell yourproduct every day, you need the income coming in.
You have to be present or be mindful of, yeah.
Exactly.
and you should be looking for opportunities because you're not, you know, secure yet.

(56:39):
You know, you, you don't, you, you have to be going after those opportunities.
So I don't, I, I hear the
What do mean about how that's as tasteful or it could be, but I don't know.
It's also reality.
It's probably pragmatic.
got to execute sometimes.
there's nuance there, right?
Like, the other thing Ben talks a lot about is like, he's so done with zero and onebinary, black and white.

(57:04):
The energy, so he's like, I'm done with it.
done with it.
I really enjoyed his talk.
But yeah, it kind of goes back to like the why I got mine, Jack.
Well, there's a certain there's a gradient there.
And it's like,
Can you participate enough where like you're going to survive, you're going to make itthrough, maybe you'll make some money along the way because you're smart and you've got

(57:25):
your ear to the tracks.
Or is it the screw everyone else, I'm out to win, this is my chance because of orange manin the office, right?
Like that's a whole different sort of like relationship with your fellow human.
It's yeah, it's not just a single point.

(57:46):
it's gradient.
Everything's great.
And I was one of the best things that ever happened to me at B school was like, well, Iforget it became like a theme across several professors, but there was one in particular
that I think instigated it.
He would always like, you know, ask questions and try to get us young bucks to giveanswers and stuff like that.

(58:07):
And then it'd get back to him.
He's like, it depends.
Like every answer he'd be like, it depends, which is true.
Yeah.
it depends.
This is the most often correct answer I feel like.
depends.
I don't know.
Those two things should be said more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's not a single, you know, correct point of view that's going to naturally work onany problem, because the problems we face typically in our lives are very complex.

(58:39):
So, I mean, a lot of problems we have are fairly simple, but the bigger ones are, arenuanced and complex and how you don't even solve them, just improve them.
It depends.
I mean, and you had said something kind of earlier that,
Ah, no, nevermind.
I don't want to circle back to that.
was going to say about the binary, right?

(59:00):
You about being binary, but that's also like you said something earlier about, um, Oh,this is a bipartisan issue, but even in today's world, it's hard to have those because
once one side, one, once one side takes a stance and the other side just immediately takesthe opposite stance, even if they're would agree, you don't see like just because it's,

(59:20):
they've said something.
I have to say the other thing.
Otherwise I'm.
Like them, I don't know.
I think that this is a super dangerous behavior.
When you can't even, like yeah, we should be respecting the, it kind of goes back to like,okay, we're gonna go there.
This war on DEI that's been taking place now, like I'm not even gonna wade in thosewaters, but.

(59:46):
Meritocracy, right?
Like it's a meritocracy of ideas.
It's a meritocracy of people.
Like let's just pick the winners and double down on winners as we go.
don't like why isn't that so hard?
It's a question.
I know we don't, I don't think we can go there.
It's like way too complicated and historical and in this country in particular, it'sextremely complex.

(01:00:10):
um, but going back to your, like, well, I mean, I didn't watch much of it, but even, uh,Trump's speech in the, in the, in the Capitol the other day, it's like, well, it wasn't
there some moment where in like some, you know, young boy was disabled or something likethat.
Yeah.
don't know.
then, and then the Republicans clapped, of course, because this is a sideshow for theRepublicans.

(01:00:35):
And then the Democrats don't.
And it's kind of like, well, that human probably deserved a round of applause.
Didn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, right?
And that's not me picking on Democrats.
The Republicans would behave the exact same way in my opinion.
So
that goes both ways.
It depends who's given the State of the Union.
And it's a shit situation.

(01:00:56):
Yeah.
Anyway, I end on a bad note.
No, no,
But yeah, it's March and we're, we're, you know, we're, we're here, we're here at the endof, at the end of Q1.
And I'm really dying to see what, what, you know, the reports come coming out in, youknow, April show in terms of earnings and see how, if we're starting to see any impacts

(01:01:23):
from any of these policies that have been going on now for it's, I think it's probablystill too early to see too much impact, but, it will be interesting to see, you know,
targets already.
put out warnings of guiding down their profitability because of the impacts of all this.
So it'll be interesting.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what truly comes here in the next, honestly, 60 days, Ithink it's gonna be very telling.

(01:01:49):
But we're doing this for another, you know, what, 45 months after this.
So
Talk about like drugs to the vein.
Like I don't think my body can take more.
It's so early.
It's just so early.
there's just opportunities abound for the next years.

(01:02:09):
We just trying to figure out how to play them right now.
Right.
Yeah, I don't know.
There's like some, you know, another thing I see on Twitter pretty regularly now is like,you know, make volatility great again.
Mm-hmm.
Cause it's definitely, you know, if you have your ear to the tracks, man, you can, I gotmine Jack.

(01:02:32):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's hard.
The problem is it's hard to keep your ear to the tracks when you're got a day job andyou're, you know, kids and, it's, there's a lot of noise, compared to signal to suss
through.
Although.
strategy, Like just flood.
the more information you put out there, the less people can pick up on and care about andthey get overwhelmed and yeah, just overwhelmed.

(01:03:02):
Yes.
feel like everybody's numb this year so far.
I feel like everybody's just kind of numb, but maybe that's just...
I know.
Yeah.
we went from angry to numb.
Is that better or is that worse?
Did we hide the anger that it comes back worse?
I don't know.
I have so many questions.
I'm so scared.

(01:03:23):
Eh, at least we're too old to be drafted.
I don't know.
Wasn't Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan like 39 or something like that?
I'm like, dang it.
Yeah, he was, he was supposed to be put, he was supposed to be the elder, right?
Yeah, exactly.
The elder.
And he was.
He was like the wise man in front of his young troops.
Yeah.

(01:03:43):
Well, but it was, but I don't think he had been drafted.
I he joined in the movie.
I think that's a different, I don't recall the exact details, but I don't know.
I mean, when.
teacher.
I remember that.
So yeah, I know he had, he wasn't his career.
He wasn't a career military guy.

(01:04:04):
but I wonder if we'll ever see a draft again.
I certainly hope not.
it's a
too, but they would have to be pretty big.
Right?
Yeah, really, it really, it would have to be, you know, the next World War, right?
Probably.
Well, yeah, that's what we tell ourselves now.

(01:04:24):
like, okay, so like, frog in boiling water, do you know it's the next, like the way weentered World War I and World War II, yes, if you're getting drafted as an American, you
would know it's the World War, because we entered it in late.
But when it's beginning, do you know?
Good question.
Like, like, are all these tensions, like the Red Sea shutting down and all the tensionsthroughout the world and Gaza and here and to Yeah, exactly.

(01:04:51):
Tell each
There was a really, again, a really funny tweet that was like, and I has probably totallymade up and it doesn't matter because it's a good, and then he's like, German here, just
want to get it on record.
So it's okay that we go, you all want us to go and rearm?
You want us to build tanks and march through Poland?

(01:05:12):
Got it.
Okay.
Just want to get it on record that you said it, not us.
Yeah, yeah, that was a good one.
I saw that too.
the things we are seeing right now, I don't know.
Did you see the Japanese?
There was another.
I mean, it seems like he's probably a Japanese American because his English was spot on.

(01:05:35):
No accent.
He seems like he grew up here, but he can speak Japanese too.
Japanese guy and it's like him talking to himself, but like he is playing the UnitedStates or whatever.
And then, and then Japan and it was, you know, it's like, yeah, telling Japan that they'vegot to rearm and he's like, no, no, you know, it speaks Japanese and like, no, no, you

(01:05:56):
know, we're.
we're not doing that or whatever.
And then America starts yelling at him.
like, you've gotta stand up and doing that sort of thing.
And then Japan's like, do you like South Korea?
I'll take South Korea.
It's like, it just goes into crazy mode.

(01:06:18):
He's like, do you remember this?
Do you remember what it was like?
Mm-hmm.
No, we don't.
That's problem is we don't as a people.
We don't remember.
saw some headline that the last Holocaust survivor died.
Yeah, we, we, we have cultural memory of, of it from, you know, grandparents and parentsthat who had fought, but, but we as right now, modern day, we don't have a memory, like an

(01:06:48):
actual living memory of any of this.
And I think that's what starts making situations more likely to be unstable is becausepeople forget what it was like before a certain type of stability that was, has been
around for 80 years.
Yeah.
What's the cliche, the history that you don't know or you're bound to repeat?
I'm not saying it right, but like that, that message.
yeah.
Well, I mean.
Yeah, that I don't know if you're saying who you're quoting, if you've, whoever it is,it's, a, it's a fine point.

(01:07:15):
because when you don't know the outcome of something or you don't, haven't been therebefore you try stuff, right.
And, and, the, like we were talking earlier in the process of trying stuff, sometimes youbreak stuff.
So, I don't know exactly what the end goal of all of this stuff that everybody's tryingright now is, but.
Yeah.
Atomization.
This is something we've been talking about because of Peter Zion for like, what, a longtime now.

(01:07:38):
And it's accelerating.
It feels that way today, at least here in March of 2025.
Maybe by November I'll be feeling differently, but yeah, it feels like we're on anaccelerating path.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I might feel differently every other day at this rate.

(01:08:01):
I don't know.
We're just, we're not going to be able to plan shit for a while.
And we just got to get used to that.
Not knowing what to expect.
it, right?
Instead of, again, going back to instead of getting pessimistic and complaining about yourposition, it's you are here.

(01:08:21):
This is the state of play.
So accept it for what it is, accept it as the norm and play for, yeah, go do things.
Yeah.
Otherwise, otherwise you're just going to be left behind or irrelevant.
Yeah.
And disappointed.
Honestly.
Yeah.
You'll be just be frustrated and anxious and feel like nothing's in your control is not afun place to be in.

(01:08:46):
Right.
Or angry.
Yeah.
But if you can be, if you, yeah, if you can be a little dispassionate about the situationand just look and say, this is the situation.
you can probably deal with it a little easier, I feel.
And maybe that's why people, I feel like people are little numb right now, is people aredoing that, you know, in a different way.

(01:09:08):
not numbness and it's just respecting, respecting, re,
Leaving it be.
numb versus leaving it be.
I don't know.
Well, let's leave it there for the week, speaking of leaving it be.
Yes, good transition.
Thanks.
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Unqualified Advice.

(01:09:28):
We hope you had a good time listening to our kind of meandering conversation this week.
I certainly enjoyed thinking about all these things with you, Dan.
I don't know about you.
no, I enjoyed it lot.
was, these things are hard.
I just, have a hard time with a lot of these subjects, so it's really helpful for me toget them out.
cause I think part of that, helps me process them.

(01:09:51):
And since they're so charged around so many people, you can't actually talk about thisstuff in, in a way that is like constructive and, I don't know, meaningful, like we're
workshopping this stuff rather than like getting our hearts entangled in it.
so yeah, I, this, you know, this helps me a lot and that's all I hope it helps otherpeople realize like, you know, try to, try to work on how you're feeling about something

(01:10:20):
and your relationship with stuff.
find someone that you can do that with and, and see if you might be able to change yourrelationship with certain things because reality is reality and, we're all just doing our
best to live in it.
It's all our perceptions, all our lenses.
Yeah.
It's all our own perceptions, all our own lenses that we're seeing this through.
Well said, Dan.

(01:10:41):
Well, we'll see everybody next time.
Bye.
bye.