The Little Rascal Who Walked Away From Fame - with Bug Hall - Avoiding Babylon

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (00:46):
no-transcript.
It's very impressive.
So I see somebody in thecomments saying we're going to
get a long show tonight becauseI'm not working tomorrow.
But I'm actually stuck workingtomorrow.
It's also my anniversary, somaybe not too long.
Oh, it's Rob's anniversary.

(01:07):
Yeah, let's not All right.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
But, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
So I've been waiting to get Bughole on for a while
Before we do that.
Actually, we're going to jumpin and just do our ad real quick
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They are a Catholic family,help them out, all right.
So, bug, I've been waiting toget you on for a long time In my

(02:16):
home growing up, not in my home, growing up in my home.
When my kids were growing up,the Little Rascals was like a
staple to their childhood.
We watched it regularly.
I watched it as a kid growingup and I.
I saw it as a kid also well, Iwant to know, like, what was the

(02:37):
story behind?
How did you even get that gig?
Like, how did did your parentswant you to be a child actor?
Like what was what?
How did that even come about?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
No.
So yeah, I got into thebusiness in a very different way
than most child actors.
Most of them it's their parentsand they kind of find them an
agent, slowly get them out intothe hollywood audition circuit
and it's a whole, you know awhole thing.
Uh, little rascals was an oddcircumstance because spielberg,

(03:10):
uh, he rightfully recognized thecharm of the original rascals
was that they weren't actors, itwas all just like normal kids
uh, from around the country, andso he wanted to kind of
recreate that with the remake.
So he had a strict ban on likeno actors, we're not hiring
actors, we're doing open calls,I don't care how long it takes.

(03:31):
And that's what they did.
They went around the country,all the big cities.
They auditioned 10,000 kids forAlfalfa and you know it was
just.
It was a long process and thefirst one was like a four hour
long line.
You know, all the news wasthere and it was funny because I
, when I decided to go to it, abunch of my friends were going

(03:55):
and we all just kind of wenttogether.
Well, I had grown up watchingthe old little rascals.
My mom, my mom ran a 24hourdaycare out of our house and all
we watched was the sound ofmusic and the Old Little Rascals
.
So I don't know why I knew todo this, but I was eight years

(04:16):
old and I would just sit andrewind the VHS tapes and play
them and like, imitate Alfalfaand play it again.
Getting ready for the audition,I cut my rat's tail off and put
black mousse in my hair and mymom, like hot, ironed my hair up
for me and so I went in and itwas funny because I had the

(04:39):
voice down, I had everything theposture, the mannerisms and
then I got.
I've been waiting in line forfour hours.
I go in and they asked me likethree or four questions and then
they said, okay, thanks.
Next, and again I don't knowhow, I knew that I was screwed
and that I needed to figuresomething out quick, but somehow

(05:02):
I did and I realized, okay,that was it, I need to grab
their attention.
And so I said, hey, can I, canI sing you a song?
And they said, oh, uh, you know, sure, I guess you can't say no
to a kid.
So I launched into she'll becoming around the mountain,
which was like a famous alfalfasong that he used to always sing

(05:23):
.
And I did it in the voice and Ilaunched into the character,
into the posture and everythingelse.
I assumed they were going toask me to do that and they
didn't, so I just launched intoit and then from that point on I
was like answering theirquestions in the alfalfa
character and doing the posture.
And then it was a callback,another callback, and then they
were flying me to Los Angeles tomeet Spielberg and Penelope

(05:45):
Spires and that was it the lastaudition, the big final audition
.
It was an eight-hour longaudition because they wanted to
see which kids could handle thelong hours.
And there were two other kidsfor Alfalfa there at the final
call.
One of them went in one timeand the other one never even
went in.
They never even called him in,they just the whole eight hours

(06:07):
was me going in and out.
Basically they were matching meto all the other kids that's
pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
So wait what right around that?

Speaker 1 (06:16):
time the movie came out in 94, so okay, so now now
that movie comes out now.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Did you have hopes of landing another role after,
like, what, what happens to youracting career after that?
Because you, you definitelywere in other stuff and I know
you, you know you did try tokeep that going for a while.
So how did that pan out?

Speaker 1 (06:48):
yeah, uh, yeah, I did about 100 film and tv shows
over the years.
So the first, first year afterlittle rascals, I did like four
movies, uh, the big green and uh, john landis's the Stupids with
Tom Arnold, a whole bunch oflike kids stuff.
And then I was on a TV show fora little while.

(07:13):
On WB.
They put a show together for me.
I was doing that with ShelleyLong, robert Hayes, and then I
kind of went into.
I wanted to do a bunch of indiemovies around my teen years
because I was worried aboutbeing typecast as like the nerd
character.
So you know, I kind of stupidly, you know, said no to a bunch
of big stuff.

(07:34):
I wanted to do like real grittyindie movies.
And so I did that for a fewyears and then just kept working
.
I mean, you know, tons ofDisney movies over the years, a
whole bunch of stuff working.
I mean I, you know tons ofdisney movies over the years, a
whole bunch of stuff by my lateteens.
Uh, you know, I was doing I wasstill doing a lot of big stuff,
the, unfortunately the likeamerican pie spinoffs and all

(07:56):
that stuff.
But I was a big liability bythat point because of, you know
drinking and partying andeverything else.
So more frequently the filminsurance companies were like
he's never gotten in trouble,but he's probably going to
pretty soon and so work sloweddown.
So how?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
old are you when the drinking and stuff starts?
I started drinking around 11 umaround 11 12 so were you living
with your parents through allthese gigs or were you like like
what, like what?
Was your home life like throughthose years where you were

(08:39):
going on working on these showsand things like that?

Speaker 1 (08:43):
uh, I had a great family.
My mom was great and my auntand uncle actually moved out to
California with us.
They lived with us, my siblingsbut I wasn't home a lot.
So I'd be home a few months outof the year and then I'd book a
movie Back.
In those days you could kind ofget around like trial and

(09:06):
custody laws I guess, in termsof like a guy could kind of be
dropped off on a movie set andyeah, you know, uh and my little
brother was also working a lot,so he was doing a big show with
ralph macchio for a long timeand, um, so my mom was with him
because he was the younger onehe was five years younger than
me and so I was.
She would usually show up you,she'd come out and bring me out

(09:27):
for the first week of filmingand then kind of signed me over
to the production.
Or sometimes my uncle would gowith me or somebody else, you
know, but I was just, I was kindof on my own for large portions
of the year.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
And were you like how , how does the drinking and the
drug use, like when does itstart to get out of hand?
Because I had, I mean I'll,I'll share some stuff from my
childhood.
I had, I mean, you're talkingabout drinking and drugs.
I had a very rough childhoodwith drinking and drugs as well.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
So yeah, yeah, I mean out of hand, I don't know.
You know, I mean early on, veryearly on, I would.
I would frequently blackout,but it was, you know, at that
age it was I couldn't make myown opportunities Right.
So, like only if I was allowedat a party or if I was, you know

(10:22):
, at some particular event orwhatever, that I kind of scam
drinks and everyone would kindof turn a blind eye or whatever.
It really wasn't until it waseasy for me to make my own
parties right.
So that was around 16, 17.
It was easy for me to actuallygo get my own alcohol and say,
okay, I'm partying and I washanging out with a, you know, a

(10:44):
rougher crowd.
By that point.
You know all the, the dredgesof hollywood, all the people
that had kind of kind of shotthemselves in the foot, uh,
because they were constantly introuble.
Brad renfro was, you know, oneof my closest friends back then
and he ended up overdosing anddying when I was 18, 19.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
So now, so you go through, so, like, when does it?
When do you make the decisionthat like, all right, I'm, I'm,
I'm going to stop the actingthing, like was there something
that happened or cause, or wasit the atmosphere?
You just had to get away fromit?
Was it the drinking?
What was it?

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, I mean I continued on in the business all
the way up until five years ago.
I mean I had an Emmy nominationjust four or five years ago for
the last show that I sold toNetflix and I was producing a
lot, writing a lot at that point, once I got sober.
I got sober when I was 23.

(11:48):
Uh so, uh, you know, from 23 tofive years ago I had four
relapses, just kind of spreadout but um, but yeah, I got
sober at 23 and started my owndevelopment company, film and TV
development company.
So I was still acting.
You know, I would take real bigroles.
You know, if it was, if it kindof outweighed the fact that it

(12:11):
would put a pause on my companyfor a little while.
Um, so I did the harley and thedavidson's, which was actually
that still holds the record asthe highest, the highest rated
single network miniseries in TVhistory.
That was just eight years ago,something like that, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Did you, do you get, do you still have, like residual
income from royalties andthings like that from your, from
your acting career, or, as alldid you?

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah Well, the royalties will technically come
in forever, but you know they'relike one cent.
I mean, you know I, if you'reconsistently working, like when
I was doing a lot of TV, tv islike where the real big
royalties are.
So you're doing, let's sayyou're doing, five, six guest
stars a year, you know, oryou've got, you know, a

(13:04):
reoccurring role on some, youknow some show.
The compounding of thoseresiduals can be a lot of money
but they taper off real fast.
So you got to keep that cyclegoing right.
So I mean, at this point youknow it's probably a couple
thousand dollars a year.
You know, when I, when I, whenI self-canceled five years ago,

(13:28):
um, that was, you know, that waspretty much it.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
So now they've, they've tapered off pretty fast
so I do remember like a coupleyears back, um I I guess it was
around five, I think it was morethan five years ago, though
like when you, when you had your, because you were a cradle
Catholic right.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
No, no, I converted.
Oh, you're a convert, oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
I thought you were a revert, okay, so all right.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, I converted in 2013,.
A few years after I got sober.
I was sober in 2009,.
Converted to the faith in 2013.
I was running my company withmy business partners, um.
I wrote and produced a moviewith selena gomez.
Um created a show for netflixand I was I was through that
time period.

(14:14):
I was struggling with the ideathat that the faith was just not
really compatible withfilmmaking.
I just don't, I don't think itis, I think it's a, I think it's
a lie.
And that was my big sellingpoint to my investors, you know,
was like we're Catholic, we'retaking the culture by force.
You know, we're thisclandestine war in Hollywood,
underground Trojan horse,catholic values, secular films,

(14:36):
kind of thing.
And one day I just stoppedbelieving it, you know, and I
was trying to keep that liegoing in my mind and I think
that's what led up to my lastrelapse about five years ago and
that forced me to hit the pausebutton, you know, um, and think
about what was going on and Ifinally came to the conclusion
that the faith is just notcompatible with with filmmaking

(15:00):
in the modern world.
It's just not.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
So I self-canceled and chose poverty in a farm it's
kind of um, it kind of doessuck because, like film is such
a powerful medium and, yeah, ifdone right, like there are
several films that when youwatch them they move your heart
and they sure are powerful toolsof conversion or or just even,

(15:25):
you know, just evangelization ifdone properly.
But it really is such adifficult thing to nail it
properly right.
Like even even the, the, thefilms we've seen come out
recently that we were allhopeful for, kind of like we're
just missing something.
And yeah, I think really likefor greater glory was probably

(15:47):
the last really well donecatholic film, like it was like
from beginning to end it's justlike a very thoroughly catholic
film.
It tells the story of thecristeros and stuff, but so okay
, yeah I, I would, I would.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
I would have to make the argument that all film and
TV is sodomitical.
All of it, yeah, all of it.
I don't care who makes it, Idon't care how Catholic they are
, and I got buddies that arestill Latin mass Catholics
trying to make good Catholicmovies.
And we're friends to each hisown.

(16:22):
I think it's all just hey.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
You want to explain?

Speaker 1 (16:29):
well, think about this.
So the the entire foundation of, of hollywood, of filmmaking in
every culture, by the way,because, like hollywood, wasn't
the only uh advent of filmmaking, right, there was a big, big
advent going on in Germanyaround the same time.
The sodomites were on theground floor from day one, day

(16:55):
one.
All sodomites, all of them.
And that continued on.
They still flock to it likemoths to a flame.
At some point.
They still flock to it likemoths to a flame.
At some point, a reasonable manhas to look at it and say, oh,
it's because it's gay, that'swhy they all flock to it.
And then we get entertained byit and we go well, this one's
pretty good, this one's allright, you know.

(17:16):
But then you take into accountthe amount of usury it takes to
make a film.
I think the whole thing is issaturated all the way to the
core, no redeemable qualitieswhatsoever, go hey.
And I think if every catholicwere to hit the stop button on
their entertainment intake andjust say, not watching movies
anymore, uh, every single one ofthem would benefit from it

(17:41):
without any, without having lostanything really yeah, we're
gonna.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
We're gonna get to that, because even you taking a
step like okay, so uh, all right.
So so I do remember you didhave that relapse a couple of
years ago, um yeah, five yearsago yeah and then.
But there was also a significantchange in the way you use
social media too.
Like I remember you, like Iremember getting like a bad

(18:05):
taste of reading your tweets afew years back and being like
whoa, he's.
Like I was I'm not, I'm noteven saying you were saying
anything that bad, it was justvery vicious the way you would.
You were on Twitter and thensomething happened where it was
just like everything got kind ofwholesome and like you just
started posting about likethings in your daily life, like
on your farm, and things likethat.

(18:26):
I was like something must havehappened in that time period
where you did like a little bitof self-reflection, you know
yeah, I yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Maybe you changed, maybe that's always a
possibility.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
That's always a possibility.
No, there was some.
There was definitely like achange in the way I don't know.
I saw you getting intoarguments with a lot of people a
few years back and thensuddenly you just kind of had
like a lighter way of dealingwith things, where you it seemed
like you were laughing thingsoff more than like going full
force into arguments look.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
So this is part of why this last little round of
interviews I'm doing and thenI'm just kind of getting off off
the internet.
This is partially why I becauseI, I I fundamentally reject
that perspective, right.
But here's the thing is, we'reall controlled by the algorithm
and the reality is all thealgorithm controls so much of

(19:30):
our perspective on every lastthing.
From the time that Iself-canceled and started tweet,
I was tweeting about my farm, Iwas tweeting about my family,
and then some contentious thingwould kind of burst out of that
little bubble and the lib cardswould all lose their minds, and
I love good banter.
So every time that would happenI'd be entertained for three or

(19:51):
four days, poking fun at peopleand you know, and then the
media would kind of blow it outof proportion and put a picture
of T on me.
You know, tmz with me, like this, like you know, so I don't, I
don't think that that's, Ireally don't think that's true.
I think that, but also I willsay that it seemed like you went

(20:13):
through a transition at somepoint for sure, where you, where
you, you stopped worrying aboutwhat people were you know,
would think about what you weresaying, right, there was like
there was like this tippingpoint for you.
So and this is this is again mypoint is, I think that
algorithm is always kind ofmanipulating our perspective on
a micro level and on a macrolevel, and I'm not sure that I'm

(20:37):
comfortable with that.
I don't, I don't think I wantrandom mechanical processes
within the broader internetcontrolling even a single
thought of mine, right, ormanipulating, even on a small
level, a single thought of mine.
Again, it's a very sodomiticalthing, right, that hyper desire

(20:57):
to manipulate and to curatepeople's perspectives, that it's
a kind of narcissist thing,right, and that's one of my
problems with film.
I think that's why thesodomites are so drawn to film,
because that's the, that is whatfilm is, right.
Being a story engineer, I mean,I used to, you know, I used to
get paid to go give storyengineering classes to state

(21:21):
film commissions, right, thatwas like my, that was my
wheelhouse for 10 years.
Story story theory, especiallyas it relates to film, film
commissions that was mywheelhouse for 10 years.
Story theory, especially as itrelates to film and TV.
And what the entire process isis emotional manipulation.
You're presenting, through theprotagonist and the antagonistic

(21:43):
forces of the stories, you'representing an ideology and then
you're trying to pair it with avery curated emotional
manipulation of the audience sothat their emotions are bonded
to this ideological concept thatyou're presenting right, this
new value system.
That's what it is.
It is manipulation.

(22:03):
New value system that's what itis.
It is manipulation.
Now, of course, you can use thatfor good, for good ends, but
you're still not using what Iwould consider to be dignified
human means.
We're not supposed tomanipulate anybody, and that's
also why I don't talk in amanipulative way online.
I say things frankly andplainly and if someone isn't
like it, I say well, you know?
Uh, how long has it been?

(22:25):
Long has it been since youwiped the sand out of your?
You know what?

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, that's actually an interesting point.
It's like, even if you havegood ends and intent, because,
like Jim Pine just said, we needbased films to win back the
color, because, look, film hasbrainwashed generations at this
point, right Like, we have theseboxes in our homes.
It started out that way.
Now we have them in our hands,but this is this magic glass box

(22:52):
that just pumps propaganda intoyour home and it.
You've watched what it's doneto the culture since the thing
was invented.
I mean, started with Elvisshaking his hips and everybody
making such a big deal out of it.
Wow, everybody's making a bigdeal.
It's like, no, no, no, theywere actually right.
Like Elvis shaking his freakinghips, degraded the freaking
culture and turned us all into abunch of perverts.

(23:13):
Yep, like that criticism wascorrect.
You know so, and all of thesethings the algorithm like.
Everybody's fear is that we'regoing to have robots take over
the world, but that's not what'shappening.
What's happening is thealgorithm is taking over humans
and humans are then doing thething that the robot you know
like.
We don't need to worry about aterminator 2 scenario.

(23:34):
We need to worry about whathappened to that school down
south where the trans girl wentand killed a bunch of christians
because of the algorithmmanipulating her mind.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Right, but that algorithm I mean even on a
larger scale.
Yeah, I mean even on a largerscale.
Look at Trump, right, thiswhole thing, I'm convinced, this
whole thing with Iran andeverything else.
If you don't want to drill toodeep on, you know conspiracy
theory.
You can explain it very simply.
Trump is someone who is, Ithink, easily moved by people

(24:06):
who he think loves him.
Their opinions, Now, he's a manlike us in the sense that
people who he knows doesn't lovehim, he doesn't give two squats
about their opinion, but ifthey're coming at it from the
perspective of they love him.
Oh, we love Trump.
We hope he does this and wehope he does that.
He listens to that.
I mean, I think that'sabsolutely true.

(24:27):
Now you have this algorithm thatstarts driving across the
Internet all these narratives.
Everything rallies behind it.
Who or what is causing thatwhole thing to happen?
Right, if I tweet somethingthat doesn't fit, whatever that

(24:50):
big force is that's trying tomove, you know, I mean you guys
know you're on Twitter, you get100 likes, right, and then, all
of a sudden, you know you getbehind the thing and the
algorithm says yes, that's thething.
I started noticing it.
I started playing games ontwitter for, uh, about six
months or so, where I would justkind of test the algorithm and

(25:12):
it was wild to watch in realtime how it's kind of weeding
stuff out, pushing another stuffforward uh, yeah, I know most
of the contentious stuff I knowhow to make a tweet go viral at
this point, like I'm pretty goodat it.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
I have.
I've timed it to where Iusually get one a week.
One a week will pop off and itgets a couple hundred thousand
interactions.
You know what I mean.
So it's like I know, I don't, Idon't do, I don't want every
tweet to be that because peoplewill hate me, but I do know when

(25:46):
something comes along like oh,I, I know how to light the fire
on the people with this one,I'll fire this one off, but it
really is it's dangerous becauseyou're right like I'm, then
manipulating people's emotionsthrough through what I'm saying,
you know yeah, and and you'realso, you're also contributing
to that infrastructure, becausethat infrastructure needs people

(26:07):
to be part of it.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
And that's I don't know, man, at a certain point I
was.
It was nagging me for a longtime, kind of like the idea that
I needed to quit Hollywoodbecause it's incompatible with
Catholic moral truth.
That had nagged me for a longtime but I ignored it.
This one, it wasn't quite quiteas long, but it had been
nagging me like you just need toget off the internet, just live
, live your life.
You already kind ofself-canceled anyway.

(26:30):
Um, you know, you're reallyhappy, I'm really happiest when
I'm just on my farm doing mything and I'm not uh, you know
I'm not distracted anddissipated by by my phone anyway
.
And you know this last one,before I was evicted, I got to
where I was.
I didn't even take my phone outanymore, I would just kind of

(26:53):
leave it laying around the housebecause I was just so happy,
you know, doing what I do andliving my life.
And so I was with Father Ripout in Wyoming.
I was praying one morning forMass and it just suddenly was
plain as day to me Okay, you'vekicked the can on this, you've
tried to ignore that grace andjust don't be part of the whole

(27:17):
thing.
If you know it's wrong, don'tbe part of it.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
So the other thing I was really curious about is like
uh, how long have you beenmarried?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
I've been married, uh , about a little over eight
years okay, so you're, you'remarried eight years now.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
You, you meet your wife, she's, she's with a guy
who's in the film industry, andand then one day you just tell
her like I'm self-canceling, uh,we're gonna go live on a
freaking farm, like how does shehandle that whole, that whole
thing?
Was she shocked?

(27:56):
Was she just because I, I think, if I told my wife like we're
moving to the middle of nowhere,she's gonna do whatever I ask
her to do.
But I do think there's got tobe like, wait a minute, what
does some shock value to that?
To that right?

Speaker 1 (28:08):
yeah, yeah, um, it's funny because the first of all,
you know she's a gem.
Uh, she's a gem of docility, um, and it's one of my favorite
moments of my life was when Itold her I had driven four hours
.
I was out in Milwaukee meetingwith this exorcist priest friend

(28:32):
of mine and I hung out with himfor like four days and we were
just talking.
We didn't even talk about thepoverty thing, that was just
going around my head, and thenit just hit me on the way home.
I was like this is what I wantto do.
I really know what I want to do.

(29:01):
It's weird and it's wild and Idon't understand it.
But I know that this is.
And I said, okay, here's whatwe're doing.
She just kind of stared at meand she said, okay, that was it,
and she fell.
She's, she's gone along,sometimes kicking and screaming,
you know when it's hard, andthen sometimes just pouring out

(29:22):
affection, I mean for the idea,right, I mean she's madly in
love with it as much as I am now, but she's a woman, so that
comes and goes.
You know when it when, whenit's hard, she has to be
reminded, we have to talkthrough it and she'll throw a
bit of a fit sometimes, and thenshe goes back and she's like,
well, I would never trade thisfor anything.
This is, this is the best lifeever and that's a growing

(29:45):
process.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
I think, yeah, there was something.
Uh, there was something yousaid online a couple of years
back and it just like struck meand you were like poverty only
sucks if you're trying to getout of it.
Like I remember you say you'relike poverty only sucks if, like
, you're desperately trying toget out of it.
But if you embrace it and youactually are like no, I want to
be poor, like there's somethingpsychological about like the rat

(30:09):
race of trying to keep up withthe joneses and this and that,
but if you actually say no, no,I want to be poor, I don't want
all these things cluttering mylife and and and the attachment
to, to all these things that arebasically just vain, glorious
toys that we get to show off, itstruck me.
It's always sat with me.
I've remembered it for years.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, and that's really the core of the whole
thing.
The core of the whole thing isthere's no widgets in my life,
there's nothing.
Our overhead we're aiming forzero.
We've gotten it really close acouple times and then things
will happen and life throws acurveball at us.
But I mean, our overhead israrely ever more than a few

(30:55):
hundred dollars a month, whichyou know I can build a shelf for
somebody, somebody in theparish, you know she's like, oh,
I need a shelf, I'll build itfor you.
I mean, that covers it rightthere it's.
You know, I don't.
I just don't ever really haveto think about money.
I don't really ever have tothink about, uh, doing anything

(31:17):
for people, or I don't thinkabout taxes, I don't.
It's really odd now, lookingback at my life, you know cause
I ran this big multimilliondollar business selling shows
and doing all this stuff.
It's so complicated, all themountain of widgets, and every
widget begets another widget andmore widgets and it's endless,

(31:38):
right?
I mean you know what it's likewhen you're living a normal
middle class, successful life.
You're juggling a thousandballs and I don't have, I mean,
just don't have that.
I haven't set an alarm.
You know, in years I just Iwake up at first light anyway,
when the birds start chirping.

(31:59):
But but I mean, you just, youdon't have nothing is in control
of you, there's nothing overyou, there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
The one thing I was hoping you were going to do.
I was hoping you were going tofilm the building of your home
on your new land, Like I saw youwere like filming the clearing
of the land and stuff.
Like I was hoping you were goingto film that process because
not for the algorithm sake, notfor the but it's so interesting

(32:30):
to me to see somebody pick up,move to the middle of nowhere
and just say, yeah, I'm going todo this.
It's like it makes me want todo it.
I have my friend, adrian, thatwe spoke to.
He was just like getting onbecause I still live on Long
Island and he's like you got tojust do what Bughole did, bro.
You got to just do it.
You got to just move to themiddle of nowhere and just say

(32:51):
screw it.
And he did it.
He left like a big city and hemoved down South and bought a
farm and he's like living offthe land and stuff.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
So that's awesome.
I'm a big proponent of it.
I mean I first of all.
Anyone can do it.
It I knew.
You know I knew how to usetools relatively.
I knew some very, very basicsof construction.
You know building a shelf orsomething.

(33:18):
And from scratch, you put it alltogether and you know, five
years later now I'm 100% sureI'm going to knock this house
out of the park.
It's going to.
You know it's going to be atimber frame, stonewalled, beh,
behemoth.
It's going to stand for 500years stone roof.
It's going to be awesome.
It's going to be a trulymagnificent house.

(33:39):
You know we'll get a chapelbuilt.
Uh, you know, I'll build achapel with some flying
buttresses and it's going to beit's going to be like this
monastery smack in the middle ofthe ozarks, and who knows what
god will do with that over thenext.
You know, next, 100, 200, 300years, but it's a, it's a
wonderful thing.

(33:59):
And then you're free.
No bills, right?
We're not going to have anelectric bill.
We're not going to have a waterbill.
You know we're eventually goingto, uh, share our phone.
So our phone bill will go downto, you know, 50 bucks.
I think it's about 100 bucksbucks right now Um 130, I think,
unless I'm late.
But you know, no bills you,just you're free.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
So okay, so now you tell your wife that you're going
to do this, she and she goescause.
I would imagine that was adifficult thing to try and sell
at first, but I but I do thinkall of us are happier with less
crap in our lives.
So I think, you know, once theinitial adjustment comes, I
would, I would imagine mostpeople would learn to love the

(34:43):
freedom and in the life you'redescribing.
Yeah, so what?
What is it?
Let's back up a little bit,because you had your conversion
around 23.
What makes you look intoCatholicism over?
You know something else.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
You know, I know the apologetics thing is real big
online, but before my lastrelapse I actually wasn't really
online very much.
I wasn't on Twitter.
I wasn't on Twitter, I wasn'ton anything.
I was busy running my companyand doing my thing and working,
so I just didn't have time to beonline.

(35:26):
And I met a Catholic priest andI was very quickly made to see
that the Catholic faith was true.
I didn't compare it to anything.
I didn't do the whole.
I know it's real popular now,but I went down this long
journey and I investigatedOrthodoxy and every branch of
Protestantism and I found theone true church.

(35:46):
I was just like he was talkingabout Thomism and the seven
deadly sins and I was like itsounds like he's talking about
me.
How is that so accurate?
Well, because St Thomas is just, you know, as accurate as
you're going to get to humannature.
Where did that truth come from?
It comes from the Catholicfaith.
You know what's that?
Well, here's the tenets of theCatholic faith.
I see why that's true.

(36:07):
I think probably mostly gracethe teacher who I happened to
run into, father Ripperger.
I mean, you can't find a betterperson to be your first priest
to ever meet.
He was the first priest youever met, first priest I ever
met.
I had never even seen a priestin person.

(36:30):
That was something in a movieto me.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
What were the circumstances around that?
How did you meet him?

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Well, he was at Eduardo Verastegui's house out
in Los Angeles.
My old business partner hadjust converted to the Catholic
faith and they were all meetingup at Eduardo's house and Father
Rip was giving a uh, aconference.
There.
Just get a little private men'smen's conference with a bunch
of guys.
And my, my old, my old businesspartner kind of tricked me.

(37:01):
He said, uh, hey, bud, we'regoing to cause.
He knew I was very adamantlynot, I don't want anything to do
with you, with this new thingof yours, the religious stuff.
You know, leave me out of it.
And um, he was like we're goingto this, we're going to
Eduardo's house, uh, he's gotthis psychologist coming over to
to give a talk on my advice andhow it affects your psychology.

(37:24):
Oh, that's, that's cool, that'sreally scientific.
Um, I walked in, I walked in anduh, uh, I remember when he got
to one particular seven deadly,seven deadly sins.
He's going through this, thisThomistic psychology.
And um, I genuinely thought hewas talking about me, like I

(37:45):
actually thought it was a setup.
I thought my friend like toldhim everything about me and was
like, hey, just you know, hithim hard with this stuff.
I thought I thought he wasactually talking about me, but
that's saint thomas right, it'sso accurate.
Uh, his understanding of humannature, you know, of course,
rooted in you know aristotelianlogic and everything else, but
it's just so accurate.

(38:05):
Um, and I had, I had humannature, I think, was my big
thing right, having grown up asan actor for 30 years, um, yeah,
I loved, I loved understandinghuman nature, what made man what
he is and men behave the waythey do, and so that was

(38:26):
actually a really big sellingpoint to me, if you will, the
fact that that was the only timeI had ever seen something that
was perfect.
It was a perfect description ofhuman nature, flawless.
It had to come from somewherethat was true and, most likely,
divine.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Man, that's wild, because the first time I met
Father Ripperger he was doingone of those little conferences
for Kevin James oh yeah, yeah,kevin's from Long Island.
So I went to a Scott Hahn talkand we saw Kevin James there
with Father Ripperger.
So when we had Father Rippergeron, we were talking about that
too.
But that's great.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, I was out at Kevin's place.
We were at KJ's twice a yearfor like a week and a half at a
time, two weeks at a time, youknow.
Yeah, I love him.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
He's a great guy, yeah, he's.
Yeah, I go to the same parishas him, but so oh, with the
Augustinians.
Yeah, at St Rocco's yeah, Nicenice.
So then you have all right.
So you, you become catholic,but you're not, like, well
versed in the catechism just yet.

(39:41):
You don't know all the, all thedifferent arguments.
How do you, and you're notmarried at that point, right
like you hadn't met your wife,right.
So now, when you meet your wife, are you, you like, fully
embracing your Catholic faith atthat point?
Is your wife already Catholic?
Like, what's the?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
dynamic between you and your wife.
No, she wasn't Catholic.
So you know I came right in tothe faith through a really
rigorous Latin mass community.
So, you know, and having havingfather ripper as a spiritual
director, you know, for all thattime and the faith you know,

(40:19):
plus having the norbertines,that's where I was baptized,
with all the norbertines.
So I mean I would say in thefirst year I probably knew the
faith better than 90 of thecatholics you're likely to run
into.
Yeah, you know, I readeverything.
I read all the papalencyclicals.
In the first year I read theProust Prumer, you know dogmatic

(40:42):
theology, which was theseminary tome.
You know, for like 200 yearsthat was the main seminary book.
That was one of the and FatherRipley would just give me tons
of homework, you know, and hewould give me fun stuff, like
one time he said to read aughtsand to find the errors in the,

(41:04):
the errors about Our Lady, thereare errors in aughts, and that
was all he gave me.
He was like there's two errorsin aughts about Our Lady, find
them.
I was and aughts and that wasall he gave me.
It was like there's two errorsand aughts about our lady, find
them I was like oh yeah, I neverreally got there you know, so
like, so that was like.
I mean, that was.
That's how I came into thefaith, you know but you were 23

(41:25):
at the time.
Right like you were young guysstill no, no, no, I got sober
when I was 23.
I I converted to the catholicfaith when I was 27, 26, 27, so
so after you convert, because Ihad.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
This is what what happened to me is, yeah, I had
my I mean, I'm a cradle catholicbut like, even after I'm back
at mass, like I the, just likethe, the every day of life kind
of got to me for a period and Istopped going to mass again,
like even after I had like.
So like once I stoppedattending the sacraments, I kind
of got swallowed back into myold lifestyle, and that's when I

(42:01):
had a relapse or two in thosetimes.
Like, did you experience thatafter your, your conversion?

Speaker 1 (42:08):
you know, interestingly, no, I I mean,
when I had my relapse, you know,it was still like daily mass.
You know, we were praying ourrosary.
I prayed the office every daybasically since I converted, you
know, 12, 13 years ago, Iprayed the full office, not the
little office, I did the big guy.
I really think it was look,ultimately and this is more

(42:34):
Augustinian kind of moraltheology but you know,
ultimately, if it's, if itweren't for God restraining us
right, if it weren't for God'sgrace, there's no sin that we
wouldn't fall into.
Oh, yeah, for sure, and I thinkthat God just just retracted
his grace.
I think that he, I think he wastrying to wake me up.

(42:54):
There was a truth that I wasadamantly refusing to see and I
was running and gunning hard inmy company super Catholic, all
our investors are Catholic, allmy business partners are
Catholic.
We only hire Catholics.
And then we're sneaking intothese meetings at Netflix, like
you know.
Oh, we're just like you.
We're totally pretending we'rethis big Trojan horse battle,

(43:17):
right, the Catholics against theworld.
I mean, it was like I justlived and breathed it.
Right, I mean, I was.
I was Catholic all the way, allday, every day.
But I was lying to myself andthe reason was is that I had
been doing that for 30 years,living in Hollywood and working
in Hollywood and beingsuccessful at that career.

(43:39):
There was no other way Godcould have ever forced me to
look at that attachment andrealize that that's what it was.
It wasn't some holy desire, itwasn't some everyone's always
like God's calling me toHollywood, to you know.
The reality was God was likeyou don't belong here, man.

(44:00):
You've got a family, you'reCatholic, just go be Catholic.
And I think he just had toshake me to the bones, man.
He had to, he had to retractthat grace and he did.
It shook me to the.
You know, netflix was cool.
They were like hey, you cancome back anytime you want.
Your contract's good with us.
Um, I mean, obviously they knewthe emmy nomination was coming,

(44:21):
so they, you know, you kind ofget to do whatever you want when
you have an emmy nomination.
But, um, at the end of the day,I took like six months and just
walked around kicking rocks andthinking and I didn't do any
work.
I just, you know, I talked toall the priests.
I knew I would travel a littlebit occasionally and go talk

(44:41):
with these different priestfriends of mine and because I
was confused, like how, on paperthis doesn't look right on
paper you don't go to daily massand pray your rosary and, like
you know, you're a rigorousfamily man, when you're home
Right, because you know you're abusinessman You're not home all
that much and then still justhave this like wild, crazy

(45:04):
relapse.
That's just.
I mean, it was only 24 hours,but still that doesn't work on
paper.
You know, something isseriously wrong and so that's
what I think I mean.
For me, it wasn't, it wasn'tthat I slipped away from the
faith, it's that I was ignoringa grace that God was just really
, really trying to make me see.

(45:24):
And he could have.
He could have, as Scripturetells us, given me over to my
passions.
Scripture tells us, given meover to my passions.
Yeah Right, he could have said,like my old business partner,
you know, is right, right backto making shows about witches
and everything else, and youknow God love him.
He's my brother and I love him.
But you know God could havejust gave me over and been like,

(45:46):
oh, you don't want to listen.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
All right, bye.
Yeah, that's.
That's actually God's wrath,right like god's mercy is
allowing you to have a relapseand your conscience hits you and
you make these life adjustments.
That's actually god's mercy.
His wrath is oh, you want this?
God?
Go ahead, go ahead.
You want to listen to me?

Speaker 1 (46:02):
I'm not gonna make you yep, one of the scariest,
one of the scariest things thatI've ever read in scripture I
think about it all the time isyou know?
It know, it says God hardenedPharaoh's heart.
Yeah, if God retracts his grace, if he's like you know, all
right, you're done.
You don't want to listen If hejust decides there's nothing you

(46:25):
can do about it.
There's nothing you can doabout it.
What a horror.
I mean the horror of that.
You know, when I recognized that, as I was, this priest out in
milwaukee, um, is an exorcistand I was helping him for like
four days and he thought that II think he thought I had helped
with exorcism stuff before, Iguess just because I, you know,

(46:47):
uh, you know because I came intothe faith, kind of through
father rip and everything else.
And so he was like, hey, comeout and you know, for four days
you just help me during the daywith my work and then in the
evening we can sit and talkabout what you're going through.
And I was like, okay, andwhat's crazy is the, you know,
exorcism work is like it's liketorture and interrogation, right

(47:12):
, like a lot of people don'treally understand what it is,
but it's basically just tortureand interrogation.
The priest, of course, is thetorturer and interrogator, and
it's wild because there's allthese different ways that you
can torture these demons, andyou know.
But the main thing that thisone priest kept coming back

(47:33):
around to is he would mentionthat that the demon, he would
remind the demon that he is themeans of this person's
sanctification, that he'sessentially doing God's will
against his own, and that's partof the humiliation for the
demons to just just forever bedoing god's will, knowing that
they can't get out of it.

(47:53):
It's like a, a horror.
You know one of those mirrorhouses, right, it's to them.
It's a horror because god is ahorror, right, and as I was
driving home I was thinkingabout that and I realized that
that's all, that's all of us.
When draw our last breath, we'regoing to stand naked before our

(48:13):
Lord.
It'll be like the whole worldhad never existed.
It's just going to be us andhim, and we're either going to
be overwhelmed with joy Becauseour will will have been
conformed to the will of ourLord and whatever he has to say
will only bring us joy, right?

(48:34):
Or we're going to gnash ourteeth and we're going to spit
and curse and we're going tohate when we see our life from
his perspective, so to speak,and we see that we have always
been at least within his passivewill, right, and we're going to
hate that and we're going to,we're going to act like the
demons and we're going to befixed in that state forever.

(48:57):
Man, that's a horrifyingthought.
It's a horrifying thought and,uh, and that was it.
That was for me.
It was like, okay, that's all,that's all I'm living for.
Now I'm, I'm living for radicalof my conscience, every tiny
little nudge.
I don't care if I even don'tunderstand what the nudge is,

(49:18):
I'm just following my conscienceevery second of every day.
And the problem is living in abusiness world.
You're jumping through moralconundrums 20 times a day.
20 times a day.
I had to think through what arethe tomistic principles here?
You know which principlesgovern this and which sub
principles govern it.
Well, can I charge this personthis if I'm doing this, and can

(49:40):
I say this to this person?
It's an endless loop.
And it was like two years I wason the farm and one day I was
just sitting out there smokingand watching the chickens my
kids kids are playing and itjust struck, it just hit me out
of the blue.
I was like I haven't had onemoral conundrum in two years.
I haven't had to sit and ponderone moral quandary right, not a

(50:04):
single confusing principle thatI had to work through, nothing,
not one.
And the peace from that andbeing able to just radically
follow your conscience all worthit.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, look it like even rob, and I have to wrestle
through that with our stupidthumbnails like oh, what are we
gonna talk about?
Tonight it's like there's beentime for rob and he's just like
dude.
I don't want to go to hell forthis show like right right and
it's like we gotta, we gottareally you know what's, what's
the principle here?

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Okay, you know you can't bring attention to scandal
, you know.
But then again, you know we dohave at least some degree of
obligation to correct publicscandal.
It's an endless thing, right,and you know, frankly, it sucks.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
That's part of.
One of the reasons I like doingconstruction is because, like I
go into work and I swing asledgehammer, I go into work and
you sit in a truck, that'ssometimes stop it.
He likes to say that, no like.
But the point is like I go inand even if it's I'm sitting in
my truck doing paperwork, it'slike I'm not like wrestling with
stealing or things like that,like it's just go in, do your

(51:13):
stupid job and go home.
It is what it is.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
You know, it's like it's, it's.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
It is one of the relieves of of doing that for a
living.
But so let me ask you, how, howdid your um, how have your
in-laws handled all of thedifferent, uh, decisions you've
made?
Like, do you get along withyour in-laws?
Do they have a hard time withsome of the ways you've taken
their daughter Is that?

Speaker 1 (51:36):
too, personal.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
You don't have to answer if it's too personal.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
No, no, it's not.
Well, it's funny because, youknow, when I was so, my
mother-in-law, me and mymother-in-law, we got along
great.
She's the funniest woman Like.
She could have been like ab-rate comedian, yeah, I mean,
she is sharp as a whip, funnyman, yeah.

(52:03):
But uh, when, when I was stillout in hollywood I was working,
I was very successful um, shewas unhappy.
She was unhappy because herdaughter wasn't home and we were
having kids and you know theylived in Michigan, you know well
, right on the border of Ohio,and it was difficult for me to
see their grandkids.
And you know we're, we'rerunning around the world doing
this and that, making movies.

(52:24):
She was unhappy about all that.
So, interestingly enough, aftermy relapse, when I was like you
know, joe, I think we're justgoing to move to Michigan, be
near you guys and and just bepoor, just figure out how to
live poor, she was ecstaticbecause she was getting her
daughter back and she wasgetting her grandkids, and so

(52:45):
she was very supportive.
Same with my father-in-law, youknow he was.
He doesn't get it, obviously,and still doesn't, you know, but
he's a, he's a wonderful man.
He's simple.
He's a simple guy.
Um worked in a factory.
You know crazy, you know stillcircling hours right, where
you're like midday shift andthen your night shift, and you

(53:05):
know he did that for 40 years tosupport his family.
So, and in his mind, supportingyour family is like making sure
they have all the stuff right,the new pool and all this.
So in his mind, well, why, whycan't you just go work and
provide all the everything theyneed?
I'm like they have everythingthey need.
My kids are the happiest kids inthe world.
My wife is happy.
We all have.

(53:26):
You know, no, no, no, no, no.
But they need things.
They need the stuff and thetoys and the.
You know, you know you're not,and but he's never been
contentious about it.
Um, my mother-in-law passedaway a year ago and, um, you
know they were.
Uh, it was nice man, because usbeing here, I mean providence,

(53:46):
is incredible.
Right, like it's only kind ofby a fluke that we ended up here
.
Um, when we decided to do whatwe did, I wanted my wife to be
near her family and we just kindof made it work, and then she
gets sick within two years of usbeing here.
She's dead a year later.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Um, oh, wow.
So she got to see her, herdaughter and grandkids those
last couple of years of her life.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
That's a beautiful story actually, and then, and in
that, he, in those few years,you know her and her husband,
you know they're, you know Ilove them, but they were like
christmas and easter catholics,you know, and you know by by the
, the last year before she gotsick, like she had, she had just
finished her first saturdays.
She was praying the rosaryevery day.

(54:30):
They never missed mass again,you know, and she died a holy
death.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
What a dude to talk about Holy providence.
Wow, that is.
I'm so glad I asked thatquestion.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Yeah, it was.
It was awesome man, and we we,you know it's been hard and we
miss her and we're still kind ofin the.
It's been a year but we stillkind of feel like we're in the
middle of it, um, especiallybeing back here, you know.
But that was also.
It was crazy because thathappened.
We got evicted three days afterher funeral and, um, me and my
wife were like it was, it wasweird because we weren't all

(55:07):
that upset about it, because wesat down and we were thinking,
well, shoot, we were here forthis.
We were clearly here to see herthrough.
My wife was over there bathingher, you know, wiping her bottom
, I mean taking care of her for,you know, in her final days and
months, and that's what we werehere for.
We can go anywhere.

(55:28):
Now we're done Like.
We did what God wanted us to dohere.
We don't have't have to be here, we can.
And that was how we ended uplooking at arkansas.
Land is cheaper.
Taxes are like 400 a year for80 acres, uh, with a house, you
know like, and we just kind ofsaid, well, okay, that's, that's
what we're doing.

(55:48):
And, uh, we, we did what godwanted and and he sent us on um,
all right, we're gonna go overto the other side.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
I want to.
I want to ask some morepersonal stuff because I, I, I I
don't like getting too personalon youtube.
It's too too public of aplatform, so we're gonna go over
to the other side.
So, bug, stay there.
We're gonna cut the youtubefeed off and we're gonna go over
to our to to local subscribersonly.
If you guys want to hear thesecond part of the interview,
subscribe to our locals.
A lot of you need to subscribeto locals because me and rob are

(56:17):
not doing this for free anymore.
Getting a little tired of this,help us manipulate the
algorithm, everything bug justsaid.
Don't listen to any of it.
Support us now.
We're gonna go over to localswe always have one over there.
uh, bug for the, for the youtubepeople who are leaving right
now.
This was, um, man, what anawesome story you have, man, so

(56:40):
I do want to continue it, butfor everybody that got this
portion of it yeah, this was anawesome.
I wasn't sure which way I wasgoing to take the show.
Like I wasn't sure if we weregoing to just like, have you as
third mic and just talk aboutsome of the stuff in the news
and then do the interview overthere.
But I, like I just had too manyquestions and you and I have

(57:01):
interacted over the past coupleof years and so many times.
And I do want to tell yousomething you did for me about a
year, maybe two years ago onthe other side, that I'm not
going to tell the YouTube side,all right.
So all right, guys, if you'renot on locals, you need to.
We will see you guys on theother side, take us out, rob.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Give me a second here .
I want to share the link beforewe go.
I just got to log in real quick.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Freeloaders will make you holier, anthony, okay.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Sharing the link in YouTube Okay.
Sharing a link in YouTube Okay.
Let me start killing some ofthe feed too.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Is it awkward out?
It's poor people.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Give me a break.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
You have never cared about being professional once in
your life Just sitting herefloating adrift as rob kills the
feeds?
Um, what do you?
Got left up?
All right.
Goodbye, youtube, see you later, all right.
Um, yeah, bug like.

(58:11):
Like.
Maybe two summers ago I posteda picture, uh, of, of, of, of
something personal I remember,and you, you actually said this
picture is disgusting I rememberand I deleted it and I had to
think about it.
At first I was really mad at youand I was like that was like

(58:31):
the most loving thing he couldhave done for me.
Because, like I was like I'mnever doing that, like my
motivations for doing it waslike I wanted people to tell me
my wife was pretty or somethingand I'm like I'm like an e-girl.
What am I doing?
Like this is.
This is disgusting, like whydid I post that?
You know?

Speaker 1 (58:48):
I'll tell you, you know, we never even spoke about
it.
You never said anything, justdeleted.
I um I, I gotta say I didn'treally know a whole lot about it
.
Surprises people to find out.
I've never watched a podcast.
I don't really keep other thanwhat?
Just my interactions on Twitter.
I don't really know who anyoneis.
I don't know what anyone'sshows are or how big they are,

(59:10):
what they do.
I don't really think aboutanything and I know you were
kind of floating around and Iwasn't sure what your thing was
and I didn't really have muchopinion about you.
But my opinion actually wentthrough the roof on you with
that one because your responsewas perfect.
It was just, you know, it wasjust to reconcile the issue and

(59:31):
you handled it like a man.
You know?
Yeah, you didn't, you didn'ttry to defend it, you just done.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Yeah, it was like, but it made me see like my own
motivations on Twitter too, andit was like.
It was kind of just like one ofthose things.
I was like man, am I?
What the hell do we do?
Why do we and I actually won'tpost pictures of my family
anymore or anything and it'slike, especially as like our
Twitter profiles grow.
It's like what the our twitterprofiles grow.

(59:58):
It's like what the hell are yousharing with strangers?
Why are you?
Why are you letting strangersinto your personal life like
this?
It's it really is.
It was one crazy, uh, ex-deacon,to get you to change that.
Oh, did I jim jim jim.
Um, yeah, it's like okay, soeven, even, that's actually a

(01:00:21):
good segue, like you're.
So, yeah, of course, thehollywood industry, you're
dealing with sodomitical stuffand the usury and stuff like
that.
Like when did your mind startto come around on that stuff?
Like when were you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
when were you like holy cow, this is just pure evil
here so, like I said, I doveinto catholic principles hard
and heavy right away, and I meanright away.
Everything rips out for money,right like.
It's funny, because when Ifirst converted you know you
always hear these conversionstories and everyone's like oh,

(01:00:55):
I was so happy and my life wassuddenly filled with meaning and
joy.
I remember just being pissed offfor a couple months the more I
dug into Catholic principles.
I was like man, I've been liedto about everything history,
principles, principles, morals.

(01:01:22):
You know everything.
Everything is a lie.
And so one of the things thatwe did was whatever projects we
were working on.
So I had a development slate ofabout 30 projects and my job was
to develop them and thenpackage them and then kind of
get writer's room together,writer's rooms, and we'd hire
writers and we'd come in.
I didn't usually do the writing.
Writing I engineered the story,because writers can't write
anymore.
A lot of people don't know that, like I had Oscar winning

(01:01:44):
writers that I hired for oneproject.
They can't come up with a story.
You have to engineer the storyand then kind of keep them in
those parameters and they canwrite great dialogue and stuff
like that.
So that was kind of my job and,um, we would every project when
it would get to a certain point, we'd run it by father in and
he'd kind of look at it and go,okay, here's the, here are the
moral principles that need to beanswered.

(01:02:06):
Um, you know, for the projectto to retain the integral good.
You have to make sure that thisis answered or you have to take
this out or whatever.
And there were a whole.
I learned a bunch of stuffthrough that process.
It was like we had a heistmovie and so I had to learn.
It was kind of looselyconnected to like Bitcoin and

(01:02:28):
stuff, and so I was learning alot about economics and the
moral principles of economics,and I kind of went down the
Chesterton rabbit hole in termsof like usury and, uh, you know
the, the false dichotomy ofcapitalism and communism.
Um, and so the the economicthing was really nagging me in
general, um, but then also, yeah, also just it was like all

(01:02:53):
these little things.
It was like a million littleseeds all being planted through
this process and they weretrying to blossom and grace was
trying to do its job.
Uh, and I think when I firstquit my company, I hadn't
committed to quitting Hollywood.
I quit my company because Iwrongfully this is what addicts
do.

(01:03:13):
Right Is is you?
You when you, when you, whenyou recognize that something's
wrong, you want to blameanything else.
You don't.
You don't want the problem tobe to be your fault and it was
my fault because I wasparticipating in all of it and
so I kind of was like you knowwhat, maybe if I separate myself
from my business partners andjust start a new company, and

(01:03:36):
that was like a halfway step andit was still me trying to hold
on to the lie.
But at that moment I definitelyknew, I knew, I knew, I knew, I
just didn't want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
When I saw you guys got evicted, I remember waiting
for the fundraiser to pop up,and I never saw a fundraiser pop
up.
Like you know, you guys nevereven asked for any assistance in
that whole thing.
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
No, I had a lot of offers.
That was the most tempting time, cause I, throughout the last
five years, I've had lots ofpeople offer, hey, let's get a,
we'll do a fundraiser for youfor this or for that, or you
know, you know you should beutilizing your platform to at
least generate some kind ofpassive income, and I had a ton
of offers from, I mean, everybig name, even non-Catholic big

(01:04:25):
names.
Uh, we're all like we'restarting a fundraiser, and I
just told him no.
Um, there was always.
There's two reasons, I guess.
You know.
There was always the fear in mymind that once I cracked that,
once I cracked that nut a littlebit, um, I'm going to lose.
What I've always promisedpeople online is that I'm just

(01:04:47):
me, I'm not a brand, nothing,you know nothing.
Nothing goes into myconsiderations as far as, like,
what I say and what, what Ichoose to talk about, except for
just the fact that I thinkthose things need to be talked
about.
And it's easy, I think, whenyou're making money at all, it's
easy, again, that algorithmkind of mindset to slowly allow

(01:05:08):
that to shift you towardstalking about certain topics or
whatever.
But then the second reason,though, was just that, um, we
were okay, yeah, um, my, my, mymodel that I had built for four
years, at that point, my modelof poverty worked.
Uh, we were not homeless, wewere not going to starve.

(01:05:29):
Um, I was able to provide formy family.
You know, by the skin of myteeth, but I was able to provide
for him.
It was uncomfortable, but wewere fine.
There's lots of, there's lotsof people that genuinely need,
are there in genuine need, youknow, and we, we weren't, even
though we had a great story thatwe could have.

(01:05:50):
Just, you know, we could havejust, uh, you utilize.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
But, yeah, rob and I, rob and I both kind of I don't
even know if we ever had theconversation, but Rob and I both
kind of I don't even know if weever had the conversation, but
I think both of us for us tostart a fundraiser, I think it
would have to involve like afamily, a child or one of our
wives getting sick, and the onlyway we would do a fundraiser
would be like I can't go to workand I want to spend time with
this.
You know, I think that would bethe threshold.

(01:06:16):
But like, like I've been invery bad, like I told the story
the other day, like I almostlost my house a couple years ago
during covid and stuff, likethe thought of like starting a
fundraiser didn't even cross mymind.
It's like, no, just trust god,he'll get you through this.
You gotta sell your house.
You gotta sell your house.
What is what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
You know, maybe that's god putting another thing
in front of you, but and that'sthe thing is, there's so much
grace in the situations God putsus in and when we run from
those situations and that's notto say there's never a time that
charity is good and needed, butwhen we're, I think, very often
we use money in a way to avoiddiscomfort, sorrows, to avoid

(01:06:57):
the situations that God istrying to put us in for our
growth.
And what that did, what thatsituation did for me, was it
helped me, see, because I hadbeen defining my vow of poverty
for four years and I was stillunsure that it was not just
absolute insanity like I, I,there was still a part of me

(01:07:20):
that was like I just don't know,and that solidified, you know
that, that that gave me theconfidence to go.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
This works, this is fine yeah, because there's
something about, especially likeeven what you were saying with
your father-in-law.
There's something drilled intous, especially being raised by
boomers, where it's the workethic and providing for your
family.
It's.
The reason so many men commitsuicide is when they fail

(01:07:47):
financially, they fail atproviding for their family.
When I was going through thatthing with the house, I remember
having to sit down and talk tomy wife about it, because I do
all the bills.
My wife doesn't have a cluewhat things cost.
I lost 35% of my paycheck andthings were costing way more.
I had to sit down with her andjust tell her look, things are

(01:08:11):
bad, we're behind in themortgage.
We may have to sell the house.
I remember it was such an egothing.
It was like, oh, I will have tosell that out.
Like I remember it was such a anego thing and it was like, oh,
I will have to go and tell myin-laws, I'm gonna have to tell
everybody that I failed at thisand there's such a mark of
failure that we see as men whenwe're not providing the middle
class lifestyle for our family.

(01:08:32):
As an american, I think itreally is a twisted way to see
life.
That's why.
That's why, before we did thisinterview, I said there's like,
there's almost something.
So I have such a deep respectfor what you did and just
stepping away from that, thatability to provide in that world
, and just saying no, no, I'mgoing to choose this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Yeah, yeah.
And what's neat is I mean, mywife's aware of it, obviously,
because she, you know she's shewas part of the modern world
just like, just like all of us.
But what's neat is my kids.
They have no clue that there'sthat there's any other life.
They love their life.
One of the happiest moments I'veever had was my second daughter

(01:09:15):
.
For a long time she kept sayingshe wants to join my eldest
daughter's convent, because myeldest daughter, she's been
adamant for like four years,she's starting a convent and um,
and then one day she was likeyou know, dad, I don't think I
want to be a nun, I think I wantto be a mommy and a wife.
I was like, okay, that's great,that's awesome.
Yeah, That'd be, you'll be goodat that, that's wonderful.

(01:09:45):
And she said but, daddy, willyou help me find a husband who
wants to live a life how we live?
Because I know people there'slike people that live different
kinds of lives, like like wherethey go to work and they they
have you know, they're gone allday and the kids have to go to
school and stuff and um, but Iwant to find a husband that
wants to live how we live andmaybe he'll even want to live
here and you can build him ahouse.
I said, well, I'll show him howto build a house, you know I'll
help him.
I said, of course, yeah, that's, my job is to help you find the

(01:10:06):
husband that's right for you.
I'll do that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
But it was neat because, as I thought about that
, that was her at that age, atfive years old, she already knew
that she loved her life, butshe didn't want to trade it out
for anything else.
There's this there was one con.
Your last controversy that theyput you in tmz and all those
things was when you werediscussing something about women
.
I forgot exactly what the tweetwas, but it was like the idea
that you, as a father, will nothave input into who your

(01:10:40):
daughter marries.
It's it's it's so alien toboomers and Gen X Like they
think.
Like no, you just have to letyour kid go and do whatever they
want to do and they're justgoing to marry whoever they want
to marry.
And I'm I'm like I look at someof the decisions family members
have made sisters of mine andthings like that and I'm like
where the was my father?

(01:11:01):
Like why did he allow this?
What, what?
Why did he allow that to godown?
I don't understand.
Like there's no scenario wheremy daughter would be living with
some guy before she like I'llmurder the guy.
There's not.
Like never, in any scenario,will my daughter be living with
a guy before she's met.
Like I don't understand thesefathers that don't think they're
gonna have input not just that,like if my daughter brings a

(01:11:24):
young man to my home, like I, amgoing to be his spiritual
father who starts to teach thisyoung man how to be a father
like I.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
I don't understand the older generation and their
just lack of no, no, your kidsgot to go do whatever the hell
they're going to do well, and Ithink you know I was down in
florida, um, so the last fiveyears I've given like one or two
talks a year at differentparishes.
Random people will reach outand ask.
So I was down in florida givingthis and it's all boomers, you

(01:11:54):
know.
And this woman comes up andshe's like, oh, my kids, you
know, they all left the faithand I don't know what to do.
And I hear that all the timeit's all boomers, you know.
And this woman comes up andshe's like oh, my kids, you know
, they all left the faith and Idon't know what to do.
And I hear that all the timeit's all they ever talk about my
kids left the faith and, andyou know, no shade on anyone,
because a lot of people justwere taught the wrong stuff.
They didn't know what they weredoing.
They were, they were told kidsare supposed to just go crazy in

(01:12:19):
their teen years and leave andthere's nothing you can do about
it.
But this just kind of shows youthe mindset I said.
Well, I said she said she wantedme to talk to her son.
She's like, if you talk to him,I think it would help If you
would just talk to him.
I'm not going to talk to yourson.
I said but what are you doing?
I mean I pray for him.
I said, but what sacrifices areyou making?
Are you making sacrifices forhim?
Well, I mean I said, look, howmuch TV do you watch?
I always go to TV because Ithink, you know, I was so close

(01:12:42):
to it and I loved it so muchthat now I have like a get out
of jail free card I can talkabout it however I want.
I said, how much TV do youwatch?
She said, oh, I mean me and myhusband.
You know we have the shows wewatch and we watch, you know,
maybe a couple hours a nighttogether.
I said would you give up TV forthe rest of your life to ensure

(01:13:04):
your son's salvation?
Would you offer that as asacrifice?
Oh, I think that's a littleextreme.
Okay, well there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
You're not willing to give up TV for your son's soul.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
That's really what it comes down to, and in a lot of
cases it's like it defines awhole generation almost.
But so much of it is because alot of our fathers weren't
priests in the home and we, theykind of just let mom be the
priest.
You know, it's this like theway, the way the older

(01:13:37):
generations allowed their housesto be run.
It was like, oh, mom's makingus go to church and dad you know
whatever, just kind of goingthrough the motions.
But I, I do think there is agroup of younger men who are
seeing their role as priests inthe home as something,
especially because we have sucha lack of real priests in the
church right now, like your,your, your role and

(01:13:58):
responsibility in the home as afather is so much more important
now than it was 50 years ago,because most of the priests are
freaking gay.
We have to freaking step ourgame up.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
My role as the domestic priest here in my home
is robust.
You know, we pray in the office, my daughters you know.
So we're in a circumstanceright now where praying the
office together, the morningoffice, isn't practical, because
I'm you know, I'm working aconstruction job for the last
like two months in order to payfor this house.

(01:14:35):
I'm trying to get renovated soI can pay for our property in
arkansas.
So it's like a.
You know, part of the vow ofpoverty is that I don't keep a
means of income, but I can takea temporary means of income if I
have an immediate financialneed that needs to be covered,
right, um?
And so we're in thatcircumstance.
Like my daughters are sad aboutit.
They're like we haven't prayedthe morning office in so long.

(01:14:56):
Dad, when are we going to praythe morning office again?
Like, and we pray the officeevery night, you know.
You know we pray Vespers andCompline before bed, and I mean
they live.
They live a lifestyle that'salmost as rigorous as like a
really, really loose monastery,and that's my job.

(01:15:20):
My job is to to guide them,lead them and do it in the way
that they love it.
You know, um, because you cando it the wrong way.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
I think too I got somebody here saying, uh, it's
great that you're out of thepublic eye and out of hollywood,
but you have a lot of words ofwisdom to share.
Don't, please, please, don't,go away completely.
Um, that's kind of why I washoping that you were going to
film this journey.
You were on a little bit andnot even for, like I said, like
you could turn comments off andstuff.

(01:15:45):
But I was watching your videosof when you were clearing your
land and I I was like I was kindof excited about it.
I was like, oh man, this isfreaking pretty awesome.
I would.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
I was too.
I was too, I um was too.
I became kind of loose friendswith the Walsh family.
You know Mrs Walsh and MattWalsh and she was a big advocate
for it.
She was like you have to filmthis, it's got to be, like, you
know, some sort of a documentaryor something of this.
You know, building a farm fromscratch on raw land, building

(01:16:17):
this house, and I was excitedabout it.
I was even looking into, likeyou know, minor film gear.
You know, okay, you can get alittle cheap camera and, uh, you
know, the, the the problem isthe.
The more I focus on that task,the more I dive into that
process.
The same thing when I had myfarm here and it was really

(01:16:39):
getting working right the earlystage, it's easy to get
distracted.
But once it's really workingand the cows are coming home
each night and you just live inthe ebb and the flow of the
seasons and the sun you know welive by the sun every day it's
funny how the interest justwanes, it just goes away.

(01:17:01):
I can't motivate myself to doit and it took me a while in
prayer to realize because it'smeaningless.
It's ultimately meaningless.
I know there are people that itmight help.
But the reality is God doesn'tneed us and just like I figured

(01:17:23):
it out on my own anyone that'sreally motivated to do it,
anyone that really accepts thatgrace and says I'm going to just
be a wild man, I'm going todrop out of high school, I'm
going to work for two years someconstruction job and I'm going
to pay off 40 acres, I'm goingto build a house and I'm going
to live this life.
They'll do it.
They'll do it without me everhaving made a video to show them
how they'll figure it out.
You know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
Yeah, you're not wrong.
The how, how is, how's yourrelationship with your family?
Like you said, your youngerbrother was into acting too and
stuff.
Right Like you still.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
You still talk with your family, like you said your
younger brother was into actingtoo and stuff right, like, do
you still talk with your family?
Yeah, actually, part of thereason that Arkansas popped to
the top of the list because wewere originally looking, you
know, I was looking in all thestates that had really low
property taxes.
I don't have to worry aboutincome taxes because I don't
have an income, so propertytaxes are the big one, like out

(01:18:18):
here in Michigan, you know, our60 acres was like $6,000 a year
and so that was a huge, you knowhuge thing.
That suddenly would come up andblindside me.
But there's places in theUnited States where huge
holdings, you know, 80 acres,like I said, 400 bucks a year.

(01:18:38):
That's nothing I can.
I can make that, you know, on aweekend, just helping someone
with something.
So I was looking at all thesedifferent places and, kind of
crazy, I told my dad, my stepdadwho raised me, um, I I legally
took his last name so that mykids would have his last name.
He's a, he's a great man.

(01:18:59):
Um, I was talking to him whenwe got evicted.
Him and my mom dropped whatthey were doing and they drove
straight out.
They were there like three dayslater and he was helping me rip
fence posts out, standingbehind me while the landlord was
screaming his head off andthreatening to call the sheriff
and all that nonsense.
Um, cause, you know he.
He was claiming it doesn'tmatter that you brought all

(01:19:22):
those materials and that allthat fencing belonged to you.
Now it's installed on myproperty and it belongs to me.
And I was like not in my world,buddy, sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
What?
What happened with thatrelationship that he soured like
that with?

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
the landlord I mean.
So ultimately it was a wholegoofy thing.
But you know, we had a verbalagreement.
Me and him talked for like twoweeks.
We worked out all the details.
We talked for two weeks, day inand day out, walking the
property.
I hadn't known him very long,they had just.
He married this woman that waslike twice his age, he was 20.
She was like 40.
She was like twice his age, hewas 20, she was like 40.

(01:19:58):
She had kids almost his age anduh, you know, it was all her
money, right enough to buy theproperty, all of that.
And I just, for some reason, Ialways just kind of take people
at face value.
He never brought anything toher, he never told her what the
situation was.
He, he kind of led her tobelieve that we were going to be

(01:20:19):
eventually buying the propertyor something, or we'd be going
in on half paying property taxes.
And me and him had explicitlycome to the agreement that he's
financially in charge ofeverything.
I'm farmhand, I'm the, I'm thepeasant farmer, I bring the
knowledge.
I mean he was like a tech guyfrom detroit and she was, you

(01:20:42):
know, she didn't know anythingabout farming and they were,
they were.
I didn't pick up on this untillater, but they were afraid of
that.
The end of the world was coming.
They were like doomer, you know.
Uh, you know, and that's neverbeen my motivation.
My, my motivation is beauty andgoodness.
I want to live a beautiful life.
If the world never ends, I'llhave still lived a beautiful

(01:21:04):
life.
That's the whole point, right.
And so they were motivated bythat.
And then, all of a sudden, youknow, one of his stepsons is
like his age, uh, got hisgirlfriend pregnant and, um, you
know, the woman, the womanwanted, wanted them.
She couldn't get pregnantherself.

(01:21:25):
That was a big, you know,sorrow for them.
And now she's got a grandkidcoming.
And next thing, I know, youknow the plan is they're going
to be moving into our house andyou know I'm expendable.
The farm was built, farm wasdone, I mean I had, you know,
and so they had been watching.
You know they had been watchingand they had been kind of

(01:21:48):
seeing how I run things and theykind of got somewhat the hang
of it, although you know, it waskind of somewhat humorous to
watch because I was still therefor a couple of months packing
up and trying to get everythingout of there.
They had the court evicting meas fast as possible.
They had the sheriffs come tothe house like four times.

(01:22:08):
They tried to convince me thatI'd be arrested and hauled off
to prison if I took one stick offencing or whatever.
And when you, when you make abad decision like that, you got
to justify it.
So next thing, you know, youknow we're me, you know just
demonizing me every which waythey can and um, it just got

(01:22:28):
nasty real quick, um, but uh oh,that's, you know the funny
thing is man.
The funny thing is man.
The funny thing is it was thebest thing that could have
happened.
I mean, you know, now we'regoing to end up on this farm in
Arkansas and my big thing wasthat I have.

(01:22:50):
You know, I'm a creative person.
I grew up in Hollywood, right,and over the last five years
I've really invented my ownmethod of farming, because it's
rooted in this idea of poverty.
And if you're going to farm forfree Father Rip kind of
jokingly calls it Thomisticfarming it's all about just like

(01:23:12):
hyper-focusing on the naturesof all these different animals
and then trying to figure outhow to, to, uh, build this
ecosystem that takes care ofitself.
Right, you're just the the, youjust orchestrate everything.
Right, you build the parametersand then you let the farm
thrive.
And, um, you know, with mypoverty, that's how I have to

(01:23:32):
farm.
I can't buy feed and hay andhave all these expensive inputs.
And little by little, you knowso the woman's, her parents,
also ended up moving in andadding onto the house.
The other house, because theywere their house was right next
door, and then it became thislittle community.
But the community was like alltheir family and then my family.

(01:23:55):
And then all of a sudden, likeas a hobby, they were constantly
input right, like telling meyou can't do it this way, you
can't do it that way.
No, you know, there was a timewhen I got invited to this, this
, this thing, and I was going tohave to be gone for three days.
I had been studying in themedieval ages.
They would use fodder feeding,which means they would literally

(01:24:23):
chop down trees into thepasture and let the livestock
eat the leaves on the trees fora few days, and that would get
them over to the next pasture.
Right, it would buy you sometime and it's actually really
healthy because it diversifiestheir biome, their rumen in
their stomach, and it's good forthem.
And it's like they were like no, you can't do it.
And now I'm a principled man,they are the property owners.
So now, all of a sudden, allthese kind of wild ideas, these

(01:24:45):
experiments that I want to do ofbuild this world, for himself,
whatever that world is, and forme it was this, it was this farm
, and my wife was kind of beatdown because we're obviously

(01:25:08):
trying to live this, this vow ofpoverty.
And the other family was likenot, obviously, you know.
So they were out to eat andthrowing parties, you know, and
my wife was like kind of gettingthe the grasses green, uh, the
grasses green around the side ofyour face constantly.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
Yeah, yeah.
And so you know, and then theyweren't treating her real, real,
real great.
You know, they were always justkind of they were, you know,
they were sort of feminist andthey didn't like that.
She was submissive and dociletowards me and so they would

(01:25:46):
kind of poke at her and makecomments about how, you know
well, your husband just kind ofrules, rules around here, and at
a certain point we weren't ashappy as we could have been and
I think God just was like look,I got something better in store
for you, don't worry about it.
And we felt that, and not tosound like a, you know,
evangelical, but like the secondit happened, we felt it.
We were like okay, there's aplan here, there's something
better in store.
It's probably going to requirea lot of suffering to get there,

(01:26:08):
but there's something better instore.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
Man, that's a what a story.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
But back to you were asking about my parents.
So yeah, my dad they droppedeverything and they came out.
My dad was like helping me pullfence posts for you know a week
and and we were just talkingand he was like hey, you know,
your brother is the same brother.
That was that was in acting andstuff when he was little.
So you know, your brother justbought a farm in Arkansas which
I I you know me and my familyare really close but we don't

(01:26:37):
talk on the phone.
Like it's a weird thing.
Everyone always says y'all arecloser than any family we know
and yet we almost never talk onthe phone.
We see each other in personevery few years or whatever it
is.
So I was like no, I didn't knowjim and I bought a farm.
He said yeah, yeah, he's inarkansas.
Now I said that's crazy,because arkansas is like in my
top three.
And my dad, he was like dude,if you buy a farm in arkansas,

(01:27:01):
if you buy land in arkansas nearyour brother, uh, we'll sell
everything in texas and we'llmove to arkansas.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
And I was like done arkansas, that's, that's, that's
really what it takes.
It takes the first person inthe family saying screw it, I'm
leaving.
Then somebody else follows them.
Then it's like why would we beapart from our family?
Everybody just go there.
It's like that's pretty amazingyeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
So my dad's already been out there on the on the
property helping me.
Uh, he helped me, put you knowwith the driveway, because he's
a he's like you, he was aconcrete guy his whole life and,
uh, you know, he was a engineerin the army so he, we had the
skid steer out there and justripping up, ripping up mountain
to turn it into driveway yeah,it's like uh, it really I think

(01:27:49):
every man has that carnal desireto just own his own land and do
what he wants on it you knowit's like yeah, I, I've, I've
hit a point and this is somewhatcontroversial.
I've hit a point and this issomewhat controversial.
I've hit a point.
I think it's actually the onlytrue fulfillment of our nature

(01:28:11):
to build things that areimminent, to manage a thing, to
have stewardship over land andto imminently provide our means
of sustenance.
I think everything else is one,two, three, four, five degrees
of separation and I think thatour brains as men, I think that

(01:28:33):
our brains actually can't reallydo it.
We can say it and we can say Igo and I do this job so that I
can make money, so that I canpay the bills and I can buy the
food at the grocery store.
You have to tell us that and wehave to keep that up.
But but deep down, it's so manydegrees of separation that it

(01:28:56):
doesn't feel real.
You know and I was saying thison the last podcast it is real.
You know.
I'm not.
I'm not saying those men aren'tproviding.
They obviously are, but deepdown we don't believe it.
We don't feel that that's real.
Until you're chopping up a cow,you're skinning a cow and you're

(01:29:19):
cutting off a chunk of meat andfor the next year, every meal
is so satisfying.
You're watching your familyjust chew into this meat every
day and you get that dopaminehit right.
Every morning I go and open the.
I go and open my chicken coopdoor that my family gets their
eggs from every day and we eattons of eggs.
It's like a huge part of oursustenance.

(01:29:40):
Every day I open that chickencoop door, I get a dopamine hit
that says you built out of thatchicken coop.
I don't care if it's two yearslater, I still remember.
I built that chicken coop like amug.
And it's just this constantdopamine hit and I think that's

(01:30:00):
why so many men chase thedopamine hit in every other
possible way they chase it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
It's why they chase it, it's why the marriage falls
apart and they got to go get ayounger chick.
They're always trying to chasethat thing that you're talking
about.
That would actually fulfill.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
And it goes away, like if you have the courage to
do it and to go, all, right, I'mout of here, I'm taking my
family to the woods, right.
Or I recommend young men, like,do it before you even get
married, because then you'regoing to attract a woman that
actually wants that Right andshe's going to, she's going to
be the right kind of woman.
But it's like everything goesaway.

(01:30:38):
All the voices are quiet, allthe dopamine addiction, all the
desire for more and somethingelse and that thing, that
chasing, that restless soul,right, that St Augustine talks
about, and I know it rests inour Lord, but it rests in Him in
that imminent connection toyour livelihood.

(01:30:58):
I mean the prayerfulness ofbeing able to just walk my farm,
hear my family far off in thedistance laughing, and I'm just
tending to some little corner ofmy farm and I'm just with God,
I'm just.
It's just me and my Lord outthere and we're both just
beaming ear to ear as we hearthat family that knows I'm just

(01:31:19):
a call away.
They know that I'm not justproviding, I'm protecting, right
, because men are gone eighthours a day.
And I think that deep downwomen, especially women and
young girls, I think deep down.
There's a psychologicalcomponent to the fact that they
know they're not actually beingprotected.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
Not in reality.
It's not natural that I'm outlike leaving the home for 12
hours a day to go and work, andthen I, you know between the
commute and the actual work.
Like I'm out the door four inthe morning, I don't get home
till five at night, like that'scompletely unnatural and it's
not.
It's not.
It's not.
I mean, you know, it's one thingif you like it, it's one thing

(01:31:59):
if like the majority of yourlife's at home and then, like,
you take your products and yougo to a market to sell them for
a day or something like thelifestyle I'm living is just so
right and there's, and I Ialways try to make it really
clear, you know, there's nojudgment in it, because it's the
world we all made right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
It's just the world we're in, but I I think there is
a different reality that'spossible without, without the
world having to change toaccommodate.
You know, I think I've found it.
I wish I had started it earlier, that's.
My only regret in life is thatI didn't do this when I was 16.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
Yeah, I feel like I keep pushing it off cause I got
a few years left till I canretire and then get my annuity
money.
I'd actually have a decent nestegg to go and do something like
that.
I don't know if.
I can do the poverty now.
I don't think I can do thepoverty now like you, but still
getting the land and building myhome on the land.

(01:32:56):
It just sounds so attractive.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
No, ac was the hardest one.
It still is.
No, ac was like it summers,it's, it's we.
We keep window units and we'llturn them on like an hour before
bed for like a month, month anda half during during the peak
of summer.
But aside from that, we're ACfree, and that's been a hard one

(01:33:19):
.
You come outside, it's ahundred degrees outside.
You come inside, it's 100degrees outside.
You come inside, it's 100degrees inside.
You're like, oh man, what am Idoing?
What am I doing with my life?

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
air conditioning is probably the greatest invention
of the last few centuries.
It's like it is one of thosethings like it was 101 degrees
in new york today and just likeso I go, stop to stop.
We do like patchwork in NewYork city, so I'm working with
asphalt which is 250 degrees,but we get the jump in the truck

(01:33:50):
for like a few seconds ofcooling off in between stops and
it's like, oh my gosh, I don'tknow what I would do if I, like
I remember growing up we didn'thave air conditioning Like ever.
Growing up we didn't have airconditioning like ever.
Until I got out of my home,like my parents, I had eight
siblings Like we were three in abedroom with a window fan, and
I just remember dying as a kid.

(01:34:11):
And then I remember when Ifirst started driving, like as
18 to 25, every car I bought hadno air conditioner.
And then, like, when I finallywas making enough money to buy a
car with air conditioning, Iwas like I will never own
another car without airconditioning.
I don't care, no, it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
It's a, it's a fantastic invention.
Well, the house I'm buildingdown in arkansas I'd say 80 of
the engineering, because I lovearchitecture, I love engineering
, I love you know I I geek outover that stuff.
80 of the engineering is allgeared towards cooling.
Yeah, so almost every featureon the house is geared towards
cooling.
I think we're going to have areally cool, even cold house, um

(01:34:54):
, even when the weather's hot.
I think it's going to be muchbetter than you know we have, we
had like a stick.
Yeah, proper ventilation.
It's stone, right, we'rebuilding it into the ground.
Um and uh, I've got a bunch ofother features.
You know, I've got a, abelvedere that I'm building into
the house, which is like aneight by eight tower that sticks

(01:35:14):
out of the top, and I'm goingto build little bench seating up
there.
You know, I jokingly call it mylookout sniper's tower.
But, um, the floor is going tobe going to be wood grate.
I'm going to build some woodgrate into it and when those
windows are open so they do thisin the middle east they have
these big sort of ventilationtowers on the buildings and

(01:35:35):
it'll lower the temperature inthe house by 10 degrees, you
know.
And then the stone the stoneholds the heat and then radiates
it back out at night once itcools down, so the house is
never heating up too much.
So I think we're gonna, I think.
And then stuff like we'veforgotten stuff like shutters.
You know, shutters, we think ofshutters as, like you close the
shutters when the storms come,and shutters down in the south

(01:35:58):
were very popular and it wasbecause you could close them in
the summertime during the dayand you still get light coming
into the house, but it'sblocking the heat, you know.
So stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
You just we're just kind of going back to old
methods what, uh, what is yourplan for finally ending the
social media stuff?
Because you said you were goingto do a couple of, a couple of
interviews before you wrapped itup for sure, like it was, it
was a couple a couple of weeksago.
You said that, right, you, I,something happened, I remember.
And you were just like, yeah, Ithink I'm I'm done with all of
this.
You're like I'll do a couplemore interviews.

(01:36:29):
I watched a video you did I was.
I was a really good video youput out.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Yeah, I, I, you know, like I said I was, I was it.
It was mass, early morning masswith father rip and um during
mass.
That's all I, all I wasthinking about and praying about
, and and it was just a veryclear answer from our Lord Just
do it, just do it.
You're not going to be quit theFOMO, you're not missing
anything.

(01:36:54):
Nobody needs you.
You know, there's not.
It's not like, uh, you know,drastically change someone's
life.
If you, if you put thousandsand thousands of hours in over
the course of your life towardsmaking these videos or whatever,
you're good, just just go live.
Go live, man and um, that wasright before Easter and and then

(01:37:14):
after Easter I was like, okay,it's time and I, so I made that
video.
We were, we were staying in aconvent up here for a little
while and so I made that video.
This is the second to the lastinterview, y'all.
This is the second to the last.
The last one is when we're roadtripping home to Arkansas.
I'm going to stop at my bestfriend's house in Kansas,

(01:37:34):
outside of Kansas City.
He's got a little podcast thathe does or used to do I don't
know what the status of it isright now Mike Parrott.
He does the RTL.
Oh, I don't know.
Yeah, me and him.
He was part of my company outin LA.
He was the CFO at mydevelopment company, so we made

(01:37:57):
movies together and we've knowneach other for a long, long time
, went to mass together everysunday out in la for years.
Uh, so we're.
Yeah, that'll be the last one.
I'm gonna sit down and just uhwhat do they call that?
Um, performatively smokedcigars.
We're gonna perform it and andjust chat and you know,

(01:38:19):
hopefully it's like three hours.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
We'll just sit and talk and maybe piss some people
off and maybe there's somethingso different about the in-person
interview where you could justsit and just you know, like I
know rob, today's rob'sanniversary, I'm I'm worried
about work tomorrow so we dohave to wrap this up, but like
when you're just hanging outwith your friend in person and
you're able to have a, you know,just just talk in person.

(01:38:42):
It's a much different vibe.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
So yeah, in a way, you know, set it up, you forget
the cameras there and you'rejust talking, you know yeah,
yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
Well, this was, um, I'm glad we finally did it.
I'm glad we caught you beforeyou actually did sign off
because, like I said, I've beenwatching you for years, man, and
it's like I like I rememberseeing you when you first
started coming out publiclyabout your conversion and stuff.
I think I watched you on Church, militant and a couple of
different places where I saw youcome out and talk about your
conversion and then justwatching this whole thing of you

(01:39:15):
going from doing theself-cancellation thing to you
getting evicted from thatproperty and then and then
moving down to Arkansas.
Like I'm telling you, I waswatching all of those and all of
them were very inspirational,man, and it's stuff that I have
always in the back of my mindLike when the hell am I going to
finally pull the trigger andget the hell out of New York?

(01:39:36):
So if I ever do, I'll I'll oweyou a thank you, man.
If I ever do, I'll owe you athank you, man.
God bless you and good luckwith everything you're doing.
You married a beautiful woman,man, and give her our regards?

Speaker 1 (01:39:47):
Yeah, I will.
I will Pray for me.
Gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , and unless you guys have like
a last question in the chat,we're going to wrap this one up.
Everybody say it was afantastic show.
I'm glad I jumped right into itbecause there was some really
good gems in that interview, manand I hope.
Uh, typically, like when you doan interview, they don't get,
they don't blow up that big likepeople want people in current
events.
But you know the people thatactually want to get something

(01:40:17):
like this, this show willactually maybe get something.
Give somebody a littlemotivation to go and pull the
trigger on something they'vebeen waiting on.
So thank you very much for yourtime.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
Buck appreciate that alright, love you, brother,
we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
Take care, brother.
Thank you.

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The Little Rascal Who Walked Away From Fame - with Bug Hall

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Little Rascal Who Walked Away From Fame - with Bug Hall