0107 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude named Goggles N Teeth

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gene (00:00):
Hey, this is Sergine and joining me today is another dude
named Ben.
This one is named Goggles andTeeth named Ben.
How are you?

TeethNGogles (00:08):
Good afternoon, Gene, or good evening, I guess.

Gene (00:10):
So Goggles and Teeth, that's what you're going by?

Yeah, it's a skydiving nickname.
hmm.
started when I first startedskydiving.
The first guy that got me onvideo, he shouted to the room,
all I could see are, these giantgoggles and these giant teeth
coming flying at him and it justkind of, it stuck.

Gene (00:32):
How long you been skating?

20 years,

Gene (00:35):
Wow.
And you're still alive.
That's amazing.

Still alive.
Skydiving slows down once youhave Wife and kid.
So my first few years I wasdoing, a hundred plus a year.

Gene (00:46):
Wow.

I got married and it took about 15 years to get a
hundred more done.

Gene (00:52):
Yeah, it's funny because my ex wife kept trying to get me
to do skydiving.

Was it before she was the X or after she

Gene (00:57):
Oh, definitely before she was the

Okay, because if it

Gene (01:00):
after that.

if it was after I'd be concerned that she was
packing for you

Gene (01:04):
I kind of suspect she was, so hundreds of skydives out
there.
So you must enjoy that feeling.

Yeah, I did my 400th skydive this year.

Gene (01:14):
Wow.

I did it on Just a week before my

Gene (01:18):
numbers, How high up do you get up there when you jump?

AvErage it kind of depends on the plane Bigger
planes you get to go a littlehigher.
Probably the normal is 12 or 13thousand feet

Gene (01:31):
Okay.
from 12, 000 feet, how long isthe trip down?

You got about a minute ish of freefall

Gene (01:40):
Mm.

And then you want to, kind of, deploy your main
parachute and after your mainparachute is deployed, depending
on when, where, and when youpull, uh, you got about three or
four minutes under canopy to getback to the ground.

Gene (01:56):
Okay.
So about four or five minutesfor the 12, 000 feet.
Awesome.
Then,

It's fun.
I

Gene (02:04):
and how high up do you pull the parachute?

Different people pull at different levels.
I'm, my, I don't jump my owngear anymore, so I rent gear and
because that I'm a little morecautious, I usually pull right
around 4, 000 feet.
Right.
When I was jumping my own gear,I'd usually jump around 3, 000,
3, 500.

Gene (02:24):
Okay.

there've been a couple of times I pulled under
two, but that's a little risky.

Gene (02:29):
And how long do you have to figure out if your main chute
worked or not?

sEconds.

Gene (02:35):
Mm.
So if you pull and something'soff kilter, you got to cut

Yeah, you, you do have a reserve,

Gene (02:42):
the reserve one.
Yeah.

right?
So there's in skydiving,jumping, just, normal skydiving
rigs.
You'll have the it's called thethree, three ring release
system.

Gene (02:53):
Mm.
Mm.

So if you.
You jump, you have fun, youdeploy, and there's a bucket of
shit above your head.
And it's not going to openbecause either a line over or
just it's tangled or whateverthe problem is.
You pull your cutaway handle anddepending on if there's a,
what's known as a reserve staticline, that will automatically

(03:15):
pull your reserve.
But if you don't have an RSL youpull your reserve handle and
Hope that opens nice and youland it and you say nice things
to it all the way to the ground.

Gene (03:28):
Okay.
All right.
And.

I've had one cutaway.

Gene (03:33):
Okay.
So you've gotten to experiencethat.
What height were you at?

I mean, it was actually pretty good jump.
I probably cut it away around3000 feet.

Gene (03:42):
Mm.

That was actually when I was still jumping my own
gear.

Gene (03:45):
Mm.

And my parachute just didn't really want to open.
It was opening a little slowerthan I wanted.
And I'm like, you know what?
Screw it.
I'm out.
Hold my cutaway.
Kind of did a flip.
Pulled my reserve landed and,everyone tends to do a little
bit of backseat quarterbackwhen, you land, they're like,

(04:06):
Oh, you could have landed thatwhen it was fine.
It would have opened, but I'mlike, you know what?
My neck, not yours.
I chopped it.

Gene (04:14):
so we're going to go through all these questions
right off the get go.
So I don't forget them.

All right, man.

Gene (04:19):
how, how much does that shoot costs?
If you get to replace it,

Well, if you replace it, um, thousands,

Gene (04:28):
if you cut it away and you can't find it,

yeah, if you cut it away and you can't find it,
you're looking at, a couplethousand dollars for just the
parachute.

Gene (04:35):
a couple thousand.
Okay.
And that's some sort of asynthetic just like a nylon
super thin material.

Yeah, it's a variety of builds of nylon, but
essentially the technology ofskydiving is nylon, Velcro and
rubber bands,

Gene (04:51):
Okay.
How about the rest of the suit?
soMebody spend if they want toget it all their own gear?

it depends on how fancy, I mean, it's just like a
car, you, you can buy a a usedcar, which is a lot cheaper,
which is what I had for my firstrig.
And it was actually my only rig.
I spent, and this is 20 yearsago, um, I spent a little over a
thousand bucks and traded acomputer for the parachute I

(05:18):
jumped for about, I did about300 jumps on it.
And then, so that's actuallyreally cheap, but that thing was
really used.
It was well worn.
It was referred to as the campusmattress, if you know what I

Gene (05:31):
So what's the new one go for

New one, if you want like a complete package.
New main parachute, new reserveparachute.
New lines, the whole shebang,container, rig, et cetera.
You're looking at probablyaround 10, 000.

Gene (05:48):
10 grand.
Okay.
Gotcha.
That's a little higher than Iwould have expected.
I would have figured closer tofive, but yeah.

I mean, you, you can get a complete package
that's used for five, but youdefinitely want to make sure
it's inspected and looked at,and, you want to buy it from,
someone reputable not just,don't buy a rig off of eBay
unless it came from a, anotherparachuter,

Gene (06:11):
What what do they usually charge for the plane fee to get
you up there?

Once you're licensed and it takes you a
while to get licensed,

Gene (06:18):
Mhm.

You're going to spend two, 3, 000 just to get
licensed.
But once you're licensed, if youhave your own gear and you're
licensed, you're looking at 30bucks

Gene (06:29):
Oh, that's the cheap part.
Okay.

Yes.
But it takes you a little bit toget there.

Gene (06:34):
Yeah.
And I got to imagine it's notlike you're not going to go
every week.

naH man people, skydivers, I used to refer to
myself as a skydiver who, doeswhatever else.
A skydiver who is really intoit, like I used to be, you're
there both days every weekend.

Gene (06:54):
Really?

You, you flush every penny you have.

Gene (06:58):
So you just,

it's a lifestyle.

Gene (07:00):
want that adrenaline rush, huh?

is a lifestyle.
I, when I, after I got marriedand stuff, um, and I was still
jumping as much as I couldbefore then.
I went three weeks withoutjumping once.
And I was like a junkie who wasgoing through, withdrawal, but
you know, now I only jump like acouple of times a year.

Gene (07:21):
It, it makes sense.
I mean, if you're used to havingthat much adrenaline going
through your system every week.

Yeah.
And it's, and I talk aboutskydiving pretty much constantly
with everyone, as you can tell,even though I only jump, three,
four times a year now, fivetimes a year this year, I think,
um, when I was doing itregularly.
And by that, I mean, bothSaturday, Sunday, sometimes

(07:50):
Friday afternoon, sometimes aMonday afternoon,

Gene (07:52):
Mm

when you lived at the drop zone, you really meet
an amazing community of people

Gene (08:00):
hmm.
Mm

because you have these people from every walk of
life.
You have police officers, formermilitary, uh, doctors, lawyers.
At the time I first startedjumping, I worked in television.

Gene (08:14):
hmm.
Mm

tHere was a guy I jumped with a lot.
He was a garbage man.
I mean, every walk of life.
But after you go there, you hangout, you jump all day.
Gets to dark, beer light comeson.
Out comes the beer and whateverelse and it's party night every
Saturday.
It's a good time.

(08:36):
But you also get to know thesepeople.
They become part of your family.

Gene (08:40):
Mm hmm.

I mean, they're I knew, I not only knew the
spouses, I knew their kids, Ieven knew their dogs,

Gene (08:47):
Mm hmm.

I spent Thanksgiving with a couple of
them.
I mean, that's, it just becomesa family, so it's a really good
community.

Gene (08:55):
Yeah, it reminds me of gun range for me.

Yeah, I think it's very similar to surfers,

Gene (09:02):
Mm hmm.

Just anything for that fix,

Gene (09:06):
Yeah,

and it, it's, it's an amazing community, it's an
amazing sport.
Most dangerous part is you'llspend every last time doing it.

Gene (09:16):
It's true of I think a lot of hobbies

Yeah.
Yeah.
And this one's

Gene (09:20):
did you ever try paragliding

no, I've never done that one.

Gene (09:24):
whatever they call it?

No, I haven't done that.

Gene (09:26):
Okay.
I watched some videos of a dude.
I don't know if he still makesit or not, but he, a few years
back, he had a lot of videos ofhim like doing the, the
paragliding in a bunch ofdifferent locations in the U.
S.

that'd be cool.
That would be very cool.

Gene (09:44):
I can't remember how high he went, but he went up to where
he needed an accident.

Okay.
All right.

Gene (09:50):
And that was like, and he's did it once.
And he's yeah, there's really noreason to do it.
And I'm never doing it again.
I guess it's more fun whenyou're, a thousand feet up, not
like 15, 000 feet up, 20,

yeah.
When you, when you start to needoxygen, you're usually in that
15, 000 feet area because it,it, it starts to get a little
thin

Gene (10:10):
Yeah.

and I honestly could say I've only jumped once
from that high

Gene (10:14):
Mm

and because it was like a one time thing.
I don't even know if I had a 200jump yet.
I get out of the plane.
I jump, I'm doing my thing.
Woo.
And I'm like, wow, this istaking so much longer just
because I had an extra 2000 feetto play

Gene (10:28):
Mm hmm.

Because your mind really does slow down after you
after you've jumped, 30, 50times.

Gene (10:34):
Mm hmm.

I even remember the jump where I refer to it as
the jump where my brain stopsscreaming at me.
bEcause jumping out of a planeis not it's not normal.

Gene (10:47):
Oh, sure.
Sure.
Yeah, not a perfectly good plananyway.

Right.
And yeah, I remember the jump isright around jump number 30.

Gene (10:55):
Oh, okay.

I was, I was jumping with a couple of friends
of mine, the garbage man and hiswife.

Gene (11:00):
Mm hmm.

And it was up in the Seattle area.
And I remember I was jumping andit was kind of around sunset.
And I remember feeling myselfgoing through the different
layers of air.
And you could actually feel the,the temperature difference.

Gene (11:14):
Sure.

And I actually noticed that instead of my brain
going, Holy crap, holy crap,holy crap, holy crap.
I'm falling out of an airplane.
It was like, really the firsttime that I relaxed and enjoyed
it.
And, after you do that, you'rehooked.

Gene (11:30):
Now unless you're trying to accelerate by getting super
aerodynamic, you, you wouldtypically hit terminal velocity
before you pull a parachute.
Right.

Yeah.
No terminal

Gene (11:41):
what is that velocity?

thAt's, that's not a static number.

Gene (11:46):
Okay.
Mm-Hmm.

a lot of people will tell you, Oh, 120, can I go
faster?
Not true.
120 is like the average or askydiver falling stable, belly
to earth, kind of in that bigbox man formation, right around
120.

Gene (12:03):
Okay.

I'm a guy who's got a bit of a beer gut.
And when you have a beer gut, ifyou think of aerodynamics,
that's basically a nose cone,and a nose cone spills off air.

Gene (12:16):
Yeah.

So because I have a nose cone, I can go faster.

Gene (12:23):
Right, right, right.

So I've actually maintained control at around 165
miles per hour

Gene (12:32):
Okay.
Mm-Hmm?

On my belly, like straight down 165.
Woohoo! But you know, my armsare tucked in, legs are tucked
in, I'm trying to get as smallas I can.

Gene (12:41):
Yeah.
Mm-Hmm.

But that's belly to earth.
If you're doing what's known asfree flying, uh, you'll, you'll
get in what's known as maybe asit fly position, where it looks
like you're sitting in a chairwith your arms out,

Gene (12:55):
Mm-Hmm.

and you'll actually go much faster that
way.
The reason that is, is becausein a sitting position, you're
presenting less resistance tothe wind, so you're falling
faster.
sOme people go head down, whichbasically they kind of turn
themselves into a pencil.
When you do that, you go evenfaster.

Gene (13:14):
Mm hmm.

So terminal velocity is more based on wind
resistance and body position.

Gene (13:22):
Mm hmm.

So when, when I go fast, I tell people I go fast
and then they go, ah, I can keepup with you, no problem.
And I'm like, really?
And so, I'll, I'll get out of aplane.
I'm like, okay, you go as fastas you can and I'll, I'll see at
the bottom.
And they never catch me.

Gene (13:40):
hmm.
Did you ever see Moonraker?

I Don't know if I have,

Gene (13:46):
It's a James Bond movie.
Came out in 79 or 78.

I don't know if I've seen all the moon right.
I've probably seen bits andpieces.

Gene (13:53):
so that movie starts off with a with James Bond having a
fight inside of a small plane.

Okay.

Gene (14:05):
Pilots are shot or maybe one pilot, I can't remember.
And then one guy jumps out.
With a parachute and Bond isleft there with no parachute

Mm.
Okay.

Gene (14:17):
So he jumps out, dives very aerodynamically to catch
the guy that jumped out beforehim, and then grabs him, shoots
him, puts on the parachute, andthen pulls it just in time.

Ray,

Gene (14:32):
How many times have you done that?

Myself, none.

Gene (14:35):
Oh, jeez,

I've, I've s I've seen video of a guy that used to
jump without a parachute, andthen he'd put his parachute on
quickly and free fall and thendeploy it.

Gene (14:45):
Mm hmm.

I've seen video of that.
thEre was a thing one of theguys from Red Bull, his name's
Luke Akins, uh, he did a jumpwithout a parachute into a net a
few years ago.

Gene (14:56):
Oh, wow.

was, that was it was a big publicity for Red
Bull.

Gene (14:59):
Right, right,

And I've actually jumped with Luke a couple of
times.
I'm sure he wouldn't recognizeme if he, threw a brick at him,
but

Gene (15:06):
So he just slowed down himself to as slow a terminal
velocity as possible.

yeah.
Yeah.
What you do is you,

Gene (15:14):
of the net to make sure that it's, decelerates you
slowly enough to not kill youand not smack you against the
ground.

Yeah.
And the, the videos out there,he, he did several practice
jumps, um, before he did it and,he landed in a net, big
publicity and woohoo, and it wasinteresting.
A couple of years ago, he andanother skydiver I know tried to
do a plane swap.

Gene (15:42):
hmm.

So they're both pilots

Gene (15:44):
Right.

and they took off at the same time and they tried
to basically jump from, jump outof one plane and get into the
other while the other jumperdoes the same thing.
Well, Luke made it, but theother jumper the plane just went
a little squirrely on him.

Gene (16:02):
Mm hmm.

And so he didn't make it back into the plane, but
they were both fine.
They're both wearing parachutes.

Gene (16:07):
Okay.

But Luke actually made it back into the plane.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The one plane crashed, it didhave an emergency parachute on
it.
And when they put that on aplane, it just, slows it down.
So it'll minimize the damage.
Yeah.
There's all kinds of stuff outthere.

Gene (16:21):
it's it's interesting.
I mean, I get the, the interestfrom an adrenaline standpoint.
I, I don't like waiting around.
And so I think even if I haddone this in my youth, I don't
know that I would have gottenhooked simply because.
You got five minutes ofadrenaline and a lot of time

(16:42):
between.

Yeah.
That's why, most skydivers, whenthey go to the drop zone, they
go there and they do five to tenper weekend.

Gene (16:50):
Yeah.
Yeah.

know, not just one or two.

Gene (16:53):
Yeah.
No, I, I get it.
And I, back in my earlytwenties, I used to go play
paintball where I was out thereevery weekend

Mm hmm.

Gene (17:01):
and same, same rationale I think is that you, you enjoy the
adrenaline that you get fromavoiding getting shot and
shooting other people.
And and even there where you'rebasically, once you're out, you
might have to wait, 10 minutes.
Until the game's over torestart.
That was still the longest 10minutes ever.

Yeah, there's, there's always a lot of waiting
around on the drop zone.
Yeah, you're waiting for, yournext time to go up, so to speak,
even though the, larger dropzones have bigger planes.
Bigger planes mean more peopleon a load, so, if you're at a
small drop zone that's jumping alike a Cessna 182, which is a
really small plane, you're onlygoing to get four jumpers in it

(17:43):
plus the pilot, but you're at abigger drop zone.
You're going to get, 15, 16jumpers in the plane.
Yeah.
They make more money that way.

Gene (17:51):
I'm sure they enjoy that.
Yeah.
Now we're recording this andyou're on Linux.
So, that's, I guess it'sinteresting in the sense that
most people don't.
Don't do podcasts on Linux.
However, you're a avid Linuxuser.
And so for you, like doinganything on Linux is normal.
Yeah.

There's definitely a lot of Linux gurus out there
who know, thousands of thingsmore than I do.
I've had this it's an HP Envylaptop.
I've had it since 2016.
And yeah, I've been playing withLinux for a while prior to that.
2017, I decided, you know what,I'm putting Linux on it, I put
Linux on it, no Windows, no,dual boot or nothing, and I've

(18:36):
been happy with it ever since.

Gene (18:38):
Which which Linux destroy you running.

Mint is my friend.

Gene (18:43):
Okay.

Mint is probably the, in my opinion, um, the
easiest for a Windows user toget into, because it has
everything you need, and itdoesn't have all the Ubuntu
ugliness, um, comes with all thedrivers you need.
I mean, from from first install,your wireless works, your, your

(19:06):
wireless internet works works onthe laptop, touch pad works on
the

Gene (19:10):
Wow.
That is

I mean, I mean, the fact that the touchscreen
works, that's pretty amazing.
Wireless usually with someonegets into Linux, they go Ubuntu
or something like that, and theygot to make sure they get the
correct wireless drivers.

Gene (19:26):
Yep.

But if you go in with Mint, it usually has all
that stuff.
So.
I've played around a differentdistros, but Mint always seems
to be what I go back to.

Gene (19:38):
Okay.

I had my daughter using her laptop on Mint for a
while until she broke it,physically broke it, the screen
broke.
It wasn't a Linux thing.
It was a dog jumps on bedgravity thing.

Gene (19:53):
And there's a lot of Linux laptops that have duct tape on
them.

Yeah.
This one was crack the screen.
So it was not usable,

Gene (20:01):
Got it.

but you know,

Gene (20:03):
host.

I bought her a, we got her a, a cheap windows 10
laptop for Christmas one year,and she was complaining it was
slow and I go, I can put Linuxon it and she was able to use it
didn't have all of her access tosome of her games She liked but
it worked just fine for her.

Gene (20:20):
And now you're, I already said at the beginning of the
show that you're a dude namedBen.
So I'm continuing my line ofInterviewing pretty much only I.
T.
people with a few exceptionshere and there for other people
that I've run into that, wereinteresting for some other
reason, but it certainly seemslike of the people that I've met

(20:44):
through no agenda one way or theother, either through events or
through the no agenda social.
That the percentage of dudesnamed Ben is extremely high.
Yeah.

I think I think that's probably the Dvorak draw
that's my theory because a lotof a lot of people have been
listening for a long time Ifound them through twit, you
know that this week in tech.

Gene (21:13):
And the, and I guarantee you that when this show comes
out, there'll be people arguinghow the year full of shit and
that's not the case.

Yeah, it's okay.
They can argue.
Okay.

Gene (21:23):
When I was in tech many years ago, Um, Twit and
certainly John Dworak at thatpoint, I would have never called
technology people.
I would have called them poptech.
This is tech shows for peoplethat don't understand tech.

Yeah.
Yeah, that was definitely theCNET channel.

Gene (21:43):
Yeah, that whole channel was built on that.
It was really like popularscience on TV.

Mm hmm.
I enjoyed it.
I loved it,

Gene (21:51):
Yeah.
And I was way too much intoactual, development to, to ever
watch these people that would beon the pop tech stuff, but I did
read John's column that he hadin the back.
He always had the back page ofMac user or Mac world, but one

(22:11):
of those two.
And I remember in the eighties,always reading that column
first, because it was the mostcontroversial.
Okay.
He's already said the mice arenever going to last.
Let's see what else John killsthis week.
It's who needs color by JohnDworak.
So there, there is a, always areally fun contrarian kind of a

(22:38):
kind of a trolley article byJohn on the last page.
And so that was my firstexperience in in becoming
familiar with John.
And, and seeing what, whatsomebody who purposefully knew
how to be a troll could actuallydo, because his column was one

(22:59):
of the most popular columns inthe magazine, but it was always
an anti column.

right.
It was, he was the the antihero, so to

Gene (23:09):
it was a designated troll for the

Right.

Gene (23:12):
And.
And it was great.
I, I really thoroughly enjoyedit.
And of course, right about itwas a little later, I think,
that Adam got on MTV and Istarted watching him on there.
Although I must admit, nothorribly often, because
Headbangers Ball was just notreally my kind of music.
sO I would see him when he wason doing other stuff or if I was

(23:37):
just flipping channels and hadbangers ball happened to be on,
but generally that was not thethat was not my jam.
As the kids say

back in the day when MTV actually played music.

Gene (23:48):
Yeah.
It's amazing.

Yeah.
It was, that was good times and

Gene (23:54):
they rolled out this, this little show called real life, a
real world, real world.

got in the real world and they realized they can
make a lot of money

Gene (24:02):
Yeah.
And it was like, Oh my God, wedon't even need writers.
This shit writes itself becausethese kids are crazy.

Yeah.
I think they occasionally poketo the bear on the when they
pick to their people.
They always picked the the tokenslob, they always pick the token
pretty girl.
They pick your, not to soundhorrible, but, they pick your,
African American guy, yourAfrican American girl.
You make sure there's plenty ofdrama between those two.

(24:31):
You pick the jock

Gene (24:33):
It was always about creating

the pot and yeah.

Gene (24:35):
And then one of the things that they jumped on fairly
quickly, and then went, I think,a little overboard is, okay,
who's the gay one this timearound?

Right.
Exactly.

Gene (24:44):
It's oh, come on, dude.
You, you've done it the last sixshows, you can skip one, and
that'll actually be morecontroversial.

Yeah.
Who, who are we pulling out ofthe closet this

Gene (24:54):
And it's Oh my God, come on, people.
So yeah, they, they went all inon that show and with all the
other reality crap that followedit and MTV was never the same
afterwards.

Yeah, they did a what real world and then road
rules.
And then real world road rules

Gene (25:13):
Yeah.

say that four times fast.
And then yeah, it just, it wentdown until downhill after that.
I think I stopped watching afterthe fourth season.
I was just done,

Gene (25:23):
Of road rules

of real world

Gene (25:25):
real world.
Yeah.

Yeah.

Gene (25:27):
Yeah.

sometimes in the mid nineties, I was just like,
you know what?
I'm done.

Gene (25:31):
yeah, it was just not, not interesting after a while for
sure.

I'm actually, I feel like I was kind of late to
the game in tech.

Gene (25:39):
Mm hmm.

My.
Early career goals out of highschool.
I graduated in 1990.
So if you do some math, you canfigure out how old I am.
I worked

Gene (25:50):
and four it sounds like.

I'm 104.
I'm 104 went to school withKissinger.
I'm sorry, too soon.

Gene (25:58):
At all.

anyway, I, when I was in high school, I got
started working in radio, thelocal, local radio station, and
we're talking a town of 20, 000people in, central Nebraska.
And I'm, I'm at the only rockand roll radio station with,
other high school kids.
And then I got a job at thelocal TV station and again, very

(26:21):
small town, very small market,but I did, broadcasting off and
on for about 15 years.
And then finally, I was justlike, you know what I've done.
And I quit pretty much in a huffduring my dinner hour.
I Actually completely torchedthat bridge and left some napalm
behind.

(26:41):
I, I quit and like my last quoteunquote duty as production
supervisor, I called the weekenddirector and said, you know
what, you better come in becauseI'm leaving and I never went
back

Gene (26:54):
Now had you stayed at that small town station the whole
time or did you travel around atall?

I moved around quite a bit.
So I, I started in a little towncalled North Platte, Nebraska.
They pride themselves on BuffaloBill and the birthplace of
rodeo.

Gene (27:10):
Yeah, no one's ever heard of it.

And then, uh, went to Hastings, Nebraska, which is
even smaller town college therefor broadcasting.

Gene (27:19):
Nebraska

Yeah, it was

Gene (27:21):
I'm just giving you shit.

Yeah, no, right outside Walmart.
There was a cornfield

Gene (27:25):
Huh.

right there.
But went to Hastings and then Imoved out to Scotts Bluff,
Nebraska, again, Google it.
And then I lived in Lincoln fora few years and all this kind of
pretty much bounced aroundeither radio or television

Gene (27:39):
Mm hmm.

and ended up sticking with TV.
And from there I moved toMemphis, then I moved to
Seattle, then I moved to Floridaand after Florida, after a
couple years, I was just like,you know what, done with TV.
Went back to school and got intoIT.
Not as much fun, but paysbetter.

Gene (28:00):
Not as much fun.
Really?

Well, TV's fun when you're younger.

Gene (28:06):
Okay, so you enjoyed your time in TV Just didn't pay very
well.

Didn't pay well, and once wife and kids gets
involved, you don't want to workevery holiday, every weekend,
every disaster, every hurricane,every thunderstorm.
It just, it gets old,

Gene (28:25):
hmm.
Mm

you know.
It's fun when you're youngbecause, one of my nights in
high school, I was standing onthe top of a hill looking for
tornadoes in Nebraska.
That's pretty good for a 17 yearold.

Gene (28:37):
Yeah, that's that's a good times.

Yeah, it was fun.
thOse core memories so to

Gene (28:42):
It's yeah, I've I've been to a few tornadoes up close It's
very impressive.
The sound just really Just makesyou realize that the energy
involved in those things,

Yeah, sounds like a freight trains coming

Gene (28:55):
it, it makes a freight train seem like a toy.

Yeah

Gene (28:58):
It's, it's really tremendous.
Very low pitch and a constant,constant, constant sound.

freight train with wind.

Gene (29:08):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I I've always done, Ialways, I've, I've also done a
stupid shit in my youth standingon top of a hill to get some
really nice lightning shots witha tripod.

Yeah, that's probably a bad idea

Gene (29:24):
That's, yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, I've I've plenty of stories of and here's
another reason why I should bedead

Gene (29:31):
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
That's what happens when you getto be 104, is you start thinking
back over your life and you'relike, how am I alive?

Yeah, that's when I just

Gene (29:42):
I, I clearly should be dead by now.
That's, that's very true.
so You got kind of pulled intoNo Agenda through the John
DeWaer gateway and Twitch.

Yeah, I was

Gene (29:55):
Twit.

twit.
When I lived in Seattle back inthe early 2000s tech TV was a
big thing.
So I watched tech TV and goodold Leo Laporte and the,

Gene (30:05):
hmm.
Mm hmm.

That gang of hooligans.
And then when podcasting cameout, I'd, I'd, by that time I'd
moved to Florida.
And, I was listening to twit,cause Hey, look, it's Leo again.
And from twit, I found you know,no agenda.
I started listening, probably II'd say I regularly started
listening.
There were still in theseventies for episodes numbers

Gene (30:27):
Okay.

pretty early

Gene (30:29):
Yeah.
That's certainly way earlierthan most people.
I think at this point, probablyhalf the people came through
what's his face

Rogan.

Gene (30:40):
Mm hmm.

definitely a lot of Roganites out there.

Gene (30:42):
Yeah, because you hear a lot of them talking.
wHich is cool.
I mean, that's a, that's a goodthing.
I was always happy to see Adamgoing on, on that show, even
though it seemed to me like hewas more nervous than he should
have been because he's actuallygot, uh, a longer and more

(31:03):
interesting career in broadcastthan Joe Rogan,

Right.
Joe Rogan was an actor for awhile.

Gene (31:09):
not a very good one.
Yeah.

yeah,

Gene (31:12):
He he was a decent show host because he did that.
That show where you ate grossfood.

yeah.
He did.
He did the man show for twoseasons and then he went to the
fear factor

Gene (31:25):
but it was a I think his standup comedy was better than
what he did on the screen forthe most part.

probably.

Gene (31:33):
Yeah, that was just my impression.
And obviously when he starteddoing the podcast, I really got
into that because, uh, the thingthat he was doing two things
that he did slightlydifferently, in my opinion, one
is he had guests instead ofregulars and almost all the
podcasts back then were justregulars.
And then the other thing he didis long ass form interviews,

(31:58):
where it'd be the same personthat's a guest for two hours.
And that was another thing thatwas crazy, because even the
people that did interviews, theytend to like to have these
little concise segments, justlike TV would.
No TV show in the world wouldhave an interview that's longer
than an hour.
Most of them would be less thana half an hour.

He followed the Larry King model.

Gene (32:22):
Yeah, but even Larry's interviews weren't that long.

Because he was restricted by network TV.
I mean he might sit with someonefor two hours, but it was cut
down to 52 minutes So theyshould get their commercials in
there.

Gene (32:35):
Do you think he did though?

Oh, I'm sure he did.

Gene (32:37):
Larry seems to me like the kind of guy that would waltz
into the studio about fourminutes before the start, do the
show, and then take offimmediately afterwards.

I I think that's actually what he did do

Gene (32:49):
Oh, okay.

similar to Adam and John,

Gene (32:54):
Yeah,

They say they don't talk to each other during
the week, you know So there'sno, you know pre show so to
speak other than five minutes onthe pre stream

Gene (33:03):
Mm hmm.
I

In interviews, of Larry King, he would say, he
doesn't talk to his guests.
He doesn't read the book.
He, might find out who the guestis.
He'll do a little bit ofresearch on him, but he won't
talk to him until he sits downwith him.
So it's, it's the long formatconversation like interview.

Gene (33:25):
love his interview with Jerry Seinfeld.

I don't think I ever saw it.

Gene (33:31):
You never saw it?
You should track it down onYouTube and watch it.
Jerry was so insulted.

Yeah,

Gene (33:37):
Oh my god.
And like for real, not playing.
Because Jerry had just finisheddoing Seinfeld and had 10 years
of award winning shows.
Where he, he left, he stoppedthe show.
He ended it at its peak ofpopularity with the largest
network, numbers that it's everhad.

(34:01):
And and then he, he went onLarry's show and then Larry
starts asking questions so didyou expect it to just kind of
wrap up at some point?
It was a surprise to you when itwas canceled.
What was how'd you feel aboutthat?

It wasn't really canceled.

Gene (34:20):
And Jerry's looking at him like, are you a complete idiot?
He's we weren't canceled.
We, did it of our own accord.
We were super popular.
And he's yeah.
So what do you know?
You were thinking of startinggoing on another show, what
you're going to take a littlebit of time off and then get
back and work again.
And Jerry's walking out of therewith a hundred and eighty

(34:42):
million minimum.

Right.
He he wasn't watching hislaundry money.

Gene (34:47):
no, and, and so every question that was asked had
reconfirmed that Larry had noclue who Jerry was, had never
seen the show, didn't botherreading the notes about Jerry
coming in.
And I think Jerry was very closeto just getting up and walking

(35:09):
off for the complete lack ofprofessionalism that he was
shown.

Yeah I mean, but I think.
I think Jerry maybe also shouldhave done his homework.
Now, granted, I haven't seen theinterview, so

Gene (35:21):
yeah, you should, you should check it out.
It's I think you'll enjoywatching it cause it's cringe.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure it was uncomfortable if he
wasn't expecting that.

Gene (35:29):
It was certainly very different from every other
interview that, that his bookershad him on, which were all,
congratulations.

right, they were all pandering to him.
They're all like, oh, you're sogreat.
You're so wonderful.

Gene (35:40):
here's Larry.
Who's never heard of him.

Who are you again?

Gene (35:44):
Yeah.
And I can't remember if he saidanything nasty about CNN, but he
might've it's I, I'm not reallysurprised that you would know
anything about our show, giventhat you're like the 38th most
watched network,

right CNN's,

Gene (35:57):
something to that

garbage anyway.

Gene (36:00):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we did, it wasn'tgarbage in its early days back
when Ted was really pushing itand competing against the the
local broadcasts.
I think it was quite good.

I mean, in the 80s when CNN was, coming into its
own, so to speak, prior to theoriginal Gulf War there was
nothing else out there, therewasn't any 24 hour news channel.

Gene (36:25):
Yeah.
And it's, it's really, it grewout of TBS's newsroom and then I
think it really blossomed in 91,uh,

The, the first Gulf war is what basically,

Gene (36:37):
It made

know, it made it what it was.

Gene (36:40):
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm

Now, when I was, when I was working in
television, I was a newscastdirector.
I was the guy behind the scenescalling the camera shots,
Kellen, calling the video,calling the audio, running and
punching and, I was punching theshow.
I was the guy behind the big,big shiny switcher, so it was a,
when I was doing a newscast.
It was.
Very tense, very stressful.

(37:04):
And the problem

Gene (37:06):
you got, let me guess, you got no respect and no money.

Yeah, got them both right.

Gene (37:11):
Got them both.
Yep.
Mm

When I, when I was working in Seattle, I was
working at a small cablestation, uh, called Northwest
Cable News, which touted itselfas CNN of the Northwest.

Gene (37:25):
hmm.

And if anybody who listens to this ever watched
Northwest Cable News, it was, itwas pretty rough because
basically all they did wasrebroadcast all the the packages
and news stories from all thesister stations.

Gene (37:38):
Mm hmm.

But it was it was a rough time when I was there,
it was, 2000.
So you had the, the first GeorgeW.
Bush election, the hanging chadsand all that fun stuff.
We had an earthquake in Seattleshortly after that.
And then good old nine 11, justa few months later.
And that

Gene (37:57):
So these are all good things for the news business.

It was painful.
I would go to work and I wouldliterally control how much water
or anything I would drink.
Because I know I would go intothe control room and I wouldn't
leave the control room for eighthours because it was just
Constant constant

Gene (38:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.

It was like that for months after 9 11.

Gene (38:21):
I believe it.

there's about 500 reasons.
I'm glad I'm out of television

Gene (38:25):
Yeah.
That seems to be a consistentthing with.
Almost everybody I've talkedwith that used to be in
television.

Yeah, it's it's to meet grinder.

Gene (38:37):
Yeah, it's I, I interviewed there and God,
what's her name?
I can't remember her last name,but she was she was a Fox
talking head and she'd been on anumber of local markets before
that.
And then she ended up gettingpicked up by RT about three
years ago and had a nice, likehigh budget show in RT.

(39:02):
And then of course, when thewhole special military
operations started within twoweeks, RT America was shut down.
so she lost her job and youknow, I think it was kind of
like they, they stole from herjust as she was starting to get
some real money coming in.
Yeah.

the talking heads on local television definitely
make more than the poor sapsbehind the scenes That's for
sure.

Gene (39:32):
Yeah.

But you know, I I did that for while I was a
director for about 13 years So,it, it fed me, it let me jump
out of airplanes.
I was happy.

Gene (39:43):
Sounds like it covered that, that hobby that killed you
any day.

It, it covered the spread where the credit cards
wouldn't let me put it that way,

Gene (39:52):
Huh.
Huh.
Exactly.

but now I'm a dude named Ben, who's been riding the
help desk for about 10 years,

Gene (40:00):
Okay.
And are you burned out on thatyet?

Getting close.

Gene (40:05):
Oh yeah.

I told my boss a few weeks ago, I was like, you
know what?
I can only reset so many morepasswords before I go insane.

Gene (40:13):
Don't, don't you have a script for that man?
Mm-Hmm.

Problem is you got to deal with the users and see
there's.
There's three kinds of users.
There's skilled users who theyknow what they're doing, you can
talk them through stuff,

Gene (40:33):
Mm-Hmm.

know, you can explain things to them, they'll
figure it out on their own, andthey're not a headache, then you
have the middle of the roadusers who you have to explain a
lot more, you always have toconnect to their system, you
have to walk them through allthe basic things every 90 days
when their password expires,

Gene (40:51):
Mm-Hmm.

and then you have the users who may be great at
their job, But should not have acomputer job

Gene (41:02):
Mm-Hmm.

and I, I like to tell the story of one of my
first it jobs is working to helpdesk and I was trying to get
remoted into this lady'scomputer.
She was older, she was a realestate agent, and I'm sure she
was a great real estate agent,but she should not have had a
computer job.
So I, 20 minutes to get into hercomputer, which normally is just

(41:27):
like 5 minutes.
Because she has to go to awebsite, click on a couple
things, download it, boom, runit.
You're there.

Gene (41:33):
Mm-Hmm.

So after about 20 minutes, I was like, okay, I'm
almost into your computer.
Your mouse is gonna startgetting a little squirrely on
you.
Meaning the cursor on the screenis gonna start moving around
because I take control.

Gene (41:46):
Mm-Hmm?

I apparently picked my words very wrong and
she says, okay, I'll make surethe mouse is in a good spot on
the desk.

Gene (41:56):
Oh, nice.
Yes.

So she thought her mouse was actually going to
start moving around on its own.

Gene (42:03):
Yeah.
Mm-Hmm.

Now, I had about five help desk people behind me
just howling,

Gene (42:08):
sure that must have been a fun one.

trying to maintain my composure.
I'm like, Oh my God.
Yeah.

Gene (42:14):
do they, let me ask you this, do they teach you how to
do the Indian accent or is thatsomething you pick up on your
own?

I watched a lot of The Simpsons.

Gene (42:23):
Got it.
So you got it off TV.

Oh yes.
I got it off The Simpsons.
Watch TV.
Thank you very much, sir.
Come again.

Gene (42:29):
Very good.
Because I know that's arequirement for being an IT help
desk

it.
Go.
Hello.
My name is Mark.
I would like to help you,please.

Gene (42:36):
Mark Anderson.
Yeah, exactly.

is Jeff.
Sorry.
That was horribly insensitiveand

Gene (42:44):
How's that insensitive?
That's reality, man.
That's not even comedy.

Yeah.
I know.

Gene (42:48):
It's just, it is reality.
It's always shocking when youget somebody The other day I was
calling Amazon and this guy witha kind of a Midwestern accent,
but like I could tell he was inhis seventies, was picked up the
line.
And I'm thinking, boy, did I getlucky or did I get unlucky?

(43:09):
Because on the one hand, I don'thave to explain idioms to him.
On the other hand, this is goingto be a very long support call
because I'm going to have torepeat everything two or three
times.
And I'm going to have to waitfor him to process what I'm
telling him and then type thingsin one finger at a time.
And that's almost exactly whatended up happening.

(43:30):
It was a super long supportcall, uh, and he technically was
doing the correct things, but itwas sort of like, I, I would
think somebody a wee bit youngercould have done that entire call
in about a third of the time.

Yeah.
Possibly.

Gene (43:49):
So it's it's time to get rid of the old people is what I

Yeah I, I, I find myself, I mean, I'm, I'm 52,

Gene (43:57):
Oh, you're way too old.

I know I'm just, I've been help desk for 13 years
and probably too long,

Gene (44:09):
Mm

but I, I get to the point where there are some
days I just go in and I starttaking calls and I'm like, oh my
God, I just talked to youyesterday about the same

Gene (44:19):
Mm hmm.
Yeah,

and I fixed you yesterday and I'm fixing you
again today for the same thing.
And then tomorrow, and then it'sjust there is a point where
frustration sets in, so I kindof get in trouble with joking
around with people, I've thebackhanded compliment,

Gene (44:41):
yeah, yeah, no, it's you, it's a skill.
Every support person I thinkneeds to have

combination sarcasm and cynicism.

Gene (44:49):
exactly back when I was in my tech days, I was definitely
not somebody that supportenjoyed because I'd be the guy
that would get in there and say,okay, I know what the problem
is.
Just give me a, give me rootaccess.
That's all I need.

You just want to

Gene (45:06):
we have to, we have to go and ask questions like, you
really don't, cause we're goingto end up exactly where I'm
telling you we are.
Just let's speed this along.
Flip little switch.
Give me road access.
I know how to fix it.
I've done this before, but Ican't do it with my current
access level.

right?
I, I totally understand that Iget to the point where I'm just
like, we have certain, Oh yougot to submit a ticket first and
then you got to explain theproblem and then you got to get
approval from your manager.
And.
All these little checklistthings and I'm sitting there
just tapping my foot saying Ijust want to fix this and get
this person off my telephone

Gene (45:43):
exactly.

and I'll go wild west sometimes and do just that.
And sometimes I win.
Sometimes I get yelled

Gene (45:51):
And it, and it's awesome when they, you and you get
somebody that actually doesthat.
I had that happen.
Years ago, not anything recent,but maybe seven or eight years
ago, I had, I just got fiberinstalled the house and you
know, something was clearly offcause I wasn't getting the
speeds I'm supposed to begetting called support.
And they kind of went through anumber of things and he's Oh,

(46:13):
it's looking pretty good onthere.
And I was like, okay, so I knowthere's gotta be more interface
on this device than what I'mseeing.
Can I log in there and look atsome logs, maybe that I can tell
you what's going on.
And the guy's yeah, you knowwhat you're doing?
I'm like, yep.

Nice,

Gene (46:32):
okay, hang on one sec.
Goes in and then resets the theadmin password on there.
It's okay, punch this in.
So I do that and I'm like, holyshit, that's awesome.
This is gonna make for a veryquick call.
It'll get your queue lookingbetter.
And and I, I'll tell you exactlywhat's going on.

(46:53):
So I pointed to it.
He figured out what it was.
It was not coming up through theauto diagnostics as usual.
And sure enough he did the fix

Yeah, that's,

Gene (47:02):
I kept my access for six years.
It was great.

It's always nice when you get actually someone
who's legitimately helpful onthe other end of the phone,
whether it's a user person or,you're calling in for support.

Gene (47:17):
Yes.

If you actually get someone who's actually
helpful,

Gene (47:20):
Mm hmm.

Now the other, the other problem with a helpful
person is if you've done anytype of help desk support, um,
you'll have your helpful userwho won't take their hand off
the mouse

Gene (47:33):
hmm.
Mm

and, you're trying to do things and they keep
checking their email and doingother things while you're trying
to work on their computer.
Nothing gets me closer toswearing out a user.

Gene (47:43):
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.

Give me the goddamn mouse.

Gene (47:48):
Yeah.
No, that's that is funny.
Now, have you watched any ofthese videos of the, the scam
what do they call themselves?
Scam killers or whatever?
These guys that basicallypretend to be old people.
And then when the Indianscammers Target them and then

(48:10):
tell them, Oh, we've just sentyou 10, 000 by mistake to your
bank account and you need to loginto Microsoft and then reverse
that transaction.
Otherwise, I'm going to lose myjob.
Is that kind of bullshit?
You ever watch that?

I haven't watched those, but I have dealt with a
few of those scammers.
I worked at this one company, wedid tech support for these
interface devices and the helpdesk team always answered all
the calls, every single call inthe building, whether it's the
sales call or for the manager,the boss, whatever we handled
every single call.
We were kind of like secretaryslash help desk.

(48:45):
So I, I I've helped.
I've gotten two of those that Iremember very well.
One, we had this person whoalways called, she wanted the
numbers off of our copier.

Gene (48:57):
hmm.

And I thought, you know what, I'm going to mess
with this lady.

Gene (49:00):
Mm hmm.
Mm

going to mess with the dude.
First, it was a dude who called.
He's yeah, I'm so and so fromthe copy lady.
I need the numbers off yourcopier.
And he got me on the wrong day.
So I'm like, alright, hold onjust a minute, let me put you on
hold.
So I put him on hold.
I take him off hold like aminute later.
I'm like, yeah, you still there?
Okay, I'm in the copy room.
It is You need ready for thenumbers and I'm you know, just
stringing him along,

Gene (49:22):
hmm.
Mm

sitting at my desk and I go.
All right, the numbers are THX1138

Gene (49:29):
Yeah.

Which

Gene (49:30):
Good old THX.

right, if you're a Star Wars fan or George Lucas
fan, you know that code But he'slike THX 1138.
I'm like, yep.
That's what it says.
It's right there He's is that aLexmark?
And I'm like, I don't know it'sYou know, and I, I played
totally dumb with him and I justwent on and on and I go, tell
you what, let me, let me put youon hold a second.
I got George here.
He's going to help me.

(49:52):
There was no George at thecompany.

Gene (49:53):
Mm hmm.

So I put on hold and I picked the phone up and
I'm like, all right, George islooking at the copier.
He's, he just lifted it up andoh, oh, he spilled toner all
over the floor.
It's a mess.
I'm just making this up just offthe, off of, off the top of my
head.
And he's like freaking out theguy on the phone, think he's
going to get trouble, and sothey called back a little bit
later.

(50:16):
And I go, yeah, Hey, I'm gladyou guys called back because
they got me again.
Letty calls, call back, Georgeis in trouble.
He spilled toner everywhere.
The boss is going to fire him.
I need your boss's name andnumber because this is serious.
And so they called me back againabout an hour later.
And this time it was some ladyand she's I'm explaining it to
her because they got me again.

(50:37):
I'm like, yeah, George liftedthe copier up.
Toner spilled everywhere.
We were trying to find thenumbers.
I, and I'm spill, I'm spillingthe same tail.
And she finally was smartenough.
She's you know what?
I think you're messing with me.
And I go, you know what?
You're right.
Why don't you guys stop callingus?

Gene (50:53):
Mm hmm.

They never called again.

Gene (50:56):
Oh, that's good.

And then I got another scammer.
The the ones where they call andsay, hello, my name is Mark.
I'm calling for Microsoft.
And you have a virus on yourcomputer.

Gene (51:09):
Yes.

I, I let this guy just, I let him play with me.
He had me open up, commandprompt and net stat.
And he shows me all theseforeign addresses.
And I of course start making funof him.
I'm like, oh my God, all thoseforeign addresses.
Are those all you?
Cause he was clearly from thedark continent.

Gene (51:27):
Huh.

And I, I had him on the phone for probably 20
minutes.

Gene (51:31):
That's great.

And then finally he figured out that I was
messing with him because theywanted home users.
And I made the mistake of sayingI was at a business and our I.
T.
guy was a guy named Bob who'sreally good at installing office

Gene (51:44):
Oh, yeah.

in you know, after that he realized he was at a
business.
He just got off the phone andI'm like, but I did get his
phone number and his extension

Gene (51:54):
Nice.

and, and Google plus was still a thing the
Google social media.

Gene (52:00):
Mm hmm.

And I actually put his name and phone number on a
on Google plus.

Gene (52:05):
Nice.

So I don't know if anybody called him, but I
figured I got my revenge.

Gene (52:11):
Didn't sign him up into any nasty lists.

No, no, I didn't get his email.
That's his phone number.

Gene (52:17):
These days that's more risky because you get spammed to
death with text messages.
So I, I put a link in in herefor you that you can click later
to watch some of these antiscammers doing their thing.
And these guys are freakinggood.
Like some of them like one ofthe dudes is learned Hindi.

Really

Gene (52:39):
Yeah, so he started, I believe his whole story was that
his grandma got scammed for 15,000 and that pissed him off so
much that some, nice old ladywould get scammed like that,
that he just started spendingall the free time he had just
trying to, bust these guys andyeah, basically make life

(53:00):
difficult.
And then he ended up setting upa YouTube channel and actually
he's very very popular.
So that's all he does now.
It just makes a living off ofdoing that.
buT they, they get scammersbusted.
They, they take over control ofthe the CCTV cameras inside of
their offices.
They, they talk to the localpolice and give them, provide

(53:22):
the, the kind of Evidence thatthey need to actually arrest
these guys that like it'shardcore.
It's

That's good.
That's a,

Gene (53:30):
But it's all documented on YouTube, which makes it
hilarious to watch.

Right.

Gene (53:35):
It's you know the It's what the FBI should be doing,
but isn't.
It's instead you have theseYouTubers basically doing it on
their own.

Yeah.
FBI is too busy.
Investigating January 6th, thepeople

Gene (53:49):
That's the important thing they need to do apparently.

tAking a slow tour through the,

Gene (53:54):
yeah, slow walk through the Capitol being shown where to
go by the security guards there.

Yeah.
I mean, there

Gene (54:01):
seems bad.

I remember that day I was at work and we were
all watching, whatever streamingof this.
I was watching a, a YouTube livestream of it and just people
were just walking through justdo, do, do, Oh, this is really
pretty.
Oh, look at these paintings.
Oh, isn't this fancy?
And they were all still behindthe felt ropes.

Gene (54:20):
Mm hmm.
Yeah.

If you're in, if you're behind the felt ropes, is
it really a riot?

Gene (54:27):
Exactly.

Not to go off on politics.

Gene (54:29):
yeah we can have you not read my posts?

Yeah, I

Gene (54:34):
I'm perfectly happy to go off on all kinds of politics
here.

Yeah, I, I get in trouble when I go down that road
when I'm not talking to noagenda people.

Gene (54:42):
Oh, yeah as, as somebody that's been very much in the
original knowledge on the personI, I feel perfectly fine being
the bull in the China shop.
It's

Yeah, I, I definitely have,

Gene (54:55):
don't give a shit if people get their panties in the
wood.

yeah, I've definitely made some, made some
enemies.

Gene (55:02):
Yeah.
Which is a sign of intellect,frankly

yeah, it also gets you ostracized out of family,
but that's okay.

Gene (55:09):
dude you think I've talked to my dad in the last few years
at all?
Come on.

I don't

Gene (55:13):
If you're not getting ostracized from family, you're
not doing it right.

Yeah, I've definitely poked a few bears in
my house, that's for sure.

Gene (55:21):
exactly.
so Let's see, we talked aboutthe the stuff you're doing at
work.
What I don't know what, whatkeeps you what keeps you on no
agenda social Clearly you'rethere mostly to read his
messages.

There's a lot of fun people to post on no agenda,
social, and honestly, Adam wouldhate this, but I'm there for the
memes because I'm, I'm sittingat work all day, every day.
I'm on no agenda, social, justlooking at stuff,

Gene (55:53):
hmm.
Mm hmm.

know, if, if I wasn't in it and I was worried
about it actually peeping onwhat I was doing, I'd probably
be fired.

Gene (55:59):
Exactly.
With half the traffic comingthrough.
From the big pipe on Macedon,having either underage Japanese
girls or God knows what with noclothes on flickering through

I stay out of

Gene (56:16):
would definitely not.
Yeah, I would not be watchingfederated if I wasn't sitting at
home.
That's for sure.

Yeah.
If I, if I'm, if I'm at work,yeah, not in the Fediverse.
Yeah, that's a, that's adangerous place,

Gene (56:31):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's get you into trouble.
And it's exactly the kind ofshit that back when I was in it
that I spent doing, like I w Iwas an architect for security
information center,

right?

Gene (56:45):
installation.
So it'd be all about.
It's getting the rightmonitoring solutions in place
and making sure that, with ourIDSs and IPSs, we can see what
everybody's doing, see what kindof traffic is moving through.
It, it's the,

definitely stay out of the federated if you're
sitting at work, cause you neverknow what's going to pop up.

Gene (57:07):
I would probably just make, be on the phone for
anything like that and not tieinto the main corporate network
because you never know

Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't

Gene (57:16):
they're literally no controls.
Somebody could just as easilypost some.
Illegal literally stuff thatends up on no agenda social.

Yup.
And then it's cashed on yourcomputer and then you're fired
the next day and you'reexplaining it to

Gene (57:31):
day if they're doing their job rights within two hours

They got to get the HR involved.
It takes a day.

Gene (57:36):
Depends on what it is.
We had processes in place that,that I helped put together for
Fortune 500 companies wherethere are certain things that
you bypass HR on.

Yeah.
Yeah.

Gene (57:48):
Yeah, you, your, your,

out of the building.

Gene (57:50):
your first call is to the the CIO.
Your second call is to the FBI.

Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had,

Gene (57:59):
and they better be within five minutes of each other
because the FBI will ask you whyyou didn't call sooner.

Right.
My at my first it job it was avery small MSP managed service
provider.
We did a lot of work for theRealtors.
This is again, the same placethat had the, the old lady with
the mouse.
I Don't know what it is withthese Realtors and I'm, I'm sure
there are plenty of niceRealtors

Gene (58:25):
know who realtors are, right?

Yeah.

Gene (58:28):
players and the cheerleaders from

The Realtors down in Southwest Florida,

Gene (58:33):
Mm

uh, they're a bunch of horny buggers

Gene (58:36):
hmm.
What did I just say?

Yeah, we had, we had computers coming in every
few weeks from pretty much thesame people that were loaded
with viruses tons of malware.
And then you go into the,documents and pictures folder
and, Oh, surprise.
And at a smaller company, it'slike my boss had to basically

(58:59):
make a decision.
It's you know what?
It's all ones and zeros to us.
And I'm like, okay.
Whatever you say,

Gene (59:06):
Yeah.

we had to do a lot of big deletes.

Gene (59:10):
Oh, I bet.

I mean, that was back in the days of, you were
doing good if you had a 60 gighard drive in a laptop

Gene (59:16):
hmm.

and 50 gigabytes of it was porn.
Like, all right, good job, buildit up.

Gene (59:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, it's people, I think, aremuch better now, even though
they're still not great, atunderstanding that if stuff's at
work, then somebody could seeit.

Right.
I think there's a more of anunderstanding of the, IT can see
what you're doing,

Gene (59:43):
Mm hmm.

Maybe 20 years ago, it was like, whoo, free
web, free everything.
I speed when I'm at work,

Gene (59:50):
Mm hmm.

I'm on that, T1 line when I'm, sitting at
sitting at my desk instead ofAOL.

Gene (59:57):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a lot of back inthe 90s and early 2000s, there
was definitely a lot offreewheeling attitudes.

TeethNGogles (01:00:06):
Yeah, it was definitely more Wild West and,
I'm, I like the Wild West, Ikind of like, deregulation and
just, If what I'm doing is notkilling anybody or hurting
anybody, leave me alone.

Gene (01:00:18):
And I think this is where the dark web is good, because
it, it's something that is justslightly too complex for the
average person.
I mean, it's really not, but it,it seems that way.

Yeah, I have, VPNs are easy,

Gene (01:00:35):
Yeah.
And if it's a weird lookingaddress that doesn't look like
your normal HTTP, uh, mostpeople aren't going to go and
try and figure out how to getthere.

right?
Right.
Most people have accepted thatthey don't recognize it.
Hopefully they won't click onit.
Hopefully.

Gene (01:00:56):
Yeah, exactly.

But when I'm sitting at home, yeah, I'll hide
behind a VPN sometimes and, dothings that maybe, I wouldn't
want grandma to know I'm doing,but I'm not killing anybody
either.
VPNs are easy and they'rerelatively cheap.
I have one that's roughly fivebucks a month.
And I pay for it yearly and it'sgood for two computers

Gene (01:01:17):
Mm hmm.

and it runs on Linux.
So bonus for that.

Gene (01:01:21):
Yeah.
I generally just run all mytraffic through Russia.
It makes it a lot safer.

tHat works for you.
A lot of people think I'm in theNetherlands.

Gene (01:01:29):
Oh, okay.
Nice.
Nice.

even, even, even though I'm hiding in my basement
in Ohio

Gene (01:01:36):
and then, now you'll maybe even have a little more freedom
being in the Netherlands.

yeah, maybe,

Gene (01:01:42):
Yeah.
With Geert Wilders winning, Ithink his government's going to
be vastly different now than theprevious one.

I don't know.
I don't trust any government.
I'm too cynical.

Gene (01:01:53):
that's fair.
I mean, certainly the bestgovernment is no government,
but.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.

I, I consider myself an old school
libertarian, um, meaning RonPaul or before where basically
You know, less government isbetter.
I understand there has to besome government, but I don't
need you in my life for everysingle thing I'm doing.
And I don't believe we should bestarting wars in every little

(01:02:22):
country that has more resourcesthan we do.
I have told my kids who arejunior high and high school age
that, I, I share my opinions alot with them because I'm hoping
they'll pull their heads out of,their respective asses.
And, I said, Hey, why?
Are we causing all these wars?

(01:02:43):
Why do we have bases in 182countries?
Do we need that?
And, my oldest, she's, my yeah,they make money off of it.

Gene (01:02:53):
Yeah, hell

We, we all know about the military industrial
com, complex.
my, high schoolers sake, she'staking American government this
year.
And believe me, I'm paying veryclose attention to what she's
learning,

Gene (01:03:06):
hmm.
Mm hmm.

I want to make sure she learns it right.
And when she started, this pastsemester, they start, in
December of, Revolutionary Warand Founding Fathers and Bill of
Rights and Constitution.
And she comes and talks to meand I'm like, I can just rattle
stuff off to her without evenhaving to look it up.
And she's like, how do you knowthis?

(01:03:28):
And I'm like because theyactually taught this in school
when I was a kid.

Gene (01:03:32):
Mm hmm.

And, so she'll ask me my opinion on things and I'll
share it with her.
I'll say, I don't.
The founding fathers didn't wantthis.
They didn't want this.
They didn't want this.
They didn't want, they didn'teven want corporations,

Gene (01:03:48):
Yep.

Corporations were illegal when this country was
founded and now corporations runthe country.
I

Gene (01:03:55):
Oh, big time.

mean, we don't even have to go down the road of
what, Pfizer got away with forthe past four years,

Gene (01:04:02):
Oh, they all get away with everything.
That, that's the thing is whatwe have is politicians whose
primary allegiance, notsurprisingly, is to where they
get their money.
And they don't get their moneyfrom a salary.
I mean, it's a tiny percentageof their money.
Where they get their money isfrom the fundraising that

(01:04:22):
happens, and those arepredominantly corporate.
They're, they all get a littlebit of small individual
contributions, but none of them,on both sides frankly Get the
majority of their money frompeople.
Most of them get their moneyfrom

but it's all special

Gene (01:04:43):
direct corporate or or what do you call them?
The the, the sort of the groupmoney that's put together.

got the lobbyists that are doing the day to day
and then you got the special.
The packs

Gene (01:04:57):
Packs.
That's the word I was lookingfor.
Yeah, exactly.

and those are mostly formed for the reelection
campaign and you get, crazyuncle Joe in there who's been,
in quote unquote public servicefor, 50 years, at least since I
was in diapers

Gene (01:05:13):
Mm hmm.

and, he, he's been elected over and over and over
and over and over again for,Senate, Senate, Senate, ended
up, vice president for a while.
Yeah.
And then took a couple of yearsoff and now somehow he's
president.
And I, I loved my grandfatherwhen he was 80, whatever years
old, loved him to pieces, but Iwouldn't trust him to run the

(01:05:36):
government.
mY, my grandfather did reallygood about, doing his own
insulin shots, stuff like that.
Good guy.
Wouldn't trust him to run thegovernment.

Gene (01:05:46):
No, there's

to even pretend to run the government.
Because we, we all know crazyUncle Joe doesn't actually run
the place.

Gene (01:05:52):
yeah, exactly.

it's his minions that are running around.

Gene (01:05:55):
It's somebody, the real question is, is it Obama or is
it somebody else?
But clearly it's not Joe.

I think, I think the Obama buddies and even the
Clintons, and this even goesback to the Bushes because, the
Bushes helped get Bill Clintonin there,

Gene (01:06:10):
Mm hmm.

I mean, it's, it's all one big, cabal, if you want
to go there,

Gene (01:06:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Because the Bushes helped the Clintons get into
power and, then they get theirbuddies into power and then when
Bill was done they get, Bush Jr.
in there and he does his eightyears.
And then they get Obama in thereand he's just, buddy with the,
it's, it's an oligarchy.
And it's been that way since Istarted paying attention in the
mid nineties,

Gene (01:06:37):
Yeah.

And it's been happening since, the 1890s.

Gene (01:06:40):
it, it has I think it's actually worse than an oligarchy
because the.
At least oligarchs got there byhaving some business sense and
also, a lack of morals.
These guys that we have aspoliticians don't even have the
business sense part, they purelyhave lack of morals.

They got, they got money from someone having
business.

Gene (01:07:03):
Yeah, yeah, they're, they're get, yeah, they're
getting money from,

Go back to Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, everybody loved him.
What does his dad do?

Gene (01:07:13):
yeah.
Yeah, he was in with the mob,yeah,

He was him at the bar.

Gene (01:07:17):
absolutely,

And Kennedy, pretty sure he wouldn't have got
to where he was if there wasn'tsome mob back.

Gene (01:07:24):
I don't know that everybody necessarily loved him,
they just didn't like thealternative

the alternative was Nixon.

Gene (01:07:32):
exactly.

And, that was the days of, very early television.

Gene (01:07:36):
Yeah.

And Kennedy knew how to do it, and Nixon he looks
something like I do.

Gene (01:07:41):
Yeah.
He, he

got a great face for radio.

Gene (01:07:43):
did not present well for the television.
That's to be sure.

It's just, it's just been,

Gene (01:07:50):
but that, that's, that's a recurring topic for a number of
my podcasts is, is America doesnot elect a president based on
who's the best man for the job.
What's the qualifications?
America elects a president basedon a popularity contest.

Right, it's,

Gene (01:08:09):
It's, it's the the same thing that happened in high
school.

Exactly.
It's, it's the the homecomingqueen and the, homecoming king
and the the high schoolquarterback, the most popular
guy and, back before that goback to, the middle ages, who
became the king?
He was the guy who defeated theenemy,

Gene (01:08:29):
Yeah.
The, the king usually had theparticular talent of organizing
others

right.
He organized the army.
Yeah,

Gene (01:08:37):
confederation.
The local politicians for lackof a better word, the local
landowners, uh, really were justthe the strongest, the biggest
brutes in the

yeah, they were, the Knights would become
landowners when they wouldbasically retire from
knighthood.
And that's how you got, toindentured servitude.
You had the people crawlingaround in the mud that worked
for their, their Lord andeverything got kicked up to
them.
And then the Lords had to kickup to, up and up and up until it

(01:09:11):
all gets to the King.
Right.
It's, yeah, it's the surfsystem, back to the middle ages.

Gene (01:09:16):
And we're not that far away from that right

We're not, we're really not.
We may all have, fancyelectronics, but we're still all

Gene (01:09:24):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Most people can't just stopworking and guess what?
That means when you can't stopworking means you're a surf.

exactly.
I mean, we, we all,

Gene (01:09:35):
you whether you work or not.

we all say it on no agenda, iTM slave, we're all
right there, I'm, I mean, I'm, Iknow I'm not alone.
I'm probably three paychecksaway from, not eating,

Gene (01:09:48):
Yeah.
And and like for a majority ofAmerica, three is good.
The.
The average, I think is one

well,

Gene (01:09:56):
with plenty of people in order for it to be one.
That means there's plenty ofpeople with zero

right,

Gene (01:10:02):
because that one is the average.
So

right.
I mean,

Gene (01:10:06):
it's pretty bad, man.
It's,

now, I mean, in the past, I don't want to just
bang on, crazy Uncle Joe, butthe past two and a half years,
everything has doubled in price.

Gene (01:10:17):
literally.

I, I think, for just a, a tier two it guy, I
make decent money, um, for whatI do, it's certainly a lot
better than I did when I workedin television, and, my wife
makes, decent money actually alittle bit better than I do,
but, fast forward two and a halfyears and it's like prices of
everything have doubled,nothing's ever going down

(01:10:41):
because prices never go down andnow I'm like, you know what, I
need to change jobs again.
Because this ain't enough,

Gene (01:10:49):
Well, then

my wife works full time.
I work full time and it's justnot enough.

Gene (01:10:54):
we are absolutely above Jimmy Carter levels of
inflation.
If we use the same formula.
And the 1980 formula forcalculating cost of living.

Yeah, the problem is cost of living has gone up,
the livable wage hasn't matchedit.
If if the cost of living andwages went up together, it'd be
it'd be okay.
It's nowhere near that.

Gene (01:11:24):
yeah, and the real wages declined.
And this is, this was the, the,the great trap.
Now this is another argumentthat I have against getting
women the right to vote.
Is that it eventually led to adirect path to moving from a
one.

(01:11:44):
Earner to a dual earner home.

hmm.

Gene (01:11:48):
And for the early adopters and my parents were early
adopters of that.
it Was great because you'reliterally adding on like another
50 percent on top of what allyour compatriots are making,
because your wife's never goingto make the same amount of money
as you, but you're, you're goingto be making more than everybody

(01:12:08):
else.
But it's a very, very slipperyslide because that only is true.
Until the 50th percentile, whenroughly half of the population
are dual income earners, um,then the wages overall have

(01:12:29):
adjusted to that dual earnermedian.
And so you actually for thesecond half of that equation for
the later years.
You're actually, your real wageas presented percentage of cost
of living is actually decreasingunless your spouse works.

right.
And here's here's the otherthing.

Gene (01:12:54):
it is absolutely a trap.

so when I was in my 20s and 30s, single guy, just
me and my cat, I could live apretty cheap life.
I could live in a crappy onebedroom apartment with my,
vehicle that may or may not be,new may or may not be paid off.
I lived a pretty simple lifewhere I could put everything in
the back of my pickup and in a UHaul and I could move across the

(01:13:18):
country.
And I did that multiple times.
But then you get into.
Wife and children and childrenare very expensive and very
expensive and very expensive.
I mean, diapers alone for yourfirst three years are, that's
like a second mortgage.
But then you actually do get ahouse.
And then what do you do with thehouse?
You start filling the house.

(01:13:39):
You buy furniture, you buy TVs,you buy, furnishings for that
extra bedroom just in casesomeone stops by.

Gene (01:13:45):
hmm.

And your expenditures essentially
eventually match.
What you make and you get, your,two story house in Cleveland,
Ohio, and you have to work everyday to, feed the beast.
I know I, I'm making a lot morethan I was 20 years ago when I

(01:14:10):
was working in television, butbelieve me, I'm also spending a
lot more because I've got,mortgage, two cars, two kids, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Gene (01:14:20):
A,

So your lifestyle eventually meets what you're
making.
Very, very few people actuallyare making more

Gene (01:14:28):
very easy to, for it to meet what you're making because
what you're making is less thanwhat you used to make.
And that's, that's the thing isif you look at inflation, like
from the mid eighties to today,uh, in the, the 30 years, 30,
40, whatever years it is fromthe mid eighties

pushing 40.

Gene (01:14:46):
40, yeah, almost 40 years.
You'll, you look at a handful ofthings.
You don't have to look at everysingle item that was part of
the, the consumer price index,although you can, but.
You look at sort of

Look at a car.
Look at a house

Gene (01:15:00):
yeah, price of a house, price of a house, a brand new
construction, 1981.
I remember these because that'swhen my parents bought a house.
And, uh, 100, 000 got you a verynice house.
And the most expensive houses Iremember seeing back then were
about 160, 000.

(01:15:21):
And those today That 100, 000house depends where you are, of
course, but here in Austintoday, that 100, 000 house from
1980

It's probably worth a million.

Gene (01:15:31):
it's a little over a million and the the 2, 800
square foot house that wouldhave been 116, 1980 that's about
2 million right now

Yeah, it's I mean in different parts of the
country.
It's different Oh,

Gene (01:15:46):
at

I was in Florida, I was in Florida when the

Gene (01:15:49):
Mm

you know 2008 when the mortgage crisis happened and
you want to talk about a crazytime to be in Florida you had,
these people that, had all thesefive year, flexible mortgages
and then that fifth, fifth yearhit, here comes the big hate
payment and everybody walkedaway and you had housing

(01:16:13):
communities of, acres and acresand acres of houses that were
halfway under construction thatwere just sitting barren.
I actually lived in Lee Countyand in 2008, 2009, Lee County
led the country in foreclosures.

Gene (01:16:31):
Mm hmm.

So that's right where I was, it was a very weird
time.

Gene (01:16:38):
And again, I think the foreclosures came because when
the economy dipped, there wereso many people that were one
paycheck away from bankruptcy

Right.

Gene (01:16:50):
had lost their jobs that they literally could not make
house payments.

Right.
The funny thing is, is in LeeCounty in 2007, 2008, there were
still a lot of construction jobsbecause for one building all
those houses, a lot of thoseconstruction workers came in
because of the hurricanes.
In 2004, 2005.
So they came in for thehurricanes to do those repairs

(01:17:17):
and stuck around for all thishousing and they all got these
cheap five-year, flexiblemortgages.
And then when that fifth yearhappened, and no hurricanes and
no more construction, the countyturned into a ghost town real
quick.
The only ones who stayed in LeeCounty were the snowbirds and
they were only there six monthsout of the year.

(01:17:39):
uNless you were

Gene (01:17:40):
Yeah, the events like that will get you some cheap real
estate if you have the money forit, for

It did That's how we got our first house.
But even then it wasn't supercheap, but for Florida, it was

Gene (01:17:53):
Yeah, and then I don't think that regardless of who the
next president is, that there'sgoing to be a huge change in the
in inflation.
I think we're going to continueseeing high inflation probably
for the next four, maybe longeryears.
Simply because a lot of thefactors that are feeding into it
isn't just poor decisions fromthe Biden administration, but

(01:18:16):
it's, it's the poor decisionsthey made early on that will
have an impact continuing forthe next 20 years.

well, 2008 is still affecting us, that's only
15 years ago, and basically whathappened in 2008 is they pumped
up the economy.
They churned in a bunch ofmoney, which they printed, you
may remember the days ofquantitative easing where
there's printing money, printingmoney, printing money.

(01:18:43):
Now we are officially at thepinnacle of the result of that,
so between.
BIden saying this is allRussia's fault because of
Ukraine, which we all know is a

Gene (01:18:53):
Everything's Russia's

Yeah, or it's a Russia's fault.
But Jesus the past four yearshave just been, one thing after
another.

Gene (01:19:04):
I think I'm saying this only kind of half kidding, but
if you look at what's happenedin Russia, maybe the best thing
that could happen to the U.
S.
is if we get some countries thatdecide to.
Do sanctions against us

Yeah they're gonna do economic impact on us
eventually.

Gene (01:19:21):
because Russia's economy is doing better than ever with
internal spending and a lot ofindustries that have left Russia
are now back.

we're coming back because of the sanctions we put
on Russia.

Gene (01:19:35):
That's my point is I think somebody needs to sanction us so
that we do that.

Yeah,

Gene (01:19:39):
If China sanctions the U.
S.
first of all, I don't think theU.
S.
could survive without China formore than about three months.

I don't think, I don't think that's, China would
be able to survive without useither because we need all their
cheap blast crap at Walmart.

Gene (01:19:54):
We do, but I think China would survive a lot better than
we would.
thE thing that, that you gottaremember is China is a command
economy.
They can shut things down, hell,they can kill people to reduce
their population count if they

and then get away with it.

Gene (01:20:08):
And get away with it, exactly, exactly.
We can't quite get to thatpoint.
We can, they'd like to, they'dlike to for sure,

they tried with COVID

Gene (01:20:16):
uh huh, huh.
But we can't, we can't quite getto that point.
So it's going to be tougher onus if the trade stops and it's
obviously both countries benefitgreatly from this trade
imbalance that we have.
China needs somebody that'lljust buy literally everything.
And the US needs somebodythat'll supply the 95 percent of

(01:20:37):
the products that we just don'tmake.

Know, they make it cheaper.

Gene (01:20:42):
it's not even cheaper.
We just, we don't, we just don'tmake it.
You can't get anywhere else.
We sell, somebody did anexperiment recently.
I watched on YouTube.
Where they they put a car intoa, one of those crusher things,

Mm

Gene (01:20:56):
you know, that's a little junker and they put a couple of
apple tags inside one of thetrunk, one in the middle of the
car and see if one of themsurvives.
Right.
And they both survived.
And so they, they weremonitoring through the apple
tags as the car went fromWisconsin to Michigan.
And then it, it clearly got on aboat and, and then because the

(01:21:18):
signal just disappeared and thenthey thought okay, battery's
dead, whatever.
It's not going to come back in.
Yeah.
It popped up in Shenzhen liketwo and a half months later
where their car that theycrushed and sold for, for steel

Yeah.

Gene (01:21:37):
that ends up going to China.
They buy our scrap

They'll

Gene (01:21:42):
then they sell us.
Yeah.
And even steel, like if you wantto buy steel in the U S.
Most of it is coming from China,even though we used to
manufacture a shit ton of steel.
Like we have huge steel mines inNorthern Minnesota.
Iron

Pittsburgh.
I

Gene (01:21:57):
Pittsburgh.
Yep.
Yep.
Before that.

the Pennsylvania

Gene (01:22:01):
Like there, there's a lot of potential still.
I mean, there's a lot that wasalready pulled out of the
ground, but there's still a lotof potential, but because it
used to be cheaper doing itthrough China, once you get rid
of that industry.
You can't just flip the switchback at willy nilly.

Yeah, the if the United States ever had to go
back to being Sovereign

Gene (01:22:22):
Mm

and not just you know being a sovereign country,
but I'm talking had to take careof itself Couldn't get imports
couldn't get you know thingsfrom other countries like China
We the United States could getthere, but it would be very
painful for

Gene (01:22:38):
We would be one of the best positions of any country in
the world, but it would betremendously painful because we
just,

It would be very hard.
I mean, look, look what happenedin World War II.

Gene (01:22:47):
Mm hmm.

So, the 20s and 30s, United States was still
dealing with the depression.
And, depending on how shiny yourtinfoil hat is FDR may have kind
of helped us get into the war.

Gene (01:23:02):
Yeah.
Like a hundred percent.

Okay, yeah, you and I are no agenda people, so,
I, I, I filter it for somepeople because

Gene (01:23:11):
People that don't know about the history maybe?

A lot of people don't know history.
I actually listened to one ofyour recent podcasts today and,
You're talking about someonewith Josh, I believe going into
history.
So I was enjoying that.
caUse I, I'm also a historybuff.
I like, early American historyand unknown history, unreported
history and history that'spurposefully been forgotten or

Gene (01:23:33):
Yeah.
Mm-Hmm?

So I love having these talks with my daughter
too.
She, she enjoys them.
She's 16 after World War II orWorld War II started, we got
into the war.
We cranked up this amazingmilitary industrial complex

Gene (01:23:51):
Yep.

and, we went from a country basically in poverty,
or where a lot of our populationwas in poverty to the new deal,
which kind of created some jobs.

Gene (01:24:04):
Mm-Hmm.

And then here comes World War II where we're
shipping, 20 year old men,between the ages of 18 and 35,
off to war.
And if you're not able to go offto war you're going to work in a
factory to make, warplanes andships and bombs and tanks.
And, we've all seen the postersof Rosie the Riveter.

(01:24:27):
So this entire country went tobat for four years and became
this monster thing after WorldWar II.
And, we've tried to continuethat, but unfortunately it's
gone too far and gotten toocorrupted.

Gene (01:24:43):
Mm-Hmm.

Because the United States enjoyed great prosperity
in the fifties.

Gene (01:24:47):
Yeah.
That was the award dividend.

right, that was, everyone came home from the war,
everyone

Gene (01:24:53):
Not everyone, unfortunately

the ones that came back.

Gene (01:24:57):
Yeah.
It's, it's, if you look at itthrough a unbiased lens, what
you actually see is that.
In the 1920s, the United Statesstarted flirting with the idea
of becoming a banking basedstate.
And we, we saw what happens whenyou have, um, I, I mean, I would

(01:25:19):
say libertarianism, but a lot ofpeople would start pointing out,
that's not pure libertarianism,it's corrupt.
Fair enough.
But when you have no controlsand unbridled capitalism, we saw
what might happen in thatscenario.
And of course, that was alsowhat ended up causing the
Federal Reserve to be created aswell.

(01:25:40):
But the way we got out of it wassocialism.
And I don't, it's a dirty wordand we don't like to use it, but
what FDR did pre World War IIwere socialist projects.
They were hiring people.

all love the interstates.

Gene (01:25:56):
Yeah, it was

socialist project.

Gene (01:25:59):
absolutely 100 percent

socialist project.

Gene (01:26:01):
It was taking money that didn't exist in the government
and then hiring people to dosomething that is tangible,
which can then result in thatmoney becoming real and paying
those people.
So it was a bunch of left hand,right hand maneuvering.
And then World War II,regardless of whether you
believe that we strategicallygot into World War II by

(01:26:24):
inviting Japan to bomb us, orwhether you don't believe that,
it doesn't matter, the point is,that was also very much driven
by conscription, which isinvoluntary government

right, that was the draft, yeah.

Gene (01:26:37):
Yeah, we had almost 12 million people conscripted for
World War II over the course ofthe war.

And most of them went willingly anyway, because,
you

Gene (01:26:44):
No, actually a minority went willingly.
There, there were, There were 6million volunteers and 12
million draftees.

Hmm.
Okay.

Gene (01:26:52):
And I know the image is always the John Wayne, everybody
runs to the, to the, army officeas soon as, as soon as they can
in the world war II to go helpout the French.
Reality was nobody wants to die.

Sure.
That's absolutely true.

Gene (01:27:06):
so you're going to wait until your tickets called and
you're not going to volunteerbeforehand.
And there were also plenty ofpeople that got deferments in
world war II as well.
A lot more of them got it inVietnam.
I mean, the people that werewealthy enough to get them, but
there was still plenty thatmanaged to be alive, but not
served during world war IIeither.

(01:27:27):
So.

And they built that, the war machine that gave
us the prosperity of the fiftiesand then late in the fifties, we
got into Korea.
So there's another war.
tHat one wasn't quite asprofitable.
That

Gene (01:27:43):
Yeah, it's, it's all a propagation of the system that
was built up during World War IIbecause we,

They were trying to continue the machine.

Gene (01:27:53):
but again, it was all very socialistic, if not socialist,
because you had you, you had thetotal of, um, 18 million people
that were getting, Paid directlyby the government for being in
military service.
Then you had all of the militarycontractors that were hiring

(01:28:14):
both Rosie and men that wereoutside of the age bounds that
were also being paid by thegovernment.
So the end product of a lot ofAmerican industry was really the
federal government.

Absolutely.
Yeah.

Gene (01:28:27):
And, and so it was a lot of you know, shifting of hands
back and forth and making moneypop up out of nowhere.
And a lot of the bankingindustry not only recovered
from, from the the crash.
But actually became giants,they, because they were the

(01:28:49):
intermediaries in this newsystem with the Federal Reserve,
effectively, it's not the Fedthat creates money.
It's banks that create money.
The Fed just oversees thatprofits and gets to adjust how
things are going with the rateof that creation is, but having
rules in place, whicheffectively allow a single
dollar to be loaned out ninetimes.

(01:29:12):
It allows the banks to createmoney out of thin air,

Right.

Gene (01:29:16):
because whenever you make that loan, you're creating an
asset, which you can then use tomake a loan.
Yeah.

Discussing politics with my kids.
I'll say, yeah, I'm a, I'm anold school libertarian, and the,
the big thing that, is alwaysstamped on libertarians is, oh,
you guys just love the openmarket, and I, and I understand
the open market only works ifeveryone in it is ethical and

(01:29:44):
that's the problem

Gene (01:29:45):
And, and the biggest unethical group is usually the
government because they don'tcare about the rules.
They, they want to get in therewith their own rules.

right.
I mean, insider trading is legalin Congress.
Oh,

Gene (01:29:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing, isn't it?

you ask anyone, Gen Z or millennial.
And they won't know any of thisstuff, they won't know that
insider trading, they won't evenknow what it is, let alone that
Congress can get away with itand nobody else can.

Gene (01:30:14):
And there, there are literally funds out there,
groups that just follow theinvestment.
Of politicians and dosubstantially better than the
average for the year.

I'm sure.

Gene (01:30:24):
single year.

Yeah.
You, you find out what Pelosi isinvesting in.

Gene (01:30:27):
Yeah.
They, they have no actual reasonof why they just follow what the
moves are.

Right.
Right.
Cause they know what's going on.
They know where the next warbond is going to be.

Gene (01:30:37):
Exactly.
They know where to invest andwhen, and that's why you have
politicians like the Obamas thatwere broke coming into the
presidency net net value networth of under 250, 000.
With a lot of outstanding billsand then becoming multi, multi
millionaires within two years.

Yeah.
And they have the giant ranch inHawaii that

Gene (01:31:02):
Yeah.
Ranch in Hawaii.
You got a huge property onMartha's vineyard.
Like literally for what, forbeing a president and making a
280, 000 a year salary for fouryears, eight years.

No, that's every year of the rest of his life.

Gene (01:31:16):
Yeah, yeah, but fine, but it's still it's that's not
enough to own the property theyown.

Right.
Oh, absolutely.
It's the.
Speaking engagements and thesure I'll go come speak to your
club

Gene (01:31:29):
Mm hmm

it only cost you 500, 000 for me to just walk in
the door for

Gene (01:31:33):
an hour Yeah, but

know, it's the whole system's broken and I hate
to say it because I've, I've gotkids that are, just about to be,
you

Gene (01:31:43):
That

in it,

Gene (01:31:44):
It sucks.
But this is not a good time forthem

yeah they're

Gene (01:31:49):
two ways about it

They're

Gene (01:31:50):
because either either we're gonna end up with a draft
before too long here Or we'regonna end up in Whatever the new
version of a civil war is.
And I always kind of jokinglyreferred to it as I'm I keep
waiting for the French stylerevolution to start when the
galaxy guillotine manufacturingstarts to become a popular

(01:32:11):
business that people are gettinginto.
Then, we finally hit the mark

yeah.
Hobbyists are buildingguillotines in their

Gene (01:32:18):
mm hmm because

I, I joke Viva La Revolution, but as many guns and
as much ammo as the Americanpeople have that supposedly,
more ammunition and more gunsthan in the military.

Gene (01:32:33):
Oh, no, we have more than the rest of the world combined
including all the militaryforces of the world The
civilians in the u.
s.
Have more.

We don't have tanks.
We don't have airplanes.
We don't have missiles,

Gene (01:32:44):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah

So, you may have, 50 of our closest buddies.
All armed to the hilt, aboutready to take the courthouse,
but you don't have a nationalguard with, tanks and planes and
boats parked offshore,

Gene (01:32:59):
but you know what the National Guard has and the army
has

tHey got citizen soldiers.

Gene (01:33:05):
they've got they've got wives and children

not the 20 year olds.

Gene (01:33:09):
Okay.
The 20 year olds, I'm notworried about they're, they're
the ones that are going to besitting around waiting for an
order.
It's the 28 year olds that aregoing to be giving the orders.

Right.
But see, the thing is, there'stwo types of soldier and I'm not
military.
So I don't want to pretend

Gene (01:33:26):
Here you go.
Now you're going to get allkinds of comments on

I'm not, I'm not going to pretend I'm military.
That's why I'm throwing thisdisclaimer out.
You got the people with theconscience.
And then you got the, thehardcore, I'm just following
orders, sir.
And we all know how that workedin Germany.
Right.
We all know how that worked outin Germany in the 40s.

Gene (01:33:47):
Exactly.
Yeah.
And,

up in Nuremberg.

Gene (01:33:50):
Realistically, very few of them did.
So it actually worked out quitewell for most German soldiers.

Of them ended up in Margentina.

Gene (01:33:57):
soMe ended up there.
Most of them were just trying tomake sure they won't become
Russian prisoners.
Is that, that's worse thananything that the West could
have done.

Right.
It's a little cold there.

Gene (01:34:07):
but the, yeah, cause if you were a Russian prisoner at
the end of World War II, youwere never coming home.

Right.
You'll be up in the gulags

Gene (01:34:16):
There's, there's no, as far as your family's concerned,
you died and you'd be a veryproductive member of Russian
society.

and breaking rocks for the

Gene (01:34:25):
Mm hmm.
Exactly.
Mining uranium, baby.
your life expectancy is about ayear and a half.

Yeah, you'd be glowing in the dark for that
year and a half.

Gene (01:34:34):
But that's what, and I have no problem with that.
I think that is exactly what youdo after the conclusion of a
military engagement withsomebody that tried to, tried to
invade your country.

Right.
And we're, we're past the theera of wars where you would go
to war.
And then if you won the war, youwould win all the land,

Gene (01:34:56):
Yeah, are we though?
I don't know if we are.
I kind of think we're rightthere.

Look at it like the middle ages, you go to war
with the country, you win thewar, you get your country plus
all the land of the nextcountry, that's, that's the old
school

Gene (01:35:13):
Yeah.

after world war two.
Yeah.
You bomb the shit out of acountry, then you have to pay to
rebuild it.

Gene (01:35:19):
I think that's only true in America.
Nobody else does that.
There's no point.
It's we have, because this iswhat people need to understand,
is

And we make money when we

Gene (01:35:30):
exactly.
We are not, we're not engaging.
We, we haven't had a war sinceWorld War ii, first of all,
officially.
But the reason that we haven'tofficially had a war since World
War II is because what we'redoing isn't war what we're
doing.
is creating a supply need forthe military industrial complex.

(01:35:52):
And the way you do that is byengaging in military actions all
over the world.
None of them are wars, but whatwe're doing is we're creating
that demand.
We're creating demand for thecompanies that are still in the
U S that haven't moved to China.
whIch is the militarycontractors.
So we're just ensuring that theydon't go out of business.

you got Halliburton, you got Raytheon,
you got, Boeing.
You've got, everyone that makes,everything big and shiny that
blows up.

Gene (01:36:23):
exactly.
So, if you're, if you'reactually let's say that Mexico
got a socialist government thisyear, and that they basically
said, you know what, all theseyears, Americans have been
fucking us over.
And so here's what we're goingto do.
We're going to give amnesty toall the drug cartels.

Yeah.

Gene (01:36:47):
We're just going to say, you know what, we're not going
to go after them.
They have a legitimate businessin Mexico, and we're not going
to help this, this countrythat's been fucking us over
United States and the Northernborder.
At all, and the cartels see thatas a wonderful go get them.

light.
Yeah.

Gene (01:37:06):
Yeah.
And so they start coming intothe U S that would result in a
war for the United States andthe outcome of that war.
I can predict it would be theutter and full conquest of
Mexico and the division thereofinto territories, which may
become States a hundred yearslater.

Yeah, maybe.
Yeah.

Gene (01:37:27):
It would not be a we're going to come in and help the
Mexican people.
Fuck that it would not happenbecause it would be a time for
for America to actually feelsome pain.

Yeah.
And they.

Gene (01:37:39):
Everything else we've done has been a world away.

Yeah, I've, I've said this to a coworker today,
and I'm sure you've heard thisactually today, it was a couple
of days ago, we've all heard theadage of, good times create soft
men, soft men create, hardtimes, hard times create hard
men, it's a big cycle and weneed to get, unfortunately, I
think we're headed to the pointwhere hard times are going to

(01:38:04):
create hard men and then we're,we're going to have to go to
war, we're going to have to, putour big boy pants on and,

Gene (01:38:13):
Mhm.

Start, working for a living again, we're going to
have to start, I hate, I hate tosound like that old guy, but,
we're going to have to sound,we're going to you know, I'm
not, I'm only 50, 52, I'm a GenX solid Gen

Gene (01:38:28):
but, mentally, you're 104.

mentally, I'm still a skydiver.
We don't want to go back tothat, skydiver drinks way too
much beer.
But this, this country, I thinkis if it's not at the
crossroads.
It's definitely getting close toit because we can't continue on
the path that's on

Gene (01:38:49):
Now, we've been living off of a legacy of,

of our grandparents

Gene (01:38:55):
a first world, enjoyment.
And again, I think in a lot ofways, this was the The post
world war two banking can saveAmerica plan, which is to say we
have a unique opportunity beingthe only industrialized country
in the world that didn't getdamaged during world war two

(01:39:19):
Hawaii doesn't count.
And so consequently, we can.
Write the rules and the ruleswill say the, the almighty
dollar shall be the currency ofthe world and you have to get it
from us.
And when that

coming to an end.

Gene (01:39:39):
yeah.
And when that happened, um, itwas a, it was a absolutely
brilliant scheme.
I, I, I think we're at the veryend of it here, but it

it worked.
It worked great for 70 years

Gene (01:39:51):
70 fucking years, man.
That's impressive.
Right.
They managed to basically.
We as a country lived forgreater than what we should have
based on our output for 70years.

what didn't they say the the average age of an
empire is about 200 years

Gene (01:40:10):
I, I've heard so many variants of that.
I don't know if there's any

Rome was really powerful Rome the Roman Empire
had 200 years of glory before itfell apart no, of at the high
point,

Gene (01:40:25):
Yeah.

Then the Roman empire kind of fell apart, went
into, the Holy Roman empire,which, got us into the dark
ages.
And, that was kind of a mess

Gene (01:40:35):
yeAh, there, there, but, but the original of Roman
Republic started a thousandyears before that.

Right.
Right.
Yeah.
It started then, but I'm justsaying like the glory days,

Gene (01:40:47):
Yeah, the, at the height of conquest.
I mean, if you're referring tothe period of time where Rome
extended.
From Ireland to Jerusalem, thenthat probably was a couple of
hundred years.

damn near Prussia.

Gene (01:41:00):
Yeah,

Yeah.
That was, that was a couplehundred years.
That was like the high

Gene (01:41:04):
they, they own the majority of everything that

They owned everything.

Gene (01:41:08):
They owned.

Yeah, they owned everything and except for,
Russia and China and the East,

Gene (01:41:15):
Yeah, but I mean, there was nothing but forest in
Russia.
It's not much to own.

Yeah, you got,

Gene (01:41:21):
Population density was probably the lowest of anywhere
at that point, until you got toChina.
Once you got to Mongolia andChina, then it was higher.

but you know, empires can't last forever,

Gene (01:41:33):
Yeah, yeah, but this will be one of the shortest though.
It's the most other empires Ithink lasted longer than 250
years.

probably, probably, I mean, our, our glory

Gene (01:41:44):
And it's arguable to say whether America was even an
empire pre World War II.
A lot of people would say no.
So it's really an empire that's

say before.
No.
If you go back in history, Inthe 1800s, after the Spanish
American war, we were, we prettymuch were the policemen for the
Western hemisphere.

Gene (01:42:03):
Yeah, cause we

we had most of the

Gene (01:42:05):
the Monroe Doctrine.

right?
We had the entire Westernhemisphere.
It's this is us.
We got it.
We're in charge back to TeddyRoosevelt.
And then that was the caseprobably up to the twenties,
thirties, and even up until, thebeginning of World War II and
then World War II.
the shit happened and Like yousaid, after World War II, we're

(01:42:26):
the only ones that, remainstanding.

Gene (01:42:29):
Yeah.
It was the only industrializedcountry that was not damaged.

Right.

Gene (01:42:34):
So yeah, it's I, I think that it's, it would definitely
be a stretch to call America anempire pre World War II.

Yeah, I agree.
I

Gene (01:42:45):
Because even during the Monroe Doctrine, when we
technically asserted our rightsover all of the Americas, we
were only challenged like fourtimes.
It's not like we were constantlyhaving to repel.
Other countries,

Yeah we didn't really have anyone that met our
match, so to speak.
I mean, we'd, we'd cut our teethin the Revolutionary War.
We're a, we're a country that'sfounded on war.
We started Revolutionary War,then we had the War of 1812,
where basically the British andCanada decided they wanted us

Gene (01:43:16):
I mean, to be fair, every country that exists was founded
on war, but we're not unique inthis regard.

true, but we're maybe one of the newer ones.

Gene (01:43:25):
Yeah, like the, the Britain and UK really were
founded on the Viking conquests.
It was just a bunch of littlevillages before that until the
Vikings started hammering thehell out of them and

some amazing

Gene (01:43:39):
said, hey, we should organize or something.

There's a couple of really good series on
Netflix.
Granted, they're all docudramas, but, based on true
events, but

Gene (01:43:48):
Yeah, I, I, I got rid of pedo flicks a while ago and

yeah I, I never watched whatever that show was
called.
Cuties,

Gene (01:43:55):
Yeah.
I just don't like supportingpeople like that

right.
Understood.

Gene (01:43:59):
whichever

I got kids, so they want to watch TV.

Gene (01:44:03):
yOu're the parent,

Yeah, that's true.

Gene (01:44:06):
It's, I, I don't have kids.
So you could say it's easy foryou to say, yeah, but I remember
my dad telling me no, an awfullot.

Right.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
We're of a, we're of a differentgeneration.

Gene (01:44:18):
yeah, and there there's a watching some of these YouTube
videos and they're all just likeI'm the old man shaking my head
saying world's gone to hell in a

who I am.
Yeah,

Gene (01:44:31):
because literally these kids just grew up being told
that they're perfect and awesomeand anything they want they get.
And daddy and mommy will make itbetter.
And they have no concept of riskand reward.

no, none.
I, I try to teach it and I Imeet a lot of resistance.
Let me put it that way.
Not a

Gene (01:44:53):
If women didn't have the right to vote, things would be
better.
That's all I'm saying.
yEah, it's, it's a it's not aproblem unique to the U S but it
certainly seems like we'repeeking in it.
In the U S so I'm going to giveyou a couple of books to read.
I'm going to give you homework.

Oh, I got homework.

Gene (01:45:11):
Huh.
That's what you didn't, didn'tthink they'd be homework in a
podcast.
Did you?
Huh.
All right.
So the, the first book is calledpendulum and it's by Roy
Williams.
One of the two authors.
I can't remember the other guy'sname.
ROy wrote this book about 15, 18years ago, something like that.

(01:45:32):
And basically, it chronicledhistory for the last couple
thousand years and looking atcycles within history.
And the specific cycle that isin this book is a cycle between
height of populism and theheight of individualism.

interesting.

Gene (01:45:51):
it's an, it's a roughly 80 year cycle, uh, for Roundtrip.

You can talk to Dvorak about cycles.
He was going to write a

Gene (01:46:00):
Dvorak has an autographed copy of this book.
And he still hasn't written hisown, so he can keep yapping
away.
This book was written way beforehe started talking about it.

Right.
I just, I just pulled it up onAmazon.

Gene (01:46:10):
yeah, yeah.
And Roy's actually a businesspartner of mine.
so I've got a personalconnection to him, but even if I
didn't I really think this is avery good book.
Because what it foretold, like Ifirst read it maybe 10 years ago
or something, but it essentiallysays 2023 is the very peak of

(01:46:33):
the, the, the we, um, or thecollectivism.
And so it's.
And then the peak of the me ofthe individualism was 1983 and
you can remember 1983 and that,movies like wall street came
out, uh, it was, yeah, but youstill remember it.

Sure.
Girl, Hannah was amazing.

Gene (01:46:59):
and the eighties were really the best decade that
that's ever been a decade.
As far as I'm concerned.

80s were great.
I'm a big fan of the 90s.

Gene (01:47:08):
I'm a much bigger fan of the eighties because eighties
introduced all the importantthings that we have from, from
the internet to computers.
To digital music, all thesethings happened in the eighties
MTV that used to play actualmusic came in the eighties.
And so I'm, I've always been abig fan.

(01:47:28):
I think there were other decadesthat are interesting in history,
but I've not lived throughthose.
I did live through the eightiesand, and really, uh, that's sort
of my version of the heaven thatI want to go to is a heaven of a
perpetual eighties.
And so,

Good

Gene (01:47:46):
that was the peak.
Yeah.
Great movies.
That was kind of the peak of theindividualism.
And since 83 to present, we'vebeen sliding in the direction of
collectivism in the West.
So, specifically in the West,but in general, obviously we're
all in the United States.
So that's kind of what the bookis looking at.

(01:48:08):
But that pendulum is startingits swing back from, from its
apex in the opposite directionright now.
And I think that if you startlooking at events that are
happening right now, includingsome of the political wins that
we're seeing in Europe and inSouth America, um, these are,

(01:48:31):
and.
Even before that of Trump'svictory a few years back.
I think these are all indicatorsof the majority of people just
being sick and tired ofcollectivism and wanting to
start heading back towardsindividualism.

Yeah, I think, I think it's still going to take a
little longer than the next fouryears, let's say,

Gene (01:48:56):
Well, no, it's 40.
It's a,

No, but I'm talking like the next four
years.
I'm talking the next four years.
Everybody's a lot of people, Oh,let's elect Trump and he'll fix
all our problems.
No, no, no.
We've got so many problems thatare gonna be with us for, I'm
sorry, that's my furnacerefilling with water.
I can hear that in thebackground.

Gene (01:49:17):
I can't hear it.
Don't worry about it.

Okay.
But it's going to take a lot

Gene (01:49:24):
Mm-Hmm.

and it'll take a lot of change and a lot of
uncomfortable change to get thiscountry, our country, back on
the road it needs to be on

Gene (01:49:36):
40 years.

because I mean, Jesus, I look at my kids and I'm
like, for a while there, mydaughters were more concerned
about, where they stand on therainbow than, because I have two
teenage girls.
And it seems like startingaround 2019, 2020, the big thing

(01:49:57):
for middle school was are youtrans?
Are you bi?
Are you poly?
Are you, I mean, and it's youknow, middle school, I was more
worried about, being able to doa sweet bike jump for my BMX,
over a car or something, and noteat shit.
My kids are worried about,something completely different.

(01:50:18):
And it was like, they almost,they had to find their spot on
the rainbow and then they had tofind their spot on the spectrum
because, it was said years agoon no agenda, he who is most
oppressed wins.

Gene (01:50:33):
Yeah.
The oppression

So,

Gene (01:50:35):
This is why we're seeing the whole, free Palestine from
the rivers of the sea thingbecause they're winning the
oppression Olympics right now.

right.
Absolutely.
And then, and how long is thatgoing to last?
Cause we know how long the mediacycle is.
It's about five weeks and thensomething else will happen and
then something else will happen

Gene (01:50:52):
But again, you're, I keep saying 40 years and you're like,
yes, but not for yet.
No, it's not for dude.
No.
Things have changed direction,but you know what that means?
That means five years from now,five years from now, it'll feel
about the same as 2018.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And 2018 was pretty damnrainbowy.

It was pretty sweet compared to 2020.

Gene (01:51:17):
Yeah, everything's well, yeah, but that's my point is
it's a pendulum.
It doesn't loop around instantlyto the other extreme.
It slows

will take a very long time to get us back on

Gene (01:51:28):
swinging back in the other direction.
So the midpoint and, and, welikely won't see the eighties
again.
Because we got to see him whenwe were young.
So that sort of individualismwill be dead by the time it
happens again, your kids willprobably see it, but if the U S
doesn't start world war threeand nuke, but what we're going

(01:51:50):
to, what we hopefully will stillsee.
Is what the next 30 to 40 yearslooks like in heading towards
that other side of the eighties.
And that means roughly 20 yearsfrom now in 2044, 2043, 44, then
that's going to feel more like2000,

Yeah.
And we can hope for that.
We can hope to see that.

Gene (01:52:13):
Yeah there, that's why I'm saying check out the book
because they, they showed thispattern repeating for literally
2000 years.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Gene (01:52:21):
So

added it to my Amazon wishlist

Gene (01:52:23):
Which means it's not based on events, it's based on humans
lack of memory.
Because we keep cycling over,and over, and over.
And it ties in nicely with thewhole strong men create good
times thing.

Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's, I mean,

Gene (01:52:41):
And then the other book, which also you kind of brought
up the topic.
Is called going home by aAmerican and this is a fiction
book that follows an it dudenamed Ben, uh, who drove up a
couple of hundred miles to aclient site and on the way

(01:53:04):
there, right before reaching hisdestination, his car dies and
and he's in Florida and Sallytakes place in Florida and.
He's a bit of a prepper type, sohe's got stuff in his car.
So his thing is let's see if Ican flag somebody down to help
me.
And then he quickly sees thereare no cars driving by, but

(01:53:24):
there's a lot of people walking.
And he realizes that everybody'scars just died.

Hmm.
Interesting.

Gene (01:53:33):
Which is very likely the result of an EMP going

Right.
That's what I was just going tosay.
EMP

Gene (01:53:38):
is not a big secret.
He talks about it in the firstchapter of the book.
That's the most likely cause.
And so now he is 165, 170 milesaway from his home.
He's got a backpack, he's gothis computer laptop bag, he's
got a number of things he'sbrought with him.
And now he just needs to gethome.

if there was an EMP, his computer's probably
dead anyway.

Gene (01:54:01):
Yes.
And we'll, we'll, you find outall the fun stuff like that.
And and it's a very well writtenI should say the first book is,
it's his first book ever.
So it's a little clunky in termsof reading it.
The topic's very good.
But he literally just nowfinished the 12th book in that
series.

Oh, wow.
Okay.

Gene (01:54:20):
So it's a very long series of same characters, same kind of
plot line continuing from whereit starts in the original book
and a book that a lot of peopleare now.
We've gotten a lot of people onthe social reading it, and I
think some people are a littlefurther ahead.
Some people are a little furtherbehind.

(01:54:41):
I'm on book nine right now.
Ben, who I do just good old boyshas finished the whole series.
He's, he's a very fast readerand it's a fun book because it's
from the perspective of a guywho is a dude named Ben,
libertarian mindset, likes hisguns, likes to be prepared.

(01:55:03):
In a lot of different ways, andnot like a comedic prepper, but
like what a lot of us actuallyhave at home.
And one of the things that'sboth annoying and kind of fun in
the book is that the authorreally enjoys using brand names.
So you can literally look up theproducts that, that his
character is using on Amazon.

That's

Gene (01:55:24):
It's oh, that's the stove that he's got in his house.
That's, that's the model of,yeah, exactly.
That's literally that's themodel of his backpack.
It's 220, man.
The guy bought an expensivebackpack, so it's

almost like he's got a native, native ad built
into the

Gene (01:55:39):
I don't, I mean, he doesn't make any money off of it
though.
That's the thing, but it is kindof neat to be able to see that.
But for some of us, it's evenworse than that because son of a
bitch, that's the exact same oneI have.
So it's okay, okay, so theyfucking create a fictional
character that happens to havethe same shit that I do.

based on Sergine.
Yeah.

Gene (01:55:59):
I already, I, I'm already in lawsuits with the the South
Park guys for stealing Cartmanoff of me.
I don't, I don't need othercharacters that are clearly
based on me.

Some people think I'm the embodiment of Homer
Simpson.

Gene (01:56:13):
Oh yeah?
Okay.
See, there you go.
So you got somebody too as well.

Yeah.
Though people who actually seeme in person, they think I look
like Tim Curry.
And my question is always, isthat before or after the stroke?
Because he didn't look goodafter the stroke.

Gene (01:56:28):
from what?

Tim Curry, actor big in the 80s and 90s.
He was in Home Alone.
He played like the Home Alone 2.
He was the hotel manager.
He's from Rocky Horror Picture

Gene (01:56:42):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the, that's the careerI'm thinking.
I'm like that guy wasn't badlooking.
What are you talking about?
Especially at Rocket Horror

but if you look, look at a picture of him now,
look at a picture of

Gene (01:56:51):
Oh, he's still alive?
I thought he was dead.

now he had a stroke like about 10 years ago.
Yeah, he didn't do well.

Gene (01:56:58):
Yeah, no.
Strokes don't, I mean, I'mshocked he's alive that

Yeah, I think he's still alive.

Gene (01:57:04):
Wow.
He won't be for long because itseems like most people I talk
about on podcasts seem to die.

yeah that's part of being 80 years old.
Oh,

Gene (01:57:11):
Yeah.
Exactly.

you say I'm 84?
8404?
I don't remember.

Gene (01:57:15):
Is he?
I don't know.
But yeah, I, I thought he was hewas in a bunch of funny movies.

Yeah, he's not a bunch.
oh.

Gene (01:57:22):
What was that clue?
He was in that

Yes, he was in that.

Gene (01:57:25):
multiple endings.

he played Pennywise in the 80s version of

Gene (01:57:30):
Mm-Hmm.
Yes.
Now was he in, in the, what wasthat movie about?
Time Traveling Midgets?

Think he was

Gene (01:57:40):
it wasn't in that one.
Okay.
What was that movie called?

Oh, Time

Gene (01:57:45):
Time Bandits.

Love that movie.
Funny movie.

Gene (01:57:49):
yeah, yeah.
That was a wacky movie.

There we go.
Pulling him up on IMDB.

Gene (01:57:57):
Okay.
Anyway so there you go.
There's two books for you toread.

Okay.
I got one for you.

Gene (01:58:03):
Okay, go ahead.

will go to your tech

Gene (01:58:07):
Mm hmm.

love of tech.
So, have you heard of the bookby Daniel Suarez called Damon?

Gene (01:58:15):
Yeah, I read it.

You read it?
Okay.

Gene (01:58:17):
I've read the whole series.
Yep.

That one and then Freedom.
Yeah, those are pretty good.
The near future, AI takes overand starts killing people.
Yeah, I didn't know if you'dcheck that one out.
That one's actually really good.
I, I tried to get my daughter onthat one.
She didn't read it.

Gene (01:58:33):
No, I think it's Like you gotta cyberpunk stuff to really
enjoy that stuff.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, but it was, it was
definitely it was true enough topossibility that it, it actually
got interesting because backwhen that was going on or when
that book was released,

Gene (01:58:49):
Mm hmm.

Everyone's releasing, virtual reality
goggles and that.
Remember the Google, rememberthe Google glasses?

Gene (01:58:56):
Oh, yeah.

That, that would do the augmented reality.
They kind of got away from that,but, that was like right at the
same time that that book cameout.

Gene (01:59:04):
Yeah Yeah, I'm looking at his list.
I think I read all his books sodemon freedom kill decision
influx

Right.

Gene (01:59:15):
Delta V read

I haven't read that

Gene (01:59:17):
a year ago and then Critical Mass was the last one I
read.

I think I, I read, well, the first two, then I read
Kill Decision and then I, I kindof got stuck in Influx.
I just, that one didn't grab mequite as hard.

Gene (01:59:32):
Yeah.
I, I had people recommendingDaemon to me for a long time
until I first picked it up.
But when I picked it up, Ipretty much just got the rest of
them right away.
Because I was like, okay, I'm inthis mood now.
Let's just keep going.

Yeah.
Of course, in the eighties I wasreading the Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy.

Gene (01:59:49):
Oh, yeah.
No, no better book written.

Yeah.
I've, I've read that wholeseries like five times.

Gene (01:59:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's it was I was extremely sad to see Douglas
Adams die

Yeah.
I, I think I shed a couple oftears and

Gene (02:00:04):
because he you know between Obviously that series
that everybody knows and Dirkgently's holistic detective
agency series Like he just had away of writing like nobody else.

Yeah.
Did you ever play the gameStarship Titanic

Gene (02:00:21):
No.

that was based on a story that he wrote with Terry
Jones.

Gene (02:00:27):
Oh, really?
Okay.

and I read the book when the video game came
out.
This is, late 90s, early 2000swhen you know all the CD ROMs
are out.
And it was called StarshipTitanic.
It had the same style of humor.

Gene (02:00:42):
okay.

It was like a walkthrough video game, kind of
like, you remember Myst?
Yes, like Myst.
It was, it was a lot like Myst.
You, you went to a room, yousolved the puzzle, you get the
key, you go to the next room,you solve the puzzle, you get
the key, and

Gene (02:00:57):
Yeah.
Miss was

and on and on.
It was, it was pretty graphicintense for those days.

Gene (02:01:04):
He was the first guy in Britain to get a Mac.

Oh, yeah,

Gene (02:01:09):
He was a huge fan.
Yeah.
He had it he, he had onepurchased and shipped to him on
the release day in the U.
S.

nice.

Gene (02:01:21):
So he got to be the first guy in Britain to have one.
yEah, he's, he was a cool dude.
I got an autograph signed, Iactually got a towel signed by
him.

Oh, that'd be awesome.

Gene (02:01:30):
Mm hmm.

That'd be like glass case, rub it with a diaper

Gene (02:01:34):
It's so would be if my mom hadn't washed it.

Oh

Gene (02:01:39):
Yeah, so I have the story, but I don't have the

out your Star Wars action figures.

Gene (02:01:46):
Yeah Those I at least played with so I didn't feel bad
that she like sold them in agarage sale for two bucks for a
Whole dove fader it

Here's a box for you know,

Gene (02:01:55):
yeah, they were not original but but the frickin
towel autographed by DouglasAdams he said it was the first
one he'd ever signed

wow, that would be amazing

Gene (02:02:04):
And I, yeah, I mean, if there was ever a moment where I
could have killed my mom,

Well, don't do that

Gene (02:02:11):
God rest her soul, she's dead, but cause I killed her.
No, I'm just kidding.

Watch that towel.

Gene (02:02:17):
Huh.
This is what happens when youwash the towel.

Don't watch that towel.

Gene (02:02:23):
Yeah.
Yep.
But very sad that no more bookscame from him.

Yeah they had the one that his kids wrote based
upon some short stories, Ithink.
It's called The Salmon of Doubt.

Gene (02:02:38):
I

I read it, but it wasn't that good.

Gene (02:02:40):
yeah, exactly.
That's exactly right.

It just didn't have,

Gene (02:02:45):
Yeah.

just didn't have the thing.

Gene (02:02:47):
That's usually how it goes.
If the, if somebody tries totake the Notes and assemble them
into a finished work that's notby the same person.
This is why I, I hope George R.
R.
Martin fucking finishes his bookbefore he dies.
Cause there's a good chance thathe won't.

yeah, I've been re watching Game of Thrones,
actually.
It's

Gene (02:03:07):
ya?
Okay.
I don't think I'll ever rewatchit.
I really enjoyed watching it thefirst time.
But so much of Game of Thrones,and by the way, we really should
wrap up.
But so much of Game of Thronesis about just the surprise for
me.
Like that, that initial oh mygod, that character just got
killed.

Yeah.
I'm actually watching the redwedding episode.

Gene (02:03:28):
yeah, yeah.
That's a

No, I, I know what happens.
I'm not going to spoil it.
In case there's two people inthe universe

Gene (02:03:34):
I know that they still haven't seen it, but that's,
that's classic and if I had torewatch it, I would just skip
the last two seasons and just

Yeah.
They, unfortunately Seinfeld,

Gene (02:03:46):
they,

I loved that series, but that those last two
episodes were just abysmal and

Gene (02:03:53):
didn't know how to end it and

they tried to, what they did was they tried to
throw a big fat bow around thewhole thing.
And they brought back in all thecharacters.
From, 10 years of this show,

Gene (02:04:05):
Mm hmm.

to throw a big fat bow around the whole thing, and
it just didn't work.

Gene (02:04:11):
Yeah.
I, I don't think they shouldhave done it that way.

Yeah, it

Gene (02:04:16):
you watch the the Larry David final episode of the
Seinfeld?

No, I didn't.

Gene (02:04:21):
So you, the Larry David show, right?
The Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Yeah, Kirby Re

Gene (02:04:25):
So I think about five or six years ago, one of the
seasons, maybe season eight orsomething, the, the whole theme
for that season of Curb YourEnthusiasm was.
LArry somehow tell somebody thathe's bringing back Seinfeld and
then the whole rest of theseason is him trying to figure

(02:04:47):
out how to actually get thoseguys to do it, which he does.
He manages to convince all ofthem by, lying to, to actually
do the show.
And then for the final twoepisodes of Curb Your
Enthusiasm, they actually pulledout all the set pieces from that
original show and they have allthe the main characters, Elaine

(02:05:10):
and George and anyway.
And and then they went throughand updated what would it look
like, 15 years later, the fridgeprobably looks a little
different, different stove, but.
The, the, the generally, yeah,exactly.
Get a stainless fridge orsomething, but generally
speaking, everything's the same.
There's still a bicycle thatJerry allegedly

hangs on the wall.

Gene (02:05:31):
Yeah.
The, he never takes down andthey wrote a script for it and
it was, it was a pretty, prettygood alternate final episode, I
thought.

I

Gene (02:05:42):
So if you get a chance to watch that, if you have a HBO or
something, um, that then, yeah,you should be able to watch that
on demand.
Just get back to that season.
And there's obviously all kindsof other little stories
intertwined for, for LarryDavid's show in there as well.
But the central plot for thatseason is all about getting,

(02:06:03):
getting the guys back together,getting the band back together
again.

Works out anyway.

Gene (02:06:08):
no, no, but it's, it's again, the way he kind of sells
it is, is it's a way to.
Give the true fans somethingthat they've really have been
asking for without really, andit's on a different channel and
it's R rated.
And so it's, it's also verydifferent from Seinfeld as

Right.
I'm sure a lot of people wonderwhat happened after they got out
of prison.

Gene (02:06:35):
Right.
Exactly.
So, or was that whole thing justa dream sequence?

Oh God,

Gene (02:06:42):
Oh, you never know.
You never know.
Now you're going to have towatch and see.

Oh, all right.

Gene (02:06:49):
I, I was watching something recently where.
They did a dream sequence and inthe dream sequence, one of the
main characters talks about howan overused trope is dream
sequences, because it basicallymeans lazy writing.

Yeah, they

Gene (02:07:04):
I love, I love seeing shit that's self aware like that.

I forgot what that was.
I think I saw that.
I

Gene (02:07:09):
Did you?
I, it was something recent and Ican't think of what it was, but
it was in the last month or sofor sure.
All right, man.
This was a good fun time.

Yeah.
Good talking to you, Gene.

Gene (02:07:20):
to know you a little better.
Another dude named Ben.
From old dudes named Ben.
Yeah,

that has done other things than just computer
stuff.

Gene (02:07:32):
you're like a dude named Ben.
That's that that worked on thereal life version of that TV
show that Apple has what's itcalled the

Oh, the morning show or what

Gene (02:07:45):
show.

Yeah.
I was the behind I'm behind thescenes.

Gene (02:07:48):
Yeah, you're like, but they still have some of those
people behind the scenes thatare constantly bitching about
not making enough money

yeah, I haven't actually watched it.

Gene (02:07:56):
Right

Yeah, it's just,

Gene (02:07:59):
traumatic too much trauma.

Honestly, okay This is weird.
I know you want to wrap up.
So I left television in 2007

Gene (02:08:08):
hmm

walked away in a huff burnt a bridge I still have
about once every couple months.
I have a nightmare where I'mdirecting a newscast And the
whole world is going wrong.
The switch is not working.
My scripts aren't there.

(02:08:29):
People aren't where they'resupposed to be.
2007, I still have nightmares.
So there might be some weirdlevel of PTSD.

Gene (02:08:38):
It sounds like it, but that's, that's why I kind of
brought it up.
Cause one of the main charactersin the show basically has
nightmares about his job.

Yeah, I mean, I was

Gene (02:08:47):
realistic.

I started in TV in the late eighties, saw, the
Berlin wall come down.
I saw, I actually was workingthe Saturday or Sunday morning
that Nelson

Gene (02:08:59):
network were you guys affiliates of?

I, I've worked at a bunch of different ones.
I've always been at the smallmarket TV station.
I've worked at two NBC stations.
One ABC, two Fox.
And then the cable news channel.

Gene (02:09:21):
Okay.

So I've, I haven't hit CBS.
I've applied at a couple, but Inever got a job there.

Gene (02:09:27):
Mm

Yeah.
I, when I worked in TV, I saw alot and, 9 11 and earthquakes
and elections, and I'll tell youwhat high school football in the
Midwest, that'll scar you

Gene (02:09:41):
Mm

Friday nights, high school football, trying to
get all those scores on thescreen.

Gene (02:09:45):
That was Nebraska Big Ten?

Nebraska is big 10.

Gene (02:09:48):
Yeah.

I'm still diehard loyal.

Gene (02:09:52):
Mm hmm.

Despite the past 20 years, I'm still diehard
loyal.
I'm even part of a watch partygroup.

Gene (02:09:58):
Oh, my God.
I

Oh yeah,

Gene (02:10:00):
of those.
Yeah.

yeah, I'm one of those guys.
You'll see my Jeep drivingaround Cleveland.
It's got a big Nebraska N on theback of it.

Gene (02:10:08):
I'm a gopher's alum.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Gene (02:10:12):
I got all the winters I will ever need for the rest

Yeah, I'm, I'm sure you did.
That's why you're ending up inTexas,

Gene (02:10:18):
And I always say, if I ever move, it's only in one
direction, that's further south.

further south.
You might end up in Mexico.

Gene (02:10:23):
I enjoy Mexico.

I don't speak the language or drink the water.

Gene (02:10:29):
That's.
Not really as big a problem aspeople think it is it takes
about a month to

probably get used to it.

Gene (02:10:37):
exactly

I've lived in, I've lived in a

Gene (02:10:39):
need the right

where that water's rough.

Gene (02:10:41):
Yeah

Southwest Florida, I, the well water pretty bad,
pretty bad.

Gene (02:10:48):
Yeah, and that's the thing is I think a lot of places if
it's a small town and they'vegot Their own water that's not
coming from a stream It's youknow, same shit.

Yeah, pretty rough.
When I lived in Fort Myers, thethe public utilities would
water, the lawns, like thehospitals and all the public,
squares and whatever.
But they used reclaimed water.
So all the water had a nice tintof sewer smell.

Gene (02:11:17):
boy.
Yeah.

So, at night, 9, 10 o'clock at night, all the,
everyone's watering.
It's reclaimed water, and you'rejust driving down the road, and
you can just smell it.
It was

Gene (02:11:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's not good.
And on that note, let's go aheadand wrap up.
And you are a node in the socialunder what's your name again?
Remind people

Goggles and teeth.

Gene (02:11:41):
with the letter N between them.

Yes.
Goggles, and

Gene (02:11:45):
Yeah.

it's my skydiving nomocular, how do you say it?
And yes, that's it.
One more beer.
And just, it's one of thosethings that

Gene (02:11:59):
thanks.
Thanks for joining me.
And hopefully you

Thank you, sir.

Gene (02:12:02):
the next surgeon speaks as well.
And we'll have a different guestin that one for you to enjoy.

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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;} 0107 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude named Goggles N Teeth

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0107 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude named Goggles N Teeth

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