#160 Myke Metzger - Sharing your authenticity with technology & understanding the digital landscape

0:00Nobody knows what's going on. Nobody knows. Nobody has the faintest idea. The best guesses are lies. You may be sure of it. Today I had Mike Metzger on the podcast and I ended up having some technical difficulties, some issues with the audio for some reason and I couldn't get it figured out with Riverside. So just bear with me on this podcast the first 15 or 20 seconds. The audio quality is pretty poor and it's pretty hard to hear him. So after that it seems like it balances out and I had to use the raw footage so the video quality on this podcast is not what it typically would be. So enjoy the episode. He's got a lot of interesting perspectives. I found him through the algorithm and started catching some of his riffs on some of the corruption that's happening with the deep state and other stuff like that and he has some fascinating perspectives. Mike, thank you for joining me, brother.

1:02Absolutely, man. Thank you for having me. Yes, somehow the algorithm knew to plug you into my feed a few weeks ago and I started going down the rabbit hole on your page and really love the way you think. I like how you question authority and you're definitely a creative thinker. So I thought it would be fun to have you on and share some of your essence with more people. Yeah, thank you, man. Yeah, I really appreciate the invite. Totally. Yeah, you have a wide ranging way of thinking and I don't know you at all. We're meeting for the first time here, but what is it that if you were to tell people what you do for your clients and what you do in the world, what is it that you would say you do? Yeah, everything I do revolves around marketing. You know, it always comes back to marketing and marketing in the sense of digital. So you. I've done a lot of social media work over the years who basically started. Do you mind going back in time and sharing a little bit about what that point in time did for you and how it looked. So 2016 was the year that I learned sales really. You know, even as a teenager, I was doing sales without really knowing it. It was what steered me towards entrepreneurship and affiliate marketing and high ticket sales and even things like network marketing and multi level marketing, which you know, a lot of that is kind of BS.

2:14But at the time, I didn't know that. So I was very interested in just trying to find a different way of doing things and getting outside of what I had known for so long, you know, I was always getting fired from jobs and stuff and I just hated the traditional job. And so in 2016, I started to learn about sales specifically like phone sales and even online webinars and marketing funnels and all that stuff. And I had always been pretty good at two things ever since I was young, which is technology and art, you know, I've always been creative, I've always really loved art. When I was in high school, I took graphic design and computer programming and AP art and photography class and all that stuff. And so, you know, if you kind of combine art and technology, you get marketing. But marketing is no good if you can't sell. And in 2016, I had partnered up with a friend of mine, his name is Adam Winig, and he gave me the opportunity to start doing phone sales. And so a lot changed for me in 2016 because I had had skills and I had potential prior to that, but I never really understood how I could like get that out into the world and find a way to, you know, really make a living for myself and find a way to prove my value to others and find a way to package and sell services.

3:22And I think that's one of the most important skills that entrepreneurs can have is understanding how to sell. So 2016 was the year for me where I learned how to sell specifically over the phone. And within a short like two year time period, I went from being like a struggling broke bartender basically an idiot that had no idea what his future looked like. And in two years turned into somebody who had a pretty strong skill set was able to learn sales and I made my first six figures at that point, which for me was a huge deal. So I changed my whole life and I think I was 26 or so at that time. See, I was a big pivotal moment for me 2016. Yeah, and it seems like you really focus on you are the brand, right? It's like you create a personal brand and that's what you teach in a way. Yes, you know, in my world, there's this big argument of, do you niche down into a specific topic or do you take the approach of you are the niche? And there's no right or wrong answer, you know, both strategies can work. But the thing that really I think puts a lot of weight into the argument of you are the niche and you are the brand is the fact that we have AI now, you know, it's like we have super intelligence at our fingertips.

4:36So the service provider from a decade ago, you know, you could put any topic right it could be real estate, it could be breathwork, it could be yoga, it could literally be anything. If you are just an expert at that topic, it's not all that useful because you can hop on chat, you be T or Google or anywhere and just find information about anything in milliseconds. So, you know, the power of niching down is not as strong in my opinion as it used to be and YouTube is the perfect example of that, you know, you used to go on YouTube and just type in, how do I fix my lawnmower? And YouTube would be the thing that guided you through that. And these days that's far less common people are turning towards AI to actually take pictures and say, hey, here's what's going on with my lawnmower, how do I fix it? And there's actually no person involved in it at all. So how do we bring the human element back into technology in a way? And to me, the answer to that is having a personal brand and putting yourself out there and sharing your story and your journey and your flaws and your mistakes and your failures.

5:38And that is what keeps us human and still allows us to utilize technology for good rather than just replacing ourselves with it. Yeah, how do you find the balance of doing things that allow you to find the presence in the everyday moment versus being online and, you know, doing all of the editing and uploading, and I'm sure it requires a ton of your time. It does, it does. And it's a lot. I often refer back to this concept of the man in the arena and the way that I think about it is, the way to balance your work with consumption of content is by the way. Accepting the role of being the man in the arena, right, man, woman, whatever, you're the person in the arena. And if my job as the gladiator in the arena is to slay the beast in front of me, which is freedom abundance, right, that is the thing that I'm trying to conquer and attack and prevail over is like, I need to have agency over my own life.

6:41The only way to do that is by focusing on the task at hand. And so if there's a beast that I am attacking and that I am, you know, to slay, I cannot pay attention to the crowd and their opinions. And to me, that is consumption, right, we are consuming other people's opinions. We are consuming their information, their feedback, whether they are haters or trolls or clowns or whatever. And in the crowd is many other things too. There's distractions. There's pleasantries. There's leisure. There's all these other things around us. And if we fall into the trap of paying attention to them, that is the thing that distracts us in my opinion from like living a fulfilling life. So when you're deciding to pursue work on the internet and using technology, you have to recognize it for what it is. It is a tool. And you are not using it as entertainment. And that is the battle that you are fighting is, can I use this as a tool without being pulled into being distracted by it as entertainment. And that's really how I think about it.

7:48You know, anybody who picks this thing up has a choice that they're making. And it's, am I using this as a distraction and as a way to numb myself and as a way to entertain myself and distract me from real life. Or am I accepting it for what it is and making the deliberate choice to use it as a tool to advance my own frameworks and philosophies and ideas and my art and my creativity and put that out into the world. And yes, on the other side of that, people are going to consume what you create. So in a world of consumption, my goal is to put something into the consumption pool that is actually valuable as opposed to gambling and pornography and slap and... In bullshit, you know. So that's my approach towards it all. Yeah, it's beautiful. What do you think are the fundamental reasons why you think so differently and why you're so against the matrix, if you will. I've heard you do quite a few bits. At least I've never heard your full podcast, which I'll put in the show notes for people. But I've heard quite a few rants and I pretty much resonate with a lot of what you say.

8:51And you've been paying a lot of attention to the underlying social engineering components. You've been paying a lot of attention to the corruption of, you know, the military industrial complex. There's so many things you go into. Why do you think it is that you're so aware of those things versus somebody who's just on autopilot and not aware of those things or willing to question those things. Well, I think in many ways, I don't think I'm any more aware than anybody else. I do think it's the approach of thinking. Like I'm willing to accept that there is something bigger and more grand than me and then us that is orchestrating how the world functions. Like, you know, it's, I think it's crazy to think that small government is just running bureaucracy. You know, that's just how it works. And it's, and it's chugging along and it's going great. It's like, no, that's not what's happening. And I think people would do themselves a huge favor by investing their time and learning history. And personally, I think that's what it comes down to is the average person is probably overworked.

10:01The last thing that there is on their mind or that they care about is like, oh, let me sit down and like look into ancient history. Let me look into all these like prophecies and ritual magic and just all this crazy stuff regardless of what is real or what isn't real. I think it takes a massive amount of context to understand how the world works. And I'm not claiming to, you know, understand how the world works. But I have my theories and a lot of the stuff that I often find myself drawn to is because to me it makes a lot more sense than what we are told. And to answer your question, what made me aware of, you know, the conflict between what the mainstream narrative tells us and what is actually kind of underneath a few layers deep to be discovered, which in my opinion is more along the lines of reality is my childhood. You know, I think that's true for probably many people who are kind of like anti bureaucracy, anti, you know, one world global government, whatever.

11:07Yeah, I was just always getting in trouble as a kid. So through that process, you learn to not trust authority, not like authority. And so that has been a reoccurring theme throughout my life of I have tried to follow the rules, tried to pursue my potential and really what ends up happening is, you know, you you end up getting stabbed in the back in many ways. And I was arrested at a really young age for a crime that I didn't commit. And that's probably the thing that started it all. You know, I grew up in a rough neighborhood in Florida and I had friends around me that were always stealing and, you know, stealing bikes and going to Walmart and stealing Pokemon cards and like just stupid little stuff like that. And I got caught up in that and was friends with these people fast forward several years later, I moved back to Virginia, which is where I live now. And literally many years later, probably five, six years later, I was at prom and I was leaving my high school prom and a drunk driver, T-bone to my car and the cops showed up.

12:12And I ended up being the one that was arrested because somehow I had a warrant for my arrest in Florida. And that started like a very long chain of me feeling some type of way towards authority. So, whether and don't get me wrong, you know, I'm responsible for all the things that I've done that have got me myself in trouble as well. You know, never have I been, I've always been a troublemaker, you know, I've always been a bit of a troublemaker. But there's just been things that have happened throughout my life that I think put a sour taste in my mouth and just made me question a lot of things. So, you know, I could go on and on and on and on about the reasons that I maybe don't trust people that try to tell me what to do. But I've just always had to figure out my own way and kind of grew up as a solo ranger, if you will. And it seems like you're obviously pretty obsessed with always being open to questioning your own thinking. And a lot of my guests on this show are people from neuroscience or psychology or philosophy, all these regions I've been fascinated with this stuff for myself.

13:13What is your ultimate understanding or basically your philosophy about the ultimate nature of consciousness or the nature of reality? What do you think is happening here? And if so, what do you do inside of it? What is your orientation in this life knowing what you know or think about what you think? So, I think that somewhere along the way, most of what we do on this planet has been turned into a system to benefit other people. And I think that's pretty easy to agree with and understand, but some people don't feel this way. If you tell them, hey, there are family dynasties that have been around for hundreds and thousands of years that have way more say into what happens on this planet than we do. And yeah, for a long time, they've been orchestrating and building these systems. And I think it's pretty reasonable to think that with billions of people on the planet, which is arguable by the way, which is not.

14:15If you look at the numbers from the United Nations, it doesn't add up to $1 billion. I mean, 8 billion people. There's a lot of questions around how many people actually live here on this little spinning ball allegedly, whatever. But I actually think it makes quite a bit of sense that along the way, somebody thought or a group of people thinks, okay, we have to get this organized. And I think global government and world government, it's a business, just like anything else. And through my journey into marketing psychology and entrepreneurship and business and eventually rubbing shoulders with very wealthy and very powerful people, you start to realize like, okay, yes, the result of a lot of these things is evil and wrong. But you can actually kind of understand why some of these things would be happening. So for example, a lot of people feel that we're being depopulated. A lot of people feel that we are intentionally having our fertility rates declined. A lot of people feel that we're being poisoned through our food and our water. And I'm in alignment with a lot of these thoughts.

15:20And it feels sinister, but I think deep down you kind of have to admit, I kind of understand it. I kind of get it, you know, because if it's okay, there are people that have been here long before us that need to figure out what do we do for the future of humanity. They've obviously chosen what they think is the right answer. And maybe that is getting rid of people or whatever, right. I personally feel that like our purpose here is to reach our fullest potential. And so, you know, you could call this a lot of different things like the Greeks called it this concept of skull, Friedrich Nietzsche called it the uber bench, Maslow called it self actualization. So it comes in many different phrases in many different forms and words. And I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm very interested in these topics. And it's one of the reasons that in many ways I'm like honored to even be asked to be on this show because I don't have a degree in human behavior. I am actually just an observer of it. And I'm fascinated by it. And I'm the last person that would ever say I'm an expert on these topics.

16:22But I actually think that that perspective is what helps me because I oversimplify these things in order for me to understand them. And nuance has a place. But I think that, you know, what is it called? Occam's razor, right. It's like normally the simplest observation is the true one. And so I look at my simple observations. And I think that working ourselves to death and fighting to gain credentials and to fall in line with government and bureaucracy is not the reason we're here. I understand the purpose for a lot of it. But at the end of the day, I think that people are pawns that are being milked for their resources, their data, their time, their energy, their attention, their money. And I kind of get it. I understand why because if you're sitting at the top of the pyramid, if you will, you would eventually grow to think that millions of civilians are kind of worthless. You know, and I think a lot of people at the top of the chart feel this way. It's like, all right, we just got all these people. What are we going to do with them?

17:23Well, give them jobs, teach them to be a cog in the wheel to me that actually makes sense. But I think that for people like yourself, for people like me, when you recognize that, and when you see it for what it is, you do everything that you can to get out from under it. And to me, that is the pursuit of fulfilling your fullest potential. And it's actually not about becoming a billionaire, becoming a millionaire, being an entrepreneur, being on the cover of Forbes. Like, who gives a shit about any of that? I actually think that it's to achieve actual freedom. And for some people that's having a farm or living in the jungle, or, you know, it could be any of these things. And I think that creating a life where you can spend time with them. You can spend time with yourself and with the people around you that are important is freedom. Money is just a tool to be able to do that. So as much as I love the pursuit of wealth and success, really what I think we're all here to do is to reach our fullest potential. And to find a way to use our skills and strengths and talents to contribute to the world and contribute to the people around us.

18:25That's beautiful. Yeah, I think very similarly, and I think freedom is probably the orientation. Internal freedom, external freedom. If you can seek that in your life or create that in your life, that's probably one of the first goals for anybody. And a lot of times it's an illusion that you're not already free. A lot of times I feel like it's in our mind, right, that we have been conditioned to believe that we need more that we. There's this illusion from the matrix. If you will, I hate to use that metaphor because it's so overused, but in my own world, I've realized that 98% of the suffering in the West at least if you're not starving and you're not just seeking to get away from disease or, you know, being slaughtered is in your mind. And I think that right now with this technological landscape that we live in and we have this exponential growth of technology and we have data centers and everybody's praising AI. There's this transhumanist religion that's emerged. And you know, even 15 years ago, I remember hearing Ray Kurtzwell speak and thinking like this guy is powerful and he is a visionary and he's got more patents than anyone on the planet.

19:32And nobody I know in my local environment has a clue who he is, right. If you bring up a certain name like a Ray Kurtzwell or you pop names out, nobody has a clue, which is fascinating to me, you know, and it's not wrong or right. It's just like, okay, but these are the people that run the programs at AI and they're actually creating the future that we live in. And so with this exponential technological growth, I've heard you say, okay, we have these tools. There's somewhat a moral. But how does one start to view technology in a way that would give them the most freedom, if you will, because I know that you're really good at using tech to speak into the microphone and to share your ideas and it's actually really cool. But what about the average person that's unaware of how much tech is implementing their own enslavement? Do you want to speak to that a little bit, especially when you watch like the social dilemma and things like that. Yeah, it's tough. You know, it's an ongoing battle. I think that technology offers a lot of opportunity. And it's one of these things where it's hard not to say like if you can't beat them, join them, right.

20:40It's not about like joining the AGI hive mind, if you will. You know, that's kind of what I think AI is. And I think it's the best description of what is trying to be accomplished with AI is sort of this crystal ball. And the thing that people should realize is the technology that we use is not the technology that they use. You know, we look at all these amazing things and I'm calling it amazing and within the context of what it can do for somebody like me, like a business owner, right. I think a lot of people look at Chatchy BT and people are very anti AI because when they think of AI, they think of, you know, what a lot of people are calling like brain rod and you know, goyslop and like whatever you want to call it, which is, you know, these ridiculous like videos and just junk and it's just like trash, right. But if you think about the capability of some of these other tools and a lot of the best tools are open source, which means that they don't cost anything and they they aren't owned by some big AI conglomerate, right.

21:40Now, eventually many of them do get purchased. So for example, there was this open source AI called open claw that was then acquired by open AI. So those things do happen. But if you look at other open AI tools like Hermes agent, I don't know if you're familiar, but basically it is an open source, AI, you know, agentic operating system that you can run locally on your device. So that means it's not exactly connected to a cloud. You could run it fully in a dedicated local environment and it could help you organize your life. It could literally become your technological personal assistant. And that is only possible because of the invention of AI and the growth of AI. Now, when it comes to like transhumanism and how is this affecting our future, it's quite hard to say, you know, it's, I think I would be ignorant to say that I've got my head wrapped around it. It's a battle that I fight it weekly. I think about like, man, I'm so inundated with all these tools and all these softwares and I'm, you know, I'm in, I'm in the matrix, but I'm aware of the matrix. It's like, how does that work, you know.

22:50And so what I think is that using these tools to have a better understanding of yourself and using these tools to help other people recognize their own potential is the ultimate goal. I use AI a lot to organize my work. I don't use AI in the way that I think most people would imagine that creators use it. You see a lot of creators that are, you know, writing blog articles and like writing video scripts and stuff like that. I would say 90% of everything that anybody sees from me has nothing to do with AI. Now, when I write, I will sometimes have AI almost like fight against me and challenge my own ideas. And I'll ask it, hey, am I contradicting myself and things like that. It just helps me with editing and things like that. Or something like doing a podcast episode, pulling the transcript and just dropping it into AI and say, hey, identify the common themes and core topics out of this episode so that way I can wrap my mind around what are all the main topics in the episode.

23:57So it's, I'm not using AI for the creative purpose. It's really to me, the organizational element of it all. And it's the, the computation power of it really, you know, it is a computer. It is a supercomputer. Now, what are we doing with this information? We're basically feeding what I think is a hive mind. You know, if you were to go into any AI tool, right, anthropic chat, you BT, whatever, and ask it, you know, hey, what are the, what are my biggest investment opportunities. The information that it gives you is very outdated. You know, it's going to give you market trends based on whatever happened, you know, at the earliest like yesterday. But it really would probably give you information as an aggregate over the past six months. It's not really giving you like accurate updated information. You can even ask AI about itself. You could type into chat, you be to your cloud and say, hey, what are the most recent updates in cloud. And it doesn't know it has to go do research on the internet to figure out what its own updates are.

24:59So our version of AI is not like a live super intelligent supercomputer. But you can bet your ass that the people that run these companies absolutely have access to a weaponized version of super intelligence. I mean, they could ask it anything, you know, if you think that these people, whether it's Elon or Sam Altman or Jeff Beza, whoever, if you think that they're not walking around with a crystal ball in their pocket, you're out of your mind because they are. And they have the most advanced version of these softwares, you know, like we are getting the version of these tools that are the furthest behind. And so our effort with these tools is feeding and fueling the future version of AI that is already being accessed by people at the top. And into the future, you know, it's very similar to the military like, you know, the fighter jets that they pull out at the baseball game. Those are not the jets that are, you know, fighting in wars, you know, it's like the technology that they have is far more advanced and it's stuff that we won't see for another decade. And I think AI is the exact same way.

26:03That's fascinating. Yeah, I thought about that with like Google and Facebook and all of these companies that are deeply pretty much created with CIA or intelligence or defense department budgets and then deployed to the masses as like a social experiment to get the feedback loop and then to have the social engineering components to drive behavior. And you seem to think like that too. And so I was just thinking about how power. I've heard like Jamie wheel and other people describe how if you look at the biggest buildings in history, that's how you can tell where the power comes from whether it be the churches or the banks. And right now it's the tech buildings. It's, it's we're building data centers that are raping the planet for resources. And so what do you think about power dynamics and where it's shifting right now? Do you think it's tech companies and it's like stakeholders or do you think it's actually big governments like people are worried about Israel and China and the US and Russia and they think they're still presidents and there's these like old ideas merging with technology creating this new technology if you will. What are you thinking about power structures?

27:07Yeah, I mean, I think that true power is not something that has been created recently. That's what I think. I think that there are groups of families and organizations that have been in power for a really long time and you can call them whatever you want. You didn't call it free Masonry. Some people call it the illuminati people call it whatever. And all that stuff sounds silly and funny and it sounds cute until you take the time to like look into all of these things and where they come from right and you gave the example of these tech companies and many of them were literally started as CIA projects right or insert any big three letter agency. You know, these are all connected to it. Many, you know, whether it's like NASA or the like even the ADL like even the ADA and the whole industry of dentistry and like all this, you know, all these things have very interesting and strange beginnings.

28:10And it makes you wonder, okay, well, when all of this stuff was starting out like whose ideal was this and where does it come from. And of course, it's, you know, it's hard to say and there's so many different theories, whether it's the Rothschilds or whether it's, you know, whatever. What I think about power specifically, like when you mentioned, you know, presidents and things like that. I think it's quite arrogant to think that the president of the of any country is the person that's in charge of that country. I think there are a couple of countries that are maybe exclusions, but it's definitely not the United States, right? Like I would say that we are a fully occupied country and that we are not under control of ourselves at all, not even remotely close. And it's a battle every day to figure out like, all right, what do you do about these things? And you know, I think the conclusion that many people come to is, well, let me put my head down and do what I have to do until I can do what I want to do.

29:14And I think especially for people my age, I think that a lot of the goals, especially of millennials and Gen Z and Gen X as well. But I think our goal is to either find a rural retreat somewhere where we can become self sustainable and kind of fuel our own lives or potentially leave entirely. Because I don't know if there's any like saving the situation of what's going on. Because I think a lot of people think that this is stuff that is unfolded just within the past, you know, handful of years or within the past couple of presidencies. And it's like, I think that a lot of this stuff has been in the works for a very long time. Yeah, I resonate with that. You were speaking about Genesis and then I've been really watching things unfold like these flock cameras and axon and this surveillance state, which we've already had in place forever. But do you mind talking a little bit about Genesis and some of what you're seeing with this overnight turnkey just cameras on everybody and access to everyone's privacy.

30:20Yeah, and you know, to be honest, I might sound a little bit ignorant here, but like when you say Genesis, like are you talking about flock and all that stuff. Yeah, and there was something about Genesis AI and it was it was some rant you went on, but maybe I'm off on that. It could have been and I hadn't heard of that and I thought I would ask you about it, but I could have swore you had brought it up. But we could. Yeah, I think Genesis doesn't particularly ring a bell. I mean, I'm pulling up their website and it looks like it's basically this in-home personal AI robot. But yeah, it's I mean, it's right in alignment with all this stuff, right? Like flock these cameras that are in your house. You know, you could think about how these big tech companies are acquiring all these different tools and softwares, right? Like the ring cameras and I do think that there is a a web and a network of surveillance and cameras being built and a really great example is the whole Pokemon go thing. You know, it's like you have a guy who built out topography software for the government. He was then hired by Google and when he decided that he wanted to go off and make his own project, which was Pokemon go, which first of all,

31:35doesn't align with anything that the guy was interested in. There's not a shred of proof that he was ever even interested in Pokemon. It doesn't it just doesn't compute it doesn't make any sense. Well, instead of doing what any other, you know, founder would have done or any high up, you know, executive and any big tech company would have done, which is retire and leave or, you know, vacate their seat at the company to go start their own startup. Google actually left him on as a team member of Google and then even helped fund the Pokemon go project and just so happens that also his former software is what turned into Google Earth. So it makes you it's like just if people would just look into these things, they're not crazy conspiracy theories. It's like pretty logical and rational in my opinion, especially when it comes to all this tech stuff, right? It's like, you know, Palantir partnered with Aura ring and it's like it comes back to the Occam's razor thing. It's like, oh, you have a military tech company partnering with a personal wearable health device.

32:41It's like, take all the context out of it and just think to yourself, huh, why would they be doing that? And it's like the answer is pretty clear. Yeah. And I think the same thing with Pokemon go and I think the same thing with whatever this Genesis thing is, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a personal assistant robot. And again, they may have other products too, but I'm just looking at the website here and it shows like this personal robot called E know you put it in your house. And it's like, yeah, what's your split second knee jerk reaction? It's like, oh, well, who knows maybe look into the history of that company. See who's behind it? See what's going on with it? Why would people be investing hundreds of millions of dollars into it? And it's either reason a because, oh, this is great for, you know, human productivity. This is great for humanity. As somebody who uses AI quite a bit, I'll be the first person to tell you that like AI does not fulfill the promise that it makes, you know, like ask Uber, ask any of these companies that have fired thousands of people to replace them with AI. Only to learn that AI actually cost them more money and they were less productive.

33:44And I think that's for a lot of reasons. I think it's because people don't really understand AI prompting and loop engineering. And I don't think that they really fundamentally understand how to best use AI. And I could talk about AI a bunch, you know, but the big problem with AI is contextual memory. And so you have to find a way to solve. How does AI remember everything? So if you're going to tell me that there's an AI that you're going to put in my house that has cameras all around its head. And that it's going to learn my entire lifestyle and it's going to do my dishes and it's going to make my bed and it's going to go grocery shopping for me. It's going to check the mail. It's going to do my laundry. It's going to sweep the floors. Like I don't know that just sounds ridiculous to me because you know, put it this way you can ask you can ask an AI. Let's say that I'm in a car. Okay. And my goal is to get a car wash.

34:48Well, I could be in my car 50 feet from a car wash and I could ask the AI. I could say, hey, I'm looking to get a car wash. Find the nearest car wash and should I drive there or should I walk there? And the AI will tell me, well, I just looked up the nearest car wash. It's about 50 meters away. It doesn't make sense to drive there. So I would just walk there. And that would save you time and efficiency. Because AI doesn't have like reasoning in the way that we think it does. Like it doesn't have this complex reasoning that it says that it does. It just doesn't. So the way to give it context is by having some sort of knowledge base. And that means either the user has to provide the knowledge base and say, hey, this is everything about me. This is how you function. These are the rules. These are the guidelines. These are whatever. And those rules and guidelines would be very hyper specific to every individual on earth. Right? Like you and I may have things in common, but our lives are very, very different. Right?

35:49Like we are we are greatly different than the person right next to us. No matter how much we have in common. Our patterns are different. Our habits are different. Our patterns of everything is different. So if somebody says, oh, we're going to make this grand consumer piece of tech that's going to be in thousands of homes across the country. And it's going to cost three, four, five thousand dollars. Is it because it's a great consumer product that can use artificial intelligence to help us? Or is it maybe that it's building a web of cameras inside of people's homes? And that's really the main value of it. And then when the AI fails and it doesn't deliver on its promise, which it ultimately will, because that's what's happened with almost every big AI promise that there's been. Well, then up, oh well, well, we got the data that we needed. And it's exactly what happened with Pokemon go. There was also this product a while back called the rabbit R1. And it was this big promise of this, you know, AI. Personal executive assistant that you carry in your hand. And that was like two or three years ago that that promise was made.

36:54That still doesn't exist, right? Like we have a phone in our hand and there still is not some AI executive that is just always on that you can talk to that just manages your life. I don't know a single even myself. I'm not even at that point. There is no AI assistant where I can just pick it up and actually say, Hey, I need to I need to have my laundry dropped off at the local dry cleaner. So get on taskrab it, find the best person for the job, do a background search and get my laundry taken care of. Also, let me know when it comes back and it's dropped off at my house. And while he's gone, I need you to book me a trip to Thailand. And I need you to look for what are the best moitai kickboxing camps. And I need you to look through it, find me the best one, book me a session while I'm there, take care of my Airbnb thing. It's like that doesn't exist that that's not real. And I think so many AI things promise that this is going on. So my point of all this being, I'm not so sure about these big projects like Genesis and all this other stuff.

37:58I actually think what they're interested in is the information and the infrastructure and the database and the raw assets that they get from it, which is always the data user information, voice prompts and voice cues, being able to listen to how people interact with it to train the high mind videos of people's homes because they already have videos of everything outside of people's homes. So the next thing is, well, what's in these homes? And what is everybody doing? And it's like think about the massive amount of opportunity that companies would have if they understood the internals of everybody's life. I've always thought it was insane that people have these security cameras inside their house pointed at their living room. Like that's, I don't know, that blows my mind. And some people just don't even give it a second thought of like, you know, having a, I don't even know what the popular ones are like, you know, it's basically a ring camera, but it's in your home. It's like watching it. I don't know. That's just crazy to me. It is crazy. And I feel like a lot of the younger generation doesn't even question having their location being shared with all their friends. They think it's just normalized now. And I'm like, that's not normal for everyone to always know exactly where you're at all the time. It's not a cool feel. Yeah.

39:03It's not like you're doing anything wrong. But I grew up in an era where I didn't have any of this shit. You know, and you'd leave the house and you were off in the ethers. And so you know that data is always being tracked. And so what do you think about? I've been hearing Elon recently speaking about the universal basic income and how everyone's going to have complete abundance. And it's like, oh my God, dude. And he knows people are so excited about this. Like we can have whatever we desire. And there'll be so much stuff that we can have. And it's like, dude, what a, what a meaningless shitty life to just have more shit and no purpose and no drive. And then you're reliant more on the government. And so I just feel like these tech bros are pitching this universal basic income. Just believe that it's all going to happen. What are you thinking that's happened there? I think that you be I is actually like one of the potential final puzzle pieces on the board. Yeah. Like that little piece, if you were able to be like, wow, we've got that. And you put, I think that would like almost complete the puzzle that they've been trying to build.

40:03I think it is probably one of the worst things that could like ever happen. Because it, I mean, it's, it's perfect, right? It sounds like the perfect thing and it sounds so great. But it is, it is the exact mechanism that would allow somebody to completely control your life is if they control your income, right? Think about how much your job controls what you do in your life, right? Like I'm fortunate not to have like a traditional job. I control my own time. And I see how that is so much different than the people around me, right? Like being an entrepreneur and I'm sure a lot of people could resonate with this working for yourself and having full control over your own schedule, your own time freedom. It isolates you from all of society, you know, because normal society functions on a schedule, right? The days of the week have a meaning. It's like, oh, Wednesday is hump day, Friday is the last day of the week. The weekends when we go get drunk and then Sunday is like rest day before I have to get ready for Monday again and Monday is hell. That is a structure that has been going on for like over a century now.

41:04And when you decide not to live within it, it's quite a lonely experience or it definitely can be if you don't have the right community, you don't have the right support system like being in your own system and determining your own schedule and your own income is worth it. I would never have it any other way. But if you think that your job puts a lot of pressure on what you're able to do, imagine if you lose the job, but you're still given all of the constraints of what the job gave you, which is you must follow these guidelines or you do not receive your monthly stipend. And with you know, and I understand that this sounds a bit dystopian, but again, it's really not that crazy and these things are already happening right when people chose not to take the vaccine, they lost their jobs, they were ostracized by their family. It's very possible that you be I would be the same exact thing because people who would resist you be I, you would be seen as the person who is ruining the party for everybody else.

42:05And it's like you need to accept you be I otherwise you are bad for society. It's the same thing right and then by accepting you be I, you've now been injected once again by the government. It's the same exact thing, you know, it's it's literally the same thing. But the difference is now that is connected to your financial institution, it would be connected to all of your other stuff like, you know, my state is rolling out like this mobile ID app that they want people to download. It's like, hey, don't even worry about it. Like don't have a license, don't have an insurance card. Everything's going to be in the app, right? And it's like, huh, well, I wonder what that app would do on my phone, right? If I'm walking by a camera, would it maybe ping my location? You know, is it tracking everything else? I'm doing on my phone and that determines whether I get my income every month. Right. If I if I run a red light and then I don't pay the fine, does that mean that it's automatically taken out of my monthly stipend? Does that mean that I don't even get it because I'm below a certain credit or below a certain point value. And again, that stuff sounds crazy until it happens. You know, it's always that way. It's like it sounds insane. You know, and there's this funny joke of like, oh, what's the difference between the truth and a conspiracy theory.

43:15And the answer is, well, about six months, you know, and it's like, that's the difference. And so yeah, it sounds crazy today. And obviously six months is just an allegory. It sounds crazy today. But you know, two, three years from now, maybe it's not so crazy and really that could be happening. So I think that's the thing that worries me about this like personal AI, universal universal basic income. You know, if you don't take the money or you know, or you're not whatever, they could shut your car off, right? You've got these cars now that run on a subscription. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. And the social credit score thing, people think that's nothing or it's not going to happen, but that's exactly where it leads. And that leads to basically all of your finances, all of your freedom are completely tied to the government. And it's a turnkey totalitarian dictatorship. And I'm curious what your perspective is. I'm pretty sure I'm going to guess it's what mine is on COVID, but I listened to Catherine Austin Fitts. You ever heard her speak? I haven't that name. She's she's a brilliant lady, but she she speaks to COVID and what it was and how long in advance it was planned and for what reason. I'm curious what your perspective is on COVID.

44:21Yeah, you know, when it was happening, I was spending a lot of time doing research into it. You know, as following like James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, I had seen a lot of stuff about how it was hinted at and pre-planned. I forget what the name of the conference was, but it was quite positive if I remember correctly, like Bill Gates was involved and it was it was even called like something 19 and it was talking about a global coronavirus. And this is like, you know, in the middle of 2019 before it was even happening. You know, my mom was on a cruise event 201 maybe. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, maybe something like that. Yeah, maybe something like that. I do remember looking into that. Okay. You know, my mom was on a cruise in 2019 and got this crazy illness and like, you know, they thought it was pneumonia. They thought it was this. They thought it was that I'm pretty sure it was COVID. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about things feeling like you can kind of understand why some of these things were being done. You know, like, this is a little bit of an out there theory. You know, but there's a lot of huge benefits and advantages. If you're at the top and and let's say COVID really was planned.

45:33There's a huge amount of benefits and advantages to doing that experiment on humanity. And by no means am I endorsing any of that. Of course, as you know, I feel the complete opposite, which is how dare somebody think that they have the authority to inundate the world with with a virus or with sickness or with illness. The thing that gives it away is all of the propaganda that was spoon fed to everybody as it was happening. It's like, how do you explain that because now we know what is true. So how do you explain this organized media campaign around getting a vaccine and why was the vaccine so important? Who can answer that question? Right. Because it wasn't to save lives. It wasn't to stop people from getting the virus because now we know that not to be true. And you know, I'm not a medical expert, right? I'm not an expert on any of these things. So again, I am just a person, just like everybody else, trying to look for objective truth and things that don't add up. That's really it, right?

46:40Like if if I had to say I'm good at something is just spotting patterns. That's really all it is. And those are the patterns that stand out to me. I do think that it was pre planned. I think if people don't know where to look, I would start by looking into like the world economic forum. I find really, really interesting. I do think that Bill Gates as a topic in itself is quite interesting. And a lot of the work that project Veritas did in the very early days of COVID-19 was really interesting too. Obviously that whole organization has changed quite a bit. And I don't think James O'Keefe is even involved anymore. But yeah, really interesting. I'll have to look into that that lady that you mentioned. And just to really quick on the social credit score thing, you know, people are kidding themselves. If they don't think that that already exists. Like what do we think a credit score is? It's like that's exactly what that is. Now it may not be as extreme as in places like China where we're considering it a social credit score. But it's still a credit score. You know, and we are, you know, we're born with an ID number. Like how crazy is that? Like you're literally born with an ID number.

47:40And if you try to have a child outside of like the traditional healthcare system, you will be met with a lot of resistance and a lot of friction. There are a lot of videos of women who have children in a traditional hospital. And they're being fought from taking their own baby until it is injected, however many times, and assigned a number. And that number goes with them through all their life. So it's like we already have an ID number in a credit system that already exists. You know, so it's just an expansion of that already existing program. And by the way, it's like your social security number is based on receiving social security later in life, which that's not real. It's like the whole thing is a scam. So, you know, and don't just take it for me. Like there are huge global leaders that have just openly publicly admitted that it's a Ponzi scheme. It's like there's not even enough. It's, yeah, you know, it's ridiculous. And again, I probably don't have the most articulate argument for those things because it's not my line of work. You know, it's not what you know, I don't spend decades researching these things. So it's important to take that into consideration.

48:44You know, a lot of what I say online is like these short like sound bites. And I actually think it's quite funny because I get in rage as people. But it's just important to keep that in mind, especially in these longer form conversations that, you know, who you're listening to is like, I'm an entrepreneur. I do, I'm deeply fascinated by ancient history and all these weird things that go on in our life. But my main goal is like to pursue freedom like personal self governance, self agency, self sufficiency. And you got to be aware of some of these things to recognize that. And so, you know, the social security stuff and the credit score things. I do think that they're happening. And I think it's just important for people to pay attention to and I don't, I don't think you're going to stop it. You know, I don't think there's any stopping it. But I think like knowledge is power. And it's like if you can be aware of it, then even just making the deliberate choice to like not download the stupid mobile ID app when your state says, hey, there's a new ID. You don't have to carry your ID around anymore. It's like at first that sounds convenient. And if you don't take the time to really sit down and think, okay, like what is this for again and what could this be used for? And then making the informed decision to say, you know what, I'm good. I'm not going to do that.

49:53And the last thing I'll say on this is, you know, I just spent some time traveling and I flew to Florida and then I went on a cruise. And at every security checkpoint along the way, I just said, hey, I'd like to opt out of the camera screening. And nobody had a problem with it. Everybody was like, yeah, no problem. Like nobody was it. And one at the end of it, the very last person that I spoke to, which was when I was coming back from the cruise, when you reenter the United States, you get in a line and for efficiency, they have you line up in front of this camera and do this thing. And so as I walked up to it, you know, I just, I held my bag in front of my face and I said, hey, if you don't mind, I'd like to opt out. And they said, okay, and I said, can I opt out of this? They said, yeah, no problem. And they said, you need to go over here and speak with the officer. I said, no problem. So I walk over to the officer. The officer says, the officer says, what's wrong? You don't want us to track you? And it's like, you know, I don't know if she's being funny or, you know, or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I'd prefer that you don't. And she's like, honestly, I get it. She's a come surprise more people don't ask to do this.

50:54And I'm like, okay, that's pretty interesting. And so all she had to do was visually just look at my passport, confirm that I am who I said I am. And she says, you're free to go. You're welcome to continue. I said, okay, great. But people just don't know that they have that right to do that. And so they just, you know, they just willingly walk into these systems that other people have built. We don't understand the goals of them. Or we're just blissfully ignorant to them. So yeah, that's my little rant on all the, you know, credit scores and how all this stuff ties together. It's just like it's infuriating. It's frustrating. Yeah, I agree. No, it reminds me of Brave New World. I always reference that because we willingly give up our freedoms just for a little dopamine hits or just to stay busy doing the things that entertain us, you know, and it brings me to asking you about the current psychedelic movement because there's a lot happening there. And I've interviewed some interesting people on the subject and some of them are very critical of the movement from different angles. And from my gathering Peter teal and all of these tech bros and all of the investors involved in promoting psychedelics. And then the arrays that you saw with Joe Rogan and all of them at the signing recently, the day before bicycle day.

52:04And there's just like this obvious deployment of psychedelics in a certain context and in a certain model when I've personally loved the idea of psychedelics liberating people for years. And now I'm like, no, it actually can enslave people and make them more suggestible. So anyway, let's hear your perspective on psychedelics. Sure. I mean, we can almost start with the end in mind, right? So let's say mushrooms are taken over basically the same way that marijuana was. Well, what's next? It's going to be ketamine and I began in I wasca. That'll be the next thing in 10, 15 years now and on and on we go, right? And it's always been this chase of connecting with, you know, call it whatever you want, right? Higher power, the spiritual realm, ego death, like all these things. I'm a big fan of psychedelics and my life has changed in a really positive way. There's this hilarious quote about, you know, we know who the politicians are because all you have to do is identify the people who have never eaten mushrooms, right?

53:04And the quote is, you know, something like that. But basically it's implying that if you took some of the most wretched politicians and you sat them down and gave them a hero dose of mushrooms, the idea is that they would hopefully recognize that they're not doing the world any good, you know, based on their behavior and their decisions, right? I, in a nutshell, I think what's happening specifically to like psilocybin is the same thing that's happened to marijuana, right? Like marijuana was a natural plant and then it gets gobbled up by capitalism and turned into something that it wasn't the same thing happened to tobacco and nicotine, right? People wouldn't realize that nicotine is not addictive, right? Like nicotine by itself is not an addictive substance. There's a 2015 study that was done at Harvard where they could not get the rats to be addicted to pure nicotine. And even if you, there are brands that make pure nicotine and, you know, it's just like nicotine and an essential oil nicotine was proven to fight against COVID. It helps with people with neurodivergency. It helps with a bunch of different things.

54:12It even helps people with like hearing loss and stuff. Now again, I'm not a medical expert. So look into it on your own, but nicotine changed when they started adding all of these pierazines and chemical compounds to it and then turning it into a commercialized product. And again, just look into history, like go back and look at some of the commercials that were rolled out in the 60s and 70s and 80s around cigarettes and tobacco. So then fast forward into, you know, call it the early 2000s and the same thing was then done to marijuana, right? Marijuana used to be a natural plant that you grew and then you roll it up and you smoke it and whatever. Fast forward now and it's like now it's like a juice and a vape pen and like a gummy and like this and it's like it's been commercialized for gain. And I think that's always what happens and I think that now we're seeing that with mushrooms, right? So people leave one thing to move to what brings them back to center and back to nature. And to just circle back to your question of like what's our purpose of being here? It's to live in harmony with earth, right? It's to live in harmony with our planet.

55:17And it's almost like everything that's being done to it is taking that taking us away from that, right? There are forces that we don't understand. There are things that we can't see. There are energy fields that we can or can't tap into. And for thousands of years, psychedelics have been the way to tap into getting in harmonization with the earth. And so I think what happens is when big tech, big capitalism and when, you know, the top of the power chart notices that more and more people are tapping into this like universal field of all. And so that's what happens when you're in a field of harmony with what's really going on that it has to be disturbed and it has to be taken over. It has to be kind of consumed and turned into something that it isn't. And I think that's what's happening like a dollar. And what about your perspective on MK Ultra and how they use them during that time frame? I think when I think of MK Ultra out some of the like really clear cut examples I think of are things like astral projection.

56:20Like if you just talk to somebody who doesn't know anything about it, they'd be like, that's insane. That's crazy. You know, they would never want to wrap their mind around the fact that like these are real things that the government has implemented and that they've seen results with. And you know, we're forced to sit with the fact of like, wow, maybe that is real. Like maybe, maybe some of these crazy things that for the longest time, I thought were magic or fake or like not real. Maybe they are real. And like what a crazy thing to wrap your mind around. And it goes right back again, like I noticed patterns right it goes right back to the same thing with military tech and with AI right like what we see is not really what's accessible right like a lot of the times what we see. Whoever is orchestrating it is light years ahead decades ahead, you know, in some cases maybe hundreds of years ahead right we think about like anti gravity and stuff like that and some of this.

57:20I don't know a lot about the whole like space alien stuff really, but I know that there's plenty of episodes that people can watch about like element was like element 115 or like whatever it's called. You know, so there's all kinds of stuff that we know probably exists. It's just hard to wrap our mind around it being real. And I think that MK Ultra is an exact use case of that being true. It kind of proves that to be true of like, you know, the government is willing to do things because they are in the pursuit of understanding things that they want us to believe are not real. But they know that it's real and that is their effort and their pursuit to wrap their head around it to utilize it to their own benefit because if everybody knows it that's a problem right and at the same time like. If it were easy everybody would do it and if everybody did it then there's no power to it right if everybody could astral project it wouldn't mean everything it wouldn't mean anything. If everybody could just tap into the spiritual world or another dimension it wouldn't mean anything. So I think that it's consolidation of power and making sure that those, you know, the understanding of this thing that we call human existence continues to only be understood by the few rather than the many.

58:34Yeah, it's fascinating. So I was going to ask you a question that you were going to put behind your Patreon so that your followers could listen and it has to do with the nature of suffering. And I have seen plenty of it in 21 years first responder. I've seen tons of addiction and mental health stuff to the point where you're like, what is this? What's the root cause of it? And I've always gone down to like the core of victimhood. What is victimhood and why is our culture so big on promoting it and making people feel victimized? All of our models of psychology, everything has to do with it as far as like when you go see a psychotherapist, it's people somewhat dwelling on their trauma and their victimhood, at least from what I've been gathering. And I'm not saying that's all of it. It's a very nuanced conversation because I know the body keeps a score and all that stuff's true in there. But what is it that makes someone like yourself or like anyone else in society that's doing well seem to have the capacity of free will to the degree that they can choose to see opportunity in their adversity versus someone who's constantly in a victim loop?

59:39I think that people choose to be the victim because it gets them recognition. I really think that's what it comes down to. And yeah, I love this conversation. I wish we could talk for like a whole another hour because I feel like there's a lot that I could learn from you as well. I think that by being part of an in group, which is often revolving around our disadvantages. And doing so means that you are recognized for something. And so whether it's racial inequality, whether it is, oh, I just can't get ahead or I just can't catch a break or oh my job doesn't pay me enough or you know this is just what always happens to me or so and so has it out for me or this just keeps hat like whatever the thing is. If we can convince others and the world and the people around us to accept that that is true, that means that we don't need to take responsibility for our standing in life.

1:00:46And the hardest thing ever would be to accept that we are where we are because we've chosen to be there. And I think that that is one of the number one things that anybody would want to avoid because no matter how successful you are, you're not where you want it to be. You're not as far enough along as you thought you would be by now. And if we accept that that is our own doing and that is only because of the choices that we've made to get here, that is an uncomfortable feeling that people don't like to sit with. You know, people don't even like to sit in silence for five minutes. You know, it's like you can look this up on YouTube, look up videos of people trying to sit and do do nothing for an hour. They can't do it. So being with ourself and with our own thoughts for just an hour is one of the hardest things that we can do. So in our free time in the quietest moments of our life, we are given the thought that we are responsible for everything we've done.

1:01:46And we're not comfortable with it. Instead we choose to do ms growl and we scroll on Instagram and we talk to our friends and be like, oh, can you believe what so and so said or oh, it's it's Trump or it's Biden or it's this or it's that or you know, I just can't get ahead because look at what this person is doing or oh, it's taxes or oh, it's you know, it's whatever. And you know, it's not lost on me that complaining about bureaucracy and the government and it's the same thing. You know, it's the same thing. It's taking your own personal results and passing the buck. You're passing the blame to somebody else. Now, of course, there's truth to be found to a lot of these things and a lot of what people identify as right. So if they're a minority or an in group or they're from a certain country, like we all have disadvantages. And the way that I think about the nature of suffering is this. It's almost the point. It's almost literally the whole point of being here. You know, when you're laying on your deathbed and you're calling it a day and it's like, all right, I'm out of here once and for all and it's for good.

1:02:52You're not thinking about all of the, you know, you're not thinking about the promotion that you got at work. You're not thinking about the time that somebody said that you looked hot or that, you know, you got hit on by the bartender or like whatever. You're not thinking about any of those things. You're thinking about the difficulties that you overcame. You're thinking about the time, you know, and for yourself as a first responder, right, you're thinking about the lives that you changed through the act of, you know, rescuing somebody in the worst moment of their life. Right. And that was difficult for you. For me, I had to overcome a quarter million dollars in tax debt. I was separated from my brother. My only blood sibling is a child. You know, and I could go on and on, right? Like all of the things that make us who we are are the hard things are the difficult things. And so I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable with that. They don't want to accept that the bad things that have happened to them are what make them who they are.

1:03:52And it's not the good things. And so when you don't really have any difficulty that you've been through, which sadly is the truth in a place like like the United States and much of the West. Your life is not hard. I am the last, you know, I mentioned that I had like a difficult childhood, right? But I'm the last person that would sit here and say, like, oh my God, I grew up in the slums and I had nothing. And, you know, and some people would actually argue that that is true. And maybe that was true for me. But I'm not, you know, I don't identify as that. And living here, the difficulties are low. And we have to almost invent things that are hard in order to be recognized because we can't align with our own adversity and the things that are hard. And so, yeah, I think that's what ends up happening is like we invent suffering because suffering gives us meaning. And we don't have any real suffering. And so in many ways, life is about the pursuit of suffering, not always of happiness. It is getting through suffering, right? Like that's why there's so many quotes. Your message, your message, you know, the only way around is through.

1:04:59You know, there are so many things that point to getting through adversity, getting through suffering. And living through the difficult moments. And that is the meaning of life. You know, like the stoics believed in this and that, you know, the thing that determines your life is how you react to what happens. It's not based on what actually happens, right? So it's like in order to fulfill our, to fulfill our highest potential, it is all about, who do we become throughout this journey? How do we react to our inevitable suffering that will happen? And how do we overcome adversity? And how do we make that turn us into a stronger person, not a weaker person who just wants, you know, attention and recognition out of it? And it's a hard battle, right? Because everybody wants to be recognized and seen. We want to be validated. We want to have permission to be who we want to be. And through that can be suffering. And I think like the lack of suffering is actually what causes people to go down these routes of like inventing suffering that isn't real, in my opinion.

1:06:01Yeah, no, I love it. It's beautiful perspective. And it's, it's a very nuanced, complicated subject free will and choosing to, you know, choose your path in every circumstance. And I know a lot of people struggle with that for whatever reason. I always subscribe to the idea that the mystery is where it's at for me. I like to say I don't know what the fuck's going on. But I know there is a slice of free will and I get to choose my relationship to my experience. So I'm going to probably choose to be grateful for the fact that some things happening from nothing and that we have an opportunity here not to pour me no matter what, you know, no matter what the circumstance. But I've had you, I know you got to get going. I ask all my guests if you were going to die today. And this was the only thing you could share with the world. What would you say? Man. Yeah, today was the day. What I would say is that you can make a wildly abundant living just being yourself. And I think that discovering who you are and accepting who you are and leaning into both your strengths and weaknesses and putting that out into the world is the way to abundance.

1:07:12You know, it's the scariest thing you'll ever do. And even in this very moment, you know, like coming out and sharing like my thoughts on all these different topics, like it's a very like vulnerable and almost like anxiety inducing thing to do because you put yourself out there. And it's like, oh, yeah, these are all my crazy thoughts about all this stuff. Some are right and some are inevitably wrong and some somebody will think like this guy has no idea what he's talking about. You're right. I do, you know, in many ways, I don't. And it's like, but I'm willing to put myself out there because I know that it makes me a better person. And that doesn't mean that people have to do it through, you know, content creation, all this other stuff. But I do think that for anybody who is interested specifically in like content or branding or doing what you, you know, stuff like you and I do, which is like a podcast or putting your, your conversations online, that pursuit is like the ultimate journey of personal development. And I just hope and pray and wish that people recognize that in order to do something like this type of work or really be an entrepreneur and build something creative.

1:08:13You have to understand who you are and you have to dive deep into your personality and what makes you you. And then you have to be willing to put that out in the world. And so if I were to give a message and today was the last day that anybody could hear anything from me, it would be to just take that leap. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be judged. And it's going to feel at times like you have no idea what you're doing. And it's going to feel like pain and you're going to have second, second guesses. You're going to have self doubt. You're going to feel like an imposter. You're going to deal with procrastination. You're going to deal with paralysis and not know how to move forward. But what's on the other side of that is worth it. And yeah, the pursuit of being yourself and making a full and free life, just being yourself is beyond worth it. If you have the ability to make it happen. Beautiful. Mike, you're amazing. It's been fun diving into your consciousness today. And I appreciate your words. I'll be sure to where do you want people to find you? So if you just Google my name, Mike Mezger, it's Mike with a Y, you'll find whatever people are looking for, right? I have a sub stack where I write like deeply around like human behavior.

1:09:18Specifically, I write about the big four, which is perfectionism, procrastination, imposter syndrome and self doubt. So especially people who struggle, you know, whether it's ADHD or just like they can't seem to like take action on the things they want to do. I write a lot about that on sub stack. And then like my primary channel other than that would be Instagram. And so if you just look at my name, Mike Mezger on Instagram, that's a great place to connect with me. Awesome brother. I appreciate your time today. It's been fun. Likewise, man. Thank you, Ryan. And yeah, once again, really appreciate it. Very honored to like be on your episode list aside, you know, alongside many other like brilliant minds. And yeah, look forward to doing it again soon. Appreciate you, my friend. Likewise. Thank you for listening to the episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it and subscribe to the show and rate the show that helps people to discover it and enjoy the next episode. What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination of some sort.