Why Wokeness is Failing (Uncut) 02-22-2025

Why Wokeness is Failing: The Rise of Common Sense with Zuby (WiM556)

I had a video on my phone of me pulling 230. I take my phone out, post a nine-second video, and I write, watch me destroy the British women’s deadlift record without trying. PS, I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight.

Don’t be a bigot. Within seconds, I knew I’d done something. You’re just saying things that are true.

I knew it was never gonna be just the two weeks to slow the spread or 15 days to flatten the curve. Nah, nah, nah. If you give them that inch, this is gonna go on for a long time.

The one that really hit me was nobody’s safe till everybody’s safe. This attempt to like communize everyone, it’s also just not true. When people are afraid, they stop thinking rationally.

People are running off a cliff and they’ll run off the cliff with them, whereas I’ll pause and be like, there’s a cliff there. Like, don’t. You’re right here.

They’re like, oh, you’re a Nazi. I’m like, no, no, I can see the cliff. People have been able to get away with a lot of evil and wicked stuff while having this public image that you’re some sort of angel.

That’s dying out. Now it’s just like the era of truth and realness and authenticity for better or for worse. If you are living this life where actually in the real world, you’re like doing all this horrible stuff, you will get found out.

You studied computer science at Oxford University. This is a great intro, by the way. Then you made a name for yourself as a rapper.

Then you broke the British women’s deadlift record in 2019 and have since become a widely known public intellectual. Sounds about right. What a hell of an intro.

Yeah, there’s a lot of stories within that. So first of all, I didn’t know about the computer science. I did know, obviously, about the rapping and I did know about the deadlift.

Could you just, I mean, that’s an odd mix of things to have introduce you. Tell me a little bit about that journey from computer science to breaking women’s world records. Yeah, sure thing.

So I won’t start right at the beginning. For those who don’t know, though, just a super great background. Born in the UK, I grew up in Saudi Arabia, family background originally from Nigeria.

Went to both British and American schools. So I was in the American school system up until fifth grade while I was living in Saudi Arabia. Then I went to boarding school in the UK from the age of 11.

So I studied computer science at Oxford University. I did very well in school. I was always very academic, got into what was the best university in the world at the time, still is usually in the top five.

And I didn’t really know what I wanted to study, but I’ve always been interested in computers and technology. So I figured computer science would be interesting. I didn’t love my degree.

I loved being at Oxford. It was a really cool place. I love the university.

I love the city. My degree, if I could go back, I probably would have done something different, but nonetheless, I stuck it out. I got my degree.

I graduated when I was 20 years old. And while I was at Oxford, I actually started rapping. I started rapping in my first year of university.

And I released my first album in my second year after I’d been rapping for about 10 months. So I put out a seven song EP called Commercial Underground. And I made some waves with that while I was, I mean, I would have been 19 years old at the time.

And I got my first radio play. I even had my very first music video on a channel, it doesn’t exist anymore. It was called Channel U. They used to support a lot of upcoming hip hop and grime artists in the UK.

So I had my stuff in rotation over there. And I just started to make my name as this rapper from Oxford University, which kind of confused a lot of people because when you think of hip hop and rap, whether in the US or in the UK, people don’t typically associate it with the city of Oxford, let alone a high ranking university. People think of these worlds as very separate.

So I kind of had this USP just from being this young man at Oxford who’s also pursuing a rap career. But I ended up selling over 3000 copies completely independently of my very first album. And that was what set the spark for the notion that I could do it as more than just a hobby.

That’s so cool. And then when you, when did you start competing in women’s sports? Well, I’ve been going to the gym since I was 15. I used to play rugby.

I used to play a lot of different sports, but I played rugby from age 11 all the way up through university. So 11 to 20, I played rugby. And I first got into training just to get stronger for that sport specifically, because it’s a very physical sport.

It’s better to be on the giving end than the receiving end in terms of that. It’s a hardcore sport. Yeah, yeah.

I love rugby, man. I miss it sometimes. And so I’ve been lifting weights and training for a long time.

Now, if we fast forward many years, past university, past the corporate world, going into my music full-time, which I did in September, 2011, I went full-time with my music. And around the mid-2010s is when I started to really notice that, I don’t want to say the world, but I’ll say the Western world, maybe our countries in particular, and I guess you could throw Canada in there, were going, things were getting weird. This was when what people now sort of collectively refer to as wokeness or social justice really started to go mainstream.

I tend to put it between 2014 and 2015. So I started to notice these notions going out there, conceptions around gender, around sexuality, around race, around sort of oppression hierarchies. And all of a sudden I’m hearing terms like white privilege and transgenderism and people identifying as different genders.

And then you started to get this weird pronoun stuff creeping in and so on. And it was around 2015 or 2016 when I first noticed this situation going on with like women’s sports and women’s bathrooms and so on, where there were situations popping up in the UK and Canada and the US where men were quite literally identifying as women. I found it interesting that no one stopped to ask what that actually means.

And I started to notice it infiltrating sport. There was that Fallon Fox situation that happened in MMA. So I think that was like 2016.

So this was a man who had previously competed as a man who was now identifying as a woman and beating women up in MMA. I’m like, okay, that’s strange. I remember Joe Rogan was talking about this at the time quite early.

And I started to notice other situations in athletics, in weightlifting, in football and these different things. And I’m just like, all right, this is goofy. And I’m having conversations privately with people just talking about how stupid this is.

And I practice second, third and fourth order thinking. So it’s obvious to me that if you create a societal standard where you say a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman, which has been the definition they’ve kind of been giving us from the left-wing progressive side for the past decade now, then you’re opening up a giant Pandora’s box in terms of what can happen. Now there’s question marks around bathrooms and changing rooms and sports and prisons and just whatever else.

And so to me, it was obvious that you would have men who are gonna take advantage of the situation. And I started to see it happen. So in 2018, I started to use my social media platform.

So at this time, if we’re talking mid to late 2018, at this time I had around 17,000, 18,000 followers on Twitter. Across all the platforms combined, I probably had around 50,000 followers because of my musical efforts over the past 10 plus years. And in 2018, I started just sharing some more of my thoughts around society and culture, a little bit of politics, but just things that are going on in the world.

Prior to this, I didn’t really do it much outside of my music, not because I was afraid to, but just because I didn’t feel it that necessary. And I didn’t think that, I didn’t know my thoughts were that interesting. To this day, I think 90% of the stuff I put out there on social media and I say on podcasts and I say on stage and I say when I’m invited on TV, I think 90% of it is pretty uncontroversial and it’s fairly commonsensical.

But because things just kept getting sillier and goofier and more detached from reality, we’re suddenly at a place in 2018, early 2019, where simply saying what is true objectively is enough to resonate with people because there’s this climate of fear and everyone’s worried about being canceled and being labeled transphobe, homophobe, bigot, racist. This is when all of this was really, really starting to rise, right? There was a big chill. Things have changed a lot over the past six years or so, but at this time there was a big chill around that.

So my very first viral tweet wasn’t actually the deadlift one. Do you remember when Kanye West was wearing the Make America Great Again hat in 2018? Vague, yes. I remember that.

And the media was just attacking him. And I’m- Because he was a black Republican, is that why? Because he’s a black man who is daring to go against the democratic group think, right? There’s this idea that if you are a black American, man or woman, you must, if you do vote, you must vote Democrat. That’s been my entire life.

That’s been the narrative. Now I’m not an American, but I’ve always thought that that is ludicrous. There’s no political party that should have a complete vice grip on any demographic.

I don’t see any logical reason why black people must vote either way, let alone vote blue. Like it’s- Must do anything, right? Any race must do, like the categorical thinking that way is just flawed. It’s not just flawed.

I mean, it’s offensive to me and I’m not even a black American. I’m just like, who do you think you are to tell Kanye West is a free man if he wants to wear the hat of the sitting president? Like if you wore a, if someone wore a Barack Obama t-shirt or hat or whatever, no one has a problem. Clearly Clinton, no one has a problem.

But again, six years ago, now you can wear a MAGA hat and it’s okay. But at that time it was just like, there was just all this weird stuff about it. And just, I saw the way people were attacking him.

Anyway, I just had a short tweet where I just said, LOL at all the people calling Kanye West lost, maybe he’s not the lost one. And that went viral. And this was weird because I’m just an independent rapper in England.

And all of a sudden my tweet is going viral in the US and I’m seeing all these people commenting and like lots of Trump supporters are like, yeah, I totally agree, da, da, da. Like I’m a bit like, whoa, this is kind of, this is a bit weird. This was the first time I kind of had like a social media post crossover into that demographic.

And then a couple months later, February, I remember the date, it was February 26, 2018. I’d just been in the gym in the morning. It was in a city called Darby.

I was running one of my pop-up shops that I was doing at the time, selling my music and merchandise. And while I was waiting for some customers in the morning, I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw two different stories, both out of the US of males identifying as women and beating women. And I think breaking records in some athletic events.

Then I’m just like, this is so stupid. Like what is, we are living in clown world. Like this is insane.

And then my strange brain just went, huh, I wonder what the British women’s deadlift record is. And I Googled it and it was in my weight class, it was 210 kilos. And my PB was 275, which is more than a hundred pound difference.

That was mine too. So I was like, ah, and I had a video on my phone from a few weeks ago of me pulling 230. So I take my phone out, post nine second video.

And I write, I keep hearing about how biological men have no strength advantage over women in 2019. So watch me destroy the British women’s deadlift record without trying. P.S. I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight.

Don’t be a bigot. That was it. I hit send.

Robert. Within seconds, I knew I had, I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I’d done something. Because I had, so when I posted this, I had 18,000 followers, I remember.

And the numbers were just moving up in real time. The likes and the retweets, it was just like, it was just going up. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, it just kept going up.

Within about 20 minutes, the video had over 10,000 views. Within an hour, I think it had broken 50,000. And this video was just truly going viral.

I’m just, I’m standing there looking at my phone, looking at the numbers just going up. And I’m just like, I don’t know what is, I don’t know what is going on here. People start commenting in different languages.

It’s getting re-shared in Australia, in the US. It’s just going. By the time evening hits, I check it before I go to bed, 300,000 views.

I wake up in the morning, half a million views. It just keeps going for days. And my follower count is just, I remember I was gaining about 100 followers per hour for weeks, 100 followers per hour.

It just kept going, growing, growing, growing. The following morning, I start getting contacted by news outlets, BBC, Sky News, The Sunday Telegraph, Fox News. I’m just like, what is happening? They’re just emailing me.

Hey, we want to talk to you about your recent tweet about transgender athletes and so on. And I just say yes to everything. Anyone who wants to interview me, radio, TV, podcast, I’m just saying yes to everything.

I still don’t really know what’s going on. I’m just kind of stoking the fire a little bit, just kind of keeping it going and retweeting some of the comments and replying to people. About two weeks after I posted it, I wake up one morning and my phone is going crazy.

And I was just like, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan just outed you. Yo, Doobie, Joe Rogan just mentioned you. Joe Rogan just, like, whoa, what’s going on? And keep in mind, I’m in the UK.

This is when Joe was on the West Coast in California. So there’s kind of like, so morning for me is evening for them. So I think on that evening’s show, he had just mentioned it.

So I wake up and I’m kind of doing, going backwards trying to see what people are talking about. And I listened to his show. He did one with Brian Callen and they did a two minute segment.

On my deadlift tweet. And Joe gave me like a massive shout out. He announced on the show that he started to follow me.

And it was, whoa, like things had already been growing. And this was just like, this just was a spike. So I guess this would have been March, 2018.

And the momentum just kept going and growing. So that was a catalyst. That introduced a lot of people to who I was.

But because I had already built a platform through my music at this time, I’d started my podcast. I’d already built an audience so that once some degree of the spotlight was on me, I was able to capitalize on that. In a way, like people go viral all the time, but most of the time people go viral, the tweet goes viral and nothing comes of it.

But in my case, I was able to sustain that attention and turn it into more. So go forward a few more months, come September, I’m in LA sitting down with Dave Rubin doing his podcast, The Rubin Report. I get invited on the Joe Rogan Experience.

The Daily Wire reach out to me. I end up doing Ben Shapiro’s show. I did Candace Owens’ show.

Then I got invited out to Texas. I sat down with people like Glenn Beck and Chad Prather and so on. I thought I was gonna come to the States for two weeks.

I ended up staying for two months. No, three months. Wow.

Three months, which is the maximum allowed without a visa. I went to, I think, eight different cities. I ended up getting invited to the Pentagon.

I got invited to the White House twice. All catalyzed initially from this silly tweet back in February. And, you know, God works in mysterious ways, but that was, you know, we’re now coming up on the six year anniversary of that tweet.

And things have just gone from strength to strength. And I’ve been able to turn that initial spark of attention into a large audience of people who just kind of like and value what I do and who appreciate just my thoughts and opinions. And it’s morphed over time from just being about my music to music still being a piece of it.

But if I’m being totally honest at this stage, I think more people know me just from my, I don’t know, I don’t even know what to call it, my thoughts and opinions and perspectives and my voice than even specifically from my music. But I’m glad that it’s inspired and motivated people. Dude, it’s such an awesome story.

It’s like the perfect launch for you in a way, because a lot of your, yeah, I don’t know what you call it. It’s not political commentary, but obviously you’re taking jabs at wokeism often, but you’re really just, I mean, in my view, which obviously we share views, you’re just saying things that are true, right? Like men are men, women are women, very basic things. Crazy.

But you’ve done something. I don’t know what the secret sauce is you’ve got going because you’ve created a lot of viral content. I mean, as far as I can tell.

Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds of pieces. And like as someone who’s created next to zero, like we’ve had a few things go viral here and there.

We do long form intellectual content. So it’s not, maybe it doesn’t lend itself to go viral so well. And the things that have gone viral have been little clips, but you’ve tapped into something or it’s a skill you have.

I’m not really sure. So that’s like the perfect launch for you in a way, because you were just taking a direct shot across the bow at the emergent wokest nonsense. The thing that’s interesting is that’s not even specifically how I kind of thought of it.

Right. For me, it was just like, no one is telling the truth or barely anyone is telling the truth or almost nobody who has a significant platform is telling the truth. And I’m just going to say what I think is true.

Not because, not even because, you know, I want it to go viral or whatever, but because the truth itself is extremely important. The truth is valuable. And there’s something extremely dangerous that happens in any time, in any place when people don’t just, don’t just not tell the truth, but are actively lying and reinforcing lies and distorting reality.

We can argue all day about opinions and perspectives, but what I noticed going on was something I had never seen in my own life, where it was just like this, to be a quote unquote good person and to fit into the sort of mainstream popular culture, you had to either lie or reinforce lies or just shut up. Right. Right.

We were living in a time where someone can be canceled for saying something that is objectively true. Like, wait, what? So I think, again, now things have changed now. People are a lot more emboldened.

What’s interesting, Robert, is the exact same thing. So I was talking up until- They’re emboldened because of moves like yours though. But it happened again.

Because what happened after 2019? What did we roll right into? Pandemic. Exactly. And the exact same thing happened.

And I was one of the only people in March, 2020 back when it was not a popular position to take to criticize lockdowns or to question masks or to push back, like, you know, pushing back against mandates then. You know, now, again, now people can talk about all of it. It’s fine.

Just like people can now criticize BLM and it’s fine, but doing it at the time in the heat of the moment, when I criticized BLM mid 2020, that did not make me, that did not win me a lot of friends. Now people are like, oh yeah, BLM was a silo by large mansions. Yeah, it’s a scam.

I’m like, yeah, I told you that five years ago. And you wanted to, you know, metaphorically lynch me for it after they took your a hundred million plus dollars and bought crap with it. So yeah, being early is not a, being early is not always a fun or comfortable, but if I see something that is destructive and I think there’s genuinely has the position to just, if something is going to make our society and our culture worse, especially even more so when it’s something that starts like impacting kids and we started seeing that happen, then for me, that’s just, that’s just a hard line.

It’s not even, I feel like I’m some sort of moral crusader or something. It’s almost like I can’t stay silent. Right, right, right.

You know, there’s things I can ignore and you know, all day long I see things that I don’t like or don’t approve of, right? I’m not there being some moral busy body trying to correct absolutely everything. But there’s a level of it where it’s like, no, no, no, no, this is not right. Like I, again, I really felt that with the whole scamdemic situation.

It’s like, wait, we’re supposed to live the entire West, our entire life and before we were born has had this facade of liberty, freedom, civil rights, human rights, just general decency, ability to, for the most part, just live your life and do things as long as you don’t harm it. Equality in the eyes of the law. There’s a virus going around and all of a sudden that goes completely out the window.

Stay home, you cannot go outside, cover your face, do this, and then eventually inject this into your body or we’re gonna discriminate against you and you can’t do this. I was like, this is, guys, what’s going on here? Like, this isn’t okay. This isn’t how it’s meant to work since when can the government, UK government, US government, they don’t have the right to just tell you you can’t go outside.

You can’t see your friends. You can’t see your family members. You can’t stand in here, walk in this direction.

I’m just like, I was less disappointed with the governments than the population. So I was just like, how are, I get people are scared. And if you’re scared, I support your right to take whatever personal precautions you need.

If you wanna stay home, that’s fine. You wanna wear eight masks, fine. You wanna do, cool.

My issue throughout the entire thing was with the mandates and I knew it was never gonna be just the two weeks to slow the spread or 15 days to flatten the curve. Remember the rhetoric at the beginning? I was like, nah, nah, nah. If you give them that inch, this is gonna go on for a long time.

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That just basically conceptually rhymed with from each according to their ability to each according to their need. This attempt to like communize everyone, that really struck a chord. It’s also just not true.

It’s definitely not true. Like it sounds nice, but what does that mean? It’s fundamentally untrue. Like what the fuck is that? Nobody’s safe till, what do you mean? What is it about your constitution, your character? Because like, yeah, you’re doing what’s right.

You’re saying what you believe to be true in that moment. But there are, for one of you, there’s millions of other people that were scared to do that. So what is it, we’re talking about like big five personality traits before we recorded.

What do you think is unique about you that you choose to take a stand where others don’t? Yeah, it’s hard to answer this without sounding haughty. And I’m just gonna try to be honest. I think it’s a combination of a few different things.

I think before personality, the first thing, which is really the bedrock of it is my faith in God. I’ve said before that I’m not worried about being canceled by me. I’d rather be canceled by man than canceled by God.

So I get people all the time, are you not worried about being canceled or this or this? I’m like, no, I’m not. Not if saying what is right or true or moral gets me canceled or loses me an opportunity or whatever. So I’m like, good, cool, that’s fine.

I really fear God and fearing God snuffs out a lot of the other fears I think most people have. So I think that’s the bedrock of it. In terms of my personality, I’m ultra low in neuroticism.

So I’m not very sensitive to negative emotions, whether that is fear, anger, outrage, panic. There can be something happening, fabricated or real. And just statistically, I’m gonna be one of the most calm people in the room.

And when people are afraid, they stop thinking rationally. They go into the fight, flight, freeze, and they’re just panicking and they’re just following the herd. And people are running off a cliff and they’ll run off the cliff with them.

Whereas I’ll pause and be like, there’s a cliff there. Like, don’t, you’re right here. So I’m like, you’re a Nazi.

I’m like, no, no, I’m just, I can see the cliff, right? So I think that’s a part of it. I think another factor is I’ve been self-employed since 2011 and I’ve been like a lone wolf for just a long time. I’ve spent so much time just kind of in my own world with my own thoughts, doing my own thing, not in the corporate world or in the public sector world or whatever.

And I also haven’t owned a TV since I was 20. So it doesn’t mean I haven’t watched a TV at all, but like I got rid of my TV in my early twenties and I kind of get different information from different places. And I just think since I was really young and my parents can definitely vouch for this, I’ve always been someone who is very immune to peer pressure.

So even in my youthful years, I went to boarding school at 11 in a foreign country. So I’ve been away from my parents by thousands of miles. Like I was been traveling internationally alone since I was 11.

And I went through my teenage years like that. And I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve never tried any drug.

I haven’t drunk alcohol. My last drink was 17 years ago and I wasn’t a big drinker prior to that anyway. It’s really hard to make me do something unless I want to.

So, and not because I’m naturally rebellious at all, right? I’m almost like the opposite of it, but things have to make sense to me. If it doesn’t make sense, then I’m just like, I don’t care if everyone else is doing it. It doesn’t make sense to me, right? And so I guess that combination of things has just made me more resistant to it.

And then I think on top of it, so I often, I’m gonna expand this outside myself because I myself have thought many times, like what is it about the individuals? Because there are some who are very prominent public figures and then just other, you know, kind of standard citizens who seem to be a lot more immune to psychological operations in general and who are willing to stick their head above the parapet. So I think what it is, is let me think this through. I think if you find the intersection between a few traits, then, okay, if you think of what percentage of people are independent minded enough to just generally go against the herd, let’s say it’s 20%, okay? And then of that, let’s say it’s another 20% who have the courage to see it.

So they have the intellect and the cognitive thought to see through the matrix to some degree, or at least to question it. And then let’s say of that 20% have the courage to take a stand. So you’re down to 4%.

Yeah, and then of that, what percent have a platform? And maybe you could even say what percent have the articulation skills and the communication skills to, okay, yeah, they can see through the thing, but do they have the ability to articulate in a clear way without sounding like a psycho what it is that they’re seeing and connect those dots. And I think the more you kind of layer those things, you get to like a much smaller chunk of the population. So the percentage of people who can see through the matrix and are willing to stick their head up and risk being called nasty names and are articulate enough to communicate.

And let’s say in this social media world have some sort of platform. It might even be 5,000 followers. They have some platform to get that out there.

It’s a very, very small, very, very tiny number of people, which is why even if you think of like celebrities and public figures, you know, you can count on maybe two hands. Like even if you just look at the music and entertainment world, you could probably count on two hands worldwide the number of artists or musicians who took a stand during the pandemic. Right.

You could probably count on them. Like I could, you can name, you can literally name them. Yeah.

Because it’s just, it’s, it’s just rare. I’m sure there are other there. I know for a fact, there are other people who could see through it, but they didn’t have the courage.

Yeah. Right? Right. Then there’s people who have the courage, but they can’t see through it.

And they’re the ones who become the wear a mask like you do. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they’re very loud, they’re very vocal, but they’re completely on the side of the.

Yeah. Popular opinion. They almost become government mouthpieces.

That’s an excellent point because I’ve received a lot of these messages over the years where people like thank me for talking about Bitcoin and they’ll say, I could never do that because typically of their job. Yeah. And that’s where, that’s also the leverage point that the pandemic facilitators went for.

Right. It was like, no jab, no job, all this stuff. So yeah, to have that many qualifications, I think makes a lot of sense that there are just, there are a few people.

There aren’t a lot of people like that, yeah. There are a few people. And then, yeah, the faith in God, that’s such a big deal too, because if you don’t have a deep philosophy and conviction structure, right? Like for whatever the values you have, if they’re not rooted in something beyond the sphere of man, then you’re not rooted deeply enough.

Right? So to really, we were talking about that the other day with my wife, just like this idea of, you basically live life with no fear other than God. Like if you, God is beyond comprehension, beyond understanding, and like that alone should evoke some fear in you about how gargantuan and colossal and beyond all comprehension, he, it is. Like that, if you don’t have a fearful response to that, then you haven’t really looked at what we’re talking about here.

Yeah, I mean, in the Bible it says what? I’m paraphrasing, but you know, fear not the one who can kill your body, but the one who can kill your body and your soul. Yes, it says do not be afraid many times in the Bible, but also says fear God. And it’s like, that is the paradoxical approach actually.

Yeah, I think it’s extremely important, particularly as a man to know, this is gonna sound heavy and like, and I’m not saying this to like, sorry to sound like some tough guy, but like almost to like know what you’re willing to, like to know where your lines are, to know what you’re willing to kill for and know what you’re willing to die for. Yeah. And I don’t think most people do that exercise, especially in modern society.

I would imagine historically, actually most people had quite a clear idea of that. Whereas now we’ve kind of been so coddled and things are so comfortable and life is so easy that, and by the way, this is part of why I think the pandemic situation struck such a level of fear and hysteria. Because if you live in the modern West, we are very insulated from our own mortality.

We’re really insulated from death. In most developing countries and through most of history, people were like, death was pretty in your face. Like it happened quite often and it wasn’t hidden away in hospitals.

And you saw, I’d imagine most modern people have probably never seen a, this sounds so dark, probably never seen a dead body. Whereas probably by age 18, maybe by age 15. Age eight, probably.

Historically, like most people would have seen that, right? And so I think that that absolute terror about mortality is part of why people freaked out so much because they think that if the be all and end all of life is what we have right now, this 80, 90, 100 years that perhaps we get and you don’t believe literally or figuratively in anything beyond that, then it almost makes sense, the reaction that they had. It almost makes sense because it’s just like, well, I’m willing to not even live so that I can live. I’m willing to give up all of my rights and take other people’s and whatever needs to be done so that I can have maybe a few moments more here, people were willing to do that.

And I think if you were to just, it’s part of why, there’s a lot of reasons why the response in different places was different, but to this day, I think it’s so funny how little people talk about the continent of Africa during that time, right? So you have an entire continent of over a billion people, over 50 different countries. How did they respond to it all? Right, that whole two, three year pandemic situation, you saw what was going on in Europe and North America and Australia, Africa, they were like, all right, back to work. Like, let’s keep going, right? And they ended up with a lower, I think to this day, the jab rate is under 10% across Africa.

And I’m like, that should raise some questions for people. How are they all still alive? And part of that is, even my family’s originally from Nigeria, and I remember even speaking to one of my uncles about that. And it was just like, a lot of people’s thought was, this is nowhere near as bad as malaria.

We have malaria all the time. Malaria is a far worse disease than COVID was, right? And I’m not here saying COVID is absolutely nothing. I know some people responded badly to it, right? But objectively, malaria is much worse.

And malaria is there 24-7. So people were like, wait, is this thing worse than malaria? It’s like, no, not even close. So what do we, right, so back to work.

Like, what are we doing? Whereas I think in the West, it was just like, oh my gosh, like, no. I think, again, even if we’re just talking stats, the actual mortality rate across the general population, I believe, was under 0.1%, right? If you’re under the age of 40, it was like, perhaps under 0.01%, right? Which is not nothing. I mean, people die of the flu, right? Six, I think 60,000 or so people.

I don’t wanna throw out numbers and get them wrong. But you know, tens of thousands of people a year die of the flu. And it’s not headline news.

You don’t shut down the world for it, right? Sadly, you know, people pass away, I believe. Globally, I think on an average year, there’s 60 to 65 million deaths. That’s just the, you know, that happens.

No one bats an eyelid. It’s just, you know, five million deaths a month. Yeah, that’s just how it is.

But in this case, it was just so laser focused on this one condition. People forgot about all the other things that can kill people. People forgot about just quality of life, social bonds, mental health, physical health.

It was just, nope, just stay in your pod. Just keep that mask on. Don’t move.

Don’t talk to people. What was weird about the data was the flu deaths went to zero, basically. It just replaced it with COVID.

It was so crazy. Rebranding, yeah. What you’re saying there, that reminds me that my stepdad used to share this quote growing up.

He said, the coward dies a thousand deaths. The hero dies but once. And yeah, I guess it comes down, I don’t, yeah.

Being isolated from your own mortality makes a lot of sense too, because people are just, it’s foreign to them. They’re like, almost everything in life is designed to distract you from your mortality. It’s been said too that philosophy is like preparing to die.

When you actually think deep and philosophical, it’s like, well, you come to terms with your own mortality to more of an extent than you would otherwise. And in our education and stuff in the West is largely divorced from classical education. We’re not even.

And so yeah, it’s, that almost, it just makes people more manipulable. Whereas if you have a bunch of people that are like, fuck it, like, I know I’m gonna die. You’re not gonna take my freedom from me.

You’re not gonna tell me what I can do in the meantime. Those people are very difficult to control. So is it, do you think it’s been like a conscious process of conditioning to get people more domesticated and therefore docile and manipulable in these situations? Or is this just something like, we created a lot of material abundance and decadence, so now we’re all soft? It’s a great question.

I think it’s both. I think a lot of the things that modern people are struggling with is largely a result of our own societal and economic success. In terms of basic survival, we live in the best time ever essentially.

Like it’s never been easier to just survive. When I say that, I don’t mean like get on the housing ladder or like get a well-paying job or something, right? Like maybe that was better. Maybe that was better in the 50s or the 70s or whatever.

But like in terms of just being able to survive, I mean, for the first time in all of human history, obesity is a bigger killer worldwide than starvation. For the first time ever, all of human history, the problem has been lack of access to consistent calories. Now we have an overabundance to the point where not just in the US or in the UK, even in lots of developing countries, obesity is a massive problem.

People are eating so much, consuming so much that they’re ending up in early graves. So that is both a sign of incredible success, but it’s also, you just now are opening a whole bunch of other problems. Earlier on when we were talking about all the woke stuff, why are developing countries immune to it? Because they’ve got some actual problems to worry about.

You’re not arguing for 10 years about who uses what bathroom and what pronouns. Bro, we don’t have time for your microaggressions. We’re dealing with macroaggressions.

People are still, as we speak right now, people are still dying in wars. They’re dealing with all sorts of horrible disease. They’re dealing with like real poverty.

I think we in the West, we often just, people just forget how fortunate we are. I think something, it’s something around, is it around $40,000? I think it’s somewhere between 30 and $40,000 income per year puts you in the top 1% of global earners in terms of income. So think of all the people that are down with the 1%, the 1%, I’m like, bro, worldwide, most people in, like if you’re doing remotely well, like if you’re just doing all right in the UK or US, like you’re in the global 1%.

Yes, I know that there’s cost of living differences and so on, but just if you look at the- And then if you go historical. Historically, yeah. We’re in like the- Yeah, it’s, and when you view things that way, and I try to do this often, partly just keep myself grounded in reality, but it’s part of why I’m, you know, I don’t complain a lot.

I almost think it’s like disrespectful for me to complain because- To our ancestors. My ancestors and just other people around the world. Like if I look at my life, like, bro, like really, what do I have to, you know, I can talk about issues I see facing society and culture, right, but in terms of me just sitting moping around or being mad and sad about my life, I’m like, come on, man, like, what are you doing? Like that’s slapping God in the face.

That’s slapping my ancestors in the face. That’s slapping people dealing with like real basic level hostility. You know, the world is still a tough place for the vast majority of people.

Only about 1 billion people live in what we even call the West. Seven eighths of the world are outside of it. And there’s still billions and billions of people, you know, struggling to access basic sanitation and clean water and food and all of that.

And I just think it’s important to, you know, I know we all live in our own heads and we live in our own countries and our own societies. So it’s natural for us to compare to those around us and what we can see. But I always think it’s important to just zoom out and you know, whatever people are going through individually in most cases, if you zoom out and you kind of look at it in the grand scheme of things, you’re like, okay, maybe this isn’t great.

And maybe I’m not feeling good about this right now. But in the grand scheme of things, like I’m doing all right. Pretty damn good.

Yeah, I’m doing pretty darn well. So coming back to what you were initially asking. So yeah, I think some of it is just a natural result of prosperity.

And it’s not the first time it’s happened. As far as I know, this is what happened in the Roman empire. You know, you have the age of decadence and then it all collapses.

And then, yeah, I do think there are individuals and organizations who stir the pot and take advantage of people’s, you know, credulity and ignorance and weakness perhaps. And we both know, yeah, the money system is messed up and there’s the media is stirring division and creating unnecessary hostility and peddling false narratives. And so all of that is going on too.

I think both of them are true. Yeah, no, excellent point. Have you ever wanted to start a business in the Bitcoin space? If so, then the Wolf startup accelerator could be for you.

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I have a daughter, as you know, six year old daughter. And if it is this like material abundance, decadence thing that’s softening us, you know, obviously there’s the other component, right? People maliciously trying to psychologically manipulate people and all that. What, I mean, when I think about raising her and the future children my wife and I want to have, I’m trying to figure out like how to, I guess you just figure it out as you go, but like how do you microdose your children with suffering? Right, if they’re growing up in a very good situation, they’ve, you know, you’re providing for them.

They’re in the top 0.1%, whatever the thing is, like they’ve got everything they could possibly wish for, but you don’t want to soften them, right? You also want them to kind of have a resilience. You want them to have some contact with the real world, the worlds of, you know, economic scarcity and work and force all these things, right? The state, you know, you’re like, I want my children to be in touch with reality. And so I don’t want my raising them to put them out of touch.

How do you think about that? Like what is there, is there a certain way to approach it? I mean, I know you’ve traveled a lot, as you mentioned. I think that’s a huge one, right? Just in terms of diffusing people’s prejudice, really getting them in touch with other cultures, seeing how they live. It’s probably one of the most important educational tools there is.

What else do you think, like in terms of what we should be doing for the next generation to make sure they are hopefully courageous enough? Like the person you mentioned that was at the end of that filter, right? That has a platform, that is smart enough to see it, is courageous enough to say something about it. Obviously not everyone can be that, but how do we move more people in the spectrum towards that minority? It’s an amazing question. My first caveat is I’m, I will be a parent.

I will be a father, but I can’t speak. I’m always wary to give like parenting advice as a non-parent, right? So I’m gonna speak more generally as an uncle times 10 and someone who cares a lot about the future generation. Cause I have thought about this and I’ve reflected about it as well, given my own life and the huge range of people I know.

I think the two core things to instill are gratitude and perspective. I think that’s what it is. I think that’s more important than hardship per se.

So even if I look at my own life, I’m privileged in a huge number of ways. My parents at this point have been married for almost 50 years. I’ve grown up in an extremely stable family.

I’ve never not known where my next meal is coming from. I’ve never experienced poverty myself. I’ve seen it, but I’ve not experienced it myself.

I have four siblings, family’s super close. I had opportunity to go to one of the best schools in England. I grew up in a great environment in Saudi Arabia.

I went to Oxford University, got a computer science degree. I now make a living and have done for 10 years plus doing what I love. I built a big platform.

Lots of people love and respect, like I’m privileged. I don’t say that as a, like flagellating myself, right? Like, oh, like that’s some bad thing. No, but I’m by any reasonable persons, some people would look at me and be like, oh, you’re black, you’re oppressed.

I’m like, shut up. What do you mean, right? Even the word privileged might be too strong, right? Because you’ve earned it, right? Well, there’s stuff I haven’t earned. I didn’t choose where, I didn’t choose to be born in England.

Just having a British passport, hey, that’s fortunate. I didn’t choose when I was born, who I was born to, my economics. There’s a ton of stuff, like I didn’t choose, right? So there’s stuff I’ve worked for.

And then there’s stuff that was just handed to me. Maybe I’d say I’m blessed more than I’d say I’m privileged. But I was raised and I maintain a strong level of gratitude and a strong perspective.

You already talked about traveling. Traveling has definitely been a big part of that, especially from such a young age. So growing up, I spent time obviously in Saudi Arabia.

I lived there for 20 years. That’s a very different environment and culture. My family is from Nigeria.

So I’ve been back there dozens of times and seen wider family out there and just been around the country and seen how people live and seeing what people are going through. I’ve been to, as we record this, 45 countries, hundreds of different cities. And I just know so many people.

I talk to a lot of people and I’m very aware of just how people live, I guess, and the ups and downs and the pros and cons. And the human experience is extremely complicated and it always has been. And it’s why we have writings from thousands of years ago, which are so relatable now, because the love, the joy, the pain, the suffering, the disease, the death, the birth, like all of these things are, it’s just been going on for thousands of years.

And our lives are simultaneously wonderful and also tragic, right? We’re all gonna die. Everyone we know and love is gonna die. New life is gonna come into the world.

The life that’s existed is going to perish, at least in the physical form. We’re all gonna experience sickness. It’s just reality.

And I’m just very in tune with that. So I think gratitude and perspective, to me, when I see individuals who have just certain delusions or just nasty attitudes or whatever it is, they tend to lack one or both of those. Either they’re just ungrateful, they’re just ingrates, like they could, whether they’re from a good position or a bad position, economically, family, whatever it is, they’re just people who don’t appreciate.

They don’t appreciate what they have. Whether they have a lot or a little, they don’t appreciate it, right? I’m sure we’ve come across people who, materially, they have very little and they have even maybe physically, maybe they even have like some sort of disability or, but they’re genuinely happy. They’re genuinely joyful because they are grateful for the things that they do have.

And they still know, yeah, it could be worse, right? Maybe my life’s not perfect, but things could be worse. And we also know people who, on paper, like they’ve kind of got, quote unquote, they’ve got it all on paper, but they’re miserable and they’re depressed and they’re angry and they don’t treat people well and their relationships are shambles. And so I don’t think it’s, it’s not a matter of just like having money or going to a good school or whatever the case may be.

Yeah, I don’t know the perfect way to instill those things in people, gratitude. The traveling that unlocks new perspective, is that? Yeah. But then the gratitude, that’s more of a conscious practice, right? Like, tell me about your gratitude because I agree with you on gratitude.

It’s been one of the most powerful things to reprogram your emotional state. Like I actually come, I mean, I have a come from, I don’t wanna say I grew up in poverty, but I grew up closer to poverty. Then probably you did.

And I had some kind of anguish from that in my early years, but getting into yoga, meditation, and it really gratitude journaling was something like just every day you wake up in the morning, write five minutes, the things you’re thankful for. You can like reprogram your subconscious to become more grateful. And that totally changes the quality of your day-to-day experience.

What it sounds like traveled, at least addresses the perspective issue to some extent. How else do you address the gratitude issue? I think there’s probably different ways to do it. I think it is a conscious, it’s a continuously conscious process.

Because we all live in our own heads. We do, right? Like we’re all solipsistic to some degree and selfish to some degree because we can, I mean, we only can live in our own heads and in our own bodies. And so, and we get used to things.

Hedonic adaptation exists. So if you, human beings can get used to almost anything. That’s one of the most remarkable things about people from different temperatures and climates to different living conditions, to economic, like you put someone in a situation for like, probably not even a year.

It’s probably a matter of months before they just adapt to it and it becomes their baseline normal, right? So you could have someone who they’re broke and then they win the lottery and probably within a year, lots of them would have spent it all. But even let’s say they’re now living a high life and within a year, they’re used to it. And that’s just become their baseline.

And it doesn’t feel, the acceleration felt good, but now just being up there, whatever, like everything just sort of readjusts and they’re now comparing themselves to, right? So that’s kind of what happens. And similarly, you can have people who like, they take a massive economic hit or they drop down or whatever. And they go from living in a nice big house or whatever and then boom, they’re back in a studio apartment and it’ll suck for a while.

And then they’re just like, that’s all right. It’s just like, yeah, this is fine. You know, it’s okay.

We know this, we’re both into physical training. So when you’re untrained or you take an untrained individual, just doing 10 pushups or walking for 20 minutes, or trying to do one pull up, that’s enough to like batter them, right? Like that’s like, oh my gosh. And then when you get to the stage where, say you can do 50 straight pushups, like doing 10 literally doesn’t do anything.

It doesn’t even send a signal to your body that you’re doing anything. It almost doesn’t even count as exercise because you have to, you know, you have to keep pushing yourself beyond what you’re used to. So I just think gratitude is a very, I think it’s a very conscious thing.

And I think it’s helpful to just sit down once in a while. It could be a daily practice for someone. It could be weekly, however often.

And just, it sounds a bit trite, but sometimes I just think of all the things I have to be grateful for from the things. I often like just look around. That’s a great one.

And I literally will look around and I’ll like look at myself and I’ll keep in mind that there are people who, like there’s people who don’t have hands or they’re missing a finger or they’re missing a limb or they’re missing a whole limb. There’s people who can’t walk because they’re like millions of people. There’s people who can’t see.

Millions, millions of people who can’t hear. Millions of people who are living, they don’t have electronic lighting. They don’t have like access to the internet.

They don’t have the smartphone. They don’t have this clean water that I’m drinking. They don’t have friends that they’re talking to or they’re grinding so hard that they can’t sit and pontificate and discuss, just sit and let’s just talk about ideas for an hour.

It’s like, no, no, I got to grind in the farm or whatever it is. So I just think of all these things. And I’m like, man, like I’m great.

Just being in 2025, we could have been in 1835. We could have been in 1500. You know, like there was a time where guys our age, like maybe we wouldn’t even have made it to our age because we would have had to go fight and die in a ditch somewhere and get some horrible diseases or whatever.

So I’m just like, man, I’m happy to be here. It’s such a good framing because it goes back to the appreciation for our ancestors, right? Like you were saying there’s some things you earned, some things you didn’t earn. Those things you didn’t earn are like an inheritance from our forebears, right? They passed this forward to us.

I hope forebears is the right one. Yeah, that’s right. Okay, yeah.

We’ve inherited, we’ve been bequeathed this like lap of luxury. And I get so crazy looking at like this, this is a fan, right? It’s just a standing fan. What an amazing piece of machinery, right? Like I get a little warm in here sometimes under the light.

So I’ll just run this thing. It keeps me nice and cool. Sometimes I look at the refrigerator.

I’m like, are you kidding me? This thing will just store like food ready calories for weeks. I put it in the freezer for years. Like it’s just the things we have are so mind-blowingly amazing.

And so like your gratitude, like I feel like if you point your gratitude practice at very, for me, it’s like tools and technologies. And then I start really appreciating all the knowledge and all the trial and tribulation it took to get to this point. Bitcoin custody is evolving.

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Health, to me, health is a huge one. Health is a huge one because, I mean, we’ve all experienced injury and sickness and it sucks. Even when you know it’s temporary, it’s just crap.

Even a cold that just sort of lays you out a couple of days, you’re like, man, you really appreciate how good it feels just not to have an ailment. And you’re reminded how fragile it is too. Yeah, it’s fragile.

And it’s also recent as well, that’s the thing. If we just go back a hundred years, that’s 1925. That’s one person ago.

1925, and you think of everything that’s happened between 1925 and 2025. Like two world, like wars, inventions, like depressions, it’s gosh, like a lot, a lot has happened. And so, yeah, I think maybe one other thing as well is, and yeah, I think one other thing is, I view life kind of like an adventure.

Like I genuinely, and I’ve done this before, I’ve been doing this since before I achieved sort of any success or any real success or anything. It’s just like, it’s an adventure. You’ve got X number of decades to just kind of, for the first 20 years of your life, at least 15, but I’d say for around 20-ish years for most people, you’re kind of on a track.

You don’t choose that much up until you’re an adult. You don’t get to choose that much. You certainly didn’t choose like where you live as a child.

You probably didn’t choose what school you went to. You probably didn’t choose what you studied. Maybe you didn’t even choose what books you read.

When you’re young enough, you don’t even choose what clothes you’re gonna wear. Like you don’t get to choose that much. And then once you’re like 16, 18, 20 plus, now it’s like, hey, it’s on you, right? Now what are you gonna do for a living? Where are you gonna work? Who are you gonna befriend? Who are you going to love? Where are you gonna spend time? Are you gonna stay close to your family? Are you gonna move away from them? Are you gonna create a family or are you not going? Like, to me, that’s exciting.

It’s just like, hey, you can kind of choose. And this is one of the big parts of liberty and freedom and living in a society where you’re not kind of being smashed on by some administration. I think that’s amazing.

I think it’s so cool that we have entrepreneurs and we have businesses and we have music and podcasts and all these YouTube, like people are just making stuff. And you can do it. It doesn’t take any, like if someone wants to start a podcast, like assuming you already have a phone and most people have a smartphone, you could literally start a podcast or a YouTube channel or whatever it is.

You could just start with your phone, which already has an HD camera, HD video camera, internet access, and so on. And again, this is new. Even 20 years ago, we didn’t have this.

So I fully understand why we live in this age of it’s kind of like an oxymoron because a lot of the old school and traditional opportunities are becoming less stable and perhaps less available to as many people. At the same time, there’s this whole brave new world that’s opened up and is opening, where if you attune your brain and you see the opportunities properly, it becomes obvious that you have, so a 20 year old now compared to a 20 year old, you know, 20 or 50 years ago, it’s weird. From one angle, it looks like they have fewer opportunities.

If you’re in that traditionalist mindset and you’re thinking of the way you are. Corporate ladders. Yeah, you’re thinking of the way your dad, your granddad, your great granddad, you’re kind of thinking of the way they did their life.

Like some of those options are more difficult. In particular, I think, for example, like probably finding love, getting married, having children and being able to raise them, maybe being able to raise a family off a single income, being able to buy a house for a reasonable price, certain things, those have probably objectively gotten harder, but then other things, you know, like in terms of being able to, in terms of the tech, smartphones, social media, Bitcoin, like- Travel, yeah, travel. Going from the UK to the USA, how long did that used to take? Now you can go from London to Miami for a few hundred dollars and it takes nine hours and you can watch movies on the way, right? And it’s safe and it’s clean.

You don’t have to get on some ship. Rats and rats getting scared. Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, I just think for anyone who’s kind of feeling disheartened, I always just encourage people, like young men in particular, to refine that spirit of adventure. I think there’s a lot of guys who are sucked into the black pill, doom and gloom and just, oh, everything sucks and everything’s dark. They’re kind of just sitting there like doom scrolling and watching stuff that’s going to validate their negative feelings.

Whereas actually, if they kind of looked up and were just like, actually, you know what? Like I can do a lot. I can do a lot. You know, I can get myself in shape.

I can learn a skill. Like it’s never been easier to learn new skills. Right, access information.

Yeah, you don’t even need to go to and spend a bunch of money. Like whatever you want to learn, whether it’s coding, how to play guitar, how to speak Spanish, whatever the heck you want to learn, there are free or very cheap resources that everyone now has access to. You just have to do it.

You have to take that step and be like, you know what, instead of, look, the average person now spends about six hours per day looking at a screen, right? That’s a big trade-off with me. I mean, you don’t have to do that, obviously. No, but if you’re going to do that, why not spend some of it? Make it useful.

Yeah, right, like why not make some of that useful? Why not learn something? Why not create something? Instead of just being a consumer, why don’t you try producing something? Instead, yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I’ve heard this phrase, just to tie into your point on adventure, that, how does it go? It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.

So you have to, I mean, this is what our ancestors have been doing for us up until this point, right, is they’ve been embracing the suck, right? Like, oh, I do have to get on this rickety wooden boat for three months and hope that I get from London to the new world and hope that I don’t die of scurvy or whatever the thing is. They just embraced the risk. They embraced the adventure, ultimately.

And in doing so, they chart new territory for us, literal territory, and then also technological territory, figuring out new things, figuring out medicines, all these techniques and technologies that we then inherit. And so I think what you’re saying is like, yeah, we also need to do that. We can’t just sit here and be like, oh, this is great.

Thanks for, let me just like doom scroll on social media all day and not do anything. It’s like, we need to now embrace the pain, the things that are wrong in the world and take responsibility for them for our future generations. And I think it doesn’t even have to be, you can also like, you know, like in video games and some of them anyway, you know, like you can choose your difficulty level, easy, medium, hard, ultra hard, whatever.

You can kind of do that on the fly in life as well. Like you can choose, not everything needs to be like a slog and you’re playing on the most brutal difficulty and so on. So you can take that challenge if you want, but there’s some flexibility with it.

And I think it’s really important to enjoy the process. I think sometimes when people talk about like taking on responsibility and doing this and doing that, it all sounds like a, you know, like a task and it sounds daunting and, you know, and sometimes it is and it should be because that’s what makes you stronger and it’s how you achieve things. I think we sort of downplay the fun aspect of it.

Like, dude, I spent more than 10 years where my primary source of revenue was selling my CDs on the street and then eventually in shopping malls. So from, when did I go full-time with my music? Late 2011. So I was selling my CDs on the street from 2006.

Started in 2006 selling my CDs on the street. And then I became a full-time musician in 2011. And then up until early 2019, like I told you, when I made that deadlift tweet, I was at my pop-up shop.

I was in a shopping mall promoting my wares to the general public. Over the course of time, I have spoken in person to over half a million people. So I sold over 30,000 albums hand-to-hand, 30,000 transactions hand-to-hand, backpack or shop front to people.

Do you know how many people you have to talk to to do that? And I loved it. I loved it. I didn’t have to do that.

I’ve got a computer science degree. I used to work for a big consulting firm. I voluntarily went on this adventure.

And honestly, sometimes I miss going out in the street and just talking to strangers and selling my CDs because it was a slog sometimes, but it was fun. I just got to travel the country. I’ve been to over 60 different towns and cities just in the UK.

I’ve been across the entire, like you look at the map and I could be like, yup, I could put pins. I’ve been just everywhere, just talking to people, just getting in my big purple van and driving there, staying in crappy hotels and eating cheap food because I didn’t want to eat too much into my income and just talking to strangers. And dude, I’m so glad I did that.

It was like, I’m choosing voluntarily to go on this adventure. I have up days, I have down days. I used to organize my own tours.

Sometimes you do a show and it feels great. You’re like, yeah, cool. Lots of people come.

Sometimes you get to the show and there’s eight people there and you perform a one hour set for eight people. The room’s just empty. And dude, I’m so glad I went through all of that.

This is where some of the gratitude even comes from because there’s a lot of people who, 99% of people who now know me discovered me in the last six years. But there’s like a whole decade plus story prior to that. So part of the reason why I’m enjoying where I’m at now so much more and where I’m going to go is because I know, some people think it was just handed to me or I just popped up and got on Rogan or popped up and interviewed Elon or whatever.

It’s like, no, no, no, no. You guys missed, you missed all the stuff prior to that. And I remember those days.

I remember just standing out there. England does not have good weather, by the way, man. Like standing out there on the street, like in the snow, in the rain, just talking to strangers, like passing out flyers, selling those CDs, putting my headphones on people.

And I love the fact as well that there’s thousands of people on the internet who like bought my CDs while I was doing that. So they’re like, yeah, yeah, he did that. I met him in like, the people, I see comments on my stuff.

People are like, man, I remember meeting this guy in 2010 when he was like selling, I bought one of his CDs on the street or whatever. It’s so cool to see what he’s doing now. But I think without that grind, number one, I don’t think I’d be where I am now, let alone where I’m going to go.

But I wouldn’t appreciate it in the same way. And I wouldn’t have, I think there would be a danger of pride as well. When you eat dirt for a long time and then you finally get some like success or appreciation, you don’t, it doesn’t go to your head.

It’s not like- Because you’re grounded for eating so much dirt. Yeah, exactly. Like I’ve had hundreds of thousands of people just like reject me to my face.

Now when people talk about grinding, they’re talking about sending a lot of emails or adding people on social media or whatever. I was like, no, like in person, just being out there all the time. And that’s my personal story.

There’s people who have been through things that are like way more, some people have been through all really hell on earth. Sure, sure. And so for me, it wasn’t that, but my point was just the adventure.

I think everyone has to, sometimes life just throws an adventure at you and you don’t have a choice, right? You’re just like, some people it’s just like, you’re dealt these cards and- It’s gonna happen actually, right? The unexpected is going to happen and you can get down on yourself about it or sad or mad or whatever, or you can actually embrace it as like, this is just acceptance of truth or reality ultimately. It’s like the adventure mentality is embracing life for what it is. And again, as you said, you can kind of dial up the difficulty.

I mean, sometimes you don’t get to choose, right? Sometimes it gets dialed up for you or dialed down for you. But that orientation to life of like looking at it as an adventure is just so much more conducive to having fun and accomplishing things, right? That’s what kind of the nature of adventure. And you’ve mentioned a number of things you’ve done.

Obviously you’ve had an adventurous life up to this point. And you said there’s many more things you plan to do. So I assume you plan to adventure more.

Some of these things like going on, I’m just gonna throw out a few that you’ve mentioned, going on the Rogan podcast, interviewing Elon. What other big events have you had on this adventure so far that have been especially notable for you? Wow. Gosh, I’m prone to like almost forget or overlook things because it’s been a long time.

It’s been my, it’s my entire adult life at this point. So man, you mean like things that are, the things that would be a big deal to other people? Because I feel like the things that are big to me are. Yeah, it could be one of each, I guess.

Maybe like what’s one thing that people go, oh my God, he interviewed Elon. And so that’s one thing people might go crazy for. But then the thing that’s really meaningful to you might be, people do this to me on the show, like who’s your favorite guest? And it’s always some obscure guest no one’s ever heard of.

So. Yeah. Man, there have been a few moments for me that have been, I guess, a big deal.

I guess, you know, one of that was very pivotal was actually quitting my, I worked in, I was a management consultant from 2008 to 2011. And quitting that to go and pursue my music full-time was a, if I look back at my story now, that was very pivotal. Because had I stayed on that track, all of the things that I’ve now done and which people may know me for, that, none of that happens.

That whole avenue closes off. And I’m just a guy who’s, you know, probably earning a good salary in the corporate world, but I’m not getting my thoughts and ideas out there. I’m not necessarily inspiring or motivating anybody.

I’m just kind of living a privately somewhat successful life. So I think that was a big one. I’d say also when I hit a point where I was just making a living, being able to keep myself afloat, breaking even, just through my own creativity and entrepreneurship.

I was not making even close to a lot of money or anything impressive, but it’s just like, I’m sustaining myself on this adventure. Doing what you love. Doing what I love.

And there’s no game plan. There’s no blueprint. I’m just kind of making it up as I go.

That was a big one. One, many years later, I’d say, was achieving location independence. So getting to a point where I don’t need to be in a particular city or even country in order to keep this going, right? When I’m just grinding, selling my CDs on the street, it’s all right.

If I stop doing this even temporarily, then my income drops to zero. And so I had a degree of freedom, but I’m still not totally free. Then I got to a point where it’s like, oh, okay, cool.

I’m earning enough location independence that that opens. I guess with me, I’m noticing a pattern here. I guess the markers are increasing degrees of freedom.

Yeah, increasing degrees of freedom and autonomy and ability to just live life on my own terms. You know what I mean? Maybe that will sound selfish to some people, but to me it’s not. It’s just, I like the phrase that you can’t pour water from an empty jug.

And so I’ve said since I was 18, 19 years old, my goal and mission in life is to positively impact and inspire. It used to be 1 million people, and I think I can confidently say I’ve done that now. So at this stage, it’s just millions of people, as many people as I can in some way, shape or form.

So anything that makes me know I’m doing that always feels good. You must love the feedback you get from people, man. Yeah, I travel a lot.

And I’m constantly, I mean this in the realest way possible. I’m not being facetious or fake humble, but I’m genuinely humbled and honored every single time someone, particularly in real life, comes up to me, but even just messages me or emails me, just telling me some sort of story about how something I’ve done or said has made their life better. Now, and some of those have been really powerful and humbling for me.

Like I’ve had more than one person tell me that they were suicidal and something I put out there was the nudge they needed to reverse that. I’ve had people going through bad stuff, cancer and so on, and just saying, hey, just following you and listening to your podcast and listening to your songs has helped to keep me in a positive frame. Because the thing is, as a creator, I just put stuff out there.

I don’t know, after we record this podcast, I don’t know how many people listen to it or what they take from it, if they act on anything that I said, I don’t know. But I might find out in four years time, I meet someone and be like, man, I heard that episode you did with Robert and that thing you said there, that was just like a little spark for me, a little catalyst. And I love that.

I’ve had four different people on four separate occasions now in real life come up to me and all do the same thing. Show me a before picture on their phone. I’ve had four people in person come up to me.

Each of them lost over a hundred pounds. Wow. And all four of them were like, your book, strong advice, or just like your tweets, or just like, this is what I used to look like.

I wanna show you something. This is what I used to look like. And I’m looking at them now, a hundred pounds lighter, looking happier, looking fitter.

And I’m just like, man, they’re hyped to see me. And I’m hyped just like, man, you put a book out, I don’t know, people buy it. Did they read it? Did they act on it? Did they do something? You don’t know.

People just take things away and some people don’t do anything with it. And some people, they just quietly, hey, okay, I’m gonna go do this thing. And then a couple of years later, they see you at an event.

They’re like, man, I need to thank him. And I’m sure you have those stories too. And it’s, I would actually say more than any big interview or meeting this person or that person, I would say it’s like those moments that really.

The most salient. Yeah, they validate that I’m on my mission. Yes, you’re on the path.

Because day by day, I just kind of do what I do. And I don’t think that much of it. And then it turns out that, oh, wow, okay, that it can even just be a tweet.

I know. It can literally be a tweet. Especially coming from you.

I mean, your tweets are on fire. Honestly, that closely parallels my experience. Mine’s obviously different, but producing a lot of stuff, putting it out there and you don’t know.

You just don’t know who reads it, who listens to it. You don’t have no idea. And you get some feedback online, but it’s not the same.

But when you go to certain Bitcoin events or whatever, and you see people in person, and they start thanking you for whatever, transforming their life or their family’s life. And like, I mean, it gives me chills like even to start to talk about it. That’s where the math, I mean, that’s where the good stuff is.

Like the good stuff, whatever business you’re in, try to get to that point where you’re adding value to other people’s lives, significant value to their lives to the point where they’re giving you some feedback about it. That’s the, I mean, fulfillment in life. I feel like that, if I could just keep doing that for the rest of my life, some version of that.

And this is why probably obviously having kids is such an amazing thing. It’s like, you get to do that all the time, day in, day out. But I guess, sorry, to finish the point, we’re hardwired or optimized to interoperate with other people.

Like we exist to serve other people, basically. And so when you do that, you’re happy. Yeah, we’re called to serve.

And I deeply believe this as a Christian, we are called to serve other people. We each get a unique combination of personality traits, background, talent, skill sets, experiences. There’s no one who has my exact same combo.

No one has your exact combo. People have very different talents and interests and skills around the world. And it’s like, as I view it, you are given these things by God and you can work on them and you can develop them and improve them.

And then you go and you, how can you serve humanity with that? We’re all built very differently. Some people’s talent is in sports and they can just entertain millions of people because they’re so incredible at basketball or so good at football or whatever it is. And it’s like, cool, take that and use it to help other people.

And then you can earn from it. And then you can even use that further to help more people. If you are good at speaking, if you’re good at writing, if you’re good at listening, if you’re good at with your, you’re good at, I don’t know, I’m not, I’m not a carpenter.

I don’t know, I don’t know how to like- Craftsman, yeah. Yeah, I’m not a craftsman. I don’t know how to like make stuff, but there’s people who do that.

It’s like, wow, what an incredible service. Some people are healers, they’re medics, they’re paramedics, they’re nurses. Like all of that is, all of that’s amazing.

And I think what’s so, what’s super cool about it all is it’s true on so many levels. It’s even true, if you think of what the economy even is, when people think of economics, I don’t know why. I think they, people’s brains go to like stock market tickers and like the red and the green and up and down, right? Like that’s where people, when they hear the economy, it goes to like data and numbers.

The economy is essentially all of the people in a community, a nation, a state, who are offering some form of product or service, whether they realize it or not. Serving one another. They’re serving one another and being compensated.

And being served. So even when people are like, how do you, how do I make more money? People think of it very selfishly. I think a better question is like, how do you serve more people? How do you solve problems for people? Given your talent stack and experience and interests, how can you take that and create something that other people want or need? And if you can do that very well at scale, money will be a byproduct of that.

And it’s almost like people think of it the wrong way. They think of it the wrong way around. And you can see that, you know, when people are getting mad at someone just for being rich and it’s like, how did he get rich? Like, if you look at what that person did.

Or they just chase dollars and they end up miserable. Right, because they do something they don’t want to do to get paid. Exactly, exactly.

And you know, there might be short moments in our lives where someone has to do that, right? Like you’re not, 100% of people are not gonna enjoy their job 100% of the time. But even with that, I think if you know deep down why you’re doing it and it’s serving some greater purpose and it’s leading towards something bigger, or even if it’s just, hey, that’s the thing that feeds your family, then there’s something very honorable about that. That’s something to take positive pride in.

And it’s something that is, you know, if you’re doing something that’s hurting or, you know, scamming or policing other people, then obviously that’s bad. But if you’re, you know, making whatever your business is, if it’s legitimate, then that’s something good. It’s why I got so, I don’t want to go back to the scamdemic too much, but it’s why I got so angry when they started calling people’s jobs labeling essential and non-essential.

I remember I had a tweet go viral and I said, and he said like something like, any legal job that feeds your family is essential. They’re literally just like, oh yeah, your job, not essential. What do you mean it’s not essential? That’s how that person makes a living and keeps food in their children’s mouths.

That is an essential job. But I don’t want to go too far down that one again. Yeah, no, it’s a great point.

And yeah, again, just embracing, that’s not always fun. I feel like maturity, a big part of maturity for me has just been embracing that life is work. And again, there’s a lot of fun, there’s a lot of play, there’s a lot of other aspects to it, but the work is the majority of it, especially as you aspire to do more things.

Well, then you start to take on more tasks, right? If you want to be in shape and a good person and, you know, financially successful and, you know, a standup member in your community and, well, those ands are more work. There’s more discipline, there’s more training necessary. And so like, yeah, as a young person, I feel like you’re kind of averse to that.

You kind of want to do, you just want to hang out with your friends and whatever. But as you get older, just that, yeah, really embracing that. Like I try to, I mean, I love my work.

I’ve created something that I really enjoy doing. It’s amazing to me that I get to nerd out with other people, like other nerds like you for a living. Like, it’s amazing.

But yeah, I guess that’s just like the message I would like to push out there. It’s like, really try to embrace the work. We have this weird thing where like, you know, people are like, oh, I have to go to work.

And so they say like, it’s a bad thing. Like, you should embrace that. Even if it’s a job you don’t necessarily like, it better be a stepping stone on your larger vision to where you’re headed.

And that’s the key to actually making that forward momentum. Yeah, I think perhaps one advantage that I’ve had in life, I’ve had a lot of advantages, but something, I don’t know whether this was like unconscious or conscious, but I remember like in my late teens, really spending a lot of time just thinking about, just really thinking about like what my mission is in this world and what I want to do. And I don’t think most people ever do that.

Perhaps they don’t have the, I’m sure some people don’t really have the luxury to, but I think a lot of times it’s just this combination of hurriedness and peer pressure and family pushing people in a certain way. And even the schools and college system, like, you know, just you’re kind of just putting someone on a track. It’s like, you know, you go to school and then you, you know, school, high school, college, go straight into the job market.

Now you’re boom, you’re already in debt. And now you just run, you just run on this wheel. The track comes with all the limiting beliefs, right? Like it’s almost like part of being on the track is like you’re in this lane.

So you’re, what’s that scene in Inception where the guy’s like shooting with a little AR up in the bird’s nest. And the guy goes, you mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bit bigger. And he dreams up like the grenade launcher.

It’s like people get in that track and they’re afraid to dream bigger. Maybe they don’t know they can dream bigger. Yeah.

And it’s interesting because I think that gets beaten out of people because kids believe it. Yes, right. There’s something that happens between childhood and adulthood where for so many people that creativity and dreaming and imagination gets snuffed out.

And I think there’s a healthy balance of maintaining some, do you know, I’ll tell you who has this incredibly and it’s so visual, Elon Musk. There’s something so childlike in him. Did you see it? Did you see him yesterday at the inauguration? No.

Jumping, dude, he was like an excited seven year old. Just literally like, he was so happy. He was bouncing around on stage, like to the point that, you know, he went like that, like throwing his heart out to people.

And some people are like, oh, did he do a Nazi? And it’s like, even when, like I’ve spoken to him and when he talks about like making human beings interplanetary and going to Mars and going to space, like it’s, there’s something really childish about, like if you talk to a little boy and they just have this like huge imagination. And I think a combination of, you know, maybe it’s a lot of things. I understand as you become more mature, it’s important to be grounded in reality.

But I think that often goes overboard into cynicism. And I think because so many people don’t live their dreams and have given up on them, they tend to project that on others. And it happens in all sorts of ways.

People, for whatever reason, maybe it’s that misery loves company thing. People like to project their own personal limitations and limiting beliefs on others. I see it all the time.

I hear it all the time. And I don’t think in most cases it’s malicious. But people, yeah, people do it nonetheless, right? It’s the way that, you know, people will talk to someone who is going to become a father or a mother and they’ll tell the, they’ll like, they’ll give parenthood the worst PR possible, right? You know what I mean? They’re like, oh, I hope you get ready to never sleep again.

You know what I mean? It’s like, why are you, like, I know that there’s, yes, I’m aware that if you have a newborn, there will be some sleepless nights or something. But it’s like, why is the thing you choose to highlight and put in their brain like negative? Why don’t you give them some words of encouragement? Why is it always that? Or someone wants to start a business and instead of asking questions about it or seeing how maybe they could potentially help you or support you or whatever, you’re there talking about how, well, you know, 95% of businesses fail in the first story. Oh, like that’s a, you know, right? Like there’s people who constantly do that.

And I don’t think it’s, I don’t think in most cases it’s intentional, but I think that a lot of, I think a lot of people allow other adults to beat the sort of dream, the imagination out of them. And oftentimes it’s parents, right? When you have, even in certain cultures, like I get so many, I’ve had so many people ask me, knowing my background is from Nigeria, I guess Nigerian parents, maybe like Indian and Chinese parents have a bit of a reputation of like wanting all their kids to be, you know, doctor or engineer or accountant or lawyer, right? Like very, which again, I think generally comes from a good place because those have been stable careers for a long time. Thankfully, my parents have always supported me in what I do and my, you know, creative activities and so on.

So I’m blessed in that regard. But I think sadly, oftentimes parents and siblings and aunts and uncles also can crush that, that thing in children and young people where they really do believe, hey, I can, like, yeah, I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a dancer.

I want to be a professional artist. I want to be a musician. You know, not all of them are going to succeed with it, but if there is some inkling of talent and interest there, I would think that should be nurtured and encouraged and developed rather than, oh no, like.

Get a real job. Yeah, yeah, get a real job. Then, you know, like just snuff it out.

And yeah, I guess I feel quite passionately about that. Yeah, we are these, I mean, the child’s archetype for this, right? Just they’re infinitely creative and discovery and imagination all the time. And I’m thinking like my five, six-year-old daughter, like that’s the mode she’s in all the time.

But yeah, at some point in adulthood, it does get snuffed out a little bit, which is necessary to some extent. You can’t run around playing imaginary all the time, right? You got to drive and, you know, take care of business or whatever. But we should be cautious to extinguish that flame because that, man, that’s where the magic comes from, right? It’s all the inventiveness.

There’s a quote, something like, the world is a museum of passion projects. I hope I’m saying that correctly. We’re like, you realize, you come to some point in your adult life, we realize that everything that you see that’s man-made was created by someone just like you, basically, right? Like someone that has flaws and strengths and all the things in between, but through, you know, passion and focus, they were able to create things that other people value and find useful.

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And something that sort of strikes me is everyone is, the most extraordinary people, for the most part, are pretty much like normal people who chose to do extraordinary things. I think sometimes people have this idea that celebrities or super successful entrepreneurs or whatever, they’re almost kind of like a different species. Like they’re just a whole different breed of human being.

And it’s like, you meet them and you talk to them and you spend time and you’re kind of like, hey, this guy’s more, almost like everyone I’ve met is more normal than you almost think they’re going to be. I’ve had people meet me and say this. They’re like, I’m surprised by how normal you are.

I’m like, what do you mean? They’re like, I don’t know. Like I see you on social media and on YouTube and like, I just think you’re going to be all, you know? And I’m just like, no, like I’m a normal dude. I’ll talk to anybody.

I’m normal. Like I’ve just made certain decisions and I’m passionate about what I’m passionate about. There’s a distortion that comes with the spotlight, right? People see you in the spotlight and they characterize you in certain ways with the limited knowledge they have about you.

And then they meet you like, oh, it’s just a normal guy. Yeah. Like I’ve felt this with so many people.

People are like, oh, what’s Joe Rogan like in real life? I’m like, he’s exactly the same. I’m like, have you listened to his podcast? I’m like, he’s exactly the same. He’s friendly.

He’s curious. He’s funny. He’s very open-minded.

He likes to talk about ideas. He’s into his fitness. You already know what he’s into.

He’s like, and again, that’s a, what a wonderful example. Like he just started his podcast, just like, you know nothing special, just chatting with some of his comedy buddies in a room with like very basic equipment. And then over the course of time, five, 10, you know 10 years, it just, yeah.

It just grows into something extraordinary. When people, I’ve had many people ask me, you know, like what was it like to meet Elon Musk? Like, what was the, what did you take? The thing I learned from him actually is not the biggest thing I learned from him is, let me say it was more of like a reaffirmation, which is no matter how successful, famous, wealthy whatever you are, no one has like an excuse to be an a-hole. So I’m not obsessed with materialism and, you know earthly treasures and so on, right.

That’s not my strongest orientation. But if we’re being frank, if there were a man on this planet who had a right to be an, to be arrogant to be prideful, to consider himself a bit better than most people, I’d say Elon has a pretty good claim $400 billion net worth probably going to be the first trillionaire. Like, you know, I don’t know how many companies he’s running Tesla, SpaceX, X, like doing all right.

Like if someone had like a sort of right to be a bit like pompous and whatever. Still schooling people on online video games. And he’s not at all.

He’s so humble. He’s so down to earth, so friendly. He’s like a normal guy doing extraordinary things.

Yeah, he’s smart, but he’s, you know, he’d sit here with us and just hang and chat, you know what I mean? And I’m like, okay, well, if he can be like that no one else, like, no matter how big I get or anyone else gets like, cause you know I think in the old celebrity world, people were used to like celebrities having this whole, like, you know just being almost like they’re larger than life, ivory tower kind of thing. And I’m like, yeah, no, there’s no, it doesn’t matter how wealthy and successful you are. There’s not really an excuse for that.

You should always be grounded in reality. You should recognize that, you know whatever level of success you have, like normally it’s it’s because of other people’s support. 100%.

Because of other people’s support. And you’re still that same human being. Yeah, I’ve changed in my 38 years but I’m still the same guy I was when I was 28, 18, eight.

Like fundamentally, I was kind of still the same person. Same soul, different container. You know, you still got, you know people still have certain insecurities or certain things, certain memories of like, you know.

So yeah, I think that’s, that’s just that really resonated with me when I met him because I noticed he, he was as happy to meet me as I was to meet him. Yeah, that’s so great. Like I was like, yo, I think I’m going to be here.

Jeez, like I’m sitting here and you know like this with the mics and the cameras set up and like, I’m waiting, you know cause there was a two hour delay. So we were waiting for two hours for him to come in. Cause he was having meetings and we’re like, you know I’m there with like the producers and we’re all like, geez like, you know what I mean? And then like when I met him, he was like Zuby, like so great to meet you.

You know what I mean? I was just like, ah, like, this is, this is cool. And yeah, I’ve had that with, you know, a lot lots of different people. I don’t want to like name drop too much.

But it’s cool. And I, I, I’m so happy. I’ll tell you something I love.

I do love about this social media and digital age is I do love how it’s shrinking the world in many ways. And just allowing billions of people regardless of their age, background, nationality geographic location, whatever, like we’re all in the same place. And you can actually just reach everyone.

Like everyone, people are all just interacting there. And I think that’s, that’s amazing. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to result in but this cross-pollination of ideas and personalities.

Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. It’s much more of an idea meritocracy, right? Where the best ideas are rising to the surface, hopefully. And then too, we were talking about this the other day but the fact that people can now physically self-organize and relocate themselves to places with people that share their same values, right? That the ability to discover other individuals and communities that share deeply held values as your own.

That’s very powerful, right? That was actually a big friction point historically pre-internet. It was hard to do that, you know? You don’t get to choose where you’re born. And oftentimes it’s hard to unplug yourself from one culture and plug yourself into somewhere else.

But with the internet and with travel becoming so cheap and easy, it changes the way we organize ourselves. It does, it’s very exciting, man. It’s very exciting.

And I don’t think the average person yet realizes how amazing it is. We’ve now had the smartphone plus social media combination be ubiquitous maybe for about, let’s say about 15 years. Maybe like about 2012 onward, most people in developed countries have had a smartphone and online access.

And even though people use it so much and have such high screen time, I don’t think most people have sort of fathomed just how powerful this communication tool is yet. I think most people are still, you know, they’re just kind of scrolling and consuming and being entertained, but they’re not really like, hey, what am I holding in the palm of my hand here? Like when I hold my phone, I’m like, I have, this is a gateway to everybody in the world. Like I can just tap some buttons here and I can literally get a message out to millions of people.

I can just send a message to some of this person or that person, high, low, whatever. And there’s a good chance they’ll see it. And yeah, I just think the power for that, for business, for personal relationships, for information learning, just for whatever it is, it’s incredible and it’s going to continue to grow.

I might get some of the numbers wrong. I think right now there’s around 4 billion people on social media. And I think in the next 15 to 20 years approximately that number is going to about double.

So there’s still several billion more people to come. So what we’ve just been through in the last 15 years across many parts of the world, parts of South America, parts of Africa, parts of Asia, all these people who are not yet connected, they’re coming, they’re coming. We might think people are there like, oh, is it too late to start a podcast? Is it too late to start a YouTube channel? Everything’s saturated.

I’m like, bro, like you have no idea. Even of the people who are on these, out of that 4 billion, how many are really creating anything? How many are, you know, 1% are actually like using it to do something. And mainstream media is still in decline, right? So there’s still people coming, even of the 4 billion people that are online, there’s still more people, the more attrition coming from mainstream media to social media.

So the market is just growing. Yeah, it’s just growing. And I think long-term the truth wins.

So yeah, there’ll be waves of censorship. Yeah. There’ll be some various types of sort of digital combat.

Sure. And there’ll be all sorts of things that happen. I can’t predict it all, but I think long-term the truth wins.

And I think that goodness wins. Yeah. I think one other interesting thought I’ve had with this is, I believe we’re past the age where I think this is for better.

It’s for worse for the bad guys, but I think we’re actually living in an age now where you can’t, how would I put it? You can’t really live a double life in the way people, if you look at celebrity culture for the past decades and I assume centuries, right? People have been able to get away with a lot of evil and wicked stuff. You’ve been able to be a horrible human being in the real world while having this public image and facade that you’re some sort of angel and wonderful person. That’s dying out.

Yeah. It’s dying out. It’s getting to the point where it’s like, things are so authentic and transparent and there’s just so many internet super sleuths that if you’re living this life where actually in the real world, you’re a real scumbag and you’re doing all this horrible stuff and then you’re putting out this persona, you will get found out.

For sure. You will get found out. In the past it could happen.

Now it’s just like the era of truth and realness and authenticity for better or for worse. It’s there. And when I look at the people who are sort of becoming more famous and better known and becoming more trusted, it’s a higher caliber.

I think it’s a higher caliber of individual because it almost has to be. It has to be. People want the, I would think that the modest success and fame, quote unquote, I’ve managed to gather over the last few years with at least several million people knowing who I am and liking what I do.

It’s just been from me being me and being authentic and just sharing what I genuinely think. I’m not trying to shut anyone else down but just saying, hey, this is my perspective. This is what I think.

Here’s what I think is useful. Here’s my take on this. Here’s my thought on that.

And that is enough for people to gravitate towards and to build the trust and for people to be tuning in and wanting to know what you’re saying. And there’s lots of people doing this in different spaces in the finance. Look at the revolution happening in the finance world.

You have all the traditional mainstream channels and they’re kind of there doing their thing. And then you could have like a 19 year old with an ex-account who’s just like dropping gems about inflation and Bitcoin and the economy and whatnot. And people will gravitate towards them.

The truth. Yeah, people will gravitate towards it. And you know what? If there’s a debate and it’s like, okay, well, this person’s speaking the truth, this person’s wrong, then it gets corrected.

It’s all in the real time. If I go online and I say something that is just like palatably wrong or it’s just, you know, whether that’s objectively or morally. And then, you know, people will, man, people would love to correct me, right? People will jump in and that conversation happens.

Community notes and all that. So I think that’s wonderful. It’s a discovery.

Like we often, you know, the word truth, it’s like no one has all the truth, right? It’s like, we all have little apertures on what’s really happening. And then we collect all of that data together to discover what the truth is. These devices have radically increased the number of apertures basically in the world, right? One of the examples I gave was, this is a piece I wrote previously that, you know, Martin Luther King, when he was marching and protesting racial injustice, he did that a lot of times.

But it was when, and they got beat up by cops and, you know, roughed up a lot of times. But the one that got televised, I think it was in Alabama, that’s the one that like set off the fire. And like now there was actual reform passed after that.

So it’s like when you increase the windows of perception for people, we’re able to engage more effectively in that truth discovery process. And that’s my big optimism for the digital age. That’s why I think a lot of the veils are falling off, kind of these old power structures and, you know, the truth or versions of the truth, conspiracy theories, whatever you want to call it, they’re spreading like wildfire online.

And then you get the wisdom of the crowd, cross-checking it, rechecking it, you know, upside down and sideways. And it gives you more accurate portrayal of the world basically, versus getting it all from, you know, ABC, CBS, whatever top-down media company we had in the past era. Yeah.

So that’s all good. It’s all good. And it’s, you know, and it’s more democratic.

It’s more meritocratic. I would say, you know, it doesn’t, can the algorithm spin things a certain way? And yes, of course there can always be, you know, nonsense out there. And there always will be because human beings have, you know, free will.

And if there’s freedom of speech, not everything is going to be true and accurate. Yeah. And we’re just getting started still.

Cause it’s like, we’re still on centralized social media. Like I think, you know, I was telling you before we started, like I have a big hope for decentralized social media in the future. And hopefully we get past the censorship thing online.

Then we can just have this process like thrown wide open. Right. It’s a truth discovery process without distortion.

I’ve kept you way too long already. All good, man. But I have to ask you one last question, like on this theme of adventure, where you’ve been, where you’re going, like what is, what are the twists and turns for the adventure in front of you? Like, what are you, what’s next for you? Where do you see your life going? Yeah.

For me, the next big chapter is going to be family. That’s going to be the next, you know, very significant change in my life is going to be, you know, I come from a big family, but starting to create my own, that is to me going to be a, that’s kind of obviously the next big thing. I have creative projects.

I’m going to have more books. Obviously I’m going to have more podcasts. I’m going to release new music, but I’ve done all that before.

What I’ve never done before is brought new life into the world. So I am excited about that chapter of in the future, getting married, having children, and everything that comes with that, because I know that that is a, that’s a lifelong mission. Oh yeah.

That’s not, it’s not just zero to 18. It’s I’m 38 years old and I talk to my parents all the time and my parents are still parenting myself and my four siblings very much. Now that they’re in there, you know, both my parents are in their seventies now and they’ve got all their grandkids more to come.

And yeah, for me, that’s, that’s the next chapter. That’s the next chapter. And it’s I’m ready to, I’m ready to embrace it.

I’m excited about it. Yeah. That’ll, that’ll be it, man.

That’ll be it. That, God bless you, brother. Thank you.

I’m so excited for you. I mean, it is, yeah, it’s, it’s what life is all about. Right.

It’s like creating life. Yeah. So dude, thank you so much for coming to Miami.

Well, you were already here, but thanks for coming all the way over to the studio. You’re welcome, bro. And I think we’re going to flip the script now, do this the other way.

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