Danny Jones Podcast - #169 - The Dark History of Albania & The Future of the American Empire | Bek Lover
Aired: 2023-01-19
Duration: 02:03:22


=== Perpetual Conflict and Autonomy (14:59) ===

[00:00:09]  Why is it that every Albanian I've ever met looks like they would kill you for sport?
[00:00:17]  You know what it is, man?
[00:00:18]  We're a people that have been in perpetual conflict, man.
[00:00:23]  You know, the Albanian territories sit in the crossroads of the empires.
[00:00:28]  So if you look at where we're positioned, because, you know, I know Americans are amazing with geography.
[00:00:33]  You know, we're at the crossroads, man.
[00:00:36]  We're north of Greece.
[00:00:37]  We're south of Serbia.
[00:00:39]  We're in really technically in the heart of the world, but we're in the heart of the empires, right?
[00:00:43]  That's where the Roman Empire had provinces.
[00:00:46]  That's where, you know, the Ottoman Empire spent a good five, six hundred years.
[00:00:54]  World War I started there, right?
[00:00:56]  In Bosnia.
[00:00:57]  So when you look at the region that we come from, unfortunately, it's been a very hostile place for a very long time.
[00:01:05]  And unfortunately, it looks like it's going to continue to be that.
[00:01:08]  So the Albanian people, The world calls us Albanian, and it's very similar to how we have the word Jew.
[00:01:16]  The largest tribe, if I'm not mistaken, of the Israelites was the Judeans.
[00:01:19]  So that's what people call them.
[00:01:20]  They had more contact with that tribe.
[00:01:22]  That's where the word Jew comes from, right?
[00:01:25]  The largest tribe of the ancient Illyrians was the Albanoi tribe, because the Albanians are also a tribal people.
[00:01:33]  So the world had more contact with that.
[00:01:36]  So we got the word Albanian from that.
[00:01:37]  We don't call ourselves Albanian.
[00:01:39]  The word that we use in our own language is called Shiptar.
[00:01:41]  Shiptar?
[00:01:42]  Shiptar.
[00:01:43]  So, like, Shiptar.
[00:01:46]  And when another Albanian sees another Albanian, you're like, hey, what's up, Sheepa?
[00:01:49]  So, listen, it's unfortunately still one of the poorest regions in the world.
[00:01:54]  It's the poorest region in all of Europe.
[00:01:57]  We've been through conflict after conflict.
[00:02:00]  We've been struggling for our freedom for over 2,000 years.
[00:02:03]  And I would equate us to like being kind of like the Afghanis of Europe, a people that are constantly under conflict, constantly struggling to live in peace, but we're not as, you know, not as similar history as the Afghanis.
[00:02:18]  But What I'm saying is we come from a very rugged terrain.
[00:02:21]  It's very mountainous.
[00:02:22]  It's the second most mountainous country in all of Europe after Switzerland.
[00:02:25]  You didn't really have roads up until the last 10 years.
[00:02:29]  So a lot of times, you know, we're mountainous regions, very poor, always in a constant state of war.
[00:02:37]  That's going to age you, Danny.
[00:02:39]  And it's going to make you rugged.
[00:02:40]  It's going to make you tough because you have to be tough just to survive, you know?
[00:02:44]  Those stories of I used to walk 20 miles to get to school.
[00:02:47]  Like my dad really walked 20 miles to get to school.
[00:02:51]  Like he was not lying to me.
[00:02:53]  You know, I'm born and raised in America.
[00:02:55]  I'm first generation.
[00:02:56]  I'm very blessed to be here, man, and how lucky I am.
[00:03:02]  And I know a lot of Albanians feel that way because every time I go back to Albania in the Albanian territories, the number one question I'm asked is, How do I get to America, man?
[00:03:13]  I want to get to America.
[00:03:14]  And everybody wants to come here, nowhere else.
[00:03:17]  Yeah, here.
[00:03:18]  Yeah, I was telling you right before we started, back in the day when I was like in my early, my mid teens, I worked construction and I worked with these two Albanian guys.
[00:03:27]  And I never heard anybody talk so positively about America before.
[00:03:33]  They were just so happy to be here.
[00:03:36]  They were some of the most fun, kind people I'd ever met.
[00:03:39]  And I still keep in touch.
[00:03:40]  I still talk to them.
[00:03:42]  This one guy, his name is Illyrian.
[00:03:48]  So our language is the oldest original Indo European language in existence.
[00:03:52]  When you look at the family tree of languages, you have Latin based languages like Portuguese, Spanish, Italian.
[00:03:58]  They're all cousins.
[00:04:00]  Then you have the Slavic languages like Russian, Polish, right?
[00:04:05]  You know, Serbian.
[00:04:06]  These are Slavic languages.
[00:04:08]  Yeah.
[00:04:08]  The Albanian language comes from nothing.
[00:04:11]  It's original when you look at it.
[00:04:12]  So, you know, a lot of the countries that surround us, unfortunately, are very hostile towards us.
[00:04:17]  And I really hope that our neighbors can just, let's just accept the status quo, man.
[00:04:22]  Like nobody's won in these conflicts.
[00:04:25]  You know, speaking about your friends, in the Albanian culture, it's extremely important.
[00:04:29]  The guest, the guest.
[00:04:31]  They have an expression in Albanian.
[00:04:33]  The guest is the god of the house.
[00:04:36]  Hmm.
[00:04:37]  You know, basically, When someone comes over your home, you're responsible for their life.
[00:04:43]  The second they cross your threshold, you're supposed to treat them better than you treat yourself.
[00:04:47]  You're supposed to feed them better than you feed yourself.
[00:04:50]  They're sleeping in your bed.
[00:04:51]  You're sleeping on the floor.
[00:04:53]  You take your shoes off before you enter the house.
[00:04:55]  The house is a sacred place, the home.
[00:04:58]  So when a guest comes over, you know, ask anyone that's ever visited an Albanian family.
[00:05:04]  You know, everything's coming out.
[00:05:07]  Every food, every beverage, whatever we have, whatever you want.
[00:05:10]  If we don't have what you want, they're sending their kid out.
[00:05:12]  To the store.
[00:05:13]  The guest comes first because it's very important, you know.
[00:05:18]  But listen, the longer you live in the melting pot, we start to kind of adopt, right, the American way of life where it might be a little bit different.
[00:05:24]  It's like, hey, you want to sleep over my house?
[00:05:26]  You're sleeping on the couch.
[00:05:27]  Right.
[00:05:28]  But we are a very loyal people, you know.
[00:05:32]  What bothers me, and, you know, I'm from, my mom's family's from Tropoya, where if you watch the movie Taken, right, that's where the guys come from and they get this bad reputation.
[00:05:43]  You know, of being these guys that, you know, we don't want, we want to avoid certain words for the sake of the podcast.
[00:05:47]  But, you know, that movie, everyone knows what it's about.
[00:05:49]  It's about a guy whose daughter gets taken and blah, blah, blah, and sold into the black market.
[00:05:54]  And this is like the most watched movie that has anything to do with our people.
[00:05:58]  And for me, it's like heartbreaking because it's like we've already had so much of a tragic history.
[00:06:03]  We've done so much for the world that the world doesn't even know about.
[00:06:06]  And this is how we're portrayed, you know, in films when most Albanians live, you know, half of our people live abroad because of the perpetual conflicts, because of the hostility of our neighbors.
[00:06:18]  Because of the poverty that our people live in, most, you know, half of our people live outside.
[00:06:24]  They live in Germany, Switzerland, Austria.
[00:06:26]  They live all over the world, Australia.
[00:06:28]  But there's a big chunk of us in America.
[00:06:32]  The love for America, as you mentioned earlier, goes back to the early 1900s.
[00:06:38]  Most Americans don't realize that you have no greater ally, not just in Europe, in the world.
[00:06:47]  When it comes to the relationship of the American and the Albanian, what the American needs to understand is that the Albanian people are willing to fight and die for the United States of America.
[00:06:58]  You want proof?
[00:07:01]  Danny?
[00:07:02]  The proof is when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Ottoman Turkey, they controlled most of that region for 500 years.
[00:07:09]  When they collapsed, there was no borders and boundaries.
[00:07:13]  You're under an empire.
[00:07:13]  It's just one big blanket.
[00:07:14]  There was no borders and boundaries.
[00:07:16]  The Balkan Wars erupted.
[00:07:18]  And everyone that was stronger was just grabbing land.
[00:07:20]  The Greeks took what they could, the Serbs took what they could, and we were in the middle of all these different countries and we lost about 70% of our territory.
[00:07:28]  We would have lost 100% of our territory if it wasn't for Woodrow Wilson, the president of the time.
[00:07:33]  The first Albanians to America settled in Boston.
[00:07:37]  So I always make a funny joke.
[00:07:39]  Most Americans don't know a cute little fact.
[00:07:41]  Two countries started in Massachusetts the United States of America when the first pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and Albania.
[00:07:51]  Albania.
[00:07:52]  Was recognized as a sovereign nation because of Woodrow Wilson and the first Albanians that migrated to Boston.
[00:07:59]  Wow.
[00:07:59]  They were able to court the friendship of Woodrow Wilson, who was the president at the time.
[00:08:05]  One of them went to Harvard.
[00:08:06]  We're talking about Faik Konitsa, who is a very influential person.
[00:08:10]  We owe our existence to him and a couple other figures in Boston.
[00:08:14]  They're buried there in the Forest Cemetery in Boston.
[00:08:19]  If it was not for them and their friendship with Woodrow Wilson, when we were being attacked by all of our neighbors, we would have lost 100% of our territory and we would have been the Kurds of Europe.
[00:08:29]  He went to the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson, which at the time was today's modern version of the United Nations.
[00:08:37]  Lobbied and said, Listen, you got to give these people something.
[00:08:40]  So, the love affair of our country with America is over 100 years old.
[00:08:45]  We literally owe our existence to the United States of America.
[00:08:49]  Now, we're much older than that.
[00:08:50]  Right.
[00:08:51]  But we're talking about in modern history where we had a chance to literally be wiped out.
[00:08:55]  The love affair continued in the late 90s when the war broke out in Kosovo and the Clinton administration got involved and initiated bombing against Serbia, which ended that conflict.
[00:09:10]  Made them withdraw.
[00:09:11]  And today Albania is I mean, Kosovo is recognized as an independent country, even though most Albanians consider it just Albania.
[00:09:18]  But we can't control what the world's doing with us.
[00:09:20]  Yeah, we built statues of American presidents, so if you go to Albania or Kosovo, you're going to see statues of George Bush, statues of Bill Clinton, statues of Hillary Clinton.
[00:09:32]  The highway that connects Kosovo and Albania is named Bu Biden Bo Biden Highway.
[00:09:38]  They named it after his son.
[00:09:39]  They don't know about us as Americans.
[00:09:40]  They don't know about our political strife right now, how we're, You know, at each other's throats, left and right.
[00:09:46]  They don't care about any of that.
[00:09:47]  They don't know what we're going through in America and they don't care about our politics.
[00:09:49]  They just want to respect the country.
[00:09:51]  They want to respect us as Americans.
[00:09:54]  As a matter of fact, after that conflict ended, they were naming their kids, if they had a boy, Clinton or Bill or Billy, and they were naming their daughters Hillary to respect America.
[00:10:05]  It wasn't about, they don't listen, they're not into our political strife over here.
[00:10:09]  Right.
[00:10:09]  So when I say that America is making a big mistake, yes, Albania joined NATO, Albania is in NATO, but Kosovo, Is at a force of 5,000.
[00:10:21]  That's all they're letting us have.
[00:10:23]  We can't defend ourselves.
[00:10:25]  And, you know, it's like a slap in the face when, you know, someone that was in the war, you know, underneath the buildings in New York when they, you know, they went down that day in September, you know, we went over there to take out this enemy that we ended up leaving in power anyway 20 years later, leaving them all these weapons that if they would have given us, we would have been a formidable force who's willing to fight and die for the United States of America.
[00:10:47]  If the American government said, Albanians, do you guys want to be.
[00:10:50]  A part of the US?
[00:10:51]  Are you willing to be the 51st state?
[00:10:54]  We would be the 51st state.
[00:10:56]  No hesitation.
[00:10:57]  I'm so confident in our love with this country that I know our nation, if they, rather than being the European Union, if they gave us a choice to be the 51st state, we would be.
[00:11:07]  That's how much love we have.
[00:11:09]  So I hope whoever watches this understands we need to be armed.
[00:11:13]  We need to be trained.
[00:11:14]  Not because we've never been the aggressor in history, we've never attacked our neighbors.
[00:11:18]  But if we're a force to be reckoned with, then maybe we will bring peace and stability to the Balkans.
[00:11:23]  Maybe our neighbors won't keep attacking us.
[00:11:25]  And we can have peace for once, permanently in the Balkans.
[00:11:31]  How does that make you feel?
[00:11:32]  Like having your unique perspective on the United States and living here and seeing all the strife going on here and all the division going on here.
[00:11:39]  What is that like?
[00:11:40]  It's terrifying.
[00:11:43]  You know, being born in the US and growing up here and being proud, and even when I would go back to visit, so even before the Kosovo war erupted, when I used to go visit my dad's family in Kosovo, I went there as a child first, as a baby.
[00:11:57]  But the first memories I have of it are in 91.
[00:12:01]  right when the Bosnian war erupted and Kosovo was still a part of Yugoslavia.
[00:12:05]  It was a province that had autonomy.
[00:12:09]  So we always had a special class.
[00:12:11]  You know, we were given a certain degree of self-rule under Yugoslavia, which at one point was a functioning country.
[00:12:19]  People got along.
[00:12:20]  People had jobs.
[00:12:21]  Like they had like, they didn't need visas to go to certain countries.
[00:12:24]  Like they had a decent life there for a while.
[00:12:26]  This guy kind of had it together.
[00:12:27]  I'm never a fan of socialism or communism, but this guy seemed to like give everyone like a break, let everyone live.
[00:12:34]  You know, people say life wasn't too bad under that guy, Tito.
[00:12:38]  He was the main figure of Yugoslavia for a very long time.
[00:12:42]  When nationalists got into power in these other different countries, those wars erupted.
[00:12:47]  So my first memory was getting off the plane, seeing soldiers with guns everywhere, checkpoints everywhere.
[00:12:54]  I'm leaving this beautiful life.
[00:12:56]  And when I was younger, we were really poor.
[00:12:57]  So it wasn't like I was leaving this extravagant home, I was leaving an apartment.
[00:13:01]  But compared to where I was brought up, and as bad as we might have been financially when I was younger, Going over there, I was like, wow, man, am I lucky.
[00:13:12]  And I'm living in a two bedroom apartment, you know, with my family.
[00:13:17]  To see, you know, no power most of the day, no running water most of the day, police everywhere, soldiers everywhere.
[00:13:24]  So during that time, Kosovo lost its autonomy when Milosevic came into power.
[00:13:30]  There was a brutal regime.
[00:13:31]  They laid off all the Albanians.
[00:13:33]  They fired them from their jobs.
[00:13:36]  And I'll say this to everyone that watches this, you know, my goal here is not to paint.
[00:13:40]  negative pictures of other communities.
[00:13:41]  I think there needs to come a point where we got to forgive each other and move on, but never forget what happened.
[00:13:46]  I lost a lot of family in that war.
[00:13:48]  Nobody wins in war.
[00:13:49]  They didn't win in war.
[00:13:51]  Our countries are all poor.
[00:13:53]  We're all struggling.
[00:13:54]  We're all suffering.
[00:13:56]  So coming from the U.S. with that perspective and seeing the opportunities that I had, I did phenomenal in school, brother.
[00:14:04]  Straight A student, academic scholarship, because I had a chance.
[00:14:07]  My cousins couldn't even go to school.
[00:14:09]  They were in private homes.
[00:14:11]  Albanian children were not allowed to go to school in Kosovo.
[00:14:13]  This is a fact.
[00:14:14]  We never asked to succeed from Yugoslavia.
[00:14:17]  We only wanted autonomy.
[00:14:19]  And if you look at all the archives of the news, the first demonstrations, the first protests were never for the Albanian population to break off of Yugoslavia.
[00:14:27]  It was simply to restore their autonomy that was given to them by Tito.
[00:14:31]  We didn't ask to break off.
[00:14:33]  We didn't ask for an independent country.
[00:14:35]  But when the brutal crackdown came, we declared our independence, but we did not bear arms.
[00:14:41]  We chose to follow the teachings and the philosophies of.
[00:14:45]  Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, we tried civil disobedience, peaceful protests, very similar to what happened in the civil rights movement here in the U.S. If you look at the images of Kosovo in 97, 98, people were being beaten with dogs, hoses on us.
[00:15:00]  They'd come to your house, round you up, take you to jail, torture you, beat you for the same rights that many Americans are giving up today.

=== Suppression in the Village (15:27) ===

[00:15:08]  When you ask me about what do you see?
[00:15:10]  I'm very worried when I start to see suppression.
[00:15:13]  We can't have open dialogue about things that are impacting our life.
[00:15:16]  We're avoiding certain words here, and you know why.
[00:15:18]  We had this discussion before we started.
[00:15:20]  But everything that's happened in the last three years, folks, that's affected our lives, and we can't sit down and talk about certain doctors or certain politicians.
[00:15:28]  And if we do, things get taken down.
[00:15:31]  Is this America anymore?
[00:15:32]  Because when you start to have that type of suppression, it reminds me of seeing the type of propaganda that was being pushed out there during those conflicts where my family comes from.
[00:15:45]  The fact that you can turn on the mainstream news and never see a world leader speaking unfiltered.
[00:15:51]  I don't want your opinion.
[00:15:52]  Let me see what Putin's got to say.
[00:15:55]  Let me see what Zelensky's got.
[00:15:56]  Let me see the whole one hour if I want to.
[00:15:58]  And most people don't even know where to even pull up their speech and look at it or read it.
[00:16:01]  You'd have to actually go in and search and find it.
[00:16:04]  The fact that we can't see the president of the red nation, right?
[00:16:08]  The red flag with the yellow stars that makes everything we own, right?
[00:16:12]  That when's the last time you've seen their president talk for more than five seconds on the news?
[00:16:16]  So, how are you going to formulate an educated, honest opinion about current events, what's going on in our nation, let alone in other people's countries that impact our life, brother?
[00:16:25]  If we go to war, what do these wars benefit our country?
[00:16:28]  20 years of conflict, the Middle East went on fire.
[00:16:32]  Those people that we went to take out overseas after that horrible day that happened in New York City, right, where two buildings came down, those people are still in power.
[00:16:42]  So, what did the American gain?
[00:16:44]  So, to see this type of stuff going on, to me, our deficit where it is, the amount of money we're printing is terrifying.
[00:16:53]  And to hear the level of ignorance I hear from people saying, hey, you know what, man, we're America, you know, like we'll never fall.
[00:16:58]  Even Albanians, America will never fall.
[00:17:01]  I go, brother.
[00:17:03]  Every empire can fall.
[00:17:05]  Every country can fall.
[00:17:06]  And you, as an Albanian, should know how many empires have we seen collapse.
[00:17:09]  When they ruled us, they were the most powerful empires in the world.
[00:17:13]  And where are they today?
[00:17:14]  We visit their runes and the artifacts that they left behind.
[00:17:17]  And the same thing can happen to us.
[00:17:19]  And you know what?
[00:17:20]  I believe if we don't change course soon, we will be no longer existent the way we've known it throughout our lives because we're close in age, me and you.
[00:17:29]  Yeah.
[00:17:29]  How long, when you were, so you were born in, in, New York or Texas?
[00:17:33]  I was born in Texas.
[00:17:34]  Texas.
[00:17:36]  Shock, shock to those of you out there, but I grew up in the New York City area my entire life.
[00:17:39]  And how old were you when you decided to go back to Albania?
[00:17:43]  And what made you decide to go back there?
[00:17:45]  I didn't decide to go back, it was just family there.
[00:17:48]  And I didn't go to Albania in the beginning because Albania communism had just collapsed and it was literally like the wild, wild west at that point.
[00:17:54]  Now it's an amazing place to visit.
[00:17:56]  It's growing exponentially with tourism.
[00:17:58]  But 91 was the first time I remember going.
[00:18:00]  My dad took me in the 80s as a child.
[00:18:02]  I've seen videos of me there, but I don't, of course, I don't remember.
[00:18:06]  So 91.
[00:18:07]  You know, I get off the airplane, and then they had a rule at that time.
[00:18:11]  If you were outside of Yugoslavia or Serbia at that time, you had 24 hours to report to your local police station and register why you were in the country.
[00:18:21]  And they'd ask you all kinds of crazy questions.
[00:18:23]  And at that time, there wasn't a lot of Albanian Americans going back to visit.
[00:18:26]  So I remember always being nervous, scared.
[00:18:29]  There were checkpoints everywhere.
[00:18:30]  They would stop us.
[00:18:31]  Sometimes they would come into my family's homes in the middle of the night.
[00:18:35]  And it's just like people don't realize what it means when you have that type of.
[00:18:39]  Tyranny or overreach that you know to live in that type of a world where they can just come into your house for no reason, interrogate you for no reason, arrest you for no reason, you have no trial like you know, these are things we take for granted as Americans.
[00:18:54]  You should never be giving up your inalienable rights, your constitutional rights.
[00:18:58]  You know, a lot of these things are in play right now, whether Americans realize it or not.
[00:19:01]  So, to see this type of stuff happening in our society where I haven't really seen anything this volatile and you know, since I've been alive.
[00:19:11]  Is very scary, man, and it's very alarming to me.
[00:19:14]  And I really hope people are paying attention.
[00:19:16]  I feel like when you're a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth generation American, you know, you were born with this privilege that you don't even realize you have.
[00:19:25]  A lot of people don't travel, man.
[00:19:27]  I tell them, go look outside, man.
[00:19:31]  No one's saying we're perfect, and no one's ignoring our past.
[00:19:34]  As Americans, I'm speaking as an American first.
[00:19:38]  Yes, we have a dark past, no one's denying it.
[00:19:41]  But please go visit other countries right now and see how they treat you.
[00:19:45]  Being a different race, a different nationality, I've experienced racism because in certain parts of Europe they can tell my name's Albanian, they wouldn't let me into nightclubs, man, just because they knew I was Albanian.
[00:19:55]  So I know that uncomfort.
[00:19:58]  I also know what it feels like to be hated to the point where you lose 30 people in your family.
[00:20:02]  I lost 30 people in a single day during the Kosovo War.
[00:20:07]  The only person to survive the massacre of that village in my family is my first cousin.
[00:20:11]  He was shot over 30 times on top of a mountain.
[00:20:16]  No medical aid, no help.
[00:20:17]  They're hunting him down.
[00:20:18]  It's kind of like Behind Enemy Lines, the movie.
[00:20:21]  He's wounded.
[00:20:21]  They can't, you know, they're hunting him down.
[00:20:23]  They can't find him.
[00:20:25]  He has no help, no food.
[00:20:27]  My friend, you get shot once and you don't get help in a day or two, you're probably dead.
[00:20:31]  That's why I believe unless it's your time, and I've seen too many instances of this in life, unless it's your time, nothing on this earth can kill you.
[00:20:39]  He was shot 30 times?
[00:20:41]  And his lower extremities, three to four days.
[00:20:44]  His documentary is online.
[00:20:45]  I can get you footage of it.
[00:20:46]  You can show him explaining what happened to him.
[00:20:50]  First, he witnessed the death of all his first cousins.
[00:20:52]  And then he's coming down this mountain with his foot.
[00:20:57]  Tied around his neck with a belt, crawling like this with his arms on his butt down a mountain.
[00:21:01]  He fell down hundreds of yards.
[00:21:03]  How the?
[00:21:04]  I got the message he was dead.
[00:21:06]  So when I got the phone call, I found out these 30 guys because I used to go back every summer.
[00:21:09]  He said, You know, when you used to visit, these guys made it bearable for me because they were similar to me in age.
[00:21:14]  We'd play hide and go seek.
[00:21:15]  They treated me like your friends treated you that you talked about very hospitable.
[00:21:19]  He's come from America.
[00:21:20]  We have to honor him.
[00:21:21]  We have to like take care of him.
[00:21:24]  What's crazy is that I used to feel really sad, bro, because being so privileged at that time, the Albanians were not using the currency of Yugoslavia.
[00:21:34]  Because of the crackdown and the brutal oppression, we created parallel systems trying to supersede the oppression that was going on.
[00:21:42]  So we had our own school systems within private homes.
[00:21:45]  So imagine there's a beautiful high school, but there's no Albanians in it.
[00:21:47]  They're not allowed to go to school.
[00:21:48]  We had an apartheid.
[00:21:50]  And meanwhile, we're 90% of the population in that province, right?
[00:21:55]  And we had no rights.
[00:21:57]  So I would see what they went through.
[00:21:59]  They started using the German mark.
[00:22:00]  This is before the Euro.
[00:22:01]  So they were using the Deutschmark.
[00:22:03]  As a secondary currency and also because inflation was so high with the currency of Yugoslavia that they used it was easier just to do business with the German mark.
[00:22:13]  So at that time when I would visit, one dollar was like two to three marks.
[00:22:17]  Depending on the year that I went, it was between two and three times our money.
[00:22:22]  So one dollar was getting me three of their dollars.
[00:22:26]  My dad would give me a thousand bucks for two months and I couldn't spend the money man, and I just felt bad because like here I am, this little kid, 12 years old, and I'm buying everyone food And drinks, and I'm not even thinking about it.
[00:22:38]  I'm telling people in the village, yo, whatever you need, man, grab bags of flour, whatever you need, rice.
[00:22:44]  I'd still go home with money at the end of the two months, man.
[00:22:48]  And I'm like sitting here feeling bad that I'm buying 40 year olds and 50 year olds food.
[00:22:53]  So when you say to me, how did that impact your life?
[00:22:57]  I was like, God gave me this chance to be born in this beautiful country, to have a chance to do anything I want, learn anything I want.
[00:23:03]  And I'm going to point fingers and blame people when I see my family, I see my friends, I see my people, they have no chance.
[00:23:09]  They have no freedom.
[00:23:11]  They have no rights.
[00:23:14]  No, man, I love this place.
[00:23:15]  I'll die for this country, man.
[00:23:17]  And for me to see where we are is lack of information, suppression of information, ignorance at the utmost degree.
[00:23:27]  Ignorance squared is what's going on right now.
[00:23:30]  And it's sad what's going on in our country right now.
[00:23:32]  Do you have kids?
[00:23:33]  I got three.
[00:23:35]  What sort of lessons do you teach your own kids about the world, about life, about the way they treat other people that?
[00:23:43]  You've gained from your experiences being over there and coming back to here.
[00:23:49]  So, I've been able to maintain the next generation in this nation, even though I believe the majority of our people will.
[00:23:56]  See, what's sad is because of everything that's happened to our people, and 50% of us live abroad, we run the real risk of losing half of our population, not to war or conflict, but to poverty.
[00:24:08]  So, when we all live abroad in two generations, brother, we're not going to know how to speak Albanian anymore.
[00:24:14]  Most Albanians 100 years from now won't even know where Albania is, right?
[00:24:17]  Because they become.
[00:24:18]  Right, right, right.
[00:24:19]  Where they are.
[00:24:20]  I'm still first generation, so I'm in between the two worlds.
[00:24:23]  My children, they will be because their mother's actually from there.
[00:24:26]  She's from Kosovo.
[00:24:27]  She survived the war thanks to America.
[00:24:30]  Every day she says, if it wasn't for America, I'd be dead.
[00:24:33]  Her family almost got wiped out.
[00:24:35]  There was a village that was wiped out next to them in the Peja region.
[00:24:39]  The Serbs pronounce it Peć, but in Albanian, it's pronounced Peja.
[00:24:43]  And in that region, they got trapped in the city and they were fortunate to run into, you know, people that we were doing bad things, but they weren't wiping people out.
[00:24:54]  And then when the NATO plane started flying over, they evacuated.
[00:24:58]  But if they would have fallen into one more group's hands, my wife wouldn't be here today.
[00:25:01]  So that pressure from NATO literally saved my wife's life.
[00:25:04]  She's writing a book about it called Not Without My Father.
[00:25:07]  She literally saved her father's life.
[00:25:10]  Her family was hiding outside of their village.
[00:25:13]  Her dad got trapped because he went back to the house to get something.
[00:25:17]  They're all hiding, and you couldn't trust them.
[00:25:19]  You didn't know they were wiping people out left and right.
[00:25:22]  You know, these are the people that massacred the Bosnians, right?
[00:25:25]  So they told her, listen, bring your whole village back.
[00:25:30]  Well, we're going to kill you that.
[00:25:31]  But how do you trust them?
[00:25:33]  So she goes back and tells them all, if you guys don't come out of hiding right now and go back to the village, I'm telling them where you're hiding.
[00:25:38]  So she literally, as a 12 year old girl, took the most dangerous risk ever, forced her family to go back to their village.
[00:25:46]  They were at gunpoint for like three days.
[00:25:48]  They beat them up a little bit, nothing too crazy.
[00:25:50]  Then the NATO plane started going.
[00:25:51]  They left, they evacuated, and they survived the war.
[00:25:55]  And he's her dad's alive today because of her, so that's my children's mother, right?
[00:25:59]  So, you're not going to forget what you've been through and the opportunities that you have.
[00:26:04]  I always say, I wish I had because even though, yeah, I come from over there, I was born here, man.
[00:26:11]  I was brought up very, very blessed, right?
[00:26:14]  Compared to, I wish I had the hunger of so many people I see come here.
[00:26:19]  What they do in such a short amount of time boggles my mind.
[00:26:23]  I'd rather have been the Albanian that came here as an immigrant than the one born here, the one that came from over there.
[00:26:29]  Brother, within 10 years, they all buy homes, successful businesses.
[00:26:33]  They work hard.
[00:26:35]  And that's also, I feel like, when you don't have a choice.
[00:26:37]  I feel like we're so spoiled.
[00:26:39]  I have a million different things I can do.
[00:26:40]  I'll go to school.
[00:26:41]  Maybe I'll major in language arts and I'll switch to a minor in marketing.
[00:26:45]  You know, like we have all these options where when you come here as an immigrant, you don't have an option.
[00:26:51]  You have to survive, you have to succeed.
[00:26:53]  So that's why a lot of them end up in construction or they own restaurants.
[00:26:57]  They work hard in a restaurant, they save their money, they buy a restaurant.
[00:27:01]  My father started with pizzerias and then he got into real estate, which he did extremely well.
[00:27:05]  My father was an animal.
[00:27:06]  He worked like 14 hours a day.
[00:27:08]  I didn't see him for years until he amassed what he did.
[00:27:11]  And, you know, no matter what, the dude's my hero.
[00:27:14]  To come here, to not speak the language, not have any money, not have any back, no support, and people want to talk about the American dream.
[00:27:22]  I am the American dream.
[00:27:23]  I was given the chance to do things that my father never could do.
[00:27:28]  And so many of us, man, it's like, yo, if you're American, you're born here, come on.
[00:27:33]  Like you got.
[00:27:34]  So much opportunity that you just don't see it.
[00:27:36]  But you like some of the stuff that you saw, and some of the stuff that some of the other kids who were born there and immigrated here, some of the stuff that they saw, it's almost impossible to convey that to children that are growing up in the United States.
[00:27:56]  It's almost, it's got to be impossible, right?
[00:27:58]  Like the only way film doesn't matter.
[00:28:01]  A little bit.
[00:28:02]  Right.
[00:28:02]  You can learn.
[00:28:03]  Tiny bit.
[00:28:03]  You can learn stuff in school, but.
[00:28:06]  The experience, the firsthand experience, trauma, brother.
[00:28:09]  That trauma, that knowledge that you, that firsthand knowledge that you have burned into you, that's something you can't really instill in somebody that's never been through it themselves.
[00:28:21]  Well, we keep going the way we're going.
[00:28:22]  I think all of us are going to get to experience it here if we don't get our shit together fast.
[00:28:28]  You know, we're printing money like crazy.
[00:28:31]  We still haven't recovered from what happened two, three years ago.
[00:28:33]  New York City, my friend, the way things are looking, I'm going to have to leave my own city.
[00:28:39]  Things are just out of control everywhere right now.
[00:28:41]  And people really need to, like, yeah, we need to, like, rope this in.
[00:28:44]  Enough with the division.
[00:28:46]  I understand there's two very different ideologies out there right now.
[00:28:49]  But if we don't find a way to come in the middle somewhere, we're all in trouble and we all go down.
[00:28:54]  So, you know, I agree with you.
[00:28:57]  There's nothing like going through a trauma or an experience to really light a fire under someone.
[00:29:01]  It's either going to destroy you completely.
[00:29:03]  Right.
[00:29:04]  Or it's going to make you.
[00:29:05]  Right.
[00:29:05]  Exactly.
[00:29:05]  And when it makes you, like, it really makes you.
[00:29:07]  Yeah.
[00:29:08]  Right.
[00:29:09]  So for me, one of those life changing events for me, for example, is like when I lost my brother.
[00:29:13]  Right, that type of trauma, I came out a completely different person.
[00:29:17]  It's like being put into a pressure cooker, right?
[00:29:19]  When you go through something where you lose something or something horrible happens to you, you either can choose to live the rest of your life destroyed, which unfortunately a lot of people do, they go towards drugs or alcohol or whatever the case may be because they can't handle the pain, or you embrace that pain, you tell yourself mentally, No matter what, I'm never going to give up.
[00:29:38]  It might take me years to get back up, it took me years to get back up.
[00:29:43]  And you use that pain for fuel.
[00:29:45]  And I think that's what a lot of immigrants do.
[00:29:47]  They say, hey, I went through all this crap.
[00:29:49]  I lost all this.
[00:29:50]  My family went through all this.
[00:29:51]  And if I give up now, you're alive today.
[00:29:54]  Whoever you are watching this show or listening right now, you're alive because guaranteed someone in your lineage, and most of us can't even go back three generations, someone definitely went through something horrible, Roman Empire, whatever empires, someone in your lineage survived trauma beyond your comprehension.
[00:30:13]  For you to be alive right now and to have the chance that you have right now.
[00:30:17]  Somebody, your great great grandfather, your great great grandmother, suffered in a way, wherever, whatever part of the world you come from, went through a living hell for you to be alive today.
[00:30:27]  Risking your life to come on one of those boats from Europe 500 years ago.
[00:30:32]  You said goodbye to somebody, you didn't know if you're ever going to see them again.

=== The Cost of Citizenship (14:44) ===

[00:30:36]  And most of the time you didn't.
[00:30:37]  So someone in your ancestry went through a living nightmare for you to have the chance right now that you're throwing in the garbage.
[00:30:47]  And if you can instill anything, so I think people need to like, I think everyone's preoccupied with just stupidity, man.
[00:30:52]  Take a step back, focus, think.
[00:30:56]  You're alive.
[00:30:57]  That's a blessing.
[00:30:57]  You can breathe.
[00:30:58]  That's a blessing.
[00:30:59]  If you're healthy, that's an extra blessing.
[00:31:01]  Some of the most positive people I've met in my life who have done more than people that have two arms and two legs.
[00:31:05]  I know people that can't even walk, they've done more with their lives than people that have everything.
[00:31:11]  So it's not being grateful, not learning from mistakes, not knowing what you want.
[00:31:17]  The hardest thing in life is not to make it.
[00:31:20]  It's knowing what you want.
[00:31:22]  Because once you know what you want, whether it's to be the best podcaster in the world, a music, whatever, once you know, most people either know and they're scared to go after it or they haven't fully committed to going after it because there's nothing for free, man.
[00:31:35]  Whether you're paying with tears, sweat, money, everything comes out of sacrifice.
[00:31:40]  And most people are not willing to lose in order to win.
[00:31:44]  They're scared.
[00:31:45]  They're fear.
[00:31:46]  And we've all been there.
[00:31:46]  I've been there at times in my life too.
[00:31:48]  So I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm some amazing human being who hasn't made mistakes or doesn't have fear.
[00:31:53]  But I try to learn from mistakes from people in my life, from situations I've witnessed, like visiting Kosovo before the war, visiting Kosovo after the war, and seeing it completely burned to the ground.
[00:32:10]  Every single house, pretty much in the entire nation, was destroyed.
[00:32:14]  And to not take advantage of that opportunity that I have here in the US, to not be grateful for it.
[00:32:22]  And when a setback comes, it's like, hey, dude, your family's been through worse.
[00:32:27]  Your friends over there have been through worse, and they don't give up.
[00:32:30]  How are you going to give up?
[00:32:31]  Right.
[00:32:31]  You can't give up.
[00:32:33]  And so many people that migrate from some of those places overseas or even from Mexico, like you were talking about with Julian on the podcast with him, is that a lot of these immigrants are the backbone of America.
[00:32:46]  They're the ones that keep the infrastructure going, the ones that are doing the blue collar work.
[00:32:51]  They're the ones not digging ditches.
[00:32:53]  But you know what I mean?
[00:32:54]  They're doing things you don't want to do.
[00:32:55]  Go to any construction site when they're pouring concrete, they're all fucking immigrants.
[00:32:59]  The whole fucking world is made of concrete.
[00:33:02]  They're the ones that are doing the shit that we don't want to do.
[00:33:06]  Fact.
[00:33:09]  But do I think we have a little bit of an issue right now?
[00:33:11]  Like the way people are coming in?
[00:33:13]  I think there needs to be some type of regulation.
[00:33:15]  You can't just, you know, you can topple an empire that way.
[00:33:19]  You can change demographics in a way.
[00:33:21]  You know, go to other countries.
[00:33:22]  You'll see how their immigration policies are.
[00:33:23]  I mean, we still have the most lenient immigration policy.
[00:33:26]  People come here, you know, not the legal way, and they still get their papers.
[00:33:30]  They still get their citizenship.
[00:33:31]  Plenty of Albanians have done that also.
[00:33:33]  They came here.
[00:33:34]  you know, political asylum or whatever the case may be, they got their papers, right?
[00:33:38]  So I'm not saying people should go that route.
[00:33:41]  And my family came here legally.
[00:33:43]  My mom's family, my grandfather escaped communist Albania.
[00:33:48]  He was hunted down by the communists.
[00:33:49]  He had to get out of there.
[00:33:51]  He made it to Rome and he was granted a visa through Amnesty International, which is how they got to New York, the Bronx.
[00:33:59]  That's where my mom's family started, was in the Bronx, New York, which is where little Albania is today.
[00:34:05]  And my dad came because my uncle married an amazing Jewish woman.
[00:34:09]  In Croatia at the time, they met and fell in love.
[00:34:12]  She brought him to Texas, and then they did the visa for my dad.
[00:34:17]  So, you know, both of my parents did immigrate here legally, but many people came however they had to come.
[00:34:22]  And, you know, it's hard to judge those people and it's hard to not feel sympathetic for them.
[00:34:26]  Listen, the overwhelming majority of those people coming over the border are not bad people.
[00:34:29]  That's a fact.
[00:34:30]  They just like where they live is a hell.
[00:34:33]  Where they're coming from is conflict, right?
[00:34:35]  Poverty, whatever it is.
[00:34:36]  Me and to not feel for them, you're not a human being.
[00:34:39]  But we also have to protect the interest of our nation and make sure that things are done the right way because.
[00:34:44]  this can really backfire big time.
[00:34:47]  So it's like a catch-22, you know?
[00:34:50]  How does it make you feel when you watch the news and you see like the things that are going on in conflicts with like Ukraine and Russia?
[00:34:57]  So it's a very dangerous time for Albania also.
[00:35:01]  Serbia is basically the sister of Russia.
[00:35:04]  And last week, Serbia amassed their forces on the Kosovo border since the Kosovo war ended.
[00:35:10]  So over 20 years ago, just last week, they had all their forces on the border of northern Kosovo.
[00:35:16]  and they're talking all this rhetoric.
[00:35:17]  I mean, we're still under the protection of NATO, but what's to say that they don't do the same thing they did to Afghanistan and just leave us in the lurch?
[00:35:25]  If they leave us in the lurch, we're finished, bro.
[00:35:28]  We're in big trouble.
[00:35:29]  So I think there could be a conflict in the Balkans again.
[00:35:35]  Maybe Russia tells Serbia to start a war or whatever the case may be.
[00:35:38]  And this conflict in Ukraine has the potential to pull the entire world into it on a level I don't think any of us really comprehend.
[00:35:49]  And Russia can't afford to lose that war.
[00:35:51]  So, I think we're far from ending it.
[00:35:53]  I hope they do find a way to end it.
[00:35:55]  My heart goes out to the average Ukrainian.
[00:35:57]  I can only imagine what they're going through, but there's a lot of crap going on.
[00:36:00]  I think most of us don't even realize what's going on, and no one really knows what's the real reason sometimes.
[00:36:05]  Things happen.
[00:36:06]  Yeah, that's a difficult thing, right?
[00:36:08]  Like you were talking about earlier propaganda.
[00:36:11]  Most people watch the news, like Fox and CNN, to understand what's going on in the world.
[00:36:19]  And they're just competing for views.
[00:36:21]  They're just fucking.
[00:36:22]  Trying to come up with crazy headlines just to compete for views and for clicks.
[00:36:29]  And they both put their own spin on it.
[00:36:32]  And then, if you want to even go deeper than that, if you want to understand what the leaders of these other countries are saying, it's in a different fucking language.
[00:36:40]  How are you going to understand it?
[00:36:41]  How are you going to, like, are you going to, do you trust what the first line, the first level is the translation?
[00:36:47]  Like, is it being translated accurately?
[00:36:49]  The second level is the news taking it, putting it through their blender, and then recycling it and regurgitating it on TV.
[00:36:54]  But that's usually what's happening.
[00:36:56]  Yeah.
[00:36:56]  What you just said right there is like I said, ask yourself when's the last time you got to see a world leader outside the US talking uninhibited and you get to formulate your own opinion?
[00:37:07]  I can't remember the last time I seen you.
[00:37:09]  Can you?
[00:37:10]  So you might get a little blip, just a little.
[00:37:12]  They said this and they'll take one line that fits their narrative.
[00:37:15]  The closest thing I ever saw, which I don't know when it came out, maybe like five or six years ago, but it was the Putin interviews with Oliver Stone where he went, he did like a four part documentary where he went and interviewed Putin.
[00:37:29]  Like he interviewed him for like six hours.
[00:37:32]  It was six hours edited, but it was, you know, he spent weeks on end with spending entire days with him talking to him about things.
[00:37:39]  And his perspective on America was kind of mind blowing.
[00:37:44]  If for someone who hasn't really ever listened to the guy talk, and I grew up only hearing, you know, America's spin on Russia and hearing his perspective on the United States was very, very eye opening to say the least.
[00:37:56]  I mean, he talks about, and that's another thing is, He has survived through so many presidents, right?
[00:38:04]  So he has this perspective on Trump, on Bush, on Clinton, on Obama.
[00:38:09]  And I mean, the guy's basically a dictator.
[00:38:11]  Let's call him what he is.
[00:38:12]  He's not relinquishing power.
[00:38:13]  Right.
[00:38:14]  No.
[00:38:14]  Before him, Russia was a joke.
[00:38:16]  But, right?
[00:38:17]  Like, you compare Yeltsin to him.
[00:38:19]  Right.
[00:38:20]  Yeltsin was drunk.
[00:38:22]  This guy's like shirt off, horseback, judo.
[00:38:25]  Like, let's go.
[00:38:26]  Yeah.
[00:38:27]  He fought wars against Chechnya.
[00:38:28]  He invaded Georgia.
[00:38:29]  Like, the guy's much, you can't even compare him to Yeltsin.
[00:38:32]  Right.
[00:38:32]  You know, and then when they lost McDonald's last year, I don't think the Russians were crying.
[00:38:35]  I wish the same thing would happen to us.
[00:38:37]  I wish we could lose McDonald's.
[00:38:39]  I think McDonald's is hurting us.
[00:38:40]  No offense, Mickey D's.
[00:38:41]  Yeah, but I mean, he said, you know, when you talk about the history of America and Russia, you know, we've just been instigating with NATO, pointing, you know, having.
[00:38:52]  They're completely surrounded.
[00:38:53]  I mean, that's the truth.
[00:38:53]  They're surrounded with these missile sites that are supposed to be defensive missile sites, but they can be converted into offensive missile sites in the matter of minutes.
[00:39:00]  It's literally a button.
[00:39:02]  It's not, I don't think you have to get a thing.
[00:39:03]  You just say, okay, attack.
[00:39:04]  I don't think you need to do anything.
[00:39:06]  You just say, push.
[00:39:07]  So, like, that's one thing I don't think a lot of Americans understand.
[00:39:10]  And again, you got to be fair.
[00:39:11]  Even with nations that are hostile towards you, if you look at the whole picture, are they completely surrounded?
[00:39:17]  Are you know, so do I know what happens here?
[00:39:22]  No, I think there's a lot at play.
[00:39:23]  I think our currency is at risk.
[00:39:25]  I don't see the dollar surviving if we continue what we're doing right now, unless we pay down this deficit immediately.
[00:39:31]  I think the play is into crypto, I think that is the end game.
[00:39:34]  And I think there are powers that manipulate that are not in the interest of the US, and we don't need to get into all that.
[00:39:39]  Most people know what I'm talking about.
[00:39:40]  So, what are you talking about?
[00:39:43]  I just think there's a lot of people that are in power that do not have the interest of our nation.
[00:39:49]  First, they make interest based on the interest of their group, their people, whoever they are.
[00:39:54]  People have different names to them, but you know what I'm talking about.
[00:39:58]  People say, oh, it's a theory, a C theory, right?
[00:40:01]  Conspiracy theory, yeah.
[00:40:02]  So I tend to lean towards that because a lot of the stuff that goes on doesn't make sense, man.
[00:40:07]  It's not in our interest.
[00:40:08]  Why are we doing it?
[00:40:09]  That's like kind of the point I was making about Putin, where it's, yeah, he's a dictator and he's not relinquishing power, and that's bad, right?
[00:40:16]  But is it good that we just have a brand new person to run our country every four years?
[00:40:21]  Or every eight years that has to learn the job and get elected through this joke of a political system that we have here, these two binary options that we have that are, it's, and then Fox News tells you to vote this way and CNN tells you to vote that way.
[00:40:35]  It's just like a fucking circus, really.
[00:40:36]  And then if you don't want to vote for either, what's your vote?
[00:40:38]  I mean, like, what is it?
[00:40:39]  Is it, would it be better to have a president for 10 years versus four years?
[00:40:44]  I don't know.
[00:40:45]  It's actually a great question.
[00:40:46]  I mean, I don't know either.
[00:40:48]  I don't know why there has to be, you know, given that we have secure elections and everything like that, right?
[00:40:54]  And we should probably nix that word because that'll probably kill the algorithm.
[00:40:57]  But getting back to the point, you know, I don't see, I don't have a problem.
[00:41:02]  If the American people vote for someone to stay in power for 25 years and they're doing a good job, who cares?
[00:41:07]  You know, like if, you know, we had this extraordinary leader and we keep voting, the masses vote for him.
[00:41:15]  Who cares?
[00:41:16]  But it's still a democracy and you're still voting for that person to stay in power.
[00:41:20]  Why break something that's amazing?
[00:41:21]  If we have a human being who puts us first and cares, to me, a leader is someone who's willing to sacrifice themselves for their people.
[00:41:29]  If we use that definition to describe a leader, you don't have not one in Washington, D.C. Right.
[00:41:34]  You don't have a single leader.
[00:41:35]  And it's so obvious that the people that are in power in America, no matter who they are, whether it be the president or any of these other given politicians, senators, whatever, they all want that really badly.
[00:41:49]  Like they started in this weird system.
[00:41:50]  Be careful of the one who seeks power.
[00:41:52]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:41:53]  The one who wants it is the one who should not have it.
[00:41:55]  A true leader is the one that is such an amazing person that the masses say, no, you need to do it.
[00:42:01]  Like you need to be the one.
[00:42:02]  You know, you have a divine responsibility if you're a spiritual person.
[00:42:05]  When you're a leader, you're put in control of every single living creature under your realm.
[00:42:12]  You're accountable for it.
[00:42:13]  If a tree gets cut down for no reason, that's on you.
[00:42:17]  You're literally in charge of every living creature under your rule and every resource.
[00:42:24]  And if these things are being squandered and not used appropriately and not used for the benefits of the masses, and you're making decisions that are only for you and your friends, you're not a leader.
[00:42:33]  You're an evil.
[00:42:34]  Criminal is what you are.
[00:42:35]  You are not a leader.
[00:42:36]  A leader is one who is so humble, they're willing to sacrifice themselves for the hive.
[00:42:43]  And we don't have a single politician in this entire nation, except, you know, maybe the guy that's doing a pretty good job here, man, where you guys live.
[00:42:51]  But other than that, DeSantis.
[00:42:53]  Yeah, the rest of them, you know, I'm not here to get into the little squanderings of what you believe ideologically with birth.
[00:42:59]  I'm talking about just what he did for your state during the most volatile time ever to keep you guys afloat where you've become one of the most desired places to live.
[00:43:08]  Your property values skyrocket.
[00:43:10]  Your employment is stable.
[00:43:11]  I'm driving around and life is normal in the midst of what was the biggest storm we've ever seen on our shores.
[00:43:19]  You know, to me, he has the leaders, he has the characteristics of a leader.
[00:43:26]  You're not going to agree with everything he does.
[00:43:28]  Right.
[00:43:28]  But the overwhelming decisions he's made have benefited your state and every person that lives in this.
[00:43:32]  You think he runs against Trump?
[00:43:35]  I think he'd be stupid not to.
[00:43:38]  I'd vote for him.
[00:43:38]  I wouldn't.
[00:43:39]  Yeah.
[00:43:39]  He seems much more disciplined.
[00:43:41]  He's just.
[00:43:42]  Much more level-headed, very respectful person, but very calm.
[00:43:46]  You know, listen again.
[00:43:47]  Some people hate some of the certain issues that are very touchy right now.
[00:43:50]  So she would reproduction and all that stuff.
[00:43:52]  But as far as what he does for the state and for the people and for business, the guy's, the guy's, she's a freaking rock star bro.
[00:43:59]  He really is.
[00:44:00]  He's amazing.
[00:44:02]  How do you think this gets fixed?
[00:44:03]  How do you think we fix the problem in America with the leadership and there was a song that came out in the 80s I kind of I think it was Mike And The Mechanics all I need is a miracle.
[00:44:12]  All I need is help.
[00:44:14]  We're in trouble.
[00:44:15]  I don't know.
[00:44:15]  I don't know.
[00:44:16]  I don't have an answer for that one, But I think the responsibility comes back to each individual American to educate themselves, to be open-minded, to be scared when conversations are suppressed, because that has always been the first step to tyranny in any society.
[00:44:31]  When you see, even if you hate the other group and you can't stand their ideals, their principles, or whatever the case may be, when you allow them to be silenced, you are next, you idiot.
[00:44:41]  You will be next to be silenced.
[00:44:43]  So these are the red flags that scare me as someone that comes from a part of a world where that was the norm.
[00:44:49]  And if you voiced your opinion, you disappeared in the middle of the night.
[00:44:51]  So any shape or form of that, even creeping into our society, whether it's through social media, whether it's through policies and laws, must be turned down, must be defeated, must not happen.
[00:45:06]  Everyone should be able to voice their opinion the way me and you are talking right now.
[00:45:09]  You can either choose to listen or not.
[00:45:11]  But when we do not allow these conversations to happen, we're in a very, very dangerous predicament.
[00:45:18]  Have you experienced any?

=== Red Flags After 9/11 (15:13) ===

[00:45:20]  On your podcast, which is amazing, by the way.
[00:45:23]  Have you experienced any kind of.
[00:45:24]  Not even close to yours, Danny.
[00:45:26]  What are you talking about?
[00:45:27]  Yours is fantastic, man.
[00:45:28]  But some of the guests that you hear.
[00:45:29]  You're at Joe Rogan level, bro.
[00:45:31]  Come on, stop it.
[00:45:32]  Dude, you really are, though.
[00:45:34]  First of all, I wanted to thank you.
[00:45:35]  I'm honored to be on the show.
[00:45:37]  But you look at the cast of people that you have an eye for picking out amazing guests.
[00:45:41]  I'm not just saying that because I'm on here.
[00:45:43]  So it's not to like.
[00:45:44]  I feel like I won the lottery by being here today.
[00:45:47]  So it's amazing to talk to.
[00:45:48]  I love talking to people like you, you know, not only people that have.
[00:45:52]  Grown up and experienced the things that you've experienced, and have a very unique perspective on human beings and cultures and different countries.
[00:46:01]  Your perspective is so unique.
[00:46:02]  And then, on top of that, you know, you grew up in New York City, which is people who just spent a lot of time in New York.
[00:46:08]  They always seem to be the most fun to talk to.
[00:46:09]  It was a blessing living there, man, my entire life.
[00:46:12]  Like, I love my city, and the fact that I might have to turn my back on her when even on, you know, everything I went through on September 2001.
[00:46:21]  Yeah.
[00:46:22]  Didn't make me leave right.
[00:46:24]  And where you were?
[00:46:26]  There underneath the towers yeah, I was on the e train.
[00:46:29]  I was on the e train beautiful day and I go, you know, underneath there's like the whole subway system.
[00:46:37]  So I I end up underneath the the buildings, not realizing that they're on fire.
[00:46:42]  I was going to PACE University.
[00:46:43]  It's about two blocks, it's in the shadows of the World Trade and uh okay, the subway doors open and I hear screaming and yelling and i'm a sophomore in college, so i'm about 19 years old and i'm, like I remember just being excited for a split second, like You know, like a young dumb man, like, you know, like, hey, Billy, there's a fire.
[00:47:00]  Let's go look at the fire.
[00:47:01]  So I remember for like a split second, like hearing people screaming and yelling.
[00:47:04]  I'm like, oh, there's probably a fight going on or something stupid.
[00:47:06]  I didn't think, hey, dude, the building's on fire above you.
[00:47:10]  You know what I mean?
[00:47:11]  So I get out of the subway.
[00:47:12]  As I'm getting to surface level, I hear another, oh my God.
[00:47:16]  That was when the second plane was hitting.
[00:47:17]  I didn't get to see either of them, but I remember I put two and two in my mind later.
[00:47:21]  I realized that when everyone was yelling that second, that's when the second plane was hitting.
[00:47:25]  Make the story short, brother, I get out of the subway and it's snowing outside, but it's like 80 degrees out.
[00:47:31]  And I'm like, and I look up and I could not believe what I was seeing.
[00:47:34]  I don't know how close were you to the towers?
[00:47:37]  Like, were you literally underneath them?
[00:47:39]  Direct, like, right under, like, I. Came out from the E, everyone that lives in New York knows E trains last stop, world trade, you know, world trade.
[00:47:46]  So, like, I came out from beneath those towers.
[00:47:49]  I was in the subway network under them.
[00:47:50]  My God.
[00:47:51]  And, you know, it was, man, it was crazy.
[00:47:57]  And, you know, make the story short, I ended up walking all the way to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge.
[00:48:03]  Halfway over the bridge, the earth trembles and the towers come down.
[00:48:08]  You know, I want to remind people of something because it kind of plays a role in what's going on today.
[00:48:13]  In the aftermath of what happened after those buildings fell, half of my school like dropped out because we're so close and the trauma that they witnessed, a lot of them couldn't process it.
[00:48:22]  So you smelt burning metal, right?
[00:48:26]  A smell I'll never forget as long as I live.
[00:48:30]  And we were told the air was safe and don't worry.
[00:48:32]  And the whole time I got my guard up.
[00:48:34]  Now that's the one time I should have wore a mask.
[00:48:36]  Yeah, right.
[00:48:37]  No, because it works for that.
[00:48:38]  Particles.
[00:48:39]  Right.
[00:48:40]  And I remember being so worried that eventually about a couple weeks after I ended up leading a walkout in my college.
[00:48:48]  And I was calling the students to action because I was like, I feel like the air is not safe that we're breathing, even though they're telling us it is.
[00:48:58]  And I ended up meeting with the president at the time, and then there was like some people from the EPA, if I'm not mistaken, they were there and they were giving us all these reports, and we put HEPA filters, and like, don't worry, we guarantee your air is safe.
[00:49:10]  Now, the EPA was in charge of making sure we were safe.
[00:49:13]  It was under the watch of Christine Todd Whitman, who was a former governor of New Jersey.
[00:49:18]  And they were wrong.
[00:49:19]  She issued an apology 10 years later.
[00:49:20]  We were wrong.
[00:49:21]  We're sorry.
[00:49:22]  More people have died from getting sickness related to breathing that air in than died in that building.
[00:49:28]  There's a multi-billion dollar fund today that I'm even eligible for, which I've never claimed because so far I'm healthy.
[00:49:33]  Thank God.
[00:49:35]  But plenty of people are getting 50, 60, 100, $200,000 from this multi-billion dollar fund, which was created many years after the events that took place because they promised us the air was safe.
[00:49:47]  The same way they're promising us right now that yeah, they're safe.
[00:49:50]  The things that you're putting into your body right now are safe when no one knows long term what it does to you.
[00:49:56]  I was already lied to about my health and promised I would be safe.
[00:49:59]  Why would I ever trust them again?
[00:50:01]  And that's my argument with the one thing that we can't talk about because no one will see the damn episode.
[00:50:06]  But we're in America, right?
[00:50:09]  Mike dropped that lever.
[00:50:10]  Yeah.
[00:50:12]  I mean, that's real, man.
[00:50:14]  That's real shit.
[00:50:15]  This happened.
[00:50:15]  That's a real event.
[00:50:16]  Here, you want proof that you can't trust?
[00:50:18]  They did it in downtown New York.
[00:50:20]  Millions of fire, you know, not millions, but thousands of people.
[00:50:23]  Yeah.
[00:50:24]  Respiratory illnesses, lungs, cancers of every sort and kind.
[00:50:30]  Thank God that cloud, that cloud, you know the cloud that came after the buildings fell?
[00:50:35]  Yeah.
[00:50:35]  If I hadn't left when I left, tsunami.
[00:50:37]  If I hadn't left when I left, because it went all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, like over the East River, I was just far enough away where it didn't get me.
[00:50:47]  Because if I were to breathe any of that in, I guarantee anyone that breathed in the death cloud, I call it the death cloud.
[00:50:51]  Yeah.
[00:50:52]  That was glass, asbestos, dust, whatever the hell went into it, they all ended up dying, bro.
[00:50:57]  Or getting like really bad respiratory infections and cancers.
[00:51:00]  And you had people going to saunas and they were sweating blue and green, bro.
[00:51:03]  What?
[00:51:04]  Oh, yeah, man.
[00:51:04]  This is a fact.
[00:51:05]  Everyone knows that.
[00:51:06]  Sweating blue and green.
[00:51:07]  Blue and green, man.
[00:51:08]  Firefighters, there's videos of it, man.
[00:51:11]  Yeah, I had the guy, Tim McBride.
[00:51:13]  Shout out to the firefighters, man, and the law enforcement.
[00:51:15]  When we were going over that bridge running for our lives, these guys were heading into harm's way and they never made it out, man.
[00:51:23]  I'll never forget that image.
[00:51:24]  I'm going over the bridge, the fire trucks are going in, going in.
[00:51:28]  These men and women never came back out, man.
[00:51:30]  Some of those people, man, that were there, some of those firefighters and people, those rescuers that were there that day are today really fucked up.
[00:51:37]  But that's what I missed, though.
[00:51:39]  See, as horrible as that event was, the aftermath.
[00:51:43]  Was amazing.
[00:51:44]  We were never more united as a country.
[00:51:47]  New Yorkers were like brother and sister, like together.
[00:51:50]  Like, we had a trauma happen to us and we pulled through and we were closer than ever.
[00:51:54]  Proud to be from New York, the Yankees.
[00:51:56]  Everyone was a Yankees fan or a Brooklyn fan.
[00:51:59]  And then when I compare it to what's happened three years ago with all the chaos, the sickness that shut us down, then all the political stuff that happened, and then basically New Yorkers turning their back on the police, you know.
[00:52:16]  And to see how divided we are and how many New Yorkers left, man.
[00:52:20]  They're saying 500,000.
[00:52:22]  Brother, if I had to estimate one to two million left New York City.
[00:52:24]  Really?
[00:52:25]  I don't care what they say in the news.
[00:52:26]  I know my city.
[00:52:28]  Don't show me a couple images of Times Square busy because you drive through.
[00:52:33]  I'm getting back and forth all over New York in 15, 20 minutes.
[00:52:36]  That was never the case, bro.
[00:52:38]  I don't care if, you know, Times Square gets a little busy and people like, oh, New York's back.
[00:52:43]  No, it's not back.
[00:52:44]  Those corporate buildings are still empty.
[00:52:46]  Some people have gone back.
[00:52:48]  I have family that works on 57th Street.
[00:52:51]  They haven't been back to their office in three years.
[00:52:53]  This is one of the biggest companies, and I don't want to say what industry, but very big company that if I mention their name, you'll know exactly who they are.
[00:53:00]  And they haven't gone back.
[00:53:01]  That's the core of Manhattan.
[00:53:02]  Now they're talking about maybe we should convert these office buildings into residential.
[00:53:06]  That means your city, the city that I knew, the city that terrorists couldn't destroy, right, is never coming back to what I knew it as.
[00:53:18]  It's gone.
[00:53:19]  I'm never going to see it again.
[00:53:20]  I posted today on my Instagram.
[00:53:21]  I made a video about it.
[00:53:22]  I don't think I'll ever see the New York that I knew.
[00:53:24]  And to me, it's devastating.
[00:53:26]  I love my city.
[00:53:28]  I love, like you said, growing up there.
[00:53:29]  Do you know why I love New York?
[00:53:31]  Because I may never feel safe enough to go to Afghanistan, but if I wanted to learn about the Afghani people, I can go to the Afghani restaurant on Ninth Avenue, sit down with Muhammad, explain to me about how his family fought the Russians, and then he made it out alive.
[00:53:43]  And I get to experience this culture and the food, and it's authentic as hell, as if I was in Kabul.
[00:53:50]  And I've been all over the world, man.
[00:53:52]  Ain't nobody touching New York's food.
[00:53:53]  It's like you want authentic, you get everything.
[00:53:56]  And you have this fusion of amazing things that happen.
[00:54:00]  And one thing that really stood out to me is like one day I'm watching, I'm at the park watching my kid, and I see this Hasidic Jewish woman.
[00:54:07]  She's covered, you know, the way the Hasidims are.
[00:54:10]  And I see this Middle Eastern woman, this Arab woman.
[00:54:13]  She's covered, you know, the way Muslims cover.
[00:54:16]  And they're standing right next to each other.
[00:54:18]  Their kids are playing at the park.
[00:54:20]  And I'm like on the other side of the world, they might be killing each other.
[00:54:23]  Right.
[00:54:23]  But here.
[00:54:24]  Wow.
[00:54:25]  Okay.
[00:54:26]  Here, you know.
[00:54:27]  I never thought I'd have a Serbian friend.
[00:54:31]  I made one.
[00:54:32]  It took me a long time, right?
[00:54:33]  Because everything happened to me, the trauma, to be bigger and to understand that we can't judge everyone and put everyone into one basket and that we need to grow as people and as a society to just kind of like, you got to remember, everyone's going to try to defend their own first.
[00:54:48]  And even if you're right, they've been put through propaganda.
[00:54:51]  They're not going to believe your version of events.
[00:54:53]  And like, when we stop talking, that's when bullets start flying.
[00:54:56]  And to see people, In New York City, who I know would be killing each other or hate each other.
[00:55:02]  Their kids are playing together.
[00:55:03]  Where the hell else can you do that?
[00:55:05]  But here, man, I've been to other parts of the country.
[00:55:08]  Europe is not as open as we are, man.
[00:55:11]  You visit places in Germany, they, you know, no offense, I've been to Germany 30 times.
[00:55:15]  I didn't feel the warmth as much, you know?
[00:55:19]  So that's what I'm telling people.
[00:55:22]  Like, I understand we have a lot of things we need to fix, but it shouldn't be let's take out what we got.
[00:55:29]  Let's destroy everything.
[00:55:30]  Let's destroy our history.
[00:55:31]  Let's wipe everything out.
[00:55:33]  If we don't know our own history, if we don't leave, listen, You make the same mistakes again.
[00:55:38]  You need things to remind you of the past.
[00:55:40]  This is what we did.
[00:55:41]  This is wrong.
[00:55:42]  Let's never let it happen again.
[00:55:45]  You know, I feel like we took so many steps forward as a society and then we just took like 10 back, and it's crazy.
[00:55:52]  Yeah.
[00:55:53]  Some of the people that were born and raised in America, though, they don't have that perspective.
[00:55:57]  It's very few people have the perspective that you have and are familiar with that.
[00:56:02]  You know, I mean, you know how much work it takes to actually like, I know just a little bit of it from doing hundreds of these interviews, but the normal person who works a nine to five working wherever they work, working at their job, going, you know, or working at home, dealing with whatever they have to deal with every day, they don't have the time to pay attention to all this stuff.
[00:56:22]  Like, you got to fucking get your news somewhere.
[00:56:24]  Like, where's the quickest and most effective way to get your news?
[00:56:27]  Like, Twitter or turn on the TV for a few minutes.
[00:56:30]  And it's impossible.
[00:56:32]  It's impossible to understand all the shit that's going on and know the truth behind it.
[00:56:37]  You know, I'm friends with one of the biggest.
[00:56:38]  Comedians in the world, gentlemen, shout out to Maz Drabroni, shout out to Tehran out in LA.
[00:56:44]  These guys are amazing comics, right?
[00:56:47]  And right now they're in a Cash 22.
[00:56:49]  Their people are in trouble.
[00:56:51]  There was a woman who wasn't, quote unquote, wearing the Islamic attire correctly.
[00:56:58]  So they ended up killing this young woman and it sparked massive protests in Iran, right?
[00:57:04]  For the freedom that many Americans take for granted, right?
[00:57:07]  And People are dying, they're being rounded up, they're scheduled to like execute thousands of people that were dissidents, like protesting against this.
[00:57:15]  You know, I can go protest anything I want right now, I don't gotta worry about being rounded up.
[00:57:19]  You know what I mean?
[00:57:21]  So, you know, being exposed, like, where can you, like, you have access to everything, man?
[00:57:27]  Yeah, you have access to so many cultures.
[00:57:30]  Instead of like listening to what people tell you about people, why don't you go meet those people, man?
[00:57:35]  Yeah, why don't you go sit down and have a cup of coffee with them?
[00:57:37]  Say, listen, you know, during 9 11. We witnessed a lot of people turning their backs on certain communities, and that wasn't the right way either.
[00:57:45]  They're not.
[00:57:46]  Listen, I could say I'm this, I'm that.
[00:57:49]  Islam doesn't teach you to blow up a building.
[00:57:51]  Right.
[00:57:51]  That's a fact.
[00:57:52]  It doesn't tell you to.
[00:57:53]  First of all, if you take your own life in that religion, you're supposedly punished for eternity doing the act that you did.
[00:58:02]  One out of five people is Muslim.
[00:58:05]  If they were all terrorists the way some of us were treating these people in the U.S., we would have had a much bigger problem than 9 11.
[00:58:10]  I promise you.
[00:58:11]  Isn't it like.
[00:58:13]  It's like almost tied to Christianity.
[00:58:15]  Billion, it's like the second schedule to surpass Christianity because of birth rates.
[00:58:19]  Right, okay.
[00:58:20]  And what's sad is that Christians and Muslims actually have more in common than anything else.
[00:58:24]  They both believe in Jesus, they believe he's the Messiah, they believe he's coming back to earth.
[00:58:27]  Muslims even believe in an Antichrist, the same way Christians do.
[00:58:31]  The only difference between a Christian and a Muslim is that Christians believe Jesus was god or a part of god through the trinity.
[00:58:37]  Muslims say no, god is one.
[00:58:39]  Jesus was just another line of the prophets.
[00:58:43]  He was created the same way Adam was created.
[00:58:45]  Adam didn't have a father or a mother.
[00:58:47]  Jesus was created the same way John The Baptist was created.
[00:58:50]  John the Baptist's parents, based on biblical scripture, didn't have intercourse.
[00:58:54]  How did you learn about all this?
[00:58:55]  I've studied theology for 25 years, my friend.
[00:58:58]  What do you think the biggest misconception is of Muslims in the United States?
[00:59:02]  I think they, you know, let's be real.
[00:59:05]  These same people now on the right who tell you everything's propaganda were the same ones pushing propaganda against the Muslims.
[00:59:11]  So, like, when people say, what are you?
[00:59:13]  I'm neither, man.
[00:59:14]  I am someone that likes to critically think.
[00:59:16]  If I had to classify myself as something politically, I would say I'm a libertarian.
[00:59:21]  I'm a libertarian who leans a little bit towards the right, but I also have, like, listen, do what you want to do, man.
[00:59:26]  This is America.
[00:59:28]  Bang what you want to bang.
[00:59:30]  Leave me and my kids alone.
[00:59:32]  I don't give a shit what you do with your life as long as you're not hurting me.
[00:59:36]  Like, live and let live.
[00:59:37]  That's my overall ideal.
[00:59:40]  Everyone minds your own damn business.
[00:59:41]  Go to work, pay your taxes.
[00:59:42]  Not too much, because they shouldn't be taxing us the way they are.
[00:59:46]  I want a smaller government, not in every single aspect of my life.
[00:59:50]  That America wasn't founded on those ideals.
[00:59:53]  That's where it reminds me of overseas and what I saw, when they're too much into our lives.
[00:59:59]  These people are supposed to be servants, not our dictators, not the ones commanding our lives.
[01:00:03]  So I would say the misconception people have is that when's the last time you've ever seen a movie in Hollywood that ever portrays a Middle Easterner as a good person?
[01:00:10]  You've never seen a movie that makes an Arab look like a good guy.
[01:00:14]  Ever.
[01:00:16]  Name one.
[01:00:18]  Yeah, you're right.
[01:00:19]  So, what I'm saying is, you've been programmed to view these people as hostile.
[01:00:25]  You're talking about almost 1.5.
[01:00:28]  It's like 1.5 to 1.8.
[01:00:29]  I mean, who really has a clicker that can count every single.
[01:00:32]  I never said where they get these numbers.

=== Misunderstood Faiths and Media (05:25) ===

[01:00:33]  There's 9 billion.
[01:00:34]  Do we really know there's 9 billion people?
[01:00:35]  I mean, do we really know?
[01:00:37]  Yeah.
[01:00:37]  There's countries where they don't even have census, you know?
[01:00:40]  Right.
[01:00:40]  So.
[01:00:42]  You've been conditioned to look.
[01:00:43]  I always say, meet people where they're at, man.
[01:00:46]  You know, when these horrible things happened, there was a lot of people that did a lot of extraordinary work to build bridges between these communities.
[01:00:53]  One of them is Hamza Yusuf.
[01:00:54]  This is a guy that converted to Islam.
[01:00:56]  His original name was David Hansen.
[01:00:58]  He's the founder of the Zaytuna Institute out in Burbank, California.
[01:01:02]  An amazing human being who's built bridges between all communities and faiths.
[01:01:07]  He was present during the burial of Muhammad Ali.
[01:01:10]  Him and I believe the guy's name was, I forgot.
[01:01:12]  My brain's fried here, man.
[01:01:13]  But my point is.
[01:01:15]  It's when conversation breaks down.
[01:01:18]  It's when you give voice and put people under a microscope and you're focusing on the worst element of them.
[01:01:27]  1.8 billion, you know?
[01:01:29]  Yeah, basically the propaganda was we just applied the ideals of a couple guys in a cave to an entire enormous religion, a vast body.
[01:01:42]  A guy that we supported and trained for a long time.
[01:01:45]  I mean, we got to tell the whole story, bro.
[01:01:47]  That's a lot of that's a guy that we are.
[01:01:50]  That's a long story.
[01:01:51]  So like it's like, let's look at the whole picture.
[01:01:54]  But I saw instances where like they were misquoting, you know, verses from the Quran.
[01:02:00]  Who was misquoting verses?
[01:02:01]  Mainstream media.
[01:02:01]  Really?
[01:02:02]  One was like, kill the infidel, kill the infidel, strike their necks wherever you find them.
[01:02:06]  Yes, that does say that in the book.
[01:02:08]  But guess what?
[01:02:08]  Say that in the book.
[01:02:09]  Yeah.
[01:02:09]  But they're not talking about Christians.
[01:02:11]  And in that passage, God's not even talking to the Muslims.
[01:02:14]  He's talking to the angels.
[01:02:16]  That verse that they loved using in the mainstream media about how they need to kill the infidel.
[01:02:21]  Christians were not considered infidels in Islam.
[01:02:23]  Who were they talking about?
[01:02:24]  They were talking about the other pagan Arabs that were trying to destroy the Prophet Muhammad, who was bringing monotheism, who was telling people God is one, believe in Abraham, Moses, Jesus.
[01:02:35]  These are all prophets of God.
[01:02:37]  These people are praying to statues and a million different gods.
[01:02:40]  They're the infidels, they're the pagans.
[01:02:43]  So, in that verse, they were at a battle, if I'm not mistaken, it was called Badr.
[01:02:47]  It was the Battle of Badr.
[01:02:49]  And historically, they were outnumbered three to one.
[01:02:51]  So, the first Muslims were outnumbered three to one.
[01:02:55]  And God says in the Quran, he commands the angels, go and support the forces because they're outnumbered.
[01:03:02]  And I commanded the angels to strike the infidel.
[01:03:04]  He wasn't even commanding the Muslims.
[01:03:06]  And they use that verse in the mainstream media to make you think as an American that the Muslims are coming to kill you.
[01:03:11]  But I'll give you a quote that it does say.
[01:03:13]  Speak kindly to the Christian for they are the closest to you in faith.
[01:03:18]  Amongst them you will find men of reason and education.
[01:03:22]  That's in the Holy Quran.
[01:03:23]  When's the last time you saw that on the news?
[01:03:25]  Never.
[01:03:26]  So, how are you going to judge?
[01:03:28]  Brother, I've had so many conversations about religion.
[01:03:30]  Most Christians don't even know that Jesus spoke Aramaic.
[01:03:33]  They don't know that the word for God, pull it up, I dare you, right now on Google.
[01:03:37]  Type in the language of Jesus Christ.
[01:03:39]  Do it right now on Google.
[01:03:41]  Show me what power.
[01:03:41]  I'm going to show you how dumb we are as a society and how far away you are listening to this right now, how far away you are from any concept of reality, truth, or being.
[01:03:52]  So, what was the language?
[01:03:53]  There it pops up.
[01:03:54]  Now, here's what I want you to do.
[01:03:55]  Let me blow everybody's mind now Aramaic.
[01:03:57]  Aramaic.
[01:03:57]  Now, the language.
[01:03:59]  Is a Semitic language.
[01:04:01]  The Semitic languages are Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic.
[01:04:06]  They're cousins, like I mentioned earlier.
[01:04:08]  Latin is Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Semitic languages.
[01:04:12]  Now I want you to type this in Aramaic word for God and watch what pops up.
[01:04:18]  And let me teach you a lesson.
[01:04:20]  The Aramaic word for God.
[01:04:21]  Whoa, if that's the language of Christ, I should know.
[01:04:23]  Now, what's the first search result?
[01:04:26]  Read it, say it.
[01:04:26]  I know it's hard to say it, say it.
[01:04:28]  Aloha.
[01:04:30]  Where is the search result coming from in blue?
[01:04:32]  Allah.
[01:04:35]  Oh, Jesus Christ in his own language called God Allah.
[01:04:39]  Allah.
[01:04:39]  Allah.
[01:04:41]  It's not a name, it's a cognate.
[01:04:44]  So in Hebrew, it's Elohim or Allah.
[01:04:47]  In Arabic, it's Allah.
[01:04:48]  It's a word that's the same in three languages.
[01:04:50]  It's not a name.
[01:04:52]  Al means the, Allah means God.
[01:04:55]  It's the same word in the language of Jesus Christ.
[01:04:59]  But during 9 11, all you heard people saying in New York City was F these Muslims and F their.
[01:05:04]  Yeah.
[01:05:05]  That's called ignorance, where they would realize they have much more in common than they don't and that they're being perpetrated against each other.
[01:05:12]  No one wins in conflict.
[01:05:14]  Nobody wins in war.
[01:05:16]  Muslims and Christians and Jews are brothers.
[01:05:18]  They're cousins.
[01:05:18]  The fact that they fight each other is a disgrace.
[01:05:20]  You cannot fight a Christian or fight a Jew and call yourself a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian.
[01:05:24]  You're neither.
[01:05:25]  You're nothing.
[01:05:27]  And if this group of people could just figure this out already, that's half the world, brother.
[01:05:31]  That's half the world right there.
[01:05:33]  Right.
[01:05:34]  You cannot kill a Christian and call yourself a Muslim.
[01:05:36]  You cannot kill a Muslim and call yourself a Christian.
[01:05:39]  Period.
[01:05:40]  I don't care what kings did and emperors did.
[01:05:43]  Your relationship with the creator is between you and God.
[01:05:46]  And you have the book.
[01:05:47]  And if you don't know how to read, then learn how to read and you make your own opinion.
[01:05:50]  But this should show you just how little people know about their own faith.
[01:05:55]  And they want to talk to you about Islam or Judaism or Buddhism.

=== Brothers Fighting Each Other (04:04) ===

[01:05:59]  So when you're ignorant and you're getting all your opinions from news and from this and from that, what do we have left to talk about?
[01:06:07]  I can't even sit at the table and have a real conversation with you because you're not on my level.
[01:06:11]  How are you going to talk to me?
[01:06:12]  I have people, I want to debate you in religion.
[01:06:13]  You don't know your own religion.
[01:06:14]  How are you going to debate me?
[01:06:16]  I'll quote your book left and right.
[01:06:17]  You can't quote mine.
[01:06:19]  So that's the whole point.
[01:06:21]  You got to meet people where they're at.
[01:06:22]  So when you're dealing with someone that's dumb, dumb it down.
[01:06:26]  When you're someone that's on your level, then you have the conversation because unfortunately, most people can't even handle it.
[01:06:31]  Knowledge is very powerful.
[01:06:32]  Information is very powerful.
[01:06:33]  The way you get it, the first question people should ask are where am I getting my information from?
[01:06:37]  Who's the author of this?
[01:06:39]  Who's the one telling me who am I listening to?
[01:06:41]  Let me read their biography on Wikipedia if that's even accurate.
[01:06:44]  Let me see who they are.
[01:06:46]  Because information has the power to do amazing things.
[01:06:51]  Or when it's used, we saw what it did in World War II when people are getting the information from a guy with a little mustache who brainwashed the nation to wipe out millions of people.
[01:06:59]  Information is so powerful.
[01:07:01]  You need to know where you're getting it from.
[01:07:03]  Where's the source?
[01:07:05]  Where's the proof that this is accurate?
[01:07:08]  So I just wish that when these things happen, people would say, you know what, let me go down to the local mosque.
[01:07:12]  Let me talk to the guy.
[01:07:14]  Is this what you guys believe?
[01:07:16]  Instead, they were pulling out poor Sikhs out of their, they're not even Muslim.
[01:07:19]  They were pouring them out of their cabs and beating the living crap out of them.
[01:07:23]  Someone even got killed.
[01:07:25]  Just because the stereotype is a beard and a, so this is ignorance, man.
[01:07:30]  This is ignorance.
[01:07:31]  Most people that live in this country, 99%, who came from wherever they came from, my friend owns the Russian samovar because we're talking about Ukraine.
[01:07:41]  Shout out to Yasha, Misha.
[01:07:44]  Okay, their families mixed.
[01:07:45]  They're Jewish, Ukrainian, and Russian.
[01:07:48]  Their family came here a long time ago.
[01:07:50]  They own one of the most recognizable Russian establishments in all of New York City and America.
[01:07:55]  It's called the Russian Samovar.
[01:07:56]  It's on 52nd Street between 8th and Broadway.
[01:07:59]  These poor people went through the struggles of the last three years with all the shutdowns.
[01:08:04]  You know what that did to hospitality in New York.
[01:08:06]  Completely killed it.
[01:08:07]  It almost wiped it out completely.
[01:08:09]  So imagine you get through all of that.
[01:08:11]  Then the war breaks out in Ukraine and now everyone's boycotting your restaurant because it starts with Russian.
[01:08:14]  Meanwhile, you're American.
[01:08:18]  And you're of Ukrainian descent.
[01:08:20]  Also, he puts a huge Ukrainian flag in front of his restaurant.
[01:08:26]  We're against the war and it's a ghost town for the first couple of months during this conflict.
[01:08:31]  And I go to see them because they're my friends.
[01:08:32]  I'm never turn my back on my friends and they're like beck it's crazy man.
[01:08:36]  So eventually the word got out.
[01:08:38]  They're like, no, they don't support it.
[01:08:39]  They did fundraisers.
[01:08:41]  They get messages from over there that they can never go back to Russia.
[01:08:44]  So it's like you know, just because somebody's from a certain place That maybe you don't traditionally like or you come from originally, doesn't mean that they're like those people or whatever.
[01:08:54]  They're here, man.
[01:08:56]  Right.
[01:08:56]  I'm American first.
[01:08:58]  I was born and raised in this country first.
[01:09:01]  I will fight and die for this country first because I'm American first.
[01:09:07]  But people came here, they came for the same reasons you came.
[01:09:11]  They were oppressed.
[01:09:11]  They had things that went on in Russia.
[01:09:14]  I heard a lot of Jews were not treated well during the Soviet Union.
[01:09:16]  That's why they came to the US.
[01:09:18]  So now we're going to.
[01:09:21]  Treat our fellow American in New York that owns a Russian restaurant like a criminal and a piece of crap.
[01:09:27]  And meanwhile, he doesn't even support the war.
[01:09:28]  So, like, this is what I call stupidity, ignorance, and prejudging people.
[01:09:31]  And we see it all the time.
[01:09:34]  Additionally, there's so many people that just haven't traveled and haven't been places.
[01:09:40]  And like, one of the most absurd examples of this to me is people in the KKK.
[01:09:49]  I had a guy on here who.
[01:09:54]  Who was a black guy and he ended up meeting and befriending.
[01:09:59]  Wasn't he the guy that would like always try to like deprogram them or whatever?
[01:10:02]  Like he would meet them.
[01:10:03]  I've seen that guy.

=== Stupidity and Prejudging People (12:06) ===

[01:10:04]  Exactly.
[01:10:04]  Extraordinary guy.
[01:10:05]  Yeah.
[01:10:05]  And he became, he built bridges.
[01:10:06]  He became very good friends with a couple of guys that were in the KKK.
[01:10:10]  And he said, and this, you know, he originally spent lots of time, like lots of time over in Europe and overseas in his like brave person, like in high school.
[01:10:22]  And then he came back here when he was like, you know, after high school.
[01:10:26]  And, What the most comp like the lowest common denominator of all those people in the KKK is they had never fucking left the 10 mile radius they were born in, they had never fucking even went to the neighboring state, let alone another country, to meet anybody.
[01:10:41]  So, you're in a very closed microcosm.
[01:10:43]  You're only getting information from a very limited source.
[01:10:46]  Of course, you're going to think that way.
[01:10:49]  You know, most people, I like to believe that everyone is.
[01:10:53]  Darryl Davis, that was his name.
[01:10:55]  Correct.
[01:10:56]  Like a mustache.
[01:10:57]  Yeah.
[01:10:57]  Big, big guy.
[01:10:58]  You know, it's, again, it's getting back to information.
[01:11:02]  When you're limited in where you're getting your information, this is why they limit what you see in the news in Cuba.
[01:11:09]  This is the whole point.
[01:11:09]  So, if we start doing.
[01:11:12]  This type of stuff in the US, I don't care if it starts on social media.
[01:11:14]  It's a privately owned corporation.
[01:11:16]  Well, you know what?
[01:11:17]  Technically, it has become the arena of speech.
[01:11:22]  Yes, I know it's privately owned, but guess what?
[01:11:25]  The impact that it has on society, the impact that it has on us, there needs to be a way to protect speech on these platforms.
[01:11:31]  I don't care who you are.
[01:11:31]  They have too much influence, too much power to sway public opinion.
[01:11:36]  So to allow one group to be suppressed for their views is dangerous.
[01:11:42]  I don't care.
[01:11:43]  If you're left and you hate the right, it goes both ways.
[01:11:46]  If you allow one or the other, you both will go down.
[01:11:49]  That's a fact.
[01:11:50]  It's happened throughout history.
[01:11:54]  You use one group until you get the rest of them on your side.
[01:11:56]  It's the same thing that Adolf did.
[01:11:58]  He started one group and then he took out the rest.
[01:12:00]  So it's like you have to protect this.
[01:12:02]  These platforms have become where our squares, where we would speak publicly and have these debates.
[01:12:09]  That's what social media is now.
[01:12:11]  So that needs to be protected.
[01:12:12]  I don't give a damn if it's a private corporation.
[01:12:14]  Do you have any sort of optimism about social media with Elon and Twitter?
[01:12:20]  I don't trust the guy as far as I can throw him.
[01:12:22]  Really?
[01:12:22]  You know?
[01:12:23]  Why is that?
[01:12:25]  I'm not all about this Neuralink stuff, bro.
[01:12:28]  No.
[01:12:29]  Can there be some benefits?
[01:12:30]  I think everything needs to be looked at from a dual perspective and Murphy's Law.
[01:12:35]  I'm not saying he's a bad dude, but my perception of him is I feel like he is either A, not as in our favor as you think he is.
[01:12:45]  And that'll come out later.
[01:12:47]  Or B, he's like the scientist in Judgment Day 2, Terminator.
[01:12:50]  He's like the black scientist.
[01:12:52]  Remember in the movie, they're trying to go and get the arm and destroy it and they blow up the whole office building?
[01:12:55]  Yeah.
[01:12:56]  I think he's like that scientist.
[01:12:57]  He's so happy that he's making the first Terminator, he doesn't realize what it's going to do to us later.
[01:13:01]  Right.
[01:13:02]  And I feel like if Elon doesn't have malicious intent, the stuff that he's playing with can impact humanity in ways that could destroy us.
[01:13:11]  He is one of the most outspoken people about the dangers of AI.
[01:13:17]  Which is great.
[01:13:17]  Like I said, I'm not saying he's bad.
[01:13:19]  I'm saying I just still with a grain of salt because he has so much power and influence.
[01:13:25]  It can go either way.
[01:13:26]  And just because he owns Twitter doesn't mean it's always going to stay free speech or that people are not getting information.
[01:13:30]  Like everything you type in there, why do you think it says, what do you think?
[01:13:35]  When AI combines with everything you've ever inputted on social media, they're going to know you better than you know your own self.
[01:13:39]  And I agree with you.
[01:13:40]  If he's speaking out against that, that's great.
[01:13:42]  There's a lot I love about the guy.
[01:13:44]  I'm just saying I don't fully trust him yet.
[01:13:46]  He hasn't earned my full trust.
[01:13:48]  Yeah.
[01:13:49]  Because what he's in charge of and what he's responsible for in so many ways.
[01:13:54]  First of all, a private citizen corporation has control of our space program.
[01:13:58]  Like, why did NASA close basically?
[01:14:00]  If I'm not mistaken, they defunded NASA.
[01:14:02]  And this guy, I understand his technology was way ahead.
[01:14:06]  Did he really come up with that?
[01:14:07]  Or was he like, I don't trust the whole story.
[01:14:10]  I don't trust Bitcoin.
[01:14:11]  That's a good example of.
[01:14:13]  It's just weird.
[01:14:14]  You know, the capitalism beats government funded program.
[01:14:21]  A guy with a company figured out how to cut the fat, how to do it more effectively, how to do it better, how to do it cheaper.
[01:14:27]  And he had that drive, that ambition to make that happen.
[01:14:31]  Well, that's the story they told you.
[01:14:32]  So you fall in love with this guy and think he's Tony Stark.
[01:14:36]  Yeah.
[01:14:37]  No, I mean, like if people believe this, and I'm sorry to cut you off, if people believe this story of Yagamatsu, whatever, the guy from Japan that invented Bitcoin, bullshit.
[01:14:48]  If the youth understood what can happen with Bitcoin and how blockchain really works, unless I'm wrong, and correct me if I am, I think the whole play is towards crypto.
[01:14:59]  They'll never allow something they can't control.
[01:15:01]  But if they had to let people fall in love with the idea and get used to using it and see these big returns, and now they introduce the one that they can control.
[01:15:09]  The one that's going to tell you how much meat you can buy.
[01:15:14]  And they tie it into global warming and social credit score.
[01:15:17]  That's where this is all going, my brother.
[01:15:19]  Worse than communism could have ever been as horrible as it was.
[01:15:22]  That's my fear.
[01:15:23]  So keeping that on the front stage, front and center.
[01:15:27]  Okay, cool.
[01:15:27]  I like technology.
[01:15:28]  I like advancing.
[01:15:30]  Great.
[01:15:31]  Everything has two sides, the way it could be used.
[01:15:33]  It could be used for good or bad.
[01:15:34]  The internet, in my opinion, is doing more destruction now than good.
[01:15:37]  Yes, there's a lot of great that came from it.
[01:15:40]  Everything has two ways it can be used for good or for bad.
[01:15:43]  You can use your phone to look at porno all day, or you can use your phone to read, study, Google.
[01:15:48]  Hey, you want to talk to me about religion?
[01:15:50]  It takes you five seconds to do some basic facts on Jesus Christ.
[01:15:53]  I just showed you one of them, for example.
[01:15:54]  I took you two seconds to learn something you probably didn't know about them.
[01:15:59]  Most people are not using it for the second person, they're using it to degenerate themselves, to become lower vibrational human beings.
[01:16:05]  They're using it for the senses.
[01:16:07]  The only difference between a human being and an animal, from the spiritual explanation of it, we share the same anatomy as animals.
[01:16:14]  As monkeys, as pigs.
[01:16:15]  The pig is one of the closest to us, but what separates us from them is our souls, our spirit.
[01:16:22]  When a human being only acts upon their desires, they are lower than the animal because they have intellect.
[01:16:29]  If all I do is eat drink, suck and, like Tony Montana, all we got to do is eat and drink and suck, and what, Tony Montana, that you said that one scene?
[01:16:37]  Yeah, is this all there is to a life man?
[01:16:39]  Eating drinking, sucking.
[01:16:42]  If that's all that a human being does, you are lower than an animal, and most people in our society that's all they do, eat drink suck, yeah, consume content that doesn't benefit them.
[01:16:53]  Content like this benefits them.
[01:16:55]  That's why the work that you do is so important.
[01:16:57]  The people that you have on sharing their experiences, their lives, what they've been through, these are things that will benefit you.
[01:17:02]  If you know nothing about life, nothing about people, people have never even heard of Albania.
[01:17:05]  Probably today they learned something.
[01:17:07]  Where are you spending your time?
[01:17:09]  You have a responsibility with the gift that you've been given.
[01:17:11]  Time is the most precious asset and most people throw it right into the garbage, and i'm guilty of it too.
[01:17:16]  I've procrastinated much in my life, but the duality is what scares me.
[01:17:20]  What, what it could be I, always I. What could it be used for?
[01:17:24]  And maybe that's the fear from the trauma of knowing what my family went through, what could happen, how tyranny can creep in, how things that were created to liberate us have actually started to enslave us.
[01:17:34]  And I think this is the greatest example of it.
[01:17:37]  This is a weapon of mass envy.
[01:17:40]  Mass envy.
[01:17:41]  If you look at my Instagram, you're like, this guy has the most amazing life in the world.
[01:17:45]  This guy lives like a rock star.
[01:17:47]  Brother, there's been times I posted on there.
[01:17:49]  I'm in paradise.
[01:17:50]  I'm crying in my hotel room, bro.
[01:17:53]  And that's the truth.
[01:17:55]  Because you're only seeing what I put on there and the good stuff.
[01:17:58]  You're not seeing the bad stuff.
[01:18:00]  So you're creating this environment where everyone feels like they're behind.
[01:18:03]  I'm not doing good in life.
[01:18:04]  My life sucks.
[01:18:06]  There's a lot of responsibility that comes with this technology, brother, that I think the majority of us are failing with.
[01:18:11]  And I have even given a term to this society that we live in.
[01:18:15]  I call this generation the Easter bunny generation.
[01:18:20]  What does that mean?
[01:18:22]  This is either going to be the smartest thing you've ever heard or you're going to say this guy's an idiot.
[01:18:26]  The Easter bunny generation.
[01:18:27]  During Easter, When we go to the store and we buy all the stuff for Easter, one of the things we buy are the Easter Bunny chocolates, right?
[01:18:34]  Right.
[01:18:34]  A lot of those chocolates are what?
[01:18:35]  Inside, they're hollow.
[01:18:38]  Right.
[01:18:38]  During Easter, a lot of those chocolates, you know, they have like caramel inside or something.
[01:18:41]  Yeah, you could get the solid ones, but a lot of the ones that they give you, like they stuffed about, they're hollow.
[01:18:46]  You literally bite into them and they're empty.
[01:18:47]  Right.
[01:18:48]  They look great on the outside, they're empty on the inside.
[01:18:53]  It's the same thing with this generation.
[01:18:54]  Everything is beautiful on the exterior.
[01:18:56]  Every moment of my life is handcrafted to make my life look amazing.
[01:19:01]  But deep down inside, they've never been more depressed than they are now.
[01:19:05]  One in 12 Americans on antidepressants.
[01:19:07]  People are suffering.
[01:19:09]  Suicide rates are through the roof.
[01:19:11]  And it's got to lead you to what?
[01:19:12]  But I'm looking at this.
[01:19:13]  I've lost friends to suicide that just looking at their lives on Instagram.
[01:19:16]  But that's how I see them.
[01:19:17]  I don't know.
[01:19:18]  I don't see them every day.
[01:19:20]  Whenever I saw them, they seemed happy.
[01:19:22]  I look online.
[01:19:23]  They seem amazing.
[01:19:25]  Taking their own lives.
[01:19:27]  Married.
[01:19:27]  With children.
[01:19:28]  I lost a friend.
[01:19:29]  I couldn't believe I lost two years.
[01:19:30]  I couldn't believe how his life ended.
[01:19:33]  I would have never seen the warning signs.
[01:19:36]  It's the Easter Bunny generation, brother.
[01:19:38]  Beautiful on the outside.
[01:19:40]  Empty on the inside.
[01:19:43]  I also heard you use the term generation of bastards.
[01:19:47]  Yo, you went deep, huh?
[01:19:49]  What does that mean?
[01:19:50]  So, I got to take down some of this content before I get taken down.
[01:19:53]  But basically, brother, from a spiritual perspective, you need both parents to raise a child the right way.
[01:20:00]  Right.
[01:20:01]  Divorce has never been higher.
[01:20:03]  And most, what is the divorce rate?
[01:20:04]  Is the divorce rate really the highest in the US?
[01:20:06]  It's very high, man.
[01:20:08]  You know, in like, listen, divorce was like unthinkable in the Albanian culture 30 years ago.
[01:20:13]  Now it's normal.
[01:20:14]  People would have liked families would have gotten into blood wars over honor for a divorce, like guns were drawn when people got divorced, and now it's like not a big deal.
[01:20:23]  So that just shows you from that ancient society how things have changed, let alone here in the US.
[01:20:28]  But what I mean by a generation of bastards is that so many children are born out of wedlock.
[01:20:34]  Now, in the old days, if somebody called you a bastard, you'd break their jaw.
[01:20:38]  Someone called you a bastard, there was nothing.
[01:20:39]  Look at the old, look at the films where they show people in like in like medieval Europe, and he's the bastard, he's the bastard of Sir John Elliot III.
[01:20:48]  Yeah.
[01:20:49]  And like Game of Thrones, Jon Snow was the bastard.
[01:20:52]  So, like, to be called the bastard was like, you're a lowlife, basically, right?
[01:20:56]  And I'm not saying that you are if you are one.
[01:20:59]  What I mean by that is that you don't have the proper parental guidance.
[01:21:03]  So many children are born out of wedlock.
[01:21:04]  Men are not being men.
[01:21:05]  I don't care if you marry the woman or not.
[01:21:07]  You brought that child into this earth.
[01:21:10]  You have a responsibility to that woman and to that child to make sure that they're okay, to make sure that they're being raised properly, that you have a social responsibility not only to them.
[01:21:22]  Because you brought them into the world, but to society.
[01:21:26]  And the problem is, so many children now are born out of wedlock, they're full of rage.
[01:21:31]  Brother, they've done, most of these violent crimes, if you study them statistically, are committed by children from a single parent home.
[01:21:37]  Most violent crime, sexual crime, look up to, I know my stuff.
[01:21:42]  I get rusty sometimes because I store too much information up here.
[01:21:45]  It's committed by children from a single parent home.
[01:21:50]  So this is why we see the rage, why we're seeing the stuff that's happening in schools and the violence.
[01:21:57]  It's a lot more than just, oh, firearms.
[01:22:00]  I promise you.
[01:22:01]  So, you know, and not to get into that subject, but real quickly, every house in Albania has a weapon.
[01:22:07]  We've never had one mass shoot ever.

=== Purpose Beyond Scrolling (04:18) ===

[01:22:10]  But what we don't have is psychotropic drugs.
[01:22:14]  Most children, the minute they get a little depressed, put them on this pill, put them on that.
[01:22:16]  Why are the American people not demanding just toxicology?
[01:22:21]  Every shooter, we should draw blood.
[01:22:22]  I want to know what they were on.
[01:22:23]  I guarantee you there's a common denominator.
[01:22:26]  Yeah.
[01:22:27]  Your answer is right in front of your face every time you turn on the TV and there's like a commercial.
[01:22:31]  If you're taking such and such, discontinue the use if you're experiencing, you know, suicidal thought.
[01:22:36]  Okay.
[01:22:37]  The answer is right there.
[01:22:39]  Clearly, some of these drugs make people.
[01:22:41]  Yeah.
[01:22:41]  But I mean, like, one of the fundamental things, too, that I see with people nowadays is.
[01:22:49]  Might want to cut that word out.
[01:22:50]  Not finding, not finding, like, there's no sense of purpose.
[01:22:55]  A lot of people, especially older people, like people in their 50s, maybe even 40s, they can't. figure out a way to benefit or bring any sort of value to society.
[01:23:08]  And that is the worst thing for a human being.
[01:23:12]  Having that feeling of no purpose and no bringing no value, that is the most depressing thing.
[01:23:19]  Most people don't even want to know what they do, what they want to do in their life, even if it's just a dream.
[01:23:24]  I'll sit there and talk to people and I talk to a lot of young people because I've shifted more towards motivational speaking, inspiring people, you know, with my work, the comeback team, to inspire people to never give up no matter where you are.
[01:23:37]  I've had some of the most extraordinary people come on my show, people that are paralyzed from the neck down, people who lost everything, people who have been through addiction and crawled their way out of it and have turned their lives around above and beyond people that didn't have those problems.
[01:23:53]  So I agree with you.
[01:23:54]  I think one of the biggest problems we have is that most people don't know what their purpose is or what their why is.
[01:23:59]  And the sad part is instead of trying to figure that out and spend time on that, they waste their time in idle.
[01:24:08]  Stupid activities.
[01:24:09]  I always say you'll never be a player if you're someone else's fan.
[01:24:13]  I know that sounds a little weird, but I'll explain that.
[01:24:16]  I can't tell you how many people I know watch sports.
[01:24:18]  Nothing wrong with it.
[01:24:20]  Everything has a time and purpose.
[01:24:22]  But if all you're doing is one sport to the next, fantasy leagues, gambling, placing bets on the stuff, you know, every stat, you're reading tons and tons of newspapers, and one way or the other, unless you're winning millions of dollars gambling, that's a whole different story.
[01:24:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:24:34]  Unless you're like one of these really good guys at it or girls.
[01:24:37]  Right.
[01:24:38]  You wasted so much time and resources and money on something that's never going to change your life.
[01:24:42]  If anything, it costed you your life.
[01:24:44]  Because by being a fan, you couldn't become a player.
[01:24:47]  How can I be a player in the game of life if all I do is spend my time and my resources watching other people live in their dreams?
[01:24:55]  So that's why I say you'll never be a fan.
[01:24:57]  I'm sorry, you'll never be a player if you're someone else's fan.
[01:25:01]  Yes, you should admire people that are successful.
[01:25:03]  But I mean like when you're really a fan, all you do is sit there and watch and study and the jersey and paint the face.
[01:25:10]  That time could have been used better in your life or your children's life.
[01:25:13]  It's the same thing as TikTok.
[01:25:14]  Scrolling TikTok, scrolling Instagram.
[01:25:16]  It's very addictive.
[01:25:17]  Watching football.
[01:25:18]  I'm guilty of it.
[01:25:18]  It's mind numbing.
[01:25:19]  A little bit.
[01:25:20]  But I am a content creator and it does kind of serve a purpose a little bit for work.
[01:25:24]  Yeah, when you can create stuff that's valuable to people, yeah, it's great.
[01:25:27]  But I mean, like the whole thing, the whole platform is just fucking a waste of time.
[01:25:30]  People are just like fucking China.
[01:25:33]  They have lockdowns on it after what?
[01:25:35]  A certain time frame where their kids can only see educational content there?
[01:25:38]  Yeah, like making a volcano or something, like, you know, a school project.
[01:25:41]  Yeah.
[01:25:41]  And these things are not by accident.
[01:25:43]  You know, dumbing down of the American.
[01:25:46]  We need to like really wake up, bro.
[01:25:48]  We need to read.
[01:25:49]  We need to study.
[01:25:49]  We need to have purpose.
[01:25:52]  And if we don't know, if you're young and you're listening to this show and you're in your 20s already, you should start having an idea.
[01:25:57]  The secret to life is not making it, it's knowing what you want.
[01:26:00]  Once you know what you want, you gravitate towards it and things do fall into place.
[01:26:03]  And I don't care how far behind you are.
[01:26:06]  Wherever you are right now at this moment in your life, there's someone that started further away from the same dream you have and they already got it.
[01:26:13]  Meaning someone in worse circumstance than you was able to get to where you dream of going and.
[01:26:18]  And you have no excuse.
[01:26:20]  Get up.
[01:26:21]  Start today.
[01:26:22]  Read.
[01:26:23]  Study.
[01:26:24]  I'm not saying school either, man.
[01:26:25]  A straight A student, I can't tell you school impacted my life, man.
[01:26:28]  A little bit.

=== Fascinating Albanian History (03:09) ===

[01:26:29]  There's no way to deny that.
[01:26:30]  Taught me how to articulate and write right, which was, I think, the most important thing in school is learn how to write and communicate, and basic math definitely.
[01:26:39]  You know.
[01:26:39]  History I love, but we also know that can be very flawed and very one-sided and maybe not paint the whole picture.
[01:26:45]  Albania is not even mentioned.
[01:26:47]  No nope right, and Albania.
[01:26:49]  We learn about World War Ii all the time, and Albania was the only country in the Holocaust that saved every single Jew that came to its borders.
[01:26:57]  Really okay, so much so that there's even speculation that even possibly Albert Einstein we may have saved his life.
[01:27:05]  We're having a very hard time proving it, though.
[01:27:08]  I'm very good friends with the Prince of Albania, Prince Lek, an amazing human being whose family was in power before the fall to Mussolini when they invaded Albania because Italy's right there.
[01:27:21]  So Albania was under Italian and German occupation during the Holocaust, and we were the only country in Europe with more Jews after World War II than before.
[01:27:30]  And not a single Jew perished on our watch.
[01:27:33]  And my grandmother's brothers were hung by the SS by the Nazis, and still not a single Jew died in Albania.
[01:27:39]  There's plenty of Albanians that could have sold them out and told them where they were hiding or what they were doing, and it never happened, not on our watch.
[01:27:46]  And I'm very proud of that story.
[01:27:47]  How come they don't make a movie about that when they talk about our people?
[01:27:50]  But they'll show a movie taken, which makes us look like animals.
[01:27:53]  You know, speaking of movies, I'm sure you've seen the movie War Dogs.
[01:27:57]  Of course.
[01:27:59]  That was a fascinating history.
[01:28:01]  Well, actually, I take that back.
[01:28:03]  It wasn't so much in the movie, it was more so in the book, The Arms and the Dudes.
[01:28:08]  Where they give a more thorough background on what happened in Albania.
[01:28:13]  And it was fascinating how Albania was stuck with.
[01:28:16]  Maybe you could talk to this better than I could, but I don't remember what the exact reason was.
[01:28:24]  But for some reason, Albania got gifted like billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition from China.
[01:28:32]  And Albania.
[01:28:32]  Bearing communist Albania, but those weapons were garbage, bro.
[01:28:36]  Garbage.
[01:28:37]  The ammunition was apparently fine.
[01:28:40]  So, all of the AK, there was, I forget how much it was.
[01:28:43]  It ended up being like a couple hundred million dollars worth of AK ammo that those dudes sold to the United States for the war in Iraq.
[01:28:57]  And all of it, according to the military officers in Iraq, all of it fired perfectly.
[01:29:03]  There was never any issues with it, but it was Chinese.
[01:29:07]  And for some reason, it sat there forever, too, which is great.
[01:29:09]  It sat there for decades.
[01:29:11]  So that actually did happen, correct?
[01:29:12]  And it was in the book, Board Dogs?
[01:29:14]  It was in the book.
[01:29:15]  The book's called The Arms and the Dudes.
[01:29:16]  Yeah.
[01:29:16]  The book is fascinating.
[01:29:18]  And the movie is just like a.
[01:29:20]  They briefly talk about it, but I don't think they talk about all of the ammunition and all of the arms that were gifted to Albania from China.
[01:29:31]  Yeah.
[01:29:31]  And China.
[01:29:31]  During communist Albania, they did have a relationship with China.
[01:29:35]  But like I said, my family, us, we were all anti communist fighters.

=== Chinese Ammo in Iraq (04:39) ===

[01:29:38]  That's why I was born in America.
[01:29:40]  My great grandfather was up in the mountains of Albanian.
[01:29:43]  Fighting against that regime, but they were outnumbered, outgunned.
[01:29:46]  And the rest of my family got thrown into internment camps, my mom's side of the family.
[01:29:52]  My great grandfather did 28 years in a gulag type prison, of which he got out and lived a year after.
[01:29:59]  My great grandmother was hung off a tree.
[01:30:02]  And that's why my mom ended up in the U.S. as a child.
[01:30:05]  My mom, I think she came here when she was like seven or eight.
[01:30:07]  So my mom speaks English better than me, which is crazy.
[01:30:10]  And English was my first language, it wasn't Albanian.
[01:30:13]  I learned Albanian later.
[01:30:14]  In my life.
[01:30:15]  Wow.
[01:30:16]  So I have like a weird New York.
[01:30:20]  My voice is very deep too.
[01:30:21]  So it like kind of exaggerates the way I pronounce certain things.
[01:30:24]  It's not really a true Albanian accent.
[01:30:27]  You know?
[01:30:29]  Do you think that sort of trauma in your bloodline transcends, like, do you think that gets passed down somehow without the actual knowledge and actual, like, without the experience?
[01:30:43]  Do you think that somehow gets transferred?
[01:30:45]  I think there's definitely such a thing as generational trauma, 100%.
[01:30:50]  I think that everything shapes you, whether you realize it or not.
[01:30:55]  So I'm a product of two traumas, right?
[01:30:57]  So two negative things led to something positive, right?
[01:31:00]  negative times a negative equals a positive.
[01:31:02]  I consider my birth a positive.
[01:31:04]  I consider my contribution to life a good one.
[01:31:07]  I don't hate the people that did what they did.
[01:31:09]  I, you know, I think there was a certain level of propaganda and things that happened.
[01:31:14]  I, I hope that the people that neighbor our people realize that like we just want peace too, man.
[01:31:21]  Like enough's enough already.
[01:31:22]  None of us are winning, man.
[01:31:23]  This whole war shit, where has it gone us?
[01:31:24]  Right.
[01:31:25]  So I try to broadcast a positive message.
[01:31:27]  I try to inspire people to be better.
[01:31:30]  And I think I find my bravery a lot of times, you know, I'm not going to sit and act like I'm a big dude.
[01:31:35]  And I know a lot of people, a lot of people.
[01:31:38]  New York City is my playground.
[01:31:40]  I promise you.
[01:31:40]  When I tell you it's my playground, it's my playground.
[01:31:43]  But I'm not some tough guy trying to prove a point or anything like that.
[01:31:49]  I think that, you know, I don't know where I'm going with this thought because I just lost my first track of things.
[01:31:55]  But basically, I feel like I just want to do things that are positive.
[01:32:00]  And at times when life gets really difficult, and it does get difficult, to sit here and say that my life doesn't get difficult at times, I'd be lying to you.
[01:32:07]  We all have problems, personal issues, things like that.
[01:32:10]  I think of my grandfather and what he went through and how he came to this country with nothing and started as a doorman and then a super.
[01:32:18]  And like he went through hell and brought kids.
[01:32:20]  He couldn't even speak the language.
[01:32:21]  And in the Bronx, it was a freaking war zone at that time.
[01:32:25]  The Bronx was burning when my family started in America.
[01:32:29]  And I find strength when I think of them, like what they went through.
[01:32:34]  I do find.
[01:32:34]  So I do believe it does impact you when you're aware of where you come from and who you are.
[01:32:39]  to know that my great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, his statue stands all over Albania.
[01:32:47]  He was the general of the resistance of our people, the Legion of Prizzaran.
[01:32:52]  You can Google it, the Legion of Prizzaran.
[01:32:54]  My great-great-grandfather was literally the general that led that resistance.
[01:33:01]  He died in battle.
[01:33:02]  So I find bravery in that.
[01:33:06]  And, you know, bravery doesn't mean there's an absence of fear.
[01:33:09]  Some people are just stupidly brave, right?
[01:33:12]  The majority of people that were brave, they had fear.
[01:33:16]  To me, the most brave people in our history here in the US, I'm going to take off my hat to people like Dr. Martin Luther King.
[01:33:23]  He knew he was going to die, bro.
[01:33:25]  Malcolm X, he preached a message of hatred in the beginning, and then he preached one of unity, and it cost him his life.
[01:33:32]  He knew he was going to die.
[01:33:33]  That's bravery.
[01:33:35]  And that's evolving.
[01:33:36]  And that's taking new information and saying, you know what?
[01:33:40]  Maybe I was wrong.
[01:33:41]  And I think that we all can get along.
[01:33:43]  It doesn't matter what the color.
[01:33:44]  And he changed his whole tone, it cost him his life.
[01:33:47]  And he knew he was going to die.
[01:33:49]  To me, you're going to die anyway.
[01:33:52]  I'd rather die speaking the truth than live a lie.
[01:33:54]  And I'd rather die free than live.
[01:33:56]  I'd rather live one day free than a million slaves.
[01:34:03]  And when I look at what my family went through and what it took them to get their freedom now, and I had a cousin that was in the war, and I said, Would you fight again?
[01:34:11]  She goes, Absolutely.
[01:34:12]  She goes, These 20 years of freedom were worth everything.
[01:34:14]  The way we lived before wasn't worth it.

=== Coexistence Without Superpower Status (03:28) ===

[01:34:17]  So, I think so many of us don't realize what we have.
[01:34:21]  And I hope that this message, you know, I just want to be someone that brings people together.
[01:34:25]  I'm not trying to alienate Serbians or like, like, like we need to find a way to coexist.
[01:34:32]  Enough's enough.
[01:34:33]  Yeah.
[01:34:33]  Just accept us.
[01:34:34]  We accept you.
[01:34:36]  Let some time go by.
[01:34:37]  Come visit the places that you think are yours and you want, like, no one's stopping you.
[01:34:42]  Just acknowledge us, the right to exist.
[01:34:45]  And we can all live in harmony.
[01:34:46]  Nobody's stopping you.
[01:34:49]  I get along with anyone I've met here.
[01:34:50]  I've met Serbians over here in America.
[01:34:52]  That's the beauty of America.
[01:34:53]  Man, we here we can talk over there.
[01:34:56]  I can't be seen sitting down and having a coffee with you.
[01:35:00]  And these are the things I loved about our society and our way of life that even the worst enemies can come together and have a conversation in Manhattan or in Brooklyn at a park, yeah, or over a slice of pizza in Queens.
[01:35:14]  You know what I mean?
[01:35:15]  It just seems like there's something missing in the DNA chain of us that just makes us too tribal.
[01:35:24]  And just it's a there's there's some sort of Warring gene in us.
[01:35:31]  Yeah, but what about the human tribe?
[01:35:33]  You know, we're the human tribe.
[01:35:35]  Yeah, but what's going to, what is going to make us, what would it take to make everyone on Earth see us as, as human, the human tribe?
[01:35:42]  What was going to take aliens landing on the White House lawn, an alien spaceship coming down for all of us to unite together?
[01:35:49]  I mean, I haven't, I haven't heard of a plausible scenario where that happens.
[01:35:55]  I just don't see it.
[01:35:56]  I don't, unfortunately, don't think they'll ever be.
[01:35:59]  True peace on earth.
[01:36:01]  I just don't see it happening ever.
[01:36:04]  All we can do is try to broadcast this message of unity.
[01:36:08]  You know, live and let live, man.
[01:36:10]  Live and let live.
[01:36:11]  As long as no one's messing with your core, you, your children, your way of life, and you're leaving them alone, why can't we both coexist here?
[01:36:21]  Matters of a bedroom are private matters.
[01:36:23]  Whether you're one way or the other, that's just called decency.
[01:36:28]  Respect for both.
[01:36:30]  Do what you want to do in your bedroom, man.
[01:36:31]  I don't give a shit.
[01:36:33]  But you never think there will ever be peace on earth.
[01:36:35]  I think it's going to get a lot worse, actually.
[01:36:38]  We'll see what happens.
[01:36:39]  What do you think is going to happen?
[01:36:41]  I think the Third World War has already started, and most of us don't even realize it.
[01:36:46]  What kind of war is that going to be?
[01:36:48]  It's different.
[01:36:48]  See, people play games like Call of Duty and this, and they think, I think it's already begun mentally, spiritually.
[01:36:55]  We're in the thick and thin of it right now.
[01:36:57]  Most people don't even realize that we're in it.
[01:36:59]  There's going to be major shifts.
[01:37:01]  I don't know if our country comes out of this, man.
[01:37:02]  I really don't.
[01:37:03]  I think we're in serious, serious trouble unless we wake up.
[01:37:06]  Fast.
[01:37:08]  We don't make nothing anymore, brother.
[01:37:10]  We didn't have enough antibiotics.
[01:37:11]  I mean, you're talking about a superpower that doesn't make anything anymore.
[01:37:14]  You're not a superpower anymore.
[01:37:15]  We're not a superpower anymore.
[01:37:16]  I don't care that we have better weapons.
[01:37:17]  You don't think they have them too?
[01:37:19]  And we use all those weapons and what's left on earth anyway for us.
[01:37:22]  But we are still a superpower.
[01:37:24]  We're still thought of as the superpower, aren't we?
[01:37:25]  We're thought of, but we're losing that pretty quickly.
[01:37:28]  Like we need to step our game up.
[01:37:30]  We need to bring manufacturing.
[01:37:31]  But there's a lot of things that need to be done and need to be done quickly.
[01:37:34]  We should never be at the mercy of another country.
[01:37:37]  We should never allow certain countries into the World Trade Organization.
[01:37:41]  Period.
[01:37:42]  You're using labor that costs pennies.
[01:37:44]  Those human beings don't even have a good life.

=== Losing Superpower Standing (04:31) ===

[01:37:46]  You're allowing labor that's really slave labor, is what it is.
[01:37:50]  How is the American worker going to compete?
[01:37:52]  You did everything and everything to not protect the interests of the American people, to not protect the Western way of life, and you've opened up Pandora's box.
[01:38:00]  I heard somewhere that there's more slaves in the world now than there were during Jim Crow.
[01:38:04]  If you're working for like five cents a day and you're barely getting, I mean, where are you?
[01:38:07]  You're a slave, dude.
[01:38:08]  Right.
[01:38:09]  Going back to America and where it goes.
[01:38:12]  You know, it is interesting some of the dynamic between America and some of these other countries, like Saudi Arabia, for example.
[01:38:20]  Like, that's a weird one.
[01:38:22]  Did you see recently there was that Live Golf League?
[01:38:27]  They were doing some sort of televised game of golf, and Trump was there.
[01:38:34]  And they were interviewing Trump in there.
[01:38:36]  I guess there were tons of protesters, 9 11 protesters, victims of families of people who died in 9 11 were there protesting.
[01:38:43]  And they were asking Donald Trump, You know, his opinion on all that, and he was like, Well, we still don't know what happened in 9 11.
[01:38:50]  We still don't, we still haven't gotten to the bottom of what happened in 9 11.
[01:38:53]  Do you see that interview?
[01:38:54]  No, I did not.
[01:38:56]  That was wild to hear him say that.
[01:38:59]  Did we really get to the bottom of it though?
[01:39:01]  I don't think so.
[01:39:02]  I don't think so either.
[01:39:06]  You know, who knows what really happened that day, bro?
[01:39:09]  Are you skeptical about what I mean?
[01:39:12]  So, I've talked to a lot of people about this, and it's very hard to say that as a New Yorker.
[01:39:16]  That's what I've heard.
[01:39:17]  Like people that were closest to each other.
[01:39:19]  You know, one of my really good friends, she's like one of the most important people in the building in New York.
[01:39:23]  And she takes the official account of what happened.
[01:39:26]  My whole thing is number seven, bro.
[01:39:28]  But, you know, I would like this episode to get out there.
[01:39:30]  So, like.
[01:39:30]  We can talk about it.
[01:39:31]  It's okay.
[01:39:32]  It'll get out there.
[01:39:34]  Don't worry about it, man.
[01:39:35]  I have still not been back to Ground Zero.
[01:39:37]  Really?
[01:39:38]  I've driven past the area.
[01:39:41]  I wanted to go on the 20th, man.
[01:39:43]  I just.
[01:39:43]  I've never gone there.
[01:39:46]  I know I need to go there.
[01:39:48]  I haven't gone.
[01:39:51]  Maybe on the 25th anniversary, I don't know.
[01:39:53]  But I still haven't gone back to the actual, you know, and I miss those damn buildings, man.
[01:39:58]  I feel like I knew the world would never be the same after those attacks.
[01:40:03]  That was the first thought that entered my mind that day.
[01:40:04]  When those buildings came down, I was like, something horrible is coming after this, and the world will never be the same again.
[01:40:11]  And it wasn't.
[01:40:13]  And just horrible, man.
[01:40:15]  Just everything that went down.
[01:40:17]  You know, let's not forget, millions and millions of people lost their lives because it's not just the three, you know.
[01:40:21]  Close to 4,000 we lost.
[01:40:23]  It's and more than that, right?
[01:40:24]  All the people that breed the stuff in after you're a victim of those attacks, right?
[01:40:27]  Right, right.
[01:40:29]  But millions of people across the ocean that had nothing to do with it, they had no say in that happened or not, or right.
[01:40:35]  And in Afghanistan, they're back under control of the people that supposedly helped do it, and right, right.
[01:40:40]  They're better weaponed now than like so.
[01:40:42]  To me, it's like it's a really sad feeling as someone that came out from those buildings that day in the aftermath and witnessing the war.
[01:40:51]  I'm being alive this long.
[01:40:52]  I turned 40 years old to know that.
[01:40:56]  It was kind of all for nothing.
[01:40:59]  I have family that served.
[01:41:00]  My cousin just enlisted in the Navy yesterday to get her citizenship.
[01:41:04]  You want to talk about like Americans and like what it means?
[01:41:06]  Like she's from Kosovo.
[01:41:09]  She is from Kosovo.
[01:41:11]  She was living in Colorado.
[01:41:13]  She wants to be an American so bad.
[01:41:14]  She enlisted in the Navy.
[01:41:16]  They just gave her a citizenship.
[01:41:17]  She's celebrating.
[01:41:17]  She's so happy.
[01:41:18]  Yeah, she's willing to risk her life.
[01:41:21]  Shout out to my cousin Samira.
[01:41:23]  Samira saliu.
[01:41:26]  Enlisted in the NAVY.
[01:41:28]  She's on a boat right now, as we speak, starting her first day as a NAVY woman wow.
[01:41:32]  But the key there was to get her citizenship.
[01:41:37]  She's willing to put her life on the line to become an American.
[01:41:41]  And you guys were born with this privilege and you don't take advantage of it.
[01:41:45]  You don't care to stay up to speed and pay attention.
[01:41:48]  If we loved our country, we'd all be watching C-span every day instead of sports.
[01:41:53]  We would watch what these are saying and then hold them accountable when they lie.
[01:41:58]  We'd have massive protests Demanding term limits, because there should be term limits, brother.
[01:42:05]  And, like, I don't care if they can, they want to go on forever, no problem, as long as the people say you're doing a great job.
[01:42:11]  I'm not walking through human feces.
[01:42:13]  I'm not living in a city where a guy can smash another guy over the head with a bat and he's out in bail in less than two hours.

=== Artificial Nightlife Scenes (03:47) ===

[01:42:18]  In New York City, bro.
[01:42:20]  A place that was an example to the rest of the world of what a society could look like, where you were safe to go down the street, where everyone lived together in harmony, and it was ripped to pieces in the last three to four years.
[01:42:32]  It's horrible what they did to my city, and I'll never forgive them for it.
[01:42:37]  Ever.
[01:42:37]  You did a better job.
[01:42:38]  De Blasio did a better job at destroying New York than Osama bin Laden, bro.
[01:42:44]  Mic drop.
[01:42:45]  Wow.
[01:42:45]  So you think you're going to move to Florida?
[01:42:49]  I can never fully disclaim New York.
[01:42:51]  It's my heart.
[01:42:52]  It's my soul.
[01:42:54]  Even if I come down here for my children to have a better opportunity, in some ways I feel like someone leaving his homeland for a better start.
[01:43:02]  I have to go back all the time.
[01:43:04]  My life is there.
[01:43:05]  I've invested too much into that town.
[01:43:07]  But yeah, no, New York is, hopefully we find our way back, man.
[01:43:14]  It would be so sad to see that place never go back to what it was.
[01:43:17]  It's just.
[01:43:18]  It's not.
[01:43:18]  I mean, listen, as far as night, I'm involved in the nightlife there.
[01:43:21]  So, you know, at one point, my brother owned one of the largest nightclubs in New York, closed down about 10 years ago.
[01:43:29]  And I've been in the nightlife scene since 2000.
[01:43:33]  So, 23 years in the scene, man, in the limelight, as they call it.
[01:43:38]  And I've worked, promoted, I've done it all.
[01:43:41]  And I consult with some of the biggest nightclub venues.
[01:43:45]  Is there still a nightlife scene?
[01:43:46]  There is still a nightlife scene.
[01:43:47]  It's very, very different.
[01:43:49]  And, you know, it's very artificial, brother.
[01:43:52]  And nightlife is pretty much the same in New York as it is in Vegas or Miami.
[01:43:56]  And some of these companies are so big that it's the same people calling the shots in all three cities, right?
[01:44:02]  But, you know, for me, nightlife is more organic in Europe, is really like a real party.
[01:44:09]  Really?
[01:44:09]  You know, you got to remember, New York City, the rents are very expensive.
[01:44:12]  So you're not paying for a drink in New York.
[01:44:13]  You're paying for the real estate because these guys have crazy rents.
[01:44:16]  Their rents are $60,000, $100,000, $200,000 just to open the doors.
[01:44:19]  That's without employees, staff, supplies.
[01:44:21]  That's just the rent.
[01:44:23]  So, when people say, like, why is a bottle?
[01:44:24]  Per month, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[01:44:25]  Oh, yeah, brother.
[01:44:27]  So, why do you think, you know, like, why do you think a bottle costs 400 bucks?
[01:44:30]  You know?
[01:44:30]  Yeah.
[01:44:31]  Why do you think they give minimums that you have to do?
[01:44:33]  Because, like, I can't afford to let you in if you're going to buy one beer.
[01:44:36]  I have to pay my rent.
[01:44:37]  They're providing you with an environment that a lot of times they have to also create.
[01:44:42]  They pay for women to show up there, meaning, like, promoters go out and get beautiful women to come hang out.
[01:44:48]  That costs money.
[01:44:49]  They got to pay the promoter.
[01:44:50]  They got to pay the women.
[01:44:50]  They got to give them free alcohol.
[01:44:52]  Like, you know, you're literally building an environment where someone that has the money can come and have fun.
[01:44:57]  So that's what you're paying for because it's a lot that goes into the production.
[01:45:04]  You'll never see.
[01:45:06]  It's why they still hold the crown.
[01:45:07]  It's why they were the epitome of all nightlife.
[01:45:11]  Studio 54, the red rope.
[01:45:13]  The red rope, that comes from them, brother, from Steve Lubel and Ian Schrager.
[01:45:19]  Ian Schrager is still around.
[01:45:20]  He works with Marriott.
[01:45:23]  He has the addition hotels are the ones that he designs.
[01:45:28]  He did the one in New York, the addition in, I think it's, what is it, Union Square, and then the public hotel, which is like a hotspot.
[01:45:34]  So this guy's influence is still felt.
[01:45:36]  And that all goes back to that creative art that was the nightlife of New York from like the 60s, from forever, but really kind of ended in like the late 2000s, 2010, 2015.
[01:45:51]  It lost all of its artsiness, very artificial.
[01:45:57]  You know, when I was first going out, there were clubs like Limelight and.
[01:46:02]  Sound factory, you'd walk in on a Friday and come out Monday.

=== Mixing Drugs and Cognition (05:32) ===

[01:46:06]  Jesus Christ.
[01:46:07]  Literally, no joke.
[01:46:08]  How much cocaine do you need to do that?
[01:46:10]  I don't know.
[01:46:10]  Never did cocaine in my life.
[01:46:11]  I was always scared of it.
[01:46:12]  Always terrified of it.
[01:46:14]  You're not missing much.
[01:46:14]  Don't worry.
[01:46:15]  But if I liked it, I'd be a dead man.
[01:46:16]  And many people I know died from it.
[01:46:18]  So, but I drank enough.
[01:46:21]  I can tell you that much.
[01:46:22]  99% of the people that are in nightclubs are doing cocaine, especially down here.
[01:46:27]  Especially in Miami, right?
[01:46:28]  Not even Miami.
[01:46:29]  Fucking here in Tampa, St. Pete.
[01:46:31]  I mean, you know, you're messing around with that stuff right now.
[01:46:34]  You're literally playing roulette right now.
[01:46:36]  Like people are dropping like flies from fentanyl, brother.
[01:46:38]  It's not worth the risk, man.
[01:46:40]  It's really not like I always say, don't take drugs.
[01:46:42]  Like, I'm telling you, as someone that's been in the nightlife, the amount of people that have dropped like flies friends of mine in LA, friends of mine in New York, Jersey, really Florida, brother, you have no idea what's going into that.
[01:46:57]  If there's even this much of that stuff, you're done.
[01:46:59]  You don't get a second chance, man, unless someone narks you back to life.
[01:47:03]  That's another thing that's coming from drugs.
[01:47:05]  Oh, fentanyl, of course.
[01:47:06]  Everyone going, well, you know what?
[01:47:07]  I'll let them do the bumps first and then I'll watch.
[01:47:10]  That's like their.
[01:47:11]  Don't be the first one doing the bag.
[01:47:12]  That's all I got to tell you.
[01:47:13]  Do not be the first guy taking the first bump.
[01:47:16]  You're going to be stupid.
[01:47:17]  You know, mix it good.
[01:47:19]  Yeah.
[01:47:19]  Make sure that you're not the first dude.
[01:47:21]  And the crazy thing is that shit, the cartels are not mixing.
[01:47:26]  From what I've talked to, the cartels aren't mixing Coke with Coke.
[01:47:29]  Why would they want to?
[01:47:30]  They're losing your customer base.
[01:47:31]  Exactly.
[01:47:32]  Making people scared to use it.
[01:47:33]  It's really bad for business.
[01:47:34]  From what I've heard, it's like the low level drug dealers here.
[01:47:37]  It's not the guys that are just selling Coke to their rich clients.
[01:47:39]  That's not how they would want to.
[01:47:40]  That makes no sense to me.
[01:47:41]  It makes no sense to me.
[01:47:41]  You kill your customer, you moron.
[01:47:43]  What makes the sense is it's the low level drug dealers who are also slinging heroin and pills and shit.
[01:47:48]  They're mixing it all up together.
[01:47:49]  They're cutting it on the same table and it accidentally is getting cut.
[01:47:52]  But again, I've heard that some people think it's more addictive to add it in there, but I don't know.
[01:47:57]  Maybe I just don't understand.
[01:47:59]  I'm not somebody that's mixed a bunch of drugs together and fucking.
[01:48:03]  I'm not.
[01:48:03]  I take a fucking Tylenol PM and I'm fucked up for two days.
[01:48:07]  I could never take any serious opioid.
[01:48:10]  I do drink kratom tea.
[01:48:13]  Oh, do you so?
[01:48:14]  I don't drink alcohol.
[01:48:16]  I stopped drinking almost 10 years ago.
[01:48:17]  Did you have a problem with it before?
[01:48:18]  No no, it's just that when my brother passed away, I knew you know you learn.
[01:48:23]  Listen, nightlife can either a be the most amazing thing that ever happened to you.
[01:48:29]  It opens doors you can't even believe.
[01:48:30]  If you look on my instagram, you'll see.
[01:48:31]  I'm friends with everybody, bro.
[01:48:33]  I'm one person away from anyone.
[01:48:35]  You can imagine.
[01:48:36]  It all came from the connections I made at a young age and then continue to build throughout the nightlife.
[01:48:42]  When you meet somebody in the night, Their hair is down, as they say.
[01:48:47]  You get to see a form of their authentic self.
[01:48:49]  It might not be who they truly are, but you get to see who they are when their guard's down.
[01:48:53]  Right.
[01:48:53]  When they're just letting loose and having fun.
[01:48:55]  And when you make that connection, it was like, hey, I was vulnerable.
[01:48:58]  You might have seen me blow a line or drink or do something stupid.
[01:49:01]  You didn't judge me for it.
[01:49:03]  I don't see you bad mouthing me about it.
[01:49:05]  I kind of like you around me.
[01:49:07]  I'll see you again next time.
[01:49:08]  Interesting.
[01:49:09]  There's like a bond there, man.
[01:49:10]  But it's very dangerous because when you get sucked into the nightlife, a lot of people don't get back out, man.
[01:49:16]  Right.
[01:49:16]  Or it destroys their life where they have to just stop it completely.
[01:49:19]  When I lost my brother, I knew I couldn't drink anymore.
[01:49:21]  I knew from seeing people in the past and when they experienced trauma, to continue drinking was a death sentence.
[01:49:28]  I knew I would die.
[01:49:29]  I knew with what I was feeling in my heart, where I was always just happy.
[01:49:33]  And there's videos of me online dancing with glasses on my head and my trademark dance.
[01:49:37]  And, you know, I've been a part of the fabric of New York nightlife for over 23 years.
[01:49:43]  I knew that if I drink with that type of a heart, right?
[01:49:48]  Heavy heart.
[01:49:48]  Right.
[01:49:49]  I wouldn't make it out of it a lot.
[01:49:50]  I'd be dead.
[01:49:51]  And now I'm so used to not drinking that I don't want to ever again.
[01:49:55]  So I kind of discovered the Kava culture.
[01:49:57]  Shout out to Kava Sutra, first place to open up in New York City, but their flagship is in Florida, I think Lake Lakeland or whatever it's called.
[01:50:05]  It's not too far from West Palm Beach.
[01:50:08]  And they provide a way to enjoy yourself socially without losing cognition.
[01:50:14]  So it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier.
[01:50:16]  And it's a very big subculture in Florida.
[01:50:19]  Yeah, it is.
[01:50:20]  Florida's the mecca for it.
[01:50:21]  There's a ton of kratom bars around here, just right down the street.
[01:50:24]  You got to be careful of kratom too, because too much of it can make you very nauseous or give you the jitters.
[01:50:27]  But, you know, I have a tea, very calming, very chill.
[01:50:32]  You get a social component to it, but you never lose control of yourself.
[01:50:35]  One of the lessons I've learned is that you should never.
[01:50:38]  I'm not advocating drinking or doing drugs, but if you're going to drink or do drugs, you should only do them when you're happy or you're celebrating, never when you're down or depressed.
[01:50:47]  When you're sad, don't drink or do anything.
[01:50:49]  That's a recipe for death.
[01:50:50]  Yes.
[01:50:52]  And that's how you can jump off of a bridge or whatever.
[01:50:55]  You need to really be in a good place, especially with alcohol.
[01:50:58]  Alcohol can destroy you just as bad, man.
[01:51:01]  I think alcohol is probably the most dangerous drug that's legal, right?
[01:51:05]  Worse than other things in some ways because you would do things you would not do on it.
[01:51:11]  And that cognition is important at times.
[01:51:15]  Just drunk driving, how many people have died, and you know, it's insane.
[01:51:18]  It's crazy, bro.
[01:51:20]  So it's like, you know, I knew I couldn't drink, so I stopped immediately and never had another drink ever again.
[01:51:27]  You were very close to your brother?
[01:51:29]  Yeah, it was actually my mom's brother, but we were so close in age that to say to people, he was my uncle, they would never understand the relationship.

=== Alcohol as a Dangerous Drug (07:47) ===

[01:51:39]  This guy was my mentor.
[01:51:41]  He lived less than a mile away from me.
[01:51:43]  Since the day I was born, he was always in my life.
[01:51:46]  We were either together all day or on the phone.
[01:51:48]  We were always, we were inseparable, bro.
[01:51:51]  And when he passed away, I mean, it was just like, he was the true king of New York.
[01:51:56]  And I was like his little protege.
[01:51:58]  That's what he called me.
[01:51:58]  He's the one that gave me the name Beck Lover.
[01:52:00]  Really?
[01:52:01]  My brother, Nikki Knuckles.
[01:52:02]  God rest his soul.
[01:52:04]  He owned an amazing nightclub on 52nd Street.
[01:52:06]  That's how I met the owners of the Russian Samovar.
[01:52:08]  He had a partner and they opened that place together.
[01:52:11]  They had a good run there.
[01:52:14]  And, but I was already in nightlife before that.
[01:52:16]  But then once they opened, it was like, all right, it's go time.
[01:52:19]  And I got to throw some really cool parties there.
[01:52:21]  And my network expanded.
[01:52:23]  And I mean, he's the reason I met half the people I met.
[01:52:25]  And then I knew how to like capitalize on that, you know, how to network, how to.
[01:52:29]  That's interesting.
[01:52:29]  He brought me to a lot of like, listen, he brought me to places that no 18 year old would get in or experience.
[01:52:35]  And, you know, he showed me how to be social and how to talk and how to create relationships with people and how to kind of, you know, How to just penetrate.
[01:52:48]  I mean, yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, man.
[01:52:50]  I've so many people I've met that are fit the description that you're making right now and that fit that description of being able just to connect with somebody instantly, being able to find a way with words to make somebody drop their guard or let their hair down.
[01:53:07]  And that skill, I've never seen that skill in somebody like I see that in people that are born and raised in New York, especially like poverty in New York.
[01:53:18]  Those people have a way of connecting with other human beings like no one else I've ever met.
[01:53:24]  Just the communication skills alone.
[01:53:27]  I think a lot of people who have been through trauma, I know I myself, because I'm known somewhat of a little bit of as a class clown growing up and a jokester.
[01:53:36]  I think a lot of times when we're dealing with pain, I do believe that slogan that they say, the clown is the saddest one in the room.
[01:53:44]  A lot of us are dealing with trauma.
[01:53:46]  And rather than dwell on that and focus on that, Like, let me laugh because I'm gonna fucking die today.
[01:53:52]  Like, I need to laugh.
[01:53:53]  If I don't laugh, I'm gonna lose my fucking mind.
[01:53:55]  Like, my life's already so shit right now.
[01:53:58]  At least let me fucking make people feel good.
[01:54:00]  And, like, so I feel like, you know, look at Robin Williams, man.
[01:54:03]  Yeah.
[01:54:03]  What else you wanna know, man?
[01:54:04]  Right.
[01:54:05]  That guy's death to this day still haunts me, man.
[01:54:07]  I can't believe he, you know, the amount of joy this guy had the ability to make you laugh and cry within seconds.
[01:54:13]  Very powerful human being.
[01:54:16]  And for him to go down the way he went really just broke my heart in so many ways.
[01:54:22]  And it scared me a little bit too, because I feel like a lot of times maybe I wasn't doing good and I was just using laughter as a way to self medicate since I don't use alcohol, I don't do drugs as a way to kind of like, as a high kind of like a way to like, Release endorphins, right?
[01:54:36]  Because there's nothing like laughing, bro.
[01:54:38]  Right.
[01:54:39]  Like, laughing is such a powerful weapon if you use it the right way.
[01:54:42]  Yeah.
[01:54:42]  It's an easy way to pick up a beautiful woman.
[01:54:44]  Yeah.
[01:54:45]  You know, I know, I know it works.
[01:54:47]  Trust me.
[01:54:49]  It's a beautiful way to instantly connect with someone.
[01:54:53]  Like, someone makes you laugh, bro, and they're like really witty and sharp in the way they do it.
[01:54:59]  You feel an instant bond with that person.
[01:55:01]  Right.
[01:55:01]  Like, this guy's not an asshole.
[01:55:03]  Right.
[01:55:04]  They're funny.
[01:55:05]  I kind of, I'm going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
[01:55:07]  I think laughter is such a powerful weapon when you learn how to master.
[01:55:11]  and use it.
[01:55:11]  But I do believe a lot of people that are funny all the time really probably deep down inside we're going through a fucking hard time.
[01:55:17]  Yes.
[01:55:18]  Yeah, man, for sure.
[01:55:19]  And we use laughter as a way to deal with the pain.
[01:55:24]  And I know there was times in my life where my life was on fire, right?
[01:55:27]  Like you get a phone call and you find out 30 people you love are dead.
[01:55:31]  You know.
[01:55:31]  That was a phone call?
[01:55:32]  That was a phone call.
[01:55:33]  I mean, it's overseas, right?
[01:55:34]  And so that was sophomore, freshman or sophomore, sophomore.
[01:55:41]  Junior year, high school, you know.
[01:55:44]  And, you know, I got a phone call when my brother died.
[01:55:48]  That shit was fucking crazy.
[01:55:49]  You know, I get to work and then I get a phone call from my aunt and she doesn't want to tell me what's going on.
[01:55:57]  I already knew somebody was dead.
[01:55:59]  Then my cousin calls me, tells me, I just, I was in a yellow cab, man, when I found out he passed.
[01:56:04]  He died in a car accident in 2013.
[01:56:08]  And I'm in the back of this cab because they had all told me to like rush towards, you know, get to his house.
[01:56:13]  And I'm in the back of the cab.
[01:56:15]  And when my cousin calls me, my cousin Leo, he's like, Did you hear?
[01:56:19]  I'm like, Bro, just tell me who died, man.
[01:56:21]  He's like, Nikki died, bro.
[01:56:23]  And I just, I fucking lost it, bro.
[01:56:26]  I started punching the roof, going fucking crazy.
[01:56:29]  You know, the poor cab, man, the guy, you know, I always say my things, like, If you're seeing me, I am sorry.
[01:56:34]  He pulls over.
[01:56:35]  He's like, Sir, are you okay?
[01:56:36]  Like, are you all right?
[01:56:37]  I said, Sir, I'm sorry.
[01:56:38]  I said, I just got some really bad news.
[01:56:39]  I said, Please just get me to the ferry, man.
[01:56:41]  I was trying to get to the ferry to get to Jersey, you know, where he lives.
[01:56:44]  And, you know, you go through these things man, and it's only a matter of time.
[01:56:50]  We all get hit in life.
[01:56:51]  I tell people, there's knockouts, there's knockdowns and knockouts.
[01:56:55]  A lot of people go through knockdowns and act like they should when there's a knockout.
[01:56:59]  A knockdown is you lose your job.
[01:57:01]  Now you're like, oh my god, what am I gonna do?
[01:57:03]  I lost my job, and I know how stressful that can be.
[01:57:06]  I've been there before.
[01:57:08]  You lose, you know, a girlfriend or a boyfriend or you know um, something.
[01:57:15]  That's just really annoying and and and and you know maybe.
[01:57:18]  So divorce is pretty bad too.
[01:57:19]  I still don't consider that a knockout.
[01:57:22]  You can always get married again.
[01:57:23]  You might end up marrying someone even better than you.
[01:57:25]  So it's the way you think, it's the way you perceive.
[01:57:28]  But a knockout is when you lose something you can never get back, man.
[01:57:31]  And when someone passes away, man, one year goes by, two years go by, 10 years go by, and you're like, man, I'm never going to fucking see him again in this dimension, ever again.
[01:57:44]  A song, a dance, a moment.
[01:57:47]  You know, I tried to leave New York City when he died.
[01:57:50]  It became so unbearable for this guy, he was larger than life, bro.
[01:57:53]  Nikki.
[01:57:55]  This guy would light up a fucking room in seconds, bro.
[01:57:59]  And everybody wanted to know who this guy was.
[01:58:02]  And he'd buy everyone a drink, and he was the funniest fucking guy you ever meet in your life.
[01:58:08]  And I get so happy when people compare me just a little bit to him.
[01:58:11]  They're like, you sound a little bit like him.
[01:58:12]  You look, he had way better hair than me.
[01:58:14]  I took after my dad's side, my mom's side, they got good hair.
[01:58:19]  And I did things with this guy that, like, if I tell people, and you know, it used to be like for me, it was like I would tell people, like, as I'm in high school, he'd take me somewhere amazing, and I would come back, I'm like, yo, I just met Puff Daddy, you know?
[01:58:33]  Yeah, okay, Becca.
[01:58:34]  Everyone thought I was full of shit.
[01:58:36]  Like, if social media existed when I was a teenager, the shit I was doing, I would have been blown up.
[01:58:41]  I would have been bigger than the Paul brothers.
[01:58:42]  Like, I was doing extraordinary things.
[01:58:45]  And what I would tell my classmates, 99% of them thought I was full of shit.
[01:58:49]  And now you guys know I wasn't.
[01:58:52]  You know, I wasn't a lady killer in high school.
[01:58:54]  They thought I was a clown, you know?
[01:58:56]  But after high school, when I entered the nightlife, you know, word got around town.
[01:59:01]  Like, oh, Becca Lovers, like, all over New York.
[01:59:03]  Like, this guy's everywhere, you know?
[01:59:04]  But, like I said, it was him, man.
[01:59:06]  Like, he.
[01:59:07]  opened so many doors for me, introduced me.
[01:59:10]  Like, I met the most amazing people because of this guy, bro.
[01:59:13]  And, like, the stories, like, so for me, like, when you go through that type of trauma, I was like, my first instinct was, like, to run.
[01:59:20]  Every corner of New York's a memory.
[01:59:23]  Every single corner.
[01:59:24]  New York is not as big as you tourists think it is.
[01:59:26]  Right.

=== Finding Your Why (03:55) ===

[01:59:27]  It looks high.
[01:59:28]  That's about it.
[01:59:28]  But it's not, it's 16 square miles or whatever it is.
[01:59:32]  Every corner was a freaking memory, man.
[01:59:35]  A song will come out.
[01:59:36]  It was like, you're being haunted and, like, instant tears.
[01:59:39]  Instant tears.
[01:59:39]  Everywhere I'm going, I don't know how I got through those years, man.
[01:59:42]  All I had was a little voice inside.
[01:59:45]  And like you said earlier, having a why.
[01:59:47]  My why was my boys.
[01:59:49]  I knew I couldn't give up because of them.
[01:59:51]  But I've understood for the first time why so many people give up, bro.
[01:59:55]  When you experience that type of a loss, someone that you loved so much, even some people for divorce, they give up, bro.
[02:00:01]  They take their lives, or so much domestic violence happens when that happens.
[02:00:06]  It's not worth it, man.
[02:00:07]  You can get married again.
[02:00:08]  You will find love again.
[02:00:09]  I understand you feel like you've been robbed of your time and you can't, but like everything happens for a reason, man.
[02:00:14]  And when there's kids involved, But not to get off the tangent, you go through this trauma and you feel like you're never going to get out of it.
[02:00:21]  That's a knockout.
[02:00:22]  But you can get out of it and you will get back up.
[02:00:24]  And that's why I got back up.
[02:00:26]  And that's why I understood for the first time that sorrow, why people take their own lives.
[02:00:31]  I finally felt that pain.
[02:00:33]  I also understood if I drank that that could happen to me.
[02:00:36]  And that moment of weakness, I'm drunk.
[02:00:38]  Just take your own life, man.
[02:00:39]  Fuck it.
[02:00:40]  So that's why I started the Comeback Team, the show that I did 85 episodes.
[02:00:46]  I need to do a second season.
[02:00:48]  Next guest is Kevin Hines, Golden Gate Bridge.
[02:00:51]  He jumped off, survived.
[02:00:52]  Oh, shit.
[02:00:53]  Really?
[02:00:53]  You should definitely have him on your show, too.
[02:00:55]  Amazing, amazing story how he survived.
[02:00:59]  His story to me is that that's why I believe there's a creator.
[02:01:01]  There's no way, the way he survived and said what happened to him.
[02:01:05]  He jumped off the bridge and then a sea lion came and kept him afloat.
[02:01:09]  Come on, bro.
[02:01:10]  The what?
[02:01:11]  Like a seal kept him above water.
[02:01:13]  What?
[02:01:13]  Come on, bro.
[02:01:13]  You're telling me that's by accident?
[02:01:15]  My cousin should have been dead on the Kosovo War.
[02:01:18]  People on 9 11 didn't go to work two seconds earlier.
[02:01:21]  They survived.
[02:01:22]  They missed their train.
[02:01:23]  That's what's known as divine wisdom beyond your comprehension.
[02:01:26]  When we look backwards, sometimes we can understand it, but not everything is for us to understand.
[02:01:31]  Right.
[02:01:31]  Not everything that happens makes logic if you believe in a higher power.
[02:01:35]  If you don't, it is what it is.
[02:01:37]  I don't knock people.
[02:01:37]  Everyone, you get to choose, man.
[02:01:39]  I can do anything I want.
[02:01:41]  I can say anything I want.
[02:01:43]  It's my choice.
[02:01:44]  People do what they do.
[02:01:45]  It doesn't mean that they're following a certain doctrine the right way.
[02:01:49]  None of those religions permit.
[02:01:50]  murder, killing, innocence, you know, like there's rules and people don't follow these rules.
[02:01:55]  So how the hell are you a follower of that faith?
[02:01:57]  You're not.
[02:01:59]  You're not.
[02:02:00]  You know, we all make mistakes.
[02:02:03]  Well, Beck, I can't thank you enough for coming on here, man, and sharing your wisdom and your history.
[02:02:09]  Tell people that are listening where they can find more of your work on YouTube and your podcast.
[02:02:13]  Real easy.
[02:02:14]  You can go to The Comeback Team all together.
[02:02:17]  The Comeback, you know, like when you make a comeback.
[02:02:19]  TheComebackTeam.com.
[02:02:21]  Got a documentary coming out hopefully this year.
[02:02:23]  Oh, yeah.
[02:02:24]  It's actually about my life, Nikki, and then what I decided.
[02:02:28]  I show the whole story of, you know, How I got back up, and then I drive cross country to meet all these extraordinary guests who I met because I decided to do a podcast.
[02:02:37]  Oh, wow!
[02:02:38]  And how I don't give up during the pandemic and all that.
[02:02:40]  Like, it's an amazing story.
[02:02:41]  I spent a lot of money making it, actually.
[02:02:43]  I didn't make it for money.
[02:02:44]  Thecomebackteam.com, or you could check me out on Instagram or TikTok at B Like Boy, E Like Edward, K Like Kimberly, Beck Lover.
[02:02:53]  So it's like Beck, but no C, at Beck Lover, or at Beck Lover NYC, New York City, NYC on Instagram.
[02:03:01]  I want to thank you for having me.
[02:03:04]  Thank you for letting me ramble and ramble and ramble.
[02:03:05]  You really are a good host.
[02:03:06]  I used to make that mistake when I was first started.
[02:03:08]  I would talk way more than the damn guests, and then the viewers made me better.
[02:03:13]  Like, no, just shut up, let the guy talk.
[02:03:14]  Right, yeah.
[02:03:15]  I got butchered the first 20 episodes, but it's been my honor coming on here, and hopefully, we can do it again one day.
[02:03:21]  My pleasure, man.
[02:03:21]  I really enjoyed it.