Oliver Anthony, viral hitmaker behind "Richmond" (first check: $800K), discusses recording chaos during West Virginia’s January 1990s-level storm, using a Honda generator to power organic sessions. He critiques fame’s manipulation—corporate gatekeepers like Warner Chapel (9% overseas royalties) and Nashville management pressuring him into industry trends—while Joe Rogan compares celebrity to castrati opera singers or chemically altered icons like Michael Jackson. Both question modern protests’ motives, from Antifa’s pre-planned violence to BLM’s lack of ideological clarity, calling them oligarch tools. Oliver envisions a "healing center" blending nature and art, bypassing AI’s sterile influence, where fans fund music directly. Their jiu-jitsu detour contrasts martial arts’ camaraderie with kickboxing’s brain damage, ending with Oliver’s upcoming "mothership" performances—raw, community-driven comedy-music fusion—proving authenticity still thrives amid algorithmic noise. [Automatically generated summary]
What makes that song different, I guess, than anything I've done or than a lot of music now is that we're...
We tried to, like, do it the way Leonard Skinner or somebody would back in the...
Where we're all just in the house and there's no, like...
And with this, we're just like in there doing it.
You know, try to keep it as real as possible.
Like, you know, there's no click tracks.
There's no real editing.
It's just kind of like we're all just in this house.
I mean, it's the worst timing to record, but that January 5th, 6th, 7th window was the only time that everybody could meet up.
You know, Billy Contreras on the fiddle and everybody, because he tours with Ricky Skaggs, and he's kind of all over the place.
So that was like our time to meet.
A couple days before we all went to West Virginia to record in my house up there, this terrible storm they were calling for.
It's like the worst one since the 90s, supposedly.
That's what Draven says.
So we got all this snow, all this ice.
So yeah, we used a side-by-side and a Jeep to haul everything up and down.
It was just all we could do to get up and down to the house.
And then right as soon as we get everything plugged in and ready to go, the power knocks out.
We were all just so discouraged.
Luckily, there's a Lowe's not terribly far away, and they had a Honda inverter generator that was safe to plug everything into, where the waves aren't going to mess everything up.
Yeah, see, I hadn't put a lot of new music out because...
Well, I think back to even when I was here last time and before we did the episode and all, walking around on the sidewalk out in front of the hotel with Draven and a couple other people arguing that I needed to just cash out from Richmond and roll and not make this into a long-term thing because I just...
Well, dude, I just don't...
Some people thrive in this environment, like everybody looking at them, But to me, it's just like, ugh.
And so, you know, after Richmond, I only had those two new songs.
I really just wanted to let everything kind of slow down.
And I could still maybe do five or ten shows a year and make a little bit.
But I wasn't trying to be like a superstar.
I didn't want everybody just to be.
I didn't want to be stuck in that spot I was when I was at Richmond where everybody's just, like, obsessing over stuff.
And so I kind of just tried to let it die.
And then, you know, it wouldn't.
it was like the streams kept continuing and people were still messaging me and emailing and the shows were still selling out.
And I just realized like, I don't know, you know, I believed everybody that said, And I would have been, when Richmond blew up, I would have been one of those guys who would have been like, oh, that stupid guy.
Well, that very first show was actually, it was even more amateur than that.
It was at a farm market.
It wasn't even, there weren't even any tickets.
It was just like, so it's crazy how it all, it just, it goes back to when I still believe just as much now as I did the last time I was here about it.
And I definitely won't.
I don't want to bug everybody too much with all my hokey-pokey religious stuff either.
I definitely want to read a little bit out before we go, but I do believe it was all too perfectly timed.
But I had actually picked that date out at the farm market before Richmond blew up.
That was going to be my first time playing live either way, that date.
It was like August the 12th, I think.
I had booked it back in July with that Morris Farm Market.
I was going to get $200 and go play for two and a half hours.
Seriously.
In that time, that's what happened.
So I already had that date picked, and yeah, it was just at a farm market, kind of near the beach in Outer Banks, and they say 12,000 people showed up, and that was the very first one.
Yeah, and I remember even then, I just expected everybody to sing Richmond, and that was going to be it, and it'd be cool, and I'd go back to work the next week, but it was like, even in that crowd at that very first show, all the other songs, they knew the words to, too.
And I was like, this is like something.
Wow.
The important thing, too, is that the important thing to take away from this, and I said this during Richmond, but it was like, take me out of it.
The fact that people can now choose what they want and push it to the top, even in a system that's rigged, where there is bots and there's mass marketing money going into songs and labels spend a million dollars on their own song to get it up the label, the fact that people can just decide they like something and just...
It's like reading your analytics so it can learn how to drive better.
That's the only reason why they let everybody use AI.
It's the user input that's what makes it.
For a very short period in time, it's like the stars are aligned.
While they're sucking all the humanity out of us to put into this AI, we also have full access to it.
Even in the music business, everything that the label used to hold exclusive control over, like the publicity and the marketing and the digital streaming service relationships, all that stuff is now just a la carte to anybody.
You don't need those big companies.
You can just go and hire a really good social media person, and you can work with a good music distributor without having to sign anything or give any of your rights up.
Right now the people have the power is what I mean for like a very short period of time, but this should be a This should just be a reminder of that, this song being able to go up into the iTunes charts, even with stuff with way bigger audiences, with all kinds of marketing reach.
The fact that this can just organically go into the iTunes charts like that, and people...
If we could just get organized, even for like two or three years, we could just fix everything.
The people really do have the power, at least right now, for a short window of time, but we really do.
Well, it goes back to what you said about mass manipulation and also, like, we've all sort of lost our identity.
That's why politics has become so prevalent in the way people represent themselves to other people.
As our culture and our tradition and the knowledge of where our families and all of that stuff comes from, we're just little boats out in the big ocean and we're looking for somewhere to...
And politics, they make politics so easy to reach out and grab.
Just like in the same way that people just absorb themselves into sports.
But that's, I see that, like, I just see that becoming more and more prevalent where there's not like, I don't know.
It's sort of just like, it's kind of even to expand on the thought of it, it's even like the way that now we've all just sort of, we're all in these subcategories the way we would be if we were in prison.
We're all like, you know, like in the same way that when we use the word black and white to describe like...
It creates this maybe group identity that's a lot easier to control.
But it's easy now in big public narrative and stuff to...
It's a lot easier to accuse you and 30 other different nationalities of people who are all very culturally different and unique and just call all of you white people and then But it happens with that with every ethnicity, every identity.
The goal is to put everyone in the world in one of three or four buckets and then hopefully figure out how to just put all of them into one bucket eventually.
It's so much easier to control two or three different types of people than it is 30 or 40 or 100 or 1,000.
Which is also, I think, why they never fix the problems that ail our inner cities.
They want to keep that conflict.
I really believe that.
Because if somebody wanted to have a better, stronger economy, the first thing you would do is you want more people in the workforce.
So you'd want less people that are disenfranchised, completely out of society, felons, all that stuff.
That doesn't do anything but cost the country money, right?
Unless you have private prisons.
Now, in private prisons, those people become a business.
And then that business contributes to the escalation of laws.
And they want to make sure the laws stay in place because that way their business is always full.
They have plenty of customers.
Their customers are human beings that they turn into batteries to generate money.
That's what it is.
It's like those people, every person they have in there, they get more money, which is wild.
It's wild that we allow that.
But then it's also like keeping a certain amount of crime in certain areas ensures that you're always going to have debates over law enforcement.
You're always going to have conversations over disenfranchised.
We need DEI.
We need this.
We need quotas.
We need to hire more people of this or of that, ignoring the fact that a lot of these things, especially with universities, are the most racist, especially towards Asians.
They're racist as fuck towards Asians.
There's lawsuits about it.
Harvard!
Is that still going on, the Harvard lawsuit?
Where they specifically made their application process, like the whole acceptance process, more difficult for Asians because they were kicking too much ass.
They had too many Asian people that were willing to fucking work their ass off, study 12 hours a day, get straight A's.
They're like, man, there's too many of these folks.
But if you look at like, even if you look at Bramwell, West Virginia and their recent political history, like the last mayor they had, she embezzled money from the town.
Whoopsies.
You know, and this is in a very small tent.
So government corruption exists like...
And it almost is like maybe in those big cities.
I understand definitely that I think things are intentionally neglected, like to create chaos and to create this, like you said, this need for more resources and more.
But it's also just that maybe a lot of those people that are in positions are just very spineless and self-centered and like they don't even care that people are dying in their streets.
They're worried about the money that can be made and the ego and the power of it.
It goes back to kind of what I said in that ARC speech about lack of leadership.
I just see that like, if we had people in big cities or in small Appalachian towns that had like a real backbone to them and like...
And I got to meet all these really cool people that night.
And so Tom was like, man, you ought to get up at the end of our set and do a couple songs.
And we only had one guitar, and I really wanted my guitar, Joey, you know, the guy from, he's in the Scornful video, Joey Davis.
I wanted him to get up there and get to do it with me.
And Ron's like, well, I got a guitar in my house.
And, dude, he's supposed to be getting on stage to do a set in, like, less than an hour, you know, 45 minutes.
So him and Joey get in his car, and they run every red light from his house to the back and go and get Ron White's guitar, and that's what we used for our second.
Yeah, it's kind of depressing, but that's why, at least in their short life, I try to let them get us some sunshine and run around and read stories to them at night and all that, and that way it's not so bad.
That way it doesn't feel like I'm just a horrible dictator, like a chicken dictator or something.
unidentified
The amount of chickens that get whacked in this country every year is crazy.
It's like a vibration more than a noise, but the males, they have this crazy, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's a noise they make internally that you can hear.
Yeah.
It sounds like, It sounds like when you're getting sucked up in a UFO.
That played a key role came in 2010 with a study of the genomes of eight different populations of present-day chickens from around the world.
Researchers found they all carry two copies of one version of a gene called the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor, which apparently set in motion changes that plumped up the birds.
This dominant version of the gene, or allele, had swept through all the domesticated chickens regardless of whether they were born.
Broilers, rather, bred for size, or strains bred for laying many eggs, although the precise function of the gene is not known.
It regulates metabolism, reproduction, so probably stimulated chickens to lay more eggs year-round.
It's all control, obviously, but it's crazy to think about all the things that, you know, the church, at one point in time, the church was almost like the power structure.
In a way, it's like there's always been somebody trying to use a moral high ground to control other people.
Like now it's the opposite, right?
It's like now it's people,
Like I was talking, you know, most of the people on my team, I say most, there's only really four of us now, like in my music business, but two of them are from Ireland.
And my tour manager was telling me about like growing up in Dublin when he was younger, I guess like back in the 70s or 80s and the like just the stigma within the church and all the like.
And it's really crazy when you read into all that, like how much corruption existed back then.
Now it's easy to point to corruption in government and in society and everything else, but it's not like the church is more dead now than it is corrupt, I'd say.
But back then it was just like this power-hungry thing.
And that, to me, that's not real church.
That's just, like I said, that's just government or a regime using church as a, you know, For sure.
But I remember watching a bit of this video where this is like a Romanian dictator who had been in power for like 20 years and had done a lot of oppressive stuff, but overall was like maintaining power.
And then at some point, a police officer or a military official or something shot, I think like a preacher or a pope or something.
And the dictator dude took the side of the police and it sort of was like a cultural shift.
And basically like he went to give this big speech and all these people showed up and they had applause playing over loudspeakers.
But really the crowd was there to like, I think it was Romania, I believe.
But it was so quick.
It was like he went from being in this position of power and, like, ruling over everything and having just extreme wealth and the whole military at his disposal to everyone turning on him.
And he was publicly executed, I think, the day after that speech.
Yeah, they were like, I don't know what buried is the right word, but they were like secretly in the trucks and then like they all came out at once or something.
I've heard, you know, this is all just generalization stuff, but I've definitely, I've heard people make pretty compelling arguments about like, you know, all these sort of like prophetic visions of the end of times, all the stuff in the sky and all the imagery and all that, that a lot of that could be.
I don't know.
I see a time coming very soon where...
You see they've got Tesla bots and other variants of that that are able to catch tennis balls and organize groceries.
These things are all fed off of artificial intelligence, which knows everything about all of us collectively.
It sees where we go and what we do and what we say and what we shop for and what we look for and how we drive.
It's almost like this very godlike thing.
And I don't think that it even matters whose AI it is, if it's China or ours or some private company.
Like, I think AI is already, like, deeply ingrained in music.
I don't think...
I can't...
I don't know.
I'd bet a lot that most of the new big hot songs that get written and just the big...
I think AI drives all that.
There was also a period of time that I used a management company in Nashville.
And both of those girls I worked with at both of those companies who were helping me with social media stuff, they even had AI, like, trying to write my captions and stuff.
And I would always just, like – it was always the most dumb sounding stuff, but it was like – It was, I'll never forget it.
Can't wait to see you next time.
And it was just like this little, they had like a little thing, but it.
It pre-wrote all these based off of like how I wrote in the past and stuff and it's weird how I But I think in music, AI is much more prevalent than we realize.
I just think it's like kept in the...
People aren't going to say that they're using it, but I think like...
I mean, like, and that's your job, and you're like, oh, my God, what am I going to do?
Like, you know, like, I can't go back and live with my parents.
I got to do, I don't know.
I just, I don't see how people aren't.
It's almost, people use AI in almost every job now.
I know, like, people who are in sales who use it to, like, help them manage their customer bases and who they're going to call on and what they're going to say.
I don't know.
I think it's already become ingrained in us.
We're already so addicted.
We're so reliant to technology.
It's pitiful, you know, just like how hard it is to walk around without a phone, you know?
Even when I had periods of time where I knew I had months off, and I would always at least, I got to the point where I weaned myself down to like this, But that's what I'd carry, and two or three people knew mine.
But even then, I always felt like I at least had to have a flip phone on me in case, like, what happens if you're out in the woods and break your leg?
So when the time comes, if there even is a definitive time, but it's like when we have to choose between integrating with AI or not, most people are going to do it.
Most people will just immediately submit and be a part of it and be maybe even excited to be a part of it.
Like we talked about in that text about how it feels like we're in an alternate dimension and it seems like there's these, like, things coming.
You know, it's like it does, it does, and also it is just because things happen so fast and chaotic that we can't really keep up with anything.
One day the submarine collapses and the next day this other crazy thing happens and then, you know, I don't know, it's just like it's so hard to keep up with anything of what's really going on.
I think the problem is that we have to start.
Having people gather together again and hang out and not just make all of our hangouts digital because the systems, like you said, there's bots and algorithms and marketing approaches and psychology that's just deeply rooted that goes into just the way we fundamentally communicate now as societies and just globally.
We all just talk on it.
I mean, gosh, I've used this example before somewhere talking, but it's like I think about back when I was in high school, like my high school girlfriend.
We would have some trivial argument about something.
There was no way that me and her.
We're going to text and figure out how to fix that.
And that was a high school relationship that was over something stupid.
It's like real-world problems.
You can't fix just texting.
I don't think we can fix all this shit on X and Facebook and all that.
I think people just have people are We're almost to the point now where we prefer socializing on the internet because it's it's almost like our minds have become more adapted to think that way But it's but it's we're here.
We're in this digital world chasing I don't know.
It makes it very complicated to fix anything.
We have this amazing, intricate English language where all these words can mean all these different things, and it's so easy to put everybody together in a digital space with AI and bots and manipulation and algorithms and big companies.
Your attention is what's worth so much money, which is so strange.
It's so strange.
Your data and your attention.
Nobody thought about the data part.
Boy, if we thought about the data part and they set up different regulations back in the 1990s when AOL first burst onto the scene, if they realized data is going to be one of the most valuable things and tech companies that do nothing but offer you Free email and a free search engine are going to be the biggest fucking companies in the world.
And it's because of your data.
And they're going to be, like, siphoning off your data without telling you about it.
And they're even going to be lying about it.
They're even going to be running, like, little secret things where they're snatching up your contact list and snatching up your email and all your friends and trying to get them to buy shit.
That's I just couldn't find a way to be on there and still The only time I'm ever on my profiles is if I'm with Draven or somebody and we're looking through comments together and replying to stuff or doing things.
But I haven't had anything logged in on any of my devices since last November.
There's a thousand more people that are way better than me that are in that same space.
And I think my dream of this long term is to figure out how to like – like how do you get all those people into the limelight?
Yeah.
Like what I've been working on since – I guess, you know, the one important thing to – It goes back to that first conversation we had, but you remember I was arguing that I really wanted to put all the money from Richmond into a non-profit and not ever even touch it, because I didn't want all that.
I felt like it wasn't my money.
I felt like all those people went out of the way and supported me and blew all these other huge songs off the chart.
I wanted to, so, and then you said, well, no, don't do that because non-profits are sketchy and people are corrupt and, like, just keep the money yourself and then figure out how to do good with it.
And that was the biggest thing I walked away from that first conversation we had.
And so, you know, now it's like, that's the one thing I do want people to know, too, though, is, like, that Richmond money and everything, it's, um, it's went to good, it's went to do a lot of what I think will be in the long run a lot of important things I've been buying.
Most of it went towards buying land and stuff, but I've got this whole kind of crazy thing.
I'm like just a way for people to unscrew their minds, to get reconnected into nature.
Yeah, he has a mandatory toothbrushing policy, and he'll say things like, well, no, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with the toothbrushing control camps and the dental hygiene authoritarian center, or I don't know.
A country's future depends on its ability to bite back.
We can no longer be a nation indentured.
Our very salivation is at stake.
Together, we must brace ourselves.
As we cross over to the bridge work, into the 23rd century, let us bite the bullet and together make America a sea of shining smiles from sea to shiny sea.
Now, friends, some people will tell you that this mandatory toothbrushing law is about the secret dental police kicking down your door at 3 a.m. to make sure you've brushed.
Friends, it is not.
Some will mention the dental re-education centers or the preventative dental maintenance detention facilities.
It's about none of these things.
It's not about the government-issued toothpaste containing an addictive yet harmless substance.
No, friends, it is not even about DNA gene splicing to create...
Friends, what this mandatory tooth brushing law is really about is strong teeth for strong America.
Yeah, but you're also able to, you're channeling it out through all these other, I mean, think about all the things that you've influenced and been a part of and done, even just through this podcast and all the conversations had and the information shared.
Like, it's not like you're just posting a bunch of pictures with your shirt off, like, hey, look at me.
Like, you're using it.
I mean, I don't know.
I almost would say it's, I don't know that it's a coincidence that you got put in this spot for a lot of reasons.
I mean, there's a lot.
You probably don't even look at it that way, but there's a lot of important things that come out of this.
And all the other podcasts you've inspired that have done it.
I mean, gosh, dude, there's no way to even calculate what you've, That's important to think about, though.
But I was on stage in Chicago and I was telling a story about the podcast.
I go, how many guys listen to the podcast?
And he went, Jack!
It was like 3,700 people in this place.
And they were all screaming.
I went, whoa.
That's when I realized.
At that moment, I was like, holy shit, how big is this thing going to get?
And this is another funny thing.
When I went over to Spotify, I was trying to get 10% less famous.
That was my goal.
My goal was to fade away.
My goal was, like, if somebody has to pay me and you have to go to this app to get it, all the people that are getting it, the other apps will probably stop listening.
Like, this would be great.
I'll get all the money, and I'll just fucking drift into this place where it's only, like, the hardcore fans that make the trek over to Spotify.
And then this fucking COVID thing happened.
I remember the beginning of the podcast, we lost 50% of our views, and Jamie was in a hot panic.
Yeah, that's exactly what I meant earlier about not putting a lot of songs out.
There's some cool place where you can be where you have your real fans and you're having fun, but you're not into all the sensationalism, all the crap.
And I think one of the ways that the world has prepared you for this.
Is that you've lived a normal life for a long time.
You know a normal life with no live performances no notoriety no fame no nothing you developed like a re like when people want to hear You fucking know Bruce Springsteen isn't a working man.
Do you know what I'm saying?
He probably was never really a working man.
He was never working on the docks.
You know what I mean?
He was never really a guy grinding it out.
He became famous pretty fucking young.
Bruce Springsteen and the Eat Street Band, they got hot.
Early.
Like, they're great.
Don't get me wrong.
I mean, especially as early.
Born to Run?
Fuck!
He's got some jams, dude.
He's got some great songs.
You know?
Brilliant Disguise?
Oh, I fucking love that song.
But, you're a real working man.
Like, you were a real working man when you made Richmond North of Richmond.
Like, that is real.
And you can't fake that.
And people want that.
They want a fucking trucker hat.
They want ripped jeans.
They don't want, like, ripped jeans that are ripped from work.
You know what I mean?
They don't want, like, real oil stains on your knees because you're fixing your own car.
You know?
Like, that's what people want in this world.
They want authenticity.
And it's possible to maintain authenticity regardless of how big you get.
It is possible.
And I think you can do it.
I think you can do it because you got here later in life.
You got here and lived a real life.
And then you made it into magical fantasy land where we all live.
It's the only call-out on here that's negative that I'll say at all.
Just to show how stuck in the mud the industry is and how much I think it's going to change in the near future is leading up to the scornful release, me and Draven had went back and found about 30 or 40 people who just...
People on TikTok and stuff that had made these videos.
I own 100% of my publishing.
All the music's mine, thankfully.
I have my own label, technically, that collects the money, but you have to use a publishing administration deal in order to collect money overseas.
I don't know if you're familiar, if it's the same in comedy.
Yeah, most any musician, whether you're independent or you're with somebody, you have to have some kind of pub admin.
And it's basically somebody that goes and helps you collect publishing money basically mostly from overseas is the way I understand.
Like all these obscure places that money exists.
So Warner Chapel does it for me for 9%, right?
So they go collect all the stuff.
They keep 9% of it.
They're the same to me as if I had a commercial landscaping company managing a property for me.
So all I asked them to do was, hey, Warner Chapel, this six-foot square of grass where all these reaction videos exist...
I want them to actually make the money they make on the scornful reaction videos, you know?
Like, I don't feel right if they're going to go and make a scornful woman reaction video or play drums over it or whatever.
I don't want to take 50% of what, you know what I mean?
Just don't copyright, just whitelist them.
And it should have been, okay, great, good idea, you know?
Instead, they just said, we can't do that, but it's for your protection.
This little bit of money that you're not going to collect off these reaction videos will generate who knows how much traffic to the music, which is worth the money you really want, and it shouldn't matter anyway.
It's not their shit to decide on.
It's mine.
It's the same thing as if I hired a guy to cut the grass at my commercial property and said, don't cut the six foot square.
And they're like, no, we're cutting it.
We're cutting all the grass.
And it's for your.
So I had to get my attorney involved and spend like four grand and they whitelisted them for 30 days.
And so I'm like, OK, like that's why that's why all of you industry people are like so, you know, it's like that's why this is happening.
That's why it's like.
They don't care at all about the little guy or the people who are doing all the work.
I just picture all these stinky librarian-type old people sitting around a table like, and they can make all this money and make all these horrible decisions and pour all these millions of dollars into songs that don't work, and it doesn't matter because it's not there.
They're getting their big salary in.
yeah so so yeah it's just even even in the even in the most minuscule relationships I've had in Nashville I get resistance and pushback Why wouldn't they want me to whitelist those 30 people?
It's just little stupid stuff like that that I've constantly dealt with.
So I've just decided now I just don't want to do anything in the music.
I don't even need to be in the music business in that sense.
I write my songs.
I record them.
I go do my shows and have fun.
But I don't even need to follow any of the model of what a traditional musician-artist person would have done 10 years ago.
But those people were like real fans who went and did it not because they were trying to get traffic or money or whatever.
They just liked it and wanted to push it.
And so the least I can do is not take 50% of their stuff.
But isn't that crazy that nobody's ever done that, I guess, before.
They were just acting like that was just the craziest thing in the world.
I ended up releasing this scornful song through a company called SoundOn, which is like the music distribution side of TikTok, which seems like something I would never want to do, but they give me the flexibility to go and do all that.
They don't care because they're not music industry people.
They're just social media people.
So I uploaded it through them basically so I'm still I own all 100% of the rights It's all my stuff I don't have any deals or records or labels or anything, but they push it to the streaming services for me and they do all the stuff so that way I'm not even having to use a music company to push my music I can kind of just like not even be there at all you know like not even be in Nashville at all that's the goal is just to get and so now that I've got data from you know since Richmond basically and have
learned a lot my goal long term is to I want I'm going to always put new music out and write stuff, but it's going to come in spurts, and there'll be times where people won't see a lot of me, but I'm going to be in the background with other people.
I want to find these people on TikTok that have 100 followers, but I know that they've got what it takes and get with Draven and some of these other people I've met and help them write some really good songs and record them and put them out and push them.
I would love to plant 10 or 15 people into music.
Give them everything I can give them.
To push them forward and make like, that way it doesn't feel like I'm the guy in the spotlight trying to like, I feel like I'm just in a, I feel like I'm like the most, I don't know, these companies have got like all these employees and all this money and all this backing and it's literally like four or five of us taking them.
It just, I don't know.
To me, I just think, I think there's strength in numbers.
If I could help more artists push forward and like help them break that cycle too, that it would just, it would be like a multiplication factor on this whole thing.
That's kind of what.
That's going to be kind of my next thing I get into, is helping produce music and doing festivals and starting a label, basically, kind of, sort of.
Even when Draven puts somebody on Radio WV, if they get 30,000 views, there's already people trying to sign them.
They just want control of every new thing that's...
Oh, and it felt terrifying, too, to not do it.
It just felt like I was just...
But I just decided that I didn't care about it.
I remember being very adamant at the beginning that every decision Because I'd rather go back to my old job and be me than go to Republic, but just be Republic's little bitch.
And have to do everything they want and say everything.
a little smaller, but yeah, collecting 100% of my money, and then also just knowing that I don't have a boss anymore, other than the man upstairs.
Gosh, dude.
I mean like imagine how you know I've heard stories from bands and stuff now that have told me that they've went and had to record music like under a label contract and really didn't like the way the album turned out but still had to release it anyway like oh my gosh that would just make me to have to put music out that I didn't think was good and then they're gonna get behind it.
They were my management company for three weeks, so that kind of tells you how well things worked.
But he was super nice, loved everything I was doing, and then as soon as I started with him, he was telling other people that I know, like, yeah, we've got to figure out how to make him cool, and he needs to put 40 or 50 songs out this year, and they were wanting me to make this social media post complimenting Beyonce's country album because he thought it was going to get me in a position.
Like, it's exactly what you're saying.
It's just like...
Like, you know, I'm independent, so I don't have to do that.
It's like, but that's like, and it's like, the thing is, is I don't need to be cool.
It's okay that I'm kind of lame, but I'm just me.
You know, it is what it is.
It's like, I don't have to try to get on the internet and pretend to be cool.
You know what also I think happens, and I think this is 100% real, is that there are a bunch of fake stories that get propagated to people that are really invested in conspiracy theories, hoping that those people promote those fake conspiracy theories and then get outed as being wrong.
You know, I think you can get caught up in that.
And then I also think if you're real quick You know, that's one of the vital roles that Jamie plays.
Like, Jamie's like, maybe that's not real.
Like, what?
Why are you fucking this up, Jamie?
Like, we want it to be real, right?
You want a nice juicy conspiracy to be real.
And then also, you know...
And I think he was genuinely overwhelmed by all the real stuff that he was finding.
You know, when he's getting into the Iraq War and all these different things, it's like he was just overwhelmed, man.
I think he had a psychotic break.
You know, and he'll be the first to say that, too.
It's like when your whole business is uncovering insane conspiracies that everybody thinks you're out of your fucking mind, and then 20 years later, they're like, holy shit, he was right about every step of the way.
He was telling me about central bank digital currency connected to a social credit score system that it's game over Because they'll lock you in just like they've done with China and he's like saying this like I I was like, what?
Like, the guy before him that I think, I think the two of them actually didn't get along, but I always, if I ever do meet Alex, I was going to ask him about that, is Bill Cooper, but he was a guy who kind of came before Alex.
But yeah, even back then, most of it seemed like total madness back then, and now it's like, but it's just sort of like, I laugh about when I was a kid, everyone thought that Michael Jackson was the big, Like, sexually perverted guy.
And who knows with Mike?
But, you know, now I look at Michael as like this just kid that was put in this terrible position from a child up.
And now all these other musicians that you wouldn't even think are the sex predators are.
It's just kind of like you just don't really know much of anything anyway.
Let's listen to some of it,'cause it's fucking creepy.
I just have heard stories about like, They would castrate children so that they never had testosterone, so that their body never really developed, and then they would have them maintain that young voice, that high pitch that's only possible if you don't develop the deepness that comes with it.
That's why when trans men, when women start taking testosterone, their voice starts getting deeper.
People, when they get unchecked power, have always been horrible.
That's why directionally, like this whole no kings protest that's supposed to go down on Saturday, directionally, it's correct.
Like, you don't want kings.
You don't want all guards.
Who's funding it?
Well, it turns out it's funded by an oligarch.
It's funded by a lady worth $20 billion who is the heiress to Walmart, a company that employs cheap labor and sells a lot of stuff from China that would be affected by tariffs.
It's going to take me like four or five times listening to it to be able to talk about it.
But I've went back and listened to the to the maps, maps of meaning on Audible.
And it's one of Jordan's earlier works, you know, and he's talking about society and how it's structured and basically talks about like the motivations and the origins of why people always resort to evil, you know.
But even talking about with Russia, just think about the Soviet Union and what happened there and how easily people were turned against.
This little moment in time we're in, we should just be so thankful for it, even though it is mass chaos right now.
The fact that people are allowed to speak freely and do things and have the influence and power they do is just nuts when you think about it.
But we're better off today than anybody else in human history.
And this is a struggle and it is a battle.
But I think we can come out of this on the other side if we all realize that we're being played against each other.
And that's where it's important.
When you're paying people to protest, you're leaving pallets of bricks around, and you're organizing the whole thing, and you're shipping people in on buses, and you're making sure that all the people show up at a certain amount of time, and they're all compensated, and you give them water and snacks.
We've got to realize what's going on here.
This is not for you.
When you light your city on fire and you burn cop cars, it's never good.
It's not good for you.
It's not good for the cause.
They're not going to change the laws.
One thing that I heard from Trump today that I thought was very promising.
Is that he wants to make an executive order where people that are here for a long time, that have been working on farms, that are undocumented, that they won't be targeted and that they'll be exempt from all this stuff.
This is my feeling.
If you got here and you've integrated into our society, yeah, maybe you shouldn't have snuck in.
But you did it and you're not breaking any laws and you're a hardworking person.
those people need a path to citizenship, man.
And they can't say anything because they're worried that immigration is going to get called on them.
So these people are in this constant state of anxiety.
And then they hear about the ICE raids like at Home Depot.
It's also so complicated because it goes back for so long.
And the thing now is that there's two very polarizing opinions of what America even is or represents or what job it's supposed to serve to the world.
So like, you know, in some...
Yeah, sure.
For any country to exist, it has to have...
yeah, like it just seems like without citizenship or without some definitive thing of who's a citizen or not, it's like, then it's not even a country.
It's like, and most every country The idea of there being no immigration laws for a country means that it's no longer a country.
But I also think it's like the opposite side of that, too, is like America's always – In theory, you know, America was was started as sort of this thing that was like that can maybe be like.
Like a sanctuary that like that like doesn't allow the doesn't allow monarchies and dictators and horrible things, you know, like as bad as America maybe has been in certain cases, like the fact that when.
They went and tried to rebuild.
In theory, America is supposed to be this vein that exists of, you know, its origination is from people who wanted to get away from monarchies and dictators.
And of course, like, it's so easy to pick on the Founding Fathers and all their faults and the crazy things they did, but it was centuries ago in a different culture, and they probably were all maniacs.
You'd have to be a maniac to go up against the world's biggest empire and take it on.
But the reality is that here's the thing that sucks.
And it goes both ways.
There's a lot of things about people on the left that people on the right don't realize that they have in common.
And it's the same way with this.
It breaks my heart when people just totally trash the founding fathers, not because they were these morally...
probably not as bad as Beyonce, but pretty close.
And, you know, the fact like...
They were all bad.
We're humans.
We're flawed, inherently.
Even the best of us, even the ones who act like we're the best and the most, like we're all Religious freedom, it's like they didn't want religious freedom because they were not even necessarily because they wanted to go to church.
I always thought it was so weird that they were fighting for religion, but it wasn't they were fighting for religion.
They were fighting for the mandate of religion.
They were tired of the church.
And, like, I know it's not considered the church anymore, but there is still a church that dominates us and tries to control us now.
And, unfortunately, now the church is just sort of this weird thing.
But it's the zebra mentality, you know, among politicians.
It's like, it goes back to that, I think it's Jordan Peterson that talks about the zebras and how they'll do a study on zebras.
It's in the Maps of Meaning book, I believe, and they'll mark one red to study it.
And then the predators take that zebra down because the zebra's stripes aren't camouflaged to their surroundings.
They're camouflaged to each other, so they're not easily identifiable.
And so four or five lions can't take one zebra down if they all look the same.
And in politics, I believe that's what's happened, especially on the left.
You know, I had people in Nashville quit working with me because I talked about this when I was at the Ryman, but we had this dancing.
This chick that plays the fiddle, and she does flat dancing and stuff, named Hilary Klug, who lives in Nashville, and we had her come to the Ryman to do this show with us, and it was on a last-minute thing, and I'm about to introduce her, and I tell the crowd, I'm like, hey, you know, I said, I got Hilary about to come out, and I was like, but don't worry, it's not that Hilary, and just made a joke about it.
Somebody said something in the crowd, and I don't know, I just interact, and I just say what comes to mind, and I don't care, I don't worry about all that stuff.
People might think.
I just try to say what I feel.
But I was like, you know, isn't it crazy that somebody like Hillary, who not that long ago I can remember vividly as a child or in a teenage years, like, being completely against the idea of even having two people of the same gender be married.
Like, she was as against gay marriage as, like, any person on the far right is now.
And that was in my childhood or early teens.
And I said, and now that it's okay for kids to become transgender and go through, like, what Michael did.
That, to me, it just shows that it's all theatrics and that none of those people really have any real opinions about any of this stuff.
They just emailed my attorney and said they couldn't work with me anymore.
They were that mad about that.
Which tells you how far off the deep end.
But you're exactly right with all that.
It's difficult to convey that to people because there's so many emotions involved.
But at the end of the day, it's like...
I think we're all just like, like you said, we all are trying to just effectively accomplish the same thing, just in different ways.
And it's really easy to get angry at somebody that's on the same level as you than somebody that you don't even know exists, which is like with these private equity companies and these people in the background that do all this.
So what's happened is, going back to the zebra thing, what I think has happened is, especially in politics, the reason why Hillary Clinton can be a That's a great analogy.
Like Tulsi Gabbard or whatever, I don't know, name.
There's plenty of people besides.
That's just the first one that comes to mind that's like trying to be a Democrat and And upholding most of what the Democratic Party would have wanted her to uphold up until very recently, but because she didn't rearrange her stripes, it's like, you're dead.
But there's a whole bunch more like her, too, that aren't even in politics anymore.
But that's the way I see it now is it's like all these people.
And so, like, even with Big Donnie, you know, I wonder – I just wonder, even, I just don't trust, it's kind of my Alex Jones syndrome, but it's like, no matter how cool somebody seems like that, I think like, man, does him and Hillary really still chill?
Like, they're probably smoking a fat joint right now, this laugh, I don't know, like, you just don't really know, you don't really know, you're just, you have to see what you see, and you have to take it in, and just hope that you have, that somehow you have the discernment to know what's true or not, but you really just don't, I mean, even with me, man, so much crazy stuff that gets said and done, and I just don't even, When things come out about me that aren't true, I just don't even reply or acknowledge them anymore.
I just let them exist in their own little space and be part of it.
And I've just decided that, again, we're just in this crazy thing where all this stuff happens.
And to go back to what you said at the beginning about those kids that are riding, and they don't really even know what they're riding.
they got the mask on but they're doing this and it's like I guess what I mean is is there's a bunch of human beings on earth especially now like in our But there's all these people who are really angry.
It's the reason why there's so many of these videos where they interview the Antifa dudes, and they don't really even know why.
They're not really able to articulate why they're there or what they believe.
They're just there to riot.
There's this general anger that I think has But it's just too complex, at least individually, and through the means of the internet for us to identify who our enemies really are.
And so instead, it's like, let's just go catch some shit on fire, because at least it feels like we're doing something.
But I think there's a lot more in common between the patriotic cosplaying type people who talk all the time about that and the people who are like Antifa.
I actually think that they're two of the same cloth.
They both just don't really realize it.
I think like...
I'll give you another great example.
When I was younger, I'd go to some of these protests in D.C. and stuff, and I would always stay at George Washington University with these kids.
We were all in our early 20s, probably, and we're all very, like, at that point, there wasn't any, like, real political identity to it.
I don't think those people would have called themselves left back then.
But you better believe most of them ended up going to all the Black Bloc and the Antifa and the Black Lives Matter and every other protest there was just because they wanted to go protest.
They just are like, you know, like it's like it's like, yeah, it's like it's a thing of of of like rebelling against the system.
It doesn't really matter what part of the system it is or if it really even makes any sense.
You just know that that's yeah, it's like I think I think that's what I mean is through the means of the Internet.
I don't think we'll ever be able to organize all those people together in a way that's productive.
But I do think in real life we can.
I do think I do think through I think music is I think that's why I want to focus mostly on music.
Music and like trying to influence in a way to where the rich don't control it and the rich don't choose what songs we listen to and what songs make it on the charts like we do.
I think that's the first step.
I think I actually think music is something like.
And I guarantee you a lot of people who voted differently listen to the same exact lyrics and resonate with them.
That's all I mean.
We've just been mass distracted and misled is all.
Also when you get these kind of organized protests, they're all organized with this one thought in mind like there there's unlawful And we got to stop this.
These are all, you know, oligarchs are involved and this is a dictatorship.
And they feel like they're fighting against something bad.
And if they're uninformed, and who the fuck who's 21 is informed?
You know, most people who are young, especially if you're going to college, you're around a bunch of other like-minded people in an echo chamber, and you're all trying to, like, And then there's also the thing of being on the ground with a bunch of other people that are moving in a certain direction.
To me, I think it ignites a thing.
I think there's things inside of us that get ignited.
One of them is like, the best way to describe it is like fishing.
You know when you go fishing?
I've seen people catch their first fish.
When that fish gets on the line, you get excited.
Everybody gets excited because it's this ancient thing inside of you that lets you know you're now successful.
Your family's going to eat.
You caught a fish.
And it just sparks it inside of you.
It does it with bow hunting, but very few people are going to go bow hunting.
But the other thing that it does it with is war.
And protests are like war.
You're marching.
You're all together.
Who's opposing us?
Fuck them!
And everyone's all aggressive, and they're all chanting, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, fuck us, fuck us, fuck us.
And you think you're doing the right thing.
You think you're doing the right thing.
And then you see shit like cops shooting rubber bullets at robots.
I would think maybe that that's happened a lot, though, even in the past with civil rights and everything else.
A lot of that was much more organized than it was made...
Like I didn't know until just a couple years ago like I've learned the story all through school and heard it a million times about Rosa Parks But I didn't realize until a couple years ago that she was part of some I don't even know what she was part of, but she was part of some organization, and it was like a planned thing.
I was always taught it like she just spontaneously did it.
Most things have been manipulated if they can be manipulated.
Once they realize they can manipulate people, they started, and they probably started that a long time ago.
I mean, we've talked about it a million times, so that's why Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1933.
You know, Major General Smedley Butler, who was, they tried to get him to overthrow the fucking government with a coup, and he wouldn't do it.
And then he writes this book about how every single Operation he was involved with.
He thought they were doing this, but really they were just making it safe for bankers.
They're really just overthrowing a government, installing a friendly one.
It's like it's been going on since they could.
And back then it was way easier to pull off because there was no internet where you could pull off a Hillary Clinton video from more than a decade ago and go, look at her.
She's pretty MAGA.
You could put a fucking red hat on that lady and she'd be standing on that stage right next to RFK Jr., you know?
But I remember even back then, like, well, you know, the one, But even, you know, back then I remember they were trying to, like, I guess he got kicked off of Saturday Night Live because of that, right?
When I was at the ARC where we spoke at that thing in London, there was a talk we went to, I think, the next night that was about freedom of speech.
And I can't remember who all was speaking there.
It was some people that I should probably remember, but I yeah, but they they were talking about They're arresting people for political things that they put online in Europe.
Not even giving them very obscure reasoning as to why whatever this is.
In some cases, they won't even tell them what they're arresting them for.
And so like the cause of what these people are doing is very important.
But the whole time they're just they're referring to it as the woke mind virus, which is, yeah, sure.
Funny put in a bit or whatever.
But God, like, no, what it is, is it's like the government using this one specific thing out of a list of things that they could as part of this moral high ground to arrest people for speaking out against.
Not because it has nothing to do with anything on the left or the right.
It's the fact that the state would love for people to not be allowed to criticize anything because then that means they can't criticize them.
I just remember my whole life, like since I was a kid, people were like, man, what would happen if just we got some regular dude in there and like all this?
You'd realize the entanglements that exist, and I think it's impossible to navigate.
I think once you get in there, you're like, holy shit.
And when I talk to people that are in this administration now that weren't before, And you're dealing with a machine that's been operating pretty much unchecked for decades.
We know through Mike Benz's work, the way he describes USAID as doing things that are too dirty for the CIA.
He describes it being used for regime change.
But under the name aid, it seems like it's just aid.
Oh, we're helping people.
It's Agency for International Development is what it really stands for.
So there's that.
That's been dismantled.
The thing is they're not spending less money.
They're spending more money.
They're spending like a trillion dollars on the Pentagon.
The whole thing is kind of nuts because nobody wants to stop spending money.
Nobody wants to lose their job.
And they're all in a position where they have influence.
Thousands of different points of influence.
And if you're the president or the vice president or, you know, any of these fucking people, it's a very difficult road.
One of the things that I felt like was the most important was Bobby Kennedy.
Because Bobby Kennedy getting in there, he was determined to find out what is the root cause of America's massive health crisis that we're all facing.
Like, why are we having this?
Why do we have Different toxins that are in our foods that are banned in Europe.
Why are we allowing the use of these different things that we know are terrible for the body?
Why is there not greater scrutiny on these pharmaceutical drug corporations?
Why are they able to lie and get away with it and prescribe things for people that don't need them and not be responsible for the health consequences of these things?
And that this needs to be cleaned up.
And so that's what he's doing right now.
I'm very happy.
And I hope that he can really make meaningful changes.
Because it seems like he is.
He fired the 17 people that were the head of the vaccine schedule.
And he's hired a bunch of new people.
They're all very qualified.
One of them being Robert Malone.
Robert Malone, the guy that everybody said was a kook that I got in trouble for initially for having on my podcast when they were trying to – This is over Robert Malone.
Robert Malone, who...
Certifiable genius.
Unquestionably.
They were calling him a kook.
This guy's a kook.
A guy who took the vaccine and had a horrible reaction.
They were calling him a kook.
So that guy being a part of this administration, being a part of the Make America Healthy Again movement, very important.
All that stuff is very important for everybody.
Republicans, not Democrats.
If there's any area where we should be bipartisan on, it's that.
And realizing that corporations have taken advantage of loopholes and of a bunch of different creepy laws that allowed them to poison you.
And you're getting poisoned and you're addicted to this poison.
He came out to the property where we filmed Richmond and all, and I met him.
This was before he got linked up with Trump.
This was during all that, and he was still running for himself.
But we had a long conversation about this concept for a healing center, which is like this thing that he's been kind of like, as a part of all this, which is kind of the idea of people going out into nature.
Like, learning how to grow food and learning how to, like, because in this never-ending abyss of chaos where everything's changing so fast and nothing, you know, nature is, nature has been affected by that through, like, some, you know, through chemicals and technology and other things, but for the most part, it's all the systems in nature, all the organization there and all that stuff.
is sort of like the last thing that's untouched by man.
You know, when you go out on two or 300 acres and you just sit there and you're watching the water go by, it's like you just sort of, you take everything that we've talked about, But meanwhile, nature just sort of exists and does its thing.
Like, gosh, dude, that's the only thing that saves me, especially being a little bit, probably a little bit too introverted for this job position.
You know, going out on tour even for a weekend or two, we're like, dude, by the time Sunday comes and we get through this and these two mothership shows, We got West Virginia next weekend, but I'll spend this whole week.
I probably won't talk to anybody except for immediate family.
I'll just go sit out in the woods with the dogs and just watch the birds chirp and all that.
There's something really important about that that I want to understand.
If you can take 200 or 300 acres, what can you plant on it that brings in the types of nature that benefit?
I want to conduct studies on everything from birds to plants to wildlife to different types.
How do you put a human being who is so screwed up in the most optimal condition to heal and to fix?
Because it's obviously not the case.
You're not going to go to a mental institution.
And I'm not even suggesting for people who should be in a mental institution.
I just mean like, you know, people who, like a guy I know who...
How do you get him into a spot where he can just go out and roll?
It's hard to fix that part of your brain living in a city or living in a suburb.
So yeah, it's just like this crazy dream I have where it's a way to rebel against all of this without rebelling.
It's just creating a better way to do it.
But imagine if he's like, this is like the pilot program for this thing where it's this sort of outdoor amphitheater and it's like very immersive and in nature and you can like re-unlock these parts of your brain you talked about that are sort of very primitive to us and then just emulate it over a period of time.
So I'm doing these shows where they're,
how to sell the show, where to put the stage, how to set everything up, here's all the vendors to use, and then give them this blueprint where they can do it over and over and over again and just build these sort of sanctuaries that exist all over the country that can't be molested and preyed upon by all those big companies and all their companies.
And I think inherently by doing that through like music and public speaking and other things those spaces will almost serve as like Like the way that communities thrive again and the way people reconnect and I joke and say that like I everyone
That's why psychedelics are still illegal.
And there's so much misunderstanding and misconception and just confusion even there.
like we're a natural thing existing in a world that we've created that isn't natural and so like this is all you know We sort of get isolated inside of it, especially when we're on our phone all the time.
I just mean that I just mean that like I should like I just don't want I'm just some dude that's written a song.
Like I said, this is a collective thing.
If you look at the rate of people who buy my songs on iTunes versus most label artists, it's comically disproportionate.
people buy my songs out of support and stuff.
And so what I'm saying is that this is like a thing, In my mind, this is just a thing where we're all equal.
And it just happens to be.
This is the music catalog that we're giving people a middle finger with, but I wouldn't for a second want to ever think that, like, I don't want to feel...
This is just something where I'm just so excited to see where this can go in the sense of like, And like I said, it's just exciting that some just full-blown idiot like me with a couple of his buddies can figure out how to do this and rally enough support up behind it.
I'm just like, what could really happen if things were like...
You are yeah I've been doing it the same and that's one of the reasons why I do the podcast the exact same way I do it the same way I don't think, oh, this is going to be a big one.
Now that you've said what you said about AI being able to replace music and stuff, I do agree that there is a part of it that AI will never understand the human experience enough to be able to write music about it.
That captivates people in a way that music can, that's been written by people.
I do agree with that.
They can make it sound better and cooler and catchier, but I do think the people that are really writing it are the ones that really write.
Just to talk about the songwriting process with Scornful.
We had just gotten done with the touring over the summer for the most part in 2024.
Well, obviously things are what they are, but there was just multiple different negative things happening at once, and I kind of got in a spot where I did my thing where I sort of spiraled and just was isolating myself, and so I spent a month and a half or two months in that house, pretty much.
I didn't do Thanksgiving or Christmas last year.
I just really didn't hardly talk to anybody or anything.
And so I was like at a...
And there's a few things I do want to clarify, too, talking about all this.
So anyway, me, Draven from Radio WV, and Joey are all sitting in the kitchen of this house where we recorded the song, and it's probably in the fall sometime.
Joey is 3 in the morning, right?
We were all just wired.
I can think about Joey talking about really wanting to write a song and so him and Draven were asking me about my songwriting process and what I do and so like I just went and got the guitar and I said we were sitting there around the table and I can remember it was me and Joey sitting here and Draven leaning up against the counter and we were just talking about it and I said well I said if you're going to write a song I was like the first thing you got to do is figure out what you're going to write about and it's got to be something that you feel not something that you can just articulate about it's got to be something that's like in there that needs to come out you know and so we sat there for like 10 seconds and
Scornful woman was the word that was used.
It was specific relationships, but also it was a collection of the experiences that we'd all had.
We'd all had horrible relationships, too.
Of course, we all have.
Every dude on Earth has been through what that song talks about in one way or another.
There's been so many big people go up against it and not be able to quite figure it out.
Like even Pearl Jam back in the 90s, you know, trying to go up against, I think, Live Nation it was, or Ticketmaster.
I don't know, man.
I just want to see.
Some sense of accomplishment about long time is like just how do you get all these people together who have been disenfranchised by the music industry and just rally them together in a way that like it's not to take anyone down or to do anything bad at all towards anybody but it's just to like imagine what society would be with real music again without a bunch of label propped up shit stuck in everybody's head.
Like what if people really listened to what they loved and like it was real it was like the organic side of things is what drove music through the roof.
Like, imagine what that would imagine what because think about what music can do to you, like not even in the moment, but just what it means to you over time.
Like going back and I go back all the time, like and I listen to like a 1999 live song.
Or like old Hank Williams III songs.
I don't know, stuff I listened to a lot as a kid.
Man, it'll just unlock all these memories.
You think about all of a sudden you're back in a place that you never even remembered you ever were.
That's one of the best things about the comedy community right now is that we all do that for each other.
So it's like there's a real pathway.
So there's a lot of people that are moving to Austin from all across the country, you know, that like, hey, I think if I get there, that's a place where you could really launch from.
What's powerful about your platforms here, like you and all the other people, like you said, that are in that network, is that this is all stuff that you've built that you have control over.
That's what's cool about it.
It's a whole new business that you've got here.
In the comedy world, it's not owned by anybody or anything.
It's wild and free and chaotic and it could go anywhere.
That's what's exciting to me.
Like I said, I just don't know.
I just don't know what, who knows what will even come of what you got going on here in, um, and Austin.
But this has, has shaped a lot, like in a, in a world where everything is so, is so predicted.
Like there's less and less people able to sit around in a boardroom and a skyscraper somewhere and decide what the next big thing is going to be.
It's like, it's more, it's.
I don't know.
just it's exciting to be a part of that despite all the there's so many ways that you can you can look negatively about everything going on but there is this sort of transfer of power that i just hope Pretty soon we'll all have a Neuralink and we'll be talking to each other.
But we've got a little bit of time maybe before that.
We're the last people that knows what it was like before to understand what real life really is.
And it's so hard to even say what that even means.
But I just mean that like...
Everyone in its AI, the whole narrative is, and it'll have like a million, and like probably half the people commenting on it are bots too, but I just mean, it's not even like we're going to be deceived that way.
I think at some point it'll almost somehow...
And it's not that we won't even be able to tell the difference, but we won't even care to tell the difference.
The fake world will feel more real than the real world in a short period of time somehow.
Like it'll influence our sensory...
Like it'll it'll it'll influence that more than real life will like it'll become just like everything will just feel That's why we're so drawn.
But as it all becomes more realistic and more creative and more tailored to draw us in, it will be just mass deception.
This is what's really terrifying, is the simulation theory.
The idea that, oh, I would be able to know if it was a simulation.
Would you?
I don't know.
Elon thinks it's a simulation.
He thinks the chances of it not being a simulation are in the billions.
He thinks that this whole thing is probably our consciousness interacting with a program, which is very bizarre to think.
But if you keep going with what we're doing right now, that is inevitable.
If you look at the way technology is recreating things with AI and making things look completely realistic, and then you extrapolate, you look into the future, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, yeah, they're going to be able to give you an experience that you're not going to know.
So how do you know if that's already happened?
And maybe that's how the world actually works.
Maybe this idea of the material world is an illusion, and that everything is your consciousness interacting.
through limited means I mean right sight sound smell etc like there's there could be components of reality here that we're not able to see I mean and that's where like I definitely lean into recognizing that there is this whole likes I do believe there is this whole spiritual element at play too and I see yeah it's just it's hard to it's just
It's funny, though, because the same mentality that you could use to think about the world being a simulation, you could also think about it being so organized and so perfect that, yeah, I agree that it's operating on some program.
I just think that that program is being mandated and created by what is represented in my mind as God or Jesus Christ.
Other people may just be considered like a...
Obviously there is some, like life is a thing that we don't quite understand that finds itself in the midst of so many different parts of reality.
Like life, like just in the soil, there's so many different millions of bacteria that just make it possible for stuff to even be able to grow.
And all those things are arguably intelligent and have these organized systems.
And then you see the way birds fly in the sky and just the way that, like the way that even we have these sort of inherent parts programmed into us.
There's really no way to tell but what's so funny is that in just a short period of time we'll all be forgotten about anyway and we'll never really know and maybe even this even though.
It's just no way to really tell.
I think at the end of the day, to your point, I think humanity and the truth within it is all that really exists and everything else just sort of swirls about and we're always wanting to expand upon what already exists.
We're not creatures that like repetition or we like to just always figure out what the next big thing is, even if it is our demise.
Because, yeah, we know all that about Facebook, but we all still use Facebook.
I think that now our ability to communicate has become so contingent upon these platforms that we know they're no good for us.
We know they harvest our data and all the terrible things that are associated with them.
But we still was like, where else but Facebook Marketplace can you find all these sweet – The more you're aware they're influencing you, the less effect it has on you.
Maybe through, like, that's why I really want to try doing, I've had two or three people really pushing me heavy to try to do jiu-jitsu, but that's something where, like, it's the, I don't know.
That's the way it's been.
Maybe in those sort of circles you do get that, but you just don't get it.
It's also a way where you get out all of your aggression.
In a very healthy way.
In a cooperative way.
You're doing it with other people that are your friends.
And the beautiful thing about jujitsu sparring, as opposed to when I was kickboxing, you kind of resented your sparring partner.
They're fucking you up.
They're rocking you.
Whereas in jujitsu, even if someone taps you a lot, you're still their friend.
You realize, and they'll tell you, you can't do that with the right arm.
The right arm has to stay tied to your chest, because otherwise, once it's exposed, what I'm trying to do is get you to do that.
So I can go to the other side.
Like, oh, okay.
Let's try it again.
I'll show a guy.
And when you do that with people, you're helping your friend beat you next time.
but that's the way to get better.
Like, you know, Eddie Bravo, He goes, the more you teach people to catch you in the stuff that you do, the more people, you'll be able to get it in people that even know it's coming.
You'll be able, it'll sharpen that technique up even more.
If you can get people that know what you're doing, and you tell them what you're doing, you can still do it.
Like Hicks and Grace used to tell people, I'm going to get you in an arm bar on your right arm.
You're like, the fuck you are?
And he would still get it.
But he was so much better than everybody that he would do that on purpose.
And there's a...
Also, the other beautiful thing about jujitsu in terms of your mental health is that it's so difficult to do that it makes regular life easy.
And regular conflict seems to be silly.
Like, sometimes people get, like, super nervous if two people are just yelling at each other and you think a fight might break up.
If you're, like, so used to strangling people, that's, like, totally normal.
You could fuck with the wrong dude and that happens that there's a there's a lot of those wrong dudes out there now There's so many people that are training in martial arts now You never know like you're picking a fight with someone you don't know how to fight you are rolling Those dudes are a lot scarier in real life than on TV like I oh hell yeah I've just ran into him randomly.
It's a it's a crazy time because these guys that are coming in with like one fight in the UFC They look like world-class contenders like right away Well, it's cool because it seems like it's it's like a really it's a really good way to get like obscure people into the spotlight like I I guess it does take some fights.
The guys that are in the top at the UFC now, how many fights do you think it takes them before they wreck it?
How many big wins?
Is it really just a win or two, I guess, if they're big enough and they're like...
Like, the best example of a quick rise to the top is Alex Pereira.
But Alex Pereira is one of the greatest kickboxers of all time.
And Alex Pereira, when he entered into the UFC, like, a lot of people were completely unaware of him.
And me, as a giant kickboxing fan, he was the guy.
That I was like, when this motherfucker comes over here, bodies are gonna drop, man.
I'm telling you, you ain't never seen nothing.
And I remember Daniel Cormier saying to me, like, "Really?" I'm like, "Dude, I'm telling you." I was pointing to him in his debut, I go, "That's the motherfucker!
That's the boogeyman of boogeymen!" I go, "He knocks people into orbit." And I was showing him some videos of kickboxing fights, and he was like, "Holy shit!" I go, dude, everybody he touches, he's got the touch of death.
And then we start steamrolling people in the UFC, and he knocked out Strickland in one round.
And the opening fight that he had when he hit that dude with a flying knee and just I'm like, "Yeah, dude, this guy is scary!" So that guy was, within three years, was a two-division world champion.
Which is just nuts.
Like, nobody's done that before.
And, you know, defended the light heavyweight title multiple times in just a few years.
And he's only really been fighting MMA for like five or six years.
So the thing about specialists is if you're a specialist kickboxer, what you really need is someone to teach you how to fight on the ground.
And he had Glover Teixeira, who was also a former UFC light heavyweight champion, one of the greatest, and an amazing technician.
And Glover helped him, along with all his other training partners, avoid the takedowns, learn how to fight off, learn how to fight on the ground, learn how to get back up to your feet.
When you've got a guy who's the best of the best kickboxers, every fight starts standing up.
So while you're standing there with him, it's just, you gotta get that guy to the ground!
You gotta get that guy to the ground!
This is terrifying!
And he'll fight with broken toes.
He's fought so fucked up before.
He fought when he fought Yuri Prochaska the first time.
He had a completely blown-out knee.
Like, his knee wouldn't support him.
He knocked Yuri Prochaska out with a left hook.
And then he got his knee fixed, came back, fought him again, and iced him in the second round.
And he's just different, man.
He fought his last fight with a broken hand, and he had norovirus, and still lost a close decision in the fifth round.
I just messaged Sean Strickland the other day because I saw that he was talking about his investments and that he's got $4 million in investments and he's doing really well.
And then he's got a plan.
Sean is very intelligent.
He's wild and crazy.
He says crazy shit, but very intelligent.
And I was very happy.
That makes me feel so good that you're really thinking about having money in the bank.
So you're good.
You're good forever.
And he'll always be able to do seminars and things along those lines.
It's very valuable to be like a former champion.
You can visit gyms and people will line up and pay 50 bucks and you can teach them things that will genuinely help their careers.
So a lot of guys have a thing.
Like Misha Tate, she was just in Austin recently.
And she went to Ways to Well to get some work done on her knee.
And she was out here doing seminars.
So she's traveling with her family around the country.
And they'll go, and she'll teach a seminar at a gym, and then they'll go on an RV trip.
Nice family time.
Have a good time in between, but they can make a lucrative living doing that, which is really nice.
Well, I just wonder too, like the, it seems like some of those people are, well, you know, this is totally different than MMA fighters, Like you said, dude, man.
Like, you fight and the next day you're able to go run.
It's just like, what happens when all that slows down?
Do you redirect that somewhere?
Do you think it's difficult?
Like if you don't have somewhere to dis, you know, you found this really effective way to displace all of this.
'Cause obviously those people have got something in them that like drives their spirit to be able to And George still comes to Austin to train with the Donahers and Gordon Ryan and all these elite jiu-jitsu guys.
And he'll still go to Thailand and train Muay Thai.
That's a whole other can of worms, and I'm not articulate enough in this space to give my opinions on things, but I would have liked to have seen Mike Tyson just – I don't know.
When they're in the middle of those fights, is it a lot of muscle memory or are they consciously thinking – Like, I feel like a lot of it is they've trained so much that it's more automatic, right?
When they get in that fight, like, like.
Like the way you see these slow motion replays of fights and they're able to almost predict their opponent's move and react in real time with it and just use it to their advantage.
Yeah, more so than them having to think, oh, here it comes.
It's just so incredible to watch it.
Sometimes those fights are so good.
It's almost choreographed.
so good the way they're able to like use their opponents movements and to their own advantage and stuff that's what's so so crazy to me watching the just watching how like a human being can When someone's at the elite level, like the highest of high levels, it's an amazing thing to watch.
Like there's a guy who's defending his flyweight title at the end of June, Alexandre Pantoja.
He's one of the best fighters of all time.
I mean, he's so fucking good, but he's 125 pounds So people you know, they don't appreciate him as much as he He's so good.
He's so good everywhere.
Elite black belt on the ground, nasty striking, hyper-aggressive, just dominant.
Just comes in, he has this look in his eyes like, I am here to fuck you up.
It's awesome to watch.
I mean, it's like when a guy reaches the pinnacle of his career, like when he's at the height of his powers, when he's at the peak of his performance and career as an elite MMA fighter, it's something to behold, man.
It really is.
When you watch a guy just piece a guy up and take him apart, you're like, God damn!
You know, I never get bored with it.
Never.
Never get bored calling the fights.
Never get bored.
Like, when I know it's a UFC night, I'm like, oh, baby.
It's easy to watch world star hip hop where they're just like sucker punching each other but to watch a guy exhibit that kind of skill on somebody else knowing that like and not even knowing like I said just meeting like the few UFC fighters that I've met and stuff just looking at him and being like gosh dude like these dudes are just animals you know like a star and then to watch somebody else be able to exhibit that kind of just to kind of like unleash that kind of skill on him is just you're right it's such a raw it unlocks such a it unlocks that sort of monkey part of our brain that's just like yeah!
I was just telling a story the other day about this guy that was my landscaper that took me to this Mexican neighborhood that he lived in, and his buddy had all these chickens in cages all over the place.
Yeah.
So these roosters, and they had a big pit where they would roast goats, and they would just get the chickens out, put'em in the box, and gamble.
I have, I have, dogs and humans are like at the same level of importance to me almost, you know, like, I finally replaced, I didn't, it's not a, not in any way to say replace, but just like, for me, I've always, I'm used to having three or four dogs around, because once you train, if you train a couple dogs real good and you get a couple more, nine times out of ten, they'll just learn everything from, you kind of get this pack mentality, and so I've had four for forever, and then I had gotten down to two when I lost Hooch, the white shepherd, so I finally just got this black German shepherd off this lady who was real, really.
She didn't necessarily neglect the dog, but the dog was just a breeder's dog.
So all she did was just have puppies with it.
So here I am, I'm taking this five-year-old black German Shepherd down to go swimming in the creek with us and stuff.
It was like her first time stepping on a stick.
She stepped on a stick and jumped completely in the air.
you know, now within two weeks, now she's like swimming in the creek with them and running all around and she acts like she's a farm dog, but like this dog had just kind of been in this lady's front yard for years, I guess, and just hadn't even gotten to...
They're my children.
I can't separate a dog and a human in level of importance.
It's like that theoretical scenario where the train's coming and you've got to figure out which way to switch the tracks and it's like elderly people are dogs and you're like, I don't know.
And just being able to go in there and do music and stuff is going to be nuts.
I've got a few.
I've got a friend of mine named Craig who's one of my buddies growing up who does amateur stand-up.
He's a really funny guy, so I've got him doing a little bit.
I've got Hickok45's son, John.
He does comedy in Chicago right now.
He's going to do a little stand-up thing there.
It'll just be fun.
It'll be real cool.
I've got the guys that opened for me, the Davidson brothers.
They're going to do a couple songs.
They're really good.
I don't know.
This has been, like, through all the stress and chaos of the last however many months of things going on and stuff being rearranged and all, this has been, like, my beacon that I've held on to of, like, we just got to get to the mothership and then everything will work out, you know?
I just couldn't believe the reception I got, like even when I came with Tom that first time, just how everybody sort of took me in.
Like, like...
I don't know.
I'm just sort of the...
Well, also, a lot of people don't even know who I am because all they've seen of me is just the internet stuff and all the political stuff.
So it was really surprising the first time, even when we went to that mothership, how Everybody there just was very respectful and just kind of welcomed me with open arms.
I thought I was going in there really like kind of an outsider.
I think in comedy, comedy is still There's a lot of struggle in comedy for people to make it.
I think even more so than in music.
Some of those people were telling me stories about how tough it is to go out.
Trying to make a career out of comedy.
Like, I guess unless you get a big Netflix special or you get a big break, like it's paycheck to paycheck for a long time, maybe for some of those guys.
Like until they get or until they get to where they're like a regular at a big club like that, you're just you're just off.
Everybody realizes that there's only one way to do it.
You gotta work hard for a long time.
It's the only way.
It's one of the few things in life that there's no shortcut to.
Developing material and getting good at stand-up, it's a 10-year process.
It's a 10-year degree.
You want to actually become a real stand-up?
It's probably about 10 years.
10 years of grinding.
And for a lot of people, like, oh, that's too long.
It is too long.
Yeah, that's why most people don't do it.
But if you could do it, the people that are doing it and have been doing it for like 10 plus years, like all those people hanging out in the green room, they're all so cool.
It's a lot like jiu-jitsu in that regard.
It's like people that appreciate the difficulty of something and are really obsessed with getting better at it.
And obsessed with helping other people get better at it, too.
Because I also like jiu-jitsu.
The more people that you have around you that are really funny, the funnier you'll get.
Everybody has to be sharp.
Sometimes I'll do these Joe Rogan and Friends show.
And it's fucking Asan Ahmad, Brian Simpson, Tony Hinchcliffe, Shane Gillis, Mark Norman.
And then I go up.
It's like the show's an hour and a half old before I even get on stage.
So it's like you have to stay sharp.
And if you're not, you've got to pick up the slack.
You've got to figure it out.
Get back to the laptop.
Let's go.
You've got to rewrite.
Do this.
Do that.
But that's what we're all doing.
It's a vibrant place.
There's a mindset attached to that place.
It's very positive.
That makes me real happy.
And I'm real happy that you're going to be there this weekend.
But it's a contribution of, I'd say, you know, like at the very beginning, you, Jamie Johnson, David Kushner, and just a couple people who were like, had been in it for a while and were able to.
Well, with David, you know, he was fairly recent, but we were both.
The first six months was when I could have really slipped up hard.
I just was so thankful that I got through all that without being married to anybody or any company.
So I appreciate the confidence there because it's a terrifying – Man, you've been going to work every day for some guy that you hate and some job you hate?
For so long, for like 50 grand a year, and then some dude is showing you, and they have a really convincing way of doing it.
Just think about how easy you can get prayed into buying some shit used car on a lot.
These people are like that, but they're like the professional UFC fighters of psychological warfare.
They're going to make you feel like you're so stupid, and you've just tricked everybody for five minutes, and you better do it while it lasts.
And I don't care if nothing, like I said, if nothing else ever comes of this, this has been just such a blessing to be able to just meet all the people I have and experienced it.