Health Ranger - Mike Adams - Matt & Maxim Smith: Raising Renaissance Men in an Age of Weakness

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Oct. 7, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams

02:07:29

Matt & Maxim Smith: Raising Renaissance Men in an Age of Weakness

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	Three most important verbs in every language.
	Be, do, and have.
	Having is a natural byproduct of doing.
	And doing is the place where a young person, especially, that's where their power is, is in the doing.
	There's there's a lot that they can do.
	So do is the operative.
	Do is where they need to devote their energy.
	However, the only thing that actually matters is B. It's who you are.
	And so while everyone asks people from when they're little kids, they you know what they want to be when they grow up.
	In my mind, this is completely the wrong question.
	The right question is what kind of man do you want to become?
	Decentralized.
	God realize don't deconize.
	Centralize.
	Welcome to today's episode of Decentralized TV here on Brighton.com, the free speech video network.
	And we've got a really amazing uh couple of guests for you here today.
	Uh but first I'm joined by my co-host uh Todd Pittner.
	Welcome, Todd.
	It's uh it's Thursday again, it's time for the show.
	I love it.
	We always have fun.
	Thursday for you, it's Friday for me.
	Every Thursday is a Friday for me.
	This is my favorite time of the week.
	Tomorrow, the weekend starts just because today's DTV.
	I hear you, man.
	I have fun in every one of these episodes, and importantly, you know, you and I learn from our guests as much as all of our viewers learn as well.
	Absolutely.
	And today's guests, I mean, it's just I'm telling you, I cannot wait for the interview because uh this is going to signal to a lot of young folks out there of what's possible and how you can think in cans, not can't.
	And just, man, it just feels good to be able to talk to uh not only a wonderful father, but a wonderful son, and how they're a team.
	Well, I'm not gonna give it up, you know.
	Let's bring him in.
	Let me just set the stage that our guests today.
	They uh well, the website is called thepreparation.com, and it provides a really amazing pathway for young men.
	That's the focus right now, for young men to become very capable adults by skipping college.
	Right.
	And doing something far better instead.
	And there's a whole course book around that, and it is really extraordinary because our universities and colleges have failed us, they've failed our nation, they failed our culture, they failed the test of cognition.
	I mean, my goodness, there are graduates coming out of universities that are still largely illiterate now, which is unthinkable a generation ago.
	It's amazing, Mike.
	And I think as the book, the preparedness, the program, as it matures.
	You're talking about five years from now.
	I think that there are going to be employers that are going to be looking for people who are graduates of their own program.
	Yeah, no kidding.
	Prepared.
	Exactly.
	Okay, Todd, here we go.
	We're about to bring in our guests today.
	Uh, this is gonna be lots of fun.
	It's Matt and Maxim Smith, and they've got a lot to share with us here today about what works.
	Welcome to the show today, gentlemen.
	It's great to have you on.
	Thank you.
	Thanks, Ryan.
	Great to be here.
	So let's, hey, let's start with the basics here, and then I'll turn it over to Todd because he's just itching to ask you questions.
	So if you could one or both of you, uh, give us a you know, like a two-minute version of who you are, what you're all about, and what brings you to this uh, you know, to this interview.
	Well, I'll go ahead.
	Um, so Max is my son.
	Max, two years ago, was struggling with the decision at 17 of what to do.
	And uh in terms of college and well, or any other option, frankly, that might be available to him.
	And as an entrepreneur and a college dropout, um, I didn't exactly brainwash him with the idea of the college is the key to success.
	So I think they might have left him even more anxious than he might would otherwise have been.
	Uh, but either way, yeah, I could see and feel in my son that he's like in lost, and I was trying to come up with a uh a solution for it.
	And really the solution didn't come from me, quite frankly, entirely, it came from Doug Casey, my longtime mentor, who for years has been trying to get me to write a book with them, which he called Renaissance Man, is the way he first described it uh 12 years ago to me in a car ride.
	Um but Doug's written a lot of books, and he said that he's reminded me over the years that it causes a lot of brain damage and they don't make any money.
	And on the other side, trying to convince me to write this one with him.
	So uh I always said no until Max was 17, and I saw him in the state, and I went back to Doug and I said, okay, let's flush this idea out a little bit more.
	And Doug always told me the core idea of the book was he wanted to be at about the what he called the three most important verbs in every language be, do, and have.
	Of course, I found that very archaic.
	I didn't I didn't get it at first.
	But that's really what the book is all about.
	So what we're here today is to talk about the book that we wrote.
	It's called Preparation.
	Um, and Max's experience as our guinea pig, frankly, for the last two years, and actually proving that it works as an alternative to going to college.
	All right, very, very good to know all of that.
	Uh Todd, you want to jump in with the first question, and I'll follow up.
	Yeah, I do.
	So, gentlemen, what is the preparation?
	Well, what it is, it's a it's a series of cycles or quarters of activities for four years, like college, that does indeed prepare one for the future, unlike college today.
	And it does it by basically putting exactly putting you through lots of experiences in the real world where you must confront reality, and where you learn real skills with the idea of ultimately becoming Renaissance man-ish.
	Uh, like I said, that's Doug's original inspiration for it.
	He's uh, you know, and what is a Renaissance man?
	You know, it's a Renaissance man in simple terms in my mind, is somebody who really understands reality from a broad-based perspective.
	Um, I would describe Mike as a longtime listener of Mike's uh work uh as a Renaissance man.
	He's a scientist, he's not just a scientist, he's involved in, he has lots of skills in lots of areas that often surprise me uh when I hear about him.
	And uh, you know, so this is like a deep understanding of these different areas, these different disciplines, and a deep understanding of the world, which then allows you the ability to create in that world to interact with that world successfully.
	That's what's being prepared means.
	Well, I and let me jump in here, and by the way, thank you for that comment.
	But you are so on to the most important transition, I think, for the this generation of your son and anybody considering college, you know, a college education has become not only largely useless, but it has become a negative.
	Uh, you know, my my company hires lots and lots of people.
	I care nothing about a person's college resume.
	And if they come out of a woke university, I'm actually very concerned that they don't have skills and and that their mind is all twisted and they they don't even have the right work ethic or the right attitude.
	But like you said, uh sometimes people do call me a renaissance man, and it I think it's but the way I am today is the way all men used to be, as you know, right?
	Yeah, I can write a song, I can work on a tractor, I can wrangle a goat, or I can run a mass spec instrument in a science lab.
	But these these used to be skills or those types of skills that were very common, you know, someone could chop firewood and then write a sonnet, you know.
	So I love what you're doing, and I think that that for your son there, Max, uh, you are absolutely on the right path.
	You are gonna be the kind of person that companies want to hire, or that investors want to support as an entrepreneur because you're the kind of person that is learning how to get shit done in the real world.
	Just want to say that.
	I have a I have a follow-up question because you said be do have.
	So why don't you unpack that for our viewers and I'm gonna just share with you, Matt.
	I'm a big time fan of yours and Doug's.
	I listen to Doug Casey's take every week, and I have for years and years and years.
	And when it was first when you guys first came out with uh, I think it was a few episodes ago about your book.
	Well, I bought it.
	Okay, good.
	So this interview today, uh it comes from a good place as I have gone through it.
	I have some questions that uh that that I want to ask that are directly from the book.
	So I hope you don't mind that.
	Um let me give out the website while you're talking, Todd.
	Here it is, the preparation.com, and we'll just put it on screen while you go ahead.
	Okay, perfect.
	But uh, you know, my genesis for it was uh I recently, and I know this sounds crazy, but I'm a prepper, okay.
	My daughter, Alex, just had a baby who's turning four months old, the first of this coming month.
	And I'm thinking about college already for Emmett.
	And because I have four daughters, and I paid for all of my daughter's education.
	I did the prepaid college education.
	So I wanted to do that now for Emmett.
	But now you have me thinking twice.
	You know, and that's why when you when you came out and I heard about the subject matter within the book and stuff, I was all over it and I ordered it.
	And uh you probably have saved me some money of pre-paying for that because I'm really, really intrigued in this.
	And like Mike said, I think, Max, you are going to be, you know, the uh uh person that employers are gonna look for uh because you do you have the do down properly and be do have.
	But can you unpack be do have for us, please, Matt?
	Sure, sure.
	I'll do that.
	Uh essentially let's start with have.
	Have is what everyone is oriented toward.
	Yeah, they want to have a new car, the latest iPhone, they wanna you know have a beautiful spouse.
	They want to, you know, they want to have everything, especially in our consumer culture.
	We're very oriented around stuff.
	And believe me, I've got a lot of stuff.
	I like stuff, but what you know, so there's nothing wrong with it.
	But the thing is that what people don't understand or maybe don't think about is that having is a natural byproduct of doing.
	Doing is the opposite.
	And doing is the place where a young person, especially, that's where their power is, is in the doing.
	Because they have lots of energy, they're open to novelty in a way they won't be at 15, my age.
	Um, they have they're free of liability.
	Like they don't have the obligation set there.
	There's there's a lot that they can do.
	So do is the operative.
	Do is where they need to devote their energy.
	However, the only thing that actually matters is B. Is B. It's who you are.
	And so while everyone asks people from when they're little kids, they, you know, what they want to be when they grow up, and those questions just get more serious as they get older and to get like the college age, which is part of the reason why he was feeling all that pressure at seventh film, nearly 18.
	Uh, they're asking you what kind of who are you gonna work for, fundamentally.
	And you know, you gotta have a good answer to it.
	But in my mind, this is completely the wrong question.
	The right question is what kind of man do you want to become?
	That should be your central emphasis.
	And we try and plant that seed early in the book, and we have an exercise for them to sort of begin to flush out that question in their own minds.
	And uh, but most of the book is devoted to doing.
	Exactly.
	What is the right what is the right answer to that?
	Who do you want to be?
	I don't think there is a right answer.
	There is a wrong answer.
	There is a wrong answer, yeah.
	But uh it's an individual answer.
	I mean, I know that I can answer that for myself personally, but everybody else is gonna have a different answer, which is how it's supposed to be.
	Right.
	Everybody's supposed to go down their own path.
	So what is your path?
	What do you give us give us something here?
	Give us something here.
	Yeah.
	I'd say when people have asked me that, my one liner would be uh to become a more virtuous and capable man.
	I think that's that's the B in my mind.
	Okay.
	Not not a Chippendale dancer.
	Do I have that right?
	Believe it or not, no.
	Well, I mean how rare is that idea of being a virtuous man or woman in society today.
	I mean, most young people come out of college, and if they have high math scores, they say, I want to go work in the financialization industry in Wall Street, because that's where I'm gonna make the most money, so I can have the most stuff.
	But in order to do that, I'm pretty much gonna have to use other people's money and gamble with it and maybe lose it and get bailed out, which is not virtuous.
	It's the opposite of virtuous.
	It's nefarious.
	But I love the fact, Max, that you're saying that being virtuous is the one of the the top priorities, the core of who you are.
	Because from that will flow all kinds of abundance and wealth and opportunities.
	I'm sure you know that.
	Well, and it's all the it's all the good stuff.
	Like you said, you're not cheating anybody, you're not sc screwing anyone over.
	You're acting as you should act.
	And virtue, the w the root of the word ver comes from man.
	So to be virtuous is to be manly.
	So there's something in that that's that's worth pursuing, obviously, just from the word itself.
	Yes.
	Yes, very much so.
	And uh and Todd, if you don't mind me just throwing out the question here to both of you, what do you make of the the Western culture attacks on men?
	Because you see it in every movie, every script, uh especially it's attacks on white men as well.
	Just depicting all men and all husbands as being bumbling idiots, completely incapable.
	That is a cultural program that has been pushed for about 15 years.
	What's your take?
	At least 15.
	I remember sitcoms from years and years ago where you'd have this the you know, the husband was always the bumbling idiot.
	Yep and the wife was put together, beautiful, you know, take control kind of person.
	I totally agree.
	So uh I mean, I agree, it's programming.
	And I think that if you want to destroy a civilization, you destroy the what would be the greatest opposition to that civilization, and that is men, men who act like men veer with virtue.
	Right.
	Because those men, what they know what they know, they know where to draw a line in the sand and say, no, I this will not I this is not something I will tolerate.
	And you have to eliminate those people from the world.
	Well, and that's the role of war, also is to recruit and destroy the young men who might rise up against the establishment to uh tyrants.
	I mean, that's why that's why the UK is pushing for war.
	Exactly.
	What do you what do you think about the attack on men from I think that's 100% true?
	I mean, both Athens and Spartan and Sparta fell because of their lack of virtue after the Peloponnesian War.
	That was the whole problem with it, is the young men didn't have the structure to pursue virtue anymore.
	Because it was all laid to waste.
	Sounds like uh pretty much any 17, 18-year-old I know, Mike.
	He's 20 now, he's 29 now.
	He's been doing it for two years, yeah.
	Okay.
	Hey, when young, uh this is for you, Max.
	Uh, when young, uh, why is wanting what others want a core problem?
	Well, how can you be an individual if all of your wants are outsourced to the wants of the masses, essentially.
	Um, which if I look around at my peers, all of their wants, a hundred percent of them, um, are all based upon what other people want, whether it's clothes or a car, uh, college, for example, is great one.
	Everybody goes to college, so you want to go to college.
	Literally every aspect of their lives are about what other people want.
	So there's no individual left at that point.
	That's why.
	So, how then do you, do we, do young kids, how do you break free of borrowed desires?
	Well, you have to start off with the B again.
	You have to think, and that's the first thing in the book.
	And for me, uh two years ago, that was one of the most important parts of it, because how it all started was was from Doug giving us a list of games, activities, and occupations.
	And that's that's where I started from.
	Like a napkin-sized.
	Yeah.
	So uh so it wasn't much for it with the first.
	There wasn't much to work with, but even just seeing that and seeing where that could lead.
	Uh I've always I've always loved the story of the Count of Monte Cristo.
	So besides disregarding the revenge aspect of it, just the 14 years he took to become like uh a force of nature, knowing tons learning tons of new skills, being able to shape the world around him in a way nobody else could.
	That was my kind of North Star.
	That was my vision of a man I wanted to be.
	And that made it easier to pursue that path, but and have my own individual desires at that point.
	I think that's how it starts.
	Hmm.
	Last question before uh handing over to you, Mike, is uh let's talk ladders.
	I know you talk about ladders in the book.
	Tell us why we should never climb someone else's ladder and why we should build our own.
	Yeah, the whole first part of the book, where what I'm trying to do is dispel a lot of myths that people just assume are true about the way you actually achieve success and the way you make decisions.
	And it's like the the concept of uh the ladder to success is a joke, and no one really ever asks any questions about it.
	Like, you know, why is this ladder here exactly, and who benefits from me climbing it?
	Um, and what happens at the top exactly?
	Um if they pay attention to it, you'll notice that at the top of every ladder is strangely another ladder.
	Um, which you know gets increasingly competitive and a little ambitious, frankly, as you try and climb up them.
	Instead, you know, the people all of the remarkably successful people I know did not climb a ladder.
	They all went in these paths that would seem not to they would seem irrational in that they you know that they went, you know, they zigged to zag.
	There is no ladder.
	There is no real ladder to success.
	Exactly, Mike.
	Yeah.
	That's the only way.
	And as an entrepreneur, that's where my experience always was.
	You look at Doug, I mean, Doug's life is how do you put that up?
	I mean, how you can't fit it in any box.
	No.
	But this is true of all of the of the outstanding people I know.
	Yeah.
	Um, okay, can I take the question, Todd?
	Please.
	Okay, so I I I want to ask you, I want to ask Max about uh let's talk about the female side here and uh finding and choosing a spouse that shares these values.
	I would imagine that is not impossible, but difficult in society today.
	And even though our audience is very sophisticated, our audience is rooted in morality, integrity, and so on.
	But most of the young women and also young men out there are are looking at each other in a very superficial way.
	They're not looking for virtue, they're looking for the symbols of the haves.
	So, how do you, as a young man, how how do you even navigate that?
	Because you don't you don't want to end up with a spouse that's just superficial and wants to go shopping all day, obviously.
	That would be a waste.
	Oh, 100%.
	100%.
	I mean, I've been very lucky.
	I have a um very rare uh girl for a girlfriend.
	So I'm I'm very I've been very lucky, like oddly lucky in that sense.
	But honestly, I think uh part of the reason why we strayed away from talking about dating and stuff in the preparation is because it shouldn't be your main focus.
	I think you'll you'll attract and draw in people, men and women, like men who want to give you opportunities and women who are attracted to you.
	If you are a worthy man.
	But the whole all you have to be oriented to how can I move closer to becoming the man I want to be.
	And there's no doubt if it's if it's true, if your objectives are clear and you're moving towards them, I think you're just you're not gonna have any trouble with it.
	Well, that I mean that makes perfect sense.
	You're going to attract a reflection of what you have become.
	Can I say I saw that on this?
	I I think that a lot of the problems that we see with um the young women today is a reflection currently of the lack of fear in the men.
	Yes, and I really wonder if the if the men wouldn't weren't creating such a vacuum for these women to just try and uh exp that they end up expanding into and don't know what to do when they're there in this empty space where there is no man.
	Uh, you know, I think a lot of the craziestness will go away.
	So a lot of people like to go, hey, these you know, these women, these they look at them and there are all these problems.
	I think, but where are the men on the other side of that?
	And I feel like if there were more people that were pursuing virtue that were really trying to be trying to be what they could be, then I really think a lot of that problem would go away.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	And I want to give out your website too, by the way, the preparation.com.
	Just want to make sure everybody's got that one one more time, to learn about the book and see some of the recent podcasts and interviews and posts and so on.
	So that's well worth your time.
	Also, check out the book.
	Here it is on Amazon, The Preparation, How to Become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous.
	Uh, that's all in a positive way that that means I suppose uh dangerous to the establishment narrative controllers and brainwashers and sorcerers that seem too right.
	This is what most people don't understand.
	Of course, we do encourage people to be able to defend themselves.
	Like we like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, one of the cycles, you go actually his next one that he's doing after this is going to Thailand to study movie Thai for a few months.
	You want to be dangerous in that way, but really the most dangerous man is a man who knows who he is and can think for himself.
	So that's that's the real goal.
	Yeah, uh absolutely.
	And in society today, we see the role reversals between man and woman, right?
	So we talked about this in in the culture of wars.
	They uh in in Hollywood and TV and movies, they show the man as weak and and stupid.
	The woman, especially a very small dainty woman, 110 pounds, is the warrior that beats up 250-pound Navy SEALs all day long.
	And the woman is in charge.
	And especially this also crosses racial lines.
	In every Hollywood movie now, there seems to be a black woman who is in charge of a group of bumbling white men, like in every police department that's depicted in every movie as well.
	Excuse me, Mike, it's a black lesbian woman, sorry.
	Black lesbian woman, yeah, exactly.
	So and and the fact that this is so consistently portrayed means that the script writers are being paid.
	They're being compensated to write these into the scripts.
	But there's also there's um there's a rat experiment.
	I forgot the name of the scientist, but these experiments were conducted in the 1960s.
	Uh uh or Mouse, uh, Mouse Utopia, where they built this utopia environment.
	You you've heard of this.
	And they gave the mice everything that they needed food and water, unlimited housing, and then they watched them.
	And within a few generations, all of those mice uh they became extinct.
	They could not survive, they could not reproduce because one of the last signs was role reversals.
	The female mice became the males in their behavior, and the males stopped being men and they became subservient to the females.
	We're now seeing that in society, Matt.
	What do you say?
	Oh, I think you're completely right about it.
	But I have to tell you, I have I do have a lot of faith in this younger generation.
	I know a lot of people don't.
	Um there's a big, you know, and there's almost between these uh like boomers and Gen Z, there's like a lot of pressure.
	Most of that's because of economics, really, that aren't you know, aren't Gen Z's fault, but uh, or Boomer's fault for that matter.
	But uh, but the but that causes people to have lower faith in this generation.
	But I have to tell you, I feel like there's a there's like a drive in them to do something worthy, to be someone worthy.
	And it's not just Max.
	I mean, Max is a great young man.
	I'm very proud of him, but he's not it's not unique to him.
	I'm not saying it's consistent across the generation, but it is something I see that I I didn't see in the X generation that I'm part of.
	I think you're right.
	I'm now I'm seeing a greater emphasis on wanting to do good in the world, a values-based, like a return to values that we didn't see in Generation X. I agree, Mike.
	Yep, that's the right.
	Yeah, and and to stand up against evil.
	You know, this this theme has been part of our society forever.
	I mean, all of Western civilization, uh, Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, etc., right?
	That is oppose evil and destroy evil.
	And given how much evil there is in the world right now that's taking place that's often carried out by you know the older leaders of society.
	I'm seeing a very strong backlash against that in Gen Z now.
	Is that is that what you're seeing also?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I unfortunately it's being spun into uh generational conflict rather than identifying the uh the people that are really the source of the problem and um and opposing them directly.
	But yes, absolutely.
	Yeah, yeah, very clear.
	Okay, um Todd, jump in whenever you want, and then I'm gonna go to AI at some point here, but I'll save that for when you're done.
	You got it.
	You got it.
	But uh yeah, regarding the younger generation.
	I mean, that's the nature of a pendulum, right?
	It's it's swinging back the other way, and that's very very encouraging.
	You'd mentioned about a little bit ago about where are the men before I go to my next question.
	Uh I have a stat for you guys uh so that I can tell you exactly where the men are Or aren't.
	But uh, do you know the demographic that is the highest has the highest prescription rate of Viagra?
	Take a guess.
	I mean, like what age group?
	Yeah, what age group.
	Huh.
	Well, I mean, I would assume we're talking seniors, but I'm guessing it must not be that if you're asking the question.
	25 to 35.
	No way.
	Here's why.
	Because they watch porn, so much porn that when they meet a real girl or a potential mate, someone to actually have a real relationship with, uh, they can't, you know what.
	And so they have to rely on Viagra, these alternative means.
	And that's where the men aren't, right?
	Pursuing real good, wholesome women to be able to have kids and families.
	That's the attack on this world is the attack of not just young men, but of families.
	And they're really really these druid Babylonian bastards are really good at at uh what they do.
	Um, so one thing in the book that you speak about is what a person's greatest asset is, uh, Matt.
	Can you speak to that and also speak to the compounding effect of reputation?
	Yeah, I mean, well, the the greatest asset, you know, that it's there's a there's several things I could say that actually are the greatest asset, but I mean, but but let me say this because I think it's important to make sure people understand this part in the book.
	And we we've we encourage people very early on to draft their own personal code, okay, because they are their greatest asset, their energies and actions are their greatest asset, and but they have to be right, you know, in those actions and in the use of those energies.
	And so a personal code essentially it sounds trivial at first, but everyone ought to have one in it, whether you're 50, my age, or you're at 20, his age.
	And essentially we break it down into three parts.
	And the first part is a set of rules for themselves.
	Now, I don't like rules at all in general, but I love the rules that I've set for myself and my own personal conduct.
	They've been real assets for me.
	And so we have the young person go through this first.
	You brought up the porn thing.
	That's why I wanted to, that's why I think this really fits, is because we ask them to kind of pay attention to themselves.
	And when they engage in certain activities that make them feel small, that make them feel ashamed, just to note them and and decide to say no to those to draw a line.
	Now the world might not think that you uh even have these problems, right?
	They might not be totally unaware of them.
	It might not be a problem for anyone else around you.
	But for you, those activities make you feel small.
	And stopping doing those is absolutely critical.
	And whether that's porn or whether it's you know, lying or telling, you know, for me, that's a big one, telling when I tell someone a white lie, like I know I don't want to go, I can't, I'm too busy for tomorrow to have dinner, you know, oh, as a white lie when I really just don't want to.
	Like that makes me feel bad.
	So I just I don't do that.
	And so we ask them to create a set of rules for themselves that don't make so stop doing the things that make them feel small.
	That's number one.
	Number two, we expose them to the ancient Greek and Roman virtues.
	And we just ask them to read through them and to highlight five to seven of them that really stand out to them.
	They're like they call to them, like the courage, for instance, or dignitas, dignity.
	Um, and to know those.
	And these are unlike the binary nature of the rules, these are you'll these are aspirational things.
	I mean, you could always be more courageous.
	You know, you could always uh there's you could if these are constant things you aspire to.
	These are the things that you know, the Edmund uh Dante's and the Count of Monte Cristo, you know, it's something to aspire to.
	It's not something you actually ever really fully grasp.
	And the last part of it is a list of their actual competencies.
	What can I do?
	What can I bring to the world to shape the world around me?
	And it starts off as an 18-year-old as very little, as you might expect.
	And frankly, when people graduate from college, it's actually basically the same, what they can actually do.
	Um true.
	But they stack up super fast in this book, and the list grows long, so long that when you've asked Max all the things that he can do and has done the last two years, he won't be able to recall it off the top of his head.
	Get a lot of fun.
	No, yeah.
	so anyway, so the person is the your power is the most valuable thing you have is yourself and investing in yourself and making yourself more skilled and more valuable to others around you.
	And you as you compound those skills over time, you grow a reputation for being a person who manifests these virtues, manifests these good qualities and competencies, and people want you around.
	They want you around.
	Sorry, one last question.
	Um why is our personal ability to say no a superpower?
	Well, I mean, if we're going back to the porn example, if you can't say no to that, then I guess you'll end up having to use Viagra when you're 25.
	Great answer.
	If you can't say no to something basic like that, then well, Zeno of Sitium said man conquers the world by conquering himself.
	And part of that is the ability to say no.
	Right.
	And that's also shaping the your individual self again.
	If you can't do that, then you're it's gonna be really hard to get to the person you want to be and interact with the world in the way you wish to.
	No, that's excellent.
	And it ties back to what Matt you were saying about the little white lie about uh having dinner tomorrow night when sometimes it should be, should be as easy as us just saying, yeah, not tomorrow night.
	Yeah, this is not good for me.
	I'm not just not feeling up to it.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	You know, and I I think saying no is the ultimate manifestation of masculine masculinity.
	Right.
	I mean, a man says no.
	Like the man can draw a line in the sand and say no.
	And I think if there were if there were all the insanity of the last five years, if if there were people, more people, you guys who would have said no, none of this would have happened.
	But I I want to bring in let's let's talk about nutrition and let's talk about chemical exposure.
	Because I believe there is a chemical vector of feminization that has been at play for a very long time.
	And I'm kind of curious about whether you cover any of this in your book.
	But let me just give a couple of examples first.
	So, of course, atrazine, which is the second most popular herbicide in the world, is known as a gender bender chemical.
	It feminizes men.
	That's absolutely true.
	And it's used on a number of foods, uh, such as pineapples, by the way.
	Non-organic pineapples will have uh some level typically of atrazine in them.
	Uh on top of that, there's the the soy estrogens and uh estrogen mimickers and hormone disruptors that are in plastics, microplastics, you know, food packaging, etc.
	All of this combines with pop culture, movies and TV and media to feminize men both uh physiologically, hormonally, and then psychologically at the same time.
	So then I notice, and I'm almost done with my question.
	Apologize for it being so long.
	I was just interviewing a doctor, and we were talking about literally the importance of nude sunbathing from men and women to actually bring light to the breasts and the and the testes, and why nude sunbathing was literally part of the health regimen through many cultures throughout time, because activating the male hormones through light activation of the testes and so on.
	This is a physiological fact.
	And yet in the society today, everybody covers up everything, everybody's indoors, everybody wears sunglasses, they're not getting light, hormones are suppressed through these other mechanisms.
	So my question to both of you is uh do you cover because I don't have your book, I I'd love to read it, but do you cover the health exposures and how to avoid being feminized uh with you know with the toxins?
	We don't cover anything on nutrition.
	If I if I knew uh all that you've already forgotten about uh nutrition, honestly, then it might have been something that we included.
	But uh I I know I totally agree that all those things are true, and those chemicals exist and there is a real attack on people on that front.
	Uh but no, we don't cover that in the book.
	Uh, we cover the parts about uh essentially the right uh the the right philosophical approach a young man should have toward their life at that particular stage.
	Um not to say it doesn't apply beyond people that are his age, I think it applies to me as well.
	But uh so we get more into the the cognitive part, like how to think about it, how to put things in perspective, you know, how to understand your role in society and the challenges ahead of you right now, and what is your obligation there, your obligation to take personal agency, essentially, and do what you can to drive things forward through massive action.
	Got it.
	Well, if you do a future edition and you'd like a section on nutrition, I'd be happy to write the intro for you on that.
	Happy to contribute that.
	Yeah.
	Um because you know it's important for everything to work in congruence.
	So as you are pursuing this philosophically and cognitively, that also your physiology and your body is aligned and supporting you in what you're trying to become as a man.
	And it it's it's hard to be virtuous as a defender of the innocent if you're also a soy boy, right?
	So these things go together.
	Oh, they do, they do.
	You know, but uh, you know, I also think that once people start, if you do start doing the stuff that is outlined in the preparation, the very physical things that you're gonna start to recognize the things that are helping you in that pursuit and hurting you in that pursuit.
	Yeah.
	Because you're actually there are challenges.
	There are fit a lot of it is physical.
	Um for a reason, you know, and including, I mean, there are specific martial arts in there, among other things.
	But I mean, just even the major adventures that are there at each of the 16 cycles require uh a lot of physical activity for sure.
	Yeah, uh absolutely.
	And I I would also just add, and then Todd, uh hand it back over to you.
	But the the quality of your ability to think, you know, your brain is powered entirely by what's in your blood, 100%.
	And your blood is made up entirely of the things that you eat and drink and put on your skin.
	Okay.
	So what you eat affects the quality of your mind.
	And that's why there's so many mood disorders associated with processed junk food consumption, blood sugar swings, mood swings, irritability, etc.
	And I I believe that to be a fully functioning human being in society today, we have to have clean blood.
	That's why I've never used recreational drugs.
	I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't get tattoos on my skin because you know, I don't I don't want those toxins, etc.
	But then when you have high quality blood, it just reinforces the high quality of your ability to think with clarity, which is critical for I think the philosophical pursuit that you're describing.
	So thanks for listening to my monologue on that.
	But I just wanted to add that.
	Totally agree.
	Makes sense.
	Yeah.
	But I have a question for each of you.
	But Max.
	By foregoing college, what kind of fun shit can you do, man?
	That is a chapter.
	That's a chapter in the book, Mike.
	Yeah, it's great.
	Uh there's an overwhelming um amount of fun shit you can do.
	And like my dad said a little while ago, I don't remember probably about 60 or 70% of the stuff I've done.
	But just to mention a few of the fun things I've done over the last two years.
	I've sailed in and around the Falkland Islands and through the Strait of Magellan.
	Wow.
	Worked on wildfires, worked on a geophysics crew, um, was apprenticed to an Uruguayan gaucho here, went through EMT school and all those things.
	Wow.
	All the time.
	Uh they were definitely adventures.
	But even among all of that spread out in between that, the individual activities that I've done have been interesting as well, like skydiving, scuba diving, um, learning to play guitar, learning to speak Spanish, uh play chess, which are all in the book as well.
	That's awesome.
	There's an overwhelming amount of fun stuff you can do.
	Okay, thank you.
	That's awesome.
	And and Matt, this was an important part of the book, too, or um I assess that it is.
	Why should we forget mentors and instead find a patron, patron, and can you unpack what a patron means?
	Yeah, that term unfortunately has been a little bit ruined by uh by patron, uh the patriarchy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's been a bit ruined by it, but it really is calling back to the ancient Roman uh tradition that was very important to civic society, frankly, of uh patron client.
	And you know, I'm trying to accomplish two major things with that chapter.
	Number one is I'm trying to uh break the thinking that the that uh you need to stay within your generation, that your that your generation has the answers.
	Because the best relationships I've had in my life are intergenerational.
	Like my relationship with Doug, who's been a long time mentor.
	I would I would use the term mentor, but really he is in the traditional Roman sense, a patron.
	And I am a client of his.
	And what is that?
	And that what that so that number one to dispel the myth of that that generation doesn't want the best for you and they aren't willing to help you, and that they there's nothing that they can teach you, which is a huge mistake.
	Uh it's a gigantic mistake.
	Um second of all, you know, what people look at mentorship, they look at mentors as like it's like a one-way street.
	They expect Gandalf to show up and show them the way, you know, to solve the problem.
	And there is no, it doesn't really work like that in reality.
	In reality, it's like all other relationships where it's a two-way street.
	There's benefit that flows both directions.
	And, you know, in order to get a worthy uh mentor, you have to be a worthy mentee.
	Or or in the Roman way, the Romans would think of it, as a client.
	And so you have to start like I Mike, I imagine for you, you probably have people come to you all the time saying, Hey, I love what you do.
	You know, if there's anything I can do to help out, you just let me know.
	Now you don't know this person from Adam, right?
	But they so they just gave you a job.
	Now they might be very capable of helping you in some way, but it's of no help for them to come to you in that way.
	But if they said, you know, Mike, I've been studying what you're doing, and I've and I I think I can help with this specific thing in this specific way.
	Would you let me?
	It changes it completely.
	And so the whole idea is to shift the burden of responsibility to one that you have control over.
	It's like be like to get a good mentor, to get a good patron, you know, be worthy of it.
	Like try and find ways you can add value.
	So and then my relationship with Doug really is that.
	I mean, Doug has been, like I said, try to get me to write this book with him for 12 years.
	Oh, wow.
	Um the timing wasn't right, you know, at the time, but uh it was when Max became 17, and I saw his struggle with all this.
	So, you know, but ultimately, you know, this book, we worked really hard to make sure this came out to be the book that Doug wanted.
	You know, I mean, you know, I didn't the vast majority of the writing, but it's like but this was his vision ultimately.
	Matt, let me give out the website, uh Crisisinvesting.com, which is uh a combination of you and Doug Casey.
	And uh Doug Casey is just a legendary figure in my mind.
	I've been a fan of his work for a very long time.
	Uh to this day I listen to his podcast.
	And I I think don't aren't you often co-hosting those podcasts.
	I'm the guy with them.
	Yep, I'm the guy trying to pull it out of him.
	I try and I try most people don't even know my name.
	I like it that way.
	Well, I you are excellent at what you do, Matt.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And uh I I love Doug's presentation of information because it's it's so rational, it pisses people off.
	Right.
	It's like we we definitely lose we lose people.
	If anyone would whatever trying to wedge the wedge issues trying to force down our throat, you lose a couple on every one of them.
	Well, you know, but that's that's a really important question for your son Max to consider also.
	And one of the things that I've learned over all these years, and I know Todd has as well, is that when you are a person who sticks to principles, you will lose large segments of your audience based on what's changing in the world, because the the popular culture gets swept up into irrational emotional responses currently over the shooting of Charlie Kirk or a few years ago over COVID, or uh, you know, 20 plus years ago over 9-11.
	You get these irrational waves of lunatics, the mob rule that is the worst property of democracy.
	And when you stick to your principles, you're gonna first lose a huge number of your listeners, and then they're gonna be replaced by people who share your principles.
	That's where I am.
	It's like, and that's where you can you can always be, no matter what happens, you know that you stood for things that mattered, and let the fickle public come and go as they wish.
	But you stand for something.
	You clearly understand your be, and that's the difference.
	I think if you if you know who you are, it doesn't make any difference what anyone else.
	Exactly.
	And that's the way Doug is.
	And that's the way you are.
	That's the way Max appears as well.
	And you know, it's so it's actually very refreshing, Max, to get to meet you here like this and to hear your story and some of your adventures.
	And I I, you know, wow, what an amazing uh life experience you are well into here.
	I would also ask though, um, because I set out this goal for myself many decades ago.
	Uh I I would ask if you share this.
	I said, I want to be able to pick up and operate and disassemble and clean every major weapon system that is available to civilians today.
	So I I trained with Navy SEALs for years and I became competent in every weapon system uh that's civilian use.
	But uh and then martial arts, you know, did did Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a lot of other things.
	Um tell us about your experiences in in in learning skills for self-defense as well.
	Well, I've not done nearly as much as I want to going into the future, but I've had a few months of uh Brazilian Brazilian jiu-jitsu training.
	I did a couple weeks of uh kickboxing in Paraguay, actually.
	I was pretty good.
	Yeah.
	Um and that's that's been the sum of it so far.
	But uh like my dad said, the next cycle I will be doing is the fighter cycle, doing uh Muay Thai in Thailand.
	Um but I 100% agree about learning more about weapons, and I I think if I remember correctly, Doug mentions that in the book as well.
	Yeah.
	Uh learning more.
	It's one of the it's one of the under the do fund shit category.
	Now the all the all those activities could have been an anchor course, you know, or within any of the cycles.
	A lot, any of them could have been turned into that.
	But uh but yeah, and I obviously you've had some exposure to firearms, but you know, you know, we are where I currently live, I don't you probably don't know this, Mike, but on a regenerative cattle ranch in Uruguay.
	And so uh, you know, we can't get all the same guns we hear as we could in the US.
	But yeah, you know, we get what we can.
	And um well, let me let me recommend Oh, I'm I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Uh let me recommend, Max, if you can find a local person who can train you in edged weapons, uh that would be uh a really important next step that would really go well with the kickboxing Muay Thai, BJJ, et cetera.
	And then uh so edge weapons is uh not only how to fight someone who has an edged weapon without bleeding out and getting cut up, and then secondly, how to use your own edge weapon, and you know, like to this day, I I carry this Emerson carambit right here.
	Can show a front front shot.
	So this this karambit, which I've carried for over 15 years, is uh a very simple weapon that in your pocket, it's in this configuration.
	When you pull it out, it opens as you're pulling it, and then it comes into this grip instantly.
	This has been the single most effective defensive edge weapon with a blade so short that it's legal everywhere in America, but also deep enough to hit the six major arteries that are exposed, you know, if that's necessary, right?
	So how does it how does it when it's in your pocket, how does it uh the blade come out?
	I don't get it.
	Well, Emerson has patented this wave little feature.
	You see this thing that sticks up right there?
	Yep.
	This uh clip, this um when you pull it out, this catches on the front of your pocket and it opens as you pull it, so it's faster than a switchblade.
	And now it's in see, I can still grapple, I can still grapple with my hand in this position.
	So cool.
	Not to turn this into a weapons class or anything, but I can still hold.
	And if someone think this is this is looped around my index finger, right?
	So you you max, you'll you'll want to get a crambut like this.
	This is looped around your index finger.
	If anybody tries to take this from me, I'm gonna cut their wrist and they're gonna bleed out.
	And then of course, I'm also carrying firearms for other distances.
	But um, I think it's just absolutely critical.
	And and I'm not a guy, I don't worship weapons.
	I don't collect, you know, gunfighter magazines or whatever.
	I don't give a crap.
	I don't I don't like polish my rifles and make sure they don't have hand prints on them.
	No, I'm writing notes on them.
	Like what range is this one good at?
	I don't care if they're dirty as long as they work, you know, it's practical.
	Yeah, well, and throughout history, Mike, the difference between a free man and a slave is a slave was never allowed to carry a weapon.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	And this is gonna be critical.
	And let me ask you about AI.
	And um, you know right now we see a lot of younger people, you know, of your son's age.
	They're they're allowing AI to replace their cognition.
	I see it in schools.
	I see it in MBA programs.
	They're using AI to write all their papers and they're not engaging their brains.
	So how do how does your philosophy with with your book uh approach this issue of AI?
	How do you not lose your brain but still not be a Luddite?
	Yeah, I think it's really important because uh it's well, it's hugely important, and I think more important than most people can grasp, actually, um, how important that issue is because it's going to shape the world very quickly in ways that people have difficult time imagining.
	So one thing I do early on, or I do I have a chapter that's devoted to future-proofing yourself.
	And most of that is just designed to show them that they need to have uh a diverse set of skill sets.
	You know, Scott Adams has that concept of skill stacking.
	Yeah, we believe through uh essentially the same thing by stacking the cycles, the the 16 cycles that we tell people to go through.
	Um and that makes that creates a totally unique human that has capabilities because they have understanding that are different.
	And so, you know, they can use AI fundamentally as the tool, the remarkable tool that it is, but you know, aren't uh don't rely on it, aren't dependent upon it.
	But so we do try and under explain that, for instance, in finance in particular, which was the probably most obvious profession for somebody to go into if they wanted to make a lot of money within over the last 20 years going to finance.
	Uh that that that that those jobs are gonna be first in the line, really.
	Uh maybe some software developers might be first.
	But I mean they're right up there with being totally replaced.
	So this one most promising, most lucrative career, anyway, is basically being wiped out at the early the early stage parts of that career by AI.
	And so that just shows you the deficiencies really in the college education system that they prepare you for this siloed thing and nothing else and will leave you hanging.
	That's number one.
	Number two is that we have a cycle that we call it the hacker cycle.
	Every cycle has a theme.
	You're not really a hacker in this cycle, but what you are doing is you're learning to use the AI tools to build real things.
	Well, virtual things.
	And so that's a big part.
	That's a whole cycle devoted to that.
	There's also a whole cycle devoted to it somewhat relates to uh Mike.
	Have you ever heard of Fab Labs?
	Fab Labs, no, it doesn't ring a bell.
	Actually, it comes out of MIT, but they're all over the country, and they have nine machines, nine different machines that allow you to create to manufacture on a bespoke only on a bespoke basis, not a good idea.
	Oh, it's like the maker communities.
	Yes.
	So they have nine specific machines where you can make everything from circuit boards, yeah.
	In the in the in the fab lab.
	And so understanding how to use all these machines and conceptualize a the product you want to make and make it yourself is one of the cycles, one of the anchor courses.
	Wow.
	Yeah, that that's really that's really critical.
	Um and 3D printing is just one of those.
	There are there are several uh technologies.
	And you know, when we move into this era of AI and robotics, I've come to the conclusion economically, I'm sure uh Doug would probably agree with this.
	There's going to be new value in the inherent property of being human and being able to demonstrate authenticity of being human.
	And so, like Max, the experiences that you already shared with us here, those are the things that make you human.
	Those things make you unique and the ability to access all of those memories and experiences as you do whatever you're gonna do as an entrepreneur or a podcaster, influencer, whatever, that has more value than some idiot that's been algorithmically brainwashed in a school with with a script that can be replaced by an AI robot in no time.
	So being human has value.
	Yeah, right, for sure.
	No, it definitely does.
	And just going back to the AI thing real quick, there was this one um article in New York Times, just to support what you were saying about the about uh careers after college, where this guy applied to 5,700 jobs, got 13 interviews, and now he's on unemployment because nothing came from it.
	Is a recent computer science graduate.
	Right.
	Uh-huh.
	So it's it is here.
	It is here.
	It is here.
	It's not coming.
	It's here.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	I on those authentic human experiences and uh the novelty that was only really gonna be able to and creativity that will come from humans who have enough diverse experience and skills to then be able to apply these technologies in unique ways.
	Speaking of both, uh Max.
	Have you ever shot a 30 odd six?
	Um, I think I probably have not.
	No.
	Just a 308 is that is the as far as he's got.
	Okay, I'm gonna really tax your your your um preparedness mind.
	Okay.
	Um if you shoot a 306, which is more powerful than what you've shot.
	Uh I know where this is going.
	Do you think this artery right here can stop it?
	Even with a 308 was saying, could it stop it?
	No.
	Well, if you have bones of seal, then your neck will stop it though.
	And your heart, and it will go back up and bounce off your heart.
	Oh my goodness.
	It will.
	Mike, you started all of that because you did analysis.
	You did this analysis that was just beautiful.
	You called BS on that so fast, it was fantastic.
	Well, and and that's the thing, because when you have that real world knowledge, which is what Matt and Max are teaching, you know bullshit when you see it because you've done you know, you you have competency in those areas.
	And and in fact, Matt and Max, I want to ask you about this issue of competency.
	As uh you know, we talk about the fourth turning of civilizations.
	The thing that gets lost in that final phase before total collapse is competency.
	And you end up with leaders who don't know history.
	You end up with accountants that don't know math.
	You end up with scientists that don't know science, and that's where we are, and doctors that don't know healing.
	That's exactly where we are right now.
	And the the beautiful thing about this, though, is that acquiring competency is relatively easier now by skipping college, like you're doing, uh pursuing learning and knowledge, and you can easily eclipse the morons who are the algorithmic puppets that have been trained to be incompetent because that's what the system has become.
	Your comments.
	Oh, 100%.
	And this is where you can use AI to get ahead a lot too.
	I mean, you have this you have the mass of this you have internet before you where you can access anything.
	And like we have a whole list of academics in the book.
	You can take stuff from Yale, for example.
	They have a lot of their course catalog free and available.
	But most people aren't going to seek that out on their own.
	So you can go out of your way to find that all yourself and educate yourself.
	Yeah, it was really important to Doug to make sure we included strong academics in the program.
	Because you know, so luckily, uh, you know, obviously you gotta be careful with the woke stuff and stay away from all the stuff that has been polluted and degraded that you were just referring to.
	But for free or nearly free, you can get all of the academic uh coursework you could want and more, and more than you could ever ever actually handle, frankly.
	And so in the, you know, like I said, most of the book is devoted to doing.
	We break it down into 16 cycles.
	They have an adventure, an anchor activity, like you know, the sailing thing, like uh um, you know, becoming an EMT, things like that.
	But there's layered in specific coursework on the academic side for free or nearly free.
	Reading that we recommend as well.
	There's the fun stuff too, the extra fun activities, and then reading and or I'm sorry, reflection and accountability.
	And that's probably been one of the most effective single tools, I think, for Maxim and all this is that he's been publishing on Substack since very early on.
	It started off just very crudely as a public list of what he got done that week.
	Of course, nobody was paying attention at first.
	So now there are you know there's thousands of people now that are looking, so it's you know, he's uh but the pressure has built on him every week, you know.
	But it but it works as a basic accountability thing.
	Here's what I said I was gonna do, and here's what I did.
	And and that, like uh observation of himself and where he's satisfied or not, and pushing himself further and through difficulties, uh, I think has been remarkably effective.
	And we tell everyone to do exactly the same thing, and uh through the preparation through that site, which is a substack site, we hope to connect the young people who pick this up and run with it.
	And not only not only that, actually, but I've gotten a lot of weird opportunities from readers.
	So this is just another example of like the more you do, the more competencies you gain, especially with the internet, you can put it out into the world, and more skills can come your way from people offering it to you.
	I mean, yeah, sporting qualifiers was one of them.
	One guy asked if I wanted to learn how to pack mules in the Rockies for a few days with them, I did that.
	Um, the um geophysics stuff I did in Nevada was from a random opportunity.
	So if you're talking about building competencies, it starts with doing that, and then now you can put it out to endless amounts of people on the internet who want to help you do even more.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, and just even I'm thinking the same thing.
	I'm thinking that if if both of you come to Texas, I'd love to give you a tour of my lab and show you how to do mass spec analysis of of elements in food.
	And that's a skill you can learn.
	It's it's a learnable, you don't need a PhD.
	I don't have a PhD, and yet I ended up teaching PhDs how to do what we learned to do in the lab.
	They because it was a mystery to them.
	How are you achieving that without having to go through this process?
	Oh, well, here's how it is.
	But you can, but well, let me add this.
	The thing that will I believe that will make you successful in uh competency across all these subjects is, and I'm I'm sure Matt will agree with me because this is also the way Doug Casey works, and this is what Todd and I do.
	You are always constantly learning at every age.
	You you never stop learning.
	There's never a day that I sit there and just watch a stupid ass TV show.
	I don't even have connections to cable or whatever that is.
	I'm always I'm I'm listening to Doug Casey.
	I'm reading a book, I'm watching interviews, I'm learning constantly as I'm exercising, or if I'm working on my tractor, man, I got a podcast about economics or AI that I'm listening to at the same time.
	Every hour is constantly learning.
	When you do that, you can become so competent in every area, actually, or at least capable, that uh one time uh I was at a social event and and I just sit down with a guy, hey, how are you doing?
	What do you do?
	He says uh he's an archaeologist.
	And I said, Oh, well, so like what epoch of human history are you studying?
	He's like, You're the first person who didn't ask me about dinosaurs.
	It's like everybody thinks archaeology is about dinosaurs.
	How do you know it's about humans too?
	Um, because I'm not an idiot, I think, probably.
	But but look, you can become competent in every area.
	Um, Matt, you want to add anything to that or or or Max?
	Either one.
	I totally agree.
	I think the problem is in school they no longer even teach you how to learn.
	That's not the priority.
	The priority is to teach you to go with the program, you know, to understand the game.
	The game is, you know, you have to please the authority, you follow the directions properly, you get rewarded.
	And there's some, you do pick up random facts along the way, you know, and maybe you can string them together.
	But real learning, the real desire to learn uh comes from you know, an innate curiosity that has to be nourished.
	That's right, and has to be exercised.
	And uh, you know, through this, there's a massive amounts of it because uh the fact is the person is thrown into totally unique situations every three months where you have to be very comfortable feeling like an idiot starting out because you are.
	I mean, you don't know it, but you get thrown in the deep end.
	Like when he did the saying, he'd never done any sailing before at all.
	I mean, none.
	And then going and and actually it was Matt Bracken, who I I know you know, uh, who recommended this adventure for Maxim.
	That's great.
	Yeah, there's in my lab among our scientists and analysts, we have an ongoing conversation.
	It's called the submarine emergency test.
	And the the way it goes is in any group of people, you know, among friends or whatever, you ask the question, which person in this group would I most want to be with in a submarine if there's an emergency and we have to solve the problem.
	You want to be that person.
	100%.
	Right.
	And that means understanding so many different areas, understanding the basics of physics and math and plumbing, even in a lab, plumbing and you know, basic chemistry, basic everything.
	The thing is, with AI, you can now just ask an AI engine, give me a course on this.
	You know, give me a five-hour overview to learn this, and it will spit out the whole coursework.
	You don't need a college professor today to tell you anything to become well informed on almost everything that matters.
	Yeah, you're right.
	You know, and one thing I'll add to that, who do you want to be trapped in the submarine with is you also want to be with someone who you know will do the right thing.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	You know, and not only they're capable, but they also are a person of virtue that they're going to make the hard decisions to do the right thing when it comes down to it.
	And I and I thought in that submarine, if I just had my remote control, I would be the most popular boy in the way.
	I can operate the Netflix, you want Amazon Prime, you kidding.
	Okay.
	Well, yeah, go ahead, Todd.
	One thing we were we were just really quickly, I wanted to say that since we're talking about AI AI, I know in the book that uh you talk about our ultimate resource, which is time.
	So let's just kind of end this and talk about time.
	That's our ultimate resource, but AI is going to give so many unemployed people a lot of time.
	Isn't it our real resource what we do with that time?
	Yeah, what I meant what I that's really in the economic section.
	What I'm just trying to talk mostly explain time preference to people.
	Okay, you know, fundamentally, to understand that um that your decisions today, if you if you basically through debt, for instance, if you pull forward the future to have to consume today, that you're basically stealing from yourself, from your future self by doing that.
	So it's mostly trying to understand to explain the value of what an economics they call low time preference.
	You know, where basically you can you you're building, you know, it's it's that now, this moment is for the future.
	And I'm going to make the most of this moment now for the future to be better.
	And so that's the way I'm viewing time.
	That's uh that's really the focus there.
	Thank you.
	Um speaking of time uh multiplication, also want to say this on the record that I intend to use lots and lots of robots to live off-grid in a decentralized manner to help amplify my time.
	And for the for the sake of Max especially, I want to strongly recommend that you master the art of prompt engineering, the AI software agents right now, because that skill set will directly apply to controlling robots and getting them to do the things you want them to do.
	And I think that we're gonna see homestead uh operation.
	We're gonna see ranches, we're gonna see way out in the wilderness lots of people with lots of robots that do things that make homesteading much easier, such as perimeter patrol, pulling weeds, growing food, harvesting food, collecting chicken, eggs, etc.
	And uh in fact, we're gonna be buying robots and and testing them with those tasks like can it shovel dirt, can it plant uh, you know, can it pick tomatoes?
	We're gonna do that on camera and see how it goes.
	We're we're in a way, Max is using robots right now for the farm.
	I don't know if you want yeah, yeah.
	I mean, well, it's it's a little different, but we just we just got some agricultural drones to make seeding and fertilizing a whole lot easier.
	Cool.
	So that's we're we're certain off with that already.
	Yeah, they're not independently minded, but they are programmed with and they go and they do their missions.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Is the fertilizer is it a liquid spray or is it a solid particle disbursement?
	It can do both.
	That's very cool.
	So you give it a path and it covers the acreage and just could yeah, yeah, it does the acreage, and you can you can tell it how much to spray uh of whatever if it's granular fertile fertilizer or some pesticide, for example, if you want that in there.
	Uh you can use that.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But you can you can tell it how much the spray the the distance of the grid layout it runs along your land.
	I mean, you can alter every aspect of its operation.
	Yeah, and I'll tell you uh when you see one of these drones, uh the first time we fired it up was at night, and it explained the New Jersey phenomenon pretty well.
	It's that's great.
	And then that's a really important thing to master is just drone, uh drone control, understanding how they work.
	Uh that's you know, probably a large part of the future of warfare is gonna be drone drone warfare.
	And okay, well, we're almost out of time, but this has been truly fascinating.
	And I'm just so impressed with what you're doing, both of you.
	Uh my only question is what about the women watching this?
	Are you are is there a comparable course for young women who also have a similar mindset?
	Totally good.
	It's a fair question, and uh the first answer to it is that I didn't feel like I could talk well to a young man if I was concerned about the young ladies.
	I you know, I didn't think I could do it in a gender-neutral way as effectively.
	Uh so I I focused on my top priority at the time, which was my son who was who was like I said, on the knocking on 18.
	I now have a daughter who on October 5th turns 18.
	So believe me, this is top of mind for me.
	It's a huge priority for us.
	And I think structurally the book works the same.
	I mean, uh, you know, in terms of the plan, there are some cycles uh that we would do differently, uh some of them, but not all of them.
	Yeah.
	And uh, but the uh there are honestly there are challenges and opportunities that that young women have that are diff totally different than young men.
	And I think that they have to be addressed directly.
	And I so that we're working on those ideas already conceptually because just selfishly for my daughter, and ultimately I think that that will come out in uh in a book that I'm gonna need my wife's help, frankly, to do.
	I'm a I'm a big fan of finding a good man.
	I have four daughters, finding a good man and having babies, honey.
	That's that's what I tell them.
	This is an important thing, but you but women young women have to understand they have this unique power to get men to do things for them when they're when they're young, you know, because it they just and and that is a power that needs to not be dissipated.
	It needs to be protected and cherished to find, you know, because it's it's the most useful tool uh that you'll have when you finally encounter a worthy mate.
	Bingo Yeah, it's uh if if women only knew the power they had at in their 20s, but they usually don't realize it until much later.
	And and look back, it's like uh you could have had that guy doing anything.
	And instead you said you had to do nothing and you degraded yourself.
	But I have 500,000 followers on Instagram.
	Yeah, but my husband needs the little blue pills to get it up, right?
	There's a problem.
	How can any I just don't get it?
	At age 25, having trouble with that.
	That's just hard to imagine, but I believe you.
	Unbelievable.
	Didn't most of us older guys, I mean, we spent the first half of our young lives trying not to have boners all the time.
	I mean, that was the biggest challenge.
	It's like in in public in school, it's like, please settle down for God's sake, you know.
	Yeah, it's like what's going on?
	Uh uh lost control.
	No, uh, okay.
	For the women watching, that's actually totally true.
	Um that see, that's what happens when you're when you're healthy, you know.
	A healthy young man is uh just has a lot of energy, a lot of uh virility.
	So and that's normal.
	That's totally normal and healthy.
	And also you can sunbathe in the nude and get light on your testes.
	If you don't have enough power yet, go go run around naked.
	Okay.
	Mike, are we already in the after party?
	I know, it feels like it, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	We usually get off the rails in the after party, but we brought it in early today.
	All right.
	Um that's what people love about the show.
	We're just very frank about things.
	We don't you know, we don't care, you know?
	Just say it as it is.
	Uh What else would you like to add, both of you, just before we wrap this up with you?
	The biggest thing I'd like to say is that uh the book was written specifically in mind uh as a I can encapsulate it like this.
	Uh this is a father's best attempt to give his son all of the information he felt like he needed at that time.
	It's not all that he will need, but for then.
	Now what we found though, uh I did imagine that a lot of these things that we that Max has been doing could have been done earlier.
	That became obvious to me, and Max was has been homeschooled since COVID uh along with my daughter.
	Uh once I got to actually see what they were teaching.
	Um, but so but still, there's so many things we could have started earlier.
	Like, you know, he's he knows how to fly a plane now.
	You know, you can get your pilot's license when you're 15 before you can get your driver's license.
	That's true.
	A lot of these things can be done much earlier.
	And so I so that was obvious to me, but what wasn't obvious to me at first until it got out in the world, and you know, the primary buyers are parents or grandparents who have young men in their life that they want to see them succeed.
	You know, the the but they read it first because they want to make sure they're not giving them something bad.
	And and the feedback we've gotten is holy cow, like I can do this.
	I'm gonna do I'm gonna incorporate this into what my into my life.
	I want this.
	And so I think that uh, you know, while the book is envisioned as a replacement for college, I think it um to my surprise succeeds at more than that.
	And I think that if you're a man and you um still have that thirst for adventure and to make yourself more, I think you might get a lot out of it.
	That is so cool.
	So on to something, guys.
	I think this is going to be huge.
	And Matt, could you do me one big favor?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Could you please let Doug know that today my favorite book in the world still, still is assassin.
	Uh, just give him that feedback.
	I mean, I will, but hopefully his next one, which is coming out as terrorist, you'll like even more.
	But I've read all that he's written.
	So if he has more in the on in the dock, then bring it.
	Okay, I want to ask Max for your final thoughts, Max.
	But I'll start off by saying you have a super cool dad.
	I mean, what uh how what you know, you won the lottery on dads.
	Okay, let me just put it that way.
	Um, but Max, what what are your thoughts here?
	Well, you know, I think we had no idea where this was all gonna go, and I was the guinea pig.
	I still am the guinea pig for it, only two years into it, but it's been one of the best things that is ever happened to me uh by far.
	I mean, I know all of the things that have come from it have come from my own uh input.
	But if this didn't exist, I think I d actually don't like to think where I would have been right now without it.
	Um I think I would have been on a very different path, like most young men are today, heading in a bad direction where you're just angry at the world um and not doing anything about it because you don't know what to do.
	I mean, young men want a worthy pursuit, they want to be somebody, and they know inherently that to be somebody they need to do something worthy.
	Yes.
	And they just aren't given an option, honestly.
	It's not clear to them what to do.
	So we hope this book does that.
	Wow, very powerful.
	Okay, well, gosh, thank you both for your time today.
	It's just been a really extraordinary conversation.
	It's it's delightful to meet you both.
	And uh you you have our support.
	If we can help you, you know, uh, with publicity or uh interviews, or if you come to Texas, I tell you what, uh uh Max, I I have training versions of these knives.
	I'll give you uh a safe knife training course in my facility here without using actual blades.
	Um and we'll give you a tour of the lab.
	You can see if you if you like food science.
	How's that sound?
	That sounds fantastic.
	I I think I'll take you up on that offer at some point.
	All right, all right.
	It's an open offer, and uh also, you know, Matt, you're also welcome here in studio anytime.
	So if you get to the Texas Central Texas, uh let us know in advance.
	We'll set it up.
	I'd love to have you here.
	Thank you, Mike.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Todd, this has been great.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Thank you both.
	Have a great Rest of your day.
	And for those watching, we'll be back right after this break with the after party, which might be even more insane than usual today, given the phone we've already had.
	So stay tuned.
	Join the official discussion channel for this show on Telegram at T. M. E slash decentralized TV, where you can ask questions or offer suggestions of who we should interview next.
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	All right, welcome back.
	Now, Todd, we get to let loose.
	It's the after part.
	I think we already let loose a little bit.
	A little bit, you know, talking about Viagra and boners, you know.
	What do we have left to lose here?
	Except, well, let's see.
	One of my questions, what kind of fun shit do you like to do?
	Let's get into the fun shit, Mike.
	Well, I mean, what was so amazing about this interview is here here's this this young man, Max, who's only what, 20 now, I think is his age.
	Yeah.
	But he's already done so many amazing things.
	Like he went through EMT training.
	And I'm not talking about just like fun stuff.
	Oh, I went skydiving.
	I'm talking about learning skills and volunteering here and doing this and traveling and learning from different trades and different people around the world.
	That really that's impressive.
	And can you imagine the sense of freedom he has versus and I have four daughters, you know, that went through college.
	And Mike, you know, my youngest daughter who just graduated, shared with me recently that really the thing is in college these days is people just have to become really adept at cheating.
	And I'm not saying my daughter ever did.
	That's her assessment, right?
	Just because it's about getting through the course material with a good grade so that ultimately you can get a degree so that you can go out and get hired at a Starbucks, Mike.
	You know, I I have seen so many cases where college degrees are clearly worthless because there are people who claim to have degrees that can't do basic things.
	I mean, let me give you an example.
	This is a this is a true example.
	Okay.
	Uh at the bank, this is like I don't know, a year and a half ago or something.
	The bank, I think it was the assistant manager of the bank, or it might have been the manager, came to me and and said, Hey, Mr. Adams, uh, we know that you know something about money, because apparently they see how much money goes through our bank accounts with all the food that we buy and sell and et cetera.
	And they said, We have a question for you.
	Um is it better for uh to to buy one C D, you know, certificate of deposit at the bank, one C D for a million dollars at a two percent return, or would it be better to buy to get a million CDs at one dollar at a two percent return?
	And I said, Are you kidding me?
	How are you run this bank and you don't know the commutative properties of money numbers?
	I mean, they don't know.
	That's and they have college degrees.
	They they don't know anything about money and they're running the banks.
	Right.
	I mean, Doug Casey would laugh hysterically at that one.
	Yeah, he would.
	He would his first question would be what's a CD?
	I've never invested in that's yeah.
	But but you you see people across society today that really they have a degree, they have a job, and they have no idea what they're doing.
	You see it everywhere.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	And I think employers don't have any idea of what they're hiring anymore either, right?
	I mean often the because how do you really take somebody's degree, especially you you nailed it in the interview, especially if they're from a woke college, and I guess what college isn't woke these days?
	Ever think about that one, Mike?
	Well, I mean, there are some, you know, business oriented schools that are not super woke, like let's say Rice University in Texas is a very competent business college.
	But there's there's a little wokism in it, but it's not like overzealous woketardness.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know.
	Well, that that was one thing that just really opened my eyes when I started kind of binge watching Charlie Kirk.
	Uh, and and before he was uh demonstrated how strong his jugular was.
	Um, but but but was the woke tar the the campuses that he went to talk about woke tarts.
	I mean, my gosh, it's just on a supernatural level at these campuses.
	So yeah, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	And and and I want to say for both of us, you know, it it was a horrible tragedy that Charlie was murdered, and no one deserves, you know, to go through that.
	Obvious, obviously.
	Absolutely, right?
	You know, prayers to his surviving family members and and so on.
	But the thing that Charlie did that was very courageous was he would go challenge the the woke idiocy of these college students.
	And actually, you know, what Charlie did, you know, he's being called a genius and so on.
	It was actually very simple.
	It was just the Socratic method.
	You just keep asking the person to explain their own position until they trip over themselves.
	Right.
	I mean, it's actually not that difficult.
	Was very good at that, was very good at that.
	But and I bet you in the book, The Preparedness, uh, they probably talk about the preparation.
	Or prepare preparedness, the preparation.
	So uh I wanted to show you.
	I I opened this up.
	Can you see that there?
	Yeah, kind of.
	This is really cool because throughout, they're not just telling you what you should do.
	They're actually it's like a workbook to where you can write in and they they they lead the witness, so to speak.
	But then when you want to set up your own initiatives and such, uh you you you write them yourself in the book.
	I think this is gonna be very, very powerful, Mike.
	Oh, I think so too.
	I mean, that this seems like it could spawn a whole new movement of our youth and finding new purpose in life.
	Yeah, I think it's kind of like when you rewind and when people were first starting to do the homesteading and homeschooling and things like that, and there were so few of them, but then now you look at it today, and it's it's just just part of uh it's part of everything that's good in this world.
	And I think this is gonna be the same thing.
	I think that there are gonna be young people that are going to know when they're 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, that are probably gonna be already on the pathway to this, right?
	Because uh the parents are going to be a lot smarter too, and be able to say, no, man, I I want my kids to be able to critically think.
	I just don't want them to memorize woke, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And I I really resonate with what the book outlines because it it's kind of codifying a lot of my own personal philosophy.
	Right.
	That which I I never really wrote it down, but you you've known me for a while, Todd.
	Like you know, like one day I decided like I just want to be able to solve Rubik's Cubes in a minute or less.
	Yeah.
	For whatever reason.
	And now that's it, it's a simple thing.
	And I'm solving them in half that time.
	One day, one day, Mike, maybe you'll want to learn how to write songs.
	Yeah.
	You've produced some really amazing songs, Todd, I gotta say.
	Thank you.
	Loving what you've done.
	Uh, of course, it's AI assisted, but that's what I do too now.
	It's about the the concept of the song.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	And it's about learning prompt engineering.
	100%.
	Exactly.
	Um, and like what you've done with your food forests.
	See, that would have been really uncomfortable for a lot of people.
	People say, Well, I don't know anything about growing food.
	Well, you didn't either, but guess how you learn it?
	You just dive in And you do it.
	Yeah.
	And then you go through two hurricanes in a freeze and it just destruction in my back property.
	And then, but man, I sent you the video recently, Mike, of uh just kind of an update on it.
	And I'm just blown away.
	I go back there now every day looking up at the canopy of all of these fruit trees.
	Oh, yeah.
	And I'm like just astonished.
	Do you know it was this month, the 21st of this month, that we installed the food forest just two years ago.
	No way.
	Yeah.
	It's mind-boggling, mind-boggling.
	And so think how much that's taught you.
	Oh gosh.
	Just managing the food forest.
	Managing it and going out and learning these papayas.
	All of a sudden, the papaya trees that I thought were just dead through the freeze and stuff.
	I just kind of wrote them off.
	And then all of a sudden, this right now, it it's like there's probably 40, 50 papayas that are gonna be that are on those trees.
	Oh wow.
	That's a lot.
	It's a ton.
	And it's just two little trees, you know, two years ago, tiny ones.
	And so it's just amazing.
	You you plant it today.
	And that's why, Mike, you know, our show, I think is so important because if we can help people decentralize their lives and change their mindset to where they, you know, think in terms of, hey, why not?
	Why not grow food instead of green uh uh poisoned lawns?
	Yeah, you know, yeah, and demonstrate it, demonstrate it.
	We do.
	So we we got the do part down in the be do have totally fat maximum.
	I tell people to get out of the cities and people say, Well, I don't know how to live in the country.
	And I say, Well, guess what?
	The best way to learn how to live in the country really is it's to move out to the country.
	To live in the country.
	You will learn very quickly.
	And uh, hey, by the way, as far as your papayas go, I don't know if you know this, but in Taiwan and in Chinese culture, there is a very delicious uh drink that's called muguanai, which is papaya with milk.
	And it's yeah, it's very simple.
	You take papaya and you just you know, you scoop it out and you you put it in a blender with your favorite milk, whatever that is, cow's milk, coconut milk, whatever, and you add honey, and that's it.
	It's wow, yeah.
	Seriously, give yourself a papaya milkshake like that.
	Okay, it's well, and it's just like what you get from a street vendor in Taipei.
	When they come in, Mike, when those bad boys start coming in, I guarantee you there will be a DTV episode where I get on and I'm like, no what I'm doing, Mike.
	That's gonna be awesome.
	That's that's awesome.
	I when I lived in Ecuador, we we grew a lot of papaya, and it was just year-round deliciousness, man.
	I'm so I'm I'm jealous because I can't really grow them in Texas.
	Um but I love what you're doing, and I've done the same thing here on the ranch, like uh when I got my goats years ago at first, and I was like, oh my goodness, there I'm gonna need to fence them in somewhere for some means of control.
	And I I found myself asking the question, so how do I build an H brace fence?
	Like, oh, I guess I better learn that, you know.
	And so you look it up, you know, you watch videos, you figure out oh, the tension, there's a there's a crosswire, you you make it tight, you know, you you put a stick in it and you you twist it up until it's tight, etc.
	That's how you make an H brace.
	That's how you have stability, so the goats can't knock it down.
	So you learn by doing, man.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	Now, when you do that, um, do they tell you that you need to do it in the nude so the sun can hit your testes?
	Yeah, it's it's uh especially important to do all your farm work in the nude.
	Watch that wire, Mike.
	Yeah, watch the wire.
	Yeah, just you know, don't get your balls on the tractor seat, is all I'm saying, you know, because that needs to be sanitized.
	Electric, the electric fence can stay away.
	Yeah, it's a yeah, there's a whole new way to test The electric fence, yeah.
	See, Matt and Maxim, you guys get off and we just take this right into the you know pooper.
	Oh my goodness.
	Well, um, but the point is I actually I mean, this is not a joke.
	Uh, when I'm uh in my tractor, I actually do that shirtless because I want the sunlight.
	Sure.
	But I do keep my pants on, by the way, in the tractor, in case anybody's wondering.
	Okay.
	You know, that would be weird if you're like naked farmer guy in the John Deere with a naked rear.
	Now when you're of course doing doing your kettlebells, different stories.
	Yeah, right.
	But you know, it's but see this this also speaks to how society views things in such a warped way.
	Like society thinks it's normal to not let sunlight touch your skin.
	Right.
	And that's crazy, actually.
	You need sunlight or your eyes to saturate your body.
	Or your eyes.
	Yeah, put the sunglasses on.
	I don't wear sunglasses anymore once I became educated that I'm the same way.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, especially when I'm out in in uh like jogging um where it's like grass or dirt or whatever.
	It's not you don't get the same intensity of light as you get off of like concrete and city roadways.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So it's actually it's more natural, you know, out in the country sunlight.
	Do you ever do you ever jog uh without shoes to ground or no?
	No, I because we have mesquite thorns everywhere.
	Yeah.
	Um and occasionally, so I actually jog with really thick soles in my shoes because I've learned this.
	Um and occasionally I'll hit a mesquite thorn and it'll come all the way through the shoe and it'll puncture my foot, and then I'm like, yeah, and I and uh, you know, I gotta pull the thorn out through the shoe, everything.
	So uh no, not barefoot.
	Okay, okay.
	Well, makes sense good.
	It's it's Texas with the everything is more dangerous in Texas.
	Everything in Texas, those mesquite thorns look like that knife you pulled out earlier.
	They have a right.
	I'm telling you, they they those mesquite thorns will puncture tractor tires.
	I believe it.
	So what people do in Texas, which I've done, is you take you know, you know how the front tires on a tractor are usually smaller than the the rear.
	So you take the front tires, you take them to a service, and they they foam fill the tires.
	Oh so they're solid.
	Okay, and then you obviously you never need to put air in them, and then they can just absorb all the mesquite thorns and keep rolling.
	Oh, perfect.
	Yeah.
	Is that expensive to fill those tires like that?
	Not really, no.
	They just come with like that.
	You would think, but uh being Texas, you you definitely do that.
	But but I I actually have a tract, a compact track loader, which is a skid steer with tracks.
	Okay, and tracks don't care about thorns.
	Got it.
	Because they're they're not inflatable tracks, right?
	Okay, yeah.
	So we just we just run tracks over everything.
	It's like who cares?
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Oh, you you are the Renaissance man, Mike.
	I just I'm I don't want to be bored.
	I I I like to learn and do a lot of different things.
	And there's a lot that needs to be that needs to get done.
	But you know, you know what the advantage is, and this this is along with the theme of our show, which is decentralization.
	Yeah, like most of the time I don't need to call a plumber to fix a plumbing problem.
	Yep.
	Do it yourself, you know.
	Uh on sometimes I can fix an HVAC problem myself.
	Not all the time, not if the motor's burned out or whatever, but if it's just like ants got into the control board and are shorting it out, no problem.
	Right.
	I can deal with that.
	Or, you know, you you learn how to do things yourself, as you've done with the food for us and all the construction and the honey bees.
	Tell people about your honeybee experience.
	Well, my honeybees was a valid attempt, but uh when I I have a property in the back to where it it goes from my backyard and then it slopes down about six feet, and then it's the lower area.
	And unfortunately, you know, and and I have it cleared to where it's just a beautiful property.
	I call it Pittner Park.
	So when it's not rainy season, it's just beautiful.
	It's a great place to go.
	We have picnic table, a fire pit back there.
	That's where the raccoons play and the and the deer roam.
	And that's where I put the honey bees.
	But unfortunately, when the two hurricanes came, uh that that area filled up and it became not Pitner Park, but Pitner Lake.
	It broke my heart after the second hurricane that all of the honey bees, all of the parts of the honey bees were floating out there on that lake.
	And so I lost the bees.
	So when everything cleared and I had the honey bee folks come and rescue as many of the bees as they could, I made the decision that I don't, I'm not going to be in the bee business anymore because the only place to put them would be closer to our home, right at the food forest.
	And you know, I want to enjoy the food forest.
	And bees, when you have 50,000, 100,000 of them, you know, they can tend to get arnery sometimes.
	So I wanted them further away from my home.
	So it doesn't have a happy ending.
	I really love the experience, uh, but I never did get any honey, Mike.
	Well, but see, that's also part of this whole journey is sometimes we we try things and we learn what doesn't work, and of course, everybody knows the best place to put bees is right next to your house on the back porch.
	Because that's called appy therapy, API, which is beasting therapy, which is an actual holistic therapy.
	So, Todd, what are you waiting for?
	Have some more apatherapy.
	I know, I know.
	Uh fire up those epipens.
	Yeah, right.
	Exactly.
	You have to have a sign on your front door.
	If you're allergic to bee stings, do not approach, you know.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But I really highly encourage anyone out there that man, if you have and you don't even have to have much of a property.
	Like I fact I figured out when my food force guys came back this uh a month ago, they came in and we just did some additional assessments and stuff, and I'm helping them do some things and promoting some things.
	And Mike, we figured out that the amount of property that I used to be able to plant my amazing food forest was just over a tenth of an acre.
	One tenth of an acre.
	Wow.
	You know, and so it's so much robust uh production is going to come.
	Now, the food forest, though, I I share with people is it's gonna be food for your body, but it takes about two years for that to really kick in.
	So I think this year, Mike, if the hurricanes leave us alone, I think all of my trees back there are going to develop a root system that will sustain those high winds in the future.
	I just need to get through this season.
	And um, wait a minute, aren't we mostly through hurricane season?
	No, not even not even close.
	When does it end in Florida there?
	Yeah, remember last year it was uh it was the end of October where those two hurricanes came in.
	So if we can get into November, we'll we'll do one of these things.
	Okay, but uh uh but what it has been before it's food for my body, Mike, is it has been absolutely food for my soul.
	Okay, and I go back there every day now and I see it as it's as my vision is coming to fruition, and I made the decision instead of just having a lot of bushy plants, right?
	Um, trees, I wanted to prune them.
	So it's been like I've been a little artist the whole way to be able to go out and prune and prune.
	And then as it grows, now I have this beautiful canopy of of trees.
	And that to me, I go back there, and it's just like eye candy.
	So thank you, Jim Gale.
	Fourth interview we ever did.
	Everybody should go back and watch it.
	Uh, that's where it all started.
	You know, that's uh I love what you're doing with that.
	And I I grow figs, I've grown figs on my ranch for a long time.
	And I don't even pick all the figs.
	Uh the figs get used, the ones I miss picking, they get visited by the pollinators.
	So absolutely.
	The bees and the wasps and and whatever else, they they go right for the figs.
	But then my goats, and we just we just adopted two new male goats with horns.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	This is gonna be an adventure.
	Um the we we have one goat left from the original Nigerian dwarf goats that we adopted many years ago.
	And the the fourth of those five goats just passed away at the age of 15.
	Oh, which is crazy long for a goat.
	Like the vet says he's never seen a 15-year-old goat before.
	Amazing.
	So anyway, they live a long, you know, wonderful life.
	But we have one goat left, and that goat eats figs out of my hand.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So I'm picking figs, and the goats like looking at me with the with the the lips are already moving, like, give me, give me figs, give me figs, you know.
	And give, you know, give her the fig.
	She loves it.
	The the trees are feeding the animals, which is some of what you are doing there as well.
	Yeah.
	And it's it's that's I mean, it's a normal healthy cycle.
	Sometimes we eat the food, sometimes the animals eat the food.
	Yep, yep.
	And by the way, yesterday, you know, you know, my my love for raccoons.
	So yesterday I was out feeding the majority of them.
	You know, I I uh there's about 17 of them.
	And uh lo and behold, one of my favorites, mama, I call her mama, mama Rocky.
	They're all Rocky, but this is Mama Rocky.
	She brought me right up to me, her three little ones.
	No soda.
	Oh my God, it was so cute.
	It was just amazing, melted my heart.
	She eat out of your hand.
	She eats it right out of my hand.
	Oh, wow.
	Right up.
	Yep.
	She she goes on, you know.
	I I raised a bed that has railroad ties, and she, and that's where I put, you know, my bucket for the for the deer corn and such, and and uh, and then I put the food on there, my my grapes and fruit for the for the um raccoons, and then the I they love uh oatmeal raisin cookies.
	So she'll get right up there and I'll just take a grape, put it in my hand, she eats it, she puts her hand on mine.
	It's just so cute.
	But it was just really cool seeing we got three more in the tribe, Mike.
	Wow, that's amazing.
	I didn't realize you had so many raccoons there now.
	Yeah, 20.
	It's nuts.
	But and they're so misunderstood.
	Everybody out there, raccoons are more afraid of you than you are of them.
	They don't want to be around you, they are not rabid.
	The only time if you ever hear a raccoon go, it's only because they're competing with another raccoon for some kind of resource.
	That's it.
	Um they are just sweet.
	They're just sweet.
	Except you've you've tamed the wild.
	Wild raccoons.
	Mike, your chickens wouldn't like the raccoons, though.
	No, no.
	Uh uh, as I say raccoons are chicken shredding machines.
	Oh my go ahead.
	See, so we don't allow raccoons.
	Well, I should say my dogs won't allow raccoons anywhere near my chickens.
	So we have a very different relationship with raccoons here, but that's because we have chickens.
	Yes, right, right.
	Hey, Mike, I want to I want to share with you something that uh about about U and A's.
	Yeah.
	This is my public service announcement.
	Uh you know that if people go to my575e.com and they watch the 90-minute video and they download the the the PDF to try to figure out if if they want to keep more of what they earn, if they're a W-2 earner at 1099, or if they operate at LLC.
	This one's about owning property.
	And I had if if if people want to book a consultation with me, which many, many, many people do on a weekly basis, they just do it through the website.
	And I had a consultation with a woman named Sarah, and she shared with me a very, very sad story of her 78-year-old mom passed away, and for the last two years, she's been in an elder elder care facility under Medicaid was was paying for it for dementia.
	Well, her mom died, and Sarah recently received from the state of Michigan, they sent Sarah a demand letter for almost 900,000.
	Whoa.
	Uh from Uh uh to her mom's estate under the get this, it's the Medicaid estate recovery program.
	Recovery.
	I think that means theft.
	Theft.
	So Medicaid uh funding long-term care.
	If when the person dies, they place a lien on the person's assets.
	Wow.
	And so please, everybody, I don't care what age you are, at least at least go be fully informed on how you might be able to protect your home.
	Yeah, you put your home in the UNA first.
	Yeah, if you acquire UNA, you put donate your home to the UNA, then if you ever have, heaven forbid, have to file personal bankruptcy, it's not your asset.
	You don't own it anymore.
	Nelson Rockefeller coined the phrase, own nothing, control everything.
	This is what he was talking about.
	If you get into a lawsuit to where somebody sues you, they can't go after your usually most people's largest asset, your home.
	But this one really, really tugs at the heartstrings because it's so unnecessary when either the mother or uh the kids of the mother would have the adult conversation to say, hey, let's get that this home into a uh UNA.
	And it's better to do it sooner than later because I think Medicaid has this five-year look back program before uh before you go into an elder care facility to claw back.
	Yes, it's like a clawback.
	But if but it but the where they'll go back five years and see if have you done anything funky, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, this is just good family planning if you want your kids to be able to inherit uh your assets, just be intelligent that there is an entity, a vehicle for you to be able to protect your assets.
	So I just a really good point.
	And the website that you're mentioning there is my575E.com.
	I'm gonna encourage our audience to check that out and uh sign up to watch your your free uh information about that.
	And it's very valuable.
	Hey, did you hear that uh you know right now Congress is there's about to be another shutdown because of disagreement over uh continuation of funding?
	Right.
	And on coming up on the last day of this month, I believe the the current, you know, the the current funding provisions run out, and if Congress doesn't pass an you know a new bill for more funding, then well, Trump is going to shut down large parts of the government.
	And I say, yay, how soon can we make this happen?
	You know, and Trump is apparently ordering every department to fire large numbers of people permanently as part of this government shutdown.
	And I'm like, this is great.
	I I don't love everything that Trump does, but this sounds awesome.
	Um I'm like we should be aiming for shutting down almost all of the government, including you know, the tax confiscation agency that everybody does not like.
	Yep.
	Uh, but also the FDA, you know, the FDA has harmed millions of people in America.
	And you know, you think about agency after agency, that they're not helping us do anything.
	No.
	You know, they're they are they function as arrogant, uh tyrannical regimes now that basically steal from the people.
	And that's also the IRS, uh, you know, to fund war.
	Right.
	I mean try tranny book readings at local libraries.
	Serious.
	USA.
	Some of that, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, some of that's been shut down, which is good, but there's still so much waste and fraud in the system that when they come to take your money, it's not like you could say, well, that money's going to build roads in schools.
	No, it isn't.
	It's probably going to bomb children in Gaza, you know, or uh just to fund ISIS or something.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like the money's not being used for the things that we would morally support.
	No.
	Nope.
	So I think we have an obligation to legally work to minimize our tax burden.
	Lawful means.
	Well, you know, I the guy I work for for 25 years, he's a illionaire with a B, great entrepreneur, and he always used to share that tax evasion is illegal.
	We don't do that.
	But tax avoidance using their rules should become a sport.
	And you know, I think he I know he is.
	He's he's right on there.
	Uh if you can identify any means possible that are lawful to be able to keep more of what you earn, protect your assets, increase, you know, decrease your your personal liability, right?
	Um if you and also increasingly, Mike, if if you're trading in crypto, uh you need to become informed.
	Uh and if you have children, if you have children, I'm telling you, these entity in particular uh is is magical on being able to keep everything that you don't own out of probate and and have your kids be able to control it all after you know you pass.
	And isn't that what it's all about?
	I mean, instead of death taxes and confiscation and uh uh what what is it um gentleman recently involuntary uh theft that's what Sarah I was telling her.
	I'm like that that's involuntary theft, what you're describing to me.
	Think about it.
	Wealthy families like the Clinton, the Clintons.
	Um that's all I need to say.
	Um they'll use foundations for transgenerational wealth, and then the foundations are run by the accountants who have ties to you know the government, and it's all a secret society, basically, and their vehicles are you know, they're immune to audits.
	Like there will never be an audit of elite.
	They donate their fortunes to the entities that they control.
	Right.
	And, you know, they'll they'll fly around on on private jets using foundation money that people thought they were donating to Haiti or whatever following a hurricane, right?
	But no, it's paying for you know, Hillary's private jet.
	So you know, that's abuse of the system.
	It is, but non-elite people have this method that you're talking about, the UNA, the unincorporated nonprofit association, that is a lot simpler.
	It's so much simpler.
	You don't need an army of accountants to carry it out.
	It's accessible.
	And look, you know, all I suggest, and you know this, Mike, I don't make enough money off of each of these to really care if someone gets one or not.
	It's been my form of activism from the beginning.
	When I approached you about it, I'm like, Mike, I can't imagine how I could help people decentralize their lives anymore to be able to afford to perhaps install a food forest, buy more gold, buy clean food, than to help them just simply keep more of what they earn.
	And so that's that's that's what the program's all about.
	You know what?
	Speaking of gold and silver, can I let me just show this uh check this out?
	Um silver just hit 45 dollars.
	Look at that.
	Yeah.
	45 for silver, and then I mean gold is looks like it's uh at an all-time high or very close to it.
	It's a I mean, 37.50 for gold.
	Look at this.
	I mean, that that's just extraordinary.
	Uh, let me mention, folks, if you go to Rangerdeals.com, if you want to get gold and silver, go to Rangerdeals.com and this is our affiliate sponsor here on Gold and Silver Battalion Medals.
	Uh highly trusted.
	They'll get very good pricing, insured discrete delivery of gold and silver into your hands, or you can vault it with them with their vaults that are insured by Lloyd's of London.
	And click on that link there and use discount code Ranger, and they'll waive the shipping insurance fee.
	And also, if you scroll down, here's uh lab verified gold backs, you can get gold backs as well.
	And when I started recommending these gold backs, they were $3.50 each.
	And now that is, of course, over $7.
	So they they have uh more than doubled in value since I began mentioning them.
	So help me understand that because the gold backs uh and I got a bunch of them in my site, but I just can't my memory.
	Um worth about double spot.
	Double spot, but so if I have one that says five dollars on it, right?
	Well, it doesn't say dollars, it just says five.
	Five.
	Yeah, that's five one thousandths of an ounce of gold.
	Okay, that okay, that thank you.
	Thank you.
	So when when I'm giving those to somebody, I need to explain that this is not five dollars, it's five one thousandths of an ounce, right?
	Right, right.
	So uh if gold, let's say if gold's four thousand dollars spot price.
	Yeah, right.
	So each one thousandth in spot price would be worth four dollars.
	Four bucks.
	Yep.
	And you're giving them five of those, that's twenty dollars of gold if you were to melt it down.
	But in the format of the gold backs, it's worth double that.
	So that's about 40 dollars worth of gold backs.
	For the five.
	For the five.
	Yeah, that's amazing.
	Yeah, the five is worth well, not quite that much right now because gold is not quite four thousand, but just wait a couple weeks, you know.
	I mean, where it's going.
	Yeah.
	Okay, that's very, very helpful because uh I I had tipped someone with a five, and and I mistakenly just said, you know, hey, this is five dollars worth of gold, and I knew that that was wrong.
	Oh, it's way more.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You gave them a very good tip.
	Uh gave them a very good tip.
	And then also, folks, to take care of your health, check out healthranger store.com because that's that's my online retail site where we have all the foods and superfoods and nutritional supplements, plus products for your home.
	Look at this.
	All your home care, non-toxic.
	We don't use artificial fragrances and synthetic garbage of any kind, personal care, the toothpaste, the deodorant.
	We don't use aluminum in the deodorant.
	We have it's baking soda and magnesium based, and people love it.
	We use essential oils.
	We have preparedness supplies, including iodine and freeze-dried foods in the number 10 steel cans for very long-term storage because it's freeze-dried.
	So you can find all that at HealthRangerstore.com.
	Um that's that's the sponsorship of the show today.
	And when you support us, or check out Todd's website, my five seven fivee.com, when you support us, you know, it allows us to do the show.
	Right.
	Because we don't have, you know, there's there's there's no government entity giving us grant money.
	They would never give us money to say the things we say.
	Um we don't have investors, we don't have there's nobody bankrolling us except you, the viewer, so we depend on your support.
	Yes, and thank you.
	Yeah, definitely thank you.
	Uh and we hope that you find value in this.
	And uh if you want to watch the other shows, of course, you could check them all out at decentralized.tv.
	And then uh finally, Todd, I want to mention just one more thing, which is Brighton.ai, because we're very close now to having the UNA material will be updated into the next version of Enoch, which is only about two weeks away now.
	That's amazing.
	Yes, soon you'll be able to go to Enoch and ask it about the the 575E or the UNA and get good answers.
	So so people won't go to their Lord and Savior chat GPT and have it spit out answers that are just wrong.
	Yeah.
	Well, chat GPT is good at wrong answers.
	Same thing with grok.
	Grock is not a very good AI engine.
	Right.
	I mean, ask it about the safety of vaccines, you know.
	Exactly.
	You'll find out real quick.
	Right.
	It's not that good.
	Uh but anyway, our AI engine is free and it's at Brighton.ai, and you can also ask it about health and food ingredients or gold or history or all kinds of things.
	It's really good.
	And I love the fact that the fact that Matt Smith is going to uh support your AI engine by giving you the uh digital content here, Not for people to go read instead of buy the book, but just to be able to have it in there as a resource and reference.
	I think it's beautiful.
	Oh, that's awesome.
	Uh I can't wait.
	We're gonna get his book into it.
	It'll influence the model.
	Right.
	And of course, there's always going to be free access for everybody.
	So you don't have to spend anything.
	You don't even have to create an account to use it.
	Oh so very cool.
	Um anything else you want to add before we wrap it up, Todd.
	Uh I'm really looking forward to next week's show with John J. Singleton.
	I believe that's when we have him scheduled.
	Yeah.
	And fireworks will begin.
	If you are into crypto, you want to stay tuned, it's gonna be awesome.
	Yeah.
	Um, but you know, crypto can't keep up right now with gold and silver.
	I mean, I know just skyrocketing, and crypto's kind of ho hum at the moment, you know.
	That is right.
	Uh of course that could change, I suppose, at any time.
	But I personally I love the fact, like with the goldbacks here, you know.
	I love the fact that like this is not gonna vanish.
	No, because it's physical, right?
	It's elemental, you know.
	Here it is.
	Um the value may go up and down, but given the pace at which they're printing dollars, I know this is gonna just be worth more and more dollars.
	Right.
	I mean, dollars are collapsing so fast.
	They really are, Mike.
	It's crazy.
	I mean, like by the day, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look at food costs, you know, and look at health insurance costs, home insurance, auto insurance.
	It's all skyrocketing, and people can see it while the government tells us no, the inflation's only 2.7%, you know, the CP lie, as it's called.
	Yeah.
	It's like, yeah, right.
	And Tyler Robinson is the shooter.
	Give me a break.
	Come on.
	Yeah, and inflation's only 2.7%.
	And, you know, you can stop bullets with your skin.
	Come on.
	I mean, yeah, rifle rounds.
	I don't think it's gonna upside down world, Mike.
	Yeah, but it sure is.
	But you and I are trying to make it right side up.
	So there you go, folks.
	Uh, yeah, and I think we're doing uh a good job with that.
	So thank you for your time, Todd today.
	And for all your preparation and questions and everything, you you really contribute to a really fun and informative show.
	Thank you.
	Just wouldn't be the same without you.
	Thank you, Mike.
	I really appreciate that.
	And Max and or Matt and Maxim, thank you.
	Thank you for being our guest today, and you were fantastic.
	And I think you're gonna really encourage a lot of parents, grandparents.
	Uh I can't wait to see where this goes.
	Yeah, hey, by the way, you notice that Maxim, he doesn't have one of those wimpy soy boy voices.
	No, he's got a man's voice.
	He has a man's voice.
	I think that was his third chapter where he went from uh a uh a higher tone voice to where they you know, I think Doug Casey said, talk like a man, get some face in your voice.
	And then you worked on that third chapter and now listen to him.
	Yeah, because uh a lot of the young men that I see coming out of universities, they they talk like woke women.
	They do.
	I mean, it's in it's just an instant turnoff when I when I hear that kind of weasley young man's voice, it's like, oh god.
	Right happen to you.
	And then throw in a little list or two, and then really that gets the worst, yeah.
	Gut inducing.
	Yeah, but hey, for your daughters, uh are are they are some of them already married, right?
	Some are uh yeah, I have two that are married, two who are not, and the youngest is not, and I was gonna say something to uh uh Max, but then I I realized he said at the beginning that he has the best girl in the world, so I didn't.
	Oh, oh, you're thinking of uh of a blind date or something, but I'm just saying, you know, I'm just saying.
	Well, he's he's got a manly voice, that's all I'm saying, right?
	I mean, he is in another era, you know, he would be like Hollywood material for the leading male role.
	I'd be rolling out my dowry, baby.
	But I want to the question is for your your youngest daughter, then how are you helping to Make sure she doesn't like hook up with a soy boy.
	Or I mean, is this not your business, or what do you do as a dad?
	Uh uh she is now uh she graduated from University of Florida, and what she wanted to do for this next year is go to Spain, Madrid, and teach English for a year, and we encouraged the heck out of that instead of getting right into uh race, and so you know, it's like go get some of these experiences.
	And so she's gonna be over there for a year.
	Uh she just left a couple weeks ago.
	Okay, and uh, I don't think Spain has the number of soy boys as the U.S. does.
	No, so in other words, you're saying she's gonna bring home a sexy Spaniard.
	That's when our house is a really a really rich one who's you know athletic and into clean food, Mike.
	Oh man, okay.
	And then you can show him your food for us.
	Yeah, right.
	Well, you know, men in Spain do have more practical skills than men in Florida.
	It's or anywhere.
	But I mean, hey, young Texas men, they've got skills though.
	I mean, they're they they because of the agricultural type of um ecosystem.
	Yeah, sure.
	There's there's there's a lot of homeschooled kids all across the country too.
	They're hands-on.
	There are schools that focus on teaching agriculture skills, how to handle animals, how to raise food, how to you know.
	I'm I'm very enthusiastic about a lot of the hands-on skills where I see some of these like charter schools and things that are teaching young people how to do real world things.
	We should get Jim Gale back on because he just launched a school at Galt's Landing that has about 20 kids, and it's amazing the curriculum.
	Oh, yeah.
	They're literally taking care of the food forest and the animals, and that's all interwoven into the curriculum.
	And then they're going out into their communities with um planting planting trees that have been that they have propagated and things like that is so cool.
	So we we should put that on our bucket list.
	Yeah, very, very cool.
	We need we need to really help teach the next generations about decentralization because those are survival skills for them.
	Right.
	I I I don't think I mean we really are headed into World War III, and there there really is a global depopulation agenda.
	And I gotta say that the low IQ woke tards are just not gonna make it.
	No, I mean because they don't know how to do anything.
	Except complain, you know, change channels.
	Yeah.
	Well, now I hear they're popping Tylenol in defiance of Trump.
	Oh, that just is disgusting.
	It's like really uh it's disgusting.
	Let's put our child, our our our baby growing in our womb because we made the decision that maybe we're gonna get a lot of money from the government if we have this baby, so we won't have an abortion, but instead we're gonna lay this child, this beautiful child growing in my belly at at the altar of Satan, and we're just gonna consume massive amounts of Tylenol as an F you to Trump.
	That's really intelligent.
	I said if Trump came out and declared that guns were bad, like liberal women would shoot themselves in defiance.
	Exactly.
	They would literally shoot themselves, yeah, to try to give the finger to Trump.
	Yeah, no, don't give Trump any ideas.
	Um but you know, if if you off yourself that easily, Darwin award, man.
	I I don't know any other way to say it.
	Dumb and dumber, and yeah.
	It's like if mur if if if Trump said Mercury's bad for your health, these women would try to find mercury and they'd make like mercury smoothies and suck them down on camera.
	And screw you, Trump, and then they'd die from mercury poisoning.
	And you know, for the um yeah, it's just incredible.
	But anyway, our show, I love our show because uh we're empowering people with I think very practical, honest, high integrity information that can help them navigate uh the insanity of the world uh around them and the price is right for our show because it's right free.
	For all of those, this is my commitment.
	I know it's your commitment, Mike, that for all of those who do not like any of our shows, you can um email us and we will ensure that you get a refund.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	Well, um, thank you, Todd, for your time today.
	It's been another fun show, very informative.
	Uh, it's always great to do this.
	Have a great rest of your evening.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, everybody, for watching.
	We love you.
	All right.
	Take care, Todd.
	Have fun with your raccoons in the food forest and make make the papaya milk uh smoothie formula.
	You're gonna love that.
	Got it.
	Right after I get off of here, I'm going back.
	See the raccoons are waiting.
	Very cool.
	All right.
	And thank you all for joining us today.
	I'm Mike Adams here of Brighton.com.
	And of course, you can find all the other episodes at decentralize.tv.
	And thank you for watching today.
	God bless you all.
	Take care.
	Cheers.
	I'm going to kill you.
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