Episode 111: Consciousness

0:09 Welcome back to another episode of Record, My Father. Today we're going to be talking about consciousness. Well, when I think about consciousness, I think immediately of what's his face, Duarte or whatever it was. And it's. I think therefore I am. I think about that a lot. And I mean, does that really mean you exist? I guess it does. But this. Yeah. What were you saying? I was going to say, according to Google, which knows everything and their AI overview, consciousness is broadly defined as subjective awareness of oneself and one's surroundings. So you think about the picture that you have of who you are and the people that you know and what they look like and what your perception of them is from looks to the way their mind is to the way they speak and everything that to me, that kind of puts in terms I can understand, right? Yeah, 'cause at the same time you think of a, what is it? A sea cucumber?

1:08 And the way a sea cucumber sees is in thermal imaging, it sees thermal heat that radiates off of something, right, like the Blues and what have you. And. Sounds like something made-up. And no, it's true. And I think that is that considered consciousness if your vision is altered in a different state, I don't know. Yeah, it's a. Different. It's a different state. I mean, if we, if we see things differently, then if I look at you, I see one thing. But if the eagle looks at you, it sees something different. So it has a different conscious consciousness of you than I would. Well, that seems like perception. That seems like a perception of something and the way you perceive, not necessarily whether or not something is conscious.

1:52 Conscious is something like, well, that's the argument that people had for the longest time is if animals were conscious and they said no because they like to eat them, We like to eat them as people, right. And therefore they're not conscious. We don't need to acknowledge that what we're doing is terrible. That's the whole thing. Yeah, I, I think you're, what you're talking about is perception. Oh, perception, perceive things. Oh, this is different. See consciousness is the state of being aware of 1's own existence. I'm alive, whereas perception is I feel my heart, I must be alive is the process of interpreting sensory information to make sense of the world, forming a mental representation of what is being experienced.

2:38 So very very close, very close consciousness. Consciousness is more of, hey, I'm a thing. Perception is I have a bag of skin around me. I I smell things that in your room it doesn't smell like a whore anymore, but it has changed. You have such great vocabulary what what people are around you too. How you are being affected by other people I think is also the way that perception works. But I don't know. I mean, I think that there's also an interesting thing about being present, what that means and what that means being in conscious.

3:21 Well, yeah, yeah. What are you going to say? I was going to say when you, when you, when you said being present, that that's that kind of struck A chord with me because one of the things they say that the what is the total enlightenment is when you no longer worry or think about the past or desire or look forward to the future. It's when you are in the moment, that's it. And I, and I think that I think that that's, that seems like almost an impossibility because, you know, being where I am right now and doing what I'm doing right now, it's all predicated upon thousands of decisions that I've made over the past 65 years, you know, from marrying your mother to having you.

4:11 So how I could be in the moment, it seems very odd that that is a possibility. You know what I mean? Yeah, No, I mean, if you're, I think at the same time though is not really thinking about the decisions that you've made, but thinking about the decisions that you are currently making in that instant is really important. But I don't know if I've ever thought like that. I don't know if I've ever been present, right. I don't know if I ever have. I remember the only time I think that even on vacation, right. Well, the reason I say that is because I look back to memory and I don't really remember a whole lot of the ways that I felt or the the things that have happened to me. I don't.

4:51 I really remember a lot of things and I think that that is kind of having to deal with maybe how easy it is for me to be present is that you have no memory of the past, right? I don't know. Do you do you do you not from your childhood and on up not have like points that that were see, that's mine is I have all of these points that were huge things that happened during my life and they were huge to me and they're they're like memory moments. Are you? Trying to milestones or just general? No, there weren't milestones. I mean, I remember when my mother brought a dog home that that was. That's not a milestone. Yeah, that was a. Pet and and I remember reaching underneath her 1968 custom Ford under the seat and grabbing this furry thing and it goes and and and I didn't know what it was and I didn't realize it until I pulled the paw out that it was a dog and then I was ripping its freaking arm off.

5:48 I was stupid, but it was like I was probably 8 1/2 then and that a little over 8, something like that. And that was just to me, which is the most amazing thing. And it's something that I remember. I vividly remember the blue seats. I remember the carpet. I remember that there was a there was a like a rubber mat in the back that I remember that on the back of her of the passenger seat, which is where the dog was, was under the passage. I mean, I just have that kind of thing. It was an overcast day. It was 530 in the sun. It was a little dark. I think maybe it would have been It wasn't cold cold, but it wasn't warm warm. So it was like September, you know, that's what that's that's what I remember, you know, and it. Was just like.

6:39 Very wow. And it's the same thing that I can remember when I was sitting on the porch and I've told a story about when we watch the squirrel. Swimming around, you know? Yeah. The rats, yeah. I remember looking down at my shoes and then looking at my brother and him saying words and I could just see his mouth move. You a dumb ass and. I don't have vivid memories like that. I don't know why. I don't really have very colorful memories, more so colorful dreams. I feel like I'm almost more present for the dreams that I have than for my actual life after once. Yeah. Yeah, no, I even do. Like, last night was crazy. Oh, my gosh. Really? I feel more present in my dreams than I do in my own life, which is kind of interesting, really.

7:23 I don't know what it is. It almost seems like in my own life, the decisions I make have already been made before and I I'm just reliving and I don't know what it's almost. I'm kind of a predestination kind of guy in a way, but I'm not Christian, so I don't know if that's predestination or that's just a circle. There's all sorts of is it the Calvinist that said that your life is all completely predetermined, Everything's going to happen. That is what this is OK. Or what you said, John Calvin? Yeah. Yeah, and they, they, you know, it doesn't really matter what you do. This is what's going to happen. You're going to do it here. You're going to, you know, it's already predetermined if you're going to go to heaven or hell or you're, you know, and all this other kind of happy horse shit, you know, and, and they, everything's been determined. But, you know, if I pick my nose right now, will that be, oh, we, we already knew you were going to do that, you know, and, and it's like, OK, if I do this or do that or do something different, you know, is it going to matter? And so, yeah, but I, I don't, I don't believe that. I think, I think that there is weirdly, I think that we have a certain amount of free will and I think that at this point that we that the powers that be have learned that manipulating the masses free will makes them a lot of money and. All the powers that be meaning the elite. Is that what you're talking about? I don't yeah.

8:40 I mean when I just think anybody that like looks at it and says, hey, I'm an influencer. How can I drive people to they they will make me money if they buy stuff that I say to buy or I tell them to get the DeWalt screwdriver, you know, and they will do it because they trust me and love me and all that. And so DeWalt, then the sales go up. So then I get paid, you know, and it's like, so I get the masses. Now if I can manipulate the masses without direct marketing in a slower and a roundabout way, like like everything that you do from the beginning when you get up till you go to work, every, every lot of people look on this little square thing. Every single thing that comes through there is running through an algorithm that will either give you things that you'd like to see, or give you things that you don't like to see. Well, that's the whole thing with the Instagram is it's about 1 trillion different TV channels. That's what it is.

9:43 But all of them are ads. It seems like all the famous popular influencers are all people that are trying to hawk something to you, right? It's kind of interesting if you remember cable and how you used to well. That's what they say about podcasting. I mean, are we trying to sell something, though? I don't know if we're trying to sell something, I think we're just two bored people that kind of enjoy each other's relationship. I don't know if we've been trying to make money off of this necessarily. Not really. But if that happens, that's great because it's an art form. Not really. I wouldn't really consider this an art form, but it kind of is. But it's not. But yeah, I mean, do you feel conscious during this podcast? Conscious. What do you mean? Do you feel self aware I guess?

10:26 Yeah, I do. I think that I feel, but I feel it's for for, I don't think I do this for as much. You touched me after like the 5th or 6th one when you said one of your friends heard us and then that's how they reintroduce themselves. That's why I thought that. And that and that really like sparked me to say, wow, it was, I mean, basically it was a great way to keep in touch with you and to build something that we would do together over time. And I thought it would be dead and probably six weeks. And I figured, hey, I'm going to flush a grand on this. I don't care. But I'm going.

11:08 To. Share Still doing it? Yeah, but we're sharing ideas and I'm just like, this is what you want to do with your kid. And I'm assuming this is what you want to do with your old man. It's like, oh, share stories. And we, it resonated a lot with me because of what that that I have a whole lot of unanswered questions to my father, to my mother, to other people. I didn't, you know, and I learned all these later in life. I think that and if I die and you have unanswered questions, you're a serious dumb ass, OK. It would be really hard to have unanswered questions at this point that we're about 115 hours into this thing. Yeah. So it's like even even more than.

11:49 That even that you don't, you don't act some act my sexual preference or any weird stuff like that. You can ask me that stuff if you want. I don't care. You can ask me any single thing. I may not disclose it on a public format, you know, but, but, but I'll tell you personally and I'll tell you separately and then we'll decide whether or not we can let the rest of the world know that. And I think that that's a certain thing that we have that I don't know if I have. I mean, I have with your mother. We're just, we're just completely, you know, I don't lie. I don't, I don't lie. I don't make shit up. I might hide certain things, but but you know, when it comes to like things like that, I just like I have to, I feel like if I had to do that, that I don't want that relationship and I don't want a relationship where my kid doesn't trust me, where my kid kid doesn't know where he stands, where my kid, you know, those kind of things matter to me.

12:51 And I, I, I want to make you a good person. And I think I have been, whatever you want to call it, a piece of what you are is part of what I have pushed toward you. That is good shit. Not. I mean, I'm sure I've taught you lots of bad shit. A lot of a lot of bad stuff, but I think ethics wise, ethics wise, I think that definitely probably the best thing you you let off on me was that an improper way to make money is to lie, cheat and steal. And I think that IA lot of people don't teach their kids that. And I think that a lot of people grow a lot to become business owners that are lying, cheating Steelers.

13:37 And I think that you don't you you. Change that for me. If your if your business will only survive if you exploit the people that are working for you, that then then I have no, I have no respect. 00 respect. Oh, we can't afford to pay them that It's like, well, then you don't have a sustainable business. You should. You should, you know. Or maybe you should be doing the work yourself. I think that that's more so the the proper kind of jurisdiction for that, that kind of question, right. But at the same time, yeah, no, I always paid well. I paid fairly and here we are now with two projects. Yeah. And you're and you'll get, you got screwed. You absolutely will get Oh, I got screwed. So bad in the beginning.

14:21 Oh God, yeah. But that's OK. The beginning is in the very beginning now. It's still the beginning, but I don't know. You know, well, you're, you know, you have moved fairly quickly and progressed really quickly into doing what you want to do. And I, I, it's amazing. That's that my, my consciousness of it is we got to bring him back to the topic. Come on, man. Well, I think that is. What we're doing is we're aware of our relationship, one which I think is a conscious effort to do so, right? I think that's a conscious effort, the way you affect people, right? Not the way that you're being affected, but the way you are affecting, right? But at the same time, I mean, you think about animals, so you think the dogs are conscious.

15:09 Hold it, you mean? Oh yeah, the new painting. We're going to say that hold. On the new painting, we have a new edition. Yeah, there. There it is. That's the great painting right there. Oh, that's fantastic. Hold up to the camera. Oh, that's great. That. That's Yoshi, and that's Yup Yup. That's an impressive painting. I do like that. But as I was saying, the the dogs here. That painting, Yeah, the baby was done by a a, a, a friend that I've known for 15 years. Doctor Jeff. Doctor Jeff. Doctor. Yeah.

15:49 He's a doctor, yeah. Doctor. Yeah, yeah. No. But do you think the dogs are conscious? How do you think that works? Well, I mean, I thought it was interesting when people say that they have since they have a shrunken life, they they live their whole life in a very short time span. So their consciousness is magnified exponentially 2 hours. But then that would assume that a fruit fly is just really magnifying, so. What do you want? But what does that even mean though? That like I understand that the, the idea that their, their life is everyday is like a year or so, it's a magnifying amount of time.

16:32 But what what do you mean by their consciousness is enhanced? Like their ability to perceive is is better than our not to perceive, but to exist is better than ours from the time that we are at that age. And so on and so forth. Do you think that the fact that they don't, since they don't have a higher brain function, that things don't bother them unless they bother them immediately? So they have more of a sense of now like, like Yoshi doesn't or Yup, Yup. They don't have a sense of wow. I mean, they have some sense of what happened yesterday and the day before yesterday. And that's why they, they, they love your mother and not me and, and, and except when I'm feeding them and when she's not around. And but I think that that they have less understanding about what happened before and what's going to happen. So like when, you know, when something comes up, it's like his job to bark.

17:32 I have to bark to let people know. I have to bark to scare them away. I have to bark. I have to bark. And I don't know what it is. And I'm always trying to figure out like, is he talking or is he yelling ACC? Look at that, Look at that, look at that, look at that. You know, And it's weird. I do the same thing with her. When I see a cool looking bird on the bird feeder, I'm like, bye. Yeah. Come here. Come here, Valerie, come here. Well, if you think about what you're saying to the existence of a monk, right is kind of the same thing A devout monk is is I his whole life lives around the aspect of prayer, meditation, and a simple life. Much like similar to the way the dog schedules aren't affected by exterior things such as other than eating and drinking water, I really don't think that they have too much of A busy schedule.

18:18 So I think that. You're right. Well, it's like all the. Animals, right? Animals are. More survival, survival and procreation of their species. That's, that's what every animal does, right? That's what we do. We survive and we procreate to expand our to expand or continue to expand our species. And after that, what? What? What good are you? Some of these behind things, not all of us. Though I mean not not many dogs have left by behind a big history other than but they leave it behind for men. I don't know if they leave it behind for other dogs does. But history is correlated to consciousness for you. I don't know, I I don't know when you when you think of consciousness, is it, is it in the moment or is it like what happened before you know, or what what is going to happen?

19:07 You know it's being. Present, though, it's being aware of the. Yeah, I guess being present means you're sort of. It's not really forward or backward, it's now. Yeah, but it's being now, but also now is to me. Everything's predicated now upon what I've done before, right? But when you're present now, do you think about the before? No, like right now. See, there you go. I mean, unless I stop and then I go. How did I get here? That's what it is. And then I'll say, oh, where I am right now used to be greenhouse and then, you know, we had this garage and then we had, and this was a studio and then it was apartment bedroom. So I mean, that's my boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's just, that's 20 years of what happened. Well, that's kind of the deal to say if you're hungry and you go out or you're at home and you have hot dogs and eggs and you say, well, I remember the time.

20:05 That I ate hot dogs and eggs. I don't like hot dogs and eggs. Eggs. So you're still being present, but with the historical kind of way of remembering. Yeah, yeah, don't like is really the softest way that you can put that the worst abomination on the face of the Earth. Well, I think there was soap in the pan when we made them. Yeah, so it was soap, hot dogs and eggs and we had that. And I tell you, I have never, I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth. I ate, I think I, I think I ate some of your shoes poop or something to try to get it wet to clean my mouth out. And it was nothing that was punching enough. I was eating hot Peppers and everything and it was just like. I tried drinking water and I remember my stomach just it did not feel good.

20:50 It felt like a bubble bath in your stomach. Yeah. Oh yeah. It felt like you ate. Soap that what that? Probably was it was really the the exterior soap in the pan. Because I think the ingredient that. That was my fault. I think I loved the soap in the pan. That's good. Wow. Since then, I've tried. Yeah. It's so funny. Since that time about 3 years ago, you think? Yeah. Was that pandemic? No, I don't think it was. No, it's after. It was absolutely much after 'cause it we got. It from like a Lebanese storefront, which I don't even know if it's still there. It's Bon Chipotle. Oh, we got the sausage. You remember that? Yeah, but that's the Lebanese links, and they were sitting in there forever. And it's like, oh, let's. They might have been really bad too. They're kind of like sausages and it's like, well, let's have sausage and eggs. And that's what I was thinking of more. Well, they were canned too, right? I don't know no I could with a canned or then a jar. Maybe they were in a VAC seal.

21:44 They might have been in the VAC. Seal that's right. They were all VAC sealed up and they were they that's probably they were only a couple months old and they were not green. No, they were not green, but vac seal to a lot of people. Somebody told me the other day I defrosted a steak and the the I defrosted and they're like, we can just throw it back in the freezer. And I'm like, I don't know if you can, but it's in a vac seal. I'm like, I don't know if you can do that. No, I don't think it's, I mean juices, once the juices thawed, but you're going to lose a lot of whatever it was that made it a piece of meat. Well, I think it's going to taste old, right? Yeah. It is. I'm conscious that it'll make me. I've not tried. That I want to eat it. I've not tried refreezing the meat, thawed it, freezing it, and then thawed it again and eating it.

22:30 We should try that. We should give that a shot. Usually what we do is when we see that we actually cook it and then we refreeze it. And that's like you can do that. I think you can. That's what that's what we do. We have chicken that's been in the refrigerator for three days and now it's got to be eat it or lose it, you know, and I'm not really hungry and neither she but I'm going to cook it and probably I'm trying to be conscious about how I'm going to cook it. You know, I haven't been hungry lately. I haven't really been hungry lately at all. No, Oh my God, you're eating those sandwiches from that shop that are they're they're bigger than your head. Why? Fast till noon and then I'll eat that sandwich, yeah, at around 12:30, 12/20 and then that's it, That's all I'll do for the day.

23:14 OK, so today same thing. I got up at 8:15, I had 3 cups of coffee and then I had 2 glasses of water. And then the next time I do you. Drink water in the morning? Really. Yeah, yeah, I always try to get a glass. I always. Don't do that. I need to do that. And then I went to. That was at 8:15. We had the pool guys here, they're doing all sorts of stuff. We're finally, it finally almost opened. The water's in it. It's all done. But it needs to chemicalize for like 5 days and I've got to brush it every day for the next 5 days. Anyway, I went to lunch at around 12:30 at the Matchbox, and so I got served by one by 1:00. I ate and I would say chicken sandwich. The chicken sandwich there's really good. Crispy chicken sandwich, Really really good and I tried the onion straws.

24:13 Have you ever tried those? Was it on top of it or is it? No, I just, they just made a plate of them and I was like, holy crap, you know, and I ate a bunch of those because I'm an onion guy and I'm working on my prostate, you know, whatever. Anyway, I came home, I messed around here, did some stuff, then I took a nap. Then I got up and now it is 638. I have not eaten anything since then. I had the one meal. No, I had two chips. Your mother had I when I went to the store after I went there, I got some stuff and I brought it home, put it, put it all the way. She opened up the chips and she was eating some chips. So and I will probably maybe eat a sandwich later maybe, but I don't right now.

25:04 I don't. I don't. I'm not I I'm feeling that the best way for me to feel good and healthy about myself is to wait until I can hear my stomach growl before I eat. That's what I started doing as well in. Actual it's a hard thing to do because because a lot of times you just do it because you're bored and that's when everybody else is doing it. Or it's a reward system. When you do something, you accomplish something of the day and you say, OK, now I can feed myself. Ice cream. But in reality, you just ate. Yeah, yeah. See consciousness of it. Are we conscious of that? You like my new recliner? Yeah. Is that your recliner? Yeah, look at this. Ready. Wow.

25:45 You like that? Yeah. Yeah. You're further away. I can't hear you. It's kind of like a children's recliner. I didn't realize that on Facebook Marketplace so I have to sit low in it so. But you have a good chair. Towards my neck. Oh, it's great. I can sit in here for hours. Really. Yeah, but it's smaller and it doesn't lock either. It doesn't, you know, like how a recliner locks. Yeah, doesn't lock. So I need to get like a Cotter pin or something so it actually locks the the thing out. So it's like. Yeah, that's see like look at that like like here and then. Yeah. Oh wait, that kind of locks that kind of in back. But then it it'll that that. It doesn't have anything on the side. No, not at all. Not a pull or anything like that, Nope. Oh wow. It leans back in the It's kind of like an airplane chair, if you think about it. Which is how I hate airplane chairs. Me as well.

26:30 Well, not an airplane chair. Like a comfortable like an actual comfortable 1A comfortable. I don't understand why they decided they made a conscious effort to make the worst chair possible. You know the now they have the ones that. Southwest has probably by far the shittiest those choppy little things they have. Spirit is really bad. OK, I haven't, I haven't done spirit in 15 years. Well, it's just as bad as you remember, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, I, I hate the airlines. I'm just going to say it. I hate them all. And we need a new form of transportation. And I don't know what that's going to be, but it's going to be something. We got to get I, I see. See. For me, I would just eliminate all the security. Yeah.

27:10 That to me is like the biggest pain in the ass. And it's just, you know, I would rather, I would rather fly on what? It's probably making the government money 'cause they all have like contracts with the government, right? So like at the same time some guy somewhere owns that company who owns all those stupid sensors that goes in there 'cause you're. You mean the ones that get sold to them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My brother used to. EIDOS made the lead scanners, the human scanners that go in that. Hey, don't worry, it's not going to do anything. Oh, don't put your little kid in there. Exactly what? What do you mean? I told the story, I think episode like 85 or something, there was a kid in front of me that was going to go through it and the, the security of the TSA agent was like, Nah, you should go through the metal detector.

27:58 I'm like, what do you mean he why can't I go through the metal detector? I think you can do an active resistance or something. You could say I, I choose not to do that. But then do you really want to be that difficult guy that's going to mess up the line that's going to. Not even. I mean, there's that, but there's also nowadays with the new weird, you know, Third Reich in charge, that they're more apt to come after you. And, and it doesn't seem as though the rule of law really matters. You know, they'll, they're, they'll arrest you if you're not a, if you're a citizen, they'll, they'll do whatever the hell they want to do, which you know, it's just not. I just don't want to do anything above or abnormal in an area.

28:39 You don't want to stand out, you really don't want to stand out from the crowd because you're going to be travelling internationally. Well I have global entry as well. I don't want that to get messed up like that is one thing. You're just gone. No. I lost global entry and I think. We shouldn't even do be doing this podcast anymore. I think that I lost it because I and you know what I think? Well, there's a Phil Brown in Florida. I thought that was all messed up or something. No, that's the guy that took my points account at my whatever place the and not the guy that stole the computer. It would be the the reason I think it is, is because I was buying Cuban cigars and I bought them online through Switzerland.

29:19 And they sent them to me here. And they got stopped at the border. And then they said this is illegal contraband or something. And that's health. That's whatever the hell it is, the same as the airports, you know, customs. And so customsense reports me for receiving, you know, illegal stuff. And I was like, oh, OK, whatever. Yeah, I don't. They just sent me a notice that said if you have any issue with us confiscating this, you should please come here and fight us for it. And I was like, ah, forget it, fuck it, I'll just let it go. And I did. And then they sent me another box of cigars separately from a different place, and it was the same ones. And it just wasn't worth the hassle. And then so I went to, I lost my Global Entry shortly thereafter. And I didn't, I never drew a line between the two because they, because they for years, they were always talking about my criminal trespass when in in 1996 or 95, I ran onto a ball field in Baltimore.

30:20 Were you conscious during that period? It barely we we have had we have consumed quite a bit and but I didn't get charged with drunk in public and nothing like that. I was with myself and another and a Co worker and we slid into he slid into first place. I slid into second base. I slid into third base, but I ran on the you know, and it was it was the tarp was out. It was a rain delay. I'd never interfere with a game. That's stupid. But we got arrested and all this kind of stuff, and I never, and it was, and it was a sponge and I wasn't, I was charged. But then they said the record was expunged. And then when I filled out my Global Entry, I didn't put it in there. And they were like, oh, you were arrested. I was like, well, you didn't say arrested. You said convicted.

31:04 And they're like, yeah, we men arrested. I was like, whatever. You know, they changed the form through the years because they started realizing that a lot of us were arrested and nothing happened. Well, there's a thing too, that I'm just not putting it on there that they'll, well, it's weird too, 'cause what I learned the other year is if something's expunged, that doesn't mean that they can't see. It they can see everything because once it goes in the record, it's in there permanently. It never gets removed. Whatever people tell you. It may be for common employers or something like that. But if you do a background check, I mean, I don't know if you do a background check on me, would you find that out? I mean, Thompson, when they bought us, they did a background check on me and I told.

31:47 Them that, I said. I've been arrested, you know, it was a, it was a 45 times. Yeah, I've been arrested quite a few times, but there were only a few that showed up. 45 or 50? No, most of them were, like most of them were when I was a, when I was a kid, you know? No, I'm saying 45 or 50 times. First time I got arrested was 8 or 9, you know, So yeah, yeah, yeah. That was not, I mean, that was the whole, the whole going to court, you know, when I was 9 or 10 years old. Were you conscious when? Yeah, I'm very conscious. I remember the parents saying that if you say the right thing, you'll get ice cream afterward. But that was when they were getting divorced that you weren't. Arrested. No, no, no. That was a different time that that that was when I was, I was being charged with being incorrigible and they were trying to remove me from the household and so I went. To social services or whatever.

32:39 Yeah. And they were like, hey, hey, well, all a lot of neighbors that got together and were ganging up on US and, and they all. Signed Not to be defensive, but the family life seemed a little a little rough. It was, it was, yeah, yeah, there was, there was like, you know, there was 0 intervention to things that you would do wrong or right, didn't matter, which is almost. Worse than the actual intervention itself? I don't know. Yeah, the intervention came at the end and after always, you know, like when we were the intervention came when we got picked up at the jail or I mean. Well, how do you prevent a a child from doing a crime? Because they're not mind readers. I'm kind of.

33:26 Confused. No, no, no, you don't. You don't know. The thing is, it's just how you who you hang out with. Oh, I see. When you're you're accountable, like, hey, it's noon, where are you? Where did you go today? Having a simple conversation with your kid on a daily basis. Like what'd you do today? Oh. Oh, I don't know. Hey, where'd you get all that money? What? How'd you get? Why do you have all those potato chips? You have 700 bags of potato chips. We bought them. No, no, no, you didn't. You're lying. And then you and you come down and I think you come down hard early and often when they're when they're real tiny and they're real young and you got to let them know that stealing or taking or anything like that. And it's just not.

34:13 And The thing is people, right? But if you hang out with people that that is acceptable, then you know, you, you drift into it. It's the same thing. I mean, you know, it's like it's who you hang out with when you think about. Surround yourself, yeah. Who you surround yourself with is where you're going to be in five years. If you surround yourself with drunks and drug addicts, you'll be a drunk or drug addict in five years. If you surround yourself with the the most excellent business people in the world, you will excel at business. In five years. If you surround yourself with nice, wonderful people, you will be a nice, wonderful person. And I think that that's, you know, that's your consciousness when you think about it. You know, you start to look around and you got to go.

34:54 And I mean, it's hard to be selective when you think about people and what you want them to be and what you want them to do and your friends and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, wow. And I mean, me, I've conscientiously at 65, retired, gone back and they're friends in my life that I slowly was drifting apart from. And I would and, and, and I would say, OK, are you worth it? And then I would answer my own question and then I would make it an effort. And now I make. I've been doing that more recently a lot. And it's like I, I cannot, I cannot spend time on people that don't want to spend time with me. I cannot spend time on people that just want to use me for whatever they can get from me for whatever.

35:41 And, you know, I, I, I will spend immense amount of time for people that I care about and that care about me and that, you know, I mean, the people I hang out with now, I feel like if I needed something, they would be there. And you know, I just. But what about your LinkedIn comments where you're trying to rage bait people? What about that time span? That's my question, because I keep seeing these things that says, Phil Brown commented. And then I, I already know what it's going to say. And then like it's somebody's saying this. Your mother's a whore. Either securities information or it's just general business device. It says you need to do B to B business for this side or the other and then in the comments it's you saying Are you sure?

36:22 About that, Well, no, I mean because people say really stupid stuff. Oh yeah? Well, you know when you generated ads to AI? When you see, when you see. And no, I'm not commenting on generated ads. I'm commenting on what people are saying. And then I see somebody generated from AI. Somebody steals something from somebody else and they post it as fact and then they say see what's happening in the world today. This person below look at this story. And then I, I go when I look at the story and I find out the story's just a total crock of crap. So then I come up and I said, Hey, you should check your facts. And they're like, why are you talking me? And it's like because you didn't verify, you know? Everybody that says they're doing well, from what I've learned is a liar.

37:06 That's kind of what I've learned in this new digital age. What? Does that mean? I exactly. That's why they're a liar. Because it's so. I don't know. It's all relative. It's all relative. I don't know what that means. Doing well. Are you happy or are you doing because a lot of those that's. The hardest thing? A lot of those that are successful do not say that they are successful, which is I think, but. I mean, it's like success is sort of control tiers. They're tiers of things that you get to, that you think about, that you want. And then when you get to a certain like we all have different plateaus of things. Some people want to earn more, Some people want to have more relationships. Have, you know, they want to bag 700 women or 700 men.

37:49 They want to, they want to own a million houses. I mean, they're everybody has different things. And you think to yourself, like when you finish one or you get to a certain level where you feel comfortable, you'll you'll always dabble in it. Like I still dabble in security stuff and I don't know if I'm going to go back. I'm trying to do this whole Stanford thing I was telling you about that I think would be cool. How's that going, by the way? I'm I, I don't, I don't have anything. I got to send her a message. I got I got to send a message. And say you don't just get in right. It's like an apply. I don't know I I applied, but I kind of applied flippantly and I'm not sure if that was a good idea. Well, that doesn't really work at a what is it an Ivy League school? Hey, take me.

38:30 I have so many. I have so much distrust in institutions ever since CBA. Like I no longer respect any of those institutions. Especially since I listened to a podcast I forgot what it was called. But it was. About the beginnings of in vitro and how at Yale, Yale, whatever medical medical school at Yale, they were doing this in vitro, I think where they were removing women's eggs, right? And this is an especially painful process. And when the women would would request morphine, they would be questioned at first to say, does it really hurt that bad? And then also the second thing was they were cutting the morphine with water because 86% of the nurses were backdooring the morphine.

39:11 They were selling the morphine out of the back door at such an esteemed university such as Yale. And that's what makes me think it says there are charlatans everywhere. There are snake oil people everywhere. Therefore, I'm just saying like, why? Why? I don't know why we have such a trust in these institutions when the only people that told us to trust those institutions or those institutions themselves, right? And the people that got out of them, they did really well. Exactly. And and they, you know, it's like if you've ever met a Harvard grad, you'll know within 3 minutes. That's I mean, that's the one thing you they always tell you where they're from like but and they're very. Proud. We're cutting the morphine 50 to 75% with water.

39:51 When they were injecting these women that were going through the in vitro process where they were getting their bags removed, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the process, but it's a needle piercing your uterus. And these women were requesting one of those painful things in the world, and they were requesting morphine. In fact, it was just water. And they were being questioned if they even needed it, because theoretically they would notice that it was just water and then the nurses would get in trouble, right? It's very, it's very clear that that doctors, men in general are always discounting and nurses even more are always discounting women's pain. If you know, I mean, it's, it's strange.

40:33 I, I am a little bit I, I'm doing this knee thing, right. I know I had the shoulder surgery. Give you an idea. They gave me 2030 oxy, real Oxy. They gave me a prescription for 30 of them for my shoulder. Coda had actually Oxycontin. Oxycontin. Oh wow, that's actually. Actually that's I mean that. Was rare. That's not. I know it was rocket fuel, dude. It was amazing. Anyway, you know, and I mean, when they gave me the script, I looked at him and I said, well, so are you going to give me another one for after the surgery? And I'm like, shut up. But my wife, she goes in, she gets a knee replaced, which is 10 times as, I mean, so much more painful. They slice it down the middle.

41:25 They put up this whole new thing in there that's crazy huge. And they give her like hydrocortisone and they're telling her and they give her, you know, 1000 milligrams of Tylenol. And I'm like, what the so bizarre. They they give the old man and she goes, well, they just happen to know that all men are pussies. I, I don't know. I don't know what the deal is. We've never had to squeeze a small basketball out of our asshole. So we don't know what real pain is. You know, I can imagine that, you know, having a kid would probably be the craziest screaming pain because it's coming out of your guts. Yeah, I can't imagine that.

42:06 And and it's just like, Oh my God, you know, and I remember when she was having the kid you that the nurse said exactly that it's supposed to hurt. That's what she said. And I was just like, I can't punch her because that would cause trouble. And my and Valerie just like looked at me with this like because they were asking, she was asking for the EPI, give me the EPI. And it's like, which is the epidural? They give you an epidural so it chills you. It'll slow it down. Well, I think what happens is you can't really feel anything or something. Well, it. Slows down the IT slows down the childbirths because you can't tell whether you're pushing or not. But The thing is, is it it does and it doesn't. It depends upon how much they give you. And there's, you know, and I'm not a doctor, so I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but but I'll just pretend I'm Joe Rogan and I know everything so. That's kind of what we do here, anyway. Yeah, that's what we do.

43:00 Yeah, that's what. Podcast is all about lying. That's. What you. Know Podcast is all about lying and making things up. Right, that's true. Well, I. That Yale podcast was real, though. I will say that that was a very real. Thing that was. That was incredibly good. We could I could probably find the link for that. I That was a really good series because it really shows you that the most trusted institutions in America. Really shouldn't. Be that trusted, no. Well, I think that you can find mistakes and criminality in every single institution. I mean, it's like when you think about remember the housing crisis in 2008 when everybody had real estate and they had real estate holdings and say, for instance, if I was a multi millionaire millionaire and had put my money with Goldman Sachs or with Merrill Lynch, I think Merrill Lynch's at the time might have still been separate or Citicorp if I had and their investment, if they were managing my money, what they did is all of those credit default swaps that crashed, they put them in the portfolios of people like me and we took they and their their customers lost like $500 million. OK, So they got sued.

44:24 I mean, you would think this is criminal, right? Fraud. You know, you, you signed a statement that said, yeah, I can manage your money, but I can't put it in high risk things. And somehow they put the highest risk thing in the world in My Portfolio. You would think that's a very clear violation. That wouldn't be a big deal. It took three years of litigation. They had a $265,000,000 settlement. I mean, nobody went to jail. So, and I think if the fact that and that $265,000,000, all it really does is it comes from Goldman Sachs itself, which is actually the shareholder. So the shareholders are paying for that risk, right? So why wouldn't they do it again? If I had if, if I was holding on to a bunch of shitty real estate right now, I would try to stick it in anybody's portfolio because the downside is basically they'll pay for it anyway.

45:10 I won't. Nothing don't happen to me. I don't go to jail. Nobody went to jail. You think I'm like, there's no, there's no, oh, you're going to fire me? Oh my God, I got a $30 million. And you see stuff like that. And then you look at the guy that committed like the most mortgage fraud ever when it was like, it was like only $25 million worth of mortgage fraud. And they're like, we caught the biggest criminal of all time. And I'm like, oh, so you actually caught the people that started Wells Fargo? No way. Oh yeah, we're in the. $323 million lawsuit and 99 because they were giving a higher interest rate mortgages to minorities. You remember that? I forgot about that. It's. Crazy. But they're not racist, those people. Yeah, but they're not racist. Right? But no. See that? Well, Silicon Bank was another one that pissed me off to the end because they were starting to go under and we did. One of our early ones was about Silicon Bank going under and now here's the interesting thing.

46:00 Silicon Bank has a whole lot of non performing loans. It's anybody looking at the financial statements can see that they're going to go underwater. What they had done is they had bought long term bonds at 2% and then the market started rising. And when the market's rising, they, they could not the 2% money, they, they couldn't pay the interest rates that they were giving the money out and, and it, and it was a squeeze and everything was worthless. You know, cuz if you have a, if I have a 2% bond and the market goes to 3 or 4, instead of being worth $1000, it's now worth 800 or 700 because nobody wants a 2% bond when the market's for, they want a 4%. So you have to make it up on the principal usually, right? So when you're selling it in the market, it's only worth 700. It used to be worth 1000.

46:53 So now you're and you're watching all of your principal go away. And when your principal goes away, the interest is less. I mean, it's just like it's a spiraling thing. Well, anyway, the people that have oversight in the financial marketplace are the Fed, OK, You know, the Federal Reserve, everybody's heard of this. Did you know that the president of that bank was the head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve? And you're like, so you have somebody who's supposed to be the most savviest financial guy, you know, 1 of 12 in the country, and he's doing the stupidest shit you've ever seen. This is the same thing I heard when I had this, when you saw the SNL bosses that they're all the NBA guys in the late 80s. Remember, junk bonds, people, you know, the savings and loans crisis that happened in 8586, whatever under Reagan or right after Reagan was, it was due to a bunch of financial guys saying, hey, we're going to loan the money to people at you're earning 5%, but we're buying these bonds, we're investing the bonds in the junk.

48:09 So we're for 12%. And it's like, well, you know, any first year finance guy knows that the more reward is the more risk. And then some of those start and 1 defaults and your bank's gone. And so there was, there was a bunch of savings and loans that crashed and the government had to step in. And all these people are in theory, they were MBAs and doctorates of finance at banks and they were the heads of banks and they invested in this. And you're like, dude, I don't have an MBA and I don't have a doctorate. You're a dumb ass, OK? And it's just like, well, we took, we managed the risk.

48:50 And it's like, no, you didn't. The government managed the risk like always, and they actually put people in jail then, so that was kind of cool. That makes me really happy because nobody seems to be getting put in jail anymore, and I think we need more jail for those that are breaking. I would, yeah. Ethical codes that. Are what we usually do but I got to say the the problem with the industry, the financial industry is we're taking away enforcement. We're taking away all these different people that actually put people in jail and we're really really really, really good at looking at the bottom feeding people that stole $12.00 from McDonald's or robbed up $100 from a Burger King, but we're not touching a guy that's stealing $500 million from everybody's pension fund.

49:35 I think that that needs to we really need to focus on more whales because the people at the very near the top are fraud is OK and it seems to be that we really need to send a message because we have we have cryptocurrency coming out. So fraud to me and we and we just, they just pardon a guy that had 2.8 billion he stole. They just pardoned him. So it wasn't like 6 months. No, no fried Fried's still in. He'll probably get a pardon if he has. If his mom has enough money to donate to the local administration, he will. He will get a good he'll get. He might be zapped though, I don't know.

50:17 They took everything. From what I understand, they took they. Try, but you remember if you came after somebody. Swiss banks what? No, no, crypto in itself is non traceable right? Oh yeah, yeah, I. Mean when you put, when you put, Oh my God, they're closing in. I'm going to take 100 million, put it in the ABC lock box and just throw it out and just have the code somewhere and safety deposit box somewhere and deny that it ever existed. It's a. Fairpoint. You know, in 20 years from now when I'm out, I'll have $100 million. It may not be worth anything. It may be worth a lot more. Who knows? I'll go see. It could be something. Historically, it'll be worth a lot more. Right. You would think so, unless it's like Confederate currency.

50:59 You know, the losers. Yeah, it's worth. Nothing. All right, on that note, thank you guys so much for listening. As always, check yourself on the socials on the website. We got a mailing list. Go check it out. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.