Episode 96: Ideas

0:09 Welcome back to another episode of Record My Father. Today we're going to be talking about ideas coming up and future episodes maybe. Maybe future episodes ideas, future episode ideas, or more so, how to come up with ideas. I remember one time when I was, I think in high school, coming up with ideas for this artistic portfolio that we needed to finish by the end of the year. It was 12 pieces. And I remember looking up different ways to come up with ideas. And apparently the neuroplasticity in your brain is exercised. If you force yourself to write down 4 new things that you've never thought of each day, and you keep doing that, you're doing that and it actually kind of increases your creative, expansive mind. I don't know, look that up.

0:55 It was a YouTube video. What do you think? I I'm trying to write down 4 things so I know what I can think about. Yeah, we're going forward. We got some advice from my a confidante of mine known as my significant other. And she was talking about how maybe the original experience of escaping poverty might be a good one. I mean, because that's, that's something that you. Yeah, well, I mean a lot of people. It's it's really odd. It's really odd. And I and, and I said it, I actually wrote it down and I wrote it down to my mother's eulogy when I said we were poor, What was it?

1:41 It was really an interesting thing the way I had it. I forgot what it said. What was it? I never knew we were poor until we weren't. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's very strange if you live in a a community of people that you know and you know, you're whatever the houses are checkerboard houses, projects. You know, it wasn't really, but we were not in the projects. We were we were one step out of row houses. You know, if you think about you wouldn't know Archie Bunker, but older people listen, would know the Archer bunker houses. That's what we kind of grew up in. If you look back at one of our episodes, you get of oversight picture of where our house and when it flooded and when we left and why I support charity. One of the reasons I support charity is today. And we didn't, you know, we we had less and we work with it. And I mean, people would mess with you because they had, you know, you wore Levi's and I wore Wranglers or you had Chuck Taylor's and I had which these tennis shoes or you had a members only jacket.

2:51 That was like the coolest thing in the world to have in high school. And we couldn't afford that stuff. And even when I worked, I wouldn't buy it because it would have been, it would have been to me something that was it was something that was here today and it was gone in the not too distant future. Whereas if I put money in the bank and I could actually save to do something that I would feel would be lasting, I think. Well, I thought you also had an individual experience with your parents because they always endorsed for your college. Oh yeah, yeah. They were like a financial plan for that necessarily 0 But they they said you're, you're going to do it whether you like it or not and. Yeah, only stupid people are going to college.

3:31 They were very they were the smartest people in the in the neighborhood that they lived in, which, you know, it's like after I got out of that and after I looked back, I was just like, well, if you were so smart, why didn't you do better? You know, that's that's how messed up there was a you know, is a lot of psychological stuff that was going on there that kind of messed it all up, you know, and I. Think that that's kind of an interesting idea, is overcoming the the mental anguish that you did. Yeah, 'cause I think that I don't. Think I'm a little sick? I think I still have it, you know? What about you overcoming poverty? I never did. I was basically given the golden spoon my entire life and I've always been very, at least I acknowledge my privilege.

4:16 I think so to some degree. I understand that I wake up and I have opportunities that nobody else has in the entire world. Maybe some in, maybe some in the US, but also in Oman where they pump millions of gallons of oil out of the girth each day. That's a level of wealth that we'll never understand. But I, I definitely identify with the opportunities that I've been given through your hard work. And I, I, I think it's funny too that we consider the other day I looked at Forbes and there was this cover. It says Kylie Jenner first made or self-made made billionaire. And I, I have to tell you that when, when the this podcast makes $1 trillion because we're going to be trillionaires off this podcast. I'll tell you that much.

5:01 Well, I was never self-made. I, I, I don't see how I could identify as that so selfishly and so and look in the mirror and not laugh at myself for saying that I built my whole life from the ground up from nothing. I think that that's hilarious that she said that like and I, I don't. It's, it's, it's incredibly self-centered, I would think. I mean, I, I didn't do what I did, I didn't do on my own. I, I didn't, I, I happened to Trump through life and trip over things and recognize them. I think I was given opportunity because I worked for certain things and I, I had a certain level of integrity that frankly, a lot of people don't have, you know, Well, I think you had a.

5:51 Partner too that was willing to help you through thick and thin. A lovely woman. Both. Are you talking about mom? Called my mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. I was talking about my first business partner was the same way him and I were. Like I was talking about mom, but yeah, we. Were married. We were, I mean, for all intents and purposes, we were married for like 18 years. You know, it was very anything, anything you need. What do you need? What we what you know, that was that there was no and there was no like worry about anything ever not being taken care of when I wasn't there it. And yeah, I mean the beginning. It's your own little psycho that they can't do it without me.

6:32 And in reality they can and you can do it without them. And that that, you know, it's, it's a hard thing to let go of that, but. I think you still can't negate the the supportive spouse though. I think you can't do that, yeah. Yeah, there was just so many, many, many things that that she allowed me to put the business first. Almost always, you know, you just can't go. I got to go to a show, can't do this. I got to go to a show, can't do this. I got to do a speech, can't do this. I got to do that. What are you doing? What are you doing? And then we got into calendars and we would try to sync calendars. So everything was, you know, but I mean, when you came along, I, I, luckily I was in the throes of retirement for the for the first few years.

7:17 So there, there wasn't anything to, you know, what are you doing? I'm going to Zach's school. Oh, OK. What are you doing? Was still working though when I was 5 right? Yeah, or like 4. Yeah, probably four or five up until 5:00. That's when I come home, yeah. Yeah, that's when I quit smoking because you found the Marlboros in my truck. Who? Whose are these? Somebody must have left them there. And then I was like, I can't, I can't hide and lie to my kid anymore. This is ain't. Gonna change I'm glad I didn't find the the crack you know I would have been I would have been a tough explanation would have been a really tough explanation I. Usually always smoke my all my rocks as soon as I bought on them.

8:00 I did not. I didn't. I didn't like stuff them somewhere for later that's. Why we never had the TV 'cause you kept pawning the TV all the time and then you have to go get it back. Mom will go get it back and, and things like that. But no, nonetheless, that was an idea. And then also financial planning for the future for young people was another idea that somebody told me about and. Oh, I love that you. Have a level of knowledge of financial planning that not a lot of people have and also I think we've talked about. It seems so. The thing is so silly to me and you know, and, and, and I and even even a lot of my friends are not and, and I have a business degree. I'm not like Mr. Advanced Financial, CFACF, whatever the hell it is, certified financial planner or not, none of that stuff.

8:46 But I know enough about it. I've seen the markets and I've seen what people do and how they get, you know, screwed by the Merrill Lynch's and the Goldman Sachs and the Morgan Stanley's and the JP Morgan's and all them when they manage your money and for a 1% fee plus, you know, some percentage and that, you know, you, you, you, you earn half of what the market does when all you have to really do. And, and I think The thing is, is people are frightened that somehow if they put it in a professional's hands that it's going to be taken care of and it's going to do better than if they just put it into a fund that mimics the market and leave it there and just let it go just everyday. And no one touches it.

9:33 No one manages it and just grows. And, and 'cause I, I have tried those money managers and you've seen it over and over and over again. They lose, they lose over time, they always lose. And when and when someone, and here's The thing is, is their goal, it's not to beat the market, it's to meet the market. And you're thinking like, well, so, so your goal is to do as good as me putting my money in a fund that that that that's just going to mimic the market. And it's like, why would that be, you know? To that extent, too, it was funny. There's this guy named Martin Shkreli who got in trouble for insider trading years ago and misleading investors, and he's in prison for a long time.

10:23 But there was a phone call 'cause he used to do this online Internet show and this guy calls in. He's a young guy. I think he got lucky either on the stock market or was from inheritance. And he had about like 150, two, $100,000. And he calls Martin Scarrelli and he's like, So what would you do? Like, how would you set up a portfolio? He's like, well, that's just not enough money to start. That's not enough money to even get close to invest in the stock market. You shouldn't even be concerned about that. You should be concerned about starting your own business. And I find that interesting too, because if he, I think this was around like 2008, if that guy with the the inheritance or however he met the money found something that he trusted in. And then I don't know why these people make it seem like it's such a foreign kind of idea. The stock market, they make it seem overcomplicated and they make it.

11:07 And they also diminish people that try to do it at an entry level place as well because they think that there's so much smarter and there's such a level of elitism in this kind of stage. And if you actually just understood that you took a company and you said, OK, where will it be in five to 10 years to have you trusted it your entire life? Do you believe in it? Do you think it will exist? And then you invest, I don't know, a certain amount of money that you don't need to be liquidated in that company. Chances are they all do pretty fucking well. Chances are right. That's it. And it's really that simple. And a lot of people don't see that because of the gatekeepers out there. And I think that they're, well, the gatekeepers are all. Going to say that they're, they're, they're worried that you don't have professional advice and you don't have analysts and we research everything and we do all this kind of stuff like that.

11:51 But though, though, if, if I consistently beat the market over time, that means that I beat something that's random. And I mean, if the randomness beats me over time, which it does, why would I, why would I? Hey you. And that's usually the thing they usually will compute what they're, what they're, what they've made before their fees, which jacks it up by 1 or 2%, you know, which is kind of, I mean, that's another thing that comes up. We made 8.8 point percent last year and it's like, well, the market went up 22. I mean, last year was sort of the nail in the coffin for my, my latest financial advisor because I'd given them, I usually give a chunk of money to people every so often to see if they can do something better than what I'm doing. And they didn't.

12:43 Sure. And what does that mean? I try what, what is, you know, the market went up 28% last year. Why? You know, we didn't get 28%. Well, well, no, we only got, we, we got 9. And it's like, well, I just put my money in, you know, the Vanguard, whatever the, the Russell 2000 and it was up 34%. So that means all the money I put in went up 1/3. It's like, holy crap. Wealth managers for me are under the same occupation as used car salesman, car salesman and then realtor. I would agree. I would agree with that, which is somehow in this society that we live in, specifically in America, we've let snake oil salesman have actual jobs and I don't understand how we see them do that.

13:32 I don't understand how we it's. Very easy. It's, it's a financial market that grew from, you did not see the proliferation of advisors until like the mid 80s. And then it just sort of blew up with the whole people can't manage their own money 'cause they would put their own wealth and they wouldn't put it in the stock market. And everybody's trying to pull them in the stock market cause stock market was doing, you know, 1012% and they were all had most people I guess up into the 50s and 60s and 70s had defined benefit. What do you call them plans? So when they retired, they were going to, you were going to get a, an X dollar amount per you weren't going to.

14:14 And then all of a sudden the four O 1K thing came in, which is defined contribution plan. So this means that you saving for the future have to decide what you're going to do with the money. And you put it in and you have a, a list of funds that are at the company level. And then there there you have it. You have the individual walking in and people are frightened to plan their financial future and it's they think that there are other people that know how to do it better than them. And unfortunately those people are actually planning their own personal financial future. Provide, you know, with a piece of what they make off of what you give them.

14:55 And that is, you know, I mean, in a true perfect world, if I was a, if I was a wonderful financial planner or financial wealth person, I, you would give me $1000 and I would say, OK, I'm not going to charge you a management fee of 1% or a half percent because that's what a lot of people do. Which what does that mean? I don't know. You're not really doing anything. You take money, you put in the stock market and then you get a piece, you get like usually 20 to 50% of whatever the upside is. Sometimes they'll have, or they'll have a fixed 1% or 2% or 5% or whatever of the upside.

15:36 So, so when I look at them, I'm like, you know, that's, there's an, they'll say we'll see if you get a percentage. Then there's an, there's an incentive to grow. And it's like, well, if I give you $1,000,000 and you grow it by 10,000, I mean, I'm, you know, and it could have grown it by 300,000. Well, you still got your, your $10,000 fee and it's like, well, you didn't really earn it. You, you got hammered. You're not, you're not. If you can't beat the market, then why wouldn't you? Just why would, why shouldn't I put my money just in? And when I say the market, I'm saying an index fund that Vanguard has them, Fidelity has them.

16:20 They all, all the different funds have them. They charge a .75 or a .65 percentage to, to invest in that or ETFs. You can buy and sell them and trade them, which is exchange traded fund. And they traded at a price and that's a price of 1 stock or basket of stocks representing the Fortune or the, you know, the Russell 2000 or the Fortune 500 or the Fortune 1000 or the S&P 500 or you know, there's all sorts of different baskets. And that's a, a microcosm of what, what the market is. And since 19, whenever that, that that has been around the average rate, I think it's like 8 or 9%.

17:08 So if you put your money, you throw it in the market, you put in an index fund, you leave it, you're going to get 8 or 9% a year. You're not going to get it consistently. You're going to get, you're going to get 34% this year. You're going to get, you're going to get a -10% next year. You're going to get, you're probably going to get -10% this year, it's already got down 8%. So those are the kind of things that you're going to have to live through. And I think that people feel that, that people that have analysts behind him and a big name like a Merrill Lynch or JP, what everybody else does, you know, when it's those, they were not those huge, huge amounts of money coming into them and behind them. And it's like, I don't, I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't, I think people feel like you have to put more time in when, when the guy that's managing their money probably puts in 2 minutes a month if it most. And and that's up to call you to say that you're fucked, Bob. And it's gone.

18:05 Yeah, and it's gone. You remember that? I mean, I don't have anyone. I don't. I haven't had a single person tell me yet that their financial advisor broker person was doing. Well, for them I've never heard that either. They were always saying they're doing OK. And then if I pose a question like, were they better than the market? And then the question is that they beat an index fund. And then they're like, well, I don't know, you know. And I mean, I, I, I've had them try to slice and dice the numbers and pitch them back to me. I had this guy that we we first started using stuff and the wife was like skeptical of me, just the money and index funds and saying, well, you know, you're not, you didn't go to school for that. You don't you know, it's like, yeah, that's cool. I understand that.

18:58 So we put, we gave this guy at Merrill lunch 100 grand and he and I said have at it go crazy. And he lost immediately within the first two or three weeks. It went down about 6 or 7000 and then and he had it for three years. So I was not going to be crazy, you know, And at the end of three years, it was at like 100 and pennies or dollars or something like that, 100,000 and 100,000 and two, something like that. Very, very minimal. And, and he proceeds to tell me that he had like an 18% increase. And I'm going to like, and he and he said, well, last year it was at, it was at 87.

19:43 And I was like, yeah, but, but, but I gave you 100. And he goes, well, we're not measuring from there. And I'm going like, well, I am. We're we're measuring from what I lost, all right. Exactly. And the year that he lost, it was not a down year in the market. And that's the and I was just, and that's when I was like, you know, if you, if you lost money the year of the housing crash, when the whole industry went down 28%. Well, no kidding. You know, I think I was down 14 or 13% something like that I got or not even that. I Remember Me and you made a mock portfolio for me when I was around 13 and it was a fake one.

20:24 And you said, all right, why don't you go in here with this theoretical money that you have. And it really seemed as if from about 2012 until what was it, I think it was around 2018-2019, you couldn't really pick a wrong stock. Twenty O 8 was the crash, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I'm talking about 20 that. Was 23% down in one year the Oh yeah, that's right, you were later. You missed that. Yeah, we started when I. Was 13, so 2012. You know, I mean, last year was 28%. Think about that, that, that means that if you put a dollar in the market, you have $1.28 that I mean that's, that's incredible.

21:04 That's just incredible. 2 years ago I think it was 30%. You know, so it's, it's been, it's been exceptional for a long time. I am looking for a haircut of 1/3 because of what is going on in the marketplace now. Oh yeah, it's going. It's going to get expecting. Worse and, and I would tell you that I am 80% out right now, 85%. So if something goes completely wrong instead of my dollar will be worth only $0.20 of my dollar is in the market. So if the market goes down 10% or let's no, let's say it goes down 30% because it's already down 8. If it goes down 30%, I'm going to lose what is that I would lose seven cents, $0.06.

21:56 I'm going to lose 6 cents on my out of my 100 instead of $0.30. So for me it's like because I don't trust it right now. But on the other end, a large portion of my money is in, is in a, what do you call it, money market fund, Vanguard in particular, and it's returning a little over, it's about 5 1/2%, which is to me is phenomenal. 5 1/2% on your money means that if you put $100 in, you got 105 at the end of the. Year you got, that's great. You know that's. Fantastic. Yeah. What was another idea that somebody was mentioning to me?

22:36 Did you have any ideas about future episodes? Because that's kind of what this is about. When I when I think about future episodes, it's what are the objects that you are, the cluttering your life, You know, we think about that. That in a way, organization with Marie Kondo. We remember that we talked about Marie Kondo and the whole idea of Marie Kondo invented this idea, this kind of philosophy. Oh, if you don't use something for such and such time, OK, how does it? Make you feel if you don't enjoy it or something, throw it away, right. It was kind of almost a what is that called? The form of poetry. It's not alliteration. That's a that's.

23:17 AI think we call it chick canning. Yeah, exactly. I think that's what we're calling it. But yeah, I don't know. Or anthro. I can't even pronounce it. Clean water in America. Anthro clean water. In the US, I can't. I don't know how. To pronounce Oh yeah, that that would be a good 130% of people don't have access to clean drinking water. Yeah, I would like to do. What I would like to do if we're going to do something like that is I would like to have 10 or 15 research questions that we ask each other, like how many population that has access in the US, number of cities that don't, and just and write down a list of questions.

24:02 And before we start the podcast, I want to look up those answers and have them. So they give us sort of fodder to talk about as we go through it, because I think that that would be something really interesting. And you know, it was be like, oh, you clean water because everybody thinks Flint, you think Flint, MI, they're still doing bottled water. But now I talk to people in West Virginia and they're like, no, no, we don't use that. We use bottled water. What? And there's people in Michigan. No, no, no, we don't drink the water there. We drink. I'm like, I thought, I thought that in the USI mean we're, we're the arguably the richest nation, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th richest nation in the world. And we don't give clean water to people. I mean, that is, you know, what we call, I mean, when I think of other things like pollution, pollution in my lifetime, I mean, it's, it's been dramatically changed on the things that that we as a society have done. I, you know, and I think I've talked a little bit about it. I don't know if that's something have we remember? I remember when I was young that when you cleaned it out, I think I mentioned this in a podcast where when people would just throw their their trash right out of the window. Yeah, we talked about the Clean Water Act under Nixon 1972. Was it?

25:21 We talked about that. Maybe that's. Why kind of did talk about pollution to some degree, I'm not going to lie, but I think specifically clean water we could, we could do I think clean water today that would be a good one. You know what? I also thought my asphalt days. Creating a a business plan for my business. That might be that might be an interesting episode. Yep, that's good. Well, I'm going to Mongolia here. We're going to go do pre production for this this documentary, and I think that that would be kind of cool thinking of what we're going to do. And then we're wrapping this next project here in the coming month. So you're not really looking for a business plan, you're looking for a project plan. Yeah. Well, distribution plan more so I think that that's really what, yeah. OK. So this project on a board, you want to write down first how you want to do it, who you want to include, what it's going to cost, how you're going to market it, who you're going to sell it to, who, where, when, what, why and how. I mean, those are the questions you generally ask when you're asking a business plan and about how you're going to do it. And it gives you an idea of scope, like how large is this thing?

26:28 Is this, is this a $200,000 project, you think? Any idea? And, and, and you don't have to know. You don't have to know for sure. You just say, well, we're going to do airfare there. We're probably going to go there four times each or three times each. We're going to meet people. I'm going to have to pay my average cost for a, a person who edits is $5000 for per hour. This is going to be a 2 hour documentary. It's that's going to be 10. I'm going to need four of those. That's going to be 40 grand. I'm going to have my my photographer that's going to come with me, my film at film Master guy. He's going to cost me 25,000 bucks. And each time you throw their number out, whatever you think it is, add like 10% that we used to do that we were doing when we're doing product planning because.

27:14 Fringe right? Is that what you're kind of thinking about? Yeah, because they're things that happen that you don't expect and, and, and as a rule of thumb, it is better to come back and say, wow, you know, I, I plan to spend 14,000 for the product guy and I only spent 10. I mean, it's not like that hurts. That's actually feels good. It feels like, wow, I was good. I I overestimated a little bit. Now, when you underestimate, but we're going to get the money, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a hard, hard thing. That's what you're talking about. Product, You know, when we first started doing products, I remember we, we did this endless registration database that we, we put these two guys on it working full time and they worked on it for probably 3 months. And after the first month they said it and it's only going to be another month.

28:10 It's going to be done. After the second month they said another month it'll be done. At the third month they said it's it's almost it's like 3 weeks away and. Sounds a little like something in my life, I'm not going to lie. Yeah, yeah. And The thing is, is that you don't get it's, it's because then you then you sit down and you write down and say, well, what are the tasks you need to do to finish? And if they don't know all the tasks, then you realize that it's a lot longer than you thought. So it's like, what do I, what do I need? What, what goes into making a documentary? What are the stages and what are the things I would get AI would get some type of a template that said the making of a documentary. What are all the things that go into it? The the people that are involved, the different things like that.

28:50 And I would put that on a sheet and I would write some arbitrary dollar amount next to each one if I wanted to do it financially if I wanted to. Kind of have a list right now of specified dates and deadlines of what we need to meet, right, in order to shoot at a specific time. But then like, it's kind of interesting too, 'cause now that we talked to cultural advisors and now that we're talking to more people that are on the ground there, they're like, well, why aren't you coming here during the 9 nines, which is 81 days of negative temperatures? Because in order to understand Mongolia as a whole in the climate change, if that's what we're really trying to target, which I think is definitely a portion of the documentary, is you need to go there during the most brutal time of. So go there, do the groundwork or it's it hasn't passed 9 nines will be there.

29:36 Yeah, right in the area. And then? And then what are we talking temperatures? Temperatures, we're talking negative temperatures -20. Stuff like that. When your when your mother and I went to Finland, it was negative. It was -27. Yeah, we're talking. Negatives. So there, there are Celsius there, correct? Yeah. So it will be negative because it was -27 Celsius, which is like a negative like 19 or 18 Fahrenheit. I don't know, it's one or the other. It's something like that. It's not that much more It's, but once it's below -20 you're just like. With snow storms included too. Yeah, with snow storms make it much worse and, and if you got a heavy wind, then it's going to be to slice in right through you.

30:18 But yeah, yeah, that would be, that makes absolute sense. So that should, so you should plan a trip for five days or whatever, whatever amount that does that. And then you have to incorporate the cost into it. That's what. Kind of is going to be later on, because right now this first trip coming up on the the 10th through the 20th is going to be I get there on the 10th and then I leave on the 20th is going to be really relationship building and kind of understanding a certain level of cultural aspects that we aren't really garnering from a laptop, right? And kind of understanding where these people are in their lives career wise and social wise and where they kind of are in society. And I think that at the same time, too, shooting documentary, it kind of changes all the time because say we go there and we we have this idea that we're going to do the ninja miners, right?

31:10 And how mining is affected the cultural and environmental aspects of Mongolia. But then at the same time, if we've discover something that is so much more ingrained in that message and it's more niche, I mean, that's, that's what we're going to do, right? I can imagine going to the mines when it's -20 I would just that in itself standing at the open, the face. And when you say the ninja mines are those are those something that are under the ground or what? So ninja mines primarily are open pits, right? And they're abandoned gold mines. And these people come from foreign countries or even in Inner Mongolia and go to these gold mines, kind of abandoned gold mines to get the last kind of. Excerpts -20 They're digging.

31:52 No, see, that's what we're talking about too, is the the kind of the combination of mining in Mongolia and how it's attributing to these sporadic winters that have been causing, yeah, massive famine and also dried land. Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. So you're going to draw the, draw the link, the scientific link or? Yeah. So there's two kind of parts to it. Yeah. The the, the, the winners don't have necessarily as much to do with the actual aspect of mining, but the more of the environmental impact. Yeah, yeah. But that's what we're going to, we're think we're going to do. But then at the same time, we might get there and we might discover something completely new, because I think when you start putting feet on the grass, you're talking to people.

32:33 You discover so much more. And it starts to grow like, like the reason, you know, now you have to go when it's cold. Yeah. I think that in order to get an actual cultural basis and to not be afraid of kind of actually throwing yourself into the entire project, you need to suffer or not really suffer, but to understand. How? Cold it actually is. Instead of trying to avoid something that is so such a big part of that culture. Yeah. Yeah, and it's when you breathe in and your lungs hurt. That's it's cold. Exactly. It's real cold. I I I've never been, I've, I've been to cold places. But, you know, we were in Antarctica, but we were. It's the summer and, you know, it was cold, but it wasn't, not really.

33:18 You know, when jumping in the water, We we did we jump in the water? No, we never. No, I didn't want to do that. Did you do it? You didn't do it either. No, no were. We hungover I. Think we were. Drinking. I think we were drinking and I we. Were hungover and we were drinking. I looked at that. Well, I remember jumping in in the Galapagos and I was like this. Yes, we did that. That's fun. Cold. Well, it was. It was cold. It was cold too. I think I swam around the boat though. Did you? Were you allowed to? You weren't supposed to. That's why I did it. Breaking laws? Yeah, I was legal, man. I'm like, I'm, I mean, I'm we could do something on breaking the rules. Yeah, we could, but you're coming up here with surgery too, right? Yeah, that's tomorrow.

34:02 That's tomorrow. Yeah. You do you. Well, how do you feel about that? Oh yeah, I was wondering about the, the, the worries and that come up with it is that I've had no problem or no worry about it until like, I don't know, like 4 nights ago. That was the whole idea of what happens if this is it, you know, you, you run those those scenarios through your mind late at night and you don't and you don't sleep. We had Harvey up the street who had a typical back surgery and then he died on the operating table, right? So there's things like that, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think this is just this is. Really mild stuff and if and it and it's like I think that you can gin yourself up to believe in anything with all the negative thoughts, but everything coming out of this so far, everything going into it is positive. I think that you're a good person too, and I think that you know how you're really Christian and how you feel rewarded by God's ever loving light.

35:08 Well, if that's if that's the case, then would. I mean, that's the thing I don't understand is like, why don't all the Christians die or kill themselves? Because, you know, if you want to go to heaven, wouldn't that, I mean, I would, wouldn't you say, hey, shoot me, I want to go to heaven because then I get to go now instead of waiting on this place, which is nothing and not beautiful at all. Well, I hope so. What do you know? That I'm praying for you, which really means I'm sitting in my room doing nothing. Means you're trying to get attention. We could do some on religion. All that too. Isn't that? That is kind of interesting. I never really thought about that. We've never talked about you say you're. Praying for somebody, it's kind of taking the them as a center of attention off of them and putting it on yourself and see, I'm doing, look at all the hard mental anguish I'm going. I'm doing something.

35:54 That's what it is. Just Zach, instead of sending you a card, I'm going to. I'm letting everybody know, not just you. I'm posting it to Facebook and all these other places. I'm praying for you and I want you to know that I'm doing that when you're not there. I can't imagine what it's like to get cancer. And then you have like maybe 150 people. If you know that many, I don't really even know that many. I'm going to say maybe 25 in your inner circle that say, Oh, well, I'm praying for you. And you're like, well, so you're I'd rather you send me a gift basket or something before I die. Like, I don't know. I'd rather have like something that actually is kind of implementing that you care, right?

36:36 I don't I don't really see how talking. Well, The thing is, they don't know what to say. Most people don't know. I would say they don't, they don't, they don't and and so they're going to ask some invisible being for some special thing, which if you believe in the Bible doesn't has any already made is all of his decisions. So all of that praying is basically a waste of time begging, right? You pretty much. I mean if. God, if God already didn't decided that if there is a God you know well, no, I won't. Let's just not go down that precipice. But but if they if this thing that they believe is ultimately infallible, which that's one thing they believe, then your destination is already decided by him, right? And since he is infallible, he's decided that either you are going to die where you were going to live. He's already decided he's already decided when this hymn that we call him a hymn, but that which is weird to make him human when in the act.

37:39 It makes no sense. So if he's already decided that when you go in and you pray, are you saying he's wrong? I don't know, you know, question. It's in God's hands. And it's like, no, I'd rather have it in my surgeon's hands. I don't. I want, I want, you know, God's guiding him. No, no, He went to medical school. He has the same God that did the Holocaust. Yes. Yeah. In his hands, Yeah. That's he's done a great job so far. Such a great job. No, no, we, we could, we could, we could definitely do an episode on bashing religion, you know, But when I think that would piss that would that would I don't understand the, you know, yeah. Should people that don't believe stand up more for their rights in anything, in anything?

38:30 Because I think that, you know, it's like like people that are, that have a problem with gays have no problem shitting on them. But people that like me, it's like, I I think that that's wrong. I think that they're, you know, they're people, they're the gay people feel the way about the same sex as I do about the opposite sex. So I don't, you know, and that's just something that happens, you know, and it's, and it's, I believe it's biological. I don't really understand the the personal investment in other people's lives to such a degree.

39:11 I don't know. It almost seems like social media has made it almost purposeful in the divisiveness that exists in opinions today, because I don't think that people nearly gave that much of A care about other people's lives in their decision making 10 years. They hated. They hated gays. And, well, they hated. Them, but I don't think it was you didn't have ready access to hate because now you go on like somebody's Facebook profile and then you could you could call them slurs or you go on any sort of thing and there's just breeding hate constantly sick. Remember. Remember Tory inclinations. 80s, seventies, 60s, you, you had TV and then many people didn't have TV in the rural areas, so they just had their parents. And if your parents, parents, parents, parents, parents, parents all thought black people were not at the same level, what do you call it in any way?

40:13 Then they would pass down that same thing to you. So you wouldn't have anybody's outside of pen in her voice. Well, that's how it is today as well, but it's a little more of. A the only way that you got an outside voice was to leave your family and go to and get educated. And that's when you would when you would go to college, you would meet people that had differing views. And then you'd be like, oh, Zach doesn't hate gay people. What's wrong with him? And then Zach says because they're people and, and, and how does it hurt you? Oh, I actually it doesn't. And that, you know, and, and you start to see that and, and I think that's why we, it seemed like we were on this progressive movement for a long time and then social media sort of just destroyed it, you know, in a lot of ways. Well, because there's an echo chamber, that's what it is like. You see the chamber like 4 Chan that which kind of breeded a lot of these hyper, hyper racist people, hyper homophobic people, 'cause it's just a bunch of group of people and they're all talking about the same thing together. And that's, that's kind of what it's always. But when you when you look at, when you look at an actual number of posts, when you actually look at the social media posts, the people doing it, it's a very, very small number.

41:37 It's not, it's not millions. The people that are that are doing the most posts. There's like I think there was a, there was like 8 or 10 on Facebook that were posting all the racist stuff. And you could get rid of 80% of it by just removing those eight people. I think you're negating to think about the comments though, because. Even the comments, well, see, The thing is, is then, then the comments sort of drive it. And you can see, you can see the same model, the same model that I, that I see in every single thing is that you go to a right wing site and they have a, a right wing story.

42:18 Same thing with a left wing story. And then, and then the first comment is attacking the story and, and just a totally stupid way. Well, Trump's the greatest president ever, you know, or Biden's a complete, he's a, he's a pudding head. He's stupider than anybody in the world, you know? And then they get 100 people reply to that guy and you're just like. Well, it's baiting, yeah. And also, if you think about it, if you go to the top of a post and you pay somebody or have a bond, kind of say something of the opposite of the post, automatically you're already garnering a bunch of interaction on the post. So you get a bunch of following, you get a bunch of people looking at it. Whereas if you didn't have that, you get about 1/3 of the the amount of interaction user interaction on it. So this is how we should grow our podcast. I think so.

43:08 I think we need to pay people to make terrible comments on our posts. Wait. I, I think about the devices and it's like the, one of the things I've always is kind of good about this is you and I sit here and talk and we don't talk about we, we, we, we graze politics. And, and you can, you can listen to these podcasts and see where I'm coming from and kind of what I think, but it's not this head on in today's news. Biden did this or Trump did this or Obama did this or somebody did this. And this is shitty and This is why and this is horrible. And they're, they're breaking the rule of law and it's, no one's ever done it. You know, just tell lie after lie after lie. I just don't find it palatable anymore. I'm just so tired hearing another white man's opinion on what's going on in today's day and age, because as a white man, I consider my own opinions.

43:59 Not really that big of AI, don't know that big of a thing to care about. I don't really. I don't. Know you no longer reflect society. I don't really understand why we should focus on such terrible things that are happening when there's so many beautiful things in the world. Chats. Well, comedians are doing it now more than ever, and I don't I'm like, what happened to actually philosophizing? Philosophizing. That's a word. And. Being philosophical. And analyzing your own life without having a political agenda behind it. And I don't really like you looked at even the inauguration for Trump and you had all these celebrities there.

44:40 And I'm like, what is this? Like, this is like so strange that entertainers are now considered, I don't know, the most important people in the Western world. And I think that that's, well, I think that's a little weird, Right? Well. Because they they have reach. Yeah. And, and if you like, if you like the Kardashians or if you like Joe Rogan or if you like Oprah Winfrey or if you like people, a politician or someone that wants their sphere wants to cozy up to them. And then they'll say, Oh, I like so and so, you know, but the other side, the, the reciprocal of that is there are people that hate them too.

45:20 And so you're, you automatically corner that those people that were on the other side that liked you now don't like you at all because you you've chased the the easy target, so to speak. I don't know if we're ever going to get back to a serious level of hair in, well, humility. I think that we're going down. That the pendulum swings. And I would say that politically, I've never seen it swing this far right where people were trying to kick judges out and, you know. And I think the only reason why that it's swung this far is because of 2008 and how we had a black president. I think that that's the only reason why. And there was such an uproar in the reaction politically to what happened.

46:10 It was so weird because he had one of the highest vote counts ever. Exactly. Which I don't really. It really brought people out of the woodwork that hadn't been voting for a long time. And I feel like that that's really what it did. So we represented America, but then the people that represented America and voted for the black president then kind of stopped. I mean, that was that was Chappelle's observation. I remember that because he said, yeah, I went to when I went, when I went for Trump in the first time, I knew he was going to win. It's like why? I said because the line out and around the block was all these dusty white people. It was a reaction of what had happened in 2008. Yeah, that's that's what I think it. Was, and then when I, when I went in 2000, the the first Obama election, there were black people as far as the line could see and it didn't matter if it lightning came out. They were all waiting.

47:00 I was like, I'm going to vote for the first black president. Second time he ran, same thing, got the same kind of turn out. I think Trump comes along and it's like it's a white woman who, you know, pays lip service to people, and they've been hammering her for eight years on every horrible thing that she'd ever done, you know? There's something about a mirror and looking at a presidential candidate and you want to see yourself in them. And I think that not only the long history of racism in the US kind of is indicative of the reaction of 2008, but at the same time, I find it interesting too, that people missed somebody that looks so akin to them that really didn't. Like, at least George W Bush had a manufactured accent, right? At least he was appealing then.

47:45 He wasn't honest about his background. He wasn't very truthful about where he came from. But Donald Trump was, he was, he's like, oh, I'm a, I'm a billionaire. I'm a really successful guy, which was so kind of polar opposite to George W Bush, which I find interesting. I don't know, like, I would have expected a good old boy again, but that's not what he is, which is kind of strange. I don't know. He tells it like it is. He's in a particular moment. What was he? He was from Massachusetts originally. I think. That's crazy still. Was he? Yeah. Who's? George Yeah, yeah, yeah. New Hampshire, I think, Or New Hampshire. Yeah, that's what it was. New Hampshire. Oh my gosh. Kenny Bunkport was there. Whatever.

48:25 I don't know, growing up, whatever. Something like that. Wow. What are we at for time here? I got 48 on my clock. OK, you're right. Yeah, we can stop, mine says. Well I turned mine on like 10 minutes after we started. I. Think mine says 54 and we stopped for a few minutes so. All right. Well, I think we're I think we're good here. What do you think We think we're? We have some ideas. We're going to pull these out and use these in the future. Or we we might post this as a we don't know what the hell we're doing so we need to put an idea session. I think that this is a good idea to make an idea about ideas. I don't know. I think that we're. Do you want, do we, have we done anything on technology? Not really. I don't think so, no. See, I think that one of the discussion, the starting of the discussion was artificial intelligence that I did with Brock.

49:10 And I thought that that was really, really cool. That's so saturated though. I'm so tired of talking about AI to some degree because here, for me specifically, it's just like a it's, it's just beaten to death. It's like they took, Yeah. But I think that we could. We could. It's something that people will listen to. Fair. That's fairpoint. Well, actually, we don't know that. Wait until wait until people, if anybody actually listens to his podcast and posts stuff and says things, that's what I want to say. Yeah, we'll see. You know. I'm curious. And I sent you the link. Post the link to your. Can you just post that to our website? I don't know how you do that. Can. You post a link. I guess I could I could post it in the link of this video if you want, but this is coming out in 2 weeks so no.

49:53 No, no, I would say how do you post a link to his thing on a record of my father? Can't you go on? Oh, on the website, yeah, we only really have episode pages. I could figure it out. We'll figure it out. Well, as always, thank you guys for listening and we will talk to you next week, recordmyfather.com on YouTube, Instagram and Spotify. Thank you guys for listening and we will talk to you later. Bye.