The Wolf On 100thousand Podcast

wolf

get away from those sheep bollocks

you're listening to the wolf

and the shepherd podcast broadcasting

from fort

worth in the great state of texas now

get ready for this episode of the wolf

and the shepherd

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we got

uh something a little bit different so

the wolf went on another podcast

uh with a good friend of his and did a

guest appearance

and we're gonna get to share that so

wolfe tells just a little bit about your

guest appearance

well it's actually somebody i've known

for almost 20 years

and i coached them at soccer but alas

they grew up

got married had a kid and started a

podcast

oh nice yeah all right well cool well

you're not going to hear

any more out of my voice so maybe that's

a blessing in disguise

who knows but all right let's let's give

a listen to the wolf's guest appearance

on the

one thousand podcast this is the 100 000

podcast we are an audio magazine

keeping it 100 exploring a thousand

topics i'm your host ruby avihana and

today

we are talking with tristan abbott

tristan is a soccer skills coach here in

dfw he was actually my coach when i was

at

uh lake country as a middle schooler uh

so we'll get into that a little bit but

uh

yeah soccer and skills he's got my uh

got my foot skills a lot better than

where i was

um he also does uh cyborg he is a cyber

security contractor and a podcaster at

the wolf and the shepherd podcast

it is in the top point five percent of

all podcasts in the world

so we're just a little bit ahead of him

on the list

we're not even close to what he's doing

uh but really really good stuff there

tristan van thank you so much for

joining me today i really appreciate it

thank you i'm really pleased to be here

i'm a bit concerned about the name

the hundred that sounds like a lot of

effort to put in in one go

yeah the hundred thousand yeah uh we

have to keep it 100 so i can't i can't

do any 99

97 none of that i'm used to keeping it

at round about 40.

to be honest yeah okay we'll just hit

the

yeah well uh thanks for jumping on with

me today uh

i mean you are most well known for i

would say right now and

and getting a lot of attention for the

wolf and the shepherd

in the podcast that you guys started um

tell me a little bit about that tell me

a little about

jumping in the podcast game was this

something you had wanted to do for a

while was it just kind of a

whim that became a dream and became a

reality really quickly or

how did you guys jump into it i think

for me it wasn't anything that i ever

set out

to do i think even when i was on the

path to doing it

i still wasn't that on board my friend

uh max who's the shepherd in the wharf

in the shepherd podcast

he had the idea at the beginning of

covert that

people were going to be home a lot more

maybe listening

you know to podcasts and

we've been sitting around talking for

about five years not about the same

thing we're normally quicker at solving

problems than that

but he had this idea that hey look we

just sit around and talk about

random stuff anyway why not let's just

do a podcast on it put it out there

and i said no for about six months

and one day he just said hey let's just

record something

and it was terrible but i think we did

end up releasing it

and we kind of went from there and now

we're about 92

93 episodes in and it's certainly become

easy

you know you just go in there and you

just have fun you sit down and talk

but i certainly wasn't something i was

on board with to begin with

because it sounded like a lot of work

but once you get into it it's really not

much work at all yeah yeah well what um

how did you guys come up with the name

the wolf and the shepherd now i know

that the wolf has been a persona of

yours that you've carried since uh

since i was a a wee 12 13 14 year old

yeah i'd had that nickname since i was

about

five i got it from watching an episode

of scooby-doo

and they came across a werewolf and

scooby and shaggy would obviously you

know try and hide every time they heard

the wolf howl

and i think about a week later

in recess i was playing soccer and each

time i scored i'd howl

and so i ended up like the nickname the

wolf and that's how i got it now

as for the wolf and the shepherd podcast

my friend came up with this idea would

it be cool if the wolf

and the shepherd actually just sat down

and talked to each other and realized

that

they're both really just doing a job you

know the shepherd's trying to look after

the sheep the wolf's just trying to feed

his family yeah and they might find out

they have a lot more in common

more in common than they don't have and

so that was the premise or at least the

kind of a

philosophical backdrop to it and my

angle was well maybe the wolf and the

shepherd are the same person

you know like you go into duality that

it's different aspects different

personality traits that sometimes you

have to be the wolf in your own life

sometimes you have to be the shepherd

yeah so that sounded all very complex

and you know existential but really it

was just the first kind of name we came

up with after

sitting around for a bit yeah so there's

nothing there's nothing super deep in it

and we

i think we actually came up with those

explanations to try and sound a bit cool

after we'd actually come up with a name

so yeah well that's that's kind of how

things

i mean that's how things work for this

podcast i always think sitting around

going like okay what do i name this i'm

just not very good with titles in

general um

uh and i was like just trying to think

through i was like well what do i want

to do with this

well keep it real i want i want people

to give

you know 100 when they come here and i

want them to to be fully honest so

100 and i want to talk about a lot of

different things and i thought well what

about

what about the 100 000 and just call it

the 100 000

and stick two things together which

actually mean two different things i

looked it up

there was no podcast that had that name

i looked it up online didn't have

anything else wasn't going to be

you know riding on somebody else's

coattails and somebody else's name so

i just went with it i mean it's a simple

i think some people make these like oh

we got to have this existential right

discussion about well what do we want

this to be about and

you know do years and years of research

and it's like no we just we kind of came

up with the name

and our explanations almost came later

that's

it's interesting how you guys did that

uh yeah i mean you guys

and you guys talk about a ton of

different topics we like

i mean the the tagline for the show is

talking about a thousand different

topics

but i think you guys do that to the nth

level in the nth degree uh

we got three different episode titles

here from february of this year so i'm

just going to read them off

the amish cancel culture and j-pop right

i mean i don't i don't know how

how different three different topics

could be on the same podcast

how did you guys come to that because i

would say this the conventional wisdom

is

for new podcasters you have to be so

niche

that you gain an audience through the

niche because you're you're hitting

a point that nobody else is hit it seems

like i would say you and i's

podcast in this way are kind of zagging

on that and saying no

we'll we're going to actually talk about

a large variety of different topics

yeah i think your approach in that you

know you're gonna keep it real and give

a hundred percent

we decided we were not gonna go either

of those routes that

we're far from keeping it real and 100

it might be a cumulative total for the

week if we recorded three podcasts so

maybe we gave like a third effort in

each one but

yeah we never really took that we wanted

it wanted it to stay pretty casual

and in terms of the topics again just in

natural conversation across the years we

spoke about

random things and i think when i've

perhaps eavesdropped on conversations in

the past between people i always find

obscure topics or things you normally

wouldn't hear people talk about

more interesting than just somebody you

know discussing something you've heard

you know discussed maybe a dozen times

that week already in terms of the topics

we pick

we figure that you know there's not

perhaps much

integrity from a i guess perhaps a

journalistic

view because you know you say take kpop

right it's big business

and there are k-pop experts out there

now

if you told somebody you met somebody

and they said hey yeah i'm an expert on

k-pop

although you might give a little bit of

kudos and respect to the fact that this

person is expert on k-pop

in your head you're still thinking well

that's a bunch of crap yeah yeah

and so when we did a podcast on k-pop

we did it from the point where max the

shepherd knew

nothing about it whatsoever hadn't even

heard about it and my knowledge of it

came from annoying intro ads on youtube

which i couldn't fast forward through

fast enough okay and about 20 minutes of

research and so

that was enough to do a podcast on kpop

yeah so obviously it had

a lot of humorous approach to it what

was the point of it

you know perhaps how does it compare to

western culture of

you know boy bands and all this stuff

and you just run with it

now half of what we said perhaps in that

podcast might be completely untrue

because the sources for our data

weren't well checked or double checked

but that's how we do a lot of our

podcasts

okay because that's what reflects

natural conversation

people make points where they have very

shaky ground for perhaps being

definitive about their opinion but it's

just what they've heard what they've

read and again

nowadays because most people's

information comes from the internet

there's a good chance it might be

complete crap but we just run with it

anyway we don't put in any disclaimers

other than don't

sue us because we don't have any money

but yeah

yeah i mean we'll we'll run with

anything i mean i don't think there's

any topics which we won't touch

the only one we had difficulty with we

tried to write a podcast on clowns

really and i spent two or three hours

actually researching

clowns and couldn't really find anything

which

would set the podcast in one direction

or another other than doing the history

of clowns you know going back to court

jesters and all this type stuff and even

going back to egyptian times

there was nothing really you could run

with to make it interesting

you know i mean you could be sitting

there and be like yeah i don't really

find clowns funny i hate them

i don't really find them scary blah blah

blah and that's

it yeah you know in terms of pop culture

that's

that's it you know most adults don't

find clowns funny and

they've been in a few horror movies

outside of that clowns don't really have

much

day-to-day touching of your yeah life as

such everybody knows what one is but try

and hold a conversation about clowns for

two minutes

uh uh modern family where one of the

guys is

right but so i'm not actually talking

about clowns right about people yeah you

dressed like a clown

and now i'm on to a different topic yeah

that's interesting uh so did you did you

guys say

did one of you say hey we should do

something on clowns and then you

couldn't find a path

way to do it did somebody was it a

listener that that

uh that wrote in or how did you guys how

do you guys come up with the

that topic in particular well i come up

with most of the topics

i do most of the pre-production work and

i sat down on for some reason i don't

know what triggered it it might have

been seeing krusty the clown on tv or

something

i thought oh yeah i'll do one on clowns

because we had done i can't remember the

clowns one

was before or after we did one on the

amish

and i thought well if i can get a

podcast out of the amish i can get one

out clowns but apparently not

so okay and actually i saw some amish in

the wild last week i went to colorado

and um it's the rocky mountains

and this coach pulled up and a whole

bunch of amish people got off some with

iphones so they're obviously cheating

um but yeah it's weird so i took i think

i actually took more photos of the amish

than i did of the mountains just because

it was surreal

i hadn't really kind of seen them in the

wild before other than like on

you know tv right yeah yeah

well you you've given me a you give me a

challenge with clowns maybe i can yeah

i'm gonna a thousand topics maybe

that'll be one of the the episodes that

i figure out and

maybe i'll have you on for that now i

think i think if i could get somebody

who's an actual clown a professional

clown

okay you know not one who's been

convicted for

you know pedophilia or something you

know get an interesting guest on

just a day-to-day life of a clown

because i know there's this

i don't know if it's this romantic type

image that

you know the face is painted smiling but

underneath they're really sad and all

that crap but

um i think i'd like them just to sit

there and be like

yeah it's just a job but i can't say i

enjoy it but it's easy and then you know

i put

some makeup on the face go you know

throw some

foam pies around for 30 minutes collect

my 200

check and then i go home yeah and i

think that's probably

maybe the same as people who play santa

at christmas you know they put the suit

on collect paycheck go home i don't

think they have any intrinsic link with

santa

right you know i think it's the same

thing with clowns and that's probably

why it doesn't have that much leg work

in it

i think we could have got together and

found a bunch of funny news stories on

clowns people dressed as clowns doing

ridiculous things

but i felt we'd probably done that too

much with other topics it would just be

maybe a photocopy of another podcast but

this time it's a clown

doing ridiculous things right you know

yeah well

i think the most popular the popular

version of that right or somebody that

it comes to mind when i think of clowns

i think of

the clown prince of crime who's the

joker right right you saw the

newer movie that came out with joaquin

phoenix yeah they explore it but i mean

it doesn't have much to do with clowns i

mean he does

play a clown which is kind of different

than some of the other takes on the

joker

um and that is it's for sure a more i'm

sure you've seen it

i'm gonna yeah you've seen it yeah but

it's

uh definitely the sad clown and and the

sad

demented clown and the sad demented

mental unstable clown uh but

i mean those are those are the i mean

i'm again i'm trying to rack my brain

for like

pop culture references and it's the

joker john wayne gate

and yeah maybe some some tv shows or

something yeah i can't really think of

any

well i think there's always been

something slightly sinister about

clowns which why

you know perhaps over this last five six

years

you know it's translated into a new kind

of horror movie genre

obviously stephen king's book it you

know had its first

major tv you know adaptations like

decades ago

but clowns have always had a bit of a

creepy thing to them even though they're

supposed to be this symbol of

you know mirth

as such i think when you go back to

their original

connections and even if you go back to

say i don't know you look at

what's that greek demigod pathos you

know one face

smiling the other one frowning and again

going back to this duality two aspects

of the same personality

but you're wearing a mask to really hide

what's going on underneath

you know with clowns i think like i said

there's always an uneasyness with them

but kids don't see it when you're a kid

it's like oh it's a clown it's somebody

dressed funny but they only start

becoming sinister and a bit scary when

you're growing to an adult where

normally

those type of things would be the other

way around you'd be like with a kid oh

there's no reason to be scared of that

yeah but they're not scared of a clown

but then you know they get 10 years

older and it suddenly becomes creepy you

see it

clown on the side of the road instead of

the kid laughing you're driving kind of

like all right i know i'm in a school

zone but i'm going to be going 60. yeah

yeah yeah wow no i i hadn't really

i hadn't thought of how that kind of

gets flipped because you're right if i

saw a clown stopped on the side of the

road

i'm probably not stopping to help them

change the tires right i don't think so

yeah versus you know if somebody's

dressed like a i don't know

uh a doctor or i know a firefighter or

something anybody else basically any

other costume i'm not thinking oh what a

weirdo but

it's the clown yeah i'm blowing right

past you there's got to be

easier ways of getting famous and being

the victim of some clown who's

raped and murdered you at the side of

the road so plus you know i'm figuring

if you can afford the clown outfit

you've also got some type of roadside

assistance service which you should be

calling in

rather than relying on random people to

stop and help a clown

change a tyre oh man success rate's

going to be low to be honest

it's going to be low gotta be pretty low

you probably go you probably go into it

i gotta get i gotta get triple a to come

help me because i'm not gonna be able to

do it

all right um well okay so clown episode

didn't work

right tell me your favorite episode so

far maybe not the best one maybe not the

one that got the most downloads but just

your personal

oh man i just i love this episode was it

a guest was it just you and

and your co-host going back and forth

well i think there's been a few

in terms of interviews we keep most of

them

pretty serious because we let the guest

drive it you know if it's the topic

which

might have some room for humor we will

kind of navigate

you know to various kind of ports of

humor just to kind of keep it

interesting because not every topic is

interesting we actually

had a guy come on who dug holes for a

living

and we before we had him on we thought

all right the questions we're going to

ask him kind of what's the deepest hole

you've ever dug if you know if you ever

dug down and

you know discovered something freaky

like you know hit a buried body

or come across something like what on

earth is this you know discovered a

dinosaur

yeah you know digging holes for oil so

anyway it turns out this dude who digs

the hole so he

digs like between 12 and 18 inch holes

and he tends to do it in people's

backyards if they're like

having a foundation for like a patio or

something put down

so that's probably on us we should have

done a bit more research

and because i could beat that guy we

didn't get i get lower than 18

oh my goodness we didn't uh yeah we

didn't discover the depth of his whole

digging until about five minutes into

the podcast

and it was like oh let's try and drag at

least 30 minutes out of

shallow whole digging so um

you know you went there do you have any

funny stories kind of thing

no not really oh my goodness now if you

actually go back listen to that episode

max and i we do actually run completely

to the point where not where the guest

is shut out but

we take control and try and steer it

to it's something listenable now that

episode still isn't great

yeah i wouldn't go back and listen to it

personally but um

you do get people who are a challenge

you think it's going to be an

interesting topic and it's really not

yeah and yeah but i think one of my

personal favorites had a guy

on called landon who's an aba therapist

for

you know children on autism spectrum

okay and he had worked with my son

and you know he was a really interesting

guy i mean i've had a hundred

conversations with him before about

steph

but you know him telling his story of

why he's involved in it his vision and

his understanding why he likes working

with kids

although it was a very personal issue to

me i found it a very interesting

you know topic as to why somebody would

go

that route because if you want to work

with kids it's not the easiest route

because you're not

seeing neurotypical kids you're seeing

kids which

you know internally and externally you

know

are going through various issues and it

can be quite heartbreaking

you know but you need people like that

in the world who will work with people

who

struggle yeah um you know to make the

world a better place i mean

you know you've got relatives if you've

got elderly relatives who are sick or

need care you need people

even though it's a heartbreaking

profession in a way

you know to be able to step up and not

break down

all the time in tears not be overcome

emotionally and so i think

i think that was probably one of my

favorite serious

serious interviews we did because it was

a very personal thing

and it opened my eyes to something which

i don't think i could do although i have

a good relationship with like

you know kids and stuff having worked

with them for close to 30 years

i think kids in any type of turmoil or

distress

i'm too sensitive to be able to work

with that i'd just be

i just come home and cry all night till

i fell asleep yeah

and then wake up and probably cry some

more but right yeah

well i got an interesting question not

on our list at all but

why do you think like occupations like

that or or people that work in hospice

care or

uh or mental health professionals people

that really do

have to do work that is i would say

significantly more

taxing maybe emotionally why do you

think that they're not

rewarded with higher salaries and things

like that like do you think it's just

they don't really generate revenue like

maybe you know the ceo of a

of a fortune 500 company that's

generating millions and billions of

dollars worth of revenue

because i think that most people and

society would say

man those people wow what a you know

what a servant even if you're not a

christian or even don't come in from

that standpoint you would say man

somebody that works with

um with children that are on the

autistic spectrum

like wow that must be a really special

person and so i guess my question is why

why don't we reward them more

financially why don't we see that uh why

don't we see that follow maybe the

the respect that's given to them just

generally well i think in

almost any occupation in the united

states and perhaps the western world in

general that

people are rewarded for the amount of

money their

occupational work brings in not

necessarily the

value socially of what they do people

talk about teachers

and they tend to be polarized in terms

of views of teachers are overpaid or

underpaid

and perhaps some of the more prominent

news stories

over the last few months where you have

people refusing to go back to school and

teach in person even though the data

regardless of your thoughts on how

danger cove it is

that the data says young people are very

little

danger there's more i think today

there's actually been more people

died as an adverse reaction to the

vaccine

at a young age than there have actually

died of covid at a young age

and so incredibly ironic so

you know young people are not at risk

and for a teacher to say well i don't

want to go back in the classroom because

i don't want to put myself at risk well

you know if you do believe in you know

the effectiveness of masks or the

covered vats in etc

there's got to be a point where you run

out of excuses that

you know what you're just lazy you don't

want to go back you know zoom education

is no way to get an education

the number there's actually been more

kids committed suicide

where either the notes that have been

left or the conversations they've had

with family members or friends that

you know when they've described the

depression from the isolation

encode then again young people who have

actually died from covets so for

this has been her horrific for kids

and for them to have you know pretty

much

their entire social life taken away you

know with school not being in operation

and then these teachers a year later say

no it's too early to go back

you know they've been sitting on the

backsides collecting the paychecks you

know they don't want to

do anything but the zoom calls they

don't want parents to be able to see the

zoom calls to see what they're teaching

and stuff and those type of teachers you

think kind of well yeah they're overpaid

because they're not doing anything but

then again you have these other teachers

who

you know they see a kid who's struggling

they go out of their way to try and help

that kid and they do that continually

for you know 20 30 years they make huge

difference in kids lives those type of

teachers yeah they're not paid enough

but

the problem is on a case-by-case basis

you know we don't have that ability to

sit down and be like oh yeah this

teacher is worth this this teacher is

worth that

now if by what the teachers did they

were bringing in sponsorship money

somehow

sure we figured out okay you know i

talked to little timmy's dad in second

grade and his

you know construction company is going

to build a new fence for the school for

free

and that teacher gets a ten thousand

dollar bonus because the school had you

know thirty thousand dollars set aside

to put

you know to pay for this fencing that's

the kind of model

throughout society basically how people

get paid the amount of money you bring

in the value you are to that company

reflects

the value in terms of money now that

doesn't reflect the social value of

somebody in the job they do

but that just happens to be a society we

live in you know you're paid for

what money you bring in people will

criticize

the ceo of kroger for

you know maybe taking home a 10 million

paycheck last year even though he

employs tens of thousands of people

yet the same people won't bat an eyelid

if beyonce makes 75 million dollars from

a

world tour where she employed 30 people

for four months

you know so i think people look at it

very differently with a certain amount

of bias

and it's it's a very

kind of fake sympathy in some ways i

think because it goes out the window

very quickly yeah um

so along along those same lines which

would you say is

more valuable would you say like the

social aspect so let's say

let's say somebody uh is you know has

all the influence

in the world because the community sees

them as valuable versus

uh an engineer that nobody knows about

but he makes

you know uh 20 million dollars a year

something

you know something very significant that

would set him aside from the rest of

society

i mean which which would you say is more

valuable that 20 million dollars without

maybe the notoriety or the the influence

or the person that has

you know all the influence in the world

in the community they're in well i think

people come from two different

viewpoints says the jealousy viewpoint

that if somebody's making more money

than you for doing something you

consider

less work or less skilled than there's a

certain amount of jealousy

which comes in they're equally

i think people when they observe

other people's lifestyles have a very

i guess dimmed view

of what people do or they take

i guess the description of what that

person does from what they see on tv

they don't really understand

the ins and outs of things you know i

mean imagine like a vet

okay people a lot of people think oh

yeah that's a nice job other than you

having to put animals down

but again that that wouldn't be a job i

could do i couldn't

be there and have a kid crying over

their dog i'm just to be able to put

down i'd be in tears all day long

doing it and it takes a special type of

person to be able to do that

but you think of the number of people

you know have pets probably almost

everybody you've ever known has had a

pet

yeah and at some point you know

obviously pets die

and you know having somebody who hate

who makes that process

easier for you you know keeping your pet

healthy and then when it comes time for

your pet

you know to be put down somebody makes

that whole transition easier

to me i mean that's a job i couldn't i

couldn't do

but i look at some other jobs and i

think well yeah i could do that

you know i sat down read a book watch

the youtube video i could do that now i

know that's kind of

underplaying the perhaps the amount of

work you know you need to do some jobs

but

generally i observe i look at some jobs

and think yeah i could do that yeah

you know and i think the value people

place like i said it's

it shifts people like oh dude i mean

during the pandemic you know people were

oh doctors and nurses deserve you know

so much more money for dealing with this

well

yeah it's a job for one right and

believe it or not

you know there are a lot more dangerous

things in the world of being a doctor

and a nurse than

covet but all of a sudden people like oh

now they deserve more money

you know what about the guy what about

the technician who's working in the

laboratory where they're trying to find

a cure for cancer and his entire job all

day long

you know maybe works 50 hours a week is

cleaning off slides clean out petried

issues making sure that room's spotless

so people

how is he not just as valuable as that

guy he's

technically maybe just a cleaner lab

technician or whatever

but the importance of what he does to

make sure you know laying the groundwork

that people can go in there and work off

the bat and have confidence what they're

working with is untainted

you know people like that have a great

value so i really kind of dislike

placing i guess

a value on what people contribute

especially when

i don't really understand perhaps how

they

how that wage is set i mean who sets

you know the going rate for you know

what a lab technician gets

is it the value they provide you know is

it

obviously people are better at cleaning

than others i mean if i go in there and

clean then you know ebola's going to

break out before lunchtime

you know so you get some people they

might be you know incredible

yeah at it so but the point is if i went

in there

as an entry level and i'd be paying i'd

be being paid the same amount of money

is somebody

went in there and did it and was awesome

at it same thing you know you think

musicians

i mean there's so many musicians who you

can listen to and think well this is

horrible

right but you know they're millionaires

many times over and then you've got you

know maybe

an indie artist or somebody you hear you

know when you're out at a restaurant you

think

this is really good and this person's

you know maybe being paid 20

for the hour yeah you know it's not a

case on what you bring to the table

it's really what you bring to the table

for other people which sets your wage

yeah no that's that's a great point it

it really is and and there's a lot more

factors than just

skill level right because like in using

musicians is a great example because

some of the greatest musicians

will never you know they won't have the

right marketing they won't have the

right

uh promoter they won't have the right

for whatever number of different

various factors they'll never be more

popular

even though their skill level is higher

than you know some of these

now especially with the the invent of

auto tune i mean

so many of these singers really you best

you just need a body

that is able to do all the things that

the people in the back are kind of

pulling

strings on and now you have a pop artist

right

um and you don't actually need vocal

talent which you would think would be

the

well who has the best vocal you you sit

around a table and you're

in a music studio and you're thinking

well how do we get how do we get more

how do we sell more records

well we need the best vocal artists like

that's not even what they're looking for

right they're thinking

we're going to do this map we're going

to create this star and all we need is

the person

who will be able to fit almost similar

to like a movie role right when you

when you script out a movie except this

is this is real life but you hear these

music producers

and music executives talk about this

that we're looking for a certain type of

person

and yet there's somebody at the

applebee's down the road that has more

vocal talent

yeah and i think that's that's a little

bit different between

i guess actors and singers because

right up perhaps into the 70s

for you to be a musical artist i think

you did actually have to have some

talent and be able to sing

sure there were a few novelty exclusions

to that

but if you were a singer you were

expected to be able to sing

okay but you know you take the early 70s

mid 70s

probably the pre-punk era

where it was more about the passion in

the music than perhaps

the quality of musicianship you take

punk as a whole and the new wave

movement which

followed you had a lot of front men and

front women in bands who

the band was personality driven and

attitude driven and lyric driven

and perhaps the ability of the guitarist

the lead guitarist and the singer

wasn't as great as perhaps in the past

but the character and identity of the

music

certainly carried a lot more weight in

terms of identifying with

listeners and perhaps splitting society

into genres

um for once people have the choice to

listen to one thing or another as

opposed to what you were presented with

right you know i think before music was

like okay we've got 12 different flavors

of milk here which one do you want

you had to drink milk the only

difference was it's a slightly different

taste and flavor whereas music then

split into being very very different

from each other yeah do you think like

it was just the

the advent of the

like the technology getting a lot better

and and maybe i mean the stones and the

beatles obviously

you know they they started incorporating

and they they carry a lot of the

uh i guess the the fame

for you know the beatles specifically

well they started doing sound that you

know nobody had heard before and they

were doing all these different

they were experimenting with different

musical styles you think it was them do

you think was technology do you think is

there a different factor that i'm not

even

putting in place well i think you know

using the beetles and the stones as an

example the beetles were presented as

more of a clean

cut type thing and the rolling stones a

little bit more rebellious and yet

now you look back and you read the

biographies and

you know make another band and they were

both the same in terms of living things

to excess

you know especially john lennon and

you know you know for the beatles and

keith richards probably with the rolling

stones

you know two people who led you know

pretty interesting lives

pretty deviant type lives but one was

presented in the media as

one way and you know they were wholesome

band the beatles went

which then you know the reality was

probably far from that i mean the

drinking the drugs everything else but

it was pretty much hidden

and it's really just the equivalent of

perhaps

you know the 90s version of backstreet

boys versus nsync

you know really it's the same category i

can't believe

the same you just split in the same

audience i can't believe we're comparing

them though i mean i know what you're

doing

but just in my mind i recoiled it but

it's a popularity

contest yes and the reasons might be

very trivial for like

you one over the other but i mean even

if you take the musical style you listen

to something by the beetles like helter

skelter

that says brash and archaic

as a lot of the stuff the stones did in

terms of style

and so i think the division between

beetles and the rolling stones was

kind of paper thin it was just how they

saw a market

somebody thought okay we're going to go

over the rebellious market we're going

to go after that

awesome market where you know the

beatles think mostly love songs

all those type things until they went

add a little bit

too much influence from psychedelics

um but you know i think nowadays

people want to find something they

belong to

and i remember when the smiths came out

you know we didn't have internet didn't

have anything else and you'd listen to

the smiths and

most people didn't really like them they

found them a bit depressing and it was

coming off the back of you know the kind

of new romantic

type movement with like duran duran

stand out ballet

you know flucka seagulls all that type

stuff where the music was all very

uplifting and all

you know almost kind of like glam pop

went from glam rock to glam pop glam

synth pop but you had the smiths

and it's very melancholy you could call

it depressing but

a lot of people kind of identified with

lyrics in those

songs and felt

that they didn't have anybody to talk to

those things about things were too

personal this was in the day where

especially if you're a guy you had to

suck it up if you're feeling depressed

well suck it up put on a smile

yeah put on the clown pain right yeah

that smile on regardless how you feel

underneath

and people didn't know there were other

people out there who felt like that

because you just didn't talk about it

yeah it was easy to get disillusioned

and stay disillusioned

and i think you had a whole generation

of people who stayed disillusioned their

whole life because they had no

outlet you know socially with friends or

family to talk about weaknesses

something like unrequited love can mess

up

two or three years of your life because

you're pining you know for somebody and

yet you don't tell anybody you don't

tell the target of that

you know love and people go through it

and they feel almost like they're freaks

like nobody else is going through it

and musical lyrics you know again with

the example of the smiths you found a

way to identify as like somebody's

singing my song and talking about how

difficult

this is and but then you're feeling like

this is truly a personal relationship

between me and this band and

these lyrics because they apply to me

and then you don't know but there's 10

other million people out there

feeling exactly the same way but with

the beauty of the internet

and social media people were able to

find each other

you know other than okay i'm going to go

to this and watch the smiths who knows

who's going to turn up and then you're

there among

30 other thousand people who feel

exactly the same way as you do and now

it's easy to find those groups

and live that type of inclusion 365 days

a year

now you can be yourself because you can

find somebody else to identify with

you know that opportunity didn't used to

exist and i think that's why there's

probably been more focus on mental

health over this last 10 15 years

because people more willing

to speak knowing that there's other

people suffering like

i'm suffering because what was the

benefit before about speaking up about

weaknesses other than perhaps showing

that

you've got weaknesses right you wouldn't

think it would help somebody else

yeah vulnerability wasn't seen as a

positive trait right right now you got

people like brene brown who's like

championing vulnerability and so now it

almost seems like there's almost this

olympics of

who can be the most vulnerable yeah i

think it's i think it's done

too far i mean i know i know people joke

about it

but both people on the left and the

right joke about this whole

nanny culture now where people need to

be kept in diapers until they're

you know 18 years old in a way

that you can't let them make their own

mistakes now i know

both you and i growing up you know we

made

mistakes and some of them were great

teaching points some things the teaching

points don't come out until years later

because

if you don't understand the motivation

of

why you did something perhaps that

learning point

doesn't come out until you do understand

why you did that thing

and i read a book maybe about

20 years ago and one of the most

frequent

things people all around the world say

at some point

and multiply multiple times during their

life is if i could go back in time

i would change or i wouldn't do this or

i would do that

and the truth is if you did go back in

time without the benefit

of that knowledge of that event you

would more than likely make that exact

same choice again because there was a

reason why you made that choice

what you think is something off the cuff

and just a random choice

isn't there's a reason you chose tails

you were always going to choose tails

now it might be a one in a thousand

there might be something but now you're

going into this whole alternate universe

what would have made it

suddenly turn to heads at that time but

you feel there's no motivation for you

choosing tales

but there might have been a hundred

different things which made you choose

tales

and you choosing that tales that one

night

may have led you to having that extra

shot of alcohol which

makes you drive home and you shouldn't

hurt when you crash you could have

killed somebody

and so something is insignificant as

tossing the coin and choosing

had a great deal of influence on it and

so you could say oh i could go back in

times i'd chosen heads well no you

wouldn't have you'd have gone back in

time and chosen tales

yeah well and and some of the ways that

we even know how memory works now right

and they

they did this uh i can't remember which

research group did it but they did it

with

using 911 and saying uh so like the day

after 9 11 they pulled in

something like a thousand different

people and they said give your your

recount of your experiences on the day

of 9 11. this is like 9 12

and like the week after that and so they

got pretty well right so people remember

usually yesterday and the day before and

those kind of things and even a week

you can have a pretty good memory of

what happened so they what they did was

they compared them they brought them in

a year later

and they tried to have them say like

what was your experience that day

compared it i think they did it five

years

and then at 10 years i believe and they

showed how and they would play it for

them at like the 20-year mark

they're playing this is what you said

the day of this is what you said

a year later this is what you said five

years later and what they realized was

your brain starts to take you know

it can't make a 100 clear picture of

what you remember that day

and so what it does is it pulls these

pulls these memories from other places

that you're not aware of and certainly

you know the researcher has no

idea but it begins to build these

stories and you believe they're true

and nobody can convince you of them

unless you know somebody says listen

here's your voice from the day after

saying what you did

but if you would ask that person you had

at the 20-year mark where were you

they said oh i well i walked out of the

room and i went left

and you're telling them no you don't

understand you actually went right and

so

i go down that point to say our our

brains i'm sure with some of this stuff

remember these different you know poor

choices or choices that we made

and we forget the reasons for why we

even made that choice in the beginning

because it didn't work out for us right

so we erase it or we take it as oh we

that was just a bad choice

rather than i bet if we went back you

know uh if we had a time machine went

back in the moment like you said

i think we would realize and not with

every choice right you can't just say

this is every single choice

but i think that play is a bigger factor

i think we remember

and our memory uh betrays us at times

yeah i think a certain amount of that is

self-protectionism

we all have things which trigger us

more than others and some whether it be

visualizations or

sounds stick with us more than us and we

tend to cut out things we find

uncomfortable

mostly on a subconscious level you'll

find your subconscious will rewrite your

memory of something to make it palatable

some experiences or memories can be so

extreme that your subconscious

tries to shut it out altogether and

anything which might

act as a trigger to bring back that

memory

um again your subconscious works over

time to try and

i guess soften that trigger so it

doesn't bring back certain memories but

it's funny you bring up this topic

because literally last night

talking earlier about my son who has

autism

he's going through a period at the

moment where on my phone

he's constantly going through the album

of his own photos right from when he was

born

and i've got about 3 000 photos and

videos on my phone of him

but i also have on a jump drive

i don't know maybe like about 500 photos

and videos which i copied onto the jump

drive and i plugged into the xbox and

actually show on the big tv

and recently he's been wanting to see

those videos and photos

on the tv and on the phone and sit there

and just kind of look

and i was trying to think why is he so

subtly obsessed

and it kind of came to me that you know

with his autism

because of the his sensory

needs and wants are very different to

ours

that he might find something overbearing

in terms of like say maybe the sound of

air conditioning that might be the

loudest thing and he can always hear

it even though you and i might not even

be able to notice it and so his memories

of a certain situation might be oh yeah

i remember sitting in that room

i could hear the air conditioning and

the light was very bright

now you and i might go sit in that room

like not be

particularly bright and we might not be

able to hear the air conditioning

but his memory of that is you know

different different than ours and so

when he went through his childhood his

early childhood having autism

his memories of certain situations are

more sensory based

and it's based upon how he felt that

time

you know what his senses took in and

another child a neurotypical child you

know without autism

his if he did exactly the same things

might have completely different memories

and recollections

and i came up with this theory actually

last night

that i think the reason he's now looking

at these photos and videos

is he's going back almost rewriting his

own memories because what he remembers

might not be accurate or might have the

wrong exaggeration or waiting on a

specific thing where a lot of the other

experiences

he might have completely ignored they

didn't take in and now he looks back and

it's almost like a new experience he can

see himself and be like

oh yeah i remember that toy over there i

remember this i remember this day

because of something completely

different of why he would have

remembered it before so he's almost like

going back and reverse engineering and

rewriting his memory seeing things how

it's you know how i saw it perhaps

through my eyes or how he would have

seen it through his eyes if he was

neurotypical and it's

kind of a bizarre thing but you can see

him when he plays videos over and over

he gets fixed perhaps on things which he

might not have taken in at the time

and so yeah that's uh we do remember

things differently but

i mean my biggest memory about 911 if

you go back to that

some people the image of the planes

crashing into the towers was the most

iconic memory from that day but you know

i've been in a war zone you know i've

seen people die i've seen planes crash

and stuff so to me

yeah as bad as it was it wasn't you know

i guess as

uh touching

i don't know what the right word is

because everybody

unless you were there were kind of

isolated from a bit and in some ways i

think

that made things almost a little more

difficult because

it happened in the united states of

america we're in a different state but

we were still watching it on tv in the

same way as somebody was watching it

on a tv in new zealand yeah you know

that it felt like part of our close

community but again here in texas i mean

i can't

remember how far away new york is at the

moment but you know we're still

it's still a great distance yeah

say hi hi what are you eating

i think many people remembered 9 11 in

different ways

dependent upon what affects them

a lot of people were very

shocked and still in shock to this day

at seeing the

sight of planes going into the world

trading center but

you know when you've been in a war zone

and you've seen planes crash you've seen

people die you get a little bit

desensitized to that

part of it i think the part which stayed

with me the most was perhaps a couple of

days afterwards and some footage on a

late

night news station of people putting up

posters of people who were still missing

who hadn't been

found and there was a group of maybe

half a dozen people pinning

pictures of kids wives husbands to this

small wall

and the camera zoomed out and it must

have been about 200 yards of water as

people just pinning

posters and missing people and that

impacted me more than

the visualization of you know the actual

planes hitting themselves just the loss

and the not knowing of people

you know around that that hit me more

than

the visual aspect of the actual day i

think that's what i remember more i

guess the actual emotional

and social aspect wow

yeah yeah i mean i remember it i was uh

12 i was in sixth grade science class

was

it was mrs roberts it was miss robert's

class right i can remember mrs jordan

coming she's the assistant principal

she comes through she says something to

her and you can tell i mean even when

you're 12 you can start to pick up on

the adults and you can you can tell it

was tense but you

had no idea right then she explains mrs

robert our science teacher

right sits here and explains to us tries

you know

the best as she can what just happened

and

the first thought that i'm thinking as a

12 year old is what's the world trade

center i don't even know what it was

i had no clue the impact um but then i

can

i can remember little things like going

to lunch and coming back from lunch and

some kid being like

yeah there's two planes that are coming

here to texas and i remember being like

what are they gonna hit in texas like

what are they gonna do

you know it's just these rumors so you

can only imagine what it was i can only

imagine what it was on

the adult scale but you know for kids

who have no compass like they just have

no idea that

there were certain kids that were

terrified i mean they were terrified

that planes were going to come

hit their house right and i'm thinking

like they're only going to hit things

that are important

and just this callousness toward i

didn't feel that i mean i didn't feel

like oh my gosh people died i

i just didn't get it yet i mean as even

as a 12 year old

i mean so those are like my memories

around it are very much

more like i think we just as a

as an american society i would see you

know we see things like while people

coming together and uniting around it

and

there have been some definitely some

opposition to president bush at the time

but he was so

new that it was kind of like this and

then

it seemed like the world the world the

world for the most part but definitely

the united states kind of coalesced

around this idea with

uh yeah with with coming together

and it's interesting i mean you can take

this as either any way that you would

like tristan from here because i'm

throwing a whole bunch of stuff at you

but it seemed

i kind of thought covid was gonna be

that for this generation and it seems

like it's not

it does not seem like something that's

coalesced together it seems like we've

become

more divided more uh

what's the word but more polarized i

don't know so you could take that any

direction that you'd like from there

yeah i feel

if you took 30 seconds of footage from 9

11

perhaps you made a montage right

you could communicate effectively with a

little

narration to perhaps a kid in 100 years

time and they would understand the

impact

perhaps that would have on society i

think with covid

because it was heavily politicized right

from the word go and we have had

information which was written in stone

one month and then apparently

we find out it's written in silly putty

you know it's not

it's not accurate and

certainly young people have been least

affected

by it and the majority of people don't

perhaps know anybody who's died or has

been seriously

sick with it i had covered for

maybe an evening i wasn't sure whether

it was allergies or not

but tested positive for the antibodies

and hey you had covet

you know my son had it my girlfriend had

it my son's mom had it

and you know nothing i mean it was

really really nothing it didn't impact

us at all

and we don't know anybody who's been

really sick with it i know

tons of people have had it but

everybody's

just had the kind of mild cold symptoms

really

so you know it hasn't had such a

widespread

impact on everybody and so because

everybody has a completely different

experience

i don't think it has that unifying

factor where you could just show perhaps

like i said the images from the world

trade center with some narration

probably show that to any kids in any

country in the world

of a certain agencies or kids and they

would see that

and you know they would understand what

type of impact that would have

you know it's visually disturbing and

you can understand the aftermath

now in terms of damage i think it's very

difficult

for younger people and you said you were

12 at the time to understand

truly what terrorism is because it was

never an attempt to kill as many people

as possible

it would have been a lot easier to have

smuggled a bomb into a sports stadium

you know crash the plane into a stadium

while the game's going on

you know why not go while the yankees

are playing you know

so it wasn't about loss of life it was

about destroying

previously untouchable things like the

pentagon

or iconic things such as the world trade

centers that we can strike at the heart

of you know western civilization and

affect the things that matter

you know loss of life you have to

remember you know the united states had

been through

two world wars in the previous century

and had massive loss of life

over a longer period perhaps you know in

vietnam as a lot of

loss of life and so you know lives

when you put them into large numbers

become less meaningless than when

they're in lower figures if you say like

nine people

you know died in a fire that has more

impact

than 30 000 being people being

killed in perhaps a country in a you

know landslide or something

right you know that once numbers get so

large it desensitizes you your mind

can't cope

with or can't break down that amount of

individual suffering so you group it

together and then you don't identify

with something once it becomes in such a

large group

all the individualism kind of goes away

you forget

that's 30 000 individual stories it just

becomes one story and that story is

about a landslide that killed a lot of

people

right it's interesting you say that

because like using that as an example

like the death of kobe bryant

last year about about 18 months ago now

because there were eight there was

eight people there was the pilot there

was his daughter and then you know

five other i think it was young girls

that were basketball players

um and i mean for a lot of reasons that

had a lot of impact but i think because

it's interesting that you say the small

number because i thought that i was like

man it's really only like eight or nine

people and it's interesting because

when i was young too i had to speak to

the other point

uh one kid his name was dakota he was

like

well why didn't they hit three mile

island like that's a nuclear thing that

could have like you know blown up why

didn't they why didn't they crash planes

into that

and that's the way i thought of it i was

like yeah why did they go i mean 3 000

people that's a lot but

that's i thought the same thing well

texas motor speedway holds 250 000

people

but it was more about the symbolism

right it was more about

the i didn't understand terrorism and i

remember my you know i'm trying to

understand it as a 12 year old

uh and i think you know it took years

before i was like

oh this is why it's not necessarily the

numbers

yeah i mean i think if you read

something like the art of war

you understand terrorism

as a tool to try and achieve

something because if they had attacked

something like three mile island

the retribution would have been on such

a scale

you know it doesn't matter how you try

and spin it

you know to your populace that hey we

attacked america we gave america a

bloody nose but when america turns

around and drops

you know three atomic bombs on you in

retaliation for attacking three mile

island and wipes out 50

of the population it doesn't matter how

much spin or how much pr

you know you have on your news channels

the fact they've just wiped out half

your country be like yeah we probably

better not do that again you know it's

not as

you don't count that as a victory giving

the giant a bloody nose it's like yeah

and they're all cheering but when the

giant comes and stamps out your entire

village to death

it doesn't feel quite so much as a

victory and so you know people perhaps

you know misunderstand terrorism as an

objective as

what it's trying to achieve it's

my new victories to

continue a power hold in those countries

a lot of the time like hey look we

we can do this we can strike anybody

anytime we want

which again it might be true in a

respect

but as fanatical as some

of these terrorists are they're also

smart enough to realize there's only so

far you go

before you know you can either poke the

sleeping bear too much

yeah well and they only have as much

firepower right because the ski that was

a scary thing everybody was like well

what if one of these guys gets a nuke or

what if what if iran develops the

program well again that's not

um not something difficult

getting old of you know plutonium

uranium making a dirty bomb

is not a difficult thing in today's

society i mean anybody can go online

and pretty much build anything as long

as you have

what you need and certainly you'd think

if china hated us as much as the press

try and make out

that they would have financed a rogue

country or individual

you know it's not difficult to say take

somebody who's dying of cancer who may

be in their 50s

and they have a poor family and

somebody comes to you from an

intelligence agency of a country like

china and says hey look

we know you're dying anyway strap this

bomb to yourself we're gonna get

get all the papers sorted out you go to

this country you blow yourself up in a

stadium

we promise you we'll take care of your

family we'll make sure that your family

is given enough money so that you know

your children your children's children

all your relatives are all going to be

taken care of that would have happened a

thousand ten time

ten thousand times over if that was

truly the aim

you know of a country like china or

russia to do damage to the united states

i mean they could

pollute the water system they could make

sure that

nobody would feel confident enough to go

to a shopping mall

or do anything if they really wanted to

but they understand that the

consequences of retribution

again you can only push it so far and

what might seem like

a major incident like 9 11 it certainly

was a message to the rest of the world

like

united states aren't untouchable

but that was probably as far as you

could push it i mean we did go

we did retaliate with a kind of

immediate somewhat war

if you could call it a war but now i

think most terrorists

are part of a more

insular closer to home type plan than

really

you know going for world domination i

mean they realize that you know just

hitting the world trade centers

america's not going to be forget it then

you know we'll turn

you know we'll suddenly follow islam or

your sect of islam whatever it is

um yeah it's and you know what's been

interesting is

you know a lot of the anybody that was

speaking

against the united states going to war

or anybody that was saying well

this is a result right it got you know

you talked about the pr people in the

spin

well this is a result of colonialism

this is a result of the united states

you know in in foreign affairs and

they're doing this and and now we have i

mean

right now as we're recording this we

have this massive pull out where

uh president bide is pulling our troops

out

and as quickly as we're pulling out the

taliban is sweeping in and i mean we we

see it they're taking back

all of the control that we had while

we're there and that and then it becomes

i'm interested to hear your uh to take

this in a little different direction

i mean you coming from england you guys

i mean if colonialism was a thing right

you

you guys had the kingdom that's right

the earth yeah and so how do you

i guess how do you balance you know the

united states influence

as a protector of innocent people

in afghanistan but also saying well we

have a responsibility

to our folks here at home um and you

know and and

like to your point it's not about the

loss of life because i think it was like

22 people have died

in the last year total like in you know

2020 that died in in afghanistan and so

it's not about oh we got all these boys

dying overseas

but it's more about the idea that hey

we're pulling them out

so that we don't continue if i'm

understanding right what he's saying

well we don't want our influence

there we don't need to be there they can

rule themselves

and so i guess what's the what is the

balance between you know that

isolationism

and setting our own house in order and

still standing up for the rights of

people that are

in these kind of countries well i don't

think first of all you're ever going to

please everybody

um you know usually using a sports

reference and one reference i

like to use especially in regard to

soccer when you're coaching is that

when you divide teams up and you give a

kid a vest

right you have this vest which you've

bought from the store or online and you

give it to the kid and

most of the time it doesn't fit because

it's that one size fits all

but what one size fits all more accurate

would be one

size fits nobody because they're always

going to be people who are too tall too

short too that too thin

it's never really going to fit ideally

and so one size fits all really does

become

it disenfranchises more people than

whatever but you can live with it and i

think america's role in the world as

long as it's not too extreme

that the rest of the world

i guess puts up with it because they

don't want to get involved for one

i think they see the mess in the middle

east

and realize that if it goes unchecked

certainly three or four

rogue nations getting hold of you know

the capacity to be able to build nuclear

weapons is unsafe even if you're a

country like switzerland which

tends to keep neutral through everything

but the thing is if

you know if i bombed your apartment

complex across the road it's not going

to not have an effect on you

and it's the same thing with countries

you have to understand that

if your neighbor in a country which is

the enemy of somebody else then you're

going to get

you're going to be affected one way or

another and so the rest of the world

they like to say oh america's a big

bully it gets involved in foreign policy

where it should

shouldn't but secretly they kind of

welcome it because they see the need for

it

but either don't have the strength or

influence themselves to do it

or they just too scared because

you know not every country has the

ability to be able to fight a dirty war

and we've found out

right going back through from vietnam

you know right up to date in afghanistan

fighting dirty wars is a long drawn-out

process with

very little victory to celebrate

you know when you hear on the news that

oh we killed 30 taliban

commanders people don't understand what

scale and what

that means i mean so we killed 30 it

would have killed 50 what difference

would that have made it would have only

killed five

what does that make and it's hard to

measure success

yeah and people traditionally have

measured wars by either you've won or

lost them

and all right the war is over we're

bringing everybody home

was that a victory i don't know i don't

know you could count

afghanistan as a victory that was an

area of the world which has had a power

vacuum which

everybody whether it be tribes uh

russian interference or us going over

there everybody's tried to fill that

vacuum but it's never worked i think

afghanistan

is one of those places in the world

where it is tribal and you're always

going to have tribes fighting and there

will never be peace because the people

who actually

indigenous to that area they've come

from a tribal history they used to be in

tribal i don't think there's anything

just going to

unify those people because there's

hundreds if not thousands of years of

bad blood

you know yeah it's it's very different

than

i think we've grown up i'll just say for

myself i mean i've grown up in a

the idea of a nation state is just the

way that people i just assumed oh that's

how they organized themselves oh i'm an

american this period

you know this group of people is this

but even like using a country like

germany

where like yes they're all german but

you have like the kingdom of bavaria or

you have like

hundreds of different identities yeah

even in there and then you go well

take it to afghanistan who like they

don't

nobody there is saying like i'm i'm from

afghanistan like that's

that's where i see my identity they see

themselves right like you said like a

tribal identity yeah

and so they don't fit in the boxes that

uh maybe maybe you could say the west

but let's let's just say the map makers

for black and better term the people who

draw

maps like and say oh well all these

people now identify

you see this with the kurds um in iraq

and

uh but yeah i think it's hard for us to

understand that because we just assume

i'll just say for myself i guess i just

assumed growing up

oh well they see themselves that

afghanistan those people are the bad

guys that's just how i saw it i didn't

see

well osama doesn't see himself as a

leader of afghanistan he sees himself as

a leader

of of more of an idea and more of a

tribal

uh chief rather than a president right

yeah do we have i mean maybe i don't

know maybe i'm

way off in the weeds but it doesn't seem

like we have good categories and so we

can't really

we westerners can't see that and

understand it maybe

or maybe i'm off maybe a that doesn't

make it well i think we felt

part of the pressure on the world stage

especially when it comes to

foreign policy is that we're taught in

the western world from a very

young age that if you see something

which

you perceive as injustice that you're

almost just as bad as the perpetrator if

you don't get involved in trying to stop

it

and america as a nation i feel

you know there are people who feel we

shouldn't get involved under any

circumstances unless it's a direct

attack on our soil

but the majority of people feel like we

should be standing up for

you know the innocent the afflicted if

we

what we think we can clearly see as a

victim that we need to go and confront

the bully and either

you know give them a hard enough warning

so that they don't do it again or

completely remove the bully

you know from existence and there is

that

i think it's something which we all grow

up with because that's what we're taught

that you know if you see injustice

then you know if you do nothing then

you're just as bad or maybe

even if you're not as bad you can't come

out of it with any type of credit

just because you didn't get involved in

the bullying yourself doesn't make you

any better a person if you stood by and

watched that person getting bullied and

so

i think we grow up with that in our

psyche and i'm not sure

outside of the western world what other

cultures if they grow up with that type

of thing

i don't understand what it means to

grow up within a rational hatred

which has been preached you entirely by

media and propaganda to the point where

you never question it

but then we could turn around and be

like okay well why do people

you know have a mistrust of russia or

china i mean we haven't gone to war

against either

country yet we had a cold war but that

was more like you know a couple of had

an argument and not talking to each

other

yeah you know it wasn't really a war war

but

you know our propaganda in the west did

enough to make us mistrust

china and russia and you know we accuse

them of human rights violations but we

put the microscope on ourselves in our

own history whether it be

you know from where i'm from in england

or you know here in the united states

it's not like we're innocent

of you know yeah definitely not

you know throwing our aggression around

the world and

i guess looting the resources when it

suited us

so yeah it's um yeah it's difficult i

don't think there's any right or wrong

answer about interventionalism

certainly if something happens and we

didn't get involved

there's a certain weight of individual

guilt and national guilt

if that thing then gets worse so it's

like well okay we could have prevented

it

but then obviously you're gonna meet the

other side of people being like we

shouldn't get involved it's not our war

it's not our place

i don't think there is a right or wrong

answer i think most recently

we saw this with syria right civil war

starts about 10 years ago 2011

uh it's clear assad is bashar al-assad

like he is

he's obviously been a tyrant over his

people i mean

maybe maybe not i'm lebanese and my dad

is from lebanon

and uh we won't get into all that but

syria played a major role

in oppressing the lebanese people for a

long time so obviously i'm i'm coming

from a big place of bias here when i

talk about

assad specifically but even on the world

stage

once you know president obama said you

know he drew up

drew on quotation marks drew a red line

and say well if chemical weapons are

used

now i'm going to do something and then

there wasn't the response

and then it was like well should we

shouldn't we and it was like

you know it seemed like this weird dance

up and again i

i don't have the right answer

but it seemed like well what is the

world's responsibility

when we clearly see somebody doing

something and you're right there there

isn't a clear-cut

answer it's like well how many people do

they have to kill before we call it

genocide and the u.s tried to

define that but i yeah i don't have a

good

answer i mean what what is the

responsibility of a country

right where we do have resources we do

have influence

well i think perhaps you know the united

nations if it fulfilled

the role that it

said it was set up for

there would be no need for

interventionalism from countries like

the united states but the united nations

are like a paper tiger

theoretically they have all this power

because they have representatives from

every country in the world

at a debate table but the un

outside of perhaps advisory

powers doesn't really carry any weight

the united states doesn't need the

united nations i don't know

really any country on earth that really

needs the united nations because it

doesn't give the smaller countries a

voice they're very rare

they're not on the important security

councils and trade councils

um it's like being invited to a seminar

where you never get the chance to speak

or do you

you know give your opinion but you're

supposed to feel valued just because

you're in the room but

the end of the day there's no difference

between you're sitting at home and

listening to the same people talk just

being in the room doesn't change

anything

but my experience of the united nations

you know going back to the yugoslavian

civil war

i was there uh with the military and

yeah and uh bosnia herzegovina and just

south of sarajevo

a kind of military intelligence role and

the u.n basically allowed genocide to

occur

they the rules they placed on their

peacekeepers and the movement of the

peacekeepers you know they moved them

around like a game of chess where they

didn't want their own

pieces to be taken and

it was yeah i mean it was complete mess

i mean you take the

genocide in rwanda uh

cambodia anywhere around the world the

united nations has done nothing

outside of issuing statements of

condemnation and the peacekeeping

forces are always put in

visual places which have no impact

you know the uh bounties on the blue

helmets the u.n and

because nobody's going to retaliate the

united nations don't have

an army as such where if somebody

you know bombs you know and kills 200

united nations

peacekeepers what they're going gonna do

nothing they're not gonna do anything

yeah you know you bomb 10 us troops

we're going to come in there and

retaliate and do something about it the

united nations they're pretty much

toothless in that respect and

you know i don't feel that having a few

countries

having influence around a table

at the united nations has any better

outcome

for the world than if the united nations

didn't exist

you know i think it's all the united

nations are

handling it it's like it's like a bear

looking after your baby i don't i don't

feel that confident

about well i'm not even a bear i'd say

it's more like a jackal because the

bear's quite a majestic strong animal or

can fend for itself whereas the jackal

sister

you know eating road kill a lot of the

time i mean they can be aggressive but

yeah i just don't see the value of the

united nations really don't but that's

the same with a lot of world

organizations you know the world health

organization i mean it's so

so corrupt yeah um you can't trust

anything they say

it's funny how again that's been

politicized during the pandemic you know

people like oh you need to trust the

world health organization but at the

moment um

world health organization and the cdc

are in direct

loggerheads over something at the moment

i read it yesterday but i can't remember

exactly what it was and it's like

well look they don't agree so who do you

follow do you follow the who you do

follow the

cdc because i remember when this

pandemic first came out

and you know the world health

organization said yeah it can't be

transmitted from human to human

right uh then there was the whole masks

won't do anything because the size you

know the micron size of the virus will

get into your eyes even if it doesn't

get

you know your nostrils through your

mouth and will get through most most

masks anyway or

you know if it's on surfaces then again

the mass is going to be useless um

so yeah it's it's been difficult going

through this not having anybody you can

really trust

because you don't believe anybody

doesn't have a motive

behind it and it you know i'm a

conservative

mainly fiscally than anything else

but i didn't really trust the left or

the rights

you know version of things during it i

know it's i think you can see that

certain people have used it for their

own advances

but in terms of the moses to lead us

you know across the wilderness there

certainly isn't anybody not any

politician not any medical body which

i would trust to be that moses i'd just

watch and see if moses

got there safely before i'd follow him i

think

yeah it's well it's interesting that you

say that

because i i would say

strategically not speaking politically

or anything but if i was just

what do i know the 31 year old so i can

i can figure it all out right

um but if if president biden

wanted to bring a lot of um

what's the word i'm looking a lot of

confidence uh for those that have

not been vaccinated i feel like

the strategic move would be give a lot

of credit to president trump

who like did so much work on the front

end right right to say

because then well anybody that doesn't

trust you they probably trust him

probably right that not everybody falls

into that but yeah the majority of

people would say they trust one of those

two men

so if you're just thinking strategically

and if the goal is

we just need to get this shot you know

we need to get the jab into as many

people as possible

why not give credit to the guy who did

move the ball forward

and you basically kind of picked it up

and and yes and

both guys i think if you're if you see

that as a valuable thing

of what you know of getting the vaccine

out there and certain people don't

see that as well that's not valuable i

don't see a lot of value in it but

if you do it seems like strategically

that would be the move

but i think the polarization says we

can't give him any credit for it

because then there will be those on our

side who knock us

and the people on that side that we want

to influence they probably still won't

trust us

anyway right but i think the people in

the soft middle would go well if both

sides are sitting here and they're

actually working together on this

i could probably get behind it versus i

mean i think there's people

maybe you and i and some people that

would agree with us that would go well

i actually would be more worried about

it if both sides are agreeing and trying

to

you know push one certain agenda

on us i don't know if you have any

thoughts on just the of that

strategically and

maybe the polarization and if that is

more important if us being in our camp

being right is more important than

actually accomplishing the things that

we

you know were for lack of a better term

hired but

elected to do well i think obviously the

polarization plays a

role but common sense went out of the

window pretty early on

with a certain proportion of society who

wanted to be told

how to think where to walk how to eat

and you still have these people who are

driving around in cars by themselves

double mast

because you can't be too careful but

don't use any common sense or spend five

minutes

to research on the internet and i'm not

talking from political websites and

opinion websites but actually the

science behind

you know transmission of any type of

infectious disease especially

respiratory

ones that there are certain

things you can do which will lessen your

chances of getting it

and there are certain activities you can

do which will increase your chances of

getting it

but there are certainly some things you

can do which make no difference

whatsoever

yet there are still a lot of people in

that holding pattern of doing things

which make no difference whatsoever

and it's because of political reasons

it's not because it has any practical

reasons any helpful reasons and in terms

of the vaccination

you know when you've got one party which

spends most of its lifetime

projecting this my body my choice and

then all of a sudden wants to

not force but getting close to it in

some of the language

you know force everybody to take what

by any definition of any other period in

history would describe this

as a experimental vaccine

that it's become

a political thing oh you're not

vaccinated you know you must be you know

republican or conservative or

you know this person's driving they've

got two masks on and a

you know beekeepers outfit they must be

a democrat

and you know when you go out towards the

edges

those characterizations are true

you know you mentioned something earlier

about

you know average life expectancy okay

and i can't remember that whether this

was on mike or off mike

but i think it was awesome i think it

was off might be you talking about

average life expectancy in the time of

jesus and

you know when you take out all the

people who died

because of disease malnutrition

uh people basically killing them

and you take out you know the people who

have

lived to abnormally long ages and you

actually get that middle

perhaps 60 percent the

yeah you can have maybe the average life

expectancy was around 60

right but you take

certain states in the united states to

say oh the life expectancy is only 64.

but you know perhaps if we use an

example of say somewhere like chicago

right if you've got

even 10 people under the age of 25 being

shot

dead each weekend and you'll count on

those in the statistics

you know just one person maybe being

shot dead at 17 years old

has an effect if you group them in with

another nine people of a similar age it

affects the average life expectancy even

though for those other nine people

it has no effect you're trying to find a

correlation which you then apply to

everybody

when in fact you have to treat almost

everybody like an individual because if

you're not making the same

life choices you're not in the same

geographic clary you don't have the same

struggles then

saying the average white american male

has a life expectancy of 77 years

doesn't really mean anything because you

can make choices today

and not commit suicide but you can make

choices today which will end your life

tomorrow

absolutely you can make lifestyle

choices today which may elongate

your life for another 10 or 15 years bar

in something

outside of your control something

unforeseen so

life expectancy is a bit difficult when

you throw it in there but

i think it's a good example to use when

you take popular opinion that

you can't just get rid of the five

percent either side so you take politics

you think all right five percent

radicals on the

far left five percent radicals on the

far right the problem is you then have

the people who are influenced by those

radicals or perhaps

share some of those ideologies and

really you have to perhaps get rid of 15

or 20

in either on either side and take that

middle 60 to get a true representation

on what perhaps an average which might

apply to the majority of people is

because you know i've got friends who

were interested in the whole kind of cue

movement

thing yeah and

to me i looked at it as a bit of a larp

you know a live-action role-playing

thing because there were some elements

of truth

in terms of information into change from

you know documents which

were released from whistleblowers things

which came out which

the american public at large

weren't really aware of but people tried

to tail those bits together

and again like you mentioned earlier

about your friend who has this

feeling that you know this whole deep

state thing that

the dice you know loaded before you even

enter the game which is

which i mean it is true it doesn't

matter whether you're black white

who you are it's loaded because there's

always going to be barriers to entry

sure uh and that can come from anything

from just simple favoritism i mean if

you know two people come for an

interview and there's somebody who

supports the same soccer team as me

or if somebody comes in and they're

wearing something i don't like you have

an automatic bias i don't think it's so

deep people like to blame something like

racism

or sexism but sometimes it's something

far more

shallow which just makes that choice

it's not an

inherent you know dislike towards a

whole section of people it's just

something which

sets you off but now it seems like every

reason has to have this

deep reason for why it was said done or

made and

they try and choose the worst reason for

what it might possibly have been

and then people like oh well i don't

want to be like that and so people end

up conforming so they don't

stand out you know they don't get

accused of things which never even cross

their mind and it's a dangerous time in

politics

not just at the political level but even

people

at the peasantry level people are afraid

now to say something in case it comes

back and bites them in the backside

they're afraid to lose their job because

they post it on facebook that they

didn't like a particular person

yeah you know with a this is the first

time in the world this situation has

existed and so instead of

really bringing up a whole

social group which should be free to

share ideas

and we evolve through these shared ideas

what it's done is given the opposite

effect and people now are just shutting

up

because they don't want to get in

trouble and it's gone almost as bad to

living in a communist regime where you

don't want to speak out against anything

in case you get dragged off in the

middle of the night now i know that's

an extreme example but people are

feeling it's not

too far from that because symbolically

you lose a new job you're losing your

income not being able to take care of

your family

over the long term that's worse than you

just being taken off and just being

arrested and questioned for one night

yeah you know you they can basically

shut your life down and completely ruin

it and use in your family's

livelihood because you expressed an

opinion yeah well

it's interesting you say that because

i've had friends that have said like are

you worried like you're doing you're

doing a podcast like you're putting your

your voice recorded for anybody first of

all to either manipulate

or or they can just pull a clip and they

can you know 50 years down the line they

can say oh this is who you are

right and they said are you worried

about that or i've had people that have

said hey i want to have you on i've said

i'd like to have you on to discuss this

topic and they are

legitimately scared they're like i can't

discuss that topic

right because or maybe i'll discuss it

but i can't discuss this part

and it's not for any you know

intelligence or anything like that it's

literally simply well i'm scared that my

social credibility

and i may lose my job if i express a

certain idea

you know i would say that's on both

sides i have liberal friends that would

say that hey if i say

i support you know this person my my

more conservative

friends here in texas will automatically

you know disown me or vice versa or i

have

you know friends that would on the right

hand side that would say if i do that

it'll sound like i'm i don't know

whatever

just put the easy term oh it'll sound

like i'm racist which is

the worst i mean you can't be called

anything worse than a racist now in

today's

right um even though again 90

something percent of the country would

say racism is a

bad thing i really truly believe that

and yet

it gets thrown out there and you know

for a multi

you know there's there's so many

different factors that could go in but

uh the point i guess i'm making is

people are legitimately scared of these

things and they're scared to the point

that they

they won't even come on here on on a

podcast that how many people i mean

how many people are listening to and

what impact will it actually have

yeah we've we haven't

tried to be too careful on our podcast

in terms of what we say because

it was pretty much communicated early on

that what we say is mostly

tongue-in-cheek

and don't take it seriously yeah and

we will say things which if you took

them out of context

and if you applied them widely as this

is what we believe

then yeah you could come up with some

pretty bad stuff

from some of the things we've said i

mean we don't

you know involve too many racial

conversations and things but certainly

cultural

ones we will will be like you know what

is india worship cows and

things like this and on some platforms

that might be even considered a racist

thing just to raise that question you

know why well why shouldn't they have

you had a problem within his worship

no you know i mean you don't tell me

it's any worse than western kids worship

in tiktok

yeah um no so i mean i don't have any

problem but i'm also not

so bludgeoned down that i don't notice

differences

growing up right from my teens

you know probably until now i mean i've

had a mix of friends from

you know all over the world different

colors different skins and it never

crossed my mind

to put a label on that person in terms

of how i would treat them because of

where they came from or the color of

their skin to me

you're either an a-hole or you're not

yeah you know there's no guarantee

you can come from the most conservative

christian family

and just be an absolute jerk you know

you can be a complete

atheist of you know any racial

origin and be a fantastic selfless

awesome person and so i've always taken

people

you know to see them and well not see

them but as you know i experienced them

but it seems now like if you criticize

somebody and they just

happen to be of another culture or just

happen to be of a different skin culture

sorry skin color that they decide

your actions or words are based upon

that person's skin or not based upon

their personality and they decide that

you said that or did that because of

that person's skin culture sorry skin

color i don't wanna keep saying

skin color or culture and

we don't abide by that rule on the

podcast i mean we will say if it's a

person we don't care what color

they are where they come from they've

done something stupid we'll call it out

if they've done something awesome we'll

call it out you know we don't have any

differentiator

you know yeah yeah it's and it's it's

interesting because

i i don't know

may get in trouble here even even trying

to make this comparison but

uh we talked about 9 11 earlier i mean

life for

like my family got very different after

9 11.

yeah um my dad owned a gas station he

closed on a gas station september 1 2001

in rural in boyd texas so very like

rural

uh yeah rural texas and i can say

his first 10 days versus the time that

he owned that business after

got very very different and versus while

people may have some ignorant ideas

in in rural america they have some very

ignorant ideas in urban america too

sure but but the

yeah but things just changed and i would

say they changed in some

cases with some people they looked at

arab people

as a monolith first of all they right i

mean the difference here but

they looked at arab and muslim and they

put the two together so if you're aaron

you must be a muslim

not sure doesn't always doesn't always

track

um but i mean things as simple as going

to the airport i went to the airport we

visited lebanon in

in the summer of 2001 and the even just

internationally traveling was very very

different

yeah then than it is now

so i think but here's what i would say

but it is also okay

to point out hey all of those hijackers

19 or 21 of them i can't remember the

specific number

but all of them were arab and they were

from arab

countries well most of them from saudi

arabia are in terms of the power

which were issued um but again there's a

lot of conspiracy theories behind that

in terms of well they could have come

from any

country and you know just happened to be

issued sell

saudi arabia passports i mean it's not

hard

i don't know how hard it has always been

i would actually say it's probably

it used to be easier in the past because

there were less

ways you could check the validity of

certain papers and issuance before

certain networks you know came along and

um you know between nations being able

to exchange information travel

information

uh you know criminal

you know pasts etc and so certain

countries have shared this information

and we've made it more difficult for

terrorists to travel

but once you're outside of that

you can pretty much as long as you have

the money i mean you could get

you know yemenis you know passport

tomorrow you know if you had like 400

and you could go you know to the gate at

jfk in new york and they wouldn't be

able to tell whether it was a fake or

not

certainly from looking at it and they

might run it through the system but the

person who bought that past

you know passport from might also know

somebody who works

in the passport issue in office who

might have put it in the system

legitimately for you and so nobody would

know who that person is whether they're

a terrorist

who they are so i don't think there's

any barriers to prevent anybody

you know coming in and doing what they

want outside of perhaps our sleuth our

detective

um chances of eventually

reverse engineering and finding where

this person came from who financed it

what was really behind it

that's where the risk lies i guess of

it's not that you can't get away from

the app but you're going to find out who

was pulling the strings at the end of it

you know and then that retribution comes

along now in the case of saudi arabia

so what that they all came from saudi

arabia you know you could probably find

in

i don't know north tarrant county if you

looked hard enough and you could

actually find them maybe 30 radicals who

would do the same thing

if they had the opportunity in the

funding right you know so you can't

point at country and say oh yeah

everybody from saudi arabia is a

terrorist everybody in iran is you know

a terrorist and they all hate america

and want a new kit

you can't say the thing about you know

people in china because outside of the

ccp

you know we don't know what the average

chinese person thinks about the west you

know we're taught that two billion

people hate us and so we need to be very

scared of china

but that might be the furthest thing

from the truth at the moment it seems

like there's more people

in america who hate america than you

know voices coming from china

so i mean i think it's a very difficult

thing

free speech it seems to only work

one way and that works in the way

whoever's steering the ship

you know you can encourage people to

drive towards the destination you're

already going to

but if you have any let's try sailing

over there

they quickly quell and shut down that

dissenting voice you've just got to

enjoy the trip and

when you get to the destination where

you can walk to that place you wanted to

go

to because we're not taking you there

and i think i don't know what's going to

make it any better it's either going to

get to such an extreme that

almost everybody rejects it or we're

going to split and just go to

completely separate ways because

i can guarantee if you sat somebody down

the other side of the table from

you know perhaps upstate new york or

northern california

they'd have perhaps more in common with

us

than say somebody who lives in south

dallas

in terms of their political views but

equally you know you can take somebody

from

you know southern california and we may

have

nothing in common whatsoever in terms of

political views but personal interests

everything else we might be dead on and

so i think you have to learn not to talk

about

specific things or realize what the hot

potatoes are because

if you put people's back hairs up

immediately yeah

you never get anywhere and so that's why

i say i try to take people how they come

how they treat me how i see them treat

other people and if that's fine

i don't really care who they support

politically who they support

athletically yeah you know i'm going to

try and find the things which

we have in common and you know unless

you're going out

you know murdering old people at three

o'clock in the morning or

doing something abhorrent then i'm not

you know

it's not it's uh you know don't i don't

think there's a good reason to

not give everybody a fair shot you know

yeah it's

it's interesting you said and i guess

we probably have a lot more with in

common

with the rural farmer who is

you know uh whose livelihood comes from

the yellow river

in china who doesn't care about any of

these things that we

care about and i mean even if you take a

metric like

christianity that there's more

christians in china

number wise not not population and not

percentage

but just number but raw numbers there's

more christians in china

than there are in the united states yeah

and you think like

so how how do we have this idea that oh

china

are the bad guys um or china

or maybe you think oh china is great

because you know you're

you like the way they run run things

politically

but i think if we instead of just

assuming

everybody is there we saw this in the

election we saw people didn't understand

why latinos specifically i'm married to

a latino woman and they didn't

understand well why did more latinos

vote for president trump this time than

they did the first time but it's because

there's this

this deep deep misunderstanding of the

culture right and you think

well all latinos think blank but you

really break them down you're family

people

they're usually they're more they're

more family oriented they're more

religious

they're more all of these things that

you would typically go oh that's what a

white evangelical does

yeah and the idea that you have of white

evangelical actually probably

matches up closer with a latino person

who you've never met before

than the white evangelicals that you

seemingly

think are the big bad guys now of course

yeah

now i have a lot of hispanic friends

i've made through you know

coaching soccer and you know just

general social circles and yeah the

majority of them

would identify conservatively certainly

on the fiscal level because they want to

build a stable

you know home and they want to feel like

if i put in the hard work i want to be

rewarded for that hard work

and forget the type of work i do because

i know there's always a stereotype you

know of like oh

you know hispanics it's landscape

gardening or you know whatever form of

manual labor is if it's

like some pariah of a profession

and it's as we first started

talking about i mean those people are

just as important as you know the lab

technicians or anybody else

because again society wouldn't function

it wouldn't function in the same way

and i hate the

accusation from various people on the

right that the more people we let in

we're gonna have

you know less jobs for americans it's

like you know what

if somebody can come into the country

not speaking the language have no

contacts and take a job and earn money

and you've been sitting on your backside

and you're complaining about this person

taking work

i don't think that person is necessarily

the problem in this whole equation now

if you want to get angry at the

government for letting people in

you know and feeling that we can't

perhaps float an extra you know 100

million people

financially you know take care of them

in

certain social welfare aspects i can

kind of understand that yeah let's cap

immigration until a country gets

stronger economically or whatever but

being angry at people coming into the

country

who 99 of them

you know just want a better life but

they're willing to work and they managed

to get a job and they managed to get

money and then people were bitching

about

people who have come in and got a job

it's like we're good for them they came

in

they had no contacts can't speak the

language they know that

a certain proportion of the country is

angry at them if they're coming in

and yet they come in do a job and start

really there's just people just trying

to live a life

do you not honestly think if they have

the choice and we're able to live this

type of standard life in their own

countries they probably would have

liked to have stayed there i mean i

don't want open borders because again

that's

that's a slow suicide you've got to have

some level of i guess

not educational background because there

are certain people who have done very

well and become multi-millionaires

through very little

you know educational input so i think

that's a bad thing and also we don't

know the standard of colleges and what

they're taught in a lot of other

countries so to say

oh you've got a degree you can come in

and apply for a job well why

why not that 17 year old person who

dropped out of school at age 12 to help

feed their family

why should they not be able to come in

and work if they're willing to work

so i think some of the criteria is a bit

you know weird now it's okay if

somebody's been arrested for

you know 400 hardcore drug offenses and

19 murders

perhaps we should stop them at the

border and tell them to do a turnaround

yeah you know we don't we don't kind of

need people like that

but that's not discriminatory on any

type of cultural or racial level that's

purely that person is a piece of crap

let's not have them come in the country

yeah and that's my really only

barrier to immigrants is that yeah we

don't want to be letting people in not

somebody you know was caught with

marijuana when they were 16 you know 20

years ago and now they can't come in the

country for the rest of life because

this is stupid

right right i mean the majority of

crimes involving soft drugs tend to be

victimless crimes it's just that

you know you're paying homage to a

system which

has dug its heels in and been very

strict and almost spiteful in terms of

how it's been applied to people when

it's devastated entire communities of

both colors

and people have been demonized and

removed from the normal system over

something which in probably 20 years 30

years time

will look back and see was actually

pretty inhuman

in a way when you've allowed people to

you know run around drinking alcohol for

the last however many hundreds of years

causing goodness knows how many car

crashes fights relationship

breakups infidelity and all the damage

that's had on society

but you ruin a kid's life because at 15

you know they smoke some part in high

school

so i think you know we've we've

definitely got to look at people

individually on a mass level if that

makes sense as in we shouldn't

discriminate against large groups of

people because of the actions of a few

which again is the whole core of the

thing of racism people's experience of

people of different colours or cultures

they

treat everybody as their first i guess

introductions to that

you know race or culture and we're all

guilty of it i mean if i see

i don't know a black person i will make

certain assumptions about them if they

see a white person they'll make certain

assumptions now is that racism or is

that just

generally historically knowing through

social relationships that there are

differences and what's so wrong about

having differences

i mean that's the worst thing it's like

some of the explanations or definitions

of racism now is identifying differences

in culture

like oh we're all the same no we're not

the same definitely we're not all the

same

and i love the differences this is the

thing unless their differences is they

like to cut their children's heads off

and eat them

you know i'm pretty open to most of the

differences you know people with

different cultures and colors bring to

the table and so to me

recognizing the difference isn't racism

if you're saying oh

you know black people are stupid because

blah blah blah then yeah that's

out and out racism ridiculous right

and the same thing if they turn around

and say that generalize white people

along

those lines it's racism i don't think

there's such a thing as reverse racism

it's just racism period

and you know i i kind of get that stupid

and completely wrong

but if you have to be afraid to talk

about a person

and say certain things because of their

color or culture

when if another person did the exact

same thing you'd have

open season to be able to criticize them

or compliment them then i think that's

very wrong because we're steering a

million miles away from

what mlk is kind of uh vision about

judging people by their character yeah

the character the content of their

character rather than

you know yeah rather than the color of

their skin yeah and so

yeah it shows up in you know little ways

it shows up in

the fact that if i if i'm filling out

any form

and it says like what race are you i

mean

i it's it's been so weird i remember as

a kid going

well do i put white because like some

forms will

will have arab underneath white but it's

like you

and my dad that consider the same race

right which

my dad is is is a dark-skinned arab

yeah he's grown up in a very different

culture than than

british culture it's like how how do

those fit together or am i

asian because lebanon is technically in

asia but are you meaning asian or are

you in the pacific islander and so i

it shows up in so how do you that's

that's a very

simple uh more innocent way to say well

how if you're going to sit there and go

well these people are allowed to be

criticized on this basis but these

people are not allowed to be criticized

well so what what do you do then for

that and

these issues come up in many different

ways i'm just choosing

to use a very innocent one to say so how

how would somebody label if you're going

to label me a certain race

right well and certain people would call

me white

or white passing because of the color of

my skin but the culture

that i was raised in was very different

than that

and even so much to to the point that my

dad would use

language that would say well americans

do this it was very confusing to me

an american who would look at my dad and

say we are americans like what are you

talking about you're a citizen of this

country

how how could this be done so i

i guess the point that i'm making is you

can't right you can't just look at

somebody and say

it's impossible to say oh you're you're

a brit so this is the way you think

because you're a brit

well not far from it right

you could take two brits and you could

be more different right and we see this

uh

last thing i'll say is we see this with

christianity i would say that i probably

have more in common

with for the things that matter with

somebody from

that you know that farms near the yellow

river than i do

with someone who could live next door to

me that would be

the same skin color come from the same

you know maybe they're

they're half white half arab but they're

i idealistically they're a muslim and

they think differently politically and

they think all these things and so

somebody from the outside

could look at us and say oh you guys are

probably really similar you guys are

probably

you guys are basically the same person

and i go no i mean far from it i'd be

you know just from the outside looking

in or from looking at these

uh i said the last thing i'll say

looking at these these factors

i don't think are as big of an indicator

of who a person is

right as other factors that we seemingly

just throw off to the side yeah

and i think you know the labels we put

on people

to protect them actually end up doing

more damage

because you don't get a real experience

of life if

people artificially have to talk to you

in a way that

they're trying not to offend you even

though

you probably wouldn't be offended but

some people are offended on your behalf

and so i've decided in society you can't

say that thing

now if you take hispanics for an example

i mean your wife

some people might look at her and be

like oh she looks slightly asian

yeah right yeah yeah and uh you look at

some hispanic people and they look

middle eastern

right but you know your wife's

family might have been here for 200

years

same thing with some hispanic people who

look middle eastern they might be 200

years yet you might have a white person

walking around who arrived from sweden

yesterday yeah

you know just because you know the color

of the skin is no indicativeness

of you know a connection with a country

you know love for a country again it

comes down

people's actions and their individual

personalities which defines them

but it's too difficult for us to with

however many billion people in the world

for us to go on a case-by-case basis so

we tend to

you know lump people together but we do

it with you know even other white people

i mean if we have to describe what our

people like

from i don't know san francisco yeah

we'd come up with a bunch of stereotypes

we'd come up with things

perhaps not so much from personal

interaction because i can't off the top

of my head

recall anybody i've met from san

francisco but certainly i can recall

news articles from san francisco where

maybe perhaps if i adopt adopted some

rather

odd and unusual social practices such as

pooping on the street

um and you think about the local

government where they've put their money

and why they're not combating this and

this and you come up with this automatic

kind of prejudice or way of thinking

and my first thing i think

if somebody sat down across the table

from san francisco i would

ask them about those things they look

the only kind of view we get

of san francisco from the media

regardless

of whether it be from the left or the

right these are the kind of hot issues

now tell me is this really this bad can

you not walk

down your street without playing having

to play hopscotch with homeless people

poop

i mean is it really that bad or is this

just down to a quarter of a mile area

out of right whatever because you know

things are exemplified and blown out but

when you have very little personal

social interaction to prove otherwise

you start

building this i wouldn't even say it's

prejudice just this

idea or collection of ideas around

somebody and what

their life experience is and what their

attitude to life is

you know and i don't know if you know

maybe

maybe we could take a weekend trip to

san francisco and not experience

anything that we've seen on the news

whatsoever in the last decade

but somebody might go there for an hour

or an experience everything they've seen

on the news

and when we got that we'd have very

different views of what

san francisco is and what san francis

people from san francisco are like

but we do it from even here in texas we

have views on what people from

east texas are like people in west texas

you know southern part of texas are like

people in the panhandle alike

i think tribalism exists at almost

every level i mean we're going to

differentiate ourselves but i think we

differentiate ourselves more to belong

than to actually get push people away we

want to find

something we have in common with people

and stick together i mean kids form

groups and cliques

even in grade school you know well

kindergarten and pre-k

you know groups come together and it's

at that point in time it's about more on

what they have in common and likes and

dislikes

you know you don't get a division of

black kids hispanic kids and white kids

and asian kids you know in pre-k you

find people who you like people who are

friendly people you have something in

common and that's it you run with it

and it's not until you know outside

influences point out

at a later time or date that well it's

kind of a bit odd you hanging around

with that asian person because you know

they come from a country which is not

traditionally that supportive of

you know the united states and you know

we did you know that you know

70 years ago we were actually at war

with this country and you know and

you're supposed to formulate a whole

revised opinion of somebody based upon

history you were never aware of

which is supposed to affect personal

relationships and now i can't mention

this in front of this person in case

you know i offend them and because i

remember like

in grade school i mean with asian people

if somebody said to you

what does an asian person look like

you're gonna

enact stereotypes yeah

you're going to but it's innocent you by

no means when you say like when you're

six years old

you know if you point out that many

asian countries

you know people's eyes are you know of a

different shape

than a traditional western is you're not

being racist you're just pointing out an

actual

factual difference and if you asked you

know an asian kid of the same age what's

the difference between westerners like

what they have around their eyes they

feel like it's not being racist

it's just a fact it's a characteristic

it's a personal characteristic you're

not saying that person's better or worse

yeah he's pointing out a difference

which is a true fact

but now that's considered racist i mean

there was somebody

on the news who was um

i think they'd made a comment years and

years ago

and i don't even like this person so i

don't know why i'm kind of saying this

because it sounds like i'm sticking up

for them but they made some comment

about asian people having squinty eyes

right which technically if you want to

go from it you want to approach it from

a pre-k type of description of somebody

yep okay they do

so i've i've known people white people

with squinty eyes i've known white

people very bulbasized you know those

people it almost looks like their

eyeballs popping out my head

but so well yeah it doesn't affect how i

feel about that person it doesn't limit

what i think they're capable of it

doesn't lessen them in my eyes in terms

of their role of society what they can

achieve so to me

that's not racism it's just me noticing

a difference which

they themselves notice i know this now

if i treat them differently based upon

that

different matter sure you know but

if you start teaching kids hey it's

wrong to notice differences

you know michael's skin's darker than

yours so you need to treat him

differently you know you've got to

walk around now apologizing a lot more

if you happen to win something you've

got to give it to michael because

apparently you know there may have been

some disparities in the way

these things been handed out in the past

so you've got to suffer for it and

you're

bringing up kids with like i said you're

trying to take away the innocence which

you know they had at an earlier age and

get them to carry the guilt which other

people

had the luxury to forego i think yeah

sorry that's a long-winded answer no no

i mean i i think that's a good i think

that's a good place to

i think that's a good place to land is

that yeah i mean

i hope my hope is that in the generation

i mean we both have

uh young boys your your sons not to be

eight my son's about to be

two in a few months and i hope that the

world that we raise them in

i hope that that's not the case that we

can't how do i say this in a positive

that we are allowed to point out

differences

and have discussions like this with

people who

for whatever reason certain groups don't

want to work together people

want to point fingers and say oh you're

the enemy of this person you're

you're not supposed to associate with

them you're not supposed to do this or

you're not supposed to ask that question

because

uh for whatever reason right because

well because their skin color is this

color

is darker so they're less or

yeah very you know ideas oh well they're

the

they're the descendants of kane right

all the way to

well because their skin color is lighter

they have carried a privilege that you

will never get

sure and so you're gonna have to operate

in the world in a way that is

and it's like well i i just hope that

those conversations and so when somebody

says something like that

i hope that there is a conversation

that's allowed to come up to say well

why

or or why is it that way yeah instead of

having to put the brakes on it and say

well

i can't really say anything because if i

share a very honest opinion about this

that maybe doesn't exactly line up with

these certain people

now my phrase and my words will get used

against me and i'll

yeah i'll lose my job i'll lose all of

this or i'll lose all these friends

because i

i voted for a certain person or i didn't

vote for a certain person

um yeah i hope that we can i hope that

we can get to that place well i think a

couple of good examples over the last

two months

sleeping beauty apparently on a new ride

a sleeping beauty ride at one of the

disney

places they had to remove or alter one

of the rides because it shows the prince

kissing sleeping beauty and

the so-called uproar was about that

because she was

in a coma or whatever she was in deep

sleep that

she couldn't give consent to that kiss

and so it was inappropriate and it's

teaching kids that

you know it's okay to kiss without the

person's consent

and you know the second example

um is one where

you know all this going back in time and

you know

rewriting or completely taken out scenes

from old movies

or songs which went 30 or 40 years

uh without causing any offense and then

somebody picks up a line and says like

you know like

baby it's cold outside right they

decided that that sounds a little bit

rapey

in terms of some of the lyrics because

he just wanted to go and so pleased with

her to stay

and stuff and the sad thing is

everything everything come by now all of

a sudden

yeah the sad thing is that it's probably

only

one percent of one percent of

people on the left who actually think

that way and

the other you know proportion of people

on the left or even

if they identify as liberals think that

stuff's just as crazy as we do

but the way it's presented you then have

a large proportion of people on the

right who think

well that must be the attitude of

everybody on the left

but equally you know people on the left

are being taught that

you know everybody on the right are all

you know capital building

insurrectionists and we all you know

hate immigrants and

were all anti every single vaccination

not just this particular shop

it doesn't classify the facts i recall

refused to call it that

um but again it's this one percent of

one percent of people who

you know they make they make the news

because it seems so outlandish and so

outrageous but then we formulate this

view that okay with that's the opinion

of people on the left they think there

are

over 200 genders whereas for all the

democrats i know none of them think

there are 200 genders

yeah you know yeah but

so again it'd be easy to label and be

like oh yeah i don't want to

i don't want to you know socialize that

person they're a democrat

so you know they're going to be offended

at

something i wrote on twitter you know

nine years ago

but truth is people aren't like that but

i think we're being pushed to view that

it is a

huge huge problem and a huge conflict

which

is a daily hourly conflict where in

reality i mean how many people have you

met

day to day week to week month to month

who

really share any of those six stream

views from the left or the right

you know i wouldn't tell i wouldn't be

able to tell with most people whether

they're

democrat or republican even after

talking for 30 minutes unless i ask them

specifically they don't come out

with these radical things of like we

need to overthrow the government or

you know we shouldn't tell our dog you

know good boy because it's you know a

sign in them agenda and they might feel

like they're a female and by calling

them good the other pet you didn't call

good

might now have insecurity issues yeah

the majority of people don't feel like

that just because

a liberal might have said that or you

know some conservative person in east

texas might have said

yeah well it's time for an insurrection

we need to overthrow them don't mean all

people on the right

share that viewpoint you've got oddballs

in society and again even that becomes a

oh well now you're being offensive to

people with mental health well

you know what just tell me what words i

can use and i will find a way to make

those offensive in some way

allow me to i remember there was an old

episode of friends where joey

was i think showing maybe

phoebe or monica they could turn any

word or

phrase and make it sound kind of like

dirty yes

yeah now i can't remember what it was

it's like aunt caroline's apple pie

you know it's like you can turn anything

and make it inappropriate

you know and i think that's where it's

out they just look to make literally

anything

you know inappropriate yeah yeah well

i i think that's a good that's a good

place right there i mean we can

uh yeah we can end on the friends note

we can end on

uh yeah if if you are somebody that does

that

if you are somebody that is so polarized

by some of these opinions

maybe take a second yeah take a second

to actually talk to the person that

maybe

does offend you that maybe their social

media posts uh

you don't like them take a second or or

just try to engage with them

on something other than that and i think

you would be surprised to see

how much you really do have in common

that you really can connect with that

person and

uh there is so much more that is way

more valuable than these

uh these um for lack of better verbiage

but these dumb ideas that seem to

to separate us but also i'd say go ahead

yeah

take some level of personal

responsibility

because it's not all about the other

person being thin skinned

and being offended because you can say

the same thing

say in different ways and it have very

different meanings so we do have care

to everybody to you know how we deliver

our message

i just want to leave on my part with an

example from ricky gervais on one of his

stand-up

tours he said you know the words you say

and the way you say them can have very

different effects he said let me give

this example

he said if uh one of your friends you

haven't seen in about six months

pulls out you know a photo of their

daughter who you haven't seen in a few

years and they show you the photo and

you go oh yeah she's beautiful

it sounds very dismissive like you don't

care you don't care about family

everything else but

if you take too long and you say the

same words he said it can come out even

worse and it goes

so if you take the effort and you're

like oh

yeah she's beautiful he said i can come

across as creepy

yeah yeah the the the phrase i use

uh that that i always

used for that or heard used for that uh

exact idea was

uh well i didn't say you were fat and if

you emphasize

any of those words yeah it's gonna have

i didn't say yeah fat

i didn't say you were fat i didn't say

yeah you were fat i didn't say you were

right so you can do that and and you're

right like yeah

have have fun with that one um you can

have anything

that can say that and you're right

personal responsibility we have to be

responsible and again if you

for myself uh you know looking at it

like

we have a higher responsibility if you

say that you're a christian if you label

yourself that way

you have a higher responsibility to

before your political affiliation

how do you represent god in that now

that doesn't mean that you can't

have strong opinions you can't have

strong opinions jesus had strong

opinions on things

but in the way that you develop them in

the way that you deliver them

i think like you said i think it's

incredibly important of how we do that

and

if you are somebody that calls yourself

a christian you have to say hey my

my first responsibility is ultimately

reconciling

bringing people back to god and so if

there's something that's gonna cause me

to not do that because i get so caught

up on

i really like cheeseburgers and this

person really likes fish and now all of

a sudden we're gonna

separate and we're gonna be different

people and we're not gonna associate

because of something so silly i mean

yeah and people would think oh nobody

would ever do that but just why don't

you just look at the things that you

choose to not uh associate with people

and

sometimes they're not as as ridiculous

as as a change like that

um tristan do you have anything this is

this has been i think this is the

first episode that we've touched on i i

can't even

this was not even the map that we had

set out but i really enjoyed it i really

enjoyed the time i think we we did touch

on almost about a thousand different

topics here

um i appreciate your 40 that you yeah

yeah thank you no thanks for having me

on um

i don't normally have a good

track record of following

the following routes when it comes to

like interviews and podcasts and stuff

so that's

kind of normal really par for the course

yeah yeah

uh well well thank you yeah i appreciate

you guys um

check out the wolf and the shepherd you

can do that on any any podcast streaming

platform you can find them there

um you're gonna like it if you like this

podcast if you like different topics

you're gonna get a lot of different

topics a lot of

a lot of stuff and i i appreciate the

the flavor that you guys bring to these

different topics

yep and uh we don't have any cussing on

there

so it's children friendly yeah uh it's

not always

brain friendly because sometimes we talk

about ridiculous topics

and um check out especially the

in other news episodes because we do

actually

take people from all walks of life all

colors or political backgrounds

and just point out the ridiculous

stories in society just so we have other

people to laugh at rather than ourselves

that's that's a lot of fun that's a

that's a good way to put it well this is

it's been the 100 000 podcast we are an

audio magazine

uh we've kept it an average of 70 today

um and we talked about almost a thousand

topics but we we are

signing off thanks for listening to this

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podcast

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