Occupy Wall Street

Full transcript: Occupy Wall Street on London Real

2:03 Hello and welcome to London Real. My name is Brian Rose and I’m here with my main man, Nick Gabriel. We have just come from St. Paul’s where the Occupy Wall Street movement was happening. Nick, what did you think of that?

2:18 Interesting. Interesting. I admire what they’re doing. I really do. I’m not sure it’s going to make a difference though.

2:26 Capitalism is a juggernaut that has got so much momentum behind it. I think a few hundred people sitting in tents, I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s enough. I know you said that when we were down there, it just didn’t seem like it had a lot of momentum behind it. But I guess all movements start that way, right?

2:45 I’m even trying to figure out whether they should be doing this or not. I know you’re a capitalist at heart. I’m still trying to decide whether I am or not. I’d like to know why you think capitalism is the best system. The reason I think capitalism is the best system is because humans, I think, are lazy.

3:03 We’re just lazy individuals. And unless you have to get up and go to work, unless I have to get up and do my job, or you have to go and train someone or do that, then you’re just not going to do it. And I think unless you’re motivated by money and need to eat or something, I think the human race isn’t motivated otherwise to do things and to innovate and to just kind of push yourself harder than you need to go. What do you think about that? When I hear that, I mean, what you’re saying makes complete sense, but what about if you think of tribal societies in civilizations, or in times gone by?

3:41 Like Papua New Guinea type examples. Yeah, I mean, all they had to do was hunt and gather the resources they needed for, like the very few things they needed, like maybe straw to build huts or whatever. I don’t know. When you, when that’s all you need to do, you can spend your spare time doing other things like thinking or enjoying yourself or just being, you know, playing with your kids. It’s when you’re chasing down this dream of acquiring stuff that you kind of get lost.

4:12 You have a good point. I mean, when you talk about innovation, I think on our last session, you were talking about, you know, the desire to innovate. And I just don’t think without capitalism, you’d have an iPhone or anything like that. I think we would just still be living in a kind of agrarian, socialistic way. Or look at communism examples, look at Cuba, where a doctor earns the same as a bus driver and there’s no, you can’t transfer property rights, you can’t buy and sell property, you can only transfer it, and there’s no, you know, there’s no real consumerism.

4:41 And I just think that’s a perfect example of what hasn’t worked. I mean, you go there and it’s just antiquated, falling down. People aren’t motivated to do their jobs. What’s become clear to me from my current perspective is, you know, capitalism is not a perfect system. But up until now, it’s probably one of the best ones we’ve had.

5:01 You know, I’m not saying I agree with these protesters at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London. There are inherent problems and it’s becoming more and more apparent that a lot of people are getting screwed over in the system. But it doesn’t mean we need to take the wheels off the car. It just means we need to maybe change its properties a little bit. Does that make sense?

5:23 Yeah, I think capitalism always has to be checked. And you look at what FDR did in the 1930s. He brought in the New Deal and he involved all these social programs after the Depression because things were really bad. You know, there wasn’t any kind of low-income housing or anything like that. So I think it always has to be checked.

5:37 And I was reading an article recently at a website called Stratfor. It’s a strategic forecasting. And he was just saying that basically you’ve got the wealthy elites, which is like the bankers, that the political elite trust to kind of make our system work. And when they fail, like they did in 08, the political elite has to go after someone or the population will come after the political elite. So they have to go back and just say, okay, we trust you with this system and you just screwed it all up.

6:01 So now we have to go after some heads in order to keep our position as the political elite. Otherwise, they’ll get elected with someone else, a Green Party or something, and they’ll do the job. But you saw in this last iteration of 08, not many heads rolled in the banking and finance world. And you could argue maybe that’s because they’re doing all the campaign contributions to Obama and everyone else. But I can see why there’s anger down there.

6:23 And I worked in the city for nine years and I started my first job on Wall Street in 1993. But I could see the anger there. I just think sometimes it’s not properly thought off. I heard some things today. I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

6:37 To me, like the way I look at it is that we’re approaching an epoch where the conditions are very similar to when they were just before the French Revolution. Do you know what I mean? There’s like a massive discrepancy between income levels, between the rich and the poor. And that gap or that gulf is only growing. What was this?

7:01 We heard is it the top 1%? Something like 90% of the wealth. Quite a skew. Yeah, but I was chatting to a friend of mine, Dan, and I made that same point and he said that’s how it’s been throughout history. And so the way I think about it is from a comic view, like in one lifetime you’ll be the 1% and in another lifetime you’ll be the 99%.

7:29 Some days you’re the hammer, some days you’re the nail. And some days you’re the wood, right? You’re the wood. That’s good. Yeah, I mean, has it always been that way?

7:38 I don’t know, maybe it has with that distribution of wealth. You know, when I see something like today, I try to put it in my own head because I worked as a banker originally and then I worked as a broker which was basically working with bankers all day long. And I mean, people get mad at the bankers, the greedy bankers, they’re being paid too much. And I try to get my head around it because I used to spend time with those guys. And the way I look at it is I think you need to separate the banks from the bankers.

8:01 You know, I mean, banks have historically provided us with capital for infrastructure building, for investment, for trade without banks. If everybody put their money in the mattress, there would be no capital in order to further, you know, economy and civilization. So there’s a reason for the banks. Now, you get bankers, well-paid bankers, are guys making a lot of money in these banks. Maybe they’re trading derivatives or doing that kind of thing.

8:22 And they get paid very well. The way I try to look at it is a bank just like a company like Apple, they have shareholders, they have to reduce profits. Otherwise, people will sell the bank stock and buy Apple shares. So ultimately, they have two things. They have depositors, which they need to make sure their money stays safe or you’re going to have riots on the street.

8:40 And then you have the guys that make all the money, which are the proprietary traders. There’s a documentary I watched a few years ago. It’s called The Corporation. And one of the points that they were trying to make was a corporation is a legal entity that has the same rights as an individual. And the reason corporations were created was to shield business owners.

9:03 But the problem is a corporation exists for one aim, and that’s to generate profit. And it doesn’t have the moral restrictions on it that a human being does. So a company will always go after profits regardless of the cost to human welfare. And that’s why they argue that that’s why capitalism is in a bad way. So that’s a counterpoint to what you were saying about.

9:29 Yeah, and of course, because when you invest in a corporation, when you buy a stock or something, I mean, you wanted to make money. That’s what you wanted to do. I mean, when you invest in Apple stock, they did a really interesting article before Steve Jobs died about, you know, Apple actually has no philanthropic endeavors. They do not give money to anyone. And they’re like, okay, it’s this huge company, it’s one of the largest in the world.

9:49 And they don’t give even, I think, $10 million to any charities or anything. Well, I agree with that because most of those philanthropic efforts by companies are just utter bullshit. It’s just a facade, right? Could be. But they were putting money.

10:00 I think Jobs was just like, look, I’m here to make the best technology possible. I’m not here to be a great, you know, person in benefactor and that kind of thing. And I think that’s right. I mean, a corporation, like you said, is set up for one reason to make money. It needs to be checked by legal and political means, which doesn’t always work because you get, you know, campaign contributions.

10:18 But something that has become very clear to me, you were saying how capitalism exists or the reason it’s important is because human beings are inherently lazy. Now, in your time working in the city, did you find that bankers worked especially hard or harder than the average person? Yes. You did. I would say, first of all, you have some very smart people in the city.

10:40 For sure. You know, I mean, people can complain about the bankers and the jobs they had. But, you know, these were the guys that did study hard for the most part, went to the universities. They’re fairly smart individuals. Don’t get me wrong.

10:50 There are some, you know, there’s a lot of chaff in there as well. The thing is, is that in the banking industry, you’re dealing with such large amounts of money, you know, such large transactions that if you take one one hundredth of one percent, which is a common transaction fee. So, for example, if you have a hundred pound transaction, that’s one P. That can be a lot of money. And so you get all this trade going.

11:10 You look at the societies like the Dutch. I mean, the Dutch is a country. They don’t have much to offer, but they were a trading route. And so that’s why Amsterdam became so rich in the 1500s and 1600s, because they just facilitated trade. Lots of money involved.

11:22 And these bankers, they get paid to perform. It’s all about the annual bonus. And if they make money, they call it in the city, you eat what you kill. So that’s what it’s all about. And they’re working the long hours in order to do that.

11:33 And so I’m not justifying it, but that’s what the dynamic is like. Do you, in your experience, during your time working in banks and as a broker, do you think that most of those people are happy and fulfilled? Oh, man. Probably no. You know, I mean, the thing is when you’re poor, you want some people want money and you want lots of money.

12:01 And so if you look around, what’s the way to get it? Maybe there’s entertainment, starting your own business, going into Wall Street, becoming a lawyer, I don’t know. And so you have this goal of, I want this money. And you kind of get lost in just a number. And you’re a bonus at the end of the year is a number that’s big in your head and you can keep score with your friends.

12:19 But at the end of the day, it doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. And if you’re working 80 hours a week, you don’t necessarily have time. You see these guys, they’ll buy a Ferrari and they’ll drive it from South Kensington to the city and the city back to South Kensington. And I talk with guys that have like Ferraris that have like 5,000 miles on them after three years, because they literally just, and so it’s like, you know. You know, I rarely respect and admire people who can do things like that.

12:44 I rarely respect and admire you for going and putting in all that time working in institutions like that. You know, when I first arrived in London, I was just at a university in South Africa and I landed a job with one of the big banks. Okay, I didn’t know that. Yeah, and I didn’t go in. The first day, I called them and I said, I’m not coming in, because just my instinct told me this is not right.

13:09 This is not what you want. You’ve got to expand on this, because now I’m hooked. I mean, you know, it was in Canary Wharf and I remember walking out of the interview and I was surrounded by all these super high-rise buildings and I was just, I had this empty feeling in my soul and I was like, Nick, if you go down this path, you will be expected to sit in this building for 10 or 12 or 14 or 16 hours a day, five days or six days or seven days a week. And I just instinctively knew my soul said, this is not your path, man.

13:44 And yeah, but I respect and admire people who can do that because I got a friend who’s a banker and he was telling me that they count and time has toilet breaks. Really? Yeah, it’s one of the big banks and to me, that’s the ultimate loss of freedom. Like, I don’t want anyone to own me, you know, no matter how much money they’re paying me. It’s interesting you say that.

14:10 I mean, there’s so many different experiences in the banking world. You’re going to have some guy that’s stuck in the back office till 11 at night calculating profit and losses who doesn’t have the glamour trading job or is on the floor or the sales guy that gets to take guys out to drive Porsches in the weekend in Germany. And then you’ll have the guy behind the scenes doing the hard work too. So there’s different experiences in the city, but it’s interesting what you said about that.

14:32 But everything, like, I suppose the guy who slugs it out for 10 years and who makes his fortune, I wondered, does he say at the end of all that it was worth it or not? I don’t know, only he can say. Yeah, I don’t know. You compare that to, I guess, his alternative job, which is I don’t know where he would be working in the manufacturing plant or here or there. I see you’re quite a creative guy, Brian.

14:55 I know you’re always doing courses on video design and you’ve made your own film. I wouldn’t say I’m creative. Yeah, I think you are. And my question was going to be, I think everyone’s creative actually. I think that is true too.

15:11 And I think everyone’s an artist as well. I think that’s part of the life force, once they express itself through creativity. And it’s my understanding that a lot of these people who work jobs like that, there’s no outlet for their creativity and then a part of you starts to die. Did you ever feel that? Did you ever feel that your creativity or that creative impulse was being stifled?

15:32 Wow, that’s a strong question. You know, I wasn’t creating when I was there, really. When I first got there, I was creating my accounts in a certain business. But after that, it’s more of a maintaining process. And so, to be honest, this last couple of months, working with you on the podcast had been some of my most creative moments in like two years.

15:49 That’s hard to believe, you know, since I made the film. So, I would say there’s not a lot of creativity there. And you probably got that feeling when you were in Canary Wharf, right? Do you get a bit of a worker bee feeling there? The word I use is drone.

16:04 Okay, well, that is a worker bee, right? Yeah. But you have quite the 180 opposite of career path in a banker, right? Man, I’m not, again, when I see these people, most of the time, it’s admiration that I feel for them. It’s interesting you say that because there’s so many people, not like you, but there’s so many people that would go down to what we just saw, Occupy Wall Street, and they read the headlines and they just say, damn greedy bankers.

16:30 Government seems bailing them out. And so, I’m surprised to hear you say that. Well, these are intelligent people and they’re making rational choices. They’re like, this world runs on money. This is a way to get lots of money.

16:41 I’m going to do it. Okay. And man, I respect that. I completely respect it. And at one time in my life, that is a belief or a perspective I held.

16:51 You know, I’m not anti-money. I like money. I like what it can do. You know, I hope to have a lot of one day. Okay.

16:58 I just wonder if there’s not, I don’t know, I just think there has to be a better way. Some people I know rarely enjoy what they do. Some people thrive with their energy on the trading floor and that doggy dog world and making deals and that high energy situation. And that’s great. I just, it’s not for me.

17:15 Yeah. It can be quite a buzz. You know, it was that, I forgot what the movie was, but they called them Masters of the Universe, which the writer was actually making fun of these traders because the Masters of the Universe were these little like, they were these little plastic dolls or these little plastic figures. Was it American Psycho? No, no.

17:32 It was, gosh, I forgot the name. Bonfires of the Vanity with Tom Hanks. And so, they were called Masters of the Universe. And if you think of it, it’s like, oh yeah, but they’re actually these little plastic toys, you know. So, they think they’re Masters of the Universe, but they’re actually the plastic toys.

17:43 But yeah, there’s a big buzz and you can get a big buzz off of that. And a trading floor is pretty intense because you’re packed in like sardines. I mean, you’ve probably been to one before, I don’t know, but there’s no offices. And you each have about a, I used to have a meter of space and then a guy next to me had a meter of space and meter space. So, you’re packed in because you need that density for the information exchange.

18:02 And so, almost claustrophobic because you’re with these guys. You’re listening to them. You’re smelling them. You eat, you eat there on the desk. You don’t go to lunch.

18:10 You get your food on the desk. Most of the guys found that they ate really fast because of the job you’re always on the phone. So, when they would go out to dinner with their wives, they would find they would eat their food really fast because they were constantly like that. But I don’t know. I’m sure lots of jobs have that buzz as well.

18:26 I’m sure performing, that kind of thing. Something that’s become clear to me is, you know, there’s an expression if you want to succeed in life, you have to work hard. You know, it’s all about hard work. And I agree. You probably won’t achieve any goal or objective if you don’t put in a certain amount of hard work.

18:44 But I’m starting to understand it’s more about working smart like in applying your leverage at specific leverage or applying your powers and your mental capacities at specific leverage points. Because one of the things you have to remember is that many people work hard their whole lives and have nothing to show for them. Yeah. It’s very hard to take a bird’s eye view of your life and to critically assess your own capabilities. I think you’ve done that.

19:13 I’ve heard you talking to people before and you’re like, I’m not good at this. You do this. I’m good at this. But I think it’s hard to do that. It’s very difficult.

19:21 Are you able to do that? Well, it’s impossible to be completely objective about your life or anything else. It is. We’re all super subjective. Exactly.

19:30 I mean, one of the exercises I try to do is every now and then I just try to imagine my life as a stranger looking in. But maybe that gives me a slight bit of clarity. But at the end of the day, my mind will take me where it wants me to go. There’s nothing I can do about that. Do you know what I’m saying?

19:49 I know what you’re saying. It’s good, though, if you can try to look at your consciousness from the outside. Observing ego, right? Yeah, observing ego if you can do it. I was just thinking of something random.

19:57 Will Smith said before he made Men in Black with Tommy Lee Jones, and he did his breakout movies. And also when he did, what was that one where America gets taken over by those aliens? Independence Day. Independence Day. Him and his manager took a step back and they said, what are the top 10 grossing movies of the last 10 years?

20:15 They all were science fiction and had creatures. And he said, these are the top 10 movies, Star Trek, Star Wars. And he’s like, so he’s going to make a movie based on that. I mean, if there’s ever a good example of taking a macro perspective and looking at his career, that’s smart. I’ve had a thought recently that, you know, I always, I had this erroneous belief or perspective that business and creativity were diametrically opposed paradigms.

20:44 And now I’m starting to realize that that’s not the case. Some of the most creatively intelligent people I know are businessmen. And the way to make profit, the way to provide a good or service that people want is to think creatively and think out the box and find areas that haven’t been, I don’t want to say extracted, but haven’t been utilized or find strategies that haven’t been utilized. And I think that’s what I’d like to do. Like, I’m starting to get more and more focused on my own businesses and I’m enjoying the creative process of that, you know?

21:19 It’s like the ultimate, one of the ultimate creative places because there’s no canvas and there’s no, there’s almost no history of artists. You have to kind of mimic and you kind of can do your own thing. I think Andy Warhol even once said, a beautiful, a business, a profitable business is a beautiful work of art, you know? And if you think of Andy Warhol, he’s known for all of his pieces of art, but he had a place in New York City called The Factory where he literally cranked out all those paintings you see of like Mao, Queen Elizabeth, you know?

21:48 And he just, he literally cranked them out and sold them for like crazy money. And he was, he was probably the ultimate capitalist as an artist. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that about Andy Warhol. He’s a fascinating guy.

21:58 That’s a really cool quote. So what did he say? I have to Google it. It’s something like, I guess something like not a profitable business, but something like a good business is a work of art. You see, because in my mind, for the longest time I associated business with accountants and, you know?

22:17 I think most people do. Do you know what I mean? And that’s probably why I didn’t put much focus on it during my 20s is because I didn’t like the idea of that. But now I’m starting to understand that you can be a pretty well-rounded and interesting person and a businessman. And starting a business is very hard.

22:34 It is. I mean, they say it’s 90 some percent of all small businesses fail. I’ve heard that that statistic has been proven false. Really? Yeah.

22:43 From everything I’ve seen, it’s pretty accurate. I’ve just seen so many people have a hard time trying to get into a business niche and trying to keep it. I mean, these days, a good example is the iPhone. Like I remember four years ago when I bought my stereo system or five years ago, six years ago, the guy tried to sell me a device so I could control everything wirelessly. And that was completely made redundant with the iPhone because they give it these apps that are almost free.

23:03 And I try to think of how many businesses the iPhone took out because all of a sudden now people have these touchscreen wireless app, wireless devices in their pockets. And anyone else that had made this investment effort to try to provide that device in any form is now, it’s now outdated and no longer relevant. Yeah. On the subject of technology, there’s a concept, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, it’s called the singularity. Do you know anything about that?

23:30 No. But I’d like to. Yeah, if I’m not mistaken, it was first coined by the futurist Ray Kurzweil. And singularity refers to a point in history whereby we will create artificial intelligence that will be able to create an intelligence smarter than itself. Kind of like in Terminator 2, like Skynet.

23:50 Okay, all right. And apparently the interesting thing about it is all the cultural models break down when you get to the point of the singularity the same way all the models in physics break down when you try to describe black holes. It’s just so far beyond anything the existing model can cope with. Wow. I don’t understand black holes.

24:17 I’m quite interested. I think we are approaching something like that. I’ve got a friend who’s doing his PhD in artificial intelligence and some of the stuff he tells me is just absolutely fascinating. Wow. I mean, you see it on the ground with this new Siri speak to thing on the iPhone from everyone I’ve spoken to, it’s pretty incredible as in they have conversations with her.

24:40 And I mean, I’m just thinking about waking up every morning and saying good morning to my iPhone and where that goes from there and having semi-intelligent, artificially intelligent conversations with your devices. Gosh, that’s scary. On the subject of the iPhone, I just am continually amazed by that piece of technology. I always tell people it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever held in my hand. It’s the last thing I look at at night before I go to sleep and in the morning it’s the first thing I reach for.

25:09 More than your children, right? I don’t have children. But if you did, it would still be the case, right? Well, yeah, maybe. Depends on what my children were, right?

25:19 Yeah. It’s impressive. I remember when you got one, this was like three or four years ago, and I didn’t have one yet, and you looked at me. I used to carry around my Sony Ericsson and my iPod, you know, together. And you said, Brian, don’t think, just buy one.

25:34 Yeah. And I was just like, okay. And I did. It’s a great, amazing thing. I didn’t look back.

25:39 Yeah, apparently, Steve Jobs saw that technology presented to him when they were working on a tablet and he saw the touch screen and how versatile it was, and he said, we’re not going to make a tablet. We’re going to make a phone with that, because his brain saw that there would be so much more applications on a phone first. I couldn’t have made that call. I’m like, make the tablet. Yeah, I’m not entirely sold on tablet computing.

26:05 Have you played with an iPad? Yeah, I’ve played with an iPad. It’s kind of cool. You know, I don’t know that it can do anything that my laptop can’t do. And I know there’s a lot of things it can’t do that my laptop can’t.

26:15 Yeah. And there’s a little big brother there. There’s no torrents. There’s no… You can’t download certain things.

26:21 Yes. It kind of keeps… Speaking of torrents, what’s your take on downloading music and movies illegally from the internet? I don’t favor it. You know, I’m in two ways.

26:32 I mean, you know, I made a film, okay. And so when people just download films and watch them, it makes me a little angry because I do respect artists’ rights and they’re proprietary and they have a right to sell their art. And there’s a whole business in Hollywood that wouldn’t exist. I think the porn industry’s gotten killed from illegal downloads. They still make a lot of money.

26:49 But I’m against it. At the same time, if the artist can’t provide it to me in a way where I can pay something for it and get it, then I’m the first one to download it, you know. I get you. And there was an article that came out a year or two ago and it was something like, better than free. It was something like that saying that the user will actually pay for content if you put it in a right form or in the right platform, they’re happy to pay for it.

27:13 For example, I’m happy to go into iTunes and pay for pounds for a movie if I know it’s going to be crisp and clear and everything as opposed to taking a random chance with a torrent where you don’t know what it is. Or say an artist has an album and they sign 50 limited versions of a consumer might pay to have something like that. So I think it’s the artist’s responsibility to make that content better or on demand. What do you think? You know, it’s a tough one.

27:39 I do respect all the effort that goes into producing film and music and television. I really do. Music’s got killed. Yeah. The thing is, you know, if you think about a rock star, right, or the music industry in general, they’ve been raping the consumer for years.

27:55 You know, like, the reason you pay 15 quid for a CD is so that… We’re used to. Yeah, we’re used to it. So that music industry execs can throw these wild, expensive parties and snort coke off. I don’t know, whatever.

28:08 They’re corporations and they’re trying to make money. And that’s fine. But if you look at the way the models change now, now artists are making most of their money off live tours. Yeah. And I think that’s great.

28:20 I think that’s a way that piracy is actually… It’s keeping artists real, man. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Ice T says something funny about it.

28:29 He’s talking about how no one pays for music anymore. And he’s like, you know, when was the last time you paid for a song? He said to someone and he’s like, okay. He’s like, when was the last time you paid for a sandwich? He’s like, you know, you pay five pounds for a sandwich, right?

28:40 Because you want to eat every day, but you refuse to pay anything for a music track. And it’s just gone completely… Yeah, pirateable. But like you said, touring is the way to do it and that’s why they make money. Speaking of paying for music, I’m using Spotify at the moment.

28:56 And that’s such an incredible service. I pay ten pounds a month, which is about fifteen dollars, if I’m not mistaken. Right. And… That’s a lot of money.

29:05 Yeah. Is it though? I know. This is what people say. That’s like, that would get me the equivalent of ten tracks on iTunes.

29:12 True. Right? True. I download as much music as I want. I don’t legally own it, but I have the right to access it on my iPod or my computer, which is where I use it.

29:20 You can’t exit on your phone, no. Well, on my iPhone. You can? Yeah, I can. Okay.

29:26 And, you know, everyone who’s listening and watching, I would highly recommend Spotify. It’s incredible. The thing is, once you stop the subscription to the service, it’s no longer yours to listen to. But still, I mean, it’s such a more fluid and versatile way of running the industry, I think. I’d be surprised if Apple or one of those big media companies didn’t buy out Spotify soon.

29:45 Does it stream to your iPhone, or is it actually stored? It streams, but what you can do is, you can create a playlist and put the tracks you want in it, and then you can click on a little tab that says Make Available Offline, and then it will actually download them to your computer. And what it does is, every time you turn it on, it will send a message to the server just to see that your account’s still going. Okay. And then you can continue to play them off your hard drive or off your iPhone or whatever it is.

30:10 Interesting. Great service. Yeah, it’s cool. You know, I was reading something recently about how Apple, the one business they never got into was the television industry. And for a while, they were selling TV programs through iTunes.

30:22 And then they had the Apple TV device, which I have, but you actually can’t watch television on the Apple TV. You can only go in and only order movies. And I think they had a… They’re not doing television shows anymore? I think the cable companies got together and forced the studios not to sell to Apple because they make so much money off your cable subscription.

30:37 I mean, I was paying Skye like 75 pounds a month just for all my premium channels. 75 quid a month. That’s a lot. That is a lot of money. And when I left, because I changed houses, they were like, calm me up.

30:49 They’re like, no, no, we’ll come. We’ll install it for free. And I was like thinking about it. I was like, okay, because I’m paying them like a grand a year. No wonder.

30:57 You know, that’s a real, that’s a serious customer. Yeah. I love television shows, but I do not like the idea of sitting down on the couch and just vegetating in front of the TV because then it just spews out at you and you’re just absorbing what it wants to play you, especially like commercials. I like the idea of hearing about a box set or a series from a friend and then going out and getting the box set and then watching that in my own time on my DVD player. Like a well-made television series like Mad Men or…

31:23 Exactly. Yeah. That way you can cut out all the extraneous bullshit. I mean, goddamn, some of the adverts on television it’s just too much, bro. I don’t want to watch that.

31:31 Drives you insane. Yeah. And I mean, don’t even get me started about news. I mean, the news is just, you never want to watch the news on television. You never want to watch a BBC or anything.

31:40 It’s shot journalism. Tim Ferriss, in his first book, The Four-Hour Workweek, he goes on about making a decision to not read newspapers or watch television. Is that part of his information diet? It is. And man, I did that.

31:55 I started that four years ago and I don’t read newspapers and I don’t watch the news. And people are like, oh, how are you going to know what’s going on in the world? And I just say to them, look, what you get given from a TV news show or from a newspaper, it’s such a filtered and packaged piece of information. You have no idea how true that is. Yeah.

32:17 The good example was the London riots that they had a couple months ago. A good buddy of mine from New York called me up and was like, are you okay? Are you okay? And I was like, dude, I’m here. What you see on TV is okay, there was some fires and there was some drama, but it looked like the whole city was in siege.

32:31 I felt fine during that. But on the news, it made it look, well, because that’s their job. You want to panic people. And bad news sells, right? It does.

32:39 My buddy, yeah. Actually, I won’t say his name, but he works for an airline and there was a big strike earlier in the year and he was at the strike where it was actually happening in the negotiations with the airline. And he said what? He’d go home at night at the end of being at strike and what he’d see on the news was just outright misinformation. He said it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

33:08 And it’s crazy, but since it’s on the news or it’s in print, as a human, you inherently believe it, right? What always interests me is how, you know, like let’s say on a busy weekday morning, you’ll be walking towards one of the London Underground stations and you’ll see a guy standing, handing out these free newspapers and everyone just takes one. And I’m like, I feel like saying to them, look, the reason this newspaper is free is because it’s being paid for by people who have an agenda.

33:37 They want to get this information into your eyeballs, into your brain. Like you, I just, I look at those things and I kind of back away. To me, it’s like… It’s amazing to watch because if people have 20 minutes in the tube and they’ll look at it and watch it and it’s paid for by advertising. But I mean, if you look at like in the US and the 30s and 40s and 50s, like the newspapers controlled things.

33:57 Like the Corleone family had things in the newspapers and when Michael Corleone shot the cop, they just started putting articles. The cop was corrupt. I mean, you can sway public opinion massively. Big time. Trent Reznor from…

34:08 Actually, I’m sorry, not Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson. I watched an interview with him a while ago. He’s a smart guy. Very, very smart man, you know, and he was saying how… He knows exactly what he’s doing.

34:19 Yeah. There’s this cycle whereby the media feeds us fashion and popular culture and then we mimic that and feed it right back so the media goes, okay, they like it and then feeds it back to us and it’s this never ending circle. So it’s this regurgitation and recycling of material and that’s scary. That’s very, very scary. Very scary.

34:39 You know, the funny thing, you can look at the common perception of beauty and how it’s changed over the last 100 years, 200 years, 300 years. If you go to the National Gallery in London or the National Portrait Gallery, you can see these pictures and like in the 1600s, a beautiful woman had like a huge forehead, enough where they would actually shave the top of their hair to make their forehead bigger. Come on. Yeah, and it was like a dainty little nose and all white because that was shown that you weren’t working, obviously.

35:03 Yeah. And that’s the perception of beauty and it was believed. Yeah. And then it was perceived. There was no models with abs 40 years ago.

35:12 Yeah. They didn’t exist. Abs existed. But like now, for a male ad or underwear ad or anything, I mean, it’s standard. So…

35:22 And guys are feeling that. That’s… Right? That’s really… Yeah, that’s…

35:27 Male beauty, too. That’s probably why you put that amazing six-pack on your mind. Yeah, you know. It’s a by-product. So think about this.

35:33 The standard for beauty is being influenced through the media. How many other things are being influenced that we don’t know about? Everything. Yeah. I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but you need to think about this stuff.

35:45 I mean, I kind of think I’m borderline conspiracy theorist. Yeah, but the thing that’s good about you is that you’re not walking around in a paranoid state saying, oh, yeah, they’re all doing this, all doing that. You don’t sound like an Occupy Wall Street where they have the solution. This is what’s going wrong. And I don’t know.

36:02 That’s where people lose credibility. Yeah, well, it’s an imperfect world and we’re all just trying to make our way through it. I think it’s very strong that you choose not to watch the news and not to read the free newspapers because that in itself I think is something very few people do. So there’s a thing in philosophy called the tabula rasa, which means the clean slate. It’s one of the goals is to be able to look at the world with that clean slate and not bring any of your preconceptions to the table, which is impossible.

36:31 Yeah, we all have those from birth. I mean, they’re instilled in that. It’s like you say everyone is racist because everyone has preconceived notions based on race. Exactly. You can try as much as you know not to.

36:43 But I still think it’s important for him. One thing I do is I try to constantly clean the slate. I know I can never reach that state of having no preconceptions, but I try to catch myself when I have a preconception and I follow it down. Why do I think this way? Where did that come from?

37:05 That’s one of the most important things I feel I’ve learned in the last few years is when you find an issue in your life and you have a very strong standpoint or you take a very strong stance or a very strong viewpoint on a particular issue. You have to ask yourself why? Where does this come from? Why did I start thinking that? Marriage is one of those things for me.

37:25 Please tell me more about that. Oh man, we’re all taught like you’re born, you go to school, you go to college, you find a wife or a husband, you get married, you have kids, they have grandkids, you get old, you retire, you die. Why? Why is that? Where did that idea come from?

37:43 It wasn’t always that way. No, it wasn’t. It may or may not be the right way for everyone. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, people say that that’s created to keep the civilization, you know, calm and rolling forward and monogamy is there to promote a family life and to promote the rearing of children and yeah, it’s funny, like you look at a movie like Goodfellas and you know when the guy starts cheating on his wife, it’s okay for a little while and then all the guys get together and they’re like you have to go back to their family, you know, and so like they had these core values of what’s like kept this Italian tradition through, is that the family, is it the very nature of, I don’t know, civilization or progress?

38:20 I don’t know. But we’re fed it to where even when you’re probably checking yourself with the tabula rasa, you’re probably still thinking someday I’m going to get married. You know, I try, I check myself all the time. I’m 40, I’ve never been married. I’ve never been close.

38:34 Hope that doesn’t offend anyone. Good for you. But I still think about it. I still think someday, one day, one day I’ll get married but why? Why are you doing that?

38:43 And we could talk for ages about that whole concept. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I have a lot of theories about marriage.

38:50 I have a lot of theories about alimony and the 50-50 split of wealth, which I completely don’t understand. I have a lot of things about, is marriage a contract or is it love? It’s really a contract. I don’t, I think like marriage is anti-love actually. I really believe that.

39:09 Tell me more. Man, I was the first guy to say he was going to get married and he was looking forward to having a family and everything. And that may or may not happen. I might change my mind in five or ten years’ time. I might get married, who knows?

39:23 But so people say they get married because they’re in love, right? But think about it this way. If you’re in love, love is a personal thing, dude. It’s a very personal thing. Why would you want to bring the state and the church legally through a contract into something like that?

39:41 That is just, to me, it’s poisoning something pure. And people say, oh, it’s because you want to make a statement to society that you committed to this person. Matt, if you’re committed to someone, you don’t need to make a statement. You’re committed. Do you know what I mean?

39:55 Yeah, I know what you mean. Donald Trump says something really interesting about marriage and prenups. And he says, always have a prenup when you get married. He’s like, always have a prenup. He said, you know how many deals that have gone bad with me where I’ve had a contractual obligation with a business?

40:09 And somehow later it went wrong. And based on the contract, we knew what one person got and one person didn’t get because it was a legal agreement. He said, take all that and now put emotions in it. Love and then betrayal and all the stuff that breaks down after marriage. And then look what happens.

40:24 Smart guy. You’ve layered a contract. And like you said, the church and the state, now the state can come in and mess with you. And then the emotions in a divorce court. I mean, gosh, it’s payback time.

40:35 A good friend of mine, he said, he’s a very successful businessman as well. And he says, if he looks at some of his past relationships, if he looks at them as businesses or if he had looked at them as businesses, he never would have entered into them. And I think… That’s the way you should look at it. Marriages is a businessman.

40:53 Or it’s a legal entity very similar to a business. And man, for me, love and business are two separate things. Very separate. You can love your business, but I don’t know. Should you be in love with it?

41:08 I don’t think so. That’s why in businesses you sign contracts and there’s legal and you know exactly what happens. A, B and C and D. You don’t just… I mean, you can shake hands on a deal, but most people don’t.

41:18 And yeah, that’s where they’re intertwined. And then you start getting… Yeah, you could get me talking all day about this and then the wedding ring and everything. So… So when you’re getting married, why?

41:28 Oh, man. Big shout out to Brian’s girlfriend. Yeah, you never know. That’s all I say. You do never know.

41:34 And also, I was a child of divorce. I always think about whether this affected me. Welcome to the club, my friend. You are? Okay.

41:41 My parents’ marriage… Dude, it puts so much shit into my head from such a young age. Like, that stuff will never get up. What age were you when that went down? They only got divorced a few years ago, but you know, there were a couple who…

41:56 They had no business… Using the word business, they had no business being together in the first place. And yet, they stayed together for the kids, which… They had noble intentions. And I applaud them for it, but it was the worst thing they could have done.

42:12 It was literally the worst thing they could have done. And that’s probably one of the reasons I’m so soured on marriage. Interesting. And they stayed married. Yeah.

42:20 Until a few years ago when they got divorced. So I was seven when my parents got divorced, and my dad just moved away like 15 minutes away. And when I look at it in retrospect, I couldn’t see them I think it would have been a nightmare just to watch that. But instead, I got to just live with my mom until she drove me crazy and threw me out to my dad. But I always try to view my thoughts on marriage through a perspective of being a kid of divorce.

42:46 And I don’t know if it’s affected it. It must have, right? It has to have, yeah. I mean, again, every pain has a pleasure, right? There’s something you got from…

42:55 Or something children from divorce situations get that children from stable homes probably don’t get it. Probably they get a strength or a self-reliance or… I’m not sure. Is it zero sum game, do you think, complaint, pain and pleasure? Definitely.

43:10 Really? Yeah. What about like post-traumatic stress disorder where someone is like rattled after being in Afghanistan for a year? Is there… Is that a point where it’s too much?

43:21 You know, that which does not kill me makes me stronger. Do you always believe in that in all scenarios? You know, it’s at this point where my beliefs, they’re pretty out there. You know, we spoke about you mentioned that you don’t believe in karma. I do.

43:35 Okay. I think… And I think karma definitely carries on from past lives. So, you know, the only way my mind can make sense of the great injustice in this world, the only way it can process that is through karma, you know, through the belief in karma because… And I’ve come to think to myself, you know, maybe you’re just holding on to the notion of karma to make yourself feel better.

44:05 Could be. I don’t think so. But if there’s no such thing as karma, then this is a very, very scary world. Yeah, that’s well said. That’s well said.

44:19 I just… I think about what I’m doing like a business deal with someone or recently I moved flats and I was just like, you know, making sure that everything was sorted out and fixed. And I was like, you know, I could leave this here and try to make a run and make sure they don’t get my deposit back. And I was just thinking, you know what, I’m not going to be that guy. I don’t want to send that bad negative energy out.

44:39 I’m just going to do the best I can and be straight up. And if I get nailed on one, that’s fine. But I was just thinking, I know what I can do for myself and I don’t want to, I don’t know, go out like that. That’s not really karma, is it? I think it is.

44:52 And I’m going to throw in my weekly biblical quote. Cool. I like him. I don’t read the Bible. What Jesus says, I think it was Jesus.

44:59 I’m hoping it was Jesus. He said, do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. And that’s the key to everything. Everything. Before I make any decision, I think to myself or any decision that involves other people, how would I feel if the same thing happened to me?

45:14 And some people say it’s a very childish way to look at things like only do what’s going to reward you or serve you. But I don’t think so. I think that is an amazing rule. It’s an amazing law of the universe that keeps everything in check. You know, what’s more amazing is that until two thousand years ago, nobody had conceived of that.

45:31 You see, that’s, I don’t think that’s technically true, because yeah, I think the Romans were doing that. Yeah, the Romans definitely weren’t doing that. But in Eastern traditions, in Hinduism, I mean, reincarnation is based on that whole, or based on similar principles. Karma is, you know, you get in this life situations as a reward of punishment from the life before. Right.

45:54 Some people would argue that that was only to keep the caste system functioning. I don’t think so. I think, I think karma, we spoke about it last week. You said you don’t believe in it because it’s a cosmic balance sheet. Yeah, I did say that.

46:07 I’ll stick to it. Yeah. What I said is, the way I look at it is, that’s not the way it works. Like if everything is energy and for every action or for every force is an equal and opposing force. So if you put something out, you should be expected to get the same, or an equivalent opposing force back.

46:27 I do think that’s true with energy and positive energy. You’re talking about the caste system. I was just wondering if you’ve been to India and then I was wondering on top of that. I haven’t, Brian. Well, okay.

46:36 I haven’t either. I’d love to check it out. What is the, from a cultural perspective, what’s the most interesting place you’ve been to or something that’s like a stunning kind of wow kind of observation moment. Or maybe that’s London. I don’t know.

46:50 But off the top of my head, the place I find most interesting is the United States. Okay. Interesting. Why? Every time I get to that country, I’m completely blown away, scared, excited, amazed by the scale of it all.

47:12 Just, you know, I arrive in, I go to the U.S. once a year at least, usually to the West Coast and I arrive at LAX and I either take a taxi or someone picks me up and we get on one of those freeways and you just see these like, these eight lane or ten, how many lanes are there? I think they do ten or even twelve and so six and a six. Where I grew up in Cape Town, the biggest highway’s got like four lanes, right? So for me it’s just incredible the scale of everything and the scale of commerce, you know, and the juxtaposition of the rich and the poor and it’s just an incredible place.

47:50 Very exciting. You find it exciting, man. Very, I haven’t, I’ve been to Thailand, I haven’t been to anywhere I think is as intense as India yet. I’d like to visit one day but, I hear it’s intense. Yeah, I think there’s plenty of interesting things still to see in the U.S.

48:05 I’ve been there like ten or twelve times, I’ll go another ten or twelve times. I think you could see, I mean there’s probably fifty cities you could go in the U.S. and see so many different things. I do believe, and I want to make it very clear that I love the U.S.A. I’m a huge admirer of its culture but I feel that it’s an empire, it’s a civilization severely in decline.

48:27 I think the twentieth century was the American century and I think there’s a lot of conditions that are similar to the ones that were found prior to, in Rome before the fall of their empire. Okay, or what, Britain’s empire or Spain’s empire? Yeah, but I think in America it’s most prevalent. I’ve heard that a lot. I’ve read a lot about that as this guy George Freeman from that site Stratford who talks about the next 100 years and he predicts what’s going to happen in certain countries that he’s bullish on.

49:01 He’s very bullish on Turkey because they have that whole Asian step there, they have access to Asia, they’re in a perfect position strategically, economically, but he’s quite bullish on the U.S. just because of the infrastructure, the waterways, the navies, it’s just the U.S. by luck of the draw in my opinion is just placed where it has the Pacific, it’s got the Atlantic, it’s got control around there, it’s got the trade, it’s got the rivers, and so he’s quite bullish on it for whatever reason.

49:29 I hope it works out. It’s an amazing place. It’s having a real identity crisis right now. I was reading today that I think home values across the U.S. are lower now than they were four years ago and that’s never happened in the U.S.

49:41 Since the Great Depression where it’s ever declined and people buy houses in the U.S. and it’s like the asset class that everyone’s proud of and they’ve been growing at seven or eight percent steadily over the last 60 years and now that’s not happened and everyone, it’s really freaked everybody out. It really has and I think it’s a major confidence issue for the U.S. and a wake-up call that people are having. What do you think the biggest crisis facing that country is as an American?

50:06 I think it’s a bit, I think it’s a bit like what the Greeks are realizing is that there’s a book called Who Moved My Cheese? Have you ever read that? Yeah. It’s a great book and it’s basically these mice that go every day and their cheese is there and that’s great, their life goes great and then one day someone moved their cheese and they’re like, what the hell? And they go through all the emotional reactions of things aren’t the way they used to be and I think the Americans are getting used to that just like I think the Greeks are understanding that they’re a kind of lifestyle that they’ve been used to over the years, the big pensions and the different things that they’re used to they couldn’t afford and now they’re getting a reality check and I think the U.S.

50:44 Assumes growth. They’re like, the U.S. will grow and we’ll all be part of that big ride and everything’s going to be prosperous in the future because that’s where the U.S. has been since the 1940s. Interesting you mentioned that book Who Moved My Cheese because the primary lesson about it was change and embracing it, right?

50:58 Yeah. Yeah. And I spoke about that in episode one. I’ve had that on my mind a lot lately. Really?

51:05 I’ve been thinking about it because so many people came up to me and so I watched the podcast and I was thinking about it and you said I think sometimes the hardest thing for us to do is the most necessary thing and so many people applied that to their lives and I’ve been thinking about it lately. I’m like, what the hell? What have you been doing lately? You know what I was thinking? Not enough.

51:25 But again, it’s an interplay. It’s always these that’s the those are the fundamental it’s one of the fundamental laws of existence. It’s the interplay between between opposing forces. So like you need you need change in your life but you also need stability. Yeah.

51:40 Too much of one or the other and you’re going to crave the opposite. Yes. You know, it’s like when you have too much stability in your life you get bored. But if it’s there’s too much shit happening too much stuff going down too much changing you get anxious. So I think it’s I was at a point in my life a few years ago when I was just pushing back and forth and I was like, you know, I’m not going to I was at a point in my life a few years ago when I was just pushing too hard and it was too much.

52:07 You know, I burned myself out. I realized I needed Okay, slow it down. It’s time to stabilize. What were you pushing? Just I was trying for growth too hard pushing my jiu jitsu pushing with relationships smoking a lot of weeds trying to push the to the limits of my mind pushing limits of my consciousness and got a lot of growth.

52:26 But at one point, you know, I was at a friend’s place in the States funny enough and he’s got this this herb garden and he was I was watching him tend to the plants that he was growing in. I realized that human beings are very similar to plants. You know, they need enough simulation to encourage growth but then they also need quiet time when the fans and the lights and the heating is off so that they can grow and replenish and one of the keys to living an exciting and interesting life is learning to walk that line.

53:03 Like how close are you to your edge because too far and you can fall off, right? You get manic and you just get the brain can’t process everything. Exactly, but too too far away and there’s not enough stimulation to encourage growth and you’re bored. I was just thinking what’s the best way to make sure that you’re constantly on the edge of that and the first thing that came to my mind is having really good friends around you and being in close contact with those people.

53:27 Do you think that’s true or not? You know, good friends that challenge you and push you and have new ideas that you can to either adopt or not adopt as opposed, I think the diametrically opposite of that is you on your sofa watching TV. Yeah, I agree. You just have to I guess you’d have to be careful that your friends weren’t we spoke about it before weren’t trying to limit your own growth because of their own discomfort at seeing your growth. The thing that’s becoming clear to me now is listening to the body.

53:55 You know, you can feel when you’re tired mentally and physically and again comes back to meditation. Most people are so distracted by the million things they have to do every day. They’re not listening to what’s going on. You know, sometimes when I’m sitting meditating I can feel God damn, I’m tired. You know, everything is tired.

54:16 My body hurts. My mind is tired. I’m weary. And that’s when I know okay, scale it back. You know, maybe tomorrow don’t work out or don’t do a podcast or whatever.

54:25 Just chill out for a day. That would be my answer to that. I think that definitely comes a little bit more with age as well. When I was in my teens and 20s it was just let’s push as hard as we can and that’s not good enough and push it even harder. And I don’t think I noticed when the body was giving out.

54:40 I think you just don’t pay attention to it. I’m the same Brian, yeah. Especially when you’re in a goal-oriented society. I mean, that’s what matters. That’s what matters.

54:47 The other thing I recently realized is that just I think we’re all built on just our interactions with each other. I just think that that’s like that’s the thing you kind of take away with you at the end of this life. I know it’s kind of a random thought here but as opposed to your accomplishments I mean those fade in importance and those things you did when you competed like when I was 30 I was competing whether it was business or personal and all those accomplishments are fading now and what I really remember now is kind of those interpersonal reactions.

55:20 Is that a grandpa talking? You’re not that old Brian. There’s an expression. I think it’s from Judaism or to belief. It’s when you die you live on in the memories of the people that remember you and I don’t strictly I don’t think that’s strictly true.

55:42 I think there’s a lot more to it than that but yeah it’s another saying through teaching you can become immortal and that’s one of the things I love about being a jiu-jitsu instructor is like you know you’ll one day I’ll see one of my students using a technique that I showed him or using something I showed him and knowing that one day he might have a kid that he shows that technique too and so on and so on and that’s amazing. Is that powerful? Yeah I really appreciate that it’s the thing I appreciate most about teaching.

56:12 Even though it’s anonymous? Even though it’s anonymous and it’s also very egoic it’s just appeasing to my ego to see okay part of me is going to live on something I showed. Even though the submission isn’t named after you but still it was kind of your effect on the world. You know I kind of wish that my grandpa and great grandpa had like done a podcast so I could have seen what they were like. It would have been five minutes but just to see the way they talked I see pictures sometimes and it’s fascinating but that would have been really interesting to have a record like that.

56:43 Something I think about a lot is how many captains of industry or people that achieved great things with their life enduring things. How many of them were motivated by the fear of the dissolution of their own ego? How many of them just wanted to be remembered when they died? Lots. Yeah that interests me a lot and I’ve seen it in my own life.

57:05 You know there were many times many times there still are things in my life where I’m like you know I want to achieve I want to have this goal and when I follow it down it’s like why? It’s because I’m afraid of not being remembered you know and there are very very few people whose names will not be forgotten completely in a hundred years time. Very few. Unless you completely rewrite the history of the world in a good or bad way. In a good or bad way.

57:31 No one is going to remember your name in a hundred years and in a way that’s kind of confident. Maybe it is. I guess maybe you’re offspring well somebody to think about. How much do you think about your grandfather? I know my grandfather I didn’t know the guy very well but I find myself thinking about him a lot.

57:48 Did you know him well? I did know him well and you know he started from nothing and started farming and I was in Arizona recently and he’s dead now and my grandma who’s alive I think I told you she’s 92 she showed me like the first field that they were on and she looked at this field and she said he spent two years pulling up tree stumps before he could plant crops. Oh my god. And I was just like Wow. Yeah and yeah.

58:13 That is incredible thank you so much for sharing that with me. If you hadn’t done that then maybe then my son my father went to a university and he moved to California and then had me but if he hadn’t done that it’s just like man that’s a big slap in the head. You know I’ve had on my mind lately the value of physical labor you know I’m working with kettlebells and for those of you who don’t know what a kettlebell is it’s like a almost looks like a cannonball with a handle on top of it and you use it to exercise and some of the movements are really really arbitrary like some of them are like swinging this thing over your head and picking it up and pressing it and I realized just how how similar these movements would be to old time manual labor that well not old time a lot of people still do that but it’s not a part of my life.

59:04 Right. Or most people’s say again? Or most people in urban situation. In urban modern western life like most people have very sedentary jobs and yet strangely enough we’re moving back towards that old paradigm of hard manual labor. Yeah and I do a weekly kettlebell workout as well and I’m sure it’s like yours where you have to do so many iterations of this and I always think it’s like I’ve got 20 minutes of work to do just like you have to do this work and it does it’s unlike any other weight lifting technique it feels like you’re like you’re doing work and it’s like yeah I just think of it as a job like if I was in agriculture I got to you have to pick all the cotton in this field or something heavier I guess.

59:45 But yeah we are kind of regressing back aren’t we? Some of the guys I’ve worked with in Australia they call the origin of energy you can Google them and they on their own their whole system is based on what they call ancient wisdom modern science and they’re all about health and being as healthy as you can be and what I find interesting is we are starting to come full circle like we’re realizing that eating in a more primal manner is healthier and physical labor in that same kind of capacity of moving lifting heavy things is what’s best for us whereas maybe a hundred years ago we were all society was trying to get away from that as fast as possible we wanted to get out of the fields or out of the manual labor and we wanted to eat cake you know now we’re realizing that maybe the old time is we’re on to something Yeah It comes back a lot to what you were saying before I think last episode where the the connection with the body and the mind and how it’s how are you saying it it’s just listen to the body is that what you were saying?

1:00:52 Yeah well it was earlier today or was it earlier today integral part of the human experience is your body Yeah whether a lot of people walk around with their mind and like you were saying it’s just a tool So many you know in some of the esoteric systems that I’m exploring like some of the workshops and seminars I go to you see so many people that are so desperate to get out of their body you know they want to astral project or they want to have a lucid dream or and I think to myself I wonder how many of them have ever actually been in their body in the first place You know That’s well said Like pushed really hard in an anaerobic way or Yeah There’s a quote on my Facebook it’s I cannot remember the guy’s name but he’s an American guy who went and trained judo in Japan before it was fashionable to do so Okay He was explaining how during one of the workouts you had to do 600 pushups in a row or something Ridiculous And he said I’m paraphrasing but it’s you know you go somewhere really deep inside or really deep outside I don’t know where it is but I’ve been to that place and it’s cool Only people who’ve worked out really hard know what I’m talking about I think you’re one of them I’ve been there I think usually you were on top of me when I was there For those of you who don’t know the background of what it sounds like It was a it was in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu standpoint on a mat But wow Well as usual that hour passed quick For anyone out there who wants to check this out

1:02:19 We’re on Facebook.com slash London Real and we’re on a website which is LondonReal.tv and we will soon be Twittering at at London Real TV and over to you Yeah guys leave some feedback on the Facebook page Be sure to like the page and that’s it for this episode Remember It’s about the journey Indeed Alright Take care See ya