Full transcript: Yann Houdre on London Real
0:02 Good afternoon and welcome to London Real. My name is Brian Rose, and with me is my co-host Nick Gabriel, and we can you tell me who this guy is in my house? Brian, this is my very, very good friend Yann Houdre, and Yann and I met, as with all the cool people I know in my life, on the Jiu Jitsu mat. Crazy. Huh.
1:08 I just want to start with a little story about, yeah, I can’t wait. You might find this interesting. So this is maybe three years back. Yann and I were in a nightclub, quite a low-grade nightclub, to be honest. Right?
1:25 Is that how you usually roll? So we’re standing against this wall again, and I’m just chatting. It’s early, it’s like maybe nine o’clock, things are just starting to get going. It’s not very, very full yet, and this girl walks straight over to us. Right, you guys, hey, how’s it going?
1:42 Introduce yourself. We chat there for a couple of minutes, and then she goes, look, guys, I’m just gonna put this out there. I’m a single mom. I haven’t had sex in over a year, and I was just one year and a half, actually. Yeah, details.
1:55 And I’m just wondering if I’m one of you guys would like to come back with me. And so Yann and I just looked at each other with this kind of bro look, do you want to take this one? And eventually both declined, but I think the overwhelming thought was, why can’t all chicks do that? Right. Yeah.
2:12 But then she kind of, you know, she realized that no one was interested. She actually offered. She said, hey, you guys can all come back to my house. remember. They remember that.
2:21 Yeah, I don’t remember that. All of you guys can come back to my house. It’s 9:30, waiting for friends. She went early as well. God bless you.
2:31 Why doesn’t that happen more often? Yeah, you know, man, it should’ve been hot. I might have thought twice as well. You know what I mean? So, one of Yann’s professions, besides being, I call you a philosopher, young.
2:46 Yeah, you know, I’ve got this. I’ve got this idea. One day we spoke about it before, to get the summer, I saw. Yeah, I like to say you have a little expression for each of my friends, put on, and Yann’s is going to be the thinking man, because this guy’s thinking all the time. Dude, I mean, you say philosopher, I mean, that’s, it’s in the modern day.
3:05 I don’t know any philosophers. So how do you become a philosopher? Well, I’m, I don’t have any training in philosophy, but it’s probably the best part. Yeah. What I’ve always had from childhood was a very overactive brain in terms of, not IQ, anything, which is always thinking, always thinking, always, and analyzing things, analyzing things, and people have told me, man, you get paralysis by analysis, and you think too much, and yeah, and everything I see is food or a sort of an inspiration to think, especially these days, because I think right now in the world we’re in.
3:44 There’s a lot going on. Some very positive things, some very negative things, but I’m constantly thinking, constantly making links between things, and then you get, you know, you get some friends go, oh man, you think too much relax, you know, don’t do this, and then, and then you get to me, guys like [expletive] like oh man, I’ve been thinking like that for years. What are your general thoughts on technology? I know that’s such a general category but when I say that word, do you think positive things?
4:10 Well, I’m reading Steve Jobs biography. Okay, and the background of biography is the technology. I mean, there’s him as a guy, crazy guy, good in good ways and bad ways, but he used to wash his feet in the toilets. Yeah, yeah, what a fruit diet! Yeah, he had a fruit diet, and he thought for a while that he didn’t shower.
4:31 Yeah, he didn’t need to shower because of his diet. Yeah, unreal. Wow. LSD was big into, sort of, you know, went to India, very, very sort of spiritual guy who could also be ruthless in business. Yeah.
4:44 I heard he used to park in the disabled bay. Really? Yeah, yeah and then in the background of that biography is a technology. I mean, you’re talking 80s, and they’ve got, you know, Xerox. They’ve got, you know, guys working on touch screen technology, that sort of thing, back then.
5:02 Wow. And if you think now we’ve got that on iPhones. I always think, I was actually thinking about that coming away. It’s like, what must they have now? What are they working at?
5:12 What are they working on now? So technology, very good things. Like I was telling you about that hovering thing that the Japanese minister. Yeah, tell us about, tell everyone about that Well, I was on Facebook, wasting time. How many hours away a day have you spend on Facebook?
5:28 It’s crazy, huh? Four or five. I am the guy who wakes up, grabs the iPhone, and goes to Facebook. Okay, wow, welcome to the club. I thought it was just the kids, but the Japanese Ministry of Defense has come up with this spherical hovering things that’s quiet, and I just, that moves around in such a smooth way.
5:48 I mean, you can bounce on the floor. If you push it, it’ll come back to its location. Okay. So there’s one side. There’s the implications of what you do with that, and then there’s, and like I always think, you know, who come up, who comes up with this?
6:04 If you want to talk to the guys, to be like, is this what you do for a living? Oh, yeah. Let’s invent this. Listen. Oh, another good thing, TED on TED.
6:14 There’s these Swedish scientists who decided to build a mechanical bird that would fly, so they took a seagull, and they managed to, you know, have a makehead to come up with a mechanical bird that flaps its wings. Wow, and the flapping of the wing makes it very fast. It’s kind of cool. What is TED? I’ve heard of it before, but it’s TED Talks, if I’m not mistaken, it’s a non-profit organization, each, and they host a thing called the TED Summit each year, and they invite a series of speakers, people who are standards in their particular fields, to give 18-minute talks on anything, anything, 18 minutes 18 minutes, and most of the time, this or they’re skewed towards things that are going to help humanity, if I’m not mistaken.
7:06 Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Humanities, politics, sociology. Some guy the other day did something on how the availability of pornography on the Internet is changing male chemistry into of arousal. Wow, and is creating problems between men and women.
7:23 That’s very interesting. Tim Ferriss was on there as well. Okay, I think that was one of Tim Ferriss’s, like, first big breakthroughs, as being on third, I think I saw him was talking about swimming or something. Yes, yeah, he was afraid of water or something, and he taught himself to swim and monitor his heart rate. Yeah, very cool guy.
7:40 Tim, he is. Let’s have one wonder. Yeah, let’s come on, come on. Tim, stop by next time. You gotta be here.
7:45 Yeah. Very smart car, yeah. He had a great podcast with Joe Rogan, and he just was stopped saying things off the top of his head that would just, you know, I’m thinking about what you said about pornography, and yeah, and that’s you know, we are such visual creatures, men. I remember, I don’t know if you guys have experienced anything like this before, and I’m being pretty honest about this, but I have noticed, like, in certain relationships, that when and with the girl and when she’s made up and she’s looking great, you know, she’s got that glitter on her skin, and she’s just done her hair and she’s ready to go out.
8:22 I love her more, I know. And in the morning, like when she wakes up and she’s not made up, and like, I feel that, that fire burned a little less bright. Yeah, it could be. Well, I think it’s, isn’t it, pretty, pretty much interlinked. I mean, how Yann is saying pornography habits are changing the way we perceive arousal process for a man, the chemical sort of reaction in your, in the brain, are being changed by the exposure, and the availability of pornography, i.e., stimulation, press the button, get stimulated immediately, and the response to stimulation influences young men and that’s, which apparently, the influence is not very positive, and that’s why a lot of, apparently, in younger generations, men tend to sort of not express themselves as much.
9:21 Okay, and that creates difficulties for women and to interact with them, that’s crazy. I heard someone talking the other day. Was it a woman? She’s, I think she was an intimacy coach and she talked to, she coached guys on intimacy, and she said everyone sees pornography and they think that’s the way to have sex because everyone’s seen it, and so in the back of your mind you’re thinking, okay, I know how they’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to be the dude in the room.
9:47 And she’s like, most guys are just so overly aggressive when it comes to sex, and they don’t realize that the woman is taking her a lot more time to respond, and it’s not, women aren’t like the women in porn movies, but women in porn movies are ready to go, but I see, I would disagree with that though. Really, I have to say you don’t have that experience. In my experience that, like, you know, if you consider, if you take evolution, let’s work with that as the givenness.
10:13 That’s what the way we’ve come to be in this point. Human beings, you know, we’ve evolved from primate, so we’ve shared a common ancestor, right? If you look at, like, mating rituals of primates, they’re not, it’s not like the f***ing male gorilla doesn’t like candles and [expletive] put down rose petals. He takes what he wants. True, and it takes me.
10:33 It’s been my experience, like, from in my relationships, that the more dominant and more aggressive I am sexually, the more women seem to be turned on, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. It just is what it is. That gets you to the sex point. But when it comes to the sex act, do we all think that we need to be 30-minute-long porn stars, because we do in the back of our mind, because if you’ve never seen that before what would you do? Would you do things differently?
11:00 I think I started out my sort of dating life as quite a naive guy, thinking, well, you know, the guys are the ones, are the bad ones, who are always out for sex, and women are perfect, and women are nice, and you know, they’re loving and everything. And then, in my experience, and also in my job, which is, you know, you have the job I do. I’m Kevin crew. You have a majority of women and discussing and talking about, you know, that sort of thing, you realize that it’s an individual thing, and that some women actually have very aggressive approaches your sexuality.
11:34 I remember once I was in Barbados, I was on the beach, and the one of the young children of the posters next to me was, you know, we were kind of joking, had a few changes. I said, oh yeah, my boyfriend, I love him. He’s a lovely guy, but he’s just a little too lovey-dovey sometimes, and I’m like, well, isn’t that what you guys are into? And you know, she literally said, well, you know, sometimes I just want things to happen, but I’m not gonna tell you what she said, but she just sort of sexually.
12:01 Oh yeah, because you said, you know, when you kissy kissy just so, I think it’s an individual. Do you have a unique perspective working with that many women? Yeah, that I don’t, I’ve never had. I’m sure, Nick, you’ve ever had, man you’ve been Behind Enemy Lines for so long, and I don’t know if I can trust you, man. What I think.
12:22 I really think nowadays, well, yes, like, actually, yeah, being someone, by women like that, you understand that we’re very different. Yeah, women are extremely different than men. Okay, and then, but sometimes it’s a bit, you know, you sort of start thinking, well, can it work? Because there’s, they really, they’re in the world we’re in, a world, and you know, sort of the overlapping area of interest can be a bit thin sometimes. But sorry, again, what do you mean by that putty.
12:50 Yeah, by that I mean, you know, they’re so different that sometimes you wonder if, you know, if there is a God, if God was like, all right, you know, the whole reproduction thing, well, we’re gonna have two entities who really aren’t supposed to work together, but you got to make it work, and the psychology is just so different. It’s very different. I heard someone say recently, I was on a podcast, he said you know, women, by nature, because they have to have an infant inside them and protect that infant even when they get outside of them, they take a whole, just a different approach to the world.
13:17 They’re going to have to, not through their strength but through their mental ways and tricks, whatever you call it, or whatever, that’s their one thing they think about, you know, and we think about dominance and reproduction. I would guess, but the woman has to think a little thing a little differently. And I think, and maybe I’m wrong, but here’s what you guys think, that affects everything about them, for sure. I don’t think we don’t think about dominance Okay, we don’t think about it.
13:44 They think, and this is, yeah, I’ve realized, for instance, that the could, we generalize, but most women have a capacity for planning and manipulating, which men are not designed to have. We don’t, you know, we wouldn’t think, okay, you know what I’m gonna have to do this because I want that, because there’s a, I have a very good friend of mine in New York who’s very much the, I want to see, Alpha woman, but you know, sort of working girl, you know, quite intense and she’s my inspiration. As soon as I have relationship or anything like that, I just think, okay, this is what’s happening.
14:20 That’s what she said. What does she mean? And sometimes she’ll say, okay, you know, what she’s doing this because she wants to send this, and I’m like, what? Yeah, it’s like, oh my God, I never would have thought 10 steps ahead, right? Why would you do that?
14:33 Yeah, and I think she doesn’t. The best book today is, and one day I was having this. It’s probably the best way, she says. Yeah, you know, what [expletive] can be difficult what does that mean? That means it can be very difficult to understand women.
14:50 And she has this approach. She always tends to tell me, you know, they can be ruthless. They can be quite, they can be quite, yeah, quite manipulative. And from my point of view, I don’t know, I don’t think, I don’t think men can be that manipulative. They can be hurtful.
15:07 Guys give me, guys be right, they really mean, but not, they have to really plan the whole thinking. I don’t think, man, I think it’s something, I think it’s unconscious of the women, and Nick and I have talked about this before. What’s something that I don’t know people are familiar with called a s*** test that we call it when you meet a girl and she just makes you jump over that boundary. Okay, what about that? what about that?
15:24 And you’re like, why am I being bombarded and trying to qualify myself all the time? But I think they do it unconsciously. Do you know what it is, Brian? A buddy of mine, big shout out to you, Carlson he says, what happens when you meet a woman and she enters into your world, right? If you want to take it right back down to evolutionary, through to our evolutionary history, is on the savannah, like millions of years ago, when we just started walking upright.
15:49 A woman meets a man, and she has to know if he is going to be able to protect her in her offspring, so when he start, when she starts interacting with a man in the modern world, she’s basically entering his house, and she’s knocking on all the walls to see if the house is going to stand up, so if you supplicate or, you know, if you fail that s*** test, she’s like, oh, this dude’s weak. He’s not going to be able to. He’s not a strong man. He’s not going to be able to provide for me and my kid if we have one together, and that completely rewired the way I think about male and female interaction.
16:22 I like that example, and I think guys do it too. And I’ve seen it in any kind of group situation, someone who comes in the group. That’s what hazing’s all about. And I’ve seen it in the city where I used to work. He had a new guy, and everybody ends up f***ing with a little bit, and just seeing if he can take it.
16:35 Yeah, if he checks, fasting, and if he can, then you kind of accept him. You know, it’s just like organize hazing. I was in a fraternity in College de Jesus for six months. Do push-ups, memorize this, do that, you know, go get, and go get me something from the kitchen, and if you make it through that, you’re one of the brothers. So maybe it’s a human thing.
16:51 Yeah, I did an interview for Merrill Lynch when I was in college in the states. And yeah, it was a little too nice on the trading floor, and my manager, same Alpha woman video, with the Jersey accent. She came up and said, you know, what, you got to be mean, man. You know, you have to swear. First of all, swear.
17:10 Yeah, don’t try to be polite, and then, you know, if someone push, push harder. Yeah. It’s like that book. I think you put me onto Liar’s Poker about them, Salomon Brothers, [expletive] yeah. The, this in the book, the guys relating a story of when he was a trainee at Salomon Brothers, and one of the other, one of the head traders was teaching this group of trainees, said, if you want to be if you don’t get [expletive] within this job, you need to, through a martial art or, B lift weight, because these guys are going to try to dominate you, and it comes back to what you said the other day on our last show, when on the Jiu Jitsu show, when you’re saying how, like, there was this one alpha monkey dude, and like, you just knowing that you could probably f*** him up because of Jiu Jitsu, kind of, it helped, because he would go around and push people and mess with them and hit him in the head, and all this nonsense, and so, you know, it just, I just wouldn’t flinch when he’d come by.
18:03 Okay, and we had, we have a policy in my old work at The Old Company. If you throw the first punch on the floor, then you’re out. Is that how it is? Because you can get to that before, and I saw two guys wrestling before, knocking computers over, but they didn’t punch each other. So that’s the rule, and if you do, then you’re out.
18:19 That’s incredible. So I mean, it’s, I know, I was trying. I think I was telling Nick this. Nick’s like, what the hell, this is the city, but a trading floor is an aggressive place, and it gets a little hot, and you end up spending you know, 12 hours a day, right next to these people. There’s no offices.
18:32 You can’t take a break. You don’t leave the desk for lunch. And you smell them. You see what they eat. You listen to their personal calls.
18:38 Everyone listens to your personal call. It’s like you got to get used to a place like this, and sometimes then you get mad. There’s a lot of money involved, and in a bank there’s a subjective bonus involved. So at the end of the year they say, hmm, he should get that much, he should get that much, and you know, and it’s based on if you can show. So I used to show, with quick remarks, put people down on their desk all the time, just because I knew coming into the year, if I could show that I was more, whatever, I would get that extra 1,500 grand or whatever Yeah, so that’s where you get it from.
19:09 Oh, that’s funny, though. I’m sorry you never came by the floor when I was. Yeah, three months, juicing College by the World Trade Center, right? Well, actually it was for Herzog Heinekid, who was bought out. Okay, Merrill Lynch that summer, as I was working there.
19:30 Okay, it was intense, man. The whole interview, the whole thing was intense. Yeah, it’s very awesome. It’s Alpha males when it’s kind of like, it’s like, it’s like, the whole Alpha interaction, a few women in there as well. But all these sort of PC rules of society are taken out, you know.
19:48 You can swear. Men can actually say some pretty hardcore stuff to women as well. You know, women have to have thick skin, I found. In the, yeah, we had a few women, they think they just ignored us after a while, because we were just talking so much. Seriously, it’s just the disgusting things that we say.
20:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like you said, it’s the Alpha women show up there too. They’re no joke either. I mean, no, no, I personally, like, I don’t know if a woman wants to enter a man’s world like that. Then do you know what I mean, it’s like it would be like me going to a baby shower with, like, a girl and all her friends, and like trying to get involved in that.
20:25 That’s the way I look at it. I have to change your whole mentality. Yeah, you probably have to start skiing anymore. What if, what if these women have that in them to do, what to be, you know, the Alpha side, and they can sort of. That’s interesting, you said, because I’m personally of the belief that we each have, like, within the whole, is contained male and female, and during your lifetime, whether you if you’re born male or female, like physically used, and depending on how your life progresses and the choices you make, you start to express.
20:56 Obviously, if you have a d***, you express more of the male aspect. But some guys are more male than others, right? And some women are more female than others, and that’s what I don’t really like the idea of a woman becoming involved in, like, hyper masculine activities, because they become masculinized, right? I mean, I think you’ll probably find some studies that show women who are involved in men’s, or predominantly male, centric fields, their facial structure will change, their jaws will become more.
21:26 Yeah, I’m guaranteed you’ll find a study. I like that, interesting. I think some women, that’s just, they hear what they have to do, you know. Can Meg Whitman, who was the, you know, the CEO of eBay and ran for governor California. I just think, you know, now she’s the head of Hewlett Packard, or something.
21:39 I mean, I think she’s just one of those women that has to get out there and compete. Could be. I don’t know many of them. I don’t, should have one on the show. We still haven’t had a girl on the show, by the way.
21:49 We’ll get to that. Very good point. Yeah, yeah. She has to be hot, right? Oh man, let the hate mail continue.
21:57 So somebody mentioned Burning Man earlier. I think it was you. Talk to me about Burning Man. Well, I think, I don’t know if everyone knows what Burning Man is out there. If you don’t, you’re a loser now.
22:08 Yeah. It’s my understanding that it was one of the founders of Google, he, him, and a few friends, are used to go out to a desert. It was, is it in Nevada? Yes. Yeah, it’s a playa in Nevada.
22:21 Yeah, it’s like a salt flat or something. Yeah. And they used to erect this effigy, which was like a humanoid kind of structure, and that camp out around it for a few days, and then the last day, that’s the last night, that set her on fire, and it was this crazy ritual. And, what, 25 years ago or something. Yeah, something like that.
22:39 Now Burning Man’s grown into this monstrous thing, but there’s a couple of neat things about it. The first is there’s nothing there. You take in everything you need. So we’ll take food, water. Yeah, you’re taking everything you need.
22:50 You take out everything you don’t leave anything there. But another cool thing that I really like is everyone, or not everyone, but most people go and they take a skill or a product or something to share with everyone. There’s no money exchange there. Yeah, it was not allowed. You can’t buy or sell anything.
23:05 Yeah, you can only trade or give away stuff. It was set up as a sort of a separate society. Okay, but it only lasts three days. Yeah, yeah, each year for three days. I think it’s five now.
23:16 Okay, 500 people gone. Yeah and you bring in all your water and everything, and yeah, they build the whole city, and there’s, like, a great artsy as well. Now it is, right? Yeah, I mean, people build these huge sculptures. He’s like, you know, 60-foot-tall sculptures and you’re like, crazy.
23:29 I don’t know if it’s gone beyond the point of, I mean, it might have been become too popular or too commercial, or not of commercialized, the right word, but let’s go soon then. Yeah, we should go check it out too. Apparently there’s another one, like, which is started a later time in the year, and it’s in a slightly different spot, and it’s like how Burning Man used to be. Wow. But yeah, we should check out either one.
23:51 Let’s go next year. I’ve seen pictures. Yeah, yeah, it looks pretty trippy. There’s a time-lapse thing on the internet. Oh yeah, taken from a hill where you can see day and night, how it’s building up, and you guys just come up.
24:06 You see the cars, and you see the lights at night, and in the end you see the big fire. It becomes like a city. My sister’s been a couple times. Yeah, she lives out in San Francisco, and you know, I would say she’s on the crunchy side. Hello, Claire.
24:19 I love my sister. Yeah, she, I would say she is, and so she’s been a few times. She says I should go, dude. You know what? I’m so excited for Brian.
24:27 I’m so excited for you to take Ayahuasca and join us on the crunchy side. Oh man, the Ayahuasca challenge, part two. So what’s this Ayahuasca stuff? Yeah, and do you have any thoughts on Ayahuasca? Yeah, yeah, well, oddly enough, I keep reading about it these days.
24:42 I think it’s getting quite quite popular. It is, yeah. And, well, you know what amazes me of Ayahuasca is it’s something that the vine, if you eat the vine that it’s made with, your body doesn’t do anything to you, but the Indian tribe that came up with it figured out that if you mix something else with it, then it becomes psychoactive, right? From an oral stuff. And apparently there’s quite a few chemists who’ve experienced with it.
25:14 Some have tried as well to reproduce it in labs. And the experiences seem to be quite visual. The one of the common thing is, you sort of realize that you’re not as sensitive to other people’s pain as you should be. Yeah, empathy is a big, big thing. Yeah, that’s what scares me.
25:35 So it’s a psychotic, right? is that what you call it? Psychedelics, psychoactive. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about it before, and it makes, was it, makes you more empathetic?
25:47 Yeah, it shows you how, have affected other people. Yeah, which f***ing terrifies me. Yeah, it’s just terrifying, you know. Other people will suffer, and you should be more sensitive to it. That whole guilt trip thing, but you guys are still talking about, you guys, my buddy.
26:04 He, so the active ingredient in Ayahuasca is DMT, dimethyltryptamine, if I’m not mistaken. And, buddy of mine, big shout out to you, Johnny. He was telling me he smoked DMT once, right? Bless. Is that the vine?
26:19 Well, DMT is the actual molecule that’s responsible. Yeah, that you find in the vines. It gets natural occurring in human beings. Yeah. So he smoked it.
26:26 He smoked it, and I was like, bro, you got to tell me about that. So he was like, he said what happened? He was sitting with a group of friends, and they were passing on this pipe filled with a bowl of DMT, and he hit this thing, and he passed out, right? Like he passed out. So then he woke up and he said to his friends, how long was I out for, right?
26:50 And his friends were just ignoring him and he’s like, how long was out for? How long was that for? And then he looked over and saw his body lying on the ground, and I was like, God, now I don’t know if I’m ready for a trip like that. Yeah, that’s quite intense. It’s really heavy stuff, and I mean, that if to do it right, you’re supposed to go down to the Amazon, I think, in parts of Brazil or Peru.
27:10 Yeah. Brazil, Matt, if I ever do DMT, I mean, you can do it in London, there’s dudes out there. Yeah, yeah, but I don’t want to do it in London. Come on bro, you want to go to the Amazon, and there’s a shaman who’s a ritualistic guy that administers it to you, and does all the sounds. Yeah, there’s a sound as well, because apparently the chanting and the drumming, the chanting and the drumming sort of helps you through the year.
27:30 They’ve been doing this for thousands of years down there. They found some ceramic evidence over a thousand years old. I think that they’ve been cooking it up down there. It’s like a part of their life. They, I think, they’d say never going, like, a month without doing it or 90 days without doing it.
27:43 I mean, it’s hot. Wow, yeah. It’s had pretty heavy stuff, and you purge, and you throw up, and you have these crazy psychedelic trips, and they actually, the guy that started the company on it, that sells Alpha Brain, he came back from the Ayahuasca challenge. I know he, I came back from doing Ayahuasca, changed his name, and then created this company. I’m not, I’m not mean.
28:03 Yeah, he’s like, that’s not me anymore. I have a new name. He’s awesome. He was on talking to a Rogan on his podcast, and really interesting guy, you know. He went down that really open-minded, wanted to do it right with a shaman.
28:13 You can choose your own shaman when they have their own brew, their own mix of potion, and he chose like this, some badass dude, scars on his face, like nobody wanted to touch him because he had, like, the badass brewing he’s like, I want you, and then he went through the whole trip, and he was down on the ground and he had this crazy psychological trip, and all this stuff was happening, and the shaman went to him at the end and he said, how are you? And he said, smiled. So he said, dead, you know, it’s the death of The Eagle right, you know.
28:39 Yeah, I think that’s what it is. I had this magic mushroom trip for the first time, I’ve never done that before. Early in the year, in the states, with my good buddy Yankee. I call him cool name, man. Yeah, he’s a cool dude.
28:53 So the interesting thing is Tim Ferriss speaks about taking magic mushrooms. If you spoke about on Rogan show, and he said yes, once a year he takes a large dose, and uses it as an ego research, a reset. Yeah, and I think I was probably too, too chicken to take a large dose. I took a moderate dose. He takes a bunch, right?
29:11 Man, it really makes you look at aspects of your life. You know, I think that’s the thing a lot of psychedelics and entheogens do, is you know, we all sweep things under the rug of our psyche. You know, I mean, things you don’t want to deal with, you hide it away, you sweep it under, and you know when I first started smoking weed. I mean, I don’t smoke really much anymore, but when I was really big into it in my mid-20s, I remember the way I used to characterize it, people, was like, it was like someone had given me a big flashlight, and I was shining this flashlight into the darkest corners of my mind and finding stuff that I’d been too afraid to face, or stuff that had been buried there for years.
29:50 And I, you know, Rogan always says, like, that’s why smoking weed is good for you because it opens your mind, it opens you up to things you’ve been hiding. And I can kind of agree with it but like anything else, it’s a double-edged sword, right? You can also f*** yourself up. What are your thoughts? Yeah.
30:06 I had my weed days. Okay, then I have to say, of all the things I’ve tried, that’s a tough thing, because it’s just, I’m a very hyper person and I’m goal oriented. You know, I get to-do list every day, and we cancel that, so it enables the background sort of brain activity to surface, which is very good. You know, that’s when you get, I get more creative, because if I’m too, sort of, oh, too negative, do this, this, and that, creativity is dying. Yeah, I understand.
30:38 And, yeah, we’ve always been quite quite a bit, but then with age you’ve sort of changed, you know. When you’re younger it’s easier, and it’s nicer to smoke weed, but then with time, you know, you just kind of get super tired and get hungry. Yeah, you don’t get the same benefit from it. I remember when I first started smoking, a good friend of mine said, you said, Nick, you will supersede this, you know, like you want one day it won’t be, because when I first started smoking weed I was like, oh my God, this is the cure for everything, if everyone is high, the world to be a better place, and I believe that.
31:14 I do believe that, yeah, to some degree. Yeah, apparently everyone in California now, since it’s available, yeah. Everybody’s smoking weed because they, some fighter, tested positive for it. He’s like, dude, everybody smokes weed in California. I either got, probably got it second hand, you know.
31:27 I remember I was at a party once about five years ago at my cousin’s house in, so there was a joint being passed around, and like, they came to me. I took my head and I handed it on. It was just like 65-year-old chick, bro. Like, this old chick, she took it and took a drag, and I was sitting there, I was like, this is surreal. Yeah, and I remember walking around Oakland a year ago, and you could walk in the street, and it smells like, okay, from everywhere.
31:53 I was in Venice Beach about a year ago, I think, and there was a guy with a sign, like, in the thing saying back pain, and they’d sign up, and he’s like, laughing, come on sign up, sign up, you know, you sign up, you sign up, and then I went into a shop where they sold it, but I didn’t have the thing, and they had all the brownies and everything, and apparently, you know, they have these electronic cigarettes. Have you seen those? Yeah, and that with the steam coming out?
32:14 Yeah, it’s like what it does is gives you a, like a bit of nicotine vapor when you drag on it, so you can smoke it. I don’t know if I let it, smoke it in planes, but anywhere. But apparently they’ve got that for weed now. They like the highest tech is going into this in California, and they’re having, you know, and all the edibles, cream, like they had some guy that went to one of the shops, he’s like, a lot of my patients can’t inhale the stuff. I got cream and weed cream, you know.
32:38 Yeah. I was just seeing this, a friend of mine who moved from San Francisco to New York a month ago, and she was telling me, when you go to a dinner party in San Francisco, usually dessert is, you know, special brownies. You don’t even realize it, but you know, it’s like if there’s pie or cake, it’s, you know, it’s laced. Wow, that’s California. That’s California, not New York.
33:04 That’s interesting you said, because a friend of mine’s Colombian, and he said to me, all b******t aside, that when you go to dinner at a friend’s house in Colombia, like, if they’re middle class or a well-to-do family, afterwards they’ll bring out a tray with a few lines on it, and I mean, when I heard this, I don’t know if any of our readers know if that’s true? If any, or any of our listeners, you know, if that’s true, any Colombians, like, let me know, because I find that interesting. I find that crazy.
33:29 I really don’t like cocaine. I don’t think it’s a cool drug at all. It’s not cool. Yeah, I gotta save it. I first time I tried it.
33:38 I remember, you know, as a kid, Miami Vice, mainstream, yeah, and all this stuff, and the crime, and the money or Bogota, the cartel, what was his name, you know? They got the golden toilets. Oh, you know, I’d rather have a beer. Yeah, I think it was the 80s drug, in the 90s drug, but it’s still very prevalent. I mean, that Mexico makes so much money.
34:13 It’s like a 10 billion dollar business in Mexico, and Mexico couldn’t survive without that drug money that permeates the whole country. Like, I mean, it’s a major part of their economy. The U.S. drug trade, a good buddy of mine said something. I don’t know, maybe you guys have an insight into this, but he said he’s had an interesting life. He’s worked in nightclubs.
34:31 He’s worked on ships. He’s worked pretty much all over the world he’s worked in casinos, and he said, wherever you find money, you find cocaine. Those two things always go together, and I wonder why that is, because I mean, it could be argued that people who are so focused on money or creating wealth could also have a deficiency in their psyche that requires that. I don’t, I don’t know. That’s a long shot, but I’m just putting that out there.
35:03 Do you guys have any thoughts on that, or no? The status thing, like you said, in the 80s, it is kind of like it was the power kind of the good looking people drug, you know, like Studio 54. And this was the new thing, and it got you in this go-go mindset, and you know, I’m the king of the world, kind of feel drug to it, you know, and I remember it was some massage parlor in New York that said that when the guys would come in all cooked up, they think they’re porn stars, they’re like, and they’re like, okay, you’re not, they were just like, oh God, and I was thinking, just I think it caters to different personalities.
35:36 Yeah, you know, when he gets the two prostitutes, he’s like in his own world in front of the mirrors, like, yeah, I love that book. It’s a great book. I don’t know. I love you as well. It was a good movie.
35:49 They did a good job, but I like the book better, but the book’s strange, because the book kind of shows you he is going crazy, because in the book he’s doing all this stuff, and he’s told from the first person perspective, and after a while you’re like, wait a second, he’s out of his mind, and he’s like, going on a car chase with cops, and cars are exploding, and then he gets back to his office, and nothing happens, and you’re like, but it’s a good book. My favorite scene, I haven’t read the book, but in the film, my favorite scene is when they’re all comparing business cards. Yeah, and you realize that these dudes who call themselves The Masters of the Universe, their egos are f***ing paper thin.
36:22 They’re so fragile, you know. I would say a lot of that’s very accurate. Yeah, as well. Yeah, we have new business cards See, these are our new business cards. You can tell a lot by someone’s business card.
36:37 Ours are, are they humble? I think so. They’re beautiful. Yeah, but yeah, that was a good book. I used to read that book.
36:46 I used to read Pimp by Iceberg Slim, which I know you’ve read. That was a very, very dark. Have you read that book yeah, you should read it. It’s a story of Iceberg Slim, who is a pimp in the, is it the 30s? I think it was 30s, yeah, in the, in America, and he just talks all about the pimp game.
37:00 He got out of it later, like 20 years later, and became a writer. He’s a really good writer, and he just talks about the pimp game. And it’s a kid, Nick, a copy, and he wishes I never gave him, but I wish I could erase that from my mind. Oh my God, for hanging with me, just like, so the whole thing with these pimps, right, is that. I mean, maybe I just, maybe I’m just naive.
37:21 Before I read this, but I had no idea it was this dark. What they look at, their, what do they call prostitutes? They call them, the client is the trick the pimp, it’s his girls. He calls it, you call it, group of prostitutes, you’re stable, and then your main girl that keeps the stable together. Your bottom girl, you always need a bottom girl, because all the girls are going to be talking rubbish, and the bottom girl says, no, no, he’s our pimp, we’re gonna stay here.
37:45 So the thing that is crazy. The thing is, they look at, or they look at these girls as economic units, like, they just wanna bleed this check dry for every cent that you can get, as fast as fast as possible, before she, like, before she gets used up. They want to extract every possible cent of revenue, and it’s, I had no idea that a human being could do something like that to another human being. It’s former slavery. It is.
38:14 Although, you talk to Ice-T is a rapper who took on the Ice name on the back of Iceberg Slim. He’s one of my favorite hip-hop artists, but he was talking with some professional pimps, and the pimp said, you know, without pimps there still would be a lot of hoeing going on. You know, I mean, there will always be women that want to trade. They’ll always be prostitutions now it’s on the web, and they don’t need a pimp as much. Yeah, but what was the motivation for these women you know, this is the whole thing.
38:39 It’s a psychological game, and it’s almost like the pimp is doing a reverse con on the women. So the women go out there and get men to pay them for sex, because that’s the one thing they know that they want, and they can pimp them for that, and what the pimp provides for the woman is kind of that higher status of a character, and she, he gives her that fulfillment that she’s missing or doesn’t have in her life. Sorry, good father. Yeah, and his circuit father, and she respects him because, first of all, he’s good looking, he’s strong he provide some protection, but it’s almost like, like you said, like a surrogate father, and so she doesn’t respect her tricks.
39:13 She doesn’t respect regular dudes that want to get married. She only respects that guy, and therefore she gives him her money, and that completes her psychological, you know, wow, yeah. And then, so he’s got, so he’s calm, Iceberg, because he always has to be icy, because at any moment one of his girls, reminds me of trading floor actually, any one of his girls might be like, I’m not going to work for you anymore, Daddy. And he’ll be like, and so, you know, what he’d say, he’d be like f***, I’m happy anytime one of my prostitutes wants to go work somewhere else, because some other girl out there, a champ, to come and pimp for me.
39:43 Yeah, he calls it to practice. It’s like I’ll take you to the train station right now. Let’s go. And she’s like, yeah, it’s a proud, he’s like, it’s like a bluff, and then it puts her back in place, and she gets her to shut the f*** up, and go make some more money for a while, man. You know, and the thing is I’ve seen, I don’t know if that’s hard-coded in our DNA, or if that’s just part of human nature.
40:05 But I’m reading this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, and I mean, sounds interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. I’ve seen in my own life when you’re too nice to people, they treat you like s***. It is what it is. People are girls.
40:18 I’ve found myself using that line as well. Like, if a girl’s in my apartment and she makes some comment about it, I’m like, there’s the door and they never leave, but they’re like, oh my God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way, you know, and it’s so you’re pimping, basically. I’m a pimp, Daddy, right? I love this episode So what do you think about all this? Well, yeah, I have to say the whole prostitution thing is it just, you know, I’m, you know, with work, you know, we go to Amsterdam, you know, on my steps and okay, I just find it strange, and I just found it strange, this sort of sex as a commodity, and there’s there’s a gloomy side to it, and what you guys actually described is really, really nice.
41:05 It’s cool. I mean, also, they’re they’re in Amsterdam, they’re registered, and they get health care, they pay taxes, I think, and it is a way to make money. The Economist is a magazine, it’s quite good, and they had an ad up in the subway, the other day, and I was looking at it, and said prostitution is a horrible form of slavery, blah blah blah. And then right next to it, it said proposition provides a greater income than these girls normally get. It’s safe, they get health care and I had, what do you think?
41:31 I had two arguments, before and against, and it made an interesting point, and it’s a free country, and it’s legal, you know, in Amsterdam and regulated, man, you know, like beyond the moral implications or our standpoints. Yeah, I just could not get aroused knowing, like, that I’d be paying for sex. It just, I could not get aroused, like I have to kind of know that the chick digs me for me. Do you know what I mean, like, and if, if there’s, like, a monetary I don’t know, it’s just, what do you guys think?
42:00 Yeah, I have to say, yeah, I don’t think the whole pain thing. It’s just, it’s weird. I think they’re there for a reason, which is that guys go out and they go at the club, they’re finding, they’re getting nowhere, which I’m sure is, many guys are finding this, and then they’re coming to the end of the night, or they’re getting older, and like, you know what? Yeah, they’re getting older. Parties, maybe, yeah, and they’re like, I’m just gonna go pay.
42:21 Yeah, you know, I guess, but I mean, it’s obviously a thriving industry. Yeah, it’s the world’s oldest profession, right? Well, yeah, well, yeah, and I always heard that the Egyptians had temples where prostitutes were like, priestess, or you know, I don’t know. I remember reading that the act of sleeping with these women was revered as some form of a, it’s a religious thing, of a sacred thing. Yeah, yeah.
42:48 Those Egyptians, man if you go to the British Museum and you look at some of the stuff, I want, but if you see some of the things that they had, too much money on their hands and too much time on their hands. You look in the British Museum. I mean, they had, like, things that you would find in Boots. I mean, they have, like, little tiny combs or things to cut their fingernails with, and stuff, and you look at all these little intricate things that they had.
43:08 I mean, such a wealthy nation that they could afford to do all, to do all these crazy things to mummify people, to build these huge pyramids, and to, you know, to practice this religion in all these crazy ways. It’s fascinating What fascinates me, and I have such a tiny knowledge of Egyptology, but one of the little things that that I find very interesting is, if you look at the three main pyramids, is it at Giza? I think so. They correlate exactly to the stars in Orion’s Belt.
43:42 So I mean, these guys were doing, like, advanced astronomy, like back then, which is amazing, it’s trippy. I always think of, I always used to think of, like, civilizations from those, by one areas is relatively primitive, but you know, the more I read and study and hear people’s opinions, I’m starting to realize that they, in many ways, were far advanced, far more advanced than our society. There’s different theories on that. Some people say that they were super smart then, and then after that the smartness went down, and yeah, and then we became dumber people, and, you know, Rogan’s a big fan of that theory that there was a super intelligent society, and all we have left is a few things they left.
44:23 I can believe that. I mean, so we always look at a time like a missing link, because we think that in this day in society, last 200 years or a thousand years, you know, we get smarter and technology gets better, but it could be cyclical, right? Because we think of it moving in this linear progression, but maybe it’s moving in circles, and maybe we’re at an apex of one of those or at the turning point of one of those circles. And I think we are really, yeah, I think we do think that you think it’s the end of capitalism too?
44:49 Yeah, for me, the end of capitalism in its current form, in its current form, it cannot go on like this, Brian. In my opinion. I disagree. Can we get a third opinion? Yeah, definitely, definitely.
45:00 I have a bachelor of Finance. I studied in the states. That’s, that was my training, and but I come from a very left-wing family, so I have a, I have a, I’ve realized, I remember in my thing was sophomore year, second year university, studying, I think it was a banking institutions. I realized that capitalism is a very strange system, because left on its own it will self-destruct. But you need a sort of neutral entity to regulate capitalism, because capitalism relies on the flow of capital, so you need people to spend, you need money to go around, you know, the old diagram, households, and that you learn in economy, right?
45:47 I think I said remember that microeconomics. Yeah. But if it’s completely liberal, if there’s no regulations, all the wealth is very quickly concentrated into almost monopolies, right? Like them, like you saw in the states, like with the Carnegies and the Mellons and the steel type, the oil, and all that stuff, right? And everyone else was massively exploited.
46:05 And then there’s, and this is what we’re seeing here, because, you know, wages do not increase, you know, everyone relies on credit. That’s what’s happened since the player, the Blair administration, and it’s almost like a pump where the fluid is not going through, and all the wealth is concentrated on top because that’s rule now. When I say this, by the way, I don’t make a value judgment. It’s a, it’s an objective observation, so you do need I think regulation, but at the same time, people who advocate liberal capitalism say, oh no, we don’t want regulations, but I do believe that if you don’t have regulation, even those people will be negatively impacted.
46:45 For instance, this whole subprime thing, right? There was a reason why you had the Glass-Steagall. There’s a reason why there was this wall. Well, it was, you know, and I, I was in the states back then. I remember studying that, and Clinton said, well, you know, we’re going to believe that, you know, we’re going to take that away, and then the regulation for the rating of all those instruments sort of went a little loose, so at the end whatever was underlying the value of the instruments and the actual rating was miles apart.
47:16 The Glass-Steagall was basically keeping the banks from doing, banks in the investment banks completely separate, and he took that out, but because it wasn’t really very separate anyways. So, like, man, tell me this is my theory, or this is my belief, my current perspective. It might change, but throughout history, or throughout the, I mean, this is probably post hunt together as societies, but wealth has always been concentrated roughly according to the Pareto principle: 20 of the people have had 80 of the wealth, right?
47:49 And that’s a natural law, you know. You see that, the Pareto principle, you see it throughout your life. You wear 20 of your clothes, 80 of the time you hang out with 20 of your friends, 80 of the time. You can identify this all over, and I think that’s pretty much healthy, and that’s the way it should be, right? Because certain people work harder.
48:06 You, you’re the one who said human beings are naturally lazy. Yes, and I agree with that completely, and I think that is one of the beautiful things about capitalism. It takes into account inherent self-interest, but the problem is that it becomes so skewed now it’s like 98 of the wealth in the hands of two percent of the people, and I’m not calling for, like, communism or socialism. I just, I think that, I think the system is a little bit sick. I think, but again, I said it in a previous podcast.
48:36 We don’t need to scrap the car. You know, we just need to modify it a little bit. That’s, that’s my belief. Yann, what do you, well, I, I do think there’s a problem today One of the things, I just, to step back, I know that when I’ll be 80, 85, if I have kids, I’ll be able to tell them, you know, what I was in my 30s when the world shifted, because I think this is what we’re, this is what we’re experiencing here. End of capitalism?
49:00 I don’t know, but there’s a crisis. One of the main consequences of what we’re living here in the West, North America and Europe, is we’re broke, and we’ve got, you know, sort of a technical, technological advance on Middle East, China, India, but they have the demographics, and China has the money and that is going to shift the balance of power worldwide as we speak. It’s happening. I mean, Sarkozy has this European benefits of the Chinese to secure. It’d be nice to have a little Chinese investment there.
49:37 I mean yeah, as a symbol, you have to understand, you know, China is not a democracy. Okay, so let’s, let’s, if you look at it again, no value judgment, just objective observation. So I think there’s a problem. For me, first of all, because of the Cold War, when someone criticizing criticizes capitalism, immediately people tend to think, oh, you must be a communist, you must be a socialist. Two different, there are two separate things, communism, socialism.
50:05 The first one, it never really got to the actual end of the system, which was you know, freedom and no class, because you always had a guy who took control, you know, the sort of the workers dictatorship, and there’s always a top guy. He’s Stalin, the guy in Cuba, Castro, Castro, and sort of you know, never, and those people stayed in that intermediary phase. They never relinquished the, the powers that people would be completely free of the exploitation, but so that’s, that’s done.
50:36 Those systems, you know, we’re done with that. Yeah, it’s kind of proven that they don’t work. What’s communism, socialism? Right. Yeah, Cuba great example, but what’s in common is the big thing for me is capitalism, companies have something in common.
50:52 There’s an underlying assumption, which is that we have infinite resources and they both make, we both function on the assumption that, you know, what, the Earth, yeah, there’s, there’s always going to be resources on the planet, and that’s why there’s going to be a problem, because, you know, it goes back to the whole resource-based economy. It’s, if you want to compare, it’s the same thing as if you live your life every day spending without ever, ever thinking how much money you have on your bank account. You’re just spending all your resources without thinking, well, how much do I have left with it, because we’ve got this intermediary thing called money, and money is this, this complete illusion that we’re using, which it works very well, but in the meantime, yeah, the guy who has the most money can buy himself gold, a golden toilet seat, but is it good for the environment, for our planet?
51:44 Are we wasting resources? That’s, I think, we’re running out of resources. Your regeneration, I don’t think we’ll run out of resources. I don’t think we’re running out of oil or natural gas, and, dude, you’re kidding I just don’t think you’ve got. Oh, I’ve got a link for you.
52:02 There’s a link. Only, I think it’s some professor of math in some community college in Colorado who does a very simple arithmetic to show that the consumption of oil cannot be sustained, and it probably can’t, but we can sustain it for the next 100 years until we find a new resource. Yeah, that’s what I believe. Yes, definitely. But then think of the energetic transition, how long is it going to take for us to find resources and to change the infrastructure to be able to use that.
52:34 We can use it in an efficient way and to have that much output. I mean, you know, to be able to fly planes again when we don’t have any oil. Yeah, and that’s a, that’s a point making, but I do think the technology is going to catch up to it, but maybe if you don’t, so resources like I mean, you’ve read about the fact that the world’s oceans are rapidly being depleted of fish. I mean, that’s, that’s one example. Like, every year a piece of the Amazon rainforest, the size of Switzerland, disappears, you know.
53:03 So what, for what so we can have soybean farms, and yes, you know, I mean, that to me, this is a value judgment, but I, I don’t think that’s right, and I think it’s a symptom of capitalism. It is. I mean, but we all need growth, and we all need jobs, and we all need that, and oil is the key to growth. I mean, if the Strait of Hormuz is shut down by the Iranians, which they could probably do at any point in time, then like a third of the world’s oil that’s gone from Saudi Arabia gets shut down, and you think this economy is bad?
53:30 We’re going to be talking major recessions, because the whole world machines needs oil, not just for power but also for industrial uses, and so this whole, it’s all, it is all about the economy at the end of the day, you know, and everyone needs to eat, and they need this stuff. Now, if everyone wants to step back and say, we’re going to go with a five percent reduction in growth for the next 10 years, we’re going to stop consuming oil, but nobody wants to do that. Yeah, no.
53:52 At the end of the day, no one’s prepared to make those sacrifices. There’s a book I read called The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight, and if you think about what oil is, it’s concentrated sunlight, you know, because the sun shines on the earth, and through photosynthesis plants turn that into their structure, and then those plants die and rot and turn into vegetation, and all the dinosaurs that were eating those plants dying, right, and turn into this, you know, the sediment that eventually becomes oil over millions and millions of years. So that’s ancient sunlight that’s sitting in the ground, and what’s happening is this, this is the, this is oil, is our planet’s legacy.
54:30 It’s it’s our, it’s this eons and eons of concentrated sunlight or concentrated energy that’s being reserved and pooled, and we’re just blowing through it in a couple of hundred years, you know what I mean? We’re just spunking it all over the shop, and that to me, I don’t know, I just don’t think many humans are prepared to stop buying oil-based products. What you’re buying yeah, of course you’ve got, you’ve got the psychological element, and what people are willing, hey, you know what, I like my iPhone, me too, you know, oh, it’s rare earth metals, I like, I like being on the internet, but at some point, are we going to plan something, or is the end of the party going to be abrupt?
55:11 Oil fields all the time, and natural gas is a very viable alternative. There is a lot of oil. You look at China, you look at India, their goal is to have our lifestyles. Yeah, and why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t they?
55:26 We’ve enjoyed those lifestyles, but if we have that lifestyle, and if they have that lifestyle, and if Africa has that lifestyle for me, again, just, it’s, it comes down to, like, just a little bit more balance, right? You know, I’m not saying shut down all the factories and let’s all walk around and, like, fur and hunter. If you’re not saying that, but do you really need [expletive] the iPhone 5 or that you do that? Yeah, I was being contradictory, but you know, you walk into, like, these, it’s, it, whenever I’m in the states, it’s when I see it most clearly.
55:59 You’ll walk into one of these huge mega stores like Walmart or and you just look out on this ocean of unnecessary things, unnecessary s***. It’s a consumer society, but it’s, it never used to be that way, you know. It was, you told me, I think you told me, Dad in the 50s, that was kind of, someone mentioned this to me, in the 50s was when we were at all that was kind of like the golden age, because consumerism hadn’t become a sick thing. It was a good thing, you know what I mean?
56:27 So you’d buy a nice car and keep it for 10 or 15 or 20 years, or whatever it was. Now it’s not like that anymore. Everyone’s newer stuff all the time, and it’s responsible for like 70% of the growth in the US, so when people stop spending, everyone loses. That was developed in order to guarantee the growth that we can have. I mean, you know, right now, and you probably know that from working in the in the financial markets, financial markets can take a tumble just because they expect to make less profit.
56:56 They’re still making profit, but they’re making less. Yeah, see, this is, like you said, you know, if if oil is taken out of the equation, if markets can react that strongly to just a little shutter, just okay, we’re gonna have 13 instead of 15. Can you imagine if we don’t have oil anymore? It’s just, it’s so, it’s just hard to fathom. What would happen?
57:16 Exactly. It would be mayhem. Yeah, it would be mayhem. You know, the US is already prepared for that whole plan. If Iran starts to do that.
57:23 Well, the Strait of Hormuz is that small little piece of water that goes by Dubai, and it’s how Saudi Arabia exports its oil, most of their oil, and it goes by the whole coast of Iran. So all Iran has to do is put a mine in it and put some small boats in there to threaten these tankers, and if you threaten the tankers and they can’t get through, then the insurance for them goes up, and if you stop supplying oil to the world and all these manufacturing processes that use oil, not to mention, you know, planes and everything else that uses them goes down, and you’re talking about a massive recession worldwide, where, you know, you collapse. It would be a major collapse to a point where there would be rioting, and meaning Occupy Wall Street.
58:00 It would be us flying compared to what would happen, and it would just, I just, nobody’s prepared. The US is trying to prepare for it, but Iran could do that if they want to, and they know that, and that’s their power, and that’s why you can’t mess with them too much, and that’s why they can posture and do all those things, but I see what you guys are saying, and I think there’s some kind of, some, there’s some kind of compromise. I think there is a well-regulated capitalism.
58:22 But yeah, you know, I just, I just came from the city now, and the Occupy Wall Street, they just took over this building next to UBS. Then they’re in there, and the cops are in there, but because of squatters’ rights and stuff, they can’t just go there and take them out, and it’s this whole unabandoned building, and they’re literally up there, crawling along the roofs, and they put a sign saying “UBS, you owe us,” and so like they’re trying to escalate this movement but I’m just curious what you guys think. I don’t know how to occupy.
58:47 People are going to affect politicians, because that’s what they have to do in order to get this regulation. Because unless they can make a political change, who’s going to listen to that? The problem in the system is because money is what makes the political changes. UBS putting X amount in the politicians’ back pocket. Oh, come on, come on.
59:05 About votes, too rarely think elections, or one, or lost in this day and age based on like popular opinion. It’s no way, but it is technically a democracy, you know. I mean, you don’t have to listen to the guy that has the ads. I mean, Rick Perry is going for the Republican nomination in the US, and he’s got the most money of anybody. I don’t know much.
59:22 He’s got 50 million or something, and he can put the ads up, but he still says some dumb s*** on the debate. So I still think that in all the Republican candidates are making some stupid things. I mean, I don’t even think they can put a leader that can really go against Obama, except maybe Mitt Romney. So there is a democratic process in there somewhere. America is run by corporations, end of story.
59:41 It’s easy to say, yeah, anyone who says otherwise, America is run by corporations. It’s just the way it is. I don’t, you know, I think, I think you know the Western world is run, back, yeah, man, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Okay, value judgment, but let’s be honest about it like the dude living in the council flat in East London, if he wants to make a change, he’s got no chance bro.
1:00:04 There’s just no way. Can you vote? Can he Occupy Wall Street? I don’t know where that movement’s going. We only got a couple minutes left.
1:00:13 You were asking about the whole Occupy thing. Yeah, of course. It is, it is crazy to see. It’s a mix of people, you know. You don’t really know what they’ve seen.
1:00:22 Something like this since like the Vietnam War. People are occupying. It’s an exciting time to be alive. It’s interesting. Yeah, I think they wouldn’t be here, they wouldn’t be doing this worldwide if there wasn’t a problem, and this is happening worldwide.
1:00:34 They shut down the New York movement, you know, a couple days ago. They went in there and just cleaned it all out. Legal proceedings as well. Yeah. But the Occupy people will say they reckon maybe that was a good thing because the movement was getting a little bit, you know, some chick was raped in one of those.
1:00:47 Yeah, that was somewhere in a Western US well, I don’t know, you don’t know, but I think they definitely, getting the anarchists come into those camps, and they were enjoying because there’s a whole group of people that just like the anarchist side of it, and then those, the people I think with the message. So some of that was happening. So some people were saying that was a good thing for Occupy Wall Street, because now they can do grassroots movements as opposed to some tent camp, but I don’t know.
1:01:07 I don’t see how these guys are going to make political change, but I do, bless them. Hats off to him. Guys, we’ve, we busted out our hour here. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah, it was cool.
1:01:16 I think we could have gone a little bit more. Most definitely right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. All right, thanks for coming. I just want to say thanks to all the emails we’re getting out there.
1:01:26 I mean, Nick and I get crazy positive emails. A couple of negative ones too, which is cool. Thank you. Good. I still haven’t got much, except people say it’s too long, and I understand this is a podcast.
1:01:35 It’s a new genre. People aren’t used to sitting and listening to us for an hour, but man, I just say, put it on the background when you’re making dinner, and you might get some cool idea that Yann talked about on Nick or me, and maybe you’ll read a book that you hadn’t read, and that kind of thing, and I think, I think people are going to start to understand that, as opposed to turn the TV on when you get home, you can just flip on a podcast and hang out with some cool cats and get some new ideas yeah, that you wouldn’t normally do, because new thinking patterns. Yeah, you probably have a social circle that’s kind of set, and you probably attract people that are like you, and that’s a good thing, but maybe every now and We appreciate any likes, would be awesome.
1:02:22 Forward this to your friends and let them know, and yeah, you said it I get so many emails saying I already loved the show, and I’m like, man, tell people about it please. No, like, just all you have to do is click share on your Facebook wall, or send it via email, send a link on YouTube by email to your friends you think might appreciate the show, and one more thing guys. If you’re, if you’re an interesting person and you live in London or you find yourself another often, and you want to come on the show, send us some info about yourself, and there’s a good chance we’ll have you on.
1:02:50 Yeah, be good to have some kind of random person that we don’t know. You can send that to, probably, [email protected], and we’ll get that email. And there you go, man. So we’re gonna keep doing this. The train keeps rolling, it is, but most importantly it’s about the journey.
1:03:06 Indeed. All right, thanks guys. That was awesome. Thank you. There’s a lot of fun
