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EXIT Podcast 33: Cody Elijah
473 Plays3 years ago
Cody blew up on Twitter last year after quitting his job as a physician's assistant - now he has left healthcare altogether, writes fiction and is starting a construction business. We wanted to talk about the experience of leaving behind a substantial investment in a credentialed job like that, and why more and more guys in bug jobs are heading in that direction.
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Transcript
Introduction of Cody Elijah and Career Shift
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett.
00:00:19
Speaker
Tonight we got Cody Elijah.
00:00:21
Speaker
Cody blew up on Twitter after he quit his job as a physician's assistant rather than submit to a VAX mandate.
00:00:26
Speaker
Now he's building a construction business.
00:00:28
Speaker
We wanted to hear from him about the mandates, the phenomenon of guys leaving bug jobs for trades and entrepreneurship, and just the struggle for space more generally.
00:00:36
Speaker
So Cody, you're not the first person that I've talked to who is trading away a high status credential job for more freedom to do what you want.
00:00:47
Speaker
And, you know, there's a sense in which you were forced out of the job by the vax mandate, but obviously there's tons of people who just chose to get the vax and...
00:00:58
Speaker
So I'm interested in what led you to decide like the credential track, the professional course that you were on was worth interrupting
Reasons for Leaving Healthcare
00:01:08
Speaker
for that.
00:01:08
Speaker
Well, I think there's kind of a couple parts to answer there.
00:01:13
Speaker
One was the big picture of what is going on in the world, you know, in terms of what they're using the vaccine mandates for, the changes that they're trying to institute.
00:01:24
Speaker
So that alone, just having a hard, you know, having a hard no,
00:01:30
Speaker
was a big part of it.
00:01:32
Speaker
But like you're saying, I think there's, you know, some of these careers, you know, probably were once very prestigious and, you know, doctors, lawyers, things like that.
00:01:46
Speaker
But my experience in medicine and healthcare just was never really all that
00:01:52
Speaker
fun.
00:01:54
Speaker
The stress is, you know, through the roof, you've got student loan debt, all these things that just made it really, really easy to walk away from.
00:02:03
Speaker
So when you put those two together, it wasn't a very hard decision.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, they, I have this theory that like, because student loans are a way of capturing rents, like we're going to get to the point where essentially like the
00:02:20
Speaker
the marginal value of getting versus not getting the degree is going to be like as narrow as they can possibly make it just enough to convince you to do it and then slave and then make like a little bit more money, whatever they can persuade you to make, you know, to sell you on.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I feel like that process has accelerated as...
00:02:42
Speaker
bachelor's degrees have become increasingly like the necessary condition to get a
Educational Debt vs. Credential Value
00:02:46
Speaker
job.
00:02:46
Speaker
It's like, they're going to, they're going to suck up as much as possible of that surplus value and leave you with just barely enough to get you to do it.
00:02:54
Speaker
And then something like the VAX comes along, you know, and that, that tips the scale.
00:02:58
Speaker
And it's like, well, now, now this is not worth doing.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker
I mean, I think I was in probably one of the sort of the, I'm 43 this year.
00:03:07
Speaker
So I was in college from like 97 to the like,
00:03:12
Speaker
0203 doing my all my undergrad stuff.
00:03:16
Speaker
But I think I was in that last era really where that transition happened where the student loan laws actually changed right around then where you couldn't get rid of them in bankruptcy.
00:03:27
Speaker
Then when I got out that you couldn't even consolidate them.
00:03:30
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, I think I would my undergrad was in the kind of the old era where some friends of mine got out and got really awesome jobs in finance or whatever with a bachelor's degree and then
00:03:40
Speaker
because I went into medicine and got a master's degree as a physician assistant, it crossed me into that era, like you're saying, where the margins are razor thin and I would never do it again, you know, and it's just, it's got to be hard for young people now to have to make a decision like that.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's absolutely, it's really challenging.
00:04:02
Speaker
I really don't know what to tell them.
Vaccine Mandates and Biometric Control
00:04:04
Speaker
You mentioned,
00:04:06
Speaker
what they're using the vax mandates for.
00:04:09
Speaker
And you alluded to some of this on the base Brotherhood podcast, which I just listened to.
00:04:15
Speaker
But tell me a little bit about how you think that the vax mandates are being used.
00:04:20
Speaker
Well, if you do your research and kind of look at the people who are involved in all this and their own words and what they want to do, the vaccine mandate is basically like a Trojan horse.
00:04:33
Speaker
You know, it's a proxy for basically a biometric control over people to grant you the access into normal everyday, you know, activities, buying and selling.
00:04:46
Speaker
You know, you could call it Mark of the Beast or whatever.
00:04:49
Speaker
But in more real terms, it's a way to get you to think that it makes sense when it doesn't make any sense to lock people out of society, you know, over something that
00:05:04
Speaker
as, you know, I, what intimate, I guess, you know, as a vaccine, as an injection, you know what I mean?
00:05:12
Speaker
It's just beyond absurd, but that's kind of what they're rolling out is, is a way for them to control digital currency mixed with, you know, real time taxation, surveillance, and then control.
00:05:29
Speaker
Right.
00:05:29
Speaker
So the vaccine was a way for them to open that door.
00:05:33
Speaker
in a way that seemed to make sense to people, you know, that aren't paying attention essentially.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:40
Speaker
The, the, the real-time taxation pieces, and that never occurred to me, but like with this digital currency thing, they're trying to roll out, they could easily tax your income before you even receive it.
00:05:50
Speaker
And then just, well, that's why they're trying to pass the law right now for taxing unrealized gains, like on your home.
00:05:57
Speaker
So when you know their end goal and you watch what they're actually doing,
00:06:02
Speaker
you, you know, you can see why they're trying to make those moves that we're seeing now, but they're never going to call it what, what the real reason is.
00:06:11
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:06:13
Speaker
Um, I had a, I had an uncle who had some wild ideas about, um, well, a lot of things he was, you know, I think everybody's, if you come from any kind of a big family, everybody's got a conspiracy uncle.
00:06:27
Speaker
And, um,
00:06:29
Speaker
What was wild about that is like, there's still pieces of it that I'm like, ah, you know, I think, I think you might be off base there, but, but what was remarkable to me is like, none of it was proven like dead to rights, but everything that has happened in the last like five, 10 years,
00:06:51
Speaker
is really hard to explain from the assumption that everybody is operating under their stated motivations, but it all fits just like a brick if they're operating according to these nefarious intentions that he sort of promulgated ahead of time, that's what they were doing.
00:07:11
Speaker
So like I have this crow eating conversation that I have to have with my uncle.
00:07:20
Speaker
Because he was right.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, which I'm actually kind of excited about.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
00:07:26
Speaker
But the guy in my life, that was my best friend's dad.
00:07:29
Speaker
And he's been telling us for 20 years, you know, that once digital currency happens, it's all over.
00:07:36
Speaker
And he was like living off the grid his whole life.
00:07:40
Speaker
He never had any debt, lived totally off the grid.
00:07:43
Speaker
So I learned a lot from him.
00:07:45
Speaker
But I think almost fortunately, he
00:07:47
Speaker
he died right before, like right before it all happened.
00:07:50
Speaker
I don't, I don't, I don't know what he would have been, if he would have been able to handle it.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
Kind of go mad from the revelation a little bit.
00:07:58
Speaker
Like, Oh yeah.
00:07:58
Speaker
I mean, he would have been, uh, tooting his own horn to every, anybody who would listen for having to do it.
00:08:07
Speaker
Um, that, that off grid living piece is so interesting to me because, um,
00:08:14
Speaker
I try
Resilience Through Entrepreneurship
00:08:15
Speaker
to be less.
00:08:15
Speaker
So I don't, I don't know if you know much about what we do at exit.
00:08:17
Speaker
We have like a group where we're basically built around all kinds of anti-fragility, all kinds of resiliency to, to corporate coercion, to government coercion, basically making it so that you can tell them to pounce in if you have to.
00:08:30
Speaker
And that includes, you know, that's like entrepreneurship.
00:08:33
Speaker
It also includes like homesteading, homeschooling.
00:08:36
Speaker
I did a podcast with a guy who does direct primary care.
00:08:38
Speaker
So you don't have to have health insurance, that kind of thing.
00:08:43
Speaker
the tension is always, we know that nobody's going to be totally exited.
00:08:49
Speaker
Nobody's going to, nobody's going to be totally independent of the system or free of the system.
00:08:54
Speaker
And so it's this, this, this debate of like, how, how far out does it make sense to be?
00:09:03
Speaker
And I want to get your take on like, how are you threading that needle?
00:09:06
Speaker
Where do you think is like the level of involvement that you want?
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question.
00:09:12
Speaker
And it's something that it's funny because so knowing my friend and his family, I think they were kind of at the point where you could kind of go rationally or in a sane way.
00:09:27
Speaker
But just for example, like they lived in a one room concrete block, basically a shed or a small building, you know, it was probably like 200 square feet or something with
00:09:40
Speaker
you know, the mom and dad and the two boys when he was in junior high school and they had no water solar, they didn't even have solar, you know, electric at that point.
00:09:50
Speaker
So it was all candlelight hauling in water every day, but they still went to school.
00:09:55
Speaker
Um, the dad was a substitute teacher.
00:09:57
Speaker
The mom, you know, did work at community centers and stuff like that.
00:10:01
Speaker
Um,
00:10:02
Speaker
That, I mean, that's pretty out there.
00:10:05
Speaker
If you, if you really think about that, you know, you're showering at like the swimming pool, like rec center in town and all that you're cooking on a wood stove that you also heat your house with.
00:10:15
Speaker
That's pretty out there.
00:10:17
Speaker
Um, and so when I met them, when I was around 20, I got to kind of experience that.
00:10:23
Speaker
And I just thought it was cool.
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, it was like cool that they were doing it.
00:10:26
Speaker
Um, they had a few different properties and one of them was a little bit more normal, but, um,
00:10:33
Speaker
I think you can get a little, probably get a little bit closer to society than that.
00:10:39
Speaker
Um, I think technology too has helped where, you know, the solar, the solar, like they have in their place now, um, you know, it's like a couple of panels and they can run most lights and watch a TV and stuff like that.
00:10:51
Speaker
It's not a big deal.
00:10:51
Speaker
They have a well, um, that they use a gas power generator to fill a cistern and then it, so they're, they're still totally off grid on, on one of their properties, but, um,
00:11:03
Speaker
I think that's about where you can probably take it because if you go any more than that, I mean, one, it's really, really hard to live like that practically.
00:11:14
Speaker
And again, like you're saying, you're still going to have to go to town and go to Home Depot and get a nut or a bolt or go to the grocery store or whatever.
00:11:25
Speaker
So it doesn't make sense to go too far.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:29
Speaker
And I think about
00:11:30
Speaker
Not only because tribe is so important to me.
00:11:33
Speaker
And as I'm raising my kids, we're homeschooling our kids.
00:11:37
Speaker
And as I'm trying to make friends in a new area, I'm like, there's got to be connections
Community and Off-Grid Living Challenges
00:11:43
Speaker
to build.
00:11:43
Speaker
And I was talking to a guy on the last episode about this guy who basically became secular Amish and a very similar lifestyle, totally off the grid, hauling the water, et cetera.
00:11:59
Speaker
And at the end of his book, he's got this like, hey, if you want to live like this, like come live with me for two weeks and we'll try it out.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I want you to cut like it was very like hungry to have people join him because not a lot of people are willing to do that.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I think part of the puzzle that you have to solve when you're determining how off grid you want to be.
00:12:24
Speaker
is how, how isolated do you want to be, not just from the system, but from other people who might be potential allies and friends?
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, that, and that's something that, you know, my friend's family definitely dealt with, you know, very few people would even want to go out to their place.
00:12:42
Speaker
Cause it's, you know, to do that, you have to be pretty well outside of town.
00:12:49
Speaker
And it's just not for everybody that people aren't used to living in that rustic of an environment.
00:12:53
Speaker
And then when I built my own off-grid cabin, as soon as I became a PA and ran into the same thing, nobody would ever want to go there.
00:13:04
Speaker
Do his kids do anything like that?
00:13:09
Speaker
No, the two boys, yeah, the brothers, they definitely are still in that sort of mindset.
00:13:19
Speaker
mindset.
00:13:20
Speaker
They do lead a little bit more normal lives, you know, than their father or their parents did.
00:13:27
Speaker
You know, they have sort of normal careers and stuff and have properties that are, you know, homes that are a little bit more normal.
00:13:36
Speaker
But yeah, it's still a big part of them.
00:13:38
Speaker
And they, like you're saying, they have that, their family had roots for so long that they have that network of people that are, you know, into it.
00:13:48
Speaker
and are willing to help.
00:13:51
Speaker
It just takes a lot of time.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:53
Speaker
So speaking of not being too far out of society and having social connections, I mean, you've had a pretty storied history.
00:14:05
Speaker
I remember talking to you and you were saying you were a PA in California and then you were in Nevada at one point.
00:14:12
Speaker
I believe most recently you were in Washington and that's where you got fired, even though your wife was able to work.
00:14:19
Speaker
And then you moved all the way across the country to Florida.
00:14:24
Speaker
So how has that process been in terms of trying to figure out things as a family?
00:14:29
Speaker
And now that you're in a completely new place, trying to set up with a new career,
00:14:35
Speaker
Um, you know, how far out of society are you, um, are you still trying to get a job as a PA?
00:14:41
Speaker
Have you given up on the
Transition to Construction Business
00:14:43
Speaker
medical industry?
00:14:43
Speaker
I mean, you've been through a lot of transitions.
00:14:46
Speaker
Um, what has that exit process been like for you?
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's been, it's been kind of weird.
00:14:55
Speaker
Um, and it's, I, I've had to sort of, you know, kind of reconsider all of it, especially, you know, um, especially because right before, um,
00:15:05
Speaker
COVID kind of started, I sold my off-grid cabin in Nevada that I'd built specifically for the New World Order.
00:15:15
Speaker
So that's kind of ironic, but yeah, moving around,
00:15:23
Speaker
has been tough, but it was, it was a situation where, yeah, I mean, I was unemployed for almost two years.
00:15:28
Speaker
So it was, yeah, just our family surviving, um, and doing what we had to do, uh, each step of the way.
00:15:36
Speaker
Um, and now, you know, where I, where I live in Florida is just in a beach town.
00:15:41
Speaker
It's totally normal.
00:15:42
Speaker
Um, I actually did just get a job as a PA.
00:15:45
Speaker
I'm going to try it.
00:15:47
Speaker
Um,
00:15:48
Speaker
it's just in a private, you know, urgent care.
00:15:51
Speaker
So I don't have to deal with any of the vaccine stuff and like I would in a hospital, but I also did start, you know, officially start my, um, kind of construction business too, that I'll maybe try to get going and basically just see kind of what, what pans out, um, whether I can even tolerate medicine anymore.
00:16:10
Speaker
Um, but I do, I do still, you know, we still think about, um, you know,
00:16:18
Speaker
like you're saying, exiting and kind of the right way to do it.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I think we're at the point now, having built an off-grid cabin and all that before, I learned a lot about, you know, location's huge, the laws of, you know, the local area where you're going to do it is huge.
00:16:37
Speaker
So I still want to do that, but I'm going to do a lot more research before I do it again so that I make the right move.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
What did you, um, tell us a little about the construction business that you're building.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, basically here in Florida, um,
00:17:00
Speaker
the handyman laws are pretty friendly.
00:17:02
Speaker
So you can do basically anything that doesn't require a permit or anything structural and you actually don't even need a license.
00:17:12
Speaker
So you get a business license, but you don't need some board thing.
00:17:16
Speaker
So that's what I'm going to do.
00:17:18
Speaker
A lot of my, I've flipped five houses in the last five years or so during all these moves.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so I've learned along the way to do things like
00:17:29
Speaker
really good drywall work, tiling, bathrooms, fences, all that kind of stuff, just flipping these houses.
00:17:36
Speaker
So that's probably the sort of the bulk of what I'll be doing for people is, you know, nothing crazy that you'd need a full general contractor for, but, you know, stuff that some people can't or have no inclination to do.
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:51
Speaker
I know a guy who
00:17:53
Speaker
basically bought an excavator and a skid steer.
00:17:56
Speaker
And that's his business is just any job that's not doesn't require permits or the property owner is willing to pull the permits.
00:18:03
Speaker
There's lots of ways you can get around that registration system and run a business that way.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually taken a similar path to you in some ways.
00:18:12
Speaker
I had a, as you Cody, I had a pretty high flying white collar, comfortable office job.
00:18:19
Speaker
And I left it a lot of it for sort of bureaucratic ideological reasons.
00:18:24
Speaker
And since then I've just been doing a lot of trade work.
00:18:29
Speaker
I don't think I'm at your level yet.
00:18:32
Speaker
Um,
00:18:33
Speaker
And I recently just got hired as a construction coordinator in a small community I'm in to build some new houses for folks.
00:18:41
Speaker
And I've personally found it really rewarding.
00:18:44
Speaker
So I'd love to hear how you like it in terms of the freedom and the ability to actually physically create something in your construction business versus having to follow rules and regulations as a PA.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think...
00:18:59
Speaker
That's one of the things that draws me to it is the fact that I'm a very goal-oriented person.
00:19:08
Speaker
That's the problem with healthcare is it's just a revolving door of people.
00:19:11
Speaker
There is no goal.
00:19:13
Speaker
As soon as you get one thing done, there's just another one waiting for you and there's no sense of satisfaction, accomplishing something and getting it done.
00:19:23
Speaker
Another aspect to it is being a writer.
00:19:29
Speaker
I'm also kind of an artist.
00:19:30
Speaker
So there's a little bit of that too, where it's, you know, these trades, you know, growing up, it was like, you get sold this idea that it's, that it's dumb or, you know, whatever, that the smart people go to school and do these, you know, higher end white collar jobs.
00:19:45
Speaker
But I mean, it's, that's sort of like one of the big lies that was, you know, sold to us, our generation.
00:19:53
Speaker
And I think a lot of us are realizing that like, whoa, like there's,
00:19:57
Speaker
you know, satisfaction to be had from some of these jobs, just like the Zen state that you can get in doing, you know, blue collar or whatever construction type work.
00:20:10
Speaker
But then also you can,
00:20:12
Speaker
you're helping actual people.
00:20:14
Speaker
And a lot of times you can own your own business and can control things.
Trade Jobs: Freedom vs. White-Collar Restrictions
00:20:18
Speaker
And that's going to be, I think, even more important because look at inflation.
00:20:22
Speaker
You can either be an employee.
00:20:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:25
Speaker
So the job I just got here is like one of the lowest pay I've ever been offered because that's what Florida is like for PAs.
00:20:32
Speaker
But if you own your own company, you can just charge people more and they'll have to pay it.
00:20:37
Speaker
So I think a lot of people are going to be starting to make these moves.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's huge freedom in it and also money.
00:20:46
Speaker
I mean, I think one of the things that we were told, well, I guess there were probably well-meaning people who steered us away from those trades.
00:20:59
Speaker
And to the extent that that was well-meaning, it was rooted in like they had this image of somebody wearing out their body until they're about 45 and then like getting injured or not being able to work anymore.
00:21:11
Speaker
And then
00:21:13
Speaker
you know, really struggling and not really anytime you're getting paid for your time.
00:21:19
Speaker
Like there's only so many hours in the day.
00:21:21
Speaker
And so there's like some caps on that.
00:21:24
Speaker
But when you combine it with some like business acumen, some entrepreneurial skills, some ability to manage people, I definitely know guys in the trades who have turned their ability to do the physical work into
00:21:43
Speaker
it's not passive income, but they're primarily supervisory.
00:21:48
Speaker
They're making sure it looks right.
00:21:49
Speaker
They're dealing with the customer, that kind of thing.
00:21:52
Speaker
Is that the direction that you'd be interested to go?
00:21:54
Speaker
Or do you want to be like hands on all the way?
00:21:58
Speaker
No, I definitely think that if it took off, I would you have to go that way.
00:22:03
Speaker
I mean, I just did a section of fence for my new place here in Florida.
00:22:07
Speaker
And yeah, you're going to break at some point.
00:22:10
Speaker
Right.
00:22:11
Speaker
And
00:22:12
Speaker
it's funny Rajiv, you brought up that you're kind of doing the managerial side.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I've actually thought that like, maybe I should just look into, I did like a indeed search just the other day.
00:22:21
Speaker
Like maybe I should look into doing like, because I can spot homes that have the value and I know what needs to be done.
00:22:29
Speaker
And then I can offload them for profits, at least for the last five years running.
00:22:33
Speaker
Like maybe I should just look for people like you're saying that like the tribe or the team that's already doing it and may do more of that role where, yeah, you're, I'm,
00:22:43
Speaker
eyeing the property, I'm running the crew, um, just from a managerial standpoint, it would be easier on my body.
00:22:49
Speaker
And ultimately you'd probably make more money.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
Though I do have to say, um, I'm not making too much, um, in this job I'm starting.
00:22:57
Speaker
Um, but the advantage for me at least is that, um,
00:23:02
Speaker
You're right, it's a combination of some of the more managerial administrative stuff, but also kind of doing a site supervisor role and being construction runner.
00:23:11
Speaker
So I get to learn more about the tools and materials.
00:23:15
Speaker
And if someone needs help, I can step in.
00:23:17
Speaker
Like if someone's doing some cabinet work and they need some waterproof wood, I get to go in and kind of learn how that works and learn how it's done.
00:23:26
Speaker
And in fact, part of my exit plan was to learn that sort of stuff.
00:23:30
Speaker
And the company I've joined, they've even said they've trained some of their guys for three or four years.
00:23:36
Speaker
And then those guys went to start their own company.
00:23:40
Speaker
So like you were saying, it's a pretty common thing
Success in Trades vs. White-Collar Struggles
00:23:43
Speaker
that's going to happen.
00:23:43
Speaker
And anybody who, in my opinion, has a little bit of sense is starting to get into more of this DIY stuff, either on a personal level or like you and me on a more commercial level.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny too, because, you know, I tell this to people a lot, like all the people I knew in high school that went on to do stuff like that.
00:24:05
Speaker
Like one of my friend's little brother, you know, just ever since he got out of high school, started a, was a framer, you know, for houses does this, you know, the framing.
00:24:16
Speaker
And he now owns like one of the biggest framing companies in the area.
00:24:20
Speaker
And he's like bawling, you know, and like you get people like us that are
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, like living paycheck to paycheck as the New World Order rolls out and then they're doing just fine.
00:24:31
Speaker
But yeah, so I mean, there's people that have kind of seen the writing on the wall the whole time.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's what's funny.
00:24:37
Speaker
And everybody laughed at him.
00:24:38
Speaker
And now we're, yeah, like you said, you've got to eat some crow over all that.
00:24:46
Speaker
Well, and it's like, you do not have to be a genius to do a lot of these jobs.
00:24:52
Speaker
And I think some of the snobbishness about it is like, well, you don't, you know, you have to be super smart to get through med school, which, you know, maybe, maybe not.
00:25:03
Speaker
But the fact is that you can, you don't have to be a genius to be in any of these fields.
00:25:09
Speaker
But if you are a bright guy, and if you do have some acumen, you can take
00:25:15
Speaker
any one of these fields and turn it into something.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:17
Speaker
I mean that, like you're saying, it's the people that have the mixture of both are going to do really well.
00:25:26
Speaker
And it's, it's almost like one of the, like the, the classic, you know, book smarts and street smarts, you know, that,
00:25:34
Speaker
The guys that have been doing, you know, kind of what I would call almost like real world jobs, you know, dirty jobs like the TV show.
00:25:42
Speaker
I mean, those guys, it's they've got a sense of reality that the other side doesn't have.
00:25:49
Speaker
You know, it's the classic like the architect makes this and the builders like it's impossible.
00:25:53
Speaker
You literally can't do it.
00:25:54
Speaker
You know, I also find that like they run their mouth way more.
00:26:00
Speaker
than white collar guys do.
00:26:02
Speaker
And it's because, you know, they might lose like a customer because of something they say, they're not going to lose their livelihood.
00:26:12
Speaker
And so like we've had to kind of people, people like me who've had these white collar jobs for so long have, have sort of come around to that approach because of anonymity.
00:26:25
Speaker
And in my case, getting docs and then having to, having to, you know, getting kicked out of the, of the corporate world.
00:26:32
Speaker
But these two, these dudes who are like, I have neighbors who have like a tinting company.
00:26:38
Speaker
I live out in the country and,
00:26:41
Speaker
Guys have a tinting company or they're farmers or they're mechanics.
00:26:45
Speaker
They're like they're trying to attract the attention to some federal agents with the kind of way they talk on Facebook.
00:26:52
Speaker
And it's because they're just not they're just not afraid.
00:26:54
Speaker
And it's it's super it's admirable.
00:26:57
Speaker
You know, I like I sort of wish that I wish had always been that outspoken.
00:27:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:27:02
Speaker
I mean, I, I, my whole career as a PA and hospitals and stuff, I've been calling out kind of the bullshit and corruption and stuff.
00:27:10
Speaker
And, you know, I basically got to the point where I moved around a lot, honestly, because, you know, you, you, if you are calling things out for what they are enough, you know,
00:27:23
Speaker
people don't want the truth out there.
00:27:25
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:27:27
Speaker
Um, right.
00:27:27
Speaker
Because you know, like healthcare is a big money.
00:27:30
Speaker
There's a lot of illegal stuff going on.
00:27:32
Speaker
And if you're the guy that says anything, you're blacklisted.
00:27:34
Speaker
So yeah, but it's, you know, what kind of stuff did you see?
Corruption in Healthcare System
00:27:41
Speaker
Oh, uh, I prior to COVID or, or, Oh yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker
The whole, my whole career.
00:27:46
Speaker
No.
00:27:47
Speaker
Um,
00:27:48
Speaker
Price fixing between two groups of physicians.
00:27:54
Speaker
So they would meet and collude on prices, which is a federal crime.
00:28:02
Speaker
Basically, most health care right now, especially the corporate stuff is...
00:28:09
Speaker
you you could make a case that there's a massive amount of billing fraud going on i mean i think up you know up coding charts and stuff is probably the biggest one where yeah you know um gosh i mean um you got something do you think a lot of covid cases went that way where it's like if we turn if we call this covid we get like 15 000 extra bucks or whatever yeah i i
00:28:33
Speaker
So I was laid off in the beginning.
00:28:35
Speaker
So I can't, you know, testify to that, whether that was truly going on.
00:28:39
Speaker
But from the outside, it, yeah, a lot of that stuff didn't make a lot of sense.
00:28:44
Speaker
And that's how I knew something wasn't, you know, on the level about all of it, because you don't just test people driving through a parking lot and call that a disease, right?
00:28:53
Speaker
You have to examine the patient.
00:28:55
Speaker
I mean, and this is like, if you want to bill, you know, something and call it that on your chart and diagnose someone, you have to like
00:29:03
Speaker
take the history from the person, do a physical exam.
00:29:05
Speaker
And then, you know, COVID, just having a swab doesn't mean you're sick, you know?
00:29:11
Speaker
So that was definitely a huge tell.
00:29:14
Speaker
I was just like, come on, you gotta be kidding.
00:29:17
Speaker
Kind of going on this theme, you said you graduated kind of in the early 2000s and moving forward, it seems like things have just gotten worse in terms of
00:29:29
Speaker
hospitals, you know, being corporatized, bureaucratized, you know, physicians probably have to push certain treatments or, or build certain things a certain way.
00:29:42
Speaker
And, and you were talking about some evidence you saw about that on the ground, even if you didn't see during COVID, I guess, do you, do you have ideas of how, how medical system or even medical schools can stop, you
00:30:00
Speaker
going on this debt-funded model or this, you know, kind of this kind of scammy billing
Healthcare Structural Issues and Reforms
00:30:05
Speaker
model?
00:30:05
Speaker
I mean, what does it look like from your perspective to have physician's assistants or doctors actually...
00:30:14
Speaker
provide health care, not health management or health billing.
00:30:19
Speaker
Do you have any ideas of what it would take to sort of start unwinding this whole Leviathan of medical malpractice, for lack of a better term?
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:32
Speaker
I mean, I think it's gotta be, you know, people just need to stop selling out.
00:30:37
Speaker
I mean, the physician sold out a long time ago.
00:30:40
Speaker
I mean, most older doctors would say, you know, even me, I'm like, you know, it probably started happening in the eighties.
00:30:45
Speaker
Right.
00:30:46
Speaker
So it's, it, that's the biggest thing though, is, um, so as an ER PA, um, I've worked almost exclusively for one company called, uh, actually, I don't, I don't want to say their name, just
00:31:01
Speaker
you know, for legal reasons, but it's, there's like basically two, literally like two that own almost every ER contract in the country.
00:31:12
Speaker
And so what, how that works is basically that corporate, those,
00:31:17
Speaker
corporate umbrellas buy out local physician groups that had contracts at local hospitals.
00:31:23
Speaker
Right.
00:31:24
Speaker
So the docs just have to stop selling out and they get, they get cut sort of sold on the idea because, you know, the billing is a nightmare.
00:31:35
Speaker
You know, you basically have to have a billing company if you're going to do it.
00:31:40
Speaker
And what's crazy is my first ER group I ever worked for was private and,
00:31:48
Speaker
you know, some of the things that happened there, I realized through my career that they, that was probably one of the best jobs I ever had.
00:31:58
Speaker
And I totally took it for granted just because I didn't understand what the industry was like.
00:32:03
Speaker
So if the physicians can do that on the big level, like hospital providers, that's a, that's a huge start.
00:32:09
Speaker
And then
00:32:10
Speaker
Like you had mentioned on an outpatient basis, I think you've got to cut ties and basically opt out of Medicare completely, go to like direct primary care or cash pay.
00:32:21
Speaker
That gets sticky on the patient side, though, because they're still going to basically want, people are going to want insurance for catastrophic surgeries, accidents, you know, illnesses, things like that.
00:32:32
Speaker
So...
00:32:34
Speaker
That's sort of the conundrum.
00:32:35
Speaker
And that's, I believe, why they made when Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, came out, they made basically catastrophic health insurance illegal because they probably knew that if you had that, it would be like car insurance where a 30-year-old dude could pay 50 bucks a month for catastrophic insurance.
00:32:56
Speaker
And they don't want that because then they can't.
00:33:00
Speaker
The Ponzi scheme for all the older people that are
00:33:04
Speaker
you know, spending all the money in the healthcare system, it would collapse.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
Do you think that there's a solution to that problem of the sort of moral hazard or the, like, do you think that we just have to have a different attitude toward death or like, is there a way to take care of those people more effectively?
00:33:27
Speaker
Or what's your take on the elder care situation?
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really complex topic, but it's one I've thought a lot about over the years.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I definitely think that people have to be a little more comfortable with death and dying.
00:33:47
Speaker
Sort of an anecdote, I don't know if this is still accurate, but when I was going through training, they said half of all Medicare dollars are spent on the last six months of life.
End-of-Life Care and Healthcare Spending
00:33:56
Speaker
So that shows that too.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker
And again, I don't know if that's still true.
00:34:01
Speaker
I'm sure it is.
00:34:02
Speaker
But regardless of hard numbers, yeah, it's I've had to basically tell my mother and one of my old best friends to just let themselves die because of the nature of their illnesses.
00:34:14
Speaker
I, you know, it was just
00:34:17
Speaker
Being in my role, it was just I had to be the one person that wasn't going to lie to him and tell him, you know, you're not going to survive this big transplant or, you know, dude, it's it's time.
00:34:29
Speaker
It's over.
00:34:29
Speaker
Like this is this is the end, you know.
00:34:33
Speaker
So that's a big part of it.
00:34:37
Speaker
But yeah, I mean.
00:34:41
Speaker
Which is it's fundamentally it's a spiritual.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
Problem.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't – I'm the wrong guy.
00:34:48
Speaker
I don't even think I'm qualified to answer the big picture economics and insurance stuff.
00:34:53
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:34:53
Speaker
That's complex.
00:34:54
Speaker
But I do think on the individual level, people need to also live healthier.
00:34:59
Speaker
But yeah, realize that none of us are getting out alive.
00:35:05
Speaker
That's a huge piece of the COVID freakout that was so –
00:35:11
Speaker
that was so disturbing to me is that they were unwilling to talk about health and taking better care of yourself.
00:35:20
Speaker
Cause I mean that, that makes so much more difference than, than wearing a mask and, and, but there's these, I don't know if you can call them interest groups or what, but like it's, it's very difficult for anybody to say like, weight is a problem.
00:35:37
Speaker
Um,
00:35:38
Speaker
and having, you know, being constantly sedentary and having a weak heart is a problem.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:45
Speaker
And that's part of the political sort of color revolution, I think, that's going on, you know, is that basically politically correct speech, right?
00:35:57
Speaker
And so I think there was some intentional sort of part of that, like you're alluding to with COVID, where
00:36:03
Speaker
You're not allowed to call people fat anymore.
00:36:05
Speaker
So you can't say, hey, don't be fat because you'll die of COVID.
00:36:09
Speaker
And that gets really into the periphery of what we're talking about.
00:36:14
Speaker
But I think some of it is intentional in the big picture regarding COVID, where, hey, you can't talk about that stuff anymore.
00:36:24
Speaker
You're dangerous misinformation.
00:36:28
Speaker
And it's just so obviously not directed toward like the, it's sort of like climate change and nuclear.
Impact of Political Narratives on Health
00:36:36
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:36:36
Speaker
How it's like, if you guys were really concerned about what you're claiming to be concerned about, you wouldn't be blocking nuclear power.
00:36:43
Speaker
And, and this is, it's exactly the same thing.
00:36:45
Speaker
Like if you, if you were really concerned about this disease and you, and it was so threatening to, to you, you would be doing what actually works to make it better.
00:36:55
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:36:56
Speaker
And, and you know, that's,
00:36:59
Speaker
That's what's so concerning to me about what's going on in the world is exactly what you're saying is I think we're well into sort of a, you know, people argue about whatever ism it is, fascism, communism, whatever.
00:37:13
Speaker
I think we're well, you know, into that sort of transition of controlling information and what you can and can't say.
00:37:22
Speaker
But yeah, it's, it,
00:37:25
Speaker
I come from a nuclear town, oddly enough, my dad's a nuclear engineer.
00:37:28
Speaker
So yeah, it's, you get into any of those topics.
00:37:31
Speaker
And one thing I've always said is, if you really wanted to solve all these problems, or even the healthcare money problem, you could use AI to find out what the most efficient way to do it would be, is, right?
00:37:45
Speaker
Now, you're always going to have people arguing over like, what should be prioritized and all that.
00:37:50
Speaker
But you know that there's an agenda because
00:37:56
Speaker
common sense tells you that, yeah, they're not even addressing the actual problem.
00:38:00
Speaker
They're using the issue as a sort of, you know, again, like a proxy element for some other thing they're trying to accomplish.
00:38:07
Speaker
Well, yes.
00:38:07
Speaker
Speaking of kind of both, you know, emphasizing personal physical fitness and then also, you know, to some degree, we're talking about personal faith and spirituality to deal with health and what that means for death and
00:38:25
Speaker
I know
Jiu-Jitsu for Fitness and Community
00:38:26
Speaker
you've been doing jujitsu for a long time.
00:38:30
Speaker
And so I grew up doing various martial arts.
00:38:33
Speaker
And the way I was always taught was it was definitely for health, but there was also sort of a very grounding aspect where it helps keep you involved in kind of the real world and have real physical feedback as opposed to
00:38:51
Speaker
what you were saying, a lot of people who just speak politically correctly and want to avoid the fact that, hey, you know, there's people die and they get sick.
00:39:01
Speaker
So I'm wondering, you know, can you tell us about, you know, how long you've been doing jujitsu, how that's helped you keep fit and healthy?
00:39:09
Speaker
Maybe it's had a similar grounding or spiritual impact on you.
00:39:15
Speaker
I kind of see a lot of guys getting into that, you know,
00:39:19
Speaker
And I personally haven't done it, but I'd be very interested in doing it.
00:39:22
Speaker
And I'd love to hear how that's impacted your life and how that's helped keep you sane.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:32
Speaker
You know, as a kid, like a little kid, 10 and under and stuff, I was always pretty active.
00:39:37
Speaker
But I grew up in the military, so we moved around a lot.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I never really played a lot of traditional sports because of that.
00:39:44
Speaker
You know, you just couldn't get into the community and be on teams and stuff because you'd literally move like a year later.
00:39:51
Speaker
So I was in that era, you know, sort of like the
00:39:57
Speaker
the Van Damme Ninja Turtle era, right.
00:40:00
Speaker
As a little kid.
00:40:00
Speaker
So that, uh, I started, yeah, I started getting into just, you know, like Taekwondo and ninjutsu and all that, you just stuff like that, you know, as a little kid.
00:40:11
Speaker
And then, uh, you know, I started doing Taekwondo like in junior high in my, in my early teens.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then, uh, the first UFC happened and I saw it on, um, MTV news, I think that Hoist Gracie had won.
00:40:26
Speaker
And, um,
00:40:27
Speaker
there's a lot of history to the UFC that is really interesting.
00:40:31
Speaker
You know, if you read about it and the Gracie's basically, you know, invented it just to show off.
00:40:38
Speaker
So anyway, I, I started watching those early, those first UFCs and saw the Gracie's, you know, demolishing everybody with, with their jujitsu.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so back in those days in the early mid early to mid nineties,
00:40:54
Speaker
there really, it really wasn't any, it wasn't anything right there.
00:40:58
Speaker
You could, you basically had to go to like New York or LA to even know, you know, meet anybody that was any good at it.
00:41:05
Speaker
Uh, but that's what I did.
00:41:06
Speaker
I, um, immediately because of my passion for like martial arts, um, I knew, I knew immediately that that was going to be the way to go.
00:41:19
Speaker
Um, because it was just so effective.
00:41:22
Speaker
Um,
00:41:23
Speaker
And so I did everything I could, you know, I, I actually flew, I went to a Hicks and Gracie seminar, who's Hoist Gracie's older brother.
00:41:32
Speaker
And for a while he was like, you know, the best in the world.
00:41:36
Speaker
Um, so I, I went to a seminar, talked to him, got, um, the, basically permission from him to go to his house and do private lessons in his garage.
00:41:46
Speaker
So I spent literally like cashed in my life savings and flew to LA and did it.
00:41:52
Speaker
Um,
00:41:52
Speaker
But this was so, you know, so long ago that and it was so primitive that, you know, we were training and like I bought some old wrestling mats from our high school, like a chunk of it and put it in my garage.
00:42:08
Speaker
And we do that.
00:42:08
Speaker
And, you know, over the years, you really had to be really into it, you know, to even survive those first few years because there was nobody to train with and stuff like that.
00:42:20
Speaker
But ultimately, you know, in those in those teenage years and maybe early 20s.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah, I realized right away that aside from like fighting and stuff like that, it really was more of a like a.
00:42:35
Speaker
like a drug, you know, like an addiction, you know, where you, you have to do it, you know, or you don't, you start to lose it a little bit, you know?
00:42:44
Speaker
And I think now, now I'm even a little bit past all that.
00:42:49
Speaker
Cause I've, I've been doing it so long, you know, I've gotten injuries that build up and stuff, but now, you know, like you Rajiv said, it's almost like,
00:42:58
Speaker
It's almost like it's a social thing now.
00:43:01
Speaker
I do it just almost solely like for the health and then to talk to people and you that your jujitsu friends are your best friends.
00:43:08
Speaker
You know, it's just when you do jujitsu, that's just the way it is.
00:43:11
Speaker
So it really is sort of this all encompassing thing.
00:43:15
Speaker
And I think people can get that from a lot of sports and activities.
00:43:19
Speaker
But there is something different about, you know,
00:43:22
Speaker
grinding your sweaty face and forehead against another person while you're physically trying to hurt each other that probably builds a little bit different bond than playing tennis or something.
00:43:32
Speaker
You're testing yourselves against each other in this really fundamental way.
00:43:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:41
Speaker
And kind of even relating to what we're talking about overall, the interesting thing I think about jujitsu above most others is
00:43:50
Speaker
sports or martial arts or whatever is everybody in the room knows who's the best.
00:43:57
Speaker
There's no debate and there's no hiding.
00:44:00
Speaker
There's no faking it.
00:44:02
Speaker
If you, if you put on a black belt and you're not a black belt, if you walk out there, everybody's going to know.
00:44:08
Speaker
And I think there's an element to that where a lot of people, you know, mixed martial artists, jujitsu, or even just real hardcore fighters.
00:44:17
Speaker
It's, it's hard to, you know,
00:44:20
Speaker
bullshit people like that because you know they they live in that world where you just you can't get away with it you're going to be exposed immediately right and so like this this palace intrigue and this like jockeying for status just can't just can't happen i i thought that i you know i'm not uh like
00:44:42
Speaker
even like a super fan or anything.
00:44:45
Speaker
So I feel like I'm a little bit out of my depth, but I've, I've seen enough of MMA to, to follow like, cause early days there was like different styles being tested against each other.
00:45:01
Speaker
And, and there was this process of like, I feel like jujitsu sort of emerged as like whatever winning fighting style you're going to,
00:45:12
Speaker
you're going to implement, it's going to involve pieces of this.
00:45:15
Speaker
Like this is unambiguously, this works.
00:45:20
Speaker
And, uh, and so I think that the, the realness of, of that competition, the realness of like, you know, we're going to, we're going to throw everything at the wall and test everything against everything else.
00:45:35
Speaker
And it's a pure competence hierarchy, um, is, is, is incredibly powerful.
00:45:41
Speaker
I'm, I'm actually, um,
00:45:42
Speaker
We've got a little gym here in town about 20 minutes away, and this spring, I'm going to take my boys down there and get them started.
Evolution of Jiu-Jitsu as a Sport
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's really good.
00:45:54
Speaker
Kids can get so good.
00:45:56
Speaker
I mean, it's amazing.
00:45:57
Speaker
And nowadays, it's just such a high-level sport that my daughter's about to be two, and...
00:46:05
Speaker
The superstars today and like a pure jujitsu, like wearing a, you know, a gi and the belt and competing.
00:46:11
Speaker
I mean, those guys, they're, they're all doing it since they were little kids because.
00:46:16
Speaker
you just can't compete with people that have been doing it that long.
00:46:18
Speaker
It's, it's really been really wild to watch it grow and being there from the start.
00:46:22
Speaker
And at least in America, it's, it's been really fascinating.
00:46:26
Speaker
And what's funny is I told my family back in like 95 or whatever, I was like, yeah, jujitsu and UFC, it's a sport of the future.
00:46:32
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, okay, man, whatever.
00:46:35
Speaker
And if I would have just,
00:46:38
Speaker
I still might open a school someday or whatever, but if I would have followed that, not like that gut instinct and that passion, I would have, I'd be probably, you know, having a six figure gym right now, just teaching two classes a day.
00:46:51
Speaker
I mean, that's the ultimate lifestyle right there.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, if you're training at the ground floor that early on, I mean, no kidding.
00:46:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's huge demand for it everywhere.
00:47:03
Speaker
So going back a little bit to the COVID thing, you've mentioned that COVID is real.
00:47:11
Speaker
It's not a fake disease.
00:47:13
Speaker
But your attitude toward the solution depends a lot on how bad you think other things are going, if that makes sense.
00:47:20
Speaker
If the government was hunky-dory,
00:47:22
Speaker
And the economy was going to be fine.
00:47:24
Speaker
And it was just about vaccinating people against this horrible pandemic.
00:47:29
Speaker
You know, I can maybe get inside the headspace of somebody who thinks that these measures make sense and you're kind of selfish for not participating.
00:47:39
Speaker
But I almost liken it to like the Flight 93 election, that article about Trump, how
00:47:46
Speaker
a lot of people who, who like maybe had problems with Trump personally, we're still supporting him on the basis of like, he's up against this really, really sinister situation.
00:48:00
Speaker
And so like his flaws just are not that relevant.
00:48:03
Speaker
And I, I wonder what your take is on how COVID is going to remain salient in the future or to what extent it's being
00:48:15
Speaker
A lot of people have been talking about like Ukraine sort of absorbing a lot of the, a lot of the COVID energy and it's now it's Russians instead of the unvaccinated who are the big enemy.
00:48:26
Speaker
But I wonder how much you think that stuff's going to stick around or, or not.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
there's a couple of parts to that.
00:48:34
Speaker
I think they're moving into a different phase.
00:48:37
Speaker
So again, if you agree that this is sort of what they want, they want this totalitarian, basically biometric surveillance state with digital currency and real-time taxation monitoring and all that.
00:48:54
Speaker
You can see the weird thing about what they did with COVID is
00:49:02
Speaker
I feel like it sounds really kind of cheesy to say this, but I feel like some of the red states in America might have saved the world almost because the red states proved that what they were doing wasn't necessary.
Geopolitical Events and World Order
00:49:20
Speaker
Because, I mean, the lockstep way that everybody was doing it was insane.
00:49:25
Speaker
And so to have any fissure in that was...
00:49:30
Speaker
You know, it spread pretty quickly.
00:49:33
Speaker
But like you're saying, now they transition to this Ukraine thing, which is so obviously not on the level.
00:49:44
Speaker
It's just like COVID, right?
00:49:45
Speaker
Like in the beginning of COVID, I didn't really even know exactly what was going on.
00:49:49
Speaker
We didn't know who the World Economic Forum was.
00:49:52
Speaker
We didn't know who Klaus Schwab was.
00:49:54
Speaker
None of that.
00:49:55
Speaker
And so I think, you know, it's pretty obvious Ukraine isn't on the level.
00:50:00
Speaker
We know that, you know, what Biden, you know, was doing over there and maybe the CIA did the Maidan, you know, coup or whatever in 14, you know, there's just enough going on where, you know, something's not right.
00:50:14
Speaker
So, you know, now the question is, is Putin in on it?
00:50:18
Speaker
Are they doing this to create a multipolar world, you know, where you have China,
00:50:24
Speaker
maybe in collusion with Russia, but either way, if you had the three, China, kind of Russia, and then the Western, you know, Europe and US, it, I think what they're doing is basically going in phases.
00:50:40
Speaker
So they roll out COVID to get everybody used to the idea of a world like that.
00:50:48
Speaker
And, and now they go to the Russia thing where they can dismantle
00:50:54
Speaker
the petrodollar and get everybody used to a multipolar kind of existence where there's no U.S. hegemony anymore.
00:51:01
Speaker
So I think, you know, this isn't even close to over and you kind of just have to watch and not buy into anything right away anymore.
00:51:10
Speaker
You don't believe anything at all, nothing until you, you know, make sense of it with your own eyes and ears.
00:51:17
Speaker
I had an experience in the Middle East during college
00:51:22
Speaker
where I got to talk to a lot of regular like Arabs on the street.
00:51:26
Speaker
And I was amazed at how distrustful they were of media.
00:51:32
Speaker
And I was, you know, pretty naive kid.
00:51:35
Speaker
And I was like, gosh, wouldn't it be terrible to live in a oppressive autocracy where you couldn't, where you couldn't trust what you read in the newspaper.
00:51:44
Speaker
And, and that's another situation where I've like, I've watched it happen here as, as people's trust in the media has collapsed.
Media Distrust and Conspiracy Theories
00:51:52
Speaker
everybody has gone to conspiracy theories and it's like, basically they've had to abandon their epistemic helplessness.
00:52:00
Speaker
They've had to abandon their outsourcing everything to these gatekeepers, which is there's pros and cons to that, right?
00:52:11
Speaker
Like not every theory that you might come up with is created equal, but it's probably a really good thing for people to recognize.
00:52:20
Speaker
that they can't trust what's going on in the media.
00:52:23
Speaker
And I wanted to ask you about, I think from my perspective, I'm sort of inclined to believe that a lot of this stuff is less about centralized conspiracy and some of it's more about
00:52:43
Speaker
coordination through incentive structures and things trending in the same way due to technology.
00:52:50
Speaker
And it's like, it's definitely nefarious, but I'm not sure that there's like a cabal pulling all the strings.
00:52:57
Speaker
And I, I, my guess is that you have a different take on that.
00:53:01
Speaker
And so I wanted to just ask you about that.
00:53:04
Speaker
Like what makes you, what gives you the sense that these are deliberate sort of nefarious plans?
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:13
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think I'm pretty open minded.
00:53:15
Speaker
I think I just tend to, I tend to lean towards it being that way, mainly because there's some evidence, you know, that, that, you know, Putin has been involved in the World Economic Forum and like did, you know, was, were these people involved in him?
00:53:34
Speaker
kind of taking over when Russia collapsed and stuff like that.
00:53:38
Speaker
And it's just sort of like the same people keep the same players all the time.
00:53:43
Speaker
I mean, there's videos of Putin talking about like, you know, the fourth industrial revolution and being on board with it.
00:53:50
Speaker
I mean, they're doing the same vaccine stuff there as they are everywhere else.
00:53:54
Speaker
So there's sort of like this thing I feel like with some conspiracy or like right wing, you know, quote unquote people,
00:54:03
Speaker
that are like, oh, Putin's a good guy.
00:54:04
Speaker
He's taken down the cabal.
00:54:06
Speaker
I'm like, I don't, I definitely don't think that.
00:54:10
Speaker
But, you know, I, I, I guess I just wonder whether I assume, you know, that, that everything is planned out, I guess, because that's sort of worst case scenario.
00:54:25
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:54:26
Speaker
Worst case scenario is this is all a put on all of it and that we're doomed, right?
00:54:30
Speaker
I mean, I don't necessarily believe that, but right.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can definitely see, you know, elements, you know, to what you're saying.
00:54:39
Speaker
And the biggest example of this, not to go off on a different tangent, really, but the best example of this is Trump himself.
00:54:48
Speaker
Because you can talk yourself and think yourself in circles, whether he was in on all this nonsense or not.
00:54:56
Speaker
Was he blackmailed by Epstein stuff to go along with all this?
00:54:59
Speaker
Was his full presidency, you know, a distraction?
00:55:03
Speaker
I mean, if you go down those kind of like thought experiments and game theory stuff like that, I mean, I think that's the biggest thing that I do is I just game theory stuff and kind of see what makes sense.
00:55:16
Speaker
And like you're saying, I'm not totally sure about Russia, Ukraine.
00:55:20
Speaker
I was just kind of throwing that out there.
00:55:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, but that's an interesting point, which is, you know, I think if you...
00:55:29
Speaker
if you judge people's participation in the new world order as sort of did they or did they not impose the vax measures on their country
00:55:42
Speaker
it's like virtually every country on earth.
00:55:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:46
Speaker
And so it's really hard to, it's really hard to find good guys.
00:55:50
Speaker
Well, the thing about that, that I don't hear a lot of people talk about is you have to realize that if one, if they really wanted to do this, like one world government, new world order thing, you have to have everybody do it because the minute you
00:56:08
Speaker
one even deep remotely large country decides not to do it again.
00:56:14
Speaker
It's just like the COVID thing.
00:56:16
Speaker
If you show that it's totally heinous and bullshit and nonsense and unnecessary, it gets really hard for everybody else to continue to do it.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:26
Speaker
So I mean, that's where, if there is some plan like that to do this worldwide,
00:56:33
Speaker
That would be the one thing.
00:56:34
Speaker
That's one thing that sort of convinces me it could be happening that way is because that's the only way you could actually successfully do it.
00:56:41
Speaker
Otherwise, you're just going to have China.
00:56:44
Speaker
You know, and everybody can villainize and kind of crap on them and make fun of them.
00:56:48
Speaker
The ostensible purpose of federalism, right, was to create laboratories of democracy where we try different things in different states
State Autonomy in COVID Responses
00:56:55
Speaker
and see what works.
00:56:55
Speaker
And so I think it's a really interesting example of that process playing out with COVID where we could we could watch what worked.
00:57:03
Speaker
And what didn't and what made sense and what didn't.
00:57:06
Speaker
That was really, I mean, I'm not a historian or political science guy or whatever, but that's sort of like, you know, the beauty of how they created this Republic.
00:57:15
Speaker
Right.
00:57:16
Speaker
And, you know, the encroaching federal powers has obviously been, you know, pretty wild over the last say a hundred years or whatever, but it's still kind of alive and kicking and it's pretty wild.
00:57:31
Speaker
And so it's,
00:57:32
Speaker
It's going to be interesting going forward, like that, this novel I'm finishing up kind of editing and stuff.
00:57:38
Speaker
I wrote it five years ago before any of this happened, but that was exactly what I was trying to work through in my head.
00:57:44
Speaker
And it basically just depicts a world where the U S is balkanized.
00:57:49
Speaker
Right.
00:57:49
Speaker
And you've got these pockets of, of awful, you know, and then how does that play out, you know, in sort of a near future scenario.
00:57:57
Speaker
But, um,
00:58:00
Speaker
I think it's really fun to kind of think about all that stuff and think about what could be and prepare yourself.
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's sort of a romance to...
00:58:12
Speaker
those those ideas because it introduces the idea that you might have freedom to work in you might have you might have the negative freedom of just the the power structures that are currently way stronger than all of us and you know can can squash us if they decide they want to
00:58:35
Speaker
if those centralized powers were to become so weak and then removed out of the way, there's this idea of suddenly there's space, you know, to act in.
00:58:46
Speaker
Suddenly there's freedom.
00:58:48
Speaker
And it's interesting to think about, like, sort of to play with that fantasy and think through, like, the consequences of it.
00:58:55
Speaker
Like, you know, obviously it probably wouldn't be sunshine and rainbows, but I think both ends of that are legitimate.
00:59:01
Speaker
Like, yeah, it would be terrible, and yeah, it would also be...
00:59:04
Speaker
a great adventure.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:06
Speaker
And even from a pragmatic perspective, I would ask, I'm kind of on the side of, you know, some people are like, oh, the Republic is over, you know, and what's going to come next.
00:59:19
Speaker
I'm kind of more on your side, Cody, like it's still kicking where I'm here in a red state.
00:59:25
Speaker
COVID is not a thing.
00:59:26
Speaker
Basically, Ukraine is not a thing.
00:59:28
Speaker
And it's not like anybody's actively resisting.
00:59:30
Speaker
It's like we're in a small enough town that
00:59:33
Speaker
there's a strong community and, you know, people pray for peace in Ukraine.
00:59:37
Speaker
And, you know, if someone gets COVID, they'll, they'll check on them.
00:59:41
Speaker
You know, I hope you get better.
00:59:42
Speaker
But from my perspective, the Republic is still alive and kicking and,
00:59:49
Speaker
And I mean, I would probably be the first one to go into Mad Max or, you know, The Road, the book, The Road by Cormac.
00:59:55
Speaker
I would not survive that.
00:59:57
Speaker
But I'm still on the side, like, let's continue to teach people about what liberty means in the U.S. sense, in the Republican sense, not the political Republican, but like being a republic.
01:00:09
Speaker
And so I'm curious to know, like, in terms of your, I mean, both of you have kids.
01:00:15
Speaker
I don't yet.
01:00:16
Speaker
You know, what, Cody, what are you,
01:00:18
Speaker
How do you want to make sure your daughter can be a daughter of liberty to make sure to fight for the Republic?
01:00:26
Speaker
Are you planning to homeschool like Bennett is?
01:00:28
Speaker
I mean, do you have any...
01:00:30
Speaker
scenarios of, oh, what do I actually do to prepare my wife and my daughter for whatever's coming next and to resist the new world order?
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're sort of figuring that out as we go along.
01:00:44
Speaker
But she is at that age, about to be two, where you have to start thinking about that.
01:00:49
Speaker
And I think...
01:00:51
Speaker
I don't know that we'll homeschool necessarily.
01:00:53
Speaker
It'll depend on just sort of, you know, practical logistics.
01:00:56
Speaker
But I definitely I highly doubt she'll go to public school unless I can be reasonably certain that, you know, wherever we live at that point, you know, where everybody's sort of rational.
01:01:09
Speaker
Right.
01:01:10
Speaker
Like I certainly wouldn't send her to public school in like Seattle or San Francisco or someplace like that.
01:01:16
Speaker
Sure.
01:01:16
Speaker
But, you know, you can kind of figure out other ways.
01:01:18
Speaker
You could hire a tutor, you know, whatever.
01:01:20
Speaker
But yeah, definitely the education is a part of it.
01:01:24
Speaker
I think the biggest thing I feel like I was missing as a kid, well, my dad was in the Navy, so he wasn't around a whole lot.
01:01:34
Speaker
But I think a big part of being a parent and keeping this thing alive, moving forward, freedom, you know, liberty, like that ideal, you know,
01:01:45
Speaker
that has been around for, you know, basically since the enlightenment.
01:01:50
Speaker
But I think a lot of it is just, uh, grounding them in reality of like the day to day thing, which goes back to everything we're talking about.
01:02:01
Speaker
You know, like if you want to teach your kid math, you can build a dog house, you know what I mean?
01:02:06
Speaker
And teach them geometry and all those things like that, you know, doing jujitsu with her, whatever, whatever she likes, you know, if she likes soccer or whatever, um,
01:02:16
Speaker
you know, keep keeping activities like that going.
01:02:19
Speaker
And then reading obviously will be a big one.
01:02:25
Speaker
Travel if we can still kind of do it.
01:02:29
Speaker
But just keeping, I think keeping the younger generation, we're in that phase right now where we got to keep our away from like the iPad.
01:02:37
Speaker
You know, it's like, that's the hardest part, man, is it's just,
01:02:40
Speaker
It's so easy to access, you know, the digital kind of metaverse, you know, they're doing it, calling it now.
01:02:47
Speaker
But I think grounding reality and keeping a balance in your kid's life from keeping them where the BS on the internet, like we're saying, like, that's great.
01:03:01
Speaker
But a lot of people don't care.
01:03:03
Speaker
Like you go out in the world and nobody's like you're saying, talking about Ukraine in real life.
01:03:07
Speaker
Like it's almost like the people that are addicted to social media are the only ones that give a crap.
01:03:13
Speaker
So I think the big thing is just balancing that, having a, you know, well-rounded education, you know, so that that doesn't die, you know, where control of information is obviously so important to these, these nefarious people that if you can,
01:03:33
Speaker
you know, kind of wrangle in some of that now and get ready.
01:03:37
Speaker
It'll be huge for the next generation.
01:03:40
Speaker
We talked about the front or you talked about the frontier spaces where you can be free and, and operate the way you want to.
Exploring Human Potential
01:03:50
Speaker
Where do you think the frontiers are right now?
01:03:51
Speaker
Where do you think are the, are the spaces where people can, can find freedom?
01:03:56
Speaker
Wow.
01:03:56
Speaker
That's a, that's a pretty interesting question.
01:03:58
Speaker
Um,
01:03:59
Speaker
to sort of preface the answer, I'd say one thing I've been thinking about a lot is that a lot of what we're experiencing right now is, you know, the end of the front, the actual frontier, right?
01:04:15
Speaker
I mean, the move West, you know, was not that long ago, you know, it was like 150 years ago, 200 years ago, let's say, you know, but that's, that's nothing in the blink, you know, in the, in the,
01:04:26
Speaker
kind of in the history of, you know, humanity.
01:04:29
Speaker
So I think what we're sort of dealing with is sort of those growing pains of, you know, there's nowhere left to explore or develop.
01:04:37
Speaker
The whole globe has been scoured, you know, a million times over.
01:04:42
Speaker
So now the people running the thing want to dominate the entire space because they, you know, they got what they wanted.
01:04:49
Speaker
You know, they're all ultra rich.
01:04:50
Speaker
There's nowhere else to explore.
01:04:52
Speaker
We did all the work for them and now they just want to get rid of us and control it.
01:04:57
Speaker
but that it creates what you're saying is like, it's like different types of frontiers.
01:05:04
Speaker
And maybe it's a frontier of human potential, where just surviving is no longer necessarily a thing.
01:05:14
Speaker
And in an ideal world, a one world government or whatever, everybody cooperating is a great idea, right?
01:05:23
Speaker
Okay, sure, idealistically, it's great.
01:05:30
Speaker
Could you create a utopia without all this other bad sides of it?
01:05:34
Speaker
I mean, there's kind of multiple ways people can sort of start exploring like how to one, live better.
01:05:48
Speaker
live, you know, be more happy.
01:05:51
Speaker
We could, a new frontier could be, probably the biggest frontier is how do we get rid of these people, you know, and get rid of this system.
01:05:58
Speaker
So there's, I think it's really, obviously my answer is very vague, but I think the new frontier is,
01:06:09
Speaker
it's just all so unknown.
01:06:11
Speaker
And that's why we're experiencing what we're experiencing is that there's a, this massive, like power vacuum in the world and there's, we've reached some boundary and now that's the moment they want to come in and control because, you know, they want to have their walls up and, and, and have a control of how, whatever people do.
01:06:33
Speaker
But
01:06:34
Speaker
I think the potential for individuals is huge in any number of ways.
01:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think the same thing about this power vacuum.
01:06:43
Speaker
I think it's an immense opportunity.
01:06:46
Speaker
And, you know, guys, I don't know, guys, guys who talk about these times, like they're so depressed to have been born now.
Conflict as Opportunity for Growth
01:06:59
Speaker
I'm like, man, would you want to have been born in a time when you didn't have to fight for anything?
01:07:03
Speaker
Like when all the problems were solved and you were just supposed to get a job and play video games, is that what you really wanted?
01:07:10
Speaker
Because that's not what I want from life.
01:07:15
Speaker
And the opportunity to be up against something big and scary is kind of cool.
01:07:26
Speaker
Well, it's funny because you...
01:07:27
Speaker
A lot of, you know, a lot of the rhetoric going around all these social topics is about the boomers.
01:07:33
Speaker
Right.
01:07:33
Speaker
And they they had like, you know, in terms of America, it was like there was Vietnam and stuff.
01:07:39
Speaker
But that between World War Two and now, whatever this is now, I mean, that was it.
01:07:45
Speaker
Right.
01:07:45
Speaker
I think everybody wanted what our parents had, which was, you know, except for.
01:07:52
Speaker
from kind of these, you know, this global running skirmishes all over the world that America was involved in.
01:07:57
Speaker
But just safety to make money.
01:08:01
Speaker
Right.
01:08:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:01
Speaker
I mean, for the most part, everybody was doing awesome.
01:08:04
Speaker
And, and, you know, this thing was chugging along.
01:08:09
Speaker
Like you're saying, I mean, just look at kind of my, you know, you guys have heard some of my interests and stuff, you know, I, I never, I've never, I've always aspired to do something bigger.
01:08:20
Speaker
Right.
01:08:21
Speaker
Like,
01:08:22
Speaker
you know, whether, whether it's being a jujitsu black belt and like fighting other people there, you know, there's nothing more kind of challenging than that on a, in a, in a real sense, but other goals, like, yeah, I want to, I want to write a book that every, you know, everybody's heard of, you know?
01:08:38
Speaker
So I think there are people that are like that.
01:08:40
Speaker
And there are people that aren't, and obviously COVID is, is completely shown who people are and what, you know, what they're, who they're going to be and what they're going to do.
01:08:51
Speaker
I mean,
01:08:54
Speaker
The weirdest part for me and sort of the most frustrating of the past two years is that is because of what I do for a living.
01:09:04
Speaker
I understand why people go along with kind of what's been going on, because I.
01:09:10
Speaker
they've always trusted the TV and these people and these institutions.
01:09:15
Speaker
And I just happened to be in a weird, you know, that weird situation where I sort of knew about what their, maybe the, you know, the new world order plans were, and then I could see the holes in COVID immediately.
01:09:28
Speaker
So I learned, I got to, I've had to kind of see what all my friends and family had to kind of witness what they do.
01:09:39
Speaker
also kind of take the slings and arrows from them and go through also just the, the, the, the chaos of that.
01:09:46
Speaker
My life has had, you know, had to endure, but it, the personal side of it is, has been one of the hardest, you know, in terms of losing friends, having family judge you and call you crazy, you know, it's, it's been, it's been wild.
01:10:03
Speaker
With the, with the effort to resist these things,
01:10:11
Speaker
Did the Canadian trucker protest and the way that that unfolded and the way that it, I guess, failed, did that change your mentality about what kind of resistance was possible?
Canadian Trucker Protest and Change
01:10:24
Speaker
No, I didn't.
01:10:26
Speaker
That didn't change my opinion on much.
01:10:28
Speaker
I thought that.
01:10:31
Speaker
I mean, I I kind of feel like.
01:10:35
Speaker
Those types of efforts are sort of futile, right?
01:10:38
Speaker
I think it's sort of.
01:10:40
Speaker
I applaud them for doing it, but I sort of thought that it's just not the right way to go.
01:10:48
Speaker
Like, it's not the way you take this thing on.
01:10:52
Speaker
And I don't know.
01:10:54
Speaker
Well, I think...
01:11:00
Speaker
protesting like in a way like that, I guess I didn't really understand like why when you're having supply chain issues and stuff, why the people that are so needed would not do their job kind of a thing.
01:11:14
Speaker
But at the same time, I get it.
01:11:15
Speaker
It's like if all the healthcare workers had stood up and said, we're not doing anything, maybe COVID would have changed.
01:11:21
Speaker
But then what happens to the patients that needed them that day kind of thing.
01:11:25
Speaker
So that's, so I think,
01:11:29
Speaker
I didn't really think a lot of pain of it.
01:11:31
Speaker
The pain of it doesn't necessarily hit the people that it needs to hit.
01:11:35
Speaker
Right.
01:11:35
Speaker
It hits people that you need to convince.
01:11:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:38
Speaker
And it basically where the last two years have been a series of what, you know, you can call a double bind where you, you, it's a stick up, right?
01:11:48
Speaker
Your money or your life.
01:11:50
Speaker
Right.
01:11:50
Speaker
And,
01:11:52
Speaker
Jiu Jitsu is all about that right you put people in binary sort of decision trees where you're if you have the advantage are ahead of them and that's exactly what has been happening to us for the past two years you're constantly being put into situations where we're in a like a no win situation right and.
01:12:12
Speaker
What's this is sort of a side thing, but Trump was always really good at doing that to other people.
01:12:18
Speaker
And then they they did it to him constantly.
01:12:21
Speaker
And that was really fascinating.
01:12:22
Speaker
But now, you know, people in general are sort of, you know, you get the vaccine or you get fired.
01:12:27
Speaker
Right.
01:12:27
Speaker
That's what that's a double bind.
01:12:30
Speaker
And I don't know what the answer is.
01:12:34
Speaker
I just kind of thought, I didn't really think a whole lot about the trucker thing, to be honest.
01:12:39
Speaker
It's sort of like Ukraine.
01:12:41
Speaker
It's fascinating on one level, but on some level, I'm like, I don't know enough about it to really even put too much thought into it.
01:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, I really like the way you put it.
01:12:53
Speaker
It's like what we've been through is a series of double binds.
01:12:56
Speaker
I've never thought about it that way.
01:12:58
Speaker
And then putting it back to Bennett's point, there's kind of a constricting element, but there's also kind of a lot of, there's a really big creative element to it too, which I'm sure you also feel when you're on the jujitsu floor in the sense that, you know, like,
01:13:18
Speaker
Bennett was doxxed and he was fired.
01:13:21
Speaker
But then from that, he had to think about the constraints for his family and other sorts of things.
01:13:25
Speaker
And he started this business.
01:13:28
Speaker
I was facing increasing bureaucracy for my job.
01:13:32
Speaker
And then I completely moved across the country, similar to you, and kind of doing trade work.
01:13:37
Speaker
And like you, you're now kind of starting your own business.
01:13:40
Speaker
And then you're thinking about maybe later starting a gym.
01:13:45
Speaker
I really like this framing of how when we're facing a series of double blinds, it's almost like an opportunity to increase our living type of jujitsu that impacts our lifestyle to figure out where are the creative opportunities and how we can move around those constraints, which kind of makes it an exciting game if you think about it that way.
01:14:07
Speaker
Well, yeah, and it goes back to what we've been talking about the last couple of minutes, all of it together.
01:14:13
Speaker
It's like,
01:14:14
Speaker
What are the new frontiers?
01:14:15
Speaker
Do you really want to live in a world where there isn't some form of conflict?
01:14:20
Speaker
You know, who wants to read a book that doesn't have any conflict?
01:14:24
Speaker
You know, like how boring is that?
01:14:26
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny because, you know, anybody who's highly skilled in anything, you know, is going to frame, you know, their you you can know.
01:14:37
Speaker
you can know a lot about the world doing anything.
01:14:40
Speaker
And that's kind of almost like encapsulates everything we're sort of talking about where it's like, you know, the guy I first trained with Hicks and Gracie, he understood the world through jujitsu, you know?
01:14:52
Speaker
And like you're saying, it's like you learn how to solve any problem by whatever you're good at.
01:15:01
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:15:03
Speaker
And, and it's, it's, it's kind of like,
01:15:07
Speaker
the new frontier really is for a lot of people going to be finding exactly what that is, you know, where maybe this world, this illusion that we were sold is obviously being exposed very, very rapidly as at best, you know, controlled, if not manipulated, if not a complete lie.
01:15:32
Speaker
So the biggest frontier is, is people, I think,
01:15:36
Speaker
building something new where you can't be put into a double bind and then sharing kind of these knowledge bases to, to, to solve the problem.
Interdisciplinary Solutions to Systemic Problems
01:15:46
Speaker
Right.
01:15:47
Speaker
It's like, if you could get,
01:15:49
Speaker
if you could get Bill Belichick and, and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and God who, you know, the best fighter in the world in a room, they would give you a bunch of different ways to solve it in terms of, you know, what they've learned in their specific fields.
01:16:05
Speaker
And because the world basically is where we're at this phase of globalism, the,
01:16:12
Speaker
That's going to be pretty fascinating is to see how we can learn from each other now that everybody's sort of doing their own specialization stuff.
01:16:21
Speaker
Well, I had to laugh when you said all that because basically you've described my project, which is to get experts from all these different fields into a room and say, how do we...
01:16:37
Speaker
How do we break loose of these rails?
01:16:39
Speaker
How do we make it so that we can't be put into a double bind?
01:16:42
Speaker
How can we make it so that we have the initiative?
01:16:45
Speaker
I feel like that's sort of in the air.
01:16:47
Speaker
That's what we're all kind of smelling is what needs to happen.
01:16:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:52
Speaker
And I think so just to, and it's not to go on and on about jujitsu, but it's like, I probably know that, you know, better than I know anything.
01:17:00
Speaker
I've done it longer than anything in my life.
01:17:02
Speaker
But so an example of that for people listening would be like, okay, well,
01:17:07
Speaker
In a fight, you know, you want to get essentially you're at two people at a distance.
01:17:12
Speaker
You come until you can touch each other.
01:17:13
Speaker
You get grips.
01:17:14
Speaker
Ultimately, what I'm trying to do is get to the person's head and neck and strangle them.
01:17:18
Speaker
Right.
01:17:18
Speaker
So what you're trying to do is get the pro I call it proximal control.
01:17:24
Speaker
You know, you start from your fingertip to your to your shoulder, to your neck.
01:17:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:28
Speaker
You're inching up this person's anatomical chain to where you have control of their vital structures.
01:17:35
Speaker
And so an example of, you know, how do we solve this problem using that framework is you go, okay, well, some things I've learned, okay,
01:17:46
Speaker
The goal is to get proximal control.
01:17:47
Speaker
Well, in the world, what are we trying to get control of?
01:17:51
Speaker
Well, what you really want to get control of, right, is like your – basically your means of existence, right?
01:17:58
Speaker
Your necessities.
01:17:59
Speaker
That's exactly right.
01:18:00
Speaker
Right.
01:18:01
Speaker
Food, water.
01:18:01
Speaker
So then you start to ask yourself – Your money system.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:06
Speaker
The education of your children, the credentials.
01:18:09
Speaker
It's all one thing.
01:18:10
Speaker
So as far as how do we solve it, one thing I've thought is what –
01:18:16
Speaker
The ultimate threat that they have is a gun.
01:18:20
Speaker
Ultimately, it's the barrel of a gun, right?
01:18:24
Speaker
So one of the solutions would be you have to take back like the police and military.
01:18:30
Speaker
Like that's it's a weird example, but that's how like people in the big scale, like you, it's almost like what, you know, like DeSantis has kind of done in Florida.
01:18:41
Speaker
It's like get a stranglehold on the education system.
01:18:45
Speaker
Because if you can do that, then you're not going to get a bunch of people in the next generation that are going to be indoctrinated into, you know, communism or whatever you want to call it.
01:18:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:57
Speaker
And then again, like jujitsu, putting people into a double bind where they have two choices, both of which are bad for them.
01:19:05
Speaker
How do we do that to them, to, you know, the establishment, you know, get inside their loop instead of the other way around.
01:19:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:12
Speaker
And you get, get first mover advantage and stuff like that.
01:19:15
Speaker
And,
01:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'd be fascinated, you know, like I'll have to go and listen to a bunch of these and get some far out, you know, people that are really different from me, but I'd love to hear sort of that specific, like, how do you fix the problem?
01:19:28
Speaker
You know, I think for me, it's, it's, if I'm answering it, it's like, yeah, you got to get education.
01:19:34
Speaker
police and military control where they're faithful to the people.
01:19:37
Speaker
And this problem is going to go away real fast.
01:19:39
Speaker
Well, it's so funny because it's such a petty pedestrian means of control.
01:19:50
Speaker
I mean, I don't think they've convinced a single police officer in this country.
01:19:53
Speaker
I don't think that there's a whole lot of like
01:19:57
Speaker
honestly convinced like globo yeah marxist corporate cops out there it is purely a matter of these guys don't feel like they have a lot of alternatives they're not making enough money to like squirrel a ton away so they've got runway and they feel like they've got to they've got to comply and so it's it's
01:20:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:23
Speaker
I mean like temperamentally and in terms of their, their personal politics.
01:20:31
Speaker
If you could just, if you could just ease up the, the, the brute economic pressure on those guys, they'd be on side in a second.
01:20:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:42
Speaker
It's where I moved from in Washington.
01:20:46
Speaker
So when COVID started, I was on the West side near Tacoma and Gig Harbor.
01:20:50
Speaker
And then I,
01:20:51
Speaker
moved to the east side of Washington where my family lives, which is, you know, dry and more conservative, at least on paper.
01:21:00
Speaker
But there on the east side, the sheriffs and stuff were not on board.
01:21:05
Speaker
You know, the cops were basically like, yeah, no, we're not, we're not closing down businesses.
01:21:09
Speaker
We're not finding people for masks.
01:21:11
Speaker
And so that's kind of what I said earlier.
01:21:15
Speaker
It's like,
01:21:17
Speaker
It's good that, you know, all the scenes you saw in Australia and England and New York City, even, you know, it's really, really grotesque.
01:21:26
Speaker
But that's one thing that I think sort of has helped overall is that we have had those pockets here.
01:21:35
Speaker
where they're just like, absolutely not.
01:21:36
Speaker
We know exactly what you're doing.
01:21:39
Speaker
Like you're saying, most cops are like, this is BS.
01:21:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:21:45
Speaker
I mean, the military, at least as much, if not more so.
01:21:49
Speaker
It's not an ideological problem.
01:21:51
Speaker
It's a very practical problem.
01:21:53
Speaker
So I want to leave on a high note.
01:21:59
Speaker
You mentioned in a tweet recently that the dawn is coming.
01:22:05
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of these spaces that we, these, these theoretical spaces and the game theory that we're trying to do, these are pretty dark, dark spots to be
Awareness and Resistance to Authoritarianism
01:22:18
Speaker
in and think about.
01:22:18
Speaker
So tell me, tell me what gives you hope, why, why you're optimistic.
01:22:23
Speaker
Oh man, I vaguely remember that.
01:22:25
Speaker
I'm not sure what I was thinking in that specific instance, but I think the,
01:22:31
Speaker
I think what gives me the most hope and probably what prompted that specific tweet was just the fact that, you know, everybody knows, not everybody, but a lot of people know what's going on.
01:22:46
Speaker
You know, this, I don't feel like this is something like, you know, we don't need to get into nine 11, but back then, I mean, there was an overwhelming sort of acceptance of what, you know, that, what, whatever the story was, you know, regardless of what you believe it,
01:23:01
Speaker
There wasn't a huge, you know, like now where there's, it's almost 50-50, right?
01:23:07
Speaker
So I think that gives me the most hope is that there are so many people that are not going along with it and that know sort of what, you know, is going on.
01:23:18
Speaker
And it's going to be really hard to roll out something like a digital currency that controls you and you lose all your money because everybody's going to be like, come on, you know, so...
01:23:29
Speaker
It's kind of, you know, you got faith in mankind and the power of knowledge and those two things put together.
01:23:37
Speaker
You know, I think there's going to be a lot more nonsense that we have to deal with.
01:23:42
Speaker
But ultimately, I think, you know, these things are going to fail.
01:23:45
Speaker
They always do.
01:23:46
Speaker
I agree.
01:23:47
Speaker
And I think people, what I always tell people is that they're expecting there to be an uprising like in a movie where the bad guy's plan is revealed and everybody, you know,
01:23:59
Speaker
gets real mad and they arrest him.
01:24:01
Speaker
Scooby-Doo ending.
01:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:24:03
Speaker
Exactly.
01:24:04
Speaker
And that's, first of all, it takes time for ordinary people to become aware of the problem.
01:24:11
Speaker
It takes more time for them to start quietly maneuvering their lives such that they can respond.
01:24:22
Speaker
And then it takes them time to respond.
01:24:24
Speaker
And so,
01:24:27
Speaker
I don't know hardly anybody who's even remotely paying attention who isn't making moves right now, whether that's to get out of a jurisdiction, to get their kids out of public school, to raise food, to increase their, their marketability, get, get their resume up to date.
01:24:51
Speaker
Everybody's in motion right now.
01:24:54
Speaker
And,
01:24:56
Speaker
And most of it is in response to this kind of thing.
Building Real-World Connections
01:25:00
Speaker
It's they're tired and they don't want to do it anymore.
01:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the coolest things that's kind of happened over this time period was when basically my first viral tweet happened the night I got my last night in the ER.
01:25:16
Speaker
So that went nuts and you start getting all these Twitter followers and stuff.
01:25:18
Speaker
But it's just meeting people.
01:25:22
Speaker
Twitter is basically a...
01:25:25
Speaker
sort of a way for people's minds to come together, right?
01:25:28
Speaker
It's not like Instagram where you're showing pictures of your food and stuff usually.
01:25:32
Speaker
But I think that's what's worth it.
01:25:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:33
Speaker
It's been most fascinating is to meet, you know, some kind of famous people and do stuff like this and share these ideas.
01:25:41
Speaker
Cause you really do realize like you're not alone, man.
01:25:44
Speaker
They might not be your neighbor, but there's a lot of people that are making moves, moving, shaking.
01:25:48
Speaker
And I think it's important to when you can to meet the people like from something like Twitter or whatever, whatever social media you use, actually meet them.
01:25:58
Speaker
You know, like that's why with the Bass Brotherhood podcast, I drove the three hours to Miami because it's a sacrifice that was worth making.
01:26:06
Speaker
That way you've seen the person, like you've actually interacted with them and that stuff is important.
01:26:12
Speaker
when things of this magnitude are going down.
01:26:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:26:16
Speaker
I, I, I do a, uh, I do a monthly meetup with the guys at exit for that reason, because this thing can't stay online.
01:26:23
Speaker
We have to actually see each other and look each other in the eye and shake hands and, and get involved.
01:26:29
Speaker
Um, so yeah, any, anytime there's a group of like six to 10 guys that I can get into a room, I, uh,
01:26:38
Speaker
I put it on the calendar and we make it happen because it's, yeah, it's really important.
01:26:42
Speaker
It's worth making the sacrifice.
01:26:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:46
Speaker
I mean, speaking of Twitter, I mean, drawing it back to what makes people hopeful.
01:26:51
Speaker
One of your tweets that I really resonated recently is you basically said, you know, after realizing, you know, how much control demolition has occurred in the past few years, it's time to grow up and
01:27:02
Speaker
you know, stop having utopian or lofty aspirations.
01:27:07
Speaker
Those anyway fall short.
01:27:08
Speaker
And now those are definitely not going to happen.
01:27:11
Speaker
And something I've appreciated both from Exit and from meeting people like you said on Twitter is it's very pragmatic.
01:27:18
Speaker
sort of approach to understanding the constraints and meeting people from online networks in person.
01:27:25
Speaker
I'm close to two like farmers markets here.
01:27:27
Speaker
So I have like a source of food, you know, in case certain things start breaking down and I'm learning how to repair all sorts of things.
01:27:37
Speaker
And I think, you know, something that's characterized my age is a bunch of sort of fake email office jobs that have a lack of responsibility.
01:27:44
Speaker
And I think
01:27:46
Speaker
there's a lot of people, a lot of men in particular, who've been starving for real responsibility.
Rediscovery of Practical Skills
01:27:51
Speaker
And because there's so many moves happening, there's people who are starting to take that up again, like you said, for the basic necessities and kind of rediscovering how to do that, you know, in the 21st century.
01:28:02
Speaker
And so I agree with you, agree with you on that, you know, it's time to grow up and figure out how to do things that are, that are practical, that are concrete and,
01:28:12
Speaker
And that's fun.
01:28:12
Speaker
It's rewarding.
01:28:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:13
Speaker
And that, that tweet specifically was kind of just one where with everything going on, you know, in the react, the reality.
01:28:24
Speaker
Yeah.
Balancing Big Goals and Realism
01:28:25
Speaker
It's, I didn't want to even imply that, you know, you can't have big goals.
01:28:30
Speaker
Like I can't, I'm never going to be able to have a famous book that I write or whatever.
01:28:34
Speaker
It was more like, like, like you're saying it's,
01:28:40
Speaker
it's time to take this stuff, like the life sort of back to some real level.
01:28:47
Speaker
And that's a grownup thing
Ensuring Personal Security
01:28:49
Speaker
to do.
01:28:49
Speaker
You know, when, if you're, you know, a hundred years ago, running a farm, you know, that's a hard life, you know, and that, that was sort of the energy of that tweet was, you know, you can sit around at night and
01:29:02
Speaker
you know, daydream and, you know, because there's no consequences to that.
01:29:06
Speaker
But in the right now, when you wake up every day, you like you're like we're saying, like you better be plotting, scheming, moving, working and yeah, and getting somewhere, you know, where you and your family and friends have, you know, some sort of safety and at least whatever you can.
01:29:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
Following Cody and Joining Exit Group
01:29:29
Speaker
Well, Cody, this has been an awesome conversation.
01:29:32
Speaker
And if you guys want to follow Cody, you can find him on Twitter or his substack, codyelijah.substack.com.
01:29:39
Speaker
If you're ready to take your exit seriously and go step-by-step and take action and be held accountable by other guys who are trying to do the same thing, come check us out at exitgroup.us.
Conclusion and Appreciation for Insights
01:29:52
Speaker
Cody,
01:29:53
Speaker
Fantastic conversation.
01:29:54
Speaker
Awesome to talk to you and keep us in the loop.
01:29:56
Speaker
I'm excited to see where the writing goes for you and this journey into this new career path.
01:30:02
Speaker
So thanks a lot for coming.
01:30:04
Speaker
Oh yeah, thanks for having me.
01:30:05
Speaker
This was really cool.
01:30:05
Speaker
I appreciate it.