Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider what the suggestion that Taylor Swift and her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelsey is a psyop really means about our, you know, to our political and our media culture.
And in part two of our discussion, we'll discuss hobbies and why science is telling us that having hobbies is really good for us.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it, podcast. I'm James Keyes, and ride Shotgun is a man who's all about restraint, even about things that he's excited about. Tunde Ogun, Lana Toonday, you plan to do anything special to, let's say, curb your enthusiasm today?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Well, I guess I gotta find a way to restrain myself. So let's see. Let's see how this goes. Let's see.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: All right.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: All right.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you please hit subscribe on YouTube or on your podcast app. You know, it really helps us as far as getting the show in front of people. Now, we're recording this on February 4, 2024. And Tunda, in the past week, we've seen a relationship between a famous pop star, Taylor Swift, and a star, NFL tight end Travis Kelsey, morph into the latest conspiracy in the minds of some Americans. Presumably somehow this is connected to an effort to discredit them in advance, because they expect that these Americans may expect that at least swift would endorse or support Joe Biden later this year. President. So what stands out to you with this seemingly out of nowhere but real obsession in terms of discrediting Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey that's coming out from the white wing?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Well, if I can stay subdued and temper my passions here, I would use a term that I saw someone else use. So I'm not going to take credit for it, but I laughed when I heard it, which is, it's a WMD, but in this case, it's a weapon of mass distraction. There you go.
So, you know, I'm just thinking about how much I've been overwhelmed in recent years from all of these, you know, just hysterical issues, like when they had the tranny on the beer can or the doctor seuss stuff or the gas stoves or the caravans from years ago coming to the southern border with 200 people. And, you know, all these, or even birtherism, right? That, you know, all these things that enter our media space that are really designed, I think, to deflect. And I think there's a lot of different actors and motivations behind the scenes and a lot of reasons why we all have to suffer, you know, talking about this, including us right now, which I find interesting, but which is what I know we'll get into. But I think that's kind of what I make of it. I mean, I look, to finish up, my thought is, I feel sorry for these two kids, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, because I know they're doing very well.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: So, I mean, yes, that's what the money is.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Sorry, but, you know, like, you're trying to have a relationship, and he's. You know, people are coming out of the woodwork with these stupid things. I mean, it reminds me of birtherism, people just making stuff up, and then other people believe it, and it's just like, what do you do about that?
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, for sure, I can see that. I mean, the fame and popularity and the money. This kind of comes with the territory. So, you know, I think that, like, they're Travis Kelsey, you know, Taylor Swift. They're big boys, big girls. You know, they're big boy big girls. So, I mean, I'm sure they can take that, but, yeah, it's. It's unfortunate. It reminds me of high school in the sense, and we talked about this a bit offline that, you know, like, this is, like, you know, the. The prom queen and prom king or something like that. And then you got a segment of people that are just hating on them and just mad about, you know, pick whatever reason, you know, they're mad about, oh, this person did this, or this person is really. That didn't, you know, and, like. And all this other stuff. So it really comes off in a way. Like, I'm not gonna say juvenile, but it comes off in kind of a high school social strategy.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Well, I'll say it. You're right. I mean, in my opinion, that's one word I thought of in preparing for the day. This is juvenile.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: But when you look at it along, like a lot of the other things that you mentioned, it is. It's taking something that is. That appears, at least to me, and I know you share this sentiment to be relatively trivial, you know, a relationship between, you know, a singer and a football player and almost centering it in terms of, okay, this is something that's so important in terms of our political world or, you know, something like that. And also, I mean, the other thing about it not just so important, but make it seem sinister. And the crazy thing about making it seem sinister is the idea that, you know, and again, this is something else you and I mentioned offline was just that if you're looking Taylor Swift endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. So it would be expected. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for her to do it this year. But now it's like, okay, we're gonna do this now so that we can make something that's expected to happen seem sinister, seem like, you know, it's something else. Like, it's crazy because she's already super famous. Like, she sells out concerts, like, you know, with the same. She'll be at the same venue night after night after night after night and sell it out the whole time. She make a movie of the concert, and that'll sell $100 million in tickets. Like, she doesn't need more publicity, you know, so. But you take this idea, like, I was doing all this for more publicity, and it's like, the scale of it doesn't even make sense. But I don't think it's supposed to make sense. I think, again, it's supposed to be something that you can put in people's minds, you know, and then. And then, therefore, they will doubt and or kind of look at something with suspicion when all organically, this was likely to happen anyway.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, I want to go back to something you said, because this actually allows me to tie it into the idea that this is juvenile. You said, alluded to that. This is like high school. And I remember hearing when I was younger, in my early twenties and all that, you know, you would hear there were studies or people talking about in the scientific community that most of us humans, or at least in our society, maybe never kind of emotionally go much further than where we were at high school. Yeah.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Like a social development. I've heard that same thing, like, socially social development. High school, for most, is the pinnacle. Like, everything is about what it's going to be for the rest of your life is what's what you see there.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And let's be very clear here. Yeah, I'm glad you made a distinction there. Social development. And that's what I mean by emotional, not intellectual, not that we don't keep learning and all that. So I just want to be clear about that. But the idea that popularity, like you said, the prom king and queen image, that these two kind of look like the all american kids. And one is, like you said, a woman that is commanding her own business empire, all that, who's been famous since a very young age, and we've never heard, really, her being trouble with drugs, the law, or anything like that. And then you got this young man who literally is kind of the all american looking kid, a midwestern kid from Ohio that's a football player in all.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: American sport, you know, and plays rough in the city. Yeah, Kansas City.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: He's born in the Midwest and plays for a team in the Midwest. And so my point is just that if you're losing a prom king and queen is interesting because I was, you know, seeing something else that makes some interesting delusions. This because they said a little bit, I don't want to blanket this, but we got millions of people in this country so that everybody's like this. But someone I saw said, they said, you know, people are triggered also by seeing people like Travis Keltzy and Taylor Swift be together and have so much public adoration about it. They can be triggered based on where they were in high school. So if they were at the bottom of the pecking order in high school, maybe this triggers them. Like when they were in eleven or 12th grade and the prom king and queen, everyone's paying attention to them, but they feel like, what about me? And then, I mean, we talked about it. You and I were athletes in high school. I played high school basketball. You played high school football. And not to say we were the coolest kids in the school, but naturally, when you have a collective group, like being on a team sport, and especially a popular sport like football, baseball or basketball, generally, we weren't intimidated by the cool kids in school because we kind of were around that already. I mean, I'm not gonna say I was the coolest guy in school, but just being, you know, six foot four by the time I was 15 in high school, and then being on the basketball team meant that unintentionally, I was already a little bit higher on the pecking order, just by the way, humans.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah. The concept you're talking about is kind of like a resentment. Like, yeah, it's depending on where you were at a certain, you know, time of your life. And again, that being a very formative time of your life, we're talking about high school and social stratification. There may be a built in resentment that the actors who want to look at this as something other than what it is can maybe tap into, you know, and when people and that this resentment that was already there and say, hey, this is kind of like that. Or at minimum, to make it mimic something like that. So that could be something. I'm sure that that's part of the stew as to why this thing.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: I don't want to blame everybody because there's millions of people, but like you said, it could be part of the ingredients. And to your point, I think this is why the ecosystems of media that are continuing to push on this narrative.
You say something very important, they understand the ability to trigger people psychologically and emotionally. Yeah, and you're right.
These feelings might be dormant in someone generally, but when triggered by the right messaging and all that, all of a sudden, they do feel that resentment.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: To your point, this is something I wouldn't have seen coming. Like, to me, I'm looking at this, and this is somewhat rational and then somewhat just kind of emotionally. Like, Taylor Swift doesn't need more publicity. She'll always, you know, take advantage of it if she gets it. But she doesn't need it. You know, she's the most popular pop star in the world, you know, at least as far as the measurements that we have. And Travis Kelsey, his team, you know, he's won two Super Bowls, been to another one. Like, it's not like he's some up and comer, that he's on the back end of his career. You know, like, he's not like he's been around.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: James, the conspiracy theory would be, if they put me on an NFL, yeah.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Super bowl, that would be the conspiracy. Where'd this guy tunde come from?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: You know, 46 year old guy would have bad back and bust up knees and toward a kick. All of a sudden, he's running down the field scoring touchdowns.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: That would be a psyop. That would be a psyop.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: That would be just.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: We can make that happen. Let's make it happen.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I would love for that to happen, because then I'd be making money all.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: In effort to boost the podcast.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: You know, that would mess me up, though, because we'd have to allude to our last show about Polyamory. When I explained to my wife's doing.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: In my box, I'm reaching back on that one. Yeah, no, I gotta figure out when.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Taylor's in the box with my wife. I'd have to figure that one out. That's my.
Hey.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Well, like we said last week, polyamory seems to be having a moment, so you at least will have a shot. But. But no, I mean, I think that when you look at it, like, you see how it can be, how this can be leveraged. Cause like I said, looking at it from my standpoint, I'm just amazed that this gets so much traction amongst two people who are already very famous and, you know, again, are not even directly in the line of fire with. With politics. But it happens. You know, it happens.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: But, James, that's why it made me think of birtherism. Think about people like me and you. The irrationality in 20 1320 hearing that. Like, really? You think this guy wasn't born? Why?
[00:11:32] Speaker A: And you guys just figured this out now? Like, all of these other people, like.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: He was in the Senate since, like, 2000.
Any of that. He was never. He was never a muslim terrorist sleeper cell guy until 2009. Yeah, that's when it all started. So it's.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: But a lot of these. And I want to keep us moving, but a lot of these things. And that's what. What stands out about them sometimes is how convenient the explanation is, or the purported explanation is that's given at a given moment becomes. It's like, okay, well, all of this other stuff has been happening, but we're going to take this moment in time and say that, oh, yeah, well, all of this other stuff actually was just a game to get us to this moment. And, you know, like, this kind of stuff never happens organically when the kind of stuff happens organically all the time. So, you know, it's seeing order. Some of this, though, you know, I want to mention this piece before I move on, is just that seeing order amongst the chaos of life is something that humans do. I mean, this is why we see constellations. This is why we see shapes and figures and clouds and so forth. So it's not the craziest thing in the world that people would see some type of order in this, but to immediately jump to the political. Oh, this is about, you know, political campaign or presidential campaigns and to try to convince people of this and that. It's just like, you're putting a lot of things together to fit some narrative that, you know, you're like, there's also much simpler, you know, Occam's razor, simpler explanations is that, you know, hey, this guy, this popular girl, and they just made.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: It reminds me of birthrism because it's. It must have been too boring just to believe that some dude from Africa came to us to study and met some. Some white american young lady and they fell in love and had a kid that was just too difficult to understand, so you had to twist, even though.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: That is a pretty. Like that. That's not something that's not uncommon, right?
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, and then the same thing here. Yeah. And the same thing here is for two celebrities to hook up. Like, I. That's not something new, right? Like, and two famous.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: And for Taylor Swift to endorse Joe Debon, that's not.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: So you're taking all these things that are kind of ordinary and trying to put them together and say, oh, this is. This is something to watch out for. And it's like, well, you know, nah, it's kind of just kind of the normal, but, all right, we've. The term psyop has been brought up, and, you know, so I want to kind of open it up here and just kind of understanding the nature of psyops. And, you know, these psyops can go from pretty mundane and, you know, just, you know, voice of America, radio free Europe, and stuff like that. It can. It could be stuff like that, or it could be something that could be more sinister, things that have been proven to be more difficult, but nonetheless, it can be that.
What do you make of the idea that people, like, that's where people ran to this, you know, something like, oh, this is this relationship or the chiefs going to the Super bowl or all of it together? Is a psyop meant to. To pull the wool over people's eyes? You know, or something like that?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: It's about as mature an idea as the deep state. That's what I think about it.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Meaning, I understand, ironically asserting that there is a deep state, you know, could be considered a psyop as well. But I'll get to that.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Well, my point is just like, do I. Like, do I recognize that the United States government has lied to Americans and even sometimes done thing against the interest of its own citizens? Like, you know, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, you know, spying on Martin Luther King and telling him to go kill himself, you know, CoiNTelPro, the Tuskegee experiment. Right? I mean, let's. Let's not start going into all the ways that we know the government has done things against his people and even things like the Pentagon papers when they came out, that creates distrust. So I'm not saying I'm naive to the idea that the government can go rogue against its own people, not just.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Here, but any nation or parts of the country.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: And we need to be vigilant of that as citizens and all that. Of course, I understand that. But this idea that the deep state, in the way that it is in the modern american, right leaning culture is just as, to me, immature as this type of psyop explanation for Taylor Swift. And here's why. First of all, the idea of the Psyop, it sounds like something that could be sinister, just like the deep state. It's got a cool sounding thing to be scared of. And then, like I've said in recent shows that all of these hysterical things, they just forced me to go look them up. And I was fascinated, actually. I started looking up the definition of what's a psychological operation and the history of it. And, you know, it's really a. I mean, what I was reading, psychological warfare goes back human history cause of just how we operate. But it's as documented as early as the art of war from Sun Tzu, which was written 2500 years ago. So psyops is nothing new. Now, the use of psychological operations in the 20th century is what we're talking about in the kind of the way that we think of it today, that we're trying to change the hearts, because.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: That would include the 21st century as well.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm just thinking about, like, kind of post World War two and then the development of the CIA and the studies that were done in the fifties and sixties and, you know, and the CIA, some things came out that didn't make them look good. Like the program MkUltra in the 1960s where they were trying to do experiments on brainwashing people and all that. And from what I was reading is there's all these different levels of psychological operations. You know what the most effective ones are? The ones that tell the truth. Yeah, that's it. No, they were getting into it like, they were actually getting into, like, the russian influence on our 2016 election. And as much as there's evidence that the Russians infiltrated 160 million Facebook accounts and all that, you know, the conclusion was that it may not have affected the outcome of the election to the point where some people feared. And on the flip side, there was. There were other examples of, like, you're saying, radio Free Europe, Voice of America, what the US was doing during the cold war. They said that didn't really lead to a bunch of revolutions in eastern Europe. You had one in Hungary in 56 and one in Czechoslovakia in 68. So if we were doing that for 40 years, you know, it's not like we got a great track record of our Psyop, but what helped us beat the Soviets was the truth. Just saying, look at your condition compared to ours. Look what you're getting from an authoritarian, kind of communist, closed economy versus us with a democratic, open capitalist system. So that's why I feel like this Psyop illusion right now is another example. Like the deep state illusion is just a weapon of mass distraction to say, look over here, because of the fear and insecurity that besides that, there's nothing for this group of people to show, I guess people they feel are their constituents I want to hand it back.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: But, well, yeah, I mean, I got more sense. I look at it. I think it's a little more simple than that. Like, I think the Psyop frame is a projection. If you are a person who is trying, like you're looking at a psyop, you're looking at. It's the effort to convey. I'll take this from Wikipedia. You convey selected information and indicators to audience to influence them, you know, influence their motives, yada, yada, yada. You know, to influence them psychologically. Well, if you're running a Psyop, if you're running a psychological operation on an audience to, let's say you have an information silo and you want to keep people inside an information silo and you only want. You want them to get all their information from you, and you're just, you try to discredit any other source of information, things like that, then. Then you're a hammer at that point, and everything else looks like a nail to you. And so, of course, you know, like, if you're. If you're running psyops or if you. What you do, whether you consider it a psyop or not, but if what you're doing is trying to convey selected information to people to get them to think a certain way or feel a certain way or react a certain way, then you're going to see that other people are doing that, whether they're doing it or not. Because again, anything that you see, you're purporting your own motives on top of that and your own actions on top of that. So, to me, we talk commonly about, I mean, the way social media is used in general from an engagement standpoint, is ripe for psychological operations. In fact, psychological operations have proved to be very effective from a monetary standpoint, from, you know, from. From the social media standpoint in terms of what drives engagement. And so there are psychological operations going on. Some are, you know, kind of you can consider sinister. Some are just trying to get, you know, part, get you to part from your money, you know, in terms of, oh, you know, like, this is every, this is what everybody's doing, you know, so to speak. Yeah, everybody's buying a Tesla, better buy a Tesla type of thing. So. But if you're looking at it from a pure, like a military intelligence standpoint, and which is where a lot of times when people throw this term out, that's what they're really talking about. The, the psyop thing doesn't really add up. You know, in this type of situation. And so to me, and I say that because there's all these disparate parts that lead to. They don't lead to some concrete result or concrete, you know, kind of objective, which is military oftentimes operates like that. You know, they're trying to. They're trying to take this hill or they're trying to do this, and that's. This is just some kind of general. Oh, well, because Taylor Swift is liked and, you know, then Joe Biden, like, it's. The objective isn't even clear. You know, it's just like, okay, well, yeah, Taylor Swift, the most popular person in the world, is trying to get marginally less. Excuse me. Is trying to get marginally more popular or marginally more coverage. So that when she does something she was already going to do, it's more like it doesn't really add up. And again, that the military. That the military is going to put all this time and resources into something like this. And so, to me, I look more so at the nature of this makes.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Me look at the.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: I was gonna say, don't forget that the military is woke and has too much. Is focusing too much on Dei.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: That's why they have time for this again. Now we're back to the buzzwords, you know, like, all this other. Which, again, go to my idea of that. There's psyops going on all the time. You know, like, the use of woke is a psyop. So that when the selective information is. I'll show you very specific things about what it means to be woke. And then the reaction, I'm trying to form it in you is that anytime you hear that word or see something, you associate it with a negative kind of feeling and emotion. So, again, this kind of stuff is happening all the time. That it would be a Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey thing to me is just. It's such a remote connection. So, to me, that's why I end up with, okay, that's a projection, because somebody is seeing order there, where, again, two popular. You know, a popular athlete and a popular singer get together. That's not cause of much like that. That's not novel, you know?
[00:21:54] Speaker B: But here's the thing. And this is where. This is why it's sad, it's immature, and it's dangerous for our society as a whole. Because normally, before you go there.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Cause that is the other shoe. What I want. I just wanted to contrast a psyop. If you want me to believe it's a psyop, they would be like Taylor Swift dating Joe Biden, then I'd be like, okay, yeah, all right. We don't see that that much then. Okay. Yeah, maybe we're looking at psyops in because. Yeah, I don't see how. I don't see that kind of thing happening at all.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: I remember I just saw in my newsfeed Hugh Hefner's widow was apparently wrote a book, and she was 26, and when she married him, he was 85. So, you know, stranger things have happened.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: That's you. Hefner, though. That's not.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: I'm just joking. But, no, but, but just to get back to the reality here is what makes this different. I think the normal B's and conspiracy theories and stuff like that, that kind of have permeated our society forever. And I'm sure every society in the world has had some version of a certain percentage of its population that's a little bit just rogue in how they think. And that's why they're called the fringe. They're on the fringes of society. And so, and these people and this mindset used to be on the fringe. And what's dangerous is that we have political leaders who embrace this. And so this is where I'm getting at as to the why, in my opinion.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Well, that goes back to what I was saying before, is how this type of stuff seems to drive engagement in a way that can be monetized and also used for political benefit online nowadays.
So it makes sense why they would endorse it, though, because they can benefit directly in a way that maybe they couldn't have directly benefited from it on a large scale in 1985.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, look, I'm sure there's various factors, and I think that could be included in it. Right. Like we say, the ingredients that could totally be included where I'm going with this is, you know, not, I want to go too far back, but in the recent years, right, there's been a lot of negative stuff that's happened just in our society. If you look at it from a top down level, we had an insurrection on January 6, 2021, which, again, this side of our political establishment in our country has been doing nothing but try to cover up the reality of that. Right.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Then we had meaning like. Yeah, like it was a. It was a fake.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: You know, it was an outside job, but somehow the people in the prison are victims and all that stuff.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Right?
[00:24:33] Speaker B: So.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, correct.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: And this all comes from the one. Remember, one of my mentors once told me, if you start off whatever you're doing off, kind of either a bad decision or the wrong kind of footing. Every single thing you're doing after that is trying to correct that original mistake. And in this case, I mean, I double down here in the conversation was really this disembracement, disembracing of the closest thing we've had to a dictator in our country, which is Donald Trump by the GOP. And I don't mean that to be partisan. What I mean is that Donald Trump has a bad track record since 2018. Republicans lost the Congress, he lost the presidency by double the popular. The amount of popular votes he lost in 2016, even though he won the electoral college in 2016.
Then we were supposed to have a red wave in 2022. With all the inflation and the bad economy and a down stock market, Republicans weren't as successful because the Trump endorsed candidates, and the candidates that endorsed the big lie lost. This is so unpopular with most Americans. And so what I'm getting at is I realized the PsyoP is what a lot of this coming out of the right wing, because they want to deflect from that bad news and also the good news in the country. So, in the last 60 days, what do we learn? Good news. The Dow Jones, you know, one of the benchmarks for the stock market hit 37,000, an all time high in December, followed up by 38,000 this year in January. The s and P just hit a new record in January of 2024. Our GDP gross domestic product just top 5% for the first time in probably a decade. I mean, it's been a long time since we had that. Unemployment still at record low. Last Friday, the economists estimated we produced 176,000 jobs. As a nation, we produced 353,000 jobs. And today, we are producing more oil than ever before in the United States. The real negative is immigration. But my point is that because there's good news on the overall metrics of the United States, and it's a disaster in the GOP. The psyop, to me, is deflecting the public, trying to deflect with stuff like this and an insecurity that Taylor Swift's gonna motivate people to vote.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah, and the proof is in the pudding on that. We've done recent shows, separate shows, about how the crime rate and about the economy, economic performance, economic performance in the country, and how public perception is so much more negative than the actual numbers are for this. And the question is always, well, why is that? Why do people have such a disconnect in terms of how things are actually going versus how they feel things are actually going. And a psyop would be a good answer for that. Okay, well, let's have a psyop. I mean, the other one. I mean, I think the most famous, you know, what you could consider Psyop that's happened recently is the big lie, you know?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Like, was a psychological operation meant to convince large numbers of people that an election that was clearly lost wasn't at, in fact, lost, and to maintain people's conviction in that despite the inability to prove the claims, you know, because, again, remember, there was an opportunity to prove all that stuff and that there was a failure, you know, on behalf of.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Still an opportunity now.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Well, but, I mean, they've already failed.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: I'm just saying, like, oh, like they.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Could any of the stuff they were saying. And so it became. They utilized the psyop to. Okay, well, you flat fell out on your face as far as trying to prove this stuff, but we want people to still believe it. And so you're in a place where the majority of registered republicans still believe that the election was stolen, despite the fact that there's never been evidence of that and that you can point to a psyop for that, you know, to persuade them of this. And, I mean, I think the biggest concern I have is that it seems like conspiracy and a rejection of reality, at least certain parts of reality, are becoming part of. Part of a partisan identity, and that whatever is actually happening is less important to providing a narrative that people can get behind and feel good or that's engaging and so forth. And so, like, anything that you see that whoever the people who are driving these narratives, if they're coming from the right wing, what anything they don't like is about something being rigged or something being, oh, it couldn't be organic. If I don't like it. It has to be coming from some kind of organized thing, you know? And so, to me, that's like. That's a really cynical way to look at everything and then to utilize your tools, you know, again, which I'm calling. It could be called a psyop, not even necessarily a department of defense Psyop, but just one. That something is designed to use selective pieces of information to persuade people of certain things. It becomes part of just. That's what we do. That's who we are, so to speak, is, okay, we're going to take. We're going to focus on certain things, as you pointed out, a very good way to distract people from things that would be considered good news and make them oblivious to the fact that, hey, the economy is performing great. Hey, you know, crime seems to be going down, like, things like that. And I guess, like you said, there is bad news. If you want to focus on immigration and the fact that we can't get anything done to resolve that, there's bad news there. But see, part of the problem with that is that the messaging coming from the right on that is that we don't want to solve it right now.
We don't want to solve that while Joe Biden is in office.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: So that, let me stop you there, because.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Real quick. Real quick.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Well, that was an interesting thing you bring up because think about it, this is where, I think this is why it's sad for the electorate and people that consume this type of media.
Think about for years now, it's been an existential threat at the border to the point where former President Trump had started that policy of separating kids from their parents. Remember? And again, we go from that to now being told, okay, well, now just leave the border open until he gets back in office because we can't trust now that the actual grownups in the Senate, the Democrats and Republicans, actually got together and try to change something. And this is the danger of all this. The Republican Party in terms of, in certain senses, instances in the last year or so, have actually extracted a lot of things out of Democrats. Remember, Joe Biden said he wasn't going to negotiate with Kevin McCarthy over shutting down the government. 30 days later, Kevin McCarthy got him to stop with the funding of the IR's. He got him to reduce some of the stuff into some of the bills they had and the spending on green energy, all that stuff. And how was he rewarded for actually getting his opponent, the opposition party, to get off of their, you know, to sacrifice some of their stuff. He was kicked out. Right. And so, and so now we have the example again, where Democrats understand Joe Biden understands the immigration is his achilles heel. So for the first time, the Republicans got them to the, to the table where the Democrats have the most conservative version of an immigration bill that they've ever had, at least probably in the last 30 years, willing to sign. And now the Republicans want to blow, you know, not all of them, but, but this group of people on the right want to just blow it up. So this is where it becomes dysfunctional.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Because this isn't where comes dysfunctional. This is just another illustration of how maybe the evidence.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's fascinating that it's all, it's, it's, it's all kind of this result of this ongoing psyop where I think that that base can never be satisfied. And that's the danger, because until they're told that the people that they should trust are somehow in control, they don't trust the system. And that's the really sad part. I'll just finish this off and then hand it back to you when I discuss those positive things about the last 60 days in terms of the stock market, hidden records, and our GDP. I'm not coming at that because I like Joe Biden, and I'm not a Democrat. I'm an american, and I love this country. And I think we have an awesome system which is designed for either party to be in power, and the system keeps going. And the sad part is, is that what we're talking about is there's a psyop on enough, you know, enough Americans that they no longer trust the system. And that's the dangerous part, that they can be led this easily in these directions.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Well, it's not the first time that's happened, though. I mean, you see that a lot of times you did have a civil war. Then when people aren't given what they want out of the system. Some people are okay with kind of the way the system is supposed to work, and you're not supposed to get your way all the time. And other people want to blow up the system when they don't get their way out of the system. And so, you know, like, that's kind of what you see here. But ultimately, I do want to keep us moving. The, just briefly, though, because, you know, I don't want to spend too much time on this. We've talked about this in other shows, but the technological aspect of this and how technology, and I mentioned it earlier in terms of how Psy ops and the, you know, like, information silos or the prevalence of information silos, the desire to use the features of social media, which, one of which is the ability to create imperceptible changes in people's behavior, how that interplays with this. And I think you made a good point earlier in terms of when you're looking at how the technological environment plays into this, and we're on the precipice of even more with, with the AI piece, but just looking at what we've seen over the last ten to 15 years is that when we're looking at how social media plays into this, it takes it from, it takes behaviors and beliefs that might be fringe in the traditional walks of our society, meaning 90% of the people won't engage in it or would look at it and say, that's a little much. And it has the ability to take that percentage from maybe 10% of the people that are bought into this to maybe 30 or 40% of the people that are bought into it. And that's where you get into a dangerous place with the country leading into what you talking about, where people are just out on the idea of the country. Either it's their show or they want to blow it up. And I think that's what we're really seeing from the technological impact here, is that the direness, the urgency with which people are viewing anything, or some people, I should say, are viewing anything that's happening in this country is being ratcheted up nonstop. It's just everything is ratcheted up, ratcheted up, ratchet up. And even when, oh, if, if so and so happens, it'll be the end. If something else, if a happens, it'll be the end. If b happens, it'll be in. And it's never the end. These things happen, and it's never the end. If Joe Biden is elected. And, you know, the country's gonna, you know, all this bad stuff's gonna happen that didn't happen. It's not like that shakes anybody's faith. And all the stuff they believed in before, the goalposts are just moved. At that point, you're essentially, you see where the large swaths of Americans are being turned or are being walked into this kind of mindset where, and again, more than just a fringe that will probably like that anyway, or susceptible to that anyway, this mindset where if they don't have absolute control or the idea of compromise with someone else becomes a situation where they have to avoid at all costs. And the problem with that is the american system is designed to force compromise between different sides of issues. You know? So what's your thought, you know, as far as how the technological piece plays into this?
[00:35:38] Speaker B: No, I think, look, I think we've, like you said, we've done various discussions on this in the past, and I think, yes, everything you said about social media and the way it's in our faces and all that and the fracturing of sources of information has been well documented. Right. Like when we were little kids, you know, there was only so many options for news, and most people sat down once a night in the evening to watch it or at a newspaper in.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: The day for the benefit. You know, just everybody has seen every show. It's not the fracturing. You can look back at the pamphlet days, you know, or even the newspaper days when there's six newspapers in a large city and they reach coming when you can look at the fracturing of information, the time from the sixties to maybe the two thousands or the nineties is more of an exception than the rule. But the difference with social media and our current technological environment is not just the fracturing but also the way that those tools can be used to change people's behavior. And that's what's been documented repeatedly about how social media engages with our brains.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think, and that's where I wrote a few things down here because just to make sure I don't forget, one of the negative things that is also they don't want to talk about is, you know, they're repealing a rovers wave that seems to have motivated a lot of young women. But what I'm saying there's certain things that we're not mentioning here that I think are part of all this. Stu, that goes back to your point about the reach of technology because I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's a term that's been thrown around incel, which is men who are involuntarily celibate. And that's a large percent, apparently there's a large percentage of men in our society who are lonely. And I don't mean that as a joke. I mean, we've seen those studies, James, about how many men have less. You know, in 1990, I think there was like the majority of men could say they had at least six close relationships. And now that number is down to like two close relationships. And then I saw some, when you're.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Talking about that, you're not just talking about with, you know, like relationships with women, but like intimate.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: It could be just friends, like the way me and you are friends and just talk about stuff, right? Like that's important to have friendships in your life. Then I read something recently that they estimate as much as 50% of american men may not have had at least one intimate partner in the last year. And these are things, I'm not making fun of it. What I'm saying is these are important things for us as humans to socialize and to be close to other people. And I think there is some truth to, you know, this post pandemic era. A lot of people stuck at home on their computers, they're not going out to the office as much, you know, so we have an environment that's conducive for you to be at your house alone and to have still have all this information you can pull from. And then the less you go outside, the more scary the rest of the world feels.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: And I think we, we all see that. I mean, sometimes I've met someone who recently just went to Mexico, and I. And I was. My first reaction was, from what I see on tv, oh, man, it's dangerous. And, you know, how could you go down there? I would never go. And he goes, tuna, man. It's just like here. If you'd go into the ghetto in some big city in America and you start talking trash, someone's gonna kick your butt. But most of us driving around these big cities don't deal with that.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: You know, so I just was like, yeah, it probably is the media stirring me up and making me feel like it's all crazy there.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: More than what it is. They take things that it's all possible. The things you're. You would be aware or concerned about in Mexico are all possible that's not made up in large part in that context. Like, some things we, that we see in the media, as far as that are sensationalized. Some things could be made up, you know, but this one is one, for example, that's not really made up. But the chances of it, you know, there's millions of people, you know, that are doing this stuff, and the vast majority of them have no issue. And so it becomes one of those things, though, when you hear about the exception, the exception gets more prominence in your mind, the likelihood of that becomes more prominent. And that's a really good point as far as how technology influences us and also makes it more palatable. Technology enables people to stay home and to not go out and interact with people. Like, if you tried to stay home all the time in 1960, you'd be bored out of your mind. You know, there's three channels, and, you know, now you can stay home all the time. You don't have to go out for food. You don't have to go off, like, you can stay home all the time, and you don't have to go out for groceries. You don't have to go to the grocery store. You don't have to talk to the cashier. You don't have to, like, none of that stuff, you know, like, you don't have, like, you don't have to interact with people. Social kind of socialization. You don't have to engage in much socialization. You don't have to, oh, I gotta wait my turn in line. Oh, you know, I was gonna grab the last you know, box of, you know, macaroni and cheese or macaroni, but somebody else grabbed it. Do I flip out or do I say, oh, okay, yeah, man. You know, like, that just messed up. Like all of that kind of stuff that kind of forces us to socialize and not flip out every time something doesn't go our way, that kind of stuff is, or it can be taken away from your world.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: I hope you flip out because that'll make a good karen video on YouTube.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Hey, man, that was my macaroni.
Exactly.
Anything else? Because I do want to keep.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah, just the last piece is, I was going to say it's interesting that, and I'm offended as someone that does lean conservative to some of my viewpoints, that these people keep calling themselves conservatives because there's nothing conservative about their behavior, number one. Number two, it's really, it's really fascinating to me that this group of people in our country, and that's what I'm saying, I know it's not a majority, but they're loud and there's enough that, you know, maybe it's 25, 30, enough.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: That we got to deal with it.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. That. It's funny how things flip, like in such a short space of kind of like the history of the country. They are like exactly like kind of the radical left of the sixties and seventies.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: I don't know if you say that.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: But I don't think it's, you could say exactly. But you see the, you see a resemblance.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: There's a lot of resemblance. Yeah. And kind of rejection of mainstream society and that everything's alive from the government and all this stuff. And look, I'm not saying that there weren't, like I said earlier, you know, there were, there were reasons for people, some people to believe that in the sixties, primarily in the civil rights movement, all that, there seems to be less of a risk of that today for the people who are citing that they're victims of the psyops in the deep state. But I find it interesting that it's all this projection as well as the victimhood. It's fascinating watching it all.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think what you're seeing there is there was a group of people who were dissatisfied with the status quo and the trajectory of the nation in 1960, and the fringes amongst them behaved a certain way. And so you can see that you can similarity, you can see a similarity between how the fringes amongst those who are dissatisfied with the status quo and trajectory of the united of the country right now, how they behaved how the fringes, again, we're talking about the fringes there. We're not necessarily talking about the people who want things to change or things like that, but are willing to do so within the system or that. Don't look at it as we have to blow up the system in order to get these changes, the fringes. And that's because, and we've talked about this before, the fringes oftentimes are similar than they are to, to each other. The fringes on opposite sides of a spectrum are oftentimes more similar to each other than they are to the moderates on the same side of that spectrum.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: I'm glad you said that. I mean, I was just going to say the nation of Islam and some of these christian nationalists we're seeing today aren't that different. Yeah. When you look at how, I mean.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: There'S countless examples of that, you know, so. But I do want to keep us moving. We'll take a break and come back with part two of our discussion here shortly.
All right, coming back, we wanted to have our second part of our discussion talking about hobbies and sciences. There's been some scientific studies that go into how they're good for us. So, Tunda, there's a piece we'll have in the show notes that talked about this from Self magazine. What were your thoughts in terms of hobbies? And then obviously, during the course of this, we're going to have to talk a little bit about your hobbies.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: You don't want to know about all that.
No, but, no, I was, look, this is one of those, to me, it was very straightforward.
Maybe I got confirmation bias. That's my own psyop.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: There you go. There you go.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: But no, because, I mean, I didn't assume hobbies would be somewhat negative or anything like that. And it just kind of. I'm glad that this article went a little bit deeper in some of the. So, anyway, with this psyop thing, with the psychology behind, um, how we benefit from having hobbies, and also the idea that, I mean, almost anything that you like can be considered a hobby. After watching this, I mean, reading it, I was thinking, yeah, when I play Red Dead redemption on my ps five, that's a bit of a hobby, right? I'm just a way for me to get some escapism and escape from the everyday life. So, yeah, man, it was, it was interesting. And I think, you know, the idea of having a hobby is not something I think that society has ever really looked at as negative, but I think we should probably, again, as a way for us to deal with things like stress, mental health, all the stuff that we know is just things that we want to help people continue to, uh, work on and not, not see as a stigma, let's say, in our society. I think maybe having just, like, people promote walking as a way of just getting out, getting your head clear, and that can actually, um, a certain amount of exercise every week can actually help with lowering mild depression. I think the idea of promoting people to just do things and have hobbies and find interests could do the same.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Thing, do things at their leisure. I mean, and I disagree with you. I think that there is a negative stigma sometimes to having a hobby. You know, like, in our go go world a lot of times, you know, like, hobbies can be seen as wasting time, you know, or just kind of, you know, just being a slacker or something like that. If you have something, because one of the important things I think you got to take from it is that's because.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: You hang around successful people.
When you're me, all we do is chill around here.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: I don't do anything. No, you're not wrong. No, I'm an attorney, and so, like, yeah, I remember the pressures that you now, I work for myself now, so that's a little different. But I remember the pressures in terms of, if you're doing hobbies, so to speak, if you're doing things leisurely, intentionally, to kind of get away mentally from the space, you're like, that's like, oh, well, why aren't you billing time? Why aren't you? You know, this is crazy. You know, so it's like, I do see where, you know, the idea of a hobby could see, like, oh, yeah. The person who is, who considers themselves very regimented and trying to, you know, just really push the envelope all the time can see that as a detriment. But, you know, like, when you have a society where that's people are just going to the bone all the time, you can see how what that will do is make people more tense, make people more combative, and so forth. And so the benefits of hobbies, which you can imagine to some degree, but, I mean, you're talking, like, chemical brain chemistry benefits. Like, you certain, having certain types of hobbies, the accomplishing of things is a dopamine hit. Well, you can get that instead of drugs, you know, like that. So it can take the place of other things that we use, chemicals, you know, or alcohol or things like that to mimic in our own system now. So having hobbies can, in a sense, well, I'll put it the other way. What really stood out to me in this is that the absence of hobbies and what hobbies can do for you seem to lead to some of the ills in society that we observe in terms of substance abuse, in terms of compulsive behavior, primarily because we're chasing those same benefits that you could get from a hobby through these other behaviors that end up becoming things that are detrimental for you. So that to me was one of the biggest takeaways I had from this.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I agree, it's, you say some interesting things there. I mean, number one is because I'm thinking about when I was younger, we both come from professions that are pretty intense when you're young and you're in the big environment. So you're right. If you're a young attorney at a law school and you go to a big law firm, one of the major ones, you know, it's the 2000 hours a year.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: And you know, you gotta be not.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: Working, but 2000 hours of billable time.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: And so, you know, it's, that's just, you know, kind of inside baseball. Every time you spend at the office isn't necessarily gonna be billable if you're an attorney. So just there's built in that you would need to spend more time.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: The attorneys I've hired my whole life, though, treat it that way.
When I get my bill, I'm like, hold on, you charge me 0.15 hours for an email that didn't take you .15 hours?
[00:48:10] Speaker A: Turn on your computer.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: I can't, I can't stand your profession, dude. I can just, I'm just happy to.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: See you're not alone.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: No, but the reason I bring it up is just, you know, and I'm a financial guy. Right. And again, my whole, I was just telling someone yesterday, I was talking to that my whole twenties was like, I showed up at the office at 730, I didn't go home till 930, 10:00 and I was like, that whole decade. Like, this is my first ten years in the industry. And so you're right, what suffers is the leisure time and the ability to do other things, which then, and I think our society has gotten better in the recent period than it was maybe in the eighties and nineties when, you know, working and all that was really seen as a virtue. More so. And if you weren't constantly busy with work, it was more of a moral failing, I think with the amount of.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: Mental health, greed is good mentality.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Yeah. No, you're right. From the 1985 movie Wall street. It's kind of like that set. It was like a cultural meme for a while. Right. And I think what's happened, though, it's kind of like we talk about other topics in the past, like food, right? Fast food and some of these things, processed food. It takes a while for the society to realize, because you got to see. You have to let the bad stuff play out. And I think, you know, in the last 20 years or so, there's been a lot of just positive research about just on human psychology and how detrimental some of our working habits have been and how they lead to other negative offshoots in our society. So, for example, you know, kids not being. Seeing their parents as much because, you know, the parents are working, that may cause some dysfunction in the child as they get older, you know, so and.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: So as a result of that, people concepts like work life balance and, you know, may have become more prominent or just flexible schedules, you know, like, for parents and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, you can see.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: How the burnout reacts. How many people have burnout and depression and mental health breakdowns because they were working too much, you know, just in the office and, you know, at another nation, we saw that a lot. I remember a lot of that news used to come out of Japan in the eighties and nineties where people literally were just dying at their desk because they were just overworking themselves. So, yeah, the idea of having a hobby, having something that is not part of your regular stress and where you're trying to earn a living and all.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: That, I think is healthy but engaging for you because. Yeah, like, while, you know, the idea of what we were seeing with. With the absentee parent is harmful for society and harmful for kids.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: The.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: The hobby piece we're starting to see now in terms of something that is intentional and also engaging for you but not your profession, you know, like. Cause again, that was that, like, time waster or feet make you feel bad kind of mentality that I guess we're coming out of a little bit that. Cause a hobby. Part of being a hobby is that it's engaging for you mentally. It's not just having a hobby is not just sitting there watching tv, you know, like, that's. You're not gonna get the same benefits that we're talking about with hobbies from. From something like that. And so, you know, like, all right, so for you, you know, like, I know that you got a lego table in your garage. You know, you got, like, so what would you in terms of that's a good point.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: That when we were talking about the parenting, that's what I realized, too, is that the hobby also, for those of us that are busy parents, kind of with the work schedule, making sure you fit the hobby, and depending on, you know, the age of your kids and all that, if they're old enough or young enough, depending on the 25 year old kid, might not want to sit there and build legos with me. Right? And neither will a one year old, but my twelve year old does.
So to your point, he's starting to get a little bit told for that now, actually. But we had a whole Lego thing and a city and all that.
You know, I, when I was a kid growing up, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, and I used to make model airplanes. And it was interesting. During the pandemic, I bought one of the plastic kits from online. It got delivered, and I sat there whenever we were on lockdown. I made it and I had fun.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: It looked like crap.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: So I got competitive with myself. I gotta make this thing look good again. So I got this, I bought an airbrush and I bought the sandpaper and all that, and I ended up making some pretty cool looking planes. And then another hobby I picked up was painting canvases. So the canvas, I mean, for those that are watching our YouTube video, the canvas behind me, I did this one myself. And so, and I'm not saying it to brag. I'm just more saying that I just realized that, yeah, all this stuff helps me because when I'm painting a canvas, my mind is relaxed, is somewhere else.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: But not just that. Even now, talking about how what's sitting there behind you is something that you did, you get emotional satisfaction out of that. So it's an ongoing thing that, like, obviously you get. You wouldn't have.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: I'm looking at if the craziness of.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: That pattern, this is what goes on in your head.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: That used to be in my head. Now it's all on the canvas.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Got it all. I think you made an excellent point, though, in terms of when you. If you have children and they're of a certain age, how behavior, the things that you can involve your kids in are good for hobbies, you know, like having a hobby. That's something you can involve your kids in. Like, for me, I know coaching sports was something that I was able to pick up, and it fit because it was a part of. Now, you know, you have to do it and take the right approach. I'm not trying to coach them to be, you know, professional athletes, but coach them to learn the things that you can learn from competitive or not, you know, like rec league, team sports and something like that. The stuff, things like that. There are a lot of personal, like, and social things you can learn about yourself and about how you interact with other people. So focus on that kind of stuff with my own kids. And so it became something for me that was engaging and that, you know, was a responsibility and something I had to do outside of work. But, you know, it also, though, allowed me to spend the time with my kids and so forth. So choosing hobbies, depending on where you are in your life, that work also with, you know, kind of family, you know, dynamics is something. That's why I know of other people that they'll do things, you know, with their spouse, you know, like, oh, they'll do a painting class with their spouse or things like that. And that's a way to bring people together in that way, you know, in terms of your own family. So all of that stuff, even just.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Nature, you know, walking around in the woods and hiking and all that. And the one thing, though, I would say is from, from kind of the standpoint of looking at hobbies, one of my friends, he saw me, he came over one day and he saw me doing one of my model airplanes, and he saw how I was all focused and, you know, trying to not get the paint and glue on something. And he goes, tuna. He goes, I'll never forget this. It was a pretty profound. He goes, you know what you're doing right now? And I go, what? He goes, you're doing active meditation? I never heard that term. And I was like, wow, that's pretty profound because I'm one of those guys who does have a brain that, with a bunch of this crap, you know, there's this painting behind me going on. And I've tried to meditate.
I mean, I'm sure if I really tried. And I sat there and kept going every day for minutes and minutes, but I'm the type of guy that can't go more than five minutes. I keep thinking about stuff. So when he said that you're practicing active meditation, it made me realize, like, yeah, he's actually right.
I don't have to sit there and get my mind totally still in the way I thought I needed to for meditation and doubt in the traditional way we think of sitting in a quiet room without distraction and all that with meditation by focusing intensely on something, whether it be to painting a model, whether it be when I'm shooting hoops, when I'm trying to relax and watching the ball go through the net, there's a certain level of your mind is somewhere else, and it is a sort of active meditation. I just thought that was a great term. So.
[00:55:38] Speaker A: No, no, I mean, it shows.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: Before we leave, you can't put me on a spot. What's your hobbies?
[00:55:44] Speaker A: I just gave you one, man. I just gave, like that gave me.
[00:55:46] Speaker B: One coaching, but I gave you like five. So what's the other, man?
[00:55:48] Speaker A: Well, I didn't ask for five. I asked for one, but we got to get out of here. But one thing I want to mention, classes with the active meditation. One thing I want to mention is just that what you can see there is kind of the overlap. There are a lot of, like, self care kinds of literature and things you can read about, but in many respects, a lot of these things overlap, and you're trying to kind of accomplish the same things. And again, like, I think the thing you can't really forget about with this stuff is a lot of times when we're not accomplishing these things for ourselves, you know, in terms of engaging our minds in ways that are, that are leisurely but still can provide some level of fulfillment. And the dopamine hit that we look to substances to make up that gap, because it appears that humans, we just need that kind of stuff, you know? So you got to come up with some stuff that you can do it in a way, ideally, in a way that's intentional and that's fulfilling, because if not, you're going to end up doing it in a way that's compulsive and might be harmful, you know? So. But I do want to wrap up us up from there, man. We appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: Tunde Ogun. Lana.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
