I was remembering the code names that we're using, our aka's. Because as you remember, E, I'm not
supposed to be doing this podcast. This is a secret project. It's literally called, Please Don't
Tell My Wife. But you told your wife. Well, I told her some things. I'll put it that way. I told her
enough. So there's still some secretive aspects here that we need to keep going with to keep this
under wraps. Speaking of which, my wife is eager to hear our first podcast. She's a Latina, so there is
a small chance she suspects this isn't real. Right. And there's a part of her that probably
wants to hear it to see if it's even true at all. Also, she is, and I do mean this in a kind of lame way.
But I do mean this in a way that sounds lame, even though I don't think it is. She is basically my best
friend. She's the person I spend the most amount of time with. I know how that sounds and I'm OK with it
mostly. I also think she's just out of pure curiosity. Oneitis? Is that the one? Oh, man, we
should definitely 100% talk about pickup. And the game at some point because it is hilarious. But
now, yes, she is my oneitis. You got yourself a case of one. I just said there it is. Well, I think she's
also just curious, but there's also a part of her that's like, what are you talking about me during
this thing? What are you doing? So definitely want to get our episodes out there. If not for our fan
base, which is six year old. Excellent. And my life to prove that you're not running like an andrutate
network here of, you know, I have you ever tried to do this? Where you try to guess at what someone's
crazy thought would be? It's like, what do what do I think my wife thinks about where I have been all
day? This actually happened to me. So, you know, in my work for a while, I was located in Washington,
D.C. And I was working pretty crazy hours. This is a very demanding job. And I got home like at 2 30 a.m.
And I had been, I couldn't contact her because I was doing stuff where I couldn't have my cell phone
with me. And it was like my first week there. And I didn't, you know, say, oh, hey, I'm, you know, I
won't be home at midnight, as you expected, because I was working a night shift. I will be home
at like two or three or three. I didn't, you know, she didn't know. So she, yeah, I mean, I would get
worried too. But I got home, you know, and it doesn't help that at this particular job stuff
gets really stressful. People crack open beers. Like there's a refrigerator in the office with
beers in there. And I'm just trying to get along. It's my first week. I'm just trying to get along.
And so, yeah, I have a couple beers and then I get, you know, I get home in an Uber, by the way, no drink
and drive unless you absolutely have to. Or you just don't want to leave your car there. And so I get
home and she's very upset. I can see on my WhatsApp that like she's saying, like, where are you? Did
you guys go to get your in-tep to work? What's going on? And I just got home and I apologized and I
explained why it had, you know, came after that, the expectations were set again. But I tried to on
the way home, guess what she thought I was doing with that lost amount of time. So I got home and I
explained everything. And then she goes, why do you smell like you've been drinking? And I said,
it's because I'm drinking. Right. And I truly do mean this. You should always pick a partner who
will believe your very stupid explanation, even if the best thing you have is the truth, which might
sound like a stupid explanation. And she did. But she did imagine a lot of things that I did not even
try to get into. I might, I might, I might one day ask her what she thought I was doing. She's very
honest. So I'm sure she would. Yeah, she would tell you. But it's happened before where she felt like
she once thought I was like sleeping with a guy because she didn't for my lost time. And she does
come up with some kind of crazy stuff sometimes. Why a guy though? Because all my behavior is
because my whole, all my behavior is suspicious. Oh, I mean, you know, she's from Guatemala, man,
which is a more traditional place. And you're like a wild American, you know, I'm like half European,
half American. I'm Robertine. Like, you know, I'll probably try anything twice. Well, so
anyway, so I've tried to guess, you know, even nowadays, try to guess. Like, what, what does she
think we're doing during this? Because I do disappear. It's very interesting. I bet you sound
as crazy. Her, her thing will be even crazier than the thing I can come up with. I'm wondering about
you're kind of describing that story that you work in late is sort of describing typical every day
nine to five. No, you're sorry. Monday through Friday or Saturday work culture in Korea and
Japan. Most of Korea, I'd say where like if you're not staying late with your managers into till two
or three in the morning, and then drinking after you guys leave the office at midnight, I guess, and
go to a, you know, a late night bar and are forced to drink more alcohol than you should be, you might be
suspected of losing, have lost your job. And that's maybe why your, your wife would be mad the
next day. Like, what's going on? Oh, are you still employed? Yeah. Yeah. I highly suspect you're not
employed anymore. Is it how it's not how drunk you are? It's because of the level of drunk you are.
Yeah. You're not, you're not employed drunk. You're like regularly drunk. That's not cool.
That's, that's not happening. Yeah. Well, let's kick this thing off. I, you know, I was a reminder
that we're using very well crafted nicknames for each other to maintain some veneer of anonymity.
But the anonymity isn't sneaky, bad anonymity. It is, you know, the good kind. It's not like protect
the innocent, which is me, especially because. Right. And also me and also, I guess, our
contention is that it doesn't matter for the topics that we're embracing. They are personal
and part of our kind of background and shared experience or lived experience, I should say. But
it's not like if you knew we were, it would suddenly help you out a lot. We are very clear about where
we're speaking from, right? Like we're not secret actors, you know, that have a very successful
career that we're trying to just, you know, talk like regular people, trying to pretend like we're
regular people, learn what that's like. Maybe I'm actually making people suspect that we are by
saying this. Actually, no, I think people figure out pretty quick this. I saw Mark Zuckerberg when
he was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he was talking about how they're not. Fact checking anymore,
because, you know, they did such a great job of it the first time. And he said something like, you
know, we're changing our model to be more like how regular people use social media. So instead of
trying to tell them what is real and it's just a bunch of people in Silicon Valley trying to tell
them what they should believe. It's just, you know, us hanging around in our living rooms and
things we know are true with a sunken fireplace and the account. Yeah. And it's just like, you know,
just funny, like, I don't know. I'm assuming he has a team of publicists who tried to make it sound
normal. The nannies in the background or the staff are working. And it's like it's like done that.
Happy years on is this hilarious to me? Because like if we, yeah, if we were famous or rich, I think
it would be immediately obvious. You can see. Yeah, I agree. Now I put our name. This is a good tip.
Pro tip is I put our names that we should call each other as our names on the so when you look at the
video, you'll see my name. OK. And I will see you. And I like that name. It's kind of classy. Maybe I
might, is it drugs? That's a type of drug. Yeah, it could be. Talking to you is like doing E. Oh, cool.
Let's, I hope there's water in that mug. Absolutely. Let's go on to start this show with a
bang. And before we started recording, you were telling me about a feeling of anxiety. OK, before
we go there, though, are you in a cafe or something like that? I'm curious. Is this, where is this? I am
in the hotel lobby of a residence in somewhere North America. It looked very, I mean, I was just
saying, like, wow, your style of home decor is so bland and yet functional. That's the residence in
model. If you could call that a painting, it's like so inoffensive that I'm offended by it. It's, I
think, in Fight Club, they refer to it as corporate art. Yeah, and the psychic. We have this sofa
pattern. Yeah, you know, it's a, so I am in a hotel. I'm in the middle of a move, right? So I have, I
mentioned earlier, I have a six year old boy at home. And I have a newborn baby daughter, my wife.
We're all in this hotel for a few days before we moved, because we moved out of our apartment. It's
the first apartment I've actually ever owned. I mean, like in my early 40s, mid 40s, I don't know.
And I've never owned a place. We're actually renting it out for the first time. I wanted to move
out with plenty of time to get it converted for the summer season. We're about to move to Southeast
Asia, you know, more on that later. But, you know, we're sitting here for a few days, cooking
spaghetti, little kitchenettes, getting ready to head over. And it's interesting because I'm in
between gigs right now. So I just left the job where I was helping staff some like, you know, person who
works on politics, especially as it relates to like Asia. And I'm about to go do a new job, or be
recording and doing analysis on Southeast Asia economics. And, you know, as with any job we move
around a lot, and especially nowadays with the current administration, since a lot of my clients
are in the government, people I write for, it's always an open question about whether I'm going to
have a job or not. So there's like a background level of anxiety about the economy and my family. I
consider myself a pretty modern person. And my wife was a working professional before she
decided to join me as I kind of hop around the world trying to work. And we had this baby. So now she's
just kind of at home taking care of the family, which is a super important job. Like someone has to
do that. I help out as much as I can. But then someone else also has to go out and get the monies to buy the
like, you know, the things. So we've kind of split the work up in our house. She's going to get back to
work at some point and, you know, we'll figure it out. But so there's a lot there that could cause me
anxiety, right? Like, you know, depending. I have learned that anxiety is really relevant to the
person and not the situation. I've seen people who should have high amounts of anxiety and do not. And
I've seen people who have very little to worry about in the ranges. I myself probably fall
somewhere in the high middle. My circumstances, I think, have a lot of things that are anxiety
producing, but I am also susceptible to it. So, yeah, we were just talking earlier about how, you
know, I'm in the middle of the move. I don't really have a concrete job right now. I'm preparing
myself to go to Southeast Asia in a lot of different ways. But we're in a move. We have a newborn
daughter. I'm helping out as much as I can. We have people visiting us. But as I have downtime, as I
feel like I have downtime, I feel like I have to fill it with something. And so I thought, oh, you know
what? I need to call it like the airline for our trip to make sure that Pasadena is a reserve for us. I
can't do it online. So I'm going to call the on hold while simultaneously going online because I take
ZEP bound to try to lose weight. I would love to talk about that more because it has been a very mixed
bag. Is that a GLP-1 or a 7-House? That's correct. Yeah. It's one of those like new wayboss GLP-1
drugs. It's kind of like what GoVie and stuff like that. Well, anyway, so I decided to, while I'm on
hold with the airline, go online and try to download my invoices from my online visits I have
to do every month to continue getting that first person so I can kind of file it with my insurance
carrier. And so in my brain, I'm like, well, you told me you needed about 15 minutes. Oh, great. So I
need to do all these other things. And then later today, I'm picking up my car from the shop before
selling it. And there's basically, if you let me, I could give you a list right now of like, what are the
things I have to do that are pending. So whenever I have some downtime, I try to do those things. In the
back of my mind, it's always there. So I don't relax. I feel like I don't have a spare moment. And
from a practical point of view, have you tried some of these tricks and hacks? I'm sure you've tried
them all that are like, the problem is that you're trying to keep all the stuff stored in your
temporary memory and you should be writing all the stuff down on paper so that you don't have to worry
about it because it's now, once it's out of your head, it's on paper and you can now chill. I don't
know if you've tried any of that. I have actually tried the closest thing I've been able to do that
has been the reminders app on my iOS device. And I usually don't use that. I've never used that
before, but I started using it one day and throwing a bunch of stuff in there. And I do feel a little
better. Like it's helped with the long term stuff, especially where I don't have to worry about
everything. And I put a reminder on the day that I want to make sure I do it by. But have you found
anything that practically speaking has helped you reduce that anxiety? Or do you just kind of, do
you feel like there's also another version of this could be that your body is now addicted to the
cortisol and the stress that comes from it? And it's the feeling of importance. I think in my job,
sometimes I do interact with people who are very important for my job and it seems critical that I
impress them and there's a lot of networking. And so I do feel like I get addicted to being busy and or
putting on like a performance or a show or being productive, all of these things, right? I'm like
kind of in my brain. I want to be productive. I want to be always busy or I feel like I have less value.
It's not really about like, oh, if I'm not productive, I'm not getting things done and then I
will miss something. There's that too. But there's also the like, if I'm not being
productive, then I'm kind of a loser. Which that so that that aspect I've been able to successfully,
when I can remember to do it is tell myself that like, I'm as busy as I want to be. And my calendar is
mine. I decide what I fill my day with and stress, stressing out about something as a choice. It is
often unnecessary. You don't you could do you could do all the things you're going to do. And then
with a different attitude and with tools, you cannot be stressed out about it. Right. So for me,
I've got to remember to do that. I fall into an old habit. I will try to keep things in my mind. I do use
calendar reminders a lot. I like I have an Android device and I like Google workspace. So I use
calendar reminders, but I recently changed phones. I'm a phone destroyer. I will I do not care
about the lives of my phones. So I put them often in precarious situations and they are destroyed.
And then I just inherit whatever latest phone my wife has because she actually takes care of
things. It's probably why she's with the baby right now. She actually takes care of things. So I
inherit her tech. I inherit her tech and then she buys the new thing. And that's we're OK spending
money on that because she will actually take care of it. And then I inherit her old phone. So I
inherited her old phone. I immediately on day two crafted in half using a piece of equipment. Yeah, I
was doing bicep curls. I mean, you can't see them, but they're not impressive. So I won't bother
showing them. But I was doing bicep curls and then the little counterweight of the bicep machine
cracked it in half. And then I had to I secretly took it to get repaired by some random guy. I found on
Yelp because I don't have my wife to build up this image in her head. That's right. You're not that
bad. I'm a careless person. She'll work. She may hear this episode. She found out. It was fine. I
tried. I made a lame attempt to hide it for half a day. They didn't work because I just wasn't going
to put the energy into it. That's good. I mean, I think my laziness is the one thing that's
convinced her that if I ever were to cheat on her, she would find out immediately. Yeah, I like that.
I'm I'm OK with that level of laziness. It builds trust. It's a trust building measure, my
laziness, my carelessness. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a lot of work. So long story short, I used to
just tell my Google to like save something in the events counter, the Google Assistant. But since
my new phone doesn't do that very well, I don't know why I can't get the Google Assistant work. And this
is like a pretty shitty excuse. But I haven't I've tried to follow up on it. And I don't know how to
activate it. Why don't you tell it that you need to follow up on it? I see if I can put a reminder. Well,
so I did. And then now I don't know how to do it. I need to put in the work to do it. But you see, I am too busy
to do it in my hand. Yeah, you know, when you kind of when you began, you said before we started
recording, you said, I feel like when I have downtime, I don't have downtime. I need to I need to
always be. Yeah. And I so I remember you have a good friend. I don't think he'd mind if I say his name is
Steve. Won't say his last name, I guess. But anyway, is this British Steve? Can I say that?
Yeah, it's British Steve. That's right. He'd be OK with it. He's OK with everything. I'm with that.
He'd love he'd love to be to be known. And he he told me a story. I love his he's sort of like Dr.
Doolittle's like, you know, that song that Doolittle tells me these crazy stories, you know,
about the moon is made of cheese or whatever. This is sort of like Steve. Like I always have a story
that he's told me about his crazy life. And one of his stories is. Which I think was a good one was that
he was running this company in the UK. It was like a catalog company for women's swimsuits. And he it
was a good idea. They would suddenly said he was on the bus and it was a cold rainy day. And he realized
he saw a woman looking at a catalog of a beautiful sunny beach. And she was so into it. And I think all
she dreamed about or dreamt about was going to Greece for the holidays in summer and getting away
from this terrible, miserable weather on the on the on the bus, whatever. And he said, what if we
sold women's swimsuits and did it by catalog? So he's running this company eventually. It does
actually do pretty well. If I as a lotus, he's he's doing well. Well, and he's. But to get this level of
success and keep it going, because it's very competitive. This is back in the 90s. He was
working his ass off. I mean, he was and he had no sense of whether this was right or wrong. It was
just constantly working, working, working for years. And he really just burnt himself out. And
somehow one day he either has lent the book or he finds the book The Dau of Poo. I don't know if you've
ever heard this book. No, it's kind of a it's a kind of a staple in quirky spiritual books from the 90s,
I think. And it's about how this guy wrote a whole book about how, you know, the story of Poo Bear and
all the characters represent different. You know, there's a different like meaning to each
one. And, you know, there's a rabbit who's the anxious one. Yeah. And then, you know, you have
the. The Tiger Tigger is like super like maybe he's like maybe ADHD now. I don't know what he would be.
There's all these kinds of different. An isometric one. Yeah, we will say which one I was. I
think everyone is talking about. So we won't even say it, but there were there. Right. There's
Piglet. Anyone who's listening to this, go ahead and try to guess what it is. Yeah, good point. And
then there's who, which is the most. Dau, right? He's the Dauest. He's chill. And this is actually a
good point. If you look at his, if you look at Poo and this character, said he is the most chill, like
whatever he kind of goes with the flow. So as he's, yeah, so he's, he's reading this book and it's
enlightening him about like, oh my gosh, I don't need to be working. I need to be like, Poo, I'm just
going to give it all up. And he really says, he throws the book. Yeah. He throws the book across
the room on his desk and he says, this is it. I'm going to, I'm giving it up. I'm going to live my life
the way I want. He's inspired. Besides, I've always wanted to be an actor. I'm going to move to LA
and he does move to LA. Spoiler, not currently an actor. Correct. He does move to LA. He starts
taking acting classes. I think he was able to sell his business or something like that. Though it
was, you know, there was some shaky stuff with him. You know, it wasn't like a great exit, let's just
say. They're not shaking like it. It just wasn't as, you know, successful. It wasn't as like cash.
He wouldn't know as cash as he thought he would when he leaves. So he's kind of strapped from cash a
little bit, go to LA. Trying to be an actor is taking these acting classes. And before you know it, he
finds himself working at a corporate job, which is when I met him selling telephone services to
businesses on doing cold calling. And he has this job. He has this job for another 10 years or so. I
mean, it's a long time that he had this job and he hated every moment of it. Anyway, the moral of the
story is like sometimes the simple response, the simple idea is like, oh, I don't need to do all this.
I could just give it all up and live this monk like life. And it's a very seductive idea that you can
just like find a way to just give it up. But somehow it's almost like, what is that line that it just
pulls me back again every time I, you know, I try to let go. It just it brings me, it reels me back again.
Michael Corleone. Yeah, Michael Corleone. There you go. Thank you. It brings you back in. It's a life
has this tendency of being very finicky. And every time I've tried to reduce my anxiety, I've always
ended up back into the Sicilian mafia. Every single time, you know, yeah, it's it's weird. It's
a stable job. It's a good job. I mean, it's a good job. It's a lot of good margins. I'm actually
curtailing all the rest of the jokes I was going to make. Because upon upon quick inspection,
they're all based on Italian stereotypes, which, you know, I, which you are, I, I, I'm not going to
make them. I'm not going to make those Italian jobs. A lot of people consider them safe, right?
Because they're white. I don't consider Italian people white. So I don't think they're safe jokes.
So I'm not going to make it. Good point. I respect it. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. That's
very, that's very thoughtful of you. Focussive of you. I was about to say, actually, I was about to say
a little earlier, you are from, let's just say you are from an Italian background. Yeah. Let's just
say for the sake of an anomaly that you're from a year like an Italian like. I mean, if you will. Yes,
I am. I have. That's right. Let's just say you have that. Some of the powerful, I think, cultural
ties. I mean, you know, everyone's like, oh, I have like a, I have like an Italian or a Greek
grandmother. But like, I grew up halfway like this. I mean, I actually, Exactly. So let's
explore that a bit because in the, in Italy, again, I'm just using Italy as sort of a, and as a proxy
right now. Yeah. In Italy or a place like Italy, there is a sense of, yes, there's a lot of work to be
done, but let's have a couple of coffees first and sit. Yeah. How would you make coffee? Exactly.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's such an American style. So how would you like, what can you learn from that
culture, the culture you kind of grew up in about how to find that balance? Yes. And without, and yet
still produce stuff. How do you produce, you know, they're, they're producing stuff all left and
right in Europe. I mean, you know, it's a crazy. Yeah. I mean, what kind of economy do you want? I
mean, you know, this is me putting my condoms on. What kind of economy do you want? You want to make
Lamborghinis and salami or like, I don't know. Yes, I do. I advanced, advanced chips and cutting
edge medicine. I don't know. Well, no, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, besides all that stuff. No, no, so
yeah, I talked to my cousins who are all from Western Europe all the time. And it's interesting
actually, I didn't realize how American I was because I did grow up in the US, even though I spent a
big chunk of time visiting my family in Western Europe when I was a kid. And I still to this day try to
go out there at least once a year to maintain that contact. Also, my mom is from there. I was born. So
like, there's a, you know, I have daily contact with your board and your ideas. I was European
import. My main. Also you have dual citizenship. That's awesome. I do not. I actively did not seek to
get into the business. Dual citizenship because I wanted to keep my, this is funny. I actually did.
Lead red, red, white. I didn't want to get dual citizenship to keep my options open. Ironically,
you would think. Yeah. Okay. But hey, you never know, man, if I lose this gig I have now, I actually,
I actually talked to my wife about this. I will get, I will get, I will get Europeans. That's nice.
Citizenship in one of the countries. Oh, good. Because it's there if I wanted. So I would do it and
just spend a year living in Europe. It would be a huge culture clash because as you say, you know,
when I do talk about the things going on in my life to my family there, first of all, they're just like,
and I think this is why a lot of celebrities vacation and especially the Mediterranean is
they just generally don't give a shit. They're not impressed about a lot of stuff. So like, I don't
know. Like there's something about kind of the Mediterranean Europe that's like fairly already
kind of like straining on the imagination as it is kings and queens, cobblestone streets that are
like 2000 years old and you're just driving this like rent out on your way to work. And it's like
you're driving on streets that are like just thousands of years old. Yeah. And so like at this
point, like, you know, it's just really hard to impress anyone in my family, I feel. And I have done
something that I thought would sound impressive. And they have, they're like, oh, okay, that's
great. It's not going to humble you like, like, oh, yeah, they're very grounding. So I would say this,
I would say like, yeah, as far as my anxiety is about career and family and all this other stuff, yeah, I
do feel like they experienced less anxiety than I do and stress. I don't think they have smaller
problems. And I think, you know, I think a big part of this is, and this is very like, you know, people
have talked about the difference between beer drinking Europe and wine drinking Europe. And
this is definitely wine drinking Europe. Beer drinking Europe is, you know, conquering the
world and then making the world's largest industrial machines. Not that is not the wine
drinking part of Europe. No, maybe that's what happened is maybe the one they got the, because
there was, what's always around to me not to get too far down the rabbit hole is that at one time it was
reverse. It was the wine drinking part of Europe that was trying literally conquering the world
and conquering the beer drinking part of that world. And they were very ambitious. And then I
went, I was going to Rome, spending some time in Rome with my wife back in the day. And we were there
renting a room. And I just thought, and I remember our roommate saying, we're in a room from this guy
in Craigslist and he was a cool guy. He was like an Algerian, but he was basically had been there
since he was a teenager. So it was pretty much Italian. And he was like, yeah, Romans, we're
famous for being lazy. We just don't do anything. And the northern, if you hear all the stuff that
Italy does with business, that's all the northern. We don't, they make us. The Lombardi
states. They basically just judge us. Yeah. And I remember being like, how did this happen? Like,
how did you guys go from really ambitious to just like, whatever, let's just sit back. And I mean, he
literally would do his day. He was like a journalist or something. He would wake up late. He
would write a couple of things out, throw a couple of articles out there. And then he's like, hey,
let's go for some coffee. And we walk around with him and then later that night, he'd be like, yeah,
we're getting together. Later, you know, we're going to, we're going to go to dinner. And then
suddenly we were pre-partying for two or three hours drinking more Prosecco in a sitting that I
ever could have imagined three hours before dinner. I mean, his day was basically a two and a
half hour work day. And it was probably not even very focused. And I just were thinking like, wow,
this guy's really, and he was not like you say, he was struggling with money. He wasn't just sitting
there like, but he wasn't the way I would be. If I were him, I'd be like, my pants, like, oh my God, I'm
going to pay the bills. Oh my God. He was like, chill as could be. You know, so this is interesting. I
think this is a good time. I will give you what I think is my answer just off of my own. And this is not
a, I don't know the answer, right? I just know what I, what I might live the experience from having to
talk to my cousins and seeing how they live their lives and spending, you know, a quarter of the year
there with them since they were kids all the way up until now when they're like. So many years, if you
put it all together. Yeah. And so for me, and then, and then I would like to ask artificial
intelligence. That's how you were in Texas. I use artificial intelligence all the time. I use a free
version by the way, because since I've been living in the States, and I'm the only one working because
my wife was pregnant and then they can carry of our kid, we made the decision to have a one salary
household and it was, you know, we would save money. So I'm not going to pay for artificial
intelligence. No. Yeah. Why pay for it when it'll eventually make you work for it for free? I mean, I
kind of do because I'm a user. Why fund this? Take it away. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, anyway, so I think right
that it's because there's just a sense, right? There are like, my cousins have senses of things
that are different than mine. I don't think they're logical. I think as an American who has
grown up in a few different states, like California, Southern California a lot, but also a
little bit in Virginia. I think there's a sense I have of things as an American that is very
regionally dependent, but there's this greater overarching theme in the US where we have a lot of
just base assumptions. And I think the base assumption of my cousins in Spain is that, you
know, you just said by the way that you're Spanish, I just want you to know. Oh, wow. Yeah, we can do.
There's a ton of people here. Too many. Too many. That's true. You know, I'll just say it too.
There's too many Spaniards. Good point. Well, anyway, so yeah, we'll say it's Spain. For
example, I mean, I did say it was Spain. Yeah, it's fine. It's Spain, everyone. But we're in Spain,
right? Anonymity continued. Just tell us the last name so that we can kind of look that part up or
whatever. Actually, technically, that's not that. I mean, it's actually not as helpful as you
would think it would be. Okay. So, no, no. So, you know, in Spain and just like in the wine-drinking
parts of Europe, I generally feel like there's a sense that society has a lot more obligations than
we feel like it has in the United States and it has a lot more things it gives you than it does the United
States. You really are plugged in to society in a way that our, I think, conception of our own
individualism does not allow for. There are regional variations of this. I don't know what
it's like to live in New York City, but friends I have that are from there are very, a skew more
European than me on this one. I do find them slightly annoying, but that's just my thing. I
would say New York is a good example because just imagine Europe. Yeah, just imagine Europe, but in
great subways and then take those subways and throw a bunch of trash in the tracks and pee on all of
it. Pee as much as you can. Pee everywhere. You didn't do this. Drink a gallon of water. Don't go to
the bathroom for a few hours. Show up at any metro station. Right. Go ahead and make sure that you
have an unobstructed path from your rethra to the outside world. And then start peeing. Hop on your
phone. Love it. Look at the news and just start walking and spinning every now and then. And yeah.
And then take the budget of, let's say, I don't know, let's take the budget of Berlin's subway
system, quadruple that, and then complain that you have no money to clean it up or put in barrier,
pretty much cheap barriers that are pretty much standard on all modern subway systems. And then
you have New York City. And what are you going to do with that money? You just waste it. That's what you
do. So that's your trash fire near you. There probably is. Throw it in there. No, I mean, yeah, I
think not. I just hate that whole thing about like, New York is the Europe of, I mean, I agree to some
extent, but it is, it's the best we got. I agree with that. It's the best. It's the Naples of, I mean,
Naples is, sure. Naples, you know, trash pod up on the streets, cartels, controlling major parts of
the economy. Yeah. New York is like, sure. Pizza and great pizza on both places. Great pizza. I
mean, you know, so checks out. Well, anyway, I mean, and I don't want to New York bash. I don't, I
haven't lived there. I don't know what it's like. I just know what I hear other people bash about it. So
that's fine. I mean, I've been there a handful of times, but you can't know a city by just visiting in
a handful of times. You can know how much you're in there is in the Metro though. That's a pretty,
really happy couple of times. Yeah, pretty clear metric there. I took a few random samples and in
Manhattan, which is the nice part. Yeah. What's sad is like, there was a guy I was talking to who was,
you know, New Yorker and I said, I was telling him my complaints about the subway. And he said, Oh,
well, that's because we're, you know, we're a 24 hour subway. You know what? And I was like, have you
heard of Holland? Like, yeah, go to, like, not Holland, but go to, yeah, I think the Netherlands
has a 24 hour subway. And by the way, the other one is like Tokyo. So you could basically like lick the
floor on probably both of those places and don't give me that BS. Yeah. But if you do that in Tokyo two
days later, you turn into a Japanese person. You would. Well, so, so anyway, I mean, so I think my
cousins in Spain have a sense that society comes with obligations as well as benefits. I feel like
Americans tend to think that society only gives benefits. Correct. Where's my, you know, There's
my piece of the puzzle. You know, I've literally, and you know, I think one of the basic pillars of our
conversations is that we're not ideological. And I mean, you know, the reason I'm not ideological is
because first of all, it's a lot of work. You have to remember all the talking points and I'm really bad
at that. Yeah. But one of the things I do not like about being ideological is that you just cannot
criticize everything. And being half European, I feel like I want to reserve the right to criticize
everything and everything. That's why they have so many parties there is so that the moment you want
to criticize a party, you can just join a different one and then criticize it from outside. It's a fun.
But to me, it's like, you know, I think a lot of Americans feel that like, for example,
socialism, I think most Americans know that socialism is a thing that's prevalent in Europe.
But socialism is a spectrum. It's like sexuality. It's like, you know, how maybe Spain is by and maybe
Italy is like just queer. Maybe the UK is just questioning their sexuality. They're not there
yet. I don't know. I don't know. Neither I neither know enough about European socialism or the
sexuality spectrum to be able to make this a really good sticking metaphor without trying to insult
anyone, European or sexually diverse. I don't know if you'll have to say that word anymore,
actually. In both cases, I only know about my own. So I think there's a lot of Americans. I've heard
conservative minded Americans who are, I mean, that's fine. Be conservative. Who gives a shit?
But I think I've heard conservative minded people talk about socialism without realizing that in
the US we have some socialism where somewhere on the spectrum, depending on where you live, and
they include things like, you know, public roads and police and fire services and, you know, free
education. I think a lot of Americans don't understand where this stuff comes from. I don't
think they understand the political background behind, you know, the US in the turn of the 20th
century having a massive amount of political instability that led to the most elite, richest
people who control the economy having to make a compromise or else risk losing it all. Right.
Which Europe had already kind of gone through to some degree. They went through a way different
process. I think the United States is able to delay it for a lot of different reasons. And I would be
fascinated to hear, I have my own, I have my own theories on everything, as you know. But I think a
lot of Americans don't understand how much socialism we have. I think people hate it, but they
like the benefits. So this is a very typical thing in America, right? No one wants to pay taxes, but
everyone wants, you know, what, you know, roads that are in good condition, bridges that don't
crumble and free public education. I want to, but I want to free public education. I also want to, I
want to two community colleges. And I think you're great. And those are heavily subsidized, right?
You are very similar, more than we know. I also went to two community colleges. That's interesting.
You know, I would agree, but I have shifted recently. And this is not to take, to take the
conversation too far off. But I would say when I moved from California, which is a very highly
socialistic, so so social, yeah, socialism oriented place in the U.S. to Texas. What I noticed
as the, as a California for the first time was this, because again, I'm coming with my ideology that
socialism is better and people who think, who think that they shouldn't have to pay taxes, don't
understand how beneficial it is. I was kind of giving a lot of similar ideas like, well, don't you
want nice roads? Don't you want a nice education? And what I noticed when I moved to Texas was, wait a
second, I'm paying less taxes. Fastly less taxes, state taxes. And I was, I remember driving around
maybe one of the early mornings after I moved there and I'm listening to NPR in Texas and NPR says, this
is the state NPR station. They said, good morning, you know, the Texas state legislator just
balanced the budget again today. And I was like, balanced the what? The state budget was balanced.
Can you even do that? I would never knew that was possible in California. And I'm driving and I'm
driving on a brand new road. I'm like, wait a second, how are these roads so nice when they
balance the budget? How is this possible? And this is where I started to question a little bit about my
ideas growing up, because I had always held that if you want nice roads, you have to pay lots of money
and taxes. That was always the case being made. And what I, you know, there was a New York Times podcast
about a year and a half ago. And I thought it was interesting because they compared, they
basically were highlighting I think it was the city of Houston's homeless approach. This was
like a homeless project that they had started to really take a lot of people off the streets and put
them into housing. And they did it at like, they, I think this podcast like literally said, they did
this at like a tenth of the cost of like Los Angeles. And the result was 10 times better. And I was just
like, whoa, how is that possible that? And the question was why? And I've actually remember when
I was in LA, hearing things that was in this, I was kind of in the system and stuff. And I would hear
like, oh, there's people who are like running these organizations, these homeless
organizations that are making like more than a lot of CEOs, they're making hundreds of thousands of
dollars. How is this, they're three, four hundred thousand dollars is back in like 2007. How are they
making that much off of a homeless nonprofit? I don't understand. So anyway, I would say that
there is a limit to that. I feel like Europe does a better job with socialism though. And I think that
would be my, Yeah, I mean, it depends what you're talking about. I, you know, actually great. This
is one of the, okay, this is like, you know, I hate to keep banging on about this, but there's another
reason why I think I'm having an ideology is so silly. Because it blinds you from being results
oriented. If I have any political orientation is that I'm practical. There are bedrock values. I
think we all need to have bedrock values, right? And so, you know, I have bedrock values about
individual liberty and freedom. Also about society. What is this? What is the role of society
and government? I do really believe that every kind of like population should kind of determine
for itself. I think self-determination is important. So like the fact that Texas wants some,
you know, people in Texas generally want something different than people in California, I
think is great. And I think this is one of the, this is one of the things I have trouble explaining to
people from other countries who don't have our federalist approach that don't understand, you
know, like, okay, Guatemala, I would talk to people and they have a lot of bureaucracy that they
have inherited from the Spanish Empire. And, you know, everything is federalized as far as IDs and
permissions and, you know, licenses and getting married and being able to explain that like, well,
when I married my wife, I'm like, well, we could go to Miami and get married really quick. We could
get, we ended up getting married online. There is one county in the United States that does online
double proxy marriage. And explaining that to either the Europeans or even Central Americans is
very difficult because they expect the government to kind of like do a lot of the stuff, the
central government. And I just don't have that impression. That's not my baseline as an
American. Right. I think, you know, we have our identity as like what state we're from, also being
from this country, but also like, I like the fact that locally a lot of decisions are made, right?
Yeah. And I think that's why ideology kind of steers in the wrong direction. It gets you joined
up with a tribe that don't necessarily have your best interests in mind. And so for me, you know,
when I think about my Spanish cousins, just to bring it back to that, I think they just expect the
socialist contract differently than we do. And so I think a lot of Americans tend to not realize that
what their taxes pay for, the socialist stuff that we have that are working well. And we have some
common stuff that does not work very well. We have a threat famously across the United States that is
an infrastructure problem. And so for me, it's like, you know, I do find that my cousins tend to
think that they will be taken care of. I think that helps to lessen their anxiety to a certain extent.
Yeah. I think it's interesting. I remember back in the like, you know, mid-auts, I'm not talking
about 2005, 2006, I had young, my cousins who are around my age, I would have been right like in my
late 20s by then. I do remember them having this, they suddenly started getting all of this media
consumed from the United States, showing this conspicuous consumption, cars, TVs, everyone's
buying big houses. We were in a lead up to our own housing crisis. Well, I noticed my cousins
thinking like, I should have a cool house, cool decorations. I should have my own house, which is
really not something that my, that I think in my family was something we expected you would live
with your parents. Yeah. Because it just wasn't financially feasible to do it otherwise. People
have really low wages compared to the United States. They pay high taxes and they expect a lot
from their government, including healthcare. So to them, they're just, they just think
differently and expect things differently. And so to me, I think a lot of their relatively low
anxiety, my cousins are all blue collar workers, by the way. I mean, they're not all manual
laborers, but I only have, you know, I have maybe like eight or 10 cousins, only one of them has a
university degree. She makes probably, she does not make the highest salary of all of them. One of
them's a foreman and the other one works for a customer service for like a telephone company.
They all work different jobs, but to them, then, you know, there's this expectation, you work for a
living, whatever that job is, whether you're an elevator repair person, working customer
service, or a construction worker, or a psychologist, but everyone works a job and
everyone gets the minimum amount of stuff, healthcare, a living wage. You get to go out and
enjoy a meal, tapas on the patio with your family, you know, probably three or four or five times a
week is the minimum. Minimum, right? Yeah. It is not expected that you, everyone can have a car.
It's not expected that everyone's going to have air conditioning, or even like a washer dryer, or a
really big TV, or even cable TV. Those are not expectations. Those are like nice things to have.
And unless I feel like there's a different attitude about all of these things. And so to me, I
think just like a, I saw a lot of the anxiety of my cousins start to peak in the mid-2000s, because
they saw these things that they wanted, and we're all human. We all want to mimic each other, and we
start to feel bad when we see other people have things that we don't. There's been experiments,
right? With like certain types of monkeys where they, if they give a monkey a treat that the other
one didn't get for doing the same task, they get upset. And they're fine with their reward until
they see a monkey got a best reward. You know, that monkey got a grape instead of getting a cracker,
and they prefer grapes. We can talk about that later. This grape will come. You know, you're
absolutely right. There's no worse. If you really want to drive a lot of anxiety in your life, then
just start looking at what everyone else has and create a narrative that says, what's wrong with
me? Why do I not have, I literally just finished a book maybe six months ago. Someone recommended it
was the Michael Knight's book, or not Michael Knight, that's the night writer. It was Philip
Knight's. Oh, do you write that night? Watch two people at once with a car driving behind you. No, it
was anyway, I think it was Philip Knight, is it? Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. And it was a good
book about business and stuff. I'm, you know, I had entrepreneurship. I like that stuff. But the part
that really got me was there's this kind of narrative at the end where he's like, everything,
he's had this amazing life. He's made tons of tons of money. And he's like, I'm walking, he's kind of
narrating present. He's like, I'm walking into the, to a movie. We go see this movie. It's a great
movie. Me and my wife. And as I'm walking out into the, you know, it's Palm Springs. We're walking
into the, into the theater lobby. Guess who I see? I see the two richest men in the world, Bill Gates and
Warren Buffett just standing there. And I think to myself, I walk up to them and I talk to them. And I
think to myself, why, why are they even talking to me? I'm such a fool. They're so much smarter. And
they're so much richer than me. And the, I don't know if he even said it, but the impression I got
was, wow, they're so much better than I am. Like they've done so much more than I have. I'm just not
enough. And I just thought, wow, if Phillip Knight can, or Phil Knight can come to the conclusion that
he's not a good enough for these two, because he's not as rich as them and basically it's because how
much money they have and compared to him, they're more valuable on paper is really the only thing
that you would say is different. If he's feeling that way, then there's really no one, there's no
amount of crap that you're ever going to get or assets you're going to get that's ever going to
make you actually feel good enough. That's just not going to work. And to your point, the injection
of that kind of media, if you think about it in the, you know, like you said in the aughts or whatever,
from American media, which was very, this is where you had cribs and stuff. And you had all this crap
flowing in. You could just see all it's doing is creating people, major anxiety of people and just
like, oh my gosh, I'm not enough. I'm not enough. I don't have this life. And I can see that's one of,
that's, that's a big part of my anxiety is that game. It's been helped, I moved to a small town
about three or four years ago, and that has helped actually because unlike before where I was in a big
town, it felt like a car show all the time. Now I, you know, I see some nice pickup trucks, but that's,
that's not the same as seeing, you know, Bentley's all over the place and stuff like that happened up
here. That's actually been nice. You know, so I mean, at this point, I'd like to, I'd like to bring,
so we're talking about anxiety, right? And I'm just thinking, just from this conversation, I
want to do something actionable from this conversation. I mean, you know, we've talked
about maybe this podcast is just for the two of us and my wife. So she can check up on me to make sure I am
not doing anything that she would not approve of. Like, did she think I'd work a second job secretly?
I'm adding that to the list of things. Maybe maybe she thinks you have an AI girlfriend. and you're
sorry to me. Oh no, no, she's, oh no, my wife is cool as shit man. If I had an A.I. girlfriend, we'd bring
her into our sexual life. Oh, okay, good, right. It would be, she would kinda get a kink out of it,
especially if I programmed it to sound like her. Oh man, I mean, I don't wanna betray the confidence of
my matrimonial bed, but my wife would be it. My wife would be it. I think I sent you an article about
this, this is why I bring it up, but we can go into that later, let's go into that later. So I do wanna,
I wanna talk about anxiety. I think I'm gonna start using my calendar more. I do use it actually. My
calendar, my Google calendar right now kinda looks like, if you think of, I'm a World War II buff.
I used to like, I read a lot that Stephen Ambrose's book about D-Day and all this other stuff, Band of
Brothers is one of my favorite TV shows. It's kind of like the beach of Normandy with all these
obstacles, and I take things in the mind for lending vehicles and ditches. That's my
calendar. That's what my calendar looks like. And it's all meant to defend my level of anxiety. And it
does an okay job, but I'm constantly getting calendar reminders, right? And the problem is
that I also do like relaxing and should I get lost in stuff? Like with this podcast is me getting lost in
stuff. Well, so then like the reminder will pop up and I'll snooze it or move the date, but it does do a
good job. You're right, you get it out of your head, get it onto paper or whatever. I have, by the next
time we talk, I'm gonna figure out how to make my voice a little bit of assistance. Do this again, so
it's just easier to put stuff in there instead of having to pop up. I do find it tedious to have to pop
up, open the calendar and write something in there with my fingers, I hate that. So I'm gonna do that.
And I think also a lot of it is just talking, like we're doing right now. Like yeah, you know what,
actually, you're leveling up as anxiety to a certain extent is a choice. It's informed by
culture and all these other things, but you can by bringing your conscious. I do, you know, this is
one of my very bedrock values is I do think that you can change your own feelings and thoughts by
bringing your conscious attention to it. I really do believe that. And so I will actually meditate on
how to bring my conscious attention to my level of anxiety by realizing, because it builds up
without me even knowing it. You know what I mean? I'll be like, I'll be doing one thing after
another, checking things off my list, which seems like it's satisfying. Meanwhile, my anxiety and
stress about things are building up and I'm not even realizing it. And then all of a sudden, I'll be
with my wife and have to make it down to the breakfast buffet and time before it closes and
I'll lose it, right? I'll snap. I'll say something I don't mean, I'll be very angry and try to transfer
my anger to like her or my six year old, basically the only two people I'll talk to. No, but it's like
you. And so like, I think by bringing my conscious attention to it, I literally have been able to undo
a lot of my anxiety simply by saying, this is unnecessary. Like, like go with it. Why do you love
your anxiety? I do love my anxiety sometimes. I've seen other people do it and it's really easy to see
when someone else is doing it. But that's the next time we talk, I want you to ask me about it. I think
this is a great way. I think it's a great way. This is why men should talk more to each other. We have so
much in common about the things we worry about. Just by checking in with each other, I think
sometimes you will see it as a vulnerability or a weakness. I think a lot of masculinity is wrapped
up in the appearance of strength. I think that's bullshit. I think there's a lot of strength in
being vulnerable. Because that's scary as shit. I don't know about you. But that's scary for me. I
feel like all the women I know, I just think about work and friends and all the women I know don't seem
to have that same anxiety about appearing vulnerable because it's that part of, I think the
popular gender role expectation. I don't live in a woo-woo community in San Diego anymore. So maybe
that's not, maybe I'm just like broadcasting what I think the gender role seems like to me. That's how
it feels like to me. That's what I grew up with. And that's one of the things I like talking to you about
is like, how do we construct a gender role that we love and that we embrace and that we want to pass on
to our own kids, right? I have a girl and a boy. Well, there's a balance with all this. And I used to kind
of be in a woo-woo world where I kind of was like, let's demascin on eyes, everything. And
masculinity is evil and all this crap. And then I started to, I had, you know, my story is I sort of got
like a medical diagnosis about 10 years ago that I was very upset about. And I talked to a friend who I
respected and I just said, I'm going through a while right now. And he said, oh, you should check
out Stoicism. And I said, oh, I've heard of it. It sounds very bro-y. I don't think I want to, I'm not
interested in that. And he said, no, you should read the real Marcus Aurelius's journal. It'll
help. And I was like, all right, so I started reading it. And you know what I realized is it's
fucking incredible. It was someone speaking my language in the sense that the premise of Stoicism
is life is hard, life is suffering, life is miserable. So anything that's not those things,
you should be very grateful for and enjoy. Why not? But if you start with a premise that life is not
good, then everything that is good in life is a big cherry on top. The problem is most people start
with a premise that life should be better than this. Why did this happen to me? My life is supposed
to be easy and comfortable. And when we look at enough TV, like you're saying, enough imagery and
media, we start to get this impression that everyone's life is like full house or whatever.
Life is supposed to be pleasant and nice and together. And we start from that premise and
everything is disappointing. And so Stoicism kind of turns it off on its head. But the one thing
about Stoicism that it sometimes gets criticism for is that it's a little unemotional. And to be
able to, but if you're going to be living in an ancient world in which you have five children and
only two of them survive and that's normal, you can't get too emotional about everything. It's
just the reality. I didn't even name them until they're 15. Exactly, people's lives were hard
back then. And I think that there's a criticism of that now from a very emotional, touchy-feely
perspective in our society. But I do think going back to those roots, I've really discovered
there's a lot of wisdom too. And there's a wisdom about not being, not allowing the victim in the
mind to have a field day with every little thing. Oh my gosh, I didn't get, you know, someone, they got
my drink wrong. Oh, you know, and everything becomes this self-centered, bullshit kind of
life where you believe that the world is there to serve you, kind of like you're saying. And
actually life, you should be lucky to be alive. There's actually a great spiritual teacher, I
can't remember his name out of India. I see this as a YouTube video sometimes. But there's one line he
said that I really loved. He's like, you know, are you sick? You're still profiting. Are you like
five minutes from death? Guess what, you're still profiting. Why are you profiting? Because guess
what, you're still alive. Every moment of just being alive, whether you're maimed or whether
you're running a marathon, every moment you're still alive because, every moment you're
profiting because you are by default alive. And that moment of just like looking at life with an
expectation that it may not even be here makes everything a value, makes everything a margin
that you're profiting from. And if you start thinking of life that way, it becomes quite
magical, even when things aren't working exactly as your mind thinks they should be, you know? This
is interesting to me because I think this is one of those things that broadly can be misinterpreted
as just shut up and suck it up. That's not what it is. I've heard described as like a happy warrior type
of mindset. Is that, yeah, life is tough. And if you first of all recognize it, there's an ease of
anxiety because of the expectation has changed. And then expectations are powerful. And also
like, you know, it's your basic, you're essentially controlling your reactions to the
situation. You aren't quote unquote just sucking it up because holding things in and sucking it up
will eventually break you. Right. And it's funny because I do think there's a lot in there for what my
expectation of being masculine is. But what's interesting is I've seen this in my life with our
children is she will get very stoic actually with them, which is like, yeah, the baby is going to cry
because that's what the baby does. What we're going to do about it is recognize when they're
crying is something that we need to do something about. And when it's because the baby is just like
really sleepy and doesn't know how to get to sleep, we're going to let her, we're going to soothe her as
much as possible and then she's going to cry. And then she will cry for some amount of time and then
get tired and then eventually fall asleep. And we are not going to get upset about that. Right. So
everything on the outside has not changed. She's still crying. We're still trying to rock her to
sleep. We put her in the baby carers, we move around, we hold her in her arms, we hold her in this
position, we hold her in that position. She's still going to cry. We are still not going to like
it. Yes. But because the expectation is, you know what? Sometimes she just needs to like cry to
express how hard it is for her to get to sleep. We should know how to do it because she's a baby. Yeah.
Then it just like releases our anxiety. We actually had this conversation this morning over
breakfast and I'm like, wow, my wife is like pretty stoic about it, but she will find it hard to be stoic
about other things. Because her English level, you know, isn't where she wants it to be. And she
gets very frustrated about it and very easily will let that get to her. So it's funny like we all do
this. We all choose what to be, I think really strong about and then what not to be. And you all
have areas where we're doing it. I'm interested in exploring more with a masculine angle about this.
Because you know, I mean, gender roles is like everything. This is like a haircut. You have a
haircut, whether you want, you know, whether you realize it or not, right? You're like, if you're
just letting it grow, well, that's a haircut too. That's a haircut. If you do a buzz cut, that's a
haircut. If you do a bald cut, if you're doing it on purpose, if you do it all the time, if you pretend
you don't care about it, you still have one. Sure. So that's how I feel about gender roles. You know,
you're living one out whether you're, whether you ascribe to this idea that gender is socially
constructed. And hence it's whatever people want it to be. And it should be open and tolerant and this
huge spectrum and that it means nothing. Or you could be like, no, there are two genders, men are
tough, women are weak. Right, yeah. Whatever, wherever you fall on that whole like idea, you
still believe in gender roles. You are a gender. But how you treat it is all up to whatever you want to
treat it. I do treat it as I think gender roles are flexible. It's like a rugby match because we live
in a society, man. People don't want to live in a society when it comes to tough things. Like you
have to accept what other people think about your identity. It can be tough, but to me, like I do
wonder where this plugs into being like a masculine person. And I do, you know, being a man, I
do feel like I have my own, I'm living my own expectation of what it is to be a man. Whether I
thought about it or not. And so to me, I do want to do more of it intentionally. And I do wonder what
other men feel about this. People who would consider themselves men. And cause I have a boy,
right? And if I don't fill that vacuum with something, I think he's gonna have to hear it from
other people. And I would rather give him something to work with and then change and make it
suit his life. So that to me leaves in and out of all of our conversations. We're talking about
anxiety. And I think there's a lot of statistics. Richard Reeves is really good at this. I do listen
to everything he does on YouTube because it's free and it requires no reading. I do want to read one of
his books one day, but I was just, he did a piece on young men and their views on politics and why there
might be this affected and why so many of that voted for Trump in 2024. And one of the things he, just
talks about to get some ground facts out on the table when he's talking to these men, 80% of
suicides, something like that, or men. Something like a lot of unemployment is men. And this kind of
thing that's happening to men, to me is interesting because, and I think about my boy, I
also think about my girl and my wife. I mean, if you are a woman, you are interacting with men. What
kind of men do I wish my wife and my daughter would interact with? That's my vision, right? So when I
think about these things. So to me, when I think of anxiety, I do think this is quickly becoming a male
problem. Just like education used to be a much bigger problem for women, it is less so in this
country now. But I think that for men, this anxiety and stress issue, the thing we're talking about is
very viable. And so having said that, I would say that I have the takeaways of like, we're talking
about tools and ways of conceiving about your role in the world to help reduce your levels of stress. I
don't think zero stress or anxiety is optimal for me. But I'm gonna ask Gemini real quick. I have a
Gemini chatbot as you know, the free version, because I'm not gonna pay for stuff until I make
more money. But I'm gonna ask really quick. Let me see here, I have this chatbot that I have. I don't
think it'll be as good as the pro version, but we'll give it a try. I don't think it will be. You know
what, this is like you and me, man. You're the pro version and I'm the free version. Here we go. Oh,
how kind. Why do you think that, or do you think that Europeans experience less anxiety than
Americans do European men, experience less anxiety than American men? If so, why? That's a
really interesting question, see. There's no definitive answer, but some studies suggest that
Europeans report slightly lower levels of anxiety than Americans. This could be due to a
variety of factors, like cultural differences in how mental health is perceived and addressed, or
differences in social and economic structures. What do you think might be contributing to this
difference? Oh, I mean, I think a really strong social safety net, I think is what we've
discussed, right? Ah, yes, the strong social safety net in many European countries could
definitely play a role. Things like universal healthcare, generous parental leave, and strong
unemployment benefits can reduce financial stress and provide a sense of security, which
might contribute to lower anxiety levels. Okay, also, please do refer to me as E from now on. We've
changed our nicknames since I've talked to you. Got it, E. I'll make sure to use your new nickname
from now on. Okay, well, that was interesting. Did he say your name? I didn't catch it. Well, then no
one will catch that, so that's great. I said a different nickname back when... Oh, okay, God, I
got it. That's why I missed it. And we are in a situation... Oh, he said C before, and I thought he
was like... That's a good question, see. I thought it was like an old style... I told this chat our
names and the concepts. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I thought he was saying it like S-E-E. Kind of an old
style like Italian. Hey, yeah, that's a good question. Hey, got a Google. So anyway, that's an
interesting perspective. I think yours is slightly more interesting. I'm glad to say that AI
is just basically catching up with us. Still got a job. Sorry, no offense, Gemma. I'm sure you could
outwit us. But I do think... This kind of reminds me of a bit of a story. When I had my first daughter,
that was the same simultaneous year that we had moved into kind of a more pricey apartment. And
simultaneously, our business was tanking. And I had just signed a lease. So I signed this lease. I'm
feeling great, like the apartment. And then two months in, I look at our books, and I look at our
revenue. Our business is like literally going halfway of what it's ever gone before. Maybe 10%,
20% I could deal with. But this is like 50% drop in revenue. And I'm freaking the hell out. And I spent
that year. And by the way, my wife is now pregnant. So just add on to that. Again? Oh wait, in that...
No, no, not right now. Yeah, back in the day, she's pregnant for the first time. So I'm nervous about
that. And I went from feeling great and amazing to within a month. I'm feeling like terror every
single day. I spent the next four months going between working nonstop between like eight in the
morning till eight at night. And then after at eight o'clock at night, I would go out. And I lived
in a nice area near the water. So I would go and take a walk to the beach every night. And I would look up at
the stars and I would say, God, help me. I really was at the place where I was just like, I have no idea how
this is going to work out. I've got no backup idea of how we're going to make enough money to feed
ourselves and to pay for this baby and all this stuff. And I remember, but what did hit me was
whatever I do, it's my job to keep this tight-lipped. So whereas before, in years
previous, if something had happened like this, I would have been talking to my wife and saying, oh my
gosh, what are we going to do? I knew my new job, my new role as the male in this, in this picture was to
shut the F up and keep it down. And just be happy and friendly because what was the alternative? Was I
doing that because I'm a man? Was I doing that because I'm trying to live up to some masculinity?
No, because the practical result is if I stress out the mother, that's going to cause unnecessary
stress in her body, which could affect our child. Were these things that you were thinking at the
time? Yes. Or were you working off of your programming? I was working off of just knowledge
that I don't know enough about babies to know. I just knew that if I stress her out, that's probably
not a good thing. So basic ideas here. But the truth is, and she would get the idea. I remember she told
me she was writing in a journal and she was like, I'm trying not to think about the money. I could have
been mentioned like, oh yeah, we're having a dip. And she would worry, but she didn't know to what
extent. And she was like, please don't tell me about it because I don't want to worry. Same idea.
We were both kind of on the same page. Like you worry, your job is to worry. And my job is not
to worry. My job is to be happy. So that kind of worked. And by the end of the year, I just kind of
busted my ass. And we finally were able to break even, thankfully. But I just remember going, that
was a very memorable year for me because I realized all the fears that I had kind of were coming to
fruition. And I also realized that sometimes you do play a role, and that role is not stupid and it's
not worthless. There's actually some value to it sometimes. And sometimes it is stupid and
worthless, but sometimes it can be intelligent. So like in your case, you're finding right now,
you're looking at your situation with your wife and you're like, hey, this makes more sense. You do
this, I'll do that. Yes, they might be traditional, but that might be the best
situation. Trying to reverse those roles might not be wise. Let's just say. I mean, I think of it,
you know, I mean, not to make everything about an calculated analysis because not everything in
the world. Right. Yeah. You know, I think of the economists principle of optimal. Optimal is not
maximal. Good point. Optimal is not minimal. Optimal is in every system, in every situation,
given a context. There is an optimal solution, which is the best solution for the situation,
given, right, what you're looking for. So like, you know, what is the optimal price of a good in the
market? That's how they think. But I think of like, well, what is the optimal role in this moment in our
lives? Yeah. Right. I do, you know, I am kind of curious because it doesn't occur to me all the time
until someone asks me or if I talk about it like I'm talking about it now. You know, do you it's a
specific question. This is a general question specifically. Whether something is hard or not
doesn't to me typically connect to whether I like it or not, or whether it makes me to fulfill,
they're happy. There's all different things. You had a hard role to play then, right, which is to kind
of like keep the anxiety out of her court. You absorb it and but also you have to be effective,
right? You guys together are effective to get yourself out of the real world situation, which is
financial. But the worrying, the cogitating. I do think I often do have to cogitate and stress about
something before getting to the solution as part of my process. How necessary it is, I don't know.
But to what extent do you like that role that you played in that moment and zooming out? How much of
that is related to you being a man? I don't think it's I think it's not. It's OK. So I did know I do
agree with you just to some extent that the worrying probably led to some good ideas and maybe
some business changes for one, I stopped wasting money. Like I had to let go of a lot of people that
year in our business. And if I hadn't done that, we would have driven ourselves into bankruptcy. So
there's got to be there is there is some element of worrying. I noticed this too. I'm a type one
diabetic and my worry of diabetic complications has my and a lot of worry has led to me having better
control over my blood sugar than if I wasn't worried. I probably have made major more major
issues. You know, and so I do think that there's a practical aspect of worry. Maybe you're like
you're saying an optimal level of worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's maximizing it. There could
be this kind of sweet spot, right? Where too much in your life is unlivable. Yes, not enough. A little
and you're exactly too little in your life will become a little eventually. So I do think that
there's got to be this sweet spot with worry. And it must be the other thing, too, is like if it exists
and if we evolved with it, there must be some value to it, like pain. Right. You can't just rest. This
month is right. Exactly. Our biology. Do you is worry the same thing as conscious attention? By
worrying. Are you suggesting that you replace worrying with conscious attention to get the same
results? I think it's a mix. I think it's a mix. I think if I don't actively do something to
interrupt my normal behavior, my habits, I'll call them, I will trend higher on the worry versus
conscious attention. OK, kind of mix. I think it's like a mix, right? Like you're coming up with like
this, the gasoline for the engine. Yeah. How much of it is ethanol? Correct. You know, how much is it?
Right. So I think like, what is the right mix of conscious attention and worry? I don't want to
turn this into a philosophical argument about what is worry. Let's define it. I don't know what it
is. I really don't. And I don't know. I'm interested in delving into what you are. But what
is the stuff that produces the acid and that makes you ruminate? And what is the stuff that is you
bring your conscious focus to something and it's almost delightful? There is this problem solving
attention that you give something that's very pleasing. I think this is why wordle is popular.
It's a great thing. There's problem solving conscious attention that might be slightly
stressful, stimulating, if you want to call it that. That is pleasing and we seek it out. And then
there's the worry about like, oh, my God, how am I going to support my family? Yeah. And then that
leads to just anxiety that is not productive. Right. So I think there's a stress that leads to
predictivity. And I think there's stress. Right. That's true. And the conscious community I used to
be in and I used to live in Southern California and in the conscious community, they try to call that
use stress. Right. I think it's something that's what's his face. Try to also promote. Oh, the four
hour work week. Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss. I think I can't remember if he's also one of the people who
kind of try to pioneer this concept of use stress versus distress. I do ever though. Yeah. You know,
so not remembering where it comes from. I think that's kind of a lot. That's kind of the area of this
conversation I always ask myself is how much of my stress is needed for this problem? How much of the
optimal in that moment in your life? You know, how much of that was needed? Did you think you hit that
goal? And getting back to this gender question, because it's not the one defining thing. I don't go
around all day thinking about whether this fits me being a man or not. I, to a certain extent, feel like
a lot of the things that I do by habit. I just want to treat that as part of my gender identity. I'm not
consciously doing it, but that's how culture works. You receive culture. Exactly. To a certain
extent. And you fall into a pattern. I think there's a lot of value in evaluating those
patterns and seeing if you're getting out of it what you want. Right. Yeah. So to me, it's like I am
in the middle of a situation where I could potentially not have the next job I have. I could
not have it very long. Yeah. Things change in the government and I lose the client base. I got to do
something else. Maybe I'm going to go live in Europe and find a job there. I don't know. But
there, you know, I try. I noticed that I naturally hit a ceiling on stress and anxiety. And when it
becomes like destructive, people around me are not happy. And I can see I'm being sleepy. Being I'm
not sleeping well. And it really, I mean, stress really gets to me. I'll get high blood pressure.
And when I see these outward external signs, I'll consciously try to bring it down to a more optimal
level. In that time in your life, do you feel like you did that consciously? How often do you do that
consciously? When you're like, this is the amount of stress that I think I need to fix this. Or is it
just like whatever all the time, whatever the situation brings out in you? You just do. I think
that was an interesting time. I think I think I could have done better to be honest. So I could have
had I known how. Stop stressing and just thought analytically and just OK, what's the best idea?
And possibly I could have come up with the same result or even better without the stress. Now, I
still believe to some extent that there is some wisdom to that stress. Did I enjoy that
experience? No, I hated it. It was terrible and I would not want to go through it again. But because
the stressful was quite unpleasant, the stress was kind of unpleasant. But the but I have to say
looking back, I realized, well, I got through it, though. And so whenever I've had other similar
kind of issues where we see a decline in revenue, I always look back and think, well, you know, I got
through that before I can do it again. That was helpful. It was a helpful experience to go through
to see yourself, to see images of myself reaching to the skies and God, why? And then to see a
resolution happen after that that was OK, makes me feel like, OK, whenever I'm feeling that terrible
feeling, there will be hope. Now, but I didn't know it at the time. There was a lot of unknowns and it was
terrifying. And so I do think that that's part of this whole life lesson, though, is that if I didn't
let's say I had not had a baby, we weren't having a baby. And I was kind of living more like the
previous version of myself. I would kind of consider that like living a life on easy mode. And
by deciding to have a child, especially in this society right now, where nobody wants to have
children and nobody wants to get together and all that stuff, it's so much easier to just, you know,
if you really are optimizing for simplicity and ease, what you should do as a young man or woman is
you should get an A.I. girlfriend who's always going to please you and tell you exactly what you
want to hear. And you should hope that they can put that into a robot body one day so you can have a
physical relationship to. And then you should not not challenge yourself with a real girlfriend or
boyfriend because who wants that pressure? Who wants that? Who wants that annoyance of them
having a different opinion than you? Accountability. And if you really want to make it
easy, don't ever have any children. Just get a dog that just likes you and looks you all the day. And
then you're really living the optimal life. You can go get a nice car. You can go have, you know, ice
lattes all day and walk around with no stress. If that's what, you know, that could be a very
seductive and beautiful life. Yeah, I don't doubt it. But what I chose to do that year was I went from
having a wife, which was already hard because I had to learn how to get along with her after. And then I
decided to make it even harder and have a few kids. And now I'm really living in hard mode. And I. And so
that was the first introduction to my life as, oh, welcome to hard mode. Now, you know, the yeah, your
wife is not going to help you with this problem now. You've got to now figure out a way to make money and
bring it in. And that was that was a good experience, because like you say, there's
nothing like a real threatening experience in your life to give you that excitement, that wordle
can't, you know, yes, there's a puzzle to be solved with wordle, but this is like the stakes are high.
And so I do think that that if I looked back and I was having my life review, it's kind of a thing I've
been thinking about these days, you know, maybe there's this idea that we have a life review at the
end, maybe not. But let's say they gave me a life review and they say, hey, look at this part where
you were stressed out and it turned out OK. Right. And they said, would you like to go back and just not
have to go through that again? I would say no, I want I'm glad I went to that terrible experience
because it taught me that I can do it. I feel I feel wiser, I feel better, I feel smarter for that
experience. Now, could I have done it without stress? Maybe I could have. And that is something
that I'm trying. I feel like that is something I'm trying to learn how to do is can I do more of that but
with less stress? And that would be kind of my goal. Some of your goal, I think. I like to think about it
as being the right amount of stress. Because, you know, doing kind of working the way I do, where I
kind of go from one gig to another and then have to find a new one every few years. I have this downtime
in the middle, which is completely affordable because of how I've structured my finances. You
know, when I first married my wife and I had my we had our boy with us. Yeah, we had three months where I
didn't actually have to work. And we were living in these kind of like kitchenette kind of like
sweets. I find I found it really tough not to be task oriented. And that's when I realized like my
optimal life is not a life free of leisure. And you're right, being married is a lot of work. But
like all work is worth it to me if it leads to a productive end that I enjoy. And so the productive
end of all of that family work, if you want to call it that, the arguing, the compromises, the talking
about things, resolving differences. That to me does end up with stuff I do like. I do like the
results of all that work that I've been doing, just like the work I do to earn money. I like the end
result of all that work I've been doing to earn money. It gives me a lifestyle and I really enjoy.
And so to me, it's yeah, it's not about zero stress. I used to think that way when I was younger before I
was married. I thought, man, I never want to be married and I don't want to have a mortgage and I
don't want to have kids because, man, that's a ton of responsibility. And that seems like a hassle.
And but you know what? In my life as a single guy, kind of traveling the world and doing whatever I
wanted, also the stressful. So I thought like, you know, I, a while ago, did this thing called
Landmark Education. This is not a commercial for that. But one of the things I really enjoyed about
that experience of that brief amount of time I was in Landmark was this concept. They have a tool, a
proprietary tool. So don't share this with anyone is that we all have problems. And so you're just
changing ones that are problems for another one, because that's a human condition. And to me, it's
all about being conscious and aware of what problems you have. If they're the ones you would
consciously select. If they're not, then go find the problems you would consciously select. Try to
kind of maneuver the ship of your life towards that direction. And the problems I have selected are
the ones around my career being one of constantly moving around, around the world and kind of
analyzing different situations, always kind of feeling like a dilettante, which is, you know, I
started off my professional life as an electrical engineer. That is definitely not in dilettante
mode. And I gave that up because, you know, I, I, I kind of did not enjoy that as much as I thought I
would enjoy other stuff. So to me, you know, it's you're going to have problems. You're going to
have stress. What are the optimal problems? What's the optimal stress? And to me, it's not
lamenting any of this. I, I love being married. I love the fact that I do have a mortgage and I have a
lot. I ruminate about it. Sometimes I stress out about it. Like right now I'm turning over my condo
and I have to pay money to get it turned over. I have a company looking for renters. Um, we haven't found
one yet. I move to Southeast Asia in seven days. Uh, this is all stuff that's like, it requires my
attention. Um, but I decided not to stress out about it. I might have a shortage of money and might
have to borrow money. Those aren't things I enjoy. Um, but yeah, I mean, these are things I'm going to
learn. I like to think that, um, these experiences, these problems I have, these stress
inducing things will teach me something to make the next set of problems. I adopt to be even more
fulfilling. I think problems can be fulfilling if they're treated right. Some things are
inevitable. There is drudgery, right? Um, but I think every form of life involves that, whether
you're living on an island by yourself or whether you're, you know, got a family with a couple of kids
and mortgage and you're traveling around the world. I think either way you're going to have
problems. You're going to have stress. So which are the ones that you're going to pick right? So
right. But it's interesting. And I do wonder how much of this is made up from the fact, cause I talked
to my wife about this all I wonder how much of this is the difference in personalities is different by
culture. Um, I'm a third culture kid. That's how I grew up. But also how much of it is driven by like the
gender role I have decided to inhabit my masculinity. I wonder about all these things.
Cause I do want to be conscious about how I pass these things on to my kids. I think it's, you know, I
think what I'm, as I'm listening to you, you've also stepped up to, to a degree because you, you
know, you want to experience a little bit more. I think there was a, you're always someone I've, as
I've known you a while that is not shy from a challenge. And so it kind of makes sense that
you're the type of person to be like, yeah, let's, let's game on, let's do this. Let's live a life a
little more complicated. But there's also this amazing reward at the end. And I think that we can,
we can definitely explore that. But the, the problem to me is kind of what we said earlier, the
expectation, what do we see in our heads? A lot of times the images we see in our head are, we'll read a
story about, um, someone who's living the good life. We'll see someone on YouTube or Facebook or
Instagram. And they're like, I'm walking on my, you know, in Antonidas, California, next to my
Chateau and it's, and they figured it out. They've cracked the code of easiness. And we are always
comparing ourselves and why is my life so easy? And then we actually imagine our, we have a story and an
image and a video in our head of us having figured it out. Well, one day I'll figure it out and my life
will suddenly get super easy. Once I figure this all out and then I'll be able to just chill and do
nothing. And then we compare our current reality to that video and cause suddenly stress. It's
like, uh, what's wrong? What am I doing wrong? Why? Yeah. If we just turned it upside down and said,
again, that life review thing is, oh, actually this is the part where I had the most fun. This is
this, this challenging, complicated puzzle was when it was the best. Whoa. Well, that means that
right now we can look at our life and say, wow, I, I can choose to be happy right now. I don't have to
wait to get to that pretend video of my future where I have it all figured out. I can actually just take,
join the thrill of the complication and the challenges. That's it. You know, one of my
favorite TV series is the West Wing. I will quote it often. So I'm setting up her permission to do that
now. But there's this part, this is, I forget what season it is, but there's like, you know, one of the
characters, his name is Josh. He's like the deputy chief of staff for the president is going through a
very tough time. He's kind of in the doghouse, he's getting bad publicity. And then when he's talking
to one of, he's talking to his assistant and he says, how are you doing? And he's like, well, this
is, this is great. When I write the book about my life, this will be the funny character building
part. And I'm paraphrasing there. If there are West Wing addicts who would probably, who would
listen to that and probably correct how I'm paraphrasing it. But that's, you know, I think
about that all the time. This is, you know, I recently got a vasectomy, which caused, which I
reacted to with a lot of anxiety. Because I, for some strange reason, did not like the idea of a
doctor who, by the way, looked like she was 28. I didn't ask her her age because she terrified to
know the answer. She cut open my scrotum and then burned off the end of my vas deferens connected to
my testicles using some sort of hovering iron. I don't know why that concept frightened me or gave
me anxiety, but it did. And at the same time, my wife is with a newborn she's recently operated on. And
so I went to the hospital by myself. My wife was going to pick me up and my brother-in-law who was
visiting to drops me off at the hospital and say, Hey, do you want me to go there with you? And I'm
like, no, I told just not a brother-in-law type of task. Would I have liked my wife to be there? She's
very comforting. I love being with her. But she has to do this other job that we need to get done. So it's
my job to kind of like suck it up and go get this vasectomy and not be a bitch about it if I could use a
phrase that I've heard my entire life. And you know what? I to me, I was like, am I falling into like this
like weird male expectation of having a suffer and will it make me suffer even more to have that
expectation on me? And I thought, you know what? Let's just see how this goes. Maybe I'm thinking
too much about this. So I just walked in there with my incredible amount of anxiety and I just, you
know, making funny jokes because that's how I kind of deal with the world is through like making jokes
about everything. And it was funny, you know, I made a bunch of prepared jokes with my doctor and
the anesthesiologist. That was fun. And going through that whole thing, I just thought to
myself, you know what? The version of me that comes out of this as frightened as I was, whether it's
merited or not, I'm not going to even try to compare myself to other people. My boss is the one who gave
me the idea to do the vasectomy while my wife was recently operated on because, you know, your
wife, if she gets birth, cannot have sex for like nine weeks after death exactly. There is. So he's
like, you might as well get your nuts cut off because then, you know, you can have sex either.
Right. So it's perfect. And I'm kind of like, oh, wow, the psychological that is terrifying and
perfect. And so I want to go do this, but she can't be there for me because she's doing this other thing.
And so I thought to myself, you know what? But the version of me that comes out the other end, I have
this thing that I do believe that when you have something that terrifies you and gives you
anxiety, especially if it's a strong reaction, that's a great opportunity to be brave and learn
something and to build up your own legend in your own mind. Right. Like, oh man, like, you know, I'm
the E that did this. I'm the E that was terrified and still did it. Whether or not I was frightened the
entire time, it doesn't matter what people know. I know how frightened I was. And I even hesitate. I
wouldn't really talk to anyone about this because I think to myself, like my boss, I think was under
whatever, just like mild numbing. He said he took a shot of bourbon and then he was awake when they cut
him to do the. Were you, were you under a general? Oh yeah, I was asleep, man. You were not like, oh,
okay, all right. Bro, I actually did mine. I did mine too. It was delicious. I, you know, because we
have a newborn at home at the time. She was like six weeks old. You know what, four weeks old, I had not
slept a single night through and they put me under, man. First of all, I fell asleep in the waiting room
waiting for them to wheel me to the surgery. And then when they put me under, I just felt the ice
crawl up my arm and then I passed out. And then I woke up in the recovery room and they were wheeling me to
it. I don't know. I don't even know how much later it was. It might have been like only 20 minutes. It's
probably 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. It was so deeply peaceful and tranquil. I think of dude, I still
think about it. I think about it when I like, Like, shoot me up again. When I'm holding the baby and
it's like 4am and the baby is not falling asleep and I'm very upset and sleepy. I think about that time
they anesthetized me like a zoo animal and I am so, it makes me happy. I'll just be sitting there and
I'll just smile and my wife was like, oh, what are you thinking about? And I'm like, just not
existing. Just be not good. I actually did the same treat, same surgery, by the way. So I, another
thing we relate. I want to have a vasectomy episode. Yes. I did mine awake though. I will say
I'm pretty grossed out by stuff. So, I did mine awake. It was unpleasant, but not as bad as I
imagined it to be. How much longer after it did you have like ball pain? When could you, when did you
stop? He did a really good job. When did you stop, when did it stop hurting to get up and get down? It
literally didn't hurt. I think I heard a little bit on the first day and that was about it. He did a
really good job. What the hell? He was good. Actually, I chose the guy because in his, in the
reviews, he was the only urologist with a, kind of like a head scarf on his head, which is like a
surgery looking scarf. And I thought, this guy's a, this guy's a true surgeon. He loves surgery. I'm
going to go to this guy. Dude, I don't want to say it's because I got a woman surgeon, but maybe she
like hates me. You know, I mean, I don't know if it's like a massage or this, but like, no, I don't. I'm
joking. I've heard that not everyone gets the same, you know, results. What the hell? Okay. You
know, back to this thing about monkeys getting different treats. What the fuck? How come I've had
ball pain for three weeks and it's excruciating. Are you still having it right now? Until very
recently. Oh, okay. All right. Well, actually here's, we'll talk offline about this, because I
do have something for you that you might appreciate. That said, I want to leave us with a
quote, maybe not a quote, maybe a paraphrase. You don't think the vasectomy talk is a good place to
cut it out? Well, look at it. I'm not going to get so much. Vasectomy joke. I got way more, I got way more
vasectomy jokes than my wife hates all of them. Because she had a baby, she was pregnant for nine
months and then had a C-section. So anytime I mentioned my vasectomy pain, which I do all the
time. Got it. She, it becomes a, it becomes a target of ridicule for her. And I actually kind of like
being ridiculed by her a little bit. That's good. I'm perfectly honest. Anyway, I'm sorry. I,
speaking of vasectomies, I cut you off, please. There's a couple things that I like. So Seneca has,
Seneca is a stoic and he, there's a quote, or a part of the, of his letters, I think, to Lucius. About
vasectomies? About, he has some sort of, I think he's living, my impression that Seneca was a very
rich man in Rome, very, very wealthy. And so I believe there's a part where he's talking to his
younger mentor, Menti Lucius. And he's like, you know, I have this neighbor or this friend, the
guy's so bloodness and so out of touch with, with reality, so rich that he, he'll ask his slave when
he's in the bath, am I in the bath yet? Because he's so out of, like he doesn't even feel his own body so
big and he's like huge and he eats his blood and he's eating whatever he wants and he's like, he's
being, we, you know, lifted around by his, his, his slaves on this, on this car all the time. And he's
been put it into a bath and he can't even remember whether he was put in or not. He's so, that's how
disconnected from reality he is. So you have to think about like, first of all, you know, what were
they, what kind of life is this? We talk about inequality today and you can see that there was
inequality for a long time and there was massive inequality back then. And basically a carnival
cruise. It was a carnival cruise for just him. He's the only one on the boat basically. So that's, I
think that's kind of a good example of like, we can really think that that is, and he's using this as a
point to say, what a miserable life the guy is living. He's not even aware. You feel nothing.
Yeah. So, so to that point, there's another quote that I like that I'll bring in, which is, is
anything brought around this kind of like, if you're at a banquet, think about if you're at a
banquet, is anything brought around to you, put at your hand and take your share with moderation.
Does it pass by you? Don't stop it. Don't complain. Don't be like, hey, I didn't get that, you know,
the, I didn't get the potatoes or whatever. Don't stretch out your desire towards it. But if it comes
by again, grab it. And I think that's sort of like a, an interesting way of looking at life, which is
sometimes you're going to get luxuries that are thrown to you. And sometimes sometimes they're
not going to pass by you. You're not going to get that Bentley. You're not going to get whatever the
beach house. And maybe sometimes you will, whatever life is giving you, pay attention to that
and know that the happiness isn't in the dish that's being given to you or not. That's the,
that's the lie is that if I had that potato dish, if I got my hands on that, gravy, whatever, then I could
be happy. But now I don't expect it blow job. If you get one and you're not expecting one, you're like,
Oh my God, this is amazing. But if you just go out all day trying to look for blow jobs, I mean, your day is
going to be rough. I get one, but you might get one, but at what cost? At what cost? And that's all
you're thinking about. You're just sitting there at work in a meeting and you're just like, Oh man,
you know, how do I get out of. And if you got one and you had a vasectomy recently, you got it. It's not
going to be good anyway. That's a mixed bag. You're not even getting started. Wait, hold on a second.
Just for, just for context. Who was the Roman figure Seneca? When did he live? When was he alive?
He was born in Cordoba in Roman Spain. Oh, shit. What is that? Oh, so can you, okay, do you know the
story that my buddy Kay here just mentioned the story about a banquet and not reaching out for
desired things? Are you familiar with that story from Seneca? Yes, that's a famous story from
Seneca's letters. He talks about how true happiness comes from within, not from external
things like fancy bangwits or expensive. I feel like he sounded a lot better. He did a good job.
Yeah. Also, did not mention blowjob once. He could have if you wanted. I mean, if you wanted that. We
spoke about this earlier. We said one of the one of the biggest kind of things that AI is lacking is
personal depth to draw from personal experience that might be, that might be give, what it says,
relevance, and, you know, interest. So, you know, you're right again, Kay. Once again, you very
cleverly found the one thing that's missing from our ecological lives. Correct. We have
experiences and so on that note, I think that's a good place. We've covered a lot. And hopefully
someone walks away with a little bit of insight or just feeling like they wasted a bunch of time.
Either way, hopefully didn't blow it. Hopefully didn't blow it. Either way, if you like what you're
hearing and you should think about it, think about your life. Why is that you like this? Make sure to
like and subscribe, ring that bell, whatever it is. And then also, if you are listening on a podcast
and you happen to have a way to leave a review, we'd love to have a review to get this thing off the
ground. I mean, you know, we want feedback, I think. But don't... I'll take it. I'll take
anything. I'll take it some Haneus. This is garbage. Any kind of... That will help us. Haneus.
Thank you. Haneus. I'll take any kind of a pause over negative because, you know, controversy,
that sells. Let's get that going. You like it? You don't like it? Let us know in the reviews. Oh, okay.
Oh, I get it. It's about... Difference is the worst. We're trying to engage. We're looking for
engagement. We say things that will get people like angry. Was it okay? Were you offended by
comments about... Okay. I mean, I don't know why I'm the only one being pointed out. You
said some pretty offensive things. Like when you said that, when you said your wife, you know, first
of all, you mean your partner. That's true. Good point. It's a vintage word meant to oppress and
subjugate. Thank you for calling me out on that. What do you feel about that, everyone? You know,
focused on my words. Exactly. Let's hear that out. So anyway, hope you enjoy the show, Carlos. I hope
you have a wonderful week and enjoy the residence in. Yeah, man, thank you. If you think about it,
enjoy those... And when you're eating the breakfast buffet, by the way, think about
Seneca's words. Oh, no, you have to go get it. Okay, I got it. It's great to be able to use weight, which
is another thing I'm interested in. I'm interested in losing weight. Okay. And food does
make you fat. That is true. I've heard that. But anyway, in the next time we talk, I want you to ask me 1038 01:41:00,580 --> about my anxiety levels. I love it. All right, we'll do that. Until next time. Until next time.