Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en and he’s like he’s like you’re afraid of me huh and i was like i was like yeah i’m afraid and he goes that’s your truth huh i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like what’s going on how was uh wednesday uh it was good man ramon was on so no you know ramon ramon is the best so ramon came on and did his thing he was the best good i’m uh i’m happy for him he’s getting a bunch of wins right now and that makes me happy for him yeah uh you where were you so you were doing something interesting that’s why let me tell you come back tell us the story yeah let me tell you what i did so i volunteer with this program called the last mile it was started by my friend chris redlitz chris started uh he did a bunch of stuff he was early at reebok so he’s 65 years old he was an early employee at reebok when he probably became very financially successful there then he started a company that he took public and then he started a vc fund that i believe was quite successful they were in on wish.com and a few other things and he started this charity or nonprofit called the last mile and the whole vision behind this thing is basically um so i’m not supposed to use the word inmates they’ve asked me not to use the word inmates but sometimes i’m still going to use that word because that’s what most people know what it means but basically prison inmates they are going to get out what do they want you to say well and it’s a good it’s a good terminology and good way of thinking but basically they’re like well look we’re trying to get them out of prison and into the mindset of they’re going to be working and having a job we don’t want to refer to them as offenders as inmates but students but um but that would be confusing in this context okay yeah in this context yes and so i’m gonna kind of go against his rules in this context so there’s uh something like a million people in prison right and a lot of guys are there for 10 20 30 years for manslaughter for doing whatever they’re going to get out and whether you like the whether you forgive them for their crime or not the fact is is that you they’re going to get out and so the last mile is teaching them how to code for about two or three years through a program and then helping them get jobs at like slack i believe ebay things like that and they’ve graduated i think 800 people out of prison who went through the program and none of them have gone back to prison and i believe the average prison the average person who goes to prison i think it’s like a 65 chance that they go back to prison right so the fact is that these guys like for example i was with this one guy who uh basically he caught his wife cheating and they got into an argument according to the news i googled it she like went to fight him with a hammer he grabbed the hammer and killed her and he was in prison for 20 years and i was hanging out with this guy which is weird that’s weird you know that’s like a mind [ ] and he was like yeah i’m gonna get out in three years uh prior to this i was an engineer or sorry i was a sales person at a pharmaceutical company i had a great job and i’m learning how to do javascript and mongodb so i can get a job at a tech company hopefully because no one’s going to hire me unless i go through this program and that’s crazy right isn’t that weird like i’m hanging out and i was with my wife sarah we’re walking around this prison just hanging out with these guys and i get to know them and i’m like i would hang i mean you’re nice enough you’re right you get along fine i had no idea you’d ever done this and they start opening up and telling me what they did and it’s pretty amazing and it’s amazing for a couple reasons the first reason is that um when you’re in this like when you’re so some guys are just like habitual criminals like i talked to this one guy i was like what was your job before this he was like oh i was a meth dealer right i stole meth and i killed the guy we went to rob this house and i killed someone and um and i would but and he was like besides killing them i was just like criminal i just did all types of crazy [ ] but once i learned how to do coding i actually got more logical where i realized that if i do this then this other thing is going to happen and so i started learning a lot about impulse control and i started learning about myself and so it’s like learning how to code but also learning about yourself typing like an if then statement for your life yes and so that’s quite fascinating the second thing is you know there’s not a lot of black coders but unfortunately there’s a lot of black folks in prison and so uh these guys are learning how to code we are with we’re in indiana it was mostly white people but i’ve done this in san quentin but um like for someone who graduates and leaves jail and they go back to an all-black neighborhood a lot of times it’s these these kids these young kids it’s the first time they’re gonna meet a programmer who’s black and who looks like them and so not only are we helping these folks stay out of prison but it’s kind of cool that like you know you’re actually like helping the diversity issue in tech and so how the heck did this guy chris read let’s start this that seems so random from like you know your employee at a reebok and then you start a vc fund and where did this come from i i believe the story is 10 years ago he was dating a woman and she volunteered at a prison and she was teaching i think math like she just got pulled into it at san quentin she lived in san francisco and someone was like hey we need like or no sorry uh someone was like chris can you come and talk about entrepreneurship to these inmates right and he was like i guess i’ll go and he goes and they’re like can you come again can you come again he’s like uh i guess and then eventually he was like wow you know this is a major problem uh that i’m passionate and i care about and so him and his wife they started a thing where they go hey um they went to uh sacramento the the capital of california and they basically lobbied for this program they go hey everyone we’ll put up the hundred thousand dollars uh you know they’re talking to the politicians would it would be okay if we did a cohort for entrepreneurship in san quentin and they like through friends of friends they got in front of the right people and it approved and then they’re like well you know entrepreneurship is okay but teaching them how to code is way better right and so he starts doing that and then he goes and convinces apple the i believe the trump the trump administration uh the koch brothers uh rich people to donate money and now they have this like huge program that’s kind of amazing they’ve trained some huge number of people right like there are a lot of people in this program is that right yeah they’ve got i believe that they only allow like 20 or 30 people per like cohort and they have like 15 prisons doing it by the way if you’re listening to this well they graduated i think a thousand people and i was gonna say by the way if you’re listening to this i’m getting some of these numbers wrong um i didn’t like write all this down so whatever i’m saying divide by two and multiply by two so i think they have like a thousand people but let me tell you something that’s interesting so i was in this prison and you want to know what’s crazy dude most everyone was really fat and out of shape and yeah as a fitness influencer you just you couldn’t you couldn’t help yourself well here’s why this is interesting to me so i was talking to chris and i was like you know everyone was like fat and like the food that they give these folks it’s horrible it was like white bread and bologna and like generic like oreo cookies and you could buy stuff but he was like yeah well you know at some of the longer maximum uh maximum security prisons they’re a little bit more fit but yeah it’s a huge problem and in china i was like chris like if we gave these guys like look there i understand like the idea of like you committed a crime you sacrifice privileges whatever but i think if we just gave them like some better meat and vegetables for every meal and forced them to exercise like you’ve got to get up at 7 a.m and as a prison we’re gonna do jumping jacks push-ups calisthenics and like you know it’s like the military i think they would behave better and ultimately like if your body works better you’re gonna maybe behave and act a little bit better and he was like yeah you know i think i agree but even in american prisons you can’t force people to do anything it’s like against the law or against the rules but i started thinking about this and and i and i think that’s kind of interesting and they do this in china and he was like yeah we uh we like got some we like saw chinese prisons and everyone shredded because they make you do this wow uh okay did you know i’ve done a very similar thing so i got a couple of uh like when you said you were doing this i i like remembered back when i did this so there’s a group in the bay area that does this called the inside inside circle i think it’s called and um nonprofit they basically go into it’s like a men’s group so for people who listen to this that don’t know what a men’s group is uh it’s a idea that’s been around for a long time there’s many different flavors of this there’s some that are like kind of business oriented there’s some that are uh oriented around just changing your life i forgot what’s the what’s the famous one of the barrier that people think is a cult that’s like a men’s group uh i don’t know if you know the name of it it’s like a weekend it’s like a weekend thing you do uh but there’s a whole bunch of water or something yeah something like that uh not not that but there’s something like so anyways a men’s group is where a bunch of men get together they sit in a circle and they talk about their feelings and they talk about what’s going on and they and they have like a whole process that’s like basically helps people unpack what’s going on inside so that they when you unpack what’s going on inside you’re not carrying all this baggage around and then you you will act more like the way you want to act because you don’t have this sort of suppressed and pent-up stuff inside that’s my like layman’s version of i’m sure there’s a much fancier better way of explaining it so i went to folsom prison did the same same sort of thing two-day program you go in i met this guy gino he was kind of like you know you get a pen pal buddy basically so you know you meet your buddy and he was in there he’s been in there since he was 18. and he had murdered somebody when he was 18 and he’s like been in there for 20 years now so he’s 38 and he was like you know yeah i did this horrible thing when i was 18 and like i’m in here for life basically like my whole life is basically in prison and uh he had a great great attitude about him funny guy and he was you know he was just it was kind of unreal um because i had been you know kind of embarrassed to admit it but i had been kind of uh you know in my head i just sort of wrote this off like i just wrote off people in prison like i think society writes them off and i had sort of just thought like yeah i’m not super interested in going in and meeting people who have murdered people before um but you know it’s really not that simple once you meet them it’s really not that simple um to sort of like bucket people like that as good and bad and so you know kind of you know it’s kind of embarrassing to even say it out loud it sounds obvious but you know it was kind of a i don’t know this kind of awakening moment and then we we did these exercises so we did these exercises where you’re like you know you sit in your little group and you talk about what’s going on and it’s so funny because it was basically half successful tech guys and then half people from folsom prison and uh and they would be like you know the tech guy is like oh you know um you know just a stereotype for a second like my kids trying to get into this private school the admissions process my wife is really blah blah and then like the next guy who’s like you know um i haven’t seen my daughter in 25 years and i just hope she’s okay and i heard something heard something happen to her and i’m not able to help and it’s just gutting me and then the tech guy is like you know my company we raised our a we’re just trying to raise our b like it was like it’s so funny like real problems fake problems real problems fake problems and uh but like this is sort of like no judgment right that’s the idea is like um actually it’s funny the guys who lead you in there they’re very like sort of wise people there there’s one guy bj who runs the program and then uh i forgot the name of the other guy he’s an awesome guy and he’s like he’s like recognized as a shaman in like seven different civilizations in africa like this guy is just a beast in all ways they in fact they call his nickname is beastmaster because he sort of is able to tame the beasts in the prison um and he’s got this like presence about him that he wouldn’t believe like imagine ray lewis he does volunteer he was in prison but he was in prison he got out and then he you know devoted his life to this work um and he’s like sort of one of the most wise guys ever and he said this early on he’s like uh you know let’s set some ground rules before we go in here man like okay what are we and one guy was like you know no judgment i want to be going here i don’t want to judge the guys in there he goes okay so we’re going to lie to ourselves and he’s like what what do you mean he’s like he’s like you’re going to make a judgment when somebody says something or does something the brain is instantaneously going to make a judgment and you can sit there and say no no i’m not doing it i don’t want to do it you can try to resist it but you’re going to fail he goes instead let’s just agree to this you’ll make the judgment but just agree to this the judgment says more about you than it does about them he’s like so just use that that reaction to teach you about yourself don’t use it to define the other people in there that’s something that i still use to this day kind of like in every every walk of life uh because it’s it’s so true um so anyways i had this like crazy experience in there so i was uh i was talking or i guess like i don’t know if i should even tell the story but basically i when i went in there was one guy in there that just looked like the baddest dude in the prison he was wearing his sunglasses nobody else was wearing sunglasses he had like a cane he wasn’t the strongest or the biggest but you could tell he had the respect of everybody in there and almost like the fear like a fear version of respect or at least that’s what i perceived because you know you go into the situation you sort of quickly scope it out and you’re trying to like understand the lay of the land and so instantaneously my brain’s judgment was that’s the baddest dude in here like don’t piss that guy off don’t say the wrong thing in front of that person uh he kind of scares me and of course as fate would have it we get into a group of four we get matched up and he’s my buddy in the group of four and this guy basically i was you know so then you’re supposed to like again talk about your problems and i was kind of conscious to be like okay i’m not gonna talk about these like first world problems so i tried to say some [ ] that was like deeper than that but he saw straight through it because these people have a very good you know [ ] detector and uh he was like he’s like man you’re just saying what we want to hear he just cut me off like two minutes in oh that’s bad and i was in the middle of my big kind of like heartfelt thing and i’m a good talker i’m a good storyteller i’m a good liar frankly um and he immediately was like man don’t come in here and just say what we want to hear and i was like oh [ ] and then i’m like my the guy i was already afraid of is now calling me out specifically for basically one of the worst things you could do in these situations which is be inauthentic and be fake it’s like you didn’t you really didn’t have to do anything that was the one thing just don’t be fake uh and i was i was being vague and this guy called me out on it he’s like what you really thinking and i was like and i just said what was on my mind i go i go i really just don’t want to sound like an idiot in front of you and he starts laughing and he goes he goes you afraid of me i was like yeah i’m afraid hey i’m afraid here he goes so if i get closer you’ll be afraid he gets closer closer he gets right up to my face like one inch from my face and he’s like he’s like you afraid of me huh and i was like i was like yeah i’m afraid and he goes that’s your truth huh i go yeah i go yeah i’m like in my head i’m like oh okay i think i did it right i just said well i was thinking of that i think you know and so then the brain the voice in my head that was like judging every word i was saying kind of like relaxed for a second because this guy put him at ease and he was like he’s like he’s like i can respect that and he’s like uh and he’s he starts telling a story about like his life when he was afraid and like you know i’m off the hook i go sit down now and uh and at the end the guy like you know basically gave me a hug on the way out and he was like you know uh he’s like i hope i see you again sometime and i was like wow that was a just like a little life moment that it doesn’t like i’m telling the story now i don’t think this even means anything to anybody but i remember this like it like it happened yesterday and there’s very few moments in my life that i can remember so vividly but this was one of them and i think it’s because it was like a primal moment where i didn’t know what was going to happen there was real fear you talk about this a lot like we’re very rarely in real danger situations and even though this wasn’t actual danger this guy wasn’t gonna do anything to me it definitely felt that way and i remember it and the crazy part and we can move on for this but the crazy part is like i think what separates you and me or anyone listening to this podcast which by the way i learned well i’ll talk about a second what separates us from someone like these folks like i met a bunch of people who were like habitual criminals they were like yeah you know i just like i was a drug addict or i was just i hated authority and i’ve changed but i was young and mean and i met a bunch of other people who work i met a guy who worked at abbott i met a guy who worked at ford i met a guy who as engineers like you know they’re probably making six figures and they go my marriage went horrible one of us cheated and i got into a fist fight and i killed someone or i hurt someone really badly and i was like i don’t think i’m ever gonna like hurt someone but i could like it’s not like in a thing of rage like you could flip out or i could get drunk and kill someone and driving you know like you could and it’s not that cr we’re not that different some of these guys and so that was really crazy and while there so let’s get we’ll talk about business there’s this there’s these guys have like ipads they’re not apple but they’re like a different brand of like i ipad type like tablet okay and um you can be an approved podcast and so if we go through this the process of getting approved we can go in there and there’s about and there’s about a million incarcerated folks in america and there’s not that many podcasts on this on this thing i was like oh i was like dude let’s boost our numbers and so i’m working um with the right people there’s like a company that makes these like amazing and and we’re going to be called microsoft and it’s a surface the microsoft manager system shambles as you keep calling it an ipad dude i looked it up on on wikipedia it’s this company and they were they sold to a pe company for two billion dollars and they basically make things that the gives to right you know incarceration they can buy they can like buy movies and [ ] and uh you basically if you have enough money on your accounts you can watch movies your entire stay and so anyway it was kind of cool so that’s my story i have a related thing do you know the guy mike posner of course the musician so he i know who he is yeah so he’s like kind of like rapper singer type dude i i took a pill and ibiza that’s like i took a pill at ibiza cooler than me he’s got a couple big big big big songs he went to duke right he went to duke so he was there while i was there we were in the same year and uh and i remember meeting him or seeing him and he said this white kid he said he’s gonna be a white kid from detroit who said he’s gonna be a rapper i was like all right like eminem like you know that’s who goes to duke yeah like you went to duke yeah that’s not really the path my friend um but he killed it he did amazing and actually like one of the things i remember from that was he released his song on itunes u um because he was in school so he only somebody only a student or professor could put content on itunes u which was like the subsection of itunes and because most of the things that go up there are like extremely academic right this is like a lecture from this random biology class in at duke so now all of a sudden you get this like rap song that goes on itunes u and he hit the top of the charts on itunes u and he would tell so he put out there like yo i’m number one on itunes you know like parentheses yeah yeah and so that’s how i think he got booked on at first that’s how he got a lot of college it’s like a growth hack like a lot of college students heard his song because itunes u had like uh like there was like the rankings it’s like show the top 10 itunes songs which is super competitive you got to be like mega famous to do that and then right below it was top 10 itunes u downloads and his was number one and so i think he got a lot of fans that way and then he booked a bunch of early gigs when he had no name to say by saying yeah i’m number one on college campuses on itunes and they were like well okay that sounds decent all right well we’ll give you a shot and that’s and then he went on a college tour and that’s how he built his following so he did a very similar thing to what you’re talking about that’s badass i i like him a lot so that’s a good that’s a good story it’s like it’s like bjork getting famous in iceland or something like it’s better to be like have like a local maximum like to be famous on a local on a local level and then you leverage that well one more quick prison one before we switch off that so um so my buddy did my best friend trevor did this thing called a book storm which i think is a great idea in general which is he wanted to write a book and so he’s like all right books normally take a long time what if i did it differently he’s like so let me he did like a quick not a draft but like just a quick like kind of concept of the book and then he flew out the five most badass people he knew and he put us all up in a hotel and he said i want you here for basically a day and a half to just help me think through this book and he’s like we’ll brainstorm it together and he’s like i think if i just do this with deep intensity i can make way more progress than if i just kind of like lightly touch this book every day for like two years yeah for two years and it totally works name what’s trevor’s last name reagan uh r-a-g-a-n so he uh so he and now he has the book it’s coming out it did like for what he called like a patio book it’s like a podcast of the audi of the book or something like that so um anyways he flew out it was me because i was like his best friend from college and then it was like this person who was like the um the the olympic coach for the women’s volleyball team and so the us u.s women’s volleyball has just kicked ass internationally which is not expected because volleyball is a much bigger sport in other countries but this guy like turned the program around and like so he was amazing he was there and this one guy was there and he had been in prison for 20 years and he had gotten out and he trevor does a lot of uh pro bono like talking in prisons and so he had met this guy in the process and he was like wow this is this guy’s amazing and this guy shared two things so i was like he came out and i was like man this guy’s like he is so wise he is so articulate i feel like he’s read every [ ] book because he keeps referencing really insightful pieces from all these different books and so i was like what’s your story man he’s like actually i was in prison for 20 years i was like whoa no [ ] and he goes you know i said so you read all these books while you’re there he goes he goes yeah he goes my first year when i was there i was like i was 20 years old or something like that he’s like i decided uh i’m gonna see what i want to see he goes so i i decided like you said they’re calling they’re called them students there hey that’s what he did that’s that’s what he did for himself and his brain he goes i told myself i’m not in prison i’m in university he’s like and every day i woke up i said i have i’m getting a 20-year phd in life he said every day i woke up and i just everybody around me in the line we’re getting food out this is this is the student union i’m at the student union i’m getting food from the from the from the mule hall i’m going to the library i am in university right now i am not in prison he just literally like worked himself up into a frenzy where his mind only saw that and he saw everything as as university so he read all these different books and then similarly he said you know i would look around on the on the yard and on the yard you’d see all kinds of bad [ ] going on you know the black guys fighting the white guys and the mexican guys and all that and you’d see broken you know just broken down you know our basketball hoop was half crooked all that and he’s like i just played a game every day in my mind i would change what i saw so i would see a beautiful green field i would see he’s like every day he’s like if i saw a broken glass i would see roses and this guy’s mindset impressed me so much it’s another one that stuck with me which was like create your own reality and like how many times if this guy could do that in prison then when i’m waiting in line at starbucks i’m not waiting in line bored i change it in my head just like the guy changed his university things that was another one that was like that’s amazing a huge life thing that i took away from that guy dude i love this prison talk we we should i gotta we got i think we should do like an entire episode on this there’s like all these guys who are blowing up on youtube who like are it’s all about crime and and and prison talk and and whatnot and i learned so much from those folks do you watch these videos that’s basically like a guy these are not insightful and deep but they’re just entertaining to me have you seen these ones where guys will go they’ll film around a police station and then the cop comes out and he’s like hey why are you filming man what are you what are you doing here let me see your license let me see your id he’s like nope i’m not going to show you my idea and he’s like what he’s like let me see your idea watch that [ ] all the time and he’s like no i know my rights i’m in a public place i’m allowed to film he’s like yeah but what are you doing here he’s like do you not know the rights and they just like talk back to cops and there’s something about this about just talking back to cops it’s called justice porn and it’s just exactly like it’s just this porn that’s what i call it it’s like and the comments are super polarized half the people are like what an [ ] dude you’re just making you’re just being annoying to the cops they’re like you’re provoking them and then they take the bait and then you like jump on them with because you you why did you spend your day doing this and then the other half people are sort of like me and they’re like god i don’t know why i find this so entertaining i just love when somebody’s like it’s just like knows their [ ] accident yeah there’s something to it man i can’t i can’t resist that’s my joke that’s my new reality tv yeah go to uh reddit.com justiceporn and there’s a whole subreddit for that and there’s like a million subscribers it’s pretty crazy yeah it’s not like there’ll be a guy gets pulled over and he’s like let me see your id and he shows him a password from another country and he’s like uh no i need your id he’s like no you don’t there’s a treaty that says if i show you this password blah blah blah and you cannot arrest me and he’s like no some random ass like loophole and he’s just driving around fast hoping to get pulled over just so he can do this thing on camera and get a bunch of views it’s kind of sick but i like it speaking of other countries let me tell you about something interesting have you heard of prosper have you heard of prospero pera sounds very familiar what is it okay so i almost or i’m in the process and i hope i can make it happen of investing in this company called uh mini circle so prospero is this new like private charter city we’ve talked about private charter cities a bunch right okay and so it was set up in part by peter thiel who’s a very controversial weirdo type of guy i like him but a lot of people don’t um and so he basically set up this country or the city in honduras and they have their own rules and their own laws and weird things like that so do you know what gene therapy is have you heard of gene therapy yeah is it basically uh like is crit would crispr be part of gene therapy so it’s basically the modification of your dna in order to like fight disease is that a good description yeah so it’s this very experimental kind of technique kind of like medical procedure where basically you insert and modify genes in order to in order to replace surgeries or drugs so for example there was this kid in syria he had some weird disorder where like all this skin started deteriorating he was about to die and they did this gene editing stuff and he was able to regrow back his skin and a lot of people but it’s very controversial because you’re doing a couple things you’re kind of like playing god which uh i don’t buy in but that’s an argument and also yeah and people don’t like it and also it’s experimental and so the fda like very closely monitors this stuff and they’ll say like yeah and so there’s and there’s a lot of like weird like biohacker fringe types who are interested in this stuff and so it’s all like controversial kind of but nonetheless it’s cool so i’m trying to invest in this company called mini circle and they’re making this new gene therapy that like increases muscle mass bone density helps you uh with insulin sensitivity and does all this like crazy [ ] to you but in order to get it done in america you got to go to the fda and it’s like this big process and so they’ve moved their company to prospero this peter teal city in order to make all this [ ] happen and they’re doing their existing floating city or just in honduras and so they’re doing it like so basically they’re like we’re working with fully informed and trusted i’m reading off something we’re working with fully informed and trusted study participants who are choosing to do this right but it we couldn’t get this done in america it would take 40 years to do this we’re going to do this on this lane on this weird city type of thing and i’m trying to invest in this company i think it’s ridiculous i think it’s crazy but kind of cool it is very cool i invested in one charter city called uh praxis and there what they did was pretty smart they were like they first created just a bunch of like um like a group here in america so they invited a bunch of cool people from new york la san francisco and they’re just like host events so they’ll throw dope parties so these people they’re like in a community they get to meet each other at these events and there’s like an online component and they keep doing this they keep doing this and meanwhile they’re searching they’re going around to like all around the world and they’re basically negotiating with governments and they’re saying hey give us some free land and let us have our own rule of law and rule of financial law um in like our own financial regulations and our own rule of law in this zone we’re going to create a new city and we’re going to bring all these people like cool people plus like development dollars to your place right so in the u.s you could never say hey us government go give us you know a little piece of wyoming they’re not really going to give you that but um you know you go to whatever you know you go just in the mediterranean or the balkans and you find some random piece of land you say oh this is beautiful it’s right on the ocean it’s undeveloped and you go to the government you say look what if i could get a bunch of uh people from america you know successful people who want to kind of live in a new a new charter city and uh and so it’s like really wild moonshot idea i totally fully expect this investment to go to zero i put in a very small check but i had to participate because the founder was so convinced that like yeah of course people will do this and uh and that if you did it it would be very large it’d be like owning the raw land you know you know the land under manhattan where all the buildings are going to get built and you can either do development yourself or you could sell off the pads and make a ton of money so the business is great if you can kick off a new charter city and one of the ways you attract people is this like if you own if you have your own rule of law you can say hey biohackers come here because you’re allowed to do you know you’re allowed to run your experiments here because we have our own kind of like free zone where we can do our own [ ] and so uh i think it’s really cool what’s happening biology is pretty convinced that in the next 10 years we’re going to see charter cities uh you know pop-up startup cities yeah and on one hand to say to explain why this like why the haters exist on this um and why i i definitely hate on them a little bit or you know there’s like some negativity which is like it’s most likely like fringe libertarian types kind of like how all the bitcoin rich folks are going to puerto rico to avoid taxes you know you could say like the fda exists for a good reason rules exist for a good reason you guys are freaks just trying to like avoid the reality um and there’s definitely a truth to that and there are like probably that’s a solid argument some parts of that and then on the other side you can say well like that’s like what the [ ] america started right yeah you know we bailed on we were we were the free experimentation zone right yeah like we rode a ship across like uh you know 3000 miles not knowing what to expect and we just landed and we figured it out so i think even the people who like startup cities would say yeah great there should be the fda there should be all this stuff for most people in most places but if it covers all all land and all people within a country then you stamp out the experiment wild experimentation so i know that google guys have been talking about this before which is that they need a there should be a free space where if you opt in you can go and you can do some of the experimental things that you can’t do here and the learnings from that let’s say nine out of the ten things don’t work out or they have bad consequences okay fine but if one breakthrough innovation or um or discovery is made then that can be exported back to the mainland we can say look let’s go let’s take this through proper testing and let’s roll it out to everybody so like you know people go to germany to go get you know stem cell treatments and things like that because it’s not legal here but in other countries they’re more liberal about it so like you know i started a company once a biotech company and the technology was made in the u.s the government us government had funded 40 million dollars of r d for this technology but you couldn’t go use it in anywhere in the us because the like you would never get the permits the people would say why would we will not let you put these microbes into the ground it was basically these little micro bugs that could eat coal underground so you don’t have to mine it and they would basically just like fart or breathe out natural gas so they will just mine the coal themselves and you just collect the natural gas you don’t have to frack the earth and you don’t have to mine the coal but the us would never let us pump these microbes into the ground because they’re like we don’t have to we’re life is pretty good here we don’t have to do that so we went to indonesia and we went to india where they were like yeah hey here’s a huge plot of land how much money do you need to go do this we love this right we want economic activity we want innovation and if this works then we want to capture some of the upside of being able to like sell this technology to others and so we got quick permits in indonesia and india where we couldn’t you know the company’s trying to do the same thing in the us they were bogged down for years and never got approvals have you ever heard of medical tourism yeah i’ve always been curious about like how how people have the guts to do this but it makes sense you go to mexico and get your teeth fixed or whatever you know have you ever done anything like this no so for those who don’t know what this is i learned about this because me and sean’s buddy john howard you’re friends with john howard yeah yeah he’s we i shared an office with him at this place called founders dojo and they created a company i forget the name of it but it was basically medical tourism so basically um i i think a a use case is typically like dentists or like veneers and teeth stuff although then there’s other stuff like breast implants and uh plastic surgery where their premise was basically it’s cheaper to get it done in bali or mexico or india somewhere like that where like they’re i have no idea if this is true they’re like the doctors are just as good but it’s a fraction of the cost to fly out there get the surgery done and chill there for a week and recover and fly back the company did not work out and frankly in my opinion it sounds like a [ ] pain in the ass i would never do that i’d rather pay twenty thousand dollars in america for veneers but be able to get it done like three blocks from my house then i would want to go to mexico but well yeah it’s not for you right it’s for somebody who can’t afford it here it’s it’s not if i could do this or that it’s i can’t do this and my teeth [ ] hurt i can’t do this and i need this surgery done uh okay if i can’t afford it here even with insurance then okay i’ll go to mexico and i’ll do it because i have no no real other option all right it’s so prohibitively expensive it would [ ] me financially and i don’t want to save my health and [ ] my finances so i’m going to do this there’s i think it’s a hundred billion dollars a year is paid off it’s 100 billion of medical tourism per year globally that amazes me i never would have thought that i know i just think because it seems that’s what i’m saying in the ass it seems wild right but i think that’s the you know when people are pushed into a corner they will find a way you know that that is sort of the the innovation of people um and yeah i’m actually surprised this thing didn’t work what he was doing was he was selling leads so he would find customers who were interested in it he would educate them and he would sell those leads to the off medical offices you know in mexico or wherever and say hey this person is interested they want to do a phone call with you would you pay us 100 for that lead and they were like yeah sure you know and i i honestly think that business should have worked and would have worked had he stuck with it it was like a pivot and maybe he didn’t have enough time to figure it out yeah i don’t i don’t know the particulars but i know that it’s when he told me about it i was like there’s no way this would work but i say that about a lot of stuff yeah exactly all right what else you want to talk about i don’t know what do you want to do uh let me look at your list here okay so there’s uh julian building of ranch i think that’s pretty cool and we should talk about that uh let’s do julian building a ranch and then let’s do uh let’s do that okay i have a good deep dive but i’m gonna save it for the next episode that’s a good one about the diamond industry all right lay the background of this so you know julian better than i do right yeah yeah so julian shapiro he’s just at julian on twitter a lot of people follow him there i think he’s got like you know 200 000 or maybe more followers he’s a weirdo total weirdo in the best way possible um yeah he called me the other day and i said i go hello and he goes the love of my life like check my phone who the [ ] is calling me and then he’s like i have this deal blah blah blah and then he you know just go straight into it doesn’t even acknowledge the love of my life part uh it was just hilarious he’s just a hilarious character he sends us like the funniest memes like on twitter he’s like this really thoughtful intellectual like guy who’ll teach you how to write and teach you about all this other stuff teach you how to think frameworks blah blah blah and then in our group chat he’s sending you know the the goofiest memes which is uh like that’s my favorite type of person who’s got both of those sides to him the silly side and the smart side so he tweeted out that he’s basically he’s been talking about this for a while so it’s not just like a [ ] thing but he’s like he really really wants to build a ranch actually by the way i should share the most interesting thing about him for the last eight months all he has eaten is wag you steak and boiled eggs which i don’t believe i believe it because he’s crazy and he he kind of needed to i think he had something like his his gut health wasn’t right and he just like took control he’s like i’m gonna i’m gonna figure out how to fix this the doctor’s not helping me i’m gonna fix this myself he had read about the carnivore diet i think jordan peterson had a very similar like kind of like issue and he famously came out so i did carnivor it healed me basically and so he started doing it he started feeling a little better then he committed to it he’s like okay so he literally orders wagyu steak from these like farm from this one farm actually in particular and he orders like three thousand dollars a month of steak and he shows me his freezer his freezer is just full of bricks of steak imagine like you know when you see in a movie piles of cash like just bound up thousands of cash it’s that but with wagyu stakes and so he had like he said he said it was miserable for like six or eight weeks he was like i craved carbs i craved sugar and then he got six eight weeks into it and he’s like i can’t even imagine eating sugar carbs again i i don’t crave them at all it sounds horrible but by the way that’s a real thing from what i understand that there’s basically in your microbiome in your gut there’s all these uh you know basically there’s bacteria that live there and the bacteria feed the different yeasts and bacterias feed off of uh different like substrate different different food and so the more you eat carbs so imagine if what you’re putting in is carbs the bacteria that thrived off of let’s call it meat are going to sort of die out and the bacteria that thrive on carbs are going to like proliferate they’re going to spread they’re going to multiply and they’re going to um they’re going to make up the majority of your gut and then if you decide to switch and go low carb all of a sudden those bacteria are going to say where the hell’s our food and the in the craving you feel those carb cravings is not just like your mind being weak it’s literally the gut bacteria that are signaling to your body we need our fix we need our [ ] we’re gonna die dude what are you are you reading about body stuff now how do you know all this uh no well i heard this once i was fascinated by it and somebody had told me this and i looked into it because i was like is that [ ] and like i’ll just say half the [ ] i read five years later turns out to be [ ] so like with health i feel like nobody knows anything but in hearing this i was like oh that makes total sense and that’s how you get you know just like you get withdrawal pangs if you stop caffeine the same exact thing happens with carbs and when you know that that’s what’s happening you’re like oh okay i just need to ride you [ ] out like i just need to keep i just need to hold you i’ll starve you guys out and in seven days you’ll be dead and the only bacteria left will be the ones that feed that like the stuff i i want to be eating so it’s a total thing well okay so and back to julian and by the way that’s always why i wanted to start my startup called hostage where we just like take you and uh throw you in this like like land and uh keep you in a cabin for like three weeks and just like monitor exactly a guaranteed weight loss program would you yes would you be interested in a 10-day program that would guarantee results i will i will pay you a hundred thousand dollars if you don’t lose weight it sounds good we just give you 1400 calories a day welcome to hostage and yeah like would you like a glass of water uh like that’s all that’s all you get one of your top 10 ideas so anyway so julian basically yeah he buys it and by the way the ranch thought he was a restaurant because he was ordering so much [ ] steak they were like well certainly you’re a restaurant here’s your like wholesale price break and it just turns out he’s just a dude anyway so he really wants to build this ranch in the middle of nowhere because he’s thinking about where do i want to live and then he tweeted out this thread that i love and just just search his name julian and i’m building a ranch in the middle of nature and basically he’s like you know why am i doing this i want to leave san francisco i um you know i just think it would be amazing and he basically tweets out his plans he’s like here’s where i’m looking here’s the land here’s how much it cost i’m gonna build this like these like prefab homes i’m gonna build this podcast studio i’m gonna have like my blank you like this i know this is like right up your alley so what did you think about this okay so this is in my opinion very romanticized incredibly not practical and it won’t work in most cases have you ever been uh you know you live and you lived in a city for a long time you now live in the burbs but it’s still populated with people have you ever been by yourself for a while like in in uh rural areas shoot me yeah horrible it’s fun for a minute it’s great i was just in hawaii and it was like this is relaxing this is i can’t i think that you basically you want to do it to the point where you’re like i felt the benefits and now i want to run back into society and tell everyone how awesome i am for doing this retreat from society yes and so like i’m reading the teddy roosevelt biography and he did the same thing so basically um his wife and mother died on the same day and it was tragic it was horrible and while she the wife died allison while giving birth to his daughter so like the most complicated day ever and he was like the light of my life is gone i cannot live anymore uh just life is done for me and so he went and he bailed and he lived in the badlands which is in the dakotas and he said i feel replenished i feel wonderful but you still gotta get he went eventually back to dc and or new york and became a politician and i think that i think what a lot of people overestimate is or rather underestimate is community so in order to make this work i think a few people can make this work but for nine out of ten folks you need peers you need family you need friends life is i don’t give a [ ] if i live in the most beautiful place on earth if i don’t have people that i can see on a regular basis who i love it’s stupid i’d rather live poor and in a shack with people i love than in a mansion on a 50 50 acre 100 acre plot of land that’s beautiful 100 agree i think um part of his plan is to basically have a bunch of basically guest house and make it an awesome ranch where he’ll just have this rotation of kind of friends and cool people that want to come stay and i think that will i think that will happen uh but he’s i think he’s single so i don’t think you know if i went out there with my wife my kids then i think i could last a lot longer than than if i went out there literally by myself um even just hoping kind of friends would come to visit so i think that is one thing and i think this is a great example of you want to have this dream but then i think you need to test it i think you need to go live i think he should stop right now he should go somewhere for one week and just say okay let me go test or two weeks let me go spend two weeks by myself in this airbnb in the middle of nowhere and let me just see how i feel after two weeks and then let me try that again and i know he’s got the discipline because if you can eat steak only for you know steak and eggs only for props but like you don’t want it to feel like an endurance contest if you’re trying to choose your lifestyle you want it to be one that feels effortlessly awesome not like uh a a test of your mental fortitude i think so i think it’s amazing i would love to go visit but i would not want to do this myself so i’ve actually like done this a bunch of times so there’s a bunch of stuff that i wanted in my life and i was able to test it on a very small scale and i’ll give you a few examples so for example um i wanted to retire and so i had the opportunity a couple years ago i took six weeks off right and i just took it off completely and by the fifth week i was like i can’t retire i have to be around i have to have something to do another example is buying a fancy car you can go and test these cars for right it’s a lot of money it’s a thousand dollars a day but you could testing a 200 000 car for two days is might you you get into it you’re like this ferrari is so small i cannot drive this up and down like a driveway it’s just going to smack the ground and it’s not fun yeah i’m stressed about this and the fun of having it versus the stress of having it is actually not a good trade now that i feel it i know it another example is having a 5 000 square foot home for the longest time i was like i want a 5 000 square foot house so i went and rented a 5 000 square foot house i spent a lot of money maybe i think i did it in new york i rented a 5 500 square foot house and it was like 13 000 for a month a lot of money no doubt about that but the house was way more expensive than that and i got in this house and i was like i i cannot imagine having to fix all this crap all the time this is exhausting i can’t do this i don’t want this or i’m i’m only using the living room the bedroom and this huge kitchen which i like i don’t need these six other bedrooms and anyway i think that you could actually test a lot of stuff and more people should do that they should they you know dude so i i okay i’m gonna rant for a second think about like in college right so i think there’s this crazy thing in society which is like over commitment and over specialization without dabbling so like you’re a freshman i remember at the end of my freshman year in college i had to commit to a major like dude i just figured out like where the hell the bathroom is i don’t know what a major is i don’t know what the other majors could be i know that if i don’t commit i’m going to be falling behind and off track and i’m not going to have my credits on time and i’m not going to know what courses to take and i’m basically picking my career without ever even knowing what my career should be so forget what classes i’m going to like these my major sort of dictates what job i’m eligible for at the end and i think it’s crazy and the same thing with people’s you know like first job they just sort of pick a career track without dabbling and figuring out what they actually might like to do the like the idea of dating is amazing like my parents were arranged marriage so they you know they literally my mom read an ad in the newspaper for my dad which said like you know six feet tall which is a slight lie you know he’s 5 10. uh you know indian um what else engineer degree and good family i was basically at the ad and she was like described like every indian american good enough good enough to marry uh let’s let’s meet and then they the parents met and they’re like okay in this one tea we’re having together this one coffee meeting we’re having all right cool done deal uh see you the next time i see you will be at the wedding um and that’s how they got married and like you know really shocker that you know these marriages aren’t always the best and so that are they happy uh no most so i would say like indie marriages have like a very low divorce rate because like societally it’s like like there’s like a taboo against getting divorced so they just like even worse stay together unhappy is what most people do and then obviously some get divorced but like this arranged marriage ideas it’s not great now the counterpoint would be you know i think in new york there’s a 53 divorce rate also so you know maybe the whole dating thing doesn’t work as well so that’s that’s a fair counterpoint but i would say this idea of dating of basically try before you buy is um is really important in life and like these tests that you’ve done for yourself are super important and i’m shocked more people don’t do them i started doing them and i’m like wow that’s way better than this like i’ll just have this idea in my head and it’ll get so real in my head and then when i finally do it i’m like oh [ ] that was underwhelming it’s like couldn’t i have just sampled this beforehand and known that and not have this idea like um uh what’s an example uh like okay i’ll give you an example on the plus side so example the plus so i hired a chef so i have a personal chef i wanted a personal chef for a really long time how much does that cost a month so um how much does it cost me a month it’s about 3 400 a month uh 3 500 maybe uh 3500 that includes food that does not include the food no the food’s on top uh that’s just like the service the service of having a private chef in my house and uh by the way worth it amazing like you know uh fortunate to be able to afford it but to me i don’t have a fancy car i don’t even have a fancy home but i got a housekeeper who comes you know three days a week and i got a private chef and to me that’s like that’s my version of luxury that’s like you know that’s my version of a lambo it’s like a lifestyle so does this person tell me everything does this so i had a chef as well for a minute but it was a little bit different it was more like meal prep does this person come and i paid way less a fraction of that right um i’m in the bay area too so you know it’s uh yeah but my guy came two days a week and they would meal prep for me and i didn’t like it i ended up just not using them and i i made my own food i tested so to do the sample idea i i first even got the idea because i got to sample it so my previous company monkey furnace you’ve been there before for lunch i think probably uh the the the investors behind us they were kind of like a billionaire family the the birch family they had a private chef in their home but you know they were out and about all day working or they’d be at the office so their chef would just come to the office and cook for all of us and so you know a company of like 20 people and he would cook this amazing spread and all of a sudden healthy food tasted good so immediately i was like holy [ ] this is kind of amazing i don’t have to like go out figure out what to eat every day this guy just decides so that’s one decision i don’t make he cooks healthy food and it tastes like junk food all right that’s like you know wow that’s amazing if i just ate this for all my meals i’d be way healthier than just my lunch and so um so i got to sample it that told me i want this um and there’s other things that i got to try you know when i was at their house or fancy parties that they throw or fancy cars that they have that you know i got to try and i was like i i don’t care about this good i can scratch that off the list it’s one less thing i want it’s one less thing i care about and so that’s just hanging out with them got me got me to try some things that i thought i was working for and figure out what i like and don’t so then i tried some meal prep people but what i figured out what i really like is somebody who comes i don’t decide what to eat they know my they know my life they know what food i like they know what what health what level of healthiness i care about and they just come make it fresh on the spot because saying fresh food tastes way better than meal prep food and so she comes and she and then i also thought i also realized oh this is not just about my health like one of the most time-consuming parts of being a parent is constantly trying to feed your kid like my kid’s like a picky eater and so she uh you know like i’m making like three dishes for her every meal just trying to get her to eat something that she likes and that just takes up more time than even cooking for myself did so the chef cooks for me my wife who’s vegan and uh our our baby and so our baby now eats like way better than when we were just you know let’s make some mac and cheese let’s warm something up and it makes it fun to feed five days a week so i was tired so she so right now she’s coming three days a week uh so she comes every other day basically and then on the weekends we want to eat out so we’d like to go to restaurants or whatever so we said don’t come on the weekends and uh we may move it up to five days at some point but right now it’s good basically and it’s little things like uh here’s a green smoothie she makes every you know so in between meals instead of a snack it’s she’s like oh you want your smoothie i’m like oh yeah i do want that smoothie thank you have you lost weight uh i think so i don’t really weigh myself but in the mirror i look like you lost weight i look better and i don’t know if my weight has changed i don’t i don’t use the scale but i just use the mirror as the scale and so often does your cleaner come three days a week also and how much do you pay for that 160 bucks per visit i think damn dude do you spend a lot of money on these things i mean i spend a lot of money on happiness they make me extremely happy to do it but they make like that the feeling after the cleaners are here is like you know that’s like a high for me that’s like i did it i don’t know what molly is but that’s molly for me i feel so good in my own home it’s amazing having food having fresh healthy food made i think that’s that’s a a treat that’s an absolute treat for me i uh i’m perfectly happy with we have a cleaner who comes every two weeks and i think we spend 120 or 100 i don’t remember but i’m also messy as [ ] and i have kids and they’re messy as [ ] so like you know how the house gets destroyed uh you know my sister cleans i think four times a day in her house she’s putting putting toys away every you know every four hours basically so it’s crazy uh but i don’t know if people care about this but i guess my my the point i’m trying to make is i think samuel this episode is already like totally ranked the world’s gonna i think sampling your lifestyle is super important i’ll give you one more story here that that helps so um you know that uh i did a podcast from vegas i said i was at somebody’s home uh you know 15 000 square feet yeah uh i don’t even know how many it’s like ten ten to fifteen thousand square feet just it looks like a hotel basically and uh unbelievable they they have a they have a lambo and a ferrari and a monster truck and like all this other cool [ ] they have all the toys there’s a batting cage in the backyard there’s a you know like infinity pool that looks over the city you know you can see the strip there’s like everything you would want in a home they got it elevator all the crazy [ ] um and uh and so anyways when i was there i had this feeling that i don’t like that i’ve thought i had slayed this feeling but nope it came back and it was like kind of like jealousy it was like i was and the way i knew it was because i was like kind of poo pooing like oh i don’t need all this i’m happy without all this and i was kind of like in my head trying to like almost say why i didn’t want these things because actually i felt bad that i didn’t have all these things like this weird psychology thing but the simple way of explaining it was like i felt these like little hunger pangs of envy of like oh i want that um and i was like oh that’s not a good feeling and the shift i made was uh instead of feeling like oh you know these are things that i don’t have but they have right like it’s nothing wrong with them but just i don’t have these things and other people have them um instead i looked at it differently i was like uh by the the third day there i i was like i gotta shift my mindset i’m not trying to have this jealousy feeling in my my day is not a cool feeling for me so i was like all right what am i gonna shift it to and i said oh how about i look at this like like i’m at i’m getting a sample platter here so these are things i can have these are things i can have in the next few years you know things go right in my business i can afford all these things so why don’t i feel like what it feels like to wake up in a mansion like this why don’t i feel like what it’s like to to have a basketball court in a batting cage you know built into the home why don’t i feel what it’s like to drive this car and oh now i’m all of a sudden feeling excited what do i get to try today that’s like you know i get to go try on something that i might have in the future did you did you drive this ferrari yeah so i get to test drive the stuff and feel like what like you know what does it feel like you like it no for me cars are stressful uh like i i don’t like fancy cars they’re very stressful to me and they’re kind of like uncomfortable like i don’t really get off on it there’s probably a version of a car that i like but not the like supercars basically supercars are not something i want and so i got to figure out what do i not want and then oh actually this feels really good it feels really good to have you know this home gym built into my home so okay you know why don’t i do that and you know why don’t i why don’t i go for that then so i think that sampling is not only just an effective way to figure out what you want it’s also a cure for jealousy because when you’re in those situations where you’re jealous switch it to thinking of it like i’m just getting to try before i buy before i have all these things i get to sample them and figure out what exact flavor of this i’m gonna want and then it becomes yours instead of feeling like it’s theirs and you don’t have it i have that feeling with um so we had this guy on the podcast a while ago we should have him back on again his name is nick bear b-a-r-e nick bear he runs um bear performance nutrition or some bpm and a big youtube channel right and a huge youtube channel this guy came out with us he came out with this his content production is so freaking good so he’s got this supplement business that does like 20 or 30 million in revenue a lot but when we had him on it was like 6 million in revenue or something like that it wasn’t like it was good but it wasn’t significant and he created this youtube channel he’s like good looking like yolk like he’s a massive dude but he so he lifts weights and he’s this muscle head but he’s really cool and now he’s into endurance sports and so on his youtube channel which now when we had him on i think it had like 200 000 subscribers now it’s getting close to a million seven eight hundred thousand he did this thing he’s got this whole team behind his his youtube channel he’s got like three or four guys working full time on it he released a 45 minute documentary about him running the leadville 100 the leadville 100 is a hundred mile race through the mountains of leadville colorado and you basically i it looked like it was like laps or something of like 15 or 20 miles and he had these guys at checkpoints to film him and i was watching this guy it was the most inspirational [ ] i’ve ever seen i’m gonna go and buy like i don’t even know what bear nutrition sells because whenever i buy whey protein i just go to whole foods and i just buy like you know like uh or an amazon i’m purposely going to go out of my way to buy his stuff have you been paying attention to nick bear i don’t he doesn’t show up on my youtube feed i need to subscribe so it starts to show up in my feed dude you got to watch this guy it is the crate so he’s ex-military you’re the only fitness influencer i watch we can talk about that in a second but he this he’s inspired me to like take it to the gym yeah he is so crazy this guy is nuts like he has a video of him like dead lifting 550 pounds which is a [ ] ton of weight and then he goes and he runs a marathon in like 2 hours and 55 minutes which is very very fast and he’s the biggest guy doing it it’s very interesting so i’ve been watching this guy and i have this like pretty big sense of jealousy where i’m like i want to be doing that and uh so that’s why i’m doing this little fitness influencer [ ] now and it’s kind of a joke but not really a joke and to be honest it’s so fun dude you totally have to do this it 100 makes you accountable and makes you exercise harder yeah i love it i have to so i sampled your gym so i went to your house sampled your jam i was like wow amazing and then i called you the other day i was like yo what are you using for the flooring what are you doing for this what are you doing for that give me the give me the the the blueprint because i’m turning my garage into your garage i’m like that is a great that was such an amazing feeling to work out there i want to have that feeling on a daily basis so dude it’s way cheaper than you think i know i didn’t even take it’s not even a lot of money but it’s more like it’s more of having the clear vision of what you want and seeing yours was like oh now i know what i like and i just have some addition some modifications i’m like oh my daughter who’s two she loves to come out when i’m working out and she loves to work out with me side by side which is just like she just wants to be she wants to do little things next to me so we’re creating a little workout play pen where she can go in there with little foam weights and do her thing while i’m doing mine so i’m like okay i’m going to craft this lifestyle to be what i want and um and so like you know that there’s something to this sampling and i really encourage people to find a way to sample it if you want to know what kind of home you want go airbnb something before i did this chef thing i hired a chef for one meal to cook like a kind of a dinner for like i had some friends in town he’s like oh let me hire somebody off craigslist just to make one meal like i don’t want to deal with we can go out to eat but wouldn’t it be cool if a chef came to our house and did it and like the cost is about the same of you know taking my friends out to a restaurant so let me just do that at home it was amazing and so uh having that chef at the at the home was like a good way to test these things and so that’s my kind of challenge to anybody who has made it through this random episode which is like think about the [ ] that you have been telling yourself you want and figure out a way to go sample it like in the next week go rent the car go hang out at someone’s house go shadow a ceo go you know hire the chef for the day do do like the sample of it and figure out does it make you want it 10 times more or 10 times less because usually that’s the reaction i have when i when i feel it for the first time real is i want it way more or way less i’m curious if people are gonna like this rambling um i like this stuff but i don’t know i wonder what what people will enjoy because i could talk about this [ ] all day i like this this fitness crap this building the life that you want crap i love this stuff ben chime in here what do you what do you think ben um i can only speak from like my perspective which is uh i’m really into the charter city stuff so that like i really liked that and the prison stuff i think is gonna be interesting to anyone so it worked for me and teddy roosevelt i mean come on you knew that would be are you gonna do dude teddy roosevelt is the most prolific person i have ever read about i’ve read maybe over 100 biographies he is likely the most active person have ever read uh he has done so much amazing stuff this guy’s a freak teddy roosevelt’s a fan where is it where is the how to take over the world episode on teddy roosevelt of uh i would say of the people that that people bring up that they want me to do teddy roosevelt is probably number two uh genghis khan probably number one that people mention and teddy russell number two so it’ll dude roosevelt is like he’s different than napoleon like napoleon did a lot but roosevelt is far more eclectic he like before he was even in politics when he was 21 he wrote a book on the spanish-american war and it was considered a textbook for decades um and then he wrote a couple more books he uh uh became um uh president obviously that’s amazing he um was like this avid hunter and this zoo zoo what is it when you collect animals and like uh describe like the where they come from and things like that like darwin [ ] he did that type of crap before he was like in his 30s very prolific very interesting person you got to read about uh teddy roosevelt very intriguing what book are you reading the rise of ted of teddy roosevelt i think there’s like three of them because i know of them there’s one that came out fairly recently is really popular now about his trip to the amazon um later in life and that was amazing the guy was ridiculous he also has this book that i’m thinking about reading this title is beautiful it’s called a strenuous life and so he had this phrase where he was like so roosevelt would like even when he was president every morning he would box like fight box like spar he loved and he was like it’s our like we have to live the strenuous life where we put in effort physical effort and we get hurt sometimes and we struggle he’s like you we have to do that otherwise you’re never going to feel like a man or or a human being and so i’ve been very inspired by teddy roosevelt very interesting person that’s funny you know i’m listen ben i’m listening to the vladimir putin episodes that you did on the on how to take over the world and uh i’m only i’m on part one and uh i love that he was like the opposite of what you described because when sam describes these people it’s like holy [ ] these are just like another species it’s like a guy who’s done this and this and this and this all before the age of 30. and the best part about the putin thing was you’re like up until 30 he basically had a very sort of like average average life there’s nothing remarkable that would tell you that this guy’s about to become what putin ended up becoming it was like little hints little signs a couple moments but you know by and large it was like you know mediocre mediocre student you know kind of like low level low level uh you know spy not not you know put in this like random random office not in the high highest level and then that was all until 30 and then i’m guessing because i haven’t listened to part two yet but i’m guessing that obviously it’s gonna turn up and he’s gonna end up you know becoming the leader leader of the country but it was so crazy to me that he was unremarkable essentially until 30. was that surprising to you yeah and the the moment that you’re talking about is like he was kind of like a mid-level operative in st petersburg and i think the guy that he worked for lost an election so he’s like out of a job and he was gonna go just like start a judo gym in st petersburg russia yeah because he’s like pretty good he sounded like just like he’s from the office he’s like in scranton he’s just a mid-level he’s assistant to the regional manager and then somehow becomes you know it’s like if dwight became elon musk that’s sort of like what happened with putin mid-level officer to like you know president do you think ben that he is actually the richest person in the world [Music] no i don’t in so far as like do i actually think he has like whatever a 100 billion dollars in secret accounts probably not but it’s like it kind of doesn’t matter because he has access to as much money as he wants whenever he wants yeah yeah yeah so he probably just doesn’t have to he like doesn’t have to move all that money to his account does that mean he scares me man so rich he doesn’t need it in his account he freaks me out man putin scares the [ ] out of me sam have you listened to this episode of the putin one there’s a there’s no i i i dude i i fear him and so i’ve been nervous to listen to it there’s a line at the beginning that i love those like it’s like this little little anecdote it’s like he was kind of like not a great student in school um and just like wasn’t very interesting he’s like he’s the teacher’s like he’s smart but he’s not that interested in school and so the teacher tells his dad like you know he’s not living up to he’s not living up to his potential and the dad like as just like as a russian dad would it’s like most most russian [ ] ever he goes so what do i kill him or what do i do that was the response so what should i do kill him i was like wow the most russian thing ever dude he’s freaked me out man a lot of the russians scare me that’s kind of like why i like khabib and the ufc’s because the russians like freak me out they’re on another level they’re on another level there’s levels to it let’s just put it this way on one level i’ve never seen a russian doing a podcast russians don’t do podcasts right they live a harder life than us they’re doing more and more tough [ __ ] than than sitting in front of a microphone dude i’ve never even seen a russian smile like they don’t like they don’t i think i’m almost positive they like smiling and rushing those weaknesses if you saw a russian and he winked at you what would happen in your body there’s this comedian who like talks about like he’s like you know like one time i was going to this bad neighborhood and um i was nervous and i wr and he was this guy’s a white guy and i was nervous and and he goes someone came up to me talked to me and asked me like a question that i thought that they were just like trying to like trick me into like uh you know testing me to see where you know if they’re gonna rob me or not and he goes immediately i just spoke at a russian accent and immediately they were afraid afraid of me and walked away and he’s like this is my defense mechanism he just says uh dude of course i know like are you in this like horrible rush like do i know where i am of course do you like he like says this like scary thing to this guy and he like walks away from him entirely and that’s the defense mechanism from now on it’s just speaking of russian accent that’s amazing if i do that in indian accent i just get beat up on the spot so it doesn’t work the same um all right we should wrap it up i just i was going to say something i was going to stick up for the russians a little bit i visited russia with uh with my wife she speaks a little bit of russian my experience was like they’re they are very much like that like they’re kind of gruff and like a little scary whatever but there were a couple times where like like my phone wasn’t working and like we needed to get to the train station in an hour or else like we were gonna miss our flight and everything go wrong and like people were more willing to go out of their way and like literally walk with us for like five blocks make sure we found the exact right spot than anywhere else i’ve ever been so it’s like they have this very tough exterior but once you get past it they’re like and obviously we’re joking if you are russian we have love for you but we’re i thought we were complimenting the whole time i was saying don’t poison sam don’t feel sad i was saying how badass they are everything i said i stand behind as a compliment uh you know even just the cities dude st petersburg do we have anything on the level of the word moscow saint peter’s these just sound tougher than american cities right like whenever i hear the word the kremlin or kremlin i’m like i freak out yeah exactly kremlin scary words bro we have like tampa bay it’s this is not comparable what we have you know it’s just they’re on another level of toughness like denver can you imagine just put it just put denver up against moscow america america is just not where it’s at all right i gotta go i’m just before i get canceled for for praising the russians you