SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Howdy, Ben, and uh Happy New Year.

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

Happy New Year, Gene. We're recording this on New Year's Day.

SPEAKER_00: 0:32

Yeah. So we'll try and get it out there quickly as well. So, how's your new year going so far?

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Pretty good, I guess. Other than the normal BS.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

No technical issues?

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00: 0:49

Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

Other than what we just had with Chrome for some reason.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

Oh, yeah, yeah, there we go. So Ben got a new audio gizmo. You want to talk about it? Woo-hoo.

SPEAKER_01: 0:59

Yeah, I got the Rode Streamer X, which is the single XLR version of the Rode. Uh, it's pretty compact, fits on the desk nicely. It's not huge.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

Um streamers, but certainly usable for podcasters.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17

Right. It's also got an audio capture card, video capture card, all that. But nice knobs for volume, both for your headset and your mic. Quick mute button. You know, I can bleep. I can I can do a sensor. I can you know do the how's that work? Just like that. Or, you know, I can always annoy everybody with the air horn. Anyway, it's all those things like a Wuzella or something. It's an air horn. But yeah. Anyway, it it it's it's fun to mess with stuff. And I actually think I sound a little bit better on it versus the Moto because it has a setting, even though my EQ settings are the exact same as they were on the Motu, the difference is A, the audio processor, but B, this has a big bottom, and I think that's what's making the difference.

SPEAKER_00: 2:10

Yeah, and it's I noticed it right away when you switched. I was like, something's different. I couldn't tell what it was, but I'm like, you don't sound worse. I wouldn't necessarily say you sound better, but you definitely sound a little different. Same mic, just different audio pressing.

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

Yep. Um it's amazing how that can change stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 2:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:34

But I do like having the mute button, the physical mute button up here where it's accessible. Right. Because the Stream Deck mute button configuration for Windows doesn't always work 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

Well, you could also hit just the the mute the mute button on the web browser that we're recording over.

SPEAKER_01: 2:52

Right, but not having to have that browser up and being able to hit a physical button has its own advantages.

SPEAKER_00: 2:58

Yeah, fair enough. Get that, and it's something that I originally, when it first came out, I thought, well, this is a heck of a good price for something that because really most podcasts you're gonna do not in the same room with somebody else. I've only done one podcast of any real duration with a guy in the same room, and that was with my buddy Greg when we used to do it's probably five years ago. When we used to do a business podcast together, and I'm blanking out on what the hell the name of that thing was.

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Well, and if you wanted to do that with this, you could with their like lavalier mic. So for your guest, you could have that wireless lavalier and it'll connect to this, no problem, or you can use a USB mic. So it can do multiple audio ends, but it's only one XLR. One XLR so yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:48

Yeah, it's it it seemed like a pretty good gizmo, but I didn't really need uh another audio interface, so I I was hoping I could get you to play around with it, test it.

SPEAKER_01: 4:01

Well, and so I'm I'm glad uh that still is.

SPEAKER_00: 4:05

What's that?

SPEAKER_01: 4:06

The motu holding its value.

SPEAKER_00: 4:08

I'll be able to get you know, it'll it'll actually more than this thing has cost you.

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 4:13

Which is great. I mean, that's the thing is Moto is undoubtedly a pro-grade device. It is made for people that make money by being musicians. It was always kind of uh overkill for podcasting. Oh, yeah. Uh, and the only reason that I started using, I was actually the first one to get it, and then after Adam heard it, he ended up buying it as well. This is back over 15 years ago when I started doing this testing, because I remember he was complaining about his portable setup, which used to take an entire suitcase. And uh, so I started working on trying to find him a better portable setup. And Motu was always small physically in size and had very high quality sound, so ended up going that route. Uh, it's funny. I like he doesn't use a moto anymore, and he doesn't use the same mic, but for a while there he was using the Motu that I found and the RE320, which is the mic I'm on, which I bought a whole bunch of back when I had my studio. And again, same kind of deal. He he's like, Oh, can I borrow your mic? I I need one more mic, and I loan to him, and then he's like, Hey, I don't really want to give that mic back, I really like it. Can I just pay you?

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

Yeah, so well, you know, I wanted the the Moto AVB specifically for the web interface because my whole goal was to get it working on Linux. Well, that didn't fucking work because it's just um Linux audio is a it's I thought we were on Linux now.

SPEAKER_00: 5:51

I was all gonna be impressed and shit.

SPEAKER_01: 5:53

No, and there's definitely no way. I mean, all right, to get Rode to work on Linux, I would have to get Unify their software to road in Linux because it doesn't work unless the software is open, which is an advantage to the Mo2.

SPEAKER_00: 6:09

Hmm. So what do people use on Linux? I mean, there's got to be something, right? Is it just cheaper, shittier quality gear or what?

SPEAKER_01: 6:19

Standard USB audio interfaces, which most of those don't have EQ or noise gates and stuff like that. Like if I get just a straight USB audio interface, it'll work on Linux just like sound blaster compatible. Yeah, pretty much. Or USB audio spec compliant, whatever it is. But multi-channel, if you have a multi-channel device, you're fucked because then you got to get into jacked. And dude, the documentation on jacked is jacked up, and that's even if you can get it to work with your kernel. And the audio processing in Linux is also not a low latency thing in the kernel, unless you literally get a low latency audio kernel, and then you've got other support issues there for if you want to use the machine for multiple things. So like most pros aren't doing Linux.

SPEAKER_00: 7:15

Oh, they're using Mac audio. Yeah, or Windows, but yeah, but the pros use Macs. But so I wonder why Linus didn't ask Linus about audio. Because Linus I mean, there's certainly plenty of audio stuff he's tested in the past, but that topic never came up.

SPEAKER_01: 7:33

Yeah, I don't know. That would have been interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

I think the the clip that definitely went viral from that interview was when Linus basically said interview Linus Torvald when he built his computer. Yeah, thanks for the clarification. I I probably should have said that.

SPEAKER_01: 7:53

Well, you're throwing around two Linuses, so right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 7:56

Well, I mean there's only two, right? Yeah, in the entire world. Pretty much. And they both have made-up names, apparently. But I think the the viral clip that kind of I've seen pop up way too many times now is the one where Linus asks Linus or mentioned something about you know, some people consider the amount of code that you generate to be the or no, what was it? Somebody used the amount of code that developers yeah, yeah, uh created as a measure whether they still have their jobs or not. And Linus responds back with like, well, that person's an idiot and clearly doesn't have doesn't deserve to be working in a tech field at all. And then Linus is smiling, he's like, You know who that is, right? And Linus says no. And and so Linus replies back, Well, that's Elon Musk. And then Linus says, Well, so I was right. Well, yeah. People love reposting that.

SPEAKER_01: 8:59

On the other side though, Musk is doing a lot of good stuff, especially with financing campaigns and things. Also, I don't know if you saw his tweet that he retweeted about tolerance means the ends of Western civilization. They cannot be tolerant. And then uh someone was posting New Year's resolution for everyone in the West, stop being tolerant, and he responded yes. So but I think I I think the tolerance is breaking with this news story in Minnesota. Have you been following it?

SPEAKER_00: 9:36

Oh yeah, yeah, it's home turf for me. So, you know, it's it's interesting to see what that's shaping out to. And I really hope what it turns into in a mass expulsion.

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

Mm-hmm. Well, I think I think it's going to be. Uh especially, you know, so uh for those who don't know, in Minnesota, there's daycares and health clinics that are run by Somalis, and it's not just Somalis, but that are just fraudulent, there's no doubt. And estimates currently are in the billions of fraud that the state has paid to these organizations.

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

The the real issue, in my opinion, isn't so much that these Somalis figure out a way to you know pretend to have daycare centers that don't have any children. It's what the hell business does both the state and the federal government have in subsidizing any daycare centers. That's just bullshit. That should not be happening anywhere. You want to have people stop having children? Then yeah, yeah, we don't want poor people having kids. So stop subsidizing it. That's just insanity. Why would you provide food or medical or child care services to people that shouldn't be having kids? Makes no sense.

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

And I think there are going to start being a lot of deportations. And I think what's interesting is Israel's recognition of Somaliland.

SPEAKER_00: 11:17

I saw that, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:19

So that means now this distinct portion of Somalia is no longer, you know, it it's a recognized country, and these people are, you know, fleeing persecution, supposedly, from Somalia. Well, eh, we can deport you back to Somaliland and you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00: 11:39

Yeah, although you can't deport somebody to a different country than the one they came from.

SPEAKER_01: 11:43

Yeah, you can. Trump's already done it.

SPEAKER_00: 11:45

Yeah, well, you you can't. I mean, it's it's not a real deport deportation at that point, then it's just a offshore offshoring your prison system, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the I think Israel is going to always recognize every breakaway independence movement in any country. I think that's that's going to be a standard thing for them. It kind of has been. I mean, they were all they also recognized Kurdistan back, you know, after the Saddam Hussein war, which of course Turkey is massively opposed to and and is mad at Israel for that as well, because Turkey just wants that piece of land. They don't consider that Kurds are a separate nation or a group of people. It it should all just be Turkey. But Turkey is always just wanting to restore the Ottoman Empire. I mean, if they could take all the Middle Eastern land, including Israel, back, they'd be super happy. And frankly, I think Europe wouldn't be particularly upset either, because they are now seeing that they made a mistake when they won the war against the Ottoman Empire. Because they quickly turned most of it into colonies without providing any of the governmental infrastructure to be able to actually support it, and that's why those colonies ended up becoming independent very quickly. Because you govern differently in the Middle East and in Africa and in Asia than you govern in Europe. It's it's a lesson that Europe never learned, and then upon becoming basically socialist, I mean, let's just call a spade a spade, Europe is is it's a socialist country. And when that happened, and they basically got rid of religion and replaced it with the religion of tolerance, they're now getting exactly what was obvious to everybody who isn't a moron was gonna happen. You can't import non-tolerant people into a tolerant society and expect things to remain the same. It it doesn't work that way. This has always been my argument, and I we're getting slightly off topic here, but let me rant a little bit. This has always been my argument against the against being agnostic towards different religions and different ethnicities, different nationalities. Because on an individual basis, you shouldn't group people together. However, when that group of people is acting in the same way, it is fair to address them as a group. So a bunch of individual Islamic people that are all trying to accomplish the same goal, ripping off the government in Minnesota, they can be labeled as a group. They don't you don't individually have to name every single one of those fake uh child hair facilities to avoid being racist. You can just call it that whole group what it is, which is it's an Islamic Somali group of people that has been ripping off the state and federal government for well over a decade now. I mean, they originally started coming there to Minnesota 20 years ago, it was right around the black hole black hawk down actual event. The movie came out later, obviously. So when they start acting as a group, I think it's absolutely appropriate to treat them as a group as well and just put an end to it. And in their particular case, their visas were authorized as temporary. Now, generally, the US does not ever not convert a temporary visa to a permanent one, like that's the it's a normal thing that the US has always done. However, it does give Trump the opportunity to then actually kick them out, even though they've been living here for 20 years. Oh, I forgot my rant. So my rant is basically that you can support things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion and and not you know being prejudiced to different people's background and stuff. You can support all that stuff, but you have to have an asterisk at the end. And this is where you and I have historically disagreed because you don't think that there should be an asterisk, and I do. And the asterisk is for people that reciprocate, because it's too easy with democracy to invite in communists and have them take over and not respect democracy and not respect freedom of speech and not respect freedom of religion and all these other things. So you let them in because of your beliefs, and they take over and put you in jail because of yours. I think that's just stupidity. That's not like being true to your moral self. That's just, you know, doing some and doing an unnatural act because you know logically where it goes and you're still willing to do it. So it's really uh it's sort of a self-sacrificial act, which you well know being a fan of Ayn Rand, I'm very much against. I I don't believe in self-sacrifice. I believe in coming up with winning strategies, uh, including for people that I can help win, uh whether they're friends or clients or somebody else. But I I sure as hell don't believe in sacrificing yourself for somebody else's benefit, because that just leads to a well, denihilism, frankly.

SPEAKER_01: 17:50

Yeah, well, uh, I mean, there's there's got to be a balance because to me, you need to be a loving, giving person and try and you know, do things for other people when you want to. And that's to me not self-sac sacred uh self-sacrificing. It's doing something because you want to.

SPEAKER_00: 18:14

Exactly. Exactly. And that's a bit most people miss. They think that they do nice things because they're being altruistic. In reality, most nice things are like, yeah, exactly. Most nice acts are done because they generate endorphins, and that's the way it should be. Like, that's a good thing. Like you are immediately rewarded mentally by your own brain through a drug spike for doing something that you and others consider to be nice. When you donate money to charity, when you help somebody get up, when you you know help an old person cross the street, when you do whatever that nice thing is that you weren't required to do, you feel good about doing it. And you rightly should feel good about it, but you shouldn't be compelled to do it ever. Yeah, and agreed. And where this ties back to the Somalis and other groups, frankly, but certainly the Somalis is their good example, is the idea here was one we shouldn't have, but did go into Somalia. Big mistake. But when that happened, there were people that we paid money in order to translate for us to sort of be the fix-it guys locally, the guys that'll show you the safer routes. So there were a number of Somalis that were working for the US when the US was there. And these people were they're not doing it for free, and they were not doing it in the goodness of their hearts, they they're doing it for money, but also obviously not just money, but they also had some kind of beef with the government there. So they're doing it because they're unhappy and they see this as a way to change things, and they're getting paid for it. And US historically, when it leaves an area, it provides an opportunity for visas for anyone that was working on behalf of the US. So in this case, the Somalis, we did the same. Thing in Afghanistan with the Afghans. We did the same thing in Iraq with the Iraqi translators and people that were basically, you know, working for us against their own country. We historically do that. Most people, oh, and and going back all the way to Vietnam, right? We did that with a whole bunch of Vietnamese that were supportive of GIs there. We had massive flights of planes taking off and then even ship their shiploads.

SPEAKER_01: 20:52

There's a big Vietnamese population in the coast of Texas that started trimping. And you know, when I was a kid, I remember so this is not a flattering story for my dad or for me, but I was probably like four years old and down at the docks with my dad. And the the Vietnamese, you know, would break the laws, they would do do a lot of things. And, you know, the the shrimpers and then the Vietnamese shrimpers just did not get along. It was it was bad. But I really embarrassed my dad one day, and this was you know probably 1990, and we were walking down the dock and walked past a Vietnamese person, and I said, fucking gook. And my dad turned bright red, and because he knew it had come from him, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

Yeah, I was gonna say that were you could have only picked that up on TV or from your family.

unknown: 22:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:27

Wasn't happening, it wasn't gonna happen anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01: 22:29

So no, it was not spontaneous. But you you gotta remember I grew up around a lot of Vietnam veterans, too. You know, like the most decorated Green Beret to come out of Vietnam and everything else, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

Yeah. Which does not automatically mean they should be racist, but they certainly could be.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

Well, when you're fighting, you know, people, you you other them. That's what you do. Like that that's what you have to do in your mind to justify what you're doing in war.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Yeah, I guess. I mean, I I don't see why you couldn't just kill the people, but whatever. So I don't think it was a particularly unflattering story. I mean, it's I guess it's not flattering, but it's how old were you? You were still a kid, you said, right?

SPEAKER_01: 23:22

Yeah, I was like four.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

Oh, four. Well, yeah, there you go. So it's it means literally nothing. You don't even know what a what that word means.

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

Right, but at that age, right?

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

Yeah. So it's just a a description that you heard your dad for addressing people that look like this.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Uh anyway, we we we do stuff out of the goodness of our heart trying to take care of the people who helped us when we were overseas, but it ends up hurting us badly here. And I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not anti-immigration. I think we ought to brain drain the entirety of the world, but I want to brain drain, not just anybody.

SPEAKER_00: 24:06

Well, and it does bring up a complicated question because from a practical standpoint, whether it's a military operation or a CIA operation, if you want to get cooperation from foreign nationals, you have to give them something in return. Otherwise, they're not going to help you. The most valuable thing you can give them is not money. The most valuable thing you can then give them is U.S. citizenship. So it is not surprising that the US has historically had this policy of providing citizenship to people that have cooperated with the US. And I think any country that we would come into would have the exact same problem in the future. You know, if the US goes into Iran at some point, we're gonna have a massive amount of Iranians moving to the US. They're still gonna be Muslims, they're gonna be anti that particular regime of Iran, but they're still gonna be Muslims.

SPEAKER_01: 25:11

Well, I don't know. I mean, the biggest, the fastest growing religion in Iran right now is Christianity. So there is a significant Christian Persian minority in Iran.

SPEAKER_00: 25:21

Well, I how significant though? I mean, I've heard that before. I'm not doubting that it is the fastest growing. But is it growing at like is the Christian population more than 1%? Do we know that? I can Google it. Yeah, I'll go here, I'll Google it. And then we'll be uh right back as soon as my Google works here. Hang on. So I'm getting like just over a hundred thousand Christians in around. Which I'm not sure what percent that is. But it's not a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01: 26:03

Well, it depends. So that's the official census. But if you look at the minority rights group, they estimate over 300,000. Another group based out of the Netherlands estimates uh 1.2 million, another various Christian organizations say between 800 to three 800,000 to 3 million. So point is it it's not it's not really huge, but it's not teeny either.

SPEAKER_00: 26:33

Here's the thing, and I I've always liked Iran. I don't like the current regime of Iran. I have like I remember seeing when they came into power in 1979, and I'm like since that point, they've certainly seemed like the bad guys, but although I think what was his name? Ahmadinejad, I think he was a little more moderate, but but I've always liked Iranian food. You think Ahmadinejad was moderate? Uh, compared to the Ayatollah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:04

Well, if you like Iranian food, that there's a family that I know was friends with their son in college. Uh they have a restaurant here, and it's well that's now when I'm up there next, let's go there.

SPEAKER_00: 27:17

Okay. Because I I'm giving you some monitors, so I'm gonna need to make a run up there anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 27:22

Mm-hmm. And and I've got a shirt for you.

SPEAKER_00: 27:24

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01: 27:26

I I got Gene, one of what's his name, Gomez's or what's it what is that dude's name? Which dude? Oh, God. He this generation sucks. Duke Gomez. Yeah, Duke Gomez's shirts that says bring back asylums.

SPEAKER_00: 27:43

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Asylums, yeah. Been saying that for a long time. That was the biggest mistake Reagan ever made, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01: 27:52

That and the gun control stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 27:54

Well, yeah, yeah. But that was later. This was back in when he was in California. So I like Iranian food, I like Iranian music, I like Iranian I mean, the chicks are pretty hot. Not all of them, but plenty of them are. So, like Iran was a it was it was, I think, seen like in the 70s, Iran was seen by the West very much like like UAE is right now. You know, it was like a progressive, kind of Western friendly, rich country. And when they had their revolution, the not only politically did they become enemies, but they started repressing a lot of the things that because you could have a political revolution without really, you know, a repressive kind of ideology behind it. But in their case, it was very much a a deep religious-driven revolution. So they they both overthrew the government, but also got rid of a lot of the more western type concepts. So Iran would be perceived back in the 70s as being more progressive than Turkey in terms of headdress, in terms of you know, just how westernized people were. Women wore mini-skirts all the time in Iran.

SPEAKER_01: 29:25

Well, if you look at the old photos, it looks like a western country.

SPEAKER_00: 29:29

It totally looks like Western country. And Iran back at that point was not working at all against Israel. They were, they were, I wouldn't say they were necessarily friends with them, but they certainly weren't enemies the way they currently are. And so when when this all of this is just to make a point saying that I like Iran, I have nothing against the Iranian people, and I would love to see them actually get rid of this conservative religious government that they've got and go back to something, or not go back, but go to something else. Like they don't have to go back to the Shah, they don't have to have a king like Jordan. They can go back to a presidential system or go to a presidential system or something else, they don't have to go back. But what's obvious here is that they are a repressed country, and that's when I see these quotes from protests happening, not just Christians, but protests in general, and but Christian stuff too, you know, when the when you talk about Christian population growing there, even if it's on the low end of the estimates, even if it's just uh a hundred and a little over a hundred thousand people, uh not five hundred thousand, it's still a very small percentage of the overall population of Iran, because Iran has got a one of the bigger populations in the Middle East, given that they have historically been the breadbasket of the Middle East of the Middle East, they can support a much bigger population than most of these other countries, which really were just Bedouins in the desert until oil became a thing. And it was really oil that kind of drove them to consolidate us as actual countries and not just be Bedouins. So Iran tribes Iran. I think I would love to in my lifetime see Iran prosper. I don't know if it's gonna happen. I I certainly hope that it does. But this is where it becomes very tricky because we really keep pointing the finger in Israel. It's like, oh, we're only interested in Iran because of Israel. No, we're interested in Iran because of Iran. Most of the people born in the last 35 years don't even know that Iran took American hostages and then held them for I think it was a close to a year, something like that, in 1978 during the revolution.

SPEAKER_01: 32:02

Probably what caused Carter the re his re-election.

SPEAKER_00: 32:05

Yeah, yeah. Car well, Carter was ineffective on a lot of fronts, and this was definitely the nail on the coffin for him because he was not able to resolve that problem.

SPEAKER_01: 32:15

Well, when the nightly news is saying X number of days since the hostages were turned over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00: 32:21

Yeah. Yeah, and that's where like we had the song tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree that came out in that time, I believe. So there was a there was definitely a whole generation of people. I was on the very youngest side of that generation who remember Iran having American hostages and and for an extensive period of time, and the US not doing anything about it. And I think a lot of those people, myself included, were very surprised when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Because both Iraq and Iran were destabilized at that point in time from a decade-old Iran-Iraq war where literally a whole generation of young men died on both sides. Like both countries lost well over a million people. I think they lost several million people each. I don't I don't know without looking it up how many people they lost, but it was in the millions of men that died on both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. And I I know that the US was on the Iraq side of that because we have a photo of you know the ex-Iraqi president, ex Because we killed him, Hussein, in the White House. And he was a big fan of all kinds of American crap. He had a huge tennis shoe collection back in the day. You know, much like Fidel Castro was a big fan of American stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01: 33:48

But yeah, ironically enough.

SPEAKER_00: 33:51

We had an opportunity to come in on the Iraqi side, take out Iran under the guise of helping Iraq, and then make Iraq our bitch because they would owe us. Like to me, that seemed like a no-brainer twofer. You go take out Iran's government, you come in there and plant the biggest military base in the Middle East, and you stabilize the country, you bring it to a democratic state. Meanwhile, you took out the biggest enemy that Iraq had, and now they have to be your bitch. Like it would have been a total no-brainer in my mind, but for some reason we decided to go after Iraq, even though none of the hijackers from 9-11 that were the pretext for all this were Iraqis. As we all know, they were mostly from Saudi Arabia.

SPEAKER_01: 34:44

It was weapons of mass destruction, Gene. Of course, we have to believe Rumsfeld, right?

SPEAKER_00: 34:50

But what are we saying that Iran didn't have weapons of mass destruction? I mean, everybody has weapons of mass destruction. A weapon of mass destruction is any weapon that requires about a nuke program, though. I know what they were implying, but there were no nukes, as you know. And then they they were also talking about them being chemical. Someone they couldn't find any nukes. And then, of course, there was no chemical weapons either. There were plenty of reports, fake reports, just like with Syria, of like, oh my god, Saddam Hussein is using poisonous gas on his own people. Look at the carnage. Yeah, yeah, we did that. That wasn't them, that was us. Just like it was in Syria. That was us. That was not them. So I don't know. To me, this was a big blunder. Like, we could have taken out the Iraqi government or Iranian government and had full control of the Iraqi government in one fell swoop, but instead of doing that, we just picked, I guess, the easier target. I don't know. So now we still have to deal with Iran.

SPEAKER_01: 35:54

Well, I think Iran may be dealing with itself. So with all the unrest and everything that's going on, I think the Iranian people might take care of it for us.

SPEAKER_00: 36:06

Yeah, I that would be good. That would be good.

SPEAKER_01: 36:12

So do you want to talk Form 1 or do you want to talk Venezuela?

SPEAKER_00: 36:21

Well, let's get Form 1 out of the way, uh, as uh Jensen Borick would say.

SPEAKER_01: 36:25

I am a really big proponent of this idea, even though you're poo-pooing it, but not just the 3D printed stuff. Like, so Form 1 is when you're making an NFA item. If you are building it yourself, you're telling the ATF, hey, I am making this, register this. So there is, and I'm looking at some of the AutoCAD sites. Holy crap, dude, is there a lot of different designs and stuff that you can just print? Oh yeah. Now, is this gonna last very long? Nope. But, you know, like Mr. Guns and Gear had pointed out, uh, well, just destroy it and tell the ATF to remove it from the registry and da-da-da-da-da.

SPEAKER_00: 37:05

Good luck with that. I I kind of sort of say I agree. I don't know why you're saying I'm poo-pooing it. I'm not poo-pooing this idea.

SPEAKER_01: 37:13

Okay, well, I I I am seriously looking at it because I was looking at suppressors here this week and trying to decide on what I wanted to do. Now, my go-to-war gun, am I gonna have a 3D version of suppressor on there? No, but my 22, sure. But the other thing I would say is thread adapters. So you can buy a threat adapter, tell the ATF you're going to form one it, do the form one, serialize it, and then you can put an oil can on there, and that's a pretty fucking effective suppressor.

SPEAKER_00: 37:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:46

And the registered part, the part that is the suppressor, is the threat adapter.

SPEAKER_00: 37:51

Yeah, and I think that's what you're gonna see a lot more of with this. Because it's zero cost. Well, yeah, but you're gonna see a lot more people getting creative with the registered part bit and and selling like titanium, really high quality, really nice, gonna last you forever. Basically, thread adapters. And then we already have a pretty much a standard for the most part on the thread and suppressors. Not it's not 100%, but it's like 85% of the suppressors use the same thread.

SPEAKER_01: 38:28

Well, not not only that, but Surefire has now started making a surefire mount to hub adapter. So surefire's even move in that direction, yeah, which is a big important part.

SPEAKER_00: 38:40

And that's surprising, but yeah, that's good because they were a$300 part, way fucking overpriced. Yeah. So I think that's gonna happen, and the actual part that does the work of the suppressing, that will effectively become a non-registered part. So everybody that wants to have a suppressor will be able to register a threat adapter and then swap out as many suppressors as you can.

SPEAKER_01: 39:05

Well, I I hope so. I my local gun shop, I was talking to Barry, the owner down there, and he says they've seen a ton of people purchasing. So, like he they're trying to keep stuff in stock, sort of thing. Like they've been they were buying as many as they could leading up to the build-up, and they can't keep up.

SPEAKER_00: 39:25

I'm sure. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01: 39:27

But I really like the Form 1 idea because then you don't have to wait. You can print what's interesting. I'm looking at it, and dude, you can get a 3D printer that would be capable of using the type of material you would need and the speed you would want for like 230 bucks.

SPEAKER_00: 39:49

Yeah, they're they've gotten pretty damn cheap. Although I've never bought one, I've looked at them plenty of times, and I've had a good friend, ex-business partner, that that had a really high-end one. He actually made other printers with that. But my my thought for me is this thing's gonna be used like once every three months, it's gonna mostly collect dust. So I don't really want the 3D printer, I just want friends to have them. Well, I I you I've got some ideas on better quality ones to buy for you.

SPEAKER_01: 40:24

Well, let's let's talk. Here's the other thing about this if people start doing a ton of Form Ones, like if we have hundreds of thousands of Form Ones filed here in the next few days, which I think we could legitimately have, yeah, then it becomes in common use and by the NFA's own language will have to be removed.

SPEAKER_00: 40:47

Yeah. I would love for that to happen. I don't think it's gonna happen because uh we're gonna lose the midterms, but it theoretically could, yeah. The I I did think about this this morning, in fact. I thought about, you know what's to stop somebody from just like buying the non non replaceable parts of suppressors. So you if you have a Form 1 on something, you can still maintain it with maintainable replaceable parts. You just can't replace the serialized part.

SPEAKER_01: 41:24

Correct. So that's where some of these suppressors have been designed to be modular.

SPEAKER_00: 41:28

Exactly. And a lot of the newer ones already have been for the last few years anyway. And and so why wouldn't you just instead of having to pick and choose a suppressor, just buy some cheap, you know, basically just that part of the suppressor, just the serialized parts. Kind of like you know, I've bought a number of just lowers that I can then finish out and build and turn into whatever gun I want. But the only thing that was on the forms which are supposed to not even be kept, but we all know they keep them forever, uh, is that it was a lower. But like there's no more information than a serial number and a lower on that form. And if for this, it's even more the case because you're if you can just get essentially a lug nut or an adapter that's serialized and you put any damn thing you want on there afterwards, yep, then just buy a bunch of these right now before the midterms and before this gets this gets thrown out again, and and you should be set. Because they are registered for zero dollars. They are registered, you never have to re-register them. This is not like if they change something, all they'll do is just say no more of these can be registered. They won't make you lose your registration status.

SPEAKER_01: 42:58

We've got we've got Trump as president, so we have the ability to veto. So hopefully no changes to the registration will come in. But the other thing that it this made me realize is you know, individuals are always approved faster than trusts.

SPEAKER_02: 43:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 43:15

But here's the deal it doesn't matter anymore because you can register it under yourself, then do a single shot trust, transfer it to that trust for no cost, and then once that's done, add whoever you want to it without having to re-register it. So you can hurry up, get the suppressor in your possession, it be yours, and then do that. So there's a lot it's really opened up a lot. And I I think between purchases and some of these groups that are doing the 3D modeling and the printing and the fact people just taking thread adapters and serializing them. Exactly. I think we're gonna see hundreds of thousands of suppressors in common use very shortly. People who have never done it or know about it, and if you're in the gun community at all, going a full bore.

SPEAKER_00: 44:06

So then the thing is, unfortunately, and I've looked for this for a long time because I again from talking about 3D printers, there are some cool things that you can do with them, but most of the things I would want to do with them are metal, not plastic. And the price for metal 3D printers, it's gone down, but it's still insanely high. I think the cheapest one I found was about sixty-five thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01: 44:32

Yeah, I mean, at that point, picking up a few generations old C and C machine is just probably a better bet.

SPEAKER_00: 44:39

Although the 3D printer is significantly smaller, it's a lot more compact than that. And this is why a lot of people were renting 3D printers instead of buying them. If you remember Cody Wilson, the guy here in Austin that years ago. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 44:54

Which by the way, the the liberator in World War II was a single-shot pistol that the Allies dropped over occupied France so that someone could go up, shoot a Nazi, take his gun, and then you know arm the French Revolution in that way.

SPEAKER_00: 45:08

And if they didn't get rid of their guns before that, that was a good way to do it. So I I think I think this is a great thing. Obviously, it's unfortunate that the amended version didn't pass through because that fucking stupid parliamentarian bitch. Because what we should have had is just a total elimination of suppressors from there. It shouldn't have been a thing. So I'm I mean it's good that they at least still passed it with zero dollars, but I also know that as soon as the Democrats are in office, they're gonna pass legislation to change that zero dollar amount to what would be probably around two thousand dollars because they were they were already were talking about how this two hundred dollars is ridiculous because when it was created, it was two hundred dollars. It should be adjusted with inflation yearly. So the current stamp would be a little over two thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01: 46:01

Right, but again, they are not gonna end up with a veto-proof majority.

SPEAKER_00: 46:07

Well, no, not in terms.

SPEAKER_01: 46:09

Yeah. So I mean Trump can just veto that. They can pass whatever the hell they want, it's just gonna get vetoed.

SPEAKER_00: 46:16

Yeah. They yeah, I mean that it's true, but that that just means there's two years left until they do it again. I don't think Vance is gonna win. That's the other thing. So I think we really have like three years left.

SPEAKER_01: 46:32

I think I think I I think we're gonna see a pretty robust primary. I don't think Vance is just gonna get it. I think it's gonna be a pretty robust primary.

SPEAKER_00: 46:44

I I just uh I I like Vance. I like I think he's got a very he's very articulate. He he's very good at speaking. But I'm also seeing that a lot of people really dislike the fact that he is an Indian wife.

SPEAKER_01: 47:01

I don't get that, but anyway, let's talk about that. I'm not either, but I'm seeing a lot of people that are let's talk after the show about 3D printers because, like, here's an Odyssey FN5 inch that's a flow through design for 556 that for about 50 bucks in materials with some epoxy and some carbon fiber, they're saying can last up to several thousand rounds. So that's how you could get your flow through cheap.

SPEAKER_00: 47:31

Yeah. Well, that that that is cool. So, what a CNC or a metal 3D printer would let you do is literally print your own gun legally. With this form, you don't need to do that yourself. So you you we should be able to start buying guns made by companies that have 3D printers that were never making them available previously because they're you know they're busy with other manufacturing contracts making parts out of 3D printed stuff. But I think a lot of these businesses have guys in them that are gun guys that will start adding the opportunity to start printing. So here I guess what I'm trying to say is I think in the next six months to a year, certainly by the end of 2026, we're gonna see a tremendous increase in the number of suppressors that you can legally buy that are pre-manufactured by somebody else. Like right now, we might have 25 companies that make them. By the end of the year, we'll probably have 500 companies that are selling them. I mean, like actually manufacturing and selling, not reselling. Because it is no harder. It's yeah, kinda, but it's no harder to make a suppressor with a 3D printer, with a metal 3D printer, than any other part with a metal 3D printer. It's and it uses less material because it's mostly air inside, it's mostly channels. So I think it's gonna be a fairly quick print for them, and I think the price will be somewhere halfway between the current prices of suppressors and just doing it yourself with a normal 3D printer for, like you say, 50-60 bucks worth of material. So if I can't get a 3D printed suppress flow through, which is I what I've always wanted, is a flow-through model. If I can't get that for 500 bucks by the end of the year, I'll be shocked because I'm pretty sure that's coming. Because 3D printing is perfect for suppressors because it's a complex shape.

SPEAKER_01: 49:42

Well, that's what SIG's doing on their uh I know, but because the military contract, right?

SPEAKER_00: 49:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 49:48

But the new SIG suppressor that goes with the spear is literally a metal 3D printed suppressor, yep. Because they could achieve stuff that they couldn't do with normal manufacturing technique.

SPEAKER_00: 49:58

Yeah, yeah, and 3D printing that process of 3D printing, like metal wire vapor transfer process, perfect for making these things uh because you do have internal complex shapes, but also plenty of channels. So that this is anytime you have more empty space inside than you have the surface area on the outside, it is better to 3D print the more actual filled space you have, the the better it is for C and C. So that that's the very roughly speaking the breakdown. So seeing seeing see and seeing a suppressor in ERD is a lot of wasted material. 3D printing is a lot less wasted material. Anyway, uh it's I think twenty twenty twenty-six will be a good year for it. This is also why I'm not jumping into like for first day, because I wanna I wanna see what happens here. And I you know I I waited long enough for a suppressor, I can wait another three to six months.

SPEAKER_01: 51:12

So I have a personal question for you. Alright, so I have a surefire war comp on my Tavor. Okay. So that's right now it's got a linear compensator on it as well to clear the handguard. Should I get a surefire suppressor that'll go on there for that gun and then get hub mount for everything else and end up with multiple? Or should I take that war comp off and go to a hub compatible mount and sell the war comp.

SPEAKER_00: 51:51

That's a good question. Probably, probably the latter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 51:58

Because the premium on surefire suppressors is just so big.

SPEAKER_00: 52:01

Yeah. Yeah. But that's the thing, is I think we're gonna have a slew of surefire compatible mount made by other people's suppressors within six months.

SPEAKER_01: 52:13

You can't, because it's still under pattern.

SPEAKER_00: 52:15

But you will, you will, yeah. I mean, you know you will. It's it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01: 52:20

Well, I I think the price of suppressors is also probably this year going to drop like crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 52:25

Tremendously.

SPEAKER_01: 52:26

Because so many people are gonna be buying. Yeah, people are gonna start making it.

SPEAKER_00: 52:29

I think it's gonna be a a slight uptick initially right now because the demand is gonna exponentially increase compared to what the supply has been all along. So for January, I think it'll be more expensive and harder to find suppressors. And then by probably February, that'll start a downturn and it'll keep getting cheaper and easier to get and cheaper and cheaper until the end of the year. So, like for next Christmas. For next Christmas, we may be able to get a suppressors for under 200 bucks.

SPEAKER_01: 53:03

I would like that.

SPEAKER_00: 53:04

Not you know, not titanium ones, obviously, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 53:07

No, no, that's just material cost, though.

SPEAKER_00: 53:09

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's cool. And you know, doing just a plastic 3D printed one, and I'm being very generic when I use the word plastic, there's a lot of different types of materials you can use in 3D printers, but a non-metallic 3D printer, I think that would be cool. I would not trust it for a thousand rounds or more. I mean, maybe maybe you just every 10 boxes you shoot, you just put a new one on.

SPEAKER_01: 53:35

Well, it depends. So, like the truck gun I have, right? That's the it's the MC, whatever chassis for the Glock. Yeah. Well, I have a threaded barrel on that Glock. Yep. And I can host a suppressor in that chassis. Yep. And at nine millimeter, I guarantee you it'll go a thousand rounds.

SPEAKER_00: 53:56

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 53:57

You know, like any low pressure cartridge, and when I say low pressure, I mean pretty much any straight walled cartridge, you're gonna be pretty okay.

SPEAKER_00: 54:08

Yeah. I I think it's the it's really the pressure. Nine millimeter, they should last a damn long time. 45, they should last a damn long time. 40 cal, not as long.

SPEAKER_01: 54:22

Even even like 300 blackout will last longer than a 556, just because of the pressure difference. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

Yeah, that's exactly it. So it's not about the diameter of the bullet as much as the pressure in the so in the chamber.

SPEAKER_01: 54:37

Right. And that that's why the 308 will probably last maybe a few hundred rounds, 500 rounds.

SPEAKER_00: 54:43

Do it. Yeah, exactly. But even barrels don't last as long on on rifles as they do in pistols.

SPEAKER_01: 54:49

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 54:50

Yeah, my Glock barrel in my 40 caliber Glock, that barrel has seen over 30,000 rounds. The first barrel saw 20,000 rounds, and I replaced it, and that's the barrel that's still in it with about 30,000 more rounds in it.

SPEAKER_01: 55:08

Right. But I mean, five to ten thousand rounds on a 556 is a pretty common. Now, when like my 300 rum, it's probably only got a few thousand rounds through it. But oh, you need a new barrel already. Uh well, that's the thing, is that 300 rum, when I was really shooting it, I was shooting a hundred and fifty grain projectile with 92 grains of uh I forget which IMR powder, but I had that some bitch chronographed at 88, three, 3,800 feet per second at the barrel at the muscle. Now I am burning so much powder so hot, so fast. That's gonna tear through that barrel quick. And that's that's one of the reasons why I haven't ever switched over to 6.5 Creedmore, is it eats barrels.

SPEAKER_00: 55:51

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 55:54

So, you know, if I want a barrel liter, I've got it in my 300 rum, but yeah, without that, my 308s, you know, a 308, you should get several thousand rounds out of your 300 rum, so in in real speed measurements of of meters per second is as you're doing the conversion.

SPEAKER_00: 56:17

As I'm doing the conversion, well, I'm getting AI to do the conversion. So it's 1158 meters per second. So you're you're that over the course of a what uh 24-inch barrel? What what do you have in there? 22 22 inch barrel? So the course of 22 inches, it accelerates to about the tenth the speed necessary to leave orbit. Pretty fucking fast.

SPEAKER_01: 56:43

Yeah, exactly. So it's a big boom. And I tell you, I think I've told this. I think I've told this story, but the when I was testing out that load, when I was developing that load, I was at the range and I pulled the trigger and I hear click. Uh oh. And I'm like, oh god. So it's a hangfire, and I just stay on the gun, keep it cinched in my shoulder, and I swear to God, five seconds later, boom.

SPEAKER_00: 57:10

Damn, five seconds?

SPEAKER_01: 57:12

Holy, and I ended up stopping my range day. I went home, I pulled all the bullets out of the casings, deprimed the casings, and got to looking and I inspecting the casings. I found tumbler media in the uh flash hole for the primer. Oh, that's not good. Oh shit, that's what it was. So using actual walnuts? Yes, yeah, yeah. Actual walnuts. So that walnut got ignited by the primer. Yeah, and it's it was a slow fuse.

SPEAKER_00: 57:40

It slowed fuse. Dude, I've the longest I've had is about a second and a half, and that felt like it was about five minutes. Oh yeah, standing there.

SPEAKER_01: 57:51

Especially on a big gun, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't dare eject a shell.

SPEAKER_00: 57:55

No.

SPEAKER_01: 57:56

Anyway, so it it's it it what I ended up doing after that is every time I was done with my tumbling of cases. First of all, I didn't deprime my cases anymore before tumbling them. And second of all, I ran them through the depriming press stage or so to make sure and poke a hole through the you know flash hole.

SPEAKER_00: 58:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 58:18

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 58:19

Yeah, that's uh that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 58:21

Anyway, and by the way, I'm surprised you didn't like the flashbang stuff I found that's legal.

SPEAKER_00: 58:28

The fun thing about that is it's it's you know, it's soft soft aim, or what do they call it? Soft uh airsoft, airsoft, airsoft level stuff. So it is a flashbang simulator. It is not a an actual flashbang.

SPEAKER_01: 58:45

Yeah, but they also have thermite grenades and they also have pepper spray grenades and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 58:53

I I get it. It's it's edging the legal limit without a uh having any paperwork, is what it's yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 58:58

And here's my thing. One, taking their stupid little certification class literally took me 20 minutes. Two, if you're a civilian who's never been around something like this.

SPEAKER_00: 59:09

Oh, yeah, you're gonna think you're it you're gonna be like that cop that the the squirrel dropped a nut on his head. He thought he was you're like, Oh, I can't feed my legs, I can't feed my legs. I I just had a massive explosion happening within three feet of me. I my whole body's just missing.

SPEAKER_01: 59:27

Well, my entire thought process on this was during civil unrest. You know, if we have a bunch of riots or something, it could be a useful tool.

SPEAKER_00: 59:35

Absolutely, but then again, so can bullets.

SPEAKER_01: 59:39

Yeah, but you know, dispersing a crowd. That'll disperse a crowd. Have you uh been paying attention to the college football playoffs at all?

SPEAKER_00: 59:49

Only by talking through osmosis with people like you and other friends that follow that shit through and then not, you know, which is not me.

SPEAKER_01: 59:56

Yeah. Well, I'm I'm feeling better about our loss to Miami because they beat Ohio State today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:03

But holy shit, this Texas tech need to just be embarrassed at this point. Dude, Oregon put up 23 points on them and they put up zero.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:13

Yeah, that's that is pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:15

That's a spanking. And then Indiana spanked Alabama. This was great to see. Indiana spanked Alabama 38 to 3.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:26

Yeah, it seems like the games have bigger score disparities than I'm used to and seeing in the the only college football playoff team thus far to drop out of the college football playoffs by one score is AM.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:41

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:42

Because we lost to Miami ten to three.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:45

Yeah.

unknown: 1:00:46

But

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:47

You know, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:48

Yeah, I mean it's it's still a loss, but yeah, it's not a dramatic loss like the previous game losing to Austin.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:57

Dude, Ohio State losing by more than 10 points to Miami. I did not see that one coming. I really didn't.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:05

Yeah, that's that's interesting. Do you now which generation is playing these games? Is this the COVID generation of kids? Is that who's in there now?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:18

What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:20

Like they were to school for a year or two? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I wonder how much impact that has on it. Because I think people that are less socialized when they're young tend to have bigger, bigger not ups and downs per se, but like if something ru if something bad happens, they think it is absolutely life-changingly bad. Like, because you know, stress in humans is not a fixed number, it is a variable between the worst that you've seen so far in your life and the best you've seen so far in your life. And and so your way to deal with stress greatly depends on what you've dealt with in the past. And I kind of feel like, in some sense, people say, well, it's stressful for them to have not gone to school and been in school on their computers, but I think that's actually less stressful than what most average kids go through in school. I'm just reflecting back on what I remember. I mean, there's tons of fighting and bullying and cheating and lying and I mean you learn all the life lessons in school. You learn how to either be a criminal or a cop or a normal person. And missing out on that, I think has a very it's a like a real effect on your future. Do you think that's the case, or not? Do you disagree?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:09

I I don't know how I feel about that actually.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:15

So the it it's sort of like going to a science fiction convention. This is a self-selective group of people with poor people skills, but generally a better OCD ability to get things done. People that are good at science fiction shit, good at video games, good at things that they're doing without other people in the same room as them, they they build up a very different set of skills and they somewhat get lost at trying to just act in crowds. So if you ever go to a sci-fi convention, you can immediately tell who are the what do you call the people that do the costumes? The cosplayers. Yeah, yeah. You can tell the cosplayers from the actual sci-fi fans very quickly, even if both are wearing costumes. Because the cosplayers are just generally hot-looking chicks that like to wear revealing clothes, and this is an excuse for them to do it all day long, and they're more interested in looking at what other people are playing, or you know, for with cosplay, whereas the nerdy sci-fi fans will kind of put on stuff because they really like the character more so than because they want to have other people gawking at them, but they'll be absolutely acting like you know, socially inept if you are talking to them on a topic that's other than the main thing they're focused on. Like if there's Star Trek nerd, they'll talk to you all day long about Star Trek. But if you talk to them about what?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:02

Well, I'm a Star Trek nerd, but I don't sit there and just talk about that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:06

At a science fiction convention, you would. I've never been. You're yeah, well, there you go. So are you really a Star Trek fan or not? Maybe not.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:18

I've been to a convention. Days building the Lego enterprises.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:22

I've been to like sitting on my 30 conventions, and I wouldn't even call myself a fan.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:27

I don't dare to. Dude, days of putting together that Lego kit that's sitting on my coffee table in my office.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:35

And I thought it was hilarious that both you and my other co-hosts, Darren's from Unrelenting that show, his wife was doing it at the exact same time you were. So I thought it was funny. I was very tempted to just say get a room, but uh, I think if both of you are married, that would be the wrong thing to say.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:57

But no, it's I'm actually looking at lighting kits for it now. They've already got lighting kits out, so it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:04

Yeah. Oh well, and and Darren's, you know, he he definitely he met this this woman in high school, and she is definitely a nerd, and you know, hasn't like divorced him, which is amazing. So he he locked out, definitely.

unknown: 1:06:30

No.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:30

Now I have a lot of friends that I talk to that bitch about their wives. He's one that doesn't.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:36

You know, I've the only Legos I've done recently, other than this, was for like my kids, you know, putting together stuff for them and helping them. I haven't bought a Lego set for myself in God only knows how long. But as a as a Trekkie and as someone who likes Lego, I I dude, I had to get it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:57

Yeah. It looks cool. Looks cool. Let me know. Send me a picture when you get the lights in there. I'll be I I I appreciate the interest in doing something like that. I just don't appreciate it enough to pay for it and do it myself.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:14

Well, it's it's it's a 3D puzzle, is all it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And it's there is something it was really actually relaxing after Christmas to sit there and cathartically spend some time just you know doing that in sessions of putting the different parts together, seeing it come together and all that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:33

There's a video game called Empyrean that is a space survival game where you crash land on a planet, and then you have to use its resources to build parts to be able to harvest more resources, and eventually to build parts for a spaceship to get off the planet, and then you've got a whole galaxy worth of planets to explore after that. There are a number of games that have that basic premise. The difference is this game Xperion or Empyrean, EMPY R I A N, I believe, is it lets you build spaceships from different shaped blocks. So you're not just like, here's the nose section, here's the tail section. You know, you're not just assembling it from 10 different pieces, like most games would if they let you assemble one at all. But here you're literally you've got like 128 different shaped blocks that you can build it out of. So your ship is very much your ship. It is gonna be mostly unique to you, unless somebody thinks like just like you do, you're gonna have all just the parts where you want them, and you can paint the thing. So, in a lot of ways, like the mini-game in the game is basically using virtual Legos to build a spaceship, except that you're not recreating somebody else's, unless you want to. Because there are guys that have done like Firefly and done a lot of movie spaceships in that game as well. But I have to say, I I am I don't know that I knew this about myself, but I definitely figured it out after playing that game, and this was years ago. I think I was playing that game buff during COVID mostly. But the thing I realized about myself is I'm very much a utilitarian. I will build seven. Well, anything I hate to say it, but I've built like seven cubes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Exactly right. And not on purpose. I like I wasn't, oh, I'm gonna recreate a board cube. I just started adding sections based on need and you know where the engines go for optimal stability, and where you end up is with a board cube. Pretty odd. Exactly. But mine was painted, it was blue and yellow, but other than that, it's kind of cubed. But it's it's a fun game. Well, one thing I will say is that a lot of people that don't really play video games on a regular basis, which is probably most people, they they categorize this thing called video games as one big category of sort of child entertainment. It's entertainment that's childlike. And what they don't realize, unless they're one of the people that plays a lot of video games, is that video game, you know, saying you you play video games is saying is the same thing as saying you watch television, it doesn't actually tell me anything about what you're watching, it just tells me the device you're watching it on, and same thing with video games. When you when someone's a gamer, they play video games, it doesn't really tell you anything about where their actual interest lies, it just tells you the medium that they use for their entertainment, and so for me, most of my games fall into one of two categories either spaceship games or space-related games, because I like space science fiction, or strategy, because I like strategy, and then the best games, the ones that I tend to play the most, that I've spent the most hours in, is an overlap of those two categories. So it's basically like I played Eve Online back in the mid-2000s from about 2004 to 2010. And what I loved about Eve Online is I had about 15 different spreadsheets that I was running for calculating and balancing everything. Every day I would log in to Eve, I would update my spreadsheets, I would go out and make money in the game through trade and manufacturing. And I always got teased for, you know, oh yeah, you like to play spreadsheets more than anything else. Back about three years ago, I saw a big Microsoft event where there was a Microsoft Office thing happening. And in that Microsoft Office thing, there was a presentation done by the Excel team where they announced the integration through APIs of Microsoft Excel to Eve Online, where you could query all the different parameters in the game through an API virtually after authenticating. Like that is the kind of shit that I totally am into. I love that stuff. I I love it when you can get game API talking to spreadsheets. And if there's a game and I can have a spreadsheet for that game, I'm I'm in. That probably tells you way more than you really need to know about me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:59

Yeah, well, so I have it's obviously been slow and the normal podcasts and stuff that I watch hasn't been on, right? So I have been watching so much Linus Tech Tips, it's not even funny. And going through and like some of their scrapyard war stuff and things like that, it has been really nice to have on in the background.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:23

I think they deserve all the credit that they get for really pioneering the technical channel movement. Tech TV kind of started that all, but they did it the old school way with guys like Leo Laporte and John C. Dwarak, you know, old farts that really didn't know tech as much as they could talk nice without any you know breaks or pauses on camera.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:49

I actually have a signed photo from the early days of the screensavers from Leo Laporte and Kate Cutello because I was on there asking some Linux questions.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:59

Exactly. So, you know, I think what Linus did is the next generation version of that very organically and grew a company to a very large size successfully with a lot of hard work and a shit ton of hours of content, like an insane amount of content hours. But he also went the corporate route in the sense of like you know, he's got a hundred people working for him, which on one hand totally makes sense. On the other hand, that's a really bad employee-to-profit margin ratio.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:34

It is. And it did you see his interview where he talked about almost losing all of it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I mean, Tim Poole's been a lot more dramatic about a similar thing as well.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:46

Tim Pool, dramatic? What?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:48

Yeah, I know, right? Exactly. But this is not an uncommon thing in most businesses, is that at some point, usually when you've crossed over$20 million a year line, what you keep hearing from people, and you finally have the money to do is you just need to hire somebody to do that for you. And that is so much the wrong advice. Like, don't hire people to do that for you, hire people to figure out what needs to get done in the company. Hire people like me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's good. You don't you don't have to get a CEO, but do get a CEO. If you want the company direction to be set by somebody else, then you can bring in a CEO. But if you want the company to be run efficiently, which you need, you probably need it when you get past about 10 million, but most people don't tend to actually pull the trigger on bringing in experts until they get to about 20 million in sales per year. But certainly by that point, if you got the same guy running the company operations that was there when you were doing 2 million a year, then you're you're penalizing yourself from faster growth from future growth because you're that person, unless they're literally a one in a million, is not likely to be the right person that you need at 10 million. And I I did not plan to say this stuff, but this is literally chapters out of my book called Beyond Sales. Available on Amazon. If anyone wants to look it up, just do a search for Beyond Sales, and it's got a yellow cover. But I don't know, I'm I'm just listening about you mentioned Linus, it reminded me of how much of the advice in my book he never took. And he'd have like a hundred million dollar company right now if he had.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:54

Well, anyway, it's interesting to watch, and there's lots of good content out there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:01

And it's quite frankly made me want to build a PC. But I I uh don't want to spend the money on that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:08

Well, you know the motherboard that I would recommend.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:10

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:11

Yeah, it has the word God in it, so it's blessed. It's a blessed motherboard.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:16

Uh-huh. I'm not spending that much money on a motherboard.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:20

Your motherboard doesn't cost at least as much as a nice optic. It's not worth having.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:28

You know I've built systems in the past, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:33

I know, I know. I can't help but to be poking fun at your frugal personality type. Yeah, I'm trying to be nicer. I'm not calling you a cheap ass. I'm saying frugal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:53

Anyway.

SPEAKER_04: 1:17:54

There's something else I was gonna talk about, but I'm blanking now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:02

What else were we gonna do? We talked about. Do we want to talk at all about candles? I'm kind of over that topic for the most part.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:12

I haven't seen I mean if you've seen anything Well, it's a daily thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:16

Every day I get a morning candle update.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:19

See, I haven't.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:20

Yeah. Well, I like I like that Israeli chick that that provides them, so I'm I'm gonna keep watching him. I sent you her videos before. She's like this 20-something.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:32

I've watched them.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:34

Yeah, probably not. Israeli, like I I guess she's an influencer for lack of a better term. But she just she's ethnically attractive, meaning she's not gonna win Miss America contests anytime. But she's cute, she's very cute, she's got long curly hair, which I'm a big fan of, like, you know, down past her boobs, and she she will make these dorky faces when she talks about things that she dislikes. And so anyway, it's entertaining to watch. So, and she's been talking a lot about Candace, so I've been hearing a lot about it. But it certainly seems like the Candace downfall is now fully fully in motion. Candace is having to backtrack and said, I never said that, I never, I never equivoc, you know, unequivocally said blah blah blah. I would that was she's she's starting to backpedal and say people are taking her out of what the hell's the phrase, out of uh context, even though they're literally playing her videos from I don't know, six months ago, and her videos from right now. And so I think that down downfall is going. And what's interesting to me is that there's getting to be more focus on her husband, and what has he been in doing as part of all this? Because apparently he was running turning point UK when they met.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:12

Yeah, so it's it is interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:16

I I did think it was pretty fucked up and sick that they had a apparently a replica tent at the turning point USA event that people were taking photos of these in a replica tent of the tent that Charlie Kirk was assassinated in. Oh, yeah, it's fucking sick.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:37

Well, yeah, but you can also see how people would be interested in that. It's you remember. Or maybe you don't remember, but Lennon, who died before World War II, I think he died in 1930 or 31, I don't remember off the top of my head, but it was it was way before World War II. His body was kept in the mausoleum for public viewing literally until the fall of communism. For like 70 years.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:15

Well, I mean, you know, I I don't remember that, but I remember the Reagan, you know, state funeral that they did. You know, and that was shocking to me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:29

I I think at some point it switches from people that genuinely were emotional about the event, just people that are more interested in the homage to the event and then taking a selfie there. It's so I think it's kind of a moving target kind of thing. I I wouldn't necessarily want a photo of me in Charlie's tent, but I completely understand because I've seen that for so many different things, how that type of thing attracts a lot of attention from people. It uh gets a lot of people wanting to come and take a picture there for some reason. I don't know, man. I think I think Canda's definitely her turning point. There's no two ways about that. I don't know if that was her intent or not. Maybe it was. She definitely also, I think by the average person is now seen as a jaded past lover or maybe an unrequited lover. She clearly had a thing for Charlie, but you know they'd never got married, so whether they had some kind of romantic interludes or not, at some point, we don't know, but clearly she still felt like she had a even a greater ownership of Charlie's memory than Charlie's wife does, which is insane because no no woman who wasn't emotionally attached would ever act the way that Candace has been acting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:02

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:04

But also she's crazy, she's fucking loony, and she's been crazy for a long time, and she worked for a lot of people, so she's she's not unintelligent, like she has good control of language, she's a good orator, she has a lot of similar skills to Alex Jones, or to even to Rush Limbaugh, in a sense, but where Alex just uses cryptic words for things that are not necessarily cryptic, I think that's just his modus operandi. She genuinely says things like I had a dream, and based on that dream, I have now had a revelation of blah blah blah. Like she genuinely believes that shit. So I think that uh there's always gonna be a group of people that are gonna be very into her and are gonna be right there along with her. I would kind of describe this as the Oprah crowd. You know, there's always a a bunch of women and not just black women, there's a ton of white women that were like religiously addicted to Oprah. She was a combination of their uh God, I'm blanking out. The the chick that Darren likes Oh shit. Taylor Swift. Yeah. They're like a combination of their Taylor Swift, their rabbi, and you know, their their best friend, their virtual best friend. Like if Oprah said it, it must be true because she cannot be wrong. I think you're gonna have people just like that that will keep following Candace and she'll have a job for life talking if that's what she wants, because they're always gonna be there. But her, along with those people collectively by society, will be seen as crazy people, which is already happening big time, and that means that you know she'll she'll always be somewhere in a corner with a group of people watching enough of her to make money, but no one on the big grand scale is gonna take her seriously for anything. So that's why I think we're heading on that. Well, we'll see. Yep. Any any other things happening for you? I know for me, we talked about it last episode. I'm gonna be starting my fast. Like I said, I'm not doing it on the first, but I'll start on the weekend. I'm not sure yet Saturday or Sunday. I'm trying to clear out my fridge. Honestly, it's the main thing. Just to prevent temptation, I'm I'm trying to eat out of everything that's in the fridge right now in the last few days beforehand. And then, of course, I want my last meal to be a big salad, something with lots of fiber in there. Because one thing I can tell you from experience is your digestive system slows down drastically when you're not consuming any food. And the last thing you want is to have your last meal be like a two-pound two-pound prime rib with fat and meat in there, and then nothing to push it all the way through. Because you're gonna be walking around with that for two weeks.

unknown: 1:26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:42

So not a pleasant thought. So, yeah, basically cleaning out the fridge, gonna get a huge salad, probably some one of the local salad preparation places, and then chow that down on the last day and then start the fast, which I'm my target is two weeks. I've done longer than that once in the past. I've done two weeks several times, I've done ten days a bunch of times, and last year I did five days, which was pathetic.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:12

Well, I I would say, you know, instead of a salad, you could have what I had for New Year's Day today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:18

What did you have? Thai food?

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:20

No, no. So I uh, you know, you as a good Southern boy, you always have to have black-eyed peas and cabbage on black-eyed peas, cabbage, ham, all that into kind of a stew with cornbread.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:33

So I did something similar last week between Christmas and New Year's. I got a hankering for cabbage. So I bought eight pounds of sauerkraut.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:46

Jesus.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:47

And uh it's really cheap, man. It's cheaper than buying fresh cabbage, honestly. And it's better for you because fermented stuff's got great live cultures in there. And then I did a basically hot sauerkraut with ham and sausage mixed in, and then obviously spiced up, and then ate that with some uh sour cream. It's kind of a Russian take on, I think on a more of a German food. But yeah, one thing is for sure, no matter how old you are, eating a lot of sauerkraut in the same day has the exact same effect.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:35

Well, that's what my parents always used to tell me because I used to not like cabbage or greens or whatever, is you know, you better eat some in self-defense.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:44

Well, it's it you you can probably run a whole engine on the uh methane output coming out of that shit. It's very uh very potent. I think any cabbage is it's true for, but the sauerkraut has the added benefit of being probiotic as well. So, yeah, it's uh it's not a bad idea. But really, I I mean I just need to have something that that's a nice light last meal. Last supper's gotta be late, you know. That's how it goes. Okay. Yeah. And and we'll probably do uh at least a couple of episodes while I'm fasting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:23

Well, I why would that affect it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:26

Well, it it wouldn't really affect it. I know again from past experience, the the two hardest days mentally are day two and day three. Day one just kind of flies by. You don't really think about it. It's just like the same thing that happens if you're just too busy to eat all day long. It it you're mildly annoyed by it, but nothing more. Day two is before you've switched into ketosis, and so your your body is like, hey, by the way, there's like no sugar in your blood right now. We kind of need energy, we need to operate on something, and that's still the case day three, but day three is when ketosis finally kicks in, and day four feels a lot more normal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:14

Have you ever got some keto, you know, ketosis activators or anything like that to try and skip some of that? No, I've never done that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:24

Maybe worth trying. I know you were for a while, you were doing some research on that stuff, but I've I've never I've never bought anything like that. And your body just calls into that mode after a couple days anyway. But so really, my my point is that whether you go four days or six days or ten days, each day is just like the previous day. It's not like it gets harder and harder and you get hungry and hungry. The big the your hunger peaks somewhere between day two and day three, and then goes down after that. And generally the first meal after a fast, you feel full after about four bites. Doesn't even matter what you eat, you could eat like one hamburger patty with no bread, and you'd be totally full, or you could eat like four or five bites of a salad and you'd feel totally full. So it is a complete reset of your hunger in a lot of ways. And like I said before, I I would love to do this more frequently if I could skip past day two and three. So that that's what makes it hard.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:43

It's been a long time since I've done a fast, but I do have a religious question for you. What do you think of Lily Phillips getting baptized?

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:57

Who's Lily Phillips?

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:59

She's the British chick that did a thousand men in 24 hours or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:07

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's got a different name, doesn't she? Ah, what's her stage name?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:13

No, that's that is her stage name.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:14

That is her stage name? No. Okay. I mean, I don't know. Was she never baptized before, or what's the deal?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:22

Well, apparently she's turning Christian and getting baptized.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:27

And well, you know. See, this is the thing. This is the this is one of the topics for our next religion episode whenever we get around to it. Because I've actually been watching, mostly watching, doing some reading, but I'm probably watching like nine hours of religious stuff on YouTube every day. And there is an awful lot of contradictory things in the New Testament alone, not to mention contradicting with the Old Testament. And so this was one of my things that you were pointing out to me that didn't make a whole lot of sense is the idea of that all you need is faith, your actions don't make any difference.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:11

Well, your actions stem from your faith.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:14

Yeah, but I mean your past actions. Like fucking 100 guys in one day and then getting baptized. A thousand?

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:25

Yeah, a thousand.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:27

No, she it's I'm looking at her thing. It says a hundred guys.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:30

Okay. Lily Phillips. Anyway, here's what it comes down to. My the best comment in this Twitter post that was announcing this, and I really think this way, and I I think this is probably a good way to think about it. And I'm gonna read, quote, my heart says I'm proud of her and celebrate her turning to God. The devil on my shoulder says, please change the water before the next person.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:59

Yeah. I I don't know. I to me, not being Christian, it it's it sort of doesn't really change anything about her, whether she gets baptized or not. She's still a chick that slept with a hundred guys or however many guys.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:20

Well, and here's that thing never goes. If it doesn't change her behavior, then it's just performative, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:27

Yeah. Yeah. But would she need to get baptized just to change her behavior?

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:33

No, and I don't believe that baptism by water is necessary. It's baptism by faith that is necessary. And you know, the only reason why the only reason why I was baptized was because I wanted a public explanation and a public decree of my decision in my faith.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:58

So I wasn't saved when I was baptized, I was already saved, and that was just it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:06

The baptism performatively.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:08

Yes, literally. As as a this is something I am giving my life to. As an adult, this is what I've decided to do. And I don't believe in child baptism at all.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:19

You know, I I don't see how anything can be.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:22

Well, you know why they do it meaningfully.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:25

Catholicism.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:27

Well, yes, but that aside, it's it's the fear that something happens to your child and they die without ever having been baptized. So just to make sure that they're not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:37

Until they are old enough to m consciously make the decision, my reading of the New Testament is that those children are held as innocent.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:45

Yeah, and that's a very Jewish reading, by the way. But the I think in the Catholic faith they do confirmations, don't they? They do. Like when you're when you're a teenager. So I think that's like at the age where you're consciously taking the religious on, the religion on.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:05

Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:06

So I mean I it's it's all shit that got stolen from Jews anyway.

unknown: 1:36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:16

But we'll talk about that in that uh next episode. I know we have some people that enjoy listening to those. I'm sure for some people they're boring as hell and they skip over them. But I think they're fun to discuss these topics, and I've been working on getting the next album put together of songs as well.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:37

What's the theme gonna be on this one?

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:40

What?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:40

What's the theme gonna be on this one?

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:43

So the theme on this one is gonna be John.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:49

So they're all gonna be related to the book of John. But I I want to do more songs, I because the last album I did 10 songs, which I I I think technically an album doesn't have to have ten songs, but I always feel like I'm cheated out of buying an album if I buy an album with less than 10 songs. I don't know if other people feel the same way. I I've I've always kind of felt like I was getting screwed when I'm buying an album by some artists and there's less than 10 songs in there. So, but this one I want to do more than that. So the last one that 10. I'm gonna shoot for at least 20 and maybe even 25 songs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:34

So, but yeah, it's like like I said when we originally talked about it. The the beauty of doing records based on the Bible is you have so much content to work with.

unknown: 1:37:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:48

Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:50

Mm-hmm. And it's content that is very much laid out, or at least for the most part, laid out in stories. Whereas, except for the book of numbers, but I mean, as long as you like ballads, it's it's great. Yeah. Yeah, if I ever get around to doing music for that one, it'll be interesting. Hey, one other piece of interesting info, which you probably aren't aware of because it it's got to do with my other co-host, Darren O'Neill. You I don't know if you knew, Darren was a songwriter in his youth.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:27

No, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:28

Okay. So Darren was one of those guys that like worked with people that were successful but never was himself. And that's not a slam on Darren at all. It's just what most people end up, you know, having to deal with in their lives because it takes a lot more than skill to be successful at anything. But where I'm going with all this is he said that he just finally imported the last of his Darren-written music into the AI. And he's got 600 songs in there now. So over the course of his life, Darren has written about 600 songs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:15

Which was fairly impressive.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39:17

I was very impressed by that because I know he likes to talk a lot. He's uh he does a show a day, basically a podcast a day. And he's a big music aficionado. He's you know stolen more music than God. But I did not realize that that he's also written more music than most people. And you know, he plays guitar, and and he's I guess I've only heard him sing once, so I can't really judge his singing quality, but it's apparently never stopped him from actually writing songs, most of which I think are gonna be in either country western or like southern rock country-ish style. I think that's what most of his stuff is. But I wanted to bring that up because over this coming year, his plan is to start creating albums and releasing his music, but performed by an AI musical group. So I think that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:24

And we've been talking about it'll be interesting to see if he ends up playing any of them on the rock and roll pre-show or if they get any traction at all.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:36

So I told him what he ought to do is start doing a Daryl Daryl Hour or something like that, where he plays nine. Nothing but songs that he wrote himself. He's played a couple of them. I've heard only a couple of them as well, and they sound really good. I mean, they they s absolutely sound like something I would have heard in the late 90s, early 2000s on country radio.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:04

Which is the best time period for country music.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:08

I mean, some people would say probably like the late 60s were the best time for country music.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:15

Like I love Towns Van Zan. I love Texas swing, but really when you get into like the real Texas country vans that came out, and there's some good ones now too, and I will distinguish that from you know more pop country. But you know, like when when fucking Garth Brooks did his pop album, like that was that was just terrible, right? And Garth Brooks, the song Rodeo is what got me into country music. Okay and I because I grew up grew up on more classic rock and zydeco than anything. But like my favorite band is CCR, right? Uh Credence Clearwater Revival. And I just I I like Texas Country.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:08

What? It's so boomer.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:11

How so?

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:12

CCR? What about it? People your age?

unknown: 1:42:16

No.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:17

Well, and the other one I like that's also CCR, that's one of my favorites, is Cross Canadian ragweed. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:24

Okay. Well, there you go.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:26

Have you ever heard Cross Canadian Rag?

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:27

I've never heard of that. No.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:29

Oh, dude. Alright. Um I'm gonna send you some songs tonight.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:33

Yeah. I'll check them out. Yeah, I just I've always liked like 1960s country.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:43

And what's 1960s country? Give me an example of what you mean.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:46

Uh I'm like I'm hearing these songs in my head, but I'm I'm not pulling any like Patsy Klein.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:56

Would you put her in that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:57

Yeah, I would put her in there, yeah. Yeah, it's basically people that were on what was that country music show? On the Grand Old Opry.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:09

Now, I love me some Johnny Cash, but I put Johnny Cash more in the rock category.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:15

Yeah, yeah. Uh it's definitely that cross. It's it's all outlaw country.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:21

I grew up listening to Patsy Klein. You know, I make my vows on Sunday and break them on Monday, you know, and all that. And then Tennessee under Ford and all that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. That's the other guy I was I was literally picturing in my head, I couldn't remember his name.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:36

So this is this is a stuffing tons and what do you get?

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:40

Yeah, this is stuff that I was listening to on my Walkman in the 80s is basically 60s country. Yeah. I was never a big fan of the 70s country stuff. I listened to 80s country when because that was what was on the radio when I was a kid. But I never really listened to 90s country or later, because by that point I had accumulated a shit ton of CDs of other kinds of music. So I country was always my radio music, whereas they didn't play the other music I liked on the radio very much, like uh German techno.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:24

So, see, see, when I was growing up, basically the only radio station around that we had in Idaho was a country radio station. So you know, I but I you know it's funny because you know, I I get made fun of here at home for you know the my my style and the way I dress and everything else. And don't get me wrong, I can be as preppy as anybody, but you you want me comfortable?

SPEAKER_00: 1:44:53

I'm in boots, I get it, but on a tracksuit like a normal person. I get it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:58

Boots, jeans, and you know, a plaid shirt of kind of some kind, and you know, yes, a cowboy hat. Yeah like I I I like I'm looking back at pictures because this has come up in arguments, but looking back like as a kid, I I always had a hat on, I always had boots on, like even when we lived at the beach, you know, there's a picture of me probably around four or five years old walking on the beach with my cap gun in holsters on my hip. So I got two six-shooter cap guns on my hip in a plaid shirt and boots, you know. Like that's just always the way I've grown up, man. You know, what's wrong with that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:45:46

I mean, that's the nothing it's great.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:49

Yeah, and and you know, and I grew up when when we lived in Idaho, we had cows, I had horses, I bugged hay. I I remember my high school sweetheart, she had a horse and they bought some hay from us. And I loaded up the trailer and borrowed my dad's truck, and I moved two tons of hay by myself in one day. And you know, her mom told her when she was seeing me out there moving the hay and shirtless and everything. She her mom told her, you know, I never understood what you liked about Ben till now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:24

Uh that's funny. Yeah, it I don't see anything unusual or wrong about that. I do think a tracksuit is is more comfortable, which is usually why I'm wearing one. But other than that comfort thing, yeah. And I I traded in my boots for flip-flops 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:44

But um flip-flops are my house shoes, dude. And I grew up at the beach, so I've got plenty of flip-flops, but you know, if I'm going out to do anything, like I don't even have a good pair of tennis shoes. All my tennis shoes are junk at this point.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:58

Yeah. I I switched into flip-flops because a podiatrist told me what was causing my my foot pain. And he said it's hard heels. You need to stop wearing shoes and boots that have hard heels. You can put in a really thick, like you can get some you know, custom inserts and stuff, or just don't wear hard heel shoes. And amazingly, within three months, all my foot pain disappeared. And it's obviously it's related to me being fat. I mean, there's no two ways about that. But like the solution was either lose a bunch of weight or Which would be the better thing to do. Sure, sure. Or change shoe style. And as soon as I did that, I started wearing what do you call them? Adam Blankin Hell again. The the shoes that Adam always makes fun of. The uh Oh, I can't remember the brand. But anyway, they're they're plastic shoes. So as soon as I start wearing those, like that foot pain just totally disappeared. And I even have dress shoes that are made by the same company. Yeah, well, I'm they're like on the tip of my tongue, and I'm not sketchers, I don't know. Nope. Nope the like the sho they're some people refer to them as gardening shoes. Crocs. Crocs, there you go. Crocs. So I have dress shoes made by Crocs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:38

Yeah. Dude, no, you don't.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48:40

I do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:40

I can send your picture. You don't. What you have is people who are it's it's it's crocs or someone who has no style and is just, how do I put this, interested in comfort.

SPEAKER_00: 1:49:00

I've got 16 pairs of crocs. Including dress shoes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:06

Oh my god. Did you buy the Crocs cowboy booths?

SPEAKER_00: 1:49:08

I've full leather crocs, I've got dress shoe crocs, I've got all kinds of crocs. They're all made by the Crocs Company and they're all I have never worn crocs in my life. Well, I'll tell you what, they made the pain disappear, and so I'm I'm a big fan. And they're super cheap to make, and they have a huge profit margin on them. So, tip for anybody that's into Crocs is uh if you go to their outlet store at the outlet mall, they're they're usually selling them for like 66% off.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:40

You ought to watch the fat electricians episode on Crocs since you're a Crocs.

SPEAKER_00: 1:49:45

Oh yeah, I'll totally watch that. And yeah, I'm I'm inclined to send them a formal request letter to stop calling himself fat because he's he's not fat. He might be big boned, but he's definitely not fat.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:01

Well, he's lost some weight too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:03

So yeah, I th I think the making a lot more money off of the YouTubes is probably doing that for him.

unknown: 1:50:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:12

I like him. He's a good guy. I like I was watching him before I knew his name. I was watching him through shorts and a bunch of clips and stuff. Uh he's he's somebody that is a very good storyteller. Doesn't even matter what the story's about. Yep. All right, man. Anything else? Yeah, what do you think? I I think we're plum out of topics here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:37

I think we are too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:39

So we're good. Happy new year, everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:42

Oh, and we might as well mention we had some people come on, some people drop off. Right now we're about five dollars short of having our costs for the podcast paid for monthly. So if you want to step up and I just saw the invoice today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:59

Well, I've the invoice I just paid was$25, but okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:03

Oh, really? Oh, okay. All right. All right, well, then a couple of you, a couple of you guys, maybe three of you, not just one. I was gonna say just one more person. But yeah, let's have like if we get three more people signed up for the monthly donations, that would be great. Because again, all we're trying to do is just get to a point where we do the hard work of talking to each other, the stressful work, and then if we don't have to pay any costs on top of that, if you guys take care of our costs for actually putting out the podcast, that's the the best way that we know that you can show that you're actually enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:42

Well, and you know what? I I go out, hit people in the mouth, additional listeners, always welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:49

So that's that's true too. You know, if we can really this year double our listenership over the course of a year, which is very realistic, I think that's a a realistic goal. All it would take is for each person to just let one additional person who they think would actually enjoy the show. Don't you know tell it to your mother-in-law who's never gonna listen to the show, but just tell somebody that has your sense of humor. If they have your sense of humor and you like our show, they will probably like the show as well. And that'll uh double our listenership. And we do have a lot higher a percentage of people willing to donate than most shows. We just don't have as many people listening as what we like. But so if we can have a couple people step up and then everybody listening to the show right now, just at some point in the year try and have somebody that shares your sense of humor subscribe to the podcast, see what they think. That's all we ask of you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:49

Go out and hit people in the mouth.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52:52

All right, Ben. We'll talk next week.