I Lived the 'Golden Days' - They Weren't as GOOD as You Think! | Tucker Max DSH #618

Yeah, I can make both cases.

Like what people think are the golden days.

I lived

a lot of it and I don't think it was as good as people remember.

There are way more people who are awake to

screwed up shit.

Just pick your topic.

Now a lot of people are like, oh, wait a minute.

All these people who I thought knew what they were talking about and I thought had my best interests in mind don't.

All right, guys, we're here in Austin, Texas, here with Tucker Max coming off Tucker Carlson Show.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you for having me pulling up right now.

Yeah, of course.

And we're talking out there about some interesting things.

So

let's talk about it.

So you had four home births.

Yes, I had four kids.

All four were home births.

And that is very unique because back then that wasn't as common, right?

I mean, my kids are nine to two.

Like, my kids are young.

So it wasn't like that long ago.

But no, I mean, my wife's a doctor, too.

She's an NP, but whatever, same thing.

And so she, I remember she, when she got pregnant, then she's like, you know, we're going to do a home birth.

And I was, I was actually the one confused.

I'm like, what do you mean?

Of course we go to a hospital.

So do you have a baby?

And she's like, no, you don't know what you're talking about.

I used to work in hospitals.

I'm never going into a hospital unless I, if I can avoid it at all.

And then she actually made me watch this documentary.

by Ricky Lake of all people.

It was a great doc, though.

It was called The Business of Being Born.

And then I was like, oh, wow, I had no idea about any of this um and then you know met the midwife that she had she had already picked right and uh and i was like this woman's amazing and then it was like the first experience was the best and then each one was better it was it was amazing it was beautiful i'm actually leaning towards either that or a wellness center for my kids uh oh yeah yeah of course like a like a birthing center yeah like yeah those are basically the same thing right like uh yeah for sure i try to be as holistic as possible because even with ebiduro and stuff like who knows what if that's affected me.

My wife, all four births were totally natural.

Like, I don't think she did or took anything.

The first one, maybe a little bit of castor oil, because like, uh, like their water broke and he wasn't coming fast enough, but like, that's it.

Nothing else.

Yeah.

And you were saying out there, she would only go to a hospital if she was dying.

That's what my wife said.

I mean, there's, listen, you can be having a home birth and there can be,

you know, reasons to go to a hospital, like, I don't know, clamsia or whatever.

Like, I'm not the expert on any of that.

And, and my midwife and our wife talked about that.

Like, they knew, okay, here's the things that might happen.

They knew, okay, if these happen, here's the steps we go through.

If we get to this step, we go to the hospital.

And so, but we never even, at least with our bursts, never got close to any issues.

Nice.

So, are you fully holistic right now?

I mean,

it depends what you mean by holistic.

My wife and I are very,

we moved out to a ranch three years ago for a reason, right?

And it wasn't just like to get away from the danger of a city, right?

Although that was part of it, but it was far more about being in nature,

being

raising as much of our own food as possible, and then or buying from neighbors, right?

Essentially shortening

both the supply chain, but also being able to know the integrity of what's going in our body, like water, right?

Food,

milk, you know, like we get raw milk from literally three ranches down, like from cows that we know, right?

And they banned that for everyone else.

Yeah, for real.

Like in Texas, it's like a little bit of a pain to get raw milk.

That's ironically, California is one of the most free states.

You can buy like raw milk at stores.

Yeah, right.

But

so we're very, very health conscious, but like

health conscious 10 years ago meant like kind of nonsense, right?

Now I think people understand that think like go to any grocery store and like find a packaged product that doesn't have a seed oil in it.

It's almost impossible.

Like 80, 80 to 95% of products in a package, depending on the grocery store, have seed oils, which are horribly toxic for humans, right?

And so like, and that's just like that.

Forget like processed grains, you know, with glyphosate and all the other nonsense.

So just avoid, like,

we spend a lot of time and effort to both avoid those negative things, but then also, like, the chicken we eat is chicken that we raise on our ranch, is slaughtered on our ranch.

Like, we do it, we do all the processing.

Wow, kill it, de-feather it, uh, you know, pack it everything, process, gut it, everything.

And it, the taste is amazing.

It's not like one of those things, it tastes better because I did it.

No, I can do it, and it sucks.

Like, it's not like just me doing it does not make it taste good.

Yeah, but it, uh, you know, it eats our grass.

I know exactly what goes in its body, and it um, it tastes amazing, and then I don't have to worry about anything, right?

It's like, and you can see my kids are all super happy and healthy, and they're not like you know, uh, sugar zombie, uh, zombie kids like you see all over the place, and yeah, we spend a lot of time, uh, that sort of stuff.

And then, like, things like screen health, you know, like my kids don't have, not only do they not have phones or iPads, like we have a TV because I'm not going to go that extreme because sometimes I got to watch football or whatever.

But, like,

they get to watch like a movie a week or something, right?

Like, they love Harry Potter.

So, we'll put a Harry Potter on Saturday night if they've listened well all week.

That's it.

They don't have Netflix binging allowed.

Oh, dude, not in a million years would I give them access, unfettered access, to the poison that comes through screens, right?

Like,

um, not, I mean, they'll get an age where, like, of course, that becomes appropriate, but I can't imagine it's pre-16, you know, like, uh, no way, man.

You see, I didn't even realize, because, like, my kids go to a Waldorf school, which are very anti-screen.

And so, most of their friends are Waldorf.

And it's like, well, I'll hang out with a friend of mine who's not, you know, who has kids, but isn't in that school circle.

And sometimes I'll meet their kids and I'm like, oh my God.

Like,

I didn't, like, I just didn't know what, like, because it's not like I hang out with a lot of kids other than mine and their friends, right?

And so, I don't meet a lot of kids who are, you know, zooted out on sugar and on screens all day.

And it's crazy how

zombified.

I don't know a better word for it, right?

So, like, if you mean holistic in that sense, oh, yeah,

that was a long answer.

I love it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Kids are getting iPads in like first grade now.

Dude, it's unthinkable

to me that you would do that.

Like, I'm not going to sit here and say there's no defensible use for a screen or whatever.

I get it.

Like,

but man,

the negatives to me really outweigh the positives, at least until they're 10, you know?

Yeah.

Like, and then I, not unfettered access, no way.

But like, my son is about to turn 10.

And so like letting him watch.

you know, like if he's super into, okay, he just, he got super into the battle of thermopyla, right?

And so I let him watch some YouTube videos about that little like history channel type things loved it it was awesome for him it was great helped him contextualize understand what's going on in situations like that i get it right but bro

there's been times where like he'll he'll get a hold of my phone and go down the youtube rabbit hole and then he's you know

who knows what video is coming up right like he's watching videos on how to like you know burn down forests or something like what the hell is this you know at best forget anything else so no no no Unfettered access to screens is for children, toxic.

I wonder if there's a correlation with screen time and all these learning disabilities with these 100.

There is.

There's tons of studies about this.

No one wants to talk about it because I think a lot of people use screens as babysitters.

Yeah, it's a distract.

It's easy to just throw them on a pad.

It is.

It's an amazing.

It's an amazing tool for

sedating your child, in effect, right?

And it's like, and I get it, man.

I have four kids.

Like, I understand

it can be overwhelming to deal with a lot of kid stuff at once, right?

It can be.

And like, and I'm a patient and a great father.

And still, there are times where I'm like, oh, man, this is too much.

So I understand the urge and what parents feel like is a necessity at times.

And I'm not trying to sit in judgment of that.

I'm just telling you, in my life, the way my wife and I have organized our life is that we don't have, we don't ever want to have to use screens as babysitters.

It's so seductive, man.

It's like eating fast food.

It's cheap, it's easy, it tastes good.

There's a price you pay for it, though, right?

You become fat and sick.

Same with screens.

Absolutely.

How tough was it finding a school for your kids?

It was so hard we had to start our own.

Wow.

You started it?

Yeah, we started at Waldorf.

That's what Elon Musk did, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He started a whole different type of school.

No, so we were in Austin-Waldorf.

There's a lot of different educational systems, like Montessori or Acton or whatever.

I think Waldorf is the best by far.

It really nurtures the emotional side of children as well as like physical and intellectual in a way that no other system does.

And so the Austin Waldorf is like a famous Waldorf.

It's one of the best in the country.

And then in 2020, like a lot of institutions, it went lunatic woke.

And mainly just the administration.

Like, you know, my son was in kindergarten there, and the teacher he had was like amazing.

She was like a saint on earth.

Like, she was the type of woman, she's like 65.

And I'm like, man, I wish my mom was like this.

This woman was incredible.

And so, I was super happy with that.

And then the school went woke, and like, we're going to teach, you know, six-year-olds that they're racist.

I'm like, get out of it, get out of here.

And so, us and about 50 families broke off and

started like our own Waldorf.

And then the school kind of transformed a little and iterated.

But we have a, um, we were part of of the group that started uh uh the waldorf out in tripping springs wow so yeah like it's

if you i i think the where society is in almost every category is if you want to be healthy you have to basically do

you have to ignore the conventional wisdom and often do the opposite wow right like think about it like if you listen to the experts in nutrition you'll end up fat and sick if you listen to the experts in medicine you'll end up probably dead,

but at a minimum ill.

If you listen to the experts in education, your kids are going to be

neurotic.

Yeah, neurotic at best.

Go down the list.

Experts in finance, you're going to be poor.

Experts in

work, you're going to be miserable.

No, like it, it's.

If 2020 and 2021 taught you anything, it's that the institutions are captured by

at its core what i think james lindsay is right by a deeply communist ideology right which manifests and looks like a lot of different things but it's i should say a deeply anti-human uh capitalist right money's the main priority no i mean no it it's not capitalists are

necessarily capitalism is not inherently anti-human it uh like industrialism consumerism are capitalism is just that's like kind of a trick that that communists use um uh to make a free market.

They try and use free market and capitalism as synonymous for each other.

They're not.

Free markets mean individuals are interacting without sort of

force with each other, right?

That's a free society.

Capitalism is just an economic, like the way that you think about organizing who owns what, not about a free market.

So that's

most philosophies

that most institutions are are implicitly or explicitly run by are anti-human.

Wow.

Right.

They just are.

And

no one who's

super

pro-LGBTQ or whatever, they don't think they're anti-human.

In fact, they think they're

supporting people and they might be supporting certain types of people in certain ways, sure.

But the expression of those values

in almost every institution, like look where, like,

do you go shop at normal aisles in the grocery store?

Do you send your kids to public school?

Do you listen to what the government tells you?

I don't because it doesn't work.

Yeah.

It's horrible and toxic and poisonous, man.

I mean, it's just, it's just a fact of where it is now.

It's pretty crazy.

Growing up, I really respected and trusted doctors, teachers, dentists, and everyone.

But now, as I'm getting older, I

as a group, man, as a group, I don't listen to, I wouldn't in any way listen to any of them there are other individual doctors who have their together of course yeah

like uh it's not uh but yeah no i you know what's funny is i i don't know

i to me it's an open question did things get worse or did we just wake up to how bad things were dusty you know yeah i think it's a little bit of both right but like everyone thinks things were better when they were younger although i'm actually not one of those man i think most of the things in the world were not better at least for me i'm 48 When I was like 24,

man, I think most things are way better now.

Maybe things are better now?

In certain ways, yeah.

Like, I think things were actually pretty bad then in a lot of ways, but we just didn't realize it, you know?

Like, I'm too young to remember.

How old are you, 20?

27.

28, yeah, 27.

Yeah, right.

You're, you're a different generation.

So, like, yeah, you don't, when I was your age, like, it was, that was the 90s, you know, and that was a whole different, it's a whole different world.

And I was actually right past the 90s, but it was the same, whatever.

It felt more innocent, especially with the cartoons, because I watch the cartoons these days and movies and the Disney stuff.

And it's like, what the hell?

They're like programming people now.

Yeah, you know what?

But hold on.

So, yeah, the problem with the programming now is that it's so obvious and it's so ham-fisted.

Yeah.

Right.

And it's so ideological, clearly ideological.

It's not obvious to me there was less programming then.

I think it was far more implicit and it was far better.

Okay.

I mean, like,

what old cartoons are you talking about?

Because you're talking about G.I.

Joe.

Like, that's about as, like, that's extreme programming, dude.

I mean, went on the list.

Like, do what?

You're saying it was programmed for people to want to join the military?

It just, it was pro-American exceptionalism, right?

Which, like, okay, you can argue whether that's good or bad, but the point is it was still propaganda, right?

And, and, yeah, okay, is some propaganda better or worse?

Maybe, yeah.

But it's not obvious to me that things were better then.

I just think,

I don't know.

We'll see.

You can make the case.

I can make both cases.

I think things were a lot worse.

Like what people think are the golden days.

I lived through a lot of it.

And I don't think it was as good as people remember.

I think it was,

in a lot of ways, even worse because

one of the benefits, bro, of the last five years is that

there are way more people who are awake to

screwed up shit in the world.

Whereas, like in 2019,

I mean, how many conversations could you even have with people about just pick your topic, you know, like

vaccines or food additives or

home birth versus hospital birth or whatever.

Like just like there were most people weren't even aware.

They're like, what do you mean?

This is just the way, right?

And then this happens.

And it's like, now a lot of people are like, oh, wait a minute.

All these people who I thought knew what they were talking about and thought had my best interests in mind don't.

Yeah.

Right.

Which is like, it's sort of like, you know, like you kind of have to sometimes go through the pain.

before you come out the other side.

I think that's kind of where we are as a society is waking up and realizing, because, bro, I thought I was super awake in 2019.

And then I realized, man, things are way worse than I thought.

Like, I thought they were here bad.

They're actually here bad.

Wow.

So it was an awakening for me, too.

Like, it's not like I was like, oh, yeah, I knew all of this.

No, dude, I, I,

I, there were definitely a lot of times.

I'm like, oh my God.

Yeah.

You know, I stopped watching the news that year.

Oh, dude, I haven't watched the new the news.

Think about how crazy that is.

Why would we call it the news?

None of it's news.

None of it.

It's all propaganda, regardless.

I don't care whether you're talking about the right or the left.

It's still propaganda.

Right?

It's still.

So, I mean, that's a huge part of why I've changed my entire life because it's like, all right, I'm not going to be involved in that drama.

Yeah.

That's their drama.

But it's a very engaging drama.

Like, I will admit, if like, if like, if like the, if the Biden-Trump drama were a movie, it'd be like a compelling movie, dude.

I can't deny that at all.

You know, like Trump the other day challenged Biden to a God.

If they actually have a golf match.

That'd be legendary.

I mean, like, do you want to talk about pulling attention?

Like, how could anyone resist that, even if you hate them and hate the system?

It is so compelling.

I just have to, as a storyteller, that's super compelling.

It was the first debate I've ever watched.

I didn't watch it.

I didn't watch it because I knew what was going to happen.

Because anyone who saw anything about Biden for the last three years understands he's got dementia.

Like, ask any doctor who knows anything about dementia.

Like, yeah, he's got, like, it's not.

The New York Times just released this.

I don't know if you saw it, that he's been getting visits from a Parkinson's doctor.

Dude, they got, they stole that from Alex Berenson, man.

I follow him on

Substack, and he was been writing about that for two weeks or whatever it is.

And then they like,

I listened to.

the quote unquote news, which I,

everyone I listen to are independent journalists, and they're all people who have agendas and admit them, which is like, okay, I can court if you tell me what you believe and why, I can course correct for what the information you tell me and understand a probability to give to it, right?

But if you're fooling yourself, I could probably still course correct, but it's like there's no reason for me to listen to.

Berenson's one of the ones I listened to.

Um, and he used to be a New York Times reporter, and he actually woke up and kind of realized how screwed up everything was.

Wow, yeah, he wrote about that weeks ago.

Wow, like that's like that's and it's funny.

Like,

this info was out there.

Yeah.

Did you see?

Oh, dude,

I can't.

You don't suck me down this hole because I'll go to.

No, that's how it's like.

I'm

resoundingly against being involved in any of that drama.

I know it's not my drama, but it's still like, it's hard to resist.

I'm following this Jordan Peterson drama right now.

It's tempting.

What, what drama?

You didn't see this?

No, Jordan's a friend of mine.

Oh, so him and Michaela's daughter.

Right.

I know a huge Twitter beef right now with Nick Fuentes.

Do you know Nick?

Oh, he's that like lunatic dude who's like, like, not even right.

He's like, like, Naziist, right?

Or something?

Something.

But like actual.

Like, not like, not like...

Against Jews.

Yeah.

Okay, right.

So he's anti-Semitic, right?

So they're going at it really hard.

And now people are picking sides.

It's a big deal.

But it's tempting to get sucked up in that.

It is.

It's really hard to resist.

Yeah, people like drama innately.

That's why these news outlets love reporting negative things because it's just drama.

It is because it adrenalizes and then you get addicted to that.

And like, that's how they

I forget who it was, man.

Uh, one of the spiritual people I was listening to a few years ago on some, I forget what I was, I was at a conference, and they were telling me that what their point was

that um

screens suck our life force out through our attention.

And I remember thinking, okay, that's like a cool, you know, like I saw like the golden or I read the golden compass.

Like, that's a, that's the, the, the theme of the book.

It's a great theme, but I'm like, come on, dude, like, like, let's live in the world, the, the, the world, like the materialist physical world we live, or at least the world has a materialist physical plane, right?

Explain this to me on that plane.

And like, you know, they would, they weren't that type of person, right?

But then like

that frame has stuck with me.

And like, even if it's not literally true, it's definitely one of those things that's

very truthful.

Like there's a lot of things that aren't true, but if you act as if they are true, they make your life better.

And that's one of those things that

if you act as it's true, your life's way better.

Like if

probably 80% of my attention in 2019, at least, was caught in the normal sort of dramas of Western modernity.

Now I would say it's 20%.

Wow.

Yeah.

And bro, that's been all the difference.

Like, that's been a man.

I mean, it was a very conscious, like, it was a conscious decision to do that.

Like, I mean, I got just as adrenalized as anyone early COVID and to mid-COVID.

And that's when I really started to wake up.

And I'm like, hold on, this is fucked, dude.

This isn't, it's not working, right?

And then that's a big part of why my wife and I moved out on land and, you know, bought a ranch and then started, helped start a school out there and all that.

And why we don't let our kids, we don't have screens for our kids.

And, and the next step for me and her is like enforced like anti-screen time, like putting phones in like a Faraday box for like three hours a day or whatever it is.

Like,

because I think I'm at that point now where it's like, I'm not going to go any deeper until I start

like making myself, you know?

Like, I'm super excited.

I didn't know about that Jordan Peterson.

Like, that's a good sign.

No, I love Jordan and Michaela.

I wish them the best, but I'm super glad I didn't know about that drama.

My goal,

probably the next step for me in terms of health and consciousness, is where like, if I hang out with someone like you, and like, I don't know hardly any of the dramas you're talking about, right?

Just because like I'm focused all my attention on the things that matter to me, which are

not,

you know, two

senior citizens arguing about who's got a better golf game.

You know, like that, that's never going to matter to me.

Yeah.

You know, I love that.

I love the spiritual aspect you incorporate in your life, too.

Yeah.

Oh, dude, it's been, that was,

I was, I was like an atheist for my whole life.

I never believed in God because to me, it seemed transparently obvious, like, you can't reason your way to God, right?

Like, I know Thomas Aquinas and what, no, you cannot go from a world of empiricism and reason and logic.

to God.

You cannot.

And

as a kid, I was like, this doesn't make sense.

There's no proof of this.

Why would I believe this?

And

so it was just, I wasn't like angry about it.

I wasn't like a Sam Harris nibbled who's like, you know, thinking all Christians are stupid or whatever.

I mean, I did think, all right, you're kind of stupid to believe this.

I don't, there's no evidence for it.

But I wasn't like judgmental, judgy, that judgy about it.

And then

about four years ago, I did some psychedelic medicine.

I mixed LSD and MDMA.

And, bro, I had the most profound spiritual experience and i realized without going like too crazy deep into it i realized that um i'm right you you don't logic or reason your way to god uh god is um

the spiritual

aspect of that is is beyond reason right and and uh that you you can experience it though and once you have the experience of god

then it's like oh yeah right which is what i had the experience, like what religious would call an ecstatic experience, right?

And I remember I'm really good friends with this Mormon guy.

He's like, very devout.

He's the type of Christian, like if you meet him, you're like, if all Christians were like you, I'd be Christian.

Like, he's like the type of guy.

He's like Mormon.

Yeah, he's Mormon.

And very.

These guys are extreme, though.

Usually.

Yeah, I mean, it depends.

Some are some are, right?

Some are, you know, like the magic underwear and all that shit.

He, he's like a normal dude, but like

he really does try to live by the words of

in the teachings of Christ, not just say it, right?

And he does, like, he's just a great dude to be around.

And I called him and I'm like, buddy,

I didn't understand.

When you say you have a relationship with God, you really mean that literally.

It's a feeling you have.

He goes, Yeah, dude, I've been trying to tell you this for 10 years.

And I'm like, I thought you were fucking stupid.

Like, I literally, no, I did because like I thought he was like listening to the preacher or reading the Book of Mormon and just believing it, which is fucking transparent nonsense.

No, not at all.

Like he, and so once I had that experience, I'm like, okay, I'm not religious.

I don't need a dogma.

I don't need a container for my experience, which is what a religion is.

It is an external container for the ecstatic experience.

But then after that, I'm like, okay, yeah, this is real.

Like, I don't know.

I'm not going to pretend to be some expert on God.

or the universe or spirituality, but whatever it is,

I had that experience.

I felt it.

That's legit.

I get it now.

And I went instantaneously from being, because it's like one of those things, like,

you know, you're a virgin, then you have sex.

And it's like, you watch all the, watch all the porn you want, read all the books about it.

You got to have sex to understand it, right?

I think same thing for believing in God.

I think if you don't have the experience, I guess you can just tell yourself, right?

There are definitely people who believe it because everyone else around them does and whatever, but I'm not one of those.

I can feel it these days, dude, because I love how you source your own meat.

Because when I eat poor quality meat, I can feel it

in your body for sure.

I only eat grass-fed, grass-finished now.

Yes.

I need to.

And it has to be ethically sourced.

Where you live, Vegas, right?

Yeah.

There's a company out here that's really good.

Yeah.

You can find that around there locally?

Yeah.

Force of Nature Meats.

Oh, yeah.

The tailor's over.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's at Whole Foods.

Yeah, no, like the, I know the people who started that.

They're in Fredericksburg.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're great.

They're fantastic.

Yeah.

They ethically source everything.

Oh, yeah, no, they do.

They're legit, they're for real, legit, big difference, dude.

Yeah, I know it costs way more, but it's worth it, my opinion.

Because the food, I mean, they're injecting stuff and the poor quality meats.

Oh, dude, it's I mean, like it was bad in the 80s, like with hormones and antibiotics.

Now it's like

I wouldn't, I

man, my wife and I are total foodies, and it's hard for us to go out to restaurants anymore because it's like you can't, you know, even at the best three Michelin star restaurants,

they're doing their best to source.

It's like they, you just can't.

You can't get everything and get it high quality.

Like, I mean, like, in terms of ethically clean, you know,

it's just impossible.

Yeah.

And a lot of them use seed oils, even the nice restaurants, canola oil.

For sure.

Yes.

I went to STK in Vegas and I asked them what they use, canola oil.

Of course they do.

Crazy.

First off, most people don't realize how poisonous that is.

They don't realize it's literally machine engine lubricant.

It is like it was made for

submarine engines or something crazy like that.

It was developed as a fucking engine lubricant.

It is so horrible.

It is the worst.

The story I always tell people, like, who like argue with that, I'm like, listen, go research Kate Shanahan.

Yeah.

And

look, she was the doctor.

She's like a pretty famous.

She wrote a book called Deep Nutrition, which is amazing.

But

she was the nutritionist and doctor, team doctor for the Lakers.

Literally cut seed oil from everything the team fed the players.

And like the team

was demonstrably better

to the game that they cut that.

Wow.

To the point where like 15 other NBA teams hired her as a consultant, nutrition consultant and all this stuff.

And I'm like, LeBron James doesn't eat seed oils anymore.

He's like, oh, really?

I'm like,

I wonder what Lakers year that was.

That was the first time Dwight Howard was there.

So remember when Dwight Howard was cooked and he came back, like everyone thought he was done?

Yeah.

Came back to the Lakers and all of a sudden had this one amazing season?

It's because he was eating the way she told him to.

And then he left.

He signed a big free agent deal off of that and went somewhere else and was cooked the next year because he started eating all the crap he normally would eat.

He got cut the next year after winning a championship.

I always wondered how that made sense.

I wish they kept that team, man.

I'm a Lakers fan.

Yeah.

You follow sports?

Probably not.

Man, I grew up in that era.

Like it's, uh,

uh,

I,

I think we're talking about out here with kids.

Like, I, I don't, my kids aren't in any team sports.

Like my son's super into Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

He's really good at it.

Like he's, which is amazing.

Uh, but um

team sports is another thing.

I grew up playing.

My wife played Division I college basketball.

Like she got a

full ride.

I know, right?

Um, but like as much as I, and I still love it, I like, I can't deny that I still love watching football and basketball, whatever.

Um, I feel like team sports are in a lot of ways toxic, especially at the kid level.

Yeah.

Um, because they teach, everyone's gonna talk about what the good things they teach.

I can't deny there aren't good things, right?

For sports, just overall, movement, that's of course that's great, right?

But team sports, the problem with team sports to me is that it teaches the child to sublimate himself to a group.

I want to teach my children how to be sovereign.

And so if you want to teach your kids how to be a cog and a wheel, that's cool.

Good for you.

Go put them in team sports.

I'm not going to do that.

When my son goes to do stuff,

his effort

rewards him.

And his failures, he pays for.

You know, and like he understands, like, like jiu-jitsu has been an amazing

tennis is probably like this, almost any individual sport.

i'm sure i mean to the extent golf is a sport whatever but like uh uh jiu-jitsu has been so uh so great for him because it's highly competitive and it's like he's on a team he's got other kids he trains with yeah but like

when you're on the map it's just you you know and he has learned so much about so many lessons that took me decades to learn um i mean part of it is i'm like helping him like understand and contextualize the stuff but like it's so awesome to watch him

really grasp these things

and understand like

what I get from jiu-jitsu is what I put in, you know, and that you know, if I lose, first off, it's totally fine.

Like, you know, we just saying in jiu-jitsu, there's only there's no losing, there's only winning and learning.

And he gets that.

And like, but more importantly, like the results I'm getting

is a result of what I'm putting in.

Right.

And to see him connect those dots and then turn up the practice, right?

And then get serious.

Like, he actually, like,

he used to only go to one school and he's like, daddy, I'm not getting pushed enough.

Cause like, wow, he was like the best kid at the school and change schools.

And then, even at the new school, he, there's kids there who can, who can roll with him, but he's like, they play a very specific game.

He's like, Dad, I need to train with kids who play this other sort of game.

And so, like, I sort of take him in addition to his school to other places.

Wow.

I know, right?

It's amazing.

Like, what not, I'm not saying there's he's only a nine-year-old like that, but to get there as a nine-year-old, that's incredible.

And, but it's not, and it's so cool because it's not, he's not neurotic about winning.

I mean, like, I, of course, I, like, I told him for, like, I don't care if you win or lose.

What matters when we go to competitions is you have fun, you grow and improve.

If you focus on, if

I I said, buddy, if you are getting those two things, you can lose every competition you go to.

I don't care.

In no way, shape, or form, does that matter?

Wow.

Yeah, like gold medals are cool.

Like, if you get it, put it on your wall.

That's not the point, right?

And he gets that.

And so it's like, he's not trying to improve because he's neurotic about winning.

He's trying to improve because.

like he's a young boy who wants to develop value and and re and and mastery of a skill and and he's so confident now and it's so awesome to watch him click all in.

I'm not saying you can't get this from team sports, but team sports, it's like you got to worry about everyone else, you know, and like what are they thinking, what are they feeling?

But you don't have to deal with any of that garbage, right?

It's just you.

A lot of politics involved in team sports, too.

Oh my gosh, I know.

Like, I have friends who are like, whose kids, especially some of them are good.

They're like, oh, the travel teams.

And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do it.

I don't just love my family.

I like my family.

so every decision i make the first question is does this take time for my family and if the answer is yes then it better be off the charts important or valuable yeah and if it's not no way one thing that caught my eye about you also is you're teaching your kids self-defense at a very young age oh yeah of course oh for sure my kid both my seven-year-old daughter and my nine-year-old son, I brought in a

Army Special Forces guy who's like a badass, teach them shooting right like i'm a pretty good shooter but like i don't know get get the real experts to and they're like they're great shots now they love shooting my nine-year-old got his first deer this year damn yeah i know my daughter loves shooting she really wants to get a deer seven she's seven and you have full trust in that i mean i'm not sending her out by herself yeah she's going with me she's not like a little girl in the woods with a gun no no no like but yeah of course i mean like you know my nine-year-old we went out hunting and and yeah, I mean, like, if you teach my children, at least, and plenty of other kids I've met, if you teach them how to be responsible, even with things that are potentially dangerous,

then they will be.

Like, if they understand how serious things are, they'll be, they'll be serious with them.

You know, like, of course, they don't have the guns in the room.

Like, when they're not using them, I have a gun safe.

It's like

the obvious things are obviously taken care of.

And they're not.

shooting ever by themselves.

I'm always there with them or someone like, you know, the guy who was the serious instructor.

But, um, but oh, yeah, this year I'll totally take her hunting.

Wow.

And, and, you know, she'll probably get a deer.

That's amazing.

I know, which will be, think about that, man.

And seven, she'll probably be eight, maybe, I think, uh, by the time she gets a deer.

An eight-year-old girl goes.

First off, I mean, like, you want to talk about important, like, one of the most important relationships in the girl's life is with her dad, right?

Most important is mom.

Second, most important is dad.

So she, I mean, um, she,

one of my most jobs is a dad, right?

Keep your daughter off the pole.

If you pay attention to your daughter, she's not going to do shit like that, right?

So this is a great way for me to, to not just pay attention to her, but to do something she likes and she's excited about

that is bonding for us.

But then also talk about confidence, man.

I mean.

That little girl already knows she can shoot and in a year, two at max, she's going to know she can feed herself.

Like she can stalk and take down a deer.

She can already skin it and gut it.

Yeah, like

I'll show you.

She's gutting deer.

Yeah, for sure, dude.

Wow.

It's not that hard.

You just have to show them how.

No, I'm just surprised because girls think stuff like that is gross normally.

Not mine.

Like my daughter loves it, man.

Like she loves cooking.

She loves preparing meat.

Like

cleaning and gutting an animal is really part of cooking.

Like in the history of humanity, processing animals has almost always been the work of whoever's cooking, right?

Which in most cultures women, not always, but often.

And she loves that.

Because what it is, is she's a child who now has a skill, right?

And no one can take that from her, right?

No one can deny that.

And the next step for her is to, and bro, my nine-year-old, man, when the first time.

So, you know, the main, the prime cut on a deer is what's called the backstrap, right?

So like what would be like the ribeye section of a cow is much smaller on a deer, of course, right?

So it's like about, you know, this big, like a beef tenderloin is what it looks like.

But it's the other side.

And so the first time we sat down with the deer he killed and we ate the tenderloin from the deer he killed.

Dude, I've never seen a child so proud.

Wow.

No, because think about it, man.

Nine years old.

Everyone in your family is eating what you put on the table.

That's not a small deal.

Like my son is very, very confident and has great self-possession because he does things like that.

Of course, I helped him, blah, blah, blah, but he took the shot.

Like, if he hadn't hit that, the deer would have ran off.

Right.

And then, so, like, it was, it was an amazing, not just proud moment for him, but a confidence building, right?

Yeah.

I mean,

I can't wait for that, for my daughter to have the same thing.

And you want to talk about like, then my daughter doesn't have to.

At that point, My daughter knows, okay, I can do things myself.

I'm not, especially for girls, it's very important for them to understand, yes, of course, I can have relationships with men, rely on them, but I can also do shit myself if I have to, right?

If it comes down to it, yeah, that's important for women, I feel like.

I mean, it's important for everybody, but dudes, I think we kind of implicitly understand if we don't produce value, no one cares about us, right?

Yeah, like you could be a woman and have a different orientation to life.

But

my daughter wants to be able to do stuff.

And so fuck yeah, I'm going to help her do it.

That's cool, man.

Sounds like those moments are what brings you what brings you joy, too.

It's it is, bro, kids are kids are a paradox.

They are a huge pain in the ass at a lot of us.

Like people, anyone who tells you that they're not, it doesn't have kids or is lung.

But at the same time, they're worth it 10x.

Like they're,

you know, everyone says, you'll hear, do you have kids?

I want kids, not yet.

Okay, all right.

You're in no rush.

You're a dude, so it'll be fine.

But, like,

people will tell you, kids are your best teacher.

Like, I remember hearing that.

I'm like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

What is a two-year-old going to teach me?

And of course, I was being like ridiculous.

I was thinking of it literally.

They were right, but not in the way they were explaining.

People said that.

Kids are great teachers because they're a mirror.

Right?

Like,

they are going to reflect you back at you.

And you're going to see who you are, either because they're acting just like you or they're reacting to you.

And in that way,

so like probably my kids have been

one of the biggest catalysts for growth in me in my whole life for sure.

No doubt, man.

Like they've been, and then

I'm going to tell you, dude,

most of the cultural narrative around dads, I think, again, most of it I found to be false, right?

Like, look, there are some dads, the first time they see their baby when it's little, they freak out and they're in love.

Okay, cool.

No judgment of that.

I did not have that experience.

Like, I didn't not love it, but to me, a relationship is something you have to form over time with someone else who's contributing the relationship.

And babies are sociopathic little locusts.

They don't contribute anything, right?

When they're little, and it's fine.

That's what a baby's supposed to be, right?

They're not doing anything wrong.

But, like,

you know, my wife's like, oh, look, he's looking at me.

I'm like, he doesn't have vision until three months.

Like, it doesn't even make.

So, like,

whatever.

It's great that my wife and mother-in-law were all cooing and thought that they had deep love for the baby when it was little.

That was important.

For me, my relationship with each of my kids has grown as they've grown.

I love it.

And so my nine-year-old is now like getting to be real serious boyhood.

And we can talk about complicated, kind of sophisticated things.

And he gets it, right?

And it's so awesome.

My seven-year-old girl's starting to get there too.

And so it's like someone very wise once told me like, listen, you're honestly, as long as your wife's an amazing mom, you're not that, your only job until they get to be 10 to 12, depending on the kid, is to play with them.

And I'm like, really?

They were being a little bit extreme.

It's not your only job, but it was more right than I realized.

Wow.

Like, my primary job with my kids is to play with them.

And they love playing playing with that.

When they want to be nurtured, it's mommy.

Like they'll tolerate me if mommy's not there, but it's mommy.

But when they want to play, mommy's not fun.

Daddy's fun, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And so we have the best time.

But now they're getting my two oldest, especially getting to the age where it's like they're

becoming human, you know, like full humans.

And I can see how like I can have such a an impact, but it's not like do this, do this.

It's much more like with my son, I'm very Socratic with it.

Why this?

Why that?

What do you think?

You know, as much as possible, I try and help him

form his own conclusions to understand the questions, form his own conclusions.

And then, like, instead of telling him, well, here's what you have to do, I'll be like, all right, well, here's what I do.

Here's how I see it.

Wow.

But you can see it a different way.

I like that style because I grew up disciplinary, which I feel like most kids do.

And there was a lot of conflict.

But with your style, it's more open-ended, right?

We still have conflict at times, for sure.

Well, that's inevitable.

But yeah, but

no, yeah, it's it's not conflict because I'm oppressive or pushing down on them, right?

No, no, and a lot of kids face out with whether it's school grades or sports or whatever.

Uh, a lot of parents put pressure, dude.

One of the main things we've done to

head off conflict with our kids is we teach them, ask for what you want, right?

And we always say, no guarantee you're going to get it, but uh if you can learn to identify to yourself what you want and then ask for it, at a minimum, mommy and daddy will always do our best to help you try and get what you want, right?

Yeah.

Or help you figure out how to get it.

And so our two oldest, especially are really starting to understand that.

Like I said, like when I talk to my son, like he was very frustrated that the first jiu-jitsu school he's going to wasn't very good.

But like, he asked for what he wanted, went to a better school.

And even at the better school, wanted more than, okay, great, then we'll add this.

And, you know, I know a place that's got some really good young kids you can cross-train and this and that.

And so like, he's like, because I taught him too, I'm like, buddy, you create your reality with your thoughts.

Like you're like,

and he gets that now.

And so that's one of the main ways we've learned to kind of head off like conflict is most of the time, in my experience, conflict with our kids is they're having an emotion they don't know how to express, especially if they're younger.

And for that, it's mainly just emotional connection, holding space, helping them modulate off of you.

Right.

But as they get older and start thinking as well as feeling, it's much more about, all right,

helping them learn to think through problem solving, right?

Instead of either solving their problem or just dictating an answer, right?

You know, like, because those are two extremes, like the authoritarian parents talking about, which I can't stand.

We weren't, we aren't like, but bro, helicopter parents are just as abusive in a different way.

Yeah.

You know, that's what entitlement is.

Entitlement is when a child is frustrated and you rush in to meet their needs for them.

And if you do that consistently, that's how they develop like entitlement.

And you see a lot of, you know, rich parents with their kids and them kind of messed up, right?

I'm sure your friends, you're dealing with that with your circle.

Oh, yeah.

No, I definitely have.

It is probably the number one worry and concern and issue with friends of mine who have a lot of money.

The way they think about it, though, is how do I.

How do I make sure my kid has drive?

And I'm like, well, are you sure?

Like, like,

because most of my entrepreneur friends, and I was in this space for a long time, the ones who have money have money because they were very driven, but the drive comes from a wounded place.

Right.

And I'm like, you sure you want your kids to be wounded?

You know, like, I don't want my kids to be wounded, you know.

So, yeah, I'm not trying to recreate me with my kids.

Like, the ideal situation is there's enough shit you have to deal with on earth.

I don't want to add to it, you know?

Like, I want to put them in a spot as much as possible where they're having to deal with the least amount of stuff that me or my wife dumped on them, right?

You know, just the trauma of life as it is without any family shit is enough.

A lot of successful people have trauma, though, now that you said that, 100%.

Yeah, it got me damned.

Almost all of them.

Yeah, there's definitely a relation there.

It's tough to find a counterexample of someone who

is very successful in the way we would define it, modernity, whose primary driver isn't some feeling of I'm not good enough.

Wow.

So that's what causes success then, trauma.

Well, sort of.

Sort of, sort of, because you can find a whole bunch of traumatized people who are poor as fuck.

That's true.

So it doesn't necessarily

success can be a coping mechanism.

It can be a byproduct of a coping mechanism for the feeling of shame and lack and whatever, but it's not necessarily.

You could just as easily become a drug drug addict.

There's lots of other

coping mechanisms that aren't as productive.

Yeah.

Success is probably one of the rarer ones, actually.

And I mean, a lot of cases, yeah.

Yeah.

That's what happened to you, though.

You got some stuff.

And then, I mean, every bro, I, I, I,

I don't,

yeah, of course, like, I had a ton, but no, I,

it's 2024.

You're 27.

I'll bet you

no more than 20 years, probably 10 years.

You're going to look back, all like a lot of people, not just you, but just you're going to look back.

And most people are starting to wake up to the fact that our society collectively is insanely traumatized.

Right.

And that we live in a sea of trauma.

Like what I just talked about, the feeling of I'm not good enough.

When you leave here, go look at every media message you get and ask yourself how many of those messages at their core are a message of you aren't enough.

Wow.

Every single ad, without fucking exception, every single ad at its core, if it's that, okay, you could probably show me a couple that are like funny and there's nothing in there but you aren't enough.

Okay, fine.

Virtually every ad

at its core is you aren't enough.

Like every ad to women is.

There might be a couple to men that are just funny, but that's it.

But then

most media messages, not just ads, but in media.

You need this course.

You need this supplement.

You aren't enough.

All of it is you aren't enough.

Wow.

That's true though.

Yeah.

For women, it's about looks.

Oh, dude, for women, it's horrible.

Bro, it's so toxic.

It's so bad for women, man.

Like, I, oh, it's a huge part of why I don't want my daughter on screens, my daughter, especially.

Because I don't want her filling her head with the horrible ideas and thoughts of these

women who think that their only job is to be pretty and to consume.

Ugh.

That's a lot of.

There's a lot more to life than that.

Yeah, yeah, that's a shallow way of living, I think, just off your looks.

Not how I want to be.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not good looking enough for it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not either, but I feel like the purpose isn't there with that lifestyle.

You know what I mean?

Listen,

you can make a really good argument that the same thing's true for economic financial achievement, right?

The counter-argument is, but you know, I'm doing something for other people.

Yeah, maybe, maybe not, right?

Like, I mean,

uh a really good uh iconic example everyone celebrates

most people celebrate how much elon musk has achieved right right and take nothing away from that the dude has done quite a bit of stuff and and a lot of it's like cool rockets are cool i'm not denying anything what's the price he's paid for that

well he has a level what do you know about his kids yeah he's not in their lives right

one of them disowned him I think I saw that.

Transitioned.

Yeah.

And took a different last name.

I saw that.

I'm not willing to sacrifice my children on the altar of my achievement.

Not knocking Elon.

I'm just telling you, there's a price to pay for that.

I don't see what Elon is doing as fundamentally different than what Kim Kardashian is doing from an emotional standpoint.

Okay, if you want to say he's producing more stuff that's good for civilization, you can probably make that argument.

You're probably right.

Okay, fine, whatever.

But the core emotional drivers of the two are the same.

Wow.

I never even thought of comparing them, but when you put it that way, I can see it.

I can see that.

But she's also a sharp businesswoman, not.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Not knocking Kim or her family or whatever.

No, no, no.

Like, I picked her because she's...

She's also very smart, very accomplished.

Like, she's done.

I mean, if makeup is valued, valuable to you and appearance and all that kind of stuff, if that's a primary value, I mean, those women are the Elon Musk of that world, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

Not my thing, but whatever.

Yeah.

Tucker, it's been really cool, man.

I can't wait to do a part two with you and see the feedback on this one.

Anything you want to close off with or promote?

No, man.

You got a book or anything coming out?

No.

Actually, that's a great segue.

I'm working on my next memoir.

It's kicking my ass right now.

It's really hard.

The The only thing I have, it's not even to promote, but

what I do now is I help people write their memoirs.

And so it's like a, like I have like a sort of basically a memoir coaching program.

In a month, like August 7th and 8th, our third cohort launches, like our third workshop, onboarding workshop.

And what's cool, one of the cool things, I mean, like, listen, I'm great at writing memoirs.

I'm one of the best.

I helped Goggins write his and Tiffany Haddish and mine all sold a bunch and blah, blah, blah.

But like

I'm actually writing mine with, I'm going through the program with the group, right?

And a big part of the program is sharing our writing and whatever.

Everyone else can share if they want or not.

I make all my stuff available to the group.

So, when I not even finish a rough draft, like I'm showing them my raw drafts, right?

Um, which, like, when I first started, I'm like, okay, they'll just see, you know, whatever.

And then I didn't realize I was going to hit like a

real, real bumpy patch.

And so, but it has been very hard for me.

me.

It's ended up being amazing for the people in the group because I think a lot of them have the idea that, oh, like these fancy memoirists are, you know, do this stuff I could never do.

And instead, they're seeing like my dumpster-fire drafts and like, oh, yeah, I can write shit better than that.

That's terrible.

Right.

And they realize, oh, he's not, there's no magic to what he's doing.

Like,

it's, he's struggling like I struggle.

He's starting where I'm starting, which I tell them, but they don't believe me.

Right.

Like, cause I'm sure like some kid who's like, wants to be a big podcaster or YouTube star, like looks at you and like, you're like, it's not magic.

You're like, oh, I can never have what you have.

Yeah, you can.

It's just work.

Yeah.

Right.

And so it's ended up being amazing and really helped that group.

So

I don't think anyone's ever done that before any like really accomplished memoirist took a bunch of people through their memoirs as they were writing, as he was writing his and then shared it.

So I think I'm the first person to do that.

Maybe not.

But I've got that going.

It's an expensive program, but but um, it's been amazing for even for me, but for the other people in it, too.

That's going, yeah, we'll link it below.

Thanks for coming on my notes.

Yeah, man.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

As always, see you tomorrow.