Our First In-Person Episode: Mental Health, Masculinity, and What We Wish We’d Learned Sooner

Hey, everybody.

This looks a little bit different than our other recordings that we have done before, and that's because we're actually all here in person.

We spent the last few days meeting and mapping out what the rest of this year looks like and the long-term plans for Find Out.

And along with that, we decided to do two in-person recordings because usually we are in three or four different states, and actually, we had never met before.

So, what you're about to see is one of the first times that we have ever met in person.

And we actually ended up having a really powerful conversation about stigmas around mental health and things that we can do to lower that so more people get the help they need.

We also have some laughs in there because, of course, we can't take ourselves too seriously.

And we also talk about some classes that we think would actually be great for kids to have to go through before they graduate college and actually improve their lives.

So with that, take a look.

Let us know what you think.

And enjoy.

Hi, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

And you can see we still act the same way, even in person, that we do on Zoom call, except more touching, I guess.

And more beer.

And more beer.

Well, same way.

Wow, you just don't see it.

So on this episode, we're going to dive into a few topics.

The first one we're going to talk about is

what class do you wish they taught in school?

And we're talking K through 12, not college.

Mandated class that you have to take.

Like you have to take, you know, math classes, science classes, all these things.

So we want to talk about what is a class you wish you had that would have actually prepared you for life?

And our listeners in, I think, Oklahoma, they have Bible study now included in that lesson.

So that's why I'm going to go ahead and

get that.

Trump Bibles.

Also learning about the fact that Donald Trump did like lost or did not lose the election.

Yeah, it's fact.

You know, they got to look for the discrepancies that don't exist.

They're doing that.

That's for real.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ryan Walters, the state superintendent.

Yep.

What?

So

we've all talked about it a little bit before.

So two of us have the same one,

which is Zach and I.

So I'm going to let Zach talk about it first.

Personal finance, 100%.

And one state, I don't want to compliment this guy because I hate him, but Ron DeSantis has it in Florida where it's okay, a mandated high school thing.

I think it's the only good thing Ron DeSantis.

We were just talking about how I needed to scoot away from the overall Republicans going to get into it.

There are a number of ways you could have introduced that that didn't involve Ron DeSantis.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

That's fine.

All right, I'm only saying because one state actually does do it.

All right, let's just move past this part.

Let's move past that part.

Yeah, no more complimenting Ron DeSantis.

But if I had known all the shit I know now as a a 37-year-old when I was 18, I probably literally could have saved 10 years of strife in my life.

Because when I first got my credit card, I was 18 years old.

My first credit card at $1,000 limit, it's free money.

That's what it felt like when I was a kid.

It's free money in my hand.

Spent it.

I think I probably got 90 days, 120-day late payments on that thing.

So many times my credit was...

below 600 for like the first 10 years of me being an adult completely screwed me over obviously that's not the case anymore i've you know eventually figured out how to be a human being, but I had no context as to what.

No thanks to school, right?

Exactly.

And if in school, I'd learn what are the fundamentals of credit.

How do you manage any of your money in your life?

Because I was a poor spender during all that time.

Like every single element of my life up until I was like 27 was like, don't ask me about money.

You will lose your life in the end if you're going to rely on me.

It's just, it's not going to happen.

So personal finance, I think, could go a huge, not only just for like people.

managing their lives, but just in the sense of like the economy.

I think the economy would do so much better if we had people who were aware of how finance works from the jump, getting out into the world and they know how to manage their credit.

I mean, we would not have the same debt problems.

It would have a huge cascade effect.

So you're saying something like 12 trillion in outstanding credit card debt across America is a problem?

I don't know.

Just a little bit.

One thing that I don't know that I could have been taught when I was a kid was

what compounding interest actually

is.

Like I could intellectually understand it.

I could write in a graph.

I could do the

like actual

fucking multiplication and I could conceptualize it, but I couldn't internalize it.

That's the funny thing because we do the in

economy or economics.

God, I can't even talk.

You do like the stock market game.

So we learn how to lose money on dumb risks, but we don't learn how to balance your checkbook or like manage cash flow or understand what happens if you lose your money or if you borrow a bunch of money and then you don't, you just ignore it like it's going to go away.

So I actually did take this class.

So I, I wanted to be blue collar.

Like I, I was one of those kids who is, I could take any test.

You know, Scantron was my favorite fucking thing.

Like I, I could ace any test, never did anything else.

That, that's who I was in high school, which meant no homework, meant the teachers fucking hated me.

I hated school.

So in, I don't know if it's a Long Island thing or if it's a

New York thing, but we have this program called BOCES, which I don't know what it stands for.

It's basically blue-collar for kids who don't like school.

So I wanted to go into construction or really architecture.

And then they kept canceling classes until I ended up building cabinets in high school.

Not the plan.

But in order to do the blue-collar shit, I had to learn all of the stuff that everybody should have learned.

So I learned the basic, very basics, but the basics of accounting.

I learned how to balance a checkbook and all that type of thing back when, you know, we were actually writing in our checkbook the balance.

One fact.

Never written a check.

You've never written a check your whole life?

Wow.

I have a checkbook.

Never written one.

Really?

Nope.

Okay.

Never had to.

See, the world is changing.

You don't usually need to.

I mean, I very rarely do it now, but

I think that with the personal financing, a lot of things about education, and we talked to Congressman Pat Ryan about this the other day, was that like...

Sometimes there's a split between the people who want are looking for debt relief from college loans and like the people who who are more on the blue collar track and there's this disconnect because it's like, why are you getting relief and I'm getting nothing.

I feel like personal finance is one that everybody would benefit from.

It would help the country and it would save a lot of kids like yourself.

And I've heard the story of friends of my own that that literally got themselves into tens of thousands of dollars of debt and then are paying like a 25 to 30 percent interest rate on top of that.

It's impossible to get out of it.

And so like, right.

And it just sets you, like you said, set you back like 10 years.

And like taking one class like like senior year or whenever, like seems like a logical thing to have people do.

Like I, my mom is a teacher, so it's not going to be great for me to say I didn't like school either.

And I always,

my issue was I always bristled at the things that I was forced to do that I could not figure out why I was doing it.

And math was one of them.

I struggled at math.

And

I would ask my like.

calculus teacher like why do I need this it tell me how I'm going to use this in my practical life and the answer is you don't.

What it does do, though, is it makes you think critically and it like pushes you and it like helps you with with problem solving and things like that.

I wish someone had just told me that.

But I think like, you know, learning about, like you said, balancing a checkbook, like a credit card is not free money.

In fact, it's quite a dangerous thing to give an 18-year-old and

gets a lot, like thousands, if not millions of Americans out of debt at like 25, right?

Like the fact that they're having to spend their 20s digging out just before they never get in debt in the first place because they know how it works.

Go straight into the workplace.

And even if they make less money over like the lifetime earnings, you're starting out with a green light, you know, basically debt-free.

And you can just, as long as you understand credit, cash flow, and how to manage your finances.

So you could, I mean, I think it should be like maybe every year.

just a required class and through through high school at least.

But you could start.

I mean, I remember kids carrying around a loaf of fucking flour.

That's what you call it, right?

A bag of flour, calling it a baby, so that they could learn how to be a mom

and baking cake.

No,

when, and then they call it home economics.

And I'm like, it's an elective where you learn how to bake,

but you're not going to talk about your credit score.

Like, that's kind of the macro home economics conversation.

And we just like, we're like, nah, that's probably not important.

But, you know, A squared plus B squared equals C squared

required learning.

So

I was a terrible student when i was in high school and and everything it was a fourth grade i remember the day that i stopped doing my homework i i had a legitimate excuse for my homework not getting done and i never did homework again like never never did homework

from fourth grade on how did you pass anything because i ace absolutely everything that i took i was very sorry and they could not fail me i was i was like i'm higher scores than anybody else in the class.

You can't fail.

But like writing papers.

Did you write papers at home or between classes?

classes?

Yeah, nice.

I was the same way as you.

I remember in seventh grade, I think it was, I handed him my homework.

It was like all crumpled and messed up, but I handed it and I got, and the teacher just sat there and went, that's fifth.

I can't believe it.

And the whole class gave me a round of applause.

So I completely relate to that.

When I,

I think same grade, I uh, I had my cat, I had like a poster that I, some sort of project with a poster, and my kitten took it and tore the shit out of me.

And I went into class and I was like, my cat ate my homework.

And this teacher was like,

And I just remember feeling like the biggest fucking asshole ever.

I was like, I just, I can't, like, yes, it's real.

I know it sounds fake, but like, this cat actually ate my fucking homework.

That's crazy.

All right, Luke, what you got?

Religions of the world.

Oh.

Like, I grew up super small town.

There's like two black kids in my entire school.

The only religion that happened anywhere around Christianity.

There was various different strains of it, but it's the only one.

And every other religion was viewed as lesser or

like

heretical or like weird is a really good way of putting it.

Like, oh, I can't believe you'd think that.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Yeah, that's another way of good.

And

I feel like a class taught at some point in high school where it's like, yeah, by the way, all these other religions have just as much history as this one that you've been taught is the one.

So like, it's okay to have your view of what you think it is, but like

they have the same right to think whatever their thing is is the right one.

And you having your thought does not put you above them.

Do you think you could implement that in a small town though?

I mean it would be tough,

but at the same time, they just don't learn about it.

Like I came to college with no idea about like Islamic culture or Jewish culture really.

And those are like the three biggest religions in the world.

I still know practically nothing about any of the other ones, and I want to learn more, but like

even college isn't like super big on teaching.

Not really.

I think it's a great idea, and I think one of the best experiences I had growing up was that my town in Maine had a sister city relationship with a village in Japan.

Oh.

Because where I grew up, Bath, Maine, is a big shipbuilding community and has been for about 200 years.

So 100 and something years ago, one of the Bath ships was wrecked off the coast of this village called Shiriki, which, because now the name has changed,

uh, and they saved a bunch of the sailors.

So there's always been an exchange program between uh bath and it was Shariki at the time.

And I knew nothing about, I'm in a small town from Maine.

Like, I mean, we didn't have, I don't even know if we had two people of color in my school.

Like, it was really that small.

And it just gave, like, it just opened my eyes.

And this was as a freshman.

Like, I spent two weeks over there with a family.

I lived there.

They didn't speak any English or very, very little.

Yeah.

And I just realized it was such a

powerful experience for me because I was learning about these people that I didn't know anything about, really.

And I actually was even there on, I think it was the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima, which I learned afterwards, which I was like, that's a little, but like never knew anything.

But it was, but, you know, and I've also worked at the State Department in an internship where we brought upcoming leaders from other countries to the United States so that they would have a better opinion of the United States.

The same idea with this, right?

Learning that, you know, most religions have a framework of the similar ideas, right?

There's different names and whatever.

But like, I think we would be a much more empathetic world if people were exposed to more things than the one thing that they know.

Well, that's the problem.

Especially like comparing the similarities, because everybody's so focused on, oh, here's the fucking differences.

And like the three big Abrahamic religions are really fucking similar.

Extremely.

Yep.

Well, and that's, I mean, that's the threat.

That's why you can't say happy holidays.

You have to say Merry Christmas.

Yeah.

Because everything,

in this is the point everything is framed as an attack on christianity by the right and it's only a tiny tiny segment of actual christians who believe that everything is an attack on christianity but they take that and then they try to just say well if you're a christian there's only one way to be a christian and that is to behave like this and this and this and this and one of those things is the people who would say

by teaching children that other religions exist and putting them on a level playing field or even

teaching about them objectively in context with Christianity, which in their opinion is by far the superior religion, they would view that immediately as an attack on Christianity and that you're trying to spread, you know, heathen beliefs or whatever.

I don't even know where they would go.

They just make shit up.

There's all these motherfuckers that want the Bible in school and taught us fact.

And I promise you, if you make the same argument, oh, all right, put the Quran in school, teach it the same way.

They will lose their fucking mind.

Yeah, well, there's a clip from,

I don't know if it's Borat or one of these

characters that What's his face plays, and he goes into a small rural America town and he's like, we have this amazing like business.

It's going to completely change the economy here, all this.

And he open and he pulls down this thing and it's a giant photo of a mosque.

And they're like, we're going to put it right here.

And the people lose their minds.

I saw that.

They lose their minds.

Yeah.

So

it's such a great, like, and he's like, well, we're going to, you know, like, maybe there'll be Sharia law, maybe not.

And these people are just like, fucking.

Exploding.

Exploding.

But because they don't, you know, these people don't know.

No, they know nothing about it.

They know nothing about it.

So I grew up in Long Island.

And in the world that I grew up in, yes, it's New York.

And like, yes, I had access to the city and it's incredibly diverse.

But the world that I grew up in, like suburban, like white suburbia, Nassau County, just out, it's the county next to Queens.

When I grew up, you were, you were Catholic or you were Jewish.

Yep.

And if you were Catholic, you were either Italian or you were Irish.

Those were the only identities that I really grew up with.

Now, I would pass churches that would say Lutheran church, Baptist church.

Being a Catholic, I, or, I mean, you know, raised in that church.

I just thought it was like the name of the church.

I didn't understand that these, that there were different types.

I honestly, at the age of 18, did not understand that people took these differences between different types of Christianity really fucking seriously.

Like until I ended up in basic training and I met people from the Midwest who were like, and the South who like were like, oh, fuck the Lutherans, like the Methodists, fuck the Lutherans, fuck the Baptists.

Like they, they're at each other's throat.

The people like, which is crazy to me.

The different flavors of Christianity are more anti-Christian than most other people.

Yeah.

Well, there's a famous clip of Ricky Gervais, who's like a well-known atheist on Stephen Colbert, who's a well-known Catholic and very strong.

And they have a discussion about whether God is real and religion.

And the thing that it has always stuck with me is that Ricky Gervais says, well, I just believe in one less God than you do.

Like, you don't believe in 999 gods, and you believe in, but you believe in one.

I just don't believe in the thousand.

And it's really true.

Like these.

These people are convinced because they're taught this growing up that

their way is the best.

Everybody else in the world, which is the majority of the world, is wrong, and we're right.

And I think having at least a basic knowledge of what other people believe

Islam is about, which is

a very peaceful religion for 99.999%

of people who practice it.

Just like Christianity, everybody is a very peaceful religion for 99.999%.

Right, but there's this fear, right?

There's fear of the other or the unknown.

And I think it's great.

And if it wasn't an unknown, it the fear wouldn't exist exactly and it's not just about making people less religious even though we're all less religious than maybe the average uh republican in the south but um

we don't want to make people not religious we want to make you help you i should say but really make you less crazy like to be fair but when you understand that like oh maybe like like buddhism i i don't know anyone who could possibly find anything to blame or to fault in buddhism specifically.

And there are a lot of religions like that that are sort of more decentralized.

It's more a way of living and it's more of a philosophy.

And I mean, religions cover everything.

And when you just accept that, well, I'm still going to be a Christian.

I still believe in one God.

I still believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Trinity and all that.

The Holy Ghost, I think, is the other part of the Holy Holy Spirit.

Yes.

The Jedi ghost.

Santa Claus is in there somewhere.

No, Santa Claus.

No, come on, guys.

Mine was funnier.

You can still have all of that,

but you're going to be just a little bit less crazy about it when you realize that all these other people who believe in all these different religions are maybe not monsters.

Yeah, that freedom of people.

Or they're just regular people who just believe slightly different religions.

What you're describing is the difference between freedom from and freedom to.

And I...

I feel that the left, progressive, liberal, whatever,

our

belief is we want the freedom from interference, right?

What conservatives, in my opinion, really want is the freedom to act with impunity.

The freedom to do things.

That is why there's the rejection of cancel culture as a concept, which is cancel culture in air quotes because it's not a fucking real thing.

It is really just you're dealing with consequences.

Yeah.

You do something fucking stupid, people don't like you anymore.

Yeah.

Like just don't do the stupid thing.

Not saying that, like, people don't go fucking too far.

Yeah.

But, like, what the right wants is the end of cancel culture entirely, which actually means they want the end of consequences.

Consequence free culture.

But only for them.

Only for some people.

Oh, of course.

Well, right.

I was thinking on the religion thing for a second, like, you won't remember this.

But like right after 9-11.

What did all of the conservatives do?

They were like, there was this, like,

they wanted to go after Muslims and Islam in general.

There was a, this is like 25 years ago now, but there was a mosque that was being built in New York City.

Fox News lost their absolute minds and they were like, it is so inappropriate.

And

I wish somebody had just said, why?

Because there is violence in every religion.

What happened on that day was absolutely horrific and

barbaric.

But most Muslims also agreed with that, that it was barbaric and horrific.

this like again with the othering and like you said they they don't want consequences because they they want to go after people right they want the muslim ban which i don't do we is that even like implemented or like he said he was going to do it and then it got rolled back and then yeah it's like but but like they that but this is like i think again going back to your original point like i don't think that would have as much teeth if people fully appreciated what these other cultures and these other religions are about and i'm saying that as somebody who grew up catholic and is nothing now like and but it is it is a real problem and one of the root causes of i think the schism that we sort of have in this country right now.

Well, it's a diversity of thought thing, right?

I mean, that's really the key difference between the left and the right, is the right is very siloed into this one way of thinking about every single thing they do.

It's all woven together, too.

Right.

It's simplified to this one simple path.

And I think that's why the left has a harder time unifying a lot of the time, too, is because we do have diversity of thought.

We have different perspectives on different things, and we're not demonized for having those differences.

I mean, it happens here and there.

But the general tenor underlying with the left is that we should encourage diversity.

We should be having these kinds of classes where we're learning everything we possibly can.

The more we know, the better we're able to interact with everybody.

And like, you can do it in your own life.

Like, even my wife and I, we moved to Atlanta like two years ago.

We moved from a very white northeast town.

I grew up in a very white place.

And now we live in a place where we're literally minorities.

And we did that by design because I wanted my daughter to be raised around a lot of different people and not grow up going, well, I don't really understand black culture.

Like, well, yes, you do now because you're going to learn it.

Right.

And it's, but that has been such an amazing shift because I grew up where I, I think I had two black people in my high school of over a thousand.

It's not like I didn't grow up racist.

I was never had any of that tendency, but I didn't understand black culture at all.

I never was exposed to it.

And as I went into the world, I went, if I ever have a kid, she is going to be in every single culture possible.

So she does.

As much as you can.

Well, and this isn't just about religion, right?

No, no, no.

It's racial.

It's really

culture.

Maine is the least, least diverse state.

by percentage in the country.

And I was in a town of 9,000 people.

And like, there was like the only Jewish person I knew was the guidance counselor.

And like, there was a Navy base in the next town over.

So every once in a while, there would be a person of color there.

But like, you know, there's a reason why

cities tend to have more liberal policies related to race and religions and sexual orientation because you're living with all of these groups of people and you have a better understanding.

And if you are from small town, Maine, for example, and you never leave, you don't get exposed to that.

And then all of a sudden, you're hearing these voices telling you that those over there

are your problem.

What else are you going to believe?

Absolutely.

And like we went, I think I told this story yesterday to you guys, but not on camera.

And we went to North Georgia during, I think, Memorial Day last year.

And like, my wife had never really seen like backwoods kind of Republican culture like that before.

And she was really taken aback by it and not a fan.

And she asked me, like, why are they like this?

I said, because they don't.

they don't let anybody in the bubble.

They're very comfortable in the spot.

And when you come in, it just makes them nervous.

And a lot lot of the hate that they, you know, come, that the party kind of takes advantage of on the right is really just them being scared.

Like they're just scared of you.

There's things they don't understand.

That's all it is.

And if the more they see that it's not something that's dangerous, the more they're going to be able to come to the table.

But so much of the right-wing agenda is focused on that fear and stoking that fear of if you let them into your sphere, they're going to fuck you over somehow.

It's like, no.

I mean, why do you think cities function?

It's because that's not how it goes.

And it's because they're afraid that, I mean,

it's a control mechanism religion just like a lot of things it's one of their pillars of control and if that becomes even just decentralized or challenged at all then suddenly they can't say these people are trying to attack your religion.

You can't manipulate me with fear of Christianity being attacked because I'm not afraid of any of these other religions.

Suddenly they lose that whole category.

And it's the most deeply personal to most people who, I mean, the people who are controlled by it have been instructed to have it be the the most important part of their identity.

So even anything that even starts to tiptoe down that path, they know it.

And that's why they disingenuously manipulate you with that fear so that you never even entertain the idea of learning about Islam or Judaism.

Well, we're probably going to have to have an episode that's fully on religion at some point after what he's talking about.

But I want to kick it to Chris because we're still going around the room saying, what is the class?

This was supposed to be like 10 minutes total.

Oh, yeah, we're already rocking a half hour into this.

So my

course, my required course for high school students would be economics 101 and 102, micro and macro economics, which I think

prior to going to school, I would not have understood that there's a difference between finance and economics.

And when I think that a lot of people think of economics, they think of money.

They think of numbers and the stock market and all this.

Economics is about

incentivized behavior.

And that economics 101 and 102 I had took at my community college when I was like 28 or 29.

It was the most eye-opening course that I ever took.

It helped me understand

things like the sunk cost fallacy.

Oh my gosh.

Like when

I was taught about the sunk cost fallacy, which is basically like you shouldn't just keep doing something because you've already spent so much time trying to fix it or trying to build it or whatever.

Are you talking about relationships?

Are you talking about economies?

Yeah.

So yes.

Yes.

Exactly.

The answer is yes.

So economics 101 and 102, by introducing these logical fallacies for the first time for me, helped me improve all sorts of aspects of my life and

understanding

how markets move and how markets respond and that we are not

perfectly rational human beings.

when I was in the army and when I got out of the army, I was very libertarian.

I was very, very much like, don't, don't fuck with me.

There shouldn't be, you know, we should have small government.

We should, you know, not interfere with, you know, the State Department to me was interference.

And the CIA and all that shit was evil because of my experience in the military.

Going to Iraq.

I saw what American imperialism looked like and it fucked people up and there's blowback and all that shit, right?

So I came out of that being like, we need to withdraw from all of it.

But then when I came into economics 101 and 102 and my professor explained to me about how like

libertarianism doesn't work as libertarian as he was, he's like, doesn't really work because we're not perfectly rational creatures and we don't, we just don't do what the math says.

We don't act in our best interest all the time.

Like, yes, we are inherently as human beings, as animals, as anything alive.

We are inherently selfish, but we make mistakes.

We

engage in the sunk cost fallacy.

Like we needlessly waste our efforts and our time doing things.

And

those two classes together, back-to-back semesters, just

taught me to identify problems in my own behavior, with relationships, with,

of course, finances,

just in the trajectory of my life.

It allowed me to allocate my time and my effort

and my

attention in more efficient ways that changed my life for the better.

The thing that made those two classes, same professor, Professor Frost or Mr.

Frost, the thing that made that class so effective for me was he was a fantastic storyteller.

Like he...

He would tell stories about his kids and how he would teach them economics.

So he would tell his kids, like, I learned about economies of scale, which if you told me those three words, economies of scale, before that, I would have had no fucking idea what that was about.

He told me about his kid, go get some toilet paper.

We're out of it upstairs.

It's in the basement.

And the kid would go downstairs and would grab six rolls of toilet paper.

There's only need to go put one on the rack, come up with six rolls of toilet paper, and he'd go, what, I just told you to bring one toilet paper.

He'd say, economies of scale.

because that meant that he didn't have to go back down six times right and and that lesson from

mr frost's kids like that stuck with me and and that guy was such a brilliant teacher because every lesson he would just tell you a story about a regular human interaction that didn't have to do with factories and you know all this complex shit

Republicans would call that indoctrination.

Yeah, you're right.

Well, it's, I mean, I always had the teachers that I always enjoyed the most were the ones that did that.

I had a,

I had a biology teacher.

And again, I said I was not the best, like history and English, great.

Math, science, not so much for me.

But I had a biology teacher who was just really engaged and really like,

she brought it to a, to real world, to real world situation where I could understand.

I get, okay, I understand how these pieces work now.

And it makes a big difference.

Your class, though, I would say going back to this, is the right thing we should do, but conservatives will never allow us to do it.

Not a million dollars.

It will destroy all of their arguments about the fact that trickle-down economics does not work.

We've done it 50 times and it doesn't work.

And then on the other side of it, where they like to demonize poor people, the most economic stimulating thing you can do is food stamps.

Yep.

And they hate that because they want to talk about that as a handout.

It's like, no, if you actually want to put money into this into the system while also feeding people at the same time.

Don't, yeah.

Like that, all of that money is going back in.

It's the complete opposite of giving billionaires money when they just put it in their pocket.

Are you saying that Republicans wouldn't like people to learn what progressive taxes are?

That would be either

progressive taxes sound really evil to me.

Right.

So far, I think all three classes we've got here would be immediately vetoed by the Republican Party.

Absolutely.

Not in a million fucking years.

But they want to teach the Bible in school, though.

Yeah, they want to keep you dumb, broke, and Jesus-loving.

They'll take the teeny piece of your class, and then the rest of it they'll throw out.

Right, just the Christian.

Just the Christian part.

If people understood the sunk cost fallacy, what would that do to the lottery sales?

Oh, yeah.

Just lottery, like whole states pay for whole things with lottery ticket revenue.

Talk about regressive taxes, which you

regressive taxes.

Talk about regressive taxes.

You're taking the most desperate people and letting them chase the sunk costs, this idea that if I just, it's the same thing.

If I just, if I just get a little bit more in,

eventually this will pay off.

And I'm like, dude, you make $12,000 a year and you're buying scratch tickets that best case scenario, pay out $8,000

if you hit the jackpot.

And then half of that's going to go in taxes.

But sure, keep chasing that.

But those dollars are paying, in some cases, for education budgets.

And I mean, they're paying for infrastructure because they don't want.

people who have money to pay.

Mr.

Frost used to call the lottery the idiot tax.

I don't don't play the lottery no

well have you ever turned a lottery card or ticket around to the other side because they are in most states they're legally obligated to put the odds on the back oh yeah oh really and so like i remember what's an odd i don't even know what that means

i think yeah it and i think it says somewhere i remember one it was like your odds of winning were like one in 45 million

It's it's not even a needle in a haystack.

No, no, no, no.

It's like a needle on the moon or something.

It's being hit by lightning.

Yeah.

Oh, literally.

Or even eaten by a shark or a fish.

I mean, a shark is a shark, right?

That's true.

That's true.

So we got three classes that Republicans will let us have.

Let's see if Rich can bring us home with one.

Do we think you've got one?

I think that,

no, mine is logic.

Yes.

And this is because most people, I took this for one semester in college and it was like, this is the whole thing.

This is a whole topic of conversation.

Just like you did maybe proofs in geometry class, which nobody likes.

Fucking hate proofs.

Just like a Republican engineer would use systems to build a software program that functions correctly or that makes decisions for you correctly, just like how AI models are built.

Everything that is correct is built on a system of thought, a system of integrity.

And

you can actually learn that.

in how you form opinions on things in the world.

And most people are like, well, no, it's a deeply held belief.

Okay, fuck off with the deep, or get fucked, as Luke would say.

I love your deeply held beliefs.

Now, now reverse engineer the logical structure that supports your deeply held belief so that it is defensible.

And so in a logic class, you would learn the actual logical fallacies that people create.

Like, well, I have a PhD in economics, so go buy all the lottery tickets.

which is a

appeal to authority, I believe.

See, I should have researched this, but this is what happens.

There are so many documented fallacies.

Obviously, the bandwagon fallacy is something that Republicans love.

Everybody's doing it.

The non-sequitur, the slippery slope.

I mean, you hear a slippery slope fallacy every single day in the news.

If we this, then some ridiculous thing, like kids are,

people are going to want to marry animals.

If you put the Quran in school, every student will become Muslim.

Right.

And you're like, okay, there are about 700 separate decisions that would have to take place at your level, at your desk before you got to that point.

But straw man, they like that one too.

The straw man fallacy, the red herring, the red herring.

I mean, so you can just learn all of these things.

And instead of learning them

with an intent to weaponize them in an argument, you can learn them so that you can then deconstruct your own opinions and beliefs and go, oh, shit.

I just think that because everyone in my family thinks that.

There is an actual correct way to build a great argument that is super defensible.

And then when you get into that debate, you're not losing your shit because your identity is being threatened.

You're going back to, okay, I unpacked this myself and I rebuilt it structurally.

And so this is why I believe this.

And at any point in any level of that thinking, somebody can come at it and say, well, that layer is broken.

And then it's not your identity.

It's just the argument.

And you're rebuilding the argument more soundly.

And

it puts everything you believe at at arm's distance because you have an objective, healthy relationship with your opinions.

And

you could teach this, you know, maybe in a year or two in high school so that when people are getting ready to go and vote and criticize policies, criticize candidates, they can form their opinions based on real things and facts.

I mean, opinions shouldn't be fucking point causes, right?

And what your dad says.

However you feel about it on any given day.

Yeah, it's insanity.

And I think, you know, debate would go hand in hand with that, where you have to be able to defend multiple positions or at least dissect your opponent's argument because you already revisited or you visited that argument in the first place.

Because there's like the speech and debate team in high school.

I was on it.

And they demonized the fuck out of that where it's like, oh, you're a nerd for being able to think.

It's like, oh, okay.

And it's all an elective or extracurricular shit.

It's shit that you've got to take like the debuff of in high school.

It's like, you're in speech and debate, ick.

Like, oh, no.

And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where only the kids who are willing to criticize their own thoughts take it.

And I'm like, you're the least of my concerns.

Yeah, it's great people who have a visceral reaction.

It's crazy how the Venn diagram of kids who do well on like standardized tests and kids who do speech and debate is basically a fucking circle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I went from

Nassau Community College in Long Island to Columbia University.

And the very first class that I took, like very first classroom that I walked into,

was very memorable because I'm a vet.

Some habits die hard.

I show up super fucking early to this fucking thing.

I'm sitting there in a fucking dorky, you know, like not really nice fucking sweater, front fucking row.

Did you have a pocket protector?

Sitting there.

I don't like pockets

on my chest, but otherwise, probably.

So I'm sitting there by myself for 10 minutes.

The first young girl who walks in, she's 10 years younger than me.

She walks in and she goes, Hi, Professor.

And I'm like, oh,

I'm like, yeah, all right, cool.

But anyway, so methods and problems of philosophical thought.

It was a logic course.

And

seeing the logic, the logical arguments broken down into,

I don't know how to describe it.

It's like broken down into symbols.

And learning about like the if this, then that kind of structure has.

helped me write our budget for this podcast.

Like learning about if this, then that structure.

If-else statements, man, computer science helped me learn how to do very, very complex fucking budgeting,

you know,

10 years later.

So one of the required classes at

my school was

like a music course.

I never was never a musical person.

Like I like hard rock.

That's as deep as I really got.

Like, yeah, I like some bands and shit, but was never super, super, super into it.

When I took an actual music course, I and I saw kind of like the connection between early math and science as it developed during like the Enlightenment with the development of different instruments and music.

But for that, I wouldn't like Kendrick Lamar.

Like I would not like the most popular music in the world if not for understanding and listening to the music,

the mathematical structure of

his lyrics and the beat and everything.

And

I am sad that the vast majority of Americans will never take a course like that.

What's really amazing about music, I did not know this was going to come up, but that it was timely because

my wife and daughter are both taking piano lessons right now and they're learning theory in the process.

And it's so fun to watch because I'm a musician, but I play the drum, so I'm kind of a half of a musician I think

I identify I can't say that never mind

I am a musician oh geez cut that um so

they're learning about the relationships between notes and that it is a mathematical relationship and we were talking about this and um

people might not fully understand this but it is literally a physical relationship in wavelengths that makes notes either harmonize or not harmonize and sometimes you don't want them to sound sometimes you want them to sound evil or sad.

Those are mathematical relationships in the physical world playing out directly into your brain.

And your brain is either computing them or not computing them and feeling very angsty.

Those things are all purposeful and by design with the, with the really good composers, obviously.

And when you see that, I mean, it's to the point of how we got to this part of the conversation.

It is a system.

It is a logical system.

created purposefully for a specific outcome.

And it doesn't have to be in art.

It's beautiful because it doesn't have to be

an outcome that can stand on its own.

It can be an outcome that is purposefully disheveled and frustrating.

If anybody's going to go down a YouTube rabbit hole,

this is the one.

That is cool.

Like this, like learning about

how different wavelengths, different types of sounds are either harmonious or discordant.

Yep.

Like I now better understand why certain music appeals to me when I'm feeling different ways.

It is so cool.

And like to know that there's a science to it.

It's not just emotion.

Like it's chemical.

Yeah, you're right.

It's chemicals physical.

It elicits a chemical response in your brain.

And this is, and I wouldn't know this, I think, but for going to the school that I did, the relationship between the developments of math and physics and chemistry and all of these discoveries, like music evolved over time because of math and science.

And math and science, I think, benefited from the way that music was developing over time.

And they've proven that kids who take music classes, on average, score better in math and science classes.

Not because, I mean, it might be correlated because they're coming from a specific type of family, of course, or a specific cultural background, but also because music passively...

stimulates the part of your brain that is responsible for the structures and the logic that support math and science.

So you don't even realize it, but your brain is activating and tapping into these same parts, whether you're doing one or the other.

So you're

writing a piano medley or melody, or you're playing the drums, and then you go into math and science.

You feel like you're doing two different things, but you're actually

listening to you listen to music.

listen to the same music like while you're studying and while you take the exam at the same time it can improve test results really i used to listen i wish i knew that i listened i used to listen to the breaking bad theme while i studied chemistry and then i listened to it while i took my chemistry stuff it's it's really funny because you're saying maybe it depends on families.

I'll give you a perfect example of my family.

So my brother is two years younger than I am.

We are very, very different.

I'm much more extroverted.

He's much more introverted.

But he's also an engineer and

it was very, very small, like top of his class, math, science.

And he's also a musician.

He picked up guitar relatively easily.

My dad played guitar,

a little bit of piano.

He plays bass, like all these things.

And then I like look at it and like, it doesn't make any sense to me.

Though it's interesting, I've gotten my dad's piano after one of them after he passed away and my wife has even watched me sort of noodling around and she's like you actually understand this a lot better than you think um just from like being in that in that world a little bit I mean I still can't do an actual song but like can get a little can do little bits of things but it is really fascinating how those things are really related so We can, I think, get into the next level of the conversation, which, you know, it comes out of education pretty well because what we wanted to talk about was

messaging and the two components of messaging.

And this was something I learned in marketing communications throughout my education and my career.

And that's that there are two components to a message.

And that is one is how it's delivered and one is what the message is literally.

So you can call it like the message and the delivery.

There's lots of ways to think about it.

But essentially, it's the what and the how, what it is you're saying and how you say it.

And when you split it apart, you start to see all of the different ways that it plays out across like cancel culture and like, can you say, we feel like we can't say the right thing and making comedy funny again.

There are a lot of ways to take it, but splitting that apart in terms of Democrats versus Republicans is really, really interesting.

Zach, I know you have a strong opinion about, well, no, I think because I think...

Zach and a strong opinion?

I think

any of us and a strong opinion?

100 guys versus a strong opinion?

Actually, we would win that instantly.

Yeah.

I never met an opinion that wasn't strong.

You have a strong opinion, obviously, about the messaging around the 2024 campaign, but really more broadly around the Democratic message and

how we've failed.

Do you want to get into that a little bit?

I mean, I think just a little tiny bit.

I mean, look, just to broaden out to what you're saying, I think it's very clear.

Republicans tend to focus on how they deliver the message and they always keep it hyper simple.

You know, everything they do is just designed to make it as easy to understand as humanly possible.

And it's it's almost like the music conversation where like on the surface, even a song that seems really simple, there's a lot of complexity underneath it.

They ignore all that complexity.

They don't give a shit about that because it confuses people who are not there to learn the full scope of the issue.

They just want to get a visceral response and go, yes, that's what I want to do.

And Democrats on the other side of it, they want to explore that complexity.

They want to dive into why does the song sound this way?

Why did they choose these particular chords?

Why are these instruments in it?

Why are these not in it?

That's how they would look at that question.

And I think that Democrats in 24 spent way too much time focusing on how things are going to work, why they're going to work, what are we going to do, and zero time delivering that message in a way that was resonant to people who just wanted a simple answer to a simple question in their mind.

How can I have more money?

How can I be safer?

How can I be more prosperous?

Whatever it may be.

That to me was the undoing of this whole thing.

Because like, I think if you zoom out and look at what Democrats actually offer, what Republicans actually offer, most people would want what Democrats offer.

Yeah.

There's no question.

Like, it's not even close.

And even when you talk to some, like, Republicans who think of themselves that way, if you message it as, like, yeah, look at these things that you can get

that you need, they go, oh, fuck yeah, I'd want that.

And then you go, oh, it's a Democrat, and they'd lose their faith.

That's why Trump and Sanders had carryover voters for sure, because they were selling the same thing, just differently.

Do you remember when people thought Obamacare and Affordable Care Act were two different things?

Oh, my God.

And Affordable Care Act had a really high approval rating, and they were like, but fuck Obamacare.

And you're like, tell me more about Obamacare.

But I also just do think, like, we got into it.

I think people next to us in the bar next last night were just like, these guys are just like, we're just going to listen to them fighting about

this stuff.

Yeah.

I think you even reached over, like, are we being too loud for you?

Because, you know, this is intense.

But we were arguing about pretty much exactly this.

And my argument was more about, because I'm a moderate.

There's no question.

I'm hands down the most moderate here.

I know it's gross.

Gross.

But I need to wash my hands.

A lot of the things the left does push away moderates, even, because it's it's the way in which they pitch their arguments comes across as like you try to twist it to be something it's not.

Like I think we were talking about immigration at the time and the...

We don't need to go back into that.

I'm not going to jump into that in depth.

Yeah, that's going to send us down a different path.

Another three hours.

I'm ready.

Just to give the context of it.

When we were debating like the

issue at hand was what should the policy at the border be?

And instead of debating, you know, what should the process be, the fundamentals of it, it started to turn to like, well, this is a racist policy.

And my argument was it may be.

They have policy at the border.

It may be considered like if you dive into it, there could be racist elements to it.

But even moderate voters look at that and go, don't change the subject.

Let's focus on the subject at hand.

And I think Democrats have a hard time with that too.

When they start to feel like they're being challenged, they pivot to go, well, hold on, hold on.

There's racism.

It's like, yeah, okay, but only Democrats care about this.

Republicans certainly don't care about it.

And moderates look at it and go, well, stay on subject.

So I think there's a lot Democrats need to learn about how they deliver their message.

It's not to say that you can't deliver a message about racism and equality.

Pick the moment for it.

That's the issue that I think Democrats really run into a wall with a lot of the time.

And I think we, we,

it's been a long time that it took us to get here.

I said that in the worst possible way that it took us a long time to get to this point.

But if you look back, you know, people ask about like FDR, would we even elect a man in a wheelchair right now?

You look at JFK, who...

I don't want to say for better or worse because it was for better.

JFK was an amazing president, but he was handsome and eloquent.

And that was kind of a double-edged sword because we got real used to seeing a smart, eloquent person on television.

And he said the right things, but he also brought that other piece right as television became a thing.

And we started caring more back to the subject of the conversation, which is like the mess, you know, the what versus the how.

We went from caring 90% about the what and 10%, 10% about the how

to now we have a reality TV show like Jerry Springer fucking trash guy, you know, dumpster celebrity host as president because we're at like 99%

of the what or of the of the delivery and 1% about the policy.

And Democrats are so frustrated about it because we are still listening for the policies.

And so we say, he's saying literally racist things right now.

He's saying shit that Nazis said.

And they go, yeah, but he speaks his mind.

He's saying it how I like it.

They're not even talking or thinking about the policies

because they just, they're like, well, it resonates with me how he delivers.

And so we have to be more mindful of that and understand that

they're eating our lunch because they package it in a way that's very palatable.

And we're still packaging it in a way that's like, here, let me show you the math.

And that is not what Americans are asking for right now.

That's actually a great point, too, because like a lot of the time, like the language we use to define them as like racist or fascist or things like that.

And just because of what you're saying, the fact that the way it's packaged, they like it.

They don't like it.

I mean, some like it because it's racist and fascist, but most are not thinking that way in any way, shape, or form.

They're just going, oh, I like this guy's delivery.

Like how he makes me feel.

They like it.

They like it.

It's Amazon.

That's what it is.

It's fast.

It comes in an easy to open box and you open it and you're like, oh, there's my thing.

So we're done.

I don't think about anything else.

I look at it a little bit differently.

And I've talked to a lot of people about this.

The messaging and all of the delivery is very, very important.

But from a comms and marketing perspective, the brand, I think the democratic brand is just so badly damaged right now because of a lot of the things that we've been talking about, right?

Or like, you know,

sometimes we say one thing and do another, or like, you know, we dive to or we don't deliver.

And if you look at the last 30, 40 years and you say, what are the two best, best brands on both sides?

It's Donald Trump with Make America Great Again, and it's Barack Obama with Yes, We Can.

And if you went to those rallies and you, which I went, I've been to not the Donald Trump ones, but I've been to the Obama ones.

I thought I was about to find out.

But it's almost like a concert, right?

And it's like, it's not a concert because you're really excited that he's got a public option within the ACA, right?

It's because of how he, it's the vision for the future and like the world that you want to live in.

And it's the same with the Republicans.

Like Make America Great Again, they have this completely bullshit narrative that like all we need to do is to go back to the time when America was great.

Now, when you ask them what time and period, period of time,

they never can do it.

Or they'll say the 1950s, to which I'll say, okay, well, what about women and black people?

Well, but the top tax rate was 90%.

Yeah, yeah.

And

there was massive discrimination, legal discrimination.

But that's, but that's all the what.

Like,

but I'm getting into it because now I'm doing the democratic thing where I'm talking about the thing.

But like the vision of the 50s, the white picket fence, the like two and a half kids, it's quiet.

The Rookman's coming, the vapor's being thrown on.

And it like, it elicits a reaction.

And I think whoever wins next is going to have to put that vision together.

And I would actually argue that the vision is probably going to matter more than the actual policies.

For sure.

I mean, it's really just a question of like, how easy can you make my life?

I don't think I want to hear the word tax rate from a Democrat.

No, just never.

I don't want to get into deep.

I mean, I do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a better way of saying I want to hear it, but I don't want to hear it at a camp at a round.

And that's exactly it.

You don't say we're going to raise taxes on the rich.

You say, we're going to make America great.

And then you know when you go away and you do the math, the only fucking way that you can make America great is by making sure that the people creating the wealth are as close to the fucking wealth as possible.

And that is the fucking workers of America

through correct wages and correct benefits, which unions used to provide.

And now there's nothing left.

And so they're like, hey, how about

guns and religion, right?

Yeah, it's no different.

Like the only way that Trump could pay for this fucking tax cut was by cutting Medicare.

Like that was the only...

But he's still not paying for it.

Yeah, he's still raising the ceiling.

But like the only

trillion.

You say that and you go, yeah, the only mathematical way he can do it is by cutting this.

And they go, well, that's not true.

It's like,

you're arguing with math.

The only math.

That's not true because he's making America.

Right, but we've already lost.

I think we're doing that.

I think you guys are giving Republicans or conservatives or whatever you want to call it, the MAGA, too much of the benefit of the doubt.

I think a big part of the motivation of Trump voters is they want other people to hurt.

I think they're right.

And suffering will hurt them.

100%.

So when people hear about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, whatever is getting cut, when they hear about it getting cut, I think a lot of people, if they're not going to say it out loud, are thinking, good, fuck those guys.

Fuck those people.

And fuck them.

They're getting a handout.

One of the best articles I've ever read on MAGA was by a writer named Adam Serwer in The Atlantic.

I think it was in 2019.

The cruelty is the point.

The cruelty is the point.

And that is 100% clear.

There is a segment of the American population that if they don't have a thing, they do not want anybody else to have it.

And fuck those people.

But that's exactly it.

Because why are they resentful?

Because they don't have it.

And why don't they have it?

Because of Republican politics.

Well, right, right.

Yes.

I tried to wash it.

Oh, I was not getting that at all.

It was very straightforward.

But I have a question, as the most moderate person here above all left, but I'm the most moderate person.

Hang it.

But it's a quick, the reason there's a reason for it.

Do you guys, I agree with the characterization that you're laying out here of MAGA folks.

Yes.

But do you apply that to Republicans?

They're non-MAGA.

Do you think that non-MAGA Republicans want people to hurt?

Because I agree.

MAGA Republicans want to see people hurt.

But do you think that regular, like Bush Republicans are like that?

I'll give you, I'm going to.

Yeah.

I don't.

That's not.

So let me.

Yeah.

So I, I used to be a Republican.

I was, I was libertarian.

I was a, I was a Bush Republican before I was a libertarian.

Um, then I went to war and became much more, I became a Ron Paul libertarian.

And I don't, I don't remember necessarily at that time wanting other people to hurt.

I

resented feeling like other people were getting advantages that I could not.

So, you know, I, and, and we have, we have had these conversations before where I kind of think back about like my old self and being like, I don't know that that would have resonated with me.

Where like when I was applying to college, like I

was a veteran.

You know, I had on paper done everything right, but I didn't apply.

I didn't qualify for like any fucking grants, like none.

And a lot of my peers who did not look like me qualified for all sorts of help.

Now, that didn't change the fact that like

nine years ago, I was homeless.

Nine years ago, I was couch surfing.

Like

I had made it into Columbia.

I had no debt to my name, and I was so fucking scared of going into debt.

I had to drop out of Columbia, and I was couchsurfing for like months.

Right.

And like that,

that experience living in that

at that point, and this was way after I had become like progressive and Democrat.

I remember the feeling of fucking couch surfing for months and like not knowing if I was going to have enough money to eat, and being like,

I don't know, man, this white privilege thing doesn't feel too privilege-y right now.

Like,

like, I fully recognize the history of it, of what I've been through and all the advantages that I had.

But in that moment, so when I think about the MAGA voter or the broader Republican voter, I kind of have to remind myself the emotion of being in that moment where it was like,

this doesn't fucking matter.

Like, it's not feeding me.

Yeah, I think there's two pieces to this.

And I think there's the answer is both, in my opinion.

I think what Chris is talking about is exactly right.

There is a, there are millions,

let's just talk about young men for a second.

There are millions of young men who feel like that they are being left behind.

Suicide rates for young men, sky high.

Drug and alcohol addiction, sky high.

And like why that ridiculously racist thing about Haitians eating bats or

cats, not bats, was

and dogs, was effective is because it's again, it's the othering and trying to say these people are the problem here.

But like, I also think there is a problem that Republicans are telling them it's the others.

And I don't think we're doing a good enough job of saying, no, it's actually the Republicans.

No, no, you motherfuckers, it's you.

And that's, that's one thing.

But over time,

there has always been a strain within the Republican Party of wanting others to suffer.

And I'm going to give you a few examples really fast.

One, civil rights.

All of the Southern Democrats went, fuck you, I'm out of here.

And they became Republicans, which is why that whole thing about Democrats being the founders of the KKK is so ridiculous because every time I get that comment, I want to stupid throat punch somebody.

So there's that one.

And then the patron saint of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, and his administration laughed.

at gay people with HIV and AIDS.

Laughed, not behind the scenes, on camera.

There are press conferences of them laughing at gay men in San Francisco and New York City dying.

And then in 2004, George W.

Bush, one of the main reasons he won was because he wanted a ban on gay marriage.

And I'm sorry, but a ban on gay marriage means I don't want you to have what I have.

So there has always been a strain.

I'm not saying that all of them, because like, you know, I don't think John McCain subscribed to some of those things, for example.

I didn't think he was particularly great either, but like, you know, there's strains in Mitt Romney a little bit.

You know, there's some of those that don't exist anymore, but there has always been an element of cruelty in that party.

Cruelty wasn't so much the question, it was a question of desiring to make other people suffer.

Well, no, but I don't think cruelty is.

I think cruelty is that.

Yeah, but cruelty can take on more forms.

So just that.

Yeah, I think it's really important to call out: if you are angry and suffering, that's okay to feel miserable and angry.

And it's also natural because all of us have this in us all of the time.

It is 100% natural to want to blame or hold somebody accountable for that.

What is happening in this country is all of these young people, and not just young people, especially young people, because they're struggling financially more than anything.

And really everything comes back to economics.

Yep.

Always.

If you're struggling and you're in a painful place and you're looking for someone to blame, who are you blaming and why?

And what they're saying, this is why they say that they are importing people from Venezuelan asylums to live in five-star fucking hotels.

What in the fuck?

And like Social Security and Food Stamp and Medicaid, they're saying that illegal immigrants are getting social security benefits.

It is so fucking deranged and it is utterly wrong.

I mean, it's it's almost always 0% correct and just fucking wrong.

It is just a lie.

Occasionally, they'll have a story where like one person got in a car wreck and so they got a check for whatever.

And then they, and then they hang on that.

But the point is the Republican Party, they will tell you either the truth or partial truth or an outright lie so that you don't ever come knocking on their door saying, why the fuck don't I have more money?

Why don't I have better health care?

Why are you taking away my veterans benefits?

All of those things can be laid at the foot of the Republican Party.

That's why they're not doing that.

Refugees and immigrants and poor people and women who need abortions.

And

I feel like I'm lucky because that period that I went through where my mental health collapsed, my finances had collapsed, I was fucking couchsurfing for quite a while, I had already taken my economics 101 and 102 course that we talked about.

I had already taken

methods and problems of

philosophical thought.

You couldn't have built an illogical argument from your situation.

Like, I knew.

I fucking knew that, like, well, if the Democrats were in charge, I probably wouldn't be homeless right now.

Yep.

Like,

probably wouldn't have had to fucking drop out of school and worry about getting hit with fucking debt like right away and like having no way to pay.

Right.

So I feel lucky that when I went down,

when my life went down, that my

attitude and my feelings and my politics didn't go down because everything in my, in my body wanted to fight and wanted an enemy, wanted to blame blame it on somebody.

Because like you think about it, if you flip it and somebody that's on the other side is in that scenario, I bet it doesn't go that way.

Like they come out of that blaming others.

Blaming the easy, and that's the easy path.

I give you a real quick person to blame.

It's that guy down the street who's taking all your money.

Yeah, he, you know, that

black dude that's getting, you know, he's getting food stamps to feed his family.

That works right next to you at the same fucking job site.

Somehow he's the problem.

Whereas, oh, it's not, it's definitely not the Republicans who are fucking limiting you but i think i think the failure of the of the democratic party is is that we haven't found a way to address those that community of people i don't think that people are inherently racist i think when people i mean some people they're born into it stuff right but like i think a lot of the rage and anger comes again from like no one's helping me but people are helping them but what do we need to do to help those people and one thing i would say that we we do not talk about enough in this country is supporting mental health

And this is something that is still in this day and age, you think 2025 it wouldn't be, but it is still demonized.

Or if you're like, there are segments of the population that if they learned that you were in therapy, they would think less of you.

And if like a president or a candidate for any office did therapy or admitted to it, they'd be done.

Done.

Done.

When they're in fact helping themselves.

So like, how dare you?

So this is a real problem.

So how do we, how do we start to change that conversation?

I think exactly how.

You just start being honest about it.

Like for me personally, I've been in therapy most of my life,

in and out, but the last maybe two years has been the most successful therapy I've had.

And I've made huge strides.

I've had horrendous anxiety most of my life.

I used to have really bad panic disorder and I would have panic attacks like every single day for like a decade straight.

Horrendous experience.

And, you know, therapy didn't work for a long time, but it just kept going and going and going.

And eventually it did.

But a huge part of it not working was me feeling I had to hide what i was going through from everybody so what i did recently especially at like work in my job i'd be like hey i can't be at this meeting because i have to go to therapy and be straight with people who are going to and because and the other side of it i was like maybe they're going to think less of me maybe not but at least i'm being honest about where i'm at i think more of people than they're in therapy me too i mean of course we do

the country doesn't the country doesn't but like i feel like that's something that should be encouraged right like 100 if you're somebody that's you know in power like and you you get approached and you're like, oh, somebody asked your take on therapy or like mental health.

Fucking, yeah, if you, if you're not in therapy, you should be in therapy.

You know, it's like the brain wrangler is never bad for someone.

So there's one advantage that I have that you guys don't.

And that's that as a as a service disabled veteran, I have free health care for life.

Sure.

As long as Trump doesn't torpedo it, which is very, very likely

at this point.

By the way, June 6th, we're having a protest.

Fuck yeah.

Dropkick Murphy's Dropkick Murphys are gonna be there.

You get to meet some of these guys.

I didn't mean, did not mean to pitch that.

Shameless plugs are never bad.

So during that period that I just discussed, nine years ago, like remember it pretty fucking clearly,

I was also having really serious health issues.

And I

was

going through a period like you've experienced where I was like, I was like, this is a panic attack.

My fucking chest feels like it's caving in.

I can't breathe.

I've had panic attacks and before I've had panic attacks before.

I'm like, I need to go to the VA.

I need to go get checked out.

I walk into the ER, sit down with the doctor, and I'm like, hey, having a panic attack.

My chest feels like it's caving in, can't breathe.

And he's like, you are not having a panic attack.

I'm like, nope, been here before.

Been on the meds.

I'm having a fucking panic attack.

So the doc would not fucking let me go.

I ended up having a lesion in my lung,

which is unexplained.

Like, burn pits are probably the reason.

But, like, had a foot, you know, they checked me out.

They're like, yes, you're probably stressed out.

I had like just started couch surfing.

But they're like, you need an x-ray.

No other American gets that kind of healthcare.

Nobody else in

the middle.

It's also some antibiotics.

Go on your way.

They'd fucking like, okay, you're having a panic attack.

You know, maybe if you've got coverage, they'll throw you some Xanax.

No one in fucking the United States has a healthcare system where they walk in, they present symptoms, and the doctor's like, I'm not taking the easy way out, not letting you self-diagnose yourself.

I don't care if you've been through this before, you're getting the fucking x-ray.

Yeah.

I had a cavitary lesion of some unknown, who knows.

I don't know if it was a disease.

I don't know if it was a foreign body.

It kind of resolved on its own.

But like, I was immediately brought up to an isolation room.

They thought it could have been tuberculosis, which is pretty fucked, pretty scary, by the way.

Doc holiday.

Yeah.

And like I was in an isolation room for a week while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

And I walked away with no debt.

Like, I mean, I was still couch surfing and I was still fucked, but but I could have been way more fucked.

You weren't even more fucked, exactly.

That's another barrier to mental health.

A lot of people just can't afford it.

Fucking expensive.

Insurance usually doesn't cover this stuff.

Like schools are one way to do it.

Yeah, schools are one way way to do it.

But even then, it's like, it's just, it's still so stigmatized.

Like, it's better.

I think it's better than it was.

I think we could probably all agree, but it's nowhere near ideal.

But again, I think it depends on where you live, right?

Because obviously, like, we live in New York.

I have had colleagues be very open and upfront about it, but like Maine, not so much.

Iowa?

Not so much.

Probably not.

I think something that's really important to say out loud is

I didn't want to ever get into therapy or mental health care at all because I felt like once you got into it, you would never get out.

They would get you in and they get your copay or they get you're out of pocket or they get they get paid.

And then they say, well, you have so many things that we need to talk about.

Let's talk about your mom and your dad.

And you're like, oh, for fuck's sake, let's unpack everything that's ever happened to you.

And so for me,

early in COVID, my son was two and he had had really bad RSV

infections in the past that were like he was in the 3% of people who got, of newborns, of babies, that got really bad RSV and his oxygen levels dropped.

And so we knew he had maybe, he maybe had asthma, but they won't diagnose asthma until you're five.

And so, and they won't treat it either way.

And so we thought there might be something there.

So there's some uncertainty about his respiratory health.

And this is like...

2018, 2019.

And then COVID hits and we're working from home and we're thinking we need to keep our jobs.

So we need to send our kid to daycare, even though he might have shitty lungs.

He might be.

And we didn't know anything about COVID when it hit.

So we're like, you know, you're washing your chip bags and you're like, is this going to kill our kid if he gets it?

And yet.

we still have to like leave our house and go on with our life.

So that was obviously very heavy for both of us.

And I saw a therapist and in two sessions, she did real things.

It's actual science.

And in two sessions, she went through the motion.

I explained what was happening.

She isolated the thing.

She had me talk through it.

And then she did this electronic eye therapy and she fucking fixed it.

And she also fixed a large portion of my underlying anxiety, which I didn't think was possible.

And I talked to her two times.

It was like two over the course of two weeks.

That was it.

So even if I was paying for all of it out of pocket,

it would have been maybe 200 bucks or something like that.

And I was cured.

And I had no anxiety through the rest of COVID.

And he eventually got it.

He got 104 fever.

He, before he was vaccinated, he bucked it because babies are crazy.

And we got a little bit lucky.

COVID didn't come after kids,

really.

And he was over it.

And then he got vaccinated.

No reaction to the vaccines at all.

He got his dumb-dumb.

And we all went on with our lives.

And now we're all immune and now we're all healthy.

But I didn't have anxiety after June of 2020 so there was still a lot of really bad left ahead of us sure and that whole time it was like okay if it did happen what do you do next okay if it if that happens how do you respond and just by allowing yourself to go through the process of talking it out and then and then with this therapy thing that she did um i was like i hate to say the word cured but i haven't talked to a therapist since 2020 amazing and it improved my entire life one of the things that's super popular on the other dude podcasts is talking about psychedelics.

And they often talk about it and have very similar experiences to what you just did.

I was part of

the VA's MDMA study.

And I was one of the lucky cohort.

I got to do it three times.

And I have to say that it was a lovely experience.

And I hope that more people are able to do it, but it didn't cure shit.

It did allow me to process like a lot of shit that I went through.

Weird enough for me, like none of the things that I thought about were like combat related or even really military related.

I was thinking about like relationships, a lot of relationships that were fucked up post-military service were like, that's where my brain went when I was on this drug.

And it didn't cure any anxiety.

It didn't cure any like depression or anything, but it did help.

Like it, it did help me process things that I didn't realize had been in the back of my head, kind of like the the physical description and and it was a physical emotional experience was when I took the drug it felt like I was taking off armor like I felt like I had been carrying a metal suit of armor on my body my entire life and when I took the drug the emotional relief that I was feeling I felt physically like I felt physically lighter.

I mean, I think the thing that's interesting about this is that like, all of this shit works.

And like, why are we, we as a society, like penalizing people for getting the help they need to feel better?

Like, the, the, the,

we have maybe

100 years on this earth.

Why would you not do the things to make that short time

worth it or more enjoyable?

Yeah, and there's like, it's so crazy, right?

Because like Republicans are, rah, therapy's so bad.

But then like their first fucking inclination if they've had a bad day at work is to go home and crack a beer.

Right.

I was just that's not therapy like right self-medication

not to work exactly exactly

they self-medicate right until they take their own life because it's not fucking working right or they or they do something even worse like burn their house down with their family inside of it and you see these headlines and you think what the fuck happened there and they go well thoughts and prayers and then you move right on instead of saying Maybe we should have the really messy conversation.

Like I should have been in therapy.

Right when we're fucking in it right now.

Well, that's the core of of it i mean the core of this whole stigma especially on the right with this is that they don't want to feel vulnerable right right therapy is vulnerability you'd rather die strong than live weak there's some legitimacy to being afraid when it depends on your life position but the way that i experienced it was my first interactions with therapy were while i was on active duty and there was there was a consequence if you were diagnosed with anything there would there was a there was a and it's your your job is your life.

It's not like in the civilian world where you get fired, you change careers.

Like, if you are labeled as broken, especially in the unit that I was in, 3rd Infantry Division, infantry battalion, infantry company, like

if you are labeled as broken, doesn't matter if you fucking fell off a Humvee and your bone is sticking through your leg.

If you're labeled as broken, you are not treated well.

So

I know that that exact thing doesn't exist in the military excuse me it doesn't exist in the civilian world but there are like scenarios there there are people who have a legitimate fear of facing repercussion cops for example yeah cops don't get therapy because they are afraid of the same exact things that i was afraid of getting stuck on that desk and when you're stuck on that desk you're isolated you no longer hang out with the the guys you're you're no longer welcome at at the fucking you know at the parties and shit.

Like, you are, are no longer in the in the literal fucking locker room.

And it just makes it worse.

Yeah.

And so so there is there is there are legitimate reasons for people to be afraid.

It's we have to

going back to last episode, we have to impose consequences on people who are perpetuating this shit.

Yeah.

Like we straight up, there should be no consequence for going to therapy and there should be a consequence for saying therapy is bad.

Yep.

And you're weak for going.

Whether it's fuck you.

You know, whether it's in in the the military, you know, if it's your fucking commander, if you're, you know, if it's your sergeant in the NYPD, or if it's your, you know, I don't know, your fucking manager,

like who's penalizing you for taking time for therapy or family time or any of the things that make you human and whole, like, we need to go after those people.

I mean,

the crazy thing about it is, like, if you get an infection, you take an antibiotic.

Yep.

Well, not if you listen to rfk not rfk jr

who by the way is our hhs secretary who said do not take medical advice from me which is

mind-boggling wonderful

to covert vaccine and did you see him take a swim in that river yes well i used to live in dc that was a very it was in rock creek park a very dirty dirty and he had dirty dirty dirty place his niece or nephew or something yeah which i think he was trying to find his brain worm he was trying to react well he was about to get he probably did get some more worms from that so that's true but but but but anyways it's like you know we've had generations of

people who've lived really sad or unfortunate lives because they were, it was such a stigma.

I mean, I could tell you from my experience, like my dad was an alcoholic, but he became an alcoholic after I left the house.

And the catalyst for it all was my grandfather dying at 66, and then my grandmother fell apart.

And this was in the 90s in a small town.

And so what is somebody in that situation who all of a sudden has lost their dad, doesn't have a chance to process, like the whole family's upset.

And then his mom's literally calling him on the floor crying every single day because she's having panic attacks.

So what does somebody in that position

do for help?

You don't ask people.

He turned to alcohol.

And then it became a 15-year odyssey.

And the way he got through it was therapy.

But like, it's like, I, and there's just, there's a lot of regrets in all of this, but like, if he had just been given, or basically, if we had lived in a society that was like, this awful thing happened to you.

You really should go talk to somebody.

Maybe none of that happens, you know?

And, and my father unfortunately passed away at 70, made it four years longer from a liver thing that they say doesn't have anything to do with the alcoholism, but like, it's kind of hard to, you know.

So

there's just so many consequences on top of consequences by not addressing it.

There's one other element to it too is therapy is one thing, which is extraordinarily important.

But for some people, medication is important.

Because it's all science.

So hyper-stigmatized.

Don't give me a pill.

Don't give them a pill.

Don't be a baby and take a pill.

Dude, if I didn't have medication, I don't know if I'd be here.

I really don't.

Like, I think there's so many people that would not be alive right now if it weren't for the medication.

I can definitively tell you that I cannot keep it together without medication because, in order for me to get into the MDMA trial, I had to go off my meds for the first time in eight years.

And

because of my job, I have a uniquely stressful job.

Yeah, I mean, a little bit.

We're not talking about the podcast, guys, by the way.

This is not uniquely stressful.

Although Zach is pretty frustrating.

It comes with real-world threats.

Like a neo-Nazi showed up in my mom's house and it took me over a year to get him locked up.

That is what was going on while I was taking the MDMA therapy.

So I had to go off of my meds, which meant that like my

experimental sessions were getting delayed because of fucking court dates that ended up getting canceled or or post owned or postponed or whatever but i got to learn after nine years of being very successful you know graduating from columbia with honors running my own nonprofit working full-time all at the same time on meds had been running like that for years doing all sorts of incredible shit went off my meds.

I couldn't fucking keep my business open.

I couldn't keep my nonprofit running.

My, like, my relationship with my wife just completely fucking fell apart.

But like,

thankfully, I understood the value of therapy and I kept fucking going, kept going, kept going, kept going.

And I was so,

I had heard so many of these studies.

It's not just rumors about like psychedelics curing people of PTSD.

I was hoping so much that I would get that kind of relief.

And I didn't.

And I eventually was just like, this is not safe.

I need to get back on the meds.

And it took a while.

It took a while for the meds to to kick back in and for things to actually and external stimuli had to also calm the fuck down like the Nazi actually went to jail for six months

which helped a lot sure but like

now I'm now I'm at it again now I'm running both my nonprofits I got my business they're doing the podcast hell yeah because of the meds they they allow me to be my best self and I think that's one of the scary things about RFK Jr.

being

the Secretary of Health and Human Services is that he is actually quite skeptical of pretty much all drugs.

And he's even talked about sending people to like

camps

for medications.

Which is insane.

And

when the reality, Zach, as you said, sometimes it is just medication.

I mean, after my, so I had a period where my grandmother died and then my dad died 10 months later.

We had five days.

heads up that he was going to die with some other family stuff going on.

And then I ended up being in the same situation that my dad was in

because my mom's still here.

Now, fortunately, my mom is not my grandmother.

And if she's listening to this, she's saying, thank God you just said that.

But I all suddenly, and luckily, I have a brother.

My dad was the only child.

But like, all of a sudden, I was in the same situation that my dad was in 25 years before.

My dad had actually more heads, like my grandfather had cancer, so it like took.

months, but my dad's thing came up.

And, you know, so there were days after that, and I had a little son at the same time, too.

There were a couple instances.

I can remember one instance in particular where I was sitting in a chair, and I was just staring at the floor, and I just felt like everything was collapsing into me until I basically burst.

And the thing that helped me was,

I think it was probably, no, it wasn't, it's basically like a Lexapro type thing.

And not that, not that it was like an all better, because that's not really how those work, but I didn't have that anymore.

So like,

what is the problem with doing that?

Like, how are you a lesser person?

Because you take a drug that makes you feel better.

And we've just got to, we've got to knock that stigma away because a lot of guys in particular, but women too, will not go because they're terrified of the reaction, right?

Just like you're saying within the military.

There's a lot about medicine that everyone doesn't understand.

Like, we can do a whole episode.

My soon-to-be baby within nine days of the time we're recording this is a product of IVF.

And I have learned so much about human reproduction.

I thought I was well-educated on this shit.

I was not.

One of the things I thought I also understood way back when, in 2007, when I first started seeking mental health while I was still in the Army, was I thought you take a pill and you feel better.

And the doctor had told me, well, well it takes a while to build up in your system so it's going to take a little bit so i was like well if it takes a while to build up in my system i'll take three oh going

oh boy how'd that go how'd that go i i wish i had said that to the doctor i did not feel like i got a shortcut in my head right now so i i went from having a panic attack in the emergency room to you know getting told like hey you're having a panic attack.

Here's a prescription.

And I just, I was like, well, if it takes time to build up in the system, I might as well just take a bunch right now.

So it builds up

by the time I got into my car, and I like drove a block, and I was like, nope, nope.

No, no, it's not happening.

It's not fucking happening.

And so going from panic attack to I'm too fucked up to drive was not a good day for me.

But it took me years of therapy to actually

like a lot of different types of therapy, psychotherapy and pharmacology, like a lot of hundreds of hours for me to even begin to understand how

to

identify what was going on in me to recognize my symptoms and to start to act to control those symptoms if i couldn't control the external stimuli at least control

right yeah and it's important to know like Not, I don't think any of us are endorsing medication for everybody, but there are like, I think the challenge that we face here is that there are certain people who go, I'll never do it.

You know, and that's, that's the hardest part of the whole thing.

But medication is not for everybody.

I know people who have gotten through with just therapy.

It sounds like you got through with just therapy, and that's great.

But this is my

God.

You're one of those.

But that's an extremely important thing because a lot of the time,

especially on the right, they'll demonize it and go, you're just throwing a pill at the problem.

It's like, nobody should take pills because anybody could be able to work through it if they're just strong enough.

Like some people just aren't.

Some people just have a chemical imbalance that cannot be fixed by any amount of talking.

No willpower.

No willpower fixes that.

I had to do a a good amount of research on this for some family reasons recently.

And the way I got to thinking about it, because I had to explain it to a kid, and the way I got to thinking about it was you've got a nail and you need to nail it in.

And you can either do that with your hands and your knuckles or you can use a tool and do it like a fucking smart person.

And the way medications ideally work is it's just brain tools.

And you're giving your brain a shortcut to do something better or faster or easier.

You might not have nails to hammer in for the rest of your life.

You might have nails to hammer in for the rest of your life.

It's all fine.

It doesn't fix the problem, but it makes it so that you can get to the solution or get to an ideal state.

Cause really we're all just trying to get to bed, right?

If you can just get to fucking bed happy and wake up the next day and know that you can just deal with the tasks that are put in front of you.

Who fucking cares?

You might eventually learn to make shit without nails if we want to keep the metaphor going.

You can do the wood on wood joints, you know?

Well, and I know we...

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

But it's a tool and it's a tool you might need for a long time for a little bit of time you might need forever and and and that's okay use fucking tools when they're presented well i don't there's not going to be anybody on earth who's sitting on their dead deathbed going man i i'm so glad i just like white knuckles these horrible moments or oh real i really wish i didn't take that pill or go to therapy and feel better you know like and i think we just like it when you put it that way it seems so simple but like we've we've been in this this world of of stigmatizing it so well we are actually at time we've gone way over but this was really great.

And I would just say to anybody, you know,

who is going through something right now, that talk to a friend, talk to a relative, or look up, there's a suicide prevention hotline.

988.

988, which Trump's trying to cut a little bit of it, but fuck that there.

It's there.

Use it.

It helps people.

And I hope that this conversation

helps somebody make that decision because the other decisions are horrendously worse.

Do not do that.

Don't do a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Exactly.

Well, thank you, everybody, for sticking with us on the longer one.

You've asked for longer ones, so you got a long one.

You got a long one.

So,

and probably the next episode will be back on the screens, but we'll find another time to do this again.

But thank you all, and we'll see you next week.