Ep 270 | How to Make Men DANGEROUS Again | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Young men are making a terrible mistake.

They are taking four of what should be the most adventurous, life-changing years of their life, and they're spending them at a university where they're lectured about how toxic and privileged they are.

They emerge with debt and zero prospects, or very few, prepared for a world that doesn't exist anymore or soon won't.

Future-proofing our kids against the rise of AI and the fall of common sense.

That's what everybody, at least I as a dad, that's what I worry about.

I am going to introduce you to a young man who skipped college and instead sailed around the Falkland Islands, became an EMT, learned Spanish, wrangled horses in Wyoming, is getting his pilot's license as he flies planes in Colorado, and so much more.

And his father, who created this epic alternative to a four-year degree for his son and for possibly yours.

Welcome two of the men behind The Preparation: How to Become Confident, Competent, and Dangerous: Matt and Maxim Smith.

Maxim.

Matt, welcome.

How are you?

Doing well.

How are you well?

Thanks.

Good.

I'm so excited to have you on.

I have a 19-year-old son.

And, you know, we have gone back and forth on college.

And, you know, he's like, what am I going to college for?

And I'm like, I don't want you to go to college, but I don't know, don't know exactly what to do.

And I saw this and I thought, please, let's, I want to pursue this because I want to pursue this with my son.

I just think this is brilliant.

This is the first real answer for what do you do with a young man that is lost.

Maxim, I want to ask you, because this is what my son has said to me.

Dad, why don't you go to college?

What is the point?

So I go to college and then maybe that job is still available with AI.

And then what?

I get a job and I work at a place I don't really like and still can't afford a house or a life.

Is that the way you felt?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, my dad never persuaded me to go to college, but I remember it's probably about a year and a half ago, I was thinking,

what do young men have to look forward to?

And so they have these three main paths, college being the main one.

And then it's like, what, you can't really afford anything.

You can't buy your own house anymore because you're probably not going to make enough money to do so.

And yeah, exactly.

You're going to go to college to get a degree that maybe gets you something, maybe gets you a job, maybe gets you good money.

But,

you know, what else do you have from there?

So, yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

And what were the other paths that you looked at?

For me personally, I would say the only other path was, just because my dad's been an entrepreneur his whole life, was doing that instead.

So, dad,

you're watching your son.

You're seeing this.

You are just an entrepreneur that, you know, has done it.

But I think even that,

you and I are both from a different time of entrepreneurship where in some ways it was harder to be an entrepreneur and some ways it's much harder now to be an entrepreneur.

It's just different.

It's just different.

So tell me your journey through this.

Well, you know, actually,

I guess I should say that this is a book that my mentor, Doug Casey, wanted to write for the last 12 years.

He called it Renaissance Man when he first pitched me on it 12 years ago.

The idea being, well, when he pitched me on it, he said, I want to go, I want to call it Renaissance Man.

And I said, well, tell me more, what's it about?

And he said, well, the three most important verbs in every language are be, do, and have.

And I want the book to be about that.

And frankly, at the time, I didn't know what he meant by that.

I asked a couple of follow-up questions, didn't really get anything from him.

And every couple years, he would, and Doug's written lots of books, but every couple years, Doug would kind of pitch me on it again.

And at the same time, he would remind me that it's a lot of brain damage, he would say, to write a book.

So, you know, I'm getting mixed messages.

But when he was 17, on the cusp of 18, you know, I could see in him and feel in him the anxiety, the uncertainty.

I mean, this is two years ago.

So we're coming out of COVID still.

I mean, the world became incredibly uncertain for everybody, I think, during that era.

And I think young people got the shaft in that in a big way and created more uncertainty and uh but i could see his anxiety like he wants i could see he want we like all men we want to be somebody you know but we know we have to do something that matters in order to become someone that matters you know so it didn't sound obvious like there was no real clear path and because i i am i'm a college dropout so i didn't grow up i didn't he didn't grow up with me saying college is the key to success because that was the key to my success.

So in some ways, that made it harder for him, I think, because, you know, it was like, at least it wasn't, it wasn't propagandized with, oh, well, this is a strategy in my work.

100%.

I face the same thing.

I didn't go to college.

I went to college for a semester when I was 30.

I couldn't afford it.

And so I have said my whole life that because I didn't go to college, I don't think in the box, which helps me.

You look at life completely differently.

And it's helped me.

And so I've never been really for college.

My wife has been for college.

I'm not for college, but it is, it put us in the situation to where my kids were like, well, then what, then what?

And we didn't know then what.

Well, we didn't know then what either.

So then I went, so I went seeing him like this, I went back to Doug

and I said, let's flesh out this idea a little more.

And we came up with basically what you could really essentially put on a napkin, a list of skills,

occupations, games, and activities, essentially, that like a Renaissance man would ultimately have.

That was his idea, under the Renaissance man theme.

Hang on a sec.

For anybody who doesn't know what a Renaissance man is, I don't even know if that's a term understood anymore.

Explain what a Renaissance man is.

Well, that's why the book's not called Renaissance Man.

You're exactly right.

So basically, a Renaissance man is somebody who can, well, Glenn, I think you're a good example of this.

You can paint,

you can write.

You know, you're a man of many talents.

You can do lots of things engaging with the real world.

We're not limited to specialization, you know, where you're caught and wheel.

You do one thing.

You understand the world around you and you're able to successfully engage in that world and create in that world.

That's what a Renaissance man, in simple terms.

So that's where we started from.

And fortunately, Maxim was a great sport about it and willing to follow our direction.

And

it really was not well structured in the beginning.

You have to understand, it was very loose.

And we only came up over the last two years with a much more structured approach to it to make it so he could be more effective.

And ultimately, then it translates well for others to apply.

Okay, so what's the best way to take this apart?

Should we do with the B

do have?

Let's start with the B, because that's the first thing you have to do, if I'm not mistaken, Maxim, right?

Yes, yeah, that's, that's one of the primary things that lets you start it all.

Okay.

You need that for sure.

Yeah, and I think it's important to understand the kind of orientation between two, because we are today,

we're motivated generally by having.

You know, we like to have a nice house.

We'd like to have a, you know, beautiful spouse.

We'd like to have a new car or the latest iPhone or whatever.

Especially in our consumer culture, this is becoming, this is like what people focus on.

The problem is, is that everyone, it's not well understood that having is actually just a byproduct of doing.

You know, it just, it comes along by doing.

And so doing is the operative.

Doing is where the power is.

Like by doing, that's where you can change things and can ultimately get to the have.

But you don't, this is the thing that I've talked to my children about a lot.

You can't just do because I grew up poor.

My kids have grown up surrounded by success, which is, I think, much more detrimental detrimental than poor.

But I've tried to explain, you weren't there for the tough years.

You know what I mean?

And you can't just do.

You must be

different.

You must know who you are, what you serve, what you're trying to create, how you're trying to make life easier for other people.

When you know that, then you'll find your do

and then you'll have.

Is that philosophy close?

I think

you're exactly right about that.

And I totally agree.

I think it's just, it's very hard for a young person to believe in their, in who they are

until they're engaged in the world and practicing it.

And so what we do in the book, we try and we plant the seed of be.

We try to explain to them this orientation and that truly The doing is the operative.

Doing is your tool.

Dual, you have lots of energy, lots of time, no liabilities.

I mean,

lots of possibilities, open to novelty in a way that you won't be when you get older.

I mean, well, anyway, doing is where your power is.

It's the operative, but B is the only thing that matters.

It's the only thing that matters.

And so we try and plant the seed around that early on.

And we actually put people through an exercise, which sounds trivial at first, where we have them develop a personal code because it's because

just to give them,

get them to begin to answer and think about, at least, the most important question, which is not what people ask young men typically before they go to college.

It's like essentially, who are you going to work for?

It's really the version of the question.

It's what kind of man do you want to become?

What kind of man do you want to become?

So, Maxim, can you take us through your personal code?

On the man that you and

I mean, walk us through how you got here, if you can.

Take us through the process so we understand it a bit.

But what is your be?

Who do you want to become?

How did you answer that?

Well, I think I kind of

answered that in the beginning.

As soon as this list of games, activities, and occupations was given to me,

I had always loved the story of the Count of Monte Cristo.

I'd read it and seen one of the movies, one of the versions of the movie.

And despite all the revenge stuff, we're not, you know,

not talking about that part.

It's about the fact that during a period of about 14 years, he transformed himself into a completely different man with lots of skills.

And that was kind of my image of the man I wanted to be at the time.

I think it's morphed a little bit, changed a little bit.

But that's where it all started in the beginning.

So how did you put that together?

I mean,

do you have to write this out?

How did you formalize that?

Definitely writing it out.

Yeah, we have a symbol.

Do you want to describe the structure to them?

Yeah, well, the structure of it is there's three main parts.

There's the moral code part, which is where you kind of draw the line in the sand.

This is where you write.

kind of write up what you will and will not allow yourself to do.

Can you be specific?

Yeah, let's say like, for example, I won't do anything that degrades myself or

I will endure any bearable condition, for example.

Things like that, and then it moves over to virtues.

So we speak about the classic

Greek and Roman virtues, and we lay out a list of them in the book, and we have people pick out five or seven of those virtues that they add to their list and try to pursue.

And then the last section is your competencies and that's where you write down, it's an ever-increasing, ever-expanding list over the four years in the preparation where you keep adding your new competencies, your new skills.

So really in the beginning it was just kind of writing out

I didn't have the virtues so much.

I think I added that later on, but it was writing out the things I would allow myself to do and would not allow myself to do.

Yeah, this is the way I see it is, you know, I'm not one who loves rules.

Okay.

I don't love, you know,

all the rules that there are so many in the world.

And his generation has grown up in the most surveilled, tracked, scheduled of any, if any people ever to walk the face of the earth, you know?

And

so those rules are very confining to young people, but rules that they choose for themselves, rules that

because of observing themselves, like when they engage in behavior that they see makes them feel degraded to do.

You know, it could be with porn, for instance, which is not uncommon among young people.

It could be lying.

You know, a little white lie, maybe people say, oh, that's not so bad.

Well, you know, I feel personally, I feel a little degraded if I tell a white lie.

If you ask me out for dinner on Friday and I say, I'm busy when I really just am not in the mood for it this week, next week would be better.

But I tell you, I'm busy, that little white lie makes me feel small.

So like I,

observing my own responses, the way I behave in the environment, I have a set, you develop a set of rules.

I'm not going to do this anymore.

And it sounds trivial, I know.

But this is, for a young person, this is the

beginning of real self-esteem because it's the first time they are deciding.

who they are and what is acceptable to them and what is not acceptable to them for their own conduct not for other people but just for themselves they can take it's the start of them taking control over their life with these rules and they're you know they're binary.

The past fail.

The virtues go into something else.

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I keep thinking of a couple of things.

One of them is Washington.

George Washington did his rules of civility.

He was eight years old.

Of course.

Eight years old.

He writes the rules of civility of the man that...

I'm going to do these things, and that's what a man is.

And we don't, you know, I've always had a problem with people saying,

you know, what do you want to do when you grow up?

No, no.

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

That's the most important thing.

So now tell me the cycles.

How do the cycles work?

We go from this preparation of who you want to be.

Are we finished with that?

Did we cover all of that?

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, basically.

I mean, the thing about the virtues, I'll just say is that the virtues, so like the rules are binary.

I passed, a failed.

It's kind of a guideline.

The virtues are an aspiration.

I mean, courage, for instance,

you could always be more courageous.

I mean, it's the constant pursuit of these virtuous conduct, essentially.

And we ask people to choose among ones that really call to them.

And for individuals, they'll be different.

They really will.

We lay them all out for them and I just ask them to pick which ones call to them the most.

And there's no.

And then finally, as Maximum.

There's no,

this is all self-written.

I mean,

you don't don't have to turn this paper in and and, you know, you're not, you're not programming to anybody but you.

Yeah, and I think it's really important that you, that, because these rules are,

to the world, they might, you, they might not even know that you engage in behavior that makes you feel small, but you know.

And so you might not, the rest of the world doesn't need to know,

but you need to know.

You need to create these things for yourself.

And I, yeah, I'd say generally they are, Max does publish his as an example, but I mean, I wouldn't encourage everyone to do that.

This is for you.

It's really only for you.

So Lynn, what's the next step?

Well, 80% of the book is doing.

Okay.

80% of it.

Now, we do spend some time in the book dispelling myths about how the world works.

Everyone thinks, you know, you climb the ladder to success.

Yeah, yeah.

You know,

it doesn't really work that way.

So we dispel a lot of myths around that.

We explain how economics really works so that they don't make bad decisions early on with debt and they understand the value of savings.

They understand the dollar and issues with that.

Just the core fundamental things we think that they have to know.

I mean, really, this book is, at its core, a dad who loves his son's best attempt to say, this is what I think you need to know now.

There's more you'll need to know, way more.

But right now, these are things that would be really useful to you.

So there's that context build in the first part of the book, which is the philosophy and some education.

But then the next part is all about doing.

And when the doing, we break it in, because we figure we're essentially competing with college.

So we use four years.

We break down the four years into quarters.

We call them cycles.

Each cycle has a theme.

And each cycle includes an anchor activity.

That's what we call it, which is like, which is an adventure, really.

It's doing something challenging,

where you walk away in most cases with a skill of real economic value that you could go get a job on with that alone if you wanted to, but we discourage it at this time.

We think stacking these on top of each other has a way impact to do that.

So you have the anchor activity.

And we think that everyone, of course, we do believe in education.

We just don't really believe in college as a place where you really get that.

So, and especially today, I mean, you know, MIT publishes its entire course catalog online.

Yale has a whole bunch of stuff online.

You can take Yale's MBA program if you want.

I mean, it's all this stuff.

It's available for free or next to free.

So

you have lots of academics in there.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the one thing I, I don't know if you're that familiar with Charlie Kirk, but

he was a friend of mine and I kept watching him.

And I know he didn't go to college.

And I kept, every time I'd see him, I'm like, how are you learning all this?

And he took 19 courses for free with his Hillsdale.

He could quote every classic.

I mean, he was a disciplined mind, and it just came from him doing, knowing what he wanted to learn, and then doing it and pursuing it every single day.

And it didn't cost me.

He wasn't in debt.

I mean, it was a remarkable testimony to me on what somebody can do if they just set their mind to it, if they want to do it.

I agree.

When you see him speak and the things he's able to draw to mind so easily shows that he was, that's what a real education is.

He pursued things out of his own curiosity, his own desire, thirst for knowledge, rather than this is the course catalog and this is what I'm doing.

You say these cycles they each teach you.

Can you give me an example of some of the cycles?

Sure.

Do you want to talk about it?

Yeah, I mean out of the 16, we have different, many different kind of genres in it.

There's the fighter cycle, which you're training Muay Thai in Thailand for three months.

There's the heavy equipment operator cycle, where you go to Florida to learn to become a heavy equipment operator and operate tons of different equipment.

Which you get certified in and then turn into your job if you wanted it to.

There's the EMT cycle, which is probably one of the cheapest, next to the fighter cycle where you become a certified EMT.

There's also an entrepreneur cycle, an investor cycle.

There's a welder cycle.

Exactly.

There's this great place in Maine called the Shelter Institute where you design and build a home in three weeks.

Wow.

I mean, in the third week, you only put up a timber frame only.

You're not doing all the final, you know, the finishing of the home, obviously, in that time period.

But the design part, the two weeks, you'll know how to design your own home out of that.

And I mean, it's a great program they have.

And so that's one of the cycles.

There's a welder cycle.

And then we have a cycle where we say you should work.

Because along the way, you're going to be presented with opportunities that and some of them you're going to want to pursue for a few months just to kind of see.

And for Maxima, after he became an EMT,

sort of, and these opportunities sort of come to you the more you do in the world,

someone showed up and said, Hey, I see you're qualified to do that.

You know, I own a wildfire.

And then I, so the next year, he brought me on and I worked on wildfires the next year, earning $600 a day.

So it was like a crazy opportunity out of the blue that I took a $1,500 four-month-long EMT course, became certified, and then it translated over to something wild like that.

And when you say four-month-long, it was half a day, two days a week for four months.

It was

exactly what I was doing.

So what are you doing the rest of the time?

Are you just like, you're taking these courses, but what else are you filling your day with?

It's a good question.

I mean, because your day is full.

I mean, unlike where a university, 12 credit hours is considered full time,

which is why you see there's so, you you know, I mean, I went into college from the Army, and so it was like, I was shocked by that everyone was sitting around doing nothing all the time when I got on campus.

Right.

Like, it's like 80% hanging out.

This is 40, basically we plan for 40 hours a week, you know, 40 productive hours a week, but this is, but, which is just normal.

I mean, this isn't even entrepreneurship work, right?

This is normal work.

But things count like

Reading.

There's lots of reading assignments in here and lots of, we have a whole library of other things we encourage you to read that is like electives essentially.

But we have a, there's a whole section on different activities that a lot of them could be anchor courses themselves, but we just,

you know,

but but but we want people to have exposure, like a Renaissance man would, to lots of different things.

So like we encourage people to learn to draw first or and take a painting class or learn to play chess.

scuba dive, rock climbing, whatever.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of different things in there that we, we recommend are good to get exposure to when you're young.

You know, just broad basin, somebody will like call to you more, but if you don't get exposure to them, if you don't understand that they exist and they seem so foreign to you, you know, you'll never know to explore them further.

So there's a certain amount of time set aside for these types of activities every week, and there's a certain amount of time set aside for reflection.

And this has been a really important part of it because it's reflection and accountability.

Maxim, when he first started, what he did is he, I said, after a couple months, I said, why don't you start publishing what you did this week on Substack?

Just,

that's it, just a list of what you got done.

It's a public accountability, essentially, you know, of what you're trying to do in a certain week.

And now it's along the way, ended up, you know, there's thousands of people who subscribe to what he's doing now.

And it's gone from basically this list that meant nothing to anyone but him and I, I guess, to now he's actually become quite a competent writer and, you know, has his own ideas and writes about those ideas there.

And so that we encourage everybody to do this, to do the same, because that accountability piece, ultimately, you know, you're swimming.

You've done this your whole life, Glenn, but like it's not normal to swim against the tide.

Like it's very hard for people to do this.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean,

so that's why college is easy.

You're, you feel like you're succeeding even if you're failing for four years, you know, because even if you're on a track that will lead to failure, if you tell your friends and family and neighbors about it, they'll say, you know, good job, Johnny, you're on the right track.

I mean, you don't even know.

The feedback loop isn't there.

This feels very different.

It feels more like way your life was early on or mine.

Yeah.

And

you're saying that you want to finish the four years because

the point is to be completely rounded.

right

yeah and of course there are many things that you could pursue beyond this

And I bet that the person who builds the habits, the max, who has started where he has, and is two years into this, that it will never really end.

Right.

Never really.

Because you'll, I mean, the learning, of course, never ends.

But like these habits of putting yourself in totally new situations and being comfortable feeling stupid as you learn new skills.

that that habit will be so ingrained.

Already he is

way better at now, I would say, than way better than me now at going into these, throwing himself into these crazy new experiences.

I mean, one of them was, for instance, he didn't mention a sailing cycle.

On the sailing cycle, he sailed around the Falkland Islands.

It was thrown in the deep end.

He'd never been on a sailboat before, okay?

Around the Falkland Islands and through the Strait of Magellan.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

How?

Were you with a team?

What happens there?

Yeah, it was.

Well, this is part of the reason why

we ask people to publish on Substack, for example, is because you get these random opportunities.

So from that,

an ex-military guy, sailor, and author, Matt Bracken, recommended to me that I

basically do this competent crew course with...

this high-latitude, famous high-latitude sailor and his crew.

And so I from here in Uruguay I had to hop over to Chile to get stuff and then fly to the Falklands and that's where they had their their boat a seventy two foot big two foot long

boat basically a schooner and that's where we started the the trip with the crew of and you knew nothing when you got on the boat

I knew absolutely nothing about sailing.

No, nothing.

What do you do?

What do you know now?

Well, I think I know a lot more about the basics of sailing, especially because

it was such a different place to sail.

You know, most people start off maybe sailing in the Great Lakes or around Florida and calm waters, but when you're sailing at 50 degrees south latitude, it's very rough.

So I'd say, especially the fact that it was about 21 days of sailing overall, I think I know

more than most.

Was there anything that you've thrown yourself into the UN?

This was a mistake?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was this year.

I got another random opportunity to work on a geophysics crew in Nevada.

And for an exploration mining company, and it sounds a lot fancier than it is,

because it's mainly just grunt work.

You have to lay out kilometers of wire in the desert and basically send electrical signals through the ground to pick up any anomalies.

And this company was looking for gold or silver or copper.

And we laid down this wire day after day, had countless problems, broken down trucks, people getting hurt.

One guy got shocked and there's several amps running through this wire.

So he could have died.

Actually, it was probably only his wedding ring that saved him.

Wow.

Redirecting the current away from his heart.

Everything went wrong that could have went wrong, basically.

And it was

not a great crew to work with either.

So I did

kind of regret parts of that.

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So

do you have any of these light up?

Or is this just something that the average 18-year-old with their dad is supposed to go, I don't know, let's go here to work on a ranch for a while?

How does this work?

Yeah, so

there's these random opportunities.

Like I said, the geophysics one that came up that...

Because you will be presented with random opportunities.

You may want to pursue them.

But this is a very important thing.

That's just because you're working with people or working around people and say, and they're interested and they're like, hey, you know what?

I have an idea.

You should go do this.

That kind of random.

Well, and also because

he's publishing what he's doing.

And so he's developed people that say, hey, you know, if you're interested and you're doing this interesting stuff, you might want to try this, you know?

And so actually, it really comes from readership

as much as anything else.

But the core of the program is we have, it was very random for him, especially at first.

But what we've done is we've turned

what was random for him into 16 structured cycles where we tell you exactly where to go, like the Shelter Institute, exactly the people that he went with to do the sailing expedition.

We don't tell you what exact EMT program to go to because there's one in almost anywhere you live, you know, you'll be able to find one.

But the heavy equipment operations school, that's there.

There's this great cooking school in Italy where you go to one of my favorite cities in the world.

You go to Florence

and

spend a month learning to cook quite a bit.

And at a time, and these cycles are structured in such a way that they have a theme.

So we try and as much as possible, layer in academics that are relevant to where you are and what you're doing so that it makes sense, makes sense.

And so, of course, you can imagine the types of academics that we would recommend if you're spending that much time in Florence.

Yeah.

Right.

You're surrounded by this great Roman history, this great art.

I mean, it's, you know, so much.

And economic history.

Like crazy.

Well, that's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we lay out exactly what's exactly what to do.

So there is, you don't have to think about it.

Now, every single cycle has room for electives where you fill in what you want to do, but the base anchor course, where it is, how much it costs, how you can sign up for it, that's all laid out in there.

So

do each of these cycles,

have you picked the things that go into these cycles to teach a man

something radically different?

It's not like you're just looking at, I mean, each of these cycles has meaning behind it.

I'm guessing.

Well, do you want to answer that or do you want me to?

I don't know if they each have an individual meaning or a deeper meaning behind it.

I think it's just the building of great skills that translate and interconnect across various aspects of life to, like you said, Glenn,

make a more well-rounded man overall.

That is the deeper meaning behind everything.

The deeper meaning is like helping them actually understand by putting them in high contact with the world

so they can understand the reality like what's real in the world and how do things really work in the world And how can I create within that world?

But it's like there is no deeper meaning in an EMT certification other than the fact that if you happen to find yourself in an unfortunate situation, that you're the guy who knows what to do.

I mean, there's great value in that, but there isn't like, you know, any deeper meaning in it.

But we love, that's where he started was with the EMT one.

And we think that's a great place to start for everybody because it, you know, because honestly, that's such a great skill to have and so few have it anymore and um it's easy for everyone to do it doesn't cost much you can do it from wherever you're from you're you know if you're staying if you're living with your parents you can do it now what does this cost you for four years

if you did everything that we outline in here it's about 72 000 over four years okay

Now, there are two courses in here that are anchor courses that are very expensive.

And one is getting your private pilot's license.

Wow.

Which you don't.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

You're like, how many hours are you into that now?

About 30, 30 something hours into that.

And then the sailing course, I guess the heavy equipment operator course is a little

expensive too.

But again, we tell people to work along the way and make money along the way.

I mean,

before or while going to EMT school, I worked at Office Depot.

I worked as a pizza delivery driver.

Then later I worked on wildfires, worked for the geophysics crew and then have made a little bit of money riding the along the way so it's all supposed to be about working in uh during it so you can pay your way through it like you used to be able to do with college right and if but i saved go ahead

i was just gonna say i i

like you i grew up poor nothing you know lots of hardship He hasn't had to grow up in that environment.

I'm grateful that he hasn't had to grow up in that bad environment.

But

I saved an irresponsibly small amount of money for him.

Considering the obvious, you know, I could pass along this much money every year without gift tax.

I didn't save even that much for him.

Enough for basically one year at a really good school, maybe.

But today he has more money than he did when he started two years ago.

And I think this is the, a lot of people see this and they go, oh yeah, okay, so a kind of a rich guy is basically sending his son to go do all this stuff.

No, he wouldn't need money to do it.

It's something the biggest thing we try and and teach people in this economic section is understand debt and liabilities.

And it's like, listen, at 18, you are free.

You don't have to, do not take a car loan.

Do not rent, do not sign a lease.

Like, do not, do not take on these liabilities that then require you to get a job just to be able to survive.

Like, and so he's stayed with friends and family, you know,

wherever he's gone to do these things that require him to do it and done it on the cheap.

I mean, he's become very resourceful and thrifty because of it.

So many people are living every day with pain and they think they're just stuck with it.

And that's what it is.

But it doesn't have to be like that.

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Tell me about the economic courses.

What is that cycle like?

Where do you go or what do you learn?

For investing,

the one on investing.

Yeah, well, we have them read

several books on the topic.

We have them take a markets course from Yale.

And then a lot of it is essentially they set up their own

essentially a paper trading account as they're going through it.

And so they get to experience, experiment, and understand how the market's working.

Now, of of course the markets are not working now if you ask me as a kind of a financial guy yeah um but well they're working they're just they're just a little rigged

there's no price discovery mechanism i think it's a rivalian gold um you know so uh

so that's the reality but we do want them to understand how to allocate capital obviously if they say they're savings and we're not we in the earlier part of the book not part of a cycle when we spend a lot of time talking about economics i mean you know

the

you know more of the austrian school of economics and talking about right

where you should keep your savings and things like that so um it was show them specifically the you know explain the inflation and money printing and how all that works and by by using a have you ever seen this uh website it's wtf happened in 1971.com no You ever seen that website?

No.

It's great.

It's great.

They have so many charts that show not just how prices have changed, of course, because that's an obvious thing, but it shows a lot of not obvious things.

Family formations, how that started to collapse, incarceration started to really skyrocket.

All these social problems that are caused by the disconnection of money from reality in 1971.

And so we just, we, we, we show them a little, you know, we don't want to go too far, too deep into this, but we want to make sure they understand it because it's really, really important because they can never get ahead if they under, if they, especially if you take on debt in that environment.

And even I would, and I even think liabilities like rent for a young person is,

if you don't need to, you know, we live in Latin America, so it's very common that a young man would live with his parents until they get married.

Now, I found this shocking when I learned this at first.

I'm like, you're 30 years old, you're a you're a successful lawyer, and you live at home with your mother, you know, and your father.

And

he was like well of course I do why wouldn't I

and um but but in in the U.S.

at least under the tradition I grew up under was 18 you're out one is expected one is expected to move along yes and it it changes it changes everything changes the dynamics of the family it it it changes everything I think we'd be much better off if we

you know, not in the same situation, more like it probably is in Latin America, less like it would be here in America where you're just playing video games in your mom's basement.

That's not

unhealthy.

No, that's obviously not healthy.

But, you know, I think, Glenn, I really believe that a lot of this,

these problems we see in young men today where they're like, that's, they might end up there, it's because they don't see

anything that they could do that would actually be,

you know,

To be somebody, they have to do something worthy of being somebody.

And that there's nothing presented in front of them that can show them the way.

I mean all the paths fundamentally are you know is join the military, go to trade school, go to college.

Trade school, nothing an honorable thing to do.

Military can be honorable for sure.

Like all that, but all of those mostly

I could argue that the army, you know, the military has another additional component, but fundamentally, they're designed to get you a job so that you can become, hopefully, economically independent, which is important.

But economically independent is the least important form of independence you want in a young man.

You want an independent thinker, an independent doer, a person who has a sense of agency and like embraces personal responsibility.

That all comes first before financial independence and is a natural byproduct of it.

I personally think,

I mean, you have to be a chick magnet to some degree as well, because you are so well-rounded and you can go anywhere.

You know, probably parents would really like you.

You know, when you meet a girl, they probably love you because you're so well-rounded, well-thought out.

And you're not just the typical boy that never seems to grow up.

You're a pilot.

You're a heavy construction worker.

You're a thinker.

Right, exactly.

I mean, especially when you look around

at a world of, at least in the U.S., of people who don't know how to do anything.

And then there's this guy who knows how to seemingly do it all.

It's like, holy cow.

That's exactly what Tom Woods said, actually.

He said, oh, women must love you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you're putting this together and you're working and you're doing so many different things,

did you think when you were preparing this in some ways about AI that we are all going to have to live this way?

There's nothing that's going to last.

You have to be able to adapt all the time.

You may work seven, 10, 15 different careers or jobs over your lifetime where that's a new kind of thing.

This seems to put you,

this seems to build that core of

change is not a bad thing.

I can change.

It's no big deal.

I can do anything.

If that doesn't work, I'll just do this.

Right?

Was that intentional?

It does.

We have two chapters in here.

One is how to

future-proof yourself.

And the whole discussion is around AI.

We actually take the example of probably the most

financially lucrative career of the last 20 years or so.

It would be to go into finance.

And we show how those jobs are going to, all those entry-level finance jobs are absolutely going to be destroyed.

Absolutely.

And so this one that went from the most lucrative is going going to go to the there isn't anything here very quickly.

And so we demonstrate that to just to show people what's coming.

Then there's a chapter that's on, we call it hacker, you're not really hacking, but basically you're learning to use these tools to build things.

So like we just like want you to be able to build a house in the real world or not that you have to, but to have to understand how it works and you could do it.

We want you to be able to build in the virtual world too.

Like if you have an idea for a product, you'll know how to use these tools to create.

Now they're changing constantly, but not to see them as something, we don't want anything in the world to seem like closed off to you, foreign to you, inaccessible to you.

And so the technology is a big part of that.

So, and there's another part of one other cycle we didn't mention was one where, have you ever heard of Fab Labs?

No.

So this comes out of MIT and they're all over the country and all over the world, in fact.

And basically they have nine different machines where you can manufacture basically anything on a, not on a scale basis, but on a bespoke basis, you know, just on a one-off basis, anything from circuit boards to a chair.

I mean, it's unbelievable with these nine machines, what you can do.

And these things are open to the public.

I mean, you can go in and you can use them.

It's part of the deal with this,

and they're all connected.

globally.

Yeah, Fab Labs.

So that's one of the cycles is going in and actually making something and learning to use these machines at one of these fab labs.

That is fabulous.

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I think of,

have you read Thomas Jefferson's letter to his nephew Peter Carr ever?

Have either of you ever heard of this?

You should read it.

He wrote a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, 17, I don't remember, 60s, I think.

His mother had just died, and

his father is getting sick.

So he goes to Jefferson, who learned like you did,

was, you know, just learned from different people and learned all kinds of different stuff.

And

he came to him and he said, Thomas, you're the smartest man I know.

I'm dying.

Help my son become a man and an educated man.

So he sat down and he wrote, In mathematics, in philosophy, in all of these different categories, these are the things that you must master if you want to be a man.

This is how to think.

And the last one changed my entire life.

He said,

when it comes to religion, above all things, fix reason firmly in her seat and question with boldness even the very existence of God.

For if there be a God, he must surely rather honest questioning over blindfolded fear.

That was almost treasonous to say that back then, but it shows,

it shows how you have to be honest in your search for everything,

you know, and how important that is.

Who keeps you honest in this?

I mean, because I would assume the goal is you keep yourself honest.

But they're also, I mean, I know me well enough to know,

you know, last night I was going to, I started a course on art at Hillsdale.

And last night, my wife and I, we were having dinner and I'm like, we've got to do this course.

And we never ended up doing it.

Who keeps you honest?

How does that work?

I think you should answer this.

Well, I mean, what we encourage people to do is this weekly what I did this week.

And that by publishing it, And I think it's important to publish it.

And we encourage everybody, we show them how to do it on Substack.

And we'll connect all these people to over time that are doing it.

But that public, ultimately, we are the only ones that can hold ourselves accountable.

We have our own standards for ourselves.

And often our standard for ourself is higher, frankly, than what other people would even have for us.

So

I think ultimately it's up to us.

But that public accountability, that process of writing it down every week, there were several weeks with him where he's like,

see, he was just like,

I don't want to do it.

I don't want to do it.

I don't want to do it this week.

I don't even know if it makes any sense for me to keep publishing this.

And I'm like, are you disappointed with how you did this week?

Yeah, yeah.

How did you get through that?

Well, it was motivating, especially as there's more and more people paying attention because you're like, oh, now I definitely have to do better.

So it was just.

Getting through it was just about doing more, honestly, because then I enjoyed writing it.

I enjoyed writing what I was doing.

And i enjoyed explaining uh what i was learning so just doing more actually was the way to get through it all yeah and you adjust it you adjust you know you learn well

what didn't go well okay i'll make some adjustments and it's that constant course correction that gets you to the place you want to be and what he what he realized over time is that he had all these people that were watching what he was doing publicly.

I mean, just, again, starting off with just a little list and rooting for him.

You know, and when he would write, sometimes they have a hard time, and people would be like, He's very, very transparent about it.

People are like, Oh, yeah, it was very surprising.

People are like, Oh, don't worry, you'll get through it, it's no big deal.

There's no grades, there's no judging, you're the judge, right?

100%, yeah.

I mean, there are certifications, like you know, for the EMT thing, obviously, you pass or fail

on that, but I mean, in life, there are no grades, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they miss the grades, yeah.

I mean, you're not going to get kicked out of the school that doesn't really exist, that doesn't really exist,

Are there

with no diploma?

Is there, because there's not with me.

I've never asked anybody

about their college.

In fact, in some ways, and I just read this is true, in some ways, big companies are now looking at Ivy League diplomas and staying away from them because they're like, oh, well, you've learned all the wrong stuff right now.

Is there any use for

last and will mean something?

Well, personally, I think that any diploma that is in a highly regulated industry is still going to be required.

Obviously, like being a doctor or being a lawyer, you know,

certainly things that require lots of lab work.

So stuff in the STEM category is absolutely still necessary.

But if you know that you want to go into those things at 18, you're a rare 18-year-old, honestly.

Most people at 18 have no idea what's possible, let alone what they want to do within those infinite possibilities.

Some people say that's, I mean, I went to college when I was 30 because I knew what I wanted to learn at that point.

You know what I mean?

I knew, like, I don't know anything about this, and I know I want to learn.

I think that's when education is really important.

And

I think what you've developed is

better.

But when you kind of know what you want to learn, then you can go and spend the money.

This way, you're constantly,

constantly learning,

which I think is a much better habit throughout life.

Because

I'm trying to pick that back up now.

I kind of went through a period of like 20 years where I'm like, I'm just doing, just doing.

And I was doing and learning.

And I think you should always do and learn.

Otherwise, you just stop.

Right?

Yep.

Oh, you're totally right about that.

Yeah.

And I mean, the thing is, is that

college is exactly the opposite of that.

It's not doing, there might be some learning that gets picked up along the way, but essentially, what I, you know, I dropped out after three semesters.

So it's not like I'm a college expert.

I mean, Doug, our co-op, you know, he went to Georgetown.

I mean, he's highly educated, but even he says way back when he went, it was a waste of

misallocation misallocation of capital, he said, his time and money, his parents' money.

And it is to do that.

Is that partly because you're going to find yourself?

I mean, I hear that all the time.

What is the difference between shaping yourself and finding yourself?

Well, you know, I don't think you'll ever find yourself.

You don't suddenly peek around the corner.

There I am.

I don't think that works that way.

Right.

But I mean, ultimately, and also, and ultimately, that's like an accident.

It's a very disempowering thing.

I'm number one,

major into personal responsibility.

That's the most important thing.

And people see that, oh, so you're taking on lots of burdens.

Yes.

And you're also taking on personal agency.

I can change it.

I'm responsible for this.

Even if I don't like it, I can do something about it.

And by the personal code, beginning first with small things, set of rules, then

something to aspire to, something worthy, something noble.

I don't know if you know who Joel Saladin is.

He's this crazy regenerative farming guy.

He's very popular in the U.S.

I love him.

He's

lucky enough to host him here on our farm actually for a little while.

This is one of the psychosis, is it not?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Explain for anybody who doesn't know what it is.

Explain what it is.

Well, Joel Saladin is a regenerative farmer who actually, unlike most American farmers today, because they produce these commodities at scale with lots of inputs, Joel makes a lot of money for his relatively small farm.

I mean, it's something like a 100x per acre or a typical farm.

And he is, but he's a born teacher.

And so he has, you know, he's integrated, he has this program where essentially you basically intern for him

during, you know, for a season and you learn about all the things of the farm.

Now, this is a hard program to get into because Joel Salatin is like, you know, people, you know, he's like the guy, right

yeah but there are lots of these types of farms throughout the country people that are that are slight i'm a student of joel salatin and we have a regenerative cattle ranch here in uruguay i mean i'm you know there are many students of his what does that mean a regenerative farm what does that mean

means a way it doesn't require inputs uh like you don't use fertilizer and seeds and you're you instead you use the animals and you use the environment to

make uh to create a virtuous cycle with the property essentially where the animals supply the animals produce quite a bit of fertilizer

um you use them well use them to shape the land and you're constantly uh investing in fundamentally making the soil better

so as the soil gets better everything becomes more and more bountiful every year it gets better and better and you don't you're not you're not subject to the

you know, during COVID when fertilizer prices skyrocketed and it really, you know, put people like, will their farm succeed this year or not?

Because they were subject to these input prices.

It kind of frees you of those things.

Now, it might make you less efficient in the first few years, but ultimately it makes you very resilient.

And you also produce higher quality food as far as I'm concerned.

through that process.

So we think those are the good things to learn.

A lot of these things, like, let's say you want to be a farmer or a cowboy, we're not going to say you want to be work, you know, an EMT or you want to be a sailor or a welder or a hacker, you know, but all of these things stacked on top of each other.

Again, they remove the mystery of the world and how it works from you.

And you, so you can see through it, understand it, and create in it.

So that's the whole point of it.

I think it's fabulous.

I think it's really, really great.

I can't thank you enough for sharing it and

best of luck.

And I'm looking forward to seeing you in 10 years and seeing what you're going to be like and doing in 10 years.

It's great.

Looks like you, Glenn.

You bet.

Well, I got to say, I want to say one last thing, Glenn.

As a dad,

I've been able to watch him as this anxious, uncertain, maybe even scared 17-year-old

to what he is now already after two years in the program.

Somewhere along the line,

in almost every way, he went from being a boy to being a man.

I mean, it's remarkable.

I can't pinpoint the point.

It's probably after the sailing thing, actually.

But there's something that he's just not the same person he was.

And it's awesome to see.

And I can't wait for the next 10 years, honestly, as his father.

I'm stopping the podcast with you to go call my son.

You've convinced me.

We'll see.

We'll see what he says, but I think this is fabulous.

Guys, thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate Thank you very much.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

Just a reminder: I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

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