Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch, and welcome to another episode of Metaviews, recorded live at the Academy of the Impossible, where we got a lot of snow today that never stops the goats.

And we've got our Radical American Wackadoo back to talk about the Great American Depression appearing now at an economy near you.

This is going to be one of those episodes.

It's been a while, as our listeners know, I traveled, unfortunately, so I'm still kind of recovering.

But we are going to get back into it.

We've got a few episodes kind of in the can.

And of course, our Radical American Wackadoo is always there to make sure that we are having a good time, having a smart time, having a.

A deep time as we aspire.

But of course, we start every episode of Metaviews with the news, partly because Metaviews publishes a daily newsletter on substack that we encourage everyone listening to to subscribe.

And if I were to hypothesize, I might guess that a majority of the people watching and listening right now are already subscribers.

That is how modest our audience is.

But as you know, Mike, we turn to our guest in the news feature in hopes that they will bring us some news.

Good news, bad news, dystopian news.

We're open to it all.

What news do you got today for us, Mike?

Wow.

You know, it's interesting.

Is this.

Depending on where you live and what your opinions are, this will be dystopian, incredibly positive, or both.

Or neither.

That's.

We're looking for the hat trick here.

Yeah.

So, no, it's not about Ovechkin, and it's about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Signing one of the biggest contracts in the history of modern baseball.

But here's why it belongs on your show.

He signed it with a team in the 51st state, the Toronto Blue Jays, as I believe you used to call them before it became.

What are we going to rename Toronto?

I don't know.

When the fall of Toronto happens, that'll be up to the people rising from the ashes to produce great American glory.

But what I really wanted to talk about, as all that is joking fodder for our audiences, is I'm actually wondering, like, what is going to happen with a trade war, even just with contracts, travel.

This also would be a question for the Raptors in the NBA.

So when two countries that are normally peaceful with each other decide to share sports teams, that's a huge deal.

That.

That doesn't.

We don't have teams with Mexico, for example.

And as you know, The Montreal Expos used to be a team, so it would have a different effect right now.

But, but my point is it's the historic contract part that really got me thinking about like this contract is for 14 years.

So they signed this young fella for a 14 year contract, which means the Toronto City of Toronto, the management is confident that the ballpark will stay in Toronto, the team will stay in Toronto, the fans will still want to attend baseball games, which is an American sport.

So as a culture war for sure starts and a trade war for sure is starting and hopefully, and I really do sincerely mean this, not a real military war, I'm curious, like, what do you think?

How do you feel about this?

I mean, to your point, Toronto sports teams have always had a little bit of a disadvantage signing players because of the.

There are tax issues, there are different residential legal issues, border issues.

So it has historically been a fly in the ointment when it comes to signing big stars.

To give you some context on the sports side, you know, the baseball season is now underway while it is early April.

I would say that previous to this announcement, nobody cared about the Toronto Blue Jays.

Like, like, like, not like.

I know a lot of die hard fans who were completely determined to ignore them this season.

They were so completely fed up with management.

And the people who own the Toronto Blue Jays are the same people who own the Toronto Maple Leafs are the same people who own the largest cable and mobile phone provider in Canada.

So they are hated, they are villains, they are not loved business leaders.

So I would say that this entire story ignores the political conflict that is brewing on the continent.

It very much a PR attempt to get interest back in the team.

This has result.

Like there's a lot of people who are very happy with this announcement and to your other inference, it completely ignores and pretends as if the larger political crisis is not happening whatsoever.

You know, sports being the opiate of the masses in many respects.

But big news here in Toronto, here in Ontario, I think here in Canada, when I was traveling, I wore a Montreal Expos hat.

When I do my podcasts I wear my Toronto Blue Jays hat.

But when I travel I wear my Montreal Expos baseball hat.

Which when I got onto the plane it was three flights, like two stops and the first stop was Toronto to Montreal.

And when I got onto the plane, a very lovely francophone flight attendant spoke to me in French complimenting my hat.

And I understood what she said, but I couldn't respond en francais because my speaking is just not there.

But my point is it achieved the effect.

Right.

It kind of gives the entre nous, I am one of you kind of attitudes that makes me really appreciate Expos Baseball.

So I would say well done there, Mike.

That was very relevant news.

I think most of the people who are listening here will, while familiar with the Toronto Blue Jays, have no idea what we have been talking about.

So it was news to them.

And these are people who live in Toronto, mind you.

And again, it's partly because it's April.

April is usually when hockey depression is starting to sink in.

You know, I always, in March, loved baseball.

I was a spring training nut.

My fantasy was to always be in Dunedin for spring training for the Blue Jays.

But, you know, politics being what it is right now, there aren't a lot of people paying attention to the Blue Jays.

And I think that's why they made this announcement.

They really needed a kind of Arnold Horshock.

Look at me.

Everybody look at me.

And they succeeded.

So well done, Mike.

Well done.

Let us transition to our wtf.

What's the future?

This is another subject where dystopia does seem to be a little pervasive, but no pressure.

What do you got?

I got the best one ever.

And it hit me yesterday I was in my kitchen chopping whatever the heck I was chopping for dinner.

And that's usually actually when ideas strike me.

It's not when I do my best thinking.

So it's, I want to make sure I'm making this clear.

Ideas just kind of hit me.

And it occurred to me that the unifying factor in America, what's going to save my country, and it's presumably going to save yours as well, is all that can happen from here on out is more and more people collectively start to hate the administration that has taken over America to the point where we're united.

And hating someone, which is the easiest and fastest high school mentality path to unification, hating the principal, hating the coach, hating the other team.

So I actually see a really organic way out of all this.

It's going to take some time, it's going to be messy, but I don't think we're going to end up in a war with especially you.

But I literally think, like, even if the tariffs sort of work, the crunch and the squeeze and the pain is going to be unbearable to the point where the lamentations and complaints will be so high that it will be unpopular not to side with either a movement to impeach the sitting president and or let him ride out his term and then replace him with Whoever wins.

And I don't think Vance or any of the other members will be able to successfully run under his shadow or, you know, guilt by association.

So.

And again, I really do mean this.

I actually think this is the most organic thing.

But what I don't want to take away from you because I read med reviews religiously and even though I don't agree often with talking points within talking points, I.

I generally agree with you on the.

The meta level.

Met abuse.

But.

But I really do think that it requires your website.

It requires me speaking the way I am to my American audiences.

It doesn't.

It's not that we can all just say, okay, the anger is going to rise up.

No, we have to like, like the protest last weekend.

Like, you do still have to show up.

You still have to like, not sit at home and Twitter protest.

Like, there is definitely, you got to move the meter the old fashioned way.

So I would caution people who are just like, oh, Mike and Jesse decided there might be an organic way out.

No, no.

I mean, resistance is key, but not, you know, just like if you're breaking up with someone, but you know that you're going to end up seeing them in the future.

Like, don't burn the bridge, you know, like, so be careful how we talk about each other and ourselves.

Well, and I think part of what you and I do individually and collectively is seek hope and look for hope and look for avenues of hope, because those are the paths that we personally desire that are part of what we're looking for.

And I agree with you.

I think as the shroud of darkness seems to be even more enveloping, I think we are starting to see a future past it, a way out.

And to your point, the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin was a really good kind of litmus test of what's to come, because it really was a vote against Elon Musk and his disapproval rating in Wisconsin was like 94%.

So he really is uniting Americans.

Americans are uniting against Elon Musk.

It kind of suggests that the administration should keep Elon Musk on board as an albatross around their necks, because he really does present a very easy target for all Americans to unite against.

I agree entirely with your analysis, only to add that hate is dangerous and that this is part of.

Yeah, this is part of what has put America into such a precarious position is at some level, we do need to have some love.

And that is where Donald Trump has a lot of love from the Cult of Maga.

Right.

They were successful in Bringing that.

I think Bernie Sanders right now is getting a lot of love from the people who are coming to his town halls.

Although I still do not see Bernie as a credible candidate for president.

What worries me, given that I think the administration grossly overestimated their competence and we are now seeing the fuck around.

Find out where I think the entire country is recognizing the toddlers are in charge.

They have clue what they're doing and they are running the bus off the cliff.

That's causing some moderate Republicans to start to vote with Democrats on occasion, which is a good sign.

But my concern here is not that the administration is losing control of the narrative, which they are, which is good they got this far because they are masters of the narrative.

And I think their grip on power is weakening because the narrative of incompetence is so strong that even they cannot overcome it.

Even they cannot spin this as if they have some master plan.

The concern is whether the general paranoia of the Internet that April 20th marks the start of martial law, that is the other shoe dropping.

So if we assume all things being normal, and there is no fucking normal, if we assume that all things are normal, then yes, they've already lost the midterms like dramatically and he will be impeached post midterm.

He may not be removed from office like last time, but as many people have pointed out, impeachment on a symbolic level benefits the Democrats because it does push people back to voting against Trump.

So if we live in an electoral society, I agree.

I think the guy fucked up, he lost it and there's no coming back.

He is gonna lose in the midterms, he's gonna be impeached.

And as long as the Democrats don't shoot themselves in the foot, the political pendulum is swinging towards them.

But I.

Can you say Beetlejuice like two more times, please?

But I cuz I don't think any of that's gonna happen.

I think we are facing martial law.

I think unequivocally they are gonna engineer a national security crisis.

It could happen as soon as the next couple of weeks.

That to me is the only path they have to staying in power and buddy not being put in jail.

And I think that he will do anything to stay in power and not be put in jail.

So I agree with the last sentence, but I don't agree only with the unequivocally part.

Just because I see no certainty with the uncertainty and with the break things and see what happens around and see what happens, you know, like so only because of that do I disagree with it.

It's not that your rationale doesn't make sense to me.

To be clear, the caveat I never say is unless things change, right?

Unless somebody does something.

Right.

Going back to the Democrats, do you.

Think Cory Booker's speech moved the needle?

I didn't at first, and then I didn't the next day, but now I do.

What do you think it did?

Yes.

Like it moved the needle for some people and those people needed the needle moved.

Right.

Like he, he is a moderate Democrat and, and he is the kind of moderate Democrat who is far more popular, far more even, dare I say populist than most other moderate Democrats.

But.

And here I got to give a shout out to Russell McCorman, a really smart, really compassionate guy, comments on our stuff.

He made a comment this morning on the Red Tory podcast saying he wishes that we weren't looking towards the Democrats to get us out of this.

Cuz that is a kind of false hope.

And I agree, Russell.

But the reason I'm gonna keep talking about the Democrats is it's theirs to fuck up.

And when they do fuck up, I wanna be able to say hey, look at that fuck up.

So we can get everyone past this kind of political party oligopoly.

But my point is the Democrats are very divided right now.

A time when they shouldn't be divided.

And where Cory Booker, his protest I think was tremendous, was laudable.

I think it does not do enough to heal the party.

He did not speak to the right issues, he did not talk to the right constituents to really help bring things together.

I think a lot of Democrats, to your point, think that as long as they're opposed to Trump, that's enough versus I think they need to start providing an alternative to MAGA in particular.

Here's my point, I finally got there.

An anti establishment alternative to maga.

And that's where Cory Booker is establishment.

Right.

It's great that he did that, it's great that he's mobilizing people, but that's why Bernie is outperforming him.

Because Bernie is credibly anti establishment and we need the Democrats to unite around an anti establishment Democrat.

And unless they do that, America is going to continue to be at each other's throats due to petty issues that you and I feel are superficial.

But you know, folks who are red or who are blue, these are die hard issues and I would like to go ahead.

Yeah, I think I've been thinking a lot about why is America well for my whole life I have been very Upset by the two party system mentality and the literally two party system of my country.

I also am a historic type person who can understand why it happened, it was very intentional and why it's still intentional.

I also understand that depending on your attitude and who you wanted to see win, you can be very upset as an American every time a third party candidate gets major traction because it usually does what you're describing.

So, you know, we have.

George Wallace is one of the most famous examples.

Don't forget Ralph Nader, wrongly accused, but still for, you know, history.

Yeah, no, for sure.

Ross Perot, obviously, even Millard Fillmore.

Teddy Roosevelt's my favorite because the Bull Moose party was something I would have gotten around.

But anyway, what I am trying to explain is that to the Americans listening at least it's a weird time because if we come out in numbers and accelerate a third party's chance of becoming a viable, really like second and a half party, we're gonna see the Republican stronghold win.

So it's a dangerous time for radicals.

It's always a dangerous time for radicals.

But I do, it's interesting.

My dad confessed to me that for the first time in his life, he voted for a major party candidate in the last election.

I, I don't know if he'd be comfortable with me saying this, but it was, it was for the right team.

It was the one that I would have cast mine for as well.

And that blew my mind.

It really blew my mind that my dad, who's 100% a baby boomer, but whole life.

Yeah.

Do you think he voted for someone or against?

No, no, no.

Against someone.

And so what I'm trying to point out is I don't think my dad would come back in the next one and vote the same way.

So that's what I'm trying to point out to people is like, again, I would just say use caution in your rhetoric as a fellow citizen, either Canadian or American, it doesn't matter.

The point is you want to be friends and peaceful with these people.

Ultimately, like the, the MAGA people became MAGA people.

Just like people become annoying drunks in college and then sometimes they quit drinking.

Like it's okay for people to change.

So don't permanently cast people into a role.

I would even frame that further.

It's not even just okay for people to change, it's a constant.

Yeah, like this.

I, I don't think that we should be giving permission to people to change.

I think we should recognize that we all do it all the time and that it's something we delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.

And we can't evoke Russell without talking about electoral reform and things like rank ballots, even within a party primary could go a long way towards not just allowing radical voices and radical debates, but allowing people who are not necessarily good looking or who are not necessarily well connected or who are not rich in the larger American political sense to still be part of politics and have a chance and compete.

Which is something we have to remember not just in terms of multiple parties, but how those parties make their decisions.

Because as Russell rightfully argues, parties right now are very corporate and they use a very corporate model of fundraising and popularity that has nothing to do with policy, has everything to do with emulating a kind of boring corporate culture.

And as you may or may not know, I've been lamenting on Meta views how this federal election here in Canada is basically reducing us to a two party state, that even the beloved Bloc Quebecois are being decimated in the polls at least because everyone is choosing either Liberal or Conservative.

Liberal if you're opposed to Trump, conservative if you're opposed to Trudeau.

So everyone is voting against something.

People aren't really voting for something.

I get that a lot of you liberals out there are saying, no, you're voting for Canada.

And I would say, really, no, you're voting against the usa, you're voting against Trump.

And that's why Carney is getting all the popularity that he is, notwithstanding the fact that he is outperforming a very incompetent competition.

But that brings us to our feature discussion.

And you'll notice today on our episode, the agenda is not publicly displayed and I have not yet identified our three themes because we're going to wing it.

And I think we're going to.

Which doesn't mean that the three themes aren't there.

It just means that they're not yet disclosed.

They may not even yet be conscious.

But I want to start, and I felt our conversation has organically, naturally been leading us here.

We spoke, I can't remember when, before I traveled about opinions versus positions.

And the idea was that people use opinions far too vaguely and that sometimes when we say opinions, what we really mean are positions.

Because an opinion is something that quite frankly is uninformed, that you haven't thought much about, that you've just done in passing versus a position is something that you are a little bit more informed and that you're.

It may not be informed enough, you still might be an idiot about something, but you have enough confidence that you want to take a position, you want to challenge other people's position.

And that position changes to our point about people changing.

But I think a position is important because we are in highly politically charged times, and where you earlier sort of cautioned against reckless rhetoric, I think that's different from taking a position and debating it.

Like, for example, I firmly believe in diversity, equity and inclusivity.

And that's a position that I can take, that I can respectfully argue and defend against anyone, anywhere, using economic terms, political terms, cultural terms, human terms, science fiction terms like wherever you want to go, I can defend that position.

And so I want to advance this kind of linguistic distinction by going further and saying that there's no such thing as neutrality.

That where people desire neutrality, I think that there are other words that evoke similar emotional states or similar political relationships.

But for example, here in Canada, you can't really be neutral about the United States threats to annex us, right?

Like, that's a position that most people would not tolerate neutrality.

The same way on the Internet, people really don't want you to be neutral about Hitler and the Yahtzees, Right?

Like, that's a thing where they really want you to have a position.

What did you think?

How do you, what would you do then there?

So I, I, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, given how many Americans wish they were neutral, right?

There's a lot of Americans wishing that they could claim the status of Switzerland right now because they don't want to offend their Canadian friends.

But at the same time, they don't want to wade into American politics because, boy, what a mess that is.

So that's my kind of political linguistic setup.

I'm curious to hear your reactions there, Big Mike.

Yeah, well, I have a lot of friends in Switzerland, and they're not going to like what I'm about to say, but I have said it to all of them in one context or another.

But the average American thinks that if you're neutral like Switzerland, it means you harbor gold and you turn a blind eye to mass tragedy.

So just to make that clear, coming from the American wackadoo perspective, while I do not necessarily believe that or hold that to be true, that is the, the second most common assumption about Switzerland.

The most common being it's next to Finland and this candy called fish comes from it.

But it is the second most popular assumption that during the war, this great northern, you know, Norwegian type country hoarded Nazi gold and all that.

And I, you know, I speak with humor, but it is also Interesting that Switzerland has been neutral because rich people who don't want to die need a place to hoard their money that is safe.

So if it's not going to be Switzerland, it might be Vegas in the future.

Who knows?

But the point is, wherever a large place is that says we're never going to take sides, that's where, if you're Elon or any of these people, you're going to hoard your fake or real zeros and ones.

I read something this morning that didn't blow my mind, but I loved it so much that I'm going to segue it through to this, because I think it actually works.

There's no such thing as evil, and there's no such thing as good.

There's degrees of good, and they all just start from a baseline.

And so I would like to say that that baseline is probably neutrality.

Neutrality is a cold indifference with no hearts and no mental connection.

And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's cold.

It's like.

Like, one time a teacher was trying to show how biased we are against different problems, and so she said, what's worse, alcoholism or apathy?

And everyone raised their hand for alcoholism.

And then she's like, how is that true?

Like, is that really true?

Have you ever dated an apathetic person?

Have you ever been in a relationship with, you know, have you been, like, we weren't parents yet, most of us, but, you know, have you ever had an apathetic son or daughter?

And, like, I really saw her point, and I always, to this day, think it's true.

Like, even pedophilia, as much as everyone wants to say that's the thing that deserves to have your, like, jail throw away the key.

Like, you know, still there's like, this off kind of problem with, like, judging evil.

So that's where I'm coming at this from.

And so I would say neutrality is.

I would say, first of all, you nailed it.

I don't ever wish to be neutral.

What I wish to be is peaceful.

I wish to be a person who is not creating conflict because my opinions are so strong and demanding that others around me have to kowtow or walk on eggshells around me because the fear of what I would do with my opinions.

With that said, I just talked about how resistance is important, making your opinions known and clear as important.

So I don't believe in neutrality.

I.

I have trouble talking to unreasonable people about, like, evil and good not being true, and that really, it's just your subjective impressions.

But with You, I don't have this problem.

And I love how you advance this conversation because I still been trying to think about, like, what you just said.

Change is constant, so why should I even have a position?

Like, who cares?

What's the point?

Like, hey, it's Tuesday.

Today I love boxers, tomorrow I like briefs.

Like, who gives a crap?

But, but, but that's, that's an opinion, not a position.

Versus.

No, no, but, but my position is one step away from being, I'll never wear underwear again, I'll only wear boxers, or I'll never, like, you can change your opinion without a good reason into a position.

And I've been thinking about this because.

I don't know, but that's why I'm pushing back, because there's a few.

So there's one thing I think we've both inferred that for the listener, viewer we should put on the table, and that is a commitment to some form of self awareness.

Right?

I think that's something you and I glossed over because we both internalized that.

But that's a prerequisite for having a position.

Like, if you don't know who you are, then you don't know your position.

And that's why you might be stuck in the world of opinion.

And I also like your use of the word hot and cold.

Because the nature of physics is if I'm hot and you're cold, we will instantly find a temperature in the middle, right?

Like, there's no way for me to retain my heat without a tremendous amount of insulation.

And even then, I am still going to leak some of that heat.

So connection inherently involves a negotiation of position, if not a compromise of position, because those temperatures, and to use that as a tangent.

So a lot of D and D fans, a lot of people who are into Dungeons and Dragons, they love to use the word neutral because they love the political alignment of D and D.

Right?

Chaotic, evil, lawful, good.

And on the one hand, I like that world because it gets into what you and I were describing, that good and bad are inherently relative and that you can look at good and bad as not constants, but things that are contextual, things that are arbitrary, things that are fluid.

But again, I have a problem with the way they use neutrality in that area because it's always temporary.

Like, the truly neutral person in the DD world still takes advantage of people who are good and bad.

They're still engaging with people who are good and bad.

And that's why I also liked your use of the word peaceful, because peaceful comes With a cost.

On the one hand, you could be peaceful and be fully committed to not committing violence.

It's difficult, right?

There are very few Mahatma Gandhis in the world.

But it is possible.

You can commit to peacefulness and not commit to violence, but you cannot commit to peacefulness and not be subject to violence.

Right.

That part of what you are accepting as a kind of consequence, as a kind of responsibility is that if I am truly going to embrace being peaceful, that means I will be vulnerable, that means I will be hurt, and assumedly.

And here I'm taking a rift.

There's lots of other scenarios assumably that by being peaceful you make friends, you find loved ones, you have community, and they together collectively protect you from being hurt.

Like, to me, that's a very sane strategy of being a human in the world we're in.

But my point being being peaceful is still not neutral because you can and will be hurt.

Yeah, like you may have decided not to hurt.

Right.

And that may come with a lot of benefits because not hurting people really does benefit people on a huge fucking level.

But you will still be hurt.

And that's, to me, often the illusion of neutrality, that a lot of the people who desire neutrality don't want to be hurt.

And that is a very laudable desire.

But they are not factoring in what they're going to do when they are hurt.

Because most humans, when they are hurt, will hurt.

And that's why I started with self awareness, because you need a lot of self awareness to recognize that.

You need a lot of self awareness to recognize what is often referred to as the Mike Tyson principle, that it's all good and well until you get punched in the face and then all bets are off versus the person who is truly committed to peace, anticipates being punched in the face, knows what they're gonna do when they're being punched in the face and are much less likely to resort to violence because they have gone through that process.

They know what it's like.

So there's a lot there.

But this is why to me, to re articulate it, there is no neutrality because at some point you're gonna get punched in the face.

And it's pretty hard to be neutral when that happens because what Switzerland has going for it, in addition to the backing of rich people, is a lot of mountains that make it really hard to get punched in the face.

Also, what you're reminding me of is when I was younger, I never partook in.

And even though three times it was suggested I partake in it.

I never did something a lot of my friends did, which is to have a friends with benefits relationship with someone.

So I had heterosexual friends, I had homeless.

I had, you know, all sorts experiment with this.

Polyamory is different.

So I'm not touching.

Totally different.

Yeah, yeah.

Just.

Just in case anyone listening thinks I'm going there.

I'm not.

I'm talking about when you and another person are friends and you decide you're not going to call each other significant others.

You're not going to respect the normal rules of fidelity or the normal customs.

You're allowed to go to a party together and leave with someone else.

I mean, it's.

It's no rules.

But the idea is no one gets hurt.

Well, guess what?

Every single time someone gets hurt.

So I'm just going to leave that as like the floating metaphor, for example.

Exactly.

Why you're right.

I think that and also avoiding pain and avoiding getting hurt is just a way to save up that the punch is even harder.

So I tried very hard to work with an unpeaceful person in a failing marriage.

And the longer I waited, the more she was springing back to just punch me even harder in the face.

And to this day, I learned a lesson.

I did expect to get punched in the face.

That's the reason I'm smiling and still here.

But, oh, my God, the punch was probably worse than how I'd imagined.

I would say.

Yeah, I would say it was worse, so.

Well, Chris, I'm being coy when I say that the peaceful person has to anticipate being punched in the face.

Doesn't matter how you anticipate.

It still hurts more than you expected.

Yeah, that's always going to be the case.

That is why I.

I say there is.

There is no Mahatma Gandhi.

Most people do respond to violence with violence.

Like, it's really hard not to.

But I'm glad that you brought up friends with benefits, because I do think it is an entirely different milieu than polyamory.

An entirely different culture.

And to your point, 100% failure rate, even people who think that they were successful in it, years later realize, no, actually, I'm still pissed.

And we're not blaming any of the people who tried.

Like, there were good reasons why people tried.

I agree with you.

I was never interested, never went there, always saw it as a trap.

It's because it's not about the individual participants.

It's about the culture in which it exists because it exists in a larger transactional culture.

Like, we can have this transaction.

There won't be emotions, there won't be feelings.

It'll just allow us to relieve ourselves or it will allow us to feel valued or whatever the individual's motivation is.

The larger society denies that neutrality.

The larger context makes it impossible to go back to our larger point.

For the positions taken to be static, because to use the friends with benefits example, participants start with the position that there's no strings attached, that there's no emotions.

But that position changes when you develop emotion.

That position changes when there's jealousy because someone else comes in the picture.

Right?

That position changes when there's gossip about you because other people gossip the way humans do.

Positions change all the time.

And we have to be able to reassess our positions, renegotiate our positions.

Today I am saying, hell no, I don't think Canada should join the United States.

But I can guarantee you there will come a time in the future, just as there was a time in the past when I would say, actually, I think it's a good idea.

Right?

And one obvious example in our own current train of thought, if President Bernie Sanders was offering Medicare for all legalized cannabis, demilitarization, shutting down prisons, and Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre was doing the opposite, right?

Recriminalizing cannabis, turning like, of course I'd be like, America, come take us over, please.

Right?

Like, it all is context.

It all depends on the particular moment, which to slightly segue topics, but not discourage you from talking about anything we've spoken about so far.

This is why I'm worried about this impending depression.

And I use the word depression because even if it is a recession, there is a mental health dynamic, a tsunami of anxiety, isolation, and small d depression that is pervasive in our culture.

So I see this as an intersection of economics and mental health.

And that is why I feel that we are headed into the great 21st century American depression.

And what worries me is that's when desperate times call for desperate measures and I worry about what people may or may not do.

Thoughts, our radical American wackadoo.

Yeah, I would say the only thing I did learn from getting punched in the face and all that is why worry me?

No worries.

Like, there's no.

Great things happen in horrible times.

Great things happen in great times.

Like, you know, it's funny because you'll read stories like, some people benefited so greatly from the Great Depression that it was the greatest 10 years of their life.

And I'm not even talking about, like, rich people who profited, but just, but.

Just, just to really emphasize that.

And this is your idea, so I encourage you to run with it.

That's a brilliant fucking content idea, bro.

Like, if you started unearthing real and or fictional stories of people who really fucking enjoyed themselves in spite of, like, it's not their fault it was a Great Depression.

Right?

It's not their fault that times were hard, but they nonetheless were able to thrive and survive in that.

I bet you there'd be a big audience for that shit.

You've never read the hilarious famous comedy the Graves of Wrath?

It's one of the funniest books ever written by John Steinbeck.

Oh, my God, It's a lot.

I now am familiar with what you speak.

I have not read it, and I bet you most people alive today also have not.

It's not the most depressing book I've ever read, but it's one of the greatest books ever written.

It's not even my favorite.

He's my second or favorite author of all time.

I've read everything he's ever written.

And it.

Because it's so famous in the way I went into reading it, it's always harder to like a book that's preposterously famous.

I have a saying, you know, a great book is a great book until it's assigned in English class and then it stops.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was lucky enough to read it in my 20s and I signed it to myself.

But I will say the end scene sticks out to this day as a phenomenally important moment in American culture that even if, like, my generation isn't familiar with, the previous ones were, and it mattered.

It affected us.

But basically, can I ruin it?

Is that okay?

Yeah, please.

It's pretty amazing.

It's the end of the Great Depression.

The Okie family we've been following are finally at this, like, safe shelter in California.

And instead of things being good, it's clear that it's bleak and it's not going to be better.

So they were lied to.

The dream of keep going west and keep going north didn't work out.

And it ends with this sad mom feeding breast milk to, like, her husband or one of the boys.

And it's just, like, pathetic, and it's not going to work and they're all going to die.

And it's just like, this dry, sad.

And if someone here is literary and read it more recently and I'm butchering the ending, I don't care.

My takeaway is breast milk for adults.

That's how starving these people were.

So they burned food.

So People would starve.

That's the segue I'm trying to make.

And I think it's important for people to understand that this depression, like most others, would be manufactured and fake.

And that's the problem with the food supply and with the work supply.

And this actually segues into one thing I want to talk about that you wrote about, which is, should countries steal intellectual property to combat America?

And the reason I want to talk about it is it's an example of what it's both sides of what we're talking about, which is how fake everything is.

Like, of course your intellectual property is not property.

But of course your property is not property.

Like, all of this is part of the problem, which is that we've decided as a species that literally, like, looks with its eyes, but tends to think more with its glands that reproduce, that things belong to things, and then we should set order and rule to that.

So, like, literally every conquest and every fight is over this.

And I am not arguing for or against, I'm not being neutral, but for the idea of intellectual property, let alone property.

But what I am trying to point out is if and when there is a recession, depression, it's manufactured.

And the only way to wake up out of that nightmare is to understand that cooperation is the only way out with no matter what the framework and rule structure is.

So cooperation to me, looks like you need people to work all day on a farm, even if they have robots and tons of assistance.

Food has to be made for the people who are intellectually developing.

Technology that helps the food be made, helps the food be safe, helps test the food.

And so it's an interesting world we're entering where people continue to say teachers should make drastically less than lawyers.

And people who come up with ideas like, Amazon should be so rich they fly planes to the sun.

Like, it's not that anything is wrong or right, it's that it's ridiculous that we're not cooperating with.

You know, some people are like, well, that's your lot in life.

You're not smart, so you should work on an assembly line.

Okay, fine, but how about we make it so the person on the assembly line feels like they're getting enough?

How about we just understand?

And that's cooperation.

That's not legal.

Like, you can't make it a law.

It's just something that has.

And again, self awareness.

It's cultural up there.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's cultural.

And that's where, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to play with the word neutrality is it's, it's kind of like the word partisan, right?

People like to say that they're not political, but really what they mean is they're not partisan because they reject political parties.

And similarly with neutral, where people want to say they're neutral, often what they might say is, I'm impartial.

I don't yet have a position on this, but I'm also not disconnected.

And impartiality is an example where often I'll encounter two conflicting parties and I'm not necessarily taking either side, but I am party to the conflict.

I am impacted by the conflict.

I will suffer if the conflict continues.

So there's a role for me to collaborate, to cooperate, and there's an impartiality that I can bring to that, right?

That because I'm not taking a position on either side, I'm not neutral because I want these people to connect.

I want these people to find common ground.

But I'm not picking a side either.

So it allows me to be impartial, not neutral, but impartial, and to use that impartiality to try to foster understanding, to try to foster connection, to try to bring people together.

And I say that because I figuratively, metaphorically, would love to play that role vis a vis the urban, rural divide, right?

That I spent most of my life living in Toronto, in a big city, but I'm now living rurally and I understand some of the grievances that a lot of farmers, that a lot of rural communities have.

And I see an opportunity as an impartial, kind of privy to both how we can bring those two together, how we could connect those two.

Now, you started with an interesting metaphor that I want to go back to, which is the one lesson I've learned from being punched in the face is ideally, you want to take your glasses off first, because if you don't, it hurts a lot more often.

I take my glasses off when I don't want to see, when I want the world to be a little blurry.

And it makes things less clear cut, it allows things to be a little more gray, a little more negotiable, a little more obtuse.

And I find with some of our conflicts, we would benefit from that.

We would benefit from it being not so hard, not so clashing and bashing against people.

Because I hear what you're saying in terms of there is a way to get through a depression, there's a way to get through economic uncertainty.

And I think a lot of people are anxious now because they don't know what's coming.

And that's where I struggle myself with my own relationship to money.

Because on the one hand, I have had a belligerent, an irreverent strain where I just don't take money seriously.

I just don't care.

I don't see it as valuable.

It's like what you were saying about property.

At some levels it's just arbitrary.

It's just fucking paper or coins or digits.

But then on the other hand, I live in this society and at some point I do have to pay money to get other things from other people need that shit.

And that's where I'm kind of struggling right now.

Because on the one hand, there's a part of me that's just like, this is all bullshit.

Who cares?

Just fucking ignore it.

But then on the other hand, I feel the kind of cultural gravity of money and the way everyone's worried about it.

I'm like, should I be worried about it too?

I, I mean, we're so insane.

Step on this.

And it's first of all just a quick anecdote because it's funny to me.

The only time I've ever been punched in my face, I had taken my contacts out because my eyes were dry from taking a giant bong rip at a college party.

And I put on my glasses that no one even knew I had.

They were just like literally for the end of the night after taking out my contacts.

And then Nazis started, literally Nazis skinheads started breaking windows in the house and I went downstairs and I got punched in the face with glasses on.

So it's hilarious that you mentioned that, because how would I know that I wasn't really a glasses wearing person?

And yes, it made it worse.

So anyway, so you learned that lesson.

I literally learned that lesson.

And it's funny and I still don't.

I had Lasik, so I don't have to wear glasses for a while.

But.

But yeah, the, the money thing is very interesting to me.

And first of all, I'm going to go to the most meta level I can, which is at the foundation of my meditation practice.

There's a spot that isn't here and it's not where I go when I dream.

And it's not really a spot I go to.

I believe it's actually the spot.

It's just like what time and space are like without time and space.

And in that spot, just like many people will confess to or say or test to is the right word.

I have no fear.

And I don't care and everything's fine.

And so I kind of ultimately always think like, even if I'm in the prison, in solitary confinement in a 8 by 10 cell with one meal a day, I'm just going to sit and meditate and everything's going to be okay.

And like, you know, I've been hit by a car and laid up in a hospital and I've been in a wheelchair for months and I've had like all sorts of things happen.

And, and it, it's always just you in your head, you know, and it's.

And so I would say to people that a lot of people are about to find out what people like the comedian slash podcaster Joe Rogan constantly has been saying for eight years, which is when life actually gets hard, you'll, you'll start talking differently, you'll see differently.

And I do see that coming.

Coming.

Like there's a whole generation under a generation that truly thinks nothing bad is gonna happen and that you're always an Instagram video away from laughing and the Internet.

If it goes out, you have a right to just start shrieking and complaining and someone better get and fix it.

And if the power goes out, someone better go and fix that.

And that's.

It's so scary living in a megalopolis like Phoenix where there's 6 million people and no water.

It's just utterly terrifying when the power goes out, which is often enough that it reminds me of just like.

So what I would say is panic is the worst experience I've ever been in.

I don't panic, but I have been in a panic stricken situation three times and it's the worst feeling I've ever endured.

And I say endure because you just have to sit there not panicking while people around you are panicking.

And it's almost like being thrown out of a white water raft experience where you just have to sit.

And the calmer you are, the more likely you are to survive and not have any like concussions and damage.

So I don't disagree that the depression's coming.

It doesn't matter if we impeach.

It doesn't matter what we do.

It's coming.

And it's coming because this is what I told my wife and she agreed.

America has become the bad guy in an 80s movie and people want us to fail at this point and it's too late.

We're, we're O'Doyle rules.

O'Doyle rules.

Happy Gilmore.

If you guys have seen that, it's, we're like, you know, Val Kilmer, Iceman.

Like, you just.

You don't like us and you don't want us to succeed at this point and you want to see us fail.

Not you.

I mean.

No, no, no.

But to your point of evoking different movies, I think the variable here is whether it's the evil, stupid villain or the funny, stupid villain.

Because if it's a funny, like, either way, the villain loses.

I think evil's stupid, to be honest.

I worry about that.

Yes.

But I don't think we're funny in.

Hoping that it's a comedy.

It's not that bad.

Right.

Everything goes, you know, into some kind of stable, a new world at the end versus the horror show is just a horror show.

I do want to pivot this slightly, but in kind of continuing this, there's, I think, a larger conversation here in terms of the fluidity that we keep evoking.

The fluidity of identity, the kind of fluidity of position, the fluidity of situation.

Like your situation's always changing.

And I agree.

I think the big variable that we've been sort of circling around that I've been thinking a lot about lately as young people, partly because Gen Z does tend to be huge supporters of Trump and huge supporters of some of these really silly and stupid policies.

At the big protests that happened throughout North America on the weekend, young people were notably absent.

They were kind of not willing to get out in the streets and do their thing.

And to your point, I wonder if they would be the most discombobulated when they can't get their Instagram, when they can't get their TikTok.

Albeit I am being a little ageist in how I describe this, but I've had a lot of unpleasant situations in my life.

Crises, dangerous situations.

The one that you evoked was this.

I was flying.

I had a speaking gig in.

I'm pausing here because I can't remember a ski town outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, that has a famous festival.

Like a really, really rich ski town in Utah.

Again, it's on the tip of my tongue.

Is it Aspen?

It could be Aspen, sure.

Vale or Aspen.

It's probably one of the two.

But isn't Aspen in Colorado?

Yeah.

I thought you said Colorado.

Did I say Colorado?

No, I meant Salt Lake City, Utah.

Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

I'll Google it while you talk.

Fair enough.

So I.

So another one of these complicated travel arrangements, and I'm flying from Salt Lake City to Detroit and we take off at a Salt Lake City.

We get Airborne.

And then all of a sudden, the plane catches fire.

So we had to do one of those emergency descents, right, where you go down really, really, really, really fast.

And we landed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and we spent 18 hours in detention in Cheyenne, Wyoming, because we had passed security, but they didn't want us to come back out of security.

And then there was all the issues of they couldn't get us a plane, they couldn't get us a whatever.

And everyone was understandably stressed, anxious, panicking, right, because we don't have food, we're in this strange place, and we're all kind of whatever.

But I do what I tend to do in those situations, which is I talk to people and.

And talk to people with a sense of purpose, like, all right, what's going on?

Okay, I'll go talk to the.

The airline staff.

Okay, I'll go talk to the airline, the.

The airport staff.

Okay, I'll go talk to this group, and I'll go hang out with the smokers because they're giving access to the tarmac, and that way we like.

And I wasn't the only one doing this, but it strikes me that to go to your point of community, in these moments, it's important that we help each other.

And that could be emotional, that could be intellectual, that could be logistics, that could be all the different ways in which we connect.

And I kind of feel that the danger of our contemporary American individualism is that we think that we are supposed to be alone in these moments, when instead we should be finding ways to connect and to help each other.

I say this because I did one of the other.

You and I were having a signal chat about substack subscribers and about income.

And it was the first time you kind of disclosed to me that you had the inklings of a larger business model behind what you were doing.

And I wondered if we couldn't talk about that for a moment, only because it's the first time that it's come up.

And business models is something I tend to think about a lot, only because I think about all sorts of subjects that have a lot of delusion and which delusion tend to be pervasive.

For.

The benefit of our audience and as a setup for where I want to take this.

Tell me a little bit about your thinking around your current business model, especially in the very relevant context as we head towards a depression where people may not have a lot of surplus funds.

So I have four books under contract with Amazon that make me a pretty large profit margin, relatively speaking, in the publishing Industry.

And then I have a fifth book.

To be clear.

Yeah.

Profit margin is a meaningless word.

Sorry, what do you want me to use?

I'm bad at business.

Yeah, yeah.

Because when you say you have a profit margin, what it means is you sell a book for $10 and you get $9 of that $10.

That's a massive profit margin.

But if you sell two books.

That'S $18.

I don't know.

But the market.

My point.

Yeah.

The margin means nothing if you're not doing scale.

Well, I was about to mention scale.

I had to.

Okay.

That's why you threw me off there.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, yeah, yeah.

So I was in the middle of how I was going to explain my business model.

So I need to explain all of the wares I sell before I can get into the model.

Because I disagree.

I find that entirely distracting and it completely throws off my ability to understand you.

But go ahead, do what you like.

I'm going to continue anyway because it's very important, because my model is incomplete if I don't include my published novels because they actually do earn me money.

And I tick sales off and I try to drive people to buy my books through my model.

So.

Got it.

But the fifth book is under contract with a company that takes a horrible large, normal percentage of my profit margin.

So that is the weakest.

And so I'm mentioning that I want people to buy my previous four books and not my fifth novel from a standpoint of I want money people just to read my books.

And my fifth book is the one that actually got a publishing contract for a reason.

And it's because I believe it's the best thing to date that I have written.

Meanwhile, I also run a sub stack which is based on a subscription model that I started in 2006 that has done well enough that I have set a reasonable goal, which is if I can reach 20,000 free subscribers, I will earn more than my other jobs combined, which I've already started to decrease my time working on.

Sure.

So I'm trying.

It's like, you know, I'm trying to, like.

For the record, though, you haven't even come close to addressing my question.

You're kind of doing.

I thought I did.

I thought you want to know my business model.

I'm really confused.

You really know.

You're not at all answering the question.

You're kind of doing question was what.

Is your business model?

I literally thought that is the question.

And you're not answering.

My business model is to get 20,000 people to subscribe to my substack.

That's not a business model.

That's.

That's goals.

These are your business goals.

Good business.

I literally.

Yeah, I know.

That's why we started this way.

That's why I cut you off business.

You're doing what most people do.

When someone asks them a question, what's your business model?

They tend to vomit stats that are not a model.

They're more activity.

Can you give me an intention business model for like Ford Motor Company so that I can hear?

Yeah, the Ford Motor Company sells cars.

Okay.

I sell subscriptions to a substack and I sell books.

That's my business model.

But you haven't articulated as a model.

What you articulated was a strategy.

You were.

No, no, no, I'm with you because.

The piece that you.

The piece that you were missing that I asked you for originally, that you didn't leave is.

But how many are you selling?

Right?

Because the model, like anyone can sell books.

That's not the model.

The model is how do you get people to read the books, buy the books, know that the books exist.

Right.

Ostensibly you sort of answer that with the substance, but when you answered with.

The substack, people tend to buy books and not read them.

So I focus on the selling aspect.

I understand why you'd have that answer, but the reason that that's not a model is you need, let's say, one out of 20 of them to read it, because the one who reads it will get 20 more people to buy.

Right?

Because I agree with you that the vast majority of people don't buy, don't read the books.

But in order for you to sell at scale, you still need some to actually read it because they will be your salespeople moving forward and for you to scale.

And again, I'm being generous.

I'm saying 5%.

If 5% of the people who bought the books read the books, that would be huge.

But the business model here comes back to how are you getting people to know that stuff?

So that might have been your answer.

Could have been.

You appear on podcasts.

No, I have.

Yeah, I have a lot of answers to that.

I didn't understand that.

I thought a business model was literally, what are your goals and what do you need to sell?

So I know I need to sell 20,000 free subscriptions at the rate of premiums I'm selling in a ratio to it, which has actually gotten better, not worse.

And when you say that stuff without talking about the business model, you're just spewing stats.

Yeah.

That the person hearing it won't understand.

And I wasn't understanding you.

And that's my point.

Right.

That's why I find the American discourse around business to be focused on numbers, to be focused on revenue, but not logic.

Right.

And that's where maybe you were saying, oh, I'll get to the logic.

Versus no, no, no, I don't think there's any logic.

I don't.

Then there's no business plan.

I agree with that.

Right.

Because.

Because if I were.

Yeah, if I were.

If I was inferring a business plan from you, I might start by saying, well, yeah, my name's Mike and I'm amazing at conversations and I'm really good at ideas and I'm really good at getting people to think about stuff in a way that on the one hand self evident, but on the other hand that they wouldn't have thought of on their own.

And I practice this primarily by like going on to podcasts and reaching new audiences and connecting with people who are themselves also authors.

But I get access to their audience because I bring my shtick.

And then I have a podcast where I bring people on and then they promote my stuff.

Because right there, there's.

And you'll understand what I've done.

There is A, I've indicated what your value and differentiator is, and then B, I've indicated your relationship to the marketplace.

That is how people find you, how people learn about you, which is you getting out there.

Now, you could be doing other stuff that I would want to hear.

But that's where your business plan starts.

Right?

It then follows with the here are my products, here's how I bring my products to market, and here's how my products generate different revenue based on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

Versus you were doing the opposite.

You were starting with, here's my products, here's my revenue.

And I was like, but I don't get it.

Versus to start with.

No, no, no.

I'm fucking amazing at conversations.

Right?

And I'm really good at ideas and getting people to have ideas.

For example, I used to be an ESL teacher.

And one of the things, you know, like that's.

Do you understand that's the business model?

I do.

I, I've never, I've never talked to a business coach.

I've never talked to an entrepreneur coach.

I've never talked to a business person.

So they're all grifters.

Well, and, and my gut.

So here's I.

Everything I believe in.

First of all, I, I want to make sure.

That I'm being clear.

I'm part of something called the entertainment industry.

And my biggest problem with my industry is I don't respect.

Respect it.

And the people who I love also don't respect it.

And.

But be careful.

Yeah.

As soon as you use the word industry, you bring in industrial logic.

And while that's my problem with it, that's my problem with it.

And here's a key reason.

You have a problem with it, as I do, as everyone else do.

The entertainment industry is.

Is.

Is gate kept?

Yeah.

If you don't have an agent in the entertainment industry, are you really in the entertainment industry?

Yes.

There's the technical answer.

But it's really hard to be successful in the entertainment industry without an agent.

And agents are a big part of the problem of why the entertainment industry is crooked, for lack of a better phrase.

So first of all, I full agreement.

And again, I just want to say now that it's clear, the next time someone asks me, what's your business model?

I'm gonna laugh.

And then I'll give them an answer that's realistic.

But I would like to say, but don't laugh.

You should have a good answer.

You have a good business.

That's why we're having this conversation.

Not to belittle you, but to actually get you focused.

Because I'm going somewhere with this, which is a suggestion, but go on.

But I want to make clear that the biggest problem I have with success is that I don't believe in my value.

And it's part of what is what you spoke about, my value.

You have to focus on that.

You cannot pass go.

You cannot collect $200.

You have to spend time.

And I don't mean like today, because we can do this every week in perpetuity, but you have to spend time focusing on your value.

You cannot go to the marketplace without.

Just to stop myself and take a tangent.

Earlier in our conversation, we acknowledged that self awareness was something we both relied upon, something we both assumed that is central to doing business.

And the way in which you manifest that in doing business is what is your value?

You must know your value.

And you must come to the marketplace with an almost arrogant sense of your value.

Because if you don't, you will be exploited.

You will be taken advantage of.

When your goal as a worker, as an entrepreneur is to maximize your value.

So you have to know your value going in.

And I think you do know your value, but you struggle with it because it is unique, because you cannot look at a ton of other franchises on every other corner and go, yeah, that's their value.

Hey, that's my value.

No problem.

Right?

In contrast, your value is so unique that when you look in the marketplace, you don't see many people who are like you.

And that is why it is difficult for you to say, this is my value.

But.

And there's strength in this.

You did correctly identify your industry, and in doing so, you also identified that you're a dissident, a rebel, a critic.

That you approach your industry in an unorthodox way, but nonetheless, it is still your industry.

So fundamentally, your equation is, what is my value in the entertainment industry?

Because your value in the construction industry is not relevant.

Yeah, I like that.

That helps me and it doesn't hurt me, and it doesn't do anything.

That only helps me.

But.

What?

Yeah, what's the but?

I hear the but coming.

Yeah, the but is that the attachment to outcomes ruins my ability to be me.

Yeah.

And yet with no focus on outcomes, I tend to rush things and not do as good of a job.

So I've always been trying to figure out this, like, comfortable medium.

And also, like, I'm about to release my first song in years, and I'm making a music video for it.

It is taking me much longer than it would have taken me 20 years ago.

And not because 20 years ago I was faster and better.

It's because I'm taking more time than ever to get it right.

And I'm doing.

It's because your emotions are way more involved than it was 20 years ago.

Yeah.

And I'm making, like, a TikTok size drawing, and then I have to convert all of them to YouTube size drawings, and then I might even have to convert to a Instagram regular feed at some point.

I have to say, is it really worth the effort?

This is.

This is why I asked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is.

My point is, of course it's worth the effort for me because this song has tremendous value and importance to me.

And it's important that I not only finish it, but that I do it right and I get it out there.

Okay.

And.

And getting it out there means for the first time ever, I joined Tick Tock and I'm gonna actually put something on TikTok and not because I have fever dreams of getting.

I hope it's not too late, friend.

Well, it's.

You mean to join TikTok because.

Yeah, tick Tock may be over.

I hate to tell you, but I don't even.

I know I joined it a couple weeks ago, and I was having.

I had to download the app to like change my pro.

I don't need to get.

Anyway, the, the, the.

The talk.

The clock is ticking on whether Tick Tock will be banned in the United States and it ain't looking good is all I have to say.

But it's okay.

YouTube has shorts.

So what you create for TikTok, in theory, you could post on YouTube.

You identified a paradox, however, and it is a healthy paradox.

And it's the paradox between having an outcome and having that outcome corrupt your process.

And it is something like a position that is always moving that you always have to be reassessing.

I would include in that the amount of time that you spend on a particular project because in some cases you're not spending enough time.

In other cases you're spending too much time.

Time.

But allow me to regrasp your attention from whatever it is you're searching.

What if I said to you that in addition to everything that you are focusing on currently in the entertainment profession, in the entertainment industry, are you neglecting in person events?

Neglecting would be the right word, but yes.

Why?

Well, because this is where I'll point out to you that most Entertainers, especially in 2025, are making their money in person.

So here's.

Here's my answer.

And it's not what most people like to hear, including my wife.

I am not going to compromise my life as it stands right now for anything including money, profit, fame, and success and the reason why.

So you don't have to explain that to me because I am identical.

Yeah.

Let's treat that like self awareness and just put that as an assumption.

Put that aside.

Yeah.

And let's go back to the question.

Sure.

Go ahead.

Say.

I already said the question.

Okay.

All right.

In person.

I just want to make.

Everyone else in the entertainment industry is making money in person and you live in a market of 6 million people.

I did book signings a few times in my life and it's a.

I.

Don'T mean book signings because you're not going to make money.

Book signing.

You might sell books.

Book signing, but I don't think so.

I think you're more likely to sell books doing what you're currently doing.

Allow me to reframe it since you've got a mental block here preventing you from seeing what I'm saying.

Oh, can I real quick say what I was searching for?

Was it Park City, Utah?

That was the.

Thank you.

That was it.

You were correct.

That was the thing that my eyes.

Yeah, that was it.

I was in Park City, Utah.

Didn't like it.

Glad I left.

Yeah.

You could do really well doing in.

In person events.

And here's a scenario.

You know Mikey Oppenheim's town hall.

What the fuck is going on?

The only place where nonpartisan everyone can come to talk about what's happening in the world.

You charge people 10 bucks a head just to make sure that you weed out the people who are assholes and you weed out the no shows.

And then all you do is facilitate a conversation.

That's it.

No agenda, no comedy show, no products being sold.

It's unofficially group therapy, but no one needs to know about that.

It is literally just you inviting people to chat.

I, I don't like that because that's not actually something I want to do at all.

Why?

I don't.

I want to make.

It's totally fair that you would not want to do it.

But why?

Well, first of all, I don't want to be a public figure and I don't want my name associated with any of that.

And second.

Okay, but, but one, one thing at a time.

One thing at a time.

Don't go too fast.

You are a public figure.

You're on Meta views.

Yeah, hate to break, but I want to be.

But what do you not want?

No, no, but you are a public figure, period.

You've lost control of that totally.

What is it you don't want to be associated with?

Charging people money for therapy, but it's not therapy.

Well, charging people money sounded fun, was the therapy part.

So the only part that actually sounded.

Because that's what it would be.

Because that's what it would be.

But you cannot do therapy.

You are not legally allowed to do therapy.

This is not advertised as therapy, but I'm telling you it would be therapy because that's how your mind works.

What I'm suggesting it is, is entertainment.

People every night go out in search of entertainment.

What you would be offering compared to other people is conversational entertainment because you're really good at conversations.

People really want conversations.

People can't get conversations.

If you look at this from a marketplace perspective, there's high demand and low supply, Radically low supply and radically high demand.

People will pay you good money.

They will be happy to pay you money so that they can be entertained and have a conversation.

And if they know that that conversation is not partisan, right.

Is not maga, is not fucking any other alternative.

It's just human that you are offering them human conversations.

You have kids, so you need money.

So that's why you're charging it because it's entertainment and this is showbiz.

Right.

Totally fair if you don't want to do it.

But I'm just saying I see high demand, low supply, and you being particularly exceptional at providing this form of entertainment.

And it would reinforce your other revenue streams dramatically.

Because when you try to do this online, you're competing with a million other mics.

You do this offline.

There's no one else doing this at all.

You know, it's interesting.

You're right.

First of all, as far as, would it work?

Yes.

Do I have the personality to make it work?

Yes.

As long as I had someone helping me promote the event and announce the event, meetup would probably be the best place to start, I think free at first and then start charging would probably be the.

No, no, no.

I, I, I, I encourage you to always charge, just even the first one all the time.

You can always.

If, if you want to be accessible, you can put the pay what you can, Right?

So it says you're not turning.

But there is, there is something crucial about what I call the psychology of value.

If you don't charge, people will treat you like shit.

I agree.

Period.

End stop.

If you charge five bucks, that's it.

All of a sudden, the culture changes.

All of a sudden, the expectations change.

You don't need to exclude anybody.

You can let people in free covertly, but you must have a psychology of value.

Otherwise people will treat you like shit, and they will believe that they can treat you like shit.

It sucks, but it is what it.

Is, is I, I love this conversation, and I, I want to keep.

I know we got a hard exit.

Well, it's not only that, but I want to pause because I want to ask you about.

Well, hold on.

Let me, let me finish a thought on this, because it's actually relevant.

Everywhere I go, what you described happens.

It's why I became like, an administrator at a school.

It's like why I was the most popular ESL teacher at the school.

And I'm not.

You know, I just, I, I want to be careful whose toes I step on.

But sure.

Life is a popularity contest, and I am not popular in any context except the one you described.

Yes.

Which is facilitating conversations.

That's.

It's because most people suck at conversations.

Yeah.

Period.

End stop.

Yeah.

It's a rare skill.

You.

I had a different idea once.

Can I throw it out there, please?

Because it's much more up my alley.

Do you remember watching the Peanuts cartoons?

Yeah.

Char.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you remember how Like Lucy gave advice.

I think it was Lucy.

Yep.

It's more that.

It's more that I've been pitching my.

Local cannabis shop that I want to do that literally that I describe them.

The Lucy thing, it's like ST the stoner is in because that's so.

Every Saturday I run a writing group in Phoenix and it's very popular and I don't charge, obviously, and it's.

I facilitate it.

But the best part, everyone agrees, is the conversations.

And again, it's not I come up with a topic and lead a discussion.

It's just that I'm a naturally good conversationalist, like you said.

I know all the members of it would agree with that.

I don't think I'm speaking out of turn.

Where it gets hard for me, Jesse, and this is what I wanted to change the topic to, and it always gets hard, is I don't like asking for money, but I don't at all have a problem with taking money.

I want it to be offered because I offer it to people, which is what infuriates me.

Like I was dying to pay you for meta views.

I don't know how to explain it to people, but like I have the number of page subscriptions on substack.

Must be a fucking record.

But you people, you have to have the self awareness to know that you are an outlier, that most people are not like that.

But that's.

I don't like.

But that's the outlier, the outlier within the outlier is that I don't care.

Like, I have this when you keep.

Like if you said like so.

But you answered the question.

Your writing group is the free version.

Yeah.

And I love it and I look forward to it every Saturday.

And I would argue that it is the nucleus, the seed for the paid version and the reason you should have the paid version.

And to your point, Meetup could be the one asking them for money.

Yeah, you never ever talk about money and you make it so that it is still accessible.

But there's no reason why you couldn't be doing this professionally in a way that augmented your existing revenue but then allowed you to never worry about money.

Because you're not the kind of capitalist who'd be like, oh, I need more.

Right.

You just need to pay your bills.

Right.

You just need to be able to satisfy your partner to know that you are also contributing financially.

It's.

It wouldn't take much.

And fundamentally, while I don't know you well enough that there could be other secret powers that you have that you've yet to reveal.

You are exceptional at this.

Right.

In a way that I suspect the more you put yourself out there, the more that people will desire this service.

Because everything we've been talking about depicts a pandemic of isolation, that everybody is isolated, anxious, feeling alone.

And all the cliches of politics reinforce that, right?

They don't want to be red, they don't want to be blue.

Right.

They don't want to be, you know, good, they don't want to be bad.

Right.

They want to be human.

And what you, in theory have the seeds of is to offer them something human, not religious.

Because this is kind of the realm of religion, not therapy.

Even though it kind of might be.

Right.

It's community.

That's what it is.

And to charge people for your service recognizes that your service is valuable.

You don't have to charge a lot, but it makes them say, yeah, it makes them go to some company.

You got to hire Mike.

Hire Mike to come in and facilitate a conversation amongst the company with no agenda.

That's what you guys need to deal with.

This tariff or this.

What, like whatever the crisis might be, just putting it out there.

No, it's.

You know, what's interesting about our friendship is I knew when you started that by the end I would be compelled to have a different opinion.

But I always want to, like, buck against any advice that could be helpful.

Like, it's just my nature to be like, no, no, man, you got the wrong guy.

But I actually enough pieces in my brain connected that I could see not only how this is nice, but it would actually just be like, at the very worst, I could probably get 10 people to pay 10 bucks for a two hour session every Sunday.

And that's 100 bucks a week.

That's 400.

That's actually like a decent.

And.

And no offense, one hour, not two.

Okay.

I actually was curious about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because like, that way, make it intense, make it packed, let them feel like they still got the rest of their day.

Right?

And then you could start doing it twice a week.

Then you could start doing it three times a week.

And then it could be 20 people.

You could handle 40 people, right?

Like again, I could handle any number.

This is the crazy part, is that scale doesn't matter to me.

I can facilitate a conversation with.

Right.

And.

And the difference, to go back to what I was saying, is that at some point, as an entertainer, you have an agent and the agent does this for you.

The agent sells you.

The agent takes the money you just show up and help everyone feel good.

You just show up and create an entertaining conversation and maybe you record it and it's a podcast.

The weirdest thing to me is that in reverse, you've reverse engineered without me thinking about it.

Really what Kill Tony is.

Okay, Bill, Tony is actually the best example of what you said.

It was an organic attempt by Tony Hinchcliffe and his friends to start a different version of open mic with Tony's best skill, which is being the most ruthlessly mean comedian out there.

And I know a lot of people are probably like, Donald Trump, Tony Hitchcliffe, that speech, blah, blah, blah, but I don't give a flying F about that.

What I'm really speaking to is just the genius of his heartfelt plan to do what he's best at within a group where he's not the best.

So he's not the best comedian and he'll never be, but he is the best Kill Tony ever because he invented it and it's his.

So I see your point, and I'm gonna do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because, you know, the, the, the awkwardness here is how do you demonstrate this value when there is no setting in which this value can shine?

So therefore, you have to take the risk or the awkwardness of creating the setting.

And paradoxically, the setting is other people's conversations that you were facilitating.

Yeah.

Right.

And those people aren't going to realize that they need you to facilitate that conversation until you facilitate that conversation.

Right.

And then keep doing it.

That people go, man, I had this great time with this guy Mike.

You gotta come.

Right.

And that's how it starts becoming a phenomenon.

Yeah.

And I have a lot of ins for how to start it because I have coffee shops that know me personally and would be more than willing to let me do it there without a fee, at least to start.

And then I'm part of a meetup organization that's incredibly large, and the person who runs it, I'm like his not right hand man, but I'm under him and he would definitely let me use that list to get the first one promoted, so.

And then it's all content for all your digital shit.

Yeah.

Right.

And the most.

Most of my premium subscribers are people from my writing group who know me personally.

And I've talked about this a lot.

I do feel like if you know me personally, you want to support me for the right reason, not the wrong reason.

Because your question to me was about my substack subscribers.

Yeah.

And the vast majority of them are people who know me who've had some connection with me.

Like, maybe not physical the way you and I are, but we still have a connection.

Right.

So everyone sees the digital as this opportunity for revenue, and it is, but it begins in the physical space.

It begins in community.

That's where you make the connections that then get people selling the digital stuff, get people promoting your books and so on and so forth.

My Alana is going to be your biggest fan starting today.

This is literally what she's been trying to tell me to do for five years.

So I've been Covid.

Put a big monkey wrench.

Yeah, understandably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But.

But it really didn't.

I mean, I used it as a convenient excuse.

I also, the best part about this is I hate being awake late at night and I hate nightlife.

This is the best excuse to do it on a Sunday afternoon.

This is an afternoon thing.

No one wants to do this late at night, so I don't even have to compete with other crap.

And.

And if the Great Depression is as bad as we think, there'll be lots of time during the day, during the week, too.

No one will be working.

Yeah, No, I love.

I'm blown away.

Thank you, Jesse.

I'm.

Wow.

Thank you.

Right on, right on.

And.

And also thank you on a human to human, friend to friend level, for I have trouble understanding my value and I have trouble with, like, just all of this.

And we all do.

Yeah, we all.

Look, I'm the same as you.

Anyone who gives me a compliment, I instantly distrust because I'm like, what?

If only you knew what I knew.

Anyway, with that said, we are running out of time.

We have a hard end.

But any.

Any final shout outs that you've got.

I will myself think of any.

Just kind of scratching my head here.

I'm gonna repeat who you mentioned earlier, Russell McCormond.

He's a guy.

He took the time to, like, listen to the podcast and make a really thoughtful comment on it.

I feel like he's another one of us.

He's a real warrior trying to rule with his heart and Rome.

And I don't know you, Russell, but I know you.

And I hope in the future I get to actually know you a little better because you are awesome.

I like the way you think.

And I hope this message will drive a few people to his substack, which I am a subscriber.

And I think Russell is a great example of how one's positions in life change.

Because while certainly Russell's position on copyright has been really solid and consistent, he's a great example of a Canadian who has self educated himself about Canada's first nations in our Indigenous communities and really why we have the moral obligation to support them, especially their quest for sovereignty.

So another great Meta Views episode.

Go ahead.

Let me just push you real quick with something I wrote online, but I would love for you to write an essay on what makes Canada unique and different and why your culture is special and America shouldn't absorb it.

I don't know if it's an excellent challenge.

I'm not sure I'm up for it will take me some time to think, so give me some lead time there.

I will rise to that challenge, but it may be a while because I've.

Always been you are the man for the job.

I'm critical though of Canadian culture.

That's part of it.

You're catching me in a weird point in my life where normally I'm very anti Canadian, but now that America is attacking us, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Is that how that goes?

Sort of thing works.

I mean, yeah, this is a return to 20s Mike because 20s Mike had to fight Bush and Cheney and then peaceful Obama Mike was like a way different.

Yeah.

So it's cool.

It's cool to see it.

I get it.

It's the evolution of humanity.

We're constantly changing and becoming more.

It's been another great episode of Meta Views.

You can catch us on all the socials on TikTok while it's still there, but obviously on the audio podcast platform, which I think are most reliable.

So thanks again.

We'll be back soon.

Stay fresh, stay autonomous and stay cool.

Okay, take care.