Ep 128: Hollywood Star Zachary Levi on Speaking Out for Trump, AI vs the Arts, and His $100M Texas Studio Project

0:28We're not stopping AI. Beyond that is why I moved to Austin to build a new type of Hollywood. What I'm building at Wildwood is not just a movie studio. It's also a living community. I believe that we are called to be both deeply empathetic and deeply logical. You're like a conservative hippie, aren't you? A little bit. Yeah. A little bit.

0:51My daughters know Zachary Levi as Flynn Rider in Tangled. He's a really popular actor, has been in a lot of great movies and shows. and he's done something Hollywood doesn't usually do. He's spoken out for other values. He's spoken out for his Christian faith, for President Trump and RFK when he thought that was important. He's building a new studio that represents his values here in Austin, Texas. It really gives me a lot of optimism for America when I see some of our leaders from spaces like Hollywood willing to show the courage, willing to build the new things that we need for our society to push it forward.

1:21We have very different views on some things. He and I had a great debate on AI in the show. It was really fun to get to know Zachary Levi. I think you'll enjoy meeting him too. Welcome to American Optimist. Zachary Levi, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, man. Happy to be here. You're most famous as an actor from Shazam, Tangled. I think Chuck was a TV show we all saw. You also, you're an author. You wrote Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and Others. And you've been speaking out lately and having opinions, which I love. Well, particularly because they're on the same page.

1:48That's fair. I actually like debating with people too, though. It's good when people have an opinion. Brother, me too. Me too. And I know we were just talking about it a second before, But this is, you know, one of the one of the things that Charlie brought to this world. And it's and it's the thing that we need to continue to carry on. We need to carry on spirited, loving debates so that we can bring people to a middle ground where we can all be working together for a better world. So, yeah. Amen to debate. That's all of our jobs. And so, you know, I have a bunch of young daughters there. Fans of yours are excited to meet you, I think, from Tangled, especially.

2:16Oh, sure. My eight year old. She had one question. She's because most of the roles you do are like that one are very family friendly. She was unsure if it was responsible for Rapunzel to be dating a career criminal. all she asked me if that was a good decision uh that would be the writers i guess i don't know but i will say though i mean i mean that's an excellent question and it's funny but um but it is you know i've always found flynn to be kind of like the han solo of disney princes right it's like why would princess leia you know date han solo or even be you know interested in was because while they might be career criminals on some level it's because they there's a redemption arc in them right it's like deep down in those characters there is a good man it's just that they needed that love of a good woman or something to instigate that that kind of change that evolution in who they are so and it makes for good storytelling you've had your first child recently i did yeah yeah he's uh nearly six months old right right now his name is henson ezra levi pew and he is just the dreamiest man i mean i've wanted to be a dad since i was a kid I knew it was a part of my identity, like in my bones.

3:22I got a lot of catching up to do with Mr. Six Kids over here. But and it's it's it's not exactly what I expected. It's far better than I expected. But it's but it's a lot of the things that I did expect it to be in that. And you can attest to this. They are the greatest teacher, the greatest mirror. They're the greatest, you know, reflector of, oh, who am I? What are the choices that I'm making? how can I be a better individual in this world? How can I lead them better? And also just like watching them and be like, oh gosh, like that's me. That was, was that what I was like for my parents? Like, oh man, do I have a lot of, you know, explaining and repenting to do, but you know, he's six months right now.

4:04He's finally, he's getting his first teeth and he's still that dreamy little, little, you know, little baby. I love it. It's 14 months this week for my son. Oh wow. So we're having fun with it too. How old is your youngest? Pretty young. The last two we used is ours but we used the surrogates and so it's confusing okay so so we have like four normal away and then and then we had a boy and a girl they were only like not quite nine months apart actually i ended up not sending out a notice for the very last one because i felt awkward because it's like people would all reply like what's going on here yeah how did you have babies so wait a minute they're not twins but they're like real close like some health issues but we still wanted to have more so we sure so we kept going yeah yeah i think it's beautiful man yeah he's like you know i'm really happy to have them all so yeah we're probably done six is a lot i love I think you're saying we're probably done.

4:46I mean, my wife's sort of in charge here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At this point, it requires science, so we'll see. Yeah, sure. We'll see. And I don't know if it's tied to the thought of having a kid or family, but you've shown a very unusual courage in your industry lately. I think it is courage where maybe it's your Christian faith, maybe it's something else, but you actually came out and actively supported RFK, supported Trump, something that very few people in Hollywood have done. I know a lot of people in Hollywood who agree with you and who are good friends, who are very famous, who just stay totally silent and they think they have to for their career.

5:14Like what gave you the courage? How did you decide to speak out? Well, you know, I think that there are just more important things than one's career, I guess. Right. I think that we live in a society, in a world now that has been so safe.

5:37And yeah, it's just been so safe that I don't think a lot of people have even considered this idea. other than people who go into the armed services and who are operators or whatever right but we haven't had real danger real like life-threatening um you know uh global things going on that have been dragging us as a people into constant on our own soil type of wars for a really really really long time nothing's been existential to us 100 and i and i think that we've not that i think that self-preservation is a bad thing but i think that when you make every decision based on your own self-preservation you're missing out on a greater calling in your life and i don't want to die i don't like you know i don't think charlie wanted to die obviously but charlie understood that there are some things that are more important than even protecting your life and for me it's a far cry you know losing one's life is the ultimate sacrifice losing your career is a pretty big sacrifice.

6:35Fortunately, despite my best efforts, I still am getting hired by some people in Hollywood. I haven't been officially or entirely blacklisted. But even if I was, I believed that, I do believe that we all have a responsibility to stand up for what is right. We have a responsibility to stand up for what is true. And also it's not always easy, right? Like Trump is a very polarizing person. I don't like all of Trump's Trumpiness. I don't think you need to like every aspect of a candidate particularly when we're being offered only two yeah a lot of times this is just uh you know you having to really eat the chicken and spit out the bones right people people forget that because you can get really angry on the right at the very worst things kamala does you get really on your left the very worst things trump does and we're not none of us are necessarily supporting the worst things no we're not we're not and and i think that you know i think for anybody on the left to they don't like trump because of you know certain actions personal or professional or whatever that is i get it i understand kamala is not some paragon of integrity right now she might be better at hiding it a lot of the people on the left are are way better at that kind of showmanship or that that you know oh you know that shaking your hand with one hand and stabbing you in the back with the other i mean this is just politicians in general typically right right or left or you know what have you there's a lot of these things that are going on so i immediately i'm not looking at either kamala or trump and thinking i'm going to vote on these guys based on how good of a person they are because i don't know most people don't know i don't know all the things that are going on behind the scenes with trump or with kamala but i can look at what they're providing as far as how they see our country how they see the world and what their policies that they want to enact how those would trickle down seemingly and what do i think ultimately would be better for this nation and sometimes you got to do that holding you know holding your nose with a vote or whatever i know a lot of people like you were mentioning there's people that you know people i know very famous people in hollywood that are intelligent enough to recognize that that's the way they needed to vote but they also So we're like, oh, but I don't know what this will mean for my career.

8:50Now, you know, could I have exercised more caution or wisdom in all of that? Certainly. But also, if everyone does that, if everyone is just like, oh, I know this is true. I know this is probably what I got to do. Well, then one side loses because no one will speak out at all. Because nobody speaks out. This is what I was faced with in tech. I've been speaking out for the last 10 years more than others. and certain people try to come at me and counsel me. And it's actually really good when you can speak out and you can still succeed though, because then it's even more powerful. Absolutely, absolutely.

9:23And my goal and my hope is that, you know, through all of this, through all the bumps and bruises and whatever, that people will see my heart and they will understand that just because I voted for this man doesn't mean I endorse everything about him. I was given two options. We were all given two options. And I think the triage, you know, something that we all learn early on as children, or at least I did. I remember being in elementary school and we're learning about, you know, you know, medics and, you know, things like, oh, there's a fire. There's an earthquake. Like, what's triage? Well, triage is something we need to apply to everything in our lives.

9:54Like, what is the most important need followed by the second, the third, the fourth, so on and so forth? And I find that on the left side of the ideological divide, I think everything's important, right? I think that every single person is important. I think we're all God's children. I think that we need to value everyone. And I think it's worthy of having conversation, debate about every issue that we have. But some issues are just simply more important in the list of importance. And so when you have, for example, you know, trans rights to me, do I think that there are trans people in the world?

10:33but absolutely there are people that identify as that that's a whole other conversation of is that mental illness is that real is that a spiritual thing i don't know i'm not a doctor i'm not going to get into all of that but i can say even just on the surface level of it the amount of trans people in the world is significantly smaller than the amount of people that are that are affected by the open borders and the poisoning of our food our water and our air which is everybody right so i got to look at those two things and i got to say okay well there's this group here that feels marginalized and but they're they are a small group of people who are fighting for what they're fighting for let's have that conversation happy to have that conversation and do that in love and also do that in logic i think a lot of times logic i believe that we are called to be both deeply empathetic and deeply logical if you are all empathy with no logic that's bad if you are all logic with no empathy that's bad yeah and so i'm happy to have those conversations but it's like you got to address well what is who is bleeding out the most right now where is the most amount of bleeding the bleeding was we have an insane problem at our border with millions of people that are coming over many of which are decent human beings looking for a better life but amongst all of them very very very bad actors who are murderers and rapists and so on and so forth our house we have out in california five of the neighbors got hit last year by cartels basically there's stuff like that was happening everywhere exactly and that affects everyone so should not we then prioritize the things that are affecting affecting everyone and then we work our way down to other things that are affecting a smaller group of people and it's interesting because i think there's some rational people who honestly just want to help trans people i do think there's people who who use the issue to try to try to get power and i think it's the same thing with uh criminals across the border people who really want to stop criminals coming across the border and then people who like use it to get power and so it's always really hard like who are you talking to because sometimes you know on the trans thing for me uh i think i probably fall more where charlie kirk falls that it's more of a mental illness is my view although although i i can't say i'm 100 sure about that you know but it seems that's that way it does seem like like there's certain places where like one girl will be that way and then like five more girls in the class will have it it seems like it's a contagion but yeah and there's things like that it seems like people are taking advantage of that for political purposes but at the same time doesn't mean you should you should necessarily make someone feel terrible for no and that's why i think we're called to whether you're a christian or buddhist or jew or whatever it is like i do believe we ought to all walk in love right now Now, love doesn't always mean you have to like somebody.

12:59I think that loving, the best definition I've ever heard is to love is to will the good of the other. You want to will their good. That doesn't mean you have to be their friend. Doesn't mean you have to like them. You don't have to have them in your life. You want to see the best for them. Yes, you want to see the best for them. And if you really do start there, then that means how you approach that person comes with, I think, a kindness. It comes, like a lot of times, you know, Charlie could get angry. Charlie could get a little dismissive sometimes. But a lot of the time, I think most of the time he would see somebody so long as they respected him and we're not trying to gotcha Charlie, he would sit there and he would he would talk with them.

13:31He would be kind with them. And even though he vehemently disagreed with, you know, whatever their conclusion was about why they were trans or why other people might be trans, you can still have that conversation and you can do that in a love. You can do that in kindness, regardless of where you stand on it. But there are certain things that are just statistically correct, at least from my perspective, which is that you cannot just have open borders. I don't care what country you are in. I find it ironic when, you know, people who are all about like there shouldn't be borders and everyone should be able to just come in here.

14:02And then you were to ask them like, OK, cool. Are you OK if people just move into your home right now? Well, no. I mean, I don't want was like, well, OK, this is where the fallacy is. If you're not willing to say if you're saying no property, nobody should have private property and nobody there shouldn't be any borders except for me in my house and all that stuff. Well, that's very hypocritical. And so this is where I think a lot of the issues lay. And then for me, you know, supporting Trump really came down to I was supporting Bobby. I believe in him and continue to believe in him and Tulsi Gabbard just, you know, to the ends of the earth.

14:33I think there are incredibly human beings who are truly fighting the good fight all the time. and so for bobby you know i i if bobby would have been on the kamala ticket which never would have happened but hypothetically if he would have been on the kamala ticket there might have been a chance that i could have voted on that ticket because bobby more than anything needed to get into the position he's in right now to clean up where we're at with all of these pharmaceuticals with our food with our water with with everything right like that affects every single person straight gay trans queer doesn't matter all of that is poisoning everybody so that's something we needed to address i want to jump into the maha stuff because i'm super interested um it's interesting when we started chatting we hadn't even mentioned charlie necessarily before but it's just so natural that all of our minds and he's a friend of mine this is a very tough week on that um it's interesting the emmys just happened and they talked about a lot of the things going on in palestine of course all the left-wing signaling there's no mention of charlie at all is that is that weird i mean is Is that just what you expect, I guess, of Hollywood?

15:34It seems like very strange when it's something that millions of people in our country are struggling with. It's a big issue. And it's just they don't even mention it. I mean, I think it's unfortunate. I think it's sad. But I don't find it shocking or weird. I mean, it's Hollywood. Listen, I have a lot of love and respect for a lot of the people that were at the Emmys and that are in my industry. However they feel about me, I still have lots of love and lots of respect for that. So much talent that's there. but as you said in the same way that people who that you know who are in that industry voted for trump i can't talk about that there are people that feel very badly for charlie and for his family and for this country for that matter because of what happened but they know based on the programming based on the the media spin and everything that if they were to get up on that stage and say i just want to call out that it was really tragic what happened to charlie kirk and i I, you know, I call us to, you know, a call to end political violence and may we pray for each other or something like that.

16:35That person would have been lambasted. Really? Oh, absolutely. Because even trying to make a neutral statement just because people hate him so much. Yeah, because in Hollywood, that's not a neutral statement. In Hollywood, Charlie Kirk is an extension of Donald Trump. Got it. Charlie Kirk was a huge part in getting Donald Trump elected. I mean, a massive part in getting Donald Trump elected. and getting Bobby together with Donald Trump, which is a big part of getting Donald Trump elected. So they can't extricate that from each other. They're not able to look beyond that. But what they can do, in part because they might believe it and in part because it's a virtue signal, they can go on and they can talk about things that have been deemed acceptable to fight against in Hollywood, like free Palestine and things like that.

17:20Walk me through this a little bit because I guess Reagan was an actor in the 50s and 60s And he was a big leader who helped fight against the communists and the unions back then. That was a really big fight in Hollywood. Gosh, I guess it was 60 years ago now. Like, when was Disney pushed to the point that it started injecting all this far left stuff and a lot of the things it does? One of these institutions, a lot of our institutions kind of got conquered. And we talk a lot about that in our society. Like, when did this happen to Hollywood? Why did that happen? Is it possible to reverse it? Well, I mean, I'm actively trying to reverse it.

17:49But I have found that the only way to really battle that is not, you're not going to be able to try and turn the Titanic. Like it's too big a boat. It's too big a boat to try and get any of these major studios to really come to their senses and recognize that somewhere along the line, they've been compromised. Somewhere along the line, ideologically, something got in there that then they started to go along with. I think in, I want to believe that for the best of intentions, right? These things, Jordan Peterson talks about this. When you're trying to usurp something, when you're trying or, or, or rather incept something, you don't just take it a hundred yards.

18:33You take it five yards and then you get pushed back four, but now you still got a yard on that. And then you take another five to get pushed back three. And then it's incremental, right? So nobody came in swinging and saying, you got to use all this woke ideology. They started with little bits of just kind of, well, what if we just did this? And what if we just did that? And some of it, I think, was in the spirit of diversity, in the spirit of equality. Yeah, you do want to support gay people and black people and all these things that are nice. All of it. All of it. But when you start to, I think, lose the plot and now you are, again, very small part of the populace, you are catering to this little part of the populace, still human beings, still worthy of God's love.

19:19But when you are now putting a bunch of that type of ideology into your cartoons or to your movies or whatever, you are now actually compromised. Right. So, but the, I don't think that you can, listen, everyone can go boycott, you know, plenty of people, Bud Light, right? Like people went crazy and they boycotted Bud Light and Bud Light, Cracker Barrel. How's that one? Like, holy crap. I got reversed right now. I got reversed real fast, real fast. But I think that's also because even the moderates are kind of seeing a lot of this now. Even the moderates are saying like, wait, wait, what are we doing?

19:56Why? You know, it's crazy. But I think that the best way to combat that is truly, and this is what I have been actively trying to do, is why I moved to Austin. To build a new type of Hollywood. So you're building a new studio. Yeah. Tell us about it. What's it called? Yeah. W Y L D W O O D. Uh, you can go to wildwood.com. We're actively raising money now and, you know, finding partnerships and all that kind of stuff. But, but ultimately the long and the short of it is 25 years ago, I started working in Hollywood. I believe that God called me to do that. And it very much came true. I'm 18, 19 years old.

20:32I'm beginning to work in Hollywood. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is all happening. This is amazing. But immediately I was confronted with the reality of what Hollywood was. It's a very, very broken system. And I, God created me to care about humans and excellence, like, like to care about other human beings and care about excellence. And, and that's very difficult when you're working in an environment that doesn't really, in my opinion, by and large care about either of those things. Hollywood is not a place that values the artists or values the audience. Therefore, you know, the excellence that we're giving to the audience.

21:03It seems to value the top artists, but just not everyone else, huh or not even them really but i don't know that they really value those i mean one could argue that maybe they do but they're not valuing them because they actually see the value of the human being yeah they're valuing them because they sell tickets yeah it's not the dignity of the person it's not yeah they could use someone up and throw them out exactly exactly and so i was apoplectic i was so angry and i was so heartbroken i was like god why would you call me into this industry and i really very very i felt god talk to me not audibly but as it as god will speak to us in our soul and the answer was zach i've called you into this because it is broken because it needs there needs to be a better version of this that does value the humanity of the artists and their art and therefore the excellence and therefore valuing the audience because you are giving them what is and it doesn't all have to be wholesome it doesn't all have to be you know family entertainment or kids or whatever but may it be excellent number one and may it not be infected with a lot of just ideology to push us toward destinations and might i add i i believe that across the spectrum like i don't really i think there's been a lot of like let's say christian movies or christian art that's horrible it's really not good quality stuff and it's because they were relying on the ideology of it thinking well this is enough it was ideology first not the art first exactly exactly and also but also i don't mind if you have ideology that underpins it But why do you have to be so heavy handed about it?

22:32You don't have to say Jesus every other word. Not every movie has to have an altar call. You can, in fact, some of the most profoundly, let's say, Christian or godly symbolic movies don't even touch that. They're movies that are bringing people in through the entertainment. And through that, you are infusing really good moralities, really good lessons. That is the way we ought to be doing things. And so that's the kind of studio that I want to build. It's not going to be G-rated Christian conservative. If anything, it's a very libertarian type of a studio where people like myself and people that would be a counterpart on the other side can work together in harmony, agreeing to disagree on wherever we might stand politically, but coming together to co-labor and co-create really excellent things.

23:18And more than that, trying to solve for lots of other brokenness in Hollywood, or not even just in Hollywood, in the world. like what i'm building at wildwood is not just a movie studio it's also a living community it's a it's a you know it's hospitality it's schools for our kids like i when i was 19 i'm looking at the future i'm looking at all of these people that i knew they were older and had kids and they were all getting shipped off to all these different places to save the money to save the studio's money for like filming incentives and whatever it was but when they would do that because traditionally everything was shot in la so you didn't really have to leave and then all of a filming incentives start popping up and you're having to look at your spouse and your kids and be like, Hey, I love you, but I'm going to see you in two months.

23:58Cause I got to go live out here now. And the amount of marriages that, that broke up because of that, the amount of community that gets broken up because of that. And so I think that to be able to create an environment where I can wake up, I can walk my kid to a school that by the way is actual education and not indoctrination. And then I can drop them off and I can walk to work and then I can coordinate our work schedule and his school schedule so that I can meet up with him at lunch and we can throw a ball and we can talk about what are you learning at school today and then I can go back to work and he can go back to school and we can have a true community a true ecosystem of differing opinions differing lifestyles but everybody agreeing on certain tenants you know like the people that live at Wildwood all you know part of the HOA would be hey no no child who lives at Wildwood is allowed to have a smartphone before 16.

24:46I love that end of story we're doing that with our kids oh yeah by the way so i especially have five young girls it's like oh yeah oh my god it's horrible the programming that's coming out of it but the problem is that even if you do that at home no no you have to the school they go to has to be the same thing because otherwise if they're if they're 12 year old friend girlfriends on it and they're all hanging out yep then you're then your daughter needs it or she's a weird one exactly no no so it has and even if they even if you never could be like and give them that phone they'll watch it on the friend's phone that's true i mean this is why little boys like it's terrifying the average age of young boys finding discovering and using pornography is eight years old eight years old like that's younger than i didn't realize it's insane it's insane now are do they become addicts at eight years old do they even really understand what it is and i i don't know about that but they should not be looking at anything close to that for well really ever but for a long long time a long time right like i want to go back to the studio i'm curious because there's lots of other values that that i'm passionate about i'm curious how you're thinking about it one of them so i used to love science fiction a lot yeah i still do but i used to really love how like a lot of american science fiction was really optimistic on the future was always painting these like really cool worlds and really beautiful things we could build and just like technology was going to like innovation was going to lift up humanity and lead to a better world and i didn't always agree with everything in star trek but it was fun i was a star trek fan right it was interesting right and and now most of the time especially the last 10 or 15 years like all the science fiction is more dystopian and it's a negative future and it's dark and it's critical and it feels like it's really bad for western civilization if we can't tell stories of how innovation can like lead to something that's more positive and lift all of us up and i'm curious what you think about that because it seems really important to try to tell optimistic stories for us to actually lead to somewhere optimistic well listen i mean i i don't disagree most sci-fi is a more dystopian take right um but it wasn't always that way 1950s was mostly positive well right i mean well i mean mean in the 1950s i think most things were mostly positive or right we were post-world war ii we were living fat on the lamb like we were like we're america like and we were much poorer then and we had much more suffering overall but we were optimistic in the u.s in the relative in the u.s like the houses were tiny people had real wages were like much lower the working class was it's like it's like we told ourselves not to make a story because we were still rich relative to 1900 but we were still very poor compared to today in 1950s well i don't know i mean i would i would be interested to go down that route with you because i think that while we might have been making a lot less money or or certain people were making less money the price of a home wasn't nearly as disparate right so like your average salary versus the average home price was way more in reach in the 50s than it was but homes were tiny homes were like this room or something and then we're next to and that's it well okay typical typical middle class family okay but how much home do you really need that's fair i mean i to be perfectly honest i wonder if the the the problem is less of uh we had too small a home then or or or rather that we all think we need so much more now and and i would i would cite um i don't know the exact study but i remember uh reading or scanning or whatever this fascinating study they did with heat signatures in people's homes where they did uh essentially like some kind of a drone where they actually spent time yes yeah yeah and it was like it was this it was in such a small percentage of their massive home so this is an interesting point so i so i'd argue in real wealth terms like the middle class working class are actually much wealthier even than the better off middle class people back then but in terms of our soul what we want and what we feel like we need and how we feel like we're doing there's like just like a much higher bar i don't know maybe that comes from social media maybe that comes from something else but it seems like we do feel like we need more even just to be okay yes it's marketing in general that has that has gotten us here i mean i really believe that capitalism i believe in i'm a capitalist but i believe in conscientious capitalism and i don't think that capitalism as it is right now is conscientious at all we've convinced everyone they need things they don't need exactly in order to make better margins and bottom lines and police shareholders and look at our spreadsheet and all that stuff as opposed to i think industrialists of old recognize that like hey we can make a lot of money but we're not going to cut all these corners and We're not going to brainwash people into thinking that they need this thing.

28:57We're just going to provide a great product or a great service and let the market decide whether or not we're doing that well. That's where the competition came in. But there's been so many levers and so many buttons that have been activated since then. We've created so many new products, right? But people like them, but you don't need them. But you start thinking you need them. You don't. You don't. And at Wildwood, my intention is to actually build a much more minimalistic type of life and experience. Like give people homes that are awesome, that are super dialed in. They got all the tech you could possibly want and need and even stuff that people don't think about.

29:29Like, you know, circadian rhythm type of things. Like imagine if you could just buy a home turnkey and the lighting that's built into that is all incandescent or some, you know, variation of that. I think circadian rhythm stuff is more important than people realize. Bro. So the light, these are not good, but the lights in my office up there actually like change to like a different frequency at night. Because otherwise my wife convinced me that it was like screwing me up. It is. But that's the thing. it is but most people i either don't know that or they don't know what to do about it so why don't we do that for them why don't we figure out a way so that when the sun comes up right your lights are adjusted with exactly the frequency you're like you're like a conservative hippie aren't you a little bit yeah a little bit i mean i think there's a lot of people in the maha i mean i know you say that in jest but but it's true listen man i'm very much about i believe that god really made such an incredible thing in this world and the problem or one of the problems is that we've lost touch with how incredibly made it was to begin with we add all of these things how we market to people how we do how we sell people things oh you need this and you need that when really what you need what we always needed from the beginning and what our ego was always like yearning for right like the ego is this incredible thing inside of us as a survival mechanism but it originally thousands of years ago or really up until even whatever but yeah there were five five basic things that we needed food water shelter clothing and community those are the only things that we need there weren't there wasn't anything else well i think i think maslow's hierarchy might include self-actualization in some sense too forever even back then you want to feel self-actualized maybe a little bit perhaps perhaps but i guess what i would say is that from a i don't know that that's something that the ego is asking for i think that that's something that the spirit is asking for i think that's that is a frequency with god because we're here to learn to grow to yeah i think i think being made in god's image is such that like it's such that you you do want to like like deploy your greatest possible faculties to achieve things and there's aristotle talked about this a lot where like that's that's that's kind of how you achieve like the spirit of who you are is to apply your your talents and certainly in the high end so i do think it's something very kind of god-like about that absolutely we were created to create we were created to discover we were created to accomplish like this is this beautiful amazing playground that our soul gets to come down into this mech meat suit that we get to walk around in which is fascinating but it's tied to very simple needs you're saying it's not tied to all these no no and i and i think that so and the ego is really about those those simple needs it's survival it's not actualization it's not that accomplishment so much it's all it's tied to our basic needs but then 10 000 years ago or whenever the hell it was the sumerians or whomever it was decided that hey why don't we instead of everybody schlepping around their wares you've got pots and i've got sheep and we and we got 10 of your pots is where two of my sheep and i got to bring my sheep over to you or you got to bring your pots to me so why don't we just do this why don't we have these shells and that can denote a value for any one of our things we'll we'll decide what two sheep of shells is worth or 10 pots is and then we can just go back and this is our barter this is how we do it great awesome Some problem in that was, I think it hijacked the ego in such a massive way because the ego understood in that moment.

32:38They go, wait a minute. I don't need five things. I need one thing. I just need shells. I need more shells. Because if I have shells, I can get the food, water, clothing, and shelter and community. Well, that's the irony, though. That's the big lie. You can't buy community. You can't. You can buy yourself into a neighborhood. You can buy the home and you can buy all the things and the accoutrement. You can pay for a good tuition for your kids to go to a school, but community comes down to you. Community comes down to how willing are you to go and reach out and connect with others and dialogue and be there for other people.

33:12And this is interesting because when I look at the ancient world, I think of things in terms of Rome and that style and also of kind of ancient England. And it's interesting because if you look at the, look at like the, what they call our founders believe in natural aristocrats. There's some people who have like certain talents and skills who naturally emerge as leaders. I think you seem very much like a natural leader to me or because they're encouraged what you're doing. And that's what you're doing. And so that's a role you're playing. So you have the natural leaders in society and those leaders back in the day would have to defend everyone else.

33:37And so there was like this role of the leaders to be also the martial class, which you had to do because you had to protect people. And it was interesting because the martial class and almost every ancient society in the West was like really embarrassed about money. And to the point where it was like, that was never the point. The point was your honor. The point was, was your role as a leader. The point was like your connection to God. And it was like this really important thing that of course you use money, but it was, it could never, ever be like the thing that mattered. What had to matter was your, was your honor and your leadership and your society.

34:07And, and, and, and we had this like duty. We taught our leaders and it was like this noble thing. I know nobility meant something. It meant you learn how to have that role. And I think you're going where you're acting and talking reminds me of like what the traditional noble class did. That's what you're supposed to do. And there is something where we lost that. And then the secondary thing became the primary thing, which is very bad. It is. It's incredibly bad. And I think that's why scripturally it talks about, you know, it doesn't say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil.

34:36And that's what we've done. We've replaced. What is your guiding principle? What is your north star? Is it that you love God? Love each other? Is that what's guiding you? Or is it your love of money? and if it's your love of money you're willing to compromise how you care about your neighbor how you interact with your creator how you care about your environment this earth the amount of people that are willing to twist and turn and everything because it's like yeah but but but money but but look at and look at this now look at and because they think that this is my look at my identity look i'll be remembered forever and they won't be do you i i literally what's ironic is that I can't remember his name right now, but it goes to my point.

35:18I've made this talk at some charities before. Do you know who the richest person in the world was? I can't remember. Maybe somebody can look this up right now. What year are you talking about? No, no. Well, historically speaking. Oh, well, there was like an African dictator who had like infinite gold in the 13th century. Yes, yes. Right. So technically speaking, this man. Matsumusa maybe. Yes, yes, yes. Matsumusa? Something like this. something like that right yeah anyway so again but to my point i can't even remember i looked up his name multiple times because i go to these charity events and i try to let people know like what are you doing why like spend some money on this on this charity package do this do that you won't you don't see a u-haul in the back of a hearse what do you think you're going to do take it with you like it's not going to happen and so but so many people have think that the bezos of the world or whatever it's like i i will be on this mount rushmore of of names of faces that will be remembered forever and it's like bro a thousand years from now which is a blink of an eye in the course of human history chances are nobody's going to remember you so there's different ways of doing this i i i'm inspired to fight for for our civilization and for our values i've been a lot we're starting universities you know policy groups to fight for things to help lift up lives who do our best of that.