Who You Meet Down America’s Forgotten Backroads - Peter Santenello - #1132

34:00And I'm like, no but congratulations on that he's like well we're gonna need that video that's a little bit of a flex it's the equivalent of north korea showing their ballistic missiles on a parade total flex yeah and my law team wasn't going to fight with theirs because you know i have one person that i can call that's not going to deal with those and they've got machetes no they have they've got tomahawk they have bill they have billions of dollars yeah and tomahawk and those things so what i'm saying is it's so widely varied you can go to pine ridge it's the poorest native res in the country where it looks poor and it looks rough and then you have on the other end of the spectrum the seminoles who are fantastic capitalists that figured out the game really well and i believe and i don't know exactly the number but it's like 128 000 per kid every year what so they all revenue that they're distributing yeah so they come out of high school all millionaires.

34:59Now, I don't want to get myself in trouble on the exact number because it changes hard information to get, but there's that end of the spectrum and then there's the other end of the spectrum. So that's my point about America. The more you go deep, the more you go granular. It's complicated and there's so much rad stuff here. You really don't know what's going on because you're busy in your own life. We all are doing your own thing. And it gives a lifetime of discovery. It's crazy that, you know, it's easy to, can you chat GPT how many Americans have got a passport for me, Jared? I'm pretty sure it's like only 60 % of Americans have got a passport.

35:4160? Yeah, I think so. And it's easy, as you said before, you can be judgmental about that. Think about how big the world is and by virtue of being unable or unwilling to get the credentials to be able to travel. You can't travel. But without leaving the country, you guys have got more than 50 countries inside of here. But half of Americans have a valid passport. State Department estimated 51%, 170 million people in late 2024. Yeah. That is fucking insane. You got to think though, half the population does not have the money to go anywhere. Correct, or the time, even if you had some of the money, the time that you would need to take off in order to be able to travel without your obligations for Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that.

36:26Yeah, it makes total sense. I don't get it. Yeah, I do. I do. I'm a big proponent of travel, for sure. But you don't actually need to leave the country. In a way, yes and no. Like, you can constantly learn and discover, and every state has its own identity. Being in Texas this time, it's like its own country, for sure. The big states in America, California, New York, Texas, Florida, with big populations, they have their own their own gravity to them right yeah what what's the poorest place that you visited in america uh technically well i would say two regions really stand out for talking wide regions central appalachia so that's like west virginia area eastern kentucky it's out there you got to check that out great people but poor Mississippi Delta would be the other big region.

37:19Those two sort of left behind. You don't know US cultural context, you're saying. I think it's changing a little, but back in the day, the butt of any joke would be like the West Virginia hillbilly, right? Looked out upon with Hollywood. It's where a lot of the industry, the coal came from to build this country. And you have those regions in the UK too. We do. But you don't have the room. The thing that's fascinating watching your videos is just how much fucking space there is. Yeah. You know, when you talk about forgotten areas, lost towns, I don't know how much can be forgotten in a place that's got 10 times the population density of the US, right?

38:00We've got 50 million people-ish, 50, 60 million people versus 330, 350 or whatever's over here. But the land mass is so much smaller than the amount of people are smaller. It's 10 times denser. So everyone's on top of each other. You know, you don't drive for that long unless you're really looking for it. Yeah. You don't drive for that long without seeing something that looks like a hub. On the road trips that I've done around America, it is fucking barren for huge periods of time. And then there's some farm that comes past or just some like caravan park, mobile home, we would call it in the UK, with shit tons of trucks.

38:43Like there's a random tractor there. Some guy's got a bike that's just in parts and then it just leaves and then something else comes up. So yeah, forgotten towns. I think the opportunity for that to happen in America is much higher because you don't just have this sort of stumbling effect. You really can be incredibly detached and detachment would lead to alienation. And then that's going to really start to drive down your ability to earn, to be integrated with the rest of the country. Yeah, good point. Out there in Appalachia, I mean, there are coal jobs now, not as many as there were, but a lot of young people don't want to get into that, understandably so.

39:29You think about those guys, the inner city kid, like living in the hood, the projects, has way more, okay, in theory, way more chance to tap into an economy just because it's literally six subway stops away. Now you're going to have to pull up your pants. You're going to have to work hard. You're going to have to get the skills. But that opportunity is there where the kid out in the middle of Appalachia, there's no real opportunity around to go get. What are people doing in these places in Appalachia? What do they do for work? there's a lot of drugs unfortunately selling drugs using drugs selling drugs the full monte yep um i find it to be really extreme as in people are either working really hard and doing well for themselves carrying along or deep in the poverty and in the drugs and so when do you know of the sackler family the oh yeah the pill mills yes yes yes yes yeah okay in documentaries so oxycontin that was sort of the testing ground because all of these coal miners it's hard work they'd be in a lot of pain i met up with a fourth generation coal miner he said he was one of the first one put on that medication on that drug and it's highly addictive and then when the jobs left town a lot of them well the addiction became that much greater because your life's looking terrible and this thing feels great it's not just the physical pain it's the psychic pain so there's still fallout of that now it got better with that and then fentanyl hit pretty hard around five six years ago the chinese oxycontin yeah exactly so i like to highlight the problems problems in this country we have plenty of them the good the bad the ugly though a lot of positive stuff i don't just go for the heavy i don't just want to go for the crime and the drugs now these things need to be brought to the surface but i want someone to see my youtube channel look at all the videos on it and be like oh that's that america place that's pretty cool yeah it's got its issues i don't want to be online just being like full dopamine driven rage bait where they look at it and it's like that's awful there is a kind of tragedy porn that you know what's what's that area in philly that's got kensington kensington and you know if you want to do a a two million play vlog you just go to kensington and interview some people about how the legs falling off and no one really cares and i used this needle five times last week and everything's horrible so kensington i wasn't gonna shoot a kensington story because it's been done so many times too too trite yeah i want to be on the front front edge of things i want to be able to see russia yes i can't see russia it doesn't count exactly yeah so but there's this guy his name was buddy his name's buddy he's bringing kids off the street.

42:44He's got a boxing clinic and religious rehab, and he's doing something good, trying to change it. So, okay, I want that story now because here's a big problem. Here's somewhat of a solution. Let's show that, give a little hope in the thing. So I did that story two years ago. I can honestly say after being in the hoods of Karachi, Pakistan, in the slums of India, there's nowhere more disheartening than Kensington. No way. Fact. Because it is on the fentanyl, on the trank, face down in the curb, and we're just going to let this go. Yeah, so it's more disheartening because of the prevalence of drugs, and that's the sort of hopelessness?

43:33Not necessarily. It's the way we're dealing with it. So for me, compassion would be, hey, that guy's deep in on Fent, he's not looking good. He's bleeding. There's a wound. Like we got it. We got to change it. We got to get, if I had the power, I'd be like, that guy needs to be brought off the street. Even if he doesn't want to go, the best thing for him would be go into rehab of some sort, a therapy. Nobody gets on Fent because their life is great. Oh, I had a great day today. I'll go do some Fent. Right? It's because things are terrible. I mean, it is a Friday. You want to do some? Yeah. Fuck it.

44:13Let's go to 6th Street and get some Fent, dude. I'm sure it feels great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Until your leg falls off. But until you're on Kensington and it's not so great. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings.

44:53Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below are heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Here's the breakdown in the system. In many of these places, Skid Row in LA, the housing is there, but I've done videos there too.

45:28And a lot of these people, they like the adventure of the streets. They don't want to go into housing and not be on drugs or play by the rules. So we're at this weird point in different jurisdictions, depending where you're at, where it's like, if they can stay on the streets and no one can remove them, then it just, the problem gets worse. And so that's also with the ACLU, freedom in America, right? I'm free to choose how I want to live my life and how I want to be. And the law, when it's written up differently in different places or not enforced, doesn't allow for the system to really remedy the problem.

46:15Is fentanyl the biggest drug problem in America in your experience? Yes. Trank's pretty ugly too, but I'd say fentanyl and meth are the worst. But Trank, if the distribution can get there, will maybe be as bad or worse? Trank is awful because they'll get wounds. I was in Kensington, some guy was on Trank, he had wounds, and there were like flies festering on the wounds. People kind of decomposing while they're alive. Decomposing, yeah. So that's what I mean while it's poor in India, for sure it's poor in Pakistan. Like we have resources here, but it's just the lack of humanity. Now there are people like Buddy trying to help, but it's this hiccup where nobody can really solve the problem.

47:00Then there's harm reduction, which is bring needles out because the theory behind that is give someone a fresh needle they're not reusing and spreading disease. And I'd say on the argument for harm reduction from the people, it's really impossible to get in with them. I've tried. The argument is, hey, if we have someone coming into our facility using clean needles, then maybe we can get them into rehab. Maybe we can sell the rehab on them. But there is a homeless industrial complex in the country. There are a lot of people making a lot of money. Who's making money off homeless people? okay so um there's a lot of housing involved with building out how is the housing involved in homeless people yeah isn't it wild they're building what do you mean they're building in la on skid row is this the fucking bass pro shop selling tents like what is this they give out tents there's some there's some grift okay okay there'll be money to give out tents but that there is housing like that is very expensive housing in los angeles built for homeless people okay it's a little bit of an oxymoron but go on it is yeah so there's that grift there's a lot of a lot of ngos that get money from this from different organizations from the state from the feds to sort of remedy the problem and the problem's not necessarily being remedied i mean i saw living in san francisco the tenderloin has always been bad have you ever been there uh i'm not selling you on america chris am i we're we're going on how my channel's not all dark and now I just keep going into the drugstore.

48:36That's okay. That's okay. I mean, dude, I mean, I've walked through SF. When did we do Naval last March? And that was the first time I'd been to SF for Michaela Peterson's wedding. And then I hadn't seen the city at all. And then I went to go and do the Naval episode and we were walking through the financial district. And it's this huge fuck off equinox. And it's an old bank. You've got these crazy steps up to the front of it we want to get a training session in before we're gonna go and film and it was closed on a fucking saturday it is so driven the cosmopolis in the middle of sf is so driven by this group of people that do the nine to five or the you know nine to nine or whatever that it's closed on a weekend and we thought well there's another one two miles away i'm good to get a walk I want to walk.

49:31I want to see the city. And as you walk from one equinox to another, you just very quickly see the financial district fall away and the human feces begin. And it's so, to me, that it's how stark it is. And this seems to be one of the sort of through lines. I know you did this thing in the Hamptons, which I thought was fucking fascinating it's not just across the country how big the inequality can be yeah it's within very small spaces it's when you walk three blocks difference and it feels like you're in a different city yeah to be fair san francisco has gotten better we left in 21 my wife and i it's gotten better since their new new mayor new da it's cleaned up a bit things are always changing But yeah, to me, it's unacceptable.

50:26And that's why I try to highlight these socioeconomic differences too, like what you're saying. Not to do the tragedy porn thing, but say, hey, this is what we can fix. Yeah, and it's not necessarily a solution I'm offering. It's just showing. The book, I don't, can I talk about the book at all? Plug it, plug it. Dude, why should people go to read this amazing fucking memoir that you put together? Okay, Your Fellow Americans, and I'm going to put you in that basket, Chris. Is that cool? perfectly okay because you you've embraced the country the country's embraced you drive a camaro you do yeah oh nice 80s oh no new one okay scumbag sorry okay no scumbag is 80s oh okay fair enough doing burnout i'm elevated i think yeah okay so it's a lot of the content from the channel a lot of the backstory so much happens when the power button's off um in amish country shooting a series.

51:22Like everything, it's nuanced. It's complicated. The Amish have the Schwartz and Trubers, which are the most conservative. You'd think of the Schwartz and Trubers when you think of Amish. No phone, no electricity. It has the beachy. Those would be the most liberal. They drive around. Okay. What makes them Amish? Yeah. You don't really get a plaque or anything. I guess you just say, I'm Amish and you play the game as in, have you seen how they cut their, their beards? Yes. Right? Yes. Like you wouldn't be able to be Amish looking like you're looking or me like I'm looking. Okay. Be unacceptable.

51:59Yep. But you, you're part of the church. You're part of the Amish church. You live by their ways. And. But you also have some technology. Depending on the type of Amish. Yep. Yep. Okay. So in the book, stuff like the cat, I'm in an Airbnb in the countryside, Amish country, cats are meowing outside. I don't know why there are cats outside, but I go out to feed them. Door closes behind. I'm in my underwear. Sun's coming up. Go to open the door. Oh, shoot. My phone's inside. Code is on my phone. I got to shoot a video. I hear the hooves coming down the road, the steel wheels of the carriages. The Amish are coming.

52:41The Amish are coming. And I'm in my underwear, like one of those dudes with a metallic blanket. I'm reflecting pasty white to the world. And so there are two questions in my head. I mean, there's two ways to go about this. I walk to the most conservative Amish people's house, the Schwartz and Trubers, in my underwear, bald, naked, pretty much, you know, past their kids and say, hey, can you help me get into this house? Or I got to break through the window of the house where I'm staying. And so I throw a big rock through the window. Why? You would too. Why? Are they scary? Just think. I mean, you're a ripped, good-looking guy, but even you showing up to an Amish home, some of the most conservative people - You think you'd get shot?

53:33What would happen? No, they wouldn't shoot you. It would just go wrong, I think. I don't think it would go well. Okay. It'd be so out there. I imagine news doesn't travel that fast in the Amish world, though. It does. Okay. They're like aspen trees. They're all connected. Okay. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. They know what's going on. They're more connected than we are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Faster than the internet. Um, so call the people obviously, Hey, sorry, I broke your window. I'll replace it and whatnot. There's a lot of that stuff behind the scenes of video making, which when the cameras are off, the thoughts that come through what I've learned on the journey and also how I started into this after high school, taking a road trip across the country and a lot of historical context in there and just an overall pro got it.

54:19We're in difficult times, a lot of doom and gloom. You can get that all day long on the internet or turn on the TV. Here's a space to go, that being the book or the audio book. You can open up 10 separate chapters, easy to read. They're all separate on their own and smile about America and learn something and connect with your fellow Americans. I don't know. So the publisher reached out because they saw the channel and they're like, do you want to do something off your channel? They're thinking to zag while everyone is zigging right now. There's a lot of heaviness, a lot of doom and gloom in the country.

54:58Just think of the Western world overall, maybe all the world, I don't know. They're trying to think front lines. Hey, how can we go the opposite direction here? And that's what my book is. Nice, wholesome. Yeah. I'd like to think so I get in a little heaviness but not too bad it's mostly uplifting positive give me some more stories about the Amish okay here's one for you you'll like this being English I'm English too in the Amish world everyone here is English anyone that's not Amish is English 100 % including the Japanese black Japanese female you're English oh that's fantastic you're not them you're English Dude, and they said that the imperial colony had died.

55:42No, we're still going strong in the Amish. Go fuck yourself. So you're English, I'm English. Yes, and Italian apparently. Old order Amish can't drive, but they're out in the countryside. They need rides really bad, okay? So I meet this guy, his name's Marcus. I'm like, Marcus, I'm making videos. And he's like, hey, I can bring you into my buddies, my old geezer buddies playing shuffleboard in an Amish barn out in the sticks. I'm like, man, that's going to be cool. I got to drive an hour to Marcus. It's another 45 minutes to his buddies. I go to Marcus's place, pick them up. Oh, howdy, Peter. How you doing?

56:24Oh, hang on. So he's okay to get in a car, but not to drive a car. He can't drive. He needs English to drive. English you have to drive. So this is like Shabbat a little bit for Jewish people. yes we can't turn on or off the light but if we got somebody else that can turn the light on or off which i did a video on that too okay i got in shabbat but uh okay so pick marcus up yeah about halfway through the drive i'm thinking great time to start the video rolling hills homes county ohio beautiful marcus is a character i bring out the camera i'm like he's like what are you doing i'm like i'm just gonna start the video he's like uh i don't know let's not do that right now so i'm reading the room okay cool go to the event with the shuffleboard feeling it out with his guys characters great scene a lot of yelling they're speaking pennsylvanian dutch what the fuck is that which is their language it's germ it's like a form of german yeah that's their native language they call it dutch not to do with the netherlands but like doish where did that come from came from the motherland from europe right they came to the u.s to flee religious prosecution persecution and william penn in pennsylvania said hey come on over you guys are great with the land you're great with farming and they could live to their own tune in america there are a lot of carve out carve outs for them and that's a part of my book neither here nor there people in america chicanos amish siberian yupik who are american but living in their own universes okay so get the event i'm not feeling the vibe i gotta feel the vibe and ends up i don't shoot a video and then i try i'm a little bit confused but whatever i'm just going with it drive marcus home 45 minutes drive back to my place an hour i tell an amish guy a couple days later he's like oh yeah he totally played you the amish bum rides from english and he just roped you in he wasn't gonna do he finessed you he wasn't doing no video with you and i laughed i thought it was great you thought that it was on you that you hadn't maybe made everyone feel as comfortable as you should have done but the video was never on the table it was never there yeah you see you look at the amish and you say that's primitive technology but you just got completely schmoozed by him.

58:49Schmoozed. Yeah. And before the pandemic, I did these videos like right around the beginning of the pandemic. Oh no, in the beginning it was like, everyone was like, oh, the Amish left behind. They're not keeping up. That would suck to be them. Then the pandemic happens. Everyone's like, I want some of that. They're making their own food, hanging out together in the countryside, not worried about a thing. so the book gets into those those stories just like the videos what about the intense jewish communities that you've been to see yeah the hasidics and again they're different sex you have the the satmars would be the most conservative and then you have the lababitch which i did a shabbat dinner with we had to get approval from the rabbis for me to get in there and shoot that video.

59:38The wife shops at Gucci. Okay. So you have Gucci to so conservative, it's like the most Spartan living. Homespun. Yeah, in Brooklyn. In like the center of urban America. So that's fascinating. Look, I think Shabbat's cool. I think Shabbat's cool. I totally respect that. I think it's awesome. We did a, the guy that does the ads for my show, Sky, one of my best friends had his bachelor party. It was a couple of years ago. And he decided to do it in Houston. he likes asian food asian culture and that was it for the theme for the weekend we did shabbat on the friday evening because i want everyone to kind of be here in the moment when everyone phones away we'll do food um so i'm like i've never done this before i guess it's secular shabbat you could call it it's basically just don't use your fucking phone for Friday evening and we'll eat some food.

1:00:45Food arrives and he'd got two pounds of crawfish. I'm like, that definitely doesn't fucking work. Also, there's 25 of us and you got two pounds of crawfish. That's like a hundred grams of edible food. So immediately I broke Shabbat, got my phone out and ordered pizza for everybody. I don't give a fuck about this thing. But we did that and we We did a Jeffersonian dinner where you have a single question and you're sort of circling the room. And I can see the allure of it. I really can. You know, an equivalent of a lot of people are doing a digital Sabbath now on a Sunday where, okay, I'm just no screens for, you know, nine till nine on a Sunday.

1:01:27After coming back from a seven-day silent meditation retreat with no screens, having little doses of that, I think, make complete sense. So you can do, regardless of whether you're religious or not, or a part of the culture or not, I think that there's a lot of cultural technology, social technology that you can take and bring into your own life. Why wouldn't you want to, yeah, maybe the light switch thing might be a little bit much, but okay, a period of the week where you don't think about work. A period of the week where you're just being present. a period of the week where you're away from screens.

1:02:03Like, who thinks that that's a bad idea? Right. Yeah. I'd like to get there. Yeah. The Appalachia thing, just going back to that, I was watching a video of you speaking to some kid who had the most insane history knowledge. Yeah, right. Who was that kid? Because he was giving you an entire history lecture about the difference between the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans and how he had beef with the ancient Romans because of this slaughter that they'd done in like 404 AD. I'm like, yo, if you're holding on to beef from the fucking like third century, that's very impressive. And he was like 16 years old.

1:02:48Yeah, he was on the side of the road. I saw these guys fishing and that video is actually the best performing video on my channel and i almost 34 million views is no joke yeah and i almost i almost didn't do it i was like struggling to get it going but that's one of those videos where i'm like okay i got a long road trip who i meet up with along the way and what happens with them determines if it's a good video or not and you have to put your extroverted feeling out sensing so i see these kids off the side of the road turn over we get into a conversation and then he drops that and he starts singing for me too and he his main point was he wanted to show the country that we're all not just drugs and alcoholics and coal miners that we have we have something more in us and that sophistication as well yeah and you realize like labels are simple and stereotyping they exist for a reason but you can't judge.

1:03:52I mean, if this work has taught me one thing is to judge less. Like that guy was a gem. He was just dropping it. I couldn't keep up with him. I'm like, yeah, that sounds good because I didn't have that historical knowledge. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co last night but they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem. Sorry, man. I just kept chugging away for the regret to creep in. Never happened. See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off.

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1:05:14what was that story in the appalachian company town where some widow lady had to had seven days to remarry or leave or something yeah well in company towns not that long ago i don't know if it was like this in the uk but they were paid in script script was company money like a special currency that could only be used in company run stores exactly okay and for your housing and everything horrendous so you're to control the people that are working yeah you're not leaving or if you want to leave your money's useless yeah so if a wife passed our shy husband passed in the mines the wife had to bounce out of town or get her kids in the mines immediately or else you're losing everything because the company owned all the real estate and they need workers in that real estate it's getting perilously close to a type of slavery yeah they're like indentured servitude thousands of of these places do you know we still have company towns in america that use the currency thing not the currency but almost everything else okay what what is a company town company town company owns the real estate it provides all the employment everything revolves around the company so uh again one of those nights i'm looking at google baghdad arizona what baghdad arizona who would have thought okay i looked into it what's this town freeport mcmorrin owns it copper mining they own all the real estate there everyone there works in the mines or still still or some ancillary business connected the mines and i checked it out and i'm thinking old company town what's it like out there people are all tied into this thing.

1:07:15Well, I get out there. The average wage was above the average in America. It was 90 grand, I believe. Rent, 350 bucks, three bedroom, two bath. This is looking up. Everything's good at the moment. Yeah. Summer workout facility, pool, daycare for kids. School's great. No crime. Why? If you commit crime in a company time you're out company's booting you and so it's not for me i don't want to be in that mold necessarily but i totally get it in these times where inflation's kicking up you know more stress i would say with like trying to make the bills, childcare, all that. What control is in a company town other than everybody has to work for the company?

1:08:12I'm trying to think about, you know, there was hard power before with the currency thing. Yeah. What are some of the other ways that pressure is applied to the people that are working? Yeah, you get fired, you're out, obviously. If you're old, once you retire, you're out of town. Yeah. They're not going to save that space for a retiree. For somebody that isn't being economically contributive to this project. Exactly. I suppose that's interesting when you think about the fact that being able to own your own home now or rent an apartment, as long as you can make payments, you don't have to have any allegiance to anyone.

1:08:54right you don't have to it doesn't matter whether you move from google to procter and gamble or from starbucks to to fucking prada manje uh all of that's fine you just the house is independent but for almost all of human history if you were in some serfdom thing if you had to have fealty to wherever the local baron in the uk medieval times uh you know if you had lords if you were playing land registries and shit like that. Like it's kind of a economic engine, even if you're living on a farm. Yeah. So, okay. So there's some outhouse on the farm and you look after the pigs, you're the pig guy. And then you stop looking after the pigs.

1:09:36It's like, well, guess what? You're out of the house as well because your housing was attached to your economic output. Yeah. Not just your capacity to pay. That was all part of a single. So I suppose this you know historically is not that strange what feels weird is to now think about having your house and your social structure because being kicked out of the house is hard but losing every friend you've ever had and every person that you've ever known in this probably incredibly insular environment yeah hey 65 congratulations now fuck off none of your friends are going to be able to go with you and insular also geographically these are like middle of noah middle morency is another one two big ones in arizona and people are trying to get in because look the pay is good they save up money and get real estate out a lot of the ones that are thinking through it they they do their time and they buy real estate outside and retire in that okay desert arizona it wouldn't surprise me if people are innovative and if there is this understanding that you work in this place and then when you retire you're going to get kicked out that will begin to be a pathway conveyor belt to well why don't we make a retirees town that's not too far away and this has all of the things that we want and then that begins to be the kind of tradition that people go through yeah and right now they're doing well because copper is doing well right what about east la east la is great i love the chicanos they're cool um one of those again new country in my own country experiences didn't know anything about chicanos really got in with these guys true 100 chicanos as in english is the native language with a spanish accent why it's the culture okay a lot of them are bilingual but spanish yeah but a lot have been here generations and they grew up speaking english but they have a spanish accent it's wild cool okay uh look the car culture is awesome they love i get it yeah the lowriders the taco It's a culture.

1:12:04It's connected. It really is connected well. It's its own universe out there. And again, it's one of those either here nor there. The Chicanos will say, when we go to Mexico, they call us American. But when we're in the U.S., they call us Mexican. They're in the uncanny valley of Mexicans and Americans. Yeah. Right in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I made a few videos out there with them. Actually, a chapter in the book about the Chicanos. And that's what's so rad about America. You have all these different existences coexisting. And my wife says, it's a build your own bowl country. As in, pick your protein, pick your vegetables, pick your dressing.

1:12:52So pick your culture, your addiction, fentanyl or medicine. Pick your geography. What do you want, mountains? You want oceans? You want your culture? You want your politics even? Choose your own adventure. It's fucking cool. For all that there's problems in this place, and it's the misogynistic, capitalistic hellscape that's trying to bigotedly keep everybody down, I understand. But I flew back from SF, and just the change, that journey from SF to Austin, the change in the landscape looking out of the window is fucking unbelievable. this is it is everything i've seen everything on route to the only thing i haven't seen is snow in fact i probably didn't maybe see some snow like san benadino valley if we went over that way i don't know um yeah you can there's places that you can snowboard and ski in fucking may yeah and and it's just it's so varied and that is what makes it cool i remember when i first started coming out here man mid-20s i started coming out as part of these author projects that I was doing and I would get flown out to Norfolk, Virginia.

1:14:05And it was just a like military, it was right on the bay. So I'm seeing all of the huge military ships coming in and out. And there was one weekend where we were staying at the Sheraton downtown in Norfolk, Virginia, right on the water. And there was a powerboat convention going on. uh like every dude had a mustache every woman no matter how old she was had bleach blonde hair platinum super i was like this fucking rules this is the sickest shit i've ever seen in my life yeah and then the next year i went to baltimore and it was the fourth of july and i was in downtown baltimore right where the historic ships are right on that bay and the motherfuckers are firing cannons 4th of July there's all of these fireworks going up I was on my own I was like this is amazing and I posted a a photo on Facebook and put my phone away and I was having a beer or whatever just on my own I'm walking about it's like wide-eyed bushy-tailed ba-ding ba-ding ba-ding ba-ding ba-ding I was like fucking all right fair enough get my phone out it's late US time so there's no one awake in the UK and I basically had no friends in the US all of the people that were running the event was saying, what are you doing downtown in Baltimore?

1:15:20Do not go past 49th street. Do not take a turn down there. It's like, what do you mean? No, like, just don't go to 49th street or whatever. And I was like, well, now I'm fucking going to 48th street. Okay. So go all the way up. And on every single street corner, there was a cop car with two police officers. So on every intersection, you would have one, two, three, four cop cars, like on the corners of every, I'm like, how many fucking cop cars have you guys got? And they would just sat there. Even that, didn't go to 50th Street or whatever. That's fucking fascinating to me. And then did this huge road trip.

1:15:55Went to, fuck, what's the place just near Dollywood? It's like a ski lodge town, begins with a G. Gatlinburg. Okay. I went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. sea and this is like a aspen the swiss ski lodge town that happens to be beautiful weather in the middle of summer i fourth july nashville broadway like it's it's fucking awesome dude like for people that i guess haven't traveled haven't been able to get outside of their home state and see just how much stuff there is to do like this sounds like i'm shilling for the fucking american tourist board or whatever but it's just it's fucking cool it's really good and i'm glad that i'm here so what do you where do you think things are going where do you see things in uh in five years are you are you optimistic about things are you thinking something has to come to a head or i don't know i the america is very divided thing seems less true than america is very isolated i think people are more isolated than they are divided and that can cause people to kind of become quite deranged in the way that they see themselves in the world yeah if you don't touch grass that much i had this question on a q a this guy was asked a question of um you say i say that the bar is very low for most men and that you know if you're a well put together guy with a stable job who's nice and takes care of himself you're in the top like five percent of all men i'm like i think that's true and he's like and yet i see all of this stuff online about how a guy needs to be six foot tall and make six figures a year and i'd be emotionally intelligent.

1:17:33He's got 10 years of therapy and all of it. I think this is what happens when you spend too much time on the internet. I think the internet takes the most caricatured extreme versions. It's like WWE for sociality. And it turns everything into this kayfabe pantomime and everybody starts performing. And what I think, what I hope is that we can continue to push people into real world experiences like stuff like your travel vlogs i think are really great at reminding people there is a fucking world of adventure out there off the screen adventure is not a staycation at a local fucking yoga retreat that's 30 minutes from your house yeah adventure is taking a left down a road that you don't usually go down i'll never forget i did um as part of this i want to see the world thing when i was younger i did thailand on my own i did bali on my own the thailand trip it was my final full day on ko samui yeah uh no ko tao sorry ko tao ko tao not ko samui and um me and my one dollar per day moped which had one break on it and was definitely gonna kill me and i was i was basically just uh doing thai boxing the whole time i was there i was going from gym to gym, just fighting.

1:18:56So I thought that would be fun to do. And it would give me a community of people and I'd feel less alone. That worked out great. Final day, I was driving the trip from the smoothie place I like to go to back toward the gym, but I'd already trained. I was like, there's a turning here on the left. I'm just going to see what's down this road. And that took me two and a half hours and nearly ran out of gas. And one point opened out into this elephant sanctuary that I didn't know was there, wasn't signposted. Saw that, pitched up for a bit, just sat and watched things pulled back off and then there's a guy with a huge truck with all of these uh rolls uh sort of bark spun up and rolled tied up behind him i looked like a scene out of final destination like thailand's final destination it's all going to fall off and kill someone and i was like just watching this person thinking i wonder what i wonder what that guy's afternoon is going to look like i wonder where he's going i wonder what he does i wonder where he lives and there would be just the opportunity to see some fucking real shit yeah that is not being fed to you at the velocity that you're used to i don't know i mean i can't tell you basically anything that i watched on the internet last week but i can tell you a story about thailand that i remember doing 10 years ago yeah like if that isn't how you make a richer life i kind of don't know what is and this doesn't mean that you got to travel all the way to fucking thailand but you know no you're fully right there's the on the ground reality and the online reality right now and the delta is massive and unless you're getting that on the ground reality to balance it out you know this thing starts taking over everything seems catastrophic but look next five years what do I think is going to happen I would like to think that we're going to get some degree of pushback against the level of onlineness i wouldn't bet against people's ability to actually be able to look after themselves um and i think that people are way more resilient than we give them credit for i would be worried about what is happening to young people with technology usage but australia and the uk have now both got under 16 bands for social media um even if you can work around it with a VPN or something, I think that's going to be good.

1:21:17And it wouldn't surprise me. America, unfortunately, the freedom thing actually works against you with that, that sometimes maybe you need a bit of dictatorship, maybe you need a little bit of bureaucracy and some sort of top down telling of what, because people hate the idea of losing freedom, but also along with freedom, the optionality can mean that most people kind of, they gravitate towards the path of least resistance. Sometimes that's something that they want, but they isn't good for them. Yeah. Something they want, but don't need. Yeah. I think it'll, a lot will depend on what happens internationally over the next couple of years, because that is causing a lot of people to feel quite uncomfortable.

1:22:02One of the biggest niches or most of the biggest trends in finance on YouTube about six years ago were slow investing 401ks dollar cost averaging and if you look at 2026 it's all vibe betting polymarket calci get rich quick crypto and i think that speaks to the sort of short-termism that people are feeling yeah i i don't know if the future is promised to me so i'm gonna kind of just make immediate reward um i hope that that stops because that's a real recipe for fucking disaster. That's a great point. I call it the RPT. Do you know what the RPT is? No. Okay. Nothing against Russians, but the Russian package tour.

1:22:44So Soviet Union falls in 91. Okay. These people have been behind the wall for decades. All of a sudden, travel opens up to Italia, Turkey, Shamal Shek, Egypt. So you have these flights for people that never were able to leave their country. Chalabinsk, Ufa, Novosibirsk, flying to these all-inclusive package tours. So you go, you get your food, your hotel, everything's included. Well, if you've ever been around an RPT, it's like, take everything off the table, stuff your pockets mentality. Because they've dealt with so much scarcity and you never know what tomorrow brings. And I'm saying this with some humor too.

1:23:31Okay. So not everyone's participating in the RPT. There is some short term. There's the UPT, Ukrainian Package Tour. There's the Chinese Package Tour. It's just sort of a joke of the Package Tour where it's like, I paid for this. I'm going to get all I can get. And I feel like the RPT is sort of taken over culture even here in the West, as in, let me get my thing quick. There's nothing long-term here. Get it off. I feel like the whole country is run like the RPT right now. It's like, I'm going to make my mo, here's my meme coin, I'm going to bank, get out, nothing long-term. And nothing good really comes from short-term thinking.

1:24:11You didn't get to where you're at from short-term thinking. That's a long grind. Same with me. Even to get the visa, dude, even to come to the country, it's a very long grind. If it was short term, you would have given up, done something easier. So I totally agree. Especially young in this country, you need to realize that it's not all social media, obviously. Social media shows RPT mentality. Anything that's worth something is long game. I mean, it took me until... I mean, I was trying to figure out my life at 38. I was stressing in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, reading everything I could get my hands on.

1:24:52Like, WTF am I going to do now? Now you've got a huge YouTube channel and a book deal. Right? But that's from long-term thinking, like having hope. And at the very least, I'd be an old man and be like, at least I went for it. If it didn't work out. I upped my entire life and moved countries on my own with two suitcases at 34.

1:25:17people who say you should have got your life sorted out by now assume that development comes with age and not work and the whole age thing is it's like that makes sense if you know the day you're gonna die if i'm dying at 100 and i have kids at 48 who cares but if i'm gonna die at 50 better have them earlier if you want kids and that's just like this whole you have to do something by a certain timeline thing, I threw that manual out at a young age. So I understand that seems to be a little bit of a contradictory pattern to some of the stuff that you did when you were younger, which is I'm not going to be able to travel like this in the same way perhaps in the future.

1:25:57So it feels like you did have an understanding of part of the timeline. Is that fair to say? With that amount of freedom, like fully untethered, no relationship I was in, no commitments. And yeah, I was sort of foreseeing maybe I won't get that chance again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's actually happening on the American-Mexican border? What's the truth? Right now? Yeah. Okay. I did a follow-up video because I've done, I don't know, five, six, seven videos. No, seven, eight videos down there. Right now it's chill. Crickets. No one's coming over illegally. No way. Nah, nothing. so I started doing border videos when I was moving from California to Florida and someone reached out and said you got to come down to the border and I was in the middle of a move driving across country I'm like nah I'm not gonna do that I'm too busy and my wife was like detour do it go do it we got to Florida dropped my bags dropped her and went right to the border in Texas so not far from here at McAllen and so I went in with some preconceptions of you know why would you want a border wall that's I don't think that's the right way to go about this and then after spending time there during that trip I left yeah you want a border wall down there look if the wall's 30 feet migrants are going to get a 32 foot ladder and they go It's not stopping everything, obviously.

1:27:33But for customs and border protection, it pinches everyone. They put their technology on the wall. They can see better. They can manage it better. You have to see these landscapes to understand how vast they are. Do you know how much of the border is covered by protective fencing then? I don't know. California, most of California. a lot of Arizona not all of Arizona not all of Texas it's got to be one of the longest conjoining borders in the world I have to assume coast to coast perhaps but there are a lot of Canada will be more actually oh yeah that's the longest border actually Canada and I've done a story up there too which was interesting but there it is for the US-Mexico border roughly 700, 750 miles of its nearly 2 ,000 miles have some form of primary fence or wall, about 35 to 38%.

1:28:29That is not one continuous wall. Much of it is replaced. Earlier barriers and the remainder is covered by terrain, patrol sensors, and other enforcement measures. The US-Canada border is overwhelmingly unfenced. Yeah, that's nothing up there. Okay. So I went down. I'm like, I left that first trip. Yeah, you should put a wall up there. The second trip, I went to West Texas, where the Rio Grande is. And if you put a wall up there, you give Mexico the whole river. It would destroy those places. So I left that trip being like, yeah, you wouldn't want to - No wall. You wouldn't want to put a wall there.

1:29:03Then I went to Tijuana and there are two walls between Tijuana and California. Two mega walls. Is it one to keep the Mexicans out and one to keep the Americans out? No, double - Double Mexicans. Double front. Okay. Because if you didn't have walls there, it'd just be a bum rush to the north.

1:29:25Arizona is interesting. So every sector, there are, I think 20 sectors in the United States where there's the Yuma sector and the Tucson sector. They're basically different border jurisdictions. Yuma sector, when I went there, 140 nations were coming through. It was wild. We had an OTM policy other than Mexicans. A lot of people don't know this. Like Mexicans could not come over unless they were really good. But the cartel controlled that whole situation. A lot of Indians. Got Indians on my video from Delhi. Fly Delhi, Mexico City, Mexico City, Mexicali. Cartel picks them up at the airport, like Epcot Center without the name tags.

1:30:10Brings them to the gap in the wall. Gives a U.S. phone. Get to the U.S. side. Dial 911. one. Our customs board of protection comes on them. And I was there for it's in one of my videos. Quarter, half mile down, Sinaloa cartels running, the Fent, the young girls, all the stuff that's definitely going to get busted on. But at that time, we had to process. It's a very confusing topic. And unfortunately, both sides have used it as a weapon. But at that time, it was pretty much fair game to claim asylum, depending on what the country you're from. But if you're from India, and you could say, hey, political persecution, I need to leave.

1:30:50It's dangerous for me to be in India. We had to process them. Buses would come in, pick them up, bring them into a detention center, and then off into the interior, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, all over the country. With an asylum court hearing, hey, come to this court hearing, and the courts are still backed up, not enough judges some are five years out some are seven years out so the the word on the street or the word in the world was game on green light come on you just have to pay the cartel the right amount of money so it was insane i should have just i shouldn't have done my fucking oh one i didn't need to do my oh yeah you didn't and then you'd see the fallout in places like chicago where all the police stations, you had Venezuelan migrants just sleeping out on the floor.

1:31:43Like you walk in a police station, it was just sleeping bags, kids' toys, kids playing. And all the police officers were just like hating their lives. That was the asylum place they'd been assigned to? Just, we weren't, these cities weren't ready for this influx. These places weren't ready and it was just a mad influx. And so I don't blame the migrants because it was green light. I would have done the same. Play the system. I'm in Honduras, six grand of the cartel i'm going up i'm making 10 times as much money and living a better life but the influx was insane unsustainable i thought my channel was going to get demonetized for sure on that topic and maybe shadow banned but it wasn't thank god i've never had a problem with you two, knock on wood with that.

1:32:32But I thought it was going to have an issue. And I would get in with the sheriffs because the sheriffs, this is a really cool thing about America. We have local law enforcement. You have city of Austin law enforcement, right? What county are we in? Travis. Travis. Okay. There's the sheriff's department, both doing law enforcement, operating completely different. The sheriffs are voted in by their constituents. The only people that oversee them really are the voters. Where the local police, city council, it's tied into local governance. So I can never get in with police departments. The only one, Glendale Police, basically Phoenix, shout out to Glendale Police.

1:33:12They let me do my thing. Other than that, nobody. But the sheriffs, if you get a good sheriff, like I got in Yuma County, Sheriff Wilmot, like straight out of the music uh straight of the movies handlebar mustache got the cowboy hat on unreal and he brought me and the camera and the audience into stuff that no one was getting access to because customs and border protection had a gag order no one could speak and it was insane so the problem right now whatever media you're watching everything's got a bias everything's got a bias and so some people didn't even know there was a situation really going on other people think like america's gonna blow up tomorrow yep and there's no real place to go where truth is the north star at least i haven't found it in media i don't know where you go you have to you have to read wide you have to watch wide so again a lot of the benefits you have in this country freedom is one of those amazing uh limited restrictions but also massive optionality and the inability to coordinate right like you can't get top down with that the same thing where i don't think that this is the case in the uk right you have northumbria police constabulary which will be for newcastle the the city that i was from Northumbria being the county.

1:34:39And it's one cohesive unit. And there'll be divisions and whatever else in that. But this means if you've got the sheriff and his guys, then you've got Austin PD and their guys, and then there's probably some bullshit with like Travis County as well, too, trying to coordinate that because you've got these systems that are all trying to interlock and there'll be a little bit of power struggle. And it doesn't take much. Anybody that's worked in a company that's grown quickly or anybody that's been a part of a startup or seen any business that's trying to grow, as soon as you go from founder plus founder and assistant plus founder and assistant to something, it doesn't take long before the diseconomies of scale really come online.

1:35:18All the coordination, the communication problems, things get missed. Everybody's doing the fucking Spider-Man meme thing where they're looking at someone else whose job it's supposed to be. That's what you have in a country that's like that. And because it's so new, there can be little power grabs. Oh, we'll build this, we'll build that. And before you know it, why haven't we pruned this area of this particular bureaucracy? And the disadvantage that we have in the UK is that because it's been around for so long, we've accumulated loads of pomp and circumstance and bullshit. There are all of these, when I graduated from university, both times there's this insane procession of stuff there's a mace bearer the dude carrying a fucking medieval weapon and everybody dots their caps in different orders to people based on hierarchy and it's like cool and kitschy and you know old and worldy or whatever this old university thing but like that's also the way that the police is run and that's also the way that people are voted in and that's also the way that the house of commons works and that's also the way the banking system works.

1:36:26So because it's old, you have a lot of the bullshit that's been pruned is good because things that weren't able to contribute have been gotten rid of, but there's also loads of superfluous like horse shit that's in there too. So it's just, again, the only two countries that I can speak on with any degree of non-expertise is the UK and the US. And what I see in the US is like a huge coordination problem because it's so big and so sprawling. And there's been i don't want to say a power grab but you guys have had to build quickly for 250 years yeah three lifetimes dude it is nothing there's trees in my garden that are older in the uk that are older than this fucking country yeah so it's it's not a surprise that it's a challenge and then changing technologies you know whatever's going on geopolitically people coming across the border it like it's fucking well nolly it's messy the good side of that would be hey without those sheriffs there's no way any of us would have seen what i could show if it was all it was completely uh top down in that sense now in america's founding the the crown the king didn't want us to move past appalachia too much to manage too many skirmishes with the natives I mean, that's what, it's such a massive thing to manage where if you don't have some of these autonomous things working in the spirit of America, America's all the crazies, you being one of them, right?

1:38:07You came here without like no guarantee. You had your thing going. So you had some footing, some foundation. But think of most that came here. They're like, my family got on a boat. How long was the journey for the original migrants that came to America a few hundred years ago? It would be six weeks on a ship or something from fucking Ireland, from some port, probably an island or on the West Coast of the UK. Yeah. Uh, my family came over in 1918 on a boat from Italy, from Naples, no English, 18 years old was my, it was great grandparents. So great grandmother, great grandfather. They all came into Hoboken, New Jersey.

1:38:52I mean, the first European, no, no more, like a little bit, like a little bit newer than that. It's like 1800s. try like because i have to assume that that would have been 1800s most immigrants from europe and america spent four to eight weeks at sea by sailing ship okay by the late 1800s steam ships had made it faster even one to two weeks on a ship but that at the start of the 1800s hey dude do you want to go to this place that you have absolutely no idea what it's like it's basically undeveloped there isn't much going on there was a revolution recently maybe it's over i think so i'm not really too sure it's going to take between a month and two months survival yeah maybe um want to go like that is why this country is filled with people that are risk takers like they're the they're the progeny of people that went fuck it let's get on that ship for two months let's do it and then the ones that went west into native lands like how sketchy would that have been so it attracts that it always has and you're the latest iteration that's true what um tell me about this thing you did in the hamptons because you know when you're thinking about rural off grids yeah you know i don't immediately think of the hamptons as being in that mix so the hamptons met up with this guy jimmy jimmy ding ding because he fixes surfboards the dings on surfboards Great name.

1:40:23We started at the dumps. So think of the most bougie, one of the most bougie zip codes in the country. We started at the dumps because Jimmy's old school local. And so what I want to show is like you can label the Hamptons. I always thought of starch, linens, helicopters, big pads. But there's a whole working class that lives there in many of these wealthy places. Right. So I just got in his story. Fascinating guy. Grew up there. Fisherman. And you see a lot of the tension that exists in these places where the real estate shot up so much. How do you hang on? How does a guy like Jimmy hang on? In what period of time did the real estate go vertical?

1:41:06Well, it was always a place for New York City's elite to get out of the city. It had been desirable for a while. Yeah, but there was enough land and space. I believe his family got a place back in the 50s or 60s. Dirt cheap to get out. a normal home. And now it's just through the roof and it's everywhere in the country. And I think in the UK too, right? Right. Yeah. It seems like it's a worldwide phenomenon. It depends where you want to live. The UK is an interesting one. So I'm from the most northerly town that isn't Scotland. I'm as far north as you can go. In Game of Thrones, which is loosely based on the War of the Roses from like the 1000 AD, winter fell which is the fucking freezing cold dark miserable place that the starks are from that's based on newcastle so that's newcastle and then there's a wall right there's the ice wall and that's hadrian's wall and that's not far from us so there is a there was there is a wall that's still there that was meant to keep the barbarians out and they were the scots and if you were to spend maybe now 150 000 pounds so 200 000 something like that maybe 180 you could get a very nice family home probably semi-detached terraced in a you know be a 1900 early 1900s builds brick it'll be really nicely but it's not going to be super cool modern but it'll be kitschy and really, really nice.

1:42:37And there'll be enough space, especially for something in the UK. If you take that amount of money and try to go to London, you've got two years of rent, right? Or three years of rent, maybe, if you're lucky. The UK, I think, is the fifth biggest, 10th biggest economy in the world, something like that. So people look at the UK as a rich country, but the UK is a poor country that surrounds a very rich city. And the city is London, and the city is really the city of London. And that is the financial hub. And then you've got this sprawl out into Westminster and then London and Greater London. And then you get outside of the M25 and it starts to fall off a bit more.

1:43:15And then you get to Birmingham and Manchester and Newcastle. And so it's affordable depending on where you want to be. Is there a lot of tension between the London crowd and the rural crowd? Not particularly, at least maybe the rural crowd when it comes to sort of farming and stuff like that. that wasn't something I was integrated in. It certainly felt to me growing up in Stockton on Tees, which is 50 miles south of Newcastle, famous for having the UK's widest high street and the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK. And then it lost that. You weren't part of that? I wasn't. I was desperately trying to contribute, but I was a horrendously uncool teenager.

1:43:53and then I never thought London is being a part of what I was a part of okay I didn't feel like a part of the same country it was I guess and I maybe I went when I was like 17 or 18 a few times but I it really is south versus north because the the shape of the country is so particular right It's long and thin. And you talk about South, no one's talking about East versus West. Like there is a difference between people that are from Liverpool and people that are from Newcastle, people that are from Manchester and people that are from Leeds, right? Going left to right, but no one really gives a fuck.

1:44:33Like it's just people with different silly accents. But North to South, as soon as you get below Birmingham and you start to get toward London, that's when things, there is definitely a sense that, oh, these are two different cultures. Don't forget, they're two kind of different climates. Like it is different to go, it's not that far it's three hours on a train a pretty quick train but it's you know 400 miles something like that yeah and that difference is not insignificant when it comes to the weather like to go from the northeast where we are to the south coast is also next to the north sea that's the coldest sea i think in the world and it's really fucking dangerous but yeah um there is definitely a detachment um if you're not in london you are not really considered much by the press press stories aren't bothered about what's going on in fucking rotherham right they don't care about whether stoke on trent has got some issue that's occurring locally socially it will be on local news but it's not going to break out international news so it is it is all of the money and all of the attention is just focused on london and that's fine what about isle of man is that when you have big bucks and you're trying to avoid the taxes i don't know whether there's a tax haven out there i know there's a big festival i've been to i spent a little bit of time near there and it's a retirement place for a lot of people i know that's interesting i mean dude if you look at even the uk the fucking hebrides these islands off the northwest of scotland i think my map yeah the can you pull up google maps jared we can just do it on the big screen just search hebrides for me and um it is so fucking cool up there like uh i gotta get out there fred again did a tour of storn away i think it was so storn away is one of these islands and um yeah just the the amount of variety that you do have in in a place that's got such population density is pretty fucking cool yeah the hebrides so look at that dude look at where that is so zoom in for me jared kirkwall what's up there yeah so look at this dude wow that's the hebrides there and it's just such a so this was halfway between what the um the fingers i think were from game of thrones look at me the only reference i can give you is fucking game of thrones things um but yeah all of that that's the isle of sky that you can see this s-k-y-d um i bet the accent really changes out there huh on some of those islands i don't know i'm not scottish enough to be able to tell you what the difference would be between them and somebody that's maybe from glasgow go across for me jared just pan east okay so berwick upon tweed top right okay there that is the border so you can see the border sort of cutting through then it cuts down to Northumberland National Park and there's Annick which is a place that I would go and uh go to like there's some national parks the equivalent of national parks in the UK the difference between Berwick-upon-Tweed, Annick and Dunbar is Annick completely English accent, Berwick-upon-Tweed is 20 miles away you're like there's something going on here and then by the time that you get to another 20 miles away in dunbar it is completely scottish so the difference is so fucking stark yeah remembering that this isn't like driving across the border from france to fucking switzerland or something this is you being in the same the same money the same everything but just is so and then pan down a bit more for me and then you can see there's newcastle so that's the place that that I grew up in and then Stockton on Tees below it, which is where I actually was born.

1:48:22So yeah, the north of the UK is kind of fascinating. But dude, you keep going down and you keep going down. There's Leeds. People are kind of interested in Leeds. There's Manchester, Liverpool. Okay, there's some ports and shit that are going on there, but no one gives a fuck. Sheffield, no one gives a fuck. Nobody cares at all. Keeping going down. Stoke-on-Trent, definitely no one gives a fuck. Nottingham, nothing. Birmingham, kind of a little bit. I guess Manchester, a little bit. There's some stuff going on. You're still going down. you're still peterborough absolutely nothing cambridge oxford luton and albans okay and then you get to london right you've got the m25 which is that ring that goes around the outside of it and if you're outside that people kind of don't really care all that much there's some bits like people give a shit if there's a big deal in manchester maybe birmingham but you get away from this and people really don't don't care they don't even go out to dover right No, no, not really.

1:49:13I don't think. Come on, Tabinato Dover. Yeah. Did you know there's an island in the United States and Maryland that some of the old timers still speak a form of Elizabethan English? No, but I completely endorse it. Yeah. So I met this guy. I made a video with him. He's actually in the book, too. His name's Jerry. His family's been there 374 years. And he's got, you're going to love the accent. Is there a video of this guy? Can we get a video of him up? Okay, what do we search? Smith Island I would just Type in Peter Santanello Smith Island A lot of Brits Watch my channel too And they're like That guy Sounds straight out of Leeds I forget where Okay Oh this is gonna be Fucking fascinating Allow me to diagnose His accent He's a water man That's a British term Right Water man This one His family lived on That one Yeah that one Hey how you doing Buddy He's a yarny too I mean this guy He's a yarny What's a yarny is that a british word which means it's like an old english word for friend that means friend is this the guy is this the guy that you're thinking has got an english accent yeah i guess no no i'm sorry it's southern southern it's very fucking southern there might be a little something going on words come through all right let me see someone else let me hear this these guys talk four or five days would be a good soak time for them now yeah i guess the kiddiefish is eating all up they ate no oyster i don't know what he said they're eating oyster too

1:50:52okay so i i mean they look like lovely gentlemen um i wholeheartedly i wholeheartedly support a like accent driven recolonization of this country from from england but that is that he's not that is fucking cultural appropriation if ever i've heard it if you think that that guy sounds england i'm sorry not pissing on the parade jerry jerry's a great guy let's see that guy let's see that guy in the black t-shirt last chance scoot back press that yeah or is that the same that's jerry go okay so maybe it's a bit of a stretch he he says some some old english words okay i don't care about the words what i care is how they're said yeah you know what i mean it's not what you say it's got a bit of a carolina brogue to it yeah well look me with my smoking pipe i can

1:51:41that might help um after all the different communities that you've spent time with yeah like navajo amish you pick which one could you see yourself most living with full-time do you think man you have to up six and you have to spend the rest of your days somewhere with a community of people where would it be i like being a free agent so much you know what i mean i i respect and honor all these groups and i can admire what they're doing and the the families that that's been in a place for 10 generations that's really cool but i've always had friends from every background and never belong to a specific group.

1:52:23And that scares me for some reason, like just being in that group dynamic. Do you feel displaced a lot of the time from that? No, it's almost like I belong everywhere and belong nowhere at the same time. Like I like learning and like getting into different groups, but to be Amish, maybe two years, but then after a year or two, you're like... Do you think this would be harder? Obviously you did this before you met your missus, but do you think this would be harder if you didn't have the unit, like the you and another person relationship unit thing? Because it feels to me like it could be quite destabilizing.

1:52:59You might feel a little uncertain and grounded. 100%. So my wife edits. So this is our baby, this whole thing. Oh, cool. It's a family affair. Family affair. We got a mini dog. So that's the extent of it. So we - So it's you and a GoPro? It's me and a GoPro. I figure out the story, she edits. Wow. But we worked - Commandeered some Ukrainian workforce. They're hardworking people. It wasn't my intention, but it turned out that way. That we're just - Unreal. We're fully in it together. So we have that bond, but totally, if I had to hire an outside editor and it was just like sending files of video off and working that way i think you're right i think it would be destabilizing destabilizing but i come we're very tight i mean okay the only two other people we have a guy that does translations in thailand american guy uh just to do the translations for videos in a in a virtual assistant in thailand that no philippines that takes takes my emails and puts them in monday.com for organization that's it do you know ryan trahan yeah yeah so ryan got rid of everybody.

1:54:13No way. Just him and an iPhone. Are you serious? Who edits? Him. You serious? Correct. The guy that's doing numbers not far off Mr. Beast is him and iPhone. His wife's there, but just, I think, largely hanging and just like kind of a moral support. Good for him. Him with an iPhone. And yeah, he's just in the editing. Because here's the deal with this works. I got the logistics of it. Got to get to the location. Got to figure out the story first. It's a day of shooting. you can either be more of a creator or more of a manager in in the video space i think correct and i don't want to manage like it hurts the quality of the video i remember i had someone working for me and she was great she set up a lot of stuff in the channel but there was drama before going out to a video and my password facebook password was given to a marketing company and I'm like, oh, like dealing with chaos.

1:55:07And then we had a blow up. It wrecks the video. And then I wrecked the video because I went out there and I was late and everything got messed up. So I need to be in my own head and space a long time with no interruptions. There's an essay called Manager Mode versus Maker Mode by Paul Graham, who is the main guy at YC. Yeah. And it is kind of a fundamental frame that everybody needs to know. you cannot be in maker mode if you're in manager mode it's it's actually impossible and basically as soon as you get drawn into admin executive function planning logistics operations as soon as you do that no matter what it is yeah your capacity to get back into blue sky sort of fluid thinking, just vibing with it, man, world is basically impossible.

1:56:00And this is the trajectory. I was literally talking to Ryan Long about this today. This is the trajectory where people get things wrong when they try to build a business. And it's a temptation. They get things wrong. It is a hurdle that you need to get. It is a series of hurdles, an endless series of hurdles you always need to get over. At each one of them that you fall at, it slows things down and it worsens the quality of your output. 100%. It's dangerous. And some people have the skills that they can flip between both quickly. I don't have that. I'm yet to meet anybody that is great at going from manager mode to maker mode.

1:56:35Within the same day, I think you can degrade from starting off making something and then there's a catastrophe and you fall into logistics mode. Yeah. I don't know a single person, I've never met a single person who can start a day off in manager mode and become maker mode after lunch. it's straight up is a one-way street yep and this is why if you're going to organize your you know if you're a burgeoning executive or you know an online pt or something and you have calls or you have to do client check-ins or whatever just pick a day or a bunch of days and have those written off start to finish all right i just i'm in pure adderall and newtonic energy like cranking out all of my productivity and then i leave myself time that's sacred all the alternative if you can't take entire days is to have your morning because you can go from maker to manager but you can't go from manager to maker yeah that makes sense that's the way to do it peter santanello ladies and gentlemen dude you absolutely fucking rule thank you i think your content's amazing i really applaud you for trying to bring lightness and you know levity to stories that people think is a little bit more dark uh where should people go to get everything on you on everything just peter santanello tough name to spell so peter sant and i'll usually come up i got a website with everything, the book tour coming up.

1:57:50I don't know when you're posting this. It's got a book tour. I'm all over the country signing books. Unreal. Got the book dropping, got the videos on YouTube. So. You're the man. That's where it's at. I really appreciate you and what you do. So thanks for, thanks for the great conversation. Yeah. All right. Goodbye, my beauties. All right. See you next time. Dude. Yes. Thank you. Fuck you. Thank you. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you love, it's just here. In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up.

1:58:25Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe. No long-term contracts. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.