Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 433: Jake Flores

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

Jake Flores, very funny comedian, podcast host, and commie, joins the DTFH! Check out Jake's podcasts, Pod Damn America and Why You Mad? And follow Jake on Twitter and Instagram! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Manscaped - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout to get 20% off and FREE shipping. BetterHelp - Visit betterhealth.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling!

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I was chastised by a communist on Twitter who felt that I had said something about communism that indicated that I was an idiot. How dare you say I went to the Stalingrad University of communism online. Regardless, after Twitter yelling at me, he suggested some guests that I might want to talk with and pointed out that I hadn't really ever had a discussion about socialism or communism on the podcast. And one of the people he recommended was Jake Flores, a very funny comedian with two awesome podcasts, PodDam America and Why You Mad.

You should listen to these podcasts. If you've got some weird, uneasy feeling when you hear the word communist or if you are nervous about the idea of communism itself, he actually might make you feel a million times better. Not only that, he's brilliant. And he really educated me in the best way possible during this conversation about the history of communism. And I misunderstood a lot of it.

So you were right, Twitter communist. Now without further ado, everybody please welcome to the DTFH Jake Flores. Welcome to the DTFH. I'm so happy you're here. And it happened in the most beautiful city in the world. And I'm so glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And it happened in the most magnificent way. It possibly could have happened, which is a disgruntled communist suggested I speak with you because they're upset over what they saw is my opinion on communism. So, and I honestly, I wanted to interview you before that. So it was actually a really perfectly timed, angry tweet. Yeah.

Thank you to my little disgruntled Cupid out there in the internet's world. Yeah. I feel very conflicted about this because on the one hand I saw that and I was embarrassed and I was like, no, if you like me, please don't yell at people I like that makes people bad. And on the other hand, I really wanted to do this. So thanks, I guess to that person. I don't know.

Well, you know, I've gotten really good at distinguishing like just, you know, troll shit tweets from people who are legitimately like, you know, to get to the point where you're listening to someone's podcast and then to critique them on Twitter and then to recommend people to talk to that to me shows a kind of, it's not, that's not, do I like having anyone irritated at me, especially a communist online? No, not necessarily, but I am legitimately glad that they recommended you and they were legitimately right and not, I don't, and I disagree with their critique, but they were right in the sense that I haven't had any like communists on that I'm aware of or any

that where that has been the top of conversation. And so yeah, I want to fill in that void. And also I would love to brush up on communism a little bit because it's been a long time since I studied it or looked into it and I don't really understand it. And so welcome. Thank you. Well, yeah, I mean, we're after that. You know, it's, it makes perfect sense that, you know, there's been like sort of a resurgence

in interest in this sort of thought in the last few years. And it's, you know, partially because it's such a taboo subject, the internet has helped quite a bit. And so it makes sense that, you know, that this sort of stuff is naturally slowly creeping into the ecosystem that we work in as like comedians and stuff like that. No one's like, Hey, Duncan, why didn't you, why don't you know all of, you know, Mao or what? Like, it wouldn't make any sense.

Yeah. You know, why would you, you know, and, you know, so, so totally normal that this is happening, I think. And the other thing I want to say right off the bat, talking about this is I think there's a tremendous amount of pressure probably on me to represent what I'm talking about correctly. I will not be able to do that. I am not the best person to be talking about this to you. However, I think I might be the best standup comedian.

So that's where I'm coming from. Cool. And I know that we share that in common as an experience, you and I being comics. Yes. So I'm going to give it my best, but, you know, I am, I am like you, Duncan. I'm a student. I'm a little traveling wizard going through space. Yeah.

Learning things. Yeah. I get that about you. That's one of the things I like about you. And, but, you know, the thing with just even talk, like even talk, saying the word communism for me is especially intense because, you know, I grew up with a, my dad, like, volunteer to go to Vietnam and went back another time. He, he, you know what I mean?

And so for him, just the word itself was like pretty like, I don't know that I mentioning it would be bad around him. And then also I think anyone who came up in the United States has a healthy amount of conditioning related to the word itself. And cause, cause it's one of those, um, you set off this alarm system when you stayed around people and they all weirdly do that, like invasion of the body snatchers thing where they were gurgitate the identical sentence, which is communism doesn't work. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and that's, that's weird to me because a lot of the people who say communism doesn't work. Even if you, if you, if you ask them to give examples, they might be able to have some muddy a historic, like it just gets people killed, but they don't, they haven't gone much deeper into it. Uh, and so, but I, I also feel a little fear and trembling related to the subject matter just from a lifetime of conditioning.

Yeah. I know. I mean, it's, it's scary because we're living with like a hangover from the cold war and all of, you know, you have history kind of for the last 100 years or so. And like it's, uh, of course it's, it's just extremely taboo and you're indoctrinated to a ridiculous degree to consider this thing, you know, like akin to fascism or something like that, which is really weird because fascism is like kind of more hypercapitalistic, but nobody understands this.

Yeah. Right. And I don't know. The other thing is like, if you can think about this and it kind of flattens out after a while, if you really do the, like the debunking, but it takes a little while. So for example, when people say like communism doesn't work, yeah, sure. You know what? I mean, there really hasn't been an example of it really working, but that is a meaningless

statement because capitalism also doesn't work. What does working mean? You know what I mean? Right. What is the end goal of a society? Well, so far we have not reached any sort of like state of utopia in any state on planet earth, you know, and with capitalism, you know, you can, I mean, people always say like, oh, look at all the bodies that communism, you know, stacked and with Mao and with Stalin

and it's like, sure, but like how many people have cat capitalism killed? Same amount at least, you know, with slavery and war and all this stuff, you know, right? So, you know, it's a mood argument. No one is arguing that I'm not going to sit here and tell you, I figured out how to organize all of human society. No, I'm just going. No, of course not. But I, you know, I would say, you know, you don't have to be some kind of communist or

even a socialist necessarily to like just have some basic common sense in relation to you know, it's the old, it's like, if you and me are on an island and I have taken all the bananas, you know, and you're, you're hungry and I'm like, no, I'm not giving you the banana or I'm like going to make you do triple or quadruple the amount of work that I did to get the bananas to get a banana. Yeah. You're going to just, as a friend, be like, this is fucked up, man. Like this is some things, this doesn't make sense the way we're doing this banana share

thing. Like it, but it, and then, and then when you take it to like, you know, my mother-in-law, I have, if she, it would be really fucked up if all of a sudden she started charging us for like taking, for being with my kids, you know what I mean? That'd be weird. Like if a grandmother started charging her parents started charge, that would be fucking weird, but then like it goes on and on and on various examples, kind of showing how bizarre this weird exploitation is that we call that comes up in capitalism.

Like, I think, you know, anyone could say that's fucked up, right? But, but with the moment you, you start saying it's fucked up, people get on your ass right away. Like you're not supposed to say these obvious things. You know, I mean, look what happened, they were in that COVID bill, just trying to get the minimum wage raised a tiny amount. You know, that was impossible. Yeah, it's, I mean, we're living in the worst country for that, you know, deeply

steeped kind of ideology. I'm going to go back to what you said, the banana thing, right? So that's like a, it's a fun metaphor to work with, right? But like, let's be honest, you and I were living on an island and there were a bunch of bananas, we're two pretty chill guys. We would probably just share the bananas, right? Yeah. But this thing that you were describing where you hoarded them and manipulated me

with, you know, you having all the bananas. See, that could happen. You would just need, you know, certain like infrastructure in place to have that involving the growth of the bananas. And then, you know, you have, right, armed guards and or other people to control them or whatever. This is basically how class society came about. If you read about, you know, pre feudalism and stuff like that, there's

a very strong historical case to be made that like, when people were like communal and hunter-gatherers and stuff like that, we lived in a much sort of more classless society. And so this all leads into the basics of like materialism, which is the nuts and bolts of how you get to a conclusion like communism, which is that, you know, the abstract state apparatus that we built on top of ourselves to organize stuff like food distribution is what kind of led us into these like we're class society things.

But before I even get to that, so I want to start off with the very basics because I really like the reason I wanted to do this is because I'm a big fan of yours and I love them in like hospital and stuff. And when I watch your stuff and when I listen to your stuff, I'm like, I bet, I bet that people that are into this sort of stuff could easily understand materialism, the philosophy of communism, because it is as exactly as it's very interesting and it's very like your brain sparkly and stuff. When you think about it, it's just in a different mode.

And so like at the very core of this is I guess when I think about like the stuff you talk about on the show, a lot of it is what's referred to as ideological or not ideological idealistic, right? It's very like airy and it's has to do with abstract things. And, you know, closing your eyes and creating the world in your head as you, you know, use your brain or whatever. So at the core of materialism is this conflict between materialism and idealism. Right.

So a long time ago, there were two groups of philosophers. Idealists sort of argued, I create the world in my head. My eye is the lens that I project the world through. Yeah. If I die, it goes away, right? Right. Materialists, on the other hand, said, actually, the world creates me. It the world, everything, all the circumstances that I live in and all

the physical dirt and muck and bricks and things like that create like they carve me out like via a negative space, right? It's almost like looking at one of those black and white pictures and going, is it a vase or is it the two guys heads, you know? Yeah. And so it's interesting because that's that is inherently an unanswerable question, right? Like when I die, does the world go away or does it stay and I go away?

Like, I don't know, you know, right? No one knows, but what's important about this is that both of these things are like key components in understanding the greater like everything. And most people walk through life really only grasping to one or the other. Like even communists that I hang out with stuff, a lot of them are very vulgar materialists and they're like only materialism. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, you got to listen to Duncan Trussell. And then I'm like hanging out with people and they're like, no, no, no, no,

no materialism. I'm like, or yeah. And you know, the other way around or whatever. And and it's crazy because even Marxism is all about how the two things inform each other, right? Right. So I really can. How does materialism look like?

What is the the life of a materialist look like versus the life of an idealist? Well, I mean, so I guess one way to understand this is that at a certain point in human history, a lot of people that were promoting idealist ideas, like we're sort of arguing that the advances that occurred in society were because of great men who had great ideas. And those ideas, when you come up with like the theory of relativity or something, that goes into the human zeitgeist and it's out in the cloud and all of a sudden advances all of us and it's better for us, right?

And that's like a fun idea and there's some truth to it. But it's also very advantageous for rich white men throughout history that have been the people that sell these things who go, you know, yeah, it's it's all because of this one guy, you know. So there's no reason for everyone to have resources because we need to give the resources to to me. I mean, all the stuff, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, where I see, I see.

It's like, OK, yeah, yeah, OK, it's the way you might write. OK, right. OK, I get it. So it's like, that's so cool. So it's tricky, right? You're trying to get wrap your head around. Why the fuck does that guy have own? Why does that dude own skyscrapers? And I work at a McDonald's.

Yeah. And so then you're thinking, well, the reason that is is because there's something more like something special. About that guy versus all of us. That's what he's doing. That's what he's telling you, like, no, you but you also you need to work it out in your own fucking head or you're going to go nuts. Right. It's like, if you just start thinking, like, oh, really, the way what's happening, what you're looking at here is just like

a thing that's been going on forever, which is that people establish themselves with all this wild power. They get guarded by some kind of private army and then they figure out ways to make you feel OK, making their hamburgers. But, you know, right? That's that's the idea. And the way they do that, the way they make you feel OK, making their fucking hamburgers is by number one, making you think there's

some kind of special wizard and number two, making you think, you know, you keep making these great hamburgers and you're going to get a fucking skyscraper. Yeah. That is not what you're talking about. Exactly. Yeah. OK. That's totally it. And so so, yeah, idealists sort of sells you it like that. And the materialism is this, you know, thing that comes along where people start to realize, like, wait a minute, you know, this actually doesn't compute. And this person is lying about saying like they earned their way to the top

of that skyscraper. They just inherited, you know, wealth. This is all trackable. Capitalism really has only existed as a phase of history for a few hundred years. And then the people that became powerful from capitalism, a lot of inherited it from feudalism, the phase before us, you know. And so you look at this and you start to realize, like, you know, what was a big materialist like breakthrough for me when I was a young comic is I would watch TV shows even before I did comedy, just as a young person.

I would watch TV shows and movies and stuff like that. And I would think, why did they never show like the eight, the full eight hour work day in these shows? You know, like when you watch a TV show about someone, they're barely ever at work or if they're at work, it's for a little bit. Or if they are a TV show about being at work, they're having fun all the time. And what you've ever seen reflected is what my life actually felt like as like a 21 year old kid working in a hobby lobby.

It was just like staring at a fucking wall all day and hating it. And I think most people will tell you, well, that's because that's bad storytelling. But I'm also like, I think that actually, no, it would be a good story to tell what it's like to like work in the muck all day. It's just that the story is inherently going to be antagonistic against your boss. And that doesn't really sell in in art, right? And so, right, you know, what you do instead is you paint like your ideal life. And I started to notice this because when I started doing stand up,

I noticed that if you talked about working and stuff like that, people would really they would speak to people because everyone kind of has this common experience where you just fucking work all day and it sucks. But you would be encouraged, though, to to tell a different story, like tell a story about, you know, yourself in the future, where you're like having all these crazy adventures and stuff, because that's what happens on TV shows. So I'd find myself being feeling a little bit of pressure

to change my act away from what was actually happening in front of my face. Just telling stories about this imagined me in the future. And I was like, oh, my God, this is this is like what Mark says fucking talking about. Like, you know, and Mark's talks about that kind of. I mean, on an abstract level, you know, actually a better comparison is John Steinbeck said that all Americans are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. So we have this mindset of like not living in the moment where we're actually down here in the shit.

And that's so brilliant. Isn't it crazy? You know, I was just writing this and bear it like I remember when I was in L.A. And I it was like the first Hollywood party I got invited to. And I'm fucking, you know, I'm like dead broke, man. We all were, you know, we're comics are when you start off broke, you might in bro. You know, like, I remember like Ari had come over to my apartment

with this comedian, Stephanie has to get hated. And the first thing they did was open my refrigerator and I had a package of cheese. And Ari goes, you have cheese. And they both just started eating it because they're hungry, you know, but I remember like going to this guy got invited to this party and it was in this fucking hideous mansion, all this hideous art on the wall. And I thought. New rich like what the fuck was that?

You know what I mean? Like what what the fuck is like? I'm a Rockefeller or something. You know what I mean? But my mind has to fit in perfectly what you're saying. Yeah, like my mind was acting like I like how what experience did I have with any? I'm like I was I was at the time like old poor. You know, but yeah, I know what you're saying.

So it's like we've all been tricked into imagining this right around the corner situation. Yeah. Much thanks to better help. That's H-E-L-P for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Is there something interfering with your happiness that's preventing you from achieving your goals? Like, I don't know, maybe a global pandemic and you're worried that you're not a good dad. And you are concerned that you're going to end up in a bad situation. And you are concerned that you're going to end up failing your family because of some deep

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In fact, so many people have been using better help that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and the Duncan Trussell Family Hour listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash Duncan. Thank you, BetterHelp. Now back to the podcast. Most of us will live and die without that ever happening. It doesn't actually happen for every human in society, right?

I think it's kind of interesting about this. It's weird. It's right in front of you, but you never think about it. A question I like to ask people is, let's talk about reincarnation. If we believe in the concept of reincarnation, just hypothetically, who do you think you were in another life a thousand years ago? Right. Who do you think, for example?

Me? I don't. Man. Yeah. The whole reincarnation thing. I can't answer it, not because I don't believe in it, but just because it's like, anytime I've run into people who are really into reincarnation and they tell you who they were, it's always pretty fucking fancy.

Yeah. It's always like a Merlin or a king or one of the main characters in the- Joan of Arc. Well, statistically, you were a serf that was covered in cow shit and lived and died in cow shit and hay, right? You were a dead baby. Yeah. You lived for like six breaths.

Yeah. You see this often also reflected in like art and writing and stuff like that. Like somebody, man, I interviewed Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and I heard him say something that blew my mind, which he said, the novel is a bourgeois form of art, right? It's always about like a small group of people who it's never about like millions of people, right? Which is why he writes these big sci-fi novels that are about entire worlds and stuff. Yeah.

I think about this because like, take like Game of Thrones, for example, you watch that show. Fuck yeah. It was great, right? But what's funny about that show is that like, it's really about the hundred or so ruling class people at the tops of these societies. Yes. And like that is not how history works.

Like history was not shaped by like, you know, one king and his prince brother or whatever. It's these big, bubbling, roiling, boiling like mobs of people at the bottom, right? Right. Interesting. So another way, I think about this is like, I'll get into that. So you know, you mentioned earlier, though, that not everyone can have everything. Not everyone can have like, just based on like common sense. Yeah.

Not everyone can have the same amount of stuff because there's a limited amount of stuff. But from your, from what you know about, what's that? Not exactly. It's not that there's a limited amount of stuff. See actually, okay, that's a good. So wait, that my question is, do you can, is in this philosophy, can, is there a possibility where everyone can have like access to the resources that we attribute to wealthy people? Like being the sole domain of the wealthy.

Yeah. I mean, that's called communism. And then utopian goal because what's fucked up about what we're living in right now is that this is another early thought I had when I realized like something's kind of off with all this stuff that I'm thinking capitalism is telling me is like, you know, whenever you watch like the Democrats and stuff and like their messaging is all like, we're going to lift up people and like marginalized people are going to, you know, have college programs and everyone's going to excel in society, excelling and becoming wealthy.

These are relative terms. You can't be wealthy unless someone's poor, right? So the idea that everyone is on a trajectory upward and we're all going to get sucked up into the fucking upper class doesn't make any sense because if it won't be an upper class, if there wasn't a lower class and it only like really functions as an upper class because it's smaller than the larger class. So like capitalism, one way I like to think about it is that it's like a computer program that every time you open your little DOS window and you enter it and you play it out, it always

turns into a pyramid every time. And we sort of entertain delusions that it will not turn into a pyramid. So like something's been happening recently, like people have been arguing about Amazon, right? And a lot of people who don't really think about this stuff will tell you, oh, we should boycott Amazon, right? And it's like, yeah, that makes sense. Boycotting is good and they're a bad company, right?

But the thing is, A, that probably won't work because they want everything and B, if you boycotted Amazon and they, Jeff Bezos got sad and he went away, he went off. Fine. You don't like me anyway. He quit his job. Yeah. Because of the way the capitalism is shaped and the market is shaped, something would come along to take its place and it wouldn't be like a more ethical Amazon because unethical

nature of it is how it became Amazon, like it's still going to be shaped like a pyramid no matter what, right? So the problem here is like the shape of the thing itself, right? Yeah. And so do you ever, but with that, like really dark moments, some, and like when I'm like thinking about the world, you know, I'm just like looking at my, just this morning, looking out and a fucking crow comes flying out of a tree, it's getting attacked by a mockingbird or something.

And then, you know, the crow comes hobbling down the street a little bit later, one of its feathers is all fucked up. And you know what I mean? Like you look at the world, like all the other ecosystems and it's like, it's a nightmare. It's walking dead. You know, like the reason rabbits are so freaked out and everything's so freaked out is because they get killed all day long by cats and predators. And so you look at the world, I'm saying this isn't, I don't know, this feels materialistic,

non-idealistic moments. I look out at the world and I think, holy fuck, it's just on every single level, including ours, it's killer be killed. You know, it's, it's, it's thing devouring other thing for its energy, mostly outside of like, you know, things that have photosynthesis. Oh, that's such a good question. Um, okay, check this out, right? So Darwin wrote about evolution.

And when he wrote about it, right, that's what he focused on for a long time was like all this, like, compared competition between animals, they have to kill each other to survive and to, you know, the strongest person survives and stuff like, like, right. And after he wrote that, a lot of political economists and philosophers really latched on to that part of his writing specifically. And they were like, this is why it seems that the free market is natural. Like we are just in constant competition with each other, right? But the thing is, the rest of Darwin's life after that, he's like one of those people,

he's like one of his albums blew up and then the rest of it's way better, but no one pays attention to the rest of his stuff. Like his, the rest of his later on in life, he negated that and he really like tried to hammer home that, no, I went and, you know, studied all these other animals and like there's a lot of them cooperate with each other. And so, uh, someone who wrote about this was Peter Kropotkin is one of the fathers of anarchism, um, or a big, actually, and, and anarcho-communism, I guess is kind of what came out of him.

I don't know, tweet angry shit at me if you're listening to this. Um, and I got that wrong. Don't tweet angry shit at me. We're comics. Don't tweet angry shit at me. Leave us alone. We're just trying to figure this out. So Kropotkin wrote this great book called Mutual Aid.

And what he does in Mutual Aid is he sort of, um, looks at what Darwin wrote. And then he goes, actually, I'm going to make a counter argument. Here is like basically a million examples from the animal kingdom where we, you see animals only surviving because they're like ducks that fly together in the shape of a V and stuff like that and like hold together for warmth. And so this argument that it's inherently like genetic in us, that we compete with each other, I think is actually, it's not entirely untrue, but it's way overblown because it's very advantageous to the people that wanted to sell you capitalism because that

story for them was like, look, this is the way it is. Right. And that's what do you want me to do? Go rewrite God. Come on. This is the way it is. We eat each other. Now get back to work.

Yeah. But it's crazy though, because when you actually went to like communal hunter gatherer societies, like, like the societies that Europe was colonizing throughout all of the last few centuries or whatever, they were all fucking hanging out and just smoking weed and sharing food and stuff like that. Like a good example of that is the Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. You know, I mean, he was basically from like a like a communal hunter gatherer society that had not had all this stuff imposed up on it.

And then the reason he put on the bandoliers and the guns and stuff, because he's like trying to fight away this fucking government. It's like being imposed upon him. I bring him up also because I need to name drop my great, great, great grandfather was a Mexican anarchist who worked with a guy named Ricardo Flores McGone in the Mexican Revolution. I didn't know that before I got into all this shit. And then I found it out afterwards.

Wow. Crazy. What are your thoughts on anarchism versus communism? Well, I don't think the two things are in competition with each other. I think that ultimately, I think that communism is the goal and I think that anarchism is like it's very practical and intuitive. And I mean, they're just very similar.

It's just that anarchism, some people go off the deep end with anarchism, where they're like, we can't have, you know, a DMV or whatever. It's like, you know, no, we're right. Zero regulation. What's really what's interesting about the two things is that they're not actually in conflict with each other. The goal of communism is to basically flip over society

and put the people in charge of the state and then slowly dissolve the state and then end in communism, which is kind of a everything's been melted down and we're just kind of hanging out and, you know, we don't have a military anymore and stuff like that, which looks a lot like what anarchists sort of argue for. But I think the method, the method of how we're getting there is kind of what's up for debate between the two groups. Right. I don't know. Because communism, the method is via this

revolution and also the imposition of the state to figure out a way to redistribute all this stuff and then like it's like a cast on a broken bone. We're going to keep the cast on until we heal and become humans again. And then we'll take the cast off. And within that, wouldn't you say is a lot of idealism in the sense that you're dreaming that at some point people who have power and theoretically power that's been going on for a while, because this shit isn't going to happen all at once, are going to suddenly be like, we did it.

We're it's a communist planet now. Yeah. And then and then let go of all the stuff that seems to be part of it, which is like, look, if we are going to do a revolution, fuck, we're not going to. What are we going to do against the state military and state police forces? We need weapons too. And you know what I mean? So we're going to be that we're going to be militarized.

And you know what I mean? So that to me is the part where it's like, if only there was like something that we'd experienced in our contact with humanity as a whole over. Recorded history that gave us the impression that at some point people who have power like, here you go, it's yours now. That's a really good question. And you're right. So actually, one thing I want to tell you is that

Lenin made the exact same metaphor. Instead of cast, he called it scaffolding. He was like, you know, he puts on the outside of a building and then the scaffolding falls away once the building is kind of thinking through the same way. Right. And like, you're right. So when people talk about like utopian communism, like you'll see these jokes every now and then I got about like, was called like intergalactic space, fully automated, luxury, gay space communism is like a meme that was going around.

Cool. It was just really cool. I think you would enjoy this guy specifically. That all was based off of this South American Trotsky who went completely crazy. His name was Jay Posadas and he like went off alone by himself and then came back out and he had started a cult where he was like, OK, here's how communism is going to happen. We have to embrace nuclear war and then the dolphins talk to us and then the aliens show up and he was the three pillars of his philosophy were dolphins,

nuclear war and aliens. It was crazy. Lost me and aliens for some reason. I like the dolphins and nuclear war. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's like when you have to when you're drunk and you have to throw up or you're trying not to, but you know, you'll feel better. Yeah. So Posadas is crazy, right? Because he was imagining his thing was like aliens want to bring socialism

to the planet, but we're like, they're waiting for us to stop like with a war and stuff, completely black and do nonsense. That's not how this works. Marxism, really. So the way Marxism works is taking looking at all of the patterns of human history that have led up to now and then really using that only to project like the slightest amount in the future. You can only produce it's like this thing where you can psychically think like a minute in advance or something like that.

That's it. But then he's like, but the trajectory you get off of understanding the minute is where we sort of move next. And so every time we do another step and then hopefully it ends up here, but you're right, it is inherently theoretical, you know? And so the way that that works, the way that that's scientific method sort of works is like this. I'm going to have to do a really cliche thing like in movies where they start with the Big Bang and then, you know, please.

So Big Bang happens and then planet Earth and then there's like water and there's an organism in it and he grows legs and yada, yada, yada. Next thing, you know, evolution into hunter-gatherer society where everyone's communal and then what happened after that, right? So clans formed and then villages formed and then contrary to what everyone thinks like that part of history, Kropakin says like, oh, they were just chilling. Like all that barbarian stuff is kind of made up or they're fighting, whatever. So after villages, then someone figures out agriculture, right?

And when you figure out agriculture, when suddenly you're not hanging out with your friends, growing the food, it's one person's job to grow it. Then you have this situation where one person is in control of all the resources and they have to make up reasons why you should be nice to them and they shouldn't have to contribute as much or whatever. And yeah, you got like kings and religious. That's the king. Yeah. Or like, I love thinking about the first king.

I love that moment where someone's like, I'm a king. I'm I come from God. You don't. Yeah. I'm a direct. That's the foot that's in the foot. To me, that moment where people who are probably kind of friends with the first was like, yeah, yeah, I guess you're. Yeah, I'm like, well, also he had like a knife point at your head.

So you're like, OK, I guess you're the king. Like I. Yeah, that is more like it. Yeah, he's like, yeah, you're the king. I went. That's right. Yeah. I went to the ruins in Tulum, in Mexico one time. And this is fucking one of my favorite things that's ever happened in my life. We're with a bunch of tourists and there's this guy who's indigenous and he's very serious looking and everyone's like trying to be very like

what the word is, like respectful around him or whatever. And he's the tour guide and he's going to show us this big room full of our carvings and stuff on the wall. And everyone's like, oh, wow, it's like his sacred culture or whatever. And then he just starts talking. He's like, yeah, so OK, so basically what happened is, you know, somebody figured out how to grow all the food. And then when they had all the food around, they had to fucking tell everyone,

like, you know, back off. So that's how they came up with Ketzacotl, the sky, you know, lizard thing that flies around and makes lightning is because if you if we caught you stealing, I'm going to tell you, oh, Ketzacotl is going to come kill you or whatever. And then he was explaining it very flatly and very like funny. And then he was just like, but he explains something I thought was really interesting. He's like the first generation of people that came up with

these myths did not believe them, but then they would pass them down to their kids and then those kids would pass them down to their kids. And eventually somebody would forget that it was made up. And then, yeah, now it's real. Yeah, now there are gods and fucking, you know, afterlife and all this sort of stuff that's a retribution for if you break the little law about the, you know, the corn over here or whatever. Right. So that's the birth of class society, right?

Basically, once we have this division of labor in the little village that we lived in where somebody works for the other person in the audience, it just grows from there, right? And so we've fast forward a little bit through feudalism to like the French Revolution. So in the French Revolution, you know, you had all these like farmers and stuff, but you also had this emerging class of like people who owned stuff and were like professionals and lawyers and stuff like that. And then you still had a king and the king wasn't really doing anything.

And the fucking like bourgeois I just described, eventually they decided we need to overthrow the king because like, why aren't we running society? We're smarter than him. Yeah, that happens. And and then eventually communism sort of goes and hypothesizes. Eventually the peasants will do that to the bourgeois and that's communism, right? But the important thing is so this is all working on what's called a dialectical framework, which is something that Hegel theorized, where he basically was just

working out how like two ideas, you know, come in conflict with each other. They can't stay in the same space for long enough. It's untenable, boom, they explode, a third synthesis happens, right? So Marx applied this to history and he pointed out that like, oh, you know what happened in the French Revolution is that when the bourgeois and the king were existing alongside each other, but like their interests were not be met and the bourgeois felt like they were getting ripped off and that they had a chance to overthrow this thing for their own betterment.

That's what's called a contradiction. And that's what's really important about all of this. So the cycle of history moves through these things called social contradictions, where like, eventually everyone in a class realizes that they're getting fucked over and that they also outnumber the people that are fucking them over and you start to go, hey, wait a minute, if we formed a union at the job here, we could get whatever, right? And so Marx didn't invent socialism or communism. He just noticed that this was happening around him, right?

The factories and stuff. And he was like, oh, I bet it's going to happen again. And then it did. And so there's like, you know, you look at that and you go, OK, I'm not saying all this is true, but the framework, at least the argument is that we are existing in this constant cycle of things bubbling up and pressurizing into moments of great social contradiction, which then can only be resolved if there's like a snap and a break and like a reforming of that system.

And that's the reason I bring this up. And the reason I think it's relevant to what's happening right now is like all of this shit that happened last year with like the pandemic and then people fucking freaking out and leaving their houses and going rioting in the streets even harder than we've ever had before with like the George Floyd protests and stuff like that, people were like, what's going on? Like, how do I explain this, you know? And I think what a lot of Americans will tell you is an idealistic argument.

They'll go like, you know, there's like it's because people don't hit their kids enough, it's because cancel culture, it's because of, I don't know, racism even. Like that argument is kind of idealistic. And like the reality is once you understand this little lens that Marx gives you that you can pull out and put in front of your eyeball and look at stuff, you're like, oh, my God, it's because of contradictions. And like every time you're, I mean, I don't know about you. Like I could just feel it like last summer.

I was like, oh, my it feels like it's come out of my fucking body. Like something's happening, you know, something communal is like really happening. Yeah. And like even people that have not thought all this out and don't have the language for all this, I think you can feel when there's contradictions happening, because we do kind of have like a bug mind where we're all part of the same species and we do want to be like part of each other and communal and stuff. Yes.

But it was so contradictory that we were being told to stay inside and that also we were being told to trust the police, but the police were killing people. And we're like, this doesn't fuck, this is a contradiction, right? And so like, right, this is the beauty of like this, this process of Marxism dialectical historical materialism is like at any given time, I'm not saying it's true. I'm just saying, take that little thing out of your pocket, put it in front of your eyeballs and look at what's happening ago.

Does apply here? I think it does. Because you're saying like one, I didn't. That's a really cool thing. Regardless, like everyone's like fucking Karl Marx, that motherfucker with his communism, he like he invented it. You're saying, no, you just identified like in the same way. Like, I don't know, people study plate tectonics.

Like they figured out what, how earthquakes happen. And so he identified this kind of seismic movement in society that results in these fucking earthquakes, except those are called revolutions. And right. And so what one thing to sort of back up what you just said regarding the crazy fucking summer. And even before that was this show is happening all over the planet. There were these wild, seemingly disconnected, massive protests that

were happening in France. They're happening in Hong Kong. They started happening in the United States. They're happening everywhere. And it was a weird coincidence. I mean, I, not knowing what you just told me, I remember just trying to figure out like, why the fuck would this be happening all over the place? Like, what is this protest weather or something like that?

And what you're saying is, no, that that's maybe a foreshock for what's coming, which fits in with what Marx identified as some kind of natural tendency in society. Exactly. All of those things happened because of social contradictions that were in place in those, you know, in Hong Kong and in what they were happening in like Brazil and stuff too, in Venezuela and places like that. And, you know, I remember somebody sent me, they were like, you've got to

watch this documentary or blow your mind. And the documentary was about like someone basically arguing that just Facebook had caused all of these things. And I was just like, you know, this is a fun idea, but I don't think it makes as much sense as this like scientific Marxist explanation of like this stuff would be, the pressure was there anyway. It sounds like the technology that we have to communicate with each other just catalyzes that already inherent pressure.

And I know that that pressure is real because I'm broke ass and I work for a living and like, I, you know, I feel like, you know, this all makes sense to me as a worker, you know, and I remember stuff very innately before I ever studied any of this stuff and just being kind of beaten down though by the American culture thing where it's like, well, yeah, but this is the way it is. Like you will never escape from this, you know. Do you think part of the reason people didn't like Trump was not just for

the obvious reasons, but because here you have a fucking very wealthy privileged person displaying their like privileged to a very hungry world. And that that was going to accelerate this possibility that Marx identified. Like anytime you see anyone like, you know, he looks like he was in the Pink Floyds, the wall is the weirdest fucking thing. He looks like that drawing of the little like prancing fucking fat fuck. You know what I mean? Like in the judge or whatever.

But I'm not bashing. I'm just saying like when you start seeing. Do you, is there something in common to communists talk about like the reason we have these walled communities is not just because of safety, but because if enough people see how people are living, then they're going to get angry enough that it accelerates us towards a revolution. Yeah, I kind of, well, let's talk about Trump first. So, you know, what's really interesting about Trump is that when I look at him,

I see what you just described. Like I'm like, this is fucking disgusting. This display of wealth, right? But I think Americans, because they have that temporarily embarrassed millionaires problem, like his fan base should have been angry that he was richer than them, right? But they weren't, they were like, no, that's my God, I'm friends with him. I'm about to get as rich as him, right?

And so this really echoes what kind of happened in Nazi Germany, like right before all that shit really blew up, which is that there's this myth, right? After Trump got elected, like liberals were kind of like the media was kind of like, oh, he got elected by all these like angry, poor coal miners and stuff and like broke like white trash people. And like, sure, some of those people are in his base, but most of his base is very middle class. They're like people who are like small business owners and own hot tubs

and stuff like that. And case in point, you know, when those people with QAnon people stormed the capital in January, I was watching the news that day and they interviewed some of them and they would be like, I'm a small business owner. Yada, yada, yada, like it was like, wait, you're not the worker. You're, you're what's called the petty bourgeois, right? You are a small business owner who thinks they, like they identify more with the class above them than the class below them.

Small business owners are very like, oh, I'm better than my workers in this country. And so the reason that they were so pissed off is because they were living and what they felt like was a contradiction, which is that I'm supposed to be accelerating and getting rich as fuck right now. And my like fucking pool company, like isn't blowing up. And so it must be because of the Trump comes along and he goes, that's right. It's because of Mexicans, right? And it's like, no, it's not because I'm right.

It's because of capitalism. But when you have the anxiety there and the feeling of the contradiction, but someone comes along and gives you a scapegoat, like a fucking immigrant instead of the answer being capitalism, that fascism, because that whole project was like, well, we're going to fix this by scapegoating this fucking problem and exterminating. Right. I got you, man. Oh yeah. Okay. So this is a Camus myth of Sisyphus that I'm revisiting.

It's talks about this in a very different way. Maybe it's my misinterpretation, but it talks about. So Camus says you realize that at some point, you're going to have to realize that you don't fit into the world, that something's fucked up here. And there's a not fucked up, but as a human being, you're all you can't fit into the background. You've got to be as something. And in that act of being as something, you're forced into this weird

confrontation with your own mortality, your own meaninglessness. And also the description he gives is really fucking trippy. Just like the it's the moment where everything just seems kind of alien and horrifying to you and you don't even know why you just don't fit it. What the fuck? So he calls this like absurdity. It's the moment of just realizing like, what the fuck? I don't like when you're outside and you're looking at like smelling gas

and cars and there's lights. And for a second, you don't remember what any of it is. And you're just like, I'm looking at like a love, crafty and hell city here. So this is the encounter with the absurd. And so his Camus premise of the whole book is like, why wouldn't you kill yourself if you really realize that? Why wouldn't you just commit suicide? And so the book is about why you wouldn't commit suicide.

But to get there, he has to talk about philosophical suicide. Phil philosophical suicide is a way out of the absurd, which matches your critique of idealism or what you're telling me, which is that and that was his critique of all these existentialist philosophers like Kirk Soren Kierkegaard and Husserl, who apparently who had come up with tricks. Kierkegaard said, you know, faith is the answer. Right.

The fact that you don't understand the divine and are confused by it is the sign of the divine's power. Let us our confusion is our connection to the divine faith. And then Husserl had a more like, and again, man, I just read from reading this in the morning, a lot of coffee. Husserl just said that apparently he came up with some version of the plate platonic ideals, like a place where some ideal form must exist outside the body and Camus said, that's a more clever form of philosophical

suicide, because you've discovered a thing we can't see a non-materialist thing. Camus doesn't even mention materialism in this, but it's exactly where he's coming from. It's a critique of idealism based on what you're telling me. And so, yes, you're saying this is another form of suicide. What you're talking about is a form of suicide that leads to fucking fascism, where instead of looking the problem right in the fucking face, you come up with a easily defeated, prop, mostly helpless group of people and just

start beating them. And then somehow in that, you like feel like you're like fixing things. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's like, I mean, that's a really good comparison. And I'm sure all these philosophers, whoever came after whoever was informed by the other, because they were all nerds and they all read each other's shit and whatever. So like, it's probably all connected somehow.

But like, I mean, yeah, basically, you know, I ultimately don't know really what the answer to this is, but it does seem like human beings tend to experience that alienation that Camus was talking about and Marx talks about. And everyone kind of puts a different word on, which is like an emptiness where you're yearning for something like to kind of solve it. And there are really bad answers to that, like getting really fucking into QAnon and just like filling your life with that. And then there are answers that are kind of neutral, I'd say.

Like people, people, people, I think that are really into just like Christianity and having like a personal relationship with God or whatever. I think this is kind of filling that. And then I think the communist answer is making the argument that like, no, what you're, what you're feeling is actually like you're yearning to like live in cooperation with your fellow man and not in this like weird man made alienated fucking battle with, you know, in a power line with each other all the time.

And, you know, and when you feel that contradiction stuff, I'm talking about what like when last summer, like when I just fucking woke up, something's happening, I don't know, my bright antenna is just going off. Like that's like a better world yearning to be birthed out of us. Like at all times, but, you know, but it's just, yeah, no, it's like giving birth. You know, I mean, it's like painful, bloody and stuff. No, not like giving birth that hurts because it probably isn't going to happen. It hurts because I don't think no, yeah.

It's like it hurts because it's like it hurts the way a bird sees in a cage. She's a bird fly by. It's that kind of fucking pain. It's like you get it. You catch a smell of this possibility. You don't know what the fuck it is. The moment you start calling it something, people are like, what are you a fucking communist?

You're like, no, I don't, I don't think I'm a fucking communist. I don't know. Is that bad? And then, you know, but, but to me, like, and this is an embarrassing thing and all anyone listening, you're communist friends who probably hate me. Forgive me. Okay. But, but the, you know, God, I'm sorry, man.

I don't mean to embarrass you, but burning man is like a ren fair for communism. Oh, it's like, obviously, what's that? I'm way into this. It's, it's like, yeah, you got to pay to get in and all the critiques of it. You could go look, there's infinite critiques. But if you've been living in a fucking society, as I have, where everything is outside of your family or friends is based on some form of exchange and even friends think of dating, people go on a date.

Some people and they're like calculating how much the other person owes. And when you're eating with people, it's a big ritual. The end is like, okay, you had the hamburger and I had the wine, but I'll pay for your wine, Jerry. That fucking thing. But like, suddenly you go to this place where the only thing you can buy is ice and coffee, everything else you have to have brought or people give you and you go there and like, all of a sudden, people are just giving you stuff.

And you want it, not like little things like food and like helping you and like you want to cry and you feel like, what the fuck is this? And like, you know, you're with your like camp and you're helping them build stuff, but you're drinking and you're laying in hammocks in between and you're laughing and it's fucking fun and real and beautiful. But you don't know why you feel so sad and happy all the same time. And it's because for a tidy second, you get to experience this other way things could be this other way that isn't scary where there's some

dude in a fucking Chinese military outfit dragging you out of your house at night to ask you why you tweeted some Winnie the Pooh fucking picture. But you know what I mean? But it's like, it's like people who really are just like loving each other. It's temporary. And you know, it's not going to last and there's all kinds of problems with it. But I'm just saying it's the, you know, most people, when they think of work, they're like, ah, fuck work.

Yeah. Because the only work they've experienced is like work where they're working for someone who's paying them. You know what I mean? Or their parents made them mow the lawn or something. You know, humans like to work. It's just that we want to get like compensated correctly for it. The problem with capitalism is that I'm not, isn't an argument like we need,

we don't want to work anymore. It's like, oh, I just want this guy to stop taking all my money that I made, like all the value that I made. Actually, you know, a lot, big part of Marxism is talking about this communal utopian stuff that you're describing where it's like, oh, in the future, we all will like enjoy, you know, like hanging out with each other and taking care of, you know, the community and stuff like that. I dude, I was just talking about what you're talking about on my

friend's podcast, The Antifada, we did an episode about the movie Spring Breakers, because we were just like, what the fuck is going on with this movie or whatever. Yeah. The conclusion that we had. It's fucking great, man. You should check it out. But like dumb ass teenagers going on Spring Break, hipsters like us going

to music festivals, fucking Burning Man, Ren Fair, all of these things are the same thing, which is a vacation where you can experience like that communal lizard brain thing that your body's yearning for, but it's only temporary and that's what's so tragic about it. But you're, I mean, I agree 100%, you know? Yeah, it's like, it's temporary. But, but, but to me, that was like my experience with it was fuck, this is like actually the most insidious, clever form of communist indoctrination

that I've ever seen in my life because it's some experience with it instead of hearing about it or trying to understand it. And to get to the place where you get to actually experience it is, I think if we're going to like cite some of the suspicious aspects of the society we're in, that's got to be one of them. It's like weirdly, it's easier to go to a place where someone's getting paid, it was going to give you shit that it is to like gather together with a group of people and mutually construct something for fun.

You know what I mean? Like it takes a little more, more organized organizing skill. But, you know, this is what I want to know because I don't think I disagree with much of anything that you're, you're saying. I, the part where I just went, I just think there's just no way. Like it's, it's more likely, it's more likely oligarchy. It's more likely fascism. It's more likely what, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.

It's more likely that some kind of work, like a new, a new drug is going to come out that is a pacifier, you know, that like just makes people completely happy, whatever is going on or wherever they are. You know what I mean? Like then, then somehow anything more happens than like a temporary revolt, lots of people dying. We got to crack down and then some form of fascism. That's where I get bummed out about it.

How do, how the fuck do we get to communist utopia in our lifetimes? I don't know because honestly, like I thought maybe we might get the slightest smidge of progress when Bernie was a thing and he's not. And now we're living in a post Bernie world and that's really depressing. But you know, ultimately, when I think about this stuff, I it's fucking weird because honestly, I don't actually, if I was a gambling man, I don't think we're going to reach anything resembling communism in my lifetime. So sometimes I feel like a fucking evangelist or something going around

and going, it's about the, you know, this weird apocalypse future that we're not even going to live to see or whatever. But that's not the point, right? The point isn't the end goal. It's understanding the line on the graph that, you know, tends in a certain direction. And so, you know, better things are possible that are just on the way there. And I think that's why the stuff is so important to understand. However, I'm also not the most positive person in the world.

I tend to agree with you. And a lot of times I think about this and I'm like, yeah, humans, human nature seems such that we will literally like just blow ourselves off the fucking planet before we allow this to happen for some reason. But, you know, isn't that the beauty of Marx, even though I, like, isn't that the beauty of what he was saying? Like, isn't that like the mercy of this person's philosophy is number one, recognizing that people who tune into this are going to first be like, wow, and

then feel an intense level of despair at, you know what I mean? His advice was don't let's stick to a few seconds ahead here instead of worrying about some fucking utopia. Forget about all that bullshit. We got to stay seconds, like just in the, in the now of things, because otherwise we're all going to just blow our fucking brains out. So forget about that. Let's stay in the now.

That's where he like synergizes with like a Buddhist teacher. I love Chogyam, Trumpa and like, who is also like would say things like it's hopeless. Just that's the reality. It's a hopeless situation. And everyone thinks that's a depressing statement, but it isn't. It's like, let's start where we're at here. Uh, but do you think one of the path, like we have to think about pathways to this utopia, because I feel like it's our human right.

And regardless of the whatever's up, we're up against, it's our human right. And it's also part of making stuff as you think of the end result and forget about what's getting in the way. And then you can kind of reduce that end result until it fits in with something more realistic than what, whatever you, you have at your control. But what about this idea? This sounds like idealism though, but what if like the answer is not the revolution that people think, what if the answer is that communists, hardcore

communists have to become wealthy, they have to become CEOs. They have to go through the avenues of capitalism, become insanely powerful and wealthy, and then you, then that's where you dismantle the fucking thing, enact laws from that place of power and wealth, act like you're all fucking wealthy, you're fucking Batman. You're the Batman of communism. You know what I mean? And then is that a pathway into people think of that as a possibility?

I don't think so. That's honestly a very American concept. That's what we tell people so that communism doesn't happen. They go, how about you do this instead? But the problem is that does not alleviate the contradictions of society. It just heightens them in favor of someone else, I think. One thing I do want to make pretty clear to kind of come to a little bit of an inclusion about this release, my spiel is so what I think is honestly

the path forward and the reason I think that talking to you and talking to your audience about this is going to be so cool is that I did not come here to negate idealism and materialism does not negate idealism. It's not a battle between the two things. One of my favorite things anyone said about materialism is that materialism does not negate idealism. It simply puts it in its correct context. And in that way, the two things work together in like synthesis.

And I think really we have to kind of understand how these puzzle pieces fit together because like one thing about like modern society and like millennials and shit like that is like we're all like working right now and our contradictions are heightening and we're getting paid less and working harder and stuff like that. And our bosses are and the culture in general is kind of pushing like this self care stuff on us and like medicine and all that sort of stuff. And the thing is that stuff is not wrong, but it's in the wrong context

because once when your boss tells you how about you meditate, they're telling you that it's like instead of giving you a raise and you're like, oh, let me can only add to that for you because I've heard all the critiques of mindfulness and it's one of the big problems with it is that like mindfulness and meditation, it's an ambivalent, it's neutral. You know, here's it's like jumping jacks or something. You know, it's like this is a neutral thing. But it's not just that it's being used.

It could be used as what's what what you're talking about is like spiritual bypass. It could just be used as a way to like sort of give yourself the impression that you're doing something or that you're like what this is something that I used to be so good at, which was like, you know, just figuring out ways to make my cowardice seem like I was being revolutionary. I'm too good for the world. I'm outside the system. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, I'm totally in the system, but you know, I don't not really into this. But I am totally in the system. That kind of shit. And and because I meditate, I go to ayahuasca retreats. I, you know, I take acid or whatever it is. You know what I mean? And so the but the big critique is like, you know, they're teaching drone operators mindfulness.

They're they're teaching people who are dropping bombs on people how to practice mindfulness to reach a kind of clarity when they're turning people in a hamburger meat in other countries. Right. So, but to, you know, for me, like the, if Marx is saying, we're going to stay right here, we're going to stay like in this moment now here, then that extinguishes a lot of like possible idealism just right there. Because a huge part of it seems like a huge part of what people use to

soothe themselves is like little orphan Annie, which is the ultimate example of what you're talking about, you know, the little orphan gets adopted by the fucking oligarch, and then like all of a sudden has a great life. I mean, it's a parable of idealism. And what's the fucking anthem of little orphan Annie? The sun will come tomorrow, you know what I mean? It's like, you know, tomorrow it'll get better, motherfucker. You know what I mean?

So to me, I think where you're right, where a lot of like mindfulness and a lot of meditation and a lot of like quote, spirituality gets misused or misplaced is by people who are trying to use it as a sedative. But any real experience with the shit, it fuck hurts. It's it's about dropping your ignorance. It's about letting like not ignoring all the shit that's inside of you or the world. And, you know, it's a fuck.

It's I think a lot of people are shocked to suddenly discover that through some spiritual practice, they're experiencing a lot of what was it? You're saying that causes the revolution contradictions, contradictions. And that yeah, they're that through that practice, they're being invited to look the contradiction right in the fucking eye instead of ignoring it. And then that empowers people in some way. But I mean, tell me a little bit about like, and thank you so much for this conversation.

Do you have a little more time? It's been an hour. I got it. Let's put it this way. I have more time than you. One. Wonderful. I got kids.

Yeah. But but so let's bring it into instead of like that. You did a great job of like framing this. Thank you. I had a great time. Thank you. That was awesome. But now frame it in a day.

What if Marx is talking about this? It's it's like being in the nowness of what's happening. What does that look like for an individual from on a day to day basis? OK, that's a really good question because we are so brainwashed into thinking about ourselves as individuals. And so this is like this is why this stuff is important. Because when you understand all this stuff and you have class consciousness, you immediately realize that that's not even a good way of framing it,

but you still are an individual. So you do wake up and a lot of people might think, well, I want to make the world a better place. So for example, I am going to not buy or eat any meat, you know, and which is fine. I'm friends with a lot of vegans and I support that whole heartedly and everything and I understand why. But, you know, that's really still framing your connection to the world

as you as a consumer and your power being as a consumer, right? So you can be a vegan for as long as you want. But, you know, if you if you in more concrete political ways, you know, you don't support your local union that then represents and puts pressure on a politician who makes decisions about factory farms and things like that, you have done way less in one direction than the other direction. So actually putting all this pressure on you and your individual lifestyle is very advantageous for the capitalist system because it has you kind of misdirecting

all of your energy, you know? So actually, one thing you can do is relax, like hang out and, you know, enjoy yourself for a moment and put all this stuff in perspective. And, you know, it's hard because the thing that you can reach out at most often and really affect is kind of classically pointed to as your workplace. And that's really scary. There are a lot of tactics to keep people from organizing their workplaces. I personally think like any better any good that I'm talking about on this trajectory

does not come from electing another AOC or a Bernie or whatever. It's we have to spread the gospel of everyone organized your workplace. And then we sort of rest power back that way. That's a difficult task. And I think the first step to getting there and before even joining your local DSA or whatever, reading, you know, theory on Libcom or something like that is just the lens, just understanding any given moment, what's actually happening and how actually to manipulate the various contradictions in the world.

Because we're screwed when we go, OK, there's a problem with the police. OK, what if I vote for somebody who says they're going to train them? All right, that doesn't do anything to resolve the contradictions between us and the police. It just lowers a little bit. And inevitably, they heighten back up and rub against each other and start to make friction right. And so, yeah, I mean, it's really just just kind of a basic understanding.

And, you know what, that's hard, too. The reason that another reason that this stuff is so alien and so taboo and American society is so hard to find is because there is an inherent contradiction in the fact that in order to read all this shit, you have to not be working all the time, which is, you know, why I do podcasts about it and stuff. But really, like, no, take take a load off yourself. Stop. They want you to have a guilt complex where you're like,

it's it's me as the stuff that I buy is what changes society and the stuff that I boycott stuff. No, it's. Oh, my God, right? Like, it's like that. I remember when I first learned about this rotten pairing that court that companies do, where they pair their coffee with like they in the laziest way, they'll have like a picture of their like coffee beans and they'll say sustainable on top of it.

And so you go there and you get this weird sense of guilt mitigation. Yeah. Because you saw a picture of coffee beans and above it, it said sustainable. And so you drink the coffee. You're like, oh, I did something today. Yeah. Or like, you know, like non-government organizations, like people just kind of ritually go like, oh, I donate a few hundred dollars a year to X company or whatever.

Like those are all they just the money gets sucked up into them. And then they just pays the employee. That's like the fact that you felt better for doing that is actually worse because it's all your resources as a person. And we need those resources to, you know, build a better world to birth the better world from all of us. Well, you how do. OK, I'm here.

Comes a fucking the oink of a pig. I'm having a fence put around my house that I bought first house. I ever have bought. I know that's insane. I can't believe it. And I have people who are working to do this to doing this work. And I know for certain that the person I'm paying isn't, you know what I mean? Just the way shit works.

There's no way they're getting like it's not equally. It's not distributed equally. So I mean, just nuts and bolts. How the fuck do how do I do that? What does that look like? You know, how does that look? What does that look? I'm just saying, like, I'm privileged.

I'm successful. And my experience of life is very different from my experience of life when I was pulling cheese out of my fucking refrigerator. Yeah. But but so I'm on the sadly like on the other side. No, it's not sadly. I mean, I like it. But still, it's like, what the fuck do what do we do? What do I do with like the little good fortune that I have?

What does that look like? And I'm not saying like, like, what do I do? Like, I can obviously guess, but I'm just curious from a communist perspective or from the perspective of communism, what are the householders supposed to do? What are the people who have employees, even if it's temporary, supposed to do? What the fuck do we do? OK, so the first answer is relax, because, you know, a lot of people will tell you

like as a very just flawed, immediate critique of everything I'm talking about is people will go, well, you use a cell phone and you order food off of Grubhub. I was a pizza delivery guy for many years. I use the app that exploits pizza delivery guys. Like it's part of just being alive in America. Yeah. Socialism comes from understanding that we are trapped in the workings of capitalism. So don't worry if you have to buy stuff that is inherently exploitive.

All things you have to buy are inherently exploitive, 99 percent of the time. And, you know, you can do individual things like tip nicely or whatever. But really, more importantly is just live your life. But really understand that when those workers go on strike, the only thing you can do to support them is to support the strike. Or, you know, if there's an organized boycott, then boycott then. But like, you really have to pay attention to that stuff, too, because like, I mean, sometimes boycotts are bad because if they're not called by the workers,

then like it actually hurts the company. They just did this in in Alabama. Amazon faked a boycott and they've tricked people into thinking like, oh, I should support this, but it's like the workers didn't call it. And so we still work for a place. We still need you to spend money there so we get paid and stuff like that. So like there's all these things that you need to understand. And if you understand them, it's actually very easy

because then all you notice that all you really have to do is support the strike, you know, and spread the good word. And I, you know, I don't know. I mean, probably there's something I'm not getting to here, but I'm just trying to, you know, I don't know. This is all I got. No, it's cool. Spreading the good word. I think it's great, man.

I think like one of the sweet things that you're saying is, which weirdly does parallel a lot of the like spiritual stuff is like, let's just drop the fucking guilt thing for a second. Like you're where you're at. You know, I remember I was whining to my meditation teacher once because I had just eaten lamb and I was feeling all guilty, which is the most sociopathic thing. Like, you know what I mean?

It's like imagining Jeffrey Dahmer after eating a person, but then like apologizing to the skull or something is way worse than just eating the fucking thing, you know, but I was bitching him about it. And he's like too late for the lamb, too late for you. And, you know, like that's just the way it is where we are, where we're at. So I like that. I think there's a lot of room in what you're saying for me to to like just be like, oh, I guess I'll just relax.

And that's it. But I think you're adding to it like, you know, get to know what you need, what union shit's going on in your town. Is that what you're saying? Like get to know where the workers are organized and pitch in a little bit if they need your help. You know what you're saying? Yeah, it feels very counterintuitive.

It feels intuitive to people, I think, to do the things that you do all day, which is buy things and walk around its stuff and try to help that way. But it's actually it's much more abstract and weird. I mean, what you could do is actually pay attention and be an active member of your society and specifically support things that, you know, cause the sort of dialectic thing I'm talking about to further itself. And, you know, I'm not talking like, oh, look, with the Union Drive at Amazon, they're not going to violently overthrow their boss.

That is just a resolving of a contradiction where they end up getting paid better because they formed into a union that says, hey, well, I'll quit if you try to fuck us or whatever. Yeah. So it's weird because if you understand this stuff, you will actually take enough of a load off yourself. We were not enslaved mentally with the weird liberal guilt thing of I need to donate and I need to fucking buy the right thing.

And then you have enough energy and will within you to, yeah, I just pay attention to labor politics in your area. Follow your local DSA and stuff like that. And like, you know, pay attention to when Democrats run people, whether it's some bullshit, you know, where it's basically Republican or if it's a bona fide person who doesn't take PAC money and stuff like that. And, you know, on this basic level, I mean, this is a hard question to answer because like this is what I'm trying to answer all day in my life and with

my podcast and stuff is like, how do we apply this to the world we're living in? I there's a few ways I don't know if we're living in a time where there's a really great call to action and part of not having that call to action does make me feel like the Camus absurdity thing sometimes where I'm like, well, I understand all this stuff and there's nothing I can do about it, you know, but that's. Hey, you know what, Jake? You know what that makes me think?

Maybe another capitalist symptom is the hero thing. Totally. It's like, don't worry. You don't have to be the one to figure it out. Mate, you're not going to be the one to figure it out. We're all going to figure it out together. And you can know another way you can relax is you're not going to save the world. Right.

That's the whole point. We're going to save it together. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of us in a decentralized way. Right. Like, don't I feel like that my like begging you for some solution is just another sign of the fucking indoctrination. Yeah, which is be the leader, be the hero, be the fucking thing. You know, it's hard to relax into like, no, be part of the thing.

Right. That's that's cool. Yeah. No, it's it's the you're describing individualism, which is like such an American idea. You know, we have all the John Wayne movies and Cowboys stuff. Yeah, we're inherently just we can't. It's really hard to break yourself out of the idea of thinking things happen because of individuals and I'm an individual, so I need to do this. But you're right, it's you're part of something.

And honestly, that's why I'm like, let's talk to Duncan and his audience about this sort of stuff, because that's a thing that that looking into your inner world helps you work out. These things benefit from each other, you know, both sides of the coin. Like you're what you're able to actually enact outside of you benefits from like bettering yourself inside and vice versa. You know, like the the inner world stuff benefits from being able to put it in the right context.

So yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is what I think is one of the things you could do, I guess, is just it's really hard to map out like instructions for how to raise consciousness, you know? Well, I think you've given a really great. Map and steps and most importantly, just information. I mean, that's what I do like about communism. The little bit of it that I've studied is the just like this is how it is.

Like you what if you're mad at communism, what are you going to get mad at winter? Or are you going to get mad at like cycles of the moon or something? This is just this is the way it is. People do get mad at it for that reason. It's it's very depressing at first, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But it's also really like I think, you know, individualism is exhausting, man.

And it's like it's you're only going to be disappointed and it's lonely. You're going to be fucking lonely if you're always trying to be the boss or the leader or whatever the crazy ass thing you're trying to do. Just that relaxing. That was another I'm sorry, man. God, I'm sorry. I want to use my only example of. No, I love it, man.

That was the other thing I noticed when Burning Man was like it wasn't just like we're all sharing and also that you just don't even want to hold on anything anymore. No one's taking shit from you. You're like, it's what are you going to sit and eat your fucking grapes by yourself? Like some, you know what I mean? With like, like, you know, people cry, I saw someone cry. Someone gave them a piece of bacon and they just started crying. You know what I mean?

It's like a but but also like the way the community holds people the way that, like, you know, people going through shit or like the community just naturally kind of like has a healing quality to it. Well, there isn't like, like anything I ever saw, you just realize like, God, I bet it's so much a mental illness in the world is just based on folks having this tourniquet wrapped around them and the rest of their species, you know? Yeah. So yeah, there's a healing quality to it. Totally. Yeah.

You know, you sound like an anarchist right now. That's that's like kind of what, you know, Kropakam was talking about and stuff. The manmade artificial thing that we set up to divide us all is like making us sick. Like, I mean, everyone can relate to this right now. Or most people, I guess, if you participated in the pandemic, you know, it feels weird when you don't leave your house for 10 days and then you go out and you're like, eyes are all bugged out and dark rings under them and stuff. And you're like, literally unhealthy from not like

could doing what you were, you know, evolved probably to do, you know, just live in community and live as a piece of a greater sort of operation that sustains us all, you know? Yeah, man. I think like, yeah, you are doing something because we've this is what you we need. We need more you to be doing what you're doing because what's happening is people are listening to you. It's this end of the podcast, which in the beginning I was going to be about communism.

And at the end of it, where's the evil communist? Right. So is this an evil as a person I'm talking to right now? Evil, are you are you hearing like the bitter anger of some like person who wants to steal your fucking car and give it to like his collective? No, you're that's the thing is like when you hear the real thing, it's sweet. It's it's there's a kindness to it. And and also, I think because of that, it's inevitable. It's just too much energy to keep capitalism going.

It's just not it's too much energy, too much exertion. Isn't that what Marx was saying is like, this is going to happen. Yeah, just because the fucking model doesn't work that you're it just can't. There's not enough energy to do permanent capitalism. Yeah, it's sustainable. Unfortunately, sometimes it kind of looks like it's it will kill us before we, you know, it allows us to overthrow it. But right, you know, I mean, that's the million dollar question.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future. But I do think it's one of those two things, if this makes any sense. It is, I do think it I mean, it didn't. Can you I'm sorry, we are in an hour and a half. Do you have a little more time? I have a few more questions. I got all day, man. I'm having a good time. Thank you.

Can you talk about a little because one of the things I remember reading when I was looking in the communism, Marx was talking about this problem of automation, saying like, you know, things are just going to get completely automated, where the worker will become unnecessary completely. Can you maybe do you know much about that? Or can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, no, that's perfect.

I'm actually in a reading capital, his seminal work in a group with a bunch of other people right now and we're exactly at that part. So this is perfect. He's so fun to read, by the way. He talks about he's describes like the monstrosity of the factory as if it's this giant dragon troposaurus thing. And it's just so fun. But, you know, I mean, inherent in the nuts and bolts of like what he's laid

out, you know, the dynamics inherent to like the factory system describes this thing where, yeah, eventually machines, which cost a certain amount to run, but aren't like elastic in the way that workers are, they come in and they replace workers, and then you have like one worker running a bunch of machines instead of, you know, a bunch of right. And it affects the dynamics of the situation. So the thing that's really important about capital is it marks pretty much identifies as a first person political economy, history to identify

that like where actually wealth comes from is not, you know, it's not from trading creatively, it's not from God, it's not from whatever. It's from the fact that a human being working is like an elastic thing that you can squeeze excess pro like value out of it's a long time to explain the math on this, but it's like, let's go with that. All right, it's like an inherent problem in this whole situation, which means that if you replace the factory with a bunch of automation, but you have one person you're then squeezing profit out of them,

the only way to really like, you know, continue this process because you're making so much stuff is like, you have to open more factories and that's how you ended up with the industrial revolution where we put, you know, railroads and steamboats and shit all over the world. And, you know, all this evil fucking steam and dark clouds and stuff happened in the octopus and over the globe. And so he's looking at all that and he's sort of saying that's why it's inevitable that we have to the only way to solve this contradiction

that is yielding all these evil results is to change what the technology is for. And the only way to change what the technology is for is to move out of the historical phase of capitalism, because in capitalism, like AI and machinery and stuff like that is for profit. And it will never not be motivated by expanding in the way, right? But if we resolve this problem and we achieve like socialism or communism or something like that, then suddenly that big scary machine is your friend, like it just works for like us to be able to get around.

And I mean, like everyone benefits from technology in the modern world. I love using my phone. I travel around and you stand up and I don't have a car right now, at least. And so, you know, what I do a lot of times is I just roll into a town and I fucking use those bird scooters as little, you know, evil Francisco scooters and everyone hates them because they're like some tech asshole makes them any profits off of them, right? But what if they were owned by the public?

What if they were free like the library? Then wouldn't it be fucking awesome to live in Denver or whatever, where you can pick up a scooter every now and then and just ride it around? Yeah, the the the the contradiction is only like it's on. It's only that. That's the thing about looking at these things this way. It is only resolvable through the synthesis. That's so cool.

Break. That's so cool. I misunderstood it. What are you saying now? I get it because I didn't I probably that was probably the reason I remember is probably because I was the last thing I read the last time I read Marx when I was like, I don't give up. I this is fucking crazy. But the I didn't get to the part where he's like, look, it's not so much

the factories or the automation. Yeah, it's that this is making one person rich. But a full automation for the people is utopia. That's a utopian place where it's like we're using solar powered bird scooters that, you know, or the AI has figured out a way to harness all the energy from the sun to fuel everything. And like there is no more need for work. I mean, that's that that's the thing.

It's like that's to me that what I how what I thought Marx was saying is like if we go full automation so they're in there, we don't even need a worker looking after the machines because it's a fucking robot looking after the machines that's being looked after by another fucking robot. You know what it means? Like maybe, you know, eventually there's almost nobody at all running this shit. You know, that to me is where like all of capitalism collapses. You know, like now well now who's making money?

And if no one's making money because there's no more jobs, who's buying the shit the robots are making? The problem and then the problem is it's over right now as of that happening. Someone still owns all those robots and is profiting off of it. But the premise of all of this is kind of like, hey, what if we have all this stuff in place and then, you know, the term is sees the means of production? Like we take it over and then repurpose it to do something different than earn profit for some guy in a top hat, right?

And the point that we turn it towards is making our lives better, greater good. You know, and it's like, yeah, if it's also sometimes it's this stuff sounds crazy and like out there and it's like, really did it. That's what a library is, you know, it's a small scale. Like that's not a bookstore. We just agreed to throw money at it and go, OK, it's communally ever to read a book and that's for the greater good, right? And everyone fucking loves a library unless you're some demon.

There's nothing better than a fucking library. You go in there, it's nice, it's quiet, bring your kid in there. Like, holy fuck. There's books everywhere. Yeah, every like that's the thing. All the I guess like a long term PR campaign or a natural kind of like, you know, if we're going to look at corporations is like some form of like data organism and organisms want to stay alive.

And so any kind of message messaging regarding like the evils of what of communism or any of this stuff, it really is just like you're going to get that because it's an existential threat, like the whole thing. Yeah, it fucks the whole thing up. Like, and of course, the thing doesn't want to get fucked up. So it's like it doesn't work. Dude, that's literally where PR comes from. There's this great documentary by Adam Curtis.

I was watching a while back. I think we mentioned that last time we talked, but it's called The Century of the Self and he talks about how. So check this out. This is crazy, man. Sigmund Freud had a nephew named Edward Bernays and Edward Bernays moved from Germany to America, and then he just started working in America and like, I think he's a writer or something.

And he got hired by the CIA because the CIA wanted to overthrow the Guatemalan government because they had elected a democratically socialist government, and that was interfering with the fact that we had the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. And so the point of that was for us to extract profit from using workers in Guatemala, right? But they elected a democratically socialist government. So what they did is say, hey, we're going to nationalize the fruit industry

we have, so it benefits us. And so the profit comes into growing our country. And so what the CIA did is overthrow the government, install some evil military guy. But the way that they needed to sell that to Americans as a like a war effort was to re like frame it and recontextualize it. And, you know, change the narrative. And so, you know, they hired Edward Bernays, fucking a Sigmund Freud's nephew. Oh, weird. He used psychology to like to change, you know,

the the framings around this stuff and make it look like, oh, we're going to fight an evil third world government dictate. The guy was elected like with votes, you know, and he was trying to give people the, you know, the benefit, the fruit of stealing the land. Yeah. He's stealing the land from the people. And that oh, and that birthed PR public relations as a science comes from like that incident after that, he just that became his job. And he came a guy who went around and said,

do you need me to re fucking contextualize something and sell it to people on behalf of capitalism? That's what I do. And then, you know, the rest of American history and advertising all that stuff was birthed from there. That, see, this is like in this, there's a great book that I think you would like by Jaren Lanier. You ever read his stuff? No, I'll write that down.

It's like 12 reasons to delete your social media accounts. OK. And he worked in Silicon Valley and like he was one of the people who developed VR technology to where it is now and stuff. But yeah, he that's his what one of the like fears that he's putting out there is like it's AI is going to like be like, you know, it's going to turn all of society to a fucking skinner box. And you're going to be completely dominated and manipulated by. And another friend of mine, you know, pointed out that my friend

Jason Lou was talking about how anytime anything appears in pop culture, no matter how legitimate it is, it instantly gets adopted and then warped by pop culture and a domesticated version of itself, meaning that any, you know, did you the best example of this is, did you see that fucking failed Coca Cola commercial? It's one of my, do you know what I'm talking about? I don't know. What did you know? Oh, my God, you got it didn't work.

It's one of the Kardashians is in it. And like she was a Pepsi one. No, the Pepsi one. That's what I mean. It was a Pepsi, the one where you have like the fucking protest and she gives a Pepsi to a cop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? But it's like, it was, you know, like someone's sitting in a boardroom. They're like, all right, we got protests.

How do we turn this into an opportunity for Pepsi? And they're like, well, we need a Kardashian for sure. And then we'll make it so that the bridge between the people and the police state is Pepsi. And that's how we're going to solve this problem of police brutality. Yeah. It thinks it's too absurd. Like it didn't work after contradictions were heightened high enough to where it didn't like you can't sell that back to somebody as a Pepsi commercial.

No, that was the fail. But that was a human failure. Yeah, the scary thing is when AI takes over the PR campaigns of the CIA and then suddenly it's like, you know, people like us start seeing shit. And we're like, you know, that kind of does make sense. And we don't even know that our needles have been nudged by some artificial intelligence in the servitude of some state agency that wants to continue some cultural trend.

That's where it gets scary, man. It's like, yeah, you know what? So that relates to what I was talking about with the individual like consumer power stuff, you know, because it's like all of this is the illusion that the things you do and things that you're clicking on and liking or whatever do stuff like here's an example they use when they talk about the birth of PR in that movie, this fucking blue line I heard about. Wait, can we cut to a commercial real quick?

Yes. I'm sorry. I just funny to say cut to a commercial in the middle. I'm sorry. I was going to get interrupted by commercials though. I feel guilty. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, we live in capitalism.

You have to do it. You know, that's so funny, though. It did occur to me. I was like, oh, that's ironic. So check this out, right? Way back in the 50s when they first were kind of coming up with like powdered cake mix and stuff like that, like that you would make a cake at home in your new little suburban oven or whatever.

They used to be all the ingredients came in the box and then you'd pour the box into a bowl and you would add water and like some milk or something. And that was it made a mixture. And then you made a cake and they didn't sell very well because they realized that after a while people were getting depressed by how they didn't feel like they had any agency in the process of making this cake. So what they did was they took one of the ingredients that they had powdered, which was an egg, and they un-powdered it and they took it out of the cake mix.

And now the instructions, when you get a cake mix, it says, take an egg out of the fridge and break it and mix it into the cake mix. And that way you feel like you're doing something, even though you need not be doing it. Yeah, that crazy that is happening nine million times a day when you open Facebook and Twitter and all this stuff and like just can tell yourself these little stories and like that's even what I was saying about like, you know, the consumer stuff, whether it's, you know, I'm going to shop. I'm going to boycott Amazon today.

I'm going to shop at the ethnic store that's owned by somebody I like or whatever. All these things are that's it's just the egg over again. You have to look big picture and figure out a way to get around all this stuff because it's just tricking us into leaving the only thing more dangerous than leading a meaningless life is leading one in thinking that it's like really meaningful. You know, all right. Oh, God, that's so depressing. Well, look, you know, I think one thing that you said, I'll carry with me

for a long time because it's very pragmatic and it's just help the fucking workers. That's not hard. You can do that. It's easy to find out where the DSDSA is in your city. Or if not that some union or probably somebody could use at least you're just listen. Right. Like just listen. What are they saying? Is it crazy? Do you agree with it? And then if you agree with it, I'm sure there's some simple thing you could do that helps and that doesn't make you part of some sinister communist revolution

that's going to take all the joy out of life. But really, it's just you're just helping people who are working and need need some fucking help. I'm going to do that now. And I appreciate you, man. I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you. It was a good refresher. I forgot a lot of that stuff. Oh, hold on one second.

Jerry, bring me another fucking Pellegrino. Sorry, my assistant, man. He's a fucking idiot when you heard my mouth go dry. Well, maybe you should work harder. And one day he'll be the podcaster. Yeah. Hear that. Oh, man, thank you very much. Can you let people know where they can find you?

Absolutely. Thank you, Duncan. This is an honor. I'm such a fan. And so I had a Christian. Thank you. My at on all social media is Feral Jokes. It's an anagram for my name, which is Jake Flores. And I know, fun, right? And my podcast, I have two podcasts. One of them is like I do a podcast with a bunch of comedians.

We're all DSA organizers and stuff like that. And we do, you know, comedic stuff about what I'm talking about in the news and stuff like that in history. It's called Pod Damn America. It was a joke making fun of Pod Save America. And that was years ago. And now it doesn't make any sense anymore, but whatever. The other one's called Why You Mad?

And it's a little bit more conversational, a little bit more Duncan style, I'd say, where me and my friend, Louisa Diaz, who's an anthropologist and comedy booker, we just really get into trying to make little fun rhizomes out of talking about various things and stand up art, art history, theory, philosophy, communism and all that sort of stuff. And those are pretty much my two things, you know,

I think I might do stand up again sometime soon. If the pandemic permits sometime this year, maybe next year, but you can find all that stuff by following me on social media and whatever. I list all my dates and stuff on my website. That's it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jake. Thank you so much. Everybody connect with this man.

I hope you'll come back on the show, man. I'd love to continue this conversation. Anytime, man. I would love to. Thank you. That was Jake Flores, everybody. A big thank you to our wonderful sponsors, BetterHelp and Manscaped. And much thanks to you for listening.

Remember, if you want to find Jake, all the links you need to find him will be at DuncanTruzzle.com. Please subscribe to his podcast. He is so clearly brilliant and deserves a massive, ever-expanding audience. I love y'all so much. I hope that you have a tremendous week.

And I'll see you real soon. Hare Krishna. We are family. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JC Penney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with.

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