Sziasztok, Jánó vagyok. Közép-Európa első világra szóló podcast csatornáját hallgatjátok Magyarországról. Ez a Budapest.fm. Hi, my name is Ray, and you're listening to the number one podcast station in Central Europe, Budapest.fm, podcasting to the world from Hungary. Sziasztok, mindenkinek. Welcome back to Budapest for episode number five of Talking with Willie. I am joined once more by the one, the only, Bob Tamás. Tommy B, how you doing? Very good. Sziasztok, everybody. As always, happy to be here. Best way to wrap up the Friday, as I've said, and I'll stick with it. Cheers to Talking with Willie. Egészségetekre. Egészségetekre. We actually have here what we're cheersing with as a follow-up from the bourbon-laced episode of last week with Mr. Barlang János. We have a Gemenc Hungarian grain whiskey, and there's a nice little wild boar on the bottle, single barrel. I think this is like the only Hungarian whiskey they even produce. Where did you get this, Tom? I got this from a wine store on Szondi utca near the Kodály körönd, and the name is leaving me. I can't remember names. I'm on this podcast. It's impossible. But yeah, it's my favorite wine store just down the street from my house, and as I was checking out, there were four of these bottles on the stand, you know, at the cashier, and I was like, I'll take one. And then they were like, okay, which one? Because each number means it's a little bit different, but they couldn't really tell me why. So on the neck, you see this is the 2108. There was another one that was like five zeros and an X, and then another one which is, I don't know, 100. And so I said, okay, give me one of each, please. And we were trying this one. I don't know how it's different, but yeah, Gemenc whiskey. Well, I gotta say, 2108 is a wonderful little bottle, 48% alcohol, single barrel. And as we remember from last week, when you smell the whiskey, open your mouth, give it a nice deep breath in. Notes of vanilla, a little bit of brown sugar, a little bit of caramel. Positively delicious. And to stay on the drinking theme, I just got back from Tokaj. Do you know about Tokaj, Tom? I do know about Tokaj. I guess what I usually tell people is that Tokaj is basically where Hungary gets its international fame in wine. That's what people know Hungary for: the Tokaj dessert wines. It's famous. It wins global awards all the time. But we know that Hungary is more than just Tokaj. But yeah, I'm curious, how was the trip to Tokaj? The trip to Tokaj was fantastic, and you're exactly right. Hungary, actually going back through the history, was a world-famous wine region. I'm talking back in the days of the Renaissance, 16th century, 17th century, and the reason for that was the famous Tokaj dessert wine. Actually, Tokaj as a name is sort of a stand-in for sweet dessert wine traditionally, and it's a fantastic, fantastic place to visit. As you've mentioned, there are many Hungarian wine regions, something that I didn't know before I moved here, but there's plenty. You have Szekszárd, you have Eger. I think there's like 13 or 14. In the big market hall in Budapest by the Chain Bridge, there's like a little memorial to, I think there—yeah, there's 14, right? Fourteen, something like that. Yeah. But Tokaj is definitely the crème de la crème, the king of the wine regions. Interestingly, though, they only have white wine in Tokaj. Not out of, like—I mean, it is out of a choice because the white grapes grow better there, but they have to grow white grapes for commercial use. If you're a vineyard in Tokaj, you're not allowed to grow red wine, believe it or not. Kind of crazy. And so the Tokaj dessert wine, is it restricted to certain types of grape varieties? Well, you have a few different major grape varieties. The one that I have here is a furmint, and that's a white grape. You traditionally see this either sweet, either dry, but with a dessert wine, it's obviously sweet. And then you have a few different types of white grapes that are used in the dessert wine in Tokaj. You have hárslevelű, a word that I always find to be just a wonderful word, delightful to tickle off the tongue, hárslevelű. And then you have muscat, sárga muscat specifically, which is like yellow muscat, and those are the three big, big hitters. You have a little— You know, grape varieties of every sort. There's plenty of little micro grapes, this, that, but definitely the big ones are furmint, hárslevelű, and muscat. And so Tokaj as a region is just absolutely beautiful. It's up in the northwest of Hungary, and it's one of the most diverse in terms of geography. You have, I wouldn't call them mountains, but you have definitely, like, significant foothills and a lot of beautiful valleys and water features. Actually, we went somewhere on a hike just two days ago called the Tenger-szem. Tenger meaning sea, szem meaning eye, and it's like the sea eye because it's in between—it's an old rock quarry, I think they used to mine—and now it just is this beautiful little oasis in the middle of Hungary. I like to say it's the biggest sea in all of Hungary, as we know they don't really have a sea, so they got the tenger-szem. There you go. Take that, little sea-less Hungary. Well, yeah, slightly landlocked, although we do have the Balaton, and that is sort of like the Hungarian Mediterranean in a way. Yeah, the biggest freshwater lake in Central Europe, if I'm not mistaken. But this was actually my second trip to Tokaj, and I went last year and was absolutely blown away. I mean, it was May, it was warm, the flowers were blooming, everything was just melodic, poetic. This time it was awesome, loved it, but if I'm gonna choose, like end of March versus middle of May, save it for middle of May because wow. We all know Willie loves a good spring awakening. This is sort of Willie's thing, spring awakening. So where were you staying? Were you staying in some kind of cave, up on the mountains? What's the Tokaj life look like? I was not staying in a cave. We went to—not this time at least—we went to, like, this little guesthouse. I don't know, I'm not gonna name names. I don't know if it was technically legally open, but it was great. And one of the places that we went to was the Takács Pince, and it's a pince, which is in Hungarian like a wine cavern. Basically what it sounds like, a cave where they keep wine. And this one is right below a church, and it's in like an idyllic little location. And the two proprietors, Adri and Janos, they are friends of Alexa's mother's neighbor. And so we go, and they ply us with all sorts of white delicious dessert wines. Adri's mother, she brought down an absolutely astonishing plate of rántott disznó and rántott csirke, which is just fried chicken and fried pork. Pork. Disznó is pork. And mashed potatoes that—I've never had mashed potatoes this creamy in my entire life. They were absolutely, oof, to die for. Give me some of these mashed potatoes. But I brought from the Takács Pince a bottle of their Tokaji Furmint Kétezer Tizenhét, 2017, which I was told by Janos last night—I asked him, what's the best vintage? So if any collectors are in the audience, what's the best vintage of the past ten years? And he said, without a shadow of a doubt, 2017. And this Tokaji Furmint, it's not an aszú, which is like the famous Hungarian signature dessert wine, and that's the one that's super, super, super sweet. You can only have it in a tiny little glass. This is a Tokaji Furmint késői, which is a late harvest wine. So it's harvested instead of the traditional harvest time, November, December, October. This one's harvested, I think, in January, and it just adds a little bit of like sugar to the grapes. So I think it lets more of the sugar develop in the grapes before they harvest it. There you go. Thank you, Tom. We can pop it open and just have a little, a little tipple. Let's pop it open. Yeah, yeah, let's have a taste. And while I do that, how was your day? Tell me about your day today, Tom. Wow, my day was great. I've been trying to... Be a little bit more intentional with my days, you know. Sometimes I tend to wake up and just watch YouTube for a little while, and that just puts me in this little upset mood. So woke up this morning, just put my shoes on and went for a little run, listened to, you know, my audiobook as I'm going. And then, yeah, got home, did a little stretching, and then popped right into work. And I've been listening to this podcast during work called Flow State. Shout out to Bobby Light. I don't know if that's your real name, but it's like the best podcast host name ever. He has this podcast where he just plays 30 minutes of kind of like smooth technical techno music to help you work and to get you into the flow state, which is a kind of like a state of focus that was actually coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian philosopher. And it's this concept that when it's—it's when you're—when the challenge of a task is up to your ability in the task, and you get so caught up in the work that you're doing because you're performing at such a high level, but you're also challenged to a very, like, intense degree, and you fall into this kind of like—if he calls it the flow state—and it's when time just goes by, you can't even, you don't even realize, and you're just working and you— So he coined that term? Like this Hungarian dude, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He coined the term flow state. So that's something that we use a lot in, like, everyday parlance, I would say. I've heard many people say, Oh, I'm in a state of flow. I'm in a flow state, and he was the one that coined that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm pretty darn sure I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure, yeah, it was. That's all right. So you listened to this podcast by this dude, Michael Light. Yeah, Bobby Light. Bobby Light. 30 minutes of this kind of music that, like, helps you drop into this flow state, and then for five minutes— And does it work? Does it work? So it's related to this thing called the Pomodoro technique. It goes around in the software world a lot, which is—the Pomodoro technique is you have this little timer. It's set for 30 minutes and then for five minutes, and then it repeats. So you work for 30 minutes, and then you take a five-minute break, and then you work for 30 minutes, and this keeps you— No matter what's going on for 30 minutes, you take a break. And this is how you, because flow state, this is what Bobby also talks about in the five-minute breaks, like kind of talks about the flow state and teaches you about the philosophy behind it. And the point is that being in the flow state is actually, like, really, really tiring, and it's really hard on your body. So you have to take little breaks and get out of this. So, you know, you do this all the time when you're working. You're just kind of, like, stuck and working. You're just in your keyboard and you don't realize an hour goes by. Well, that's probably giving my process a little bit more credit than it deserves. But no, that's true. That's true. You get into a state. I think I find this as an equivalent to you programming is probably when I'm, like, editing videos. It's probably the most focused I get. And it's true, you get into a point where, like, all of a sudden you look up and you've been doing it for an hour, and it is draining. It is exhausting. I was actually experiencing a little bit of burnout for the first time because I made an episode of Walking with Willie. For the past two months, every Tuesday I would film, and every Wednesday I would spend the whole day editing, and every Thursday I would post. And I posted eight Thursdays in a row. Yesterday was my first break because we were in Tokai. But definitely I noticed that there was these swaths of time, specifically on Wednesday when I was sitting at the keyboard, sitting at the computer editing, and yeah, it felt good. But the exchange of it feeling good and feeling like you're in a state of flow is that it does drain a lot from you. So what you're telling me is that this Pomodoro technique is a way to stay more consistent in the flow state because you can take little breaks in between? I think the Pomodoro technique is actually completely separate from flow. It's just a concept of keeping your focus. But he does relate it to flow state in that it's important to take breaks, and that the thing is that when you're in flow, you can stay in it for a really long time if you're really deep. But yeah, when you fall out, it's pretty hard to come back if you've been in it for so long because you're really tired, and by the time you leave, you just feel exhausted. So have you reached the flow state while you're programming? Does that happen to you often? Oh yeah, for sure. That's, like, I mean, sometimes it doesn't happen, and that's, like, kind of sad. And if you go through a day and don't have, you know, 30, 40—some people just call it deep work. This is also a common term. But yeah, deep work is so satisfying. It's crazy. It's just like meditation. It's crazy. It feels so good to just be lost in your work. Nice. And what I really like about flow is it's described in a graph, right? So one of the axes is the challenge of the task, and one of the axes is your ability in the— In the task. And flow state can only happen at the peak of both of those. So when it's very challenging, but you're also very good at it. And so, and yeah. So for instance, something that's like super simple, I don't know, spreading peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich. Exactly. You can be the best peanut butter and jelly spreader in the entire world, but you're not going to reach the state of flow because the challenge—I mean, maybe it is for some people, I don't know. I don't want to rule it out. But to use that peanut butter and jelly example, it would be difficult to reach a state of flow because the challenge is not high enough. And that is that the challenge is subjective and it changes over time. So as you get better at something, the challenge is diminished. So with video editing for you, like when you were doing video editing in a certain manner, let's say on Instagram with that app you were using, you maxed out your ability at some point and you couldn't really get creative at a certain point because it wasn't that challenging because you knew all the tools so well. Well, that's actually a great example because, yeah, I used to edit specifically for like three years just on my phone using InShot, which is an app, and then when I started to do the YouTube series, I took it to Adobe Premiere Pro, and that was a new challenge for me, and it was really tough at first. It took me a lot longer to finish a task because I had to learn how to do the fundamentals and everything. But now a year on from starting to learn how to use this software, you're right, I guess now my skills have caught up to the challenge, and so it's still a hard enough challenge, and now my skills manifest in a way that I can reach this flow state. And with such a diverse application like that, Adobe, there's so much to it. Even though you're very good at what you do in it now, there's a huge amount that you don't do on that. So you always have the ability to expand the challenge, and that's why something like video editing can be a great place to reach the flow state, I think. And computer programming is equivalently an infinite challenge, probably. You're never going to master it because there's also always new softwares and new scripts and new languages coming out, and you have to— So when you reach a level where something becomes too easy for you, I mean, I don't think that you're— You're probably there yet with computer programming, nor am I with video editing. But if you get to this point where you fully— is it now time to look for a new challenge? Is that one of the things that you need to, like, get out of your comfort zone? It could be. I mean, but also, like you were saying, in that the last eight weeks have been pretty much exhausting for you because being constantly challenged can become exhausting, and there's cycles to everything. So once you get really good at something, you know, there's something to be said for just being really good at that one thing and doing your— staying in your wheelhouse and doing your thing for, I don't know, a year. So that was your day today. You woke up, you listened to Bobby Light, and did you get— I ran. You ran. Got myself in the right mood. Where did you run? Where did you run? I ran from my house to Városliget, the city park in Budapest, right near Hősök tere. Hősök tere. Nice. Heroes' Square. Yeah, just stopped at one of the monuments in the park, did a little stretching, did a little movement, loosened up my body for the day, and then, yeah, got back, turned on Bobby Light, and got smashing. Cool. And you were sending me some stuff earlier today about stoic philosophy, stoic meditation. What is stoic meditation? What does that mean to you? Well, it's stoic philosophy, and I was telling you the relationship between stoic philosophy and just meditation, because there's the show on Netflix called Headspace Guide to Meditation. Anyway, it's just kind of like a little sitcom show where half of it is kind of like anecdotal stories about meditation and explaining what it's all about. It's about a guy who was a psychologist and then went to become a Buddhist monk, and now he just runs this thing called Headspace. And so Stoic Philosophy is the book I'm reading about right now. And do you meditate? Yes. It was something that when I started work at Prezzi, there was someone there who opened me up to the idea of just breathing. Basically, you just sit down and just focus on your breathing for 10 minutes. It's kind of like what you do in yoga, but without moving. Should we just do that now? Just sit here quietly for 10 minutes? I think that would be very compelling for the audience. But the idea is that it's little bicep curls for your brain. So when you just sit there and try to think about your breath going in and out for 10 minutes, within 30 seconds or less, your brain's going to go somewhere else. You're going to think about what you had for lunch that day, something you said to somebody that you don't like, something like that. And you just have to recognize that you're no longer thinking about breathing, and then just slowly bring yourself back to focusing to breath. And what you're doing is you're doing bicep curls with your brain. You're just teaching yourself. So eventually your brain, after doing this, let's say for a period of three months, every day, 10 minutes, deep breathing, meditation, your brain is stronger, and you have, what, an easier time of channeling deeper thoughts. I think, yeah, the idea is that you become better at dealing with distraction, and you become better at dealing with, when you're going through work and everything, you might get a text, and you might just hearing the vibration or just seeing the thing pop up on your phone might take you out of work. And then you look at the text, and then you realize 10 minutes later that you've been distracted by just one event. And I think with doing this meditation, you train yourself to be able to say no to these things, and you teach your brain the ability to just breathe these distractions out and focus on what's really important. Well, I need to incorporate that into my life. I mean, I do not meditate. I would say, though, that before the bathhouses were closed, because I go to the bathhouses a lot more often than your average Joe, unless you happen to be like an 83-year-old Hungarian retiree named Balazs. But for the most part, I would go like three or four times a week, and for me, that was perfect meditation time, specifically because there's no technology in the bathhouse, unless you're a real sicko. But it's not a good idea to bring your phone into the bath. And yeah, it was just a great forced meditation, even more so than the bath, the sauna, which I would go bath, sauna, cycle it back and forth, steam room. And I really, really, really miss it because I think I never thought of it as, like, meditation in the same way where, like, you're sitting in front of a, I don't know, a window and closing your eyes and deep breathing and all that. But it was, for me, two hours of meditative time, and it's something that I desperately, desperately miss. That's one thing that, for some reason, the show really brought it out in me, but I've always, like, been fascinated by this idea. But meditation is not a big deal, and every single person does meditation. That's why, like, the word meditation is kind of hard. It's just, like, focus or breathing. Because, yeah, in the sauna, the sauna is the perfect example, because you have nothing to think about and you're so stressed that you're almost forced—for me at least, I'm forced to think about my breathing because if I don't, I think I'm going to die. And I just have to just say, okay, take a breath in and take a breath out. And then as soon as I don't think about that, I get nauseous and I get freaked out because I'm so hot, and then I'm forced to just tell myself, You're going to be fine. Just breathe. So that's why I think the sauna is, like, the best kind. Yeah, I mean, the sauna is great for so many things, and that's also, that's something that I used to, like, the—basically when you go into the saunas in Budapest and probably everywhere, there's usually a sand dial of, like, a 15-minute timer with intervals of five minutes. And I remember when I first started seriously using the sauna, I would try to go in for, like, 10 minutes, see if I could make it. And by the tenth minute, I was, like, really, really anxious, and my body was— Sort of arriving in pain, and then I finally conquered that, and then I would go to 15. I think once I even got it up to like 25. But either way, that for me was like a 15 minute of just like, oh my God, I feel so much better afterwards. I mean, usually you feel like really not so good in the immediate aftermath because your body is sort of hyper stressed. But then once you get into the cold pool and you wash everything off, a trip to Key Rye Bathhouse for me, which involved probably three or four cycles into the sauna and three or four cycles into the various pools, it would just be like pure bliss walking outside. I mean, I really, really miss that. This is what that, like, mental bicep thing is all about. So, like, just the same way you feel good about doing a workout after achieving something, that's like when you leave the sauna, you feel that same achievement. And when you do meditation, you feel that same achievement. It's like you've taken this concerted time to challenge yourself to something, and you've failed, but you've also succeeded. Like, you— So you started to seriously meditate when you started to work for Prezi? Is that when you— Well, not seriously. It's just that's when I was open to the idea of just, hey, in the morning, sit down for 10 minutes and breathe. That's what the guy just told me. He was like, It's not complicated. And you do that every day? For times in my life, like for a few week spans, I would do it every day, but it never caught on to the point where it was, you know, like every single day for months I was doing it. You know, it comes in and out of my life. And right now, what we were talking about, the Stoic— I'm listening to this book about Stoic philosophy. You got me saying Stoic meditation. So Stoic philosophy is a— actually, so one of the founders of Stoic philosophy, one of the stalwart representatives of the practice is Marcus Aurelius. And he has a famous book called the— isn't Marcus Aurelius— Marcus Aurelius, exactly. The Meditations. Well, that's why I'm calling it Stoic Meditation, because his book is called, I think, The Stoic Meditations. Oh, you're right, you're right. Interestingly enough, which I mentioned in our previous episode with Nausicaa and Pere, is because we were talking about Roman Budapest. It was called Aquincum back then during the Roman days. Right, right. And Aquincum was a province of the Roman Empire located on the Buddha side of the Danube. The Romans, they didn't really go to the Pest side of the Danube. The Danube was sort of the frontier of the empire. But Aquincum became, over a 400-year period, a thriving part of the outskirts of Rome. And Marcus Aurelius, I believe he was active— don't quote me on this— between like 160 and 180, and he actually wrote part of his Stoic meditations on the banks of the Danube. So that's pretty cool. If you ever listen to read that book, it's fascinating. It's a very interesting experience, not like any other book you've read, I would suppose. Have you read any of that book? I did. I read— I made an episode of Walking with Willie about Roman Budapest, and I read fragments of it. I don't believe I was— It's a very fragmented book. It's perfect. It's basically just him taking notes. What do you like about the book? What's cool about it? That book, to be honest, didn't really speak to me. I mean, there are parts—I listen to everything, so if it's... some books are much more tailored to a reading experience. That one, I would say, is a reader. So, but what is Stoic meditation? What does Marcus Aurelius talk about? This book? Oh, about that, or the one that I'm listening to? It doesn't need to be specific, but Stoicism in general. Okay, so Stoicism in general, it is this concept that everything you feel, everything that happens in life is not a reaction to the world. It's not caused by the world or everything that's around you. Everything you feel is based on your opinion of what happens. So there's like three actors, let's say. There's the outside world, which influences you. There's your judgment or your opinion of that thing, and then there's your feelings. So those are the three things. And this is where Stoic meditation or Stoicism separates itself from many other philosophies, in that there's this middleman. There's this basically your active brain, your active perception, your opinion about things that you have control over that affects how you feel about everything. So it's like your perception. And the whole idea of Stoicism is that you have power over that perception, and you can step in at that phase. So when you are working and you hear a car alarm going on outside, and you just get so frustrated because it's like, ‘Oh, why is the car alarm going on outside? It's so loud and annoying. It's the guy.’ And the idea is that there's nothing inherently bad about the car alarm. It's just your opinion. You developed some opinion that it's frustrating for you that it's going on and it's, like, bothering you, but that doesn't have to happen. So to be a Stoic in that situation would be to sort of filter out the frustration that you have from the car alarm and just focus on the task at hand, or just take a step back and say, ‘Okay, there's a car alarm going on outside, and that is something that's happening, and my feelings are irrelevant, and I'm just going to keep moving forward.’ This is actually where—so a lot of my understanding of all this is a hodgepodge of things, so my other favorite thing is This Is Water is a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, a famous... Author, American author who passed away in the last decade, I'm not sure. I believe he committed suicide. Yeah, he committed suicide. So this is Water Is a Commencement speech he gave, and the whole idea actually is very much Stoic philosophy. And I never knew this at the time, but this one speech—it's a 20-minute speech—has stuck with me since the day I listened to it, and I try to listen to it like once a year. What stuck with you? Something from the speech? Basically, his speech is sort of preaching this idea of you can control your opinion. He basically says you have control of your perception. He says that when you graduate from liberal arts, people often say that you're a well-adjusted—you're a well-adjusted person. And he basically says that all being well-adjusted is is that you have a good control over your perception. So when you hear that car alarm going off, you could think, Ah, this is inconvenient for me because I want quiet time and I'm working, but that's your perception. If you could put yourself in the perception of the owner of that car, and that car was actually trying to be robbed by somebody, and that car alarm was the only thing that saved them from losing, you know, $10,000 worth of their life, then that car alarm becomes an amazing thing. And if you can put your perception into that person's shoes, it becomes a wonderful thing, and you don't have to be frustrated about it. Well, that sort of applies well probably to the massive car alarm that's blaring in the world right now, which would be, I guess, coronavirus, where that could be something that sort of jolts you out of your state of happiness, your state of being, and all of a sudden there's sirens going on everywhere: Red alert, red alert, red alert! Stop what you're doing! And I guess the first impulse would be to become incredibly frustrated by that. But you could look at it as a potential lifesaver because maybe it readjusts your habits, maybe it gets you into a— And I think even more so than that, to be stoic during the time of coronavirus would be to accept this as something that's happening and just be like, This is water, and you have to work as well as you can within the set of circumstances that you're dealt. Just to re-give that this is water, to give that context, he starts the whole speech with a joke, and he says, Two young fish are swimming along. And an older fish swims by and says, Morning, boys. How's the water? A couple minutes go by, and the little fish are swimming along, and one fish turns to the other one and says, What the fuck is water? And yeah, it just goes to show that, yeah, you have to understand what soup you're swimming in, what perceptions you built for yourself, what opinions you have that you live with. And yeah, I totally agree, this is a great application to COVID. Because the fish would never know what water is because they're just fish, right? Yeah, I mean, they grew up their whole life in water. They never questioned the fact that they're just like, you know, this is the world they live in. They don't know that it's called water. They've never been to the surface, and they don't have a language, or they do have a language, but it's a different type of language. They just spit bubbles at each other. Well, it's funny that you talk about perception. I actually have a book right here next to me by Aldous Huxley called The Doors of Perception. What? And it's all about mescaline. Basically, the whole book is just a massive mescaline trip. The Mexican tequila? No, it's mescal. That's mescal. Mescaline is a psychoactive drug that I believe is used in many native indigenous peoples' religious ceremonies, but it basically causes a massive psychoactive hallucinogenic reaction that, according to Mr. Huxley, is pretty life-changing and transformative. Aldous Huxley, he's the Brave New World guy? Exactly. So what's the plot of this book? He just takes mescaline and trips, and that's it. And he just writes about it? Yeah, it's a short story. I mean, I read it a little while ago, but it's, you know, you just look here. In this context, how significant is the enormous heightening under mescaline of the perception of color? For certain animals, it is biologically very important to be able to distinguish certain hues. But beyond the limits of their utilitarian spectrum, most creatures are completely colorblind. Bees, for example, spend most of their time deflowering the fresh virgins of the spring. But as von Frisch, who knows who that guy is, has shown, they can recognize only a very few colors. Man's highly developed color sense is a biological luxury, inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. So I think that's just something that he thought of while he was tripping on mescaline and then wrote it down. So it's all just a live account. He just takes a bunch of mescaline and starts writing. That was actually a very interesting example that I just randomly flipped to. That was all about the perception of animals and how they perceive things different than us and, yeah, to use the example of colors instead of water. But yeah, Mr. Huxley, Brave New World, Doors of Perception. Wild. I recommend it. You can borrow it, actually. I'd love to borrow it. Yeah, yeah. I can't really read, but I'm illiterate. I've just killed my reading brain cells with all this audible audiobook stuff. Doors of Perception. Let me get that back, actually. Okay, yeah. I want to hear some more. Do you have any other saved passages from that? I have no saved passages. These are all just randomly... We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education. This, of course, is not surprising. The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time. The urge to do something for the young is strong only in parents, and in them only for the few years during which their children go to school. Equally unsurprising is the current attitude toward drink and smoke. In spite of the growing army of hopeless alcoholics, in spite of the hundreds of thousands of persons annually maimed or killed by drunken drivers, popular comedians still crack jokes about alcohol and its addicts, and in spite of the evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer, practically everybody regards tobacco smoking as being hardly less normal and natural than eating. I guess this is an old book because I think nowadays the views towards smoking have certainly changed. I don't know about that. I mean, it's just super popular in Europe. Yeah, but still, I mean, he says here that tobacco smoking is regarded as hardly less normal and natural than eating. I think for most people today, they understand that there are some— But you're right. Europe and America definitely have a different context about tobacco smoke. But let me just read one more line of this because he says, From the point of view of the rationalist utilitarian, this may seem odd. For the historian, it is exactly what you would expect: a firm conviction of the material reality of hell never prevented medieval Christians from doing what their ambition, lust, or covetousness suggested. That's fascinating. Lung cancer, traffic accidents, and the millions of miserable and misery-creating alcoholics are facts even more certain than was in Dante's day the fact of the Inferno. But all such facts are remote and unsubstantial compared with the near-felt fact of a craving here and now for release or sedation, for a drink or a smoke. So do you think—so I'm kind of, like, not sure if I caught the end, but is he saying—or what's the deal with the human condition and just flying in the face of things that we know are horrible for us? Well, I think there is just this craving that he talks about, this urge to have something, for example, a drink, which I'm reaching for right now. Yeah, let's get another drink. Now that we're talking about how horrible this is for us, can you pour some of that poison water into my glass, please? The Abigail. This is actually—I mean, this just shows you, like, the way he says that comedians glorify drink, yeah, I was going to say, so do companies that are trying to sell it to you. I mean, in this case, this is named Abigail Tokaji Furmint, and Abigail is like the two-year-old daughter of Adrián János, and now I have, like, an emotional resonance because I went to their cavern. I even met Abigail, and now I'm drinking the fruits of Adrián János's hard work during the January late harvest in Tokaj, which is probably a grueling, grueling process, and it feels sort of significant and atmospheric and delightful to me. It's a delicious one. It's a really delicious one. Cheers to Adri and Janos and Abigail. Abigail. Egészségetekre. But that was probably one of the more depressing examples from the book. Well, I mean, he was tripping on mescaline. Let's give him a break. Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of it, if you read it, it's just like colorful. But I find that a very compelling passage because he talks about the days of Dante and the Inferno, and when the Christian church and the Catholic Church still had a vice grip over the decision-making and the free will of humanity. And even in those days, when the punishment was potential perpetual burning hell, people still committed sin because of their natural cravings and their urges and things of that nature. So if that wasn't enough to stop people, then obviously a few warnings about tobacco being bad for you are not going to stop you from reaching for a smoke. Right. It makes me wonder, actually, what's a more compelling punishment? Is it the punishment that, hey, science says this is going to kill you, like this is undeniable fact? Or is it that this mystical being, yeah, this undeniable hell, like that's the worst thing that can happen? Well, they also do say that human beings have a death wish, and that is sort of like the epitome and the foundation of modern-day advertising, is to, like, sell people their death wish. That's why, like, the Marlboro Man or things of that— Does that frustrate you? That puts me into a spiral of hatred. Well, it depends what your relationship is to death. If you think that death is, like, an ending, or if you think it's just a new beginning. But that's my choice. If I want to flirt with death, that's fine. But if, you know, the system starts pointing me in that direction, basically, like with, you know, marketing and capitalism and all these things that are just, like, telling all your kids to eat Frosted Flakes because it's a healthy, balanced part of a good breakfast, when really it's— Cause the obesity rates in America skyrocket. I mean, that's— so what about it frustrates you? The fact that we're sold Frosted Flakes even though they lead to diabetes and obesity. I guess so. Okay, so one conclusion we've— okay, not conclusion. One thing we've stated is that it's part of the human condition to— what did we say? Not flirt with death, but what'd you say? Just to have a death wish. Have to have a death wish. That's one thing when it's every individual's condition to have that. But when giant corporations start putting hundreds of people in a pipeline to produce marketing and convincing stuff, whether it's newspaper articles and videos that push you down that path, that's another story. And I think there just needs to be some kind of limitation and some kind of control on this power that, you know, you're just— Well, I would agree. I mean, I think that that is one of the basic fundamental diseases of modern-day capitalism, is that un— left unregulated, corporations and businesses will try to milk every cent out of us, even if it leads us to less than savory ends, such as, like, you know, making an entire population fat because Tony the Tiger is a orange— They're great. So what do we do about that? I don't know. I've talked about this with my brother a lot. This is kind of my brother speaking through me. He gets so upset about cereal. Like, his biggest thing is cereal lately, and just added sugar in everything, like soda and cereal are just the death of America, basically, because it's the obesity problem, and the obesity problem links into the, like, healthcare system. Anyway, so my theory is— so capitalism doesn't feel like it's going away, and my theory is that every individual has to be taught how to educate and make better decisions. So I guess it starts with education. Yeah, that's— I mean, everything starts with education. But one thing I would say that it's almost a luxury of— The upper class to be able to think about these things, particularly on a systems-wide basis, because if McDonald's and Frosted Flakes is the difference between feeding your kids or having them starve, then that's what you're going to do. And if it's the cheapest option, then that's the decision that you're going to make. I suppose that better education could teach people cheap ways to eat healthy, and if that was something that you were given an experience of. There's many ways for this. So you could also educate the people with money to say, like, hey, you have enough money to help build a better world. So just start buying, start putting more of your— don't put your money in these places that it's going to be bad for humanity in the long run. Like, put your money in the more healthy options, because you're going to be paying more than everybody else now, but you can afford it. And if everybody in your tier starts doing this, then that company can start lowering its prices and being more competitive. This is, I mean, this is something I just thought of now, but this is like the Tesla model. The electric cars were not convenient and they were not cost-effective. But at the beginning, they just built these electric cars that cost $100,000 for the super rich, and they weren't practical, but they were doing that for five years. And with all that money, they did a ton of R and D and slowly brought the price down. And now you can buy a Tesla for $30,000, and electric cars are beginning to become more popular. So that's almost a boon for capitalism. That's saying that capitalism can work to create solutions that are good for the planet, with the proper pushing in the right direction. Yeah. And what pushing is that? I have no idea. Is that just Elon Musk wanting to be a beloved modern-day genius that has pushed us there? I mean, for him, it was the only— he wanted to make an electric car that everybody used, and that was a very practical— Practical approach. Some might argue the only practical approach in capitalism. Do you like Elon Musk? Is that someone that you admire? For sure. I mean, absolutely. I think it's hard to be a technical person and not, to some degree, admire him. Pretty impressive what he's doing. So what do you admire about him? Just the fact that he's created such a transcendent company. I mean, there's just so many bleeding edges he's on, you know? I mean, he's made electric cars like a thing of, like, the masses. He's done a lot with solar power and advancing how, like, how fast solar is moving and making California very renewable. And he's also doing work with The Boring Company. It just, that one's more funny, The Boring Company, but it's also— What is The Boring Company? He's working on drilling tunnels below L.A. and below all cities to try and reduce congestion on the streets. And he named it The Boring Company because it's boring is like to drill a hole, and it's also like a boring name for a company. So, yeah. And so I forget the exact phrase, but he talks about key principles, and it's basically like he takes problems—his philosophy is that he takes problems and breaks them down to their— Fundamental parts and tries to make the fundamental parts more efficient. And with The Boring Company, his concept is basically just make the tunnel smaller. So right now, if you want to drill a tunnel that cars are going to use, it has to be like 24 feet at least in wide, and that's a very huge hole to drive through rock, and it's super expensive. And when you make the diameter of the hole smaller, it becomes not just like doubly as cheap, it becomes exponentially cheaper. I just listened—if you make a 12-feet-wide tunnel, it's not just half as expensive, it's like 10 times. It's magnitudes. Exponentially. Yeah. So that's what they're doing, and they're trying to change the— But anyways, and he's building rockets. Yeah, I was gonna say, boring is not the main thing. So he's also doing Neuralink, which is doing stuff with neurology and doing brain-computer interface stuff. So I've heard about Neuralink before, and my impression of it is that it's basically a way for us to basically take the next leap forward in terms of information exchange. Yeah. That's like the broader, the long-term vision is, yeah, like a more bigger bandwidth communication between brain and computer. Right now, your bandwidth of communicating with your phone is your thumbs. So you have—it's binary. You have two fingers. So you can only—you have two thumbs, so you can only type so fast. There's a small bandwidth. And the idea is if we can increase that bandwidth, that when you start using a computer, you now have 10 digits, and that's a lot faster than typing with a phone. But is that a good thing? Is that a good thing? I think yes. Objectively speaking, is that a good thing that we make progress in that direction and we get a greater increase in terms of speed and efficiency of communication? Sort of like a cleaner, sturdier shirt. It's gonna happen. Technology is getting faster, getting better, and at some point— I mean, you know, we're talking long in the future, even if it's centuries from now, even if it's, you know, hundreds of years from now. Do you really think it's going to be that long, though? No, I mean, even if it's hundreds of years from now, where technology becomes actually something we have to fear, like just technology, not people behind technology, but actually some kind of computers. Like computers become sentient and we enter like a Matrix phase of society. Maybe not sentient, but maybe there's a program that gets a little, goes a little crazy. Maybe it's a virus that somehow somebody leaks out and it just fucks up everybody's computers. Like, that's that you don't need a sentient virus to just accidentally create a computer virus that really fucks a lot of shit up. Well, from a philosophical sense, it's sort of like what's the difference between that and the virus that we're facing right now with the coronavirus, where we've created, or maybe we didn't create, but overpopulation, eating bats, whatever you want to call it, there has been like a virus that has leaked out. But then I guess that the only fear would be from an individual basis, not from a species-wide basis, but from an individual basis. Are these increases in technology making us happier, healthier, more fulfilled individuals?
Yes and no. I mean, is social media making us happier, healthier individuals, or making us, you know, making us have horrible understandings of body image and, like, bullying and all this kind of stuff? There are good and bad things to every development. It's funny when you even say that, it's almost said with an air of, like, of course social media is a terrible thing, because it's like when it first came out, I think, like, ten years ago, there was a much different feeling about social media, since it was all about this, like, wow, interconnectivity, and we can communicate with our friends. And even for me, like, I remember always saying, do I like social media? Do I not like social media? And always my fallback was, yeah, it can be like a time suck, and I think there's this inherent sense that we want to spend less time on our phones, but the bright side is that you can stay connected to people all around the world, and that's almost like an absolute good, or at least it was an absolute good. But now more and more, I feel like people are viewing social media as, like, as an evil that's sort of tearing apart the fabric of society. Or do you disagree with that? Well, it's got to be a tool and not, like, in a lot of ways social media uses us. I mean, we can get in a phase where social media is using you. Like me with YouTube. YouTube uses me. I mean, I am absolutely a fool to the recommendation engine. Like, I open YouTube just because it's become a physical reaction. I sit down on the toilet, I sit down on the couch, I lay down in bed. I, like, my thumb just clicks YouTube and it just happens. And then the recommendation engine is good enough that it knows what I'm kind of interested in, and I just watch it. And YouTube's doing that because they're getting money from me doing that. Like, they're getting good at doing that because they make money by doing that. And so if we turned it into more of a tool, and we make sure that everything we do is using it like a tool. It can be. That's when it can become really powerful. And it's happening. People do it right now. You and I do it. Everybody, in some ways, technology is a tool. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about the development of social media. For instance, right before this podcast, I did something which I've never done before. Apparently, do you know, you're a YouTube guy. I mean, I guess so am I. I'm a YouTube guy. I have a YouTube vlog, but I don't really know how it works from a consumer standpoint, because I never have been a big YouTube consumer. But there was this sort of feature on YouTube that was like Instagram stories, but it was YouTube stories. Have you ever used that before? Yeah, I mean, YouTube, the little shorter clips. Yeah, yeah. It's part of my—I'm such a YouTube rat. But it was literally, I did it literally just before this podcast, and it was like by far, I think, the most addicting social media experience I've ever had in my life. And every single video was incredible. There was like one video which I didn't like, which was basically something that just never had an ending. It was like a kid that put like Mentos or some sort of like bucolic acid into like a bottle of Coke and threw it in a pool and it just never exploded. But everything else was like just electric, electric, electric content. And it was like so creative and so interesting and so compelling, wrapped up into little 15-second clips, and I could not take my eyes off it. I think I watched it for like an hour and a half. It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm just sharing this link for people. I'm going to let people know that they can let us know if they want to call in. Let us know if you want to call in. So this is a Facebook Live link, which I'm now making an Instagram story of, and I'm going to put a swipe up on it so that the people can watch us talk. And drink wine and drink Hungarian whiskey, and this is happening live. It's happening live. So, just to bring it back, actually, to the Neuralink thing, eventually, yes, the idea is that we reduce the bandwidth between brain and computer. But in the short term, in the short term, it's mostly about healing people and helping people that have, you know, injuries to their nervous systems and all this. And this is fascinating stuff. But basically, they put little electrodes, little wires into your brain. Wait, this is the Neuralink that you're talking about? The Neuralink. But what were we talking about? I don't want to go back here. No, no, please go back there. I'm interested in fleshing this out a little bit. So the way that it works is that they can put neurons and nodes and things on the back of your head. They put little wires next to neurons in your brain, and the little wires can both receive and send information. So they can tell when your neurons in your brain are firing, but they can also act like a neuron and fire electric signals to send information to your brain. So this means you can talk to your phone and your phone can talk to you. But yeah, so hundreds of years from now, maybe this means that we can just think a text and send it to our friend. Why are you so sure that it's going to be hundreds of years from now? I feel like—isn't, I mean, it might, it's probably, it's much shorter, more like decades from now. But no, the only reason I say it like that is because, as far as I've heard, and I'm much less knowledgeable about these technological developments than you are, but as far as I've heard, like this is going to be an exponential thing where all of a sudden we reach— No, no, I mean, it's a hype machine. So Elon Musk, we've learned from Elon that he's a hype machine. You've seen the, like, breaking window of the Cybertruck, the indestructible truck. They go on the show and they break the window. It's just, you know, he's a hype machine. He knows the power of social media, and he knows that if you make a splash, it's going to get a ton of people interested. And it doesn't have to be that valid, it doesn't have to be factual. We all know that. Well, that's what he just did with Bitcoin, right? Didn't he just, like, buy— No, he bought, like, a shit ton of Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin, you know more about cryptocurrencies than I do. What, you're interested in, like, Ethereum, right? I will not claim to be a crypto person, but yeah, I mean, I know a little bit about it. So you're like the opposite of Elon Musk because he apparently bought, like, a shit ton of Bitcoin. And I mean, Bitcoin to me, it's just already, like, artificially inflated. I don't really understand it. I guess now it is a commodity and it is a currency just like anything else. Yeah, I mean, but that's where I, like, don't get why it's so revolutionary, because to me it's just like, okay, another version of gold, right? It's like a store of value. Yeah, but I mean, do you get why gold is important? Not really, but that's, like, the whole crux of economics as a philosophy and as a discipline in the first place, is that, like, it's all predicated on human behavior and sort of, like, this basically lust and craving for, like, shiny objects. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and even, but then— That's why Bitcoin is even confusing, because it's not even shiny. Not even cool. I don't want to wear a Bitcoin. Well, that's why they need fucking people like Elon Musk to be beat in the chest and beat in the drum, right? Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah, like you said, Bitcoin is just a controlled way of having, like, scarce resources that you can trade and prove that you have. But then again, there's also this feeling of, like, I'm missing out. I feel like that's, like, what the whole Bitcoin phenomenon is all about. Like, oh no, I'm going to miss out, because I've had that feeling as well. I see the charts going up. It's now at, like, 45,000, 50,000, and it's like, wow, if I had bought this thing when it was at 3,000, I could be one of these shoulda, coulda, woulda, Willie. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. But then again, like, what are the Bitcoin people really spending their money on? Like, they make the money, they spend it on, like, flashy things, cars. But then you could have some geniuses that are just using it as stored value, reinvesting into the traditional stock market. I don't know. It's just like—this is another thing that we'll see decades from now, what it becomes. It very well could become, like, a cornerstone of what the future economy looks like. But for now, it's really hard to estimate, I think. Well, I think something that's interesting about Bitcoin is this idea of, like, a crypto anarchy, where, like, the traditional systems of governance that we have constant reminders of, of failing us and letting us down and leadership that is corrupt and thieving, to not mince words about it, a crypto anarchy could fray the bonds of traditional leadership and traditional government and create this new sort of apolitical international regime of things that are less reliant on, like, the Fed in America or, like, the European Reserve Bank. But then again, my one, like, caveat towards that— It's like, what, we're gonna have a crypto anarchy and then the crypto people are gonna be in charge? You really want, like, an over-caffeinated 23-year-old that's trading Bitcoin to be, like, the one that's pulling levers in society? I don't know. Yeah, this is actually something I was thinking about with—okay, you were saying with the social media, and when it first started, people were super excited, and, like, I think that that just shows that there's not a lot of foresight. Maybe this comes back to the discussion we were having with Americans being more positive and just, like, seeing the bright side of things before considering being critical. To think about this, like, Bitcoin anarchy and, you know, leaving the traditional governance behind, that doesn't sound that good. It sounds like a disaster. Well, I think the utopic version of all of this, like, sort of cyber social media, from my limited knowledge of the subject, I think a lot of this philosophically was started in, like, the '90s and the early 2000s, and people had this real utopic version of what the internet could bring to society. And this sort of goes along—if you look back at generational thinking, the post-Cold War world where capitalism sort of won and the evil of communism was defeated, and people sort of believed in this, like, idea of this march of progress, and that's sort of what the liberal belief system is all predicated on, is that eventually we're gonna get to this point of utopia, and it's gone from the days of, you know, brutal feudalism in the medieval era to the Enlightenment, to a more rationalist sense of thinking, to the computer age, to this sort of clash between societies of communism and capitalism, and then the Western liberal democracies, they win, and we have this steady march of progress going into the future. And then I think that is where a lot of this utopic vision of the world started in, like, the '90s and the 2000s. But now I almost feel like we're in this, like, postmodern era where people are really questioning that. Yeah, but does it end—I feel like it doesn't end at utopia. I feel like all the books that we—like, The Giver... All these books we read in high school were always about how utopias are false. It ends in dystopia. Yeah, yeah, they can't work, so. Well, what do you think? Do you think that we're headed towards a brighter future or towards darker days? Same. I mean, the same. It's, it's, it's—I mean, we're always right down the middle, right? I mean, you can look back and say we're better than before or whatever, but you're always right down the middle. When you're in it, you're in the middle of everything. There's good, there's bad. I mean, I don't know. Well, no, that's sort of like—I mean, they make the argument of maybe the agricultural revolution back at like 10,000 years ago, or however long, like 100,000 years ago. They make arguments that that was bad for humanity, that we started congregating in bigger groups. We would have been better off being a hunter-gatherer tribe, that, you know, life expectancy was 50, but we stayed in smaller groups. There was no such thing as a pandemic, and we basically were just smart monkeys. But, I mean, this is—I don't know. I find it really hard to connect with these kind of arguments. Yeah. I mean, but what do you think? Where do you think these, you know, capitalism winning, different people winning, are we headed to an end? It really depends on what side of the pillow I wake up on, because sometimes I'm incredibly optimistic about the future, and other times I'm incredibly pessimistic about the future. And I think that ultimately, it doesn't really matter. It's sort of like this idea that we have the agency to really shift things is a little bit like narcissistic and self-indulgent in a way. Of course, there is certain specific movements and certain specific instances where humans have to rise up to the occasion, and they have to overcome, like, inherent evil that faces us: Nazi Germany in World War II, racism in America, things of that nature. They need to be conquered, they need to be overcome. But in terms of, like, really, like, shifting humanity towards this, like, utopic vision of tomorrow—and this is where, like, I have to take not exception with Elon Musk, because I believe that he's doing tremendous things for the development and the progress of society—but, like, does he view himself as sort of this godsend that is the one to—I don't know. Is that sort of like a cult that he's building around him? It's sort of like a manifestation of a modern-day religion. I don't think so. I think he's aware of the fact. I mean, he's not— I mean, he's not solving a bunch of world problems. I mean, there's too many problems in the world to have one person be the guy who solves them all. Yeah, there's so many little problems, and he's helping solve some of them. He's not even— he's helping moving some things in the right direction, and I think he'd probably say that. I don't— I don't. No, you're right. And then again also, but that's where, like, then I start to feel optimistic about things because Elon Musk, 300 years ago, he would have just been some, like, fucking asshole salt merchant that was, like, maybe, like, manipulating a little fiefdom in baroque Germany or something, you know? Like, at least now, like, he's like, Yeah, I'm Elon Musk. I'm gonna name my kids some, like, irrelevant set of symbols and letters and married some Canadian, like, punk rock person and just build rockets to take us to Mars. It's kind of cool. So then you start to think, like, Oh, maybe we're living in a utopia where, like, this sort of stuff can happen. But then you look on the other side of the coin and you're seeing, like, a virus run rampant through impoverished communities and just, like, decimate people, and there's a lot of corruption and government malfeasance, and you start to think, Wow, maybe we're living in a dystopia. Yeah. And then I think that's where you need to be a stoic, right? You need to just sort of, like, take things as they come and say, I'm gonna operate as well as I can within this given set of circumstances. One thing about Stoicism that they stress in the whole teachings is that you can't be quiet. A stoic is not quiet. A stoic is loud, and they're active in public discourse, and they push things for betterment of humanity, which is why I will agree with what you were saying with, like, right now, we are not in good places. There are a ton of horrible things happening socially, like, you know, racism in America, all kinds of things, and, like, you know, impoverished people, not food and no clean water around the world. Like, so there's so many big problems that need to be solved, and maybe— Maybe that's what a utopia means. That every individual that's born is born into a world that accepts them, and everybody basically has the equal right and the equal ability to succeed in the world. And maybe that is a utopic future that we could eventually be—that could be the North Star. Well, I think that that is a good North Star to aim for. And I was thinking about this the other day, but there's always a question of, like, is it really worth it to try? Because you can have a tendency in times like these to feel a little nihilistic, like, why not just live my life and just forget about all the problems of the world? But then what I feel as a push against that is, like, if we don't try, if the people with good intentions don't try, then the people with bad intentions are going to win because you know that those bastards are going to try. But can you really go through your life and not be approached with these problems, especially today with social media, like what we're saying? I mean, there's a lot of people that turn it off. There's a lot of people that don't really give a fuck. They just take it as like, okay, I'm not going to be able to change things. I might as well just live my life as an individual. And there's two separate—I mean, there's a scope of manifestations of that because you have, on the one hand, some sort of hippie that's living off in the woods and enjoying the nature and has good intentions but doesn't really care enough to change things. Or you have a completely just nihilistic son of a bitch that sort of turns into this dark emo, maybe drug-fueled, sort of spiraling out-of-control individual. And then you have a whole scope of people that exist within that spectrum. But either way, I think that certain people have to try and push back against the negative forces in the world, otherwise they're going to win. Yeah, I think it's also about—it's a matter of scope of influence. So we're talking about—this is why it's kind of hard to talk about people like Elon Musk, because it's very hard to relate to him because his scope of influence is massive. It's insanely big. He's influencing how the auto industry works in the globe, and he's making rockets go into—so it's like almost doesn't make sense to talk about him because our scope of influence is not that big and probably will never ever—most likely will never be that big unless we make it big. But—and having the scope of influence of one person— is enough. You know, if your scope of influence is just yourself and maybe who you see throughout your day, that's more than enough. I think if you just practice these concepts of making the world a better place in the tiny, in whatever size of influence you have, that could be that, you know, eventually that will lead to utopic, as long as there's a well-understood concept of equality. Well, that opens up for me a question of: is it better to strive to be an Elon Musk and, like, sort of a generational, maybe even Bill Gates-like philanthropic societal force, or is it better to strive to be an educator in a small town where you can actually, like, really significantly make an impact and a difference in the lives of maybe it's just 80 kids over a period of 30 years, but you can lead to the next Elon Musk, or you can be the teacher and sort of have a more comfortable individualistic sense of self-worth that you're just sitting there and—not just sitting there, but, you know, you know what I'm saying. Like, it's almost more romantic in a sense. I would hope that it's kind of like an incremental growth, or it's a—what do you call it? I hope that that would be stepwise. To get to be the Elon Musk, you'd have to start by influencing in a smaller circle. At least that's the way I like to think about it. My plan is to just influence my circle right now. At the moment, my circle is just the people I spend time with every day, the people I work with, and maybe if I share a post, some of my friends on Facebook. And then maybe a couple years from now I'll start releasing videos, some kind of teachings, with the idea of reaching a broader audience, and, you know, maybe in the future that can, you know. Turn itself into a more consistent, bigger audience, and I can, you know, incrementally work my way up. But some people, and it's also fine to not want to grow as well. That's why I think that it's— no, I don't think it makes sense for people to strive to be Elon Musk, strive to be whatever you want, as long as you're just, you know, not being mean to people. That's a good, that's a good foundational principle. Do you mind if I read one more passage from this Doors of Perception book? Yeah, the passage you didn't pick out, you just opened to a random page. These effects of mescaline are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can't be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As mind at large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases, there may be extrasensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others, again, is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event. In the final stage of egolessness, there is an obscure knowledge that all is actually all, that all is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. And this, the beginning, what's the first sentence of that? These effects of mescaline are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. So I take that to mean that mescaline... The cerebral reducing valve. What is that? The cerebral reducing valve to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. So I guess the cerebral reducing... What is it reducing? Because what I understand from that is this loss of ego. Egolessness. Yeah, yeah. You lose your concept of yourself. So I think it's irrelevant what the valve's actually reducing. I mean, if we were neuroscientists, maybe we could give you a better answer. But the point is that mescaline, that is like the mechanical process that it takes, and the ultimate effect of that is that it reduces your ego. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this also ties back into what we were talking about with perception and everything, because perception and your opinion of things is very much based into you looking at everything through the lens of yourself. So what do you think of when you think of the ego? I think of the This Is Water thing with David Foster Wallace, one thing that he said, and I was listening to this while I got onto a plane. For some reason I remember that, because I can remember when this clicked in me and it was when I was getting on a plane. It's this idea that when you enter the world until now, everything that you've done, everything that's happened in your life has been completely apparent to you and only you. Every sensation has been, has, you know, everything you've seen, everything you've heard, tasted, entered yourself through your brain, your senses put it in your head, and then you experienced it completely in a silo by yourself. When you shared it with other people, you shared it by talking to them about it or sharing your ideas, but you never actually shared the sensation. So everything that happened to you is in yourself, and so when you think about... When you base an opinion about something, you're always coming through this understanding of the world that, you know, everything is in your silo, and it's so hard to take yourself out of that concept. So that's why we need masculine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and then, yeah. So that's my idea of the ego. The ego is this thing that we build through this process of constantly being, you know, just given information by our brain, when really it's a broader world. Have you ever experienced egolessness? No. No, for sure not. Never? I don't think so. What about a loss of ego? Probably not. I mean, the ego is a very powerful... I mean, you know, I think when I think about the ego, I think about Freudian psychology, I suppose. You have the id. I love this. This is my favorite. The id. I mean, the best lesson I got about Freudian psychology was in ninth grade from a teacher, an English teacher of mine named Miss Salomone. And Miss Salomone, we read Lord of the Flies. No way. You learned about the in superego? She was a great teacher, a phenomenal teacher, one of the best I've ever had. A little bit of a hardo, but, you know, most good English teachers are. Yeah. And she taught us about Lord of the Flies and about how you have the id, which is like the kids when they, like, basically smash Piggy's heads out on the rock, right? Doesn't that happen in Lord of the Flies? What? There's, like, a huge anarchic element to it, and there's like— They kill Piggy? I believe he got— I only read the SparkNotes of every single book in high school, so I don't really know. Killed with a rock over the ledge. Either way, but the id is what's acting out when the kids, they get into the wild. Then you have the ego, which is like your brain's reaction to— It's your consciousness. And your consciousness and all that. And then the superego is like society and all the other things that we learn, and then that's like your— The rules. The rules that you build from society, and then the ego is the one that chooses between the superego and the id. Okay, that's what I understand. So it's funny that you learned it from Lord of the Flies, because we learned the id, superego, and ego. From Frankenstein, the book Frankenstein. And with that, I can't remember. I think the monster is obviously the id because it's driven by, like, just desire. I can't remember who's the superego and the ego. But either way, the ego is a very powerful force in humans. And I suppose Aldous Huxley, with that quote, is talking about how mescaline reduces the cerebral, reducing the valve of the brain, and that helps achieve this state of egolessness. Egolessness is something that I think—so that I once experienced an ego death, or I thought I did at least. Was this before or after you knew about egolessness? It was after I took a pretty significant dose of LSD. There you go. And that'll teach you about egolessness. You know, I think maybe egolessness is sort of like what is really your definition of the ego. But I remember more so than ever before thinking less about myself and more about the world around me. And that's almost a little bit simplistic because I think that sort of suggests that I don't usually think about the world around me, which I certainly do. But I remember just feeling like I was utterly irrelevant, like I did not matter at all, and I didn't really care what happened to me, but in, like, a good way. And it was a little bit scary. I mean, it freaked me the fuck out, actually. But I remember afterwards feeling a sense of, like, sort of fulfillment that I'd achieved something, I suppose. I mean, that sounds beautiful. And I think that, so one of my ideas is that, like, altruism is never real. Like, there's no such thing as doing something for other people. You always have yourself in mind, and this is a byproduct of you living your life through your own fucking brain. And so for me, like egolessness, the closest thing I could see someone getting to is getting really good at stepping in to your opinion formation, stepping in to that step. When you receive stimulation from the world and before you generate an opinion about it, step in and, like, realize that, you know, it's more than just your brain. It's more than just you out there, and try and challenge yourself to have a broader perspective. Is that something you think about when you're meditating? No. What do you think about when you're meditating? Breath, rising and falling of the chest, just breath, and things that are going on during the day. What if we give him a Reiki and Pulteney call? Yes, I would love to hear what they have to say about metta. Would you mind filibustering for 30 seconds while I go run to the bathroom? Yes, yes, I would mind. You would mind. That's fine. I'll stay here and piss my pants. All right, one sec. I can filibuster. Let's see. What is there to filibuster about? Favorite type of cheese. Oh, funnily enough. Okay, great topic, Willie. Cheese. So over Christmas, I had this concept to create a—my family, my last name is Bean. We call ourselves the Bean family. I had a concept of creating the Bean Family Lecture Series. This is an event where after dinner, one of the Bean family members gets on stage, you know, stands in front of the family and gives a small presentation, a 10-minute talk about something. Maybe it's something they're interested in. Maybe it's something that they wanted to learn more about. Maybe it's just something that they thought was funny. And the reason for this was to give a presentation about something, to teach something to someone else. You really have to learn it to a very deep degree. And my brother chose to do a presentation about cheese. What is cheese? We eat cheese all the time. We love cheese. It's a beautiful thing, and we know it's dairy. But what the hell is cheese? So he tried to explain this to us, and I found the conclusions completely delighting. And here you go. So cheese was discovered by a bunch of, I'm not sure, people, old people, way back in the day, I think in maybe 800 BC or 800 AD, I don't know. These guys put dairy inside of a goat bladder for transporting, and I think they forgot about it, and it ended up curdling inside the bladder. And they found it months later, and they were like, Hmm, this is weird milk. It's solid now. And then they ate it, and it tasted good, and they were like, Whoa, this is crazy. And basically over the years, all these ways of aging dairy started being created. And they discovered that it is different kinds of bacteria that eat and change the— so dairy, when you leave it out, it starts to curdle. It changes the things in the milk, I don't really know, but the bacteria that make the milk curdle change how the final product tastes. And so when you eat a cheddar cheese, let's say, that is called cheddar cheese because it is— From a bacteria that is something like Cheddar bot chetteralinum. It's a bacteria that has cheddar in the name, and it originates only in a place in England where the first cheddar cheese was made. And because these people stored the milk in a cave, and the kind of bacteria that's native to that land made the cheese taste like cheddar cheese. And so now it's called Cheddar England, is the name of the place. It's called Cheddar, England. But now you can buy cheddar cheese anywhere because we can grow bacteria in a petri dish, so you don't really need to be in a place to get that place's bacteria. So you can make cheddar cheese in Vermont, where Willie and I went to school, and now that's where the best cheddar cheese is made. Sorry, England, but Vermont chabot cheddar cheese is the best cheddar cheese. We took your bacteria, we took your cheese, and that's all I have to say about that. So that was a great filibuster. Thanks. The end result was that Vermont cheddar is better than English cheddar? Yes. Any English person out there, fight me with a block of cheese. We'll see who wins. Oh my God. But so yeah, bacteria makes cheese. The name of the cheese usually comes from the type of bacteria. I'm trying to add another link here to the Facebook live stream, but for some reason Instagram is telling me that it's an invalid link. Why do you need a second link? Facebook. Willie's being— oh, I can just share it on Facebook. That makes a lot more sense. Thank you, Rev. Okay, so after I— the main topic. We were asked if the main topic was crypto. The main topic is not crypto. I'm pushing the conversation away from crypto. Thank you, Norbert. We're gonna start the calling ins. We'll give you a ring. Okay, so I'm putting the link now on my own personal Facebook page, and now we are going to call Polton and Marecki. Polton, why don't you give us a little bit of a primer here? Who are Polton and Marecki? So Polton and Marecki, the first time I met Marecki was actually on my birthday in 2018, the same day. Well, so Marecki came to visit you. Alex Marecki is a half Ukrainian, half American man, if I'm not mistaken, and he lives in Berlin now. He's a friend of Willie's. I'm not sure where you guys met. Whatever. And yeah, we met in 2018. He came for my birthday. We went out for a wonderful dinner, ate some shrooms, went to a wonderful party where I ended up meeting my wonderful girlfriend, Vivian, photographed for the first time, had a wonderful night, and that was the start of our beautiful relationship. Thank you, Alex Marecki, for taking us on that journey. And Matt Polton, friend from yours from New York. Polton and I actually go way back. He was freshman year of high school when I was 14 years old. I made the varsity soccer team. Watch, after we give them this whole hype-up, they're not even going to answer. But I made the varsity soccer team as a freshman just by some freak occurrence because the captain, who was also a defender, his ACL was shredded to bits on the final day of the tryouts. And I remember I was so nervous that I was going to make junior varsity because there's three teams. There's freshmen for the scrubs. There's JV, which is, like, pretty good if you're a freshman. It's usually, like, freshman, really good freshman, a few sophomores, and maybe, like, a few not-so-good juniors and seniors. But that's something to strive for. And then there's varsity, which I had no intentions of ever even being considered for. And then on the last day of the tryouts... A right back, which was my position, his ACL was torn, and I walked up into the bleachers and the coach told me, You made the varsity team. And that was like a moment that sort of— Go Willie! Yeah, it was though. Go Willie! —a moment that just changed my life forever. Because our team that year, we went to the state final for the first time ever, and one of our other captains was a guy named Matt Poulton, and he was the captain of our soccer team. And then I moved to England as a 24-year-old to do my master's degree, and Poulton had been living in England for three years. He's a fashion designer, sportswear fashion designer specifically, and we became, again, friends. We were before, but it was, you know, 18 years old, 14 years old, sort of like now we really became best friends. And then the four of us together, me, Marek, and Poulton all took a trip to Georgia, and that's where we became the group that I suppose— The four elements. The four elements. So let's give them a call and see if they pick up. Here we go. I've given them a little bit of prior warning, but you never know. Are we group calling them or are we calling them one by one? I'm just going to group call them on Facebook. I think that's probably the best way. That sounds like the best way to do it. So yeah, just to फिलibuster while Willie's sorting out the technical difficulties here, we went to Georgia together, which we mentioned on the first episode. And Georgia, as we mentioned in the first episode, is one of the best countries ever. It's a beautiful place. Winemaking originated there, which is very cool. And we went there for a ski trip. We spent 10 days in Georgia, a couple days in Tbilisi, and then most of the time in Gudauri, which is where the biggest ski mountain in Georgia is. Georgia is between Russia and—I'm forgetting the name—but it's bordered by a mountain range, Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, the Greater and Lesser Caucasus border the northern and southern part of Georgia, and it makes Georgia be this crazy, crazy place because— In Siberia, in Russia, it's crazy cold, kind of like a desert. And in Azerbaijan, it's super hot and also kind of like a desert. But in Georgia, it's like this crazy mashup of wonderful weather with crazy snow on either border, and then beautiful greenery and nice, like, balanced weather throughout the region. And it's because of these two giant mountain ranges, which help to, I don't know, do some meteorological effects to the environment. And it makes Georgia the best country ever. So I just discovered what the problem is. I've run out of data. I'm refilling data on my phone right now. Ui radenvo. That's what I text to Verizon, or not Verizon, to Vodafone. But now I have new data, so just give me one second and we'll get the lads on the phone. What were you saying about the meteorology? It's just that the mountain ranges on the northern and southern border of Georgia is why you'd think that Azerbaijan—I don't actually know much about Azerbaijan. Maybe it's not a desert. But Siberia in Russia, which is definitely the northern border of Georgia, is not a suitable place for having fun and just being generally enjoyable. But Georgia is crazy nice, and it's because of the giant mountain range that helps to— The Caucasus. What did I say? The Greater and Lesser Caucasus. The Greater and Lesser Caucasus. Yeah, yeah. The greater's on the north, lesser's on the south, and Georgia's in the middle. Georgia is an ancient, ancient society. I mean, it really, really goes back to the days of—in ancient Greece, they called it Colchis, Colchis, and that was where Jason and the Argonauts went. Oh. Jason and the Golden Fleece. For the Golden Fleece. And they went over the Black Sea on a search for the Golden Fleece, which they say, because there's like gold in the rivers of the mountain ranges of Georgia, and the way that they would, I think, mine the gold out of the water was with, like, sheep fleeces, and they would basically, like, drag it through the river. And I think that that was the origin of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, but don't quote me on that. I did try to—like I said, I'm an Audible freak, and I tried to force the fellas to listen to Jason and the Argonauts. It's a short two-hour Audible book, and when we were sitting in the hotel room before we went to sleep, I always turned on Jason and the Argonauts. I'm curious if they remember anything about this. And what was your favorite part of the Georgia trip? The Tbilisi was a mind-blowing experience. So Tbilisi was such a cool, almost like a precursor of Budapest to me, because— Can I help, by the way? Can I call them? Well, I just need to get, like, Wi‑Fi on my phone. Oh, just let me hotspot you. Shit, sorry, should have done this earlier. There you go. I don't know why it's not working. There you go. Hot, hot Wi‑Fi. Hot, hot Wi‑Fi. Why is that the name of your Wi‑Fi network? Oh, because it's hot. It's hot. Everybody's out here trying to get the hot, hot Wi‑Fi, and the password is red, red, red. Anybody out there who's listening, ever sees hot, hot Wi‑Fi on the list, the password is red, red, red. It's ergonomic when you're on the keyboard: only left-handed, only three fingers. Very fast. Red, red, red. What do you mean by ergonomic? Oh, because it's the most comfortable. Only left-handed. You can just do it with your left hand on the— letters are right next to each other. Is that important to you, to have an ergonomic password? I mean, if you think about it, if you only need to use your left hand, and they're all right next to each other, it's very fast. Is it working? It's not working. Do you want me to call them? Yeah, but then you're not connected to the RodeCaster Pro. Rig, can we link my phone to the RodeCaster Pro? Let's do it live. So, Tbilisi. So, Willie, I want you to riff a little bit about— so Tbilisi, I thought was kind of like a precursor to Budapest in that it's— A precursor in the sense that you feel like it's Budapest 20 years ago? Yeah, Budapest 10 years ago, because it's like they came out of this socialist, communist regime, and they're sort of like building up their own kind of identity and their own kind of just like— Yeah, Georgia is definitely a lot more raw than Budapest. I mean, they've had— A more probably fractured history than Hungary, particularly because they've never joined the European Union, and they have much closer links with Russia, as you mentioned before. Joseph Stalin, he was actually from Georgia. And so he was a Georgian, a Georgian, and Georgia was one of the most significant provinces in the former USSR. And actually, they faced a lot of border wars in the regions that border Russia because Russia, you know, Georgia is a great place and it has a lot of natural beauty. It has delicious, delicious food, and food in addition to food. And one of the reasons, like the Black Sea resorts of Georgia and the mountain lands, they're very something that the Russians really crave. So they fought a few wars over there that are continuing to this day. And when you say that Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was sort of Budapest 20 years ago, I don't know what Budapest was exactly like 20 years ago, but Tbilisi is incredible. One of the craziest things about Tbilisi is that when you walk down the streets there, you just see this, like, squiggle language, which is the Georgian script. The ancient Georgian language is just the most beautiful sort of, like, this crazy, crazy script. And they have a huge culture of poetry and all the, all the, all the—who is the main, the main poet of Georgia? There's a poem called The Knight in the Leopard Skin, or The Knight in the Panther Skin, and it's all about a guy who went down to, like, India during, I believe, the 13th or the 12th century, and he went down and he won a panther skin in order to claim his right as, like, the new king because he wanted to wed and bed the princess, and he needed to get the panther skin. And if I've sold that story short, I apologize to all our friends in Georgia. We do have a couple of friends in Georgia who have started a wine bar, which we really need to go to. Wine not Tbilisi. Wine not Tbilisi, right. The two Ninos. The two Ninos. Everybody in Georgia's name—oh, right, amazing. Okay, so my phone also is not, like, there's no internet going on. Maybe the whole world is broken, and we've just been in— We might be in a tiny little silo of the installation of the crypto anarchy. So we've had some significant technical difficulties. It appears that there has been some sort of cyber apocalypse and Facebook is no longer working, and Tom and I are overly reliant on that as the main form of communication. But to be honest with you, I don't know any of my friends' numbers anymore since I just talk to them on Instagram and Facebook. Is that a bad thing? Is that something that I should rectify? Personally, I despise that we only talk on Messenger because I turned all Messenger notifications off on my phone. So if you call me, I only hear the notifications coming on my iPad, which is, like, you know, somewhere. So I'm the only one that you just talked to on— The only one I talk to on Messenger. And you're also—it makes—oh, well, whatever, that's not true. I talk to other people on Messenger. But the only one who I regularly talk to on Messenger. So that's potentially why there is zero people watching on the Facebook stream right now, is because Facebook is down. Is that what we're working with, that Facebook is down? Facebook is down. That's why there's no watchers. But everybody who is here, you guys are strong. You guys shared it on your Facebooks? I shared it on mine. Okay, wait, I found—we have, we have, we have a possible—we have a possible linkage. I found— We're not giving up on this. We're not going to promise that it's going to happen, but after this try. I say we cut, we cut, we cut strings, and we shift to another passage of Aldous Huxley. I mean, he will never let us down with his mescaline trip, so let me just... Wait, maybe I can just call Poulton on the phone. I'm just gonna call him on the phone. Okay. We're just, we're going back to phone calling. Let's see. All right. Okay, yeah, this is a real phone call here. Can't wait to hear what Poulton has to say. Poulton. Matty Poults. One second. Hello? Hello. What's going on? How you doing?
Hey, hey, I'm good, I'm good. How are you guys? You have no idea the arduous journey that we just had to get you on the line here. It's been hard. It's, it's, it's been, it's been so— What's that? I can't hear you that well. You got sound really muffled. Oh, wait. Can you hear us better now? Yeah, yeah, that's a bit better. How you doing? Where are you calling in from? I'm in Liverpool at the moment. Liverpool, England, one of my favorite places in the entire world. What's the weather like? It's been gray and overcast today. The sun's trying to fight through, but to no success. And what's going on? Are you with anyone? I'm just chilling with Kaylee at the moment. I saw you were posting some pictures from Thor's Rock before. What was that all about? Yeah, we made a trip over to the world yesterday, and we found Thor's Rock. Yeah, and did the Viking trail over there. There's an old Viking settlement over there. Matty, I mean, I know you're no stranger to the Vikings and the mythology of that era. What took you on that journey in the first place? Was it the Old Kingdom, New Kingdom books, or what are they called? The Last Kingdom. Yeah, shit. Yeah, no, that definitely helped. That's funny, Kaylee asked me the same thing, asked me, like, how did I get hooked on this? And I don't know. I think the Last Kingdom series definitely helped by Bernard Cornwell. And then the Viking series, and then just British history, just finding a passion for that. Is Facebook working for you right now? What's that? Is Facebook working for you right now? Like when you go on Facebook, does it work? I think so. Why wouldn't it? We thought we were in a silo of just, like, complete Facebook disaster. We were trying to get you and Mareki on the phone, and the reason that we wanted to talk to the two of you is because we were discussing Georgia and our trip there to the Caucasus, and that, I mean, what are your memories of that trip? Just absolutely legendary. Mostly dogs and bathhouses. Dogs and bathhouses? What kind of dogs? It's a dog kingdom over there, man. All the characters that we came across—like, I can list a couple different dogs that we came across and just showed us a great time. And what about the cats? Ah, it's a bit too dramatic. Didn't you guys touch on that one a couple episodes ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't need the retread over old ground. And what about the two Swiss gentlemen that we met, Mark Allen Buckley and I think his other name was Jonathan? Two very special guys, fantastic snowboarders. And they named us the Elemental Boys and assigned us each an element, so— Which element are you? Water. Water, because it was kind of very chill and just going with the flow sort of guy. Whereas I'm the complete antithesis to that. Is that what you would say? Yeah, you have your moments of fire, so yes, you're a bundle of energy. But let's not forget that water can be quite a dangerous thing. I mean, think about floods, tsunamis. Water can cause some damage, and I believe you were in a baby tsunami mode at one point when we were in Georgia, going crazy over some dumplings, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. The power of water, when it gets going, it can definitely be treacherous. But yeah, tore through those dumplings, and dumpling juice turned into a river of— That's why they call them Donnie dumplings. Donnie dumplings, yes. Yeah, no, I mean, it was epic over there. Can you give us a highlight? Not necessarily your favorite thing, just the first thing that comes into your mind when you think about our trip to Georgia. Um, I just, I think, like, sort of random sense of adventure. You know, I know you were talking about it in one of the earlier episodes about how we came across the decision to choose Georgia. I don't quite know why, but I just think just going somewhere on the off-beaten path and exploring new worlds and— Do you remember the day— Speaking of hidden worlds, do you remember the day that we went up to that crazy statue? I also just thought of the same thing. I mean, we basically hiked up to that crazy, like, former Soviet silver statue that was like this giant, like, goddess to femininity or something like that. It was that giant silver woman. And then we walked down into that little valley of bathhouses. And unlike in Budapest, where you have bathhouses sporadically placed around the city, in Georgia they were all clustered together in this sort of ancient shrine to bathing. Absolutely. We went to one in particular, I think it was called Gulas or something like that, and basically what they have is a, a... A bathhouse where you get your own private room. And one second, Marekki, I got the other guy from Georgia on the line. But now we've got all sorts of— The elements are coming together. The elements are coming together. Facebook is working for me now. Could we maybe get a Facebook call with Pulten and Marekki? Is that possible? I can't, but can you? I think that I can, but now we're talking about all sorts of technological ins and outs and ups and downs. But either way, either way, we went down— What's up? What's up, Pulten? You guys are recording a podcast right now? We're live. Oh, wow. Oh wait, what is the topic today? The topic has been, we've gone through all sorts of Rings and somersaults. We went to Elon Musk, crypto anarchy, the doors of perception by Aldous Huxley. Oh, right. And now we've been, basically for the last, like, 20 minutes, we've been trying to figure out how to get the Rodecaster Pro, which is our delightful little recording device here, to link up to my phone and then to Bean's phone and then to get you and Marekki on the line, because we wanted to do a group call. But either way— I thought you would've figured that out by now. I know, I know, I know, I know. You know, what can you do? But going back to Gula's bathhouse, we were sitting in there, and in Georgia, what's different about the bathhouses of Georgia from Budapest is that you get your own private, like, room, right? What was the room like in Georgia that we had? Well, that first one, it was, you know, it felt like it was all built of stone, so it had this sort of grotto feel to it. It was dark, the very, very— How do you say? It just, it was, I don't know, dark and cave-like. And then they had, I think they had like your own private room, which we did not utilize, just for the record. But there's like a whole private room with like a bed and all these other things. And then we had the room with, there was two warm baths and a cold bath, and you basically bathed for a little while, and then these two burly Georgian men came in and offered us like scrub down. And we're all completely naked this entire time. I mean, that's an important visual to keep in mind, that we are utterly butt naked during this whole experience. And these two guys come in and they offer you scrubs, and then you lay down on a marble bench and basically get like vigorously, like scrubbed by a Georgian man for, I don't know, 20 minutes each. Absolutely. Yes, it was very revitalizing. It was incredible. But it was one of the best experiences you could ever have. It's really cool to be like vigorously rubbed down by another man. Yeah, it does something to the skin. And then afterwards, what the best part was was that you went into the sauna, and the guy, I remember he took out a big tub of water and he started splashing it all around the cedar walls of the sauna and made it super, super hot, and then brought in—what's the stuff that you drink in Georgia? It's sort of like palinka in Budapest, but in— Chacha. Chacha. And chacha was like this Georgian—Poulton, you've had palinka, you've had plenty of palinka, and you've had a little bit of chacha. Which one do you like better? Yes. Oh, I gotta say, chacha hits the hardest, man. That is a very, very strong moonshine, if you will. Do you mind holding on for one second, because I think that Bean can get Marekki on the line. We're just gonna hang up with you and then do a group call on Facebook, if that's all right. Absolutely. Let's do it. Let's get the ground element in this. Let's get the earth in here. All right. All right, we're getting earth. Poulton was water. Starting call in three, two, one, go. Tommy Bean is air because he's so fucking tall. Yeah, I think that was the only reason for me to be air. I'm fire because I was like—oh, the whole clan is here now. I'm in. You're in? Hello. Oh, Ricky, what's going on? How you doing? Willie, you should not join this. Okay, that makes a huge echo. I'm sorry. How's it going? I'm in full lockdown in Berlin, so I'm staying home and studying tonight. What are you up to? What are you studying? Karma Sutra. Karma Sutra? I'm studying Deutsch, man. Studying Deutsch. Studying the German version of the Kama Sutra. I actually have a German version of the Kama Sutra. You actually have the German version? That's great. We were actually just in the middle because we were trying to finagle all sorts of technological difficulties here, and finally we got you in, but we were retelling the story of when we hiked up to that, like, Soviet statue of the woman and then went down to the bathhouse, and then were vigorously scrubbed while naked by Georgian men, and then got a sauna, and then we had some cha-cha. Do you remember? Wait, wait, can I say—you say we hiked up that mountain, but Bean raced a Georgian rugby player up that one. I thought we all raced up that. Oh no, was it Willie? No, Marekki versus Bean, wasn’t it? Oh, we did race. That was super fun. We raced up these epic stairs with a giant, like, 100-foot sculpture of a human at the top. I don't remember any of that. I do remember drinking the chacha after the bathhouse. Marek, do you like chacha or palinka better? Do you have recollections of either? Yeah, yeah, I like palinka better. Well, Poulton said chacha. Is this contentious? It's not necessarily contentious. I mean, I think that palinka is certainly the winner, but Poulton has brought in all sorts of contention into the argument. Well, I said chacha hits harder. Yeah, let's be honest. Let's be easy. Well, when someone asks you a question, what's better, and you say with a big grin on your face that chacha hits harder, how are we supposed to take that? Well, yeah, no, it brings a certain spirit out, that's for sure. But don't get me wrong, I do love palinka. I do love the flavors of palinka, so I'll drink that any day. Although I will say the first chacha experience that I remember in Georgia was inside of a giant inflatable igloo at the top of a ski mountain with a bunch of—I believe that igloo was called, what, the White Rabbit? The White Rabbit. Oh my gosh, what a place. And that was in Gudauri, which is the ski resort about, what, an hour and a half north of Tbilisi, and we washed up there completely, absolutely, like at the end of our rope in terms of hangover. I think maybe just me, but we got there, and the White Rabbit was this, like, ski igloo refuge in the middle of this mountain. And in Georgia, the mountains, they don't have any trees, which is kind of bizarre coming from an American, maybe alpine European perspective. You just have this bare, naked mountain of just, like, snow. And then there was the White Rabbit, which was this igloo-yurt thing, and we had plenty of chacha there. Do you guys remember anybody that we met? During that trip, that was interesting. The two Swiss fellas that were traveling Iran after. Remember those guys? Mark, Alan, Buckley, and Jonathan. Yeah, the characters, some characters. I was gonna say as well, there's only one way to get over a hangover. What's that? Drink again. That's right, that's right. The hair of the white rabbit and drink a bunch of cha-cha. The hair of the dog. The hair of the dog. Mountain air. Do you want to know, actually, speaking of the two Swiss guys, I have an Instagram voice note from Mark. We've stayed in sporadic touch, but randomly the other day, Bean and I were driving, and I said, Well, I have a voice note that I haven't listened to from Mark, and so we played it. And basically, to sum up what he said was like, Oh, I'm sorry that we haven't talked in so long. The coronavirus, you know, it's not so good. And this was his plan for the summer. He was basically going to take a boat— I'm gonna take my boat. His boat, his boat. So apparently he has a boat. And what was he gonna do? I don't know. He said he was gonna just go down the Mediterranean, go down the Mediterranean, circle around, and then come back like through the Balkans, up through Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and then sail back across to Italy. It just sounded like a fantastic plan. Those two are something else. Wait, did they even make it to Japan? Because when we met them, they were journeying from Switzerland to Japan, originally on bike at first, but then one of them hurt their knee and they had to resort to walking, or— Well, that's Jonathan, who was like the taller, lankier one. They were both professional Swiss snowboarders of some sort that were planning to bike to Japan from Switzerland, as he mentioned. And Jonathan, he hurt his knee and he had all sorts of knee problems, and he also fell in love with a Georgian girl. And we were there for the dismount. Hard not to. But as far as I know, he has like been there ever since. I don't know if he's ever left, because Mark said something to me in French that was apparently, like, the translation was like, You are this thing, and that's like only what you can be because it's glued to your persona, and he was suggesting that Jonathan was always gonna meet that Georgian woman and just stay there. So there you have it. We were there for that. We were actually there. There for the night when this, I remember the conversation, they were like, Yeah, our journey's over. Then Jonathan was like, I'm in love with this girl. I'm never gonna leave. Actually, another thing that I wanted to ask you guys is, is Elon Musk someone that you would aspire to be? Is that like an aspirational figure for you? When he becomes Iron Man, when he fully transitions. So that's the Elon Musk version of transitioning, is just becoming an Iron Man. Yeah, it's the fourth gender. I thought there was like 73. I don't want to be too politically incorrect here. I don't know. Yeah, no, no, no. That's, I mean, if the Iron Man is the fourth, that's good. But we're just on Facebook Lives. You guys can check it out. Either way, is Iron Man slash Elon Musk someone that you would, is he an aspirational figure? For me, I don't think I would aspire to be him, but I highly admire what he's accomplished and would like to partake in what he's done, so. You getting the Neuralink? You getting hooked up? We talked about Neuralink before, which I still don't really understand. What is it? Is it like the Matrix? It essentially makes your brain into a processor, doesn't it? It turns your brain into a processor? No, like a computer processor. Like you can store and take in and out data like a computer much faster than, and we can retain information that way. Yeah, right now you can only input and output data between a computer and the brain by like typing on a keyboard and looking at a screen. And this bypasses the sensations of sight, touch, and all this stuff, and it just bypasses, it puts nodes directly into your brain so that you can communicate with thoughts, and computers can talk back to you with thoughts, basically. Yeah, I'm up for it. Plug me in. Plug me in. It is the Matrix. Just like, really. That sounds like it. I don't know, though. I kind of feel like I want to become more detached rather than more attached to technology and speed. I think it's very hard to conceptualize right now. Like, it's so far away from being a consumer product. Well, that's also something that's, like, it's coercive in a way because, like, inevitably if that comes out, you're not going to be the one guy that says, like, Oh, I'm not going to use the Neuralink, because then you're just going to be like a potato living in the Stone Age. Yeah, you become pretty unemployable. Everyone else is hooked up. You're reading a book. Unemployable, unmateable. You're just going to be, like, living—well, I don't know. Maybe right now there is, like, separatist colonies that exist that are completely detached from the technological infrastructure, and they have their own sort of economic structures that we don't know about, and I don't know. Yeah, there's one in the north of Spain. I met this girl from Barcelona on the street yesterday. She was telling me about it. Her friend started, like, this colony in the north of Spain where they all, you know, together grow their own produce. If a new person comes, they all come together and build a house for that person, and they don't use internet. So you met someone on the street in Berlin that—she lives there, or she knows of it? That's so Berlin. That is so Berlin. So Berlin. She's your neighbor. Well, Marek, you're just walking around meeting—How did you meet this woman? Can you tell us how you initiated the conversation? Is this a live podcast? I can just say it anyway. I was biking home. I had a big plant with me because I was picking up a plant. And then I saw this, like, cute girl in a blue jacket. She stopped me, and I was, like, on my street, and I'm like, Hello? She spoke to me in English, which was a little bit bizarre. She asked me where I can find weed, where she could find weed. She's trying to smoke a joint. And I told her, Well, I don't have any weed on me right now. And then she wanted—she asked if I can get her weed, and I thought, Ah, this is a bit sketchy. She's off the street. She might try to rob. I'm like, Do you live here? Do you live around here? And she's like, Yeah, I live around the corner. So anyway, I said, Good luck. Ciao. And I went to my flat, and I came down 20 minutes later to go to, like, the corner store, and she was still there. And at this point, we struck up a conversation, and then we went to my flat and we smoked some hash, and then now we're friends. Because on the second go, I trusted her a bit more because I knew she was in the area. And the first go, I was a bit—bit conspicuous for me. You're very cerebral. Anyway, next body, she's from Barcelona. She's a contemporary dancer. Wow. Very cool. Soberly. And so this colony in the north of Spain is just, like, off the grid pretty much, and they just sort of exist and grow things for themselves and live in, like, a blissful utopic parallel universe? I don't know how blissful utopic is. I think something better true. That's what you always have to wonder, is, like, how good is that actually going to be? Are the people really just cranky and at each other's throats all the time? Yeah, yeah. I think it's a mix of both. A mix of both, just like anything else. We can't escape. We're just—we're in what we're in, and that's sort of the theme of this podcast has been the philosophy of stoicism. Do you guys know anything about Stoic philosophy? Yeah, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, right? Exactly. You know that he wrote them— Or some of them, at least on the banks of the Danube in the Aquincum colony, which was ancient Budapest. Oh, I didn't know that. What a beautiful picture. What a beautiful picture. I mean, imagine that, Marcus Aurelius. But I don't know too much about the Stoic meditations other than he wrote them in Budapest. I don't know them that well. Can I be informed by them? By Marci, you sound like you know a bit about it. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially a philosophy where you try to better yourself in the pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge is like the highest virtue, right? Oh, I love that. That's a bit like Odin from Norse mythology, always trying to gather more knowledge, sacrificing his eye for knowledge. Is that why Odin has one eye? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He gave it up. Gave it up to the tree, right? For knowledge. What would you give up for some knowledge? Sweet, sweet knowledge. What would you give up? One of my balls. No, the left one's too precious. Which one hangs lower for you? Well, you know, it's sort of a given that it's the left one now, but the idea of Odin and Norse mythology is something that has been very intrinsic, I would say, to our relationship, Poulton, because you sort of bequeathed this idea of being, like, rabidly obsessed with Vikings onto me, and have led me towards the descent that I've been on ever since the spring of 2017. Yes, yeah, I might have played a part in that. Yeah, depending on how you look at it, it could be an ascension, but either way, I'm going somewhere. Yeah, yeah. What I will say about, I think that, yeah, it is, I think stoicism is a pursuit of knowledge. But when Odin gave up his eye, it was kind of to pursue knowledge in the tangible sense, like knowing everything, knowing what everybody's doing and all that stuff. And stoicism isn't really about pursuing tangible knowledge, but it's like using your power, the power of your brain, to challenge your understanding every step of the way. So not necessarily, like, gaining more knowledge, but whenever something happens to you, actively using your ability to, like, your brain and your ability to think to change your perception of that thing that happened, or to influence your perception. So it's essentially becoming like a well-rounded skeptic on your way through life. Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. Actually, you know what book, speaking of perception, that I have in front of me, which we read a few passages of tonight, is The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. Maruki, you've read that, haven't you? I have read that. It's actually on my bookshelf. I'm rereading it because another friend of mine who runs another podcast in Amsterdam wants to talk about that on her podcast. Oh, wow. What's this podcast about? It's called Mind Ocean Podcast. The Mind Ocean Podcast? Yeah. She essentially, like, interviews creatives, which technically I'm not one, and talks about, like, different, I don't know, different ambitions, different ways of life, different perceptions of, you know, this journey that people have. Anyway, this book, I recommended this book to her, and she was really taken by it. That's why she wants to invite me on it. Oh my God, Whiskey Bar Langianos has just messaged into the live stream on Facebook. Do you guys know about Whiskey Bar Langianos? I know you've—I mean, done a podcast with him and a Walking with Willie episode that I'm super excited to catch up with. He seems like quite the character. He's an electric guy. He's basically brought a new enthusiasm for bourbon and Tennessee whiskey into my—did you know that there was a difference between bourbon and Tennessee whiskey? I assumed there was one, actually. You assumed there was? I had no idea. He brought a new appreciation for, like, Jack Daniels and, like, just Tennessee whiskey in general, and just, like, how influential that whole world... Oh, so this—okay, so this is a passage from Aldous Huxley that describes, like, the scientific biological process of mescaline on the body. Do you mind if I just read this for one second? Here we go. Whether or not—you go ahead. Whether or not you've given me consent, this is the— Do the viewers out there know what mescaline is? I don't know, because I don't think that Tom and I—I described it as, like, a cactus derivative that's used in, like, Native indigenous religious ceremonies in the southwest of America, in Mexico. It's a psychoactive drug, as far as I understand. Do you have anything to add to that? No, I think that's pretty accurate. I know there's, like, five different main types of psychoactive drugs. This is one of them. So this is like an ayahuasca? Ayahuasca is another. Psilocybin is another. Psilocybin being, like, shrooms. So we have psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, mescaline, and then peyote, maybe. About DMT, is it? All right, either way, this is what mescaline does to you. The brain is provided with a number of enzyme systems which serve to coordinate its workings. Some of these enzymes regulate the supply of glucose to the brain cells. Mescaline inhibits the production of these enzymes and thus lowers the amount of glucose available to an organ that is in constant need of sugar. When mescaline reduces the brain's normal ration of sugar, what happens? Too few cases have been observed, and therefore a comprehensive answer cannot yet be given. But what happens to the majority of the few who have taken mescaline under supervision can be summarized as follows. And there's three—there's actually four descriptions here. I'm just going to read the first line from each. The ability to remember and to think straight is little, if at all, reduced, so it doesn't really impair your memory or your thinking straight. But visual impressions are greatly intensified, and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood. That sounds cool. Number three: though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will, your will, so I think that's sort of related to your ego, suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescaline taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which at ordinary times he was prepared to act and suffer profoundly uninteresting. And finally, number four: these better things may be experienced as I experience them—thank you, Aldous—out there or in here or in both worlds, the inner and the outer simultaneously or successively, that they are better seems to be self-evident to all mescaline takers who come to the drug with a sound, alert, and an untroubled mind. Interesting. Whoa. I mean, the thing that stuck out to me the most there was the idea that it takes your mind back to a state of visual childhood, no? Yeah, I think, like, peeling off of that, that's essentially we see with more clarity. I think as people go through this life, like the clarity we have is a bit diluted by, you know, society, the capitalist structures around us, et cetera, that we don't see quite as clearly the reality of the world. And mescaline gives you a chance to reclaim that. That's cool. That's very cool, yeah, because our active filtration of everything that comes to us is very much dictated by how we've been changed or conditioned by, like you said, the societal structures that we live within. And that sounds fun to drop some of that. Sounds like we can use a bit of it. We could all use a bit of it. This is the third passage that I've read from the book thus far, or the fourth, and three of the four have been from pages 12 and 13, and I've opened randomly every time. Oh man, I don't know what that says about me. I think I need some more mescaline to unlock my... I think Aldous Huxley has a tremendous ability to explain what's almost unexplainable. Like, his prose, like, he's very detailed in his explanations in a way that, I don't know, I think the average experience couldn't be communicated, but he communicates it really well. Right. It's a very dense book, isn't it? But he does it also unpretentiously in the sense, I mean, it has to be, like, a little bit pretentious if he's writing a whole novella about a mescaline experience, but at the same time, he is able to just, like, bring in such a genuine universal experience that everyone can relate to. And he also, he references a lot of stuff. Like, I've just flipped open here and he's talking about Zen Buddhism and Taoism and Christianity, and he's talking about things that we can, like, actually relate to given our own lived experiences. You don't have to just talk about a drug trip as being this sort of, like, trippy-dippy visual experience. There's a lot of concerned thinking and insight in here. So I think it's pretty cool about this idea of meditation and kind of like stoic meditation. That's what we started this whole kind of conversation with Stoicism about and how it's so similar to what is often called meditation today, which is active breathing and actively thinking about what your mind is doing. And in a way, this mescaline is forcing you to change your perception and change the way you think about what you're perceiving. Same thing Stoicism is challenging how you think about what you're perceiving. And Marek, you just talked about how, like, Huxley is able to describe this thing. What, like, how do you—why is he able to do that? I don't know. I mean, how does what I said just make you feel? I mean, topics I really enjoy. I mean, as an active meditator and an active, I guess, speaker of the real experience in life outside of, you know, what we're conditioned to believe, I think that Huxley—I mean, one, he has a fantastic grasp of the English language, so it's just very enjoyable and fluid when he writes. He reminds me of almost an Alan Watts. And I think Alan Watts can translate Eastern thoughts to Western prose in a way that no one's done before. And Aldous Huxley reminds me of him because in all the books I've read of his, he essentially paints like a very intellectual and profound image of a very, very, like, I want to say simple, to be honest, because the experience of mescaline, I feel like it's more sensation than logic, and he brings that sensation into our logical mind and has the words to convey that. It's fascinating. Nice. I love that. Shout out to The Island by Aldous Huxley. Fantastic book. Yeah, you guys haven't read it. There's also, I think it was his last before he died, when he brings a lot of his ideas on the paper. It's good. Well, Huxley's Brave New World, that's sort of his magnum opus. And that paints another type of dystopia than George Orwell in 1984, but they're often seen in tandem to one another, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, is 1984 like a little bit more of like a negative dystopic image? I mean, Brave New World is also a dystopia, but a different type of dystopia, no? 1984 is a super authoritarian, right? It's where the state overall prevails. And I think Brave New World is a bit more like from the libertarian aspect, where the personal will has an opportunity to expand. But there's—yeah, yeah—but they are in contrast a bit, aren't they? They usually are coupled, at least in my experience. I don't think I've ever read the complete version of either of them, so I might be a little bit in here. There's the Netflix show coming out, and we can finally, like, experience the whole book. We have Neuralink. We could just download it right now. Yeah, that would be cool. And then just—there's gonna be so many musicians when Neuralink comes out. There's gonna be so many musicians. There's not enough already? There's gonna be more, man. More. Poulton, you're kind of a musician, aren't you? In what way? I don't know, because you're a fashion designer. It's like, it's kind of the same thing. I'm a sportswear designer. Fabric. Oh, come on, you're a fashion designer. There's a big difference. Well, I think it's up to me. And whenever someone asks me about you, which is almost every day, I say that, yeah, he's my friend. He's a fashion designer in London. Oh no, it's so embarrassing. Meanwhile, you're doing sportswear up in Liverpool. Poulton, do you feel yourself dropping into the flow state during your work in the fashion world? And if I can ask a second question, in what kind of work do you find yourself dropping there? Sorry, I don't understand your second question. Into the flow state, like deep work. What causes the flow state or this idea of deep work, zoning out, feeling in the complete flow of things? I'm not sure what causes it. I think it takes some practice getting into it, and it's not something you can just jump right into. But yeah, the longer you stick with something, like for example, if I'm designing a print that's going to go onto a football tee, it's hard at first. But the longer you play with it, you know, you start to enter this creative zone and get deeper into it, and you start to feel the creative flow, I guess you would say. But yeah, I mean, for me as a sportswear designer, there's a couple different modes I have to go into. If it's sort of like a tech packing stage, I go into a more robotic zone where, you know, the work is a bit more repetitive and stuff. But if I'm more in a creative area, it's definitely using a different part of the brain. And it's interesting because I use different... I would say, like, I'll listen to music when I'm creating prints or designing, but if I'm doing more tech pack work, I'll listen to podcasts to sort of entertain my brain. I always thought that was interesting, like what parts of the brain we're using at the same time. And would you say that the amount of fatigue that you experience after each of these focus sessions is different? Would you say that you're more fatigued after one kind of work? Yeah, that's really interesting that you asked that, because I found myself, like, I think the creative stuff is actually mentally a lot more—it takes a lot more fuel. You know, I'm quite tired and knackered after it versus something like a tech pack, which is pretty basic work. So, yeah, it's definitely like using mental energy. It requires a lot, I think, the creative stuff. All right, as we only have like a few more minutes here before the Budapest 8 p.m. curfew is enacted—oh no—do you guys remember the word bassiani? Does that mean anything to you? Bassiani? Oh, the boom boom? The boom boom. What do you think of when I say bassiani? Everybody gets a phrase. Football club. I think of some really trendy young folks. Marek, I remember you after like eight days of just heinous activity, just relentlessly trying to get us to go there, and nobody really wanted to. But you're like, We gotta go, Bassiani, Bassiani. And I thought it was just gonna be like a normal nightclub in Georgia, in Tbilisi, and we get to—I'm gonna read the Wikipedia description right here. Bassiani in Georgian, it's like three squiggles and a curly line, is a nightclub in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, founded in 2014. It's located in the building of the city's largest sports venue, the Dinamo Arena, and utilizes a disused swimming pool as the main dance floor. It is the largest dance club in Georgia and can accommodate around 1,200 people. But that doesn't really sum it up because it was like— A crazy, crazy, crazy, just post-Soviet unique experience. And I think we were all pretty thankful that Mareki made us go there at the end of the day. I don't know about you. That was our house, man. You hear the kids talking about it. You gotta check it out. It was amazing. You keep your ear to the groundstone. Every day. That's how I wake up. You always need that sort of person in the group that's gonna rile up the boys, get them to go out, hit Sziget last night. Thank you, Mareki. That's why he's earth. He's close to the ground. He hears the hubbub. He's got everything. He makes sure we're with the beat of the earth, with the tune of the planet. And last question before we leave. Last question before we leave, each of you get an answer: where is the next trip gonna be? Yes. I was just thinking about this a few minutes ago, and Albania popped up in my mind. Ooh. Is that because you got your haplogene diagnosed and you're like a 128th Albanian? A little bit, no, but I was thinking about the characters that we met up in the White Rabbit, and I remember one of the guys, all sort of expat travelers, and we brought up Albania, and he said it was just such a beautiful place, and I could picture going there. I'm definitely down. That, or I know we've spoken about Ukraine and Mareki's homeland. Well, Mareki, is that what you were gonna say? No, but that's always on the card. The card should fall that way. Being a Yuki, where would you say? Do you have a suggestion? I was actually gonna recommend the Balkans, and I think Albania is in the Balkans, isn't it? I think a Balkan trip would be fantastic, which also tethers into one of the previous guests that we had on, which was two Hungarian girls that are documentary filmmakers and are currently producing a documentary about the Balkans, so. Anyway, it's in the cards: Albania, Balkans, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which I think is now called North Macedonia. There's a bunch of countries out there, and I think they're all beautiful, cheap, and ready for— Macedonia. Macedonia would be interesting. You don't really hear people going to Macedonia for vacation. No, you don't. Well, thank you, lads. I really appreciate your patience in getting this call. Actually, you exhibited no patience because you didn't even know we were calling you. But thank you for joining in when you did. This was an enlightening discussion, and I hope that we can talk again in person, perhaps flying you out here for another episode in the future. Absolutely. It's great. It's always a pleasure lobbing the ball into each other's court. Oh, nothing better. Much love, fellas. Much love and gratitude. All right, Marekki, good luck in that Spanish colony up in the north. Stay in touch. Well, spectacular. You know, it was worth the wait in the end. Absolutely. I think we have to do that now, basically at least once every other week. That was spectacular. Great guests. Well, Tom, I don't know if you want to do one more cheers with our— Sure, why not? Let's— Gemen's whiskey. Let's make it a proper ending. This was really a spectacular episode. That's the third time I've said it in the last two minutes. I feel bad for repeating that word so many times. But, no, you know, we're our own best propagandists, and that's all that you can really ask for. Oh, all right, Ray's getting in here. What I wanted to say is that I like the idea of— This whole thing being primarily for ourselves, and therefore, like in product of that being for whoever's listening. And for me, this episode was very great for myself. Really great to have this conversation and learn from you, learn from this conversation, learn from our good friends, and build a foundation for what I want to do in the times to come. And Aldous Huxley. I mean, maybe next time we all talk, we have to take some mescaline before. Who knows? That's a foundation to me. Cheers. Egészségetekre. Nice. Hungary does not only do pálinka, they also do whiskey, single barrel. Pretty well. Gemenc. Gemenc, I think that's a place in Hungary, so we should probably go there. Anyway, thank you very much, everyone. I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate you listening, and we will be back very soon. We have a couple of very, very, very exciting episodes lined up in the next two weeks: the founder of Flex Gym in Budapest, and Eddie and Maria, a.k.a. Emma Lovett, two of the most famous webcam models in the entire world. So we will see you back here at some point in the future. Köszönöm szépen, köszönjük szépen, jó éjszakát, jó reggelt, jó délutánt, good morning, good afternoon, good night. That was another episode of Talking with Willie. Love you all. Thank you very much.
