Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality and other big picture stuff like we're liable to today with leading researchers thinkers and their critics. Wow, got a really great one for you today. Charlie Robinson is back. Charlie Robinson, super book a few years ago, Octopus of Global Control. Been knocking it out of the park on his podcast, Macro Aggressions. Also, you'll always see him on the Fantastic Union of the Unwanted. He is like the hardest working man in all media. I was listening to your year in review and it's like a hundred shows last year. I know, I know. It's great.  And I feel driven to explain what I see. Not that I have it all figured out. I'm just bringing some pieces to this puzzle but it seems very important given where we are right now as a society that we ring the alarm bells, to the extent that we can and wake people up because I'm not interested in sleepwalking through this. What these maniacs have planned for us requires us to be awake and aware of the circumstances so that we can get out of the way if we need to. So I'm down with that. I'm down with all that half the time and half the time I'm like, are we maybe taking that in the wrong direction? But let me ask you this kind of on a personal level. How do you do in just kind of normal company? I mean, even, because I ran into this the other day in a very kind of family kind of situation where somebody told me that I'm not fit for ordinary company and not in like, not in red pill mode even. Like I don't have to be in red pill mode to be in red pill mode, if you know what I mean. Cause once you're there for a while, right? Tell me, tell me how that works in your life. It's tough. It's a dance. And I'll tell you, it came out of this, actually the whole like court course correction happened 15 plus years ago when I made the mistake of bringing up 9-11 at Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws house at the time I was married before. And it didn't go well. And I realized and it didn't go well and it was my fault in fact because I didn't have my argument down. The timing was wrong, the audience was wrong. Everything about it was wrong and it was 100% my doing. Now I feel justified in discussing 9-11 but you have to know your audience and you have to realize actually this is where the first book The Octopus came out of because what had happened was that I had no particular expertise on this topic of 9-11. I wasn't a pilot, a structural engineer, didn't work for the government, didn't work for the FAA. I don't have any of those things. And so when I was trying to explain the reality of the situation of 9-11 to these people that were aghast at what I was talking about, they didn't view me as an expert. And that's fine because I wasn't an expert and I didn't know enough to have that conversation but what had occurred to me was that if it wasn't coming from me but if it was coming from somebody else, if it wasn't me saying these things but if George W. Bush was saying this or if I could show you examples of the Rockefellers talking about this or the Clintons or these recognizable faces or names that people know and have some sort of, have given them some sort of perceived credibility, if it wasn't me, it was them saying it would it change your mind? And I think the answer to that was, well, sure it would be a whole lot different if it wasn't you saying this, if it was somebody else. And so what I did with the first book, The Octopus, was I set out to find those voices, to find, I used 700 quotes from 500 different people that could sort of punctuate the points I was making. So as an example of 9-11, if I'm writing about 9-11 and I'm not a pilot, but Captain Russ Wittenberg is a pilot and he has said that he's flown these actual aircrafts of 9-11 and he knows he's saying with 100% certainty he as a pilot could not have made these banking turns that the hijackers allegedly made, that carries more weight than me saying it can't be done. And so part of what I realized in my interactions with normies is that I have to be very careful in recognizing how they perceive me because if they don't perceive me as having any level of expertise or knowledge on this, it's easy to dismiss me. So I try when I'm interacting with people now, I try to stay away from it as much as I can. I try to stay away from the hardcore topics unless someone invites me in or if somebody says, well, you've written books about this, I'm curious about, then that's a different story. But if we're watching TV and a commercial comes on and they're saying, you got to donate to this 9-11 fund because we've got to get back at these Muslims that did this to us, I'm just going, I'm just biting my lip, I'm just going, I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to ruin Christmas, Alex, I'm not going to ruin it this time. So you're saying that basically if you want to, you can fly under the radar. Because the reason I ask that is, the problem with someone like you now is that you have amassed so much information that it has changed you fundamentally, not only how you look on these red polishes, but on how you look on everything. This is a why people believe weird things kind of thing, which is the whole world. And once you cross that rubicon, the whole world is a why you believe weird things, why I believe my weird things, why you believe your weird things. But how do you not be outed as the arrogant condescending bastard that you are because you do know a lot. You know, some people say know it all.  Well, I'll tell you why I know what, why I know what I know and why I have the retention that I have. And it has to, it's not like a magic power or anything like that. It's from writing books. It's from being around this information and just being over it for weeks and months and rewriting this sentence and backing up. And so I've got dates and names and they stick in my head. It's the same conversation I had with Whitney Webb about this too, why she goes on Glenn Beck and he asked her a million questions and she's got dates and times. I know why that is. I mean, she's super smart, but I know why that is. It's because when you're writing and rewriting and changing this and moving this paragraph around, you're just looking at it over and over and over again. And so I have this information and it is, but it's poison to people if they're not looking for it.  I've tried the fire hose approach. I sit down here and let me tell you how things really are blah, blah, blah.  They're either physically checked out. They're mentally checked out. They're not listening. And so through trial and error and a lot of embarrassment and ostracism from friends of mine, I have learned that if I want to have this conversation and a lot of times I do wanna have this conversation with people that are either close to me or some people that I've just met but are interested and they seem to be talking about things that I might wanna talk about. I've found that the best way to really get that conversation going or to at least know how to navigate it is for me to ask questions of them, to get them going to say, hey, what do you think about this? You know, or to get them to verbalize it and ask them a question, get them to verbalize it. And what I've found is, if I'll say, hey man, how do you, like what do you think accounts for two airplanes knocking down three buildings in lower Manhattan on 9-11? And their response will be, well, you know, wait, what? There were three buildings that got knocked out or it'll be, well, I don't know, I never really thought about that. So for so many of the interactions I have with people, what I discover almost immediately into the conversation is that they've never talked about it. They've never been asked about it. They've never really thought about it. It's been, you know, they see the news, they see the planes going, you know, I've used 9-11 as an example because everybody knows about it, but nobody, very few people know the mechanics behind it. They just know what the media has told them. So it's a really good litmus test for me to figure out where I am with somebody in terms of their worldview is if you think 9-11 was 19 Arab hijackers with box cutters, then I know that you're probably on board with a lot of the other established narratives. And that's a really tough nut to crack because you're going up against decades of psychological indoctrination, you know, through televisions and schools and all this stuff, probably of parents and friends reinforcing that. It's difficult to break through, it's difficult for me to meet with somebody who believes all the things and not, you know, I don't really wanna go to work on those people. I've come to prioritize my energy. And a lot of times with people like that, I don't see an opening. And so I'm not gonna push too much, but God forbid somebody at a cocktail party asked me what I do and wanna talk about it, it's on. It's so on. And what I find is that a lot of people go, tell me more, you know, they look over both shoulders and they go, tell me more about this.  So there's a bit of shame in this for normies that like, you know, that they're entertaining the concept that maybe there's an alternative explanation for some of the things that they've grown up believing. But, and I think there's a lot of ego associated with that, all of us clearly have ego.  So you have, it's a fascinating, having the conversation is a fascinating case study in just human psychology, really, to find out why people believe what they believe and why they're so resistant to anything that challenges that, you know, because, oh, if that's true, well then everything I believed before this conversation is garbage. So I have to rethink my whole worldview and I just have to go to work tomorrow. I'm not ready for this, Alex, and I just wanna, and I get it, I get it, I get it where people go, I'm not ready for this. You don't get it, you don't get it, and I don't get it. I don't respect it, I understand it, but I don't respect it.  I heard a doctor recently, he's kinda, I'm gonna get him on the show and he's been totally ostracized from a long time ago, Richard Fleming, and he's... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you had him on? We had him on the Union of the Unwanted, yeah, yeah.  And I kinda think you are on that level, right?  It's still the closest church to my house, so I still have to go, you do not get that, I don't get that, I mean, there's a line that we would all draw in the sand and you draw in the sand. The other thing about you that's different is you come from a world that a lot of us can relate to in terms of your success orient, you were trying to make things happen, you were doing things to manifest, you know, you weren't sitting around putting a pendant around your neck and saying, you know, you were trying to manifest things in a more conventional way and you did and you still are manifesting things but that's different than a lot of the folks in our community too and I don't wanna say our community because I only have a community and one of the things I guess I'm gonna stumble in here, stumble into here in this talk and we talked about this the last time you were on and it kind of always is an issue for me is, you know, the all media needs to clean up its act too in terms of we are so co-optable when we adopt these stupid ideas and let them, you know, perpetuate, like even one of my pet babes, and I just talked to Sam triply just the other day on zero, we had a great conversation. I love Sam, Sam is just awesome, awesome guy. Flat Earth, Flat Earth. I mean, I don't care about your Flat Earth. You know what I care about is you just moved everyone two steps closer to accepting COVID, two steps closer to accepting COVID and one step closer to the climate scam because what you've said is there is no really way to know or understand things.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a funny batch of people here in the alternative media. A lot of people, you know, there's a look. A lot of people are searching for answers. They're trying to figure out who's got the best information and I don't think it's all collected in one person's brain. We all bring different things to the table. I'm open to having, you know, there might be concepts or things that I'm fascinated to talk about but I would never write about them because I don't know enough about it. Like if somebody says that there's an opening to the inner earth in Antarctica and that there's, you know, secrets around that and everything, does it sound crazy? Oh, a hundred percent crazy. Am I interested in hearing more about it? Sure, from a science fiction standpoint, I would love to hear more about it. Do the Richard, you know, Admiral Richard Byrd is in his diaries and things like that. Does that make me sound, does it make me go, hmm, yeah, it does. But again, I have to drop that. I have to leave that sort of in my like, this is stuff that I'm interested in, like, I don't know, emotional junk food or something, you know, like just stuff that I kind of like from time to time, but I don't, I can't write about that because I don't know it and I don't understand it and I don't know how it all works. So I like, you know, I try to keep my stuff as provable as I can to the extent that I can prove it, you know, because let's be honest, some of the stuff, you know, you do the best you can but you don't know, you know, you're talking about classified documents from 70 years ago and things like that. I don't know. But I like to try and stay in the realm of logic and reason and reality, but I also have to give myself the flexibility to be wrong, too. And the flexibility to recognize that that's okay to be wrong from time to time as long as your, as long as your intentions are solid. And I've kind of put this in the first book and I think I've said it, well, I know I've said it multiple times, but my standard is that I reserve the right to change my mind if I'm presented with new evidence that is better than the old evidence I had. And I like, and I don't do that to be wishy-washy, I do that because I recognize my ability to be wrong about things we all do. And part of when we're talking about the alternative media, having some bad habits is our inability to be flexible on some things and to say, no, this is what I believe and this is the way it is. And it's like, well, what if you were wrong about, what if you were right about 95% of the other things but you were wrong about this 5%, do you want to be right or do you want to eventually get it right? And my feeling is I just want, I want to get it right. Even if I'm wrong about it initially, I want to get it right. And so I try to do that to the extent that I can. And I know that when you're dealing with, we're not dealing with two plus two equals four, that's pretty easy. What we're talking about is we're going up against the most experienced disinformation apparatus in the world, in the CIA, in the Mossad and all these intelligence agencies. It's a wonder we get anything, right? We have the mainstream media. It was always, it was always thus. So go back in history and it's always been like that. I mean, my methodology, which I just kind of honed in on lately is one, follow the data wherever it leads. You got to go wherever it leads. And number two, follow the deception wherever it leads. I mean, if you're getting jacked up by Andrew Kaufman, who's going to be down there in Acapulco, spinning his no virus, which is to me, to me that's been revealed as an op. Anyone who doesn't see the whole, you know, there is no virus. There's no such thing as viruses. There's no such thing as rabies. David Ike Band is so interesting. David Ike, you can't move around. That's a whole other thing.  I don't know if he's, you know, just following the cheese in his crazy kind of world, whatever, but he's creating a co-optable situation. Think of what he does in terms of the COVID thing, in terms of the divide and rule. Now he has this little kind of fringe, crazy circle of people who think there are no viruses. I did several shows on this. There's no rabies. There's no, the rabies doesn't exist. Oh, it's probably just worms in your dog. So if we don't, if we don't follow the deception wherever it leads, even if it leads into our own conference that we're going to. Especially if it leads to our own conference that we're going to, yeah. I like Daniel List over at Dark Journalist. He talks about this concept of there's the conspiracy, then there's the junk conspiracy, and then there's the truth. And they send out two versions to split people and then all is the truth.  This is real, let's sort of figure this out. And then there's the junk one, which is just sort of like airplane chaff. You know, this is set out to distract the missiles and send them a different direction so that, you know, so that, you know, they split the group. It's, it's, that's what I'm saying. You go up, you're going up against the best disinformation agents in the world. Cycle up people that understand how the human brain works. You're in a, you're in a great spot because you understand that better than most people. I am at a severe disadvantage and only learning and catching up to the extent that I can about how the human brain works.  And you go, oh my God, you know, like we're real. We think we're so tough and we think we're so solid and we think we're so married to our ideas. And then a guy in a lab coat with a clipboard comes around and next thing you know, you're cranking up the, the electrical currencies to your neighbor in the next room and cooking the guy, you know, because some guy with a lab coat told you to keep doing it or you're going to mess up the experiment. So I have come to learn how little I know through this whole thing. And I think that's kind of liberating. I, I, I, you know, from the beginning have wanted to make sure that I don't mislead anybody into thinking that I know more than I know. I tell people what I know. I tell people when I'm speculating and then I talk about educated guesses too. And so I reserve, you know, I reserve that right to be wrong. And in fact, if someone can prove to me that things are wrong, that's one step closer to me getting it right. So I sort of welcome that in a sense. I don't want to be wrong.  There's a lot of things I do really want to be wrong because to admit that this is true means to admit that this world is really broken in some ways. And, and so I don't like that. But at the same time, I don't think it's very noble to pretend like you, like that stuff doesn't exist. I think, I think that we, we do ourselves a disservice if we, if we sort of turn a blind eye to, to things.  Yeah, but it's the closest church to me. Okay, great. But are you willing to turn a blind eye to what's happening in there? Because I, I'm not, that's a line I have to draw is that when I see things like that, I try to speak out about them, not at Thanksgiving dinner anymore though. So I'm not really, I'm not really a psychology guy. If anything, I'm just kind of an anti psychology guy just kind of stumble over psychology to get to where I really want to be which is who am I, why am I here?  And that from someone who's not a Christian, I'm not a Christian used to be a Christian. You go understand the science of spirituality and what we know and you just can't maintain being a Christian. And if you think you can, then you're really not looking at the data. So I'm always about who am I, why am I here? And then that has led me to kind of stumble into psychology and why is psychology saying that there isn't a voice inside your head, that you're a meaningless, but if I was to take like the stuff that you're really good at, the political stuff, which you just nail. And again, you know, if people have forgotten the octopus of global control and I'm glad you kind of just touched on it briefly because then the second book too was the controlled demolition of the American Empire. That one I wrote with Burwick. And the third one, the third one that when we talked, you were working on a third one. This one, Hippocracy, Surviving in a World of Cultural Double Standards, where I put Uncle Sam in a straight jacket and a padded cell with Thorazine eyes and all of that. So that is your, that is your bailiwick. So here's kind of where another topic I'm gonna pivot on and wanna talk about that's more kind of in line with what you do. Cause just yesterday, I was talking to Johnny Bedmore and he's been on your show, you know? Yeah. Love it. Him and Whitney on Unlimited Hangout, phenomenal. I mean, just phenomenal work. Investigative journalism of first order that what it does for any of us who are been around a little while, you go, where did this go? Where did this stuff that used to really happen and be kind of the backbone of what we thought journalism was about, you know, at its core? That has just kind of disappeared, but it has.  And I wanna bounce some of these things off of you. Cause I look at the great reset thing and the Klaus Schwab thing, which I'm still amazed that, you know, I talk about normies. I can talk to people and go, well, you know, the great reset thing and there's a stereo. They don't know. You know, you will own nothing and you will be happy. And they're like, no. And I'm like, no, you got it. You don't have to know this stuff. But anyways, there is that, that still that level of kind of unknowing. So here's, here's Ray of hope, silver lining playbook kind of stuff that I'm gonna bounce off you. Let's start with you will own nothing and you will be happy. That to me is a ray of hope because clearly that is the absolute worst marketing slogan you could possibly come up with. You have to be so dumb. And it speaks to this idea that we think these guys are so brilliant and they have it all worked out and it's all gonna just play out their way. No, it did not when you come up with something that dumb.  It's like, dude, it's in your Twitter. We all got it with way back machine. We're looking at it right here. Well, this is the level of, you know, you will own nothing and you will be happy. That is silver lining. As a marketing major from the University of Southern California, I appreciate a good marketing campaign. The World Economic Forum's marketing campaign is garbage. It is an advertisement for global communism, the way you would sell a unbuilt high-rise building to a group of potential investors, right? You just, you go, it's a glossy marketing. You go, look, look at all of this. We're gonna have smart cities.  I actually gotta have a smart city, right?  And I go through their wholesale pitch and it's gonna be unicorns and rainbows and beautiful buildings and all this. And I think to myself, I bet this is similar to the pitch for communism back in for the Soviet Union.  And then the reality of the situation, it's like when you buy something online, right? You go, this doesn't look anything like what I bought online, you know?   The world economic forums ideas, their concept for this, is dumb. It's not, I'm with you on this. But doesn't that lift your spirits, Charlie? He explained this to me and I forget who it was, but it was a great point. It was, it might've been David Ike, but it was, they were talking about having a plan, talking about these guys having like a 10 step plan. And he said, you know, the thing is that like, you're here saying, well, they've got a 10 step plan and if they accomplish all this, it's over for us. But he's like, you gotta remember that if you trip them up on step two, they can't get to step three, four, five, six and seven. He said, and they're having a hard time with step one, which is getting everybody out of the gate to inject themselves with a experimental poison, you know, it's not going well when you have to incentivize people with laps around Talladega Speedway and lottery tickets and free donuts. That's an admission that this is clearly, I mean, you would hope, you would hope it's clearly not plan A, it has to be plan B or maybe even plan C. So with that in mind, knowing that you've kind of gummed up the operations early on in the first couple of steps of this process, that's tremendously inspirational to someone like me. He says, all right, well, if step 10 is locking the door on this digital prison, they're never gonna get there.  And by the way, they're on a timeline. It's 2030 is their benchmark agenda 2030. Bullshit, they can throw it any other timeline. The other way it's not going well is Charlie Robinson's blowing up and he's not the only one.  You look at Facebook, their model is failing, right? Their model is failing and they will not be rescued.   They fail in the marketplace. They don't do, Microsoft would be out of business if that guy didn't do Xbox. The fun pattern though, when you look at Facebook and you look at Microsoft.  No, I mean, he just bought it. I mean, he didn't have to steal it. I mean, it's stealing the same way that you got five other dorks in your dorm room that have written the code and don't know what to do with it. And you say, hey, can I use that? And the only way, I kind of, my undergraduate was information systems then I got an MBA and then I went back to get a PhD in artificial intelligence. And halfway through, I go, screw this, I need to start a company into artificial intelligence. But the only way I got through that was stealing other people's computer programs that have bugs in them and fix the bugs because I couldn't write the program and I wasn't a good typist and I was dyslexic. It just isn't good when you leave a comm in the wrong place but I could figure out the problem so I could just take somebody else's program and go, oh, you got it 90% right, I'll just fix this and this and I can turn it in before you get yours in. Yeah, it's funny that also you look at these parallels between the Rockefellers and Gates and you go, well, they both had this like monopolistic hold over an industry until the government got involved and government got involved and broke them up into these pieces, which I think with the Rockefellers, I think a case could be made that it was better for them that they got broken up into these pieces and they start the antitrust suits with Microsoft in the late 90s and they go through all that stuff and what comes out as a result of both of these cases, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as these PR vehicles to clean up their image and also let's be real honest, they're tax shelters too. So you can find the answer, you put your money over there and then use that as a vehicle to drive your agendas under the guise of saving the world, right? That's a paid two. You're also allowed to invest that money and you don't have to pay any taxes on it either. So if you think about that from a, and you can invest that money and sometimes you can find creative ways without even a lot of thinking about it to enrich your non foundational kind of things, right? So now you invest in all these things to save the planet and genetically understand greater and all this.  So that's, yeah. Very convenient the way that's set up. Yeah, there's a lot of this happening and look and it leads us into this world economic forum group who they've taken the concepts, which I think are probably anchored in decency. Like we're going to fix these problems with the world. We're going to transform this world. We're going to raise up the living standards of these people. It's all horseshit, of course, but the idea that you would collectively take your, the benefits that you have of being a very wealthy person from making all of this money, from starting a transformational technology company and you're going to partner up with other people that have also had great success and you guys are going to use the methodology that you use to make your companies great. You're going to use that to fix the world. In theory, sounds great, right? A case can be made that if you have like an altruistic, if these are actually good guys, that the idea is, look, I mean, who do you want to help make this world better? Some guy that can't keep a job at Long John Silver's for more than a couple of weeks or do you want a guy that knows how to build businesses, you know? Because we, and you go, well, yeah, definitely we would want the guy that knows how it all works. The problem is these people are so, they're not, they don't want what we want. And they have a skewed world view. And I'm going to challenge that. This is the conversation we had last time, which was so excellent. And you have the ability to be so nuanced in the way you talk about this stuff, which is so refreshing because a lot of times we don't hear that.  And what we talked about is, you know, which I threw on the table last time was like, yeah, it's horrible, you know? It to enslave these people in a different way.  You do keep the commies out. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. And if you look at the World Economic Forum and not look at it through the lens of what you just said, but look at it as like, and this is what I told Johnny, Johnny Bedmore. I said, you know, the silver lining thing in this is that I was all worried that this was a new world order, globalist kind of thing. And I'm comforted somehow that this is a Henry Kissinger CIA thing. I get it. It's just make America great again. Oh, okay, you know, I'm more on board now that that's what it is. Yeah, there's a financial component in this for them. And that actually is, like you said, it makes it the new world order part where they've got all the money in the world and they're not necessarily in front.  Exactly. The World Economic Forum people, which they're saying, wouldn't it be great if we can convince everybody that they can only shop at the company store and we'll build the company store so we can make all this money? That is different. That's them. Take it one step further and see what you think of this, Charlie. So what reveals itself to me is that one Klaus is a protege of Henry Kissinger. Yes. And in following those footsteps, again, it's kind of more like a make America great kind of thing. It's like world domination thing. And if you look at the World Economic Forum and you look at Russia, and again, the guys that eliminated hang out did a great job of this. Cause Russia took Putin, World Youth Leader or whatever that thing is after you. He was on the ends and now he's on the outs, right?  Tried to scrub that he was a part of that. But if you look what Russia wants to do with it, they want to go full commie with it. They hear the whole thing and they're like, this is great, are you kidding me? We have more surveillance cameras than anyone. We can put this in place. Oh, this idea of this passport, this vaccine pass, super, we can do that tomorrow. And this idea of locking everybody up, got it. And then all of a sudden, they go do Ukraine and we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, pull back on that now, bro. Because what I suspect, and this is what I guess I'd like to hear you, your thought on it is, what's really at play here is that we are gonna continue to control the US crypto. We want that crypto to be our crypto, the US crypto. And Russia, you wanna talk about linking up with, you talking to China over there? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Talking about going down to Brazil and you know, and you're gonna do the, no, no, no, no, no. There's only one crypto guys. It's USA, USA, and that's how we want it. And so, China, we took the chips away from them. You see where we, who knows? I don't want to use the word Biden because I don't know what that really means that puppet that's there. But did you see him where he pulled the chips, the AI chips and he pulled all the people out and stuff like that? Those two things in concert of slapping down Putin from the World Economic Forum, scrubbing him from that. And then China is to say, that's what it says to me is that, you know, we'll play all this shell game with all this stuff that you think we're doing. But what we're really about is the US fiat crypto has to, we have to own that. The octopus book comes out, right? There's eight tentacles in it. And everyone, I just go out and I start doing press for it. And people say, so what's the most dangerous tentacle? And I think everybody assumes, I'm gonna say the military. And what I say is the banking. The banking tentacle is the most dangerous component. And here we go.  We go, we have Britain Woods. We wind up going off the gold standard at some point and watching the value of this currency just start to collapse. We did a very good job of controlling the world through our dollar system. And those days are coming to an end. And that's what Berwick and I not, well, that's what Berwick and I talked about. The end of the petrodollar situation. I think that this has ramifications. And you see this, we're talking about Russia and we're talking about China. We're talking about these two being forced due to these worldwide sanctions, being forced Russia to look for partners for a variety of things, their oil. And also the swift banking system that they were kicked off of. And China, this happened to China. China built their own version of that. Russia thought about doing that in 2014. And I think they did, to a certain extent, build a version. But when they were thrown off of that swift platform, they said to the Chinese, can we work with you on clearing these international wire funds? And they said, sure, no problem. We'll do it with us. We, I say we, because it's not we, but it's the West I think is making a miscalculation with the Russia thing. Because they're forcing Russia into tighter relationships with China. And China has a very, I'd say, prominent relationship with Saudi Arabia. And this all matters for the dollar in the end because I can envision a scenario in which Xi's representatives, or maybe even himself, are in Saudi Arabia talking to that, to MBS and his group and saying, listen, you got this petrodollar situation, but that's the 70s. That's when America is buying 2.5 million barrels of oil a day from you guys, reasonable to have that. They only buy about 400,000 barrels a day. You know who buys 2.5 million barrels a day from you guys? We, the Chinese, we do. Why don't we do something? Why don't we do this? Why don't we modernize this arrangement? Why don't we get away from the petrodollar and move to the Petro you want? Now, it sounds crazy, of course. And it sounds like something that would never happen. And it would never happen if you had the Bush family and that whole regime with their tight relationship with the Saudis still in control. But you've got Joe Biden. And like you said, whatever that means, Joe Biden, whoever's wearing the Joe Biden mask, and they don't have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia. They're not strong. They're sort of embarrassed. I can foresee, and I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I'm saying I could foresee that conversation happening where Saudi Arabia starts to think, well, really, our best partner here are the Chinese. We can work with them. And America's sort of going the wrong direction here. I would say, though, as I have that thought about the whole scenario, there is one thing that makes me think that it wouldn't happen. And that is that the Saudis are crystal clear on how America would react to something like that. I think that they would be terrified of what America would do in retaliation for something like that. Have you ever been to Russia? No.  They're four times.  China? I have not been to China. I've been to Taiwan. Been to Shanghai. It's weird. They ain't going to win. It just doesn't work. It runs itself out in the same way. Like we talk about North Korea and stuff like that, and we talk about the world's greatest golfer. You know? The great leader, Kim, was a five-hole in ones, and it's where it's fed however long that goes. As crazy as our system is, our system seems to come out on top because it promotes this kind of freewheeling capitalism. Russia is not going to win.  And I can't believe that people paper over that, like Oliver Stone. I just heard him the other day.  You can't see through the Putin thing. Right, just having fun here. Are you aware of this? Are you aware of the Biden chips thing? Let me read this into the show. In short, the Biden administration wants to prevent, take that out. They already did, prevent by executive order and by physically pulling workers, US workers in China and telling them, you better go home if you're working for any chip people in China. Wants to prevent China from buying the world's best chips and machines to make them. These chips will power not only the next generation of military, but also AI technologies, which is what this is really about, but also make sales driving vehicles, blah, blah, blah. They actually did this. Oil is great, but think chips. And then who's manufacturing 70% of the world's chips, these very, very high-end chips, which are all that matters. I mean, if you're manufacturing the chips that go into toys, have at it. We'll let China do that all day long. Vacuum cleaners and all that stuff. You keep doing that all day long, but the AI that's really already CPT chat and is running, we can see it in our face is running the world, that you're not going to have. And even if you think Taiwan, you're kind of missing the point because IBM is the one who's actually designing the chips. So again, I think, looking at the chessboard one step back, I'm encouraged, I get this. This is Make America Great Again. We're gonna kick your ass, Empire, which is horrible in all the confessions of an economic hitman kind of way, but it's the world we live in and we better hope that we do stay on top because the other people who would take over and who we would see on top, we don't want to be on top even worse. No, it's, I would have a hard time living under a Chinese dictatorial power structure. I mean, I think that's putting it mildly. This is the devil I know, the white devil I know here in America, as opposed to the other, the devil that you don't know, which I don't see, look, I don't see, I don't see the Klaus Schwab group getting the traction that they want, but I do have very big fears about the Rockefeller United Nations groups and what they want and that relationship with China has been something that they've been growing for a very long time, for a while, at least I guess since the 70s with Nixon and David Rockefeller and Kissinger going up over there and opening up that sort of door to us. I've read too much and heard too much about this pivot to China being sort of, well, they're gonna take the next phase of this and I'm obviously concerned. I don't like the idea of any empire, but like you said, if you've got to pick one, well, if I'm in America, the American empire at least theoretically would kill me last, I suppose. I don't know, maybe that's not, maybe that's an incorrect calculation. Whatever progress we could make in terms of reversing the forces of that empire, much better chance of doing it with our empire than somebody else's. For sure, for sure. And China is taking this, you know, like the social credit component of this which I'd say is a factor in this world economic forum. It's really being test driven in China. And I remember reading years ago about Shenzhen, the city of Shenzhen, having, I think they said, you know, millions and millions, not just cameras, but facial recognition cameras. And they talked about this example of a guy getting on a, waiting to get on a bus and he lights up, so he gets on the bus comes, he gets on the bus, he lights up a cigarette. Facial recognition cameras in the bus catch him, see who he is, figure it out. It's illegal to smoke on the bus. The fine is, let's just say $10 or whatever.  You were fined $10. It was deducted already from your Weibo account which is like a Chinese PayPal. And you have been marked down for that. Re-education program. Yeah, those years ago, right? So this idea that, you know, well sometime in the future, they're going to do, the future's now depending on where you are on this planet. And that scares me because that, where I take a look at that and I go, oh, like I see the dystopian breadcrumbs leading to where it's going. But yet, another person who doesn't know what we are talking about, doesn't understand, hasn't thought about this, you know, a couple of steps ahead as to where this empire is going. They see that and they go, oh, that'll be great because then nobody will be smoking on the bus anymore.   We don't allow, in Southern California, we don't allow it on the beach. I know. It's already over the top. Hey man, you're out on the beach. You want to let him know. So, but here's two more silver lining playbooks. One is Kissinger and one is Frederick Douglass. And I guess I'll go Frederick Douglass. I bring them up all the time.  Again, I'm not Christian. I don't know what satanic means, but when you get that thought in your head that that's okay to enslave another person, to take their infant out of their arms and go sell that to, you know, torture and sadistic and all that. And I guess that goes two ways for me. One, it goes we have to own our fricking history. And Black Lives Matter may be a total scam and it is, but it points to a reality that we lived through that. And then we fought a war over it and then we let the Ku Klux Klan do it for another hundred years. And we did it again and again and again and decision and law and world economic forum after world economic forum, which we had 50 of them back then.  And my mom grew up in Tennessee and she remembers when she was a kid that there were colored drinking fountains. So this isn't like a million years ago. This isn't like something where we're digging out in the desert and looking at sediment layers and going, oh, it looks like there was slavery 400,000 years ago. Like there's people that remember this and these concepts and it's disgusting for sure. And so, but here we go. You can have a concept like this that needs to be examined, the treatment of all sorts of people, not just Blackfield, but the treatment of all sorts of people. And you can wanna have that conversation and then here comes the media and they hijack it and next thing you know, it's Black Lives Matter. It's not the problem.  Whatever that means, that is satanic and the same thing is happening now. And this is a spiritual battle. Again, I'm not a Christian folks, but if you're not thinking about it on that level, then it's Black Lives Matter and reparations and political issues. It's like, no, it's like, how could that happen? How could someone's soul allow them to do that to another human being? And once we begin to understand that, we go, oh, that's what the Chinese want. They're tapping into that same energy. That's what Klaus Schwab wants. That's how we can get into this mode of thinking we want to satisfy that need to control, to dominate, to do. If we don't go there, then we're always gonna be talking about the mansions that they bought from Black Lives Matter and we can get riled up about that. We're never gonna get to the core issues. Yeah, it's human beings are capable of some horrible stuff but a lot of times we have to get whipped up into it or you have to learn the idea of how you treat other people.  So my worldview from growing up there was that that was all just kind of normal. It wasn't my thing, but it was relatively normal. But just a few thousand miles away where my mom grew up in Tennessee, it was very abnormal. That would not, like the relationship that the people have with one another, same country, theoretically the same types of people, right? Living through the same era, vastly different views on what is acceptable in society and what is not. And now we're in a place where the information war, the media is putting thoughts in people's heads, kids, younger and younger, that the planet is overburdened and the best thing to do is to kill themselves and not contribute to this carbon or definitely don't have kids and all of these things.  Would you ever think of that if it wasn't for the media pumping that in? No, of course not. It never crossed your mind. So we've got a battle that's raging on multiple fronts. You mentioned the spiritual battle, for sure a spiritual. I'm sure you and Sam talked about that on zero. It's a spiritual battle, man, 100%. It's an information war. Who's got the best information? And if you don't have the best information, can you at least suppress the other guy's best information? What can you do there? Culture war, everybody's trans, everybody's non-binary and the planet is gonna end. They've gotten people so anxious and so screwed up that they don't even trust the planet that they're living on. They don't even know what's going on. So as a writer, sitting in the bleachers, watching this whole thing, fascinated. As a human being that has to participate in it, pretty terrifying and especially one that has a kid who's going to have to navigate this world. And it's like, how do I teach my daughter how to navigate this world when I'm still trying to figure out what the best strategy is for navigating this? And I know some of the easy ones stay away from the media but you might detach yourself from the media but everybody that you're interacting with hasn't. So they're all getting their information from the media. So it's a really weird landscape right now to try and navigate. And the more I look at this, I find bits and pieces where I feel optimistic and I say, okay, well the plan isn't coming together as they would like it to. And then I look around and I go, but if the plan is also to scramble the brains of a lot of young kids and get them feeling like all hope is lost, well then that plan is being kind of accomplished it seems. I'm not, I mean, have you felt that or do you feel that like they're working on a young generation? I absolutely. And I listened to your show recently, your excellent, excellent show on Ask Thaspin Institute. Is that what it has been? Yeah, yeah. Phenomenal, you know, and they're going for the kids, you know, they're directly targeting the kids. And it's very depressing. And that's why I'm hitting you really hard with this Silverlighting Playbook kind of theme kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Because you could... Warm me up a little bit to... Well, not exactly, Shelley. One, you are awesome. Like there are very few people that can stay in this kind of dialogue with this without just kind of melting down or, you know, and you're totally engaged, which is great. And I don't know if I'm right, you know, obviously. You know, we're... I don't know if I'm right either. We're all trying to figure it out. But I think if we... I think you believe that I'm coming from the right place, even if there is an issue that we disagree with. And I believe you are coming from the right place. That's a lot better than most people, I would say, that are in conversations with one another. Well, that's an awesome part of it. The real part for me is that I believe in your data because you support it, you know.  And the other thing that I've said is like the deception. You're open to the deception. When people just bring the data and they can't interpret it because they don't understand this paradigm of deception that's going on, both intentional and self-deception too. And they're not able to sort through any of that. Then it's kind of a pretty flat conversation very quickly. Well, you get complacent and you start thinking you're right and always, always right. I'm always maybe, I don't know if paranoid's the right word. I'm always expecting challenges. And I like that to my belief. And I like that because it keeps me sharp. And it keeps me saying, if I have to defend this, can I? If I'm gonna say something crazy. And I don't mind saying something crazy, but if I say something crazy, am I just saying it to try and make people say, well, okay, so it's crazy things. Cause I don't really wanna do that. I have to be able to defend it. And so I like a little- It's that intellectual competitiveness. Were you, you said you did soccer, right? All the way through college? I played soccer in high school and college. And I played baseball in high school and tried out in college, but they were pre-season ranked number one in the nation. So I wasn't making that team. Yeah, but you're competitive. But I tried that because I had to know. Where was, what college was it? USC. USC, yeah. Well, so to me, I think that's an interesting crossover too. So I played sports and I played football and I played college. I played college football out of scholarship. It wasn't a very big school, but I think that- Playing college and playing football in college is a big deal because- Well, it was wonderful and all that stuff. But it's like, you know, when you do, that's one thing that you can't relate to with Rogan and some of these other guys. You know, competitive. Competitive. You don't wanna lose. Intellectually competitive.  And you notice how that's another thing that's been kind of beaten out of the system. You know, I mean, I'm kind of kid about the participation trophy, but it's all over the place. To me, it's like, I couldn't believe when people pushed back on me getting on people or arguing with people. It's like, bro, what are you talking about? Everyone's opinion doesn't matter. You don't really think everyone's opinion matters. You don't live your life like the woman wearing the double mask driving or BMW has just as valid opinion as you do. You don't think that. So why do you wanna pretend like that's a value that you wanna promote?  I went through that with trying to bring up 9-11 at Thanksgiving dinner table. They challenged me on it and I fold it because I wasn't prepared. And I learned some valuable lessons about how you do that, what not to do, but you gotta have that. You gotta go through this.  When you mentioned people's opinions not mattering as much. Yeah, I'm not trying to say I have it all figured out and I'm not trying to say that my opinion is the only one, but like you said, if I see somebody who's double masked in their car driving around with the windows rolled up by themselves, I recognize that they don't have the level of information. They're not working off the same source material that I'm working off of. And I think my material is better than theirs and I will challenge them because I can back up the material that I'm working with and I don't think they can do the same. So you're right, not everybody's opinion matters to the, you know, not everybody's opinion is valid. Let's just be honest.   So I'm not trying to say that that's them and I'm something else. We've all done that, but with regard to these important world events and whatnot, I am always expecting somebody to push back and challenge it because it all sounds so crazy and I'll give them that, it does sound crazy. The first time I heard about these topics and concepts and events that weren't exact exactly as we were told, it sounded crazy to me too. But just because something sounds crazy doesn't mean it isn't true. It doesn't mean that there isn't truth behind it. And like your show challenges people to really start thinking about this. And you know what's funny is that there aren't a whole lot of people out there challenging others to think. And that I think is a huge problem. Okay, so you've been awesome. I really, really, really do appreciate you. I appreciate you, like they say. And then I appreciate you doing this. I appreciate you personally and all the ways in between. How do we make the world better in 2023? What can we do from you?  How do we, I have some ideas on things that might change the world, AI and all the rest of that. But what do you think, what can we do? Well, look, first thing we've got to do is we've got to get real honest with ourselves about where we are and what we're facing and what we're up against. This idea that you can turn on the television and the television is your friend and you can turn on the news and the news is going to tell you what's going on in the world in 30 minutes. That needs to, I mean, it seems obvious to us and your listeners, my listeners. I mean, they know we're not, we're not doing that. But there is a, you've won that. You've, you've, I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on a limit. You don't want to, you've already won that battle in a substantial way. You've made the gains, you know, to kind of circle. So yeah, no one, no one's, look at the numbers. No one watches CNN. Everyone watches Rogan and Rogan is a huge step towards Charlie Robinson. If you do Rogan, then you have no problem swimming in the water with Charlie Robinson. So let's give that as a given. What do we really do to battle the octopus, to get the octopus in the jar?  You know, how do we get it in the tank, in the jar or whatever? Well, what, what do people see the first, the first step in, in recovery is acknowledging that you have a problem, right? So if we can get the first, we give people to recognize that there is a problem, that there is a concerted effort, a coordinated group of people that are actively trying to benefit themselves, their own self-interest.   Okay, yeah. Okay, get over that. It is happening. What are we gonna do? Well, there's some very practical things we can do, like from a financial standpoint. I mean, when a lot of people don't really think about money, they don't think about their money. They don't think about the concept of it and how it's created and where it is and what it's doing. You know, understanding that your federal reserve notes that are in your pocket are promises that are backed up by not just, not, it used to be gold. Now it's just a promise to not get invaded by the United States military and all of that. Get a realistic view of how economically the world works and try to the extent that you can to move yourself out of the way so that you don't get hit by this gigantic tidal wave, which is an inflation of the money supply, lowering value of your dollar and things like that. Money is important in the sense that, you know, you can, you need it to navigate this current paradigm that we're living in, but it's not the only thing, but understanding it, I think puts you in a better scenario. Look, start being proactive as opposed to reactive. In this society, especially in America, we get pretty soft and we get pretty used to. Yesterday was normal, today is normal, therefore tomorrow will be normal and maybe it will be and I hope it is, but there's no guarantee about that. So start thinking conspiratorial, start thinking like a paranoid person a little bit. So that might come in some different forms as it relates to money. Maybe you say, well, look, I've got money in the bank, but I don't really trust the bank.  I'm just gonna transform it from being US Federal Reserve notes into silver coins or gold coins or something along this. I'm just going to change it. I'm just gonna change the way it's made up so that I'm not, I don't have all of my eggs in one economic basket, be that a currency basket or a national, you know, United States basket or whatever. So I like the people that are thinking along the lines of diversifying out of the current financial system. And this is actually what kind of started me on the second book with Burwick, who does the dollar vigilante and the crypto vigilante was we were talking about, he was talking about the financial system and how it's, it really, when you look at it, it's a house of cards and it's been held together with duct tape and all that good stuff. But you can only do that for so long before your, before everything kind of comes unglued.  And I would agree with him on that. So why do you guys continue to beat that drum that you've beat forever? I mean, let's look at it from another perspective. Let's look at it as a global competition, right? Everyone's got their crypto. Crypto is equivalent to fiat currency, right? So the only thing you wanna do, they've already kind of schooled you in how to do it with whole FTX. You just gotta pick the best crypto. Right now, the best crypto in the world is the US dollar. Where are you gonna, where else, where else are you gonna put your crypto? It's the best bet going right now. I'm just saying that there's ways around, if you have more money than you know what to do with and you're looking to diversify out by land, yeah, by productive farmland. And this is, but again, now I get into my real estate world, which is where I've been for 25 years and people was like, well, what do you think about real estate? I would say, I would say, hold off in America, hold off on the houses because we're going to see corrections there. But on the flip side, I would say I'm bullish on land, on a specially productive farmland. Anything that grows food, anything that grows, you know, orchards, things like that, what you're smiling, I know you want to jump in here. Well, I just think it's the soccer, you know? It's soccer, baseball, it's a scramble, dude. It's a scramble, investment advice. The investment advice is be a better investor than the other guy.  That's what investment is about. It's a zero-sum game. You buy the stock or you short the stock. Someone wins, someone loses. And that's cool thing about money. So when we talk about it as if it's something different, I think we're immediately on the wrong foot.  Right now we're in a great situation. You know, if you were a global investor and you had to park that money someplace, where would you put it? Would you put it in China right now? Would you put it in Europe right now? Would you put it in Japan right now? You're running out of options. You'd put it in the USA. That's where you'd put it. Just not if you're totally dispassionate about origin or loyalty or anything like that. It's just clearly the best right now. It could change, but... Well, the dollar is dominant. For the currencies. And how is it currency? And how has the dollar done in the last few years? The dollar has done well in the last few years. Yeah, actually it's done well. I mean, everything else is slipping. But I would say it is the smartest kid in the special ed class right now. Well, we only have one classroom. I don't love it long term. I don't love the inflationary component of it. I don't like the Fed. I don't like any of that stuff. I think that that stuff is a house of cards waiting to collapse. But they took away your option, which you knew they were going to take away. You knew they weren't going to let Bitcoin and crypto ever threaten them in any way. So you want to talk about the short lifespan. It's, you know, it just, it can't, why?  And it's who's the head of the game and cybersecurity. You're just going to let this, you're going to let this Bitcoin thing just, you know, run, run its own. No, you wouldn't. I mean, if you could, if you could stop it, you would. Wouldn't you? If you're the guy in charge of the US dollar, if you could stop it, you would. This is where I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to the technology component behind it. Because I don't know the sort of, I'm not the programmer that you are and that everyone else, you know, they say, well, it's, you know, it's this security, whether it's Bitcoin or Monero or something that has all these, you know, the privacy features baked into it. I'm really unqualified to say, oh, well, this is uncrackable or something like that.  So I wouldn't ever say that I don't think that that's a possibility. I would definitely agree that the United States government, if they find a way to compromise crypto or control it or crack it or however you want to phrase it, if they have the opportunity to do so, they will do so for sure. There's nothing in their past that leads me to believe that they would not try to influence that. I wouldn't expect that. Well, you remember the test case? To me, you just look at the evidence, follow the data, right? So I forget the couple, but we can easily find it. I looked it up, it was Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein and they stole $8 billion in Bitcoin. They traced it down. Everyone said, well, they'll never get it because it's untraceable. No, they traced them down. You can go watch the documentary. I saw it on American Grid with Stacy Keach. It's so interesting because of his back. It's a great show. I love that show. But they found that they already, in doing that, in winning that case, they kind of played their hand, which is like, you're sitting back thinking your Bitcoin is somehow secure. Well, it's secure only to the extent that we don't go looking. Because if we want to go looking, we know where it's at. We know what transactions you made. We know where you spend it. So great. You want to put it there or you want to put it in the bank or you want to put it and go, I don't care, but we're tracking it. Yeah. Well, anything that threatens that sort of established system, clearly they're going to want to come after. And I don't blame them.  And look, crypto is one component that we're dealing with. They're starting and you may, and you can, let's just say, you can get to a point where you can compromise crypto. You can compromise Bitcoin. I would say that a bigger component of this is that they're trying to just compromise ideas. They're trying to get people so disconnected from reality that they're, they don't know what to do. They throw their hands up and go, daddy government, just tell me what to think. Tell me what to believe. Tell me where to go. What to do. I'm so tired of all of this. There's a lot of people in this world that need to be told what to do. It's a reality you come to much later in life. I think as a kid, you're always, you're told what to do because of your parents. And then you grow up and you go, well, when I'm an adult, then I get to tell other people what to do.  And they never grow out of that. And the government is perfect with their partners in the media for deciding that they're going to be the ones to tell you how to feel or tell you how to what to do or to stand with Ukraine or do this and put this in your, there's a hundred genders and you could be cake gender and men have periods and that's totally fine. And you need to be, people are getting to the point now where they reality, biology, these are like, these are subjective concepts that are easily, that people say, well, biology is subjective. You go, really? It is, it's totally subjective. You can just pretend that you're somebody else. That's interesting. How does that work? What is your passport? What does your passport say? Does your passport say male or female or does it say cake gender? So there's all of these new ideas out there. And the new ideas are that nobody knows anything. Everything's free form. You can be whatever you want. I'm going to identify as a salamander tomorrow. And that's normal and stunning and brave. And if you question that, then you're the problem.  And it feels like we're diverging from reality at a really alarming pace. And that to me, you ask like, where do we go in the future? And what are we optimistic about? There's a lot of us and few of them. We're going to work this thing out. I'm optimistic in this sense. Human beings are amazing. When we get together, we know what's best for us and we know what's, you know, I'm not worried that we're going to make it through this. I think we're going to make it through it. But boy, there is a battle for the minds of these young people out there to try and get them to believe unbelievable things. And I really worry about that. And I'm not worried about myself so much. I'm just worried about the new generation that is viewing victimhood as some sort of something to be elevated. I've described it as the victimization to cathalon where it's like, oh yeah, well, you think you've got it bad. Well, listen to me, I'm a non-binary, one-legged Eskimo with ADHD and I take all these boxes and everyone's like, oh wow. So I think that that's a sickness. I think that's a long term for society that's not healthy that we're going down that path. So I do have some fears about that. But overall, look, we're the ants. They're the grasshoppers in this scenario. There's so many more of us than there are of them. We just, and we don't need, you've seen the studies, you don't need 100% of the people to get on board with the plan. You need 3%. You need a surprisingly small percentage of people to figure this out and then cultural norms start shifting back. And of course, let's not forget about this societal whiplash effect of cultures where you get so crazy one side that it snaps back the other side. So there's that sanity wave that we hope will be coming over us at some point soon. So there's a lot to be worried about, to be fair, but we're on such an amazing planet. It's so magical. And I've had the ability to travel, I'm sure you have too, and you get around and you get out into these places that are quiet and you go. If I didn't know about the World Economic Forum, I wouldn't know about the World Economic Forum. I'd be sitting here in this picnic table here on Maui on my 50th birthday looking out over the water going, none of that stuff's bothering me right now. Maybe it's all in my head. And maybe they want it that way. Beautiful, beautiful, so, so cool. How do people keep it going for everything that you're doing and keep being inspired by the information that you're bringing forward? Always with a little bit of humor, with an upbeat tone, not doom and gloom. You have an amazing ability to deliver some hard facts in a way that doesn't totally suck all the energy out of you. So what's coming up for you? How do people stay focused in on what you're doing? Well, first of all, thank you for that. I try to deliver this bad news in a way that doesn't sound so bad because I don't think it's at the end of the world. I do believe I am optimistic. I think we can get through all of this. I like to, I don't respond well to the real scary stories. I always liked the John Stewart show, the Daily Show when John Stewart was doing it because he would talk about, he'd give you kind of the news but there'd be a funny undertone to it.  I would understand the serious nature of what he was talking about and I liked getting my information that way.   So macro aggressions as a podcast goes out twice a week, once as a monologue, once as an interview and in audio format, wherever podcasts are served and in video format on band.video and Rockfin and Odyssey and vigilante.tv because these are the only places where I can't, you know, I can't be on YouTube anymore. They've made that decision for me. I think we should retest that. I'm gonna talk about that when we, we're gonna talk about that when we hang up. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I'm open to that. And in the books, well, the website is the octopus of globalcontrol.com. You can find my books there. I'm gonna be speaking, like you mentioned, at Anarcapulco with a bunch of interesting characters and we're gonna see what happens there. But look, I appreciate you personally. I appreciate the show, the conversations. It's, I don't have it all figured out, man.  I'm not gonna read it because it's a couple paragraphs but it goes something like this. It's Stephen Bassett, we're mentioning UFOs. It's Stephen Bassett, the executive director of Paradigm Research Group, which normally focuses on UFOs, right? But he describes it as, he says, you're born into this world and you're given this box, this jigsaw puzzle box with 10,000 pieces in it. And this is the truth about reality. This is how it all works, right? And you're given this box when you come into this world and you go set about trying to figure out, put this puzzle together, right?  He says, but there's a problem. And the problem is that the government that you're living under has decided to interfere with your truth process. They've taken some of the pieces of your box and they've thrown them away. And he said, that's a problem. He says, but it gets even worse because they've taken a couple pieces out of other people's boxes and put them in your box. And now you go about your life with the understanding that if you can just put this puzzle together, it will be the way reality works. It will make all the sense in the world to you. But he says, you just don't have all the pieces. And so he said, it's very frustrating for human beings, but it's very effective for the state. And that just kind of reminded me of this. It's we're on this, you know, I've got my box and I'm putting these pieces together. But Alex, I don't even know if I've got all the right pieces, to be honest with you. And I'm trying to put this right. It looks like it's gonna fit. Sometimes it doesn't fit and that's okay. And we have to recognize that. So it is my hope and intention that through the rest of my journey on this planet that I either get some of these pieces put in the puzzle or I link up with people that have the pieces that I need for this puzzle. And they can have the pieces from my puzzle that don't fit too. I'll go, this goes both ways. So that I can try and make sense of this because the way it stands right now, it's very hard to figure out this world that we're living in. You are so awesome, buddy. Thanks again. Thank you.


Hey everyone, this is Dan. According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the U.S. government is approaching its ceiling on debts. If the ceiling is not raised by the Congress before June 1, 2023, the government might not be able to pay its employees or might even default on its debt payments. Many prominent figures in the financial sector, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also issued warnings about the danger of the U.S. government defaulting on its debts if the debt ceiling is not raised. Many people are worried that the stock market will collapse if the U.S. government default happens in the next few weeks. Are those concerns about the market justified? How bad would it get if the debt ceiling is not raised by June 1? We actually went through the same chapter in 2011 and 2013 when the Congress was laid in raising the debt ceiling. The stock market did drop in 2011 and 2013. Let's do a deep dive into those years to see how much the stock market dropped, as the Congress and the administration bickered over the debt ceiling. Let's look at 2011. The candlestick line here is the S&P ETF SPY. The green line here is the NASDAQ 100 ETF QQ. We can see that there is a big dip on the chart. Let's put the chronological events of 2011 on this chart. On April 18, S&P issued a negative outlook on the U.S. AAA Sovereign Debt Rating. Then on May 16, U.S. Treasury declared a debt issuance suspension period and utilized quote extraordinary measures and quote to acquire funds to meet federal obligations that did not require the issuance of new debt. On July 14, S&P issued a research update putting the U.S. debt on a 90-day credit watch. Then on July 16, Egan Jones Rating Company which is a smaller credit rating agency cut its rating for the U.S. government from AAA to AA+. On August 2, the budget ceiling was lifted finally after the House passed the Budget Control Act on August 1 and the Senate passed the same Act on August 2. But on August 5, S&P downgraded U.S. Sovereign Debt 1 notch from AAA to AA+, with a negative outlook. On August 8, following the announcement on Friday August 5, all three major stock indices declined between 5 and 7% in just one day. That was a big drop. As you can see, the big drop of the stock market did not happen until S&P downgraded debt rating of U.S. Sovereign Debt. If you like what you've seen so far, I'd like to suggest for you to click the like, subscribe and notification buttons because that will enable you to receive notification when I post my next video. It will also encourage me to make more videos like this in the future. We have a lot of important stuff to cover. Let's continue. Between the maximum in May and the minimum in August of 2011, SPY dropped 17% and the NASDAQ 100 ETF QQ dropped 15%. Those were pretty steep drops. In 2013, we ran into the debt ceiling problem again. The U.S. government actually had to begin a partial shutdown on October 1 in order to reduce expenses. On October 16, the Senate passed the Continuing Appropriations Act to fund the government until January 15, 2014 and suspending the debt ceiling until February 7, 2014, thereby ending the 2013 government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis. On October 17, the following day, DAGON Global Credit Rating downgraded the United States from A to A- and maintained a negative outlook on the country's credit. However, unlike the 2011 S&P downgrade, the DAGON Global Downgrade did not make a dent in the market. Between the peak in September to the bottom of October 2013, SPY dropped 4.3% and QQQ dropped 3.2%. The drop was nowhere nearly as severe as 2011. Maybe that's because a major rating agency like S&P had not downgraded U.S. sovereign debts in 2013. What are the credit ratings for U.S. sovereign debts today? S&P's credit rating for the United States stands at double A-plus with a stable outlook. S&P has not downgraded U.S. sovereign debts since after the 2011 downgrade. Moody's credit rating for the U.S. was last set at triple A with stable outlook. Triple A is Moody's top rating. Fitch's credit rating for the U.S. was last reported at triple A with stable outlook. Triple A is also Fitch's top rating. DBRS's credit rating for the United States is triple A with stable outlook. Again, triple A is DBRS's top rating. Overall, the U.S. credit ratings today are pretty good. To understand a big picture, we need to be aware of a few historical events. As you might recall from a few pages ago, on August 5th, 2011, S&P downgraded U.S. sovereign debts one notch to double A-plus with a negative outlook. Then on August 17th, New York Times reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether the nation's largest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008. Some people felt that this investigation was in retaliation to S&P downgrade of U.S. government's credit rating in 2011. Then on August 22nd, S&P replaced its president, Devin Sharma. Finally, four years later, on February 3rd, 2015, the Justice Department and state partners secured $1.375 billion settlement with S&P for defrauding investors in the lead up to the financial crisis. Coincidentally, S&P never downgraded U.S. debts again since after 2011. In my opinion, it is not likely for a major credit agency like S&P to downgrade U.S. debt in 2023 unless a few catastrophic events happen. What are those catastrophic events that could lead to a downgrade by the S&P? First, if the government goes through a partial shutdown for more than three weeks. Why three weeks? That's because 2013 partial shutdown lasted 15 days and that did not result in a credit downgrade back in 2013. Another catastrophic event would be if the government defaults on some of its debt payments. Historically, the U.S. government has never defaulted on its debt payment. In my opinion, in the next two to three weeks, S&P is not likely to drop more than 5% from today even with the debt ceiling issues. What are my investment strategies? I sold some of my long positions on May 16 to lock in profits because I expected some last-minute suspense in the debt ceiling negotiation between the Biden administration and Republican congressional leaders. Now, if the debt ceiling is lifted in the next few days, before June 1, I will buy long positions such as SPXL, T-TQQ, ASML, AMD, Alphabet, or MVO, which is Novo Nordus, a pharmaceutical company, because I expect the stock market to shoot up if the debt ceiling is lifted. If the debt ceiling is not lifted by June 1, I might short the market by buying SBXS or S-TQQ, and I will update my Twitter subscribers almost on a daily basis about my trades and about the latest development. At this point, I'd like to suggest that you're subscribed to my Twitter account, which is DanMarketL. I've been providing my Twitter subscribers frequent updates on important news related to the stocks that I follow. I also share with my Twitter subscribers about some of my trades. For example, on April 25, because Microsoft and Alphabet beat earnings estimates, I bought SPXL aftermarket at 3% below my sell price on April 17. And then two days later, I sold three quarters of the SPXL share at 3.5% gain. And then on May 16, I sold the SPXL shares I bought on May 11 at 1.1% gain. I also sold ASML shares at 2.2% gain and sold NVIDIA shares at 9.9% gain. I mentioned that the market rebound on that day might fizzle out if the debt ceiling is not raised by June 1, 2023. That's why I was taking profit on May 16. Thank you for watching all the way here. I'd like to remind you again to click the like, subscribe, and notification button. And as usual, I very much welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. I'd like to remind you that I'm not a financial advisor. I share my stock trading strategies and analyses for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you want to buy or sell stocks, you should make your own decisions and you should definitely consult with your financial advisors before you do so. That wraps up my video for now. I will chat with you again in the next few days. In the meanwhile, I'd like to wish you the very best of luck with your financial investments.


Say hello to my little friend. Say hello to my little friend. Say hello to my little friend. Say hello to my little friend. Say hello to my little friend. Say hello to my little friend. Say hi to my little friend.  Fly, Pelicans! Check out all those on Instagram, Twitter, for more juicy content. Threads! Thank you very much for your support on Patreon. Follow the Twitter account and subscribe to the like button. And it really is great to be with you. Today we have a quick video. This is called Crazy Moments in Cricket. What? They're crazy! Oh! They're nutbags! That's all I know of it. Rick'em, rock'em, rick'em, rock'em. Get that ball and really fight! Here we go. Someone had a good breakfast that day. He's your practicing. Why can't I do that? What? This is a jingle too. Is this an account? Oops. Wait. Oops. Oops. He went too far. Oh, it's like stealing a base, but... I've heard it all before. That's typical, Matt Wood. That is typical, Matt Wood. Typical, Matt Wood. Leg side. Just lying short. What? Right for short. It'll be $400. I don't understand why this is expensive. All the way. He's fallen over. From that side. You got to explain why that was... Yeah. What? Is he ambidextrous? He's just doing a joke. Yeah. Keeps Marv... Stay down. I thought it was fine. What's he got on about his arm? A bee? If a bee on his own, I think it's fine. His gloves are lifting the shirt. I'm presuming to make sure the esteem between the legs... I hate not understanding everything. Yeah. It's like, why is that crazy? Maybe because of where it's at in the game? Maybe just because he's hitting a lot of force and sixes? And the way he's doing it? Oh, jeez. Stairs up. Whoa, that person is way taller than another person. That's the only thing I can say about you. He's very good in the T20 internationals. Oh! This is probably... Well, this is probably people's helmet, I think. Oh! Yeah, for bowling. He's taking the shoe off. He's making a cone ball. Why does it work? This is going all the way. This might be your score. You don't drop it. Oh, it doesn't work, man. I love it. I know you were up for it. Six runs. I love the top back. He's guilty again of the half-bowling. It's just... Number is called dialer six. And it's two of them. And...  If you listen to him talk... Oh, jeez. Incredible batsman. That's a cool... That's incredible. He's deliberate. See the movement on that thing? The offside. Is this a chance? Yes, I think it is. Take on... Bear-handed. Martin Gupta. Yeah, a lot of those we just don't understand yet. I'm guessing some of those are because they... Because it looked like the ones, especially the ones that we didn't understand, where they just kept hitting... Over and over again. It was like insane, at-bad kind of thing. So he kept hitting fours and sixes, I think. I don't know. One that was... He like scooped it. The one at the end? The one where he just kind of scooped it twice and went backwards for sixes? There's like a crazy-slash scoop? Crazy. That's clearly... I know the skill on that as well as the movement on that ball several times when they just whiffed it. It was crazy. But yeah, the other stuff, we're still learning. I feel like we got a lot of it, but... Yeah, some of that is just... I don't know. Like when I think of crazy, I think of like... Right. I mean, I guess just like when Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady throws five or six touchdowns, if you know football, that's pretty crazy. Like that doesn't... Yeah. Or if somebody has a wide receiver, has a 300-yard game. Right. Or even on a broken play, and they do some kind of a weird, not-their-throwing-hand shovel pass that gets through a hole in the line and they actually catch it, stuff like that. Yeah. If you don't know football, it's probably like, is that... Right. Does everybody not do that? No. Right. No, they don't. Um... We're incredible catches by wide receivers. Some of these reactions is cricket virgins. No more. Oh. We should have had a title called Cricket Virgins. We are cricket over. We're still... I think we've gotten to third base. I think we're still cricket virgins. Well, we've been to... to... Also, I'm disappointed at the U.S. one because I thought it was they were playing in LA. Yeah. They're playing in Texas like the entire time. Yeah. So I thought the LA Knight Riders were going to be playing in Los Angeles. They're all just playing in Texas. You'd think. Maybe it's in the future. They're trying to build it up and then they're building it. Because aren't they building a stadium here? I guess it saves you money by having everybody in the same city. You know, you don't have to have everybody travel around the nation. I think they have to build the audience first. Yeah. To justify. They're building it. They are building a stadium. My suspicion is they're starting it there and growing it out. I mean, they're saving a lot on travel and hotels and stadium fees and, you know... Yeah. I think they're just they've got a plan to go. Isn't like the World Cup going to be here? It is. I don't remember what year. 2026 maybe? As are the Olympics. Well, we're getting the Olympics, the World Cup. We're getting Cricket World Cup. You hear about what the city of LA is doing with the possible demand on hotels and using empty rooms for the homeless and how people are talking about it as it relates to what it'll do to people during the Olympics. Not just the city, but yeah. There's bills potentially coming up where the city of Los Angeles is going to force hotels to house homeless in their empty rooms. Nice. Very interesting times. But they don't like that. No, they don't like that. They don't like that. Yeah. Very interesting times. That'll be funny. Anyways, let's know what are the cricket videos and the stuff we didn't understand. Yeah. Please help me so explain that down below.


The CDC recommends everyone over the age of six months get a routine annual flu shot every year, unless you have some sort of country indications, such as an allergy to any of the components. They recommend trying to get it by the end of October, but maybe beneficial even December or later. How effective are flu vaccines? It depends on the year, but typically it reduces the risk of getting the flu by about 40 to 50%. So in healthy adults, we can say with moderate certainty, we can decrease the risk of getting it from like 2% each year down to just under 1%. Among older adults, you may get a similar relative risk reduction, but the baseline risk is higher and the consequence is greater, so the absolute benefits are greater too. And kids, flu vaccines really shine a high certainty of evidence of a substantial drop in risk, but even in this kind of best-case scenario with vaccination, there's still a risk. So what else can we do? Each year, Americans experience millions of cases of influenza and hundreds of millions of colds. What about elderberry supplements? In a test tube, elderberry extracts can inhibit pathogens, including the flu virus, and in a petri dish, it can rev up the production of flu-fighting molecules from human immune system cells like tumor necrosis factor, as much as nearly 45-fold, and elderberry juice can help mice fight off the flu bow. What about actual people? The first clinical trial was published back in the 90s. A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial to treat flu-like symptoms and odds for improvement before the fifth day in the treated group were more than 20 times the odds in the control group. Two subsequent double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trials showed similar accelerated healing in the elderberry groups. This is the study I was excited to see elderberry supplementation for cold symptoms in air travelers, given my 200-city book tour, a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 312 economy-class passengers. While taking elderberry didn't seem to prevent people from coming down with cold symptoms, the duration and severity of symptoms in those that did get a cold seem to have been lessened, suffering on average about five days instead of seven. A similar study using the herb Echinacea found a lessening of symptom scores that was of only borderline statistical significance. But if you compile all such studies together, even though most of the individual trials didn't find statistically significant improvements, and put them together, there may be about a 20% decreased cold incidence, though there is a concern about selective reporting and publication bias, meaning a bunch of findings in entire studies seem to be MIA, suggesting maybe negative studies were quietly shelved. So we're really not sure about Echinacea, but all the elderberry studies seem to have positive results, suggesting elderberry supplementation provides an effective treatment option when more serious treatment isn't needed. This conclusion came from some with apparent conflicts of interest, though. In fact, each of the four elderberry studies were funded by the elderberry product companies themselves. Any other berries that might help are randomized, placebo-controlled, interventional study funded predictably by Ocean Spray found that the gamma-delta T cells of those drinking a low-calorie cranberry juice beverage for 10 weeks appeared to be proliferating at nearly five-fold the rate. These immune cells serve as like a first line of defense, though they didn't get fewer colds, but they did seem to suffer less, but not enough to actually prevent days from work or an impairment of their activities. But at least, you know, cranberries have never been reported to cause pancreatitis, some guy taking elderberry extract, not only suffered an attack of acute pancreatitis, a sudden painful inflammation of the pancreas, it went away when he stopped it and then reappeared again years later when he started taking it again, which suggests a cause and a fact. Why take elderberry extracts, though, and you could just eat the elderberries themselves? Well, cooked are fine, but consuming raw elderberries can cause you to puke your guts out. Oh, no, you tell me. I found out the hard way, as I explained in an answer to the question, what was the worst day of my life in my how not to die London Real interview? It turns out elderberry fruit form cyanide, such that eight people had to be medivacked out after someone brought freshly squeezed elderberry juice to a gathering.


The question is, do you use Swiffer dusters inside your own home? And the answer is, yes, I do. True confession. I keep them on the backs of the open doors in my house. So if you have a laundry room door or a closet room door, and that door stays open for the most part, I take a command strip. And this is just a little tiny sticker. It's got sticky on the back. You stick it on the door and it has a hook on it. I take the Swiffer duster and I hang it on the back of the door. And it kind of hides out of sight, out of mind. Then if you ever find yourself with a couple of free minutes, you can go ahead and take the Swiffer duster and dust all the areas in your house, hang it back up when you're done. There's a lot of life left in the Swiffer duster before it gets nasty. And so you can use it again and again and again.  So yes, I use them inside my home. I've got lots of them and they're hiding behind all the open doors.