https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=0qkGu_K49dg
Tell me about what’s happening with your YouTube channel and your online activities, your podcast and all of that. Yeah, a few years ago, I started a podcast. That was actually quite a few years ago now. It was in 2015. It might have been kind of as the explosion of prior to the explosion of podcasts. In fact, I think I read something that said at that time it was like 17% of Americans were listening to podcasts and that number’s much, much higher now. And I kind of got lucky because at the time, Tim Ferriss had one of the most popular, still very popular, but at the time, just because the numbers of podcasts that existed, his podcast was even more popular. And I went on his podcast and when we got done recording and he pressed stop on the record button, he looked at me and said, you should have your own podcast. And I kind of took that and noted it. And then a little while later, I was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and he had obviously another one of the most popular podcasts in the world. And he told me in the middle of that podcast that I should have my own podcast. And so when guys like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are telling you to have your own podcast, you have your own podcast. Now, I came to realize later that Joe Rogan actually would tell everybody to have a podcast. So maybe he would tell everyone, oh, you should start a podcast. Well, I actually listened to him. And so I started that podcast and I would say I probably, if somebody would have asked, what should a person do to make a good podcast or maybe not a good podcast, but a popular podcast, somebody would probably say, make it probably half an hour to an hour, bring a bunch of different guests on so that you can hear a bunch of different people talking. And, you know, talk about positive things in the world. And so instead of doing any of that, what I did was I have a podcast that’s between two and five hours long. Oftentimes, it’s just me talking, reading from a book and reviewing a book. And usually the books are about war or suffering or some kind of human atrocity. And so that’s what my podcast is. And really what it boils down to is it’s learning about human nature. And for me, human nature is best revealed or most clearly revealed in times of suffering. And one of the, I guess, pretty good monopoly on the market for suffering is war and right in there as well as human atrocities. So I started that podcast. And like I said, when I started it, there weren’t that many, there weren’t as many as podcasts as there are now. So it got some traction out of the gate and it kind of just stayed there. So I was very lucky in that respect. And I’ve been doing ever since. I’ve put out one podcast a week for five years. I’ve only missed one week in there. And that was when my best friend was killed in a parachute accident. And so I didn’t put out a podcast that week. But other than that, I’ve been very consistent. And then the YouTube channel is, well, it’s kind of the podcast. And then we do some excerpts there and little clips and stuff like that. And Echo Charles, I forget what you called him in the bio, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner. He’s also a video guy. And so he makes his little, he makes little clips and puts special effects in them and stuff because he’s creative and bored, which means it’s a great combination for someone that you’re working with. It is indeed. So I think that’s what’s been happening online for me and for the past few years. Who do you, who’s your audience? Do you think? Or do you know? Yeah, I know actually quite well that my demographic is people. It’s people, it’s human beings. Really, it’s all over the place. And when I go and do live events, I’ll have just the entire spectrum of humans there. Hey, look, is there a, is there a, you know, kind of a typical person? Yeah, there’s a typical person, but we get everybody on the spectrum from the grandma to the little kids. You know, I’ve written a bunch of kids books and the little kids show up as well. Right. Pretty, pretty, pretty kids books. Yeah. Pretty broad demographic. That’s, I meet all kinds of people, everybody from a, I’ll meet a firefighter and then a hedge fund guy and then a stay at home mom and then a retired Marine. It just meet everybody. It’s, and that’s the audience. Do you, do you have any sense of what it is that’s attracting people to your podcast? I mean, you, you, you sort of approach that tongue in cheek in some sense for, for a dark topic. You know, you concentrate on things that are, that are pretty negative or they’re pretty dark. And so as you said, that might fly in the face of any advice you’d get about what to talk about. But obviously, I mean, one of the things I’ve encountered is that there’s a very, there’s a vast hunger for serious dialogue. And I mean, one of the things that struck me always about your podcast was you often read something that’s very, very emotionally demanding, stark, harsh, rough. And, well, and it’s interesting to think about why people might be attracted to that. What’s your sense? And also, why are you doing it? I think that it’s emotional. I think that these are emotional topics. I think these are things that people can be a little bit afraid of and a little bit nervous about and being able to brush up against them a little bit gives them a little bit more familiarity with them. And therefore, when you see when you come close to things that are that stark and dark and horrible, it also makes you look up around at the present situation that you’re in and maybe it doesn’t look as awful. Yeah, so So there you touched on two things about knowing something about history that might be really useful about human affairs, right? One is that, I mean, it’s a tenant of, of clinical psychotherapy that voluntary approach to what’s frightening, threatening, even disgusting is curative, it has to be voluntary. And it can’t be too intense, right? Because if it gets too intense, it can actually hurt you. But if it’s voluntary, and measured that actually seems to strengthen people, it develops resilience. And I would say that’s one thing that virtually all well trained clinicians agree on is that that kind of exposure, whether it’s discussing old difficult experiences in an autobiographical manner, or whether it’s actually going out into the world and facing things that you’re afraid of. If you’re an elevator phobic, for example, you might be faced with confront confronted with the necessity of at least looking at an elevator, which is something you might avoid if you’re phobic. And then, so that’s the first thing. So there, there is some pronounced human tendency to be attracted to what’s dark, because that is a pathway to mental and physical resilience. And then the second thing is, which I also think is extremely important is, it’s useful to cultivate gratitude, in my estimation. And one of the ways that you can do that, because you take a lot of what’s good in your life for granted, it gets invisible, especially if it’s predictable, it gets invisible. And that’s unfortunate, because it’s still rare and precious. And if you know how terrible things can be, have been or could become, then that can alert you to how fortunate you are when all hell isn’t breaking loose right now everywhere in your life. So, yeah, and you can also sort of learn some skill sets of how to handle these tough situations when you get in them. And if you can see that someone went through something that’s much worse, and what did they do to deal with it? How did they get through it? What did they think about? What did they do? You can say, Okay, well, I’ve seen that before. And the situation I’m in isn’t quite as bad, but I know that that person took action. I know that person is stood up and, and made a move and made things happen and tried to move forward. And maybe that’s what I should do too. So you can, you can definitely garner some skills from the past. And right. So that’s a third element is that it can expand your notion of human competence. And that’s, I think that’s partly that’s one of the reasons that people love watching high end sports performances, you know, because you think, well, look, there’s that’s what a human being is capable of, isn’t that so remarkable, and I am one of those. And so that’s a limit case, but there’s obviously, obviously room for me to develop. And that’s, that’s something that’s very hopeful. And so if you are in dire straits, and you’ve seen that other people can get through that, you think, well, maybe, maybe I could get through that if I could just learn how to do it. So I had a guy on my podcast who had written a book, his name was William Reader. And he had, he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and he was shot down. Well, he shot down two times. The first time he was shot down, he was able to make it back to friendly lines. The second time he was shot down. He was captured, and he was captured in South Vietnam, which is actually worse. You didn’t want to get captured in South Vietnam, because then they had to get you to North Vietnam to the prison. And getting to North Vietnam while you were in prison, you had to get to North Vietnam. While you’re patrolling through the jungle for months on end is not a good thing. And at one point, he’s in a two foot tall bamboo cage in the jungle. And he’s, his legs are shackled. And it’s nighttime, and he’s trying to sleep. But he’s having trouble sleeping because the rats are gnawing at the wounds on his legs. And so knowing that someone could suffer through that, and survive and get through and make it out the other side, and then carry on with a completely productive life, tells me that we are pretty resilient as a species, if we can dig deep and find that resiliency. Yes, well, that’s exactly the kind of story that also makes you much appreciative of the fact that you have a bed in an air conditioned room, that in a house in a town that’s not burning to the ground with rioters, and you have that every night. And so you take it for granted. But it’s still worth noting that it’s a kind of miracle compared to all the alternatives that might manifest themselves. Yeah, I think people appreciate that. I think people, you know, look, how many movies are have been made about war, countless movies have been made about war, countless books have been written about war. So human beings are definitely have some sort of, I don’t know if it’s a fascination, or at least an appreciation for the sacrifice and the effort that goes into fighting a war.