LFD Double Ligero (w/Simcha)

Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate. And I'm Mike. What are we smoking today, Nate? Well before we get into what we're smoking, we've got a special guest. And what did we say you were going to be introduced as, Simcha? The Sultan of Desire. Yes, that's right, that's right. Apologize for the mispronunciation of the name, we should have cleared that up before we started recording. No, it's okay. It's the way we... It's all good. We'll get into all that in a second.

This cigar that all three of us are smoking was Simcha's choice. It is the LFD Double Liguro Churchill. And it was difficult for Mike and I to find, but I did not go to a gas station like Mike believes. And I actually went across just downtown here in the little suburb that I live in, and they have a smoke cigar vape shop thing, and they do have a walk-in humidorum. And that was that. Oh, nice.

But this stick is so big, it's fallen into my ashtray twice because I've not placed it perfectly balanced as all things should be. I have lit it up. It's good. Good start. Yeah, it's a good recommendation. Now, have you smoked these before? Myself? No, the guy that recommended them said, I think the first time... I think it was the first cigar he ever smoked, and if anyone asked him for recommendations, this is the one he gives. Nice. Well, it's good. It's girthy.

Got a little bit of spice on the wrapper. All the things Mike and I normally like. Yeah, a little peppery. It's a good start. It's girthy and spicy. So I think, I don't know, I mean, it's whatever Simho wants to talk about, but I think we ought to talk a little bit about how we know each other, which is through some random habit stance. But I did a web series that I got scored by a fellow named Zeriel, who has a son who's friends with Simha. Yep, Shlomo, local DJ. And now you're out in Chicago.

Yeah, I'm out in Chicago. I live in the heart of the Orthodox Jewish community. And yeah, it's really big. Now, did you move to Chicago to be with that community, or was it happenstance? My future ex-mother-in-law, may she rest in peace, lived in Indiana, in Fort Wayne. So it was a close drive. She had MS, and so it was easy for her daughter to go and visit her. It was close by. I went to New York at first.

I went to Crown Heights for a few months, but ended up deciding it was best to come to Chicago. Sure. I've never been to New York or Chicago, so there we go. I've been to both, but not the Jewish sections of either that I've been aware of. Crown Heights was cool. I was there for a couple months. I wanted to settle there, but I'm from Oklahoma, and I never moved anywhere before on my own.

I didn't know how to get stuff lined up, but I had some money saved up, so it just helped me stay in myself for a couple months. I learned in an urbanical seminary over there for a few months, and then as things would have it, I ended up moving to Chicago. I've been here since July 31st of 2012. So you've been there quite a while. Some might even say you're native now. I still don't feel like it.

Sure. That's actually longer than I think I've ever lived anywhere, other than when I was growing up. I've kind of moved around in my adulthood. I've lived all in the western part of the country and rural areas doing industrial work for the most part. So almost the exact opposite of going to New York City. Yeah. Go ahead. Some people ask me how I like Chicago or whatever turmoil goes in Chicago with Chicago politics or crime. I was like, I don't know about Chicago.

I live in the Jewish community, and that's like home. It's like one giant family. But if it wasn't for the community, I'd probably hate this place. I feel like it would be depressing. Is it really that bad? Because I lived in Minneapolis. My community is pretty quiet and safe. Like you said, it's the heart of the Jewish community. But I'm saying if they weren't here, this place would feel empty. It's not really much.

All the stuff to go do is not in this area for people that come to Chicago to do things. Sure. Do they have a transit system that's worth anything? I've only used it once. I don't know. Sure. I lived in Minneapolis for a year and we were talking before the show. My wife is from Minneapolis and I lived a block, a couple of blocks off of the train system they have. And you get on the train for two bucks. You can go anywhere in the city basically. So it's not too bad.

As far as getting around the park. Sarah and I used the L when we were there. I think we were there for like a week and it got us pretty much everywhere. So Nate, you're from Oklahoma, right? No, I'm from Wisconsin. Oh, and you lived in Oklahoma. I went to school in Oklahoma for four years and then worked there an additional year. So how did you make Serial Cocktail?

Yeah, I was looking for a composer for my web series and I can't remember exactly what site or platform it was that we got introduced. But I believe, and I don't know if he still is, but he was at that time actively seeking more composing roles. And so I think he must have been out on some site that filmmakers go to to find other people. And then we just kind of got talking and went ready, steady, go. And it was weird because I think that he was really truly the first Hasidic Jew, right?

That's the term. Yeah. Yeah. That I kind of met. And so my co-star in this series was actually an ex-Hasidic Jew. And I think he was a Jewish down in Texas and then moved up north and left the order. But he never really talked much about it. So you know. And then, I don't know, it must have been five or six years ago now, or longer, probably longer ago now, that my wife and I actually traveled over to where Zuriya lives and we met him for coffee.

Wow. It was very interesting because my wife went with me and it was strange because I'd never actually interacted with an Hasidic Jew before. And so he would shake my hand but wouldn't shake her hand. I wasn't rude about it, just said, you know, my religion prohibits me from touching another woman. And you know, but it was very, very pleasant. But I didn't, I don't think I did a good job preparing my wife for the interaction because I didn't know myself. So Right, right.

Yeah, you couldn't have known. I don't know if you want me to share how I knew that you knew Zuriya. Yeah, I don't care. All right. So basically, our dearest friend Nate here dated my future ex-wife. And a long time ago, I had him on Facebook because she's like, you would get along with him so well. So I just had him on my Facebooks. And then I said, you know, hey, Nate likes my anti-political posts. She's like, really? I guess she looked them up and she says, you know, it's Zuriya Ocasio?

And I said, no, but I know that last name. And so she's like, he knows Zuriya, he did the music for him. Maybe it's related to our friend. So I searched on the profile, Zuriya Ocasio, and I found a picture of you two. And I showed my friend Shlomo, I was like, do any of these guys mean anything to you? And he goes, dude, the guy's my father. I was like, this is crazy. And so I told Nate, and Nate's like, well, how did you know I know Zuriya? I was like, oh, you know, my wife.

I was trying to be vague. That's my wife. And he's like, who's your wife? And I told him. And then I said, you wouldn't believe it. She's a Hasidic Jew now. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you a few questions about that. Not about your wife necessarily, but so when you join or become, I mean, I guess what's the term for it when somebody comes to join Hasidic Judaism? Like conversion? Conversion. When somebody converts, they get to pick their own name or do they get named by someone else?

So they get to pick their own name and back in Oklahoma, I was with my wife and we were talking, talking it up and somebody, a non-Jewish guy who was a music professor, a friend of mine came to pick up a gas can and he let me and in order not to look stoned, I wore a sombrero. Don't know why like that was like, you know, to me that says absolutely not stoned. Anybody in a sombrero cannot be stoned. Anytime I see that, I think, I just think sober.

So I go outside to give him his gas can and he goes, you know, I was just thinking you should name yourself Simcha. Simcha means joy, like happiness. Cause I'm walking out goofily and it just reminded him like he was thinking that. So when I went to Crown Heights, they're like, you know, what's your name? I said, Justin, do you go by like a Hebrew name? And I just said Simcha and it stuck. And then whenever I did my conversion, I said, do you have a name? And I said, yeah, Simcha.

So that was that. So you weren't always a Hasidic Jew? No, I was raised Southern Baptist in Oklahoma. Oh, interesting. Like most people are in Oklahoma. I don't know if you were here for that, Mike. We were saying that I spent five years in Oklahoma, four in college and then one working. So we both, we, but we didn't know each other when I was in Oklahoma and he was in Oklahoma. Sure. We knew of each other. We might've been the sombrero twins. I don't know.

But I was, I was looking up some of the stuff about Hasidic Judaism earlier today. And one of the things was saying that the tenants are kind of, there's like three love, love, joy and humility are kind of the three big ones. Yeah, pretty much. Service to the creator and service to your fellow man. That's kind of like the values that, you know, Hasidic Judaism present. Not all Judaism technically, but I'm saying like that's the values that we emphasize.

I am certain that you were the first person I've talked to who I knew was Jewish. Nate and I talked about that before. There's Jewish temples in this area, but all the people left to go to larger cities. So I've just never had the opportunity to talk to somebody who is Jewish before. I didn't either like back in Oklahoma. Sure. Sure. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's weird from my perspective to say, well, how have I never talked to a Jewish person before? But I was thinking about it. I haven't.

You know, there was a guy I went to school with and I didn't know he was Jewish. And I started getting into Judaism like my summer after my 10th grade year, 2007, I just lost my train of thought. I partied too hard last night and didn't sleep. So obviously, partying is not against the rules. I partied way too hard. And marijuana is not against the rules because marijuana is actually kosher. And we were talking about this when we were trying to set this episode up.

And there are certain kosher cigars, but it's the leavening agents, right? Yeah, for Passover. And now it's for Passover. That was all for getting, you know, like, soaked tobacco and alcohol or how it's made. So then I asked all my cigar connoisseurs, tell me you guys smoke cigars during this week. And they're like, nope. And I was like, darn. OK, so there's one type of cigar called. I don't know. It's called I didn't have a Solomon's something or anything. I have to order online.

OK, I don't know what it's called. Maybe for next next Passover, we'll have to have you back on the show and we'll all smoke the kosher cigar and see how it compares. I heard it was good. Somebody told me it was good. But I met my wife when she was my music teacher in college in high school. But she wasn't a faculty. She was like a student teacher for the college. That's what they all say, man. I met her at band camp. You were groomed. She plays euphonium.

So I don't want to know her band camp stories. So I was playing trombone. And then when she came onto the scene, she's like, can you play euphonium? Because we need a euphonium player. And I was like, sure. So I switched that. I can, you know, I can learn an instrumental week. And then some guy was instrumentalist. I'm like, what is 13 or 12? Mormon. But when you play classical piano, you can learn anything. So I was like, okay. So I learned the tuba.

And, you know, then I went to college and she was my section leader in band and my bully. You said bully? No, she was my bully. She was like, she was like cool. And when I started college, she was like very hard on me. I almost switched majors. I think it's the the Sultan of desire in you. It's very intimidating for others that know you. So it's a fight or flight response, I think. Right.

Yeah. You know, one day, like I was already into it by high school and then she got into it and went to class. And there was a rabbi that came to Fort Sill. And that's when I got involved. That was my first Jew. The guy I went to school with that I didn't know was Jewish. But he she came and she was started learning Hasidic philosophy. And she has had philosophy is like Kabbalah, esoteric. And she just now she's a Hasidic woman. Oh, yeah.

But when I was with the guy, the rabbi, he was on the base. He was a chaplain. My friend from high school, his mother was there speaking Hebrew. I was like, why is Matt's mom speaking Hebrew? And then he's like, oh, I get it. She's Jewish. She's Israeli. I never met his mom before. And do you speak more Hebrew or Yiddish? I don't speak them, but I can learn books in Hebrew. OK. I just can't speak it. I mean, I can say things, but I can understand.

OK, I was going to say this is probably probably a little out of pocket and I don't meet it in the way that it's intended. But when I'm absolutely shit faced, I can understand German. Oh, my goodness. Something something happened to me when I'm like, you know, hungry and like low blood sugar. I just did French on the screen. I don't know if that I don't happen once. I never had the opportunity to try to see French when I was low blood sugar again. Oh, yeah.

That's not not a state you want to because I'm diabetic. It's not a state you want to repeat usually. Right. I mean, being drunk and high is one thing, but, you know, low blood sugars is completely different. But I had a nice night. You know, we all went to a bar and I wanted my I don't know, we'll call my former female domestic associate. I was talking around the phone for like three hours the other night and I was like, you really have to meet my friends.

Like if you meet my like my new friends, like you'll be like, where were you guys all my life? So you have to come to my birthday. It was like my birthday was during Passover. So we did everything late and she came last night. It was really fun. And she hit it off with them and we stayed till like 3 a.m. and then I came home and didn't sleep. This is the way. This is the way. And I had my I had my podcast that we did at two o'clock and it was a couple hours and then boom, boom, boom.

I haven't crashed yet. There we go, but we still have over half the stick left. So everybody stay tuned. Simha may crash during this episode. So now you have rabbis and Rebbe's or they are interchangeable. I thought you explained to me that Rebbe was a little more less like church leadership type and more like spiritual type. Yeah, kind of off base on that. You know, the Rebbe or a Rebbe is like a leader, like the head of a Hasidic dynasty.

And there's different movements and they come from different places in Europe and they're all named by their places. So I'm part of a very large influential Hasidic movement called Chabad. And excuse me, the leader of our movement, the head of our movement is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Part of the reason you have food stamps, I don't know if you guys have food stamps, but he was very influential figure. Really like compared to all the others, he was really big.

The world leaders would visit him. John Voight, actor John Voight had a relationship with him. And Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan spent some time in the Yeshiva I went to. Yeshiva is like a seminary. Okay. And Bob Dylan's from Minnesota where Mike and I both are. Yep. Hibbing. Hibbing, which is near Virginia as a callback to our previous conversation. Yes. I believe Bob Dylan was the original original mumble rapper. So I haven't really got in into any of his stuff because it's all like mumbly jumbly.

Mike and Mike's going to fight me afterwards for saying that. So it's all right. Some of us were not born in Minnesota where Bob Dylan is required listening in your teenage years. Well, and some of us weren't born in Wisconsin where winning Super Bowls is part of your heritage. I thought you were going to say binge drinking lightning coogles. Day now. That and serial killers, right? Oh, homosexual serial killers, I think is your specialty, isn't it?

I don't know about my personal specialty, but maybe the states. Dahmer was well done, by the way, just for the record, if you guys haven't seen it. No, I haven't seen that yet. We did do an episode on the Manson family. Oh, we did. Not quite the same as Dahmer, though. No, no, not quite the same. Similar but different. Charles Manson has some good songs. His music isn't bad. It's not. That's what Mike was saying the whole episode when we were talking about the Manson family.

He's like, you got to check out his music and become part of his like sex cult thing. I sent a message to my friend. I was like, this song is really good. Am I allowed to like this? Look at your brain, girl. That's kind of the strange thing, though. I mean, nowadays, right? So many of these musicians and stuff have, you know, like rape charges or all these weird, weird things going on. And I mean, I know some of it is, you know, haters going to hate and try and drag you through court.

But some of it's legit, you know, like Chris Brown beating women and stuff. R. Kelly. It's like, well, can I still like the music or not? I'm not saying I like Chris Brown's music or R. Kelly's music, but you know, there's some other big names out there and bands that have kicked singers or guitarists out of their band because they were doing things with underage people, you know? Yeah. I forgot what the band was. Lost Profits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember hearing about that. Yeah, Lost Profits.

You know, that's why I haven't written the song yet. I'm not broken enough. I'm not crazy enough to write songs. Okay. I thought you're going to go a different way with that. And I was like, oh my God, are we going to have some kind of weird confession on the show? I haven't hit enough women. I haven't. Right? You would think after everything I went through in the past, like, you know, since August, like at least a decent song will come out of it. Yeah. Well, we believe in you.

One of these days. You know, you can just write a country song, being from Oklahoma, and just throw out the generic platitudes and it should be good to go, you know? And make it metal. Every, yeah, every time you talk about a truck, just swap it out for, you know, like the Baptist God or the Christian God. And you can make it a acidic Jewish heavy metal song, right? Right. Yeah. Jewish heavy metal song. I am playing it. There's got to be Jewish heavy metal. There has to be.

I thought just to make it one of those heavy metal songs, you sat on a vinyl seat enough to wear it down to get your name, your band name, and then you just play all the instruments as fast as you can and scream unintelligible things into the microphone. Like where's the writing in that? Just start screaming, man. Just start screaming. Scream into the void and see if it screams back.

You know how I really, I really like to try to see myself as, and like ideally would be like Corey Taylor from Slipknot. Yeah. With the mask and everything. At least him as like a person. I don't know if you guys are like familiar with like him as the person. No, no. I mean, I'm familiar with the band. The whole band's familiar with it. Right.

I've always had this kind of philosophy, like, you know, just because you're a specific religion doesn't mean your music has to have the religious content. I mean, mine would be spiritual probably just because that's who I am. But also like there's some good, like meaningful heartfelt lyrics about like, you know, whatever life brings you.

Yeah. I mean, I really appreciate that because there are a lot of bands that like, I don't know if Korn went full on Christian music, but you can definitely sing about things in your life without making it so oddly specific that only people that share that exact belief system like it, you know? Right. I mean, how much, how many lyrics on like, you know, esoteric Kabbalistic concepts can one write?

Well, if you're a fatalist, they've all been written already and now we're just recycling everything. If you're an optimist, then there's an infinite amount of things left to write. Right, right. And I mean, I like writing movies and things. And so I would like to think that there's still things out there to say, although I've been on quite a dry spell, except two years ago, I finally wrote, yeah, I'm a good writer. I writ something down, see? So it's years in Oklahoma getting me.

I do the National Novel Writing Month every year. And I finally finished it, 50,000 words two years ago, I finally finished it, which isn't long in terms of novel, but it's, you know, it's technically a novel, but I haven't gone back to revise it or anything because I'm kind of like, I spent a whole month with that. I'm kind of, I need a break for a couple of years. I just need discipline.

Yeah. I mean, the point is I'd like to think there's still stories out there to tell, despite what Marvel and Hollywood would lead you to believe. Well, if I may give this opportunity to give a shout out to my podcast, because we're going to tell, Team Spirit Art House is something that my friend from Oklahoma has made. I don't know if you know what an art house is.

It's a new concept for me and I can't really fully describe what, because it's a multifaceted thing and he's into film and animation. But one of the things is the podcast. So it's not like the podcast is Team Spirit Art House. That is the name of the podcast, but it's like part of this larger thing that he's trying to create and like the whole website and everything and he's these two non-Jewish guys. I know from Oklahoma because we were part of this movement called the Hebrew Roots movement.

It's like, you know, Christians that start to do Jewish things, but they're still Christian. Like we still have like the Christian mindset, the Trinitarianism and the eternal hell, whatever. Then I met him through that and he introduced me to Hasidic philosophy and Kabbalah, which like quickly got me out of the Christian mindset and well, long story short, here I am. But he had a stroke. He's like 45 and he sends me a message and says, you know, can you help me?

Like I can't do all of this myself and I had a stroke and it's more exhausting. And I said, yeah. So I was helping him with some research and ideas. So he doesn't have to research the Jewish concepts he's looking for because I have them right here. I have like five Ikea bookshelves full of books. Then he asked me if I wanted to be on his podcast. The same week you asked me if I wanted to be on here.

So when we made a WhatsApp group with this other guy who he met online named Elias Dan, who's like in the cult, he has all these different podcasts. And when we were talking on the WhatsApp group, he said, what should we list Simcha as? And he says, a co-host. So I was like, oh, I'm co-hosting now. So that's kind of how it started. They recorded one episode and we did like, I don't know, last three Sundays recording stuff. Like there was an introduction of me.

I was telling my story and then I guess it's all going to be edited and then this Walter Benjamin, we interviewed a doctor or professor who was like an expert on Walter Benjamin. So that's what we did today. Yeah. And I will say you sent me your, it was like a three or five minute video that you did for the art house, team spirit art house. And I really enjoyed that. And you also sent me a video about whether or not Hitler was in hell, which I really thoroughly enjoyed. Do you remember that one?

Was that the rabbi? Yeah. The rabbi and he was like, nope, Hitler ceased to exist or whatever. He was talking about how there's no eternal hell and people should throw whoever believes that should throw it out. Yeah. He's from Minnesota or not. He's not only from Minnesota, he's from Crown Heights probably, but he for a while, I don't know if he still lives there, but he had his whole thing in Minnesota. Okay. Yeah. I really enjoyed the video. And yeah, I don't know.

I was reading something today where it was like, I don't know, 20 things that people believe were in the Bible, but actually aren't. And there's not a whole lot of devil or eternal hell run by the devil in the Bible. And so like the levels of hell comes from Dante, not from the Bible. And there's nothing really in the Bible that says that Satan oversees the eternal torture in hell. And it's more that hell is as far away from God as that you can be.

And so that would be the worst thing for an angel to be. But it doesn't really... Yeah, it's the washing machine. Yeah. Yeah. It's the washing machine. The devil as they call it, but we call him the Satan, but we say the Satan, which means adversary. He's like a prosecutor in court. Okay. So he's not like God's alter ego or whatever like Christianity kind of has portrayed him to be. Does he...

In your religion, does he put the temptation in you like in the Christian religion, where it's kind of like, well, Satan was tempting me that day or something? Well, we can't really blame him, but he's the type of guy that I think from my understanding, everyone listen to Bill Hicks. Yes. Yeah. I use this as an analogy. I don't know if it's a weak analogy, but Bill Hicks was talking about it as a government thing where he's like, you know, pick up the gun. The guy picks up the gun.

So the other guy shot him. He's like, look, he had a gun. Does that make sense? Yeah, classic. So, right. So that's kind of, I think, what the Satan does. Put something in you, you give him the temptation or whatever it may be. And then in the heavenly court, he's like, look, look what he did. Yeah. The eye was there is irrelevant. Look what he did. Sounds like the FBI. Sounds like our government. Palpatine, right? Meet your checkable with me. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

Yeah, we haven't, speaking about unwelcome surprises, I don't think we talked about the new three movies that Disney just announced where Ray Palpatine, sorry, Skywalker is coming back to be the Jedi Jesus, as it were, and to resurrect and save all of the Jedi. This will be the new movie directed by a female starring a female Jedi who had, I don't know, three and a half minutes of training of how to drink milk out of a seal's nipple.

But she's, she's going to be back and she's going to save the Jedi. So I for one cannot wait. So where are we holding on the three movies that came out in the last few years? The sequels or are you talking like, we shall not speak their names. Oh, the ray triad, the ray triad. If they would have came out with Darth Jar Jar, I would have been okay with them. But other than that, they are horrible. They should have been banned.

I don't know if you heard the Mike loves a Soka episode, but if they would have put a Soka in there, Mike would have been over the moon happy and he would be trying to propose to Kathleen Kennedy right now, probably. But Soka is my Jedi knot or force sensitive crush. Oh, there we go. I don't know. I don't want to put words in Mike's mouth. I'll let his episode on a Soka do that for him, but he probably feels a little stronger than that.

Well, you know, well, I think, I think the trouble with the trilogy for me was everything. But the biggest thing was that they had three directors lined up and they told them, do whatever kind of movie you want to do. And they never really got together to write out a cohesive trilogy story. So like JJ did the first one or Rainn Wilson, or I don't know who did it. Rainn, I don't know. Somebody did the first one and then somebody else did the second one.

And then the first director came back and did the third one, but they never really talked to one another about what would happen. And that was supposed to give them full creative control, but it led to very overly muddled and plot points that got dropped because the second movie then didn't pick up any of the plot points that were set up in the first one because they didn't have to talk to one another. They had full creative control.

And I don't think any of them had even seen any of the movies or the Clone Wars or Rebels or any of the other stuff that was out there. And they just said, hey, wouldn't it be neat? And it wasn't. But in the first one. Oh, go on. No, go ahead, guys. I was just going to say in the first and second one, there's at least one scene that I enjoyed that I was like, hey, that's really cool. In the first one, it was Kylo Ren stopping the blaster bolt in midair. I thought that was pretty cool.

Just you know, cinematically. And then the scene that everybody hated, but I loved was when they hyperspaced through the Star Destroyer and the way that they brought everything together together with the editing and the visuals and the silence, it was phenomenally done. Like they used up their entire cocaine budget on that one scene. And then they went back to meth. Like, I don't know why.

But and then in the third one, I don't even remember what what happened, except there was like a there was a dagger there for some reason, because that's what people at the Star Wars universe use. I don't think anyone's ever used a dagger ever in Star Wars. Man, weird fighting dagger stuff. Yeah, I listen to this guy named Star Wars theory. I don't know if I'm assuming that you guys are obsessed enough to found him. But I used to I used to defend the Disney sequels a little bit.

And I mean, I like the characters and I would like movies all my friends think were crap. So I guess, you know, it's not really saying much that I enjoyed them. But after listening to him and what he was bringing up about, like how they, you know, Lucas's idea for the sequels was different. And they basically said they're not contractually obligated, but they would stick to what he wanted and they didn't. It was entirely different thing. And that's what like changed my whole mind about it.

I just think the sequels had a lot of missed opportunities, largely because of what Nate was talking about. You know, they could have had a very interesting storyline with Finn and they didn't they could have interesting storylines with all the characters. But instead, they wanted to have blue milk and magical finding of abilities instead of earning instead of earning your place in the world.

None of us like watching the original trilogy, I never once thought to myself, I really wonder where that blue milk comes from. And yet here here's Disney answering it for me. And I never asked. And I don't need a scene of supposedly the most powerful Jedi Luke Skywalker drinking straight from the nipple of this thing. Like it was like it's that shocking of a scene in a Star Wars movie in any movie.

And you know, like all the people breast is best and nursing in public is natural and all that stuff. That's not what this is about. This is it's a it's a I don't know what it was. I don't know what the what the animal was. And the porgs were kind of like terribly comical, except then Chewie Chewie like burned one, didn't he? He was like grilling one. Virtus.Ri style. He was. Yeah. And it's like, OK. So I don't know. It was very I guess uneven would be the best way to to to sum them up.

Even within the movies, they were uneven. And one of my buddies dragged me to the last one, The Rise of Palpatine. Sorry, The Rise of Skywalker. And we were watching it and watching it and watching it. And I'm sitting there going like, what in the hell is going on here? But he really wanted to go. And I'm like, I'll go with you, man. Like you don't have to fly solo. I'll come with you. And then the lights came up at the end and he turns to me and goes, what the hell did we just watch?

And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. What what did Finn want to tell Rey that he loved or that he was for sensitive? I don't know. I honestly didn't think about that at all. That wasn't one of the questions the the sequel trilogy left me with. Most of mine were how did this happen? How could I get paid that amount of money to make this level of output? And what is Kathleen Kennedy still doing there? Cats was a better movie.

People say that Palpatine somehow survived and they were like, how did he survive? Lucas told I can't think of his name right now because I haven't had sleep, but I know all their names because I'm about Ian McDermott. He said that Lucas told him that Palpatine was officially dead. But like in like Star Wars Legends or somewhere in the Star Wars universe, the expanding universe, the Palpatine clones himself.

So like I was thinking, well, that's not that's not necessarily a crazy thing to say that, you know, there's another Palpatine. I think it was I think it was just easy for them to do. That's probably why they did it. But and also said also like people criticize the ending where Rey says Rey Skywalker. And I think because of my like, you know, involved in Judaism, like in my religion, like there's a concept of somebody teaches somebody Torah. It's as if he fathered him or if he parented him.

So I was just kind of thinking, well, they taught her the Jedi wisdom and like, why would you want to be a Palpatine? So like it almost made sense that, you know, she kind of saw them as parents. That was like my defense of it. Yeah. And I don't have a super huge, huge issue outside of it kind of being lazy writing, I think, because she could have been a Skywalker. She would have and they kind of set her up as like a nobody. So she could have been a nobody.

Like why does she have to be a Palpatine or a Skywalker? It would have been better if she was a nobody and then chose the name like that would have felt more earned, I think, writing wise. Right. FYI, guys, I am about halfway through my cigar and we usually do a cigar check cigar check. And I'm enjoying it. We'll do we'll do a hand check later because we have talked about a so good quite a bit. So Mike, let's see those hands too late, too late. At least we're all remote, right? Exactly. Right.

I'm going to put off the microphone. Thanks for being quick on the mute button, Mike. The first time ever. Yes. No, but I'm enjoying my cigar. It's good. Yeah. It's no flavor change, which we talk about that. It takes some work to make them taste smooth and similar the whole way through. So it's it's good. Pleasant. Yeah, I've been liking it. It's it's dark, not overly dark. And but it's spicy. I still have some spicy aftertaste in my mouth from my last puff.

And I don't know, it's it's kind of a solid flavor that I that I enjoy. What are your thoughts? Nice. My my friend always has good recommendations, though. You know, they're all like libertarian, like anarchist attorney. All these people like smoke cigars, all the people I go like talk to, they're all pathetic Jews. What do you recommend? Anything that they recommend has been good. That's excellent to have friends like that. That's Mike for me. Oh, geez. Yes, indeed.

Some of my friends from the synagogue, these same people, they have a fire pit that we know somebody's house, we just kind of frequent on a Saturday night. And like always somebody brings like a big bag of cigars. It's like fire pit cigars and like 90s music. Nice. You know, Mike, Chicago is not that far away. No, it's not. No, it's not at all. My Sarah and I were talking about making me making a trip to go to Chicago, visit the museums and the zoo and all that fun stuff. And the shed aquarium.

And they've got a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright. Yes. Yes, I want to see some of those buildings. I'm an architecture minor. So the Frank Lloyd Wright boner is strong with me. That's an architectural term. It has nothing to do with an actual erection. By the way, are you still into Ayn Rand? No, we did a whole thing. I think we talked about on the podcast fairly extensively, but I have forsaken her and her clan and have moved on to stoicism.

That's what I thought because I was going to say, despite being an atheist, I do believe it's very important for a person to have a strong philosophical grounding point in their life. And it could be religion and it could be philosophy and it could be, you know, whatever it is. But I think that you kind of always need external input on things. And stoicism is kind of everything that Ayn Rand wasn't. But you know, I do like the one thing that she said, which was don't accept unearned guilt.

But the rest of her stuff is very, very black and white. And actually, that's how Mike and I met is I was in Ayn Rand black and white ville and he was in Mikeville, for lack of a better term. And we butted heads and actually did not like each other at all when we first met. My mutual friend here in Chicago, you influenced her to read Ayn Rand, what she saw as the book. And she tried to reread them several years ago. She's like, I can't do this. She's like, this is terrible.

But whenever I knew her from college, she was very much into it. Yeah. And I kept her novels, but I got rid of all the other stuff because she did a lot of like essays and like pontificating and things. But I do enjoy Atlas Shrugged, even though it's a absolute bear to read because it's fucking massive and long. But I kept kind of the novels because I was like, well, you know, you can read a novel and not be sucked into the whole philosophy kind of thing.

So I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, but I have to admit when I read it, I did skip the 150 page monologue. Oh, yeah, that one's a bear. That chapter is a bear. But yeah, without that, it's a really good book. There's a book like I don't I haven't read most. I mean, I just kind of started. And I haven't been continuing like I got like five bookshelves of holy books that I'm like, you know, going through. So but it's called Democracy, the God that Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe.

Yeah. You sent me that and I got the PDF to read. I'm reading and I'm going like, you know, I never I grew up in a Republican bill. And when I became like, you know, started learning Judaism, like I left for publicanism. I was never like a Republican. I never identified that I played video games in Red Lord of the Rings growing up. You know, Harry Potter is a minion of the devil. Oh, yeah. I was not allowed to read Harry Potter. Yeah, that's witchcraft.

But you were allowed to read Lord of the Rings. Yeah. But I went by my mom's back and read Harry Potter. And then as I as I got older, she went to see the movies with me. But she went through a phase. But like all my like anti political views when I'm talking to my friend, they're like, it's I said, this is just how I feel like I don't have any sort of intellectual like, you know, thing behind it.

And he's like, well, if you read Democracy, the God that failed, you know, a lot of what you're saying is, is in there. I'm very much influenced. I don't know, like some people think libertarians are these like, I don't know, I guess there's two different types. I guess there's those like crazy right wing types. I don't know. Again, I'm not really educated in that.

So I said libertarian in my podcast, my friends like I just want to confirm what you mean, because in Tennessee, libertarianism is like different. I'm like, no, these are like, these are the guys that get accused of being leftists when a Republican is president and they get accused of being a conservative when a Democrats president, these types of libertarians. Yeah, I think the problem is the most vocal groups of libertarians kind of co-opted that term, right?

So now you can't say libertarian without thinking about the Tea Party party. And even they kind of co-opted the Tea Party stuff. I was like, it doesn't mean what it means anymore. And now you can't even have the don't tread on me flag without being without somebody thinking you're racist. You know what I mean? Like they've like these outspoken groups have taken something that meant something completely different and have taken it to mean like uber conservative racist asshat.

And now the rest of us have to find a different term to call ourselves because I don't want to be labeled the libertarian or Tea Party. You know, I want to be labeled something different. Maybe nothing at all. My pronouns are none. Please don't refer to me. I took a political compass. I don't know how accurate those are. People say that pretty good.

I answered all the questions according to my best of my knowledge and I had most of it had to be based on my Jewish values because I get I'm not like an expert in a lot of the stuff that people are talking about. And it said I'm libertarian, like a little left of center. Sure. So that was the result. I would be considered libertarian left, so I'm about three quarters of the way in the libertarian and about three quarters of the way on the left.

So yeah, I don't remember exactly what mine was, but it was a lot further left than I originally thought, you know. And I think that part of the reason is the right has been getting further and further to the right so that anything even close to center now is considered left, which is kind of fucked up. It is because I was getting accused of being leftist. Well, you know, anybody left of certain right wing political figures in America are considered to be to the left, you know.

So if you're left of what are they? Pat Roberts. Well, even Pat Roberts is left now on issues supposedly. But if you're left of let's say, oh, who's some hardcore right winger that is Marjorie Taylor Green? Yes. If you're if you're left over to the green, you're a leftist, you know. So even Pat Roberts, Pat Robertson is OK with trans people. He doesn't think that they should be harassed. And he's a televangelist, for fuck's sake. So it's kind of crazy. And we talk about that issue here a bit.

And it's like we're talking about such a small percentage of the population that who cares what's going on? You know, well, it doesn't affect anybody. So what's the difference? Yeah. I mean, and really, like we try to be even even off the podcast here, we try to be as reasoned out as we can, you know, and we think about things and we have a whole episode that we talk about kind of, you know, trans rights and some of these bills that are out about, you know, a lot of the outspoken. Right.

So all of these things in the national media are outspoken people. They're not the majority of people. They're the far left or far right. And the far left outspoken people say every kid deserves a sex change operation and the far right says there are kids and you shouldn't and nobody should be getting a sex change. And you know, there's somewhere in the middle that I think our society needs to get to. Right. Some people need it because then some people don't.

And you need to kind of protect the kids in both senses where the kids need to be protected if they legitimately need it and they need to be protected if they're following a trend or a fad. I carried pogs around to screw cardboard circles. Like I carried those. Somebody should have protected me from those. And then the school banned them. So we went on to something else.

But you know, I mean, as a kid and even as adults, there's lots of these transitory fads that kind of go on like bitcoins and cryptocurrency and stuff. Texas Hold'em. My friend and I were doing some research on transgender and Jewish law. This is a real question, especially nowadays. I don't know how much of a question it was back then. But you know, because men are obligated to certain commandments that women aren't.

So if a person transitions against a sex change operation, does this person still keep the commandments of that all of them just like a man or would he just be like a Jewish woman? And we found one contemporary authority on Jewish law who rules a lot more liberal in a lot of his rulings and he says that they recognize the sex change and she would be considered a Jewish woman and her obligations would be thus. And that seems reasonable. So that's not gonna stop people who got sucked into society.

Unfortunately, that's what happens. And so you have Jews, unfortunately, that are very right wing. And you have those that are libertarian, you have those that don't care. And I don't know, I guess it's not like some topic of discussion at synagogues or anything. My friend and I were talking about these people, like it's not easy being them. It's not like so simple as some like, you know, woke dude just wanting to become a woman. Like these people go through some shit.

And so that's what we were trying to find like the sources. Better to have these people be, you know, in our mind, the religious Jews than like being made to feel like they can't be religious because of their identity. Yeah, for sure.

And that's super interesting because, you know, that's been some of the criticisms of, let's just say the Bible, because that's what I'm more familiar with is, you know, if God and Jesus were all knowing why didn't they put in the New Testament, you know, thou shalt not send dick pics to minors. Right. You know, so I mean, a lot of it's open to interpretation, but it's not willy nilly interpretation.

It's you know, you need the people, the right people to look at it and study it and in accordance with everything else. And you know, the overall, I mean, even the Constitution was designed as sort of a living document to some extent, you know, because there's an amendment process, which is, we've never seen an amendment in our lifetime. I don't believe Mike, have we?

So you know, it's not something that happens very frequently, but there are definitely Supreme Court cases that come and redefine things that have previously been decided, you know, and right now it's the abortion stuff and the access to the abortion pills and medications. And I don't know what 10 years ago or so, or maybe longer than that, because I don't want to believe I'm as old as I am. It was, you know, same sex marriage, and they decided on that.

But it's always kind of one of those things where you can go back and change your definitions as the environment changes. Yep. That's why we have the Talmud, which is a, I don't know if you've ever seen these people accuse the Talmud of being black magic, but it's just a bunch of legal discussions.

And then we just use the logic of those discussions, like books and books of Jewish law have been written for like, you know, over the past 2000 years for contemporary times, because some things just weren't, they didn't exist back then. So how do we do it? So then you have these people that are experts on Jewish law and then this is what they do. They get together and they design. Based on sources, everything has to be based on sources. It can't be made up.

Yep. So very much unlike our government. Right. Well, Nate and I have talked about this before. Inflation must be higher, therefore it is. And now the post office is trying to raise the stamp price to 66 cents because inflation wasn't enough for you and I to shoulder. So they're going to hit us somewhere else. All my Dear Abby letters are going to be more expensive. I'll be published one of these days. I tell you. Dear Abby. Is Dear Abby still being actively published?

The CEO of my company was making eyes at me. Dear Abby, what do I do? Dear Abby, my friend said that transgendered women aren't allowed to be on the girls volleyball team. What should I do? Dear Abby, Kathleen Kennedy is still employed at Disney. What do I do? On a serious note, did you guys see the interview with John McCain's wife where she said that everybody knew about Jeffrey Epstein and they knew what he was doing, what was going on. They just didn't know who they could report him to.

I didn't see it. He didn't see it. I didn't. But that is what I've been saying all along. Mike and I have been saying all along, you don't go to Pedophile Island, see pedophilia going on and then be like, I didn't see anything. It's like Bohemian Grove, right? Everybody knows what's going on. Yeah. Or what's that place in Florida with the spring break? Fort Lauderdale. You know what's going on. Yeah. If your wife goes to Fort Lauderdale for spring break, you know that's not a good situation.

How do people trust these people? I don't understand how people trust politicians. I really don't. I don't either. Stupid people. But they all watch the news media. They're plugged into the machine and the news media repeats every story like twice an hour. And then that's the only story they think of. And that's why everything in our culture is so transient.

One week it's school shootings, one week it's Bud Light beer cans, the next week it's USPS stamps going up, the next week it's Russia doing something else or Ukraine doing something else. Everything's on a two week cycle. If you stop and pay attention and they released, it was years ago now with the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers.

And it was outlining how all of the uber rich and the ruling class, meaning all of our politicians, keep all their money in these offshore accounts to circumvent taxation. And they all came out and everybody was all up in arms. And then the journalist who broke the story the first time wound up committing suicide in their jail cell. No wait, that was Epstein, I'm sorry. But they died anyway. This journalist. Epstein didn't kill him, folks. I'm sure of a suicide. No, yeah, of course he did.

Of course he did. I mean, the security camera at this high security facility just happened to go out and then his guards just happened to walk away, you know, at the same time, magically. Not like there's an alarm on things like that at high security facilities. I mean, that would be magical. They have alarms on security footage are magical. I don't know, the government takes hardly any taxes from you or I, and they can't afford a battery backup generator thing.

You know, they're like less than 100 bucks to go get a real nice one that'll run your fridge in a power outage. But yeah, high security, they don't they can't afford backups for those cameras and the guards have their union mandated breaks. So it was the unions fault really, and all the Lib Dards, right? Yeah, unionism is horrible. This ban unions.

If the Republicans would have had their way, they would have they would have went in there and shot him themselves instead of hanging him and trying to make it look like a suicide. Wait, I'm sorry, did I say that out loud? Make total sense. You know, one of his conspirators committed suicide in prison too in France. Shocking. I know it's weird. It's real weird. Strange, strange how that stuff happens. I guess these high power people are really emotionally unstable.

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Or something. It's 100 percent. If you're just not paying attention, it's fine. Yeah, if you just plug into the national media, it doesn't matter if it's CNN, Fox or whatever the other ones are. They just repeat the cycles. And it's it's always the distractionary technique is the other side is to blame. Get mad at them. Get mad at your neighbor because your neighbor wants to do something different than you do. They cheer for a different football team.

How can you trust them? And that's all people think about. And that's why and that's legitimately why I quit watching football is because everybody got so wound up about millionaires hitting each other trying to chase a ball around the field and they would get downright mean. And it's like we're watching millionaires. We're supposed to be entertained and we're fighting each other over it. Like stop. You got to stop. Right. It is the opiate of the masses.

I really like how they throw around cultural Marxism now is like some sort of weird insult. I don't even know if it has a definition in reality. That term, you know what I mean? It's like the boogeyman. You might as well say the boogeyman. Yeah, it's almost like terrorism, right? I mean, terrorism is totally a thing. But after 9-11, anybody that did anything that was upset about anything anywhere ever was terrorism or domestic terrorism. They're a domestic terrorist. We can waterboard you now.

We don't have to give you your your God given rights to a fair trial or to anything because you're a terrorist. Therefore, you forego all of your rights. America. Fuck yeah. Freedom cost a buck oh five or with inflation $10 and 50 cents. You just have to appreciate that you have the freedom to do what you're told. God damn it. I would love to do that as an American citizen here and all these communist bastards. We're going to get them.

I don't know how we're going to drive over a pothole roads and our tanks and we're going to get them. We got our EVs. We're going to get them. I want to talk about that. Did did you guys see that Biden's new plan is to get EVs to be two thirds of all vehicle sales by 2035? I didn't hear about that. You sent me that. I said, yeah, I sent Nate a video and I sent you the New York Times article too. I can't remember. But yeah, it's behind a paywall. And apparently I've used up my quota for free.

New York. I thought it was the first fucking amendment freedom of the press and why do I got to pay to read journalism? New York Times is that journalism really? I know. Is any of the journalism journalism really? We're just talking about today in the podcast. Walter Benjamin made a lot of a lot of profound statements and predictions. I'm not a Walter Benjamin expert to explain it here when that episode comes out. Listen to it. The guy talks about it.

I think that you guys are really, really like it. The things that he was talking about is like, wow, people need this in our times, you know, the way and media. I don't remember what specifically, but media, how it affects culture, how it affects society and just art. We're not even talking about news. But we did talk about how like, you know, you can't trust these news sources because it's about what the consumer wants and they're just giving it turn to Fox News.

Yeah, it's like infotainment is what it is. They give you just enough of what actually happened and then they spin it. I think Nate has, but have you ever read any Noam Chomsky? I'm familiar. OK, so one of the big ideas is manufacturing consent. And that affects media and any sort of thing we see in the national news where you don't get to be in that position unless you already agree with the consensus opinion. And that's part of the problem.

You know, you don't get to be there unless you truly believe with the consensus. That's scary. I mean, I knew that, but I mean, I didn't know that part, but I knew about the scary. Like, how are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to trust? You know, no one trust, no one. You know, something disturbing happened around covid. I think we were still doing the masks, the separation, the synagogues. I mean, it's a large community.

There's like 30 synagogues or the synagogues that I can walk to because of the Sabbath, we don't drive. So I walked it. But I was there once. And OK, I don't know if you're familiar with Education Day. I don't know how many people are really aware of that. Never heard of it. So Education Day, they have some resolution. They read it, whatever the White House puts it out. And I think they read it at the UN or something.

But it was a day commemorating the leader of my Hasidic movement that I'm a part of because the Rebbe, our Rebbe Menachem El-Shenarism believed in education. So they honored him by making his birthday Education Day. So whenever his birthday falls out, I don't know if it's if they make it the Hebrew Day or if they make it like the English day he was born, is Education Day. This is where I don't know, like nobody makes a big deal out of it, except they just read it as a resolution.

But during this whole Trump thing and the whole anti-vax thing, I don't have an opinion. I'm not a scientist or a medical professional. But one of the people, like whatever, he was giving a talk about something and he just said the education was dangerous. And I didn't say anything. I was just like, wait a second, this is totally opposite of like what we value and what the leader of our movement valued. But like I couldn't tell if he was joking at first. Like I just really couldn't tell.

But it was just weird. Like this whole that whole thing just made a bunch of people forget they're Jews and they became like Republicans first. Sure. Well, education is dangerous. You know, any sort of ignorance based ideology funded education. I think the trouble with education is a lot of education with the standardized testing and everything is it's teaching you to memorize facts rather than it is teaching you to think for yourself. Right.

Thinking for yourself and questioning authority is dangerous. It just inherently is to the to the to the state. Well, yeah, the people with power, you know, you should really be worried about Bud Light sending a can to an online influencer that has three people that follow them. Dude, I'm so mad. I am so mad about that. But like, can I forgot all about French haircuts? It's amazing. I know. Right. No French haircuts on that day.

All anger towards Bud Light and some random person who lives somewhere in America. Did they not like it because the person was trans? Is that like the whole thing? Yeah. Well, it was a masterstroke, actually. So the people who are like the hard left people hate Dylan Mulvaney because of certain factors. And then, of course, the right wingers hate Dylan Mulvaney because of the trans issue. It's perfect. Perfect. As far as it makes one of my bud light.

I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do enjoy the hardcore conservatives that go out and buy Bud Light now just to shoot it with their AR-15 on their YouTube channel to give Bud Light even more money and promotion. Like, that's how not to do like a boycott. Right. Like you don't you don't boycott something by buying more of it. Well, yeah.

And people are talking about that instead of the government going after whistleblowers, which they just the New York Times just exposed a whistleblower on purpose and they don't talk about how the government is trying to ban VPNs right now. You know, there's a lot of serious issues that are a lot of serious things that are happening in our government and they don't want you talking about that. They don't want you to talk about how the government is purposefully extending the war in Ukraine.

Yeah. Well, the good thing about the VPN that I use that I don't use, I mean, is that I did an extensive amount of research and it's not part of the 13 eyes group of countries and it's not based in the U.S. so it's not really limited to whatever the United States decides. I'm not saying I did that research and I'm not saying that you, the listener, should do that research. I'm just saying. By the way, I meant to ask you guys something. People see Marxism as a quote unquote threat.

I don't know much about Marxism, but some of the newer friends that I made in my community are like their words, real lefties, not this guy left that America has. You mean what you mean the zero sugar lefties, Coke Zero? What's yours? Coke Zero lefties. The gluten free. Yeah, we don't use diet anymore. The gluten free is a good one. Oh, I see what you're saying. He said that, you know, he went to Evanston nearby here. He grew up in Evanston. He used to hand out like Marxist newspapers.

He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He was a very good guy. He grew up in Evanston, and he used to work at the Marxist newspapers, and his wife's parents were some revolutionaries in Chile or something. Like, it's really crazy. It's so cool. Like I was like, oh, so what we have here is just a joke? Yeah, this is the joke. Whatever is left.

If you're seeing something that's left wing on television, it's not left wing. Right. It's just not. You're never going to see anybody talk about on national television, criticize the military industrial complex and explain that we could spend 100 billion, a hundred million dollars in end homelessness in the United States. Hey, or we could buy Twitter for 44 billion. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We sent more money to Ukraine than it would take us to end homelessness permanently in the United States.

So what benefits you and I more? Right. It's very, why are people scared of Marxism? It's propaganda. So there's like really nothing in Marxist philosophy that like, you know, is somehow dangerous. I never like, I'm not. Well, Marxism is kind of like a pipe, pipe dream, kind of like, uh, true libertarianism is a pipe dream. Well, and you know, like capitalism, capitalism is kind of a pipe dream.

I mean, the same people that, the same people that say cap or Marxism is dangerous or the same people that see nothing wrong with our capitalistic society as it is today. And I think the problem is, is that power is that goes back to star Wars and Palpatine, right? Like absolute power corrupts absolutely or something.

And those people that seek the power and can vote themselves salary increases and whatever, it doesn't matter if that's under a capitalistic economy or a Marxist economy or communist or socialist or whatever kind of economy. When you have the ruling class versus everybody else, anything's a threat. Even capitalism, what we have today, which is morphed into like corporatism and cronyism. And that would happen even under Marxism, you know?

So there's gotta be some kind of safeguards under these things to keep these people in check. Sure. I mean, it's a pipe dream. Like I say, we've never seen a government that fell underneath the strict Marxist ideology. It was always Bolshevism, which is just a, another way of saying totalitarian government, you know what I mean? So it's just a political philosophy, but it's a good bogeyman to throw out there. Right. Yeah. And so I've been wanting this. If you read, Oh, go ahead, Nate.

Oh, you go Mike, and then I'll go. Oh, as I was going to say, if you read Karl Marx, a lot of it makes a lot of sense as far as the means of production are owned by the ruling class, but the means of knowledge are owned by the middle classes and the working classes and that the ruling classes, because they own all the capital, they get all the profits, even though they don't have any of the knowledge to produce anything. And that's just fundamentally true.

You know, the people who make all the money don't actually know how the system works and they don't know how to produce anything. And they don't make anything operate. They just have capital so they can maximize profit. And that's what our society is all about. Yeah. And that's why my boss doesn't know how to do what I do. Like if I like, I can't go to him to ask for questions about how to do my job because he just doesn't know. He's a nice enough guy, but he doesn't know.

And I think that's true of any economic or governmental, whatever, whatever you're following is a country like there's going to be people that know more that actually do the things. And it's all kind of like checks and balances. And so the whole point is like what when we started our country, we had the three branches of government to try and do checks and balances. But now they all work together because they get rich off of us, you know, and off of their other deals and stuff that they do.

And so but I was going to say the book that I'm reading is called The Dawn of Everything, and it's looking at inequality through the lens of pre-Columbian tribes here in North America. And they had it was I can't remember the exact term, but it was they were basically flabbergasted, which is totally in modern parlance these days, that the French people had poor people that were begging for money and couldn't afford to feed themselves. And they were like, and you guys think you're better than us?

Like everyone in our tribe eats. They all eat. Some of our tribes, tribes, people have, you know, more beads to trade or more knives or more arrows or whatever. But we all eat like we're all taken care of. So it's kind of like the social social socialism or something or like base needs socialism. And then, you know, if you're quote unquote poor, you can't do as much much trading with other tribes, but you still eat. You sell a home. You still have a role within the tribe.

But you're just not, you know, I don't know. I mean, what's wrong with that? Like, why why couldn't we fix homelessness? Why are we spending all this money on aggressive homelessness architecture? You know, the spikes on benches and windowsills and things instead of, you know, giving them places to live and teaching them skills to do things. I don't know. That's just left. It's nonsense. I know. Damn it. I blame Disney.

Well, if we tried to take care of our social problems like homelessness, how could we have military bases circumnavigating the entire globe? You know, that is a good point. My was a few of them. We definitely need military bases everywhere in the world. I don't know how we could function without having that military base in that country I can't pronounce. Right. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in my county since a war that happened 130 fucking years ago against the Ojibwe.

But I got to really worry about, you know, what happens in the Philippines. Yeah, right. Are we Team America? Well, please. Exactly. How are we supposed to have good puppet sex without it? I know that makes that makes our rulers a lot of money. So we have to have all these wars all the time and all these things that we fund all the time militarily. We couldn't possibly have a military base in the country we couldn't possibly, you know, have. I don't know. This is going to this.

I'm you know, this is going to make me sound like a communist. I don't know why we can't just have universal health care like most other first world democratic countries have. But that would make us communist. So we can't do that. Well, what's good for Pfizer is good for America, dude. Obviously. I mean, that's why the head of Pfizer is an American. Yeah. OxyContin was great for us. Give us more, please.

That's why the head of Pfizer is an American and not like the son of a fucking Nazi war criminal. I feel like both are probably true. I don't know if he was the son of the grandson. Not nice guys, not nice, not nice guys. But man, can they turn to profit? So therefore they're successful Americans. Right. It makes my heart swell with pride to be an American. Proud to be an American.

The Jewish sages 2000 years ago said don't trust politicians because when you need them, they're not going to be there for you because they're only interested in themselves. They only care about themselves. And and whatever they were doing on Epstein Island. And whatever they were doing on Epstein Island. But I really don't understand how even like Jews could like trust. Oh, Donald Trump's not a politician. He became one. So there you go.

If you're actively seeking a public office, you are therefore a politician. If you're a business person, you're a politician. You have to be. That's the whole definition of politician. Right. I just don't understand how people can overlook the fact that Donald Trump has been in the cultural zeitgeist for 40 years. And his whole persona was being a dirtbag, corrupt, rich New York businessman that went around grabbing pussies and banging, you know, Eastern European prostitutes.

You're fired. Exactly. And that's fine. I mean, I'm not trying to like say he's any worse than our current president, who is well known for certain negative things. Being a dixie, potentially being a molester, you know, we're not defending any politicians. He just likes to smell hair, man. Let him let him sniff hair in peace. Always raining on the hair sniffing parade, this guy. Right. You know, and that's why his daughter wrote that she was afraid to take a shower at home when he was home.

I'm afraid to take a shower knowing that he's somewhere out there and has the NSA watching me. And the term woke man, this got ruined. What do you say, woke? What? I said the term woke got ruined. Oh, for sure. Yeah, the cult of these go on, Sima. I was saying, I always thought that woke meant you had like some higher perception of reality. That's how I always interpreted it. And then the past two years, every time I heard the word woke, it's like people are using it in a negative term.

Yeah, because like originally it was like Matrix, right? Like you've awoken from your captive cell or pod or whatever, and you see the state of things as they are. And now it means something completely different. And I just could we have like a societal movement where they don't co-op terms that I'm used to using, and then I have to learn a new definition of it and then find something else to use because they ruined it.

Definitely. Well, as some wise man once told me, the revolution will not be televised. Thanks, Obama. Probably the truth. Oh, yeah, we still got to blame him for stuff. I forgot about that. What I think is so funny is that people think there's a difference between Obama and Bush and Clinton and Trump and Biden. Can you tell me a meaningful difference? A couple of those guys are white. At least one of them doesn't know how to pronounce names in the Bible, which I think is hilarious.

And I don't think Trump uses a script writer or speechwriter. I think he just goes off the cuff all the time. And we talked about that, too, Mike, where it's like, you know, his whole persona is kind of like I speak from the truth or speak for my truth or whatever. But it ends up making him sound like a giant ass hat, which, of course, he is. They all are. But the others, at least to my knowledge, have kind of used a script writer. And it's not our fault.

And it's not his fault that Bush can't read a teleprompter. So, you know, he's like the Ron Burgundy of presidents. And that's what everybody like tore into him about instead of other things that were maybe more meaningful to tear into him about. Oh, geez. I said that kind of fast, just, you know, just in case. Yeah, we we use a slang terms around here, like French haircuts. And in Minecraft.

Yes. Speaking about Minecraft, the guy that leaked all those documents did it on like a Discord server for his game gamer buddies. I mean, supposedly, that's if you believe what the media is telling you. Oh, that's a hard one. Well, it's interesting because he got exposed by the New York Times when he was on the news. He got exposed by the New York Times, which is completely against journalistic ethics. So that tells you the state of journalism in a nutshell right there.

So what news do people trust? You have to do the research and get them, you know, get a variety of sources and try to make the decision for yourself based on the various lies that are being propagated. That's the big thing, Mike. You got to look at a more than one source. You can't just say, oh, this newspaper, this media outlet has served me well in the past. Therefore, I'm going to believe what they say. Who is the I'm trying to? Oh, Edward Snowden, you know, and he's and he's on the run.

And all he did was tell the American people they were being spied on. And now he can never come back here. And Julian Assange is in prison and was on the run for years. And the journalists who reported on what he leaked got pulled surprises. So, yeah, so it's a whole big it's all a big game to the powers that be, you know, the ruling class. And I say this all the time is it's not Republican versus Democrat. It's ruling class for us everyday citizens.

And if you're not in the ruling class, you're an everyday citizen. It doesn't matter if you're middle class or poor. You're an everyday citizen and the ruling class. It's all a game to them. And they love to spin it. And they love to shoot out different things to both their bought and paid for media outlets.

I think just the stuff that came out of Fox News with all the Fox News anchors saying that they hated Donald Trump off air, but then on air, they said he was the greatest thing ever in the world. So, you know, there's no journalistic integrity anymore because these are not journalist outfits anymore. They're propaganda outfits, they're propaganda wings. So you have to go to both to both sides. And, you know, and that's when we did a whole episode on one of our friends.

My wife and I, as friends, sent us a book called The Case for Christ because they knew that I am an atheist and they wanted to bring me into God's loving arms and save my eternal soul. And I read that book because part of stoicism is you should always be reading and always be learning. But if you're only learning or reading the things that agree with your beliefs, you're not doing it the right way.

So I read that book, but I found it to be and, you know, you can go, our listeners can go back and listen to that episode. I'm not going to rehash the whole thing here, but I found it to be so poorly researched that I found another book called The Case Against the Case for Christ by another New Testament scholar who basically took the same umbrage that I did with the researching of that book and refuted it chapter by chapter.

So I read the chapter in The Case for Christ and then the chapter in The Case Against the Case for Christ. And I learned so much more about the Bible than I ever knew, just reading both of those things, both of them together. And I'm an atheist. Why do I care about learning about the Bible? Well, it's fascinating and it's not something I believe in, but I grew up trying to believe in it. You know what I mean? So it's very, very fascinating to me. And I think more people should do that.

Go read something. You know, if you don't like Republicans, go read one of the new Republican books out there by one of the Republican people. And if you're a Republican and hate Democrats, go read the New Democrat book. I don't know, like branch out, think for yourself. You got to look at multiple sources. Right. The case or crisis, they just want you to worship a Jew. Yeah, but they hate Jews. Yeah, but he's a Jew that looks like he's from Scandinavia. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Yeah. Like everybody is like, you're my favorite white person. Jesus, excuse me. What? Speaking about speaking about that. So that's like Christians have no problem with a white Jesus. But everybody's up in arms about the new Netflix documentary about Cleopatra, where she's shown as a full on black woman, which incidentally is not true because she was descended from Greeks. And that's why they're mad. Yeah, because they're they're effectively so liberals get mad for people whitewashing stories.

And now the liberals are mad because they're blackwashing history, you know, and making Cleopatra black. The conservatives are mad because they're blackwashing. Oh, I see. Oh, somebody's mad. I don't know. But it's also not history. Right. Like if Cleopatra is not black, then she's not black. You can in my mind, you can make the little mermaid black. And it's not a big deal because as far as I know, and I'm not a mermaid ologist. So don't quote me on this. But mermaids aren't real.

So if they're black or white or orange or blue, it literally doesn't matter to the story. But if you're going in, it matters. Yeah, it matters to insecure people. I'm sure the story is going to be absolutely rubbish anyway, because most remakes are rubbish to begin with. So but it has nothing to do with the race of the actors. Right. Right. I mean, I take a controversial stance. All right. Hit us, Mike. Hit us.

I think that it's fine to race swap mythical characters like Jesus or Santa Claus or the Little Mermaid. But I'm less of a fan of race swapping real historical figures or telling stories in historical context and putting people in there that don't belong. So it kind of lessens the sting of racism in America when you put like a black queen in Scandinavia, circa 1200. You know what I mean? They get to tell realistic stories about the past if that's what you're planning on doing.

But race swapping Santa Claus, who cares if Santa Claus is whatever. That's what every culture has their own version of Santa Claus, kind of. Right. I mean, isn't there one in Mexico that comes in like if you don't do the right thing, they like beat you or something like, I don't know. The Krampus. Yeah, the Krampus. Yeah. Like a lot of these mythical things like it doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these mythical things. And that's what I'm trying to say to Mike is like, it doesn't matter.

I don't care if Ariel is black or, you know, like, I don't know why Aladdin would be white necessarily. Like, I don't think he would be white or Jasmine, you know, like in a lot of the in Aladdin, but maybe they were. I don't know. This mythical stuff, it's all make believe. But to put. Well, that and Jasmine being black would make a lot more sense than being white. Yeah. But but yeah, but like making a race that she wasn't right. Go ahead. Are they doing that on purpose?

Are they doing that on purpose for like equality or something? Is that what you do? Or any of like the changing the race of any character? Well, the change in the race of any any character is mostly to try and fit the modern society, which is fine. That's fine with me if it's a mythical thing, if it's a if it's a fictional thing. Like if you want to go back and retell Star Wars and have Luke be black, that doesn't that doesn't offend me at all. Other than the movies were great.

And I don't know why I have to keep fucking around with them. George, special edition. I'm looking at you. Yeah. I know that if I was going to sell Santa Claus to like middle of India, I would make Santa Claus Indian for sure. Yeah. If I was Coca-Cola and I was putting Santa Claus on cans in Colombia, I would make him probably a medium skinned Latino. And if I was selling Santa Claus in California, I'd make him a trans woman. I thought Santa Claus was a trans man.

Oh, there's a spin I didn't see coming. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, people people get all riled up about this kind of stuff. And that's the whole point is it's all it's all fluff because what's the what's the government doing when we're arguing about fictional characters? They're plotting their next thing. Exactly. How many billions are being stuffed into illegal bank accounts right now that we're not focusing on?

Supposedly, Zelensky stole 400 million dollars out of the money that we sent to Ukraine. Well, we said it before on the podcast, the only country more corrupt than Ukraine is Russia by like one spot. So they're on the very top of the corrupt countries list if you go look at that kind of research online. But we're sending them all this all these great weapons of war. So hooray for us. Well, who would thought that a guy named Voldemort would be corrupt and a baddie?

Not me. That man was just misunderstood. Yep. Just misunderstood. We got totally siderelled on our sidetracked on that. Well, you know, I did ask what somehow I wanted to talk about. And he said anything. He's big into Judaism, of course, and Star Wars, of course, and, you know, politics. So we kind of covered all three of those topics. Sure. Did you guys did you guys hear about Clarence Thomas? Oh, his fancy trips. Oh, his fancy trips. You mean his constitutional right to fancy trips?

Yes, yes, yes. His totally not corrupt bribes, multimillion dollar yearly trips. I don't have to report those. Oh, God, it's fucking awful. It's always been awful, though. We're just more aware of it now than ever. Well, we have to be because like the Internet's everywhere. Right. But not everybody uses it. And I've said this before.

And one of my favorite things I've seen online is, hey, remember, you know, 30 years ago when we said, man, if only everybody could have equal access to the wealth of human knowledge, there wouldn't be idiots anymore. Well, turns out with the advent of cell phones and the Internet, that that's not the reason people are stupid. Just so you guys know, I am officially done with my cigar. It was a finger burner. Yep. Finger burn. My fingers are warm right now. I had to stick them somewhere cool.

Wine reek. The stuff smelling them then. I don't know if this is taboo. I guess it's not taboo here. But is anybody familiar with the usage of psychedelics as like a therapy? I am somewhat familiar. But the other day I met my friend's house a couple of weeks ago. I met my friend's house. He's a Hasidic guy who grows them. And it was a Saturday night and we decided we're going to order pizza and watch Han Solo. He's never seen it. I've seen it many times.

Yeah. And he goes to his garden and picks up these giant. I mean, I don't know how to measure the stuff. These two really big penis envy is what it's called. Okay. Boy, I was envious when I saw that. He comes into the room and he hands them both to me and says, if you eat these right now, you can have these. And first off, they're nasty. Yeah, it's not peer pressure. It's just your turn, right? Yeah. And I was like, I'm not going to say no. And I ate them and I got smacked by the cosmos.

It was beautiful. I lost all sense of self-awareness, like really, like what do they call it? Ego death. I use the term in Hebrew, but it means ego death. I was all sense of self-awareness and I was like getting kind of worried, like, am I am I going to go crazy because of the when I came to like I would come to whatever, wondering if I was going to go crazy. Obviously, I didn't. Maybe I did. I don't know. But it was a very healing experience, to say the least.

So I talked to my therapist about psychedelic use and he told me like all these like good things about it that he knows. Yeah. So I've always been interested psychedelics. Oh, go ahead, Nate. I was going to say, I've always been interested in kind of the the shroomage stuff because, you know, they can do a lot of things.

But I was reading somewhere they had kind of like a scale where, you know, it ranged from like a mild kind of like buzz to what you said, like the ego death or the full complete loss of everything and, I don't know, floating out amongst the cosmos kind of thing. And I've always been a little like apprehensive of going to the deep end of that of that spectrum. But I don't know. I mean, I'd be down to try.

I don't really enjoy mushrooms just in general, like on pizza and things because of the texture. But I've heard you can just put it in peanut butter and then everything is good. But I love peanut butter. So go ahead, Mike. I was going to say they used to use psychedelics in therapy and drug treatment. But of course, our government banned that despite the record of it being potentially useful.

I don't know why all these drugs are banned and we have all these weapons of war that we're sending to Ukraine. Well, it's hard to have a person who wants to hate their enemy when they have their third eye opened occasionally. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you have three eyes, do you see that woman from Total Recall with Arnold and the three breasts? If you're watching the movie, I suppose. Is that a question for a different podcast? I don't know.

Yeah, man, you can't have a whole population of people who feel brotherhood. We're happy. All the people of the earth. Yeah, I think we need more of that. And Mike and I have talked about this. Yeah. And I don't think you know this yet, but Mike and I have talked that we really feel that in America, America is so big and vast just in land, in land, your geography. Yeah, there I go with my big words again. America is big in the land. Elect me as your next president.

But because it's such so huge geographically, we don't. And now everybody is so sectioned off in their little groups or cliques or political spectrum regions that we don't really have an underlying, uniting nationalism. And I don't mean the bad nationalism stuff, but we don't really have that. What would you how do you phrase it, Mike? Like the national consciousness or something? Yeah, we don't have a national

consciousness. So not having the national consciousness is a huge detractor because I think it would fix a lot of our stuff because he couldn't. Right. And you were talking about this, too, somehow about the how can the Jewish population root for certain politicians when they're told to not trust politicians? But we don't have that social consciousness. And if we did, we would never elect any of these people that have been elected. Right. That's for sure.

That is for sure. Mushrooms are something people the first time person tries it should be kind of fun. I mean, I use it for more like I don't want to say spiritual things because that's using it as a cheat, but for more like therapeutic, I guess. Maybe that's an excuse. I mean, I do have fun when I'm on it, but it's like a reset. It might also get you closer spiritually, I mean, because that's who you are. Right, right.

The idea is to reach spiritual high with one's own effort, though, like not necessarily use those things for spiritual eyes. I mean, you do get one regardless if you're looking for it or not. It's my experience, but but it was just so beautiful. Everybody I have a friend, he's a creating guy. He is a PhD in neuroscience and he's a data scientist. That's what he's doing. And he was asking he's he's a very intellectually curious Jewish guy. And he asked me, he said he thinks he wants to try shows.

I mean, this guy buys Japanese Chinese teapots for no reason. So like, you know, he comes up with these endeavors. And so Corrine and I were telling him, yeah, you know, encouraging him. And we took care of his stepson and his daughter. So his wife could babysit him at this guy's house. And what my friend failed to tell me is that he had a PhD in neuroscience.

And because of his knowledge of neuroscience, he gets super paranoid and anxious about things that he goes to the emergency room for like all the time. If he if something feels weird to him. So he had an awful he had an awful trip. So, you know, we're still waiting. I mean, his kids are fine. And then we get a call from his wife saying we're going to the ER. And I was like, what? Maybe. Yeah. We're like, he'll be fine. He's like, no, he insists, you know, his wife's American.

So she took him to the ER. And I don't know whatever he was saying. And she wrote a note. She said, sorry, if my husband's an asshole and tripping balls, he took mushrooms. She added it to the guy. The guy was the guy was fine. But it's like the person who, like, tried to, like, brief him in it is really into, like, using it for, like, you know, ego death and, like, you know, all this stuff that you have to face and deal with.

And that's kind of what made it what kind of thing made it a bad trip is because it was his first time and he's being told some serious stuff. Yeah. And then he tells you the other day, I think I should try it again. They said you should have told us about your underlying anxiety, dude. I don't know how to answer that. I would say yes, but I'm not. I would say probably not. Yeah, probably not. I mean, that's what I've heard.

I mean, I've never done anything psychedelic like that, but I've always heard from people that have done it is that you have to go in with the right mindset. You know, you have to understand or you have to be in a safe what you would consider a safe place, you know, with people that you trust and maybe not a lot of, like, external stimuli, and then you can have a good trip. But, you know, I don't know. I've never done it. So I don't know for sure.

I had one bad trip the first week I was away from home after my separation. I never had a bad trip before. So, like, you know, I was at that friend's house and I took mushrooms and I was just like, crying and it was just awful. Like, I thought I was fine. I felt like I was in a good space. I thought I'd close her. And then, like, I just had a bad trip and I didn't realize it. But obviously, like a week after a separation, I probably shouldn't have tried to take them.

But I thought, oh, I need a reset from all this, you know? Yeah. I thought I was going to give me that. I have a friend, he's a rabbi that makes, like, edibles, like, for the Sabbath. We can't smoke on the Sabbath. So he makes them. He started making them for older Hasidic ladies that had problems and they needed it. And he wanted me to try it out because he wasn't a smoker. He didn't know the potency. And, you know, sometimes it was like too much.

One sip was too much. Sometimes, like, whatever. Like, one sip was like a little bit. So last July, my friends, one of his sons got hit by a car and died. It was a whole community, like, very sad. And, you know, as a parent, just made it worse. And that following Friday, I hit up my friend and I was like, yo, dude, can I get some of that oil? It was basically like olive oil or something. You can just drink it. I said, can I get some of that oil? Like, I really need some.

After all this week, it's just, you know, and he gave me some. And I started to sip it. I just took a couple of sips. And right before, you know, we lit the Sabbath candles, you know, I took one last look at my phone and I saw like some news, like Jewish community news of somebody somewhere passing away. And I was like, oh, man, not another one. And I don't know why, but that gave me anxiety, probably because the edible, like, it really hit me. Yeah. And so I'm fine.

I'm just feeling a little anxious. And I'm like, you know, Friday night we go to the synagogue and my son wanted to go with me. And of course, if you had a bad edible experience, you know that you judge yourself awfully. So I was like, I don't want to go. I'm going to be a bad father if I don't whatever. So I go in the bedroom and I lay on my bed and my kids come in and say, you know, is Tati all right? And their mother said, and I was just stoned and feeling overwhelmed.

But she had to say, Tati's just sad what happened to his friend's son. And that triggered me. And I just started like, I'm not a crier. I was crying. And we have basically Friday night and Saturday is like two days of Thanksgiving meal and you have guests. It's not like Thanksgiving food, but it's like pretty much a big thing. And I had guests over. I had guests over it. I could not stop being so emotional because I was high out of my mind. And I just played it off.

Like, instead of saying like I had an edible, I just played it off as like, you know what? I mean, it is true. I was sad about what happened because she triggered, but, you know, it was just a terrible experience. I think most people have experiences like that. As far as like people who are using substances, I've had bad experiences myself. So and it's usually triggered by something external, you know. Yeah, very much.

And that's a drastically change all the topics, but I know Mike's done with his cigar and I just put mine out. How are you doing on yours? Oh, mine's done. Oh, OK. I didn't know we had to announce that. Oh, yeah. Well, that's kind of the the format of the show is like we kind of go until the cigars are done. So, yes, we can do we can do final cigar thoughts. I think this has been a great conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope everyone else did as well. Yeah, it was great.

Yeah. If you enjoyed it, you want to plug your podcast again? Yeah. Team Spirit Art House. If you know the website, team like T E A M Spirit Art House dot com at the website. Yeah, we'll put the link in the episode description here. Be sure to give them a follow, a check out, listen to them. And I've listened to some of their stuff and seen some of their other multimedia stuff that's come out and it's been top notch. So give that a check out. This cigar was really, really, really good.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, it was definitely good. I'll get another one later. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Smoked it until my fingers got burnt. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Simha, for being our guest. And we look forward to speaking with you in the future. And thanks for listening to Nice Ashes. All right. Yeah. Thank you very much. Take care. Be safe. Have fun.