What is the sociable? The Sociable is a website, well, it's a it's a news portal, news blog that I actually started working on in 10 days or on October 30th, it'll be 10 years that I've been running that site and it's. That's pretty good. Started off writing about AI and the Epic of Gilgamesh and Humanities quest for digital digital immortality. But no, it's a it's a place where try to track tech and how it affects society.
And so I look into what defense departments, you know, government stuff, intelligence agencies with how they develop some of the tech, how that gets transferred over to big tech and vice versa. And then going into what kind of legislation goes about. And then also a lot of stuff on policy. So policies. On. How tech is used and, and so that's, that's a lot of either either from governments or from NGOs, you know, and globalists and stuff that that's the kind
of area. How deep do you dive? Do I do kind of medium dives because I, I put out, it's not like a lot of Evergreen content, although there's quite, there's some of that, but it's kind of looking at the day-to-day stuff or week to week stuff. And so once you know, you start reporting on those enough, then you get a bigger sense of kind of where something is moving in what kind of direction. And then I'll do a little bit of a deeper dive.
But it's nothing like, you know, more than I think 10 minutes of reading time maybe is about the longest I've I've done on a writing thing. But I try, you know? I do direct sources and quotes and stuff and try to bring all
the receipts as well. Yeah, digital influence is probably one of the biggest talking points actually, if you think about it, because I mean, Technocracy, New World Order, Build Back Better, what, The Great Reset, all of these terms that generally mean the same thing all directly involved technology. Yeah, because I mean, Even so the Great Reset thing, that's kind of going back to the New
World Order thing. But as far as the tech side goes, especially when you're talking about the Great Reset, that's what's powering that. So when Klaus Schwab and Chucky sausage fingers Rex when he was the Prince, King of England was a Prince, they launched the Great Reset together in June of 2020. And so that's a great reset of societal contracts and of the global economy, they said.
But what's powering that is Schwab's term, the 4th industrial Revolution, which is an infusion of our digital, biological and physical identities. So that's what it's it's the merger of all the different technologies, AI, virtual reality, augmented reality in the future, quantum computing, but also biological technologies and all that. Yeah. I mean, that's why you end up with sort of like like biometric recognition, facial recognition and these sorts of things.
It's the merger of of exactly those philosophical and scientific talking points. Yeah, basically. And it's, well, it's basically going down to transhumanism in the in the future. It's kind of like what it's going towards. But you know, for now, you've got, you know, airports are pretty much, I mean, countries all over the world are, are getting advanced in this and pushing through this agenda, this digital ID 1 biometric one
very in a very big way. But you know, airports have almost got locked down, you know, And so these things, it's, you know, if you look at what these digital identity systems are, some people say it's on a smartphone, you know, but eventually that's not going to matter. It's, it's you, it's your face, it's a camera, it's a, it's a probe, it's a sensor, it's, it's whatever.
Even in in the UK, they're Advanced Research and innovation agency, which is modelled after DARPA in the United States, they're going after something to re engineer stuff in nature and why. And then the who's the other the UN in the Rockefeller Foundation using that they want to monitor and put a digital Ida nature ID on everything in nature.
So I don't think nature has a cell phone or a mobile phone, you know, a mobile device, but still they're going to do a digital public infrastructure to monitor, track and take control of all land and resources and biodiversity. I often find myself having a bit of a personal tug of war with these concepts because the way we often talk about them on my show and and online and everything else is it's always bad. It's always nefarious.
And I sometimes wonder whether that's a little bit too much like being like a Luddite. I mean, not everything that's technological is bad. I mean, technology is largely a set of tools which can be used for good and for bad. Yeah, I mean, you can use a hammer to build a house, or you can bash someone's brains in with it. You know, depending how you use it, Yeah, Inherently, I've also
seen these arguments as well. Some people say that, you know, a certain type of technology that's only purpose is for bad or to spy or to manipulate. You know, for me, it comes down to, at least for now, the people who are controlling it or when in charge. And it's about trust. So yeah, I mean, digital ID, digital identity systems can be a godsend. They can make everything easier. And then they actually promise to do that.
And they probably will, but you know, at what cost That's the people, you know, in charge using. I mean, in a future where there's AI and especially mixed with the quantum computing or whatever, then I don't know what kind of alien entity is entering into the system there, whether there's actually any human input. But for now it's that, yeah, it's, I don't want to be a Luddite either. You know, I try to, I only got a mobile phone, what, 2 1/2 years ago.
You know, I, I'm, I'm 40 now so I just got one just a little bit ago out of wanting to, you know, for, for banking stuff and for like doing bills and stuff like that because it's just, you know, living out in middle of nowhere in Columbia and on top
of mountain. It got a little more difficult yeah, but yeah, there's luckily, I mean, you can still pay in cash here, but it's not the greatest, you know, they still have to go through the banking system, still got, you know, your debit cards and what have you. So yeah, I'm not allowed. I, I don't. The digital ID thing, yeah, it's coming. It's already here and a lot of people already do have it and use it, but it's kind of like how you navigate through it
right now. You know, I'm, when I was first reporting on it like 5, about five years ago in the Great Reset. And like my first story on digital ID was your digital identity could be used against you in the events of a great Reset. And the, the image that I had for that article was up a voodoo doll because I thought that was very appropriate. Because whatever you prick over here, it's going to happen to you, you know, kind of like a quantum, like an entanglement
thing. And plus it had stuff to do with the coming vaccine passports as well. But yeah, the technology itself again, yeah, I'm not going to be one of those. I used to be so gung ho and like reject this, don't you know? But the ways when it's getting out, it's not like you signing up for it.
You know, this could be if you do have a phone, the government can just like have the net app downloaded onto your phone or something or whatever tech company they they partner with or, you know, just if you go someplace, it's like no, stop. If you don't have a phone, well, here's here's a here's a little paper card, maybe if they'll mail it to you with a QR code on it, or if not that just every single while they're installing CCCCCTV cameras everywhere. That's you.
I mean, your eye, your palm, your, your gate movement. I think that's one that I don't, I know you would recently went to China. I don't know if they say anything about gate gate recognition, but that's when I read it. That was coming out there as well. I mean, China is very technocratic, there's no doubt about that. I've never seen as many cameras. I mean, mass surveillance is huge, huge, huge, huge there. I mean, I won't get into a chat now about China, but I will say this.
I come from the African continent. So my default setting is, you know, no mass surveillance. We have a very inept government right across. Every government in Africa is pretty useless. So we don't have very effective surveillance tools and where we see cameras, a lot of them don't work. And when some of them do work, there's, there's no real enforcement. So my, as I said, my default setting is not to have mass surveillance and I quite like where I live as a result of that.
But, but I will say this, you do have very blatant mass surveillance in China. It's in your face, you can't miss it. They don't hide it, whereas in the States and in the UK and Europe it's very subversive. It's the Palantir type of sinister back door kind of surveillance. And I think that that's but a little bit more worrying. Yeah, and there's a lot of it that's in the just, you know, terms of service, that little fine print that you Click to agree on whatever app or
service, whatever. And you know, it's, yeah, you're right. It kind of flies a little bit more under the radar, like, oh, we're not doing this and we may collect this technology about you or this data or not. We may share this or not. You know, I was just reading the Facebook, those articles by Ian Davis that you had on the other day. And yeah, that's true.
And yeah, so it's, but it's creeping and people can like, you know, it's the little, the, the frog slowly boiling, you know, but I think people are starting to wake up to the heat of it. And yeah, I know what you're saying about Africa. I I spent six months in Ghana in Accra as a as an intern reporter for the Ghanaian Chronicle there. I mean, we had rolling blackouts all the time. No, I mean, no water, rivers of
sewage, no cameras anywhere. I didn't see like infrastructure just not there, you know, Internet going off and on like crazy and you know, so basic stuff. Not, not so much there here in Colombia, you know, I'm, I'm up in the rural area, but if I go into a little Pueblo, there's, there's cameras in every corner. Most people who don't really pay attention to them and they're not really as privacy binded.
Every time you go to a store, they ask like, Hey, do you want to share your ID with us and so we can give you better deals and stuff. And I mean, everyone here just kind of goes along with it. Not me, you know, for that matter. What do you think is the hill to die on at the moment? For me, it was the one to die on was the vaccine passport thing, even though that is a digital ID, but also involved getting, you know, putting something in your body. You know, I wasn't going to do
that. That was the one to die on for me, the hill to die on for me, this digital ID 1. You know, like how how invasive and how just getting away from that concept of being a thing on a smartphone, you know, that's that's a temporary thing, you know, but it's going to again, going through all those different kinds of sensor systems, sensing systems. So it's, you know, avoid it as
best I can. But you know, it's really good question because you know, the end game stuff and trying to see the, the end picture, you know, I, I do see it as one of pillow control, but it's, is it something that's like, oh, no, I'm opting out. Well, if you don't, if there's no opting out because it's already automatically built into just whatever sees you. So I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's a tough one. So he'll dine.
He'll dine. Was the vaccine that was putting something in my body changing, changing something about that. But for for right now, I'm monitoring it and navigating it day by day, you know, and seeing what comes up. I agree with you. I think when you have to inject something into your body, that becomes a hell of a lot more important than than something that's more abstract.
I mean, CBDC, digital ID, yeah, these are real things, but they're, they're kind of more abstract if you compare them to being injected with something. I mean, I also avoided, I mean, I, I avoided PCR also. I don't know if you did, but I I didn't have a single PCR test. No, I, I did because I was, when I was traveling, I was, I was OK with the test for traveling, but I mean, when they did ask for like tests and, or, or because I
wanted to see family and stuff. But the Colombian government at one point, they, they turned out, they, they said, no, if you're going to Colombia, you need to have the, the vaccine. And then so it was 1, they did that two weeks before a Christmas one year. And so I couldn't, so I could leave the country and, you know, go to the United States, see family. But I couldn't come back home to Colombia, where I've been living for 11 years, 10 years or nine
years at that point. And so, you know, I, I missed, I had a nephew who, who was, had seven years of leukemia and that was his last Christmas. And he, he died just a couple weeks after that one. So that was really tough, but I didn't do that. But, you know, I didn't get the shot. I didn't leave the country. I stayed here and missed out on that. That was a sacrifice that I, that I, that I went with. But yeah, but for PCR, that was OK.
Didn't like it, but it wasn't as invasive, you know, as putting some kind of tech, other kind of tech in you. Let's just stay on that for a second. If you could go back to 2019 before any of the stuff rolled
out, would you I'm. No, I mean, because no, this is, I'm not, I'm not one to go back in time, you know, and, and and and try to do that because now with the knowledge that I have going back then, I mean, would I just go, are you asking going back there with the knowledge I have now or just going back there? Yeah, knowing knowing what you knowing what you know now. No, because no, because all the stuff that I've learned now, it was result of things that
happened. So, you know, looking at the even before digital or vaccine passports were even considered as something it was like in late 2020, you know, a year later after 2019 that I already saw the writing on the wall. I saw that digital idea was coming. I saw these vaccine passports were coming before a vaccine came out. So it already that kind of foresight, you know, if you keep, if you, you know, read the, you can forecast a bit into the future because they tell you
what's going to happen. So in 2019, you know, I guess it would have been nice to look at event 2O1IN real time. Maybe, maybe that's one of the things I would have done and just right then and there to not be so slow to the narrative because, you know, when the pandemic was declared in March of 2020, like right on the Ides of March, it took me about 5 months or so to really kind of like, hold on a second.
This isn't like they're abusing this now two weeks to flatten the curve, to follow the spread or whatever. I was like, OK. And then then like, oh, this is such a weird thing. Oh, but we're all going through it now. Let's make the best of it. And then, you know, after the weeks go by, I'm just like, all right, who's who's making these decisions? Who's pulling the strings here, you know? And so I got really more into that. I was really skeptical, but for the first couple months, few
months, I wasn't. I think it was Nassim Taleb who who wrote in his one of his books about, I think it was him who wrote about Black Swan events. Can't remember now. Besides the fact that he got COVID very, very wrong. I still appreciate, you know, his work about risk analysis and 2020 was a major, major turning point in human history, right? I mean, I don't think, I don't think the world has been locked down at any point in history. I think in World War 2, maybe one or two countries.
And I mean, come on, we know that it was just coincidental, Tim. I mean, we can't be conspiracy theorists here. It was just all coincidence. And all the countries just did it at the same time and they used all the same language also, you know, just coincidentally. But I'm thinking 911 was also a massive turning point on, on so many levels. And we still don't really know what happened. Would would you say that the
COVID event was bigger than 911? They're both they're moving the needle or pushing society in a certain direction. So yeah, 911 was huge. I mean, I was 16 when that what happened. I was still in high school when when 911 happened. But I mean, immediately after that, we got the Patriot Act and we got TSA, Department of Homeland Security, like all this stuff that came in within like
weeks after. So that was already the the plan was already in place to bring in all this stuff, all the surveillance, but they just needed a catalyst. Same thing with COVID, you know, just doing the same thing 20 years or 19 years later, both bad and they both they keep re reauthorizing emergency, you know, stuff with the Patriot Act. So it's, it's just, it's something you keep, keep recycling and it's not going away, you know, so and, and so which one was, I mean, they were
both huge. Nothing is I mean that we want and they both launched the what invisible wars on an invisible enemy, the War on Terror, you know, the war on a disease. You know which what, what built by by the military, funded by the US government, maybe in a lab in Wuhan, you know, like it's it's, it's insane. Can you remember what you're doing, by the way, on 1911? Oh, of course I was. I was at open gym and doing basketball practice before school started. I used to play captain of my
basketball team. Yeah, I remember I came, we came out of open gym and I'll sweat and go into the parking lot and my coach just yelled out they're bombing the Pentagon. And I was like, what? Like, because my coach was pretty crazy. Anyway, I just thought he was saying, spouting some weird thing. But now we were all glued to our in school and class for the next couple of days. Nobody taught anything. We were just glued to our the televisions every single class.
Yeah, yeah, I remember it also. I was at my, I was visiting my girlfriend at the time and I don't know, I think we were watching MTV or something and her brother came running in shouting America's under attack, World War 3 is beginning. And then we switched over. We switched over to CNN. Those were the days when I still watched CNN, you know. Yeah, I didn't even watch. I mean, it was on. I mean, it was on every channel as well, you know, like I was
like wanting to watch ESPN. I was trying to watch Sports Center and. But no, they're showing that too. So yeah. I mean, I feel like an idiot in hindsight because I didn't catch on to any of this stuff. I thought. I thought the official story was what happened for years and
years and years and years. I mean, even when it first happened, I went out and got a little tiny American flag, put it on the antenna of my car and was like trying to be all patriotic and stuff like that, you know, not not knowing anything about it. Just because, you know, I'm a teenager with my world was high school and in sports, that was it. When did you start getting your sort of Damascus moments? Actually it was like around 20/11/2012 and that's when I started.
I started seeing on YouTube the stuff of Bill Cooper and David Icke and those. Yeah. I mean, it was like in 2012, I'm like, huh, Huh. And then, you know, from there, I kind of, I think what happens maybe with people who first get awakened. I don't want to say awakened, but all of a sudden, like they realized that one thing wasn't really true. And then you always start listening to this one person or another and they start digging and going down the rabbit holes.
Then you're like, nothing is true. This is all like anything else that comes up. No, that's because of this. That's because so I think people kind of lose their minds for a bit. I don't know if Candace Owens is in that realm right now where like she just kind of starting to gradually discover like, oh, this isn't right, Then this isn't right. And then it goes full on meltdown and about everything.
But yeah, but but I think that's AI think that's a natural process of like almost like a deprogramming thing where it's like, well, if this isn't true, nothing's true. But it's a little bit more nuanced than that. It definitely is more nuanced than that. I think you're right. I mean, we're talking about complex systems. Yeah, definitely.
So. So with the 9/11 stuff, yeah, I want us to Start learning about, well, even then in 2003 when the US went to war with Iraq, I was like, what did that have to do with Afghanistan and 9:11 and then looking at, you know, in the Taliban and Al Qaeda and stuff like that. But then it's like, well, no, the people were from Saudi Arabia and where was, where was bin Laden allegedly found in Pakistan? And so I'm like, and then there's also the whole thing about Israel dancing Israelis.
So like, and then, you know, celebrating right on 9/11. So I'm looking at Israel and then and they found their, you know, the, the, the, the, the hijackers passports in, in a twisted bubble, all, all, you know, good. So these complex things, it's the more information that comes in. And that's our thing too.
You know, we got the Internet became, you know, so there's in social media, they came Internet got more users, you know, more, more people online sharing information and stuff like that. So before, you know, you say you used to watch CNN because, yeah, I mean, there wasn't really much out there on Alta Vista or CompuServe or AOL kind of stuff, you know, back in the day. What do you make of AII I I'm in two minds. I don't think it will ever take over because I don't think it
has a will or a desire. But I think it's highly advanced algorithms that can be used for very nefarious for very nefarious purposes. Yeah, I mean, because it can. It's really good at, you know, handling just a shit ton of data and processing it and trying to make some sense out of, you know, spitting out whatever results it does.
And that can seem, you know, right now it's, it's it's, you know, generative AI is really shit at getting, well, they do is like go to Reddit or Wikipedia or whatever, you know, so it's not going to get to that. But yeah, as it keeps advancing, you know, whatever. And, you know, people look into it like as maybe some kind of form of government, others look at some kind of form of
religion. But the answer is as the, as the more data gets collected and the more it processes it, it's going to be, you know, it's beyond our comprehension. So whatever like result it turns spits out, it could seem totally alien to us, you know, and, and like, if we surrender our decision making to it, that's when we got really big problems. We do a lot anyway, you know, even just the search engine, like we don't memorize stuff anymore.
We don't really kind of go go into physical books, which like, if you want to know something like, oh, just look it up. And so we've lost, you know, just like we don't really know people's phone numbers anymore. We don't have those memorized, you know, so we just said, oh, I got to go look it up. But what, you know, with AI and, you know, being so reliant on technology, then, you know, what happens if the signal stops? You know, what happens if you're not be able to do that?
You know, our, our knowledge base now is not just, you know, written in stone like it used to be. It's not in these papyrus papyri in the desert where it can be preserved. It's in the cloud, it's in screens and stuff like that. So if you so, you know, if there's any kind of cyber warfare that goes on or if there's some kind of natural disaster of, you know, something that messes with all these systems, we're going to be kind of stupid. You know we're going to.
Yeah, Tim, if, if there are so many psyops going on and so many distractions going on, where should we be looking? Well, the old philosophy is look within. No, The thing is, you got to I, so I, yeah, I look at and follow tons of sources, you know, even the ones don't agree with or disagree or even one that seems so fantasy fantastical that I
don't know. But The thing is getting information from everywhere you can and then applying your own discernment, your own judgement, your own, you know, so I wouldn't say, you know, like follow or worship anybody. You know, like you can have like people you look to as trusted sources, but always question, you know, like look at, you know, when they're saying something like do they provide evidence? They back it up and you look at
that. And then even if they are providing evidence and have the sources, do you come to the same conclusion or not, You know, based on everything else that you know about and just based on your own real life experiences. What did Gandhi say? That you must be the the light you wish to see in the world or the change you you must be the change you wish to see in the world, which can be used for good or I'll. Yeah.
So I mean, what? And for, I mean, for some people, I mean, there are psychopaths out there, There's narcissists and the ones who want to start within, if they actually could, are able to start within. But what they're going to project onto the world is something truly horrible. But no, for, for people with the consciousness and empathy and, and normalcy and, and, and a decent idea of logic or even the abstract.
It's good to, to do that because in little ways, you know, I'm, I'm a relatively small account, you know, on social media, it's starting to grow a little bit, but there's been so many times where I, it's like planting seeds, you know, like I'll put out something and it like, it doesn't get any traction forever. And then like a year later, then someone else shares this little bit and then it goes big and
then gets shared. It gets filtered through lots of different accounts and never goes back to me. Well, not, not never sometimes, but in a way it's like I, I can see that influence playing out. I can see that what my words just, you know, like just the other day on Sky News Australia, I saw they, they quoted from one of my articles just on air.
So it's like, oh, these little seeds, you know, if you plant out there and this comes from within, this is like your own doing the research and coming to your conclusions and doing it all in good faith, and that's from within. One of my rules of thumb when it comes to following media sources is generally to have more faith in the media sources like the sociable, for example, because you're a smaller outfit and what that means is that you've got more skin in the game.
You know you've got more to lose if you get it wrong. If CNN or Fox gets it wrong, nothing really happens. Yeah, especially early on in the pandemic when when I was going on about all this Great Reset stuff that that really put my, that's really put myself out there. I knew that, you know, I got so much. Actually, a lot of the condemnation came from a lot of people who are close to me, not really out there in the public sphere, but I got that as well. So yeah, just.
And when it comes to bigger organizations, yeah, they they even if like the whatever big news is out there, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Like a week later or something like that, they make a tiny retraction, but by then it's already spread and no one cares. But I appreciate you saying that about sociable and yeah, because it's just, yeah, I'm not, there's no outside influences there.
Like, like not, well, there's influences, of course, but there's not any incentive for me to do this. I'm doing this out of because I really, I don't. Well, basically it comes down to I just want to be left alone. You know, I don't want all this control. I don't want all the surveillance. I don't want what's coming, you know, all the stuff that's coming. And so I want to let people know about that and then have them come to their own conclusions.
One of the big difficulties, though, is discerning which battles to fight, because some of these battles are really pointless. They're not worth fighting because you can't win them. You know, you want to fight the battles that you can win. And I sometimes wonder whether folks quote UN quote on our side, just stretch themselves too thin by fighting too many battles. Yeah, because you got to pick, pick and choose which ones are the most important to you and and things.
So, yeah, you know, when it comes to conflicts that are far away from me, like Ukraine, Russia, Palestine, Israel, I'm not really vocal about them. I have my opinion, of course, but that's not that's not my battle. You know, other people are doing that. Other people are getting stretched than doing that, but that's not that's not mine. Yeah, I'm, I'm just because again, that's coming from something within.
I just want to be left alone. I don't want this to this stuff happening to me. I want to let the world know what's going on here. And if you choose to pay attention to it, that's on you if you want to or not, if you want to pick it up, if you want to go to. Yeah, everywhere in my stories, I put every single source so you can go look at that, you know, like every report. And that's another thing too. But when you talked earlier about which, you know, Media Trust, I really, I don't read
newspapers. I haven't read newspaper. Like it's only on occasion if something crosses and even if then if I'm going to report on it, I'll look at whatever the media report was and I go, OK, where are their sources in this story? And then I go directly to that source and then I go from there. I, so I never on face value, I'd never trust a media publication. I'd say do the same for my own,
you know, as an outsider. But even when I read more independent journalist stuff, you know, from time to time, you know, there's a circle of a few that I that I pay attention to, but I also look at their sources as well to, you know, make sure they're not full of it and, you know, keep. So we're all still kept in check. Yeah. But I mean, have you found that there is also a problem with the alternative media space?
Yeah, I don't know, because you also hear a lot about infiltration and subversion and maybe like some aren't. I mean, some are out there just get a buck and get the clicks, and some are just completely not even real. Like, you know, 2 two sources which get huge traction are in this category are the People's Voice TV and Slay News, which they've ripped off my stories. Yeah, Slay News is not real. Frank Bergman, the main writer, whatever they say, that's not a
real person. They, what they do is like they take stories and then it's a little bit of truth, you know, you know, putting 11 truth and two lies or whatever together and totally distort and twist information and it gets them clicks. Like I was looking back at something just even a couple nights ago that some big, huge account was sharing of Oh yeah. It was about the, the World Economic Forum publishing their blueprint for, you know, financializing, monetizing nature and stuff.
And some other huge accounts got that and it went viral. And I, this is one of the times I went to grok and I was like, so why did this one get all the traction? And, you know, I put that news out there, I put that out there a month before. And then it's like, well, this, this account uses sensationalist framing and this is what our algorithms love. And so that's why it got
disseminated. So there's people out, you know, there's sources out there that are just all in it for that to monetize and to get big that way. I'm not like that. I actually prefer, I like flying under the radar. You know, I don't know if I had a huge account if I don't know how I'd deal with all that extra attention. But yeah. And then other ones, bigger ones, you know, like, like Alex
Jones and stuff. Like, it's going back to what I said earlier about, you know, whether it's the most fantastical stuff to look at or, or mundane, you know, you know, consume it all, but don't believe everything. You know, It's like, because even even what Alex Jones is saying, there's some truths in there and there's some not so. So make up your mind. Yeah.
I mean, and on that, something that really bugs me is the sort of doom scrolling mindset of so many people who claim to be pushing back and fighting the system etcetera, but all they do all day long is share sensational stories, but they don't do anything. Have you noticed that? Oh, yeah, I try not to fall into that category myself, you know, as especially as someone I used to be out in the field talking
to people. You know, when I first started out in journalism, when especially when I was in Ghana, I'd go to all the press conferences. I went to the former president's house, John Koufour, you know, and with, with 20 Zongo chiefs talking about tribal land rights and stuff. So I used to go to, you know, out there and, and here in Colombia in my earlier days, I was an editor at, in a reporter at Columbia Reports, which is in English about news about Columbia.
And I, you know, I went out on the streets and where people were marching to get hostages released from the, the FARC guerrilla group. So I used to be out there. So the doom scrolling stuff now, Yeah, I sit behind a computer all the time. I'm not, you know, I'm, but I'm not, you know, the doom scrolling. I'm not trying to do this for attention. Well, the attention I do want to get is not on me.
It's on the information. And again, like I said before, even if it's just a little tiny seed, even if it's not recognized, you know, other bigger ones. Yeah, that's another love hate thing. So some of the more sensational people that doom scroll and put that out, some of that, it is information I've put out there as well. And so it comes back, at least it's out there that that's that's what I care about. Just get information out there. But I mean, what do you do with
that information? I mean, isn't that the ultimate white pull? You know, you've got all this information. You've got to do something with it. Yeah, so my, well, what I do is just tell the world about it. That's a lot, you know, because I, I figure that there are people who are a lot smarter than me, you know, I'm because I'm not a solutions person. My solution is, well, I work under the, the, the, you know, the axiom or what the saying knowledge is power.
And like you said, what do you do with that knowledge? Well, you can do whatever you want with it. It's your power to do with it. And So what I'm doing with knowledge is I, I, I'm talking to you and talking with you.
And I write stories and I put stuff out on the Internet that's, you know, and when I go back and visit the States, I mean, if I try to talk about that stuff with people here in Colombia in Spanish, my vocabulary, vocabulary is a little bit limited when it comes to technical stuff. But once I start talking about people are like, OK, that's fascinating. And then and then they're like, OK, what's the price of avocados? You know, so it's not like they don't really care that much
here. But so yeah, the internet's the the forum to do it. By the way, you mentioned Colombia a few times. How is it living there? Oh, it's wonderful. I've been here 11 years. It's especially great out in the countryside. You know, I lived in Medellin, the city, the big city there for three years. But price of the price of living and stuff that are relatively cheap, it's about four to five times cheaper than living in the United States.
No GMOs fresh. I mean, still after 11 years, I'm, I'm seeing like alien fruits that I've never heard of or tasted or tried before. So it's it's really great food. The infrastructure is pretty darn good. I mean, as long as you don't get too far out into the, you know, jungle areas. We still got a lot of crime got a lot of the government is corrupt as hell. You still got narcos, you still got guerrilla groups.
Yeah. And actually just I woke up to the news today that Trump cuts aid to Colombia because he said the president Gustavo Pedro here is a is a drug dealer and stuff. So, yeah, that's interesting. But here they only have elections every there's only one term elections. Now that that I've been here long enough to know that. So 2 presidents ago, Santos won when? Well, Santos, he had two terms, but in his second term, he eliminated two term presidency. So the next guy, Yvonne Duque,
he had five years. And now this guy, President Pedro, he's going to, they've got elections, I think starting next May. So that's going to be interesting. But no, it's a, I've, I've seen violence, I've seen weird stuff. But overall, it's it's, it's, it's a wonderful place to live for, for me. It sounds exactly like South Africa. You could be talking about my country. Yeah. I mean, you know, yeah.
Do you, do you find them that in that sort of chaotic environment there is a a sense of freedom that you don't get in other countries? Yeah, I've always felt like it's like the Wild West here a bit like it's or like even like with the mom and paw shops everywhere.
They're more popular than the big chain stores, you know, so it, it just feels like because of that and, and cash is like mostly king here, even though, I mean, it's changing a bit, but still a lot of people pay everything in cash. You know, your neighbors that there's a big sense of community here. And while they are installing cameras and stuff, they're like their agencies, organizations
don't talk to each other. It's it's so hilarious because I like even with immigration, they don't talk to the Department of State. So one of them issues a visa, the other one just stamps your passport, but they don't talk to each other. And I love this. It's not like I love how how unorganized and uncentralized this. Yes, they have lots of data like everywhere, but so they don't know how to connect it yet, which is I'm so happy about, you know? We have the same. We have the same thing.
Yeah. And I think it's a blessing. I'll give you a quick anecdote. My wife and I were driving this weekend. We went on a short road trip, a few hours drive and there was a roadblock and the police pulled us over and he said, just what can I see your driver's license? We're just doing a routine inspection, a routine check. We're just going to put your card into the machine here to see if you have any outstanding fines.
And I said to my wife, Oh no, he's going to pick up on this because I've got loads of outstanding fines. Why? Because I don't pay my fines because there's no, there's no system in place that can follow up on it, right? So. So he came back to the car and he gave me my my driver's license. And he said, you're all good, Sir. Have a good day. My wife just laughed. She said. My wife laughed. She said, OK, let's just go. Yeah. I've got, I've got the same
thing. I drive an 88 Mazda and there's cameras that give you tickets, which I didn't know about when I first started driving. So I racked up a few of those and I've been pulled over so many times. A little checkpoints, yeah. And they just look at the license and they don't, well, even for in my case, they don't run it, they don't scan it. And in my case, my license was printed out on a bad printer so that the, the thumbprint is gone. It's, it's not even there.
Even the barcode is a little bit there that the head is twisted, you know, it's like elongated on the photo. But yeah, they don't talk to each other. So like the, the ones that in every single year I have to go in for inspection on the car, the technical, mechanical inspection. And they don't talk to anyone else either. So, yeah. So every year it keeps getting renewed.
So The thing is though, I think when I have to renew my license, my driver's license, which would be in two years, then they, I think they ask for like, well, do you have anything, any priors? So I don't know what's going to happen then, you know, or I'll just go to the United States to get an American driver's license and bring that over here. Maybe that'll work. Who knows. But then I have to sign up for a Real ID. OK. But so I mean, are you a Colombian citizen? No, no, still American.
I've been here just on different types of visas, work visa, tourist visa, you name it. I've been, yeah, just been going off of those. Why did you move there? Yeah, so in, in 2011, I was living in Seattle. I was working at a restaurant going nowhere, and I hadn't used any of my education. I mean, I went to school for linguistics, but I studied Spanish. And so I, I, I was not liking where I was in life. And so I did the digital equivalent of spending the
globe. So I just searched, I, I want to do something with writing. So I searched writing gigs, internships, and I was just like the world or South America or something like that. And then there was the first thing that popped up was unpaid internship in managing Colombia for three months. And I was like, all right, I'll go try that out and loved it. I was there for three months, got cut my teeth into journalism.
The first, the first week, two days, I think 3 days into my first time ever being journalist, my story got picked up by Fox News, BBCCNNCB. They got picked up everywhere. It was about Colombian soccer player who went to Saudi Arabia, got arrested because he had Jesus tattoos on his arms displayed. You can't do that. So that was like my first week. I'm like, oh, OK, I can do this.
Yeah. And I fell in love with Colombia. I went back to the IT was only three months, went back to the States, tried to look for a job, couldn't get 1. So in three months after that, I, I did that again, I was like, well, I'm going to try to be an intern. Maybe if I get some intern more international experience, they'll be OK Did the same search again, but for like Africa and I saw one in Ghana for the Ghanaian Chronicle. And so I went over there.
So yeah, that that's. And then after doing that, went back to the States, couldn't find a job again. Worked in restaurants, worked at Applebee's as a waiter and and, and Johnny Rockets as a waiter and a host at those restaurants. And then I was like, no, I'm going to go to maybe I'll be a travel writer. So I, I went to guy when we take it to Peru, I thought I was going to be a travel writer about, you know, going to Inca and ruins and stuff like that.
So I spent a month in Peru, didn't really do much there. I just went and visited ruins, drank some wine and had two day hangovers from the, from the altitude sickness. And I was like, and then, so I, while I was three weeks there, I, I rang up my old editor at in Columbia and I said, Hey, can I just come stay with you and crash at your place? Because I lived with this, this person in Meta Gene news, Dutch
anarchist, really fun, fun dude. And my intention was just to stay in Colombia for another six months, just not doing anything because I had enough money saved up that I was just going to hang out. But he had The Newsroom in his, in his apartment at the time for the Colombian 1. And it was during election week. And I was like, oh, I got that itch. And I was like, Oh my God, can I come join you? And so then again, I worked for
free for another five months. And then I got from doing that a local entrepreneur, an entrepreneur in in Colombia who's American, offered me a space, a place working in PR and then from PR getting into the sociable and which. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's the story. It's kind of long, but yeah, it's been a lot of ups and downs and twists and.
Turns no but your your story is great in the sense also that it shows that otherwise backward countries could actually be great choices, particularly as we move into a more technocratic future. There seems to be a bigger buffer in these types of countries. Yeah, and I was, I've said this for many years, is that for me, Colombia was the the land of opportunity. You know, so many people want to get out and go to the United
States, but for me, I couldn't. Every single job I was looking for wanted three to five years of experience. You know, I mean, I graduated university in 2007, 2008, the whole financial, the whole economy collapsed. And so I couldn't get anything. And so I was just so frustrated. And I was like, well, at least for me, it, it was, I wanted adventure. But I, you know, maybe this is my way in so I can come back to the United States and, you know, work for a big news outlet or something.
I ended up falling in love with it here because like those things you said, like, yeah, the, the infrastructure, the kind of Wild West of it, the, the organized chaos and stuff, it just really lent it to being the place where I can thrive and survive. And especially like right now
I'm sitting outside. I do all my writing and working, you know, outside on this, this front balcony and, and, or this front little porch here and I've got a view of just beautiful Green Mountains. I'm end up in the Andes, you know, and so it's just, it's conducive for writing. There's, I mean, there's stuff going on here, but you know, it's, it just I can thrive in this environment.
Well, yes, and also because you know, Colombia and South Africa and Ghana and you know, countries that are what you'd consider developing or third world or whatever, they tend to have lower starting points like the, the, the baselines are lower. So there is actually opportunity in many, many areas where as if you go to say Shanghai, everything is developed and I'm not entirely certain how many opportunities there are anymore. Yeah. And there's less competition, right?
Like not, not, not, not billion, not like somewhere like India where there's billions of people trying to get one thing, you know, like or a billion people. Well, yeah, I mean, you're looking at traffic and stuff like that. I was just looking at this example from India. I spent a month in India as well.
That was that was interesting. And, you know, like people would just stop their cars in the middle of the road to walk over and get something in the street from a store and block traffic forever because it's that competitive. Like, no, if I don't do this here, I'm never going to get a spot. I have to do that to be first. It's so competitive. Imagine like big old cities are like that as well. But if you're out in a place where there's, you know, it's not as developed.
There's not. Yeah, there's less, there's less competition. And so even, you know, even if I weren't doing what I'm doing here, doing what I do, I mean, teaching English would be something that just everywhere everyone's looking for that, you know, there's always something. But the big thing for me is again, to try and be in a place where you have, I think a better prospect of not being Privy to all the sort of New World Order stuff, you know.
I mean, I don't know if you've been to Amsterdam, but I mean, it's a 15 minute city in in the making. You know, it's there's no reason for you ever to own a car. You can just ride a bicycle and there's no reason for you to go further than 15 minutes because everything is is there. Whereas here in South Africa, a 15 minute city is not going to be happening anytime soon because there's no
infrastructure. Yeah, and like I said about the the mom and pops shops and things, it's, it's like stepping back in time in a way, you know, like to the night when my, you know, parents would talk about, about the 1970s or 1980s. Well, even going back, you know, in Ghana, I remember the first I got one of these fruit juices or a soda or something and it had a pop top, you know, like the one that you can actually snap off. And I thought those went away like in the 1970s.
I thought like I'd never see that before or, or even there. OK, corned beef is a weird thing. It's, I've never seen corned beef in in Colombia, but I know in Brazil that they do it because when I was in Ghana, I used to get corned beef and cans from Brazil. And it was with those little keys you twist around and like, I thought those were from Mres from World War 2, but those are still here. This is awesome. Yeah. And so it's like that you could.
So it's like, yeah, you're slowed down in time here. I mean, I do feel it's going to eventually going to come. But maybe you bought yourself 1520 years, you know of that. They have the means to do it. They got the back. They got the money. They got the funding for it. Yeah. I mean, you've got Larry Ellison funding the Tony Blair Institute. You got Blair and Starmer being Labour, who are all Fabians who've got tons of money and and things like that. Lots of influences. Yeah.
And big, yeah. Like, again, Larry Ellison, Oracle, big and media, yeah, just tons of stuff here. We we got it. It's it's at the airports is the most is is the is the biggest. Where it's rolled. Out is like I couldn't believe yeah, the bio like the biomig check thing that they have at the airports. They just scan like I don't use it. I think it's more more Colombian citizens, but it is completely they don't even talk to an agent.
They just go right through scan themselves and then they they enter the the country, you know. So I, I imagine that's I haven't actually looked into what's Colombia system is but I imagine this comes from somewhere else and it's definitely not home. I don't think it's a home grown thing. So yeah, they they've managed to do it there because it's a small little what do they call it sandbox to do it in.
Try doing that on the people here when yeah, there's we still got, I mean, there's there's child labour, there's child soldiers, there's all the again, the infrastructure is not connected so disjointed. That's a little more tricky to do it on a larger scale. Why do you think Tim, so many countries, though, have bought into this? Well, and the first, I mean, their governments are normally you got to be psychopathic to run in government.
And if you're not, as soon as they get in there, they take you behind a closed door and say, huh, this is how things really happen, so better change your tune. But a lot of them, I think, want money from elsewhere. And it's almost like, yeah, you know, they want that funding, you know, in the states, like, we want that federal funding, so we got to do this or whatever. So a lot of them, you know, they'll sign up to stuff for, for the United Nations, You know
that that's the big one. The, the pact for the future. Every, every single country. 193 agreed that they, they were, they consented to rolling out digital public infrastructure in their countries, which is digital public infrastructure, DPI civic technology stack modeled after India's Adhaar thing. It's digital identity. It's fast payment systems and data sharing, data exchanges between public and private entities. So but it's. Not just that, though.
It's not just that. It's also, as Ian Davis points out, it's sustainable development, which is the ultimate Oh yeah, yeah, goal. Yes, it's it's all about yeah, the the packs of the feature, the UN, their whole mandate is Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals. This is one way of you know, this is just one component of it. Of course, I mean, the the other thing too is to and sustainability and this and net zero stuff and it's all tied back.
You go if you want to do that, you know, digital ID, carbon credit, social credit, you know, system thing, yeah, it's all part of it. But the but DPI sustainable. What is sustainable? If you get rid of carbon as the boogeyman, everything falls apart. There is not one argument and this just this just is the most insane thing to me. And and now you're not even
allowed to question policy. The UN has been coming out saying that even if you question policy, anything that impedes on our progress towards 2030 agenda Sustainable Development Goals, you are spreading disinformation. So, and, and then they're creating a disinformation task force as well to go after that. And, and in the EU, Ursula von der Leyen was saying that misinformation, disinformation bad. And the, the, the World Economic
Forum, everyone's saying that. And again, it's it is going back to that Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, and without carbon as the boogeyman, it all freaking falls apart. Yeah. I asked you earlier about your sort of Damascus moments, and I think my first one was around 2009, 2010, when I watched a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle. And that was the first time I started questioning everything
that I thought I knew. And little that I know how important that film would be because everything actually is centered around carbon dioxide, as you just pointed out, everything. Yep. Well, Even so where's the story that I did? So I read, you know, I've read the Great Reset and the great narrative, you know, from Klaus Schwab and Terry Mallory actually interviewed Terry Mallory once as well.
But so the idea, even when the, when the pandemic came, it was all what they did, is they took those climate change narratives, slapped it on to COVID, and then once the COVID control narrative went away, they went back to the climate net zero stuff. So what 2 quotes from the The Great Reset which were really
kind of eye opening. One was some leaders and decision makers who were already at the forefront of the fight against climate change may want to take advantage of the shock inflicted by the pandemic to implement long lasting and wider environmental changes. They will in effect make good use of the pandemic by not just letting the crisis go to waste.
That's one of them. And then the other quote is, if in the post pandemic era, we decide to resume our lives just as before, by driving the same cars, by flying to the same destinations, by eating the same things, by heating our house the same way and so on, the COVID-19 crisis will have gone to waste as far as climate policies are concerned. Sure. So yeah. That's a that's. A great question of eating.
Yeah, and so yeah, it's it's whatever it was before like lockdowns and what climate lockdowns back you know, you know, lockdown of all of society use consume less, eat less meat, you'll own nothing be happy. Whoa. That's another one that that has to do more with the circular economy, which is coming as well. Circular economy is where you product as a service. So anything that is a product and now you, it becomes a service to rent out. So you. Actually. Oh, like Apple Music?
Yeah, it's, it's a life as a subscription. Yeah, that's, that's what the circular economy is. That's a big one from the WEF club of Rome is huge on that as well. And I think in Mackenzie, Deloitte, all of like they love their circular economy because that's you owe nothing. But it is also sometimes quite handy to have what is subscriptions. I mean, for example, you don't want to keep buying an album all
the time. Sometimes you just want one or two songs, but you want access to all of it. You know what I mean? Yeah, but how long is that access available? A lot of times it's what they do is it's they're licensing. So I remember I bought on Amazon back in like 2012, the musical Danny K Hans Christian Andersen, Amazon. And now I go try, try to find it, get it again. It says, no, you don't own this.
Like, no, I bought that. Well, they don't own they didn't own the rights at one point or they lost it or something changed or is it a policy update? So that's how quickly those things can go away. I would like I still at least back in my folks home in in the United States, we've still got a collection, not VHS anymore, unfortunately, but DVDs, tons of DVDs and and records. I do have records. Yeah, me too. I've got a whole bunch beyond me. Yeah, and it's just amazing to to have those.
I mean, if the Internet goes out, something goes wrong, some kind of terms of service doesn't work anymore. What if a company goes belly up some or they sell it to someone else and comes more, you know, if you can't afford the subscription anymore, this one type of thing isn't available. They keep raising prices or they said, Oh, no, you can't share this with this person, your accounts, it can only be limited here and stuff like that or in this device, even though you
might own multiple. I mean, they can change at any moment. So no, I prefer the physical of yeah, I I prefer analog stuff. But no, you're right about convenience. It is oh, especially OK, I'll, I'll do it with books with books like I got my Kindle, you know, I can't lug around cases and cases of books everywhere I go to you know, I'm can't bring those on a plane with me. So yeah, that it's really convenient when it comes to from, in my case with a book. But it's what?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's what Catherine Orson Fitz often says, just apply some discernment. You don't have to go in either direction to the extreme. I mean, it is sometimes a lot better to have 100 books on your Kindle, for example, than to have 100 books in your luggage when you're flying. Yes. Yeah, yeah, for obvious reasons, yes. Yes, but then, but then playing a vinyl, it's just so much nicer. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Yeah, you don't.
Yeah, those are the things that you don't get to experience.
And well, Speaking of those things, you know, like when we do talk about the incoming digital gulag, panopticon control grid and stuff like that, as more and more people sign up for it and agree to give privacy away, or if they don't agree to it, just all of a sudden is inflicted A thrust upon them, then, you know, future generations are never going to know what freedom is, just like other ones are not going to know what a vital record sounds like, you know,
and you can go back for, you know, every single century go back, you know, all these things. You know, we don't know what that smell is or the of the OR the sound of the the blacksmith making that horseshoe, you know, or, you know, doing things like that, you know, and what was that old movie from Disney way back in the day, tall tale, the adventures of Pecos Bill, like electric light balls. Electric light balls are coming. How we're going to see the stars, you know, that kind of stuff.
Let's. Talk about freedom. What do you mean though? Talk about what? When you talk about freedom, what do you mean? Oh yeah. Well, just the freedom to be without being monitored, like and kind of, and because just because you're monitored, what you're doing is you change your behavior if you know you're always being watched.
Then they did this. I remember this little experiment they did I saw in the few years ago with kids like, so the teacher, I think it was during lockdowns and the teacher like went away for a second but kept the camera rolling, you know, like for the virtual classroom stuff. And then the kids started going, teacher's gone, we can do it. And then one of them's like, well, hey, the camera's still on, it's still recording guys, they can still see us.
And then we was like, oh, oh, OK, OK, So that, that's the kind of thing because once, you know, you just can't go any. That's what I love about nature. I love, I love kayaking, I love fishing, I love hiking. I love going out in, in these places where just no one can see you. And you know, like you're kind of, it's that privacy thing, you know, and some people say, well, well, if you've got nothing to
hide, well, what's the problem? You know, then I'm just and I'm thinking like, well, why don't you just walk around naked all day? You know, what's what's the problem with that? You know, yeah, there's, there's, there's limits here. All right, dude, I'm looking at the time one more time. How can my audience follow your work well? Thanks a lot. Yeah, sociable.co is the website and on X it's at the Sociable. And then for me personally at Tim Henchliff and Jeremy, Thank.
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's no, it's been an absolute pleasure.