Jason Bockman of Strange Donut talks about Julius Caesar, Dante's Inferno | ATCF | Episode 14

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] A quick, like 45 second introduction,

Guest [00:00:03] And then we'll get going. All right. As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast,

Vance Crowe [00:00:08] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This is an as the Crow Flies episode, which I do on Fridays, but it's a little bit different of an episode because I was working out an idea, I was gonna take a clip from a presentation that I gave at the New York Farm Bureau. And when I went to sit down to think about how would I explain this, I remembered a conversation I had with the president of the New York Farm Bureau, a guy named David Fisher, And he actually told me, he was really honest with me. He was like, I didn't really understand that part in your speech when you talked about the lie your character once believed. And so we talked about it a little bit more. And, and I'll explain that on another episode probably, but it made me realize, like, you don't always know what you think until you say it out loud. And then it's really helpful when somebody sits across from you and they say, that didn't, that didn't make sense for me. And so I realized I didn't have any content for my podcast today. And I was sitting around being like, what am I gonna do? Because I've, I, I wanna put something out that's valuable. And I had one option where I would just come on here and be like, Hey, my podcast isn't coming out this week. Listen to this other podcast. I think it's really good. But then I thought, why not call my buddy Jason

Guest [00:01:22] Big J. Bird?

Vance Crowe [00:01:23] And, and, and with that idea, I called you, you said you only had a few minutes, and I realized like, this could be just a good time for me to talk about some of the things I've been doing, some of the things you've been doing, and I really wanna get your thoughts on a book club that I am trying to kick off.

Guest [00:01:40] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:01:40] And so there's no agenda here. It's not gonna be the, like, let's travel through Jason's life story this time it's just have a conversation. Cool. And we'll go till you gotta go. You gotta go pick up your son. Right? Right.

Guest [00:01:51] Nice. He's got American Ninja Warrior class.

Vance Crowe [00:01:54] Oh, is that what it is?

Guest [00:01:55] Yeah, that's right.

Vance Crowe [00:01:55] What do they do there?

Guest [00:01:57] Jump around. I do all kinds of weird stuff. Stand on a ball, they throw stuff at 'em and like, pull

Vance Crowe [00:02:02] That microphone up to you.

Guest [00:02:03] So they keep their, a lot of balanced stuff. Agility, he just jumps around and it's, you know, like builds fearlessness. I mean, it's,

Vance Crowe [00:02:11] That's

Guest [00:02:11] Great. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

Vance Crowe [00:02:13] Has your, have you read Jocko's book Way of the Warrior Kid?

Guest [00:02:17] No, I read Extreme Ownership.

Vance Crowe [00:02:21] Yeah, that's right up your alley.

Guest [00:02:23] Yeah, that one was, I really liked that book. I

Vance Crowe [00:02:26] Loved that book. And I, I did the audio one. So you get to hear Jocko's like, and then that's what I did exactly. I stabbed his neck

Guest [00:02:33] In Ramadi. Yeah, that's good.

Vance Crowe [00:02:37] And, but he has a book for kids. And my brother Dan, he and his son Oliver read it. And his changed Oliver's whole mentality. He's now exercising, he cares about what he eats. He wrote a Warrior code. And I had a woman on last week, Christie Beck, who was this woman that found out she had cancer. And so she wanted to like, cure it. And she was talking about, well, I realize that I, my children are growing up, but they might grow up without a mother. She lost her mother when she was really young. Mm.

Guest [00:03:08] So

Vance Crowe [00:03:09] What can I do to teach them the lessons that I would want them to know if I only have a short amount of time? And when she found Jocko's book, she was like, bingo, I'm gonna get that book. So that's my book recommendation for you

Guest [00:03:20] Today. Where the Warrior Kid.

Vance Crowe [00:03:20] That's right. And I think there's more too, but that, that one's the, the primary one.

Guest [00:03:24] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:03:25] So speaking of books, I last Friday said, Hey, I, I wanna start a, a book club and I wanna use this concept of something being Lindy. Have you heard this idea? So Lindy is the idea that an artifact in culture is likely to be around for as long as it has been around. So let's say like a New York Times bestselling book, bill O'Reilly wrote, you know, killing Lincoln. It's been around for 10 years. It's likely to be around for 10 more. Okay. If you go back to Kill a Mockingbird, it was in the 1960s. It's likely to be around for 50, 60 more years. Same thing with the Bible. 2000 years ago now, 2000 years in the future. And the, the, the guy that came up with this concept and other people around it say, the reason that certain stories last is because their archetypal, they really get at the core some really core story about being human. And so the older the book is, the more likely it is to be really deeply embedded into culture. So I wanted to start reading those books, but I know that just like running, if I don't have a goal to get to it, like I'm not gonna do it. And so with reading books, I could just say, well, I'm gonna read 12 books this year. Or I could say, I'm gonna read books and I'm gonna start having conversations with my friends about those books. And so I, I put out an idea that people should read a Lindy book and I'm gonna suggest the first one. And then I have another guy, Lyle Benjamin, that's gonna submit January's. And then we'll see where it goes from there. But I just wanna do a test.

Guest [00:04:52] And Lindy, I'm sorry, Lindy is a list of books.

Vance Crowe [00:04:55] No, no. Lindy is just a concept. A concept. Right. And it's to say, and, and like, it's

Guest [00:04:59] Like Old Man in the Sea. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:05:01] That's likely to be around for whenever Hemingway wrote that,

Guest [00:05:04] The

Vance Crowe [00:05:04] Forties or something like that. Yeah. So it'll be around for another 80 years.

Guest [00:05:09] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:05:09] Does that make sense?

Guest [00:05:10] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:05:11] So it doesn't have to be a thousand or 2000 year old book. It could be a hundred years old. That's pretty Lindy. It's just to get away from what's going on in the hyper changing world of culture that's going on right now. So the book that I wanna read is Dante's Inferno.

Guest [00:05:28] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:05:28] Have you ever read that?

Guest [00:05:29] It's parts of it. I have, I have not read the whole book though.

Vance Crowe [00:05:32] When I read it, I think it was in like college, I could get through it. The words are not complicated. But I don't think I was like really aware of what was going on in the story.

Guest [00:05:41] And

Vance Crowe [00:05:41] So I talked to my buddy Rob Long, and he was telling me about the story of Dante's Inferno. And I was like, oh my God. It's

Guest [00:05:48] Like a double entendre, right? Like there's, there's two meetings. It's really explaining something else.

Vance Crowe [00:05:54] Yes. Yeah.

Guest [00:05:54] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:05:55] And the, and essentially it's the guy, there's a human that, that is, I don't even know why yet. I haven't started it yet. But he goes into hell and he's accompanied by Virgil and they, they go past the different circles of hell for what people's crimes they committed, what sins and how are they tortured for eternity. And as you get deeper into the circles, you see they're worse and worse punishments because they're worse and worse. And the because of what they did was worse. And so I'm interested because I think that that's describing, like, it's not the the hell that you're gonna have as eternal damnation and punishment. It's the hell you create for yourself in your own life. So I wanna see what he thinks are the deadly sins, the ones that get you really punished.

Guest [00:06:40] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:06:41] And so then I wanna have a book club about it. I wanna find a way to have other people that have read this book have a way to like interact. And I don't have a creative way to do it.

Guest [00:06:51] How many people do you think will sign up?

Vance Crowe [00:06:53] Well, right now, I've had one guy already told me, he, he just read it over Thanksgiving weekend. And I've had about maybe seven or eight people on Twitter. N some of 'em I've never met saying, Hey, I'm in, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read it.

Guest [00:07:07] You can do, you can do Instagram live, you know, you can patch people in. So I mean, you could be the moderator and then tag other people into the conversation so they have a chance to speak. Do you know how, have you ever done that? Where there's a split screen

Vance Crowe [00:07:20] On it? No. Uhuh. Yeah.

Guest [00:07:21] You could do that. And like, and everybody who's has read the book and follow in and they can list comments at the bottom.

Vance Crowe [00:07:26] That's cool. Can you do it on your computer? 'cause most things on Instagram, it's gotta be on your phone.

Guest [00:07:31] I don't, I only, I'm like never on a computer. So

Vance Crowe [00:07:34] You did, you've done this on your phone?

Guest [00:07:35] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:07:36] You've done this.

Guest [00:07:37] Not the book club thing.

Vance Crowe [00:07:38] No, but I mean like using the Instagram live and the moderating.

Guest [00:07:41] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:07:41] For what, what do you do?

Guest [00:07:43] No, like, so let's just say that like Tyron Woodley right, is at an MMA event and he is going live. I can send him a comment, dude put me on and like he'll do a split screen and then it's me and him talking and everybody can see he and I talking. Right? So they see my FaceTime. They see his FaceTime and they say comments, right? So he could ask me some questions. You could do an interview that way. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:08:06] Man, I'm in. Yeah,

Guest [00:08:07] I'm

Vance Crowe [00:08:08] In. I'll try that.

Guest [00:08:08] You do that? That'd be cool. I assume not everybody is in St. Louis.

Vance Crowe [00:08:15] Yeah, no. Right, right, right. All over.

Guest [00:08:17] Try that man. See what works with that. I don't know, maybe there's some other, there could be. Do you know Uber Conference? No. Yeah, there's a free service called Uber Conference and it gives you a conference line. It might kind suck to call into a conference call to

Vance Crowe [00:08:30] Yeah, I might talk about that. I like this idea of the Instagram one because I have Instagram and I like throw stuff up there occasionally, but I am not spending enough time to actually learn how it's useful. And I see it clearly is to some people. Oh dude. Yeah, for

Guest [00:08:42] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:08:43] But I like, it feels like it's so much time to learn how to do it that even I Yeah.

Guest [00:08:48] Feel

Vance Crowe [00:08:48] Frozen in it.

Guest [00:08:49] I get it, I get it. Some, I mean, there's, there's always updates and advances and whatever, but the, some of it's intuitive as you start to go through it. And I think like running it for a business or doing it personally, like, I don't know, I, I just think it's interesting, it aggregates like all your interest if you go to press search, like maybe some people don't really know this, but like, it aggregates what you're spending time looking at. And so like, all my stuff is like cars and working out and probably some girls and then like

Vance Crowe [00:09:21] Cooking,

Guest [00:09:21] You know what I mean? Like, and so like all the stuff that, and so I looked at my wife's phone, I'm like, what is, what is it showing for you? You know? And like, it's aggregates. I'm like, oh yeah, this is like a pretty active conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:09:31] See that is actually like, you know, you think about something that's scary that the Black Mirror type thing, that one's scary to me because it's like you just keep seeing more and more of the thing you already, like it's

Guest [00:09:44] An echo chamber.

Vance Crowe [00:09:44] Yeah,

Guest [00:09:45] Yeah, dude.

Vance Crowe [00:09:45] Yeah. Yeah.

Guest [00:09:46] That's

Vance Crowe [00:09:46] Why I like Twitter and I get so angry when Twitter tries to show me stuff that other people have liked, but it's not somebody that I follow because I just want that thing to be a very clear stream of exactly who I've followed, saying, Hey, they thought this was important enough to put out. I don't want Twitter giving me ideas. 'cause they're never gonna get it. Right. Right. And that's the point. Like, I don't want somebody else controlling what I would see. I want an uninterrupted feed,

Guest [00:10:13] Man, I feel like hitting notification, but like Instagram has gone the way, well it's known by Facebook, but like, it used to not be that way. And it progressively becomes that way and then they start selling you things, right? And I'm like, man, this sucks. Like, I understand what you're saying that you want, but then, man, there's so much work and I understand why they do it. There's so much work that goes into maintaining those networks, you know, smart people that,

Vance Crowe [00:10:40] But I think like, you

Guest [00:10:40] Gotta pay 'em.

Vance Crowe [00:10:41] And the, and the challenge is that you wanna be in a place where there are enough people that you can interact with. Not just the people you know, but the people you don't know. But I, so I think that the only people that will ever see ads in the future are people that can't pay to get rid of them. And so, because like right now that's already going on. You, you buy Apple tv, you're paying to get rid of, you know, you never see a commercial. You watch Netflix, you don't see commercials. People are willing to pay money to get that time back. For sure. And I pay, pay for YouTube so that that way I don't have to watch all the 32nd commercials. So my speed with which I can maneuver through YouTube is way faster. And if Instagram would do that, done,

Guest [00:11:19] I've never thought of that. Wow. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:11:24] And the only time you'll see them is if you're using a free service or you're driving around on the, on the road. Right. Or, or a podcast has 'em, I guess, you know, as underwriting or whatever.

Guest [00:11:33] Yeah. Or you pay for the premium podcast, which doesn't have

Vance Crowe [00:11:37] Yeah.

Guest [00:11:37] Commercials. They skip through their like little sound bites where they're like, Hey, speaking of Instagram, have you bought a phone lately? What? You know what I mean? Whatever. But yeah. Interesting dude books though. Dude. Let's talk about books. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:11:50] I

Guest [00:11:50] Can talk to you about anything forever, dude, books.

Vance Crowe [00:11:53] What do, do you think of Dante's Inferno?

Guest [00:11:55] I haven't read it. That's what I'm saying. I don't know. You just told me the concept of it.

Vance Crowe [00:11:59] Yeah.

Guest [00:11:59] I like, I've, I've skipped over it. I'm not that familiar with it. I am. There's a, there's slaughterhouse, right? Like, there's like a few books that You mean

Vance Crowe [00:12:08] Slaughterhouse five.

Guest [00:12:09] Slaughterhouse five, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:10] Kurt Vgu. Yeah.

Guest [00:12:11] So that is explaining something else. So like, there's a couple books that,

Vance Crowe [00:12:16] Oh, I didn't know that I remember reading that and not, not catching the deeper meaning.

Guest [00:12:20] Yeah. So there's, there's a few books that I think they always get like grouped in that, but I don't know, did I speak, I read the book that you gave me, only an Irish boy. What'd you think? It was awesome. I really enjoyed reading it, dude. And the, you know, Andy is right. Yeah. So Andy, you know, doesn't, there's like very few times in the book there's one specific time where he is really hungry and poor and, and that's the only time he ever really questions is poverty. You know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [00:12:53] That's right. Right.

Guest [00:12:54] And but, and when, and he's put in that place as a result of somebody, you know, the man trying to get him. And when then he's back on top how he takes, you know, he takes pity on, on the person who put him there. IIII really like the book.

Vance Crowe [00:13:11] I mean, I think that it's, in many ways I, I knew it was a story that's really sounds like you actually, you know, like, I mean

Guest [00:13:18] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:13:19] Truly.

Guest [00:13:19] Right on. No, I dude, I, I, I, yeah, I appreciate that. The, so

Vance Crowe [00:13:24] That book was written by Horatio Alger,

Guest [00:13:26] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:13:27] And my friend Pete that is out in New York is a Horatio Alger Award winner. So this is a big deal. It's for an orphan that treated his life like this. So the, the story of, of only an Irish boy is Kid is totally down in his luck. Like his father died, he was an orphan. His mother's taking care of him, and they're poor. She like cleans houses and he encounters all these obstacles, a kid getting in his way and bullying him and, and needing money and all this stuff. And this is how he kind of fights through it. I think this Way of The Warrior Kid is an updated version of that. Yeah. Yeah. That's, dude.

Guest [00:14:00] So you think about these books, they're like, man, why can you read these old books? I think every generation, like, there's people that work with me, you know what I mean, that are 10 years younger than me. And like, they think that I'm old and I'm like, man, shut up. And I get what they're saying. I probably thought that, you know, somebody 10 years older than me was old too. But like, maybe the way we say things is different, but everybody basically feels the same. You know what I mean? There's like different ways of thinking. But you think there wasn't like super progressive people a thousand years ago? Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:14:32] Yeah, yeah.

Guest [00:14:32] You know what I mean? Like that stuff. And they were pushing the envelope. Like there'll be people after them that think they're old and their ways of thinking are outdated. But I thought that, I was like, when I was like, you know, uneducated and I, I would read these classic books, right? And they were like one of like the only books that I knew, like the names of, like, I read A Farewell To Arms, right? Oh yeah. And I was school, I was, and I, like recently, I don't wanna talk about like reading. So I thought, so I read these books that are classics and then you realize how interwoven they are in our culture. Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:07] That's mind blowing,

Guest [00:15:09] Right? Like, so very specific lines, dude crossing the Rubicon.

Vance Crowe [00:15:13] Oh yeah.

Guest [00:15:14] Right, right. So Julius Caesar, this little tiny river, it means like, you know, when he crossed over this little river,

Vance Crowe [00:15:21] There's no going back. There's

Guest [00:15:22] No going back. 'cause you're an invader into Rome now,

Vance Crowe [00:15:24] Right? That's right. And so

Guest [00:15:25] We have a jeep called the Rubicon, you know what I'm saying? We have

Vance Crowe [00:15:28] Oh, I never realized that. Yeah.

Guest [00:15:29] We have, you know, people say like, we're crossed the Rubicon whatever in business or whatever it is. And I'm like, dude, they probably don't know that that was from how many hundreds of years ago, thou, I don't, was that a thousand years ago? I don't know. Yeah. And Caesar like taking some horses and some men over a little tiny river that still stands for like, we're burning the boats. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:15:54] So it's funny you bring up this like, timescale thing, right? And we're thinking like Greeks or you know, I don't know, a thousand years ago, Romans, what, you know, when I was at my last talk, I was giving an example the try and show how deeply embedded storytelling is. And I was explaining that basically I put two dots on there, present day and 10,000 years ago. And 10,000 years ago is when the invention of agriculture happened. So, you know, in little pockets all over the world. So basically everything that's happened in civilization has happened between those two dots. You know, pottery, roads, bridges, cars, satellites, everything happened there. And then I go, I push a button and the the dots start sliding and another one comes up, and it's 15,000 years ago. And I was like, that is when we domesticated dogs. So dogs were actually with us as a part of how humans were around for, for 5,000 years before we got agriculture. But then if you, the dots move again and they, they press a little bit closer, and then you see the, the, the number 50,000, 50,000 years ago is when humans, and that's, that's a conservative estimate, conserv, that humans developed speech, really. And once they developed speech, everything changed for them because now they could start communicating concepts and coordinating between the other apes, right? Like there may, it's not, it's no longer are you reliant on your instincts. Now you can communicate a message to tell somebody, wait, avoid that and lemme tell you why.

Vance Crowe [00:17:28] And now let's make a plan for the future. Now let's talk about the future. Let's have a concept of things that go beyond us, things that came before us. All of those things. So 50,000 years ago is when we got stories. That's why it's so deeply embedded in us.

Guest [00:17:41] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [00:17:41] That's why when you read a story, you're like sitting there, it doesn't even matter if they're talking about a fairy princess or a spaceship guy or anything. You're sitting there being like, what is this? What is the inner meaning here that I can pull away, that I can learn from, that I can have wisdom.

Guest [00:17:55] Wow. Imagine though, just you are alone getting by on your labor alone and your labor and your understanding dies with you. Right. Crazy dude. So then we developed speech and now your labor is scaled, right?

Vance Crowe [00:18:12] Oh yeah.

Guest [00:18:13] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:14] Now, now coordination can happen, hierarchies can happen for things other than brute strength.

Guest [00:18:19] Wow. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:21] Have you ever seen petroglyphs? Have you ever gone somewhere? So in Las Vegas there is, if you go to my Twitter at the banner, what

Guest [00:18:28] Is a petro grove?

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] So it's where it's on stone and then they carve it

Guest [00:18:32] Into

Vance Crowe [00:18:32] Him. Yes. And so, you know, generally they're pretty old.

Guest [00:18:34] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:18:35] And if you go into the valley of fire outside of Las Vegas, it's like 30, 45 minute drive or something like that. You go down into this valley and then you get outta your car and you walk about a half a mile. And then this canyon starts building up around you. And every once in a while you look up and you're like, oh, there, there's the petroglyph. You know, like, oh, there's another one. And you keep walking and before you know it, you realize when every, actually everywhere I look there are petroglyphs. It's like a cathedral made out of these things with people having pounded what looks like other humans, what looks like a medicine man, snakes really,

Guest [00:19:10] You

Vance Crowe [00:19:10] Know, things that are, you could not be there by accident. And they're way up on the walls and they're hundreds or even thousands of years old. It's amazing.

Guest [00:19:18] I've never heard of it. I'm gonna go, I love Vegas, dude.

Vance Crowe [00:19:20] And the the petroglyphs are the original storytelling, right? Yeah.

Guest [00:19:23] Be

Vance Crowe [00:19:24] The original capture of an idea so it can live on beyond the author.

Guest [00:19:27] Wow. What have you been reading?

Vance Crowe [00:19:32] Oh man. Well, I I, I've been reading Jackie Joiner's autobiography, which she's

Guest [00:19:38] Such a nice lady. He's

Vance Crowe [00:19:39] Not met her. She,

Guest [00:19:40] Oh my God, she's nice to

Vance Crowe [00:19:41] You and her, she's gonna come on the podcast. We just haven't been able to arrange it. She's a, you know, she's like, yeah, I wanna do it. So, but her book reads exactly like her personality and that it's so bubbly and happy and excited that it's like really pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. And then I've been reading the history of Salt, so that is really interesting. I had no concept that for many, many generations, salt was something people ward over. They they, it was like, do or die because your body can't produce it. You can't get enough from plants. So if you wanna have enough of this mineral that the body needs to have neurological function and a whole bunch of other things, you gotta have salt.

Guest [00:20:21] Really,

Vance Crowe [00:20:21] This book is the history of it. And I've gotten maybe a few hundred years into the history of it, but it goes all the way back to like ancient Chinese times and how do they use it to preserve fish and vegetables, things like that.

Guest [00:20:34] This sounds like, dude, we use a, I'm reading the History of Salt, it sounds, no pun intended. It's so dry, dude,

Vance Crowe [00:20:43] I'm reading about sand. But you know, there are people out there that read books about sand.

Guest [00:20:49] Oh no, of course, dude. And they're probably some of the most interesting people ever. But you think about that, some of these things I remember being, when I was trying, I went to this, I went to a, this huge factory, and we were driving by this factory and I fell asleep. I woke up and we were still driving by that

Vance Crowe [00:21:09] Building. Wow.

Guest [00:21:10] It was massive. And I was like, man, what are these people building in here? And we, we went, we went in and they were, there was like the floor vibrated dude. The whole, the whole building did. And there was prob it was huge, huge miles long. This building was, dude. And

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] I've never even heard of a miles long building.

Guest [00:21:31] It is so big. And I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll find it and I'll send you a picture

Vance Crowe [00:21:37] Just when I, when I tweet this episode, then just,

Guest [00:21:39] Just when I find it, okay, dude, they make nuts and bolts at this place and it was all automated and they shake them from place to place to finish them. Dude. And I had never in my life considered, I was like standing there and I was like, everything that's held together in the world always by it came out of this place. Wow. I was just started thinking about, I was like, man, this is the, it was like the biggest nut and bolt manufacturer in the world. They made screws and other things of course, but it was all fasteners. And

Vance Crowe [00:22:07] I was like,

Guest [00:22:07] Everything

Vance Crowe [00:22:08] In the world.

Guest [00:22:08] Like, but like these things that are innocuous that you never consider salt. Right. But like, literally keeps the world going, but it's, you know, a fish and water. You know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [00:22:20] Right. I

Guest [00:22:21] Mean,

Vance Crowe [00:22:21] To me, learning about things like, this is what should keep you humble. Right? Because, because like, you start thinking like, I got the world figured out. I know how things work, da da da. You, you know, like, you try and construct a hat on your own. Forget

Guest [00:22:33] About it, dude.

Vance Crowe [00:22:33] Yeah, yeah.

Guest [00:22:34] No, I think about that all the time. Sometimes I wonder, I'm like, is there's something wrong with me? I think about two th like a couple things on a regular basis, if a big rock blocked the door, like, could I kill the people that I'm in the room with? Or like, would I be the leader to get people out there? Right. And that's, I don't know,

Vance Crowe [00:22:48] Do you think about that when you lift? Like do you use, do you use like rage moments to, to get you going? I

Guest [00:22:54] Was, I worked out today, I benched 3 45 2 times.

Vance Crowe [00:22:59] Oh damn.

Guest [00:23:01] I went to get the third one up and I was, but that's the most I've ever done.

Vance Crowe [00:23:05] Congratulations man. Yeah. Thanks.

Guest [00:23:07] And I'm in there, I go, I'm like, like I get weird and I think about like, I think about throwing the weight through the ceiling and like screaming. Yeah. Like, if I could be in there screaming, I would, you know, it'd just be weird. I'd ask get asked to leave.

Vance Crowe [00:23:24] Yeah. I mean, and the people that do go make all their noises unconstrained, everyone in the gym hates Yeah,

Guest [00:23:29] Dude. Something. But they're

Vance Crowe [00:23:30] Not putting up 3 45.

Guest [00:23:32] Dude, I I, I, I totally think, I think, I think I'm like, I will f and kill you is what I think when I'm doing that. I will kill, I don't know who you is, but I'll kill you, you know, is what I think. And I get rage.

Vance Crowe [00:23:46] So I used to have the rage, like listen to lots of loud music. And now in Juujitsu my biggest problem that right now, like, coach will roll me to the ground, pin me down there. You met coach. Yeah.

Guest [00:23:59] And,

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] And he'll say you should flow like water. You should relax. Your problem is not that you don't do the moves, you're not strong enough. You're not flowing like water. And it's because every time you lift right. You take that little bit of extra energy to get flex outta your muscle and you hold your breath. I was converting that and that kind of rage mentality into juujitsu. And it's not the same thing. So it's like weird. You think of all these things that you, these patterns you're building, which is why you gotta come to

Guest [00:24:29] Jujitsu. Oh, I know, I know I do dude. And actually matter of fact, like I know that I know coach and I know, like my cousin worked with him for a real long time. Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:24:37] And

Guest [00:24:38] My cousin's a small world, but the, yeah. Anyways, the,

Vance Crowe [00:24:43] What was, we were talking about fasteners and then you were talking about lifting and

Guest [00:24:47] Fasteners, lifting salt,

Vance Crowe [00:24:51] Ordinary things,

Guest [00:24:52] Ordinary things that are like, that are that you saying keep you humble. It would be like, literally, dude, I've been reading a ton about Caesar, July is named after Julius Caesar. He went to Egypt. Like the, the timeline of the dude, this stuff that this dude did is so insane. You know what I mean? He's, he gets asked to leave Rome, he becomes a governor. He is like, put me next to the galls, I think. Right? And then he like conquers what his, you know, modern day France and doubles Romans empire. Right? And then they're like, man, we better get this dude outta here. He is like, people are loving him. 'cause he is sending all this money back. And then so when he comes back, they're like, we gotta say that he is a terrorist. And he attacked, you know, Roman, I

Vance Crowe [00:25:36] Didn't, they did that to him. Wow.

Guest [00:25:37] Dude. So his name is Pompy, right? So Pompy was the dude that like, put him in as a sto, you know, to run the Senate Caesar. And then people started liking him. He is like, you're outta here. Right? Because they didn't want anybody having more influence than them or being liked more than them, which is like super vain, right? But then Caesar was so ambitious and he's like with I, I love this history, dude, but he's with Brutus, his mom, right? I just, I I I think that history repeats itself so much, dude. And I don't wanna like keep going, man, this is great. So crazy is great. But I've been reading it and I've been thinking like, oh my God, this stuff is awesome. So Caesar was like, Hey, we're gonna take a vote today on bringing eating donuts every Tuesday or whatever, you know what I'm saying? And everybody's like, no, we don't want donuts on Tuesday. And he is like, okay. And Poppy's like, dude, I put you in here to push these things through. We're gonna get you outta here. And he's like, let me handle it my way. And Caesar was a general, right? Caesar was a, was a beast. Him and Marcus Aelius, not Marcus a Mark, Antony. Mark.

Vance Crowe [00:26:40] Yeah. I'm, I'm,

Guest [00:26:41] These names are all familiar to

Vance Crowe [00:26:42] Me. Yeah. So Mark an I know

Guest [00:26:44] Mark Antony's, the general of their homies. And, and so he's like, dude, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me see what I can do. And Caesar has his goons go beat all these senators up, right? So the next time they come to meet, he's like, we're gonna donuts on Tuesday. Everybody's like, yeah, it's till Tuesday. So they end up, he starts, he's with Brutus mom who eventually betrays him and stabs him, right? But Brutus mom was a descendant of the person who founded Rome, I can't remember his name right now, but the, so she knows like how to move politically. And she starts coaching Caesar and Caesar gets like big time and then they kick him out. Poppy's like, they're gonna, he's gonna be more influential than us. They kick him out. He goes, conquers the Gus expands the Roman empire by, you know, a hundred percent starts sending the money back. He's going back a champion, right? And then they say, if he comes back here with this influence and money, we're on state list,

Vance Crowe [00:27:42] We're done. Yeah.

Guest [00:27:43] So, and

Vance Crowe [00:27:43] We already know that he'll beat P'S willing to beat people,

Guest [00:27:45] Right? So they say, you know, war crimes, he used Roman soldiers for his own political game, okay? So he used his, he used our soldiers for his own political gain. And then they, they said, we'll, abandon the city, right? So this is over the course of like four years, okay? You're kicked out, you expand the empire a hundred percent. Come back, you're a terrorist, pompy, and all the senators leave. They're like, we'll abandon the city and he'll be so stupid and vain that he'll take Rome. Okay? So then they leave both. But

Vance Crowe [00:28:22] Why do they think that that would be a bad thing?

Guest [00:28:24] So they think Caesar will take Rome.

Vance Crowe [00:28:26] Yeah.

Guest [00:28:26] They're gonna go get a bunch of soldiers come back and kill him when he is fat and happy and lazy. Okay? So Caesar pull this

Vance Crowe [00:28:36] Microphone up,

Guest [00:28:36] Mark. Anthony says, Hey, they gave us Rome. And he's like, they, he's like, well, we're passing that. We gotta go kill all these dudes, right? Or else he sees the riding on the wall. They gave this up as bait. So they had a 200 mile lead. Imagine this dude, you have, you know, 20,000 troops and you're chasing people and they're 200 miles ahead of you and you're walking, he catches them as they're in boats sailing off. And Mark Anthony's like, they're gone. And he is like wrong, break down all the carts, build boats, which we're getting them. And they sailed to Greece and Mark, they build half, they've built enough boats to carry 10,000 soldiers. This I've been reading, I've been like obsessed with this. So Caesar, he's like, build boats. As soon as they have enough boats to carry half their soldiers, Caesar says, I'm gonna go Mark Anthony, keep building boats when you're have enough boats, come, come catch me. So he goes, and Poppy is, they, they, they look over this hill, he's there. He has a hundred thousand soldiers. Caesar has 10. Poppy comes out and he says, Hey man, you know, surrender to me, we'll go back to Rome and we won't kill you, but you need to, you know, you know, apologize publicly and whatever, but, but I won't kill you. You'll be my political prisoner. And he says, no, you came out here to 'cause you, you know, I'm gonna defeat you and you're asking for forgiveness.

Guest [00:30:11] And Poppy's like, what? They go back and Poppy says, get all the troops right now we have to go attack him. Right now they only have 10,000 people. Caesar goes back to Camp Mark, Anthony pulls up with the other 10,000 soldiers. Right? This stuff gets me so jazzed up, dude, jazzed up. This is awesome. Keep going. I'm like, spell bound. So, dude, so here we go. And I'm sure there's people that know more about this than me and you do like DM me stuff for me, it's fine. I wanna know more. Wanna know, dude, this is the beginning. Let let this feed the children's book, right? So in three hours, in three hours, Julius Caesar with his 20,000 soldiers who just got off of boats, kill 50,000 soldiers from Poe's army and take 50,000 prisoners, which in the, that day, those prisoners are turning into slaves. But imagine, you know, you probably lost 5,000 of your soldiers. You have 15,000 soldiers who in prisoned, 50 in three hours, they killed 50,000 people and took the rest of them as prisoners. Poppy leaves, mark Anthony's like, let's go, man. Let's go back to the room with these people. Each head is worth a thousand shillings or whatever. Sheckles, I don't know what. And Mark an or Caesar says, this will not stop until I catch him and kill him, right? So he's like, mark, mark, Anthony, you go back to Rome. Rule it until I get there. I'm going to get Poppy.

Guest [00:31:44] He thinks to himself, Egypt owes him money. So he's gonna go there and forgive them. The debt in exchange for an army. This is what Caesar thinks that Poppy's gonna do. So he goes to Egypt. And in that time, Pompy was there, meets with this child King, who's 14 years old, who was fighting with his sister at the time, right? For power. So their dad died, made them marry before he died to consolidate power. So brother and sister are married. And, and then after dad dies, brother and sister are fighting for power. Okay? He goes, Caesar says, I'm here. I want, I know Pompey's here he is like, yeah, I have him. And brings him his head, right? So when Pompe went and said, Hey, you know, I'll help you win your war here, then you come back with me to Rome and help me win my war. And he says, I heard Caesar just wiped you out. You're weak and I'm killing you. And at the same time, killing him, he forgives the debt that he owes the guy, right? So he kills him. But Caesar is so angry that someone who wasn't Roman killed a Roman, right? And even though this guy just killed his mortal enemy, he can't forgive 'cause he's so

Vance Crowe [00:33:03] That a, that a Roman citizen would be protected.

Guest [00:33:05] That a Roman citizen should be protected. Dude. I'm like, holy shit. This guy, this is all still within this four year window, dude, all this has happened. They put, he's like, you're gonna serve me and help me win my war against my sister. He says, I'm not doing anything for you, right? Because you killed this woman. They put him on house arrest, they beat him and beat him and beat him. And the sister ends up sneaking in to Caesar, who's the sister?

Vance Crowe [00:33:34] Oh, CLE Patrick. Lea

Guest [00:33:35] Patrick.

Vance Crowe [00:33:36] No.

Guest [00:33:37] God, dude. Yes, yes. So this dude, let's go back. Dude is a brute gets put into senate, gets popular. They're like, you're outta here. He's like, okay, I'll expand the empire. I'm coming back. You're a terrorist. No I'm not. I'm gonna kill you. I build the boats. I kill 50,000. I go to Egypt, I get imprisoned, I hook up with Cleopatra, right? He comes back to Rome, dude, after he's there for a while, shacking up with Cleopatra, helps her win, you know, like stabilizes Egypt. And then goes back to Rome. And he says, and this is like, this starts to get crazy. He was like, things have been so screwed up since I've been gone. And Mark Anthony, dude, he's not a politician. He's just been killing people. Dude. When they, when they get outta line, they're like, we're hungry. He's like, now you're dead. You know what I mean? And so people are complaining. People are complaining. People are complaining because they're hungry and because they're hungry, they're getting killed. Caesar comes back, dude, revolutionizes food distribution, the way we store and food store and distribute food. We still use some of Caesar's principles, okay? He's like, you guys have been so screwed up,

Vance Crowe [00:34:52] Move this out. You can't hear you

Guest [00:34:53] That we don't know what day it, what day is it? And they're like, we don't know. Caesar sets up a 365 day calendar.

Vance Crowe [00:35:03] I didn't know that. Yeah,

Guest [00:35:04] Dude, July is named after Caesar. Oh my god. Julius Caesar, Caesar had seizures, right? The dude was epileptic, right?

Vance Crowe [00:35:15] So he, 'cause he was so smart. I'm like, this is unbelievable.

Guest [00:35:18] He comes back, he's like, the calendar screwed up, food screwed up. And in the day, you probably heard this like the Romans during times of war, you know, it was a democracy. But they would appoint a person to be,

Vance Crowe [00:35:31] Yeah. To,

Guest [00:35:32] For it to be a

Vance Crowe [00:35:34] Martial law. Martial

Guest [00:35:35] Law. So there'd be, you know, there's one person, not a democracy, a a

Vance Crowe [00:35:41] Dictatorship.

Guest [00:35:42] Dictatorship, boom. So we gotta do what this one guy says. So he is like, I'm a dictator for 10 years. And this the crazy thing that, that happens. So all these people that were opposed, that, that kicked him out. When he come, he comes riding back, dude. And they're like, we're all dead. He calls everybody to order. And he says, not only are you not dead, I forgive you. Right? So let that be a lesson as to how we will rule, right?

Vance Crowe [00:36:06] Wow.

Guest [00:36:07] Yeah. So, so they're like, oh my god. And then he says, and I'm running this for 10 years. And they're like, do whatever you wanna do. You know what I mean? Don't kill us. So he does all this stuff, and I, there's, there's more and more and more. But like, talk about Lindy, right? Dude,

Vance Crowe [00:36:24] Yeah. I'm so Lindy, Mandy, Lindy, Lindy, Lindy, L-I-N-D-Y.

Guest [00:36:28] These stories, the strategy, be strong and forgiving, you know what I mean? Be calculated. Know your enemy, dude. Have, you know, honor and allegiance to your country, not a man. You know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [00:36:44] Wow. Like

Guest [00:36:45] I was rea I was reading this stuff and I was like, dude, I, and I'm sure there's a lot of reasons I don't wanna be Julius Caesar, you know what I mean? But I'm reading this stuff, I'm like, man, there is so much to learn here that is timeless. And we think we get it wrong. Like, we think that like, you know, because like Instagram is popping and I need to like show that I'm like rich or whatever, you know, like I should probably be like serving in strategic with, you know what I mean? Like who I am.

Vance Crowe [00:37:13] This is, I mean, you, you painted the picture even clearer than I could. But this is the type of adventure that I wanna be going on with reading because it's so easy to get caught up in, Hey, what are you guys reading? And you get just random selections. So let's find good books. Yeah, dude that have deep, deep meaning. Let's read 'em and then let's talk about it and see what other people pulled out of them. Yeah.

Guest [00:37:32] You're way smarter than me too. I'm like looking forward to do I, I wanna do this. You're gonna do this. All right. Yeah. I'm doing it. And like you and I came to the party, which by the way, dude, let me look into a camera real quick.

Vance Crowe [00:37:41] Just look into that one.

Guest [00:37:43] This is the classiest man I've ever met in my life. If you're at that party, you understand what I'm saying? Dude, I learned so much from you. You're such a good dude.

Vance Crowe [00:37:49] I got something for you. And I know you gotta get outta here to go pick up your son. So this right here, look

Guest [00:37:53] At this dude.

Vance Crowe [00:37:55] I got something for you. So this is a gift that I want you to share with your kids,

Guest [00:38:00] Okay?

Vance Crowe [00:38:00] Some morning you're making pancakes or whatever. This is from Blue Merrill Apiaries, which is in Hartwick, New York. So I just got done meeting with the finest farmers in all of the land in New York. And it turns out we were in Binghamton, New York, which you probably have no idea. It's about an hour south of Syracuse. It's where the first Farm Bureau was ever started. And so they have the oldest longest tradition of being in the Farm Bureau, which is a group of people that all own their own land, that are trying to grow things that are valuable to sell to other people. But they get together and they say, let's find a way to agree. 'cause there's a lot less of us in, in the, in the world of politics. You have to consolidate your power. And so they all come to consensus on ideas and they talk about hardcore things like, should we be involved in hemp production or marijuana? And it was a really cool place and they gave me this honey. And I want you to know that your kids can have it and you can tell them that I gave it to you from New York because I'm so grateful that you came by that I, I, people loved our interview the first time and, and we got to develop a friendship. So if nothing else came out of this podcast, my friendship with you would be more than enough for all this effort. So I'm so glad you're here and we will figure out a way to do this book club and try and find Lindy books and make our book club Lindy. Maybe it'll be a hundred year old book club. Tight. Alright brother, thanks for coming by.