Why This Academic Left His Tenure Track Job and What It Reveals About Institutional Decay

Justin Murphy [00:00:00] Basic goal was that I was going to disintermediate everything that I was doing as a professor for the university. I was gonna basically just find a way to do it online without the institution. So how do I cut out the middleman, but continue to do and everything I'm currently doing as a professor and pr, and create and provide the same value, but without a university and on the internet independently?

Vance Crowe [00:00:21] I'm Chris Haworth, a grain originator and accountant living in Pocahontas, Iowa, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We take a wild ride into philosophy and the future where I taught, I had a chance to sit down with a man named Justin Murphy, who runs an A brand and a website and a newsletter called Other Life. And it was a really interesting conversation. He left academia to then start up his own courses that he runs online, and we talked about Rene Gerard and Mimetic Desire and Scapegoating. And really this was the first time many of the viewers have heard me talk about Rene Gerard, but that we've ever gotten to do a deep dive with somebody that actually knows about his research from a totally different angle than I do. And then we start talking about the way in which distributed servers and the cryptocurrency is going to change the future world that we're living in, how it will make it so the sensors that are happening via Facebook and Twitter and Google can't, won't be able to block information and the positive and negatives that will come from that. This was a really interesting conversation and I'm so glad you're here for it. If you are somebody that loves these types of conversations, know that there is a network where we get together after the interviews are done, we chat about the podcast, we also talk about other things going on in our lives. People are sharing things, they're working on their goals, and you would be more than welcome to join if you're the type of person that's been listening to these interviews and you, and it, you ought to come check out the Articulate Ventures Network.

Vance Crowe [00:01:57] You can do that by going to Network dot Articulate Ventures. Thanks so much. And now onto our conversation with Justin Murphy. Justin Murphy, welcome to the podcast.

Justin Murphy [00:02:09] Hey man, how's it going? Thanks for having me on.

Vance Crowe [00:02:12] So you are somebody that is very interesting to me because you have left academia, you decided, hey, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm going to leave the the prestigious world of academia, although I don't know how prestigious it is, and have started talking about philosophy and selling courses on your own. How in the world did you decide to leave the comfortable world of academia?

Justin Murphy [00:02:34] Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I just had this strong sense that I was on a sinking ship and then I was doing stuff on the internet, and that just felt like a ship where the tide was rising every, every passing month. So it was just this strong perception I had from everything around me that was basically just like, oh, this one way of doing things is getting worse and worse. It feels, and this other way of doing things is getting more and more promising in every way. So I was just like, you know what? I'm young enough. I think I, I I kind of felt like I was just young enough to make this kind of massive career risk if I was a little bit older, if I had already had kids, these types of things, I, I, I knew I probably wouldn't be able to make that kind of massive risk. And I was like, you know what? I don't have kids yet. I'm only 31. Around then was when I kind of first got this conviction, I'm like, you know, now's the time to, to, to take the jump and, and make a bet on, on this different kind of future and these different ways of doing the intellectual life that I believe will become more and more prominent. And it was really just a bit of a gamble, but that was the, the basic logic behind it.

Vance Crowe [00:03:39] And what sort of a academic background did you have? How much had you sunk into this life and where were you, where were you teaching?

Justin Murphy [00:03:45] Oh, yeah, ton, a ton. I mean, I had given my whole adult life to academia, basically, I decided I wanted to become a professor from, you know, sophomore year in college. So around, around 20 years old or so. I, I kind of really was like, this is what I wanna do with my life. I wanna live an intellectual life at all, at all costs. I will figure out how to do research and thinking and writing at the highest level possible as my main vocation in life, come hell or high water. That was, that was the goal. And, and I was dead set on that from around age 20 or so roughly. And, you know, at the time, academia seemed like the best way to do that. It's kind of the most obvious and natural way to do that for, for most young people who feel called to that kind of life. And so that's what I did, and I, I, I basically buckled down and gave everything I had to, to winning that game. I, I did a PhD. I not only did a PhD, but I, you know, worked extra hard, hustled extra hard. I come from a working class family, so I didn't have a safety net, you know, I was very much like, I, if I'm, if I'm gonna do this, it needs to produce a real job and I need to have real money because I had nothing else to fall back on. So I, I worked extra hard and was extra strategic. I even in the halfway through my PhD, I kind of changed research focus to be more marketable, to be able to get a job. I switched from doing political theory and philosophy, which is what I was always interested in. I realized I wasn't gonna get a job that way. So I learned statistics and went all in on quantitative methods and actually got really good at it and pretty sophisticated. And so I, I was giving everything I had to, winning this game basically is, is the context I'm trying to give you here.

Justin Murphy [00:05:19] And I, I won the lottery after my PhD and got a good research gig. The, the, the type of job that academics all dream of and, and fight for really hard. It's very, very competitive. I got a tenure track gig in England at the University of South Hampton, and it was, it was a good department and it was, you know, a research heavy gig, not the kind of like teaching heavy gig that is more common, but, but quite draining and exhausting and it's, it's not really what academics are after. So I basically, I got the dream job. I I made it, I really made it. And then I, from there, i i, I gave everything I had to that gig. Like I've always had these interests in philosophy and theory and all that, the stuff that I do now on the internet. But I I, I didn't do any of that during my career. I did what academics have to do, which is you publish in the specific niche that is mo most likely to get you prestigious publications. And then through those prestigious publications you rise the ranks in, in prestige within your academic niche, basically. I, I did that, I did nothing but that kind of buckled down, focused, patient, obedient, strategically sophisticated path from about age, you know, 20 to about age 31. And I did nothing else other than that. So, and I made it, I got tenured in England, the British version of tenure is a little bit different. It's not quite as, as as as it's known in the us but it's basically the same logic. And I'm, I made it and it was only then that I started taking my liberties.

Justin Murphy [00:06:51] 'cause I was like, this is the whole point, right? This is the dream. This is why you pay your dues to get that kind of dream job security where you have a nice salary and you just get to think and write and speak and, and, and say what you think is true. Right? That was, that was my mental model of it. But it turns out that that's actually kind of a myth. And I, I took it literally, I guess I've been naive working class kid who thought that that was real. And I guess I, I I I, I, I was supposed to have got the memo between the lines that you're not actually supposed to do that once you get tenure. You're, you're actually supposed to continue, you know, being, being politic and, and, and being strategic with what you say and what you do. But I took that very literally, that was why I got into the game. And once I started doing that, it was very clear that it was like not gonna be the lifestyle that, that I dreamed of. And that was, that was another kind of factor in, in how I'd made the leap out of it.

Vance Crowe [00:07:42] What were you putting forward that the academic establishment was not happy with?

Justin Murphy [00:07:47] Yeah, people always ask about this, and I, it, I think it's a major misconception that people have. It's, it's like not any particularly profound or provocative research findings or anything like that, or it wasn't even political really. It's a, it's actually much more a matter of just lifestyle and norms. And in a certain kind of prestigious professional milieu, there is just cer a certain set of expectations around what it's reasonable to act like or think like, or be like. And I found that to be the real problem. And that was kind of what I was constantly brushing up against and, and constantly having problems with. So the example I like to give is like the first time I started the, the very first time I can remember having a kind of clear problem or being kind of reprimanded explicitly about anything that I was saying or doing. It wasn't like some kind of provocative, you know, red pilled like theory or something that I had it, it was 'cause I, I took mushrooms in Amsterdam with my wife one weekend where it's more or less legal, right? It's not like, it's not even naughty really to, to, to eat some psychedelic mushrooms in Amsterdam. It's like you're allowed to do it basically. And nowadays there's more and more research that psychedelics are actually very good, you know, in moderate doses. It's, it's, it's pretty much, there's really nothing bad about me eating mushrooms with my wife in Amsterdam. I'm having a lovely time. But I posted some videos of my wife, of myself and my wife tripping on mushrooms.

Justin Murphy [00:09:18] It was just like a cute little, we had a lovely weekend in, in Amsterdam and we were on mushrooms one day and I posted, I took some videos and I posted that to Instagram. So in every way as far as I could tell, completely innocent, nice and, and even quite beautiful. I thought they were really, I thought that, I thought they were, I thought they were very nice little videos. It's just a perfectly nice wholesome and beautiful interesting weekend. Exactly the type of thing that, you know, an intellectual I think would generally like to do with their life here and there. You know, it's like to, to me, that's just a perfect little example of, of a exactly what the intellectual life means is thinking, being creative, exploring life, exploring the different aspects of, of human experience and sh but most importantly, sharing them honestly and transparently just, just reporting on, on the human condition is honestly as, as one can, I feel like that's the obligation of a, of a genuine social scientist worth assault anyway. And, but that's the kind of thing that you're not allowed to do, right? Because, you know, drugs are, are, are dubious it that it looks a little, it looks a little off color, you know? And, and so the idea that I posted video of this in Amsterdam was like, you know, got me, got me reprimanded basically, I, I was told, you know, you're not supposed to do that kind of thing, Justin, what are you doing? You gotta, you gotta kind of be more professional. So that's the kind of, that's the kind of conflict that the, the true intellectual life in my mental model has with academia. It's, it's, it's not a political controversial research kind of thing. It's more just like I had a vision of what the genuine intellectual, what the free intellectual life looks like and feels like that was constantly just running up against just general bourgeois professional norms.

Vance Crowe [00:10:57] Yeah, it's interesting because I think a lot of people, if you've never been involved in academia, you don't realize that in order to get a PhD you have to go to the frontier. You have to go all the way out to what everybody has already known. And then in order to get your PhD, or historically it has been that you have to discover something new. And the the thought was, if you've gone out all the way to the frontier and you've discovered something new, it will inherently change you. So when you come back to try and be a part of academia or the regular world, you are going to be a little bit different, which is why you want this tenure, not just for the freedom of speech that we have in this kind of western, certainly us tradition, but this idea that, you know, when you really go to the edge, you, you're changed in some way. And now I don't think anyone even recognizes that that's why they do tenure. That, that because you've pushed people in their studies so hard that something's actually changed in them. But now it's much more about, you know, it's almost like a corporation, right? There's almost indistinguishable, right? You have a reputation, we have a reputation they need to align. And so I could see both sides of this and think it's, it's hilarious. How surprised were you that this was a, a, a thing that they didn't accept?

Justin Murphy [00:12:11] I guess not too surprised. I mean, I get it right. I'm not, I'm not naive. I, I un I understand there are professional norms. I understand the, the logic behind it all. But I guess what I was a bit surprised by was how, how the academic, how do I put it? The, the, the prestige that academics themselves have is much weaker relative to the power of kind of bureaucrats within academia. I think, I think this was worse than I had expected. So I knew that, you know, doing the, I have always had this kind of propensity, so I always like to just be a little provocative, I guess, whatever. But so I, so I've seen this like throughout my life, but I figured I would be able to be a bit of a gadfly for a while before it would be like a major kind of existential conflict between me and the university. So I, I, I did predict this kind of conflict, but I didn't know it would kind of accelerate so quickly. And I think that that was in part because I, I had not realized how much the university is dominated by b bureaucratic mindset. Like you made a mention before about how academics, one of the distinguishing characteristics of a professional academic, you know, to do a PhD to even to even, you know, pass your, your PhD dissertation, let alone get a good job and, and, and advance in your career. You have to, you have to innovate on the frontiers of what is known as, as you very well put it. And in my, my mental model in, you know, how I was raised in, in grad school and, and, and what I always thought was, you know, when you're able to do that, you're, you're never gonna, you're never gonna let some bureaucrat tell you like what is true and, and what is not and, and what, you know, it's like the whole point of, the whole point of making it to that frontier and paying your dues is because from then you're like, okay, I call the shots on what is real, you know, it's like sure bureaucrats have these rules or whatever, but, and in fact, what you find in contemporary academia is much more like what bureaucrats say is real and true is just like taken for granted as, as what is real and true.

Justin Murphy [00:14:21] And my, my my feeling in academia was very much like I didn't, I didn't do all of this independent research and, and, and develop a sophisticated independent scientific perspective on the world to have some bureaucrat tell me like what is real or good or true or false. And yeah, that, that was kind of what was maybe that that was worse than I expected to a surprising degree perhaps.

Vance Crowe [00:14:46] And do you think that the contemporary academia is different than, say in the past? Is this different than the seventies or, or the early 19 hundreds? Oh,

Justin Murphy [00:14:55] Without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah. We know this for sure. It's well documented. And you can also find ample kind of anecdotal data on this if you just talk with older academics, right? So, you know, in my time in academia, I, I had the good fortune of befriending a lot of older heads and they, they would tell you stories, you know, in the, in the seventies for instance, it was really easy to get a job as an academic. I mean, if you could just do a PhD, right? So if you were kind of in the elite people who could, you know, do a PhD and, and do teaching you and, and research, there were jobs galore because the university system was first opening up to mass education, right? So there was massive demand that they needed a lot of professors and you could basically get a tenure track job just on the strength of like a decent PhD dissertation. Whereas now you need to have multiple articles published at prestigious journals. It's, it's, it's, it was just basically way less competitive and way more way cushier basically ev you could pro you could pro progress way easier. Everything was looser, less competitive, and it, and it meant like people could be like crazy, right? People, you know, might know of famous examples like Timothy Leary who was, who was, you know, a PhD back in, back in the seventies. And around that time there were a lot of academics who were crazy people basically in, in their, in their private life and their, but, but their private life and their research life were very, very overlapping. And so yeah, it's, it's, it's quite well documented, I think.

Justin Murphy [00:16:25] And, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of stories you'll find in academia to back it up without a doubt. As academia has become more competitive, it's become basically like a, it it's as brutal a kind of corporate rat race as, you know, becoming like a, a consultant at McKinsey or something like that. It, it's, it's absolutely the same kind of competitive career bureaucracy logic as, as any other kind of in highly coveted corporate track. And in the seventies it just wasn't like that. So,

Vance Crowe [00:16:57] So if you got inside of the, the walled garden, right? You're there and you're at least, you know, you, you have a paycheck coming, your stability with your life and career. Where did you head off to when you decided you were gonna leave the walled garden?

Justin Murphy [00:17:10] Yeah, well, I'm an American and my wife's an American and we had moved to England just to, to do the job. And it was cool and we, you know, maybe could have seen ourselves settling in England for good if, if I, you know, really felt at home in the, in the academic trajectory there. But it was never a particularly natural feeling to be in England at all. So we had a natural kind of gravitational pull back towards America. And honestly, that's another thing that's relevant here because I mean, your audience might may or may not find this interesting, but America's awesome basically, and I didn't realize how awesome America is until I I lived in England for five years and no hate on England. I mean, you know, they were, they were, you know, they hosted me graciously and it was a, it was an interesting place to live for, for five years. But like, I am an American, I'm like a blue blooded American. I'm, I'm died in the wool American in my personality and spirit and, and, you know, people like me really can thrive much more easily in America than in England. And, and that's another kind of part of, of this story. So yeah, that's, those are, those are kind of relevant contextual factors there. So when, you know, it started becoming clear that academia was not really the ideal path for being an intellectual in my, in my view. And I saw this other way of doing it on the internet. It was a natural, it was natural to just, we're going back to America and rebuilding from there. So that was like two years ago now, or so, I mean, almost three now actually. Yeah, more like three. And yeah, we've just been rebuilding in America.

Vance Crowe [00:18:44] And now you teach classes that you put online. And I think the reason the executive producer Ben Anderson put me on with you is because you are studying something I've found an amateur love or fascination with, which is the, the philosopher Renee Gerard. And so I'd be really interested in how did you encounter Rene Gerard? And when you're explaining this, you know, somewhat obscure French anthropologist to the world, how, how do you, how do you give a summary of who he is and what he's describing?

Justin Murphy [00:19:15] Yeah, sure. So a little bit of relevant context here is that when, so when I left academia, the, the basic goal was that I was going to disintermediate everything that I was doing as a professor for the university. I was gonna basically just find a way to do it online without the institution. So how do I cut out the middleman, but continue to do, and everything I'm currently doing as a professor and pr and create and provide the same value, but without a university and on the internet independently. And so one of the obvious things to do was courses and because, you know, it's something I'm good at, something not a lot of people can do well, and something I've built a lot of, you know, cultural capital and, and being able to do. And so then from there I did a couple experiments, and then I did, I did some myself and, and they were moderately successful. But then I started thinking, oh, you know, I could build something bigger and kind of more impressive if I got some other good people to teach courses kind of within my system. I could move faster, grow more courses and make more of an impact faster. And so I also started thinking just what are, who are the thinkers and what are the ideas that are most important right now or most interesting to people right now? What, what's most likely to just, just what's most of the current moment that really needs to be taught and thought about and that people would be interested in? And so Rene Gerard was one of, of my answers on this, and I happen to have a colleague and friend on the internet named Jeff Schullenberger, who's something of a, of a Gerard specialist himself. And so I brought him on to do this course. So, so shout out, shout out to Jeff Schullenberger. People can check out his blog and podcast out outsider theory, I think it's outsider theory.com.

Justin Murphy [00:20:51] And so he taught the Gerard course in my, in my course catalog. And the reason that I wanted to do a course on Gerard was for a few reasons. One is that he, he's a Christian and I think there's a massive latent interest in Christianity and kind of pre, let's call it pre-modern forms of, of, you know, intelligence and, and social, social theory like perspectives on, on the world and society and, and how to live in the world that are essentially pre-modern or even anti-modern. And I think Christianity is just historically, you know, in, in the western, in western civilization, Christianity is, is kind of the, you know, the elephant in the room really. And so, so that was one part of my thesis is, is a massive latent interest in Christianity, which I'm also interested in. I happen to be a Christian and I'm, you know, I, I I, I teach, I write and teach like a kind of typical, you know, secular, modern rationalist academic or whatever. But, but I happen to be a Christian. And so Gerard I think is just one of the most interesting and impressive and sophisticated, but genuinely Christian philosophers or, or anthropologists or thinkers. So that's, that's one part of it. And I think the second part of it is that a lot of his most well-known ideas like the scape, this, the concept of the scapegoat and the concept of mimetic rivalry are just very easy to see in the world right now. And so that's why a lot of people have kind of turned to him in, in the current moment and why, why his name is, is kind of hot right now is, is because people see the, the natural and intuitive applicability of, of some of these key ideas he's associated with for contemporary political situations.

Justin Murphy [00:22:36] And so yeah, those, those two factors made me think, let's do a course on Gerard.

Vance Crowe [00:22:40] Yeah, I mean, when you encounter Rene Gerard, you, at first you're like, this seems so simple as to be like, how, how powerful of an idea could it be? But then you start applying it to, to the rest of the world, and then he starts breaking apart Christianity. I watched one of his lectures at a, at a peace building seminar, and they actually did this whole thing where they did a little play acting before the whole thing began. And they said, you know, the line in the bible where Jesus tells the followers, you know, if somebody asks for your cloak, just, you know, go ahead and take off your cloak and give it to 'em, but also give them the undergarment too. And I'd never really understood that. In fact, it always seemed like a real kind of, you know, sissy way to behave. Like, it just never, it never dawned on me. And what they did by doing the play acting was the guy actually got all the way down to his underwear and handed the guard all of his clothes, and all of a sudden you start realizing like, whoa, that really would be a really radical way to behave. Or if somebody smacked you and instead of you responding by hitting them back, you actually just give them the other cheek to smack like that, that actually is a really ballsy move. Yeah. And so you start breaking apart some of the things that Gerard was saying. And it's, it's, it's interesting because if you've grown up, like I grew up Catholic, if you've grown up in the Christian Melu, many of these things seem just obvious or, or already known or yeah, that's the way you're supposed to do it if you're the good person.

Vance Crowe [00:24:11] But you never really stopped to think about what is the, why was this so radical? And I think that was some of Gerard's brilliance was taking Christianity and, and demonstrating what the radical nature of it really was.

Justin Murphy [00:24:26] Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it, for sure. I mean, what I like about Gerard is that he's a, he's a legit Christian, but you know, he does do his work in this contemporary, you know, civil society, secular rationalist kind of way. And he really makes, I think, some of the strongest, most compelling arguments in favor of Christianity, but from a social scientific perspective. And I think that that's, that's one of the things that's most interesting about him, you know, and alluding to what you're saying about the, the radicalism of it, I think, I think you're absolutely right about that Christianity, according to Gerard, was this radical kind of anthropological rupture basically. It was, it was, it was a rupture in, in what it means to be human and, and what it means for a society to, to be a society really in the history of human civilization. It, you know, has clear kind of anthropological and, and political and social significance. It's like a, a, a social and political revolution. And you know, the essence of that is, is basically this what it does around ESIS and, and mimetic rivalry. So to give your listeners just a, a, a very brief, kind of a recap or summary on one of the, one of the key ideas in Gerard, basically he argues that all of all of kind of human cultures before Christ were, they, they all suffered from this tendency towards mimetic conflict, which means that societies would almost all the time, eventually at some point be vulnerable to these sudden waves of where everyone in the society basically attacks some relatively innocent but kind of different or unique member or outsider or entity of some kind.

Justin Murphy [00:26:16] Like, there were just, he noticed that there were always these periodic events where pretty much everyone, all the humans in the group would converge on some entity who is usually different in some way, stands out in some way, but is not particularly guilty of anything objectively. They're just different. And this, everyone in society would basically converge on that different entity and stone them or kill them or hang them or torture them and kill them or whatever. And he basically located the, the logic of this phenomenon, which, which he argues you could observe across all of kind of pre-Christian human cultures. He located it in the nature of, of human desire, basically because, and the basic idea here is, you know, because human desire is, is social, we learn what to desire from what is desired by the people around us. There's this intrinsically kind of zero sum aspect to desire. So once everyone is taking their cues from what other people desire, you can easily see that there's a tendency for desires to converge on the same thing. It becomes competitive, and there's always going to be these kind of irresolvable conflicts for this reason. And then the, the, the entity that society decides to, to converge on and punish, that's called the scapegoat. It's basically a way of releasing all of this kind of pent up conflict from the irresolvable zero sum conflict that mimetic desire creates.

Justin Murphy [00:27:50] And so he reads, Gerard re reads Christianity as basically this kind of profound anthropological solution to this problem. And the basic idea there is that it, i, it, it pretty much inverts, it inverts the, the violence that we are naturally inclined to put onto the scapegoat. It kind of inverts that he, at, at one point, Gerard, I think it's in, I forget which book it is, but at one point he, he calls Christianity, it's like a trap. It's a trap for Satan or something like that. So what it does is it takes, it takes these mimetic instincts that we have to, to kind of kill the scapegoat, and it inverts them, and it actually turns that natural instinct that societies have to kill the scapegoat. It turns that into a kind of pro-social positive sum game that, that is sustainable and can expand through peace and love basically. And what you were referring to before about turning the other cheek, it's basically, or you know, the famous, the, the, the famous anecdote about, you know, not being the first to throw stone at all of those ideas are basically specific anthropological, inter interventions against the, the, the mimetic conflict and scapegoating problem. And it turns all that on its head to turn to make it a pro-social kind of expanding positive dynamic. And, and that is literally the, the, the moral revolution that was the basis for western civilization as we know it.

Justin Murphy [00:29:21] So that's, that's the quick TL TLDR.

Vance Crowe [00:29:24] Yeah, the, when I first encountered it. So I have, you know, lived in Africa and I actually watched a mob form up and, and kill people. And I saw it, not, not just once, but several times. Wow. And when I was listening to Gerard talk about these things about, you know, Christianity is really an antidote to the mob, at first I thought like that this can't be right, right? Like that's like, what are you talking about? And then he goes in and he's breaking down stories that I've heard, you know, whatever, 30 some odd times when you go to Easter mass, right? Where they're describing anyone can join a mob, anyone can be a part of it. Because our natural tendency is to doing that. He points out, like, look at Palm Sunday, the people were laying down palms saying, we're so glad you're here. We don't even want your sandals to get dusty. And by the end of the week, they were all prepared to crucify him. And even Peter like couldn't resist the pull towards the mob. I mean, when you really hear Gerard describing, you know, Peter saying denying three times that he was with Jesus and that no, he is a part of the mob. That's when it dawns on you that Christianity's real amazing power that had been ubiquitous in my life, ubiquitous in the lives of all these Christians that have known things, is this avoid the tendency of the mob. Because as to your point, like the mob is going to grab people and, and try and get that cathartic release. We, we, we think something is horribly wrong and we wanna get rid of this person who we're blaming on and on, and then everything will go back to normal and everything will be okay.

Vance Crowe [00:30:57] And now we're watching this play out in our streets, right? We're watching, you know, people burn down, you know, Krispy Kreme donuts and gas stations and all kinds of things because they have this pull that like, there's some evil in the world and we need to get rid of it. And it just, without Gerard describing something that'd always been there, it's like a fish trying to understand water.

Justin Murphy [00:31:20] Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. And so I think Gerard basically is one of the most important thinkers right now because it shows that in really compelling kind of historical and anthropological detail with, in a way that's empirically sophisticated. And you know, although he's a Christian, he doesn't, you know, take refuge and, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't invoke faith for his arguments. He's not like, he doesn't write like a theologian, he writes like a social scientist or, or an anthropologist and something of a philosopher. And I think people see it very clearly today because mob dynamics are so salient in, in the West today. You know, you see, you see a lot of social patterns right now where people do seem to be kind of aping into these, these rapid group formations that it seems pretty clear to people paying attention that there's not a lot of honest, independent judgment from the entities involved. It's like mostly people following other people in these kind of crazed, enthusiastic, you know, mimetic formations mostly. And so I think that that's the reason why people see the value of these ideas right now in the West,

Vance Crowe [00:32:36] It's interesting to think about the, how ubiquitous Christianity was. And, and you can certainly point to different eras in our lifetime when Christianity was used to some pretty brutal ends. Like just go read about the 1600 when, when the Dutch were using Christianity on their, on their sailors to be able to, to to, to put all kinds of morals on them. And they could just treat them just horribly and, and brutally. But you think about Christianity in the modern American era as Christianity's gone down. So since 2000 we went from 70% of people saying, we belong to, I belong to a church, to now below 50%. Is this something you believe will rebound? Do you think people will start looking around and saying, whoa, the, this mob action seems really uncomfortable and while it's hard for me to get up on Sunday morning to go to church and sing songs, I think I need to do it because I don't have meaning? Or is it going to take something else?

Justin Murphy [00:33:29] Yeah, that's a good question. I, I definitely am not making the case that there's any reason to expect some kind of profound, you know, revival of, of Christianity in the West, in, in quantitative terms. Like I, I I, you know, as you mentioned, if you look at the data, it's not very promising for, for this. And so I think that you have to bite that ball, at least how things look empirically. But I do think what you're going to see and what you are already seeing is the devil is gonna be, the devil is in the details. I think the, all of the interesting action really has to do with small groups nowadays. And so there's definitely going to be a revival of Christianity among a, a certain set of people, which, which you're seeing, right? So although you're seeing secular declines in kind of things like church attendance in, in the West, if you look across the board averages across the country, it doesn't look good. If you look in into very niche pockets, you see pretty extraordinary kind of revivals and a lot of, and a lot of interesting kind of cultural energy, right? So on place and, and it's, it can be very, very small. It can be very, very niche. It can be like, you know, trad Catholic e girls on Twitter and people like Ross d and you know, there, there are. But, but in, in those niches where it is passionate and it is felt and it is really being seen, the the, the energy is, is, is substantial. And, and that's going to, I think continue to grow. So these niches are all gonna become more and more intense and more and more evolved is, is my, is my kind of mental model of, of kind of America in general.

Justin Murphy [00:35:03] I think it all of the action in the next, you know, few decades really is in very, very, it's all fragmentation, it's all ification, it's all small groups. So I think averages will continue, will be, you know, incredibly misleading. But what's gonna happen is that basically like, you know, the anti-Christian people are going to intensify and splinter off into their many different kind of anti-Christian niches. The Christian people are going to splinter off and, and fragment into, into their different niches and a million of shades in between. And, and what's really gonna happen, that's, that's most interesting to me is that there's gonna be this mass kind of competition of an, of an extraordinary number of fragments and niches. There's gonna be hardcore like lifestyle competition, basically. I think this is what you're gonna see because, you know, you're seeing more and more things like homeschooling and just general in every direction you look, people want to go in different directions and people have more and more, they have the technology and the communication infrastructure to do so. And so that's what you're gonna see is, is people going, small groups, going in many different directions, and then in 50 years, a hundred years, it's gonna turn out that some of those directions were way more successful than others. And some of those models are, some of those niches are gonna have superior models of what human nature really is. And the ones that have the better model of human nature are going to weigh outcompete, the ones that don't. And so that's where I would think the, the the interesting future for kind of Christian or or, or somewhat anti-modern, more, let's call it traditional, we'll just call it traditional ways of, of, of life are going to win out.

Justin Murphy [00:36:38] It would be in the longer term after this current period of mass fragmentation and niche competition.

Vance Crowe [00:36:45] So you used a, a phrase, the trad Catholic e girls, but for people that don't know what trad is, what, describe that, what does it mean to be a trad?

Justin Murphy [00:36:55] Oh yeah, sure. So there's just like, on the internet, a kind of niche subculture of men and women. I mentioned e girls 'cause it's funny, but men and women who are just interested in kind of trad values, trad is just an internet term for traditionalism, but it's, it's kind of more aesthetic, you know, there's, there's an interest in all kinds of, of trad values and aesthetics like traditional architecture, traditional urbanism, traditional values, fa you know, like traditional family values. And it's, I guess what's, what's meaningful about it that would be of interest to, to your audience possibly if, if they're not aware of this kind of internet subculture? 'cause I guess it sounds a bit trite or it sounds like who cares? But I guess what's interesting is that it's, it's like a revivification of these things in, in, in youth culture terms. So it's like, it's becoming cool is, is another way to put it. It's traditionalism made cool for the youth culture where like actual young people who are creative and, you know, ambitious and sexy and you know, all of these things that are associated with, you know, thriving, growing youth cultures. They have their own version of traditionalism or Christianity. And, and that's, that's kind of what's new and interesting because for, for quite a while, these kind of trad values or Christian values were where the antithesis, where the antithesis of cool, but now you're seeing on the internet significant, you know, small niche for sure, but very non-trivial, significant pockets of, of cultural energy where these trad values are becoming cool and fashionable and really kind of energetic for, for, for young adults in particular,

Vance Crowe [00:38:44] Which is interesting. You know, if we think back to the concept of the mimetic desire, right? The, the where as soon as you start seeing a small group of people, they want these things that come from being a traditionalist, then all of a sudden more people start saying like, oh, I've noticed that guy wants that. Well maybe I should want it too. And the, you know, the the idea that maybe there's a large enough gravity well to be able to change society in some way. Do you, you know, 'cause really that's what you're describing, you know, all of these niches are mimetic competition people defecting. And this is your term actually that I read in a fascinating article you wrote on the, the orbit and the telos of creator economy. You had a, a term called prestige defection, which is where people go from one area where they used to have prestige, kind of like you did in academia and saying, Hey, I'm going to throw that off and I'm gonna go in a different direction because I believe there's an, you know, an arbitrage opportunity. There's an area where the, where the prestige is bought for very low, but it's a different way of looking at the world and then being able to, to raise up your, your, your own prestige or your own mimetic desirability for others.

Justin Murphy [00:39:55] Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting connection there for sure. I think, well, prestige defection is basically what I was talking about with my own story. That that was pretty much the, the move or the decision that I made this kind of defecting from prestige. Because I think basically the returns to institutional prestige are decreasing. I I think actually faster than people realize. And the opportunity to simply build cultural capital within totally autonomous private communities is actually the, the value of that or the payout to that, the payoff to that is, is growing faster than people realize. And so that's one of the reasons why I think you're gonna see this mass accelerating kind of fragmentation of, of, of cultures basically. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's right. And I think that basically where that pans out is that when people defect for prestige, as you're seeing now, you see it with, you know, things like all the New York Times journalists who are now just doing, you know, leaving, leaving the prestigious New York Times to do a substack is just one example. My example with academia, many other examples, the, the trajectory of that is going to intensify. And so it's, it's going to become people building their own towns and cities, probably it's going, it's going to become people building their own universities. It's going to become people building not just their own, you know, independent journalist outlets, but basically their own independent reality systems basically.

Justin Murphy [00:41:30] And you're already seeing this, people just don't really know, know how to appreciate its its magnitude because it's so, it's so chaotic. But it, you know, the, the rise of conspiracy theories as really, really massive kind of public influential kind of public social intellectual formations is a, is a good sign of what's to come. You know, that conspiracy theory cons, the word conspiracy theory is used to kind of denigrate people, but whether you agree with certain theories or not, you know, it's, it's kind of a polarizing term, so it's probably not the best term to use. 'cause some people believe them, some people don't. And I'm not even trying to have an opinion on, on them. One person's conspiracy theory is another person's, you know, totally, totally true verified reality. And, but this is my point, what gets called conspiracy theories, there's gonna be more and more of those. And pretty much everyone is gonna have to pick their, their own conspiracy theories. Every, if you believe it, it's true. But to everyone else in society, it's a conspiracy theory that's gonna, that's gonna it continue until, until we basically have fundamentally different realities and, and there's gonna be thousands of them, is how I think about it.

Vance Crowe [00:42:33] Yeah. And the funniest thing about a conspiracy theory is it's not a conspiracy theory. It it's a conspiracy theory, not until it becomes true or false, but it's like, do enough people believe in it that we can be accepted. So I recently had Alina Chan on the podcast, and she and Matt Ridley wrote a book on the lab leak hypothesis. And like I put it out there and I didn't get much pushback, but I had some other friends that had tweeted it out and then they're like, oh my God, I got just walloped by people saying that I was participating in a conspiracy theory. And they don't know if they can trust other things that I say. And like you could tell this like mimetic rivalry, right? Like, you're either with us or against us, and if you believe in this thing, this is outside of the normative belief of our group, so you are no longer allowed to be here. And this fractionalization that you're talking about, it's, it's a curious thing because we have more information than we've ever had before, and yet it feels like truth is much, much harder to get at.

Justin Murphy [00:43:33] Yeah. Yeah. I, I I think that's right. I think we we're only starting to see the, the beginning of, of, of what this is gonna look like. It's gonna get way crazier, I think, you know, so people look at like something like take, take as a, as a, I think one of the best examples Q anon, right? So some people of course will call it a conspiracy theory. Some people will call it just, you know, the truth, right? And wherever you come down on it, it's, I think it's a really good example to kind of fix, fix ideas around, because there's going to be, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, there's gonna be more Q anon, but every time it's going to be a little bit more technologically sophisticated. So imagine, you know, imagine a world where Q anon could not be shut down thanks to let's say crypto, crypto infrastructure, for instance, permissionless, truly decentralized, technically unstoppable communication infrastructure and imagine incentives also getting involved, right? So, you know, imagine that Q Anon has a, has a token, right? And, and Q Anon is basically paying his followers to find new clues for him. And, and, and imagine that all of this communication between Q Anon and his followers is taking place on Cryptographically Secure absolutely. Private sensor proof communication protocols that you couldn't, you couldn't shut them down if you tried to because there's no point of failure.

Justin Murphy [00:45:03] Failure, right? So Qan Anon was essentially shut down by concerted effort, by big social media platforms, realize it got so massive, it, it was incredibly massive. It was something like, at, at its high point, something like around 40 or 50% of Americans believed somewhat. I, I believe the survey, the survey data said that that 40 or 50% at least believed somewhat Q anon. So it had massive name recognition, massive influence, and a lot of people really liked it, even had, you know, some, some congress people, right? And so it was really only

Vance Crowe [00:45:38] Stopped. Can I jump in? Yeah. I think like most people don't realize, like unless you are into decoding or you've, you've been involved with cryptocurrency, like most people don't realize that almost everything you see on the internet is given to you, served up through some other party, right? Most people spend most of their time on the internet, not on individual websites, but through a, through a window like Facebook or Twitter or whatever. And so these ideas that are conspiratorial or just different than mainstream ideas, like for a while they were able to spread, but then there's pressure on these companies to get rid of 'em. They have both social pressure internally and political pressure, so they start shutting down. But as, as the rise of cryptographic currencies of the ability to have your own servers. So in, in systems like Orbit where the people that are there actually run their own internet that is using the same pipes as the, as the rest of the internet, but on a different system. So now all a sudden Facebook can't say, Hey, that Facebook group that was spreading those things, we're just gonna shut that down. Now there's the ability to just be like, well, there's no one that can shut us down un unless you come and literally unplug the server from my wall, or you cut my, my internet connection to from my house, you can't shut it down.

Justin Murphy [00:46:57] Yeah, absolutely. So that's what people need to buckle up for. 'cause it, it's coming whether we like it or not. And, and so you're gonna, you're gonna see another Q anon, but eventually it's gonna be totally unstoppable, right? And if you look at how fast Q anon kind of rose to power, like I said, something like 40 or 50% of Americans more or less believed, some of it had massive name recognition. That was why basically Google and YouTube and Facebook more or less kind of coordinated to shut it down all at once. And that's the only reason it, it went away. That's going to happen again, something similar, but this time no one's gonna be able to shut it down. And so whether you like that or not is quite beside the point because guess what? There's also going to be another one, a competitor one, and then there's gonna be a third, and then there's gonna be a thousand qan ons with different personality factors, different demographics, different political ideologies. So just imagine a world of like 10,000 Q anon where it's a completely different model of, of political reality with extremely intense stories and ideas and memes that are highly, highly engaging, but totally different in each of the different communities. So, so fundamentally different realities are going to emerge in a way that is unstoppable because it's on this radically decentralized technological layer, which we're going to have. I, I think without a doubt, I, I, in my opinion, Irv is kind of the most interesting and compelling competitor for that, that that layer that's, that's inevitable, but time will tell.

Justin Murphy [00:48:28] And so this is important though for thinking about what we were talking about earlier in the conversation when it comes to, you know, the prospects for traditional values or the prospects for small communities and kind of what's going to, and, and you know, kind of humane western, you know, Judeo-Christian ethics and, and, and politics versus the, the kind of crazy mob dynamic dynamics that seem to be kind of taking over the west. You know, when we think about those, all of those problems that we see in the contemporary status quo, and we try to think through how's it gonna pan out? Who's gonna win? What, what tendencies are gonna win or lose? You have to take, you have to, you have to think about it from the perspective of, of 10,000 Q anon operating on unstoppable infrastructure because, you know, I think a lot of people are scared by something like Q Anon and generally it feels to a lot of people like it as a bad connotation. This means like crazy people are gonna be able to brainwash the populace. But that's only what it looks like in the short term because what, what it really means in the long term is the, these 10,000 qan are gonna have to compete and they're gonna have to provide real leverage to human beings to live at, at the end of the day, the, the Q anon that win are gonna be the ones that promote the ideologies and mental models and, and practices and norms that actually lead the largest number of people to thrive, basically. And, and so I do think in the, in the, in the long run, the al the, the equilibrium outcome of this process is going to be the one where the actually correct theory of human nature and the actually most beautiful aesthetic sensibilities, and the actually most good and true ideas and philosophies and norms are gonna be the ones that win.

Justin Murphy [00:50:11] Because those are gonna be the ones that are genuinely most flourishing for, for human, for, for, for humans, be because they most fully kind of represent the, the truth of human nature. And so that's a really beautiful long run perspective in my view. It's, it's not as, as pessimistic as people often think.

Vance Crowe [00:50:31] Yeah, I think that the, the long-term perspective that you're describing is only achieved once, once turbulence has been gone through, right? Like, we're already watching what happens when people live in two completely different realities. Where you have, you know, one group of people that think that the police are now just the most brutal institution and they're actively out there killing people that are minorities and, and that are different than them. And then there are other people that think, you know, absolutely not, this is the most, you know, sanctified group and it's peaceful. And if we don't have them and give them more strength and all the, and the, these two realities can no longer be reconciled and they're only going to fractionate in more and more groups over more and more topics that people feel ever more deeply passionate about. And I, so I go out and speak with farmers all over the country, and you can hear these farmers talking about how, how under assault they feel every single day of the year, like, you know, like about whether they're able to use their water or whether they're able to use chemicals to grow their food. And they're at the point where they're literally saying things like, I think we've been peaceful for too long. I think we, you know, have let this go on for too long. And that, and that our problem is that we haven't actually pushed back. And the the striking thing is once violence begins, which I think it already has, I don't think there's any way out of it until, until one side conquers the other in some, in some meaningful way.

Justin Murphy [00:52:06] Yeah. But it doesn't have to be as zero sum and, and as conflictual as people think, and as it, it kind of sounded like you're, you're maybe thinking in, in your comment there, because in what, what it, it rather should be and probably will be is in the, in the medium term is it's just people going their own way and trying their own things, you know, so like the, the farmers who feel the way you're describing, I don't think that they need to, you know, engage in any kind of particular offensive against, you know, the status quo government. Rather they're going to figure out how to organize for themselves more autonomy and more freedom to basically organize life along their preferred terms because of the technological infrastructure that is, that that is, that is coming and, and that is already underway. It, that technological infrastructure is going to allow them to have their freedom and to thrive according to their own values and practices more effectively and more cheaply than ever. And that's gonna be, and so they're gonna ha they're gonna be able to do that in a way that the government's not gonna be able to stop, basically. And so I, I don't think that conflict in, in a zero sum kind of antagonistic sense is necessarily the thing to expect in, in the short term or the medium term or the long term. 'cause I think exit is more important than voice right now. And exit is becoming cheaper and, and, and more effective than, than voice or debate or conflict, basically.

Vance Crowe [00:53:34] So let's talk about what think that's what mean by exit versus voice.

Justin Murphy [00:53:37] Yeah. So here, I'm, I'm invoking the, the book by Albert Hirschman called Exit Voice and Loyalty. It's a very I important and influential book. It was written in 1970, and he basically just, he was a social scientist and he, and he kind of modeled out how, when organizations or institutions decline if something goes wrong and how they function, there's more, there's really only two ways to respond as, as a member or as an individual with a stake in that organization or institution. And you can either exit or voice, in other words, you can either speak up or you can walk away. Those are kind of two ways to, to, to, to deal with it. You can right, try to fix it from within, by cooperating and using your voice to, to, to push for the change that you think needs to happen from within or you can walk away. Both of those are ways of kind of communicating your dissatisfaction and, and those are both ways of exerting some kind of change. And you know, I've, I've recently made the argument that if you actually read that book and you, and you go back over and look at his, his model for almost all significant kind of political conflicts today, the only solution that makes sense for almost all of them is exit and voice according to Hirshman. If you, if you, if you take his model seriously according to Hirshman, it makes almost no sense to use your voice for complicated reasons, which you'd have to kind of look into the book to, to, to spell it out. But that's the background for what I'm referring to here. And so what I think technology is doing is it's basically lowering the costs of exit and increasing the payoff, the payoff to exit while it's making voice kind of more and more irrelevant, basically.

Justin Murphy [00:55:21] And so that's what I think farmers and people like that are going to realize more and more is that it's never been easier for them to basically build their own systems completely outside of, of, of the control of, of governments. And so they'll just, I think I exit the infrastructure altogether.

Vance Crowe [00:55:39] I, I I, I'm familiar with the concept and I think the challenge that it struggles to address is that in the world of farming, there is only so much water that you, there, you must use roads, there must be fuel. You, you have to actually make purchases of chemicals that are regulated, right? And so on some level, exiting would mean like literally giving up everything that you have of value in order to, to survive. And so I like, to me it's a, it's a difficult thing to, to reconcile because they're saying, look, if if I am not allocated the water that my farm is, is required to grow these things, you know, I'm, I'm out of the game and I, so how do you, how do you think about that when you're talking about physical realities as opposed to just digital realities?

Justin Murphy [00:56:29] Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I you're absolutely right that for, for groups of people like farmers who are kind of deeply embedded in these physical systems, which are themselves deeply embedded in governmental sovereignty, you're absolutely right that it's not so easy, it's not so straightforward is what I'm saying. But I just think that, that, I just think that that means the, the people like farmers are, they are going, they are going to be on the later end of, of these transformations rather than the earlier end of these transformations. But I, but I do think that these transformations are going to be universal and sweeping and it, and it will, it will kind of take everything up eventually. So I think your point is absolutely right, but the point really just says that people like farmers will be, will be towards the end of, of, of the curve. But to kind of sketch what I mean by that or what it would look like, it's, it would have to do with the, the sources of government itself, right? And so I think you're right that at the moment farmers have to worry about things like regulations and, and con access to water and things like that. But, but the nature of, of the US government, for instance, is, is probably going to be changed in really, really profound ways that are, are hard to predict right now. Because in some ways, like something like Bitcoin, it basically is a competitor government. 'cause you know, for people who maybe don't know anything about this, so Bitcoin is, is, is kind of the leading cryptocurrency, the first cryptocurrency, the, the one that with the biggest market cap. A lot of people think that it's, it's kind of the only real one.

Justin Murphy [00:58:02] We don't have to get into that debate, but it's a, it's a self-enforcing monetary system. So, you know, right now in the US government with the US dollar, the us the US government controls monetary policy, the U US government can, can increase the money supply, they can decrease the money supply. The western governments currently have sovereign control over money supplies with Bitcoin. No one has control over the money supply. And to the degree that this thing continues to take off, right now it's around a, a, a a trillion dollar market cap. But it's been here for like, you know, 13 years now almost. And it, it's only gone up every year. So, and this is a completely decentralized system with absolutely no controllers. It exists on, you know, computers around the world and, and that's it. There's, there's no point that can be squashed really by governments. And so it is literally a competitor monetary system, a competitor mon a monetary government that if it, so, so it's not speculative to say that here you have an example of a novel technological system that is literally taking over monetary governance if it continues to succeed. What it will mean is that governments, as we know it literally lose a current form of sovereignty that they have, which is, which is their monetary sovereignty. Okay? So that's not, that's not really speculative. This is, this is not really like pie in the sky, crazy sci-fi stuff. This is like, this has been happening for, for 13 years and if all it needs to do is continue for this to pretty much be the case.

Justin Murphy [00:59:38] And so that's just one example, but it's, if that is true, and it appears to be it's not, it's somewhat speculative, but it's not at all implausible or too farfetched to imagine the same process happening with other forms of, of governmental control and sovereignty such as control over things like water or such as control over things like regulations. You can absolutely imagine all of those things being governed in through these absolutely impersonal systems which are essentially market based. It it's just hardcore market logic pretty much is what is what blockchain, you know, it's, is what the blockchain is, it's what Bitcoin is. And so where, where does this pan out? Or, or what does it mean for people like farmers? Well, what it means is that in the, in the very long run of the technological transformations we're watching, the, what I would expect to see, what I think people should expect to see is absolutely unimpeachable nonpolitical markets and kind of market logics running pretty much every type of system. So when it comes to water control or access to water, who gets water and who doesn't get water is going to be purely down to incentives and market market logics that no bureaucrat is going to be able to intervene in, right? And so I'm not saying that it's necessarily going to be, you know, like this is not all good, you know, this is, it's, this is not at all all good. I'm not saying it's some kind of like perfect utopian thing.

Justin Murphy [01:01:10] It's, it's gonna, there are gonna be trade-offs, but specifically when it comes to bureaucrats and politicians telling you what to do or inserting their values into things and all of that kind of stuff is gonna go away, frankly, I, I think across the board. And so yeah, I think this, the, the, so, so this is, this is where I'm, where I'm getting at that basically even for the most hardcore physical things that seem like they would never be touched by this, you know, newfangled blockchain stuff, it ultimately will be, because the nature of governance is going to be basically overthrown through these blockchain logics, is, is how I think about it.

Vance Crowe [01:01:50] As you look out in the world and you see this new future, how long does it take for these things to manifest? Are we going to see the, the, you know, Bitcoin transformation of the US government in five years, 10 years, 50 years? What does that look like in your mind?

Justin Murphy [01:02:07] Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a hard question. You know, these kind of predictions are always a fool's errand. So, you know, my instinct really is to say I'll pass. I, I don't, I don't really have a, a strong prediction on, on these kinds of things, but, you know, I'll be a good sport for the conversation and say that, I mean, the way I, I personally kind of think about it is, is these, these, the, these big transformations are probably pretty far off, pretty long term. I think it's always safer to go to err on the side of, of longer, you know, this might be, honestly it might be 50, a hundred, 500 years. You know, it, it is the kind of, is the kind of scale that these kind of big, like the nature of the US government is, is just like unrecognizably different because pretty much everything is being governed through these blockchains. Yeah, that, I mean, that's, that's probably a, you know, a, a 200 years or something. I don't know, obviously just guessing, but, but I think you're already seeing very non-trivial impacts. So there, there's gonna be milestone, there's gonna be like surprising and and impactful milestones, you know, ev every few years I would think until that happens.

Vance Crowe [01:03:18] Yeah, I agree with that. I think, you know, if you go back and look at like the Treaty of West failure, then you start looking at what happened after World War I and World War ii, like, there were massive changes to the way government structures were to the way we were organizing our financial systems. And the day that it happened, nobody really knew just how big of a change it would be. And then they start cascading out. So I'm, I'm totally there. This has been a fascinating conversation. Justin, you've talked about the programs that you're running, your courses, if people wanted to learn more and where would they go and what would they find there?

Justin Murphy [01:03:53] Oh yeah, sure. People could just go to other life.co. That's my little media brand. I, I write a newsletter and run a podcast. They're both called Other Life. So that's just other life.co, other life.co. And yeah, people can sign up to my newsletter. It's all free. And yeah, I do courses as well. That's a kind of separate thing. I do a bunch of courses basically. So there's a course on Ella's, there's a course on Gerard, there's a course on Ivan Ich course on a few other things that we, that we're building out over time. But the easiest way to find all of it and keep up to date with all of it is just, you know, signing up to my newsletter and or the podcast other life. So thanks for letting me plug my work there.

Vance Crowe [01:04:33] Oh, this has been great. Well, Justin Murphy, thank you so much for coming on. I look forward to having you on again sometime. Alright,

Justin Murphy [01:04:39] VI appreciate you having me on, man. Thank you very much.