Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the consider
the cosmos podcast.
I'm your cohost, Mary Liz bender.
And I'm so excited to finally
bring you this show today.
I had an amazing discussion
with science rapper.
Greydon Square
And I think that you will be as
inspired by his work as I am.
I absolutely love his music, but I also
think that you're going to find his
personal journey extremely inspiring.
We accidentally had a two and
a half hour discussion about
music and space travel and stuff.
and theoretical physics and Carl
Sagan, and the list goes on.
The audio quality is not the best.
I apologize.
This was the first time I did a zoom
recording and didn't realize that the
quality got super compressed, but in the
future, I hope to fix that in addition
to my discussion with Graydon in order
to help really fill out the story.
I also weave in previous
interviews that I did.
So you're also going to hear
from astronaut Nicole Stott.
Astronaut Leland, Melvin
astronaut, Ron Guerin.
And you're going to hear from my futurist
friends, Rowan Roberts and Jason Silva.
And for those of you who are listening
to the podcast, if you'd prefer
to watch it, we actually recorded
video of the entire conversation.
So you can join us on YouTube.
You'll find that
video at considerthecosmos.com.
Enjoy.
Yeah.
Started at the Boehm as the quantum verse
on the journey from the plane through
the Omni verse, the shortest distance,
you can travel at the speed of light.
Watch me take the same path as the
neutrinos flight shot board zoom in
past the top core where the space, time
and energy Rose does not for hobbies.
It's slept on since the electron Westborn
home at a place to leave your chest wall.
Great.
And thank you so much for
joining me today on the podcast.
It's so good to have you good to be here.
How you doing?
I'm doing great.
I am doing so great.
There's a lot of ground that we
need to cover, but I want to start
by just having people understand
who you are and where you're at
in this time and space right now.
How do you typically
introduce yourself to folks?
Well, first of all, it's, it's
a, it's a privilege and, and
I'm grateful to be on your show.
I don't necessarily know if I get
to introduce myself in that way.
A lot of times, because a lot of
people have had me in their minds
as the atheist rapper for so long.
And I feel like I've moved so
far away from that at this point.
Um, I'm always willing to talk
about that issue and I don't
necessarily think that those.
Though that worldview has
changed about reality.
However, The things that I talk
about is not related really, to
atheism or secularism at all.
It's very much more related to
science and technology and space
travel and the cartridge of scale.
And you know, a lot of these, these
topics that aren't really mainstream,
but a lot of people are interested in.
There's a whole demographic of people
who really just want the brain picked and
they're noodle scrambled, if you will.
Uh, they liked that intellectual
stimulation, that dopamine
rush, when you, when you.
Present to them a concept in a way
where it makes their brain run.
It makes their mind go into places
that some of the great thinkers
and philosophers have gone.
So I like to introduce myself
as, you know, Graydon square,
founder of grand unified, uh, and.
Yeah.
If you want to call me an
atheist rapper, that's fine.
I've been known as a
lot of different things.
Science wrapper, nerd core, a lot
of different things, but I'm an MC
you know, I like just being an MC at
this stage, in my career as more of
a teacher I've taken on more of an
instructor role with rap and music.
So I have thank you.
Well, it's, it's, it's a
lot harder than it sounds.
And I feel like I'm at a point
now where if I can't teach it,
I don't know it well enough.
That's yeah.
That's always like the
good rule of thumb, right?
I was a programmer for, well
over a decade and anytime I came
up to an issue, I would say.
Let me just try to teach this to
someone else or I, you know, you
might know it as rubber ducking.
Like you sit a rubber duck on your
desk and you try to explain to them,
well, this is how I'm doing it.
And this is why.
And if you walk it through to a
certain point and you get stuck
there in lies the issue, right?
So what languages did
you, uh, program PHP?
Um, processing, but I did a lot of
front end development prior to that.
Ruby Ruby on rails was my
favorite framework to work in.
I went through a, I coded a little bit.
I'm not even gonna say I, I, you know,
anything like that, but I got, I went
through a Python phase where yeah, I was,
you know, coding little games, snake,
the snake game, and, um, you know, uh,
tic TAC toe and a bunch of hang man.
Um, and I was going through tutorials
and stuff like that, just because I've
always been interested in, uh, computer
programming and code in general.
Beautiful code, you know, it, when you see
it, regardless of if you can code or not.
Uh, and I've always
been interested in that.
So I always every now and then
I'll, I'll, I'll try my hand at
coding or we have a whole community
within our community of coders and
just kind of get into just coding.
And so.
But let's okay.
So first of all, I want to
talk about your community.
Cause I have just joined it and
I got to say that I am part of
several discord communities.
I, myself run communities and
I've never seen a group of people.
Exactly.
Like the folks you have somehow put
together, they are some of the most
empathetic and thoughtful thinkers.
I mean extremely logical, but
never trying to immediately need
your caviar reaction to anything.
They're so thoughtful to everything.
And, and I feel like I've found a lot of
people like that in these other discord
communities, but by far, your community is
really special and extremely supportive.
So why don't you talk about how you
came to bring these people together and.
And how do you work with them?
Well, I'm sure that's the nicest, that's
probably the nicest compliment that
I've ever heard about the GAU community.
And I will say the G community
because it's actually a bunch
of smaller communities that
exist under the same banner.
So there was an idea and I hate
to sound like Nick fury, but there
was an idea in, at, at a point in
about 2008, 2009, when a lot of us.
Quote, unquote atheist
rappers of secular rappers.
We were all kind of doing our
own thing independently and.
On the internet, you would find people,
for instance, a tombstone, the dead
man, one of the other founders of grand
unified, you know, people would try
to pit us against each other, like,
Oh, you're not better than this guy.
And he's, he's older than you or whatever.
And one day I reached out to 'em.
And I was like, Hey man, I mean, I know we
don't know each other, but he'll check out
this comment section on Reddit that was
talking about us and I sent it to him and
he laughed about it and we met each other.
Well, he had already
had his own community.
Like the Reaper Legion was its
own thing before grand unified
had even kind of coagulated into a
kind of multi house sort of thing.
And so he had already had
his community and then.
You know, guys like sickness and sea
gas and Johnny hoax, they already
had their own community on that side.
And then low technology was
born later in the Yannis left
was one of the original houses.
And, you know, the trans
intellectuals were the Facebook
group community that had, you know,
2000 members in it and whatnot.
And so it was bringing all of these
people together under one banner.
And it wasn't really until discord,
we could really do that discord.
It doesn't get enough credit.
Cause I know a lot of people like
to hate on discord and sometimes for
good reasons, it's a bit bloated.
Uh, but this court has done something
that I haven't seen since IRC.
I don't know if you remember
IRC, but IRC chat number higher.
CJ.
I feel like my face with that with short.
Yeah.
Well maybe AOL chat was, was
kind of the same thing because
it had a, it also had groups.
Yeah, right.
So you could kind of talk
about certain things.
I was just saying that discord
reminds me of AOL chat rooms.
They dates us.
It absolutely dates us for sure.
Um, there is a, there is an element
of community that people long for.
And when you're a thinker, it's harder
for you to find that then it would be
just for a kind of a person who's not
really in their thoughts like that.
So what I tried to do was I tried to
create a discord community where people
clearly knew who was not only in quote
unquote charge, but who could kind
of set the direction and the tone for
the community, because my thing is.
Tone and delivery is everything.
When you communicate, you're
communicating with somebody, I can
say, you know, uh, Hey Mary, Liz, you
know, uh, maybe we could do something
different with X or Y and you'd
be like, okay, well, that's cool.
I'll think about that.
But if I came at you and I'm like,
you know what, this really sucks.
You know, why don't you
just do it this way?
I'm saying the same thing really.
If I'm able to communicate with a
better delivery and a better tone,
it may be more likely that you would
be, you know, a minimal to, to the
suggestions that I'm trying to make.
And so I always try to set this tone of
being, um, considerate and empathetic
while also holding your ground.
I don't want you to just, you
know, be a pushover and no,
cause we foster debate here.
You've seen probably a lot of it.
There's a lot of.
You know, discourse when it comes
to politics or, you know, even food.
I mean the food channel is people talk
about so much food, the food setup.
Um, but, but I always tried to
make this environment one that the
tone into, and the delivery foster
discourse, it fostered communication.
So people didn't feel like, Hey,
if I brought this topic up, I'm
going to get attacked for it.
If I bring up this.
Alternate perspective.
I'm not going to be called a racist here.
I'm not going to be called a transphobic
here or a massage in this because I
had a question about something or I
thought a different way, or, you know,
to me, there are very few places and
I hate to use this term, but safe
spaces for open discourse these days.
Now I feel like you have to have
this sterilized hive, mind approved.
Dialogue where the
narrative is already set.
You're told what your talking points are.
And if you stray from that in any kind of
way, you're castigated, you're ostracized.
You're you're out, you
know, you're canceled.
That's it.
Yeah, I've been actually
talking about this a lot.
I mean, especially with recent events, it
feels like, um, people are just having a
really hard time being human, you know?
And so, and we're having a hard time being
truthful with each other and being open.
And I'm, it's sad because I see this
as a time to really come together.
I see this as a time to unite and grow.
And you can't do that if you're
not talking, which is why I really
I've loved your community, because
it's true that you lead by example.
I see that and nobody is really afraid.
And even I've seen people like
kind of shy away from their
point and say, Oh, sorry, sorry.
And then other people
were like, no, no, no.
Don't worry.
Like you can defend yourself.
You can it's okay.
We're not judging you.
You don't go away.
Now.
You even called that person out.
It was during a, uh, one
of your live streams, which
are just absolutely amazing.
So you've mentioned two things
now that I think are really
missing from society today.
And I think it's something that
I've been trying to work on, but
I feel like you have somehow just.
Really mastered bringing this to people,
and this is why they've come to you.
Um, so the one is of course, this
ability to have open logical discussions
and the other is you challenge people
intellectually, you don't shy away and you
don't try to, you know, kind of baby them.
Like it feels like the whole
world, you know, bought into the,
keep it simple, stupid mantra.
And I kind of feel like I've seen the
degrading of society or at least open
conversations as a result of that.
And, um, you and I have a hero in
common or at least someone that
has really inspired us go for it.
Okay.
People know who I have two
main huge heroes, and I'm not
sure if you're a fan of one.
So it has to be Carl Sagan.
I love Failla Cudi.
If that's where you're talking about.
Oh my God.
He's like my favorite
musician of all time.
I have loved failing QT.
Okay.
So we'll talk about that in a second.
I was talking about Carl because I
didn't know that you knew about Phala.
I just talked about facial acuity
this morning to my band mate, because,
you know, he made protest music.
Yes.
That was happy.
Yeah.
It was like dance to it.
Yeah.
It was joyous.
It was joyous protest.
It was, uh, and I don't mean to
cut you off, but it failed as
somebody who, I remember my first
failure experience, everyone.
You remember your first
failure experience, right?
Like, um, I was already a
musician and I was already known
when I had had this experience.
Right.
So it's probably like 2008, 2009.
I hadn't created the cartridge of scale
yet, but I had already put out two
albums and I walk into this record shop.
And something is playing and I'm
a person I have super huge ears.
I'm sure you, you know,
I have really big ears.
Right.
And so sounds from everywhere
and all corners and all angles
are going to hit these big lobes.
I got ears like Frankie.
So my Frankie ears pick up this sound.
This.
This Afrobeat it's magnetic.
It's got gravity to it.
It pulls you.
And you're like, what is
that one who is playing this?
What is this?
Can I just buy all the
records and sound like this?
And the guy's like, yeah,
man is the last one.
And I was like, how much
he was, I don't even care.
Just give it to me.
I think I paid $25 and that was
the first time I had realized that
anyone could do a 21 minute song.
Yeah, that's right.
Yep.
Baylor is a guy who I aspire
to be like in a lot of ways.
And I know like most human
beings he had had his character
flaws and stuff like that.
But as an.
As a force, as a creative force
of humanity, he is one of the
best who has ever existed.
He's like Bob Marley and
Tupac rolled into one.
Like there's no one like him, in my
opinion, there were people talk to
me about like, you know, Bob Marley
and Tupac and no shade to those guys.
Right?
Those are very transcendental
figures in their own, but fail it.
Fail us bond, not only a continent, but he
created a whole style of music, basically
a whole sub genre of a style of music
that really didn't exist before him.
There's I can't praise him enough.
Have you seen his documentary?
Yeah, top three, top
four documentary for me.
It's so it's, so there are a couple,
there are like two documentaries
that I always recommend to people.
One is Nina Simone's live in
mantra, or however it said a jazz
festival from, I think it was 67.
76.
I always get it wrong.
And the other is, is Failla Cudi.
Cause that was my introduction to
him and his music and documentary.
What's that?
You said it was the documentary?
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow.
That's powerful.
So I saw the documentary and I was blown
away because I, you know, I wrote a lot
of political songs and, um, you know,
I thought of myself as an activist as
a teenager and I was like a hardcore
punk rock or, you know, and then I
watched the Failla Cudi documentary
and I'm like, Oh, I see I get it now.
So this is how you can
really create change.
Well, one thing I will say is.
First, I would love to dive into some of
your, your music at some point off air.
I think it'd be fascinating just to
trade notes as musicians, but, um,
when it comes to protest music and
using your voice as a, as a force
for change and stuff like that.
Look, we would all live in the
shadow of people like Marley and
Tupac and, and Franklin Cudi.
Right.
But I don't want people to feel like,
just because you aren't that big
of an artist that you CA your voice
can't be heard in a creative way.
You may not be the greatest musician.
You may not be the greatest rapper
or the greatest producer, but
what you do matters in a chorus of
voices that are trying to better.
The human condition.
And I feel like you should always,
cause when I wasn't that good, I was
still writing music that I felt like
was socially forceful or impactful
or whatever the word I'm looking for.
It sought to induce change.
And if I didn't believe that I
could do that even at my, you
know, lessons skill level, um,
I don't know where I'd be today.
I totally agree with you.
The process of the creative process is so
hard, especially when you are a thinker,
because you get so deep inside your
head and you can, you can question it
to a point where you never get anywhere,
which is something that I worked through
a lot, but, but I think with Failla
what happened was I realized that you
could use beauty, you know, like you
could use joy and dancing as a way to.
Kind of induce a state of on
wonder where you're more open.
Um, I don't know if, if
people are that open though.
I think a lot of people are closed systems
when it, and I, I speak for myself, right.
I, I am a very close creative system and
I get into a lot of trouble from people
who want me to check out certain music
and new music from this place and that,
because it's like, there are certain
things I'm just not going to listen to.
Now my reasoning for that, I
feel like should be understood.
And understandable as a, as a reason,
but there are people who simply
don't understand why I don't do that.
Having said that, uh, you know, tombstone.
Said something in a conversation
we had on the podcast, what I
thought was really important.
Uh, you can be a closed system to
protect the integrity of what you
have, but if you are a closed system,
then no new information gets in and
thus, no new novelty can be created.
And I do feel like there's truth to that.
So, you know, I think.
Someone like me, who was a hardliner
when it comes to what I listened to,
maybe I should be a little bit more open.
Um, you know, when it comes to people
like Failla who show people that you
can, you can be beautiful and, and.
Your political message
can not only sound good.
And, and, and so, uh, seeds of dissent
in the political sense, but it can
bring people together and create an
atmosphere of joy, which I feel like
we've gotten away from, with our art.
I am totally with you.
That's what always strikes me when I
listen to Failla and actually, um, I
think I watched the documentary because
I was about to play a music festival.
Where his son was performing Femi, right?
Femi.
Yeah, he's got, he's got sons like Marley.
So we never know at this point that's so
true, but I, and I think the documentary
covers that aspect of his life.
Um, but Femi was amazing.
I mean, his band was incredible
and the dancers blew me away.
That was like, A true
moment of on wonder for me.
There's there's this song,
I think it's called joy.
Um, but it's like the only thing
that I can hear when I think of
this song, he just like dances
around and everybody's going insane.
And you know, there's like this crazy
hand drum solo for a thousand years.
And then all of a sudden.
You know, like they're building up,
they're building up their building up.
And the whole song is like
evil people everywhere.
It's just singing evil people everywhere.
And then eventually this crescendo
comes and then everything stops
and he says, but they will never,
never, never know true joy.
And then he like goes insane.
It's just really hit me that, um,
That's a really powerful thing to say.
You know, when you kind of, when you
go through the kind of things that
his family went through, surely.
So anyway, uh, to everyone listening, I
highly recommend checking out Fela Kuti.
One of the best musicians of all
time music is the weapon is the,
uh, is the, the documentary.
If you're interested in what
we're actually talking about.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And then the other thing that I was saying
that you've brought into the world is, is
that intellectual, um, side to your art,
which is really the signature of your art.
And that's something that Carl
Sagan always brought into the world.
So you, you mentioned Carl
Sagan quite a bit in your music,
which I think is really amazing.
Where did you discover him?
What first drew you.
So it's interesting.
I had a weird introduction to
Carl Sagan because I discovered
Carl Sagan through rap.
And I know a lot of people are
like, well, how did you do that?
So my seafood, my teacher, the
person that I learned hip hop from
directly and indirectly from was
a rapper by the name of cannabis.
He's an all time.
Great.
He was.
Easily, one of the greatest among
his class in the late nineties.
And he had a line where he mentioned
Carl Sagan and he also had mentioned
something along with the Drake equation.
So those were two things, two concepts
that I had learned from a rapper.
And when the internet
was kind of coming about.
I was able to kind of look some of
these concepts up, look up who Carl
Sagan was, and this was way before
we competed or anything like that.
So, you know, this was in the early
days, days of the internet, where
it was the wild West, you could
post anything and it was just there.
Those were the good old days.
I will say that it is a totally different,
I will say that if you're of an age
today where you don't remember that time,
there's a whole different internet that
used to be, uh, but it's no longer that.
So.
I had heard about Carl Sagan
through that, but then, uh, I.
Discovered the cosmos series shortly
after that and started catching up
on a lot of his cosmos material where
he started talking about, you know,
four dimensional objects and four D
space and, um, you know, flat Landers
and all these different concepts.
And.
He was one of the, I mean, I, so I
came up with this thing called trans
intellectual realism a long time ago, and
I always talk about him being the first
trans intellectual definition for you.
So a trans intellectual is okay, so
it's related to the cartridge of scale.
So that to put it in the type of
framing and context, I think it's
better that we start off with
what the cartridge of scale is.
And so there was a Russian physicist
named Nikolai Carter who came
up with this way of measuring
advanced civilizations, right.
Planetary, stellar, um, you
know, interstellar, galactic,
intergalactic, right?
Like he had this way of measuring how.
Advanced these, these, uh, civilizations
were by among other things, their
energy consumption and output their
ability, uh, to control their,
their kind of physical destiny.
If there are planetary species,
then there wouldn't be any type of
planetary event that could render them
extinct, or if they were, uh, Stellar
species or an interstellar species.
It just expands in scope.
And so I became fascinated with
this idea around 2008, 2009, and I
was already coming off of my second
album, which was primarily about
atheism called the CPT theorem.
And.
I was looking for, I was at a crossroads
in life and I was looking for a
new way away when reinvent myself.
And so nobody had ever talked about this.
Even my favorite rapper of all time,
cannabis had never talked about anything
like this, and that's no, no shade
on him because he had talked about
some pretty advanced topics as well.
But I felt like, well, I could literally
make a whole album out of this.
I didn't think I could make
a whole career out of it.
Right.
So I had a, basically we.
I threw away a lot of that material
I was working on for my third album
that ended up became that ended up
becoming the cartridge of scale.
But a lot of stuff ended up staying
the misconception about the Carters of
scale was that it wasn't about atheism.
And it was probably my most atheistic
album because I had all this material
that I had written for the next version
of what was going to be the CBT, which
was going to be content scattering,
which is a whole different other thing.
So, um, So anyway, I go back to, to
say that, uh, the card is just scale
was used to invent the concept of
the trans intellectual and the trans
intellectual was someone who wanted
to use their creativity or their
insight into their intellect to propel.
Humanity up the cartage shift scale to
increase humanity's mobility up the scale.
So if you work with space X or you, you
teach science education, you teach STEM,
um, you're into programs that allow,
uh, demographics that may not have
the access that other demographics do,
uh, to, to science and, and, and, uh,
education and mathematics engineering
and all those different things.
And so, um, With the trans intellectual,
it became a way to describe
people who were about propelling
human humanity towards type one.
And then obviously when we get to type
one, hopefully humanity will take over
for us and push us towards type two.
So that's what the trans
intellectual term came from.
It came from the idea of the cartridge
of scale by Nikolai cottages.
And we just kind of acknowledged
that Carter, that Carl
Sagan was the first of us.
Got it.
Thank you.
Cause I had been wondering, I've been
hanging out in the discord channel and
I'm like, and listening to some of the
songs and I'm like trans intellectual ism.
This sounds really exciting.
I don't know what it means yet,
but I am definitely hip to the
type one, two, three civilizations.
And I'm in one of your, I was
trying to decide where do I
subscribe Patrion band camps.
I was trying to make the decision.
I was reading some things.
And you, you said.
That something like you cover
a range of topics anywhere from
atheism to type three entities.
And I was like, all right, I
think I know what's going on here.
But anyway, um, before, before we get
too far there, I want to talk about,
um, how long you've been making music.
It's been what, since
2004 was that right there?
Okay.
So there's two answers to this because you
it's almost like being an amateur athlete.
You know, there was a time you were
doing it and you were an amateur.
And then when you go pro you got
the day, you really count it.
So I released my first album officially,
my first album, the ones not called the
constant effects called absolute in 2005.
Ish four or five.
When I got out of the military, I
put that album out and it was an
album that I literally would stand
at the gas station and ask people
if I could play it in their car.
And I would ask if I could, you know,
basically trade the change in their
car for a burnt CD of my music on it.
Wow.
Yeah.
I met a lot of people like that too.
It's actually pretty crazy.
Um, but it was a to even.
Go back then, but that wasn't when I
became, because I was still operating
under the name apocalypse back then.
I hadn't even changed my name yet.
And then I came out to
Phoenix to go to school.
I was, you know, going to school for
physics and then decided to go for.
Well, actually, I went out
here for sound engineering and
then decided to go for physics.
Uh, and in that transition, um, I had
changed my name, great and square.
So in 2006 ish, I changed my name
to grade square from apocalypse.
And that's when I kind of count
when it began, because then I
put out my first album in 2007.
The problem with that though, is that a
lot of the material from the 2007 album.
With predated when I changed my name.
So songs like roots and, you know,
Exton, and, you know, there's a
lot of songs on there that are just
that predate the name grade and
square that I just had left over.
And then I wrote like three
or four more new songs.
And that album became that album.
I didn't know it was
going to be successful.
I didn't know that people
were going to listen to it.
I didn't know that anybody was going
to care about what I was doing.
Uh, but a few people
who have the ability to.
Influence, you know, whatever they had
the ability to influence had brought
me up in the, in certain circles.
And there were people who were
interested in what I was doing
and somebody had reached out.
So I'd say the official
answer to that question.
I know it's a very roundabout way
of answering it, but 2006, you know,
I've been making music though, since
I was six or seven, I've been playing
the piano since I was six or seven.
I sung in the choir when I was five.
Um, so music has always
been a part of my life.
It's it's, uh, It's always been a pardon.
I learned to play the piano.
I taught myself to play the
piano when I was six as well.
And I'm a self taught
piano player as well.
I knew that.
And I, I want to know when you
sit down at a piano and I'm not
talking about a keyboard like that,
do you feel something different?
Do you feel like you've
come back home or something?
Yeah, but I, I get that
feeling in a couple of ways.
So piano.
Yes.
But I also get it.
When I write to beat, like when I am
able to rhyme and, you know, we call
it landing when you're able to land.
It's that it's a different feeling.
It's a different dopamine rush.
You feel like your entire existence
was meant to do this very thing.
And I think most people who do
things very well, get that feeling.
So I don't think that that is
unique, but, um, I do get a
feeling there is a uniqueness.
When you sit down at the piano or
when you sing in a group of people,
acapella, there's a primal type
of, I don't know, There's a, is a
primal feeling or an ancient feeling.
It's almost like I tell people, you know,
people are like, why is baseball popular?
It's so slow.
And I'm like, you don't understand
baseball is a glimpse into 120 years ago.
It's the oldest game from the
past that the Western world has.
If you're looking at baseball,
it's, it's a glimpse into the past.
And whenever anybody, anytime
somebody asks me about like,
well, why is baseball popular?
And I think that's the same thing.
When you sing in a choir, you sit down
at the piano where you do anything.
That's an ancient form of creativity.
So I do think that that
has a lot to do with it.
You have this amazing, um, routine
that you do that I've only just
discovered and I want to know about it.
So you, it's an extremely
vulnerable thing to do.
I don't think I could do it.
You live stream yourself and you
invite your community and you put
in the topic like something probably
controversial that you want to just
like, get people talking about.
And there's this period of time
where you're playing your own beats.
And sometimes you're like, this
is a writing session and you'll
mute, but everybody will be there.
We're all looking at you.
We're all chatting with one another
and you're moving your lips and then
you'll come back and say, Oh, when
I'm, I'm just writing right now,
like I'm literally just riffing.
I was like, what, how can you
write in the open like that?
How does, what is the
process like for you?
It gets even crazier because I.
Not only try to right in front of people,
but I also try to write in front of
my students and encourage my students
to write in front of people as well.
Because if you can, right in
front of somebody, then, you know,
rapping in front of somebody,
isn't going to be hard at all.
Uh, and I try to shock the stage fright
out of all of my students very early.
Like it's like bootcamp, you know, it's
very hard because no fan is going to
be harder on you than I'm going to be.
There's no listener.
Who's going to be harder on you
about the expectations of what I,
what, what is expected of you through
your creativity than Envoy to be?
So my students kind of realize that
like, you can be afraid of them or
you can be afraid of me, you know?
And, and, and I mean that in the most
kindest and respectful way, because
I'm trying to get the best out of them,
the fan or the listener, they're just
trying to listen and be entertained.
So we're working from two
different places here.
Uh, When I talk me and RK gold,
uh, my cohost for my podcast.
We talk about this all the time.
I never wanted to be.
The quote, unquote greatest, even though
you've desired, that when you're in your
primary, like, you know, you just think to
yourself, like, I want to be the best at
this, but I wanted to create the greatest
or create versions of the greatest.
I wanted to be the
master it to a Bruce Lee.
I really didn't care about
being Bruce Lee himself.
Now, Bruce Lee is an iconic figure,
but I think it's more fascinating.
The processes that went
into making a Bruce Lee.
As opposed to just muesli being
Bruce Lee and having the impact that
he did, you know, what makes the
failures, I want to be a part of that.
And so that's why I kind of got
into more of a teaching role.
As I settled into my place in history
and hip hop history, uh, what I've done.
I think I have a pretty
successful and established legacy.
I'd like to think that
I do, but who knows?
I agree, but you have.
Already left your Mark and you, you know,
probably hardly begun this question.
I'm sorry.
Let me ask you this question.
Are you normally a fan of rap at all?
I wouldn't say that I have like an amazing
selection and I listen all the time, but,
you know, I grew up in the nineties loving
hip hop, and then I went through different
hip hop phases, but I'll be honest.
I haven't heard any new hip hop
that really excited me lately.
And so when I heard it, I was
like, Oh my God, I feel it almost
felt like a coming back home to
something that I really loved, but.
It's so intellectual and, um, obviously
was hitting all of my favorite topics.
I literally went through like all
the playlists and I highlighted all
of these lines that stuck out to me.
And you got some lines you want
to discuss I'm all down for that.
Yeah.
Every MC is a poet let's there.
They're two references that you make two
poets that obviously really speak to me.
One of them is every MC as a poet.
And I was listening to your,
um, gray and gold podcast.
And there was an episode where you talk
about the creative process and, and you
talk about referring to rappers as poets.
And I first, do you want
to elaborate on that?
Yeah.
Uh, it's first, it's a very
strange feeling for my lyrics
to be parsed in that way.
It's a surreal feeling,
but I do think that.
An emcee or a wrapper is the
evolutionary next step of the poet.
You're just taking poetry and you're
adding a little bit more rules to it.
You're saying, okay, here's the structure.
Um, the expectation that you're going
to either soft rhyme or hard rhyme,
these words, these syllables, there's
a syllable count, a stands as schemes
there there's word play in the same way.
There's going to be wordplay
and poets or in poetry.
And.
Some of the greatest poets, in my
opinion, if you were to just look at
their lines, they read like lyrics,
they read like rhymes, like rap lyrics.
And so a shout out to arcade
gold for even bringing that
conversation out of me like that.
I mean, he's such a fantastic cohost.
Uh, it, there is an element that.
Poetry plays in hip hop.
If you're looking at it from the
perspective of being at poet and
having the responsibility of a poet.
But I don't think a lot of rappers of
today are looking at hip hop as that.
And they're not looking at the
art as they have a responsibility
as poets too, you know?
Evolve poetry into its next
evolutionary step, whatever that is.
I think they're looking at
it as a means to an end.
So when I say, you know, rappers, when I
make references to rappers being poets,
um, I'm really referring to the ones that
look past the immediate gratification
of what can hip hop do for me.
And I'm looking at the
ones who are kind of.
Giving to the legacy of hip hop and
trying to validate the credibility
of it being a poetry art form.
Yeah, it really it's intriguing.
I actually, um, you know, I've
been writing music and lyrics
for almost my whole life, but I
only recently got into poetry.
Like literally the quarantine.
And so every morning I was very strange.
So every morning I went out, um, and I
would watch the sunrise and I would write
a little poetry based on my, how I was
feeling or my experience or whatever.
And now I've got I almost daily.
I did that.
So I have racked up quite a few
poems, but I realized how sloppy
I've always been with my writing.
And when I heard you saying that line
and then have that discussion in the
podcast, I was thinking about it.
And I was like, you know, I, um,
I'm really amazed because I just
feel like watching you on the fly.
Come up with these crazy structures.
I mean, this is some of the best
poetry that I've come across.
And for me it's like, Oh, you
know, it takes some time, you know,
and then I rearrange stuff and
I scribble it out and whatever.
So I'm, I'm pretty amazed by that.
And then the second line I
actually emailed you about it's
what really has drawn us together.
I think.
Um, now you're probably referring
to, uh, the movie contact.
I'm going to guess that Saifai, as
far as IFI is concerned, contact
might be one of your inspirations.
It is my, it is a primary
inspiration of my entire life.
Like it is that star Trek, princess
bride belongs to that conversation.
The Goonies, the wizard, uh, yeah, those
are foundational pillars of my life
and contact as a movie changed my life.
Probably more so than
anything other than star Trek.
I think star Trek, deep space, nine
sits a little bit above contact as
far as influential, uh, in my life.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, I almost want to just
like pause and go there.
What about contact?
How did you discover it?
And, okay, so contact
came out in 95, right?
I was living in Compton at the
time, and I remember it was a
movie that I was taken to see.
Mmm, because I was in this group
home and, uh, I actually, we actually
got a chance to, it was one of those
things where they just drop you off
at the theater and like, Hey, we're
going to come pick you guys back up.
It was back in those days,
they just drop you off.
We'll be back.
And I was like 14.
Maybe, and you basically see 14
year olds hanging out by themselves.
So it's not too crazy, but this is LA you
know, we're out at, at whatever theater
we were at, out in Carson or whatever.
And I remember everybody else
went to go see something.
I don't even know what it was.
And I just, I was like, yeah,
I'm going to go see this contact.
And I remember the movie,
you know, cause it ran long.
People didn't believe me that I went
and saw that they thought I had like
went out somewhere and went to the
store, someone around the corner.
I was like, no, I was still in the movie.
They didn't even believe
that the movie was that long.
And then it was, you know, so
yeah, that was when I first.
Saw contact the movie.
And then I had, when it came out on
video, a couple of maybe about a year
later, back in that time, took about a
year for things to make it the video.
Somehow I gotten it on VHS and I
watched it over and over and over,
you know, um, it was probably
top five watch movie by me ever.
And I'm putting that in the conversation
with like the Goonies princess bride,
third generations, like princes.
Right.
I was just talking about princess bride.
I really need to watch that again.
Um, so that is, that is the
greatest movie ever created.
You do realize that, right?
I, I think it might be, it's
definitely up there, I guess.
I struggle.
I feel like I'm, I'm now,
like, what is the best one?
I feel like there is another one
that I think is the best, but, well,
I've heard Shawshank redemption.
I've heard, uh, you
know, gone with the wind.
You hear Casa Blanca, but it, like, I feel
like, look, I'm not going to, it's like
talking about babe Ruth and Mickey mantle.
I'm sure they were great.
I'm sure they were great.
I'm sure they were great.
I'm sure will.
Chamberlain was fantastic, but in the
modern age, the princess bride is.
Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who was
the goat end of discussion.
But I feel like all the Jordan fans
were like, uh, no contact as a movie.
I feel like any young child,
who's 13, 14, 15 years old.
You're going to come away from that movie.
Wondering about things about
life, about life out there.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I know what the best movie is
to me, from my perspective.
And it's the movie that did that for me.
Cause I actually didn't discover
contact until I was an adult.
That's a longer story, but it was 2001, a
space Odyssey, which I saw when I was 14.
That's not a bad, that's
not a bad suggestion.
It's my favorite movie.
It's my favorite book.
And they go together and I love that.
I love that they were written together
to be a unit, but, but yeah, princess
bride contact definitely open that.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know that about 2001 space
Odyssey was written as a book and
a movie to be experienced together.
One thing I know about 2001 space Odyssey
was that score music is incredible.
It's one of the best scores.
Ever and no one ever gives
it that type of credit.
Oh, I do.
I never, I never stopped dying about that.
That waltz when, during
weightlessness it's it's insane.
Um, yeah, that's the thing about
2001 is that people always come
away saying, I don't even know.
What happened.
And first of all, I'm like, how is that?
Not the most exciting part.
The other part of me says, you have to
read the book because they're really
meant to be consumed and parallel.
Um, so yeah, I ha I highly recommend it.
Arthur C.
Clarke wrote the book and one of the
all time greats, absolutely amazing.
So getting back to contact though,
um, you use a line in another
one of your songs that w which is
damn, we should have sent a poet.
Yeah.
That's a direct reference to the contact.
I figured it was well what's, what's
interesting is that I had forgotten
that that was part of contact because
it's so present in my mind that I
guess this is where Carl Sagan got it.
In 1968, Frank Borman, one of the Apollo
astronauts, he was one of the Apollo eight
astronauts that took that Earthrise image.
He came back from lunar orbit,
you know, totally changed.
And someone asked him, how would
you describe your experience?
And his response was we
should have sent poets.
He literally couldn't describe it.
He was like, we're we're
engineers, like we're test pilots.
You guys should've sent poets because
we can not describe the grander or
what we saw and that's affected me.
And that's what brought me,
I think, I think, Oh, wow.
Well that, well, that's crazy.
But think about what he's saying in that
he's saying that I have the technical
expertise to pilot a craft into space.
Defying all of them, the common laws that
we understand about our world, and yet I
don't even have the ability to articulate
the majesty and the beauty of what I saw.
And I feel like this is where I get
into places where I talk about reality
in such a grand scale, the Omni
verse, you know, a lot of different
things like that because at a certain
scale, It's just relationships.
And I'd like to think that there's
a beauty to those expressions.
If you see them at a, at a high enough
scale, that reality is beautiful.
What is is beautiful.
And then we get into this other
philosophical conversation, which is
why is there something rather than
nothing, which is a question that
I've struggled with my entire life.
Well, I hope you never
stop struggling with that.
That's that's it?
That's the struggle.
That's humanity.
That's the whole point, right?
Yeah.
Um, he, was it him, someone, someone
else said, you know, we went out there
to discover the moon, but what we
discovered was ourselves and, you know,
those were in the early days of Apollo.
When only a handful of people, 10, 15
people had gone total and they come back
and they're all saying the same thing.
Like, I don't know how to
describe what happened.
Um, there's another lyric in, I
think the same song, which in which
you say you basically do a cosmic
zoom or, or what people refer to
as the power of 10 zoom out, right.
I think that's even in your
Omni verse video, isn't it?
Yup.
That imagery and you say something
like, you know, we're a couple
parsecs out or something and,
and you mentioned the overview.
Can you recite that line?
So let me pull that up.
Cause that, that is a pretty good line to
talk about because a lot of people forget
or not forget, but they misunderstand
what my purpose is, uh, as a, as an MC.
And I say that because it's,
it's one of those things that
I have to clarify, which is.
My goal was never to be a famous rapper
to people who were just fans of rap.
It was never that my goal was always
to be an, a rap option for people who
wanted intellectual stimulation, because
that's what I wanted with my rap.
Uh, I never did music to, to, to quote
unquote, make money so much as it.
It was to kind of place myself in history
amongst the great thinkers of all time.
So the line I was talking about, um,
where we're talking about different
parsecs and I mean, I use a lot of stuff.
It's it's I can't believe how
many, how many words you pack into.
It's beautiful.
So I said, um, Who you talking to?
I said the cold vision visited every
road near and leave the solar system.
Only one of many, all the space
in between here, when there was
cold and much of it is empty.
Still come across a Nebula or two, a
couple of car sex, and we've only gone up.
Before we launched into from Orion's on
star shifts, galaxy class, we climbed
on galactic following barely known
than a local group train and non alone.
They're large voids of and true.
Take it in.
Let it sober you as we go out to get
a better seat of the overview and
notion of space and golfing you with so
many, superclusters that singular way.
I mean, these are some of my
favorite lyrics I've ever heard.
And you know, a lot of people
try to make sciency music,
but this, this feels organic.
This doesn't feel forced.
It feels like it goes beyond, you know,
just like trying to talk about science
for the sake of talking about science.
This is a philosophy that you're
getting into and it's literally like,
I I've been talking for a couple
years now, since I co founded my
organization cosmic perspective.
And the whole point was to take the grand
concepts of the cosmic perspective and
bring it down into these practical lessons
that can be useful to us humans, these
tiny little humanoids right here on earth.
Right.
And I feel like you accomplish that in.
Each verse of each song and it's, it's
pretty amazing, but I think it's maybe
a couple lines before the parsec line
where you say something like from this,
from here, we get a good overview or
something that made that made me wonder.
If you'd ever heard of the overview
effect, I don't think I have, but
I'd love to hear it right now.
Oh my God.
I'm so excited to tell you about my
favorite subject in the universe.
Okay.
All right.
This is, this is straight
space philosophy.
Um, it's all about perspective and, and,
you know, We've already really covered it.
It's just that someone gave a
name to it and he's a wonderful
human named Frank White.
So in the 1960s, like I was saying,
the Apollo astronauts came back and
they said we should have sent poets.
I can't explain my experience.
And in one of those astronauts,
Edgar Mitchell actually like
went on a whole mission.
Like tell me what I experienced.
I don't understand how to explain it.
Like he, he literally could not stop
until someone gave him the language
he needed to explain this experience.
Whoa.
It was really intense.
He went to, he said, I went
to all the religious texts.
I went to all the philosophical texts.
I couldn't find it.
I went to a university and
eventually found this, this word,
which was some ancient word that
I wish I remembered right now,
but it was basically an awakening.
It was an ecstasy moment that he
had where he was like, Oh, I get it.
I get it.
We're all part of this universe.
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, you go for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so this man, there's so much
to talk about with this because I'm
not going to, uh, I'm not going to
incriminate myself here, but, uh, there's
a lot of people out there, excuse me.
There's a lot of people out there who have
had psychedelic experiences, and this is
a part of the description that they come
away with, which is I do not have the
vocabulary to describe what I experienced.
There are no words.
And I think when you talk about
the humor, when you talk about.
The human experience at the lowest scale
or the universe at the highest scale.
There really aren't words that
we have to describe those things
because in my opinion, they
predate the human experience.
Whatever that experience is,
um, Psychedelics when you're
able to see the planet, if
you're able to leave the planet.
I don't know.
There's probably meant how many
people have left the planet ever
in history, like a hundred, no, 570
about that's crazy in human history.
That's all think about that for
people who are listening in the, in
the history of humanity, 500, some
odd people, you know, there's only
420 people who play in the NBA.
Wow.
So it's like, you know, you're
talking about the top, top slice
of, you know, the human lottery
winner to be able to do that.
But, um, I feel like there's a lot
of people who have that experience.
I hope to have that experience,
uh, at some point in my life.
I think I've kind of had a little bit
of it with some of the things that,
the topics that I talk about, but
I feel like there's an upper limit.
My understanding.
And I'm not sure that I, I'm not sure
I can break through that upper limit.
I'm not sure anybody can.
Hmm.
Yeah, you're right.
That a lot of people make that
comparison by the way, with the
psychedelic experience and this,
although I've talked to Frank White
about that, um, Frank White is a space
historian, a space philosopher, and he
coined the term, the overview effect.
This wasn't until.
1987.
He published the book and what he
did was he didn't know about Edgar
Mitchell, and he didn't know about those
folks coming back and, and, um, yeah,
trying to put language to something.
He was actually just on a flight
where he went from Washington, D C
and I think he went over Las Vegas or
something, did a cross country flight.
And while he was looking down
at the earth, he was like, Wow.
I just left all of the
petty politics of DC.
There's gone.
There's behind me.
It looks so tiny from up here.
And he was, you know, thinking,
well, now I'm already over here.
I wonder what this has to
be like for space settlers.
And he was thinking, you know, when,
when people are, when humans are on other
worlds and they look at our planet, that's
got to have some kind of like profound.
Long lasting perspective shift
that changes them and changes
the way that they think.
And imagine then coming back to those
humans with that perspective and them all
looking at you, like you're a crazy person
because you have that new perspective.
They're going to say no, no, it's
all in your head or no, no stop
thinking with your heart, stop
being so emotional illogical.
And there's a certain level of experience
and understanding that just can't be
expressed through language and logic.
Um, he went to all the religious.
Uh, scholars and the people he
thought could give him those answers.
And he probably came away with a word.
Yeah, and it, and it was not something,
you know, like fine men is fond
of talking about how he learned
all these concepts, but until he
learned how to label things, then he
couldn't communicate them to people.
But then you also have to learn how
to teach people in order for them
to understand your labels, you know,
but, um, but Frank White just had this
theory, like something has to happen.
When people see the earth from space.
And so he, he set out to interview all
these inner, all of these astronauts and
ask them, what was your experience like?
And they all said the same thing.
He's interviewed over 60 astronauts
now over a period of 30 years.
And he keeps updating his book.
It says, it's right now going to the
fourth edition and over time as he has.
Talk to these people throughout 30
years, he found that they, they take
more time to integrate what they learned.
You know, they come away with new
ideas about what they experienced.
So some people experienced something
really profound that immediately changes
them and other people they'll come away
and say, Oh, I'm just now beginning.
You're extracting for
me what I've learned.
And I'm just now learning.
So.
I think that you would be extremely
interested to delve into that work.
It's it's what drives.
It's totally what drives what
I do, because I was telling you
earlier that, um, my last interview
actually was with astronaut Nicole
Stott, and she is an artist.
And she's telling me, so you're
telling me that I'm following the
episode that had an astronaut.
Wow.
My name is Nicole Stott.
I am, uh, an artist and mom and
wife and retired NASA astronauts.
So I painted in space, which at the
time, you know, when I took the little
paint kit with me, I thought, Oh,
this is just something I enjoy doing.
Why not do it in space?
I had somebody to encourage
me thankfully, to.
Think about those kinds of
things, like take the human with
you on your human space flight.
Right.
And I'm so thankful for that.
And yeah.
You know, as I was thinking about,
um, retiring from NASA, I was
like, man, you know, how do I
uniquely share this experience?
And I just kept coming back to that.
Opportunity to paint in space and
art to me, I mean, it's like this
universal communicator, right?
Um, I don't care what language you speak,
you know, whatever the, the music, the
sounds of it, the, you know, visuals
we get from painting or, you know,
dance, um, those kinds of things get
into, regardless of where you're from.
On the planet and we can
communicate really complex
things through, through art.
And we can communicate
really simple lessons.
Like, you know, the ones I learned,
which are we live on a planet, you
know, we're all earthlings, only border
that matters is that the blue line
of atmosphere that blankets us all.
And I don't know.
It's funny, like whether
people like my art or not.
Isn't important to me, it really
it's, it's my interpretation.
It's going to be what it is.
Right.
But if I can engage people
in this backstory of.
All that we're doing in space
together to, you know, ultimately
improve life here on earth.
Then I don't know.
I consider that my next mission in life.
I just thought about that question that
people ask me all the time where they're
like, Hey grey, would you ever go to Mars?
And I'm like, yeah, if I can take
my equipment with me, you know, like
if I can record, I don't know if I
even need the internet at that point.
I mean, I do, but you'll have it.
It's Starlink is going to
be the internet on Mars.
I heard, I heard Starlink is man.
That's a real thing.
Yeah.
It's, it's quite real.
I am at every single launch, we just
had one like two or three days ago.
We've got launches like four times
a month here at the space coast.
Thanks to Starling.
Cause they're just shooting them up.
Um, but yeah, on the topic of the
overview effect, what astronaut Nicole
that said was, I'm so grateful to Frank
White because he gave us the language.
That we didn't have, we, we, um, I
will speak for anyone who's flown
in space are thankful to him for, I
don't know, putting into a philosophy
to, uh, a way of understanding.
I think what we all kind of
struggle to share, you know,
to share how it's impacted us.
And he's just so beautifully done that.
And then.
You know, shared it with everyone
too, that it's, I'm very thankful to
him for, for doing what he's done and
continues to do to try to encourage
us to, you know, but there's this,
um, very human side to it all where.
I think when we do anything that we find
extraordinary, we don't just live it.
Right.
We don't just, we're not just there
doing it, but we're seeing it.
We're feeling it.
It's like becoming part of us.
And that in space flight
is really central.
I mean, there's the visual.
You know, that you can't deny the
disappearance of our planet out the
window, which by the way, is a planet.
You know, you get that reality, reality
check that, you know, a lot of times
we don't just think of very often.
Right.
And, um, but that's our home.
And, um, and then you feel it in a
way, you know, emotionally, but you
also, you know, you're floating now
as you're seeing that through the
window and there's just this kind of.
I don't know, overwhelmingly beautiful
sensory thing that goes on that's that's
a very transcendent experience as well.
Yeah.
And she's like, you know, before
that I was just explaining,
like, I, I came back changed.
I came back and I was
desperate to change the world.
You know, Ron Guerin, he
was a fighter pilot left.
Was viewing earth from space from
the international space station
while perched at the edge of
the robot arm, the Canada arm.
And there was like nothing between
him in the world and the world.
And he's just flying slowly
through space and it just hit him.
Well, the third spacewalk
to the end of the space stations, robotic
arm, and with me attached to the arm.
It was flowing through a maneuver that
we called the windshield wiper, which
took me across this big arc across
the top of the space station and back.
So at the top of this arc, I was a hundred
feet of the space station looking down at
this enormous, incredible space station
against the act trap of our indescribably.
Beautiful on it.
240 miles below the sheer beauty
of that took my breath away, but
more important than the beauty was
the incredible human accomplishment
at the space station represents.
Sounded like an amazing technological
accomplishment, probably the most
complex complicated structure
ever built, but an amazing example
of international cooperation.
And as I hovered there above the
space station, I thought about the
fact that 15 nations, some of these
nations, weren't always the best of
friends, some on opposite sides of
the cold war, opposite sides of the
spacers, some fought Wars against each
other, but somehow they were able to.
Find in the awe and wonder space flight,
a way to set aside their differences
and do this amazing thing in space.
They were able to live out
the promise of Earthrise.
And I wondered as I covered up there,
what would the world look like?
How many fewer problems would you
have if we were able to bring that
same level of cooperation, that
same level of collaboration down
to our interactions on the surface.
Sorry, let me ask you this question.
Why do you think that
people like him astronauts.
Uh, the people who can put
human beings into space.
Why do you think they're not as popular
as let's say athletes or entertainers?
I don't know.
I think it's kind of changing.
I hope, but it's not like
they'll ever be like Tom cruise.
Like everyone knows now that Tom
cruise is about to go to space.
Right.
And make a movie.
I heard about that, but
few people know that.
Astronaut Richard
Garriott already did that.
You know, like, I mean, it
was, he made a fun site.
He made a fun like home movie and he
made a joke about it with Tom cruise.
But, but yeah, he was
like one of the first.
Private citizen astronauts who also
invented video games basically.
Um, yeah, with the ultimate
series or PC games, I guess it is.
But you know, this guy should be just as
famous as Tom cruise, if you would ask me.
And I don't know.
I think as someone who does a lot
of space outreach and talks about
these people a lot, I find that,
you know, most people, most people
don't even think we went to the moon.
I would love to pick your brain
on that as far as just why science
literacy seems to be taking a
step back in the last 20 years.
In my opinion, 20, 25 years, it
seems like Americans are less
scientifically literate than ever before.
I wonder, I don't know for sure, because,
you know, I speculate by the way, I
don't have any data to back that up.
That's what I was going to say.
I don't have data.
So I feel like we feel a certain thing
because of the way the media portrays us.
And we feel like we're living
in Idiocracy but great movie.
Right.
But here I am having this amazing
discussion with you and I'm seeing
the art that you put out and the
community that you've built and I'm
like, It's the data really in, you know,
are we actually revealing the data?
Are we maybe progressing?
And we feel like we're not, I
don't know my question to you.
Is, are there more people out there,
like the people within this community
or, or are most people just kind of,
you know, glossy eyed about science
and they really don't care and
they're, they're skeptical about it.
You know, every scientific discovery.
Cause I know people who are.
You know, it's not like we worked
together or anything like that.
I just know them through other
people, but it's like, they question
essentially everything from, uh,
whether we can even leave the
planet, whether the planet is around.
I mean, it, everything is
questionable at this point.
So then the question becomes,
how do we get to this point?
And I have an answer for that just,
and I'll throw it back to you.
But I think that because attention.
And validation has become such a
currency that most people who say like
flat earth there's I don't believe
that flat earth is really believed
that the world is not spiritual.
I think they know that there's
a certain amount of attention
that you get when you say that.
And that's the most amount of
tension that most of those people
will ever get ever in their life.
As a person who's gotten any
type of attention at all.
I know how addicting it could be.
I know people out there who are like,
man, I just, I need to get, you know, uh,
you know, 10,000 subscribers or I need
to get, you know, X amount of followers.
I know how that feels that desire to, to
put yourself on and to have a voice and
to be heard by people and some people,
in my opinion, They feel like that
is the way that they have to do that.
And that's why they say stuff like that.
But if you hook them up to a lie detector
or a polygraph, I know they're not
admissible in court, but in some way where
we could absolutely tell if they were
lying or not, I bet you less than 10%
of those people actually believe that.
I hope you're right.
I hope you're right.
I don't know, but we
can't prove it though.
That's the thing.
Unless we had some infallible way
of proving it, we couldn't prove it.
I do know that as I've been touring
around, I mean, honestly, especially
outside of the U S a lot of people outside
of the U S definitely don't think that
we went to the moon, which blows my mind.
How many places have you been to,
uh, outside the United States?
Um, well, I lived in Spain for
three and a half years, and
then I've been to Argentina.
A few times, and I've talked to
people there about this, um, But
it's not like you couldn't reach
out to people in different parts
of the world on the internet.
Right.
So, yeah, it's definitely not like,
but, and the reason why I asked that
is because I too have noticed that
as well, where people are much more
skeptical about the claims of America
than Americans are, which depending
on what side of the political aisle
you fall on, you're either completely
skeptical or 100% percent gullible.
It's never anywhere like where you
have like a balanced perspective as
to why things are the way they are.
You know, and I think that, um, what
I've kind of come to come to the
conclusion that, um, I personally
had a really strange upbringing.
I had very strange education
that is not at all.
Like, I don't know how rare it is.
I hope it's super rare,
but I didn't discover.
Um, I never went through logic training.
I never was told about critical thinking.
I never learned science.
You know, I was in my mid to late
twenties when I discovered these things.
Yeah.
I discovered Carl Sagans
cosmos in my late twenties.
I fell madly in love, but, um, So part
of me wonder is like, is that, is it
that people just don't have the skills
of logic and they're not taught, you
know, how to think for themselves.
And so either way, what I've come
away with is I just want to now
help people think on bigger scales
outside of themselves, um, outside
of their lifespan, you know?
And when you do that, you have to.
You have to develop a framework
for thinking logically, you know,
so I feel like I know kind of an
answer in a way that I'd like us to
go, but I don't know why we're in
the situation we're in right now.
I think about a lot all the time.
Um, so.
I do.
I know, you know, I don't want to
take you over too much, but if you
have some time, no, I got time.
I got all the time you need.
Cause I I've been like babbling
about stuff and to be completely
honest, I am really excited to know
more about your inspiring journey.
As as much as you're
willing to go into it.
So, so cool.
Awesome.
So people know that you are now,
um, the successful rapper, you've
made an amazing name for yourself.
You're teaching people, um, but your
start was pretty tumultuous and I've
only received a little bit of the
information I could find on the internet.
Can we talk about young?
Yeah.
So, um, for those who are not aware of
my backstory and how I grew up and all
that type of stuff, I grew up as a ward
of the court in the state of California,
in LA, in the eighties and nineties.
And for those who may not be aware,
LA was a very tumultuous place, very
volatile place during that time.
Um, The mother I was born to was 14
and some change, or it just turned 15.
I'm sorry.
Cause August.
And then I was born in September,
so she had just turned 15.
So if you, if you want to
say 15, five 14, that's fine.
Um, my father was in his twenties.
I'll just leave it at that.
And, uh, my biological mother
and my biological father were
never really a part of my life.
My, my, my biological father was killed.
Uh, in the late eighties due to gang
violence and my biological mother,
uh, for the short amount of time
that we knew each other, it obviously
wasn't something that was compatible.
So I spent essentially 18 and a
half years as a ward of the state.
Um, you know, something like.
2122 different group homes in about
19 years, depending on what you would
consider a group home and a placement
and all of those different things.
Foster care, juvenile hall, McLaren
hall, different group homes, all over
LA Compton, long beach Carson, Torrance,
Palmdale, Lancaster then matter.
And so when I was in
99, I got arrested for.
Yeah, something stupid, just running
the streets and, and you're, you're
hanging with people you shouldn't be
hanging with and you get sweet, they
get swept up and you get swept up.
And so, um, When I was locked up, I
kind of first started being introduced
to type of formal, uh, drill and
ceremony or, you know, uh, what
you would have in, in ROTC, right.
Where you're starting to learn
about order and discipline.
And cause I didn't have that.
Right.
I didn't have a father and none of
those things were really available,
available to me at the time.
So, um, when I got out.
I was 18 already.
And my probation officer had basically
told me that I had two choices.
I was either going to go to the
conservation Corps, which was like
this volunteer service that helped with
forest fires and, you know, certain
volunteer services, stuff like that.
Or I was going to go to the military.
Those were the two options that he gave me
or he was going to violate my probation.
No, I didn't even know he
couldn't do that at the time.
So it was an empty
threat, but I believed it.
I was 18 and I really didn't have
anything going for me anyway.
So I always say that that was the
best threat that there was the best
empty threat I ever responded to.
So I go to the military and, uh,
it's May, 2001 basic training,
obviously, you know, what's coming.
Nine 11 happens in September
while I'm still in training.
So I have a front row seat to the world
changing and by 2002 early spring,
2002, I was deployed, um, and spent
a good chunk of, I turned, let's see,
I was deployed over there when I was
19 turned 20, turned 21 in Baghdad.
And then basically I
was back to the States.
By the time I was 22.
Uh, but I had basically turned 21 in
Iraq and you know, all of the things
that come with being deployed and, uh,
being in a combat theater and, and I, and
all of the, the effects that it has on
one psychology and, and all that stuff.
It was a profound event in my life,
my own personal nine 11, really.
And I don't mean to sound insensitive
to that event, but it was definitely
something that knocked, you know,
whatever internal structures I had
completely knocked them over because
I, for the first time I got to see the
difference between society and nature.
In the first world, you really don't
see that you rarely see that we're
starting to see that now with some of the
destabilizations of our society, with the
pandemic and social racial and political
strife and all that type of stuff.
But most first worlders never see the, uh,
the difference between society and nature.
And when you see that at 18, 19,
20, 20, one years old, um, it
changes you and it changed me.
So.
Uh, after that, I basically got out of
the military and went to Kansas city
and I worked in a casino for about.
Six months.
And that was an eyeopening
experience as well.
Cause I was seeing people with gambling
addictions, and that was the first
time I'd ever seen like real addiction.
Like you think, you know, a crack
head, but you ain't never, you
ain't never seen someone addicted
to you to seeing a gambling addict.
Like they may crack heads look functional.
That's true.
Yeah, they really do.
You know?
And so like there was people
having to get drugs out of there.
Like the wives would call the police
to have them drug out of there.
Cause they had spent the rent
money and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Right.
Like we had to protect people
when they had won the jackpot,
walk into their car because that.
Part of the, the area, you know, people
would come and Rob people follow people
home and it's all kind of stupid stuff.
So I spend time as a casino security
guard, and then, you know, I got a
wild hair, uh, to go to school for
something I was passionate about,
which was, which was, sounded share.
What drew you, what was that
moment of deciding I'm going
to try something entirely new.
Man.
I had put out, not put out, but I
had finished my first album absolute
and I was standing at a gas station
and I was wondering what I was doing
with my life as I was begging people
to let me play my CD in their car.
And that was a really
humiliating time for me because.
Here I am with all these big plans
of being, you know, a musician.
And this was when I still had thoughts
of like, I possibly could sign to a label
and, you know, aftermath was the big
label at the time I thought bad boy would
call me or something puffy would call.
No, none of that was happening.
They weren't looking for people like me.
And so I'm standing at a gas station
at a quick trip in Kansas city, trying
to get people to listen to my music.
And it was like, I don't see myself
doing this for a long period of time.
I go insane.
And I started asking myself, which is
interesting that you live in Florida
because I started asking myself like,
okay, well, where can I go to learn
the information that I need to know?
And for all my full sailors out there,
you know where I'm going with this,
because there were two schools that.
You know, we're the two main schools
now, LA school of recording arts.
I don't count them because I'm from LA and
I wasn't going back to LA at that time.
So that was already ruled out, even
though it's a pretty good school.
I've heard really good things about the
LA school of recording, but it was either
full sail, or it was the conservatory
of recording arts and sciences.
And.
It was kind of a coin flip because I
had no real reason to go to either one.
Right?
Like, I mean, I didn't know if
the military was gonna pay for it.
So it was like, well, you know, I could
go to Florida or I could go to Arizona.
And the only reason why I think I chose
Arizona is because it was similar to
Iraq and it was the weather conditions.
And I felt like, well, I could live
know I spent almost two years in Iraq.
I could spend, you know, X
amount of time in Phoenix.
So I moved out to Phoenix.
And, you know, started going to
recording engineering school.
Wow.
Couldn't be more different, uh,
temperature or humidity wise.
I shouldn't say super
dry, super human human.
Yeah.
And I almost did it.
Like I was, there was a moment there where
I thought I was going to go to full sail.
Wow.
And so the military covered your
schooling percentage for me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They did.
The GI bill definitely,
uh, helped out and.
You know, with me, not really
having an anchors, I'm not married.
I don't have any children
or anything like that.
It was fairly easy to get by with just
me and my brother for the military.
You know, one of my best friends in life
and we were in the military together.
So when we got out, we moved together
and when we moved from Kansas city,
we moved to Phoenix together and, um,
He ended up meeting his first wife.
I think they're in Phoenix and ended
up starting a family where I just,
all I had was to focus on my music.
I was never really all
that successful with women.
So I wasn't going to be
distracted like that.
So for me, it was like, okay,
let me just make this music.
And, you know, I spent all my time.
Just writing lyrics.
I have so many beats and songs and
lyrics that I've written from that time
period that never came out, uh, that
are pretty cost to album quality stuff.
I mean, it is old, but you know,
if I actually wanted to, to, to
retool some of that stuff, it
definitely could be used there.
Wow.
I cannot imagine going through the
archive, I've actually lost a lot of my
hard drives where I've saved all my demos.
And so I'm just like, you know what.
Fine.
Cause that would have been really
overwhelming anyway, to go through.
I got a hard drive going all the
way back to I was 18 years old.
Crazy.
Let me show you, let me show you.
I gotta show you these right here.
And I have four in my system right now.
Oh my God.
How big are these?
Oh man, what's this?
Uh, Two 50 gigs, a terabyte?
No, that's 500 gigs.
Let's say two 50.
Wow.
Seven 51 terabyte.
500 gigs, plus what do you want?
A 50 gigs plus 80 gigs and then four
in my, yeah, so it's, it's so silly.
Wow.
So, I mean, here you are making
all of this amazing music.
What, what drew you to physics?
It all comes back to is mr.
Sagan.
Right.
And you, and you didn't know
the contact was written by him.
You hadn't discovered him at no.
Yeah.
So that came later and it was,
did you say it was cosmos?
Uh, yeah.
When I had gotten into like watching
his cosmos series and stuff, it was
like, okay, yeah, I can do this.
You know, I could see myself going to
school for this and actually, but my
problem with school has always been,
um, um, So much of a creative, it's
hard for me to pay attention because
if you say something interesting, I'm
just going to try to turn it into a run.
Yeah.
So it's hard for me to pay attention.
God, I can't, I actually do
kind of know what you mean.
Like someone will say something and
I'll just get stuck on that thing.
And then I just, uh, and then,
um, I come back and I say, I'm
sorry, can you repeat the last.
Five minutes
is terrible.
So this is really, really interesting
that it always comes back to Carl.
God, I love Carlos.
You know what?
I actually, um, I had an amazing
discussion with his daughter
Sasha in October of last year.
Really amazing interview.
Yeah.
She wrote a book.
I think you'll really love it's.
Um, it's about ritual for
secular people like that.
We have this major gap when I've, I've
heard you talk about it in your lyrics.
Like we miss that, um,
the community church.
Yeah, absolutely.
I grew up with that.
But in your, in your song where
you mentioned that, uh, I know
which one it is, is it myth?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's funny.
Cause you guessed it before.
I did.
I have notes.
I have notes here.
Yeah.
I'll never forget because you
actually have a scene there that
looked like me when I was a child.
If you have a scene of like the
kids raising their hands and shirts
from Jesus camp, that's the one.
Did you ever see Jesus camp?
That's my life.
I can recite it.
I could recite anything.
Those kids say, wow.
Yeah.
I, you know, I went through a phase
when I was younger, where, you
know, I was really into theism and,
and, and all that type of stuff.
But as I got older because of the
star Trek influences and the, the
contact influences and stuff like that.
The questions just got
big, too big for religion.
My questions just got way too big
for what religion could offer as an
answer these days, I'm a lot more
understanding about religion and why
it is necessary in the human condition.
Given what our experience has been, what
our, our evolutionary history has been.
Um, It's not my explanation for reality.
I don't, the reality of existence
does not require a creator.
In my opinion, like you could pick any
one of the cyclical inflationary models,
uh, you know, or, or multi-verse models
that doesn't speak to an Omni verse.
And yeah, you're probably going
to get, in my opinion, it's
going to be the same thing.
So I feel like there's
not really too much need.
For a creator in that way, but if
you need that for your life to have
meaning, I understand that it's
just not something that I need.
Um, and there's there doesn't have
to be that being there for there
to be something else beyond this.
And I think that that's some of
the questions that I feel like we
should get to as well, which are,
how about let's start asking more
unique questions, like forget.
Is there a God, that's
an old question, right?
I'm more curious as to, can there
be a universe where they God
and a universe without a God.
All right.
We're talking multi-verse now.
Yeah.
It's like, is there a, um, I have
a weird theory about reality.
Tell me with the hair.
So, so the reason why people like,
so what, what's the difference
between your Omni verse and just
the regular multi-verse right.
And it's a unique question I had to,
it definitely is a question that begs
some thinking, and I tend to answer that
question by saying in the omniverse, all
realities are equally true and false.
So this reality is no more true than
the Marvel reality is false to ours.
Every type of reality that can be
conceived of through any type of
intellectual thought from any species
who's ever existed throughout all
of time, uh, has the same validity.
As far as if they're real or not,
the definition of real is real
important because we then get to
ask the question, what is real?
The primary word in reality is real.
So what is that?
And that is one of the fundamental
based questions where you say,
if you answer that question,
well, how you don't answer that?
What you described is real or not.
So the omniverse at least gives
this, this kind of blanket where it's
like, well, it doesn't have to be
real because none of this is real.
It's all equally true and
false at the same time.
This could be in the imagination of
some guy in a, in a cell, or this
could be, we could be the first of
us of a technologically communicative
species in this reality, in this
universe of these laws of physics.
And it could be both.
This, this is the kind of thinking I
get to when I think about the simulation
hypothesis, which, you know, it just seems
like we're gonna get there eventually.
If we haven't already gotten there,
if we're not inside of it already,
and we're inside a hundred thousand
versions of a simulated reality.
And then at what point do you say,
what is real and what isn't real?
Because if.
I hear living inside of the simulation
then to you, that is real right.
I kind of lose myself or I'm not even sure
if the person inside the simulation is a
less real than the person who created the
simulation by what standards are we using
to define that that is more real than the
other, which is the original substrate.
What is the original base of reality.
And I argued, there is
none with that though.
There are some consequences, right?
Because I feel like we do fly right
in the face of the standard model.
You completely throw out big
bang cosmology all together.
Right?
Like most of the inflationary models
are basically null and void, uh,
because they're not necessary.
And so when you get into some weird
places of like, okay, The standard
model, as well as quantum mechanics
are pretty good predictive models.
For reality, they make predictions
incredibly well, incredibly accurate, you
know, one part, a billion or trillion or
whatever it is to the accuracy of these.
A lot of these readings.
Um, I, I, what I would
like to think is that.
If there are, I don't know, what's the
expected amount of realities out there
in Leonard Suskind's multi-verse right.
The landscape cosmologists like 10 to
the 10 to the 500 or some retarded.
Right.
It's just something ridiculous
at that number of permutation.
You're going to start seeing
essentially repeats of the same thing.
So this reality that we're in right now,
this conversation we're having the same
conversation somewhere in some other time.
Uh, except I'm the host of the podcast,
cosmic perspective for rapper who
talks about all the science stuff.
And I'm like, I'm so fascinated
with all these lyrics are crazy and
you're like, you know, I'm dope.
You know, it's whatever.
I love this.
I can't wait.
I really wish I could go.
I could just like hop around.
Do you ever watch, did
you watch quantum leap?
I did.
Oh my God.
Captain Jonathan Archer
from star Trek enterprise.
So he's always going to
have a place on my shelf.
Absolutely.
Gosh, your shelf.
So your Omni verse, um, concept, I
think that you have a song, honestly,
I've just like so immersed myself and
I've just been listening on repeat.
I don't even know which one it
was, but there is one where you're
having a conversation with yourself.
I think it's in type three.
And, and you talk about all of the
gradients, like you're talking to all
of the grades at once or something.
Oh, into dimensional council of grays.
That's the one.
Yes.
Yes.
So that's an interesting song because,
um, and that came out around the
same time as Rick and Morty came out.
And a lot of people knew about the
interdimensional council of Ricks.
But what they don't know is that neither
one of us originated that idea, right?
Like Rick and Morty or myself, that
actually comes from Marvel comics.
Any concept known as the
interdimensional council of reeds,
which is the Reed Richards, the
leader of fantastic for the smartest.
One of the smartest people in the Marvel
universe, if not the smartest person
in the Marvel universe, he creates
a way to meet alternate versions of
himself from different realities.
And they exist in this place known as the
engine dimensional council, uh, where they
all exchange ideas and stuff like that.
Well, I'm sure Rick and Morty found
out about that through that, because
it predates by at least 25 years, but,
uh, maybe 20 years, but either way,
that was where I got that idea from.
So it was the idea that everyone has
a version of themselves out there.
In reality, that's smarter enough to
come up with an idea to where they
can interact with each version of
themselves in different realities.
And so in the interdimensional
council of grace was that song.
Um, and I always wanted to
write that song from type one.
I wanted to write that song and
it just finally got a chance
to write it and type three.
It's so awesome.
We should probably say you have a
trilogy type one, two and three.
Quad quadrille actually, because
I'm working on tight for right now.
No kidding, but what is type four?
Oh man type four is crazy.
Uh, tie four is actually
a, not an album itself.
It's actually a sequence of albums.
So tie four is four albums
containing 16 songs each.
So 64 songs, one for each,
each square on the chess board.
And the general idea was,
is that I was going to.
Emulate the first three albums
in a kind of, in a modern way
with kind of modern content.
A city on the type of forever was the
first album, uh, for, um, the last of the
rhyme Lords with the second, uh, city on
the type of forever was supposed to be
more like the cartridge of scale type one
lasted the rhyme Loris was supposed to be
like tight to iron star era, or I'm sorry.
Tour of the orphan night was supposed
to be like type three and iron star
era was supposed to be a little bit.
More of like a closure of like,
Hey, here's a cap on all of this
stuff and all the legacy song
conclusions, all of the things I
needed to close up that I left open.
That was where that stuff was going to go.
So, yeah, it's four albums, 16 songs
each on each album, and it's meant to
represent each square on the chess board.
Wow.
Whoa.
Okay.
I need to know how you
accomplish all of these things.
What is a typical, what is
a typical day like for you?
Do you have a set of rituals
or schedule that you stick to.
Uh, yeah, for the most part,
um, depends on what mode I'm in.
So there's two modes there's
writing in this producing.
It's hard to be in both
the same time, right?
When you're, when you're making music,
it's hard to form words into things
that make sense when you're forming
words into things that make sense.
It's hard to actually make in play music.
Um, people don't realize how hard
that actually is, but it's very hard.
So depending on which mode I'm
in, it's a little bit different.
From writing lyrics.
I'm a little bit more, there's a little
bit more leeway because I feel like
I'm a little bit better of a writer
of lyrics than I am as a musician.
When I'm producing, I'm a lot more strict
about what I'm doing in my schedule,
because I need to it's volume producing.
So it's produce as much as
I can and pick out the gems.
Because like, I don't know, 60, 70% of
the stuff's not going to be that great.
And I need to make a good chunk of it
so I can pull out, okay, this sample,
um, you know, this be, uh, this
particular sound that I want, whatever
it is, I need to be more strict about
that because if they don't care about
the music, they're not going to care
about what you say in the lyrics.
So I have to be way more strict
about the music side of it
than the lyrics side lyrically.
I trust myself a lot more because I
know I'm playing to a specific audience.
Like, if you have an IQ that's, I
don't know, above a hundred, you're
probably going to be interested
in what I'm talking about.
Uh, so my typical day, as a, as a, as a
writer, which the mode I'm in right now,
it goes a little, something like this.
I wake up at around six 37 in the morning.
Uh, I.
Basically, if I haven't thrown my
geeky in for jujitsu at 10, then
I basically throw my D in, but it
usually it's, it's pretty washed.
Um, and if I stream in the morning,
which sometimes I do, if I stream
in the morning, then I'll go ahead
and knock out my stream from like
seven 30 to like, Eight 39, 15, and
then I'll take my key and I'll go
to jujitsu and then I'll come back.
And when I get back, I'll
eat my meal, prep, my meals
already prepped for the week.
I usually throw on my ankle
weights just to add a little
weight to me running around.
And then I come and I sit down and
I usually open something on YouTube.
That's going to inspire me to write.
So people like, uh, Isaac Arthur
or the sauce or Joe Rogan's
podcast or something like that.
And they'll say something in
a certain way, and I'll say it
I'll repeat it right after him.
And I'll figure out how
to rhythmically say it.
And I'll write that down.
Just those words down.
And now my mind is going on all the
different ways that I can run that.
Forget the context, forget how to make
it mean something just rhyme it hard.
Right?
Best you can do.
Once I come up with those two, I
look at those two lines and I'm like,
okay, how can I make this make sense?
And so I then start adjusting.
I start saying, okay,
this word is unnecessary.
This is a filler word.
It's a three syllable filler word.
Let me replace this three syllable
word with a three syllable word.
That's not a filler.
That actually means something.
And I'll do that for about an
hour or two hours until I'm done.
I get exhausted.
Then I go jump on the Xbox.
I'll play some hockey or play some
basketball and I'll get my ass whooped.
When I lose games on Xbox against humans,
it makes me want to write even more.
That's the first thing
I do when I get off.
If I, if I, when I get lazy, I'm
like, ah, yeah, I feel real good.
Now I don't have to do anything.
It's like, no, you're still a rapper.
You're not a professional
video gamer, bro.
You know, that, that kind of happens.
So after that, usually I
hook up with my buddy RK.
We'll do a podcast that day.
We'd usually do daily podcasts.
Um, you just takes about 40, 45 minutes.
And then after that, I usually meet
with my crew, uh, my senior staff,
which is the unified Federation
star citizen Guild that we have.
And I usually meet with my senior
staff or my chief tactical officer,
my chief security officer, get the
plans for whatever mission we have
that we're doing on our meetup time.
Uh, and then I start
prepping for the next day.
I started, um, you know, getting
my geek in the, in the washer.
I start, you know, doing
my nightly stretches.
I started getting all my news and stuff.
And then for musically, the last thing
I'll do is I'll start rehearsing all
the stuff that I wrote that day, so
that when I wake up the next day,
it's I don't forget it because what
happens is you'll write something,
but you'll forget how you said it.
How did I say this?
And I'm reading stuff that I
wrote from years ago, and I
have no idea how I wrote it.
So, what do you do with all these
lyrics, but you don't know how to say it.
This is, this is an incredibly strict
regimen, which I'm guessing the military
is what gave you that discipline, right?
Not as much.
Now.
Here's what I'll say about the
military and discipline, because
that is a common misconception.
You get discipline.
If the drill Sergeant in basic training
care about you, I care about you.
I have to give a shout out to drill
Sergeant Dingle and drill Sergeant
Sturm, my two drill sergeants at Fort
Jackson, South Carolina, and they
cared about us in the sense that.
You know, it was like a good cop, bad
cop, old head, young dude dynamic.
Right.
You know, the young drill Sergeant was
the bad cop and he was so energetic.
He was just so gung ho about everything
and you know, let's go, go, go, go.
Everything was just.
And the older ones, Rosario, Dingell
was much more cool and relaxed.
And he was just, he was like the sheriff
with the cool glasses that just, you
know, it was just looking out at the
world, just got his eye on everything.
And, um, he didn't say much because he
led GSR and, uh, Sturm do all the talking.
But when he spoke, everybody listened,
um, that was probably the most amount of
discipline that I had in the military.
After that it's pretty much a job.
You know, like you, you wake up
in the morning, you go to, you
know, you do peace with the flag.
You go to PT.
After that, you go back to the barracks
and you wash up, you go to chow, then you
report to work at nine lunches at 1145.
You come back at one 15, you know,
uh, call of duty is a, uh, what for.
15, maybe people are closing
the shop around for yeah.
Yeah, man.
Like, I hate to throw people under the
bus for shaman, but we used to sham hard.
And for those of you don't know what
sham means, it means you look like
you're working, but you're not really.
This, this actually, this is a,
I come from a military family.
I'm the only child that did
not go into the military.
So now I feel like I have something.
Yeah.
Just be like, just tell them, just
tell them, like, y'all be shaman.
You know, you be sham and get outta here.
But I know I love anybody
who's ever put on the uniform.
Um, any branch and I just feel
like in order to swear that oath
it's most important that you swore
that oath in times like this.
And I never want people who, who
put on that uniform and swore that
old to forget that I'm here, here.
But if, if that's not where your
discipline came from, I actually
just remembered a lyric from your
song, the master, the master paradox.
There's a line that I, I took down.
It's let us pause for the
derelict cause a former derelict.
Let us pause for the
perilous call derelict.
Yeah.
Former Dera lick who would become
a master because he cared to
evolve because he cared to evolve.
Yeah.
You know, I wrote that song about someone
who was it about, I wrote that song
about a Brazilian jujitsu, black belt.
Hey suits.
Yeah.
Um, he was a fan of my music
and he became a friend.
Uh, and I wrote that when
he got his black belt.
As a way to kind of honor the
struggle of becoming a black belt,
especially in something like jujitsu,
which if you ever roll anybody
who rolls knows it is like the.
Look, I know wrestling wrestlers are
going to be like, we're all my wrestling,
but it's like the soccer of martial
arts, um, other than wrestling, which
is even more endurance demanding,
but Brazilian jujitsu and what it
takes to make that your entire life.
I thought what he did deserved song,
you know, you ever see something or hear
about something that someone does and
you're like that that deserves a song.
I'm sorry, that just,
that deserves a song.
You know, you, you want a medal of honor.
You, you pulled someone from the
wreckage, you, you lifted a car off
a child, or that deserves a song.
I'm going to write a song about that.
So if you ever do something
crazy, expect a song right now.
It's the hero's journey.
Absolutely, absolutely hero's journey.
Uh, but as far as discipline, I say,
I got that a little bit from just the
mistakes that I made, uh, Learning.
I was a hardheaded learner, uh, especially
when it came to the discipline of
understanding what I had as an artist.
I didn't understand that I was, I
had a voice that was influential
until maybe tight to wow.
That was about the time where I
was like, okay, people are really
paying attention to what I'm saying.
I should probably like somebody sent me
a message and they were like, Hey, great.
And I let my kids listen to you.
And I was like, Oh, I started thinking
about all the songs I wrote, where I said
this word and that word, and thought about
summer's ending where I use the C word.
And I'm just like, God damn, man.
I wish I would have changed.
There are certain songs that I just
wish I would have done differently.
You know, like the N word, I just wish
I would have done that differently.
It was like a 25, 26 year
old kid who wrote that.
And I just, you know, you
don't really know, but you try.
Uh, you know, I actually, uh, summers
in being with something that really
hit me, the video is incredible.
Who does your videos?
Um, that one was actually
done by someone else.
Um, I can't think of what the
guy's name is cause it's been so
long since we've actually talked.
Um, but I'll definitely get
his information for you.
I actually don't have a lot
of video contacts like that.
Most of the times I get sent videos.
They're fan made videos.
Um, you know, the ones that I do do,
uh, are done by either Dabi, dreads.
Um, who is kinda like my main
video guy, but most of the time
it's a fan made submission.
Omniverse was a fan made submission,
was wondering, I had no hand in that.
And, um, there was a guy on
Twitter name, uh, coffee and music,
coffee, the letter in and music.
And he sent it to me and he was like,
Hey man, I don't know if you, uh, accept
fan submissions or anything like that.
But I did this video for you.
And I was like, bro, this is crazy.
And I put it up and people loved it.
It's amazing that well, that's
where I got my start in this,
um, You talk about I'm so sorry.
What is the name?
The, the, you, you were having
a mission meeting every day.
You have a meeting with
your team, the Federation.
What are you doing?
So, Oh man, you're going to
open up a whole different,
well, we can always schedule.
Oh no, no, this is, I'll give
you a brief, quick sort of thing.
So, um, I play a game, a PC
game called star citizen.
And, uh, I'm a huge fan of
science fiction and star Trek.
And, uh, I grew up on, on
star Trek, deep space nine.
I obviously I watched the next
generation as well, but these space
nine is what really, you know, Benjamin.
Cisco is my TV dad.
So it's for me, that show is what a lot
of people's like childhood based show is.
And, um, so I always wanted to be able to.
To be that, to want to have my own kind of
crew in my own organization, where we set
off in the stars and we discovered green
alien and we, you know, had adventures.
And so when star citizen was beginning
its development in 2012, it was
then that me tombstone the dead man.
Uh, Clifford Douglas also
known as Debbie dress.
We created the unified Federation,
which was a, basically like a star Trek
version of grand unified, which is the
community that you're talking about.
Now, the thing about the U S as it relates
to GPU is you mentioned earlier that
the community is just very empathetic
and very civil and communicative.
That is even a very informal version of.
G U because the unify Federation
is a more formal version of that.
Wow.
They are because they are subscribing to
perform a duty within this particular.
Gain function.
So this game allows you to do
multi-crew functionality, where
you can have someone at helm.
When they're flying the ship, you can
have someone at the turret gunner on
the starboard turret or the portrait.
You can have people on an away
team and them go off to the planet.
And while you stay in space and
you monitor the whole thing.
So we created it to where it was.
Bill kind of like star Trek.
You had your security department,
you had your operations department
and you had your engineers and your
department heads were the ones that
you would coordinate in the same
way that in the military you would
coordinate with your platoon Sergeant.
So your platoon leaders, the way they
would coordinate with the company
commander or the first Sergeant
or the, the NCO battalion NCO.
I see at a brigade and
COIC, whatever it was.
So we meet.
Sometimes it's not every night, sometimes
every other night, but it doesn't go too
long before we actually speak because we
got to prep permissions on, on Sundays.
But what we actually do is what I try
to do is I try to create missions that
build our chemistry, create missions
that, that allow us to become a more
cohesive unit so that when we are under
fire and we're in times of stress, when.
Orders or directives are given the
response time where the ping is
so much lower than everyone else.
When the other people play the game, it's
like they're playing, but they're having
fun, but they don't understand, understand
that in a firefight seconds matter.
And you have to be able to make a call
on the fly that when I make the call is
going to affect everybody on the ship.
And there are 20, 25 people on the ship.
Plus there's air attack, you know,
our air tactical guys, running
air caps, protecting these guys.
Plus, you know, we got a security force
and we just a whole bunch of moving
parts that we have to coordinate.
So my department sheets, my chief of
security, my chief of chief tactical
officer, my chief engineering.
They all come to me and they're like,
Hey, just want to let you know, X, Y, Z.
And I'm like, alright, cool.
Or.
Hey belay that we need to do X, Y, or Z.
So that's what that really is
relating to when I talk about that.
And it's all basically taking place in
this game called stars to the Senate.
So the most realistic game ever created,
I think it's the greatest game ever.
So that's probably the image I
see at the top of your website.
Yeah.
That's directly from the game.
Wow.
That is so beautiful.
Have you ever seen it now?
The game never.
Oh my goodness.
I mean, look, I'm biased.
I'm a complete Stan.
So I'm what they would call a
white Knight for star citizen.
I make no bones about that.
I can critique it when it's it's
necessary for me to critique it.
But this is essentially the
greatest game ever conceived.
Wow.
That's the period.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, there's, there's, I
can't even think of another game.
I would even put in that, that
conversation we were about to ask.
How long have you been playing this game,
especially consistently with your well, so
we've been on together since 2014, 2013.
I mean, the Kickstarter went around, came
out in like 2016, or I'm sorry, 2013.
And we have been planted since like 2012
since the Kickstarter actually been out.
So, um, Yeah, it's been
about good six, seven years.
We've been together.
Wow.
What Kickstarter are you referring to?
The star citizen Kickstarter,
which was, yeah, the game actually.
Was born out of a crowdfunding project.
Wow.
Yeah.
And they've raised now $400 million.
It's the largest crowdfunding
project of all time.
It's easily.
And there are people like me,
people like you, who love space,
who love space adventures, and
this appeals directly to them.
I would love to see, I tell
people this all the time.
I would love to see more
women play star citizen.
I think it's such a fantastic experience
for those who enjoy, uh, space travel
and space flight and, you know, a
warp speed and first person shooters
and going down the planets and
exploring and all the type of stuff.
It's just awesome.
Uh, I wish there were, there was
more women, but the people who
are, and there are women who are
interested in the game now, but the
people who are interested, most of
them really, really love it because
there's nothing like it on its scale.
You know, I got to say being
someone who works in the space
industry, there are a ton of women.
There are a ton of women,
you know, documenting.
There are ton of women, um, you know,
astronauts now, although only of the
570 ish people that have been to space.
I just learned today.
Today's the day that the first woman.
Uh, went to space in 1963, Valentina,
Tara Skova was a, you know, from
the Soviet union at the time.
And she launched a space on this
day, orbited the earth 48 times, I
think, and then had to eject herself
from the capsule and parachute four
miles to the central Asian land.
Yeah, I, I read up a little bit about
some of those Russian cosmonauts
space experiments of those times,
and they were not the safest, I mean,
there was a real race and they didn't
care about safety at that time.
That's one thing I love about space X,
because say what you want about Elon Musk.
He is paranoid about safety.
He's literally paranoid about safety.
And he knows that any type of like,
I hate to use this and then really
insensitive way, but I'm just using as
example, but any type of challenge or
type incident, he will never survive that.
So he knows like he has to be so
on the ball to where if something
does happen, it can't be on him.
Can't be on him.
Yeah.
Because it's so much at
stake with his legacy.
You know, we, we talk about that
a lot among ourselves, I guess my
reporter friends and I it's like,
are we ready for that to happen?
Because it just feels like mistakes
are going to happen all along the way.
And.
And I don't know if anybody's
really prepared for that.
And I was thinking about it, um,
because just a couple of weeks
ago, space X launched humans.
They were, they returned human space
flight to these launchpads right here.
For the first time, since the
end of the shuttle era, which
ended because of those accidents.
And so I was thinking about it and
you know, I had met Bob and Doug
and I knew about their families.
And I had talked to Nicole, Nicole
Stott, their dear friend, and I knew
that their children were watching.
And here I was just a few
miles away from the launchpad.
And I just started bawling, like
the, I seen so many launches.
I cry at every lunch, but I see so many
that I it's a tear inducing event to see.
I mean, even when you see it on.
Okay.
So I'm just going to full disclosure here.
There were times in human
history where I cried, uh, when
Obama got elected, I cried.
I just felt like it was such a monumental
event for the country at the time.
Little did I know that was probably
going to be the best of race
relations for the next decade, but,
uh, it was definitely something
I felt like emotionally moved by.
And if I saw, if I was physically
there at a, um, Any launch.
I mean, I cried at the end of the
star Trek Picard season finale.
So I could definitely see myself
crying for humans, launching
themselves into space at great
risk and reward to the species.
So, you know, I definitely feel like that.
It was insane.
I mean, I bawled my face off
I was so overwhelmed with.
Joy that, um, that we
humans decided to go for it.
But then I, I was also, um, had a pretty
intense feeling of fear and anxiety, like,
Oh my God, what if this doesn't go right?
I don't know.
I've never seen it go wrong, but.
One of these days that might,
and I just, I'm not prepared, but
yeah, I, you know, it's funny.
Cause I think in a lot of cases,
Elan and space X in general,
they take tons of risks.
They move really fast.
They're like programmers, they
release early and iterate often.
That's kind of the mantra, but
when it involves humans, Especially
because they were working with
the NASA commercial crew program.
It's very different.
It's gone a lot slower and it's
more methodical and, and you can
see the reverence in Elan's eyes
when he, he enters the press room
and there's talk of humans or the
president of space X, Gwen Shotwell.
She actually spent a lot
of time trying to humanize.
Bob and Doug and Doug are dads, Bob
and Doug have wives, Bob and Doug
sons are going to be at the lunch.
You know, she's like I wanted all
my engineers to know that this
is not another, these are people.
Yeah.
And you know, what's interesting about
that is we, as, as people observers,
people who are not in the field of space
exploration, we tend to dehumanize these
people, uh, in the, in a way where.
They don't seem real.
Uh, they seem like, um, almost like
actors, uh, like a basketball player.
Like it's the furthest thing from
that because all of the hopes and
the dreams of human innovation and
exploration ride on each launch and
the setback, if something goes wrong,
it's always going to be monumental.
Because no one's going to be the next
one to want to take that risk after
something has happened, unless they're
absolutely sure that the risk to them
is minimized in some kind of way.
So I think that's, that's a real
interesting perspective to look at it
with, you know, I'm glad you say that.
Cause I kind of forget.
I mean, I see these people a lot.
I feel really lucky.
That's honestly, Part of my whole
mission is to try to transport
people to what, to my perspective.
Cause like I, like I told you before we
started the call, I live in this amazing.
I call it the OB bubble and I don't
think it's a derogatory thing.
Um, it's beautiful in here
and I just want to expand it.
I want to pop it like everybody in here to
see that these are beautiful humans who.
Just like the Brazilian jujitsu black belt
who just kept putting one foot in front
of the other and said, yes, it's worth it.
Yes.
I'm going to get up and do this.
Yes.
I'm going to keep trying.
Yes, I know this isn't the same.
What am I doing?
Who am I imposter syndrome,
just going to keep taking steps.
And, you know, what's interesting.
The analogy that you used is in
Brazilian jujitsu, just like the
science, uh, or, you know, the study
of discovery and in sciences, you're
going to get beat up a little bit.
Um, you're going to take some bumps.
You're going to take some bruises.
You're going to tap.
There are going to be times where
you're just like, you know what?
We can't, I don't know
how to process this.
We need to step away, come back
with a new approach because
this idea submit our reasoning.
Every time.
And so, uh, that analogy, I think
holds true because you're going to
take your lumps and you're going
to, you're going to be a white belt.
You know, human beings are probably white
belts when it comes to space exploration
or we might've just gotten our blue belt.
You know what I mean?
It could be a hundred
years before we get purple.
It could be 500 years or a
thousand before we get Brown.
What is a black belt?
Spacefaring civilization look like?
I want to know.
I want to know.
I actually love that you brought that up.
Do you know what an astronaut
candidate is called while
they're an astronaut candidate?
Uh, I don't, uh, I don't know.
That's a good question.
And I asked, can I heard Bob and Doug
say, I think it was Bobby said it he's
like, you know, when I was going to ask,
Oh, well they can call themselves that
I won't call themselves that because
they are so much cooler than I am.
Let me ask you this question.
Has there ever, I don't think
there's ever been any rap played
on the space station or in space.
What is the sure thing?
So you want to know what,
who who's been though?
I want to know, cause I've
made a reference to that.
My music and I'm sure no
one's played me on that space.
Well, we should change that.
I don't know how we do it, but
I think we can, we can try.
Okay.
I think there are ways we can try,
but I will say that, um, I don't
know about rap specifically, but I do
know that, um, They've experimented
with really cool things like blasting
because you know, they've got the micro
gravity, physics environment to play
with where everything is different.
There's the lack of gravity means
you can look at cells in 3d.
They don't flatten out on the Petri dish.
You can look at water in 3d or just
floats and they'll blast the blast,
but they'll blast music at water.
To visualize the, the waves that
as they're happening, visualize
what happens to this crazy water.
And so they blasted metal at it.
I'm sure they blasted rap at some point.
Um, but I will say that I just
recently heard from Leland, Melvin,
who was, um, an amazing he's, he's
one of my favorite, um, astronauts.
I've met him several times.
He's really sweet.
He's an amazing musician.
Like classic classic plea,
trained pianist, amazing poet.
He played football professionally,
and he talks about the overview
effect, which I mentioned to you.
He had, it's like, It's kind
of like his life mission.
He just talks about the, the
perspective that he got from
space, the unifying perspective.
And he talks about this moment
where he went over to the Russian
module, but, uh, we get there and
you're looking at what's happening.
You can smell the beef and barley cooking.
You can see the people's eyes lighting up.
As we think about the people that
we're, we're working with people
we used to formally fight against.
Germans.
We were mourning his
Russia in the cold war.
All these things were going on.
African American, Asian American,
French, German, Russian, the first female
commander breaking bread, having this
meal, listening to shot a smooth operator.
this is when my perspective changed.
This is when I got this cognitive shift.
It was a little bit technical thing.
This was us working together
as one civilization, breaking
bread, having a meal, just like
you're going to do tonight.
Just like you do at home with your family.
It changed my life.
And I think once you can bring
people together off planet,
there is no reason why we can't
bring people together on planet.
I have these, these nerd fantasies of
like, you know, some, some astronaut
and, you know, Mark Kelly's on the space
station or something and he's streaming.
And then the background is my
music playing and people are
like, you know, what's that music
and it's great and square, you
know, and YouTube takes it down.
Cause well, can we talk about that?
You know, I get copy
strikes for my own music.
Yep.
That's aye.
Aye.
So we need to get you on the space
station and what else can we do?
What are, what are your aspirations?
Do you want to go to space?
Actually?
You ready?
If you asked me tomorrow, if I would
want to go to space, I would say yes.
I mean, I'm at the, answer's
always going to say that that
answer's always going to be yes.
So the, my aspirations though
is to, uh, Turn grand unified
into a community that is.
Welcoming and filled with people who
are astronauts, biologists, physicists,
chemists educators, um, engineers.
I w my dream, my, my longterm dream
is something that I came up with years
ago called the tier complex, which
was the trans intellectual education
repository complex, which was this.
Facility where our community
could get together.
And the smartest of our community could
educate the rest of our community to go
back out into the world, almost like a.
Like proselytizing of science in
a bit where it's like, Hey, we
have, you know, three physicists.
I mean, we have people in the
community with doctorates and
theoretical physics, right.
Doctorates in particle physics.
And to give them a space, to be able to
teach the rest of us, I'm going to be in
the front row, in the front seat of that
class, raising my hand, asking questions.
And it's, you know, my quote unquote idea.
But for me, those are where my aspirations
go because I still feel like my imprint.
On this species is not really going to be
felt until three, 400, 500 years from now.
So I'm trying to set it up for, so
that 300 years from now, people can
talk about grade and square, the
same way they talk about Galileo
or, you know, Newton or whoever.
Oh, I'm so glad I wonder how we'll
be able to preserve digital video.
Like, do you ever wonder that, like
how do we preserve this stuff forever?
What's going to happen.
They're going to make a hologram of you.
They're going to make a hologram of me.
It's going to range from our youngest
age, because they're going to be
able to extrapolate with, with,
uh, AI and algorithms, what you
looked like when you were, you know,
six and they're going to do it.
Yep.
That's common.
Think about how real deep fakes are
right now are like so real it's you
can't even distinguish you can't
distinguish them from the actual thing.
It's insane.
Every time Joe says something
weird, I'm like, Is this real
or heard someone make the stuff?
I don't know, Joe Rogan, if you can get me
on the Joe Rogan show, that'd be awesome.
Hey Joe, I just wanted
to let you know that.
Sorry.
I already had this amazing
interview, but I will allow you
to continue the conversation.
If you want to ask different
questions or whatever, it's fine.
Oh, yeah, me and Joe would talk a lot
about psychedelics and inner aliens.
I always thought his, his thoughts
on that were pretty interesting.
I don't know about that, but I
was thinking that you might have
been referring when you talk about
type three entities, um, trans
Ascension hypothesis style entities.
Yes.
It was the transcendent.
Transection hypothesis did
factor into some of that, but
it wasn't the whole thing.
I still try to make it someone where, uh,
or something where we're talking about
extra terrestrials at such a high level
of technology that they might as well be.
God likely, might as well be, um,
angelic or ma magic because the
level of technology, their mastery
over time and space is just so.
Vast that they might as well be gods.
They might as well be alien, super Kings.
This reminds me of something.
Where do you got contact?
Because the beings that were able to
create the network in which Ellie,
uh, Went through, had to be at
least a tight two species, at least.
And I'm thinking like 2.5, 2.6,
2.7, uh, any type of inter galactic
conduit through which time.
Dilation is a thing.
Uh it's and I know in the, in the
book from, I don't know, I don't know,
cause I didn't read the book, but
from what I hear in the book, there
are illusions made to, uh, architects
or are beings that are like, God like
that, you know, that actually created
the, the gateway, the hub or whatever
it is almost in the way that Stargate
I'm not familiar if you were a Stargate
fan, but I was a huge Stargate fan.
We had the same type of mythology.
No, but you, there is another line that I
wrote down in one of your songs where you
said something like, keep your rockets.
I'll take the Stargate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of, uh, wormholes and,
uh, Einstein, Rosen, Podolsky bridges.
I was a big slider stand back in the day.
And so, uh, I forgot about that.
Oh, yeah, I totally forgot.
Wow.
What a great show.
And really that's a show they could
remake today and I wouldn't even be mad.
I wouldn't even be mad and I hate
remakes and reboots, by the way.
I know for like reunion
tours, those drive me crazy.
If you retired, retired, stay retired.
Don't come back with a reviewing mentor.
That's not necessary.
Do something new.
Start a new band.
That's what I think too, but
sometimes I still appease them.
I'm like, well, I never saw
the Pixies when I was younger.
So, um, yeah, I, I too, I, I love being
here and seeing the rockets and, you know,
I mean, there, there is nothing like it.
Um, it's extremely emotional, but if
I really think about it on the longer
scale, I'm not disappointed, but.
I'm definitely hopeful that we can
make a major breakthrough in with
theoretical physics that allows
us to break the speed of light.
I feel like what we're learning at
the quantum level should allow us
to somehow get from here to there.
In no time.
Do you see the look on my face?
Yeah.
The, the reason why I had that look is
because as fascinating as being able to
travel faster than the speed of light
would be, I don't know if our reality,
our universe and our laws of physics
allow for something like that without
some real causality consequences.
Things happening before the
initiator, I guess, causes them.
Like, there's just this weird.
I would love for us to be able to
traverse vast amounts of space in time.
I don't know if we do that from
a point a to point B linear
rocket propelled type of travel.
The only way I could see us doing it
is the, uh, and this is just one of
many that have been proposed, but have
you ever heard of the Albi cure drive?
No, uh, basically it was a type of
IX it's, uh, it was an idea for an
experimental warp engine that used exotic
energy to contract the space in front of
a vessel while expanding the space behind
the vessel, not violating, uh, special
relativity and basically allowing the
pocket that was created to move faster.
Then information.
Yeah.
It looked like kind of, I know
what you're referring to now.
I've seen kind of the, the illustrations,
it kind of looks like a, an inch
worm, like space turns into inchworm.
And you're just kind of using that
as the belts that you move along.
And what you're doing essentially
is not accelerating yourself up to
relativistic speeds so that you're
not creating all of this extra mass.
That needs all this extra
energy to then propel that back
up to a relativistic speeds.
I, I mean, if there is a way to do it
without violating special relativity
and, and, and information travel.
Yeah.
That would be awesome.
But I feel like if we're going to
do it, it's going to be in such a
non-intuitive way, because it seems so.
Such a non-intuitive concept to me.
Like, it sounds good in stories and
in science fiction, but when you
really get down to what it would mean
to be able to travel at that speed.
I mean, if you leave anywhere
at that speed, you're not going
to come back to anything you
resent, you recognize, or yeah.
Got it.
And then it gets down to
what is consciousness.
And like, I think that about that
too, with the transition hypothesis,
which I only recently learned
about at burning man last year.
Yeah.
And then told you about it.
Do you know who?
Well, first of all, at burning man, uh,
we're part of a camp that it's like a 70
person camp and we build a giant telescope
dome and we're black rock observatory.
So it's an astronomy camp.
We have talks all week.
It's amazing.
We have media meteorite museum.
And Jason Silva is, um, do you know
that techno poet, she came, he came
and talked about the transition,
the transition hypothesis for a bit.
I love that guy.
He's great.
I mean, what a beautiful
poet as well, right?
Taking similar concepts and.
He speaks.
He reminds me of Carl Sagan and
the way that he speaks, he is
really thoughtful about things.
And he's always doing things with
lens flare and insight of nature.
Just like Carl.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
He knows how to play on that.
Yeah, it's lovely.
Yeah, we had, um, Alex
Filipanco, do you know who he is?
Sounds familiar.
I'm not sure if I'm familiar
with his work though.
You'd probably recognize his face.
He's an astrophysicist on all of,
you know, on all the documentaries.
He's, he's amazing.
He's got the most beautiful smile in the
universe he came and yeah, we learn, we
learn from all sorts of amazing people
there, but, um, that's where I learned
about the transection hypothesis and
I thought, yeah, that makes sense.
That's where all the aliens are.
They've just gone, you know, in.
Um, so how many of you are aware of,
uh, the Fermi paradox, some of you?
So, um, so, uh, for me it was a physicist
mathematician and he said, you know,
looking up at the night sky, if there
are all these billions and trillions
of stars and there's all these billions
of years for intelligence, civilization
serve evolved, where are they?
Why do we see zero evidence
of intelligent life?
Out there.
So there are many answers to the
Fermi paradox, but perhaps the most
interesting answer that I've come
across is known as the transection
hypothesis put forward by John smart.
Who's the founder of foresight university,
and Jason made these two incredible
videos on the transaction hypothesis.
And I think if you want to hear
something truly mindblowing as
a response to the Fermi paradox,
it's the transection hypothesis.
So maybe Jason, you could paraphrase or
summarize the transaction hypothesis.
Yeah.
Can give it a shot.
Um, so John's smart.
He came up with a theory to account for
Fermi's paradox, which is again, like.
In an, in such vastness, you know, Oh,
we've found all these earth like planets.
Now, these exoplanets, I mean the
conditions for life seemingly with enough
space and enough time and enough of the
four most common elements that we have
in our bodies that exist in the universe.
I mean, it seems easy for
other technologically advanced
civilizations to have emerged
and yet where, where are they?
You know?
And, and, and I don't know.
Really ascribed to the conspiracy
theories of like, Oh, the U S
government is hiding actual little
humanoid aliens with big heads.
Like, and I don't know if, when you're
tripping on Iowasca or DMT, the self
transforming machine elves they're
actual aliens from other universes.
They may just be like algorithms
inside your unconscious.
But I think that the Fermi
paradox is very sorry.
The transaction hypothesis
is very interesting.
Theory to account for, for me is paradise.
And he says, if you consider our story,
as we technologically advance, we
are expanding outwards, like taking
over all the continents, spreading
ourselves all over the planet, you know,
going and satellites into space and
maybe a space like we'll go outwards.
But that together with that advancement of
expansion, there is also this expansion.
In words, our technologies become like.
Denser and denser are the computational
substrates get smaller and smaller.
And the idea is that eventually
we reach femto scale densities of
computation, and essentially we
kind of disappear out of space time.
So the transection is that it's like an
implosion out of the visible universe.
And so if you think that eventually
with things like mind uploading and.
If we were able to map the patterns
of consciousness and recreate
artificial intelligent organisms
that can think, and that can dwell
and matrix like environments.
When we have simulated bodies.
I mean, if we can model something
that feels like us, but they can
live in the virtual plane, right.
Or a similar locker room of some kind,
and we can dispense with our bodies
and the entropy that, that costs us
and essentially non-biological minds.
Living in virtual universes, running
on femto scale density, computers
that are at the density level
of a black hole that we implode.
Like we, we transcend transection eyes,
you know, out of the visible universe.
And then that's where
all the technologically
advanced civilizations are.
So they've, they've, they've
kind of like inwardly vanished.
I guess he can't prove it necessarily,
but like, you know,  just speculating
that like, just contemplating
that I think is, is cognitively
pleasurable and, uh, and worthwhile.
So I did a video about that and I was
like, this is something you can bring
up at your next dinner party, you know?
But then the question is where
is in and how is that accessible?
Uh, Don't get me wrong.
I think it's fascinating
what he talks about.
I think the transection hypothesis
is a fascinating concept.
Um, but.
I don't let myself get too wrapped
up into that because I know that
ultimately it is purely speculation.
None of that stuff is testable.
And if you ever talk about it with
anybody else of science, they're
just going to be like, are we
talking science or philosophy, right.
Yeah.
They'll pull you right off.
So a lot of times it's not a conversation
that I get to have, but I think it is
a fascinating concept as to, um, what.
What, uh, in word means when you're
talking about space inward, maybe going
to the very small, as opposed to going
out to the very large classical scale.
Well, let me pick your
brain on this for a second.
If this was a simulation,
would FTL laws still apply?
Like if you lived in a computer
simulation, would it be necessary for you
to observe the laws of a linear causality?
If you will.
I don't know.
It's fascinating to think about, I love,
I love thinking about the simulation
theory, actually love thinking about all
of these things, just for the fun of it.
Just kind of like the
fun brain exercise of it.
Not because I really think, you know
that scientifically I'm going to be
doing anything very productive, but, but
philosophically, it's fun to think about.
I bet you, I'm sorry, but I bet you think
that there is something unique about
reality worth exploring in that way.
Right?
Like I think that's why we, we pursue
these lines of thinking is because
we know, you know, what Neo Morpheus
told Neo in the matrix, you know,
there's something about reality.
That's just not right.
Something is weird.
Something is just off.
Like I keep trying to catch
a glimpse of it as I turn.
But just out of you, whatever that is.
And you know, a lot of people's are great.
You sound like a three year straight now.
It's like, no, it's not, I'm not saying
that there's some, some, some being
there, but there's some type of higher
order of reality that this reality
sits in that is just outsider view.
This reminds me of what you were saying in
the beginning, which was, um, Oh my gosh.
I just realized the time.
This is great.
So I just, Oh, wow.
I didn't even realize it's just
been, we've just been talking.
Why not?
Well, okay, so.
Maybe we can, we can begin to
wrap up, but you talked about
flatland and that is what is that?
The edge of forever.
It's my favorite cosmos episode where
Carl Sagan tries to explain a Tesseract
as something that we can't really
possibly understand in our universe.
And so he uses the two dimensional
shapes and it's the cutest thing ever.
He's like, so we have flat people and.
Can you imagine what type of father he
was with his, his, uh, his children,
where he's explaining things that he has
that same charm that we all fell in love.
And that coupled with the, the all and
the, uh, the interest of a child, right?
The inquisitiveness of a child
with the carism of Carl Sagan.
I think I actually
thought about that a lot.
And I even talked to his daughter
about it and you can read her book.
It's uh, it's, it's called for creature
such as we and somethings title.
I know.
Right.
Um, something like finding meaning in an
unlikely world or something like that.
But.
She talks a lot about ritual and, but
then there's so much autobiography.
There's so much about her mom and
her dad and like, It's it's touching.
Can you imagine you are so great at
something that your children can write
an autobiography about themselves,
about how they were raised by you?
Yeah.
That's the famous thing, right?
Like that's the, that's how big
failure was Femi and, and, and, uh, I
think the there's like three or four
of them or whatever, like all of his
sons, they didn't have to do anything.
Then have to go on to music,
then have to become entertainers.
Like their legacy is secure and yet
still like you're going to go and,
you know, get into a field where your
father or, you know, a relative your
mother has set the standards so high.
I couldn't even, I, you know, following
the, being the child of, you know, biggie
or being the child of big pun, these all
time greats that passed away too early,
I mean, the expectations that are heat
upon their offspring, their progeny,
where it's like, you gotta be great too.
Now it's like, well, hold on.
He was great.
I missed the kid, you know?
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And I think.
When the parent puts that pressure on
the kid, then something else happens too.
It's like, ah, wait, wait, when there's
pressure on the kid to be like the
parent, whether it's from outside
forces or the parent themselves, but
with Carl, it seems really clear.
That there was no pressure whatsoever
about being in science or whatever.
In fact, I actually learned, you
know, well, you know, how much of a,
um, a secular teacher, he was free
thinker, um, spoke about atheism a lot.
He, they read the Bible in their home.
I found out from Sasha, she's like,
Oh yeah, We read all of the stories.
Yeah.
We didn't, I grew up kind of Jewish.
She had her mom as a Jewish family
and I thought that was interesting.
You know, it's interesting you say
that because I talk about reading.
Counter view points.
Often I read the Bible, I read
the Quran, I read the Torah,
I read the biography Gita.
I read the communist manifesto.
I read Karl Marx.
I read, I've read mine comp I've
read, you know, anything that is
of a counter, like, you know, off
limits or we're not supposed to eat.
Like I'm going to read it
because I need to understand
what it was like to have ideas.
That were ostracized ideas
that were challenged and were
considered outside the norm.
How were they able to still, uh,
get their, their thoughts heard
without paying the consequence of
society, ostracizing them in that way?
So, yeah, I definitely think that it's
important for the smartest of people
to read things that you disagree with.
We are challenged to, to, to
challenge your, uh, your, you
know, what, what's it called?
Um, your echo chamber to, to, to at
least try to test, to see how strong,
um, that echo chamber actually it is.
If you can break it down and
get some new data in there.
I think that's a good thing.
Ultimately, I think that's a good thing.
Yeah.
I, um, I think that's, that's
really, it goes back to the
beginning of our discussion.
That is a major issue
that we have right now.
We don't.
I see, in some circles, like in
your community, grand unified.
Um, and others that this is, this
is people are flocking there because
they're hungry for conversation.
They're hungry for nuance.
They're hungry for not cut and
dry situations because that's
not what we are as humans.
We're very complex.
But, um, I don't know.
I don't know about the rest of us.
I feel like either it's
a weird media game.
And they're all tricking us into
thinking that this is an issue, or
we've got a major issue where we're,
it's almost like the transection
hypothesis, but not in a good way.
They were all, we're all kind of like
curling into our bubbles and our, our,
uh, echo chambers, as you say, you
said something and I think it'd be a
good thing to kind of end on, which is
people are hungry for nuance, right.
And there are people out there.
Who, yes, they're binary thinkers.
They don't know that they don't
want to be binary thinkers until you
introduce them to landscapes of nuance.
And so instead of what I try to
do, trying to convince people to
think a different way, don't take
my approach, take the approach of.
Understanding why people think the
things that they think to begin
with the mechanism behind how they
arrived to a certain conclusion.
You can follow the same line of logic
and reach a different conclusion
because we're all born with different
brains and different brain chemistry's.
And so I think that that's important
to look at for people like new already
been kind of knee deep in what I did.
I had to change because I was very
adversarial early on in my career.
I was very aggressive and now
I take a different approach.
I feel like I'm playing more
chess and checkers early on.
And it was like, music
was a blunt force object.
And then I discovered Failla and
obviously it was like, Oh, it
can be used as a precision tool.
You know, I can, I can talk about
things, change within the music and
have the person who's listening.
Not even aware that I'm talking about
change because I can be subtle about it.
I can code it in a different way.
And I even said that in one of
my songs where it's like, now I
speak in coded language because.
It's easier to slip past your defenses
when I code the information differently.
That's right.
I love that.
All right.
Well, this has been amazing.
Absolutely lovely.
I think we've covered some good
ground, but somehow I don't even
feel like we've covered half of it.
So hopefully we stay in touch.
I'm part of I'm part of the community.
So.
You're welcome.
I would love to have you
on my podcast as well.
I would love to come back
and pick this conversation up
whenever you'd like, let's do it.
Cause I have way more questions.
I have way more answers.
I know.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much.
Tell everybody how they can find you.
Oh, yeah.
Great square.com.
Great and square.net.
Uh, G R E Y D O N.
Squares in the shape, Instagram, Facebook.
Uh, I host a, um, a podcast
with a good friend of mine.
RK Gold's known as the
gray and gold podcast.
You can check that out on Spotify,
Apple music, my music itself, you
can find on Spotify, Apple music band
camp, or whatever the case may be.
And, um, The last thing I'll leave people
with as far as what we do at grey unified,
if you decide that you want to, to seek
us out is, uh, just come willing to, to
discuss things openly and be respectful.
And you'll have some of the best
conversations that you probably
think that you want to have
about these particular issues.
And we talk about everything race.
Politics, um, space travel.
As you can see food, we had
a big active food community.
So nature.
I love our nature channel.
I, I welcome everybody.
Who's listening to this to at least come
check us out and, uh, get us Apple as
to how we communicate with each other.
You might, you might like what we do.
I do.
Thank you so much.
It's been amazing for having me.
Absolutely.
