 I'm fascinated when somebody has an aha moment when they had narratives in their mind for so long and then the narratives change. And obviously it's not because of one thing, it's a compound effect of exposure to different ideas and different narratives and maybe life experiences and you really go through it yourself. It's like, you know, you and I, our families both come from former communist countries. And I have, you know, you have a rise of leftists over here and they're talking about socialism, like you motherfuckers never lived through socialism, like quote unquote, whatever the fuck real socialism is. Right, sound real socialism of course. I'm like, you know, both our parents left, they ran away from their, think about it, they left the country, they left their friends, they left their family, because how fucked up it was to come somewhere better. But yeah, you have people over here that have never experienced that saying, No. Fucking socialism. Yeah, give me more stuff, more free stuff. You know, my parents came here, they barely had $100 to their name. Like we had to go into recycle bins, we had to go to the garbage. Like if we found a TV in the garbage that was, that turned on, this was like Christmas for me. It was amazing. Whatever was on the side of the street, right? Hammy Downs, like that was life. And frankly, it was a happy life. You really appreciated what little you had. And coming from a place like Soviet Russia where, you know, I tell this story and it's like, it's gonna be my grandpa story, but like I waited for four hours to get a banana in line, four hours. Bananas happen to come in, you never had them. People lined up and myself as like a four year old or whatever I had to wait for four hours to get a banana, which was probably not ripe anyway. So my father, for him especially seeing him, cause he's gone through hell and hell water to get here, it's really tough for him to see what's happening socially, you know? What things are kind of like accepting art blanche, so to speak. This is happening. I think as human beings, there is this like, it's almost like a bias, let's call it, but when things get too good, we begin to look for problems. There's even a study that came out that kind of touches on this. I don't remember who the researcher was, but essentially when our life becomes really, really good, and when we kind of go up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so to speak, and check off all those boxes, we have everything we need, we often begin to look for problems. Let's say before we get to that place where it's like real self-fulfillment, and like making an impact, leaving a legacy before we get to that point, once all of other physical needs are met, we start to look for social problems, problems to fix, things to complain about. It's very easy to look elsewhere, gaping hole inside of us, so that again, we don't have to live our arite moment. I have a hard time grasping the mindset of certain individuals because it's one thing to maybe talk about that pre-cerca communist Russia, or Russia, US lab, all this former China, but we have so much historical evidence today of how bad that system is, millions and millions dead. But yet, it's like why the cognitive dissonance, here's what has happened on their systems like that. Oh, no, no, no, our system will be better. Dude, I think you hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Number one, I think there's a few things there that we can touch base on is the fact that you were not very good with evidence, right? We dig our heels in when we're presented with evidence that's contrary to whatever our opinion of the day happens to be, even if it's blatantly wrong and based on no evidence, nothing substantial, everything circumstantial, we dig our heels in, right? Because it's like a fight, but I think that's part of it. I think a lot of us just aren't taught the full history. Number one, like I think the educational system needs a bit of a revamp, a little bit of a rejig. Revamp, huh? It's an understatement. Yeah, being polite here. And then the other component is just us, man. It's like we like to be asleep, you know? We like to have our comfort. We like to feel like, no, I'm good, I'm good. I know my stuff. I've got an opinion. Yeah, and so we just ignore evidence, and it's tough for everybody. Like this is why even in science, sometimes a generation of scientists has to die before like a new novel idea or theory will be adopted. And it's just those cognitive, friggin' pesky cognitive biases back. It's like the guy at the H. Pylori study. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was saying for the longest time, like H. Pylori is a thing. This isn't like a symptom of something else. And for the longest time, researchers and scientists are like, no, dude, you're crazy. And he eventually like, I'll show you, he drank it. Like I'll show you in real time that H. Pylori does fucking exist. That was a crazy moment. That was a kind of balls deep. Yeah, hero's journey moment. Yeah, and so for me, it's fascinating because yes, people have different narratives and social media is exponentially piggybacking off our already biases that we have. I'm making it worse and creating something called the wedge, a chasm. And you have now minority groups of all different spectrums screaming the loudest. Generally speaking, most people just want to live in peace and fucking leave me alone for the most part. I always wondered though, too, is like, yo, what do these people do? Dude, that's what they do, right? No, I'm serious. Like, how the fuck do you like, do you work? Yeah, yeah, I do. Like when people are protesting all the time, not like the Hong Kong stuff, that's like do or die, but like regular protesting. Like, are you a full-time protester? I'm like, oh, are you fucking working? Like, what do you do? That's all different conversation. But I'm always interested where it's like, obviously two different narratives aren't communicating. They're just throwing stats and both of them have their own, you know, confirmation bias, some cost bias and they're throwing narratives at each other. No one's listening. So they can both agree. Both of them will agree that no one's listening. In reality, when you look at it, a lot of people, whether it's left or right, they have a lot in common and very minority of differences. Those differences cause the chasm, the wedge. I'm interested though is, you know, you've gone through your own experiences. I don't know if you wanna talk about it. What has worked for you that you've utilized, whether it's mental frameworks or tools to kind of better know yourself and to better integrate information that you get? It's a brilliant question, man. It's one that I actually, I need to spend a little bit more time thinking about because I think it's been almost like, I've been boiled in fine wine, let's call it whatever, like a toad that hasn't noticed, but over time I've just adopted a lot of these things and I think I'm also going through this kind of point in my life where I'm building them out, I'm kind of categorizing them, putting them on paper just to really understand what it was that helped me and I know what it was in some ways and in other ways, cognitively maybe I don't, but I think like, I think just part of it was knowledge I have acquired along the way, things like, you know, the Socratic method or the Stoics or again, going back to Greece or like the notions like the unexamined life is not worth living. And it's not cause like you can't live life without it, but like if you don't examine things, you're defaulting into somebody else's worldview. And I think like I always wanted to push forward into to realize things on my own. Is there an example that you had a, I wanna say opinion, but a narrative on one thing, then over time you've changed it? All the time, man. So here's something like, and this is a value, I think that we need to have the right values in life. And for me, a value is that I want to be fair and just and I want to have an open mind. And so, and sometimes look, man, I hunker down too, especially like I can get into an argument very easily, but I think there's always this component of me where I wake up in the day and I'm like, I want the thing that I value the most is truth and honesty and like finding common ground. So like I try to extend all of branches to see where people are coming from. And look, man, sometimes I falter too and I try to push my perspective, right? I've done that, but it's like every single time I kind of learned something from it. And I actually went down a deep rabbit hole through social media when all of this political stuff was happening. And I started... God damn it, social media. I started posting a lot, you know, and just it was a bit of a nightmare. And it kind of turned me into a bit of a curmudgeon, to be honest. And so like I had that and I had to come out of it and be like, holy cow, like, you know, there was a lot of people messaging me and saying, thank you so much for what you posted, you know, hurrah, like you're speaking the truth. But in reality, like, what difference did it make? And the other component is it probably pissed off some people who, whatever, they probably would have been pissed off for any other reason. But I think for me and other values, like to be good to people, you know, and that's something that I had lost along the way somewhere in this search for truth. Yeah. So it's like the razor's edge, man. I think like you're always walking that balancing act. What's important.