 here, just chilling at the Sydney airport and just using the loo and washing my face and I looked up and there's this like old bloke, a bit overweight saying hey my name's Brian and I'm the captain of my soul. I thought holy hell, what's this? And then I read on he says like most bloke's I don't like to open up but I was going through a dark stage a few years ago and and I asked for help and so now with the help of my doctor, my counselor, I'm doing well and I'm making all these positive decisions and turning my life in the right direction and so you see all these posters and pictures and billboards promoting mental health and reaching out for help if you're feeling discouraged and there's a particular emphasis on different demographics and some of the posters are appealing particularly to bloke's you know Aussie bloke's tend to be stoical they don't like to open up but just letting people know there's help which I think is good. Like I've had some dark times in my life I think I've ever had such a dark time that I'd need to call a helpline but it's really good that they're there so I'm thinking part of the reason that there may be so much less social dysfunction in Australia compared to America is that America is highly individualistic and Australia is much more communal so America is all about be all you can be you know go for it and reach for the stars well in Australia there's much more beneath those of be with your mates and the tall poppy the one who tries to stand out you know they get cut down or they get heaps like if you're not appropriately humble no matter how much success you have in Australia people will give you heaps so life in Australia is much more communal it's much more based around your mates and in America it's much more room for striving for ambition just naked ambition just going for it and I want the consequences to anyone else like in America we reach for the stars America's the best place to be a success and success is more valued and respected and even liked in America than probably any other country in the world so America is the number one place to go if you want to reach for the stars reach for the top of your profession just chase your ambitions and to just go for it while Australia is much more communal yet you hang out with your mates and you live life in a community and I think we're built to live our lives in tribes like most people do much better when they have their mates and they live in community and they live in a tribe so because people in Australia they're more likely to have their mates they've not traditionally used mental health services gotta hate Tony just hanging out here at the but now there's been a huge surge in psychotherapists in Australia like there are more psychotherapists in Australia than pretty much any other nation but perhaps five so they usually call them counselors here like what we call in America you know NFTs marriage of family therapists but in Australia they're just called counselors that Australia is typically a fairly stoker country but there's been a huge increase in mental health counseling therapy you know there's been reduced stigma for going to a psychiatrist we're just asking for help the normally people were down they just talked to their mates but now there's a whole therapeutic industry that's sprung up sort of like grief counselors like all the there's no evidence that grief counseling does any good and there's considerable evidence that grief counseling does far more harm than good but there's an enormous grief counseling industry so what's that kids jump thing you know that jumpy thing that you get for kids for birthdays you know they bounce around in this jumpy thing well one of those got hit by a gust of wind in Tasmania I think six kids died and another half dozen or so kids were seriously injured like the gust of wind took the bouncy castle you know up 10 meters in the air and tipped all the kids out and so immediately after this tragedy you had the prime minister saying oh you know we're going to spend a million dollars for grief counseling it is absolutely no evidence for grief counseling does any good but there's a huge grief counseling industry like there's the grief counseling industrial complex all right and so whatever there's a disaster like the dumb thing is to say you know thoughts and prayers all right thoughts and prayers the people affected and we're sending them grief counseling but there's absolutely no evidence that like grief counseling doesn't many good but there's a whole industry it's like the accepted thing it's like taking your tonsils out so by the 1930s we knew that you know taking your tonsils out didn't do any good but but there was a whole industry behind taking tonsils out it's like hysterectomies like hysterectomies on average reduce women's lives uverectomies josh Randall disavows don't need no help so hysterectomies and uverectomies where you remove the the ovaries of a woman they on general lead to reduced life spans they reduce sexual pleasure you know all sorts of reduced functioning you know lead to more bad results than good results yet there's an enormous industry that is performing tens of thousands of unnecessary hysterectomies and uverectomies each year in the united states because it's like a whole industry behind you know cutting out these organs and there's a whole industry for decades behind taking out tonsils even though the evidence was that did more harm than good so we got no evidence that grief counseling works but there's an entire grief counseling industry now i do think that good counseling can work but you know grief counseling is just like one off breaking news the institutions treat humanity like insects yeah so grief counseling usually you know just means one or two sessions we talk about you know the things that are most painful to you and often just you know talking about it will make it worse so ongoing therapy like if someone's you know a good counselor yeah you can probably get help but just like digging it up once or twice in one or two sessions of grief counseling that's more likely to happen than good but it's that it's the dumb thing right we go we go provide grief counseling but i like all the mental health posters in Australia USA is me me me greed quite frustrating and underneath unhappy people well it's a fine line right because you don't want to be someone who is like overly concerned with all this so that your own well-being is you know just tied up in you know other people so you prefer to get obsessed with other people rather than looking at your own stuff so i've gone into therapy and i started talking about someone in my life the therapist will try to get me on track so you know why you're talking about her so much because i you know in a sicker in a sicker mode of me i'd rather talk about other people than face up to my own problems i'd rather get caught up in trauma around other people than face up to my own issues so there's a there's a fine line there the path of moderation you want to help people moderately so there is a time for me me me for example i even on vacation i've been taking sponsored calls you know several hours a week i've been volunteering my time for a 12-step program and when i'm back in the usa i've got another volunteer position that i do for about five hours a week all right so i will volunteer typically between about seven and 15 hours a week and then i work about 40 hours a week i earn money and uh then i do my own thing all right so then it is me me me me me right so i think you should be looking out for yourself but you shouldn't look out only for yourself because i think just as many people are overly obsessed with other people as a distraction from what they need to face in their own life as there are people who are incredibly selfish and never think about this so a good question for resetting one sobriety i think is now how is my selfishness negatively affecting other people so on this trip you know i've been hoeing down the mangoes mangoes are my favorite fruit and if there's a mango like i'm going for it and i've probably eaten hundreds of dollars worth of mangoes on this trip so there may have been times when i haven't left many mangoes for other people like my brother calls me the locust right the locust i just like go through the really expensive fruit the fine apricots the beautiful nectarines i'm prone to obsessing about my real world friends drama yeah because it distracts you from the stuff that you need to be working on and it solves your anxiety you think wow you know my friend is so screwed i am so much better off by comparison let me think more about how screwed up he is let me think more about you know the difficult situation that he faces because the more i think about him and his misery like better i feel by comparison so i know my father would look like visibly burdened when people would tell them things they were struggling with now do i look visibly burdened by other people's struggles so you know maybe i lack empathy but it doesn't take me down any to hear about other people's struggles like you can call me and tell me like all the worst news of the world oh my god wow that's that's really tough i'm you know i'm so sorry but you're not going to see misery and just hanging off me right it doesn't doesn't detract from my happiness levels to hear about someone else's problems my oldest friend rode the bottle all the way to the bottom and emotionally speaking i went down with him yeah but you went down with him because that was serving you in some way it wasn't wasn't just an accident right wasn't just an accident you went down with him you went down with him because that was providing something for you it was it was giving you drama and excitement that was filling a need in you it was it was feeding you to get caught up in his drama and if someone's determined to ride the bottle all the way at the bottom there's nothing you can do till they're ready to get until they're ready to get help look mate make sure you contact me once in LA of a small present oh right as i said i was too involved oh congratulations on settling that matter mozzletove gym way to go mate so yeah i'll contact you when i get to los angeles so yeah i've often i've often been caught up in drama like in work workplace it's like it was easy to get all caught up in the drama rather than to do the work i'd add a job and i'd enjoy getting caught up in a drama and we'd talk about you know what a horrible person the boss was or you know what was going on with so-and-so because that was more fun and more exciting than doing my job so there are two types of people in the world those who accomplish and those who fill the open space from lack of accomplishment by drama all right people who accomplish stuff don't waste time in drama but people who aren't accomplishing anything they love drama like we need excitement i know i need excitement i need i need i need drama but i can get that through a healthy pursuit of excellence a healthy pursuit of youtube broadcasting excellence right through vigorous discussion of ideas through reading books through changing my mind about things through seeing things in a new perspective through you know writing a good book or writing a good blog post or you know making a good show like preparing for the show making notes making all my points as clearly as possible benefiting you know someone you know someone watches the show and they feel happier they get a benefit so that's a healthy way of meeting my need for drama and excitement but you know unhealthy ways get all obsessed with someone else's sex addiction or alcohol addiction or drug addiction or their emotional turmoil or their divorce or their adultery the middle path so i had a really good holiday in australia i didn't get as much writing done as i wanted and i think i wrote one good blog post while i was here and the highest rating video i've made while i've been in australia it's like a 50 second it's a 50 second video i made about the suicide of ironwalder look if you decide to return jim manga will be waiting for you with 20 manga is excellent i can't wait but when i was working for my brother up in ten of sands at his garden center i heard that ironwalder who's this heredity orthodox jewish author of you know inspirational stories for children and i heard he'd committed suicide after he'd been accused of massive child abuse i love watching planes take off we're interdependent human beings we need people yes we do need people but they're healthy and unhealthy ways of needing people so anyway i made i just took a minute while i was working for my brother just made a quick video about ironwalder yes i'm at the airport i was sitting in international airport ironwalder accused of massive amounts of sexual abuse he committed suicide and i just noted that a lot of people tried to guilt you by threatening to commit suicide if you don't do what they want but you can't let people manipulate you that way like you can't let people go i'll commit suicide unless you and desist from going to the police or something like that so i made just like 45 second video on ironwalder and that's the highest rating video that i've made since i've been in in sit in in australia it got like 1300 views within 24 hours they might thought for meditations on life and love and loss and what's healthy and like you know those will get like 45 views about a 52nd video on ironwalder commit suicide we are getting crazy news about australia crazy in what sense so australia i think yesterday had its highest number of covid cases like it had had about 170 000 cases omicron so they're reinstituting some restrictions in australia just like in america and they're reinstituting some some restrictions so grocery shelves are running bare and info wars is a super solid distraction good stuff so yeah not so much stuff on the grocery shelves in both america and australia discouraging public singing people gathering to sing that's been discouraged in the south wales i chose not to go to shul on shabbos to avoid getting omicron like it feels like everyone around you is getting omicron because apparently like 10 times as many people have omicron as who have actually tested for it so 170 000 people test positive for it like 10 times that is 1.7 million is omicron really comparable to the original covid well in some ways it's comparable and in some ways it's not everything when you note ways two things are similar you're not denying that there are all sorts of ways which they're dissimilar so omicron is similar to the original covid in that it can be a death sentence it can have you know devastating effects it can hospitalize you it can send you to the er it can put you on a respirator but it seems like the odds of being hospitalized put on a respirator etc you know it's about one third that of delta so it looks sounds like omicron's a little less deadly than the original coronavirus and so far it appears that omicron is substantially less deadly than the delta variant of the coronavirus but you still wouldn't want to get it i just love watching planes take off man that's awesome right so i know people used to i heard a story about a woman who took a kid to a chicken pox party kid got chicken pox and died i think it's stupid if you like deliberately try to get an omicron because it could have long-term effects it could have deadly effects could have devastating effects so i've abstained from public gathering such as synagogue over over the past couple of weeks because the the omicron numbers are just huge here in south wales we're talking about 40 000 to 170 000 a day and it just seems in my social circle like everyone's getting it even in like regional australia people communities that have had no cases of coronavirus they're now getting it omicron and it's not inevitable that the next variant won't be more deadly so we have no idea if we're done with this or not so eventually it will mutate to be less deadly but meanwhile we could have more strains that are more deadly than anything we've seen yet so if you try to claim bob said you died from omicron you're officially a conspiracy theorist or you're betty white we have no idea why he died right he did he did have covid but he seemed to recover and apparently no drugs are alcohol look i failed to marry you or convert you to traditional catholases mate i feel like i failed now i have to see a therapist well omicron auto omicron burned me so hard so i'm trying to tread the the middle part so i don't automatically accept everything that the elites say and i don't automatically accept what the dissidents and the populace say i do find it interesting that so many of the what the lower brow versions of the alt-right like britney selna become anti-vax activists so the lower brow members of the alt-right became covid dissidents and the higher brow members generally speaking very broad generalization became quite co-worker just recovered said the worst thing was the loss of a sense of time wow tell me more about loss of time so at rigid Spencer and greg johnson both have very conventional perspectives on covid right but andrew fraser a complete dissident i would assume that kevin mcdonald has conventional views on covid i would assume that jarrod taylor is fairly conventional views on covid uh jf garry p is a dissident right he had that debate with greg johnson about covid and after it apparently greg used the the f a bop bop ot word and holy couldn't tell if it was morning or evening well that doesn't sound any fun like if i could avoid getting something like that that disoriented me from time i would certainly avoid it so for the first year of covid i severely restricted my socializing so i didn't do much in person socializing so it's the best of my knowledge i i never got any form of the coronavirus but i did like really restrict my life luckily i love to read and i love to stay home and immerse myself in books and articles and essays and academic papers but uh you know i paid a big price for that much social isolation over the course of a year luckily i have you so someone close to me said you know isn't life lonely i said no i don't find life lonely but i may be feeling myself like maybe i spent so much time online so much time blogging making videos because there is a loneliness in my soul that i try to slake through social media and making videos so you know maybe i'm just here sharing ideas oh so on jocovitch i don't have a really strong opinion i accept that at some point i'll get it i'll try to keep myself in good shape and eat right and mean ah but how much social distancing have you done glib why is the airport so empty because of coronavirus right a current basically can't fly into australia unless you're in australia there are very few exceptions so not much international travel into australia very highly limited but glib medley how much social isolating did you do like i did a substantial amount because i wanted to reduce my my chances of getting covid so i cut back on the socializing you know cut back on you know all sorts of events that my friends participated in because i didn't want to get it i love the smell of diesel or whatever airline fuel i love i love the smell of fuel in the morning my lifestyle is social distancing but i go to yoga classes and jabber maskless with immigrant shopkeepers but did you did you substantially increase your social distancing that's that's what i'm asking because i you know i significantly increased it why are japan's numbers so low and why are australias so high it's the difference between a loose society and a tight society so northeast asian societies tend to be tight meaning homogeneous they tend to to be very concerned with what other people think and so northeast asians even even in america they're far more likely to wear masks like before for any influenza they had a cold or the flu now walking down the street they would wear masks they just thought it was their social duty to reduce the odds of transmitting whatever they've got to other people so so the northeast asians japanese koreans and chinese are much more socially conformist they take much more care of how i don't go out of my way to hide says glib and i often get a maskless on the subway oh man jeff fuel smells so good i just associate it with traveling so yeah i guess i like drama you know i love travel i like new beginnings in australia they look down on sniffing kerosene so yeah i get part of my drama needs from traveling and from thinking of moving to a new country so so the japanese they're much more careful in their choices and they're much more considerate of others and they're much more conformist while individualist societies such as australia and america you know do their own thing much more and so they're much more vulnerable to covid i think airports are just awesome places i love the smell of airports i love the possibilities of airports i love flying i love travel i love possibilities i just love you can go to the airport and then in 10 12 15 hours you can be on the complete other side of the world freaking love that so in japan i think someone with the cold or a flu even before coronavirus was much more likely to go out and contaminate other people so like who drives more cautiously like asians or you know white people obviously asians the cliche is that they drive more cautiously well people don't help people drive reflects their whole personality people who drive more carefully they also are more careful in how they have sex they're more careful in you know how they walk along a cliff they're more careful in in their social media activities all right so people who are more careful there are certain groups more careful than others so groups that are more cautious they're going to have much lower rates of covid so it's ccela said that it's it's the upper class who are most vulnerable to covid because they fly around more they travel more they probably have more of a social life they go skiing you know they they sing you know with their church it's shut-in losers who probably less likely to get covid so a lot of the airport signs are in chinese i met a friend in a bookstore cafe had to share my passport half of our convo was maskless but then there was a new guard who told us to mask up mask the useless and humanizing says glib i think i have to disavow i mean i think wearing a mask is kind of common sense in an influenza and i think they're particularly important inside but we have to be honest the academic studies on the effectiveness of masks have not been particularly clear so there are a lot of studies on the effectiveness of masks and reducing transmission of influenza and the studies have not been definitive so people who are opposed to mask and point to that i think wearing a mask during an influenza but that's just common sense particularly inside so so yeah wearing a mask inside seems to be about 20 times more important than than wearing a mask outside but theoretically if you're outside around a lot of people now what about those black lives matter demonstrations where there are a lot of cases of covid from that when you walk into a restroom with a mask on you can still smell how bad it is so it doesn't really block anything it seems but what about when you sneeze like when you sneeze and you wear a mask it does seem to reduce the the transmission of fluids oh and there are many different types of masks so what is it n95 are the the more effective ones so there are different types of masks with different different degrees of restriction of transmission of particles from your breathing and from your mouth so masks reduce the viral load i'd be all about them so i would expect that masks do reduce viral load so i'm not an expert on that and anyway youtube does not permit anything that contradicts whr guidelines just seems like if it's in the air so i'm going to stop it from inhaling but maybe it reduces it doesn't make common sense that it would reduce the transmission when i see someone wearing a mask outside it immediately deduct 20 IQ points so i think it's virtue signaling often you know wearing a mask outside it's it's also it's kind of a communal signal that you know we're all in it together and that we're we're a person who takes this thing seriously so i can't anyway i'm on youtube i'm speaking on youtube but even if i wanted to i can't say anything critical about wearing masks so that is the context in which we're speaking so jokovic so i don't have a strong opinion like if you ever worn your mask while driving in a car no if i see someone driving alone wearing a mask i deduct 30 point yeah i see that and i question that but maybe it's like a mindset like i know at like various jobs i've had i would do some useless work because it would get me into the right mindset to do the things that i need to do so i remember i was once working as an assistant and i just basically insisted on scanning everything that came through and that way as long as i worked in that office nothing that i was in charge of i've ever went missing because i just scanned everything now some of what i was scanning wasn't necessary to scan but i needed to get into that habit of scanning scanning or the incoming correspondence so it could be that wearing a mask outside wearing a mask in your in your car it's it's practice it's preparation it's it's getting into the habit and it's showing you that you're on team mask but of course i can't speaking on youtube i can't say anything negative about mask so i'm in bivvy about jokovic she's the world's number one player so if if he tested positive for covid if the scientific evidence that that provides substantial immunity did you guys let novak play yet i'm not sure i haven't checked the latest news so i don't have a strong opinion either way so i wouldn't care if he was banned from the country and i wouldn't care if he was expelled and i wouldn't care if he was left here and and allowed to play so i see good arguments on both sides so i'm a terrible pundit i'm i'm just ambivalent about jokovic so if you expect everyone to get vaccinated to participate you know in public events which is kind of the norm in australia and america much of the industrialized world then why would you make an exception for jokovic so i like that argument although the other hand jokovic is the world's number one tennis player and he tested positive so does that mean he's less likely to transmit it supercross was in anaheim california last weekend no one had a mask full stadium yeah look writing the fence hard here yeah i haven't heard i haven't heard a strong argument either way on jokovic that that pulls me really strong to one side so i guess if i had to if you said you have to make a decision look you cannot sit on the fence then i would support expelling him because i believe you know vaccines provide substantial protection and so if you're making it you have to be vaccinated to participate in public life then yeah if you force me to come down with an opinion then i would say he has to go because you're trying to set a standard that to participate in public life you have to be vaccinated and so why would you then make an exception just because he's the world number one tennis player so if you force me to make an opinion then i would go hard for expelling give him the well it's too late to get the vaccine because the vaccine takes weeks to kick it in so do i feel qualified to be an aboriginal translator no but reconciliation between aborigines and and uh other australian seems to be you know more of a priority more of a thing now than ever before in australia it seems to have just been steadily building over the past 60 years so aborigines have increasing power they've increasing land rights they have increasing social cachet like even the conservative parties here in australia we're all about reconciliation so when i made a joke about aboriginals to my friend who's like center left said mate that's not on here that even the conservative parties here are all about reconciliation so i find reconciliation bogus because i mean we did take their land and we're not going to give it back we're not going to leave and there are all these like you walk around and there are these signs you know we acknowledge that the garangal people of the you know the ancient caretakers of this land like land acknowledgments are a much bigger thing in australian canada than they are in the us but they are coming to the us and they just ring bogus to me so there's a lot of reconciliation in the air will that actually do good for aborigines like black lives matter raking in billions of dollars novak is number one in the world maybe he knows some skills like ethics are domain specific so you can be great in tennis and it doesn't mean you're great in anything else you can be honest in how you do business that doesn't mean you're going to be honest with your kids or with your wife or with strangers right so ethics are domain specific skills are domain specific wisdom is domain specific so rabbi who knows a lot about the talmud doesn't necessarily know anything about history or mechanical engineering and someone who has a good eye for say purchasing art they don't necessarily have you know wisdom on racial reconciliation so skills ethics moral character domain specific like there is no true self because who we are varies depending on the circumstance so someone who's a great in tennis they may suck at typing right someone who's aggressive on the tennis court they might be an absolute wimp with their spouse or in say a face-to-face confrontation or a punch up so skills ethics morality so-called moral character or very much domain specific if it's number one status depends on his health and he chooses virus over backs yeah but you're setting a precedent how much is a flight from sydney to la so one way I think for about you can get one for about a thousand dollars right now and return you can get one for about 1200 I think you can get one from 800 to 1200 american dollars the street street flight from la to sydney is about 18 hours no it's 15 hours but the flight back from sydney to la straight flight no stop over is about three hours less because of the wind currents that's about 12 or 13 hours straight so I'm going to be taking off about 2 p.m on friday and arriving about 11 a.m ah so the Australian government will probably make an afternoon announcement so Scott Morrison the conservative prime minister spoke tough about uh jokovic so the government's kind of in a in a bind if they don't carry on with their tough stance then they'll look inconsistent so there's an election coming up so they want to look uh they want to look tough so yeah if I if I fly out of sydney it's a 12 30 p.m you know I'll arrive in las angeles at like 9 a.m on friday well you'd be when the shabbat hour arrives I will be going to my friends for a shabbat dinner I think but should I socially isolate from the flight and from the airport I'm thinking about that and I'm dying to get back to sure I'm dying to see my mates back in LA but maybe I should socially isolate and I've got quite a bit of anxiety now the Dallas Cowboys are only three point favorites listing the san francisco 49ers and the wild card round on sunday so it's the closest point spread of any wild card game it's the one most up in the air so being in australia is kind of diminished much my enthusiasm for american sports but hasn't it's only taken like 10 off my enthusiasm for the Dallas Cowboys so I've been watching a man in fall look forward do you clap when you enter u.s airspace if everyone around me is doing it they say NFL ratings are back up yeah the NFL ratings are the highest in about four years so I've been watching man in the arena what was the football game everyone was buzzing about last sunday honestly hi like oh yeah that was a great game I was following it on my phone just the play-by-play it was the sunday night game it was las vegas readers versus any ego charges and if either team one they'd get into the playoffs but if they tied both teams would get in the playoffs so the raiders were up by two touchdowns by 15 points with about five minutes left and just in her but this san Diego charges quarterback drove the charges to two touchdowns and a two-point conversion and he converted about four fourth downs and some like fourth and long like fourth and ten like routinely and some third and long he just played amazing I got into overtime both teams kicked a field goal then the raiders drove down at the end sports is time away from the rituals I don't know I love sports man I think it's great to be passionate about things to be excited about things obviously you can spend too much time with sports and it can you know distort your priorities so 1982 I almost skipped flying to my sister's wedding oh covering my ear so I don't hear spoilers yep Las Vegas versus San Diego you can find the highlights on youtube or nfl.com great great game and on chaos sports that's the australian sports live sports streaming app has over a million subscribers and you can watch a game for a week or two afterwards like you can watch the whole game I've been watching man in the arena really enjoyed the tom tom brady documentary series it's been airing on chaos sports they also have all of ESPN 30 for 30 so since I I've been here I read 21 things they don't tell you about capitalism by the South Korean economist it was a Kevin Michael grace book club book a few years ago and I never finished reading it so I finished reading it here then I read a biography of Vasily Grossman the Soviet Jewish novelist and I'm reading his cricket test 3 p.m. today oh that's the final ashes test in Tasmania I don't have there ever been an ashes test in Tasmania so I'm reading on the on the flight I'm going to read Vasily Grossman's novel Stalingrad about 10% of the way in it's an enormous book and I reread a book by David Stahel who's like the I think leading expert on Operation Barbarossa from the German perspective he's an Australian academic written about six books on Operation Barbarossa so I reread his book on Operation Barbarossa and I read volume one of Stephen Cokkin's mammoth Joseph Stalin biography and I'm into now reading part two of his Stalin biography re-reading them then I'm going to reread read Stalingrad the novel so that's my plan for my flight so it's going to be a day night test so if they're starting at 3 p.m. then you know they'll be playing into the night my tests typically go about seven hours so test match series runs five days about seven hours a day and I love watching planes take off and land bye bye