 In the States, UK and Canada, well, in Australia and New Zealand, in Western Europe, all of these places which people thought were pre-countries, individual rights, have been run roughshod over. And Zubi Udizeg, better known simply as Zubi, is a rapper, podcaster and author known for an engaging mix of personal uplift and political provocation that led to a highly publicized, temporary suspension from Twitter back in 2020. Born in England to parents of Nigerian descent and raised in Saudi Arabia, he now spends much of his time in the United States, where he criticizes identity politics on shows like the Joe Rogan Experience. He's built a massive following on social media and has just published a children's book designed to showcase the benefits of good nutrition, exercise and self-control. Earlier this year, Zubi spoke at a Mises Caucus event at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno, Nevada, where he said he was overjoyed to be, quote, talking about freedom, liberty and all of that good stuff, end quote. Reason caught up with Zubi at Freedom Fest, the July meeting of libertarians held annually in Las Vegas, where we discussed his experience of the pandemic in eight different countries, his defensive tweets mocking transgender athletes and his support of rights for trans people and why he's bullish on the future of individual responsibility and freedom. Zubi, thanks for talking to me. Let's start by talking about a new project. It's a book subscription for kids, brave books that you're working on. Tell us about that and what are you hoping to accomplish with? Yeah, sure. So Brave Books is a company that was founded in 2021 in Texas and they work with different authors to release new children's books every month with different themes. It's a conservative leaning company. Some of their books have been more on-the-nose, socio-politically, but not in a way that it kind of beats children over the head with it or anything like that. Although you could beat children over the head with the books. Potentially. I don't advocate for that. And I wrote and released a book with them called The Candy Calamity, which just came out recently. That one is totally apolitical. I actually told them specifically that I didn't want any political messaging in my book at all. It's on the subject near and dear to my heart, which is health, fitness, and taking care of your body. And is the calamity that they're eating too much candy or there's not enough candy? It's that they're eating too much candy to begin with and they run into an encounter where their lack of fitness and self-discipline has some bad results. And so they go back and they start eating better and they start exercising and training and they learn their lesson and they're able to face the challenge better the next time around. So it's a really fun book. It's about great illustrations. It all rhymes as a rapper. I had to make sure my first children's book was all rhyming. And it was a great opportunity to reach a different demographic. I have a lot of people asking like, oh, why did you write a kid's book? Or how did that come out? Are you a groomer? Is that what this is about? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Gosh, no, I'm joking. So, you know, I've got, I don't have children myself. Yeah, I've got nine nieces and nephews and I do, I'm going to have children in the future. And it is something I think about a lot in terms of raising that next generation. And I think that the message about health and fitness across society, I mean, for adults, it's necessary. And I think it's something that should be spoken out about a lot more in a real, open, honest, and informed way, especially considering the past two and a half years, which supposedly has been all about health. But there's been very little communication about health. And a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people just sat around getting fat. Exactly. And also stressed and anxious. Yeah, let's go from that, because one of your earlier, another thing that you were doing was a kind of work, I mean, to say it's a workout plan is wrong, but it was kind of a fitness program and book and system that you were selling. That is, you know, all about, I mean, what I find interesting from a libertarian point of view is that, you know, it's a, it's, you are an individual and you, you know, you need to take your, take ownership of your body and your mind through kinds of exercise, diet, and regimens. Talk a little bit about what that was and, you know, how you came to be focused on that kind of issue. Yeah, sure. So in 2019, I wrote a book called Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody. It was a completely independent release, sold over 10,000 copies of it now without it even being on Amazon, which has been way more successful than I anticipated. And it's really the book I wish someone gave me when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I started going to the gym about the basics and fundamentals you need to know about mindset and motivation, nutrition and training. That's how the book is split up. So whether someone is trying to build their muscle, get stronger, lose weight, even gain weight, burn fat, whatever your goal is in terms of your health and your physique, it shows you how to optimize your training and your nutrition and also your mindset to achieve that. So I'm big on, as you already alluded to, I'm really big on the concept of personal responsibility and accountability. It's something that was ingrained in me now that I think about it, certainly implicitly and I guess somewhat explicitly all throughout my childhood and throughout my life. It's kind of an ethos within my entire family. It's something that my parents definitely instilled in myself and in my siblings all through my time in school and then university. And with everything I've done now, I mean, at this point, I've been self-employed for 11 years. I've been, I went left my corporate job in 2011 to go pursue my music full-time and it's all been on me. I've really just been, you know, been a one-man army for the past 15, 16 years with everything that I've built and created. And I also want people to understand just how empowering it is. I think there are so many people who don't realize how much they can do. So many people think that, you know, it's great to have a team and I'm not saying I'm not against having a team or people having people who help them or anything like that. But I think the vast majority of people greatly underestimate what they themselves are capable of doing. And I mean this on every single level. I mean this physically. I mean it mentally. I mean in terms of the positive impact and change that they can make in the world and in their communities. I think that I love this idea of potential and I often think of what would, what would things look like if more people recognize their potential and took strides to maximize it. One thing about potential is you can never, you can never actually reach it. But if people thought, okay I have the capacity to do this. Maybe I'm only doing 30% of what I'm capable of. What if I push that up to 50%, 60%, 80% and strive towards that then I think that's how you really change the world. I think many, many people, especially in the modern western world, there's a lot of what I call performative activism or some people call slacktivism. There's a lot of, hey I'm going to put this hashtag in my bio and I'm going to shout this slogan and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to screen this. I'm going to, I'm going to be telling other people what to do all the time. Right. I'm going to, I know how to fix the system. I know how to fix that person, how to fix this. These are people who don't even oftentimes have their own life in order to any degree. So I think that you start with yourself. You start with yourself, you start at home. So very much my message throughout my music, my podcasting, my public speaking, my social media, the through line through it all is, hey look, you are, you've got, you've got the power yourself. Don't outsource it to the state or the government or this person or that person because the big things are going to make the biggest difference in your life and even those of others is what you're capable of doing. There's so much in this world we don't have control over, not directly. So let's talk a little bit about how this kind, does, you know, does this come out of your, your upbringing and your childhood? You're of Nigerian descent, right? But you were, you were born in England and then you grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia. That's right. You know, what were your parents doing and what was it like? Is Saudi Arabia a place, you know, particularly if you're in Englishmen of Nigerian descent growing up in Saudi Arabia, you know, is that like, yeah, I'm going to become a super individualist or I'm going to become a collectivist or is it something else going on altogether? Yeah, man. I mean, it's interesting because throughout my childhood I didn't think of stuff this way at all. And I know my background in upbringing is atypical, but for me it's just my life. So I don't really think about it that hard. What did your parents do? My dad's a medical doctor and my mom was a journalist. So we moved there. We moved to Saudi Arabia when I was just a baby. All my earliest memories are from Saudi Arabia. And I was actually in an international school there from kindergarten up until fifth grade. So one, people always get confused by my accent. One reason why I don't sound British and never have is because I actually went to an American school during those formative years of my life after that. And yet you can speak well and you can read. Yeah. Yeah. And then I went to boarding school in the UK for a while, you know, got when it talks with university and studied there. So I've had heavy exposure from the beginning to four really different cultures and ways of doing things. So being British by nationality, also being Nigerian, having Nigerian ancestry, going to an American school, being in that school system for a long period of time, and then of course living in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia. These are all really different countries in many different ways. And I was blessed to be able to meet and interact with such a range of people all my entire life. I mean, people like to talk a lot about diversity. It's a very popular buzzword these days. But my upbringing was really, truly diverse from the very beginning preschool onwards. I was surrounded by people of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, backgrounds, religions, just, just everything. So for me, that's always been the norm. That's actually one reason why I speak out against some of the divisive racial narratives that people are pushing in the USA or in the UK, or these ideas that you, our skin color is deeply important. And some people call it critical race theory, but there's all these ideas that are floating around. So is it that you think, I mean, among other things, when people start to say, okay, well, you know, you're black. So you are going to have certain experiences and you also need to have certain thoughts. That is what gets under you. It's hard to trigger me. And that's, that's one of my triggers when people come with that, like, I'm not the guy to do that with because you're going to get. Can I ask before we continue with that though, it's, you know, of the things that you mentioned, I'm kind of familiar with them. I'm curious what, particularly for people, and I guess this would have maybe been your parents or grandparents, but like of the Nigerian diaspora, or, you know, what if, you know, Americans are like, well, we're, you know, rugged self and, you know, we're rugged individualists or something like that. What is the, you know, what's the standard Nigerian narrative about like who, what is a Nigerian? Wow. Well, the first thing to recognize about Nigeria is one of the most diverse countries in the world. And a lot of people don't know this. There are over 500 languages in Nigeria. There's no such language as Nigerian. There's dozens, hundreds of different ethnic groups, different tribes, and so on, which all happened to some years ago. Someone drew a line and decided that this should all be a country. Right. Not someone. I mean, European. Yes. Yes. So Nigeria is truly diverse because you're talking about, yes, there's, I guess, some overarching Nigerian culture, but it's really specific. My family is Ibo. There's, you know, Halsa, Yoruba, there's many different tribes. But in terms of things that are somewhat consistent, I think a strong focus on family values. The south of Nigeria is predominantly Christian, whereas the north is predominantly Muslim. There's a lot of people of faith in the country. Education is a big one. Respect, especially respect for elders, is a much bigger focus there than it is, say, in Western society. And there's a lot of focus on, yeah, just hard work paying off. And that notion of personal responsibility. If you want to be successful, that comes from you. And Nigerians are one of those groups, at least in the West or in Europe and America that do extremely well. Wherever they show up, they're doing well. Overall. And a lot of that is, I mean, there's many, there's multiple reasons for that. There is a selection bias there in the Nigerians. Yeah, wealthier Nigerians who come over. Yes, they're more likely to be more highly educated and so on. But also it's part of it is recognizing the opportunity. I mean, even being from the UK, when I'm in the US, my mind is blown by the opportunities here. And one of the, if there's one thing I can recommend to, I say to all my American friends, American is to travel. Travel and see the world and see how people live in different places. And it will give you a whole different level of perspective and gratitude and appreciation, both for the world, but also for your own country. Because if someone is born and lives in the America their entire life, and they never really leave it or go outside of it, honestly, most people end up with a really skewed perspective of what the world is like. And you end up often undermining your own country and your own potential achievement because you don't recognize how special it is. As human beings, if we take something for granted, we often devalue it. Yeah, we devalue it. But the USA has many problems. Every country has its problems. But in terms of opportunity, in terms of equality under the law and genuine social tolerance and whatever background you're from, whether you're a man or a woman or whatever your skin color, your ancestry, whether you're straight, whether you're homosexual, whatever, you can thrive in this country, right? Yes, there is history and 100 years ago that statement would not have been so true. But you can't say that about everywhere in the world. And so that is one of the strongest points in the USA for sure, but across the West and in developed countries in general, just that level of opportunity. So that's why you do get many people who immigrate here and they crush it because it's like, oh my gosh, look at all these opportunities. There's so many places in the world. Do you think people on the left, well, you know, it's weird because there's a right-wing critique of America. But let's look at the left wing first, you know, where they say, no, America, there is no opportunity here. You are totally defined by your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your parents, your class that you're born into. Is it because they don't, you know, in a weird way because left progressives seem to be better educated, they seem to be more worldly, but is it because they really don't understand the exceptional nature of America? Well, man, that's a fantastic question. And I think it's multiple things. First of all, I don't think many of the people who espouse those views are as educated or as worldly as they really think that they are, let alone as open-minded as they think that they are. Bernie Sanders did travel to the Soviet Union on a Sunday, so he knows the world, right? But do you know one of the biggest differences I notice between, I don't like to use the terms of the left and the right, but generally one difference I notice say between people consider themselves progressive liberals or people who consider themselves more conservative or right leaning is what they compare things to. And a lot of people on the left tend to compare things to utopia, whereas more people on the right tend to compare things to history and to the rest of the world. So if you compare the USA to utopia, say someone asks the question, is the USA a racist country? Most people, right leaning, I imagine would say, no, no, it doesn't mean there's no racism. It doesn't mean that there wasn't severe racism in history, but right now in 2022, no, the USA is not a racist country because compared to what? Compared to history? Absolutely not. Compared to the rest of the world? No. Absolutely not. It's one of the most tolerant countries in the world. It's literally the most racially and ethnically diverse country in the world. So and people generally get on fine and there's not, there aren't major issues. There's no laws that are discriminatory against racism and so on and so forth. And if anything, I mean people are so sensitive to even potential racism here. Like there's been an overcorrection in fact, but many people on the left would say, yes, absolutely, America's one incredibly racist country because they're comparing to something that doesn't even exist and has never existed. They're comparing to a magical land where there is zero, zero bigotry, zero discriminations. And so, and you know, and there are pros and cons to those different types of worldviews. Right. The benefit of that, you know, the latter of course is you do always want to be striving to make things better in a society, but you have to be really careful with how you do that because oftentimes if you go too hard or too quickly or too aggressively or you don't really think through what it is that you're proposing, you can end up with the opposite effect. And I think this is what we're living through right now. I think for the past seven years or so, we've been in an overcorrection. I think we're in an overcorrection on race issues, on gender issues, on some aspects of socioeconomic issues. I think there was an overcorrection on the pandemic response, just everything, overcorrect, overcorrect, overcorrect. And when that happens. What do you think is driving that? You said it like over about the past seven years. Do you know what I think it is? And yeah, was there like a particular event or something? Do you know what I think it is? I think for the first time and the first place in all of human history, we've actually, essentially achieved very, very close to true equality under the law and social equality. This has never happened before. And it hasn't happened anywhere else besides a handful of Western countries. I think the very final law on the book that someone, regardless of someone's moral position on the issue, that someone could argue was discriminatory, was gay marriage. And I noticed that once that was legalized, that's when the left became unhinged. And I think it's because that was the final bear. If you think back to any previous decade, the role of progressives or liberals, it was always obvious. There was always a group that wasn't being treated fairly. Hey, these people are not allowed to vote. These people are, we have segregation. We have these people not being allowed this. We have this all sorts of discrimination with sexual minorities, people of different races and ethnicities, women, so on and so on. And just recently, it's like, oh, actually. So there's actual kind of legal equality. Yeah, we've achieved legal equality, even socially, even socially. Again, human beings are not perfect. But regardless of who you are, like, this is an incredibly tolerant country. So why would that, I like what you are saying, or it has the ring of truth. Okay. Why would that unhinge the left? Like, suddenly, everybody, you know, we've won. We've reached the promised land. Yeah, I think number one, I don't think people have realized it. And I think that you have millions of people who make, for some of them, especially people who are older, perhaps their entire lives, they've been, you know, progressive activists of sort. They've always been fighting for some type of cause or who they believe is marginalized and so on. You'll see at the same time, this is when that there was this, there's been this strange latching onto transgenderism. Ten years ago, no one was talking about transgenderism, let alone pushing things in the way. But they've decided this is their new civil rights thing. And in their blind efforts, and myopic efforts to force, they've actually started losing ground in many areas. They've started infringing upon other people, infringing upon women in this, infringing upon people's general freedom, people's freedom of speech, people's ability to, it's become a very cultish thing where people must fall in a certain line and have a certain belief system, or they want to punish you. And so I think a lot of it is from all this energy that people have had. And I think some people are wired to have a sort of activist type mentality and they want to have a battle. They want to have an enemy. It gives them meaning. It gives them purpose. They need to have that direction, something to orient them in something to fight against. And I think right now, that's just not, it's not, it's not necessary. It's not necessary. Or if there is a target, it's not being, it's not being chosen well. So there's so many people there where they want to fight for some cause. Do you think the right response to that are conservatives? Because right and left are a little bit vague. But you know, because right now in America, and this has been coming for 20 years plus, but a lot of people on the right, a lot of people in the Republican Party don't like difference. They, you know, they talk about, we, you know, we need a timeout from immigration because the types of people who are coming here are not traditional Americans, meaning, you know, they're not Irish and Italian and Jewish or they're not from Europe. Are they unhinged by, you know, a kind of new world where things are pretty wide open? I'll be honest. I don't think so. Yeah. Okay. I don't think that's true at all. I think that the right side of the aisle has become much more tolerant and open to that. If anything, the right has shifted somewhat more liberal. And what was liberal has just gone. So you're saying because a lot of people say the right is far more extreme, but then what explains thing, you know, like Donald Trump's ascendancy, you know, was very much predicated upon Mexicans, Mexican rapists, drug dealers and sick people coming through the border. You know, he, the way he phrased that comment was not particularly articulate. Yeah. But that's no one voted for, people didn't vote for Trump because of his comment on, they voted for him despite comments like that, not because of them. The notion that Trump rallied this hidden racism or white supremacy or something in the USA and rallied all these tens of millions, apparently, of horrible Americans who have been living next to everyone, apparently. It's BS narrative. It's complete nonsense. Honestly, I think people who claim that still have no idea why he won and had nothing to do with that. People tried to make the same claim in the UK, by the way, with Brexit. People tried to say the same thing that oh, it's because there was this hidden racism and xenophobia and people just hate him. What explained, you know, kind of the rise of Trump that in your mind because obviously, you know, and he squeaked into office, but, you know, it's amazing, you know, that the guy won and he did win the election. And, you know, there's multiple factors. There are certainly economic factors, just those standard. I mean, his campaign was, besides the bluster and his personality, it was a fairly standard, solid, conservative, Republican platform. So, a lot of the people who just like those policies will go towards that. I think, of course, there was also a socio-cultural element. And I think for, from about, I don't know, 2010 through to 2015, there had been this rising up of what people now consider wokeness or certain attacks on what people consider traditional American values. And I think many people were looking for someone to put a pause on that. I think also, if you're talking about Trump, you can't talk about the vacuum. You also have to talk about who his opponent was, Hillary Clinton, right? And she has, just like Donald Trump has many flaws and imperfections. So, does his opponent wasn't like, okay, there were- He didn't win. He won against a very specific- Yes, yes. It wasn't a vacuum. Similarly, if you're talking about Joe Biden's victory in the last election, I think it was largely a referendum on Trump. I don't think it was because people were super enthusiastic about Joe Biden. I think it was just, are there so many people who Trump has annoyed or rubbed the wrong way or just don't like him and his personality that they all vote? I think people voted against Trump rather than for Biden. So, I don't think you can look at these things really in a vacuum. You have to consider them. So, what has gone wrong? Because then we're looking at at least the past 10 years or so, where America has kind of gone pear shaped. Or it's just, nobody's voting for somebody, you're voting against the other. You're voting against whoever is in power because they're not delivering. Obama didn't deliver the hope and change. So, you get Trump. Trump didn't deliver. So, you get Biden. What's done off the rails? That's a good question. I think shared values. I think one of the tricky things with a country like the USA, and I don't know how much people think about this, but the diversity in itself, and when I say diversity, I don't just mean the superficial people having different skin colors. I mean, ideological diversity, religious diversity. Then, of course, you have racial, ethnic, national. This is a truly diverse country. It's also a massive country. It's huge, 340 million people or so. And it's hard to get people on the same page. A big question is, what do Americans have in common? I think we spent a lot of time saying, what is a man, what is a woman, but what is an American? What's the commonality? And I think, due to the history of the USA, and I've made this point before on Twitter, and actually, when I pointed out to Americans, they're often, they've never really thought of it this way, which is, there's a lot of labels here. Here, people say black American, white American, Latin American, Latino American, African American, Hispanic American. There's all these terms. In England, we say British. This person is British. If someone said, I'm African British, black, but he'd look at them like, what? That's such a weird thing to say. And so, in the media, in the lexicon, in everyday language, it's even more fragmented in the way people talk about things. And I can understand from history, why some of that exists. But it further serves to keep people in all of these little camps. And I think people do need shared values. People do need shared values in order to have a country and in order to have a culture. It doesn't mean everyone agrees on everything, or that there isn't a lot of diversity. But I think, and I don't know who this is a mission for, but I think the USA as a country needs to decide what all Americans have in common. What is it about the USA? What is it about being American that unites everyone? Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you're on the left, you're on the right, you're straight, you're gay, you're black, you're white, whatever. What is that commonality? And we've gone through, you know, at different phases, we had, you know, you believed in freedom. America was a nation of immigrants for about a century. That's how we talked about ourselves. We were for the, we were the free world versus communism. We, you know, but certainly over the past 30 or 40 years. It was also a Christian country. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And not that there was a state religion. No, no. Right. But it was, okay, just like Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country. Right. So with that can come some of its own challenges. Right. For sure. But it's kind of easier to govern because everyone's on the same page. You're all, you're all kind of following the same rule book and the same text that it goes back to. Whereas now you've still got the fumes of that, but you have people who are openly hostile to that, whoever think it's a bad thing. People don't even agree on the constitution. I see people many, again, many people on the left side of the aisle saying, is the constitution even a good idea? It was written by, you know, white men in hundreds of years ago, many on them. Audible. Nobody reads anymore anyway. Right. So nobody reads anymore. It should be unaudible. Yeah. Well, you're, you are rolling with the Mises Caucus within the Libertarian Party or, or. I didn't, I didn't event with them. I'm not explicitly part of it. They invited me to speak. Yeah. Let me ask, at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno recently, you spoke at a Mises Caucus event there. Can you tell me what, what's attractive about that or why you chose to speak there and kind of rehearse your comments to the audience? Sure. Largely because they invited me. And I, I'm happy to, I'm happy to speak to all different kinds of audiences. Right. If the democratic socialists of America invited me and wanted me to give a talk, I'll go and I will talk to you. I think, especially in light of the past two and a half years, liberty and freedom and base, very basic civil rights and individual rights have been run roughshod over in all of our countries in the States, UK and Canada. Well, in Australia and New Zealand and Western Europe, all of these places which people thought were free countries. A lot of that went out the window. I, I, I don't think in, I mean, certainly not in my lifetime, I've never experienced anything. Right. Never experienced anything like that. Where did you spend most of the pandemic for you? I went to eight countries during it. Oh yeah. Most of it, most of it in the UK, but I actually managed to travel quite a lot throughout it, which also gave me an interesting perspective because you really saw the global nature of everything that was going on. So I was talking about freedom and liberty quite a lot prior to, prior to any pandemic situation, but I think it just brought to light. It really brought home why, why this stuff is important, because oftentimes we talk about ideas and people know, you know, people have an idea of freedom of speech. Right. But how often do people really think of, okay, well, why, why is freedom of speech important? What are the, why, how and why may it be infringed upon? What happens if you don't happen? What is the danger of censorship? Like we have an idea that certain things are just good and bad, but it's like, okay, why, why is that something that is so bad? What, what is the answer to that during the pandemic? Spin that out a little bit. Why is, you know, freedom of speech? Yeah, why is freedom of speech particularly important in light of what we've gone through? I think first of all, because you need to be able to, that's how we sense make. That's how we make sense of things. If we're not able to speak and have conversations and debates and challenge ideas and have all these conversations, then how can we get to the truth? Right. There's nothing to orient ourselves. We don't have a compass, but if you can talk to other people and you can discuss ideas and someone can challenge your ideas and, you know, you have that whole discourse, then you get closer, hopefully, over time to what is actually correct. Right. If you stifle certain voices, if there's a scientist, if these three scientists are saying, you know, we think this, and there's a scientist, they're going, no, no, I think this. And you just say, okay, well, you shut up. We're just going to silence you. He could be the one who's correct. Right. He could be the one who's right. And this has happened many times throughout history and in the world of medicine. And then it just gets ossified. And then this now becomes the science or what people perceive as the truth. And it's actually incorrect. And then everything downstream from that, if you diagnose the wrong problem, if you go to a doctor and he thinks you've got disease X, when you actually have disease Y, he'll give you the wrong prescription and everything from there downstream could be harmful. I also think more broadly, there's only three ways you can solve any conflict. Number one is discussion, discussion, conversation, debate. Number two is separation, segregation, divorce. Number three is physical violence. That's all. So I'm a big fan of the first option. Right. I'm a huge fan of the first option. Because if you suppress it for too long or for too many people, either you need to just part ways, right? You could be talking about a friendship, a marriage, a relationship between two nations, any group dynamic. Either people have to separate and just say, look, I'll do me, you stay over there. We don't interact. And therefore, we don't have conflict. Or it's a fight. It's a war. It's a fist fight. And I would like to avoid that option in as many cases as possible. So by letting people talk, even though it can be uncomfortable, people can get offended, not everyone likes to have their ideas challenged, people don't like to change their minds and so on. But all of that, even though it's messy, free speech is a bit of a messy concept. Because sometimes people say things you don't like and you can hurt your feelings, but it's better. It's much better than the alternatives. In speaking of free speech, in 2019, you are an incredible power lifter. And your personal best is for a deadlift is 606 pounds. Okay, which I hope people understand what that means. The bar is bending significantly. But in 2019, you lifted like 530 pounds or something around there. That was the video that went viral. Yeah. And then you said that you had just set the women's, you know, the UK women's deadlifting record because you identified as women and that became a big kind of controversy and things like that because people thought you were making fun of transgender people. You ended up, I think you were kicked off of Twitter for a while? No, not for that. No, no, no, no, I had no repercussions from that. Okay, but what were you trying to do with that? And did that, you know, is that a, you know, that's free speech for sure? What were you hoping to spark? What kind of conversation out of that? Men and women are different, or sexually dimorphic species. We men and women are different. We have different physical capacities and different bodies. Men are physically stronger, faster, not an average tribe larger, so on. Yes, especially that once you get to a top level of any sort of sport, it's going to be all men at that level. And for again, for the past few years, there have been people pushing this idea that men and women are merely social constructs and anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman, anyone who identifies as a man is a man. And instead of doing what many people have been doing and are still doing and having these philosophical and biological debates as to why this is not correct, I thought, okay, I'm going to just take that and run with it. You said, you told me, wait, what's a woman? Anyone who identifies as a woman? Cool, I identify as a woman. Boom. There we go. Checkmate. So for someone who pushes this ideology, they really have two choices at this point. They can say that I'm not really a woman, which by their own argument is transphobic, right? That's what they've been saying to everyone else. So either that or I am a woman, and I am the British women's dental tracker holder. There's no other direction to go here. So I was just making a point using satire and using a video just to make a salient point in a funny way in a very non-aggressive way of here. This is why it's a silly idea. We have male and female sports. So it's really about sports because you're also a critic of biological men competing in women's sports. Under, should trans people or is there a larger harm that should be dealt with legally of people identifying as one gender or the other? Should transgender people be given full equality under the law? They already have it. So that's not what you're talking about. They've never not had it. When did they not have it? Well, there were times in the U.S. where if you presented as the other section, it could be arrested. There were laws against that into the 21st century. I assume this is back when white and black people can get married. Yeah, it's a little bit like more. I'm talking in recent years. So you would not say that you're transphobic? Of course not. I don't even believe it's a real word. I think every human being should have equal rights. I don't think anyone should be, I feel silly even saying this because it's so obvious. I don't think anyone should be mistreated or harmed or unfairly discriminated against or subject of violence because of anything. I don't care what that thing is. I'm against aggressive violence. So yeah, needless to say. Everyone's included in that category. I don't feel the need to say I support trans rights or I support women's rights or I support gay rights. I support human rights, period. Why has that position seems, why has that, it seems like that's become obscure, but that's a basic, certainly a libertarian perspective, but I think just a kind of basic human rights perspective. What's been muddying that? I think what's been muddying it is this obsession with identities and labels. And again, this is something that is honestly is predominantly pushed by people on the left side of the aisle, which is this obsession with splitting humanity into groups, white, black, brown, men, women, even though that ones, they're not really keen on the binary there anymore. LGBTQ, I can't even keep up with the acronym, right? I don't need to do any of that. And no one else does because I just support equality. Frida, I don't need to pander to one group or another group or say I'm an LGBT ally or I'm, it's just like, no, I'm not putting any rainbow flags up. I'm not putting any whatever hashtags. I support humanity. And so I think that's what's been muddying the waters with people feeling like they need to explicitly cater to this group and then this group and then this group and this group. Whereas actually, you could just say, hey, I support human rights. I support equality. I am against aggressive violence. I am against unfair discrimination. I am against people being insulted or harassed or badly treated. Again, based on anything, whether you could be hype based, right? Just how silly would it be if you came out? You know, I support the rights of blonde people or I support the rights of short people. Of course I do. You're human. Let me ask you a question because your world, like the empire that you've built for yourself, the audience you've built for yourself, is really enabled by the breakdown of kind of legacy media and the breakdown of kind of centralized institutions, whether it's book publishing or music labels. Your music is, I believe, all independent. You mentioned the exercise and fitness book that you didn't even go to Amazon, which itself creates a marketplace where hundreds of millions of books are sold, whereas before it was harder to break into publishing, really. And you're wearing Bitcoin socks and Bitcoin in particular, but crypto more broadly. These are incredible marvels that are about distributed information, distributed opportunity, decentralized power, barriers to entries get lower and lower. And it seems like that leads to, I want to ask you about attention. It leads to people being in more kind of fragmented niche cultures and niche economies and everything. And at the same time, it seems that the, which is all good. It's very liberating. It's been incredibly empowering for you. It has been for me and for reason and whatnot over the past 50 years for reason. But then you're also talking, and I think you're right, there's a crisis of kind of unified meaning. Is this, do we just need to come up with a different way of talking about stuff? Or do we have too much distributed freedom? Or do we, how do we solve this kind of puzzle? And you had a tweet storm recently, there's like 20 tweets that got what, millions of impressions on Twitter that kind of went through a lot of different things that you were talking about that seemed to kind of touch on this. But how do we square this circle of, we are freer than ever to be individual, but that also might make it harder for us to ever, to be a kind of community at the same time. Yeah. Do you know what I think? Do you know what I think people really need to do is act out what they claim to believe? So again, there are really some really popular buzzwords in the UK and USA right now, diversity, inclusion, equality, tolerance, kindness, all of these words. And oftentimes the people who like to use them don't embody them, right? They don't embody them. And this goes from the top, from the top, from the top down, from the media and politicians who oftentimes actually set an example, perhaps more than they even realize. And then just everyone, I simply try to, I mean, I don't try to, I just embody the things that I say and that I believe. And I wish that more would do that. I think that if you are a media outlet and you claim to be objective or you claim to be interested in the truth or you claim to be a pro-free speech, then be it. If you claim to be someone who supports diversity and who is tolerant and who loves humanity and is kind and so on, not just to people who agree with you on absolutely everything, really be that. Think of what tolerance means. Tolerance doesn't mean I just tolerate people or I can deal with people who have the exact same worldview or sociopolitical views as me or share my religion. It's like, no, I can get on with everyone. And even when we disagree, you know, I will still be civil to you. I will still be polite. I will still treat you with respect. I'll treat you as a human being. I will be decent to you. That's really what it means. But a lot of people deviate from this. And oftentimes they think it's okay because they create this straw man of the person, that other person being something bad. Right? Again, we saw this horribly in the past year with the demonization of people who didn't want to take the vaccine. Right? You saw families splitting up. You saw friend groups. You saw people advocating really awful things. Right? Oh, that person, you know, they have a different opinion on me, or they want to take a different action. So now it's okay. I've now got the green light to want to trample their rights or to treat them badly or to insult them or to attack. That's not cool. That's not okay. And we've seen this throughout history that it goes wrong. So that was one of the things that was most mind blowing to me where it was just like, Hey, if you're going to talk about tolerance and inclusion and being kind of, then do it. Let's be that. And I think if people could take that personal mission on, then actually, I think we'd all be better off. I think what people refer to as the culture war or the political polarization, it would become a lot less heated. It would bring the temperature down. Because right now the rhetoric's just been, I feel like over the past decade, the rhetoric's gotten increasingly nasty. And yeah, there have been leaders who haven't helped with this. One of my one of my biggest criticisms of Trump, as someone who generally liked most of his policies, would be that, you know, he's very petty and a lot of the rhetoric that came out of his mouth was not becoming of a president at the same time, nor was the media's right. So the media is there pushing this and he's pushing back against them. And you just have the temperature going up and up and up and up. And then people start modeling that and replicating it. And the next thing you know, you just have people at each other's throats far too much. And honestly, in the real world, things are mostly still pretty cool. You see a lot of this on social media, because people are disembodied. And it's much easier to straw man people. And it's much easier to make assumptions and to treat people badly when they're not sitting there in front of you, and you can't empathize with them, all of that. And that's just a new challenge. We've only really had that technology for about 15 years. So I think we're still in the baby stages of, okay, how do we have these online interactions in a decent and humane and civil way without just treating each other in horrible ways. And one of my one of my personal things I do my best to do online, and I'm not perfect at it. But I have a general code of conduct that I follow online. And one of them is to not say things that I wouldn't say in real life and not treat people in a way I wouldn't if they weren't there. Now sometimes it can be tempting because as I said, you can't see the person or someone says something is really nasty to you and you want to lash back out at them. And you have to it's a daily thing where you have to kind of recenter yourself and go away. Hang on. Let me not let me not be that guy. Let me not do what I'm criticizing other people in doing. Let me not try to add to the flames. Yes, I can say things that are sometimes polarizing or controversial or I dip into subjects which some people don't want to wait into. But I'm careful not to go after individuals. If I'm critical of something, I will criticize an idea. I won't criticize everyone who attack everyone who believes in that idea, let alone go after a specific individual. So that's generally how I try to operate. And I am aware that you know, I don't see myself as a role model per se, because it's kind of a weird thing. But there are millions of people who follow me now and know about me. So I also do try to model what I would like to see in other people. I'm not perfect at it. But I do my best on a daily basis not to just be out there just being a flamethrower and jacking up people's emotions and getting people angry at each other all the time. There's enough of that. Let's cool it down a little bit and we can have great discussions. We can have good debates. It can be, you know, you can debate things that are hard topics, but it can still be enjoyable. It can be completely polite. It can be civil. And even if people still leave with very different ideas, you can at least have empathy for the other person's position. So if you go into something thinking, oh, well, everyone who believes X is just stupid or as horrible or as nasty, and then you actually talk to someone and you go through all of the debates and you understand it and you build that common ground and you be like, okay, we don't see eye to eye on this, but I get, I at least understand where that person is coming from. All right. That's, I think a great note to end things on Zuby. Where's the best place for people to go to consume all things Zuby? Yeah, sure. If you go to ZubyMusic.com, you'll find links to everything. And on all social media, I'm the same handle at ZubyMusic, ZubyYMusic. If I'm you there. All right. Thanks so much for talking to me. Appreciate it. Thank you.