 What do you hear? So my family moved to California from Australia in May of 1977. And so there were about four months before school started. So I would occupy my time. My immediate thought was, where's the library? So I didn't know anyone, but I knew what to do with my time. I'd find the college library. So I hung out in the Pacific Union College Library in Angwin, California in the Napa Valley. And I'd just read about eight hours a day. So I was just turning 11 years of age, May 28, 1977. And I basically spent the next four months just reading mainly books in the Pacific Union College Library. I read a lot of books on Weimar, Germany, and on World War II. And then I went through back issues of Reader's Digest. And let's get my lighting out of the way here. So I'd read the back issues of Reader's Digest and Time Magazine, Life Magazine, Newsweek. And I remember I started school in the fall and there are adults who are concerned that I was not fitting in with kids my own age. So they said to me, I should read books for kids because I'd just been reading adult books and adult magazines, Time, Life, Newsweek, Reader's Digest. And so I went to the kids' library at the school at the Pacific Union College Elementary School, the kids' library, and I picked up books for kids and I picked up all these books on sports. So I read a book on Roger Storbach and I read a book on Tom Landry and these seemed like really good Christians. And so as a seventh-day Adventist Christian at the time and so I became interested in the Dallas Cowboys. And so learning about American sports was a way that I assimilated into American culture so much and I continued to read so much on American sports that adults would set aside time to talk with me about sports. Like they would say, you know, this kid knows more about sports than any other kid I know. And they'd like set aside an hour to talk to me about the upcoming NFL season. So this is after I've been in the United States for about three years. I could tell what to say that I know more about sports than any other kid that they know. And most of the things I knew about sports, I learned from books because we didn't have a TV until 1980. So I was watching very little television. If I did it was at a friend's home on occasion but I was reading a ton of books and I'd read Sports Illustrated Magazine. And so I became a Dallas Cowboys fan and in eighth grade I decided I wanted to become a journalist when I grow up. And I started working in high school. In my sophomore year in high school I started doing a weekly news report for K-High News. It's K-High K-Health News based in Auburn and Sacramento. And after high school I went back to Australia for a year and then came back to America and I started interning at K-High. And then one Saturday night I stayed up all night covering this Western state's 100 mile race. And I'd file updated reports throughout the night. So I just stayed up all night. And then the next morning there was breaking news about a murder. And so I stayed up and reported that. And then after that the radio station hired me. So I got paid for 16 hours a week at minimum wage. And the San Francisco 49ers would train at the community college I was attending. So the Sierra Community College in Rockland, California they would train there in the summer. So I started going down there covering the training camp. And then I would sometimes drive to Candlestick Park on Sundays to cover the 49ers games. And in December of 1985 I covered a San Francisco 49er versus Dallas Cowboys game. It was the last game of the season and the 49ers won. And after the game I stayed for the, went for Bill Walsh, he was a San Francisco 49ers coach. He gave a press conference, hung out for that. And then I went over to the Cowboys locker room, the visitors locker room. So I was walking down the hallway, there was Tom Landry in the hallway talking to journalists. And they're asking him about Skip Bayless's latest column. And Tom was saying, well, I haven't spoken to Skip Bayless in three years. And so I just stood there, I think with my mic and they're like two or three of us journalists around Tom Landry. And I realized I wasn't gonna get any sound bites that I could use for my Sacramento radio station. And I moved on to the Cowboys locker room. And I remember all the Cowboys defensive backfield, it's cornerbacks and safeties that were all shorter and seemed smaller than I was. But I got to interview Randy White and a lot of the Cowboys stars. But Tom Landry was a significant figure for me because one of the ways that I simulated to America was reading a book on Tom Landry. Books on Roger Storbach, books on the Dallas Cowboys and then started to watch their games. So he was a major emotional figure. But when I was standing next to him there in the hallway in interviewing him or at least the possibility of interviewing him, I don't remember if I asked him questions. My blood pressure was the same as it was for interviewing anyone. It wasn't, I wasn't all, ah, this is my hero because I was in reporter mode. So when you switch from fan mode to reporter mode, the emotions go away. So I interviewed Senator Alan Cranston, United States Senator from California. Venner White from Willa Fortune, Joe Montana, Steve Young, Roger Craig, Ronnie Lott, et cetera. When I'd interview these Larry Bird, Reggie Theos, when I'd interview these people, I was in reporter mode. So I wasn't all tingly in fanboy mode. So it's amazing what happens when you just simply switch modes. So I think one of the things that attracted me to journalism is that it was like an all-access ticket to life. I could just plunk myself down in the middle of what was happening and ask questions and become kind of a different character. Like my self-doubt went away. I felt at ease. I was willing to push and shove my way through a crowd of reporters to try to get the best soundbites, the best scoop. And you get to kind of step into a journalism persona where you feel like you have the right to ask anything President of the United States or Fortune 500 CEO or the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers. I remember San Francisco 49ers had won the Super Bowl in 1985, then the summer of 85, they're training in Rockland, California and I'm going to training camp. And then 49ers lose one of their early games, the New Orleans Saints, I think fourth game of the season. And as the Saints are running off the field, they let you down onto the field for the final two, three minutes of the game. So when there was a break in the action, we'd all pile in the elevators and then the reporters would rush down the elevators, they'd let us out on the field. So we're like standing on the field, like by the players, by the coaches. And the game looks completely different when you're standing there on the field. Like from a TV perspective, the game looks like chess. Players move here and here and here. But on the field, you can see like the human dimension, you can see the struggle and the blood and the guts and the tears and the human element. It doesn't look nearly as mechanical down on the field. So there are at least two occasions when I was down on Candlestick Park, the field for the final two, three minutes of the game. Then as the players are jogging off after the game, the one New Orleans Saints player yells, some kind of genius, because Bill Walsh had been given the reputation of genius, but the Saints had just knocked them off. And so in the locker room, Bill Walsh comes out and he says, ah, it's good to be among friends. And he's being sarcastic because you regard the San Francisco news media as a bunch of piranhas, just feasting on the, you know, whatever problems they could find with the team. And I remember I raised my hand on this 19-year-old kid and said, well, you know, one of the Saints players yelled out some kind of genius. Do you think that the pressure is getting to the 49ers and Bill Walsh said, well, I'm happy to match our record with anyone. So that's the cool thing about being in reporter mode, that you can go anywhere and you can ask anything. And that's a good thing with being a professional, whatever your profession is, if it's, you know, software developer or accountant or doctor or dentist or nurse, when you go into your professional mode, like your personal foyboards can just fall away. And the things that normally trip you up in your personal life, they don't when you're a professional. So I was standing there next to Tom Landry and it didn't emotionally shake me. Just like, I think there's a little bit of feeling, oh, isn't this cool? I just watched a documentary, The Football Life, it was on Tom Landry. It's really good. It's about 43 minutes long. It's on YouTube and it's got quite a few comments by Skip Bayless talking about Tom Landry playing a role as God's coach that on Sundays in Texas, people would go to church in the mornings and then go to a second religious service in the afternoon, meaning go see God's coach, Tom Landry coach. And Texas Stadium had a hole in the roof. And the story was, isn't so God can look down on his team and on his coach. So in the 1970s, in particular, America was going through a lot of moral, social, cultural changes. And Tom Landry, the Dallas Cowboys coach, was like a bulwark. He was like someone, he was the last cowboy to quote the title of a biography of Tom Landry. He was somebody that a lot of people looked up to and admired. And he used to, after his playing days as a defensive back, he wasn't very fast, but he watched a lot of films, so he knew where to be. And yeah, what's gonna happen with that contract? I have no idea. But Landry became a player coach at age 30, and then he became a four-time coach. So he would coach the defense of the New York Giants, Vince Lombardi would coach the offense. And I thought they were like classic cultural differences because Vince Lombardi was very emotionally demonstrative and Tom Landry was very cold and refined and restrained. And I think it was symbolic of Protestant versus Catholic differences. Generally speaking, Protestants of Northern European heritage tend to be much more emotionally repressed and restrained. And Jews and Middle Eastern peoples tend to be much more emotionally expressive. They vent more, they get angry, they share their emotions more. And Catholics are kind of in between. So Catholics kind of run the gamut. They can be cool and stoical, or they can be loud and emotional. So Vince Lombardi was much more loud and emotional. And Vince Lombardi connected emotionally much more with his players. Tom Landry very rarely connected emotionally with his players. So if you're among, generally speaking, if you're among Jews, Catholics, Protestants, you'll notice generally speaking, Jews complain the most. They give the most vent to their emotions. They get emotionally involved. They're the most volatile. And Protestants will be the least likely to complain. The most emotionally restrained and repressed, the most careful with their language. And part of it may be the religious culture. So Judaism is a religion of laws. So therefore, because there are all these actions that are prescribed, you can be much freer, talking about what's going on inside of you or what you're feeling. And Protestantism has very few laws. It's a religion of faith. And the way you demonstrate your faith is by your character and your words. So Protestants tend to be much more restrained. I think what's even more important than the religious culture is the DNA. Protestants traditionally come from individualist Northern Europe, where life is tough and cruel. And people tend to be much more restrained and engaged in a lot of planning. And Catholics tend much more to come from Southern Europe. So there's like a difference in monogamy as you go south in Europe. So in Northern Europe, most likely to be monogamous, one woman is more than a bloke can handle. And then as you go south, say, down towards France and Germany, you start getting a lot more adultery and promiscuity and you keep going south through sub-Saharan Africa and all bets are off. So Tom Landry, very restrained Protestant, did not generally connect emotionally with his players. But after the 1965 losing season, I think that was his sixth losing season as the Dallas Cowboys inaugural head coach. And he just broke down in tears and said, you know, I failed you. You guys have played well, I failed you. And the players saw his tears and for the first time, Landry made an emotional connection with his team. The next year they went out, they were 12 and two. They hosted the Green Bay Packers in the championship game and lost 34-27. And the next year they played the Packers again in the championship game. This was the ice bowl, they went to Green Bay. And I wonder if there are cultural differences here. So it came down to the final play of the game. I think the Cowboys were leading 17-14 and it was third down and one. I think there were about 50 seconds left and the Green Bay running backs couldn't get any traction. Okay, so it's about 15 degrees below zero. And so Bart Starr, the Packers quarterback and Vince Lombardi, the Packers coach, he signed on a quarterback sneak. And Landry saw that, he keeps yelling out, watch out for the sneak, watch out for Bart Starr keeper, watch out for the quarterback keeper. And Bob Lilly, the Cowboys defensive lineman, he's like digging into the turf so that he can gain leverage in the battle of the scrimmage. But Jethro Pugh, the defensive lineman next to him does not bother to dig into the turf with his feet to gain leverage. So because Pugh is too lazy to dig into the turf with his cleats to get leverage, Pugh just gets smashed away and Bart Starr goes straight in for the touchdown. And it about killed Dandy Don Meredith, the Cowboys quarterback. It was just so heartbreaking. He retired after the next year. He was only 31, but one, he didn't like working for Landry. He found Landry just kind of a plastic man. Landry wouldn't let him choose his own plays. He felt no warmth from Landry. And so Dandy Don Meredith gave up being Dallas Cowboys quarterback at age 31. He could have played for another six, seven years easily. But cause he did not care for Landry, he stepped away. But after the game, this is interesting. After the ice ball, it was one of the rare occasions when the media, when TV came into the losers locker room and Frank Gifford was, I think, a CBS broadcaster and he approached Don Meredith and the exhausted Don Meredith in this an emotion-shoked voice just expressed a lot of pride in his team play and said that in a figurative sense, he felt that Cowboys did not really lose the game because the effort expended was its own reward. The interview attracted considerable attention and Don Meredith's forthcoming and introspective responses played a key role in him landing a role with ABC's Monday Night Football Telecast three years later. So 1972 season rolls around and Tom Landry's system was just too complicated. And so Roger Storback finally convinces Tom Landry to dumb it down a little bit. So Tom Landry never won a Super Bowl without Roger Storback. He never even made it to a Super Bowl without Roger Storback. And starting off the 1972 season, Landry had this crazy idea of just running Don Meredith and Roger Storback in as quarterback on alternate plays till about five games in. Landry annoying Storback as he's starting quarterback and Storback would interpret Landry's system and he convinced Landry to dumb it down. And also when Landry was sending in a bad play, Storback would circumvent it. So by the late 70s, Landry is starting to lose his mental edge and you can almost pinpoint the game where the game passes Landry Byers. The Super Bowl in 1979, the Steelers win at 35 to 31 over the Cowboys. And the Steelers saw that the weakness of the Dallas Cowboys flex defense. So Landry developed this flex defense where they would, it was aimed to keep the middle linebacker free to make plays. So he would have the defensive ends would line up right at the line of scrimmage, but then he'd bring his tackles would be back a couple of steps to avoid allowing the center of the guard to just take them out so easily. So Landry's flex defense was designed to, especially to stop Vince Lombardi's very simple offense for close to no gain. The flex defense was designed to stop the run. But Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers, they saw you can throw on the flex defense on first ground. So Terry Bradshaw threw from his 200 yards just on first down against the Cowboys in that Super Bowl. So that was kind of the moment that the game was passing Tom by. So Landry developed all sorts of innovations, not just the flex defense. He develops the shotgun in circa 1975. He develops multiple set offenses. So he has the players constantly moving around. And then he has the linemen stand up just as he finally shifts the backs. So the linemen are standing up kind of blocking the defense's view as they're trying to respond to where the backfield is moving to. So Landry had a lot of innovations, but by about 1980, the game's catching up with him. And once Storback retires, Denny White, he's not able to get it done. Denny White takes the Cowboys to three straight NFC championship games, but he doesn't change Landry's place. So Landry's starting to lose it. So he's calling like slow developing plays when he's got the ball at the opponent's one yard line when normally you just want very quick plays to smash it into the end zone. And then he's calling very quick burst plays when he's at midfield. So he's Alzheimer's dementia is starting to kick in by the early 1980s. So by 1984, the first time in nine years, the Cowboys don't make the playoffs. Tech Shram, the Cowboys general manager wants to start easing Landry out, but Landry won't hear of it. So Landry stays on, we passed his prime. So 1985, the time that I covered the Cowboys at Candlestick Park, that was their last playoff season under Tom Landry. And so you can judge Landry's mental acuity by his team's success. So he won the Super Bowl played in 1978, lost the Super Bowl in 1979, then gets to three NFC championships and then final playoff appearance is in 1985. So curious what happened with my sports journalism career. So I wanted a career in journalism and I often thought about sports journalism, but once I actually started doing it for K-high, K-hill radio, I just found it really shallow. For example, I remember I was taking economics classes at college and I became interested in the oil crisis. And so I would go read these like giant books on the oil crisis and how oil prices, gas prices had gone up so dramatically in America in the 1970s. And then I'd go to work at the radio station on the weekends. And I remember there was this conference on third world debt. And so many oil rich countries in third world in the 1970s took out these huge loans from American banks such as Bank of America to invest in drilling for oil. And then oil crashed, if you may remember, in 1986. And so these countries could not pay off these loans. So we had this burgeoning third world loan crisis and I went to this conference where there were speakers from the United Nations, et cetera. And then I'd come back and I'd have to compress it all into like a five minute news report. And I'd read hundreds and hundreds of pages on these topics. But at most I got five minutes and they only played that report once because it was a local news station. They only wanted, you know, 50 second reports. They didn't want like a five minute report on the oil crisis. So I just became frustrated with how shallow journalism was. I by 1985, 86, it's like, no, I want to be an academic. I don't want to be a journalist. Like it was kind of fun covering professional sports but it just seemed so shallow and inconsequential. And even daily journalism, radio journalism just seemed shallow and inconsequential. I wanted to write these big, thick books. Like I wanted to delve into a world of ideas where I could go into things in greater depth, like on these shows. Like I can do three hours on a topic if, or more likely I'll do an hour on a topic, 35 different times to keep developing on an idea. So I was frustrated by the genre of journalism and how superficial it was. Also, when I got really sick for six years then as a result of that, sports just seemed incredibly trivial compared to deeper issues of culture, religion, morality, politics. So by 1986, I no longer wanted to be a journalist. No longer wanted to be a sports journalist. I just dallyed in it until the fall of 1987 when I walked away. And then yeah, I guess I came back to it to write on the porn industry. But when I wrote on the porn industry I could go into as much depth as I wanted. Like I wrote thousands and thousands of pages. Like I would do 25 page profiles of people and I could delve into issues just tangentially related to obscenity in the pornography industry. And so that freedom to go into as much depth as I wanted just thrilled me. And so, other, an author friend, he's published about six books through a prestigious press and he sought me out a few years ago because he just loved my interviews because I just do these long exhaustive interviews with porn stars but would go into great depth. So that's what I loved about blogging as opposed to journalism where you have to work within a particular genre. So I strongly recommend this production from NFL Films, a football live Tom Landry. It runs about 43 minutes. Ah, so in 1979, NFL Films was doing a season highlights of the Cowboys. They just lost the Super Bowl 35-31 to the Steelers. But NFL Films comes up with a moniker that the Dallas Cowboys are America's team because they were the most exciting team in football. And Tom Landry did not like it because it was just too, too showy. How hot, Vanna White was very hot. So this was just after she'd appeared naked in Playboy. But we had to interview her on a stage at this car dealership in Rockland. So there are hundreds of people around the stage and then we all got like five, 10 minutes to interview her but the whole public could get to hear the discussion. And Vanna White's PR reps told us that if we mentioned Playboy, that they'd immediately end the interview. So we did not. But yeah, she was pretty hot. So Brad Sham, the Dallas Cowboys Playboy playman, he said, Tom did not like the moniker America's team because to stand on a stage and scream look at me was not who he was. Okay, but it's an inherent part of the human being to wanna scream at times, hey, look at me to stand on a stage and scream, hey, look at me. God tells Abraham in the Bible, I will make your name great. I will make you famous. That's one of the promises that God gives to Abraham. So on the one hand, Tom Landry did not wanna stand on a stage and scream, look at me. But on the other hand, that's an inherent part of being human. So that is precisely what Tom Landry was doing with all these gadget plays. Like he'd have these tricky plays like that he'd run on kickoff returns and like he'd hand off to the halfback who would then toss it to the receiver on an end around and then the receiver would throw it back to the quarterback of Flea Flecker who would then throw the ball 50 yards downfield. So on the one hand, Tom Landry had this non-shewy, very Protestant, very self-contained attitude to not interested in standing on the stage and scream, look at me. But that's precisely what he was doing with all these gadget plays. He just wanted to show off how smart he was. Like he needed to let the world know how smart he was. So people could be, oh, you know, don't look at me, don't look at me, don't look at me. That's the rhetoric, but underneath the rhetoric is the reality that they're gonna do things that will scream, hey, look at me, look at me. Tex Shram introduced, he was the Cowboys general manager, introduced Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders with synchronized dance moves. So Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, as we know them today, really got started in 1972. And Tom Landry's reaction was that they were unwholesome. So the Tex Shram, so in 1977, he sits Tom Landry down and says, you think the Cowboys cheerleaders are unwholesome? Here, look at this. And he played Debbie does Dallas and after about two seconds, Tom turned around and walked out the door and Texas saying, this is why America regards as unwholesome. So Skip Bayless wrote a great biography of Tom Landry's called God's Coach. And he makes the distinction there's business Tom and Christian Tom. So during summer and fall, Tom Landry's all business. Then when the season over, he would turn into Christian Tom and he would go travel. He made 54 appearances with Billy Graham's preaching crusade. And he stayed on too long, right? He should have retired after 1984. But the 1985 team went 10 and six and was far more successful than expected, far more successful than its talent would suggest because the defense, Dennis Thurman, Thurman's thieves, the defensive backfield drew up all these innovative blitzers. And so they played way above their head. 1986 Cowboys start off the year six and two. They've got Herschel Walker. Denny White breaks his hand and Tech Shram had insisted on bringing in Paul Hackett as the offensive coordinator. And eventually Paul Hackett is going to be the next Dallas Cowboys head coach but Tom Landry gets jealous. So Hackett has introduced a particular type of passing scheme where you don't throw where the receiver is, you throw to where the receiver is expected to be. So you throw the ball, the receiver makes his cut and then the ball arrives. But when Denny White goes down, Scott Pallura comes in as the Cowboys quarterback. Landry seizes this as an opportunity to go back to his offense. And so he scraps Paul Hackett's innovations. So Paul Hackett had been brought in to be the Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator from 1986 to 88. But Landry sabotaged him even though it hurt the team's record. Like Landry's ego still got involved. He was a Christian and he was self-denying and he was a good Protestant and all that. His ego still got involved. He didn't want Paul Hackett's superior offensive system to take away the glory of what Tom Landry imagined his offensive system was. So by 1980, the NFL had passed Landry by and so he did not adjust with the times and Dallas Cowboys safety Charlie Waters came in and went off season and said, Tom, we need to switch to the three, four defense. Tom wouldn't listen to it. In that NFC championship game in January 1982 against the San Francisco 49ers, the 49ers just barely won 28-27 despite turning the ball over six times on that final drive. So 49ers have the ball at about their own 11 yard line with about four and a half minutes left in the game and only Stout and the defensive coordinator of the Cowboys sends out a prevent defense. And Charlie Waters, the safety says, no, no, no, we can't do that. We need to stick with our regular defense. And I think Stoutness says, well, you have to take responsibility with Landry if that happens and Charlie Waters was not willing to do that. So the Cowboys bring in their prevent defense. 49ers run the ball, run the ball down their throats, much the ball down the field, score the winning touchdown. And yeah, it was obviously a mistake to be in the prevent defense. So Tom Landry, like many athletes and coaches stayed beyond his prime. His ego got in his way. When Paul Hackett installed a superior offensive system, Landry had to sabotage it because it wasn't his. So he'd rather his team was less successful, but he felt like he was fully in charge. Also, he wasn't working that hard his last few years. Like he would, he'd quit work about five, six p.m. Everybody would and they'd all go home. Like the successful coaches, they would stay in work till 1 a.m., 2 a.m. Then they'd sleep in a car at the office. So Landry was really phoning it in the last three years. And it was definitely for the good of the Dallas Cowboys organization that he finally got fired. So his ego got in the way of his team's success and even his own best interests. Do I know the pornographer Al Goldstein? Yes, I know Al Goldstein. Yes, Ashie Bravo, I can see your messages. The late Al Goldstein, so I interviewed him once. And my interview with Al Goldstein, it is continually quoted all over the net. So just put in Luke Ford, Al Goldstein. So Al hated Christianity and he was quite a rebel and a very gross man, obese, vulgar. I remember Larry Flynn once signed a copy of his book to Dennis Prager. For some reason, Dennis Prager must have met Larry Flint. And Larry Flynn signed his book to Dennis, think pink. Think pink. Oh, Ashie, you just had three messages to lead it because you're talking about the over-representation of gay males in the sciences. Yeah, well, Google is heavily censoring chat. So there are all sorts of channels that are gonna start up with live streaming soon. So I think Odyssey is gonna be launching live streaming where we're gonna have censorship free chat and I'll be able to monetize it. And Rumble is launching live streaming. So I can't monetize D-Live. They start monetizing political streams after the January 6 Capitol Hill riots. But happy days are here again. George Gilder was right. He wrote a book in 2018, The Fall of Google, predicting that blockchain technology will provide avenues for more freedom of expression. We'll be able to get away from Google's censorship. The heavy hand of Google, well, we're fleeing the heavy hand of Google. So I'm sure it will soon be live streaming on Odyssey. Live streaming on Rumble, we'll be able to have censorship free chat, blockchain technology, which Odyssey is a beautiful site. So I've just started out my channel on Odyssey and LBRY.tv. And you can find the links in the video description. So Odyssey is O-D-Y-S-E-E dot com. I've got three channels on there. So we're gonna have good times ahead, censorship free chat ahead. And you can also monetize on Odyssey and on Trovo. And hopefully bring the monetization back to D-Live and on Rumble. Bye.