Hey there, River Rats! It's your host, Jeff Nesbitt, back for another episode of Ramble by the River. This week, we have a real treat for you. Our guest is Erik Svendsen, owner of North Jetty Brewing, and we had an amazing conversation that covered everything from beer brewing tricks to the majesty of toothed whales.

During the news and current events section, I talked about Elon Musk's father speaking up about the family emerald mine, the explosion of the SpaceX Starship rocket, and the recent gun-ban that was signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee this week in Washington State. It's always important to stay informed about what's going on in the world, and we've got you covered.

Now, onto the interview with Erik. We continued our conversation from last time, and it was even more fascinating than the first half. Erik shared his insights on leadership, authority, and benevolence, as well as his approach to taking risks and setting goals. We also talked about the amazing staff at North Jetty Brewing and the tricks of the brewing craft. And of course, we couldn't forget to discuss our mutual love of garage sales.

In the final segment, we tackled some deep questions about consciousness and matter, as well as how we determine morality. But don't worry, we kept things light-hearted with some jokes and puns along the way. We also explored the cultural significance of hip-hop, why Kendrick Lamar is so important, and whether or not we should allow kids to be celebrities.

Other topics to enjoy:

• Western Washington University vs Central Washington University rivalry
• State universities: why they were established and where it went wrong
• How did Jeffrey Epstein build friendships with top scientists and academics?
• Performance anxiety and public speaking
• How do we define creativity?
• Self-judgment: just write the bad song
• The power of habit
• Managing ADHD with novel experiences
• Escaping reality via disassociation
• What the Nazis taught us about food and stress in WWII
• Effects of stress on a developing fetus
• Communism, socialism, and Marxism

Music Credits:

• Skateboards and Sunsets, Rocket Jr.
• Frosty Tale, Ludvig Moulin.
• Fractured Paintings, Trevor Kowalski.
• Acai Bowl, Timothy Infinite.
• If you Only Would, Anna Landstrom.
• Dark Matter, Valter Novak.
• A Slow Tune For G, Franz Gordon.
• Luv, Bomul.
• Still Fly, Revel Day.

Erik's Links:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• North Jetty Brewing

Ramble by the River Links:

• RambleByTheRiver.com
• Patreon
• Facebook
• Instagram 
• Twitter
• Episode catalogue
• Business: ramblebytheriver@gmail.com

Copyright 2023 Ramble by the River LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[00:00:00] Jeff Nesbitt: Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of Ramble by the River. I'm your host, Jeff Nesbitt, and we've got a great show for you this week. Thank you for tuning in. It is Saturday, April 29th, an o Dominique 2023, and this is part two. Of smashing fears and slinging craft beers

[00:00:46] I mean, probably for you too. I don't think you've probably made a hundred podcasts.

[00:01:02] So let's get into the show. Huh.

[00:01:17] You can find the most recent episodes as well as links to our entire catalog at Ramble by the River dot com.

[00:01:39] I think that you're done paying. I don't wanna support Patreon anymore I don't like him

[00:01:47] So if you caught last week, you'll already know that

[00:00:00] Eric Svendsen: Well, you know, it is that whole idea. It's that the one thing that I've really tried to remove from myself is that, that fomo, that fear of missing out.

[00:00:11] Jeff Nesbitt: I think about that so much,

[00:00:14] Jeff Nesbitt: or not. Yeah. I think about fear of missing out. People talk about that. Like, oh, I'm, gonna, I can't go to the party and I'm gonna miss out.

[00:00:40] I could have, they could all be different. I could have this one a bunch of times. Who knows? I could have just one and then it'd be done. Who knows? Yeah. Do you have a favorite theory? No. That's the thing that bums me out is I grew, I grew up in a, in a situation that was very dogmatic. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, this is black and white.

[00:01:18] Yeah. And why can't I just look into it myself and, and then especially on something that's a spiritual matter. And then I realized like, oh, there's somebody who monopolized spirituality a long time ago. Yeah. And that then whoever taught me about this stuff was somebody who was taught by somebody else, who was taught by somebody else down of long chain that started with something very violent and ugly.

[00:01:41] Eric Svendsen: Well, and that's, you know, and that then that is the, you know, that's the positive mark for virtue ethics is that then it doesn't matter. You know, people ask me sometimes, well, you know, is there washed? Why the blood?

[00:01:53] Eric Svendsen: washed, cleaned by the blood.

[00:02:11] But it's fun to think about just, oh, it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting to think about, you know, and the different, uh, you know, the different metaphysics, the different ideas people come up with. But, but what I know, similar to what you said was, what I can do is I can, I can try to give my grandkids the best life I can give them.

[00:02:50] I'm doing Oh yeah. Kinda. I'm doing the brewery. That

[00:02:56] Eric Svendsen: those two things. But it's fun. It's, it's fun. It fills up my days, but I mean, I, I I guess I'm not starting a new business. I'm not starting a new endeavor.

[00:03:07] No,

[00:03:16] Jeff Nesbitt: know. Do you, do you feel like you've almost have to feel guilty because you like your life? Well,

[00:03:22] And I've tried to, and I've tried to get away from that. I've tried to just say, Hey, you know, this is, this is where I'm at and this is, you know, I, I can go take these walks and I'm just, I'm gonna feel good about it. And, and, and that's part of, I think that comes from coming up in those accounting firms.

[00:03:44] Jeff Nesbitt: and it's, and it's not necessarily a bad one or a good one. It can be either way.

[00:03:53] Yeah. It's, that's any, I mean, but

[00:04:10] Uh, when you are in a community that where everyone sees everything you do. Yeah. And there happens to be a lot of people who are in poverty or miserable on some level. Yeah. It like, kinda, it feels weird. And I can I that I, I, I came from Ocean Park and, you know, I was, I wasn't the poorest, but, uh, you know, we didn't have a whole lot of money.

[00:04:57] Eric Svendsen: Yeah. Do you ever feel that? Uh, you know, I, I, I could see that. I could see it. You know, for me it's, it's, it's probably for me, it's probably more that I, I feel like I should be there if my guys are there working, if my, you know, if my people up front, if, if it's my guys, my team, the people that work for North JD Brewing is they're there working.

[00:05:21] Jeff Nesbitt: you ever think they're thinking that?

[00:05:36] Exactly. And you have to say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna live my life. And some people may not like it, and some people will, and that's fine. Mm-hmm. Um, You know, and that's, and that's just kind of, I think that's part of, that's part of, that's the mastery

[00:05:52] Eric Svendsen: Yeah, exactly. It's getting comfortable with yourself.

[00:06:12] Mm-hmm. And backslide. I've lived my life as a fairly intense person.

[00:06:17] Jeff Nesbitt: great intention to hold though. Try. That's, that's what, that's what it means to have principle is just like, you're never gonna be perfect, but if you know what you're shooting for, you can at least know where you stand and like know when you're messing up.

[00:06:49] It's beautiful. You know, you, you could just, because you're, you're gonna, you know, you're not gonna, you're gonna just cuz you're not gonna hit the mark doesn't mean you don't try, you don't climb them out and you don't do the things.

[00:07:03] Yeah. Is like, just try to do something. Yeah.

[00:07:19] Um, a loose grip. It's a loose grip. Yeah. It's, it's, it's living with the, uh, and I can't remember the act, the act word. It's virtuo virtuosity, but it's living with sort of effortless virtuosity. It's, is it dharma? No, it wasn't Dhar. May, well, maybe it was, I, I'm, I don't do, I haven't followed tons of Eastern religion, but I, I've started kind of dipping my toe because I, I look, it might be dharma.

[00:08:08] Jeff Nesbitt: that's more that holding on loosely.

[00:08:13] Eric Svendsen: And that, and that's the big thing and that's, it's that, that's living fatalistically. It's not resigning yourself to the way things is. It's just saying, you know, if I can convince myself that I want things to be the way they are, I'll probably be happier.

[00:08:28] Jeff Nesbitt: Well we acknowledge the power that we have to change the present into cool future. Yeah. But at the same time, it's not that yet. We gotta be at least happy with what we got.

[00:08:50] But, you know, for me, I can make sure that treat people, try to have a good time at North Jetty best do my ability. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad people do your beer's good too. Thank you. I'm, I'm really happy with where our beer is right now. Our, um, I give a shout out to our head tie, our head Brewer Titus and our, uh, our assistant Brewer Casey.

[00:09:23] Jeff Nesbitt: Agni. Oh, Tricia Agni. Yeah, I remember her. Yeah.

[00:09:30] Jeff Nesbitt: good

[00:09:38] And, uh, we're doing a, uh, we're kind of really starting to get going on this bottle condition series. We did our first stt. We have a Flanders red coming out, and then we're doing another stout. So bottle condition is, rather than forest carbonating, we're actually putting yeast into the bottles and letting them them be naturally carbonated.

[00:10:16] We try to put on social media. I think we sat in one case down to Bridge and Tunnel and Astoria. Um,

[00:10:32] And then you, like, you take the risk and then Yeah. They just

[00:10:52] What's the worst that you're out? Everything falls apart. What's the worst case scenario? And, you know, and I'm, and I always, I, I factor that in. I look at it and I run it past my business partner Michelle, she's the president of North Jetty. She has a certain amount of veto power on things.

[00:11:08] Eric Svendsen: To help you out. And, and Michelle and I are very much like that kind of rocky idea of, you know, we have parts and we, we kind of fill the parts that are missing in the other person. She brings a lot of humanity to me. Um, but. She's also a very, she's also a very systems thinker. I'm a, um, I'm more of a linear thinker and she's more of a, well, I'm kind of 50,000 foot, I guess I kind of go back and forth, but it's just, I run it by her and we say, Hey, look, we're gonna try this and it may work out, may fall on her face, may work out great.

[00:12:01] You know, when, when you're, especially when you're home brewing and you're bottling a lot of beer, is you're taking it straight out the fermentation Car Boy, maybe after a dias rest and you're putting it into the bottles and you're just putting in some priming sugar. Cuz you already have yeast in solution.

[00:12:18] Jeff Nesbitt: I mean, these, these bean bustled pepper beans, they're like a prank beans, but I kind of like them. Are they hot? Yeah, I'm trying, there's a scale on the front. Oh.

[00:12:29] Jeff Nesbitt: I've had everything but the, but the, whatever, the Ghost Pepper, what's the last one?

[00:12:37] Eric Svendsen: delicious is the, how's the habanero Delicious? Is it hot though? Are they actually

[00:12:50] Yeah. Yeah. They've been doing it. I'm gonna start better than anybody else as long as I

[00:12:59] Jeff Nesbitt: Who, that's a hot one though. I got a sriracha and I thought it'd be mild cuz it's like low on the scale, but that's pretty good. I don't know how many scovilles that is, but jalapeno, that's hot.

[00:13:11] Eric Svendsen: Tastes like jalapeno. Tastes

[00:13:12] Eric Svendsen: cascade chips. It's got some heat though. Yeah. Um, so anyway, yeah, we, um, we, uh, I'll try a habanero maybe when we're done Yeah. Won't be able to talk. Um, and so the yeast is already in there, so you just have to add primary sugar.

[00:13:35] Jeff Nesbitt: when the, it's my diaphragm quiver. Mm-hmm.

[00:13:48] Did you talk to the yeast?

[00:13:52] Eric Svendsen: Oh, no, no, it's fine. Uh uh, I don't, does anybody, uh, you know, I wouldn't be surprised.

[00:14:03] Eric Svendsen: mean, it's got a couple billion of its friends around them. Yeah. They don't want

[00:14:07] Eric Svendsen: human bullshit.

[00:14:14] Jeff Nesbitt: our own, our own bodies. Like we're, we're more bacteria than we are, man.

[00:14:24] Barely. We're

[00:14:36] Eric Svendsen: But, uh, yeah. You know, the tightest goes in and counts 'em, you know, so we check how many are alive and how many are dead, you know, and, and uh, and those kind of things.

[00:15:03] You could taste the slurry and see how it's tasting. Um, but you know, it did methylene blue and all that. And then you go through and you count the lives, one of the dead ones, and you do a calculation. It tells you based on methylene blue. Is that a stain? Yeah. It stains the, so. If they're dead, they absorb the blue.

[00:15:37] You want a few dead ones in there, or no, dead ones aren't bad because, uh, I mean, they're not gonna do you a ton of good, but if you, uh, uh, if they're breaking down, because when they auto, there's, you know, when they, when they start breaking down, when they idolize, they, uh, they can releasee some bad, uh, chemical compounds, anaerobic stuff.

[00:16:04] Jeff Nesbitt: I've never had Vegemite. Yeah. Don't have Vegemite. Never

[00:16:12] I don't remember Marmite, I think they call it over there. What is it? It's dead Brewers yeast. Oh, well that sounds that they make a paste out of, and they season and they put it on bread. Ooh, that doesn't sound

[00:16:27] Eric Svendsen: awful. I mean, it depends on, uh, you know, I mean, it depends on where your head's

[00:16:32] I mean, looking at your shirt, it might be your people too. Where are you from?

[00:16:38] Jeff Nesbitt: Where is your, uh, genetic lineage? Like, uh, go back to Yeah. As far

[00:16:53] Uh, but you know, when I do, when I do mine, it's, uh, it's Denmark's, Sweden, Britain, uh, Ireland. Nice. You got

[00:17:04] Eric Svendsen: Oh yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing. And then, and then I do have some, uh, Hungarian. I believe it's, uh, Eastern European. Um, and then, um, some, uh, early, early East coast settlers, like Mayflower two.

[00:17:17] Jeff Nesbitt: You must have like no chronic disease, huh? Or I'm sorry if you do, but, uh, I've gout. Oh, gout. Not, is that a chronic disease? I don't

[00:17:45] We're robust people. Yeah. We're a dense people. I can't swim. I take a full breath and lay on the bottom of the pool.

[00:18:05] I'll just tell a quick story. I used to cheat on my swim testing when I was at rower. They make you do a swim test where you have to tread water for 10 minutes. You don't have a life jacket? No life jackets. I mean, they sprinkle a few out in the crowd just in case someone's drowning. Yeah. Um, but I wasn't gonna do that bullshit.

[00:18:22] Eric Svendsen: having an umbrella.

[00:18:35] Right. I should be able to do it, but swimming's real hard for me because I'm dense and I just sink right down. But our dock was chained to the ground and I found the chains. And I just stood on the chains and, you know, there you go. Act. Everyone else was like talking to each other. If, if I was to do that, I would be like drowning.

[00:18:54] Eric Svendsen: did a sprint triathlon once and I, uh, I almost drowned in the Deschutes River. And I remember, you know, when they, when they first started doing the fire, the, the little triathlon down here at Black Lake. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know which

[00:19:06] Eric Svendsen: 5k. Yeah. And I, uh, and I did that. Is that right?

[00:19:23] Jeff Nesbitt: another thing people weren't doing before. You guys were around swimming In Black Lake. In Black Lake. No, I've never seen anyone swim

[00:19:34] I swear it was like no shit. There was a massive fish in there and it looked like a carp. Like someone had dumped a coy or something. Oh, I hope it wasn't a carp.

[00:19:47] Eric Svendsen: All, I'm sorry, go ahead. This was a long time ago.

[00:19:53] Jeff Nesbitt: Oh yeah. By now. By now. Several times.

[00:19:57] Jeff Nesbitt: funny. And I did it perfectly appropriately, you know, grab another beer and safely. But, black Lake is always gonna have Brazilian elea and Eurasian water mill foil.

[00:20:13] Eric Svendsen: swans out here? Hell yeah. Really? The white

[00:20:24] Eric Svendsen: Huh. Interesting. I've never seen a swan out here.

[00:20:43] Eric Svendsen: I always tell people it's rare I go south of my house or north of the bank during the Oh, you're in a little, little bubble.

[00:20:52] Jeff Nesbitt: does it make you feel good to be in the bubble? Like, like when you leave the bubble, does it feel bad? Um, if you, if you don't really feel like, like, uh, I don't know. I'm just trying to think if I'm strange or if, cuz I fucking love driving around.

[00:21:08] Okay. Yeah, no, I drive around, you know, and, you know, kind of try to say hi to people, you know, I walk around that kinda thing. No, I, I, I, I go up and I, you know, I kind of make my round stuff like that more. It's just the, it's just traffic, you know, driving through town and those kind of things. Traffic

[00:21:22] Eric Svendsen: dealing with traffic.

[00:21:31] Jeff Nesbitt: oh, you're talking about rod run traffic.

[00:21:38] Jeff Nesbitt: 0 1 Oh no, you're totally right.

[00:21:41] Eric Svendsen: so fucking Memorial Day weekend, you know, and then, and then the tourists figure out the back roads and then everything falls apart. Well, they have ways,

[00:21:51] Eric Svendsen: back roads. Well, I tell you the worst is I don't wanna crap on tourists, but the worst is Memorial Day, man, because the, the, the, uh, what do they call the garage sales?

[00:22:09] Jeff Nesbitt: little good about garage sales. I, I tend to feel a deep hatred for them, but it's for several reasons. And I do see that they're, you know, people love them.

[00:22:25] Eric Svendsen: it's tough because, you know, you have all this stuff, you don't just wanna throw it away, you know? Yeah. But like,

[00:22:34] Eric Svendsen: My wife likes yard sailing. I go, I'm so sorry. I will, I'll walk to the neighbors. You know, we have a, we live, you know, right in the middle of Seaview, so it's like garage sale central.

[00:22:54] Yeah. That, that is true. Old. A bunch of just a table full of like really nice crystal vses

[00:23:03] Jeff Nesbitt: and the ladies dead. It's her daughters getting rid of it. Yeah.

[00:23:09] Michelle just brought home some kind of seed planter and I looked at it and I said there, there's no way. This is from anywhere newer than 1987, the

[00:23:20] Eric Svendsen: well, and just the colors. Yeah, the colors is like this kind of mustard yellow uhhuh, this kind of weird green.

[00:23:28] Jeff Nesbitt: Everything was the same colors. It's like that now. Um, the colors changed, so like slowly that we don't even realize it. But I wonder what the colors of this era will be. People are now talking about millennial gray. Teals

[00:23:42] Teal is big right now. Gray is big. That kind of,

[00:24:00] Eric Svendsen: a millennial.

[00:24:06] Jeff Nesbitt: That's what makes people hip is not, not expecting or people to care or, or thinking about it. I dig

[00:24:19] Jeff Nesbitt: I thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. The mountains were really fun. I love an excuse to do some art.

[00:24:28] Jeff Nesbitt: Oh yeah. That one. Uh, that was. A gift from a very

[00:24:37] I was like, ah, Michelle

[00:24:47] Eric Svendsen: was, yeah. It, which was surprising to me how, how hard she took it. But, uh, yeah, she seems fairly tough. She is, she is. Um, you know, but it, it's, um, you know, some, some things just bothered people more than other things, you know?

[00:25:02] Jeff Nesbitt: when it gets in a little, uh, an opening in your

[00:25:17] Yeah. I mean, I, we, we sent like a hundred or 500 of them to our different distributors and give them away and, and those joking with our daughter, it's like, you know, gonna be like 85 putting us in a home. It's like, well, we got one more box of Tin tackers. It's,

[00:25:35] Eric Svendsen: That's funny. But, uh, you know, I mean, at least they're cool.

[00:25:38] Jeff Nesbitt: they're really cool. Yeah. I, I'm really tempted to make a clock out of it for some reason. I think you

[00:25:50] Jeff Nesbitt: used to draw every single thing on that thing. That's why I love it.

[00:26:11] I, I, it's cuz I fuck like, it's just like a much better version of one of my doodles when I was in college. Harkens

[00:26:20] Jeff Nesbitt: Humboldt? Uh, for a year. I went to Humboldt and then Is that California? Yeah. No, Arcata. Yeah. That was fun. That was a great school. I bet it it's similar to like, I think an evergreen vibe.

[00:26:34] Jeff Nesbitt: Reid is close to, to Humboldt. They're not far apart. Yeah. Um, I remember Humboldt kind of looking down their nose at Reid, but Really? I think so. Yeah. Wow. But that's, you know, that's just

[00:26:52] Yeah, yeah. I know you went to Western, which

[00:26:59] Eric Svendsen: I think Western and Central are pretty similar size-wise.

[00:27:06] Eric Svendsen: quality. Well, you know, but you know, kind of go for your wheelhouse.

[00:27:19] Jeff Nesbitt: That's true. I'm not competitive about anything. I don't give a fuck. I just think that's fun. Oh yeah. I'm

[00:27:26] Fuck

[00:27:41] Eric Svendsen: That's mess. I always remember the George Carlin bit. He's always like, never trust anybody who went to a school that has like a direction in the name.

[00:27:58] Jeff Nesbitt: bars and the direction name schools are a specific group of schools. Like they made 'em for a reason. It's for, it was for us. It was for the middle class to get educated.

[00:28:15] Eric Svendsen: anymore. They're also supposed to be

[00:28:27] I don't know if they're still doing that, but they did when I went there. I, I liked it, but I, I hear a lot more people complaining about that than, than they used to. That that's more led by identity politics. And I hope it's not true. What do you mean by that? Well, that things, uh, like what gets funded is, you know, what bleeds leads, what gets funded is like the gender studies stuff and, and, and the current culture, the stuff that that's real popular is, uh, identity politics stuff that's like about, you know, the, the, that kind of stuff.

[00:28:58] Eric Svendsen: You know, the unfortunate part is people are gonna graduate degrees in gender identity studies and find out there's not a lot of jobs. I mean,

[00:29:15] It's just there's a, a thing where it's always been there, you know, you gotta follow the party line. Yeah. I

[00:29:37] About X, Y, and Z you know, that they're going into,

[00:29:54] Yeah. That's how, that's how he got his power. Is he, he, he, he met with scientists who like wanted to do something exciting and cool, and they're like, well, you know, I'm gonna talk to this Jeffrey Epstein character. He seems really to be, he's throwing money around. He's throwing money around. He's friends with Bill Gates.

[00:30:13] Eric Svendsen: island.

[00:30:15] Eric Svendsen: , we went to, uh, the Virgin Islands. We went to, uh, St. John and we took a catamaran trip over to the bvi and we What was his plane like?

[00:30:24] Eric Svendsen: plane, just his island.

[00:30:29] Jeff Nesbitt: I'm joking,

[00:30:35] that's

[00:30:39] Eric Svendsen: sorry. No, no, no, it's fine with me. Like I said, I'm Generation X. We don't, uh, we missed the, uh, I don't know.

[00:30:50] Jeff Nesbitt: I, I don't have it either. I, anytime somebody pushes it, I'm like, Ooh, shit. What? Life is exciting for a minute. I'm

[00:31:01] Jeff Nesbitt: there's a difference between trying to push the outrage button for, for, to ignite everybody in laughter and trying to push it to scare people and cause hate.

[00:31:09] Eric Svendsen: things. Yeah. You know, my, my whole thing is, is just like, you know, let's, let's just, let's have the conversation. If you wanna have the conversation, let's have the conversation. But I've never been a proponent of shutting down the debate. Me either. And, and ridiculous. No. And, and I will say that, you know, I, I think the, the far left and the far right, they both have their individual problems.

[00:31:46] Jeff Nesbitt: That's a quote somebody's gonna write down for you and somebody like, you's gonna say it on a podcast later.

[00:31:51] Eric Svendsen: not sure if I came up with it. It's a good one. But it's true. Is that it's, it's this kind of circular thing and, and the way that, and they both shut down freedom of speech and they shred him down for different reasons. But it still results in the net effect is we don't have the conversation and we don't share ideas and we don't get all these things down on the table and we ferment, uh, you know, feelings of hopelessness and frustration and aggression and all these things.

[00:32:33] Jeff Nesbitt: We gotta just inch our way towards the middle and no one has to go there all the way completely.

[00:32:53] Eric Svendsen: You know, it's, it's interesting.

[00:33:12] Because you don't have to fight against the things that people in on the periphery may have to fight against. And so, like the far left on the progressiveness, they have to fight for rights and fight for inclusion and fight for equity. And so maybe they don't ha And so I saw something once, it was from a, it was from an African American, a black guy, but he was saying it's like I don't have the privilege to be in.

[00:33:53] I have a, I I, I don't quite know how to come to the

[00:34:09] Eric Svendsen: I do. I remember one, I remember one time, like really one time when I really experienced paranoia and I remember how awful it felt.

[00:34:26] Jeff Nesbitt: exactly what triggers it for most people.

[00:34:36] Yeah. But at the same, it's a threat. Yeah. It's a threat. You know, lunch, a bunch of animals are looking at me. Let's get the hell outta here. Yeah. You know, and you gotta breathe through that.

[00:34:47] Eric Svendsen: hate it. Yeah. You know, I, I've learned to live with it and I can kind of bring it on to like, I just played St.

[00:35:09] That's part of like, when you, when you perform a lot, you kind of get used. You, you learn how to channel it and direct

[00:35:16] Eric Svendsen: practice, practice. But, you know, it's, um, nah, I forgot where I was going.

[00:35:26] Um, I love it actually. It feels great, but it's usually because. I can, I have stuff to say. Emotional expression and artistic expression are too closely related. Yeah. That it feels very vulnerable. Yeah. I, to do music or, or a performance of any kind. I, I even as a little kid, I remember just, even just doing a play.

[00:35:50] Eric Svendsen: a little bit, I've always considered myself a technician rather than a creative. Mm-hmm. And so as a technician, I can always sort of have this, I'm recreating someone else's creativity, and so there's maybe less of myself in it than there are in a lot of artists and performers.

[00:36:10] Jeff Nesbitt: lot to be said about that. And a lot of it is that that is what true creativity really is. You're taking what you know and, and shaping it into something through your perspective and your lens. Yeah. And that's, that's what cre creativity

[00:36:24] I've tried, they all sound like a 13 year old kid's diary.

[00:36:30] Eric Svendsen: are my songs.

[00:36:51] Well, there's, and how much of it is just like, how many songs are in somebody's computer or, you know, in a fucking eight track somewhere that no one ever heard. Yeah. And, and are, are just beautiful pieces of art and, and yeah. The person who made it thinks it was

[00:37:11] There's

[00:37:18] Eric Svendsen: opportunity this brings opportunity is such a big part of success and such a big part of fulfillment and that kind of thing. Is that, yeah, that's that opportunity. Um,

[00:37:32] So like, you get to choose, that's what the game is, is like knowing how to spend your time tokens. Well, and that's the thing. And your attention

[00:37:47] Jeff Nesbitt: your life.

[00:37:51] Eric Svendsen: alive. Everybody's like, well, I gotta make X amount of money. It's like, do you, do you how much? You know, cut. You have to, that's good questions to ask. You have to make some, you have to make some. But if you didn't need to keep up with everybody and watch everything that they're watching and get the bigger TV and get the better surround sound and get the better car, and get the better wheels, and get the better clam gun or whatever the, you gotta get, there's some good clam guns out there, good clam guns out there, but do they get clams better than the shovel or the busted piece of PVC pipe?

[00:38:29] Jeff Nesbitt: But, but you can use that as a blanket, just like, yeah, I can't do anything because of this. And then you can throw so many other things right on top of that and be like, that's the reason.

[00:38:41] Eric Svendsen: be because you, it's like, because you have the ability to change, to change your life. You are totally responsible for your life. And that's John Paul sart, and that's existentialism. That is, yes, we were thrust unbidden into this world, but we're here, but we're here. And so it's your responsibility to make the most out of it that you can.

[00:39:18] Jeff Nesbitt: No, no. And it would, you don't want 'em to, if they tried, you'd be like, fuck no, you

[00:39:27] Jeff Nesbitt: life. It doesn't, and they might not even want you to have the good life. They might want you to just work for them forever and not get paid very well.

[00:39:33] Eric Svendsen: Oh yeah. No, it might, yeah. We come by cynicism naturally in my,

[00:39:40] Eric Svendsen: corrupts, but that's true. It, it's, it's, you have to look at your life, decide what to change, decide what you don't like, and my wife, understand what you don't. My wife calls it jettison the beliefs that don't work for you anymore and adopt new ones and, and figure out, you know, where you want to go on those kind of things.

[00:40:16] Jeff Nesbitt: and those kind of things.

[00:40:46] Eric Svendsen: like walking, people say, it's like, what?

[00:40:57] Jeff Nesbitt: Do you watch TV because any amount of walking

[00:41:05] Okay, go walk. Exactly. Go walk. Because it's, unless it, unless it becomes important to you enough to give up something that you otherwise enjoy doing or you're just in the habit of doing.

[00:41:24] Eric Svendsen: You do 'em because you're used to doing 'em charities of habit, comfortable.

[00:41:47] It's like, how

[00:41:57] Eric Svendsen: I heard this great thing, and it kind of drives this point home where, um, you know, we're sophisticated enough animals that if we eat dinner at the same time every night, about 15 minutes before we typically eat dinner, uh, our body releases insulin about 15 minutes before we typically start eating because it knows food's coming.

[00:42:39] The rational function is in charge, not my body, not my stomach. And I can deny it. And the more I deny it, The wider my comfort zone becomes, because now my comfort zone isn't, I have to eat every time it's hungry. My comfort zone is I eat when I feel like it and if my body's hungry.

[00:43:00] Eric Svendsen: Well, and that grouch have a bite. Grouch, grouchiness. It'll be good that grouchiness is a tough one. And that, and that hang, you know that Michelle and I have done intermittent fasting now for about six

[00:43:11] Eric Svendsen: do that, well, it becomes a, again, it becomes a habit. Mm-hmm.

[00:43:18] Jeff Nesbitt: challenge every day you kind of feed off of the, the starvation.

[00:43:26] Jeff Nesbitt: that. Yeah. You think crystal clear? Yeah. It's really, I, it's like a

[00:43:32] I, I think it's, it's, it's, um, a lifestyle change that we made. And I I, I've never looked back from it. I'll do it the rest of my life. It's, uh, and that's that, that's that that ethos, you know, the characteristic, the habit and, and you have to do it to build a habit. It's not gonna be easy at first, but you have to stick

[00:43:52] I don't know that it, I mean, then it doesn't, it's never gotten that easy for me, even when I've established really good habits for years at a time. It has, I've always waited for it to get easy. It just doesn't. But that also could be, you know, the neuro divergence. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:09] It, it, uh,

[00:44:19] Eric Svendsen: fairly self-aware guy. I mean, why do you think it wouldn't become easy To a fault. To a fault? Yeah. So why do you think it's not easy after

[00:44:27] Well, I, I do think it's just because I, I have a brain who typically loves to just go, go off. Yeah. Like, um, I, I really get excited by new, new paths and, uh, most of them are completely mental. Just like a lot, a lot of it is just like thinking about new projects or ways that I could drastically improve my life with, uh, just by doing something really smart, like, uh, or a book I could read that has just like, changed the world and I could read that book and those kind of thoughts.

[00:45:08] Eric Svendsen: As almost like masturbatory almost.

[00:45:19] Yeah. I needed a whole lot of dopamine. I was like, I lived in my head. Yeah. And, uh, that's, that's disassociation. That's not a healthy life. Yeah. Uh, but it's, it's made it to where, you know, I do have a pretty rich inner world Yeah. That I can go to when I need it, and I don't live there anymore. So it's just kind of there.

[00:45:39] Jeff Nesbitt: of still live there, but not all the time. Yeah. Well you have

[00:45:53] There's always a point. And even like Marcus Aurelius says, you know,

[00:45:59] Eric Svendsen: going, you always have a place you can withdraw in your head to recharge, reboot, and then step back out into the world.

[00:46:19] Yeah. And not just two like decart thought, like the, the dualism Sure. Where it's just like we are a soul and a body and that's it. And, um, they're separate things, but it's, it's clearly not that either. But I really enjoy just the general human task of observing that process of the different Jeff Nemetz that pop out and when they pop out and the, the audacity of some of them, and like the, how I, the same person can be so withdrawn and in one situation and not in another.

[00:47:15] Yeah. And that, that's where the most genuine happiness actually is. And I think it's like that for anyone, no matter what your life is.

[00:47:31] Yeah. What causes these other people to pop out? When, when do I feel the most confident? When do I feel like I'm feeling a little reserved? And then investigating kind of what that is because again, our, our bodies with our different hormones and stress hormones, they're so good at cajoling us into doing what it is our body evolutionarily thinks we should be doing at that point.

[00:47:59] Eric Svendsen: and the subconscious. Yeah. It's, it's like the, you know, our consciousness is sort of developed to, in my, in my opinion, to sort of deal with the, the, the constraints of social living because, you know, we're an entity that takes a lot of inputs to raise, but we can't get 'em ourselves.

[00:48:35] I don't, I don't need that kind of, it it to be telling me all these people are looking at me. I gotta get ready to fight or flight. Creating that separation. Yeah. And so then it, so then it becomes that, that game of trying to get that higher function to over override it. But it's true. I mean, we are, we are so complex organi, we're such a complex organism with so many different inputs.

[00:49:19] Eric Svendsen: we haven't observed.

[00:49:25] Jeff Nesbitt: we don't, could we have observed it on ourselves if we were

[00:49:39] So, I mean, just gotta look 'em in the eye.

[00:49:43] Eric Svendsen: And there was a book I read once and it was, it was, it was pretty amusing. It was like, um, it was back from the sixties. I didn't get too into it, but it was like, I read like one of the series and it was a sci-fi book and it was basically like, there's three levels of intelligence in the, in the universe, right.

[00:50:15] They didn't kill anybody. They just wiped out all the technology cuz it was bad for the dolphins. Because the second level intelligence is the beaked whales or the toothed whales, you know, orcas and dolphins, and then men or, you know, humans and animals and trees are not considered intelligent. And so those were like the three levels of intelligence.

[00:50:44] Jeff Nesbitt: think I read, I'll say, I

[00:50:55] No, but he had this, he had this, no, I don't know. I'll look it up. But he had this whole thing where like everybody was naked all the time and they like, were like little perp little. He, he was really big on everybody, but he had this big nudist kind of concept. Mm-hmm. Like enough that very 60, 70. Yes.

[00:51:12] Jeff Nesbitt: okay. Enough of the nude

[00:51:16] Jeff Nesbitt: obscure. He's like talking about skin folds all the time. Exactly.

[00:51:25] Uhhuh. Exactly. You know, the daughter's arguing about having to like go to school naked cuz she wants, but my

[00:51:31] Eric Svendsen: in the sun. Yeah. It got, it got a little, it got a little that way. I was like, all right. I mean, cool story, cool idea, but uhhuh you lost, you lost the handle here. For me, that's

[00:51:52] And, and uh, or how much do you just like try to focus on the purity of the art form and how, you know, that balance? I mean that's what makes good artists, good artists. Yeah. But, um, how much that's visceralness nudest

[00:52:09] and there's some really

[00:52:12] Eric Svendsen: There is, you know, and, and there is, and that's why this,

[00:52:19] Eric Svendsen: all of it. What, what, what is your, what is your, uh, what is your medium?

[00:52:29] Mostly turkeys. Yeah. Um, uh, I, I do a mean hand. What did you do? These mountains? I did do the mountains. They're impressive. . Um, that's

[00:52:46] Jeff Nesbitt: bald at one point? No, I made,

[00:52:50] Jeff Nesbitt: friend Kelsey made that for me with Dream Suite designs.

[00:52:54] Eric Svendsen: Very nice. Yeah. It's, it's nice. Very clean lines and all that kind of thing. Thank you. It matches your, your

[00:53:03] Eric Svendsen: you, do you just like hang out up here?

[00:53:11] And a job and, you know, demanding wife. 14, 12, and five. Oh, you're

[00:53:25] Jeff Nesbitt: yeah, it's, it's a lot of work, but it's, uh, it's, I know again, it's like I have a pretty zoomed out perspective.

[00:53:55] So it's my choice, you know?

[00:54:06] Jeff Nesbitt: uh, it's just so fucking easy to be sad and, and yeah. Discouraged. Why bother? Like leaning into our natural tendency to do so, which some people.

[00:54:37] Eric Svendsen: Right, right. And I, you know, and, and that's, that's a good point. That's a good point. And I think it's like, you know, it's not letting that pragmatism run away with you. Yeah.

[00:54:50] Eric Svendsen: It's that second level desires, you know, it's that I, you know, I want the ice cream, but I wish I didn't want the ice cream.

[00:54:59] Jeff Nesbitt: Watching that whole process of watching the creature that wants the ice cream, that knows it wants the ice cream. Yeah. That's what we should be doing. Yeah. That's fun. Like, we can all do that. Why don't people do that? Right. I l I love doing that. Like talking about like really on an honest level, how weird we all are.

[00:55:20] Eric Svendsen: it's, it's, you know, the, the, your, your body evolutionarily speaking is like, Hey, look at this. These are free, simple carbohydrates I usually can't find. Simple carbohydrates, heat, eat all of this that you can right now because I'm gonna storm away for later.

[00:55:47] Jeff Nesbitt: it, I'm gonna pull back on the dopamine. Not even just a little bit lower than you were before you had the sugar.

[00:55:53] Eric Svendsen: you go get more. Yeah. Sugar's my thing man. I, I don't, you know, I, I I don't drink a ton cuz of the gout and stuff like that. I'm on the medication, but it's like, mostly it's health and stuff like that. But what's

[00:56:06] Eric Svendsen: bit.

[00:56:36] It's like, you want more simple sugar because your body loves simple. And especially if you have, it's so good. I just read a thing and I, and I wanna talk to my mom about it because what I read or I didn't read, I listened to it, is that it counts. Yeah. So it's this idea. If it's a book, it counts. It's a, uh, it was a, it's a lecture series.

[00:56:56] Eric Svendsen: So it's like a professor's, you know, lecture series kind of thing. Yeah. Great.

[00:56:59] Eric Svendsen: I'd say it counts. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, he's a doctor of

[00:57:08] I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Yeah, keep going. No, no,

[00:57:31] And it was this one winter of like 1941 where, or is 44 because it was like the Nazis were losing and their supply lines were cut off. And so what they did is they just took all the populations food, right? For the Army. And so what you had is you had this one very specific time period with this one specific population that went from very, very healthy first world western European, uh, dietary habits to this super restrictive starvation level, dietary habit for this one winter.

[00:58:33] And what they found was these mothers who got a very restricted diet, these fetuses are saying, okay, I'm entering into this world where there's not a lot of nutrition, so I need to create for myself a metabolism that is thrifty. It uses little, and it stores all that it can in which you have as obesity.

[00:59:12] But. So non-genetic hereditary because of the circumstances of the mother during pregnancy. And then what you have is this fetus that then if it, uh, grows to maturity in it and it re and it, and it has children of its own, this, this woman then has children. Then it passes along that. And so now you have two or three generations of, uh, high insulin levels, adult onset diabetes, obesity, short fat, these kind of things, short fat people generation for generations.

[00:59:51] Jeff Nesbitt: they count as epigenetics. I,

[00:59:54] Jeff Nesbitt: the terminology. I mean, I don't know what it means. Epigenetics is like when environmental factors affect the switching on and off of genes.

[01:00:19] Jeff Nesbitt: I don't, I've heard that, I've heard that study before and, um, or those

[01:00:24] They found these anxiety hormones where if your mother is very stressed out during pregnancy, especially in the third trimester, uh, these fetuses, they don't turn off the anxiety produc. Even if the, what was causing the anxiety, the production of anxiety hormones in the chi in the person once they're born, the function that turns off that anxiety producing hormones gets.

[01:00:54] Eric Svendsen: off button. Nah. Yeah. We're in a stressful environment. Yeah. Keeping coming. Yeah.

[01:01:04] Eric Svendsen: No, it's not. And it's not something that then, you know, really kind is, it's not something that we need in modern society. It's not something that we need with our modern experience.

[01:01:16] Eric Svendsen: Now it's a lot of people that are anxious

[01:01:18] Yeah. It's giving people agoraphobia and things like that. Obsessive convulsive

[01:01:33] It's just that, that, that sort of, um, static kind of, um, I don't know. Worry.

[01:01:52] We like figured it out and changed something about the wifi and it went away. And everyone's like, oh shit. I've, I feel so much better. When is there studies that says it's wifi? No, I don't think so. I'm just spitballing here. But it's like, like when everyone learned, started drinking water in the nineties, it was like, oh wow.

[01:02:07] Eric Svendsen: Yeah. Water's good for you. Yeah. I mean, I, it could be, it could be absolutely. Something environmental that's causing this much more anxiety and this kind of thing. I

[01:02:28] Eric Svendsen: Well, absolutely. You know, we're, we're, we're not, we're not, we didn't probably evolve to live exactly the way we're. You know, no,

[01:02:44] Eric Svendsen: Evolution is a totally random, you know, here's a, here's a genetic mutation, and it either increases your chances of survival or not even survival.

[01:02:58] Jeff Nesbitt: That's a very, uh, like systematic way to look at it, but it's, it

[01:03:09] Jeff Nesbitt: sample.

[01:03:13] Eric Svendsen: like. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. People are very concerned. Like, what? I'm

[01:03:18] Eric Svendsen: like to think the universe is skewed in their favor and it's unfortunately

[01:03:25] Well

[01:03:34] Jeff Nesbitt: You get out there and shine buddy.

[01:03:49] And now, you know, these plants that were yellow, now, they pop bright glowing and it leads them to 'em better. Well that bird's gonna have a better chance at surviving and raving young and passing along. That's just a random genetic mutation because that same bird could have had a genetic mutation that makes its eyesight less responsive to ultraviolet light and it's gonna have a harder time finding food.

[01:04:24] Jeff Nesbitt: but it's not, it's not so much built to survive in it as much as like that bird, it's selected I know, but as much as that bird couldn't see as well, an ultraviolet as well as that other mutant bird. but I better figure something else out. And so it, it was like those plants they look similar. I'm gonna try it, and it's got some kind of special property that makes that bird accelerate in their development?

[01:04:52] Eric Svendsen: It's, it's totally random. You know how it kind of comes in and

[01:04:58] Yeah. But I mean, the other day I had an AI tell me that consciousness is an emergent property of matter. And with enough time to develop, uh, sufficient complexity, it will emerge. And that's what happened with us. And that's what's now happening with AI

[01:05:15] Jeff Nesbitt: Say that again. It's an emergent property of matter and it just takes enough time to develop enough sufficient complexity for it to emerge basically like the, all the parts of one conscious being working together long enough will align enough times to develop enough benefits to their reproductive health to condense into a being that is powerful enough in its thought powers.

[01:05:46] Eric Svendsen: there needs to be, there has to be a reason. Not a reason. There has to be some benefit to consciousness in the environment probably to keep on selecting for it. I think

[01:06:02] That's what I, I don't think evolution's done at all. I think consciousness is just continuously improving. Yeah. And we are just one iteration of that. But I, I, that's what it is. It's, that's what the whole evolutionary process is. Probably just consciousness is evolution through matter and hopefully we're not the last bit of matter that before it jumps

[01:06:21] Well, I don't think we're the, you know, we're not the end of history. Well, by, not by any means we're, we're sitting, we're kind of just sort of sitting.

[01:06:36] Eric Svendsen: guess it. Robot depends. Well, I, I guess then to defined

[01:06:40] That's, that's where we get really getting into. But we're, we're over three hours now. Oh yeah. I don't want, I don't want to tax it. Oh, I would, I mean, I would love to honestly, but the, that's my favorite question ever cuz most people don't wanna talk about it. But it's, it's really fun.

[01:06:55] Consciousness is just being self-aware as being awake and aware of your surroundings.

[01:07:09] Eric Svendsen: that's true. That's true.

[01:07:13] Eric Svendsen: tree hugger.

[01:07:18] Jeff Nesbitt: about, they're fully aware of their surroundings. Absolutely. Surroundings. Absolutely. And they actually, they do manipulate their environment. They communicate with their peers. They do a lot of stuff. They share resources between one another.

[01:07:28] Eric Svendsen: perfectly adapted for their environment. Just like. Every other creature who's survived the billions of years of evolution to get to where they are now, they're adapted well to their environment. So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting que, I mean, we'll have to do this again

[01:07:41] That'd be a great way to look at what's the best kind of consciousness is how well is it adapted to its environment. Yeah. Because

[01:07:52] Jeff Nesbitt: No, go, go for it, man. Is um, I'm at my house. As long as you can stay and talk about consciousness, I will

[01:07:59] Is that, you know, somewhere along the way, and this is just kind of my thought and I haven't, and and you make a good point, you know, where do you cut off consciousness? Is, is that we have first level desires as animals. You know, we talked about, so let's say I desire to, you know, eat this food right now, somewhere along the way.

[01:08:26] Jeff Nesbitt: which is a pretty distinctive thing for they're

[01:08:44] And those second level desires. Because we're such a complex entity and because we are born very prematurely, you know, we're born because our heads are, brains are so big to fit through the birth canal. We have to be born very prematurely. And so it takes a lot of years to bring us to adulthood more. And that's also, you know, why you have, uh, a pair of bonding and, you know, the, this kind of a need for a family structure and a village structure to help raise these kids.

[01:09:43] And this starts being based on these pressures of social life. To raise these very complex animals to adulthood, it requires being able to check your desires. That

[01:10:04] Are they gonna implicitly know? Is that just gonna emerge one day that they're gonna be like, oh yeah, it's actually for the benefit of all if I'm to, you know, sometimes put my desires last and put the needs of

[01:10:22] Mm-hmm. You know, I, I, I think you do, I think is part of this. So you know, what you say is their objective right or wrong, you know, that's constant day ontological argument. Is there an objective right or wrong? Is there truth value to any statement of a moral right or wrong? And then someone like David Hume says, no, it's not.

[01:11:07] And so I think some of these things about, yeah, yeah, survival are deontological Now I don't think there are, in a cosmic sense, I don't think there's any objective right or wrong, but to our survival as evolved beings then yes, I think there are. But I think that probably the more the truth is, is it's probably just kind of a statement of opinion.

[01:11:30] Jeff Nesbitt: well, that's a lot. I think I got most of it, but yeah, no, I, I think, but that's the

[01:11:40] Jeff Nesbitt: it, and most of the time, how much does it matter if it's beyond that actual situation where it applies?

[01:12:04] And it's, I think that's a dangerous path. Some of the

[01:12:18] Jeff Nesbitt: I love that. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's practice what you

[01:12:22] And it, and it's, and and, and it works out really well. But then someone can come along and say, okay, but that's just sort of formalism because what if I think which is great is stealing everybody's property. And I don't mind if everybody steals from everybody. And so that's anarchy. It's

[01:12:36] Eric Svendsen: truly anarchy.

[01:12:38] Jeff Nesbitt: people can kind of, sorry, anarchists, I don't mean that

[01:12:55] Jeff Nesbitt: you can, you can mess up anything good.

[01:13:18] Yeah, sure. So it's saying that because a person is a member of our cosmos of humanity, they have dreams and desires. They have a sort of ingrained humanity and a right to liberty and happi happiness in the pursuit of whatever they consider happiness and justice and all these things is that as members of the human cosmo opolis, we should not have the right to use them as a means to our end.

[01:13:58] Jeff Nesbitt: basically, so they're not having an exploitative mindset,

[01:14:01] Yeah. It's saying we're in this together, we're gonna work together. So that was con's kind of, kind of, um, kind of take on it.

[01:14:19] Eric Svendsen: No con had family money. You don't have to be a capitalist.

[01:14:23] Jeff Nesbitt: had family money or none at all. Like it seems like it was either one or the other. Well, you know, you can only, they weren't thinking about

[01:14:37] Jeff Nesbitt: otherwise no one listens.

[01:14:55] The first time you read Marks,

[01:14:58] Eric Svendsen: And it does, you know, and, and if you're around 20, you know, and, and unfortunately it just sort of seems dangerous as fuck when you collapsed under the weight of contradictions, you know? Yeah. It just, it just, it, it doesn't, it doesn't end up working out based on, probably not Marx's fault, but probably

[01:15:15] No, he was a good writer. The fact that it's so punchy is the reason it's kind of a little scary. But

[01:15:42] That's why we

[01:15:52] Eric Svendsen: fighters. Well, it sounds real. Yeah. People recognize

[01:15:56] Love hip hop. Well, who, who are you like Beastie Boys? Oh shit.

[01:16:26] Fantastic. Uh, Emine. All good is obviously, you know, but then I, you know, I, I love 50 cent Nelly Ludacris. I mean, that's, that was, that was my middle

[01:16:40] Eric Svendsen: puffing Buddha move bitch. Yeah. But that's, that's what I grew up listening to be, you know, and that, you know, grunge and, you know, that kind of stuff.

[01:17:08] All these kind of stuff. All you saw them was like, you saw an interview with them on, on mtv and maybe they were then, like, if you were around when it was on Yeah. When you're around with it on, I'm in Portland, they're in New York, you know, maybe you get like Thrasher magazine and they got like a little article about the Beastie Boys and it was so

[01:17:26] Yeah.

[01:17:36] Jeff Nesbitt: are. Yeah. No, there, that puts so much more pressure on, I mean, good kind of pressure on the art to be like, on the work, to be the expression.

[01:17:51] Eric Svendsen: exactly. Yeah. It was, uh, you know, and, and that's true. It's, it's, it's become, the music industry has become entertainment. It's

[01:17:59] A lot of it is just, everyone wants to watch a soap opera. They've wanted every politics turned into soap operas. Music in industry has turned into soap operas. It's all fucking entertainment. Yeah. Everybody's slinging

[01:18:12] Jeff Nesbitt: it entertains most people for seven to 15 seconds.

[01:18:17] Eric Svendsen: I have never since I was, I, I grew up a skater punk in port. I, I, I skateboarded, I played music. You know, I, I smoked dope. I did all

[01:18:27] Eric Svendsen: Podcast. I, I've only listened to a couple that Michelle sent too. That's all the stuff that he did. I, I gotta listen

[01:18:35] I'm, I'm sure of it. He talks very much like that. But it's a great, it's a great show. I love it. I gotta listen to more of it. It's better than this one. If you're listening to this right now, go listen to his cuz it's better. I, I think

[01:18:46] Jeff Nesbitt: done okay. I think so. No, this has been great. Thank you very much.

[01:18:51] Eric Svendsen: Dude, this has been fun. This has been fun. But, uh, yeah, you know, it's just, uh, I, I never liked pop culture. I never, I never understood, I never felt real to me. And that's why I like someone. Like, even though Beastie Boys were pop culture still felt real,

[01:19:08] That's, I love pop culture for that very reason. Yeah. And, and that's the thing as BC boys are pop culture. Yeah. They were one of the, they had number one hits. Yeah. I I think that you do love pop culture if you love the Beastie Boys.

[01:19:26] You

[01:19:33] Eric Svendsen: me. Oh man, it gets more shocking. I'm

[01:19:45] These are new fresh artists. Um, yeah, it's, it's very, it's not like I'm listening to Journey, which sometimes I do. And, um, then I realize, no, dude, the shins are not a fresh artist.

[01:20:06] Yeah.

[01:20:15] Eric Svendsen: think. Yeah, it's just, you gotta embrace it. It's gotta be open to you just, you know, bring it on and I'm gonna roll with the punches

[01:20:28] Yeah. Kendrick Lamar is a great example. Yeah. Uh, I, everybody was freaking out about this guy, and I'm just like,

[01:20:56] Jeff Nesbitt: he watched them shoot a Tupac video on his street from Compton when he was a

[01:21:00] Like, you know, watching like the Rodney King riots and those kind of things, and watching what was going on down there. And then hearing Ken Kamar with Mad City and the way he takes it through the three stages, him as a kid, him as a teenager, him as a young adult, or the gang banger going through this, it's like, I, I was blown

[01:21:15] You know, it's a masterpiece. It, it was, all of his albums are like that. Stunning. So the first exposure I had to Kendrick Lamar was I heard, bitch, don't kill my Vibe at a party. Oh yeah, yeah. And I was like, this is very catchy. I've never heard anything like this at all. He's in a very high range.

[01:21:54] It was weird to me and everyone was freaking out about it enough to where I was like, all right, I'm going to get, so I'll listen to things like for a day. Yeah. That is not a lot to me actually, but I mean, all day.

[01:22:10] Jeff Nesbitt: en envelop it in my brain.

[01:22:12] Eric Svendsen: familiar with Mad City the song? Yeah. The one that, the part that gets me on that is the, the middle section where it's got like, you know, the guys coming in to get your punk ass up. We're going out on the street and this kind of stuff, you know, and it's got that groove that's exactly like NWA and you expect the straight Outta comp crazy, you know, that kind, you expect it come into that and then it comes in with a Straight Outta school.

[01:22:42] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That's incredible. It's so confident. It's so confident when it's something so different than you're expecting. Right. But it's also,

[01:22:52] Yeah.

[01:23:07] Eric Svendsen: yeah. I like him. He is a, I tell you, he is a smart, smart guy.

[01:23:14] Jeff Nesbitt: him. Dam is uh, probably my favorite. Uh, the Pimp A Butterfly is the first one I really got into. But Dam the album is fucking amazing.

[01:23:28] Jeff Nesbitt: was completely different than the other ones.

[01:23:40] Eric Svendsen: I, you know, I, I, I hate to say it, but I only, I only know about Kendrick Lamar because of the Super Bowl halftime show. I didn't even know he did one.

[01:24:04] And, and it was, and Kendrick Lamar came out at the end. Oh, I did see that actually. Yeah. And I was listening. I was like, dude, this guy's good. I mean, this is, this is impressive. Cuz I, I didn't, I don't, I don't love the mumble rap. Mm-hmm. He's not a mumble rapper. No, he's not. And but I'd gotten, oh my God, take it back.

[01:24:27] Jeff Nesbitt: sort of thing. That's a bunch of triplets, like in music, like, uh, da

[01:24:39] Although I do like that. I do like that one that, uh, Drake did with, um, DJ Khali that Bieber did the video for. I don't know which one is that? Um, pop Star. Oh, I love that song.

[01:24:52] Eric Svendsen: have. Oh. Did watch the video because the video's hilarious because it's during Covid. It's like Khalis calling Drake's saying, we gotta make this video.

[01:25:18] That sounds funny. It's a

[01:25:35] Well, and,

[01:25:37] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. And he didn't do, I mean, he's done a few things that are shitty, but he didn't do anything to deserve it in the way like Kanye West did. No,

[01:25:52] Yeah. But he, he was growing up and going through the hardships and all that kind of stuff, but they got through it pretty well.

[01:26:01] Eric Svendsen: not. You know, these are kids that have talent and they're, you know, they're in the spotlight,

[01:26:09] Yeah. They're

[01:26:15] Jeff Nesbitt: And they have adults with bad intentions telling 'em what to do. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bad, have you heard some of the stories? Like, peop kid Child stars Tell Oh yeah. Like Corey Feldman, Feldman, McCauley, Colten.

[01:26:27] Eric Svendsen: awful, awful. Like exploitive, you know, you're Epstein, you know Epstein, those guys

[01:26:56] Like was real creepy with McCauley kin and kept telling him how handsome he was and like, you know, making Yeah. When you're a handsome young boy, you know, when an adult man wants to bang you, it's a vibe that you don't mistake. Oh man. And, uh, McCauley kin recognized it with this creep and the guy ended up telling him that, uh, he, like point kept mentioning his shoes.

[01:27:28] was maybe involved in the making of those shoes and McCauley Colgan puked on the shoes and ran outta the room. My God. He said this on a radio show. That's crazy. He was like 12 years old. Yeah. And the, the Yeah. There's a lot of really evil people in the

[01:27:52] Something that they're not, they just, you know, they, they lose their

[01:27:59] Eric Svendsen: Well, and and that's where we're talking about con they become a means rather than an end.

[01:28:07] Yeah. Where you just, like, you're in it for you at that time, in that moment. You, it's you against them. It devalues other people. Mm-hmm. Treat them like a commodity. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sad. But we can't end on that note.

[01:28:22] Jeff Nesbitt: shoes.

[01:28:25] Eric Svendsen: finished. Uh, what's a good one?

[01:28:30] Eric Svendsen: I'm sorry. No, no. And I, you know, and that's, and that's a, uh, you know, and, and, and, and here's the thing is it needs to get to more people.

[01:28:43] Eric Svendsen: this?

[01:28:57] Jeff Nesbitt: Oh, man, that, and that's a whole nother problem on the internet, on YouTube, people running their kids' social accounts.

[01:29:22] Eric Svendsen: Is this kind of like a, is this sort of like a, like a worst version of like the dad who's trying to get his kid to be the football star kind of thing? They're trying to, yeah.

[01:29:44] Eric Svendsen: Well, here's the thing. No one's above an ass whooping. Someone needs to go deal with those people.

[01:29:57] Eric Svendsen: The child come again, porn thing.

[01:30:12] And, um, yeah. So, fuck, I'm

[01:30:18] Jeff Nesbitt: bit. I mean, this is the gist of what they said. Sure, sure. Uh, I shouldn't mention, I am paraphrasing. I am paraphrasing, but Yeah. You know, but that's what happened. People were running a, a child, a cp as we say on TikTok, um, network on Patreon because it's paywall and

[01:30:39] I only remember like the four chan. It's always like the pito. Yeah. Bear and those kind of things. Pito is too obvious. Yeah. That's why I figured it was, it's it's too

[01:31:00] Yeah. It makes it a really kind of a positive environment. Uh, really. Yeah. Where you, I mean, I assume it can get dark maybe if you're a dark person, cuz it's really good at reading your mind. Make, just giving you what is, it's like a mirror. Yeah. Um, so I see some really delightful things.

[01:31:19] Jeff Nesbitt: I love it. Anyway, thank you so much for coming man, and spending three and a half hours bullshitting with me. This has been so much fun for me.

[01:31:33] Uh, so thank you. Absolutely. That's why I Ramble by the River exists. Yeah. Thanks you for having me. And uh, yeah, it was a blast. Thank