Life After Getting Cut Off by My Parents, Building a Pharmacy Empire & Battling the PBMs

Tania (00:00:00):
And she just got so mad at me. I mean, I'm not looking at myself, but I didn't have an attitude or anything. I just said, "Okay, we'll fill this out. " And she just went crazy and she's like, "I have HIV. I'm going to spit on you. " And all these things. She just went crazy.

Matt (00:00:18):
I'm Matt Handy and you're listening to My Last Relapse. Yeah, well welcome.

Tania (00:00:23):
Thank you.

Matt (00:00:25):
Thank you.

Tania (00:00:25):
I'm excited.

Matt (00:00:26):
Yeah. You've never done one before, right?

Tania (00:00:28):
I've never done a podcast, but I do watch them.

Matt (00:00:31):
Okay. So you're probably a pro.

Tania (00:00:33):
I know what to do.

Matt (00:00:34):
Okay. So what's your name?

Tania (00:00:38):
My name is Tania Kanga.

Matt (00:00:40):
Okay. Where are you from?

Tania (00:00:43):
So I was born in Montana. I grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma and I've been in Houston since 2012.

Matt (00:00:50):
So Montana. What part of Montana?

Tania (00:00:53):
I was born in Bozeman, Montana.

Matt (00:00:55):
Oh, okay. Yellowstone. Random.

Tania (00:00:58):
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like everybody knows it because of the show. Yeah. I actually don't know much about Montana. We were there for a short amount of time and then after that we moved. So most of my childhood was in Oklahoma, Which is very different than Houston.

Matt (00:01:15):
Yeah. Most places are different than Houston. Houston is a very unique place. I'm new here, relatively new. I've been here for less than two years and most people that have lived, they're Native Houstonians. So in San Diego where I'm from, I've been on every street legitimately. I know the county. Houston, there's six counties in the greater Houston area and I don't know a single person that's like, "I know every street of the city."

Tania (00:01:45):
Yeah, no, it's impossible. It's too big.

Matt (00:01:48):
And it's not like your typical city. There's country in the city.

Tania (00:01:53):
Yeah, I know. I know. Actually, even in my neighborhood, if you go further north, there's farms, people on horses. It's very strange and it's still in the city.

Matt (00:02:02):
Yeah.

Tania (00:02:03):
So odd.

Matt (00:02:04):
I hate the weather here, first of all.

Tania (00:02:06):
Really? Love it. I love it. I love the heat. I love the heat. So I'm Sri Lankan, which there's no winter in Sri Lanka. Not that I'm from there or ever really lived there, but I just feel like it's in my blood to love the heat.

Matt (00:02:20):
Is it massively humid there too? Yeah,

Tania (00:02:22):
It's an Island.

Matt (00:02:24):
Yeah. My first prison term was in the desert and it was 114 all summer. Oh my God. So that was hot. This is something different. This is choke you humid.

Tania (00:02:40):
Yeah. I mean, it could be like 85 and it feels like it's

Matt (00:02:42):
140. 100. Yeah, dude. It's so crazy.

Tania (00:02:45):
Yeah. So as you know, I own a pharmacy. I've worked in the pharmacy industry for the last 11 years and I kind of wanted to do something to help the industry because independent pharmacies, which are essentially pharmacies owned by pharmacists or business owners, they're kind of going extinct.

Matt (00:03:06):
Yeah,

Tania (00:03:07):
Totally.

Matt (00:03:07):
And

Tania (00:03:07):
It's basically on three pharmacies are going to close in the next three years, which is a crazy high percentage. I really wanted to come up with a concept that would help save these pharmacies. And so I have my startup, so essentially we're trying to create a network of independent pharmacies and have more access for them to reach their patients, for their patients to get their orders, just to be able to give more access for medications. And so I do a lot of stuff related to startups. And with that, you have to talk to people, you have to meet with people, you have to understand the issues, the problems, not just with pharmacies, but with doctors and all these people. So I meet with people and because I've been in sales my whole life, I have no problem driving across town to the Woodlands or Sugarland or wherever.

Matt (00:04:01):
Yeah. The whole pharmacy business. They used to sell heroin in pharmacies, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think about when that kind of stuff was on the shelf, it was literally Mr. Johnson down the street and it was the corner store that had a soda bar in it and shit and they would sell tonics and all that.

Tania (00:04:23):
Yeah.

Matt (00:04:24):
But yeah, how'd you get into the pharmacy world?

Tania (00:04:32):
This is a long story, so I'll get into it.

Matt (00:04:35):
We got time.

Tania (00:04:36):
So when I moved to Houston, I really was planning on going to medical school. That was always my dream. I wanted to be a doctor. I love helping people. And when I did an internship here in Houston, the doctors that I worked under, they were like, "Man, you have such a great personality. You should get into sales, you should get into marketing, you should be talking to people, educating people. You're smart, but you also have a great personality. Don't waste your time going to school, racking up all that debt. Just give it a try." So I was like, okay, I've never thought about that in my life. I went to school for microbiology. It's always been science. It's always been medical things. So I was like, okay, let me just try it and see. Well, my family didn't quite agree with my decision to go down that path.

(00:05:29):
And so when I shared that with them, they were like, "Oh, okay, well let's talk about it. " Well, overnight they completely cut me off of everything. I was really dependent on them, like my car, my expenses, everything. They were paying for everything and they took my car away.

Matt (00:05:45):
Literally overnight?

Tania (00:05:46):
Overnight. Everything was gone. Is

Matt (00:05:49):
That a cultural thing?

Tania (00:05:52):
I think so. So like I said, I'm Sri Lankan, but we grew up in Oklahoma and my Parents-

Matt (00:05:59):
Where did they grow up?

Tania (00:06:00):
In Sri Lanka. So they didn't really force the culture on us, but they still kind of had some things that were still- Mentality. Around them. Yeah. Yeah. But education's huge on them because they're academics and it's also a status thing. If you have this higher degree that you're like whatever, this hired person.

Matt (00:06:23):
Is it similar to how Indians do it?

Tania (00:06:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Very similar. I mean, there's not a caste system or anything like that, but it's still very similar. They have these expectations for people. And even if you have a doctorate or whatever, but you're a stay-at-home mom, it doesn't matter. You still need that, which to me it doesn't make sense. Why am I going to waste my time going to school and doing all these things if that's what I'm going to end up doing? So I mean, I've always been social. I've always enjoyed talking to people. And like I said, I love helping people and I love the medical field. And so I wanted to stay within the realm. And so I took a year and I was working PRN and shifts and stuff as a medical assistant, front desk and whatever, whatever I could do to just kind of supplement. And one of the doctors I worked under at a clinic was like, "You'd be really great at sales." And I was like, "Man, this is the second time I'm hearing this. " And so I just said, "Let me just go for it. Let me just see. I'm going to apply to some companies and just see." And there was a pretty large pharmacy group.

(00:07:31):
So they had several different locations of pharmacies. They were based in Dallas that approached me and they said, "Hey, we want to talk to you. We want to see if you would be a good fit for our salesperson." And so I went and I talked to them and they liked me and I liked what they were working on. And so I started being a sales rep for them. I knew nothing about sales, but I feel like I was really interested in it. I learned about the pharmacy industry and I started selling and it just grew and they noticed like, "Hey, she's putting in a lot of work. She's making our goals." And so they offered me a little bit more of an in- depth type of position where I would be able to learn a little bit more about the operations. And so then someone from that group had branched off and started their own pharmacy group and they said, "Hey, we'd love for you to come in and be part of the sales team and help us in all the different ways and grow this company." And I said, "Okay, I'll do it.

(00:08:27):
I'll do it. " So I joined them and I learned so much from that experience. I was traveling all over. They had locations in different states and just learning the culture and how pharmacies are received in different states and all of that. So 11 years. And I worked for a local pharmacy here before I bought my own. The main reason I bought my own was actually to be able to use it to test the startup concept and just fully understand everything before I just go in and feel like I know how to talk to pharmacy owners and know what their struggles are and know what's going on in the industry today.

Matt (00:09:07):
And so how long have you owned the pharmacy for?

Tania (00:09:10):
It's been about two and a half years, Three Years. Yeah.

Matt (00:09:13):
You like it?

Tania (00:09:14):
I like it. It's a lot of work. Yeah,

Matt (00:09:16):
It sounds like it. It's a lot

Tania (00:09:17):
Of work, a lot of responsibility too.

Matt (00:09:20):
Yeah. So you were talking about margins and how it isn't like a moneymaking machine. Is that true still if you scale it out?

Tania (00:09:31):
So if you scale anything, it's going to grow, especially if you have a good model, but the cash flow is crazy. You're going to have to dump a bunch of money into each location in order to get it going and get it to a place where it's profitable. So in that aspect, it's a lot of work to do that. So is it worth it? It depends on who you're talking to, but if that's what you want to do, then absolutely. But it's scary because margins continue to change every year And so we don't know what's going to happen in the next three, four, five years.

Matt (00:10:05):
Do insurance companies set rates for drugs?

Tania (00:10:10):
So there's a middleman. It's called a PBM or pharmacy benefit manager and they're the ones that kind of regulate where the reimbursements are, what's covered, what's not covered, what pharmacy you can use. If you have this insurance and you have to use this pharmacy, and they're the ones who kind of control everything. So they're like the middleman and they're not nice. They see Independent pharmacies as the lowest hanging fruit and it's scary. It's scary to think about the changes that can happen. And now Amazon has really entered this market And they're not necessarily the good guys either. So it's scary. And Mark Cuban, I don't know if you've seen his kind of touch on the pharmacy industry.

Matt (00:10:54):
No.

Tania (00:10:55):
So he has this pharmacy called Cost Plus and he wants to create transparency with the costs of the drugs. "Hey, this name brand costs $3,000, but there's a generic equivalent that's like 50 bucks. So he wants to create some transparency, which is good.

Matt (00:11:13):
Are those realistic numbers?

Tania (00:11:15):
It is.

Matt (00:11:15):
It is.

Tania (00:11:16):
Yeah. I mean, there's certain drugs that you would think are very, very basic and everyday type of drugs that are thousands of dollars.

Matt (00:11:26):
I know that diabetic, what is that? Insulin, there's an insulin issue, right?

Tania (00:11:32):
Yeah. There's been for the longest time. It's like supply, the cost, everything. It's just ...

Matt (00:11:38):
Do you know how they make insulin?

Tania (00:11:42):
No, not really.

Matt (00:11:43):
Okay. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's a beef product.

Tania (00:11:47):
Oh, interesting.

Matt (00:11:47):
They take it from cows.

Tania (00:11:49):
Oh, maybe. Maybe it's a derivative of it.

Matt (00:11:51):
Yeah. There's a base that they take out of cows and then they like- They

Tania (00:11:54):
Make a synthetic form of it. Yeah. I wouldn't doubt that.

Matt (00:11:58):
Yeah. Yeah. So pharmacies are an interesting thing to me. Because of my life, I guess, had a lot of interactions kind of third person with pharmacies because I was always scamming pharmacies for drugs. I was getting scripts and doing crazy shit. I actually have a friend that robbed a pharmacy at Knife Point. It didn't really work. He ended up getting busted for it and didn't really get anything out of it either. But when I was homeless downtown San Diego, we wouldn't sleep. But there is a bunch of pharmacies downtown. And one of the things that I always thought was really crazy was when they delivered the drugs, they just come in tubs. They just come in tubs and they sit. They just drop them off and then they just sit there. It's like the people got to come out and get them. And I would talk about it with buddies or whatever and be like, dude, it would probably be- I know if there's anything good in there.

(00:13:04):
Well, for sure there would be because this was a massive farm. It's massive and it was probably a quarter of this room worth of buckets that they were bringing in.

Tania (00:13:16):
Oh my God.

Matt (00:13:17):
Those great totes that they have. Oh,

Tania (00:13:18):
You mean their order? Oh, wow. Yeah.

Matt (00:13:21):
Yeah. I mean, every day was that much that they were delivering. We would have to go through a ton of stuff to figure out what was there, but there would be something in there, but the risk was not worth the reward for that. It was coming from a guy that robbed a bank. Yeah.

Tania (00:13:41):
Wow. I don't think I've heard that story.

Matt (00:13:44):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, I robbed a bank. I got caught. I got cut days later on totally unrelated charges and then I gave the cops such a hard time because I knew this was out there. I mean,

Tania (00:14:00):
I feel like you can't rob a bank anymore because the bills are marked, right? They know which bills have been-

Matt (00:14:06):
No. No? No, no, no. That's

Tania (00:14:08):
What I've heard is that's the reason why you don't rob a bank.

Matt (00:14:11):
No, they don't mark bills. I've had marked bills before. So I was selling drugs downtown and I got set up by a guy and those were marked. They had them photocopied to know, okay, yeah, this guy is the person that sold them to this guy.

Tania (00:14:28):
Oh, wow.

Matt (00:14:29):
Yeah. But they don't mark bills like that because it's just cash in, cash out. But what they do do is die packs. They'll do dye packs and tracers, but you just tell them, "I'll kill everybody. Just don't do it. " And they won't because it's federally insured money. Interesting. They have to legally give you the money. If you went in there just like exactly how you are and you told them, give me all the money, they immediately have to do it.

Tania (00:15:00):
Really?

Matt (00:15:00):
Yeah.

Tania (00:15:01):
Oh, wow. That's scary.

Matt (00:15:03):
Because they can't risk anybody's life for insured money. It's not there.

Tania (00:15:07):
So they just, here you go, And then that's it. And then they just hit the panic button.

Matt (00:15:12):
Yeah, unless you tell them that you'll come back and kill everybody. And then I think they will wait. But yeah, it was this whole ... Yeah, I was mental at the time. Wow.

Tania (00:15:22):
So you went in and you robbed the bank and then you left?

Matt (00:15:25):
It was December 26th or something of 2020. So at the time you were not allowed in a bank unless you had a mask on.

Tania (00:15:34):
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (00:15:35):
So I was like ...

Tania (00:15:36):
Yeah, Perfect Time.

Matt (00:15:38):
And then you can get on the FBI website and look up the details of the case. They told the cops I was 5'10". I'm 5'5" at best. But it's just that is a testament to when somebody is scared, their perception of everything is completely out of proportion. I am not nowhere near 5'10".

Tania (00:16:03):
But automatically you're intimidating because you came in there and-

Matt (00:16:07):
Told them I was going to kill everybody. I wasn't even angry. And my dumbass, I quoted an Eminem song to him. Went there and ... Yeah.

Tania (00:16:17):
Which one?

Matt (00:16:18):
I said, "I'm here to make a withdrawal." And then I slapped the note on the thing. There's criminal, the song criminal. Okay,

Tania (00:16:25):
Probably if I heard the song, but ...

Matt (00:16:27):
Well, there's a robbery in the beginning or the middle of the song and I don't know where it came from, but at the time it was like ... And what I did was I- This

Tania (00:16:37):
Felt like the right thing to say.

Matt (00:16:40):
And I walked into the bank and cut everybody in line and I just walked straight up to the first empty teller.

Tania (00:16:47):
Wow.

Matt (00:16:47):
And this was during COVID, so there was glass up, but in the teller's box there's always those two sides that they add. I don't know why they do it, but they just screwed it onto there.

Tania (00:17:02):
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (00:17:03):
So there was a gap like this big and I was like this. I was like, I'll show you the pictures. It's really funny. I look really short in them anyway. 5'10". They probably would've never ... But it was out there. There was an APB on this guy. You can look at the court documents and online, all the records of it on the FBI website. There was a guy around the block and hanging out in a bush. They arrested him because he was wearing something very similar to me. They arrested him and took him and questioned him for hours.

Tania (00:17:41):
And he's like, "What are you talking about?

Matt (00:17:43):
Yeah. The funny part was he was a homeless dude and I knew him.

Tania (00:17:46):
Oh gosh. Did he come back and was like, "Hey, they're looking for you. "

Matt (00:17:51):
Oh, no, no. I knew there was ... So I didn't go back to where I normally hung out anyway. Also, I was 20 minutes away. I robbed a bank, not downtown. I went out and robbed the bank. But a bunch of people knew and I was actually getting ready to go to Oklahoma. The deal was I was going to go with this chick to Oklahoma and just wait for it to die down. And then the plan was to go on a bank robbing spree after that. I was going to move to Mexico, cross and then-

Tania (00:18:29):
So you were like, "Okay, I was successful, let's go do this again."

Matt (00:18:33):
And it was so easy. I was in the bank for maybe 30 seconds.

Tania (00:18:38):
So did you have a weapon or anything or you just walked in?

Matt (00:18:41):
I told them that I had a bomb in my backpack. I wasn't even wearing a backpack. Oh my God.

Tania (00:18:46):
Okay. That's worse than a gun. If I heard someone say I have a bomb, I'd be like, okay, when is it going to go off? Everyone's going to die. If it's a gun, I'm like, okay, well maybe I can dodge the bullet. I don't know. So get on the floor.

Matt (00:19:01):
When the feds came and interviewed me, they were worried about the bomb more than anything else.

Tania (00:19:06):
Well, Yeah. That's a Big deal now.

Matt (00:19:11):
I got away with less than 10 grand and they were like, "We don't even care about the money." Actually, I got booked-

Tania (00:19:17):
Where is the bomb?

Matt (00:19:18):
Yeah, I got booked with the money and I still kept it. I spent all of that money.

Tania (00:19:23):
Oh, wow.

Matt (00:19:23):
Yeah. I gave most of it away though. When I left the bank, went-

Tania (00:19:30):
You're like, who Wants money?

Matt (00:19:32):
Yeah. I told a bunch of people what I did and I was like, what am I going to do? I was paying for people's hotels that night and buying everybody food and drugs and it was felt like a king for ... But I also knew I was leaving stuff had hit the fan for me. I just had to get out of town. I was like, maybe I'll come back, maybe I won't. But I found all that stuff out about that guy after a couple of years later when I was researching what was actually online. The feds keep a really, really detailed record of every call that they make and it's all public access.

Tania (00:20:11):
Oh, interesting. Okay. I can't say I've ever looked that far into anyone.

Matt (00:20:17):
Yeah, it surprised me. So the way that it actually all happened was I had a friend that robbed a series of banks and then left and got away with it.

Tania (00:20:27):
Wow.

Matt (00:20:28):
And then I had a bunch of other friends that they were doing the same thing in teams and then they were doing other stuff too. But when-

Tania (00:20:38):
Gosh, that's scary.

Matt (00:20:40):
Yeah. I mean, it's really not that scary. Well, anyway.What

Tania (00:20:43):
Was the reaction of the other people in line that were-

Matt (00:20:46):
I don't think they even realized what was going on.

Tania (00:20:49):
Really?

Matt (00:20:49):
Honestly.

Tania (00:20:51):
Oh, wow.

Matt (00:20:52):
Other than the fact that I cut six or seven people, this is the day after Christmas.

Tania (00:20:57):
Oh, wow.

Matt (00:20:58):
So

Tania (00:20:58):
I feel like it's busy, right? Because people are depositing

Matt (00:21:01):
Cash and stuff. There was probably six or seven. This is also at 1:00 PM on a Friday the day after Christmas. So yeah, I'm sure everybody realized who is this person that just cut everybody? But other than that, the guy that I was talking to was really calm. He's definitely been through this before. I read this thing afterwards where it's like everybody that's a bank teller gets robbed at some point in their career. Oh my

Tania (00:21:33):
Gosh. They need to get paid more.

Matt (00:21:34):
There was a time ... Have you heard of the Hollywood shootout?

Tania (00:21:39):
No.

Matt (00:21:39):
Okay. So these dudes went into a Bank of America Bank of America in North Hollywood That's what it's called, the North Hollywood Shootout. Anyway, at that given time period, there was 36 banks robbed a day in LA County.

Tania (00:21:54):
What?

Matt (00:21:55):
Yeah. At that time, there was a bank robbed every 15 minutes in the United States.

Tania (00:22:02):
That's crazy.

Matt (00:22:04):
Yeah.

Tania (00:22:05):
Oh my gosh.

Matt (00:22:06):
It's way less than that now. I feel like New York

Tania (00:22:07):
City, it's so much easier just because everyone's going in and out of places and I don't know, for some reason it just feels like that.

Matt (00:22:15):
And nobody's got guns.

Tania (00:22:17):
Yeah, that too. Exactly. Yeah.

Matt (00:22:20):
Which blows my mind. It's like the most densely populated ... Isn't it the most densely populated city in New York

Tania (00:22:26):
City? I think so.

Matt (00:22:27):
Yeah. And it's small. It's so

Tania (00:22:31):
Small.

Matt (00:22:31):
Yeah.

Tania (00:22:32):
The city's tiny and there's so many people.

Matt (00:22:34):
Yeah. They built it up instead of ... They couldn't go anywhere. They can't

Tania (00:22:38):
Go anywhere. It's like the ocean.

Matt (00:22:40):
Yeah. Those two rivers and the bay and yeah, they totally built it up. But it was an interesting experience. It's one of those things where it's like, I'm really glad that I did it, but now because it was so easy, I probably shouldn't say that. I'll get canceled for that. But yeah, I've blew my mind for sure. Yeah.

Tania (00:23:09):
That's crazy. I've never ... I have thought about being in a bank and something crazy going down. So I think that may be part of the reason why I opt to go through the drive-through instead of going into a bank because I always feel like, okay, the security guard is not paying attention. They're not going to help me. And I don't know. As I've gotten older, I've gotten more ... I think more about positions that I put myself in, like the gas station thing and the bank thing. It's just what if something goes down? What am I going to do? I'm this tiny little person. I'm not going to be able to do anything.

Matt (00:23:46):
Are Sri Lankans small people?

Tania (00:23:48):
Typically. I mean, my whole family's all small people, but I think there's some taller, more muscular people because there's a lot of people that work in coconut plantations and cut down coconuts. They climb up the trees and cut them off and stuff. So they're really strong Muscular Athletic people and that's what they do all day long. And then there's also the fishermen because they go out to the shore and then they push the boats out and they're fishing all day. So I think people are typically in shape, but I think most people are on the smaller side.

Matt (00:24:29):
Yeah. How big is Sri Lanka? It's pretty big, right?

Tania (00:24:32):
It's smaller than the state of Texas.

Matt (00:24:35):
The state of Texas is massive.

Tania (00:24:37):
I know. I know, but still it's a whole country.

Matt (00:24:40):
Every person in the United States could get an acre of land in Texas and there would still be room. Oh

Tania (00:24:47):
Gosh, that's crazy.

Matt (00:24:49):
That's how big it is. Every person is-

Tania (00:24:50):
There's so much wasted Space.

Matt (00:24:52):
Yeah. I don't know about wasted, just not used. The middle of the country is fucking empty.

Tania (00:25:00):
Yeah, I know. I mean, when you drive ... So I had driven ... Well, I was with my brother, but we drove from Houston to New Mexico and I don't know, six of those hours was nothing, Literally Nothing. There's no gas stations, no nothing to look at. Literally nothing. It's crazy.

Matt (00:25:18):
I drove here from San Diego.

Tania (00:25:21):
Oh, you did?

Matt (00:25:21):
Yeah. In a moving truck. Yeah. And it was me by myself. And so I stopped. It took me three days to get here. I took my time for sure. Yeah. I also stopped in El Paso. Have you ever been to El Paso?

Tania (00:25:35):
I've never been,

Matt (00:25:36):
But- Oh my God, it's terrible.

Tania (00:25:37):
There's also a lot of land there too. It's a Really big city, but there's just people are so spread out.

Matt (00:25:45):
Yeah. So El Paso is right next to New Mexico too, but it goes out. There is a lot of empty space in Texas. Yeah. Have you heard that joke? Oh, it was in ... Have you seen Yellowstone? Yeah. Okay. You remember where he used to work on a ranch where you could get in your truck in the morning and then not be at the other end of it by the end of the day and think I was like, "Yeah, I had one of those trucks too." Yeah. But it is fucking massive.

Tania (00:26:17):
Yeah, it's crazy. And there's really awesome things to see in Texas that you wouldn't think of. There's this abandoned castle that they turned into this tourist attraction.

Matt (00:26:29):
There are castles all over Texas.

Tania (00:26:32):
Really? All over. Okay. So I only know about that one. It's an hour away from Houston, but you can have lunch there and rent a room and it's so strange. Why is this here?

Matt (00:26:43):
Yeah, I look at houses for sale all the time.

Tania (00:26:47):
And there's castles?

Matt (00:26:48):
There's real castles all over Texas for sale.

Tania (00:26:52):
That's crazy. There's also sand dunes. It literally looks like a desert. I don't know. It's somewhere kind of near El Paso, that area, but people go there and do all these crazy photo shoots and stuff. There's a lot to see.

Matt (00:27:09):
So I have on Instagram, there's a page where it's just castles for sale in Texas.

Tania (00:27:15):
Really? Okay. Now I have to go look.

Matt (00:27:17):
Yeah.

Tania (00:27:19):
Instagram is definitely where I spend the most of my social media time. It's horrible.

Matt (00:27:25):
Do you doomscroll?

Tania (00:27:26):
I do. I do. But I feel like I can get really good news on social media also. I know some of it's conspiracies and stuff, but I like the fact that you can read a news article or whatever, Something That's going on, but then you can see what other people think or say about it. I Don't know why. I just love that because I don't know. Before it's like, oh, I see this whatever, fire, whatever. And I think, oh my gosh, that's horrible. But then you'd never think somebody else would think the whole opposite of that. And I just love to be able to see other people's perspective. That's what

Matt (00:28:04):
There's a website. So Cal Fire, this is the California Wild Forestry Department or Wildfire Department. Yeah, Cal Fire. They have a map that shows all the active fires in the United States. There is always fires, massive fires going on all over the United States.

Tania (00:28:24):
Really?

Matt (00:28:24):
Yeah. And think about it, it's like the world's natural cycle is like shit would burn down and then it would regrow and then it would burn down and regrow. Yeah.

Tania (00:28:34):
I mean farmland, they do that on purpose to clear out-

Matt (00:28:39):
Crop rotation and stuff. Yeah.

Tania (00:28:40):
It's easier to do that than to go out there and actually cut it all down.

Matt (00:28:45):
Well, actually it also replenishes a lot of nutrition in the dirt. Have you seen that thing where it's like the health ... We only have a few years left of healthy soil and a lot of the farmland.

Tania (00:28:59):
Yeah.

Matt (00:29:00):
It's really crazy. I wonder what we're going to do.

Tania (00:29:03):
It's scary.

Matt (00:29:04):
Yeah.

Tania (00:29:04):
It's scary to think about common resources being scarce, especially in the US.

Matt (00:29:13):
We buy a lot of agricultural products from all over the world now.

Tania (00:29:17):
For sure. Yeah, definitely. So the largest supply of tea comes from Sri Lanka. It's the number one thing. Well, now I guess it's tourism, but it used to be that tea was the one thing that drove the economy. And so this is actually a reason why my dad got into plant pathology is because the tea plantations and that was such a prestigious job to be involved with the tea industry there. And so yeah, I mean, all the tea comes from Sri Lanka, all black tea to England and they take their tea very seriously. So if you look on- Has it

Matt (00:29:54):
Always been like that?

Tania (00:29:56):
Yeah. If you look on the back of a tea-

Matt (00:29:58):
Wait, was Sri Lanka a British?

Tania (00:30:01):
Yeah.

Matt (00:30:01):
It was, huh? Yeah.

Tania (00:30:03):
Yeah. You'll see Selan tea. Se Lan is, it's like saying America versus the United States of America. It's like a nickname for it.

Matt (00:30:12):
For Sri Lanka.

Tania (00:30:14):
Yeah. So you'll see that everywhere. Ceilan tea or you'll see a little Sri Lankan flag on the tea thing and most people don't know that.

Matt (00:30:21):
Most people don't notice. Well, also I don't drink tea. You're

Tania (00:30:24):
Not a tea person.

Matt (00:30:25):
I'm not a caffeine person.

Tania (00:30:27):
Really?

Matt (00:30:27):
Yeah.

Tania (00:30:28):
What? I have been on a matcha kick because at first I'm like, oh, this is gross. But there's this one place here in the Heights that makes the best smatcha and I'm addicted to it.

Matt (00:30:42):
So

Tania (00:30:42):
Good.

Matt (00:30:42):
I can't do caffeine. I'm super, which is funny because I smoked and slammed meth for a long time.

Tania (00:30:48):
You get jittery?

Matt (00:30:49):
I get jittery.

Tania (00:30:50):
See, I can't drink coffee anymore because I get jittery and I feel like it heightens my anxiety too.

Matt (00:30:54):
Oh yeah.

Tania (00:30:55):
Yeah. So That's Why I switched to tea. I've always been a tea person, but coffee is a no-go for a meal.

Matt (00:31:00):
Do you like tea with milk? Do you ever do that?

Tania (00:31:03):
Only matcha. I don't do regular tea with milk. I like just the pure tea, like white tea or green tea or whatever. I'm Not Picky about it, but it's like tea is my caffeine.

Matt (00:31:14):
So the one tea that I would drink pretty often, and I haven't drank in a long time. Was it Arizona green tea? Oh yeah. So good.

Tania (00:31:21):
Yeah. But

Matt (00:31:22):
That's like a hood drink.

Tania (00:31:23):
It used To be A dollar and now it's like what? $1.50 or something? I

Matt (00:31:27):
Don't know. They

Tania (00:31:27):
Changed it, which is so crazy because it was part of the label Instead Of dollar.

Matt (00:31:32):
Yeah, 99 cents right on the can. Yeah, it was like you could buy a mucho mango and a bag of hot Cheetos for 250.

Tania (00:31:40):
Yeah.

Matt (00:31:41):
Now it's like five bucks.

Tania (00:31:42):
Doesn't exist. Yeah.

Matt (00:31:43):
Definitely

Tania (00:31:43):
Not in California.

Matt (00:31:45):
Definitely not in California.

Tania (00:31:47):
Now it's like $5.

Matt (00:31:49):
Yeah. I mean here too, food is pretty similar here. At least fast food is similar here. Do you eat fast food?

Tania (00:31:57):
I try to stay away from it.

Matt (00:31:59):
Yeah.

Tania (00:31:59):
I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't really crave it. Lucky

Matt (00:32:04):
You. I just

Tania (00:32:05):
Don't. I don't know why.

Matt (00:32:06):
They don't have good Mexican food here.

Tania (00:32:08):
You don't think so?

Matt (00:32:10):
I'm from San Diego.

Tania (00:32:12):
I'm like, I don't know. I mean, to me it tastes good, but what do I have to compare it to?

Matt (00:32:16):
I mean, it's just different. So California has Baja Tex Mex. Okay.

Tania (00:32:22):
Okay.

Matt (00:32:23):
And so it's like burritos and stuff like that. Here it's like platters and tacos. And the tacos here are still different. And so people- I

Tania (00:32:33):
Feel like tacos, fajitas, that's the thing here.

Matt (00:32:36):
It's for sure. For sure. And plates.

Tania (00:32:38):
Yeah.

Matt (00:32:39):
Yeah. San Diego, you go to any taco shop, it's like burritos and tacos.

Tania (00:32:43):
Oh, interesting. Yeah. You don't really see burritos here.

Matt (00:32:46):
Yeah. It's funny. I think it's called, what is it called? Anyway, the guy moved from San Diego.

Tania (00:32:55):
To here?

Matt (00:32:56):
Yeah, it's north of the ... It's in the Woodlands, I think.

Tania (00:32:59):
Oh, okay.

Matt (00:33:00):
Okay. And I would drive an hour to

Tania (00:33:03):
Go

Matt (00:33:03):
There. Just to

Tania (00:33:03):
Get it.

Matt (00:33:04):
Yeah. But it's still not the same because the meat's not the same. And now in Kiema, they were from Riverside. Yeah. And they truck all of the supplies out here.

Tania (00:33:18):
Wow.

Matt (00:33:18):
Yeah.

Tania (00:33:19):
And it's Mexican food?

Matt (00:33:20):
Yeah.

Tania (00:33:21):
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Matt (00:33:24):
All of the people are from there. They're from Riverside. All of them that work there, they're all here now and then they send trucks of food. Wow. Because The food supply is just different.

Tania (00:33:37):
Yeah, no, completely different. Completely different. Interesting. Yeah. The cuisine in Houston is amazing. Any kind Of cuisine you want, you'll find it in Houston and it's probably at least decent.

Matt (00:33:54):
Okay. So what I heard was five years ago, no Michelin star restaurants and now I think there's three.

Tania (00:34:00):
Yeah. Well, okay. So what happened, I don't know the exact story, so don't quote me on this. So in order to have a Michelin star, you have to participate. The city has to participate in the program. And so we had Michelin Star quality restaurants, but they didn't have Michelin stars because Houston didn't participate in Michelin Star until I think it was two or three years ago when they finally accepted it or whatever, they were given the opportunity. I don't exactly know how that went down, but yeah, so now they have it. So now it's restaurants, everything. I think the chefs get that recognition or whatever. And then also hotels.

Matt (00:34:41):
Yeah, the diamond hotels and stuff. Yeah.

Tania (00:34:44):
Yeah. So that's the whole reason. But there's all these crazy concepts and restaurants with world renowned chefs and whatever, but they just never got their Michelin star because it just didn't exist in Houston.

Matt (00:34:57):
Houston is an interesting place. There's extreme wealth in small pockets.

Tania (00:35:02):
Yeah.

Matt (00:35:03):
Extreme wealth.

Tania (00:35:04):
And it's very quiet wealth though. That's The thing is there's not these people that flaunt their money and do crazy- It's Not LA. ... parties and things. It's not LA. And it's not New York City. I mean, people do that there too. I mean, honestly, even Dallas and nowhere it's a younger generation of people who become wealthy, they just flaunt it and it's crazy. But here it's generation after generation after generation. They just live in these massive compounds and It's Just their life.

Matt (00:35:33):
I went to a black tie event a couple weeks ago and first of all, you see me. So we went there and we're all in tuxedos. I haven't worn a tuxedo since prom.

Tania (00:35:46):
You're like, that's not my thing, But I was there.

Matt (00:35:49):
Dr. Shah went with us and it's like Dr. Shah. It's like he's a doctor. And in my head, the way that this works is doctors are all rich and they're all upper crest of society and he was so uncomfortable. It was funny.

Tania (00:36:04):
I feel like most doctors are like, yeah, they like to be in their scrubs, do their thing and then go home.

Matt (00:36:10):
Yeah. He has a shopping problem, lightweight. And I told him, "What do you buy? You're always in scrubs." So it's funny.

Tania (00:36:21):
Yeah. I don't know. Doctors have interesting personalities, but yeah, if you think about it, I mean all their life is in school and with the same people and you don't really get to go experience life because you're so focused on, okay, we got through these classes and now these tests and residency and this and that. And it's like-

Matt (00:36:39):
Residency sounds like such a nightmare.

Tania (00:36:41):
Yeah. It's like imprisonment.

Matt (00:36:43):
So what kind of doctor were you going

Tania (00:36:48):
To be? So it was a toss up. It was between emergency medicine or pediatrics, which both are not what you want to be. No. But I think emergency medicine, because I did work in emergency rooms and I just loved the hustle and bustle. I just loved that you felt like you were really helping people and you're saving people and you're doing what you can really quickly. So I just love that.

Matt (00:37:13):
So I've known a few ER nurses and they all fucking hate it.

Tania (00:37:17):
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, you get burned out. I mean, especially somewhere like Houston, I mean, you see people in one shift, you might see several people pass away and you Just have to Move on to the next person. It's just crazy.

Matt (00:37:31):
So I don't know the type of news that you consume on Instagram, but have you noticed the massive influx of teachers, female teachers that are sleeping with their students? Yeah. What is up

Tania (00:37:42):
With that? I wonder if it's just a trend right now that they're just putting everyone on blast or if it's actually some kind of influx and- I don't Know. I Don't know.

Matt (00:37:55):
I just know that since I moved here, it's like every month a new one is getting arrested.

Tania (00:38:01):
Yeah. I don't understand that concept at all. No comment. I don't know. I mean, it's quite disturbing.

Matt (00:38:11):
It's really weird because in California it's the opposite.

Tania (00:38:13):
Yeah.

Matt (00:38:14):
It's always male teachers.

Tania (00:38:15):
I know that there was a big shift in Houston with HISD that the government is now controlling the public school system. So there was a big shift between the county and now the state of Texas regulating things. So I don't know if that changed the quality or the people that they're hiring. Maybe they're hiring younger people. I don't know. I mean, it's not my wheelhouse, but I know that there's a big shift and it was this big controversial thing. And so who knows? Maybe there's a correlation between the two. I don't know.

Matt (00:38:49):
Maybe, maybe. It's funny too, because all the guys that I've brought this up to kind of joke where it's like, dude, I would've never told on her.

Tania (00:39:02):
How do they get caught?

Matt (00:39:04):
Dude, it's always the parents looking ... So this is a- Oh,

Tania (00:39:07):
The parents looking at the phones.

Matt (00:39:08):
Yeah. So in my head I'm like, was this happening when I was a student? And I didn't have a cell phone in high school.

Tania (00:39:17):
I mean, I can't imagine it happened because everyone was significantly older. So if it was, it would be really odd. We didn't have that many younger women. It didn't happen.

Matt (00:39:31):
Yeah. I didn't have ... Actually, at my high school, there was a good mix, but yeah, it was never like all the teachers that you're seeing this happen with, so they're like 25. Yeah,

Tania (00:39:42):
And they're like beautiful.

Matt (00:39:44):
Yeah. Dude, it blows my mind. And they're married. Yeah,

Tania (00:39:47):
They're married. They have kids. They have a family. The

Matt (00:39:51):
Craziest thing. There's that one that fell in love with ... Have you heard of that one? Yep. That one is so crazy to me.

Tania (00:39:57):
Yeah.

Matt (00:39:58):
Yeah. It blows my mind. What is going through their mind? I don't know.

Tania (00:40:03):
I

Matt (00:40:03):
Don't know.

Tania (00:40:05):
Yeah.

Matt (00:40:06):
But it's like an epidemic. It's happening so often. And it's like they're getting caught really often. How often are they not getting caught?

Tania (00:40:15):
Yeah. That's even worse. And I wonder if it's happening the opposite way too where men are preying on younger girls. Now that I can say happens, maybe not actions, but little comments and things. I Feel like that even happened when I was in high school and it's disgusting.

Matt (00:40:35):
Yeah. When I was in high school, nobody ever walked in on them, but it was like this teacher would give this girl rides everywhere and it was like, "What?"

Tania (00:40:48):
Just gross.

Matt (00:40:49):
Yeah. It was weird for sure. His kids were out of his house already, but he was this very charismatic salt and pep. He looked like Mr. Fantastic.

Tania (00:41:03):
It's always those, right? They have This big personality and everyone likes them, but then they're just a little bit creepy. That's not okay, especially freshmen. They're like what? 14?

Matt (00:41:16):
Yeah. Well, that's the whole contamination of our food thing because girls are developing and it's like there's this whole thing going on where human hormones are being fucked with so much because of our food where girls are developing at ages where they definitely shouldn't, unless they're in Mexico, then it's okay. But boys are low to no testosterone.

Tania (00:41:42):
Oh, interesting.

Matt (00:41:45):
And they're saying that it has to do with microplastics, but a lot of it has to do with food too.

Tania (00:41:48):
Yeah, of course. Of course. And it's just air pollution too, right?

Matt (00:41:53):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much that's playing into it, but I know the hormones that are being pumped into cows specifically is very real time translating into what's going on with young girls.

Tania (00:42:05):
Wow.

Matt (00:42:05):
Because cows are not supposed to produce that much milk year round. They're supposed to get pregnant, whatever, have their calf, feed their calf, and then go through that whole cycle again. These cows are producing gallons of milk.

Tania (00:42:20):
Just all the time.

Matt (00:42:21):
Yeah. So they're pumping them full of estrogen just constantly and that shit's going right into the food. There was a time where ... Do you know what Tren is?

Tania (00:42:34):
Tren?

Matt (00:42:34):
Yeah. Tren is a steroid. So they would pump these cows full of tren and then there's a filtration period where it was the last few months before they slaughter them, they'll pump them full of steroids and they grow massive. And then they're supposed to wait a certain amount of time before they slaughter it so that the drugs are out of their system. But there was a period of time where they weren't doing that and there was trend. Humans were eating it and you could test positive for tren.

Tania (00:43:09):
Oh my God.

Matt (00:43:10):
It's called Tren Balloon. Yeah.

Tania (00:43:14):
Terrifying.

Matt (00:43:15):
It is. It's terrifying.

Tania (00:43:16):
Well, I know with chickens as well, that was a whole thing. And just seeing Tyson Farms, how packed in the chickens are and then they just pump them up and it's just-

Matt (00:43:27):
Have you seen that documentary? Are you a documentary person?

Tania (00:43:29):
Sometimes.

Matt (00:43:30):
Sometimes. There's one, I think it's called Spoons Over Forks.

Tania (00:43:37):
I'm trying to think if I watched that one. Sounds familiar.

Matt (00:43:39):
It's about the whole meat industry. Let me see. Spoons.

Tania (00:43:44):
There's one I'm thinking of that was ...

Matt (00:43:47):
It is Spoons Over Forks.

Tania (00:43:49):
Okay.Maybe that's the one that I watched. I just remember seeing some, it was probably a documentary or something that showed the Tyson farms and just how overpopulated they are and the conditions that they are in and it's just awful. I mean, horrible.

Matt (00:44:12):
Yeah. I don't think it was spoons over forks, but awful conditions. But yeah, I saw one like that too, where it also showed them slaughtering some of them and it was terrible and it was like this train of pigs that were hanging upside down, they were just like ... Yeah, crazy.

Tania (00:44:37):
Yeah.

Matt (00:44:39):
Dominion, was that it? No. I don't

Tania (00:44:44):
Know. I think we're thinking of the same one. I just can't think of the name of

Matt (00:44:47):
It. I can't think of it either and I can't find it either.

Tania (00:44:49):
It was so popular and then ... I don't know.

Matt (00:44:52):
Is it Eating Animals Food Inc.

Tania (00:44:56):
Yes.

Matt (00:44:56):
That's the one. That's

Tania (00:44:57):
The one.

Matt (00:44:58):
Yeah. Some crazy stuff. Another time when I was in prison, I was in Norco and there was massive pig farms. It smelled so bad. Horrible, I'm sure.

Tania (00:45:14):
Yeah. It was

Matt (00:45:14):
Terrible. The whole prison stunk. And by the time I was there for a couple years, by the time I left, I couldn't smell it anymore. Because

Tania (00:45:22):
You're just used to it.

Matt (00:45:23):
Yeah.

Tania (00:45:24):
You're like, I don't know what fresh air smells like anymore.

Matt (00:45:27):
Yeah. Well, the people that picked me up were like, "Oh my gosh, it's terrible out here." I was like, "I don't even smell it anymore." And it was like 114 all summer long. So it is just crazy. But it's funny how humans can adapt to smells like that.

Tania (00:45:44):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same thing. I keep saying Tyson farms, but it's in Arkansas and I'm sure the people that live around there, they just-

Matt (00:45:51):
Have you ever smelled a chicken farm?

Tania (00:45:53):
No, I don't want to.

Matt (00:45:56):
It smells different, but it smells just as bad as pig farms. Chicken farms. Have you ever raised chickens?

Tania (00:46:02):
Yeah. Well, just like a couple.

Matt (00:46:04):
Okay. We had 20 chickens at some point. And where the coop was ... God, it smelled so bad, but there was a- Yeah, all

Tania (00:46:12):
They do is poop all day long.

Matt (00:46:14):
Yeah. All day long. Yeah,

Tania (00:46:16):
All day.

Matt (00:46:17):
It's like, what do you do?

Tania (00:46:18):
You have to go in there and clean it multiple times a day, otherwise it's just nasty.

Matt (00:46:23):
Yeah. We lived in this canyon. The house was on a canyon and there was hawks there and these hawks would break through the chicken coop. They would fly into it and break it and just demolish our chickens. Oh my gosh.

Tania (00:46:38):
I know people in Texas that have them, they are scared of owls. I guess owls Come Grab them one by one.

Matt (00:46:47):
Big enough owls to take babies.

Tania (00:46:49):
Yeah. Yeah. They're huge. They're Huge. Owls are kind of scary.

Matt (00:46:52):
Yeah. They're a vicious ... They're condors too, right? Is that what they're-

Tania (00:46:57):
Are they vicious?

Matt (00:46:59):
Oh yeah. Really?

Tania (00:46:59):
Against Humans?

Matt (00:47:01):
Well, I don't know about against humans, but people have been attacked by owls. Yeah. People have been attacked by owls though.

Tania (00:47:09):
Really? They're huge. Their wingspan is really scary.

Matt (00:47:12):
Yeah. They're cool animals though.

Tania (00:47:15):
Yeah. I mean, they're really beautiful. They're very majestic. It's just I don't want to encounter an owl in The Wild.

Matt (00:47:22):
Those baby owls that are like- Yeah, they're

Tania (00:47:24):
So cute.

Matt (00:47:24):
They're like the

Tania (00:47:25):
Cotton balls.

Matt (00:47:25):
Yeah. It's funny. But

Tania (00:47:27):
That's definitely not where you want to go because there's some massive mother somewhere protecting them.

Matt (00:47:33):
Well, there's another ... So I'm still in awe of the amount of exposure to different stuff that you can have for social ... My last social media profile before a few months ago was MySpace.

Tania (00:47:46):
Oh my gosh.

Matt (00:47:47):
That

Tania (00:47:47):
Still exists.

Matt (00:47:49):
It's MySpace music now.

Tania (00:47:51):
Oh,

Matt (00:47:51):
Okay. It's something totally different, but-

Tania (00:47:52):
I never had one, but I remember MySpace-

Matt (00:47:55):
Were your parents strict?

Tania (00:47:57):
Very strict.

Matt (00:47:58):
Oh yeah.

Tania (00:47:58):
Very strict. And we had one computer. It was dial-up internet. I wasn't going to be on there uploading pictures, selfies and stuff. No way.

Matt (00:48:10):
We would

Tania (00:48:10):
Do AOL chat. Me and my brother

Matt (00:48:13):
Would- Aim?

Tania (00:48:13):
Yeah. We would take turns talking to people on there about nothing, literally Nothing. But yeah, no, it was regular phone calls or go out and play with your friends. It's Just Nostalgic to think about because that doesn't necesst anymore.

Matt (00:48:30):
It doesn't happen anymore.

Tania (00:48:31):
No.

Matt (00:48:32):
There's a meme that I saw where it was kids in 1995 when I was a kid and it showed that at a playground playing on the swings and sliding down slides and shit. And then it was kids in 2025 and it showed this playground full of kids just all looking at their phone.

Tania (00:48:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (00:48:50):
That is an exact photo. And there's

Tania (00:48:51):
Six-year-olds that have cell phones now. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was in high school and it was a flip phone.

Matt (00:48:58):
Well, that's all there was.

Tania (00:48:59):
Yeah.

Matt (00:48:59):
Well,

Tania (00:49:00):
There was the Razor. Remember the Razor?

Matt (00:49:02):
Of course. I had a chocolate before I went to prison.

Tania (00:49:04):
Oh, and then what was the-

Matt (00:49:07):
Sidekick.

Tania (00:49:08):
Yes,

Matt (00:49:08):
Yes. T-Mobile sidekick.

Tania (00:49:09):
Yeah.

Matt (00:49:10):
Yeah. Those were the shit. And you could play games on it?

Tania (00:49:12):
Yeah. Yeah. You could do everything. And then the ring tones and all that, that was a thing.

Matt (00:49:17):
The ringback tones. You remember ring back tones? I was like, you were cool if you could change it all the

Tania (00:49:23):
Time. Yeah.

Matt (00:49:24):
And

Tania (00:49:24):
We'd always like, "Oh, I can't pay for this. My parents won't buy us on, so we'll just be like, be quiet. I'm just going to record the song

Matt (00:49:31):
On the radio

Tania (00:49:32):
When it

Matt (00:49:32):
Comes on. " Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I remember all that. I was telling somebody the other day, I was one of the last generations of teenagers that when I wanted to call a girl's house, I had to pray that their dad didn't answer. And then if they did, it was like this grilling before I want- Yeah, who are

Tania (00:49:51):
You? What grade are you in? Why are you calling? Where do you live? Parents Know you're calling.

Matt (00:49:58):
Yeah. And we had real people skills back then. But there's this Generation Alpha. Let's see what their age

Tania (00:50:06):
First. Yeah, I know. I know. Generation Alpha, but I don't know what age they start at. I think it's pretty young.

Matt (00:50:13):
Yeah. What have you heard about them?

Tania (00:50:18):
I think that they're dependent on

Matt (00:50:22):
Technology. So 2010 to 2024, 15. So yeah. 10. Yeah, 2010. I was in prison. Yeah.

Tania (00:50:34):
2010 I had just graduated high school

Matt (00:50:38):
And

Tania (00:50:38):
I was in college.

Matt (00:50:41):
So this generation of kids, what have you heard of them?

Tania (00:50:44):
So they're just dependent on technology

Matt (00:50:46):
And

Tania (00:50:49):
I guess the wokeness bleeding over from the Gen Zs and what else? I know I heard some other things. What have you Heard?

Matt (00:50:58):
So one of the craziest things about them, first of all, 2010 is when my generation started having kids. Are you a millennial?

Tania (00:51:06):
Technically. Yeah.

Matt (00:51:07):
Yeah. Okay. So that's when our generation started having kids and then all the way until 2024, these kids are our kids.

Tania (00:51:14):
And

Matt (00:51:14):
So I know that it isn't their parents that are instilling things into them because I know my generation. We fucking suck. And it scares me that we're about to take over control of the world. I know. It's really crazy. But these kids are like young kids are making commitments to sobriety and celibacy and just making really good decisions. And really what I think it is, is they're watching our generation go, these people are fucked. It's like very mind-blowing.

Tania (00:51:48):
Yeah. I mean, it's just even interviewing and hiring people that are of the younger generation.

Matt (00:51:55):
Their parents come with them and shit.

Tania (00:51:57):
Yeah. And drop them off and they have no problem with it. It's not an issue. It's not embarrassing. And then they're very opinionated like, "Well, I can only work from this hour to this hour and I need to get paid this. " And they have no qualifications. They've never worked before. It's just all these demands

Matt (00:52:14):
And

Tania (00:52:15):
I'm not feeling good today, so I'm not coming to work. And they don't care. I mean me, I was terrified to call in. Anytime I have to cancel anything, I'm terrified. I'd never talk back to anyone that's an adult or an elder or

Matt (00:52:30):
Whatever. If you're 34, I don't talk back to adults anymore.

Tania (00:52:34):
Yeah. I mean, it's still addressing people as ma'am and sir and properly. I

Matt (00:52:41):
Don't hear very many people say ma'am anyone. I do. I texted even like, yes, ma'am, whatever. But yeah, just the language, they have lost their ability to communicate. Have you seen that thing where it's like the parent will be in the next ... Scene, this is again, our generation, how shitty we are, but the kid will be in the next room over and they'll still text them. My parents yell from across the house and we had to run to them.

Tania (00:53:11):
I mean, we had to eat dinner as a

Matt (00:53:13):
Family. As a family. Yeah.

Tania (00:53:15):
Every night, no matter what, no matter what.

Matt (00:53:18):
Yeah. It was like-

Tania (00:53:19):
No exception.

Matt (00:53:20):
No exception. It is so important that even if you're with your friends, just bring your friends.

Tania (00:53:28):
Yeah.

Matt (00:53:28):
And I was like, "You're not missing this.

Tania (00:53:30):
" Yeah, which is great. I mean, it's beautiful. And

Matt (00:53:33):
Now

Tania (00:53:33):
You walk into houses and they don't even have a dining room table.

Matt (00:53:36):
Right. Yeah. Well, again, this is our generation, but they fucking can't cook or anything.

Tania (00:53:41):
No,

Matt (00:53:41):
Nothing. Nothing,

Tania (00:53:42):
Nothing. Literally nothing. I have so many friends that are like, "Oh my gosh, you know how to sew, you know how to clean and cook and all these things." I'm like, "I didn't have a choice.

Matt (00:53:51):
I had

Tania (00:53:51):
No choice."

Matt (00:53:52):
Yeah. I was taught how to sew really young too. Were you raised in a religious home?

Tania (00:53:58):
No, not really. I mean, our parents, again, they decided to raise us in the US and they wanted us to become accustomed to the way that we went to school and our friends

Matt (00:54:09):
And all the

Tania (00:54:10):
Other people around

Matt (00:54:10):
Us. They wanted you to be American.

Tania (00:54:11):
Yeah. And they also let us be open-minded about religion as well. My family's Hindu. We do have some people in our family that are Christian as well, but I mean, being in Oklahoma, most people are Christian. They have no idea what Hinduism is.

Matt (00:54:30):
Oh, you're not a vegetarian.

Tania (00:54:32):
A lot of Hindus are

Matt (00:54:33):
Vegetarian,

Tania (00:54:33):
But I myself am not. I

Matt (00:54:35):
Never

Tania (00:54:35):
Was. So yeah, my parents weren't either. I mean, they're very accepting and loose about that. They're very accepting of people. They're very accepting of different cultures and different societies and all that.

Matt (00:54:50):
But you not going to medical school is it?

Tania (00:54:52):
That was a no. It was an absolute no. And it didn't help that my brother's this super smart engineer and he did everything on track and whatever. And I'm like, "Can't you be happy with one kid doing that instead of both?"

Matt (00:55:13):
Was it an expectation that you were going to be a doctor when you were a kid?

Tania (00:55:18):
No, not really. I think they just wanted me to be successful something through academics to be successful, not go be an entrepreneur, go be a pop star or whatever it is. That was not an option. It's like, you have to make good grades, you have to do this, you have to do that. They weren't like, "Oh, we don't know how we're going to pay for college for our kids." They're like, "No, you get scholarships. You do well in school. What? We're not paying for college. Why pay for college?" That's their way of thinking, which

Matt (00:55:48):
Is- What's your relationship with them now?

Tania (00:55:50):
It's great. It's great now. I think there's a better understanding of, you have to let me be me. I've proven that I was able to take care of myself, learn all the things, make the mistakes, not fail from them and just be responsible on my own. And in turn, I never lost respect for them. I mean, it was rough having to do that on my own and not talk to them for several years, but I didn't lose respect for them. I mean, I still respect them and obviously they did an amazing job raising me, but I mean, it changed my perspective on life and I don't know what kind of person I'd be if I was just still just depending on them and living under them. Well,

Matt (00:56:31):
You'd probably be a doctor.

Tania (00:56:33):
I'd be a Doctor. By now, would I be happy? Yeah. Would I be Happy? I mean, I don't know because I know lots of doctors who are not necessarily happy or they want to do other things. They wish they knew how to do other things. They wish they knew how to run a business.

Matt (00:56:47):
Oh yeah.

Tania (00:56:48):
And they lean on people like me. How do I run my business? How do I do this? How can I capitalize on what we're doing? All I know is how to treat a patient. That's it. That isn't Equal To money always.

Matt (00:57:00):
Doctors are a very smart group demographic of people, right? But if they had to run their own businesses, they'd all be poor.

Tania (00:57:11):
Yeah. And I think so many of them have come to that conclusion. And so that's why all these private equity groups are going out and praying on doctors and all these offices because they know they're like, "Oh, we'll just dangle a bunch of money in front of them." And they're like, "Oh yeah, that's more than we've been making for the last however many years." And it's freedom, sign me up when they don't realize you could be doing the same exact thing that they're doing.

Matt (00:57:38):
Yeah. It's interesting. When people find something to exploit, they exploit the fuck out of it. Oh

Tania (00:57:44):
My gosh. Yeah. It's Really sad because these private equity groups have no idea how to treat a patient or-

Matt (00:57:52):
Or care.

Tania (00:57:53):
Anything.

Matt (00:57:53):
They don't care about it.

Tania (00:57:55):
They're like, "See more patients, make more money, and that's it. I don't want to hear about anything else at all. Just do it. That's it. "

Matt (00:58:02):
Yeah. The healthcare industry in Houston is one of the first things that I noticed was how crazy it is. There's emergency rooms everywhere. Everywhere. They're in strip malls.

Tania (00:58:12):
Yeah, everywhere.

Matt (00:58:13):
Everywhere. In California, it's not like that. There's hospitals and those hospitals service the whole city. There's seven or eight. There's no

Tania (00:58:26):
Freestanding ERs and freestanding urgent cares.

Matt (00:58:29):
Yeah. It's like a brick and mortar strip mall with an emergency room in it. There's an emergency room right next to my house.

Tania (00:58:37):
Yeah. I mean, there's one right next to my house as well. I literally could walk there. Once I had to walk there because I was like, I'm not going to drive my car. And I went to the emergency room and I got there in two minutes because It's right By my house.

Matt (00:58:52):
Why were you going?

Tania (00:58:54):
I started getting this really bad fever and I was like, I feel like something's off. So I mean, it's the middle of the night. I'm not going to go to the medical center and sit in a waiting room full of sick people. I'm like, let me try this ER that's right here because I probably can get in really quickly.

Matt (00:59:13):
It's funny because they've got concierge services. It's huge. Concierge service at an ER. They're like, "Oh yeah, you're in and out and you're seeing a doctor in five minutes and you've got all your medications and you're stabilized in 24 hours." And it's like-

Tania (00:59:28):
Amazing. Before the thought of going to an ER is like, do I really need to go to the ER Because I could potentially be sitting here for 12 hours.

Matt (00:59:37):
Yeah, seven hours before you're seen.

Tania (00:59:40):
Yeah.

Matt (00:59:40):
In a room full of fucked up people

Tania (00:59:43):
Sick people, Drug people.

Matt (00:59:44):
Bleeding people.

Tania (00:59:46):
Dying people. It's just mass chaos. Yeah. And then the thing about emergency rooms is you walk into the waiting room, but then everyone that's coming in through the ambulance, you have no idea how many. They're constantly And coming in and they were taking up the rooms too. So you're not just fighting the people in the waiting room, you're also fighting the people coming in through Life Flight and ambulances.

Matt (01:00:10):
Yeah, the healthcare industry. The fact that it's called an industry, the treatment industry, what do you know about treatment?

Tania (01:00:18):
Not a lot until I guess I knew more about it than I just maybe gave myself credit for, but I don't really know. I don't know what treatment is. To me, I just thought, oh, rehab, that's just what treatment is, but it's not. It's not the same at all. And so I wouldn't say I know that much about it, but I think I know the basis of it at least.

Matt (01:00:42):
Yeah. One of the things that ... So I'm going through this phase of building a company around a model and a theory. And one of the things that was really interesting to me is the nonprofit sector of this business, they don't call it the treatment industry. They call it the field of recovery. Call it something completely different. And then the way that the language that they use is very different. So ultimately what it comes down to is I think the for- profit treatment industry sees patient as money.

Tania (01:01:17):
Oh yeah.

Matt (01:01:18):
Really that's what it comes down to.

Tania (01:01:19):
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Matt (01:01:21):
And so the nonprofit, they don't see it the same way. And so yeah, I've just been like, we are actually going through typical industry norm terminology and redefining stuff around the model. And that was one of the ones that came up. I was like, "Really, really call this an industry." And it's an industry that's focused on saving lives. How does that make sense? Yeah. Blows and

Tania (01:01:48):
Fine. Yeah. I mean, every single aspect is it's like jumping through hoops. And I Always say there's a beautiful potential for the healthcare ecosystem, but it's broken. Every single part of the ecosystem is broken

Matt (01:02:04):
And it's just not- Nobody's really done it right either. Because they've got social healthcare, that shit's fucked up. Capitalism healthcare, I guess. What is it? This shit's fucked up.

Tania (01:02:17):
Yeah. I mean, I think there was one of the hospital systems in Dallas was caught and is currently being investigated for giving kidneys to rich patients versus poorer patients. I don't know exactly. I didn't read the article. I just saw the headline, but I mean, it just happens everywhere. So let's not talk about, oh, it's just Dallas's fault. It happens everywhere. It happens absolutely everywhere. And I mean, here in Houston, there's buildings named after certain people who've donated money because they needed immediate treatment and they knew that that's the way that they could do it.

Matt (01:02:59):
Oh, really?

Tania (01:03:02):
Yeah. I mean, the Texas Medical Center, which is here in Houston, is the largest medical center in the whole world. So anyone in the whole world that has this extremely complex, crazy thing going on, they come here.

Matt (01:03:17):
Really? Where is it? Is It downtown?

Tania (01:03:20):
Yeah, I guess it's downtown near Rice Village. It's called the Medical Center. So you can access it from 288 from 59.

Matt (01:03:30):
Yeah,

Tania (01:03:30):
It's that little area right there. And it's actually that whole land there is nonprofit. So there's a lot of money to treat people, but they allocate it in different ways. And so we don't have to go down that rabbit hole, but yeah, It's Interesting. There's a PA I know she works in the medical center and she's like, "Oh, there's this form that I could fill out for all of my patients and they just get everything paid for for free." And they tell me, "I'm going to get in trouble if I keep filling it out for people. " And she's like, "But then what is it for? " It's kind of scary to think there are resources, but they legitimately turn people away who are terminally ill or potentially terminally ill.

Matt (01:04:15):
Have you seen this scandal that's going on in California? The $24 billion scandal?

Tania (01:04:20):
No, I haven't.

Matt (01:04:22):
So it's a treatment industry scandal.

Tania (01:04:24):
Oh.

Matt (01:04:25):
Technically. Really what it was was a homeless, I forget what they call it, but they were going to get rid of homelessness in California. And so they did a bunch of initial upfront studies and had a bunch of dialogue around, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? Why are we going to do it? What is the metrics we're going to use for success? They did a whole bunch of studies. And one of the things that they did upfront was like, let's get a census of all the homeless people. So there's like 32,000 homeless people in California in 2019. And so one of the questions that they asked was like, how much money would it take to give every homeless person a house for a year and X amount of money? And the number that it came out to was 1.6 billion.

(01:05:15):
And then they used that as a starting point to justify why they need to not do that. We can't incentivize drug use and we can't have them dying in these houses and all this crazy shit. Anyway, they justified a $24 billion billion with a B, taller than the Empire State Building B and justified this huge package and then they created a bunch of NGOs and just started distributing money and people were winning contracts and getting awarded huge amounts of money. There's one, they got a $20 million contract. The deal was you're going to build basically supportive housing for 132 people You're going to get $5 million a year and you have X amount of time to build it. So five million a year, four years later, they got all the money. Four years later, they never broke ground.

Tania (01:06:13):
Wow.

Matt (01:06:13):
Yeah. And that's just one of probably thousands of stories. There was 24 billion. So now a bunch of people are getting investigated and the thing is it's very easy to protect yourself personally from any kind of legal ramifications. You set up LLCs and corpse and all this stuff and it's like 501 and next thing you know, it's like that entity is what's in trouble, not me. And so all these people, there are people that are losing jobs and stuff like that, but dude, it's $24 billion. That's

Tania (01:06:46):
Sick.

Matt (01:06:47):
You could have housed every homeless person in the United States for a year. And then they got that whole thing that happened in San Francisco when Xi came in and they cleaned up the whole city For A day.

Tania (01:07:02):
Yeah. It's really a problem. So what's your theory on that with homelessness? Because they say that there's communities and even if you gave these people money, food, shelter, all the things, they still wouldn't want it because it's like a culture that they want to live in the streets and they want to do this and they want to live this way. Is that real?

Matt (01:07:29):
So in San Diego, there's an estimated 2,500 homeless people downtown. Of those 2,500, legitimately mentally ill, maybe I'm going to be super generous here and say a hundred. A hundred of them are actually mentally ill where it's like

(01:07:45):
They can't support themselves. They ended up there, that was their lot in life. They were the homeless people that were homeless in zero. Same type of deal. But public facing, if you ever see interviews with homeless people, it's like, "Yeah, we need help and we need this and that. " I've done drugs with every homeless ... From 2017 to 2020, I had done drugs with every single one of them with confidence can say that I've done drugs with every homeless person downtown San Diego and none of us wanted to go inside. It is a lifestyle. The amount of freedom, the level of freedom that you experience when you're disenfranchised and you have no responsibilities and you have nobody to answer to. It's like, yeah, not only is it a community, they all want to be there. Public facing, they might say something, but when we're all together, nobody wants to go home.

(01:08:46):
Everybody's there for a reason. And typically what it is, is we don't want the responsibility of being a productive member of society and how are you going to sustain a life of full-blown drug addiction and try to have a nine to five? And it's like drug addiction is a very expensive thing, but it's also very sustainable if you find the right rhythm.

Tania (01:09:11):
Yeah. I mean, if that's the only thing you have to focus on, then ...

Matt (01:09:14):
That's it.

Tania (01:09:15):
That's

Matt (01:09:15):
It. And there's so many different ways to get money. Here in Texas, it blew my mind. We had collected, I drink a lot of sugar-free soda. And so in San Diego or California, they have that tax on aluminum where I think it's like 10 cents a can. You buy the can and they tax you 10 cents and then if you recycle it, you get it back. And so nobody does it though. So homeless people will go around dumpster diving, spending days and they'll get massive amounts of cans and they'll go recycle it twice a week and they'll get a couple hundred bucks. I brought five trash bags to a recycling pace. I got $1.29 here in Texas. I was like, I am never doing this again.

Tania (01:10:10):
It was more work than

Matt (01:10:11):
That. Yes. I was like, "I'm never doing this again." Oh

Tania (01:10:15):
My gosh.

Matt (01:10:16):
Yeah. And the guy in San Diego, you have to have an ID to do it. They waited. I was like, "Okay, all right." Yeah, it's

Tania (01:10:26):
Like a good amount. And

Matt (01:10:27):
They're like,

Tania (01:10:28):
"Here's your dollar."

Matt (01:10:28):
Yeah, $1.29. I was like ...

Tania (01:10:32):
Okay.

Matt (01:10:33):
And the whole time the guy was talking to me, I could see him looking at me funny like, "What is this guy doing?"

Tania (01:10:38):
Yeah. Why did you take time to sort this?

Matt (01:10:40):
Yeah. Just

Tania (01:10:40):
Put it in your green bin and just call it a day.

Matt (01:10:43):
Yeah. I was like, "What?" And so yeah, in California specifically, I have no experience outside of California. I interacted with the homeless population in San Francisco. I wasn't homeless, but I spent a lot of time with them because they have the drugs.

(01:11:03):
And then in LA, same deal, wasn't homeless, hung out on Skid Row and stuff. But in San Diego, I was homeless for a long time. If you ever listen to interviews with homeless people, it's funny, I only really keep track of news in San Diego still. I don't really watch any other news, but I will periodically see people doing interviews downtown and stuff and it's like, "I know that guy." So the first time I did drugs, I was 13 and I bought it on the same street that I ended up homeless on. It was still the homeless area. And some of the homeless people that were there when I was homeless had been there since I was a kid.

(01:11:55):
And then periodically, there were periods in my life where I would still go down there to buy drugs. And so there were people that recognized me when I started really hanging out down there, I think I started hanging out down there in 2016. All of my friends were homeless. Yeah. That actually led to the decision that I made where I was like, "I don't want to pay rent anymore. That's a couple thousand dollars I can go to drugs." And it was a very intentional process that I went through where it was like, I'm just going to be homeless. And it was like, okay. So by the time that decision was made, all of everybody that I interacted with, it was either homeless or drug dealers.

Tania (01:12:41):
Wow.

Matt (01:12:42):
And from 2016 to the end of 2020, that was my life. That was my culture. Those were my people. And it's very funny because most people think of homeless people and they walk on the other side of the street or they're scared. The reality of what you're actually scared of, I think, well, maybe not in Houston. Houston is crazy, but the most people that are scared to have something happen to them at a gas station, it's homeless people, but here it's drive-by shootings and shit. Oh yeah.

Tania (01:13:16):
It's more than just homeless people.

Matt (01:13:17):
Yeah.

Tania (01:13:19):
I would say the only time I feel maybe nervous or scared around a homeless person is in New York City in the subways because I've heard so many stories of them pushing people right before the train comes. I'm terrified. So I'm always like, "I need to put my back against a wall when I'm waiting for the subway." But other than that, I don't know. It doesn't bother me too much because I think again, the ER experience and all that, that kind of helped me a little bit. But I mean, I know that there's certain instances where someone's having a bad trip or whatever and they just do crazy things,

Matt (01:13:57):
But

Tania (01:13:58):
Generally it's whatever.

Matt (01:14:02):
So access to healthcare is a massive problem for the homeless population and they'll access every level of healthcare. If they need a checkup, they will go to the emergency room and it's like that's their only option really.

Tania (01:14:16):
Yeah.

Matt (01:14:16):
Did you ever have the giving false names and shit like that?

Tania (01:14:19):
Oh, all the time. All

Matt (01:14:20):
The time. All the time.

Tania (01:14:21):
And we would have the weirdest, I just vaguely remember this lady, she came into the ER and we would just ask, "What's your chief complaint or what's going on or whatever?" And she's like, "My lips are bleeding." And we're like, "Okay." We're like, "Okay, whatever, fill this out. " And she just got so mad at me. I mean, I'm not looking at myself, but I didn't have an attitude or anything. I just said, "Okay, well fill this out. " And she just went crazy and she's like, "I have HIV. I'm going to spit on you. " And all these things, she just went crazy. And I was like, "We didn't say we weren't going to see you. " And I told you meth is really bad In Oklahoma and I don't know, maybe to her it sounded like, okay, this is a legitimate reason to be at the ER, but to us we're just like, whatever, you're just another person that's going to pass through here and ...

Matt (01:15:17):
Yeah. I mean, I know a guy, he's from Plano and he's been to every treatment center in Texas and it has gotten to the point for him where it's like the only way for him to come off the streets or have access to care is to go to emergency rooms. And so all of the emergency rooms in Dallas know him now. And so now he's spreading out and now he's in San Antonio, I think, probably doing the same thing. But in California, it's a very different culture around the way that people treat homeless people. There's also a lot more of them. They're everywhere. I don't know how people are homeless here in Houston. Yeah,

Tania (01:16:00):
It's rough.

Matt (01:16:01):
It's really rough. The weather alone. I was homeless in a place where it was perfect and rainy.

Tania (01:16:09):
It's hot and just not good, not friendly. Even drivers, I know a few that are kind of near my neighborhood that have gotten hit by cars and killed. Yeah.

Matt (01:16:25):
Also- It

Tania (01:16:26):
Happens.

Matt (01:16:26):
It's highly illegal to do drugs here in Texas, whereas in California, I've been arrested-

Tania (01:16:33):
You get away with a lot.

Matt (01:16:35):
It's decriminalized. In practical terms, it's decriminalized. You can get caught with drugs on you and they'll either throw it out or they won't even ticket you a lot of the time. Unless you have amounts that represent for sale, they don't give a fuck. So on top of the homeless issue being homeless here and a drug addict seems bonkers to me. It's like you're going to jail all the time. I went to jail all the time anyway and I've been arrested 40 times and hardly ever was it for drugs unless I got caught selling drugs. It was always just dumb shit. I got caught on the trolley tracks definitely where you were not supposed to be and yeah, I got arrested for that, but if I got caught with drugs, I'd have just thrown them out or let me keep them. Oh,

Tania (01:17:30):
Wow.

Matt (01:17:32):
Yeah, they'll do-

Tania (01:17:34):
I think in Houston what they do is if they arrest a homeless, obviously a homeless person, they usually take them to the psych hospital. I mean, that's Just what they Do because they don't want to fill up the jails with homeless people because there's actual criminals in Houston as well. I mean, that's usually what happens because you'll see a lot of homeless people come out with the scrubs from the Psych Hospital. And so you just know they're there for a couple of days, a day, two, whatever, and then they're just like, "Okay, go do your thing."

Matt (01:18:08):
Yeah. And

Tania (01:18:10):
They usually go right back to the same place that they were before.

Matt (01:18:12):
Oh, the exact same spot. Yeah.

Tania (01:18:14):
That's like their home.

Matt (01:18:17):
The crime here in Houston is so different than the crime in San Diego. People think of San Diego and it's just a beautiful ... It's America's finest city, but there's still a massive crime. Mexico's right there. The drugs come right across the border to right there. But the murder rate here is insane.

Tania (01:18:39):
Well, I mean, I think it has to do a lot with weapons and access to weapons and just that's what I think. I don't know. People Are angry in Texas.

Matt (01:18:51):
Have you had the Southern hospitality experience here?

Tania (01:18:59):
Honestly, I think I've probably felt it more in Oklahoma than I did here in Houston at least.

Matt (01:19:06):
Yeah. There was definitely culturally different than in San Diego. Everybody ignores each other down there. They literally was like, "You can go to a grocery store and not talk to anybody." And that's normal.That felt normal to me. And then I came here and I was like-

Tania (01:19:22):
You're like, "Why are you talking to

Matt (01:19:23):
Me? " Yeah. People are saying hi and shit. It's like, "Hi."

Tania (01:19:27):
Do I know you?

Matt (01:19:28):
Yeah. And so I experienced a level of Southern hospitality that I didn't ever know was real. You hear about it, but it's like, okay, maybe it's a thing, I guess. I feel

Tania (01:19:40):
Like it's way les here than what I'm used to back

Matt (01:19:43):
Home. Yeah, I bet.

Tania (01:19:44):
Everyone talks to each other, everyone to strike up a conversation and Just Talk to you, whether it's genuine or not. It's just a thing.

Matt (01:19:54):
Yeah. And then you get on the freeway in Houston and it's like a fucking mad house. Yeah.

Tania (01:19:58):
You hold your breath.

Matt (01:19:59):
People are crazy. The drivers here- Don't cut

Tania (01:20:01):
Anyone off. Don't honk at anyone. Just you're going to get there when you get

Matt (01:20:05):
There.That's a funny thing. I can't remember if I've heard people honk at each other here, but in California, everybody honks at each other constantly.

Tania (01:20:14):
People don't do it here on purpose because if you make the wrong person mad, they're going to shoot at you.

Matt (01:20:20):
Really?

Tania (01:20:20):
Yeah. It's like a thing. Really is a thing.

Matt (01:20:23):
At the

Tania (01:20:24):
Very least, they're going to wave their gun at you.

Matt (01:20:26):
Really? Isn't that illegal? Is that illegal?

Tania (01:20:30):
I mean, of course it's illegal.

Matt (01:20:32):
Okay. It's

Tania (01:20:32):
Not illegal to have the gun.

Matt (01:20:34):
It's

Tania (01:20:34):
Illegal to shoot somebody though.

Matt (01:20:35):
No, but I'm talking about in California, if you brandish a gun, if you show somebody your gun, it's illegal.

Tania (01:20:41):
Oh, I mean, I don't think so. It's open carry in Texas. So you can openly carry your gun.

Matt (01:20:48):
Yeah. Do you watch YouTube?

Tania (01:20:52):
Sometimes.

Matt (01:20:53):
Do you watch the ... Probably not. I watch hood channels and I go into hoods and interview gangs and shit like that.

Tania (01:21:03):
I haven't watched anything. Probably not the ones that are always going to the same areas, but I find that so fascinating.

Matt (01:21:11):
Me too. So Houston is a hotspot for that. People come from all over the United States to come to visit the gangs in Houston. And dude, they've got full-blown weaponry. It isn't pistols. They're talking

Tania (01:21:24):
About

Matt (01:21:24):
Rifles, crazy weaponry. And it's like California, that's a secret society. Those people, they're a secret society. Here, they're everywhere. It's everywhere.

Tania (01:21:36):
Everyone has ... It's almost wrong to not have a weapon because if someone breaks in your house, think about it. If someone breaks in your house with a gun, what are you going to do? Grab your knife. It's scary to think about that anyone and everyone has access to a gun here.

Matt (01:21:55):
I

Tania (01:21:55):
Mean, everyone feels differently about it, but just thinking from a protection

Matt (01:22:00):
Standpoint,

Tania (01:22:01):
You got to be able to protect- Do

Matt (01:22:02):
You have a gun?

Tania (01:22:03):
I do.

Matt (01:22:04):
Yeah. I get my gun rights back in four years. Can't wait.

Tania (01:22:09):
Can't wait, Especially Here.

Matt (01:22:11):
Yeah.

Tania (01:22:13):
I grew up, again, being in the country.

Matt (01:22:15):
Oklahoma,

Tania (01:22:16):
Yeah. Yeah. You learn how to use it properly. You know how to store it properly. It's almost like gambling too. It was just easily accessible so it just didn't feel like this is exciting or something I'm going to get addicted to. It's just regular. So that's kind of how I think about guns as well. It's like everyone has a gun, you use it safely, you use it for certain things, but that's it. It's not something you just carry around with you and threaten people with. That's Just not A thing. That wasn't a thing for how I grew up. So I have it properly stored and it's there for a reason. That's it.

Matt (01:22:52):
And you don't need a license here? You can just go to a gun shop and buy a gun.

Tania (01:22:56):
Unless you have a felony.

Matt (01:22:58):
But so they run background checks? I think

Tania (01:22:59):
You have to be 18. Is it 18 or 21? I don't remember.

Matt (01:23:02):
Okay.

Tania (01:23:03):
They do. They do a background check.

Matt (01:23:04):
Okay. So in Arizona, you can buy guns from people and all you have to do is show them your ID. Is that the same here?

Tania (01:23:12):
I don't think so.

Matt (01:23:13):
Okay. Yeah.

Tania (01:23:13):
Because I think you have to register. It has to be registered to you. Even from a pawn shop or anywhere.

Matt (01:23:20):
Yeah, because I know people in California, gang members and criminal elements, they all go to Arizona and bring guns back. Oh, wow.

Tania (01:23:28):
Because

Matt (01:23:28):
You can just buy them out of someone's trunk.

Tania (01:23:31):
Yeah. I mean, it's very important. If you have a gun or something in your car and if it gets stolen, someone breaks in your car and it gets stolen, you have to report it. Because if someone uses that to do something crazy, then it's under your name.

Matt (01:23:46):
Yeah. The murder rate here is always blowing my mind. There's people getting killed and it isn't one person. No. Have you seen a couple weeks ago? If you actually start looking into this, it will blow your mind. There was 17 people killed in a single weekend recently.

Tania (01:24:04):
I feel like that's so normal.

Matt (01:24:06):
Yeah. I mean, I didn't realize how

Tania (01:24:08):
Much- Which is really terrifying. It's terrifying. And there's a lot of abductions and trafficking. Houston's so bad for trafficking.

Matt (01:24:18):
Yeah, the 45, it's called something. It's called the ... Anyway, it's like human trafficking corridor.

Tania (01:24:23):
Yeah. It's so scary. You just never know. I follow this page on Facebook. It's this lady, this local lady from Houston. It's called Grizzy's Hood News and she reports everything. People send in like, oh my gosh, there's cops over here. There's a fire over here. It's

Matt (01:24:42):
Like real-time news.

Tania (01:24:43):
It is. And it's so interesting because you never would know about those things. But when you pass a crazy accident or something on the highway, you get on there and you actually see what happened.

Matt (01:24:54):
Really?

Tania (01:24:55):
Yeah. This was a high speed chase or this was something crazy happened. This person was intoxicated or whatever happened. You know about it.

Matt (01:25:02):
Do you ever get on the police scanner apps? I

Tania (01:25:05):
Never have, but there's another page that's basically the scanner, but then they tell you about what's going on. It's called police happenings or something.

Matt (01:25:15):
Okay. Yeah. And when I was on a lot of drugs, I would always be on one of those apps because I swore they were coming. You were

Tania (01:25:23):
Paranoid.

Matt (01:25:24):
Y'all were very paranoid. I was ridiculously ... I would ...

Tania (01:25:29):
You're like, they're coming to get me. I just Know it. I

Matt (01:25:32):
Moved an hour outside of the city, not even in the same county anymore. I would spend three nights out of the week at my front window, literally not move and just look out the window the whole night. It was ridiculous paranoia.

Tania (01:25:48):
Oh gosh.

Matt (01:25:49):
It's not fun. I

Tania (01:25:50):
Couldn't imagine living like that.

Matt (01:25:53):
It's different for sure. It's hectic and it's very taxing.

Tania (01:25:58):
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Life in general is scary and it's this unknown, but adding some kind of stimulant or whatever to that, I just could have loved

Matt (01:26:09):
That. Well, you know what? I think, okay, my point of view, how you think the gas station and all these other places, the deeper you go into that world, the less scared you are of a lot of shit.

Tania (01:26:23):
I guess so.

Matt (01:26:23):
Yeah.

Tania (01:26:24):
I guess when you let go of the worry or your perception, how everybody else is going to look at you and think of you and all that, then it just feels like, okay, it's just me and it's like I just need to take care of myself and that's it. That's how I imagine it is.

Matt (01:26:40):
Yeah. I think what it really is, is I know them. I know the people that you're scared of and I know they're not going to go do that. But you don't know that.

Tania (01:26:50):
I mean, a lot of crime is based around people not having resources and people not being able To Feed themselves or get gas because they have no money and they can't get anywhere because they're in this place where no one's going to take them seriously and give them a job or give them money or whatever. And so they're Like, "How else do I survive?" So That's a big thing too.

Matt (01:27:11):
No, that's a good point. The access to just basic necessities, when that's gone, the viable options for how to feed yourself become fucking crazy. And people do do crazy things. People are crazy.

Tania (01:27:28):
Yeah. I mean, they're like, okay, let me just go steal a bag of chips or whatever. Because you think about the things people steal sometimes and you're like, "Why did you steal a box of cereal or whatever?" It's because they're hungry. They don't have money to buy it. So what else do they do? That's All they want. They don't want to harm anyone or anything. They just want to eat.

Matt (01:27:49):
Yeah. I can't tell you- Which is like,

Tania (01:27:50):
I'm not saying it's okay to steal things, but at the same time, it's like, what do you do? What's your other option?

Matt (01:27:55):
Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I would be sitting in the holding cells and somebody got arrested for stealing socks or underwear. It's like, you got to ... First of all, how did that even happen? How did you get caught stealing underwear? But the fact that you're stealing underwear is like ... So there was a guy, there was months where every time I was arrested, he was there too in the waiting cell, in the holding cells and this guy ... So the progression of how this happened. So the first time I saw this guy, he was the crazy guy in the corner talking about God and conspiracies. And then a couple of years go by and I'm sitting in a jail cell and I realized, oh my God, I turned into him. And I'm ranting about the government and God and all this shit. I was like, "Oh my God, how the

Tania (01:28:49):
Fuck?" You're like, "I'm him now."

Matt (01:28:51):
Yeah. And I was like, wait a minute, I'm not crazy. Wait a minute, that guy was crazy, but I'm doing the same shit. You're

Tania (01:28:57):
Like, "Does that make me crazy?"

Matt (01:28:58):
Yeah. And in my head, I'm like, "No, wait, I'm still fucking normal." But I am doing exactly what he's doing. Yeah, it was a really funny progression. But there was a guy that every time I got arrested, he was there and this went on for a couple of months and he would get arrested for the dumbest shit. And then I very quickly realized this was his alternative. He would just get arrested.

Tania (01:29:23):
Yeah. Oh, that's all the time. People try their best to because they're like, "You get a meal, you get shelter, you get socks." Why not? It sounds

Matt (01:29:32):
Great. That's funny. I did an interview with somebody yesterday who is also homeless and very similar story to mine and he was talking about how obsessed he was with socks and I'm like, whoa, that's where that came ... I'm obsessed with socks. Because

Tania (01:29:50):
I mean, I feel like if you live on the street or you don't have those types of resources like getting your feet dirty or cutting it on glass or whatever, that's a thing. You want I'm going to protect your feet.

Matt (01:30:01):
Yeah.

Tania (01:30:03):
Or keep yourself warm.

Matt (01:30:06):
Yeah. So in San Diego, people don't realize how cold it gets at night. It Gets really cold at night. But my feet, I have a very funny foot situation. I baby my feet, so I wake up, immediately put socks and shoes on.

Tania (01:30:24):
Really?

Matt (01:30:24):
Okay. Immediately. And I don't know what ... I've been like this my whole life, but when I was homeless, it was still the same way. It was like shoes and socks.

Tania (01:30:36):
You just have to.

Matt (01:30:37):
Yeah. Have to.

Tania (01:30:38):
I feel like I kind of have the same thing. I don't like the feeling of having dirty feet. I don't want sand or anything on my feet. I have to have socks

Matt (01:30:47):
On. My feet are just super sensitive to pain.

Tania (01:30:51):
Oh, okay.

Matt (01:30:51):
Yeah.

Tania (01:30:52):
I don't know why. I think mine's just this feeling of, oh, they're exposed as dirty. It's ugh.

Matt (01:30:57):
Yeah. So there were definitely times where I wore the same socks for weeks.

Tania (01:31:01):
Well,

Matt (01:31:02):
Yeah.

Tania (01:31:03):
Yeah.

Matt (01:31:04):
But it was just the fact that they were protected from pain. I have a really high pain tolerance, but at the same time, hate experiencing pain. I went to the hospital one time and had a bunch of abscesses and actually it was in jail. I got arrested and they did surgery on them with no local anesthetics, nothing. They just cut it, drained it, sewed it back up. And the whole time I was gritting my teeth, they had to drain three or four of them. And when I got up, the lady was like, "You handled that better than anybody I've ever seen." And I was like, I'm sweating.

Tania (01:31:45):
Yeah, you're like, did I?

Matt (01:31:47):
Yeah. But she was like, "Yeah, some people, there was nurses that have been knocked out by inmates that were trying to do the same thing."

Tania (01:31:55):
I could imagine.

Matt (01:31:56):
Yeah, because it is not- Well,

Tania (01:31:59):
Yeah, because it's already infected, so It's Sensitive. And then on top of that, just cutting you open. Yeah, of course. It's Going to be painful.

Matt (01:32:09):
Yeah, it wasn't pleasant. I've had the craziest abscesses. Looking back on it now, I know people that have died from the infections.

Tania (01:32:18):
Well, yeah, of course.

Matt (01:32:20):
And it's like I would walk around with softball size abscesses on my back and on my shoulders and shit because to this day, my veins are still not really back. And so I just started muscling dirty drugs, like street drugs. And I would get the gnarliest infections.

Tania (01:32:41):
I bet. Yeah. It was

Matt (01:32:43):
Insane.That's

Tania (01:32:43):
Scary. I know. Every time I go get a shot, I'm like, "Make sure you use alcohol and I don't want to get an infection." And there's literally people alive on the street using used needles.

Matt (01:32:56):
Oh yeah. Sharing needles?

Tania (01:32:59):
Yeah. Yeah, That's a Thing.

Matt (01:33:02):
When I got clean, I went to the doctor's one time. Well, a series of doctor visits, I got my blood work done and got tested for everything under the sun and they were like ... And dude, I wouldn't brush my teeth ever. And I had no cavities, I did noth. And then this was years ago and I just never went back to the doctors.

Tania (01:33:27):
Wow.

Matt (01:33:27):
I hate going to the doctors. I

Tania (01:33:30):
Don't love going to the doctor either, but I mean, I do just because I feel like it's hypocritical for me to be like, "You have to go to the doctor and take care of your health and whatever." I'm always preaching this. And then I'm like, do I need to? I feel like I'm fine.

Matt (01:33:45):
Yeah. I've been very impressed with my body because if anybody was a poster child for needing to go to the doctors because of the shit that they've done, it would definitely be me. But every time I've ever gotten checked and then my teeth, no cavities, no fillings at all. That's

Tania (01:34:05):
Crazy. That's crazy.

Matt (01:34:07):
And I've smoked a shitload of meth and I've smoked so much stuff off foil. The damage that I thought I was doing in my teeth, nothing.

Tania (01:34:15):
Wow. You must have good enamel Because The meth part, I don't know about that. But I figure if you're living on the street and stuff, you're not eating candy and ice cream and stuff that really rots your teeth.

Matt (01:34:27):
Oh no, that's all you're eating.

Tania (01:34:29):
Oh, really?

Matt (01:34:29):
That's it. Yeah. You're not going to- I feel

Tania (01:34:31):
Like You Just go to McDonald's and get a sandwich, Something That will be substantial, no?

Matt (01:34:38):
No, no, no. Think about it. We're looking for calorie dense and satisfying. We want sweet shit that's calorie dense, empty calories, but it's like, yeah, I would eat pie for breakfast and then ice cream for dinner if I ate. And it was like, yeah, pie and ice cream.

Tania (01:34:57):
Wow.

Matt (01:34:57):
That's what I lived off of for a long time.

Tania (01:34:59):
Huh. Okay. Nevermind.

Matt (01:35:01):
And yeah, especially with opiates, you crave alcoholics too, they crave sugar.

Tania (01:35:07):
Interesting.

Matt (01:35:08):
Okay.

Tania (01:35:08):
I guess my theory was wrong. Yeah.

Matt (01:35:10):
No, yeah. I just felt

Tania (01:35:11):
Like it would be something that's filling and would last a long time and-

Matt (01:35:15):
We don't eat. We get full off a Snicker bar.

Tania (01:35:18):
Wow.

Matt (01:35:19):
Yeah.

Tania (01:35:21):
Yeah. It's so funny because when you give your leftover food or whatever to a homeless person, that happened to me in New York. I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to take this home with me. Let me just give it to this homeless guy." He was like, "What is this? " And he threw it away.

Matt (01:35:34):
Yeah.

Tania (01:35:34):
I'm like, "Okay, I would've eaten it if You're just Going to throw it

Matt (01:35:39):
Away." Yeah. And so some of the shit that people come by with food and stuff like that, it's for homeless people. Yeah. And they're like, wow. Well, that food, they will keep it for days and just eat off of it. And it's supposed to be refrigerated. And so I learned really quick on the streets we are so paranoid about our food and normal people are very paranoid about food going bad and shit like that. It's like food doesn't really go bad anymore. There's so much preservatives and artificial shit in it. It's like bread. I remember when I was a kid, bread would go to bad so fast and it's like I've had the same loaf of bread in my pantry for a month, then there's no mold.

Tania (01:36:22):
Really?

Matt (01:36:22):
Yeah.

Tania (01:36:24):
That's scary. It's a scary though. Wow.

Matt (01:36:28):
It's funny.

Tania (01:36:29):
Yeah. I

Matt (01:36:30):
Don't

Tania (01:36:30):
Know. I mean, you always think ... Well, I mean, I know feeding the homeless, that's a thing still. Obviously

Matt (01:36:36):
You

Tania (01:36:36):
Still need food. It's free. Of course they're going to take it. But yeah, you just never know. Who's actually going to be thankful for that? Because there's

Matt (01:36:46):
The homeless

Tania (01:36:46):
People who are homeless because they lost their resources, but then there's the homeless people that are like, "We're just living on the street because we want to.

Matt (01:36:54):
" Yeah. Even the ones that, at least from my experience, I still met a lot of homeless people that ended up homeless. It wasn't a choice. I made that choice. A lot of them didn't make that choice, but then they experience homelessness and they're like, "I'm never going back indoors ever."

Tania (01:37:13):
That's crazy to think about.

Matt (01:37:15):
Once you end up there, it's pretty awesome.

Tania (01:37:19):
Interesting. Okay.

Matt (01:37:21):
Now the drug addiction part is fucking terrible, but dude, you don't have to pay anything. And I think a lot of people try to capture that level of freedom and they'll go to the mountains for a month at a time or something or they'll go, but they still got to go back and they'll be out there and it's so great. I don't have my cell phone and all this kind

Tania (01:37:47):
Of- Yeah, but you still have to pay your mortgage.

Matt (01:37:48):
Yeah.

Tania (01:37:50):
All those things that are back home.

Matt (01:37:51):
Yeah. And plus it's a very expensive way to try to capture freedom. The reality is a lot of those month long trips are super expensive. Yeah,

Tania (01:38:01):
Of course, because you still pay for things back home and you're paying for things wherever

Matt (01:38:06):
You go to. Yeah. And they're buying high-end gear and paying guides and shit like that. It's like, yeah, dude, but when you're homeless and you have nothing to lose and you have nothing to pay for and you have literally no responsibilities and no connection to society at large other than it's happening around you. But when I was homeless, it was a very small world, very small and we all knew each other. It is a culture for sure. It's A very unique culture.

Tania (01:38:39):
So do things like jealousy and all of that, does that happen within that culture?

Matt (01:38:45):
Oh yeah.

Tania (01:38:46):
Yeah?

Matt (01:38:46):
I mean, humans are tribal by nature and so there's always going to be a pecking order of the tribe. And then you add drugs and criminal mentality into it and it's like, yeah, there's a lot of dangerous shit that happens, but you can either play the game with them or not. And then it's also like, who are you? Who was I? Who was I connected to? Who did I know? But then there's the people out there that it's like, they're just dangerous people too. So there was on 17th Street in San Diego downtown, when I first became homeless, it was Skid Row and you had to earn a space for your tent on that street and there was rules around keep your shit clean and sweep every day. No using the restroom on this street. It was a very ...

Tania (01:39:43):
Okay.

Matt (01:39:43):
Yeah. And if you fucked up, they would kick you off the street and you'd have to try to earn your way back onto the street.

Tania (01:39:49):
Interesting. Okay. And

Matt (01:39:51):
Everybody wanted to be there because that's where all the drug Dealers Were. So it was a coveted spot to have your

Tania (01:39:58):
Tent. Okay. I watch Soft White Underbelly and there's a lot of people off of Skid Row that they

Matt (01:40:08):
Review. His office, the original one is on Skid Row.

Tania (01:40:14):
Oh really?

Matt (01:40:15):
Okay. So outside of that door is Skid Row.

Tania (01:40:18):
Oh, wow.

Matt (01:40:19):
Okay.

Tania (01:40:20):
Okay. That's why it's so easy for him to ... Okay. Okay. That makes a lot of sense.

Matt (01:40:24):
Yeah. And then I think now he has an office in Venice and people go to Venice for it. But yeah, that is on Skid Row.

Tania (01:40:31):
Yeah. That's awesome. What are your thoughts on what he's doing?

Matt (01:40:36):
He's got some really, really strange connections to people. Have you seen this whole Tania thing that's going on? She has a 13-year-old daughter that was a prostitute. Now she's like 15.

Tania (01:40:49):
Okay. I don't know if I'm familiar with that one.

Matt (01:40:52):
Anyway, it's actively going on right now, but he said some really weird shit to them and the idea around it's really cool. And then he's got those recurring guests, like Rebecca.

Tania (01:41:05):
Rebecca.

Matt (01:41:06):
Yeah.

Tania (01:41:06):
Yeah.

Matt (01:41:06):
And it's got some weird relationship. I'm not saying that it's sexual or anything, but there's some really ... It evolved into something very different than I thought. But my mentor was on his show and he's an ex- Navy SEAL.

Tania (01:41:22):
Oh, wow.

Matt (01:41:23):
And it's like ... Yeah. I mean,

Tania (01:41:25):
He interviews people that are not just homeless or not just addicts or whatever. It's all different people addicted to certain weird Things And fetishes stuff.

Matt (01:41:35):
Yeah, fetishes.

Tania (01:41:36):
Yeah.

Matt (01:41:37):
Some weird fetishes.

Tania (01:41:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Strange things. I'm like, where does he find People?

(01:41:42):
Yeah.

Matt (01:41:42):
And a lot of people do reach out to him. After he got enough notoriety, people very obviously reach out to him and they also find people with cool stories. But his everyday show though, what he does on a daily basis, he's interacting with that very specific homeless population.

Tania (01:41:58):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah. I'd watched one episode with Rebecca and he actually had his daughter on the show with-

Matt (01:42:06):
Yes, I saw that one too.

Tania (01:42:07):
And she was talking about how she went through rehab And All this stuff. It was really like-

Matt (01:42:13):
Their friendship with Rebecca. And I actually saw that one first where his daughter was on there and then I started reading underneath and it was the seventh episode that it's been on. So I went back to the first one and watched all of them and it was like, Rebecca will be on there with other people all the time and stuff. And then that's where I found out that he's paying his guests every single time. Yep,

Tania (01:42:41):
Yep. He pays. I think he gets him a hotel room. He's given Rebecca several cell Phones To communicate And she Just always loses him or whatever. But Rebecca is such a well-spoken, intelligent Person And it's crazy. She knows all this history and it's just incredible, right?

Matt (01:43:04):
Yeah. My experience with that is there's a lot of really, really smart people on the streets and some of the smartest people I've ever met will never get out of prison. They're in prison for the rest of their life and they're just in there, total waste of a human. And so that is one of the things about his show that is super interesting is you get to really see a different side of the homeless population that you normally wouldn't. A lot of presuppositions and stigma and assumptions that are going on about the people that end up homeless.

Tania (01:43:37):
They're real people. They're real people. They go through these things. This could happen to anyone.

Matt (01:43:43):
Yes. And that's a really weird part about the homeless population is you're like, especially when you look at statistics around how much money people have and most people are one bad paycheck away from being homeless. Most-

Tania (01:43:58):
So many people. So many people.

Matt (01:43:59):
Yeah. Most people don't have a $500 emergency fund. Yeah, no. Not even.

Tania (01:44:04):
No at all. So many people live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck and they try to stretch everything. I mean, it's just almost a norm now. Even in a place like Houston, which is relatively easy to live in as far as a bigger city, imagine places like LA and New York and DC and these very expensive places, It's Hard.

Matt (01:44:27):
Yeah. The cost of living here is, well, everybody's coming here. Yeah, it's

Tania (01:44:30):
Like a breeze.

Matt (01:44:33):
And I can't imagine what it was like for a janitor to be able to afford a family of five kids and buy his wife a car and him a car and own his house. That is not happening today.

Tania (01:44:48):
No, it's not.

Matt (01:44:49):
And then the house prices, so this house originally sold for $16,000 and it's now like a million dollar house and it was only 60 years old, but it's just how much we have changed. The value of a dollar has changed. A lot has changed.

Tania (01:45:10):
Yeah. I mean, you don't find houses for 100 to $200,000 anymore At All. Just doesn't exist. And even those programs that they have- First buyer programs. Yeah. I mean, they've raised the bar to half a million dollars now. What? Buying a half a million dollar house was a huge achievement back Then. That was The norm.

Matt (01:45:32):
Yeah. That was the American dream. It was

Tania (01:45:35):
Like you buy a house. You made it. If you got a house that's half a million dollars. Now it's like, no, now it's been raised to two or $3 million. It's that level. $2 million for a house. It's

Matt (01:45:46):
Crazy. Yeah. Especially because when you think about what that ... Having a $3 million house actually means what that actually means for earning potential over a lifetime, that means that you're going to make X amount of money. I don't know what it actually ... It's probably like $15 million or something like that. But the fact that people are struggling that own $3 million homes is bonkers. And they say more money, more problems. And it's like really what it is, more money, more bills.

Tania (01:46:18):
Yeah, because I mean, okay, you buy a $3 million house. To sustain that house, you're still putting in $20, $30,000 monthly for a pool and for the furniture and to get it cleaned and maintained and all the things It's Crazy.

Matt (01:46:34):
Yeah. And then mortgages are ... Oh, and then The interest rates. And

Tania (01:46:39):
The insurance.

Matt (01:46:42):
Because of the wildfires in California, they got rid of ... A lot of insurance companies pulled out of that market for fire insurance. You have to have fire insurance to buy a house in California.

Tania (01:46:54):
You're like, okay, how?

Matt (01:46:55):
Yeah. And so you either have to have a preexisting insurance policy or I don't know how they're doing it now. It's like, how are you going to buy a house if it's mandatory but there are no options? Oh, we'll tell you it's massively expensive. It's massively expensive. It's like crazy the situation that we've evolved into. What blows my mind is that it just continually gets worse.

Tania (01:47:19):
Oh,

Matt (01:47:20):
I know. How much worse can this actually get? I

Tania (01:47:22):
Know.

Matt (01:47:23):
We'll see.

Tania (01:47:24):
It's scary. It's Really, really scary.

Matt (01:47:28):
Yeah. And then when you look at the statistics around people moving out of California and then the amount of people still moving into California, people are moving into California still. Yeah, there's a negative right now or there's more people moving out than moving in, but there's still a ton of people moving to California. So as that wage gap grows, where we're really getting rid of the middle class right now, it's going to be rich people and poor people and it's happening really quick.

Tania (01:47:58):
Yeah, I know scary thought.

Matt (01:48:02):
Yeah. I saw this thing just the other day where it was like in order to live comfortably in San Diego, you have to make 116,000 a year.

Tania (01:48:11):
Yeah.

Matt (01:48:12):
That is not a little bit of money. No,

Tania (01:48:14):
No, it's not. But now it's the norm. Yo have to make $100,000 at least, if not more, to live a comfortable life.

Matt (01:48:23):
To live the lifestyles that people think is the bare minimum. Do you watch these dating shows?

Tania (01:48:29):
Yeah, sometimes. It's Very good background.

Matt (01:48:33):
Yeah, for sure. Do you ever watch whatever podcast?

Tania (01:48:36):
No, I don't Watch That one.

Matt (01:48:37):
These episodes on average are like eight hours.

Tania (01:48:40):
Oh my gosh.

Matt (01:48:41):
And it's like one dude sits here and a ring of chicks constantly. There's 12 guests and he does systematically asking them all the same question and getting their answers. And one of them is always like, what is the bare minimum that you'll accept from a partner? And it's always like $10 million or $20 million. And it's like, what? Yeah. What do you do?

Tania (01:49:07):
I'm real. Nothing.

Matt (01:49:09):
They do nothing. No, it's like, oh, I do OnlyFans. Yeah. It's like, okay. Literally

Tania (01:49:12):
Nothing.

Matt (01:49:13):
Yeah, literally nothing. And it's like, how much do you make on OnlyFans? A couple thousand a month. The average, right? There is that top 1% that make millions a month, but that is not normal. No,

Tania (01:49:25):
It's not. It's

Matt (01:49:25):
Crazy. They have

Tania (01:49:26):
No perception of what it takes to become a millionaire. How much work it takes to get to be a millionaire and then sustain it, right?

Matt (01:49:34):
Yeah.

Tania (01:49:34):
Making a million dollars is ... Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge achievement, but it's so attainable now. So then making the second million and the third and the fourth and the fifth and the tens of millions, it's a lot of work.

Matt (01:49:46):
Yeah. They used to track millionaires. How many millionaires does each city have? Yeah. Now they're tracking billionaires.

Tania (01:49:53):
Billionaires. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (01:49:54):
It's crazy. I

Tania (01:49:55):
Know. And for you to be a millionaire to a billionaire is a huge accomplishment.

Matt (01:50:00):
The jump? That's a thousand millions.

Tania (01:50:02):
Huge. I know. It's huge.

Matt (01:50:05):
I mean, there are families that have trillion dollar valuations. I know. They're not here. They're in other parts of the world, but there are families that have golden toilets.

Tania (01:50:15):
Yeah, I know. And that's Normal. It's normal. Craziness.

Matt (01:50:20):
Insane. The world that we live in is insane.

Tania (01:50:23):
The demand of things and I really blame social media for it is that, oh, I deserve this life and I should have this because I'm a woman or I'm pretty or I'm whatever. It's Like you're not understanding what it takes to get to that point. It's just ...

Matt (01:50:38):
And in the dating market, the people who have the most value today, the extreme differences, it's like 45-year-old men and 19-year-old girls.

Tania (01:50:51):
Yeah, definitely.

Matt (01:50:52):
And it's like they're not going to ...

Tania (01:50:53):
Yeah. And it's the opposite. So just like you're saying, even these bajillionaires, they're like, okay, now I want the prettiest girl ever. And they're like, yeah, they're like 20. Yeah.

Matt (01:51:03):
And they're 60. Nobody makes fortunes in their 30s. No. It's too hard. Some do, some have, but that's about- It's very hard. 01% of the ... And then there's the whole stigma around age gaps in dating relationships and it's like these are the two people who have the highest value in the dating market and when they date, people look down on them.

Tania (01:51:29):
Yeah, of course. They're like, oh my gosh, did you see that couple walk by or Whatever? They're just so odd.That could be her grandfather or whatever. And it's Like, but that's what you want.

Matt (01:51:38):
Yeah.

Tania (01:51:38):
That's what you want. That's what you live for.

Matt (01:51:40):
Yeah. Well, I mean, when you talk about equal value, that's who actually matches. And Then it's like the whole two income households that I personally, I don't know where you're at politically, but feminism, where are you at with that? I don't want to offend you.

Tania (01:51:58):
I mean, I'm open. I'm

Matt (01:52:00):
Open. Okay. Dude, the amount of damage that feminism has done to society at large, and then you criticize them and you get canceled.

Tania (01:52:09):
I feel like I could argue both sides of it because it's like, yeah, I understand it because women have worked so hard to be seen and heard and accepted, but I feel like they have started to weaponize it. You're weaponizing it saying like, oh, I deserve this because I'm a woman, or you should be doing this and you should be opening the doors for me and you should be rolling out the red carpet. That's not okay.

Matt (01:52:34):
Right. You can't be a boss babe and expect a guy to ... You cannot be the CEO and expect every guy to open your door, but feminism has had multiple eras. There was first wave, second wave, third wave and it isn't feminism wholesale. It's third wave feminism specifically that has shitful. They're blue hair freaks.

Tania (01:52:54):
Yeah.

Matt (01:52:54):
I'm probably getting canceled for that.

Tania (01:52:58):
Again, I can argue both sides. I mean, I've always been a liberal and I think I always will be, but-

Matt (01:53:06):
Until you really have money and have to pay a lot of taxes and then you're going to be like, "Fuck this. "

Tania (01:53:12):
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I'm not there yet, but it's like I believe in rights and I believe that I've always been a giver. I mean, I believe in helping people and giving back to the society. It's always been my life, but yeah, I mean, I've never lived it. So I can't comfortably say, "Oh, well, whenever I'm a billionaire, millionaire, whatever, I'm going to not want to pay taxes and I'm going to want to be a conservative and whatever." I don't know. I haven't been there, so I can't speak for it, but I don't know. That's just-

Matt (01:53:43):
You know what I'm saying? My

Tania (01:53:44):
Choice.

Matt (01:53:48):
A 20-year-old conservative doesn't have a heart and a 45-year-old liberal doesn't have a job.

Tania (01:53:56):
Yeah. I mean, it's true. It's perspective-based, but I mean, I think in the life that we're living right now with the political climate, things have shifted a lot. So the label has changed and I mean, based on what I said, I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.

Matt (01:54:17):
Oh, yeah. I definitely understand.

Tania (01:54:19):
I don't agree with hate. I don't agree with racism. I don't agree with any of that. So I agree with an equal playing ground, but there's different perspectives.

Matt (01:54:31):
I mean, yeah, when it comes to feminism, I'm not talking about equal rights or anything. I'm talking about this crazy shit about toxic masculinity and that whole weaponization of feminism and of the feminine, but it's like, okay, you want equal rights, but how come none of you guys are swinging a hammer?

Tania (01:54:52):
Yeah. No, and I agree. I mean, I think that we have worked so hard to be able to be respected and have the same rights as men. So why are we not using hose things,

Matt (01:55:06):
Right? There's a book you should read. It's called Ocult Feminism and it's like the whole history of every wave of feminism. And one of the most shocking things about it is that feminism and women's suffrage was actually promoted and pushed by men. And the whole idea behind it and all of the ... Really ultimately what it is is really smart, rich people taking advantage of not so smart, not rich people. And they're like, "Oh, we're going to expand our voter base. We're going to expand our taxation base. We're going to expand all of this stuff."

Tania (01:55:39):
Sounds familiar.

Matt (01:55:41):
And then it was like, if we empower women, they will basically in theory, and then it happened in reality, these women will overpower men, it'll put men in their place and then we will consolidate all the power. And now it's like, oh yeah, the rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer and the middle class is disappearing. And so I don't know if this is strictly a downstream effect of this specifically, but it definitely contributed.

Tania (01:56:10):
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, again, I just feel that I'm thankful that women have rights. I mean, I own my own businesses. I do my own thing. I support my own self and I have since all of this has happened with my family and I'm thankful that I'm able to do that. But I also, if I get a flat tire, I have to change it. It's not like I can call my husband or whatever because I'm not married. It's like you have to take on those tough things in your life as well and be able to own it. That's what you wanted, right?

Matt (01:56:44):
Where do your parents live?

Tania (01:56:46):
They live in Oklahoma still.

Matt (01:56:47):
Okay. And your brother lives in San Francisco. Okay. So yeah, you can't Even call dad.

Tania (01:56:52):
No, I don't and I won't. After that experience, there was so many times that I'm like, okay, maybe I should just give up and just go back and let them take care of me. And I'm like, no, I got to keep pushing forward. I have to prove them wrong. I have to do this. I have to do it for myself. I have to prove to myself that I can do this because I know I'm capable of it. And my dad did raise me to say, "Hey, you do need to learn how to change the oil in your car. And If You want to have a car, you should be able to take care of it. " No,

Matt (01:57:24):
For sure. If you

Tania (01:57:26):
Want to own a home, you should be able to fix some things on your own. Yeah.

Matt (01:57:29):
Or if you want to own it, then you should probably pay for it. Yeah,

Tania (01:57:33):
Exactly.

Matt (01:57:34):
But I had a very similar experience with ... I'm the oldest of 10 kids. And so when I got kicked out at 16, there was legitimately little kids living at the house that I was doing drugs in. So they were like, "Bye." And I'm pretty sure their point of it was like, "You can't do this on your own and you're going to come back and you're not going to do the shit that you're doing." The complete opposite happened. I just stayed out and learned how to survive and figured it out for myself. And so when I look at the capability of the average human is way beyond what they've boxed themselves into. And so a lot of people today, especially the people where it's like, give it to me, blows my mind because it's like they will give you just enough to keep you hooked on just enough.

Tania (01:58:24):
Yeah, of course.

Matt (01:58:25):
And you're still going to struggle and you're still going to be hungry and you're still not going to be able to do the things that you want to do, but it's just enough to keep you right there.

Tania (01:58:33):
Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, it's like this with everything,

Matt (01:58:37):
Right?

Tania (01:58:37):
Universities, corporate jobs.

Matt (01:58:41):
Do you have student debt?

Tania (01:58:43):
I don't.

Matt (01:58:44):
Okay.

Tania (01:58:44):
I don't.

Matt (01:58:45):
Because

Tania (01:58:45):
Again, my parents were like, "You have to pay for your own school."

Matt (01:58:50):
Yeah. I mean, did you have any student debt?

Tania (01:58:53):
I had none.

Matt (01:58:54):
Okay. So you did good in school.

Tania (01:58:57):
I did.

Matt (01:58:57):
Where'd you go to college?

Tania (01:58:58):
Oklahoma State.

Matt (01:58:59):
Okay. Sooners?

Tania (01:59:02):
No, Cowboys.

Matt (01:59:02):
Cowboys.

Tania (01:59:03):
So Stillwater, Oklahoma State is in Stillwater,

Matt (01:59:06):
So

Tania (01:59:07):
I didn't move.

Matt (01:59:08):
Where the sooners at?

Tania (01:59:09):
In Norman, Oklahoma.

Matt (01:59:11):
Okay.

Tania (01:59:11):
Yeah.

Matt (01:59:13):
What school is

Tania (01:59:14):
That? OU University of Oklahoma.

Matt (01:59:17):
And where did you

Tania (01:59:18):
Go? Oklahoma State.

Matt (01:59:19):
Oh, okay. Okay.

Tania (01:59:19):
Yeah. It's the two major schools in Oklahoma, but

Matt (01:59:22):
They're

Tania (01:59:23):
So similar.

Matt (01:59:24):
So you graduated from college and then that happened. Oh.

Tania (01:59:28):
Yeah.

Matt (01:59:29):
Well, at least you didn't have to ... Dude, student debt is the biggest scam.

Tania (01:59:33):
Oh, I know. I know.

Matt (01:59:34):
That's the only thing that- I mean, you

Tania (01:59:35):
Can just keep it literally forever.

Matt (01:59:37):
Yeah. I mean, you can file bankruptcy and it follows you still. And it goes to your kids once you die. Yeah.

Tania (01:59:42):
Yeah.

Matt (01:59:42):
It's crazy. I'm glad I didn't go to school.

Tania (01:59:45):
Yeah. I mean, if I could do it again, I'd be like, well, yeah, let me just go from high school to living life and start working on learning all these real life things because that is what has carried me.

Matt (01:59:57):
Do you use your degree?

Tania (01:59:59):
Not at all.

Matt (02:00:00):
Okay.

Tania (02:00:00):
They never have.

Matt (02:00:01):
Yeah. So I know a girl that she was the first female freshman to be a starter on their water polo team.

Tania (02:00:09):
Oh, wow.

Matt (02:00:10):
Yeah. And then she transferred to Brown and met her husband there. She got some crazy degree and never used it at an Ivy League school. I

Tania (02:00:20):
Feel like that's so many people. They have a degree and they're like, "This is my degree and that's all it's good for is-

Matt (02:00:26):
" Amazon Wall.

Tania (02:00:27):
Yeah, Beyond My Wall And That's it.

Matt (02:00:29):
Have you seen that scam where people can buy degrees? They're fake.

Tania (02:00:33):
No?

Matt (02:00:33):
Yeah. People buy fake degrees from Ivy League schools and they look totally 100% legit and they just hang them on their wall. Just get on

Tania (02:00:40):
ChatGPT and be like, "Make me a diploma from Harvard."

Matt (02:00:43):
Yeah. I mean, no. I'm sure it

Tania (02:00:44):
Would.

Matt (02:00:45):
It's like a full-blown underground black market thing where you can buy degrees from any school that you want.

Tania (02:00:51):
That's crazy.

Matt (02:00:52):
Yeah. But it makes sense. It's like you want to have the most prestigious credentialing. Yeah.

Tania (02:00:59):
I mean, I think even in the job market now, it used to be so strict on where you went to school and what degree you got and what was your GPA and all of that and they verify it all. Now they're so open-minded because look at the giants. They're all entrepreneurs, people who dropped out of school, people who never went to grad school or anything. That's who's running the world. It's like, okay, maybe we should change our perspective on Who Our talent should be.

Matt (02:01:25):
Yeah. You know Jericho's story, right?

Tania (02:01:28):
No.

Matt (02:01:28):
So he was going to some top accounting school and then interned at one of the big four accounting firms in the United States. He was watching what was going on. He was like, "Wait a minute. I can either do their finances or do exactly what they're doing." And he quit everything and started businesses.

Tania (02:01:47):
Oh, wow.

Matt (02:01:48):
Yeah.

Tania (02:01:49):
That's crazy. Yeah.

Matt (02:01:51):
I mean, so much

Tania (02:01:53):
Time.

Matt (02:01:54):
Yeah, he saw under the hood and I was like, wait a minute, I know how to do this. And you had just quit everything.

Tania (02:02:00):
Hey, I mean, if you don't take that leap of faith and you don't believe that you can achieve it, it's not going to happen. But if you believe that you can achieve something, that's all it takes.

Matt (02:02:11):
And you're right, it's a lot of time.

Tania (02:02:13):
It is a lot of time. And There's a lot of starts and fails and restructuring and re-imagining what you need to do and how you're going to achieve it. As long as you're okay with that journey, then you're going to be fine. But I mean, what do they say? 98% of startups and 98% of business owners are failures. You

Matt (02:02:33):
Have to fail three times before they succeed. Yeah.

Tania (02:02:37):
Yeah.

Matt (02:02:38):
Yeah. I hope that's not true.

Tania (02:02:41):
I mean, I don't know. That's why I like to have my hands in a bunch of different things And just Try different things and just see at the very least I'll learn something.

Matt (02:02:51):
Yeah. I mean, the process of getting to wherever you're going is definitely going to be marked by highs and lows. But I think something else that's going on with the youth of today is, first of all, the premium is definitely not ... Well, dude, half the kids in school want to be influencers. Oh, I know. It's crazy.

Tania (02:03:17):
That's their goal legitimately.

Matt (02:03:18):
Yeah. I want to be a YouTuber, but there's massive amounts of money. You know why though? Yeah. It's because of information. Yeah,

Tania (02:03:25):
Of course. Of course.

Matt (02:03:26):
You're generating massive amounts of information. And

Tania (02:03:30):
People pay attention to it, which it's good. I think it's good. I mean, instead of watching a movie that's completely made up, at least you're watching podcasts and people are talking about real life things and facts and history and places where they can learn instead of just watching a show that's nothing.

Matt (02:03:50):
Yeah, I still do that. Do you watch shows?

Tania (02:03:52):
Kind of. I didn't get to watch a lot of TV growing up, so I don't depend on it. I don't sit around and watch TV or watch movies. I don't have a TV in my room. I just have one TV in the living room and that's it. When I have time, I'll watch it. But my life doesn't revolve around, oh, there's a new episode or whatever. It's just-

Matt (02:04:12):
Oh, lucky you. Yeah. I don't do the weekly. Okay. I lied. Somehow got stuck watching ... You know what 90 Day Fiance is? Dude, I watch it religiously. See,

Tania (02:04:25):
I've never watched an episode of it. I've just watched clips

Matt (02:04:28):
Of it. I've never- So crazy. If you're into gossip, it's the fucking best.

Tania (02:04:34):
I feel like that's what the dating shows is for me. It's enough drama that I'm like, "Ugh, somebody else's drama. I'll

Matt (02:04:40):
Watch it. " Which ones do you watch?

Tania (02:04:42):
I just finished Love is Blind, which is crazy. Such a crazy concept. I don't know how I feel about it now, but I feel like the first few seasons were really honest and legitimate, but now I feel like it's just- Gimmicky. Yeah.

Matt (02:04:57):
Yeah. Did you watch Love Island? No, I watched it. Oh my gosh. It's the craziest fucking show.

Tania (02:05:02):
The Bachelor, I've never really watched That. What else do I watch?

Matt (02:05:08):
Do you watch dating podcasts? No. Okay. Those are crazy.

Tania (02:05:13):
What is it? Recaps or crazy stories from people's dates?

Matt (02:05:18):
No, no, no. That's the one that I was telling you about. The whatever podcast is the number one dating show in the world, I think.

Tania (02:05:24):
Oh, okay.

Matt (02:05:24):
And they've got their average. There's another one that's called Fresh and Fit and it's very similar. The hosts though have ... They're part of the Red Pill movement. It's Like the hosts are fucking crazy, but they just get ... It's always a guy that hosts the show and then they just bring on-

Tania (02:05:45):
Like a bunch of girls.

Matt (02:05:45):
A bunch of girls and they just talk about the dating market and how crazy ... You see how delusional the dating markets become. And then it'll be like every now and then it'll be like a high value guy will come on where he's 28 to 35 and he's made a shitload of money and he's explaining to these girls why they're delusional and what's the- Then they're like,

Tania (02:06:08):
Wait a minute. This has never happened before.

Matt (02:06:11):
Yeah. Well, and because a lot of them are attractive and so they have this ... That's a big part that always comes up is your value drops with age. And so if you continue this for the next five years or if you're a porn star, your value immediately drops by almost all. Nobody that's dedicating their lives to making something of themselves wants to date like a porn star.

Tania (02:06:38):
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because I mean, image is such a big thing. Even in Corporate America or anything, you have your own business, you're a business owner image is everything. So you can't be associated with certain things like that. It's like this natural cast type of thing.

Matt (02:06:55):
Yeah, for sure. It is. And then it's like a lot of them are like, "Oh yeah, well, I'm going to stop when I want to have kids." And who wants to have kids with you?

Tania (02:07:04):
Yeah. After that, what?

Matt (02:07:06):
Yeah. And it's like, well, what about your kids? What about your kids finding out about all this?

Tania (02:07:11):
Oh, well, it's going to be- They don't care. I think it's the same thing with the OnlyFans thing. They don't care. They're very open-minded about it. I'm like, okay, I get that, but you don't understand the repercussions of what your children will have to deal with in school and the rest of their life.

Matt (02:07:27):
Do you know how OnlyFans started?

Tania (02:07:29):
No.

Matt (02:07:30):
It was a way for ... So I heard about OnlyFans in 2012, and it was a bunch of chefs that were on there teaching cooking lessons and people would- And then it

Tania (02:07:43):
Shifted what during COVID to be like-

Matt (02:07:45):
I don't know when it shifted, but I mean, somebody obviously figured out it's a subscription-based service where it was these professionals getting on there and having classes with people and people would pay and it was a very, very easy transition into like, "Oh wait, I can just show my body on this and have this. I can really benefit from this. " And now it's one of the biggest producers that organization produces more information and content than anything else. YouTube-

Tania (02:08:18):
Crazy.

Matt (02:08:19):
YouTube, have you seen how many videos? It's like 50 million hours of videos gets submitted to YouTube every hour.

Tania (02:08:27):
Really?

Matt (02:08:28):
Yes.

Tania (02:08:29):
Oh my God.

Matt (02:08:30):
Yeah, crazy. The volume of just content that's going on here is insane. Yeah. And OnlyFans is like, it's obviously not 50 million, but-

Tania (02:08:41):
It's right there.

Matt (02:08:42):
Right there probably. It produces more money. I think per creator produces more money. Wow. Yeah.

Tania (02:08:49):
That's crazy.

Matt (02:08:51):
I mean, you've seen those girls and it's like, I turn 18 in a week and they'll make $10 million the day they turn 18 because people are fucked up and they want to see that. It's

Tania (02:09:02):
Very good. I've heard the people that make the most money on OnlyFans are the ones that are enticing and alluding to, "Oh, I'm going to show you this or that or whatever." And then they don't. And so you just keep paying and paying and paying and paying to see more and more and more and more. And The ones that are just completely buck naked, they don't get as much money because it's a one and done thing. You Saw everything and then that's it. What more is there to see?

Matt (02:09:31):
Yeah. There's the ever elusiveness of ... First of all, guys are gross a lot of the time. And so a lot of these girls that come on to these shows, they have specialties. They'll have a very niche type of porn that they do. Yeah, the girls, there is a OnlyFans channel of just feet and they're making millions of dollars a day.

Tania (02:09:56):
Yeah. I don't understand the feet thing.

Matt (02:09:58):
I don't either. I really don't.

Tania (02:10:00):
I think that's really nasty, but- I

Matt (02:10:01):
Think it's really weird. It's like the most veiny part of the body.

Tania (02:10:06):
It just looks strange. It's like the strangest part of your body I feel like.

Matt (02:10:11):
Yeah. The word be stranger. Yeah.

Tania (02:10:15):
Yeah. I mean, Either Your hands or your feet. It just feels like they're weird.

Matt (02:10:20):
Yeah. I definitely think feet are wasted. Maybe because I've always- It's weirder than your hands. Yeah.

Tania (02:10:25):
I don't know, but feet are just strange.

Matt (02:10:27):
Feet are definitely strange. And the fact that it's so fetishized is even stranger, but they are making a ton of money just taking pictures of feet.

Tania (02:10:34):
No, I know. I know. There's websites that are just for feet people.

Matt (02:10:38):
Yeah. So they've got all these different niche girls and it's like some of these niches are off the fucking wall. I watch a lot of debate content and a lot of the people that I follow that are debaters, they have a more conservative point of view.That's who I watch. And then I watch them debate people from the other side and the people on the other side on your side of this are fucking crazy. And the crazy part is as an ideology, liberalism is like, it makes sense from a social standpoint, but the people who fill that space, a lot of the public facing people that fill that space are degenerates for the most part.

Tania (02:11:28):
I think it's such a perspective thing because I mean, I can sit here and say this exact same thing, right?

Matt (02:11:36):
I'm not saying privately, I'm saying publicly.

Tania (02:11:40):
I don't know, because you look at certain statistics about who's on what side, how are we going to compare them? Their popularity or their educational level or their whatever it is, what they're saying, how they present themselves. There's so many different ways. And I think that's one thing that I don't lean on whenever I'm talking about politics with people is I can't say, "Oh, this person's smarter than this person. I'm comparing this side to this side and they present better than this person presents." And I feel that both sides have very educated people. They Have very well-spoken people. They have very popular people. They have a lot of very wealthy people. I feel that there is an equal on both sides. There's an equally crazy person on this side than there is on this side, right? And I feel like that's not the core of what it is, but things have shifted in that direction where it's like, oh, all the liberals are crazy and they're ultra feminists or they're ultra whatever it is and oh, all the conservatives are racist or whatever. I feel like that's what it's turned into is that it's very like, oh, this side is all the poor people or all this uneducated people and this side's all the educated people, which it doesn't stand true.

Matt (02:13:07):
Yeah, no. Politics

Tania (02:13:09):
Have gone way out of left field,

Matt (02:13:13):
Really. No, for sure. So I mean, when you look at the evolution of the politician in the United States, who were the first politicians? It was the generals, the people who fought for the country, military service, really invested, put their lives on the line for the country, and now it's all the politicians are coming out of the same schools.

Tania (02:13:33):
Yeah, of course.

Matt (02:13:34):
Regardless of what side they're on, they're all coming from the same place.

Tania (02:13:38):
And really it's like, is this a facade? Because I feel like they all sit at the same tables. Oh, dude,

Matt (02:13:43):
They're all friends in the background. Yeah.

Tania (02:13:45):
Yeah. And I don't know. I find it to be very fascinating, but at the same time I'm like, is this just some big reality team

Matt (02:13:52):
Show? It's a charade. No, The way that they pass laws, I mean, the fact that this is supposed to be a democratic society, but we have no clue what's in those bills. We have no clue. They don't know what's in those bills. They get submitted an hour before they vote on it. 10,000 page bills. It's like, how are you guys reading through? And you guys are all voting for this.

Tania (02:14:19):
Yeah.

Matt (02:14:19):
It's like the whole Patriot Act thing. They voted this thing in, had no clue what was in it, and the next thing you know, it's like half of our rights were trampled on.

Tania (02:14:27):
Yeah, absolutely. It's scary. I mean, I think having a leader that's a leader is important and whatever their political views are and whatever is up to them. But I think having a leader is important. And I feel that that's the disconnect currently is that I don't feel that we have a strong leader and that's where I feel that there's a ripple effect into things that are not relevant to politics.

Matt (02:14:57):
Yeah. So I think with Trump, we have a strong leader. We have a poor politician. I think he's a very strong leader. He's just not leading us down the direction that I think we should be. I don't know.

Tania (02:15:12):
You're right. I mean, he's not a politician. I don't know if he's ever claimed to be a politician, but-

Matt (02:15:16):
I mean, whether he claimed it or not, he is one now.

Tania (02:15:18):
Yeah.

Matt (02:15:18):
Yeah, you kind of asked to be. I grew up in the Arnold Sorsenager era. He was the governator for my teenage years. And then we have historically precedent for that. It's like Ronald Reagan and all of these other politicians that are really actors, they're actually actors.

Tania (02:15:38):
Yeah.

Matt (02:15:39):
But at least when I watch a lot of C- SPAN and I don't know, that's always been super fascinating to me. But the funniest part to me is that I know they're all partying together. Oh,

Tania (02:15:54):
Of course, of course. They do. I mean, history, just go back in history. All these people, they run in the same circles. They're friends.

Matt (02:16:03):
I mean, every president has gone to ... So I think half of the presidents have gone to the same two schools.

Tania (02:16:08):
Yeah, of course. And they're around the same age and they all know each other. It's going to

Matt (02:16:14):
Be crazy to see when our generation is up there. I know. It's going to be wild. I wonder what's happening. I mean, we have a couple, we have AOC up there and let's see. I think JD Vance is one of us, right?

Tania (02:16:28):
I think he is. Yeah, I think so.

Matt (02:16:31):
Let's see. First of all, do you know what years our generation is represented by?

Tania (02:16:40):
I have no idea. It's like 85-

Matt (02:16:48):
He is a one.

Tania (02:16:49):
Is it 85? What's the year?

Matt (02:16:51):
96. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh, 81 to

Tania (02:16:57):
96. Oh, okay.

Matt (02:16:58):
Okay.

Tania (02:16:59):
Yeah. See, 81, that's old. I feel like that's old compared to my age. Let's

Matt (02:17:08):
See. 81 there. How old are

Tania (02:17:10):
You?

Matt (02:17:10):
I'm 36.

Tania (02:17:12):
Oh, okay. We're around the same age.

Matt (02:17:13):
Yeah. So you were born in 91, right. Yeah. And it's funny though, because I know a lot of people that are 45 plus and I feel like I connect with them much better than a lot of people my own age.

Tania (02:17:27):
Yeah, I think so too. I think I connect a lot better with older people, but just thinking about the age, I like to be younger, but I like to mingle with older people. I Feel Like I can just have a more educated conversation With older people.

Matt (02:17:45):
No, it makes sense. Are you single right now?

Tania (02:17:47):
I am.

Matt (02:17:48):
Okay. When you are dating, are you trying to date up in age?

Tania (02:17:52):
I'm really funny with dating. I'm very open-minded. I've only dated younger one time. How did that go? Two times. It wasn't significantly younger. It was one or two years younger, but not good. I feel like the maturity level is just, it's not there. And I don't know if I'd always blame the age for that. I feel like people mature in different ways for different reasons, but yeah. I mean, If I had a choice, I would date older.

Matt (02:18:22):
Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Tania (02:18:25):
But I know it's different for guys versus girls, right? What

Matt (02:18:29):
Do you mean?

Tania (02:18:30):
I feel like guys typically are okay with dating a younger girl, typically.

Matt (02:18:35):
I mean, yeah, they're less mature. And then also who has the value in the dating market, let's see, a 25-year-old Pamela Anderson is the same person as a 45-year-old Pamela Anderson, but they look very Different. Very different.

(02:18:51):
Yeah. Or a 25-year-old Angelina Jolie versus a 45-year-old Angela. Very different. Totally different

Tania (02:19:00):
Person.

Matt (02:19:02):
And I mean, really in the dating market, that is the value ultimately because most men don't care. They don't care what you make. They don't care what you drive. They don't care.

Tania (02:19:14):
I mean, I think it depends. Everyone's different, right? Everyone wants different things. I don't think they're after how much money you make, but I think ambition is a value for some men.

Matt (02:19:26):
No. Okay. Ambition, for sure. But ultimately they're not expecting you to pay their bills.

Tania (02:19:32):
Yeah, I know.

Matt (02:19:32):
So they don't really care what you make versus it's the complete opposite. And I think that that's how it should have stayed, was like guys just should have just assumed all of the debt, but I don't know.

Tania (02:19:48):
Yeah. Too late for that.

Matt (02:19:50):
It is. It is. And I don't know if it was necessarily for the worst, but I don't know. I know it wasn't for the better exactly, but I just ... I don't know. Shit's so fucked up nowadays. Well, okay. Guess how long that's been?

Tania (02:20:08):
How long?

Matt (02:20:08):
Two hours and 45 minutes, basically.

Tania (02:20:11):
Oh my God. Yeah. Well, I can

Matt (02:20:12):
Do that. Well, thank you for coming.

Tania (02:20:14):
Of course.

Matt (02:20:18):
Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate, evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at harmonygrovebh.com. Follow and subscribe to my last relapse on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts. Got a question for us? Leave a message or voicemail at mylastrelapse.com. If you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling, you don't have to face it alone. Reaching out for support is a sign of strength and help is always available. If you or anyone you know needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 888-691-8295.