Sovereign House, the launch of Reign, and how to get unlimited AirBnB credits - with Nick Allen

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00:00 It is kind of crazy that liquor licenses are tied up so much more. Like you can just get you know, Chinese peptides in the US at this point, but if you want to sell liquor publicly uh in every city, it's like 500k plus a whole background check into your whole lineage back until the Mayflower plus like give us your entire DNA sequence, you know. Yes, you have a very good point. I would totally disagree with you though because what what I have seen is that getting a liquor license is a huge barrier to entry to having a place where people can gather in a social in a social setting. And is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I think that it's a good thing in certain neighborhoods because Yeah, what

00:45 I'm hearing Lucas is he's on the other side of the of the regulatory capture. Now he's he's defending the regulatory capture. That's That's That's what I'm hearing here. >> [laughter] >> Crabs, it's all crabs in the bucket all the way down, man. It's just crabs. >> It's my moat. >> [laughter] >> Don't touch my moat. That is kind of funny. No, I I was talking to the guy who uh what were the the Hestia cigarettes? And I was just asking him about like Slay. Yeah. Yeah, so I was talking to him about what what the process looked like to actually get the tobacco license. And it's like this dude has spent like 12 years of his life getting and maintaining this tobacco license. And it costs like an exorbitant amount of money. And if he ever were to change anything about the formulation to his cigarettes, it's like another like

01:30 12 years of like recertification. Like I suggested to him that he do like uh you know, like a like a light blend of tobacco, make it like a skinny cigarette, like uh you know, like e-girl style effectively, right? Like Chinese e-girl style cigarette. And he was just like it sounds good. Like I would be totally all in, but like let me just see if you understand like what that's going to entail. And then he talks for 30 minutes about regulatory. >> And then I'm [laughter] just like oh my god, dude. Never mind. Keep selling the regular thing. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Poss Weed Deniable Experience brought to you by our sponsors Polymarket, brand new sponsor Zcash,

02:15 very proud to have them. Great company, great people. A little bit of turmoil right now. We love them. Uh Citizen X and Network Press. And we have with us Nick Allen, the infamous, the famous Nick Allen of Sovereign House. Nick, do you want to introduce yourself really quick? Um just yeah, I'm I'm the founder of Sovereign House and also opening up a new members club called Rain. See if they were at an Urbit Sovereign House Passage Press event. And you will see very clearly what is going on. Lord Miles who turned on me recently why was he hanging out with Nick Allen the Sovereign House guy at an Urbit event in Lisbon a year ago?

03:02 Why was he hosting an event at Sovereign House? Hm? Run by Nick Allen whose parents were in the CIA. Run by Nick Allen who's the part of Ethereum and whose boss [music] Peter Thiel and future Moldovan citizen who also I can talk about it cuz apparently they're going out of business. And future Moldovan citizen runs it with Nick Allen. And future Moldovan citizen is part They're all part of the same mutuals network. Him and Scott Siskind, him and Costin Alamariu, him and Lolmez. Yeah, and we met in Lisbon in 2023. That's also when we met Lucas, isn't

03:47 that when we met as well? All three of us met in Lisbon. Yeah, all three of us. That was a very funny It was like a week, right? It felt a lot longer. That's when we were homeless. Do you remember that? Yeah, we were really raccoon mode out there actually. Yeah, there was a moment when uh I was staying in the shared Airbnb with Curtis Yarvin, his fiance at the time, uh a bunch of Urbit guys. And it it started to look a lot more like a drug house in Lisbon than like an Airbnb. And I was like hm, it might be time might be time to exit these living accommodations. And then Lucas, I think you guys they misbooked you, right? The The Urbit Foundation brought you as

04:32 a speaker and misbooked your hotel. And uh we kind of joined forces. We were both like hm, we're in this together. And then Lucas was dressed very nicely in a suit. But he had a huge cardboard box full of Milady t-shirts. [laughter] Do you remember that? It was just like this totally destroyed cardboard box. And so we were walking through Lisbon. Lucas is wearing a suit. I have like a like a tech nerd backpack on. And we're just walking through Lisbon with this homeless cardboard box. We also we thought we were like meeting some people in a restaurant. Do you remember? We went to this super nice restaurant with this like homeless cardboard box. All the all the patrons are just looking at us like and then the the people who let us in were like why did I do this? Like it's clear that these people do not

05:18 belong [laughter] here. Like >> They thought we were like never going to leave and we just left. We were like oh, wrong restaurant. You could just visibly see the relief in their face that we were not going to have They were not going to have a homeless a homeless incident. One of those incidents where like this this homeless person comes in that you clearly need to like kick out kick out of your place. Uh but you can't quite do that. That was a fun week. You opened up a pop-up uh that week in in Lisbon, right, Nick? Yeah, we we were um hosting all the side events, the after parties, the the Blimp Dao event. Um we had we we were staying It was It was It was us and Lord Miles who were staying at the house. I rented out an Airbnb and with a with a huge uh it was like you know, there was like a railing all the way around the second floor, but

06:03 it looked right into the into the living room space. So we could we could hold about 100 people in there. And so we just did various pop-ups throughout the week. I have a lot of friends who have Airbnbs or rent out properties. And uh it's kind of obvious like which ones are going to get used for like hosting. Uh Oh yeah, you know how you tell? You look in the description and they say definitely no parties. No parties allowed. You We will call the police on you. Yeah, those are always the ones. What is your actual event hosting advice if you had to give it to? Let's say someone wants to spin up like some sort of like communal event center in a totally different country. They don't know anyone. They speak a totally different language. Like are there a few bullet point tips that you would give them to do this? Or would you like to

06:49 protect them all as trade secrets? That's also acceptable. >> No, no. I'm I'm here to reveal the secrets because I am no longer trying to create a transgressive uh a community, you know, art scene um home. So I can now I can now Spill the sauce. Yeah. But Lisbon for me has actually always been the this like fever dream of a portable network that has that has come into Lisbon. You're dropped there for a week. Um and so I've only been to Lisbon in that capacity where it's like an explosion of this of of several thousand people coming in and uh and and having a good time and and like super concentrated. Same with like Airbnb. Getting a getting a space is relatively >> easy. It was easy getting an Airbnb out there during that time? Cuz like you got a

07:34 pretty nice Airbnb. And we were looking around for Airbnbs and it wasn't like uh Yeah, it wasn't looking so great at the Yeah, the Airbnbs were not You guys probably got one when you you know, when you flew into the airport, you were probably looking. Um I did get a little >> Oh, so your secret is planning. Oh, my god. I was I was just I was just counting on you guys. But my secret actually is something that's not very replicable. I I was a uh um I I was I was a user of Airbnb in like 2014. And back then they had a um an affiliate program where you if you if you add emails like your friends' emails to your Airbnb, there's like a field where it says like send send email to your

08:19 friends and and uh and you'll get $50 Airbnb credit if they sign up and use Airbnb. So I went to the um District 34 Los Angeles voter logs and I got all the emails. And I um and I made a bot that would just submit one after another 200,000 emails located in Los Angeles. Uh the you know, the people located in Los Angeles. And then every time they would sign up because it didn't have to be a click from the email. It just had to be if the email was in the database anytime in the future, you get uh a $50 credit. And so I still have like almost unlimited amounts of uh Airbnb credits because uh because I did that way back in the day. >> ref link strategy.

09:05 Who's that one guy who made like uh millions and millions of dollars off of like hyper liquid ref links? No, this is this is actually like this is reusable alpha. Like I think there have been people here. I'll I'll expand on this a little bit. So so Nick did this where he just took everybody's email from a database and plugged them in for Airbnb. The modern version of this that I've seen is people will take their referral link to like some sort of a trading platform or something where you get a volume fee for people who sign up through your ref link. And what they will do is they will go and they will sponsor their own ref link on like Google or something like that. So that when you search for the trading platform's name, instead of finding the trading platform, you find the trading platform with your referral tag, right? So like all of the organic user traffic

09:50 will go through Google and click on to your referral link. And like it won't get marked as phishing or anything because it's literally the same like domain. Uh So if anyone is really like >> Yeah. Yeah, you know that the platforms don't allow you to do that cuz because of the um the email like people did abuse this and uh and but the the the um the special technique here is that you're able to have the platform send the email on your behalf using their domain. So that um so so that it's all it's seen as for coming from the brand itself. And there was a rare moment in internet history where the platforms would do that cuz it's easier, right? But that could also be seen as um as

10:36 spam. And so now no platform allows you to do that. But the secret of uh of getting a space that's linked to this technique is the fact that I have so I have so much Airbnb history. During COVID, I only I exclusively stayed in Airbnbs for a year. And so I have so much um so many good reviews that uh when I when I when I go to book a place um you know they >> get a zero star and it doesn't even matter cuz you're so heavily weighted towards the positive. >> burned I burned I got I didn't get a zero star in Lisbon, but I but I but I am able to I can do a burn uh a a burn party venue and and not be affected. That's so funny. That actually is that actually is a pretty good strategy here. I mean the

11:22 the usable way for this uh you know for for those of you out there who might be saying, well, I I I don't know. I can't buy 500 million uh Airbnbs. How does this benefit me? The key to gaming this is you go and you find one of your friends out of the group and now they're the designated Airbnb guy. They're the one whose account is going to be used for all of your vacations and setups and whenever you need this, you're going to be juicing and farming them for uh their reviews. You just have to make sure you stay friends with this person forever. Don't do some weird catty Or get their password. And their 2FA. Yeah, their password. Yeah, their 2FA. Yeah. That's actually really fun. I bet there could be a business here of like renting out someone's like great Airbnb to like

12:09 uh like you're obviously going to nuke it. Like they'll tank a bad review for you for like some amount of money. Um Oh, for sure. They were >> probably selling Airbnb accounts back on black hat world black hat world forum in in uh in 2011. Yeah. So it's like the the equivalent of like a worn in like crypto wallet. You're getting like a worn in crypto wallet, like a worn in like X account, like uh you're going for the used well-worn Airbnb, 30,000 reviews. I guess you can do this with Uber, too. You can do this with Uber. >> even a superhost. You're also a superhost, too. You host 10 10 apartments in 10 different cities. Wait, do you uh do you use Airbnb on that side, too? No, I I don't. I I I did um I used to I used to I used to be a host,

12:56 but it's uh that get that game's long over, especially in New York. Yeah, I used to I used to host, but it's it's now illegal in New York. Actually, a really crazy a really crazy thing that I I don't know if um well, probably time has the time has expired on this secret, but um back when Bloomberg was the mayor I learned uh from from from a credible source, but this is also just alleged that his daughter might have been the largest shareholder in Airbnb private shareholder in Airbnb at the time. So he leaves and then it becomes illegal. The the literally the week after he left, there was Do you know Do you know who the um Do you know who the most powerful person in we'll say New York City well well

13:41 also many tier one cities is? Like what is the It's not the mayor. It's not the police chief. It's It's uh it's the fire marshal because he can come in without a warrant. And um and so the week after Bloomberg left, there were there were raids on superhosts and uh they were fined for being an illegal hotel because he had to look at the the fire marshal and and uh people he designated had to go in and check if there were sprinklers. And um so if you're renting for more than 30 days and there were no sprinklers, then they got hit with $25,000 on fines. Ouch. A lot of countries actually just have outlawed Airbnb. Like uh Taipei, they're also illegal. They still exist. >> the hotel lobby

14:27 that that gets that done. I mean they they did end up getting that done in in New York. And now hotels are like $1,000 a night. Yeah, hotels are so ridiculous in New York, man. Well, this is how it would go in all the other countries, too. It's like it after it gets outlawed, like it's just this ridiculous disparity where the Airbnbs cost like $40 a night and then the hotels cost like 200. I mean Taipei was uh I I remember the first time I went down to stay there and we checked into our Airbnb and like a very scared Asian man says like, "Please don't report us to the government. Please don't I'm going [laughter] to get kicked out." Another thing that I learned living in Taiwan for a couple years was every 3 days there's going to be like a new Taiwan hysteria where like everybody in your

15:12 life sends you all these articles about like Lucas, like you're going to be bombed. You have to leave Taipei. The Chinese are invading. At first it freaked me out, but eventually I noticed this just goes on every week and nothing ever happens. And then I asked the Taiwanese people about it and they were also like dude, yeah, it's been going on for like 40 years of this. Nothing ever happens. So I realized everyone in the West was just insane and hysterical and I was like, how do I make money betting on these people being wrong about everything? And the answer that I found was going to Polymarket and looking for the Taiwanese markets and there's always some market for like, will China bomb Taiwan or like will China invade Taiwan? And it's always like 1 to 5%, right? But then one of these like minor news articles comes out and everybody goes hysterical and they're like, "Oh my god, like it's really going to happen this time." Then the chance of it happening doubles and I go and I buy the no

15:58 shares. Like, no, like nothing will ever happen. Nothing changed. Like you people are freaks. Go home. Go home. And it's just worked every single time. Like in theory, this cannot work forever, but thus far, the record does seem to indicate that nothing ever happens. I think the whole nomad thing was like great for a period of time. Like it's awesome being a digital nomad when in not being a nomad is like, okay, you can't leave your house. You're locked indoors. Like bars are closed, gyms are closed. And it's like, yeah, wow, digital nomad, so exciting. Like I left the country and now I can actually go to restaurants. Like that [ __ ] mogs, bro. But like if you're if you're just like escaping something that works and is cool, you're like, wait, it was cooler back home, bro. Yeah, you need to be rooted

16:43 in your local community. You can't I I feel like the the motivation to leave and go and like, you know, that frontier mindset is important, but um but yeah, you got to be like you have to quickly find you have to quickly find your roots. How do you think people How do you think young people now should go about like finding where they actually want to like settle down? Uh I mean it's it it depends on the type of person. I settle down meaning like have a like have have kids and have land or Just like >> Both. Post uh digital nomad. I would say like post like to a kid right now that's either in college or like graduating college. Uh and they're like looking for like, where do I go uh

17:28 to apply to jobs? Where do I want to set up shop here? I guess I guess the job market's bad enough now it might literally just be like go wherever the [ __ ] they hire you. Uh if there's a job, you should go live in the place. But uh you know, if someone had more selective uh ability, what would they What do you get uh What would you push them towards? I mean I I I I always encourage people to come to New York. There were a lot of people that were a part of the um the the Urbit scene and also just um you know, within the Ethereum the Ethereum developer community that um that I had run into you know, many times over the years and a lot of them found their way to New York. Um Yeah, I mean you definitely want to I

18:13 would you definitely want to go to a tier one city. You sort of you know, you you find if you are uh if you have talent and um and and you're you have a trajectory ahead of you, then if you're in a tier two city, that'll be there'll be a ceiling. You know, so um so you definitely want to go where there are other motivated, capable, talented people. And um I'm I'm I'm firmly in favor of New York. So when you say like tier one, tier two uh Like tier two would be like Austin, you know, what Yeah, I mean so so I I mean you want to look at I view I view tier one as like sort of if it's industry, then it is the the um it is the it is that city for industry. So like SF

18:58 DC LA and um and New York. You know, I think there's even I think there's a Wikipedia page that actually ranks these things, but you know, part of it's population um and then part of it is like other types of um qualitative uh qualitative um uh measurements. Yeah. I think New York is great because it's like very dense. You're very close. You're on a good corridor. It's great. So speaking of New York, you ran Sovereign House then permanently in New York for a very long time. Tell us a little bit about like when it started, how it started, uh where the motivation came from, you know, who was interested. Uh kind of run us through like the beginning of Sovereign House. Like back when it was, you know, early days. Right. So early days, I mean this had

19:43 just it was this was my uh relocation back to New York and it was when things were started starting to get uh we we could see the end of COVID and so you still had some of the mask mandates and you had um you had you had sort of the the um reintegration into society and I found myself uh you know in in Lower East Side uh where I'd been living before and and I and I found this uh you know the the residential um micro neighborhood Dimes Square where there were there were plays going on in in people's apartments and there were uh readings being done in bars and people were

20:29 hanging outside in the in the pedestrian area known as New York City Open Streets um specifically you know this stretch being Canal where Canal meets Orchard and and uh and Ludlow and East Broadway and Essex and so I had noticed that you know there was there was no proper venue for these types of activities and I view the activities as um if you were to if you were to look at like what is a what are what are outside of work what are the spaces that you can go to in a um in a like tier one tier two city and you know you'll you'll find if you look at um if you look at that in the lens of art

21:14 then you'll you'll find on one end of the spectrum you have an art gallery and you have paintings hanging on a wall um and then on the other side of the spectrum you have like a like a nightclub with a DJ you know so they're they're both like they're almost purely aesthetic uh arts but and there's no message you know and so but but these are the venues that exist that support uh most of what you know most of the off work uh if it's not eating or working th- these are like known as uh almost like our our our fun zones or like activities that are outside of that and it's sad because those are the those are the only spaces um so what I what I began to see is like

22:00 there were these other mediums that were being uh fostered by by uh people in our generation that were sort of old mediums but they were coming back and there was such a desire to to uh to to create art in these mediums like like theater or or literature um or you know even like making short films offline um there were there were there was this desire to do this that that you would even do a play in someone's apartment and you would you know even like stand up and do a reading at a bar and there was no venue so I wanted to create the venue for these sorts of activities the ones that are between the spectrum of an art gallery and um and and boring DJ you know rave music

22:49 and so I did that I I I I had uh I've had commercial leases in the past and I've had other spaces you know whether it's an office or um you know an Airbnb and I so I I have a couple of friends that are brokers and they sort of monitor off market listings and so one of my friends Doug he he found this uh he found this space for me located on East Broadway and at that time it was it was it was being restored back to what it had looked like in um the 1960s and so I got it at the tail end of that renovation which was which was really just like removing drywall from um the bricks and um

23:35 sanding down the floors and uh and and removing all the debris from the backyard and making that nicer so I started that lease in February of 2023 and um and then I just I just uh uh started hitting up a bunch of people that had been doing these events and um and and word spread quickly and uh and we we got started and then you know we have we had events almost every night from there Did Did you wind up impacting the value of the property? I guess this is kind of like a little aside but like when you rented this thing versus uh the next renter of this thing are they paying more than you did? Uh I

24:21 When did you start renting it also? I'm curious >> February 2023 He said February 23rd right? >> Yeah Yeah Yeah so I think that it right I mean I I think that that two I think that if you um if it was a normal market and it wasn't just coming out of COVID that it would have been more but also this space is so interesting because it is in in New York this isn't what I this isn't what I encountered at this particular space what I'm about to say but it is what I encountered in the past which is if you have a space in New York and it doesn't meet um it doesn't meet it's in this like uh ambiguous area of of of what is it um it's usually classified as an art gallery so like a mezzanine space for example with 8-ft high ceilings where

25:07 you know um or even seven seven feet uh ceilings where you have like pipes running through it and you know the the egress is um is questionable um this will be classified as a art gallery you'll sign an art gallery lease and um and uh and so this space was uh similar to that even though it was all up to code and everything like that it was just like what is this this ambiguous space could it it's it's a little bit like you take a couple steps down and um and and the the rest of the building is residential so um there isn't any signage um the the windows are opaque and um then there's a backyard and so you can't really do much with it and

25:52 uh meaning like you can't it doesn't lend itself to a normal retail space or a wine bar or um or an office and so I you know those types of spaces interest me and um but what I'm trying to to to get at uh is I don't I don't know how valuable that space is unless you have a very uh weird use for it and so I know that that that my landlord there um would always talk about putting in a a sauna and a pool and um you know he's a very eccentric guy he has a lot of great buildings around a lot around Lower Manhattan um but I don't know if that's going to work out I don't know if you can do that um but he you know he has visions for

26:37 the for the space and I'm glad >> client for him right? I think uh well I think that I was I think I was the dream client uh yeah we'll leave it at that Definitely >> [laughter] >> Did he ever Did you guys ever get a lot of noise complaints or stuff? I assume so right? >> Well you know what I learned is that um when you have a backyard that is surrounded by apartments on all four sides um you can't people like to sleep and so you can't have 60 people hanging out in the backyard when other people are trying to sleep at that point you get noise complaints you don't get any noise complaints coming from inside the building but and this is actually a common this is a common thing amongst

27:22 bars in in New York if you have a backyard there are closure hours because and it's the most sensitive topic um like more sensitive than than anything else when it when it comes to getting a liquor license or maintaining your liquor license the backyard they're always going to be there's always going to be a problem so I did get a couple of noise complaints um because of the backyard usage but then I simply just just closed it at reasonable hours Yeah That's interesting and so it started off and how how did this work like were you just like okay I want to build this space I don't think there's a space did you get together with friends you know what was the like initial thing were you like I'm all in this seems super interesting or did you have a bunch of doubts about it and then you were like okay it definitely seems like people

28:07 want this to exist? Yeah I'm usually an all in type of person um that goes with like um whether it's investments or or uh or relationships or spaces um or like what I'm doing with my life I'm usually an all in I like to take risk in one concentrated bet um so I but I did I did have one doubt you know and it was like if if this doesn't work out you know uh what is the space going to be and I just thought you know it could be it could be my office um but but we had an event right after we opened and um and I mean people were flying from everywhere to come to the event and and so I I realized early on that um

28:53 that there was a because of this like coming out of COVID but also the organizational uh uh facet of the internet you are and and groups and like intellectual groups online they want to they want to be um uh substantiated in in a physical space and also just uh meet people that they have relationships with online and they want to they want that you know there's a there's a it's strong desire for that and I saw that when there were so many people that were that that flew out um to come to the first event What was the first event? The first event was um uh Unqualified Reservations uh book launch Hm got you did Curtis come out?

29:40 Yeah That's a good that's a good uh headliner that's a good way to kick it off I think Um and then did you always view it because it it ended up becoming kind of this meme where like if you actually went and I actually went a bunch of times. I went with you. I went with other people. Um, you know, there was like a a crowd of people that would go pretty often, but then it got a really big reputation for hosting these like, you know, kind of dissident right or extreme right or you know, whatever just not like Democrat liberal which in New York anything that is not Democrat liberal um is is a staunch right wing um events. Did you always kind of see that as a thing or is that more like you were the only venue willing to accept these people and so, you know, you became de facto the place for those things to

30:25 happen or how how did that like was that always part of the original vision? >> disagree with the entire premise and you don't think that it was always a thing? >> I disagree with the entire premise. Um, I I I don't I the way that I view it and the way that I've always viewed it is um uh it it was it was a it was really a task of coordinating events and people that have a high openness characteristics with low agreeableness. You know, so um there there's this guy Paul Safa who was a professor at Stanford that coined the I'm sure you've seen this on on Twitter um high convictions loosely held. Yeah. And that's you know, those are the types of people that um

31:10 that I was that I was looking to get into a room, right? And that's that creates a lot it's a lot of energy. It's a lot of fun. Um, it's you know, it it it's like like these um for ideological people the traits are associated with heterodox and um unconventional positions and perspectives and um even for artists uh you know, there's like these traits facilitate a likelihood to challenge consensus and um and and like find originality in their work. And um and so like yeah, you could call these types of people like contrarians, but um there's a category that that goes

31:56 even deeper than uh just you know, straight up contrarians or people that are trying to um uh just like sort of like seek out seek out an opposite or seek out an enemy. So, the way that I have tried to define it is that there are subtractive contrarians and there are additive contrarians. And um a a subtractive type is is is interested in being contrarian only for its sake. You know, it's like it's almost like having um ODD like oppositional defiance disorder. Yeah, would the difference basically be like uh the contrarian who gives you an alternative solution versus the contrarian who just says I [ __ ] hate this dude, you're a [ __ ] and then

32:42 offers no way to fix anything? Yes, right. I mean there's right. It's like it's like it's a nihilistic response. I think it's held in a lot of intelligent young people and um and but it's it's uh it's sort of like on the path to there's always an ability to be on the path to to being an additive contrarian. So, um like you know, if you're around if you're around these subtractive contrarians like let's just say that that's a lot of fortune. Uh it's it's tiresome. You should avoid it most of the time. Um uh but you know, their their effects their limited effects are basically collateral damage for the additive contrarians that emerge from that. And

33:28 um and and an additive contrarian I think it is the the main definer is seeking act like seeking out truth. It's not just in opposition to something. And that's how you get that's like >> That is what a great artist is writer performer a founder, right? It's like they have the will to seek truth after they have um descended to the depths of of hating everything or being in opposition to everything. Um and I think this is also similar to taking psychedelics because it makes your brain and I don't I don't do psychedelics um but and I but I've done it once and um and and I but I but you you know, the mechanism of

34:13 um uh you know, psilocybin or or LSD um is to make your brain more plastic. It it it takes all your patterns um that that you know and are so ingrained in you and just root it just cuts them right off. And um and and so if you take a psychedelic and you get all your all of your uh you know, you remove all your patterns, you you quit your brain will quickly try and re-identify a new patterns. And that's why I think like psychedelics are an opportunity. They're also super dangerous because you go into that mode of like every uh nothing is familiar. Everything is new, but if you if you um don't

34:58 quickly attach that to healthy patterns, um then you're going to end up in this like very very uh schizo negative state. Yeah, like it's very it's very easy to build something from first principles that actually sucks and is [ __ ] right? Like just because you're like I have I have completely disintegrated all of my prior assumptions about this. Uh that doesn't mean that what you recreate from that stance is going to be good or meaningful. You can also just make something way worse. But I've actually I've run into this with like a lot of my friends recently who had uh like anyone who's like really ingrained their personal identity into what their career is right now is kind of running up on a wall because they've downloaded like a software pack of like let's say you're like a software engineer, right? Uh Mhm. it requires you to think of yourself as like yeah, like I'm sort of

35:43 like quiet like autistic. Like I I do like this type of work. I don't like these types of things. And like as a lot of careers are like overall like changing now, it's starting to become like problematic because your your sense of self-identity is like now defined by like the global consensus of what your career is. Uh and so they're just kind of like getting tugged around by the whims of like social media information flow in a way. And this is especially happening to artists, right? Like the people I know that define themselves as artists are very much so at risk of being like uh Yeah, like I am like a very bursty worker. I have to stay up late at night. I am a drug addict. I I cannot grind for the life of me. I am unreliable. I can't make meetings and like

36:29 uh Yeah, I'm just like a whimsical person, bro. Uh and that's actually like super not conducive to like mental health or like long-term production. So, uh I don't know. This is like the benefit I think of like what you're saying is you don't necessarily need to tie yourself to these things that have such strong like anchoring connotations for your identity. The classic one is like the guy who does ayahuasca and then is like convinced he needs to open up his relationship with his girlfriend and then he's like literally like puking like his girlfriend's like having sex with some guy in front of him and he's like puking and like no no, this is good. Like I'm healing, you know, it's just like uh So, to you it was never like oh, this is like an explicitly a place that's going to court, right? When people just like hey, I'm I'm you know, I want to have interesting people people who want to

37:15 have dissent who want to have opposing views. Um because it very much did become this like meme place where there's a bunch of different pieces about it and a lot of them are like oh, this is the the hangout for like, you know, people who don't agree with pronouns. >> you're you're talking about journalists and um if the journalists it's a journalist's task, you know, if they are the most ethical uh you know, adhering to you know, whatever guidelines they're taught in journalism school to uh their their main task is to make the world legible. They take something that is ambiguous that is uh that that that is like demonstrating some sort of novelty and they want to articulate it to the world. And um I I think that just that is is uh

38:00 just that is bad. Um because um that is like Here's the best version of journalism. That's bad by the >> [laughter] >> Oh, that that too is bad. Yeah. Yeah, no no. I mean that is that is the thing. >> rigorous journalist, you want to make the world understood. And that's bad. It is. It is bad. And and and >> So, how do you feel about journalists who are rigorous by the way? Say that again? So, how do you feel about journalists that aren't right now? I'm just I'm just giving you [ __ ] You know, that's that's how I feel about the good journalists. >> it. Let me walk you through it. So, uh somebody that who who would agree with me here basically well, I would agree with him is is is Kierkegaard. Because what what he describes um this as being as as um a

38:46 spirit of leveling the entire world. You know, so so anybody that um that isn't legible has to be leveled. And the the the process of legibilizing them is the process of leveling them. And um so, I'll just I'll just uh read you this quote that I pulled up here um by Kierkegaard. A revolutionary age is an age of action. Ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens, but there is immediate publicity everywhere. In the present age a rebellion is of all things the most unthinkable. Such an age does not even produce a rebel. The present age is essentially a sensible reflecting age devoid of passion flaring

39:33 up in superficial short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing and indolence. The leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. So So when you say there are pieces that are written that have been written about Sov saying that it's right wing, yes, there there that that is true. But number one, you know, there which is which is the worst form of journalism is seeking out to be sensational in order to monetize that, you know, to monetize that. And so you end up getting a lot of things twisted and there is no real desire to present any truth there. It's just to get get clicks

40:19 and and make money off that and just present the most sensational sensationalized aspect of of what you're doing. So So unfortunately, you know, that is what that is just a risk you run when you're doing something that can that can be twisted. You when you have an open door policy, when anybody can come in and and overhear a conversation and then and then write a piece about that. But but it was important to me. It's always been important to do things that are eligible because that is where that is where the like real truth exists and and real new new things Right. It's like definitional that you must be

41:04 somewhat illegible to the random person if you're doing anything new because the only legible things are ones that they have already like deconstructed and understood. Right? Like it's just it's like a tautology. Right. And so that's where I see that as like the the the additive contrarian where you know, where where there's like there is this medium where their seeking of truth has to has to be be placed in. So it's and that's why it's important to to look at output, you know, of a person and see you know, once they have gone through this exercise of being a contrarian, like what is their actual what is their actual output? You know, is it is it

41:51 is it coming from like a place to seek truth and and be productive? You know, and and and I think like you know, that's at the individual level is like a contrarian like a contrarian that's individual. But like group dynamics, how does that how does that how does that play out in an entire group? Uh You know, it's it's something that I've thought about and it's it's like it is this there is this generational challenge to articulate the discontent. And and every generation has has that task, right? And and when you articulate the discontent, you know, especially a generation that has been like so

42:37 dispossessed. There's a lot to There's a lot of discontent here. There's a lot of valid discontent. And the the the the task shouldn't just be oh, I'm seeking truth. Make like I am I'm I'm reading something that that speaks to me, you know, very very subjective or or like I'm I'm I'm painting something, you know, that like looks good to me. Like the the real task of a of additive contrarian is actually to articulate the discontent within the group or generation around them. And and so that is what is important, you know, as you as like a group matures

43:23 is to foster that. Is to is to try and see like, you know, what are what is what is it what is the shared discontent here? And then what do we do about it? You know, what and and and it doesn't have to be only like self-referentially explained to each other. You know, this should actually result in policies or even companies. You know, where where you're you're able to you're able to identify that discontent and then you're able to do something about it. And that that is basically the task, you know, like that is the task if you're living a good life, that should be your task is to go through all of those steps and on the other side create something that

44:08 that's meaningful for for your generation around you. And um and and and and spaces are so central to that because that is like a it's you know, it's like the it's like it's like the organizing meme. You know, you do have to you do have to organize people around that the around those shared goals. And and this is like you know, maybe it's a conspiracy, maybe it's just the way that like both power and and and capital have come together to just be so extractive. But there are no there are not really spaces that are that are conducive to that. You know, like

44:53 I was able to pull off or or like have Sovereign House because I didn't have an agenda other than fostering authentic culture and and creativity and conversations and you know, in many cases new friendships. New York City like it there is every space in New York City basically has an agenda and that is that's standard. It's standard to have like a commercial mandate or you know, a political mandate. Like you you want to have um you want to have like this this this short window of of ROI. Whether that's a vote or whether it's a dollar and it demands a return.

45:39 You know, and and all these tier one cities, that's just what your that's just what your spaces demand from you. You know, and and and if they're like an an an agenda whether it's political or commercial, it subjugates its patrons, right? Like it you are viewed as a tool to to facilitate somebody else's agenda. You know, like for example, Jacobin magazine. You know, like you view them as like the socialist magazine and they're 501c3 and they accept donations and you know, they they sell their magazine. Like true, but also but also wrong. They

46:25 rent out their their email list. They rent out the addresses to to people like in the establishment. They rented out to AOC. So you'll see these things that are like that are that are seemingly you know, like like neutral in terms of being captive from from from from political power or or commercial or like or capital. And they are they end up being tools, you know, and that's another reason for doing something in a in a short time span. Like the longer something goes on, the more the more of a chance that it becomes captured. And so having a short window of Sov House being 2 years was important for me because it's like that was a flash, that was a moment that

47:11 was pure and and and and let's just let it sit at that. You know, a lot of things were born from that, a lot of friendships, marriages even, kids even. But you know, let's just let that sit as a moment in history. The way that I always saw Sov House was basically like during COVID I life in America and specifically life in New York became like increasingly captive towards one one thing. Like you could do or say one thing. Art had been dead probably since like 2012, 2015 in this way where like you couldn't actually do anything new. There was no like artistic revolution. It was all some sort of like it was basically like the the complete like neoliberal

47:58 tsunami that had just like washed forward over art. And it was getting to the point where in places like New York specifically, there's like a lot of budding uh desire to get out of that. Like not everybody agrees with the same sort of energy, right? And not everyone was like fully on board with like the ideological capture that went on during COVID. And so anyone who was like outside of that in any capacity was like oh, thank God there's something else I can do. Uh More so than it being like oh, yeah, like this is where like libertarians go or this is where like whatever communists go or like right wingers. Yeah, I mean a lot of that is presented in the in the in the you know, what I call you know, the programming, you know, the events.

48:44 And like to me it was important just to say yes to as many people as possible. You know, so like I mean we just and I'm willing >> mean that's also that's also how you beat the allegations of being a being like a curated like ideological safe house, right? Like if you're like dude, if you want to come to the thing, like you're you're welcome at the thing. Right. They can't really say that you're trying to curate like one way or the other. It's just like it is what it is. Right. Yeah, I mean and it all existed in that spectrum of you know, you could say like to the right of the Overton window and the left of the Overton window and all types of of art that was in the middle of that spectrum that I defined earlier as being

49:29 like an art gallery or or or DJ. You know, that was kind of what I was going for. And uh yeah, I mean 200 events, you can see you can see the history um and try and make sense of it. Um you know, try and put a a narrative to it. Um or >> 200 events over like 2 and 1/2 years? That's kind of uh 2 and 1/2 years, yeah. That's uh what are you doing? Like that's more than like one event every weekend or something. Oh yeah, no. It's It's many >> Very aggressive event schedule, sir. Many per week. I just I just wanted to have as many events as possible. Uh when you when you strike something where there's a lot of energy and a lot of pure energy, you want to maximize it. You know, you you you uh you you just

50:14 want to you want to see how um how how powerful can get. What were you guys always had um this open door policy, right? You had open door and open bar, which is really funny because you very rarely get both of those together. Uh Yeah, yeah. And and that's that's you know, it's important to gatekeep um when you have something like that because it could definitely attract uh extractive people and um people that want to to take advantage of that and uh you know, they they >> beyond like even meme words like extractive people. Like it could literally just attack attract like a homeless crackhead. Like uh This is like a Well, I mean we had you know, there were there were some of

50:59 those that came around, but um you know, they >> shoot away successful. smart money. Those they don't want They couldn't make sense. I mean not many you know, journalists couldn't make sense of it. I let alone a crackhead. Yeah. That's funny. That was really funny. But yeah, it was always funny there was like a very um What I always liked about when I went is that there were very different crowds of people that went. You know, you had anything from like center left uh think tank guys to like a crazy artist to you always had an international crowd cuz New York is this place, right? Where people pass by a lot. So you had a very interesting people. Um a lot of the events were really really good. What were like what's like your you know, most interesting? I won't say best, but like the most interesting events you think you've had. Um cuz I'm sure there was a lot that like repeated that were

51:45 great or like you just would open at a certain night, you know, on like whatever nights and people would come by. But was there ever like oh, these were like the super interesting like out there events um that I thought were very cool or that you thought were >> sure. I mean we had we had what I like hosting I like hosting Reason magazine cuz it was like you get the sort of establishment. Like they're they're the professional guys. Um you know, they they know how to run an event. Um but they bring interesting topics. And so they brought Bathhouse, which is like really top tier sauna in New York that is heated by Bitcoin miners. And they you know, they have one in Flatiron, they have one in Brooklyn. Um but they you know, they brought in those guys.

52:30 Um they brought in With them came the PubKey guys. Thomas was there and you know, there's a panel, right? They're speaking about about this stuff. Um they also brought Backpage um like the founder of Backpage or like you know, the one that's one of them that's you know, free was free to free to talk about it. Um so we had like you know, event on that. Um Uh you know, these are the ones in New York. The ones outside New York uh were also fun like the Arc after party and the Dojo party. Um let's see. Uh Yeah, I mean we we like in terms of magazines um American Affairs, Heavy Traffic uh Mars Review Frontier magazine um

53:18 And then we you know, we had uh we had Ben Teitelbaum. That was one of one of my favorite even though you know, he wrote the book on Bannon. He wrote um uh War for Eternity. And I wouldn't say it was a hit piece, but um you know, it was very exhaustive book on Bannon and and and he's not you know, Teitelbaum is not a friend of the right. Um but he spoke on the theology of exit and you know, this is like he's he was speaking on this before Teal started uh making you know, semi-public appearances about the Antichrist. And uh so Teitelbaum was was was well, at least he spoke to us, you know, room of 200 people about the

54:03 Catechon, uh you know, which is which is the um the man or the spirit that that occupies the place of the Antichrist before uh in order to keep the Antichrist away. And um you know, he he he exposed a lot of these ideas to to the Sov House crowd, which was which was cool. I really liked that. Uh you know, we had Norman Finkelstein. And um And uh you know, he he he's like he's another weird one, right? Where like you can't really can't really pin him down. Um and then I even got reached out to by John Hinckley Jr. You know, the guy who who uh shot Reagan. In the arm and he did it because he was

54:49 like um uh obsessed with Jodie Foster. And you know, he went to jail, he got out of jail. He he called me or emailed me and he said, "Hey, I want to do an event." I'm like like uh what kind of event you want to do? John. And and he was like, "Oh, you know, I I play guitar. I play I play uh cover songs on the guitar." And I was like, "Sure. Yeah, let's do an event. Let's get you up here." And so he he ended up canceling because he ironically he said New York is too unsafe for me. There's too many shootings. And That's [laughter] so funny. Oh my god. So he canceled and and and when he canceled, he gave he would you know, for for condolences, he sent me one of his paintings. He also sells paintings on

55:35 eBay at $500 each of the same cat. And so he sent me one of those. Are all of the all of the paintings of the same cat? Yep, it's the exact same. Is it the same position or does it does he move it? >> Same position, uh different colors sometimes. Does it Does the cat have like a bandage on his arm or something to simulate like uh the pain of like Reagan's uh Uh it's a little bit too abstract to know if there's a bandage there, but it's possible. >> Wow. That's very abstract if you can't resolve the bandage. That's like we're getting to some like 17 polygon count levels of uh abstraction here. So out of all of the things that you have done uh hosting events, is there like I I feel like you have some sort of esoteric real estate knowledge. Like

56:21 what would you change about the actual venue of Sovereign House uh to make it more suited towards what you what you found to doing? And how much of what you actually wound up doing with Sovereign House was dictated by like the form of the place that you leased. Like do you think it would have been meaningfully different if uh you know, it had like higher ceilings or there was maybe like a pillar in the middle of the room or something like that. Yeah, so I definitely have thought a lot about this. I don't know if I would change Sov House because it it really was it really ended up being perfect, you know, I I don't know if I can if I think that like more could be squeezed out of it. Um but I I have lots of thoughts of like if somebody was going to um create a new Sov House

57:09 you know, like what what would that look like? And what would be >> actual key elements of the place they needed versus like what was just like it didn't matter or have any impact on things? So uh okay, where do I start? I mean you need to have you you definitely need to have a place that is close to public transportation. But um but it has to be like 50 ft away from the steps of the entrance of the train. And the train has to pass through a uh like a couple stops like a couple stops away from another neighborhood that that that um the high quality people live in that then want to come to your neighborhood. So like for example, um I know I just said high quality, but um bear with me. Williamsburg is right in

57:55 the next stop. So to East Broadway. So you have you know, you you people that are coming from Brooklyn and they're they're they're taking the F train and then they get off on East Broadway, which is the first stop when you're in Manhattan. So having and then 50 ft away from that is is Sov House. Um And uh you also want to have like a like when you get out of that station and what and you know, what's around, a lot of places in New York are sandwiched between two buildings. So like you have a retail space, you come out of the retail space, you're hit with a building right in front of you. Right across from Sov House is a huge park, Seward Park, named after the guy that um that founded Alaska uh purchased helped with the purchase of Alaska and then tried to purchase Greenland, but that didn't work. Um and

58:40 and >> work yet. It didn't work yet. The spirit of Seward is still around. And and you have this like huge park with basketball courts and uh and even a ping pong table like a made out of concrete uh and not not like rigged together. You know, it's a it's like a real deal. You know, it looks like it could be sponsored by Nike. Um ping pong table that people play on 24/7. Uh Does that change the bounce? What? Like did Does that change the bounce any? Like does the ball Does a ping pong ball bounce differently on concrete than it does on like uh plywood? >> Absolutely it does. It goes a lot higher. It goes a lot higher. Also the the net is metal. So like if you if you

59:25 graze the net with um with a ping pong ball that's made of fabric and like also the elastic You can do the thing where you maybe you tip over, you get like a let and it goes onto their head very softly. But this is just like boing. Yeah, it bounces it bounces away. Uh there's no give at all. And then just and like the lighting too. And also it's under trees so the leaves fall while you're playing and then you hit a leaf. Um so then the the park also needs public restrooms. Uh and uh and uh and a track as well. Like you need a really like heavily used park, not one that's just like derelict there for people to you know undesirable people to to to hang out and mess up. Like this is this park

1:00:11 is is is is really loved and you have um you have a lot of a lot of a lot of light and greenery that comes from that big opening, you know, cuz you're not sandwiched between the building. Uh another >> wind up getting like a like inbound people from the park who just like maybe you have people that go out into the park and then they're like playing around and then they meet people and then just through the sheer force of social interaction the rest of the park gets dragged into Sovereign House. Uh no, but I did have some people that were very curious as to what's going on and I always let them in, show them around, you know, ask them if they want to uh watch this weird um you know show and uh some people some people would but

1:00:57 I kind of actually had like an unofficial age limit and the thing about the neighborhood which like this is the thing about just I think a lot of a lot of American cities now is that they are um they are they are aged and so I think a space should have uh you know, obviously a minimum uh age limit but there should also be a maximum age limit. And um and so you know, a lot of the people walking around curious about the neighborhood they are um you know, they're not the right demographic. They're you know, I was always nice to them and and and and for the most part they they get it because when they were young these places were everywhere. I mean if you go to like um I'm I'm like if you go to South Korea

1:01:44 and you're in Seoul there's 18-year-olds like just every almost every single retail space is owned by a super young person whether it's a cafe or a golf simulator or a shoe store. Like there are young people that that have those commercial leases and that's probably how it was uh that's probably how it was like many generations ago in New York. Now it takes like private equity, you know, to to to open a place. Um and >> it, right? They're just like oh this is Sovereign House. It's not like a retirement home. Okay, I'll be on my way and they like wander off. Right. They'll be like yeah, this is this is too young for me. Um It's like uh have you have you gone to like a university gym

1:02:30 in the last uh like 5 years or so? Like that's like the feeling. Like when I when I that's what I'm imagining these people feel, right? Like when I go to a university gym I'm traveling it's like the only one there and I walk in and I'm just like I'm too [ __ ] old to be in this place. Like this is just goofy. I have to leave. Uh Yeah, you you you know yeah, you know you know it's not for you. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> That's what I imagine the old person wandering in or around Sovereign House would be. So you you think that the park is important, you think that the public transportation is important. Is there anything about like the actual like I is there any like weird truly esoteric you know, like someone will be tweeting about like oh like the high ceilings allow like maximum circulation of CO2

1:03:16 which which promotes like a more boisterous atmosphere in like the living room or something? Yeah, I was I was going I was going outside in. So now I'm ready to go inside Okay. >> journey of the of the esoteric knowledge. Um number one you need to have you need to be you need to be um you need a retail space. You there you know, you cannot be having people go up in an elevator. When you get in an elevator you are like you're programmed to turn off as a person. You can't smile, you can't look around, you have to like you have to like be a robot and just turn off until you get to your destination. That's just that's just you know, how what the what the what the rules are. And um and so it's it's a vibe killer. It's a total vibe killer. If you're walking >> with a reboot, right? Like everybody gets in the elevator and they shut down

1:04:02 and now like they come to your door and they have to turn it back on again but you usually can't turn it back I mean the average person can't just like >> Totally. Yes, that's right. That's right. You have to you have to re like you you cannot take anything that was outside now inside. You have this total boundary separation which sounds cool but it's really not. It's really it's really a vibe killer. It's the worst and so you need a retail space. Um uh the um the other thing is about that um entrance is that that also has to be the exit. Meaning people have to be able to look at the door and know that they can leave at a moment's notice. If they don't if they and ironically that makes them want to stay longer because they know they can leave at any time. And uh you don't have to like leave with

1:04:47 people, you know, like if you're looking at an exit and you're like in someone's apartment you don't want to be the guy that just leaves by yourself or just like you know, it's like I'm leaving now. Like you see someone if you don't want to be there you see people going like I'm going to go with them. You know, you have to like sort the strategy out. But if there's just a door that goes right to the outside you don't have to do that. And so it's like psychologically comforting for people that the street's right there. Also if you smoke you you you don't want to figure out that part. You also you also may just want to go outside and smoke. And um The 7-minute the 7-minute like smoke break where you have to like gather up your friend, you have to go find the lighter, you have to go find the door, find the elevator, go down and now it's like >> And then and then you finish the cigarette and you're sitting out there thinking like am I really going to go up

1:05:33 and do this again in 45 minutes? Like am I am I truly about to spend my whole night doing this? I think Sovereign House had two other things that were really good which is one you have the bar right next to the door which is great because you did have these people who would come in and had never been to Sovereign House before. Like it was you know, it's not like a bar where it's always the same people or like a club where you have the same regulars. Like there were a different significant amount of new people that would come in. Um So I think having the bar next door was good especially with the open door thing where like a homeless guy might just come in or something crazy. Um I think the other thing that was really good is you enter and you can immediately see a doorway and like a bigger room in the back. And I assume this was just cuz like the constraints, right? Cuz the floor was at a certain height and whatever. But the back room

1:06:18 being so much bigger I think really invites people to go in. Um and then as you go to the back room there's also there's this huge shelf with a bunch of uh fun and interesting books. And so you you'd have this effect where like you would immediately be invited to go in and check out what's happening in the back room firstly uh unless it was like super full and you couldn't even tell that there was like a an opening. Um And also when you get there I mean I don't really care cuz I'm a super sociable person but I think a lot of people you know, maybe they're in like a very new space like this you don't know what to do. And so I think having like an interesting prop like the shelf full of books means someone can just go and just like thumb through books for like 2 minutes until they find like oh I'm going to go talk to that person. Or then like kind of sit here thumb through

1:07:03 books eavesdropping on a conversation and then kind of like insert myself into a conversation. >> to look like the weird person on the side of the wall on their phone, right? Like you truly do need this at every single modern event space. You need something that you can do to not look like the phone cell that's just like Yeah. Yeah, not being a phone cell is like super important. The books set the tone for like what the space is because there's so many crazy uh like sort of like I mean it was esoteric, right? And and I and I I don't I try not to own any books that have ever been in a Barnes & Noble and um I also try and not own books that are like that are like super political. And so just like like political theology is the is what you want to go for. Um and and and some sort of like uh cultural like

1:07:50 like philosophy or cultural commentators that are also not sold in Barnes & Nobles. Uh weird science as well. I was going to say do you have like bioenergetics or like uh like a key to like maximizing your hairline or something? I have a anti-gravity one and these are you know, these are I have cancer as a parasite. So you know, those those when you see that you're like oh I'm not in I'm not in a commercial space cuz these would never be there. I'm not in like a I'm I can't be in like mag like a like a maga space where they want me to sign up to be a voter cuz we you know, we we don't have any of that there. So it really sets a tone uh having having a a large assortment of like 2,000 books right there on the wall. The most esoteric secret I can give you and this is going to be crazy,

1:08:37 okay? No chairs. Nobody can sit down. You can only stand. That means that you have such social fluidity. You you you can't uh be holed up with your group. You have to be standing have to socialize and if you um it takes effort, you know, if you're there for 3 hours and you're standing like you want to be there. So if anyone doesn't want to be there anyway if you if you know, you're fatigued or whatever you want to go sit down you you have to leave. You can go to a bar but like you know, there's going to be no chairs here for you. I know people that have accomplished the same thing by saying like I will I try I mean a lesser version by saying every like X minutes I'm going to like toast or clap my hands and everyone's going to be forced to get up and reorganize. Like

1:09:23 you must [ __ ] socialize. You you meet new people. Uh it feels forced. it's very heavy-handed, and you you like when it happens you like roll your eyes, right? You're like, "Oh, great. We're doing the [ __ ] like icebreaker musical chairs again. This is so cool and wacky." Uh, but if there's no chairs, it's just like, you know, someone will eventually just get bored or especially in New York, right? Like there it's not like you have the Midwestern tendency where like if you're trapped in a conversation with someone that you're like, "I would like to be elsewhere." You're like, "Ah, [ __ ] Like I'm from the Midwest, so I must stay here and keep talking to this person forever." Like in New York, you have like a 4-second latency on like I have mentally checked out of this conversation before you just walk away and go find someone new. Right. Oh, also no LED lights. You know, that's an

1:10:08 obvious one, but it's also one that tons of people miss because when when you get if you get a new space, which this actually this happened this is when I this is when I first had a a conflict with my landlord. It was he had installed these, you know, the Remember the entire place is restored to what it looked like in the '60s, but he thought it would be a great idea to put in recessed lighting that were LEDs. And I said I need to to have the 60-W Edison incandescent incandescent bulbs and that have the glowing tungsten in it. And I and so I'm going to take out all of the recessed lights and I'm going to put these in. And um that was a huge that was a huge battle that I had to go through. I had to pay

1:10:55 an additional $11,000 to him just to just to do that myself. Was that was that regulatory on his side or was Like why did he put them in? Cuz I know in some places around the world you can literally >> efficient. You can save a dollar and 32 cents per year with this one light bulb. You're like, "Sign me up." [laughter] Yeah, you want to get to as close to fire as possible, which is like those were street lamps in New York in the '70s. You know, we had gas lamps. It also makes like uh it doesn't it doesn't do well for women's makeup. Like women definitely >> look good. The fluorescent lighting is like the most lighting of all time. And it's very >> way from that because you have you literally have to tear out the ceiling to they're not compatible. They've made it incompatible. You know, you cannot

1:11:41 just take out an LED and put in a incandescent. You need a you need what's called a G27 socket in order to have that in. And then a lot of switches like I had a lot of incandescent bulbs. A lot most switches can only hold 500 W. That means if I have 10 bulbs that are 60 W each, the the actual switch the switch will actually melt. So, you know, I don't know how they did it back in the day, but but right now it's like everything is designed to be against you using these these real incandescent bulbs. So, you did you did Sovereign House for a really long time, bunch of interesting events, you know, a couple pop-ups, DC, Lisbon, etc. Um and then you were saying like, you know, you wanted to at some point draw it to a close. Was there always like a time limit on Sovereign House where like

1:12:27 I want to run this for a period of time or was it like at some point it's like, "Okay, you know, I think we're starting to get the same or or how did that happen where you're like, "Okay, at some point this is going to end." Everything has an expiration Almost everything has an expiration period to it. And and this was no different. So, it was a 2-year lease and I was able to my landlord allowed me to keep it open for a couple more months. So, I you know, got close to 2 and 1/2 years, but I always knew that there was an expiration. That wasn't the only reason why there was an expiration. This was You know those those meme posts where it's like this was a social experiment, you know, but but conducted by the psychology department of Harvard. You know, that was kind of what this was. Um it you know, it just wasn't Harvard.

1:13:12 So, when you're talking about like keys to what made Sov House successful, I'm assuming that it's just like taken for granted that you must have alcohol at these social places. Um yeah, you're saying like Uh are you saying like at at social clubs in general or Yeah, generally. Like uh I mean like there's all of this talk about like the Zoomers aren't drinking, etc. etc. I you still think you do you think that doesn't matter at all? And it's like, "Come on, man. It's a social club. Like it's open late at night. What are you talking about? It there has to be alcohol. Shut up." I think that Yes, I I think that I think that whenever I see a like a forced narrative like that, I always ask I always ask like "Why is that happening?" I think a lot of a lot of these things happen because

1:13:57 there's sort of a a like a journalistic endeavor to sensationalize. And um but then also, you know, who knows? It could be it could be um a cannabis lobby, you know, pushing that. Um you never really know, but I'm not seeing that. I think that that alcohol is a great social lubricant. I think that like even like the act of holding a drink in between you and another person like there needs to be something there. It's it's too um it's too ingrained. I mean, we had we had to pass a constitutional amendment just to get our alcohol back. It's not it's not going away. It's also the um Like if you're not great at dancing, having a drink that you have to hold the

1:14:42 whole time prevents you from having to do some sort of mumbo jumbo with your hand. Uh, so it's generally something that a lot of otherwise less social guys like, I think. But the other thing >> thought this about um like smoking is well, right? It's like the physical the physical action of like holding a cup in your hand or of smoking or all these things. It gives you something to do with your hands, which like lets you, you know, push off like negative energy. And then it's also this thing where like you're not the guy on your phone. Right? Like I think a lot of people go on their phone because they have nothing to just like ideally do. And if you have something to ideally do, like we've all seen like it's obviously not a great guy to be, but it's better than being the guy on your phone, which is like the guy leaning against the wall with a cup in his hands. Right? Like that's like month significantly better than being a guy leaning against a wall

1:15:29 like with his phone in his hands, right? And so there's all these things where >> very heavily from that human requirement to have some [ __ ] in your hand. Right? Like I think I think we've always been kind of doing that. And like cell phones like now you have [ __ ] in your hand that you can scroll. >> that's a notebook or a book? Yeah, or a drink. Um yeah, I think maybe that's going to be the reason why we don't all shift to Neuralink. Cuz we just that's so funny actually. Like we just prefer Like we actually we thought cell phones were bad, but actually Neuralink is even worse and we get saved from Neuralink because we can't put our phones down. Like the boomers, they were right for like 30 years and now they're super wrong and cell phones are actually like the last thing standing between us and the Antichrist.

1:16:14 It's Panopticon. That would be really funny actually. Yeah. Speaking of the Antichrist, it's becoming increasingly clear that when he returns, he is going to be making the United States his primary residence. And if you would like to protect your family and your finances from that, always remember that our sponsor CitizenX allows you to buy passports to many other countries where you can protect your family and protect your finances. So, I'll I'll button really quickly. I've been a member of a couple clubs in Europe. And then I'll say it's not so much like you don't have The ones I've been members of are more like older social clubs, which is just the same thing, but like now it's rebranded into members clubs, right? Um I'll say uh you it's a great place to meet new people with a pretense. Like because I

1:17:00 don't know. You'll have your group of friends and like I have group of friends that are more solidified. I also travel a lot, so I have a lot of different groups of friends. And I really like one of the things I enjoy most in the world is meeting new interesting people. Like unironically, I've restructured my entire life so that I meet as many new interesting people as possible. I really really like doing that. I try to do it as much as possible. And so I think this is a thing where you'll meet new people through this that aren't necessarily like, "Oh, your buddy's college friends or your buddy's high school friends." Or hey, you know, you play in a you know, a paddle league on the weekends and like it's another guy or like, you know, if you're older like, "Oh, this is your daughter's father you know, your daughter's friend's father." Or whatever. Like you are always being the same people. So, I think this is a good way to meet different people. Um and then I'm curious Nick to to

1:17:45 kind of change the question just a tiny bit. What do you think most of these members club offer? And then are you trying to offer something substantially different? Are you trying to execute it on it better? You know, etc. But like first off like what do you think most of them are offering? And then maybe more you or Rain. Mhm. So, I think there has been an you know, what's called like tragedy of the commons. There is not there and especially like reduction of um religiosity and people going to church. Uh, so you you you're you're sort of like um uh forced into this very superficial what if you're in a if you're in a large city, superficial uh scene of some sorts where you can only go an inch deep with anybody you

1:18:30 just meet. Um you know, like have you noticed like if you are in um if you're in another country and and you identify like another American, like you will talk to that other American like, "Woah, you're American. I'm American." And then you like if you're in the same state, it's like doubly like impactful. But like you can be in the same city living in the same city. You there's like that not that response. So, it's it's there's a lot of these like superficial identifiers that don't really mean anything, but like gives you some small gratification. And people get over that very quickly, you know? And and so so so you have to understand like that like the like the outside. What is the What is the world offering right now? It's you know, it's not offering much.

1:19:15 There's also in the places that used to be frequented that are that typically would have high quality people in them. They have a lot less because the high quality people have moved to members clubs. And so there's there's this like larger stratification going on where you sort of you sort of have to be in one of these or or be a guest of somebody, you know, that that is in one of these in order to to to access that that group. And so and and and so I think that that that you you sort of forced to you're going to be forced to choose one of these. And

1:20:01 what I have seen is, you know, like what are members clubs offering? It's a lot of the same. Like [clears throat] when you have private equity behind it and it's like this is a good business plan because people have to pay to be a member and then they have to and then like that kind of filters for people that that that have the service. >> already. Yeah, and and like >> And also are you want them there in the first place. And and so you'll you'll you'll go cuz you're like what am I getting what am I getting out of this? And there's a lot of that going on. You know, there's a lot of that and and and maybe that's true but like that's going to have diminishing returns soon because you're you're going to you're attracting from the same pool. Like Kith has a you know, members club they're opening and it's

1:20:46 $35,000 initiation fee. Like how many how many people can afford that? You know, you're going to end up with boomers. You're going to end up with like foreign wealth and you're going to end up, you know, I hate to say it, some a little like some prostitutes and you know, looking for clients. And you know, that's what you're that's the group and there's a lot of those but not but there are not that many like there are a lot of those people in the world but there are not that many members clubs that they can you know, sort of like all or nothing or like maybe some guy can have seven you know, seven memberships but it's going like that's all they're offering. I think there's a level of um there's a level of fee that is reasonable that's like your you know, it's like keep the riff raff out and you know, obviously not exactly like that but kind of like that. And

1:21:32 then there's a level where it becomes like this perfect Keynesian game where like you're both like it's just like okay, how much like how much economic pain can you take? Right? And then it's also becomes a thing where like I don't know, you know, a members club is charging like 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K. All right. It's like at a certain point it's like do you really want to like even if you are a billionaire, do you really want to hang out with a bunch of people who are like you know, like oh, I need to pay a billion dollars to hang out at a place. This is exactly what I was going to say is like when you raise the fee to a certain point, you attract the type of person who only pays the fee to brag about the fact that they paid the fee which is just an awful person, right? >> what the bigger brag is? I paid the fee but I don't even go. I've never even been. And then they don't even you know,

1:22:17 then then there's no one there. It's just that you're buying the status symbol >> [snorts] >> and it's hollow, you know, and and that's what that's what I see and that's I think that's so great because what that means is that they're they're going to fail or they're going to keep it's going to be like a containment board. Like they're all going to be contained in these spaces while you know, other people can can uh can capitalize on on the on the larger trend. And >> they're not going to go to the thing because like the thing that they're using to brag, they're not going to go to the place where everyone else also has the thing, right? It's like if you buy a $1 million watch, you want to brag to it you want to brag about it to people who don't also have the same $1 million watch, right? You're going to go up to the guy with the Rolex. You're not going to go into like the owners club

1:23:03 with all 100 other people who have the same identical brand and model of watch as you and be like, "Dude, I'm so awesome." And then "Oh my god, you're so you're so awesome, too." Right? Cuz the point of it is that you feel more awesome than them. Yeah. And and the flex there and the and the arbitrage there is is like is guys doing that to girls. Like you know, you'll be on some dating app and be like, "Want to go to my members club?" And then it just ends up being like sort of like a I don't know, like a mouse trap of sorts, you know, for a whole 'nother demographic. And you know, that's all terrible. It's all really really really bad and and it's you know, it's it's dark but I'm glad that that gets to be contained elsewhere because I think that we're going to get a lot of high quality members clubs that are

1:23:49 going to be um specialized in in a sort, you know, like there is I'm not using this as an example as a high quality members club but I'll show I'm using this as an example to demonstrate how specific you can get. There is a members club in New York that's opening that it is really tastefully like the the architecture, the interior design, you know, there's a lot of money and and talent and taste behind it. It's for podcasters. It's a It is a for us, Lucas. Oh my god, we got to go, dude. >> [laughter] >> Holy [ __ ] Yeah, well, I think I I have joked I'll I'll do a slight set, you know, parentheses here. I've joked that you know, it's going to be the podcasting class now. And actually it's like really funny with the rise of these podcasts, you have people

1:24:35 I don't know if you've heard about this but like TBPN came up and then there's a bunch of these other ones and people are actually like trading ad slot derivatives. So like I won't say which ones but there's people who like will pre-buy ad slots on these and like re they're like oh, this is going to like 10x in like 30 days. And so they're like I'll buy an ad slot and like flip this like I'll buy 50% of an ad slot or something. Yeah, just a weird little caveat but it's like a really funny. Yeah, that's that's pretty funny. I well, I think a historical one of these was like the Explorers Club. Right. >> Like you had a lot there it's like you have some kind of niche interest and you already have your like college friends, your high school friends or you know, the friends of your kids or whatever but it's like oh, I really like exploring. I

1:25:20 like going to weird places and you know, seeing cool things. So it's like I'll become a member of the Explorers Club and then you'll meet a bunch of people who have done all these cool things and you have something in common with them and it's like a place for like-minded people with a specific interest to meet in person, right? And have some camaraderie. I like the Explorers Club and so so you know, I hopefully this isn't really [ __ ] on them but they you have to have an exploration in order to be a member. Okay? But what is exploration now? It's traveling. You know, so it's like you know, and and then you know, they give honorary memberships to Elon Musk and and Jeff Bezos and you know, for space exploration and you know, then they're like oh, they're members, you know, well, are they members or you just gave them a membership title and then you

1:26:05 have you know, people that that that pay to go on a safari are now you know, saying that they that they explored the frontier. You're sort of paying for filtration of people that you definitely will get along with and probably going to grow up in your generation, you know, for decades, right? Like it it might be you might find your wife there. You might find you know, your best friend, your business partner or like your job. Like it's not it's not like a fraternity >> Guaranteed your first. Guaranteed you will find your wife at Rain. Guaranteed. Money back. Hey, it's guaranteed to some people. That's for sure. Money back guaranteed if you don't find your wife at Rain. But you actually seen

1:26:50 this many times in the legacy members clubs. And this this is the this is actually a sort of a a designed downfall or or designed termination expiration date of the legacy members clubs. They have these like $100 buildings and it was them and their friends who joined you know, 50 years ago and they've paid their they've paid their member dues which is like to keep the club alive. It's not like it's sort of like this shared co-op thing and and and and they they they started you know, 50 years ago. That was like the that was like they reached max capacity and then they get very gatekeepy about it and they don't let anybody in so much so this is the

1:27:36 designed expiration date now, you know, almost every almost every event that happens is a memorial service for a dead member because they're so old and they're not recruiting younger people. And then if they see somebody that's like 50 years old, they're like oh, oh, did you see that, Larry? There's a young person here. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Right? And and and and so what's happening what's happening this is and this is the this is the financial expiration. They end up not being able to collect enough of the member dues because half of their half of their population has has died. So they end up selling or mortgaging the building and then getting a long-term lease up until the point where they would definitely be dead.

1:28:21 And so they can hold on for for the last you know, several years with their friends. But what's important even though this is a tragic story and it's the end of the of the legacy members clubs and there there have been many that have been sold. What happens is there's usually a 501c3 set up along a 501c7. The 501c3 is to maintain the historical building. So it's a lot of these on the historical register and it's to maintain the building. So so you know, the C's the C7 still operates, the C3 still operates but the building itself has been sold. They got a influx of cash like $50 million, $100 they use that to pay the staff. They use that to keep the longevity of the of the of the building and them occupying the space. And and and and it's just going to decay

1:29:08 until until it it gets sold off to meaning meaning the actual club itself, the C3 and the C7 will will will be under new hands. Maybe someone discards that name and and and has their own members club in there. Maybe it gets turned into a gap. You know, you never know, but but this is the this is the story of the members club. That's a tragic material story of the members club. But who are these people? What did they turn into, right? Where did they come from and what did they turn into? Powerful a powerful network of and and and and an amazing story for most of the people involved. Um uh you know, we're talking about like like Union Club, Union League, Metropolitan Club, Cosmos, a lot of the ones in London. Um they have they have shared reciprocity with

1:29:54 each other. And so you not only do you get to be in your own members club, you then get to when you travel, you get to stay. Uh a lot of these have rooms. You get Yeah, well I just uh I'm I'm like in uh the Tri-Cities right now. I'm like up in the Hamptons and I was staying at the Metropolitan Club in New York. >> So there's a bunch of these. But that that's one of the ones where like it's all old guys. Like you walk in, you have to dress super nice. You have to >> this that and the other. Yeah. >> about the think about the lives that they have lived, right? Like they were they they entered into an organization like a loose organization where it was such strong bonds. You know, they they probably all got to um go to each other's weddings and their kids, you know, like they've they've helped out

1:30:40 their kids. Another member's helped out their kids. Like it's it's a it's it's a powerful thing to to to have a small community that's just uh that that you grow that that you grow for many decades um you know, to last to maturity. And that's I think what's being offered. That's what should be offered by members clubs. So you could say any brand with a subscription, you could say owning an iPhone, having blue text messages, that's a members club. But the important part is is you know, to be autistic about it is the Dunbar number. It's you want to reach like you can only have 150 uh friends uh you know, like deep connections with Yeah, the the number of people that the average human brain can actually like conceptualize as

1:31:25 like a connection, a person I know, something like that uh before you get into like Stack Overflow. Right, exactly. And so you know, at that point there's a lot of things that don't resemble a members club because because that's not it's not true connection with with other people. It's just a shared identity under a brand and basically you're being used as a brand ambassador and uh and paying for it. In a most optimistic scenario, you found your wife there, you found your job there, you got investors there. Um you know, there there's there's a lot more being offered than um than just >> very much the case, yeah. I I know a ton of people who at these social clubs have found investors or like business partners or the classic one is like the which I

1:32:12 don't think you'll you'll see a lot of these now. This is like a old generation thing cuz now most people do their own finances or just index funds. But the classic one is like you're a wealth advisor and you go to a country club or something, right? Right. Or now you're a life insurance life insurance salesman. I I mean that that one might be even older. But yeah, there's a ton of these where it's like Yeah, yeah. You'll you'll find like some I mean you're you're finding these people. And so what what are you trying to do with Rain? Like what type of person are you trying to get? What's the space going to be like? You know, are you going to do events or whatever? So the type of person, you know, I've thought a lot about this and I've been exposed to I think um it it's a growing it's a growing uh category, I guess. I

1:33:00 don't know how to define it exactly, but um you can define it by by by by much grouping a grouping of smaller cohorts. And so you know, what I've seen out of Sov by hosting a lot of uh literary events is that there are a lot of these uh print publications that are coming out. It's like a rediscovered medium, right? And so what do you have in a print uh publication? You have writers and you have readers. And uh and you know, you have staff, of course. And so that like a publication is like an is like a node, um but it's also but it's like a cohort. And so and so you know, just to define this a little bit more, um the people that that that I um am have first approached uh for Rain have been readers

1:33:47 and writers for American Affairs, Palladium Magazine, Works in Progress, Arena, and um you know, there's there's a few other smaller ones. And um and so you know, those are not they're non-political. They're like they're like sort of ideological, but more of more of a um on an analysis. You know, they're they're more like cultural uh analysis and um and just highlighting, you know, um the output of a lot of these people. Like if like you can anybody can write for these, you can write on what you're doing, you know, you don't have to be like a a journalist or like um a thinker, you know, to write for to write for these publications. And so that to me highlights like that's like a pre-selection cohort for the type

1:34:34 of of person that um that I'm looking for as a member, you know? And then you have so that's one grouping of cohorts. Um and and I would say that that's more of like like an ideological bent, you know, uh it's pre-selection of an ideological bent. And then you have on the other side um you know, the whole American dynamism, abundance, reindustrialized. Like that includes you know, that that grouping of cohorts includes founders, investors, early employees. You know, these this this output is is less of a ideological output and more of um uh more of a material output, you know, in like whether your sector you know, you're working at a startup in in defense or robotics or space, something

1:35:19 like that. But there is this um there's this grouping there, you know? So so uh so that's that's kind of how I'm like um trying to define the the membership without using buzzwords. It's more of like an affiliation sense. Speaking of affiliations, I'd like to take a brief moment to remind you of our newest sponsor Zcash. z.cash. So you said that the dues will be paid uh or that that the uh the establishment will be financed in part by the sale of drinks, right? So does this incentive push you towards uh does it push you towards attracting alcoholic members? Like is there any sort of is there any sort of a feeling right now that you have to go out and find the most bumbling drunks in all of the scene

1:36:06 uh and invite them >> know, I think that like what a defining characteristic I have no experience on this. Um but a defining characteristic of an alcoholic I think is drinking before 3:00 p.m. And we open at 3:00 p.m. So They can't be alcoholic. If you're a member of Rain, if you're a member of Rain by definition, you cannot be an alcoholic because I've personally defined it as starting drinking before 3:00 p.m. That's really funny. Uh so what I find Lucas is that most of these places, the ones that work well, um there's a balance where you want to charge for the services and the amenities, but you usually want it to be slightly subsidized. So like for example, >> don't want it to be free because if it's free, it's just full of like the guys who have nothing to do. Again, this is like an older model, but I've been a

1:36:52 member >> because they get free things is a very specific type of person. And I know because this is myself at a buffet, right? Like if I go to a buffet, I am going to I am going to get my like my payment out of this, right? I have never once lost to a buffet. I've ever gone to in my entire life. >> this mentality is so cancer. Like losing is such a cancer mentality. Right, it's like What I'm saying is like there's this >> saving money by like buying a sale, right? So like that's who goes to your club now is you're like the guy who's like I paid $2,000 for my membership. That means that every day I'm going to go every single day. Well, it's not a bad thing. >> the right mix. You want the right mix where like they're coming a lot because it's like cheaper. Like for example, I think like

1:37:37 a clear mistake is like a lot of the older ones are like golf, right? It's like country clubs that have like a you know, they have a like some links or whatever, right? So it's like if if your thing is ever more expensive than them going to some random thing. Like if if it's a you know, social club and it has a bunch of paddle courts. Like if the paddle courts that are just like the generic paddle courts are cheaper, you've really made a mistake on the pricing. You definitely don't want them to be free either, but you want it to be full because you want there to be people there because the it it's not about the paddle, it's not about the golf, it's not about the polo, it's not about whatever it is. It's about like there being people that you're meeting and you're spending time where there and these amenities are like an excuse to meet people and spend time with people, I think. Right, yeah. I also have um you know, I

1:38:22 mean there's this there's there's tons of there's tons of bars, there's tons of restaurants. I mean these are like it within the neighborhood, they're um they're they're they're class A um in terms of like you know, their hospitality and their food service and stuff. So the um I have I have to compete with that as well as you know, having um the community that is that exists within the doors, you know? So there's not the only thing that I'm really trying to compete with is is you know, the the the quality within the neighborhood, which is already at such a high bar. Yeah. Where is it roughly? It's about four doors down from Sov House. Oh, okay. Staying in the neighborhood.

1:39:09 That's right. >> Staying in the neighborhood. Yeah. Are you going to have >> I knew where it was, but I also you know, I don't know how >> [snorts] [laughter]

1:41:54 >> bureaucrats can make your life impossible if they want to with like a very slight pretense. And so you generally don't want to do that. Never be a rule follower. Like like to the extreme degree if you want to open up something in New York. And that's against every cell in my body, but I have had to force myself to comply with all local and federal regulations. Super like you can't tell. You can't see him on camera, but like he looks like he wants to kill himself right now. Like I've never seen a man this depressed before. Yeah, that doesn't sound that doesn't sound super super fun. So you guys have your founding member lineup already.

1:42:40 And so it's just like people who wrote for these publications was basically and what was the thought process behind that? Like you want these people cuz they're worldly because you think they're interesting or I mean they've gone through the I don't want to force anyone to do an application. It's the worst thing in the world to like have to write about yourself and it's a lot of I think it's a lot of is there some sort of a referral scheme on ironically referral I mean for sure. What's like an informal referral scheme? I see but a lot of these clubs have formal like when when I wanted to be part of this one in Europe, I had to get like five I had to get one guy who's like like if I do anything bad, he's like liable for it. Like if I piss anyone off every one of these that I am part of is something where it's like I had to you

1:43:25 know, you have to know the guy to get into the thing and then if you [ __ ] up, it's his head on a platter and you a very cool social technique. I really like it. And do you I'm sure you've heard of blackballing. Do you know where that comes from? Well, they they did this thing where they put you up on they put you on a chalkboard. I mean I don't know what this is, but mine is like they put my name you know, Sailor underscore up on a chalkboard and it was just there in like a common area of this club for like a week. And if anyone wanted to they could go and like there's this little like chalk thing and they just yeah, they they like scratch off your name and then like anonymously. Yeah, it's like anonymous, right? It's like ZK ZK proof kind of, right? Cuz like any someone who's a member of this club cuz that's only way you can get into these areas didn't want me to be a

1:44:10 member of this club and so it's like now you're [ __ ] I actually don't know what happens if they like if that happens. I'm actually not I'm not like quite sure. Well, I often have this bit where I say like we we we're conditioned to think of technology always as industrial technology or information technology, right? And technology is actually like a broader world word really. And I think in a lot of senses, I mean if you look at information technology or if you look at industrial technology, obviously, you know, we're very very advanced and like the pace is increasing more and more. Our social technology is basically our social technology seems to be like really bad. Like really really bad. Like

1:44:56 maybe maybe all time bad. Like to have people that have historically unimaginable amounts of wealth who literally just don't want to have kids. Like just don't want to have kids is like incredibly catastrophic. Yeah, it's it's I mean it's like hard to exaggerate how bad it is actually. So I think this stuff is pretty interesting. But yeah, I often think about that. Like in in terms of social technology, we have 100% regressed and regressed by a lot, right? It's like we're we're in a like a social dark age right now. Watching watching the way that like young people interact when they're like trying to meet people or date

1:45:42 is one of the most like hostile environments that I've ever seen anyone attempt to navigate. Doesn't work super well and even like even like the situation you were describing with your membership club where if someone like takes your name off of the thing, that doesn't even really work in America. Like if there's one of these groups that is formed in America and some guy joins the club, it's a very high chance that like someone who knows or is friends with one of his exes will organize some sort of a cabal to like erase his name from the thing or like otherwise create some drama. Like you can't have it be like one person has a problem with you. There actually has to be some sort of like weird like node-based delegation strategy to prevent weird social drama from coming back and being weaponized against people in ways that like are

1:46:27 historically impossible. Yeah, I haven't seen that technique be used in in in like new members clubs. I've only I've only seen it in the old ones. I think there's also an understanding that like or there there was an understanding that it's not like oh, this guy is like I don't love him. I'm going to you know, blackball him. It's like Like it has to be something pretty significant. It's not like oh, this guy just like the vibe is a little bit off. It has to be like something that crosses a certain line. But like how do you enforce the issue with that is Well, that's the issue. Like all of these gentlemen's agreements have gotten like significantly degraded, right? They they just don't exist anymore. We we don't know how. Like Nick said,

1:47:14 they find you and they put you in jail if you try to make a gentleman's agreement nowadays. But no, it's like we we I think society really used to exist off of gentlemen's agreements in so many different ways. And the more your ties to people are like just sort of like ethereal or like

1:47:59 internet based where you don't see these people, you don't care as much about them, then it's like suddenly the social friction towards negative behavior just goes to zero and it's like you actually like there's a lot of things where you can like optimize for short-term gain or some sort of like very petty action that like on a long-term if you were to stay with the same group of people would ruin your life and result in you basically like starving during the winter and like never having kids, right? But now it's like whatever, just go find a new group of people. Like just wash out every 6 months. Like there's zero switching friction. Move. Go find different group. This is another bit I have that's like uh We seem to understand all these reasons economically why like the most frictionless experience is not always the best or like when you have a frictionless experience you might

1:48:44 optimize for one thing, but make another thing way worse. But then for whatever reason we think that like socially this is great. Like it's it's obviously a bad thing that like you can break up with your girlfriend or boyfriend and like immediately go out to a bar and meet someone new and like you can just hook up with them that night. Like you you couldn't do this you know, a thousand years ago. It's like you're in your little Hamlet in like you know, Western Germany and it's like everyone knows that like, you know, you just called your wife a [ __ ] and like kicked you out of your house. You can't just go hit up the local tavern and like find a wench, you know, that doesn't really work. Um I don't know. It's it's a it's a weird time, right? And we haven't adapted for it. Um it's not very >> for uh saying that like if somebody has a

1:49:29 grievance with a member, I guess you actually probably don't want to formalize this, right? You don't want to tell people how to kick other people out of the thing or else they just like game theoretically optimize for being like the most vicious weasel possible and abusing the system. Right. Yeah, I mean I I like the way that I did it with Sav um was uh like it it was say similar to like um it was all I mean to attract people was like an information flow. You had to be you had to um either know the person that was doing the event or you had to um you know, you had to be like in uh directly invited to one of these RSVP things or like um uh even like through text or a group chat and then um and then like uh the good thing about

1:50:16 Luma, which I don't think a lot of people realize, um is that you can see who refers another person. So, it will generate a different a different um uh a different link if you are sharing it from uh the link that you RSVP'd from. And like through cookies, you don't have to sign or anything. And so, it it will create this this um this link that's trackable and then it will tell the host of the event who uh who that like basically sponsor of the of the other person that signed up through that link is. And if that person caused a problem or, you know, was uh you know, too old or weird or whatever, um then then they the entire branch would be cut off.

1:51:03 And that's kind of interesting. So, Luma >> develops like a social network uh social score referral tracking. Yeah, that's right. >> you Luma has an internal social score whereby they can see like who like always get like a hot girl who like always gets auto accepted to like every single event, right? Uh >> Well, do you remember there were many threads like uh I want to say a year ago on uh Twitter X, whatever we're calling it now, about how uh there was some Indian guy who made a thread about how he has his Luma picture as just like a hot blonde girl. >> Yeah, yeah. Because he just gets swapped in like 5 minutes before he arrives. And he says he says right before he arrives, he changes to his real picture because everyone just auto accepts his hot blonde girl picture and they don't even think about it. Whereas if he uses a

1:51:49 picture of himself, he frequently gets rejected. Yeah. Yeah, in India I think that that it's because it's so homogeneous, there's like there's like a brotherhood feeling even at scale. And like that Yes, and and that that contradicts with with the caste system for sure. But if you're in the if you're in the same caste and you uh you know, like I mean there's because there hasn't been there's like so much tracking, you know, it's like um that that like your last name or like you you grew up together. Like there's there's and just because you have to keep track of of uh of who's in what caste, like there is this scalable knowing knowingness of uh of the people you're interacting with. And I mean I I I lived there for a

1:52:37 while and I would see guys holding hands like crossing the street and they're not gay. Like that's how like it's it's weird it's weird to us, but like um there is >> high trust society is where men hold hands. >> [laughter] >> Without being gay. >> to And like sitting here like wait Without being gay. much sense. Like I'm not gay. I just have a lot of trust for sale at like >> [laughter] >> Well, so this is like very circumstantially funny. I don't know if you know this, but in Lisbon, when we were homeless before was it before or after we found the right wing compound? Well, when was this, Lucas? I I don't know which one you're referring to. Which compound? No, like what what are you referring to as in like We shared a bed. We shared a

1:53:23 bed for like a night. We slept under this like uh very weird >> place after the right wing compound. It was after the right wing cuz we didn't want to stay there forever because like it was a big nice place. They had all like you know, they all paid >> Everyone had paid or yeah, we hadn't paid. We were like bumming off of them. And they were very happy to have us. But we were, you know, it's like we didn't want to >> Yeah, it's just yeah, you don't want to be like that much of a raccoon, right? So, we went and we found someone else to be a raccoon off of. There was a place that had a spare room for us uh that we moved into, but there was only one bed, so we made do. And so, we we shared beds. This was very funny that you're like, oh, you know, the sign of a high trust society is when men hold hands platonically. I think half of the high trust Lucas and I are. It's like we're called plausibly

1:54:08 deniable, right? This is the plausibly deniable >> It is. This is like the bed. Yeah. It was it was a good time, man. Lisbon was a good time. I don't know if I'd I'd be I mean, I don't know how excited I'd be to share a bed again, but it was a it was a very good time. >> shared a bed since then. So, it's like I know I know. It's like zero. Yeah, I know. I'm aware. I'm aware. Uh but it was a it was a fun time. Um Yeah, it seems like so many years ago. It does. Well, I I think just like things are happening very quickly, right? Is there anything is there anything as a final addendum here that you would like to say uh this maybe this list of things without this that I learned doing Sovereign House running Sovereign House for 2 and

1:54:54 1/2-ish years uh would not be possible at Rain, but because I did this and I had this experience, I know that this aspect of this is going to kick ass. Uh Yeah, I would say the people, you know, I there were 35,000 people that came through Sav and I really got to you you no one's ever going to say this, but it's something that's like im- implicitly learned uh when you when you are in a a very like temporal scene that expands the globe. And um that is that there's there's only a few people that are doing things in the world. There's only like to me, I think there's 10,000. >> Oh, Lucas and I say this all the time, though. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> We always say this. Remember? Yeah. No,

1:55:39 we said this publicly, I think. Um but but but yeah, so so so I think that I really got to see that at Sav because, you know, whether it was like going to um Hereticon or um or or going to like Palladium events um or even like uh you know, certain things in DC and London, like in not in a bad way, but you do end up realizing that um and I hate the trope like small world. Like it's it really is large. I mean, you know, I've I've I've recently uh uh uh learned about this conspiracy of like there's actually less than a billion people in the world and I kind of like that. It kind of makes sense. >> I've been huge on that one. There's For those of you who are unaware of this one, it's basically that there's like an

1:56:24 extreme incentive to fraud the number of popula- the number of people in your country like up a lot because it just always benefits you. You look like a bigger military strength. It looks like you have uh it looks like you have >> aid is just directly tied to how many people have. I mean, you can write down You also can just fraud all elections. Like when you have like 80% of your citizenry being fake, like it's just very easy to elect whoever you want. Uh you get more foreign aid from people. Uh you get better emission standards, too, right? Like if you have like a billion people, you're allowed to just pollute so much more. Uh and it's like, yeah, you can kind of track this all with like energy expenditure and like cell networks and stuff, but like I just don't believe that governments on a coordinated scale aren't good enough at scamming that they could figure out a way around like

1:57:09 satellite images, especially when there are so many places where, you know, like how many how many people can live in a single family house? There are parts of the world where it can be like eight families. There are parts of the world where it's like half a family. So, what I've become to know is definitely true is that there are only a you know, 10, 20, something like that thousand people that are really um out there in the world like making considerable output that that matters, you know, to like the direction of society. And um and and I, you know, and that's that's what the members club is for. And um you know, that's what I learned and that's also, you know, what I've been trying to create over the past over the past uh year since I realized that and realized that, you know, I want

1:57:55 to a home for those types of people. Yeah, that makes sense. Join our club or else you will never influence anything. Join our club or you're not a real you're not even a real person. You're an NPC. You don't you don't exist. Yeah, truth truth nuke. If you're not at the in-person podcast recording of the plausibly deniable podcast at Rain, you're not a real person.