Campbell Walker on Doom Culture, Creativity, and Finding Light in Darkness
Why does progress still feel like doom?
I just sat down with Struthless AKA Campbell Walker.
He’s an artist, author, and YouTuber making creativity a tool for mental health.
In this episode you’ll learn
Why negativity bias drives anxiety and pessimism
How creative expression can shift depression into progress
Why humor is a survival mechanism in hard times
We dive into the details later in the conversation.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
07:05 Doom Culture and Its Origins
12:48 Social Media as an Outrage Machine
19:12 From Doom to Bloom: Expression over Depression
24:41 Navigating the Depths of Despair
31:10 Confronting Problems and Their Shadows
36:10 Comedy Meets Activism
41:32 Creativity as Healing
46:15 Shifting Perspectives on Technology
56:12 The Power of Positivity and Perspective
Listen
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Here’s the full transcript:
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:00.066)
When a world is blooming with more people coming out of poverty daily, insane medical breakthroughs, all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips, why does it feel like doom? Exposure. You don’t have to default to doom when you don’t know everything. That is not the way to make things better. How can you get attention online goes from, hey, how many likes can I get?
How good is this thing to, how many comments can I get? And the best way I should say to do that is something that researchers have coined the out-group animosity effect. How can you harness creativity to improve the Everything you are looking at right now has been created by something, by someone. Be it a shirt, be it toast, be it buildings, be it babies, be it a vibe. Everything was once nothing. Run me through that and how that applies to everything we’ve been talking about. Okay, this is more just like a moment that kind of blew my mind.
Oh God, could I get killed for saying this? No, I don’t want to say this. I actually don’t want to say this. Actually, not screw it. Screw it. Like, what’s he going to do? Welcome to That One Time with Adam Metwally, the podcast bridging the gap between health, hustle and happiness. I’m with Campbell Walker, aka Struthless69, the artist, YouTuber, modern philosopher, author and dad. How are you, my man?
I’m delightful. Thank you so much for having me. How are you? I’m really good. When I was doing my research on you, I was watching a bunch of your videos and the more I watched, the more I got excited for this conversation. Oh, really? Yeah. Were there any videos that made you be like, oh, maybe we could take a rain check? No, no. Okay, sweet. Mission accomplished. You’re doing some good shit. like it. Bless you, That’s very kind. It’s like the school of life, but cooler. Oh, oh.
Cool. What makes self-help uncool and what are you doing to make it cool again? Okay, firstly, gotta say I love this question. I’m going to push back on the second part with the use of the word again. Don’t know if self-help was ever cool. Hey, hey, I mean the stoic seemed kind of cool. Seemed.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (02:09.262)
Were they? What do you reckon they were actually like? I don’t know. Just a couple of assholes. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t. I mean, like some self-help is like arguably cool. It seems inherently impossible to be cool because you’re admitting that you care. You’re admitting that you care to the world about the world, about yourself. And wow, that’s so lame. That’s so lame that you care. But it’s far lamer to pretend you don’t.
Who doesn’t care? You know, someone who’s dead. Like, if you’re dead inside, then yeah, sure, go ahead and like turn your nose up at the idea of improving yourself. Like, yeah, that’s a wicked aesthetic, bro. Love that. But I mean, the reality is like, we’re all going to be here. We’re all stuck in our own head. Like, and the idea that we should not be conscious of trying to make ourselves better, I think is just pretty short-sighted, really.
Maybe it’s also uncool because of its kind of like, if you see it as a poll, a cultural poll, then it’s got an opposite. And what’s that opposite? It’s like the Kurt Cobain archetype. It’s the rock star who destroys himself, leaves the world with incredible art and then says, I’m too, you know, this just isn’t for me out by 27. Like that is the opposite of trying to make your life better in so many ways. mean, yeah, we can get into a Kurt Cobain argument later and no one will listen. Worst date of your life.
But the, but it sort of does go against that anti-establishment archetype. I think people who say, I reject this. Like the, what’s that? We’re known to write a movie. It’s a terrible one. It’s like a Gen X movie that’s telling you, God damn it. No, I’ve already derailed this. no, I didn’t, I ain’t got a point here. think, here, let me just wrap it up. So if you need that in a tight sentence, then you have it.
Whereas I think if you take something stereotypical, like, you know, tiny man on big stage, like a Tony Robbins being like, you’ve just got to believe in yourself. That’s the complete opposite. And it just feels so great in comparatively. Yeah. So I think if things fall to either side, like it’s a pachinko machine and you can only go into one of two camps, a very small pachinko machine, guess, then yeah, self-help is not going to be cool. So
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (04:33.346)
Well, I mean, I feel like I like the way you’ve packaged a lot of the stuff you do. It’s very raw and very colorful and lots of movement, which gives people with ADHD like myself, the ability to stay on topic. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to say that was like an intentional choice, but I think that’s just who I am. Yeah. I can see that.
And look, I feel like if you’re doing work that is as close to who you are, it’s going to have a higher chance of A, lasting longer and B, resonating with people that are also kind of like you. Yeah. Yeah. Mental. Yeah. here we are. Hell yeah. Why do you think self-help has not been handed its cultural cache? Why do you think it sucks? Why is it lame? Well, I think, I think
I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I started getting into the self-help space when I was 18 by reading like Think and Grow Rich and The Richest Man in Babylon and Seven Havocs of Fire. You know, just the OGs. Yeah, The scriptures. Yeah, honestly. And it’s funny you say that because the conclusion I got to after reading probably 50 of these books was that it’s basically spirituality wrapped up in business advice. Pretty much.
And it’s the same point over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. So stopped. I’ve stopped reading it. I read philosophy now. I read psychology. I’m reading the 48 Laws of Power right now. I’m reading a book about copywriting, you know, a bit more specific because
Yeah, there’s only 70 times you can read. Just show up. in yourself. Yeah. But I mean, sometimes that stuff also like, you know, just like the straight up inspiring porn. don’t know what you call it. just. Motivation porn. It’s literally motivation porn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I feel like you’re doing something, but you’re not. Yeah, yeah. If if that puts you in the right headspace, I’m not knocking it.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (06:48.812)
Like if you need to listen to Goggins yell at you, who’s going to carry the boats to cinematic music? Do it. You carry those boats. You carry them. I ran a marathon. One. You did? Only one. Yeah. And I pull, I ripped a two hour compilation of David Goggins with cinematic music off YouTube and played it every time I was running. And it’s exactly what happened.
And there was a part where it was like, you’re going to carry the most. I’m like, Stray hog, stray hog. Yeah. You’re like, Yeah. No, completely bad. Like, yeah. It kind of worked. I think you and me, I’ll throw myself in that confession too, are part of a larger cohort than I think anybody realizes. People who run to insane David Goggins compilations. I think it’s a great way to start running. It’s so good. Yeah.
Yeah, back it. Speaking of self help, you’ve got a book. I want to dig into some of the points in the book because I think it’s super interesting and really relevant to the way the world is currently. So your book’s called Doom and Bloom, a case for creativity in a world hooked on panic. And the concept generally is when a world is blooming with more people coming out of poverty daily,
insane medical breakthroughs, technology moving leaps and bounds, connections that you could never dream of, all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips. Why does it feel like doom as in high levels of depression, suicide and helplessness from the cohort of people living through it? So I’d love to get your thoughts there. Exposure, the things that we expose ourselves to. The way that we’re wired, mean, let me be the trillions person to.
bring up the negativity bias when talking about this sort of stuff. But the way that we’re wired is to remember scary things. It’s not to forget train wrecks. It’s not to forget deaths or things that kill us or poisons or whatever. It’s to keep those things lodged in our memories. And when we expose ourselves to all of that, they’re obviously going to stick around. Now, the volume of things that we do expose ourselves to and things that we might not have control over.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (09:04.686)
It doesn’t change the fact that if they are negative, they stay in our head. And when we’re putting together a worldview, if all you have are remnants of horrible, horrible things that you’ve seen, which is what goes well online. mean, take something like, do you know that famous case about the city reporter? It was this online newspaper that for one day, oh, okay. So for one day, they basically ran only positive news or news that could be phrased positively and they lost two thirds of their readership. So.
Obviously, if you are consuming anything, you are only going to be exposed to the things that respond to the incentive of that system, which is going to be negative stuff. So all of that stuff goes into your head. And I’m not saying it’s like not worth thinking about. It’s obviously worth thinking about. What I’m saying is believing that the problems are insurmountable is not how you solve them. You need to have a clearer worldview with hope and love, man. Peace. Yeah. You’ve previously...
called social media an outrage machine, which I really liked. So what does that even mean? A lot. I guess it’s... How far back do want to go? The dawn of time. All right. Okay. So picture this. Bang. It’s big.
No, I guess you could go back to sort of like the birth of Facebook and you look at the old old like transcripts or not transcripts, but you look at the interviews that have come out around the people who architected Facebook when it was first beginning. People like Sean Parker, who said, our mission, our guiding. Justin Timberlake. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m bringing the lack of privacy back. Whatever. I don’t know. Stop Campbell.
Stop. Okay, so if you look at like what he said about the guiding principle when they were architecting Facebook, it was how much of your conscious attention and time can we take as possible? That was basically how they were doing it. And he thought about it and he said this openly in 2017. He’s like, this was just how I thought about it as a hacker. I thought that human psychology was like a computer, something to be hacked and exploited in the way that when you see like a backend code, you’re like, hey, there’s a vulnerability here.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (11:23.822)
I’m going to profit off that. And so that was like quite literally the mindset that they had. So of course, when they started noticing that things went well, they were like, yeah, cool. Now we can’t jump all the blame onto them because when you’re like, you look at something like the like button, right? So this was created by a designer called Justin Rosenthal, who his idea of having the like button on Facebook was to
hack people, yes, but not hack them in a way that it’s led to been accused of, you know, like this like dopamine enriching, like you got to get the notification, got to get the notification. He quite literally innocently thought he’s like, well, people say crazy stuff on the internet. Maybe if I stick a big thumbs up in front of their face, it’ll trigger them to only say nice things, right? Which is like quite a beautiful thought, but all it did was trigger people just to chase as many likes as possible. Now.
Then we get to the next big leap in the architecture of all this sort of stuff, where we go from chasing likes to chasing engagement. A lot of sort of internet historians tend to point to the dress as the moment that it changed. You know, the blue and white versus like black and gold dress and people having a fun little like pineapple on pizza style debate over that. It blue and white. yeah. Yup.
Anyway, what the architects behind Facebook noticed is that the comments were piling in and basically creating engagement on that post. so they were like, well, seems to be triggering people to, engagement seems to be causing people to stay on our platforms for as long as possible. It’s answering that guiding principle from before. How much of your attention can we have? And so engagement became the Holy grail, which meant other people started adapting to that system.
Now it just became about hot button issues. So how can you get attention online goes from, hey, I’m here. Hey, how many likes can I get? How good is this thing to, hey, how many comments can I get? And the best way I should say to do that is something that researchers have coined the outgroup animosity effect, where you create your straw man as a group of people and you’re like, these guys suck and they’re saying shit about you.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (13:33.678)
And yeah, Q, one of the oldest human forces ever, tribalism. And so now you just get this outrage machine where the incentives of the internet are linked directly to how much can you turn any kind of idea, any idea, doesn’t matter how mild it is, into a team-based blood sport. So would you say that is pretty much doom culture in a nutshell?
Yeah, if I had to give doom culture a more succinct definition that wasn’t a very brief history of the last two decades of social media, it would be equating the unknown with catastrophe. Basically assuming the worst when you don’t have all the information. Yeah, yeah. So this is so what makes this so prevalent now? And how can you switch it up? Well, firstly,
I want to say before I diss it is that it makes sense as a worldview. I don’t blame anybody for having this. I have this. I mean, this is why I wrote the book to sort of like debunk my own thoughts and feelings. think anybody living in the pressure cooker, that is our era. Anybody who is exposed to, you know, the amount of like insane headlines or insane like posts from people or like, dude, like you go on Instagram.
Honestly, next time you’re on Instagram, count the first thing that you find that isn’t just somebody complaining. You’re like, wow. Like when you kind of like just like step back, you’re like, damn, man, everything starts with, you know what’s wrong? It’s just a lot anyway. So anybody who’s on their phone is going to feel this way. But also anybody who’s just like walking down the grocery aisle and seeing like the high prices and then just like, you know, getting exposed to any kind of like actual rhetoric about why this is going on. You’re like, Jesus Christ, there’s nothing in my favor.
then you’ve got like unrealistic body standards. So it’s like you come home, you look in the mirror and it’s like, you’re not even safe from yourself. So I think defaulting to doom makes total sense. Feeling like you’re not, you’re not enough and that the world is somehow going to let you down or that it has been letting you down and that it’s all going to go to hell in a handbasket. Don’t blame anybody for that. Is it a useful way of living though? No, no, adamantly no. I think at best it can make you
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (15:55.072)
maybe like avoid something bad happening in the same way that being like wickedly anxious and just not ever leaving the house could, but like, I don’t know, becomes bubble wrap. I think the worst thing that it does is it masquerades as like a true worldview because sometimes cynicism can be mistaken as like intelligence or like, know, like it’s better to just assume the worst and look like some privileged, naive dummy who...
you know, just doesn’t know about the world or whatever. But it is actively damaging when you think things are bad. They become worse. That is not the way to make things better. Like, I don’t know the examples that I use in the book. Things like from Jody Jackson, who is this she founded the News Literacy Lab, where she said she likes to do in front of an audience and she said, how
What percentage of the world is refugees? Is it 14 %? Is it 8 %? Is it 0.5 %? And the majority of people guess it’s 14 % based on the headlines. Now, I’m not saying 0.5 % of the population of the world being refugees is a small number. Definitely not. What I’m saying is... Statistically small. It is statistically small. mean, yeah, like, you know, it’s bigger than the population of our home country. Like, Which is tiny.
Yeah, which is tiny. Yeah. I’m not saying it’s not an urgent problem that absolutely needs solving. And I’m not saying that those I’m not saying any of that. And neither was she. What she’s saying is that when the rest of the world believes that the problem is so big, too big to tackle it, the people that benefit are not the refugees and they’re not the people on the other side who could actually make a change. It’s the messenger. It’s whoever is telling people about how bad things are.
because you get people into that fugue state, you get people paralyzed, and then you get people just not doing anything. And a hopeless, a hopeless populace is really, really good for some people. And it’s not usually the people that you want it to be good for. You make, you make a good point, which ties in all of this with the social media component and the doom culture and the concept of doom from the book, which is we have access to all the world’s problems at all times now. Yeah.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (18:11.886)
It’s a of a plot hole in reality. know, you’re like, hey, if you know everything, why are you so angry? but why are you so wrong? I don’t know. Like, but also I actually, I don’t want to say why you’re so angry because if you know everything, like anger is so fucking justified and valid. like, only if you know all the bad things going on. Very true. Very true. There is heaps of shit. Yeah.
Hell yeah, Doug. Check out ice cream. What’s that about? Exactly. It’s problematic somehow, I’m sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milk. Would you say positivity is naivety then? Fuck no. No. And there’s a real good study that actually like completely debunks this because it seems like that is the argument of the cynic who doesn’t know anything. They’re like, ugh.
Typical idiot. It’s like, okay, you’ve learned your first fact and now you’re going to look down on people? Cool, man. That’s awesome. No, there’s a really cool study that really debunks this. It was from Ipsos and it’s been going on since 2012 and it’s called the Perils of Perception, wherein basically like thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have been asked these five questions about global development. And they’ve also been correlated with whether or not you think the world is getting better or worse.
And what they found is that the less people know about global development, the more they tend to think that the world is getting worse. And the more people know about global development and issues that are actually going on, the more people have knowledge, the better they think the world could become. I mean, their awareness is correlated perfectly with optimism. Interesting. So, basically what you’re saying is if you view the world in a more optimistic lens, you tend to result in more optimistic outcomes.
based on science and literature? That is what I’m saying. That’s not what the study saying. Like correlation and causation aren’t the same thing there. They’re saying the causation works the other way around, that the more you know, the more you tend to be optimistic. And I’m saying that the optimism also bleeds into a better world. Interesting. So what about people who, isn’t there this idea that the more educated you are, the less happy you tend to be? Yeah, on a personal level.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (20:25.08)
So how do those two things fit if they’re opposites? well, I mean, that’s about optimism for the world, not necessarily about personal happiness. So like two completely different things. guess you could be happy for the world’s progress and still hate yourself. Yeah. And you could be feeling like the world is doomed and still love yourself. I mean, that’s like every politician ever, right? They have pretty good lives and they work very hard. Yeah.
they get paid really well and get a pension for the rest of their life. So I want to explore the opposite end of it a bit more, which is your concept that you called Bloom in the book. What is that and what does it feel like in practice? I think the easiest way to understand it is to look at Doom, to look at it personally, basically, to see Doom as depression and Bloom as expression.
to sort of see depression and expression as opposites. And I think another way to look at it might be as self-destruction or creating something, right? If you are burning something, if you are breaking something, you’re not making something. If you’re making something, you’re not breaking something, just in general. And the feelings that you get when you make something, I believe are the antidote to the feelings that make you want to break stuff. There, yeah.
Oh, I was gonna say, to put it in simpler words, have you ever listened to the musician Jeffrey Lewis? No. Sort of folk punk icon, but he has this beautiful song called Time Trades, where he, you know, the sort of refrain is he’s saying like, time is going to take so much away. And which is a horrible thought for any human ever. mean, it’s the friggin, it’s like the crux of existentialism. It’s like, oh, God, we’re all going to die. Time is going to take so much away. It’s going to take everybody you love. It’s going to take me. It’s going to take anything I’ve ever made. Right.
And then he goes, but there’s a way that you can offer time to trade. The sort of like reverse entropy, but just around you. You could be anything. You could be many things. And then he just lists all of the various things that you could trade your time for. You know, could be carpentry. It could be guitar and can’t remember the quiet lyrics, but it’s basically just projects. It’s all of these things. It’s the idea that hobbies can be an antidote to the dread. And even more so building something that has meaning can be an antidote to the dread is just doing things that you love and contributing, which
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (22:51.358)
Sounds so basic when you say it out loud, but that’s the crux. So basically the idea is idleness. Idle hands of the devil’s play thing. Yeah. Yeah. It leads to do. Yeah. Like that old phrase, which once again, I mean, it comes back to the idea that self-help is kind of timeless and gets repackaged in ways that make sense for people. Like that’s.
Basically, it does come down to idle hands of the devil’s play thing. So when you’re in the say pits of depression, how do you, what can you do other than feel idle? You know what mean? It’s a very dark place to be. That’s very challenging to then go, you know what? I’m going to go build a cubby house. God, no, don’t start there. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s the end. I mean, that’s kind of, yeah. an elephant with a hat.
Yeah, now do it. No, I think rather than focusing on things to do, like when you’re at the very end, and this is kind of why I wrote the book in three sections, like talking, addressing, like when you’re in the pits of despair, when you’re kind of in the middle and then when you are good and how you can sustain it. But when you’re in the pits of despair, it’s not about what to do. It’s about how to stop things that will make your life worse. And that’s easier because it’s just a bit less energy.
to abstain from something to actually actively do something. What’s an example of that? All right. So let’s say you’re completely depressed and you’re on the couch and you’re there and you’re like doom scrolling, right? One thing that you could remove could be the couch. It could be doom scroll while you walk. Another thing that you could remove would be the phone. be like put the phone somewhere where you can’t see it or can’t reach it. And that is effectively like deleting something, like removing something to make things a little bit better.
Often, don’t expect immediate results. If you do take something away from yourself, you will also have to contend with new sounds that come up, which they will. But it’s pretty much inverting the question. So it’s like, all right, I’m having a shitty time. And I know that this condescending bald fuck on this podcast is telling me that, yeah, sure, some good things are possible. I’m sure they are. Shut up, guy. What about today? What about tomorrow? What’s going to happen there?
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (25:16.224)
Well, it’s not about tomorrow, you know, building the house or whatever. It’s saying, OK, what is going to make my situation worse between now and tomorrow? And that might mean not showering. That might mean. Like leaving a to do list undone, that’s going to make things chaotically worse or leaving a bill unpaid. And then by tomorrow, it’s going to have interest and becomes a bigger bill.
basically stopping things from getting worse before you even start to think about improving. So people need a desire to do that a lot of times and in that mental headspace there is no desire. There’s almost, well a lot of times there’s not even a desire to live. So I just, don’t know, I’ve had, I know that the book was partially, well don’t know if it was partially or completely inspired by suicide. just like you, I’ve had multiple friends kill themselves and
I just think what could I even do? It seems like there’s anything you can really do. It’s just, they somehow have to figure their way out of it or it’s over. So I don’t know, like, do you have any?
Have you thought about that with your friend? And I know this book is kind of, I’m sure you have a million times, but any, any conclusions you’ve come to in how it could have gone different? So firstly, I want to segment the advice from before with the true depths of, not true, but like that even darker depths of hopelessness. So all of the sort of remove things from your life. don’t think that is applicable advice to this.
layer even lower. the end point. Yeah. Yeah. When you’re there, that’s more like that’s sort of like malaise. Um, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Just so it’s not like breathe and believe guys. Yeah. Um, and we tried therapy. Yeah. Yeah. It’s only $300 for half an hour. Go. Um, yeah. Well,
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (27:26.359)
It is.
so horrible to be in that space and to feel like your life is just over, it couldn’t possibly get better. And to feel like it’s ruined and that you’ll never feel good again. That’s how it feels, isn’t it? It’s that complete lack of hope or belief that the future could ever, ever be better than the present.
and that things are only going to get worse. And I think that is such, yeah, just, don’t know if you’re listening and you are at that point, I’m so sorry. Like, fuck, I can say that with so much more compassion. but like, yeah, it’s.
It’s horrid. like nothing anyone anyone says to you is going to really make that much of a difference. It’s all going to sound like noise. It’s all going to sound like people who don’t understand and they don’t understand. They don’t understand where you are right now in that sort of like complete relating way. They understand their version of it and that’s not nothing. And they understand that.
And if they do understand their version of that, if they have felt suicidal in the past and if that suicidality has become their past and they’ve recovered from it, then they might also be worth listening to in a way, I would say, because they would have a fundamental belief that you can go from feeling 100 % despair to not feeling that.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (29:17.71)
I don’t really have practical advice here. It seems like I’ve never found anything. Well, how could you, man? Like, it’s... I feel like there’s a need, there’s just a constant desire to want to find something. Yeah, of course. of the point. Yeah. I mean, I like, I can tell you my opinions, but like, you know, it gets murky, like, because...
Like we’re talking about something so damn heavy. I think one thing that bothered me about discussions around suicide is how taboo they felt. And you can see this, you know, the fricking like when you see the word unalive and you’re like, wow, what are you doing? Why would anybody use such a condescending, isolating word? It’s like if somebody’s feeling suicidal and you use the word unalive,
What are you like? Are you treating suicide like it’s Candyman? Like if you say it too many times, someone’s going to like freaking is going to appear as a monster and just like get you or like an attempt to lighten. Yeah. Yeah. It’s euphemistic. And it’s like what what what a rude thing to do to somebody who is going through the most profoundly isolating experience of their life to say, oh, I’d like to isolate that further using language is just not.
It’s not kind. so I think calling a spade a spade and being like, absolutely. Is better. I think about to kill yourself might have a little bit of predictive language that I’d probably avoid. Like maybe. Yeah. It seems like you want to kill yourself. Yeah. That sounds like Clippy. Like, can I help? No, I mean,
Yeah, yeah. Like, however you phrase it, think. However, like it’s going to resonate with different people in different ways, as long as as long as we don’t other people who are feeling suicidal, because it is more normal than I think people realize. Like, I do believe that there are steps out, no matter how dark it seems. There’s that documentary, The Bridge, where that guy survives. And at the end, he said, I realized that all my problems were solvable apart from one. And that was that I was falling straight off this bridge.
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And yeah, man. Yeah. I don’t know. But I do think that step one is going to be feeling seen by other people. And how do you make somebody feel seen? I think music does this really well. Like a lot of really horrible music does it really well. I think a lot of really cynical stand up comedy does this really, really well. I think.
books can do it really well. honestly, art and music that are about the human condition, like do remind you that you’ll, what you’re feeling is part of something that other people, really brilliant people have felt. The analogy that I like to think about it as is like lights, lights in an apartment building. So if you think about an apartment building at night,
and you’ve got all these various little lights are on like in, you you’re seeing them, but like from the street, you can tell which apartments have their lights on, which apartments don’t, right? And some people might be happy and some people might feel hopeless. That’s like lights on happy, lights off hopeless. But the further you walk back, the more those lights all start to blend as one thing. And then once you’re like truly out of it, everything that you can see just becomes this one shining light. And I think it’s the idea that even in our darkest moments,
I mean, God, don’t say we’re all part of the light, but that’s kind of it. It’s like, I realized it when I, when I first started talking about some really, really dark stuff online, stuff that like kept me isolated and kept me just in the worst possible place mentally. That was when I felt the most connection from people. was when I, like people started like sending me these like,
insanely beautiful messages and I was like, well, that’s fascinating that the most connection that we can have that I’ve ever felt to strangers has always been at the bottom of the barrel. What’s that about? And it’s about the fact that even when you feel isolated, even when you feel like your lights off with enough perspective, you realize that you’re just part of the whole thing. That is the most connected that you could ever be. So that’s how I see it.
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It’s a fine line, I would say, between that and the idea of, know, misery loves company. Which has merit, I think, like, as long as you’re making yourself better, like with the company. Yeah. You’ve said in the past, a monster might look bigger in the dark, but the second you expose it, put some light on it, you see it for what it is.
and the shadow goes away instead of dreading it, start to deal with it. Yeah. Run me through that and how that applies to everything we’ve been talking about. Just quickly though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production and a better show overall.
Alternatively, please take a look at the affiliate links of the products that I use and love in the comments below and consider purchasing using those links. They’ll give you a discount and they’ll also provide the podcast a small kickback. These are two very easy ways for you to support us as we continue to grow the podcast that we absolutely love doing. Thank you for your support and I’m back to the episode. For sure, man. It’s the idea that problems
are really two problems. There is the problem and then the shadow of the problem. So whatever it happens to be, let’s say you are avoiding talking to somebody, right? That’s a problem. But the avoiding itself, the anxiety that you have, the thing that you’re putting off, that’s the shadow of the problem, the dread. And the more that you do it, the longer that you put it off, the bigger that that shadow gets and the more that you start to feel that that problem is insurmountable because I mean, it’s become like this big monster, right? And so
With these problems that we avoid, sometimes it’s easy to forget that it’s not just the problem, but the problem that avoiding it creates this long tail. And the phrase that I like in that moment is the magic that you’re looking for is in the work that you’re avoiding because it’s kind of like, God damn, sure, sure, whatever. But it is. mean, it’s it’s have you ever had this thing? You absolutely would have being someone who, yeah, like with ADHD where
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You have a tiny task that you need to get done or maybe a tiny few list of tasks. It might be like something as simple as like, I have to send this package at the post office and that package sits in your house for four months. And every day you look at it you’re like, tomorrow I will do that thing. I’m sure I’ll do it today. No, today didn’t work. No, it’s going to be tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and you’re like, I’m going to send that thing. Oh God, why haven’t I sent that fucking thing to the goddamn post office? Literally got an Amazon returning my backpack that’s been in there for like a week.
Boom. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. And then when you finally do it, you’re like, bro, that took two minutes. That was the easiest thing in the world. What was that about? But the thing that you had to do was two minutes. But the problem it created was a four month problem. hours. Exactly. was of headspace. Exactly, man. people talk about opportunity costs like, by doing this, it means that I’m not doing that. Therefore, what’s that?
But there is also an anxiety cost or a dread cost by avoiding this. Yeah, it might be hard, but what is the cost that I’m creating in avoiding that? I saw a little while ago this when I say study, I mean the headline of a study on social media. Oh, no, it’s just a green screen tick tock. And it was people that are also what I’m looking for.
I can’t think of the word off the top of my head, but when someone like doesn’t really care about anybody else. Apathetic? No, no, no, not in that way. Like... Anadonic? Neurotic or like, no, that’s not the word. We can cut all this out, but like that’s not the word. It’s like neurotic. The people who care less about others tend to be happier in themselves. And I thought about it and I thought about a friend of mine who...
would say he’s like, he would say actively, he’s like most things like I don’t give a shit about this person. I don’t give a shit about this thing. But he wouldn’t say in a mean way. He would just say it in way of like, I’m doing my own thing. I don’t care about you or anything you have to say. And he was very happy. And I would call him out on it on a lot of topics. And he would just be pretty firm in his nonchalance of the world around him. And then I saw that study.
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And I thought, shit, he might be under something. the idea, I think there’s a middle ground. And the point I’m trying to make is maybe with a lot of this stuff, except for, sometimes you just need to go and do the thing, but you can, I just not actually caring about stuff. Most of it goes away. Maybe. I mean, like, it really depends on the scale of like where your apathy gets to. Like, cause if we look on the other end,
You take a do you know the comedian Sammy O.B.? OK, so this dude is super interesting. I’m like super fascinated by this guy’s work at the moment, because what he’s doing in comedy is he’s combining it with activism, which is something that I mean, there are always like so many different types of stand-up comics that like come out. But seeing this, a guy who’s like wholeheartedly committed to both things at once. I’m like, I didn’t know that was possible. And I think it’s really beautiful because like so much of activism just like transcends into like
lecturing people until they actively like don’t care about stuff. And then so much of comedy can sometimes do the opposite way. It can like, yeah, like, I don’t know, render people apathetic. And so to see these two things come together is like seeing a guy who says, I do care. I really do care about things. And instead of having that eat at me, I’m also going to combine it with my passion. And that is probably where the whole Dume and Bloom thing comes back into play, where it’s like, yeah, the way that I’m naturally wired.
I mean, I kind of relate to the way he’s naturally wired where it’s like, you really care and worry about these issues. And so you could either let that worry consume you and get dreaded, or you can turn it into something. And that’s exactly what he’s done. And he’s created some of the best stand up that I’ve seen a hot minute. I think with comedy, quickly touching on this before we move on to the next part, I think comedy is a really powerful tool to get a beat on society.
What’s the best? Like, what better tool is there? Yeah, one to get a beat on what people are feeling because you can’t control laughter. And the second one is to put ideas into
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common thought that are a bit taboo to talk about but around the dinner table or in public because the comedy element takes the edge off a little bit. completely. It takes the edge off completely. I mean, like you read Victor Franco, like one of the things that stood out to me was when he was talking about the amount of jokes they made in like Auschwitz. I’m like, whoa, dude. And it’s just like, yeah, like it’s just like this like, like this chaser for the fucking despair of everything.
Well, you’ve said in the past laughter is a survival tool. I mean, how could it not be? Yeah, well, I’ve talked to him about that. yeah. I wish I could recall his name right now, but it’s this philosopher. It’s a lot of syllables in his name. It’s not that I can’t recall it. It’s that I can’t pronounce it. Who said basically like when people get together and they make all of these dark jokes before they get into a good conversation, it’s almost as if they are acknowledging the ugliness.
that is around them and through that they connect. And I kind of love that because like dark humor is a really helpful and humor in general is just like a really helpful way to say, I can see the bad things, but I also see the good thing in you and I don’t want to bring you down. I want to bring you up. I don’t know. you talking about Friedrich Nietzsche? No, No, I just googled the point. no. But he said something very similar as well, didn’t he?
Nah, I can’t doesn’t matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for me, it’s like seeing yourself as almost like a conversion, like a conversion machine where it’s like you take the horrible things that you see and you can convert them into things that make other people happy, but also make other people aware. So, I don’t know, like it helps so much just to laugh like who the hell wouldn’t want to? Yeah, I mean, do you? I’ve noticed you use a lot of humor in really,
dark topics in your content as well. Was that a previous, or is it a compensation tool that you’ve noticed as you grew up? Because I feel like my first response in a lot of uncomfortable situations is to laugh as well. And I’ve always wondered if it’s...
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sometimes inappropriate, like right here, you know, I don’t know, but it does, it just comes out of you. I don’t know how to explain it. And- I completely get it. Like, yeah, I find it really hard not to make inappropriate jokes. I find it like, I have to be on my best behaviors, like pretty much 24 seven. Otherwise they just like blurt out. Cause that’s all that’s going on in here. It’s just like these stupid fucking jokes that are just like,
Say this say this say this stop it. I’m not gonna say it’s not gonna say it and then every now and then one gets out and you’re like fine fine Hopefully hopefully not always but um, I don’t know and maybe it’s a coping mechanism Maybe it’s maybe it’s a crutch or maybe it’s just fun Oh, yeah every time I have a bad thought I like go and kill people that’d be that’d be fucked up
Yeah, I’d much rather make jokes. after you do it laughing. yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I’m like some sort of, like, yeah, 90s psychopath, like from a frickin movie, like, yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of humor, I want to understand a little bit about the character arc, because this has been, we’re doing my digging into you, been quite fascinating. You went from crass humor and joke, jokey life hacks.
to now serious, genuine modern life philosophy that’s helping millions of people. So how did we get here? yeah. I don’t know. I guess it just grows with you, doesn’t it? Like, because at first I was pretty edgy. And there’s a lot of like edgy political cartoons that I put out into the world. And I really enjoyed that part of me. And that’s who I was at the time. Like I was this, you know, just a big ball of rage.
who just wanted to make only some people laugh and make other people angry. And that was really fun. Like I had a fun time doing that, but I wouldn’t do it again. So if I’m to piece together the concepts of the book, it’s we’re living in a very, very negative dark doom culture currently. And through harnessing your creativity,
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you can help to heal and improve your mental health and the life that you live. Is that the general gist? So, and theoretically the world as a consequence of that. and just so there’s no, misconceptions about what I mean by creativity. It’s not like painting a picture. It’s just anything generative. It’s just anything that is constructive, anything that adds. Yeah. Yeah. Well that, was going to lead into my question, which is,
if you’re not a creative, naturally creative person, like a writer or a painter, how can you harness creativity to improve your mental health and to heal and to improve the world? Yeah. So I think I see this in two different ways. So the first is like taking the novelty from creativity or just doing anything that is different.
Um, and then the second is taking the additive element of creativity. And so like seeing those as two different things. like everything you look at right now is creative. It’s sorry. Everything you are looking at right now has been created by something, by someone. And yet we like, uh, seem to like have this label of creativity as though it’s like some exclusive birthright for, I don’t know, someone who’s just cooler than everybody and makes all this art and then dies at like,
20. Yeah, it’s like, nah, dog, I don’t like that. Like, I don’t know, it shouldn’t be gate kept as a term, especially not when it can serve as such an antidote existentially. But it’s like, look at like absolutely everything, like be it a shirt, be it toast, be it buildings, be it babies, be it a vibe. Everything was once nothing. And I think the first step is noticing that and noticing how many things you
create as you go through your day. So right now you are creating ideas as you hear these words. That’s one. Maybe later today you’ll create a conversation. That’s two. All of these things add. Maybe you’ll create a fricking dish. I don’t know. Whatever it happens to be. But like there are all these sort of things. So this actually comes back to the idea of lowering the bar completely. Giving yourself the points so you can actually like get yourself onto the ladder. All right. So that’s the concept. It can be added to anything. Now what we’re going to do is add that other one, which is novelty.
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So novelty, I don’t know if you’ve read this, this is like quite a repeated study, but it’s basically the way that you can increase your sense of how much time you have is the amount of novelty. it’s really cool, man. But yeah, the way that you can, yeah, the time that you’re experiencing within your life, like it might feel like it’s going fast, but the more novelty you add theoretically, like the more memories that you’re creating or the more memories that you’re actually latching onto that you’re not just like archiving because it’s the same day that you had yesterday.
then yeah, the longer that your life feels, which is really cool. And that novelty can come in absolutely anything. And I think embracing it has a profound effect. I’m a big believer in that idea that how you do anything is how you do everything. And that you can almost as like a gym for your habits start novelty incredibly small. So like, I don’t know.
what’s the smallest thing I could think of like eating cereal with your non-dominant hand and just noticing how fricking awkward that feels and being like, wow, it certainly is weird that I have a hand that’s good and a hand that’s bad. What’s that about? And so like starting novelty there or if it’s like, you know, just taking a different like path that you normally wouldn’t take, like, I mean, geographically, like if you’re driving somewhere, if you’re walking somewhere, what happens to me? And then
The more that you instill that into your tiny moments, the more that you are reinforcing to yourself that novelty is fun, that you are fun, that novelty is possible as well. I think it’s so easy to get caught into that autopilot way of thinking where you’re just like, no, I just do this, then this, then this, then this until you fade away. And then, I don’t know, you end up dying at 30 and then again at like 80. And so reinforcing novelty in tiny moments and then they’re making stuff. So.
Earlier we touched on recognizing that what you do is constantly creating. That’s all you do. But giving yourself a bigger goal and a goal that you can work towards. mean, I also believe that everything works in a similar way where it’s like if you do something long enough with enough intention, you’ll get good at it. So it’s acknowledging that and acknowledging that whatever you pick is going to be something. then as long as it’s adding, I think you’re going to be good. It’ll lead you somewhere cool. Yeah, nice.
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Great. Well, I want to get your thoughts on what is the biggest thing over the last two years you’ve changed your mind on? I love that question. AI. Yeah. Yeah. I used to be like quite enthusiastic about artificial intelligence. I used to really like it and I used to use it in lots of stuff. Just personal projects. I put a few online.
And I really enjoyed them and I really liked all of the generative stuff. I don’t know. I’ve been following that world for a while. And then more recently, having read a lot of the studies that have come out about how LLMs can erode your critical thinking or like, yeah, and cause that cognitive debt. was like, I mean, I was already kind of like.
off the train by that point, but that was the final, the final nail on the coffin. But I think between that, understanding, like at first I struggled to really feel the legal argument because I felt like it was more of an argument about capitalism in general. And then I realized that I was just like ideologically copying out and that, yeah, the copyright.
around generative AI is like pretty messed up. So that’s probably like the biggest thing that I’ve changed my mind on would be my attitude toward that. So how has that impacted the way you’re approaching life now? Well, think at first it felt like it could... At first it like reignited this lack passion I have for cool gadgets, right? Which I think everybody has and that sounds so innocent compared to what AI could be.
And like, also just like the, I don’t know, anyone who’s like researching something that’s new and I have that like, I don’t know, I love reading books about it, all that sort of stuff. And I love playing with it. But I think now that I can, I don’t know, having seen how it’s being used to things like, you know, like bots, like the amount of like bad bot comments that you read and like, yeah.
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Yeah, like seeing that, seeing people have like psychosis as like, you know, a sicker, phantastic AI tells them, maybe you could have like a little bit of meth, like, you know, just as a treat and you’re recovering meth addict. That’s a real thing that happened, by the way. That’s not just, yeah, that actually happened to a guy or like people like falling in love with them. I think I was maybe disappointed, disappointed in its application.
For this potentially like really really cool tech. to the uses. that’s true as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And like also realizing that like regulation doesn’t just happen and it doesn’t happen naturally and that also people can pay to like, you know, push back regulation and usually the people with the money are tech companies. So go figure. So yeah, maybe I’ve just been a bit disappointed in like how it’s been rolled out, but like, fuck what else is new.
Well, mean, it is moving quick, right? So these things are a pendulum, I feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even Sam Altman recently admitted it was a bubble. But to answer your question, how has it impacted me? Like, just how I feel? How you’re approaching the way you... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ve decided to experiment more with low tech, actually. Like, so having seen it...
and been excited by it and like, you know, exhausting all of the various uses I could have for it. Like, I was like, yeah, this is awesome. This is awesome. Oh, wow. Generate grimace, flying a plane, doing, I don’t know, like, fucking kick your fucking thing. Donkey Kong or the Nuremberg trials, whatever it happens to be, right? And I was like, man, I was having a blast, but at what cost? And so now I’ve decided to go the complete other way. So I’m like back to reading like, like physical books.
much more. I’ve even like started filming on like an old school camera. Yeah, because I’m just like, I don’t know. Maybe I’m nostalgic. Maybe I’m just a hater. I don’t even know, dude. But like, I think it’s the
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I’ve become very weary of convenience and how convenience can erode your own agency. I saw this tweet the other day, for example, that’s like, even if you are the most broken person, you can still be smarter than 99 % of people ever just by avoiding short form content. And I was like, that’s funny. And I’m pretty sure that’s right. Like the idea that, yeah, people would be spending five hours a day putting like
I don’t know, war crimes, things all retailers like video, then like an ad for fricking, I don’t know, like some face mask into their head on repeat for five hours a day. The idea that that’s not going to be causing like some sort of like weird, irreversible damage to your head is it’s pretty hard for me to believe that. So I think, yeah, don’t the other way completely. I mean, that probably adds to what we were saying before about
why we’re all over the shop as a society these days with stuff like that being constantly bombarded into your brain. this, attention spans, you’re hearing it becoming lower and lower and lower. So, feel like... I mean, and everyone can notice it anecdotally within themselves, you know? Like, I feel more irritable every time I use it. Like, I feel dumber.
I feel like it just hijacks my day and my thoughts and my emotions. Like, I don’t want to be thinking about this. This is useless. Yeah. I recently deleted Twitter off my phone. I deleted, I mean, Facebook’s kind of a moot point, but I deleted Facebook off my phone. Yeah. Marketplace. And I deleted Instagram.
for a while, but then found that it’s actually my main mode of communication, which I brought back. But I was noticing myself on Twitter spending a lot of time on Twitter getting outraged and... For what? Well, yeah, this is a thing, but I thought I was being informed. yeah. You know, and... And to be fair, you were a little bit informed, like...
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And a lot outrage. was disproportionately outraged to inform. Jews ain’t worth the squeeze. Like I said, Jews ain’t worth the squeeze. Which feels like very Twitter appropriate. Like just the amount of antisemitism that you see like rampant on there. Like, yeah, it’s crazy. It’s wild. So what I am...
When I deleted it, I completely forgot about it, its existence for a while. I remember- And your whole life fell apart. Then you knew nothing. Yeah. No, I said I know nothing. And I am happy. I know. But you don’t know irrelevant stuff. mean, Twitter has mastered the art of arguing about nothing. Did you feel less informed? I have felt less informed, but-
But listen, don’t think the information matters is what I was about to say. Exactly. Most of it doesn’t matter. gosh. Now I won’t know opinions. I was thinking about this the other day. It’s like if you printed out all of the opinions and put them in a newspaper, like you remember how newspapers used to have like the letters to the editor and it was the most like the craziest person you can think of was in this tiny little section right here. And that was the opinions of randoms. And now it’s like, that’s the whole thing. We’re like.
That wasn’t that was like a fun part of the newspaper. Like the baseline. Yeah, man. Yeah. I want one positive I found with Twitter was my I started following and getting notifications for very, very specific people. And a lot of it was investing and stuff like that. I found that it became my first point of research for investment decisions, which sounds like like a red.
warning you would hear on a investment video, but I hit like a 10X-er and everything’s gone a hell of a lot better. That’s awesome. On the investment front since using Twitter as a platform for listening to people like specific analysts. Yeah. Choosing my own specific analysts on specific companies as opposed to watching.
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the news saying, this new stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was useful. Yeah, but that’s not necessarily the architecture of it. It’s the people that are useful at that point. Like, if they change the architecture to like not make it an outrage machine, it would still be useful, arguably more useful. And you can still use it that way. But yes, but what a good side effect. Maybe we’ll end up being replaced by AI.
on social media and it’s just bots arguing with each other and we can just go frolic in the meadows. I’m about to outsource my screen time to a robot please. Would you mind doing like five hours a day on me and like just getting like three petty arguments like an hour? Yeah that’d be wicked. Just give me a summary of every video that you watched. Yeah yeah yeah. That’s not a bad idea.
Yeah. And then you could look back at it go, wow, that would have been a complete waste of time. That’s so true. That’s so true. I’ve got this idea at the moment that I’m like probably going to execute pretty soon, but it’s basically like, what would all of that stuff look like if it was printed out? You know, like, because I’m being like a bit of a McLuhan head, but like the medium is the message. So like if I had that in a book and it was just like these like arguments and like, OK, so I’m watching the dumbest, meanest people in the world just.
go at it back and forth, is it going to feel like, wait, am I going to pity them more when they’re in print? Like, am I going to be like, what the hell? Because on my phone, feels urgent, you know? It does feel urgent. At what point in society or human experience have we had everyone’s problems available to us with big red buttons at all times?
It’s kind of crazy. When you really think about it, it’s kind of nuts. Yeah. Hey, man, wrapping up on this, what’s a lesson you want everyone to take from the conversation? You don’t have to default to doom when you don’t know everything. It can be very easy if you don’t have complete information to just assume the worst. And it’s a bit of like a Pascal’s wager, because if things go bad, then you are right. If things go good, you’re pleasantly surprised.
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But I think that is, I think that underestimates the role that an attitude to life plays in your life. And in general, we tend to get whatever it is that we focus on. And if we focus on the negative outcomes, just in general, we tend to hit them. We tend to get them. you win. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. Which is like sad. Yeah. Yeah, it’s...
I’m really thinking a lot more and trying to be a lot more positive in the way that I approach the world. It’s hard. It’s really hard. hasn’t been natural. No. And the problem I had previously was I had some minor successes in life with the pessimistic view, which made it even worse. yes. And it’s like, if I pay attention to everything at all times and I am like so careful.
and no one fucks me over and nothing goes wrong. And then I had this a few wins. I’m like, yeah, this is the right way. And then you find out over time, the longer the game goes, things start to unravel. That is so interesting. I want to ask the specifics. But firstly, like I’m fascinated by the idea of like you getting wins when you adopt the pessimistic mindset. Because I think there’s a lot of new creators that you see play the algorithm, the negative algorithm. And so they get rewarded for like saying,
Here are nine things that are wrong, you know, and then like all of a sudden the algorithm is trained a whole bunch of people to like just complain. What would the, yeah, and it’s obviously circular. What were the, what were the wins that you had that you felt like negativity held you with? Well, I, in business specifically, I had a very us versus them view on the world. Not as collaborative as I’ve become, as I’ve gotten older. It was a.
I had nothing I need to capture and control and hold and, and anything that came in was I would, you know, take, take, take, and I would give sparingly. Yes, I understand. And it worked for a while. It built me a base. But then the reputation is what carries you over the long term. And the downside of that approach was very
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reputationally impactful. And then it played out the opposite direction unwound in the opposite direction over time. then moving and then I realized and this steering the ship back in the other direction is a lot harder to do from the negative base and it is from neutral. Huh? So did something bad happen to you? A lot of a lot of challenging situations. Yeah.
Yeah. pendulum back and forth. mean, wild ride. True. But it’s been nice in New York because I’ve pretty much got a hard reset. I’ve learned 32 years of skills and mistakes. Yeah. A hard reset in a new city. like it was a training ground. Yeah. It was a training ground. Kind of an exodus. Yeah. Yeah. Not quite an exodus, but just a reset. Yeah. Yeah.
So necessary. the reset, had the choice of staying in Australia and starting again or going to New York and starting again. And I thought, you know, it’d be funny for the plot. Let’s go to New man. Like YOLO. Like, absolutely. Which, by the way, I’m never going to let YOLO die because I think it’s the greatest life philosophy of all time. You do only live once. And I did think to myself when I chose to move here, when I was reflecting on what I wanted to do with my life and whether this was the right decision, I said to myself,
What is 80 year old me going to think about this decision? Will staying in Geelong be... You’re a Geelong boy! I’m a Geelong boy. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Wow. So were you a teen dad? Not that I know of. Yeah, you’re a different type of Geelong boy. Yeah, I somehow managed to navigate it. Oh, good for you.
good for you. mean, Jolong is changing now, but like, shit. Yeah. I I say now like past 10 years, but yeah. Yeah. Wow. So that was interesting. And yeah, staying and staying there or coming to America and seeing what can happen. Dude. Good on you. Cheers, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:06:40.067)
I’ll be the awkward dude with like way too much shit and two kids and fucking just look at Jesus Christ. No, I’m going to embrace it. It’s good fun. I’ve spent some time with my cousins here who have a bunch of kids. wicked. Yeah. sick. Sick. Yeah. Is there anything you’re excited about at the moment that you want to let listeners in on? I did just write another book. And by write, I mean drew. I drew another book. Where did I put it?
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:07:11.85)
No, I was going to say this book just came out, which is kind of exciting. I haven’t really announced it, but like I drew this. Osher Ginsburg, know, El Batchi, Australia Idol, as we remember. So yeah, he wrote this book and then it’s like my first ever kind of like graphic novel type thing. So this just came out. Yeah, it’s huge. So what’s the code? So what now? What? Penguin. Yeah, sick. Penguin’s good too. That’s a solid R.
Yeah. distributor. Good bird too. Yeah. bird. Quality. So, and where can people find you if they’re interested? YouTube, I guess is probably the best starting point. Maybe Instagram. Don’t post there as much anymore. It’s of become like a of a hellhole of an app. But every now and then. Yeah. YouTube’s solid. I’ve really, we’re really prioritizing YouTube with the podcast. think it’s a pretty I like it. People are in better moods there. Yeah. Yeah, they are.
and they’re willing to sit down for longer than 30 seconds. Yeah, which is nice. Sick. and books. Books are great. Books are good. Yeah, so yeah. Got a few books out there. Google it, I guess. What are the books called? Your head. Fuck it. I think I’ve got them all in range. I got this one, Your Head is a Houseboat. That was my first book. Demon Bloom. Put it over there. Not getting that. Now, I don’t know if I got a fucking...
No, Dermot Bloom is like my new one that I wrote. I’m really proud of that. And then, yeah, so what now what? And then I’m working on another one right now, which is kind of exciting. Stay tuned. Hell yeah. Adi, bro. Cool, man. And last one for you is, to wrap this up, what is the meaning of life? Oh, easy.
Fuck have a good time and shit, eh? I don’t know. You think so? No, God, I don’t know. Fuck, dude. What is the meaning of life? Leave everything better than you found it? I don’t know. Shit. You got nothing? Got nothing, man. I’ll get back to you. I’ll get back to you in about 50 years. I’ve had a little bit. When you’ve it out. few more laps around the sun. Shit. Yeah. Oh, no, easy, man.
Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:09:25.454)
And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube search that one time out of Metwally, click subscribe, like the video and leave us comment. Wicked. Thanks for having me man. Of course my man.
