Cole talks about a book recently released called "The Fourth Turning Is Here" By Neil Howe and seeks to motivate Millennials to come together and save the country.
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We're ready, we're ready, we're ready, we're ready. ["America Plus Theme Song"] Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. What's up, everyone? It's America Plus. I'm your host, Cole McCormick. It's another week, another episode. What's going on, everybody? Happy to be here, folks. It is July Sunday, July 23rd. It's 2 p.m. and we are thriving. Everyone, welcome to the show. It's America Plus. Whoa! Wow! Guys, transparency, I gotta just be honest with you. I just did a workout on a microdose. I'm on.3 grams.
I'm on.3 grams of a psilocybin dose, and I'm feeling phenomenal right now. I just need to tell you that up front, I've had an apple, I've had a banana. I turned up the volume on my microphone. Can you hear a difference in how I speak? I hopefully am not as low. I feel like for the last year and a half, I've been lower. And now I'm just, like, I'm upping myself, you know? I'm just turning up the volume, bro. This week's gonna be incredible. I'm talking about the fourth turning. We're doing a mini book review, folks, this week. We are diving deep into generational values, okay?
This is some serious, serious, serious shit, all right? Before I get into that, there's a connection to what's happening today. Today on the 23rd, 6.30 today, I'm going to Universal Studios Hollywood, to their IMAX theater, to view and premiere the IMAX 70 millimeter print of Christopher Nolan's, Oppenheimer. I couldn't be more freaking excited. Oh my God, I talked about it last week a little bit, but this week is, I cannot wait. Shannon and I, we got these tickets forever ago, dude. Like we saw the trailer in the theater. There was like this theater exclusive trailer that we saw.
I was like, it was nuts. We were super hyped for it. Thank God, sorry. Thank God my girlfriend is a Christopher Nolan fan. Thank God that like we can vibe with this. I'm happy that she's just like a film nerd like I am, because we can just talk about this stuff. It's something to be discussed where you have an individual filmmaker who has an incredibly specific preference for how he would like to capture his art and for how that art to be exhibited. And I have the privilege, like truly, it is a privilege and I'm lucky to be in Los Angeles to be able to look at this celluloid photochemical reel.
It's funny how like Instagram has reels, but like this is like Christopher Nolan's reel. You know what I mean? Like this is like his personal shit. He wrote this and he filmed it and the entire film is in IMAX. So I don't think there's gonna be like any, like if you notice between like IMAX movies and normal movies, there's like black bars at the top. First off, last week I saw Mission Impossible in the IMAX theater. That was a ripoff. That was so stupid. The aspect ratio never changed. The like one of the benefits of the IMAX screen is to have a larger picture, to have a larger frame.
But for Mission Impossible, they chose to just keep the black bars on theirs. Do you know how annoying that is? Do you know how freaking annoying that is to get the ticket for the IMAX and then to not really have anything better? They say it's better sound, but regardless, whatever. Oppenheimer, I'm focusing on Oppenheimer, to be able to view this historical drama of, it's said in the movie and it's said throughout history, the most impactful situation in human history, the most important moment in the species to be captured on film and to be viewed by me.
I'm excited. It takes place during like this insane crisis era, right? Oppenheimer is, you know, some people are saying it's Chris Nolan's magnum opus, which first of all, I don't even know what a magnum opus is. I don't know where I'm going here, folks. World War II is one generation's crisis. If you were to look at the work of author, Neil Strauss, he has a number of books out. One of them is called Generations. Another one of them is called The Fourth Turning. And this newest one that came out this past week, and I've been listening to it, is called The Fourth Turning Is Here.
And what the fourth turning describes to, what this entire, what these book series talk to is connected to Oppenheimer. There's seasons of time. And within these seasons of time, there's always a constellation of generations. There's a constellation of people growing up and absorbing their environment and moving forward and just trying to make the right next move, trying to make the right next step. And this current book, The Fourth Turning Is Here, is it's very good, it's very condensed. If you don't have to read these other past books of his to understand what's going on here, but I do think it's a little serendipity-ness of how we got this giant World War II, like the atomic bomb, what are the implications of the atomic bomb?
This epic movie. And then we have this Fourth Turning Is Here book that I sort of, I sped read, I got an audible. I haven't finished it, but I listened to the most important parts, what I think are the most important parts. I'm gonna be focusing on millennials, okay? We're focusing in on one particular generation, this Oppenheimer movie, that is a very particular generation of humans in history. And they chose to look at their crisis and they built something to stop the crisis, or they did something to stop the crisis, they moved through that.
And when you go through these series of books by Neil Strauss, you're reading about these different seasons of history. There's cycles and there's, he describes turnings, okay? And we're focusing on one turning, we're focusing on one generation, but to give you a brief overview, the first turning is, it's a high. Things are good, things are buzzing, things are living life. The second turning is an awakening. Something happens to awaken up the consciousness and the status quo isn't really the status quo. The third turning is an unraveling. What was the status quo is now just being manipulated and being abused and just, it is what it is, it is unraveling.
It's falling apart. And the fourth turning, which is the moment where we are in American history, we are smack in the middle of this fourth turning. These turnings usually last for around 20 years, sometimes 20 to 25 years. The fourth turning is the crisis. And the crisis is equivalent to the World War II era. The crisis is equivalent to the Civil War, it's equivalent to the American Revolution. And we're focusing specifically on American history here, right? This is America Plus. Each of those generations that fought in those wars, and it's, I think, first of all, I think it's weird that we're talking about history throughout wars.
Is there a better way to talk about history? But regardless, I'm following Neil Strauss. Each of those generations that came of age within that crisis, I'm in one of those groups. If you consider yourself a millennial, if you were born between 1985 and 2005, you are a part of the millennial generation, and we are equivalent to, the name for the World War II folks was GI. We are equivalent to the GI generation that fought in World War II. And we have inherited the last 80-some years before us. I took some notes on this little, whoa, I took some notes on this itty bitty notebook card.
And I don't have a real, I don't have a lesson here, but I wanna run through just some things that the author lists out in terms of our generational archetype. That's something that he goes into as well. Within the constellation of generations, each generation has their archetype. And you find these archetypes all throughout history. They repeat themselves, generally throughout these generations. And what he identifies, if we were to focus in on this specific time era, this millennial era, the oldest people being, or yeah, the oldest people in this time era is the boomer, the boomer generation.
The next one is Gen X. The next one is being millennial, I'm right there. And then there's a fourth one, which is he describes as Homelander, which is my nephew Wyatt for all intents and purposes. He is a part of that new homestead. His childhood is the crisis. My coming of age is the crisis. Gen Xers, my parents, they are entering into elderhood within the crisis. And the boomers are entering into an upper echelon of elderhood during the crisis. So that's how these generations roughly move through these seasons of time. And while listing out what's so interesting about the millennial generation, I guess at one point the media has called us generation nice.
Why? Generation nice. Another term is we're the organization kids. Isn't that weird? First of all, these are weird judgments or like titles to give us. We don't like titles, first of all, but sure, I guess we wanna be organized, I guess. What he was really getting at is we grew up in organizations. We were, I'll just speak for myself. A lot of my childhood was volunteering for something. A lot of my childhood was like I was at church and I was volunteering at church. Or if I wasn't at church, I would be at a different, like some other little class or some other little program that maybe the church was sponsoring.
It'd be some extracurricular activity. And in the book, Neil Strauss, he talks about how these extracurricular activities, they sort of, within this millennial generation, all these different clubs came up and all these smaller systems to help us just feel better about our lives, really. Something to help our self-esteem. We're like the self-esteem generation. The systems around us that were given to us by our Gen X parents, first of all, the Gen X parents, they were under-parented, so now they are over-parenting us. And that's sort of like a downstream, and that's a cycle in itself.
But that's where you get all the club soccer, the club football, and these kids think they're hot shit. And then when they get to college, they're not really hot shit. So that's like a silly little parallel. Going down the list, though, we have more anxiety. We have an unromantic prudence, okay? I thought this was really interesting. He talks about the millennial generation being a bit more practically traditional. For some reason, we are not drinking as often. We are not using party drugs. And if we choose to get married, it is because we are confident in the money, and we're confident in the future path, and we're confident in that partner's ability to be prudent, like to be safe.
That's the biggest thing as well. Neil Strauss describes the millennial generation as less risk adverse. We are seeking systems, the millennials seek things that are not as risky. Not as risky, and if it is risky, we're going to be committing that risk as a collective. So that's why crowdfunding has gotten popular, not just because of the internet, but the internet and crowdfunding is sort of like what us millennials do. We wanna do that, we wanna come together. And if it fails, hey, I failed with my friends. You know what I mean?
That's a really interesting observation, and I haven't noticed about that to be specifically millennial. I've always just seen that as the internet. But reading this, I am now able to identify, yeah, my generation, me, myself, I'm more, I'm attracted to the crowdfunding, I'm attracted to the community, I'm attracted to these collective narratives. Socialism is super popular with millennials. We're more willing to listen to these narratives, we're more willing to vote for a democratic socialist. A lot of my friends were voting for Bernie. A lot of my friends were voting for Bernie.
But at the same time, so we are children within the crisis, we are inheriting all these debts, and we have a yearning to create a new system. We have a yearning to have a new community and to have new standards. And socialism is popular, we are protected, we wanna protect ourselves. Less party drugs, more prescription drugs, or more smart drugs, trying to get you more productive. Some parallels with the millennials and the GIs. One parallel is the GIs coming up when they were in school, the narrative around them was that they are the children that their parents and grandparents prayed for.
There was a narrative of like, there's no bad boy. Like all the kids did their work, all the kids did their duty. The millennial generation, we did everything we were told. We did all the school and we did more of the school. The millennial generation has performed more homework than any other generation. Another parallel is we seek a better world. Another parallel is we seek a better world. The GIs were looking for a better world. The GIs were looking for a better world, the GIs were coming up in the Great Depression and they saw their families be poor and they didn't have the most opportunity.
And that's the same thing for us. So many millennials, like older millennials go back to 2008, which is when the fourth turning begun, by the way, 2008, the 2008 financial crisis. So many young millennials can go back to that and they can identify like them being scared and like a lot of their emotion, like the emotion tied to their childhood is negative and fearful, mainly of finances and like things are not as good. But at the same time, we're still like very protective and our parents are still right above us and we're still very close with our parents, similar to the GI people.
I guess during the Great Depression, a lot of the GI generation, they were not like living in apartments. They were not living on their own. A lot of them were still living at home. And that's the same thing with millennials. You keep reading that millennials are not moving out or they need to move back in with their parents and millennials hold a lot of shame. A lot of the anxiety that millennials hold is from just perception of failure financially and career wise, like we are not where our parents were at our age. At 26, my father had already had three kids.
I'm 26 and I'm in a studio apartment in North Hollywood doing drugs. Like this is a completely different experience. The GIs, they were put in a situation, literally, literally put in a situation where men from 18 to 45 were forced. They had to serve the military. They had to serve in the military until the war was over. That was the quite legitimate, like narrative and reality. And no one knew when the war was gonna end. There was no word on that. So you have a generation that grew up in the worst times possible, were forcefully put in a position to fight and to somehow protect and to rebuild.
And here we are, the millennials, we're in the middle of, we're in the early 2020s, but we are in the middle of the crisis. And while Neil Strauss is mapping all this out, if each turning is around 20 years, 20 some odd years, that puts us, this current crisis, that's gonna end around, hopefully around 2033. 2033 is when the end or the climax of this crisis will come to fruition. Usually that depends war. Usually that means war. Usually that means that people gotta stand up and they gotta fight for their country and they gotta do something.
There's a lot of speculation while we discuss the cycles of generations and cycles of time. There's also speculation that we are in a different era. We are in a different type of vibe of history. This is not following the same old, same old cycle. There's a possibility that this is either the beginning of a brand new cycle or it's just the ending of the old ways, of the old cycles. And we are literally moving into a new, I forget how he describes it, some new form of history, some new form of generation cycles. It's not as simple, it's not as clear as World War II.
We don't really know the villain yet. We don't really know how it's gonna come about. But we know it's gonna be around 2033, hopefully, which sort of freaks me out. I'm not ready to fight. I don't wanna fight for my country, dude. Like as a stone or an LA, I don't wanna be in the military. Is that apparent yet? And I don't understand why I need to. It seems like every other war for America has always been for the bigger establishment and it's been for some system that does not support me. So the millennials, that perspective is going to have to, that's going to have to mature.
The millennials come of age in the crisis. And there's a specific type of archetype that aligns with, and that is the hero. Neil Strauss describes the people, the kids who come of age within the Fourth Turning, the kids who come into adulthood, we are the hero archetype. The GIs are the hero archetype. The people who fought in the American Revolution are the hero archetype. They inherited something bad and they just chose to push through it. They banded together and they did their best and they fought and they won and they recreated something. They made something better for everyone.
And we have the opportunity with that here right now. That's sort of what America Plus has been about. I remember reading the book, The Fourth Turning, like during the pandemic, like it was like during lockdowns or something. And so the Fourth Turning book has definitely had a large impact on the way that I view history and the way that I view my place in space. I mean, it absolutely influenced me putting out America Plus. Like one reason why I'm so confident with America Plus, or yeah, the one reason why I'm so confident is because I know that I am a hero.
I'm not the hero, I'm not the guy, but I know that with my own personal choices, with my own viewpoint, with my own thoughts, I am a hero within my own life, within my own story. That's a narrative that I really cling onto. And my childhood was just happened to be guided by all these superheroes. You know, 2008, financial crisis, 2008, Iron Man, 2008, The Dark Knight, 2008, The Hulk, The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton. Like there is no mystery. It's almost so apparent that these cycles continue to happen. Neil Strauss even talks about how in the 1930s, you know, superheroes were super big.
And it's not until like this time, like this era, like this 2008, 2020 era, you know, superheroes are bigger than ever. And so that's a mirroring and that's a parallel. And it's all just fun. It's fun to see like what's similar. It's fun to see what's different between like 80 years ago and now. But the real like important thing is that that generation, the hero archetype is like is, it's not a should be. It is is. The hero archetype is the generation that moves the country forward, that changes the times. It is the millennial generation that will bring America to prosperity again, hopefully.
It is the millennials. It is the millennials. Like we are the key. We are the key. I am the key. What type of narrative is that, you know? Has that ever been told to us? Like we've, criticism of the millennials has always been, we are special and we have special values or we have very particular needs. And I don't know how it's gonna come about, but the way Neil Strauss talks about it, it seems like the millennials seek more community. The millennials seek more teamwork. The millennials seek more heroism. Coming together for a larger cause. The narratives that we grew up with have always pointed to this.
And along with that, the millennials have also always been in a position to create something together. There's always been team projects. There's always been digital worlds to build. Neil Strauss talks about Sims. All these millennials were building Sims and now that's preparing us to rebuild the country. I think that's a little bit silly, but I understand the metaphor. Like of course, like it's easy to think about how, okay, well you have all this, you have the generation of kids who grew up on the internet and a lot of them played Sims.
A lot of them had, what was the pets? The pet me pets or whatever, you know what I mean? It was like a little device. You have the digital pets, you got the pet rocks, you have Call of Duty, you have Roblox, you have Minecraft. Like we are building within these digital spaces. And so you can't but think that hopefully that leads to this generation building a space within 3D reality, within the real earth. Like we gotta come together and put our skills, redirect our skills from building in there to building out here. You know, we gotta come together and build out here.
Us millennials, we are so focused on the connectedness and we are focused on some sort of top-down system. Neil Strauss says that we are attracted to a more autocracy. It was the millennials that were flocking to Facebook. It was the millennials flocking to the internet, flocking to the social medias. And so with that, that implies, that is going to imply how we view the future, how we view the future of systems that govern us, that guide us. The way that we've been living our lives is going to influence how we live our lives. It's as simple as that.
It's really just dirt simple. Like it's nothing to be really like formally, like super like academically discussed. Like it's just, it's seasons and it's cycles. And it's just an observation of how we've been living. And it brings in the possibility of you being the hero of your own story. And that being just one little minute detail of the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is the millennial generation is moving forward through the crisis, is moving forward through the fourth turning and we are turning America into something else. We are absolutely, it's not an if, we are changing America right now.
There's always complaining, there's always talk, there's always yada yada. The fact of the matter is, is we are impacting. It's not have a impact, it's we are impacting. And your thoughts and your words and your actions, they go into that. The way that we think about our country, the way that we think about our systems, the way that we think about the crisis at hand, the way we think about the pandemic, the way we think about the banks, the way we think about everything that seeks to control us, the way we think about vaccines and hospitals and any sort of narrative that is going to guide our life, we have an impact on that.
We are impacting that. And so hopefully we get through it. Hopefully, I don't know, there is no clear path forward. Like we're in the middle of this, dude. Like we're less risk adverse, but we wanna be more together. So many millennials speak to their parents more than their parents before them. And I think that's true. Like I definitely talk to my mother. Like I seek out conversations with my parents more often than my mother seeks out conversations with her parents. Is that true for you? It's very interesting stuff, dude. And there's good things about this and there's not so good things about this.
The not good things come from bias. Like this is all really just bias. Like your interpretation of what's different with the millennials or your interpretation of what's good or bad about millennials, that goes into what you grew up in. And that goes into what you grew up in. And that goes into just your natural way of thinking. And millennials have a general way of thinking and it is only up to us to move forward with the best way of thinking. Like we have to develop our own individual best way to engage. And that's what I'm trying to do here with the podcast. That's what I'm trying to do with my own thoughts.
Like I'm trying to be a good example as a millennial. Born in 1997. I see a path for a better future. And I'm doing my damn best to communicate and to reach out to the network and to say that we can come together. We can, yes we can. Neal Strauss even said that we're the yes we can generation. Just cause we sort of grew up with the Obama stuff. The Obama slogan was, yes we can. That's a good slogan, dude. Yes we can. Like I believe that, dude. I believe that. And maybe that's a bit too optimistic. Maybe I'm a bit naive. But who cares, man?
Like this is my country, this is my time, this is my moment. And I want my friends to come with me. I want my friends to come with me and pick up this place. We can clean up the park together, folks. We can clean the beach. Like these silly little projects. Like I was cleaning up the highway when I was 12 years old. Like it's the same thing. And we're going to be doing that same thing to make a better overall, hopefully, some sort of a new master plan is what Neal Strauss was pointing to. When the millennials come of age, when the hero generation comes of age, they create a new master plan.
And then that changes the country. I don't know what that master plan is. But it's sort of humorous that I was in this thing. I was in this thing called Rainbow Helpers when I was like eight years old. Maybe younger, maybe I was like six, I don't even know. I was a, Cole McCormick was a Rainbow Helper when he was a child. And it makes me laugh that this sort of the same little structure is how all of us kids are going to come together and we're going to save the planet. Come on, guys, let's do it. You know what I mean? I think it's like, it's so good.
It's inspiring. Like I want it to happen, man. Like Captain Planet. Like all these kids with the rings, they come together, they save the Earth, dude. It's the Avengers, man. It's the Power Rangers, man. Like we have this. And to get through that, to get to the crisis, that means that millennials got to take in the wisdom. There needs to be some sort of a feedback loop to understand what's going on and to understand how we might change our ways. Like if we did anything wrong or if we need to change something, there needs to be that type of a feedback loop with an elder.
And so if you look at any myths, there's always an older generation speaking to a younger generation. And that's the same thing in real life. So the one thing that millennials do have going for them is that we are open to speaking to older generations. We are open for these conversations. But when we don't like what you're saying, okay, boomer, we're just going to shut it down. So maybe that's a shortcoming, but that's just something that we've got to work through. There's so many different tentacles attached to this. I could speak all day about it, honestly.
Let me just read through this. I hope I didn't pass by anything too important. Give me one second. Oh, one interesting thing was the movies. He listed just a short list of movies when you were starting to see a shift in how children were spoken about throughout these last turnings. So he says in the middle, in the transitioning between the awakening and the unraveling, there was a shift in the narratives around children. During the awakening and during the 70s, you sort of had this vibe of like, kids are bad. And there was all these evil kid movies.
Like the kid was no good. Or the kid was like an asshole. And then sort of in the late 70s and 80s, that's when you get the cute kid movie. That's when you get the movie Look Who's Talking. And that's where John Travolta is the voice of a baby. Just a silly example of narratives changing on a literal way. I thought that was funny. Less party drugs, more smart drugs, yada yada yada. Yada yada yada. The biggest thing that we need to come over is our anxiety and our fear. I think if I could have one last point on the millennials and then we'll get into the value for value.
The millennials need, I need to, let go of anxiety around of lack of. I must, I must, I must, I must. I must let go of my, I get so embarrassed and scared about, hey Cole, what are you doing? I'm just working at Roost Chris. I'm doing a podcast, but I'm not really making money. But I'm making it, I really love it. And I can objectively say that my life is good and the things that I'm doing are okay. I have this brighter path, but there is this anxiety that I gotta get over. And so that's my prayer for the greater generation. Let's get over.
We will get over our fears and our anxieties and our insecurities of not having as much as our parents did or do. You know? Our time is coming. You know, the way that we seek value is different. The way that we hold value and share value is different. And so, like, that's the real thing. How we value ourselves, how we view ourselves to be valuable for the greater good, for the country, for the community. You know, we need to let go of these insecurities if we're gonna fix the community at all. If you have any inkling to make the world a better place, you're going to have to get over yourself and just do what you need to do.
Just look around. What can you provide? What can you do? How can you be a part of the team? How can you be a part of the group project? What can you give? What value can you give? I think that's top-tier important, dude. Top-tier. And with the value, with the Value for Value, folks, we're gonna be heading on into the booths. America Plus is a Value for Value show. Value for Value is a brand-new system. It's a layer of monetization. It is a layer of building communities. And it's something that I'm getting myself more into. This millennial loves it.
This millennial loves this system. Value for Value is where I produce... I'm so sorry, I keep hitting the damn microphone today. Value for Value is a system where I produce what I think is the best content. I put work in this. I put effort in this. I listen to books. I think about my words. And I want to give... I always want to give a hopeful narrative. I'm simply seeking to rebuild these American narratives, these American systems. And get better. We're trying to update here. And so I think this is valuable. You have the opportunity to show me how valuable this podcast is while you listen.
I'm gonna be reading some comments. I'm gonna be reading some booths today from Fountain. If you don't already know... Whoops, whoops, whoops. Value for Value.info is a great breakdown of what Value for Value is as a system. You as a listener can give your time, your talent, or your treasure. You by listening is good. You telling your friends about the show or just trying to talk about... You yourself trying to make a better narrative. You know, that's your time. Talent. I'm building movies. I'm making movies. If you want to be involved with anything art-wise.
If you want to help with the show art. If you want to help with any sort of an animated scene. If you want to help me with writing. If you want to do anything creative with me. You can give your talents. Or you can do treasure. If you go to the fountain.fm app, the main treasure is Bitcoin. I prefer Bitcoin. But the PayPal is also open. If you want to give me any American dollars, that'd be great. It's Value for Value. You are able to show me how much you value this show and these narratives. And the booths I got are from last week. Number 79, System Define.
We got a few booths from a few friends. The first one coming in from Atmir Mortals. What up, Kyren? This is my buddy from Down Under. Kyren Down. He boosts, number 79. With the first one, he gave me a couple. He says, 300 stats. He says, I think the Twitter stuff is going to get murky. Now people will have an incentive to be even more clickbaity and attention seeking than before. The advertising model seems to break and ruin everything. Yes, I boost. Kyren, great point. Last week I was talking about Twitter. I was talking about like monetization systems and the the writers union and Twitter and Value for Value, whatever podcasting.
I was speaking positively on Twitter, putting out their ad money. And I see the opportunity there. I still see it. But I understand this fear of clickbait. Clickbait is no good. Is there a different narrative to get yourself involved with, though? Because if you don't want to be clickbaity, then don't be clickbaity. That's the way I'm looking at it as well. But Kyren, you give a great point. The advertising model seems to break and ruin. That's understandable as well. But when I think about like the reason why the writers are striking is because there is less advertising. The residuals in their old contracts were coming from the advertising money.
So there is a utility, in my opinion. There is a utility to the advertisement, Mr. Down. And then he sends in another 300 sats. And then a while ago, Kyren asked me about why I boost the number 5,492. That's another thing about Value for Value. If you want to give me a boost, if you want to boost me your favorite number, if you want to send me PayPal money of your favorite number, we support numerology here. And I did 5,492 because that's the print number of my Star Wars archives books. I have number 5,492 out of 10,000. Out of 10,000 books, I got the 5,000th one, dude.
And so his response to that is 300 sats. And he says, nothing silly about that at all. Quite touching, actually. And Kyren, that made me laugh. Booster. The way that you said that was quite touching, actually. It made me think about the movie Love, Actually. There's a little, at the very beginning of the movie, Hugh Grant has this thing about airports and love and people. I don't see a lot of fear. I see a lot of love, actually. So Kyren, thank you for that. Thank you for doing that very much. Boosting is loving. This next one, the last one, comes from Joel W.
Joel W. gives a comment. Gives a comment, and I think, oh, he did boost. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on. Let me refresh here real quick, real quick. Joel W.'s boosting. In the moment, folks. Give us one second. Let me go to the episode again. All right. Oh, you know what? And I also screwed up majorly. For some reason, the fountain app's messing up. I didn't read the right numbers for Kyren down. So let me just revamp. Holy crap, dude. Let me just revamp this entire section. Kyren sent in 2,222 sats. Kyren, thank you very much, dude. Thank you, Kyren, for the 2,022.
And then for that last one, when he says he sees a lot of love, actually, he sent in my boost number, 5,492. For some reason, the page that I was on was just screwing everything up. I'm so sorry. Anyway, Kyren, thank you for those, my friend. And now, Joel W. Joel W. sends in three boosts, folks. All of them are satchel of Richards. They're all 1,111 sats. The first one, Joel would like to say, I'd have more sympathy for the writers if more quality and not annoyingly politicized product was released. As it stands in recent years, I couldn't care less. Hashtag sorry not sorry.
Joel. And now, as the French say, it is time for the boost. I agree with you on that, dude. I agree with you on the writers. The next boost from Joel, he says, F Twitter, check out Nostr. Sats get tossed around all day without asking Elon for permission to get paid. Ooh! Boosting is loving. I sort of like that one. Basically, you put Bitcoin with anything, and all of a sudden, that is more efficient. I understand what you're saying. Fuck Twitter. I understand that. But all I'm saying is also there is more money in it. Okay?
That's all I'm saying. All I'm saying is that there's an investment to think about. And I'm still not on Nostr. I know I need to get on Nostr, but maybe that's my pitfall. I need to really just learn these new networks. But Joel, you got to convince me to get on Nostr, bro. You really got to like, you got to hold my hand, dude. Like, I don't know what I'm doing with that. So if you want me to not go to Twitter, if you want me to not pay for Twitter Blue, someone's going to have to give me some value and hold my hand while we set up my Nostr, okay? The last one from Joel W., Last Satchel of Richards.
He says, back to lab meat. Okay, now we're going back to lab meat, folks. Cultured cells in a lab creating your dinner. The cancer cell growth medium seems to be true. It's called the HeLa cell line. H-E-L-A, the HeLa cell line. Both this and the fetal bovine serum. Okay, we're getting deep, folks. Hang on. Can I just give a little... Hang on. The bovine serum are used in vaccine production, so begs the question, is the food or pharmaceutical product? Is this a food or pharmaceutical product, Joel? And now, as the French say, it is time for le bou... I fucking love you, Joel. I fucking love you.
Yeah, this lab-grown meat thing, dude, I don't agree with it. You and me, we're getting pure animal protein. That's... Whenever we get together, dude, we're grubbing on some real ass barbecue. That's my vibe. That's my Bitcoin hangout or just barbecue in the whole night. Joel, you say F Twitter. I say F lab meat. F lab meat. We're getting nowhere near that, folks. So thank you so much to all those people who wanted to donate, who wanted to give me some value. As you can see, the comments are very particular. The comments are very specific on what they want to talk about, and you have that power, you have permission to bring up whatever you want to bring up.
This is an open dialogue, you know? America Plus is just... It's an open system about creating better systems. It's a group project. Okay, guys, together, we have the power to change the world, and I personally believe that 100%. Thank you to all those people. Value for value is real, and if we're talking about better systems, get involved with Bitcoin. A better system is Bitcoin. A better system is value for value. The only way... And this is my opinion. The only way we're going to get through this crisis is if we engage, is if we really engage with better systems.
So, Kyron Down, Joel W., those are two guys who are making the choice to engage. You make the choice. That's America Plus, bitch. Stay free.
We're ready, we're ready, we're ready, we're ready. ["America Plus Theme Song"] Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. What's up, everyone? It's America Plus. I'm your host, Cole McCormick. It's another week, another episode. What's going on, everybody? Happy to be here, folks. It is July Sunday, July 23rd. It's 2 p.m. and we are thriving. Everyone, welcome to the show. It's America Plus. Whoa! Wow! Guys, transparency, I gotta just be honest with you. I just did a workout on a microdose. I'm on.3 grams.
I'm on.3 grams of a psilocybin dose, and I'm feeling phenomenal right now. I just need to tell you that up front, I've had an apple, I've had a banana. I turned up the volume on my microphone. Can you hear a difference in how I speak? I hopefully am not as low. I feel like for the last year and a half, I've been lower. And now I'm just, like, I'm upping myself, you know? I'm just turning up the volume, bro. This week's gonna be incredible. I'm talking about the fourth turning. We're doing a mini book review, folks, this week. We are diving deep into generational values, okay?
This is some serious, serious, serious shit, all right? Before I get into that, there's a connection to what's happening today. Today on the 23rd, 6.30 today, I'm going to Universal Studios Hollywood, to their IMAX theater, to view and premiere the IMAX 70 millimeter print of Christopher Nolan's, Oppenheimer. I couldn't be more freaking excited. Oh my God, I talked about it last week a little bit, but this week is, I cannot wait. Shannon and I, we got these tickets forever ago, dude. Like we saw the trailer in the theater. There was like this theater exclusive trailer that we saw.
I was like, it was nuts. We were super hyped for it. Thank God, sorry. Thank God my girlfriend is a Christopher Nolan fan. Thank God that like we can vibe with this. I'm happy that she's just like a film nerd like I am, because we can just talk about this stuff. It's something to be discussed where you have an individual filmmaker who has an incredibly specific preference for how he would like to capture his art and for how that art to be exhibited. And I have the privilege, like truly, it is a privilege and I'm lucky to be in Los Angeles to be able to look at this celluloid photochemical reel.
It's funny how like Instagram has reels, but like this is like Christopher Nolan's reel. You know what I mean? Like this is like his personal shit. He wrote this and he filmed it and the entire film is in IMAX. So I don't think there's gonna be like any, like if you notice between like IMAX movies and normal movies, there's like black bars at the top. First off, last week I saw Mission Impossible in the IMAX theater. That was a ripoff. That was so stupid. The aspect ratio never changed. The like one of the benefits of the IMAX screen is to have a larger picture, to have a larger frame.
But for Mission Impossible, they chose to just keep the black bars on theirs. Do you know how annoying that is? Do you know how freaking annoying that is to get the ticket for the IMAX and then to not really have anything better? They say it's better sound, but regardless, whatever. Oppenheimer, I'm focusing on Oppenheimer, to be able to view this historical drama of, it's said in the movie and it's said throughout history, the most impactful situation in human history, the most important moment in the species to be captured on film and to be viewed by me.
I'm excited. It takes place during like this insane crisis era, right? Oppenheimer is, you know, some people are saying it's Chris Nolan's magnum opus, which first of all, I don't even know what a magnum opus is. I don't know where I'm going here, folks. World War II is one generation's crisis. If you were to look at the work of author, Neil Strauss, he has a number of books out. One of them is called Generations. Another one of them is called The Fourth Turning. And this newest one that came out this past week, and I've been listening to it, is called The Fourth Turning Is Here.
And what the fourth turning describes to, what this entire, what these book series talk to is connected to Oppenheimer. There's seasons of time. And within these seasons of time, there's always a constellation of generations. There's a constellation of people growing up and absorbing their environment and moving forward and just trying to make the right next move, trying to make the right next step. And this current book, The Fourth Turning Is Here, is it's very good, it's very condensed. If you don't have to read these other past books of his to understand what's going on here, but I do think it's a little serendipity-ness of how we got this giant World War II, like the atomic bomb, what are the implications of the atomic bomb?
This epic movie. And then we have this Fourth Turning Is Here book that I sort of, I sped read, I got an audible. I haven't finished it, but I listened to the most important parts, what I think are the most important parts. I'm gonna be focusing on millennials, okay? We're focusing in on one particular generation, this Oppenheimer movie, that is a very particular generation of humans in history. And they chose to look at their crisis and they built something to stop the crisis, or they did something to stop the crisis, they moved through that.
And when you go through these series of books by Neil Strauss, you're reading about these different seasons of history. There's cycles and there's, he describes turnings, okay? And we're focusing on one turning, we're focusing on one generation, but to give you a brief overview, the first turning is, it's a high. Things are good, things are buzzing, things are living life. The second turning is an awakening. Something happens to awaken up the consciousness and the status quo isn't really the status quo. The third turning is an unraveling. What was the status quo is now just being manipulated and being abused and just, it is what it is, it is unraveling.
It's falling apart. And the fourth turning, which is the moment where we are in American history, we are smack in the middle of this fourth turning. These turnings usually last for around 20 years, sometimes 20 to 25 years. The fourth turning is the crisis. And the crisis is equivalent to the World War II era. The crisis is equivalent to the Civil War, it's equivalent to the American Revolution. And we're focusing specifically on American history here, right? This is America Plus. Each of those generations that fought in those wars, and it's, I think, first of all, I think it's weird that we're talking about history throughout wars.
Is there a better way to talk about history? But regardless, I'm following Neil Strauss. Each of those generations that came of age within that crisis, I'm in one of those groups. If you consider yourself a millennial, if you were born between 1985 and 2005, you are a part of the millennial generation, and we are equivalent to, the name for the World War II folks was GI. We are equivalent to the GI generation that fought in World War II. And we have inherited the last 80-some years before us. I took some notes on this little, whoa, I took some notes on this itty bitty notebook card.
And I don't have a real, I don't have a lesson here, but I wanna run through just some things that the author lists out in terms of our generational archetype. That's something that he goes into as well. Within the constellation of generations, each generation has their archetype. And you find these archetypes all throughout history. They repeat themselves, generally throughout these generations. And what he identifies, if we were to focus in on this specific time era, this millennial era, the oldest people being, or yeah, the oldest people in this time era is the boomer, the boomer generation.
The next one is Gen X. The next one is being millennial, I'm right there. And then there's a fourth one, which is he describes as Homelander, which is my nephew Wyatt for all intents and purposes. He is a part of that new homestead. His childhood is the crisis. My coming of age is the crisis. Gen Xers, my parents, they are entering into elderhood within the crisis. And the boomers are entering into an upper echelon of elderhood during the crisis. So that's how these generations roughly move through these seasons of time. And while listing out what's so interesting about the millennial generation, I guess at one point the media has called us generation nice.
Why? Generation nice. Another term is we're the organization kids. Isn't that weird? First of all, these are weird judgments or like titles to give us. We don't like titles, first of all, but sure, I guess we wanna be organized, I guess. What he was really getting at is we grew up in organizations. We were, I'll just speak for myself. A lot of my childhood was volunteering for something. A lot of my childhood was like I was at church and I was volunteering at church. Or if I wasn't at church, I would be at a different, like some other little class or some other little program that maybe the church was sponsoring.
It'd be some extracurricular activity. And in the book, Neil Strauss, he talks about how these extracurricular activities, they sort of, within this millennial generation, all these different clubs came up and all these smaller systems to help us just feel better about our lives, really. Something to help our self-esteem. We're like the self-esteem generation. The systems around us that were given to us by our Gen X parents, first of all, the Gen X parents, they were under-parented, so now they are over-parenting us. And that's sort of like a downstream, and that's a cycle in itself.
But that's where you get all the club soccer, the club football, and these kids think they're hot shit. And then when they get to college, they're not really hot shit. So that's like a silly little parallel. Going down the list, though, we have more anxiety. We have an unromantic prudence, okay? I thought this was really interesting. He talks about the millennial generation being a bit more practically traditional. For some reason, we are not drinking as often. We are not using party drugs. And if we choose to get married, it is because we are confident in the money, and we're confident in the future path, and we're confident in that partner's ability to be prudent, like to be safe.
That's the biggest thing as well. Neil Strauss describes the millennial generation as less risk adverse. We are seeking systems, the millennials seek things that are not as risky. Not as risky, and if it is risky, we're going to be committing that risk as a collective. So that's why crowdfunding has gotten popular, not just because of the internet, but the internet and crowdfunding is sort of like what us millennials do. We wanna do that, we wanna come together. And if it fails, hey, I failed with my friends. You know what I mean?
That's a really interesting observation, and I haven't noticed about that to be specifically millennial. I've always just seen that as the internet. But reading this, I am now able to identify, yeah, my generation, me, myself, I'm more, I'm attracted to the crowdfunding, I'm attracted to the community, I'm attracted to these collective narratives. Socialism is super popular with millennials. We're more willing to listen to these narratives, we're more willing to vote for a democratic socialist. A lot of my friends were voting for Bernie. A lot of my friends were voting for Bernie.
But at the same time, so we are children within the crisis, we are inheriting all these debts, and we have a yearning to create a new system. We have a yearning to have a new community and to have new standards. And socialism is popular, we are protected, we wanna protect ourselves. Less party drugs, more prescription drugs, or more smart drugs, trying to get you more productive. Some parallels with the millennials and the GIs. One parallel is the GIs coming up when they were in school, the narrative around them was that they are the children that their parents and grandparents prayed for.
There was a narrative of like, there's no bad boy. Like all the kids did their work, all the kids did their duty. The millennial generation, we did everything we were told. We did all the school and we did more of the school. The millennial generation has performed more homework than any other generation. Another parallel is we seek a better world. Another parallel is we seek a better world. The GIs were looking for a better world. The GIs were looking for a better world, the GIs were coming up in the Great Depression and they saw their families be poor and they didn't have the most opportunity.
And that's the same thing for us. So many millennials, like older millennials go back to 2008, which is when the fourth turning begun, by the way, 2008, the 2008 financial crisis. So many young millennials can go back to that and they can identify like them being scared and like a lot of their emotion, like the emotion tied to their childhood is negative and fearful, mainly of finances and like things are not as good. But at the same time, we're still like very protective and our parents are still right above us and we're still very close with our parents, similar to the GI people.
I guess during the Great Depression, a lot of the GI generation, they were not like living in apartments. They were not living on their own. A lot of them were still living at home. And that's the same thing with millennials. You keep reading that millennials are not moving out or they need to move back in with their parents and millennials hold a lot of shame. A lot of the anxiety that millennials hold is from just perception of failure financially and career wise, like we are not where our parents were at our age. At 26, my father had already had three kids.
I'm 26 and I'm in a studio apartment in North Hollywood doing drugs. Like this is a completely different experience. The GIs, they were put in a situation, literally, literally put in a situation where men from 18 to 45 were forced. They had to serve the military. They had to serve in the military until the war was over. That was the quite legitimate, like narrative and reality. And no one knew when the war was gonna end. There was no word on that. So you have a generation that grew up in the worst times possible, were forcefully put in a position to fight and to somehow protect and to rebuild.
And here we are, the millennials, we're in the middle of, we're in the early 2020s, but we are in the middle of the crisis. And while Neil Strauss is mapping all this out, if each turning is around 20 years, 20 some odd years, that puts us, this current crisis, that's gonna end around, hopefully around 2033. 2033 is when the end or the climax of this crisis will come to fruition. Usually that depends war. Usually that means war. Usually that means that people gotta stand up and they gotta fight for their country and they gotta do something.
There's a lot of speculation while we discuss the cycles of generations and cycles of time. There's also speculation that we are in a different era. We are in a different type of vibe of history. This is not following the same old, same old cycle. There's a possibility that this is either the beginning of a brand new cycle or it's just the ending of the old ways, of the old cycles. And we are literally moving into a new, I forget how he describes it, some new form of history, some new form of generation cycles. It's not as simple, it's not as clear as World War II.
We don't really know the villain yet. We don't really know how it's gonna come about. But we know it's gonna be around 2033, hopefully, which sort of freaks me out. I'm not ready to fight. I don't wanna fight for my country, dude. Like as a stone or an LA, I don't wanna be in the military. Is that apparent yet? And I don't understand why I need to. It seems like every other war for America has always been for the bigger establishment and it's been for some system that does not support me. So the millennials, that perspective is going to have to, that's going to have to mature.
The millennials come of age in the crisis. And there's a specific type of archetype that aligns with, and that is the hero. Neil Strauss describes the people, the kids who come of age within the Fourth Turning, the kids who come into adulthood, we are the hero archetype. The GIs are the hero archetype. The people who fought in the American Revolution are the hero archetype. They inherited something bad and they just chose to push through it. They banded together and they did their best and they fought and they won and they recreated something. They made something better for everyone.
And we have the opportunity with that here right now. That's sort of what America Plus has been about. I remember reading the book, The Fourth Turning, like during the pandemic, like it was like during lockdowns or something. And so the Fourth Turning book has definitely had a large impact on the way that I view history and the way that I view my place in space. I mean, it absolutely influenced me putting out America Plus. Like one reason why I'm so confident with America Plus, or yeah, the one reason why I'm so confident is because I know that I am a hero.
I'm not the hero, I'm not the guy, but I know that with my own personal choices, with my own viewpoint, with my own thoughts, I am a hero within my own life, within my own story. That's a narrative that I really cling onto. And my childhood was just happened to be guided by all these superheroes. You know, 2008, financial crisis, 2008, Iron Man, 2008, The Dark Knight, 2008, The Hulk, The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton. Like there is no mystery. It's almost so apparent that these cycles continue to happen. Neil Strauss even talks about how in the 1930s, you know, superheroes were super big.
And it's not until like this time, like this era, like this 2008, 2020 era, you know, superheroes are bigger than ever. And so that's a mirroring and that's a parallel. And it's all just fun. It's fun to see like what's similar. It's fun to see what's different between like 80 years ago and now. But the real like important thing is that that generation, the hero archetype is like is, it's not a should be. It is is. The hero archetype is the generation that moves the country forward, that changes the times. It is the millennial generation that will bring America to prosperity again, hopefully.
It is the millennials. It is the millennials. Like we are the key. We are the key. I am the key. What type of narrative is that, you know? Has that ever been told to us? Like we've, criticism of the millennials has always been, we are special and we have special values or we have very particular needs. And I don't know how it's gonna come about, but the way Neil Strauss talks about it, it seems like the millennials seek more community. The millennials seek more teamwork. The millennials seek more heroism. Coming together for a larger cause. The narratives that we grew up with have always pointed to this.
And along with that, the millennials have also always been in a position to create something together. There's always been team projects. There's always been digital worlds to build. Neil Strauss talks about Sims. All these millennials were building Sims and now that's preparing us to rebuild the country. I think that's a little bit silly, but I understand the metaphor. Like of course, like it's easy to think about how, okay, well you have all this, you have the generation of kids who grew up on the internet and a lot of them played Sims.
A lot of them had, what was the pets? The pet me pets or whatever, you know what I mean? It was like a little device. You have the digital pets, you got the pet rocks, you have Call of Duty, you have Roblox, you have Minecraft. Like we are building within these digital spaces. And so you can't but think that hopefully that leads to this generation building a space within 3D reality, within the real earth. Like we gotta come together and put our skills, redirect our skills from building in there to building out here. You know, we gotta come together and build out here.
Us millennials, we are so focused on the connectedness and we are focused on some sort of top-down system. Neil Strauss says that we are attracted to a more autocracy. It was the millennials that were flocking to Facebook. It was the millennials flocking to the internet, flocking to the social medias. And so with that, that implies, that is going to imply how we view the future, how we view the future of systems that govern us, that guide us. The way that we've been living our lives is going to influence how we live our lives. It's as simple as that.
It's really just dirt simple. Like it's nothing to be really like formally, like super like academically discussed. Like it's just, it's seasons and it's cycles. And it's just an observation of how we've been living. And it brings in the possibility of you being the hero of your own story. And that being just one little minute detail of the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is the millennial generation is moving forward through the crisis, is moving forward through the fourth turning and we are turning America into something else. We are absolutely, it's not an if, we are changing America right now.
There's always complaining, there's always talk, there's always yada yada. The fact of the matter is, is we are impacting. It's not have a impact, it's we are impacting. And your thoughts and your words and your actions, they go into that. The way that we think about our country, the way that we think about our systems, the way that we think about the crisis at hand, the way we think about the pandemic, the way we think about the banks, the way we think about everything that seeks to control us, the way we think about vaccines and hospitals and any sort of narrative that is going to guide our life, we have an impact on that.
We are impacting that. And so hopefully we get through it. Hopefully, I don't know, there is no clear path forward. Like we're in the middle of this, dude. Like we're less risk adverse, but we wanna be more together. So many millennials speak to their parents more than their parents before them. And I think that's true. Like I definitely talk to my mother. Like I seek out conversations with my parents more often than my mother seeks out conversations with her parents. Is that true for you? It's very interesting stuff, dude. And there's good things about this and there's not so good things about this.
The not good things come from bias. Like this is all really just bias. Like your interpretation of what's different with the millennials or your interpretation of what's good or bad about millennials, that goes into what you grew up in. And that goes into what you grew up in. And that goes into just your natural way of thinking. And millennials have a general way of thinking and it is only up to us to move forward with the best way of thinking. Like we have to develop our own individual best way to engage. And that's what I'm trying to do here with the podcast. That's what I'm trying to do with my own thoughts.
Like I'm trying to be a good example as a millennial. Born in 1997. I see a path for a better future. And I'm doing my damn best to communicate and to reach out to the network and to say that we can come together. We can, yes we can. Neal Strauss even said that we're the yes we can generation. Just cause we sort of grew up with the Obama stuff. The Obama slogan was, yes we can. That's a good slogan, dude. Yes we can. Like I believe that, dude. I believe that. And maybe that's a bit too optimistic. Maybe I'm a bit naive. But who cares, man?
Like this is my country, this is my time, this is my moment. And I want my friends to come with me. I want my friends to come with me and pick up this place. We can clean up the park together, folks. We can clean the beach. Like these silly little projects. Like I was cleaning up the highway when I was 12 years old. Like it's the same thing. And we're going to be doing that same thing to make a better overall, hopefully, some sort of a new master plan is what Neal Strauss was pointing to. When the millennials come of age, when the hero generation comes of age, they create a new master plan.
And then that changes the country. I don't know what that master plan is. But it's sort of humorous that I was in this thing. I was in this thing called Rainbow Helpers when I was like eight years old. Maybe younger, maybe I was like six, I don't even know. I was a, Cole McCormick was a Rainbow Helper when he was a child. And it makes me laugh that this sort of the same little structure is how all of us kids are going to come together and we're going to save the planet. Come on, guys, let's do it. You know what I mean? I think it's like, it's so good.
It's inspiring. Like I want it to happen, man. Like Captain Planet. Like all these kids with the rings, they come together, they save the Earth, dude. It's the Avengers, man. It's the Power Rangers, man. Like we have this. And to get through that, to get to the crisis, that means that millennials got to take in the wisdom. There needs to be some sort of a feedback loop to understand what's going on and to understand how we might change our ways. Like if we did anything wrong or if we need to change something, there needs to be that type of a feedback loop with an elder.
And so if you look at any myths, there's always an older generation speaking to a younger generation. And that's the same thing in real life. So the one thing that millennials do have going for them is that we are open to speaking to older generations. We are open for these conversations. But when we don't like what you're saying, okay, boomer, we're just going to shut it down. So maybe that's a shortcoming, but that's just something that we've got to work through. There's so many different tentacles attached to this. I could speak all day about it, honestly.
Let me just read through this. I hope I didn't pass by anything too important. Give me one second. Oh, one interesting thing was the movies. He listed just a short list of movies when you were starting to see a shift in how children were spoken about throughout these last turnings. So he says in the middle, in the transitioning between the awakening and the unraveling, there was a shift in the narratives around children. During the awakening and during the 70s, you sort of had this vibe of like, kids are bad. And there was all these evil kid movies.
Like the kid was no good. Or the kid was like an asshole. And then sort of in the late 70s and 80s, that's when you get the cute kid movie. That's when you get the movie Look Who's Talking. And that's where John Travolta is the voice of a baby. Just a silly example of narratives changing on a literal way. I thought that was funny. Less party drugs, more smart drugs, yada yada yada. Yada yada yada. The biggest thing that we need to come over is our anxiety and our fear. I think if I could have one last point on the millennials and then we'll get into the value for value.
The millennials need, I need to, let go of anxiety around of lack of. I must, I must, I must, I must. I must let go of my, I get so embarrassed and scared about, hey Cole, what are you doing? I'm just working at Roost Chris. I'm doing a podcast, but I'm not really making money. But I'm making it, I really love it. And I can objectively say that my life is good and the things that I'm doing are okay. I have this brighter path, but there is this anxiety that I gotta get over. And so that's my prayer for the greater generation. Let's get over.
We will get over our fears and our anxieties and our insecurities of not having as much as our parents did or do. You know? Our time is coming. You know, the way that we seek value is different. The way that we hold value and share value is different. And so, like, that's the real thing. How we value ourselves, how we view ourselves to be valuable for the greater good, for the country, for the community. You know, we need to let go of these insecurities if we're gonna fix the community at all. If you have any inkling to make the world a better place, you're going to have to get over yourself and just do what you need to do.
Just look around. What can you provide? What can you do? How can you be a part of the team? How can you be a part of the group project? What can you give? What value can you give? I think that's top-tier important, dude. Top-tier. And with the value, with the Value for Value, folks, we're gonna be heading on into the booths. America Plus is a Value for Value show. Value for Value is a brand-new system. It's a layer of monetization. It is a layer of building communities. And it's something that I'm getting myself more into. This millennial loves it.
This millennial loves this system. Value for Value is where I produce... I'm so sorry, I keep hitting the damn microphone today. Value for Value is a system where I produce what I think is the best content. I put work in this. I put effort in this. I listen to books. I think about my words. And I want to give... I always want to give a hopeful narrative. I'm simply seeking to rebuild these American narratives, these American systems. And get better. We're trying to update here. And so I think this is valuable. You have the opportunity to show me how valuable this podcast is while you listen.
I'm gonna be reading some comments. I'm gonna be reading some booths today from Fountain. If you don't already know... Whoops, whoops, whoops. Value for Value.info is a great breakdown of what Value for Value is as a system. You as a listener can give your time, your talent, or your treasure. You by listening is good. You telling your friends about the show or just trying to talk about... You yourself trying to make a better narrative. You know, that's your time. Talent. I'm building movies. I'm making movies. If you want to be involved with anything art-wise.
If you want to help with the show art. If you want to help with any sort of an animated scene. If you want to help me with writing. If you want to do anything creative with me. You can give your talents. Or you can do treasure. If you go to the fountain.fm app, the main treasure is Bitcoin. I prefer Bitcoin. But the PayPal is also open. If you want to give me any American dollars, that'd be great. It's Value for Value. You are able to show me how much you value this show and these narratives. And the booths I got are from last week. Number 79, System Define.
We got a few booths from a few friends. The first one coming in from Atmir Mortals. What up, Kyren? This is my buddy from Down Under. Kyren Down. He boosts, number 79. With the first one, he gave me a couple. He says, 300 stats. He says, I think the Twitter stuff is going to get murky. Now people will have an incentive to be even more clickbaity and attention seeking than before. The advertising model seems to break and ruin everything. Yes, I boost. Kyren, great point. Last week I was talking about Twitter. I was talking about like monetization systems and the the writers union and Twitter and Value for Value, whatever podcasting.
I was speaking positively on Twitter, putting out their ad money. And I see the opportunity there. I still see it. But I understand this fear of clickbait. Clickbait is no good. Is there a different narrative to get yourself involved with, though? Because if you don't want to be clickbaity, then don't be clickbaity. That's the way I'm looking at it as well. But Kyren, you give a great point. The advertising model seems to break and ruin. That's understandable as well. But when I think about like the reason why the writers are striking is because there is less advertising. The residuals in their old contracts were coming from the advertising money.
So there is a utility, in my opinion. There is a utility to the advertisement, Mr. Down. And then he sends in another 300 sats. And then a while ago, Kyren asked me about why I boost the number 5,492. That's another thing about Value for Value. If you want to give me a boost, if you want to boost me your favorite number, if you want to send me PayPal money of your favorite number, we support numerology here. And I did 5,492 because that's the print number of my Star Wars archives books. I have number 5,492 out of 10,000. Out of 10,000 books, I got the 5,000th one, dude.
And so his response to that is 300 sats. And he says, nothing silly about that at all. Quite touching, actually. And Kyren, that made me laugh. Booster. The way that you said that was quite touching, actually. It made me think about the movie Love, Actually. There's a little, at the very beginning of the movie, Hugh Grant has this thing about airports and love and people. I don't see a lot of fear. I see a lot of love, actually. So Kyren, thank you for that. Thank you for doing that very much. Boosting is loving. This next one, the last one, comes from Joel W.
Joel W. gives a comment. Gives a comment, and I think, oh, he did boost. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on. Let me refresh here real quick, real quick. Joel W.'s boosting. In the moment, folks. Give us one second. Let me go to the episode again. All right. Oh, you know what? And I also screwed up majorly. For some reason, the fountain app's messing up. I didn't read the right numbers for Kyren down. So let me just revamp. Holy crap, dude. Let me just revamp this entire section. Kyren sent in 2,222 sats. Kyren, thank you very much, dude. Thank you, Kyren, for the 2,022.
And then for that last one, when he says he sees a lot of love, actually, he sent in my boost number, 5,492. For some reason, the page that I was on was just screwing everything up. I'm so sorry. Anyway, Kyren, thank you for those, my friend. And now, Joel W. Joel W. sends in three boosts, folks. All of them are satchel of Richards. They're all 1,111 sats. The first one, Joel would like to say, I'd have more sympathy for the writers if more quality and not annoyingly politicized product was released. As it stands in recent years, I couldn't care less. Hashtag sorry not sorry.
Joel. And now, as the French say, it is time for the boost. I agree with you on that, dude. I agree with you on the writers. The next boost from Joel, he says, F Twitter, check out Nostr. Sats get tossed around all day without asking Elon for permission to get paid. Ooh! Boosting is loving. I sort of like that one. Basically, you put Bitcoin with anything, and all of a sudden, that is more efficient. I understand what you're saying. Fuck Twitter. I understand that. But all I'm saying is also there is more money in it. Okay?
That's all I'm saying. All I'm saying is that there's an investment to think about. And I'm still not on Nostr. I know I need to get on Nostr, but maybe that's my pitfall. I need to really just learn these new networks. But Joel, you got to convince me to get on Nostr, bro. You really got to like, you got to hold my hand, dude. Like, I don't know what I'm doing with that. So if you want me to not go to Twitter, if you want me to not pay for Twitter Blue, someone's going to have to give me some value and hold my hand while we set up my Nostr, okay? The last one from Joel W., Last Satchel of Richards.
He says, back to lab meat. Okay, now we're going back to lab meat, folks. Cultured cells in a lab creating your dinner. The cancer cell growth medium seems to be true. It's called the HeLa cell line. H-E-L-A, the HeLa cell line. Both this and the fetal bovine serum. Okay, we're getting deep, folks. Hang on. Can I just give a little... Hang on. The bovine serum are used in vaccine production, so begs the question, is the food or pharmaceutical product? Is this a food or pharmaceutical product, Joel? And now, as the French say, it is time for le bou... I fucking love you, Joel. I fucking love you.
Yeah, this lab-grown meat thing, dude, I don't agree with it. You and me, we're getting pure animal protein. That's... Whenever we get together, dude, we're grubbing on some real ass barbecue. That's my vibe. That's my Bitcoin hangout or just barbecue in the whole night. Joel, you say F Twitter. I say F lab meat. F lab meat. We're getting nowhere near that, folks. So thank you so much to all those people who wanted to donate, who wanted to give me some value. As you can see, the comments are very particular. The comments are very specific on what they want to talk about, and you have that power, you have permission to bring up whatever you want to bring up.
This is an open dialogue, you know? America Plus is just... It's an open system about creating better systems. It's a group project. Okay, guys, together, we have the power to change the world, and I personally believe that 100%. Thank you to all those people. Value for value is real, and if we're talking about better systems, get involved with Bitcoin. A better system is Bitcoin. A better system is value for value. The only way... And this is my opinion. The only way we're going to get through this crisis is if we engage, is if we really engage with better systems.
So, Kyron Down, Joel W., those are two guys who are making the choice to engage. You make the choice. That's America Plus, bitch. Stay free.
