WBD680 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin, Economics, & Mimetics with Robert Breedlove

Release date: Thursday 6th July

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Robert Breedlove. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Robert Breedlove is a philosopher and podcaster within the Bitcoin space. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss the consequences of the middle class getting destroyed, the hubris of central planning, games of mimetic desire, how Bitcoin is a high-trust environment, Bitcoin’s enemies, fasting and living life beyond the ego.

“We either need the hyperinflation of fiat currencies worldwide to get a hard reset to a bitcoin standard...or you need this hard wake up call to all central banks in the world that, ‘hey, this economic paradigm that we’ve been running does not work.’”

— Robert Breedlove

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Welcome to London, man.

Robert Breedlove: Thank you, man, I'm glad to be here.

Peter McCormack: First time?

Robert Breedlove: First time.

Peter McCormack: I can't believe it's your first time in London.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, it's been almost two weeks.  Had a great time.

Peter McCormack: That's a long time in London.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, so this is like, you know, I did Prague and I did Oslo, and then London was the beginning of my adult vacation.  So, it's been nice.

Peter McCormack: What have you done?  Tell me what you've done in London.

Robert Breedlove: Let's see, I've done a lot of the tourist sightseeing stuff.  So we walked down to the Tower Bridge, saw that, did not do the London Eye.  Also took the train to Paris for three days.  So, we did a bunch of stuff there in the middle of it.  And basically had a lot of nice dinners and been in a couple of pubs. 

Peter McCormack: Have you got wasted at a pub? 

Robert Breedlove: No, I haven't been wasted on this trip.  But it's been fun.  London reminds me of New York without the things about New York that I don't like, which is the extreme aggressiveness and the uncleanliness.  London seems to be a little bit cleaner.  People are a little bit nicer, more chipper, not so aggressive. 

Peter McCormack: Are you saying we're a civilised society?

Robert Breedlove: It's kind of a civilised New York, I guess.  And the city's super-walkable, which is, I think, I read a study a long time ago that walkability is the primary factor in determining your happiness and living in a place.  And so, I don't know, people seem to be happy here.  The service has been great, you know, the bellman, the waiters, the waitresses, everyone at every hotel I've been in, it's been very service-oriented.  So, I've had a really good time.

Peter McCormack: Good, man, I'm glad to hear.  I am a big fan of London.  I think it's the best city in the world, and I know I'm biased, but I think it's got everything you need.  I think the people are great.

Robert Breedlove: A lot of my American friends say the same thing, by the way, which is why I was anxious to come here.  Many of my American friends have travelled extensively internationally, say London's their favourite international city, and I think I see why.

Peter McCormack: And listen, I love New York, but for different reasons.  And I love Los Angeles, I love Paris, I love Berlin.  I've still got to tick off places like Singapore and Sydney, hopefully later in the year.  But I am a big fan of London because it's a very multicultural city, it's very accepting, it's very civilised, it's got growing issues sadly and we'll probably get into that because there's definitely growing societal issues.  But I am pro-London and I love it when people come here and experience it. 

How does it, okay, so now you've seen it, because I think, and I don't mean this in a condescending way, but a lot of Americans don't travel outside of America.  I'm doing the pod, I've met a lot of people who literally have not left America, and I think you have to see the world to understand the world a little bit more.  How would you compare and contrast London to say, I know America as a whole is a tough one, but generally speaking?

Robert Breedlove: So when I first -- this is not my first trip to Europe.  I've been to Europe several times, first time to London though.  And my big takeaway the first time I travelled to Europe was, America is an adolescent culture, right?  We're less than 250 years old.  You see it in the architecture everywhere, we just don't have things that are as ancient as you guys have in Europe.  And with that comes a lot more history, a lot more story, and I guess just a more refined culture by virtue of being older, right?  If culture is a collective organism, we often talk about it, then the European culture would just be an older, wiser organism, whereas America is kind of still in its late teens, maybe, I'm not really sure. 

Peter McCormack: The petulant child. 

Robert Breedlove: Maybe early 20s, which has some advantages, right?  We're bold, we're all of these things, we're innovative, experimental, but maybe a bit reckless, a bit immature, a little bit lacking in wisdom.  And when I picked that up, the big perspective gain I had in coming to Europe was this whole, like, there's a whole other world, right?  I've been in America my whole life thinking this was it.  And it's kind of like that feeling of stepping off the side of the Truman Show and like there's whole, entire other worlds out here.  And when I went to Asia, that's another whole culture shock.

Peter McCormack: Unbelievable.

Robert Breedlove: I mean, an alien world basically. 

Peter McCormack: Have you been to India? 

Robert Breedlove: Not yet. 

Peter McCormack: Dude, you've got to go to India. 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I've heard. 

Peter McCormack: Mumbai was one of the biggest culture shocks of my life.  It's just fucking mental, the city's unbelievable.  I loved it, I'm desperate to go back, I want to take my kids.  But yeah, sometimes you know the kind of things we debate or we clash on.  We have things we disagree with and we can remain friends over, but sometimes when I have these disagreements with people, I almost think, "Well, I've spent a lot of time in your country.  I've been to the US 70, 80 times.  I definitely understand the US better than you understand the UK".  I wish people would travel more and see and understand why we're different.  I'm not saying we should be the same, but there are cultural differences.  We don't have kind of such extremes.  We kind of meet in the middle more and try and figure stuff out, which I think has its negatives as well.

Robert Breedlove: Sure, sure.  Someone, actually the culture of extremes, I forget who described that, but they were talking about how America is very much that, right?  It's like, we have the fittest and the fattest.  We have the richest and we have the poorest.  We have some of the nicest restaurants and some of the most disgusting places.  It very much is a polarised land.  And maybe there are advantages to that, where you're trying to, again, be creative or innovative, you need to have these extremes.  But for a long-term sustainable place, you would expect it to have less polarity and a little bit more centeredness perhaps. 

Peter McCormack: Well it feels it's breaking.  Have you listened to Balaji and Marty Bent? 

Robert Breedlove: I haven't, no. 

Peter McCormack: Man, that's worth giving up that four-and-a-half hours.  It's my favourite podcast of the year so far. 

Robert Breedlove: I've got a flight tomorrow, so I'll listen to it.

Peter McCormack: It's so good.  I don't agree with everything Balaji says.  I'm keeping notes because I'm going to interview him, because there's some things I want to challenge him on.  But there's so many key points he hits on that are really insane.  There was one point he said only 4% of Democrats marry Republicans, and he said it's this divide now.  It's almost the Sunnis and the Shiites.  And it is, to me, it's a culture that's breaking.  Well, it's two cultures really that are trying to survive together.  And I don't know if it just needs to fully break, or this is a good thing.

Robert Breedlove: I don't know the answer to that either.  You've seen these data visuals, though, where it shows red and blue.  It shows the divide on issues year-over-year, and it shows it just getting wider and wider apart over time, right?

Peter McCormack: It's like Moses parting the sea now.

Robert Breedlove: Exactly, but I mean my hypothesis is it's a post-1971 thing.  Once you start to eviscerate the middle class through money printing, you develop these political tensions between rich and poor, obviously, because the rich are getting much richer, the poor are getting much poorer.  That manifests itself as political tensions as people are voting their interests essentially.  And so I think that you've got money upstream from culture, you could say economics upstream from culture and culture upstream from politics.  So, I think a lot of that divisiveness that's going on in the US is a direct consequence of the US dollar hegemony, that we've just been destroying our middle class more aggressively than ever in the past few years, and you're seeing those tensions erupt into political shitstorms effectively. 

Peter McCormack: That is happening here as well now. 

Robert Breedlove: Of course, it has to happen everywhere where it's taking place. 

Peter McCormack: The middle class is getting destroyed, middle-class businesses.  I mean families I know with two incomes who you think, life should be pretty comfortable and decent, are in debt with two solid incomes.  And the massive inflation, massive increase of energy prices we've had over the last year has been really particularly bad here, have just seen the destruction of disposable income.  It's not good.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I mean, I'm a firm believer that it's strong property rights that allow a middle class to be built up, and the middle class is obviously the bulwark to the entire society.  As long as it's flourishing and healthy and prospering, then it sort of is the glue that holds together the hierarchy.  But when you start violating property through printing money, excessive regulation, taxation, whatever it may be, you're gutting the middle class; you're literally destroying the centre, the centre of mass of society itself.

Peter McCormack: I think it was Dominic Frisby, you know Dominic don't you?

Robert Breedlove: Of course.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, when we made a film on inflation, I can't remember because I don't know the facts, I think he said it was Stalin who said, "To destroy a society, you destroy the middle class".

Robert Breedlove: Of course, yeah.

Peter McCormack: And I don't know if it's coordinated evilness or it's just the incentives of the system just lead to it, and I think I kind of sway to the latter.

Robert Breedlove: I agree.

Peter McCormack: I just think it's a system of poor incentives that ultimately lead to the destruction of the middle class.  And I say, we are seeing it here.  I don't see an easy way back.  I certainly see a potential for massive rounds of further increasing in money printing.  I just don't see a road back from this.

Robert Breedlove: Well I don't really either, other than the return to sound money. 

Peter McCormack: There we go, man. 

Robert Breedlove: Which takes a long time.  Ed Dowd calls it a meta-fraud, which I really like that description because it's not a few guys sitting in a room puffing cigars saying, "What are we going to do to destroy the world?"  It's this emergent process of bad incentives leading to bad outcomes, and then people typically try to double down.  And obviously, as you're destroying the middle class, you end up this with this huge cohort of poor people, that especially through a democratic mechanism are trying to vote themselves money.  And what you know when you get into that process of different people trying to vote themselves money, so using the political apparatus to enrich themselves, that's something that's not productive.  You're not creating anything. 

You're moving away from the positive-sum game of people trading and producing new things and more wealth to the zero-sum game of like, "My win is your loss".  That seems to be this major dissolution that occurs with moving off of sound money.  As you break the money, trade starts to not work so well, capital starts to get misallocated, the pie is basically shrinking or not growing as fast, so people devolve into more of a zero-sum mentality, where it's like, "I need to take from you to gain, rather than both of us gaining through mutual trade".

Peter McCormack: Is there a nuance to that?  Because you said people are trying to vote themselves money, which I completely agree, and I don't think it matters which political party, they're all trying to vote themselves money.  But when you say, "Vote themselves rich", who are the people voting themselves rich?  Because certainly here, the Labour Party would be campaigning on supporting the people who struggle the most in society.  And so, these people aren't trying to vote themselves rich, they're trying to vote themselves survival.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I'm not saying vote yourself rich.  I'm just saying, again, what is the vote, right?  I'm casting a ballot saying, "I want this political leader, who presumably represents my interests, to go and leverage the political apparatus, which is not creating anything, it's just an organisation that is sustaining itself on theft from citizens through inflation and taxation.  So, I want part of the stolen proceeds to go to me, whether I'm the poor labour class or I'm the, I don't know, the upper class", in the UK.  We have basically Democrats in the US which support the poor and Republicans usually serve the interests of the rich. 

The point is, when you're reallocating the flow of funds or purchasing power via the political mechanism, it devolves the whole game into a non-productive tit-for-tat fight.  It's a net negative for everyone in the bigger picture, but it's almost like there's a myopia or a short-sightedness of people who understand that.  They think the only way, "Well, I'm poor, I'm dispossessed, prices are going up faster than my wages.  The only thing I can do is go and cast a vote for this guy that's going to take the political fight to the rich, tax the rich, tax the billionaires, give me more".  But I guess my point is that that solution is not a long-run solution.  You're just going to disincentivise the productive, they're going to fucking go elsewhere, they're going to stop producing.  Capital production goes down and everyone gets poorer on a net basis.

Peter McCormack: That's been one of the hardest things I've had to go through over the five, six years of doing this podcast.  I think as you've come to the UK and seen what it's like, we are very much a civilised group of people who try to figure out, "Let's figure this out together.  We're all in this together, we are a society".  We don't have, you know, I think Americans have this fairly recent history of, you know, kicking out the Brits, becoming a republic, having a number of freedoms enshrined in your Constitution, so you have a different way of approaching politics to us.  I mean, the Democrats are a bit weird at the moment, but generally speaking this kind of distrust the government that they are meant to serve us and not us serve them, even though it's gone a bit haywire recently; we don't really have that here.  We've gone from monarchy to politics, and so we've always tended to figure it out.

So, I think there's some people who listen to the show from America haven't understood why I haven't been on the same page as them.  It's just taken a bit longer, but I am now in that kind of political paralysis at the moment because I see it like you see the matrix.  I see it now in that it doesn't matter who I vote for, it's the same.  They're both throwing away my money.  And also, as I've built more businesses, I've had to go through all the difficulties of running a business.  Just a bar alone, I talked about this on the podcast, just a bar alone, all the different licenses I have to have for a bar that has 200 people to come to it.  If I want to put in a new fixed structure, say this was my bar, and say I wanted to change these to a different set of seats, I have to put in planning permission to the council and then the council have to come and they have to check, and they have to agree to allow me to put that in.  So, I cannot change the seating in the bar that I run because of that. 

Football club, the football club, we've got new floodlights put in and they were 15 meters, whatever the number, 15 feet, I can't remember what the size is, and the size was wrong, it needs to be 16.  So, we put in an amended planning application and they rejected it, so we have to go through another full planning application which is another form…  Just the constant bullshit that gets in the way and then when you start looking at the rounds of taxes, the difficulty of opening bank accounts, it's really fucking hard just to run a business!  And then I have to give most of the money we make away. 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, right. 

Peter McCormack: So, I think I'm coming to where you are, or you are at, and a number of other people; it's just taken a lot longer.

Robert Breedlove: I mean, okay, one of the things I did when I got here was, it was the King's birthday, the first day I was in London, maybe the second day I was in London, and they were doing the entire march there in front of Buckingham Palace, I think that's what it's called?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Robert Breedlove: And one of the things they did, I have a great video of it actually, is they were flying over, so there's that arch, there's that long road leading up to Buckingham --

Peter McCormack: Horse Guards Parade.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, okay, I didn't know the name of it.  There's the giant golden statue right there in front of the palace, and they were flying military planes right along that corridor, so it'd fly over the arch, down the road, and past the palace.  But they were flying different generations, so they would fly, I don't know what year, 1950s planes, a group of them would fly by, there's some 1960s planes, 1970s and the big bombers, and then finally the end was like the 2020 jet fighters, flying very low, very slow.  And it was just such a flex of military power, and the last planes had the different trailing colours behind them, the British colours.

Peter McCormack: Was it the -- oh, that would be the Red Arrows.

Robert Breedlove: The Red Arrows, I think so.  They look like very sharp-looking little military fighters.

Peter McCormack: The Red Arrows, for every big event revolving around the monarchy or even things big like sporting events, the Red Arrows come in and they do their flybys, but you know them, because they're red planes.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I don't know if they're red or not, I'd have to check out the video.  But anyways, what's going through my mind this whole time is, all right, we're celebrating one guy's birthday.  How many millions of pounds of jet fuel are we running just to have this little demonstration?  People are loving it, I'm loving it, by the way, it's just cool, nice to see all this.  And then, so the planes go by, everyone's cheering, taking videos, we walked down to the end of the road near the palace, and then all these soldiers on horseback carrying swords and big hats and armour, very classic-looking stuff.  They're kind of distributing the crowd a little bit.  Then all of a sudden, who drives out, but the king, right, the king drives out in his, I think it was a Rolls Royce, and he kind of gives a little hand wave and drives on to his birthday party or wherever he was going. 

I was just, the whole time, what are the numbers on this?  Like, what is the payroll; what is the jet fuel; what does the military spend on this little flex for this guy's birthday?  And do these people know, do other people think that they're actually carrying the burden for this?  You go to this show, you're like, "Oh, it's a free show, it's cool, I get to see it", not knowing that if you're a UK citizen, obviously you're paying for that.

Peter McCormack: But I think the work's been done, It's a shame I haven't got Danny here because I'd have him look it up, but I think the study's been done that you're thinking of that in terms of spend, I see that as almost a Cirque du Soleil for the Royal Family, it's advertising the Royal Family.  The Royal Family don't really have any power.  I mean, yes, there's the ceremonial things where the Prime Minister goes to the King and gets in to approve Parliament decision, but he doesn't actually have any power.  And I think the monarchy is tourism, that's what it is.  You saw it, people go to Buckingham Palace, they go and see all these things and I'm pretty sure they've done the work and they've done the studies that the Royal Family do deliver a net positive income to the United Kingdom based on tourism.  I'm almost certain that's true, but again somebody might disprove that. 

Look, I'm not a monarchist and I am anti-establishment, but I do recognise historically the role that the monarchy played.  They used to play a much more important role and I know it's a drama series, it's worth watching The Crown.  The role that the Queen played before we had social media and the internet, we just had radio broadcasts on the TV and bringing the country together, she almost had pretty much an unimpeachable, what was it, 75 years as Queen or 85 years.  And I think the world modernised beyond a monarchy during her reign.  And I think maybe during his reign, we will see that more. 

I mean, essentially, nobody's really a big fan of King Charles.  He was horrendous to Princess Diana, his son, Harry, has now gone off and tried to exploit his position to become a media person in the US and it hasn't gone down well, his brother is a nonce.  I think the Royal Family is in struggle at the moment, but I don't know where it will be in the future.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, also, I don't know if there's any truth to this, but I've heard it described that the Royal Family gives people another outlet for, if they have frustration with the politics or whatever in Britain, you can also direct some of that frustration at the monarchy rather than just the Parliament or the political. 

Peter McCormack: Maybe. 

Robert Breedlove: And in the US, we don't have that, right, it all goes red versus blue.  So, maybe there's a benefit to diffusing some of that political angst.

Peter McCormack: I'm not sure on that one, I don't feel that one.  I just feel that the monarchy gets criticised on its own for its own decisions.  Prince Andrew was criticised for paying off his lawsuit pertaining to Epstein.  There's lots of...  I think they judge on their own decisions and their own behaviour.  I don't feel we use the anger of the country against them or anger of the current situation.  Occasionally, some people may look at the times are tough and we've got these high energy prices at the moment, high inflation, they might look at the Royal Family and go, "Well, it's ridiculous that they spent all this money on this birthday".  But generally speaking, the Royal Family has a budget and I'm almost certain they deliver a net positive.

Robert Breedlove: But it's a state-backed budget, right?

Peter McCormack: Yes, it is a state-backed budget.  But like I say, I think it's one of those things where the decision is made as the net income.  If you got rid of the Royal Family and the Buckingham Palace and all those things, how many people would come to London?  It's one of the appeals of coming to London for, remember, outside the world of Bitcoin and the establishment.  If you're a 14-year-old girl in New York, you want to come see Buckingham Palace and you think Prince William is --

Robert Breedlove: Royalty and history, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's a certain...

Robert Breedlove: I can see that, but then I can see that argument equally being applied to the American war machine.  It's like, look, we make so much money going out and imperialising the world, let's just let that thing roll.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean the slight difference is that, if it's profiteering on the blood of Iraqis, it's slightly different from having a flyby in London.

Robert Breedlove: It is, but again, I just have a hard time advocating for theft, basically.  It's like, you know, the Royal Family has a budget, but where is it coming from?  It's coming from proceeds stolen.  Does it support tourism?  Surely it does, but maybe it could pay for itself on its own tourism, rather than being paid for by taxpayers.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think you wrap it into the state.  If you think state, and to all tax, if your position is all taxation is theft, and you disagree with the Royal Family as much as you disagree with government and taxation, if you…  I'm more in the Dominic Frisby camp these days.  Dominic is anti-high tax, but he believes a reasonable, small amount of tax to pay for the certain things in society we need is fair value, and I'm kind of with him in that.  And then, if you can justify within that things that government can do which have a net benefit to the country or the government coffers, they can tax you less. 

So, for example, if you run the monarchy as a private company run by the government and they had a budget, and they delivered a net increase in income to the government to reduce taxes, you think,  "Okay, well I can accept that argument", because yeah, as much as I'm very much down the anti-government rabbit hole these days, I'm still not in the anarchist, no government position just yet, because more on practical reasons, because I just don't think it happens.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I agree actually, and I've tried to be more specific when I talk about this, to separate government from the state.  The state is that enterprise that's taking from you, you have no consent.  Again, if you want to leave the US, say, "Hey, this is a bad deal, I'm a taxpayer here, I don't like the services I'm getting, I'm going to move to London", or wherever else it may be --

Peter McCormack: 40%.

Robert Breedlove: -- everything above a $2 million net worth, they steal before you leave, right?

Peter McCormack: Everything.

Robert Breedlove: Well, no, I'm saying everything above $2 million net worth is taxed at 40%.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 40%, yeah, unbelievable.

Robert Breedlove: It's crazy.  So, they're stealing 40% of everything you've got above $2 million, which isn't that much money anymore? 

Peter McCormack: But don't you also rescind your citizenship? 

Robert Breedlove: You also have to rescind your citizenship in the process.  It's one of those few territorial tax systems where you can't just live abroad.  If you don't live in London X months a year, you don't get taxed in London or UK.  There's the US and one tiny other country.

Peter McCormack: Is it like Eritrea?! 

Robert Breedlove: Something like that.  But it's just like, you know, we're so conditioned to it and it's just kind of the way of the world.  We don't have many options, really hardly any other options.  So, we just think this is the way things are and we just accept it.  But that's a really bad deal, right?  If you could imagine going to any other service provider and you're like, "No, this doesn't work for me".  I'm going to take my assets.  And if you're at a hotel, right, you're posting a security bond to the hotel and you're like, I don't this hotel, I'm going to go to another one.  They're like, "All right, we're going to steal 40% of your bond before you leave and go to the next one".  You're like, "This is a shit deal.  What are you talking about?  Give me the money back, I'm going to go over here". 

But when it comes to a nation state, which Samson Mow analogises to a hotel, which I think is a pretty useful analogy, we take it as the norm.  And I don't know what that is, is that just part of the human condition?  And that's why I'm worried about taxation when we say I'm pro-taxation but not high taxation.  It's like, well, where do you draw the line?

Peter McCormack: Not pro; accepting of.

Robert Breedlove: What is high?  It's a slippery slope, right?

Peter McCormack: Of course, and I wouldn't give you a very good answer now.  I just accept that there are services that need to be provided by a country, and I accept there's a certain amount of taxation that's needed for that.

Robert Breedlove: That's fine if it's opt in, opt out.  And technically, if it's opt out, it's not really taxation at that point because you can just say, "No, it's a service fee or security fee that the nation state is taking".  But if you can say no and go elsewhere, then it's not technically taxation.  You can't say no and go elsewhere and they still steal your shit.

Peter McCormack: Well we can.  I could say no and just go and live in another country.  I can go, there's plenty, I can go and live in Monaco, I could go and live in Antigua, I can do that, we don't have an exit tax, so I can just opt out.  Now look, I think you have to be in a fortunate position to do that, because you have to be able to relocate, afford the relocation, have the skillset to relocate.  So, I've got a podcast, I can go back to zooming them, and I can do it anywhere in the world, I have enough money to do it.  So, look, it's a privileged position to be able to do that, but I have that.  I think it's different for you because you don't have that, because you have that exit tax, which if you're ever going to do it, you'd better do it sooner rather than later!

Robert Breedlove: It's a crazy thing, and maybe that is my primary gripe, is with the US exit tax.  Again, I think humanity in the long run will move past taxation.  I think at some point we'll look at this legalised, regularised plunder as a means of scaling society as something that's antiquated.  And it served its purpose, right?  It got us from whatever to where we are today.  But in the long run, I think in the digital age, things will just look more consensual because it's more difficult to pin people down, put them in a tax farm and steal from them on a regular basis.  So, as people have more options to avoid that, I think they're going to exercise those options and the world will just look a lot different.

Peter McCormack: You can almost look at any technology though and see how we evolve beyond certain things.  It's even, when I was discussing the show with Danny on the way down, I was driving down and, you know, we as bitcoiners are very, very quick to criticise fiat as terrible money, but I put it back to Danny, I said, "But what about the good things of fiat?  Are there positive things fiat has done?"  And of course there are.  The easy movement of money around the world before we had Bitcoin.

Robert Breedlove: But that didn't require fiat, because you could just have a gold-backed currency and it does the same thing in terms of speed.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but a gold-backed currency could still be manipulated.  I mean, the gold market is manipulated right now.  I mean you could argue --

Robert Breedlove: Largely by fiat though, by derivatives and whatnot. 

Peter McCormack: Of course, but I'm saying it still could be manipulated.  But I'm just saying that fiat served a purpose at the time, it fixed some things that gold didn't have and then we outgrew it. 

Robert Breedlove: I would just qualify that and say currency fixed things that gold didn't do, I talk about this a lot.  Portability, gold lacked portability, which is a big problem if you want a globally scaling market.  We need to be able to move money around the world very fast and easy, we can't send container ships of gold every fucking ten minutes.  So, currency, when you put currency on top of gold, it solves a lot of those portability problems.  But that's not the same thing as justifying fiat.  Fiat is a zero-reserve currency.  If a gold-backed currency is a full-reserve currency, fiat's a zero-reserve currency.  You don't need fiat per se to solve the portability problem. 

I don't think there's any additional value add to moving from a full-reserve currency to a zero-reserve currency.  Now the argument would be, "Oh, well, when there's an economic downturn, we need to print more money.  Where's that money going to come from?"  Well, we'll just, you know, we've monopolised the currency supply, we'll just produce new units, we'll fractionally-reserve the banks, and we'll give it to the people that we think need it most from each according to their ability to each according to their need, and we gradually descend into this Marxist hellhole.

Peter McCormack: So, thinking about that though, I mean it's a question I put to a couple of people, I've never actually got a solid yes or no response from anyone on this, but even the money printing, can you not even see some benefits of the money printing?  I can see the negatives.  Obviously, the Cantillon effect, the fact that we've got growing wealth divide, all those negatives, I totally recognise them.

Robert Breedlove: The business cycle, misallocation of capital, destroying the middle class.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, look, totally recognise all of that.  But are there periods of money printing which have led to, I don't know, I mean, the US is one of the best money printers in the world, it's one of the fastest growing economies.  Has it not led to more capital that can be allocated?  Has it not led to more innovation in technology?  Are there any benefits that have existed from it or come from it?

Robert Breedlove: So, this is a common, essentially a no-corner argument, right?

Peter McCormack: No, I'm not defending it.  I'm just saying --

Robert Breedlove: I understand.  A lot of no-coiners will say separate from that question that, "Well, you need inflation to drive innovation".  And they'll just say, "Look in the US.  We had inflation and we had innovation".  So, then they just say, "Correlation equals causation.  You need inflation to drive innovation".  I don't think, I don't buy that argument.

Peter McCormack: No, it's not even the point I'm making.  I'm not saying you need inflation to drive innovation. 

Robert Breedlove: Well, you're asking what the benefits are. 

Peter McCormack: No, I'm saying has a massive amount of cheap capital become available to investors, led to more innovation because there should be more capital to invest?

Robert Breedlove: But the cheap capital came from the backs of savers, right?  It was stolen from savers and given to investors to misallocate, I would argue.  So, I would say this.  This is the difference between economic history and economic science.  We can say things about economic science, like man must act; man prefers present satisfaction to later satisfaction, all other things being equal, that's where we get the interest rate; man values leisure time.  All of these axioms that support Austrian Economics, that's science, right?  That's the deductive science of Austrian Economics that we talk about a lot in Bitcoin. 

Then there's economic history, and you can say, "Oh, well, this thing happened, and then that thing happened, and I'm claiming this is causation".  But that's totally fucking unprovable.  I could say that we printed $6 trillion in the past three years, or whatever it's been, and TikTok became popular.  So, somehow, printing money made TikTok an effective, popular app.  I don't even know if the timing lines up on that, but I'm just giving you an example.  You're just cherry-picking two things out of the world and saying these two things map onto each other, but you can't actually do that in economic science.  So, the whole point is it's always subject to interpretation. 

So, when you ask me, "Has inflation done anything good?"  I can't even really give you an answer.  Sure, there's probably some benefits in there somewhere.  When there's an economic downturn and liquidity is scarce and everyone's strapped and over-indebted and no one has cash, when you inject all that liquidity into the system, it definitely gives people a sense of confidence again.  People get cheques in the mail in the US.  Even though you're getting a $3,000 cheque per US household and they printed $46,000 per US household, so the other $43,000 --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, where did the rest go?!

Robert Breedlove: Exactly.  So, is there a benefit?  Sure, that's a psychological benefit.  People that are none the wiser, they get the cheque in the mail, they're probably going to go spend it, buy something, etc.  That's stimulative to the economy, but it's very much alcohol, right?  And this is what Milton Friedman said about inflation that, "The good effects come soon, the bad effects come later".  And you get into this -- Vervaeke talks about addiction being like a reciprocal narrowing.  You know, the guy that's an alcoholic has a few too many drinks, wakes up late for work, gets in trouble with his boss, has a bad day at work, so therefore he has a few more drinks, he's a little bit more late to work the next day, he's more in trouble, maybe he loses his job, then he has a few more drinks; and before you know it, he's dead or in a ditch somewhere. 

Fiat currency is very much the same process.  We print a little bit of money to get out of this catastrophe, we misallocate the capital, we increase the liabilities in the system, nonlinear to the money itself, so the next time there's a collapse, we have to print exponentially more money to cover the existing liabilities, and it's this addictive descent into hell.

Peter McCormack: Giacomo Zucco said this to me a long time ago, he said it's like heroin.  He said, every time you just need a little bit more heroin, reach the same high.  But he said, "When you have the crash, the longer you leave it, the crash is going to come harder".  You've got to take the poison, at some point you've got to stop.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, and the crash is the reset, by the way, to reality; it's you going to rehab, it's you getting the drugs out of your system, whatever analogy you want to use here.  And we need that, unfortunately.  We either need the hyperinflation of fiat currencies worldwide to get a hard reset to a Bitcoin standard, and I think that's the path that likely happens given human history and incentives and precedent and all that; or, you need this hard wake-up call to all central banks in the world that, "Hey, this economic paradigm we've been running does not work.  Keynesian economics is bullshit.  We've deceived ourselves into thinking we can print money to produce wealth and stimulate and control the economy like it's some kind of machine", which is just the wrong metaphor by the way. 

We talk about central bank policy tools, they literally say like pulling levers, pressing buttons.  The economy is not a machine.  The economy is a complex emergent system.  You're talking about something more like the weather than a machine.  So, humans, when I lived in Kauai, you could not get a forecast that was accurate one day in advance, literally.

Peter McCormack: Why not?

Robert Breedlove: I don't know.  The weather in Kauai is crazy, the clouds spin around the island, it'd say it's going to be sunny tomorrow and it rains.  The forecast was useless, essentially.  What in the world makes us think we can't figure out the weather one day in advance in Kauai, but we can plan a global economic system decades or even hundreds of years in advance through these policy tools?  It's hubris, it's colossal hubris essentially.  So, I think hopefully, maybe it's a matter of us moving off of this mechanistic paradigm, where we've thought that the world is a machine, and we're waking up to the reality of complex systems. 

Peter McCormack: It's weird because in this Bitcoin world as well, I don't know if you find this, but if you meet somebody and they're not in that world and they're like, "What do you do for a living?" sometimes I feel a little bit embarrassed.

Robert Breedlove: What do you say; what's your answer to that question?

Peter McCormack: Oh it depends, it depends who it is.  If I was on a date I'm definitely not going to say I'm a bitcoiner because I just think there's just all this judgment that might come in.  So, I just say that I'm a kind of a journalist, I make podcasts and documentaries.  And if they ask what, I say economics, and if they really push me I say, "Well, I look at it through the lens of fixed currencies like Bitcoin".  So, I really take my time to get there.  Some people, I just say I make a Bitcoin podcast, but it depends on the audience.  But usually, it's very rare someone goes, "Oh, yeah, I mean I get that.  Inflation is out of control".  Usually, it's just you just have to do it.  Because I don't want to deal with instant FUD or judgment, I just can't deal with that!

Robert Breedlove: Do you get recognised a lot?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's random.  I'm getting it a lot in my hometown now.

Robert Breedlove: Really?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, it never used to happen in Bedford.  I could go to New York and three times on the street, someone would stop me.  But then I'd go home and no one gives a shit.  But it's happening a lot more, and I think that's because of the football team.  Because the football team is getting noticed, everyone wants to know who the owner is, so it's starting to happen.  But yeah, and you know what?  Everyone's decent.  More in a bull market.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, of course.

Peter McCormack: During the last bull market, it was crazy.  I mean, in the elevator in New York, a football match in London, it was quite regular.  It's been less so recently.  I don't know what I think about it.

Robert Breedlove: It's been happening to me way more than I think it should based on just the number of followers and things that I have.  We're tiny, right, compared to the internet as a whole.  But I've been recognised twice in London in a few days, which is weird, people just stopping you on the street.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's weird.

Robert Breedlove: "Thank you for expanding my mind".  I'm like, wow, fucking that's amazing.  And then I went to -- I found when you get into groups that are more YouTubers, you get recognised a lot more frequently.  I went to this week-long meditation retreat with Dr Joe Dispenza, and he's a big YouTube lecture guy.  So, out of the 2,500 people that were there, I got recognised nine times in a few days because they're YouTubers.

Peter McCormack: But they see you on YouTube, that's the other difference. 

Robert Breedlove: That's the thing. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so the people who stop me are saying, "I watch you on YouTube"; it's never, "I listen to your podcast".  It's, "I watch on YouTube", because they're seeing your face.  It's a weird thing.  I think it's funny, because it happens with my kids sometimes and their minds are blown. I'll tell you a funny story, this is hilarious.  So, the other day, I'm out on a date just in Bedford, and we go this place called Chicken George.  It's almost an Americanised chicken, a bowl of Korean chicken or buffalo or whatever.  And I'm on this date with this girl and she knows one of the girls who plays for my football team but she doesn't know anything about Bitcoin, she doesn't know anything about what I do.  And she was like, "Oh, Tash was saying you've got a really interesting job and she was surprised I don't know who you are".  I was like, "No, I'm not surprised you don't know who I am.  If you're in this little nerd world of Bitcoin, you might know who I am!" 

Robert Breedlove: You're a nerdy dude!

Peter McCormack: "But no one knows who I am.  It's not what you think honestly, I'm an absolute fucking nobody.  But if you're a Bitcoin nerd, you do".  She's like, "Oh, anyway".  Literally one minute later, this dude comes around the corner, he goes, "Holy shit, you're Pete McCormack!"  I'm like, "What?"  He goes, "I love your podcast, man, how are you doing?"  I was like, "Yeah, alright".  He's like, "Well, look, I'll leave you to it.  See you later".  And then she's there going, "What the fuck?" and so that was a bit weird! 

Robert Breedlove: That's funny. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a weird world, man.

Robert Breedlove: It is, I don't know, the whole nature of celebrity is being decentralised, I guess, right?  There used to just be a few people in magazines, now it's whatever nerdy niche you're into, but not necessarily nerdy, whatever niche you're into, that you're more likely to see Instagram influencers or YouTubers or whatever.  And, I really enjoy it actually because the people that approach me, their eyes are gleaming, they're like, "Thank you, whatever you did.  My business was in shambles [or] I didn't understand this [or] my family didn't have, and then watching your show, I learned and things got better".  So, for me it's very fulfilling.

Peter McCormack: Well, the thing for me that's been really interesting about meeting people who listen to the show is that, I think you tend to meet people who are more in your tribe.  There's sub-tribes in Bitcoin.  Your tribe is very different from my tribe.  Mine is a little bit more European centrist, yours is a little bit more Austrian.  So, the things they tend to agree with you on, they disagree with.  So, there's these different tribes that build up.  And so, when you tend to meet people, they're always really grateful because they've been attracted to what you do and they're really kind.  And for me, it's made me realise that this Twitterverse is very different from the podcast world.  And I think it's very easy to be sucked into thinking, "I need to make content that Twitter's telling me I need to make", and then disregarding your audience. 

That's why I've always stuck with what the audience says, what are the emails I get, what are the comments on YouTube, where are they, and then sticking to my guns, because if we all follow Twitterverse, we'd all make the same fucking show.

Robert Breedlove: For sure, for sure.  I need to be better about that, actually.  My current practice is to just try and have conversations that I find interesting. 

Peter McCormack: No, that's a good thing to do, I think.

Robert Breedlove: I'm trying to learn, basically.  I'm trying to figure stuff out, have an unsatiated curiosity about a certain topic.  It's like, I want to read the book and then talk to the person that's either read the book or wrote the book.  And something about that learning out loud is what I call it.  You see two people kind of at the edge of their own understanding, wrestling with an idea.  It's almost a spectator sport of some kind where it's people -- I mean, I enjoy that feeling when I listen to, whatever, like a Jordan Peterson podcast, and he's got someone on that's talking about something I don't understand, and you can tell Jordan doesn't understand, he's trying to learn.  It's like we're all three wrapped up in this process of trying to understand the thing, and that's just been the approach I've taken so far.  And I don't read YouTube comments, I should, I don't know, I'm still hesitant about opening that door.

Peter McCormack: Do you let them all through?

Robert Breedlove: I think so.

Peter McCormack: So, we approve ours.  Because there's so much spam, I don't know if you've looked at yours, there's so much spam, we now approve every one, we've done it for three years.  But we don't censor it.  You'll go in there and you'll see loads of like, "Pete McCormack's a status cuck and fat bastard", and all that shit.

Robert Breedlove: So, you approve them as long as they're not spammy.

Peter McCormack: We approve everything.  All we remove is the, like, "Join our WhatsApp group".  We remove anything about Hex.  But we leave in the Cardano ones, because the Hex ones are spam.  Cardano ones are people who genuinely think Cardano is a valuable currency, so we leave it in there so people can talk back to them.  I very rarely read the comments, but I will occasionally.  I tend to, every show, I just get a little sample, "Give me 10 or 15 and that will give me the sense of it".  Okay, Jason Lowery, people thought I interrupted him too much; Robert Breedlove, they thought I didn't push back on X enough; Junseth, they found that funny.  And so that 10 or 15 will give me the sense of each show and whether I need to rethink my approach. 

Robert Breedlove: That's a good strategy. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but don't read them all because what happens is you're naturally drawn to the shitty ones.  And so, I'll call up Danny, but he's like, "Pete, that's one comment.  I read 50 that were really positive".  I say, "Yeah, but that one really hurt my feelings"!

Robert Breedlove: It's human nature. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's fucking bollocks!

Robert Breedlove: We over-index on the negatives.

Peter McCormack: There's a really good Rogan clip.  If you search for, "Don't Read the Comments Rogan" on YouTube and you watch that one, he gives you a really good bit of advice.  But no, if you can get away from reading the comments.  But I think the strategy of -- I think my view of what is success; success is control over your time.  It's not money.  You've earned good money, I've earned good money.  You know it doesn't make you happy really.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I call it freedom.  But yeah, control of your time.

Peter McCormack: Control of your time.  And by the way, the older you get, the more important that becomes.  Being able to wake up today, today I come down to hang out with you.  We're going to make this show, I'm going to have steak at Hawksmoor, it's a fucking brilliant day.  And then tomorrow, Monday, my daughter's sports day, I'll go to that.  Some people can't, because they're stuck in -- so, that to me is freedom.  And so if you can get control of that, that's the best thing.  And I think the way to get there is just make the shows you want to make and you will find a group of people who are with you on that. 

I think once you chase the numbers, it gets a bit tricky.  I think there's a few people in our industry that have chased the numbers and they've suffered because of that.  And look, don't get me wrong, I'm going to do a Saylor show every year because I want a Saylor show, I want to talk to him, and you need to have a few big shows.  But generally speaking, I think chasing numbers always fails.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, there's definitely a numbers game to be played, and I guess I haven't indexed on that.  We talked about this a little bit in Prague.  I just haven't indexed on that a lot yet, because we've just grown fast, which really I'm surprised, I thought we were kind of a niche thing.  But at some point, yeah, you're running a business, right?  And numbers, downloads are dollars essentially, or Bitcoin, whatever you're converting it into.  And so, if you're going to run a good business, you've got to manage your top line.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's like --

Robert Breedlove: But you don't want to sell out the content to manage to the numbers, because then you dilute the whole message and brand, etc.

Peter McCormack: But I think there's a difference between trying to get Jordan Peterson on and then Eric Weinstein and then Michael Malice and still not neglecting you know up-and-coming people versus having a YouTube banner which was like, "This guy made $1 million by the time he was 12", and a big cheesy grin, when you start literally just being clickbait.

Robert Breedlove: Yes, and the weird faces, yeah.

Peter McCormack: I just don't do that shit.  I think that's the road to hell in terms of this.

Robert Breedlove: This kind of goes into the topic of mimesis a little bit that I mentioned I've been reading about. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, what's that?  Tell me what that is. 

Robert Breedlove: Mimetic desire is what it's also called.  This is the thesis of René Girard.  I've only read... 

Peter McCormack: Somebody directed me to that.  Jeremy Welch.  Okay.  It's Peter Thiel's favourite book.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah.  It's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, the magnum opus of Girard, and it's about this notion of mimetic desire.  Very complicated to talk about because it's something we're always in all the time, but basically Aristotle said something like, "Humans excel other animals in our ability to imitate".  So, we actually learn and compile our personalities through imitation, and you see this with kids; you've been a parent, right? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Robert Breedlove: Those kids, especially when they're toddler kind of age, they're perfect mirrors of you.  They're not doing what you tell them to do, they're imitating your behaviours.  If you're getting mad or if you're doing something that you might not approve of, you're going to see in that kid real fast, and it's like they hold up this mirror to you.  Well, it turns out that process never stops.  We're doing it right now.  As we interact, I am this amalgam of all the personalities that I've ever interacted with across time, not a pro rata amalgam, it's not everyone you interact with, you just incorporate.  It's who you are drawn to, who you find interesting, who you find awe-inspiring.  You're more likely to imitate them. 

As I started to read this, I found things, certain ways I say things, I'm like, "Oh, I got that from my friend so-and-so back in this place, because he used to say it the same way or do the same facial gesture", or whatever it is.  And so, this is a very interesting thesis about that.  And the reason YouTube brought that to mind was because, whatever is working in the YouTube space, if it's making these weird faces or making these clickbait-y things, well, people copy that and it spreads mimetically, right?  And this obviously has connections to internet memes that we typically consider these little cultural idea packets that spread.  Well, we're just propagating those all the time and it's a game you can never opt out of. 

Peter McCormack: Is that not a little bit like what we were talking about earlier, where it's almost like the alcohol addiction that you're borrowing from the future?  And so, by chasing the memes and the downloads, it's almost like if you're clickbaiting and you've hit a certain number of downloads, then you need to keep doing that, and if you don't hit that, what are you going to do next?  Whereas, if you just don't give a fuck, if you go into our show, our YouTube banners, it will literally be a photo of you and it'll say, "Breedlove".  It won't say, "Breedlove, What is Money", we won't say, "Mimetic design", whatever, it's not going to say that.  That is our identity and we're cool with that and if it doesn't mean we get as many downloads, but the downloads are authentic, again, we want the authentic ones, because we're happy with authentic growth.

Robert Breedlove: I agree with that.

Peter McCormack: And so, I don't want to get sucked -- I've seen other people get sucked into that, and it becomes a latest addiction.

Robert Breedlove: For sure, and I just finished this book actually last night, called Wanting.  So, Rene, Gerard's book, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, extremely difficult, almost a human action type book, very dense, 600 pages, hard to read.

Peter McCormack: You've turned me off it already!

Robert Breedlove: It's really good, but it's like, it hurts.  This other book, Wanting, is written in the past couple of years.  It's a synthesis of his ideas written in a very accessible way.  And one of the things the author highlights, I don't know the name of the author, sorry, but if you google, "Wanting mimetic desire", it's the book that comes up, is that humans have to distinguish between, he calls them thick and thin desires.  I would call them deep desires and shallow desires. 

So, a shallow desire might be like, "I need to pump these numbers, so let me do whatever I can on the YouTube banner".  But a deep desire, like what you just articulated, something like, you want to be authentic, you want to be, this is your brand, this is how you want it to look, right?  There's design considerations, I'm sure there's an element of your personal style that's in-built into the show, right, like you're tatted up, cool rocker dude, you make these kind of cool-looking banners, and it's guest focused, which I think is also part of the ethos of your show.  So, you have to not get caught up in the mimetic contagion sometimes, and just by standing out and being true to yourself and true to your principles, you'll actually induce other people to imitate you instead.  So, it's kind of part of being a leader in some respect.

Peter McCormack: I think the primary goal is longevity.  You know, love the job, fortunate enough that I get to work now with my brother, my son works for me, Danny's become one of my best friends in the world and we've got this really great team.  We get to do the coolest job in the world, hang out with great people.

Robert Breedlove: Travel.

Peter McCormack: Travel, you know, privileges, you get invited to things.  There's sporting events.  I get cut final tickets and things that, there's just all these benefits.  I'd to think it's the kind of job you don't retire from, you just can do forever, right?  And I just want longevity.  And so in my head, I'm like, the longevity of this is based around two things: the quality of the product, and whether people trust me.  If you lose trust, you're done; and if the product quality drops, you're done.  And so, when I look what others do, there's absolutely no doubt, and I've said it over and over again unapologetically, very early on, I looked at Rogan a lot and, "What's he doing?" 

Robert Breedlove: Of course. 

Peter McCormack: Why do people trust him?  I was like, he's just being him.  Funny enough I don't even listen to it as much anymore now, but I was like, I trust him.  I don't agree with everything he says, but I trust him.  It's like you, I don't agree with everything you say, but I trust you.  But there's other people out there, I don't agree with them and I don't trust them, I think they're full of shit.  I think they're playing a character.  So, the longevity, so I definitely took ideas from Rogan, I took ideas from Rich Roll.  I look around and, interestingly, I don't listen to Bitcoin podcasts by the way, very, very rarely.  I listened to the Marty and the Balaji one, and it was brilliant, but I avoid that because I don't want us to all feel the same.  But I always look at other people and say, "Well, what are they doing well?  How do I get longevity?  What have they done?"  So, that's what I do.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, and that's what we're all, no matter what business you're in.  You either have someone you look up to, or your competitors, you're seeing what they're doing, and you're constantly trying to map your behaviour or actions to what works, right, whatever's being effective.  So, the general point is, we're all in this game of mimetic desire all the time.  So, one example I thought that was really useful in the book, this is again from the book, Wanting, is just the nature of a handshake. 

So, if I go to shake your hand, I extend my hand, shake your hand, and you reach out and you shake my hand.  We have kind of this little moment, we might smile, "Hey, how are you doing?" you know, these warm feelings.  Our desires are linked up, we've connected with one another.  So, you're basically imitating, right?  I extend my hand, you shake it, we're on the same wavelength, so to speak.  Now, if I extend my hand to shake it and you refuse, you refuse to shake my hand, all of a sudden I'm going to imitate you actually, because you're exhibiting these feelings of coldness or disconnection, and now I'm going to feel that like, "Oh, he rejected my handshake", all of a sudden I am now, unconsciously even, just imitating how you're behaving towards me. 

So, it's this weird thing where if the whole world is -- if the global marketplace is like a brain, right, where I was talking about the analogy between the human brain and kind of the marketplace being where all our brains are connected via the price signal, well, the brain has these things called mirror neurons, right, they're mirroring one another.  So, it's almost we are mirror neurons in this global brain.  And it's a weird thing to talk about because you're always in the game.  And in many ways, I think it's the most fundamental act of exchange.  We talk about exchange of goods or services, trading hands, but there's something even more fundamental than that, that is our actual interpersonal interactions, and we're trading cultural and ideological data packets with every engagement.

Peter McCormack: Wow!

Robert Breedlove: It blows my fucking mind.

Peter McCormack: I had a handshake rejected this week. 

Robert Breedlove: Oh really?

Peter McCormack: Yes.

Robert Breedlove: And how did it feel?

Peter McCormack: Well, she was 8, I think, or something.  She was young, it's so weird.

Robert Breedlove: Oh, she was 8, okay.

Peter McCormack: Sting's granddaughter.

Robert Breedlove: Okay!

Peter McCormack: So, Sting played in Bedford Park.  Turns out his son is a bitcoiner and also plays music.  He did an interview coming in saying, "The best thing about Bedford is Real Bedford".  So, I messaged him on Twitter and said, "I'll come and drop you off some shirts".  So, I went down to the concert and he got us in and I gave him the shirts and his three kids were there.  I went to fist bump them all and the youngest daughter just wouldn't do it.  I got rejected!

Robert Breedlove: She might just be too young to know what it was.

Peter McCormack: No, he said, "You've got to earn it with this one". 

Robert Breedlove: Oh, okay. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, she had a tough face on her.

Robert Breedlove: There you go.

Peter McCormack: I was like, "Okay".  So, we have a world where people have to earn handshakes, I get it.

Robert Breedlove: And it stands out in your memory too, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, definitely.

Robert Breedlove: That little feeling of rejection.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what it was?  I was like, you're interesting and different.  Like, if I ever met up with him again, that's the kid I want to know about.  What's she up to?  Because the other two, I mean three great kids, lovely kids, but she stood out to me.  I'm like, what is she up to; what's she doing in life?  I think she's going to do something interesting.

Robert Breedlove: And you might bring her an extra gift or something to try and win her over!

Peter McCormack: Please give me a fist bump!  So, I mean, I don't even know if there's a connection to Bitcoin with that, but...

Robert Breedlove: I'm curious though about this mimesis thing, and this is on, I don't know, just a point of curiosity for me, but to what extent does that relate to monetisation of certain assets?  If you see people holding gold historically, and you see them becoming wealthier, right, their purchasing power is going up, do people just start copying them?  Like, "Oh, well maybe I'll just hold some gold".  And before you know it, it spreads, right?  Whatever is working, people are copying one another's strategy, and before you know it, we're on a global gold standard something that, and how that might apply to Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Well, that was a question I was going to put to you.  Is that a reason that we have this kind of strong ideology in Bitcoin?  A lot of people, especially in the Twitterverse, where I'm sure you can apply this mimesis to Twitter and Twitter behaviour, is that why you get this cult kind of behaviour?  A lot of people, you know, suddenly a wave will come through, right?  Seed oils are bad, we're all anti-seed oils, steaks are good, we're all eating steaks, is that what is in play there?

Robert Breedlove: I think so, because you said earlier about trust, that we, in this little Bitcoin cult, most of us, it's kind of a high trust environment, right?  If you say something, or if Saifedean says something about not even a Bitcoin- or economics- related topic, I'm listening.  I'm like, "Oh, this is a guy that I pay attention, they're no bullshit, we're truth seekers", you might say, so I'm more likely to trust the signal.  All right, seed oils are bad; I actually learned seed oils are bad through bitcoiners; I learned about the carnivore diet through bitcoiners.  I've learned -- it's taken me down a million book rabbit holes, so the whole sovereign individual thing I learned through Bitcoin.  That's through, if not pure imitation, at least opening your mind to other things that you may have never seen before. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, definitely.

Robert Breedlove: It's like, "I trust this guy, he's smart, he finds this interesting, maybe I will too, so let me look into it".  So, I'm not saying that it's pure imitation, it's not every time you eat a steak, I need to suddenly eat a steak, but it's at least opening people's minds to alternative lifestyles, ways of being, diets, etc.  And you see how quick it moves to the Bitcoin world, right?  Once seed oils are being disrespected, all of a sudden everyone's disrespecting the seed oils.

Peter McCormack: It's a really interesting thing that I found whereby, I can go anywhere in the world, go up on Twitter, I could be in Lisbon, I could be in Ohio, I could be in Thailand and I say, "Okay, I'm in town, are there any bitcoiners that want to hang out?" and they come and you kind of instantly know you're going to get along.  And you might not agree on everything, but you're going to get along.  You've got enough crossover in the things you're interested in that you're going to get on. 

Robert Breedlove: The basic values are there, right? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, the basic values are there.  It's the Orange Party thesis which gets you away from this kind of red v blue, guns v no guns, abortions v no abortions, trans rights, all these things that have created all this separation for the benefit of the machine, to a group of people who are anti the machine, who may historically have been from very different political positions, but have found a place where they've come together.  And so that kind of virus spreading through people I think is brilliant.

Robert Breedlove: I do too, I think it's beautiful.  You could say almost that humans are like religious animals.  We need to organise ourselves beneath some story or symbolic canopy, right?  Religion has provided this function historically, the nation state sort of does now.  That was part of the big king's birthday party and all that's demonstrating that symbolic canopy.  But Bitcoin is an interesting one, right?  It's a story that humans aren't really writing and rewriting and it's something that obviously inspires people towards hard work and honesty and self-sovereignty, good things for the individual, and so it's very fascinating to me.  And I don't know, we use these words, "cult", "religion", they're used in a derogatory way, but I would argue that any social construct has these qualities.

Peter McCormack: Shared ideals.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah.  Take out the US dollar and look at the back of it, it's got a fucking pyramid and the Eye of Horus on top of it.  Talk about cult-y, right?  And I'm extra tuned in on this because of Taleb's recent comments.  Bitcoin has a long history of making really smart people look really stupid.

Peter McCormack: I saw your tweet.

Robert Breedlove: I think he's the pioneer of that comment at this point.

Peter McCormack: Have you ever spoken to Craig Warmke? 

Robert Breedlove: No. 

Peter McCormack: So, I interviewed him, he's one of those Bitcoin philosophers, great guy.  He did a thing called the Saltiness Index for journalists.  I'm trying to remember, I think it's the correlation between how early they discovered Bitcoin and now how salty they are.  Because really, you were given the Willy Wonka golden ticket, you were given the jackpot and you rejected it.  Nathaniel Popper is a great example of this.  I absolutely love Digital Gold, is it Digital Gold?  I can't remember.  It's the first book I read on Bitcoin back in whenever.  And over time, he's just become a journalist who just does hit pieces now.  I think he does New York Times hit pieces against Coinbase or whatever.  It's just bollocks, he just writes bollocks.  And I can imagine there's a scenario where he was writing about Bitcoin, not buying it, and he's just realised how fabulously wealthy he could be. 

So Craig Warmke has done this whole saltiness index and I think that saltiness index, it spreads outside of journalists, and I don't think the saltiness is just related to, they didn't buy and could have got fabulously wealthy.  I think it's also there's a saltiness related to how much pushback they get.  And I think Taleb now, his position against Bitcoin is irrational.  So, firstly he conflates Bitcoin and crypto together.  That whole interview was...  and I was like, "For this interview to make any sense, you need to tell me if you're talking about Bitcoin or crypto.  If you're talking about crypto wrapping Bitcoin together, you've made a fundamental error so let's disregard it". 

Robert Breedlove: 100%. 

Peter McCormack: But I just think he's salty, that's all it is.  He's just salty.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, his ego has been bashed.  You know, what is it?  I guess, okay, back to mimesis, right?  You see a lot of people, and by the way, if I was an outsider looking at Bitcoin Twitter, I would be like, "Yeah, these people are kind of weird.  They're all fucking eating meat, they all hate seed oils, they're very loud and antagonistic online".  It's a little kind of strange --

Peter McCormack: We're a bunch of fucking weirdos! 

Robert Breedlove: Subculture, yeah.  The one common denominator, which I really appreciate, is that we're all nerds in our own way.  Every time, and this is why I love hanging out with bitcoiners, it's always some stimulating new discussion of some things I have never heard or thought about every single time.  So, again, Bitcoin's transformed my social life too.  I used to just go and drink and go to parties or whatever.  But now, I like to go hang out with bitcoiners sober and just jive with these conversations and these ideas that are flowing that I can't find anywhere else in the world.  Anyways, so from an outsider's perspective, we look a weird group. 

There's also the tendency to be anti-mimetic sometimes, you don't want to be part of a group, you don't want to be seen as part of a group. you actually want to be seen as standing outside of it, right, they're all wrong.  And Taleb, I think, is just the leader.  He wrote the black paper or something that, the anti, "Well, here's why Bitcoin's going to zero mathematically, a mathematical proof".  And then all these mathematicians came out and said, "Hey dude, you're full of shit.  It's not a mathematical proof that it's going to zero".  And so he's, yeah, he's throwing a tantrum or something.  His ego, I don't know if it's the beef with Saifedean or what, but he is just totally, and this is a writer, I really respect, I've read his books twice, he's a great writer, if he wrote them; I've also heard he plagiarised from Wittgenstein and these other, from Mandelbrot.

Peter McCormack: But isn't it, "Great artists copy"?

Robert Breedlove: Well, once again, Mimesis.  Yeah, "To copy one guy is plagiarism, but to copy a thousand is research".  He's a good writer, to whatever extent he wrote his stuff, but his ego has become so entangled in this contention that he looks a fucking buffoon at this point.

Peter McCormack: Yeah but it's the same as Peter Schiff.

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, of course.

Peter McCormack: It's just, there's this graveyard of boomers who've got it wrong.  Even at the moment, I'm finding George Gammon getting a bit weird.  He did a whole CBDC thing today, just didn't make sense.  I like George. 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I like George too.  I haven't seen -- again, I don't follow many people's content at all.  I read books mostly, so I do very little audio or video.  But the last time I had George on the show, I felt we found some middle ground.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, me too.

Robert Breedlove: It was like, "Look, it boils down to whatever the market selects, right?"  If the market keeps selecting this thing, then it is good money.  If it's not, then it's not.

Peter McCormack: Well, I find it interesting that Taleb at this time is doing that, especially at a time where I'm feeling like the anti-Bitcoin machine, whether it's the media, big-name personalities, the state, institutions, I'm starting to see some chinks in their armour.  There was the thing that came out where, was it the IMF that came out the other day and said, "We have to accept that Bitcoin can't be stopped". 

Robert Breedlove: I didn't hear that. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Coinbase defeating the SEC.  For pretty much every presidential nominee outside of Biden and Trump, they're all pro-Bitcoin.  I feel this tide is now turning, and rightfully so, and at a time where people have good reason to distrust media, money, and institutions.  Now, I feel this kind of tide is just starting to turn, and I hope it continues.  But it's funny a time like that, someone like Taleb is still coming out and being given air time.  I mean, even the I mean the interviewer did a great job of pushing back on him.  Great questions. 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah.  You would not have predicted that maybe ten years ago. 

Peter McCormack: But he wrote the forward to The Bitcoin Standard. 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah I know, and he wrote a good forward, he said good things about it. 

Peter McCormack: He wrote Black Swan! 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah.  I don't know, I don't understand.  I mean, I guess it's easy to lose touch with reality when you're at the top of a given vertical, right?  And the guy's kind of at the top.  He made a lot of money, he has some very successful books, and maybe now the hubris has just caught up with him.  He needs to stay humble and stack sats and maybe that would humble his ass! 

Peter McCormack: Well look, one of the hardest things to do is say, "I was wrong, I'm sorry"!

Robert Breedlove: Yes, it is.

Peter McCormack: I've had to do it a few times!

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, same!

Peter McCormack: But I'm okay doing it, because I actually realise it's a superpower.  Lockdowns, I was wrong, I got it wrong, I called it wrong, I am sorry, I apologise, it wasn't through malice, I was wrong about that.  I was wrong about a lot to do with politics.  It's okay to do that.  Nobody goes through their whole life 100% right about everything all the time.

Robert Breedlove: Fucking nobody ever.  And the reason it's a superpower is because you're acknowledging your fallen, sinful, wayward nature.  We are dealing with a very complex world, we're going to be wrong about shit a lot, and especially as things are changing faster and faster, you're going to be wrong about more and more things.  So, humility increasingly becomes the optimal strategy.  And I guess this comes with age too, because I know when I was younger, I thought I had it all figured out, and the older you get, you're like, "Wow, I really have fucking nothing figured out"!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm older than you though, I don't know how much older.  How old are you? 

Robert Breedlove: 37. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm 45 in October.  Fuck's sake, count down to 50.  Yeah, it comes with that and having kids getting older.

Robert Breedlove: Kids, helps a lot.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but kids getting older, so one of the big, most transformational moments for me with kids is the moment they come at you with a very mature argument against you and they're right and you have to go -- I mean I had it recently with my son.  I had a bit of a disagreement with him and my daughter over something because they're being fucking annoying, and my son made a point to me and he was very mature, he was totally right, I was 100% in the wrong, and I had to say, "I'm sorry, you are totally right".  And that happens, because my dad's wrong about shit all the time, and I'm now the 44-year-old that can see that and tell him.

But to see my son go through that, firstly, brave enough to actually challenge his dad, it is difficult, and to be right.  And so, I think more than anything, seeing that with my kids makes me realise I can be wrong about a lot!

Robert Breedlove: Yeah.  And that's you setting a good example for them, though.  To actually, you know, "Hey, I was wrong, let me walk that back, let's walk through it again".  And these things are very difficult.  I don't know that it -- I guess it never gets easier if you're operating from your ego.  The ego's always going to feel that little tinge.  But it gets easier, I think, with kids too, because it's like, it's not about you, right?  It's like, how do I handle the situation correctly for them?

Peter McCormack: They destroy your ego!

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, which is great actually.

Peter McCormack: My kids think I'm such a dick!  They think I'm such a douche, it's so funny!

Robert Breedlove: Maybe that's a common thread too.  It's like, my mom said that having kids is an opportunity to live life beyond yourself.  And something about Bitcoin, it's not the same thing, but you do get really focused on all these bigger things, right, and other people and the long term and all that.  So, you kind of start to live a life a bit more beyond yourself, I think, just by going into the Bitcoin universe. 

Peter McCormack: True. 

Robert Breedlove: And it lowers your time preference, having kids lowers your time preference, so there's some common thread.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think one of the mistakes I've definitely made, I see a lot of people make, is they've been right about Bitcoin either through being smart or being lucky, and then thinking they know everything about everything else.

Robert Breedlove: Oh, for sure. 

Peter McCormack: And I've done that.  I'm an expert on everything! 

Robert Breedlove: Everyone with an internet connection today is an expert on everything! 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well listen, look, I'm going to take you for a Hawksmoor shortly.  Anyone listening knows what that is, is going to be very jealous.  I do want to talk to you about fasting before we finish.  Can we talk about that? 

Robert Breedlove: Okay, let's do it. 

Peter McCormack: Because I've seen Okung's on a 40-day fast, Russ Okung.

Robert Breedlove: I did not know that.  I saw a photo of him that he had lost a ton of weight.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, did a 40-day fast. 

Robert Breedlove: Was the photo post the 40-day fast? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

Robert Breedlove: Okay. 

Peter McCormack: And I think he's part way through another one.

Robert Breedlove: Wow!

Peter McCormack: How long was yours?

Robert Breedlove: I did 14.

Peter McCormack: Personally, I think you look better now than when I saw you that day.  What were you on, day 11?

Robert Breedlove: You saw me pretty deep into it, day 11 or day 12. 

Peter McCormack: You looked drained. 

Robert Breedlove: I looked pretty internment camp, I think, as you said! 

Peter McCormack: Oh, man.  What did you get out of it? 

Robert Breedlove: So, I was 235 when I started, so that's 105 kilos, I guess, 106, 107, something like that, and I dropped 25 pounds in 14 days. 

Peter McCormack: Holy shit!

Robert Breedlove: So, I went from 235 to 210, which is, whatever, 10 to 11 kilos lost, 12 kilos lost. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but did you need to lose weight? 

Robert Breedlove: No, it wasn't for weight loss. 

Peter McCormack: Okay, because I do need to lose weight. 

Robert Breedlove: I do it for a couple of things.  One, spiritual discipline.  I don't know what exactly happens when you're fasting, but your body starts to declutter your thoughts, your emotions.  It's said that the energy that goes toward metabolising food instead goes towards housekeeping in the body.  I think it's called autophagy, where sort of the stronger cells eat the weaker cells, so it's kind of cleaning up all the detritus and whatnot in the body, but it feels something that's happening mentally too, emotionally.  I just had a lot of baggage from work and personal stuff, and I had done a nine-day fast the year before, and I'd done three-day fasts several times before that.  I do one-day fast probably once a week.

Peter McCormack: Oh, wow!

Robert Breedlove: And my fast is just water.  You just drink water, and that's it, and electrolytes, so basically salt and water.  And so I get the spiritual discipline out of it.  I've had this gut inflammation, autoimmune thing.  It's not super-severe, it's relatively benign, but I've been trying to deal with that for about eight years, and so it's helpful with that.  And then, I guess that's really it.  What's the other thing is, I don't know, just the challenge.  I just like a challenge, I like to kind of set things that are hard to do and see if I can do them. 

Peter McCormack: I've done one one-day fast. 

Robert Breedlove: You know, I've become very infamous recently for ice baths. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well we tried to arrange for a barrel! 

Robert Breedlove: That's another one of those things.  You go to get into this fucking barrel of ice, everything in your body is like, "Fuck you, what, no, like, no, it's sunny, stay out here, it's warm, feels great, why would you do this?"  Everything in your body, all your instincts are saying, "No, don't do it" and yet somehow, your mind conquers and you just go in and you do it and you get this deep meditative state on ice baths, particularly all the blood rushes out of your extremities, in your chest, you're cold in your neck stem, it's awful.  You spend three to five minutes in there. 

But when you come out, and your body has this rebound effect, all the blood comes back out, the endorphins are flowing.  Huberman's got a lot of great podcasts on this.  There's spikes and testosterone and growth factor, etc, it's a hormone cascade in a positive way for your body.  There's something about that, just exercising mind over matter, and fasting is a very extreme way to do that.  So next, I would like to try to step it up.  Next, I'd probably go 20 days, 21 days.  I'd love to do 40 eventually.  This has been, there's a reason it's been encoded in wisdom traditions and religions for centuries, right?  It's a very natural, easy, low-cost, zero-cost, actually, decreases your cost because you're not eating every day, way to clean up the body, the mind, the spirit. 

It's not fun.  The hardest thing about it for me was I had to clear my calendar, because your energy levels are all over the place.  One day you're down and out and you just want to lay there and maybe you can't even read a book, you're so out of it.  Then all of a sudden you get this spike of energy and you want to write a lot.  It's very unpredictable.  So, I had to do it over Christmas, New Year's, beginning of January so I could have that two-week gap in my calendar.  I would always recommend though, do it in a warm environment, because I did this in Tennessee in the wintertime.  I was wearing eight layers of clothes and blasting the heat in my house.  Your metabolism plummets, so you get very cold, very easy.  And you have to be careful breaking the fast, is the main thing.  Supposedly that's where people can get injured, is if you just kind of reintroduce-

Peter McCormack: Eight cheeseburgers!

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, if you go straight to a half-pound cheeseburger, it might hurt you a little bit. 

Peter McCormack: How did you break your fast? 

Robert Breedlove: There's a book, titled The Fasting Cure, by a guy named Sinclair.  It's available as a free PDF online.  Saylor actually recommended that to me.  It's a very short read and it goes through a lot of case studies about people fasting and different things they've healed.  I don't want to say it's a panacea, but it solves a lot of things for a lot of people.  I broke my fast with a little bit of watermelon and then I felt fine.  So, then I had a little bit of...  I had bone broth, then watermelon, then I had some eggs, then I just jumped in and had steak and eggs.  I was like, that's my thing I really wanted. 

Peter McCormack: I did one one-day fast ever, I was in LA, and the only thing that surprised me about it is I woke up the next day and I wasn't hungry.  It was weird, I thought I would be, but it's just not for me.  I have been doing this thing called 75 hard.

Robert Breedlove: Oh yeah, you told me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I broke on day 14.  You have to train twice a day but not consecutive, minimum 45 minutes.  One has to be outside, no alcohol, but I've been off alcohol for a month anyway. 

Robert Breedlove: And a walk counts, right? 

Peter McCormack: A walk counts, yeah, a walk counts, which is pretty much all I can do because I can't run because of my back.  Gallon of water, read 10 pages of a book, no alcohol, stick to a diet, no cheat meals.  And I got to day 14, I'd only got one workout in and I couldn't fit it in because I had commitments.  So, I failed because of planning, because if I had planned it correctly I would have got up at 6.00 in the morning and done one, and done one at midday.  I did my one at midday and I just fucked up, so I'm back on it.

Robert Breedlove: So, you have to start over?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you have to start over.  But the really good thing about it is, I think actually failing is a good thing because it's just keeping me in this thing of not drinking, training twice a day, eating well, like I've lost nine pounds.  And so, I never lose weight, because I'm a fat bastard, who just eats all the time.  But it's just more of a discipline thing that, yeah.

Robert Breedlove: What is the diet you're sticking to?

Peter McCormack: I'm just doing calorie deficit.  So, I'm, what I tend to have is, a brunch, I'll have four eggs and salmon, and then for dinner I'll have a steak.  But if I'm sat there with my kids watching a film and they open a bag of chocolate, I'm not going to say no to a piece of chocolate. 

Robert Breedlove: Got you.

Peter McCormack: But across my steak and my eggs and my one coffee a day, I hit about 1,200 calories.  And so there's a little leeway if I need it. 

Robert Breedlove: Have you tried 30 days carnivore? 

Peter McCormack: No, my problem with carnivore, it never actually works for me.  So, it really triggers people.  The healthiest I've ever felt was when I was a vegan.  I did two years of vegan and the first years when I wasn't working, I cooked every meal fresh, I was light, I was running, man.  I got my 10k down to 49 minutes, I got my 5k down to 23-and-a-half minutes, I felt great, my skin was great.  I went back to work, I stayed vegan but because I didn't have the time to make everything fresh, I was having microwave meals and just pastas and then I went to shit with it.  I've tried carnivore.  Whenever I try carnivore, I feel heavy and bloated.  It just doesn't work for me. 

Robert Breedlove: Interesting.

Peter McCormack: So, it's not for me, but I'm good with fish and eggs.  Eggs, fish, green salads, I'm really good with.

Robert Breedlove: I think if you do whatever protein works for you, maybe just eggs and fish, even for 30 days, it'll snap that sugar craving.  I used to be, every week or ten days, I wanted to eat a bag of chocolate chip cookies or something, you know, this weird sugar habit.  But doing carnivore for 30-plus days, somehow it broke it, I'm not interested in bread or sweets any more.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Okung said that, he says, "Drop sugar for two weeks and you'll see a massive change in your life".  But I think I don't have a desire to -- I like watching a movie, having a piece of chocolate, get a Toblerone or a bag of Revels or something.  I don't have bread, I'm not a bread guy, I don't really eat chips or fries.  But the other day my daughter was making avocado and salmon bagels and I had one.  So, I'm kind of like, I just want to get into a place where I can eat what I want but not overeat, because I've put on like 45 pounds since I started this podcast.  What was it?  No, 3 stone, 14, 28, 42 pounds, 3 stone.

Robert Breedlove: Wow, well I think you could drop it quick.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, I'll show you my thing.  Where is it? 

Robert Breedlove: You could also try the fast if you want. 

Peter McCormack: This is my, it's my weight chart since I started.  So, I'm down from 216-and-a-half to 208.

Robert Breedlove: Nice.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but me heavier than you, when you're that much bigger than me is fucking ridiculous!

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, I was looking pretty frail and skinny though.  I gained all that weight back, so two weeks from 235 to 210.  Four weeks later, I was back up to 230.

Peter McCormack: By the way, what was that weight you were squatting in London?

Robert Breedlove: Oh, deadlifting.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, on your hex bar.

Robert Breedlove: It was 160 kilos.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Robert Breedlove: So, 335 maybe. 

Peter McCormack: Jesus.  How do your knees cope? 

Robert Breedlove: I've been doing them my whole life.  I've been doing Olympic lifting since I was 11 years old, so I'm like 26 years in.  I love it, it's my drug. 

Peter McCormack: All right, listen, I'm going to take you for a steak, let's go.  This has been great.  Where do you want people to go; What is Money? 

Robert Breedlove: Yeah, whatismoneypodcast.com.  Twitter @breedlove22. 

Peter McCormack: We made a show and didn't argue about anything. 

Robert Breedlove: That sucks. 

Peter McCormack: People are going to be really disappointed. 

Robert Breedlove: Let's do it over. 

Peter McCormack: No, fuck that!  All right, man.  Good to see you, let's go. 

Robert Breedlove: Thanks Peter.